The Canterlot Boutique (contains spoilers) · 4:54pm Sep 12th, 2015
I was right. Of course I was right. The moment she stepped through the door I knew this mare would be trouble.
I can't really put into words what it was. Something about the dress, the way she spoke, the plan, the way she was hogging the spotlight; it all screamed I have a MBA and will destroy everything I touch. Then there was the dreaded pronouncement: she had been involved in every boutique in Canterlot.
There she was. A serial manager. A parasite that flits from one business to the next, sucking out everything special as she seeks that winning formula, transforming each from a thriving, unique thing into a soulless, empty shell from which all creative integrity has been stripped and stacked away in slavish pursuit of the perfectly ordered, false harmony of monocultural production that seeks maximise the pursuit of a single, ephemeral trend at the expense of long-term vitality.
Sassy Saddles, the official mascot of the Harvard Business School, home of the sack suit, firm handshake and the unshakeable belief in the absolute superiority of the university-educated business manager, whose nearly-hidden watch, neatly manicured nails and quietly indulgent tie pin all sit just at the edge of sight and seek to quietly, whisperingly tell the world: "I'm better than you".
She was manipulative, but grossly so, easily spotted in her attempts to steal the spotlight, yet as with all parasites that visibility was not enough to dislodge her. She had cored out Rarity's dreams and spun them around herself like an armoured cocoon, and did not have to voice much threat to those dreams to maintain her position and her control. She took Rarity's desire for notoriety and fortune and used it for her own gain.
Yet her own goals were here downfall. She didn't understand creativity or even fashion, and the moment a success hit she latched onto it and drove it like cloth and thread through a sewing machine, stitch after endless stitch, without change or diversion, never understanding that the perfectly straight seam she formed was useless by itself, that the stitch was part of a greater thing, that the pattern was just one element of an ensemble that must vary and change. She couldn't see that the template by which she proscribed each new business was a straight line that could support nothing, and that would continue only until the cocoon, the hollowed out, lifeless husk that had been Rarity's dream collapsed all about them. Another failed venture. Another weave on the pattern that was her life.
Rarity was far more forgiving than I would have been.
And yet, her failure was not absolute. She was still just smart enough to see a way to change, smart enough to avoid falling into the trap of blaming others for her own mistakes, when the temptation to jump ship and declare herself innocent of any responsibility for the failure must have been so strong. She showed the capacity that others in her position don't: the ability to learn, to humble herself even; the ability to stand up and say "I was wrong". Moreso, the ability to accept her own limitations, not in a crushing, defeated way, but in a way that acknowledges who she really is and where her skills truly lie.
She's a manager, which is why she wears a saddle. She's not meant to be holding the reins of the business; she supports the pony who does.
Well...dayum.
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Very nice.
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Corporate cookie cutter. Although that last pony through the door Damn near destroyed me through laughter.
I liked Sassy, she did was she was hired to do, run the business, create hype for the product and make sales. Also it's not like she was screwing Rarity, since Rarity was the owner and the one benefiting the most from the operation (All Sassy got out of the deal was her salary and a sales bonus maybe).
Rarity should have hired some workers to do the menial work and then free herself to design and promote her other work side by side with Sassy, but I guess production lines are evil or something.
I guess some would say that it was an reference to creative types being stifled by corporate overlords, except it's not, cause Rarity herself is the corporate overlord, she just insisted in making the product herself.
Very well said.
So what you're saying is, Rarity is supposed to ride her.
Rarity needs a professional manager (one with the Equestrian equivalent of an MBA) to run her Canterlot storefront for her, that was clearly her plan all along. The problem is she never communicated to Sassy clearly that she would rather have limited commercial success in the short term to build a long term brand, rather than successfully exploit a series of trends, which many fashion businesses do today, and have managed to make successful many years in a row, just by switching rapidly between trends.
Sassy isn't a parasite, she's symbiotic. She has no real fashion or creative talent, she could never have built that business on her own. But Rarity could never have built it either, without Sassy's promotions and advertising and market research and diligent networking. I think this episode is a paean to the mutual-need based relationship between the creative founder with limited business sense, and the big-name MBA manager that always needs to be brought in sooner or later to make the business succeed beyond a certain level.
3388524 Oh, but you, you poor fool.
You don't know what you have started...
I just know someone is going to make some form of porn of this.