Circumstances aside, Congratulations Sunburst.

@Derpyfan  
That’s a poor excuse, that implies any mildly inconvenient situation will turn a kid into a psychopath. There’s no responsibility or common sense to that and we have seen it takes much more than a friend going to school to make a child have the same level of instability Starlight has. If it was as easy as this makes it out to be to become so mentally unhinged there would be a lot more psycho’s in MLP. There simply isn’t a compelling enough psychological factor here to warrant such a change in anybody unless they were already extremely disturbed in which case it was just an inevitability she would be set off by something. All this flashback accomplishes is making Starlight look unstable to an unreasonable level.

@Pagan  
No, there’s a difference between the psychology of an adult and the psychology of a child because the fact is a child’s mind is more delicate then an adult’s. What isn’t a big deal to an adult can be traumatizing to child because like I said, their minds are more delicate. The real problem with this scene is that people keep applying adult psychology despite the fact that this is child psychology. Another problem is that people don’t try to consider what it was like from Starlight’s point of view, all they care about is what the situation would be like for them (which circles back around to psychology).

@Derpyfan  
No the comments here point it out, it just wasn’t done well.

The scene where people don’t take the psychology side of things into account.

@Pagan  
And it’s also just people trying to find excuses to say her backstory was properly thought out and written.

(YOUNG HORSE NOISES)

@Phantom Rider  
It’s just people trying to find excuses to say her backstory wasn’t poorly thought out and written.

@Scrounge  
It’s his parents who put him in a different school. 10-year-olds don’t have a say in that sort of thing. He did no big screw-you to her.
 
Somehow, getting excited and running outside as seen right here (that’s what gets mentioned most, overwhelmingly) plus a decision made by others that wasn’t up to him, makes Sunburst a horrible friend and total bastard that is 110% percent responsible for every bad thing Starlight ever did.
 
Yeah, no.

@Phantom Rider  
I can’t help but think Starlight had some issues before that, and Sunburst just happened to be the one who set her off.
 
And it wasn’t even his cutie mark she was bitter about, it was him going off to Canterlot and leaving her behind. If you can’t draw the connection between the two, that’s because you’re being rational (or at least trying to).

@Phantom Rider  
Probably same people who think Mane 5 in TMMDW was horrendous monstrosity, or think that entire Canterlot Invasion was solely Twilight’s fault.

@Scrounge  
You know, I never got the whole “Sunburst is horribly evil for being excited about his new CM and wanting to tell everyone” thing.

@Crayv  
Starlight is probably kicking herself over it more. She jumped to the conclusion that he’d abandoned her and it turns out that was probably when he needed her most.

@Crayv  
Or maybe she could’ve tried to keep in touch with a pony that was a very dear friend of hers, by wiritng letters or visiting, rather than throw an epic level temper tantrum that nearly destroyed Equestria.
 
I mean, it’s not exactly uncommon for childhood friends to move to another city, or attend a school all the way on the other side of the country. Yet, very few people actually tries to become supervillains over it.

Now he probably looks back at this and thinks about how bad of a friend he was that he just up and left his friend which emotionally damaged her to the point she nearly destroyed Equestria.

@untraceablelarry  
Marmalade is serious business.

“OH SHIT NIGGA! FINALLY GOT MY ASS-TATT!”  
Happiness times ∞ ^{∞ ∞ ∞ ∞}

@Background Pony #894D  
For want of a nail… or for spite of nail? What would have happened if he got his cutie mark later than she? Would she make same mistake, but for different excuse? Or not? We will never know.

For want of a nail…..one little mistake, one word, one little misunderstanding, and everything went downhill.

@Background Pony #6863  
How so? We never saw her parents let alone see them do anything to her she chose not to make friends and be what she became her parents can’t just brainwash her nor would they even know she’s a lunatic if she never outright told them, so no I doubt her parents had anything to do with it.

All the cult of removing ones cutie marks would. Avoided if she got good parents.

@Crayv  
Well they are equines. Equines especially horses are known to overreact badly.

@Evowizard25  
Yea, just to think what would have happened if Sweetie haven’t fixed that Illuminati Dress…

@Crayv  
It’s both hilarious and scary how true that is, especially given how many times the main six have lost it. Maybe it’s a routine occurance, like how Ponyville views monster attacks.

Two things to remember when watching this show.
 
1: Ponies will forgive almost anything.
 
Which is good because…
 
2: Ponies overreact to almost everything.