@Background Pony #C888  
You’re forgetting, the spell only caused a transference because fluttershy was using the stare on the bats, which was a magical unknown. However, the second time the spell was used, the only creature affected by the stare was Fluttershy, meaning the circumstances were not actually the reverse of the original casting. This is further supported by the visual effect that occurred after Fluttershy was cured, of which there was no analogue during the initial casting.

@Mayojar77  
Going to the transcript again:

(italics mine)

@Background Pony #C888  
I’m not ignoring it, I’m simply mentioning that it doesn’t make sense for her to have said it.  
The Spell Twilight did removed the bat’s desire to eat apples, meaning that Fluttershy is wrong in assuming that the bats are still planting apple trees. This spell clearly has not worn off at some point since the farm is apparently back to it’s full luster, meaning that there’s no bats eating the fruit. Since they are no longer eating the fruit, they are no longer planting seeds, therefore there is now no benefit to having them around at all, while before the benefit was far outweighed by the detriment of having them around.

@Background Pony #C888  
That is more or less what he’s been doing since that episode aired.

@Mayojar77  
So you feel free to ignore direct quotes from the show that go against what you think should have happened?

@Background Pony #C888  
Except, by that point, they weren’t eating the apples anymore, so there couldn’t be any more seeds. Meaning that what Fluttershy said is essentially a moot point. So, no, no points for Dan.

@Millennial Dan  
@Mayojar77  
from the transcript:

Point, Millennial Dan.
 
(And I’m getting a curious sense of deja vu here…)

@Millennial Dan  
The only reason the farm wasn’t destroyed was because Twilight messed with the natural order of things. Fluttershy’s plan would not have worked without Twilight removing the bat’s desire to eat apples. Fluttershy’s plan was to force Applejack to create ideal living conditions for an animal that would, given time, eat every apple in the orchard, essentially bankrupting the Apple Family. This is a very very bad idea, take it from someone who actually knows half a shit about things like this.

@Mayojar77  
No one ever suggested that they be allowed to “run rampant”.
 
And the statement that “these things can destroy farms quite easily if left unattended” is never concisely stated, confirmed, or verified in any way, and instead is contradicted by the resolution of the episode. Naturally this indicates that Applejack was blowing things out of proportion. Complain all you want about the oddity of the way things work in Equestria, but you cannot escape the fact that Fluttershy was right in-universe.

@Millennial Dan  
And you’re ignoring the fact that it is a very bad idea to allow a crop destroying pest to run rampant on a farm. Just because there are a few different rules doesn’t mean that all of them are different. You’re implying that encouraging a produce destroying pest to live on a produce farm is a good idea, despite all logic that would contradict this notion. Hell, it’s outright stated that these things can destroy farms quite easily if left unattended. And these ‘imaginary rules’ as you called them are based on the similarities between the two versions, while your entire argument is that since one or two things don’t work the same, then nothing does.

@Mayojar77  
As always, you’re inserting all kinds of stuff in this argument that we have no reason to believe is true, other than your own insistence that it must be so. What you fail to understand, apparently, is that there is nothing that says this cartoon world has to play by your imagined rules in the least. Equestria’s version of nature has always been fundamentally very different from ours. It’s immensely absurd that you think that somehow this shouldn’t be the case in this episode.

@Millennial Dan  
Exactly what part supports her position? A single tree? Yeah, compelling evidence.
 
 
If you can’t tell, that was sarcasm
 
 
Fluttershy’s plan violates everything that I know about both Vampire bats and Fruit bats, as well as a fair bit of common sense.
 
For example, when Fluttershy mentions the trees growing stronger next year, it completely ignores the fact that, in Ponyville, if you don’t have the money to rebuild with there won’t be a next year. And as for the thing about bats, Fruit bats in the real world can absolutely devastate an orchard in a short period of time, while Vampire bats have a tendency to continue gorging themselves even when they are over capacity. A Vampire Fruit bat would almost certainly have both of these characteristics, and since they are much larger than a Vampire bat, and since there’s actually very little juice in an apple, that would mean that they have an even shorter period of time for the devastation to occur. Add to that, Fruit bats carry diseases, and as such would make the surrounding orchard uninhabitable and essentially would kill the trees faster than you seem to think they would be produced.

@Mayojar77  
The evidence supports Fluttershy’s position, that’s the whole point here. You wind on and on, arguing against the obvious, and in the end it’s just like trying to use contrived “evidence” to say the sky doesn’t really look blue.

@Millennial Dan  
And you are using circular logic to say that Fluttershy is right despite all the evidence to the contrary.

@Mayojar77  
Long story short, you’re treating your inferences as facts, despite how the episode contradicts you in its resolution.

@Millennial Dan  
Again, I’m going to tell you why that’s total horseapples.
 
 
How is it fraud? If they don’t manage to make enough money to keep making those insurance payments so that they stay insured (and considering how close they are to the Everfree, a place with more dangerous creatures than Australia), then all it takes is a little bit of serious destruction (which, I remind you, is an almost weekly occurrence around Ponyville) and they’re done for. They need the money from their crops to pay those improbably high fees so that in the event their entire farm gets leveled, they can rebuild.
 
 
So you’re saying that because Granny wasn’t around to give specifics about an event that nearly crippled her business and almost starved her family during the early years of Sweet Apple Acres, that Applejack (who is completely incapable of lying in any convincing manner) was just bullshitting them?
 
 
You’re using the fact that Granny wasn’t being overly specific as a reason to not recognize that a tree will always take some serious time to grow. You’re also stating that, somehow, bats can make trees grow from seeds into full grown trees in a short enough timespan that someone who spends the vast majority of their time on the farm wouldn’t notice a tree growing to maturity in relative closeness to an area they would likely be spending a large portion of that time in. I’m starting to think you’re not even sure of what you’re saying and how it contradicts itself.
 
Usually, the trees are fairly healthy, and that’s likely in no small part to the Apple family’s care. What you’re implying is that somehow, the bats (an invasive species of vermin) aren’t the variable and that it’s the Apples (people who’ve lived there for at least 100 years), despite the fact that the Apples have never once changed their way of doing things. The scientist in me is now weeping in the corner because of you.
 
 
Here’s a thing. How are you so sure she was looking for advice? Applejack looked like she knew what she was doing. And as for Fluttershy being right, that’s a shoehorned and poorly written environmentalism message. It fails logic on several levels, not the least being a faulty understanding of the costs of running a farm in an area where property damage is a regular occurrence. And how did Fluttershy suffer more? She wasn’t even aware of herself when she was attacking her friends, and she was eating far more on her own than those bats she was praising were. And then she pretty evidently guilts Applejack into making a sanctuary for a species that before with a slight upside that doesn’t quite cover damages, and later on is just a waste of space and money to keep around.

@Mayojar77  

It doesn’t really matter howthey handled them, the point is that their resilience reveals this whole “precipice of total disaster” claim is basically a fraud.

Don’t forget, we never had the opportunity to hear from Granny Smith directly, and her convenient absence most likely plays no small part in the problems that story presented.

Not exactly. Her exact words were: “Next, we planted our first orchards. But an orchard don’t grow overnight, and we were getting mighty short on food.” This is vague information at best, and it doesn’t really tell us how much success they had in growing individual trees. All we can say for certain is that they were trying to build up an orchard from scratch and that it took time to do so. And of course, it’s all even more obfuscated in this case by the fact that Fluttershy distinctly said the bats made trees grow faster.

At no point did we learn how long it actually took to become that way, or if the bats were entirely to blame. That latter part is just inference. Not unreasonable inference per se, but still inference.

First of all, Applejack was the one who called them there. If she was looking for help, it’s only fair that the ones she asks give their perspective on the problem. And since Fluttershy was right, the complaint becomes totally moot. Besides, Fluttershy was willing to do quite a lot for AJ pro bono, and she’s the one who suffered the most for it.

@Millennial Dan  
Your comment is so wrong and biased in Fluttershy’s favour that I don’t really know where to begin, so I’m just gonna address them in order.
 
First off, Just because they keep bouncing back doesn’t mean that they don’t have serious financial issues. A lot of their ‘bouncing back’ is probably from insurance claims, due to the nature of the disasters that usually affect them.
 
Second, while it’s not unlikely that Applejack was exaggerating a little, the story was relayed to her by Granny, who was actually there. If Granny said that the last time the bats came, the farm went through some serious problems, then I’m more inclined to believe that than the idea that the bats somehow were helpful.
 
Third, how is having a reasonable estimate for magically assisted growth due to a subtle influence that never really increases ‘Talking out of my ass’? While it’s all but been said that Earth Ponies can make plants grow faster, Didn’t Granny say that they didn’t have enough fruit bearing trees in that first year to support themselves way back in Family Appreciation Day?
 
And finally, did you not see what happened after they were shooed out of those trees? Complete defoliation, mate. In the real world, that takes a long time to happen, usually months. This occurred fast enough that Applejack (who has been shown to be quite diligent in her observation of her livelihood) did not notice until they left the tree.
 
And how does a shoehorned environmentalism message mean I’m wrong for thinking Fluttershy was being unreasonable in expecting her friend to care for vermin out of her own pocket?

@Mayojar77  
Oookay… deep breath.
 
Dude, you can’t just state you’re opinions and act like they’re facts. How ridiculous can you get.
 
 

No, it isn’t. Their farm has seen some form of devastation several times over, and they seem to bounce back just fine.

No, it isn’t. Applejack’s wild horror stories are not automatically free from error or exaggeration.

No, it isn’t. You’re seriously just pulling that out of your nethers.

No, it isn’t. Nowhere is that conclusively shown or even stated.
 
 
And in the final analysis, you’re wrong because the episode’s writing says you are wrong. It’s as simple as that.

@Millennial Dan  
Exactly how am I wrong?  
Applejack’s family has had financial issues in recent times, even to the point where their farm might collapse if they miss a bumper crop. This is known.  
Sweet Apple Acres was nearly destroyed the last time those bats turned up. This is known.  
Apple trees, even with the aid of Earth Pony magic tend to grow really slow, taking years to reach a fruit-bearing age. This is a known.  
Vampire Fruit Bats appear to be able to at the very least strip an entire tree of all it’s healthy fruit in only a few hours. This is known.
 
How is it that Alel’s point of view, which is based on faulty evidence (A full grown tree tree growing where it’s not supposed to? The bats must have done that overnight!) and conjecture(Just because she said she’d never met them doesn’t mean she can’t know a lot about them!), more correct than a logical argument based on actual known facts?

@Background Pony #3034  
When does Fluttershy admit she knows little about Vampyre Bats? Seriously, people keep repeating that but nothing on the actual episode backs it up.  
She goes to talk to them, it doesn’t work, she says it’s the first time she meets one (wich doesn’t equal not knowing about them), Applejack starts singing about how bad they are, Fluttershy counter-sings casually stating that they spread and improve seeds, after the song she elaborates by pointing to a tree that grew from a spit seed she brought, Applejack dismisses her because she wants a quick solution, and after the spell Twilight asks Fluttershy (since she’s an animal expert) if she knows of other species that could cause similar results, to wich she says no.
 
Going by the episode, it really seems to me that Fluttershy’s knows what she’s saying.
 
 
And I didn’t mean that the Apples got so many trees because of the bats, just that going by the flashback they back then had a very tiny fraction of the trees they have today, so it’s hard to say how much damage would the bats cause today in relation to their whole farm as opposed to losing the very few trees they had back then and starting from zero when they were poor; we know back then were difficult times and what would be little damage today would have been critical back then; things are different now and it’s not a bad idea to profit from the bats if it’s possible (especially considering both SAA and Poniville were funded thanks to an exotic species of apple that was stolen from the Everfree Forest).

@Alel  
This guy is correct.
 
@Background Pony #3034  
@Mayojar77  
You two are not.
 
I do wonder what you meant, BP, by this statement:

What exactly do you suspect?

@Alel  
You seem to be grossly overestimating the Earth Ponies’ ability to grow plants.

@Alel  
We can hardly attribute the size of the orchard during the first generation ALL THE WAY BACK THEN compared to the amount of apple trees they have generations later….to the vampire bats they had for one year.
 
Not only is that absolutely ludicrious, even if that WAS true, the change in the amount of trees the next year would of been noteworthy within the family. It wasn’t, only the shortage.
 
…either way Fluttershy’s argument was pointless even if she was right, which is hard to believe. (I mean her orchard is already full, trees need to given some space and planted properly, regardless of the style she spat them in)
 
Maybe its just awkward writing on their part, but despite the fact I agree with you that Applejack was partially fueled by paranoia, she obviously had more experiance in the knowledge of ‘vampire bats’, ‘the damage they cause’, and ‘how apple trees need to grow’.
 
We KNOW there was a shortage that year when the bats came, and we know how fast just a couple dozen of them can devour. Considering they already have a nearly full farm with so much more supply and demand for their apples, they aren’t going to want their crop to be entirely devoured any year no matter what.
 
Sorry, I normally like to give Fluttershy the benefit of the doubt as well, but it just seems like your reaching.
 
Fluttershy as well. At first she admits she knows very little about vampire bats, never met them and can’t understand them yet, but then comes to their defense with weak arguments that ignore Applejack’s immediate plight. In fact when she was saying ‘they’re not icky’, she seemed downright personally offended.
 
She very much seemed to identify with them and ignorantly portray them idealistically, even though she’s never met a vampire fruit bat until they spit in her face. Why? She’s willing to villianize adult dragons. What makes vampire bats so special? And why did Fluttershy accept that she became a vampire so quickly when she was turned back, no disbelief, only concern for her friends?
 
Sounds pretty suspicious when its S4 and we don’t know jack about her origins besides she went to flight camp when she was younger. At least with Scootaloo she dropped the ‘adoptive sister’ words as clues, with Fluttershy we don’t know a thing.

@Alel  
*with Fluttershy pointing to that specific young tree that’s outside the actual orchard while talking about bats spitting better seeds  
Forgot to add.