My greetings to my good Ladies and Gentlemen Having now rewatched Friendship Games a couple of times I have noticed some rather enlightening differences between the characterisation of Pony-Twi and Sci-Twi in canon, which may be of interest to any authors who wish to use Sci-Twi in their stories; it is my intent in this blog to provide plausible explainations for these differences. This seems a reasonable place for me to share; ideally with a view to starting a discussion on the topic. Note: There may be mild spoilers.

The key difference between the Twilights one should note is that Sci-Twi 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. Let's look at her posture and body language:

She is visibly cringing away from the other students. She doesn't look confident, she doen't look happy.

Now compare to Pony-Twi. Even episode one, she was much more confident and self assured. Pony-Twi disdained social interaction as a waste of her time. Sci-Twi appears frightened of it. Sci-Twi was clearly being orchestrated and bullied. Don't believe me? Rewatch the scenes at Crystal Prep, beginning with Sci-Twi's I want song, and observe how the other students interact with Sci-Twi:

Note the passive aggression, the dark looks. Note the student's bumping into her. What the writers are implying here has rather dark implications: Sci-Twi is friendless and unhappy, and not simply because the other students are oblivious; they are actively being mean to her. Pony-Twi clearly wasn't suffering from the same issues at her school, from what little we see of it.

There are three big reasons why this is so, in my view. First, contrary to appearance, Pony-Twi is rather formidable and everyone with any clue as to who she is will know it. Consider her scene in the caves under Canterlot:

And again, against the changelings:

Pony-Twi won't have been bullied for the same reason Smaug the Golden won't have been bullied; only a special idiot will attempt to bully the dragon. Of course such idiots exist, and some might, in their ignorance, attempt to mug the monster, but, being formidable, pony-Twi can deal with this easily. Or else Celestia will.

By contrast, Sci-Twi 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; Sci-Twi has far less in her corner.

The presumed head mistress of Celestia's school is, of coarse, Princess Celestia. Pony-Twi enjoyed her support in particular as her personal student. By contrast, Sci-Twi had Principal Cinch, who clearly cares very little for the wellbeing of her students. Cinch's only interest in Sci-Twi 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. If that requires Sci-Twi to be socially isolated, then so be it. This is, of course, terribly bad form for a head mistress, but then, she's not a very good head mistress.

Finally, we have the atmosphere at Crystal Prep. The head mistress's obsession with individualistic 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. Sci-Twi'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 as much of Celestia's school, it is reasonable to assume it is a rather more pleasant environment than Crystal Prep.

In other ways, the Twilights have much in common: both are idealistic and scholarly, both are cute as buttons and both are complete sweethearts. But the evidence suggests to me that Sci-Twi has had a rather harsher time of it.

Forgive me, my good Ladies and Gentleman, for my rather long winded ramblings, but I would be quite interested to hear your views on the matter. Do you agree or am I speaking codswallops. I feel it could be quite an Interesting debate.

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Obviously you're mostly discussing the differences in their character, but there's also an interesting difference in their appearance which a friend of mine pointed out: they have different cutie marks.

Obviously humans don't have cutie marks per se, but in Equestria Girls the characters tend to have motifs that crop up in their clothing and accessories which are equivalent to cutie marks — the balloon design on Pinkie's dress, the diamonds on Rarity's hair clips, etc.

Pony-Twi has a six-pointed pink star, overlaying a 6 pointed white star, and surrounded by five smaller white stars as her cutie mark. The five smaller stars are supposed to represent her connection to her friends.

Sci-Twi has a six-pointed pink star, overlaying a 6 pointed white star as her motif. No smaller stars.

4756278 Nice to know someone else paid attention to that detail. Sometimes I feel I'm the only one attentive enough to notice this stuff after watching something only once or twice.

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True. If you look closely though, Sci-Twi's hair clip thing has a white four point star, rather than six. She also keeps her hair up. Much of this will be the writers wishing to ensure there are key visual differences between Sci-Twi and Pony-Twi so the audience can identify which is which easily. Obviously, they had to be sufficiently close in appearance to ensure that Sci-Twi was immediately identifiable as the human world Twilight.

What is interesting is what a writer might infer from what differences they elected to make.

4756278 Nice points you mention. Let me raise some of my own.

I think it's easy to believe Sci-Twi's attitude was at before being studying in Crystal Prep (and thus under Chinch's principalship (sp?)), even if her tiime at Crystal Prep didn't help matters. Pony-Twi, in the other hand, had Princess Celestia: we don't know if Sci-Twi had a defining/inspirational moment as "the first time watching Celestia raise the sun" was for Pony-Twi. As far as Pony-Twi goes, at the beginning of the TV show she's living the dream, studying what she loves under the pony she idolizes the most. We don't know if Sci-Twi had anything like that, other than she had never met the human Celestia before this movie.

At least Sci-Twi seems to yearn not to be alone at the beginning of the EG3 movie, which is a step up from Pony-Twi's opinion in the matter at the beginning of the TV show.

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As far as Pony-Twi goes, at the beginning of the TV show she's living the dream, studying what she loves under the pony she idolizes the most. We don't know if Sci-Twi had anything like that, other than she had never met the human Celestia before this movie.

Good point. As far as Pony-Twi was concerned at the start of episode one, she had everything she could want. Princess Celestia had to force her into becoming a social butterfly. Only then did she see what she was missing.

By comparison, Sci-Twi clearly isn't happy with her lot at the start of the movie. It's looks like she's amiable to socialisation; it's her classmates who appear to be rejecting her It's clear from her behaviour throughout the movie that she prioritises her work; indeed, she continues with it long past the point it's clear she's in way over her head and that the situation has become dangerous. This is a telling indicater on her level of maturity in comparison to Pony-Twi. What isn't clear is which came first: her social isolation or her obsession with her studies. This may be worth investigating in Sci-Twi fics as a counterpoint to Pony-Twi, whose situation is clearer.

4756278 Thank you for pointing these things out. I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed them. Another thing I'd like to add is Sci-Twi doesn't cry when her peers bully her. She just gets kinda fed up. She acts sorry and cowers away because she's too afraid to stand up for herself (and she didn't have much of a fighting chance anyway, considering the whole school was doing it) but whenever someone pushes her around, she just sighs as if "This is what my life is like" and tries to move on. Take the scene when Sugar Coat calls her a doormat, for example. It still upsets her but not as much as you'd think it would.

The only times she cries is when she embarrasses herself in front of the whole school and Sunset Shimmer yells at her, who she values as a friend. This shows that she was probably bullied for a long time, maybe all her life, which is extremely sad.

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I agree that the low level bullying and orchestration we see Sci-Twi endure on screen (note in particular the bus scene; students were activity preventing her sitting near them), and the nastier stuff I suspect happen off screen, has probably been going on for a while; it likely started shortly after she joined Crystal Prep.

As for the lack of tears: in universe, a plausible explaination, as you said, is that she is just used to it, and that's far from the worst of it; what we saw in those scenes was basically her Tuesday. Out of universe, the writers will have wanted to keep her as likable as they could; they won't have wanted her in tears in every other scene. The audience might have responded badly to her.

While we can clearly see that Sci-Twi is her own person so to speak.. the real question should be; What does it mean to us? Do we treat her as own person or do we continue lumping the two together and what about the other human counterparts?.. Do we still consider them pony enough to be part of alternate reality where they happen to be human or do we treat them as true humans with a gift of pony magic.. In other words; How separated should they be? We know they can be mixed up if we want too but do we continue treat the other Equestria Girls as well Equestria Girls or are they simply their pony counterparts seeing how different Sci-Twi's life was? Should they have some obvious differences too?... I think that Sci-Twi very different old life brings these questions to the table that need to be questioned as well...

Pony-Twi clearly wasn't suffering from the same issues at her school, from what little we see of it.

I dunno if we can say that for sure. In 'Lesson Zero' we see that the worst thing in Pony-Twilight's mind that Princess Celestia could do to her was send her back to magic kindergarten. Not because she would be embarrassed, or from the tedious task of having to go through the ENTIRE school system again,but the her idea of how her classmates would react to her presence.

Laughing at her and mocking her. Not to mention as Twilight starts to descend deeper into panic, she begins to visualize it in a much more erie fashion.

Now where have we seen this before?

With Fluttershy, it was blatantly stated thats she was being teased/bullied. When Fluttershy started to panic during 'Hurricane Fluttershy' she got similar erie flashbacks . In fact both Twilight and Fluttershy's flashbacks were triggered by laughter that wasn't aimed at them. However in the past it can be guessed it usually was.

In Twilight's case she had no one her own age to help her, while Fluttershy had Rainbowdash. Yes Twilight had her family and most likely Cadance, but in class she was most likely thrown to the wolves when the teacher wasn't looking, or at least to get such a reaction. So she turn to things that didn't make fun of her in class and that actually got her praise, ie book and learning.

I think Twilight WAS bullied during her younger years. I mean you could chalk it up to her overreacting like in 'Bird in the hoof' or not wanting to let her mentor/idol down, but that severe a reaction points to issues in the past.

As for Sci-twi (HumanTwilight) I think she was in a similar situation, but what may have stopped all the bulling for PONYTwilight is that she became the Princess's apprentice. (I mean who gonna mess with a kid when she has that much influence?) Sci-twi wasn't so lucky.

Not to mention I always thought Crystal Prep was a kind of boarding school. So that would cut out Twilight's parents support 90% of the time, and since her brother is a bit older than her its safe to say they may have not been in the same school/wing as each other at the same time. (Ie Twilight is kindergarten while Shining is grade 6.) Which means he may have had no idea what was going on. Then Cadence is the Dean of the school. A dean is in charge of a specific area of the school, weather that be a subject like art or sciences, student needs, ect. Its not said what Candance is in charge of, but I will say its not discipline. She is most likely in charge of moral/ student relations/ school spirit as she conducts activities for the kids to do, like the friendship games. Candace was likely too busy to focus on Twilight individually, but seem to notice something was wrong in the movie when she speaks to Twilight about her introverted tendencies.

The difference I noticed that human twilight wanted to be recognized so she could leave. Pony twilight wanted to be left alone

Once again the Equestria Girls and the episode show the extreme ends. No wonder why the writers say EQG is canon. It is a good way to cover the other side of a moral.