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Requisite pony thread (No creepers)

BunBun299 said:
I wouldn't say she's a better Twilight. I would say she's a better Sunset, though.
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OK, so here's how I see it:

Twilight is the old main character, Starlight is the new main character, Sunset is the main character of her own spinoff.

Twilight was a Friendship Student, Starlight is a Friendship Student, Sunset is not a Friendship Student.
Starlight is a better friendship student because she has genuine problems interacting with others, she commits mistakes and learns to be better.
How often was Twilight wrong and had to learn what's right? What flaws was she struggling against? No, Lesson Zero doesn't count, the real lesson there was "I should not skip my meds".

Twilight is the do-all magical unicorn, Starlight is a do-all magical unicorn, Sunset at best presumably was a do-all magical unicorn.
Starlight episodes usually revolve around a new spell that 1) is interesting and pushes our understanding of what magic is capable of and 2) is an awful, terrible idea. Her magic is the source of problems, not solutions, which is what magic should be in a vaguely defined magic system. Starlight's spells give a sense of pushing boundaries, of there being boundaries to push and rules to work within. Twilight's magic is mostly there to solve problems, and when it fails it's in a wish-like fashion. It's vague and implied to be able to do anything. Remember when in Winter Wrap-Up the idea was that Twilight couldn't solve a problem with magic and the only idea they came up with was to just directly ban magic? Remember when Twilight was explaining how Pinkie Sense does not work like magic and the best she could come up with was "magic is done on purpose"?

So those are the main reasons why Starlight is the better Twilight.


Bonus round:
Backstory:
Twilight: essentially nothing of note happened between becoming Celestia's student and the start of the show.
Starlight: unsatisfying explanation of motives and a gaping void raising questions of there exactly she learned everything.
Sunset: basic background, but at least the implied actions in the human world continue to affect the second movie. Comics provide a little more backstory but characterization isn't entirely consistent with EqG.
Mostly a wash, Sunset slightly in the lead.
 
Finagle007 said:
Oh no?

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Note the first part- she talks about her favorite part of studying magic is the fieldwork, while she's just ok with books.

Sunset's basically the class president type who tries to be good at everything. She can do science but she's not the type who spends her spare time on it like Twilight, she studies it as a way to solve a problem or such.


Malbutorius said:
Oh look, they put even less thought into how their magic works in EQG than in the mainline series, and they don't even put much thought into the mainline series.
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I wouldn't say that- how magic works is explicitly more of a plotpoint in EqG, and that it's not understood and there's figuring out going on. In the main series, we see new spells and such but how it works is not outlined to us for all that the characters know.
 
schpeelah said:
How often was Twilight wrong and had to learn what's right? What flaws was she struggling against? No, Lesson Zero doesn't count, the real lesson there was "I should not skip my meds".
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You know its been a while but I remember one of the things talked about in the earlier episodes, back when the Mane Six hadn't had as much character development and still routinely made big mistakes, is Cutie Mark Insanity Syndrome. Where it seemed like if a character was unable to live up to their cutie mark or conflicted with it in some ways, they would have a psychotic break in which they'd go cocoa for cocoa puffs and do cartoonishly crazy behavior that would get you institutionalized or jailed in a more rational and grounded setting.

Starlight Glimmer is a textbook case of it. Her cutie mark is magic... but she blames magic and cutie marks for ruining her life in a massive overreaction, then resorts to radical magic to get friends, then even more radical magic for revenge when Twilight Sparkle ruins her plans. But the thing is, by the time she shows up, CMIS, at least among the main cast, is mostly a thing of the past. Twilight Sparkle still does stupid or even crazy things at times, but nothing that really compares to Lesson Zero (I'll MAKE a friendship problem hehe) or Its About Time (the future is a problem, no problem, I'll just STOP TIME ITSELF) both of which are pointedly comparable to Starlight Glimmer's pair of doozies. So as a result it just feels like "Starlight Glimmer is an evil whackjob" rather than "Starlight Glimmer is a pre-S1 Twilight lookalike but with no one to bail her out of CMIS as she descends into crazy".
 
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Speaking of CMIS and the unicorns-in-Twilight's-Zone, it strikes me one could bring up Tempest in there too.
 
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firefossil said:
You know its been a while but I remember one of the things talked about in the earlier episodes, back when the Mane Six hadn't had as much character development and still routinely made big mistakes, is Cutie Mark Insanity Syndrome. Where it seemed like if a character was unable to live up to their cutie mark or conflicted with it in some ways, they would have a psychotic break in which they'd go cocoa for cocoa puffs and do cartoonishly crazy behavior that would get you institutionalized or jailed in a more rational and grounded setting.
Starlight Glimmer is a textbook case of it. Her cutie mark is magic... but she blames magic and cutie marks for ruining her life in a massive overreaction, then resorts to radical magic to get friends, then even more radical magic for revenge when Twilight Sparkle ruins her plans. But the thing is, by the time she shows up, CMIS, at least among the main cast, is mostly a thing of the past. Twilight Sparkle still does stupid or even crazy things at times, but nothing that really compares to Lesson Zero (I'll MAKE a friendship problem hehe) or Its About Time (the future is a problem, no problem, I'll just STOP TIME ITSELF) both of which are pointedly comparable to Starlight Glimmer's pair of doozies. So as a result it just feels like "Starlight Glimmer is an evil whackjob" rather than "Starlight Glimmer is a pre-S1 Twilight lookalike but with no one to bail her out of CMIS as she descends into crazy".
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CMFIS was an early attempt to rationalize NMM by riffing off of Party of One through the lens of early fandom views of cutie marks/special talents as something concrete, unchanging, a purpose that they serve. Nowadays we know that Pinkie has abandonment issues unrelated to her talent, Celestia and Luna are bad at communicating in a way that fosters resentment with Luna having the worse of it due to having a more exhausting and isolating job, and cutie marks are for most ponies an expression of something they enjoy rather than some central destiny.

Interpreting Lesson Zero as CMFIS would necessitate Twilight to have a mark in like, pleasing Celestia or something; it's not like she's freaking out about losing magic or failing at magic. I don't even know what it'd need to be for flipping out about a warning of a disaster from your future self to classify as CMFIS.





I would agree that some form of resentment against her own talent is a likely real reason behind StarTown. She probably had the same pattern of behavior we've seen, gaining some friends then losing them by doing the Little Thing She Does. She decided she has a problem. She tried solving it the way she solves problems i.e. new exotic spell. Either it didn't work because somepony without a mark, with a magical brand that actively suppresses their personality is a freak nopony wants to deal with, or she chickened out because it's far too scary to do that to yourself and also she realized she'd be a freak. So she went and started a society of ponies who were like that instead. She kept her own mark, she needed it to cast the spell, but since the problem in the first place was friends leaving her because of what she did with her talent, nothing would go wrong as long as nopony knew she still had it or how she used it.

So anyway Twilight Sparkle showed up and ruined Starlight's last at only way to have friends. Twilight Sparkle deserved to lose hers as well. Except that became a disaster as well, a disaster well beyond Starlight's dreams.

And then Twilight Sparkle went, and accepted her. At Starlight's lowest, Twilight chose to be her friend.

And after that Starlight slipped up again, because of course she did. But Twilight and her friends kept accepting her.

And so healing could begin.
 
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