Hello everyone, it's been a while. I just want to know if there is anyone besides me who actually wants to like Starlight, I feel however that it's too late for her, they had time and time again to make her a better character but could never make it happen. Starlight had every opportunity to make the show better, to be one of my favorite ponies of all time and an official part of my iconic and fave unicorn gals (Twilight, Trixie, Sunset). Instead Starlight ended up becoming one of Hasbro's biggest failures of all time. I however don't want to hate her and have some ideas of what could have made her a better more easier to sympathize with character. These are solely opinionated, and if you disagree, it's completely fine.

1. If Starlight grew up in a society that despised cutie marks and taught her to despise them as well, maybe Starlight was forced to hide her own cutie mark out of fear of losing it or being evicted from the community. Due to this unhappy way of living, Starlight became convinced that cutie marks were evil and resulted in ponies treating each other badly, which is what inspired her to build a society where ponies were markless. Instead of being secretly wicked deep down, Starlight actually did have good intentions but became so indulged in her own fears and beliefs that she grew a superiority complex and did not take other ponies' beliefs into consideration and it slowly turned her into the very thing she disliked, egomaniacs.

2. (I honestly don't know how to make her revenge against Twilight a better arc, if anybody has an idea feel free to share your thoughts, but I do think Starlight could have still been weaker than Twilight, yet a tad bit smarter in her fight against her, this would have been the true difficulty of the fight)

3. Of course Starlight should have been punished, but instead of willfully agreeing to it, she remained silent, for me personally, trying to destroy all space and time is a trip to tartarus, or she could have even been given a chance to redeem herself by Celestia, and not become Twilight's student.

4. Ponies should know what she's done and not forgive her, even the ponies of our town, shouldn't have forgiven. Seeing as she had to prove herself to royalty, Starlight would have to prove herself to them as well, and I think her redemption arc should be longer than Sunset's.

5. After proving herself, Starlight could fine her place as a close friend of the main six like Sunset but I would avoid shilling to her and trying to have her upstage the mane six.

This is what I can mostly think of

(Honorable mentions)

Make her strong but not OP
Don't make it seem like Trixie is her only real friend
Don't make her abuse her magic, it makes her a lying hypocrite which eliminates sympathy
Make her struggle to be friends with Maud
Make her show her anger in better ways that doesn't make her look like a massive jerk.
Make other characters call her out for her foolish mistakes.
Don't keep making her the unbeatable hero in everything, she will need help at times
Make her mess up and pay for it, (be it punishment or bad karma) not having the other characters just accept it and move on.

Now see, these are what would have been the smart thing to do. I don't want to feel like I want to throttle her until she stops breathing.

6657135
honestly have her be a reoccurring villain. at that point in the show didn't have one of thaws so it would have been interesting to have a constant foil to the main six. having her show up at random pleases on the map and causing trouble only to have the main six to figure out a new way to out smart her. villain starlight was the only good thing to come out of the character so it would have been grate to have her be a character we love to hate. that they would have needed to give her a better backstory and it wouldn't be too out of the question that she woulde have had her mind opened to the idea of redemption later on.

also have her actually interact with the main six. there's a reason why the ponies are still called the main six and the humans with sunset are called the mane seven

6657181
I get it....like how the Pilaf Gang once were in "Dragon Ball"...or basically what Team Rocket currently is in the Pokemon anime...

6657135
Either way, somebody needs to do fanfics based on these ideas.