@TheAbridgenator  
Heh, it would be a really neat plot to have her do this - only appearing friendly for the sake of deception, but one thing about Twilight is she doesn’t like lying, and she was very asocial. She had a hard enough interacting with ponies in the first place, but socially manipulating them is way beyond that at a level of difficulty she’s really not prone to.
 
Look at her trying to race Rainbow Dash in “The Cutie Re-Mark.” Starlight Glimmer was able to quickly get them all to love her, but Twilight set off “stranger danger” alarms in Rainbow’s head, instead - and Rainbow’s not a shy or easy-to-scared pony!
 
Simply put, social manipulation is not Twilight’s strong suit, and when she’s the princess, unquestioningly heir to gods and her very species making her “above the rest,” she really doesn’t even need to ever learn social manipulation, either. It might work for her if she could, but why would she if she could get by without it?
 
So, it’s actually somewhat believable that she’s not very good at coming off as nice.
 

 
But, as I started typing this comment thinking - it still would be interesting to have her pretend to be nice to them, and pretend to still love them and all, merely as a means of manipulation, and her friends slowly uncover her past, but just by acting kind to them she starts to re-kindle her own kindness, and as they figure out it’s an act, it becomes sincere.

@TheAbridgenator  
Personally, I think an evil Twilight would be way more unstable. While she got the smarts, she’s not an strategist and is still developing her interpersonal skills (which would mean she couldn’t be really charming and/or manipulative). We’ve seen how she acts under pressure before, so I believe an evil Twilight wouldn’t act the way you nor this story describes. She probably would be more deranged and paranoid.

she deserved that

@GoldenSun  
Well, to demonstrate what I am saying, consider the rotten apple. When an apple rots, does it become a rat? No, because no part of the apple had ratlike qualities at any point. So it would make no sense for it to become a rat.
 
In order for this turn of hers to have any weight, it has to have aspects of the Twilight we know: cold logic, clever schemes, a legitimate threat. And most of all, the ability to play old friendships to her advantage. As it is, it just seems that Gashi wanted to include a generic villain for us to boo and hiss at, and when he realized people would call bullshit stuck that villain in Twilight’s skin.

@TheAbridgenator  
Isn’t that the point? That this one here is definitely not the Twilight we know? And while she does need them alive, I very much doubt that they would remain on her side for long, so drugging and then freezing them seems like the best move (unless she knows some sort of brainwashing spell). The plan just failed because the Doctor somehow knew the food was spiked.
 
And what’s this about an evil Twilight? I don’t think this is a well defined archetype, so there’s no way to know how she would react under that mindset. The closest thing we got was SciTwi from Friendship Games and she was closer to Snidley Whiplash than this one.

@JojoBinx  
You are a thousand years too early to defeat me

@Krek  
Yeah, I don’t think she cares for them at all by this point. She is so wrapped in her warped sense of duty that individuals hold less importance than the continual existence of the kingdom as a whole. Again, completely insane.

@GoldenSun  
My issue is basically that this isn’t Twilight AT ALL. An evil Twilight would not be so stupid as to behave like such a dick IN FRONT OF THE PEOPLE SHE NEEDS TO BE ALIVE AND ON HER SIDE. She’d play the long game, pure logic and all. This is so something fucking Skeletor would do. It doesn’t even make sense from a legitimate plan perspective, which is what an evil Twilight would do. Having an evil plan that is in character and would work, in this comic, is second banana to piling heat on Twilight like she was Vince McMahon.

@GoldenSun  
Though telling Fluttershy to fuck-off about their past friendship and such from the previous page (>>1112181) did seem like a dick move, and seems more apparent she did it out of spite than necessity.

@TheAbridgenator  
That may be so, but I fail to see why making Twilight eviler is being met with so much bile. I don’t think Spike will play a very prominent role and Twilight appears to be more insane than sadistic. She probably thinks she’s doing the right thing, rather than causing suffering for shits and giggles.

Oh fuck.
 

@Krek  
Got it in one, mate. This guy has it. :)
 
 
@GoldenSun  
Oh, in universe it makes sense. In terms of the story it’s just there to have badass Spike be badass, because who cares about Twilight, right?

@TheAbridgenator  
Spike did suffer a thousand years under her tyrannical rule (whether she is the real Twilight or not). I’m sure any sympathy he might have had for her disappeared after the first couple of centuries or so.

@TheAbridgenator  
I sorta agree with you.
 
Personally, if I were writing this, I’d have future!Twilight, upon seeing her friends again after going missing for so long, gushing over reuniting with them, and be like her present-day neurotic self; however, when her friends announce they need to return to the present, she goes slightly yandere, demanding they don’t leave so they can be friends forever and ever.

@Background Pony #0BFC  
Oh trust me, the treatment of The Doctor (because he IS The Doctor in this) is a lot of bullshit, but at least it’s consistent with the treatment he gets in his show proper. Spike, on the other hand, talks about murdering Twilight casually, and then the narrative spends upwards of 20 pages basically saying “SHES EVIL SHES EVIL SPIKE IS RIGHT SPIKE IS RIGHT”; at least with the Doctor his nonsense is used as a followup and, again, makes sense with his treatment in Doctor Who.

@TheAbridgenator  

 
Why? Spike’s barely even done anything in this comic besides spout out some exposition, yell at his subordinates for upsetting Pinkie, and look like a Street Shark.
 
If anybody is made to look better at the expense of Twilight looking worse, it would probably be Doctor Whooves, who seems to have all the answers and constantly calls the dictator Twilight out.

@Gungelion  
Darn, ya beat me to it.

@Spiritus Arcane  
Considering Twilight has done literally nothing in this comic that connects to anything like her past self, and considering she seems to be significantly more stupid in this than any other incarnation, I think it’s pretty safe to say she’s just being used as a generic Villain of the Week (TM) instead of anything interesting.
 
I want to like this comic. Villain Twilight should be epic, tragic. But nope, why have a cool villain when you could have a generic one who is Stupid Evil JUST to be Stupid Evil? That would get in the way of making Spike look awesome, because that horse hasn’t been whipped to death already.
 
This has a lot of potential as a tragedy, there’s no need to be this by the numbers. That’s all I’m saying.

@TheAbridgenator  
Or, you know, you could shut up and wait until the author/artist reveals what’s really going on?

@TheAbridgenator  
What the bloody hell are you going on about?

Woooo, character assassination!
 
Gashi, if you hate Twilight THIS MUCH, just draw some hate art and don’t spend a whole comic arc turning her into Snidley Whiplash.
 
This is why I hate Spike.

Well that was cute. Pointless to do to an immortal alicorn but cute.

Hmmm. Pondering how in/out of character this is… At first I was dubious, but looking over the events leading up to this, yeah, I guess it’s pretty plausible, especially considering Twilight’s latest words.
 
At first I was thinking that, “Would Fluttershy really punch Twilight like that?”, then I realized: The fact that it’s Twilight doesn’t make her less prone to get punched, it makes it all the more likely because it’s not only cruelty, it’s a betrayal, and not even just that, but some bastardization of the Twilight she knew that mocks and tries to corrupt her mental image of the real Twilight.
 
So, yeah, I think it works. At the very least it’s not too ooc.
 
@Exedrus  
Fluttershy has unintentionally done a brilliant tactic: act meek, submissive, go along so they aren’t expecting anything, and in one moment, BAM, act so fast that they don’t even have time to respond.
 
Blitzrieg.
 
@Gungelion  
YOU CAN’T MISS A SINGLE DAY!
 
Hey, they already got the no A/C part down!

@Gungelion  
I think more along the lines of SmileHD