Starlight Glimmer, Sociopathy and Post-Traumatic · 2:37am Oct 22nd, 2017
My take on Starlight Glimmer is that she's a sociopath, and one on the border with psychopathy because she is easily enraged. And yes -- her problems go a lot deeper than the loss of her early friendship with Sunburst. Starlight just obsessed on this because she came closest to truly forming empathic bonds of friendship with Sunburst, causing her to be aware of what she didn't have in most of the rest of her life.
Twilight Sparkle does what amounts to a forensic psychological analysis, enhanced by Friendship Magic, on Starlight Glimmer as a key incident in my story Post-Traumatic (the story as a whole is about the protracted psychological effects of bad experiences, focusing on the events of The Cutie Map), and comes to the conclusion that Starlight Glimmer is sociopath who -- because of her difficulty emotionally connnecting with others and acknowledging their reality -- has never been able to make real friends (Twilight doesn't yet know about Sunburst).
Most of the story is a reflection on The Cutie Map, after the fact, from the viewpoints of Twilight Sparkle and her friends (shifting from chapter to chapter): in the last chapter we see it from Starlight's point of view, and that Starlight Glimmer isn't really all that happy a person to be, because she knows she's missing out on friendship and love, both of which she very much desires. Her fundamental problem is that she tends to misread any non-compliance with her desires and preferences as rebellion and betryal.
This is why Starlight became an Equalist fanatic who founded a cult of personality in which her whim was law. She wanted an environment in which everypony else was totally under her control: in which there existed no strong differences between individuals such that other Ponies would have strong concerns or opinions different from her own. Starlight Glimmer could be the center of that little society, and convince herself that everypony's obedience to her was the same thing as friendship -- or, in Double Diamond's case, of love.
She was, of course, severely deluding herself, something which was revealed to her by the way in which Our Town turned on her once her own deception of them was exposed. Being Starlight Glimmer, of course, she didn't accept that she had been wrong -- she instead saw Twilight Sparkle as a malevolent defender of the Realm, who destroyed Our Town as a social experiment dangerous to the established order.
This defeat threw her into nihilistic despair, in which she became terribly open to any and all bad influences, and willing to risk total destruction in pursuit of her revenge.
I wrote Post-Traumatic during Season Five, finishing it slightly around the time I saw The Cutie Re-Mark. Seasons Six and Seven have shown Starlight Glimmer recovering from her despair, and starting to learn the ways of genuine Friendship -- and possibly Love as well.
I do not believe that this negates the concept of her as sociopathic. High-fucntioning sociopaths can in reality learn how to behave in a social and even pseudo-empathic manner, consciously building artificial structures into their personalites that compensate for the missing natural faculties which most people get as part of their basic humanity (or equinity, or mammality, as the ability seems the common heritage of at least mammalkind, and avians have something analogous).
Starlight Glimmer is an almost terrifyingly high-functioning sociopath. But one who -- for now -- seems to be choosing the path of good rather than evil.
Let's hope she stays on this path.
Who the hell can blame her for acting the way she does in Uncommon Bonds. She is left with a horrid sense of exclusion with a friend she VERY rarely sees and yet is perhaps the first real friend she ever made. And when she finally gets time with him... it's not her he interacts with, but others who he connects and interacts with. Their time together is precious and finite, and he's not spending it on what they had previously exclusively agreed to spend it on.
And I really didn't see the problem with some escapism and nostalgia when you're just having fun with a friend.
I don't remember if I wrote this in a comment on Post-Traumatic (Which I have yet to finish—odd, it's sitting in an open tab, why haven't I yet?), but I am kind of glad they didn't go the route you outlined there; about Starlight being Celestia's student and (another) proto-Twilight.
That's not meant to be criticism of your story either! Thing is, well, firstly, I liked that it shook things up from Sunset's origin story. I also think it would have made Celestia seem foolish or callous if she kept picking antisocial Unicorns as her personal students and failed again and again with only the last one turning out well.
But the third reason... it just fits, you know? Starlight is an outsider. Her past is almost entirely focussed on this one relationship she had with Sunburst. Ever since then, she's drifted, because she doesn't seem to connect with a majority of others. She's like a round peg in a world of square holes; she gathers other misfits in her wake and only recently learned it's not okay to beat the kinks out of others until they fit her vision of how the world should work. She was even relapsing during her time with Sunburst because she felt like he was slipping away from her and she needs this link to her past to stay stable.
By the way, the "gathering damaged ponies" you noted, that includes Sunburst. He was pretty rude to Starlight during his visit, but he didn't see it. Probably because he's not used to others giving him the time of day. The kind of disdain and rejection he must've experienced in Magic School, that's the kind of pain that lasts a lifetime.
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There's isn't—when you're both having fun. Sunburst wasn't comfortable with pretend-going back to a time before they met any other friends, or knew what they would do in life, or hit puberty. Especially not after he just met three new friends.
The ability to see other people as real is not something you can learn but, as you said, it IS something you can fake. It's why she tends to be a magnet for a different sort of damaged personality
: someone who doesn't like learning from the past because she wants to preserve her credibility.
I actually wish she did not go down this path. She was far more interesting as a villain than what she is now. We already have several examples of redeemed villains in the show what we really could use for variety are interesting villains.
To quote princess bride 'you keep using that word I don't think it means what you think it means.' Yes there some apects I agree she kind of was. of but the biggest thing of being a sociopath is the unalblity to feel remorse. Which she know she does feel remose and guilt about what she did. I would watching this video to show a fictional representation of a sociopath https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cIFmnn47OoM
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Oh, I see your point, and saw it during the episode. And I would feel rather upset in Starlight's place.
Starlight took it further than most would because she's (1) a recovering sociopath, (2) in some way obviously in love with Sunburst, and (3) inclined to try to use magic to solve her personal problems. It's to Starlight's merit and indicative of how far she's come that she did not try to mind control anyone.
I'll add to this that the Ponies of whom she was being jealous were her other closest friends -- Twilight Sparkle, Trixie, and Maud. So it was especially difficult for Starlight, because she had to fight against the idea that she was being deliberately betrayed by all of her friends.
On Sunburst's side, I think he was just overcome with the degree of popularity that he -- a rather socially-awkward and introverted stallion -- was having among beautiful and high-status mares. A Princess, a Doctor of Geology, and ... well, Trixie's pretty and vibrant, at least.
TRIXIE: The Attractive and Nubile Trixie wishes to register a protest at her classification as the least desirable among those mares. Trixie is not merely 'pretty and vibrant,' Trixie is beautiful and intelligent and utterly enthralling!
Okay, Great and Powerful Trixie. You rock.
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But mind control is FUN!
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Actually, psychopaths are the ones that are incapable of concern for others.
Sociopaths are the trained and/or taught and/or come from an environment that detaches them from others.
Sociopaths can overcome being sociopaths by the right training, schooling, and environment.
Where as psychopaths will always be psychopaths since their problem in nature rather than nurture so you can only control them.
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All the sites I looking at was inabilty of remorse. But You could be right to but Starlight does show concern she just does not think thing through. There something I noticed between Starlight and Tempest there noone to show them morality . In Other words responability of magic. Celestia's school or really any magic school would drill how use magic properly . Starlight really had only herself to teach. She had learn from the ground up to use it properly.