Those aren’t raiders.  
They’re not sucking!

@Anon-a-Miss  
You might as well be arguing that the show is crap because nowhere in it are Twilight and Luna married.
 
This is an AU comic, not the FIM cartoon. Some things are different.

Ok, so Twilight talked to that one guy and he basically acted like he’s worse than Pony Hitler. Clearly this means that every single one of them his beyond redemption because that’s how it works, right? No point in talking to them and trying to figure out if one of the others might be willing to reform. Just look them up forever and throw away the key. Case closed.
 
The argument that Twilight is to naïve in her believe than anybody can be reformed also doesn’t really work because the author suddenly threw a bunch of villains into the story that are far to dark for the show, while implying that every other villain behaved just like in the show.
 
So you have a Storm King whose army managed to enslave Canterlot without killing anyone. You also have a Chrysalis whose army launched an assault on Canterlot without killing anyone. Then you have Tirek who managed to waltz into Canterlot throne room without killing anyone. Notably in none of these cases we actually saw the Royal Guard trying to fight back. And now you suddenly have a bunch of random bandits who killed at least some ponies and a Royal Guard that is competent enough to stop them. This doesn’t really make sense.
 
Where were these competent guards when Tirek, Chrysalis or the Storm King showed up? How could the Mane Six, who are mostly civilians with no combat experience, defeat a large group of Changeling during the Canterlot invasion while the guards were unable to do so? Why are some native bandits far more brutal than ruthless foreign invaders? Why has nopony died in any of the attacks before?
 
It’s like making a comic about Batman where every criminal is suddenly a nice guy who’s just waiting for an opportunity to reform and then call him out for not trying to reform the Joker by teaching him the Magic of Friendship.

>Twilight got spit on  
Yaaaay  

@TexasUberAlles  
Now if only it was tge ones with casualties in the thousands actually getting shot instead of immortality in a magic prison.

Sometimes people just need to get shot.

@kleptomage  
I think there’s room for grimdark, as long as it has impact. That said, I also agree that there’s no particular need to show us dying or mutilated ponies here - hence why I’m fine with Silfoe’s call.
 
 
@Hugobertington.Esq  
I mean, I think Royal Sketchbook is pretty established as being somewhat darker than the show - previous posts have mentioned actual wars in the past, or Celestia personally going to kill a rebel leader after a friend of hers was slain. It may not be a totally solid assumption that no prior events incurred Equestrian casualties.
 
In anything, if there were previous casualties Twilight’s position makes more sense. She might not discern the difference between situations of “caused casualties, but still solvable by friendship” and “caused casualties, only military options remaining.”

@Hugobertington.Esq  
My only response goes back to the first few posts:  
Guards armors’ glorified parade gear and doesn’t cover much thats actually considered vital and unless they have a better track record then militaries in real life, ambush and guerilla tactics reign supreme with outsiders confident in their power marching in.  
These bandits are also probably used to fighting without the concept of honor, which frankly has little place on a battlefield with life and death stakes, and are probably pretty good at hitting wide exposed points like the guards eyes, throats, collar(which on a horse is a straight shot into the chest cavity since the sternum stops below that point and the ribs form a big’ol circle around the organs), and abdomens.

All these arguments and I’m just thinking we could’ve used a bit more context on why these nerds are able to inflict actual pony death and destruction that warrants an Actual Violent Response; cueing all this emotional drama and conflict, whilst all the characters here have dealt with previous and bigger threats where:
 
Chrysalis: Zero Casualties  
Tirek: Zero Casualties  
Storm King: Zero Fucking Casualties
 
Otherwise it’s just another instance of “fanon being darker and grittier than canon”

@Frustration in Excelsis  
Considering he spit in the ace of one who’s exploits, including the lackluster loyalty and honesty to their own beliefs, it’s entirely plausible he actively hates her.  
And I’m going to point out this was a full scale conflict not a raid, what with soldiers’ and military casters involved.
 
They aren’t the only ones who can burn things.
 
Also, yes, it does answer the question. From personal experiance the people who’ve decided others don’t matter due to the negligence of high powers would be content in seeing those wastes of flesh squirm and actively be hld accountable for their actions without a cheap nepotic way out.

@ExistenceNull
 
This does not really address my question. Judging from what admittedly little we’ve seen of these bandits, they’re remorseless outlaws, raiders, arsonists, murderers and likely rapists. The bandit Twilight was trying to talk to seems to have no regrets for having done the things he did, and going by the mentalities people who do such things show in real life, it’s likely that the reason these people made a living out of assaulting innocent villages and murdering, robbing and raping their inhabitants was simply because they could. If anything, this guy seemed to genuinely enjoy what he did. How do rehabilitate this sort of sociopathy? What do you appeal to? Before you can help someone make their way in society they have to want to participate in society in a peaceful and constructive manner, and this is what I think would be the most difficult thing here. These are the sort of people who spent their lives as career criminals and outlaws, viewing society as nothing more than a collection of weak people to rob and assault and the values of society as pathetic and ridiculous – that’s clear enough from their assault on the towns being violent and damaging enough to require military intervention and from this specific bandit’s interaction with Twilight.
 
You can and should try to rehabilitate them, but when someone has spent their life as violent, depraved criminal who only valued others by what he could take away from them… how do you propose to make such a person a productive member of society again? Again, we haven’t seen a whole lot of these bandits, but this guy is not likely to view any respectable social value with anything but mockery and contempt. Yes, you can probably rehabilitate a few of these people given enough time, but even a decade seems overly generous to me.

@Background Pony #195C  
A lot of artists and writers, when they try to add serious and realistic conflicts like war to the setting, take it too far and go full grimdark. I think they forget sometimes what show they are writing about.
 
Realistic conflict is fine. It’s good to show occasionally that not all problems can be solved with friendship. But gratuitous violence doesn’t fit the setting of Equestria. Better to error on the side of discretion, even though there probably should have been a little more to establish the raiders as evil.

@Frustration in Excelsis  
Judging from their response and the constant xk scenerio threats the Alicorns’ have allowed to pass to condition Twilight, most of them are probably screwed over and not to keen on following the laws of rulers to wrapped up in their own god-hood to actively prepare and protect their people.  
We know the mane six never get held acountable for their actions and it’s more then likely Celestia failed or even didn’t care to set up a system to help repair tge damage caused by her ‘plans’, meaning a good deal of people probably saw a lot of monetary and personal loss during and after those events.  
Fix that and actively move to mend the issue and twenty years becomes a overshoot. Plus they’d probably force them to conscript, at which point I’d say they aren’t fixing the problem, just burying it so they can ignore it.

@ExistenceNull
 

 
How do you know it would take that little time?

@Moonatik  
Then why would it take twenty years to rectify a situation?  
For this one group if the crowns put forth full effort instead of stop gaps it shouldn’t take more then ten to get them back on their feet, even less if they cleaned up their own acts and stopped holding their friends above the law.  
Nepotism is a form of corruption, how is this always overlooked.

@ExistenceNull  
Getting a bit boiled down in semantics here, but that’s more of nepotism. Corruption would imply bribery, not that it matters.
 
Oh, and  

 
THAT’S PRECISELY WHAT I MEAN BY REHABILITATION.  
When I say 20+ years of rehabilitation, I mean 20+ years of counselling, training in productive work, being treated with respect and giving them another chance to live. Though it doesn’t look like what’s happening in this image, those guys aren’t getting any rehabilitation.

Relevant update from Silfoe on the Sketchbook:
 

 
While I think it’s maybe fair to say a few more background details of mourning and destruction could have been shown, I also think it’s fine Silfoe didn’t want to go full grimdark or spend more panels of what is already a huge effort lingering on it. (The pegasus putting out the fire in the background of this update is a great touch, though.)
 
I’m also not terribly bothered that the bandits are treated as a “means to an end” and not given detailed backstories. I thought that was kind of clear when we jumped straight into Celestia arguing for military action: If she is already at that point, the kinds of things they’re doing are somewhat implied.

@Moonatik  
Heavy bias allowing an individual with connections to high rankig officials to face no consequences for their destructive tendencies and direct breaching of pre established laws?  
Sounds like corruption to me.  
And forcing someone to conform to a specific set of ideals over years of reinforcement while simultaneously crippling their ability to function in society rather then rectifying the damage caused by societal/medical/emotional failings is reeducation.

He shoots…HE SCORES

@ExistenceNull  
I don’t think that’s what rehabilitation or corruption is.

Well, he and his comrades were just beaten and captured by the Royal Guards, no wonder he’s… kinda bitter right now!

@Moonatik  
That sounds less like rehabilitation and more like destroying someones life.  
If Twilight can be given a pat on the back for everytime she’s destroyed peoples homes and broken laws I’d hope the justice system doesn’t have such bias.  
Because at that point it’s corruption and thats not a “rehabilitation”, it’s a reducation camp.

@Damaged  
That’s what happens when you live in a kid’s show.

Luna: I told you so.

@Damaged  
In all fairness, in most of Twilight’s personal experience, these problems can usually be solved with a literal song and dance and some non-lethal magical artifacts.