Friendship Is Magic: The Next Generation begins thirty years after the birth of Princess Flurry Heart, and the story is... a bit darker and more complicated than My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic before it. It delves into the backstory around Alicorns, where they came from, why Discord is the only Draconequus, and who is the prisoner in the deepest darkest cell of the cosmic oubliette that is Tartarus... (And admittedly, FIM:TNG does take some liberties with the events of MLP:FIM, mostly in regards to Equestria Girls and all episodes after and including The Cutie Re-Mark. That will become more apparent when it comes to the character bios for Sunset Shimmer, Flash Sentry, Starlight Glimmer, and others.) Now, I have done this for years now online, but I think it deserves attention here: whenever I discuss a couple, I always use an ampersand "&" between their names, whereas with platonic pairs/groups, I use the word "and" instead. And also, I think we all take it for granted that same-sex couples in Friendship Is Magic headcanons can have kids. I mean, magic is a thing in this universe, and it's not ENTIRELY written off that sex-changes could happen with magic. Or just, you know, other options with the magic to allow two mares or two stallions to have children together. Anyway, moving on. Starlight Glimmer, one half of the Counselor's Office at the School of Friendship, wife of Sunset Shimmer, and mother of Daybreak Dream (aka, Dawn). She is a willful and proactive mare when it comes to dealing with problems. Quick with her emotions, she once let herself solve her problems with magic and spells first and talking and communication almost never. Now that she has seen the errors of her ways and served her parole to Princess Twilight Sparkle, she is a better mare than she was in the season (of their lives) that they met. Her fathers back in Sire's Hollow, Firelight & Starbeam, had the help of their old friend Stellar Flare to surrogate for their foal. As such, Starlight ended up spending a lot of time with Stellar Flare's colt Sunburst for most of her fillyhood. They were practically twins, brother and sister, almost inseparable. And then Sunburst got his cutie mark and Stellar Flare hurried him off to Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. Consumed by hurt that Sunburst had left her so suddenly, Starlight ran away from Sire's Hollow, which she no longer saw as home without her other half. Starlight found herself in Vanhoover, and threw herself into bringing out her cutie mark. She practically lived in the library until then, and though she eventually earned her mark, she resented it for taking so long to appear. If it had only appeared at the same time as Sunburst's, they could have gone to Princess Celestia's School together! (Ironically, had she stayed at Sire's Hollow a day longer, she would have found Sunburst returned, evidently not having been suitable for attendance. Upon finding that Starlight was gone, Sunburst himself left for Fillydelphia.) Years later, as the now-adult Starlight explored Equestria, she came upon a stallion named Double Diamond struggling with his skis. It turned out that skiing was his special talent, and yet it was something that he had constant trouble with. Starlight could sympathize; his cutie mark was causing this trouble, the same as how her life was turned upside-down by Sunburst's cutie mark. She spoke with him about the troubles of cutie marks, and they decided that there had to be more ponies like them. And that's how Our Town was made! Once she had established her town, Starlight re-established contact with her fathers. She told them that she'd finally found her place, and so many ponies who were just like her. So many friends...! With her own specially written spell to separate a pony from their special talent, she was able to equalize all ponies who opted to adopt her ideology. Regretfully, she had to keep her own; somepony had to take other's marks, and she wouldn't let anypony else shoulder this burden. Everything was good... until the Princess of Friendship came. And then Our Town unraveled. And Starlight was alone, again. She became obsessed with revenge, taking away the friendships that Twilight Sparkle had as her own friendships were ripped from hers. It transpired that Twilight and her five friends all got their cutie marks because of the same event. After intense research, Starlight found a time-travel spell by Starswirl the Bearded. With modifications of her own, Starlight was able to create changes in the past to alter the present. She would destroy Twilight Sparkle's friendships by removing the Sonic Rainboom from history! When Twilight showed her the horrible consequences for Equestria because of the lack of Twilight and her friendships, Starlight refused to believe her. No friendships could be that powerful! No friendships could be the backbone of the entire world! It was a trick, a glamour! Twilight already had to be restrained enough in interceding against Starlight that the lavender Alicorn was on par with an albeit-powerful Unicorn, this was the only way she could get over on Starlight. But after realizing that her motive (Sunburst getting his cutie mark ahead of hers) was disproportionate to her current actions, Starlight returned with Twilight and Spike to the Castle of Friendship... to face arrest by the Royal Guards for threatening Princess Celestia's pupil. Standing on trial for her threats to the time-stream, Starlight faced great consequences at the insistence of the Princesses Luna and Cadance (the former for her antiquated ideas of justice, the latter for Starlight's threats to her favorite foal to foalsit and surrogate little sister). To the surprise of everypony, including her friends, Twilight Sparkle vouched for Starlight to be shown mercy. She had a small motive that snowballed to world-ending actions, sure, but she had little idea of how great the consequences were of her messing with the Sonic Rainboom, and also that she had much more to do for Equestria if she was shown the error of her ways, to correct her ideas of friendship. Princess Celestia was intrigued, as this was her logic behind redeeming Discord. Starlight was baffled, as she had done something she thought irredeemable, but Twilight insisted that Starlight's hesitation when she saw the bad future proved that she was not irredeemable. It was decided that Starlight would be under indefinite parole with Princess Twilight Sparkle until such time that Twilight decided that Starlight had fully learned the lessons of friendship. One particular acquaintance of Twilight Sparkle's would be her primary guide in redemption: Sunset Shimmer. Starlight & Sunset had a rather rocky start to their relationship, as Sunset distrusted Starlight for having done such reckless tampering with time-travel. For her part, the distrust was initially returned in full, though Sunset knew that this was fair, given her own recent history, her appearance under her glamour, and related revelations regarding her own past. Sunset kept a sharp eye on Starlight, rather bluntly letting Starlight know that she was glad Starlight couldn't be called by the Map of Friendship because of how easily she could mess things up with her borderline reckless usage of magic to solve mundane problems. Starlight was terrified of meeting up with Sunburst again, because she was sure he'd heard of the horrible things she had done since they'd separated. She was very much forced to, though, when joining Twilight in attending the birth of her niece. Apparently, Sunburst had moved up to the Crystal Empire very soon after it had returned, and despite her great fear of rejection and Sunburst's insecurity at being such a failed wizard, they patched things up and started to mend their old friendship-bordering-on-siblinghood. Starlight's hypnosis of Twilight's five best friends was a serious blow to their perceptions of her attempts to change, and Sunset chilled towards her for a good long while afterwards (as did Twilight's friends who didn't feel entirely like forgiving her right away just because she felt bad after she robbed them of their free will), though she started to warm back up after Starlight and her ragtag friends overthrew Queen Chrysalis. Twilight was very impressed by Starlight's actions in bringing out the best of the changelings, though she didn't think that this necessarily mandated Starlight having "graduated" as a student of friendship. She was certainly on an accelerated program now that she realized that magic wasn't always the first and only solution to problems. After she used dangerous magic to siphon out her own feelings of anger, Starlight was forced to wear a magic inhibitor to force her to stop considering magic as a knee-jerk solution to her problems. This prevented her from too seriously entertaining an age-reversal spell on herself and Sunburst to take them back to what they were like as foals, though it's likely that she only would have been able to do so with the Alicorn Amulet anyway. As it was, though, Starlight had to seriously weigh the notion that Sunburst could have good friendships with more ponies than just herself. When the School of Friendship was established, Twilight opted to set up Sunset & Starlight as counselors. The she-demon and the reformed Unicorn seated side by side in their office brought about many remarks from students who visited them that they looked and acted like a couple. This led to the pair of them blushing at each other, as they couldn't exactly refute this. After being weakened by Cozy Glow's magic siphon, and powerless to help her friend Starlight, Sunset was livid and more than glad to see the sociopathic little Pegasus sent to Tartarus. This led to Starlight & Sunset giving a shot at a relationship. Starlight and Sunburst eventually received a letter from their parents back in Sire's Hollow, and felt compelled to finally meet their parents again for the first time in years despite their issues. In Starlight's youth, Firelight had swung back and forth between over-indulging his own babying adoration of her, and spending time at work adoring his workaholic husband. Stellar Flare, for her part, drove a string of spouses away with her unsettling (and possibly verging on romantic/sexual) obsession with her own son. Despite their respective tensions with her fathers and his mother, Starlight and Sunburst managed to reach some degree of stability with their parent-child relationships (though Sunburst quietly agreed with Starlight to keep interactions with his mother to a minimum). When Starlight & Sunset opted to have a child, it was no question between the two of them that the latter would be the carrier. After all, they had no way of knowing how large the child they had would be, with Sunset's she-demon genes. During such time, Sunset would have to avoid assuming her pony form for the same reasons. And that's how Daybreak Dream was made! (Dawn can assume a pony-ish form as well, though with much more of a tell that she's more than she appears than with her mother Sunset.) The Alicorns' disappearance was hard on Starlight; Twilight was a very good friend for bringing out the best in her, and she worried that she could potentially relapse without the Princess of Friendship to guide her. She appreciated her she-demon wife being there to support her, since Sunset always seemed so strong. Then Sunset confessed that she was very hurt by the disappearance, since Princess Celestia was effectively her mother. Starlight initially questioned why Sunset kept this bottled up, since she would have been able to support her through both of their pain. Two trees out of balance can lean on each other. Sunset & Starlight are fairly clear that they will follow up on any leads as to where the Alicorns have gone.

2020-07-13 00:38:04 UTC