@Vivace  
Oh, even if Starlight had executions, it’d still be a lot worse than that, since Starlight could never dream of causing destruction on such a scale as Ozai.

@ViperBits  

Oh, the nonsense is tiresome. Thanks for choosing to stop peddling it.
 
@Cirrus Light  
It’s honestly disturbing how many people have a bloodlust they want mostly family-friendly cartoons to satisfy. The ongoing desire for Starlight to be made to suffer to the specifications of those with that proud vendetta, and the claims that not getting that is bad writing, reminds me of everyone calling Aang a wuss for choosing not to kill Ozai.

How it should have ended

Not much later Chrysalis enslaved them all.  
Th end.

@Cirrus Light  
That’s what the “kleptomaniac Godzilla” line was about.
 
And honestly, I stopped the list there not because there weren’t more ponies to go on it (looking at you, Rainbow Dash sabotaging a weather factory), but because I felt like more would be overkill.
 

 
@ViperBits  

 
You’re seriously jumping to conclusions. First off, crazy and stupid are two different things. Second, it was never said that the spell was forbidden or incomplete; Starlight didn’t “finish” it, she altered it. Third, the place wasn’t exactly Fort Knox. It’s entirely possible it was only locked because it was after hours. They let Twilight in with no questions whatsoever despite her showing up before sunrise wearing an eyepatch and spy suit. Moreover, they let her bring Spike and Pinkie in even though Spike could be used to send scrolls and Pinkie is, well, Pinkie.
 
 
@ViperBits  

 
It’s entirely plausible that she didn’t know. Her town was, by design, extremely isolated, and none of the <ane 6’s names seemed to ring any bells for anypony there.
 
 
@ViperBits  

 
Guilty, yes. The only reason nothing happened to her is that Twilight was playing favorites.
 
Deserving of a public execution? I stand by my statement that if she deserves to die, there’s plenty more who should be keeping her company on death row.

@Scrounge  
Spike also turned to a giant dragon and attacked the town.
 
Twilight also put it into chaos with her dolls, which used horrible mind control magic on anyone who even looked at the doll.

@ViperBits  
Fine, she can die.
 
On the condition that Trixie (knowingly purchased and used amulet of dark magic, with which she committed atrocities, including, but not limited to: imprisoning the entire town of Ponyville under a giant fishbowl, forcing two intellectually-disabled children to pull an ever-growing unwheeled chariot, and removing Pinkie Pie’s mouth from her face) and Luna (attempted to kill sister – which is attempted regicide – and cause eternal night as Nightmare Moon, then afterwards created the nightmare-inducing Tantabus entity which infested the dreams of many other ponies before nearly gathering enough energy to manifest in, and make a nightmare of, the waking world) die with her. Maybe Rarity (under the influence of dark magic, nearly rendered Ponyville uninhabitable to fit her aesthetic sensibilities; is known to have trapped two ponies withing the walls of a transformed structure, full extent of damage of unknown, but clearly she wasn’t concerned about harming other ponies during her roaring rampage of redecoration) and Spike (carelessly gave Rarity the spell that caused her to go off the deep end, also there’s that time he turned into kleptomaniac Godzilla) too.

@Cirrus Light  
And one more thing - if you want to talk “for the good of society”, consider how she bested Twilight at magic, twice. Befriend that pone and you could have a potent tool that will one day save Equestria. It’s a risky move if she’s not sincere, but Twilight trusted her own judgement of her enough to take that risk. And then if you disagree that’s just a matter of risk/benefit assessment.
 
Sorry, just sprang to mind and had to.

@ViperBits  
@Cirrus Light  
On Starlight choosing to believe Twilight was deceiving her rather than taking it at face value: I can believe that emotion makes people that illogical. I’m seeing it right now with people wanting to torment her. I see it all the time. It’s why there’s wars, crime, terrorism, genocides, why people don’t forgive and why I’m arguing on the internet instead of reading, writing, or studying. But I think I’ll get to that now.
 
But fwiw, psychology has shown well that often people make decisions for emotional reasons and come up with logical justifications after. It’s easy.
 
People are mad. They want to see her choke on rope or be tormented by having her life stripped away by prison or something else. So they come up with justifications. “We’ve got to make an example of her!”
 
Given Equestria, do you really think making a big deal of punishing her would make any future cult leader not? I think it’s pretty obvious if there even are any, it would just make them be sure to not get caught, maybe even make them feel more rejected and want to start their cult to feel accepted, or even as a sort of rebellion even if it’s not one exactly. And worst of all you’d just be telling them it’s possible.
 
As it is, so few ponies know about it you’re best staying silent. And even if it became a big deal, it might be best just to have her give some speech saying how friendship changed her life and stuff. Then you’d positively effect a lot more people, too. And stuff like that works to a decent degree. That’s why advertisers and churches use it so much.
 
Punishment would really probably just make ponies more sympathetic to her, even if not openly. But secretly is even worse, because then you don’t know who secretly supports her, and you can’t shut down secret talk in basements and backrooms.
 
You will last longer making friends than enemies.
 

 
I ramble. I’ll try not to reply until tomorrow or Wednesday or something.
 
And to be clear, making her state more explicitly probationary might have been better, or made her serve her town for a while or something. But that all happened in a kind of fast forward abridgement, so you can imagine there was a lot more to it that the episode just wasn’t long enough for.
 
I’m not opposed to some monitoring or punishment, I just don’t think she deserves to rot in a prison or anything super harsh. Or rather, I have no objections for showing mercy, as long as it’s consistently done for those who are penitent/remorseful.

@Pinkbeardedpony  
Stupid, yes, but honestly most people are pretty stupid, and even more refuse to accept obvious things for emotional reasons. Her emotions blind her. It’s immature, but that’s paranoia and a persecution complex for you.
 
Can’t say I’ve ever had anything too horrible I’ve had to forgive, fortunately, I’d really rather not, but I have had smaller stuff happen that can be pretty traumatic for that age. Had a gun pulled on me (in a weird set of circumstances - I’m not sure it was even real, now, but I don’t know, it’s a distant memory), physically punished for being bullied when I was meant to testify against the bully but the principal misunderstood what the teacher sent me there for. Both at a very young age.
 
All I want is just for that stuff to not happen again. Returning the suffering again just causes more conflict and pain for all involved.
 
And I’ve had a lot of near death scrapes, but there’s nobody to blame for poor health.
 
And continuing to both,
 
@ViperBits
 
Why must someone be responsible? Should we hold executions next time there’s a tornado, or if a pilot survives a plane he crashed in an accident, do we hold him responsible for many counts of murder? Or even manslaughter? Or what about the Fukishima directors who didn’t follow protocol? Then why do we do it for cars?
 
I think airplanes and reactors remind people not to be stupid, honestly. Technology reminds people we can be better than animals, and it feels high tech when it’s rare, and we’re more understanding of accidents when great technology is involved.
 
But do you think I’d be justified to go on some horrible revenge streak against my old principal, or the doctors that couldn’t stop my poor health?
 
“Consequences always exist, whether you want it or not. You cannot hide or run away from them. If someone died because of you”
 
But again, you’re completely ignoring the fact that there were no consequences to the time travel stuff.
 
As for the village, everyone has moved on. That’s been undone and she regrets it and can’t do anything more about it.
 
The fact that you want to continue cruelty out of anger will do nothing but cause more suffering at this point. The people who were actually effected could forgive and move on, but you’re furious and want to hurt someone because you’re not as good as they, and you’ve just fallen in love with this idea of causing pain because you think somehow it would accomplish something.
 
That’s all this is.
 
It’s why the Nazis killed the Jews, it’s why the French killed men, women and children in their revolution.
 
Anger is a horrible emotion responsible for most of mankind’s atrocities. It turns men to animals.
 
If you can’t control it, it will destroy you, and it will prevent your species from ever achieving glory.
 
If you cry for blood, remember who you’re standing shoulder to shoulder with. Lynch mobs and just about every commissioner of genocide from Mao to Saddam to Hitler are your company.
 
But she’s sorry and has done all the can to try to make it up, short of causing pain to herself for the sake of pain (she’s caused plenty for the sake of apologizing and making amends, though).
 
So why do you want to live in a world of more pain? Do you think somehow that will change the past?
 
At least Klansmam Lynch mobs believed they were stopping a dangerous murderer. But you know for a fact that she’s not dangerous any more. So what do you possibly hope to accomplish in causing more suffering to someone who’s apologetic, other than satisfying a hate and harm lust?
 
Not enough ponies know about it for an example to mean anything. Apart from helping people realize that they can go form a cult like that as long as they’re more careful about it. Not to mention all those terrible things that happened happened because of loss of harmony, so making an example of her would weaken Equestria. Being friendly is literally a tangible power here that will protect Equestria.
 

 
Now what about Princess Luna? She was set on doing much worse, but you quite easily forgive her, do you?
 
“Even if she set out to do something less selfish and destructive for everyone involved it would still be wrong!”
 
But motive matters a lot. Otherwise doctors could get charged with murder if their patient dies in surgery.
 
And again, if Starlight is responsible for those things that didn’t happen, then why aren’t we holding the admissions officer at that art school responsible for the Holocaust for rejecting Hitler from that school? That’s more a direct cause than what Starlight did.
 
To us it seems stupid that Starlight didn’t accept what she was being shown - that she’d rather believe Twilight was faking it. But that’s an example of thinking emotionally instead of logically.
 
To me it’s just as intelligent as being this furious at Starlight, still, and holding her responsible for all that.

Lots of crimes, especially those that end in fatalities, happen because of accident or simply a fluke of various circumstances. Whether it was a guy you shot after he jumped you and scared you as you were robbing a store, or a kid whom you bullied into making him commit suicide. Or even a kid whom parents neglected and he died due to swallowing one too many batteries. In none of these cases the murderer really tried or wanted to kill someone, but it still happened. And guess what? Someone still has to take the blame and responsibility for consequences of those actions, no matter if the said consequences were intended or even considered at the time crime was committed. We don’t live in a fairy tale where if you accidentally killed someone it is considered okay. No. Consequences always exist, whether you want it or not. You cannot hide or run away from them. If someone died because of you, no matter what you were thinking or hoping to achieve you will still have to answer for your actions! Sure, people usually get milder punishments if they were under influence of strong emotions or committed crime mostly by accident, but those punishments are still severe and involve years upon years of prison.
 
In the case of Starlight she stole and used a forbidden spell (only one of her crimes, mind you). A spell that was forbidden because not even alicorns wanted to have the power to alter the past and force it to bow down to their will, or they simply understood the risks and hence it was never ‘finished’. But hey, if a stupid teenager with self-taught level of knowledge in magic can finish it in a few weeks, then I suppose it wasn’t really ‘unfinished’ nor ‘impossible’. Simply neglected because it was too dangerous to use. Even the dumbest person can understand the sheer number of factors and potential ripples a small change in the past can make, as there is a snowball effect and one small change can alter the entire course of history. Starlight didn’t care. She broke the rule and used the spell to pretty much undo the Element bearers, the one group responsible for safety of entire Equestria. She knew that if they never met there would be no elements, and she was okay with it. She consciously set out to sabotage the same ponies who defended Equestria MULTIPLE times. And all just so she can continue running her small tyrannic empire based on inequality and lies, where she can have the place she thinks she deserves - a god above everyone else. The one true messiah who knows how everyone else should live their lives!
 
Even if she set out to do something less selfish and destructive for everyone involved it would still be wrong! And in her case there simply can be no justification for her actions. It is impossible to defend someone who is absolutely and undeniably guilty in so many crimes, I have no idea why you even keep trying. And all this time you’ve been talking only about the time travel stuff, completely disregarding her numerous other crimes that can’t be refuted or pardoned in any way. Come on, I am pretty sure everyone who was crazy or bored enough to follow this little discussion of ours is already tired of this nonsense…

@Cirrus Light  
Two points Cirrus.
 
One. Starlight’s adamant refusal to accept the crucial role of Twilight and her friends is incredibly stupid. She says something to the effect of, “Nopony can be that important to history.” And yet the existence of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna immediately disprove Glimmer’s argument. They are two ponies whose actions have changed Equestria tremendously, for good and ill. It’s a very basic logical conclusion that she shouldn’t have missed.
 
Two.

We are also not saints with the patience of Jesus Christ or the Buddha. There is a reason religions are centered around people of inestimable patience and wisdom.
 
If you pull out a revolver and unload it on me, and miss, I’m afraid I cannot instantly and fully forgive you for trying to murder me. Especially when you were seeking revenge because I ruined your cult by tipping off the authorities and shutting you down. I might not be too inclined to forgive you if that was your motivation, rough childhood or not. That type of alien mindset is difficult to accept, even with the premise of a different Universe and sapient race of characters. You are blessed if you can actually adopt the teachings of MLP and practice what you preach. :)

@ViperBits  
But she didn’t go back in time to warn Nightmare Moon and help her.
 
She went back in time to keep the mane 6 from becoming friends.
 
When Twilight showed her what her actions were doing to the future, Starlight didn’t even believe it.
 
It’s not like you went back in time and taught Hitler Allied strategies - it’s like a clique of friends ruined your dream life so you went back in time and kept them from becoming friends.
 
Then the person who led that group of friends starts saying because of you Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, Joseph Stalin, Kim Jung, and a host of other dictators were taking over the world because you kept that clique from forming.
 
“Starlight is clearly a saint.”
 
Strawman. I’m just saying you can’t hold her accountable for what Chrysalis, Tirek, Nightmare Moon, etc. did. That, and I’m fine with what happened in the show. People are too vindictive. So willing to decry hate as evil, yet so eager to hate.

@Cirrus Light  
New approach, less time:  
“Just because the crime is /perceived/ as harmless doesn’t make it less of a crime. She did attack foals and royalty. She did break into restricted archives and Twi’s castle. She did brainwash innocent ponies and commit crimes against pony nature by taking away cutie marks. She did time travel and destroy Equestria multiple times, ruining the lives of every living creature on the planet whether they continue to exist and remember it or not. And she did commit a repeat crime by brainwashing mane6 even after she had been pardoned. Her crimes are tremendous, her punishment none.”
 
I can and will hold her accountable for her time travel shenanigans no matter the theory, simply because she attempted it in the first place. She stole the spell and thought herself to be so right and entitled to her views that she literally had a right to rewrite the entire history to satisfy her own selfish, stupid, and completely self-centered desires. Stealing a forbidden spell is one thing, but reshaping the entire universe and history simply because your ego and underdeveloped brain demand it? Did she really think she was such a big deal and center of the universe that she could crumble and rewrite the entire perfectly functioning society? And surely you think it is alright, so if I were a neo-Nazi and went back in time right now and warned Hitler on what to do and not to do so he ended up completely wiping out USA and capturing the entire world? By your logic it is completely alright as now YOU haven’t existed because your parents were probably killed in a slave camp or some such! Clearly I wouldn’t be a criminal and my actions aren’t worth any reprimand, even if I were to be caught and stopped like Starlight was before my plan succeeded, right?
 
You can’t rewrite 10+ years of history of an entire planet simply on your own whim, it is not right, especially when you are doing it literally because of your own subjective beliefs rather than actually trying to prevent a definitive cataclysm and whatnot! By doing this you pretty much say “F*uck you and your free will, I know better how you should be living your lives and I will make sure that things are exactly the way I want them to be!” Who does she think she is? A god? This is so not alright that I can’t even begin to imagine how anyone would think her actions are anything but awful and despicable, much less go as far as defend her.
 
“because apparently it is alright to go on crusade against ice cream and its very inventor after you dropped a cone on a hot day and decided you didn’t want to buy another one from a stall literally several steps away from you.” Dropped ice cream == went back in time and killed the dude who invented it. Profit, nothing wrong here, Starlight is clearly a saint. We’ll just have to live without ice cream now because she happened to drop her cone that one time, this is fine! Never mind all her other crimes as well and just listen to what Cirrus says, surely he and his moral compass are right >_>
 
@Scrounge  
Twilight and Spike should have been enough evidence based on how much power and trust they hold in their universe (it is quite ridiculous actually, the way ponies downright adore and obey the alicorns without questioning them in the slightest). Plus if they managed to handle affairs on her parole internally without public knowing it, so too could they handle her banishment to EQG realm or her punishment by stripping her magic. I doubt there is even court and such there, most likely it is just whatever the alicorns decide, and I don’t see a reason Celestia wouldn’t trust Twilight AND Spike on this. And I do agree that EQG realm is a far better place for her “rehabilitation”, if only for her not feeling inferior without her magic there while simultaneously not being superior to anyone either. It is what she wanted anyways, they really should have just dumped her in that world seeing as there are no cutie marks there either! Perfect solution if you ask me, not too punitive if presented right, but completely safe and sound. I really wish the show writers went with it instead of introducing this poorly written and overpowered character into the main cast, needed or not.

@Scrounge  
I’m making an entirely different point, though.
 
Nobody exists who was harmed by her actions. Nobody ever has, or ever will exist, who was harmed by what she did. Aside from Twilight, who went through the ordeal with her, and Twilight doesn’t seem to be pressing charges.
 
Ergo, how can you meaningfully say that it even happened at all? Those alternate individuals literally do not exist. Look into the past, and they are nowhere in history. Nowhere in history was Rainbow struck by Starlight, ergo, it didn’t happen.
 

 
I guess I’m taking a bit of a reductionist view of what you’re saying. I’m stressing the fact that this isn’t “just” “the perfect crime”, this is literally something that didn’t happen. Reality warping stuff.
 

 
Now, the cult thing is a different story. That actually happened. Maybe that’s outside of Equestria’s jurisdiction or something though and it has a sort of Jonestown legality to it.

@ViperBits  

 
One is a question of Twilight having the authority to do so, and nopony else is involved in the decision. The other is a question of plausibility, meaning a jury of other ponies would need to be convinced that it happened despite it contradicting the current Equestrian understanding of the limits of magical time travel. Putting her on trial for the time travel stuff wouldn’t work. It’d just look crazy, and get in the way of prosecuting her for the cult stuff, for which there’s a solid case with a who;e town full of witnesses and evidence. And if she were tried for it separately from the cult stuff, it’d at best be a waste of time and at worst run the risk of looking like a kangaroo court in the public eye.
 
And before I forget again, let’s backtrack…
 
@ViperBits  

 
They could have just left him as a statue. And he won’t definitely go mad; yes, dealing with a grieving reality warper will undoubtedly be difficult, he might very well have other friends by then, and having a shoulder or two to cry on could keep him from going completely off the rails. As for killing him… I’m not sure there’s even a feasible way to do so in the first place.
 
@ViperBits  

 
You’re completely missing the point here. It’s about how to best punish and/or rehabilitate Starlight, not which characters you personally have a bug up your ass about.
 
@Cirrus Light  

 
You’re harming the point I’m trying to make. My point is that “it happened” isn’t enough in court when you don’t have evidence, even if it did happen.

@ViperBits  

You have completely misinterpreted what I said. Like you, I was quite upset that Glimmer was held harmless for all of her misdeeds. The characters on the show have forgiven her and do not intend to punish her in any capacity. What remains is the viewership’s outrage for this unjustice. I feel that Glimmer has, barely, earned a full pardon for her crimes. If it were not for Thorax, Discord, Trixie Lulamoon, and Starlight Glimmer, the age of Equestria would have ended, and the culture would fade into memory. Thus, the very foundations of Equestrian justice, which must have as a primary consideration the security of its citizenry, owes Glimmer and her cohorts a great debt. Thus I feel as though a pardon is fitting. As you say, Glimmer committed additional actions lacking in moral turpitude after the fact, for which she ought to have been punished. At the very least, Rainbow Dash reacted as I would expect most humans would having had their free will stripped from them.  

For now, I agree with you, I do not enjoy her character. I could see myself liking her eventually, but the show may well end before I can accept her. ;D

@ViperBits  
You’re still blaming her for something that she didn’t do. She didn’t murder bunches of ponies. And those realities don’t exist.
 
I’m not saying murder is okay. Of course it isn’t. I’m saying if you murder in a universe that doesn’t actually exist then you didn’t murder in reality and therefore did not murder.
 
As I said, Scrounge’s point is that you could never prove it. I’d add, because it didn’t happen. If it didn’t happen in reality it didn’t happen.
 
Nobody is dead because of it, therefore it didn’t happen. It left literally no impression on the universe. None at all. Nobody is dead, nobody was even hurt.
 
It relies on them being alternate possibilities that are erased, not other universes that persist, but in the episodes they often spoke of it that way.
 
And no, that doesn’t necessarily take more energy. Energy isn’t as intuitive as people think. For example, if Celestia spun the sun around Equus at any constant rate, then the centripetal force would apply perpendicular to the velocity vector, and since work is the dot of the force and displacement vectors, there’s no change of energy involved. See: path dependence
 
So, energy isn’t so intuitive as you think.
 
There’s a billion ways this could work, most of which we haven’t even imagined, and you want to torment a pony over a complete assumption that it works how you assume it does.
 
But you really want to lynch a pony, got the whole mob anger thing on, so yeah, I don’t expect cool-headed reasoning at this point. So I only really comment for the sake of any third parties reading this.

@Cirrus Light  
I actually knew you’d start talking about video games… Excuse me, but this shows how self-centered your thinking is and how you completely fail to view situation from the other side to realize that your claims might be completely erroneous. Characters in video games aren’t real, they have no perception of themselves, no emotions, no nothing. Those ponies/people in parallel universes? They are every bit as real as you are. In fact, if someone were to jump dimensions right now and kill you and your entire family just for fun and giggles before returning back as if nothing had happened and suffering zero consequences, would that be okay with you? You place yourself in the center of the universe and assume that no one is going to treat you back the same way you treat those “non-existing” ponies. What if we were in the said universe and it was about to do a complete reset and rollback, but instead of living like you did your entire life was complete hell due to one person’s fuck-up. Would that still be alright with you? You wouldn’t tell that they should be accountable for your suffering simply because they would go and erase your existence as if their little mistake never happened?
 
Universe was being overriden? Well, even if we go with that idea (although it has as little proof as my suggestion), a lot of creatures were still harmed as they had to live through these last years of their lives and experience the hell Starlight caused before it was erased. But I honestly doubt it ever was erased as much as I doubt they were returning to the same universe. Do you imagine the sheer power requirements to reset time and erase years of history that already took place? What’s more likely, that Starlight managed to turn back the entire universe 10+ years in the past several times over, or that she simply jumped the lines? What makes you believe that my suggestion isn’t right? Where was previous Starlight and Twi if they returned to the same point of time and space in the same universe? Were they erased too? But then how come they were still there and remembered their past loops? It is a paradox, non-existing past altering the present. So slap a time anti-paradox bubble on top of that spell too, would you? One can theorize and invent plot devices to fill in the holes as much as they want, but the multiverse theory is a perfect explanation for this kind of stuff and aligns very well with what happened in the show. But keep believing it didn’t happen, whatever. I knew it was a useless argument anyways.
 
I am not going to discuss the history of USA and its current-day propaganda to make its citizens think they did the right thing instead of actually taking responsibility and fault for actions of their country as this is not our current topic. It is utterly pointless too with how ingrained those false facts and beliefs are in most American’s heads, so let’s not delve into that pile of horse manure, shall we? Believe me, I have enough to say on the topic of USA and its external affairs (both past and present) but I’d rather not.
 
And what’s wrong with you and Hitler, really? This is one of the rules I’ve heard about… Something about every argument resorting to Hitler parallels when they one side feels trapped and needs a punchline to illustrate something. Looks silly. But as for your Hitler stuff, the Hitler who cured cancer was NOT the same one that lived in our timeline. Of course you can’t cure cancer when you are dead. So Hitler the ultra bad guy is a completely different person to Hitler who cured cancer, and as such deserves zero praise for it. This actually demonstrates an important thing - both our Hitler and theirs are two completely different persons. He is every bit as real as ours is, and should be treated as a proper human being separately from our grudge and prejudice towards him from our timeline. So seeing as he is a completely different human being, not even a clone of our Hitler who can be swapped on his lookalike, is it really okay to kill him just because this good Hitler is not in our timeline? Shouldn’t it be considered murder? If the guy who killed you and went back to his reality isn’t held accountable for the committed murder in his own reality, then where should he be accountable? Nowhere? Is murdering a living human being considered a fun recreational activity and completely legally sound provided the said human is from another dimension or timeline? After all, most people can’t see or know they existed or were killed, only the killer saw them live and die… so does killing a human suddenly becomes alright now? Is this really what you are trying to say here? In either case I am done. Far too much time being wasted on these walls of text (especially with me not really giving a f*ck about MLP nowadays) so I think I will stop replying to you from now on. It is nothing personal, just saving my time. Sorry and have a nice day.

@ViperBits  
Yes, authority to pardon is easier than to convict, because we believe in innocence until proven guilty. At least we try to hold to that principle in the US.
 
If you love to harm people it may seem fun to not do that to try to catch more criminals, but if you end up falsely convicted you’ll suddenly realize why “innocent until proven guilty” is so important.
 

Okay, I think we’re done.

@ViperBits  
Cities in the US show the trend. Different thing than countries with different cultures and haven’t always had them.
 
When the nukes were dropped they knew very little to nothing about long term effects of radiation. Also it saved 41.8 million people. Follow the link. Seriously. and if nukes are intrinsically evil then why don’t you condemn every nuclear armed country?
 

 
Anyways, why don’t we punish people for what they do in video games?
 
Because there’s no consequence of people getting harmed. When you can screw with reality like Starlight, she and Twi ultimately left a situation with no consequence of anyone getting harmed.
 
And again, no, she didn’t destroy Equestria, unless you want to hold some admissions officer at an art school responsible for the holocaust because they kept Hitler from going to become an artist.
 
Chrysalis is responsible for her own actions. Starlight isn’t responsible for what Chrysalis did unless her aid was a lot more direct than keeping a child from racing some 12 years ago.
 
As for “You can’t punish someone for what they did in another reality”
 
A) @Scrounge got the Starlight angle.
 
B) because there’s an infinite number of possibilities. The time travel in the episode seemed to indicate they were changing the present by changing the past, ergo, it’s not some alternate universe that continues to exist. Those other timelines literally never happened once they set things back.
 
If Starlight were destroying Equestria, you could say she was doing something far too dangerous. But I don’t think you can really hold her responsible. Again, it’s like the admissions officer who didn’t let Hitler into art school. Or even the British soldier who didn’t shoot Hitler in WW1. You can’t hold them responsible for what Hitler did. But their influence was far more direct than Starlight’s.
 
She smacked Rainbow with magic once or twice, so at best you might could argue she hit a child - but again, only in a fluid reality where the act was literally undone before it even happened. It’s like a video game in that it carried no consequences that ever actually harmed anyone because reality was being altered.
 

 
When Starlight and Twi came back, all that stuff that happened had might as well have been a dream.
 
Scrounge said you could never prove it. Which it true because looking at the timeline you wanted to punish her in, it literally never happened. The only place it exists is in their heads, like a dream.
 
C) and there’s another angle, too: we don’t give Hitler an award for curing cancer because that’s in another reality, to take a “Rick and Morty approach to it”.

@Scrounge  
A say-so of a princess is enough to unquestionably pardon her (especially seeing as some of her crimes were against the state itself, both the cultist thing and stealing the forbidden time travel spell from the royal library) but a say-so of a princess, her assistant and the entire group of elements of harmony isn’t enough to convict her? What? :\
 
@Pinkbeardedpony  
You do know that you don’t pardon or forgive someone on the basis of things they haven’t done yet? As in you can’t pardon a murderer because you are extra sure he will save a bus of schoolkids from tipping over a bridge or something 10 years from now. You can’t know that at the time the murderer is caught and convicted! If we were to do that and let every criminal, murderer, rapist and the likes that were captured go away with no punishment in hopes that one day some of them save a child or donate their kidney to a poor dude, we’d end up with lots and lots of repeat crimes and homicides. Because that murderer you let go? The first thing he’ll likely end up doing is killing the guy who ratted him out and helped catch him. This is not how justice works, you have to lay down your sentence as soon as criminal is caught, there is no other options! Not to mention that even if you were to let Starlight go and give her a probation period… well, she blew it, didn’t she? She completely and utterly wasted whatever trust you could bestow upon her when she brainwashed mane6 in the castle! This should have definitely been it and she should have received her just punishment - magic removal at least. But nope, scot-free yet again, no matter what she does!
 
Based on that I consider her sentence awfully unjust and criminally mild in comparison with her numerous crimes. She was pretty much let go as friend of royalty, just as kids of deputies and presidents are allowed to leave scot-free after having drank way too much and ran over 10+ people waiting on a bus stop. And this is no joke, it is a real story from my country! The dude’s son had his driving licence confiscated only the second time he ran over a bus stop full of people on his armored jeep. Second time! More than 10 people died in these two incidents and all they did to him was take his driving licence away. What we are seeing here with Starlight is absolutely the same thing, and you are defending her! I can’t believe how blind and biased people can be, it is honestly surreal.
 
Just because the crime is /perceived/ as harmless doesn’t make it less of a crime. She did attack foals and royalty. She did break into restricted archives and Twi’s castle. She did brainwash innocent ponies and commit crimes against pony nature by taking away cutie marks. She did time travel and destroy Equestria multiple times, ruining the lives of every living creature on the planet whether they continue to exist and remember it or not. And she did commit a repeat crime by brainwashing mane6 even after she had been pardoned. Her crimes are tremendous, her punishment none. People who defend this outcome are either painfully idealistic or outright blind to the real world and potentially grave consequences of seemingly innocent actions. If I was a citizen and discovered that my country handled a case like that in the way Twilight and MLP did, I would be outraged and demand justice, I hope so would you. But for some reason Starlight committing a crime makes everything alright and forgivable?
 
I will never enjoy her character no matter what she does, even if she ends up saving Equestria 100 times over. She shouldn’t even be in the show, and definitely not in the way and form she is presented right now. It is unforgivable and the main reason I quit the fandom, alongside with most fans actually liking and supporting her. I believe am done here, excuse me for the wall of text.

I have already spoken at length about various systems of punishment and the merits and demerits of each.
 
I simply wish to comment that I consider Starlight Glimmer to have repaid her debt to pony society in full, by dint of her exemplary actions in Season 6, Episode 25, “To Where and Back Again.”
 
I must preface my decision to pardon Starlight Glimmer notwithstanding the fact that I consider her to have contributed the least to the success of the operation conducted in said episode, and, as such, that she was and has been unjustly lionized for her meager contributions.
 
In spite of that, I am compelled to recognize that her participation in a guerrilla action to repel a hostile force of Changelings from Equestrian soil, and thereby save the lives of the Equestrian nobility and the rest of the populace, was sufficiently meritorious to further compel me to pardon her for her numerous felonies and misdemeanors, for which she has never received any harsher punishment than a brief self-admonishment and her own feelings of contrition.
 
I’ll see myself out. ;|

@ViperBits  
I forgot about the thingies from the games, but in my defense they were in one scene and never mentioned again, and were basically a plot device so nopony could steal Spike’s episode out from under him, so I don’t consider it an odd thing to forget. And as for the horn rings, those I’m quite certain never appeared on the show and are entirely a product of the fandom.
 
And regardless of how time travel works, it doesn’t change that for an actual trial, there’d be no way to gather evidence or witnesses. The spell, even if it weren’t gone, is clearly not capable of anything other than going forwards and backwards in your specific timeline, not hopping between them “Sliders”-style, and altering the past in an attempt to return to a specific alternate timeline, then undoing those changes without screwing anything _else up and hoping that doing so doesn’t cause some weird paradox with whoever or whatever you brought from the alternate dimension, which is the only way to show any of this to a jury, seems like a catastrophically reckless thing to attempt. Obviously, it would, be much easier to convict her for what she did while she was a cult leader, but all they have for the time travel is Twilight and Spike’s say-so.

@Cirrus Light  
I don’t know where you are taking your statistics from, please find a reliable source, better several. Countries with tighter gun laws have way less crime than ones without it as it is harder for a drunk teenager who broke with his girl take a gun and go shoot her new BF. Without a gun it just ends up in the drunk guy getting his ass kicked. With a gun you have a shooting with 1 or possibly more victims. Guns don’t commit crime, but they sure as heck make it easier to commit serious crime!
 
Not with nukes that left health concerns for future generations, although apparently napalm is another favorite of theirs. And no, they really didn’t. There would be far less casualties in traditional assault, plus Soviets were already almost done there anyways. The whole thing was to prevent USSR from capturing the islands at the cost of 2 civilian cities. Oh, and also petty revenge for pearl harbor since obviously civilians were to blame. I am amazed how history is twisted and ideologies brainwash people into justifying and defending atrocious acts they’ve committed.  
“Freedoms are an intrinsic good”… yeah, much freedom you have compared to developed European countries, but I am not going to question that. Not in the mood for political drama, plus most of the time discussing it is useless anyways.
 
“You can’t punish someone for what they did in another reality” - uuuuuum, what?! Why so, can you justify this at all? This statement is absolutely ridiculous. So by your idea if I invent a dimensional portal and start nuking cities whenever I am in a bad mood and want to feel strong and powerful that will be okay? If I go there and kill children to bring back their blood for my bath that will be okay? It didn’t happen here, so why should I be punished? It is the same as if you said “Oh, but if no one seen him murder that man he can’t be punished!” Starlight should be completely responsible for her actions and their consequences, no matter what reality they were made in and whether or not she knew and expected the said consequences. Saying otherwise is a clear display of bias.
 
Besides, even if the universes did somehow revert back to the change Starlight means and then rewrote what happened afterwards, that still means she and she alone forced the entire population of the planet to go through hell, no matter if they remember it now or even exist. She caused pain and misery by her selfish actions no matter from which side you look at this scenario.