Elaborating on a minor point I made in my earlier post, there’s been a fair amount of evidence that ponies don’t have the same hangups we do about mind control. One way of interpreting the ending to “Lesson Zero” is that Celestia was less upset about Twilight manipulating the entire town than she was about Twilight overreacting to the situation in general and letting her fears get the best of her. Then there are the references to “reforming spells” and “spell that will magically compel [ponies] to [become friends again],” from “Keep Calm and Flutter On” and “The Crystalling, Part 2,” respectively. There are even more instances if you count the comics, though their canonicity is always second to the show itself.
 
There are a few instances of mind control being treated as a serious issue, of course. Discord’s brainwashing of the main cast is referenced negatively in “Keep Calm and Flutter On,” and Sombra’s enslavement of the crystal ponies in “The Crystal Empire, Part 1” or “The Cutie Re-Mark, Part 1” is definitely not given any sympathy or justification. Then there are the multiple instances across the Equestria Girls spin-off movies, but those don’t really apply to pony society, and their canonicity is subject to the same rules as the comics.
 
Even so, it’s hard to find any reference to mind control itself being inherently wrong by pony standards. Even in the cases where villains use mind control and are called out on it, there are other factors that play into it being a bad thing. In the cases of Discord, Sombra, and Chrysalis, they used mind control to remove obstacles to their respective attempts at gaining power. Starlight Glimmer herself has brainwashed ponies, albeit nonmagically, but it was marginalized in favor of her hypocrisy and tyranny over her village.
 
EDIT: Just want to point out that I don’t necessarily agree with this viewpoint, either about ponies or about mind control (personally, I think mind control is one of the worst violations of personal liberty imaginable, due to the almost inherent removal of even the possibility of informed consent). I’m a mathematician at heart, so I dislike making assumptions. I also don’t know that it’s fair to judge a people by our own standards, in the absence of any objective moral or ethical guidelines, especially where our standards and theirs might not agree.

@Gizogin
 
Fair enough. I’m willing to put this aside until I see the episode. But make no mistake, I am not expecting to be pleased with whatever justification is given for this action.
 
Not only does it not look good for Starlight, it doesn’t look good for Twilight either. This definitely shows some level of failure on her part if the student she’s had for the entire season still thinks that there’s nothing wrong with mind-controlling people. And remember, Twilight trusts Starlight, too.
 
So….yeah.
 
But as I said, I’ll drop it for now.

@MegaAnimationFan  
Couldn’t agree more. Can’t help but roll my eyes over this. Honestly people, hate before an episode airs is way to quick to judge, but then again, because it’s starlight, they have to find something bad to say about her because she’s Starlight Glimmer!

@Spinny  
You’ve spent a lot of virtual ink criticising Starlight for an action that we have no context for.
 
We do not have access to any means of artificially asserting our own wills over others. Mind control is not possible outside the realms of fiction, and it’s difficult to conceive of a way that could change.
 
However, we do not look kindly on acts that deny or go against the consent of all parties involved. In the words of John Oliver, “Sex is like boxing; if both people didn’t fully agree to participate, one of them is committing a crime.”
 
If we can simply translate our morals onto a world of magical, talking ponies - which is a pretty big assumption - then mind control, magical suggestion, or whatever is actually going on in this scene would certainly appear to be a gross violation of personal rights.
 
As I have said, however, we have absolutely no context for this scene. For all we know, and as unlikely as it would seem, it is possible the five ponies under Starlight’s spell gave informed consent. Maybe they’re golems or magical constructs that can only act under compulsion in the first place, and Starlight simply modeled them after ponies close to her. It could even be the case that Starlight murdered these ponies and is using their corpses as magical puppets. The point is, without context, we have no reason or justification to assume anything. And, if we are transplanting our morals onto these multicolored equines, should that not also include the presumption of innocence?
 
There’ll be plenty of time to be justifiably angry after the fact, if you still have reason to be.

Well, after going to gym and venting my initial frustration into some weight-lifting, I’ve actually decided that it’s still too early to panic. I mean, we still don’t know the premises of Starlight’s questionable actions here, nor we’ve seen the consequences of it. It could be her actually breaking under the pressure (seemingly calm and concentrated behaviour here means nothing: for different ponies break-ups could manifest differently). It could be the same case with eponymous superdickery comic covers (i. e. actual scene being some dream sequence or something equally orthogonal to what it looks like here). Or it could happen at the very beginning, with actual episode being about Starlight mending the broken friendships with Mane 5 after the incident… Anyway, even if will ends up being the most unfortunate variant (like Starlight using the mane 5 like her puppets the whole episode with Twilight pulling some deus ex machina at he end) I could still give it all the berating it deserves after the actual event rather than being… prematurely pessimistic.

Of course, what Starlight Glimmer post isn’t complete without a “drama in the comments” tag

if she wanted to she could literally drive them insane.

@OverlordScorpion  

 
He, I loved this part as a Spanish speaker… “Cogeria”, “Cogería”. That’s funny (seriously). In Spanish we would say that a hater “cogería a Glim y haría longanizas con su carne y vendería sus huesos a la fábrica de pegamento más próxima” (would go and do [“longaniza” has no translation. It’s a type of lunchmeat, cold meat if you’re from, the UK, we have, a bit strong-flavored] and sell her bones top the nearest glue factory).
 
See why I say bronies are amongst the most cultured fandoms I’ve ever seen? I for one welcome my new… Er… Sorry, too many pop culture: OvelordScorpion’s knowledge and thank him for his educative post. I sucked at Latin despite being Spanish. I was quite competent at Classic Greek, tough. That was like, 15 or 16 years ago.

@Hateot
 
People do it with Discord, and he’s far more quick to do crazy stuff than Starlight is even after 3 seasons of being reformed.

@Josh103  
Yeah Twilight just needs to put the fear of God into Starlight like once. She’s been pretty kid gloves with her so far

Honestly the best way to teach Starlight, given her personality, is to show her who’s boss. Twilight has been too soft on her. It’s time for Twilight to rightfully assert her dominance over her student.
 
I like Starlight now, but I swear if Twilight is unable to for whatever reason…
 
As much as I don’t like Celestia, Twilight NEEDS to react the same way Celestia did to her actions in Lesson Zero. A reaction that gets Starlight legitimately afraid as Twilight was. Of course, other than a stern talking to Twilight doesn’t truly punish Starlight, instead proposes a different solution to help Starlight with her need for control using magic. Starlight clearly needs help, and hopefully this episode give her that help.

@Spinny  

 
Twilight being unfit for society is not a joke. Honestly, it’s ultimately going to take A LOT to convince me why she doesn’t deserve to be sent straight to a mental health institution after this to learn that it is actually NOT OKAY to exert your power to control others, something that you would honestly think she would know after spending so much time as Celestia’s student.

Not gonna lie a part of me hopes this scene turns out to be a dream or something, so all this back and forth becomes even more hilarious in hindsight

@Spinny
 
I’ve honestly never gotten the impression that the mane 6 ARE her friends.
 
It always honestly felt like they were putting up with Starlight and giving her a chance because Twilight was trying to reform Star with friendship. AJ was just pissed off at her in No Second Prances.

@kztxl7
 
Starlight being unfit for society is not a joke. Honestly, it’s ultimately going to take A LOT to convince me why she doesn’t deserve to be sent straight to a mental health institution after this to learn that it is actually NOT OKAY to exert your power to control others, something that you would honestly think she would know after spending so much time as Twilight’s student.
 
In any case, the fact that she’s mind-controlling them is only part of the issue here. The other issue is that we have not had Starlight receive any positive interaction with the Remane 5 since the montage at the end of TCR. And now that we’re only a few episodes away from the finale, where she could officially go from a secondary character to a main, we’re getting an episode in which she mind controls them.
 
Why would the Remane 5 even WANT to be her friend after this?

@Hateot
 
Remember how she reacted after that line in No Second Prances though.
 
She was exasperated when AJ continued to growl at her, and she yelled “FINE, I’LL CHANGE HIM BACK!” but it sounded like she was just doing it to get AJ off her back. Like she didn’t properly understand what the problem was in that specific case.

Alright time to vent a little, because I’m getting cross eyed just trying to wrap my head around this.
 
For the life of me I can’t come up with a theory on how mindcontrolling people who are supposed to be your friends - or if not that, then atleast the friends of your teacher’s - is going to be justified with out the one responsible for it taking a dip in the insanity lane or being a sociopath to begin with.
 
I understand that she’s still supposed to be inexperienced about friendship. That she first needs to make those mistakes in brainwashing and reckless magic usage and then learn from them like Twilight once did. But here, the thing is she’s already been told-
 
No, actually… she’s told herself that this kind of thing is not okay: ”…And I guess my first instinct shouldn’t be to magically command ponies to act the way I want them to?”
 
Incase the last season’s resolution wasn’t enough to convince her of that.
 
Or why couldn’t she ask them for help and if she did, why wouldn’t they help her if it was for Twilight’s assignment? If for somereason they refused (because the plot needed them to be jerks to make the story work) I think that’s how they’re going to justify this in the end. I just can’t figure out anything else that makes sense after she was first told the whole cult indoctrination thing was wrong and she then herself concluded that using invasive behavior affecting magic on others isn’t cool in No Second Prances.
 
I just wish they don’t let her off the hook in the end with a “you-meant-well” pat on the back or telling her that doing bad things and getting away with them is a-okay because “we’ve all done bad things of this caliber before, and in this exact same context.” That would be just stupid.
 
@Mojo  
It’s just not easy to sympathize or love a character with a personality like that, if we’re being told she’s a hero that people are supposed to root for.

@Background Pony #89C0
 
Well it’s that or the show is honestly going to say mind control is a good thing.

@gingerninja666  
“This’ll probably be the episode where she learns to cut that out”  
I f*** hope so and that would be about time

Stuff like this is what makes Reformed Starlight a better character than Reformed Sunset, her personality still has a villainous edge to it and her first instincts in many situations really haven’t changed much. She’s more like Discord or Trixie than Sunset. And that’s a good thing, it means she still feels like the same character she was before post reformation. Whereas with Sunset I always felt like she just got a totally different personality in RR onward.
 
 
So of course, she gets mostly hatred and bashing over it.

I think the key here is that Starlight doesn’t think she’s hurting anyone. With her village she realized that cutie marks are important and that she was making them live in fear or suffering by controlling them.
 
Here it seems she thinks she’s just getting them to help her out and there’s no harm in it.
 
She controlled Big Mac in No Second Prances too, and her reaction to needing to change him back was an exasperated “ALL RIGHT, I’LL CHANGE HIM BACK!”. She honestly doesn’t seem to think that controlling people in and of itself is a bad thing. This’ll probably be the episode where she learns to cut that out.

@Spinny  
My problem is as I’ve said, you’ve been trying to downplay Twilight Sparkle’s action to make what she did look not as bad.
 
Of course I don’t believe Twilight would do this to her friends at this point in time. I’ve had nearly 6 seasons worth of episodes with her in them for her character develop.
 
Meanwhile, Starlight Glimmer is a recently reformed villain with not even 1 full season of her being on the Mane 6 side.
 
Also, going by the end of the actual clip, unlike Twilight Sparkle who intentionally tried to cause conflict with her mind control, Starlight seems to be attempt to do the opposite. It doesn’t make what she’s doing OK, but downplaying who I like seems to be the name of the game here.
 
Starlight possessing a mind that is not fit for society is a joke because that can be applied to Twilight as well. Anyone who stresses themselves so badly with unfounded fears to the point that they believe they need to mind control children should be locked up in an asylum.

@shinjojin
 
This is all that matters to me, as a hypnofag.

@Spinny  
The only thing we can hope is for Starlight to realize by herself “Holy shit what have i done ?”

>20 MB  
fuck it, my phone barely crashed