Unpopular opinion time

@Vivace
 
That, and the part where her last words were basically “we will kill you all, no matter how many tries it takes.”
 
I think if the wings part didn’t do it (very strong contender, don’t get me wrong), then that was the part where Twilight permanently lost hope in ever reaching her.

@Vivace  
As did Cozy’s when she mocked a certain yellow Pegasus’s ability to fly before blasting her (among other things). With a smile.
 
Not because it’s Fluttershy, mind you, she just happens to be included.

@Vivace  
I actually entered the pony community by starting a fic like that… only to be sidetracked by, well, the community, so there’s only the first chapter or so done. Still, I did give it some thought.
 
 
@rdibp  
Not sufficiently for my liking.

@GenericArchangel  
She didn’t use her wings to commit her crimes though. Unless Equestria is Saudi Arabia I can’t see why they’d randomly clip off body parts for the hell of it because someone committed a crime :P
 
@AC97  
When a character hands an easy forgiveness, instant redemption, and no consequences or punishment to one of the worst criminals in history because she was swayed by a nearly non-existent excuse, it’s kind of the stereotype that gets attached to them :P

@GenericArchangel  
True. On the other hand, as an adult, she probably had a somewhat more coherent set than Cozy’s. (Or am I overrating adults here?)
 
 
@Mildgyth  
The implication is strongly against, unless it was a very brief, secret on-the-spot one.
 
 
@GenericArchangel  
Less humane than shoving her in a tiny cage in Hell? Or turning her to stone?
 
 
@AC97  
I don’t think it comes so natural to her, but I do think she considers it part of the job - and Starlight takes it very seriously. Remember Shadow Play?

@Badumsquish
 
It’d stop her from trying to escape, though.

@Badumsquish  
Twilight probably saw a lot of herself in Starlight. Also, Starlight didn’t substantially betray her.

@Mildgyth  
As would putting her in the straitjacket she deserves.

@Latecomer
 
Does that even deserve to be called hell outside of the name? That looks more like a prison for dangerous beasts from what we’ve seen.
 
Granted, that makes that the equivalent of sending a criminal to live in a cage at the zoo, which is inhumane just the same, and if you ask me, sounds like something the guards at Abu Ghraib, for example, would think up.
 
And as to the second, it was nothing less than what she deserved. And from what we know of those, it’s completely reversible.
 
@Badumsquish
 
Also, there’s a difference between clipping and amputating when it comes to wings.

I think I’d rather be frozen in stone for the duration of my prison sentence than stuck in a cage for that time.
 
Also, technically the thing that makes Cozy dangerous is her brain. So supressing her would involve magically making her dumber, or keeping her sedated like Mr Glass from that terrible movie Glass.

@Mildgyth  
In both cases, it seemed like just as much of an attempt at permanent disposal as when she tried to blast the Manes to ashes.
 
 
@gingerninja666  
Only if you think that she can outsmart anypony and escape any prison. Even then, she loses most of her power if her name and likeness are well publicised.

@Mildgyth  
True, but the “summon someone from anywhere no matter what” spell they used on Discord in the Season 4 premiere would work a lot better :D  

 
@Mildgyth  
Absolutely. Left completely exposed, completely forgotten about, locked in a tiny cage, in a dark pit, and surrounded by monsters in both the literal and figurative sense. That’s a pretty horrific and hellish fate :P

@Badumsquish  
Can that even be used on mortals? I doubt it.
 
And it’s only by the grace of the writers (or some unknown property or Tartarus) that Cozy didn’t starve within days.

@Badumsquish
 
Not as much as it could have been.
 
@Latecomer
 
That is, if ponies don’t get too forgiving - i mean, look at Tempest: the Storm King invasion must have lasted for enough time for ponies outside of Canterlot to have at least heard of her, and Twilight just let her out there alone to try to convince ponies she was reformed. And it worked.
 
@Latecomer
 
It can only be Tartarus - Tirek has been there for who knows how long and he was still alive (unfortunately).

@GenericArchangel  
The flaw in your argument is that not only was villain Starlight of the season 5 finale WAY more intelligent and Machiavellian then Cozy Glow or Reformed Starlight, her ideologies were the secondary motivation for her at the time of her S5 finale..
 
She was actively committing dangerous time terrorism and purposefully leaving them abandoned into timelines where she ruined their friendship, and did this not out of ideology, but out of overwhelming and cruel and completely evil SPITE. She was smug, she was genre savvy, she even proved she could make Fluttershy friends with her old enemies using her own ideology just to rub it in Twilight’s face that not only did she know all the weaknesses of Twilight’s brand of friendship, she could almost trick Twilight into being a hypocrite.
 
Their ideologies weren’t the only difference, villain Starlight’s morality was beyond sketchy even in factors not pertaining to her beliefs.
 
 
The reason Starlight reformed was because she was given the ULTIMATE denial of her own path. The time travel was used to show Starlight that her actions would not only destroy herself but everything in existence, that no matter how she retaliated against their friendship, the world would end. It was the ultimate, unfair ultimatum. And that only if she followed Twilight and set everything right, things would be OBJECTIVELY good.
 
Many people note that Starlight S5 and Starlight 6 and onwards are two very different characters, even with the reformation. In a sense, that’s not that far off from the truth. Literally EVERYTHING she culminated in the past one or two decades about her way of life and philosophy was simply denied by FATE AND THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, the future herself telling her that everything she set out to do would be the worst thing in history. Your ‘self’ would be destroyed. That’s not something Cozy Glow would of gone through either with her confidence intact, and you know it.
 
Cozy Glow is like Diamond Tiara’s mother, she’s an easy target, as well as a Darla Dimple(Cat’s Don’t Dance) homage that we assume initially is just pure evil.
 
Cozy IS really good at being evil, but as all as adults with retrospect know, kids have no filter. A kid just intelligent enough to get a grasp and passion for sadism would be an absolute terror. But she’s isn’t some perpetual creature destined to do the same thing over and over again forever. She’s merely a kid with prodigy nasty streak. Especially as children, our minds grow, our minds learn when confronted with arguments better then oneself, our hearts change. Cozy was mentally prepared to reject all regular friendships with no special treatment. She is a bad egg, but she ain’t the devil. She can be outwitted, she can be emotionally perplexed. If someone far more intelligent the Cozy counseled her before just sending her to Tartarus (a very obvious difference between sending a child to Tartarus for what she did when compared to punishing a former cult leader and time terrorist with free room and board), things may have been a lot different.
 
People in the comments section keep on making this ridiculous assumption that she was irredeemable compared to others just because ‘she seamed that way’ and ‘only craved power instead of warped ideology”. That’s nonsense. If anything her desire for power was reflective on how naive and short sighted she was, despite being mentally more advanced for a kid her age.
 
Being a child DOES actually matter. Some adults in the comments see it as an excuse for Cozy to get to do whatever she wants, but I see the opposite…Cozy being a child is an excuse for Bronies to blame the actions of a child, a creature with very little experience or self reflection, with as much hate as possible, without accepting what children really are to ruin their fun. Cause like Darla Dimple, Cozy Glow IS fun to hate. I am not denying that. But that does not change my perspective. Human kids weren’t a focus in Cat’s Don’t Dance, but little fillies are a big focus in MLP.
 
…
 
HOWEVER..like I said before, I am not advocating infinite patience for Cozy Glow. As adults, it is our moral responsibility to give children the chance to grow into productive member’s of society as they have underdeveloped brains. But at a certain point, the damage they cause can outweight the responsibility + effort put into reforming the kid. Equestria’s threshold for amnesty is…pretty damn high for some. On cozy’s end however, Tartarus then petrification were two incredibly high penalties.

@Latecomer  
Honestly both possibilities, being left to starve to death in days or being left for eternity in a hellish pit that magically prolongs your suffering, are pretty effed up. She wasn’t being fed or cared for, because if she was they’d have known she and Tirek had escaped within the day :P
 
@Mildgyth  
“Not as much as it could have been” doesn’t mean it’s still not an absolutely hellish fate that I would commit suicide in a heartbeat to escape. I’d take any of the Cutie Remark bad futures over that with zero hesitation :/
 
@CronoM  
Yeah, pretty much :D

@Myoozik  
I’m not saying that every villain needs a backstory but Cozy Glow is a child, I think giving a hint of why she evil in the first place wouldn’t hurt.

Ever since The backlash to Starlights reformation, It seems the staff had gone out of their way to subvert expectations and avoid making her particular mistakes again.
 
Chrysalis all but flipped starlight off when she tried to pull a Twilight on her, Stygian was corrupted by dark magic rather then being a selfish psycho and was in need of rescue rather than redemption.
 
Cozy Glow just turned out to be a sociopath and was treated accordingly.
 
And in the end? No redemptions at all. Seems every complaint about starlight’s redemption received a nod and redemption itself was actively deconstructed.

@Mildgyth  
Maybe - we don’t see much of what happened to her, after all. And do we even know if Tirek eats?
 
 
@Badumsquish  
Exactly. Seriously, if they could do the stone thing why didn’t they just start with that? It would have saved them a season’s trouble.
 

 
 
@TheAmazingPeanuts  
Depends if it’s a good backstory or a bad one. Look at how polarisng Starlight’s is.

@Terminal Red
 
They also redeemed characters like Neighsay and Ahuizotl.

@Terminal Red  
And yet in the same season, we get cheap and unwanted reformation for Garble and the Daring Do villains. Honestly, I’m not sure how much of a coherent message there was…

@gingerninja666  
Yeah, but they were small time.

Jerks, cowards, cheats, bullies and liars being redeemed is fine.
 
World ending cackling supervillains out to ruin lives is something else and ever since starlight those type of redemptions have been avoided.

@Terminal Red
 
I’d place Ahuizotl a bit above all of those.

@Latecomer  
Garble I can see working, but the DD villains was dumb.