(An early birthday present for Madeline Peters. Proofread and edited by deadpansnarker.)
Scootaloo hasn't fully made her peace with not being able to fly, not just yet. A part of her is still convinced that she can fly if she tries hard enough, all she has to do is find a way to get herself off the ground.
The problem is, she's exhausted all conventional methods. And the only method she can think of is one that her aunts think is too dangerous, launching herself and her scooter into the air at high speed!
But Scootaloo isn't one to take no for an answer! She'll fly if it's the last thing she does! But will her effort be successful? Will she survive the fall if it doesn't? And how will those closest to her react to learning about such a dangerous display?
if she was to fly early in the show, then she'll create a tornado that will split the continent of Equestria.
Anyway, a wonderful little work m8
Love the story! I really should get back to writing fics on this site. Watch this space...
This was a great story in how, to me, genuine to what would've really happened. Scoots was able to have a brief moment of flight. However, in all likelihood, it was more of a 'hover', at best' that felt like flying to a very hopeful pre-teen filly who felt like all the answers were being kept away from her.
There's a bit that I can relate to with Scootaloo in this story. Though it is actually more from the Aunts' perspective.
In my own life, I have had over 50 surgeries on my eyes. This includes procedures done while I was wide awake, locally put under, and put under so hard that I was scurrying the line between life-and-death.
If you were to total all the medical bills, medications, etc. together, it would come out to over $1 million dollars!
And... as you know... I am totally blind with an entire eye having needed to be removed.
So, back to the story, one could throw bits until the cows come home. However the real solution is making good with what you got.
I believe that, in time, Scoots will find her own way to fly. Perhaps a scooter that also is capable of deploying wings and has a built in parachute to slow her descent? Maybe a simple hang glider? There as many ways to fly without wings as there is to see without physical eyesight.
I met Maddy twice at BronyCon. The first was 2013 and the second was 2018. She touched on how growing up had made it fairly hard to do Scootaloo's voice. Though I'm glad she did while she could. That moment where she had to lash out at Dash was the closest we will ever get to canonically stating Scoots' has a 'limitation' that 'disables' her from flight.
Really liked this story; great to include all of Scoot's parents and guardians for this one. Don't know ho0w she survived that fall; pretty scary stuff. Thought Dash would have been the first one to be at her bedside when hearing the news. The Spitfire callback was cool; nice!
Taking off and fighting gravity
Nicely done! Wish I could have read it sooner.
Makes me wonder hot it could go if Scoots would meet a certain Oc of mine...
Sorry, just thought out loud
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"Growing Up is Hard to Do" showed her adult body with foal-size wings. Shortly after that, one of the staff made a tweet confirming that this was was in fact meant to indicate an actual disability, but included the line "fans are welcome to interpret things how they like". I interpret that to mean "We're trying to have it both ways" - that is, try to please both the fans who were hopeful to have her eventually fly after seeing her struggle, and the fans who had held her up as a role model for people with disabilities. Though they could just as easily have achieved that by letting her partake of one of the numerous examples of aeronautical engineering shown off across the series.
11042565 I feel like that was taking the coward's way out. I get the feeling they originally wanted Scootaloo to be able to fly, then after "Flight to the Finish" where they basically tiptoed around the issue, some fans interpreted it as her being disabled and started upholding her as a representative for disabilities, so they tried to lean towards making her disabled. But then other fans complained that it wasn't fair or that it wouldn't work unless the show invented some kind of lore excuse, so they sought to leave it vague.
The problem is, Equestrian society isn't like our own. There are any number of workarounds for many physical disabilities, and even in real life people with disabilities can often find work arounds to achieve their dreams.
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Heck, Lauren Faust herself once claimed on social media that Scootaloo "hasn't figured it out yet".
11043170 Well, I do know that Faust wanted Scootaloo to be unable to fly from the start. But I think the showrunners missed the boat on that opportunity once Bulk Biceps came on the scene. Bulk being able to fly despite his tiny wings meant that there is no possible explanation for Scootaloo's inability to fly that wouldn't involve a massive retconing of the rules.
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For what it's worth, Bulk Biceps was never shown flying all that well - even in "Wonderbolts Academy", he was among the slower fliers. So it could very well be that tiny wings are a handicap, merely one that's treatable to some extent. Likewise, we never saw him as a foal. He could have been much older than Scootaloo when he first took flight (my headcanon for him is that his love of lifting originated with the extensive strength training it took to make that happen).
There's the trouble with doing this sort of thing from within speculative fiction. "You don't need to be not-disabled to be special" is a fine moral in and of itself, but implying that feel-good platitudes are a valid substitute for developing and offering meaningful remedies is seriously patronizing. Here, it appears Scootaloo's aunts learned that the hard way.