Starlight Glimmer- What is the opinion of her still?

@Star Seeker  
I’m not sure, I was understanding Starlight less and less during season 7. She looks like an outdated and hypocrite parody of herself. xD
 
Hopefully there’s an… interesting episode about her in season 9, I guess?

@Ring Team  
My only issue with Starlight was she made Twilight as terrible teacher. No discipline for her or any kind of remorse cause Starlight made powerful and exotic spells on Twilight’s friends. However I like Starlight in Royal problem. She show us a lot about princesses daily life, but alicorns being so weak against Starlight spell isn’t her responsability, it’s the joke about alicorns are really useless and not powerful against serious threats.

@Ring Team  
I wish you could too - she’s very fun to watch!

@Hakirayleigh  
My own personal headcanon is that her spell only worked on them because they’re alicorns.

@Latecomer  
That seems extremely silly, considering how many alicorns she normally has access to.

Since OP asked: cult leader, Villain Sue, gets off scot-free even more often than Cartman.

@Latecomer
 
I never understood why people think the spell shouldn’t have worked, period.
 
Do people think that being strong should give them a passive immunity to magic as well? It’d be one thing if Luna and Celestia put up a force field and Starlight’s spell still got to them through that, but she just took them off guard.
 
Being an expert marksman doesn’t make you immune to bullets.

@Background Pony #852C  
That’s sometimes how it works.

@Background Pony #852C  
Well she’s a marksmare, beyond the limit.

@WyrmSpawN  
What do you mean?

@Latecomer  
If it was a spell that only worked on alicorns, surely she would have had to have it work or otherwise be tested on only alicorns to even attempt it, and that’s highly unlikely, given their rarity.
 
It’s exactly like Zecora’s potion that demands ‘alicorn magic’. At best contrived, at worst actual nonsense.

@WyrmSpawN  
Nah - I was more going with it being less planned and more impulsive, and would have quickly worn off normal ponies (like how she had to keep marks locked up when she stole them). But it just so happened that the great power of an alicorn allowed the marks to take root, at least for a while. Pure headcanon, I know, but I like to reign in overpowered-seeming spells.
 
(That potion was nonsense, though.)

Unpopular opinion Thread is discussing Starlight’s reformation, I feel like they could move the discussion to this thread.

Maybe. Course, both liking and disliking her can probably be considered unpopular opinions…

@Latecomer  
Basically that, and I mean from both sides, myself included. xD
 
It’s a topic I have no problem having long conversations about, it’s just the people who defend her (not everyone, just a few vocal people) answer in the snidest worst way that it reminds me of the Zack Snyder fanboys, the otaku community or the Star Wars fanboys.
 
And, to be honest, I’m not as angry as I was back in 2016, because the show is finished, and the last three seasons have pretty good episodes, especially The Last Problem. When a beloved TV show like this concludes with this final episode, the problems I have with Friendship is Magic are much less corrosive.

@Ring Team  

 
Do you really know what you’re complaining about, here? That she first showed sympathy for her and 100% tried to help her, but after that failed, Rarity was hoping that she’d literally time travel to prevent the problem, as in Retcon it out of happening, but Starlight refused on the basis of it being a bad idea, having personal experience in it going wrong, and Twilight can be seen agreeing with her, having also gone through time travel going wrong, multiple times even. In a scenario she did go back in time, I am certain you’d be complaining about how Starlight doing that “proved she learned nothing” when it inevitably did go wrong, and that she shouldn’t have done that, and here we are, in a world where that’s exactly what she didn’t do.  
https://youtu.be/AclDeem0L0A?t=330  
That observation alone makes your extreme myopia on the character apparent, without even going into the other stuff.

@Background Pony #3032
 
I’d agree with you if it wasn’t for the fact that she ended up using time travel in another episode. Not only that, but she also transformed her best friend into a child, ignoring all his objections, forcing him to he with her without his consent. Just because she wants him to be with her instead of Twilight, Trixie and Maud Pie, revealing an incredibly possessive toxic attitude.
 

 
I mean, listen, Starlight, if you wanna understand why Sunburst didn’t want this crazy spell, listen to him, instead of making all things about you. She hasn’t learned anything.
 
I don’t know why someone would love a manipulative possessive apathetic character that does things like this.

@Ring Team  
Hmmm, you are saying like:  
-Starlight is equivalent of an obsessive forceful man in power.  
-Sunburst is a beautiful woman that Starlight needs to claim as a wife all on owns.
 
*(‘’)*/
 
Looking at Discord in Make new friends but Keep Discord… Same pattern, just replaces Sunburst with Fluttershy and replaces Starlight with Discord.

@Background Pony #CC23  
I never said I liked that episode. But we’re talking about Starlight.

@Ring Team  
Yes, about Starlight, just comparing something similar, not off-topic. Did not said you like that episode either.

@Ring Team  
The episode… clearly states that Starlight still kept her inner devil, I do not mind much, but you are welcome to explain more of it.

@Ring Team  
I don’t know why someone would love a manipulative possessive apathetic character that does things like this.
 
Well, in real life, there exists possessive persons like this, and some can learn, some may not.  
But well, if she really hadn’t learned from that episode, Starlight would officially becomes an incel and the episode would had bad end, breaking MLP’s laws. That personality of hers in the episode is the main reason why she had no other friends in her childhood in the first place, and later became a dictator villain.
 
Twilight (the only mare that can keep an eye on her) taught her a lesson about it after that happened, it is Starlight did not yet learned about consents of friends before the events of this episode.

@Background Pony #8EAB  
I get that the point of that Discord episode is to show his mistakes, which makes sense. The episode shows some consequences of his actions.
 
However, Starlight is supposed to be a redeemed character. She’s supposed to learn from her mistakes. She’s supposed to learn the importance of friendship. But at the same time, not only everyone is supersticious about her regardless of her actions, but Starlight also ended up doing this like she did back in season 5. There’s a severe lack of responsibility on her part. When a character gets away with things like this and everyone is still supersticious about her, when what value does her redemption arc?
 
It also doesn’t help the fact that there’s an statu-quo in the show. If a character learns something, that would be forgotten in the next 3 or 5 episodes because of the statu-quo. Kinda like a reset button. I think that explains why some characters such as Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Starlight forget some specific lessons.
 
All I’m saying is: If Discord was contantly questioned from season 3 to 9 because of his previous actions, if Sunset Shimmer was hated in that high-school in Rainbow Rocks because of her previous actions, if Princess Luna was scary for the entire Ponyville in Luna Eclipsed because of her previous actions, if the Cutie Mark Crusaders were hated by the entire Ponyville in Ponyville Confidential… why can’t the writers do the same thing to Starlight?
 
Even after what I said, I really believe that the TV show was trying to show a redemption arc with Starlight, because if it’s not… what was the point of this scene?
 

 
And this scene?
 

 
And this one?
 

 
My point is: I really believe in redemption, and I like redemption stories. That’s why I love Diamond Tiara in Crusaders of the Lost Mark and Tempest Shadow in the MLP film. But not at any cost. I’m not against redemption, but you have to earn it.

@Ring Team  
Maybe some fanarts of Starlight paying for her past actions or getting punished (but not to the point of grimdark) would cheer you up. But good to see you let it all out.

@Ring Team
 
Starlight ignored Sunburst’s objections to the spell?
 
He didn’t object before she cast the spell. He looked it over and was impressed, and allowed her to cast the spell.
 

 
It takes him a few seconds to loudly object to what’s going on, and when he does she stops immediately. This isn’t really a scene where Starlight forcibly turns Sunburst into a child while he tells her no. Starlight ignores Sunburst because she’s excited and delusional and misreads his social cues. Something almost every character has done in this show. The exact same type of exchange happens in parent map. Firelight and Stellar ignore what their children say even as they try to speak, until eventually the kids are forced to yell to get their attention. It’s a very standard writing flourish the show uses to get across how lost in their own world a character is. And to reiterate, Starlight is in the wrong in this episode. The episode doesn’t treat her turning Sunburst into a kid as anything other than pathetic and creepy