Mare-Do-Well · 6:40am Jul 20th, 2014
Alright, I am currently re-watching MLP from the beginning to span the gap between seasons, and I just got tot he Mare Do Well episode. It got me thinking about the amount of flak this episode receives. A lot of people think that Dash's friends were too harsh and insensitive and such. That it went too far. Well... have you even seen the episode?
The main idea behind that argument is that Rainbow is more upset than she shows. But... she's upset for the wrong reasons through the entire episode. She's unhappy because she's no longer being noticed, upset that she's not the center of attention anymore. That just... that's not right. A lot of people seem to think that they should have helped comfort Rainbow after the first couple incidents when they start layering on how much they like Mare Do Well. But that would have been counter productive to their goal. It would have been re-affirming that she deserved to be the center of attention, that the spotlight was rightfully hers. She needed to learn that it wasn't her right to be there, it was her privilege while she was acting heroic. When she stopped doing that, she lost the privilege, lost the spotlight, and thus the lesson can be learned.
For the lesson to be taught she had to first realize that the spotlight was not her god-given right. To do that, she had to lose it completely. Had her friends comforted her and assured it that she'd get it back, that would have just told her that the center of attention would always be hers no matter what she did or what else happened. Even when she was being depressed on the cloud late in the episode, she was still focused on the fact that just because she was Rainbow Dash she should be the center of attention.
For those who say her friends overreacted, to that I say... Dash was actively risking lives. Remember the balloonist? She willingly ignored her to give out signatures. The construction workers? She saved one out of six. And even then she nearly didn't. The out of control carriage? She didn't leave herself enough time to stop it, and had MDW not been there they'd have flown off the edge and died. So no, that was not an overreaction. It had to be done.
Those arguments always annoyed me, and watching the episodes again I had to say something.
Until next time,
Kodeake out
I (personally) give the episode so much grief because of how her friends decided to fix the problem. i totally agree that rainbow needed the lesson to be learned, but the way they went about it just rubbed me the wrong way. i mean, we all know just how much pride rainbow has in the show, so that isn't up for debate. so i can't help but feel that the idea of her friends making up a fake superhero for the sole purpose of outdoing her at everything she hold so dear just doesn't seem right to me. now, if they'd just been like 'fuck it' and done the rescuing as themselves, then that'd been fine. it would have been three other ponies doing the job she was supposed to be doing, and eventually she would have gotten through her thick skull. now that might be me being optimistic, but i think she'd have gotten the message when twilight started putting herself into the spotlight, since every one of her friends knows that she's not one who likes to brag.
2301278
I don't think something as simple as that would have worked. For one, Twilight simply isn't comfortable taking the spotlight, at least this early in the show, as shown by the first Trixy fiasco. For two, if Rainbow knew who it was, so would the rest of Ponyville, and since her friends wouldn't be comfortable doing the same type of showboating Rainbow did, she'd still have a fair amount of attention directed onto her. The fact that the identity of MDW was hidden was what drove the town to become so infatuated with her. Mysteriousness has a very strong allure. If it were just "ordinary" ponies then it wouldn't have been as big of a deal, because they are the elements of harmony and at the point have saved Ponyville and Equestria twice. If they all did that kind of thing, it's become normal and whoever did the most showboating would get the most attention. Which would be Dash. MDW needed to be anonymous to give the full effect, to do it efficiently, and to actually teach a lesson rather than a short slap on the wrist like the idea you proposed would be. The thing that really drove home the episode was MDW's lack of desire for recognition combined with her rapid rise in popularity. Without the masks, the rest of the M6 would gain the same recognition, even if they didn't showboat. All it would do for Dash would be convince her to try harder. Even int he episode, she kept trying harder until MDW was revealed to be her friends, and the point was driven home when they explained it.
I probably contradicted myself a lot in that... I don't like typing counter points on the fly like that. Consonantly thinking of newer and better points without going back and replacing the older, weaker ones,
I didn't even finish the episode due to some video loading bullshit, but common sense makes me believe your argument is valid.
I think it would've been a slightly stronger episode if they had explained to her that she was showboating and getting an even bigger head first. Then if she ignored the help her friends tried to give, a more demonstrative lesson would be justified.
As it is they seem to go from 'ok all of a sudden she has stepped over the line' to dropping nukes on her self esteem. They never actively caused her to fail, but 1 v 4 is not a fair competition.
That being said most of the episodes could be solved with simply having a good talk, that's kind of the point of the show. "Look at all of this trouble and drama that could have been avoided if they had simply sat down, trusted each other, and talked."
Eeeyup
~(OvO)~