The heroes of Dakari-King-Mykan's My Brave Pony series often come off as less heroic than its author intends them to be, with the only thing stopping them from completely falling into this is that the main antagonists are often legitimately evil and not Designated Villains. And even then, that's not fully guaranteed, like with Ace Ray and Brass Bolt. For highlights both in and out of the fics themselves:
- For starters, the narrative outright calls their home, Unicornicopia, a police state in I, then tries to justify it by saying it’s a "good" police state. Needless to say, this didn't assure many readers. To make things worse, the Q&A confirms that it's illegal to mock royalty. Given that, in real life, it's common for people to roast their own leaders on a regular basis and the only governments that ban this are often corrupt at best and authoritarian at worst, this does not say good things about Starfleet.
- The Grand Ruler in My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic II makes Twilight believe she is responsible for an entire family getting hurt, just so he can teach her that she should always follow his orders blindly. Some of his other actions are also extremely cruel, seeing as despite Starfleet's advanced infrastructure technology, Grand Ruler took years to even bother looking for survivors of destroyed planets. (Lightning lost his planet Harmonia at 5 but, despite Harmonia's ties to Starfleet, remained lost for 2 more years.)
- Lightning Dawn in My Brave Pony: Starfleet Humans; after Principal Celestia kicks Starla out of the play due to photographic evidence of her trashing the props and costumes, Lightning barges into her office, insults her and even states that it's a good thing her pet horse is dead. This causes Celestia to attack him, but he’s not affected by the punches and chokes and he fells her with a flip, a shove and by smashing a cup of coffee onto her head, which burns her, allegedly doing this out of fear for his life (even though, as previously stated, Lightning retains all of his physical enhancements; the narration even states that Lightning was unaffected by Celestia's punches). Naturally, Grand Ruler finds Celestia at fault and fires her. Lightning feeling ashamed of what he did and getting suspended doesn't negate his actions one bit since he runs off and doesn't go back to help and doesn't apologize to her until later in the fic. Mykan later posted a blog
justifying Lightning's actions and blamed Celestia for supposedly starting the fight because she threw the first punch, completely ignoring the fact that Lightning instigated the fight by actively goading her into lashing out and ignorant of the fact that fighting words and excessive defense are against the law in dozens of countries, including the United States of America, where the fic is set. All in all, Lightning comes across as less like a hero defying the mean principal and more like a bully who provokes his victims into a physical confrontation so he can beat them up and claim self-defense. - Twilight dies and, rather than blame Raven for killing her, Starfleet blames Twilight for her own death for disobeying orders and trying to fight someone who was a threat to someone they love. What makes this worse is that before she went off to fight Raven, Starfleet wasted a perfectly good opportunity to capture the assassin despite Raven being at large and in a vulnerable position that they could exploit, making them come off as incompetent and in no position to blame Twilight for her recklessness.
- Starfleet's EG counterparts are not much better. It's especially bad in Starfleet Events, where they call out the Shadowbolts for cheating and being bad sports when they had been using their magical enhancements to coast by the games for the past two years, rub in their victories to the opposing side with extreme prejudice, and are all around annoyingly arrogant.
- In Starfleet Events, Sunset's "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Friendship Games is replaced by all twelve of the Starfleet Humans main cast cornering Twilight outside the locker room and ruthlessly chewing her out for stealing their powers. Not only is it much more mean-spirited and petty than the scene it's based on, where Sunset was at least partially justified due to her friends being put in mortal danger, it also comes off a lot like vicious bullying, made even worse by the rest of the HuMane Six joining in.
- By the end of V, Starfleet has wiped out all but a handful of the Insectos, meaning that they have essentially committed speciecide, and they are proud of this. Apparently, speciecide is OK when Starfleet does it. And this isn't even going into some of their other sketchy behavior when dealing with rare species...
- Starfleet Magic VI gives us the case of the pony counterpart of Mykan Stevens. He spends most of the season being an antagonistic Jerkass towards everybody and tries his level best to Be as Unhelpful as Possible toward Starfleet as they deal with their latest threat, and ultimately, they end up unintentionally spurring him into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Arc Villain after they've already pretty much defeated said villain. This results in Mykan going out in a Senseless Sacrifice that inflicts untold amounts of gratuitous collateral damage, at which point Starfleet has him memorialized as a hero despite him never having demonstrated any sort of heroic behavior whatsoever. Surprisingly, even though Pony Mykan is a selfish jerk, his human counterpart averts this trope (when he isn't drugging villainous princesses who ask him for a genuine date).
- In VI, we learn that they regularly beat and starve their prisoners for misbehaving, to say nothing of them being literally caged. And this is supposed to be justified because the prisoners are Always Chaotic Evil and deserve such treatment. Long story short, few readers were upset at Brass Bolt for freeing all of the prisoners.
- In VII, they send a literal child to prison. Sure, said kid helped invade Equestria, but he had since done a Heel–Face Turn several chapters ago and made up for his crimes, and Starfleet supposedly has rehab, so they have no reason to wheel him to a Hellhole Prison if rehab was supposedly an option. Because Mako going to the worse prisons would retraumatize him and Sienna and turn them evil again, that was even worse until a retcon ensured they were rehabilitated.
- VIII has Starfleet literally free the Big Bad Stammadon and endanger at least two entire planets, Ainzul and United Equestria, through sheer incompetence. Keep in mind that just minutes ago, they were having a treaty where they were supposed to replace Ainzul's military with Starfleet in exchange for keeping Stammadon captive. They never felt remorse over their mistakes for more than a few moments at best, and once they manage to bump off the Big Bad, they basically conquer Ainzul in all but name, even though they broke the treaty requiring them to do so before they even signed it, and never bothered to renew it or ask forgiveness.
- In IX, Starfleet fails to save Princess Calista from getting fridged by Von Devilor, which only happened due to a string of bouts of idiocy ranging from "not bothering to send more than 2 guards for Calista" to "not trying to save Calista from getting fired at", once again putting another planet in danger, and also again, they never suffer actual consequences from the Vistulans for it, to the point of appointing a president before consulting the Vistulans to rule over them, also without anyone questioning this. Said President isn't even a Vistulan. At this point, it's a miracle no one tried to (justifiably) rebel against Starfleet.
- In X, Starfleet spends much of a chapter trying to get the Blisstonians to let Starfleet save them by telling them that their Blind Obedience in Clap Your Hands If You Believe is a bad thing. Rich words from an organization characterized by its Lawful Stupid tendencies and its reliance on that very same belief power, but what pushes this instance into this trope is when they do a 180 degree turn on their stance and say that their blind faith isn't so bad, because if they kept their stance, they couldn't conveniently praise themselves for saving the Blisstonians.
- In X, Starfleet defeats Beaker and his gang, and puts them on trial for their crimes. At one point, Swift Star starts insulting Beaker, prompting the judge to tell him to be quiet. Grand Ruler and Lightning, being the wise, fair, understanding ruler and general they are, threaten the judge into letting Swift Star insult Beaker and openly side with Swift. Because nothing is more heroic than abusing one's authority to threaten a judge in court and sway the sentencing! Which has... telling implications for Starfleet's judicial system. The fact that Lightning is merely the leader of the army makes the militarism of Starfleet very obvious. Furthermore, given how many criminals they prosecute, it's likely that this isn't the first time they've done this...
- Agapi leads Cadance to Von Devilor, waits until he absorbs her, then possesses her, kicks Cadance out of her body, and leaves her at Von Devilor's mercy. Rainbow Dash and Shining Armor justifiably call her out on it, and she justifies it by saying she was exhausted from being used as a fuel drive by Devilor, but that doesn't explain why she put in the extra effort to remove Cadance's spirit from her body instead of just taking her with Agapi. It really doesn't help that 1) kicking Cadance out leaves her with Von Devilor, meaning that her actions just replaced one source of energy with another, that's also not depleted like Agapi, and 2) last season, Stammadon did something similar to Striker under similar circumstances, and he didn't even kick Striker out like Agapi did to Cadance.
