Cleverclover

I would rather prefer Twilight to eventually become a Mary Sue than to never, ever have changed her personality in anyway from season 1. At least as a Mary Sue she would probably provide more entertainment that just another 'Friendship = Autowin with no real character development' show like Carebears or Dorra.

 

 

That notion just makes no sense to me. Twilight becoming a Mary Sue would do absolutely nothing for her character except make her dull and uninteresting. At least the Twilight of season 1 was relatable, and she was a character I could actually care about. Now, of course I would have expected her to develop past things like Lesson Zero, but I think she's "developed" a little too much. particularly when she's pulling expert skills she never displayed out of nowhere. 

How exactly am I supposed to be invested in any challenge Twilight has ahead of her if she's too perfect to fail? I can't. And that's exactly the issue I'm having with her now. I would have thought that actual Twilight fans would definitely want her to continuing to be the lovable character from her initial portrayal instead of this flawless, infallible goddess that no human being on Earth can possibly relate to. 

Also, who exactly is striving for perfection? Human perfection is an impossibility because humans are flawed by nature. I suppose you can try, but you'll never achieve it. 

What this comes down to is, Twilight is only going to be as OP as the writers make her. Sure, some of her solutions are contrived (such as the Breezies and her machine in Rainbow Rocks) but overall the writers have shown they approach her power with consideration and aren't out to turn her into a solve-all-the-problems character. You initial point of "not a mary sue but too perfect" is self-contradictory, since that's what a Mary Sue is generally considered to be. It seems like you don't like that some of her flaws are starting to round-out, and that just strikes me as a strange reason to stop liking a character. Wouldn't the alternative, a character that never changes, be just as boring as a "perfect" character?

I think they're coming a little too close to crossing the line. Maybe it also has something to do with Twilight coming up with solutions far more often than her friends do. Maybe it has something to do with her making so few mistakes all season, at least in comparison to the others. Maybe it has something to do with her now appearing to be far more mature than the others when they all used to be on the same level development wise. 

I mean, I get development, but this all seems to go a little beyond development. It kinda seems to me that there's more of an effort to market Twilight above everyone else by making her look superior to everyone else. I mean, if I watch through season 4, it's plainly obvious for me to see that Twilight was glorified above them on more than a few occasions. Everything from her not being scared in Castle Mane-ia to the others being reduced to helplessness in Twilight's Kingdom. She just appears significantly superior to her friends now. 

I guess the other 5 haven't developed much since the start of the show, since I still see them as exactly the same characters they started out as. Rarity still cries uncontrollably over things, Dash is still pretty reckless and compulsive, Applejack is still stubborn (particularly when it comes to her farm), Pinkie's still rather obnoxious, and Fluttershy is still...well...shy. 

Again, I'm not saying Twilight is a Mary Sue. I know there are times when she doesn't come through. But it will still annoy me to no end the next time we see her pulling off an incredibly powerful goddess-level spell or see her suddenly having knowledge or experience to pull off something she has never done before. 

"Character development....."

Character development that grants her godlike power? Character development that makes her an unparalleled genius? 

I'm not really sure, but what I do know is that I certainly don't find her as relatable as she used to be. When I think back to how she was originally portrayed in season 1, I just don't see too many of those traits anymore. 

I will never understand how you can like someone less for being more awesome. Liking someone because they have flaws is like saying they can never get over those flaws.

 

I also will never understand how one can dislike perfection. Perfection is supposed to be the ultimate goal for all of us to strive for but no one wants to attain it and no one likes someone who has. It's total bullshit.

Perfect characters are boring, plain and simple. Even superheroes have to be able to fail every now and then. 

Just to be clear, I'm not saying she's a Mary Sue or anything like that, but she has really changed a lot since becoming an Alicorn---so much so that I kinda feel like I was lied to by those saying that she would remain the same character she always was. 

Aside from that humorous burger scene in Twilight Time, her adorkableness seems to have largely vanished, as has her tendency to freak out. Sure, I should commend her on her development, but these were traits that I found made her really relatable to the audience---traits that made me like her so much. 

In addition to this, her flaws appear to have been greatly toned down and she doesn't make mistakes like she used to. She only had two journal entries in season 4: one in Three's a Crowd and one in Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3. However, the one in Three's a Crowd was not really based on any flaw on her part, so that's really only one legitimate lesson she learned all season, while the others learned several. 

Two specific scenes in question that particularly concern me is the "breezy transformation" scene in It Ain't Easy Being Breezies and the scene where she rigged up the portal in Rainbow Rocks. 

Something about the breezy scene just really rubs me the wrong way. Twilight is a magical prodigy and that much is certain, but that scene was such a ridiculous dues ex machina moment. And honestly, what kind of goddess has Twilight become that she now has to power to transform any species into something else? Are there any limits to that power? Would the mane six have been breezies forever if Twilight hadn't reversed the spell? I mean, sure there was that scene where she turned mice into horses in The Best Night Ever, but that was just a simple poof as opposed to her actually mixing her and her friends' DNA with that of the breezies to become them. And it was also going to wear off at midnight so we know that the change was not permanent. 

The portal scene also really turns me off. Twilight has always been portrayed as being incredibly smart, but that scene pretty much implied that she's a goddamn bonafide super genius, as well as a mechanical genius. I know it was just a contrived way of getting her back into the human world, but it's still just hard for me to accept because Twilight was never portrayed as being that smart, nor was she ever portrayed as having significant mechanical experience. 

She just seems a little too perfect now that it's to the point that I simply don't have much interest in her anymore. When her spells can be used to serve as dues ex machinas and when she can just pull expert-like skills out of nowhere to serve the plot, that's when I just lose interest in her development.