Me again.

Now, do not get me wrong at all. I, like a lot of people, adore this episode. Mostly for Fluttershy alone, and the fact that she's actually the most bold of her family. It showcases a lot of her character development she's had up until this point. I love episodes that do that. Is it perfect, no, and I'll get to that. But overall it's a really enjoyable one.

The one thing that can make this episode very unpleasant at some points is Zephyr himself, who's more of a plot device than a character if I'm honest. I say that because the character that is there, is a complete and total douche. I understand that he needed to be as such to get the point of the episode across, but it gets to a point where it becomes too much and makes me not have as much sympathy as I should have near the end when he begins to do things himself. Like, you managed to make me hate him after only a few seconds of screentime, how does one even do that?

I say this because some of the things he does in this episode, can't be explained through him being afraid of failure. Things like not bothering to try in the various jobs he's given by Fluttershy all make sense, that's where this episode did things right. Where they get things wrong though, is how he treats his family. Yeah, breaking your parent's personal belongings, of which they very clearly established they had sentimental value for, acting completely oblivious, and overall being a parasite. Yeah sorry Zephyr, your fear of failure did not do that. That's called being an asshole. And I say oblivious because of the way he interacts with Rainbow, hence the flirting even though she is very clearly uninterested/disgusted. I won't dwell on it since I don't want to sound like someone who's angry that this neckbeard tried to be a waifu-stealer, but in all seriousness it is creepy and full of cringe. (Yeah, can we stop giving episodes with Rainbow in them so much cringe? I don't know why it's happened, but cringe seems to follow Rainbow wherever she goes as of season 6. And in episodes like Newbie Dash, it is RAMPANT. Yeah, don't think I won't tear that train wreck apart. I will. Eventually.) And the fact that he seems completely unaware of how big of a burden he is to everyone around him only adds to his frustrating obliviousness/not caring. It's hard to tell which it is sometimes.

Now of course Zephyr learns his lesson at the end, and he does suffer for his bad decisions by having to stay out in the forest. Still, the portions where he goes way overboard in being awful and unsympathetic make me wonder why I should care about him at all.

I've been told before "You only hate this character because he reminds you of you." I've seen other people have the same thing told to them in several different places. I could go into every thing that's wrong with that statement, but I'll just leave it at this. Anyone that says this doesn't know me, or anyone they accuse of this well enough to make that assumption. And to compare actual real life people to this guy as an insult is actually kind of awful. Now, there aren't as many accusation fics for Zephyr as there are for other characters, but that's mostly because after Flutter Brutter aired, people kind of forgot he existed. When it first happened, there was a lot of fanfiction and fanart revolving around him, same as any other new character. Since then though, barely anything. I can't really blame people for that. He's kind of a dick.

Overall a good episode, but please Zephyr, get your shit together. You're like, in my top three least favorite ponies. Right behind Starlight, but both not anywhere nearly as bad as Spoiled Rich.

5986513 I definitely didn't like Zephyr Breeze all that well either, especially since he kept looking for any excuse not to do his job, and his stereotype is VERY insulting! Not everyone who still lives with their parents as an adult is a lazy, selfish person who doesn't want to work and be a productive member of society! Most people who live with their parents at least try to find jobs and contribute to the household. His flirting with Rainbow Dash may have been fine at first, but as time went on it just got very repetitive. We've all seen that kind of joke before.

Still, as bad as Zephyr is, for me he is a SAINT compared to the insufferableness that was Sky Stinger.

5986513

Like, you managed to make me hate him after only a few seconds of screentime, how does one even do that?

He's a lazy parasite and you were brought up in a culture that revolves around the idea that working is the purpose of life. The cherry on top is that he acts like he's the equal of the other characters. He doesn't even have the decency to lower his eyes and hang his head in shame when speaking to his societal betters.

I agree. I'm not too fond of him either. He says he's afraid of failure, yet he was doing exactly that throughout the episode by not doing what was asked of him. How much sense does that make?

I personally pretend this episode doesn't exist. Like DBZ fans pretending GT and that awful movie don't exist. Fluttershy does not have a secret brother she never mentioned and her parents are not "Even shier than her" because "Lol nothing says comedy like ripping off Disney's Chicken Little of all things!".

This whole episode was written for one thing and one thing only: Insulting the stereotypical manbun millennial in all of his lazy college-dropout layabout "Glory", and telling him that if he stopped being "Afraid to fail" and put effort into life, gave up on art and creativity, and did exactly what the book said to do, everything would turn out fine and he would be loved. He even flirts with Rainbow Dash, just to make fans hate him more, even though Rainbow "Real element of Honesty" Dash is the type to set him straight as bluntly as possible, not begrudgingly put up with the BS of ANYPONY.

An evil psychotic mass-murderer creating bad timeline after bad timeline and damning all of the pony species to suffering in each one, that's one thing, but this? This is cancerous. This is genuinely bad for a kid's development. I don't want my kids watching this. I don't want my kids watching the episode of MLP that told them creativity is bad and dropping out of college and deviating from what the books say makes you a loser like Zephyr, Watching The Splinter or that Ren and Stimpy episode will give my kids nightmares, sure, but this will genuinely mess with my kid's head. I don't want that. Nobody should.

My personal theory is that one of the writers knows and hates someone he/she met that was sort-of like this, and this episode was one pathetic and childish "Why you suck" rant that has no business being in a once-successful kid's show, let alone having a whole episode dedicated to it. My alternate theory is that one of the writers spends WAAAY too much time around the kind of Boomer that whines too much and blames everything he and his parents did wrong and did to the world on the "Kids these days" that inherited it.

Life isn't fair. Life isn't just. Life isn't consistent. "Just work harder and everything will be fine, you only complain because you don't work hard enough, you are pathetic for complaining and not being a hard worker" isn't something someone with a functioning mind free of brainwashing will say. Yes, when exercising, you get out what you put in. But when it comes to the big, large-scale world full of variables and things that can go wrong and fuck you over, how hard you work won't change how badly things can go. You are not "Lesser" for dropping out of a corrupt degree-mill calling itself a college and you are not an idiot for wanting to innovate or create something not currently in the books. Living with your parents does not make you a lesser person. Your parents are not "Being too nice but finally being strong and putting their feet down" by raising you wrong and then kicking you out into the world and expecting you to learn to fly on your way down when teaching you to fly was their one job, their one job. Sometimes, life is cruel and it fucks you over, and you need to learn to recognize when things aren't your fault, no matter what the worthless wastes of electricity and air say on the internet when someone wanders onto an advice forum looking for advice and getting the smug mockery only the peanut gallery would give.

Furthermore, this episode... Saying this episode sucked got me banned from the MLP subreddit. Too many triggered glimfans attacked me, and the brilliant moderators decided to step in and ban me because making crybullies cry and going against the grain is illegal on reddit. The sheer level of bile and stupidity was astounding. And when I mentioned the name Quibble Pants, some idiots actually said "Quibble Pants is a perfect name, so shut up! Idiot! It's the perfect name for you!". You can't call a childish insult a good name that a sentient being would happily give its child, and then use that same childish insult on someone in an insulting manner less than a second later without being too stupid to notice the contradiction.

Anyone else remember the days when this show was good, when the Wonderbolts were a far-off ideal and not a circus troupe of genuinely terrible ponies playing dress-up soldier, and when fans were left to care when characters have new relatives come in out of nowhere?

In addition, the Fluttershy of the early seasons not the Fluttershy we see in this episode, and that's a major problem these new writers suffer from. The writers have no idea how to make Fluttershy "More assertive", so they've turned her into a grumpy and petty bitch that'll think nothing of giving an emotionally unstable person the only friend he's ever had just to use that friendship to manipulate and threaten and control him, a bitch that'll go "Oh no" and "Oh dear" and "Oh these things make me so sad" when bad things are happening the old Fluttershy would have cast her shyness aside to stop. The mane six were, according to Lauren Faust, supposed to represent the six different ways one can be feminine, and derailing the shy one into the stereotypical "She acts shy but is really a bitch" we've seen a hundred times before is a massive disservice to her character and creator.

5987250 Exactly how she was a bitch to Zephyr? She stood her ground and told him to get a job, but she never lost her temper and yelled at him. Heck, she even eventually approached him in the woods and politely told him how good he was and asked why he was never willing to do anything. She wasn't a bitch with Gladmane either, in fact she was willing to talk to Flim and Flam even when Applejack was (understandably) willing to let them stay split up. If anything, she only raises her temper with Discord, because Discord constantly crosses the line and Fluttershy has to reign him in. But at no point is she a bitch to him.

5987256
She wasn't a bitch to Zephyr, I was subtly referring to Discord. She was fine with Gladmane, that was a good episode. I'm alright with her reining Discord in, what I don't like is how manipulation was done to pull it off. What message does this send to the kids? "You can change that bad boy, if you can make him care about you"?

Also, both keep missing the point of reformation, resulting in "Wacky hijinks" when what Discord needs is a book on how to be a better person and a serious talk on why he should do it. His character's been derailed into that annoying guy that whines when you tell him not to swear in front of your nine year old niece.

Zephyr Breeze just might be the most unappealing stallion in the entire series. He starts the post opening scene by throwing his bag onto a tasty dessert. Who the hell does that? He's hard to sympathize with despite his situation probably hitting close to home for some older viewers, he's got an obnoxious voice and insufferable mannerisms, and he's incredibly physically unappealing. That lanky body with that five o'clock shadow and manbun kind of creeps me out.

5987242

Fluttershy does not have a secret brother she never mentioned and her parents are not "Even shier than her" because "Lol nothing says comedy like ripping off Disney's Chicken Little of all things!".

Because I never saw this episode, I will still personally think that Shining Armor is in fact the worst brother in the history of brothers.

5988046 Trust me, Zephyr is far worse of a brother than Shining could ever possibly be.

5988149
I'm sure he is, but I never saw the episode, so I wouldn't know.

Zephyr reminds me waaaaay too much of one of my uncles.

5988161
Black sheep of the family?

5988254
More like moocher but yes.

5988155 See it, but be ready to hate Zephyr Breeze with a passion.

5988335
No. I won't see it. I'm done with MLP:FiM. The only real reason I'm here is to see just how far down the road the brony fandom will go from deliberately tearing episodes new ones when they don't have to watch them and give Hasbro their money.

5988256
Ouch.

5988149
Meh, comparing a character you're supposed to hate to a character you're supposed to like isn't really fair on either. Feeling true hatred for a character you're supposed to hate means the tricks the writers used to make you hate him worked on you. I don't hate this character because he's not a character, he's a strawman. It's like someone showed you a photograph of dog crap and said "Hate this!". Yes, you hate it, and you're disgusted, but that didn't take any effort or writing skill.

5988344
I stopped watching the show, too. The show used to be good, but it just isn't any more. There was a Rarity and Sweetie Belle episode where Rarity decided to go spend time with SB, then oohed and ahhed over the decision to go for 8 minutes, and there was a subplot about an old dog that went nowhere and turned out to mean nothing. There was a Maud and Pinkie and Glimmer episode that claimed Maud is partially responsible for Glimmer's evil deeds. And recently, I hear there was a Fluttershy episode about Fluttershy and her new idiot OC friends trying to make an animal shelter like she's always wanted, EVEN THOUGH HER HOUSE HAS BEEN AN ANIMAL SHELTER SINCE EPISODE ONE. The moral of THAT episode was "If you're having creative differences with your team, sack them all and find new team members because fuck them, you rule". And considering Jim Miller, former season 1 writer and shit writer, is now the director of MLP and he has random freelancing amateurs writing whatever he wants for him without even having the new writers look back at the old episodes for research or character depth, it comes across as EXCEPTIONALLY mean-spirited.

MLP post season 5 isn't MLP. The new episodes are bad fanfics. I remember hearing a few people point out that the "Glimmer saves Equestria from the Changelings!" episode was literally a shit fanfic premise on every level from concept to final product, and the thread was full of triggered glimshits shouting him down for criticizing Glimmyglam and her episodes.

I hate those people. I hate that their arguments are never any deeper than "Stop being mean and unfair to my waifu!", "It's a pony show, it's not good and it's not supposed to be good and you're an idiot for thinking otherwise, the show isn't special and the fandom isn't special and neither one ever was!", and the classic ever-childish "I don' like what you have to say and I don' wanna hear it, asshole, so go away!".

We are the bronies. We who remember better times, or can look at older episodes and have the taste to call them better than the modern garbage. We who can watch a season 2 episode and get teary-eyed, whether on the inside or outside is irrelevant. We are the bronies, and it's up to us to preserve this fandom and its ideals and reject the still-blind still-furious haters who come disguised as friends and neutral parties only to tell us to shut up about ponies because "Pony was never great".

Starlight Glimmer is a mary sue, Miller and Vogel are idiots, and Fluttershy does not have a brother. The show ended in season 5.

5990865

We are the bronies. We who remember better times, or can look at older episodes and have the taste to call them better than the modern garbage. We who can watch a season 2 episode and get teary-eyed, whether on the inside or outside is irrelevant. We are the bronies, and it's up to us to preserve this fandom and its ideals and reject the still-blind still-furious haters who come disguised as friends and neutral parties only to tell us to shut up about ponies because "Pony was never great".

By all means, bring the brony fandom back to the way it was before the Season 3 finale and I would be delighted as hell. Really, I would. But last I checked, much of the fandom has degraded to blending in with the rest of the Internet in a nut shell.

5990889
It's like a big vat of water. If the water contains too much dirt and acidic chemicals, the water is no longer high quality. However, put a filter on that water to extract the high quality water into a different vat, and that water's high quality again.

We need more members in this group, and we need a "Season 5 was the last MLP season" group for more recruitment, since for some people, the premise of accusation fics is tied to bad Naruto/Harry Potter fics. For now, my "Glimglam is worst pony!" server makes a pretty good place to chat about MLP without glimfans.

5991263
I think it's bad enough we have a "Equestria Girls NEVER Happened" group, don't you?

5991335
Equestria Girls one was absolute garbage. But it's not canon and I'm not mad at the writers for being forced to make it, since we all know how bad HasNOmorals can be.. Rainbow Rocks was a little better, a big step in the right direction, and it had Shimmer go through an actual redemption arc. She had to work for her redemption, unlike Glimmy "I can mindfuck the Mane Six and swap the Cutie Marks of the Princesses of Equestria themselves and get away with it" Glammy. Camp Everfree was a cheap, cliched cash-grab trying to cash in on the trendiness of superheroes, and its only redeeming feature was Shimmer's occasional good scene.

5988161
Actually, Zeyphr reminds me of Joey Tribbiani