About Unicode Star Symbols
Most of this collection is one idea: ✩ ✪ ✫ ✬ ✭ are consecutive characters in Unicode's Dingbats block, and they are not five unrelated stars. They are a progression — the same five-pointed form drawn with steadily more ink, from an open outline through to a heavily filled shape. Encountered as a set they are decoration. Used as a series they can carry information.
Using a Weight Series as Tiers
Because the shape is constant and only the weight changes, this run works the way a rating scale works. ✩ for the lowest tier and ✭ for the highest gives you five ranks that a reader interprets correctly without a legend, because heavier plainly means more.
That is the practical reason to prefer these over five different star shapes: five different shapes look like decoration, while five weights of one shape look like a scale. It works for clan ranks, tier lists, and skill levels in a bio.
★ and ☆ extend the same idea at the extremes — fully solid and fully hollow — and both are supported more widely than the graded run.
The Four-Pointed Pair
✦ and ✧ are a different shape entirely — four points rather than five — and they belong to the ornament family rather than to the star series. They frame a name well and are covered alongside their relatives on the decorative symbols page.
Two Exceptions Worth Naming
⭐ and 🌟 are emoji. They arrive in fixed gold and ignore your text colour, which breaks the weight series if you mix them into it — an emoji star among text stars looks like an error rather than a step in a scale.
✡ is the Star of David, a religious symbol rather than a decorative one. It is a six-pointed shape and sits in this collection on shape alone; using it as ornament will be read as a religious reference by anyone who recognises it.