Why does Starlight have a crush on Trixie? What made her think this way? And should she ask her out or not?
Starlight has a lot of questions for herself and they're very confusing. Surely she should be able to find the answers to them if she just gets a second to clear her head. After all, she's the most powerful unicorn spellcaster alive! There's nothing she cannot do if she approaches it with a rational, reasonable mindset.
Probably.
Written for the StarTrixMaud contest. Editing help provided by Lofty Withers and WritingSpirit.
Chapters (1)
"Yes uncle Twilight"
10979632 I mean that do be how Twilight is tho, lol
— Actual exchange Twilight and Starlight had, probably
Which is why the show's writers didn't give her one. (WARNING: TVTROPES LINK!)
glad to see you got this in on time, hap! love the cover art!
I used this to teach my kid to read, very pogchamp. Would panic myself into 40 universes again.
10979955 Thank you! I added the words myself!
10980027 That's a new one! That's really cool; I hope they enjoyed it!
10979898 To be fair I adore Starlight's mindset; its so warped by power that it's hard not to be a little swept away by her special brand of chaos at times.
10980179
Warped by power and, worst of all, everyone who ever had a position to help guide her through healthy, mature social relations was actively working against the concept of her ever growing up or not being his little Pumpkie-Wumpkin, because she might get hurt if that happened.
Really, The Parent Map explained everything about Starlight.
10980555 It's such a fun vibe to work with. Like she's a bad guy who reflected on where she was in life and went 'wait, am I the baddie?'
I love how she kind of knows she's not a great person and always seems to be either holding that part of her back or not realising what she's doing. She's a really fascinating character to me.
10980558
Totally the same. I'm honestly convinced that, at this point, she is probably more ethical about her magic usage than Twilight or Cadance have ever really tried to be. I mean, at least when she mind-controlled the M5, she didn't make it contagious!
Though that's actually why I found it kind of ironic when she said she could solve anything by being rational and reasonable - because being rational and reasonable and following logic through to a simple conclusion is usually exactly what gets her into trouble. Because that answer is usually the quickest and easiest, not one that has considered potential consequences.
Mind controlling the M5? Rational and reasonable.
Bottling up her anger? Rational and reasonable.
Talents are what rip people apart, so it's best not to have any? Rational and reasonable.
Glimglam could rationally and reasonably convince herself to detonate the sun, given the right question, and she's really bad about realizing she needs to go that next step before she initiates the plan, instead of after it's already happening.
10980564 Totally. She's really cool, and she's probably easily the most meaningful reformed villain in my opinion.
Weirdly this makes it a bit tricky for me to write her though because I always just want to focus on that aspect of her, ha ha. It takes conscious effort to examine the other aspects of her personality and life for me.
Who the frick, when stuck in a moment of indecision, decides to wipe their own memory to consider it again. If you were stuck on the question, it reasons you would be again. And if that's the conclusion you came to once, it reasons you'd do it again
I feel like this is one of those problems that's harder the smarter you are. Most people only have a few things to consider to come to a conclusion. When you can literally break reality on accident, you have a few more angles to confide before coming to a conclusion.
10982016 On more than one occasion whilst working I have made the conscious decision to go back to an earlier point in my calculations/theory (I'm working on a PhD in bioengineering) and trying not to think of the various dozens of complicating factors I know exist in order to gain a basic understanding of something.
'Ignore the complexity; this is the simple problem, consider it and then move onto the additional factors later once that's sorted'. Disentangling various factors is hard, man.
Starlight is the sort of person who would mind-control other people in order to give herself time to think and calm down. No way she wouldn't do it to herself as well, lol.
This story worked well - Starlight being Starlight and over thinking things, Sunburst being himself and Trixie being herself. :)
10982028
Yes it's a good idea to go back to where you started when you're stuck. Dissecting your own logic from the first time around is a great way to find your mistake and go, "what the frick was I thinking back then. BUT WITH CONTEXT STARLIGHT
No memory=no context=same mistakes=space time paradox =starlight once again accidentally putting reality in jeopardy
This was... Wow. Very well written and relatable.
I loved this idea and it was executed brilliantly.
Thanks for this
10982486 And here I thought a timestopping, artificial mental construct making, pocket-dimension hopping protagonist might not be terribly relatable, lol. Glad you enjoyed it!
Huh. Didn't realize I'd been using the "reset the scene, mental iteration" loop trick to work through writing a scene I was horribly stuck on.
I like Subconscious Manifestation Twilight and the idea thereof a lot.
10983714 Whilst obviously the whole scenario as presented in this story is horribly fictionalised, there's a lot of it that I drew from bits and pieces of psychology and mental processes. It's not really my field (my field is a bit more engineeringy in nature) but I find how the brain works to be super fascinating. Quite a few aspects of the story take bits and pieces from my understanding of how the brain works, so it's probably not surprising that you might have done a few of them yourself. : )
Just maybe don't cast spells trapping yourself in an iterative process whilst creating a manifestation of your self-sabotaging subconscious to trap you there...
10983727
Instructions unclear, pony stuck in gay panic timeloop
10980564
you know, dwk actually touches upon this in his totally legit recap of the one episode and blinking on the name of but where star light switches Luna and Celestia cutie marks because Starlight is only one with the chutspah to actually do that and the lack of thinking things through to actually do it
hello! you should have already been PMed about this, but this comment is just to record that this fic has won Gay for Gadot's Prize for Favorite Starlight Meltdown, Best StarTrix, and First Place in the StarTrixMaud Shipping Contest!
This line totally blindsided me lmao.
11007035 To be fair Trixie's ass blindsided Glimglam too so...
Ah, I do so appreciate the confirmation that it is a good thing I am not a unicorn of such power, for I would almost definitely end up down the same rabbit hole as Starlight far too easily, because gods did I feel her on a lot of those moments...
Excellent read, thank you most kindly <3
I think I did indeed enjoy the story, yes. :)
Howdy, hi!
Okay, this was super fun. I love your Starlight Glimmer. Her characterization is just so amazing here. The absolute craziness of Starlight looping on her thoughts is ridiculous and over the top and of course she did it. I admit to not being a huge fan of Starlight Glimmer but you are really making me like this character a lot in your story. I also just love that her dynamic with Trixie is that Trixie just simplifies her anxieties and problems. She cuts through her self-looping thoughts and really allows Starlight to think clearly.
Ugh, this was just so amazing as a story. Thank you for the read~!
11011672 Starlight is one of my preferred magic horses. I really like her vibe of someone who kinda knows they're a bit evil but doesn't really like that part of themselves and is trying to fit in regardless. I've written her a few times and to be honest they're mostly just different riffs on that same idea. She's a lot of fun for me.
Glad you enjoyed the story! It was good fun writing. Congrats on placing as well by the way!
This story has several meanings to it that, if I'm being honest, if I was reading casually, I would have never caught.
The Twilight construct is based off on Twilight using Starlight's magic. It's only understandable that Starlight's mannerisms rub off on her, and cause the construct to think and talk like Starlight. It's also a very interesting fact.
I do like the subtle hints that Starlight has an ego regarding her magic ability. Please. "A drop"? Starlight holds herself on her magic ability in great esteem lol
What I love is that Starlight shares a mannerism with Twilight - Twilighting. She panics for some stuff, and tends to overreact. Case in point - that one episode where she accidentally mind controlled every Mane Six but Twilight.
Also, I can't stop laughing at Starlight's fixation on Trixie's ass. This was a fun read :)
one would even say it's super easy!
i can imagine this very easily, and am warmed by it
ah the information theory problem this kind of trope represents is a fun one to get around, isn't it?
yep! great thing to note here! most of how we perceive the world has little to do with the raw data coming in through our sensorium
and this was a great line!
quite the problem to have
like i said before, great use of these asides here to do exposition about the situation at large, wrapped in a shell of fun character interactions
and this in it of itself is adorable! ugh i love them
ah, love the antagonism here! really getting the feeling of "um, actually" Twilight from A Trivial Pursuit
Twilight construct channeling Starlight here?
i get it! this is something that is impossible by the very definition of a metric space, so the very notion is absurd!
great comedic timing of the reveal here, this one was a favorite of mine!
and yep! this is one of the many things that really make the StarTrix dynamic so interesting and good. all the angst and anxiety over their respective pasts, though Starlight's also comes with a power differential to worry about, too.
ah, love the irony
indeed. watching Starlight crawl her way down the logical path to the wrong conclusion was quite grimace-inducing
good narrative choice here to see the setup of the process and its results, and to make us feel what the looping was like without dragging us through.
and yes! this is such a great use of Trixie to resolve the plot
really loved this bit the first time, and still do.
a fantastic exploration of the StarTrix dynamic and Starlight as a character. Tightly-written, with great banter between the various ponies and mental constructs of Twilight, and adorable shipteasing memories for Starlight to overanalyze to death. thank you for it!
11041157 Cheers for the comment! I say this a lot, because it's usually true, but I had a lot of fun writing RAD. It felt like writing a puzzle at times since there was a lot to show that isn't *really* that fun to read (a lot of how brains work, a lot of logical stuff, a whole bunch of magical theory headcanons, and setting up looping...) so it was a rather refreshing challenge trying to present it in a way that felt fun and cool.
Turns out the answer was lesbian horses, which I really should have seen coming. It tends to do the trick.
And to be fair - it's so freaking easy to have endless, ever-lasting discussions about 'what is reality/what is real'. Maybe 'our reality' is just some unknown entity playing Sims. Maybe we are all just fabrications of a dying mind, living our apparent eternity within fractions of a second.
I wonder if Starlight ever freaked out over this stuff. I would suspect it's easier to deal with it if you don't think that far or if you don't have powers vast enough to make such questions relevant. Makes me think of the Inception-problem, where, at the end, it wasn't about what's real or isn't real any longer and more about 'yeah, I don't care, I like this one'.
Anyway. As always, great story, I enjoyed it very much.
Thank you.
c.tenor.com/hdEL0uNj1Z4AAAAC/diavolo-requiem.gif
Live footage of Glimglam trying to figure out what she's been doing to herself. Anyway, excellent work. This ship is really beginning to grow on me.
Delightful story and concept!
This is so CRAZY well done! So in character for Starlight, too!!! Such a fun read. I want more...
You can has review!
11830753 Glad you enjoyed it! I really enjoyed writing it. Starlight magic shenanigans are really fun to conceptualise.
I love how quick she made her decision once the real Trixie showed up lol