YMMV / My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic

YMMV items for Dakari-King Mykan's My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic, the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic.

---

A-M

• Accidental Innuendo: Has its own page.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Has its own page.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Lightning's attitude towards his homeworld's destruction flip-flops between this and Wangst. Most of the time, he's completely unaffected by it, but when he does start angsting, expect that angst to be taken way overboard and given a disproportionate amount of focus because he's the main character. Also, no one seems to care about the Harmonians' extinction except for how it affects Lightning Dawn personally.
  • Twilight's death. While characters do remember her after her passing, it never goes anywhere beyond feeling slightly sad about it and then moving on as if nothing happened.
• Anti-Climax Boss: In Human in United Equestria, Princess Avyanna, despite being one of the best manipulators in the series, goes down like a punk. She simply gets drugged and answers all the questions of Human Mykan Stevens.
• Arc Fatigue: Don't be surprised if you get bored reading any of these fics. Mykan believes that he has a word quota to fill, leading to excessive padding.
• Archive Panic: These fanfics are long and numerous. If you want to catch up, be warned.
• Ass Pull:
  • Lightning suddenly being able to summon the Uniforce because he remembers to believe, right when Titan is going to kill him.
  • In the rewrite, Nightmare Moon destroys Twilight's wings; it's never explained how she's able to do this, why she does this, why she doesn't do the same with the Pegasi or other princesses, or why she doesn't take her horn as well.
  • Brain turns out to have a spaceship in his backyard, which the others use to escape the exploding Unicornicopia.
  • Celesto and Celestia fusing and turning into the Great Celestial Ruler, who destroys Titan.
  • The MLP and Starfleet ponies being able to reconstruct a planet through the power of belief.
  • Lightning getting inside Fratello's energy-absorbing Humongous Mecha by surrounding himself with the Uniforce, which somehow allows it to absorb his physical body as well as the energy around it.
  • Starfleet having a batch of Draconequus Eggs which they give to Distraught.
  • Lightning is the last of a race of creatures known as Enticorns, which, as the author confirms, is partially based off of Super Saiyans.
  • In Starfleet Humans: Starpops, Human!Grand Ruler was capable of surviving being lost in outer space while being low on oxygen.
  • There being three Flash Sentries.
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • Dementia, Mysterious and Rep-Stallion had bad names, resembling senility, being non-threatening and being confusing respectively. So, Mykan renamed them to Waverline, Specter, and Razor respectively, fixing all the problems with their names.
  • The scene with Grand Ruler playing hopscotch was removed in the rewrite of the first season.
  • The rule they have against people fighting too strong enemies leads to Twilight Sparkle being blamed for her death. But, in Season X, even Lightning is chewed out for the same thing, though he doesn't die, showing that at least this stance is consistent and not just for Equestrians.
  • A typo that was making Starfleet look bad in Season X was fixed.^note Swift used to say, "We are forcefully telling you to praise us like gods, or whip you like slave drivers", now he says, "We are not forcefully telling you to praise us like gods, or trying to whip you like slave drivers."
  • Starfleet is very often criticized about not informing the population about threats. So, in Season XI, when it's clear the villains can attack through the shields with no trouble at all, Starfleet actually does inform the public, which is the smart choice.
  • After a lot of pressure, the author rewrote Ace Ray's arrest again, where he is reprimanded for beating his sister first and foremost, resulting in Starfleet looking a bit more heroic. (Although that rewrite didn't stick.)
  • The story is heavily criticized for its sexism. To deflect this criticism, the author made Starla increasingly more competent each Season, to the point she now stands out from the regular Space Ponies of the team.
  • Mako going to prison raised a lot of criticism, but when, because of Sienna's backstory (where she turned evil to protect her brother from abuse), it was implied that Starfleet would undo her redemption and push her further than ever into corruption, Mako was rehabilitated instead.
• Bile Fascination: There are some people out there that will read the story just to see what's so controversial about it. And sweet Twilight Sparkle, is it ever.
• Canon Defilement: While the fic itself is often loathed for making the cast of Friendship is Magic less competent to make Starfleet look superior, Celestia in particular is given the worst of it when she blames Twilight Sparkle, her own student, for getting killed instead of blaming Raven for killing her, and pretty much acts as a Replacement Goldfish for the Element of Magic, even though Celestia would never pull this kind of thing in canon. And she (along with Starfleet) is supposed to be in the right for thinking this.
• Captain Obvious Aesop:
  • One of the many Aesops given out by the Grand Ruler can be summed up as "There are different ways to solve problems."
  • One deals with how nightmares are frightening.
• Catharsis Factor: An unintentional example with Rhymey, who's one of the more hated original characters. Hence, his detractors found it satisfying in My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic III when Ace Ray angrily tells him to quit rhyming.
• Cliché Storm:
  • Let's see... The villains are Obviously Evil people who tend to live in dark places and employ minions who love to argue and compete with each other. On the other hoof, we have a realm of good where the unicorns live happily without any personal conflict between each other, are ruled by a wise king and protected by a group of Super Sentai/Magical Girl-inspired good guys, whose leader has a fairy sidekick, defeats monsters with Sailor Moon-based moves and has to learn to believe in himself.
  • The first Starfleet Humans "movie" portrays Lightning Dawn as a rebel who mouths off at authority figures. Once entering high school, he impresses practically with his very presence and has a shy, cute girl pining for him. He's better than the best athletes and smarter than everyone else. When the school is holding auditions for a play, Lightning dazzles everyone present with his dancing and acting. There's also a basketball game where Lightning's team scores the winning point at the last moment.
• Damsel Scrappy: Krysta in the earlier installments, who spent too much time playing the Damsel in Distress and stating the obvious to be of any actual use to the heroes. Even when she does try to fight, her contributions are usually so minimal she might as well not be there.
• Designated Evil: Anytime Starfleet's criticized, the critic, usually an Equestrian, is treated as a terrible person for it. However, Starfleet has multiple planets as Hellhole Prisons, altered multiple entire races' bodies without their consent, has no compunction committing speciecide, and even sent one of said dissidents to a Bedlam House - or rather, planet, where he will be drugged and restrained until he loses his sanity, on questionable grounds no less.^note Ace Ray was convicted for beating up his younger sister, but that brings up the question of why beating up someone once warrants a lifetime imprisoned, drugged, and tortured in a Bedlam Planet, and the way it's worded in both the original and the rewrite, that he had seriously broken the law, allowing Starfleet to stop him, makes it sound as if the heroes were already looking for a reason to arrest him.
• Designated Hero: So many, to the point where it has its own page.
• Designated Monkey:
  • Cadance, full stop. The author makes her kill her own brother who's been turned partly mechanical and evil, suffer horrific nightmares, get beaten up by the Author Avatar, get infected by a computer virus as an experiment, and miscarry when a pillar topples onto her causing her to be rendered infertile.
  • Twilight Sparkle is another character that Mykan hates for utterly ridiculous reasons. Shortly after Equestria is introduced in the rewrite, she loses her wings (though at least she gets them back offscreen), the MLP cast as a whole Took a Level in Dumbass, she's called out for not following the Grand Ruler's orders no matter what, and of course she is murdered, which Starfleet and Celestia blame her for and the latter takes up her mantle as the Element of Magic. This even extends to Starfleet Humans; the human Twilight Sparkle gets yelled at by Lightning regularly over petty things.
  • Rarity is Mykan's third most hated canon character after Cadance and Twilight. While she doesn't get it as bad as the latter two, she's basically comic relief at best. In particular, she's constantly mocked for her vanity and love of beauty, so naturally, she's put into humiliating situations so she can complain about her ruined looks, and nobody cares when it happens in-universe.
  • Mykan's hatred of Pinkie Pie rivals that of Rarity. Not only is she reduced to The Ditz, everyone, even her own friends, treats her like an annoyance at best and a mistake at worst for the smallest of infractions.
• Designated Villain:
  • May not exactly be an in-universe villain so much as merely an in-universe loser, but Ace Ray can still qualify.
  • Brass Bolt for speaking out against Starfleet's draconian nature. The author tries to take sympathy away from him by having him release a bunch of prisoners, but seeing how our Designated Hero cast mistreat the prisoners, it actually makes him more likable. While he releases some scumbags as well, it's by accident, which makes him look dumber, but not more evil.
  • Downplayed with Dementia, Mysterious and Rep-Stallion. They are evil, but certainly not the emotionless killers they are supposed to be and they come across as sympathetic.
  • While Titan' Trio did become more evil in Season X, it introduces the "Idiots", who basically simply want Starfleet out and to return to Old Equestria. They aren't different from Ace Ray at all, as they use anti-Starfleet posters and other similar methods. Beaker is described as turning insane like Ace Ray and Windy Bag.
• Discredited Meme: Once the story used to be compared to Sonichu, because of the constant inclusion of strawmen, the utopia that's full of unfortunate implications in practice and the sexism to women. However, after several scandals involving Sonichu and its creator, even the detractors of Starfleet Magic believe this comparison goes too far and that Starfleet is just another Hate Fic.
• Ending Fatigue: Starfleet Magic VI could easily have ended after Windy Bag's defeat. Everything that comes after would, in any other installment of the series, be leading up to a climactic final showdown with the Big Bad. Except there isn't one in VI and Windy is the closest thing it gets, meaning that we instead get an anticlimactic showdown with an army of nameless mooks.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • An odd non-character example, but even though Lightning Dawn himself is disliked as a character, any reconstruction fic involving him is bound to at least keep his name even if most, if not all of the other names are changed. This is because it's admittedly a pretty cool name.
  • Ace Ray, for being a walking example of Strawman Has a Point and his Take That, Scrappy! moment against Rhymey. Mykan tries to make him come off as insane, but he really doesn't.
  • Brass Bolt as well, for much the same reasons as well as actually taking some kind of action against Starfleet.
  • Windy Bag, for pretty much the same reasons as the other two, trying to change Equestria back to the way it was, and having a vendetta against Mykan's most blatant Author Avatar. In practice, she is also a very believable villain even after she crosses the line.
  • Despite suffering from the same fate as her fellow Equestrians, Twilight Sparkle herself is this for at least being among the closest to her canon self, as well as gaining pity points from viewers who rightfully believe she's treated horribly by the Space Ponies. Her death at the hands of Raven has also sparked several more accusations of Starfleet being unlikable, due to them blaming her for her own death because she disobeyed Starfleet to protect those she cares about. After all that's happened, it's hard not to see her as The Woobie. Cadance is also this, for the same reasons (just replace death with having a miscarriage and her and her husband being rendered infertile for life, and you're golden).
  • Flash Sentry, of all people, becomes one in Starpops. He's cited as having a surprisingly well-written redemption arc (even though it involved him dying to a Diabolus ex Machina), as well as not being completely uninteresting or Flanderized beyond recognition. The idea of him being an alien warrior prince was also relatively well received for being so cheesy, it's awesome.
  • As demonstrated by entries on this page and his character entry on this very site, Swift Star is quite well liked, even among readers who dislike Starfleet. This is due to him being a genuinely heroic figure, who (in contrast to his superiors) is willing to face evil despite orders and even try and redeem certain villians, despite Starfleet's views on redemption. Him being blamed for being kidnapped only makes readers take his side. He's also far more tolerant of those who dislike Starfleet, only taking issue with them when they break the law and not actively looking down on them. He even manages to influence Lightning Dawn to be a better pony, inspiring him to stand up to Celesto when he refuses to let them rescue Swift. So, in recursive stories like Stormwolf Adventures, his role expands further, with this story in particular still painting him as a genuine hero who intentionally changes Starfleet for the better.
  • Kitty Snip, a one-shot villain from the twenty-third episode of Season 6 and a subversion of Small Role, Big Impact for allegedly turning Celesto and Celestia on each other, left enough of an impact on Scipio Smith he decided to include her in My Brave Pony: Starfleet Nemesis.
• Ethnic Scrappy: Dyno and Myte are basically a pair of walking Hispanic stereotypes that like blowing things up and basically nothing else. Ditto for Brain, whose main purpose seems to be rattling off Stock British Phrases and occasionally providing an invention or two while contributing virtually nothing when things get hairy.
  • For MLP canon characters, Zecora has been made into one due to her inexplicable accent and essentially being turned into Rhymey 2.0.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Grand Dumbass" for Grand Ruler due to his incompetence. Also "Triceratops" due to having three horns.
  • Thanks to the existence of two separate reconstructions, some have taken to calling this fic's Lightning Dawn "LD Prime" due to him being the original.
• Fanon:
  • It's quite common to portray certain Space Ponies as stupid, arrogant, self-righteous jerks.
  • There's a theory that the events of Starfleet Magic are bastardized versions of what actually happened.
  • Rep-Stallion is often interpreted as some kind of Lizard Folk due to his name and weapon-licking Character Tic, despite there being little evidence of this in the actual text. The bare-bones descriptions of most characters don't help either.
  • It is often speculated that Twilight Sparkle was Raven's true target instead of Celestia and that Raven was working for Celesto the entire time. This is due to Celesto ordering everyone, including members of Starfleet, to not fight Raven despite her targeting his own wife with the excuse that her strength is unknown^note Which is especially odd as Raven is an Equestrian, a species that the story claims is incapable of matching the strength of even the weakest Space Pony, let alone Starfleet's strongest and most experienced soldiers. Also, Starfleet almost never hesitate to fight other villains who are just as, if not more, dangerous than her, both before and after Season III and her plothole-riddled backstory^explanation As pointed out by Twilight in Fall of Starfleet, Rebirth of Friendship, “Let’s ignore that Ponyville didn’t even exist until ninety years ago and focus on the two important things. One is, why didn’t Celestia teleport to the bad guys who had stolen her jewels instead of flying. Actually, why was she even with the royal jewels anyway and what criminal would be stupid enough to attack in broad daylight and in the presence of the princess herself. Second, what guard would hear “please help me!” and think “Hmmmmm, she is trying to get in the way, oh well. I’ll just ignore her.” No guard would be so stupid as to do that! And then you just magically disappear, that quickly? What you didn’t stick around. Wait, one last question. If you are a unicorn, then you had telekinesis, if you had telekinesis, then why didn’t you just lift up the carriage with your magic and save your husband.”. Then came VIII, which revealed that Celesto is aware of everything that occurs in United Equestria which only added fuel to the fire. While Raven is strong enough to use the Uniforce, and Celesto at least makes sure he doesn't directly send anyone weaker than Raven to their deaths, he had trained as much as her and more, his Uniforce is supposed to be the best there is, and he could have stopped Raven himself (which even Mykan admits would be a close fight), which he didn't... despite risking his life to duel another equal of his, Pinsar.
• Fight Scene Failure: All of the characters have the exact same fighting styles, with attacks that are basically interchangeable and equally poorly described, seldom even using the elemental advanatages of each character, while the fights themselves all follow the exact same formula (heroes' attacks do nothing, villain gets upper hand and forces heroes into a corner, heroes get saved by an Ass Pull at the last possible second, villain is defeated by heroes' Finishing Move) and as such are unmemorable and have no tension, making the fight scenes all unbearably boring as a result. This blog sums it up nicely.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Aplenty between Spike and the Black Dragon Knight. Spike first identifies the Knight as female by smelling her pheromones (which already has a certain subtext), and she spends almost all of her appearances persuading him to join her. Not to mention, she really likes leaning in close to whisper in Spike's ear... Becomes a bit squicky when the Black Dragon Knight is revealed to be Spike's sister.
• Girl-Show Ghetto: Essentially, the whole story was written because Mykan hated the original series for being "girly" and was surprised that it appealed to boys at all. The story itself is even more stereotypically "girly" and childish that appeals to no one in particular.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Celestia blaming Twilight for her own death gets even worse as Celestial Advice shows that Celestia pretty much acted like a second mother to her. By having Celestia act like this, she's not just blaming her student; she's blaming a pony she'd grown attached to since youth.
    • This becomes even more awful when it's shown she is not the only one who gets blamed for getting hurt while doing nothing wrong. Starfleet consistently does this to their own. Just ask Swift Star.
  • Raven killing Twilight and the "DEATH BATTLE!" between Lightning Dawn and Twilight both end up becoming this when DC's Raven (whom she's obviously based on) does the same thing to her in a proper Death Battle. About the only way it could be any worse is if they both died, considering Mykan hates both characters with a burning passion. Thankfully however, the fight's Ambiguous Ending leaves Twilight's fate unknown.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When Starla explains how her father believed in redemption, Krysta compares the idea to trying to capture the sun. Not even a season later, we learn that Starfleet lives in the same universe as Equestria, where Celestia ''can'' move the sun.
    • It gets even better; in IX, we get Daybreaker, Celestia's evil counterpart, who confirms that Celestia (and by extension Daybreaker) has full control of the sun and even heat in general, and can even weaponize it to great effect.
  • Mykan always wanted to make a more action-oriented story than Friendship Is Magic, to no real avail. Come the season 4 finale, there's an action sequence that blows anything he could write out of the water (not like that's particularly hard).
  • Mykan has stated Celesto can beat all four Alicorn princesses at once easily. However, when you compare the fourth Seasons of both series, Twilight with the power of four princesses beat Tirek. Celesto didn't.
  • The series has always stated that personalities are pathetic, cutie marks are stupid, individuality is wrong unless you're the leader, it's okay to shun and belittle others who are not the same as you, and that dissenters should be locked up and/or brainwashed. Cue the Season 5 premiere of MLP, featuring a society espousing those very "virtues"!
  • Part of the main reason the fanfic was written was to denounce the values of Friendship and instead go with The Hero doing things all on his own, using the belief he has in himself. Irony of basing the fanfic off a franchise based around teamwork aside, many detractors of My Little Pony have pointed out that the show's later arcs revolve around Twilight having to do things herself despite the theme of The Power of Friendship.
  • This is not the first time an infamously awful work implemented believing as its primary aesop.
  • Mykan has stated that he wanted to give the Equestrians a dose of reality and failed miserably at it. There would later come My Brave Pony: Starfleet Nemesis and Fall of Starfleet, Rebirth of Friendship which flat out succeed in applying reality to the Unicornicopians.
  • One of Mykan's chapters had the protagonists suffering from nightmares which left them too scared to have anything to do with their hobbies. When the Mane Six went through the same thing due to a creature explicitly preying on their worst fears, they recovered within seconds. The "Brave" Ponies are actually bigger scaredycats than the Little Ponies.
  • Turns out magic is believing in the MLP universe, but not the way Mykan imagined; according to the episode, All Bottled Up, magic is derived from a pony's emotions, and also requires that the user have faith that the magic will work, i.e. "believing". For bonus points, an attempted redo of Mykan's work had a similar idea.
  • When Lightning and his team are being transported to the Dimension of Darkness/Dark Planet, Dyno and Myte say "No Me Gusta!" at one point. The Powerpuff Girls (2016) came out years later, and... well...
  • In the fic, King Sombra (formerly known as Dusk Shine), was a bully to Celesto throughout his foalhood years. This makes Celestia's relationship with Mirror Sombra all the more amusing.
  • Even though the DEATH BATTLE! between Raven and Twilight Sparkle is the opposite of this trope, the "hilarious" part comes from the fact that, despite the loss, Twilight's magical skill is actively on par with Raven's and the loss happened solely due to Twilight being less durable. In other words, canon Twilight put up a better fight against canon Raven than against Mykan's Raven.
  • One of the most narmtastic moments in the series occurs early on, when Lightning visits the Rainbow Dish Inn, which is one letter off from one of the canon protagonists, Rainbow Dash. Years later, the My Little Pony in a Nutshell series would call Dashie by that name.
  • One of the Demonites in Starpops goes by the name Tempest. Some time later, a villain in the show itself would end up going by that name.
  • Mykan once wrote a blog detailing how Starfleet is not at fault for various villains attacking United Equestria. In VIII, that's exactly what the situation was, as they literally freed the Big Bad before they even signed the treaty entrusting them with the Sealed Evil in a Can in question.
  • Megadox's plans of sending viruses involve sending monsters one by one, and all of them are heavily focused on brawn. He also hopes at least one of the beasts will finally beat Surfer. He literally uses brute force attack, the most well-known method of hacking.
  • After Twilight's death, she would make occasional appearances as Lightning's Spirit Advisor and give him advice on how to win the day. Fast-forward to Generation 5, and a similar Twilight apparition gives important story exposition to that generation's main cast.
• Ho Yay:
  • Harkin's obsession with fighting against Lightning can easily be interpreted as an obsession of a different kind.
  • Grand Ruler angsting over the death of his old friend Starlight Braveheart in Starfleet Magic V has "deceased love interest" written all over it.
• Inferred Holocaust: At one point in III, Frosteye freezes all of United Equestria over, with temperatures reaching as low as -100 degrees in parts such as the Crystal Empire. This is treated simply as global Harmless Freezing by the story, but considering the toll it takes on Lightning and company despite their survival, it's safe to assume that some weren't so lucky...
• Informed Wrongness:
  • When Twilight Sparkle protests Starfleet killing all of their enemies, Krysta and Lightning Dawn's argument can be summed up as "Starfleet is always right, everyone else is always wrong."
  • Rainbow Dash gets two of these:
    • In VIII, she points out that it's strange that the militaristic Ainzul would literally disband their entire military and replace it with Starfleet's and thinks they're crazy for it. She gets shot down by Buddy, who calls her rude, and her concerns are never brought up again, but she does make a good point that having another nation replace Ainzul's entire military with theirs just because they want to be peaceful now is not a good idea, as such a scenario is ''asking'' for this kind of power to be abused, especially if the other nation's armies are untrustworthy or incompetent. Sure enough, just minutes after the exchange, Starfleet accidentally releases the Big Bad, invalidates the treaty before it was even signed, and puts all of Ainzul in danger.
    • In IX, she and Shining Armor get angry at Agapi for luring Cadance into danger, stealing her body, kicking the latter out, and leaving poor Cadance at Von Devilor's mercy. Agapi justifies this by saying she was too weak to do anything else, and the whole "leaving Cadance behind" thing is not brought up again, but they did have a point in that leaving her to Devilor's whims likely wasn't really necessary, as simply getting in a host's body should take less effort than doing the above and kicking the host out. For comparison, Stammadon was also greatly weakened after escaping, but he still went with the former in Striker instead of kicking Striker out.
• Iron Woobie: Ironically, the crap the story puts Princess Cadance through actually makes her extremely resilient, as no matter what horrible things come her way, she always manages to bounce back.
• It Was His Sled: Twilight Sparkle is killed in III, and Starfleet and Celestia blame her for her own death.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • At the time of writing, the series is up to its eleventh "season" and every single one of them has the same overall plot involving a generic villain invading with an army of disposable monsters, while a secondary stand-alone villain wreaks havoc in a subplot. This makes it increasingly difficult to remain invested in the series since there's absolutely no point in reading the later seasons when they're virtually just the same thing as the early ones with some of the names switched around.
  • Personality-wise, every villain is simply Dark Is Evil or Always Chaotic Evil. If that is not the case, then Mykan simply makes a strawman argument against his critics. As a result, all of the villains end up being bland and unmemorable, since seeing one of them means you've seen them all.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: While many of the villains are disliked for being bland and generic, and making very bad mistakes, most of the Starfleet crew have garnered a much more negative response for reasons outlined in Designated Hero and Unintentionally Unsympathetic but Lightning Dawn, in particular, gets most of this primarily in the first Starfleet Humans where many people found the uptight Principal Celestia more sympathetic.
  • Very noticable in the conflict between Pony Mykan Stevens and Windy Bag. Mykan Stevens shows hostility to everyone who tries to help him and is self-centered. Windy Bag wants Starfleet out of United Equestria at all costs. Even though she attempts to murder Mykan to get his fortune, she is far less hated than him.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The fic's Ensemble Dark Horses are one of its main draws. Seriously, Brass Bolt's entire, short lived character arc is a moment of awesome, for simple virtue of one-upping Starfleet and basically giving them the biggest middle finger he could. But as was said, it was short lived.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Dimension ^explanation Mykan's tendency to describe any location as this.
  • SHUT THE F*CK UP, RHYMEY! ^explanation The default response of most MSTers (and just in general people who have read Starfleet Magic) to Rhymey's terrible rhymes.
  • Rhymey: Power of Flatulence ^explanation Every member of Starfleet announces their element (which also tends to be their one character trait). Rhymey's is "I summon within; power of wind!" Naturally, readers have taken something else from that statement.
  • "POWER OF FLORA", YOU IDIOT! ^explanation Buddy Rose incorrectly announces "Power of Fauna" during the Transformation Sequence when he should have said "Power of Flora". Reactions to this tend to be outrage at such a stupid mistake. If it really was "Power of Fauna", he should be The Beastmaster.
  • PREFERENCES ^explanation What Mykan uses to justify writing his stories the way they are; it's what he prefers. Naturally, people respond with the fact that, since Mykan is putting his stories out where others can read them, it is no longer about preferences and it is now about what makes a story good. Additionally, he thinks "Spice Up Your Life" justifies his writing however he wants.
  • Vanity ^explanation What Mykan uses to explain why he and his works are so disliked. There's also the fact that Mykan has proven to be quite egotistical such as believing that the writers of Friendship is Magic are copying his ideas. Also, vanity is a trait way too common in his female villains.
  • Demons ^explanation Mykan's idea that demons are all-powerful beings and thus numerous villains are at least partially demonic.
  • "PICK A TRAIT AND STICK TO IT!" ^explanation Mykan's hatred of Character Development; there's also his inability to comprehend that people can show multiple sides to themselves.
  • Mykan's tendencies to contradict himself (i.e. Saying friendship is worthless, but creating a hero who would be useless without his friends).
  • "He's not me, he's just voiced by me." ^explanation Mykan's insistence that his obvious Author Avatars are only voiced by him and do not reflect how he really is in person. Pony Mykan is the most blatant example of this.
  • Mykan's hatred of Twilight Sparkle, her death, and the subsequent victim-blaming have since become well-known despite all the spoiler tags surrounding it. Two deconstructions occur afterwards.
  • "[Character] is/does [their one personality trait]. That's it." ^explanation Pointing out how flat Mykan's "original" characters, and the FiM cast, are.
  • Mykan creating entire species that are Always Chaotic Evil.
  • Because Cadance is Happily Married and Beast Boy and Davis Motomiya aren't. ^explanation Mykan's reason for why he tortures Princess Cadance in his fics.
  • Because Twilight preaches about the Magic of Friendship, tries to force this way of thinking onto others, and thinks she's better than everyone.^explanation Mykan's reasons (some of which are entirely inaccurate) for why he hates and tortures Twilight in his fics and eventually kills her.
  • The Grand Ruler's SPARKLY BLOOD! ^explanation Grand Ruler Celesto is said to have a blood type that sparkles. According to the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, Mary Sue blood has a similar composition. Needless to say, riffers had a field day.
  • Grand Ruler playing hopscotch to Pop Goes the Weasel, mainly for the sheer ridiculousness of it even by these fics' standards. Even though the rewrite took the passage out, the image stuck.
  • [CHARACTER] SHALL DIE, NO MATTER WHAT! ^explanation On at least two occasions, Mykan has defended the deaths of characters who died due to the cast's stupidity, incompetence and/or cowardice by using this excuse, not comprehending that just because a character has to die doesn't mean they have to do so due to said stupidity, incompetence and/or cowardice. It would be like if J. R. R. Tolkien wrote Boromir dying due to the Fellowship wandering into an orc encampment hoping for a nice meal instead of getting ambushed, yet attempting to defend Merry and Pippin.
• Memetic Psychopath: As noted under Alternative Character Interpretation, it's all too common for Celesto to be depicted as a dictator and Unicornicopia as a fascist dystopia. It doesn't help that riffers keep finding unintentional parallels to Nineteen Eighty-Four in the writing. Plus he is often depicted as the client of Raven and wanted her to kill Twilight.
  • Rhymey. Good luck finding more than five people who don't joke about him being an abusive boyfriend at best to Fluttershy.
  • Cookie Dough is not much better. Many have joked about him being a cannibal chef who's behind the disappearances of characters like Inquirius.
  • My Brave Pony: Starfleet Nemesis goes with this depiction of Celesto and Starfleet, especially Starla and except Lightning.
  • It really bears mentioning that the WMG page for this fic contains a theory that Celesto is actually a Galactic Conqueror whose very presence erodes personalities and brainwashes those around him, and said theory has more cohesive world-building than the actual fics.
• Moe: Raven's original form as an Equestrian (pictured bottom right) was admittedly kind of adorable.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • A rare, non-Equestrian example from Lightning Dawn, of all ponies, in the pilot. After Starfleet is captured and rendered helpless as Titan drains their magic, Lightning mans up and starts effortlessly dodging his attacks, before delivering a jump kick to Titan's chest, which actually made him emit sounds of pain. Granted, it was a magic clone of Titan, and he may have only won using the Uniforce, but still; where the HFIL was this version of Lightning before, and where did he go since?
  • Ace Ray openly questions Starfleet and even organizes protesters against them. However, even though this attitude makes him quarrel with his sister, and he is out of shape, he still manages to fight a Changeling to defend her, and only has trouble because, again, he was out of shape.
  • Twilight going after Raven in order to protect Celestia. She may have been blamed for her own death afterwards and Starfleet acts like she was in the wrong for trying to protect someone she cared about, but there is no denying that seeing Twilight take action when Starfleet wouldn't but could easily have done so is a treat to watch.
  • To a lesser scale, Pinkie does the same as Twilight. She defies orders to stay back, attacks an enemy machine and gets hurt for it... however, she actually deals the first damaging blow to the robot.
  • Despite Celesto's insistence to not engage with enemies he doesn't know, he shows much more bravery than usual against King Pinsar, risking his life to defend Lightning and beat the Insecto King down with his bare hands.
  • Brass Bolt gets one when he manages to free all the prisoners, all of whom are mistreated in what could be seen as violations of the Geneva Convention to hell and back, being held in one of Starfleet's prisons. Actually, this guy could be considered a walking, talking CMOA for his completely realistic reaction to Starfleet's actions, the fact he actually decides to do something, even if he is supposed to come off as insane when he hallucinates Lightning Dawn mocking him, but even that makes complete sense, seeing as no one else agrees with him when he brings up some very valid criticisms about Starfleet's behaviour, and the fact he was Defiant to the End when he is arrested for his actions, glaring at Celestia and asking how she of all ponies could agree with what Starfleet does. It is virtually impossible not to see him as the hero in some dystopian world.
  • Human Mykan Stevens of all people gets one. He throws a sword at Titan's source of power to save everyone. The villain, in a surprising moment of competence, fires at the sword to stop it. So Mykan takes the hit instead and frees everyone that way. For an Author Avatar of Mykan, he acted surprisingly selflessly, and later, he fought with willingness to die for his family and other civilians.
    • In Season 8, he even helps Rarity, despite them having a rivalry, against Megadox. Also, in Season 10, he calls out Avyanna for her toxic obsession with him.
  • Lightning Dawn's best moment comes in Episode 11 of Season 8. Swift Star is kidnapped, and Lightning wants to save him. Celesto, being Celesto, tells him not to go for safety reasons. However, remembering what happened with Starla and later Twilight, everyone in Starfleet criticizes Celesto to his face, inspired by Lightning not backing down, and Celesto has to greenlight the rescue mission immediately. Even when Celesto tries to bring up Twilight's death as an argument, Celestia immediately stops him. To a lesser extent, Lightning repeats this in the final battle when he wants to bring Swift with him, even though he merely had to state his obvious role and why it's vital.
  • Swift Star himself in the same part shines. In spite of being just an apprentice and ordered to stay back, he joins the fight against the Shis, even smashing the ice wall of En Shi, making her obsessed with him. While he is blamed for getting kidnapped, his kidnapping causes Lightning's best moment above, and he even gets to damage Stammadon, something Lightning at his best couldn't do. And all of Starfleet, except Lightning who blames himself, still blames him for what happened, and merely studies how he wounded Stammadon otherwise. Swift made Twilight Sparkle proud.
    • Even better, Swift, while being scared, is attacked by a Monster of the Week strong enough to take on the main Starfleet team. And, in spite of his fear, he manages to beat her, exploiting the bad habit everyone has to announce their attacks and making her explosives blow up in her face. Rhymey is astonished, and Lightning proud of his student, and it's shown instead of told. Swift Star deserved that victory.
  • Swift in Season XI takes on a ghost he cannot harm, but still foils her attempt on the lives of some innocents. His power level is not high, but he is still brave enough to take on powerful foes to save lives.
  • The whole final battle with Titan is possibly the best fight in the whole series. Titan has fused himself with his superweapon, and he reveals that through foreshadowing. He also uses the Enticorn's powers and tries to kill the main characters while they are still children, while fending off everyone else, showing he has grown in competence. However, Starlight Glimmer has redeemed herself, and saves everyone. After Lightning and the royal couple get a new fusion, they still have to outsmart Titan for an equal fight.
    • Even when Titan is beaten, it's not over. He becomes a black hole that threatens to destroy everything, but Starlight Glimmer gets an actually somewhat emotional sacrifice, which is coupled with an Ironic Echo, and stops the overlord.
  Starlight Glimmer: For Lord Titan.
  • Lightning Dawn shows a lot of competence in Season XI, when the Nightmares lay siege. When the Nightmares rob Starfleet of their latest Deus ex Machina and accomplish their goal of becoming physical, Lightning realizes he and his team no longer need the dream bands to fight back exactly because their foes became physical, allowing Starfleet to fight back.
  • After Phantasma proves to be an incredibly hard foe to beat and Arien mostly hides and gives advice, he finally shows why he is the guardian of dreams when he finishes off Phantasma.
  • Even the villains can sometimes be competent, not all their successes are because they are lucky. For example, King Pinsar had no problem taking on the best fighters of Starfleet and he also nearly killed Celesto all by himself! For a Disc-One Final Boss, he fell with dignity.
  • While Stammadon's plans against Starfleet are basic, he made Ka Hotake look like an absolute bitch. Warned by Starfleet and the attitude of his minions, he pretended to be brainwashed, used backup soldiers to tire Starfleet out, discovered all tricks of Starfleet and let Ka Hotake reveal himself. Then he surprised the traitor and had him executed, and Starfleet would have been next if not for Swift interfering through a puppet.
  • Dodger might look like an airhead who isn't evil enough to be a strawman, but his plan to gather hate through a disco dance was so subtle, Starfleet unintentionally helped him, and it worked very well. And he only had the help of Sun Dew, causing them to learn to like each other.
  • Titan had a cunning evil plan to get the Enticorn, where three out of four possible outcomes would end in his favor. First, he sent a battalion of his troops to capture the Enticorn. It failed, but the Kallanians got the Enticorn. Titan could let them and then steal the Enticorn from them. Starfleet made sure this didn't happen, but before Lightning merged with the Enticorn and foiled Titan's plan, Titan has one last trick, as he got the Enticorn, exploiting the fact the Kallanians and Starfleet are exhausted and off-guard from fighting each other. And it worked, giving Titan a major victory.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Titan was right to be angry at the treatment he got, but did he have to blow up his own planet?
  • Serpentari was right to hate Titan for destroying her planet, but Lightning calls her pure evil because she destroyed other planets, like his own, for no personal reason. He isn't wrong.
  • Raven crosses it by killing Twilight Sparkle. Celestia wants her dead after that.
  • Windy Bag is one of the most likable villains until she tries to blow up United Equestria.
  • Tan Shi had an actually tragic backstory due to the sexism she was experiencing, and only crossed the line when she became sexist to all men and joined Stammadon.
  • Mysterious in the first season wasn't truly evil. When he returns as Specter, however, he shows a newfound level of cruelty. He kills one of his own men for being too weak, repeatedly tries to murder Lightning as a child to the point he is called out for cowardice by him, and feels no remorse about these actions.
  • En Shi crosses it by kidnapping and basically sexually assaulting the teenage Swift Star. She is correctly seen as the Token Evil Teammate of the Shis because of that.
  • Explicitly stated with Ace Ray. Starfleet couldn't even arrest him until he beat up his own sister, which was his first genuinely evil action.
  • The only action even detractors can't defend Beaker for is trying to drown Starfleet without caring if he will kill his own men and the Crusaders in the final battle.

N-Z

• Narm: Has its own page.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Grand Ruler Celesto likely isn't gonna live down the fact he played hopscotch to Pop Goes The Weasel even though the author has since gotten rid of that passage (though shamelessly taking a scene from Singin' in the Rain isn't much better).
  • Lightning Dawn has not lived down his actions against Human Celestia in the first Starfleet Humans. Granted, he did feel some regret afterward, but all Lightning gets is a slap on the wrist for storming into the principal's office, telling her that it's a good thing her horse died, and burning her face with scalding-hot coffee.
• Nightmare Fuel: Ace Ray's "reprogramming" in the original version of Starfleet Magic III, which reads eerily like the infamous "Room 101" scene from 1984 - and serves much the same purpose, too.
  • Ace's fate in the rewrite isn't much better, as he gets carted off to an asylum to be locked up until he "gets better". Each time he tries to protest his sanity or tries to cling to his beliefs against Starfleet, he gets strapped down and sedated. They plan to keep him there until he changes his tune, locking him up for life if need be, and the last line in his chapter makes it seem like he's slowly going insane for real.
  • Twilight Sparkle's death at the hands of Raven; she pretty much shoots a beam point-blank to the heart (or in Raven's bio, slashes Twilight with her claws), to which she falls to the floor in a fiery explosion, guaranteeing her death.
  • Cadance keeping the corpse of her stillborn colt around for 9 chapters is just plain creepy and squicky, even if decomposition doesn't seem to be an issue.
  • The eagerness with which the United Alliance of Evil blow themselves up for Titan. The reason is that either Starfleet interrogations are even worse, they are just that fanatical to Titan, or both. Considering Starfleet has prisons with terrible conditions and the monsters even wanted to be absorbed by Titan in the final battle, both is probably the right answer.
• No Yay: Spike is only 15 while Rarity's in her twenties in the fic, and for some, aging him up by a decade just to make their relationship work doesn't make it better. Having a child in VIII does not help, either. This is even pointed out by the author of My Brave Pony: Starfleet Nemesis, who admitted he found their relationship creepy.
• Padding:
  • The author outright admits to using this, as he believes he has to fill a word quota. More specifically, he believes that every chapter has to be an equivalent length to a half-hour TV episode, with no exceptions. Amazingly, he complains in the author's notes of the third series about how long his fanfics are, and yet does nothing to fix this.
  • Aside from padding in-chapters, Mykan seems to have an obsession with writing 26 episodes per-season, which leads to many episodes where nothing advances the plot. The biggest offenders are in My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic II (as one MST points out, you can reorder most of the chapters without affecting the overall plot) and Starfleet Magic VI (which doesn't have an overarching plot so much as it does a bunch of unrelated story arcs stuck together).
• Questionable Casting: The voice Mykan chose for Rhymey is based on an alien version of Muffy Mouse, and it sounds too robotic to fit his body or his species. It gets even worse considering the Mane Six somehow have to mistake him for Fluttershy with that voice.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • If the rest of the page hasn't tipped you off yet, Grand Ruler gets this in buckets. Due to readers noting all the dictatorial elements of his regime, most fan depictions of Celesto make him just as bad as the villains Starfleet fights in the actual fics, if not worse.
  • Rhymey is another major recipient of this treatment. It's not hard to find works depicting him as an abusive husband to Fluttershy and an overall Manipulative Bastard and Jerkass. In Starfleet Magic, the worst thing about Rhymey's relationship with Fluttershy is that only she changes for him, which is a red flag but doesn't make the relationship fully abusive alone.
  • Cookie Dough also gets this to a lesser extent, with some joking that he's a cannibal chef who cooks and eats other sapients to explain why certain characters like Inquerius and Cookie himself get Put on a Bus.
• Rooting for the Empire: The story is meant as a Revenge Fic against My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, centering around ponies in another dimension and/or in space, fighting off an evil sorcerer without The Power of Friendship and therefore being superior to the cast of the original show. Many readers actually wished to see the bad guy win, despite him not being a Designated Villain, just so that the main characters get their asses kicked.
  • In Chapter 20 of the original fanfic, it's revealed that Serpent Tyrant's motive for collecting the Rainbow Stones is to undo the speciecide his son Titan had caused. Other than being told that the supposed Dimension of Darkness's denizens are evil, there are no indications of them committing great atrocities, and the readers only see things from the point of view of the Unicornicopians. It's also not hard to see him as a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
  • Unlike most villains, the Insectos in Starfleet Magic V actually have a better family dynamic than any of the heroes, making them easier to sympathize with, especially since Pinsar says that he served Titan in part to keep his family safe. Additionally, they can easily be interpreted as Proud Warrior Race Guys rather than Always Chaotic Evil, as the only evidence of them doing anything evil is the word of Starfleet, and the destruction of their own planet is too Stupid Evil for some readers to buy. And Pinsar becomes more sympathetic when he charges into battle because of speculation that his daughter is in peril.
  • Windy Bag from VI is an egregious case; her Evil Plan boils down to kicking Starfleet off of Equestria. Considering Starfleet's Designated Hero status and treatment of the Equestrian population, it's not hard to see her as a Well-Intentioned Extremist at worst. It helps she also has a vendetta against a blatant Author Avatar, and a particularly jerkish one at that. Similarly, the Idiots in X also want Starfleet and only Starfleet out of Equestria. They aren't like Windy Bag, and care not to hurt those who don't support Starfleet. As a result, they end up likable.
• Sequelitis: The original story has ten sequels and counting, at least one's a "movie" and a few more are based on My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, and they don't get any better. Beats0me, a DeviantArt member who draws parody comics of MLU, noted that the beginning of the series is So Bad, It's Good, reminiscent of watching a corny old kids' action cartoon. However, the further it goes on, the more racism, sexism, canon-bashing and other disturbing content start cropping up. It doesn't help that, from the third story onward, all of their plots follow the exact same formula, differing only in a few names and details.
• Serial Numbers Filed Off: The prologue and first two chapters are pretty much a rip-off of the pilot episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
• Signature Scene: Twilight Sparkle's death in season 3 is so infamous that even the author himself likes to talk about it.
• So Bad, It's Good: For some, the original fanfic feels as though it's a cheesy yet entertaining action-filled kids' cartoon that would've been right at home in the '80s and '90s. This sentiment eventually falls by the wayside with the sequels.
• Squick:
  • Krysta's implied to be the same age as Lightning, given that she was called a girl when she met Lightning, and barely 20 around the time she reunited with Topaz, yet he's old enough to have gray hair. But wait, it gets worse. Remember that when Krysta was separated from the other fairies around 10 years before the events of I...
  • Up until IV, Spike is canonically in his early to mid-teens, while Rarity is an adult. The author tried to rectify this by aging him up ten years, but that opens up even more questions about Spike's psyche and mental age without fully solving the underlying problem with their relationship. They eventually have a baby in VIII.
  • Starla telling Lightning that Shining Light may want to get involved with Flurry Heart romantically as they grow up... while Shining and Flurry are currently babies.
  • It's not known how old En Shi is, though she is certainly old enough to join Stammadon's first campaign, but her harassing, obsessing over, kidnapping, and assaulting Swift Star, who's 16 at the time^note Granted, by standards in Canada, where Mykan lives, he's legal., can be pretty disturbing to read, especially since it's meant for kids.
• Strangled by the Red String: Almost every couple in the story is comprised of characters falling for each other in a very short time for the shallowest of reasons.
  • Lightning and Starla, who fall in love immediately for no other reason than because the main character needs a love interest.

• Rarity and Spike is a much more disturbing example, given that the latter is a baby dragon. Him eventually being forcibly aged up, thus facilitating the relationship, may or may not help in that regard. Rarity also previously fell head over heels for Thunder Cloud/Esroh Dab for no apparent reason other than to make her look stupid.
• In IX, Pinkie falls head over heels in love with Dearka for no reason other than to facilitate drama.
• Artie and human!Sunset Shimmer just... develop feelings at the very beginning of Season IX. It's also blatantly obvious that their relationship only exists to parallel human!Artie and Sunset Shimmer's, which itself is an example.
• Apple Spice falls for Pinkie Pie within a day of first meeting her to create a Love Triangle between him and Dearka.
• Shining Light and Flurry Heart, if this is to go by. As early as 1 and 1 1/2 years old respectively, Starla already ships them together, as if to highlight just how hard these two are being strangled together.

• Strawman Has a Point:
  • In My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic II, there is an ex-Wonderbolt named Ace Ray who was kicked off the squad for badmouthing Starfleet and has become a loser who sits around stuffing his face all day. However, he accuses the Starfleet of being arrogant and lazy for not taking action against their enemies sooner and thus leading to the destruction of Equestria. He also calls them out on assuming every enemy they fight is irredeemably evil without even considering the possibility that they might have a reason for acting that way. He then accuses them of being overlords due to their species essentially taking over United Equestria, doing everything of value, and Celesto being extremely powerful, both politically and literally. The reader is clearly supposed to side with his sister Skye, who tells him he's bad for speaking his mind about Starfleet. However, he makes some very good points that were mentioned by reviewers and riffers of the original fic.
  • Starfleet Magic VI has Brass Bolt, who's basically Ace Ray 2.0, and makes even better points about Starfleet than Ace did. It's very hard not to agree with him, especially since his thoughts and situation read very much like a protagonist in dystopian fiction and are completely accurate to Starfleet's portrayal. To quote the story itself:
  “They come to our world, lead their enemies to us, and if that wasn’t bad enough they turned us from normal ponies into these human shaped weirdos! Oh, and to add insult to injury, they treat us all like we’re inferior and enslave us with their martial laws, and when trouble comes they just fight and kill, and they arrest creatures with no good reason…
  …They’re nothing but a bunch of silly, overbearing tyrannical dictators! Why can’t you guys see that? Why can’t anyone see that?”
  • The Idiots, a whole organization of strawmen, bring up some good points. For example, the part where Starfleet made up a story and claimed it was from people's memories. This accusation makes more sense than Starfleet's version. The fact that they act like they demand servitude for helping the Equestrians does not help matters.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: There is really no easy way to put this. Mykan's tendency to outright ignore being original in any way concerning Starfleet means that he frequently will take absolutely anything he pleases from other works of fiction, with obvious examples being Today's Special and Power Rangers to the point of outright plagiarism. And even then, he'll use them completely out of their original context, only really using it because "it's cool to him". When confronted about this, he will outright deny the idea of original context. Even when the moments in question work at least somewhat, it's only because it worked in the source material and just so happened to be one of the few things Mykan didn't butcher completely when he transplanted it into his work.
  • Each of the Starfleet Humans "movies" is simply the corresponding Equestria Girls film with Lightning Dawn replacing Twilight, his OCs shoehorned in, every shred of personality sucked out of the canon characters, an unncessary subplot, and no attempt to deviate from the original film's plot. As a result, they're universally less entertaining than the actual Equestria Girls series.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Serpent-Tyrant/Serpentari from the first season was sorely underutilized. His/her backstory and motivation involve Titan destroying their homeworld, thus easily setting up a plot where they do battle against Titan or even team up with the Space Ponies to fight him, or, since Serpentari is a more personal foe to Lightning, for him to cooperate with Titan to bring them down.. Serpent-Tyrant in the original even leaves some room for interpretation as a well-intentioned Anti-Villain. Unfortunately, they're never actually explored as a character, they have no interactions with Titan or his minions, and their role in the plot is limited to a generic antagonistic force that could just as easily have been filled in by some random monster(s), with minimal contribution to the main plot.
  • Cerise from My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic II is a major in Starfleet, can stand toe-to-toe with Lightning and can use the Uniforce. She was a one-shot character up until Starfleet Magic VI, where her appearance consists of her completely sucking at her job.
  • Whenever Twilight's spirit shows up, she only appears to motivate the others before she's quickly forgotten about. As per usual with Mykan's hatred for the character, she's not allowed to be useful even as a ghost.
  • Brass Bolt from Starfleet Magic VI is a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for Ace Ray who wants to see a revolution overthrowing Starfleet and sets an entire prison's populace loose on them, making for a very interesting potential Big Bad who's not a completely clichéd Generic Doomsday Villain. Instead, he gets busted in the second chapter by a cheap Ass Pull. Even better, the author later complains that he's having trouble driving the story forward without a Big Bad pulling the strings. The season later introduces Windy Bag, who has nearly the same personality and motives as Brass Bolt and could easily serve the same narrative role as him, begging the question of why the two were made into separate characters (other than for the author to take a cheap shot at his critics).
  • Awdr Pomption III could've been a good addition to IX. His forced marriage to Starla fits IX's themes perfectly, and it would trigger Character Development in both Starla and Awdr. Unsurprisingly, he never appears in IX.
    • Considering Mykan wants to fix the MLP characters, Awdr could also have his role filled by Blueblood.
  • En Shi, for the same reasons as Awdr, but with the added bonus of making Swift Star relevant again. Like him, she never makes an appearance in IX.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • It may sound far-fetched, but the idea of a team of space-faring ponies inspired by Power Rangers could have actually been a fun one had the series not been a gigantic Take That! to MLP, the plotting been better and not directly ripped off from the inspiration, the story not taken itself so seriously, and it didn't shoehorn Today's Special plots for no discernible reason. In fact, a number of fanfic writers took the setting and produced their own works that are, at the very least, more readable than the original fic, although none have yet to achieve the full Narm Charm potential of the "alien Power Rangers" premise.
  • The relationship between Lightning and the Grand Ruler could have been quite an interesting plot arc had some actual time been devoted to it.
  • Starla Shine's wedding with Lightning Dawn could have offered more insight into her character outside of Starfleet and her attraction to Lightning, but instead her wedding is entirely comprised of hand-me-downs from Princess Cadance's wedding. Starla's maid of honor is Twilight Sparkle, her flower girls are the CMC, and even her wedding dress is just a modified version of Cadance's wedding gown.
  • Despite the controversy surrounding it, the idea of teaching about the death of a loved one could have been a good idea had Mykan just focused on meaningful character interactions and development instead of victim-blaming and his own hatred for the pony in question, Twilight Sparkle.
  • Season IV's baddies hail from a Bad Future and are introduced easily shrugging off everything in Starfleet's arsenal, and Starfleet is more or less directly responsible for the Big Bad's existence. This could easily set up an interesting story that explores the Space Ponies' shortcomings as both a society and a military organization while pitting them against an enemy that doesn't go down to brute force. Instead, we get none of that, the heroes have all the solutions handed to them on a silver platter, and the only thing separating this season from the previous ones is that it's also an uninspired ripoff of Futari wa Pretty Cure.
  • Windy Bag's plot could've been an interesting way to develop a story with an Anti-Villain antagonist who has legitimate grievances against the Starfleet regime and potentially provide motivation to shake up their policies and status quo, or even a Grey-and-Gray Morality-driven conflict. Instead, Windy is treated the same as the rest of the Always Chaotic Evil antagonists, and Starfleet never spares her views a second thought. Same about the plot with the "Idiots".
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Many detractors who read it for the sake of Bile Fascination dropped the story, citing the enhanced racism and sexism, "realistic" treatment of prisoners, excessive use of Designated Hero, and the inordinate Torture Porn. It doesn't help that the plot is increasingly formulaic, meaning that the reader simply re-experiences the same bleakness over and over again.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: Oftentimes, different plot points will be strewn together simply because the author thought they were "cool". And while these could have been decent standalone plots, throwing two unrelated storylines into the same story means the lesser plot ends up taking time away from the overarching narrative while ending up being underdeveloped.
  • The mini-arc involving Serpent-Tyrant/Serpentari is ultimately almost 100% filler and has nothing to do with either Titan or Nightmare Moon. It's especially damning given that his/her backstory would've been easy to integrate with the fight against Titan.
  • Goldwin's episodes solely exist to plagiarize Today's Special and add absolutely nothing to the overall plot.
  • In Starfleet Humans, the main plot gets sidetracked by a subplot involving the characters getting cast in the school play. It did, however, lead to Lightning Dawn's Never Live It Down moment.
  • Raven in Starfleet Magic III barely contributes to anything and is only in the story to kill Twilight.
  • Starfleet Humans: Starpops has a subplot involving Celesto Grandruler working on the International Space Station. This adds absolutely nothing to the main plot.
  • The Phantom of Magic subplot in Starfleet Magic IV could largely be ignored except for the Mane 5 getting access to their Valkyrie Mode.
  • Starfleet Humans: Starfleet Events sidetracks the plot concerning the competition between Canterlot High and Crystal Prep with the plot involving Xaydie and Human Fratello.
  • The Black Dragon Knight subplot of Starfleet Magic V has virtually no impact on the main conflict against the Insectos, it only fleshes out Spike.
  • Starfleet Magic VI manages to have the A-story come off as this, as Starfleet's wild goose chase after escapees is far less cohesive as a plot than the supposed B-story involving Windy Bag and Mykan Stevens.
  • The Batlings subplot of Starfleet Magic VII has nothing to do with the main plot involving the Space Pirates and only exists to make it so the fates of Applejack's parents are made unambiguous.
  • In Starfleet Magic VIII, the subplot involving Megadox and Data Stream contributes nothing to the main plot involving Stammadon and only exists so Mykan can rip off Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad. This is perhaps the worst example so far as the story rotates between two groups of main characters from chapter to chapter.
  • Season IX has two examples:
    • Probably the most infamous one is the Applejack and Apple Spice plotline. A good chunk of the plot of the season is devoted to an Arranged Marriage plotline involving Applejack being engaged to a childhood friend of hers, Apple Spice, due to an agreement made by their parents years ago despite neither being for it. You might think this ties into the main plot given the bad guys are waging a war against love and marriage but it never does. The whole thing gets resolved at the last minute when Applebloom realizes that Applejack and Apple Spice don't have to stay married, and Apple Spice ends up with Pinkie Pie.
    • The season also has an arc with Daybreaker that doesn't contribute much to anything.
  • The subplot about the IDIOTS in Starfleet Magic X doesn't affect anything in the main plot and only exists so Mykan can take another shot at his critics. Even though he could (and did) do so with one of Titan's agents. And even though even the characters in-universe acknowledge the turmoil caused by the IDIOTS could be exploited by Titan easily.
• Uncertain Audience: The series bounces back and forth between violent themes (despising love and compassion, advocating Violence is the Only Option, characters getting Killed Off for Real) and lighthearted elements (spontaneous musical numbers, wholesale references to shows like Today's Special, and knock-off Power Rangers fight scenes). As a result, the series is too dark for kids while simultaneously being too immature for adults.

• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Starla's dad is mocked in-universe for having been an overly idealistic Control Freak with Suicidal Pacifist tendencies in addition to negatively criticizing Starfleet. However, his criticisms of Starfleet as racist and violent Knight Templars come off as scathingly accurate, his devotion to diplomacy and peace makes him look like the Only Sane Man in Unicornicopia, the Control Freak aspect is an Informed Attribute at most, and the circumstances of his death have led readers to suspect that Grand Ruler sent hitmen disguised as criminals to assassinate him.
  • Mysterious, Rep-stallion, and Dementia were originally meant to be The Heartless Artificial Ponies unable to express emotion, empathy, or personality. However, the fact that their actions not only say otherwise, but everyone, from their enemy, Starfleet, to their master Titan, who they genuinely care about, treating them as disposable and non-equine, has earned them the sympathy of many readers. In particular, the two Deconstruction Fics and one of beats0me's comics give them this treatment, and if the comment sections are anything to go by, many others agree with them.
  • Ace Ray: Even in the rewritten version, it is still this trope. For punching his sister upon being insulted and rejected by her, and the others who don't agree with him in making correct assumptions about Starfleet being an oppressive government, he is punished by getting his freedom taken away from him. Even though he's a clearly sane but jaded guy, he was pretty much stated to be imprisoned in an asylum for life. Wait, this sounds similar to Room 101. Seriously, read his entire chapter and see if you can deem him insane:
    No one had ever broken out from this asylum, and even If they had there was no way they could leave the planet. The warp portals that led out into Dimensional Space were inaccessible by all convicts. Any one of them who tried to enter only got tossed back out again.[...] Poor Ace, he did not take being locked up very well, and continued to insist he wasn’t insane, only to be restrained and sedated by the medical staff.
  • Human!Celestia in Starfleet Humans. It's shown at the beginning when Lightning sings and dances while in the middle of the road she is driving on, clearly stressed and upset. Granted, it's not a good idea to look at your notes while driving, but the story (and Lightning) shoehorns all the blame towards her for getting angry at him. When the fic reveals that her pet horse died, which led her into a Heroic BSoD courtesy of Sapphira, Lightning uses it as ammo against her. We're supposed to see the attack as hers instead, as indicated by Luna calling her a monster (even though, as mentioned earlier, Lightning was not hurt at all due to retaining his physical enhancements), but granted, Lightning, maybe saying that it's a good thing someone's pet is dead wasn't exactly the best course of action when you're trying to prove your friend's innocence.
  • Starfleet blames Twilight Sparkle for her own death because she disobeyed orders when she went to fight Raven. However, her actions impeded the potential assassination of a major political figure: if she hadn't intervened, Raven would've had a decent shot at killing Celestia.
  • The Crystal Prep Shadowbolts are portrayed as unsympathetic because they're trying to win the Friendship Games by cheating. However, in contrast to their canon counterparts accusing the Canterlot High students of using magic to challenge their winning streak, Crystal Prep is resorting to cheating as a desperate effort to break their own losing streak against the magically-enhanced Starfleet Humans at Canterlot High. Given that Starfleet's enhancements are described in a way akin to magical performance-enhancing drugs, it seems less like the Shadowbolts are dirty cheaters and more like they're trying to get on even ground by any means necessary, even if it means neither side is being honest. It doesn't help that the Starfleet Humans are all insufferably arrogant and love rubbing in their superiority, making the Shadowbolts' frustration much more understandable and making the reader want to see them take the smug bastards down a couple of pegs.
  • Brass Bolt is supposed to be seen as wrong for accusing Starfleet of being evil, but the writing never gives a good enough reason as to why the reader should side against him. The closest the story gets is having him release all of the prisoners from one of Starfleet's prisons, which actually makes him more sympathetic given that Starfleet's treatment of prisoners would likely qualify as a gross violation of civil rights (and probably the Geneva Convention as well) in real life.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Practically the entire cast.
  • The Equestria cast is simply unintelligent or too busy Character Shilling Starfleet (not to mention that they've all been reduced to one-note cutouts that hardly resemble their canon selves). Starfleet is full of racist, sexist, and outright sociopathic "heroes" who see anyone who disagrees with them as their enemies. Our heroes, everyone.
  • Pony Mykan Stevens is clearly meant to be sympathized with as a victim of circumstance who was treated unfairly. In practice, it's very hard to actually muster up sympathy for him since he's a massive Ungrateful Bastard towards anyone that tries to help him.
  • Emil Kudos is clearly meant to come across as sympathetic to some extent, given that he was a victim of racism and that the love of his life left him. But like the character he's an expy of, Count Logan, it's hard to see him that way, since he comes across as a massive, misogynistic jerk who's willing to destroy the world just because he didn't get the love of his life. He is also someone who beats down helpless prisoners for flimsy reasons and blames everyone but himself for his actions, which is usually done by people readers are supposed to hate.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The Unicornicopians are represented as pony heads on top of humanoid bodies, and later the Equestrians are forcibly converted into being the same thing. The result is completely unsettling, with some characters resembling colourful tikbalangs. Not helping is how obviously photoshopped the images are.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Especially compared to the other male characters, it can be easy to mistake Buddy Rose for a girl; he's bright red, attacks with a whip, and his name is kinda feminine.
• Wangst:
  • Goldwin's desire to become a normal pony and to be able to leave the palace grounds can quickly become tiresome to read, as his goals contribute nothing to the main plot.
  • Human Starla bemoaning the fact that she is attracted to Lightning Dawn despite knowing that he is married can get tiring really quickly.
  • Spike griping about how Rarity is crushing on Thunder Cloud/Esroh Dab can be grating at times, especially given the 7 year age gap between him and Rarity.
  • Pony Mykan Stevens is so adamant about refusing help from Starfleet and driving them away, firmly believing that they don't actually care about him and that they can't understand what he's going through, that it's a wonder the protagonists put up with him at all.
  • Lightning angsting over the destruction of his planet and his people is understandable. Lightning refusing to celebrate his birthday ever again because his planet happened to be destroyed on that day goes into wangsty territory. Lightning using his tragedy to not care about Cadance's suffering is definitely wangsty because it's full of selfishness.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The author proclaims this fanfiction is way better entertainment for kids than the actual show it's a Hate Fic of, when it has many kid-unfriendly things.
  • The story preaches things like love and tolerance are actually worthless and only brute force can lead to true happiness (sans in Season 9). Characters get Killed Off for Real in rather brutal ways for little kids, and there are certain sexual innuendos.
  • In My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic II, Fluttershy is in the hospital to be operated on. A changeling slips in and tries killing her by cutting her open and letting her bleed to death.
  • Chapter 13 of Starfleet Magic VI deals with the full ramifications of a Mayfly–December Romance, kills off the Villain of the Week via Rapid Aging, and ends on a none-too-subtly implied sex scene. Y'know, for kids.
  • En Shi is a very kid-unfriendly villainess, having a scary backstory involving grooming and being a rapist.
• The Woobie: Twilight Sparkle and Cadance both need hugs given what the story puts them through, even more so when you factor in that it's because the author just hates them for no good reason. So does Rarity, and Ace Ray.
• Woobie Species: The Equestrians are unintentionally made into this. They are forced to undergo mutations, are having their culture erased, and will always be passed up for promotions because they are "inferior" to Starfleet's Space Ponies.
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • The Space Ponies' typical garb consists of pauldroned bodysuits with tops and boots that complement the wearer's color scheme, which are reasonable enough as uniforms in a softer sci-fi setting despite resembling cheap Halloween costumes... except they're also used for casual wear.
  • The Equestrian uniform differs from the usual Starfleet one in one key aspect: instead of having an insignia on one side of their chest, the pony's Cutie Mark is mirrored across it, thus decreasing the resemblance to an actual military uniform and reducing visual cohesion with Starfleet. In cases where the Equestian uniform top is a similar color to the pony's fur, such as Thunder Cloud, this can result in the pony looking like they're going around shirtless with their Cutie Marks covering their nipples.
  • As a fusion of Celestia and Celesto, Grand Celestial Ruler's outfit merges several aspects of their respective attire. However, both component's tails and Celestia's skirt somehow result in the fusion wearing a floor-length gown; combined with the presence of a cape that also reaches the ground, one wonders how Grand Celestial Ruler fights without tripping over multiple parts of their own outfit.
  • Starfleet's Mega Modes give the ponies additional gold armor on top of their usual uniform. While it mostly looks decent aside from making the ponies look like Palette Swaps of each other, the gold heavily clashes with the existing color schemes of Starla (pink and purple) and the twins (various shades of brown).
  • Captain Shaina's design has too many bright contrasting colors present. She's a white alicorn with green hair who wears gold centurion armor and a blue sash over a red jumpsuit along with a violet cape. Additionally, her outfit breaks the series' design conventions for Unicornicopians; save for a star on the sash, her coat color is completely absent from her clothes.

---