Hi, Twilight, it’s... Twilight.
I’m still thinking about the best way to start this. I guess maybe I’ll start at the beginning?
It’s probably not very surprising to you that I still remember the first day we met. Obviously, it isn't often that you get to meet a doppelgänger from another dimension who’s actually a powerful unicorn sorceress. Even you said it was the strangest thing that had ever happened to you.
But it wasn’t meeting you in the courtyard that was the most memorable part to me. It was what happened that night, at our sleepover at Pinkie’s house. The seven of you were reminiscing about some of your past adventures and talking about everything that had happened since the last time you’d been here. And I quietly slipped out of the room because I felt like I wasn’t fitting in. And I just started crying.
Barely two days earlier, I had opened an amulet filled with magic I’d stolen from our friends and corrupted myself into a monstrosity. I’d nearly torn reality to pieces in a demented lust for knowledge, and it was only through the efforts of my future friends, following your example, that I was saved from myself. I was, and remain, eternally grateful to them, and I believed them when they offered me friendship, to the point where I transferred schools in the hopes of a fresh start.
Seeing you, and the relationships my new friends had already built with you, couldn’t help but make me feel upset. Like an instant fraud. That I’d never be anything to them but a disappointing replacement for you. You were the hero that had brought them together and inspired them. I was a villain who’d nearly taken everything they had and gotten away with it because I was wearing your skin.
It was the most miserable I’d ever felt in my life, until you noticed I was gone and found me. You sat down next to me, offered me a shoulder to cry on and listened as I blubbered out everything that had been haunting me since the Friendship Games.
Then you asked me about who I was. I told you about my background, my home life, my brother, my dog. You asked me about why I’d been part of the Games, and what I was trying to do at Canterlot before then. And after I told you, you pulled me in close and told me you understood everything about how I’d gotten to be where I was.
You told me about yourself, your life in Equestria. About your studies, about your obsessions, and about how you’d met your own group of friends in that world, and how it changed everything for you when you did. And that, in spite of all your accomplishments, all the things you’d done to help others and even save the world… you didn’t want me to think you were better than me.
That in another life, where things had turned out differently for you than they did, you could easily have walked a darker path. That circumstance and good fortune played as much of a role as anything in you becoming the Twilight Sparkle you are, and you were lucky to be in a position to reflect on that. And that the most important thing for me to do moving forward wasn’t to try and replicate the things you’ve done, but to reflect on who I am and how I can be the best version of myself possible. And the way for me to do that would be with my new friends.
It wouldn’t be until Camp Everfree that I truly defeated the ghosts of my past. But I don’t know if I could have ever gotten to that point without that assurance. That seed you planted inside me, that told me that I wasn’t a hollow impostor or evil twin, and that my friends would accept me for who I was, not tolerate me for who I wasn’t. That I could be someone worthy of the people who saved me from the darkness, if I let myself.
That I am Twilight Sparkle, inside and out.
In the years since we met, we’ve learned a lot about each other, and it’s amazing how much we both continue to astound each other. I remember the first time I took you to visit my lab, and you just had this incredible awe at everything you were seeing. You asked me to describe my latest experiment in the most meticulous detail possible, and you were hanging on my every word. Even Sunset can’t put up with me talking science for that long uninterrupted, but you had me going until I couldn't stay awake. And, at the same time, every story you tell of your work with magic on the other side of the portal leaves my jaw on the floor.
I’ve got to admit, I’m feeling a little bit of secondhand pride knowing there’s a version of me who can run an entire kingdom. As any of my friends can tell you, that’s not me. But at the end of the day, that’s kinda what we are to each other. You are me, I am you, but you and I aren’t the same. And the things that make us individuals are just as incredible as the things that make us both Twilight.
I’m probably saying a lot of things that basically just all mean the same thing, if they even mean anything at all, but even for someone used to writing complicated technical jargon, this will never not be a strange concept to me. But it’s one that I’m happy to continue exploring with you. I truly hope we’ll be able to keep exploring it in person together some day.
(Yes, in person. Clearly you can handle yourself on two legs better than I can on four.)
Until then, you have my incredible gratitude for helping me understand who I am, who I can be, and so much more about this weird magical world I live in. I hope no one ever puts me in charge of it.
Yours truly,
Twilight Sparkle