Thrond

See that makes more sense to me as a factor in her more passive personality. I didn't really like how that was handled but that was relevant for like one movie so that's another conversation entirely. Wonder if we would be having this conversation if I liked that movie... In any case she became more Twilight-esque as she went on and I would have liked to see her develop further in that direction in the third season we never got. The obvious joke here would be that dogs are superior to people. In all seriousness, it makes me wonder exactly what Twilight meant in the pilot when she said she didn't need friends... then again, there's a lot of ambiguity about her history with Spike.

Well, I think the extent to that her personality is different from pony Twilight is exaggerated even considering that - Twilight would still be Twilight without Celestia, I think - but I've made my point. Plus I just think that, in this series, SciTwi should be more Twilight-like as a matter of principle.

I think it's just as plausible that SciTwi wouldn't have cared what others thought about her. Honestly I think you're attributing too much of Twilight's personality to Celestia; it's my opinion that Twilight reacted to Celestia in that way because that's just who she is, and if it wasn't Celestia it would be something else. I really don't think status had anything to do with it.

I just don't think she sees him in that way.

Surely not to the extent that she's almost a completely different person without it. And I don't want to overstate my case here as I do like "Friendship Games" a fair amount but Crystal Prep didn't need to be that bad, a fact proven by Cadance turning it around after Cinch was gone.

I don't know too much about elite academies but I've always gotten the sense that they're usually like that... But, I dunno, I feel like Twilight would have internalized the environment a bit more - that maybe the results would be more like how she was at the start of the show; there was plenty to be confident about even the environment was generally negative, and clearly there are folks like Cadance there to encourage her. There were only like two occasions were it really bothered me - I didn't even mind "Friendship Games" - but I do feel it was taken too far sometimes; Twilight should be Twilight. It's just hard for me to imagine Twilight Sparkle as a doormat. That's the kind of change that makes it hard to view them as the same character. And I like that everyone else is mostly the same. I think that's interesting enough, and it suits the format. I view Equestria Girls as basically an extension of Friendship is Magic so I do hope for consistency, even though these characters are technically different.

I remain unconvinced that this is the most likely environment for Twilight to end up in if she didn't have Princess Celestia's guidance, which is why her personality differences seem arbitrary to me. The curious thing is that SciTwi seems more empathetic than pony Twilight was at the start of the show, and so I'm also not convinced that would be the most likely way for her to react to such an environment. But then again pony Twi opened up very quickly. The idea of "Twilight if she wasn't the personal student of an actual princess" is very interesting to me, especially because it lets her be an introverted nerd instead of the Chosen one - hence why I like SciTwi's later appearances so much. But that's also why I was grumpy when she was unrecognizable in earlier Equestria Girls films and specials. I can't help but wonder about Dean Cadance's role in Twilight's education. If she was willing to work there, maybe there were other decent people to set a positive example as well. But it doesn't seem that Twilight had a favourite teacher who was unexpectedly nice or anything like that.

very very quiet probably

Hmm, I dunno if I'm convinced by that; we know that SciTwi was academically successful, and being the princess's student doesn't seem to have been enough to make Twilight particularly friendly. I always thought the Crystal Prep environment would have been just as likely to make her callous. On the other hand, I do think SciTwi's embrace of friendship was a little more natural than pony Twilight's; after all, Friendship is Magic was pretty quick to ditch the implication that she was an isolated shut-in.

I don't think I would have made it through the later seasons if I didn't. Sometimes I had no choice but to put character consistency or narrative coherence out of my mind in order to enjoy a few good jokes or an interesting plot development. Doing so had its rewards.

Fair enough. There are aspects of Sci-Twi that I relate more to as well.

I find her more Twilight-esque in the short series, thankfully. It wouldn't need to be exact. It'd still be a Twilight that had never known magic but always knew computers, it'd still be a Twilight who is currently in high school, and it'd still be a Twilight without a grand destiny hanging over her. You could have all of that without making her so shy and reserved - at times, SciTwi doesn't seem like Twilight Sparkle at all, and at that point why call her that? Especially since later parts of the series reduced the differences somewhat.

At its best it could seem like extending empathy towards someone who just needed a push in the right direction. Trixie, Diamond Tiara, and Tempest Shadow are all pretty straightforward examples of this. Starlight Glimmer was a bit more awkward, but I thought that led to some really weird and interesting implications; there was a lot of room to speculate on exactly what was wrong in her life to make Sunburst leaving such a problem. When it works I like it enough that I wish more villains got that treatment; I always felt that moulding Lightning Dust into something like Rainbow's equivalent of Trixie would have been a more interesting path for her. Season 9 actually brought me to a point that I might have accepted Chrysalis, Tirek, and Cozy Glow embracing friendship, but they never had too much in the way of redeeming qualities and were so fun as villains that I didn't mind their ultimate fate too much. Discord never really stopped being a jerk, but I enjoyed watching him a lot of the time, and his friendship with the ponies and Spike was often interesting. I think these attempts to redeem the villains were at their worst in Equestria Girls - most of the later villains have no apparent redeeming qualities, so it's baffling to see the girls extend an olive branch to them. That series could have used some of the discretion seen in Friendship is Magic. I'll admit that I also found Tempest Shadow uninteresting, but she had sympathetic qualities so I'd rather she be reformed than not. In general I'm in favour of it, for the simple optimism of thinking people are capable of change if nothing else.

We don't know. Maybe the fact that it was the Cakes who got her off the farm has to do with the fact that she likes baking. We never learned about that, and there is much about the human Pinkie's backstory that we don't know either. Attending Crystal Prep could have affected Twilight in any number of ways, and besides, the culture at Crystal Prep could have been very different. But that whole argument is off-topic.

I don't really appreciate that fact.

Sometimes I think she's too different from best pony but she's close enough to be best human.

What I mean is that I want the characters to be as similar as they can be, and I generally prefer differences to come from the nature of this setting rather than arbitrary changes to characters' pasts. SciTwi annoys me for this reason. Still, that has more to do with personality than career path. It makes sense for Pinkie to become an event planner or, I dunno, a kids' show host rather than a baker. But I would argue that we don't know why pony Pinkie chose to apprentice with the Cakes, how she met them, or what options were open to her before that. Maybe she just liked baking and wanted to be a baker, and in that case, I don't think it's far-fetched to assume her human counterpart is the same.

We don't know much about her at all, really; I just don't like imagining these characters being too different from their pony counterparts for no good reason. There is some evidence in that she made that one baking video in season 2 of the short series. Pony Twilight became much more extroverted over time, though it's true that SciTwi didn't seem as heavily inclined towards leadership. But if they're fundamentally the same character I find it hard to imagine that SciTwi won't at some point become more proactive. If anything, there's already some evidence of that in the short series. Who knows, there's a billion things she could do. It's not like she has any clear direction in life beyond existing at that high school.

Struggling to choose between Twilight Velvet and Windy Whistles.

With Pinkie and Twilight I'm extrapolating from Friendship is Magic a bit. The pony Pinkie seems to have apprenticed to the Cakes, and it seems likely that something similar would happen here. Meanwhile, though she does do a lot of robotics work at home, SciTwi seems just as excited by education as the pony Twilight, so it's easy to imagine her teaching. Season 1 Twilight also seemed more studious and research-focused. I dunno, it seems to me that she has made such a clean break from her past that the show was reluctant to even bring it up after a certain point. Even when she reunited with Celestia it was a quick scene that served a "more important" purpose. But I also find Sunset's characterization hard to pin down, so sure, why not.

It's true that Friendship is Magic was often a show where changes didn't impact the mane six's group dynamic at all - Rarity and Rainbow Dash both became celebrities with careers centred outside of Ponyville, and yet they stayed put. But change is change. In Equestria Girls, the distance could be much greater, but with the more advanced technology of that world I think the outcome could be basically the same.

Plus, Equestria Girls has the internet, so it'll be even easier for them to keep in touch.