The Mysterious Mare Do Well
Rainbow Dash grinned with grim satisfaction as she pinned the Mysterious Mare Do Well to the ground. This pony had swooped into town and stolen her thunder by performing the acts of heroism that were meant for her, and now she had her exactly where she wanted her. All it would take was one quick pull on that mask to reveal her secret once and for all. Although a cool one-liner to accompany it wouldn't hurt.
"Alright, Miss Mysterious!" Rainbow said, grabbing the mask and pulling. "Mystery... solved!" Rainbow's grin faded as a coif of pink mane cascaded from beneath the cowl, and her jaw dropped at the realization.
"Pinkie?!" Rainbow shouted. "Whudda-hud-d-duh-hud-d-duh-huh?!" Her eloquent statement was halted when she noticed a second Mare Do Well appear and unmask herself as well.
"Twilight?!" Rainbow gasped. She stared in disbelief at her two costumed friends. Just when she thought things couldn't get any stranger, a third Mare Do Well entered the scene and removed her mask.
"Applejack?!" Rainbow exclaimed. "There were three of you?!"
"Yup," Twilight responded simply. "We all played Mare Do Well at different times."
"I stopped the carriage bus with these babies, Bucky McGillicuddy and Kicks McGee," Applejack said, motioning back to her hind hooves. Part of Rainbow felt like asking why Applejack had named her hooves, but it wasn't exactly high on her list of priorities.
"I saved the construction workers with my Pinkie Sense," Pinkie explained. A sudden twitch caused her to jump out of the way just as a flower pot crashed to the ground.
"Sorry!" Cherry Berry called out from the window above.
"It's alright!" Pinkie called back cheerfully.
"And I used my magic to fix the dam," Twilight stated.
"Ooh, ooh!" Fluttershy interjected, entering the scene and wearing her own Mare Do Well costume. "And I did the flyby afterwards."
"I made the costumes," Rarity stated as she walked in. For once, she was practically the only one not dressed up. "Fabulous if I do say so myself!"
"I don't understand," Rainbow said, although such a sentence wasn't even necessary to anypony who could see the look on her face. "Why? Don't you want me to be a hero?"
"Of course we want you to be a hero," Twilight responded.
"But a real hero doesn't brag," Applejack added.
"Do I even have to say anything this time?"
All eyes turned to Sugarcoat. Nopony had seen her arrive, nor knew when it had happened, but this was nothing new for her.
"What do you mean?" Twilight asked. Sugarcoat gave her a flat stare.
"Seriously?" Sugarcoat said. "This one is so obvious that you really shouldn't need me to point it out for you. So you five, instead of trying to talk to one of your best friends and tell her that she's being a braggadocious twit, decide to go through the trouble of making up a fictional character and all taking turns playing her? Is there some vital bit of friendship I'm missing here? It's okay to lie to your friend and deceive her and take away something that makes her feel happy and accomplished just because you think she's bragging too much about it? I'm glad you're not actually my friends. I neither need nor want that kind of garbage in my life."
"B-but..." a dumbfounded Twilight stammered. "...She was bragging..."
"You mean like you all were back at the library?" Sugarcoat asked. "Did you forget I'm staying there? I seem to remember all this talk about Mare Do Well's heroic feats, and how impressive her spell was, and how much she cares for ponies' safety and how her costume was to die for. So bragging is okay when you do it?" The others' ears fell, but Twilight wasn't done.
"But that was different!" Twilight said desperately. "She didn't know it was us so it wasn't really bragging."
"Listen to yourself for a minute," Sugarcoat said. "It's okay because we lied." Twilight drooped, hanging her head in shame to match her friends.
"...I'm so sorry, Rainbow Dash," Twilight said softly, the others muttering in agreement. "I guess we weren't really thinking. We just got so caught up in the bragging that-"
"Save it," Rainbow replied. "I mean, it was kinda rotten what you all did, but I guess I still could have watched the bragging a bit. We're both in the wrong here–though what you did was a bit worse."
"Right..." Twilight said sadly. Rainbow gave her a little nudge:
"Stop looking so sorry for yourself," Rainbow said. "You girls can make it up to me by treating me to lunch, alright?"
"Of course," Twilight said, her smile returning. "Anything for Ponyville's resident hero." Then she turned to look at Sugarcoat. "Are you coming?"
"No," Sugarcoat said. "I'm taking Tank for a walk to the park. See you in a week or so."
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Aww, I was hoping she would nip this one in the bud. Oh well, epic chewing out works too.
I feel this problem everyone had with the episode could've been fixed if they'd taken out that stupid ghost joke at the end and instead filled in the leftover 15/20 seconds with these lines after the Mane Six explain:
RD: "Well why didn't you try and talk to me about it?"
Fluttershy: "Would you have listened?"
RD: (looking almost ashamed) ".....No."
Or, since Season 2 Rainbow's not that self-aware until Season 3, maybe these lines:
RD: "Well why didn't you try and talk to me about it?"
Fluttershy: "Would you have listened?"
RD: Of course I would've! (everyone gives her a "really?" look) What?"
I'm the only person on earth that actually LIKES this episode...but I have to agree, the others did a shit job handling Rainbow's bragging situation.
Congrats on the getting Featured! And once again, great job with Sugarcoat!
So I'm going to guess and say that Sugarcoat's going to become an alicorn after all this...
I lost it at the "see you in a week or so".
It's my headcanon that there's a scene missing from the end of this episode, where Rainbow Dash wakes up, shakes her head & says: "What the Hey was that all about?" & then she just shrugs & forgets about it as she goes on with her day.
I must one of the few who liked that episode. I guess I just liked the costume and how it reminded me of Darkwing Duck. The lesson was hamfisted but then Rainbow Dash can be pretty thickheaded.
Like A&W root beer thickheaded.
6652155 Their screw-ups are so consistent Sugarcoat can set her calendar to em.
Also, Tank!
6652115
Pretty much. Hell, Sugarcoat could have done that if she didn't enjoy talking down to people and telling them they were wrong so much. (Something perhaps her past self will point out if they ever meet?)
I'm slightly disappointed that Sugarcoat didn't lay into them as soon as they came up with this hare-brained idea, rather than waiting until the end of the episode. Actually, she was pretty mild here, I was expecting her to really chew them out.
Although she never made any comments on how Ponyville happens to have a hill that literally everything with wheels seems to fall down by accident and come close to being launched off.
Hmmm...hill...wheels...Trixie...
Okay, I'm absolutely sick and tired of people interpreting the episode this way. Sugarcoat's a moron for this chapter, sorry.
First of all, they didn't bother talking to Dash because it's beyond obvious that it would've achieved absolutely nothing. Second of all, she wasn't just "bragging", she was ENDANGERING LIVES because of her tremendous ego and the need to finish catchphrases. Third of all, when the others were bragging about their parts in the ruse, it was rather obviously done to get under Dash's skin and not because they felt full of themselves.
Seriously, holy shit. How is everyone completely missing the point of the entire episode? The whole shtick that they did was the only good way to snap RD out of her ego-fueled "rampage". Not for a second were they excessively or undeservedly mean to her.
Fuck you, Sugarcoat.
Huh, normally this series is able to encapsulate a certain problem and approach it from several different angles and focus on the most effective means, all while remaining obvious, yet not-so-obvious at the same time... here, it was just the "obvious" parts. Perhaps if Sugarcoat had said something along the lines of "And you didn't think to simply TALK to her about it before jumping into this hair-brained scheme?", or "Rainbow Dash, what they did was stupid, but they only did so because it was the only way you could see that being a hero isn't for the glitz and glory, but for doing it because it needs to be done," then this might have been a good chapter, or even a GREAT chapter. But as it stands... it's kind of meh-ish.
I can't blame you, though. not everybody's watched The Fiery Joker, after all.
6652122 I didn't especially like the episode, but all the people ragging on Twilight and company are kind of crazy.
Not gonna lie, upon second viewing of this episode, it really DID bother me how the girls handled the situation. The lesson was hamfisted, and although Rainbow was acting pretty ridiculous and put lives in danger, the girls could have very well saved the day WITHOUT the costumes and THEN could have spoken to Rainbow about it. Like, maybe Twilight could have stopped the disaster on her own and then she goes up to Rainbow like, "Bro, dafuq, get your shit together," only a lot more Twilight-like.
FUCKING YES. I was honestly really excited for your take on this episode in Sugarcoat's manner because I knew she wasn't gonna pull any punches and that the girls definitely needed them.
As for the thing with Tank and the meta comment by Sugarcoat?
You make me very happy, Twinkletail.
6652514
-I can see the positives and negatives. Sure the writer could've skipped this episode, but I can understand that everything could've been dealt with at a different point in time... Sugarcoat is not a moron. It's this story's shtick for her to be a critic and voice of reason.
-It would be much easier for Sugarcoat to be there for Twilight's MMMDW plan and correct her before talking to Dash, but that would be boring.
-Just enjoy this story and only correct spelling errors like everyone else. Heck, I found a "j" replacing an "i" somewhere back there. I'm pretty OCD; I'm not going to point out the flaws of the story this far in unless it's something minor. Like spelling and such.
6653840
Thing is, in this chapter she's ANYTHING but voice of reason. She's the voice of the author and his total misinterpretation of the episode.
If Sugarcoat was the voice of reason in this chapter, she would have approached Rainbow Dash early in her heroics spree when signs of trouble were just starting. Instead she waited for the others to fix everything and THEN came to them with her wrong and idiotic accusations, which the others of course agreed with because the author actually thinks they were in the wrong.
6654219
Yeah, she wasn't the "voice of reason" because she was the "critic" I mentioned. Like I also said: it depends on where she pops up. Twilight didn't listen to her when she said "Don't listen to Pinkie" and Rainbow was pretty much beyond reason in this episode.
Who learns the lesson? Rainbow is upstaged, being taken out of her glory state while the others are doing no better as MMDW. Who learns the lesson? One is a hero for glory and others are lying to their close friend. Who learns a lesson?
6655200 Kind of a garbage "critic" if she criticizes them for not doing something that wouldn't have worked, and berates them for something that worked brilliantly and did no real harm, except maybe to RD's gigantic ego. But that sort of harm needed to be done anyway.
Rainbow should've learned a lesson, and Rainbow alone. The lesson being that doing heroic shit is something you do because it's the right thing, not because you get admiration for doing it. And the others' "lying" gets blown way out of proportion. Lying and pretending are different things anyway, and it's not like they were gonna keep that secret from her forever - merely until it was not needed anymore. The rest were absolutely not at fault in MMDW, in any way, period. Yet Sugarcoat's shitty criticism was directed at them. She was clearly a mouthpiece for the author and his terrible interpretation of the episode (which, sadly, is shared by the majority of the fandom, which is always incredibly disheartening to remember, because usually people are way more reasonable than this).
6655282
I have no response. I'm not going to say you're dumb because it's not helping my stance and plus; I clearly lost. Great job! You countered every point and I ran out of counters.
In the end, we're two guys arguing over ponies.
At least it's not an argument over terrorism. That stuff is depressing.
Kind of disappointed that Sugarcoat doesn't point out that Rainbow nearly got a bunch of ponies killed because she was busy with her lame catchphrase. Sure, the whole costumed hero routine was a bad way to do it but Rainbow did need a lesson in humility. If Applejack hadn't stepped in those ponies were dead.
thank you for addressing this
She wouldn't have listened as Awesomo3000 above said. Besides, it was less bragging, and more endangering lives due to paying more attention to her fans than actually doing what heroes do. Save people.
Bah. Rainbow Dash's swell-headedness had gone well beyond "being obnoxious" and into "you're going to let someone get killed". Pulling a practical joke may have been the wrong approach to the problem (although mostly because no practical joke should last more than a minute) but Rainbow Dash was actually getting dangerous.
A much quicker way this could have been resolved. Back when Rainbow was getting her picture taken.
Rainbow: Hey Sugarcoat! Do you want your picture taken with the Rainbow Dash?
...am...am I really being that bad?
Sugarcoat: You're acting like Trixie. Cut it out.
Rainbow:
Sugarcoat: Yes. Enjoying the limelight is all well and good, but pigs wallow not ponies.