And now he made a big ass PDF. He is still completely right by the way.

@Princess_Fluttershy
Is just only post but it’s not mine this image

@Deusexequus or miky94c (depending who are the one who has written the Info under the Picture):
They are not murdered, they are petrified in thwe same Way as Discord was two Times and once Twilight in the Everfree.
It’s a Prisson and Discord has been restored again after a while.
They are in Stone imprisoned like in this Story and can be released if they want.
I had already see it similar as you in this Story, before i found it.
I have see Crysalis always as a Mother, who try to feed her Children and she hate Ponys, because they have murder her Family.
Cozy I have always see like a Child who not understand many things, a Child who has to learn whats good and whats wrong.
Tirek was the only I could not sort in, the only I said is evil.
But no Creature is Evil, theres always a Reason behind the Things someone do.

I have made my own AU (Friendship is Kindness aka FiK) a wile back and there I have reform Chrysalis.
After the reforming of the Changelings with the new King Thorax, Chrysalis was alone, so I have take her and added her to Cadance and Shining.
In FiK, Chrysalis has marry Cadance as her 2. Partner, the Princess of Love who have enough Love so Chrysalis will never hunger anymore, similar to Royal Agreements by Kanashiipanda.
Cozy and Tirek had do Roles in my Story so far.
But I would let Twilight addopt Cozy similar as Celestia has addopt Cadance and let Cozy allow to be a happy Child without an Abbusive Dad who maybe hit his Wife (possible thats the reason why you never have see her Face, and she has send Cozy away, so she can’t see the injurys she maybe has).
Direk could be Teacher in the School of Friendship (not exist in FiK).

This stance is really funny. It gives “Meek dad tries to stand up to teenage son to prevent him going to a concert”

My parents after six-year-old asks them to go to McDonald’s for the millionth time

Oh god,

Oh god, more crap about wooby Cozy.

So, again, no actual effort is put forth into them by Twilight or any of the Mane 6.

I mean, wasn’t the season 7 finale, and the story with the Pony of Shadow ALL about how operating on ignorance and making knee-jerk decisions is a bad thing? That an active effort at communication and not just assuming the worst or that someone is irredeemable is a very bad thing? He didn’t show any signs of being redeemable just looking at him. It was pointed out pretty up-front that what happened to them could have very easily happened to Starlight had Twilight been so quick to assume the worst of her even though she really had every reason to and it’s not like Starlight cracked at the very first plea. It was the SECOND time she’d tried to ruin Twilight’s life after all.

Frenemies is such a harpoon of death on this supposed moral. You can’t say that they’re beyond saving when you go out of your way to explicitly show they 100% DO have the capacity to change and just lack a fundamental understanding of why friendship is good and why they should change. Just as the barest understanding starts to form, the downright predictable happens and Chrysalis rejects it, showing that 3 evil people when thrown together by a great big jerk named Discord are not very good at teaching each other about friendship. Not exactly sure who’d expect that to work, but maybe if a PRINCESS of Friendship gave it a shot, you’d get a little farther.

People constantly say Cozy SHOULD know about how great Friendship is because she went to Twilight’s little school, but Frenemies blatantly shows she honest and truly doesn’t. None of them do, and that’s why Twilight existing is not enough. What good is something existing if you have no idea why you should desire it? They all don’t see the value in it and think that the way to get what they want is in something else.

Not the first time something like this has happened. In fact, this has happened with pretty much EVERY SINGLE VILLAIN. Friendship is not some concept that only began to exist when Twilight was spawned into the world. It’s literally what keeps the windigos from freezing everything to death. Equestria has always known about and promoted friendship. Celestia told SUnset to make friends, Starlight literally had a friend before, Tempest had friends before. Just knowing about it is not a magic fix or guaranteed to keep you from going astray, and it always takes MORE than knowing about it to get them to understand it. Whether it’s Sunset getting wrecked by friendship so hard after being traumatized by a magic crown, Discord being smothered to death in second chances, or Starlight, Tempest, and the Pony of Shadows doing basically nothing while Twilight makes an active effort and grand gestures to see if there’s another way BESIDES the most immediate solution, the fact remains that knowing about friendship, being aware that it exists, is not nor has it ever been enough.

I mean, what, Chrysalis, Cozy, and Tirek are screwed because they dared to have their moment of clearly showing they could be receptive to help where the highly selective and borderline anti-proactive Princess of Friendship COULDN’T SEE IT? Isn’t her literal purpose meant to be Spreading the magic of friendship everywhere she can? That’s the thing she learned at the end of season 4 where she gave Discord another chance despite him straight up betraying all of them with nothing prompting her to do so? Beyond the fact that I guess Discord looked sad when his plan to sell all of Equestria out blew up in his face.

Every moment your enemy isn’t literally stripping you of your ability to exist as a sentient being is an opportunity to change your ways? I mean, what you call Tirek’s “opportunity” had him being held captive by Grogar who clearly outlined he’d send him back to boring hellish Tartarus (a place where Celestia was fine to let him waste away to something smaller than a regular pony) if he didn’t comply with this new evil plan, and the opportunity to make friends with Cozy and Chrysalis (who are pretty transparent about stabbing him in the back the first chance they get), Discord (who was going to send him back to Tartarus had Tirek not blatantly manipulated him by CONVINCING him to sell out his previous FRIENDS, yep, great friend / to be made right there), and Scorpan who was his brother that sold him out and didn’t even look back for over 1000 years while Tirek wasted away to nothing. I mean, if they mentioned Vorak in the show, then I assume the comic is canon and Tirek’s whole family pretty blatantly sucks with the unloving father, a mother who is unwilling to address clearly horrible family dynamics, and Scorpan who again was totally fine selling him out and never looking back. I mean, if Scorpan cared enough at all, he might have given helping Tirek a shot AFTER he was stopped instead of going his marry way or at least asking Tirek to be kept in a cell that wasn’t pretty blatantly inhuman.

Guess I might just be ranting into the wind at this point, but even if we claim that nothing Twilight does contradicts her character, then that really just leaves me to believe that Twilight is not a very good Princess of Friendship and whatever morals are being taught here with the final season are not very good ones.

The headcanon that Twilight might take some form of action in the future and undo a cruel and unnecessary punishment she let happen without speaking out is a headcanon to fix something that you must know was wrong or there’d be nothing to fix.

The way the villains are handled is so fundamentally flawed on so many levels, to the point where I’m certain there is no real plan or moral involved with them at all. They’re just obstacles you’re meant to take satisfaction from knocking down.

@SunlightDrifter
This will probably be my last post here since it’s becoming clear we see things very differently.

The opportunity is there by Twilight simply existing. She’s the Princess of Friendship, and she and her friends have given second chances to countless villains or even just assholes, as long as they were receptive to it. All three of the villains would have known that very well by the time of the last episodes given that Cozy had gone to her school.

Queen Chrysalis could have accepted the explicit offer of forgiveness by Starlight, or even just literally changed her mind at any point and just waltzed up to the heroes. Cozy Glow could have shown remorse after her failed attempt to steal the world’s magic and she would have instantly been given another chance, or after Discord had freed her. Tirek had less of a good opportunity than the others, but he could have still done the same after Discord freed him.

Could Twilight and company have been more proactive? Of course, but she wasn’t obligated to do so, belief in friendship or not. Throughout the whole series, Twilight has never been proactive at trying to help an antagonist until they show signs (even slight ones) of being receptive to that help, whether that be Starlight, Tempest, Discord (in Twilight’s Kingdom, not KCaFo), Sunset, Neighsay, etc. Her not jumping to do so for the villains that never showed anything of the sort isn’t a betrayal of her character or the themes of the show at all, and is no different than (other than severity) how Flim and Flam never got redeemed.

I know it because that’s how the writers consistently and persistently portrayed them, with the only even slightly moment saying otherwise is the moment at the end of Frenemies, which had them reject friendship anyway out of spite. If they had shown anything, anything at all, she likely would have jumped towards it, but they consistently reject all overtures. Even when their latest plan failed and Twilight wasn’t making any moves to attack or imprison them any more, they still preemptively declared they would literally not stop no matter what (while Chrysalis was the spokesperson, you can see Cozy with angry eyes if you look closely after the camera zooms out, and Tirek no longer looks afraid).

The accommodations I mentioned was letting them (mostly Chrysalis) attack Equestria over and over again rather than doing something like was done to them in the ending, and letting them go (because even if they offer friendship, none of the three are going to accept it there) would have been another instance. Tirek’s “daddy issues” were mentioned in a single line by Discord, in an attempt to provoke him. They’re even less reliable than everything else Discord says, and no stock should be put into it (other than the existence of King Vorak himself). Even if it’s true, it’s not something Twilight would have known, and it’s definitely not something that is indicative of being some kind of path to reformation. Tirek had the opportunity for friends, but rejected them repeatedly (first Scorpan, then Discord, then Cozy Glow and Chrysalis), and Twilight more explicitly extending her hoof isn’t going to do any better.

Celestia, Luna, and Discord intended for them to be petrified forever, not Twilight (or to be more accurately, only Discord specifically showed that he did, though Celestia has shown herself to be in favor of that attempted punishment before with Discord). We don’t get a single line about Twilight’s opinion (which is one of the many flaws in the episode) saying that she wanted them imprisoned forever. If you look at Twilight’s face after the villains are depowered, she had a look of sadness on them, not anger or fear. In the absence of her thoughts on the topic, it’s entirely plausible that after she becomes leader she could reverse the sentence herself.

There are many things I take issue with for The Ending of the End (Discord’s entire plan and him getting zero punishment or being shown to have learned a real lesson, Celestia/Luna/Discord butting in over Twilight at the end, the Windigoes not mattering at all in the end, and the wasted use of the Pillars, Celestia, and Luna, and more), but I fully believe that the villains’ punishment at the end is at least conceptually fine, even if the execution leaves much to be desired.

@Fwelin
How exactly did they leave open the opportunity for a second chance? Chrysalis is once again the closest they get, but that seems pretty clearly a terrible approach where they just sat back and watched as she ran off.

Cozy and Tirek though? They just got thrown away in Tartarus and forgotten about. Very blatantly forgotten about at that. It’s very clear no one ever visits down there, checks, or makes any effort at all to at least see if the prisoners are still in their cages. The fact that Tirek and Cozy can go free for months to even years without anyone noticing they’re gone speaks volumes about how much concern they give anyone who’s down there.

Is their opportunity the ability to keep existing as something other than a hunk of solid rock? Because beyond that, nothing else is happening with them.

Essentially, they ignored all three of them. That’s basically always their approach. Beat them, take care of them in whatever manner makes it so they no longer pose an immediate threat, then forget about it entirely.

That’s not a solution any rational person should expect to turn out well. That’s not effort on their part. It’s the exact opposite. It’s putting forth as little effort as possible with no real concern for anything beyond yourself.

Crushing the bad guy, and then expecting them to come back a changed reborn saint should circumstance ever bring them back into your life is outright foolish, but I know that was never the intent when it came to Cozy, Chrysalis, and Tirek. They simply didn’t care about them.

How would you know what the three villains’ deal is? How do you know they’re nothing like Starlight, Discord, Tempest, or Sunset? How do you know they’re not unfamiliar with empathy (if anything, they VERY CLEARLY are), or what their reasons are for doing what they do? They don’t even know the first thing about Cozy at all. They never cared to try and find out even though Twilight had ZERO problems trying to dig into Starlight’s past so she could understand her despite Starlight being a pretty selfcentered, manipulative, sociopath at first glance, or Tempest’s past despite her literally enslaving who knows how many innocent lands for a sadistic despot and turning her sister and teachers to stone. She reached out to Sunset with zero motivation to do so despite Sunset literally trying to KILL her a second ago.

One sidedly accommodate them endlessly? Why are you acting like they ever tried to accommodate them at all? Tirek should be the EASIEST REDEMPTION EVER in a show loitterally titled “Friendship is magic”. He’s got family issues up the wazoo, an inferiority complex, suffers from a lack of feeling accepted, and does what he does to prove himself to his lousy dad who’s always given him the cold shoulder and treated him like a threat, and YET no one ever bothers to try and learn these things or ask him about them and try to understand him like Twilight did with Starlight. Not once. The only time it’s ever mentioned is when Discord (the lovable godlike tyrannic douche who we one-sidely accommodated loads no matter how often he nearly ends the world) shows how good of a person he is and uses that information to provoke Tirek.

If you can’t redeem that dude, who very clearly needs a friend more than anything, I’m pretty inclined to just say you don’t know what you’re doing.

And yes, I know petrification is reversible, but they clearly have no intention of ever reversing it, so it’s a moot point. It’s not something they’ll ever do. They only did it to begin with to get back at them. It’s not like the friggin Elements of Harmony though it was necessary.

@SunlightDrifter
Leaving open the opportunity for friendship and a second (or third, or fifth) chance IS the effort that they gave the villains, and it’s an entirely sufficient effort as the first step. After that, it was up to the villains to make the next step by accepting it (or at least proving potentially open to it), without which reformation is impossible. The three villains were not scarred amd trying to do the right thing like Starlight was, or unfamiliar with empathy like Discord was; they repeatedly chose to do evil for personal gain entirely of their own will, and they made it entirely clear through their actions and statements that they would not choose to accept anything but one-sided conquest amd revenge under any circumstances. One cannot attempt to one-sidedly accomodate them endlessly “just in case” they change their mind this time despite them absolutely refusing to do so multiple times before, because they will eventually win if given enough chances, even Cozy Glow. Twilight is not in the wrong for not wishing to gamble the fate of countless in pursuit of a redemption that the villains had already shown to be unwillling to entertain, including again at that very moment.

The instant any of them had shown a willingness to consider reciprocating, they would have immediately found the opportunity needed for them to walk the path to redemption, and they sould have known that, given their knowledge of Twilight and Equestria (both personally and through Cozy’s time at the school). Instead, they steadfastly refused to even consider it, even after experiencing it for themselves with each other.

Friendship IS magic, but that doesn’t mean it’s flawless.

There’s also the possible angle that it wasn’t up to Twilight in the first place, considering that she wasn’t the ruler yet and was obligated to follow at the time. I’m not personally convinced by this, since the writers logically should have had someone mention it if Twilight wasn’t in favor of the general act if this was what they were going for, but it’s something to consider as a possibility.

As for the final point, I very much disagree. Literally every single other example of petrification (cockatrice, EoH, Tempest’s bombs) we’ve seen has been reversible in some way, and there’s no reason to conclude that this one is any different. Even if there’s no built-in time limit, it’s unimaginable that it could not be reversed later if Equestria so wished. Discord intending to keep them petrified forever (or even not and just being a bit poetic and metaphorical with that one line) does not mean they actually will be.

@Fwelin
As has been stated countless times at this point, the moral of “you need to learn some people can’t be redeemed” falls flat when little to no effort has been put forth to see if that’s true. Closest to there so much as being an attempt to reach out was Chrysalis, by Starlight one time rather than any of the Mane 6, and that’s rather insufficient when you have a character like Discord who blatantly laughed in the face at the mere idea of reformation, and relapsed numerous times while still receiving many chances, actual attempts to get to know him and show him undeserved kindness, and a LOT of leeway along the way.

That’s not the moral or the lesson that they’re imparting here, or at least if that was somehow meant to be the lesson it is so poorly conveyed it doesn’t even register.

The good guys win and the bad guys lose and we put them in a fridge horror scenario, including the child who was for all her intelligence is just as powerful as a regular child, not because we had to, but because revenge is something only good guys can partake in and get away with. A jail cell would have worked just fine, assuming Discord didn’t pull them out and set them on a warpath again, but we had bruised egos to alleviate.

The moral of the story is “Friendship is magic, when we feel like it.” and that’s a very big flaw for a show that at other times has sent the polar opposite message.

The idea that being turned to stone is not “forever” forever is just a headcanon to make the final act feel less icky, when that is clearly not the intent.

I wholeheartedly disgree with the image description. While it should have been Twilight making the decision at the end instead of Celestia taking over for some ridiculous reason, the resolution is fine. Friendship is magic, but neither friendship nor magic are perfect. They don’t make it always possible to successfully turn someone around, and learning you sometimes have to put your foot down is also a good lesson. Redemption requires participation on both sides, and these three clearly showed that they were not willing to give an inch (and no, Cozy being a child matters not one bit when she’s been consistently portrayed as the mental equal to a full adult in every way). Recognizing that some people can’t be swayed by forgiveness and second chances is fully consistent with all that the show has presented, and doesn’t contradict any messages or character arcs at all.

Plus, regardless of what Discord says, turning to stone isn’t definitively permanent, which keeps the door open to the situation regarding those three turning around someday down the line.

The Ending of the End is definitely flawed in a number of ways, and it’s pretty cruel of the writers to tease the reformation of the three in Frenemies if they were going to have them go down fighting in the end, but the actual resolution of the three villains’ isn’t one of them (at least conceptually; the execution has issues).

Well, if anybody has seen the new movie, we all know what happened to Equestria. It’s freakin’ hilarious.

The war happened and everything ‘friendship’ left with it. 😂

>reads the description

I couldn’t agree more with this if I tried.

Bravo.

I’m loving the comic so far.

This whole business of just kind of killing those three off because it proved more difficult than usual was a point of interest for me ever since..
I even had my own headcanon for what happens next, definitely involving rescuing the trio, with chrysalis proving to be exceptionally more complex.

Reading the description definitely opened my eyes. You weren’t kidding when you said “Character assassination”.

I also asked the same question, seems like OP implies it was supposed to be different.

I read the description. Was season nine actually supposed to be different?

@Background Pony #06E4
Based indeed.

>that description
Based.

@Wayneponeth
Nothing wrong with having strong opinions.

You don’t make a comic about something if you’re not passionate about it.

@Sanagi 蛹
I mean I’m fine with the artist expressing their opinion in this method, but yeah, they’re very aggressive themselves.

Yeah. Check the description to see why.