Yet Another Character Analysis on Starlight Glimmer

Okay, I’m writing this because thanks to some spoilers from the internet, I’ve been hearing rumors of all kinds of Starlight hate popping up because of “A Royal Problem,” the synopsis for “To Change a Changeling,” and “Mirror Magic.”  I haven’t actually seen “Mirror Magic” myself, but I’m not going to lie.  All the negative opinions about it are making looking forward to it hard to do, but I’m going to go ahead and reserve judgment until I’ve actually seen it.

          Look, I get it.  Her backstory wasn’t well conceived, her personality isn’t very likeable, and she’s a dangerous combination of giftedly powerful and emotionally fragile.  At the same time, I think I’m liking what season 7 is doing with her character development so far.  See, last season, her development was focused on how her weaknesses make learning about friendship difficult for her and how she learned to deal with those weaknesses.  This season appears to shed some light on her strengths, which is good.

          Let me explain.  So, in the seasons prior we learned that Starlight has a hard time appreciating other ponies’ differences whether they be different interests, opinions, or personalities.  However, the last two episodes involving her show that she has a particular strength that closely relates to this particular weakness.  She’s good at not giving other ponies special treatment.  The most obvious example of this strength at work is seen in “A Royal Problem.”  In this episode, when Twilight and Starlight discover that the princess sisters were the source of the friendship problem, Twilight reacts with shock and disbelief that the princesses could possibly be anything less than perfect and wants to just skirt around the problem rather than actually try and fix it.  Starlight, on the other hand, seems to understand that even royalty can make mistakes, miscommunicate, and have trouble dealing with their problems and based on that understanding, isn’t afraid to confront the problem directly.  The other members of the Mane 6 likely would have had the same problem Twilight had in this episode.  Unlike Starlight, they all would have had the princesses too high up on a pedestal to effectively deal with the problem.

          Starlight’s inclination to avoid giving other ponies special treatment can also be rather subtly seen in “Rock Solid Friendship.”  In this episode, Pinkie Pie is keenly aware that even though her sister wants a friend, Maud is a little, err, a lot lacking in the social skills department.  So, Pinkie tries to make up for this by trying to be social for her.  Based on research that I did during college on sibling relationships in children with special needs, I can attest that Pinkie’s behavior in this episode is actually pretty realistic.  Typically functioning siblings of kids with special needs have a tendency to overcompensate for their siblings’ perceived deficiencies, and Pinkie doesn’t seem to be any different.  Starlight, on the other hand, treats Maud like she would any other pony.  She acknowledges Maud’s eccentricities but, unlike the Mane 6, doesn’t define Maud by them.  To the Mane 6, Maud is Pinkie Pie’s sister with the weird rock obsession that they are on friendly terms with.  To Starlight, Maud is just another friend who just happens to have a rock obsession.  Maud probably connected with Starlight because Starlight’s the first pony who saw her past her weirdness.

          I am hoping that future works featuring Starlight will end up revealing more about her strengths.  I personally feel that doing so will give her more depth as a character.  Besides, watching Starlight repeatedly get in trouble or make a giant mess of things would have gotten real old real fast.