Illuminating Invitation (MLP: FiM AU)

[Valmond]

Because what else is there to be excused?

Click to shrink...

What? I now have no idea what you mean.
Potential bad behaviour, that we have not actually seen, does not make it ok, justified, excusable, or otherwise reasonable, for her to be a toxic person to pretty much everyone we have seen her interact with.
And, no, proper response to someone being a toxic person is not to "punish" them, it is to stop interacting with them until they stop being a toxic person.

 

[ArkNightmare]

And, no, proper response to someone being a toxic person is not to "punish" them, it is to stop interacting with them until they stop being a toxic person.

Click to shrink...

The problem with that is that simply not interacting with Sunset won't actually help her get better. That appears to be what people have already tried, and it just makes her double down. Many of Sunset's problems seem to revolve around being incredibly poorly socialized and maintaining a range of incorrect beliefs about socialization in general.

The fact that we have already seen some improvements, admittedly minor ones, due to Voice actively engaging her kind of implies she desperately needs someone to actively interact with her and unravel the mess her understanding of interpersonal relationships is.

 

[serra2]

The fact that we have already seen some improvements, admittedly minor ones, due to Voice actively engaging her kind of implies she desperately needs someone to actively interact with her and unravel the mess her understanding of interpersonal relationships is.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, like, Sunset's not doing any long lasting physical or fatal harm here. It's mostly just her being kind of mean to people. This is the type of situation where actually engaging her in conversation and walking her through her issues would actually help and be useful. We already see it working here.

 

[Valmond]

The problem with that is that simply not interacting with Sunset won't actually help her get better. That appears to be what people have already tried, and it just makes her double down. Many of Sunset's problems seem to revolve around being incredibly poorly socialized and maintaining a range of incorrect beliefs about socialization in general.

The fact that we have already seen some improvements, admittedly minor ones, due to Voice actively engaging her kind of implies she desperately needs someone to actively interact with her and unravel the mess her understanding of interpersonal relationships is.

Click to shrink...

It is not the duty of random people to make toxic people get better.
Now, Celestia and Cadence are going to, as will the being from outside space and time, because they all are better people than Sunset is, and also invested in her becomming a better person, but it is still perfectly reasonable for regular ponies of Equestria to take one look at Sunset and go "no thanks" and get the fuck away from the flaming wreck that are her social skills.

Yeah, like, Sunset's not doing any long lasting physical or fatal harm here. It's mostly just her being kind of mean to people. This is the type of situation where actually engaging her in conversation and walking her through her issues would actually help and be useful. We already see it working here.

Click to shrink...

Eh, she is the apprentice of the local godqueen who treats the staff so poorly that having to interact with her is treated as borderline punishment (or not having to do so is at least a priviledge to be fought over).
Sure, she might not be doing physical or fatal harm.
Emmotional, psychological or financial? Harder to say.
Probably not, it's a lot more optimistic story/setting i think.

 

[GuesssWho]

And, no, proper response to someone being a toxic person is not to "punish" them, it is to stop interacting with them until they stop being a toxic person.

Click to shrink...

I feel like that might just give you a toxic person with abandonment issues. Not really fixing things.

 

[Valmond]

I feel like that might just give you a toxic person with abandonment issues. Not really fixing things.

Click to shrink...

Well, the other option is to punish everyone else.
Which i feel is worse.
Nobody (with the exception of their parents, teachers, possibly social services...) has a duty to interact with people who choose behave toxicly towards others, and not recognicing that can, and has, lead to actual real world harm.

And as i have pointed out, Celestia, Cadence and Void are all going to be interacting with Sunset, so this is somewhat overblown worry when it comes to this story at least.

 

[MillerAtTheWash]

Let's see Celestia was functionally avoiding her, Cadance was actively avoiding her (with good reason) and Voice had to be summoned from beyond space and time to interact with her. Who else did Sunset Shimmer have to interact with?

No parents, Celestia technically took the job and failed to follow through. No tutors, what tutors she had were collectively toxic enough to thoroughly poison the well to the point that even if a nice one showed up Sunset would drive them off herself. No peers, she was Celestia's sole personal student and Sunset did not have equals in that area until Cadance showed up and Cadance was her own set of issues.

Court life seems to have been particularly cutthroat with nobles either being brownnosers or active enemies, and it is easy to suspect that a large portion of the guards and servants were tools and catspaws for the worse sort of noble, plus those that likely looked down on the commoner orphan rising above them in their midst themselves.

It is no wonder Sunset Shimmer became abrasive and antisocial, it was that or break entirely. Too bad it doesn't exactly help Sunset achieve her goals stated (be an alicorn) or unstated.

 

[ArkNightmare]

I agree that other people shouldn't have to help Sunset get better or put up with her, but somebody needs to. It is the role of parents and similar figures to raise children into healthy individuals and Sunset evidently seems to have lacked that in some major ways. Her issues didn't appear in a vacuum.

Still, as has been noted, people are trying to help now and this story seems to be at least currently focusing on making Sunset a better person and giving her the support network she sorely needs.

Cadence deserves some major apologizing though, even if I understand where Sunset's attitude comes from.

 

[Valmond]

And Cadence, Celestia and the horror from beyond time and space are going to help Sunset.
Because that is central part ofthe story, so personally i am not gonig to exactly worry about that.
The horror from beyond time and space is also going to help Celestia, who suffers from isolation just as badly as Sunset, and unlike Sunset, she does not have a world full of potential peers to interact with.

 

[riaantheunissen]

Just a thought from my side.

Given what has been shown so far I'm getting the vague idea that there was a certain amount of obvious care and affection from Celestia's side in the beginning, when Sunset was very small and had just arrived. But as the teaching and a certain amount of real testing and molding for Luna's return began, it faded, maybe because Celestia didn't have time, maybe because she's just bad at dealing with ponies.

It seems to me that Sunset got the impression Celestia was testing her regularly, constantly even and if she wanted Clestia's love and affection (which she did, SO MUCH) she needed to earn it. And she was never good enough for Celestia. But others, who did not do a fraction of what she did, got a measure of affection. Got a lot even, if they were called Cadence.

So she sees the world (Celestia) as being unfair to her, holding her to a standard nobody else was held to. And she felt resentment and anger. And some of that spilled onto those who gained what she thirsted after without trying to work for it.

You know... I kind of have the idea that Sunset would be easier to help if she wasn't in Celestia's company in the beginning. A holiday or something, dealing with people that isn't (to her knowledge) involved with Celestia.

 

[Mgunh1]

I believe what Sunset here really made Cadance to question herself and opened up all those hidden emotional wounds and self-doubts she had. Also, where is Cadance parents? Can she see a Dark mirror in Sunset? Can she perceive Love what Sinset feels for Celestia, that wish for motherly affection?

Click to shrink...

Funnily enough, there is a bit of a dark mirror here. Cadance is an orphan too. She was discovered abandoned as a foal in a forest by an earth pony couple who adopted her. In a lot of ways, there are some interesting parallels between Sunset and Cadance.

 

[jason1stlegion]

I don't think Sunset has ever indicated the actual malice that people seem to be reading into her rudeness. Her standards for "worthiness" are even based on helping Equestrian in addition to raw competence.

The source of Sunset's behavior is ignorance about the nature of social interactions and how people respond to their absence or minimisation, combined with a (partly justified) assessment of most immediately-available social contacts as unpleasant to interact with and lacking any actions/behaviours that would earn more than the basic "applies-to-everyone" respect regardless of the first point.

Given that the "social-ignorance" point sets her baseline respect behavior as "communicate as little as possible and deter harmful or sufficiently-wasteful behavior via negative reinforcement" (which other people would only do if they were trying to be rude), we get the Alivaril!Sunset we know and love.

 

[Valmond]

Malice is not needed for cruelty.
And her actions with Cadence are absolutely malicious.

 

[jason1stlegion]

Malice is not needed for cruelty.
And her actions with Cadence are absolutely malicious.

Click to shrink...

True on the first count, but I'd categorise her actions towards Cadence as caused by a reasonable level of emotional control for her age, combined with ignorance about the emotions/actions of others involved (a subset of emotional maturity), leading to emotional instability (from lack of perceived support from Celestia) and fluctuations (from incorrect views of events as more emotionally salient than the reality) beyond what most people need to keep in check.
Just because an action has negative consequences doesn't mean there are sufficiently-better viable alternatives to call that action cruel, so I'd disagree with that characterisation.


Addressing the general point re: the appropriateness of punishment (both positive (impede/chastise) and negative (ignore/isolate)) for ignorance-induced cruelty:

If we use non-malicious cruelty as a threshold to decrement "worthiness" and justify punishment, we'll be punishing absolutely everyone (not taking minor low-cost actions in some cases causes thousands/millions of deaths through inefficient resource allocation, IRL, which is definitely non-malicious ignorance) and getting very little beneficial behaviour change out of it (ignorance can't be resolved just by adding negative incentives, since the subject lacks the mental pathways to actually do what you're expecting them to do; sufficiently powerful incentives on each step of the process can admittedly overcome this, eg the American criminal justice system, but are impractical and wasteful compared to targeted education and weaker incentives).

It just doesn't seem like a good moral standard to implement social cooperation purely through negative reinforcement, and if we treat actions as punishment-worthy independently of cognition/intention/history, that's essentially what we end up doing.

 

[Valmond]

Why are we back to talking about punishment?
Has someone, at any point, argued that Sunset should be punished?
And no, people choosing not to interact with a toxic person is not punishment.

 

[jason1stlegion]

Why are we back to talking about punishment?
Has someone, at any point, argued that Sunset should be punished?

Click to shrink...

Hmm. If that wasn't an implicit claim (which it seemed to be from the fact that Sunset's rudeness was being considered relevant enough to bring up at all) then that's fair (though my point was more about the general principle indicated than Sunset specifically).

And no, people choosing not to interact with a toxic person is not punishment.

Click to shrink...

Agreed, that's more about your own experience than about the person you're avoiding.

 

[cyberswordsmen]

I mean... the more I read this story, the more I'm convinced that Sunset isn't wrong, just overstating the problem.

Click to shrink...

I think the problem is that Sunset is completely right about the masks but isn't good enough to infer at what is underneath them properly. She did freak out when Celestia used her pegasus form and acted acted genuinely for what may be the first time.

I suspect that Celestia is wearing a mask all the time because that is how she holds together as being a godqueen for thousands of years. The problem is that a politician and queen benefit from that kind of thing it is poison to a parental relationship when the kid can see that you are acting.

I think the reason Cadance is running away is precisely because she realizes that Sunset is being honest and she needs to think about how much of that is her being correct and how much is Sunsets past abuse is coloring her perspective as Sunset just mentioned being abused without realizing that is what she was talking about. Cadence both was just given a unflattering look at her own behavior that she probably realizes is at least partially true. If she responds to this by putting in effort in a way Sunset notices this might allow some level of bridge building between them. Also if Cadance didn't want to help Sunset despite her bitchiness she wouldn't have appeared in the story nearly this much, now she has gotten a peek into what is going in her head and what her issues are. She is probably going to be jumping between self assessment and redoubling her desire to help Sunset.

I also would like to point out that Twilight Sparkle got very similar issues in Canon despite having a good family and Cadance as a figure in her life. She had good influences in her life yet still became a similar wreck. She only got better when removed from the Canterlot Castle environment and was placed in a low stress environment. This suggests it is at least partially a environmental problem.

 

[Roadie]

And no, people choosing not to interact with a toxic person is not punishment.

Click to shrink...

Taking legal guardianship of a child, raising them wrong (even unintentionally), and then isolating them when they act out may not be a 'punishment', but it sure would be unethical as hell.

Like, come on, at this point in the timeline Sunset is still a teenager. No matter how loosey-goosey ponies might treat things once there's a cutie mark, she's not even an adult yet by our standards.

 

[065tdsa]

Sunset has expectations of other ponies, which she considers fair because they are the same expectations she believes have been placed on herself. The problem being those are impossible to fulfill and most ponies are much healthier in that regard, and the fact they can be perfectly happy like that bothers her intensely.

Half of why she gets along with Voice is that Voice is intently not-a-pony, and Sunset's expectations of Voice are essentially null, with most of what Voice actually does counting as exceptional effort in her eyes. As in, Voice being coldly indifferent to the plight of minorities and treating the whole thing as entertainment is an achievement for the whole team to be proud of as far as Sunset is concerned, because hey, at least they are not actively making it worse to get their fun.

 

[Roadie]

Half of why she gets along with Voice is that Voice is intently not-a-pony, and Sunset's expectations of Voice are essentially null, with most of what Voice actually does counting as exceptional effort in her eyes. As in, Voice being coldly indifferent to the plight of minorities and treating the whole thing as entertainment is an achievement for the whole team to be proud of as far as Sunset is concerned, because hey, at least they are not actively making it worse to get their fun.

Click to shrink...

It will be interesting to see what happens in Sunset's head when she realizes the 'be nice to the help' chiding/lesson comes from a place of Voice more or less seeing mortals in that role in relation to herself, and how an actual Sunset-equivalent Outsider would have been so much worse.

 

[AurielReaver]

Half of why she gets along with Voice is that Voice is intently not-a-pony, and Sunset's expectations of Voice are essentially null, with most of what Voice actually does counting as exceptional effort in her eyes. As in, Voice being coldly indifferent to the plight of minorities and treating the whole thing as entertainment is an achievement for the whole team to be proud of as far as Sunset is concerned, because hey, at least they are not actively making it worse to get their fun.

Click to shrink...

Yaaa and she Also understands the fact that Voice here is incredibly impressive for A Caring enough to try and B having enough finnesse with their probably nutso levels of power to not regularly Shatter Reality on Accident

C Voice also tends to Clarify and also Debate in a fashion that Sunset can in fact Understand and Engage with and not immediately dismiss because of Preconceptions

 

[Valmond]

Taking legal guardianship of a child, raising them wrong (even unintentionally), and then isolating them when they act out may not be a 'punishment', but it sure would be unethical as hell.

Like, come on, at this point in the timeline Sunset is still a teenager. No matter how loosey-goosey ponies might treat things once there's a cutie mark, she's not even an adult yet by our standards.

Click to shrink...

I don't think anyone is going to argue that Celestia is not bad at parenting, but that is completely separate from the issue at hand.
Also, i don't remember any mention of Sunset having been isolated for acting out?

Have we been told her actual age? Ponies, being a kids show, are never that concerned about it, but the main cast are shown as independent (if young) adults, and Sunset is not really reading as youngerthan Twilight at the series start.
I would have guessed late teens to early twenties.

 

[notgreat]

Taking legal guardianship of a child, raising them wrong (even unintentionally), and then isolating them when they act out may not be a 'punishment', but it sure would be unethical as hell.

Click to shrink...

Good news: Celestia hasn't taken legal guardianship. Legally, Sunset Shimmer is still an orphan. Who knows, maybe if she's impressive enough she might even get adopted!

In case it wasn't obvious, that makes it all so much worse. She's desperately trying to prove herself worthy of being allowed to stay in her own home, and thinks that if she's not good enough she'll lose it all and be back to being nothing but a random orphan. In canon she actually was going to be thrown out of the castle, here at least Celestia considered it but decided not to (she thought back on that decision at the start of chapter 2).

I don't think anyone is going to argue that Celestia is not bad at parenting, but that is completely separate from the issue at hand.
Also, i don't remember any mention of Sunset having been isolated for acting out?

Click to shrink...

Not intentionally, but all the ponies she could interact with dislike her and thus avoid interacting with her whenever possible, which is basically the same thing. The only exceptions to that are Celestia and Cadence, the former tries to help but is very bad at it and has a very busy schedule ruling the nation, and Sunset hates the latter.

 

[Valmond]

Not intentionally, but all the ponies she could interact with dislike her and thus avoid interacting with her whenever possible, which is basically the same thing. The only exceptions to that are Celestia and Cadence, the former tries to help but is very bad at it and has a very busy schedule ruling the nation, and Sunset hates the latter.

Click to shrink...

Yes, because she is horrible at everyone.
Probably due to some ponies being horrible at her, yes (we only have her word, and she has so far had zero success at interpreting pony behaviour, but i am going to assume she is notcompletely wrong), but that does not excuse her being horrible at ponies who were not already horrible at her.

We are literally told that interacting with her is so unpleasant that servants use push it on ponies nobody likes (this almost certainly does not help in any way).
Also, she is not held in isolation, she could step outside and meet more people at any given time (except now, because she is in a hospital, but you get my point), in fact, Celestia has actively sought to encourage her to do so (poorly, probably, but an attempt was made).
sunset is isolated, but she is not being isolated, it would be more accurate to say she is isolating herself both intentionally and unintentionally through her actions and life choices.

 

[Random832]

It is not the duty of random people to make toxic people get better.

Click to shrink...

This sort of hyper-individualistic attitude ultimately leads to the conclusion that Sunset isn't doing anything wrong in the first place. If we start from the premise that it's fine to just abandon someone who is part of your community because dealing with them is inconvenient, then Sunset is just doing that on a larger scale. If no-one has any obligations to anyone then neither does she.