Twilight's Growth, Sunset Shimmer, and Starlight Glimmer · 10:42pm Jul 30th, 2017
Some people don't like the fact that Twilight Sparkle, as Princess Twilight, is no longer exactly the spunky, snarky teenager that she was in the first few seasons, but has become more dignified and, well, regal in her behavior. Her character has changed, and she has grown, in many ways.
Twilight matures. She can't become an Alicorn Princess, with all the duties pertaining to that station, and remain a perpetual outsider. Seasons 1-3 are about Twilight Sparkle growing to Ascend (I do think Magical Mystery Cure might have worked better as a two-parter); Season 4 is about Twilight grappling with her new status; Seasons 5-7 so far have been about Twilight dealing with the more complex and wide-ranging responsibilities of her position as the Princess of Friendship.
I've noticed that a lot of Twilight's storylines, particularly EQG 1 and 2 for Sunset Shimmer and the very long Starlight Glimmer defeat and redemption arc, have been about Twilight learning to become a good leader and role model for mages like her former self. I don't yet iknow where this is going to go because I am still waiting to see the last half of Season 7.
There's an ascending scale of difficulty here. Sunset Shimmer was a bitter self-exile who needed to experience true friendship to find her better self. Her Element is probably Trust or something like that. She is essentially a heroine like Twilight Sparkle, with a fundamentally-sound morality and reasonable goals, mostly centered around being good to others and defeating evil. She's only slightly older than Twilight Sparkle.
Starlight Glimmer, on the other hoof, is an ideological fanatic who has never really given up on her goal of making a revolution in Equestria or fully grasped the immorality of mind control: she's just learned to pursue softer means as more effective ones. Her Element is probably Fairness, which is a tricky one to reconcile with Liberty. And she's considerably older than Twilight, making her hard to lead.
I don't know where the Show is going to go, but it's quite possible that Starlight Glimmer might rebel again. She has found friends, but she has not really abandoned her destructive goal of Equality of Outcome -- she merely realizes now that complete Sameness is unattainable. Just because she is willing to learn from her acknowledged Master, Twilight Sparkle, and willing to risk herself against a Complete Monster like QueenC Chrysalis, does not mean that she has become entirely good.
If she does rebel again, I do not know which way her friendships with Sunburst and Trixie would pull her. Sunburst is mostly sane, but remember that his reaction to her discovering that Starlight had nearly shattered time was "You got to time travel?" He is awed by Starlight's power, and he is in love with her. He might well follow her lead even against Twilight and the other Alicorns, if he couldn't restrain her from such a mad rebellion.
Trixie is an outsider with very little invested in Equestria as it is, and she's become Starlight's apprentice. She also may be in love with Starlight. My Trixie by this point has absorbed wisdome from Goldie Pie, found love with Piercing Gaze, and a place under authority in the Loyal Band, but Canon Trixie has far fewer attachments.
She might very well follow Starlight even into a suicidal rebellion, just because it was Starlight. We've seen that Trixie has suicidal tendencies ("Second Prances") and that she will follow Starlight into extreme danger (Where and Back Again).
I'd be sad if Starlight decided to rebel again, and even more so if she decided to drag Sunburst and Trixie into it -- but if handled well it would make one heck of a story arc!
I really, really don't get why people are seeing Starlight as horribly irredeemably evil.
She didn't do anything bad!
Yes, she did have a pretty stupid quasi-religious idea, but there was never any implication that the ponies of Our Town were there involuntarily. And yes, when A GOAL OF HER LIFE, however, misguided it was, she kinda overreacted. And given her, some sort of freakish magical prowess accidentally destroyed the universe five times over.
Point of comparison -- Trixie used an evil artifact to enslave and torture ponies. Starlight wanted to break up their friendship.
She's misguided at worst, she never was evil. And her idea wasn't' even that bad to begin with -- it could've very well have worked, if her equality didn't equate everyone with the worst of the group, or just didn't make them worse off, to begin with, merely equal.
"I'd be sad if Starlight decided to rebel again, and even more so if she decided to drag Sunburst and Trixie into it -"
It'd also be very stupid, and require stuffing the 'character development regression pills' down their throats.
And idea I've seen several times is Starlight going back to Our Town and trying the equality thing again, but this time by letting people swap cutie marks when needed instead of denying they exist. As long as she holds off on the brainwashing she might not have to rebel to do that.
I mean, it's still a terrible idea since the Magical Mystery Spell showed that people with the wrong cutie mark still suck at their jobs, but it might be *fun*.
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Understand, I don't see Starlight Glimmer as inherently evil. I see her as being an avatar of Fairness, who has to learn the difference between productive and destructive fairness. Which is to say, the difference between equality of treatment and equality of outcome.
The first is the linchpin of any free and liberal society, and allows great diversity of character. The second smothers freedom and liberty, and enforces a choking sameness upon all.
The sameness in Our Town was destructive. That is clear from The Cutie Map. What saved Starlight Glimmer from being a true villain is that destruction was never her intent. She was trying to create productive fairness, but made a fundamental philosophical error.
There are two possible developmental paths the character. She can acknowledge her error, and strive toward constructive fairness, or she can refuse to learn from her mistake and be plotting to impose destructive equality on an even more massive scale.
From what I see, either is possible.
If she is evil, she's the worst sort of evil: OBLIVIOUSLY evil. An unabashed scoundrel like Canon Trixie who sort of knows she's doing something nasty but justifies it to herself by misinterpreting what Twilight is up to is less of a threat than a nutjob who can't admit that she's on the wrong path for a pants-on-head stupid reason.
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Locking people in a room for days while they're forced to listen to tapes grinding away at everything that makes them special and gives them worth until they're properly brainwashed little sheep isn't bad? Well, that explains why the ponies who did wish to have their Cutie Marks back were too terrified to even talk about it in the open. They were just so happy to be there!
Or the gem of Starlight shooting a small kid out of the sky.
If this is true, Twilight is friendship, which is magic. So I can understand why she would be the one to focus on those with the strongest magic, and how to show them the proper way.
As for Starlight, I honestly think isn't interesting to see her having such loose morals. I.E. did you noticed her little loophole she used to got though the mirror? If she is fairness, then it would explain her anti-establishment tenancy. After all to be fair, she would have to be willing to step back and look at the big picture.
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Yes. Starlight Glimmer is a Well-Intentioned Extremist, which are often the worst kind because they are unaware that they are doing ill. Starlight's erroneous philosophy is specifically a variant of the one which, in our world, killed about 100 million people during the 20th century -- she's a Pony version of a Communist.
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Starlight is a classic radical in that she over-generalizes from her own often limited unpleasant experiences to conclude that the system is fatally flawed and must be replaced by one which she assumes would be more congenial to her own preferences. In Post-Traumatic I argue that she thinks the worst of Ponies who deviate from her own personality in any significant regard: when Twiilght tries to emulate her mode of thinking to understand her better, it nearly sends her into Nightmare. (Understandably, since such extreme intolerance is the antithesis of Friendship).
Starlight's loophole-seeking is exactly why I don't think she's in reality fully-reformed. Starlight acknowledges that Twilight Sparkle is more powerful and magically-adept than herself (though it's a slim margin of superiority, which has significant implications given that Twilight is an Alicorn and Starlight is merely a Unicorn); she also grasps that she's unlikely to be able to overthrow all Equestria on her own. So she submits to force majeure, and conforms to the minimum extent needed to be tolerated.
This is not the same as understanding the Magic of Friendship. Or even why Equestria needs to be a liberal feudal federation with considerable respect for the autonomy of Celestia's subjects, including their right to pursue their happiness in their various different manners. As far as I can tell, Starlight still fundamentally believes that she, personally, knows best for everyone -- with a possible exception for Twilight Sparkle, whom she has to respect because she knows that Twilight stands a good chance of beating her if push comes to shove.
Note that in some ways Starlight and Twilight are Not So Different, in that both of them are intellectuals who know that they are much smarter than most of the other Ponies around them and attempt to provide leadership on the basis of their superior intelligence. The major difference is that Twilight grasps that each Pony has her own personality and goals which must be respected unless they involve violent interference with the goals of other Ponies; Starlight thinks that she could improve matters by telling everypony what to do, and regards the laws of Equestria as inconvenient obstacles to this end.
Starlight, as you may notice, is still forming a group of misfits around her who will gladly help her in various ways, just as she did in Our Town. The major difference is that now she realizes that it works better for her to leave their Talents intact -- so that she can make use of them.
Note that Sunburst is her superior at research, and Trixie her superior at on-the-fly trickery. Also note that both of them really value her friendship. Both of them may romantically love her (I'd say Sunburst definitely does) and hence are becoming quite loyal to her.
Will she use her new assets for good or for evil? She's used them for good so far. Time will tell if she continues to do so.
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The evidence is that most or all of the inhabitants of Our Town voluntarily joined. Of course, the evidence is also that -- once part of Starlight's cult -- they were not allowed to leave. To be precise, their desire to leave was taken as a sign of emotional maladjustment requiring "therapy" rather than respected as a legitimate personal decision.
Starlight has lost control of Our Town, probably for good. She has been accepted by her former followers as a friend (largely because the Ponies are a tremendously-forgiving species); they even still respect her intelligence; they are not willing to accept her back as a leader. And to give Starlight credit, she does reallize that the specific way she ran Our Town was fatally-flawed; she feels guilty for harming her former followers.
(We know this because in Where and Back Again she is frightened when they ask for her to take charge of something even in a limited sense).
But yes: Starlight did evil things. She is even aware that she did evil things; she feels guilty about it. She is also horrified that she nearly fractured spacetime: she probably knows enough magical theory that she realizes that she could have caused really major damage, and may well actually have caused major damage by spawning those timelines in the first place.
My sole point is that she is not aware of the full reasons why what she did was evil.
I have my reasons on why I don't like alicorn twilight, I'll say a few. She wasn't supposed to be a princess to begin with it was supposed to lead to something else; it kinda defeats the purpose of the elements of harmony and gives a bad message, and as the series goes on, based on what I read, twilight is bad at her job.
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To be fair, Princess Twilight has only been a princess for either two years (short chronology) or three-four years (long chronology). In contrast, Cadance has been one for at least a decade and a half, and Luna and Celestia for centuries.
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But why make them alicorns? What I mean about bad message is that throughout the seasons you see the characters learn about friendship and harmony, but now it just looks like it's all just so someone can become a princess? That's the goal for friendship? It just looks like the other mane 6 are just being used and twilight never really had a choice, all she wanted was knowledge. And honestly I like both celestia and Luna but after season 2 they slowly became terrible at their job and are very dumb.
I hope Starlight rebels.
While I agree with many of your points, season seven feels like the show has given up on the mane 6. Twilight is feeling more like a recluse, stuck in her castle and barely interacting with any pony. Rarity it seems now doesn't know a common gem from a rare one and Fluttershy's episode could have set her on an interesting path with the vet if any effort had been put into it. I couldn't even enjoy the Perfect Peat because I kept expecting it to turn into a Starlight episode like with Pinkie and Maud. These characters have stopped growing in favor of highlighting Starlight
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The evidence is ambiguous. On the one hand, Double Diamond became Starlight's second-in-command, so one would think they were relatively close; on the other hand, the fact that he apparently dropped his skis right then and there where he first met Starlight and his words to her ("You never even gave us a chance!") imply she used the spell on him before he'd even made up his mind.
Could be the two of them met, she cast the spell before he really knew what she was doing, and then manipulated him into thinking she did him a favour when he was weak, confused, and vulnerable. That would seem like a very Starlight thing to do.
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The problem with much of what happens with Starlight is that is just doesn't feel earned.
I would've liked to see episodes where Princess Twilight actually got to teach her what she learned, or where she interacts with the other Elements on a friendly basis that hasn't been forced by Twilight, but so far, it doesn't feel like Starlight is their friend at all. She's just... there.
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Agreed. The only friendships I feel are real with Starlight are with Spike and Trixie. The rest feel forced either by Twilight or the writers.
In the end, nothing about Starlight is interesting because everything with her is so easy. She's better at magic naturally than the unicorn who went to the best school for unicorns and was taught by a princess. She can fly without wings, she can whip up a cake easily, and so much else that you wonder what is she adding to the group? Well she's not, she's taking away what made the others special
Personally, I think making Thorax Twilights pupil would have made more sense while keeping Starlight a villian
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Yeah. Even if you ignore Starlight's power level, she doesn't add anything to the group dynamic. She doesn't mesh with them. That's why she got the (first and so far only) solo Map Mission. She's a foreign particle. The writers put more effort into making her friends with Trixie or Maud instead of the ponies we're supposed to believe she cares for.
Thorax as Twilight's pupil? Now that, I would've loved to see!
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I know. It would have meshed so well last year. We could have learned more about Changeling more, had an interesting character that we feel for, and image Twilights pride when he becomes king. Heck, just the idea of having him there in Dungeons and Discord, asking to be the healer brings a smile to my face.
But as for Starlight, having her mesh and create a bond with any of the other mane six is never going to happen. I fully expect next season to start put with all of the thrones vanishing and a replaced with Starlights. Twilight gives up her title and leaves while the rest become background characters
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I think that it's possible that Ascension, for the Mane Six and possibly other Ponies, was Celestia's plan -- or at least hope -- all along. Certainly she meant it for Twilight Sparkle.
Why Ascension? Because it would mean that Celestia and Luna would have other Alicorns to help them rule and form a society of fellow immortals to help keep them mentally- and socially-stable.
I think that part of the reason why Luna revolted was that it was because it was easy to do in a Realm with only one other being of equivalent power who could be her friend over the centuries: when she fell out with Celestia, it seemed like a plausible thing to do to defeat and overthrow her. This would have been more difficult in a society with several Princesses: what's more, she might have had other friends among the other Princesses who did not want to revolt.
Yes, I do think that in some ways Celestia is profoundly conservative. Certainly, she's in favor of progress through reform and evolution rather than revolution, because she is kind and knows how much pointless death and suffering is involved in revolutionary events. What's more, she is the dominant political power, and certainly doesn't want to overthrow herself.
This gets directly back to my points about Sunset Shimmer and Starlight Glimmer. Sunset Shimmer clearly had (and has) Alicorn potential: we can debate whether or not she's already Ascended (my guess would be "not completely, yet" -- she's manifested an Angel form in the Humanoidverse but is still a Unicorn in the Ponyverse). Starlight Glimmer has definitely not yet Ascended, but may be on the path to Ascension -- she's never manifested Alicorn nor Angel forms, but she has inherent magic almost as strong as that of a (weak) Alicorn.
Sunset Shimmer no longer wants to revolt -- her former desire for power has been replaced by a desire to protect her friends, and the worlds in general (which is exactly the step in moral and philosophical evolution which Celestia wanted her to make). Starlight Glimmer, on the other hand, may still want to change society in a direction entirely incompatible with Celestia's wishes.
Hence, the unresolved issue of Starlight Glimmer's ultimate ends. She might wind up Ascending -- or falling into Nightmare -- in pursuit of what amounts to a Communist revolution.
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I have noticed this too. The worst part of it has been that they have frequently regressed their characters, forgetting their emotional development and having them act like their Season One or Two selves. This is bad because it means that the Writers either aren't trying or aren't being allowed to engage in genuine character development.
This takes two forms. There's Flanderization, in which existing established quirks are exaggerated into crippling defects (Applejack's conservatism becoming an insane unwillingness to change any of her ways even to the point of slightly modifying procedures). What's worse is stalling story arcs, possibly because continuing them would violate the show's concepts of allowable subject matter (Sparity is unlikely to ever be more than hinted at, but even less-controversial romances such as CheesePie aren't being developed even through passing commentary).
It may be, sadly, that the Show has gone as far as it can given the constraints of its function as a toy commercial. Which means that it's going to start dying, probabably producing one or two or a few bad seasons in the process. Which is what Fan Discontinuity is for.
Sorry I have to say give me older Twilight any day of the week. Current Twilight is BORING almost all the time. She is rarely interesting and far too saccharine to be fun as well. Even her short instances of crazy do not even feel right anymore. She went from being one of the characters I like to see to being the next to the bottom of my mane six list.
I like it when characters change over time but it really is unforgivable to make a character boring in a show like this.
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The Show doesn't focus on Twilight Sparkle to the extent that it used to. Which is somewhat necessary, given the introduction of new characters.
Also, Twilight has matured. She's lost a lot of her old adolescent dorkiness and twitchiness, probably because she's no longer an adolescent. She's a full-grown mare now, assuming adult roles.
She can still be pretty hilariously twitchy at times ... remember her animation of the music-box figurine? That was Season Seven.
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You're overstating the issue. It's true that a group of formerly-secondary characters are being developed to take more leading roles in stories, but that doesn't mean that they are throwing out the old ones.
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Starlight's problem is not with magical power or skill. She's a naturally-powerful mage, and she's older (and in some fields more skilled than) Twilight Sparkle.
Starlight's problem, more so than Twilight's ever was, is with sanity. This is a fairly serious problem, because it seems to be a thing that powerful mages (of any kind) in that world risk Sanity Loss, and one of the most important things about Friendship that it promotes Sanity recovery. For a bright cheerful fuzzy happy world, My Little Pony seems to be running on the Call of Cthulhu RPG rules -- which worked almost exactly like that.
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Well, in the SWSV it's because Celestia needs to raise up a whole bunch of new Alicorns to meet the terrible threat to the Earth and all this Universe from the Night Shadows. In the Canon Verse, you've got me. Maybe it's necessary for Ponykind to advance to new levels of wisdom, power and achievement?
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Allow me to point this out: Twilight went to the best school for unicorns in the land and received private lessons from Celestia because of her potential. Discord himself looked impressed when she was able to create normal space with his chaos. She has shown great skill, but it took effort and learning.
Now here comes Starlight who has no formal education that we know of, can cast any spell without difficulty, can combine and fix spells with ease. In short she is OP. Because of this she not only takes away what made Twilight and Sunset special, but also their education. Not to mention that it appears like friendship is holding Twilight back from being all she can be
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The reasons you mention are exactly why SWSV Starlight Glimmer was an earlier special student of Princess Celestia's. I thought, at the time that I wrote Post-Traumatic, that the Writers realized that the Sameness Spell was just Starlight's variant on Starswirl's unfinished spell -- the same one that Twilight Sparkle finished to attain Ascension in "Magical Mystery Cure" -- and that at some point this would be stated explicitly.
Maybe I overestimated the Writers.
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SWSV?
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"Shadow Wars Story Verse" -- the shared background of my MLP fanfiction.
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Ahhh. Well I am referring to cannon Starlight.
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I could go over all the ways that Starlight could have worked out as a better character. Like how her knowledge is more limited to cutie mark magic or a better backstory. I have thought over several. But the show and comics feel like they need to make her the omega pony while tossing the other characters in the trash. Just loom at issue 50!
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Getting more mature and changing over time is fine but she is painfully boring and a scant moment of something does not change that.
Heck I consider the relative lack of focus on her is a blessing in disguise because yes she has become that boring. Right now if she is not in an episode or she laments because she cannot go on the adventure or what have you it makes me happier because I know the episode will be more fun because of it. She has a lot of potential for something interesting but since they apparently refuse to make use of it they choose instead to drain most of the fun parts of her personality and replace it with far more boring parts of her personality.
Granny Smith is a mature character but she is not boring. They can make a more mature character be interesting they just seemed to forget that they should when it comes to Twilight.
Also I have no issue with wanting to give additional characters more screen time. I do not like Starlight Glimmer but I DO like Sunset Shimmer. Sunset was handled much better and is more fun to have around. I rather liked Starlight as a villain and I still feel they should have kept that going for a bit longer with her doing more rather than the really two appearances she got to be an actual villain. The rebellious pony starting up trouble is an interesting angle in a show about harmony and her potent abilities work better as a villain.
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They're not throwing them out, but the supposed friendship between Starlight and the Elements is something we hardly see come into focus. And I suspect the reason for this is because the writers aren't sure how to approach this issue.
The Map Missions before this had the characters interact with and play off of each other. It showed why even ponies who seem incompatible have docking points. Take Spice Up Your Life, for example, that both presented the totally opposite viewpoints of Rarity and Pinkie (please your customers vs be yourself at any cost) and showed them still being good friends, with Rarity finding Pinkie's energy and enthusiasm refreshing and Pinkie appreciating Rarity's charm and smarts.
Starlight doesn't have this. She's "friends" with them because Princess Twilight said so, but she doesn't even seem to enjoy Princess Twilight's company any.