Who is Starlight Glimmer?

This post has been long coming, so sit down, grab some popcorn and a glass of soda or something, cause it's time to explore...

Who is Starlight Glimmer?

Well, the easy answer to that would be that Starlight Glimmer is a character on My Little Pony, we could call this post done and accounted for, but that's not gonna happen, cause instead I'm gonna try to explore more into her character and hopefully clear up some questions and perhaps even inspire a further discussion.

So, lets get right into it.

The mane 6 first come upon Starlight Glimmer after getting sent into the "smiley town" by a map that jumped out of nowhere and which's decision skills nobody decided to question. Hey, listen, I could ramble for a long time here about the map and it's role in the big game, but this post is here for another reason, so lets jump over that this time. Well, anyway, the mane 6 end up in a town full of smiling weirdos and to be honest, nothing seems quite right there. 

After a while of investigating, it turns out there's a psycho pony leading the town with an iron hoof, takin' away ponies cutie marks and applying "methods" on any who dare to oppose her.

Her town is literally shit, houses look like fuckin piece of shits, ponies are pieces of shit with no personality and even the food and clothing is shit. Only thing that is standing out and isn't shit is the all so clever pony in charge of the full thing and smilingly goin' around talkin' about how great her shitty little society is.

What would be the best way to describe her regime? Corrupt, full of lies and in a way, ruling with fear. So, basically, her downfall is already inevitable. Because, you know, these things are bound to fall apart sooner or later and more upset the ponies, the more it is sooner than later.

So, since every member of this little society is either brainwashed or too scared to do something, the mane 6 try to take matters into their own hooves and fuck over their way of life themselves. Things however, take a turn for the worse and the pink-purplish fucker in charge instead takes away their cutie marks and locks those fuckers up inside a, shed or something, for brainwashing purposes. 

By the time our dear beloved ponies have had enough of that, they decide to choose the one pony of their group that would be believably the biggest sellout and decide to send her undercover to turn everything upside down. Lucky for them, it works, cause Starlight is a clumsy fool and fucks up at the wrong place in the wrong time.

And therefore starts the final stage of Starlight's downfall, the big reveal.

And that's where the things get interesting - after realizing what those 6 tourists had done to her town, Starlight snaps. She lashes out on Twilight and when she sees the things falling apart around her, she wastes no time...to go into full on revenge mode. Starlight quickly picks up all the important cutie marks (The ones that don't belong to background ponies) and heads for the mountains. 

Oddly enough, some background ponies save the day and everything is okay. 

Starlight decided to become a criminal on the run and without hesitation runs into the caves. Twilight, unsure of what to do in a weird situation like that, makes the best political decision she can, "Fuck it" and starts partying with the town ponies instead. 

This however, turns right against Twilight, because Starlight now has one goal and one goal only "Fuck up Twilight's life all means necessary." 

So, after Twilight gives her all the information,  she needs, in a nicely wrapped up presentation form, Twilight is greeted by her nemesis at her own home...*gasp* 

"You fucked up my home, I fuck up yours." Should be the line there, but Starlight realized what she had built was shit compared to what Twilight had anyway, so for the purposes of avoiding a roast, she passed on it.

So, from there on out, it goes basically into a bunch of time travel mumbo-jumbo and Starlight basically just taunting Twilight on her every move in the past. Eventually, Twilight has had enough and says no more. With some serious stealth shit, Twilight grabs Starlight and brings her back to the "now present" to get a basic overview of what's going on.

Wait, that's not how it's supposed to be...that's not how any of this is supposed to be. 

Yup, Starlight suddenly realizes she fucked up. And knowing is half the battle. The other half is getting Twilight's forgiveness, but that's basically just goin' there and askin' for it. 

Anyway, clever pony as she is, Starlight says "Sorry", to what Twilight says "You know, you'd make a great apprentice."

And then Starlight becomes Twilight's apprentice or something. 

Stuff happened, but at the end, all is forgiven and we can happily end the season.

Now, was that recap really necessary? Surprisingly, it wasn't, it really wasn't. At least not if you actually watched the season premiere and finale. If you didn't, that moreorless got you the information you needed. (Not really, I'd suggest actually watching the episode.)

Now that we know that Starlight is a former crazy unicorn who lead a corrupt fucked up town somewhere in the fuckin' dessert and a current apprentice of the most powerful alicorn in Equestria. 

Now we can get into the stuff what this post is actually supposed to be about, Starlight's character.

Starlight Glimmer's personality

Now comes the important part, the real explanation you've all been waitin' for, who is Starlight Glimmer? 

Something that I love about Starlight Glimmer is how believably well her character is written. 

She ain't just a 2D piece there to push the story forward, but an actual flexed out character with her own traits, personality, reasons and all that stuff. 

Lets face it people, Starlight has mental problems. She's on the constant edge of breaking down and her snapping, on the moment when her beliefs started to crumble and the power over her town started slipping out of her hooves, was the exact proof of that.

To understand her inner demons and her mindset, we have to start off from the very beginning. Or, well, not the very beginning, but close start. Her fillyhood trauma. (Yup, you read that right.)

Alright, so, this is Starlight. Starlight ain't really the popular kid in town, but she doesn't really care since she has a friend she does everything together with. Oh, wait, what's that? A cutie mark? That seems like an awesome...wait, what's happening? He's leaving, he's going, he's...gone.

And with just that one little moment, it was all gone. She was ripped out of her life and put somewhere else. And she didn't like it somewhere else, the previous place was fine. This place...this was a world of survival, she was alone. 

Now, this is the moment Starlight's hatred towards cutie marks first developed, as it was exactly the fault of a cutie mark that she had. 

Enter Double D, some rad snowsurfer dude who...does snowsurf stuff...

Anyway, Starlight bitches to him how cutie marks suck and Double D has always had a thing for chicks who know what they want, so Double D decided to go with it...what bad can encouraging her do anyway, amirite? A time skip of unspecified amount of time later and her little cultish idea of "No cutiemarks" has become a full on society full of different talentless and boring ponies. 

Starlight gets more into power and gets more and more corrupted by it... and you know the rest. 

Anyway, this is just about enough to determine Starlight's characteristics. 

Starlight is stubborn. That's one of her leading characteristics, she's unable to let go. She was unable to let go of Sunburst leaving her, so she started a society where something like someone leaving over their cutie marks could never happen. After the fall of that society and Starlight's realization that it's gone, Starlight became determined to do one thing she felt she had the right to...revenge. She was wronged and that means it was time to hit that whoever wronged her and hit them hard. Blinded by rage and anger, Starlight set out to do anything to destroy the life of Twilight Sparkle. The most hurting way possible, by taking away from her the same thing that she took away from Starlight... friends. 

Secondly, Starlight believes all the time that what she is doing is right. She's not some sorta evil pony determined to destroy Equestria or anything, she's just a pony doing what she thinks is right. She believed that the cutie marks were the cause of friendship break up's and she was determined to fix that. She believed she was doing the right thing by taking away other ponies cutie marks and making them live a life in the town. She was sure of it. She believed in what she said. "I created harmony!" is a pretty clear indication of that. She believed she had fixed a problem, while the hard cold reality was something way different.

Thirdly, she's damaged. She's not actually sure what she has to do, as the world keeps throwing stuff at her. The truth is, she's been left damaged and confused ever since Sunburst left. From there, her inner demons just grew. After the loss of the town, she wasn't sure what or why happened, but she was sure that she wasn't going to forgive whoever did this. As mentioned before, she's stubborn and vengeful, so there was really no way she'd let something like this go.

But now, last but not least, something that I consider to be one of the most interesting characteristics of Starlight Glimmer, a defining key of it to sorta say.

Starlight has high dependency on other ponies.

Yes, she's perfectly capable of handling herself and she has convinced herself that she doesn't need nopony else to lean on. She's proved her capabilities of handling herself, by buildin' the foundation of her town basically alone and making a plan of revenge as she was on the run in Equestria. What it does to her is make her unstable though. Her mentality is actually really unstable and it takes other ponies to be there for her to bring her back onto stable ground. When she's fending for herself though, she lets her inner demons get ahold of her, which can result in outbursts of anger, mental breakdowns and crazy not entirely thought through ideas. Knowing in her subconsciousness that she has that somewhere to fall back to, she can think more clearly and therefore make better decisions with a clear head. Take that stability away from her and you'll have a pony who is ready to do anything for the sake of her own reasons. She herself is in obvious denial about it, as she wants to be somepony who can handle herself without the necessity of somepony else having to always be there for her, but the truth is, she needs that stability.

I for one am really excited for all the possibilities of Starlight's currently already well flexed out personality being applied and expanded upon in season 6 and can't wait to see more of Starlight on the screen.