Narm Cleanup

• For starters, the mere concept of Starfleet: alien pony Power Rangers. There's pretty much no way for that premise to not be inherently cheesy, which could theoretically make for a legitimately entertaining time, and yet they're meant to be taken seriously. Then Mykan starts going on Author Tracts and bashing Friendship is Magic with these characters, and the cheese factor goes through the roof.
• The character names, which are either severely lacking in creativity or make no sense at all. Or both.
  • The Space Ponies hail from a planet called "Unicornicopia". Not only is it an awful pun, it doesn't exactly sound like the kind of place that gives birth to a society as supposedly militaristic as the Space Ponies.
  • Mykan's obsession with the word "heavenly"; "Celesto", "Leilani", and "Castor" all mean "heavenly", and that's apparently why he chose them. Not helping matters is the fact that the first of those three greatly resembles "Celestia".
    • Let's go over Celesto's name one more time, shall we? It is true that "celestial" can, in fact, mean "belonging or relating to heaven". However, the pronunciation being "CHE-les-tow" doesn't make a lick of sense; the common pronunciation for the word is "səˈlesCHəl" like Celestia's name. Adding a "ch" sound not only sounds pretentious, but also makes it come across as though Mykan thinks he's more clever than he actually is.
  • The names of some of Mykan's Author Avatars: Grand Ruler Celesto Arron Goldenite and in the Equestria Girls universe, Celesto Grandruler.
    • For that matter, "Mykan Stevens". It's bad enough that it's the most blatant of the bunch, but his pony self is named the same thing in a world where names like "Lightining Dawn", "Rhymey", "Brain", "Dyno", and "Myte" are still commonplace. Even the two parts that make up his name clash with one another; the real Mykan got his alias from his sister, who thought it sounded like an anime name, and Stevens is clearly European in nature (more specifically, German). In other words, what we have is a name with two halves that don't make a whole.
  • Just the fact that a character is named Rhymey, as if the story is basically conceding he's just a walking Verbal Tic.
  • Nightmare Moon introduces herself as "Super Nightmare Moon" in the rewrite. It's apparently meant to make her seem more threatening, but instead ends up sounding incredibly ridiculous. It doesn't get any better later on: after taking over Equestria, she renames it "Nightmarica," and her fused One-Winged Angel mode with Titan's minions is "Nightmaricus." Nightmare Moon must've taken naming lessons from Asgore or something.
    • Really, anytime the word "super" or any variation there of is added to someone or something's name to try and make it sound impressive.
  • Krysta's son, Twink. Anyone familiar with LGBT slang will likely have a field day with that one. You know, if they're not thinking of Twink from Paper Mario 64 or Rainbow Brite.
  • The Dark King's minions' names are literally just words spelled backwards. Why the Dark King chose to name his minions like that is never properly explained.
    • Esroh Dab gets it worst of all. At least the others get backwards versions of "demon", "alien", etc. His name is just "Bad Horse" spelled backwards, bringing to mind someone scolding their pet pony. It doesn't help that "Dab" usually refers to... something else.
  • The Cardinals' names are hilariously unimpressive, sometimes bordering on Fluffy the Terrible. Buster Beak? Boar Bottoms? Big Bull? Apparently, like Nightmare Moon, these baddies took lessons from Asgore. For specific examples:
    • Underdog. Whoever named this poor schmuck must've really hated him, because the name does not reflect well on its fighting ability.
    • Going back to Big Bull, he shares his name with another taurine minor antagonist from the same fanfic this Big Bull debuted in. It's truly a telling testimony to the fic's creativity.
    • Special mention goes to Baa Baa Black, whose name tries to look dark and edgy while referencing a nursery rhyme. Words cannot fully express how stupidly hilarious the end result is.
  • Some of Stammadon's minions' names leave much to be desired. Rhinotaur and Blastar/Blastra are painfully on-the-nose, Emosha is like the first two except that it's also an awful pun, Kara Shi sounds like the Japanese word for mustard (as well as resembling, even more unfortunately, the Chinese phrase for "(time to) take a dump" - ouch), Tan Shi resembles the Chinese verb "to visit", En Shi shares her name with an actual city and prefecture in China, and Rai Shi means "food container" in Japanese.
  • In "Babies Make Three", several babies are born and their names leave a lot to be desired. "Seedling" is arguably the most tolerable of the lot due to at least sounding like a pony name, and "Twilight Sparkle-Scales" is a bit on-the-nose, but "Button Fly" is just plain absurd and nonsensical (unsurprisingly, it was coined by Rhymey) and has nothing to do with anything aside from being a zero-effort rhyme with "Fluttershy", and it also sounds like something you'd find in the crotch area on a pair of Levi's 501s.
  • The natives of Firmos are heavily associated with metal, and even their appearance reflects that. That wouldn't be so bad if weren't for the fact that they're called the Fermentials. It's impossible not to think of pickled food after that.
  • In "Faith of the Blind", Starfleet meets the very on-the-nose Blisstonians, just in case it wasn't already obvious from the blurbs what kind of Hat they wear.
    • Also, two of the Blisstonians are named Primm and Prei. Real subtle, Mindia, looks like you've also been learning from Asgore.
• The narration tends to describe a scene occurring in slow motion despite the fact that this is not a visual medium.
• Many character designs due to how poorly edited they are. For a few specific examples:
  • Lightning's suit and armor are white like his fur, except for the shoulder pads and loin guard that turn golden when he powers up. When powered up, it unfortunately looks as if Lightning's not wearing pants or, even worse, is naked, with only shoulder pads, boots, a loincloth, wristbands, and tattoos on him.
    • The pantslessness problem also applies to Starla, Penny, Grand Ruler, Rarity, and Shining Armor, who all also have a white coat.
  • The Grand Ruler's three horns are positioned in a way that just makes them look weird and out-of-place. Also, the "Triceratops" jokes basically write themselves. Additionally, his body design is based heavily on Princess Celestia, meaning that he has a female face. He's also drawn with white skin/fur and a white spandex suit with armor over it. It kinda looks like the suit is his skin/fur and his armor only covers as low as his crotch.
  • Starla is literally just Rarity badly photoshopped into a humanoid form.
  • Distraught is basically Discord given a gaudy Palette Swap in colors that don't quite go together, making him look rather clownish. He also looks like he's wearing a Dodgy Toupee.
  • Fratello looks like a rather generic Tin-Can Robot from a '50s B-movie. Not the most threatening design for a villain.
  • Raven just looks like the Teen Titan of the same name with photo-shopped bat wings, an MS Paint pony face, and a golden Uniforce horn that really has no place being there, clashing with the rest of her colors.
  • Lightning Dawn's Enticorn form. Anyone familiar with Ben 10 (especially its Alien Force incarnation) will recognize what he based it on, never mind he clearly traced a picture of Ben himself when he created a picture of it. Also, the golden horn and Super Saiyan hair just look out of place.
  • If you look closely at the pictures of Penny Sillion and Inquerius, you'll notice that their right thumb extends as far as the other fingers and looks as if it was fused with their ring finger. Oops.
  • The staggering amount of Palette Swaps is already bad enough. The fact that some of the characters with copied designs aren't even the same species as the original takes this to a completely new level of Fridge Logic.
• A lot of the titles for "episodes", "movies", etc. for how lacking in creativity they are.
  • Of note is the fourth episode, "Rollin' Rocks" due to it sharing the same name with a certain angry nerd's favorite beverage. Now try reading "Rollin' Rocks" while drinking Rolling Rock on the Roll 'n Rocker.
  • Brian Wilson fans may also be reminded of "Roll Plymouth Rock" from Smile. Now try reading "Rollin' Rocks" while listening to "Roll Plymouth Rock" and drinking Rolling Rock on the Roll 'n Rocker.
  • "Starfleet Events" due to how it does not convey anything specific that occurs in the story. It might as well be named "Starfleet Does Things".
• Likewise, a lot of the attack names are just as lacking. "Paint Bomb?" "Leaf Swarm?" "Drill Quill?" "Boom Boom Flare?" Heck, one attack is named "Star Shower"! This fic isn't even trying to hide its lack of originality!
  • There's also the fact that the three-horned Grand Ruler's unique power is called the Uniforce. Setting aside the Ironic Name (assuming it wasn't ripping off the name of the Triforce), you couldn't make the plagiarism more blatant if you tried.
• Some of the attacks themselves have laughable descriptions, such as Artie's "Paint Bomb" being a barrage of multicolored paint launched from his mouth. Which means he basically attacks by puking rainbows. Similarly, every attack Cookie Dough uses in his one fight scene (which was given to Artie in the rewrite, making it marginally better) is too cartoonish to be taken seriously, involving cream pies, eggs, and an egg whisk.
• Also, the transformation phrases and Transformation Name Announcements because of how unoriginal and ridiculous sounding they are. The worst of these are Buddy Rose's "Power of Fauna" (which should be "Flora"), and Rhymey's "I summon from within, the Power of Wind" for being so blatantly different from the others that it barely even fits with the rest. That, and it's easy to misinterpret it as another type of wind from within.
• How poorly choreographed the fight scenes are. They basically boil down to: Lightning running at the bad guy and getting owned, both sides shouting silly attack names at each other with said attacks not really doing anything until the plot wants them to, the bad guys falling victim to a Deus ex Machina when they have the heroes on the ropes, and Lightning coming in to Kill Steal after kind of just standing there for most of the fight. So Bad, It's Good the first time you read one, mind-numbingly boring for the next fifteen.
• Mykan loves to pepper the narration with onomatopoeia, and as such, a lot of scenes that were meant to be epic or dramatic... aren't. Take Fratello's Heroic Sacrifice in Starfleet Events, for example:
  Upon contact, the bomb inside him exploded in a huge BAM, trigging the eruption of the volcano, and caused the main reactor to explode in one might huge BOOM!!^note The spelling errors were there in the original text, by the way.
• The militaristic Space Ponies evidently teach their soldiers how to dance and sing, often spontaneously bursting into choreographed musical numbers when one of the main cast starts a song.
  • In 'Dance-Dance Solution', it's revealed by Star Swift that dancing really is part of Starfleet's training regiment.
• Mykan's song choices are just odd. The original has examples like Barney & Friends, and even then you get songs from Sesame Street, High School Musical, and Today's Special (his personal favorite). Regardless of whether or not you like these works, it's kind of jarring to hear them in what's supposed to be an action-oriented story (for reference, just try picturing any iteration of the Power Rangers singing a Barney song).
• Mykan's tendacy to place incredibly immature sounding similes into the narration. It can be rather awkward reading about how characters are going to get "crushed" like "pancakes" or "grapes" in what is supposed to be a serious scene.
• Lightning frequently uses the exclamation "Galloping Galaxies!" It's one of those lines you'd expect from a Saturday morning cartoon with copious amounts of Ham and Cheese, which isn't much of a problem until it shows up in a scene that's supposed to be taken seriously, thereby deflating any possible drama built up beforehand.
• The villains creating one-shot monsters out of whatever happens to be nearby occasionally has just plain silly results. Such as a hot-air balloon, a bunch of make-up wands and personal mirrors, and a hot pot.
• Mykan states that he despises Twilight Sparkle for forcing everyone to be friends with each other. However, Starfleet is perfectly sane and rational by forcing everyone to change their species, their way of speech, worship their new god-dictator without question, and submit to their new government with every single naysayer being either locked in an asylum, or brainwashed into agreeing. Moral Myopia doesn't even begin to cover this, and it makes his paragraphs long rant about how she's such a demonic soulless witch for wanting people to be nice to each other look utterly melodramatic.
• In relation to the above, Mykan's most hated character of the lot is Princess Cadance. Why is this, you may ask? Because she's Happily Married, Beast Boy and Davis Motomiya didn't get with Terra and Kari respectively, and he made a personal vow never to fall in love even in his adult years because he's afraid of rejection. Somehow, Cadance having a husband goes against his entire worldview. And yet somehow, it's okay for Lightning Dawn and Starla Shine to have a relationship and eventually wed, and it's also perfectly fine for him to ship Rhymey with Fluttershy, Celesto with Celestia, Artie Bristles with Sunset Shimmer, Spike with Rarity, and Buddy Rose with Tree Hugger. Just the sheer fact that he's willing to get on somepony's case for getting married when he's just as guilty of the same thing is simply amusing.
  • This gets taken to new heights in IX, which is entirely about romantic love and marriage, complete with a Love Triangle, at least two new couples, the villains wanting to purge the world of love, and a new healing move literally called "The Healing of Love". It's so hypocritical, it jumps across the line into hilarity.
• In the comments section of the blog, after it is pointed out that solar powered trains are not effective, Mykan pretty much ignores this, then he has a Dyson Sphere explained to him, and is asked why Starfleet doesn't have one. He says it's because it would generate too much heat. After it is further explained, he clarifies what he actually meant. Please don't bang your head on the desk.
  No, no... my dyson vaccum[sic], which is powered by Electricity as well, gets really hot after use.
• Also in relation, in the comments on this blog, Mykan states that if a Space Pony and an Equestrian were to mate, the result would always be a Space Pony in spite of Celesto starting out as an Equestrian and the others being his children, technically speaking. It's like if a Saiyan and an Earthling get together; would Mykan call Gohan and Trunks pure-blooded Saiyans because their fathers were Saiyans?
• Apparently, a couple getting together in one universe means that the same people from a different universe should also get together. While the original EG series only has Cadance and Shining Armor, in the Starfleet Humans series, we get Grand Ruler and Celestia, Fluttershy and Rhymey, and Artie and Sunset Shimmer, and while human!Lightning and human!Starla aren't a thing as of yet, the latter still pines for the former, and others encourage their relationship. This highlights just how forced all these relationships are.
• For some reason, the fic tends to give an awful lot of characters dead parents as a backstory. Celesto, Lightning Dawn, Starla Shine, Buddy Rose, Daphne Dil, Distraught, Spike, Jetar, human!Lightning Dawn, Tree Hugger, pony!Mykan, Sienna and Mako, En Shi, human!Sunset Shimmer, and Apple Spice have all lost their parents, often quite violently. By the ninth season, this trope has been used so often that it unintentionally loops back to being darkly hilarious. Highlights include:
  • Human!Lightning's parents died in a car crash. Why did they die that way? Because some Jerkass threw a can at the car, spooking them into crashing their car (see Starfleet Events for more info). In other words, the can kicked them.
  • Buddy Rose losing his parents (and sister). That alone isn't Narm... until we find that his cousin Daphne ''also'' lost her parents as well. The sheer coincidence of the two cousins losing their parents can come off as particularly darkly funny.
  • Vistulans levitate and explode upon death, as Calista kindly showed us. Readers will have a field day imagining Dearka's parents' deaths!
• Mykan actually wrote a rebuttal against the criticism of Calista's death from this very website's "What an Idiot" section. Three notable bits are (1) when he reads the argument that Dearka should have shielded Calista and he somehow gets the impression that the issue is Von Devilor's hesitancy to attack one of his own men rather than Dearka's armor, (2) when he states that Calista is supposed to die anyway so it wouldn't matter what protective measures the characters took, not comprehending that writing so that they did would make the villains seem very strong instead of making the heroes seem very stupid and (3) when he insists that readers are to read by his rules.

• The very idea of "the magic of believing". Believing in what specifically, we are not told until near the end of the second chapter of the first fic where Celesto says that Lightning has learned to believe in his own inner magic; up to that point, all we get is Lightning shouting "I BELIEVE" until lasers start shooting out of his horn.
  • It gets taken to absurd heights in the finale of season 1, where the ponies bring their destroyed planets back into existence by joining hands and believing really hard. It's evidently supposed to be an awesome demonstration of the power of belief, but instead, it generally elicits a different response.
• The story's claims about Lightning's superior strength are immediately called into question when Buddy Rose tasks him with delivering a crate of vegetables to Cookie Dough and he strains the whole way. It's even worse in the original, where instead of a crate, Lightning was struggling to carry a basket.
• When Cookie Dough is introduced in chapter 1 of the original, the patrons of the Rainbow Dish Inn (which is an unintentionally ridiculous name in and of itself) all stand up in unison and start chanting "Hail Cookie Dough! Hail Cookie Dough!" The resemblance to Those Wacky Nazis, given that it occurs in a restaurant, makes it unintentionally humorous. It's even kept in the remake.
• Starfleet are supposed to be a badass interplanetary peacekeeping crew... and then chapter 2 of the original fic has them running scared through Violet Swamp and literally being frightened by their own shadows at one point. In the remake, it's slightly mitigated; Lightning Dawn is the only one who gets scared despite his being trained by the Grand Ruler.
• Episode 4 of the original has Lightning being hospitalized for exercising. Unsurprisingly, this scene does little to convince the reader of his supposedly superior physical strength and instead makes him look like a complete loser.
• Dyno and Myte live in a place that's unironically named "Big Brown Canyon." Enough said.
• Some Rouge Angles of Satin moments are pretty hilarious, but one in particular stands out. Early on in the original fic, resident Generic Doomsday Villain Lord Titan has the "heroes" right where he wants them, and gets thwarted by the timely arrival of Dyno and Mite. When Lightning gets free, he shoots Titan a look of "furry". Another particularly funny one is in Cookie Dough's introduction, which claims that "he could satisfy the appetite of anyone, even if they were even hungry."
• The fact that the protagonists are seriously frightened (though partially due to a curse) by bad dreams in one chapter, to the point that they're afraid to have anything do with their hobbies for several hours. Contrast that with the Mane 6's reactions in the FiM episode Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?, where they were scared for only a few seconds when they woke up. Curse or no curse, it makes them look incredibly incompetent.
• "Up, Up and a Balloon" has Rep-Stallion's balloon monster trying to suck in Lightning, Krysta, and Brain, with all three of them hanging on for dear life. Then the latter two slip and are swallowed by the monster and Lightning calls out their names in anguish. It's then immediately revealed that Krysta and Brain are completely fine since the monster is simply an animate balloon, making the entire scene rather melodramatic.
• The Grand Ruler loses all possible credibility (at least, in the original version) when he's shown playing hopscotch to a disco remix of "Pop Goes the Weasel" (directly copied from Today's Special, no less). Here it is in video form (it's not the Grand Ruler, but it's pretty much the same deal).
  • The remake replaces the instance with "Moses Supposes". Not much of a better choice, especially when both choices happen right before the (not) final battle with Titan.
  • The battle with Titan has a particularly absurd case of talking dragging a battle to a halt when Grand Ruler starts reciting an eight-line chant (which, incidentally, is most likely derived from the summoning chant of The Winged Dragon of Ra) to summon the Uniforce and blast Titan with it. And Titan just stands there and lets him.
  • Grand Ruler getting bullied as a colt. It's the classic, overdone "hero gets bullied for a quirk despite that quirk being very desirable" cliché, but Celesto takes this to new heights with his golden wings and horns. Supposedly, the other colts would've labeled him a freak... except that alicorns like Celesto are usually royalty, if not borderline divinity, who run very important functions like controlling the day-night cycle. If anything, Celesto would've been treated with awe by other ponies. As a result, the attempt to make Celesto sympathetic only made his sheer Sueness much more obvious.
• "Dangerous Discoveries" has Titan's minions luring the heroes out by setting O-Range on fire... except they didn't and it turned out to be just an illusion when Lightning and company show up. Poke the Poodle doesn't even begin to describe it. It really doesn't help the inherent silliness that this is the chapter where the remaining villains supposedly start pulling out all the stops to avenge Titan, but God forbid they resort to property damage.

• The fact that the main villain of this story is a finch is sure to reduce their chances of being taken seriously.

• The thought of these strong and superior Space Ponies getting outmatched by untrained Diamond Dogs is nothing short of beautiful irony. The In-Universe explanation is that "they had strong armor".
• In "Trial of Misdjudgement", Starla discusses with Lightning that she has some issues with her figure, saying that her legs are "skinny as pancakes" (which is a really bizarre way of describing a person's legs) and makes Lightning promise that he won't tell anyone else what she told him, which he does. So, of course, Starla overhears Lightning use the simile "skinny as pancakes" in a conversation with the other ponies, making her believe Lightning broke her trust. In turn, Lightning is confused on why Starla is suddenly upset with him. Starla then spends the rest of the episode refusing to tell Lightning what's wrong, all so we can have the clich&eacute "character hears another character say something out of context, leading to an argument" plot.
• "Part 1: Illusions of Darkness" has a search for a MacGuffin protected by magic that casts illusions of what the treasure-seeker fears. Apparently, Princess Luna's fear is the boulder scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

• The birth of Leilani and Castor. As this blog points out, for some reason, Starfleet, for all their shilling of their technological superiority, doesn't even have ultrasound to monitor pregnancies; otherwise, the twins would've been detected 10 weeks into the pregnancy. Which means that either they haven't discovered it yet, which makes no sense for such a supposedly advanced intergalactic society, or Celesto is just a massive cheapskate. Either way, it's rather amusing.
• After Distraught leaves a curse on them, Starfleet goes to Castor and Leilani's room to find them missing and the room destroyed... except that they were with GR the whole time and it was destroyed by Distraught's curse after the three left. Poke the Poodle at its finest.
  • Made even funnier by the comparison to the other effects of Distraught's curse, like rampaging beasts. Because as we all know, property damage is just as bad as monsters endangering people.
• Lightning Dawn has to get a MacGuffin that will hurt a being if there is evil in them. Lightning starts to grab the orb and then... nothing happens, he gets it with no ill consequences. This scene was clearly a reference to when Tommy Oliver had to get the Zeo Crystal in the third season of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers; the thing is that when Tommy did it, he was actually hurt by the crystal because it detected his evil past as the Green Ranger, but then it allowed him to hold it because it sensed him redeeming himself and the entire point of the scene was to show just how far Tommy has come.
  • It also takes the reader out of the moment when you realize that Lightning Dawn is a complete and utter Jerkass during Starfleet Humans, giving the impression that the MacGuffin is simply not working rather than Lightning being pure and good. Or that the MacGuffin is of the same moral principles as Lightning.

• The "intro" and "ending" to the "movie" have the Friendship is Magic themes start to play before Lightning Dawn interrupts and changes them to the Starfleet Humans "themes". The Author Tract in the scene (and Lightning's jerkassery) is so blatant, it's almost amusing.
• The fact that Celesto Grandruler is a retired billionaire astronaut who built and owns a high school and part of the island where the Starfleet Humans stories take place in, and also adopted the human counterparts of Starfleet. And his limousine transforms into a rocket ship. Fiction 500 has never been quite so over-the-top, and if this were any other work, Celesto would come off as a Parody Sue.
• The characters referring to the upcoming basketball game as the "grand game" instead of "big game".
• Flash Sentry and Queen Sapphira referring to humans as "Earth-girl/boy/woman/man" which makes them sound like aliens from old sci-fi films (or the Psychlos).
• Human Starla Shine being bullied. It's the typical cliché of "girl getting bullied despite being incredibly attractive" but usually the girl in question has some sort of quirk that would make her a target. Starla doesn't have any of those. There's also the "nickname" the bullies give her, "Little Star" which sounds less like an insult and more like a nickname a parent would give to their daughter.
• The Starfleet Humans apparently learned martial arts just by reading about it from books. Later in the climax, they receive the Starfleet powers from Lightning Dawn and suddenly know several different fighting styles, which renders their knowledge on martial arts entirely redundant.
• Mykan's explanation for why Human Inquerius, a pointless side character, speaks only in questions, is that she suffered a stroke. What's really Narmy is the lack of explanation for why Human Rhymey speaks only in rhymes, which unintentionally implies that he probably also has some form of brain damage.
• When the characters are auditioning for the school play, it is painfully obvious who is going to get which part: Lightning and Starla will be the main couple, Rhymey and Fluttershy will be the Beta Couple, and Sunset will be the villain. Suffice it to say, the idea that actors can only play characters that have the same personality as them as demonstrated by this fic is patently untrue (see: Mean Character, Nice Actor and Funny Character, Boring Actor), which makes it harder for the story to pass them off as master actors like it tries to.

• Raven's death threats toward Celestia are a bit too ridiculous to take seriously with the gratuitous capslock and double exclamation marks, especially since she feels the need to send more than one, as if she's worried that Celestia might forget. Mykan apparently got the idea from The Simpsons episode Cape Feare, not realizing that there's a huge difference between a ten-year-old, powerless boy like Bart and a millennia-old, powerful monarch who's most probably received death threats before.
• On Herboss, we get Buddy's first love (and later ex) Lily Bud wearing a stark white formal dress. In the jungle. On a military mission. While enemy forces are destroying the planet. And not only does Lily bring a formal dress for no particular reason, but she and Buddy start making out while still being the only ones still awake at night and it's obvious they're not keeping a watch for surprise ambushes at all. The sheer idiocy of the two goes way beyond Skewed Priorities and into unintentional hilarity.
  • The scene (and the fact that she brought along a formal dress just to make it look romantic) makes it crystal clear what Lily's true role in the story is.
  • Also, Rarity constantly gets flack in the fics for being vain and obsessed with beauty, but here, Lily brings a formal gown for no reason other than the slim chance Buddy would be around in Herboss, and wears it in the middle of the night just to kiss Buddy, but is never called out for potentially putting herself in danger. Double Standard, anyone?
• Twilight's death is presumably supposed to be a Tear Jerker moment, and is built up to be tragic. Too bad it loses all meaning when you realize that Mykan went through with this because he hates Twilight (the fact the characters proceed to blame Twilight for her own death should give that away). Also not helping matters is how Lightning responds to the horrendous act that had just occurred:
  "And he threw his head high up into the air and let out a very loud and mournful NEIGH… just like the pony he was."
  • There are videos playing out how the death scene in question should go down. We have references to The Phantom Menace, Power Rangers Time Force, and the first Spider-Man movie all spelled out for us in case the viewers couldn't possibly make the connections. It also gets in the way of the scene, breaking up the flow just to tell us how the scene is going on instead of letting the viewers put the pieces together. In addition to that, Twilight's death plays out like this.
  • Twilight's body spontaneously goes up in a fiery explosion for no good reason during her death throes, taking a lot of dramatic impact out of the moment. It also becomes a particularly dark Hilarious in Hindsight moment in the next chapter when Lightning fights Twilight's spirit in his mind and she once again explodes on defeat. As it turns out, you can explode twice.
• Dyno and Myte's home planet is called El Mundo. Problem is, El Mundo is Spanish for "the planet", meaning that whenever the narrative says "the planet El Mundo", they're also saying "the planet the planet". What a way to admit that being "Spanish" is their only Hat with Google Translate.
• Lightning and Starla's wedding wouldn't be this trope if it weren't for the fact that it is literally a copy-and-paste of Cadance's wedding. Twilight would've been the maid of honor, the CMC are the flower girls, even Starla's gown is a modified version of Cadance's. It's so lazy, it really, really cements how little character Starla has other than being Lightning's love interest.

• Lightning Dawn can't bring himself to tell Sunset Shimmer and the rest of human cast that Twilight Sparkle is dead and lies to them by saying... she has a cold. And they believe him. Also, when the truth comes out, everyone just kinda gets over it. Completely brushing off that Twilight is dead and Lightning lied to their faces about it.
• Starfleet Humans: Starpops is pretty much a rich well of unintentional hilarity in its entirety (mostly due to the villains being gut-bustingly hilarious for all the wrong reasons), but a few moments really stand out:
  • The Starfleet Humans and the HuMane Six forming a twelve person band. They also named their band "Starpops". They get the name from Rhymey's "rhyme" about how he comes up with his "poetry" on Fluttershy: "Oh, it's nothing really, it's not hard, and its really no real dread. When I think of Fluttershy and I look at a Star, it just Pops into my head."^note "Star" and "Pops" are capitalized in the story itself, just to make sure the reader gets the point.
  • Earlier, they talk about missing Lightning Dawn... because they cannot come up with a decent name without him. And yes, Lightning is the one that comes up with the actual name based on Rhymey's ridiculous line.
  • The villains of the story (Sirens who?) are the Demonites. They have a cover band with the name D-Man Knights. Their Villain Song is a cover of Michael Jackson's Thriller with THIS as the chorus (and yes, they're meant to be taken 100% seriously, because nothing screams "terrifying villain" like a boy band that sings Michael Jackson covers):
    We are the D-Man... D... Man... Knights
    So learn our names just right and be a...^note The individual members never say their names in this song.
    He-Man, She-Man, Be-Man, C-Man...
    D-Man-Knight!!
  • The Demonites' song gets the entire camp dancing with them; suffice it to say, the mental image of the main villains leading a synchronized "Thriller" dance really isn't as scary as the main characters' reaction make it out to be. For that matter, our heroes being creeped out by what's basically a flash mob is hilarious in and of itself.
  • Despite Mykan changing the lyrics, he still has Blaze sing Michael Jackson's iconic "Ow!" at the end of the song. It just doesn't fit well and it ends up giving the impression that Blaze got hit with something or was dragged offstage by the neck.
  • The Demonites' second Villain Song is a cover of a parody of Lady Gaga's Poker Face (with said parody being incorrectly attributed to Lady Gaga) which includes lyrics such as "have a ball" and "bodacious". No, the fic is not a Stealth Parody, but it certainly could pass for one at this point.
    Can’t defy
    Can’t defy
    The magic music of the
    Demonites
    
    De De De Demonites
    De De Demonites
    
    De De De Demonites
    De De Demonites
  • Right before the Demonites perform their second musical number, they strike a "Super Sentai" Stance (complete with each member declaring their own name), making them look less like terrifying world-conquering demons and more like the Ginyu Force. In fact, Mykan links the Ginyu Force theme from Dragon Ball Z: Budokai as the Demonites' introduction.
  • The fact that they are called the Demonites will remind any Team Fortress 2 player of the Demoknight, a certain build for that game's character, the Demoman. This in turn will inspire them to read all of the Demonites' lines in a bad Scottish accent.
  • In order to break the Demonites' control over everyone, Starpops sing a cover of the song from the Arthur special featuring the Backstreet Boys. We are meant to take this seriously, but what makes it even more Narmful is that the lyrics are basically just Lightning singing a love song to Starla. The end result is just completely awkward rather than the powerful moment that it was intended to be.

• The Dark King may be a pitch-black giant made of evil, but it's pretty diminished by the utter lack of intelligence he demonstrates. In particular, going by the logic the series sets in Time Travel, the DK invading past!Starfleet from the Bad Future would cause his future to cease to exist with Starfleet, meaning that everyone loses. And with little indication that it's supposed to be intentional, and the likelihood that he had time to think this through, that leaves behind an antagonist not just Too Dumb to Live, but too dumb to let anyone else live, all while gripping the Villain Ball like it's going out of style. The sheer idiocy of his Evil Plan goes a long way to deflate what little drama there is of IV's plot, and makes the villains come off as pathetically, amusingly stupid at their best. If only great power came with basic critical thinking skills...
• Some of the Cardinal's designs leave much to be desired:
  • Buster Beak the evil rooster. Sure, roosters can be aggressive bastards, but the idea of an unironically gigantic, demonic chicken is too silly to take seriously.
  • Baa Baa Black one-ups Buster as a demonic sheep. And like Buster, it's not in an ironic Killer Rabbit way. It's got sharp teeth, claws, and dark wool to beat the reader over the head that it's evil. The idea of an unironically evil sheep that's never questioned can make some giggle at the sight of the "heroes" fighting for the world against a walking fluffball.
• Overlapping with WTH, Costuming Department?, Rarity falling for Esroh Dab become far less justified when you see that he looks like this. Unless Rarity of all people finds the equine equivalent of a fur-tone suit with the Cutie Marks covering his nipples attractive.
• After Rhymey unlocks his Mega Mode his "Thrash Slash" move becomes the even more ridiculously named "Super Duper Thrash-Slash".
• After Cadance runs away, she later returns as a ninja. For no particular reason, Princess Cadance of all ponies just happens to get a ninja Super Mode. It's so random that it borders on farcical.
• The author's insecurity regarding canon characters compared to his original characters reaches new levels with the claim that the Valkyries of Harmony are still weaker than the Space Ponies in their base forms. Additionally, it raises the question of why the Space Ponies were incapable of defeating Tirek if the power gap is supposedly so wide.
• When discussing Spike's crush on Rarity, both Spike and the others focus on the fact that he's a different species than Rarity. The stigma of an Interspecies Romance is treated as a major obstacle preventing Spike from confessing his feelings to Rarity, while glossing over the fact that Spike is a minor and either 5 or 7 years younger than the fully grown Rarity. This implies that United Equestria has issues with romances with non-pony species, but not romances with minors. Glad to know that at least our heroes (and by extension Mykan) have their priorities straight.
  • Not helping their case is that in canon, no one bats an eye at either the existence of mules or the many Ship Tease moments between members of different species, like Yona and Sandbar, or Fluttershy and Discord, and since Starfleet radically altered their whole world, pushes their worldviews on anything they conquer, has a history of being... less than generous to other species, and any interspecies relationships being with the very closely related Equestrians,^note Space ponies are derived from Equestrians, through Celestia and Celesto this implies that the unintentional dissonance is specific to Starfleet's society. Our heroes, everyone.

• The deaths of Human Lightning Dawn's parents: One day, they were driving with their son when a bully threw a beer can into their car. This apparently caused them to freak out so much that they accidentally crashed, killing them and leaving Lightning an orphan.
• The pre-battle conversation between Human Lightning Dawn and a gang's leader is silly-sounding. This is despite the fact it's meant to be dramatic as he's confronting the gang who's responsible for the deaths of his parents, which started his Dark and Troubled Past.
  The Leader: [to Human Lightning Dawn] So you wanna be a hero too, junior?
  Human Lightning Dawn: You're nothing but a filthy bucket of scum!
  The Leader: Wow, you're not very polite are you? Well, I am, that's why I'm gonna let you take it back.
• Human Lightning Dawn has evidently been traveling the world and fighting all sorts of evil paleontologists. So basically, he's a Parody Sue version of Indiana Jones, except he wasn't written to be a parody. He also possesses incredible intelligence and athleticism, has practically every female member of his peer group fawning over him and is a certified teacher despite being younger than 20.

• The fic gives this gem at the very beginning of the first chapter, where the titular human drops that he's an astronaut. At age 18. After training for less than two years. And his name is Mykan Stevens.
  • It gets even better; as if he wasn't enough of a Gary Stu, he went to college at 12, and university at 16. It sounds like something straight out of a parody fic... except it's not, and we're supposed to take it seriously.
• The chapter "Princess Avyanna" takes the time to mention that Kallan, Avyanna, and Mayne all mean some variation of "powerful". With no prompting or reason other than filling up space. We get it, they're Proud Warrior Race Guys.
  • It's also blatantly obvious that Avyanna is a copy-and-paste of Amandiva from IV, in appearance, personality, and role in the plot. Truly a fitting demonstration of the fic's creativity.
• "Stranger and Strangers" also adds the "proper" pronunciation of Celesto's name next to it]], once again with zero prompting. It's jarring enough that it loops over to amusing, and the idea that the author takes "Che-les-tow's ' pronunciation seriously doesn't make it better.

• There's the Always Chaotic Evil Generic Doomsday Villain, and then there are the Insectos. According to Grand Ruler, they exterminate the inhabitants of planets, then get bored and destroy the planets, including their own. For the Evulz. Because they're just that evil. If this was supposed to convince us that the Insectos are pure evil, then it didn't work, because destroying planets for zero reason makes one sound more like a bad Silver Age comic villain.
  • Not helping matters is just how impractical such a method would be. Only a few other characters have the power to destroy planets, and doing so is not only a waste of time and resources, but also destroys replenishable resources on the planet. Not to mention that there may not be enough places to retreat to in safety if the Armada is in great danger. Apparently, long-term strategy is not one of the Insectos' strong points.
  • It also doesn't help that, in the season they debuted, we see them try this on only three planets, all of which failed, one of them didn't kill anyone, and the other two went horribly wrong. The only evidence of them being able to pull it off at all is the word of Grand Ruler. Informed Ability at its finest.
• Ladybird is mentioned to have a humanoid face. It's supposed to indicate that she's beautiful, but a human face on a goddamn insect is Uncanny Valley of the highest order.
• Pinsar is described as having four tentacles on his back. You heard that right; an insect with no relation to any sort of tentacle-bearing animal has tentacles for no reason whatsoever. That detail is so out of place for a bug that it comes off as farcical.
• When Grand Ruler first brings up Starlight Braveheart, he mentions how Braveheart worshiped him to the point where Braveheart thanked GR for every good day and preached to his wife and children about how grateful he is to GR and told them to be thankful to GR. The way he words this makes Braveheart look like an extremely devoted cult follower, and when combined with the Ho Yay in their relationship, this unintentionally makes their relationship look much creepier than it should be.
  • It doesn't help that, as the progenitor of the Space Ponies, he's technically Braveheart's ancestor, and that GR admits to thinking of them as a family, meaning that Braveheart might as well be a surrogate son to GR.
• In "Pinkie and the Brain Bug", Penny mentions developing a technology so that if current treatments don't get rid of an infection in time, they can shrink a squad of soldiers to fight the infection themselves. You read that correctly. They are seriously considering fighting infections with their soldiers. Aside from ripping off Fantastic Voyage and the massive Artistic License – Biology this entails, it's our most hilarious indicator yet of just how militaristic our "heroes" are, basically confirming that Starfleet would rather shoot the problem until it goes away than consider far more practical solutions.
  • In fact, the whole plot is this trope. For context, Pinsar sends a squad led by D-Bug to literally invade Lightning's brain but end up in Pinkie's instead because they never bothered to prepare for such a scenario. The premise is so jarringly ridiculous and stupid that the already cartoonish Insectos lose any remaining credibility from this chapter on.
• Spike recognizing the Black Dragon Knight's sex by smelling her pheromones is retroactively either this or Squick, depending on how you look at it. Later, she turns out to be his sister Scaley, which brings up some... interesting issues with the phrasing.
• The description of Scaley. She's described as looking almost exactly like Spike, down to the shade of lavender of scales... except for her red spines. Just imagining what a red-and-lavender color palette would look like on a dragon may bring up snickering at the thought of how garish it would be. (Or bringing to mind a genderflipped Spyro, which isn't much better.)
• Upon learning the Black Dragon Knight's true identity, Rhymey exclaims: “But how can this be? A family member be an enemy!” Crappy grammar aside, this unintentionally suggests that Rhymey somehow didn't realize or understand that blood relatives can be enemies. The idea that Rhymey would be stupid enough to not know that relatives can hate each other is hilarious enough on its own, but that would also mean he forgot about Artie and his parents in IV.
• Celesto's battle against Pinsar, while it's the moment both of them show the most competence in the series, has this gem in the end of their Pummel Duel.
  Celestia and Lightning could hardly believe this, but eventually, Grand Ruler missed a shit, and Pinsar slashed him hard in the arm!
• When Pinsar dies and transfers his power to Ladybird and Phoebe in "Passing the Crown", the scene promptly kills the drama when his body dissolves into "a million of sparkling lights". The quoted excerpt was in the original script, by the way.

• Cookie Dough and Khana Ling have a boy, much to Cadance and Shining Armor's envy. The boy's name? Chop Stick. Apart from sounding awkward and unoriginal, the name itself is a frank admission that Chop Stick's only personality traits are that he's "Asian" and his parents are cooks.
  • Not helping matters is that Khana is spelled Khanna just a few paragraphs above his cameo.
  • Even worse, members of Khana's family have Asianesque names like Ho Meng, etc. However, Chop Stick's name is clearly English, so either a) Cookie Dough came up with the name, b) Khana named him to honor Cookie, which brings even more problems, or c) it was to reference his half-"Asian" heritage, which begs the question of why they chose a plain utensil to celebrate his mixed heritage? Why not a snack or a type of food?
  • Later in Season VII, his name is inexplicably spelled as one word instead of two.
• Cadance and Shining Armor are both sterilized at this point, so they ask Grand Ruler to use some of their cells to make a baby. Grand Ruler and Celestia object, on the grounds that they need to extract DNA samples from their reproductive systems and they're so badly damaged, extracting the samples from them could be fatal. This, however, falls flat when you remember that 1) extracting samples from one's reproductive system shouldn't be particularly dangerous or invasive, as evidenced by the numerous sperm and egg donors in real life, 2) both of them are infertile, meaning that using their reproductive system is out of the question to begin with, and 3) Grand Ruler successfully created 100 babies using only his blood and Celestia's hair, meaning that he can do the same with Cadance and Shining Armors' hair/blood without the risk of complications. The fact that no one pointed that out and went for the needlessly dangerous operation instead of the faster, safer one Grand Ruler had already done makes it pretty damn clear that this plot exists only to make Cadance and Shining Armor suffer for being Happily Married.
  • Even better, Lightning Dawn saw Grand Ruler use the hair and blood to create the first space ponies in a dream. The fact that he didn't point this out to the others is spectacularly poor judgment on his part.
• Who got high on LSD and named their kid "Lippy Sync"!? Apart from being a shitty corruption of "lip-sync", it sounds as if the poor kid had a mouth sore or some other lip infection.
  • Also, lip-syncing is basically prerecording a segment of speech and pretending to be speaking/singing/etc. Since the Milli Vanilli scandal, lip-syncing has been viewed with suspicion in the music industry as fake and cheap, which does not say flattering things about him.
  • Even better: his Cutie Mark is a pair of lips talking. Clearly, Mykan is either running out of ideas or he isn't trying anymore.
  • The rest of his family does not get much better. "Windy Bag" and "Big Chump" are pretty crappy, but "Biffy Box" doesn't even make sense.
• In "Founder's Day-saster", it's mentioned that the day is United Equestria's fourth birthday since Season I. Fair enough, until the very next paragraph also states that it's also Unicornicopia's 1055th birthday, and follows ''that'' one with a mention that Grand Ruler and Celestia's wedding anniversary is two days away from it. The sheer contrivance of the proximity of these special days makes what was supposed to be a special moment unintentionally hilarious and pretentious.
• In "Power Life Line", the Monsters Of The Week's destruction puts Cadance and Shining Armor's test tube baby Flurry Heart into cardiac arrest. The doctors tell the couple that they can't use magic or life support to save the baby, but Lightning steps in and... repeatedly strokes and presses the baby's chest to get her to breathe. And it works. For... some reason. Unlike Fluttershy's appendix, there's no getting around this blatant use of plot armor.
  • The villains of "Power Life Line" are named Red, Yellow, and Blue, their group name is the Bug-a-Watts, and their combined form is the Tri-Bug. If it's not immediately obvious, they have no role in the story other than to nearly kill Flurry Heart, let alone personality.
• Kitty Snip's description leaves much to be desired. She's basically a humanoid with cat ears, teeth, a tail, and fur. Apart from the massive Uncanny Valley it invokes, it also brings to mind the characters of Cats.
• Grand Ruler's SPARKLY blood.
  Cherry-Lei: Awful memories of Twilight fangirls returning. You know you've reached an all time low, when you unconsciously don't realize you're referencing one of the worst books ever written.

• A lot of the prisoners' designs are questionable at best, and straight-up laughable at worst. Some particular highlights:
  • Tornado has a blower for a head. It's not hard to think of a leaf blower.
  • Prankster is the best example, as a bunch of various prank gifts and toys make up his body.
  • Domer has just a ball and crystal for a head, and a green uniform. Not to mention, that description makes it sound like his design was ripped off from Mysterio.
• When Lightning turns into the Comet Ranger for the first time without being brainwashed, the Transformation Sequence consists of him... surfing through a meteor shower and getting hit by rocks? Uh, sure, why not?

• The Chaos Guardian, the greatest threat in Equestria, is called "Chaos Gaurdian". Consistently. Even when Sienna calls his name to make him attack.
• The finale has Tree Hugger, Fluttershy, and Rarity all announcing that they're pregnant. At the same time. Yes, Babies Ever After is a thing, but this is the kind of scene you'd find in a cheesy rom-com rather than the action story these fics present themselves as being.

• When Striker is bragging about his power in the first episode, he calls the other cadets "silly weaklings". If he was trying to make a Badass Boast, it's not working. For one thing, the way it's worded sounds like something a 6-year-old would say, not a talented, arrogant military cadet.
• In the first episode, the royal dancers put on a show for a foreign ruler consisting of... disco dancing and hula hooping. Somehow, said ruler finds this show impressive.
• Similarly to Ladybird and Kitty Snip, Mowaza, despite being an anthropomorphic lion, is described as having a humanoid face. Like Ladybird, that detail's supposed to highlight her beauty, but like Kitty, it instead brings to mind Cats.
• When Striker hits Lightning with a shot of magic that causes him to fire his blaster at Queen Mowaza, the narration actually describes the whole sequence of Lightning crying out in horror, Grand Ruler and Celestia pulling the queen out of the way and the blast going out the window and exploding harmlessly in slow motion. To top it all off, the blaster had already been set to "capture", so there was no need for the dramatics.
• The single biggest example in this season is the fact that Starfleet accidentally freed the Big Bad from the box before they even signed the treaty entrusting them with it. Too Dumb to Live does not come close to describing their sheer ineptitude.
  • Not helping their case was that the previous guardians of the box, the Ainzulians, had no problem keeping it sealed for ten thousand years. After this fiasco, what sane Ainzulian would want to have someone as incompetent as Starfleet ruling over them?
• When Stammadon summons Torron, the narration describes it as the carving representing Torron vanishing in sparkling lights and the minotaur appearing. It's hard to unironically take a scene that involves sparkling and the Villain of the Week appearing out of nowhere seriously.
• It's pretty hilarious that Stammadon, The Social Darwinist, has a much more diverse army than our 'heroes'. Like, Starfleet's military is mostly space ponies, with some Equestrians, fairies, and a single dragon sprinkled in, and the Herbolites, who appeared exactly twice in the entire fic, and both appearances were limited to III. This is without even getting into the "space ponies are better than everyone else" and "we know better than anyone else and deserve to conquer other planets because we know best" beliefs they get into. Meanwhile, no two members of Stammadon's army appear to be the same species, and one of his best generals has dwarfism. Ironic isn't it?
  • It also doesn't help Starfleet's case that Stammadon's goals are incredibly vague and never gets more specific than rooting out the weak, and anything he does that could be remotely construed as Social Darwinism has been done by every other Big Bad in the series, both before and after him, further weakening the Aesop. This has the side effect of making VIII's failed attempts at an Aesop amusingly pretentious.
• When GR sends Starfleet off to evacuate Ainzul, Grand Ruler says, and I quote, "Good luck, My Brave Ponies". Yes, he really did capitalize those words In Case The Viewers Couldn't Tell It Was A Title Drop.
• Ainzul is described as having a red sky. One of the multiple ways to achieve such a color is pollution, lots and lots of pollution. Ainzul is based off of China. Cue the Chinese pollution jokes.
• When Pinkie Pie attempts to explain to Balia what happened with Stammadon, the narration describes her attempts as "long, quick sentences". Seriously?
• Stammadon's army is supposed to be a global threat, yet the first thing they do is terrorize a random town and all subsequent attacks are local in scale, with very little lasting impact on the heroes. So much for global threat. Actually, that would apply to a lot of villains.
  • During the battle against Torron and the Shis, En Shi leaps up to pelt Starfleet with hail. Later, when Rainbow tries to stop En, she's still floating in the air, as if she was suspended midair. Talk about an epic Fight Scene Failure.
    • Not helping matters is the way she releases hail, by making it fall out of her hair. It's not hard to imagine her just standing there and hail falling out of her hair, or her whipping it around and letting the hail fly everywhere.
  • When Applejack attacks Rai Shi, he grabs her arm and lifts her off the ground. Not once does she think about kicking or spitting at him. Even if it was part of the plan to tire Rai Shi out, it's hard to see how being held off the ground by an enemy will be helpful in any possible way, and it can ''derail'' their plans, as he can use her as a shield. AJ's very lucky he "only" punched her away instead.
  • Later, when Applejack is thrown across the ground, she crashes into Rainbow Dash. Who has super speed. Yeah...
• In "Strength of Evil: Part 2", Stammadon describes the Ainzulians as wimpy and Starfleet as a strong force that he and his forces should focus on, despite the former having beaten him and kept him sealed for ten thousand years while the latter having just beaten one of his monsters and freed him through incompetence after two minutes.
• The secondary plot of the season is a Whole-Plot Reference to Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad. The problem is that the story states emphatically that, despite having advanced computer systems, United Equestria chose not to develop an Internet because they were convinced the cons outweighed the pros. Not only does the premise shoot itself in the foot (after all, you can't do a plot where Everything Is Online if there is no "online") and require Voodoo Sharks to hold itself aloft, it also makes the Space Ponies come off as completely lacking innovation; you'd think that a space-faring race would see the benefits of having an easily-accessible global communications system and information repository.
• In Chapter 8, when Monster of the Week Emosha is defeated, she yells "WHOA!! I'M FEELING THE BURN!!" Yes, really.
  • Also, Emosha's superpower is manipulating emotions. It sounds genuinely creepy... until we find out that:
    • 1) She uses it with magical fans.
    • 2) She has to say what emotion she wants to invoke out loud and wave her fan ("Sleepy!" *waves fan*)
    • 3) It releases magic waves to hit the target, waves that can be easily dodged as Starla has shown.
    • 4) Instead of simply staying out of range of her opponents and making everyone too scared to fight her, she uses her powers to make Pinkie die of laughter, she accidentally makes Dyno and Myte fight with each other, and makes Starla cry. Again, yes, really. How are we supposed to take these villains seriously?
• It's one thing for Tree Hugger, Fluttershy, and Rarity to conceive children at the same time, but giving birth on the same day at the same time takes Contrived Coincidence to new levels. Once again, this is supposed to be an action show that takes itself seriously, not a sappy rom-com.
• Rarity and Spike's daughter is, obviously, a hybrid between a pony and a dragon. While she can be perfectly reasonably classified as a kirin (not to be confused with the ones from "Sounds of Silence"), Mykan refuses to use that term as he initially didn't believe that kirin were a thing and instead goes for the infinitely sillier-sounding "dragony".
• When Kara Shi runs to save Tan Shi from getting captured, he throws his sword away. Okay, but then it ricochets off of almost every Starfleet fighter in the vicinity. And it depowers everyone who was hit. This looks like something straight out of a Looney Tunes short, not an action series that takes itself seriously, especially not in a moment that's supposed to be dramatic.
• There are excusable typos, and there is this gem (don't say it out loud):
  Scootaloo looked, and saw her come was sparking softly, having been slightly damaged when she fell and smashed it against the ground. “Uh, oh…” this can’t be good.

• The Big Bad's name is Von Devilor. Von. Devilor. Apart from being as original as Lippy Sync, it's apparently not immediately obvious that he's the bad guy.
  • Also, "von" is a German preposition which can mean "of", "from", etc. Which means his name means "of Devilor" or "from Devilor".
• The Big Bad of the season is described to "[roar] like a fowl beast" during his introduction. It is difficult to not imagine him as a giant chicken after that.
• It's hard to take Von Devilor seriously when he's described as being attached to a fleshy formation that is throbbing, and to compound that, he also has tentacles. It's not very difficult to think of something else instead.
• Scarlet's name is misspelled as Starla when Von Devilor yells at her at one point.
• In "Factory Line Destruction", the blurb for the next chapter leaves a cliffhanger asking how Starfleet would save Rarity after she was badly wounded from the collapse of a factory during one battle against Dearka. Problem is, the description for IX already tells us of an operation that would turn her into a pony-dragon hybrid, making the cliffhanger come off as amusingly pretentious, so thanks, Mykan, for spoiling the event before the incident even happened!
• While Rarity is in the ER, the others discuss replacing missing and damaged parts of her body. Spike suggests that she should get dragon parts, and one of the reasons he cites is that their baby will be more comfortable if her parents looked more like each other. Keep in mind Spike and Rarity's relationship was cited as a milestone in Interspecies Romances in IV and V, and if he wanted Rarity to look more like a dragon, he'd be defeating the point of their romance.
• When Dearka details his supposed backstory, he mentions that he went to Vistula to crash a wedding and kill his parents just before the beginning of IX. For some reason, Starfleet recognizes the event as the same wedding with Lenora they intervened in at the beginning of IX... on Kiran. Even taking Dearka's Fake Memories into account, Starfleet wouldn't have known the backstory was fake at the time, so why did they (and perhaps the author) forget something as hard to miss as the planet where the attack occurred at the start of the Devils' invasion? So much for "superior intelligence".
  • It gets even worse when they go to Vistula to verify if Dearka's account was true. Not once have they brought up the attack at Kiran/Vistula at the start of IX for questioning.
• Starfleet getting Calista killed through sheer stupidity, endangering the rest of Vistula in the process. Together with what happened with Ainzul, Conva, Twilight's death, Starla's kidnapping, and IV's future, one has to wonder how the hell are they still running an empire when their best forces have the intelligence of a vacuum. Or better yet, why anyone still trusts them to keep themselves safe, let alone anyone else.
• When Calista dies, her body is described as levitating, then exploding. Way to kill what little drama there was.
  • It gets even better. This is literally how Vistulans die. Good luck imagining a Vistulan funeral.
• Bird themed typos strike again in "World War Two Ways", when Von Devilor says “Fools! Your poultry powers will serve you naught here in my world! Only the hate and the darkness reign supreme here... allow me to show you!” If the foul/fowl typo didn't seal the rooster jokes, the paltry/poultry certainly will! Good luck taking Von Devilor seriously again.
  • In the same episode, Starfleet gets separated into groups of three, and Krysta, Lightning, and Buddy get accosted by an army of shadows. Not once does Krysta use her portals to get them away from the clones. What makes this funny for all the wrong reasons is when she uses said portals to fight the monsters, and by the time she realizes she can teleport, it's too late. This did little to convince readers that she's not a Dumb Blonde and should be running an entire planet.

• Swift Star makes a speech about how tolerant Starfleet is in Chapter 8. Due to a few grammatical errors, however, while he mostly salvages the image of Starfleet, we have this gem...
  We are forcefully telling you to praise us like gods, or whip you like slave drivers.
  • He also says in the same speech that you can't just say you are right and everyone else is wrong. Big words from a member of Starfleet.
• Spike and Rarity wind up getting trapped in a planet of dragons named, wait for it, Dragonia. Really original, isn't it?
  • How about the fact that the dragon they're sentenced to fight is named Scarlight, when the villain Starlight already exists, and is described as having an "orange tummy". Doesn't exactly scream "intimidating".
• In "Faith of the Blind", Starfleet takes their hypocrisy to new heights when they admonish the Blisstonians for their Blind Obedience. This is a friendly reminder that these are the same guys who have repeatedly let others kill, kidnap, or abuse innocent people because the law stopped them, and also regularly scold people who break the rules to do the right thing.
  • Then, they take their raging hypocrisy to new heights, as they completely switch opinions after saving the Blisstonians so they can shill themselves. To quote from the chapter itself:
  Mindia never thought of it that way. She had always assumed that all blessings came from the heavens.
  “Maybe in ways... they did.” said Dyno “You prayed and wished for someone to help you while you were in danger, and me and my brother came.”
  Myte nodded, “Si... and you did pray and hope for your survival. Even though the planet was lost, your prayers were still answered; we all helped you escape.”
• In "Two-Timing Temptation", we get this sentence fragment:
  Cadance dodged Waverline’s every blast and attack, and Waverline blocked and defended herself from.

• Grand Ruler reveals that long ago, he fought an evil alien who could duplicate his spirit with martial arts to do the fighting for him. According to Ruler, he then fought the duplicate spirit until he had the cunning idea of targeting the actual enemy instead, who wasn't even fighting. Well, Starfleet's Idiot Hero tendencies had to come from somewhere...
• At one point, Lady Fair worries about Lil's increasingly erratic behavior, especially after Sole wants Lil' kicked out of the house. The narrative then tells the reader that this is strange for Lady Fair because she likes shopping more, and she even says out loud that it's weird of her to care about Lil'. Subtle.
  • Lady then finds Lil', possessed by Little Jewel, in the foyer, and when Lady demands to know what's going on, Jewel tells her that she's going to use her for her Evil Plan. It's so comically frank and simple that it really takes one out of the moment.
  Lil only laughed, “I’m not your daughter. I’m the one who’s going to use you and several others in a plot to make my dreams become a reality.”

• "Haha these names are funny" could go under Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?; Twinkle Belle's name being misspelled is a regular flaw.

• Complaining.

• Regular flaw.

• Complaining/regular flaw.

• Complaining.

• Complaining - maybe WTH, Costuming Department??

• Complaining.

• Complaining.

• Complaining/regular flaw.

• Fridge Logic, complaining, Author Tract, complaining for the sub-bullets.

• Complaining.

• Complaining/regular flaw.

• Association Narm.

• Complaining.

• Complaining.

• Complaining.

• Rouge Angles of Satin.

• Fridge Logic.

• Author Tract, complaining, Fridge Logic for the sub-bullets.

• Mood Whiplash, complaining.

• Complaining.

• Complaining/writing errors.

• Complaining.

The general folder can be cut; as per definition, Narm is a specific moment.

Season 1

• Complaining.
  • Complaining.

• Fridge Logic.

• Maybe fine if the comment about the name is cut.

• Fridge Logic.

• Fridge Logic.

• Complaining.

• Rouge Angles of Satin, as described.

• Complaining.

• Anti-Climax.

• Do we have a trope for inappropriate music? If so, it should be here.
  • See above.
  • Fridge Logic.
  • Fridge Logic.
• Anti-Climax.

Starfleet Movie: How the Finch Stopped Hearth's Warming

• Complaining.

Starfleet Magic: The Movie

• Not funny; also, several tropes (Informed Ability, etc.) fit better.

• Complaining.

• Complaining, association Narm.

Starfleet Magic: The Movie

• Fridge Logic.

• Fridge Logic, Poke the Poodle.
  • Fridge Logic.

• Complaining.
  • Fridge Logic.

Starfleet Humans

• Author Tract.

• Complaining.

• Complaining.

• Complaining.

• Complaining.

• Complaining, Fridge Logic.

• Complaining, Fridge Logic.

• Complaining.

Season 3

• Complaining.

• Idiot Ball.
  • Complaining.
  • Complaining.
• Complaining, Author Tract.
  • Maybe fine if trimmed.
  • First sentence seems fine.
• El Spanish "-o".
• Satellite Love Interest, possible Fridge Logic.

Starfleet Humans: Starpops

• Angst? What Angst?, as mentioned, and Easily Forgiven.
• Formatting - this has no reason to be its own bullet.
  • Informed Ability.
  • Maybe fine if comment about the line is cut.
  • Maybe fine if rewritten. Lyrics don't need to be included.
  • Fridge Logic.
  • Fridge Logic.
  • Complaining.
  • Association.
  • Complaining.

Season 4

• Fridge Logic, Stupid Evil.
• Complaining, extends to sub-bullets.
• WTH, Costuming Department??
• Complaining.
• Complaining.
• Complaining, Fridge Logic.
• Complaining, Fridge Logic.
  • Fridge Logic, Unintentionally Unsympathetic.

Starfleet Movie: Human in United Equestria

• Author Avatar, complaining.
  • Complaining, Fridge Logic.
• Complaining.
  • Complaining.
• Complaining.

Season 5

• Complaining.
  • Fridge Logic.
  • Informed Ability.
• Fridge Logic, Uncanny Valley.
• Artistic License – Biology.
• Fridge Logic.
  • Fridge Logic.
• Fridge Logic, Artistic License – Biology.
  • Complaining, Fridge Logic.
• Retroactive examples not allowed.
• Complaining, association.
• Rouge Angles of Satin, Fridge Logic.
• Rouge Angles of Satin.
• Grammar.

Season 6

• Complaining, Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?, Fridge Logic.
  • Complaining.
  • Complaining.
• Fridge Logic.
  • Fridge Logic.
• Complaining, Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?.
  • Complaining, association.
  • Complaining.
  • Complaining.
• Fridge Logic, Contrived Coincidence.
• Ass Pull, as potholed.
  • Complaining.
• Complaining, association.
• Association.

Power Rangers Starfleet

• Complaining, applies to sub-bullets.
• Complaining

Season 7

• Rouge Angles of Satin.
• Contrived Coincidence.

Season 8

• Complaining.
• Complaining.
• Complaining, association.
• Complaining, Fight Scene Failure.
• Fridge Logic, Idiot Ball.
  • Complaining, Fridge Logic.
• Complaining.
• Fridge Logic.
  • Complaining, Fridge Logic.
• Viewers Are Morons, as potholed.
• Complaining, association.
• Complaining, possibly Rouge Angles of Satin.
• Fridge Logic, general.
  • Fight Scene Failure, as noted.
    • Fridge Logic.
  • Fridge Logic, Fight Scene Failure.
  • Forgot About His Powers and Fight Scene Failure, as potholed.
• Character Shilling.
• Fridge Logic.
• Fridge Logic.
• Not funny.
  • Indentation. The sub-bullets below this should not be a list.
    • Not funny.
    • Not funny.
    • Not funny.
    • Fight Scene Failure, Fridge Logic.
  • Contrived Coincidence, as noted.
• Not funny.
• Fight Scene Failure, Pinball Projectile.
• Rouge Angles of Satin.

Season 9

• Complaining, sub-bullet is As Long as It Sounds Foreign.
• Rouge Angles of Satin.
• Not funny.
• Rouge Angles of Satin.
• Trailers Always Spoil. (Do we have an equivalent for episode descriptions?)
• Fridge Logic, Broken Aesop
• Fridge Logic, Idiot Ball.
  • Fridge Logic.
• Idiot Ball.
• Not funny. Applies to sub-bullet.
• Rouge Angles of Satin.
  • Forgot About His Powers.

Season 10

• Rouge Angles of Satin.
  • Complaining, not funny.
• Complaining.
  • Complaining.
• Hypocrite, Fridge Logic.
  • Hypocrite.
• Rouge Angles of Satin.

Season 11

• Complaining, Fridge Logic.
• Complaining, Viewers Are Morons.
  • Not funny.