Rainbow Dash really regrets destroying the Weather Factory. Like, a lot. It's been about a week since it happened, but she's still doing all she can to repair her reputation and have everypony stop hunting her down.
She's been given an out though, and it's pretty easy. All she has to do is fly from one end of Equestria to another, then fly back. If she wins, she's free from all moral and financial debt. If she loses, she'll have to clean up all of winter by herself for the next three years. No big deal for the fastest flyer in Equestria. Except it's a race, which also isn't that big of a deal. It's not the large amount flying that'll bother her, nor will the fact she has competition.
What bothers her is who she's racing.
Chapters (1)
Problem with the premise:
1). Winter was apparently right on schedule. It was FINISHED early, not STARTED early.
2) The fact that everyone was out playing in the snow the next day rather negates the claim that there was any crisis or damage at all. Ponyville regularly endures fricking MONSTER ATTACKS and is up and back to normal within a day or two. The idea that an abrupt start to winter would devastate the town more than that is rather ridiculous.
3)The factory was not, in actual fact, destroyed, and there was only minor damage. It just farted out an entire Ponyville winter in one big blast. The mushroom cloud was winter bursting over Ponyville, not Cloudsdale.
4)If she punishes Dash this heavily for something of such minimal consequence, she'll have to go back and punish Applejack for the rabbit stampede and the Baked Bads outbreak, Fluttershy for the parasprites and the Gala stampede, Pinkie Pie for the Mirror Pool Pinkiepocalypse, Rarity for running rampant with that renovation spellbook, and Twilight for the Smarty Pants incident... and herself for unleashing Nightmare Moon, Discord and Tirek. Three creatures she imprisoned, that she KNEW were going to escape, and yet gave literally noone any warning about...she even RE-released Discord, which nearly ended the damn world when he teamed up with Tirek! which mean she herself is responsible for more potential death and destruction than the rest of them combined.
VERDICT: Bogus guilt trip. The claims of damages unrealistic, the proposed punishment is draconian, the challenge sadistic, and the one handing out the punishment hypocritical. Celestia is grossly OOC for even contemplating it. When she starts treating beings who actually nearly end the world this harshly, then maybe it would start looking believable. Till then this story fails the smell test.
5915504 I know Ponyvile's gone though a lot of things worse than this, but considering how close the Weather Factory is to Ponyville and Canterlot, it makes them pretty vulnerable spots for that mass dumping of snow towards the end of "Tanks for the Memories". It made a massive mushroom cloud of snow that immediately buried everything and everypony in snow so deep they had to dig their ways out. Not only that but we never saw if the factory was ever totally salvaged or not, so it's safe to say the whole facility went haywire and started launching giant snow nukes all over the place. I'm from Chicago, so I've seen just how bad large amounts of snowfall can damage buildings and even break whole houses down. On top of that, considering Ponyville wants to keep Winter Wrap Up "traditional", they're not going to clean it until it's the beginning of Spring, and even when then happens they'll do it by hoof (unless Rainbow loses this race, then she'll have to do it. No spoilers.)
For further proof of how damaging snow is, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28Vya2-iHqo
5915582 Nothing you said negates ANY of the points I made. At the end the factory was still standing, as was Ponyville, and nopony was behaving remotely as if there was a crisis. People do not go out figure skating in a calamity!
The premise for this story is OVERLY CONTRIVED. It requires damage and destruction that didn't happen, reactions from the rest of Ponyville that were nonexistent, and a draconian (and hypocritical) Celestia to administer the punishment.
NO, she's not the Element of Loyalty. The element was the necklace she used to wear. They gave them back, remember? Also, why does Celestia want to punish Rainbow Dash and not Fluttershy, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity? Those four also did something that's as bad as what RD did and they got away with it
5915634 ok can we compromise and just say this is an alternate events to the show? you both make good points
yes in the show none of these disasters happened but if said events were different this could be plausible i mean just how much DO we know about the weather factory and the impacts it has on weather regulation? there is much that is still unexplained so lets just see where this goes.
Yeah, I'm sorry but the punishment seems more arbitrary than anything else and everything up to now feels like a setup for it. I just don't get how it is you can go from, "this is a crime and you must be punished" to "we'll have a race and if you win you'll be set free".
Had you wanted to set something like this up maybe a more believable, albeit cliche, reason might be to have Dash be overly boastful about being the fastest pegasus alive. She'd be full of herself, saying something like, "even Princess Celestia can't beat me!" which sets the wheels into motion. Twilight Sparkle send this in a letter to Celestia who thinks that Rainbow Dash needs to be taught a lesson and the story progresses more or less as it was.
5915504
1) Winter WAS on schedule, but it wasn't meant to be shot out in a massive cannonball like it was in so sudden of a fashion. The Weather Team was originally letting out small amounts of snowfall by individual clouds, whereas Ponyville was hit by a blast of snow that was big enough to bury ponies alive. There was no way damage WASN'T caused, considering how quickly the massive amount of snow fell onto the town.
2) Ponyville has gone through a lot of problems, like I agreed with you before. However, none of those caused a whole lot of damage as this incident potentially did:
A) The rabbit stampede only caused very minor damage to some crops and some bushes, and the baked bads only caused 11 ponies to have indigestion with some vomiting.
B) The Pinkie Pie clones were only a minor town nuisance, and they caused minor damage to a farmhouse that wasn't even truly built in the first place. The problem was resolved by Twilight Sparkle before it could get any worse beyond that.
C) All of Rarity's remodeling was reset by Luna, Cadence and Twilight. Luna may have regained her title and responsibilities but that doesn't entitle her to report everything to her sister, and Cadence owed Spike a great debt for saving the Crystal Empire which was pretty much paid in full when she pretty much covered for him towards the end of Inspiration Manifestation.
D) Celestia forgave the Smarty Pants incident because she knows Twilight better than anypony else, considering she's been her teacher since Twilight was a very young filly. She should have been punished then, but she let her go because everypony else was able to vouch for her and sway her opinion. That and an obvious bit of favoritism. Besides, not a lot of damage was done, except to some ponies pride after fighting over a ragged old doll.
3) The only time they showed the factory from ground level was immediately after the snow-nuke was launched, and that was three seconds of lightning and smoke. The internals of the winter lab were totally demolished because of the damage Rainbow did, and they made sure to show as many thunderclouds forming inside the facility as they could. Also, the whole building was both flooded and had lightning bouncing around, causing massive damage to machinery and possibly even Pegasi. Above all else in this scenario, this is the biggest key factor: Nearly the entire facility is made of clouds. Lightning could easily pierce through the walls of the complex and cause massive destruction to everything and everyone inside.
4) Really? You do know that Celestia is neither omniscient or omnipresent, right? Sure, she kept a close eye on Twilight Sparkle as she grew and learned with magic, but she can't be expected to watch every single little individual corner of Equestria. Not even her magic is strong enough for that! As for your other claims:
A) It wasn't her who released Discord the second time, it was the Bearers of the Elements. Sure, it was under her request, but considering how much of a reputation they've gained and how much political favor they've probably earned, Celestia would've more than likely gone with their decision if they said they didn't want to release him.
B) Celestia may have known about Nightmare Moon's release, but she had full faith that Twilight would come across the Elements of Harmony and discover the power to stop her. On top of that, it's also been debated that Nightmare Moon banished Celestia to the sun when she got free. Celestia had nothing to do with setting her sister free, as the spell was only meant to last for 1,000 years. Even if she DID want to keep it going for longer, do you really think she would've happily agreed to keep her sister stuck on the moon for eternity?
C) Tirek freed himself on his own accord and with his own abilities. Even the show doesn't explain how he got free, and Celestia didn't know about it until he had drained his first victim. She only sent Discord to stop him because she had full faith that he'd stay on the good side. Like I said before, she's not all-seeing and all-knowing. She needed to stay in Canterlot to help maintain order over the denizens that remained, as she's basically the voice of reason among the madness of the city in a time of crisis.
Verdict: The guilt trip was entirely warranted. Like it says in the story, it took five days for news about Rainbow's vandalism to spread to Canterlot. Considering that she heard that Dash had gone into hiding, she had to lay down the law and hold her accountable. Running away from a problem is a sign of fear, and if Rainbow really felt she had done nothing wrong she wouldn't have gone into hiding. She even eased up slightly when she saw that Dash really was sorry, and offered her something that was possibly within her realms of achieving.
She's not entirely acting out of character because so far we've rarely see her take charge of a catastrophe like this. The one time she had the chance to step forward and actually act on something was the Royal Wedding, and she got beat pretty badly after a short fight with Chrysalis.
Celestia isn't being sadistic in this story; it's purely out of competitive drive. Rainbow blurted out that her punishment was no problem, and Celestia added more to the race to make it more of a challenge for both her and Rainbow. She even offered to have Discord take away her magic! That's making the competition pretty level, don't you think?
If you truly feel like something was left out of this WHOLE explanation either read or listen to a dramatic reading of The Fiery Joker's fanfiction: The Folly of Celestia. It covers pretty much everything I covered.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/248728/the-folly-of-celestia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPVBGQBfz2k
PS: The story only has ONE chapter out so far! You're taking this way too seriously before the full story has even been developed. It's a fantasy story in a fantasy setting with fantasy characters, so of course there are going to be a lot of unbelievable and unrealistic things. That's the idea! Also remember that the sixth episode of season 5 hasn't even been released yet, so there's no way anyone can say this couldn't happen when there's no real substantial evidence produced by Hasbro to prove otherwise.
I appreciate some of the input you provided in your post (albeit it was worded rather rudely), but it's like a starved mountain lion taking on a baby: Give it a chance to grow before you pounce on it and feast on the innards.
5918920 Then why didn't they punish Fluttershy for the parasprite incident? That one was even more devastating than what RD did.
Rereading this for the first time in a while, and Celestia DEFINITELY comes across as way too harsh.