I mostly took packed lunched as well, though I occasionally went to some of the restaurants near my high school.

It's hard for me to imagine schools letting students leave for lunch. Is that really a thing?

My elementary school didn't have a food program, at least not officially. The closest they had was the pizza place across the street. The school actually had some sort of deal with them where they'd take all the students' orders at the beginning of the week and have them all delivered at once. With parental approval on the orders, obviously. It was really good stuff, though most kids were only allowed to do it once a week.

Middle and high school had a program you had to pay for, but the food wasn't the best and it was easier to just bring my own lunch. In high school the seniors were allowed to leave to go get lunch elsewhere, but there weren't many restaurants in the area so very few people did that.

I don't remember elementary or middle School but I took my own lunch most of the time. My high school though had you pay for lunch though if you qualified you could get reduced lunch which varied from person to person or free lunch. The food was pretty decent though. You had the pizza lines, the snack line which had stuff like cinnamon buns and slushies, the line that served chicken sandwiches though later they added an "Asian Rice Bowl" meal, etc. You usually got either pizza, a chicken sandwich, or an Asian Rice Bowl as well as some vegetable, frozen fruit, and a choice of milk though you could also buy other drinks and things as well.

When I was in fifth and sixth grade I took my lunch to school every day, but that stopped in Junior High.

I mostly just brought a lunch, in high school I probably only went into the actual cafeteria like 4 or 5 times in my entire time there. Towards the end of my senior year I discovered they had really tasty cheesy bread there, and I had deep regrets.

edited 21st Jul '17 8:23:25 PM by Crowfall

Yeah, we never had anything that was worth paying/standing in line for.

Anyway, I'm going to bed now.

My high school let you leave the school grounds for lunch. I was the first of my friends to have a car and driver's license, so sometimes I'd drive everyone to get fast food.

I still remember one of my friends attempting to feed me french fries while I was driving and sticking it right into my eye, prompting my pal in the passenger seat to shout, "DO NOT BLIND THE DRIVER!!!"

So here's something I wanted to do on a lark ever since my duo episode breakdown: taking a look at how the narrative focus has shaken out since Twilight's ascension. From the start of season four to today, how many episodes has each character featured in? Again, this is focused on the Mane Six. It's not necessarily about appearing in the episode, but about actually being in the spotlight. Ensemble episodes, for instance, would be a point for each of the Mane Six, while something like "Fluttershy Leans In" would only be a point for Fluttershy, even though the others do appear briefly.

For simplicity's sake, I'm just going to be providing the tallies, but I am willing to post the breakdown if people want to see it.

Season Four

• Applejack: 12 episodes.
• Rarity: 12 episodes.
• Twilight: 10 episodes.
• Pinkie Pie: 10 episodes.
• Rainbow Dash: 10 episodes.
• Fluttershy: 10 episodes.

Season Five

• Twilight: 9 episodes
• Applejack: 9 episodes.
• Pinkie Pie: 9 episodes.
• Rarity: 8 episodes.
• Rainbow Dash: 8 episodes.
• Fluttershy: 8 episodes.

Season Six

• Rainbow Dash: 11 episodes.
• Applejack: 10 episodes.
• Rarity: 10 episodes.
• Pinkie Pie: 9 episodes.
• Twilight: 7 episodes
• Fluttershy: 7 episodes.
• Starlight: 7 episodes.

Season Seven

• Starlight: 3 episodes.
• Twilight: 2 episodes
• Rarity: 2 episodes.
• Pinkie Pie: 2 episodes.
• Applejack: 1 episode.
• Rainbow Dash: 1 episode.
• Fluttershy: 1 episode.

Excluding season seven from the total count because it hasn't finished yet and would thus be unfair to consider its current episode count as indicative of the season as a whole, that gives us:

• Applejack: 31 episodes.
• Rainbow Dash: 31 episodes.
• Rarity: 28 episodes.
• Pinkie Pie: 28 episodes.
• Twilight: 26 episodes.
• Fluttershy: 25 episodes.
• Starlight: 7 episodes.

So. This was fun and interesting to look at. Hopefully, this will also help us put to bed the notion that the Starlight Glimmer has utterly taken over the show. With the centralized focus in both shipping and episodes, it seems clear to me that Starlight Glimmer remains unsuccessful at taking the title of Main Character from the show's true star, Twilight Sparkle Applejack.

EDIT: Also, apology for the double post.

edited 21st Jul '17 9:33:22 PM by TobiasDrake

My high school used to allow kids to go off campus for lunch, but then a bunch of kids got in a car accident from doing it so it was banned.

And so Pinkie Pie became LEGION and Equestria was destroyed under her terrible, delightful hoof.

There were no survivors. Not even the Princesses.

You can't really use a tally which includes two seasons she wasn't a member of the main cast for as evidence that she has disproportionately fewer episodes than the other main characters since she joined the main cast...

No, but you can look at the one complete season she has been in, where she is tied for dead-last among episode counts.

Right now, Starlight is as much the "main character" as Fluttershy.

edited 21st Jul '17 10:01:57 PM by TobiasDrake

Are you saying Pinkie Pie caused the Nothing Is Scarier-invoking barren wasteland from the fifth season finale?

Nah. If that were true, the barren wasteland would be covered with cupcakes, confetti and balloons. It would be the most colorful, festive wasteland ever beheld by mortal eyes.

edited 21st Jul '17 11:33:05 PM by drac0blade

It's hard for me to imagine schools letting students leave for lunch. Is that really a thing?

Yyyyyyes? It was a high school, not a prison. If you didn't go to class then they marked you absent.

The school was about a 10 minute walk fro main street which had, in rapid succession, a pizza place, a Greasy Spoon, three Chinese restaurants (There used to only be one but the owners had some... disagreements) and a fried chicken place. So a lot of students wound up leaving over the lunch hour.

It might be worth noting that I grew up in a town of ~5000 people, so it's not like we were wandering around a red light district or anything.

Being allowed to leave school grounds before the end of school hours (baring official tos) is a foreign concept to me as well. I mean, you joke about prison, but some of my University classes had guards armed with automatic weapons to prevent us from leaving early (not like that was common, but still).

As for lunch, my high school had lunches as an optional addition to school fees. You aid for all or none for a whole term at once.

So this train of thought started out as musing on the executions between Sunset and Starlight, but wound up rambling off into an essay on Sunset's characterization in the first EQG.

Pre-development Sunset is basically a roiling ball of emotions. DWK actually put it best when he said that her "master plan" is just rebellion, and not in the "organized movement against government" sense but in the "belligerent child lashing out at everything" form. Despite a couple attempts to frame her as this master manipulator - most of which just serve to make everyone around her look dumb rather than her smart - Sunset's behavior largely communicates that she's just a petty, self-absorbed person punching whoever comes into her vicinity out of equal parts hurt and rage.

She's not a scheming mastermind or a revolutionary or an omnicidal madman or anything. She's a bully. I've talked about a similar issue with Diamond Tiara but the biggest problem with Sunset pre-Development isn't actually her character, but how the narrative treats her. She, too, suffers from Alpha Bitch Syndrome, wherein writers seem to think that being a completely unlikable asshole to everyone around you all the time is the key to popularity.

Sunset's depiction has a Sheeple problem; she's written the way edgy 15-year-old misanthropes think of bullies. She puts in minimal effort to everything she does and everyone falls for it and worships her because they're all mindless sheeple who can't see how cool I am. ...actually, between Sunset and the Dazzlings, both of the first two EQG movies seem to use "Sheeple as Plot Device"; the latter do it more as a Fantastic Metaphor, though. Mmm. Something to think about later.

Point is, Sunset, like Diamond Tiara, wouldn't be celebrating the worship and adoration of the school. She wouldn't be Prom Queen three years running. She'd be reviled, which would only make her angrier and lead to her lashing out even harder.

Like Diamond Tiara, Sunset doesn't have the personality of the jock or cheerleader or whoever the bitter misanthrope is actually whining about when they go off on their Sheeple rants. She is the bitter misanthrope ranting about Sheeple. A self-perpetuating ball of pain and anger, a ticking time bomb counting down to when she either manages to get her life together and defuse or explodes in a violent, public fashion. Which, again, is exactly what she winds up doing; enslaving the students to invade Equestria is the Fantastic equivalent of Sunset bringing a deadly weapon to school to finally get hers.

And this might just be a little bit of projecting but I can actually understand why her character changed so drastically at the end of the first movie. I was Sunset Shimmer when I was in high school. She punches up, punches down, punches basically everyone she can reach because she has an overinflated sense of her own invulnerability. She has the kind of confidence that's inevitably born of youthful ignorance.

Weird though it might sound, one of the things that broke me of that kind of arrogance was the first time I got the shit kicked out of me for picking a fight I probably shouldn't have. Which I recognize in what happened to Sunset. Convinced of her own specialness, she punched a bit too far up, clocked Princess Twilight, and Twilight proceeded to beat the angry out of her.

That's a life-changing moment for an "invincible" bully. The moment you realize that other people can hurt you. That every snippy comment, every belligerent shove and arrogant remark, you were walking a delicate balancing act between feeling empowered and going home with a broken nose. As weird as this sounds, getting my ass kicked for the first time helped me to empathize with other people because it brought my opinion of myself down to their level.

The other effect that Twilight beating the angry out of Sunset has is that, like I said earlier, she's a roiling ball of hurt and rage. Once you run out of angry, all that's left is the hurt. People like that use the anger as a mask to avoid processing the pain. Rage is comforting. It's addictive as hell because being angry feels empowering. Anger says it's not your fault. It's their fault. You're fine. You're indestructible. Nothing can hold you back. Hurt the people who are hurting you.

But when you run out of anger, then you have to face the ugly reality of who you are as a person. So the trick is to never run out. Keep finding things to be angry about. Keep coming up with new reasons to stay angry. Do whatever it takes to keep drifting on that sweet, sweet rage high. That's where the pettiness comes in; things like flipping out at Pinkie and popping her balloons is Sunset taking another hit of rage hormones.

But anger is the first thing to abandon you when you're getting beat up. It pushes you into fights and then goes, "Shit, dude, that guy's HUGE. I'm out of here. Uh...good luck!" Which brings us back to Twilight beating the angry out of Sunset.

That was Rock Bottom for Sunset. Lying in a pile of her own mistakes without her Rage Shields to deflect her own self-hatred and remorse, Sunset was finally ready to accept the hand being offered to her. Bullies are generally miserable people. I know that sounds like the clear logic is to try and reach out to help them, but see above re: rage addiction. Try that shit with Sunset on an average Tuesday in the hallway and she would have laughed and/or punched you.

So, yeah, I like how Sunset's depicted here. I like that she is actually crying as she comes out of the crater, because it reminds me of so many rage burnouts I've had. Once you run out of angry, you start crying, because all of those emotions your anger was holding back hit you like a tsunami of self-hatred. I think that's why a lot of angry people drink; so the alcohol can pitch in when the anger runs out.

Sunset's depiction in this movie is almost perfect. It's just a shame they had to shoehorn her into being the popular girl so they could have this weird Prom Queen plot that just doesn't work for her or Twilight.

EDIT: Oh, and I like her giving up with her sledgehammer bluff too. That's a face-saving measure, which is important to retaining an attitude of invulnerability. Conceding when things go south allows her to walk away going, "She didn't beat me. I let her win. Out of pity."

edited 22nd Jul '17 7:41:39 AM by TobiasDrake

Post of the Day #1890

To add to Drake's wall, this is why I have a feeling that conquering Equestria with an army of teenagers was not Sunset's plan when she stole Twilight's crown; I don't think she had a plan beyond stealing Twilight's crown, because Sunset in the first movie seemed to wing every evil plot she came up with, because, as you point out, her evil plots tend to be immediate responses to petty BS. I think she probably had some vague notion that she could use the crown to become better than Twilight, or at least that she'd be tearing Twilight down by stealing it, and not much if anything beyond that; the conquest thing was just what happened to sound good to her in the moment when she was hopped up on magical corruption, which I've compared in the past to being shitfaced on a cocktail of tequila and the Red Skull's imperfect super soldier serum. It's Sunset on her worst day.

I'd also argue that Sunset's rage was being overtaken by her self-loathing even before she lost to Twilight; your friend pointed out in your last rewatch that Sunset is already crying when she starts transforming into her demon form. She already knows this is wrong, and that she doesn't really want this, but she's committed herself to it and can't back down without having to face herself. She's already reached the breaking point when she slams that entire bottle of magic; it just kept her going for another minute or two.

This is also one reason I'm certain that Sunset isn't an adult and that she's only a year or two older than Twilight at most. She's absolutely a teenager mentally.

Also, I haven't watched the movie in a while, but do they ever actually say that Sunset is popular, or just that she runs the school? Because someone saying that Sunset is popular would be the only actual evidence of the writers intending her to be popular. It certainly isn't in any of her own scenes or interactions with other students; other students flinch away from her when she walks past, and the only students who she's ever with are pan-dimensional minions Snips and Snails.

Sunset being popular is an Informed Attribute that is shown primarily through her having won the Fall Formal Princess crown three years running. Fall Formal Princess is a popularity contest.

It's one of the reasons that the Fall Formal Princess plot point doesn't really work. I've complained in the past about how it doesn't work for Twilight to just show up and win it as the smelly girl who picks things up with her face, but it doesn't really fit for Sunset either because it's the one part of the movie that actually requires her to be widely liked.

By all rights, the scowling glares and "F*ck that bitch" attitudes that everyone had towards her in the second film should have been how the school already viewed her in the first.

edited 22nd Jul '17 12:20:58 PM by TobiasDrake

That's what I thought, but I don't think that's irreconcilable with her actual role in the movie. Looking at the progression of her portraits, it seems likely that she won the first time due to people actually liking her, but by the third time it was through voter intimidation, with the second time presumably being a mix of the two.

Musing on it, it also makes sense that someone of Sunset's age would still be so emotionally immature, because maturity is not a product of years but of mileage. There's a type of character I've seen a few times, where an adult character gets the chance to be young again. Protagonists tend to have it happen as a sort of "Second Chance" deal while antagonists tend to seek it out, usually through stealing the body of a kid character. In either case, the idea is that with everything you've learned growing up, you're more fit to properly enjoy your newly regained youth.

As George Bernard Shaw put it, "Youth is wasted on the young."

Sunset's in that exact position. Plus, a consequence of her renewed youth not often talked about in those types of stories is that it means she's got another dose of teen hormones rushing through her. Sunset might physically be, like, 23 or 24, but she's spent the last decade or so going through Double Puberties. She is a literal Womanchild.

Also, I just discovered that the EQG shorts from the movies are a thing.

This one features the Friendcrips using an implied threat of physical violence to coerce a pair of shopkeepers into cutting AJ a deal for merchandise they fairly acquired. I honestly did not expect something like that to literally occur when I came up with that tongue-in-cheek nickname for them.

You just found out those exist?

Do you want to review those?

edited 27th Nov '17 3:34:45 PM by fredhot16

Eh, there's not to a lot to comment on. They're short, sweet character segments with—

Oh my god, Rarity has thugs.

...I mean. Ahem.