Quinch

Ditto Discord, powerful, but with nobody relying on him, thus there's little risk of screwing up something royally. Assuming I get to be a copy of him, I don't want to erase anyone from {a fictional} reality.

Twilight x Diary OTP? {she is a book lover}

Well, here's the thing - there's six elements of harmony. There's nothing to imply there aren't other concepts that have their own element incarnates.

Hmm, that might be a little tricky. I might say Element of Altruism, though that might be a pretty big word for a children's show. Failing that, maybe Element of Determination?

I don't really think I've read any depressing fanfics. I've read a few sad ones - Simply Rarity, for example - and wrote one when I was feeling really depressed, but I do tend to be partial to happy endings.

Here's the flaw that I see with your argument - Starlight Glimmer isn't a villain. She's the antagonist, and while these two things frequently overlap, they aren't synonymous. In fact, half of the video you showed reams her out on the premise that she fails to be the cackling menace she's apparently expected to be, and the other half for not acting like a perfectly rational robot with unerring prediction of consequences of her actions. Short version {I can write out a longer one, if anyone wants}, she's not a villain - she wasn't written to be one either. Rather, she was simply a person with issues and potential they chose to put to use, even if it was for a misguided goal.

It might just be my age showing, but the topic does seem a bit reminiscent of Dragonball Z powerlevel debates of old, but for lack of a reason not to, I figure I might as well toss my two cents into the ring, if nothing else, for the sake of debate and mixed metaphors. To begin with, the question seems to be flawed, since it does seem to conflate magical aptitude with magical power. For example, an example of contest of magical power would have been the brief battle between Chrysalis and Celestia in "A Canterlot Wedding" where two characters engaged in what would amount to magical arm-wrestling. In fact, one could argue that Twilight is more powerful than Starlight, as her bubble shield was able to withstand Starlight's magical blasts. But I digress. The best point to begin with with any analysis of a character, I believe, is to consider the circumstances that led up to their development. Firstly, the event that crystallized Starlight's philosophy, and ultimately her goal, was her separation from Sunburst, the event that she blamed solely on his cutie mark. One could argue that his being sent away was no reason not to stay in touch, whether by letters or visiting, but what is strongly implied is that they didn't. Reasons are left up in the air, but given Starlight's comments on how one's cutie mark can allow somepony to feel more special than others, it's not difficult to imagine that, as a blank flank whose only other friend was another blank flank, she saw cutie marks as a symbol of isolation from other ponies, especially if her town sported its own version of Diamond Tiara. In fact, it is even plausible that Sunburst himself thought, and told Starlight that his magical talent, and by extension his cutie mark made him special, whether or not he was aware of the effect his cutie marking {we need a better term for this} and subsequent shipping off had on her. Now, let's fast forward to Starlight Glimmer's own cutie mark, however soon or late it comes, and as it turns out, it's magic itself. And if you combine a great deal of personal potential with a deep-seated resentment, if not outright hatred for one specific thing, it provides the perfect catalyst for a force that can move mountains themselves - focus. Filled with conviction that all cutie marks are bad - they break apart friendships, after all - and the potential ability to remove them, it's easy to imagine Starlight making it her tour de force to spread the equality brought about by a cutie-mark-free society, which in turn brings us to the Equality Village. I'll skip over Starlight's motivations, that's a topic for a different thread. Instead, one of the main things to take away is, at the end, when she tries to blast Twilight with the decutifying spell she used - unaided, it bears pointing out - she does proclaim that she'd been studying that spell for years. If we take that literally - that the spell existed prior, in some form or another, and Starlight either mastered or modified it, it implies that she has access to resources about less known spells. If we assume she developed it from scratch, that implies that she has considerable intelligence and talent when it comes to magical spells. So, finally, that takes us to the conclusion. It bears focusing on the fact that the array of spells Starlight Glimmer used is hardly expansive - in fact, we see magical blasts, which seem to be a somewhat vanilla unicorn ability in the FiM universe, telekinesis, apparently inherent to all unicorns, floating, and finally the "force crystal" spell which appears to be rather new. Given her apparent history, it is hardly unimaginable for her to have access to or have developed the latter two, especially as her bragging about how easy it was to modify Starswirl's spell implies that she has a knack for experimental magic.

Sure, if you don't like to eat.