Twilight's Kingdom: A Mary Sue Done Right · 7:10am May 11th, 2014
Well well well... I have to say, I'm feelin' a Season One vibe from the finale.
I disregarded Season Four because it really wasn't doing anything for me. I watched the opener and never finished it. Now that I've watched the closer, I must admit I quite like where they're taking it. It's indeed moving from Twilight's time as a student through to her ascension to royalty, exactly the direction I wanted to see the series take following Season Three. I'm going to have to go back and watch the season now.
A Mary Sue Done Right
I should have picked up on this. We all should have. It's in her freakin' element, after all. Twilight Sparkle is a Mary Sue. She is the element and master of all that gives her ponies life and energy. She is at the very center of every little ripple in Equestrian life. She is more than the element of Magic. She is Magic. Her power is ridiculous. Her body, a vessel for Magic. Her mind, a repository for anything related to mental manipulation. For lack of any other description, she is beyond a mere Princess. She is the Equestrian goddess of magic.
Yet, it all rides on the fact that she must have friends to truly unlock her power.
Yes, Luna raises the sun. Yes, Celestia raises the moon. Yes, Cadence is the alicorn responsible for love, and yes, I do know exactly what I did there regarding Luna and Celestia. Of the trio, however, Luna and Celestia's powers really are a pithy pittance in comparison. Celestia's in charge of supplying the life-giving radiance of the world. Luna is responsible to ensure the safety of her subjects during their most vulnerable period - sleep. Although these are great responsibilities that require an inordinate amount of magic, they do not, in actuality, carry all that much raw power behind them. Only Cadence would be able to stand up to Twilight because real love, as in the desire to see one other's needs met before one's own, is a stronger bond than friendship. Yet, it is so much more of an intimate thing than friendship that, although strong in a committed pair, becomes weaker the more other people become intimately involved. Close friends, however, provide many different experiences, ideas, and lessons, and only in that environment can a person truly grow.
And grow Twilight has! Because of that one eviction from the Canterlot Royal Library, Twilight Sparkle has grown from an inept, abrupt, short social outcast to a solid friend and confidante. She is the strongest, weakest, most intelligent, dumbest, fastest, slowest, and any degree of oxymoronic descriptions one can come up with, of any pony in the world. She is a wild card in the Equestrian deck. She is magic. Because of that, she is powerful. With the battery of friendship installed in the Orbital Friendship Cannon, she kicks some serious can. Yet, she isn't very subtle about it. Rarity, Luna, Cadence... they have the nuances and intricacies of their fields of magic worked out. Twilight may have the raw power, but now she needs to work on her subtlety. Now that she's the Princess of Magic, she's going to get the opportunity to do so.
Returning to the point about friendship, what a failsafe! If Twilight is not involved in a friendship or two and does not have some kind of Power Star upgrade, her power level plummets significantly to the point where Celestia, Luna, and Cadence could easily deal with her. She is more powerful than the average unicorn when her power stands alone, but utterly average as far as an alicorn goes. It's cathartic, in a sense, to know that Nightmare Twilight, whatever incarnation that takes, will not be all that powerful alone. I mean, she barely got anywhere with her studies while alone in Canterlot. What's to say she'll be that much more powerful in a darkened mindframe? Although I find the speculative fics entertaining, I don't necessarily agree that she will be. Without friends or a magical upgrade, she is utterly Alicorn average, and that is easily controlled, if Chrysalis is any indication.
Side note: I hope they deal with something completely unaffected by the Orbital Friendship Cannon next.
-Z
