And Now, Season Five is Over · 6:58pm Nov 30th, 2015
...and I'm pretty much the only person on the planet who overreacted to this guy because of his resemblance to me favorite pony:
Yeah, I know that episode is a few weeks old, but I can't get over it. Anypony with a resemblance to Cheese Sandwich is bound to get my attention, because I'm insanely weird like that and I really miss him. Yes, I have a fan fiction starring him in the works, but the last few chapters had him being unable to do much of anything because he was sick in bed. Though the one significant thing he did in that arc made my readers jump.
Anyway, let's get on to the more current episode, The Cutie Re-Mark!
First off, check out this Sombra!AU Flora I drew:
I really enjoyed seeing all the alternate timelines (though you can imagine me watching with a lens of "Where's Cheese? What's he doing in this universe? What kind of pony did he turn out to be?"). I enjoyed watching all the ways that the Rainboom was disrupted (Starlight's reaction when Twilight accidentally encased filly Rainbow in crystal still gets me 
). I enjoyed seeing the Our Town gang again, even if it was brief (I'm going to ignore the part that nothing changed and just pretend they built more houses and expanded the town). And it's nice to see Zecora do something.
Also... even if it was Chrysalis, I have to say that Applejack's voice makes a pretty good evil laugh. It was brief, but awesome.
Though... like a lot of other folks, I'm not too keen on Starlight's backstory. It just rubs me the wrong way because it doesn't seem like a logical beginning to a freakin' cult dedicated to the eradication of cutie marks. There's got to be more to the story than just "my friend got a cutie mark, moved away, and I never saw him again."
Fan fic writers! To your keyboards!
(Though if I'm going to be honest, I'm more interested in the origins of the Town Four than Starlight's. I've already got a Party Favor headcanon down, now I'm seeing what I can make up or what stories I accept involving the other three)
Anyway, now that Season Five is over... how does it affect Brotherly Bonding Time?
Well, after the whole thing about the map, the CMC getting their cutie marks, and Starlight making up with the town four. I have decided...
Brotherly Bonding Time takes place before Crusaders of the Lost Mark.
So, during Cheese and Tomato's summer road trip, the CMC are still blank flanks, Cadence isn't pregnant/it's too early to tell, and Starlight's still running around out there, plotting revenge against Twilight. Though I have to wonder what she thought about the vampire army thing in Las Haygas when she caught wind of it.
Anyway, whatever the case, I'm taking a little break from BBT for the holidays (despite me missing Cheesy), and I'll be working on The Cocoa Stand, and possibly that Our Town Hearth's Warming fic that I have in mind. As far as I know, a couple of you want to read that.
That's all for now. 
Starlight has a long history of disproportionate reaction. Going on a crusade against cutie marks because she lost one friend seems entirely in character for someone who thought chronomancy made for a reasonable revenge scheme. Plus, powerful unicorns seem to be especially sensitive to this kind of thing. Look at Moondancer. The only difference between her and Starlight is the lessons they took from their experiences. Moondancer blamed herself, thinking she was worthless. Starlight fixated on the cutie mark that started the cascade of losing Sunburst, blaming it with a child's simple conviction and allowing that blame to fester into a life-defining cause.
So, yeah, that works for me.
As for what Cheese is doing in the Sombra timeline, given that his leaving Manehattan is independent of the rainboom, I suspect he's a foot soldier. Or was. Casualties are inevitable, after all.
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In that case, I hope they work on that flaw. I've had overreactions to things in the past (I once got absolutely irritated by some classmates whispering), but it's clear Starlight's got a problem. Especially with that resentment being nursed for so long (and we thought that the Sandwiches' resentment of each other in Brother Bothers was bad).
Speaking of Sandwiches...
Now you made me sad at the prospect of Cheese's death. How dare you!
My guess for the missing piece is a pretty simple one: She was in love with Starburst. Maybe she tried tracking him down as a teenager, and he already had a marefriend at that point. Tartarus hath no fury like a mare scorned and all that.
I think that the Sunburst incident was the seed that grew over time into Starlight's obsession. One thing I definitely noticed was that nothing in the Season Five Finale actually contradicts my story in Post-Traumatic in which Starlight Glimmer attended Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns and found it impossible to keep friends because she was increasingly-intolerant of any differences between other Ponies and herself; then became obsessed with the notion that it was those differences themselves (rather than her unreasonable demand that they all think exactly like herself) which were destroying the friendships.
This is actually the way Social Justice Warriors (of which canon-Starlight is something of a parody) tend to operate -- they scrutinize your words or writings until they find something with which they disagree, then accuse you of being Ultimate Evil for disagreeing with them. I illustrated this in the story by having Twilight Sparkle force herself to think from Starlight's point of view -- she nearly went insane despising her best friends, then was horrified at her own thoughts when she lifted the Mask off herself.
Starlight acted this way as the leader of Our Town. Did you notice how vehement she was about suppressing even the smallest and most harmless sorts of non-conformity?
By the way, the most beautiful thing in the Season Five Finale, in my opinion, was when the new leaders of Our Town forgave her. They didn't just forgive her. They hugged her, which meant true and loving acceptance.