Do you believe in a truly compelling and touching narrative? You do? Well, if the world of United Equestria believed as much as you do, we wouldn't have these unintentionally hilarious moments.
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Season I
- When Cookie Dough is introduced in chapter 1 of the original, the patrons of the Rainbow Dish Inn 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 Humans: Starpops
- 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 because nothing screams "terrifying villain" like a boy band that sings Michael Jackson covers.
- The HuMane Five and Humane Space Ponies talk about missing Lightning Dawn... because they cannot come up with a decent name without him.
Starfleet Humans: Starfleet Events
- 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.
Season VI
- 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.
Power Rangers Starfleet
- 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. Not exactly the appearance of an intimidating villain.
- Prankster is the best example, as a bunch of various prank gifts and toys make up his body. Like Tornado before, he is supposed to be taken seriously as a threat to the heroes.
- Domer has just a ball and crystal for a head, and a green uniform. Aside from sounding rather garish, 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?
Season VII
- 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 semi-serious action story these fics present themselves as being.
Season VIII
- 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 playground bully 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 supposedly weaker 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'. 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 not only has dwarfism but was bullied for it. 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, whatever that means, 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 effect of making VIII's 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".
- 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, or even hitting him with her free arm. 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...
- 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.
- 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 and 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... except:
- 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?
- Also, Emosha's superpower is manipulating emotions. It sounds genuinely creepy... except:
- 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 a more serious action series, 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.
Season IX
- 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.
- 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 else still trusts them to keep themselves safe, let alone the rest of the universe.
- 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 who isn't qualified to run an entire planet.
Season X
- 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...
- 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 debutted in the same season, 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, as if their raging hypocrisy wasn't bad enough already, 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.
Season XI
- 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.”
