londonarbuckle wrote:I was going to say something like this except it would have been three sentences long and dumb. Thank you for expressing my opinion better than I would have!
I had a half hour train journey
But the interiority of the story, the genuine horror Fluttershy felt contrasted with the pure benevolence and support of everyone else (except Greek Chorus of Negative Thinking Pinkie, which I liked but am not gonna argue with people who found it a bit much). Everyone's rooting for her , but there's no sense of frustration with her, and the way it's resolved by just talking it out until she realised it wasn't as bad as she'd thought.
(On that, the idea that if you just get up there and do it, you'll be fine: I played onstage for the first time in a while recently, and beforehand I just thought "

feeling nervous beforehand is natural, don't fight it"
But then I got onstage and I was like "Wait, this is much worse, everyone's looking at me and I'm not allowed to leave. I wish I was still just feeling nervous somewhere, fuck

")
Venusy wrote:Yeah. I've long held the opinion that - for a self-help show - Fluttershy's episodes are possibly the most important. They're the most directly applicable to people who have social anxiety - the primary conflict is always in Fluttershy's head, with the other conflicts just providing an incentive to win the internal one. What differs this time is that she's winning the internal conflict not because her friends are being threatened by a dragon, not for the CMCs facing petrification, not because they can't make the tornado without her extra bit of wingpower, but for herself.

It starts as a matter of necessity, but very quickly turns to enjoyment.
All your analysis has been great Venusy, and has genuinely added to my enjoyment of the episode
I think this is my favourite Flutters examination ep, because Hurricane Fluttershy was her stepping up because she felt responsibility for her friend and her community, whereas this is something deeply meaningful to her personally, that she would genuinely love to be able to do.