@cheezedoodle  
Tututut,didnt you learn anything from the circlejerk IDW thread on the forum.Repeat after me :IDW is Satan

@toxicitzi  
“not really my point, more that besides them doing horrible things, they don’t strike me as being friends still.”
 
After Hope stitched Sombra together and ate a magical bullet for him, I can see Sombra warming right back up with Hope. The real change happens when he leaves Hope to stew in his man-cave. Then when Hope comes back with Cadence, no less, he barely bats an eye. At that point, he had more or less made up with Hope. He didn’t earlier because he hasn’t had time to let what Hope did for him sink in, and she had just put him through a tremendous amount of pain to reconstitute him.

@Background Pony #1B99  
“all she wants to do is set the Umbrum free and let Sombra rule over Equestria,”
 
Where is this ever implied?

@Starswirl
 
“She called the crystal ponies villains, for example. That doesn’t sound like she thought they just misunderstood what the Umbrum were. Plus, she still promised Lightning Dust, Flim and Flam, and Iron Will revenge on ponies she never even met. Perhaps that’s even the reason they suddenly vanished from the story altogether: To get another thing Hope should feel sorry for out of the way so she doesn’t have to”
 
It wasn’t just that the Crystal Ponies thought the Umbrums were monsters, it was the fact that they then locked up a race of ponies whom Hope thought was completely innocent. So in her eyes, the Crystal Ponies were the villains in this case, by committing a terrible crime in her eyes. That’s not to say that she wanted or didn’t care if they suffered. Just because some members of a race did something bad some time in the past, doesn’t mean you want all of that race to suffer now. And she had told Cadance that she’d be willing to help stop Sombra if the Umbrums were evil.
 
She gave the mini-villains there chance at revenge, but that was to serve as a distraction to get the Heart and heal Sombra. She was a well intentioned idiot that was fooled for a millenium and got off way too easy at the end, but to suggest that she’s monstrous is too much.

@Starswirl  
Seems a bit more extreme than that. He wasn’t saying people are wrong to have that opinion, he’s accusing them of mental illness.

@toxicitzi  
Yes, you’re right about that, I merely wanted to point out how that’s also problematic. The shift between love, hate, love is so extreme, I have a hard time buying it. Sombra especially looks like a different person altogether when he’s just with Hope after she resurrected him.
 
Maybe that was the intention. Perhaps it’s supposed to show his obviously evil face whenever he’s not alone with Radiant Hope isn’t his ‘true’ self.

@Itsthinking  
I think it concluded in the second issue.
 
It was more of an occupation aided by a prison break after that.

So where was the actual Siege in the arc, anyway?

@Starswirl  
not really my point, more that besides them doing horrible things, they don’t strike me as being friends still. You gotta remember, the way their friendship ended was shown in the fiendship is magic arc, Hope betrayed Sombra and led to his banishment and here’s my big problem with this, we’re left in this arc to assume that they’re still friends, after that incident went on between them.
 
take for instance any of the show’s broken friendships. Is that how the show should have handled them, leaving it up to us to assume that Gilda and RD just got better offscreen, or Trixie and Twilight (before Magic Duel), or even better, Moondancer and Twilight? no, absolutely not, because that would have taken away so much potential that this all had.
 
in fact, the way I see it the siege itself just messed up the story more than it helped it and if this is what Jeremy Whitley is proud of, it sure sucks to be him.. if instead of all this, the story actually had the Balls not to be about anything you’d expect a tyrannical lord to be about, no siege, no attacks, no revenge, Not even fight scenes, but just about Sombra and Hope having their own version of a ‘Mending Fences’? Now that would have actually worked far better to their advantage, the advantage that they needed in order to actually continue off the previous story arc, as well as explain how they’re still considering to be friends with each other.

@toxicitzi  
True.
 
It’s difficult to cheer for two characters on how they can be better if they tried when your instinct is yelling “You’re both horrible people!”

@Starswirl  
yeah, they did that, but the essential part of showing him care is supposed to come before the, ‘oh shit!’ part, not during the start of the conclusion. This is something we needed to see when they were talking, because that’s something we have to care about before things go wrong, that’s why something bad happening to someone doesn’t hit any kind of emotional responses from us in movies with underdeveloped characters.
 
If you want your audience to care about two characters as good friends, you have to first show us why we should care about them in that way and their safety.

@toxicitzi  
Some good points there as well.
 
To be fair, they did show him care about having hurt Hope. However, it’s a very weird moment as he’s apologising for taking away her destiny when he ‘only’ wanted to cause her incredible grief for the rest of her natural life.

@Background Pony #1B99  
^
 
these are all great points and I agree, even if they wouldn’t have made the story great, they would’ve made the character much better than what we got. Fun fact about Radiant Hope, before this story arc not that many people cared much for her, but after this story arc? that’s when things got out of hand and very quick.
 
 
now, regarding what else I’d add to improve the story even slightly is Sombra’s character. He doesn’t have to turn good if that’s what you like, but here’s a few things that would’ve helped buy his turn to a better side.
 
1, have him act comprehensive of Chrysalis, or at least try to buy into the idea that the Umbrum aren’t all that good for their future that she was selling. THIS IS IMPORTANT, because this was supposed to be the reason why he didn’t trust his own ambition later on, but because of the way he treated both Chrysalis and the changelings, this never makes any logical sense and even more senseless, he concludes that conversation among the lines of, “She doesn’t understand, because she’s too scared to try and understand us”.
 
2, again on the subject of Chrysalis, Sombra should’ve been more sympathetic of the changelings in general. Him being such a d***hole to them makes no sense on so many levels and I’ll explain to you why now. First off, they’re his allies, that’s reason number 1, but that’s not all, besides them allying with him and assisting him in casting siege, there’s a kindred connection going on between them, they’re both outcasts and hated by everyone. Sure, You can have him hate Chrysalis in the end as she’s been nothing but an unrelenting pool of pure evil in the comics that cannot ever be redeemed, but the thing is, that’s not something he KNOWS about her, yet. If he truly believed that the ones who considered him a monster and his own kin monsters too, why does he go for calling other ‘monsters’ vermin, especially when he doesn’t know them all that much? this isn’t Show Sombra who could have had possible encounters with the Changelings and May know more about them, in the IDW comics, we’ve seen all of his childhood and all of his life before us from Fiendship is Magic, we Know that he Doesn’t Know anything about them at all.  
this also makes all his remarks about how others perceive him or his kin as rather hypocritical, doesn’t it?
 
3, Show him actually be more caring of Hope. This one I shouldn’t explain much because I think you get my point by now, it’s this turn around for Sombra that literally made no sense and him becoming more apprehensive of both what he was doing as well as Radiant Hope’s words sent at him, because if you told me that’s how it would’ve ended, I would’ve never seen that reaction from him coming.. From the way he seemed to always be distracted around her and thinking about anything other than her, that kind of implied he didn’t give two shits about her, so, why does he care about her now that something bad happened to her? he never Showed that he cared about her to begin with, not after he turned to the Umbrum and embraced his supposed ‘destiny’, if they wanted to make him sympathetic of Hope, they should have shown that about him.
 
 
that’s about all that I could think of, but it’s all just a couple of reason I had problems with buying Sombra’s 180 over his long since established ambitions. The way the story presented him up to the final 2 chapters, he shouldn’t have even thought twice about freeing the Umbrum.

@ichingdivine  
That doesn’t quite mesh with what she said before. She called the crystal ponies villains, for example. That doesn’t sound like she thought they just misunderstood what the Umbrum were. Plus, she still promised Lightning Dust, Flim and Flam, and Iron Will revenge on ponies she never even met. Perhaps that’s even the reason they suddenly vanished from the story altogether: To get another thing Hope should feel sorry for out of the way so she doesn’t have to.

@Starswirl  
“It is a little strange that the Umbrum’s plight moves her so, considering how little she seems to regret everything else she did in order to free them.”
 
She just needed a distraction to get into the castle to heal Sombra. And then she banked on turning Sombra from evil to good and showing everypony that the Umbrums weren’t monsters, but misunderstood. Then Sombra would free everybody and she’d heal the petrified princesses, and they’d all get along, or something.
 
Once she realized she’d been manipulated for a thousand years, she was pissed.

@ichingdivine  
It is a little strange that the Umbrum’s plight moves her so, considering how little she seems to regret everything else she did in order to free them.

@Starswirl  
“The problem is how unsatisfying Hope being sarcastic here is, seeing as how she’s to blame for all this crap happening. Nevermind that no, it’s not even that clear she’s being sarcastic since she’s drawn like she’s about to fall asleep and just doesn’t care.”
 
Look at the next couple panels. Hope is busting Sombra’s balls for his actions, ripping his worldview to shreds. Her expression here is likely one of sarcasm, but it’s definitely not indifference. She’s fed up with Sombra’s “I’m destined to be evil” self-pitying bullshit.
 
She may be naive, then again, she was mindfucked by the Umbruns for a millenia, sipping their Kool Aid, but she’s not callous. If she were, why would the fake plight of the Umbruns move her so?

@Darth Sonic  
An allergy to bittersweet, poetic endings?

@Maya  
What was their malfunction?

I think OP created a new meme. “Radiant Hope is indifferent to your misery”

@Darth Sonic  
That would’ve been something indeed. Might’ve made for a better catalyst to Sombra’s Heel-Face-Turn.

@Poptard  
the last time I sugested the same thing, someone called me sick, and everyone who believed that being sick. Hell is the people, indeed.

@Jades  
I mean I wanted her to own it!

@Itsthinking  

 
Rarity was literally dragged away kicking and screaming and possessed by the nightmare forces. She was entirely possessed from that point on. She’s not responsible for any of NMR’s actions, nor did she do anything to enable the possession.
 
When Discord betrayed the M6 in TK, Twilight was still skeptical of his motives, but optimistic. He could hardly be considered a friend yet at that point, and still as of the end of S5, is tenuous at best.

@Darth Sonic
 
Well technically she did go the Harley Quinn route. It’s just the comic constantly tried to tell us something different.