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Josh Haber on Starlight’s Parents


ShootingStar159

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A latch-key-kid (I had to look it up) is someone whose parents are never around, so the child has their own key to the house. This would certainly help explain how she was able to go so long without help.

 If this makes it into the show itself, I’d like the next Hearthswarming episode to be about how Starlight’s parents finally track her down and either come to Ponyville or invite her and Twilight back to Starlight’s childhood home. I think her parents absence would explain her cynical views on the holiday. If her parents could only spend one day with her every year, and they try to make it special for her with lots of gifts and candy, considering how bitter Starlight was over Sunburst, I could see that bitterness twisting the meaning of the holiday to her.

Edited by ShootingStar159
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Huh, I've never even thought about Starlight's parents. Could be interesting to see her deal with her old village in general, since she doesn't seem to have much attachment to it or fond memories of it. Josh just might be joking about how he never considered the parents in the script himself, so I think there's potential to go any ways about it with what that relationship would actually look like.

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Yeesh, this something that would have been useful to know from the start, would have made her backstory a bit more tolerable 

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If the show really wanted to sell us on her motivations for becoming evil and feel bad for her despite an incredibly rushed reformation, this information would have helped smooth things over a bit.

I know that I definitely would have been less harsh on in it, if this was mentioned in the season 5 finale.

Edited by cmarston1
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My thoughts about this are ... "Isn't this a little normal?" 

I assumed this was the case for many of the characters since kids are shown often without family doing some crazy things. It isn't crazy to suggest a higher degree of youth independence is built-in with this society. Starlight and Scootaloo definitely would have something in common depending on the level of absence. 

Basically, I didn't need the sledgehammer, so I appreciate the writers acknowledging the ability of some of the audience to step back and see the entire landscape. 

 

Books guys! Reading lots of books will teach you how to do this. Read for fun ... it makes other media sources much more fulfilling. You then don't need a sledgehammer to hit you with the obvious. 

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(edited)
43 minutes ago, cmarston1 said:

If the show really wanted to sell us on her motivations for becoming evil and feel bad for her despite an incredibly rushed reformation, this information would have helped smooth things over a bit.

I know that I definitely would have been less harsh on in it, if this was mentioned in the season 5 finale.

 

Oh, c’mon, where would they have the time to include this vital information? They had to include every villain, or it wouldn’t have been fair. And they had  to include a song at the end, you can’t have a finale without a song! Those things are clearly more important than fully establishing your new main character.

 

23 minutes ago, Jeric said:

My thoughts about this are ... "Isn't this a little normal?" 

I assumed this was the case for many of the characters since kids are shown often without family doing some crazy things. It isn't crazy to suggest a higher degree of youth independence is built-in with this society. Starlight and Scootaloo definitely would have something in common depending on the level of absence. 

Basically, I didn't need the sledgehammer, so I appreciate the writers acknowledging the ability of some of the audience to step back and see the entire landscape. 

 

Books guys! Reading lots of books will teach you how to do this. Read for fun ... it makes other media sources much more fulfilling. You then don't need a sledgehammer to hit you with the obvious. 

Some people want everything explained to them, down to the littlest detail. Some people want almost nothing explained, so they can’t piece the information together for themselves. 

If I ask people which tells a better story, Dark Souls, or Mass Effect, I’m not going to get the same answer from everyone.

Neither option is better, and neither option is wrong, it’s all down to personal preference.

Edited by ShootingStar159
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48 minutes ago, ShootingStar159 said:

Neither option is better, and neither option is wrong, it’s all down to personal preference.

True. 

Unfortunately it can also come down to intelligence, or more likely not training your mind to look for subtly in narrative. If you aren't used to it, then you'll want more detail and info dumps. 

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Starlight's parents probably ignored her or had very little to do with her life growing up, so maybe they weren't in the finale because it wouldn't have been important to really have them in it because they had so little to do with their daughter in the first place. Really what I'm saying is that the writers may have decided to cut them simply because they didn't want to waste the limited amount of screen time that they had on them if they were never very central to the story and her life in the first place.   

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2 hours ago, Kiryu-Chan said:

Yeesh, this something that would have been useful to know from the start, would have made her backstory a bit more tolerable 

That's the beauty and risk of having your exposition being given through the bias of source subjuct, not an outside narrator.

Compare this to the reasoning behind Snowfall Frost's past, giving through Applejack (an unbiased source). We see exactly who Snowfall lives with where her mindset comes from and how she reached said mindset. With Starlight her parents were never too much in her life so she sees no point in bringing them up at all, SHE'S telling the story, and only the parts she felt were important and they were never part of it and still are not part of it so how were we ever going to get the answer out of her unless an unbiased source is willing to fill in the details.

I sense a perfect Sunburst episode in the future!

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This does help explain how nobody was around to give her the guidance she quite clearly needed. I have to wonder, do the adults of her childhood town not interact with the children much? I'm surprised nobody took pity on her or anything. Nonetheless, it explains a lot, and fits my operating theory that nobody was there to teach Starlight to deal with social interactions maturely, which only makes me like her reformation in "The Cutie Re-Mark" more. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: she's a messed-up kid who wants to do good but doesn't know how. Twilight didn't forgive her; rather, she just saw that Starlight desperately needed help. 

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9 hours ago, AlexanderThrond said:

This does help explain how nobody was around to give her the guidance she quite clearly needed. I have to wonder, do the adults of her childhood town not interact with the children much? I'm surprised nobody took pity on her or anything. Nonetheless, it explains a lot, and fits my operating theory that nobody was there to teach Starlight to deal with social interactions maturely, which only makes me like her reformation in "The Cutie Re-Mark" more. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: she's a messed-up kid who wants to do good but doesn't know how. Twilight didn't forgive her; rather, she just saw that Starlight desperately needed help. 

I suppose we can imply from how powerful she was that the other ponies (both adults and children) thought she was this "weird, spooky unicorn with uncanny amounts of power" and decided it best to stay clear of her. Maybe she was prone to the same kind of outbursts that she exhibits as an adult and that helped drive away any support that could have come from her neighbors?

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3 minutes ago, Truffles said:

I suppose we can imply from how powerful she was that the other ponies (both adults and children) thought she was this "weird, spooky unicorn with uncanny amounts of power" and decided it best to stay clear of her. Maybe she was prone to the same kind of outbursts that she exhibits as an adult and that helped drive away any support that could have come from her neighbors?

That and the invocation of Ockham works in this case. If a thing caused emotional distress, it's common to try and avoid said thing. At least that is what I inferred from the implication. 

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(edited)
26 minutes ago, Truffles said:

I suppose we can imply from how powerful she was that the other ponies (both adults and children) thought she was this "weird, spooky unicorn with uncanny amounts of power" and decided it best to stay clear of her. Maybe she was prone to the same kind of outbursts that she exhibits as an adult and that helped drive away any support that could have come from her neighbors?

 

19 minutes ago, Jeric said:

That and the invocation of Ockham works in this case. If a thing caused emotional distress, it's common to try and avoid said thing. At least that is what I inferred from the implication. 

I’m sure it’s a mix of both of these. Starlight said that she wouldn’t make new friends because she’s was scared to lose them too. This is Equestria, I find it hard to believe nobody tried to reach out to her, I just think she scared them off, Moondancer style, maybe even worse.

Edited by ShootingStar159
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This does actually make sense for Starlight's character.  The paragraphs below are not necessarily specific to this topic but it is something I've been thinking about (again) recently and it does sort of fit here.

As a general rule I don't take anything that a writer decides to mention out-of-universe seriously.  If a piece of information regarding a character is important enough to affect the narrative then it should be introduced in the narrative.  Once a work of fiction is released into the wild its creator surrenders any control over it, I don't mean in the sense of intellectual property rights, but rather the authority to determine how it is interpreted.  The duty of interpretation falls to the consumer of that work.  If I determine that a character has a certain motivation of characteristic based on what I have read or seen and that determination is not explicitly contradicted within the narrative then the author has no right to unilaterally dictate that my perception is incorrect if they have omitted the evidence to the contrary from the work itself.

Basically, as far as I am concerned, anything said by the creator of any fiction on social media means precisely nothing.  If it didn't happen in-universe, then it didn't happen at all.  Again, just to clarify, I am not disputing Mr Haber's comment in this instance as this comment doesn't try to shoehorn in new information that should have been part of the narrative, nor is it at odds with anything previously established.

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10 hours ago, Driverscissors said:

I think it was recently revealed she has parents, they are just really busy.

Was this announced official or did a fan come up with this?

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1 hour ago, Concerned Bystander said:

Basically, as far as I am concerned, anything said by the creator of any fiction on social media means precisely nothing.  If it didn't happen in-universe, then it didn't happen at all. 

As a fan of Barthes, and an advocate of application of the reader or consumer as (generally) the final say on interpretation, I agree in part. I do acknowledge that it's closer to a collaborative experience than true surrender, so Barthes plus King is probably closer to my personal view.

Anyway, I would agree ... until I look at the context of this whole topic and account for how and where this information came from. The author didn't volunteer the information, he was solicited. That's an important distinction. As I mentioned in a prior post, this nugget of Information is fairly easy to assume if the reader (or in this case viewer) steps back and considers what we know of the world and Pony society. In this case, it may be disingenuous to suggest that the author did not surrender the ability to control the narrative, since that was exact what the reader/viewer did themselves by granting power back to the creator. 

While my take to this detail from Haber is basically, "well duh" ... the person asking the question felt this was important. While I'm saddened by that, it stands to reason that it meant something to the fan to have this fed to him. 

But yes, any consumer of this series is free to reject the creators internal views on his creation depending on how the creation is presented in the final product. 

40 minutes ago, Hierok said:

Was this announced official or did a fan come up with this?

Hinted in an episode, and in a book that was recently released. 

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15 hours ago, Jeric said:

Starlight and Scootaloo definitely would have something in common depending on the level of absence.

Oh, I smell a great opportunity for a Starlight-Scootaloo episode in season 8! :sneer:

 

1 hour ago, Concerned Bystander said:

As a general rule I don't take anything that a writer decides to mention out-of-universe seriously.  If a piece of information regarding a character is important enough to affect the narrative then it should be introduced in the narrative.  Once a work of fiction is released into the wild its creator surrenders any control over it, I don't mean in the sense of intellectual property rights, but rather the authority to determine how it is interpreted.

It's good to have a line in the sand, as it were, to be able to separate what is in-universe and out-of-universe; though I admit with me the line is a lot fuzzier. For example, should I dismiss all of the supplemental material the Tolkien estate has released over the years simply because it wasn't in the original stories? It's hard for me to ignore.

Perhaps a clearer example is the case of the sequel(s) to Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Robert C O'Brien's daughter wrote the sequels and makes it clear which characters it was who died at the end of the original - even though the original left that question open. I suppose classifying all the sequels as fanfiction (despite the author being a relative) is the proper conclusion, though again, it's difficult to reject them outright.

Of course, rules were meant to be broken and I do reject all of the "Alien" movies after Aliens. Seriously, kill off all main characters to fit your own narrative, Mr. Screenwriter? The heck with you! XD

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1 minute ago, Jeric said:

Hinted in an episode, and in a book that was recently released. 

You mean the book with the aunts of Scoots? Then I hope they will appear one time and make some points clear. For example, why she is always left alone and what they are doing.

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3 minutes ago, Jeric said:

While my take to this detail from Haber is basically, "well duh"

Yeah, reading over the quote again it does seem he was a bit flippant in his response, and that does make the statement less credible since it's not as clear if he's being serious or not, even if it makes sense logically.

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Just now, Hierok said:

You mean the book with the aunts of Scoots? Then I hope they will appear one time and make some points clear. For example, why she is always left alone and what they are doing.

I understand that some may require that information dump. I refer you to my prior points in multiple posts in this thread as evidence that I don't require such explicit acknowledgement to come to the conclusion I did. 

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