Dude, watch the whole thing before you judge.

Also notable is that this is the first episode without a Letter segment!

Ohai pagetopper.

edited 17th Dec '11 1:13:15 PM by nomuru2d

@ Pegasussuses

I had a headcanon about how pegasi are(were) likely a militaristic society, think Sparta. It is actually canon now◊, because the pegasususes' leader is a military commander.

So, Sparta, rite?

The following segment is grimdark as fuck:

Much like instead of real life Spartans plunging their babies down some cliff if they weren't healthy enough, pegasi chuck all their fillies off a cloud.

edited 17th Dec '11 1:18:49 PM by thefran

@nomuru2d, I know that, I'm not an idiot, I already said I'd watch the entire thing later today, But I saw the majority of it, the beginning and the end.

Have you been reading Book of Friendship?

edited 17th Dec '11 1:14:45 PM by kegisak

yeah Rd is a jerk but every pony needs flaws.

also Pinkie Pie stole a bread-house lol

Maybe she paid really quickly.

@kegi lest we forget that, outside of the opening and the ending, none of them are technically playing themselves anyway

Their negative traits being exaggerated for the sake of a performance is only to be expected

edited 17th Dec '11 1:16:15 PM by gingerninja666

Dash has never exactly been overly representative of the Element of Loyalty. That is to be expected when they gave her a personality that directly contradicts her supposed virtue.

Plus it's probably just easier for writers to play up her jerkishness. She is "funnier" that way, and the gags practically write themselves.

I would ask you to look at MDW again and I think you'll actually find that Merriwether put some nice bits of subtle characterization that makes her more then just a jerk.

I can agree that Dash's jerkishness was exaggerated a bit excessively in MMDW, but it wasn't so great so as to be unbelievable. My complaint about that wasn't so much that Dash got to the point of endangering ponies due to her ego so much as that she got there so quickly. She jumped off the slippery slope like after the 2nd rescue.

As for this episode; we've known since forever that Dash thrives on being the center of attention, of course she's going to want to be the star of the show.

edited 17th Dec '11 1:17:43 PM by JapaneseTeeth

@JT By the second rescue she was already THROWING BABIES!

My point exactly. If there would have been some intermediate steps in there, she wouldn't have seen like such a jerk. Like they should have inflated her ego slowly rather than going straight to the extreme.

That baby was an abomination and we all know it.

edited 17th Dec '11 1:19:12 PM by Badwolfwho

The point here is that she did not. She was too late. She miscalculated. This is the same episode where she chucked a mutant deformed baby down a cliff, mindya, and yet this was her greatest failure, her lowest point of the series. The worst things she had ever done? All in this episode. Disregard citizens @ indulge in boasting.

There are lines she never crosses. She didn't prank Fluttershy. She completely disregarded the fliers' competition (an event incredibly important for her) to save Rarity. She stood up to defend some native indians she barely knew anything about, just because they were wronged, seeking neither glory nor respect. These kinda things are what makes me appreciate Dashie as a character.

edited 17th Dec '11 1:20:10 PM by thefran

RD's brain, —>this big<—, her head.... Well We can't expand words in this fora anymore but imagine my words expanded to the size of the planet.

She didn't prank Fluttershy because Pinkie Pie told her not to.

edited 17th Dec '11 1:20:09 PM by MousaThe14

The episodes biggest issue was pacing, honestly. They focused too much on the ego-beast, and not enough on the getting there or the resolution. I just re-watched the episode yesterday, the moral scene makes me cringe because she literally say, "Okay, that makes sense.". Yes dash, Not being a enourmous dick makes sense.

It was decent plot, but it was paced poorly so it ended up being pretty bad.

You are remarkably talented at singling out the part of the argument you can counter without regarding the rest. Dash was distracted by the MDW. I say again, it's not hard to adjust by a few degrees. Had she been focusing she would have easily adjusted to save the mare. And those other moments? Rarity was her friend, she wasn't getting praised at the time and she was feeling like crap about the competition anyways. She also completely ignored the settlers needs for the natives.

Dash is not always a bad pony, but she does have serious issues. She was being told she could do awesome things, and she let it go to her head - a lot.She got stupid. All of the other ponies have had their 'worst moment' episodes. AJ had her worst moment episode, but nobody called the writer bad for going over-the-top. Nor did anybody call it on Sweet and Elite, or on Lesson Zero, or on Party of One. Part of the shows big thing is that they will all have their bad moments. They will have moments where things go o their head, and they get stupid over something small. Dash's was life-endangering by circumstance, not because of an out-of-character moment.

edited 17th Dec '11 1:26:19 PM by kegisak

There was a cash register sound effect while she was inside, so I guess she did.

edited 17th Dec '11 1:20:56 PM by Whatshisgame

So what, Gilda pranked Fluttershy nonetheless, and that pissed both Pinkie and Dashie off.

edited 17th Dec '11 1:21:28 PM by thefran

@Thefran: Just because she acts like a jerk in this episode hardly means that she's like that all the time; she realized at the end that she had been a jackass.

@Mousa: I think that's more because she never thinks before she acts; once she slowed down to think about what she was doing, she realized it was a bad idea. If she had gone through with it, I have no doubt that she would have felt terrible about it afterward.

@Kegisak: That was my biggest gripe as well; She goes straight to completely jerkish, and stays there pretty much the whole episode, and then suddenly pulls a 180 at the end.

edited 17th Dec '11 1:23:28 PM by JapaneseTeeth

To be honest I thought the scene before the play was kind of forced. I know what the writer was trying to go for but it felt kind of unnecessary.

Rainbow never found out that happened.

edited 17th Dec '11 1:23:01 PM by Badwolfwho

IMO RD's problem is that she's easily blinded by her own ego. She only ever listens to reason after it's been deflated by something (hence why I still think the MMDW scheme was completely justified)

edited 17th Dec '11 1:25:48 PM by gingerninja666

She has a fuckwin sense of timing, judging from Luna Eclipsed. That's like, 120% of what humour is about. Humour requires intelligence.

edited 17th Dec '11 1:26:14 PM by thefran

Or getting lucky, or just having a gut for it.

@fran You mean the time when she figured that further upsetting a god who had JUST gone on a massive tirade about not being respected was a good idea?

I agree and disagree.