Thoughts on Flutter Brutter

This episode is something I didn't expect and love a lot because it got me thinking about certain aspects of Fluttershy's character.

Unlike the previous episode, where Applejack either makes baby steps to backpedaling on her character growth, Fluttershy does the opposite. In this episode, we get introduced to Zephry, seeing he's taken advantage of his parent's hospitality as he stays with them after flunking out of mane design school. Fluttershy has to be the one to take the initiative to get her parents to stop enabling Zephyr's behavior and then has to force them to get him to leave. But this sort of backfires as he lives with Fluttershy, who has to try to find him a job. Through trial and error, he fails at almost everything and is shown that his biggest problem is not wanting to put effort into anything as he fears failure. Then, in the end, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash have to force him to retry to design school and get him to graduate.

I have no problems with the episode as infuriating as Zephyr Breeze is as a character. I was invested in it because of Fluttershy. In the episode "It ain't easy being Breezies," I remember how she let the breezies walk all over her. She was enabling their lazy behavior constantly to their own detriment. There was none of that in this episode; from the moment Zephyr started living with her, Fluttershy was determined to help him get a job and out of her house. Honestly, this shows how much she's grown as a character and has become more confident in herself. Even her parents see her as more strong-willed than them, and that's saying a lot. So watching her giving her brother some "tough love," which helped him get into school, was satisfying to watch.

As for Zephyr, I don't care for him all that much, as I'm glad he made it through school. I feel like he only did so out of desperation, seeing Fluttershy kicked him out of the house, and he was struggling to live in the woods. I think the problem is that he doesn't have a lot of motivation to maintain his own self-reliance outside of the necessity to live comfortably. I bet once he feels comfortable, he'll return to his old ways. Maybe in a future episode, I'll see him grow, but that's a big IF.

Overall, I enjoyed this episode a lot. It shows a different dynamic in Fluttershy's family, with her lazy brother being the focal point, and I enjoyed seeing it play out. I also enjoyed seeing Zephyr constantly hitting on Rainbow Dash, which is funny as she despises him. I think it's also amusing seeing that Twilight's brother is the most accomplished, being a former captain of the royal guard and now the prince of the Crystal Empire; Applejack has Big Macintosh, a silent older brother who is hard-working and kind, then Fluttershy has Zephyr.