Posts

@Brass Beau  
Well, that’s only in the comics.
 
And the “why” doesn’t really matter, as long as it was sheer bad luck - what matters is the effect it has on her life, and how she reacts to that.

@AC97  
If an earth pony can be a Wonderbolt, I’d say it’s possible for Scootaloo to fly. I just wish we had a little more clarification on why she hasn’t flown. What little evidence we have points to magic as the limiting factor but the magic system is very soft. Pin pointing the exact cause is more a matter of guess work.

@Latecomer  

 
Concession made, that is a good point.
 
It probably wouldn’t feel that good to be a mule in the setting.
 
@Latecomer
 

 
And considering just how determined Scootaloo is, I’m not sure Dash would’ve been that much of a deciding factor, either. Heck, probably Twilight would’ve been willing to help, by extension, since Twilight Time was a thing and all.
 
It’s sad when characters aren’t going to get something they want out of life, not have one of their dreams fulfilled, but sometimes life just works that way.
 

 
I will, however, say that I think something like this would probably work, given how fast she can make her scooter go, and it wouldn’t be farfetched in terms of technology.

@Latecomer  
I’m not a particularly big fan of that theory, myself. I mostly see it brought up in regards to Scootaloo’s parents and aunts being “irresponsible and unfit caregivers” so I mostly ignore it. Especially since you’re right, Rainbow Dash would love to train her if that was all it was.

@Brass Beau  
If lack of proper training was the issue, Dash would totally have fixed it.

That’s the current working theory I have. It is also possible that @TheEdgyDuck is right. A third theory is that Scootaloo, due to the lack of supervision from both her mother and Auntie, never received proper training for mastery of her flight.  
What we do know is she doesn’t fly and pegasus flight is as much magical as it is physical.  
Another theory is just as bleak as her mixed heritage giving her limited or no pegasus magic. We could say, hypothetically, that pegasi have hollow bones like birds. Scootaloo can’t fly because her bones aren’t hollow.  
Since there isn’t any evidence to support that I’m forced to tackle her disability from a magical angle. The one other possibility magically, is that pony magic is like chi and her chi is blocked. This explains why she can’t fly and gives her a chance to fly someday.  
But I can’t find any evidence linking pony magic to chi outside of Sombra placing black crystals on Shining Armor’s horn.

Scoots could maybe have a magic deficiency. Or maybe her not being able to fly was a birth complications.

@AC97  
Well just because it sometimes results in cripples doesn’t mean it will all the time or even most - it could be a 1% chance. But it still is a bit of a questionable message - although consistent with the existence of mules, who seem to lack any pony magic whatsoever.

@Latecomer
 

 
I think it’s partially me being attached to older headcanons, but I conceptually have an issue with it being related to Earth Pony heritage, or something along those lines.
 
Aside from it making mixed-race couples possibly problematic, it has the hole of mixed-race children like Wind Sprint being able to fly just fine (“my dad was a great flyer, too,” so unicorn mother, pegasus father), or the Cake Twins involving a baby pegasus who could fly, and a baby unicorn who could temporarily use magic well, per a magic surge or whatever, and yet their parents were both Earth Ponies, per weird genetics, so what gives? Even if you want to say that they had a different father than Mr. Cake, put stock on that joke in their debut episode, Mrs. Cake is still an Earth Pony, and we have no evidence Pound Cake had the same issue Scootaloo did.
 
_{I slightly envy you/kick myself for you putting one of the other main arguments of mine rather succinctly in comparison, lol.}
 
I just don’t see a reason to think it’s inherently due to mixed-race parents, or to think it’s more likely than it being something else, given the examples at hand.
 
Am I forgetting about any other mixed-race children?

@Brass Beau  
I think that would probably take a magically trained doctor, not laymen from a world without magic. Still, to draw an analogy, I think it’s basically just a magical “deformity” - maybe something like Down’s Syndrome?
 
 
@DarkyBoode32  
There’s a difference besides mindset, though - four seasons. What was uncertain may have become less so.
 
 
@Brass Beau  
It’s also a bit problematic to link her disability to her earth pony heritage.

I would prefer some evidence of Scootaloo demonstrating an affinity for the earth but nothing really comes to mind, though earth pony magic is already incredibly vague.

@DarkyBoode32
 

 
…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.
 

 
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.
 

 
…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

Q: assuming Scootaloo has a magically sourced handicap, what would explain her ability to stand on clouds?  
Theory: Creatures of Equestria have a natural limit to their magical capacity.  
Evidence: Tirek’s body grows to adapt to the increase of magical power. Cozy Glow similarly changes size when she gains Discord’s power.  
Theory: Ponies can have more than one type of magic.  
Evidence: Alicorns possess both a unicorn’s ability to cast spells and a pegasus’s ability to fly and stand on clouds.  
Conjecture: Scootaloo has limited pegasus and earth pony magic.

@AC97  
Not normal Scootaloo for thinking that Rainbow Dash isn’t cool and joining the Washouts because Lightning Dust brainwashed her. The reason she was angry at RD was due to Rainbow Dash’s concern for her safety which she disregarded. Normal Scootaloo didn’t draw to a conclusion but was unsure of whether or not she would fly. 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.  
Your reply to this will be invalid as I will not read it and my argument on this is now over with.

@Latecomer  
See previous post but to sum up:  
Q: Why can’t Scootaloo fly?  
A: She’s disabled.  
Q: What is the root of her disability?
 
Since that’s the thesis I’m working on (because I find it fun to theorize) we’d need to try and understand the biological/magical means by which a pegasus flies and how that could be interfered with.

@Brass Beau  
Still, with an earthpony fathef it seems like an obvious thing to test for.
 
Plus, can’t she stand on clouds?

@AC97  
That does beg the question of whether Spike and other dragons can stand on clouds. Is it a winged species only thing, or is something more going on?  
Then there is the question that alicorns are implied to have the magic of all three pony species. Is it possible to have just two?  
And since Flurry Heart was a natural born alicorn, is it possible for such a hybrid pony to exist?  
Could her difficulty flying be a lack of the appropriate magic?  
The Cake twins show that pony abilities are as natural as walking, so what could prevent her from doing the same?  
Is it biological or magical?

@DarkyBoode32
 
It’s taking character agency away from Scootaloo for her to only be saying that because Lightning Dust manipulated her into thinking that. It also doesn’t convince me you aren’t grasping for straws, when there’s also not a single quote that implies anything of the sort.
 
It is “Normal Scootaloo,” just momentarily pissed off at Rainbow Dash, and you have no proof “Normal Scootaloo” wouldn’t accept that she’ll never fly. You’re willfully ignoring implications in favor of your own views that have nothing to support them.
 
In short: assertions presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, and you don’t have any evidence whatsoever to support your claims, thus far.
 
@Brass Beau
 
Why can she stand on clouds without a cloudwalking spell applied to her, then, if she’s just an Earth Pony with vestigal wings?
 
I’d tend to think something along the lines of her pegasus magic is two-dimensional, when it should be three-dimensional, so while she can propel herself very quickly horizontallly (to the point of going faster than a speeding train while towing the other two Crusaders), she can’t fly for that reason.

@Latecomer  
It’s likely they saw the wings and just assumed she was a pegasus. She had shown limited flight ability. They may have just thought she was a late bloomer.

@Brass Beau  
Hmm… if that’s possible, you’d think the doctors would have tested her for earthpony magic. Especially given her parentage.

Okay, hear me out. This is some, as Tvtropes calls it, epileptic trees theory-ing here. We know pegasi fly from a combination of wings and magic. We know all ponies have some level of magic, including earth ponies.
 
What if, Scootaloo is an earth pony with vestigial wings.

She can’t fly

@AC97  
Also when Scootaloo said that she was being indoctrinated by Lightning Dust to be part of the Washouts. Normal Scootaloo wouldn’t say that.

I think Scoots being disabled is great for kids (and adults) that have to deal with their own disabilities.

i know right