@Badumsquish  
Then the question becomes: Does Maud know about that incident? =o How deep does the character knowledge go?

@Zeb  
Yeah, she kind of has. How recent was the “brainwash the mane six to turn them into slaves” episode again? :P
 
@hakirayleigh  
I stand by my explanation of why she’s a mary sue :D

@Badumsquish  
Because Pinkie only wants a friend to her sister, even Starlight, a pony where the mane6 has doubts about her behavior (specially Pinkie, since ELTSD) And Maud was fine with that. And again your Mary Sue definition is rushed. Plz try again :D

@Badumsquish  
To quote Maud herself:  
“It’s not like she enslaved anypony recently”
 
And, to be fair, I know people who are like that~ Myself included. Able to just ignore shitty stuff people did in the past.
 
Not saying you have to. I’m just saying that it’s something I’m familiar with and so it doesn’t seem out of character to me.

@darknessRising24  
Nah, one really bad reformation story was enough for me XD
 
@Starswirl  
This is a lot of what I mean when I say she’s being shilled. It’s like they’re forcing it. Why was she forgiven and allowed to become the Element of Mary Sue? Why was she Maud’s friend? Why was she sent to fix the royal friendship problem? Because the writers want to shill her, not because it makes any sense in the narrative. If not for that she’d have been sent to the moon (other villains were punished for far less, even ones deserving of some understanding), she wouldn’t have clicked with Maud at all (See my reply to Zeb :P), and Twilight Sparkle would have gone.
 
@Zeb  
But she was uncharacteristically friendly to the pony who kidnapped, disfigured, and tortured her sister, and then later brainwashed and enslaved her sister again. Again, it doesn’t make sense within the narrative :P

@Zeb  
And then got scammed back because why sacrifice for the ones you love?

@Zeb  
Rarity, for one. Go back when she asked her what her dress was saying when they first met, then pay attention to the look Maud gives her. That was not just “Maud being Maud”.

@Zeb  
Be careful! Those eyes rival Ghost Rider’s Penance Stare!

@darknessRising24  

@Zeb  
You can see the fury in her eyes!

@darknessRising24  
So…the pony who scammed her sister?

@Zeb  

@Starswirl  
When was Maud ever unfriendly to anypony?

@hakirayleigh  
Why she supposedly worked well with Maud didn’t convince me either. It felt like another instance where the show shilled Starlight; Maud was unfriendly to everypony else, but not Starlight for some reason. The writing didn’t work for me. Her friendship with Trixie, yes. Maud? Nope, not seeing it.
 
See, that’s part of the problem for many. It could’ve been anypony, but it had to be Starlight. Again. Even though there was nothing special about their dynamic, nothing that made me believe they had a reason to hit it off like their did.
 
Starlight being Twilight’s student had little payoff, her friendship with Maud didn’t feel sincere, her relationship (whether platonic or romantic) to Sunburst isn’t explored… you may enjoy it, but others are frustrated with the character, and we have reasons to be.
 
@Badumsquish  
I liked “Every Little Thing She Does”. Starlight messed up, but the other characters yelled in her face for it. That felt like real growth.
 
I guess I don’t dislike her so much as what the show’s doing with her.

@Badumsquish  
Interaction with Maud and Trixie were very sincere. Only because the mane6 are the best example of friendship, doesn’t means they can understand all ponies reasons to begin any relation. Starlight is a friendship example of an outsider. That’s why the remane5 aren’t her best friends, even Pinkie is the most eccentric one. And yeah, your Mary-Sue definition is a real chaos and every MLP character has important flaws. Please continue in your bubble world :D :D :P

@Badumsquish
 
It’s never established exactly when after Sunburst left she got her own cutie mark. for all we know she could’ve been a late bloomer, and by that point her mentality had been firmly locked in place by that experience and her inability to put faith in any friendship after losing her foalhood friend for fear of it falling apart again.
 
Sure, her reformation wasn’t perfect,but there’s something you need to remember, but first lemme bring up an example:
 
Let’s take a look at Neji Hyuuga from Naruto, his cousin Hinata was kidnapped by a Cloud Ninja who was murdered by her father, the Cloud Village demanding compensation in the form of her father’s life, however Neji’s dad took his place.
 
Who did Neji blame for most of his life? The Cloud Village for kidnapping his cousin in the first place?
 
NOPE!
 
He blamed his cousin for getting kidnapped despite the fact that she was five at the time (until Naruto beat some sense into him)!
 
The point is: Children don’t logic much.
 
Let’s be honest with ourselves, we’ve all alot of done stupid stuff as kids, but you need to remember that some children’s minds are fragile, easily influenced, and can blow things out of proportion, it can get the point where they base their entire philosophy around it and are eventually so locked into that mindset that anything opposing it is a foreign concept to them.
 
Not to mention the fact that all the other characters before her don’t exactly get a free pass either.
 
Discord turned the entire world into his personal madhouse on crack.
 
Trixie had a petty grudge against someone who saved an entire Village and beat by default her.
 
Sunset was just greedy and wanted more power and nearly killed Twilight just to get it.
 
And if we’re counting the comics, King Sombra enslaved an entire Empire.
 
And let’s all be honest with ourselves here, Starlight has only relapsed once, how many times has Discord relapsed?
 
Withholding information about those plunder vines and barely doing anything to help when he was summoned.
 
His partnership with Tirek.
 
His temper tantrum at the gala.
 
Not to mention several other instances where he decided to mess with Fluttershy’s friends when her back was turned just because he could.
 
A villain that relapses once and learns from their mistakes is better than one that tends to relapse at the drop of a hat and would gladly do it again as long as they don’t get caught.
 
Also, prior to the Mane 6 arriving, the ponies came to her first (one of the few things that they openly admit at certain point). And when her vision of a better world was threatened, that’s when she got more manipulative and cruel, mainly due to her collapsing ideology.
 
I’m not saying that makes her right in any way mind you, there’s no mistake that she went about it wrong and the way she attempted to keep them in line was unmistakably reprehensible, but it’s a small fact that everyone seems to be overlooking.
 
If you want to see a reformation story done REALLY wrong, go read Princess Trixie Sparkle.

@Badumsquish  

 
Naw man. You gotta understand, Proper terminology is everything! If we don’t all agree 100% on exactly how a word is used, the world just descends into chaos and disorder! =V

@Zeb  
It just honestly borders on plotholes how unjudgmental they are of her compared to even how they are to each other.
 
@Meanlucario  
Forcing herself on a dude and being offended he didn’t fit her idealized imagination of her and dressing like a boorish hick and caricature of her best friend because a stallion dared to not be into her is all the shallow XD
 
@darknessRising24  
That would be true if she hadn’t done such horrible things and they hadn’t changed her motivation to be “boo hoo my boyfriend dumped me” I think.
 
@Meanlucario  
What really is the issue is how she’s just free to get away with everything she wants. Like, does nobody in that circle of friends care even in the slightest that despite her trying to “do good” (which is debatable in the first place) that she’s not improving or changing even in the slightest? It just really feels like they’re shilling Starlight so hard that it comes at the cost of the characterization of others.
 
@Starswirl  
She’s honestly learned like nothing and changed very little. I think too, the big problem is so much of her “reformation” happened off-screen during a musical montage. It’s like we didn’t get to see her actually change, but rather this same static chararacter from after her big change, which is mostly what I find so unappealing about her.
 
To put it another way, her “second chance” and position as Twilight’s pupil feels really unsatisfying and undeserved to me because she seems to have no real obstacles to overcome and we never actually see her change for the better. It’s not shocking or sad to see her fall back onto old habits because we know they’ll just say “nah it’s cool” and let it go without even furrowing their brows, it’s no big deal when she abuses her magic over others since it will pass without any consequence or cost, and it’s unsatisfying to see her succeed because she never actually struggled or worked for it. She’s just sort of on autopilot from start to finish, which to me it makes her interactions with other characters feel very artificial and insincere, and honestly I think that’s a huge flaw for a character they’re obviously trying that hard to shove down everyone’s throats.
 
And keep in mind too, this is all in addition to my “she’s a mary sue” argument I posted before in this thread which I still stand by 100%, “proper terminology” be damned.

@hakirayleigh  
That’s probably not going to be important anymore. Starlight has “graduated” from being her friendship student. I have to admit, when Twilight looked through possible friendship lessons and said  
“No, no, no! She’s already good at that! She mastered this! She taught me about this one!”  
I had to cringe.
 
Because that was a major problem: They showed more of Twilight failing to teach Starlight than her doing it right. The Crystalling has Twilight saying she needs to give Starlight more freedom, No Second Prances has Twilight say she was wrong even thought she wasn’t, the season six ending has her be completely worfed anyhow, then this “she mastered this, she taught me this” from Celestial Advice.
 
Starlight being Twilight’s supposed friendship student had little to no payoff. It is really so strange some ponies think Starlight is shilled by the other characters and feel unhappy about it?

@darknessRising24  
Yeah. Starlight was a great ideal and she would’ve gotten away if it wasn’t for you pesky ponies and that stupid map. XD. I like Starlight, but I hope more about her backstory and maybe less Twilight´patience.

@darknessRising24  
Thank you. She does try to do good, but her corrupted ideals cause more harm than good, and losing everything you worked for to create a paradise would drive most people crazy and revenge hungry.

A minor thing:
 
Starlight, despite her wrongdoings, her ideology on cutie marks stem from her believing that removing them would make the world a better place (Not that she was in the right mind you), that’s a type of character that’s not really seen in a Kid’s cartoon that often. The ones that think they’re in the right and…. Troubleshoes and Diamond Tiara ALMOST back up her outlook on cutie marks. This is something that no other serious would-be Equestrian conqueror can claim.
 
Discord wanted amusement and complete chaos, the ponies’ suffering be damned.
 
Chrysalis wanted food for her people to prosper, but at the expense of everyone else and not considering a more peaceful route (and it was later revealed that she was even keeping them under her hoof by starving them on purpose).
 
Nightmare Moon wanted praise and adulation, even though her Eternal Night would basically mean the end of all living things.
 
Tirek wanted power.
 
Sombra wanted… well, it depends if you count the comics but it was either “power” again or “to get revenge for years of endured pain.”
 
The Dazzlings wanted “power adoration and complete control over the world”.
 
Trixie just wanted “revenge on someone for upstaging her”, despite the fact that she was acting like a bully and didn’t even back up any of her claims.
 
Sunset? Again, counting the comics, it’s either “power” or “a position at Celestia’s side that she felt she deserved.”
 
Bottom line, all of these stemmed from much more selfish ideals than Starlight’s.

@Badumsquish  
She has legitimate character flaws, it’s just that being shallow isn’t one.

Starlight’s okay, but nothing will top the OG skilled magic user, Twilight herself!

@Badumsquish  
Yeah. That’s really the biggest sticking point for me. I really wish they could write those parts better. =<
 
Most everything else with Starlight I can accept or enjoy. But a lot of the consequences are missing. Which is just sad, since they did it really well with Sunset.
 
I’ve said it before in other places, but I really feel the show’s biggest weakness overall is their conclusions. So often they gotta rush the happy and upbeat endings that they don’t really leave time for deeper exploration of things.
 
And yeah, I can understand it’s likely because the focus audience is 7 year olds, so they wanna keep things upbeat and not too complicated. End on a high note, etc. But that doesn’t change the fact that it sucks when character development has to suffer because of it.