Starlight Glimmer Appreciation Thread

@A Non Man  
Mentally, yeah. She is on the older side though. Her leadership abilities, charisma and wealth of experience indicates that she’s been around long. The way she carries herself (when she’s not acting like a child) implies that she is at least as old as the oldest one in the Mane6 (whoever that is). She is highly competent and mature normally, but reverts back to a childlike state when excited or put under stress.
 
To me, that is not a sign of ACTUALLY being young, but rather the total lack of social skills and maturity. I personally know people (and I myself am) who still haven’t put aside childish things because I haven’t really developed the confidence to put them aside. As people talk to each other ad interact, usually they shift from taking refuge in childlike behavior and nostalgia, to taking refuge in each other. Starlight for the most part HAVE learned some lessons in growing up, but haven’t done it fully.
 
She has not been interacting with actual ponies for very long time. Her dad also probably unintentionally isolated her from real social interactions. Therefore, her social development are halted. She IS still a child when it comes to that matter, but ONLY on that matter. Otherwise, she seems to be as physically mature as Big Mac, even. That’s my opinion anyway.

Up@tehwatever
 
Well, it’s all headcanon till the show says otherwise. I guess we’re both right until one of us is proved to be wrong.

@rdibp  
:3

@ILoveMyoozik  
<3

@rdibp  
That’s a Derpibooru link. Is it just copied off of Myoozik’s profile, or is it an image?

@Zaknel  
From his profile. :3

@A Non Man  
I imagined her as younger.

@Josh103  
It is less tragic and makes more sense to see her as younger. It is also a lot easier to consider her as young, since she DOES act like a child.
 
I however, like tragedy. I see Starlight and Sunburst to be adults well in their mid to late twenties (even early thirties for Sunburst) who are damaged, never had a proper social interactions in their formative years, and are unable to behave like adults–socially. You see this a lot in people born in late 80’s early 90’s and young adult millennials. Myself included.

@tehwatever  
I actually find it more tragic with the idea she’s younger.

@Josh103  
interesting. elaborate?

 
hi everyone, long time no see huh?

@tehwatever  
I agree with Josh103 here. The idea of this powerful unicorn who grew up without any real moral guidance and fueled with a naive self-certainty feels sadder to me. Starlight always felt to me like one of those well-meaning but misguided 15-year-olds you find on tumblr. You know, the original OG social justice warrior, before that term got coopted to mean anyone who ever mentions any social justice issue.
 
As I see her, Starlight felt abandoned by her only friend, but couldn’t bring herself to actually blame him for it, and so misplaced her anger on the act of getting a cutie mark (i.e. - On the inevitability of growing up.) She’s extremely powerful and clever, and so threw herself into the study of magic toward her goal of creating a place where everyone would be “equal” and therefore would never have a reason to abandon one another. It was naive, and when the inhabitants of her town inevitably began to regret giving up their talents, she refused to accept that her dream had a fatal flaw. And so she tried to make everyone there act happy.
 
All of that says to me that she really doesn’t have much life experience, and she’s used to using magic to avoid dealing with painful realities. So, I see her as being like what Celestia feared Twilight would become without her guidance: an overly-powerful child whose own naive purity might lead her to abuse her powers. Her defeat by Twilight may have actually broken her in a very fundamental way, because it forced her to confront how so much of what she was certain of was just wrong and misguided. She even says as much to Sunburst in The Crystaling.
 
And don’t get me started with Sunburst. In many ways, he’s just as arrested in his development. I can’t believe that either one is any older than 21 or 22. I think Starlight may have actually been barely an adult when Twilight first encountered her.

@A Non Man  
All of that makes a lot of sense. I’ve always felt the same way.
 
@TheGlimMaster  
Hey look, it’s the Master!

 
Protect.

@Jarkes  
I would attac in order to protec if I had to

@MegaAnimationFan  
Kinda reminds of this one  

@SomeponyfromCHL95  
Ew.
 
Seriously.

@Jarkes  
Eternally waiting.

@A Non Man  

 
It’s interesting. she never really blames him no matter what he does. their childhood separation, the crystalling, uncommon bond…

@Background Pony #6BD9  

 
I view it as Sunburst being this idealized happy thing from childhood that she’s desperate to maintain, no matter what. That’s why she was driven to actually turn them both back into children during his visit. It was a crazy attempt to recapture a relationship that I’m pretty certain they never really had.
 
I’m not saying that they weren’t friends, but I don’t think Sunburst saw Starlight as anything like the way she saw him. From his point of view, Starlight was this girl he played with when he was very young, but he hasn’t seen her in years. He’s just kind of getting to know her again. Starlight, on the other hand, has turned him into this touchstone of all the happiness she ever knew. It’s completely overblown and unfair to him. There’s no way he could ever be in real life what she turned him into in her imagination.
 
Yes, I think about the psychology of Starlight Glimmer way more than I probably should.

@A Non Man  

 
definitely. and yeah, while Starlight remembers every little details of her childhood times with Sunburst(like drinking apple juices together), he didn’t even recognize her at first in the crystalling. you said that it’s unfair to him and I think you’re right but this kind of obliviousness makes me dislike him a bit even though both of them are at fault. I wonder it’s just me.

@Background Pony #6BD9  
I cut Sunburst some slack here because I’ve been just as oblivious about girls in my own personal life. You can get very wrapped up in assuming that nobody’s ever interested in you and miss a lot of things that are obvious to an outside observer.
 
And also, be fair to Sunburst: he most likely hadn’t even seen Starlight since they were both about 8 years old. I can totally imagine that she tried writing to him at first, but his embarrassment at how badly he was failing at school led him to do what we saw him do with his mother’s letters: just throw them in a pile of unopened mail to be ignored. After that, he was probably so embarrassed that he just avoided her when he came home for holidays and stuff.
 
I honestly don’t ship Starlight and Sunburst, as natural as other people see it. I think both are just too immature to offer each other anything meaningful.

@A Non Man  
Thanks for replying. I appreciate it. Long post ahead :D
 
To paraphrase you:  

 
I am not against any of those points. I AGREE with those points. But why can’t she be 25 to 30 and be THAT as well? What’s more tragic? A 15 yrs old who is all you mentioned above or a 25-30 yrs old who is STILL all that? Mentally never growing up for 10-15 years straight? Scary thought isn’t it? Literally stuck in the past for a decade.
 
“Doesn’t have much life experience” This I also disagree. She strikes me as someone who knows her way around, EXCEPT around people and dealing with her own feelings. Isolated and bitter (thanks to her dad) and she suddenly has enough awareness and knowledge to manipulate certain people to behave in a certain way. There is no internet in that world and the dad would never teach these things to her. She must have learned and experienced life long enough to have formulated her own philosophy and methods, and then let that philosophy develop.
 
S5 Starlight struck me as adult-child. A ridiculously DANGEROUS adult-child. She enough charisma, wit and savvy to run an entire cult, give inspiring speeches and outplay a Princess by using cold, calculating logic on her own? A genius is one thing, but she is is stable and is adult enough to have patience and maintain cold composure to plan and wait for the perfect moment. She is very well articulated, charismatic, witty, inspiring and manipulative. Compare her to ACTUAL child (teenage) villains like Juniper or Wallflower. She’s nothing like that.
 
“Anecdotes, insights, midnight confessions.” If she barely has life experiences she’d be a terrible, TERRIBLE counselor. Unless of course she merely read books about them and then incorporates them into her job–as in, the anecdotes, insights and confessions would be someone else’s and not hers. OR, she’s just gonna tell stories of her time as Twilight’s student.
 
My disagreement with you, is NOT about Starlight’s behavior. It’s about her physical age. Your arguments seem to imply that just because she acts like a child then she’s physically a child. I read your earlier posts and I KNOW you feel better believing Starlight being an actual child, because her behaviors and antics are therefore tolerable and justified. Seeing her as an adult well in her twenties acting likes someone ten years younger IS bizarre. Frankly, that bizarre-ness is why I find it appropriate that she hangs out with equally bizarre ponies like Maud, Sunburst and Trixie.
 
I KNOW she’s a child, I just think she’s old enough to actually marry someone.