@Badumsquish
Missed a key word there.

@Badumsquish
Heh, I’m a fan of both Starlight and Sunset so I’m fine with that theory. :P

I do hope it’s more emotional and serious with Sprout going forward. Because of the nature of this movie, Sprout’s aftermath is treated more like a gag and the scene before the credits is also a gag. So it would be really nice to have something actually touching and deep with Sprout, certainly better than forgetting about him just for the funny. :3

@Wayneponeth
I genuinely do think their entire motivation for reforming her was “Reforming Sunset and adding her to the Equestria Girls cast was popular so let’s do that again” :P

I’m super excited about what they’re going to do with Sprout here though. MLP has never had a villain who was a former friend of the cast, so they’re in a really good place where they can pretty reasonably go any direction they want with him. I’m hoping he becomes kind of a wild card, like he keeps hating the non-Earth Ponies but still likes his former friends and Maritime Bay and is willing to begrudgingly work with them when their interests align :D

@Wayneponeth
And that’s something that keeps them together, by Sharing their past mistakes and yet current mistakes, and to help one another.

@Shimmering Spectacle
Yeah that’s actually one thing that also makes me like Starlight so much. She kind of helped reform Trixie too. Remember Trixie originally befriended Starlight to upend Twilight again so that wasn’t exactly real friendship, until Trixie actually ended up liking Starlight as a friend. And Starlight stuck with Trixie to really become her friend. After being friends with Starlight, Trixie actually became more responsible over time. She helped planning a party that she insists shouldn’t be done with magic and was even the one reminding Starlight to do it right. In a way, Starlight helped Trixie become a better pony while Trixie also helped Starlight the same way. They work off very well with each other and I really love that they’re paired up together.

@Badumsquish
you know for what’s going on in season 6, twilight did allow her to have a friend, yet not one she’d expect for her to be with, which is trixie and for what she caused, twi was practically not trusting her own student to have trixie as a friend, and starlight only befriends cause it’s something they can relate to, which both was once antagonist, and twilight was being a hypocrite to starlight, by making her befriend others, in which she doesn’t want to, her choice is trixie, and that’s her final word on that.

@Badumsquish
Well that’s the point. She is so changed she is now cute and lovely and huggable. :P

But I get your point. There is really no point in redeeming her if it feels like she didn’t need redeeming at all. Still, at least she didn’t go around being a dick to everyone despite being “reformed” like a certain lord of chaos. XD

@Wayneponeth
I’ve always believed either put the work in or just don’t do a redemption. Like, since they spent such little time on Starlight’s redemption, and for how little it actually affects her character now (pre and post-reformation Starlight are totally different characters) they might as well have just used an already good character, like Moondancer or Trixie or created a new one outright, so they didn’t have the baggage of a redemption in the first place :P

@Badumsquish
That’s kind of the problem with other characters and the contrivedness of easy forgiveness. Like I said, Zuko is truly way too high of a bar to compare because even this is done well in that department. When Zuko tried to join Team Avatar, he wasn’t accepted right away and only had to prove himself. Then even then Katara still wouldn’t trust him that easily. There is also the case of Katara never forgiving her mother’s killer. Avatar doesn’t give out forgiveness like a handout. It teaches that forgiveness is earned and worked for. However, that still doesn’t make me question Starlight’s redemption. I mean it’s not her choice everyone else around her decided to be okay with her actions. The thing is, Starlight probably doesn’t forgive herself. Every other character may have forgiven her now, but Starlight herself probably still blames herself and believes that she cannot even breathe the same air as those she has hurt. She is the classic case of self-blame and self-doubt and probably anxiety, and I just cannot hate her for that. She deserves a hug. :P

@Glimenade
Indeed

@Badumsquish
Jesus Christ these long-ass paragraphs

@Badumsquish
I know that part in season 1

@Shimmering Spectacle
It definitely helped too how he HAD done good things prior, and that Toph could actually tell he was telling the truth about having reformed. Not to mention, Aang REALLY seemed to want to he his friend, like that was teased all the way back when Zuko as the Blue Spirit saved him from that stronghold and they had that great moment where Aang was like “do you think we could have been friends if not for the war?” Like, that was one of the most underrated moments ever in that entire series, since there’s that super-subtle brief moment where Zuko actually seems to think it over :D

@Wayneponeth
A big faux-pas for me in a redemption arc is when they remove elements of their redemption because they’re inconvenient to it. Like with the changelings, where a huge driving factor in their villainy is their need to feed on love but the show turns around and is like “oh they can just not if they don’t want to” or like when Starlight had spent so much time lying to and mistreating all those ponies but the show was like “oh they’re okay with all of it like they don’t even care, like it doesn’t even matter that you did all that shit.” It’s super hard to buy the motivations of an allegedly sympathetic villain when the show turns around and makes it clear there was never a barrier between good and evil for them, since it just makes them seem evil for the sake of being evil. Like, to compare with Zuko again, imagine if he’d never been banished. Imagine if the Fire Lord said “you don’t HAVE to catch the Avatar, I love you and I want you to come home and be my son” and Zuko still was out there like a desperate asshole chasing the Avatar: it INSTANTLY makes him unsympathetic since it turns him into a prideful self-absorbed selfish bastard :P

@Badumsquish
Zuko is HONORable. Sorry had to do it lol

Zuko’s story isn’t really a sob story to make us sympathize with him. It’s used to let us know why he is in the show and just how bad Ozai and the Fire Nation is. It’s also to explained where his scar came from. He is sympathetic is because, just like you said, because he is noble, kind, and he cares about others. We sympathize with him because he got abused by his father because he worried for the safety of fellow Fire Nation soldiers, showing that he has a sympathetic heart himself. And the more we know about him, the more we realize he was just a hardworking child trying to impress his father. With Azula, while it does make us feel for her, her origin shouldn’t make everything she has done okay. Despite all her inner struggles, she is indeed cruel, sadistic, manipulative, and absolutely horrible. All her backstories are only there to let us know how she came to be and what triggers her to snap. They give Azula depth but they shouldn’t make her sympathetic. What she does herself and her personality should.

I guess it’s kind of just like writing all characters. The point is to make a well-written character with their own personalities, stories, journeys, and relationships instead of forcing something into them to make us feel for them. Yes, that includes all the token stuff people like to force into characters, like gender and race, to validate their existence, when their personal traits should be the things validating them. That goes for alignments as well. If you want a character to be good and sympathetic, give them sympathetic qualities like kindness and sympathy itself. If you want a character to appear evil, make them cruel, violent, and heartless. Don’t force stories into them to make them sympathetic. Those stories are only there to explain why they’re like this, not who they are. Show that they deserve to be sympathized and don’t drag other characters down just to do so. I think that’s why I like Starlight Glimmer so much. Sure her backstory sucks but after a while she kind of deviates from that. She eventually develops her own personalities and interests that make it feel like she really did change. She became caring, friendly, and helpful but still has her own flaws of anxiousness, hastiness, and clinginess to the past. She became sympathetic herself and tried her best to remain as helpful as she could. If she continued withholding a snobby attitude and creating dangerous situations because of her own personal flaw like Discord, I definitely wouldn’t like her as much. But she has developed her own character and stayed away from her sob story so much, I can’t help but forget about all that and enjoy her appearances.

@Badumsquish
with how zuko had to make it all up with each of the team avatar members for what he did to them before, it’s done nicely by having him help the others to get something they need to do before the final battle, and to show him what it means to have others that really cares about him after helping them along, even with toph there.

@Wayneponeth
Zuko’s a good example because his sob story isn’t what makes him sympathetic. Like, you could strip away his sob story completely and he’d still be a sympathetic character: he’s noble, he’s honorable, he cares about his crew, and he doesn’t commit the wholesale atrocities the rest of the Fire Nation does. Even in the first episode he reveals this by taking down Sokka with non-lethal force and actually keeping his word to leave the Water Tribe in peace if Aang surrendered. He could have burned Sokka alive and threatened to go back and murder the Water Tribe if Aang escaped, but he didn’t :P

I guess a different way to put it, is if the sad backstory is the only sympathetic thing about them, like if that’s what they need to try and convince audiences the character is sympathetic, then I don’t think they’re sympathetic. Azula’s a great example of that since like you said she’s like the Anti-Zuko. Her plight is just as, if not more, sad than Zuko’s, but she’s not even remotely sympathetic: she’s violent, sadistic, cruel, and even pathetic :P

@Badumsquish
Zuko is a really high bar to reach. He is like the perfect redeemed villain that no one else can match. Sometimes I don’t even consider him a villain he’s written too well. Zuko just can’t be compared. :P

Honestly I’m actually almost fine with Starlight’s backstory if it was executed better than Sunburst getting his mark right in front of her eyes and just up and leave. With his mother’s personality, Sunburst could have gotten his cutie mark and been sent to Canterlot right away by his mother without Starlight knowing so Sunburst wouldn’t be able to say goodbye and explain things to Starlight. That would make sense. And with Sunburst’s own tendency to put studying and learning before social life, he would ignore all the letters Starlight tries to send to Sunburst and never contacts Starlight at all like how he would ignore his own mother’s letter. That would make Starlight grow more bitter and she would have been informed that Sunburst left because he got his cutie mark which is why she swore hatred toward cutie marks. Cutie mark basically took her friend away and made him forget about or even hate her. She is basically Moondancer but more extreme. I realize this is probably still a “boo hoo my friend left me and didn’t call so I started a cult.” sob story but it’s better than Sunburst just arbitrarily ignoring his best friend right next to him like she doesn’t exist.

In a way, sob stories can make a character lose their mystique and inadvertently make them more if a whiny little baby than actual villain. If a backstory must be made it should be subtle and make sense. Speaking of another Avatar character, Azula is actually the opposite of Zuko in which her backstory is both revealed in the finale and more subtle. It’s also a slow buildup to dwell deeper into Azula’s psyche and mind that makes us understand why she is the way she is, but it shouldn’t excuse what she has done. Sob stories can work but they have to be believable. They should be explored deeply more than having the character explain it in a few lines and flashbacks, but they should never justify what they do but only give the audience an insight of who they are and how they come to be.

@Shimmering Spectacle
I would love if they did a very subtle sort of slow reveal that deep down he’s a good person rather than an outright “redemption.” Maybe he never loses his bigotry and his insecurities but he’s revealed to have strong principals, like he’s genuinely defensive of his town and his family, or perhaps have him defend a unicorn from attack because he believes violence against them is wrong in spite of his mistrust, things like that. Like if you ever watched All In The Family, like how Archie is this sexist racist ignorant prick right out the gate and he never stops acting like that, but it becomes increasingly clear he’s a genuinely good person who loves his family and hates violence and will do the right thing in spite of his beliefs. Like, I would adore if they gave Sprout a pegasus friend who was like the Lionel Jefferson to Sprout’s Archie, where Sprout constantly says bigoted condescending but genuinely well-intentioned stuff, and the pegasus constantly uses it in a way to insult Sprout that goes way over his head, but the two genuinely like each other and like hanging out all the same XD

@Wayneponeth
At the very least I think they need to introduce the sob story early on if they want it to work, and build off of it like they did with Zuko from ATLA where you learn his fucked up backstory two full seasons before his redemption. Also too, I genuinely believe that it’s a massive disservice to a character when they have a perfectly valid motivation and THEN a sob story is tacked on to “justify” their actions. Like, Starlight’s motive of believing cutie marks caused problems and that she was so aggressively desperate to prove it and so deluded into thinking she’s doing the right thing that she’d resort to violence, kidnapping, and extremism to force her beliefs on others perfectly explained her actions: she didn’t need the sob story of “boo hoo some kid moved away 20 years ago” to justify it and they could have reformed her just fine without it. Hell, she was actually a deeper character before it turned out she was just lashing out for no good reason. Same with Sprout, like that he’s a spoiled jealous insecure kid who is desperate to prove himself, was raised in a bigoted environment, and suddenly given authority perfectly explains why he acts the way he does – if they suddenly added a sob story like “boo hoo a unicorn beat him up as a kid once” or “oh his mom abused him because she was dumped by a pegasus” it wouldn’t suddenly make him sympathetic :P

@hironakamura
But that’s what they’re forced to do in the grand scheme of the greater goods. I’m talking about something like “I used to be bullied so how I murder people, but that makes it okay because I used to suffer too.” or “My best friend left me without saying goodbye so I created a cult, manipulated an entire town, and almost destroy the world as well. But not everyone can be lucky enough to get cutie marks at the time as their best friends.” I’m saying it shouldn’t be okay to do horrible things just because something happened to you in the past, not that doing horrible things is always bad.

If a protagonist does something bad, of course that shouldn’t be excused either, even if it’s for the greater good. My point is that shouldn’t be used to boost the antagonists’ morale or justify their actions. All their actions should be individual, not compared and competed. Of course I understand doing questionable things for the greater good, depending on the situations anyway. I actually agree with Punisher’s method of killing criminals instead of the No Kill rule because innocent people’s lives deserve more than criminal scums.

I don’t know if that makes me think in black and white or gray, but that’s how I feel. I mean I don’t see myself good with morals with how fucked up my own mind is.

@Wayneponeth
You’re thinking too much in black and white. The best characters have always been the ones that are painted gray.

Best examples are characters from Star Trek Deep Space 9. Capt Ben Sisko is the main protagonist. A federation captain who’s done several war crimes to protect the alpha quadrant from the dominion. He used subterfuge, hired criminals and became accomplice to murder with the goal of uniting alpha quadrant forces against the dominion.

S1 Celestia was the closest things I could remember in g4 that closely ressembled characters like that. Even she had to banish her own sister for the greater good of all the ponies.

It involves Sprout rescuing Sunny from Sombra because Sunny can’t bring herself to fight another pony.

Lesson: You must first learn to be cruel before learning to be kind. Otherwise, you will always be prey to those who practice cruelty.

I mean, that’s how I would do it. Its too meta, though so its wishful thinking.

@Badumsquish
Oh yes, totally agree with the sob story point. That’s honestly a problem that happens outside of the fandom as well. It’s basically the same as painting the protagonists in a terrible light to try to excuse the antagonists. Giving villains tragic stories that suddenly make what they did okay seems to be a trend nowadays. There is really no need to give every villain a tragic backstory to make us feel sorry for them. I’m glad they didn’t give Cozy some sob story to justify her actions as well.

@Badumsquish
I just hope they do sprout’s redemption arc carefully.

@hironakamura
@Wayneponeth
All things considered I do like what they did with Cozy. I just think it was out-of-character for Twilight and Celestia to do what they did, and that’s a small complaint at most since overall the show leans more heavily to characters doing what’s convenient for the plot rather than doing what they’d reasonably do as a character. I actually really appreciate that they didn’t tack some last-minute sob story onto Cozy that was supposed to suddenly make all the awful stuff she did okay. They’ve done that way too much. I’ll take mystery over “I know she tried to kill a bunch of people and didn’t feel a shred of guilt, but her parents didn’t get her the Ballerina Barbie in the little pink tutu for her 10th birthday, the poor thing!” :P

That said, the most tragic villains with the saddest story the series has ever produced, as far as I’m concerned, are the clones of the Mane Six, and that was done without making them even remotely sympathetic. They were born into the forced servitude of an evil queen, threatened with death if they refused or failed any task, reminded every second there was that they were replaceable, their only goal was freedom from their master, and in the end they were just unceremoniously killed without ever having once known kindness or anyone ever caring that they lived. That is poetically sad to me, no matter how “evil” they may have been. :P

That said, that’s also why I’m so excited about Sprout here. They left him in a position where they can basically take him in any direction. Will he get worse and become a genuine villain, will he get better and become a friend, will he stay the same and become either a recurring antagonist or a loose ally who’s interests line up with the heroes? They can basically do whatever they want with him and get a satisfying story out of it :D

@Wayneponeth
You can make a character that doesn’t want to redeem. Cozy is a bad example of that because she was not given the chance to and G4 already had a character that won’t redeem. Its Chrysalis. She was offered but refused. That’s actually convincing because you can’t help people that don’t want to help themselves.

The missed opportunity with Chrysalis is “pretending” to reform. She could have faked accepting Starlight’s friendship only to betray the ponies at the end of the season. That’s how I would’ve written her.