and my argument on this is now over with.
…unironically using the word “brainwashed” to describe what Scootaloo was doing is just… well… huh.
Lightning Dust did
nothing to manipulate Scootaloo’s inherent feelings about “will I fly,” Rainbow Dash drew Scootaloo’s ire by being
unintentionally insensitive.
Rainbow Dash: Uh… Heh. Sorry that was a little… intense. I just wanna make sure you don’t get hurt. That way, you can follow in my hoofsteps. Heh. Everypony’s dream, right?
Scootaloo: More like “follow your wingflaps”.
Rainbow Dash: Same difference.
Scootaloo: [sarcastically] Thanks, super-talented flyer, for clearing up what I should do.
If you have a counterargument showing something Lightning Dust said about Scootaloo’s flightlessness, other than baseless assertions, go right ahead and show me.
I don’t see why merely being frustrated with Rainbow Dash would affect that thought process, if that’s the reasoning. I don’t think her sense of self is that fragile.
I quote from Flight To The Finish: “What if my wings never grow? What if I never fly?” -Scootaloo
Scootaloo was in the right mindset in that episode but wasn’t when she said the quote you replied with.
…You’re quoting
S4 Scootaloo, which is a
long time for her mind on the matter to change from unsurety (not even
confidence that she would, back in S4), to surety in S8, and while Sweetie Belle has gone from learning to levitate objects in S4, to being able to cast
Accelero in S8, Scootaloo has made no such progress, to the point that it’s prominent, and it’s especially notable when
other pegasi around her age can fly, in contrast to how learning magic seems to generally be a less inherent ability for unicorns than flying is for pegasi.
Like it or not, Scootaloo
most likely came to that conclusion by S8 on her own, that it wouldn’t happen, to argue otherwise is infantilizing her, and GUIHTD reinforced that (unless you’re grasping for straws; she was physically aged up magically, and to take it any other way than face value is unfounded headcanon… also, if you
listen to their voices during that episode, you’ll notice they’re
not artificially pitched up, when they’re aged up, all three of them, in contrast to how they usually are, so that earlier argument is
invalid, about how
“her voice was the same, so the same argument could be said about her wings”), as did The Last Problem (which did happen, contrary to your delusions), and a character’s “normal” can change, as was the whole
point of, for one episode of many, Forever Filly.
And even if Scootaloo
did ever fly under her own power, no glider or something to offset her issues (she’d make good speed with one of those, with her propulsion strength), it’d be really,
really unlikely for her to be anything other than below-average, if not in the bottom ten percentile. I just don’t see any other way around it.
There’s probably a symbolic reason Scootaloo’s
associated with
chickens