#kskkskd sorry for the maybe it's already a long post it's just my brain will think of things after the fact

[discordisagoodnoodle]

If you don't mind going into detail, I'd love to hear why you dislike Starlight. I didn't watch her episodes besides her first appearance, so I don't have a strong opinion. She does come off as Twilight 2.0 and kinda OP from what I've seen though. I mean, she oneshot Discord in a fight. Yeah he came back 10 minutes later, but that seems extremely strong for a unicorn

Ok so here's my official Starlight hate post I guess. Long post warning ahead

REASONS I'M NOT VERY FOND OF STARLIGHT:

ONE: I actually didn't hate her as a villain. Like, she wasn't my favorite but I didn't hate her and then- we find out the reason that she is an ACTUAL CULT LEADER (and like I know people compared her more to a communist which if you're not thinking too hard the equal sign makes it seem like that, but her actual actions parallel a cult more) and the fact that she literally tried to erase a whole ass timeline is because her friend had to move away??? Like really??? It was...very bad. Kind of a shame, because with better writers a cultist villain could have been a lot more interesting. In fact, her premiere episode on it's own was,,,fine, and if Starlight was simply defeated and never showed up again I wouldn't have a problem with her.

I'm actually gonna go on a side rant here because I really reaally REALLY hate how they made a villain like Starlight and redeemed her. The fact that her actions as a villain so closely resemble a cultist on its own wouldn't be an issue, *but then they had the audacity to act like her being sad MATTERS when she destroyed people's lives in a much more realistic, much more uncomfortable way than guy who wanted to take over world lol and fucking redeemed her* Can I just say how discomforting it is when people write redemptions like that? Watching the pony villain equivalent of somebody who's committed horrible acts of abuse and indoctrination to others get redeemed is UNCOMFORTABLE. IT'S VERY UNCOMFORTABLE. DO NOT LIKE.

TWO: She feeeels sad and that's enough for her to be labelled Deserves Sympathy And Redemption. See, this on it's own wouldn't be as big a deal if...again, she wasn't made to parallel real world bad people? Like, if Starlight was just a run of the mill dickwad in charge of the town doing run of the mill dickwad things, we'd be having an entirely different discussion. OR if she wasn't the cult LEADER, but a member of the cult who was groomed to fully believe in it, and slowly had to be unindoctrinated. But, as it stands, no.

THREE: Her power level. In the premiere, Starlight in shown to be a stronger than the average unicorn with some niche knowledge that's helpful to her. In the finale and onwards, she's...on the same power level as Twilight, an alicorn princess who's main field of study is magic itself. This is kind of an issue in power scaling that the show has had in general, but it was compounded onto Starlight in a very intense way in which she's basically always the strongest person in the room, hooray Starlight! (And despite the fact that Discord being blasted was intended by the writer to be Discord letting Starlight hurt him, you can kind of see it with him winking, that scene wasn't very obvious about it and made it look like Discord, literally the most OP character in the whole show, was suddenly less powerful than Starlight? Lmfao ok.)

FOUR: Starlight always has to be the strongest, smartest creature in the room. You remember the season six finale where Starlight was labelled leader (despite the fact that she really shouldn't have been, hot take I guess.) of everybody and also she was the only person who ever had any ideas and also all of her ideas worked basically, and she figured out the Plot Weapon of the day? That happens in the show far too often, and it's boring. Plus the fact that it too often stupidifies other characters in order to make her look better, makes me very annoyed!

FIVE: Her personality consists of, feels bad, anxiety, and being the best all the time. I'm bored just thinking about it quite frankly. It is absolutely not fun watching Pony Cult Leader remind me she was a cult leader and also how bad she feels about it! I don't care!

SIX: The show acts like she's super amazeballs at friendship, and she's not. (Also, the whole...friendship as some sort of tangible skill you can achieve and Be The Best At instead of just learning interpersonal skills? No thanks fam.) Like...Starlight should not have been a guidance counselor, one, because being The Good Friend ABSOLUTELY does not make you qualified for responsibility of the mental health of actual children, two, even if it did, she's not that amazing at being the Good Friend! She...still does a lot of shitty things. Or before that, when she got a """friendship medal""" for saving Equestria and suddenly deemed a Friendship Master? WHAT?! Those things have ZERO CORRELATION. Very bad.

SEVEN: the fact that she'll get treated better than other reformed villains (cough cough Discord) by everybody around her despite...also doing shitty things is really annoying and a huge double standard! Stop that!

THINGS THAT ON THEIR OWN I WOULDN'T CARE ABOUT BUT SINCE I'M ALREADY NOT FOND OF HER JUST ANNOY ME:

-She's rich. Eat the rich.

-I'm actually not fond of her design. It's not the worst...but I don't love it...

-The fact that she's another Twilight clone not clone like with Sunset. Especially because they kept making jokes about how Starlight and Twilight are so similar haha! Like,,,god just stop it's so boring.

I uh. I think that's it. Maybe.