Defense Of Starlight Part 2: Selfishness Is Magic · 10:47pm Sep 28th, 2017
Starlight Glimmer: No. I'm Starlight.
Ember: Right. I'm sorry, but you can't blame me. You [and Twilight] both look and act so much alike.
Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer: What?!
Ember: I'm just saying you're both purple ponies with purple hair. You both have cutie marks with sparkly things.
Starlight Glimmer: [chuckles] Mine's more of a glimmer. Heh.
Ember: How is that different?
Good observation, ponies.
The delayed but highly-anticipated sequel to Part One of my Starlight Apologist blog begins with a common criticism levied by fans who don't like Starlight Glimmer as a hero/reformed pony.
"She is too much like Twilight!"
Well, yeah. The two are a lot alike. That's called being a foil. Starlight Glimmer is meant to contrast to Twilight Sparkle. When beginning their heroic arc, both of them started as friendship student unicorns who practice powerful magic. While Twilight is anxious, geeky, and studies magic as an academic pursuit, Starlight is confident, persuasive, and studies magic as a practical pursuit.
"But Starlight has no consistent personality! That, or she has a mental disorder!"
Yeah, probably. I'd say that she is bipolar, AKA manic-depressive. Bipolar explains a lot about her personality. Her villainy phase was a clear manic episode, with forced speech, extreme determination, and angry outbursts that often indicate mania. Her hero phase starts quite depressive, with Starlight unsure of how to fit into her new role as a good pony. She often has a defeated look on her face, and she acts quite tepidly. This is because she has to fit into a new environment. Of course, she still uses spells irresponsibly, because bipolar people are often reckless. Boozing and spendy trips to Las Vegas (Lost Wages).
As the show goes on, Starlight gets training from Twilight in how to use magic more responsibly (plus a few new spells) and she gets friends, boosting her confidence and lifting her out of depression. Because friendship, in addition to being magic, is actually proven to be just as effective as anti-depressants like Prozac. Starlight returns to what could be called normal, and we can analyze her reformed character a bit more clearly.
"But Carts, Starlight has no character!"
Starlight has loads of character. Adult, nuanced character. She is a great speaker and persuader. She has a strong sense of justice, and has strong convictions. She's usually confident, as I mentioned previously. She's quite smart. She's also selfish, both as a hero and as a villain. And I love it. Selfishness is magic! While Twilight Sparkle views magic as, "what's in this to study?", Starlight Glimmer views magic as "what's in it for me?" Tool user.
Twilight Sparkle often forgets to teleport, reverse gravity, or to walk through walls (She's done it once in "Inspiration Manifestation." Why not again?) and a myriad of other spells that she knows. Before gaining wings, Twilight constantly forgets to levitate herself to stop from falling, despite being just as capable of it as Starlight is. Twilight just picks up magic books, does every spell or studies them, but then puts the books back. She views magic as an academic pursuit, not a useful tool to ponies. Why put a mustache on Spike or turn an apple into an orange? Well, why not, asks Twilight. It's magic and magic is my special talent. Twilight sees magic as an end in and of itself. Intrinsically. Like an egghead.
Starlight, though, views her magic as a means to an end of advancing herself. This is true when she is a villain, but also when she is reformed. This puts her in the same camp as Trixie, and is why the two of them are close friends. Starlight brings a lot more magic to the friendship, though, because she is not self-absorbed like Trixie, just selfish. Self-absorption is wrong, while selfishness is okay if you have the right definition and context surrounding the question of "What's in it for me?" Starlight ain’t “The Man” who's "got nothing to learn"; she often struggles with where she is right and where she still has a lot to learn.
To recap, Starlight is 1. Probably bipolar, 2. A natural leader and 3. Selfish.
"But that makes her a Mary Sue!"
Mary Sues are characters who the universe revolves around, who are overpowered, and have no significant handicaps. Reformed Starlight is a secondary character who often plays second-fiddle in the episodes she's in, is less powerful in magic than her mentor Twilight (at least once she's reformed), and is handicapped by her own past actions and, if I'm right, by her bipolar disorder. Her mania drove her to excel at magic beyond Equestria's wildest dreams... and almost abandon it. Endless possibility in that timeline. She made the right call in the end with Twi's help.
The biggest episodes where Starlight is claimed to be a Mary Sue by her critics in are To Where and Back Again and Royal Trouble. Let’s recap both.
In To Where and Back Again, Starlight’s role is pretty minimal, and she is just part of a team. She’s like Ocean in Ocean’s Eleven, bringing together a motley crew to infiltrate a secure location. Of course, Ocean was a leader, but Starlight is understandably very antsy about taking any sort of leadership role given her past failure as it. Of course, aside from cutie mark magic, leadership is what she’s good at, though! So she actually finds her voice and finds her place. A welcome change from a Starlight who reluctantly used magic in order to get wrong things done before. The only thing wrong in this episode is that we'd have loved to see Celestia and Luna and the others get kidnapped to set up the excuse-plot. Until that, the plot goes from reasoned (potential) to incomplete (what we got).
This also sets Ms. Glimmer up for her next “Mary Sue” episode, Royal Trouble.
I love Royal Trouble, because it is the first time in the show the princesses are actually accountable to anyone other than themselves. Celestia and Luna aren’t perfect, so they don’t deserve absolute power. Sometimes they have to learn lessons. Friendship is a continual practice, and you always have more to learn, even after thousands of years. The princesses learn a lesson thanks to the only selfish pony in Equestria who is actually more concerned with her own survival than silly rules about paying deference to an alicorn, or some petty bullshit dispute over day and night. A dispute, which I will remind you, actually put Equestria in jeopardy once before, but back when the mane six had the Elements. Now that they don’t have them, the princesses getting along is absolutely critical to everyone’s survival. Starlight absolutely made the correct decision by switching their cutie marks. It was an intervention for national security purposes. Iraq, but better-planned than our faulty "intelligence."
“But Carts, that’s the problem. Starlight has to learn the same lesson over and over again about irresponsible use of magic! She’s just like Timmy Turner from Fairly Odd Parents!”
I only count three times that redeemed Starlight uses magic irresponsibly, one of which is debatable. As I mentioned previously, Starlight was entirely justified in “A Royal Problem,” so we won’t count that.
#1 is a harmless spell to make Big Macintosh talk in “No Second Prances.” I doubt that he felt too bad about it... he was a little surprised at himself but it wasn't like Glimmer mind-raped him. Hey, maybe upon introspection that little event even encouraged Big Mac to talk more (we all need prodding sometimes).
#2 is a spell to hypnotize her friends in Every Little Thing She Does. This is pretty undebatable. Okay, on both of those occasions she shouldn’t have used magic to initiate force. Her selfish nature was more on the side of self-absorption (bad) than legitimate self-interest (good, true “selfishness”). It wasn’t in Starlight’s self-interest to potentially lose her friends by mind controlling them, and she failed to realize this until taught her lesson. Again, folks with bipolar disorder (if she indeed has it. If not, then "Starlight in General") aren’t the best at making decisions… but they can get better. She has, over time. We must relearn many lessons in life. Until we change, and we can. Dr. House was wrong.
That brings us to #3, All Bottled Up, which is debatable. Starlight uses magic for a legitimate purpose, to internally and privately control her anger, another emotion that bipolar folk have trouble with. There is nothing inherently wrong with using magic for this. The spell exists and is still taught for a reason. I wish sometimes that I had a spell to bottle up emotions. Starlight is just careless with the bottles, and they break and let her anger out. Great analogy for anger management principles. So this one is technically more of a safety question than a magic question, but I include it because I’ll be accused of ignoring it if I don’t. AFAIK, Starlight has not irresponsibly used magic since season 6, indicating character development.
“What about self-levitation! That’s irresponsible magic, too. Mary Sue alert! Who does Starlight think she is, a pegasus?”
You know, I addressed this before in my last post, but I think it’s worth bringing up again because this is the perfect demonstration about the right way to be selfish. Most pegasi probably feel the same way, so I actually think that self-levitation is viewed as a social no-no in Equestria. You wouldn’t hug yourself in public either, that’s just weird. Maybe it’s also seen as unicorns “taking a pegasus' job” or some stupid nonsense. Socially-conscious Rarity would rather fall to her death after her wings burn up than float herself there waiting to be rescued. I’m sure she’s quite capable of it, since she can float her fainting couch all the way from Carousel Boutique. That, or she just forgot her powers like Twilight frequently does. Or maybe self-leviation is a more careful, delicate form of magic than external telekinesis and it requires some additional effort to learn. Who knows.
Starlight doesn’t forget, and she has no compulsion about using her magic in a selfish way, both before and after her redemption. She can fly if she needs it; why shouldn't she? Starlight is learning to be selfish more and more in the right way... by acting in her own rational self-interest. After all, selfishness is magic!
I will be publishing a Starlight Glimmer story soon, which incorporates all of these ideas. Watch this space! [Update link]
I’m glad you’re back, carts.
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Thanks! What did you think of the blog? What are your thoughts on Starlight?
Good to see you again Carts!
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TLDR
More seriously, I feel like we have already hashed this topic out well enough in our previous conversation so I didn't want to read through this because I know that if I do I'll wind up feeling like I have to actually comment on it and we'll just waste time retreading ground we have already covered.
That said, I did want to chime in and say that it's good to see you again and that I've been wondering where you went since I was expecting you to reply to me on Discord at some point.
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I have made a few new assertions in this blog, so I would encourage you to read the whole thing.
1. Starlight Glimmer suffers from bipolar or some other mental illness
2. Starlight and Twilight are different types of magic users in the way they view magic's role in their world
3. Starlight is a selfish pony, but she has to walk the line between her legitimate self interest, and being self-absorbed and making stupid decisions that aren't in her long-term self interest.
I've been dealing with some personal stuff so I haven't been around. I can talk more in detail on Discord about it.
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I’m
Sorry to not be of much help, but I liked it and don’t really have anything to add to it
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Ah crap, I knew I was forgetting something important. Anyways, before I go to bed, the TLDR is that 3 isn't unusual or in any way tied to bipolar disorder. That kind of short term thinking is basically the norm these days and is a huge part of the reason the US is in the mess it's in now (trust me, I've seen it in action first hand).
The people who say Starlight is too similar to Twilight must sure hate Sunset, but that rarely seems to be true.
Some of these complaints I used to think were valid, but have since been worked on, especially the issues of Starlight not having a lot of character. They've done a great job of improving Starlight in season 7 by the simple action of putting her Trixie-adjacent as much as possible. It's fundamentally impossible to be boring around Trixie.
Starlight isn't a Mary Sue, but she IS Overpowered, a unicorn who didn't even attend the CSfGU who seems like the most overpowered unicorn in existence.
One thing you seem to be missing in your review is "To Change a Changling," a recent Starlight & Trixie special that is almost as much fun as "All Bottled Up." It did a great job showcasing the real value of Starlight and Trixie over the Mane 6: Those two screw things up completely, and in a way that show they are not going to learn their lesson and grow out of it any time soon, thus guaranteeing years more shenanigans.
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Short-term thinking is not listed as an official symptom, but I'd argue that some of these indicate a decrease in long-term stability.
Agree with you on the country. We're basically robbing our unborn grandchildren to pay for stuff now.
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Starlight was somewhat OP as a villain but I think they've toned her down since then.
I've seen "To Change a Changeling." I actually liked that episode for the humor, but I didn't like how Trixie was basically useless in the end. They need to make Trixie bring more to the friendship than she does.
4681945 It's really hard to tone down someone being OP, they're still OP even if they're not using their magic anymore. Though I do agree they're moving away from Starlight facing problems she can easily fix with her magic.
Trixie brings the comic relief to the friendship, and she gives Starlight the feeling of being needed. That's valuable! I guarantee Starlight loves being the rational, responsible member of the group for once.
I really liked that episode in particular because both Starlight and Trixie ended up being mostly useless and helping out through sheer luck, while Thorax and the other changlings actually saved the day. It's what made me see the true value of Starlight as a main character: If there had been a member or two of the Mane 6 there, they would have solved all the problems for the poor benighted non-ponies in a condescendingly high-handed fashion.
I like that Starlight's personality didn't do a convenient 180 when she became a good guy. She's no longer evil, but she still has some villainous undertones similar to her in The Cutie Map episodes. Unlike Twilight, who's a bit of a pushover, Starlight is an extremely disagreeable pony, and like you mentioned, she's markedly more selfish.
I wasn't very fond of her as a villain, but with season 7 she's one of the best characters in the show. I'm also writing a fic about her (which I started two months ago and still haven't finished, damn it).
I'd love to see your response to this nitwit.