It already looks perfectly readable. Adding it back.
"Ice Bear believed in you".
I disagree. Both the ACI and Broken Base entries are a mess, go off on tangents, and can't possibly enumerate all the "sides", since opinions about the rightness or wrongness of any character's actions lie on a spectrum. Anyone mind if I give a shot at a rewrite?
How's about this:
- Alternate Character Interpretation / Broken Base:
- The Mare-Do-Well (actually the other Mane Five) was either:
- Showing Rainbow Dash what a real hero was supposed to be like in the hopes of making her change, and saving ponies that Rainbow Dash would have been unable to save on her own. The disguise was justified because Dash wouldn't listen when told of her problems directly, and was an integral part of the lesson about true heroes showing humility.
- Trying to cruelly break Dash and turn the citizens of Ponyville away from her by stealing her spotlight, unfairly presenting her with an unbeatable rival, and egging her on to dangerous and embarrassing behaviour, instead of simply talking to Dash, fully and heart-to-heart. The disguise was mean-spirited, cowardly and dishonest way to avoid facing Dash directly.
- Any point between these two extremes.
- Rainbow Dash was either:
- Doing good deeds all over Ponyville, acting as real hero, and basking in much-deserved praise from the citizens. She was driven to despair and abandoned by her most loyal fans simply because her harmless boasting rubbed some ponies the wrong way, and she didn't deserve anywhere near that sort of humiliation.
- Bragging way too much to the point that it was endangering other ponies, wouldn't listen to her friends' concerns, and was too thick to pick up on the lesson the Mare-Do-Well was trying to teach her until she had it spelled out to her at the end of the episode. Her problems were mostly self-inflicted through her own jealousy and sense of entitlement.
- Any point between these two extremes.
- Dash's friends were either:
- Laughing at Dash's misfortune and humiliation, mercilessly teasing her about her failures, while hypocritically praising the Mare-Do-Well who was upstaging her, knowing full-well that Dash would react very badly to this.
- Having some good-natured fun among themselves, and dropping hints to Dash that she would be happier and more successful if she improved her own attitude. It's not their fault the lesson went over Dash's head, nor that Dash reacted so badly, and they ultimately delivered the lesson as gently as they could under the circumstances, by unmasking themselves collectively as the Mare-Do-Well away from prying eyes to spare Dash any further pain.
- Any point between these two extremes.
- The Mare-Do-Well (actually the other Mane Five) was either:
Trapped in a Human Body
Broken Aesop: It wasn't all 4 ponies working in together in concert. They flat out tell Rainbow that Twilight did the dam, Applejack the Carriage, and Pinkie the construction site. So the original point I was making about it implying that it required 4 ponies to match Dash's prowess still stands.
The YMM Vness of this still stands too, whether or not the natter came after it.
We don't have to be mean. Remember - no matter where you go, there you are. —Buckaroo Banzai Hide / Show Replies
I think that the baby pony looks hilarious. Not in a bad way, though. I just wanted to say that, 'cause they hate her on Ponibooru.
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can this be dissected so that it looks readable again, please?
- Alternate Character Interpretation / Broken Base: How much you like this episode seems to depend on whether you interpret the actions of the Mane Five as just trying to show Rainbow Dash a better way to be a hero or as deliberately trying to show her up and turn people against her.
- To be fair, They never really called her out in front of the whole town. They even did the reveal in a back alley to spare her undue humiliation, and saved ponies she was being too irresponsible to save, even risking their own lives to do so.
- There's also the fact that nine times out of then, it was only Rainbow's bragging that made the disasters get to the point the Mare Do Well had to intervene anyway. Had she not stopped to gloat, she would've been able to deal with the disasters herself before they got out of hand or the Mare Do Well actually had time to get there. So knocking her down a peg or two was actually a pretty good idea.
- In one camp, this episode ruined Rainbow Dash. In the other, it redeemed her*.
- In a third camp, there was nothing wrong with Dash and her behavior in the first place, and her friends were taking it WAY too far. And that this episode was just there to break her for no reason.
- There's still the fact that they did not talk to nor warn Dash about the possible consequences of letting her heroics go to her head, all before Mare Do Well showed up.
- The scene where the Mane Cast praise Mare Do Well's heroics is particularly contentious, as it makes them hypocritical and unnecessarily hard on Rainbow.
- Even worse than that, it could be seen as them egging on Dash, as they should know from experience that her ego would cause her behavior to worsen, meaning they were actually trying to make her hit rock bottom before they revealed their intended lesson. They can plainly see she's getting frustrated and that her feelings are hurt, but they just keep poking until something big happens.
- The other explanations fans have come up with include: they were just trying to tease her a little but severely underestimated how hard she was taking the whole thing; they were checking to see if she'd learned her lesson yet; they were trying to hint to Dash that if she acted more like the Mare, people would still compliment her; and more.
- Another possibility could be The Mane 5 dropping very unsubtle hints of MDW's identity. Like The Confessor said, look for patterns.
- In one small camp, some think the way the the Mane Five behaved towards Rainbow Dash was mixture of both interpretations.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman Hide / Show Replies