That reminds me of that great bittersweet moment in Surf and/or Turf where Scootaloo compares being a sea pony to flying, as it's the closest aproximation she's personally experienced.

Yeah, I'm also gonna throw my two cents in the "F*ck No" bucket on the topic of Scoots flying.

It's something I've been dreading since I got caught up with the show. I have a recurring fear each season that some writer is going to go, "Hey, we can't end the show without Scootaloo learning to fly. It's her character arc, yo!"

But it's not her character arc. Her disability is not an arc. It's a character trait and the show's gotten great mileage out of her living with it. Having Scootaloo learn to fly is the kind of thing that some writer somewhere might put in because it gives her a "happy ending" with zero regard to how that ending affects her presentation.

Scootaloo should never fly. She should never fly because if she flies, then she retroactively ceases to be an inspirational role model for people living with disabilities. Her appropriate happy ending is to live a joyful and fulfilling life despite never flying.

Don't let Watson be the enemy of Doyle.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 24th 2019 at 6:19:04 AM

Of course, this only means she'll fly sometime before the series finale.

Apparently she was originally supposed to just be a late bloomer, but it's way too late for that. I think it might have been too late even by season 2. She is currently an icon for disability, and magically fixing it in any way will be horrible.

If they had known it would become this big thing, they could have had her start with just the weak wings and later learn to use the scooter to compensate. But she had the scooter when the show started, so that particular lesson isn't really an option.

Well, thanks to Tank we know that artificial flight options are a thing, but maybe not necessarily a practical one for every day. So they could maybe work in an episode about her having to get one, and could easily justify the lateness in the series as "she never absolutely needed to fly before" or "she was holding onto hope she could get there but it's clear now she won't so it's time to make sure the option is there when she needs it"

But it shouldn't happen. Let Scootaloo stay disabled. It's not a problem that needs to be fixed.

...Say, does anybody know if Arthur Conan doyle actually had any positive or negative feelings towards Watson?

I suppose they could do it if they emphasized that it's not really a cure. Sort of like a wheelchair or something.

On a tangential note, do we know if Scootaloo can walk on clouds? Not fly, to be sure, but if she happened to be up in Cloudsdale, would someone need to cast a cloudwalking spell for her or not?

I'm not sure if it has come up yet, but cloudwalking seems to be an inherent trait of pegasi. I'm not sure why it would be related to her wing issues.

Edit: Actually it has been answered. Parental Glideance shows Scootaloo walking on clouds and explicitly says that AB and SB can't come with her because they aren't pegasi.

Edited by storyyeller on Feb 24th 2019 at 1:01:40 PM

That's what I was saying earlier: She already has her "wheelchair" with the scooter. Sure it doesn't let her actually fly, but it lets her use her weak wings in a way she likes. It would be thematically a little odd to give her a second "wheelchair" that lets her actually fly.

Right. Stop trying to have handicaps "fixed". It's not nice.

I mean, you wouldn't do that to a gay character, would you?

Edited by Redmess on Feb 25th 2019 at 10:30:20 AM

I had been thinking of it as a wheelchair, since it would explicitly be an inconvenient and external method of providing mobility, but to a degree that's still not really as complete as being able to do it herself. It "lets her fly", yes, but as a prosthesis. Given that we know it exists it would strike me as odd to eschew it completely...

though with that said, I suppose I can still see how it might come across as 'fixing' her lack of flight.

Post of the Day #2437

Posted by darkabomination on 17th May 2017 08:56:35 AM - Post #174527 in the new thread

She already has that, though. Her scooter allows her to go fast and capture the feel of flying without using her wings. The episode "Flight to the Finish" was the first time her disability was really emphasized for a plot. After she and her friends reconciled and she accepted that she can't fly in the show, the reprise for "Hearts Strong as Horses" features her ramping her scooter off a conveniently placed board to catch some air time over a house.

The whole reprise is spent with her using her scooter to keep pace with Rainbow Dash and this particular shot takes a moment to linger on her soaring through the air with a huge shit-eating smile on her face before coming back down to earth and swooping through the landscape. There's never a point where they say, "The scooter is her crutch," but the implication seems clear to me.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 25th 2019 at 8:15:04 AM

I dunno, giving her Tank's helicopter wouldn't be bad, especially if it wasn't as convenient as actual wings. It wouldn't be a fix, then. There are, after all, multiple tools for the physically lame with different advantages. She'd use the scooter to go fast and helicopter wings to achieve clumsy three-dimensional movement.

That kind of raises the question of why OTHER ponies are not using those helicopters, though. I suspect Tank's helicopter is a one of a kind machine.

Doesn't pinkie have a pedalcopter of some sort? And twilight has her balloon, you would think they would let scoots use it some time.

Tank also weights practically nothing compared to a pony.

Didn't the CMCs try hang gliding in one episode? Because that would function as a flying prosthesis for Scoots that would enable her to fly. We know from experience that her wings generate thrust, but obviously not lift. A hang glider would be ideal for Scoots, and the closest thing to her flying under her own power. And it's not a cure for her disability, it'd be like a wheelchair or an artificial limb.

I'm not so sure that a foal pegasus would be all that much heavier than a turtle. If pegasi follow bird biology, they could be closer than you'd think.

That pedalcopter and balloon seem to be one-off inventions, too, though. There is generally very little mass production going on in Equestria, and progress seems to depend a lot on individual inventors and tinkerers. Except when the plot demands a particular modern gadget, of course.

Technology only appears in large modern cities like Manehattan, whenever they want to do a plot revolving around them ("Super Speedy Cider Squeezy"), and whenever Ponks needs them for a gag.

The balloon (and a few other options) were mentioned in "Parental Glideance" as ways to get Scootaloo up to Cloudsdale. If she absolutely needs to get in the air, she has plenty of things she can use, but that's a very different experience than simply flying under your own power.

Pegasi fly by magic. The wings are obviously an important part of it, but when Tirek drained their magic, they couldn't fly at all.

Couple of things. There are more episodes of Friendship is Magic than there are episodes of the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, and Friendship is Magic has provided more content than every other iteration of My Little Pony combined.

None of these other iterations were nearly as popular, though.

Tank also weights practically nothing compared to a pony.

Actually, an adult tortoise weighs about 550 pounds on average, but can get much heavier. The average adult pony only weighs about 400-450 pounds—and a foal around 100.

A tortoise of that size? Because tortoises can get pretty big, so I'm not sure that number is right for Tank.