Fluttershy is the total embodiment of shy.

, When you put it like that it makes Cadence sound like she is incapable of anything but love.

Anyway, my Rainbow Dash analysis is ready to post now if anyone wants to see it.

edited 1st Jun '13 9:41:48 AM by Mio

My efforts today.

All explained in the link.

I wonder if Princess Skyla is a natural Alicorn or ascended.

So I've updated my liveblog with chapter one of Fallout: Equestria - Pink Eyes.

@ Mio

Go ahead!

Congrats Fluttershy, you've become the alicorn of shyness. Your royal duties will involve standing before large crowds of ponies making speeches, and dealing with the multitude of political squabbling the nobles get up to.

Your new power: Invisibility.

Then she stages a dramatic coup and becomes the Queen of Equestria, where animal abuse is met with worse penalties than anything else.

Post of the Day #394

@Applelight: Ok, though it will probably kill the thread for the next 15 minutes. . .

Rainbow Dash

When people talk about characters that have changed or come far since their beginnings in the series a name that often comes up is Rainbow Dash, and it’s not hard to see why. I can say right away and with little doubt that of all of the characters in this show Rainbow Dash has the most dynamic and complete character arc of the entire cast. I know some will disagree and point to a more “obvious” choice in that regard (we’ll get to that later), but I think people underestimate the amount of change and growth Rainbow Dash has gone through to reach the point she is now. To see that lets consider how she was at the beginning.

The first few episodes of the show paint a picture of Rainbow Dash that is really not the most endearing of portraits (unless you happen to find that appealing). Of the cast she was quite easily the most insensitive, the most selfish, and the least mature (yes, even more then Pinkie Pie). Once more she seems to be the most distant of all the members of the Mane Six. The only pony she appears to have a positive relationship with is Applejack and that seems to be built entirely off of mutual athletic interest, and that nearly destroyed their friendship due to Dash putting her self-image and pride ahead of her friendship, and AJ’s self-righteousness pushing her to try to prevent Dash from winning. She considered Pinkie Pie an annoyance until they found a mutual interest in pranking. She considered Fluttershy useless until Dragonshy, and even afterwards mostly treated her as subservient groupie then a friend. While she respects Twilight’s abilities she belittles her interests. And as for Rarity. . .actually she does not seem to have a lot to say about her and her interest except that she finds posing for a dress for long periods boring. That said it’s kind of interesting to see who she considered a close friend when we saw Gilda. It actually possibly suggest that despite all of this she used to be worse then what she was at that point. She is also very ego-driven, probably more so then any of the others, but it’s pretty obvious even from the first episode that she doesn’t have nearly as self-confident or secure in herself as she would have you believe. It’s what drives her to try to puff herself up with boasts and try to dominate in any event she participates in (unless she is already dominate then she gets lazy and lets it fall by the way side), and when failure seems to be a very real possibility she either gives into nervous despair (Sonic Rainboom), or resorts to any kind of tactic to prevent herself from feeling it’s sting (Fall Weather Friends).

So, I guess after all of that I’m sure some of you maybe wondering if I have anything nice to say about Rainbow Dash in the first season. Well, I can say that she ultimately does bear out her Element of Loyalty. She would have to be loyal to remain friends with the rest of the Mane Six at all. That may sound like a backhanded comment but it is very easy to expect some one with Rainbow Dash’s personality to just brush off her current friends and move to others who are “more her speed” so to speak, but ultimately she sticks with them, and even sticks up for them in the face of others whom she has known longer and has more in common with (Griffon A Brush Off). Whatever she may say about them or do too them, she really does seem genuinely committed to sticking by them, even if she doesn’t seem to relate to them all that well. Also, another interesting aspect of her laidback personality is that she is actually the one least likely to hold something against someone else in the Mane Six (save perhaps Fluttershy).

When all is said and done, season one established Rainbow Dash as very flawed but also full of potential, as an athlete, as a pony, and as a friend.

Season two is rather controversial among Rainbow Dash fans for a number of reasons, some legitimate, some less so. The big theme seems to be that Rainbow Dash was made to be disproportionately unsympathetic and “punished” just as disproportionately, especially in the early parts of the season. I will agree that in this season there was a sort of unintentional theme of Rainbow Dash being “humbled”. In May the Best Pet Win she was humbled by Tank rescuing her despite having dismissed him earlier. In Mysterious Mare Do Well she was humbled by her friends being able to perform feats of heroism without letting it go to their heads and affect their performance like it had with her. Even in Read it And Weep she was humbled when she had to admit that her pre-conceived notions about reading were completely false, after an embarrassing attempt at petty theft. At times it did seem a little excessive and at times it would seem that the episodes would try to paint Rainbow Dash in a harsher light them she was before or actually in the situation (Mysterious Mare Do Well, and Read it And Weep come to mind), but in the long run the results would ultimately make it all worth it. What do I mean by this? In the first season she really did not suffer a great deal of consequences for a lot of her more questionable behavior and by the end of that season she really hadn’t displayed much change. As we will see later in Hurricane Fluttershy, after all of the “humbling” that came before, Rainbow Dash showed a great deal of change. Where she once would have dismissed Fluttershy or forced her into doing what she wants she instead displays empathy and concern and tries to encourage her on. She is shown to be taking more responsibility then she has before, and even if some of her goals and decisions were questionable (she could have prevented the situation by not being so harsh on Thunderlane) we see the real potential for her to be a good leader. I like to think that her initial experiences at the beginning of the season were a sort of wake up call for her to grow up. Especially after Mysterious Mare Do Well where her friends essentially told her “we’re not going to tolerate your antics any more”. And after all of those incidents it seems that she has taken it upon herself to actually do some growing up, starting at the end of season two and continuing into the next season.

Sleepless in Ponyville is primarily a Scootaloo episode, but it does give a look into how Rainbow Dash is continuing to develop. While Rainbow Dash comes across as a bit unempathetic and ignorant of Scootaloo trough most of the episode, it o the should be noted that despite thoughts to the contrary Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash really don’t know each other well. It actually makes Rainbow Dash’s actions at the end more powerful when you consider that she was willing to confide in someone she barely knows something she never told anyone else just to make them feel better. It’s certainly not something she would have done before. As for her finally taking Scootaloo under her wing, it is a very kind gesture on her part, but it still remains to be seen whether she can be a genuinely good mentor/big sister, though I say the odds right now are looking good. What comes next is Wonderbolt Academy, the first episode that deals specifically with Dash’s goal of getting into the Wonderbolts since Sonic Rainboom back in Season One. The episode seems to be designed to show how different Dash is now then she was before with the character of Lightning Dust. In many ways Lightning Dust is better then Rainbow Dash, more self-confident, willing to push herself a little harder, and was able to achieve literal superiority over Rainbow Dash. However it became pretty obvious that Lightning Dust didn’t care about the lives and well beings of other ponies, even her friend Rainbow Dash. To make matters worse, when Rainbow Dash goes to Spitfire about it it seems like she doesn’t care either. Earlier in the show Rainbow Dash may have been willing to accept this as a condition of being in the Wonderbolts, hell she may have even been a willing participant in some of these things. But she is not going to let her dreams blind her to the situation, the Wonderbolts were going to allow a dangerous and irresponsible pony get away with putting several ponies, including her friends in danger, and she wasn’t going to be a part of that. Thankfully for her Spitfire was not going to let Lightning Dust slide and acknowledged that she was mistaken, but it was still a powerful demonstration of how far Rainbow has come since we first learned that she wanted to be a Wonderbolt. We could probably end our look at Rainbow Dash here as it’s probably the single most important episode for her in awhile, but there is one oft overlooked episode that also demonstrates some of her development. Games Ponies Play has Rainbow Dash playing a large role as the one most adamant about getting the Crystal Empire to host the Equestria Games due to past disappointments. Her overzealousness contributed to her and the rest of the Mane Six mistaking the identity of the games inspector, and nearly losing the Crystal Empire’s chances at hosting the games, but she was hardly the only one at fault. And yet when it finally came down to explain what happened Rainbow decided to take all the blame and responsibility for what had happened. There was no need for her to do that, but she was still willing to take ownership of her mistakes and even those of the rest of her friends. If that is not a far cry from the Rainbow Dash of the beginning of the series I don’t know what is.

There are still plenty of things that the writers can do with Rainbow Dash. She has her newly established relationship with Scootaloo, and she is still working on joining the Wonderbolts, but for now I would have to say that her character arc has been the most satisfying of anyone’s in the series, and I hope it continues to be from her on out.

Some things are still pretty expensive.

@ Stevetheman: Interesting you should bring that concept up. You should go read The Heart Thief.

The Heart Thief?

Some things are still pretty expensive.

Edit: Crap, I had a whole long post typed up but accidentally lost it by hitting up when I was about to post.

edited 1st Jun '13 9:56:31 AM by storyyeller

@Mio: Sounds pretty spot on to me. RD has probably shown the most development over the course of the show thus far.

@Story: Not if you know the right guy.

The Heart Thief

@Mio: I'll probably get to that in the morning or something, when I'm a bit more more lucid.

• Milkmare
• What SA saw on his honeymoon night
• Unusual manner of nommage
• Ready for her close-up
• Gummy eats everything
• Pet shark
• Anything they can do, we can do better
• Party Hand-Cannon
• Juxtaposition win
• You've created a time paradox
• Oh my...
• Two words, indeed
• Rainbow Dash
• Being head writer is suffering
• Computers
• Human Twilight
• The brand-new sitcom by Canterlot Studios
• Medic!
• Sitting in a tree
• Naw, she just needs to release some "tension"
• Egghead Jr.

Greetings everyone, what's going on over here?

Got around to reading it and it's pretty good.

@ Mio

Yep, totally agree with your points. I remember strongly disliking RD in season one and two, and starting to ease off her through three thanks to her development. Her story is still ongoing as you say, in contrast to AJ who is seriously stagnating imo.

Whew, that was a lot to go through, Mio. But looking at your examples, I think you're about right.

I think I can guess who you'll be getting to later, but I 'll let you get to it.

Salty isn't going down so well.

what exactly is the character limit for a post?

Well that seemed pretty spot on for RD. Though i'd stil prefer to just ignore MMDW even existed.

@Apple: Don't lose heart.

@Mio: I think Wonderbolt Academy sort of solidified that RD is no longer solely interested in what's good for her. In the whole episode, you can see that she cares about how Lightning Dust's actions and attitude are affecting others. In the end, she was fully prepared to not join the Wonderbolts, because she didn't want to be part of any group that would turn a blind eye to reckless, dangerous behavior.