Twilight Sparkle [Ready]

[Scootaloved]

 

Roleplay Type: World of Equestria
Name: (Princess) Twilight Sparkle
Sex: Female
Age: Mare
Species: Alicorn
Eye colour: Purple
Coat: Lavender
Mane/Tail: Both Twilight's mane and tail resemble a carefully combed fringe. The dominant color of both is a navy-ish bluish purple, with twin purple and hot pink streaks slightly off-center.
Physique: As Twilight is young, she's rather small for an alicorn. She has grown since being a unicorn, but she is still rather miniature in stature next to the other three princesses. As a result, she's this awkward middle ground between the average unicorn and the average alicorn in stature. She is otherwise well-bodied, and her wings gained from ascension function as well as any natural-born pegasus's.
Residence: Ponyville
Occupation: Princess of Friendship

Cutie Mark:

A spark of magic best describes her Cutie Mark. It's hot pink in color and star-shaped, and little smaller white 'sparkles' come off the sides of it. It represents her prowess in magic, which far surpassed that of her fellow unicorn peers at the time of her gaining it.

 

Such magical potential was unlocked during one of her magic tests in which she was required to hatch a dragon's egg. As a result of Rainbow's sonic rainboom off in the distance, the shockwave brought out a magical surge within her body that took Celestia's intervention to calm down. Up until that point, she struggled with her magic; but since unlocking it, Twilight pulls off spells with ease and even has an expertise in crafting them herself.

 

She's not the only pony capable of grand magic, but she is one of the few with such a mastery of it, surpassing even her hero StarSwirl the Bearded.

Unique Traits: 

Being an alicorn is already a unique trait, given that there are only five of those in existence. On top of that, Twilight Sparkle has unique magical prowess, and she's none too weak a flier, either. She's earned the title of "Princess of Friendship", which means that she's the owner of the castle within Ponyville and also the champion of friendship, and thus the one to spread it across the world. It's unknown the limitations of her magic, but the fact that she managed to finish a spell by StarSwirl the Bearded, one of the greatest unicorns to ever live, is a testament to how gifted she is at writing spells, finishing them, and utilizing them to their fullest potential. She's only gotten better at it since her species change, too, as she used to only be able to cast a wing spell once; now, that's practically child's play for her.

 

History: 

Twilight Sparkle was born in Canterlot to loving parents Twilight Velvet and Night Light. While her mother, Twilight Velvet, was more adventurous and eccentric, her father was more down to earth and studious - traits that they passed down onto their daughter and a little bit her brother. When Twilight was young, she spent a lot of her time with her brother, Shining Armor, as well as burying her head in books; her parents expressed concern at her lack of desire to become close to other ponies, but some of this stemmed from an inadequacy resulting from her late blooming regarding magic. Twilight did make friends, but they were casual at best and Twilight often blew them off for her studies. Despite this, she still managed to catch the attention of Princess Celestia, who saw her potential in not only saving Equestria, but becoming a princess. It was this potential that she saw that convinced her, after Twilight passed her magic test and became well acquainted with her library, to send Twilight to Ponyville in order to unlock her potential - through which she knew would only come into fruition if she made friends with other ponies.

 

It was not a prospect that Twilight was too happy about, at first. She thought all of the ponies in Ponyville were crazy, and she didn't even attempt to understand them, and on top of that she thought Celestia wasn't taking her seriously when Twilight considered the idea that Nightmare Moon's return was inevitable. She didn't attempt, that was, until Nightmare Moon showed up, and those ponies who didn't seem to know what the hay they were doing suddenly became instruments to her success; they worked hard to achieve the goal of stopping Nightmare Moon upon her return with her. Through that adventure Twilight learned the merits that her friends individually had, and by the end of it they stood together with her, an act so moving that she found herself unwilling to move from Ponyville once the adventure was done. Celestia was happy at this prospect, and gave her a new assignment: to study the magic of friendship.

 

From there, Twilight went through a series of trials and tribulations as she gradually got to know her friends more and more. Rainbow Dash was bold and full of bravado, but she was also one of the most loyal ponies she'd ever met; Rarity could be vain and melodramatic, but she was a generous, crafty, and artistic soul; Fluttershy was painfully shy to the point of crippling social anxiety, but kind and thoughtful; Pinkie Pie was loony, but genuinely reveled in the happiness of other ponies; and Applejack was stubborn, but reliable. In the process, Twilight also grew to understand the merits of other ponies, including the established Cutie Mark Crusaders of Scootaloo, Apple Bloom, and Sweetie Belle, and even became so attached to her home that the prospect of failing her assignment of sending back a friendship lesson every time made her spiral out of control because of the fear that she may lose what she built up here. Celestia recognized this need to stay and changed the assignment to that of a journal that each of her friends could write in every time they learned a friendship lesson, broadening Twilight's understanding of how being a friend worked.

 

It's through this that Twilight developed her greatest strength: empathy. She became the rock that tied the group together because she was the one who truly understood what it meant to be each of them. She'd be the one to reach out during their darkest moments and speak to them intimately as friends, and she's the one who would believe in them the most. That didn't mean that her journey came without its hiccups, but Twilight's friendship bond with them became so strong that it was difficult to reconcile the fact that she'd ever been antisocial at all.

 

It all came to a head when Twilight finished a spell of StarSwirl the Bearded's, a unicorn whose legacy inspired Twilight since fillyhood. The secret that he was missing in this spell was friendship, something Twilight spent so much time learning. It was upon this completion, and the subsequent fixing of it once it swapped her friends' cutie marks, that Celestia took her to achieve what she'd been destined for: her ultimate ascension. Twilight used to be a unicorn, but this ascension meant that she gained wings, as well as a title: The Princess of Friendship. She had officially become its paragon through her own merits.

 

Unfortunately, Twilight found herself falling into the trap of becoming too wrapped up in what this title actually meant, rather than the fact that it simply represented what she had already achieved. She became duty-bound in spreading friendship and uniting everypony under its banner with her own knowledge of it, and she became so concerned about this that it led to her forgetting what allowed her to earn that title in the first place: the strive to learn. This especially became evident when faced with Starlight Glimmer, her moral opposite; while Twilight believed in the merits of the individual, Starlight thought that individuality was what caused strife and so sought to eliminate it from everyone except herself. Twilight united with the village that she'd enslaved to drive her out, and Twilight became wrapped up within this formula of defending Equestria from those who would threaten it... She became wrapped up in this, at least, until she figured out what Starlight's motives were, and it became clearer to her what Twilight's purpose was: to reach out to those who really needed it and extend that hoof of a friend when they were all alone without a friend to help them.

 

It turned out this adoption of Starlight after the reveal of her motives of being friendless turned out for the better, as Starlight being her pupil taught her a thing or two about friendship in itself. When an opportunity to release StarSwirl the Bearded presented itself, Twilight took that chance without thinking through the repercussions, which led to bringing back the Pony of Shadows, a pony who inflicted pain and misery upon the world of Equestria years past and would do so again. It was Starlight who broke Twilight and the others out of the mold they'd fallen into, believing that a quick blast should solve everything, when in fact what they saw was a pony who was suffering from doubt and loneliness as a result of a misunderstanding. Starlight helped Twilight to understand, once again, what the purpose of her being a Princess of Friendship was, and why that title was so important: to reach out to ponies in need with her empathy and to bring them to understand themselves a little better.

 

Twilight now seeks to spread this union to others across the globe, and she's begun this process by making the School of Friendship. She's hopeful that she will be able to make the world a better place by teaching everyone empathy, to seek companionship and to understand each other just a little better.

 

Character Personality: 

Twilight Sparkle's chief strengths come in two forms: her desire to learn, and empathy. While she may have been close-minded before, Twilight has grown to thirst for knowledge about anything she can potentially learn about, even subjects she previously might not have been interested in. This need to understand the world around her has resulted in that empathy, too; Twilight seeks to understand ponies around her, understand herself, and know what to do in a given situation. This is not simply to the degree of books, either, although she certainly champions books as a great vessel to picking up new knowledge, but she has learned that practical knowledge can be equally as valuable. Either way, Twilight is somepony who doesn't shy away from experience and learning new things, and even admitting when she is wrong about something she's cemented herself into believing. After all, what Twilight honors most is the ability to set goals and accomplish them, as well as to continue growing.

 

Unfortunately, this hunger to know more and her sheer intelligence are also a double-edged sword. Twilight can hold herself to high standards - while she's willing to admit that she's wrong and has the humility to know that she's not always right about things, it doesn't mean she likes being wrong, and she can debate with the best of them. It especially hits her hard when she believes she should know more about a subject and then finds that she actually doesn't know as much as she thought; in this way, she's incredibly self critical. It also can allow her to veer dangerously close to the territory of cynicism, unlike her more optimistic friends; if she becomes inundated with too much negative information, she can absorb that like a sponge and grow to become skeptical of the friendliness of the world around her, which she must be reminded of by those around her. Sometimes knowledge is too much knowledge, and nopony else embodies this quite like Twilight, as she can be bogged down if she's been slanted in a certain way. In addition to that, being blindsided by something can result in Twilight losing control over herself when she believed she understood a situation before, to the point that it even induces panic within her.

 

Part of this also stems from the fact that Twilight, despite her humility, is very much a perfectionist. She likes doing things right, and she likes doing things right the first time, which is why she's so meticulous. She makes checklists, then makes checklists for her checklists, and she's very detail oriented, specifically because she doesn't want to make a single thing out of place. And because she has that humility, she often frets about whether she's doing the right thing or doing it in the right way. As a result, Twilight can be particularly prone to self doubt and concern, not just about the moral implications of her actions but how others may see her when she does them, which ties back into her empathy. Twilight is very much concerned about how others perceive her, and as a result she may push aside her own wants and feelings for the sake of putting on a good impression. This backfires on her spectacularly as it can stress her out and lead her to bottling up her feelings, which have a tendency to explode outward some other way.

 

Despite this, Twilight can often have a calm and rational approach to a situation, so long as she feels like she's in control of it. If she thinks she's approaching a situation she knows a lot about and she's in her element, that hidden confidence can really show and make her appear to be the more level-headed of her friends. It's only when she's in situations that she feels like a fish out of water in that she finds herself questioning her place and giving in to self-doubt. Otherwise, she is very much the rock of her group as she ties them all together with her understanding and intimate knowledge of the situation, knowledge that she gained due to her desire to look into something as much as she can. Unfortunately, sometimes she overestimates how much she knows, which makes the crash when she's inevitably incorrect about it that much harder.

 

Twilight is a very kind-hearted and warm pony who can get herself invested in a topic easily, so long as there's something there that she can sink her teeth into. In addition, she is very much a bookworm in the purest sense: she likes to study, she likes to do work, and she likes to learn, because all of those preoccupy her brain. She can even veer into busypony territories, as she doesn't much like having absolutely nothing to do. If she has no books to read and nopony to talk to, it can lead to her proclaiming that she's bored as her mind is constantly working on overdrive and needs a lot of stimuli to function. Twilight doesn't like to sit around unless she has some project to engage her, and when left to her own devices may attempt things that would look outright eccentric to the outside viewer simply to occupy herself. In this sense, she's also the most likely to have random thoughts late at night and then act on them impulsively because they might be interesting to study.

 

That being said, Twilight is far from a practical-minded, pure scientist type. In her purest form, Twilight enjoys company with her friends the most above anything else, and would willfully give up magic in its entirety if it meant she could spend the rest of her time with them. In fact, Twilight may not like to admit it since she prefers to be the 'sane pony' of the group, but she can be the most sentimental of them all, and even have a tendency to wax poetry about her main purpose in life. While she is not as melodramatic as the likes of Rarity, Twilight is very philosophically-minded and morally-oriented, and as such it's much of what she thinks about. In other words, while Twilight does like learning, her chief motivation in life is not that but instead fulfilling what destiny tells her to do, because beyond anything she wants a purpose and to fit in someplace.

Character Summary: 

Twilight Sparkle is a loving, compassionate, and sentimental pony with a desire to learn and become a better pony every day. While she can be very much neurotic and paranoid, Twilight still behaves as the de facto leader of her group and she does so with gusto, if a bit of lack of self-confidence at times. She's a bookworm, but she is a sociable bookworm who places her friends above absolutely anything else in the world - ultimately, while one might be sucked into believing she is a pony who's rooted solely in introversion, in reality Twilight thrives off of being needed, serving a purpose, and coming to understand the world around her.

[SteelEagle]