Unpopular opinion time

@Twi Clown
Yeah I can understand how you feel man. People still say how Cozy should be forgiven for being a child, yet some times those same people ( not always the same people but my point still stands) can’t seem to do the Same for Snips & Snails for the Boast Buster thing. I mean what Cozy did was worse then Snips & Snails plus unlike those two who never did anything bad again plus they did say sorry after there mistake Cozy felt no forgiveness & tried to do evil again!

I respect what they tried to do with Starlight even if Sunset was the more popular character because I think what they ultimately did with Sunset was really easy.

It’s easy to make a character likeable when you just make them a really sweet person and then have everyone hate them anyway. Like, I wasn’t sitting there during Rainbow Rocks thinking “Man, it’s unfortunate, but Sunset really deserves all this shit she’s getting.” I’m thinking “Leave this poor girl alone she clearly isn’t shitty anymore.”

Starlight is a car wreck of a person.

@EquusStorm
Problem is, considering the vagueness of her age, it pretty much gave people assumptions that she was a filly. Good call, maybe to you, but maybe juvie would’ve been better.

I think if cozy remained a good girl, I think she sadly would easily be forgotten, like most of the characters.

Same for Snips and Snails, if they didn’t assist Trixie, and Diamond Tiara if she wasn’t bratty.

@Background Pony #61D8
Juvie Tartarus, I’m down for that lol

Actually, far as I remember, the only options we have are banished to stone, banished to the moon, or sent to essentially pony hell, except for that one rural jail with Troubleshoes, what even is the Equestria justice system

@Background Pony #14BA
Yeah, even as Sunset deserved all the dirty looks and distrust, it feels like a way to force pity. By RR, she got her entire reformation. Starlight had to struggle for more than a season to truly achieve that. So far, I’d say her truest point of redemption, that being comparable to Sunset in Friendship Games, was Shadow Play at the earliest and maybe even later.

@Background Pony #14BA

Yeah but that car is a lamborghini so it’s a high quality wreck.

@Ring Team
I don’t 14BA’s saying what you think.

@EquusStorm
Yeah they were all stuck with a Catch-22 situation there no matter which option they chose.

Sometimes simplicity is beautiful.

Sunsets themes and imagery are beautiful and nothing better encapsulates sunsets journey and it’s themes than this pic.

Sunset always had a lot of biblical and Phoenix themes tied to her fall and rise.

A fallen student of celestia who was corrupted by her pride into a demon, was defeated and cast down. She burnt herself out and crawling out of that hole, tearful and humbled was her first step to rebirth.

She endured the justified scrutiny of those she hurt and slowly made amends for her behaviour, through actions, empathy and sincere self reflection.

This is when she finally left her old life behind and metaphorically rose from it’s ashes, Reborn.

G4’s best redemption. Not a perfect story, but thematically consistent and visually beautiful.

I found everything about Starlight to be ugly. Her voice, colour and personality, both pre and post reformation. The only themes I could see was that of a Jim Jones style socialist dictator who is successfully talked down by Twilight, unlike the real jim Jones who murdered the guy who tried to talk him down and than made his followers commit suicide.

Starlight is literally just a gender swapped jim Jones with a happier ending. Nothing wrong with that, but there’s not a lot of beautiful imagry that can fit with that theme.

@Terminal Rex
Everything about Sunset’s journey felt fake and manufactured, just like the character.

Trixie, My favourite benefited quite a bit from the season one hype. All the Fan theories suggesting she was gonna be the vegeta of the show, or Twilights long lost sister. A super powerful rival with layers of backstory and personilty to discover.

But her story turned out to be way simpler and I like that.

Sunset’s story was about a fallen chosen one and a Phoenix renewing itself and reaching its true potential.

Starlights story was about a mentally-Ill super prodigy re-integrating into society and learning decency and basic human interaction, with all the stumbles and hypocracy that it entails.

Both Sunset and Starlight were already special.

Trixie’s story was of a very shallow person of no great standing or special skill, who was thrust into exceptional circumstances that forced her to Grow and become a more mature and layered person.

It’s probably just my indifference to EQG but Sunset felt just as overhyped as Starlight does with her fans.
Twilight is and forever will be better than them all though.

I like Sunset, I like Twilight, I don’t like Starlight.

Honestly I’d add more ‘why’ but everyone knows the why and everyone knows I feel this already It’s just relevant so I wanted to share.

From what I’ve seen of her in those movies, Sunset is a good character to me, not great.

@Mikey
Oh for sure, Twilights the best merely for being the Archetype the others are based on, and the main character to boot. The originals always the best.

Trixie’s just my favourite, and I found sunsets themes and the imagry they evoke more appealing and beautiful than Starlights.

Starlight never really got a big, triumphant, spectacle of a moment the way Sunset did, and I kinda love that. It’s another thing that sets them apart.

Sunset was rebirthed as a glorious angel, but all of Starlight’s moments involved either inspiring others or hopeless acts of defiance.

She didn’t nuke Chrysalis, she inspired the Changelings to, and her offer to forgive Chrysalis failed.

She couldn’t convince Stygian to step down, but she did remind Twilight of the things her hero worship was causing her to forget, and everyone together brought Stygian down.

She didn’t save Twi’s school, but she encouraged Twi to save it herself.

She lost soundly to Chrysalis, but only after making sure Trixie and the students were evacuated, as well as teleporting Chrysalis away to mitigate the damage.

She threw herself on the sword in a hopeless fight against the villain trio to give the Remane 5 time to escape, because she knew they were the ones who would save the day, not her.

I still really don’t like Sunset, whereas Starlight grew on me a bit.

I dislike Sunset. Feels like the entire Equestria Girls setting revolves around her, in and out of universe. Rainbow Rocks, Friendship Games, Legend of Everfree… She’s usually the biggest or only reason the day is saved. And most movies have her as a protagonist or the main protagonist. Sometimes make her a poor woobie that did nothing wrong too, if I read the plots of Forgotten Friendship and Sunset’s Backstage Pass correctly.

She also lost almost all of her flaws and vices overnight. Always makes me laugh when people say she’s got the best redemption arc, the Sunset of the original movie and the one after aren’t the same character at all. There was no redemption to have in the first place, just a rerolled player character with the same name and design. Now she’s just a precious flower. A cool precious flower too, because she plays guitar and rides a bike too! And is an artist!

She just feels like the writers’ precious darling to me. Or a bad fanfic version of Kim Possible. Complete with the ‘hero’s failed, villainous predecessor’ cliche. “Look at how cool and cute and special my OC is!”

That’s my take on her. And it’s biased, since I look at how the show treats her and (obviously, I’m me) compare with how Equestria Girls treats Rainbow Dash. Aka little miss ‘would be the movie’s villain if the Dazzlings or the Storm King’s magic weren’t there.’

Of course eqg revolved around her. She’s the central character and her journey and it’s consequences drove the story. I never got that argument. It’s like disliking Beowulf because his story revolves around him.

Starlight meanwhile felt like a distraction. An experiment they didn’t know what to do with once she’d run her course and so most of the time was just sorta there when she wasn’t awkwardly being inserted into roles that usually would have been filled by Twilight.

Less is not more. More is more. Sunset’ s story was simple, direct and competently done with a beginning middle and end and plenty of beautiful imagry to complement the themes she embodied. Sunset felt important and larger than life, which is exactly what you want in your protagonist. Starlight felt like an after thought, surrounded by more interesting characters.

I think the best redemption stories in G4 are from Diamond Tiara and Tempest Shadow.

If Rainbow Rocks was more focused on Sunset Shimmer’s redemption than the boring music concert, I’d say it would have been a pretty good film. It doesn’t matter anyway because Legend of Everfree was the film that made me love Sunset as a character.

EDIT: Less is more.

@Ring Team
To quote The great Yngwei malmsteen, How can less be more? More is more. Go big or go home.

@Terminal Rex
Dragon Ball doesn’t get better by having 1000 episodes. Can I can say the same thing for Naruto.

Also, Samus spoke a lot in Metroid Other M and that doesn’t make the game any better.

@Ring Team
I’m talking in terms of spectacle, emotion, thematic content and heroism.

Not arbitrary series length from weeb crap I don’t care about.

@Ring Team
Not that I’m Ragging on Diamond tiaras face turn or anything. It was well done for what it was. It’s just that all it was is a self centred little girl finally decides to stop being a bully. She didn’t have much to Redeem herself for.