Fame and Misfortune: Unnecessarily Hated · 6:51pm Feb 7th, 2022
This was originally posted on my deviantArt account on 30 January 2022
I'm writing this involving what I think of as one of the pure gems of not just season 7 but the whole series, Fame and Misfortune.
This episode in my opinion was very fun to watch. Twilight decided that they should release copies of their friendship journal from season four. Sounds like a good idea, right? Hey, everypony could learn about friendship from the lessons they learned. Thanks to Starlight Glimmer and her awesome magic, she was able to make copies for herself and the rest of the Mane Six. I'm assuming she did the same when it came to the mass production of them.
Well as it turned out, that wasn't the best idea because so many ponies seemed to think that certain ponies didn't have proper character development (Fluttershy). At that point in the series, there were plenty of people who thought she hadn't been developed as well as she could have. Her better development didn't happen until the final two seasons.
Then you had the ponies who thought Rarity thought too highly of herself over her role in setting up the Ponyville Days festival. Does Rarity sometimes seem to think too highly of herself, yeah! In the episode, the ponies were a bit cruel in the way they expressed their views to her but what fun would the episode had been if they didn't.
You also had the ponies who would laugh every time Pinkie even uttered one syllable. Pinkie is one of the funnier and more well liked characters in the series and this was pretty much taking a shot at the folks who thinks she is overly funny. I personally find her annoying half the time. Some of the things she does that some find funny aren't what I'd call funny (Filli Vanilli) for example.
Then we have the pony that so many people refer to as a "background pony" Applejack. Suddenly she's popular! So many ponies love Applejack and they want to be part of the Apple family. I thought this was funny because she became the opposite of what a lot of people think of her as. She was anything but a background pony, she was Twilight Sparkle level popular.
Then we had Rainbow Dash who couldn't even have one moment's peace because so many young pegasi think she is cool, cool to the point where she stated she couldn't go to the bathroom without somepony bugging her. Dash is extremely popular among the fandom so this pretty much paralleled things in real life. Bad thing is, if Rainbow could find a way to our world, she'd probably have the same problems, constantly being annoyed by fanboys telling her how cool she is.
Towards the end we had Twilight having to put up with annoying ponies as well. That one elderly mare's line was classic, "Twilight was better before she got wings!"
That has to be the most memorable line in the whole series because I can still hear that mare saying it in her voice. It was a jab at the people who bitched about Twilight getting ascended and I swear, that had to be the most annoying group of people out there, the whole "I'm quitting the fandom cuz Twilight became a princess." crowd.
Throughout the episode, Twilight and Starlight were trying to help their friends through all the harassment and in the end they managed to come together and realize that things could come together.
The song "Flawless" pretty much summed them up as a group. They're not flawless, they've all made their fair share of mistakes and have done good so they shouldn't be idolized nor should their names be cursed.
What I find the funniest though was that it was Toolaroola and Coconut Cream (two G3 ponies) who actually got the message of the friendship journal and were able to repair what seemed to be a friendship that was about to end over trivial little things.
I know a lot of people hated this episode because it was taking jab after jab at the brony fandom. I personally found this episode to be solid gold because of it. What they did was expose the most toxic, most annoying parts of the brony fandom for what it is, annoying as hell. The biggest thing I learned from this episode was that some people in this fandom have skin thinner than tissue paper and have very fragile egos.
This was one of those 10/10 episodes for me. There are plenty of great episodes in the series but this one will always stand out to me because of how funny it was and how much in the way of balls it took to produce something so in your face.
Well I don't like what they did to the Mane 6 and how they treat them.
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Yeah it wasn't good with the way they were treated yet it was something that had to happen for the episode to send the message that it did. They couldn't have taken the jabs at the toxic parts of the fandom by having mildly annoying ponies interacting with them.
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And it's one of the reasons why the Bronies don't like that episode. Now I'm starting to get how they feel about this episode.
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And it is for those same reasons that I think some people in the fandom have thin skin. Of course I found the parts of the fandom they were taking jabs at as the most annoying parts of it. Of course now I think of myself as more of a MLP fan rather than a brony anyway....back then I still thought of myself as a brony yet found it funny anyway. I get why they are upset but that isn't going to go causing me to not think some people have too thin of skin....tissue paper thin.
This is a very underrated episode, it's basically the toxic part of the fandom that wants perfection over everything; the treat to the Mane 6 as being exagerated it could fit in some aspects of the fandom:
- Rarity being hated because of her drama queen acts.
- Fluttershy beign too quiet and the same kind of lessons (sort of).
- Applejack being too lovely and relatable that you'd lov to spend time with her.
- Rainbow Dash adored because she's the cool one and broke cliches about MLP.
- Pinkie Pie with constant laughts because she's the funny one.
- Twilight being criticized for life choices or just events (like the wings she got in season 3).
Episode 100 (Slice of Life) gave us the love letter to us, but this one is like a lesson for that part of the fandom rather than the mane 6; is not a bad episode, has a score of 7,8/10 on IMDb. Personaly i like this episode because that lesson of not being flawless can apply to any show with a fandom that wants that perfection; ironcally that message can be learned by youngers way more than adults, as shown the G3 returning ponies they learn it while the rest is still arguing like animals. For me this episode is a solid 8/10 thanks to that part of teaching a lesson not to the characters but the fandom.
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For me, "Slice of Life" is rather unremarkable and lacks direction. It is pretty much nothing more than a bundle of chaos all centered around the wedding of Cranky and Matilda. Many saw it as a "love letter" to the fans but I really wasn't moved by it. To me the "love letter" was Amending Fences because after 102 episodes of her being mentioned, we finally saw Moondancer. We saw what Twilight's decision to skip her party led to. Yes Moondancer could have not isolated herself and still hung out with her other friends but it still gave us a reason as to why she was never in any episodes. We also got a canon personality for Minuette....who quite a few people like. We also had Lemon Hearts and Twinkleshine play good sized roles as well.
I think the big thing with "Fame and Misfortune" is that the toxic members of the fandom knew that the message of the episode was correct but they couldn't bring themselves to admit that their hatred for Rarity was rather pointless....along with all the other feelings they had for certain characters. I have my list of 10/10 episodes and this one made the list.
I may do more perfect episode reviews too but I might also do reviews of the episodes I didn't care for too.