A Moose with a crippling math addiction.
In this story, Starlight Glimmer isn't the writer's #1 favorite brand new OC (don't steal), and will not have major plot armor. Let's see how well this goes.
Rated teen for a fight scene (nothing graphic, but better safe than sorry imo).
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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Feels a little out of character, but that's just the nature of these kinds of stories. I enjoyed it.
I would have tacked on that Starlight was tampering with the very foundation of civilization by stealing cutie marks. The proof of that was the subpar craftsponyship of the food and clothing in town. If Sugar Belle made those pastries that were rock hard and she was supposed to be a talented baker, then one's talent was part of their cutie marks. Talent is needed to farm and build a decent house and to make fashionable clothing. Without talent, civilization is built on a shoddy foundation.
Starlight's cult was built on a lousy foundation since all it took was a splash of water to cause it all to come tumbling down. Years of work, for what amounted to a foal's sandcastle on the beach.
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But to be fair, a lot of real world dictatorships have fallen over even less, so...I guess the moral is that such practices are inherently unstable by default.
...Yeah, can't say I'm a fan of this one. It's a solid story, don't get me wrong, but it's written with such blatantly rancorous intent that it legitimately makes me feel uncomfortable.
I think that's more of a me thing than a you thing. Sorry about that.
would the alternate of this be a timeline where starlight either accidently or on purpose stops twilight from being able to change the timeline back? like all starlight would need to do to "win" would be for her to jump back in with twilight when she is brought back to the present then knock her out and steal and destroy the table and spell then she tecnicly "wins".
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Glad you enjoyed it!
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I completely understand. This was mostly a stress relief exercise for me, and I'll be the first person to admit to not having the best of intentions here lol.
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At least you're willing to admit it. I wish more people were that honest.
I'm not here to argue this story or your quality, just playing a little bit of devil's advocate here, although I'm unsure if you've heard any of this.
Twilight and Starlight are both innate prodigies, and you are correct in that Twilight spent most of her entire life studying, but I'd like to raise the point her studies were diversified, covering pretty much everything, not just magic, from cooking to biology to history, a result of Twi's personality but also the fact she pursued higher college level education, which necessitated more diverse courses of study, which she happily undertook.
Starlight did not got to an equestrian school, chances are she left home before she was even an adult, basing off of the state her room was preserved in. We don't know exactly what she was doing during her formative years but based on context clues it seems aside from the occasional foal play, she and Sunburst spent their time living and breathing magic practices, although it's heavily implied Star never cared much for the study itself, so with Sunburst's guidance eventually developing a kind of instinct guided form of magic practice. I believe this is part of her cutie mark's meaning, and why I desperately hoped we got an explanation as to how she earned it. Yes it's reminiscent of a falling star, but the melding positions of the wisps into a fused joint star at the end. This I believe represents Staright's true magical talent, beyond just her innate power. Star excels at the combination of spells to achieve new, greater effects. We see this numerous times from her Duplication spell, mind control spell, love and dissipation blast, and crystal shield lattice. We also know her magic is emotionally powered, the stronger she's feeling the stronger her magic, and Trixie even relates this to her power level in S5. If being upset about losing Sunburst gave her that much of a boost, losing everything, and becoming the firebomb she was in the S5 finale likely added substantially to this. We know she spent at least years after leaving before she formed her village, from her line at the end of the premier. "I spent years studying that!" Even if that just means the spell network necessary to pull off her Cutie mark spell, it implies years spent studying magic's finer aspects, not including her years spent doing who knows what, earning her magic based cutie mark, during the gap from Sunburst to the Village.
TLDR on that point, Twilight and Starlight are about the same age, Twilight spent her life studying everything. Starlight spent hers single mindedly focused on magic and the magic powered solutions to her problems. the maybe couple of years Starlight was running her village, Twilight was becoming a princess. I see no significant differential in study times or opportunities between the two.
Additionally, Twilight may be the element of magic and an Alicorn, but the element of magic has far more to do with the magic of friendship than raw power, as demonstrated by it's very summoning. It wasn't summoned by Twilight's magic power, that failed, it was summoned by her understanding and actualization of Friendship's magic. I don't see it pertaining at all to Twilight's power. Her being an Alicorn is a very valid point, considering the implications of the Tirek Battle. However, I raise a counter. Starlight almost never engages in direct magical power slugs with the Princess, where she knows she's likely to lose. She uses a shield spell preciset twice, once to block a rapid fire laser, which clearly had more of a high explosive than penetrative property, and the final shit where they're both exhausted. Otherwise she dodges, sidesteps, or redirects Twi's attacks, never going head on, and never trading.
I've got some more to say if you wanna debate some more but I'll leave the Devil's worm here for now.
Let’s see where this goes.
I mean we’ve never actually seen the true powers of an alicorn, so who knows?
Well, that was unexpected.
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The way I see it is that the showrunners were stuck with a Starlight who knew more magic than she probably should after her plot armor in the S5 finale, and so they had to stick to it at that point. The fundamental difference between the points that you made, and the bits I threw into the story is that you accepted that whereas I rejected it.
I'll also admit that I started to check out of the show at around the middle of S6, and didn't watch any of S7, S8, or S9 besides the finale of the show and the 200th episode, so I literally do not know (or care) if the writers put stuff about backstory in there.
There are a couple things I think that you're underappreciating here. One is how long it takes to set up a cult. Some of the most famous cults (e.g., heaven's gate, branch davidians, people's temple) took more than just a couple years to get to the point where Starlight's cult was in the show. This means that even if I were to grant that Starlight was as dedicated to studying magic as Twilight was (which I don't), then there's still a pretty big difference in the amount of time spent. The second thing is the fact that Twilight's been in fights before, whereas Starlight hasn't been shown to be in any up until that point. As a martial artist, I'm very well aware that all the practice and training in the world won't help if you've never been in a real fight/gotten hit hard before. It takes time and experience to be able to bring your hours of training to fruition if you were to ever find yourself in a real fight.
Additionally, after her third time getting into a major fight to save the world (which was chrysalis), I'm pretty sure Twilight would have recognised a pattern and will have invested time into not only studying magical combat, but also practicing it just in case the need might arise.
But yeah, I think the main point is that you're accepting the plot armor the writers gave Starlight, whereas the entire point of this story is that I'm rejecting it.
Anyway, thanks for reading! I'm actually quite flattered that you would put so much thought into a response.
The story I've read prior to this one had a... let's say, 'charged' comment section. So I wanted to start this comment off with appreciating the civility with which everyone here has been treating each other so far. It's nice.
As for the discussion, I can see both points. I could argue in Starlight's favor, I could easily argue against her. I usually try to ignore the fact that circumstances in our world greatly affect in-universe events. Because for as much as I love MLP and its world, it's a depressing thought to keep in mind that a toy company will always care about money, first - and maybe nothing after that. And that, for all their good will and creativity, the artists behind a show will have to bow down to the almighty dollar. Yes, the writers most likely had corporate mandates to comply with. I could easily see that being a thing. But for obvious reasons, I like to search for in-universe explanations.
You said you haven't bothered with seasons six through nine. They tried to rectify their mistakes somewhat by giving Starlight a little bit more screen time, fleshing out her character and ultimately, making her more relatable. I will admit, I wasn't exactly fond of her initially, but they managed to win me over.
No way around that. Just straight up stupid. As I said, I could argue in her favor, I just... don't usually do that. I just live with 'that makes no sense' and move on.
Doesn't change the fact that some events within this world still stretch believability to breaking point, though. Starlight winning against Twilight? Yeeeaaahhh... that was stupid.
I suppose that's the exact mindset that allowed me to chuckle throughout your story. It was really funny, and I enjoyed reading it a lot. So thank you for this alternate outcome.
The Starlight cult was built on Lowest Common Denominator thinking. I've heard some suggestions that it's a good thing she wasn't a tribalist on top of everything else.
As to this story, I pretty much agree that the show did a massive disservice and letdown when this powerful dangerous antagonist was cleared of all charges because she had a sob story and it was a one hug/song redemption.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't HATE Starlight as a character, she had a lot going for her and even post-reformation she had some good moments. It's just the way her redemption was written that bugs me.
But for those of you who enjoy a darker take on things there's a couple of artists on Deviantart.com who did some amazing world building on a delightfully demented version of Starlight.
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I blame a lot of those weird inconsistencies on what I call "too many cooks syndrome" especially in later seasons.
In world context though...when Starburst left, and if their parents were as nutty back then as when we saw them (not the best episode imo) she could have missed him, and daddy was always "not now honey" which might explain his over the top wanting to be with his baby girl in the episode, he was trying to make up for the missed opportunities.
On the other side of the equation, Sunburst's mom would be the one who is constantly crowing about things for weeks or months afterwards, it becomes clear that she is vicariously feeding her ego by her son's accomplishments.
Or perhaps Starlight tried making friends but given how jerky pones can be she failed not just once but numerous times.
There's a creator on Deviantart.com who wrote a much darker take on Starlight where she has full out NPD or clinical sociopathy. In her mind a fairy-tail happy ending is her born right, and every failed friendship or wrongdoing is not her fault.
*grabs popcorn and leaps into the comments*