YMMV / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S7 E8 "Hard to Say Anything"

• Adorkable:
  • Lovestruck Big Mac makes a return and it's even more adorable than before (especially since he's not influenced by magic this time).
  • Feather Bangs turns out to be this when it's revealed that he's a lot shyer than he leads on.
• Broken Aesop: The stated Aesop is that real-life romance isn't as simple as following romance tropes. It's broken as Sugar Belle was enjoying and being wooed by all but one of the romance tropes until the unrelated reason of Big Mac and Feather Bangs competition becoming disruptive. Thus Big Mac winning her over through Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario and The Simple Gesture Wins, rather than reconstruction, came of as playing the tropes unironically straight.
• Broken Base:
  • Even disregarding the whole Ship-to-Ship Combat element, there's some debate as to whether the whole conflict was actually pulled off well enough, and if nearly the entire episode being Cringe Comedy was justified.
  • Big Mac's having a crush with Sugar Belle in the first place. One side likes the pairing chalking it up to offscreen love while others felt that it was forced due to the lack of build-up compared to the more popular (sunken) ships.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Feather Bangs's trio of fangirls for obvious reasons.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Those who ship Big Mac with other ponies often tend to ignore the events of this episode and all the SugarMac episodes in general.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Going by the contents of Sugar Belle's saddlebag after she goes shopping, it looks like she really likes bananas. Even without any connection to Friendship Is Magic Bitch, the fact that Big Mac eagerly eyed the Josephine Baker mare in "Dungeons and Discords" makes this funny.
  • Before Season Four started, Meghan McCarthy, the former show head-runner, jokingly claimed that Justin Bieber would guest star in an episode. While he’s not voiced by JB himself, Feather Bangs surprisingly both sings and looks like him when he was younger.
• Jerkass Woobie: Feather Bangs constantly one-upping Big Mac really gave a bad first impression for the viewers. But in the end, it turns out he's just as socially awkward and desperate to win a mare's affection as Big Mac is.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Don't be deceived by the first few minutes of "eeyup"; Big Macintosh has a decent speaking part and gets to sing a Country Music-style song without others around. Sure he's trading off with Feather Bangs's boy band pop, but Mac's able to hold his own.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: No sooner than did the episode description come out then did the fandom go berserk over the Big Macintosh/Sugar Belle pairing. Some object to the sinking of some of the fandom's most widely recognized ships, some are fine with the new pairing; some would be fine, but find the claim that it's his first crush, contradicting numerous Ship Teases, as problematic; others who want to wait and see how it's actually handled before judging; and others who doubt anything more will come of it than prior teases.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Despite him admitting to his fear of loneliness and actually talking to girls rather than flirting, many fans are still unwilling to forgive Feather Bangs due to how annoying they found him.

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