Nightmare Fuel / The Return of Princess Nightmare Moon

• Although Celestia can be considered the Big Good of the story, she is very brutal once she gets serious.
  • She gives Discord the same Taken for Granite punishment she gave him in the original canon. However, this punishment is considered to be very cruel and horrible as both Nightmare Moon and Chrysalis remind Celestia that even Faust, their mother and All-Loving Hero, was displeased, only accepting the punishment after Celestia gave her a convincing argument.
  • Similarly, Nightmare Moon receives the same treatment as her canon counterpart. However, unlike in the show, she returns malnourished and on the brink of death after a thousand years of isolation.
  • While Chrysalis' actions in the first story did warrant punishment, Celestia's punishment was to use a supersonic buck followed by a light stomp to the floor to destroy Chrysalis' carapace. That's right. Celestia gave Chrysalis a Flaying Alive punishment.
    • Even worse is that after evaluating how the Grand Galoping Gala went, Celestia casually notices that Chrysalis left in a full-body cast and even goes as far as to casually mention the punishment again in the sequel...to Chrysalis face. As much as she loves her sister, Celestia does not see the difference between punishment and torture, to the point in which she didn't think that Chrysalis resented her for it and that she wanted to kill her.
    • It's even worse with Chrysalis starting from the buck to her acquiring her new carapace in the sequel. Imagine feeling your body vibrating before feeling your skin burst in front of your eyes...with the first thing you feel being an unbearable cold. To make matters worse, Chrysalis was trapped in the cast for three days until her Changelings got her out. She was rendered an invalid without her carapace, as she needed to be transported by her Changelings for months. She actually needed extensive treatment to heal from her wounds, such as healing pods and being fed more love than usual to aid in her restoration. Add the Hive Mind making Chrysalis share her pain and hunger with the Changelings (her children) as well as her basic needs and we can add guilt to her suffering. Let's not forget that Chrysalis lives in the Badlands...a desert with her being skinless. To add further despair, Chrysalis had to endure the pain for MONTHS. Her attempts to heal by sharing love with her Changelings did not work so she was forced to wait those months for lightning to use its energy to heal. It didn't work and she was only able to heal properly because there was a bit of jelly containing Nightmare Moon's love that she didn't notice at the time. It is very terrifying imagining how much longer was Chrysalis going to need to wait to recover herself.
    • The narration detailing Chrysalis' recovery makes her suffering more palpable. She remembers failing her children, being stuck in the cast for three days before the release, the suffering that she was forced to share with her children in order to sooth her pain, her desperate attemp to heal, which culminates until her recovery. What makes this worse is that Chrysalis could have DIED many times because of Celestia's punishment. The narration points out that she would have died if the Changelings had not been fast enough to give her medical treatment and that she still had chances of dying from injuries or disease if she was not careful. It's no wonder that she tried to kill Celestia later in the story.
    • Perhaps the scariest part after Chrysalis' defeat is Nightmare Moon breaking into pieces, only to reveal that her body is a vessel that can be broken and reconstructed thanks to Resurrective Immortality due to being a goddess. This means that Nightmare Moon's life was never in danger. She could have been destroyed by Chrysalis and then resurrect herself afterward. This means that Celestia condemned Chrysalis three months To the Pain for nothing. Add the fact that Chrysalis was not a goddess with the same ability as Nightmare Moon and we have a case of Disproportionate Retribution rather than a strong but still fair punishment.
• The possibility of the world ending in a nuclear warfare as evidenced by the chapter Faust Almighty, Bandaid! in the sequel makes you feel concerned about the future of Equestria.