What if Scootaloo is just a late bloomer? (SPOILER: S04E05)

People seem to be saying “Flight to the Finish” confirmed that Scootaloo will never be able to fly, but I watched it, and these people seem to be reading their headcanons into the episode, because it was very open-ended.
 
Sweetie Belle can’t do magic yet (a fact that I was surprised she didn’t bring up in the episode), so why isn’t everyone saying she’s a cripple? In fact, now that I think about it, Apple Bloom can’t buck apples and isn’t great at farming. They also don’t have their cutie marks yet, unlike many other fillies their age; they all seem to just be late bloomers (and bumbling failures in a lot of areas).
 
Why does Scootaloo seem to be the go-to pony for fanfic headcanons? People also say she’s homeless (Jossed by yesterday’s episode) and an orphan, and there’s so much Scootabuse. I’ve never seen anyone claim or even consider that Sweetie Belle will never be able to do magic.
 
Basically, tl,dr: Why y’all gotta pick on Scoots so much?

I think it is because her sister figure is Rainbow Dash. Apple Bloom can help with farming just fine. Sweetie Belle doesn’t seem that much interested in becoming a fashion designer like Rarity (I remember she did once, but only as a CM attempt), and even if she does, hooves can work fine. Scootaloo, however, admires the fastest pegasus in Equestria for her ability to fly.
 
AB is not interested in becoming AJ, SB is not interested in becoming Rarity, but Scootaloo wants to be someone like Rainbow Dash, and the huge difference in flying ability makes her the target. Let’s say SB was Twilight’s sister, I think the it would be the same for her.

They’re all late bloomers. They also all have the wrong idea about the importance of getting a cutie mark and don’t realize crusading is counterproductive.
 
And yeah, it’s because she wants to be like Rainbow Dash. But RD said that she’s her own pony, she doesn’t have to fly to be like her.

Given what I saw, I’ve come to the conclusion that she won’t be able to fly. In fact, I think her wings will serve an entirely different purpose and that’s to propel herself on her scooter.

They were saying it confirmed that? Because it seems to me like they went out of their way to avoid addressing it.
 
And we haven’t seen many unicorns Sweetie’s age magic-ing. We’ve seen plenty of pegasi Scoots’ age flying.

The thing to remember about Sweetie is that magic is hardly a big deal for many normal unicorns.
 
She could never do proper magic and few would care.

@PonyPon  
Does telekinesis count as proper magic?

@ClownDicks  
Telekinesis is pretty much all the average run-of-the-mill unicorn that had no desire to study magic would ever learn, I’d imagine.

Rainbow’s right though, so what if she can’t fly, she’s pretty boss with that scooter. She probably will learn to fly eventually, but probably won’t use it much in favor of scootin’.

@Grieffon  
@Itsthinking  
That covers the never flying thing, but why all the “homeless Scootaloo”, “orphan Scootaloo” and “Scootabuse” fanon? For some reason we really seem to love picking on the poor filly.
 
@Background Pony  
@Sono  
She came pretty damn close to flying multiple times. She probably won’t be on the level of Dash or maybe even Fluttershy, but I find it highly unlikely that she’ll never be able to keep herself off the ground for extended periods of time.

Background Pony #50FE is right. Scootaloo can fly, she just can’t fly as well as others. Sweetie Belle will eventually do magic, she hasn’t had her magic surge yet.

@Background Pony  
For the homeless Scootaloo part, that’s probably because we haven’t seen her home for a long time. And for the orphan Scootaloo part, we really haven’t seen her parents either.

Rainbow Dash certainly didn’t shoot down the possibility of Scootaloo not flying. “Maybe you’ll fly some day, or maybe you won’t.”  
With that being as vague as it is, it can go either way…  
And fanon DOES go both ways. Maybe one more than the other, but it does go both ways.

Her wings are too small and not strong enough to support her, her worrying is akin to a kid going ‘what if I never get tall!’ when it’s really nothing to fret over… at least for Pegasi… I think.

@Cosmonaut  
All pegasi (even the adults) have too small wings to actually carry them. Plus they aren’t flapping them hard enough to stay airborne. It is implied it’s magic that actually carries them (wings are used to signal the magic that “okay, I want to fly now” and for steering), it’s possible Scoots simply doesn’t know how to do magic.