Talk:Read It and Weep/@comment-99.236.56.123-20120324213446

(This might be a little far fetched, but here's my opinion:)

You know, the way she said, "I'm an egghead" makes me think this predjudice is coming from somewhere else. If she made the stereotype herself, I think she would've just as easily realized that it wasn't true. But at that point, Dash seems ashamed, and even a little bit scared to find that she could enjoy reading, too, which seems like a bit of an over-reaction for a stereotype. Her explanation later is that 'I thought it was only for smart ponies ...' which made me step back a little. I can understand that she didn't think you could be atheletic and like things like reading (and that you can be smart), but where does this thinking come from? Where would she learn that kind of thing? Speaking in terms of steroetypes, people are influenced by their culture, their way of life, and the people around them when they make judgement, so I'm thinking that to completely understand Dash, I have to go back to her fillyhood in Cloudsdale.

Basically, the point I'm trying to get at is that I think there was some influence in Dash's life (maybe Flight Camp, or heck, Dash's parents) that instilled this fear of being an egghead. The whole episode, Dash has to hide her new found love for reading from her friends because she's scared of what they'll think (and, admittedly, that she can't swallow her pride enough to go back on what she'd said earlier). Maybe her peers (like Gilda, for instance) would've made fun of her for it before, so she had come to expect similar from her new friends. Also, it pulled at my heartstrings when she basically admitted that she didn't think she was smart; why wouldn't her parents have corrected her there, unless they focused more on the physical, like flying?

Yeah, that was long-winded and far-fetched, but I guess I like reading into things like that :)