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@Japanese Teeth
Interestingly, a few of those points were revisited with Starlight Glimmer:
-She’s just a normal unicorn (more so than Sombra even, she looks like she could be anypony you pass on the street) but has incredibly powerful magic at her disposal (including one spell that some past episodes might make you think flat-out breaks the rules).
-She’s smart. She figured out from a single, seemingly innocent request that the Dissenters had been talking to the Mane Six and that they had become a danger to her regime, sets up an ambush that takes them completely by surprise, and keeps their cutie marks separate from the rest to better keep them hidden and more easily escape with them should things go south. She had cunning, as well as a great skill in both rhetoric and psychological torture, and it’s easy to see how the ponies around her could have been bent to her will.
-She gets away with a surprising amount of on-screen villainy. Between the Cutie Unmarking, the brainwashing hut, they way she ferrets out dissenters… That many of her methods have clear real-life parallels makes it all the more sinister.
Unlike Sombra, however, Starlight’s menace is not mostly confined to backstory. We aren’t looking at some nebulous cloud of malice but a seemingly-ordinary pony who’s gone very, very bad somewhere along the way. The message is clear: it’s not just the obvious monsters who are capable of evil.
Interestingly, a few of those points were revisited with Starlight Glimmer:
-She’s just a normal unicorn (more so than Sombra even, she looks like she could be anypony you pass on the street) but has incredibly powerful magic at her disposal (including one spell that some past episodes might make you think flat-out breaks the rules).
-She’s smart. She figured out from a single, seemingly innocent request that the Dissenters had been talking to the Mane Six and that they had become a danger to her regime, sets up an ambush that takes them completely by surprise, and keeps their cutie marks separate from the rest to better keep them hidden and more easily escape with them should things go south. She had cunning, as well as a great skill in both rhetoric and psychological torture, and it’s easy to see how the ponies around her could have been bent to her will.
-She gets away with a surprising amount of on-screen villainy. Between the Cutie Unmarking, the brainwashing hut, they way she ferrets out dissenters… That many of her methods have clear real-life parallels makes it all the more sinister.
Unlike Sombra, however, Starlight’s menace is not mostly confined to backstory. We aren’t looking at some nebulous cloud of malice but a seemingly-ordinary pony who’s gone very, very bad somewhere along the way. The message is clear: it’s not just the obvious monsters who are capable of evil.