Apologia For My Version of Sunset Shimmer · 1:59pm May 17th, 2016
I base my portrayal of Sunset Shimmer on the devious tactics she has used to dominate Canterlot High School when we first meet her, coupled with the way in which she is able to become friends with the Humane Five after her Heel-Face Turn, and clinched by the big Not So Different moment that she has with Princess Twilight in Rainbow Rocks. The tactics shown are of intrigue and misdirection rather than brutal bullying, and I am far from convinced that overt brutal bullying would even work in the context of an elite high school like CHS.
I think that if Sunset attempted to simply strong-arm her way into dominance, she'd wind up attracting too much hostile attention, whether from Celestia or the law. Beyond this, the Ponies are a less violent race than are the Humanoids, and hence if Sunset tried to out-brutalize Humanoids, she'd be playing to her weaknesses rather than her strengths. Sunset is brave and action-oriented for a Pony, but there are Humanoids -- probably even at CHS -- much nastier and capable of more extreme physical violence than her -- even granted that she sees the Humanoids as not entirely "people" until her reformation.
The Equestria Girls Annual shows in detail some of the things Sunset did. Her basic strategy was to disrupt existing groups of friends when possible, especially ones which crossed clique boundaries. (She probably would have liked to disrupt the cliques as well, and she likely did to some extent, but since the cliques are based on shared interests, this was probably beyond her ability). This sort of indirect and strategic approach (the equivalent of playing a chess game by position more than exchange opportunity) is exactly the sort of thing she would have learned at the Court at Canterlot.
One should also remember that An Equestrian Gentlemare ... is told from Sunset's viewpoint, and Sunset is an Unreliable Narrator because she is laboring under some serious delusions regarding the reasons for her exile, her own cultural, intellectual and moral superiority to the Humaniods, and the nature of her feelings for Flash Sentry (to list the most obvious ones that apply to the story in particular). She does a number of things in the story of which most normal Equestrians of her class would disapprove, and some things which would outright horrify them.
Sunset is capable of complex academic, intellectual, scientific and strategic reasoning because that is how she is portrayed in canon. Yes, Sunset displays some "bad girl" stereotypes (even when she's no longer a bad girl in reality) but if you look at what she has actually done and does, her power-seeking behavior is consistently socially-factional (before her Heel-Face Turn she does this by disrupting rival factions, after it by promoting her own) rather than directly violent. She was accepted into Celestia's Academy and became her personal student; this means she must be capable of complex academic thought. We see her scientifically-studying how the magic of the Humane Five works in one of the shorts. In the whole EG series, she always acts as a Guile Villain/Heroine.
In fact, everything I put in An Equestrian Gentlemare ... was based almost directly on something I saw in the series. Even both the love and the sex, in a way -- I based that on the facts that Sunset seems to have never sought direct revenge against Flash for dumping her in Equestria Girls and that Rarity used the term "an item" to describe Sunset's past relationship with Flash in Rainbow Rocks.
All this is by way of explaining that I didn't just pull my version of Sunset Shimmer out of nowhere.
This. All of this. A thousand times this. I am years away from reaching my introduction of Sunset Shimmer, but everything your talking about here is exactly why I'm taking pains to foreshadow her now long before I ever have her appear. Because I don't want her just showing up and having the readers confused and angry. You cover all my reasons for being careful to build her up and you perfectly point out why she couldn't be a openly public, physical bully. Keep up the bloody good work!
Agreed. Sunset is smart, socially adept, and scientifically inquisitive, with an expressed preference for practical experimentation over theoretical study. The social adeptness is especially important; without magic, other people have always been Sunset's favored weapon in the human world, whether turning them against themselves, employing minions, exposing machinations to those being manipulated, or rallying others against supernatural threats.
This is really the best strategy an equinoid can use in a humanoid society, manipulating a herd mentality for good or for ill. Her authority in others' eyes can back up her intimidation or lend credence to her guidance. This is why her lowest point always comes when she's a social pariah. Without that authority, she is nothing more than an extradimensional refugee, intelligent enough to understand all of the horrible implications of that status.
Of course, this apologia clearly wasn't directed towards me. I just find Sunset a fascinating character.
In a lot of ways this contrasts Twilight who when the going gets tough tends to try doing thinks herself first, with some help from a small group of friends/allies second. Sunset would make one heck of a general or strategic commander, while I think Twilight would make a better tactical one; in general at least.
If Sunset ever came back across the mirror I could see her being in charge of Twilight's guard force, if she ever makes one.
If you wish to move the discussion here, you may have had at least a courtesy of providing a link back to the post that started it.
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Sorry, reposted it in a hurry. Here's the original.
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Other people need views and followers too, y'know.
)
Ah!
I do enjoy your version of Sunset Shimmer. Despite having read the story, I'm a little confused: Why do you think CHS is an elite school? I mean, I kind of assume it's the local public high school, we've seen plenty of students (the Diamond Dog equivalents, Snips and Snails) that don't feel like they could get into a "gifted" school, and also don't seem like have rich parents paying for private school.
There's a larger question I have here, and I'm asking you because I think you may have put more thought into it than anyone else: Why does Sunset bother taking over the school socially? I mean, her long-term plan is always to go back to Equestria, right? And she doesn't see the students as a physical threat or legal threat, the most they could do to her is gossip about her or put mean notes on her locker before she leaves. Why doesn't Sunset just ignore the other humans as much as possible and stick to researching magic/technology while she waits for the portal to cycle through?
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Note the students' behavior, and the facilities. Even granted that the Humanoid World is culturally (but not technologically) closer to a mid 20th century version of America than it is to early 21st century America, that is not a poor school. Or even an average school. They're very obviously what America would call a "private school" (and Britain would confusingly call a "public school") which means a school for which you pay tuition. The fact that they even regularly compete with Crystal Prep is telling -- it means they're in the same "tier," either academically, economically, socially or any or all of the above. Also, they seem to either have an attached Junior HIgh School, or start taking their students around age 13-14, which is an American private (not public) school organizational system.
Perhaps this is more obvious to me than it is to many people because I grew up in the Bronx and live now in Oakland CA; I know what a poor school looks like, and it does not look like Canterlot High. The Diamond Dogs are the closest thing you see in that whole school to kids who actually look tough and maybe poor, and it's more likely that they just have a very grungy sense of style.
I don't know about vanilla canon, but in An Equestrian Gentlemare ... Sunset Shimmer wants to be at the school because of the Mirror Portal (and the mystery of Principal Celestia, whom Sunset realizes must be some sort of echo or manifestation of Princess Celestia); she feels she has to control the school because she (unfairly) sees the Humanoids as dangerous murderous savages. Her basic assumption is that if she doesn't throughly dominate the killer apes, they'll turn on her and tear her to bits -- metaphorically speaking.
Yes, what happened to her between the end of Equestria Girls and the start of Rainbow Rocks was her worst nightmare come true. And she was surprised to discover that, actually, the Humanoids weren't really that bad. Though this made her feel even worse about the way she took advantage of Flash Sentry, whom she had already known was really rather good and admirable.
3951403 Ah, see this is a different background then informing our different perspectives. I've been to Oakland plenty of times, and I agree this is no Oakland public school. But in California, the property values of your community impact the quality of the school much more than public/private. Go to Piedmont, or over the hills to Lafayette and Walnut Creek, and take a look at the public schools there: They are a lot nicer and tonier than many private schools, especially charter schools or Catholic schools. I assume that Canterlot the human city is a fairly upper-middle class city, and CHS reflects that. Canterlot has that gentrified downtown that screams "high property tax receipts that fund an elaborate marching band and all our electives." I've also never heard of a private school named [City] High School.
Now Crystal Prep is clearly a private school like Eaton or the like, I agree. I suspect Crystal Prep started doing the friendship games because an older principle before Cinch (40 years ago) wanted private school kids to befriend public school kids, and obviously this has backfired once Cinch took over.
Ok, so does Sunset assume if she leaves the humans alone they will actually bully her physically? That could be a real threat, if she doesn't pay enough attention to these barbaric apes to read their social cues. Or it could be Sunset is projecting some of her own paranoia and frustration on the world around her. Thanks for answering by the way, it's certainly an interesting concept to noodle on.
I have no problem with your version. It makes sense from her perspective.
I have actually seen public schools that looked as good or effectively better than Canterlot High and then went across the railroad tracks and the schools were deplorable. This is due to the greatly imbalanced (and officially illegal) way of funding schools in Ohio. These schools were in the Toledo area and it was very educational to go to them for a Men's Chorus tour.
Where in this blog are her weaknesses and flaws? You can't defend a characterization by only listing how awesome you think the character is. Sunset has plenty of flaws, and I'm not just talking about "Hollywood" flaws which only serve to make her cooler. We don't want another Starlight Glimmer.
I disagree that Sunset is some kind of teenage chessmaster. She's certainly smart, but a key motivator of her entire character is anger. Someone who is fundamentally angry, cannot be wholly Machiavellian.
And no, the humanoids would not rise up in revolt against her through violence. One, Canterlot High is an elite school. Two, you yourself think that this is not "real life Earth" but some sort of gentler alt-Earth with a "more moral" America.
Anyways, I tend to think that the true version of Sunset Shimmer is a medium between your 2 extremes (Jordan ---- Chudogort). Sunset may have spent some years in a gentrified society courtesy of Celestia, but she does not idealize herself as a gentlemare as per Rarity's romanticized expectations. She may be an adventurer, but she is more Teddy Roosevelt than a rogue or ruffian.
Well, for starters, her whole exile is self-imposed (Princess Celestia told her to leave the Academy, not to flee to another dimension!); her quest to dominate Canterlot High School is based on a fundamental delusion regarding the nature of the Humanoids (she doesn't have to run the place simply to survive long enough for the Mirror Portal to open again), and all this derives directly from her flaws -- her bad temper and her vast arrogance -- some of which she conquers over the course of the movies.
I'm not sure why you imagine that "elite" means "wimpy." And the model for the North American Federation's internal culture -- America before the 1960's -- was actually far more comfortable at the elite level with violence in a good cause than is modern America, because it wasn't influenced by the "pacifism" of the 1960's. They're less willing to take it to extreme violence (murder) than would be, say, the amoral inhabitants of a modern inner-city high school, but they are quite willing to simply beat up someone who tries to directly dominate them as a group through physical force.
There is, simply, no way for Sunset Shimmer to take over that (or any other plausible) school by directly intimidating everyone else, because she'd have to take on groups of people in direct fights. She still would have to even after separating everyone into cliques, because people still have groups of friends -- just not the biggest or most ideal groups possible. How does she do it?
The IDW Annual shows exactly how she does it -- by the sort of intrigue-based, "chessmaster" tactics that you claim she can't possibly be doing because she's too hot-tempered and angry. Yes, she is hot-tempered and angry -- which is why she's doing this exercise in Discord in the first place. But she's also smart -- the intellectual equal of Twilight Sparkle -- and when she misapplies her brilliant, Court-intrigue trained mind to creating chaos at a high school full of normal, innocent teenagers, she's highly effective.
If she hadn't been smart, or had been stupid enough to try to do it by simply running around challenging everyone to fights (or jumping them and beating them up by surprise, even) she would have been remembered as "that crazy kid who attacked people until we beat her up and she wound up in the looney bin next to Screwball." She would not have succeeded. Nobody succeeds doing that, even in an inner city high school (they succeed there by playing gang politics).
Sunset's self-idealization as a gentlemare is part of her structure of delusions -- she's actually betraying a lot of her cultural ideals by her cruel and domineering behavior. Having said that, I think that you imagine that being upper-class means being wimpy or morally passive -- I suggest you read the social history of the 19th century to find out what I actually mean by the term. I'm not talking about effete modern British upper classes kissing the feet of Muslim invaders.
Sunset Shimmer is the sort of "gentry" who might lead a regiment holding off screaming Zulu hordes or rise to power in a savage tribe by sheer force of will, courage and intelligence. In fact, the second scenario is exactly what she thinks she's doing.
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err... you seem to be obsessing over "physical force" entirely too much.
Nobody in their right mind would actually assume that Sunset goes beating people up with a baseball bat or shanking them in the bathroom or something.
That'd be stupid. Hilarious, mind you, but stupid.
Granted, I actually use a beating scene in stuff that I write (the scene I showed you), but that would definitely not be the only, or even main by any stretch of imagination, instrument of gaining power.
"Brutal", "Direct" and "Tactical" while does evoke an idea of a fight, does not actually imply physical violence inflicted upon students, but rather in my original post, related more towards the sorts of social and mental arsenal she'd employ.
Blackmail is direct and brutal. Humiliating by snide comment or setting up a bad prank or "unfortunate" circumstance or a slanderous rumour for someone may be less direct, but quite brutal. Breaking a friendship when an opportune case presents itself by employing simple think-on-the-spot ruses and deceptions is a tactical, not strategic option.
Etc
Also, you kinda keep using your own headcanon to justify your headcanon. Which is silly. FYI.
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Oh yes, that's normally how she operates. She treats FLASH, and anyone important to him, more nicely because she LOVES him. In fact, her forbearance toward him in EG was WHY I decided she loved him. She only harmed him when in full Nightmare mode.
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What you said has exactly zero relation to the thing I said.
This is a very disconcerting feeling.
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I agreed with your main point that she applies force and other influences tactically, then stated that she is much gentler to Flash, and explained why.