@RyuSpike
 
This is true. Remember that Simpsons episode where Flanders finally snapped?

@Millennial Dan  
In Putting Your Hoof Down‘s defense, Fluttershy going berserk on everybody is not unreasonable. Is it hard to believe that a timid pony like her has some pent up frustration towards others that she keeps dormant inside? Being the kind pony that she is, she keeps all those negative comments to herself. Until Ironwill came to town and helped her unleash that bottled up Flutterrage. Sadly for her friends, they happen to get caught in the warpath of the Flutter’s unbridled rage.

@EndlessWire94  
True, Applejack is often the most level-headed of the group. I think your comparison to PYHD is appropriate, as that too had a character acting completely contrary to who she is as a person.

@Millennial Dan  
I see. But still, my point is, Applejack isn’t the type to lash out at a friend, even in dire circumstances. Just look at the way she treated Fluttershy in “Dragonshy”, especially in contrast to Rainbow’s callousness.

@EndlessWire94  
Yeah, people were acting like Fluttershy was being inconsiderate to AJ, but in reality she was simply trying to offer a better solution than Twilight’s. Applejack and the others were overly belligerent.
 
With regard to the seed-growth thing, I think the idea is that like earth ponies, the bats have some special property that encourages the apple trees or something. This makes a bit of sense, considering the imbalance their presence would cause their own food supply otherwise.

@PonyPon  
Just by referring to the bats as if they meant to ruin her livelihood, and by cornering Fluttershy at the end of the song.

@EndlessWire94  
How was she self-righteous?

After re-watching this episode, and doing some research, I feel that both Applejack and Fluttershy’s solutions could have been combined. The sanctuary could have been a temporary home for the vampire fruit bats, and then, once Fluttershy had learned their language, they could convince them to relocate to the Everfree Forest: no doubt, there’s an abundance of wild fruit in there which they could live off of. The seed dispersal could be left to the regular fruit bats.  
Also, I can’t see how spitting the seeds out would produce more productive trees, and this episode did to AJ what “Putting Your Hoof Down” did to Flutters. True, she was right to want the bats off her property, but she let that anger and frustration turn her into an aggressive, self-righteous jerk (please keep in mind that AJ’s my fav).

Twilight has a bad habit of simply trying stuff and hoping it all works out without really thinking it through.

either she was evil, or she really didn’t think this out, and was just pushed into going in this blind cuz applejack and RD were impatient

Twilight is the designed hero. She has to be in the right. Most of the time anyway.

@K9Thefirst1  
She’s the kind of person who thought she could collect data on an ability that predicts unforeseen circumstances in a controlled environment.

It seems Twilight’s character trait of being a terrible scientist in terms of designing Experiments continues.

>ALLLLLLLL THIIIIIIS TEEEEEEEEXT  
I mean, I’m all for debate, but holy crap…

I always knew that Alicorn Twilight was bad, but this is just evil.

@Background Pony #A00F
 
>Animals
 
>Minds
 
You’re so silly anon, please continue to entertain me.
 
The fact that these bats are, in fact, animals, causes the effects of the stare to be completely indistinguishable from those of conventional training techniques. Subjects manipulated into changing their behavior? Check. Doing so on an instinctual basis, with no realization of what is going on - essentially messing with their brains? Check (yes, in BOTH cases). No physical abuse or actual, tangible harm brought caused to the subjects? Actually, NOT check - negative training methods often employ just that… unlike the Stare.
 
The only thing that separates typical training from the Stare, in the case of animals, is the time and money that will inevitably be spent applying such training effectively, and the lack of the option to resort to changing their behavior ONLY when deemed necessary. In other words, the Stare is, actually, completely PREFERABLE to training in every conceivable way - except for the fact that Fluttershy might not be comfortable with it.

@James Rye  
Nothing says we can’t combine the two episode concepts together, right?
 
Also, MEEEEEEEEEEEEH.

@Sjogre
 
I think there is a confusion on what Twilight’s spell was actually doing. The spell was cast so that it can remove the vampire fruit bat’s natural instinct to suck the juices out of apples. Imagine if those instincts were a piece of code to a computer program. Twilight had “cut” the code out of them so that their undesirable behavior will be gone. However, since Fluttershy was using her Stare, she was accidentally given that code which effected her in the way we were presented.
 
One might argue that her simply staring shouldn’t have an effect, but we have to remember that we are dealing with magic. The simple act of looking at a magical phenomenon can do all sorts of strange things to the body.
 
Now onto the nature of the vampire fruit bats. I mean… what is their deal, right? Well, maybe it isn’t that complicated. By the looks of it, they seem to be a fusion of real world fruit bats and vampire bats. Obviously. However, I’m not just referring to their names. Their actual design seem to be heavily based on the ugliness of the vampire bats and their way of feeding.
 
Here are some thoughts and facts that we can see. They use their teeth to create an insertion so that they can suck out the juices. They can suck up those juices very quickly so I am glad that Twilight didn’t accidentally gave them the thirst for blood. They use they tongues to help bring the apples into their reach without using their hands. We are clearly looking at a very fast feeding species. Did you know that a vampire bat’s saliva can cause the wound they bite into to constantly bleed because it makes the skin around it to loosen rather than just heal normally? Could these bats have a similar saliva but it instead helps liquify the apple so it is easier to suck in the juices? That’s just my speculation though.
 
Taking their diet into mind, being nomadic is a logical conclusion to make. Another conclusion that we can make is that they will only go after the fullest and juiciest apples. I figured this because Granny Smith’s family still had some apples left after their infestation. When Applejack had cut into her prize winning apple, Flutterbat was strongly attracted by it. So we can assume that the normal bats can also smell the apples the same way. It might even be how they can find which ones are good or bad.
 
What I can say is that I highly doubt that the bats are eating apples after the spell was cast on them. One did smack an apple out of Dash’s hoof so they clearly had no interest in them. This makes sense because Twilight removed their vampiric desire for apples. Also take into account that sucking the juices is their way of eating. Whether it be sucking or chewing, apples are their food source so just changing how they eat would be a waste of magic because they will still be eating Applejack’s apples. We have yet to see if they do eat other fruits, but if they did then that fruit will need to be just as juicy as the apple because they need to be able to suck out the juices.
 
Woo… This is too much effort for an episode about bats. In fact… Why hasn’t anybody questioned about all the bats flying around and eating during the daytime? Both actual vampire bats and fruit bats hunt during the night. Flying around is one thing but these things are clearly being very active. This rustles my bat jimmies more than anything.

@Sjogre  
A whole bunch of stuff wasn’t fully addressed in the story in general, and that’s mainly where this episode has its problems. It’s not so much that Applejack or Fluttershy were respectively wrong or right, since they both had legitimate concerns. The difficulty is that all of the solutions that were tried or suggested are difficult for us to fully clarify, given what we have to work with.
 
As a side note, it was pretty funny watching Digi have a minor meltdown over all these niggling little unanswered questions and dilemmas.

@Background Pony #8E6B  
The “Flutterbat” problem could be seen as simply the catalyst that got them to finally see reason.  
Was it? The episode sure as hell didn’t establish anything there.
 
Applejack’s concerns were completely reasonable to begin with, and Fluttershy never did assuage them.
 
Since that was a freakish side effect, it doesn’t really tell us much about what happened to the bats. They didn’t become ponies all of a sudden, now did they?  
Did they? We didn’t see what they were up to at night.
 
Fluttershy ate like a vampire fruit bat. Having them eat like a pony is a logical extension of what happened.
 
I think that the Flutterbat segment killed the conflict too much. After that was resolved, the problems from before then remained, unless Twilight’s spell was still in effect, but they weren’t addressed again. They weren’t given resolution, which hurts that part of the story.

@Sjogre  
>She never convinced her friends through logic
 
Not because Fluttershy wasn’t making sense, but rather due to their own prejudices and stubbornness. The “Flutterbat” problem could be seen as simply the catalyst that got them to finally see reason.
 
 
>If it only had mental effects, than Fluttershy shouldn’t have physically changed.
 
Since that was a freakish side effect, it doesn’t really tell us much about what happened to the bats. They didn’t become ponies all of a sudden, now did they?

@Background Pony #8E6B  
No it wasn’t. The episode showed them disinterested but still hanging around, which could mean they were on the verge of starving to death, for all the explanation we got.
 
So… Fluttershy turning into a bat and sucking juice out of fruit? That didn’t happen? It was the same freaking spell. If it only had mental effects, than Fluttershy shouldn’t have physically changed.
 
The problem isn’t so much that Fluttershy wasn’t being smart or that she was wrong, because she was right.  
Why was she right? Seriously. The episode never gave a reason for that. That’s the problem.
 
She never convinced her friends through logic, they just made the sanctuary after she was turned back. It came across as them being guilt tripped into it rather than believing that it was the better idea.
 
This episode didn’t address the problems made, which did not make anyone look good. Fluttershy herself got the worst of it for proposing the most impractical course of action and ignoring every problem.
 
You know, no one argued against Fluttershy’s plan of partitioning off a part of the orchard for the bats, in terms of merit. AJ merely said that it would take too long.  
And then spent the rest of the episode worried about the bats eating all of her apples. Applejack never said what she meant by it taking too long. Arranging a food supply equal or superior to what Sweet Apple Acres possessed would certainly be a problem.
 
And that was another problem that was ignored by the ending, although if the vampire fruit bats were still ensorcelled, they would have all the time that they needed.

@Sjogre  
>Twilight’s magic, in this episode, was shown to change how an entity eats.
 
No it wasn’t. The episode showed them disinterested but still hanging around, which could mean they were on the verge of starving to death, for all the explanation we got.
 
 
>And Fluttershy focused on the welfare of the vampire fruit bats over the other animals, including the other bats already living on Sweet Apple Acres.
 
I don’t even know how you came up with that. Fluttershy was trying to find a reasonable solution for everyone that didn’t involve mad-science-style genetic tampering or otherwise unfair treatment of the wildlife. She would hardly be one to ignore other animals in the process.
 
 
>The episode never really explained  
>The episode acted like she was in the right
 
These are the pivotal statements here. The problem isn’t so much that Fluttershy wasn’t being smart or that she was wrong, because she was right. As you even admitted, that was the impression they were gunning for. The problem then lies not with Fluttershy, but rather with a lack of logistical exposition.
 
If this were real life, we could find out who’s right about the bats’ eating habits, the true effects of the spell, whether or not it was reversed or wore off in the end, and if they are really nomadic or just have super long gestation/hibernation periods. We also might find out what really happened back in Granny Smith’s day, since it was only an issue for a single season at that time. It may very well be that the bats contributed to an explosive growth in the size of Sweet Apple Acres itself after that one season.
 
You know, no one argued against Fluttershy’s plan of partitioning off a part of the orchard for the bats, in terms of merit. AJ merely said that it would take too long.

@Background Pony #8E6B  
Nowhere in the episode did anyone say they were nomadic. The truth is that most details concerning them are still unknown.  
What? They came in at the start of the episode and started eating apples faster than they grew, so what other conclusion are we supposed to draw? The attack mentioned before had also had them leave after devastating the orchard, so we’ve no reason to believe that they stick in one place, and reason to believe that they don’t.
 
However, their biology would undoubtedly be perfectly suited to what they already do—suck the juice out of apples. Forcing them to “eat” the apples instead could have all sorts of unpleasant consequences, but that’s not even what Twilight did. She made them lose interest in apples completely.  
Twilight’s magic, in this episode, was shown to change how an entity eats. We know that it had a biological effect, and I don’t know why you would think otherwise.
 
Did the bats lose interest in apples, or were they just not hungry? If the bats lost interest in apples, how was that anything other than relocation, which the Manes were trying to avoid?
 
And heck, there weren’t even that many of them. Applejack was panicking because of her giant prize apple.  
Look at how much damage they did in only a day or two. Think about how much they would have done in week. Then a month. Then more.
 
Those bats weren’t some minor problem.
 
And another thing that is NOT unknown is that Fluttershy was not an idiot at all. She was proven right in the end, and Applejack admitted it.  
The ending of the episode completely and totally failed to address the eating habits of the bats, meaning that it dropped the main problem of the episode rather than have Fluttershy address it.
 
They said that they were wrong because transforming Fluttershy was worse than being eaten out of their livelihood, I guess.
 
The episode never really explained how having stronger seeds in the future would fix losing all their apples in the present, along with all the foods that the vampire fruit bats would turn to after they ran out of apples. Heck, it never even specified that the seeds would be productive enough to compensate for having the vampire fruit bats eating everything, and it certainly didn’t address the logistical problems in replacing the old trees with the new ones. And it also didn’t mention that Sweet Apple Acres had already been through a vampire fruit bat attack, so they were probably already using trees grown from vampire seeds.
 
Fluttershy’s solution had exactly one thing going for it, and never addressed any of the problems present. The episode acted like she was in the right, but never really explained why that outweighed all the problems involved. Even the one positive didn’t require sheltering the vampire fruit bats for any length of time, as they could just collect some of the spat seeds and chase them away after that.
 
And Fluttershy focused on the welfare of the vampire fruit bats over the other animals, including the other bats already living on Sweet Apple Acres. That’s either callous or ignorant. Choose for yourself.

@Sjogre  
Nowhere in the episode did anyone say they were nomadic. The truth is that most details concerning them are still unknown.
 
However, their biology would undoubtedly be perfectly suited to what they already do—suck the juice out of apples. Forcing them to “eat” the apples instead could have all sorts of unpleasant consequences, but that’s not even what Twilight did. She made them lose interest in apples completely.
 
And heck, there weren’t even that many of them. Applejack was panicking because of her giant prize apple.
 
And another thing that is NOT unknown is that Fluttershy was not an idiot at all. She was proven right in the end, and Applejack admitted it.