Starlight's progression as a character, going forward?

[ManaMinori 4,149]

On 5/24/2017 at 6:05 PM, Lambdadelta said:

Trixie is a really awesome friend, but i think she might have bad influences on Starlight (the end of All Bottled Up). Maud might be the most relatable friend that Starlight ever had but she's weirdo like Starlight so i dont think she will give Starlight good advices about using magic restraints (she is the one who accidentally help villain-Starlight in the first place lol). Sunburst is just passionate about magics so he will encourage her using magics... and Twilight just mentally torture Starlight in her Friendship Cave, not helping either.

AJ is an interesting choice. Let see, she was angry at Starlight when she cast spells on her brother but went easy on Starlight when Starlight cast mind control spell on AJ HERSELF and her friends (Rainbow and Pinkie are only one who pissed at Starlight so hard). Unless Starlight touch her family or ruin some traditions, AJ may not reliable as you think. 

you're right. With Trixie's laid back attitude to problems (like the cutie map disappearing), could have a bad influence on her- if its even possible for Starlight to get any worse than she already is. I mean, she already doesn't take friendship lessons all that seriously, or other ponies' magical moral boundaries. It's definitely a slippery slope with Trixie and her attitude.

[ManaMinori 4,149]

Starlight's attitude in EqG only highlights my concerns for this character and her 'pogress'. Siiiiigh. 

[ManaMinori 4,149]

I can only hope that AJLight will become possible with season 8, because season 7 is looking GRIM

[ManaMinori 4,149]

would love to hear more opinions from Starlight fans, and not-so-fans

[FlareGun45 2,221]

1 hour ago, Nightmare Muffin said:

would love to hear more opinions from Starlight fans, and not-so-fans

Here I'm a Starlight fan! And my opinion is: Starlight needs an episode with Spike sometime in the future! There, happy?

[Thrond 3,268]

On 5/27/2017 at 6:53 AM, The Nth Doctor said:

Starlight's wonky characterization makes a little more sense if you place some of her S7 episodes during her Redemption Montage at the end of Season Five and during Season 6

As far as I'm concerned, none of her episodes actually take place during Season 7's time period and are building up to her saving of Equestria at the end of Season 6

I really don't think this sort of mental gymnastics should be necessary. 

 

Anyway: I sort of wish Starlight would hang out with the main six more, but right now Applejack doesn't seem to have a strong relationship with her, so I don't really see how this will happen. It does make sense that Applejack will have the fortitude to keep Starlight grounded, as she's not one to suffer nonsense from others despite often being a source of such nonsense herself. But to be honest, I don't really think Twilight lets Starlight get away with all that much either: she yells at Starlight in "Every Little Thing She Does," and she freaks out as soon as she hears what Starlight did in "A Royal Problem," so I'm not convinced Applejack would do too much of a better job. Besides, as impatient as I'm getting with her, Starlight is making progress: in "All Bottled Up," she made an effort to avoid casting magic on Trixie, and in "A Royal Problem" she immediately questions whether she did the right thing. So while I wouldn't mind seeing Starlight hang out with Applejack, I don't think that's necessary. 

And as for Starlight's characterization being wonky: I'm only really bothered by it because I think it's getting repetitive and I'm not sure I find Starlight an endearing enough character to compensate. I guess she still gets into some relatable scenarios, but I often feel like she's repeating the same notes over and over: "All Bottled Up" = "Every Little Thing She Does," "Rock Solid Friendship" = "No Second Prances," "A Royal Problem" = "To Where and Back Again." It does sometimes seem like she's learning all the same things over and over again, but more importantly I just think she'd be much more endearing if the episodes she starred in had way more variety. She's not without her charms. 

[ManaMinori 4,149]

1 hour ago, MegaSean45 said:

Here I'm a Starlight fan! And my opinion is: Starlight needs an episode with Spike sometime in the future! There, happy?

how would that advance her character?

[FlareGun45 2,221]

31 minutes ago, Nightmare Muffin said:

how would that advance her character?

Helping Spike out with a problem that nopony, not even Twilight, ever thought about before, and only Starlight could see it?

[MLPFanatic34 3,241]

I also would like to see Starlight hang out with the mane six more than we've seen her doing, but in terms of what we've seen of her, I don't have a problem with her character.

[Brainstorm 4,123]

I think Starlight is making good process, maybe she'll help Zecora, Steven Magnet, or Spike on some more adventures.

[ManaMinori 4,149]

This is a fantastic thought from Music Chart Fan, which I'll place here, instead of stretching the op more than it already is.

Quote

Now we come to the heavier stuff, and my biggest issue with the episode. Starlight impulsively uses her magic to switch Celestia's and Luna's cutie marks without their consent, and on top of that, the spell she casts is irreversible for the 24-hour period that it's in effect, which creates its own issues. Besides Starlight's worrying about her spell actually driving Celestia and Luna further apart, what if Celestia and Luna were not able to use each other's magic properly, and then there was some threat which Celestia and/or Luna would have to solve with the use of magic? However, the bigger issue to me is that, by nonconsensually switching Celestia's and Luna's cutie marks, Starlight yet again immorally violates what I believe is a fundamental human right to ownership and control of one's own body and mind.

To start off, I'll address one defense I've seen for Starlight's actions - that Starlight supposedly "had no choice" but to use her magic to force a solution. But Celestia and Luna had only been bickering back and forth for about a minute or so when Starlight cast her spell, and this was Starlight's first attempt to get them to talk to each other about their issues. If this misunderstanding between them has been festering for a while, it's not really surprising that it wouldn't be solved in a single short conversation. It might require letting the two of them cool off, talking to them more individually, and slowly getting each of them to concede that the other might have a point. Furthermore, Starlight could try to pick a better time for follow-up conversations with Luna in particular. It seems pretty obvious that the morning right after Luna gets "off her shift" isn't a good time to ask Luna to do things.

Tied into this is the idea planted by Twilight that the current fight between Celestia and Luna might lead to Luna turning into Nightmare Moon again. First, I'm not sure how much of a danger that really is. But at the time that Starlight cast her spell, I really don't see what was happening that would justify the drastic and immoral action of nonconsensually switching Celestia's and Luna's cutie marks. Again, it seems very premature to conclude that Celestia's and Luna's issues were completely unsolvable at that point, and I see no real evidence that Luna was on the verge of transforming into Nightmare Moon or anything, which would supposedly necessitate taking urgent extreme action. So, to reiterate, I don't see the case for Starlight's actions being excused because she "had no choice" - it seems to me that Starlight hadn't given her first attempt, or the idea of slowly bringing Celestia and Luna around, much of any chance to start working, and I don't see anything about the situation that would necessitate immediate drastic action.

Next, after switching Celestia's and Luna's cutie marks, Starlight might worry about a catastrophic result, but she only does so after the fact, and she doesn't ever seem to recognize the basic immorality of what she did, regardless of what the outcome ultimately is. When Celestia and Luna are obviously angry with Starlight and demand that she reverse the spell, Starlight doesn't acknowledge that what she did was wrong, but says she still thinks it's a good idea. And when Twilight is freaking out about Starlight switching Celestia and Luna's cutie marks, Starlight says with annoyance "I thought we moved past this. It was the right call!", followed by a slight "I hope". I see this as Starlight not conceding that what she did was immoral and reckless, but rather, still trying to argue that what she did was right. Starlight also says in her dream later that "going with my gut was the wrong call", but she apparently only believes that to the extent that she thinks that it led to Luna becoming Nightmare Moon (and possibly Celestia becoming Daybreaker). And after Celestia retrieves Luna and brings her to Starlight's dream, we see Starlight crying and saying "What was I thinking? I'm never going with my gut again!". When I saw Starlight say that, I couldn't help saying "Good! You shouldn't!". In seriousness, if Starlight's gut tells her to magically alter other ponies' bodies and minds without their consent, violating a bedrock principle of morality, then Starlight definitely should not be going with her gut, and should be looking into unlearning (or at least not acting on) instincts like that.

To add fuel to the fire, at the end of the episode, Celestia, Luna, and Twilight all unqualifiedly praise Starlight for switching Celestia's and Luna's cutie marks without their consent. Celestia tells Starlight outright that "it was the right call going with your gut" and waves away any (arguably insufficient) guilt Starlight has for coming "dangerously close to messing everything up", with tacit agreement from Luna. Luna tells Starlight that the map was wise to send her because "nopony else would have been so bold as to do what you did", while I can't help cynically thinking "because everyone else would recognize that what Starlight did was immoral and not do it?". Even Twilight, who knows that Starlight nonconsensually switched Celestia's and Luna's cutie marks, hugs Starlight and tells her "I knew you could do it, and I'm so, so, so, so, so proud of you!". There's no mention at all of the basic wrongness and immorality of what Starlight did, and even Starlight's token acknowledgement of the danger of what she did is downplayed and waved away. It's a shame, because the interactions here between Celestia and Luna, Twilight and Starlight, and Celestia and Luna and Starlight are heartwarming, but they're tainted by the lack of acknowledgement of or learned lessons about Starlight having used immoral means to solve the problem.

And my issues with how the end of the episode played out highlight my differences with another of the defenses I've seen for Starlight's actions - that they can be excused (or even considered right) because things turned out well in the end. This argument seems essentially to be saying that the ends justify the means. But I don't believe that the end of Celestia and Luna making up justifies Starlight's means to achieve that, and perhaps an analogous example might illustrate why not. Say X and Y are at a party, but X doesn't seem to be having much fun, so, unbeknownst to X, Y slips some drugs into X's drink. Even if X goes on to have a better time and recovers from the drugs later, I would think that we should still consider it immoral to give people mind-altering drugs in their food/drinks without their consent, and people shouldn't be praised for doing that. Similarly, even though Starlight's cutie mark-switching spell might have had a positive outcome this time, I still think that altering others' physical/mental states without their consent is immoral in itself, and should not be praised and encouraged. I don't want to live in a society in which other people feel justified in intruding upon my body and mind without my consent because they believe that it'll be good for me or that a positive outcome will result.

Furthermore, I think Starlight's behavior in this episode, and the way it was treated, have a significant impact on Starlight's characterization and role in the show going forward. One of the defenses of Starlight in general that I've often seen is that Starlight's reckless and immoral use of magic to solve problems, including altering the bodies and minds of others, is ultimately a temporary thing. By this argument, Starlight is just reforming very slowly and making a lot of mistakes along the way - we can't expect her to do a 180 overnight, etc. But, if this episode (along with others) is any indication, Starlight's reckless and immoral use of magic is here to stay; it has become Starlight's M.O., what she's expected and even called upon to do. And since I have profound moral disagreements with how Starlight has often used her magic, that probably imposes a fairly low ceiling on how much I can like or relate to Starlight's character (in addition to other issues I have with her characterization).

To conclude this section, for as much as I've written about the problems I have with it, it doesn't even really seem like Starlight's switching of Celestia's and Luna's cutie marks is essential to making the episode work. As far as I can tell, none of the things Luna does in Celestia's place require Celestia's cutie mark or magic specifically. And while the episode states that only Luna's magic works in the dream realm, as far as I know, that wasn't set in stone prior to this episode. The main point is to get Celestia and Luna to do each other's jobs and discover the difficulties of doing them. Then the dilemma would be how to get Celestia and Luna to start doing each other's jobs in the first place. Funnily enough, the two of them were convinced to do each other's jobs fairly easily after their cutie marks were switched, even when they wouldn't necessarily be required to do that, so I wonder how hard it would have been to find a way to get the two of them to go along with it using consensual means. I even saw a suggestion that Celestia and Luna could be convinced, or come up with the idea themselves, to switch their cutie marks voluntarily, which would mitigate many of the issues I detailed above.

 

[The Nth Doctor 664]

17 hours ago, AlexanderThrond said:

And as for Starlight's characterization being wonky: I'm only really bothered by it because I think it's getting repetitive and I'm not sure I find Starlight an endearing enough character to compensate. I guess she still gets into some relatable scenarios, but I often feel like she's repeating the same notes over and over: "All Bottled Up" = "Every Little Thing She Does," "Rock Solid Friendship" = "No Second Prances," "A Royal Problem" = "To Where and Back Again." It does sometimes seem like she's learning all the same things over and over again, but more importantly I just think she'd be much more endearing if the episodes she starred in had way more variety. She's not without her charms. 

She's slowly learning to to knee-jerkingly react to problems by casting magic at it

She panicked in "A Royal Problem" and swapped their Cutie Marks

"All Bottled Up" was honestly her best showing as she directed her emotions elsewhere rather than casting them on Trixie - she just needed a better outlet instead of bottling them though

But hey, progress is progress

[Jeric 46,878]

On 6/11/2017 at 3:16 PM, The Nth Doctor said:

She's slowly learning to to knee-jerkingly react to problems by casting magic at it

She panicked in "A Royal Problem" and swapped their Cutie Marks

"All Bottled Up" was honestly her best showing as she directed her emotions elsewhere rather than casting them on Trixie - she just needed a better outlet instead of bottling them though

But hey, progress is progress

Kinda like how a real person makes progress with flaws or traits that may be problematic. It's actually why Starlight may be one of the more realistic characters on the show. Gotta struggle to make struggle meaningful, yanno?

[Patty Thundersnow 4,267]

1 minute ago, Jeric said:

Kinda like how a real person makes progress with flaws or traits that may be problematic. It's actually why Starlight may be one of the more realistic characters on the show. Gotta struggle to make struggle meaningful, yanno?

And that's why I love Starlight, because she has struggled with her flaws and the traits that were weighing on her shoulders. It makes the show, at least to me, feel more real than not

[SaburoDaimando 1,196]

One thing I would like to see happen to Starlight is for her to get sick.

I'm not kidding.  I would like to see her go through an episode having to deal with being sick, with others helping take care of her during her downtime.

[Brainstorm 4,123]

Starlight's character is improving.