Darling Starling Discussion

with regarding "Dear Libby" i have seen a couple of people talk about “Oh this isn’t right, this isn’t what friends should do” and how everyone are terrible friends.

well here is my counter point

These girls aren’t friends.


Outside of the combinations such as Sage/Cassie these 12 girls as we have seen haven’t really interacted that much to be considered “friendship” most of the time we have seen them together is when they are doing business in association with their star darlings duties…outside of that, you don’t see much. heck, you see them doing more stuff on their own then as a group.

They have done little things together, but nothing that would signify “These girls are full blown friendship” which I would find impossible since these girls were more or less just brought together out of sheer randomness.

They just aren’t that close to one another.

Beside Libby, the friendliest of them all is probably Leona, and even then her first thought was her negativity towards Scarlet.

If you are in denial about their closeness, they were the ones that egged Libby one in “dear libby”

also, keep in mind, this is the show that has Sage black mailing Scarlet

>>84130424
By definition, these starlings are parasites. even going as far as referring to humans as their "food" source

>>84131432
>"Dear Libby"
I've actually not watched the animated shorts. At least, not many of them. After one or two, it was quite clear that the books were focused on developing some personalities and the setting while the shorts were just some quick blurbs with an amusing twist at the end. Some tend to get the personalities completely wrong, like this one - Libby is quite serious and focused, if overeager and quick to jump on her own half-formed ideas. She's not obsessed over pink much more than the others are obsessed about their own colors, and I don't think I've read about ANYONE in the books discussion boys outside the boys having their own academy somewhere else.

You are right about one thing: the girls aren't friends.

They're paired up together in rooms and attend one class together (in secret) during their school day, but other than that, they don't hang out too much together. Sage/Cassie might be considered friendly, although that's probably because Sage was the main character of the first book and so gets presented as the "main" character. I've read through two and a half books (partway through Leona's Unlucky Mission) and the closest friendship so far has been Libby/Scarlet, thanks to the two of them finding some common ground outside classes. Gemma/Tessa as well, since those two are sisters.

At this point in the books, nobody is really getting along at all - for rather specific reasons, though.

Libby is actually one of the nicest Star Darlings, too. Gemma (her roommate) is the chatterbox who just won't shut up about anything, so it's surprising that they used Libby for that. Perhaps the animation requires using each of the girls so many times, and they didn't have anything interesting for Libby?

>>84131500
It gets worse. Adult humans get instantly hypnotized around Starling children, and will then do anything the Starling suggests. Star Darlings have a poor understanding of humans and human motivations, and combined with being just children, tend to make some poor decisions. Oh, and they are in a rush, as they need to complete whatever they have in mind in just a few days, and so will push into your life and make whatever changes they'd like if they think it will help what they have an interest in.

It's almost a bit fridge-horrory if you think about it too much. Magical children, oblivious to your most basic personal concerns, free to go anywhere and interfere however they want with your life? Forget about their "food" being some unrelated thing obtained from humanity. (It's really their electricity and power for their society.)

I'm waiting to see if the book handle that a bit better. It's an interesting premise and I have a feeling that Disney was intentionally trying to replace Disney Fairies with this, but it does come off as a bit freaky and invasive from a certain angle.

I'm getting the collections books.

currently reading Libby

>>84133737
>I'm getting the collections books.
That's what I did. I wasn't even considering them until I eventually broke down and picked up the Collection #1.

What do you think about them so far?

>>84133817
not bad so far, but only two books in. Though curious how exactly how old these girls are. on starland they almost seem about highschoolish, but on earth, perhaps in the range of early middle school

>>84134371
I'd definitely say middle school age. Starlings get born automatically knowing a bunch of stuff (see: Sage's automatic math calculations) so most of their schooling is just related to wish-granting. They seem to be about as mature as your standard middle school student, and middle school (at least in the U.S.) is when you first start seeing students picking their own classes and attending different classrooms throughout the day.

What I find interesting is the strange lack of confrontation in the stories - namely the visits to Wishworld. I've not seen a writing do that before. Traditional reasoning would be that it doesn't work, and in some aspects it doesn't, but the writing still does a fairly good job of giving the girls some (if contrived) challenges.

Also, I'm on the third book, and it seems like the "conflicts" will be more focused on the mystery of things happening in Starland than their visits to Wishworld. I won't spoil it for you, but things are going to end up more tense moving into the third book.

>>84134690
>>84134690
hat sounds pretty good

So what’s from stopping a sadistic Starling from kidnapping a bunch a humans and torturing them into farming for their wishes. Torturing them until they wish for the suffering to end or death; “wishing to be let go” would be an impossible wish as the sadist isn’t just going to do it.

>>84135482
Wishes come in three varieties. Good wishes are ones of a pure or altruistic nature, and are the ones which actually give energy. Bad wishes are ones of a selfish or personal nature, and they give "negative energy" which is dangerous. And then there are impossible wishes, like global peace, which simply cannot be granted.

Outside the fact that Starlings need to go back to Starworld to obtain the wish orbs in order to properly grant wishes - which means such torture would need to be public knowledge - something like "wishing for the suffering to end" would technically be a selfish wish and would grant the corrupting negative energy, which can't be used to power Starling society.

Also, there's the whole point that the Starlings are granting wishes for what is basically electricity. They don't get large magic boosts directly from doing so, so there's not exactly a personal reason for granting a wish beyond prestige. And I believe that negative energy, by the way, is toxic to Starlings.