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Wednesday, March 21, 2018

A Dash of Awesome: Read and It Weep





Hello & welcome back to Trotting Through Life and today, we continue our look at the Rainbow Dash Centric episodes as we look at Read It and Weep.  Personally, I preferred the original title for this episode.










Minor thing but let's get to the review at hand.   This episode is interesting as adds some new dynamics for RD as it shows her becoming a fan of something that she turned her nose up at something other ponies love because she thought it was uncool and deemed anyone that partook in this activity to be an egghead. There is an obvious correlation that one could make here between what Dash is going through and how some fans stumbled upon the Brony fandom.  I know that The Second Opinion brought this up in his review of the episode years ago.   And I have brought up my story once or twice before but I used to think My Little Pony was a silly little show that would just come and go without me ever watching it but I stumbled upon the first Hearth's Warming Eve episode and that made me a fan and here we are.   With that out of the way, let's get the review started.



The Plot

This episode opens on Dash as she performing a dangerous stunt in the sky as Rarity and Pinkie Pie watch and things end badly for Dash as she plummets to the ground.   After the intro, we see Dash come to her senses in a hospital and discovers that her right wing has been bandaged.    Her friends are there to see if she is okay and Doctor Horse (I had no idea that was his name)  says that she'll be fine as long she just rests and doesn't do any flying.   Yeah, Dash doesn't take to this news that well but Twilight hands her a Daring Do book and at first,  the future Wonderbolt brushes it off as nothing more than something that eggheads do but her friends chuckle at this notion as they all like curling up with a good book.

From here, there isn't much to really discuss as it's just Rainbow Dash reading the Daring Do book and getting caught up in the action, which is presented rather well with really neat sequences.














The main crux of the episode is really just how Rainbow Dash becomes so engrossed with the book that she ignores her friends' attempts to cheer her up such as with a Battleship-like game.   Rainbow Dash's obsessivness gets to a point, that she hadn't even finished the book when Doctor Horse (that is still a really weird name) checks her out and she at first feigns still being hurt to get the book back but then takes more drastic measures  and goes about stealing the book and that leads to a chase through Ponyville, where Dash admits the truth and Twilight informs her that Dash could have just asked her as she every book in the Daring Do series at Golden Oak Library and she is free to borrow them, anytime she wants. 

This episode does ring true for me and I imagine a lot of other fans, as when I first got into the show, I hid it from people in my everyday life as I was afraid of the stigma that liking MLP had attached to at that point.   I do think it has gotten better since that point as the fandom has become more mainstream and it has been shown that not everyone likes this show is some weirdo.   We like it because of the stories and characters involved. 




Character


Rainbow Dash voiced by Ashleigh Ball















While, this may seem like a smaller episode. I think that it is important one for Dash as shows how she became the adorable fangirl that we would see in future episodes and even with her Equestira Girls counterpart, when it comes to Darin Do as she seems to know every little detail about the series.















   And yeah,  I can get that way with things like Disney and MLP but I think that is just a natural tendecy that fans of something are bound to have and there is nothing wrong with that. 



My Final Thoughts


On the surface, this episode may see to suggest that you should give things a chance and not just judge a book by its cover but for so many fans, I think that this episode had a more important message. That is okay to like something and that you don't have to hide it from your friends.   And if they are your friends, they'll accept your likes and interests and not judge you for what you like.   Join me next time as I look at...

Wonderbolts Academy



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