Unpopular opinion time

CronoM

@Badumsquish  
Agreed. There should of definitely been some easy to conceive middle ground; she was an adult cult leader, kidnapper (in terms of the mane 6) and time travel terrorist. Even some brief jail time with some consuling would of done her character a great service in efforts to try and make her a well written character.
 
This really isn’t Starlight bashing. This is wishing the writers didn’t do Starlight so dirty. An inbetween punishment would of been a good step.
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@CronoM  
I don’t think Starlight ever did anything she thought was bad - at least, before her reform. And the rest is probably down to a load of self-doubt - she was wrong about the one thing in the world she was more sure of than anything, after all.
 
And Sunset does pretty much work most of the time.
 
Also, it’s not like the Elements were made on purpose. They were just reflections of what the Pillars - a semi-functional group themsleves - put into them. Together they balance and amplify, becoming more than the sum of their parts. Alone - well, it might still work if one had Harmony in thier heart. Maybe.
 
 
@Background Pony #2394  
Well her becoming loved is the stretch, but who says bullies lack talent? And saving the school several times probably helped.
 
 
 
@CronoM  
Twilight was the one who showed Starlight she was wrong about everything. Obviously, she was also the one she looked to to show her what was right instead.
 
I do think she should have kept more Equalist traits, but I guess she tries to suppress those thoughts when she has them.
 
 
@Spinny  
I think that maybe bacuse you dislike her, her popularity seems a bit greater than it is? I don’t think she’s ahead of the Manes.
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@Anonycat
 
I mean, that system has gotten so centered on gems tha even though after you buy the few characters and shops that still cost any and unlock all the territory (which is perfectly possible after one year or so playing it), you just keep collecting useless bits you can’t spend. there should be a system to convert bits to gems to counter that.
Badumsquish
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@CronoM  
Yeah. Like, it doesn’t even have to be a jail in the traditional sense. It could be more akin to a hospital with a heavy emphasis on reformation, and at the same time they can’t leave and are kept an eye on so they’re not a threat in the meantime. And sure one could argue they don’t deserve such a chance but Starlight didn’t exactly deserve to have a former victim basically devote their life into changing her for the better for her sake. In fact, Twilight’s Home for Redeeming Villains would have been SO much more entertaining than the school XD
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Okay, I guess.
@Latecomer  
A simple farming game dedicated to Applejack’s family, then a simple air racing game dedicated to Rainbow Dash and a simple platformer dedicated to Spike and Rarity’s search for gems would have been good enough.  
Hell, a simple Harvest Moon-like game would have been enough to keep people playing on AJ’s farm for months.
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@Badumsquish  
Isn’t all of that… kinda what happened, though? Lock her in with one of the most powerful magic users in the world with the implicit threat of “fuck this up, and you’re going to literal hell” that was only never acted on because Twilight is a saint. Any freedoms Starlight had in S6 were ones Twilight let her have.
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@Myoozik
 
At the very least, I’ll call her a wish-fulfillment character.
 
@Dustcan
 
I most certainly have. Namely after ELTSD.
 
@Latecomer
 
No, she’s definitely more popular than any of the mane six, to include Twilight and Fluttershy. She also doesn’t have the same contingent of haters. Honestly, to this day I sometimes get irritated when there’s a lot of Sunset art in the trending images, and there also seem to be a lot of artists who tend to create Sunset art almost exclusively.
Latecomer

@CronoM  
I suppose they could have locked her up over the seasonal break - but as the number of COzy-in-Tartatrus fics shows, that’s a long time from a viewer perspective. And if she surrenders of her own will, it feels a bit off.
 
 
@Anonycat  
Those can be worked into a more general game, or just released as cheap apps.
 
 
 
@Spinny  
Do you hae any actual proof of all this? I mean, loads of people don’t even watch Equestria Girls.
CronoM

@CronoM
I don’t think Starlight ever did anything she thought was bad - at least, before her reform. And the rest is probably down to a load of self-doubt - she was wrong about the one thing in the world she was more sure of than anything, after all.
 
Really? Are you sure you don’t want to rethink that argument?
 
Yes, the original cult town was designed to have some moral ambiguity from Starlight’s perspective….Most of the original citizens came to her town of their own free will, dealing with a minority of troublemakers may be considered justified in a twisted perspective, and the fact that she had her own cutie mark had more to do with her only being able to do the ‘cutie mark solution: spell while she herself had her above average abilities.
 
But that wasn’t the extent of her crimes! She kidnapped the Mane 6 and unwillingly took their cutie marks, tried forced conditioning on them, used debatabley deadly force on her pursuers to the extent where she was surprised even an alicorn could block it. and from intentionally and self admitted evil spite, she sabotaged royal property and attempted to banish Twilight and Spike forever to a timeline where they never met their friends via stopping RD’s big destiny for all of them.
 
Unlike the former list, the latter list was most definitely done with non-ambiguous evil intent.
 
She had a mixed philosophy on what she considered correct, but she still most CERTAINLY had quite a bit of true evil intent.  
Also, it’s not like the Elements were made on purpose. They were just reflections of what the Pillars - a semi-functional group themselves - put into them. Together they balance and amplify, becoming more than the sum of their parts. Alone - well, it might still work if one had Harmony in thier heart. Maybe.
 
Maybe, maybe not. Not only is the power something that can’t be replicated unless passed down, it seemed to have at least some intelligent design. One such avatar seemed to be what Celestia desired it to be, something that would simply pass things on with Twilight at the center ot it all  
full
 
And one very different form that far exceeded Twilight or Celestia’s imagination.  
full
 
Something with true form no matter how high on the godly level scale it seemed to be.
 
Twilight was the one who showed Starlight she was wrong about everything. Obviously, she was also the one she looked to to show her what was right instead.
 
Did she? Most of her long term equality arguments went completely unaddressed by Twilight. Heck she even use a positive variant of her philosophy to turn Flutterhsy and the pegasi bullies into friends. It was done to spite Twilight and ruin another attempt of Twi to fix things, but she still did so. Twilight never addressed the ponies that originally came to Starlight’s village willingly because of her cutie marks, or ponies like the Rodeo Clown who lived a large part of their life regretting their cutie mark. Yes they addressed the original starting point of her philosophy, but that really didn’t go anywhere in terms of disproving her views in general.
 
The main contentntion was doing it to her and her friends, and she didn’t regret doing the action out of spite really at all. It was only until the results of the Mane 6 being important parts of Euestria’s survival did she lose confidence simply due to the death toll of her actions being so high. Twilight insisted that all unique friendships were important, but Twilight’s demonstration was the exception of exceptions, the Mane 6 who constantly save Equestria. Twilight didn’t do much at all to disprove the more positive and moderate sides of Starlight’s philosophy so long they weren’t’ taken to extremes, Starlight simply gave up after seeing the handiwork of messing with the wrong friends.
 
In other words it was a cheap way to end Starlight’s platform, by using the extreme of extremes.
 
“I do think she should have kept more Equalist traits
 
Agreed. Would of made her way more interesting then just the identity of the reformed apprentice of Twilight.
Badumsquish
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@GenericArchangel  
Maybe only in the loosest sense. She was forgiven from the get-go so nothing was on the line, there was nothing actually stopping her from relapsing like she did like a dozen times (every time too, it was sheer luck ponies didn’t get hurt or worse), Twilight sympathized with her so much that even an implied threat of hell was a bluff at best. They basically just let her wander around on the off-chance it would change her, got really lucky it worked, and had nothing in store if it didn’t. If there wasn’t a MASSIVE risk involved in the way they attempted to reform her and it wasn’t really unlikely to work, there’s no reason they couldn’t have tried it on Cozy Glow too :P
CronoM

@CronoM
I suppose they could have locked her up over the seasonal break - but as the number of COzy-in-Tartatrus fics shows, that’s a long time from a viewer perspective.
 
So? Starlight’s quite clearly an adult, not a child. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the crime and all that. And the very criminal stuff was not under any magical artifacts influencing her thoughts at all.
 
 
@Latecomer  
@CronoM
And if she surrenders of her own will, it feels a bit off.
 
I completely disagree. She just saw that her time meddling ended several worlds. That’s NOT as small thing, why is everyone treating it as it is? A lot of criminals would throw themselves in jail if they saw their actions go well beyond any evil they wanted to commit. Just hours ago she was voilently attacking Twilight and trying to trap her in a doomed past. Few people would fret if Starlight accepted that she still had a lot of hate, anger and issues but was willing to be imprisoned for a while to try to reform after nearly causing a freaking Apocalypse.
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@Badumsquish  
She only relapsed once, and it can be argued that due to lack of malicious intent, she was just being incredibly stupid, not evil. And just because they never did anything doesn’t mean they couldn’t, especially since all of the Mane 6 could be present instead of just one of them.
 
As for the comparison to Cozy Glow, there is a key difference: Starlight backed down and repented, Cozy Glow did not, even when given the chance.
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@CronoM  
You’re right - I forgot the second two-parter which I dislike. I do think she was at the very least acting in what she considered an entirely correct and reasonable fashion until Fluttershy splashed her - in other words, as long as she was in control of the situation.
 
As for the Elements - well, the nature of them and the Tree is quite mysterious. I don’t think it’s awareness, whatever that may be, extends fully ot the human world though, save the part Twilight brought with her.
 
Talking Starlight down more thourouglhy might have helped - but the CMC might have been better for that then Twi.
 
 
 
@CronoM  
It doesn’t feel very friendly on Twi’s part - certainly compared to taking her on as a student. The rest of the group could have been more releuctant, though.
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