When people say: “Oh, they should’ve played up how Starlight was a piece of shit for laughs.” That… kinda would’ve killed what I liked about Starlight, I think. To me, almost all of her episodes are already about how she’s a mess of a person. Episodes like On The Road to Friendship, or Uncommon Bond. They aren’t funny to me. They paint the picture of a character who’s kind of a catastrophe even though she genuinely wants to be better.
Her explosion at Trixie in A Horse Shoe-in is also not funny. I think it’s a genuinely well written and emotionally harrowing. One of my top 5 favourite scenes in all of season 9 probably. I don’t think Starlight is a funny character, and at her best I think that’s what works best about her. The emotions I associate with her episodes are depression, worry, and melancholy.