Twilight Sparkle: Difference between revisions

Princess Twilight Sparkle is the central character of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, based on the first generation or "G1" unicorn toy Twilight.^[1] She is depicted in the show's first three seasons as a purple unicorn with a pink-streaked indigo mane, and as a winged unicorn called an "alicorn" after the season three finale "Magical Mystery Cure". Twilight Sparkle is the current Princess of Friendship and the fourth in her nation's history to be crowned Princess of Equestria. Originally from the capital city of Canterlot, Twilight Sparkle passed the entrance exam at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns and became the protege of Princess Celestia. After going to Ponyville to help plan the Summer Sun Celebration, Twilight was revealed to be the Element of Magic and became a founding member of the Mane Six, living a life of adventures and helping to resolve her friends' differences.

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Twilight is voiced by Tara Strong and her singing voice is Rebecca Shoichet.

Twilight Sparkle is dedicated to rules and organization. She is an intelligent and dutiful scholar with an avid love of learning and skill in advanced unicorn magic such as levitation, teleportation, and the creation of force fields. Director Jayson Thiessen describes her as "kind of a neurotic perfectionist" who has "a touch of OCD",^[2] prone to suffering from nervous breakdowns when confronted with a problem that goes against her understanding. A recurring theme since the episode "Lesson Zero", Twilight's perfectionism causes her to be prone to nervous breakdowns when faced with seemingly insurmountable problems or things beyond her understanding, fearing that a mistake on her part will inevitably result in disastrous consequences.

Twilight begins the story as the devoted protégée of Princess Celestia, who tasks her with studying the magical properties of friendship in Ponyville and reporting her findings. Viewing friendship as trivial and unimportant, Twilight resents her assignment in the two-part series premier. However, as the series progresses, she comes to form strong friendships with the rest of the Mane Six, realizing the value of friendship both from a magical standpoint and in the importance it holds in a person's life. She resides with her assistant Spike and pet owl named Owlowiscious (pronounced "Aloysius") in Ponyville's Golden Oak Library, where she also serves as town librarian.^[3] At the end of season three, her apprenticeship to Celestia ends when she reverses an ancient spell by creating new magic based on her studies of friendship, transforms into an alicorn, and is crowned a princess. At the end of season four, Twilight becomes the Princess of Friendship and starts spreading friendship across Equestria with her friends. In season eight, Twilight runs her newly-established School of Friendship to teach ponies and creatures the benefits of friendship with her friends as the teachers. In season nine, Twilight prepares to become the new ruler of Equestria before Princess Celeatia and Princess Luna's retirement. At the end of the show, Twilight is crowned the new ruler of Equestria, and she establishes the Council of Friendship to maintain her relationship with her friends over the years.

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Upon seeing a relief on the moon in the shape of the legendary Nightmare Moon, Twilight believed the legendary Mare of the Moon was once again returning to wreak nightmares on Equestria. She told her teacher, Princess Celestia, of the situation, though Celestia declines her evidence, saying her relative isolation as unhealthy. And so, she sent Twilight and Spike to Ponyville to check on the preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration. That's when Twilight met Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie. That night, she traveled to the celebration only to realize that Nightmare Moon really had returned and kidnapped Celestia. Twilight ran back to the library to search for a book regarding Nightmare Moon while the first ponies she met followed her back. Together, the six traveled into the Everfree Forest in order to stop Nightmare Moon. After a series of trials, Twilight grew to trust and respect the ponies, realizing their strengths and personalities more and growing to care about them on a deeper level. By the time they finally got to the Castle of Two Sisters, they used the Elements of Harmony in order to defeat Nightmare Moon by having her returning to her senses and reuniting the two sisters. Twilight was welcomed as a hero as she decided to stay in Ponyville. With every new friend she made, Twilight's life undoubtedly had a massive shift from the weariness to a much more adventurous life.

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Twilight successfully completed a number of impressive tasks with the aid of her friends, the new wielders of the Elements of Harmony. After she redeemed Nightmare Moon, thwarted the return of Discord, and helped thwart Queen Chrysalis' takeover of Canterlot, she was tasked with helping safeguard the newly returned Crystal Empire. Upon her success, Celestia and Luna agreed that she was ready to face another challenge: finishing an incomplete spell of Starswirl's. After accidentally switching her friends' cutie marks, Twilight was able to restore them to normal and complete the spell. As a result, she created new magic and became an Alicorn, with Celestia acknowledging her as a princess.

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For some time, however, Twilight was unsure of the role she was meant to play in Equestria. When Tirek escaped from Tartarus and began stealing all the magic of the ponies of Equestria and convinced Discord to aid him, the other princesses entrusted their magic to Twilight. She later engaged Tirek in a fearful battle, but surrendered her magic in exchange for the safe return of her friends, thus proving faithful to her Element of Harmony. With the help of a repentant Discord, she and her friends unlocked Rainbow Power and defeated Tirek, while also bringing a new castle into being in Ponyville. Joined by Celestia, Luna, and Cadance, Twilight revealed that she had discovered her purpose: to spread the magic of friendship across Equestira as the Princess of Friendship.

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After becoming the Princess of Friendship, Twilight was tasked with spreading the magic of friendship across Equestria. Twilight and her friends even created a magical map that sends them to remote locations in Equestria through their cutie marks to solve friendship problems.

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In season eight, shortly after the Storm King's defeat, Twilight and her friends discoverd that the Cutie Map had expanded to lands beyond Equestria. Twilight decided to open a school to teach ponies and creatures from Equestria and beyond the benefits of friendship and appointed her friends as the teachers. In season nine, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna have decided to retire from ruling Equestria and they want Twilight to take their place, so she started preparing for her new role. Later, in the season's twentieth episode, “A Horse Shoe-In,” Twilight stepped down from running the School of Friendship and puts Starlight Glimmer in charge. And at the end of the season, Twilight was crowned the new ruler of Equestria and she established the Council of Friendship to maintain her relationship with her friends over the years.

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Twilight is an heroic adventurer and her exploits far outweigh those depicted in the animated series. On countless occasions, Twilight has been instrumental in saving both the nations of her world and the nations encountered on other worlds, and her missions have involve: traveling to the Moon in order to free Rarity from Nightmare, traveling to the Changeling Kingdom in order to safe the Cutie Mark Crusaders, traveling to entirely different universes such as in "Reflections" and in "the 6th story arc".

The Friendship is Magic television series is continued in IDW comic format.

Twilight Sparkle is set to appear along with the rest of the Mane Six in the upcoming series My Little Pony: Pony Life. The new show will feature a different animation technique and will focus more on slice-of-life-style stories than its predecessor.^[4]

Twilight Sparkle, colloquially referred to as Sci-Twi by the MLP-fandom and official Hasbro merchandising, is the human counterpart of Princess Twilight Sparkle and is currently a student of Canterlot High School. Human Twilight's chacter design differs slightly from her pony counterpart: she wears thick black glasses, her hair is tied up into a bun, and the pink highlight in her hair is wider than the pink highlight in pony Twilight's mane. In Legend of Everfree and on the back cover and spine of the chapter book Twilight's Sparkly Sleepover Surprise, human Twilight wears her hair in a ponytail as opposed to a bun.

Twilight is a genius student who is extremely sweet, kind-hearted and caring. She had no social life and friends before transferring to Canterlot High. Her intelligence exceeds virtually anyone else she knows in the human world with exceptional proficiency in chess, debates, robotics, computers, engineering, astronomy, and chemistry, though she's also very well versed in piano, linguistics, geology and history. Like her pony counterpart, Twilight cannot bear the thought of not knowing something. Unlike some of her friends, Twilight lacks artistic inclination, but seems to enjoy acting.

Twilight's evil alter ego, Midnight Sparkle, first appears in Friendship Games; she haunts her in her nightmares and gives her severe anxiety of her previous actions in Legend of Everfree. However, with the help of her friends, she is able to overcome her fear of Midnight Sparkle and gain control of her magic.

Like her pony counterpart, human Twilight is well-spoken and exhibits extreme intelligence, having skipped two grades in elementary school, and is the youngest student at her school. She holds a great interest in knowledge and science, being able to create intricate scientific devices and solve complex mathematical equations, and her intellect rivals that of Sunset Shimmer. Unlike her pony counterpart, human Twilight is a "wallflower", acting very awkward and timid around others, especially the standoffish students of Crystal Prep. While not a coward, she appears to lack the lion-hearted bravery as her pony counterpart; while her pony counterpart would loudly confront bullies for their mean behavior, this version of Twilight seems willing to merely ignore them.

In "Spring Breakdown", Twilight admires and only admits jealousy over her older pony counterpart's "casting a very long shadow" and many herculean accomplishments; comparing her to a "superhero". The Princess reminded the younger human that no good can ever come from trying to compare herself or her accomplishments to that of their friends.

• Twilight is a reincarnation of an "egyptian cat" who bravely fought against the evils of the Nightmare and the former empress of Ponyville. The cat is the Element of Magic and is tattooed with Twilight's 5-star cutie mark symbol, but her personality is the polar opposite of Twilight's; arrogant, reckless, and chaotic, with disdain for books and learning. She and Discord are best friends and is romantically attracted to him.
• The Great and Powerful Twily was a unicorn mare and counterpart of Twilight Sparkle who either visited or was native to Eris' dimension.^[7][8] Unlike her Equestrian counterpart, her personality and attire resembles the Trixie Lulamoon, and she seems to have pursued an interest in stage magic rather than actual magic. In this Twilight's homeworld, Princess Trixie is the Element of Magic and Ruler of Equestria.

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The movie starts when Twilight and her friends were preparing Equestria's first Friendship Festival in Canterlot. But then, they were attacked by the army of an evil conqueror called the Storm King, led by his second-in-command, Tempest Shadow, a unicorn with a broken horn. Tempest turned Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, and Princess Cadance into obsidian statues, but Twilight managed to escape with her friends. And so, Twilight and her friends set to the Badlands to find the queen of the "hippos", after Celestia gave Luna incomplete instructions to find help. The girls arrived in the desert city of Klugetown, where they met a feline con artist named Capper, who offered to escort them, but is secretly intending to sell them settle a debt. As Capper was becoming friends with the girls, Twilight discovered that they have to find the hippogriffs on Mount Aris. The girls were about to leave, until a mole named Verko came to take them away, exposing Capper's treachery. But then, Tempest showed up to capture Twilight, so the girls got away and boarded a delivery airship run by parrots who used to be pirates, until the Storm King forced them to work for him. Rainbow Dash convinced them to be pirates again and take them to Mount Aris. But she got so over-excited, she performed a Sonic Rainboom and accidentally gave their location away to Tempest which forced the girls to reach Mount Aris in a makeshift hot air balloon.

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (July 2020)

In My Little Pony: Rainbow Roadtrip, Twilight and her friends set out by balloon, enticed by the descriptions of the events to be held, as the guest of honor at the Rainbow Festival in the town of Hope Hollow.

In My Little Pony: Best Gift Ever, Twilight Sparkle and her friends do a "Hearth's Warming Helper" to get just one Hearth's Warming present for another pony, to which they race all over Equestria to find the perfect gift.

Twilight Sparkle appears in the official My Little Pony: The Manga, a manga anthology series published by Seven Seas. The first volume contained 8 stories, with the first six being based off members of the Mane Six, seventh story featuring the original character Star Dancer and eight story featuring Discord creating a manga-themed dimension to "mess with the Mane Six". The manga was first announced on November 13, 2018 with volume 1 released on June 18, 2019.^[9] The manga is currently set for a three-volume run.

Volumes

• A Day in the Life of Equestria volume 1
• A Day in the Life of Equestria volume 2
• A Day in the Life of Equestria volume 3

Twilight Sparkle is featured in the non-canonical My Little Pony Manga spin-off adaptation by Pucchigumi. Twilight is depicted as a unicorn mare and the owner of Golden Oak Library. She lives with her best friend, Spike and is the younger brother of Shining Armor and is the sister-in-law of his wife, Cadance. Twilight is far more dramatic here than her animated counterpart, being prone to give off highly exaggerated expressions when good or bad things happen. As with FIM-Twilight she is extremely brave, compassionate, and loving; unlike FIM-Twilight is shown to be immature, have a sarcastic sense of humor, and has a fiery temper. Her best friend is Spike, with the relationship dynamic being reversed, in that Spike takes care of his irresponsible "big sister".

Pucchigumi is a Japanese magazine that contains stories, manga and games primarily aimed at young girls. In 2013, the magazine published 17 My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic stories. The stories have yet to be officially released in North America. The comics are drawn and presumably written by Akira Himekawa, a pair of two Japanese artist and "mangaka". Because show writers did not collaborate on the project, Akira Himekawa took creative liberties with their version of Twilight and is considered by Hasbro to be non-canon within the Friendship is Magic multiverse. The manga currently contains little over 70 pages with 17 total stories. The stories are typically down-to-earth slice-of-life scenarios that are often jumpstarted by exaggerated versions of the Mane Six. The comedy of the manga is considerably different than the sense of humor depicted in the comics and animated series, as it instead uses "super-deformed" and "chibi" artstyles and much more off-the-wall humor. The manga does not explore the other genres that Friendship is Magic is known for, such as adventure and action, though isn't devoid of such stories either.

Volumes

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (July 2020)

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (July 2020)

Twilight Sparkle is one of three currently known characters in Kotobukiya's Bishoujo Statues line. The release was revealed on July 18, 2018, alongside Fluttershy, on the Kotobukiya Twitter account.^[10][11] Her figurine was set for a Q4 2019 release. Currently, the design is a work-in-progress and not currently finalized.

General

• Snider, Brandon T. (2013). The Elements of Harmony: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: The Official Guidebook. New York: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-24754-2.
• Begin, Mary Jane (2015). My Little Pony: The Art of Equestria. New York: Abrams. ISBN 978-1-4197-1577-8.

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