You all know the story – Starlight steals a bunch of innocent ponies’ Cutie Marks in a wildly misinformed attempt to thrust her ideaology upon the world, only to have it spectacularly backfire in her face once the Savior of Equestria sticks her nose in her precious, near-lifelong business. She is arrested, charged with multiple crimes against the safety of Equestria and its people, and ultimately thrown in prison, where she sullenly waits to hear what shall become of her. To her surprise, she is released by the request of one Twilight Sparkle, Equestria’s newest Foreign Diplomacy Ambassador, so long as she aids her new apparent mentor in her efforts to make better connections with the other magical creatures across the world.

To say that Starlight is both amused and bewildered by this whole idea would be the understatment of the century.

While staying at the Golden Oaks Library in Ponyville, Starlight is privvy to knowing another former villain under Twilight’s watchful eye: Discord, master of Chaos. He drops in from time to time when he isn’t hovering at Fluttershy’s side, poking fun and pulling pranks and generally making himself into the biggest nuisance he can. And Starlight… finds herself laughing along.

Discord relishes in Twilight’s stick-in-the-mudness, knowing that no matter how hard he pushes her buttons she won’t lay a proverbial finger out of fear of setting a poor example for those who look up to her. Once Starlight enters the picture, he sets his sights on what will hopefully be a new target. A fellow reformee, what fun!

The second his jokes turn to tail-pulling, he’s nearly vaporized on the spot. Starlight clearly has boundaries where Twilight herself does not. Duly noted.

Discord is fascinated by this little pink pony, so cynical and blunt compared to many of her other candy-coated bretheren. Sure, she may be reformed, but she hasn’t really changed her mind, she just knows when and where it’s appropriate to keep her mouth shut. She giggles politely at the mild chaos he causes; she stifles a laugh as Twilight yet again falls victim to his many well-placed pranks. Yet, she knows where the line is drawn, and has very deliberately marked where it is since day one. Starlight doesn’t have the same obligations that Twilight has, doesn’t have the same desire to please everyone who even sees her as a mild acquaintance. The once-lonely draconeqqus has found a kindred spirit in a pony who will quite literally kick his ass if he goes too far.

And he adores it.

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This ship smacked me in the face at full force like… three days ago, so ya’ll get some half-assed art and a slightly less half-assed description that still might make no sense.

Starlight Glimmer has always been a mixed bag for me. In context I found her character arc to be infuriating, but I always chalk it up to the writers realising halfway through her story that “oh shit, this is actually way darker than we thought it would be, LMAO we’re gonna have to backtrack on this one, our bad”. Out of context, however, I find her both charming and painfully relatable. I want to like her, I really do.

I was watching an episode review of “Celestial Advice” and it was brought to my attention that when Discord starts to pull some shit at the ceremony, Starlight is the only one who laughs while everyone else rolls their eyes in secondhand embarassment. Yet at the same time, in “A Matter of Principles”, Starlight is, as far as I’ve seen, the only pony who’s bothered to actually put her foot down when Discord’s bullshit goes too far. And she doesn’t just yell in his face, no, the girl fucking vaporizes him. Turns him into magic dust. Sort of.

You see, there are some people out there who simply don’t change their ways after a good scolding, and Discord is one of them. While the lesson at the end of “A Matter of Principles” isn’t the best in my opinion, I really appreciate the boundaries that it sets for a potential friendship between Starlight and Discord.

Starlight also seems to be a bit of a chaos magnet herself – she’s supposed to be an agent of order and harmony, but she isn’t really. She’s supposed to be a Twilight clone after Twilight herself becomes Celestia’s stand-in, but she isn’t really. This is the person who broke the seal on the Mirror Pool and blatantly said: “If we make clones our ourselves, we can get a year’s worth of hanging out done in one day!” And she meant it. She’s just the right level of concerningly sociopathic to catch Discord’s attention. And I, for one, am more than willing to try and explore that relationship.

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Starlight Glimmer Cutie Mark vector by ManDash1996