Season 7 Episode Discussion [Speculation, Discussion, Spoilers] (SPOILER YOUR LEAKS)

@CronoM
 
Starlight and Stygian aren’t literally the same pony, but Starlight is still the stygian of the group. She’s the former villain and had a vested interest in believing that Stygian wasn’t evil either.
 
The Cast actually did question Starswirl. They stood up to him when he was decrying Twilight’s spell and put her over as a great mage. Like, they will stand up to him if they think what he’s saying is bullshit, but I still believe that they had little reason to doubt the pillars about Stygian. It’s driving because I feel like there’s no better way to say it. They were waiting for Stygian to return. To apologize. To explain himself. Anything. But instead he returned and tried to kill everyone and not just that, but to enslave Equestria as well. Why WOULD they doubt that he had been power hungry? The Cast even heard the Pony of Shadows speak himself, and he gave us such lines as:
 
“Don’t fret. When I extinguish the light and hope of this miserable world, you won’t remember any of this.”
 
and
 
“You summon me at your peril, Star Swirl! Once I defeat all of you, this realm will embrace the darkness as I did so long ago!”
 
Like, he sounds like a pure evil villain. The kind of villain like Tirek and SOmbra who the cast fought without a second’s hesitation.

@hironakamura  
Nice vid.

@CronoM
 
Creator’s Pet is what I’m sticking to nowadays. Way too easy to goalpost skedaddle around Mary Sue’s definition.
 
@hironakamura
 
That was a pretty good explanation, and once again, the description fully applies to MLP G4’s one and only textbook Mary Sue (Also called “Generation 1”, meaning absolutely no effort was made to dilute them at all from being seen as a Sue): Radiant Hope from the comic series. She’s the very example of how to warp a story around a character and not the other way around at the cost of making absolutely everyone else poorly written as a result just so that the Sue gets to shine brighter while also stretching suspension of disbelief a dozen ways with established rules being seen as mere recommendations. And then there’s the most damning of all: she only exists in the vacuum that is extended continuity, so Whitley didn’t even need (and likely didn’t give a single fuck about) the opinions of other writers from both DHX and IDW. Literally glorified fanfiction that, while not affecting the rest of the series (No effing way “Good Guy Sombra” is gonna pop out of nowhere in the main series) and with a high chance of being shit on would the script be posted on Fimfiction still counts as “part of G4”.

@Poison Trail  
I’m going to wallpaper my bathroom with printouts of every obsessive wall of text you’ve written on your hatred for her.
 

@cheezedoodle
 
Well, at least said obsession did something.

@Poison Trail  
Your main problem with her seems to be that she’s a smart antagonist who gets the better of the mane seven for a while until she is shown the error of her ways and is truly repentant.
 
Just like Nightmare Moon. And Sunset. And Starlight. And Discord. And Tempest.
 
But no, according to you, the comics can’t have their own version of that. That’s reserved for the show, or something. Not content to ignore her, you continually bring her up in thread after thread, week after week.
 
At least it didn’t take a friendship cannon to convert her, unlike some of the others. She had time to see what she’d done, regret her actions, and come to hate the harm she had caused.

@gingerninja666  
||Did you forget this was mlp? They’ve helped villains possessed by great evil within themselves several times before.
 
They knew the pony of shadows came back with him possessed was evil, but the original pony? They didn’t have a clue about his original motivations, and all the old heroes had was supposition. Yes he was evil now, but for element bearers that doesn’t mean much. They can do SO much more then banishment with the right understanding and the elements. This is second nature to the main characters.
 
Stygian doesn’t resemble Starlight in almost ANY shape or form. If anything, the closest comparison for Stygian is Nightmare Moon, and at least there the legends documented that Princess Luna herself wasn’t pure evil, she just fell into darkness after years with her role as princess of the night.
 
Did the main 6 banish or petrify Nightmare Moon? No they didn’t. Regardless of what Luna had become, she was not a pure evil despot before dark magic consumed her heart.
 
And for Stygian, instead of any proof that his ORIGINAL SELF was bad to the bone and simply got worse, they got supposition and more questions then actual answers. That would never be acceptable to the entire Main 6 as a group for passing judgement. Ever.
 
If they really wanted to make this impactful and sensible, they could of let Luna and Celestia receive the full impact of having their master returned to them after so many years in the middle of the two parter(instead of just crammed at the end), and have Luna speaking from experiance to want to find out normal pony Stygen’s original motivations, with most of the mane 6 backing her up to try to find out more from the old heroes who initially made up their minds but we’re still in the dark about the reasons for the stealing incident. It would of been great if we heard more of their doubts on the pony he was, even if the dark creature he is now was corrupted.
 
Not only was Starlight’s supposed “unique position” completely unnecessary with the entire Mane 6 around, not to mention ill fitting for Stygion, Luna would of made an infinitely more rewarding choice if they wanted someone for Stygian to relate to.  
||

@hironakamura
 
Any character can be the dissenting party. You just need to write it that way.
 
That’s my whole issue with this finale. That the narrative was constructed to have Starlight alone object, when it could’ve been easy to make a more balanced narrative where various characters take sides.

@MrSeyker  
I honestly do think that would have been better, but here’s the problem… time.
 
The more characters you add with a pertinent opinion, the more time a scene consumes. There’s already a ton of plot to get through here, and all these ideas further complicate the narrative. I wouldn’t be surprised if they all happened in a original draft in fact, and were then parred down to save on time.

@Philweasel
 
Eh, I really don’t think time is an issue. There are several talking scenes where you can sneak dissent between Twilight, Starlight and the Mane Five.
 
Instead of having all the Mane Five blindly follow the Pillars to be ready to battle, have them stay behind and support Starlight’s argument to Twilight.
 
They just didn’t try.

@CronoM
 
Yeah, we’ll just have to agree to disagree, it seems. I just feel like we’re funamentally seeing both different interpretations of the mane cast (I don’t quite see them as the group who would question everything in all contexts. Sombra got killed and they didn’t really give a shit and knew even less about him.) I also found the pillars’ attitude toward Stygian was harsh but then Stygian himself did them no favours. And I found that even though Starlight and Stygian weren’t a 1 to 1 paralel, they weren’t meant to be and there was enough there for it to work with Starlight’s character. There was enough that she would want to see him saved.
 
Like, we see the characters in different ways it seems. I hate it. It feels like I’m giving up.

Do people still think Mary Sues are the most flawless, most powerful, most liked character ever in a fictional piece? Mary Sues are glorified as the most important in the story making others around them appear unimportant or insignificant. And when I mean others, it involves the main protagonist(s), the ones where the story is supposed to revolve around.
 
Not counting Starlight’s surprise roles in certain episodes, look at all the premiers and finales since season 6. Look at the premier for season 8 ffs. That’s an overly important character and she’s not even enough of a main character to play a role in the movie. Anyone who still denies she’s a sue is deceiving themselves.

@hironakamura
 
She has been a constant since season five. Its too much, too quickly.
 
I like the character now. This season fixed many of my problems with her.
 
But I want her to stop having roles in the two-parters.

@MrSeyker  
I want her to be more a supporting cast. Not a main character.

@hironakamura  
But TWABA wasn’t just about her, it was about Discord, Thorax and Trixie. And she didn’t actually appear much in Cutie Remark, it was mostly Twilight dealing with the alternate worlds. And she was just one of many side stories in Crystaling, and the villain of Cutie Map (and not a particularly overpowered or ‘cool’ one either).
 
That video states it, it’s a Mary Sue when everything not about them is totally unimportant and undeveloped. That’s clearly not the case.

@Philweasel  
Maybe I haven’t seen all the finales and premiers but remind me which premier or finale where Rarity, Applejack or Fluttershy played roles similar to the roles Starlight plays in multiple premiers and finales.

@hironakamura  
But that has absolutely nothing to do with Starlight being a Mary Sue.
 
When a character has an important role in an episode, it’s called being a main character. When they have important roles in multiple episodes, one could call them a creators pet. When they are the only important character and nothing but them matters, they’re a Mary Sue.
 
Edit: And ironically, Fluttershy got one in Starlight’s very first episode!

@Philweasel  
You can have a main character. You can have a story revolve around a single charcter. That charcter is still not a Sue provided a single condition is met. And that’s letting support characters not be fodder. Let them shine.
 
Like the video says. Luke is the chosen one but there are cooler characters around him like Han Solo, Leah and even Vader. Starlight isn’t written to share this spotlight most of the time. She is always portrayed as the “best” character. Not even with her side kicks. They’re used as pawns instead of a support cast. Even Gokou lets Vegeta and Kririn have bad ass moments of their own.

@Philweasel  
I’m sorry but the season 6 finale was all about Starlight. She was the central focus and the emotional anchor for the audience, as well as the one on whom the story rested.
 
For one thing, Thorax and Discord don’t appear until very late at the end of part 1. But let’s take Trixie since she’s in part 1. She has no personal investment in the episode, she’s only along because they force her along. Her role is entirely dedicated to being Starlight’ s moral support. In other words, she’s there because of the role she plays for Starlight.
 
Now Thorax should have some kind of investment, this being his home and what not, but he’s only played for plot exposition and the instant win card at the end. You’ll notice he doesn’t particularly interact with the cast and he lacks any kind of motivation.
 
Discord is a bit tricky, I’ll say that. He has a very personal and independent reasoning and motivation to be a part of the plot. This is why he’s immediately depowered and is the first to go, despite having the least amount of screen time so far, because it’s not his story. You could have had him go through a compelling arc, him now fully committed to saving his friend and the trials that follow, but because the focus and story are Starlight’s, he needs to be removed so as not to shift the focus. The Anti-magic rock was created solely to remove Discord’s powers and render him inert to the story.
 
So at the end of the day, the plot and focus of the season 6 finale are on Starlight, and as such it is a Starlight episode. Fluttershy played a big role in Tanks for the Memories but we don’t call that a Fluttershy episode, now do we?

@Poison Trail  
@cheezedoodle  
My god if you hate her so much just leave the show and never come back. It won’t harm you in the long run (unless you count porn of your oc you favorited in that case you deserve it for the sheer egotism), and you won’t even look at her again. Hell, there are other shows out there you could be a fan of, like the recent DuckTales reboot or the loud house.

The biggest issue I have with TWABA is that it pretty much relies on the entire mane cast getting buttfucked in order to make it’s concept work and make Starlight shine, Starlight is made as the hero at the expense of every major power in Equestria
 
In comparison In Shadow Play Starlight is the hero(or at least, integral for defeating the villain), but the Mane 6 and the Pillars still contribute in helping save the day and are important in defeating the Pony of Shadows.  
Much like a lot of things in S7, I think this should have been the Finale in S6 as it does help push Starlight as a mane character and make her redemption work, but it does so without it being at anyone’s expense

@Megas75  
[bq=”Megas75”] The biggest issue I have with TWABA is that it pretty much relies on the entire mane cast getting buttfucked in order to make it’s concept work and make Starlight shine, Starlight is made as the hero at the expense of every major power in Equestria

 
Well except Thorax. He gets made into a major power by the events.

@hironakamura
 
@Megas75
 
Really? Trixie is the coolest character in TWABA. She gets the most development, her moments are the most emotionally resonant, she’s far more useful than anyone not named Thorax (and she rivals him) and she pretty much gets the final lines of the episode. Her motivation was both revelant to the themes of the show and really pertinent to her development, she was being loyal to her friend.
 
The fact that it wasn’t all about a single character was why I liked it.
 
Thorax on the other hand I do have a issue with. He should have been the hero of the episode, but it was obvious that he really needed another episode beforehand to set up his conflict.
 
Honestly though Starlight is the main character but she’s a very soft main character. She doesn’t do much, doesn’t defeat the villain, and though her motivation is focused on there are other motivations as well that all get screentime.
 
Hell, compare it to Twilight’s Kingdom or Princess Twilight, where everything is about Twilight and the others simply act like sounding boards for her issues. Especially Princess Twilight, where not only are the characters worfed, they’re generally made to look like bloody imbeciles beforehand.

@Philweasel  
Both Twilight and Starlight are highlighted at different times to make the other 5 indifferent morons or completely useless.
 
Trixie did show her guts off in the season 6 finale, but it was never really acknowledged by the rest of the cast.(and yes I found it extremely odd how uninvested Thorax was)

We can literally argue about Starlight till the end of time, but I will say, that while the mane cast are often shunted to the side, I tend to feel that STarlight’s friends get to shine more than some people tend to acknowledge.
 
Like, The Crystalling. Starlight has a lot of the character development in that episode, but to say that Sunburst wasn’t allowed to shine in that episode, arguably more than Star herself in some ways, is really harsh.
 
In TWABA, Trixie had some great character development moments and I thought her sacrifice moment was badass. Discord’s scene where he’s beaten by the changelings was like, one of my 2 favourite scenes in the whole episode. It’s just great. And yeah, I know that enjoying a scene where Discord is beaten sounds like the opposite of making him shine, but it was amazing for his character and shows how far he’s come in how much he cares for Fluttershy.
 
Season 7 didn’t have a 2 parter premiere, but the first episode is an episode where STarlight is a plot device and the main emotional moment of the episode was Celestia and Twilight bonding.
 
And Shadow Play is Shadow Play, and however you read that episode. I thought the fact that they dedicated a very large chunk of part 1 to the remane 5 finding the pillar items was awesome.