Starlight Glimmer- What is the opinion of her still?

Ring Team
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After watching A royal problem, I have the impression that Starlight writers don’t care about consistency in the show. As long as she looks good or powerful (to the point where she swaps the cutie marks of Celestia and Luna), everything is ok.
 
Speaking about being ok, it’s also very weird that the Mane 6 as well as the entire Ponyville are completely supersticious about her. In Rainbow Rocks, every single student gave a bad look at Sunset Shimmer because of her previous actions. In seasons 4, 5 and 6, nopony trusted Discord because of his previous actions. In Luna Eclipsed, everypony is afraid of Luna because of her previous actions. So… everypony is ok with someone like Starlight after her previous actions, including manipulating towns and trying to destroy the world by time travelling? Really? That’s… weird, to say the least. There’s no self-awareness about Starlight’s cuestionable actions.
 
But I think at this point it doesn’t matter. If they made Every little thing she does (an episode where Starlight, after saying she wants to be good many times, does the exact opposite thing), they probably wouldn’t care about Starlight’s cuestionable attitude, which makes it hard to finish the season 7, let alone seasons 8 and 9.
 
But at least I loved some episodes, like A Flurry of emotions and Parental Glideance.
Vivace
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“ShimSham my GlimGlams”
@Ring Team  
Hush. How many ponies know about the manipulation of a single town? Know how many ponies know about the time travel scheme? The Mane 6, Spike, the townsponies (the former), and anypony Starlight chose to tell (read: hardly anypony), and only Twilight and Spike witnessed the latter firsthand. And due to the nature of time travel in the show, since the initial event which changed the timeline was ultimately prevented, the alternate futures are entirely hypothetical, so in the long run, they don’t matter. Not to mention, she directly apologized in person to those she affected. Whereas with Sunset and Luna, the entire school and all of Equestria, respectively, knew what she did.
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@Vivace  
Yeah, but that doesn’t reflect a change in her attitude. If you really want to tell a story about redemption, great. I love some stories that touches that subject, like Luna Eclipsed, One bad apple, Crusaders of the lost Mark and the MLP movie.
 
But, if you really want to talk about redemption, why would you make an episode like Every little thing she does? Why would you make a scene from Rock Solid Friendship where Starlight says she doesn’t like to be judged after doing this?
 
full
 
I think it’s pretty easy to say she’s good and to sing “Friends are always there for you” while you forget what she did in the past. It’s like saying Joel from The Last of Us is a cool character while you forget that he and his brother murder people.
Background Pony #7C84
@Ring Team  
Something I’ve noticed in your posts that bring up The Cutie Re-Mark is the notion that Starlight intended to destroy the world there. That was never what she wanted. She legitimately didn’t believe at the time that the mane six’s friendship was that important. The latter can be heard in the sarcasm in her voice when she says “Oh, next I suppose you’ll tell me that “the fate of all of Equestria hangs in the balance!”, and the former can be seen in her expression when she first witnesses the ashlands timeline.
 
As for ELTSD, I see that episode as a hard wake-up call that pounded it into her head that you can’t rely on powerful spells to solve issues in a setting where magical ability frankly doesn’t matter, and that it in fact usually makes things worse for you if you try. Up to this point, Starlight Glimmer would generally default to using magic on others if she thought it’d make things better/easier for her (I’m sure you remember the incident with Big Mac). After this episode, whenever she tried magic to solve a problem it was either on herself (All Bottled Up) or after some deliberation and even waiting until an attempt at talking things out didn’t work (A Royal Problem).
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@Background Pony #7C84  
About that scene Starlight had with Big Mac, I’d agree if it wasn’t for quotes like “I can’t be friends with somepony who doesn’t talk”. Why would you love a character that says things like this?
 
To me, Starlight’s magic is there to appeal the people who love power fantasy, nothing more. If you make a character that only depends on magic to solve problems instead of seeing that character doing his or her best to do the right thing, that’s not a character.
Spectator

@Ring Team  
The point I was trying to get across is that Starlight Glimmer’s dependence on magic to solve her problems is something that the show does consider to be a character flaw, and that Every Little Thing She does is the first major step in getting her away from that habit. I referenced other instances of her relying on magic to show her progression in this regard, from her pretty much defaulting to it in season 6, to her defaulting to it but on herself instead of others in All Bottled Up, to her not trying magic until getting the full context of the situation and trying to have it be talked out in A Royal Problem.
 
Also, I don’t really see how power fantasy really fits into a show where attempts to power through problems through magic or brute force make things worse. This can be seen as far back as Winter Wrap-Up with the snow plow scene and even in the series premiere where the elements of harmony manifested through Twilight’s new friendships, and it holds true in later episodes as well, such as Rainbow Dash’s attempts to stop winter from coming in Tanks for the Memories.
 
And yes, I was the background pony who previously responded, sorry. Forgot to click that box.
AC97
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@Ring Team
The point I was trying to get across is that Starlight Glimmer’s dependence on magic to solve her problems is something that the show does consider to be a character flaw, and that Every Little Thing She does is the first major step in getting her away from that habit. I referenced other instances of her relying on magic to show her progression in this regard, from her pretty much defaulting to it in season 6, to her defaulting to it but on herself instead of others in All Bottled Up, to her not trying magic until getting the full context of the situation and trying to have it be talked out in A Royal Problem.
Also, I don’t really see how power fantasy really fits into a show where attempts to power through problems through magic or brute force make things worse. This can be seen as far back as Winter Wrap-Up with the snow plow scene and even in the series premiere where the elements of harmony manifested through Twilight’s new friendships, and it holds true in later episodes as well, such as Rainbow Dash’s attempts to stop winter from coming in Tanks for the Memories.
And yes, I was the background pony who previously responded, sorry. Forgot to click that box.
 
Or you can look at Twilight brainwashing an entire town, or her making the Parasprites eat something else resulting in them eating the town, her attempted solution in “Bats!” backfiring by changing Fluttershy, or her fighting Tirek amounting to jack shit because he had the hostages card to play, or her only winning against Alicorn Amulet!Trixie through trickery, not magic.
 
Friendship is Magic in this show, arcane magic isn’t, because the latter rarely solves problems in and of itself (unless it’s a fanfic, and even then it conceptually works more if it’s a team effort, tying into “friendship”), the former does. No one ever solos major villains and wins. I think ironically, Twilight came the closest to that in the S5 finale (Spike wasn’t really that much of a factor in the resolution, other than perhaps moral support), and it was… talking Starlight down.
 
For that reason, “power fantasy” is a strange assertion to make, because I doubt someone is an ideal character to imagine yourself in their proverbial shoes if the point of them is that they’re a screwup most of the time, that if you’re not chuckling at how much of a fool they’re being, you’re feeling pity for them, or at least identifying with the stress they’ve either brought upon themselves or are around.
Ring Team
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Last week I finished season 7. In 26 episodes I still haven’t seen a change in Starlight that indicates that she wants to learn from her mistakes or she wants to redeem herself. Most of the things she does or she says are activately worse, but the overall result wasn’t as shocking as Every little thing she does because back in 2016 I didn’t expect that the writers would do something like that.
 
In Rock Solid Friendship, Starlight says that she likes rocks because they don’t judge you despite what she has done in episodes such as Cutie Map and Every little thing she does.
 
In It isn’t the Mane thing about you, she doesn’t empathise with Rarity and her hair issue, like “if that pony have a problem, that’s cool, as long as it’s not my problem”.
 
In Uncommon bond, Starlight is annoyed by the fact that Sunburst is socializing with Twilight and Maud Pie (because she doesn’t like not being the center of the universe or something), and she even is able to create out of nowhere very complex magic spells about time traveling and age regression like a cheat code from a videogame or something, which is very weird.
 
In All bottled up, Starlight happens to create dark magic and manipulate other ponies whenever she gets stressed (which wasn’t established back in season 5, I must add).
 
So overall, don’t question Starlight, don’t stress her, don’t ignore her and always say “yes”. If she’s bothered by something, that’s your fault, not her.
 
I guess you could say she got what she wanted back in Cutie Map. A forced acceptance.
Background Pony #BC2B
I like her. As far as reformed heroes go, she’s my favorite female who isn’t a princess
Background Pony #7C84
@Latecomer  
If I’m being honest, I don’t really think Starlight’s redemption arc past the season 5 finale changed people’s minds all that much. It seems like those who were opposed to her reforming initially and those open to it simply found more justification for their opinions of her as the episodes went by.
Ring Team
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@Background Pony #7C84  
I don’t think the season 5 ending was meant to change people’s minds about Starlight. Back then, it was strange to see an incomplete ending like that (let’s be real, Starlight needed more episodes for her development in season 5), but then I was like “ok, let’s see what happens after that”. I wasn’t too intrigued, I was indifferent, but at the same time I was like “let’s give it one chance”. When I saw A Hearth’s Warming Tail, I started to think “maybe Starlight would be redeemed, I like where this is going”.
 
Then my opinion drastically changed with Every little thing she does. Before that episode, Starlight has kinda shown some interest in redemption, which makes sense considering what she has done back in season 5. But then, after indicating multiple times that Starlight wants to change, we have an episode where Starlight basically does the exact opposite thing of redemption. I’ve only watched this episode twice and it’s really really bad.
 
The Starlight writers don’t want to talk about redemption with this character, they basically want some episodes where Starlight can solve the problems by using magic. That’s it. That’s why we have episodes such as A royal problem. And when she doesn’t use magic, she finds other ponies or things as an excuse to say she doesn’t like being judged despite what she has done in season 5 and 6.
 
Basically, Starlight wants to use magic, she wants to get away with any kind of responsability and she doesn’t want to be judged.
 
So… kinda like Starlight in Cutie Map, where nobody can judge her and where she can do anything.
 
I think Starlight was written this way because the TV show has an statu quo where everyone can be crazy. Kinda like The Simpsons and Family Guy. If a character learns something, that would be forgotten in the next 3 or 5 episodes because of the statu quo. Because this TV show doesn’t have a flowing narrative. The story they start off with often has nothing to do with what they end on. I think that explains why some characters such as Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Starlight forget some specific lessons.
 
I think my problem with all this is all related to the redemption arc of Starlight. I like redemption, but not at any cost. Solving everything with magic doesn’t count. That’s just basically power fantasy.
 
I’m getting closer and closer to finish the season 9, but, even though I don’t think Starlight has changed for the better, it’s not as problematic as it was back in seasons 6 and 7, because Friendship is Magic is not a consistent TV show in the first place. If it was consistent, Starlight would have been a much much interesting character instead of just an OP videogame character in a TV show.
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Ecto-Phase,Activate!
I still wonder why we needed another main character. There were plenty of side characters that were never explored as much as they could’ve been. I don’t mind Starlight,I just don’t understand why she exists.
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