I said a little bit of this in the thread about the general opinion of her. I used to be among those lukewarm to Starlight as a character during a show’s run. But having expanded on her character myself on some recent things, most significantly a 32-chapter script-style story I’ve done on my ask blog I Dream of Twilight Sparkle (Mostly pixel art blog of Twilight as a Genie, Parcly Taxel’s uploaded most of my recent stuff lately.). I also have another blog that is also genie-focused that will heavily star Starlight too called Geniequestria which is in something of a hiatus but I’m excited to continue that too
I think I’m making up for lost time appreciating her character as now I feel she’s one of the biggest missed opportunities of Friendship is Magic as a whole. It’ll be up to G4 fans to keep Starlight alive as even if G5 does go into returning the Mane 6 through a similar fashion to the Pillars at the end of Season 7 of FiM. Starlight’s probably not going to be with them. So it’s entirely up to us to give our own expansion on Starlight that the show never got to do (The IDW Comics not even getting to do it despite giving a backstory issue for many other villains). In my aforementioned story I flesh out Starlight on about everything I’d like to know more about her. Though I don’t want to try to purely plug what I’ve recently done.
I think the most important thing is that we never got Starlight’s cutie mark story. Which is absolutely the most surprising thing as I thought that would of been like one of the first things Season 6 would cover at some point. Even better if the CMC were there for it. I can give a personal guess (And it’s different from the one I use in my story since there’s some significant additions to the lore that wouldn’t have been possible in canon) that she may have gotten it the first time she used the Cutie mark removal spell. But I would be interesting in hearing other’s thoughts on Starlight’s character on her mark, maybe who her mother was that was missing in The Parent Map, whether or not her father knew about what she did in Season 5 (He seemed to be the type to be entirely oblivious to what she did), why she was so particularly impressive in magic to the point of being able to go blow-for-blow with alicorn Twilight, and more.
Back during the show’s run when I realized the show probably was never going to answer some of this myself I just couldn’t find myself caring about Starlight at the time. But now that it’s sort of entirely up to fans to give their own answers, I’d be sort of interesting in hearing all the different interpretations. I do have my own as I mentioned, but I am interested in hearing as many as possible if any Starlight fans here have their own thoughts and headcanons. I never hated Starlight per se, but I do want to say sorry for having never giving Starlight her due until just about a year after the show was over as I understand the potential she had now. Just the show never gave enough for me. I now view Starlight as quite an interesting character. I’d like to see more positive and productive discussions about her. As I mentioned she might have to be a big part of those still making G4 content even as G5 rolls on to have our own ideas on stuff the entire generation missed out on. ^^