Proportionate Retribution
Into the hall of Friendship, Starlight Glimmer walked into with a heavy heart. “I know there’s no excuse for what I did,” she told the assembled Bearers. “I’m ready for whatever punishment you think is fair.” With the exception of Twilight, all looked at her with coolness, and the impassivity of a pony who must pass harsh judgement on another, and doesn’t want to get too close to them. Starlight knew that feeling well, but she never thought she would be the one seeing it in others.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about how bad Equestria fared, without just one group of friends,” the alicorn princess said with concern to Starlight. “Because even when one friendship dies, the result can be disastrous!” The dragon nodded in approval, and Starlight couldn’t blame either of them considering what she put them and all of Equestria through with her foolish meddling with time.
Starlight sighed, and sunk her head, murmuring, “I know firsthoof how true that could be.”
“And that’s why I’ve asked you here,” Twilight said, standing and striding over to Starlight. Afraid to look up, Starlight Glimmer couldn’t bear to think what the princess must be feeling right now. Despite this, a hoof cupped Starlight’s chin and lifted it up to face a smiling face, as Twilight said, “If you’re willing to learn, I’m willing to teach you what I know.”
Starlight couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She saw every bearer smiling at her, not looking at her with resentment or hatred at all. “You’ll have the power to make Equestria an even better place,” Twilight said gladly.
Starlight Glimmer backed up, looking from pony to pony, wide-eyed, and certainly not believing what was happening here.
“You’re just joking, right?” she said to Twilight, with a nervous laugh. “For a moment I thought you said you were going to teach me and give me power, as punishment.”
“It’s not a punishment, Starlight,” Twilight told her soothingly, “I want to teach you about the magic of Friendship. We’ve been looking for you for months on end, not to punish you, but because you did something incredible!”
“I did?” Starlight said, stepping back a step. “B-but you said that differences made your friendship strong! I tried to destroy that!”
“Starlight, seriously?” Twilight said, shaking her head with a curious smile, “Yes, you had some mistaken ideas, but you convinced a whole village of ponies to give up their cutie marks for the sake of being your friend! Your magic is some of the most powerful I’ve ever seen, but that’s nothing compared to your power over friendship! How did you convince them? How did they come to love you so deeply? Unless you’re seriously suggesting you put everypony in the village in that little room, before it was even built?”
“Em, no, that room was kind of a last minute thing because we couldn’t convince you...” Starlight admitted.
“I am in awe of your friendship making skills,” Twilight said, bowing her head, “If anything, I want to know what you can teach me about it!”
“But they all hate me now!” Starlight retorted with an unavoidable quiver in her voice, “Now that they know what a horrible thing I did to them, just to satisfy my own petty—”
Zipping up to Starlight’s face, Rainbow Dash cut in with, “Have you even been to your village, since everypony got their cutie marks back? They’re still there!”
“If everypony in that village wants to remain friends with each other,” Rarity said sidling out of her chair and magically easing Rainbow Dash back just a bit, “Then why wouldn’t they want to remain friends with you?”
“Because—I—because I took their cutie marks and lied—lied to them!” Starlight exclaimed, taking another step back. “I told them they were happier!”
“And did you think they were happier?” Applejack asked, walking up next to Rarity.
“Yes, but... obviously they weren’t!” Starlight protested. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before!”
“You made some bad decisions,” Fluttershy said, not so much leaving her seat, but somehow her presence projected clearly despite her quiet tones. “But if you truly believed what you were doing was saving your friendship with them, then you weren’t, um, lying.”
“Yeah,” Pinkie shouted from her chair, “You were totally lying about your cutie mark, but that’s about it!”
“I think they can forgive you for that,” Rarity said with a smile. “You had no choice, after all, since the unmarking spell couldn’t be performed without your cutie mark.”
“If you just wanted to be accepted as a friend,” the princess said, “Then it was wrong of you to lie to do so, but I don’t think anypony couldn’t forgive you for it.”
Starlight couldn’t see the princess very well, because everything was getting all wavery and watery. “But I destroyed the world!” she shouted, wiping at her eyes. “Everything w-was dead and grey, because of me! How can you not punish me for that! I—I killed you all! Everypony died, just because of my foolishness. I saw the future, just as much as you did, princess! My—my hatred destroyed everything anypony ever loved! I destroyed the world!”
“No you didn’t,” came Twilight’s voice in a contrary tone, pressing a handkerchief into Starlight’s hoof. “When did you ever destroy the world?”
“Weh... what?” Starlight wibbled in confusion. She blew her nose, and looked around. Nopony was laughing. Did the princess just say...
“When did you ever destroy the world?” Twilight repeated in what looked like honest confusion.
“You... remember, right?” Starlight asked warily, openly staring at the princess, “Everything was dust. All the plants, and the animals, and the ponies... there was nothing left. No sun, no moon, no stars. It was horrible!”
Glad for the handkerchief to daub her eyes with, Starlight couldn’t say more without her voice breaking.
Instead, Twilight nodded solemnly and said, “That was the most horrible thing I have ever seen. Worse than Nightmare Moon, even worse than Tirek, there was just... nothing. Worse still, I don’t know what caused it. There was no villain to fight, no challenge to overcome, nothing left to save, just... a vast expanse of nothing.
“Starlight,” Twilight cupped her chin again, keeping Starlight from looking away.
“That never happened,” the purple princess said carefully to Starlight Glimmer, without any amusement in her expression.
Starlight blinked, in utter, complete befuddlement. “I don’t... understand?” she squeaked, pulling away from Twilight’s hoof.
“When did it happen?” Twilight protested, tilting her head wryly, and standing straighter before Starlight. “A week ago? A month ago? If it did happen, then why is everything alive and everypony well? It never happened, because you never stopped the Sonic Rainboom, not even once.”
“I stopped it like—a dozen times at least!” Starlight said in befuddlement, feeling like she was the butt of some sort of princessly joke here.
“Good to know I was a total pushover as a filly,” Rainbow Dash grumbled quietly.
“Each time your spell pulled me back into the past,” Twilight explained, “It changed history so that you had another opportunity to stop the Rainboom, otherwise you wouldn’t have had to stop it again. When you change history, the future that would have happened doesn’t happen. That future isn’t just pushed over somewhere else in the world. It never exists. Starlight, your decision in the end, to let history run its course, and save our friendship? That was the only thing that happened. Everything else may as well have just been a dream.”
“Mwuh?” Starlight Glimmer replied, vaguely noticing that the other five were gathering together supportively around Twilight.
“If the cutie map made you dream of changing the past, without travelling through time at all, it would be no different than what happened to you,” Twilight lectured patiently, “Without changing the past, there is no time travel. You’ve been beating yourself up this past afternoon for the ‘terrible’ crime of having a bad dream!”
Starlight didn’t understand. She did understand, but she didn’t, but how could she be... be blameless??
“And for giving me a bad dream,” Twilight admitted, rubbing her forehead alongside her spiraled horn, “Which I definitely didn’t appreciate, but in the end what happened to both of us helped you see the error of your ways. I’ll have a bad dream any day, if it helps somepony like you realize her true strength. Now you know how important and good cutie marks are, and how friendship is made stronger by our differences. You learned that changing history is a bad idea, a good lesson for anypony to learn. And you know the one lesson you learned that is most important of all?”
Starlight Glimmer... blinked.
As one, everypony shouted, “Stop hiding from your friends!”
“Now then,” Twilight said in a more businesslike tone, stepping forward again, “Your first assignment is to return to your village, and apologize for deceiving them. To prepare for this, you’ll have to learn to accept that you were trying to help them, but were wrong in your way of doing it. It—Starlight?”
“Do you think we overdid it on the rehearsing beforehand?” Pinkie Pie asked worriedly.
Twilight lifted a hoof and tapped the side of Starlight’s head saying, “Hello? Are you—” The purple and pink pony toppled over sideways like a statue.
“Yep, definitely overdid it,” Rainbow Dash said, folding her forearms and nodding sagely.
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This is the first time I've seen it explained like this, but yeah I totally agree!
Also this was a well-written story, everyone was in characer. Gud read yup!
8100627 I've seen a lot of people argue that she committed unforgivable crimes, but not many who argue that Starlight actually committed no crimes.
8100629 Thanks!
Well, great. I spent all that time getting indignant in advance for nothing. ^^;
Conclusion, Starlight your real punishment is living with the knowledge of the sins you could have committed, and their result.
You have to carry that weight.
In a world that literally has multiple universes that they can visit... I don't know that Twilight would have made this argument.
Funniest bit, how misleading the cover art actually is. Makes you think you're in for something completely different.
The trollestia shines upon you today.
8101448
juuuust doing my job: 8100753
8101694
I think in finding forgiveness in her friends, Starlight might be able to one day forgive herself. Then she can stop being a whiny self absorbed sad sack, reminding everypony about her terrible crimes at least once every episode.
8101699
Alternate universes do not necessarily mean alternate timelines. Anyway EQG isn't canon.
8101885
I was going for a sort of reverse mood whiplash, to really brighten people's days who are in a dark place right now.
Uh-huh... And I suppose the whole torturing and brainwashing thing was also a bad dream.
And by the way, thinking that your doing the right thing is NOT an excuse! Hay, Starlight tried to outright murder four ponies when they got her to lose the Mane 6's cutie marks. Of course, by your logic, attempted murder shouldn't be considered punishable because the murder didn't happen.
I find your logic nonsensical, sir.
8102291 EQG is far closer to what MLP should be at this point. But let's ignore that and just say Twilight created her own alternate timeline in which she learned about a spell from her future self and freaked herself out for a week. And that was without using a major friendship artifact as a catalyst. So... yeah, alt timelines are a thing. Not saying it's a story breaking thing, because weird shit happens in Equestria all the time, but they are a thing.
8102600
Starlight stated that she studied that spell for years. She did not state that it was going to kill anypony. She could have been studying a death ray spell on the side (for... reasons?), but she could also have been trying to un-mark them again as a desperate last-ditch attempt to redeem her broken philosophy. There's no evidence one way or the other just what that spell would have done.
I don't exactly think that forcing people to listen to your voice all day counts as torture. Sugar Belle's muffins may have barely qualified, but Starlight wasn't forcing anypony to eat them. As for brainwashing... well Twilight hasn't really learned the consequences of brainwashing before, so she just sees Starlight as amazingly good at making friends.
Starlight appeared to be a murderous, torturing villain, but she didn't actually perform that role. She just looked the part. Any torture and murder we see is just us projecting our own mistaken assumptions.
8103117
Sounds good to me!
Which didn't change history. Ergo "Future Twilight" can be considered to have happened.
You do bring up a good and very subtle point though. I actually hate stable time loops to death, because authors use them as an excuse to lecture us about how foolish and evil it is to try to change history, while ignoring that stable time loops are so much worse. The fact is that a stable time loop is a paradox of the worst degree, and would utterly shred any timeline it happened in. But people don't understand time travel, so they think themselves wise for their Panglossian moralizing.
But show canon states that a stable time loop is A-OK hunky dory, so I'm just sticking with that in this story.
8103235 It literally created a new history before Twilight's eyes.
And that was a stable time loop. What Starlight did broke all the failsafes on Starswirl's spell.
8103257 No, see a stable time loop is a bad thing.
Anyway, if it created a new history, what was the old history?
8103273 A loop always has a beginning. Logically, there existed a timeline in which no future Twilight came to her, presumably she went back to warn herself of the escape of Tirek, was misinterpreted, and thus created a loop. In doing so, Twilight created two timelines, one in which she interfered, and one after the interference. Think of it as the Trunks timeline in Dragonball. It doesn't just go away.
And that's the sad fact of those other timelines. They continue.
But hey, communist horse shouldn't feel too bad. Twilight had no guards, no one was even looking for Starlight, and the history altering spells are not even behind closed glass. The world was just asking to be fucked with.
8103235
Okay, look, whatever you may think, the cutie-unmarking spell appears to have been very painful.
And when she imprisoned them in her village, she played those cult-like tapes (which were about the destruction of the victim's individuality, classic cult technique) fairly loudly—and more importantly, day and night. It didn't take Twilight's gang long to look dead-tired, and yes, sleep deprivation is considered torture before many courts.
Starlight tried to torture them into submission.
8103235 Well, I assumed it was a death ray since it incinerated stone. And The Great Derpsby explained the torture part. My problem with this story is that it's trying to say that Starlight is innocent which is complete nonsense. And it also applies to her trying to change the future. It's like saying a person shouldn't be punished for attempted murder because the murder didn't happen.
8103925 yeah, it's one thing to say "we forgive you" it's another to say "there is nothing to forgive"
8104082 Exactly!
8103925
Ponies eat rocks like candy in Equestria, so a spell that shatters rock isn't quite as scary as all that. Regardless, the spell she fired at them didn't destroy any rocks. It could've been a "change things into an orange" beam for all we know.
As for attempted murder, if you get really mad at someone, and get ready to attack them, and then Twilight Sparkle talks you out of it, it's not attempted murder. You have to actually attempt it.
8104347 The only ponies that eat rocks are the Pie Family and they are not normal. But that's beside the point.
Regardless of how severe the torture and brainwashing can be considered or if she did/didn't try kill ponies, it doesn't change the fact that she still did some really bad stuff and is not innocent, which this story doesn't acknowledge.
You seem to be avoiding talking about that part in the comments as well.
8104347 I wouldn't know. I thought that only the Pie Family could pull that off. They are Pinkie Pies family after all.
And her actions in "OurTown" where pretty nasty. Sorry to say that everyone has you on that one. I can get Twilight and her friends forgiving her. (Let's be fair, you can't really charge someone with attempted murder, if the charges are dropped before the trial.)
The way that I see it, it's that the Mane-Six are just too good to deal with her really. And in a world like MLP, what they did worked. But here it would never work.
In the end had Starlight been dealing with any other group of ponies. She would be in an asylum, in jail, or dead. But nobody except the adult fan base wants that, because we live in a society that is so messed up that we consider forgiveness a sign of weakness, and an indication that we are leaving ourselves open to be betrayed.
While the reality is that, only the truly strong forgive, because they can take whatever you throw at them, and they frankly don't care about your nonsense. They have more important things to do.
8104918
I was kind of referring to "rock candy" but whatever. I said that to illustrate that property destruction happens a lot easier than pony destruction. Call it the Y-shield.
I don't think Twilight ever said Starlight's actions weren't reprehensible. She even told Starlight she needed to apologize to the villagers. What Starlight was doing was bad. It just wasn't a crime, until the main 6 got involved.
I prefer to think that only the truly strong forgive, because only the truly strong can. Forgiveness is still an act of strength, even if you were too weak to stop them from victimizing you.
8104450
The point of this story is not that Starlight did nothing wrong. It's that Starlight doesn't need to be punished for anything. She was still a total jerk, and a bully, but the only real punishable crime I can think of is stealing the m6's cutie marks, and unlawful imprisonment. And that's just against the M6 who are kind of more concerned about others than themselves. The others in the village, it didn't say whether they gave their marks up willingly or not. Though some coercion was implied. In fact...
8103679
I bet unmarking is a lot less painful if you're giving it up willingly. It did look awfully uncomfortable though, for the 8 whole seconds of suffering.
Seriously? They were literally sleeping while they were stuck in there! She even gave them food and water! Starlight tried to intimidate, humiliate and (very) crudely brainwash them into submission, but it wasn't torture.
8105569 You had me until the 'she shouldn't be punished' part. She should have some kind of punishment for all she did. Hay, even Diamond Tiara was pretty much being constantly punished by her mother's abuse. Starlight did bad things, how bad is still up for debate, and she should be punished in some way.
Also, it's not a crime if it's consented too? You know, technically wives that are abused by their husbands (i.e. assaulted) consent to it. That's still considered a crime. And depriving someone of their ability to fulfill there purpose in life and shoving them in a brainwashing room for any defiance is much worse than hitting your wife in my book.
8106185
Starlight doesn't need to be punished, because she learned her lesson. She won't remove cutie marks anymore, or force mediocrity on others. She won't try to change history just to get petty revenge on someone, and she doesn't even want revenge because she realized her reasons for revenge were flawed, and she needed help, not vengeance. The point of punishment is to correct someone's behavior. If their behavior's corrected, no punishment needed! If their behavior doesn't need correction, then again, no punishment needed! A lot of Starlight's "crimes" didn't need to be corrected, and the ones that did were surprisingly minor in scope.
Anyway, like I said Twilight and co, and Starlight Glimmer are all kind of naive about the whole "brainwashing" thing. They don't realize how dangerous it is, so see it as a mistake, rather than a danger you attack with extreme prejudice. Incidentally, that's also how a lot of domestic violence flies under the radar, because the enforcers are too naive or in denial about the warning signs.
8109480 Fair enough (on both parts). I see what you mean with Starlight not needing to be punished because the already learned her lesson and she ultimately atoned for it when she saved the entire world in To Where and Back Again. And yeah, I suppose everypony is naive about how bad brainwashing is.
All that being said, I still don't like that the story seems to imply Starlight as being innocent and having not done anything wrong when that very much isn't true. I know that wasn't what you were going for, but it still comes off that way.
You do know it's not a crime to travel through time or change history, right? It never was. That's just a fans delusional idea.
Starlight didn't do anything wrong or commit any crime. The only thing she did was stop a race.
Actually punishing Starlight would be more of a crime. Because that would actually be illegal. Making Twilight the actual villian.