YMMV / Star Darlings

• Angst Dissonance: It can be a bit hard to care about Starland losing its magic when a lot of the things they use magic energy for are chores, learning, travel, moving things around, and things that human beings have done on their own for hundreds of years.
• Awesome Art: The illustrations and cartoon are gorgeous overall, with detailed hair, sparkles, backgrounds, and character designs.
• Awesome Music: The songs are a highlight of the series.
  • Wish Now is the series' main theme and is about how wishing from your heart can make things happen. It also gained a remix by Skylar Steckar.
  • Up is an empowering song about doing things you love even when others tell you to stop.
  • Starlight is about friendships enduring no matter what happens along the way or how far apart you are.
• Cult Classic: Despite the franchise being a flop, it has many dedicated fans.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Scarlet is one of the most popular Star Darlings, likely due to her attitude, cool design, unique power, and fascination with Earth.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: If fanfics are any indication, Sage/Scarlet and Scarlet/Vega are popular pairings.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: 8 years after this franchise involving girls traveling down to Earth in shooting stars to help grant wishes came out, Wish (2023) came out with its protagonist, Asha, wishing on a shooting star and having it come down to help her. Both series also use positive energy to combat evil magic, which takes the form of stardust and good wishes, and wishes are seen in the form of orbs that are protected until they're granted.
• Les Yay: The first book, and episode 6 of the web series, has people shipping Sage and Cassie.
• Narm:
  • The Star Darlings express great dismay over their skin and hair losing their sparkle on Earth, and often resort to using Mirror Mantras to sparkle again and feel better.
  • Stealing Starlight has several passages about how none of the Wishlings know that the Star Darlings and Vivica are battling for Starland's future, and represent good and evil, which come across as overly dramatic because they keep repeating the same information.
• Nightmare Fuel: In the Power of Twelve special Lady Cordial's skin cracks off as the Star Darlings wear her down, and Rancora bursts out of Lady Cordial's body and discards the empty shell. During the ensuing battle, she nearly kills Vega by draining her positive energy, making her eyes roll back into her head, turning her skin pale and veiny, and hurting her to such a degree Adora can't heal her.
• Retroactive Recognition: Scarlet was one of Sarah-Nicole Robles' earliest roles before she hit it big as Luz Noceda.
• The Scrappy: Libby in the animated series only. She's disliked for being a fourth-wall breaking, overly girly, hyper, poor man's Pinkie Pie, while in the book series she's much more down-to-earth, highly generous, and level-headed. (Libby in the music videos is closer to her book self, avoiding this trope.)
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Besides Lady Stella and Lady Cordial, the other teachers at Starling Academy get very little focus in the books or web series.
  • In the cartoon, Cassie, Tessa, Clover, Gemma, Piper, Adora, and Astra get very little screentime, with some never getting speaking roles until the Power of Twelve special. This also extended to the toylines, with Cassie getting two doll forms, one of which was UK-only, and Piper only one, with the others not getting any.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: While Rancora is a nasty villain and is written as purely evil in the present day, since she fell victim to a case of Because Destiny Says So, was refused admittance back to the Academy not only because of what she'd done but because doing so would undermine the prophecy, and was exposed to so much negative energy she thrives on it, with the energy also altering her personality, it's hard not to feel a little bad for her.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Every book hammers in how primitive Wishlings are to Starlings, which can make the Starlanders come across as condescending even though the planets are in a symbiotic relationship.
• The Woobie:
  • Cassie is introverted and had to deal with the death of her parents, resulting in her feeling unable to get close to people and lying that her parents were alive to feel better.
  • Ophelia is quiet and sweet, but isn't good at anything related to wish-granting and lacks knowledge of Wishworld. She's very relieved when it turns out she isn't a Star Darling after all. Later, she apologizes for having to fool the other Star Darlings as it was the only way she could gain admittance to the academy.

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