Warp That Aesop / My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic Episodes

Episodes

Season 1

• ""Mare in the Moon"
  • Are you the only one who knows of an impending apocalyptic event? Well, you shouldn't worry about that; you really need to get out more.
  • Instead of stopping said villain from returning, just get six random girls to do it.
  • If a friend you just met tells you it's a good idea to jump off a cliff, you should totally do it. Just like if they offer you cigarettes, drugs, or alcohol!
    • And telling a friend you just met to jump off said cliff somehow makes you an honest person.
  • If you're a hardworking studious type then you should recognise that interacting with people is important to really get ahead in life, and if you're a girl's marketing toy, then a you shouldn't be studying something scientific like magic, but rather a social science like friendship. Your mentor won't support any of your concerns, no matter how valid, until you comply.
  • Being quiet and studious and having only a close friend/assistant isn't the way to live your life, you need to make more friends.
• "Griffon the Brush Off"
  • It's completely fine for people to make ridiculous generalizations of certain species simply because one of them was a jerkass. See also: Dragon Quest.
  • When a jerkass picks on the elderly, don't sweat it... When they attack the cute one though, they must die.
  • Making someone cry is an unforgivable crime.
  • Constant, humiliating pranks are completely okay as long as there is no malicious intent behind them. If the person on the receiving end gets mad, they're at fault and need to loosen up.
  • If your shy friend is too sensitive to be pranked, it would be an appalling sin to do it. If your "cool" friend is too sensitive to be pranked, end the friendship immediately.
  • Friendship isn't as magic as we've cracked it up to be. Even a lifelong friendship is disposable at best and fair game to be cast aside over an at-best minor squabble, especially if you have cooler better new friends.
• "Boast Busters"
  • It doesn't matter if the performance is free, the attendance optional and everyone else seems to be enjoying themselves. If you don't like it, heckle and try to upstage the performer instead of just leaving. If they put you in your place, they're the ones in the wrong.
  • On the flipside, if you're giving a live show and some hecklers who don't like it jump up on stage and actively challenge you, it's a bad idea to accept and an even worse idea to best them. In other words, don't defend yourself. Ever. See also: One Bad Apple.
  • Judge a book by its cover. That your entertainer has done nothing more than saying one full sentence and shooting off three bottle rockets is enough to decide the performance is garbage, the entertainer is an asshole, and that it's time to crap all over everyone's fun by heckling, insulting the entertainer, and trying to get the spotlight on yourself.
  • A storyteller being arrogant and a story being fiction means a show is terrible. It doesn't matter that the stories are bombastic and entertaining, that the visuals are bright and flashy, that the fireworks are timed just right, and that she's throwing in magic tricks, all apparently for free. She's arrogant and lying, so destroy her!
  Serris: Our dimwitted friends don't understand the concept of acting! They have no theater, no imagination these scientists!
  Jason: It's difficult to... On our planet we pretend in order to... entertain. We... we lie.
  • There will be minimal negative ramifications, for you, for heading into an Eldritch Location to lure an uncontrolled giant monster, say, a celestial ursine to your populated and unsuspecting village for something as petty as finding out if someone has accomplished a feat before, on the grounds of if they could do it before, regardless of possible unknown circumstances involved, she can do it again. And if she can't, well the safety of you and your neighbors is someone else's problem.
  • The appropriate punishment for such property-damaging and life-threatening stupidity is to give the offenders mustaches.
  • Being a jerkass and a braggart means that you deserve to have your life and possessions destroyed.
  • It's completely fine to laugh at the misfortune of others if you're the protagonist.
  • Go ahead, lure a dangerous creature into town. It's not like bad things will happen.
  • People come to shows and performances to pay attention to the audience and listen to their commentary. This is why people are encouraged to talk loudly and turn up their cell phones in the theatre, after all.
  • The heckling nitpicky audience is totally innocent and the entertainer completely at fault even if the audience started the conflict and could just decide "we don't like this and walk away". Until it's your audience doing the heckling and nitpicking: then they're totally at fault, the obnoxious selfish bastards!
  • Bullying someone is totally okay if you're a main character.
  • Warping the warps: if you're a performer and three idiots show up and complain about your show, it's totally okay to lie to your audience, humiliate said idiots, and pick a fight with some member of the crowd who's just standing there not doing anything wrong. Two wrongs DO make a right!
  • If you see someone shamelessly bragging and showing off, feel free to put them in their place by bragging and showing off yourself.
  • It's okay for you to start a fight, because if they fight back and win they'll be the bad guy and you'll be the hero. See also: Crime of Self-Defense, Victim-Blaming, Protagonist-Centered Morality.
  • When someone challenges you, you have to back down. If you accept you'll be seen as arrogant, and if you win you'll be seen as a bully. Formal challenges don't count for jack when they're more popular than you are.
• "Dragonshy"
  • If your friend has multiple debilitating phobias, could seriously endanger your mission, and clearly doesn't want to go, you are a bad friend, your mission will fail, and you will die if you respect her wishes and leave her at home.
  • When your friends try to pressure you into a needlessly dangerous act, you are a coward if you don't want to and they are absolutely in the right for forcing you against your will into going.
  • When people enter your home uninvited, try to steal your stuff, and then physically assault you, you are the bad guy for losing your temper.
  • The best way to deal with an inconsiderate neighbor is to break into their home, attempt to rob them, physically assault them, and then intimidate them into complying with your demands when they stand up for themselves. Self-defense is always wrong when you are potentially stronger than the people assaulting you. See also: Boast Busters.
• "Bridle Gossip"
  • It's impossible for curses to exist in a world full of magical unicorns. Everyone knows flowers put curses on ponies.
  • It's obvious that looking weird and having a weird house, a tendency to sing, and exotic cuisine is logically equivalent to being evil, actual criminal record be blowed. In short, foreign equals evil.
  • Minorities regularly go around in strange clothes speaking entirely in rhyme. Being wary of someone displaying these behaviors is racist.
  • If the person acting creepy, threatening, and even aggressive is a different race than you, judging them for it is racism and therefore wrong.
  • In a world where there are clearly evil races like whatever the hell Tirek is, where you have to be given a race promotion to alicorn in order to be promoted to royalty (if you're female, at least), and where a once-evil race needs to get a race-lift to look all fairy-like before they can be seen as "good", it is uncalled for to judge someone based on their race.
• "Swarm of the Century"
  • If you see a problem that nobody else does, it's perfectly okay to let the problem run for a bit while you make lengthy preparations to stop it singlehandedly. You will win praise and admiration from people who'll completely ignore that you could have stopped this sooner if you'd bothered to tell them what was going on.
  • If your first plan to solve the problem totally worked, and was only foiled by an unforseen and easily preventable external circumstance (tie up Fluttershy this time so she can't stupidly keep one of the things), don't try the clearly effective plan again.
  • If you have a problem, don't actually solve it. Get it out of your hair and leave it up to someone else to solve. See also: Princess Celestia and every major returning villain ever.
• "Winter Wrap Up"
  • If you aren't good at the actual job, go into management! (Just like in Dilbert!)
  • The plebeians cannot manage themselves and require the nobility to organize them into being effective at their tasks.
  • If you fail at real work because you're too accustomed to using resources inherited from your noble bloodline, it's not because you're spoiled, it's because you're naturally gifted in being in a position of authority.
  • Always stick with your traditional ways, even if those ways mean you fail in your annual task each and every time.
  • Allowing two races to work at optimum efficiency while forcing a third one to ignore their natural talent (of having a magical horn) is not racism, it's tradition.
  • You'll be Easily Forgiven if you let your friend sleep on a melting block of ice over a lake, even if he catches a cold. It's not like leaving a very young child stranded out in the middle of a freezing cold lake isn't needlessly cruel and debatably child abuse, or like such an act could easily result in drowning.
    • And after your friend has nearly drowned, and is ill, make them write letters for you.
  • It's also fine to have your "friend" and/or "brother" and/or "son" sleep in a doggy bed while you get to sleep in a lavishly sized one. That you could afford a proper bed for him, your home is large enough to easily accommodate one, and that forcing him to sleep in such squalor screams out loud that you think of him as a subservient pet at best don't matter. Follow the drinking gourd, Spike, follow the drinking gourd.
  • It's okay to let "tradition" stand in the way of an act that is necessary for survival. It doesn't matter that someone clearly said "the food we've stored is runnin' out and we can't grow in this cold": that one third of the populace who have a natural inherent ability that could vastly make this process easier aren't allowed to use it because it's not traditional.
  • Pressuring someone into doing something you both know is against the rules, and then joining in others on scolding them when they get caught is totally the right thing to do.
  • Only small pieces of ice melt. Large chunks will stay there forever.
• "Call of the Cutie"
  • Adults should never step in when a child is getting picked on.
  • Always invite people you don't like to your parties, then get angry when you get upstaged at your own party.
  • If your friend gets something you don't have, then stop hanging out with them for the rest of the series.
  • You are born with one talent and one talent alone, anything else you're good at is simply an extension of natural talent, even if it's just semantically.
  • If you try something new and don't immediately get good at it, give up and move on. Forget about finding something you enjoy enough to work at developing your skills, or that you can enjoy despite being not so good at it - if you don't have a natural gift for it, it's not worth your time.
• "Fall Weather Friends"
  • If you let rivalry interfere with your performance in a race, you'll lose to the nonathletic nerd.
  • You can be crowned winner of a sporting event if you use a blatantly unfair advantage against an opponent you couldn't beat without said advantage. You keep the winner's title anyway, and no one besides the loser will question it.
  • Alternatively, using your natural talents is absolutely wrong. You must always bring yourself down to other people's level.
  • Some people are inherently more advantaged than others.
  • Tying a big heavy rope around someone will guarantee a fair race, because true athletes are unaffected by added weight, impaired mobility, discomfort, chafing, and tight bindings around the lungs.
  • Competition between friends is bad, and athletes who use it to push themselves to meeting training goals or merely for fun are wrong for doing so.
  • Reading about running is as valid a means of training to run, if not moreso, as getting of your idle butt and going for a run.
• "Suited For Success"
  • It doesn't matter what you, the customer, wants. All that matters is what the owner of the business wants. That you were completely satisfied by your custom-tailored outfit that was made for you and only you is completely irrelevant; the business owner spontaneously decided to volunteer you to be in her fashion show and a perfect stranger didn't like it. Better do what that perfect stranger wants!
  • If a friend gives you a handmade gift and asks for your honest opinion on it, giving them your honest opinion is wrong and ungrateful. If your friend then insists on remaking the gift to your specifications, you are even more selfish and ungrateful for accepting it. So remember kids, lying is the good, selfless thing to do!
    • This still applies if you make an honest effort to accept the gift politely, but your friend senses your lack of enthusiasm and presses you for an honest opinion. So keep those feelings of yours buried deep inside!
• "Feeling Pinkie Keen"
  • Don't try to investigate things you don't understand. Instead, embrace ignorance and simply accept things the way they are.
  • Atheism will get you seriously injured.
  • Even in a world where literally anything is scientifically quantifiably possible, there will always be cynical jerks who shit all over what other people believe in just because all the facts haven't been spoon-fed to them.
• "Sonic Rainboom"
  • Never show off, unless you already do it constantly
  • Being an arrogant show-off obsessed with attention will get you rewarded in the end... if you are a main character. If not, expect to be called out for it, assaulted, lose everything you own, and not live it down for like five whole seasons.
• "A Dog and Pony Show"
  • Being a whiny spoiled brat is the best way to escape kidnappers who want to enslave you. I mean, it worked in The Ransom of Red Chief.
  • Whining and bitching can get you out of any problem, not just kidnapping.
  • If a group of people come rushing to your aid because they thought you were in trouble, don't bother thanking them.
  • Trying to help a friend who's in trouble is thinking less of them. Assume that they can get out of the situation on their own.
  • Being feminine may not make you weak, but it does make you intolerable.
  • Winning through femininity is just as good as winning through masculinity, even though femininity only wins against opponents who are stupid, weak, incompetent, and can't kill you without defeating their own purposes.
  • Whining to get what you want is not only effective, but also a good thing to do. Especially if what you want are My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic ™ toys exclusive from Hasbro!
• "Over a Barrel"
  • It's okay to take land away from native Indians as long as you throw pie at them. It's not like they were using the land for anything, not properly.
  • If the Native Americans had been more reasonable and had seen things from the white settler's point of view, they wouldn't have lost all their land. Both parties are equally to blame for the genocide of the Native Americans.
  • If you take something from someone its OK if you give half of it back.
  • The Genocidal Westward Expansion could have gone by with a lot less death had the settlers had some tasty pie on hand. The same can probably be said for The Holocaust and The Great Purge.
• "A Bird in the Hoof"
  • If someone takes your pet away to try and treat them, feel free to troll the fuck out of them and worry them to death.
  • Theft isn't theft if it was done with good intentions.
• "The Cutie Mark Chronicles"
  • If you accidentally lose control of yourself and cause massive destruction, don't worry. The princess will take you on as her student, and everything will end up perfectly.
  • Nearly coming close to ponyslaughter has no real repercussions and raises no security concerns. Everyone's too busy watching you pulling off a rainboom anyway.
  • See, this is why kids (or people in general) don't need supervision, guardrails, safety fences, or fall-arrest gear when working at heights or in treacherous areas. First off, they won't fall. Secondly, if they do, they'll not only be okay but will also have a positive life-changing experience! Awesome! Last one to the ledge of the Grand Canyon is a rotten egg!
  • Flying fast enough will give your future friends puberty.
• "Owl's Well That Ends Well"
  • Letting a fire-breathing dragon handle rare books is a great idea! If he accidentally burns one of them, that's obviously his fault and he should be punished. Speak roughly to your little boy, and beat him when he sneezes...
  • It's totally okay to make life-changing decisions (such as bringing a new member into the mix, like a baby or pet) without talking to your family members about it first to see if they would even agree. It's not like it'll affect them in any way.
• "Party Of One"
  • Fix crippling, self-destructive, and even violent mental problems by throwing a celebration and pretending everything is okay, because it totally will be after a brief activity with friends. See also: Starlight Glimmer.
  • It's always a good idea to trick unbalanced people with abandonment issues into thinking you don't want anything to do with them for the sake of surprising them with a party.
• "The Best Night Ever"
  • It's perfectly normal to expect that your special talent will always work, and if it doesn't you're allowed to do anything to force it to. Even going insane and trying to capture things.
  • Harassing the guests and musicians is the best way to enliven a social event.
  • If you're not enjoying a party, trashing it is the answer.
  • You're wrong for not being interested in an obnoxious Gold Digger who has no interest in you as a person and is only looking to dip her hooves into your wallet and use your fame and status to boost her own public image.

Season 2

• "The Return of Harmony Part 1"
  • After routing your foes, put their lifeless corpses on display in the garden surrounding your lair as a reminder to all who would oppose you. If you have the option to seal their still-living, seeing, and hearing mind in stone and put that on display, totally do that too: it's less messy than corpses.
  • Sending a bunch of random girls after your greatest enemy without giving them any real instruction or training and then cowering in the safety of your palace while they get the crap kicked out of them and your entire kingdom falls makes you a powerful wise brave and loving ruler.
• "The Return of Harmony Part 2"
  • Hand the heroes the one thing that can defeat you.
  • Your friends are worth fighting for..... except when they're not.
• "Lesson Zero"
  • If you go insane over some silly detail, it's your friends' fault for not taking your baseless, self-imposed, and idiotic freakout seriously enough.
  • When your friend is clearly having a near-breakdown over what you perceive to be a silly notion, brush their concerns aside. It's not like there's things happening you're not aware of, or that your friend might be in need of a sympathetic ear: ignoring their literal plea for help is what a true friend would do.
  • Brainwashing an entire town pales in comparison to ignoring a friend or being a bad student. Seriously, it's not like your selfish and ethically ropey misuse of magic was heinous, creepy, or downright dangerous, or anything like that.
• "Luna Eclipsed"
  • It's perfectly fine to torment and vilify someone based on their appearance, they're the one that needs to learn the lesson.
  • If you have a history of violence and treachery, it's everyone else's fault for not trusting you immediately.
  • Having No Social Skills means that everyone can shun you and get away with it.
  • If a holiday mocks you and/or celebrates a time in your life that you're ashamed of, just roll with it. You don't want to ruin anyone's fun, do you?
  • Preying on someone by tormenting them for their insecurities while they are desperately trying to just be loved is perfectly fine if you convince everyone else you were actually doing them a favor.
  • If someone is struggling to fit in, it's perfectly okay to ruin all of their attempts and get as many people as possible to help you ostracize them, so long as you claim you're just kidding when they get upset about it.
  • If you're unfamiliar with a culture, other people are allowed to make you a pariah for their own amusement, and getting upset and leaving means that you're the real bully. See also: Griffon The Brush Off.
  • Breaking and entering is perfectly acceptable if you want the homeowner to give speech lessons (without payment, even).
• "Sisterhooves Social"
  • The only reason you should forgive a family member you had a falling out with is when their misguided but honestly good-intentioned attempts to help you actually do end up helping you. Not, you know, because you love them or you know damn well they did it because they love you, or anything like that; Friendship is magic, not family.
  • Ethnic slavery is a-okay and fun for the whole family, and a true nobleman would never look a servant in the eye. See also: Spike.
  • Related to the above, treating those who work for you with at best cold indifference and ignoring their protests of your mistreatment is totally fine.
• "May The Best Pet Win"
  • Tank is a rapist. No really, someone actually believes this. Seriously.
  • Change your mind about the rules mid-way through a competition? That's okay, just choose a different winner based on Exact Words.
  • One person who happened to be there (due to his own ineptness, but that's neither here nor there) and helped means he is the only one who was actually willing to help you. If a friend doesn't happen to be around when you happen to need them, it means they're unwilling to help and a bad friend.
  • Exotic and/or endangered animal trafficking is a fantastic idea!
  • If, when choosing a pet, you only consider animals which would be a good fit for your lifestyle, you're a shallow jerk who doesn't care about love or companionship.
• "The Mysterious Mare Do Well"
  • If you openly express any amount of pride in your accomplishments, your friends are perfectly justified in staging a collaborative effort to publicly one-up you.
  • Being passive-aggressive is a great way to deal with your problems, instead of confronting them directly.
  • If somepony mows your lawn for you and then makes a silly comment, feel free to mock her mercilessly about the silly comment without thanking her for mowing your lawn.
  • Hypocrisy is perfectly alright if it means teaching somebody a lesson.
  • Regarding the fandom reaction: If your friend is being an insufferable, entitled braggart about something they're good at, anonymously showing them how to express the same talent without being a jerk about it is a personal offense against them and definitely crosses the line. Suddenly not being able to feed one's overblown ego counts as true suffering, and you're a bad friend if you ever dispel someone's illusion that they're the best thing in existence.
  • Never mind if you saved six people's lives, you're a terrible person being proud of your achievements.
  • The only issue here is the arrogance your friend developed whilst saving people from accidents. Certainly not the reprehensible lack of safety features, absence of emergency response teams, or decaying infrastructure that resulted in these accidents in the first place. Better worry about taking that friend down a peg to make yourselves feel valid rather than putting up some fences, hiring some cops and EMS personnel, or periodically inspecting load-bearing structures.
  • "Arrogance" is such a terrible crime that it's perfectly okay to do whatever horrid things you want to that person to break their self-esteem. Even when that "arrogance" is "just being proud of themselves" and even when they've otherwise been a good and even heroic person. See also: Boast Busters.
• "Sweet and Elite"
  • If you are attending a formal event and you act like an obnoxious party crasher (or if you really are one), it's the fault of those snobby, upper crust people for not loosening up.
  • Procrastinating on an assignment will turn out fine.
  • If your friend's pet is sick, then you should obviously go have a party with that friend. The pet won't mind.
  • It is wrong for you to view a group of people as uncultured hicks even after they behaved in a way that fits that description perfectly during The Grand Galloping Gala. Even when they invade your private party and behave in an even worse manner, you are still wrong for thinking poorly of them and not wanting them around. This is because you are a snobby, elitist, rich schmuck, not because you've been given every reason in the world to have such an opinion of such people.
• "Secret of My Excess"
  • When a girl uses her charms to get something from a boy, it's charming. When the boy nags others to give him gifts, it's greed.
  • Greed turns you into Godzilla.
  • You can either deny and suppress your natural biological urges and remain a baby forever, or become a mindless rampaging monster.
  • It's okay for an adult to intentionally feed into a crush a child has on them in order to elicit gifts and favors. This is cute and charming, not something that wouldn't be out of place in an episode of Criminal Minds.
  • If they are just now learning no doctor knows what do do with Spike since he's a dragon, then that means he's never visited the doctor. Thus, raising a child without once ever taking him in for a checkup or his inoculations is a-okay! Twilight Sparkle says so!
  • Witch doctors are better than professionals at diagnosing what is wrong with your child.
• "Hearth's Warming Eve"
  • Be nice or the windigoes will get you.
  • Don't bother accepting those who are different unless there is a selfish or pragmatic reason to do so. Simply doing it out of empathy or because it is the right thing to do isn't good enough; wait until there is a looming threat that can only be repelled with their cooperation or you otherwise need them for your own selfish ends.
• "The Last Roundup"
  • If a friend does not want to talk about a touchy subject, the best thing to do is to repeatedly nag her until she fesses up.
  • Jobs are simply personal conveniences. The owner and her business, however nice the former is, can be forgotten about once you've fulfilled your ulterior motive for being her employee.
  • Taking a temp job to pay off a debt or earn some extra cash for an investment is bad, and you are bad for even considering it. See also: Just For Sidekicks.
• "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000"
  • Technological progress and men in management positions are evil! Oh, and so is capitalism. If two guys show up with a perfectly effective means of fostering industrialization and increasing overall productivity, it's your duty to humiliate them and permanently run them out of town, even if they're technically just doing their jobs. Oh, and that applies even if they're only filling an economic niche you can't due to inadequate production. Free market competition is bad, kids!
  • Gamble your livelihood recklessly; even if you lose, events will conspire to help you get back into business anyway.
  • That said, even if you have laughably bad business sense, the inability to supply your demand, and can't even be bothered to attempt to keep your customers happy, you'll succeed as a business no matter what because your friends will bail you out each and every time.
  • Singing traveling salesmen are evil. If any show up, destroy them.
  • Don't give a damn about the small mom and pop operation until they're already out of business. Until that happens, feel free to support and cheer on the competitor who is actively putting them out of business. You buying your carpets at Walmart instead of that little place on 5th didn't contribute to the latter going bankrupt; it's the evil corporations, man!
  • If you invent something the world has never seen before that is years ahead of anything else technologically, use it purely for transportation and jerking around some farmers instead of mass-producing it and changing the world as you know it. The billions of dollars and fame you would amass is nothing compared to the meager income you could make taking over a small farm in a small town and selling to about 60 customers.
  • Even when you learned not to make stupid bets, learned that your business model sucks, learned how much you could easily meet your product demand by hiring five extra farm hands for a day at most (hell, your friends would probably do it for some free cider), and learned you could literally be rolling in cash since even your laughably inefficient current cider system earns enough to keep the farm afloat for the entire winter, gloat that "you didn't learn anythin'" and that you were right all along. Be sure to add that if you take your time to do things "the right way" the work will speak for itself, even when Granny Smith herself acknowledged that compared to the competition your method and product was inferior in every single way.
  • Monopolistic corporations that keep demand up with low supply should get bailed out every time a competitor appears to challenge the stranglehold they have over the market. Bonus points if the monopoly has ties to the government while their competitor does not.
• "Hearts and Hooves Day"
  • It's perfectly reasonable to dismiss a potential partner because he happens to have a cold at the time of your scoping.
  • Shaming people for their bodies and making sweeping unfair assumptions of people based on their employment or choice of attire is reasonable and a-okay. It definitely doesn't make you a shallow judgmental jerkass who judges books by their covers, or anything like that.
  • Adding to the above, when bullies shame you for your body and it's lack of a certain defining flank marking, they are totally wrong. It's only okay when you shame other people for their bodies. Your feelings matter; nobody else's do.
• "A Friend in Deed"
  • Stalking, harassment and accidental vandalism will make you friends.
  • Unfriendly people are really just hiding their inner pain. Pester them until they reveal it to you. See also: Amending Fences
  • Being friends with people is a thing you must do because you always make friends with people and this one will be no exception! It's not because you genuinely have their best interests at heart, or anything like that. You just want to prod them until they do what you want them to do.
  • Don't respect people's personal space. Anyone who doesn't want to interact with you is just hurting deep down and needs you to friend the hell out of them, despite anything they say to the contrary.
  • Putting a note in an awkward place, or not looking for one, is romantically tragic rather than pretty stupid.
  • Everyone has to like you and be your friend. If someone doesn't want to be friends with you, something is definitely wrong with them.
  • If you meet someone who you get on really well with and then lose contact with them you must walk the earth until you find them. Speaking to the organisers of the ticketed function about what seems to be the only other person of your race at the event is futile.
  • It's TOTALLY not racist to assume two people must be dating just because they're the same species.
• "Putting Your Hoof Down"
  • Toying with people is A-OK, as long as you pay them afterwards.
  • Sellers raising their prices? How dare they! If something is offered for a higher price than you think it's worth, don't bother going to another vendor; just cheat to get it on your terms.
  • Being manipulative is awesome! Especially when you use it to cheat others out of their livelihood and effort.
  • If someone tries to scam or cheat you, show them how wrong and terrible of a person they are by doing the exact same thing back to them. It's not hypocritical at all!
  • Being smacked in the face and thrown out of your house requires no harsher punishment than a staring contest.
  • If you're a victim of domestic violence, it's your own fault for not being assertive enough.
  • Domestic Abuse is hilarious!!
  • The best way to tame a spoiled child is to stare at them.
  • If kindness is your primary trait, then you must never, never, NEVER stand up for yourself. Any attempt to stand up for yourself will make you a total prick.
• "It's About Time"
  • Time Travel is bad, confusing, and will ruin your happiness, so don't do it.
  • If you think something bad could happen, just sit back and take it. You are helpless to change anything, so why bother trying?
• "Ponyville Confidential"
  • Remember, it's perfectly okay to enjoy the pain and humiliation of others. Gossip is only a terrible crime when you're the one being gossiped about. Everyone else is fair game.
  • It's okay to hate and shun a few children for being involved in a gossip column in a school newspaper instead of explaining to them that what they did was wrong.
  • The bad guy is always the editor behind the trashy paper. No one thinks to blame the readers for buying and reading the trashy paper, and thereby handing the editor an excuse to keep selling it.
  • "It's okay to gossip, but when you gossip about me, I'll ostracize you, and everyone else should, too!"
  • Writing, editing, and distributing a trashy gossip column is wrong and you will be punished for it. Now taking the pictures to accompany that trashy gossip column is a-okay and will get you a reward in the end.
• "Dragon Quest"
  • You can make sweeping generalizations about entire groups of people based on your interactions with a handful of juvenile delinquents.
  • Don't cave in to peer pressure. Especially if you just met these peers, and especially if they tell you to jump off a cliff. Wait...
  • If you’ve grown up around many peers of the opposite sex, never attempt to befriend people who are the same gender as you. It will only end in disaster.
• Hurricane Fluttershy
  • Forcing your friend to do something that makes them uncomfortable, frightened, or puts them in a state of distress entirely for your own purposes is what true friends do. Bonus points if you manage to Gaslight them into thinking you were encouraging them to do it for their own good.
  • When you have work that needs doing and manage to round up a team of unpaid volunteers willing to help you get it done, you don't actually need to chip in and do anything. Those unpaid volunteers won't mind you sitting back "supervising them", even if they're clearly struggling and you're an Air Force captain who would be a massive help.
  • Domestic Abuse is totally fine if you're occasionally nice to them.
• "MMMystery on the Friendship Express"
  • Never praise anything. All you're doing is ensuring that someone will steal it.
  • Sabotaging a rival competitor won't get you disqualified if you 'fess up to it. This works even if you only 'fess up after being found out.
  • It's no big deal if you ruined your friends' contest entry that took months to plan and create, those creative types will find a way to make it work.
• "A Canterlot Wedding - Part 1 & 2"
  • If you see a couple feuding, stick your nose in and force them to love one another once again. Even if they are complete strangers. It's not like they could have a valid reason to be fighting, or one is an absolute abusive prick and the other has finally worked up the courage to leave after years of physical and emotional abuse, or not lovers at all and rather siblings or something. Use Mind Rape if it's an option.
  • If your girlfriend has suddenly turned bitchy and abusive, it's not her fault, she's been replaced by a doppleganger.
  • Girls, if your brother is getting married and you don't like the bride, you have every right to call off the wedding.
  • Princesses are more important than your friends and siblings, even when said princess is the villain the whole time.
  • As long as you have a good enough excuse, it's fine to keep your relationships a secret from your family until the day of the wedding.
  • Only marry someone if you already know and love their younger sister.
  • Defeat an army of love-eating monsters by finding your partner and loving him really hard.
  • It's never all right to follow your instincts, unless when they're otherwise right.
  • The Power of Friendship and even almighty Gods are nothing compared to The Power of Love.
  • Attempt murder to earn everyone's happy ending!
  • Never believe your friends until it's too late.
  • The bride is being bitchy about everything? It's her wedding, she can do whatever she wants! Even if the bride in question isn't the real one.
  • You should take your friends' concerns seriously, except if they're bitching about someone who can get you fame and fortune. At which point, disregard everything they say.
  • Praise your students for following their gut when they're gut is correct, and chastise them for following their gut when their gut is wrong. That's fair, right?
  • Pack all of your leadership positions with in-laws, family members, and friends! The fact that the soldiers under the command and deployment of your Captain are so weak and poorly trained they in a state of ready deployment lost the capital in about 10 minutes, the fact that the person is such a glaring and obvious weak link that a perfect stranger was able to recognize it and use him as a one-point-of-failure to topple your entire military, and the fact that he gets his clock completely cleaned every time he even attempts to battle an opponent aside, he's the brother of your favorite pupil and husband of your niece so it would be mean to reprimand or replace him, or even expect subpar performance from him.

Season 3

• "The Crystal Empire - Part 1 & 2"
  • The hoi polloi are beneath you and and only exist to be your pawns to be freely used with as little regard as you like. Thus it's perfectly fair to send your student in unprepared, uninformed, without her signature weapon that could solve the issue, and with restrictive criteria that goes against what you have taught her before, putting the lives of thousands of innocent people (even the lives of your Captain and your niece) in terrible danger, as a "test" just to see if your student can pull it off.
  • Adding to the above, when the test goes completely to pot, your student fails the test miserably, and the day is saved purely by dumb luck, praise your student, pretend it was a Secret Test of Character, and begin planning to make her a princess. Because doing a job poorly, crumbling under pressure, and ultimately having to be bailed out by others are all signs of a good candidate to recieve more power and authority.
  • Throwing your wife always works.
  • Just give in and let your friend finish your test for you, surely your teacher won't mind.
  • Completing a test given by a Princess - who doesn't even have the decency to explain what it is beforehand - is clearly so important when the stakes are hundreds of innocent lives. This is why it's OK to worry about the test even when an entire empire is being consumed while you waste time thinking about it.
  • The best way to reward someone for saving your life is to not invite them to your empire, but invite all of their friends (who did nothing) instead.^note As long as they get treated well when you finally get around to it, there'll be no hard feelings.
  • Apologize for saving an entire empire if you didn't follow someone's instructions to the letter.
  • Friendship is magic, except when the teacher asks you to do it alone.
  • Stage a test that risks the future of the citizens of an entire nation for your own personal interests and then praise the student for not being willing to risk the future of the citizens of an entire nation for their own personal interests.
• "Too Many Pinkie Pies"
  • Genocide solves everything!
  • When a cloning operation results in imperfect copies showing signs of mental retardation, it's okay to just off them all without second thoughts.
  • If there's too much stuff to do, don't clone yourself! Cloning is bad.
  • If you're trying to distinguish your friend from a bunch of her clones, the best test is one your friend is naturally bad at and stands a real chance of failing. No possible way that could backfire.
    • Implying: If you fail at something due to a disability, you're simply not trying hard enough. Don't you love your friends enough to overcome your disability when it really matters?
    • Alternatively: If your disabled friend gets lost among a bunch of impostors, don't worry about finding out which is the real one by, like, talking to them. Set up a test that will find the least disabled one instead, and make your own life easier.
  • Euthanize the mentally disabled. It doesn't matter that they're living, thinking, feeling people or that alternatives exist: they're a burden and should be put out of their, but mostly your, misery.
• "One Bad Apple"
  • Don't ever take your kids to Equestria. If they're bullied, no one will even notice, much less lift a hoof to help them.
  • Just stand there and watch when your younger sibling is being bullied, they'll sort it out themselves.
  • On that note, you know when your parents or caregivers say "when you're bullied, tell someone?" Yeah, they're full of crap and won't actually do anything. Instead make friends with a pushy toughguy who will shove them in the mud on your behalf when they try and pick on you.
  • An apologetic bully gets no punishment, no matter how nasty she's been, so long as she has a sympathetic enough sob story which isn't too different from the sob story of her victims (i.e. getting bullied for their lack of something).
  • Bullying someone because you're bullied means you're secretly a good person who's just in a bad way and deserving of pity and understanding, and bullying someone because you're bullied means you're a terrible person who deserves to be keelhauled, You Monster! Our crack team of scientists have yet to figure out what exactly decides the difference, but the current hypothesis is it depends on whether your name is Babs Seed or Apple Bloom.
  • Your bully will be your best friend if you save them from the trap that you originally built to humiliate them completely.
  • If you have a Freudian Excuse for your bad actions, everybody will forgive you easily.
  • Bullies are just covering up their own insecurities and should be treated with kindness, except when they shouldn't.
  • If you attempt to get revenge on a bully, you're the bad guy, not the bully. To their credit, it's Truth in Television.
  • Recklessly endangering the life of your bully isn't a major overreaction to being bullied.
  • If you don't forgive your bully, something's wrong with you.
  • Your victims of your bullying will forgive you easily, no matter how bad you treated them. They won't be traumatized or hold a grudge against you for it, not at all!
  • When kids retaliate against a kid who's being a heartless, abusive, and even physically violent prick, they are horrible people stooping to that same level. When adults retaliate against an adult who's being an arrogant braggart but otherwise did nothing to or against them because they were too busy saving lives, it's a good and heroic thing to do that deserves arrogant bragging.
  • Telling an adult is the first, last, and only thing that needs to be done to stop bullying. Bullies are all one-dimensional caricatures with simple and easy to address motives, all cases of bullying are identical, and even though this episode clearly showed Applejack CLEARLY DO NOTHING when she became aware of the bullying, yeah tell an adult. That'll solve everything.
  • Being a Parental Hypocrite is totally fine. It's perfectly acceptable to scold and shame your children for bullying (even when their "bullying" was just defending themselves from a violent bully) when you have no problem bullying and harassing innocent stage performers.
• "Magic Duel"
  • When you realize just how horrible things you were doing in order to get a revenge on your unwilling rival, you should seek her forgiveness. But feel free to ignore all those other people you've been tormenting along the way.
  • Don't bother trying to improve yourself. You'll only turn evil.
  • If someone tells you something you're trying to buy is dangerous, then meh, someone will come and save you later, and you can just say sorry. That gives you instant amnesty.
  • Did your friend assist in defeating the evil tyrant and getting you back home, and are you now the only one who can undo the effects of the curse they’re under? Don’t help them at the earliest opportunity! Instead, keep up your good publicity by performing a magic show in front of a bunch of people who also don’t care that your friend still needs help! You’ll still be crowned the Princess Of Friendship! Remember, your friends are pawns for you to use at your convenience.
  • You can spend your money to buy victory.
  • Not to mention cheat your way to it too. But don't worry, it's completely justified if your friends are part of the whole thing.
  • Torturing children, enslaving an entire town, and downright being mean is no big deal if you apologize afterwards. Don't forget to pratfall on your way out!
  • Trashing someone's house is a bad move. Trashing someone's car is a really bad move. Doing both at the same time? You'd better pray them oppressively conquering your town with an Artifact of Doom is all they do to you.
  • Might absolutely makes right. Don't be like Trixie when she tried to pick herself up, dust herself off, walk away, and move on with her life, because bullies will never stop hassling you no matter how much time passes or how far you go. Be like Trixie when she armed herself, marched up and stared them right in the eye, wrecked up their place, and made them endure ABJECT HUMILIATION until they realized exactly who they were messing with. You are either an ocean or a puddle, don't be a puddle. People walk through puddles like they are nothing. Oceans fucking destroy cities.
• "Sleepless In Ponyville"
  • Don't be afraid of the creepy as all hell forest at night◊, even if it's been well established that the world is packed full of dangerous and aggressive monsters that would just love to sink their fangs into some filly back ribs.
• "Wonderbolts Academy"
  • If you miss your friend who's joined a military organization, just wander uninvited into their live training zone. You'll get to spend the rest of the day hanging out with them, rather than landing both him and yourself in Military Police custody.
  • When someone is doing wrong, it only matters to you when they endanger your friends. Your teammates who count on and trust you? Pffff, they have their own friends who can worry about their well-being.
  • Whining to the sergeant because you didn't get your way, complacently following someone who is actively and willingly breaking the rules, and then betraying them for entirely selfish motivations, is the mark of a true leader.
  • Students are still responsible for the actions you approved of and encouraged them to do before you realized what you were approving and encouraging was wrong. It is perfectly fine to change your policy and then kick out those who followed your old policies without even giving them an opportunity to follow the new policy.
  • When two students have done wrong, the one who pushes herself, follows orders, takes initiative to lead, and prioritizes achieving the mission should be fired without so much as a reprimand. The one who complacently follows actions she knows is wrong, only confronts the sergeant because she feels she deserves special treatment, and constantly talks back to her superiors for entirely selfish reasons should be rewarded and promoted.
    • This is also a fantastic alternative to teaching them to do better. Why would an instructor's job entail instructing when they could hide in their office all day zoned out while the recruits just fly around without instruction or supervision?
  • Fire employees for doing what you taught and encouraged them to do if it causes consequences for you later.
• "Apple Family Reunion"
  • Being ambitious is a bad thing. You are 100% wrong for even considering changing or improving a tradition, and it will only end in destruction and property damage if you try it.
  • If, through incompetence, you destroy your own home, just tell your extended family to build you a new one for — literally — a song. Don't give them any opportunity to refuse and under no circumstances utter the words "please" or "thank you" for their efforts. Finally, take credit for providing everyone with a "fun activity".
  • It's inappropriate to suggest that your oldest family members finish their group project before it's too late.
• "Spike at Your Service"
  • Don't get all grateful after someone saves your life. It's annoying.
  • Don't bother saving others lives, or they'll ruin yours.
  • Ignore your assistant who is saying they need to leave you forever, even if you know you not needing them is their worst fear. Books are more important.
  • If someone is telling you to stop doing things that might get you hurt, tell that bitch to shut the fuck up. The code of honor you made up 6 seconds ago to justify doing shit for them is more important than your safety. Especially if she's a grown woman and you're a kid.
  • On the flipside, don't take a firm stance in opposing a child doing dangerous things that might injure them. After all, their body being hurt by having bones broken isn't nearly as bad as their feelings being hurt by having their imaginary honor code broken.
  • When a child tries to repay a debt by immaturely swearing fealty to you, don't sit the child down and explain why what he's doing is unnecessary, childish, counter-productive, and wrong, or offer to just let him pay for pizza or something if he's absolutely adamant in repaying the favor. Instead feed into his delusional honor code and stage an opportunity for him to save your life. It's not like this will steel his resolve and guarantee that, next week when you save him from some other attacking creature from the anarchic monster-riddled shithole the two of you live in, this will repeat all over again.
• "Keep Calm and Flutter On"
  • Everyone can turn good... even a Mad God who brutally mind raped you for fun in the past!
    • Everyone except the Evil Overlord, the Emotion Eater, but no one cares about them because Dark Is Evil, and they're not related to the ruler.
  • Brainwashing your enemies to join on your side is morally ok, as long as you or your leader have a "good use" for him.
  • An unapologetic sociopath is damaging your home and threatening to drive a wedge between you and your best friends? The only solution is to put all your trust in friendship being enough to change him. If he still takes actions that hurt you or others, you're not being friendly enough.
  • Remember kids, friendship is magic, even it it means befriending former evil beings who were once a threat to your lives and the world's continued existance.
  • If you're in a relationship where you're being mistreated and even abused it's your duty to do absolutely nothing, take all the flak, and hope he changes one day. Perhaps get back in the kitchen and make him a sammich while you're at it.
  • When your mom tells you to hang out with the kid who you don't like, even if you have valid reasons for disliking him (He's obnoxious or violent or dangerous or destructive or uncaring or a sociopath or any of the above or all of the above) you have no choice but to hang out with him.
• "Just for Sidekicks"
  • If you actually expect money in return for watching over a pet and aren't just doing it out of the kindness of your heart you're being a greedy, careless bastard.
  • The universe will hate you, even if you did a good thing and saved a lot of people.
  • Of course you're frustrated that you weren't invited back to an empire you helped to save from the clutches of evil, and one of your friends completely understands how you feel. You're still not going, though. No one else cares.
  • Teach the boy a lesson about greed by stealing his pocket change and giving it away. That'll learn him, kids, because earning your own money to purchase goods and services is wrong!
  • Looking for or wanting to purchase ingredients for a cake makes you greedy. Somehow.
  • As is wanting some form of payment for your services. You were born a slave and you'll die an slave, Spike.
• "Games Ponies Play"
  • The best way to attract people to your town is to get a group of people from another town far away who've only visited once before to do it for you.
  • If your visitor turns out to dislike fancy fanfares, but nevertheless is annoyed at not getting any kind of welcome at all, she'll be perfectly happy upon hearing that there was a fancy fanfare (but it was accidentally given to somepony else), so happy ending. Yeah, us neither.
• "Magical Mystery Cure"
  • If you're not sure how something works, the best way to find out is by ignoring vague warnings and using it. And if you can fix whatever problems your curiosity creates, your ingenuity will be rewarded, giving you even more power and responsibility.
  • Accidentally mind-raping your friends is sure to work out in your favor!
  • Your destiny is EXACTLY one vague interpretation of a picture on your butt, and there's no variation. That includes the smiling flowers meaning you should be a teacher.
  • If you hate what you do for a living, but are told it is your destiny, don't question it and don't try to find something else you enjoy.
  • If you have a tattoo of something tangentially related to a job on your thigh, it is clearly your destiny, regardless of how completely incompetent you are at it.
  • It's not okay to mess with the lives of others... unless you're a god.
  • "Destiny" and "creating a new magic" both make good qualifications for being promoted to what seems to be a leadership role. All the previous things that clearly demonstrated your mental instability, semi-reclusive nature, tendency to freak out under pressure, repeated neglect and borderline abuse of your assistant, and habit of using unknown magic recklessly (including the incident that led to this)? The possibility that at least one of your friends has learned just as much about this magic as you have? Or that little thing called the informed consent of the pony — you — who's having this destiny handed to her so suddenly and unexpectedly? None of that matters at all. Slap on the wings and crown!
  • Adding to the above, nevermind the fact that Fluttershy's understanding of kindness and friendship was enough to reform Discord, an act that not even Princess Celestia could do, or that it took the combined efforts of all five of the ponies to just barely outperform Rainbow Dash in The Mysterious Mare Do Well, or the clear and evident leadership abilities and selfless heroics displayed by Applejack, or the friendship talents of Pinkie Pie who has memorized every minute detail of every pony in town for no reason other than to spread friendship and happiness, or Rarity's pragmaticism that enabled her to extract herself from a hostage situation in A Dog and Pony Show, or that all five of these ponies have learned every bit as much as Twilight Sparkle about friendship since they've been with her every step of the way. Give the title of "Princess of Friendship", and all the power and authority that comes with it, to the pony mentioned in the last point who has only developed a cursory understanding of friendship at best. Her being your favorite pupil and in-law is a good enough reason to choose her above the others, right?
  • Only royalty deserve to be members of the Alicorn master race. And only members of the Alicorn master race deserve to be royalty (otherwise they're evil). The plebeians all have to get by stuck on the ground without opposable thumbs, much less magic, to interact with the world.
  • Never accept a destiny that has been forced on you. Unless that destiny is a princess title, in which case, shut up and take it.

Season 4

• "Princess Twilight Sparkle Part 1"
  • Never use that "view past events" spell ever again. Not even for your young adopted dragon ward who's origins are a mystery and who desperately wants to know where he came from.
• "Princess Twilight Sparkle Part 2"
  • Most of your leaders are missing and you only have one left to rule the land if you fail your potentially suicidal mission? Don't send her away to look after the town, bring her with you! If you really think a person in a position of high authority shouldn't be out on the front lines, you're just not a very good friend.
  • Your friend is the only one who knows what your goal even looks like, has the knowledge and skills to fix the problem, wears a key to making your superweapon work, and can not only fly or teleport out of danger but has more power than all of you combined? Never mind all those times you learned to stick together; send her away because she'll only be a liability.
• "Castle Mane-ia"
  • It is always a good idea to wander around the ruins of a castle in the middle of the night, even when you've seen that it is literally falling apart, because there is little to no chance of something actually falling on and injuring or killing you.
  • Similarly, upon discovering it is actually littered with still-functioning booby traps, it's probably still a good idea to keep exploring anyways. If you're lucky enough to know the people who once lived there and who know where all the traps are, how to avoid them, and may even be nice enough to provide a map, don't go and talk to them. Just keep wandering around; it'll be fine!
• "Daring Don't"
  • If you obsess over and stalk a celebrity, eventually you'll get to become their best friend! They'll in no way find it strange that you've invaded their home, they just might need some time to warm up to you.
  • All fantasy authors are really writing true stories about themselves.
  • J.K. Rowling is secretly Indiana Jones.
  • Daydream Believers, it's all true! You can live on Pandora, ride in the TARDIS, or go to Hogwarts! Go right now and find your favorite series creator and badger them until they tell you the truth!
• "Flight to the Finish"
  • If you're being bullied over an especially sensitive topic, don't bother telling anyone about your bullies. Especially if you learned to tell someone about it.
  • You should be incredibly proud of your children for making a lone trek across what appears to be uninhabited and probably very dangerous terrain (considering what hangs out in uninhabited terrain in this world) to go to another country, not absolutely shocked or horrified at how dangerous it actually was, or ashamed of your obvious neglect and failing as a parent.
    • This is always a great alternative to just waiting for the next train, by the way.
  • Having trouble learning to do something that most others your age can do with no problem? Don't bother looking for someone who could help you with that, or seeing a doctor to find out if there might be some underlying medical issue. Just keep trying on your own until you feel like giving up.
• "Power Ponies"
  • If you use hair spray regularly, you either go crazy or end as an Minion to an Evil Overlord.
  • If you know everything about a scenario but have no fighting abilities, you shall not provide intel. Instead, wait until you hear a speech about how you can fight.
  • Tell the boy how important he is to you and your friends, then prove it by walking off and abandoning him while laughing about it.
  • The name of a store declares what it sells in the most literal sense possible. Therefore, the House of Enchanted Comics sells comics that are enchanted, Footlocker sells locks for your feet, and KMart sells K's. If you don't realize this, you're an idiot.
  • Go ahead and let children purchase clearly hazardous things without so much as a warning. While we're at it, let's just lose the Surgeon General's warning and age restriction from cigarettes as well.
  • When you sell something that is intrinsically valuable in it's collectability, reusability, and resellability to someone, you're totally allowed to take it back without any manner of warning or refund once they've used it a single time. This makes you whimsical and mysterious, rather than an indian giver, scam artist, or outright thief.
• "Bats!"
  • When an expert on farming and an expert on animals are having an argument about the destruction of a crop by animals, your best bet is to pick a third option that completely ignores and disregards their opinions.
  • Even if your hare-brained attempts to use one massive fix-all spell have failed every single other time you've used one with rather disastrous results each time, go ahead and try one again! It's not like you'll forcibly change one of your dearest friends into a monster that practically obliterates another of your dearest friend's entire crops or anything.
  • Given the choice between accommodating animals in your crops and chasing them out, do the ethical thing and mindrape them into avoiding their natural food source. Bonus points if said animals are clearly sentient.
  • That said, rewiring a creature's brain with a good dose of magic is perfectly acceptable when they are a lesser being than yourself. This includes not only animals (despite the fact that ponies are also animals), but also children, criminals, and anything else that doesn't fit the mold of "pony master race". Of course when it's done to one of the better race, all bets are off and no mercy shall be given.
  • The animal rights activist knows absolutely nothing about farming, but her opinion on an infestation must be considered with equal weight to that of the farmer whose livelihood is directly threatened. Especially if she has recently made poor judgements about a pest in the past which directly caused two consecutive destructive infestations that led to the utter ruin of an entire town.
  • Meta Example: Applejack is boring and Fluttershy is cute. That means Fluttershy was completely right and Applejack was being sadistic.
  • It's okay to use your friends if you talk louder than them.
  • The best way to deal with pests is to diplomatically reason with them. If you would only talk to those cockroaches, get to know them, and set up some living space for them, you'd find they're more than happy to abide by your rules and stay out of your Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Don't worry about those bed bugs either; you don't need all that blood, after all.
  • When hungry creatures that are potentially a threat but can totally be reasoned with move in to your habitat unannounced and do their thing, your treatment of them varies. If they are pony-like and capable of speech, then CRUSH THEM, DRIVE THEM BEFORE YOU, AND HEAR THE LAMENTATION OF THE WOMEN. If they're animal-like and not capable of speech, give them a chance and hope everything works out.
  • You're not a terrible person for forcing your friend to do what you want, for your sake, and then not caring in the slightest when it costs your friend everything. All that matters is you got what YOU wanted in the end.
• "Rarity Takes Manehattan"
  • Even high-ranking government officials can't flag down a cab in New York, so don't feel bad.
  • Never show an ounce of generosity to anyone you'll later be competing against or they'll backstab you.
  • The person who allowed the one who stole your work to get ahead apologized to you, so she should be rewarded by giving her the extremely lucrative job you were planning to take.
  • A job isn't any sort of commitment or responsibility, it's something you as an employee can freely pass on to whomever you like, even if you have no idea of their ability level. This holds true even if you've already accepted a highly valuable, nonrefundable payment.
  • Don't like your job? Betray your employer to a rival and you'll get a better one!
  • Lying and backstabbing is the way to win, but only if you make sure your assistant won't betray you in turn.
  • The creative process takes priority over property boundaries. Hotels don't mind at all if you destroy their furniture and facilities for dressmaking material.
  • Mistreating those who work for you is only okay when they're not the same race as you and/or you're a main character. What Double Standard?
• "Pinkie Apple Pie"
  • If you start to miss being part of a family, don't bother trying to contact your own family again, try to join your friend's family.
  • Learning your neighbor is a (possible, extremely distant) cousin is tantamount to gaining a sister.
  • Family members stick together and give each other the help they need. Unless an elderly relative is an obvious hoarder living in squalor. In that case, who cares?! It's not your problem!
• "Rainbow Falls"
  • Remember, kids... if you're faced with a difficult decision between supporting your friends and following your dreams, don't ask your friends for advice or support. They will only judge you.
  • When your friend comes to you with a difficult decision, tell her that you refuse to help her decide, but then spend the rest of the day guilt-tripping her, glaring at her, and needling her until she does what you want. Even (or especially) if it's not in her best interests to do so.
  • Because the real reason to stay with a losing team and (possibly) throw away your dream has nothing to do with the teammates who would be directly affected by your actions, but rather because your friends who aren't competing might feel bad.
  • When a friend does something you don’t like, judge, glare, guilt-trip, and shun them until your head games make them feel so bad about themselves that they come crawling back◊.
• Three's A Crowd
  • Malingering, being needy and demanding, forcing yourself upon others, and demanding they drop everything to help you is the best way to affirm a friendship with someone.
  • DARVO people when they call you out on your reckless disregard for their safety. Almost getting them killed by luring them into a dangerous location under false pretenses and not bothering to keep an eye on them pales in comparion to them not writing you letters you never indicated you wanted.
  • Fighting a giant wurm is just as good for sisterly bonding as a normal day out.
  • That people clearly were only helping you out to get rid of you is proof they absolutely want your obnoxious, one-sided, pushy, and even violent "friendship", not evidence that they have minimal if any affection for you and were only helping you for their own ends.
  H-hey! Am I really your 'buddy'...?
• Simple Ways
  • Being monumentally insensitive (bordering on racist) to your friends won't hurt your friendship at all.
  • You should never change who or what you are to impress someone. Unless you're not a pony like Spike or Discord, are too stubborn, brag a little too much, Brag a Little Too Much 2: Electric Boogaloo, aren't as brave as your friends would like, aren't as athletic as your friends would like, don't fall into the appropriate median of assertiveness, don't want Pinkie Pie's friendship, don't want ANYONE'S friendship, are a merry prankster...
• "Pinkie Pride"
  • If Weird Al shows up and starts upstaging you in the single thing you do best, it must be because you're the secret inspiration for his entire career.
  • If your friends put you aside because there is someone more competent around, don't go away. They will need your subpar skills again when he's gone.
  • People who have the same specialisation as you are always competition, never allies. Just ask Flim and Flam, or Trixie.
• "Filli Vanilli"
  • No one will mind if you lip sync during a performance, so go ahead.
  • Pointing out your friend's greatest fears when they're obviously on the verge of crying isn't rubbing salt in their wounds, it's helping them get over their fears and a mark of good friendship.
• "Twilight Time"
  • If you've suddenly become someone important and famous, you shouldn't expect to be watched and stalked everywhere you go. If it does happen, it's because someone betrayed you.
  • Expect absolute perfection from beginning-level students within two weeks. Merely marginal improvement is proof that they don't care.
• "It Ain't Easy Being Breezies"
  • If other people's laziness means you might never see your wife and child again, it's your fault for getting mad at the selfish little bastards.
  • As we've seen with every Twilight Sparkle episode ever, why do the simple solution when you can commit a complicated and heinous crime against nature that wouldn't even work as well even in the off-chance it actually worked out as intended? Sure you could just toss the useless little bastards in a sack and carry them safe and sound to their destination, but why do that when you can transform into them and offer absolutely no assistance in this form but also risking your own life and the lives of your dearest friends for no real reason (no in-universe reason, at least).
• "Somepony to Watch Over Me"
  • Doing something dangerous and life-threatening is a great way to make an overbearing sibling/parental figure give you more freedom.
  • Little girl staying home alone for the first time? Put her food in a place she can't possibly reach without breaking something.
  • When a democratic decision goes against you, wait until the other participants are gone, then do things your way anyway.
  • It's logical to assume a youngster can't stay home alone, even though the kid clearly does just fine when left to her own devices or with her friends, rarely if ever has parental supervision on-screen, and is capable of travelling extremely long distances to other countries with nothing but her two equal-age friends and a scooter to travel by.
  • Don't bother confronting a family member who's behaving completely irrationally towards a child in her care, even to the point where said child is unable to live a normal life. She'll learn her lesson soon enough.
• "Maud Pie"
  • Some people are just too different from you to be friends with, so don't even bother trying.
  • It's okay to try and force your disparate friends with clashing personalities to all be friends with each other.
  • Eating rocks and jewels means you're different, quirky, and/or strong. Not suicidally stupid and unhealthy.
• "Trade Ya!"
  • You should never sell any of your old possessions that you never use anymore, they all have too many memories attached to them. So whether or not you have enough space for them, you should hoard them.
  • No rare collectible is worth selling your friend into slavery for.
  • Collecting things inevitably leads to selling people into slavery.
  • A verbal contract that was not written down, notarized, or even witnessed, and one that apparently violates what should be basic human (well, pony) rights, must be enforced and cannot be overturned or challenged by even royalty if the rules of a weekend flea market say so.
• "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils"
  • It's okay to leave makeup around a five-year-old with absolutely no supervision.
  • A demigoddess who can invade your dreams at will, has no qualms about breaking into closed venues, and has a history of treason is clearly one who can be trusted.
  • Little sister has self-esteem issues? Use your talents to upstage her and then feign ignorance or claim OCD.
• "Leap of Faith"
  • When someone twists your Exact Words into something else for their own financial gain, obviously you're the one who lied, so you should apologize.
  • The Placebo Effect doesn't exist. Neither do psychosomatic ailments.
  • Self-confidence inevitably leads to suicidally foolhardy actions. Don't encourage it, crush it.
  • Don't believe that a cure-all potion could exist, even if you live in a world where potions are a very real thing and especially if your sister whipped one up that made your brother want to romp about in the hay with the hot school marm.
  • It's never too late to give up on your dreams. Yes they actually said this. See for yourself.
  • Did a "miracle cure" have you doing things you thought yourself too old and frail to do, only for you to find out that it was all a scam? Don't take it as a lesson that you're capable of more than you think - just go back to your previous lifestyle of sitting around and waiting for death.
• "Testing Testing 1, 2, 3"
  • The best way to help someone learn something is to trick them into it.
  • Someone with a (let's be honest here) crippling learning disability who cannot memorize even simple facts unless they are presented in a heavily specialized way is a perfect candidate for what essentially amounts to Air Force Fighter Pilot. Since when do such people need to memorize things like flight patterns, orders, or safety regulations anyways, and it's not like they're doing a job where said things are integral necessities to completing the mission where lives could be at risk, right?
  • On the flipside, don't let the accomplished famous selflessly heroic national hero and Equestria's best flier who has saved the lives of your laughably ineffective squadron several times over join your team because she can't pass a history test. After all, it's that knowledge of Flair d'Mare and her streamlined uniforms that's made you team so incredibly successful in the past, right?
  • If you don't remember the exact lyrics of an song after hearing it once, you never will.
• "Inspiration Manifestation"
  • Don't help people.
  • Someone who recently reached a high prestige and high power position in life by carelessly misusing a spellbook and causing a ton of damage is perfectly justified in calling out someone else for carelessly misusing a spellbook and causing a ton of damage, not a complete Hypocrite.
  • Blame the boy who provided the spellbook for all the damage it caused, not the person who actually used the book and did the damage. After all, why blame the gunman when you could blame the store who sold him the firearm?
• "Twilight's Kingdom - Part 1"
  • Being made a princess but having your only job be waving to crowds is just terrible.
  • That said, when the first (and only time) you were actually placed in a position of authority and chose to shirk said duty so you could instead go on an adventure with your friends effectively leaving all of Equestria and its citizens in an undefended leaderless panic, you are fully justified in being upset that you no longer have any administrative responsibilities beyond waving to crowds.
  • Instead of the student that clearly saved the day no less than four times, send a villain who wrecked the world after another who wants to do the same.
  • When the villain is slowly regaining his cataclysmic powers, don't bother doing anything to stop him until it's too late to do anything.
  • Villain steals magic? Don't bother using arrows, swords, guns, lightning, or tornadoes against him.
• "Twilight's Kingdom - Part 2"
  • The embodiment of friendship with kick your ass Dragon Ball Z-style if you cross her.
  • You and your friends are better than literally everybody else combined.
  • Former enemies who've become your friend are just waiting for the right time to backstab you.
  • Never, ever think of obvious solutions to your problems. Instead, keep everything secretive and everything will hopefully go fine.
  • If something is unusual with your friend and she flies off, don't bother going after her to see what's really up.
  • When your hometown is being threatened by a cataclysmic villain, don't bother doing anything until your own home gets destroyed.
  • Make dumb and ill-advised decisions that will surely backfire so you can watch your student fight a giant fire monster! Hey, works in anime.

Season 5

• "The Cutie Map - Part 1 & 2"
  • When given vague instructions from an unknown source to go to an unknown land for unknown reasons, you should totally do it right away with no planning, reinforcements, or even telling anyone where you are going. What could possibly go wrong?
  • Attempts at social equality are always evil and will always fail. Long live capitalism!
  • A woman in a position of power who ruthlessly enforces her beliefs of equality on other people, expects everyone to follow her way without question, will forcibly try to indoctrinate others, and will punish dissent with abuse, unforgiveness, and exile, is a villainous cultist who needs to be stopped. A woman in a position of power who ruthlessly enforces her beliefs of friendship on other people, expects everyone to follow her way without question, will forcibly try to indoctrinate others, and will punish dissent with abuse, unforgiveness, and exile, is our lovable morally right purple protagonist.
• "Castle Sweet Castle"
  • It's perfectly normal to be upset when you move from a home the size of an apartment into a mansion.
  • The worst possible thing that could happen when you lose your home is to be given a much bigger, much more extravagant, decadent palace on a beautiful piece of real estate adjacent to a gorgeous sparkling lake. For free. Oh you poor thing.
  • It doesn't matter what kind of home you live in, as long as it's an excessively spacious and beautiful mansion on a beautiful piece of property that was given to you for free by a princess or a magical force. A lesson anyone whose lived in a slum, or a bad neighborhood, or a developing nation, or a car, is sure to appreciate!
• "Bloom and Gloom"
  • It is wrong to cast your friends aside because they either do or don't have something that you do or don't have, even though you've totally done it before and never so much as thought twice about it.
  • The human version of the episode's aesop: Don't worry, prepubescent girls, even though you'll be stuck with the body you get when you hit puberty, your family and friends will still love you no matter what size your boobs are when they grow in.
  • Careers in jobs such as pest management, custodial work, and the food industry are terrible and you are too good and special to do anything like that. Save those jobs for those beneath you who should give up on their dreams because they're not a special unique snowflake like you.
• "Tanks For The Memories"
  • Once again, we learn that causing mass destruction and endangering an entire town's way of life for selfish or frivolous reasons will lead to absolutely no repercussions provided it was an honest mistake and you learn your lesson. Even if it was actually intentional and you didn't learn your lesson.
  • Your pet going to sleep for a few months is a perfectly legitimate reason to commit eco-terrorism.
  • Trying to prevent winter is forgivable, and you'll be seen as sympathetic if you do so. Trying to create The Night That Never Ends on the other hand is evil and will get you banished to the moon. This is because Dark Is Evil, obviously.
  • You're only in trouble if you get caught. Not coming forward when you do wrong also means you won't have to help clean up or pay for the damages: that's someone else's job!
• "Appleloosa's Most Wanted"
  • Training doesn't matter for crud. Destiny will let you stumble rump-backwards into being the best there is, even if it's something you don't necessarily want to do.
  • Take what wanted criminals say completely at face value. It's not like a wanted criminal accused of repeated and destructive crimes would ever try to fabricate his story to sound justified in his actions or like a victim of circumstance, or outright lie to sound innocent.
  • You will accept your place in life, be it good, bad, wanted, or not, and it is both a wrong and pointless endeavor to ever strive for anything else.
  • It's always a good idea for children to follow suspicious untrustworthy adults. Especially into their van or basement and especially if they make promises of yummy candy and puppies.
• "Make New Friends But Keep Discord"
  • Want to liven up an event you find boring? Do you exercise your influence as an undisputed ruler, an event organizer, close friends with one of the other event organizers, and an incredibly popular person to change things up more to your liking? NOPE! Instead invite a barely reformed criminal who has nearly killed people on multiple occasions even after his supposed reformation. Passive-aggressiveness for the win!
  • If you get angry or jealous because your close friend snubbed you for someone else without telling you, obviously you're in the wrong.
  • When someone trashes an event for selfish reasons, it's wrong and they deserve to be chewed out for it. When you or one of your friends does it, it's good because that event was boring anyways.
• "The Lost Treasure Of Griffinstone"
  • Other races have no hope of flourishing on their own and even need intervention from a more civilized group to even understand basics like friendship and generosity.
  • If another race has different customs than yours, it is your duty to teach them the proper way to act. Your way, of course!
  • If you're willing to try and save someone's life, that necessarily means you want to be friends with them, and if you say otherwise, you're simply lying.
  • When you're a person of privilege who was born to a well-off family and raised in the lap of luxury as the protege to the God-Empress of a nation, you are entirely justified in smugly telling the suffering citizens of an impoverished developing nation that wanting money is wrong and they aren't being friendly enough. Because we all know friendship and smiles purchase food, clothing, infrastructure, and medicine; what good is money to people who need such things?
  • The only reason to rekindle an old friendship, even a lifelong one that was ended over an entirely petty and stupid reason, is if they save your life. The good times the two of you had together, the affection you had for one another, none of _that_ is a worthwhile reason to literally just say "I'm sorry" to a friend and start over.
• "Slice Of Life"
  • If a disaster or dangerous event is happening in the very heart of town, an appropriate response is to ignore it. Evacuation, coming to the aid of others, or even running for cover are overrated anyways.
  • Better yet, assume someone else will take care of the disaster. They usually do.
  • Putting your tongue on an arcade machine that has been handled by countless others is fun, safe, hygenic, and an all around good idea. Especially if countless others have also put their tongues all over it too: it's just extra flavor.
  • If you have a Cool Car, pedestrians yield to you and the rules of the road no longer apply.
• "Princess Spike"
  • Bad things will happen as a direct result of you trying, to the best of your abilities, to properly and completely do the job that was given to you. All those times you abuse the perks of your job will cause no repercussions, however.
  • You deserve moral comeuppance if you fail to do a job that was forced unexpectedly upon you, even if you did your absolute best to ensure it was completed to the letter of the instructions that were given to you.
  • Judge people based on their race. What could he possibly know? It's just "some random dragon's opinion", after all.
  • Children can be expected to fend for themselves when trapped in a dangerous body of water. Even if you can fly and retrieve them from a distance, leave them to their own devices and find something else to do.
  • Children can also be expected, without warning, planning, training, or instructions, to assume the position of a high prestige world leader. Thus, if the judgment calls they made when put on the spot end up causing problems or damage, they are absolutely at fault and it is perfectly okay to put all the blame on them. Even if you were one of the ignorant and ignoble idiots who's inflexible and borderline racist refusal to listen to "some random dragon" is what forced him to make said judgment calls in the first place.
  • When doing your job causes problems for others, you owe them an apology, while the person who gave you the job in the first place takes no responsibility.
  • Even if you're practically the adopted son of someone famous, you deserve none of their perks.
  • It doesn't matter how many lives you've saved, if you're not a princess you will always be obscure.
  • No matter how much damage your actions have caused, simply saying "I'm sorry" is enough to fully absolve you of all guilt. Even if you destroy the site of an important event and demolish an important monument, a simple apology and a feeble attempt to repair the damages are enough to earn everyone's forgiveness.
  • Do everything in your power to prevent the boy from doing his part (which is what led to the destructive outcome in the first place, but that's neither here nor there), and then smugly tell the boy that everything will work out in the end if we all do our part.
  • Shirking your duties onto someone who is not qualified to perform them and then letting them take the blame when they fail is not only the mark of a good leader, but also an appropriate way to treat someone who is essentially your brother/son.
  • Don't think of the obvious or simple solution to your problem, such as using a spell to create a sound-proof environment for sleeping (like the one cooked up next week to have a private chat). An absurdly effective and cost-free answer to a problem pales in comparison to just forcing one of the hired help to run around like a beheaded chicken for about 8 hours straight.
  • Don't plan ahead of time to create a work schedule that allows for proper breaks and shift-changes to avoid exhaustion and guarantee your task can be completed properly and effectively (even when it's been well established that working this hard is a very bad move and planning and scheduling are defining traits of yours). It's better to push yourself to the brink of collapse, and then expect the same of others whether they want to or not.
  • In a world where one is either born into royalty or earns it via heroic acts, the adoptive child of one princess and adoptive brother of another princess (or however you guage that all his immediate adoptive family is royalty) who selflessly saved an entire kingdom, an entire coliseum of innocents, and Applejack, and who constantly offers practical and moral support to said royalty is not deserving of the title or perks befitting royalty himself. Back to your doggy bed, Spike, but first be sure to polish these shoes. That's a good lad.
• "Party Pooped"
  • The person in charge of you, who did little at most, will be given all the credit for all the hard work you did to accomplish a task. If you're lucky, you might be off-handedly mentioned as "one of the friends" while the boss praises the one who was in charge of you.
  • Even though a person is violent, aggressive, selfish, and destructive, and even though there is honestly nothing positive, either physical or emotional, that they are offering you, you should still bend over backwards to earn their friendship. Because, um, friendship is magic.
  • You should let friends travel alone into areas where nobody has ever returned alive. They'll be totally fine.
  • If you're being repeatedly abused by someone, it's your fault for not being perfect, not their fault for being an abusive prick. Remember ladies, he only hits you because you make him.
  • If there is someone who is holding a threat of violence over you, bend over backwards for them and cater to their every whim.
  • Making friends is a challenge to be overcome, not something you should do out of loneliness or genuine empathy and feelings for others. Thus you should drag even dangerous people into your life to "befriend" them for no reason other than bumping up your friend count on Facebook. Once you've overcome this challenge, feel free to cast them aside and move on to the next potential prospect with barely a glance back. See also: Cranky Doodle Donkey, Moondancer...
  • Using violence, abuse, and destroying other people's belongings to get what you want is fine. Unless what you want is to not be violently assaulted by a bully, then it's bad because standing up for yourself is wrong. Otherwise using violence and throwing a tantrum is an excellent way to get what you want out of someone, just like when you're in the store and you want mom to buy you some fine My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic™ merchandise exclusive from Hasbro™.
• "Amending Fences"
  • People who are too busy studying to spend time with friends are always anti-social and hurt by bad experiences in the past. They are never too busy studying due to school, college, university, work, personal research, or having big plans for the future. Should you meet such a person, bug the hell out of them until they crumble, throw their studies out the window, and play kick-ball with you. Bonus points if you've never had to worry about such things because you've been backed by the government your whole life rather than having to worry about a career, and thus have no clue how difficult it can be to get a job.
  • A person who was so hurt by her friend who couldn't be bothered to attend her party would rather have a photograph that features a friend who couldn't be bothered to attend her party rather than the friend who gave her the photo and did attend.
  • You can leave your home unattended for what must have amounted to a couple of years without fear of it being broken into and robbed or ransacked for fun.
  • Having to stop the apocalypse is no good reason to not attend a party.
  • You must attend every single party or social event you are invited to, or else you'll ruin someone's life.
  • If the party host isn't the one to invite you to a party, but rather some mutual friends do, you should assume she'll be really hurt if you don't show up and go anyway, even if you have something to do that seems important.
  • If you were really only (let's be honest) acquaintances with a group of people, you should feel guilty for not being better friends with them, even if you have different and arguably equally valid views on what's important in life because friendship is the best, and also because you'll turn someone into a recluse despite the fact that all you did was study together in the same room.
  • There is no such thing as a person who doesn't want friends. If she claims she prefers solitude, it's really because she was hurt in the past. Never accept a voluntary loner; force them into forming/mending friendships they don't want, 'cause friendship is magic!! Never mind that people are different and should control their social life however they want.
  • Forcing friendships is okay. Well, it's not the first time this aesop appeared.
  • As is outright bullying people into being your friend by reopening old wounds and messing with their emotions until they realize you're entitled to have them and they really have no say in the matter. No one quits the mob.
• "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep":
  • No, apparently they do not. They dream of things that would give Freud an aneurysm, but no magic sheep.
  • The contributions of royalty matter more than the contributions of the entire population.
  • People with Guilt Complexes can get over it by making the decision to get over it.
  • When your tenure as a villain lasted about an hour tops and all you did was have the alicorn equivalent of a drunken bar fight with your sister, inflict some Amusing Injuries on a few guards, and screwed around with some teenagers, and when you were already punished with a 1000 year exile as well as being completely vilified in the eyes of everyone, you still need to beg forgiveness from everyone.
  • Self harm is only bad because it makes 'other people upset and concerned about you. Your feelings are pretty much just an afterthought, you big crybaby.
• "Canterlot Boutique":
  • It's perfectly fine to laugh at people who weigh twice as much as you.
  • Factory production is evil, and multi-producing one specific item is eeeeeevil because it lacks authencity and nobility that comes with making it by hand- err, hoof. Never mind it's more effective for the selling charts and keeping the boutique itself out of bankruptcy that way.
  • It doesn't matter what your customers want; what matters is what you want to make. Don't care about the fact that they were perfectly happy with what you were selling. The changes you make in doing as you like without regard for the customers' wishes won't hurt the sales, not at all.
• " Brotherhooves Social"
  • Trans people are hilarious!
  • Meta example: someone who cross-dresses is automatically a Trans Person, even those who have a valid reason to crossdress that has nothing to do with their gender identity.
    In other words: there is no difference between a man pretending to be a woman and a trans wo-wait a minute...
  • If you are the low sibling on the totem pole, you won't get your family's attention unless you do something that shocks them into noticing you.
  • When "Sister Hooves Social" is really just an Artifact Title and brothers are absolutely allowed to compete, don't bother telling the obvious man in drag who obviously dressed in drag to compete that it's really not necessary at all until the competition is over and he's made a fool of himself. Because someone who is willing to go to that extreme to spend a day with his sister should be mocked for wearing a dress, not praised for being a genuinely good person who just wanted to be with his beloved little sister.
• "Crusaders of the Lost Mark"
  • If you don't like the way your mother treats you, call her out for it in a public setting in front of everyone. What could possibly go wrong?
  • If you make a promise or a deal you can't keep, someone will bail you out provided it was made with good intentions.
  • If it's your destiny to help others find their special interests and talents, you can forget all about your own interests and talents. Your budding potential in construction, potion making, racing, and singing? Nope, it's your job to help others now like Destiny's Roadie.
  • Every bully ever comes from a harsh upbringing and deserves your patience and understanding, and you are a terrible person for not giving either no matter how shabbily they've treated you in the past.
  • All bullies secretly want to be friends with you. Even the ones that have absolutely nothing in common with you and have only ever treated you as a means to an end at best and a free target at worst.
  • Has trying really, really hard to achieve your goals and dreams not been working out? Try doing the opposite and say you don't care. That'll do the trick!
• "The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows"
  • It's perfectly fine to tell important secrets to someone who's notoriously bad at keeping them in. Even if they kept it in just barely you can completely trust them 100% in the future.
  • When your friend is obviously struggling with a serious issue and clearly acting out of the norm, don't offer her kindness, ask if you can help, offer to listen to her issues, or even give her some space. You have much more important things on the mind, like your own interests; the well being of a dear friend takes a backseat to that. Everything will work out in the end anyways.
  • If you let a secret slip, even by complete accident, you're a terrible person and you should feel terrible until the end of your days.
• "Hearthbreakers"
  • When visiting someplace with different traditions than yours, don't DARE even mention your own traditions. You'll ruin everything if you don't completely conform.
• "What About Discord?"
  • Your friends are terrible people deserving of a scolding if they dare to embark on any activity that doesn't include the all-important you.
  • You should always trust the plans of a barely-reformed criminal who has Mind Raped and nearly killed people on several occasions - after all, it's more important to teach your friend a lesson she could have learned at another time and was in no real need to learn at that point anyway.
  • It's okay to ignore and socially isolate one of your close friends as long as they learn their lesson in the end.
• "The Hooffields and the McColts"
  • Wars can be ended by making both sides see how the fighting is affecting the animals. Quick, show this episode in Syria!
• "The Cutie Remark Part One and Part Two":
  • Everything bad in history happened because a little girl lost a relay race. Quick, somebody invent a time machine!
  • Losing a single friend justifies ruining the lives of countless others as long as you learn your lesson for doing so.
    • Having no friends growing up is the worst excuse for having a shitty attitude.
  • Someone who is surrounded by people who would have been willing to be their friend if only their utterly despicable nature didn't make them an abusive controlling monster who saw everyone as objects and pawns are deserving of sympathy for their friendless nature.
  • Take time to learn about someone who is opposed to you so you can understand their motives: maybe there is more to them than merely "just being evil" and, with some kindness and understanding, can be swayed to a better path. That is, if they're the same race as you, related to a friend of yours, or of some use to you. The rest can enjoy their exile, high-speed crash landing, or straight up death.
  • Getting given exactly what you want counts as atoning for all the terrible things you've done in life. Princess Twilight says so!
  • The scene where Starlight Glimmer convinces the bullies to leave Fluttershy alone: If you're being bullied, don't do anything to stop it! If you do, your suffering will no longer be there to inspire your friend to save you and improve your own life, hers, and several other peoples' in the process.
    • Adults shouldn't get involved when a child is being bullied, they need to handle it themselves (also supported by "One Bad Apple").
  • Capitalism and technological advancement are the single most evil things in the world. Even more evil than the ruthless dictator who presses innocent civilians into a blood-soaked war with mind-controlling helmets and the giant who sucks the life out of everyone and uses their life energy to blow everything up for kicks. Embrace stagnation and ignorance for it is the one true path.
  • Making friends and being successful has nothing to do with being kind, decent, humble, or even interesting. In fact you can be an absolutely atrocious monster. Why? Because it's all about power. It trumps everything. Just show someone you're too powerful to ignore and BAM, you'll get hordes of friends. It doesn't matter how evil your deeds were. Just ask Discord, Sunset Shimmer, and now Starlight Glimmer about all the friends they have, or look at Trixie all alone in the corner and ask how her friendless life and likely still-destroyed career is doing.
    • OK jokes aside, that Trixie bit is kind of Hilarious in Hindsight.
  • Even if you're a selfish and heinous monster, redemption is the responsibility of others, not you. You can expect to be forgiven in an instant even by people who were directly and indirectly harmed for years by your self-serving actions and even those you went out of your way to directly target. All you have to do is stop being a dick, say "we're cool", and look extra cute in your freeze-frame jump.
  • Take what people say completely at face value. Even when someone whose characterization is defined by manipulation, lying, and self-justification with an extra dose of The End Justifies the Means (in other words, a sociopath), you can believe them when they say "Okay I'm sorry I'm a good guy now."
  • It's okay for government officials to cheat the legal system and let criminals go scot-free. That's totally not a gross misuse of power and authority or anything like that, because a fair and unbiased trial doesn't mean jack when someone with the means to tear up a criminal record takes a biased interest in someone.
  • Ponies are by default pure and good and only ever act evil when driven that way by external factors, thus they deserve to be immediately forgiven when these unfair external factors are addressed. Everything else is by default evil and monstrous, unless befriended by ponies, taught how to act by ponies or raised by ponies (and even then they can expect to be treated as a second-class citizen), and had better keep their asses on the straight and narrow if they want to stay friends with the Pony Master Race. Thus it's perfectly justified to make sweeping judgments of others based purely on their race.^note Zebras may not technically be ponies, but they're near as makes no difference.
  • When you lose something, lash out at as many people as possible until it's given back to you to make you stop.
  • Having friends automatically means you're a good guy and better than the people who don't have friends. It's not like anything ever showed otherwise, right?

Season 6

• "The Crystalling Parts 1 and 2"
  • Babies will ruin your life, and could potentially bring down civilization.
  • You won't be happy until you renew your friendship with that kid who abandoned you back in kindergarten.
    • Heck, you won't be happy if you don't reconcile with all your lost friends, even if said former friends weren't good friends to begin with.
  • Trust the perfect stranger, who has openly admitted his inability and lack of confidence in himself, with performing a potentially dangerous magical-equivalent of an appendectomy on your newborn child, on the recommendation of the recently reformed dangerous criminal. This is parenting at it's finest, not criminal neglect.
  • Name your children after what are or what will become horrifying historic events! It'll make for a great conversation piece when the child gets older, most certainly won't reopen old wounds, and Princess Flurry Heart will look so cute playing with Prince Spanish Inquisition Soul and Duchess Black Plague Belle.
• "The Gift Of The Maud Pie"
  • Last time we taught you it's okay to unfairly manipulate others to get what you want provided you are a protagonist. This week's lesson: it's okay to bully others to get what you want provided you are a protagonist.
  • Notwithstanding the above, it is not okay to manipulate or bully others to prevent your friend from being sold into slavery, even if you are the Princess of Friendship. Why would protecting friends be part of the Princess of Friendship's job, you silly billy?
  • Also to clarify, this only applies if you are a protagonist. Manipulating or bullying others will get you Laser-Guided Karma at best or an entirely destroyed home and reputation at worst if you're not a protagonist. Just ask Trixie, the Flim Flam Brothers, Suri Polomare...
• "On Your Marks"
  • When trying to accomplish something, you should trust the advice of the overly pushy and nosy stranger who (along with her two friends) had more difficulty accomplishing the same thing than anyone else in their age group to the point that it was practically a disability.
    • Alternatively, it's better to learn from the mistakes of others than from your own.
• "No Second Prances"
  • When you accept someone's apology for having done wrong, don't actually mean it until they prove themselves to you.
  • Your friends and family are only allowed to be friends with people you approve of. Otherwise do what you can to spoil the friendship and keep your friend all to yourself, regardless of how many feelings you hurt in the process. The same goes for people your friends and family love and wish to marry.
  • When you decide to trust someone who is potentially an untrustworthy and dangerous person, everyone has to stick by it whether they like it or not and accept them as a friend. When one of your friends decides to trust someone who is potentially an untrustworthy and dangerous person, oppose it with all your might. It's all about you and your feelings, after all; nobody elses matter.
  • Having a bad go? People who allegedly made peace with you have decided you're still a bad guy? Getting glares from everyone? Your friendship has taken a rocky turn? Don't tough it out and try to make things right; attempt suicide! That'll fix everything! If you fail you'll garner pity and everyone will love you again, and if you succeed that'll teach them all!!! It's win/win!
  • Hold grudges unless you have a pragmatic reason to do otherwise. If someone has nothing to offer you there's no reason to actually forgive them. It's not like they're a person with feelings and emotions just like you, or anything like that.
  • Getting mad at someone who has already bent over backwards to accomodate you (this includes literally letting you get away with murder and mayhem) because they haven't bent over backwards quite enough for you to trust your new friend makes you the voice of reason, not a self-centered entitled jackass.
  • Starting a false friendship for the purpose of hurting a third party is fine as long as the friendship becomes genuine later.
  • You'd think not completely blindly trusting the lying, manipulative, cruel, selfish, dangerous sociopath who is fully willing to torture, kill, and even irrevocably destroy time to get what she wants without feeling even a shred of guilt for it would be the smartest and most appropriate thing you could do, but you'd be wrong. You'll be called out for it, by the sociopath no less, and they'll be right because Hasbro really wants you to think this sociopath is a good person.
  • Consider the arrogant and somewhat-of-a-liar performer, whose only acts of evil were when she was unknowingly corrupted by an amulet she bought because your idiotic friends and hillbilly town ruined her career and continue to harass her to this day, to be a toxic influence over the dictator that created a cult she actually had no intention of following and eventually tried to change history for her own ends out of revenge over you, and not the other way around.
  • Starting a genuine friendship with a terrible sociopath for an entirely self-serving motive means that you are either a truly awful and untrustworthy person, or are heroically redeeming said terrible sociopath. The difference seems to lie in whether or not you are Trixie, or you are Twilight and her friends.
  • When a friend makes friends with someone you don't like, you absolutely either have to make friends with that person, or destroy the friendship altogether. Just being a mature adult who accepts the fact that your friends have a life outside of you is not an option, because it's never about them but only about how you feel.

• "Newbie Dash"
  • You should just embrace any cruel nickname you are given, and be happy to be hazed.
    • And if the nickname in question carries ugly emotional baggage from your past that those currently using it couldn't possibly know about, telling them is out of the question. Just because you saved some of their lives once (and one of their lives twice) is no reason to think they'll care about your feelings or treat you like a person.
  • You should be elated to join a team of people who are (let's just be honest here) childish backstabbing creeps who are laughably bad at their job.
  • There's nothing immature or wrong with grown adults acting like childish bullies, not at all.
  • If someone else acts with reckless disregard for the safety of everyone around them to make themselves look good, they deserve to have their career ended. If you do it, a simple slap on the wrist is enough.

• "A Hearth's Warming Tale"
  • Meta Aesop: When all else fails, just do Yet Another Christmas Carol. It's the exact same story we've seen like a hundred times (enough to land on the Stock Parodies page), so nobody will mind if you milk that giant goat one more time. Even in May.
  • The world would literally end if people stopped celebrating Christmas. In other words...
  Hasbro: BUY OUR TOYS!
  • A nickname that calls out someone's accident is charming, a sign of camaraderie, and should be embraced. A comment that calls out someone's blatant intentional hypocrisy is rude and should be stifled.
  • Once again we learn the only true reason to make friends, love one another, and show empathy to your brethren is literally to give you the power to destroy or repel your enemies. Friendship is literally magic, after all. Why else should you be interested in it?
  • People who don't celebrate holidays have petty reasons to refrain from it, like focusing on making the world a better place through hard work...y'know, stuff like that is unimportant.
    • If you celebrate holidays that promotes kindness, generosity, solidarity etc. all the good things, you should ostracize people who don't want to celebrate them.
    • People who don't celebrate holidays are evil party poopers trying to ruin all the fun.
  • If someone doesn't like a holiday, invading their home, kidnapping them, ruining their dinner, and wasting their entire night are all reasonable and positive ways to change their mind.
    • As is trying to bully and emotionally blackmail them into celebrating with you anyhow via a story that you know will make them uncomfortable at several points. And having a guest at the party who's basically there under duress won't bring down the mood at all!

• "The Fault In Our Cutie Marks"
  • Trust perfect strangers with making life-changing decisions for you.
    • Recruit perfect strangers to make life-changing decisions for you, and feel free to get upset if they say they don't feel qualified.
  • The best people for concerned parents to consult about a troubling quality their child has is a trio of children who are the same age.
  • When you worked unbelievably hard at getting something most people figured out with ease, all that hard work means you're now an expert at the topic rather than that you simply had a learning disability or are (to be harsh but blunt) simply incompetent.
  • The only thing any of your skills and abilities amount to in life is the binary quality of "having a purpose".
  • When you run a self help business and cannot help someone, the next best thing is to hire them. That makes sense, right?
  • Ashamed of the culture into which you were born? Don't bother trying to help them change for the better. Instead, cosplay as a member of the race/ethnicity whose culture your prefer.
• "Flutter Brutter"
  • You are not hypocritical for telling your lazy brother to get a job even when your "job" basically amounts to "Crazy Cat Lady with an expanded portfolio".
  • Males should have real jobs that make money rather than pursuing their interests. This is more optional for females.
  • Give your brother shit for shirking jobs that are given to him, even though you totally try to do it time and time again.
  • Males who repeatedly and incessantly push themselves on women are repulsive and disgusting. When a tortoise does it to a woman, or a woman does it to a man, however, it's a case of never giving up, the right thing to do, and will be a happy ending.
  • Male hippies who are idle slackers with messy unkempt hair that reflects poor personal hygiene are disgusting and need to clean their act up and get a job. Female hippies who are idle slackers with messy unkempt hair that reflects poor personal hygiene are best friend material and are perfect just the way they are.
  • Males who are preening self-aggrandizing buffoons who consider themselves entitled to have a woman purely because she is attractive despite her clear disinterest in them are awful and disgusting and deserving of consequence and even being legitimately screwed out of a job to further the main character's agendas. Females who are preening self-aggrandizing buffoons who consider themselves entitled to have a man purely because he is attractive (and rich!) despite his clear disinterest in them are poor victimized wide-eyed innocent girls who were horribly mistreated and deserved to lash out at him for it. Three Times A Lady!
  • Corporal punishment against your employees is perfectly acceptable.
  • It is unreasonable to leave a job where your employer uses corporal punishment on you.
• "Spice Up Your Life"
  • Critics are jerks and totally at fault, not the dumbasses who take their critiques as gospel truth instead of forming their own opinions.
    • When a critic does have enough influence to essentially make their opinions law, do not question how it happened. Just focus on cleanup.
  • Taking business advice from two random strangers with little to no business sense^note Rarity being "little" and Pinkie Pie being "no" and absolutely zero experience or knowledge of the food industry or running a restaurant who got involved because a magic coffee table told them to will end in success. Just because they already made a mess of it once is no reason to lose faith.
  • When your opinion is different than that of another, you are 100% right because you are you and they are 100% wrong because they're kind of a jerk. Don't stop to consider that this might not be your area of expertise, that your antagonist, being a professional in their industry, may have at least some valid points, or that you might be better off trying to find a compromise. You've got a point to prove so stand your ground and rigidly stick to your guns because there's no way you're letting your ire with someone who's a dick drive you to win the argument for the sake of teaching them a lesson.
• "Stranger Than Fan Fiction"
  • The only way to enjoy a story is if it's actually true.
  • Once again we learn the only crimes worth the attention of the law are huge potentially world-ending ones like Discord being a dick or Tirek busting out of the joint. Those criminals who only kidnap individuals, enslave portions of your kingdom, and go God only knows what else off-camera? Nah, they're fine. A random citizen has at least some of it covered.
  • The fame and money you make by selling your books and convincing everyone it's fictional is worth not bringing these genuinely dangerous and even murderous criminals and monsters to the attention of Princess Celestia, and even the people who learn the truth will continue to hail you as a hero instead of the selfish bastard you actually are.
  • Continuing the lesson from the last Daring Do episode, we learn that if you stalk a celebrity they'll eventually befriend you and you'll get to go on adventures with them. It will also make you more of a true fan of theirs than someone who just enjoys their work but has never met them.

• "The Cart Before the Ponies"
  • Adults have absolutely no business getting involved in a competition where children build vehicles and then race them at potentially dangerous speeds around a track which criss-crosses itself several times.

• "28 Pranks Later"
  • Convince your heavily competitive friend to stop doing something by first challenging them to do it better, then besting them at it. This works every time.
  • The best way to teach your physically fit quick to fight combative friend a lesson on pranking is to put her in a scenario where she is not only fearing for her life but also feels cornered. It's not like she could respond to said threat with violence, as has been her behavior time and again in the past, and injure someone, leaving not only her with the guilt of having harmed one of her dearest friends but also leaving said friend wounded. Bonus points if you put children and even babies at risk of this harm.
  • Giving someone a free cake is a meanspirited prank, not a harmless one that is actually quite generous and nice because it involves giving them a free cake.
    • And if you give them two free cakes, one of which is larger than the doorway it would have had to be brought in through and both of which are delicious, they are perfectly justified in swearing bloody vengeance upon you.
  • Only pranksters who are thoughtless of other people's feelings deserve to be told off and set right. People who are thoughtless of other people's feelings because of ignorance, being bitter their boyfriend dumped them, putting their own feelings first, or just for the fun of it are quirky and charming.
  • Many people banding together and having fun at the expense of a single person is a good thing to do because "everyone enjoys a good scare". One person having fun at the expense of many people is mean, callous, thoughtless, and horrible, and so everyone should take them down a peg by banding together and having fun at their expense.
  • When a friend confides in you with a secret, immediately sell them out if fun can be had. This won't damage the trust or faith they have in you at all if it's for a good reason.
  • When someone or something is chasing you because you have in your possession something that is unimportant and doesn't even belong to you, take it with you effectively making yourself their target rather than leaving it behind so you won't be pursued.
  • Don't even think about trying to be funny. You'll just end up hurting someone's feelings.
  • When a friend does something genuinely horrible like blowing up a factory and likely causing destructive and irreversable changes to an entire country's way of life, let it slide. When a friend does something not so bad like develop a bit of a hero complex or play a few pranks, stage an elaborate town-wide prank to horrify them, humiliate them, knock them down a few pegs, generally mess with them, or any combination thereof until they learn their lesson.
  • Meta example: You can pull pranks on everyone in town, and if they get upset, it's their fault for being hypersensitive babies! If they retaliate, they're the real bullies and they should've known better than daring to go against the fandom's favorite.... er, innocent prankster!
  • As explained above, if you prank Fluttershy, you're dead meat. Enjoy your zombie prank, you monster.
  • A prank isn't very good if you're the only pony laughing, and the trick is making sure that your idea of funny matches the pony you're pranking. Nobody cares that the griffon you bullied at a party or the dragon you tried to drown in freezing water weren't laughing because they're not ponies. Remember children, you can treat people differently than you if they're a different race than you! Princess Twilight says so!
• "The Times They Are A Changeling"
  • Someone has a justified hatred towards a race? Just sing a quick little song and they'll instantly forget their racist tendency.
  • Befriending someone is as easy as roboticaly declaring "I AM YOUR FRIEND NOW BZZZT-CLICK ENGAGE FRIENDSHIPPING".
  • And yet again we learn literally the only thing that determines if someone is worthy of redemption is if they've never had a friend but want one. Absolutely nothing else matters, from their personality to past deeds done.
  • Immediately trust the person you have every reason in the world not to trust just because a friend vouched for them, up to the point you let them come within touching distance of a defenseless child. There's no way something defined by it's deceptive nature could be lying, or your friend could have made a lapse in judgement, or anything like that.
  • When the first thing you do with your brand new friend is completely and utterly betray him when he needs you most, you can still count on him when you need him if you give a feeble apology and a reminder that the two of you "are friends".
  • Drag your new friend along to an area where everyone hates him. What could possibly go wrong?
  • Friendship with an unlikely person has nothing to do with empathy, finding a common ground or interest, or spending sufficient time together to forge a relationship. It has to do with bluntly declaring you are friends, spending barely an afternoon together (if even that), never once doing anything to earn each other's trust or affection (up to and including turning your back on them when they need you the most, as discussed prior), and singing a contrived song.
• "Dungeons and Discords"
  • Disregard the moral of the first episode: now a day spent hiding indoors and playing games is better than a day spent leaving the house and making new friends.
  • This is still true even if someone offers to take you there and pay for everything.
  • That said, when offered to go on a free exotic vacation to a place full of good food, good music, and beautiful women, opt out and play a tabletop game that you could play at any given time.
  • Getting so carried away during a game that you actually put your new friends in physical harm up to the point they could actually be killed will guarantee they have a fun time and want to keep you around, not make them so angry with and wary of you that they file a restraining order or something.
• "Buckball Season"
  • If you're coaching a small team that doesn't feel like competing just so you can live vicariously through their accomplishments and boost your ego, you can always somehow manipulate them into doing it anyway.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers! Your ground-bound hornless friends will love playing with you when you can use flight or telepathy (or both if you're Celestia's little stooge) to gain an unfair advantage. See also: Fall Weather Friends
• "Every Little Thing She Does"
  • Once again we learn if you're a main character you can literally do anything to anyone or anything, and get off completely scot-free if you give a feeble apology. Even if what you did was a blatant relapse into crimes you did that already would have earned you a one-way trip to the moon if you weren't cute and marketable with a sob backstory.
  • We also learn again that no matter how badly you wrong your friends, they will instantly forgive you if you apologise.
  • An abusive controlling monster who simply can't understand that it's wrong to force you into doing things against your will and doesn't care if they harm you or not (only whether or not you still want to be friends with them) is a good-at-heart misunderstood person, not a bad person by definition. You'd be wrong if you didn't want to be around such a nauseatingly dangerous and uncaring individual so you'd better just laugh off every terrible thing they do and hope they don't do it again tomorrow, just like people with abusive spouses!
• "P.P.O.V. (Pony Point of View)"
  • Successful mediation is mostly a matter of finding a scapegoat.
  • Forgiveness is instantaneous. Nobody ever needs time to cool off.
  • Stay on dry land. You'll be happier that way.
• "To Where And Back Again Parts One and Two:"
  • "A changeling can change" was meant literally. A different race can only be perceived as "good" if they change to look more aesthetically pleasing to you. Ugly people never win! That's the moral of the story!
  • Let the weakened criminal who has just declared her burning intent to kill you and everyone you hold dear just fly lazily away over the horizon. Never mind the fact that you have the world's fastest flyer, a handful of near Physical Gods capable of grabbing and moving stuff with their minds (two of whom have literal immobilization spells in their arsenal) just standing there wishing they had hands and pockets to thrust the former into the latter, an actuall Physical God who can warp reality with a finger snap, the entire reformed changeling army, and whatever the heck the newly transformed King Thorax is capable of. It's not like the last time you were too busy patting each other on the withers and jerking around with a wedding allowed her to fortify herself and come back worse than ever and achieve a Near-Villain Victory... well, what are the odds of that happening a third time?
  • Bring a limited supply of smoke bombs and no fireworks. It's not like you'll need the latter to fight back...
  • Dark and dull fur colors are bad, light and neon colored fur colors are good!
  • Four seasons ago, you were clearly able to beat up those drones. When they come back much later, put up zero resistance this time.
  • The REAL reason those scary monsters were bad is because they had a girl ruling over them! Just usurp her and make their leader a guy, women don't know how to rule... wait.
    • Then again, Celestia doesn't exactly have the shiniest track record either^note - The inherent abilities of your race determines if you are qualified or not to be the leader. Even if your leadership results in subjects that live in constant fear of monster attacks, a military that is laughably feeble, people that have lived in cultural and technological stagnation for years, having to send what are essentially teenagers to fight your battles, and a culture rife with social inequalities is definitely not proof that you've lead with debatably low success for years; if you're race is superior, you are a good leader and deserve to lead unopposed., but we're told she's a good leader so... she must be, right?
  • Your mentor wasn't willing to forgive your friend who was kind of rude to her and lashed out once at her after being genuinely wronged by a staged effort by all her friends to humiliate her, but she'll certainly be willing to forgive the Emotion Eater who kidnapped her sister-in-law, tried to stage her to murder her sister-in-law, implicitly raped her brother, staged an invasion of her home country twice, and worst of all spat out the fritters. You go right ahead and extend that olive branch to Chrysalis without even asking your mentor if it would be okay.

Season 7

• Celestial Advice
  • Empty Nest Syndrome is the only reason a person wouldn't want their pupil of friendship to leave. Not because they're clearly not ready to graduate, are still prone to evil impulses, have learned little at best, or still (let's be honest here) have only a cursory understanding (if that) of basic concepts of friendship.
  • Being in the right place at the right time, and in a position you were only able to be in in the first place because the villain who kidnapped everyone else didn't even know you existed, and doing a heroic act means you deserve to graduate university. The same way pushing someone out of the way of a speeding vehicle means you automatically earn your Bachelor's Degree.
  • When someone in a dilemma comes to you for advice, giving them no straight answers and simply telling them "You must decide for yourself what is right" is good helpful advice, not an absolute unhelpful cop-out disguised as advice because you're too proud to admit you don't have a clue in Hell what they should do either.
• "All Bottled Up"
  • Friendship is a magical and sacred thing, and you should cherish it even if your friend is a selfish, egotistical, obnoxious jerkass who repeatedly tramples on your feelings without a second thought. Unless they're the childhood friend who's a minority, the loyal friend you don't need anymore because your new friends are blank flanks, or the buddy from basic training who's standing between you and being a squad leader...
  • Even though screwing with people's heads and emotions is the reason you were a villain to begin with, and even though you were dumb enough to try it again and nearly lose all your newly won friends, just do it again. Keep trying too; you're a protagonist now so you're immune to consequences for your actions anyways. Just ask Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Twilight Sparkle, Rarity...
  • Attempting to use mind control on yourself rather than tell a friend they're making you angry is a minor error in judgement, not a sign that the deep-rooted insecurities that have plagued you all your life are still a bit worse than you want to admit.
  • Your friendship is the best thing ever and you should parade it around like it's the second coming of Gusty. Unless it costs you a record. In which case, shame on you.
  • If you have deep-rooted anger issues, that's okay; that makes you unique and interesting. It's not like you have to make an attempt to fix them or anything; that'd be boring.
  • Don't learn that taking the easy way out is a bad idea; that's not the fun way to do things.
  • Character development is boring!
• "A Flurry Of Emotions"
  • CHILDREN ARE THE DEVIL.
  • Ill-behaved little monsters should be allowed to run amock and do whatever they want because it's cute.
  • Raising your voice at a child who is out of control, up to and including endangering the lives of others, and utterly refusing to listen to reason or calm down is terrible, wrong, and makes you a monster. If your parents ever do this to you, shun and hate them until they apologize. How dare they every so slightly raise their voice at super-special you?
  • In fact, don't discipline your kids at all until they're out of control, then backpedal if it makes them even the least bit sad. Since when is punishment supposed to make a kid feel bad or learn something, anyways?
  • However, yelling at and even striking the child who isn't a member of the chosen master race is a-okay. Fairness is awesome!.
  • Take newborn babies and young children around the sick and infectious!
  • Take the clearly difficult to control and dangerous creature around the vulnerable and bedridden sick children. Since when is being hurled across the room, bed and all, bad for a sick child?
  • Remember what we said in Baby Cakes? Yeah, forget that. Now being a good babysitter (or BAE if you prefer) means only having fun and letting the kid do whatever they want, not being a responsible adult.
  • You don't deserve to be disciplined, no matter what, if you're a special little snowflake like a princess.
  • When your ill-behaved little brat ruins something of someone else's that they will have a lot of trouble fixing but you could fix in a nanosecond, don't offer to help out or fix it. Even if they clearly express how much trouble they will have correcting it in a why that is strongly hinting for you to help out.
  • When someone who has privileges and abilities you don't have ruins something of yours, you have to deal with it and fix it yourself. That's what you get for not being as special as they are!
  • Run at top speed through the supermarket while pushing a shopping cart containing an infant. It's not like there are plenty of blind corners, other shoppers, potential tripping hazards, or plenty of pointy objects to run into.
  • Dumping your kid on someone else at the last minute is perfectly okay, not a supreme dick move. It's not like being a parent means having to forego certain things you want to do for the sake of a child, or like professional on-call babysitters are a thing (even for members of the royal family that have entire rooms full of swag and could afford to hire babysitter who actually knows what they're doing).
  • Give your kid to the woman who thinks it's okay to brainwash children into fighting so she won't be late for a homework assignment and regularly neglects (and occasionally outright abuses) the young dragon in her care. That's parenting at it's finest!
  • Being there for your family means agreeing to any favor asked of you, without regard to pre-existing commitments.
• "Fluttershy Leans In"
  • Never listen to professionals' advice on how to fulfil your ambition, because it's your ambition and you are always right because of this even if you don't know a thing about how to fulfil it yourself. This is still the case even when, three times now, your notions about how to best care for animals have been proven to be at best naive, misguided, uneducated, short-sighted, and completely irreverent of negative consequences.
  • Professionals are terrible, selfish people who exist only to misguide you from your ostensibly 'right' ideas with their own wrong ideas.
  • It's okay to ignore other peoples' advice because you're always right.
  • If you hire people whose area of expertise is at best tangentially related to what you're trying to do and give them extremely vague instructions, it's still their fault if what they come up with isn't what you wanted.
• "Forever Filly": Never tell anyone when you have a problem with something they're doing. A convenient alternate problem that mirrors yours exactly will always get solved right in front of them, and they'll realize the error of their ways all on their own.
• "Parental Glideance"
  • Your parents love you so shut up and take their support, even if it's really annoying, socially disruptive, extremely uncomfortable, nearly gets people serious injured (or even killed) and more suiting for a child than a professional athlete. You're an ungrateful bitch and completely in the wrong if you tell them to knock it off and that you want a little space.
  • When two people are at odds with each other, all the responsibility for changing for the better falls on one person (in this case, the daughter). The other (in this case, the parents) doesn't need to change or accommodate the other in any way, even if they're entirely at fault.
  • Your parents are unhip, obnoxious, out-of-sync morons without even a shred of common sense or self-awareness, but you need to take all of it with a smile because they love you, even though they're actively ruining your life.
  • Hey, if your parents are constantly acting like mare/stallion foals while embarrassing your in public while trying to support you and celebrate your accomplishments, just deal with it. It's not like convincing your parents to support you without behaving like petulant children is a better option.
  • There's nothing wrong with your own child being more mature than you, not at all.
  • If someone is doing something wrong but they have good intentions in doing so, you cannot call them out. That's mean. You should accept their well-meaning no matter how much their actions hurt you.
• "Hard to Say Anything"
  • It's perfectly justified to follow the harebrained schemes of three overzealous children over a decade younger than you are to achieve a romantic relationship as long as you get the girl in the end. Especially if they effectively slipped you and a woman a date rape drug the last time they tried to get you into a romantic relationship.
  • It's okay to force a 20-year old man to forcibly grope a grown woman whilst she is sleeping as long as you learn your lesson.
  • It's fine to behave extremely smarmily and creepily around a woman you like as long as you have a reason for it and don't get the girl in the end.
• "Honest Apple"
  • Intentionally going out of your way to trigger your friend into getting angrier than she's ever been in her entire life is perfectly okay if you're just trying to teach her a lesson about how brutal honesty hurts.
  • Everyone appreciates your honesty until you're honest with them. Then you're an asshole.
  • Want to teach a moral about how claiming "Hey, it's just my opinion" doesn't give you an excuse to be a blunt asshole? Don't have the pony who has shown repeatedly that tact isn't her strong suit learn this lesson. Have the pony who is anything but a blunt asshole learn it.
  • Honest people can be biased on their opinions. Just because they always say what they think is true does not mean everything they say is true.
  • If someone fails at a job because of factors they warned you about from the beginning (which you casually dismissed and asked them to do the job anyway, then saw while they were attempting the job and didn't bother to intervene), it's still 100% their fault.
  • Respecting the work that creators put into their creations is all you need to offer intelligent criticism. Actual knowledge of the field in question is optional.
• "A Royal Problem"
  • You will get off scot-free and even be rewarded for horribly abusing your abilities and causing a ton of problems just because "it worked out in the end". Consequences don't exist since the end justifies the means.
  • Tampering with the powers and jobs of members of royalty is okay as long as it brings them closer in the end and certainly won't earn you a one-way ticket to the moon or Tartarus.
  • When two close siblings are fighting, don't just let them work it out themselves (because siblings fighting? Alert the media!) or send someone close to them to mediate. Send the borderline psychopath who barely knows them, has little to no social skills, crumbles under pressure, and is simply incapable of not trying some hare-brained witchcraft to forcibly solve the problem.
  • The best way to solve someone's problem is to dump an infinitely worse problem on them so they forget all about the original one and/or are too busy dealing with the new one. Want me to show you a little trick to take your mind off that pain? Here, gimme your hand...
• "Not Asking for Trouble"
  • If a third-world nation with an underdeveloped culture accidentally causes an ecological disaster, harass them until they accept international aid or, failing that, send people in to fix the problem covertly. They'll thank you for it in the end, because the Pink Pony's Burden helps the whole world.
  • If you are in desperate need for help, don't actually call for help, but expect that your friends will come to your aid without even asking, because they will somehow know that you are in need of help when you need it most.
  • Help people without their consent. In other words, break the law.
• "Discordant Harmony"
  • Be yourself or you will die.
  • Doing things you're not particularly fond of or interested in purely for the benefit of your friend is bad for you, so don't do it. It's All About You, after all; nobody else matters.
• "The Perfect Pear"
  • Whenever consulting a person you barely know about a very sensitive topic, whether you want to hear about said topic will be one of the first things they will ask you without hesitation.
  • Not telling your own children about your family or origins (even if they are fairly young and your origin is embedded in your own name) is completely acceptable even if much of the reason why you cannot tell them about it is fairly unjustified and it would be more beneficial than ignoring the conflict altogether.
  • If your child is in love with someone you disapprove of, don't make an effort to try and get to know or accept them. Instead, simply pack up all your things and move way to a new location. Your child's happiness means nothing. If they announce that they're getting married and still refuse to leave that person, completely kick them out of your family and don't bother trying to make amends until decades after they've passed away. By then, only saving grace is that your estranged grandchildren are willing overlook your mistakes and welcome you with open arms.
• "Fame And Misfortune"
  • Don't ever become famous.
  • Closing the door on a problem and pretending it will go away will guarantee it will go away, probably as quickly as next episode.
    • Trying to kill someone because they did something you didn't like is just a silly personality quirk, and they'll forget all about it once you calm down.
  • You and your friends will become famous all because you published a diary about your daily friendship lessons, not because of the fact that you've saved the world from impending doom countless times or that your friends are part of a world-renowned flying team, expanding their fashion business across the world and a literal God.
  • Are you and your friend critical of a series, but can still enjoy in spite of its faults? Good news, you guys are LITERALLY THE ONLY PEOPLE THAT ARE. Every other fan is a whiny baby that will literally try to murder the author for writing a story they don't like.
  • When you have taken it upon yourself to be a teacher and your students misinterpret your lessons, they are completely at fault and you have absolutely no responsibility, morally or professionally, to correct it. Just hurl blame and call it a day. See also: Wonderbolts Academy.
  • There are right ways and wrong ways to enjoy something. It doesn't matter if you're having fun or if it's just a hobby or whatever: unless you enjoy something in one narrowly specific way you are doing it wrong And That's Terrible.
    • Part of enjoying a work the right way is liking all of the major characters equally. If you have a favorite character, or one you dislike for any reason, you're a bad fan.
    • It is, however, perfectly okay for fans to disagree with each other over the right way to enjoy a work - just not with the creators.
  • 99% of your fans are horrible, picky, spiteful, ungrateful monsters who you don't ever want around. For the love of God, don't stop buying our toys or watching our show though!
  • If you don't change for the better after watching a show or reading a book, then you're a bad fan and you should feel bad.
  • If you have fans that only complain and Accentuate the Negative, take them down a peg by complaining and accentuating the negative.
  • Not liking a piece of media makes it okay to treat the creator like shit, because when the next episode comes around, it'll be forgotten. Hooray for never taking responsibility for your actions!
  • Meta example: Brush off a legitimate criticism of a character's development by having the character react out of character and claim "her journey to assertiveness was a slow one, not an instant one", rather than just admitting she just learned the same lesson over and over again and that it's not a bad thing at all considering her shyness and unassertiveness are her most likeable qualities. Bonus points if you do so after essentially addressing said criticism, having produced multiple episodes with the character in question behaving more assertively than they had been previously.
    • Warping the warps: Any TV show that doesn't pander to your opinions is bad and ungrateful to have you.
    • Warping the warping of the warps: Any fans that don't unswervingly love 100% of what a TV show produces are just butthurt you don't pander to them and are ungrateful to have you.
  • Another meta example: Taking shots at your nitpicking adult fanbase is more important than remaining entertaining and not boring to your younger target audience.
  • Remember when the entertainer was at fault when the audience took offense to or had criticisms about what was being presented to them, and when it was totally okay to harass the writers because it was a main character doing it? Us neither!
  • Enjoying the comedy of a character known primarily for their comedy means you're a jerkass who doesn't care about anything else.
    • Meta example: Feel free to criticize fans for doing that, even if it's the result of the character being flanderized from "decently well-developed character who happens to like making others laugh" to "mindless comic relief".

• "Campfire Tales"
  • Digging turns you into Arnold Schwarzenegger.
  • Don't ever go camping. Flying spiders will attack and murder you if you ever go into the woods.
  • If you leave your village to go to school, your best friend will become a spiteful, jealous dictator who bans anything that makes people special. See also: Sunburst and Starlight Glimmer.
• "To Change A Changeling"
  • Individuality Is Illegal.
    • And yet being the same is also illegal.
  • Dark (Skin) Is Evil. You'd better pray you can change the color of your skin and the shape of your body if you want any chance in hell of having your valid points listened to or even being accepted.
  • You're totally not a racist bigot if you believe trampling out the customs and beliefs of a race to the point that you even demand they change their appearance, all the while insisting it's for the greater good, while using threats of exile (or worse) to coerce people into agreeing with you. Just ask the Natives of North America, the Aborigines of Australia, and the African Americans who live under Apartheid; they'll TOTALLY agree!
  • It's totally okay to be different, as long as you choose to be different just like everyone else. All changelings are equal, but some are more equal than others.
  • It's wrong to bully and harass people into changing their appearance to suit your own values. Says the people who are bullying and harassing you into changing your appearance to suit their values.
  • It's wrong to question or challenge the leadership of a leader who is clearly being overwhelmed by his responsibilities, struggling to lead, and may not even be a competent leader. Especially if he is enforcing drastic policy changes, refusing to acknowledge counterpoints despite his lack of experience, and clearly made poor choices regarding self-defense and safety.
  • Liking things the way they used to be is wrong.
  • "Being more assertive" is the best way to convince (force) people to change their minds, rather than presenting a convincing argument or respecting people's wishes. This weeks episode brought to you by yelling: the next best thing to being right.
  • Speaking of assertiveness, being more assertive to convince others that your way is the right way is totally the right thing to do. On the other hand, being more assertive to convince others that your way is the right way is such a horrible act that you deserve to be banished. The difference seems to lie in whether or not you have enough other people blindly agreeing with you, rather than whether or not you're right, wrong, or anywhere in between.
  • Accept others for who they are... unless they aren't what you think they should be and/or you don't need them for something.
  • Respect soldiers until you don't need them anymore, then mistreat them and cast them aside. Then when you need them again, be upset that you drove them away with your mistreatment and ask them to come back and solve your own selfish problems. It's not like soldiers are people with feelings and needs as well, or anything like that.
  Let me tell ya somethin', kid. Everybody loves their soldiers until they come home and stop fighting.
  • Be angry at the woman you asked to help solve your problem (and did) because she didn't quite solve it perfectly enough and her solution included going against your brother.
  • The Complainer Is Always Wrong, even if he raises valid points regarding safety and security, until he's not dark and scary-looking anymore.
  • Once again we see you can get off scot-free for formulating a terrible idea that only worked out of sheer dumb luck by giving a feeble apology along with claiming "But at least it worked out in the end, didn't it?".
  • A group of people so crushingly stupid they, under an evil ruler, somehow forgot how to eat, and under a good ruler decided to embrace complete pacifism when a giant apex predator is actively hunting them, can be trusted to live by themselves in the middle of nowhere, rather than needing to be committed to some very "special" care. Clearly they make the cogitative abilities of your average shovel look like Johann Wolfgang von friggin' Goethe by comparison, but they'll do fine, really!
• "Daring Done"
  • Retirement is wrong. Especially if the people telling you this don't give a damn about you as a person but are only selfishly worried about no longer getting goods and / or services out of you. You gotta do what you gotta do!
  • People shouldn't be upset that their belongings were broken, and anyone who labels themselves a hero should be allowed to smash the shit out of it with impunity.
  • Write something that a good amount of people hate? Never write ever again. Write something that a good amount of people like? Run yourself ragged and write for the rest of your life.
  • Hope is all it takes to prevail over a problem. Even if the "problem" is a magic-wielding flying 20,000lb intelligent kaiju lion. Not, you know, magic of your own, or an army, or heavy artillery, or a nuclear bomb, or anything practical. Don't bother coming up with a practical plan or solution; just brashly charge in all hopeful-like and your problem will crumble under the weight and power of all that hope and retreat never to be seen again. Even when you have absolutely no leverage, the problem holds all the cards, and there's literally nothing stopping them from just eating you or sitting on you or just flatly saying no to you and there's absolutely nothing you could do about it.
• It Isn't The Mane Thing About You
  • Never trust a person of a different race who sells pharmaceuticals from a shady shop in the middle of a dense creepy forest.
  • What you look like on the outside isn't as important as how you feel on the inside. Unless you're a changeling, because Dark Is Evil and you're not one of the Pony Master Race so who cares how you feel?
  • No matter what you look like, being confident will make you beautiful. Unless you're a changeling, because the majority think you're wrong and ugly.
  • A magical fix could cause any number of troublesome ticks. Unless it's defeating a villain, saving the town from a monster, defeating a villain, regrowing teeth, upstaging your "friend", defeating a villain, defeating a villain, murdering a bunch of clones with the minds of children, screwing with their dreams to help them out, fucking shit up but it's okay because you get turned into a princess for it, mind-raping wild animals into avoiding their natural food source, turning yourselves into breezies because being smaller and weaker than the ponies normally are somehow helped the other breezies, screwing with their dreams to teach them a lesson, easily cleaning up a mess, defeating a villain, screwing with their dreams to help them out, screwing with dreams to defeat a villain (C-c-c-combo!), keeping your little brat from misbehaving, making friends, winning via an unfair advantage at sports, casting an evil spell on your friends but it's okay because you won't be punished for harming your friends, casting an evil spell on yourself but it's okay because you won't be punished for all the damage it caused, casting an evil spell on royalty but it's okay because you'll be rewarded for harming them and all the damage it caused (Three times the charm!), or the overall insistence that friendship itself is magic.
    • ...which means by proxy, barbers are the most powerful magicians!
  • If you're going bald, buy hair implants and tell everyone it's a new fashion trend. Works every time.
• "A Health of Information"
  • When writing in your journal how you discovered a previously-unknown cure for a deadly illness, on the off-chance someone might come looking for your journal in search of said cure, only write down what the cure is and leave out how to get it so they can hopefully figure it out for themselves in time to save someone gradually dying from the same disease.
  • If your friend is in mortal danger with a terminal disease, don't feel the need to rush to find a cure to save them. Get some sleep and relaxation first.
• Marks and Recreation
  • Never let Starlight Glimmer babysit your foal; she'll teach him that cutie marks are terrible, causing him to disrupt a perfectly good day camp.
  • Notice that your younger sibling is having concerns about his future? Force him to go to summer camp!
  • Wanting to be different is wrong. Dare to conform, force yourself to be what everyone else wants, and don't forget to take your Joy. See also: To Change A Changeling.
  • The best way to help kids figure out what they should do with their lives is with common summer camp activities.^note Hopefully for a certain one-shot character, "professional poet" is a more viable career path in Equestria than it is in real life.
• Once Upon a Zeppelin
  • For the love of Celestia, READ THE MOTHERBUCKING FINE PRINT.
  • If your family is having fun while you're stuck wth a stressful job, yell at them to your heart's content.
  • Refusing to uphold your end of a signed agreement you willingly entered into just because your daughter, son, and daughter in law are royalty and you were too lazy/stupid to read the terms that were clearly outlined, but still keeping what was given to you in the agreement at the expense of the other party isn't a selfish, morally bankrupt, and even illegal thing to do if you are the protagonists.
  • Yell at and strike the innocent kid for his lack of social skills and that he thinks so highly of you he's clearly too stressed to think straight, instead of explaining to him why what he is doing is wrong. Just like you do with your dragon ward who you allegedly love. After all, why should your station as Princess of Friendship™ facilitate the use of diplomacy toward friends? It's only when someone you can't bully with your rank and powers and is a threat comes along that you need to be diplomatic and respectful. That's how the world works!
    • That said, feel free to come along and apologize to him later to save face once you've used intimidation and physical abuse to get what you want from him and weaseled out of your end of a signed legally binding agreement.
  • Is your friend or relative heartbroken at missing an event or spectacle they had been looking forward to? Make a shoddy recreation of it yourself and everything will be fine!
  • Refusing to follow your part of an agreed-upon legally binding signed and notarized contract but still keeping what was given to you as part of the contract, in other words breaking the law and effectively scamming and stealing from the other party involved in the contract, is perfectly fine if the contract inconveniences you in any way. An agreed-upon legally binding signed and notarized contract that sells your friend into slavery, though? You'd better not only follow, but actually enforce that one, because it's not like it was you being inconvenienced that time and why would the Princess of Friendship want to oppose a contract that broke up and ruined friendships?
  • Providing a service to people on the proviso that they give some manner of payment or service in exchange makes you an awful, greedy, selfish person, even if you clearly outlined the trade of services in a document they signed. See also: Just For Sidekicks.
  • When your greed and negligence puts your daughter in an uncomfortable and subservient position, feel free to continue to enjoy the perks of the deal while your daughter suffers for it. This makes you a good mother rather than a runner-up for Lady Tremaine, because the daughter will find a way to weasel out of the agreement anyways.
  • Popularity is more important than anything because, with it, you can play the pity card and rally enough people behind you to not only worm your way out of a legally binding contract with someone but also bully that person off of the zeppelin they legally own (you get to keep it, too). If you're popular enough you can even make these acts of breach of contract, assault, and theft be seen as morally-superior acts of karma instead of the honestly morally bankrupt act it actually was.
  • You'll always be in the wrong when you go up against people more important or popular than you, even when you're 100% in the right. Don't bother standing up for yourself or even trying to compromise — just back down and let the baby have their bottle because any attempts to get what you actually morally and/or legally are entitled to will be seen as wrong.
  • When you offer to do something, and then fail to do it, it's the fault of everyone else. Make sure you let them know how wrong and horrible they are for being within modest proximity of you while you failed to do something you said you could.
  • Claiming to be capable of something you have no reasonable chance of doing purely for personal gain and then getting in over your head because of it is only wrong when other people do it.
• Secrets and Pies
  • Stalk and harass your friend until they confess that secret they've been hiding from you. It's okay, because keeping that secret will have made them a terrible friend, and your stalking and harassment will be conveniently forgotten.
  • Hiding something from a friend to make them happy makes you a horrible, horrible person.
  • People hate your cooking. Deal with it.
  • You don't have to like everything about something you like. That you don't like your friend's cooking in no way means you don't like your friend or that you're a bad person. Unless it's our show you don't love 100% unwaveringly, in which case you are a cad And That's Terrible but please don't stop watching our show or buying our merchandise!
• Uncommon Bond
  • Recreating something that makes people nostalgic and then cramming it down their throats is a terrible thing to do. Hint hint, Cartoon Network.
• Shadow Play, Part 1 and 2
  • If you have a really good idea for an episode with an engaging plot, funny jokes, and a nice amount of continuity that doesn't feel like it's being crammed down your throat, but you don't know how to lace it all together, throw caution to the wind and pander solely to the fans that care only about world-building.
  • Never meet your idols. They will belittle you until you save the world with the one thing they derided.
  • Never solve your own problems. Instead, banish them to another world and hope the bipedal citizens of said world will solve them for you. Failing that, just stuff your problems in a box and hope they never come back, and if they do it's fine because someone else will take care of them just like they did with your sister, Discord, King Sombra, and Lord Tirek!
  • Don't unleash an infamous and highly dangerous criminal from imprisonment, otherwise your idol will hate you for it.
  • A single conversation is all it takes to redeem a highly dangerous criminal who has committed various atrocities and has been imprisoned for years as a result of the danger he poses. It's just par for the course with this page.
  • It's not your fault you're a dangerous criminal, it's because you're being possessed by evil dark magic.
  • The fact that every influential person of power in Equestrian history except for Princess Celestia was "coincidentally" sealed away with absolutely no attempt on her part to release them isn't suspicious at all!
  • If one member of your team feels left out, never bother to explain this to anyone else, then steals your artifacts of power and plans to use them for an ominous-looking spell without explaining why he's doing it, you are automatically the bad friend. They are completely blameless in whatever massive misunderstanding that might occur from pulling an incredibly stupid stunt like that.

Season 8

• School Daze Parts One and Two:
  • If the guidelines and rules that you set are causing a buttload of problems because they're being enforced by the guy you hired to enforce them, don't take initiative and actually change the rules or step in and supersede him entirely. Just passively remind the guy who is enforcing them that his way of thinking "caused problems in the past" and step back. Even if you're a Physical Goddess with absolute authority and the guy enforcing them clearly has a malicious agenda behind his actions.
  • Racism is only bad when it actually causes direct quantifiable problems. Thus, people who are loud and open about their disgust over a different race's appearance, openly refer to minorities as monsters, are coldly dismissive of people because they're a different race, or fantasize about violently assaulting minorities aren't bad people at all!
  • And, of course, the people who are loud and open about their disgust over a minority's appearance, openly refer to minorities as monsters, and fantasize about violently assaulting minorities are perfect candidates to teach at a school that preaches friendship between races!
  • The bureaucracy is always wrong. Even when they're challenging the teaching methods of a school teacher who in the past has repeatedly demonstrated poor treatment of children, questionable teaching methods, tendency for double standards and holding grudges, callousness when solving problems, willingness to disregard other people's feelings or take credit for other people's work, lacks experience and formal training as a teacher or child care giver, lacks First-Aid qualification, and doesn't even have one of those slick teacher's blazers. Yep, the bureaucracy is absolutely wrong here because they are a bit rude, enforced the rules they are paid to enforce, and kind of look like Severus Snape.
  • A person who's last job was effectively Joseph Stalin (duties included brainwashing and Serving The Kool-Aid) before moving onto triggering the apocalypse for petty vengeance is an ideal person to trust with molding the minds of impressionable young youths. After all, children need to learn how to manipulate others, feign regret when caught to avoid punishment, convince others to let bad things slide because "they're trying", and dispose of bodies sooner or later.
  • The next time you're getting manhandled by the government, cheer up. Even the royals who have absolute authority over the government need to put up with their shit.
  • If you're royalty who intends to teach nebulous concepts without formal training you'll get to do so with a much bigger school, more staff, less students, and without following legal regulations. If you're one of the (ergh) common folk who intends to teach things like math, history, science, grammar, or the arts, you get zero regard, a single teacher, a dinky one-room barn, and royalty will gleefully bring ill-behaved little brats around whenever they feel like it to trash the place. You don't like that? Maybe next time be born a royal who makes the rules instead of one of the mud ponies who follows them.
  • So it's your job to evaluate a school that will be teaching, among others, a dragon (ignoble violent savages who couldn't care less about ponies), a changeling (an invasive enemy nation that until about last week fed on ponies), a griffon (an inherently violent foreign nation that is irreverent to the value of life when money is concerned), and a yak (violent sociopaths who's "culture" demands destroying and violently assaulting others over any minor offense). Challenging this idea or the teaching ability of the proctor or her staff who have absolutely zero experience running such a facility makes you a racist, not the voice of reason who is raising valid points regarding safety and security.
  • So you've decided to open a school and need to staff it. The logical choice is to immediately draft your friends into teaching there for you — don't worry about whether they have any experience or qualifications for this, it's hardly like you need something beyond some personal familiarity with a subject to teach it effectively to a classroom full of students, or how becoming full-time teachers will impact their personal and professional lives. Sure, they may already have work-intensive full-time careers as a result of working all their lives to achieve their personal aspirations, but if they're good friends they'll have no issue with prioritizing your unplanned, spur-of-the-moment decision over the dreams they've worked their entire lives to obtain.
  • When you and your friends decide to fear, mistrust, or judge an entire species based on your narrow-minded and ignorant understanding of them it's justified. When someone else decides to fear, mistrust, or ignorantly judge an entire species based on his narrow-minded and ignorant understanding of them it's racism. The only time "that way of thinking caused problems in the past" is when people who aren't the protagonists and/or are opposing the protagonist's personal goals are engaging in it, after all.
  • When you're too (pick all that apply) incompetent/irresponsible/inexperienced/irreverent/ill-prepared/ignorant to make an institution that's able to meet even the bare minimum standards of mediocrity required to get approval, you don't actually have to improve, or learn, or educate yourself, or practice, or plan better, or get experience, or learn to be a better person from it, or learn that sometimes things just don't go your way and that's fine. Just keep complaining and raising a stink until someone Moves The Goalposts for you.
    Bill Clinton: Thank you, Lisa, for teaching kids everywhere a valuable lesson: If things don't go your way, just keep complaining until your dreams come true.
    Marge: That's a pretty lousy lesson.
    Bill Clinton: Hey, I'm a pretty lousy president.
  • Nobody cares if you're a Hypocrite. To illustrate, the leader of a country that enforces strict gender exclusion regarding their army and a racially-based caste system regarding leadership won't be called out on her bullshit if she points out that someone's way of thinking is racist. Especially if said leader "just happens" to bringing this up in defense of her favorite pupil and has otherwise never cared about racial or gender issues; nobody will call foul on that.
  • Coldly dismissing individuals because they aren't "ponies" makes you an awful racist deserving of moral comeuppance. Outright murdering individuals because they aren't "ponies" makes you the good-natured protagonist deserving of an Everyone Laughs Ending.
  • If someone calls you dangerous and unpredictable, prove him right by threatening to beat the crap out of him.
  • Friendship can't be studied by schools and books. Better open a school where friendship is studied by schools and books at once!
  • The best way to teach different races to get along is to open what is essentially a Residential School and teach them to live by your own personal standards of society and culture. Even if pressured not to do this by the authorities due to safety, security, and competency concerns, just go ahead and do it anyways.
  • Win arguments and get your way by accusing your opponent of racism instead of actually proving his valid claims wrong, challenging his argument, or even attempting to find middle ground.
  • When you MIGHT have racist intentions, your government-sanctioned actions must be reverted and redone, even when the actual actions and reasons don't involve your potential racism. Intentions matter more than actions after all.
  • The dragon who was able to befriend ponies in spite of being a member of a feared enigmatic species, who is directly responsible for a new era of understanding between dragons and ponies, who was indirectly responsible for the new era of peace between changelings and ponies, and who repeatedly shows patience, kindness, and understanding in the face of scorn and mistreatment from friends in spite of easily being able to fight back, doesn't deserve to be a teacher or counselor or even a tutor at the School of Friendship. Just force him to be Twilight's thankless manservant just like before. After all, why would a school that preaches equality and friendship between all actually want to prove that mindset?
  • The leader of a country has no moral or professional obligation to try and ensure the safety of their own nation and it's people, and therefore should put their entire country and all its inhabitants at real risk of war or invasion for the sake of teaching five extra transfer students how to be a tiny bit friendlier than they already are.
  • Adding to the above, anyone who does try to ensure the safety of their own nation is wrong and, by default, a racist. Muggles aren't worth crap after all, just the whims of a princess characterized by her tendency to make plans that fail miserably.
  • Show how morally superior you are by calling out someone's unfair bias against something you believe in, and then demand they have an unfair bias in your favor instead.
  • Believing the true way to foster friendship between different cultures is for the culture that isn't yours to learn to follow your culture's beliefs, ways, and lifestyles makes you open-minded rather than an insensitive bigot. Relations between different races and cultures absolutely should be completely one-sided after all, because we all know your culture is the chosen Master Race.
  • Belittling and mistrusting people with other races and beliefs makes you close-minded and intolerant, while belittling and mistrusting people with just different beliefs does not. Believing that tolerance and acceptance should only apply to certain races absolutely does not make you a racist, either.
  • The best way to get along with another race is to threaten them with genocide until their leader buckles and forces them to get along with you. Why rely on empathy, kindness, understanding, acceptance, and/or forging a relationship when you can rely on The Power of Hate and sowing fear (in other words, terrorism) to get what you want?
  • The Complainer Is Always Wrong, even if he raises valid points regarding safety and security, as long as he's going up against the protagonists. See also: To Change A Changeling.
  • The whims of the few are more important than national security because hey, it's not like national security is a Necessary Evil that keeps thousands upon thousands of people safe, or anything like that. Even in a country with poor-to-nonexistent security that already gets invaded once every fortnight.
  • Even if you live in a country that gets invaded and attacked by monsters and other creatures on a near-constant basis, you are still somehow wrong for being mistrusting of said monsters and other creatures. Even when you live in a world where The Power of Friendship is a literal weapon and you're opposed to someone teaching this power to a group of creatures that have been antagonistic at best to your country for thousands of years.
  • When you're struggling to do something within the rules and guidelines set for the safety of yourself and others and your sociopath buddy rolls up and says "screw safety, just do it", you should totally listen. Just like when they say to take drugs and alcohol to cope with problems!
  • Forget Dragon Quest! Now it's suddenly wrong to judge races as a whole based on the wrongful actions of a small handful of wrongdoers. No it has nothing to do with it not being the main characters doing it this time, don't be silly.

• "The Maud Couple"
  • If you know a woman who needed to be put on parole with a live-in friendship teacher to not only grasp the most basic aspects of socialization but also to learn that brainwashing people and destroying all of time because you didn't get laid as a teenager is wrong, still has barely if any concept of propriety where friendship is concerned, and has no family, you should absolutely go to this woman for friendship and family guidance.
  • If you’re a female character who speaks with an emotionless tone, bluntly states her mind, is socially awkward, blankly stares, has a tendency to correct others, sometimes takes things literally and is strangely fixated on an uninteresting subject (in this case, rocks), you’ll be showered with love and praise by the fans. If you’re a male character who speaks with an emotionless tone, bluntly states his mind, is socially awkward, blankly stares, has a tendency to correct others, sometimes takes things literally and is strangely fixated on an uninteresting subject (in this case, sticks), the fans will consider you insufferable and demand for your blood to be spilt.
    • Warping the warp: After all, any character that was deliberately designed to resemble another character deserves the same praise and adulation as the original even if he unapologetically wastes literally everyone's time. The pickle is always worth the same respect as the cucumber, which is why it's totally not at all problematic that a new main character can be described just like the Original Characters that have been mocked for the past seven and a half years in that she's "Twilight Sparkle's doppelganger but slightly less purple but with the same magic powers but some Twilight doesn't have and becomes best friends with all the fan favorite characters like Maud and Discord and Sunset and Spike and Trixie, who totes did nothing wrong and Starlight defends against that big old meanie Twilight who doesn't forgive her until she lost a friend like Starlight but forgives Starlight because she lost a friend and thus becomes Twilight's student and thus reunites with said friend and graduates much faster than Twilight and thus lives in the princess's castle for free without a job until becoming the school's "guidance counselor" and solves every new problem by telling the characters how stupid they are (because why endear Mudbriar to the audience by telling off Pinkie when he automatically deserves endearment for being like Maud?) and thus can easily take Spike's role and—"
  • You're wrong for not liking a smug, asocial, arrogant, and unpleasant individual who feels the need to constantly correct you with information that is inaccurate at best and outright incorrect at worst.
• "Fake It 'Til You Make It"
  • Hire someone shy and unqualified for customer service to work the till, give them no training or instruction, and then throw blame and harshly fire them three times over for doing their job to the best of their abilities with what little experience they had. See also: Princess Spike.
  • Attempting to dress the part for your job is wrong because you should dress in a way that reflects you. This is why you commonly see people working shirtless in torn jeans and crocks serving your food or guys in bathrobes running the counter at the bank.
  • That you lacked the strength and confidence to do a job is proof that you had the strength and confidence to do the job. Wait...
  • Forget Putting Your Hoof Down and One Bad Apple. Now "inner strength" is standing up to and telling off people who run afoul of you.
  • There's nothing wrong with not hiring a manager or someone meant to work in customer service when you open a branch of your business far away from where you live. It's not like anything wrong will happen when your designers (that are also the salesmen) have to leave town for a moment, right?

• "Grannies Gone Wild"
  • You are an awful person and a mean old party pooper if you ever worry for the safety, well-being, or health of a group of centenarians you are directly responsible for.
  • Note that the above does not apply if said centenarian drank a health drink first: in that scenario you must immediately crush the fun they are having for their own good.
  • When a friend asks you to cover for them so they can go somewhere and do something, demand something in exchange for it instead of just helping them out or saying "you owe me". Bonus points if what you ask for in exchange will directly infringe upon what your friend is getting you to cover them for in the first place.
    • On the flip side, if a friend makes that sort of demand from you, don't bother trying to explain your situation or negotiate. Just agree to whatever it is, then find some way to sneak away from your end of the bargain long enough to do what you originally wanted to do.
  • Sexually harassing someone is a-okay if you're female, they're male, and there's about 50 years age difference between the two of you.
  • Having your own wants and/or needs means your actions are bad and you are deserving of blame, even if you acted to the letter of instructions given to you and your wants and needs in no way influenced your decisions and actions. See also: Princess Spike.
  • You're a jerkass if you assume that elderly people are so feeble that they need to be treated like toddlers. Even if you're following instructions from one of their relatives, instructions which imply that they actually are that feeble. Even if you had no way of knowing that said relative has a history of being grossly overprotective.
    • If, on the other hand, you assume that these exact same elderly people can be safely left alone long enough for you to get what you were promised in exchange for your services to them, you're still a jerkass. Damned if you do, damned if you don't!

• Surf and/or Turf
  • Insert yourself into a perfect stranger's problem for entirely self-serving reasons, do nothing to help, actually make the problem worse, and when the problem is solved entirely by outside forces pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for helping out. After all, helping people in need is all about you learning from it and making yourself look good, not about actually helping people's needs.
  • If you’re a main character, the inhabitants of a legendary kingdom will adore you and you'll be able to completely get away with committing horrible crimes like trying to steal said kingdom's most powerful artefact all because you gave a feeble apology. See also: Starlight Glim... What was that? ...You don’t need to say you’re sorry at all? ...No one will even mention your attempted theft? Ooh, boy! What will they get away with next?
  • "Choosing not to choose isn't really a decision" only when you and only you, the perfect purple protagonist, has made the decision for them yourself. See also: The Ticket Master
• Horse Play
  • Go ahead and tell one of the god empresses of the resident diarchy that she sucks at something right to her face. She’ll understand!
  • Forget what we said in Honest Apple. Now you should be as brutally, directly, and tactlessly honest as humanly (equinly?) possible with friends and loved ones. Tell her she's a shit actress right to her face! Tell her that her vocalization sucks and she's a big clumsy ox on stage, and that watching her act probably gave you pony cancer. Use lots of pejoratives and as many cusses as possible to hammer the point home. That's what friends who are honest and trusting of each other do!
  • Not shitting all over someone for trying their best but doing a bad job makes you a dishonest untrustworthy person, not someone with tact and respect for other people's sensitivities and feelings. How dare you not break someone's heart for your own purposes, You Bastard!.
  • Blame your student for failing to learn what you thought you'd taught them. It's not like you, as their teacher are to blame for failing to teach them this. See also: Wonderbolts Academy.
  • Manipulate a young child's love for you to use him as a tool to distract an angry mob and soak up all their abuse and thrown produce like a sponge. Seriously, how is Queen Chrysalis known as the love-sucking manipulative monster instead of Rarity?
  • Even if you're a princess who's entire life and every whim is paid for by the taxpayer's money, don't bother to hire a professional or two to put your play together.
  • Your actions matter more than your intentions. Except when they don't.
• The Parent Map
  • Being an overbearing parent who treats their kid as if they're still five years old is wrong, even when two thirds of that kid's life could be best described as a magically fueled years-long temper tantrum where they lashed out at everyone and ruined every life they touched just because their friend moved away. After all, it's not like someone who acted like a spoiled rotten entitled little brat until a princess gave into their selfish desires to placate them could ever be described as immature or child-minded.
  • Being born a childhood prodigy who grew up in a wealthy gated suburb with a loving parent who doted over you and gave you everything you wanted and needed but having a single friend move away is a sympathetic backstory that justifies and excuses enslaving and torturing a town full of people and shattering time itself. Everyone feel bad for and comfort the privileged rich girl who had a single minor bad thing happen to her in her otherwise idyllic life at once!
  • When you meet up with your dad after intentionally keeping out of touch with him for years and spending that time becoming a villainous brat hell-bent on purging the world of peoples' very identities followed by nearly destroying the fabric of time out of some juvenile motivation, don't worry. You don't have to tell him about that at all, just sweep it under the rug and refer to it as just a simple mistake you've made in the past. He won't question it at all.
  • Hide from your past by convincing others (and yourself) that all you ever did wrong was "made some mistakes" and that you've "learned from it", rather than actually embracing your past, learning from it, and using the experience and knowledge to change for the better and actually become a good person.
  • If you yell at your parents for being weird overbearing creeps, apologise for it. It's not as if you're completely in the right for calling out their irritating behaviour and they have to accept the blame for driving you crazy or anything like that. See also: Parental Glideance.
• Non-Compete Clause
  • Even when the teachers of a school are so irresponsible they directly endanger the lives of their students, the racist jerk who said the teachers of the school were irresponsible and were endangering the lives of ponies is wrong. Never stand up for what you believe in, because people who have a self-appointed moral high ground will always be right no matter how stupid, immature, short-sighted, or selfishly motivated their actions actually are.
  • Consider a field trip where a student nearly died, everyone was attacked by monsters, and the teachers were so busy measuring their dingles they couldn't be bothered to do their jobs to be a success. "Any landing you can walk away from is a good one" and "acceptable losses" are elements of a successful field trip, after all.
  • When you make severe mistakes don't own up to them. Instead get children to lie on your behalf and claim the "mistakes" were intentional to teach a lesson. This will get you rewarded instead of punished, even if you get called on your bullshit by the person the children lied to.
  • Callous disregard of the job and well-being of students makes you perfect teacher of the month material.
  • A school where the teachers learn the lessons and the students are just sort of along for the ride having fun is a terrific school!
  • If the students of your school don't consider you qualified to be awarded Teacher of the Month, prove them right.
  • The students of your school will learn the examples by you showing them anything but the examples.
  • Apparently, field trips are Olympics-worthy sports, complete with running commentary.
  • An award that is entirely cosmetic is more valuable than the well-being and lives of your wards, the faith and trust your boss and/or friend has in you, and the integrity of your accepted profession as an instructor. Especially if the reward is supposedly given in acknowledgement of your professionalism, ethics, and competency as an instructor.
  • Being completely self-absorbed, obsessed with winning, and not caring if your actions hurt or kill others is absolutely fine. Except when it's not. Being friends with Twilight Sparkle: The next best thing to being a good person!
  • Making dumb decisions because you're not suited for the job you've been thrust into, screwing around when you're supposed to be working, abusing your position for personal gain, and causing a ton of damage that could have caused an international incident is only wrong when other people do it.
• "The Break-Up Breakdown"
  • Someone who eagerly snaps at his partner over something they overheard the partner saying whilst eavesdropping and then won't even let the partner say what they had to say isn't an emotionally manipulative asshole spouse: they only got japed by a silly misunderstanding! Keep this in mind the next time you're getting snapped at for no reason by the doofus you met only a few months ago.
  • Alcoholism can be hilarious if you insist he's just drinking cider, and getting drunk off your ass with a child and an ex-criminal instead of confronting your problems will ensure they all work out in the end anyways. Grab your Frothy Mugs of Water and bottoms up, pal!
  • Don't trust the postal service. It's staffed by a bunch of careless incompetents with no regard for your important items and plans, and relying on them will screw up your life.
• Molt Down
  • Don't bother taking your kids to the doctor unless symptoms manifest. We all know kids don't need check ups or vaccinations, and that all medical conditions and diseases have outward symptoms detectable by the five senses.
  • Raising an adopted child with needs and a physiology you do not understand and are not equipped to care for makes you an awesome parent, not abusive by neglect.
  • Kidnapping an infant wild animal and keeping it against it and its parent's will for about a week before releasing it from your servitude will forge a life bond between the two of you, so go out and mess around with the infants of wild animals right away!
  • Puberty only takes a day.
• Marks For Effort
  • Using deceit to get your way won't work. Except for this time, and this time, and this time, and this time, and this time, and this time, and this time, and this time, and this time...
  • Feel free to harshly and spontaneously blaming your friends for sabotage even though you have no evidence or reasoning whatsoever to suspect them of such an act, even if the likelihood that they legitimately tried to help and simply failed at it is far more likely. This even counts if you're the principal of a "Friendship School" and friendship is allegedly your area of expertise, and you up until now went so far as to declare these people were masters of friendship (ie, people who would not sabotage a friend). This is because real friends assume the absolute worst of their friends at every available opportunity, rather than giving each other things like the benefit of the doubt, trust, and forgiveness.
    • And ultimately getting approval on your friendship abilities from the principal who displayed such disgraceful behavior regarding friendship is a good thing, not utterly shameful.
  • When you're running an institution and three people who, in your own words, are masters of the curriculum show up and want in, tell them to frigg off. Don't, you know, let them in as teachers or tutors or anything like that.
  • Don't believe or trust the words of your friends, or give them the benefit of the doubt. Instead, believe and trust the words of the perfect stranger.
  • When the above-all deity says that actions matter more than intentions, and the "guidance counselor" who needed a live-in teacher to be told that "mind control is bad" and "don't destroy the world because a boy moved away" in order to stop being a self-justifying psychopath and start learning basic social etiquette at like 30 says that good intentions matter the most (because she totally stopped being a self-justifying psychopath and is thus an authority on this), said live-in teacher with actual responsibilities should listen to the former, whereas it doesn't matter where kids learn morals from. Who cares about what a bunch of kids think?
  • When you lecture a friend that you have a low opinion of about being judgmental and jumping to conclusions even if it's something they already know and taught you, disregard it like the next day, and cause your friends to permanently turn their backs on you, all it takes is a feeble and vague apology from one friend and you saving the day through your known impulsive and neurotic conclusions for insta-forgiveness. Just do it again! Only if you can now permanently turn your back on your friends and leave it to the other except worse neurotic mess who makes impulsive and reckless decisions to save the day. You don't even have to apologize! Forgiveness is literally accepting people into or back into your life with love and open arms regardless of how much hurt they caused after all. Why else would she be interested in it?...
  • A former world-destroying psychopath who compliments someone's evil plan with a devious grin is totally someone who's fit to be a guidance counsellor, let alone be allowed near children.
• The Mean 6
  • A site guarded by the unknown, magically fueled, and potentially dangerous forces that you don't know everything about is totally a cool place to go camping.
  • Being evil because you were created that way but fully capable of thinking, feeling, and learning to be better means you deserve a brutal death via Deus ex Machina without even being given the chance to change. Being evil because you're just a sociopath who chose to do wrong because your boyfriend dumped you or you're jealous other people are more popular than you means you deserve to be Easily Forgiven, rewarded for your actions, and constantly given second chances.
  • That shapeshifters, brainwashing spells, and mind-altering spells are so common in Equestria they're sold in bulk at Costco isn't a good enough reason for Twilight and the gang to assume someone acting wildly out of character might have been replaced or brainwashed, so why should you rely on past experiences to better handle new problems or issues? Be like Twilight and her friends and never learn from your past!
  • Adding to the above, true friends are completely passive and uncaring of sudden changes in each other's personalities that may imply something is seriously wrong. Why should you care that your friends are suddenly being jerks? After all, it's not like anything's wrong with all-important YOU right now.
  • Not to mention, people who are that disinterested in the well-being of their friends are amazing candidates to run a school that teaches the concept of friendship to children. Especially one with students from foreign nations with shaky at best relations to yours that have threatened war over the treatment of their children, and especially when it's well-established the teachers don't even care about the risk either.
  • Murder is totally fine if, by your own personal standards, the victims "aren't real people". Seig Heil, Equestria! See also: Too Many Pinkie Pies.
    • There's nothing troubling about Queen Chrysalis' personal standards of what doesn't count as a real person, that being clones, being the exact same personal standards of a royal family member and equal to Princess Celestia, that being Twilight Sparkle. Nothing at all...
  • Genocide solves everything! Queen Chrysalis uses it to solve her problems, so why shouldn't you?
  • Intentionally creating clones of people to use as tools to further your own agenda with zero regard for their wants or well-being, threatening them with death when they get out of line, and not caring in the slightest when they die makes you evil... when you're Queen Chrysalis. Intentionally creating clones of people to use as tools to further your own agenda with zero regard for their wants or well-being, actually killing them when they get out of line, and finding joy in it when they die makes you the heroic protagonists... when you're the Mane Six. Once again, what determines if your actions and moral scope is good or evil is determined entirely by if you are a protagonist or befriended by a protagonist. Not actually your actions, or the motive and intent behind them. Why should it be any other way?
  • Hope you're not too fond of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, because we're gonna learn you that indiscriminately mass-murdering individuals who could potentially be a threat to your ideals and/or way of life is the greatest thing ever! Hey, it worked out well for the people of North Korea, The Soviet Union, and of course 1930s-ish Europe, didn't it? Hail HYDRA, Equestria!
• A Matter Of Principals
  • Once again we see that even though this school is seriously endangering its students and ponies in general and that the teachers are too uncaring / incompetent to care at all, you'd still be wrong if you pointing this out could in any way be construed to be "racist".
  • The best way to stop a bad person from doing bad things is to cave to their demands and give them what they want. Even if they don't deserve it and it's really only encouraging them to do more bad things every time they want something. See also: Starlight Glimmer.
  • If someone calls you incompetent and power-hungry, believes you're not principal material and that you shouldn't be allowed around children, prove him right by acting out with magic like you've been trying (and failing) not to do for three seasons straight and blast him to kingdom come.
  • Give a highly dangerous individual who just endangered the lives of schoolchildren the role of vice headteacher, regardless of the objections of said schoolchildren he tormented.
  • You have completely sound priorities if your response to someone terrorising children is to give him a stern warning yet you obliterate him after he insulted you personally.
  • When you are the one who set the precedent of "mistreating, abusing, physically assaulting, and even threatening the very way of life of others is good and makes you deserving of what you want as long as you're stronger than them and really really want something", you really shouldn't be surprised when other people decide to give this tactic a try as well. Just roll over and give it to them. After all, people deserve to prey on those who are weaker than them.
  • Being a selfish meanspirited predator who attacks others, overpowers them, puts them and their loved ones at real risk of lasting harm, and forces them to give up what they want and need in order to give in to your cupidity and give you a reward you don't deserve is the right thing to do. The weak should fear the strong, after all. Give this a try and not only will all your dreams come true but you won't suffer any karmic repercussions, punishments, or negative consequences for acting like this. See also: Starlight Glimmer.
• The Hearths Warming Club
  • Detaining children, unfairly accusing them of wrongdoing, and preemptively punishing them with zero evidence or reasoning to believe they are guilty is a totally fair and good thing to do!
  • Unfairly judging, accusing, and preemptively punishing a group of people based on the likelihood that they do or did bad things is only wrong when other people do it.
  • Your race can always be trusted to be good and even change their ways when befriended and offered kindness. Other races not so much. After all, its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the dragon is not equal to the pony; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition.
• Friendship University
  • If someone you have a bad history with seems to be turning over a new leaf, don't trust them; even if all your friends and the immediate evidence supports their sincerity, trust your gut that they're up to no good.
  • Trespassing, committing fraud, and unlawful interrogations are a terrific way to prove that you're the good guy and they're the bad guy.
  • Getting accredited by the government, teaching lessons that don't yield A Degree in Useless, charging tuition fees, and using one's profits as one wishes, makes you the villain. Says the woman who runs an unaccredited school that constantly endangers its students and teaches nebulous concepts, and was only able to exist in the first place because the queen of the world is friends with the headmaster.
  • Getting a crappy school off the ground because someone influential like Starswirl got involved is wrong, according to the woman who got a crappy school off the ground because someone influential like Princess Celestia got involved.
  • A fraudulent school that's probably scamming everyone involved but the students are happy and proud to be a part of is a bad thing... when Flim and Flam start one. When Twilight Sparkle starts such a school, it will prevail even in the face of being prohibited by the school board (in other words, illegally).
  • Listen to the person who weaponizes... well, used to weaponize friendship all the time to defeat world-ending psychopaths when she tells you that the idea of weaponizing friendship is ridiculous.
  • Turning someone in for committing what is actually a crime (trespassing and fraud, to be precise) is wrong if they're the protagonist and you are not. Never forget that it's who you are that determines whether your actions are right or wrong, not what said actions actually are.
  • When you've done wrong to someone (in this case committed fraud and trespassed with malicious intent) and someone responds in kind (in this case blackmail) you are absolutely justified in calling them out for doing wrong.
  • Using the profits of your business for whatever purposes you see fit is wrong. Just because you are entitled to do so both morally and legally, and being able to use profits for your own devices is the objective purpose of profits in the first place, doesn't mean that it's okay to do. Vive le Communisme!
  • Charging tuition to run a privately owned and legally accredited school is wrong. You should do it the way Twilight did it: by abusing her political connections to not only dip into the federal reserve to get the money she needed but also bypass the vetting process altogether after failing the health and safety inspection!

• The End In Friend
  • Friendships need common ground and mutual interests to succeed. People literally can not just like each other due to mutual affection or proximity or anything like that.
  • A friendship where the people like and look out for each other but just aren't that close and argue a bit is a bad friendship that needs to be "fixed". It doesn't matter if the two friends are happy about it or not, or if you actually have to force them to be closer against their will.
  • Having teachers that literally can not be counted on to properly or effectively teach or demonstrate their subject is totally not a red flag that maybe you need new teachers, or that maybe the guy who called them irresponsible and your school a disaster might have actually been right.
  • The best kind of person to help others find common ground in a relationship is a person so obsessed with not compromising and having things their way that they were willing to start a cult that tortured people into becoming members and were willing to literally destroy the world to spite the person who made things not go their way.
  • Inviting a bunch of people to gawk at two friends in their downtime without their permission totally isn't an invasion of privacy, unprofessional, unlikely to succeed, and honestly quite rude. Unless people do it to you; then you can feel free to stage them to fail just to take them down a peg.
  • It's totally okay to deceive others to get them to do what you want, but it's horribly wrong when other people deceive you to get you to do what they want. F is for Fairness, after all!
  • The best way to rekindle a friendship is to lead them on a dangerous and filthy Snipe Hunt, rather than respecting their feelings and having faith in them as actual people by just letting them have some time to cool down and reconcile.
  • The closest friendships are built on deception and lying, rather than mutual understanding and affection. See also: No Second Prances.
  • Friendship is so magic that you'd better outright scam people with disparate interests into being the best of friends.

• Yakity-Sax
  • Follow your heart and fulfill your life's passion, no matter your lack of talent or the damage you cause. It doesn't matter how much you make your friends constantly suffer physically, financially, or emotionally — as long as you're satisfying that deep need of yours, they'll gladly shoulder the burden. As we all know, when push comes to shove, you gotta do what you love, even if it's not a good idea.
  • When you're doing something you love that is disrupting and damaging others, your options are a binary two-choice either quit forever and you be unhappy, or continue and make others unhappy. Compromise, intelligent planning, and meeting in the middle is for chumps! Don't take the damn earpoisonophone to a secluded area to practice, or attempt sound-proofing, or hang out with the yaks who love it instead, or get the friend who can literally create sound-proof bubbles to whip one up for you.
  • Never be honest with Pinkie Pie, it's the equivalent of kicking a puppy.
  • If your friend is teaching themselves how to play an instrument they like but are horrible at it, you should convince them that they should quit playing because they will never get any better. Don't even bother suggesting that they take lessons from a professional or anything like that.
  • It's not about the music the yovidaphone makes that makes it great, but how it brings joy to those that play it. Even though it's spreading misery and robbing joy from everyone unfortunate enough to be in earshot (which is a lot of people), it's great because it's making one single person happy. After all, it doesn't matter how many people's lives you ruin as long as you're pleased with yourself. See also: Starlight Glimmer.
  • When your actions are harming other people and they attempt to stop you (even if by asking nicely), be as melodramatic and pathetic as possible to take advantage of their pity and get what you wanted in the end. Friendship might be magic, but it's still no good reason to actually treat others as anything other than tools. See also: Starlight Glimmer.
  • Even if you're doing something good, you're still responsible for your actions. And if something bad happens that you didn't intend, you shouldn't give up hope or lose faith in yourself. All you gotta do is make it right... maybe. Or you can do the opposite. The line lies with whoever suffers more, middle ground be damned.
  • Remember that one should be honest with someone else's poor skill at something, as lying would hurt them far more? We neither.

• "Road to Friendship"
  • If your friend gets angry at you for trading away her home without her consent and seeing nothing wrong with it, clearly she's the one being unreasonable.
  • It's okay to make selfish, callous, and stupid decisions with other people's property because there will always be a way to undo it. Why learn to be a better person when you can just continue to be horrid and have everything work out in the end?
  • One of your friend's belongings irritating you? Trade it away without bothering to ask if they're okay with that. Their feelings don't matter, nor does it matter how much sentimental value it has to them, what matters is that you're happy.
  • You can get off completely scot-free for making idiotic, reckless decisions by simply giving a feeble apology because what matters is that you meant well. ...Okay, how many times are we gonna have to write this damn moral? It's the same with every one of these episodes, you'd think this chick would've learned by now. I mean, seriously.
  • Emotional abuse from your friend selling your home, seeing nothing wrong with it and getting mad at you for rightfully crying over it is something that totally makes a friendship stronger and not a red flag that you should cut the toxic prick out of your life.

• "The Washouts"
  • Grabbing a child by the throat or shoulders and violently shaking them is a valid means of disciplining a child that definitely won't cause long-term, irreversible, and debilitating injury.
  • Adding to the above, this also applies to anyone's child, not just your own. Because, y'know, no parent is going to mind that a complete stranger seized their child by the throat to violently discipline them.
  • Also adding to the above, endangering someone's well-being because you don't care a stunt could gravely injure them is bad. Endangering someone's well-being because you don't care that your "discipline" could gravely injure them is fine.
  • When a child is doing something dangerous, don't bother simply telling their parents or caregivers. Take it into your own hands to correct the child, violently if necessary, and don't even bring the parents into it. It's not like parents would like to know their child was undertaking in dangerous activities.
  • The best person to teach a child not to perform dangerous acts and convince them to do the right thing is the impotent drill sergeant who actively encouraged dangerous acts and passed off the blame instead of doing the right thing the last time we saw her attempt to teach people.
  • A child looking up to a potentially bad crowd means the potentially bad crowd is at fault, not the deadbeat parents who have never once bothered to be involved in their child's life or activities (not even on the most important day of the child's life thus far) and have thus driven the child to seek some manner of Parental Substitute to fill the void.
  • Criticize the disabled child for finding an activity they enjoy and is able to do in spite of said disability, because one of the people also involved in said activity got to be Team Leader for a while instead of you.
  • It's not enough to fire or punish someone for wrongdoing. You also need to continually blacklist and shame them both personally and professionally for time and time to come. Even if their wrongdoing was debatable as they were simply doing their job as was encouraged by others. See also: Trixie Lulamoon.
  • A woman who has been a thrill-seeking daredevil her entire life is totally not a Hypocrite for telling someone else not to be a daredevil.
  • It's your job to decide what people want to do with their time and who they want to be friends with, based entirely on your own personal wants and needs that are irreverent to theirs, so feel free to judge, guilt, and bully people into doing what you want. See also: Rainbow Falls and No Second Prances.
  • Treating people horribly because you just don't like them and then just happening to be right by sheer dumb luck absolutely justifies treating people horribly. The only reason you should ever give someone the benefit of the doubt to change is if you have a self-serving ulterior motive or if they're powerful enough to be a threat. See also: No Second Prances.
  • When your new friend wants you to do something dangerous that you're afraid of or don't feel comfortable doing, be sure to drop a "The Reason You Suck" Speech on them and end the friendship with them immediately. Just like Twilight did when she was pressured to jump off a cliff, er, like what Fluttershy did when she was pressured to fight a dragon, er, nevermind.
  • People with anger management issues are terrible, awful villains who deserve to be fired. Things like therapy, medications, and even over-the-counter supplements don't exist because, as well all know, There Are No Therapists and Drugs Are Bad MKay?
  • The best way to quit a job you've realized isn't right for you is to attempt to kill your boss.
    Kill my boss?! Do I dare live out the American dream?
  • Continuing the lesson from Boast Busters, the best way to handle a show, performance, actor, or performer you dislike is to heckle, disrupt, and attack their show, and harass, belittle, and even physically assault the people behind it. Just not watching it, being civil, and letting its fans enjoy it simply aren't an option, so destroy it at once. Just don't do it with our show, you little loiter-sacks; our's is special.
  • Faced with a Dream-Crushing Handicap? Don't go to all the trouble of asking around the medical community to see if there might exist some meaningful treatment, or looking for technology which might help you compensate. Instead, just blindly latch on to anything or anyone which might offer some of what your condition has denied you, even if it involves doing something dangerous and stupid.
  • People with disabilities shouldn't bother trying to do anything extraordinary with their lives. They should just be wildly praised for whatever mundane things they're capable of and be happy with that.
  • Expecting someone to do the job they willingly, knowingly, and voluntarily signed up to do? You Monster! See also: Once Upon A Zeppelin.
  • Endangering a child because they willingly signed up for a job where "being in danger" is literally the job description makes you an irredeemable bastard. Endangering children because you're so selfish and stupid you're incapable of giving even a modicum of a flying fuck about anything other than sating your personal arrogance and greed makes you deserving of a tsk-tsk head tilt and an Everyone Laughs Ending.
  • People who you don't like aren't allowed to find meaningful employment or have a happy ending unless they drop everything to "become redeemed" on your own personal selfish terms. See also: Trixie Lulamoon.
  • Someone who owes everything they have to simple handouts from others, being able to skirt the rules, and abilities they were born with that they in no way earned or worked for, and who frequently endangers the lives of others, is a glowing paragon of a true role-model. Someone who owes everything they have to perseverence, hard work, cleverness, and adaptability, and who once was indirectly responsible for endangering the lives of others is a complete and utter scumbag. See also: Starlight Glimmer and Trixie Lulamoon.
  • Offering equal opportunity employment to people with mental issues or physical disabilities is something only bad people do.
  • Okay, forget Fame and Misfortune, now we're back in Boast Busters mode where it's totally alright to bully someone because you don't like their act. Funny how that always works out in favor of the protagonists...

• A Rockhoof and a Hard Place
  • Someone who was literally there to see history happening would not be of any use to a history professor, so make him do manual labor anyone could do and then fire him for doing it too enthusiastically.
  • A school where children are running about is an awesome place to play with fire.
  • Adding to the above, if you notice a fire and react immediately and appropriately, you are an asshole. How dare you care about the safety and well-being of others, you selfish oaf?
  • Being absurdly strong, enthusiastic about working, and good with tools makes you unemployable. It's not like these would make you invaluable in the blue-collar trades like construction or factory work. As a skilled combatant you're clearly overqualified for the Royal Guard so don't think about trying that either.
  • Alternately, you're way too great to ever do a blue-collar job because that kind of job is awful and for the lower dregs of society, while you're too special a snowflake to not follow your dreams and find your special purpose. See also: Bloom And Gloom.
  • The consequences of being reckless when putting out a fire at a school outweighs the consequences of playing with fire at the school.
  • If you screw up a job on your first try, give up on it entirely. There's no need to learn from your mistake and gradually get better with time and practice or anything silly like that.
  • When deciding on a career for somebody in a world with many great job opportunities that perfectly match their personality and abilities, don't suggest those jobs at all. Instead make them try out ones that completely don't match with their personality and abilities.
  • Anyone can be easily talked out of contemplating suicide just because someone cuddles them and says they'll be missed when they're gone.

• What Lies Beneath
  • Leaving unsupervised children at the mercy of an ambivalent mysterious magical entity who is perfectly willing to permanently trap and even outright murder people at the drop of a hat is a perfectly fine and safe way to treat your children.
  • Schools should totally have monsters in the basements that are willing to trap and kill students. It worked for Hogwarts, didn't it?
  • Even though the teachers are dangerously careless, the management biased and close-minded, the students in constant danger of harm, the principal hands out unfair punishments like candy, hires unqualified, untrained, and dangerous professors on whims, we've never actually seen the school even once manage to do what it was supposed to without problems, and now there's literally a dangerous entity in the basement, the guy who described your school as "a disaster with irresponsible teachers that are endangering ponies" was totally wrong and just being racist. Ad Hominem attacks are the best way to win an argument, after all!
  • Adding to the above, that your school demands other races accept and embrace the beliefs of the pony chosen Master Race on threat of imprisonment totally isn't savage racism worthy of this leitmotif.
  • The best way to teach people about friendship is to give them a test about history with strict right or wrong answers.
  • People can be taught about friendship with strict right or wrong answers.
  • When you have time to study for a test and you decide to spend it dicking around with your friends in the basement instead, you totally deserve to be given additional time to study for a test.
  • Report to the principal that the students need more time to study, but don't report to the principal that there's a monster in the basement that's willing to trap and kill students.
  • The magical projection a strange mythical entity creates of your principal acting like an unnecessarily harsh jerkwad who lashes out at others for doubting friendship, places them in traumatizing fear rooms and deathtraps and threatens to imprison them underground forever unless they accept friendship is totally inaccurate of how she is in real life. No, really. What’s with the doubtful glares?
  • A group of children unsure about their camaraderie? Force them to bond by trapping them in frightening and potentially fatal chambers. Isn't friendship magic?
  • Kidnapping, intimidation, threatening, imprisonment, entrapment, and endangering of death are all valid means of teaching children a school lesson.

• Sounds Of Silence
  • Psychiatric medications are wrong, evil, and unnatural, and should never be given to people to help them manage depression or anger management issues. Even if those issues, when unchecked, resulted in the destruction of an entire village.
  • When you encounter a problem that was solved in a way you don't like or understand, negate the solution to the problem without actually fixing or addressing the underlying problem in the first place.
  • Insert yourself into a foreign people's way of life you have no hope of understanding, declare it to be a problem, and pressure (read: force) said people into changing their ways to match those of your own self-declared Holy master race. Just like The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, The Nazi Occupation of Europe...
  • Something that was done to save lives, prevent property damage, and protect friends and loved ones counts as a "friendship" problem.
  • The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many. That one single person is unhappy with the current way of life is enough reason to expect everyone else to change to match what that one single person wants. See also: most spoiled rotten little brothers.
  • Bottling up your emotions and refusing to express the problems you have with something in an environment where said emotions cause fires is just as bad as doing so in a normal situation.
  • Never do the simple solution to solve a problem, like in this case the highly flammable anger beasts could just build using non-flammable materials like stone. Instead do the unnatural and needlessly consequential solution like literally removing everyone's ability to speak or pray to God everyone can actually learn to control the anger that already proved uncontrollable. Twilight Sparkle would be so proud.
  • Individuality Is Illegal. Being different and/or agreeing to disagree are never options. The entire group has to agree on one singular way of life and spend their entire existence trying to force any dissenters into thinking the way they think. See also: To Change A Changeling.
  • Using magic to solve your own emotional problems is totally wrong and can't be allowed. Just ask Starlight Glimmer. Using magic to solve someone else's emotional problems without their consent is totally fine. Just ask Princess Flurry Heart... when she's old enough to have an opinion on it, of course.

• Father Knows Beast
  • All immigrants who choose not to wholly adopt our culture are fat, lazy, disgusting drains on the government who don't want to work and just want to mooch off the holy Master Race. Who let all this riff-raff into the room?!
  • Fat people are all complete jokes but are often also disgusting and repulsive. Thus hating and/or mocking them is absolutely acceptable. See also: Canterlot Boutique.
  • Being someone's relative means that person's friends have to like and cater to you no matter how repulsive you actually are. It's only when (and if) you are revealed to not be a relative that they are allowed to appropriately despise you for your reprehensible actions.
  • No matter how repulsive and awful someone is, you MUST accept, befriend, and 100% tolerate all their continually disgusting actions so long as they are trying to be your or someone else's friend. If you get lucky, this one-sided hollow relationship will change them for the better. See also: Discord, Starlight Glimmer, Sunset Shimmer, Gloriosa Daisy, Juniper Montage, Wallflower Blush, and Tempest Shadow.
  • Advise the kid to get out of the new adoptive relationship where he's being treated as a servant, taken advantage of, and regularly abused by encouraging him to return to his original adoptive relationship where he is treated as a servant, taken advantage of, and regularly abused.
  • Being told by the child you raised as a servant and regularly neglect and outright abuse that he doesn't consider you a real parent totally isn't a wake-up call that maybe you should start treating him like your child instead of just hired help.
  • Adding to the above, said child owes you the apology for calling you on this. After all, treating your adoptive kid as a servant and punching bag to the point they don't consider you a true parent is a-okay (so long as you're not Sludge), but calling someone out for this is rude, wrong, and mean.
  • It's totally not poor parenting to just hand your adopted child over to a complete stranger on his own word that he's trustworthy and related. No child could ever end up on the back of a milk carton in that scenario.
  • Adding to the above, doing such an ignorant, dangerous, poorly thought out, and outright heinously callous act as giving your child away on the word of a stranger that they're related is absolutely proof that you're that child's "true" parent. Not outright child abuse, or anything like that.
  • When the adopted child in your care desperately wants to know about his origins, don't actually help him find out. Even if you're a princess with diplomatic ties to the country the child came from with access to a spell that lets you view past events. After all, if he finds his biological parents he might not need you as much anymore and then who will you get to do your housework?
  • Boys are big, fat, disgusting, lazy, shifty, unhygienic, violent, and stupid. Girls are petite, slender, appealing, trustworthy, clean, pacifistic, and intelligent. This way of thinking is definitely not sexist and/or wrong. If you're a young enough boy who would like to avoid this fate, then find the nearest girl and get her to teach you how to live.

• "School Raze Parts One and Two:"
  • Even when the existence of the school ended up endangering all of Equestria, the guy who said the school would endanger ponies was still wrong. It's impossible for bad or obnoxious people, or even people who are in any way opposed to you, to ever be right about anything, because It's All About You you special perfect little snowflake of a hero you.
  • That said, even though you were one-hundred percent right about every bad thing you said about said school, you're the one who has to have the epiphany, learn a lesson, and change for the better. Note that in this scenario "change for the better" means "agree with the people who are more special than you". That'll learn ya for being in Cool World, you villain!
  • Imprisoning children in maximum security prisons without bothering to inform their parents is morally fine. Even if that prison is literally hell, crawling with actual monsters, and their sentence is for life.
    • And don't bother to extend the olive branch to the evil child who stole magic and tried to ruin the world. Just the evil adult who stole magic and tried to ruin the world.
    • And also continue to trust your children in the custody of Princess Principal who didn't even oppose sending a child to hell. You don't need to be concerned she might go Trunchbull on them or anything like that.
  • Screw Habeas Corpus! The world would operate much more smoothly if we just detained all suspects indefinitely without trial.
  • Nothing could possibly go wrong with storing a bunch of dangerous magical artifacts around children without even attempting to secure them. Just like knives and guns! And if it does go wrong, well, a bunch of kids will probably clean up the mess anyways so the blood won't be on your hands.
  • It's wrong to judge species or races as evil or irredeemable just because they're different than you. Except the manticore, the cockatrice, the chimera... send them right to hell because certain races really are irredeemably evil. Even if some of them were never even evil or aggressive to begin with, and all of them clearly sapient.
  • Even though the The Power of Friendship has been clearly established as a potential weapon of mass destruction, go right ahead and teach it to foreign countries with at best shaky allegiances to yours. Even ones that were recently a threat, still are a threat, and were even threatening war over minor sleights. What could possibly go wrong, handing such devastating weaponry to your enemy^note Context: In the fic, there's a war between ponies and zebras. Fluttershy gives the all-powerful Megaspells to the zebras hoping the healing power of the spell will create a state of detente where both sides can't kill each other and thus won't resort to violence. The zebras just use it in the war and it ends about as well as you'd expect in an epic case of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero?
  • If a full-grown adult has very twisted views on the idea of friendship, tries to end the world because of a silly motivation and shows little to no remorse for it, take them under your wing and teach them about friendship and not overreacting so they can ignore these lessons and screw up again and again and again and again and again and again. If a child has very twisted views on the idea of friendship, tries to end the world because of a silly motivation and shows little to no remorse for it, don't bother offering to teach them and help them grow out of these unhealthy views so they can age into a mature and better person. Throw the little munchkin in Hell.
  • Adding to the above, unrepentant children who did wrong deserve to be caged like an animal and thrown in hell if they refuse to change. Unrepentant adults who did wrong deserve to be allowed to leave if they refuse to change. Only psychopathic adults deserve the Get Out Of Jail Free card; kids deserve absolutely no forgiveness, understanding, effort, or sympathy because children are the future unless we stop them now!
  • A member of royalty who was imprisoned in the freaking moon for over a thousand years will have absolutely no qualms about locking a child up in literal Hell for eternity.
  • All racists who act on their prejudices to the point of trying to harm and even imprison members of various races can be easily turned around with a simple act of kindness from said races, because heaven forbid we teach our kids that not all bigots will drop their discriminatory views.
  • Lock up a manipulative and power-hungry child villain in Hell directly next to their equally manipulative and power-hungry partner-in-crime instead of simply putting them in a dungeon, sending them to juvie or even the time-out corner. I mean, what are the chances of them having the perfect opportunity to directly talk to each other and plan a future team-up to seek revenge?
  • Children are as evil as Satan and as smart as Xanatos. Never become a parent.
  • It's only wrong to assume someone is irredeemable and unable to change if they're not the same race as you. Otherwise you can absolutely assume the worst and throw that person right in hell to be poked with sharp things for all eternity!
  • Adding to the above, the person who judged a child as irredeemably evil and threw her into eternal prison absolutely has the moral high ground over the person who judged a griffon, yak, sea pony, changeling, and dragon as threats to security and said they couldn't go to private school.
  • Show the children of your school how magical friendship really is by sending the army after the child who misused friendship and imprisoning them for life in hell alongside murderous monsters, rather than trying to practice what you've preached about The Power of Friendship changing people for the better the way you did with the mad god and the psychotic cultist.
  • If you're royalty, you can break whatever laws and basic human (equine?) rights you want and treat criminals any way your current whims please. The public who relies on and trusts you will have no qualms with you forgoing a trial or due process and being judge, jury, and executioner all in one, no matter how negatively it affects them. Even with children. The same goes if you decide to pretend your girlfriend didn't blow up a factory (without caring who was still inside) or wipe a criminal's record clean and reward her for her crimes instead.
  • How you and the other higher ups should treat villains is on a scale of "forgive and give power to them instantaneously in spite of all the damage they caused" to "lock them up in eternal hell in spite of their age and don't even tell their guardians". How much they regret what they did should totally be a factor in deciding which should happen.
  • It's totally okay and appropriate to violently and savagely discipline or punish other people's children without even informing their guardians, to say nothing of the law or parental consent. See also: The Washouts.
  • When a military or law enforcement's first, best, and only accomplishment is arresting a powerless unarmed prepubescent child after all the foiling was done by others, that's definitely not a red flag that they're absolutely terrible at their jobs and really should be whipped into shape or outright replaced. There's nothing wrong with law or military enforcement that makes Chief Wiggum look like Theodore Roosevelt, after all.
  • Prove that your country believes in not judging others based on race or gender by recruiting a single token woman into your all-male all-pony military and not trusting her with anything more than apprehending a harmless child (with male supervision, of course!) or even carrying a weapon.
  • Archaic beliefs like judging others based on race have no place in this modern more civilized and enlightened age. Archaic beliefs like throwing children in maximum security prisons with monsters and capital punishment still totally flies, though.
  • It’s not concerning in the slightest that a member of royalty’s terrible habit of forgiving the most vile pieces of world-destroying garbage imaginable is rubbing off on other races and could possibly end up being taught to the whole damn world.
  • You can send letters directly to Hell and even get a reply back just like you're sending a Christmas card to your grandmother. You can guarantee that no one at the post office will question why on Earth anyone, let alone a child, would want to send a letter to a manipulative magic-siphoning monster who almost destroyed everything.
  • It makes complete sense that a person with the ability to cast spells that can teleport him anywhere in the world would have a medallion that allows him to teleport anywhere in the world.
  • When opening the gates of Hell with a magical key that breaks the first time you use it in a situation where the world's magic is draining, go right inside without any plan on how to get back out again.
  • Just because you saved the world doesn't mean you get to pass Friendship School after a single semester because you've barely learned anything about friendship. Now saving the world when you barely learned anything about friendship AND being Twilight's protege? THAT means you get to graduate after a single semester! Never forget that it's not about what you've done, or what's right or fair. It's just all about being the pet of someone important and influential. That's the real magic of friendship.
  • People who are only willing to reform and befriend those who have political power, power they can use, and/or inherent power, while holding grudges against anyone else who wronged them, are absolutely totally not Hypocrites when they explain to someone that there's more to friendship than just power. Don't forget to prove this by dragging the now powerless child off to Hell rather than even bothering to attempt to reform them.
  • Detaining children, unfairly accusing them of wrongdoing, and preemptively punishing them with zero evidence or reasoning to believe they are guilty is wrong and racist.... when Chancellor Neighsay does it. Detaining children, unfairly accusing them of wrongdoing, and preemptively punishing them with zero evidence or reasoning to believe they are guilty is totally fine... when Twilight Sparkle does it. Even if they're the same group of people being punished. How dare you do the same things the good guys do, you evil bastard?!
  • One of the leaders of a country that was founded by weaponizing friendship, celebrates a friendship-themed holiday as a weaponized ritual to keep monsters at bay, and has used friendship as a weapon again and again and again and again and again, and befriends and reforms people based entirely on wanting to weaponize them or how potentially weaponizable they are, is totally not a Hypocrite for telling the student of the school that was saved by weaponizing friendship that friendship is not just a power to be weaponized.
  • People who react to children breaking the law by locking them in a small cage without food or water for the rest of their life are morally superior to people who react to children breaking the law by detaining them and calling their parents.

Season 9

• "The Beginning Of The End Parts One and Two"
  • You're not a completely selfish and uncaring tool if you abruptly get someone to undertake a massive responsibility while giving them little to no actual time to prepare for it, or really no choice in the matter whatsoever. See also: Princess Spike
  • You're not a complete Hypocrite if, while in the midst of being volunteered against your will to undertake a massive responsibility and complaining about it every step of the way, you volunteer one of your friends against their will to undertake a massive responsibility.
  • The perfect candidate for leader of an entire country is someone who can't handle stress, easily shuts down and gives up at the first sign of adversity, and needs constant pushing from far more qualified potential leaders to get off her butt and do anything.
  • Pick your favorite protege to be the new leader, even if all her friends have far more leadership potential and experience than she does.
  • Sociopathic ex-criminals with a fetish for Mind Rape and only the most bare-boned understanding of empathy are the perfect candidates to take over a school. Especially if that school already nearly caused the destruction of an entire country. There's no way that'll end in a "HEY TEACHER LEAVE THOSE KIDS ALONE" scenario, or a lawsuit, or something out of Disturbing Behavior.
  • You should be proud of the fact that your country's "longest period of harmony" has been about a week. Not disappointed, frightened, or actively trying to do something to actually change that for the better.
  • It's totally responsible to hand over the ruling of a kingdom to your neurotic student who can barely manage running a school, pushes a nebulous concept like friendship as a religion that everyone must conform to, forces her friends to take on jobs as teachers even though they have zero experience, and who has recently developed a nasty habit of forgiving psychotic world-ending manchildren while being suspicious of people who have committed far lesser crimes.
  • Your friends who are unqualified and irresponsible teachers and have no experience whatsoever in ruling a whole kingdom are completely fit to help you run a whole kingdom.
  • It's okay for you to retire from ruling a country with your sister who's been doing this job for over a thousand years while you've only been back on the throne for barely even a decade.
  • Deities can retire from their lifelong jobs of ruling over a country so they can... I dunno, play golf or something?
  • Pawn off the running of your school and castle to your pupil who still makes terrible and callous decisions, is incapable of facing a problem in a level-headed way, has barely learned the very basics of friendship, always uses hair-brained magic to force a solution, started a cult dedicated to brainwashing and purging people of their very identities, nearly destroyed the very fabric of time all because her friend moved away when she was a kid, constantly overreacts to the tiniest problems, decided that hypnotising you was the best way to make you get over a fear, obliterated someone for heckling her, forcibly swapped the jobs and powers of two members of royalty, age-regressed her childhood friend, brainwashed her own friends and saw nothing wrong with it until she was told otherwise, led a monster to a populated area, encouraged you to reopen your school that was shut down for completely valid reasons, traded away her friend's home and got angry with said friend when she rightfully got upset about it, and gets away with and/or gets rewarded for these awful actions either because she gave a feeble apology, she meant well, there was conveniently a way to undo her damage or it only worked out in the end out of luck.
  • Even when The Power of Friendship has been confirmed as being able to easily be used as a brutally powerful one-hit kill spell against super-powered monsters, the guy who said it was a bad idea to hand this weaponry to antagonistic-to-neutral foreign powers is still automatically wrong and a racist to boot. That'll teach him for speaking out of turn to the main characters!
  • Your friends are totally not being completely callous and dismissive when they roll their eyes at your panicking and tell you that you're overreacting when your mentor thrusts the ruling of an entire kingdom onto you and your friends out of the blue, expects you all to take over in only a few days without giving you time to properly prepare and you raise legitimate concerns about your lack of experience running a whole nation that they simply disregard.

• "Uprooted:"
  • You should be surprised, shocked, and appalled that the students think it's okay to blatantly break the rules and do wrong, when they attended a school that was only able to exist by blatantly breaking the rules and actively taught doing wrong is fine as long as things work out in the end.
  • You should be relieved and elated to discover you set a torture-happy murderer loose upon the world. Even more so if you apparently made it stronger than ever before.
  • Get mad at children and students for doing what they were told and encouraged to do if it causes unforeseeable consequences. See also: Princess Spike and Wonderbolts Academy.
  • It's TOTALLY not racism to say a changeling can't go on a dragon quest. After all it's totally okay to tell your friend he's the wrong race to play PS4 with you! King Thorax says so!

• "Sparkle's Seven:"
  • Being a terrible academic student means you're perfectly suited to be in charge of the tactically and logistically demanding position of leader of an entire military.
  • Being the adopted child means you deserve lesser treatment from the parents. Not even your own slot for golden stars.
  • You shouldn't bother rethinking how things are done until your current way of thinking has failed about 12 times or so. Better late than never on those castle defenses, eh Celestia?
    Vaas Montenegro: Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?
  • The best candidate for handling a job is the person who has, never once, done well at that job.
  • A best defense is one that will actively hinder your own abilities as well, like beings that rely heavily on magic and flight using indiscriminate anti-magic and anti-flight defenses...
  • You deserve to win a prize for getting someone else to do what you were supposed to do. See also: A Canterlot Wedding.
  • You deserve to lose your job for being poor at it. Unless you're related to someone influential like Twilight Sparkle, of course!
  • Getting someone fired from their job because it suited your own self-serving desires is totally appropriate. See also: Wonderbolts Academy.
  • Fire the one employee who's idiocy, negligence, and ease of being distracted caused a security vulnerability, while not firing all the other employees (including their boss) who's idiocy, negligence, and ease of being distracted caused a security vulnerability.
  • Adding to the above, it's totally appropriate to fire someone for failing at their duties in a staged practice scenario. Unless they're a main character, in which case you have to reward them instead even when they fail at their duties in a REAL scenario.
  • ALSO adding to the above, it's totally appropriate to fire someone after you set them up to fail and they did exactly what you wanted and needed them to do. It totally doesn't make you a Machiavellian sociopath to use people as chesspieces to further your own goals and then cast them aside and let them be punished for it once you don't need them anymore, or anything like that.
  • ALSO ALSO adding to the above, you don't have to punish, let alone fire, anyone else who failed because you set them up to fail. Like the Captain, or anyone. Just the Sca- I mean, one guard nobody seems to cares about. Seriously, jerkass or not Zephyr Breeze got screwed.
  • Being utterly heartbroken your sibling doesn't consider you family is no good reason to make an effort to actually treat him better or like family. Him pulling a Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal and taking what you wanted away from you? THAT is a good reason to actually treat him better and like family.
  • Being willing to betray your siblings for your own selfish ends makes you the true Sibling Supreme™.
  • Nobody will bat an eye if you, as a reformed criminal, commits an act that was a blatant relapse into the things that made you a criminal in the first place and for an entirely shallow and selfish reason. At worst you might get a dirty look, and at best you could even be rewarded for it instead. See also: Starlight Glimmer.
  • Don't try to talk to people when you have an issue. Instead, show people that you are too much of a threat to be ignored by waiting for a moment of weakness, attacking, and then forcing them to do what you want on your own terms. See also: Starlight Glimmer.
  • Trust no one, kids! Not your friends, not your family, not your closest confidant, nobody. Everyone you know and love is waiting for the right moment to strike, take what you value most of all, and waggle it just out of your reach while mocking you for ever trusting them. Make sure you strike first! Friendship might be magic but it's still kill or be killed, kids. Phnom Penh taught me that.
  • People who aren't part of a formal competition can, without ever once announcing their entry or operating within the established rules, enter at the last possible second and claim the prize. This totally isn't cheating in every sense of the term and they will get to keep the prize.
• "The Point Of No Return"
  • You should totally care when your stupid, self-centered antics cause someone to lose their job, and of course you should do everything in your power to make things right, but only when it's someone YOU like. When people you don't care about lose their jobs because of your stupid and self-centered antics, like Trixie, Lightning Dust, and Zephyr Breeze, just ignore it, laugh at them, or swing it around so it was somehow their fault. Whether or not you personally like someone already determines whether they deserve to be rewarded or sent to hell for doing the exact same horrid crimes, so why shouldn't it determine who's lives you leave ruined and who's lives you try to fix?
  • A woman who doesn't care in the slightest that students nearly died at her school on not one, but two separate occasions, but completely falls to pieces at the thought that she might have gotten someone in trouble at work for not returning a book on time, is absolutely the kind of person you want to have running an entire country. Doesn't get much more morally and mentally sound than that!

• "Common Ground"
  • Guys. Seriously. If she has kids don't go within a thousand miles of her. The little bugger will be more trouble than the mom is worth. "Uh oh! Kids! ♪ Back away not today disco lady ♪"

• "She's All Yak"
  • You can absolutely be rewarded instead of punished for being a destructive buffoon who ruins an event for everyone else if you're friends with someone in a position of power. See also: The Best Night Ever.
  • Feeling a bit bad, but otherwise being completely unapologetic, about appalling behavior means you should be rewarded for it instead of punished and that everyone negatively impacted by it needs to feel bad for you instead of the other way around. See also: Starlight Glimmer.

• "Frenemies"
  • You and your band of villainous companions should totally betray your boss who's clearly demonstrated he's more powerful than all of you combined, even with only a fraction of his power, by hiding his ancient relic he needs to reach his full might and plotting to use it against him without considering if it'll work in anyone else's hands. What are the chances of him discovering your betrayal, possibly through his crystal ball that allows him to see literally everything, and making you suffer for it?
  • Don't ever help a lost child in need, or really anyone in need, because they're probably actually a villain who's trying to manipulate you.
  • It's totally not problematic to carelessly store dangerous and powerful items in places with little to no security. A single lone old guard will do just fine to keep it out of the wrong hands, just like the crooked shopkeeper and the empty folding chair kept those dangerous and powerful items out of the wrong hands! After all, it's not like the news isn't full of incidents involving things like guns that could have easily been avoided had they been properly secured and kept out of the wrong hands.

• "Sweet And Smokey"
  • The best person to help solve a problem involving the health and safety of some children is the Know-Nothing Know-It-All who, time and time and time again, has repeatedly proven her "expertise" at handling living things is entirely fallacious and she is at best completely unsuited to care for animals, let alone someone's children.
  • Give "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the guy who treats your friend almost half as bad as his surrogate mother/sister. Turn a blind eye to his surrogate mother/sister's mistreatment of him because not only is she your friend and/or boss, but she's powerful and, as previously established by Princess Celestia, Starlight Glimmer, and Twilight herself, your innate power determines if what you do is right or wrong. That's what a real friend would do!

• "Student Counsel"
  • The best student caregivers are the ones who promise to help but then give up when things get too hard and shoo their students away into mortal peril without even considering the obvious and better alternatives. Hey, it worked out just swell for Emilio Ramírez, didn't it?
  • Even though the school abruptly closes at inopportune times at the whims of its inept teachers and seems to have no liability or responsibility whatsoever relating to the safety and wellbeing of its students, the guy who called the school a disaster with irresponsible teachers that was endangering students is still a racist jerk because... because... dammit, Friendship is Magic, stop proving the racist piece of trash right!
  • Preferring your spouse when they can't move or speak is quirky and charming. Not shallow and sexist at best or downright creepy bordering on Date Rapey at worst.
  • There is totally nothing wrong with people, even inexperienced children, owning highly dangerous exotic wild animals as pets. Even when we're talking about a species which has proven itself to be cruel-natured, sadistic, aggressive, has no qualms about harming children, and can turn you to stone just by looking at you.

• "The Last Crusade"
  • You're totally not unloving, unfit, neglectful parents if you ditch your kid for years at a time, missing every important aspect about their childhood in the process, to go on a self-serving adventure.
    • Bonus points if you dump your kid off on a pair of family members who are also so neglectful they're almost never around (not to mention never take the kid to a doctor when it appears that part of their body isn't growing properly) and inadvertently force the kid to look to whatever random adults decide to cater to their domestic needs.
    • Double bonus points if you come back after years of letting your child be raised by whatever local adults aren't busy, announce your intent to take them away from the people who actually served as their family, justify your decision by claiming that it's for their safety, and then proceed to establish that they'd be less safe with you than where they're currently living.
  • You have no moral obligation whatsoever to put aspects of your life on hold when you have a kid in order to raise said kid. Just dump them in front of Mr. Babysitter, remind them not to drink the bottles under the sink, and peace out for years at a time.
  • Your kids won't hold any grudges whatsoever when you, to call a spade a spade, abandon them for years and will love you every bit as hard as they did the day you left. Even if you openly admit to valuing your dream job above your parental responsibilities right to their faces, you can rest assured that there will be no hard feelings.
  • Deadbeat parents who played no role whatsoever in raising, guiding, caring for, or loving their child because they'd rather play Nathan Drake deserve the title of "parents" and the love of the child that comes with it. Not the people who actually raised, guided, cared for, and loved the child like the aunt and uncle, or the Cool Big Sis, or Princess Luna being what amounts to a social worker.

• "Between Dark and Dawn"
  • Don't get mad at and/or lose your temper at and/or punish the bumbling adults who are causing more harm than good with their misguided and inept attempts at trying to help. Just the bumbling children who are causing more harm than good with their misguided and inept attempts at trying to help. Reward them instead (in this case, with a vacation). The same logic applies when dealing with sociopathic world-ending criminals: the adults get rewarded for their antics, the children get doomed to Hell.
  • Might Makes Right. It's okay to be so terrible at your job you can't handle what should be even the simplest of tasks for you, but only if you have so much power nobody would dare ever call you out.
  • Adding to the above, and continuing our lessons from Bloom and Gloom and A Rockhoof and a Hard Place, those in the service sector are worthless wastrels who have given up on their dreams and will never be as special or unique as you. It's totally okay to cross picket lines, bring in strike busters, and crush their attempts to unionize. You're allowed to make things better for you, your friends and family, and violent repeat offenders who you favor; the worthless Proletariats can be happy with eating your scraps and licking your boots.
  • The fact that you and your friends can't even organise a royal event without you being too stubborn to make the most basic decision of asking for help from the people whose job it is to manage these sort of events means you and your friends are completely fit to run an entire kingdom.
  • Having a healthy relationship means doing absolutely everything together. Better to be on a vacation where you end up needing a vacation from the vacation than to spend even a few hours apart.

• "The Last Laugh:"
  • Think twice before putting a talented individual into a leadership role. Chances are they'll hate every second of it.
  • Having a paying job is for losers. You should avoid them at all costs. Unless your name is Zephyr Breeze.
  • Not liking your job? Just spontaneously quit. Because that won't cause long-term problems or regrets, right?
  • You shouldn't be proud of a steady well-paying business that you own (in this case, a farm) if your friends are doing better (in this case, are royalty or a member of a famous flight squadron). Even if you work hard for your accomplishments while they were just sort of handed them.
  • Once again, we learn that having a career means you gave up on your dreams because you are far too good and special a unique snowflake to ever lower yourself to the level of the hoi polloi and do (ugh) commoner work.

• "2, 4, 6, Greaaat:"
  • It's okay for you to volunteer your friend to teach an activity they clearly have zero experience or interest in without giving them any advice or support, followed by them deciding to shirk their duties and be a complete asshat to the children they're teaching who like the activity, as long as it leads to them learning a lesson in the end. I mean, if Celestia can be a manipulative teacher, why not her student who's going to run the country one day?
  • Forcing people to do things you know they are bad at and have no interest in doing it makes you a Trickster Mentor who wants her friends to learn An Aesop. Not a complete douchebag who uses her authority to bully people into doing things under duress for your own amusement.
  • It's better to find people who are unqualified to do a job and make them run the gauntlet, against their will if necessary, until they become adequate enough to manage to pull it off, rather than, you know, finding people who are willing and qualified. If called out on it, claim you did it so they'd learn a lesson rather than admit you were just being a dumb-ass. See also: School Daze, The Beginning of The End, Sparkle's Seven...
  • The best candidates for any job are your friends and in-laws!
  • When you screw up bad and pick the wrong candidate for the job, claim You Meant To Do That and that it was all a genius ruse to learn them an aesop rather than admitting you just screwed up. Being honest with your mistakes and learning from them to become a better person is for losers when you can just make up excuses to shirk blame and/or take credit for it instead. See also: Starlight Glimmer.
  • Putting someone else in a position that makes them unhappy and uncomfortable is okay if you're doing it to teach them An Aesop. Except, of course, when people do it to you: then it's wrong!

• A Trivial Pursuit:
  • Someone who isn't even fazed by her school students being endangered on multiple occasions yet loses their mind at the possibility of not winning a trivia game, and is even willing to throw their own friend under the bus in order to win, can totally be trusted with ruling an entire kingdom.
  • No one will ever call you out for being a Hypocrite who firmly believes it's her god-given right to smugly tell others their behavior is wrong while gleefully engaging in such behavior yourself. Why lead by example and/or be the change you want to see in the world when you can hop on your soapbox and tell off Applejack and Rainbow Dash, on two separate occasions, that they're too competitive and that winning isn't everything, and then go on to completely lose your marbles, stab your trusted friend in the back, and do every low-brow dirty trick in the book to win at any cost when it's your turn to compete and win something.
  • As already shown in "Parental Glideance", if someone is well-meaning towards you but is doing something that hurts you and they don't realize it, you should let them be. Trying to stop them from hurting you or calling them out is mean and is being a bad friend.

• The Summer Sun Setback:
  • You are absolutely wrong if you don't want your friend that easily freaks out when something is wrong to not freak out when something is wrong, and instead try to solve the problem on your own.

• She Talks To Angel:
  • Forcing obligate carnivores to not eat meat purely to appease your own delicate feelings is fine, in spite of the fact that it is an objective act of animal cruelty that causes sickness and early death in animals.
  • Adding to the above, believing this behavior is okay is absolutely proof that the "animal expert" isn't actually on the wrong side of animal rights.
  • Also adding to the above, keeping carnivores and herbivores together and then refusing to feed the former the food they want and need absolutely won't end in bloodshed. What could possibly go wrong?
  • Also adding to the above, this is also a fine alternative to just not harboring obligate carnivores on the legitimate proviso that you are unable and unwilling to acquire the food source they need.
  • When handling substances with potentially hazardous side effects, don't even bother to label them or give proper warning about their use. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? It's not like such lack of security has caused a similar incident before...

• Dragon Dropped:
  • Shit or get off the pot. If you like someone and they like you, then act on it; don't take advantage of their attraction to use them for menial labor and otherwise disregard their feelings and advances, and then turn green and become a jerk when they end up preferring the company of someone who likes them and doesn't treat them like crap.
  • You're in the wrong if you decide to stop associating with the manipulative succubus who feeds into the feelings she knows you have for her to entice you into doing her job for her, all the while treating you like an indentured servant at best and completely disregarding said feelings.
  • There's nothing wrong with you, an adult, breaking into the home of the child you have feelings for and hovering over them like a sexual predator in order to convince them to follow you back to your home and return your affections.
  • You are entitled to have the ones you love. Even if the closest you ever come to associating them is using them for Ethnic Menial Labor. If they ever dare pry your claws out of them and find love with someone else, it is your duty to tear that new love apart and sink your fangs into them once again. If they object, a feeble apology is all it takes to be Easily Forgiven.
  • The fact that you’re stalking and obsessing over a minor, displaying behaviour that reeks of “I’ve got free candy in my van” and trying to cut him off from his friend so you can have him all to yourself as a boy slave to wait on your hand and foot isn’t creepy, disgusting and awful in or out of context at all and is a completely appropriate episode to have on a show for five-year-olds.

• A Horse Shoe In:
  • You shouldn't let your personal feelings for and relationship with someone determine if they're fit for a job or position; it should be their actions and competency that determines this. Says the woman who has gotten off scot-free with absolutely zero consequences for dozens of things that would have seen anyone else petrified or sent to hell because she's friends with Princess Celestia's little piggy, and who has gone on to be easily handed increasingly prestigious positions, in spite of her utter lack of competency at such positions and in spite the fact she shouldn't be allowed within a thousand miles of authority, power, children, or weaponry due to her sadistic tendencies and lack of empathy, again solely because she's friends with Twilight Sparkle.
  • You're not a massive Hypocrite for calling someone else out for endangering the well-being of others, blowing things out of proportion, being incompetent and not caring about what you're doing when you literally do this, like, all the time and never get called out on it or even care as long as you get your way in the end.
  • Your friend accidentally endangering people via an honest mistake is worse than all the times you intentionally endangered people by being a whiny, violent, entitled psychopath. Make sure you let them know.
  • When an important job needs to be done, the decision should be based on who's qualified, even if it's not your friend. Even when you literally just give them a different but equally important job not because they're qualified but because they're your friend.
  • Stating it's wrong to hire incompetent, unqualified teaching staff who endanger their students just because they're your friends, and then taking steps within your moral and legal boundaries to prevent it, is right and an important life-lesson to boot... when you're Starlight Glimmer. Stating it's wrong to hire incompetent, unqualified teaching staff who endanger their students just because they're your friends, and then taking steps within your moral and legal boundaries to prevent it, is wrong and also somehow racist... when you're Chancellor Neighsay. Because why should the same rules, moral boundaries, and consequences apply to the protagonists?
  • A person who's so mentally unstable that they talk to their office plant like it's alive is totally someone you can trust with running a school full of children.
  • It's a bad thing if a school staff member calls someone out for their awful parenting, callousness and negligence of their own child.
  • Do not think twice before accepting a job position offered by a friend of yours. After all, who cares if it prevents you from performing your duties as a travelling magician?
  • The teacher who cares deeply about the students well-being and safety enough to get into heated arguments with their parents about it but made one honest safety mistake due to factors well outside of their control that almost caused a few kids to get stung by bees deserves to be fiercely yelled at. The teachers who couldn't care less about the well-being about their students and make repeated safety mistakes like exposing them to dangerous wild animals or not bothering to save them from drowning (thank goodness the other kids could do it!) deserve to be made headmaster and teachers of the month, respectively.
  • That said, when the only teacher at the school who actually cares about the safety and well-being of the students is the self-centered stage magician who only wanted to be a teacher on a whim because it sounded easy, it's definitely not proof that your school is terrible, the rest of your teachers shouldn't be allowed anywhere near children, and that the racist asshole was totally right to call it a hazard and a disaster and try to shut it down.

• Daring Doubt
  • Being a racist bully who thinks it's totally okay to profit off of physically assaulting and stealing from a minority is totally okay if you write a book about yourself that paints you as a hero and him as a villain. Even if you get caught red-handed doing it you'll somehow still be seen as sympathetic and a good person.
  • On the flip-side, being actively opposed to such a person makes you a bad person and merely trying to tell others what is actually going on (by telling nothing but the truth, no less) somehow makes you a villain who's running a smear campaign.
  • You will always be a bad and terrible person if you oppose the protagonists and their friends in any way, no matter how wrong or even vile their actions and how innocent or even noble yours are, unless you meet their self-centered criteria to be considered "reformed" and suddenly become free of all consequences for your heinous actions. See also: Gilda, Trixie, Flim and Flam, Lightning Dust, Iron Will, and Chancellor Neighsay.
  • All that really matters is someone learns a lesson in the end. All the collateral damage they caused, suffering they inflicted, and problems they created for others don't. But only if that "someone" is a protagonist. See also: Starlight Glimmer.
  • Writing trashy Self-Insert Revenge Fics that slander people you don't like is a great way to make a living. Even when people catch you doing this red-handed they'll continue to cheer you on, and even the people you spent years slandering will be okay with it so long as you invite him to your book club. Because protagonist, or something.

• Growing Up is Hard to Do
  • A friend of yours found a unique object of unknown properties that seemingly only exists in very short quantities? Surely they won't be mad at that object being wasted by children.
  • It is completely wrong to let three children do a long-distance trip on a train on their own... or it could be perfectly fine as well; it depends on whether the ones living in the intended destination is Scootaloo's family or Apple Bloom's.
  • Don't let your pet be around other people or it'll turn into a giant whirlwind and destroy everything.
  • Keeping dangerous uncontrollable exotic animals as pets is a fine idea!
  • Children who are mature and old enough to have careers and travel alone by scooter to a different country across barren, frozen, treacherous terrain likely only inhabited by fierce creatures on a whim certainly lack the wisdom, experience, and maturity to buy a train ticket and ride it to the next town over.
  • Someone who has spent her entire life doing whatever she wanted and won't hesitate to break the law to get special treatment, commit fraud, destroy the world, dodge the legal system because a violent criminal is her friend, dodge the legal system because a violent criminal is her enemy, abuse children, mind-rape criminals into subservience, and even murder the mentally challenged to make it happen, is totally not a Hypocrite for telling children "I know it's hard, but sometimes you just can't do what you want."
  • Unleashing a dangerous tornado unto innocent bystanders because you're a moron who doesn't realize or care how dangerous your actions are makes you an innocent good guy the same way unleashing a dangerous tornado unto innocent bystanders because you're a moron who doesn't realize or care how dangerous your actions are makes you public enemy #1. Just like how being a violent sadistic sociopath who has very twisted views on the idea of friendship and shows no remorse for hurting others and trying to end the world because of a silly motivation makes you deserving of forgiveness and reward the same way being a violent sadistic sociopath who has very twisted views on the idea of friendship and shows no remorse for hurting others and trying to end the world because of a silly motivation makes you deserving of exile to hell. Remember, kids: it's never about what you actually do, but about who you are, what influential friends you have, and how well you're able to designate yourself as a hero.
  • Meta example: Go ahead and ignore the past several seasons of character growth if there's a particular story you really want to tell or lesson you really want to teach. It's the final season, may as well have some fun. (May also apply to 2, 4, 6, Greaaat) Bonus points if the lesson you're trying to teach is along the lines of "sometimes you just can't do what you want".

• The Big Mac Question:
  • Your friends and family are complete and absolute morons who will ruin everything they touch if you include them in your plans to propose to your beloved. Take a page from the book of Shining Armor / Princess Cadance and Lyra / Bon Bon: propose when nobody's looking and/or everyone's distracted, plan the wedding behind everyone's backs, and only tell people what's happening the day before the wedding! Who needs the magic of friendship when you have the power of secrecy, trickery, deception, and espionage?
  • When confronted about a major screw-up, shrug it off or make a joke out of it and everyone will drop it like that and forget all about it. See also: Starlight Glimmer.
• The Ending of the End, Parts One and Two
  • It's absolutely not messed up in the slightest when two usually benevolent rulers turn a child into a stone statue for all eternity, where they're fully aware they're imprisoned in stone but can't move or speak, and then smile afterwards.
  • Take a suggestion on how to punish three criminals who nearly destroyed the world by the ex-criminal who made the remarkably stupid decision of making them team up and try to destroy the world in the first place.
  • Meta example: Don't bring back a classic villain that half of your fans grew up with and the other half have always wanted to see reimagined. Just tease them with it and yank the rug out from under them with a twist that he was someone else the whole time. It doesn't matter how poorly conceived it is, how much it didn't need to exist, how much it comes at the expense of someone's character development, how much it angers the audience, or even if you've already done a very similar plot twist earlier that season; as long as they don't see it coming and it subverts their expectations, that's all that matters.
  • Roasting a tyrant which leads to him accidentally releasing your imprisoned friends completely makes up for you dooming the entire country and its citizens in an idiotic attempt to help your friend gain confidence.
  • The lives of others are merely tools you can use as chess pieces for entirely selfish reasons. Nobody will bat an eye when you do this, that is so long as you're not the villains who's crimes involved using the lives of others as chess pieces for entirely selfish reasons. See also: Mare In The Moon, Lesson Zero, The Crystal Empire, Magical Mystery Cure, School Daze, and literally every Starlight Glimmer episode ever.
  • Having "good intentions" can excuse absolutely anything, even acts that could have destroyed your country and gotten your best friends killed.
  • Arming criminals and enticing them to commit crimes they wouldn't or couldn't have done otherwise with promises of rewards and threats of violence and death, with no care or regard about any of the casualties along the way, and then punishing them for said crimes so you can reap rewards of your own, is totally kosher. Okay, in real life this is known as entrapment, coercion, extortion (The 'X' makes it sound cool!), state terrorism, a false flag operation, kleptocracy, and war profiteering, and can land under any possible combination of amoral, controversial, and actually illegal, but when the brightly-colored totalitarian oligarchy of Equestria and their pet firestarter does it it's totally kosher. Fearless Leader says so!
  • Get mad at the guy who thought it was a good idea to reform and forgive dangerous psychopaths by releasing them from prison, training them, giving them power and/or authority, and turning a blind eye to their constant relapses and abuse of innocent people, because there was a slight chance it might be possible to reform them, even though this is how you reform and forgive dangerous psychopaths, like all the time, with no hesitation, and it happened to sort of work out due to sheer dumb luck. Nothing says wise, loving, and fair rulers who chastise people for making the exact same bonehead decisions they make!
  • Only Twilight Sparkle and those she supports are capable of reforming villains by shielding them from the consequences of their actions and giving them total power. Anybody else who tries will horribly fail and will be condemned by Twilight and her allies for trying to do so.
  • Only your personal circle of friends and designated guest party members of the story can get anything done. Anyone less is fodder no matter how experienced they really are and can only show their friendship towards the protagonists by taking the fall or be conveniently apathetic so that your own inner circle can get all the glory. Because making everyone else incompetent is totally how you prop up the protagonists and antagonists of a story. See also: Practically every season finale and the 2017 movie.
  • You are literally immune to any and all consequences if you are friends with someone important and/or influential. Even when you are guilty of every crime collectively committed by an entire group of criminals, in addition to extra crimes only committed by you and being directly responsible for all the crimes those criminals committed, and even if your motives were every bit as shallow, selfish, and hollow as theirs, you'll still get off scot-free while they burn as long as you have someone powerful enough to declare you a good guy on your side. Note that this even applies if some of the crimes you committed not only undermined decisions made by said powerful person and resulted in destruction of their property and allies but also violated their trust and faith in you by being a complete and utter betrayal of them, their friendship, and everything they stand for, because friendship or something. That's the real magic of friendship, children: it allows you to be an absolutely terrible person with zero repercussions provided you have the right people in your pocket. See also: Starlight Glimmer.
  • It's okay to blackmail people with threats of violence into committing crimes on your behalf if you're one of the "good" guys and they're bad people. They'll be punished terribly while you get off without so much as a scolding because nothing says "we're the good guys" like endangering the lives of countless other people for entirely self-serving reasons and then pinning all the blame on other people or being like Amanda Waller except much worse.
  • When you need a solution to a problem, the best person to take advice from is the guy whose idiotic, abominable, self-serving, uncaring, and careless decisions were the direct cause of your problem in the first place. Especially when what he suggests is every bit as extreme, careless, and uncaring as the decisions he made that caused your problem.
  • Not minding that your followers are basically doing what the Norsefire Party and Syndrome did to consolidate power totally makes you the good guy!
  • When the Compulsive Liar who has genuinely betrayed you on several occasions before does so again, except this time claims he did it to help you, take his story at face value. It's not like it's really likely he betrayed you for real again and is lying his ass off to save face.
  • Forcing people to do what you want (in this case attack a country) with threats of violence and death and then helping "the good guys" bring them to justice for entirely selfish motivations is totally kosher!
  • Adding to the above, this totally works even when "the good guys" are wholly aware this is what you did. Scapegoats even work when people know you're scapegoating, after all!
  • Not caring at all that your kingdom was attacked, the lives of your people and military were threatened, and their homes destroyed, beyond punishing the people who weren't even the most responsible for the violence in the first place is how a true leader should lead!
  • Forget what we learned in Wonderbolts Academy. Now the people who committed the crime or did wrong deserve all the punishment while the person who ordered them to commit the crime or do wrong deserves no punishment at all. Funny how that always seems to work out in favor of the protagonists...
  • All good leaders extend pardons to their personal friends, no matter how heinous of crimes said friends commit, and make sure to look out for their friend's well-being by outright lying to the public about the crimes their friends commit and permanently silencing everyone else involved so they can't tell everyone what really happened. Friendship is what matters, not doing the right thing, making moral choices, looking out for the interests and safety of the people who trust and rely on your leadership, or seeing to it that justice is properly served.
  • No matter how much progress your society has made in maintaining peace and harmony, all it takes is a few well-placed rumors and you've got a full-blown race war on your hooves.
  • Ordering a terrorist attack on a country for your own personal gain is totally fine so long as your Mooks are eviler than you. This even applies if your mooks only option was to follow your orders or "return to the darkness from where they were summoned". In the end you'll get the loot, they'll get the boot.
  • Enemies who were threatened into attacking you and your friends and possibly Brainwashed and Crazy by the Artifact of Doom they were using deserve no mercy. Save that mercy for the friend of yours who threatened them into attacking you and your friends and the friend who was driven evil and crazy by said artifact after holding it for about three seconds. Can't spell "mercy" without "me", after all!

• The Last Problem:
  • It's okay to blindly thrust someone into a position that requires they do the work of two people, especially if said person has proven time and time again they lack the training, experience, strength of character, competency, and moral scope to do such a job, and especially if an entire nation and hundreds of thousands of people will suffer should that person screw up. Somehow it'll all work out in the end. OR WILL IT?
    Twilight Sparkle Now that I'm in charge, friendship will reign and be the right of every creature!
    French Narrator: Five minutes later...
    Generation 5 movie plot: Friendship is gone, everyone hates each other, there's no sign of Twilight, and things are worse than ever.
  • Only certain races are fit to be leaders, and all the rest are fit to be servants and followers. In Equestria it's unicorns until they get promoted to alicorn, in real life it's... well...
  • The true way to become anything influential in life, like the leader of a military force, the ruler of a nation, the owner of a company, or even the employee of a business, is to be friends or family of someone important. What, you thought being competent or experienced was the way to do it? Pffft, idiot.

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