Unpopular opinion time

@Badumsquish  
It totally is, but there’s leeway. I think. IDK, ask someone in a uniform.

@GenericArchangel  
I googled it, and apparently yeah if you’re ordered to do wrong and you do it, it’s 100% on you. “I was just following orders” hasn’t ever been a defense in the USA ever. It’s even their job to prevent unlawful orders :P

@Badumsquish  
Is that how it’s enforced? Because cultures of power would discourage that.

@GenericArchangel  
I honestly don’t know a whole lot about how the military or the police work so I couldn’t say. Not that it matters in a world where “Being friends with Twilight Sparkle” seems to equate to “Above the law” in the first place XD

@Badumsquish  
None of that sounds remotely uncaring. In fact that sounds like she cares far too much.
 
And when did Rainbow Dash ever do any of that?

@Philweasel  
No I was comparing Dust to Starlight to stress that all the bad things Dust did really weren’t very bad. She was reckless in the Wonderbolts and got fired for it, which is fair, and she acted well within her moral rights in The Washouts, which is also fair, while other characters acted as bad and much MUCH worse yet got away with it free of charge. Not to mention she never made excuses for her behavior or relied on her relationship with others to get advantages or preferential treatment which I respect :P

Why do people insist on Luster Dawn being Starlight & Sunburst’s daughter? I’m pretty sure that was debunked.

@Wiimeiser
 
Desperation to canonize Starburst.

@Badumsquish  
And why are you comparing her to Starlight?
 
Can’t talk about pony for any length of time without mentioning her somehow? :P

@Wiimeiser  
Most likely due to certain things about her being similar to both Star and Sunburst.

@Philweasel  
I literally said why I did XD It’s just that it fascinates me that Dust is often described as such a terrible person deserving of punishment or worse, when she’s really not been that bad of a person and even manages to have admirable qualities while there’s a laundry list of characters who have done worse than her with worse qualities who are seen as better. That’s not even counting that the two bad things she did, endangering teammates and endangering Scootaloo, were totally also done by Rainbow Dash and Spitfire in the same episodes and outright ignored :P

Maybe Luster Dawn is Lightning Dust’s kid.

@Spinny  

 
You say that like it’s a bad thing.

@Badumsquish
 
Any character who is willing to try and change tends to get leeway, both in the show and in the fandom. That’s the long and short of it. Sticking to your principles is not treated as an admirable quality if her principles involve reckless endangerment. Even if someone were to say “Scootaloo volunteered”, and ignore that Lightning Dust, the adult, should’ve figured that Scootaloo was acting out against RD based on intense emotions and wasn’t entirely in her right mind, she also forced Scootaloo down the ramp after Scoots clearly started having second thoughts.

@gingerninja666  
That’s what I find so odd. A bad person who does irredeemably evil things but then only has a change of heart because it was effectively forced on them is seen as a far better person than a barely bad (if even that) person who didn’t change, even when the person who changed STILL does things that are worse than the other person ever did. A bad person goes from a 10 to like a 5 on the evil scale and is a hero while a character who stays at a solid 2 is public enemy number one XD

@Badumsquish
 
I went back and looked at the ending of Washouts, and… I don’t know how anyone could look at it and deem LD to be “barely bad”
 

 
This isn’t someone merely acting a bit reckless. She recognized that Scootaloo didn’t want to do it, and she leveraged her position as a figure Scoots has respect for to try and manipulate her into doing something she knew was dangerous. Then when Scoots expressed more doubts she flat out forced it upon her. And she doesn’t feel anything when it’s done. No remorse, no anything. She’s annoyed. At least when a character feels guilty or submits to punishment there’s something to work with there, even if their initial crimes are greater. If you’re a pure bred dick who nontheless is willing to endanger people, then why should anyone tolerate you?

@gingerninja666  
I guess that’s where I see things as different. Person A who’s unremorseful but not THAT bad I see as being an overall better person than Person B who does really bad shit and then feels guilty later. Especially when Person A actually receives punishments and consequences for their actions while Person B doesn’t, and ESPECIALLY when the disparity between who’s good or bad seems to have less to do with their actions or morality and more to do with their relationship with Twilight Sparkle and her friends. You’d think if Rainbow Dash was so disgusted by Scootaloo being endangered this would have elicited a much stronger reaction out of her, but of course she just happens to like Spitfire :P

@Badumsquish  

And once again you’re ignoring the part where it’s made abundantly clear that the stunt in question was entirely untested and slapped together without a single safety guideline on the basis of “this ought to look cool”. As well as the fact that when Scootaloo recognized how unsafe the situation was and (not being an idiot) tried to back out, Lightning Dust guilt tripped and pressured her into performing the stunt anyway.
 
Lightning Dust has made it clear, time and again, that she doesn’t care who gets hurt if it brings her some kind of acclaim. And that incident was no exception to that.
 
 
@Badumsquish  

No one is arguing that what Starlight was doing is right. But it’s equally important to remember that the motivation behind what she was doing stemmed not from some desire to conquer or rule, but a desire to create a place where friendships wouldn’t end. And while there is no question she went about it the wrong way, when you understand the warped worldview she formed from associating cutie marks with losing the only friendship she had ever known, and the reinforcement that point of view must have gotten when Twilight and her friends (having regained their marks) ruined the life and home Starlight had built, the path she took after the village, while still obviously not right, is at the very least more pitiable.
 
And as for her attempt to get revenge on Twilight, what reason did she have to think what she was doing would affect so much, or be any worse than what Twilight did to her? Yes, it’s not a healthy or sound way of thinking, but then what did losing a friend mean for Starlight? There was no calamity from her loss, no disaster that resulted from Sunburst no longer being around. The world remained, as far as she could see, unchanged, except for her. And with that perspective, taking Twilight’s friends as payback for the “friends” she had in her village must have seemed to her like a fair exchange. Certainly if you understand how Starlight might have viewed the situation, her mocking the importance Twilight places on her connection to her friends makes a great deal more sense. As does her legitimate disbelief when presented with evidence she could never have known about beforehand as to the extent she was wrong.
 
And in the end, Starlight is the better pony. She shows remorse. She apologizes for what she did wrong. She learns to recognize her flaws and, with a few missteps along the way, works to be better. At no point does Lightning Dust ever do that, or even seem to think she should.

@Background Pony #6CA4  
Nah. That Starlight chose, of her own free will, to go about such things the way she did is what makes her a bad person at heart. Like, that’s the difference between a good and bad person. That from her perspective it was justified means nothing: from the perspective of the KKK, Isis, domestic abusers, serial killers, the mafia, drug cartels, the Chinese police, you name it, they’re doing what’s justified. That Lightning Dust is able to be a moderately okay jerk-off when left to her own devices makes her an infinitely better person than someone who does unimaginable crimes when left to their own devices and was only able to be better when literally forced to by an entire group of people who drop her in the lap of luxury where she wants for absolutely nothing. You know what Starlight COULD have done with that time-travel spell? Gone back and simply stopped Twilight’s group from sabotaging her village, gone back and stopped Twilight’s group from intervening altogether, gone back and done the village better, gone back and set her younger self on a different path, gone back and prevented her and Sunburst from splitting up, but no: her FIRST instinctive reaction was to make things worse for others instead, to make herself feel better by making other people suffer, something she never had an issue with: it wasn’t regret over what she was doing, but regret over unintended repercussions, that made her feel guilty. She’d have gone home and slept like a baby, never once feeling even a shred of regret or remorse or guilt or pity, if her plan to make Twilight and her friends suffer went off without a hitch and she was able to do it without also destroying the world: choosing existence over oblivion doesn’t make you less of a bad person :P

@UserAccount  

 
Well call me the Stalin of bats then.
 
@Dustcan  
This is the greatest thing in the history of the known universe in this mortal plane. Just when I thought this meme was on its way out, I see this and it brings a smile to my face.

@Wiimeiser  
Maybe they just find the idea cute?

@Badumsquish  
If I had your artistic skills, There wouldn’t be a week that goes by without drawing Something Hilariously painful, karmic or embarrasing happening to starlight.
 
But I get it. Hatred isn’t a great motivator for creating art. You draw the things you love.

@Badumsquish  
@Badumsquish  
you sound like those people who sending love letters to serial killers in prison

@Badumsquish  

And I never said it did. In fact I stated quite clearly in several places that what she did was wrong. I just happen to think understanding why she has the perspective she does is kind of important. Regardless of how convincing you find the show’s depicted origin of her later villainous behavior, the fact remains that her primary impetus for everything she eventually does comes from the trauma of a childhood loss, and the desire to never go through that again. And her revenge against Twilight is motivated by essentially the same thing happening to her as an adult. And absolutely, what she does as a result of all that is wrong, but I can still find her situation pitiable because there is no evil intent at the heart of her problems, just a sad moment twisted and warped by years of anger and loneliness.
 
And at the very least she is more deserving of pity than some jerk who never shows an ounce of concern for anyone else even after almost killing multiple individuals.
 
 
@Badumsquish  

You have a point, those other options sound a lot more rational and well thought out. It’s almost as if having the same thing happen to her that sent her on the path to villainy in the first place had some kind of negative effect on her mental state and resulted in her adopting a hasty and illogical plan instead.

@Background Pony #2394  
Is it bad that a laugh almost escaped from my mouth reading this?