Really sad.

Twilight Sparkle, the time has come. Execute ORDER 66.

fangz: TWILIGHT SPARKLE THEE MUST REPENT FOR THY SINS!!

@Tragiclady  
That strikes me as needlessly complicated for a 30 minute runtime.
 
Just either A)Confirm that the clones are mindless automatons, or B) make is clear that she’s just sending them home.

@Darth Sonic
 
@Tragiclady
 
I always wonder with episodes like these if there was something in the script that got cut out or edited that would have made it a lot or even a little less controversial. The original ending to Wonderbolt Academy one of the writers tweeted out would have made that episode more palatable to me.

@Darth Sonic  
I really agree with you there. I think it would have been great if Twilight and the rest of the mane 6 took the clones aside, figured out what each of the clones know, how sentient they are, and how well they form new memories independent of each other.
 
I’m sure there was definitely a more intelligent and more moral solution than the one Twilight found. Also if one of the clones was similar enough to Pinkie in personality or at least won the “watching the paint dry” contest she might have been the one that survived instead.
 
If they found new homes for them throughout Equestria, or if the clones developed/had the skill to live independently, there wouldn’t have been any reason to get rid of them. Though they might still seal off the mirror pool in case something like this happens again.

@Inkan1969  
… How can creating a distinct possibility that the main heroine of a My Little Pony cartoon is a mass murderer not a fuck up?

@Darth Sonic  
I don’t think it was a “fuck up”. I’m sure that officially the clones being sent back to the pool didn’t mean they were dead. But Polsky and the rest probably realized what that would look like and so they played with the staging to make the scene evoke a mass-murder scenario, to emphasize how big the stakes were in this scene. People who pick up on that staging can then play with those ramifications.

Jesus fucking Christ, these comments are a shitshow. And no, I don’t consider this necking, because the latest episode made this pic relevant again.
 
What I think everyone in missing while talking about different interpretations here is that the Mass Murder interpretation gaining this much traction meant that Polsky fucked up. It completely sidelined the main message of the episode with a discussion that has no real right arising from a show like MLP.

And now in the newest episode it was revealed that one of the clones did in fact escape.

@Background Pony #7219  
Or that they were like changelings, and she was trying to protect Pinkie from them.

@Princess♠Molestia  
crocodile alligator?

If it was murder then twilight probably assumed they were mindless zombies and therefore she wasn’t doing anything wrong when she in fact was

Another one who thinks ending a spell is the same as killing? Oh man, i thought we were over that bs already. <.<

Psh. Wimp. This is why clones are interior.
 
sips tea and giggles at the destruction of the annoying clones

Is this supposed to be an adaptation of “Her Own Pony”?
 
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/64605/her-own-pony

@NegaRen  
He’s not bad, but I got annoyed when this guy said he was better then one of the artists of the comic. (Granted said artist was the one for the Twilight micro issue, and admittedly wasn’t the “best” artist on the comic, but still… It seems a tad conceited. Especially, when he started redrawing the comic.)

No offense, but the art style sucks.

@Deserter  
Take care. :)

@Background Pony #EFB1  
Those were everyday situations, I was talking about obvious death-or-life situations.  
Eh, whatever. You believe what you want to believe, I’ll believe what I want to believe. Good day sir.

@Deserter  
Short attention spans may be a sign of problems, but at the same time, that is a very normal problem for people. For example:
 
The average focused attention span in 2013: 8 seconds  
The average focused attention span in 2000: 12 seconds  
Average number of times per hour an office worker checks their email inbox: 30  
(National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, The Associated Press)
 
Most healthy teenagers and adults are incapable of Sustained Attention for longer than 40 minutes at a time, before needing to refocus.  
(Dianne Dukette; David Cornish (2009). The Essential 20: Twenty Components of an Excellent Health Care Team)
 
The startle reflex is a brainstem reflectory reaction that serves to protect the back of the neck (whole-body startle), or the eye (eyeblink), and also facilitates escape from sudden stimuli…. The whole process has a less than 10ms latency. There is no involvement of the superior/rostral or inferior/caudal colliculus in the reaction that “twitches” the hindlimbs, but these may be important for adjustment of pinnae, gaze towards the direction of the sound or the associated blink.  
( Castellote, Jm; Kumru, H; Queralt, A; Valls-Solé, J (Feb 2007). “A startle speeds up the execution of externally guided saccades”. Experimental brain research. Experimentelle Hirnforschung. Experimentation cerebrale 177 (1): 129–36 )
 
11% of all drivers under the age of 20 involved in fatal crashes were reported as distracted at the time of the crash. 21% were distracted by cell phones.  
At any given daylight moment in the USA, approximately 660,000 drivers are using cell phones or manipulating electronic devices while driving.  
Sending or receiving a text takes a driver’s eyes from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds, the equivalent at 55mph, of driving the length of a football field blind.  
( US Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Summary of Statistical Findings, April 2013. )

@Background Pony #EFB1  
I’ll admit my mistake, as I was basing it on results of artificially cloned animals (which do show a worryingly high death by genetic disease) instead of asexual reproduction, but I stand by my point of mental degradation. Short attention spans and blatant ignorment of potentially deadly situations do show a not exactly healthy state of mind.

@Prof.NightJack  
Well, it is true that people differ on what counts as alive, and what counts as murder. Twilight Sparkle’s final solution does have historical precedent.

@Background Pony #EFB1  
I’ll have to amend my previous statement slightly about the nine-banded armadillo, which I pulled from a mislabeled source. Their offspring are 4 identical clones, but not of the parent. However, there are other animals that do display self cloning abilities. The bonnethead shark and the blacktip shark, for example, is capable of fusing an ovum with a polar body to form a zygote that is an exact clone of itself. (Not to mention a vast array of single cell organisms.)