@Background Pony #F375
 
@Hory_Shet  
Finally other people appreciate her.

@Background Pony #F375  
Same freakin’ here.

I freaking love Rainbow Dash.  
Such an awesome character.

@Background Pony #FD7A  
“equal opportunity”? Seriously? You seriously think Fluttershy would be Rainbow Dash’s equal in anything vaguely athletic?
 
Great googly moogly, there’s a lot of stupidity being tossed around in this thread, but that takes the cake.
 
@Gatito  
Eh, I wasn’t happy that, after showing a great understanding of Fluttershy in “Hurricaine Fluttershy”, Rainbow Dash turned around and pressured her into something she wasn’t comfortable with here. Granted, Applejack wasn’t available, but Dash could’ve called for a challenger from the crowd, a move that would’ve had the additional benefit of getting the Crystal Ponies more invested in the jousting.
 
The slapstick violence didn’t bother me, though; ponies have been shown to shrug off worse hits than that with no ill effects.

@untraceablelarry  
If you think this is the dumbest drama discussion, I don’t think you’ve been browsing around Derpibooru hard enough.

I think I’ve found the dumbest drama on the site… Why are so many of you taking this so seriously? It’s a dumb bit of slapstick; it reflects little on the characters outside of their strength relative to one another.
 
And on such a terrible gif, too. Why is it missing half of it’s frames?

@gruntman14  
I think it shows that she respect Fluttershy enough to not go easy on her. She’s the only one who refuses to baby her, which is kinda what Fluttershy needs whether she likes it or not.

@VNagato  
To each their own. I personally will stick to my theory since it makes more since to me.

@gruntman14  
As much of an ego RD has, your claim is a bit of a stretch. I don’t really think she would purposefully choose Fluttershy just to easily overpower her. RD is pretty narcissistic in nature, therefore she would believe anyone would do, because she believes she can beat them easily anyways. I don’t necessarily like RD but her character isn’t that cruel
 
I’m just gonna go with Hory_Shet’s idea on how everyone else was too busy

@VNagato
 
@Hory_Shet  
And Fluttershy was busy tending to the ewes. Rainbow could have chosen any other pony to joust with, but she wanted to “uphold her reputation” as she says during the jousting match. So why not pick a pony she knew she could easily overpower and win against? And that is the true reason Rainbow chose Fluttershy as her competitor. So she could easily obtain a boost to her bigheaded ego.

@VNagato  
The others were too busy with other things.

@Rokesh  
By the way I was referring to myself as the anti-social person with little to no friends. I just came to the realization that you may have misread my comment. And my avatar is a grunt thank you very much.

@Psyga315  
Describing the situation as “simply”, is underestimating the situation. Distracting the Crystal Empire was the only thing they could have done, and jousting was a part of the Crystal Empire’s culture, it’s a good distraction.
 
The only thing what I don’t get is why Fluttershy was picked

@VNagato  
And then Rainbow Dash pressured her into jousting some more simply because they need to distract the Crystal Empire long enough for Twilight to finish her test.

I have a hunch that this moment was trying to bury Fluttershy’s popularity.

Did she dieded-ed?

@Fwelin  
It wasn’t like Dash was TRYING to throw Fluttershy into the air, and Fluttershy was upset and scared, but she wasn’t in pain compared to Dash’s reaction of being completely dazed for a few seconds after the gut stomp. She still got the wind knocked out of her.
 
@Background Pony #FD7A  
I made my point about this one, but RD was being extremely pushy about making Fluttershy go, even if she didn’t want to. There’s a thing called phobias if you didn’t know, there’s irrational fears for just about anything, and sometimes they won’t suddenly be cured. There’s no real harm done on Dash’s part, but forcing someone who feels strongly against it isn’t nice either. We don’t know if Dash specifically made the deal to watch the butterfly migration in return for Fluttershy to watch the dragon migration, Dash said Fluttershy owed her, if Fluttershy doesn’t feel comfortable with this, then it shouldn’t be forced.
 
@RaineV1  
But that’s what’s fun about it D:

Guys, let’s not overthink cartoon physics here. It’s just animated slapstick.

@Fwelin  
Mortality afraid? Seriously? Did she die in Dragonshy? So strong she couldn’t even go outside? (Which she basically did end up doing and just running off somewhere) Also, Fluttershy kinda owed her after Rainbow Dash had to go to that butterfly migration with her… “cause them harm”? lol… You’ve got to be kidding, right? Rainbow Dash wasn’t causing or intending to cause her harm and was only trying to get her to go to the dragon migration, and make her realise her fear of dragons was irrational… Also, I think the real victim here is Rainbow Dash, as she didn’t actually do anything to hurt Fluttershy as you claim, and Fluttershy essentially acted inappropriately by stomping on her gut.
 
Oh really? Can’t even come close? Heh… I wonder why she called Fluttershy her “best flyer” in Hurricane Fluttershy then? And they weren’t even flying, they were jousting, which is a different type of sport. She initiated as a way of providing entertainment and keeping the citizens of the Crystal Empire distracted from the crystal heart. Mentally impaired? In what way? Are you implying that Fluttershy has some sort of mental disability?
 
Getting stomped in the gut with no armour on definitely hurts more than getting hit with a sphere on the edge of metal pole with armour on… I fail to see what’s so funny about it.

@VNagato  
You know how falling kills people, right? The exact same way that punching people in the gut does, by damaging organs or causing internal bleeding, and a fall from 30 feet in the air has a lot more force than someone pushing you over and accidentally stepping on your gut.
 
Rainbow was also having no trouble breathing due to the blow whatsoever.

I think that it’d be best that we all agree that both were bashed about under different circumstances and that neither of them are perfect.
 
Both of these Pegasi are two very different ponies with very different characters and behavior but can still get along like normal friends.
 
Can we all calm down a bit now?

@Fwelin  
Pegasi fly, you think falling isn’t common? They should be durable in a sense to survive falls, or at least better than the other 2 races (Earth ponies are debatable since their body structures should be stronger), but no structure is protecting the organs, so unless you have steel abs, a punch in the gut is the same to anyone.  
Getting thrown into the air doesn’t happen either, if that happened in real life, sure there’d be tons of dead people but these is a cartoon. And again, Fluttershy didn’t seem all that hurt, in Rainbow’s case, she literally got the wind knocked out of her, having a hard time breathing is not fun
 
And I’m pretty sure both these cases were supposed to be comedic in a sort, I don’t see why you’re so hung up about whose more of a terrible friend

@DragonWraith  
No one got permanently injured, which is completely different from saying that no one got hurt. I’d get arrested for punching someone in the face even if I’m too weak to give them more than a bruise or a black eye.
 
Plus, I’m not arguing that what Rainbow did is unforgivable, just that what Fluttershy did isn’t even comparable, because Fluttershy didn’t initiate the scenario, didn’t hit Rainbow as hard as Rainbow hit her, and was not in her right mind because she was being overwhelmed by her fight or flight instinct.

@Lucky Shot  
Why are you bringing Rarity into this?