>>91517070Gonna hazard a guess-and again, this is armchair anon analysis so it's almost certainly off-but the fact that Star is a main character who screws up a lot and gets punished hard might play into it.
She screws up due to her personality traits/flaws, and in addition, the consequences of her failures are major and not easily resolved. In fact, they've gotten worse: Toffee is back, Glossaryck is gone, and Marco is with Jackie.
This humanizes the bug. A perfect protagonist is hard to relate to, and the same is true for a protagonist who screws up but the consequences are either not significant, or very easily resolved with little issue (which also often means little character development, or not very believable character development, which is also really hard if you have a functionally flawless or close-to-it protagonist).
But not only does Star screw up due to her own issues, she also gets screwed over even when she tries her best and does what she thinks is right (and what sometimes is right). Key example is probably the Marco/Jackie thing, where Star is doing what she genuinely thinks is right (according to her head), in making Marco happy by getting him together with his long-term crush. However, her heart (and the head vs heart battle/conflict/disagreement is mentioned by Star in Sleepover) really doesn't agree and Star is punished hard for it. That's something a lot of people can empathize with-doing the right thing according to the brain often hurts our hearts really bad, and that doesn't even mean that the brain is necessarily wrong (even though I ship Starco)!
That kind of suffering (good intentions but it still sucks) is great for building a character viewers empathize with and want to see succeed
also drawfriends pls gib Iroh and Star drinking tea and Star getting sagely advice