My review of "Fame and Misfortune":

I found this episode hilarious. It finally dawned on me that this episode was full on meta when the old mare said "Twilight was better before she got wings!" It was then that I completely and utterly lost it!XD I was laughing so loudly and hard that my BF heard it from the other side of the house! XDD

The worst/best part is every single line the "fan ponies" said was stated at one point or another by this fandom(Including myself). Am I offended? Of course not but I'll admit it was just a little unnerving after the laughter wore off to realize how meta this episode went. I can see how fans can easily see this as "an attack on the Brony fandom" but if you do that then you may as well be Starlight Glimmer at the very beginning of this episode because you are judging a book by its cover.

Put the show staff and creators in the Mane Six's position and the brony fandom in the "fan ponies". When I realized that M.A Larson co-wrote this episode, all this meta suddenly made complete sense. He was known to be a little less than enthusiastic about the Brony Fandom when he first joined the staff and found out about us.

I imagine the original episode script was written as early as season 2 as a kidney-shot to the Brony Fandom but did a massive rewrite as he warmed up to us and grew to like us(Or at the very least, formed an understanding of what this fandom is about).

This episode is a love-letter to the fans just like Slice of Life was but with a message: "Creators have feelings too" and far to often we criticize a bit too cruelly.

As a writer for 13+yrs, I do have one rebuttal however for this episode's meta: While it is perfectly fine to push characters out of their safe zones to help the character grow and expand, this is no excuse for pushing a character's personalty so far out from what would be considered normal that they no longer behave like that character AT ALL.

Applejack from "Bats", Spike from "Spike at your service", and Rainbow Dash from "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" being primary examples of this. They behaved like entirely different characters in these episodes and no amount of meta can justify this as NONE of those character traits were carried over in future episodes. Not to mention a few writers who wrote those episodes are no longer on staff.

All meta aside, it showed us that the main six are not immune to the pitfalls of fame. The episode itself was pretty epic in my opinion.