Broken Aesop / My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic

• The author wrote the story to try and prove that you don't need friends to succeed, and that friendship isn't magic, but rather useless. However, in the vast majority of the fights in the series, it's Lightning's friends who figure out how to defeat a monster or do most of the work, with Lightning only blasting the Rainbow Rod or the Uniforce at the end as a finishing blow. The Grand Ruler even says at one point that friendship is an important part of magic, completely contradicting the fic's intention.
• One of the many Aesops given out by the Grand Ruler can be summed up as "There are different ways to solve problems." But the Space Ponies are portrayed as always being right and those who have different solutions are always wrong.
• In the Season II episode "Metallic Menace", one of the lessons given is that sometimes it's necessary to kill a living being to save others' lives. The problem is that the monster of this chapter is a non-sapient robot, something that is very much not a living being.
• When Twilight is killed by Raven, the fic tries to hammer home the moral that people should not go after a threat to a loved one's life if they've been commanded not to or they will lose their own life and be derided for disobeying orders...except the characters proceed to give Twilight a huge funeral, complete with cremation, and erect a monument in her honour.
  • Also, Lightning and Abra have both ignored orders to help other people without much more than a slap on the wrist and have gotten less crap over it than Twilight.
  • While Swift Star gets the same crap as Twilight and gets blamed for being kidnapped, the message that he is in the wrong becomes null and void when someone takes into account that every time he interfered, he saved everyone from Stammadon's forces.
• Emil Kudos became the Phantom of Magic due to facing prejudice for being an Earth Pony (and for his girlfriend leaving him for a unicorn). He's supposed to be seen as misguided, even if not wrong, because while he is a victim of racism, it does not excuse his actions. The problem is that Starfleet constantly preach how superior they are to other races (and Applejack and Pinkie Pie are converted to Pegasi at the end of the third season implying that, yes, the Earth Pony form is inferior).
• One of the main morals of this series is that redemption is not always effective, and the story is supposed to spite canon for being too idealistic. Nevertheless, it momentarily goes in the exact opposite direction by redeeming Tirek of all characters, who was never redeemed in canon.
• According to his profile, Esroh Dab's death is meant to prove that some people can't be changed no matter how hard one tries and redemption won't always change things... except that Esroh actually does come to care about Rarity to an extent, which he admitted himself (which, compared to the average Starfleet villain, is quite an accomplishment), he can feel emotions despite what the narrative claims, he destroyed his own Cardinal out of guilt after getting chewed out by Rarity's friends over him attacking her, his final moments have him admiring Rarity and Spike's bond, nobody actually tries to save him when he pulls a Suicide by Cop, he drops a useful piece of information that helps them defeat the Dark King just before he dies, and his execution was because he was becoming less evil thanks to Rarity's influence and was on the cusp of turning against the Dark King. If Mykan was gunning for redemption to be futile and a waste of time, he failed miserably.
• Similarly, the Dark King came to life from extracting evil from prisoners, as their combined evil embodied. It's supposed to be an aesop against redemption, but instead, it’s a message against forcible conversion via supernatural means and actually in favor of true redemption, which does not include brainwashing.
  • Additionally, this aesop against redemption would be turned on its head in "Star Pops" (which takes place after Season IV), wherein it is acknowledged that Flash Sentry did become good in the end.
• In Starfleet Humans: Starfleet Events, the subplot with Crystal Prep trying to cheat in the Friendship Games is supposed to teach the lesson that Cheaters Never Prosper. However, this lesson falls flat due to Canterlot High also being guilty of cheating by using their Starfleet enhancements and the only reason they're not considered cheating in universe is because the characters and narrative say that it isn't. The fact that they rub their ill-gotten victories to the Crystal Prep students' faces only makes Crystal Prep's desire to beat Canterlot High look more justified. By the end of the story, the Crystal Prep students apologize for cheating and say they'll train harder to win legitimately next year, but there's no word that Canterlot High will stop using their powers to gain an unfair advantage, or that they'll share said powers with Crystal Prep to give them a fair chance at winning.
• A very common aesop in the series is that a tragic backstory alone does not justify your bad behavior, least of all the right to hurt others... unless you're pony Mykan. Between threatening and chasing the CMC away, refusing help from Starfleet, refusing to empathize with others, and being a massive Jerkass, he only makes any progress changing for the better near the end, and the hostile behavior still doesn't quite go away. Yet despite showing nothing but selfishness up until that point, Starfleet keeps extending their olive branch long after they would've given up on other people with more understandable Freudian Excuses and behavior. Even his final act was one of selfish stupidity, attacking Windy Bag's machine when she was already defeated and the machine was sabotaged, solely to sate his own anger. Starfleet's response was to give him significantly more kindness and sympathy post-mortem than they did with many other antagonists with Freudian Excuses, and even those who actually pulled a Heel–Face Turn (hello Phaedra, and Mako). They were more sympathetic to him than they were to Twilight, who was a hero from the start and died trying to protect Celestia, only to be victim-blamed by that same person.
• In VIII, the Big Bad, Stammadon, is evil because he's a Social Darwinist who only values the strong. As a result, VIII provides the Aesop that valuing people for their strength is wrong and real power comes from great moral character. However, this gets undermined as soon as one remembers that Starfleet shills their own moral, physical, mental, and technological superiority over other species on a regular basis, and is never called out for it except by a handful of strawmen. To make things worse, most of their military personnel are Space Ponies, with only 4 other species filling up the minority, in sharp contrast to Stammadon's, which is so diverse that no two minions appear to be the same species and one of his generals has dwarfism. Most damning of all, when all that Character Shilling actually starts hurting them in the form of damaged morale, instead of teaching the Aesop by calling out Starfleet for their actions, the "heroes" completely forget that this is their own fault for the rest of the season and the most they do is recruit just one pony for good PR, without ever addressing their own racism.
• Spike and Rarity's romance in IV was meant to send an Aesop about how love shouldn't care about species. Fast forward to IX, however, and when discussing what to replace Rarity's missing parts with, Spike suggests dragon parts, and one of the reasons he cites is that she'll look more like him and their half-dragon daughter.
• Starfleet's conflict with Tan Shi was supposed to distill the lesson that men and women are now equal, and Tan Shi's beef against men is irrational compared to the supposedly egalitarian Starfleet. However, Starfleet has proven multiple times to be more dismissive of women struggling through bad times than with men^note See: Cadance, Rarity, and Twilight Sparkle (though this is at least partially due to the author's hatred of them)., mocks female characters when they try to be polite but praises male characters for similar behavior, and Lightning in particular has a history of hurting women for petty offenses, while Starla joins in with the men to mock other mares like Pinkie and Rarity for being stupid and superficial respectively, when none of them are much better in either category, if at all. In light of their past behavior, suddenly their disdain for Tan Shi's beliefs starts to ring very hollow.
• In Season X, Swift Star makes a speech about how important freedom of speech is in a democracy. While he is right about democracy, United Equestria is a Police State, not a democracy. He also says that in democracy, you can't just force others to believe in what you say and you can't just say you are right and everyone else is wrong. In Grand Ruler's militaristic empire, you can, but only if you are loyal to him. For example, Lightning saying Twilight is wrong for not wanting to kill enemies, and Starfleet condemning a lot of species as evil for opposing them.
• Also in X, Starfleet evacuates a people called the Blisstonians, whose Hat is blind faith. Naturally, both Starfleet and the narrative call them out for their foolishness and use of mindless prayer... at least until they jump on the chance to do a 180° turn on their opinion of the Blisstonians to inflate their own egos, telling them that maybe their belief in miracles wasn't so bad because it led them to Starfleet.
  • But wait, it gets worse: this is the same Starfleet that initially ignored an abusive teacher because she didn't break any rules, refused to capture Raven because Grand Ruler said so, even though his wife was in danger and they were in the perfect position to stop her, leading to Twilight's death, didn't try to rescue Starla when Sombra kidnapped her until Grand Ruler greenlighted it, mocked anyone who dared question Starfleet's goals and militarism, like Twilight or Starla's dad, and didn't even bother to change an unfair marriage law that nearly got AJ married to a stranger she hadn't known since she was 11. Evidently, the lesson in practice is closer to "blindly trusting people is bad... unless that person is Starfleet, in which case, not blindly trusting them is even worse".
    • Additionally, belief magic was what was used to bring back Equestria and Unicornicopia and combine them into one planet way back in the end of the first season!!

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