Fame and Misfortune (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)

Fame and Misfortune is the fourteenth episode of the seventh season of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It aired for the first time on August 12, 2017

Plot
Twilight is inspired to use her friends' old Friendship Journal and turn it into a book in hopes of inspiring friendships throughout Equestria, but things backfire when the readers don't take the lessons seriously and focus more on other aspects within the journal.

Misfortuned Qualities

 * 1) Getting the elephant out of the room, this episode is an insult to the entire MLP: FIM fandom! The fans are portrayed as overbearing jerks, which alienated a majority of fans.
 * 2) Speaking of the fans, while they are portrayed in a negative light, they bring up a lot of stuff that fans have genuinely taken issue with (like Fluttershy learning to be assertive many times), so one might actually be on the fans' side.
 * 3) The amount of torture the Mane 6 go through (Rarity being bad-mouthed and having her shop be the victim of a protest, Rainbow Dash being harassed by many fans, Pinkie Pie being laughed at on account of anything she says, whether funny or not, Fluttershy being berated for her repetitive assertiveness lessons and Applejack being forced to cater to ponies who took a liking to her family) is just unbearable to watch.
 * 4) To be fair to the ponies hassling the Mane 6, Twilight was pretty much setting her expectations too high at having her friends' friendship lessons in their journal being taken to heart by everyone in Equestria.
 * 5) Twilight didn't think to contact Celestia and Luna and ask them for help when she and her friends are being harassed.
 * 6) The ending, while heartwarming, is undercut by the fan ponies fighting amongst each other.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The Mane 6, Starlight and Toola Rula and Coconut Cream are the only likable characters in this episode.
 * 2) The song "Flawless" is one of the episode's highlights and fans have gone on record saying that it's one of the show's best songs.
 * 3) The amount of callbacks to previous episodes is pretty impressive, given that the Friendship Journal details past episodes
 * 4) Good Moral: Not everything you publish in order to teach people will be taken to heart.

Trivia

 * The episode's writer, M.A. Larson, has also disowned this episode as much as the fandom has. In fact, he was not interested in making the episode this mean-spirited as he wanted to tweak the more distasteful aspects, but the Hasbro executives refused to respect his wishes and wanted the episode to be made the way they wanted.

Reception
The episode has received a 7.7/10 on IMDB. However, a huge majority of fans really dislike this episode for how mean-spirited it is and how much is defames the MLP fandom.