Unpopular opinion time

Terminal Rex

Going Indognito mode..
@Background Pony #6744  
Sunset deserved every bit of what she got and it made her a better person and repaid her karmic debt. Sunset was always a more stable person to begin with, her major failing being pride, which was no longer an issue when it was shattered after being unwillingly turned into a monster and finally seeing herself the way others saw her.
 
Starlight was a woman child who genuinly didn’t understand her actions were wrong. She took longer to change because she had so many issues she didn’t know where to start.
 
Perhaps if she had met a victim who didn’t immediately forgive her, or someone who never got over the brainwashing and was still pushing her equality Dogma, That would have been her Rainbow rocks moment or her wall flower moment.
Latecomer

@Terminal Red  
Deserved, perhaps, but whether it improved her is quite questionable. At most, you could say it discouraged her from falling back into bad habits - but she never showed any inclination to.
 
But I agree that Starlight, whose reformation worked quite differently, was probably more in need of confronting victims who didn’t cheaply forgive.
Background Pony #6744
@Terminal Red
 
But that’s just it though. Watching Rainbow Rocks I never once felt “She deserves this.” The story is focused on her pain rather than the pain of any of the people she’s hurt.
 
I honestly didn’t get the sense that she wouldn’t have still been a much better person had the school not turned on her.
 
And hey, I think an episode about either of those things would’ve been very interesting for Starlight, though I would like to point out that a lot of Starlight’s behaviour problems are related to her overeactions to things. She beats herself up a lot of the time, but her worst tendencies rear their ugly heads when she’s stressed or backed against a wall. I don’t think seeing someone who never got over her brainwashing would stop her from overeacting when shit hits the fan, you know?
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@Terminal Red  
I think the Starlight writers should have done something like this in season 5.
 
-Don’t make her an unicorn, just to avoid the power fantasy trope.  
-She would have another color palette, not too saturated colors. Kinda like Luster Dawn.  
-She would appear as the sidekick of another menacing villain. They don’t get along, but she doesn’t know another way to live her life.  
-She’s not shy, but after her relationship with the villain, she is not into friendship because she’s afraid she would meet another disturbing pony like the villain.  
-Instead of two episodes, we get five or seven episodes for her character development. It has to be intriguing, new and interesting.  
-The ending of season 5 is here: The villain is defeated. Twilight sees that poor pony. She comes closer. She says “let me help you”. She becomes her new student.  
-For season 6, she would learn a lot about friendship (it doesn’t even need to be like Twilight from season 1, it could be a different approach) and herself.
 
That’s how I would do that.
Latecomer

@Ring Team  
That might be an interesting character arc. I doubt the pony involved would much resemble Starlight Glimmer, though. (Although for you, that’s no doubt a feature, not a bug.)
Terminal Rex

Going Indognito mode..
Goddamn sunset had a lotta good thematic imagery in her journey. Phoenixes, Devils, Angels, Monsters.
 
Her pride led to a fall from celestia’s Grace. She didn’t see it was turning her into a monster and insisted she wasn’t one. Then the crown malfunctioned and she was turned into a parody of herself, all her worst traits turned up to 11 and she was terrified of herself.
 
She burned out, like a Phoenix turning to ash. crawling out of that Ditch, She had to truly self reflect under the scrutiny of those she hurt and admitted she was a monster after all. Her first step to rebirth.
 
Every thing she ever did wrong came back to haunt her over the series, whether it be her bullying, cheating or tampering with magic, She had to deal with those consequences.
 
Eventually, She was metaphorically reborn in fire, gaining wings and becoming an angel again. And finally, She was willing to give up her very identity and all her memories to make sure the people she drove apart once before wouldn’t have to lose each other again.
 
It wasn’t a perfect journey, but it was a good one.
Background Pony #6744
@Latecomer
 
To me, good constructive criticism keeps as much of the thing being fixed as possible. If your solution is to just write a 100% different story, then what’s the point?
Terminal Rex

Going Indognito mode..
Trixie’s my fave and she had a very simple journey. Starlight and sunset were about change, and discovering new layers to their character.
 
I feel like Trixie was more about Gaining layers. She started out very shallow and terrible at first impressions. Slowly she starts gaining more depth and pleasant qualitys.
 
Eventually, Her negative qualitys, while still very obvious, are outweighed by an inherent Goodness that you just need to dig a little to find.
 
Sure, she’ll annoy you, but she’ll also risk her life for you.
 
It’s a very understated journey, but I like it. This little blue shid who was never meant to be more than a one shot antagonist got the chance to become a genuinly nice person because we wanted to see the good in her.
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And this is still going. I left for work and I come back to this? I guess productivity is out of the window but I guess that’s how discussions go.
Latecomer

Her redemption in Seasons 5 and 6 was pretty shaky. The question is if she’s enjoyable enough of a character in later seasons to overlook this.
Spinny
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Zero due process that we have seen, on the very limited time the episode still had left.
 
Oh, please, she didn’t get shit. She was given the choice to either reform on the spot, or spend the rest of her natural days in the worst prison in the nation. Or rather, at least WE THINK she was going to spend the rest of her natural life there. We don’t know. She doesn’t know. Because she didn’t get any due process.
 
And Tirek survived there just like that for over a thousand years. from that and Cozy’s example, we can infer that Tartarus just keeps its prisoners in some sort of stasis, probably similar to how Luna managed to survive in the moon for a millenium.
 
Uhh, we certainly haven’t seen any stasis that occurs in Tartarus. Moreover…
 

 
The cage on the right is the one Cozy was poised to spend the rest of her life inside. Do you by any chance see a cot in there to sleep on? A blanket? An fucking newspaper or something to do her business on? Food? Water? Anything?
 
Yeah, I didn’t think so. She was tucked away out of sight, out of mind in a tiny cage WITH. FUCKING. NOTHING. A rabid dog doesn’t deserve that level of abandonment, let alone a pony with FUCKING RIGHTS. Err…they do have rights, don’t they…?
 
Given the above, i’d say it was rather reasonable — the alternatives were either the chopping block, straight-up brainwashing (remember the ‘reforming spell’ from Keep Calm and Flutter On?) or some other prison she would escape from in due time.
 
Nope, it wasn’t reasonable in the slightest. How about a freaking mental health facility? How about somewhere which would have actually been able to address her issues head-on? Somewhere that wouldn’t have made her feel abandoned? Was there really no freaking option like that available anywhere in Equestria?
 
Also, brainwashing would have been way more humane than being left behind in Tartarus forever.
Latecomer

@Spinny  
Isn’t the very evidence you display proof of stasis? Unless you figure the Season 8 finale takes place the same week as the Season 9 premiere?
 
 
@Vivace  
Its an arguable point. After all, a child can be put on psych meds without their consent, can’t they?
Terminal Rex

Going Indognito mode..
After season 5, Many people claimed Starlight got off so easy because she was a cute pony and that cuties always got Redeemed while almost all the Uggos didn’t.
 
I feel perhaps the writers meant for Cozy Glow to be a refutation of that point.
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@Spinny
 
Just because we didn’t see it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
 
%I swear, this is just like when people act like Equestria couldn’t possibly have faced any threats between both appearances of Nightmare Moon…%
 
I don’t know what term you want me to use - on that basis, under all normal circumstances, both Cozy and Tirek would have been dead within three days or so, long before they had any chance to be rescued or escape - the fact that they didn’t, and Tirek was there for over a thousand years without any ill effects (not even mental), implies there is something else about the place at work.
 
Mental health facility? - not even us, with our modern medicine and psychology, can cure psychopathy, and i very much doubt that Equestria could do it.
asdtroi
Lunar Supporter - Helped forge New Lunar Republic's freedom in the face of the Solar Empire's oppressive tyrannical regime (April Fools 2023).

@Spinny  
This. This is the reason why I felt bad even for Tirek back in season 5. Imagine being locked up in a place like this, especially if we assume that you cant die of old age. It’s disgusting, especially for a child.
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The show was nearly the epitome of wasted potential. The worst part was it even had amazing ideas that had to be, for one reason or another, scrapped. Particularly in the original version of Magic Duel.
Is discussion of those old leaks still not allowed? I haven’t really followed in I think years now.
 
On the subject of the leaks, I remember a while back I went off on a rant about how since S6 the writers were sabotaging RD’s episodes, back then I hoped I was just venting. But now I just hate how the leaks just validated that whole rant, almost to the point where I don’t even want to rewatch the show. Almost every single episode had perfectly fine outlines and would have been fine if they had just fucking left them alone, but shitty editing had to ruin it. Almost to the point where I had almost written off rewatching the show, only thing stopping that was the fact that the seasons prior(S1-5), actually had the care to the characters I’d expect from this show
 
Like, S1-5 had a lot of great ideas I’m really sad didn’t get to see the light, but nothing that outright made me mad like the cuts and changes that were made afterward
Latecomer

@Vivace  
True. But it’s not exactly an open-and-shut question - especially since ponies are often seen as taking mind magic less seriously than many humans might. And we don’t even really know how “reform spells” actually work.
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