Me want to pet too! Please?
 
I’ve always loved adorable Dashie.

With the way the colors and shapes in the background are, it looks like the forest behind her is on fire…

Clone Dashie finally saw the light.

@Paulli  
Maybe. Happy New Year :D

@Badumsquish  
Hey, can you make an art of Mean Dashie all cuddly and comfy at home? I would love to see that. Happy 2019 BTW.

@Paulli  
Yeah D:

@Badumsquish  
If only we’d at least save Mean Dash, we’d take her home, teach her good manners, away from the cruel world. She’s just so damn tragic.

@Scrounge  
Sure dude. Hell, pm me even if you want :D
 
And maybe, but it was Twilight came up with the idea of using a “murder spell” as a solution without even considering alternatives :P

@Badumsquish  
I can’t quite figure out how to say some of the things I want to say. Is it okay if I come back to this later?
 
Again, though, I’d like to emphasize that it’s Pinkie herself who came up with the basic idea for the test, so if you think it was dark for Twilight, stop for a second and consider how much worse it is coming from Pinkie. It adds a whole new layer of uncomfortable implication.

@Scrounge  
It’s just that there’s not really any other way to take it. The episode itself showed that they’re thinking feeling creatures, and a later episode showed they’re totally able to live normal lives. Basically the best case scenario is that they’re trapped forever in a pond, which is pretty sad when you think about it. I’d have loved if they’d raised the possibility that they could actually escape from the pond and this one was an escapee instead of a survivor :/
 
Don’t get me wrong too, I totally sympathize with Twilight being scared and hating of “fakes” after A Canterlot Wedding happened, but it was pretty dark all the same for a character who’s otherwise established as someone who’s friends and family with the non-pony Spike and would go on to insist that non-ponies deserved acceptance and friendship to just be like “yeah, these things aren’t really ponies so let’s kill / trap them” D:

@Badumsquish  
All I’m saying is that you don’t have to assume the worst. But yeah, I’ll admit that it’s a bit disturbing if you stop and think about the implications rather than focus on the antics. You can’t hold Twilight solely responsible, though, since the whole thing was Pinkie’s idea (and read what you will into that one, I’m not gonna go down that road with some of the personal baggage I’m carrying).
 
…But if we’re analyzing this on a deeper level, we also have to consider context, and in context, I think Twilight’s behavior is understandable, if not necessarily justified. After all, her brother’s wedding was relatively recent at that point, so it’d make sense if she wasn’t inclined to cut the “impostor” Pinkies much slack after a changeling army nearly took over Canterlot; the last Pinkie copies she saw could have been the last thing she ever saw.

Yeah, I saw THAT one coming :I
 
@Scrounge  
It’s definitely a scary premise to me. Like, that ending actually made me feel genuinely uncomfortable because it was like Twilight and them just didn’t care if they were actually killing them or imprisoning them forever or if they were thinking feeling ponies or whatever. Especially after they’ve showed the clones were legitimately able to think and feel emotions and learn and develop just like real ponies. Like, I remember the writers said on twitter once they didn’t consider the kind of messed-up implications behind that episode and it REALLY shows, because even the briefest scene explaining that they weren’t dying or just being imprisoned forever or Twilight actually questioning if it was right to do that to them would have made a huge difference I think :D

@Badumsquish  

 
It depends on what being sent back to the Mirror Pool entails. I’m pretty sure that if they’re all in the same place and have enough room to run around in, they could basically keep each other entertained until the end of time.

@darknessRising24  
“try” not to go off on a guy demanding they agree with you and/or believe the things you believe, then. if you can’t do that, then go like starlight somewhere else.

@DanielTepesKraus  
I was never mad, nor was I trying to bully him. I was simply pointing out why it makes no sense or is unfair to hate a character like Starlight yet give other who’ve had their own checkered past a free pass

@darknessRising24  
may i remind you that getting mad at people for disliking characters for “the wrong reason”, demanding they “respect” a fictional fucking character, and calling them a hypocrite because they don’t, will not sit well with me. don’t try and bully people into agreeing with you on something so stupid and pointless as any fictional character in a children’s show, let alone one so controversial as starlight glimmer. there is no right or wrong way or reason to like or dislike any character, and people have differing opinions on things.

@Badumsquish  

 
Well for starters, characters like Trixie and Sunset pulled the same stunts and were forgiven as well. So where is your “you’re objectively horrible for life” treatment for them? Hmm?
 
Little Miss Great and Powerful sought out a Magical Relic to one-up Twilight and enslave her town… despite the fact that Twilight saved her life.
 
Sunset stole one of the most powerful artifacts in the world that was Equestria’s main line of defense and nearly killed Twilight and her new friends, simply because Twilight succeeded where she failed in becoming a Princess.
 
You want to talk about being despicably unsympathetic? Well then byyourlogic Twilight shouldn’t have trusted the other two or giving them a “free pass” either, right?
 
Don’t single out one action and yet dismiss another, it’s very hypocritical.
 
Also, Starlight at least gets more points for willingly putting herself forward for punishment when it comes to this sort of thing. She at the very least goes out of her way to avoid making the same mistake twice. And everyone actually calls her out for her actions and no one really kisses up to her. I don’t know where you got that idea, but you need to stop listening to every “I hate Starlight” fanatic you come across just because they share your opinion.
 

 
As for Neighsay, need I remind you that he nearly caused an international incident by insulting several of the diplomats right to their faces? He wasn’t being sympathetic where he was coming from, especially since several of the species they had to deal with for willing to actually give peace a chance… and yet he immediately dismissed it, not to mention directly undermining her authority and allowing another school to be opened up despite it being run by two known con artists and him not even bothering to check their history before approving it. And then isn’t he blamed several children for an innational incident involving the magic of Equestria disappearing despite them having nothing to do with it.
 
So where’s your demand for him getting a more “realistic” putdown, hmm?
 
People get on your ass for shiting all over Starlight because you shit on her for the wrong reasons. Next time you want an excuse to throw shade over Starlight Glimmer existing, I suggest you want these:
 
https://youtu.be/0hDxcHZi30c  
(Skip to 11:15)
 
https://youtu.be/YPQD3ly3Bdw
 
It’s been three seasons dude, if you’re gonna treat Trixie, Sunset, and Neighsay properly despite their own bad choices then you can do the same for Starlight.

@darknessRising24  
Three reasons: one is characters in-universe react to Neighsay in a reasonable way. At best some might understand where he’s coming from but they call him out for how badly he’s acting all the same. His negative actions are treated as such and his reasonable motive is more or less blown off since it doesn’t excuse how he’s acting. He’s not just given a free pass to be an asshole and constantly given second chances on the promise that he’s sort of trying to do better while everyone constantly kisses up to him in spite of him constantly being a bad person. Two is being untrusting of creatures you don’t understand and have fairly valid in-universe reasoning to mistrust is sympathetic and understandable, while just throwing a life-long temper tantrum where you actually torture people and intently try to ruin lives because a friend moved away is so despicably unsympathetic and vile that it’s unbelievable. Three is why do people keep asking me for opinions on Starlight when they know I’m going to shit on her and then get yelled at by her defenders for it? I know that’s not a reason, but what the hey Twinkle Sprinkle? >:(
 
@Scrounge  
As dark as it sounds I honestly hope they WERE actually killed. Given the choice of lifelong imprisonment with no hope of escape or freedom and death penalty, I’d definitely take the latter, poor things D:
 
No, they’re just bad people all around. I mean, I didn’t think Flim and Flam were villains or bad people at all in their first appearance (I can’t reasonably call competing with a business by offering a legitimately good product, accepting a challenge, winning the challenge, and taking the prize that was offered to them bad), but they’ve since proven themselves to be dickheads I think :P

@Badumsquish  
If the Pinkie clones were actually banished back to the Mirror Pool like Twilight said they were, they have each other for company and are probably fine.
 
…Look, as long as you don’t sympathize with someone like Gladmane or Svengallop or Spoiled Rich. Or Flim and Flam (They’re endlessly entertaining and I hope they never change, but they’re horrible people).

@Badumsquish  
And why doesn’t Starlight get the same treatment?

@Scrounge  
It’s funny because I tend to sympathize more with the characters who clearly were not intended to be sympathetic, like Trixie in her earlier appearances, the Pinkie clones, the Mean Six, Spike when he’s getting a real raw deal for no reason. They’re victims in a much more subtle kind of way. Hell, I despise racists but I even sympathize with Neighsay. He’s a piece of crap, yeah, but I do at least understand where he’s coming from: Equestria gets attacked like all the time by non-ponies, just recently was invaded twice by the changelings and by the Storm King’s army, and like half the Student Six are of species that were or still are antagonistic. His prejudice isn’t RIGHT, but it’s certainly not unreasonable that he thinks that way all things considered. I kind of think they acknowledged that in the show though, like how the entire EEA was on board with him and how even Princess Celestia only really passively chided him for thinking that way :D

@Badumsquish  
We at least seem to agree that power alone doesn’t make someone a threat.
 
I guess I just sympathize with Wallflower because I identify with her. (Likewise for Stygian, at least before he apparently became a novelist off-screen.)

@Scrounge  
Thank YOU for being civil as well. At the end it’s not like we actually have to agree on anything in the first place :P

@Badumsquish  
Yeah, that’s usually how it goes. Thanks for being civil at least.

@Scrounge  
Honestly we’re just kind of going around in circles on this one. Like, even after reading all that my opinion is like 100% unchanged on anything XD