@Scrounge  
You said it!

@TexasUberAlles  
All right.
 
Sorry for the misunderstanding, hope there’s no hard feelings.
 

 
@Smitty1991  
Honestly, given that they’d been back in town for about five minutes before their cragadile nearly ate Scootaloo and they were generally oblivious to her emotional needs until everyone she’d ever met got together to tell them “hey this isn’t right”, I think her not being raised by these two idiots might have been a blessing in disguise.

@TexasUberAlles
 
Exactly! What kind of parents have a kid and then dump them on someone else to take care of while they go play as Nathan Drake and Lara Croft? At least when they did this in Harry Potter they legitimately had a good reason for doing it, but as much as I love Harry Potter I can at least agree that even that was done poorly by all parties involved.

@Scrounge  
Scoots is one of my favorite characters in anything ever; I just really, sincerely despise her parents.
 
@SPB2016  
This episode solidly established that she hadn’t been under their regular care all this time, which means that a story which includes her being under their regular care must happen after this episode if the stories are part of the same timeline.

@TexasUberAlles  
It didn’t say that her aunts lived in Ponyville full time, everyone just assumed that before this episode.

@TexasUberAlles  
Yeah, but only people you don’t like, right?
 
In other words, I’m not entirely sure if you have something against Scootaloo, but it kinda came out that way.

@Scrounge  
I say that about actual people all the ding-dong time.
 
@RaineV1  
By all accounts the books timeline is the same as the episode’s  
Entirely possible, but if it is, then the book takes place later than the episode, because Holiday and Lofty only move to Ponyville right at the end but she’s established as already living with her aunts in the book.

@RaineV1  
Scootaloo seems to have been a latch key kid, like they said Starlight was. Her parents probably left her the keys to the house, and her aunts or other trusted ponies in Ponyville stayed with her as necessary to make sure she was okay.

@TexasUberAlles  
Fair enough, but the way it came out was kinda…
 
Well, think about how it would sound if you said “their parents should have used birth control” about an actual person rather than a fictional character.

@TexasUberAlles  
Nothing in the episode pointed to it just being occasionally. By all accounts the books timeline is the same as the episode’s.

@RaineV1  
Scootaloo’s aunts looked after her  
Her aunts came to visit her, occasionally; they only have effective custody of her after The Last Crusade in the cartoon, which puts her living conditions in the books either after that episode on the same timeline or in a different, better continuity.
 
Serial custody shared by half the town is something you do temporarily, only until permamnent custody can be established with a stable family; the appropriate after-the-fact response for these two would have been to acknowledge that they’re incapable of caring for a child and leave her with Holiday and Lofty from the beginning, as they seem to have done in the books.

@TexasUberAlles  
They didn’t have the neighbors raise her. Scootaloo’s aunts looked after her. She was with family the whole time, and likely had full financial stability since her parents were likely having money sent to her or her aunts.
 
I’m not really a fan of the parents but let’s not act like the just tossed her out on the street while they were away. And even in real life a lot of kids deal with parents that are away on business a lot or away due to being in the military.

@Scrounge  
People whose lifestyles– chosen lifestyles, not even desperate poverty or whatever– do not allow for the effective care of children should not have children. If they accidentally’d while living a life that prevents them taking care of a kid the way a kid deserves to be taken care of, the appropriate response is to find a permanent loving home for the kid, not to expect the neighbors to raise her instead because she’s inconvenient to them.

@TexasUberAlles  
I can’t tell if you meant that the way it sounds or not.

@Background Pony #C13A  
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

@TexasUberAlles  
Exactly! Shouldn’t have had Scoots if you’re not going to raise her. At least one of them should have paused their career and raised her until she’s older. They weren’t around when she got her special cutie mark and don’t even know what she does. They don’t know their own child. Not the worst parents but far, far from the best.
 
Funny thing for me: if they had been in prison and just got released, I would have been more forgiving.

@Haruka Takahashi  
A spare room with a chest filled with Sweetie’s stuff?

@RaineV1  
She has spared room?!

@Scrounge  
Yeah, that’s my problem with them as well. Had they just came back and tried to reconnect with her after the lost time that would be just fine. It’s the moving storyline that kinda kills the episode and makes people not like them.

@Background Pony #3CB4  
I think it’s the part where they suddenly come back into her life and decide to drag her off to the middle of nowhere on what sure seems like less than a week’s notice that’s the bigger problem, but that might just be me.

@Haruka Takahashi  
Sweetie’s bed in For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils, where the plot specifically said she was staying with Rarity:  
>>2042367
 
Rarity’s bedroom from the same episode:  
>>588839

@RaineV1  
I think that was just Rarity’s room

@SPB2016  
The sensible thing would have been birth control.

@Background Pony #3CB4  
This, so much this! People would’ve actually wanted her to be on her parents’ adventures when she’d be in even more danger?! Her parents did the sensible thing, and they get bashed for it!

@VermiIIion  
She also has a room in Rarity’s house. It’s the bedroom that Sweetie was using in For Whom the Sweetie Belle Tolls.