I was so happy when Starco finally happened, but one of my friends ruined that for me. She said it was rushed and forced, because, "First Star cries about breaking up with Tom and then she suddenly loves Marco" and my said friend doesn't believe Starco was intense love from the start.

UGH.

And I’m not UGHhing at you, or specifically at your friends, but at… everything, from this idea to the show waiting so long to end Tomstar that so many people feel like this. I can’t change the way you feel about this, that’s something persona, but I can tell you that it’s absolutely not an issue in universe, and in canon. Let’s look at the events:

in Doop-Doop Star and Tom split up in a way less than amicable way; it’s not a break up yet, but it’s clear that both have some thinking to do. Tom does it, Star not as much because she’s too focused being happy. With Marco. As soon as she had doubts about the direction she wanted her life to take, being too insecure about stuff to even just take a trip with her boyfriend, she went to Marco. There was nothing Star felt like committing to in that moment, except Marco. She then spends several episodes without ever thinking about Tom.

Does this mean that she never ever liked Tom? No, but it just confirms what we had seen a number of times already (Sweet Dreams, Is Another Mystery, Lake House Fever…): Star has not commitment to her relationship with Tom, no investment. She enjoys spending time with him and smooching him, but she makes no ACTIVE effort to involve him in her life, and always defaults to Marco for all important things unless Tom is already there or it’s a group effort (Monster Bash, Cornonation).

Then in Sad Teen Hotline Tom is back, and tells Star they have to break up because they are heading in different directions (which reconnects to the lines about “I want a best friend too”, later), and Star cries, a lot. Wait, does this mean that she deeply loved Tom? No, it’s means that it’s in human’s nature to be sad when something ends, ESPECIALLY when you are a dumb teen. And she did have feelings for Tom, even if nothing as intense and mature as what she feels for Marco. Also, while she obviously cries as soon as Tom tells her that he wants to break up, what really opens up the waterworks for the rest of the episode is Tom telling her that they can’t be friends anymore

Because this gives the moment an aura of finality Star is not ready to accept, and she manages to calm down only when they sort this out and Tom’s fully explains and kinda reconsiders (or at least reframes) his words.

So the brunt of emotional trauma for Star during the break up wasn’t “I’M LOSING THE LOVE OF MY LIFE” but “CHANGE IS SCARY AAAAAAAA”. Once she accepted it, she was naturally more inclines to finally think about her life as well, and with Marco confessing his love in Mama Star and the final battle with Mina approaching, she finally got the push she needed to start writing the new chapter of her life,

and to decide who she wanted as her co-protagonists in it.



These events happened in quick succession as far as the episodes are involved, so I can understand how they might feel rushed to some, but they weren’t rushed as far as the build up and the psychology of the characters go. Star and Marco already had an incredibly strong relationship,

with an incredible amount of commitment (The Knight Shift, Doop-Doop), far beyond what one would expect from a normal friendship, and all they had to do was to fully accept and recognize what the incredibly intense feelings they had for each other truly meant, and recognize that they weren’t in the way of anything, on the contrary: they were the chance for something beautiful.

Long story short, it wasn’t

“NOOO TOM NOOO MY LOVE well ok guess I’ll date Marco”, but



“I thought about what my relationship with Tom was like and why we broke up and I now fully realize what I have been avoiding for months now, scared by the intensity of the feeling and incapable of fully recognizing them for what they were because mixed with friendship and fear of change: I love Marco”

