Apparently so, Dalek. =)

Look, life doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. It's possible for someone to learn a lesson from doing something wrong and not be punished for it as well, especially if they didn't mean to be mean. I'll ask again, since my question probably got subsumed when I was ninjaed - if you had to choose between Pinkie learning her lesson and Pinkie getting punished, and the two were entirely mutually exclusive, which would you pick?

While I disagree with the general idea that something bad needs to happen to somebody who does something wrong, I do think that in this specific situation, Pinkie really should have been called out on what she did. As is, she was basically an insensitive jerk to Cranky the entire episode and never really gets called on it because stuff turned out okay in the end.

What kind of punishment are you guys referring to?

Besides, isn't most of what Pinkie does simply annoying, and not wrong?

@Red I'd rather her learn something. Then tell me, WHY is it ok for RD and Rare to be punished then.

MY issue is with there being double standards, and Pinkie being immune to karma when everyone else isn't

That's my problem

edited 27th Mar '12 8:09:57 AM by gingerninja666

Is annoyingness a sin? Is it so horribly wrong she needs a punishment every time she does it?

Didn't Cranky give Pinkie a rather vicious verbal beakdown? That could count as a punishment.

edited 27th Mar '12 8:11:08 AM by PurpleDalek

@wazkatango: It less a matter of how well she will learn and more about how other characters, and indeed the fictional universe react to her.

Personally she is not the biggest Karma Houdini in this show. I believe that honor goes to LZ Twilight.

edited 27th Mar '12 8:11:44 AM by Mio

@Red: I think the problem here is less "Pinkie didn't get punished" and more "Pinkie didn't get punished when any other pony in that situation probably would have". If any other member of the cast had done the stuff Pinkie did in that episode, I have no doubt that they would have gotten called out way harder than Pinkie did.

@Waz: I honestly think the crossed the line from "annoying" into "borderline sociopathic" when she basically broke into his house. Being annoying isn't wrong per se, but continuing to bother someone when they've clearly expressed they want you to go away is. There was nothing ambiguous about what Cranky wanted, and Pinkie ignored that.

edited 27th Mar '12 8:13:22 AM by JapaneseTeeth

RD wasn't being punished. The universe just decided they wanted a rainbow-colored chew toy.

Wouldn't that only be the case because they all know better though?

What.

edited 27th Mar '12 8:13:48 AM by wazkatango

My main issue is Dashie basically being abused in amusing ways by the writers more so than almost everypony else.

In more amusing depths of imagination, Scoots somehow comes up with the gossip article that Dashie is dating Mare-do-Well after spotting the outfit hanging with Dashie's laundry.

She usually has it coming though.

@Ginger: I don't belive in karma, and I certainly don't believe in physically punishing ponies. >.> What you're suggesting is that, all things being equal, Rarity should have been punched in the face for being angry with Sweetie entirely aside from learning her lesson in "Sisterhooves Social", the same way Pinkie (apparently) should have in "A Friend In Deed". I felt like she learned her lesson, and I've never felt like any of the girls deserve to be physically hurt on top of any embarrassment they suffer over the course of learning the episode's moral.

@JTeeth: That's a fair point, but I feel like Pinkie is just less mentally mature than her friends in some ways.

edited 27th Mar '12 8:16:05 AM by RedSavant

As long as a character knows what they did wrong, I don't see a need to punish them. Sweet and Elite and Read it and Weep work just fine on a moral level even though nothing horrible happened to the characters when they did bad things. They just owned up to their mistakes and moved on.

@wazkatango: Treating Pinkie different is not a good thing for her in the long run. In fact i would argue that it would probably be good for her if she were taken down a peg a bit more.

@Waz: That assumes that she doesn't know, and in this specific case, I can't see how she doesn't. Cranky very clearly told her to leave him alone, and she didn't. The only options are that Pinkie is so oblivious that she's practically brain dead, or that she was willfully ignoring his desires.

The other thing is that over the course of the episode Pinkie displays a huge resistance to actually learning anything; the other ponies point out to her that she should leave him alone and she didn't get it.

edited 27th Mar '12 8:18:06 AM by JapaneseTeeth

Here you people go again.

I HATE Innocent Insensitivity. I dislike it when characters consistantly get a free pass purely because they mean well or didn't know any better. It doesn't change what happened.

Yuo people use terms like "oh, but she had it coming" That's EXACTLY what I'm on about.

God dammit!

edited 27th Mar '12 8:17:56 AM by gingerninja666

Or she wanted to be friends with him and cheer him up. Her intentions were good.

If someone is miserable you should try to cheer them up.

edited 27th Mar '12 8:19:22 AM by PurpleDalek

@JT: I hope so. But I think we just went from Pinkie-in-general to Pinkie-very-specific-situation

@Ginger: Most of the times Pinkie does "wrong" things, they aren't very serious. If it was, (Like the breaking in Cranky's house thing), she should be held accountable, but most of the time it isn't like that.

edited 27th Mar '12 8:19:54 AM by wazkatango

@Purple: That helps a little, but it hardly absolves her completely. I agree with Ginger to the point that being ignorant or having good intentions doesn't get you a free pass to do whatever you want without repercussions. If someone's trying to do me favor by changing the oil in my car and they end up destroying the engine, I'm still well within my rights to be angry about it.

And my point is that she isn't held accountable, even when she does cross that line. I agree that she can have a degree of leniency for good intentions, but only up to a point.

edited 27th Mar '12 8:21:02 AM by JapaneseTeeth

@Purple Dalek Then why was she more excited when he finally gave in and made her his friend rather than when he smiled for the first time?

Shouldn't making him happy be enough for her... friendship or no?

Stop. Using her innocence. as an excuse

Don't you just love when disagreeing with someone feels like a crime?

Scoots somehow comes up with the gossip article that Dashie is dating Mare-do-Well after spotting the outfit hanging with Dashie's laundry.

She even got a picture of the two together so that you can see they're the same person.

@Ginger: No one's saying Dash had anything coming, or at least I'm not. Like I said, I don't believe in karma - if an author wants to apply it to a fictional world, then they can go ahead, but I don't consider anything 'justified' by karma. In any case, taking the cider example, neither Pinkie nor Dash was in the wrong. Yes, it was insensitive of Pinkie to buy so much cider, but it's a business, not a give-away, and if she wants to spend huge bags of bits on cider, then that's her right. Dashie becoming the universal chew toy for an episode was unfortunate, but it all worked out in the end.