Unpopular opinion time

Background Pony #6744
@Background Pony #2BCA
 
She disintegrated him, and his body reconstituted outside of school grounds. Because that’s presumably how the spell works. I don’t get how this is some grand crime on her part. From her perspective, she was trying to keep him outside of the school so he couldn’t continue to mess things up and scare the students.
 
That brings me to another point though. Do you think I don’t think Starlight was in the wrong? Because she is. In almost every single Starlight episode she’s the one in the wrong. What I disagree with is the general trend of amping up her flaws and making what she does sound worse than it is.
 
You say I deflect blame onto other characters, but then you say something like:
 
So disintegrating him so hard it shook the earth for being annoying seems like an overreaction towards someone who had been her comrade and closest ally.
 
That’s pretty much the inverse. That’s diminishing another character’s part in an event down to the point of insignificance, because if you’d mentioned that he’d just been terrorising the students with a bug bear, that wouldn’t have made Starlight look as bad. That’s what I take issue with. Because yeah, Starlight was in the wrong. She let her anger get the best of her and she overreacted to Discord’s flagrant attempts to get under her skin, which only made the situation worse because her spell didn’t do a thing to stop him. THat’s a consistent flaw of Starlight’s the same way Dashie has an Ego problem. It withstands several lessons addressing it the same way Shy’s timidness survived several episodes tackling it. A lot of Starlight’s fans like how flawed she is.
 
And “propensity for mind control”? How many episodes post-reformation revolve around Starlight mind controlling people? There’s every little thing she does, and then there’s All Bottled Up, I guess? But there, she’s using it on herself specifically because she didn’t want to use magic on her friend.
 
And that’s it, out of the 19 or so episodes where she’s a major character, two of them have her trying to solve a problem with mind control.
Background Pony #6709
@Terminal Red  
M8, I just stopped letting petty cartoon shit get me that riled up. Who cares who it’s for? We obviously don’t; otherwise, we wouldn’t be in this thread.
Background Pony #2BCA
@Background Pony #6744  
First of all her introductory episode introduced her with a shack she used specifically for struggle sessions. To isolate, gaslight, berate and guilt others into conforming with her ideology. Brainwashing Is mind control by another name. She also dabbled in Hypnosis. Yes, After supposedly giving up her mind bending ways, Starlight thought learning hypnosis was a valuable skill. And Twilight was actually dumb enough to let her inside her noggin.
Background Pony #6744
@Background Pony #2BCA
 
Oh yeah, I forgot about Starlight the Hypnotist. The short with almost no bearing on anything.
 
I hadn’t forgotten about Cutie MAp. I just wasn’t considering it because she’s not evil anymore. That controlling part of her still manifested in episodes like ELTSD and ABU. I just think, it stopped manifesting as an impulse to mess with a person’s minds. For almost three entire seasons of the show, she doesn’t try to solve her problems using mind control or brainwashing. You make it sound like her knee jerk reaction to everything is to mind fuck it, and that’s just not true as the show goes on.
 
Though I would concede that Starlight the Hypnotist is dumb as all hell.
Background Pony #2BCA
@Background Pony #6744  
No bearing on anything? Starlight is a manipulator, reformed or not. She has repeatedly demonstrated an aptitude and eagerness for getting into ponies heads and messing with their grey matter. It’s such a large theme of her character that the comics used it as a point of relateability between her and accord.
 
She fit into her counsellor role so well why? What is counselling if not a more benign form of Manipulation and influence? The Hypnosis she learned as a hobby, the brainwashing pre redemption and even worse mind control post redemption, all point to a pathological need to Influence the thoughts and behaviour of others. Her job, hobby and character arc revolve around it.
 
It’s ironic, She’s terrible at self control but she’s great at controlling others.
 
I consider Sombra A dark mirror of what Starlight could have become If she hadn’t met Twilight.
 
Starlight and Sombra have similar mind control abilities though Sombras is more developed. Starlight needs control. It could very well have become a need for dominance, like Sombra.
Background Pony #6744
@Background Pony #2BCA
 
I’d argue that she does have a desire to control people. It probably stems from the fact that Sunburst left her at a formative age. Her motive as a villain seemed to be a general desire to create a world that could never hurt her ever again. And because of her vast magic she could almost accomplish that.
 
I don’t see why this is bad character writing though. Starlight has flaws in how she sees the world. She probably always will. I just don’t think she’s actively malicious anymore, and I think she has gotten better over time.The Starlight who casually forced Big Mac to speak and then got annoyed for being called out on it probably wouldn’t have waited as long as she did before blasting Discord in Matter of Principles and then immediately admit that she messed up. Starlight overeacts, it’s who she is, but her threshold for overeacting has gotten more robust, I’d say. It takes more to get her to that point. Which puts her around where most of the cast is, honestly.
 
Hell, one of my favourite Starlight scenes is her being manipulative for a good cause. It’s in Beginning of the End where she pretends to start freaking out over being given the school, because she knows Twilight well enough to know that seeing a friend in need will cause her to immediately snap out of her panic attacks, because she knows that deep down Twilight really can handle almost everything. IT doesn’t work because she miscallculates the effect that actually telling Twilight this will have on her, but I still like it.
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@Background Pony #2BCA  
Basically that.
 
I think the fact that MLP Friendship is Magic has a statu-quo where everything turns out ok at the end of every episode is what makes Starlight forgiving, no matter how big her magic power is. However, I don’t think her story works, especially if she’s gonna end up doing the same things she did back in season 5, invalidating even more her redemption arc.
 
The show made that extremely crystal clear as frequently as possible.
 
full
Background Pony #6744
@Ring Team
 
I honestly can’t think of anything else she did that’s nearly as bad as ELTSD though. Like, that was the gold standard for her relapses and they never got that bad ever again.
Background Pony #6744
@Ring Team
 
I should clarify, I don’t mean “I can’t think of any other bad things that she did” They’re just not in the same universe as ELTSD.
Background Pony #6709
That’s the thing, each of her transgressions is generally less egregious than the one before. Had the trend been in the other direction, then I’d think “invalidating her redemption” might have a point.
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@Latecomer  
Makes sense. Speaking of Discord helping Tirek, I find it strange that some people seem to be mad less at the latter for attacking Equestria and more at the former for siding with him. Tirek corrupted Discord and then betrayed him. It’s not Discord’s fault he’s not incorruptible. In fact, I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault if they’re not incorruptible.
Latecomer

@Andyxdr  
Well, there isn’t usually much discussion of forgiving or redeeming Tirek.
 
Also, he didn’t betray anyone that we know of. (Rather, he was betrayed, by his brother.)
Background Pony #6709
@Latecomer  
Fortunately for her, she doesn’t have an equivalent of directly bringing 3 villains together, freeing 2 of them from Tartarus, and enabling a siege of Equestria while supposedly reformed.
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@Background Pony #6709  
I honestly can’t help but feel like people like you overreacted to that whole thing even though Discord did what he did because he wanted to boost Twilight’s confidence and he believes in the notion that adversity makes people stronger. Also have you ever heard the saying, ‘Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.’?
Background Pony #6709
@Andyxdr  
It doesn’t take an overreaction to acknowledge that Discord did exactly as I described, regardless of why, just as it’s not inherently an overreaction to think that the impetus/inciting incident that prompted Starlight’s anti-cutie mark philosophy and methods was childish and petty, something even we Starlight fans acknowledge. Most viewers don’t let her off the hook for that, so what warrants letting him off when it may have been his worst crime post reformation? As it goes, “Cool motive; still <insert crime>.” Like Derpyfast, I don’t hate Discord; A Matter of Principals was really the one time I truly found him irritating to watch, even more than learning that he was Grogar. Mentioning these points about him is separate from liking him or not. In the comment you replied to, I wasn’t angry, so I’m surprised to be getting told that saying on holding grudges when I chided someone here as recently as this page for the same thing, which had been demonstrated via wanting to beat Starlight into the ground like a dead horse because of how much he does indeed hate her.
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Damn, I’m glad I bailed out on this as soon as I knew where the wind was blowing.
 
With that said, I’m still firmly in the camp that Discord deserved to get blasted by her, very satisfying to watch. The writing would’ve been better if they made Discord less of a complainer and more of a typical trickster where he played pranks on her for his own amusement with some funny slapstick.
 
@Spinny  
I don’t think having her friends angrily chew her out and have her work for her forgiveness by doing all the tasks that her friends assigned to her be an instant forgiveness and a “slap in the wrist”
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I mean, you could argue that Discord deserved that, but that’s the thing: He was constantly questioned since season 3. Back then, it made sense because he was an antagonist. But in the context of a reformed villain like Starlight, I think the writers didn’t want to reflect the same Discord treatment to her for arbitrary reasons even though she ended up doing worse things.
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