View source for Research:StarRoads/26-8 badly-gen-6

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[cr. 2026-08-27T10:45:19H]

~~"Letting your heart be your guide"~~ ~~"I'll be there right by your side"~~

my little pony, my little pony
~~what does friendship mean to you~~ ~~what could friendship mean to you~~ ~~what does the night sky hold for you~~ ~~how does the night sky hold its song~~ ~~where does the night sky end~~ where does the star-shine end
my little pony, my little pony
starlit journeys~



you can't turn back the winter  to light up the autumn


~~you can't stand there stallin' / so get your trot on~~
~~time waits for no one~~ ~~spring waits for no one / let's make it a glowing one~~
you can't stand there stallin'
  so let's get rollin'
time waits for no one
  let's spring for a glowing one
winter is over for good


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[cr. 2026-09-26T03:17:45H]

how can we ever come together in a world where everything we do takes away from the whole and all the other parts of it?




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[cr. 2026-08-24T15:57:10H]

in which I badly predict gen 6, but have a lot of fun with it -

Twilight is 18 or so in human years and headed off to college
actually who am I kidding twilight should be one of those characters that zips off to college at 16.
we start the G6 show with twilight packing up for college and then as she meets the other ponies she gets pulled back and becomes conflicted about whether she should leave or stay, and the show turns into this ridiculous but enjoyable tangent where Twilight keeps having to do more things before she can go to college
in the second season of the show she actually gets to college and things change up a bit but she still has her friends

Starlight Glimmer is in this
it would be severely funny if she ended up at the same university as Twilight and was a major antagonist throughout Twilight's first arc
just imagine, Starlight has been told all her life that Second-World universities are terrible and Equestria's universities are so much better. she comes into this place with internalized prejudice. everyone assumes the place she comes from, the SSSR, is a dump. and even Starlight herself isn't that good at stuff herself compared to other people there.
so she competes like hell against Twilight. she shows off with her mastery of magic that can get frighteningly powerful at times. but inside there is a lot of anger and pain and fear of what will happen if Twilight wins.

eventually Starlight has to confess to Twilight that she is afraid of what will happen to the SSSR, when every day Equestria has been saying such mean things about it and that it has to 'all come down' - she knows she will lose her home and all her friends will starve, for real, if Equestria destroys it. the Kirin, the Chollima, the earth ponies, and the star ponies will all be driven apart into a horrible war (yeah, G5 style) just so Equestria and the princesses that are going to be restored to each republic can benefit

Twilight used to find her really annoying until she learned the truth, and thought her behavior was inexcusable,
but now is much more sympathetic, and reassures Starlight that they will always be friends and there "has to be" some way the different lands of the pony world can get along even if she currently has no idea what it is
I like the implication here that Twilight genuinely has a nagging question she's studying over the course of the show that she can't figure out that the audience also knows. that really helps connect the audience to Twilight and her interests of studying the world she lives in instead of showing Twilight is 'the smart one' through this somewhat superior attitude that was apparently really alienating to a chunk of the viewers.
that's probably part of why Starlight is oddly popular, that it cemented people's uneasy feelings about Twilight when she threatened Starlight with this nasty reckoning with the ponies of Equestria not really being equal and some non-villain characters being worthy of being subjugated until they 'do things the right way' - which in a way is more sinister than Starlight using her crude methods to basically take away Twilight's power over everyone.


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[cr. 2026-08-24T15:57:10H]

ok I think there is a 0% chance of _this_ happening in G6, this is just my cracktheory now
but I think it would be super funny if
there were no princesses in this. twilight isn't a princess. starlight can't be a princess. but instead one of the magical authority figures bigger than the ordinary ponies is the Trotsky of this universe.
he's just hanging out in some weird starry realm that he was banished to. people speak of him in really weird phrasings as if they're euphemisms for him having died but he actually didn't, he's just over here waiting things out instead.  'he's moved on to a better place' 'he's gone to somewhere beyond this realm'  etc
this character is a /big/ star pony with a kirin horn that is long in the body more than in the legs and looks nearly like an actual dragon
his name is like  Autumn Trotsoff
Autumn Leaves  Autumn Trotsoff  Solstice Trotsoff  Solstice Leaves   shoot I can't think of a good name.  the Kirin being named Autumn seems like it needs to be referenced

Solstice Leaves tells them something about how they will need four ponies to solve the prophecy and save the world

I guess in my mind this is more of a movie / special style plot, not a main series plot

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[cr. 2026-08-27T11:37:37H]

I like the idea of a Solstice Leaves character in "G6",
but he is strictly an animist personification of a Fourth International. everyone unifies together and they form a new consciousness that exists for short periods of time, which is Solstice Leaves. he can use magic weapons. the only Good/Neutral character vastly more powerful than celestia or luna.  discord doesn't count ~~(and in my opinion he's not in either the real or the fake G6)~~

starlight remembers fragmentary legend about Solstice Leaves and how he supposedly disappeared never to be seen again. everyone thinks the bureaucracy killed him but in actuality he was a fusion character that failed to form again

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[cr. 2026-08-31T16:53:19H]

young Autumn Blaze presents stage play with Twilight and friends in attendance
she is playing the mythical Leaf Trotsoff, who was said to be the fifth member of the four founders of the SSSR but that nobody seems to remember
'they tell me there is no record of anyone by that name'

'this is a work of fiction...' 'they were only going to let us perform the play if we put that in front'

Leaf Trotsoff actually shatters away like shards of glass thanks to magical special effects
'we have no idea what actually happened to him'

Twilight ends up racking her brain about how it can be that there are four known things and then a fifth thing  - implying heavily to the audience that they should be thinking about the elements of harmony

when they later uncover the four star artifacts that are supposed to summon Solstice Leaves — it might not work at first — they learn that the two Mane Fours that have been established in the broader story will have to choose among themselves which ponies get the four star artifacts.
Starlight:  as I tried to tell you, Twilight, life is unfair
Twilight:  couldn't we just make more of them?   Rainbow Dash:  good idea, but how?    Fluttershy:  [brilliant observation somehow]


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[cr. 2026-08-27T11:37:37H]

superstructural fantasy world campfire story crackfic

starlight:  they say once ago there was a mysterious force that moved our land
a force that is now beyond anyone's understanding
the force of creation.   twilight our whole world is built out of labor what the hell are you doing acting like you own this place


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[cr. 2026-09-06T10:09:14Z]

Sunny Starscout shows up from the future and begs for Starlight to fix the world and basically retcon G5's world out of existence
Starlight:  but, if I do that then isn't there some chance you're never going to be born?
Sunny: 'I promised dad that no matter how dark it got I would always keep a smile'

sunny becomes a tragic character that committed herself to a big sacrifice, and arguably becomes more likeable
I can only imagine there are a lot of ponies fighting to try to prevent Sunny from retroactively deleting the G5 world, if they had any idea what was happening


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[cr. 2026-09-23T07:58:20H]

changelings become Communists.
in G6-starry-roads there is a changeling SSR.
for a while it was going just fine and then, very recently, interference from other nations tore it apart and the changelings un-reformed and became their old form, causing all kinds of chaos

discord, the former ruler of the SSSR before the revolution, moves back into the changeling republic and sets up there. his role in G6-roads is different from what it is in G4. it's kind of like he's equestria's puppet ruler except he has the control and he could puppet them if he wanted to


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[cr. 2026-09-07T18:28:10H]

last story in Starry Roads -
Celestia stands her ground and faces down Solstice Leaves
'you cannot exist, or our world will fall apart.' 'do you understand that?!'

it's probably fearmongering, but still, the world is shaken up and cracking a bit

Celestia maybe calls out Discord to break up Solstice Leaves and his terrifying power
in gen 6B, despite their period of separation they're just old buddies that knew each other from Skyros



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r1  [cr. 2026-08-25T03:50:15H]

twilight is restless, eager to go to college
her brother is off in the crystal kingdom trying to see princess cadence. the ponies of equestria are weird about this, thinking it's a status thing and shining armor really has to be great to impress her family. shining armor insists he just likes her.

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r1  [cr. 2026-08-25T03:50:15H]

there are months left until college opens
shining armor is not here to play games with because he recently went to the crystal empire

twilight trots around restlessly, jumps in place a bit
twilight  "oh why can't it be autumn yet?!"
mom  "surely there must be something else for you to do in the meantime"

twilight  "no, there's nothing to do around here. what would I even do, shoot apples off fences with that 'apple' family?"
mom laughs  "seems like my little princess doesn't have a very high opinion of any of her subjects."
mom  "what drives you to want to go to Canterlot so badly?"
twilight  "I don't know, there has to be something great waiting there"
twilight  "I keep thinking about the tale of the first princess of the earth ponies, who broke open the stone guarded by a horrible snake to find the magic jewel."
twilight  "that can't really be where unicorns came from. I wonder where they really came from."

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r1  [cr. 2026-08-25T03:50:15H]

twilight  "I've read all the books at the library. at least, everything interesting in them."

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r1  [cr. 2026-08-25T04:52:54H]

fluttershy appears very early on in the first two episodes of the show
starlight shows up  and fluttershy gets anxious like starlight is 'definitely' going to hurt her

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r1  [cr. 2026-08-25T03:50:15H]

fluttershy  "what are you doing all this reading for?"
twilight  "I want to be a princess"
fluttershy  "um... I don't think this land is really in need of any princesses right now" "celestia and luna have ruled this place for eons"

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[cr. 2026-08-25T05:11:51H]

starlight glimmer is 'learning english' - the ponies have one language and the SSSR has another wholly made up language which will sometimes be shown on screen with subtitles when the story gets there
so we've got a little bit of the 'russian seems more backward/sinister by not knowing english yet' trope, but it's sincere and not very insulting, it's all about twilight's unnecessary prejudices toward starlight
  yeah this time around starlight's voice actor is totally different and is like russian / ukrainian / eastern european etc

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[cr. 2026-08-25T05:22:55H]

equestria's understanding of things is very mystical and steeped in myth, the SSSR is just modern and scientific

twilight   ""
starlight, flat  "Unicorn tribe birthed from scholarsastic stone at first millennium."
twilight   "...the what stone?"
starlight  "the stone which is that of philosophers."
twilight   "oh, the philosophers' stone."
starlight  "is just philosophers'?"
twilight   "yes."

starlight  "in modern world... it is all focused on 'magic'."
starlight  "they said —"  starlight goes into an Equestrian accent and seemingly quotes them exactly  "If you don't have a solid grasp of magic you'll never make it."
starlight  "she never succeeds, is what it means?"
starlight puts hoof down  "Starlight _will_ 'make it'. I show them ponies of SSSR is _fabulous_ of magic at extent is good as Equestrian!"

starlight  "SSSR is their equal."
starlight  "~~SSSR founded on idea~~ SSSR was long ago founded on idea all tribes of east region is equal to each other. now everyone wants to become the greatest and tribes spits in each others' faces." "if ponies are not equal, how is there friendship?"

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[cr. 2026-08-25T06:32:55H]

starlight clashes with rainbow dash.  rainbow dash is like, competitive, and thinks making fun of people isn't hurtful, starlight takes it totally wrong, brings down her wrath and knocks rainbow out of the sky with a booming bolt of magic

starlight is hard at work learning magic and pony language
pinkie pie sees starlight and is like  doesn't she ever have fun?  starlight takes it badly. she makes a scorpion burst out of pinkie pie's cake or something. pinkie pie is shocked at first but actually just thinks it's really funny and is like, you know, you're great at surprises, we need you to keep things interesting

starlight  "maybe I made it worse." "it could be Equestria wanting to break up SSSR because ponies from SSSR only know anger, and angry pony is not wanted in this world." "maybe I disgraced SSSR." "maybe I should put on bright face."
rainbow  "no. starlight. if there is something burning inside you and it's hurting you, you should be angry."
rainbow  "don't let other ponies walk all over you!"
rainbow  "just, um... go easy on _us_, okay?" "we promise we'll be here for you." "the SSSR... well, maybe we can go there some time. it will be an adventure."
starlight, with tears  "I don't deserve you."

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[cr. 2026-08-25T08:30:55H]

twilight doesn't know a lot of magic yet. starlight is frighteningly good at magic before her.  starlight effectively becomes the physical strength of the group due to her magical power alone, and has the power to protect twilight, fluttershy, and pinkie pie,  while rainbow dash is fast, and twilight is still sharp.
twilight wants to go to college and learn history, already somewhat understanding magic.  starlight wants to learn magic, already somewhat understanding history.
rainbow dash could fit into college ok because she can play sports.  I have no idea what pinkie pie is studying. just no idea.

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[cr. 2026-08-25T03:50:15H]

royal court pony narrows eyes  "they want to spread _republicanism_."

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[cr. 2026-08-25T03:50:15H]

celestia comes down burning with the fury of a hundred suns
celestia  "the SSSR is a disgrace to the name of the stars"
luna      "celestia, no, I really do have this under control"

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[cr. 2026-08-27T18:19:07H]

starlight is smarter than Baudrillard, and at least knows just enough from her basic education in the SSSR to know that Marxism isn't just a bunch of floating signifiers

twilight, upset:  why would Celestia want to attack you? the SSSR is hurting no one.
starlight:  no one is really same.
starlight:  Fluttershy carry in ten apple. Rainbow Dash carry in fifty apple. Rainbow Dash is fast.
starlight:  Dash is greater. so if there is some land where everyone carries in fifty apples, they are greater than some land where each pony carry in ten apple.
starlight:  see the problem, Twilight? greater apples is greater books is greater magic. when ponies carries in apples and books to princess, princess says, ten apple land will attack us, we will _attack_ ten apple land.
twilight:   it isn't fair!

starlight:  no one is really same.
twilight:   (nopony is actually the same.)
starlight:  Fluttershy carry in ten apple. Rainbow Dash carry in fifty apple.
twilight:   (Fluttershy carries in ten... why apple and not apples? Rainbow Dash has... apple, too? I swear she was using plurals not too long ago.)

...I think "nopony", "anypony", etc. are actually prejudiced language in this AU that large portions of the SSSR just stopped using
but I'd be right there with Twilight studying Starlight's weird usages if it was me

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[cr. 2026-08-27T07:14:52H]

I just love the idea that this "G6" is a bit of a fractured fairy tale to G4's "everything is just fine" type of fairy-tale storytelling
twilight goes into the world already having vaguely thought of the concept of fixing everything through friendship
starlight has anxieties about the world,  twilight says, oh no it will surely be okay,  twilight is wrong.  and it happens repeatedly. and each time it just seems to get a little worse, slowly and steadily, not all at once.

starlight is worried.  twilight: "surely we can seek out princess celestia"  they get to princess celestia, she sternly looks into starlight like she's uncovered a spy, twilight has accidentally kicked off a fantasy cold war.

starlight and twilight meet Rarity.  twilight has all the optimism Rarity will have kindness and generosity in her heart and be able to change, and is like, let's bring her on our adventure to the SSSR.  rarity has only the snootiest opinions about the SSSR and it turns out badly.


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[cr. 2026-09-15T05:29:45H]

"episode 1"/"2" - young Twilight catches young Starlight Glimmer conspiring with Princess Luna to trap Princess Celestia in the sun.
here Starlight looks to be fully aligned with Luna. but secretly, Starlight's plan is to overcome Luna too and just abolish the princesses and try to create something new in their place. she has no idea how to do that. she's a disaster of a "revolutionary leader".
Twilight, watching from the sidelines, stresses out about what she's going to do about this. she needs help. but this is probably her only chance to act, or they'll go through with it. she continues to watch.

ok, no. Luna and Starlight are meeting in a dream.
Luna:  you will go by twilight, and—
Starlight:  ~~Princess, who is that violet pony~~ Princess, who is that?
[Luna's eyes search around and fix onto Twilight]
Luna:  ...oh drat. I must have compromised the dream by saying the name of a pony.
Luna:  Twilight — is that your name?
Luna:  if I catch you telling any other ponies about this, you will be imprisoned inside the moon.
twilight quickly zaps herself out of the dream, allowing her to wake up.



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[cr. 2026-08-24T15:57:10H]
;;  Twilight Sparkle (MLP:FiM)   Starlight Glimmer (MLP:FiM)   Fluttershy (MLP:FiM)   Pinkie Pie (MLP:FiM)   Rainbow Dash (MLP:FiM)
;;    Twilight Velvet (MLP:FiM) - cameo
;;    Starlight Glimmer & Twilight Sparkle (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)   Twilight Sparkle & Rainbow Dash & Fluttershy & Pinkie Pie (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)
;;  Inspired By My Little Pony Forever Friendship Theme Song (G6)   Crack prediction for MLP G6   Coming of Age   Starlight Glimmer Comes From SSSR | Stellar Single-Soul Republics (My Little Pony)
;; discarded/unclear:
;;   Biblically Accurate Princess Celestia   Alternate Universe - Cold War   Princess Celestia Hates Democracy   see end notes for my guesses on where the tags go   Emotional Support   Enemies to Friends



there are months left until college opens
shining armor is not here to play games with because he recently went to the crystal empire

twilight trots around restlessly, jumps in place a bit
twilight  "oh why can't it be autumn yet?!"
mom  "surely there must be something else for you to do in the meantime"

twilight  "no, there's nothing to do around here. what would I even do, shoot apples off fences with that 'apple' family?"

twilight  "I've read all the books at the library. at least, everything interesting in them."

mom laughs  "seems like my little princess doesn't have a very high opinion of any of her subjects."
mom  "what drives you to want to go to Canterlot so badly?"
twilight  "I don't know, there has to be something great waiting there"
twilight  "I keep thinking about the tale of the first princess of the earth ponies, who broke open the stone guarded by a horrible snake to find the magic jewel."
twilight  "that can't really be where unicorns came from. I wonder where they really came from."



fluttershy  "what are you doing all this reading for?"
twilight  "I want to be a princess"
fluttershy  "um... I don't think this land is really in need of any princesses right now"




starlight, flat  "Unicorn tribe birthed from scholarsastic stone at first millennium."
twilight   "...the what stone?"
starlight  "the stone which is that of philosophers."
twilight   "oh, the philosophers' stone."
starlight  "is just philosophers'?"
twilight   "yes."

starlight  "in modern world... it is all focused on 'magic'."
starlight  "they said —"  starlight goes into an Equestrian accent and seemingly quotes them exactly  "If you don't have a solid grasp of magic you'll never make it."
starlight  "she never succeeds, is what it means?"
starlight puts hoof down  "Starlight _will_ 'make it'. I show them ponies of SSSR is _fabulous_ of magic at extent is good as Equestrian!"

starlight  "SSSR is their equal."
starlight  "SSSR founded on idea all tribes of east region is equal to each other. now everyone wants to become the greatest and tribes spits in each others' faces." "if ponies are not equal, how is there friendship?"




starlight clashes with rainbow dash
rainbow thinks making fun of people isn't hurtful
starlight knocks rainbow out of the sky with a booming bolt of magic



starlight is hard at work learning magic and pony language
pinkie pie sees starlight and is like  doesn't she ever have fun?  starlight takes it badly



starlight  "maybe I made it worse." "it could be Equestria wanting to break up SSSR because ponies from SSSR only know anger, and angry pony is not wanted in this world." "maybe I disgraced SSSR." "maybe I should put on bright face."

rainbow  "no. starlight. if there is something burning inside you and it's hurting you you should be angry."
rainbow  "don't let other ponies walk all over you!"
rainbow  "just, um... go easy on _us_, okay?" "we promise we'll be here for you." "the SSSR... maybe we can go there some time. it will be an adventure."
starlight, with tears  "I don't deserve you."



celestia comes down burning with the fury of a hundred suns
celestia  "the SSSR is a disgrace to the name of the stars"
luna      "celestia, no, I really do have this under control"


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[cr. 2026-08-24T15:57:10H]
;; Celestia's friendship lesson
;;  Twilight Sparkle (MLP:FiM)   Princess Celestia (MLP:FiM)   Starlight Glimmer mentioned (MLP:FiM)    Princess Celestia Hates Democracy

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[cr. 2026-09-02T07:22:16H]

having seen Twilight hanging out with Starlight, Celestia takes Twilight into her office and tries to talk her out of this bad influence

celestia?:  you can replace one pony with 50 ponies, or 100 ponies.  but it's no shortcut to learning how to do the right thing




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[cr. 2026-08-24T15:57:10H]

I made this for fun to "predict" what gen 6 would be about based on the "Forever Friendship" theme song and Twilight Sparkle song that dropped in mid 2026.

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MLP is not one of my main fandoms but I have watched gen 4 all the way through (and "Rescue at Midnight Castle"). It's just been a while. So if I ever talk about MLP I am always scrambling to pull all the lore out of my head from memory. I swear none of the errors I make are intentional or trying to insult the "serious" fans; I probably just genuinely forgot that character detail or plot point after multiple years.

Starlight Glimmer may be one of my favorite characters in gen 4 in a strange ironic way. I can't get over how "wrong" the concept for her was and the Kirin in the Kirin Village episode as well, so I periodically keep thinking about them, turning over a bunch of scraps of fake episodes about them in my mind /as if/ they had been good characters on par with Twilight or Rarity. Do you ever do that? Conceptually, this fic is a bit like /the fake Starlight show in my head/ going through a G6 reboot. I hope you like it. It would be funny if this turned out to have better ideas than the real G6, because at this time nobody knows much of anything about G6. Starlight and Trixie could totally be in it for all we know right now. We haven't gotten any episodes and we genuinely don't know.

The "SSSR" is from another unfinished fic I tried to make as a simple rewrite of Starlight's arc in gen 4 season 5.
In my imagination, "star ponies" are an actual toy line that was put out for gen 6, which have some sort of marbled plastic with contrasting dark and metallic parts — a bit like the G3 Celestial Ponies but more intense. In their build, star ponies look a lot like Kirin but without horns, and a bit more fluid and serpentine. Scales, wavy fluff, whiskers, a few shiny stars peeking through the toy or sprinkled on like reflections in G6 style. The Kirin and Chollima toys would also have starry variants though.
Can I link to this single image of marbled plastic  [*ps]  if there isn't a company on the page? That's what I think they would look like.


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[cr. 2026-08-30T14:04:22H]

"starlight versus the machine"

starlight glimmer unleashes an offensive against the rainbow factory
rather than her being remembered as a hero, Equestria is furious and complains that the rainbows are not as bright and high-quality as they used to be.
characters decry the communist league as "violent" and unnecessary because 'everything was great the way it was'.

Sencha Forth is there.

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[cr. 2026-08-30T14:07:28H]

the funny thing about the rainbow factory is that it's definitely too dark for g4,
but it would be a lot more fitting to exist in g5, if it was created recently as a weapon for the civil war. twilight once used the elements of harmony as an offensive weapon, ponies realize bright cheery rainbow magic is powerful, they build a really twisted weapon based on what they believe to be the same principles.

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[cr. 2026-08-30T14:07:28H, ed. 2026-08-31T07:20:54H]

I could also halfway imagine the rainbow factory existing in G1, as just, this mysterious machine some villain has created to make use of ponies. that would actually be quite in line with a lot of cartoons of that era.
"Starlight" exists as a peripheral character in that plot. she's just called Starlight; she looks a little like G1.5 Starlight but only coincidentally.
the main characters go into the mysterious rainbow factory. the place is empty and atmospheric in this weird unsettling way exactly like the writers didn't really think out the lore and just hit the ground running. Starlight is just sort of hidden around a corner and tells them how to get to the heart of the place to save their friend that is about to be tossed into a mysterious rainbow vat.

in My Little Pony tales this character is called Starshine and she is completely unremarkable. ~~[yes, like "Starshine League". there's already a character called Starlight on this show, so we need a different name to reflect that this is a different character.]~~ she appears in about two episodes and is just, basically like any other character.
Starshine remarks at one point when the rain lets up and there's a rainbow that she is 'a fan of rainbows'. this one moment led fans to speculate that Starshine is in some kind of stockholm syndrome relationship with the fantasy villains that built the rainbow machine, convincing herself after ample trauma that actually she likes working for them. some paint her as a sort of secret agent of darkness similar in concept to the Changelings in G4. others think Starshine is just evil and fully believes in the rainbow machine. there is exactly one joke about Starshine sending ponies to die in the Great Patriotic Pony War because she just likes wasting ponies for imperialism (sic). nobody really remembers or talks about this post until it's rediscovered much later.

[edit:] I didn't even know this, but there actually is a G1 "Starshine" pony with an appropriate design who supposedly followed some sort of magical stars into the sky in search of rainbows. yup that's her origin story. it ended badly.

in _My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic_, Starshine is reintroduced as Starlight Glimmer because Lauren Faust somehow learned about all the G1 fan theories and thought they were really funny. she explains in an interview how she was disappointed in the lazy writing of G1/G1.5 and yet, in comparison those one or two posts she found searching on the early internet were art. Faust doesn't appear to be aware of the 'Great Patriotic Pony War' interpretation, but is aware of the idea of Starshine being a secret agent of the villains lurking in the shadows, and says in the interview that she liked the idea of looking at fantasy stories from the other side and thinking about what exactly the servants of darkness are going through.
this leads her to put Starlight into FiM season 1 hanging around in the background, as an ominous teaser of what is going to happen in later seasons.
fans are buzzing about this, trying anew to solve what Starlight might be plotting.

when season 5 drops, the characters confront Starlight within an ancient fortress that had gone empty for hundreds of years.


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[cr. 2026-09-06T10:13:19H]

Sencha:  I'm a reporter for The Ground.  [holds up newspaper for Starlight]
Sencha:  ~~do you know what that means?~~ You know what this means.
Twilight:  [squints, absolutely not knowing what this means]


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[cr. 2026-08-30T16:14:06H]

background info about MLP G4 production

* director Lauren Faust was 8 in 1982. 
  * she says she had multiple pony playsets in the 80s, because she was already collecting ponies with every spare penny. she knew a lot about the toys.
* a bunch of lore fragments came from people the director hired.
* hasbro pushed for 11 minute episodes but lost.  Faust describes educational content rules as "very constricting boundaries".

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Rescue at Midnight Castle

* Firefly assumed that humans are all strong knights because she saw too many medieval manuscripts where knights were riding horses or there were cowboys or something. that's very funny. and they didn't even have to detail it explicitly in the dialogue to make it obvious


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[cr. 2026-08-31T04:47:17H, o. 2015-05-01]
;; A brief summary of all Starlight's previous appearances
;; Starlight Glimmer (MLP:FiM)  Starshine (MLP G1)
;; Unfiction   Epistolary - in-universe blog post   Alternate Universe - Starry Roads (MLP G6)   Hypothetical MLP Merchandise   Imaginary Media Review    Unreality - it's set in real life where MLP toys are and I still don't know how to tag that   archival date: 2026-09-01

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[cr. 2026-09-01T04:44:12H]

This post was rescued  [*]  from a Wayback Machine version of  aspieasp.tumblr.com  before it ultimately got lost due to various URL changes. You can still  read it on the Wayback Machine, [*]  of course,
but ~~I thought it would be good to preserve it somewhere without a lot of distracting formatting~~ it seemed like a good idea to preserve it somewhere without a lot of distracting formatting.

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[cr. 2026-09-01T04:44:12H]

~~So, with the recent arrival of Starlight Glimmer to the show,~~
~~So, with the recent airing of "The Cutie Map",~~
So, with the recent airing of "The Cutie Map", there has been a lot of talk over the past month about Starlight Glimmer. Some like her, some never want to see her again.
But what you might not know is that Starlight Glimmer has been around a lot longer ~~than these episodes.~~ than these new episodes. Her first appearance dates all the way back to ~~MLP G1.~~ My Little Pony generation 1.

~~The first Starlight Glimmer looked like this:~~
Of course, everything begins with the _My Little Pony_ toys. The original Starlight looked like this:

[Image] [http://mylittlewiki.org/wiki/File:USStarshine.jpg]

~~This pony's name is Starshine and ~~ ~~Her name was Star_shine_, and ~~ This pony's name was Star_shine_, and she had an interesting little story on her back card.

_[...] Stamping her hoof on the ground impatiently, she pleaded, "send me on a secret rainbow journey!" [...]_

Starshine gets what she wishes for, for better or worse, and an actual prismatic tractor beam scoops her up and brings her on a path cutting through the dreary rainclouds straight up into the stars. On the back card, this is all fairly whimsical. The moon ~~and all the~~ and the celestial objects all have bright smiling faces; Starshine says hello, the stars say, _come back some time, Starshine_. But you have to admit that the story is a little weird. Rainbows don't come from outer space, so was it actually some kind of weird rainbow aliens? (Cue X-Files theme.) Does some alternate version of Princess Celestia exist in this story hanging out in the sun? ~~Was it the Star Ponies?~~ Are all the stars secretly ponies? What exactly happened here?

Starshine did not get a lot of attention back in 1984 when she first released as a toy. However, with the release of _My Little Pony: Firefly and the Rainbow Machine_ in 1987, ~~discussions about her would soon kick up.~~ everything changed.

~~_Firefly and the Rainbow Machine_ begins in the castle of rainbows, where Rarity lives.~~
_Firefly and the Rainbow Machine_ begins in the castle of happiness, where Sunbeam is holding a party for her friends. It's almost spring. (March, apparently, because a version of March Daffodil is there. She's a beautiful blue.) ~~Ponies are prancing around in fields of flowers celebrating springtime.~~ Ponies are prancing around celebrating springtime, making a few flowers bloom with their magic, enjoying rainbow berries, and overall having a great time. The sun is out, the flowers sway in the breeze, a couple clouds go by, there seems to be a little bit of every weather phenomenon but never too much not to be pleasant.

~~Then, a crack of lightning tears through the sky.~~ Then, a bright blue bolt of lightning rips apart the sky. The wind whips up and rain starts flying. The ponies are not sure what to do. February Violet, who has been antsy ~~about this whole thing ~~ about this party since a while ago, urges everyone to leave. But before long, a terrible cyclone carries most of the ponies away into the sky, leaving the party empty.

Firefly arrives onto the scene late, having been caught up in her own adventures. The party is in disarray. The tables are knocked over, cups and plates are strewn on the ground. She looks around the area carefully, testing for any remaining threat. Nopony is there. It's just a sad, empty, forlorn scene.

Firefly heads back, looking down over the area around the castle, where she spots two pale pink ponies peeking out below. January Carnation and February Violet quickly recount the terrible story. With a firm nod, Firefly resolves to find the missing ponies, and takes off into the air.

As Firefly climbs upward, magical beings emerge out of the scenery to guide her path. A bird appears out of the clouds, something like a big poofy canary, and the rain spirals around like a sea serpent. It's very picturesque. ~~You could put this on one of those bright-colored graphic school folders probably.~~ I feel like this special is everything the generation 1 back cards kept promising. As the sky turns to darkness, ~~the faint stars take the shape of a silver fox who points ~~ the stars form the shape of a silver fox who looks accusingly toward a dark void in the sky. As Firefly continues into the dark, surrounded by increasingly eerie space echoes and fading violet waterfalls, the light of a single small star-being the actual shape of a firefly uncovers the outline of an oddly-modern geometric building composed of spheres, cylinders, and triangles lodged into a floating island. Everything points to the characters not really being in space, but actually in some kind of in-between dreamland lodged between outer space and the sky. Firefly and the silver firefly stand there at the door to the facility in this highly atmospheric moment of foreboding, and then they go in. (Also, because I have nowhere to put this — that firefly looks amazing. Some kind of mech artist must have rendered that thing because when it's not just a point of light the amount of detail is ridiculous.)

When Firefly first gets in (through a window, of course) the first couple of rooms she goes into are empty. It's all just beautiful metallic or mineral-like rooms with a table or a chest lit up in lamplight. But then she sees an omnious figure go by in a dark robe. The villain that is headquartered here is some kind of anthropomorphic griffin-owl with a perfectly jagged face — it has the tufts at the edge, it's a slightly complex forest brown palette, and there's a little jagged tomial tooth, such that when this character smiles in a fully lit room it may as well still be a jagged line peeking out of the shadows. ~~He seems to be an alchemist or something.~~ This wizard or alchemist character is headed back to the room of ponies with some sort of neon blue crystal. Firefly follows behind carefully, hiding within side rooms and corridors. The wizard goes in and starts to set down the glowing crystal into his machine, in a room where ponies are locked in cages and there are a bunch of jars. The implication is clear. The strange clockwork machine in the center made of bright green bronze takes ponies into the boiling pot of blue liquid, captures the steam, tunnels it through the showy glass prism in the middle ~~pulsing with surges of~~ surging with waves of golden light, and condenses it into gleaming rainbow liquid at the other end. But the cages have ornate glowing locks on them, so Firefly won't be able to get them open just yet.

Firefly zips off as fast as she can through the building looking for anything that could break the locks. And this is the start of the moment that made everyone _lose it_. As Firefly is zooming past, a pegasus pony with a rainbow mane peeks out from behind a corner. This is Starshine. And that right there is half her screentime.

Firefly finds a gnarled ancient staff and flies back and nearly explodes the rainbow machine room and the ponies are trying to get out but the wizard, who is furious, scrambles all the passageways and turns the thing into a maze. ~~And I'm sorry I can't recount this whole thing here,~~ And I'm sorry I can't recount all of this in more detail, because the movie was good, but this post was about Starshine. Anyway, the ponies are scrambling to get out, and trying not to panic, and in the midst of that, they go by Starshine, who points in an oddly forlorn way toward the exit. That's the other half of her screentime. She says, "that way, with the star", and looks genuinely regretful about something, but it's never explained what it is. It's unclear if she does or doesn't get out of the place with the others. We don't see her among the ponies ~~returning to the ground across~~ taking the rainbow path back to the ground. It's left completely clear if that was an animation error, or if... maybe she was complicit in this whole operation.

From this point, fan theories went crazy. They were mostly spread around on places like Usenet, small fan sites, and early internet forums. ~~Starshine became one of people's favorite ponies, at least among the fraction of people who used the internet.~~ Starshine became one of people's favorite ponies. There was Firefly, there was Surprise, there was Applejack, there was Glory, there was Minty, and if you used the internet, there was Starshine. Into at least 1994 people were still talking about Starshine occasionally. In 1996, _Pokémon_ would launch, and brought in quite a lot of girls as well as boys. I'm sure some people forgot about Starshine because they were too busy talking about Missingno and 'M and all the other hidden glitch Pokémon. But Starshine was never completely forgotten. The fans were not going to let one appearance of Starshine slip by them.

In _My Little Pony 'n Friends_, Starshine appears in the background of "Return of Tambelon", flying away as Grogar descends on Ponyland. This story arc predates "Firefly and the Rainbow Machine", so it's unclear if this scene is meant to feed into Starshine's character.

In _My Little Pony Tales_, Starshine had a speaking line in all of one episode. ~~In episode 25, "Sundown Island", she remarks at the end of the episode that she is "a fan of rainbows".~~ In "Shooting For the Goal" (episode 24, aired in 1992), she remarks when the rain clears up before a soccer game that she is "a fan of rainbows". This led fans to speculate that Starshine must have been captured by the owl wizard during the adventure described on her back card. If it could happen to a bunch of ponies having a party, then it could happen to Starshine too.

People had wildly varying interpretations of what exactly Starshine was doing in the rainbow fortress. Some saw her as a scout that must have identified the location of Sunbeam's party. ~~Others went further. Some thought ~~ Some thought she had simply been spending a while trying to break out. Others argued that if she knew how to find the exit she must have been psychologically crushed years ago and come to believe that kidnapping ponies was her primary purpose. A few people made "boomer jokes" about how they were feeling like Starshine in their lives. And then there was that one post where somebody ~~used the phrase~~ described Starshine's psychopathic devotion to evil empires with the phrase "Great Patriotic Pony War". It must have been the recent news headline about the Soviet Union breaking up in 1991, because at any time after 1992, anyone else would not really have had it on their minds.





Starshine remarks at one point when the rain lets up and there's a rainbow that she is 'a fan of rainbows'. this one moment led fans to speculate that Starshine is in some kind of stockholm syndrome relationship with the fantasy villains that built the rainbow machine, convincing herself after ample trauma that actually she likes working for them. some paint her as a sort of secret agent of darkness similar in concept to the Changelings in G4. others think Starshine is just evil and fully believes in the rainbow machine. there is exactly one joke about Starshine sending ponies to die in the Great Patriotic Pony War because she just likes wasting ponies for imperialism (sic). nobody really remembers or talks about this post until it's rediscovered much later.


she can be seen in the background of every episode if you look hard enough.



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[cr. 2026-09-01T04:44:12H]

- "rescued": this is an in-universe event.

- "Starry Roads" AU:  this is something I made up on the spot after seeing one poster for G6 and some cryptic quotes from Lauren Faust at ComicCon. The "joke" was that it was predicting G6, but on every whim I had I would just say "no, I like that idea better" and drift wildly away from what the poster suggested. "This is my G6 prediction, guys!!" _The audience squints._


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=> https://www.cvtplastic.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/marble-acrylic-sheet-2-4.webp  *ps. starry plastic
;=/> https://archive.is/wip/ddgr4  same
=> https://mlp.fandom.com/wiki/Twilight_Velvet_and_Night_Light#Merchandise
=> https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/84359/what-are-the-rules-for-using-nobody-and-nopony
;
=> genius.com/Woodentoaster-rainbow-factory-lyrics
=> genius.com/Woodentoaster-awoken-lyrics
=> genius.com/Slyphstorm-pegasus-device-lyrics
=> rainbow-factory.fandom.com/wiki/Rainbow_Factory
=>   fimfiction.net/story/5381/rainbow-factory
=>   fimfiction.net/story/487123/the-weather-workers-song
;
=> https://mylittleponyg1.fandom.com/wiki/Starlight
=> http://mylittlewiki.org/wiki/Starshine   halfway to my g6 starlight design. released 1984. has rainbow lore. you can't make this up.
=> http://mylittlewiki.org/wiki/Sunbeam
;
=> https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/comments/15ypkzi/all_mlp_video_media_in_chronological_order/
=> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Faust  born 1974;  in 1984 she was 10; in 1992, 18
=> https://mylittleponyg1.fandom.com/wiki/My_Little_Pony_%27n_Friends  Sep 1986 - 1987
=> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Little_Pony_Tales  1992, 1993-1995
=> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan  launched in 2003
=> https://mylittleponyg3.fandom.com/wiki/The_Runaway_Rainbow  2006
=>   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Little_Pony_Crystal_Princess:_The_Runaway_Rainbow
=> https://equestripedia.org/wiki/My_Little_Pony_Adventures  pitched 2008
; G4 season 1 - Oct 2010
; G4 season 2 - Sep 2011
=> https://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/09/exclusive-season-1-retrospective.html  lauren faust interview
=> https://www.cartoonbrew.com/animators/lauren-faust-pitching-tv-shows-for-girls-is-like-banging-my-head-against-the-wall-103539.html
; G4 season 3 - Nov 2012
; G4 season 4 - Nov 2013
; G4 season 5 - Apr 2015
; G4 season 6 - Mar 26 2016
; G4 season 7 - April 15 2017
; G4 season 8 - Mar 24 2018
; G4 season 9 - 2019
=> https://matpat.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline  game theory: 2011  film theory: 2014
; G5 - 2021
;
:: cr. 2026-08-24T15:57:10H</pre>

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[[Category:Starry Roads (RD)|0001 badly-gen-6]]