Post by Starlight Glimmer on May 1, 2016 21:47:07 GMT -6
||| STARLIGHT GLIMMER |||
#Name; Starlight Glimmer
#Age Group ; Adult
#Species; Unicorn
#Cutie Mark ;
#Occupation ; Full-time student of Princess Twilight Sparkle.
#Powers and Abilities ; Starlight has a TON of raw magical power, but not a lot of the formal education to make the best use of it. So she can perform spells that require an awful lot of “juice” behind them, things on the level of Starswirl the Bearded himself—but she can’t craft them herself, and often doesn’t fully understand the consequences. However, she still has some incredible potency and stamina for more basic magic; most unicorns can’t levitate themselves, but she can fly around with relative ease and set a large table in seconds, and her stamina when casting battle magic is enough to have given Twilight Sparkle a run for her money.
This level of ability isn’t necessarily a good thing for her. It’s led her to develop a habit of trying to solve all her problems with her magic instead of facing them herself, and her doing this while lacking a more in-depth understanding of magic has led to enormous amounts of trouble. And on a smaller scale, it's made her kind of inept at doing some of the basics herself; she doesn't actually KNOW how to set a table, she just lets her magic-memory sort it all out, one and done. That can be embarrassing enough she wants the world to end again.
#Physique ; “Squishy wizard” about covers it. She’s average height and weight, but SUCH a wimp—she runs one block and falls over, then levitates herself the rest of the way, whining the entire time.
#Mane and fur color and style ; Her coat’s a nice lavender that feels silky, like a fancy bathrobe, and her mane’s all wavy and well-brushed; vibrant purple, with a streak of aquamarine running through it.
#Eye color ; Persian blue. They’re starting to look happier.
#Personality ;
Starlight is not, in her heart, a very happy pony. At least, not yet. She spent a very long time being bitter, focused, and spiteful to an extreme degree; that kind of living just doesn’t slough away overnight, especially as loaded with guilt as she is. Yet she makes the effort, and she does it every single day. (She’s resistant to the idea of forgetting her past, though, believing that guilt is the only way to ensure she doesn’t do it again—but that’s a different can of worms.)
Her intentions are good now, at least—she saw the harm that force does, and she wants to learn how to foster a gentler, kinder sort of living in Ponyville, free from her past. Although her work ethic is generally good when her task is plain and her course thoroughly directed, she can sometimes be a bit lazy and prone to taking shortcuts, usually by magical means. This... causes problems sometimes, especially around Winter Wrap-Up.
When she gets into it, though, the approach she takes is generally very meticulous and detail-oriented; this is one way she's very much like her teacher. She takes particular pleasure in building models and graphs, though, as opposed to lists and charts—visuals and tactile objects are her mental bread and butter. When she has an idea, or has to plan out for a complicated situation, or even just needs time to think, she takes to tiny tools and a great space to arrange it out in front of her. (Somewhere, in an abandoned house in an abandoned town, a grand model vision for the future of her village still sits, gathering dust.)
Stress and panic are some of her biggest roadblocks. She hasn't identified them as such, yet, but she's very much prone to panic attacks—she didn't used to be, but ever since turning over a new leaf they've become not infrequent. The isolation and guilt she feels about her history encourages her to try and keep these to herself, believing she deserves them and that they keep her on the straight and narrow. So she takes on stress and bottles it down as hard as she can, until the pressure builds and builds and explodes in her chest into another attack.
But despite it all, Starlight still craves what she's always craved—companionship. She wants friends, wants a community, more than anything else. That's what drove her to her crimes against ponanity in the first place. The trouble is finding a connection she can relate to. Things are still awkward with her teacher and her teacher's friends, as she's unevenly settled in without knowing any of them particularly well. Sunburst lives in the Empire and can only keep in touch with her through letters, and even then, they haven't known each other since they were kids. And... anyone beyond that she just doesn't know too well.
Still, despite all her troubles, she's managing to warm up. She can be very friendly, and she's got an enthusiastic kindness to her that even all her darkness never quite managed to squish. Overall she WANTS to make ponies comfortable, improve their lives and form bonds of friendship, she just had a pretty wrongheaded way of going about that for a very long time.
Old habits kind of die hard, though. She can still be kind of creepy. And maniacal. But she's working on making her laugh not sound so evil! It doesn't even scare most foals anymore, and she hasn't gotten one of those winged monkeys trying to swear fealty to her in weeks.
#History ;
Starlight Glimmer grew up in Tall Tale, to a family not so badly off and with a loving little community around her. The upper-middle class part of town was lovely—the kind of place with perfect lawns at the front of every house, each blade of grass cut precisely equal, shelves with no speck of dust, and a life very comfortable for families of her status. Having only her parents, who seldom told her what to do, she never had to worry about conflict, fights, or not getting her way. In a word... spoiled absolutely rotten, but too naïvely happy to recognize it as such.
She had a best friend as a young girl. Sunburst, a unicorn like her, and one who had all the same interests. Neither of them liked roughhousing, getting muddy, or going outside whatsoever, so they spent days and days just... doing things together. Putting together puzzles. Reading books under blanket forts together deep into the night. Building fantasy towns out of plastic bricks. They were very close. So when he got his cutie mark in magic and his family shipped him to Canterlot, to learn and utilize his special talent... something she had yet to find... it devastated her. It was the first real loss she had suffered, and she took to it very poorly.
Unable to pinpoint the real source of all her pain and incapable of pointing it at her own best friend, she pointed it to the catalyst for his leaving. His cutie mark. For years and years, a disdain for the "special" part of a special talent simmered in her head—and it reached a terrible head when she got her own cutie mark one night by using her magic to turn river water into rain. She responded with a violent burst of rage and blew an enormous hole in the riverbank, one that still sits today.
... And as soon as she got home, without telling anybody at all, she painted over her cutie mark. She decided if being special meant being above everyone else in some way, lifted up and celebrated and leaving broken hearts behind, she wanted no part in being special. This was when her plan first began to form.
The other pieces aggregated over time. She continued to build her models, her fantasy worlds of blocks and parts and paints, for a time dabbled in writing fiction. She wondered with a singular and lonely obsession about what a more perfect place would be. She halfheartedly studied some magical history, enjoying the stories, but pointedly ignored and lapsed reading about theory and spellcraft. That is, until she found out about an old and miserly wizard's theoretical spell that could, in concept, separate someone from the understanding of their special talent...
And that clicked it into place. Her vision followed not long after. A place of perfect equality, where nobody would be above anyone else ever, where ponies could live happy and secure in knowing they didn't have to go their own way. She fixated on this spell and learned everything she could about it, and when she hit a wall, delved straight into the black. The ends justified the means, and to her, these ends would be what Equestria needed the most—what she needed the most.
Once it was arranged, she simply vanished overnight. Starlight knew what she planned to do wasn't going to be palatable to the public, not at first, so when she disappeared... she made sure she did so completely. All her things were gone, and she didn't leave any kind of note—she did not, in fact, need to. Her family and former teachers mysteriously couldn't remember a filly by that name. Traces of spellwork lingered around their heads.
She gathered her first bit of following from various cities—a few flyers to ponies she understood to be lost and discouraged, seeking new home or purpose. Then the location was settled, somewhere near the mountains, in a dusty little plain. She never gave her budding village a name, partly to keep in with her pseudophilosophy of never standing above or beyond what you are—and partly so no concrete knowledge of her little community could spread out of her control. She and everyone she took in only knew it as "Our Town."
They grew, too, little by little, pony by pony. The confused and rootless trickled in to her to find a place in Equestria when nowhere else quite worked. And they did find it there; a little microcosm of perfect equality, where the only requirement of admission was loyalty to the community and undergoing a simple spell by touch of her Staff of Sameness. She never removed her own mark, though; she worried that if she did, her ability to cast the spell—the only thing that made her society truly equal—would vanish. But, with a loyal heart, she still covered herself up.
It went well. Until a strange group of ponies walked into town; two pegasi, two earth ponies, a unicorn, and an alicorn. The rest is history, and after that, so was her dream.
All she had left was that rage, and a burning need for revenge.
She still had no record. That afforded her some freedom. She walked to Canterlot. Broke into the Starswirl Wing of the Palace Library, stole a scroll. A bit of study here, a little enchantment there... all the while watching the new Princess and her friends. Know thy enemy; she didn't just want to hurt high and mighty Sparkle, she wanted to shatter her to pieces, to drag her into the dirt and force her to admit that Starlight was right. To BEG forgiveness for destroying her dream. For making her alone again. And the way to do that was, of course, by removing this stupid so-called "destiny" from the equation.
It didn't quite work out the way she wanted.
And yet... Twilight didn't exile her, imprison her, banish her, or any of the other failure states Starlight had imagined. Instead, she took her in. It came so far out of left field that it was maybe the one result she had absolutely no plan for, no preparations and no contingency.
She's still finding her feet with the whole situation. She doesn't feel right, yet, but... she's starting to bond with Spike pretty well. She's coming to understand Twilight's idea that being special can be okay, that being different doesn't need to make you alone. It's slow going. But she's learning.
The Roleplayer's Corner
#Nickname ; Dizzy
#Age ; Rom the Vacuous Spider
#Gender/Preferred Pronouns ; I prefer to be addressed as “Your Majesty”
#How did you find us? ; A portal was crafted in a back room at the discothèque. I stepped through, I came here, and I can’t find my way home.
#Sample RP ;
Starlight woke with a panicked shout dying on her lips.
Her eyes darted around. Unfamiliar. Nothing around her was right. This wasn't her bed. Too big. Room too big, too, too opulent, the walls shone, sparkled—sparkle?—Sparkle, that's right. Twilight Sparkle. The Palace. ... She lived in the Palace now... this was her bed.
She swallowed down the panicked breaths, trying to focus the spinning in her head. Another bloody nightmare... it was going to take a while to get used to this. It took a bit before her muscles loosened enough for her to be able to let go of the sheets. They were comfortable, at least.
Fortunately, she had still been in the Palace long enough to establish a routine with mornings like this. From the color of the sunlight diffused through the semi-opaque curtains, she was up early again; she guessed around six? But no going back to sleep after that. She slipped from the duvet and made her way across her (still mostly bare) bedchambers to the adjoined restroom.
Ritual comforted her. Every brush of her teeth brought her clearer into focus, banished the nightmare back down in her mind. The shower washed her clean of fear-sweat and the grime of the day before; she took it with cold water at first to shock her awake, then warm to clean, then cold again, so she could warm up outside. And after she dried out, she levitated everything to her at once—three brushes for her mane, her tail, her coat, a comb to follow them, lotion for dry skin spots, cloth to dry any remaining wet spots, two mirrors to observe through, a couple touches of makeup here and there, all orbiting and cleaning her at once.
She'd done this in front of Rarity exactly once. Never again.
Something bumped her flank—and with a quick glance, she realized that out of habit, she'd tried to apply makeup to her cutie mark. There was a smear of mascara on her butt. ... She took a long-suffering sigh and wiped it clean again.
Starlight looked in the mirror once she was done. She was insecure of a lot of things, but her looks... her looks were not one of them. She flashed a goofy little smile at herself as one floating comb flicked the last few touches to her mane. The new style she'd taken since moving here... it felt more comfortable. Less tight. New look for a new start.
"You're ok, Starlight. Just a dumb dream. You still got it..." She gave herself one last affirming nod, and all her paraphernalia flew back into perfectly-organized place.
The curtains peeked open, and she surmised it was still at least an hour before breakfast. The morning was open for a while; she could take a walk, maybe, get a little more accustomed to the Palace's layout. She could do a little light reading. Could ... get the courage up to open that letter from Sunburst. Or, she realized with a private smirk, she could work on her secret.
Starlight chuckled darkly as her horn lit again, her magic pulling a dark wooden box out from under her bed. This little side-project had been in the works for a few weeks now, ever since she moved into the castle. The timing was just right, after all. Here she was, in Sparkle's home... she could watch her all the time, figure out the weaknesses of the ponies she lived with. She was finally going to give Twilight and Spike what they so richly deserved.
A lovely, half-finished purple and green hoodie scarf floated from the box, along with a periwinkle wing cozy in alicorn size. Her crochet equipment followed. She listened for a moment, to be sure noone was likely to hear... and then allowed herself one brilliant, mad cackle to echo through the bedchamber, as her hook plunged back into the stitching, pulling together a doubled seed pattern.
"You're going to be very cozy this winter, Twilight," she muttered to herself, her voice dripping with menace and affection. "You... And your little dragon, too! Eheheheh! ...hee..." A tiny snort followed.
As she worked, she reflected fondly on all the small comforts like this she'd had since she moved here. Failing, she supposed, wasn't so bad after all.
