Character Formation of Starlight Glimmer · 8:22pm Oct 1st, 2015
What Starlight Glimmer did to the Ponies of Our Town, and even more so to the Mane Six what they stumbled upon her little community, was amazingly cruel, especially from the point of view of a Pony. So I'm going to go into Starlight's character as revealed in the episode and what this says about her background.
One's Talent is central to an adult Pony's character; I imagine that losing it would be as if I suddenly lost the ability to write grammatically correct English or conceive of good story ideas and I could only read as fast as I could sound out the words. It would take a lot out of my life. The Ponies of Our Town mostly joined voluntarily (though I don't know if they knew what they were getting themselves into) which means that they were emotionally messed up to begin with; living under Starlight Glimmer can't have helped.
Though I don't imagine her (mostly) abusing them -- at least not on purpose. There's a clue to Starlight Glimmer's character in The Cutie Map. Remember the scene where she first (accidentally) washes off her Cutie Mark? She winces and berates herself, I think she calls herself "clumsy," and she sounds just as if she's being somepony else berating her.
I think that she was raised by very critical parents, who knew she was highly-intelligent (and she must be, to do what she did) but thought that this meant they had to be very hard on her and force her to constantly excel, even when she was bored or tired or utterly uninterested in the topic. I think that they emotionally-abused her, which is why her mantras are all about not trying to do better than anypony else. I think they destroyed for her the joy of accomplishment in one's Talent which is the center of most Ponies' lives, and thus emotionally-crippled her.
If true, this would explain (though not excuse) the things she did. It would also make her a more believable (and pitiable) character, rather than merely a cackling stereotype of Mad Magery. She was very badly hurt growing up, and she wants to spare other Ponies the pain she suffered. She wants to believe that all Ponies suffered this pain, because to admit what really happened -- that her parents were crazy -- would be both to condemn her parents and to accept that she suffered a very high degree of undeserved and unshared pain.
If you notice in the episode, the way she acts toward her followers is maternal -- though as a rather controlling, demented, intolerant sort of mother-figure. She may have imagined that they loved her like her children (and there's a good chance that she's actually childless, because she's not the sort of Pony whose personality encourages a lot of love for her; she's almost certainly unmarried). If so, this would have made her abandonment by the whole population of Our Town hurt her even more.
There's a certain additional poignance if Double Diamond was also her lover, but even if he wasn't, he was probably the closest thing she had to a really trusted friend in the village. She may have viewed him as her most promising "child" (whether or not he was also her lover). And there's no way that Double Diamond, given that he's a fairly decent guy, could have been the recipient of that much positive emotional affect without feeling bad about the way things turned out -- even if he knows it was necessary.
Starlight Glimmer is, of course, a classic "authoritarian personality," and specifically of the sort who founds authoritarian and totalitarian societies. She reduces the emotional and moral complexities of life to a few simple mantras; she insists on everypony agreeing with her philosophy, and on being in charge of administering it. Like many dictators, she mistakes compliance from fear for love of her character. And thus her downfall -- for her -- is all the more painful.
I myself have felt for a while that something unpleasant and traumatic must be lurking in Starlight Glimmer's past. Given her attitudes and how exceptional she herself obviously is, overbearing helicopter parents actually makes a great deal of sense. It fits nicely with your canon of her as a former student of the princess; one can imagine ever increasing amounts of pressure and expectation piling on her until something in her just broke.
It is also quite clear that the position of Celestia's student does not lend itself to friend making. Or at least the genuine sort. I suspect Starlight Glimmer was surrounded by fair weather 'friends', who promptly abandoned her when things got bad. This might well have been her final 'confirmation' that only equality can bring friendship. After all, her own exceptional talents only got her more pressure, more misery and the attention of false friends.
I would feel a little sorry for her, were that all true. Just a little bit.
3434909 So Starlight Glimmer had fair-weather friends preying on her connection to the Princess, and decided that the moral was 'only equals can truly be friends with each other'.
Sunset Shimmer got the same treatment, and decided that 'friendship is about using other people'.
Twilight Sparkle only escaped by being so introverted and oblivious that her friends never had the chance to try to use her. It seems likely that AT LEAST Minuette, Lemon Hearts, and Twinkleshine would have tried to, since they're all social climbers (and Minuette did try to as soon as Twilight showed up on her doorstep). It's kind of implied that Lyra would have also since she was one of the bridesmaids.
Then for her Ponyville friends, she got to know them in harsh weather first, so when they tried to use her (in like the second episode) she found it annoying but not something that indicated their friendship was false.
So... the moral of the story is 'don't do favors for your friends or else you won't be able to tell the true friends from the false ones'?
3435127
There will have been genuine friends in there as well; minuette et al seem quite genuine to Twilight. But once the negatively sets in, the presence of the false friends will poison the good. Starlight and Sunset will both have become increasingly difficult to deal with. They might well have driven their real friends away, leaving only the social climbers. Which will have poisoned them to the whole thing.
Starlight Glimmer, without a doubt, terrifies me. She has incredible magical ability and, despite the reasons for her actions, she was extremely terrifying to watch in the episode. It was like watching a documentary about cults, the ones I used to watch back when I was on Bio channel all the time.
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This is not the face of mercy.
Yes. That did raise a bit of a red flag. She needed a more tolerant mentor growing up. As it stands now, she's a paranoid mess who can't tolerate normal messy behaviour.....like Elly Patterson from "For Better Or For Worse." She'd also be a lot better off if her mother didn't think that criticizing everything she did would make her stronger instead of what it did: making her a frustrated jerk who hates herself deep down but still has to bring order to the world to please someone who fears that public praise will destroy her.
If true, this would explain (though not excuse) the things she did. It would also make her a more believable (and pitiable) character, rather than merely a cackling stereotype of Mad Magery. She was very badly hurt growing up, and she wants to spare other Ponies the pain she suffered. She wants to believe that all Ponies suffered this pain, because to admit what really happened -- that her parents were crazy -- would be both to condemn her parents and to accept that she suffered a very high degree of undeserved and unshared pain.
Again, we're talking about Elly Patterson. She (and her creator) need to believe that all families are like hers and all people/ponies feel as lost and miserable as she does because she finds the idea of being an outlier TERRIFYING because it means she never actually had to feel that way at all.
3434909
One of the great untold stories is just why Twilight Sparkle was friendless (or considered herself to be friendless) in the first episode, when she was obviously admired and liked by others. I suspect that the group of friends with Moon Dancer, Twinkleshine, Minuette, Lyra and Lemon Hearts was not her first; they were just the friends who weren't obviously trying to take advantage of her, and who thus she tolerated. By the time she made friends with them, she was rather soured on the very concept of friendship; but when she met the other five members of the Mane Six, she had to cooperate with them to achieve her objective, and she found herself liking them. In "Amending Fences," she came to realize that it was actually her own fault -- that Minuette's set had always wanted to be better friends with her, but that she pushed them away.
3435127
I think the idea was that Mineutte and co were genuinely trying to be friends with Twilight, but Twilight wasn't a true friend TO THEM. Also, that Twilight didn't recognize her former classmates as her sister's bridesmaids, implies Twilight was NOT a good friend to them, AT ALL.
3435821
She went through life in something of a dream regarding everything other than books.
Indeed, now that I think of it, Twilight Sparkle, of all of the Mane Six, was the one closest to Lone-Madness. Not being able to recognize Ponies you saw every day at close quarters for years at school is not entirely sane.
3435204
What terrifies me, is that a lot of viewers and reviewers can't seem to even comprehend the idea that she actually believes what she's saying, and that her having to keep her magic was indeed, the 'noble lie' of Plato's Republic. People brush her off as using Equality just to lord over a group of ponies, and would have used eggplants if she thought she could manipulate ponies with it. They can't comprehend that it isn't about power, that it isn't about wealth, that it's about The Cause, that she is but a servant of The Cause, and that The Cause is all, who cares if you have to brainwash a princess and lie to those following you to achieve it, or blow up a tower in major city with you still in it, The Cause is the virtue.
I'm disappointed with the Equal Ponies that finding out that Glimmer was a hypocrite was all it took to shatter everything they believed in on the spot and 100% of them instantly wanted their cutie marks back. THEY WERE ALL STILL HAVING THE SAME IDEA, etc. -_-
"Tell me how this is an equal society, when one pony has a trash can cutie mark, and another has a cutie mark for quantum physics? One for a cutie mark of a doctor, and another a grave digger? Ponies are trapped by their marks."
3435836
I always assumed that she was sincere. If she really just wanted wealth, she would have promulgated a very different idea other than "Friendship through complete equalty by suppression of differentiating Talents," since that one ensured that she would be living in a bleak blockhouse wearing horrible capes and eating dry and tasteless muffins; if she wanted merely to dominate others, she would have been sitting on a throne served by the stallions from her seraglio. What it looked like she was enjoying was acting as surrogate mother to a whole village of mostly-adult Ponies; and being treated by them as (she thought) a friend (admittedly a friend whose suggestions had the force of law in custom, but still a friend).
For that matter, she could have lived better in every sense of the word by using her own Talents to make lots of money, buying a fancy house, and finding a bunch of weak-willed followers who would cater to her whims in return for being able to have dinner with her on a regular basis. Plenty of rich drones (of the Edwardian rather than Changeling vareity) probably do just that in and around Canterlot. It's exactly that lifestyle which my Moon Dancer has chosen to eschew in favor of her strange scholarship.
As you point out, there's nothing about sincerity that prevents horrible consequence. The Nazis were sincere, the Communists were sincere, and the Islamists are sincere. The belief sincerely held need not be a positive or constructive one, though generally the adherents need to believe that it is both. Horrible ideas, sincerely held have caused the deaths of many tens of millions in our world.
Actually, the nature of Starlight Glimmer's dream implies sad things about her life. Most of what she wants -- friendship, perhaps love, a maternal relationship to others -- is readily available to any Pony who falls in love, settles down and has children. I think she's seriously emotionally-dysfunctional -- which only makes her all the more dangerous, because she I'm guessing she deeply hates Twilight Sparkle for taking away the life she built in Our Town.
I think the Equal Ponies were at least as emotionally-dysfunctional as Starlight Glimmer. Maybe more so, because she was functional enough to lead the foundation of a town. Sketcha-holic has been writing a little about them in her tale of Cheese and Tomato Sandwich's vacation adventures around Equestria, Brotherly Bonding Time -- Our Town (post Starlight Glimmer's exposrue) is one of the Wacky Wayside Tribes the brothers encounter. They don't strike me in her story as entirely sane, and I have it from her that this is intentional on her part.
3435852
Equestria's not entirely equal -- in some ways less so than modern America (it has a formal aristocracy) and in some ways more so (the wealth gap between rich and poor is narrower). Equality of treatment is better for social functioning than equality of outcome, and both Equestria and America do well on the equality of treatment metric, compared to most cultures.
The quote implies, though, that the physicist is inherently superior to the garbagepony. It's true that the physicist's talent may be rarer and her contribution more highly valued, but as Ponies the two are morally-equal beings, and legally they are treated as having the same fundamental equine rights. Both benefit from the presence of each other in society; the garbagepony's equipment is designed with reference to the laws of physics, and the physicist counts on garbageponies to take away the trash or her lab would be surrounded by fetid heaps of garbage.
If we took away both their talents, they would be more equal in ability to contribute, but then neither of them could contribute very much. The physicist would lose her intuitive grasp of physics, and the garbagepony would become inept at properly disposing of garbage. Science would advance more slowly, and the cities would stink due to spilled garbage cans. Our Town only worked -- to the extent that it did -- because nothing very complex was being attempted there.
The Mark is just the outward sign of the Talent; the doctor wants to study and practice medicine; the grave-digger to dig graves in which to bury corpses. We are more cheered by the presence of a doctor than a grave-digger, but both are needed for a society to function well, at least for now. The Talent, in turn is partly genetic, partly educational, and partly precognitive (the reason why Talents for a technology can appear before the technology is that Ponies on a deep level are capable of seeing the future).
It is impossible to have a functioning society at any level beyond basic brower-grazers without occupational specialization. Even the earliest Neolithic towns, some 16 thousand years ago, had farmers and warriors and healers and priests. And, before that, even the Primal Ponies had some sort of individual specialization (though before the Eldren they didn't have Cutie Marks) -- it just happened that some Ponies were better at fighting off predators, others at locating good grazing patches, and so forth. Even in a very simple, pre-lithic culture, not all Ponies are created equal, simply because different Ponies have different personalities and prefer to master different skills.
The Sameness merely cripples all Ponies to a (roughly) common level. It doesn't do what would really be useful, which would be to permit all Ponies to share in the Talents of all others. For that, you'd need something like a Changeling Hive Mind, but with a far greater bandwidth. That's the sort of thing which my Poniternity might achieve.
Ironically, Starlight Glimmer might be one of the visionaries on the right theoretical path in terms of the science required, though with a terribly bad choice of applications.
3435911
All logical arguments.
3435836 I think they always wanted their cutie marks back but were convinced that giving them up was necessary, and she showed it wasn't necessary. They acted like they intended to stay in the town as a collective still, at the end.
3435958
And Starlight is now the one with her home gone and it now populated by strangers.
3435963
I never said I didn't feel sorry for her. Note that in Post-Traumatic, Twilight, Spike and the rest of the Mane Six are not unbiased observers. The Mane Six suffered the actual experience of losing their Talents, to varying degrees of psychological damage (as should be obvious, Rarity -- who defines herself more by her Talent than does the rest of them -- has been hurt the most; Applejack and Rainbow Dash, who looked at what happened as "being laid up with a wound," and Twilight Sparkle, whose immense intellect is beyond the power of the Sameness to fully suppress, the least; Spike wasn't directly hurt at all because he wasn't there and doesn't have a Cutie Mark anyway, but is furious at Starlight Glimmer for hurting Rarity.
They mostly don't feel sorry for her -- though perhaps Fluttershy does, because Fluttershy is Kind and saw her at an unguarded moment, and (worse) used that knowledge against her. But then, would you really expect them to? Pinkie, of course, would throw her a "You're Reformed" party if Starlight reformed, but then Starlight thinks what she's been doing was right all along, and nopony else undertands.
3435127
Interestingly, Rarity is a clear social climber, though she first befriends Twilight out of her generosity -- she wants to help fix Twilight up after Rainbow Dash splashes and blow-dries her. But it's obvious that the reason at first why she doesn't push Spike away is that Spike is one of Twilight's best friends, and she wants to get in good with Twilight. To elaborate: it's very clear to Rarity that Twilight is the intendant (agent) of Princess Celestia; and she later learns that Twilight is Celestia's personal student. Rarity knows that somepony like this is somepony she should get to know.
Rarity fails to trigger Twilight and Spike's defenses against this sort of thing because she's also extremely nice. As a result, they become her close friends -- Twilight gets to see Rarity's real merits, and in time Rarity comes to appreciate Spike's merits, quite apart from being the adoptive brother of Celestia's former personal student.
3435204
I think Starlight came close to murdering her former followers when they rebelled against her. We don't know if the spell she was going to cast on them was lethal, but given the look of utter fury on her face when she cast it, I don't think she was holding back. She was surprised when Twilight managed to shield them against its effects -- and she knows Twilight Sparkle is an Alicorn mage of considerable power and skill. That was one potent attack spell Starlight was going to use.
3435480 That's the thing. We can't have a character on a program designed for children of a certain age complain about being surrounded by phonies who only pretend to like her so they can suck up to someone more important.
We can, on the other hand, have an incredibly damaged fanatic try to sucker-punch time because her hatred for someone marches hand in hand with her sincere and misguided belief that specialization is bad because her parents were jerks.
3436376
It would probably be too far outside the experience of most young girls; they would tend to go "Huh? But everyone is being nice to her, what's she complaining about?"
Though Twilight Sparkle faces a similar situation in "Twilight Time." Interestingly, she deals with it fairly smoothly. She may have seen Celestia do the same thing to phonies who tried to use Twilight when Twilight was younger; so she knew how to handle it. Celestia would have wanted to teach her how to deal with sycophants, because if everything worked out, Twilight would face them more than once in her life.
3435958
They'd found real friendship, and possibly love, there. (Someone must have sired those foals).
3438447 This is why we see middle school students get floored by dealing with mean girls....they don't understand what having an agenda means because they want to believe that people are essentially good and we purposely shield them from the harshness of this world.
Me? I'm on the same page as Carl Barks. There's a lot of bad in good people, a little good in bad people and unequivocal happy endings only happen in fairy tales.
3435480
This somewhat off topic, but I couldn't help but notice the difference in characterisation between human Twilight and pony Twilight in the new movie, and the possible reasons for said differences.
The first thing to note is that human Twilight is a rather timid creature: she shys away from other students, she attempts to appear as small as possible, she avoids eye contact, she apologies for things regardless of blame.
Now compare to pony Twilight. Even episode one, she was much more confident and self assured. Pony Twilight destained social interaction as a waste of her time. Human Twilight appears frightened of it. Human Twilight was clearly being orchestrated and bullied. Pony Twilight clearly wasn't.
There are three big reasons why this is so, in my view. First, contrary to appearance, pony Twilight is formidable and everyone with any clue as to who she is will know it. Pony Twilight won't have been bullied for the same reason Smaug won't have been bullied; only a special idiot will attempt to bully the dragon. Of course such idiots exist, and some might attempt to mug the monster, but, being formidable, pony Twilight can deal with this easily. Or Celestia will.
By contrast, human Twilight is exactly as powerful and formidable as she looks; which is to say: not very. She is a far easier victim for any would be bullies. And these bullies might feel at liberty; human Twilight has far less in her corner.
The defacto head mistress of Celestia's school is, of coarse, Princess Celestia. Pony Twilight enjoyed her support in particular as her personal student. By contrast, human Twilight has Principal Cinch, who clearly cares very little for the wellbeing of her students. Cinch's only interest in human Twilight lay in what reflected glory she might obtain from her accomplishments; she might even regard Twilight's isolation as a positive: less friends equals more studying.
Finally, we have the atmosphere at Crystal Prep. The head mistress's obsession with personal aggrandizement and competition has rubbed off on her student body; she has created a nest of vipers. The culture and attitude of the school are a fine breeding ground for bullying, and anyone who stands out or makes his or her classmates look bad by comparison is at particular risk. Human Twilight's situation is quite clear. All she really has in her corner is Cadence, who clearly needed to take a firmer hand in the situation. While we have yet to really see Celestia's school, it is reasonable to assume it is a rather more pleasant environment than Crystal Prep.
Forgive me my long off topic ramblings, but I would be quite interested to hear your views on the matter.
3435480
Another factor is that Twilight pretty clearly has Asperger's (a mild case, but still), so she would have been oblivious to a lot of social cues. It is probable that she was used by ponies who just wanted her access to the Princess, but it's also likely that aside from that, Twilight missed a lot of attempts to genuinely befriend her because she wasn't paying attention. She really did have a grueling course schedule (probably largely self-inflicted by insisting to Celestia that she absolutely needed to study that thing too, for many, many values of that thing), she really did have to concentrate on her work, and she really did have constant social companionship in the form of Spike. Social companionship is draining to an introvert even when it is enjoyable; someone who knows you well and is family drains you less, but constantly interacting with someone may leave you with little emotional energy for going out and making different friends.
Starlight Glimmer is probably more extroverted than Twilight (probably still an introvert but not to nearly the same degree), and probably felt the pain of lack of friendship much more strongly, particularly if she never got her emotional needs met by her family. Ditto Sunset Shimmer, an adept manipulator who doesn't appear to be introverted at all -- Sunset's very socially aware. So Sunset would also have felt the pain of the difficulty in finding true friendships as a student of the Princess, and turned that into "manipulate your friends."
One wonders. We have Sunset, who is probably actually Shining Armor's age or so. We have Starlight Glimmer, who's in the age range of the Cakes or possibly Twilight's mom. Are there late-middle-aged or elderly mares out there who were also personal students of the Princess? Did she only start training personal students when the return of Nightmare Moon was imminent within the probable lifetime of the students, or has she been doing this for centuries? How many dysfunctional archmage-level unicorn mares are there out there? :-)
3489704
There may be older ones. Consider Inkwell. And consider that even though Celestia knew when her Sister would be released by the spell, she may have been trying for Alicorns all through that millennium.
Though most of her candidates probably didn't go completely round the bend. For that matter, Sunset Shimmer got better, and Twilight only went crazy after being Discorded.
3439279
You have the difference between Pony Twilight and Humanoid Twilight spot-on. Friendship Games makes a point of this, which I liked: it's one of the clear differences between a Pony character and her Humanoid analogue. And Sugarcoat even lampshades this: "You are kinda being a doormat right now."
That statement, coming from her, is a clue as to how the culture at Crystal Prep works, and a reason why everyone there pushes Twilight around even though she's a high-achiever and someone who Cinch actually values. Crystal Prep is competitive not only in the positive-sum sense that each student tries to achieve the best they can, but also in the zero-sum sense that each student tries to push all the others down.
That is entirely Cinch's fault. She clearly prefers vicious, rather than virtuous, competition. Part of what she's trying to develop among her students is the ability to do others dirty and survive attempts to do oneself dirty. Which is actually a useful ability -- but she takes it too far, and encourages a nastily-competitive atmosphere between her students, because it's also how she happens to be.
The problem is that in the process she's breaking the sanity of someone like Twilight Sparkle.
The fact that it's Sugarcoat who points this out is significant, because we know from later events that the Shadowbolts aren't genuinely villainous, and I think that Sugarcoat may have been telling Twilight this out of a genuinely friendly impulse, though the school culture in part impelled her to say it in a slightly-nasty manner. Being very openly and warmly friendly is probably seen there as being a show of weakness, and an invitation to abuse. Either Twilight Sparkle, when she decides to be friendly, is very openly and warmly so.
But note that the essence of what Sugarcoat said was "You're letting us abuse you," with the implied additional communication "you shouldn't do that." She didn't have to say that; she could have just abused Twilight. She obviously didn't want to abuse her. She was offering Twilight an opening to behave in a more assertive way in the future, which would have let Sugarcoat then be friendly right back, but in the aggressive and sardonic style more acceptable ar that school.
Earlier on the same bus trip, Lemon Zest tries to be friendly to Twilight. It's true that Twilight doesn't like her music. But sharing it with Twilight was an obviously-friendly gesture. Like Pinkie Pie, Lemon Zest is often Innocently Insensitive. Her mode of survival at Crystal Prep has obviously been to assert herself in such a way that she's obviously not at all questioning the virtue of being herself, thus presenting a poor target for bullies.
Cinch is hoist by her own petard at the end. Because she was never there for Twilight, but was clearly only using her to bask in her reflected glory, Twilight feels very little loyalty toward Cinch. This is of course true in her demonic form, but it's also true even after she recovers her humanity. In fact, Cinch has clearly lost the loyalty of the Shadowcolts as well: she violates their rough code of honor, because she's willing to just flee when her students are in danger. The Shadowcolts, notably, are not: they help save the students from both schools who are endangered by Midnight's madness.
In doing so, Cinch fails at a very deep level. Of all the people present at the time, the four with the most responsibility to protect the students are Celestia, Luna, Cinch and Cadance. We don't clearly see what the other three are doing, but we see what Cinch is doing -- running away. That violates her responsibility even under the normal concept of in loco parentis: these are minors entrusted to her care!
In choosing to behave bravely and generously, the Shadowcolts show that they're not really villains; they've merely been misguided by Cinch.
3493130
Thank you for a cogent and extensive reply
. I found it refreshing that the Shadow Bolts were allowed a moment of heroism; it was a nice reminder that they were merely over competitive jerks, rather than monsters.
I found your commentry on Sugarcoat fascinating as well.
You mah or may not wish to spoil this, but what are your plans for Sunset Shimmer in the shadow wars, assuming you have some?