"For Whom The Sweetie Belle Toils": Episode Followup

When Sweetie Belle opened her eyes, her bedroom was gone. She was standing--though she couldn't tell on what--in a pure white space that stretched out as far as she could. The only thing in sight, the only gap in the monochrome horizon, was a midnight-blue alicorn with a mane that shimmered and sparkled with starlight: Princess Luna. Why was Princess Luna here? What was this place? Was she dreaming?

"I imagine that right now, you're feeling a bit like Alice. Hmm?" Luna said. "Tumbling down the rabbit hole?"

"You could say that," Sweetie replied, still looking around for an exit. She'd never heard of any place in Equestria like this one, nor could she imagine how it might exist. That meant this had to be a dream, right?

"I see it in your eyes," Luna said. "You have the look of a mare who accepts what she sees because she is expecting to wake up. Ironically, that's not far from the truth."

Sweetie Belle looked up. The look in Luna's eyes was immense, as if Sweetie Belle was at once the most important and most insignificant thing she'd ever seen.

"Do you believe in fate, Sweetie Belle?" Luna asked.

"No," Sweetie told her.

"Why not?"

"Because..." Sweetie scuffed her hoof against what she supposed was the ground. "Because I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life."

Luna nodded, and though her face never betrayed an expression, a hint of a smile tugged at the corners of her lips. "I know exactly what you mean," she said. Luna swiveled on her hooves and began to pace, steering herself in a slow circle around Sweetie Belle. "Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me."

Luna reached Sweetie Belle's front again and stopped. She never turned towards her, but Sweetie could tell she was watching her all the same. "Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"The Matrix?" Sweetie Belle guessed.

"Do you want to know what it is?"

"Yes."

Luna's lips twitched again. "The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very space. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your radio. You can feel it when you go to school... when you go to your clubhouse... when you play with your friends. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."

Sweetie Belle bit her lip and swallowed hard. It felt like some of the white space around her had seeped into her chest. "What truth?"

Finally, Luna faced her again. "That the Matrix has you, Sweetie Belle. That it's time to wake up."

My name is Aquaman, this is the "For Who The Sweetie Belle Toils" episode followup, and seriously, get your lazy asses up. It's like three in the afternoon over here. Let's boot up this sucker up.

The animators wanted this scene to show Sweetie Belle trying to help her sister, but all I see is the same look that haunts all men whose girlfriends take them shopping: sagging shoulders, arms full of things we can't identify, toothy grin, and a look in the eyes that says, "My soul died long ago, and this body is but a hollow vessel for my sorrow. I just wanted a couple hours of March Madness time today. Ours is a cruel God."

"I thwear, thith ith the latht thime I e'er thry to beat up a foresth fairy."

Ah, kids. Someday I'm probably going to have some, and someday they'll probably run up to me and beg me to go get some posterboard and markers so they can finish a project for the next day that they've been putting off for two months. And that day will be the day that I understand where the lines on my parents' faces came from.

And then they'll just pull this face on me, and I'll teach them a few new swear words as I go and get my car keys.

"You're the best sister ever, Rarity!"
"And?"
"And you're amazing and generous and perfect and I love you so much!"
"Aaaaand?"
"And I promise I'll never touch your power tools again while you're out with your friends!"
"Good girl. Get me some thread."

"... and the bottle of grown-up juice under my bed."
"The brown one or the big clear one with all the proof in it?"
"Yes."

"Oh, I'm so excited, girls. This is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the stage lights, and those wonderful ponies out there in the dark!"
"Um... you're not in our play, Miss Cheerilee. I don't think we ever even brought it up at school."
"All right, Miss Belle, I'm ready for my close-up!"
"How did you even get back here?"

"Hay if I know what's wrong with her, Sweetie Belle. All I know is that Rainbow Dash came in an hour ago and said she couldn't wait to see the play, and Scootaloo ain't moved or blinked since."

Sticking up for Sweetie Belle here a bit: writing, directing, acting, and doing at least some of the costume design is a buttload of work for anybody to do, let alone someone as young as Sweetie Belle. On the other hand, the writer/director/producer/lead actor combo is probably something you'd want to head off before things really get underway. If one person has that much power, it can sometimes lead to some... memorable results.

"You are teah-ring me apart, Apple Bloom!"

Real talk, though: Scootaloo can put on one hell of a stink-eye when the situation calls for it.

Okay, I know you mean well, Rarity, but I've reviewed a lot of fanfics and you lived through Suited for Success. You and I both know that making unrequested improvements on other people's work just leads to misery for everyone involved. Never mind that one of the sleeves Sweetie Belle made was twice her length of her whole body--if everyone in town can grin and bear it during the performance, you can too.

There's a certain line you don't cross when it comes to helping out with creative endeavors, and judging by the look on Sweetie Belle's face, Rarity folded that line in half just so she could waltz over it twice.

Don't know if this has come up before, but I noticed on my second run through this episode that everyone in the theater applauds by knocking their hooves together like we do our hands, as opposed to stomping on the ground like we've seen before. Not that I'm complaining: the closer they get to completely human behavior, the sooner someone's bound to realize mid-episode, perhaps even mid-song, that everypony around them is completely naked. I can't be the only one who thinks that'd be funny.

Basically, any sequence of events that means Sweetie Belle wears more dresses like this is fine by me. You adorably emasculating little bugger, you.

"May it please your honor, Lord Applius,
Out of his free love, hath presented to you
Three pale-flanked fillies, trapp'd in bitchin' sweet threads."
- Shakespeare, more or less

All right, just... before this goes any further, I'm gonna clear the air about this: the Cutie Mark Crusaders are my favorite characters on the show. I mean, yeah, Applejack's obviously the best of the Mane 6, and I have a soft spot for Diamond Tiara that continues to baffle most of my friends and colleagues around here. The CMC just strike me as the most engaging characters in FiM right now, though, primarily because during the last two seasons they've finally started getting development that isn't all about getting magical talent stamps on their butts. Sweetie Belle's deep breath and sigh to calm herself down after, aside from being cute as all heckfire, is really emotive and does a great job showing off her personality. Same deal goes for how all of them decide to approach the meet-and-greet with the crowd afterwards.

Saint Scootaloo's hat is still straight ridiculous, though. And that pose. And that chain.

Baseless assumptions I'm going to make based on this image:
1) Spike and Snips are total bros.
2) Sweetie Belle listens to DJ Pon3 and possibly stole her glasses.
3) Cloudkicker back there didn't even realize there was a play tonight. She's just there for the Clydesdale Light.

I'm not saying these are the looks the pre-readers get reading some of the fanfic submissions we get in our inboxes. But I'm not saying they aren't either.

Keep it together, dude. I'm sure tons of totally normal stallions with totally normal stallion clothes in their closets know that much feminine fashion terminology off-hoof. You're fine. No one suspects a thing. Just be cool, Noteworthy. JUST BE COOL, NOTEWORTHY.

Presented without context because I need at least one joke like this in every followup.

I can't decide if it's a credit to the writer or not that I didn't even notice the throwaway line about the key stitch in the headdress the first time around. To be honest, I don't even know if it's possible for clothing to have a single thread that keeps the whole thing from falling apart.

Something something, ILLUMINATI.

I love how quickly all of the Mane 6 just bail on Rarity once they see how PO'd Sweetie Belle is, though. Staying up half the night to slave over dresses is just what friends do, but emotionally tumultuous conversations with your younger sister? AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT.

"There's a fire where? And Celestia is a princess, darling, not a lord. How would she even have anything to do with this?"

Another point in defense of Sweetie Belle: Rarity's definitely being a bit obtuse here about how Sweetie Belle really feels about what went down with the dresses dresses DRESSES DRESSES. On the other hand, Sweetie Belle doesn't screw around about holding grudges.

"Oh, for goodness sakes, Sweetie Belle! Your fifth birthday was... um... how many years ago was that?"
"I, uh... yeah, exactly. Good question."

Aaaaand what the hell, one more interjection on Sweetie's behalf: before anyone goes off on the Belle for being irrational or holding the Idiot Ball here, this reaction isn't really that unbelievable given her age. Preteen girls aren't the most emotionally stable lot to begin with, and although it's not fair of her to lash out at Rarity because she's disappointed in how her play was received, it's understandable too. Actually, it's a nicely layered bit of characterization that's never directly addressed in the episode but sits there as implication the whole time. It's probably relevant to mention now that Sweetie Belle's my favorite out of the CMC.

re: her rant about shades of red, though: I feel you, dog. You have no idea.

"For Pete's sake, it's all red!" - a furious Sweetie Belle, heard by Rarity through her bedroom door and presented with only the slightest bit of context. I'm going to hell.

Sweetie Belle: 50% drama, 50% violent outbursts, 50% bad at percentages, and somehow still cute anyway.

"So that's where you keep your grown-up juice now..."

Gotta be honest, an Oscars reference wasn't what I expected so recently after the actual Oscars. It's probably coincidence that the gag was that timely, though. In any case, I can't imagine a category for "Best Writer-Director-Actor In An Awesome Movie By A Pony And Her Awesome Best Friends" would get too many nominations. It's real tough for talking horses to get leading roles these days.

Also, if that's supposed to be a Leonardo DiCaprio horse in the bottom left corner, I'm going to choke something.

"Some fillies get to dream about sunshiny meadows and forests made of gumdrops. I get to dream about statuettes made of melty cheese and my big sister turning into Thor. So it goes."

"Princess Luna! It's really you! Or... am I dreaming?"
"What do you think?"
"Well, you're a princess and the immortal goddess of the night, but your voice still sounds just like my sister putting on kind of a regal accent, so... I must be dreaming."
"Uh... yeeeeeah. Sure. Let's go with that."

I'm starting to wonder what attracts Luna to the CMC seemingly so often, considering she has the ability to see the dreams of everypony in Equestria. It's not impossible she has some kind of Santa Claus deal going where time just sorts of skirts around her and tries to not to piss her off while she's out doin' her thing, or maybe she just ends up checking in on them more often because of their relation to the Mane 6. A third option is that she just enjoys screwing with little kids' heads and just picks one at random every time the sun goes down. I think I know which one would amuse me the most.

"Hey, Luna? Can I fly in my dream?"
"What do you think?"

I can't be the only one who thinks all those five-year-old foals look similar to the Breezies in terms of how their heads are shaped. Pony proportions get weird once you shrink 'em down a bit, I guess.

I don't have a caption for this. I just needed to put this somewhere where I could keep scrolling back to it in case I ever get frustrated or sad ever again.

"Yeah, so why did you remind me of this again?"
"I dunno. Why did George Mallory climb Mount Everest?"
"Because it's there?"
"Tack on something about schadenfreude and we'll call it close enough."

I like how the context Luna gives Sweetie Belle to her birthday party mostly just clears up that it wasn't that Rarity was trying to outshine Sweetie Belle, it's more than Sweetie Belle just had terrible friends. The girl's got half a tube of lipstick on and around her face just for them, and the only thing these small children with incredibly short attention spans care about is a sparkly thing that makes a lot of noise. Five-year-olds, am I right?

Don't give me that look. You know what you did.

"I say we all get out of here before we keel over from boredom." - a five-year-old who clearly has a secret lab in their basement and a sister named DeeDee, because damn that's an impressive vocabulary for a kid who's barely big enough to reach the doorknob.

Seriously, though, these guys aren't even out of Pre-K yet. How do any of them know what "fiasco" means? There are people in college with me now who'd probably have to look that one up.

If Rarity ever needed a good reason for abstinence, I believe she's just encountered about eight of them.

Getting back to the topic of unclear ages in the show, here's another question: how old is Rarity in this scene? Sweetie Belle and her friends are visibly younger, but to my eye Rarity pretty much looks the same as she always does here. Someone with too much time on their hands should definitely crop this Rarity out of the shot and slot her in next to present-day Rarity to see if there's any height difference or whatnot. Get to it, fandom.

"Okay, last question: is it really true that every time a bell rings, a unicorn get their wings?"
"What in the world made you think that?"
"Well, I don't know how else Twilight Sparkle got them!"
"Point taken. Don't tell anyone."

We all make choices, Sweetie Belle. But in the end, our choices make us.

I can't tell if it's coincidence or intent that Sweetie Belle's voice cracks every time she figures something out. It's like her own personal "Jinkies!", only it warms the cockles of my metaphorical black heart a little bit more.

"I'm just an average mare, with an average life. I work from nine to five... hey hell, I pay the price!"

"Oh, that? Yeah, that's just the colorblindness setting in. Turns out invading the sleeping minds of developing fillies does some really weird stuff to their brains sometimes."
"It's... it's not permanent, though. Right?"
"Eh. Hey, I wonder if there's any bells in here!"

Luna's probably still just particularly paying attention to the CMC because she's checking up on characters close to the Mane 6, but now that she's all up in Sweetie Belle's id here, things are definitely hitting close to home for her. Saying that Sweetie Belle can't let her jealousy control her "as [she] once did" says a lot about how a thousand years on the Big Cheese Wheel in the Sky tends to stick with you.

Something something, marshmallow horses.

The afro community frowns upon your shenanigans, Sweetie Belle. (Seriously, though, they actually are looking directly at her. Nice touch, Moonbutt.)

I WANT TO GET OFF MR. PONE'S WILD RIDE

Dammit, I already made an Attack on Titan joke in my last followup. Why did I even acknowledge this part of the episode?

Aw, hell. It just hit me. They've been flashing dolphins on screen half the times Sapphire Shores comes up. Of course that's foreshadowing the end of the episode.

F[yay]k you, Polsky. Just... f[buy some apples]k you.

"Equestria's going to hell... and why? Because of them. Always behind the scenes... at the Lyceum, at the shows in Manehattan, even down here in this so-called Utopia... the doubters."

There's a part of me that thinks Luna's laying it on a little thick with the Ghosts of DRESSES Future portion of our tour through Sweetie Belle's mind, but on the other hand...

Something something, and then there's Rarity.

Scrunchy Belle and Squeaky Belle in one episode. Ladies and gentlemen, somebody wants us dead.

"This one's called 'Blue Steel'."

I'll forgive you for hip-checking my headcanon that you like Florida-Georgia Line, Apple Bloom. Just this once.

"Ugh. Showtunes are dumb! It'd be so annoying to live in a world where ponies just burst into song whenever they felt like it."
"How would anypony even know the words?"

If you think about it, though, Sweetie Belle being a theater geek isn't a surprise. She's always been the type to sing to herself when no one's watching, and she's got a penchant for writing and performing as well. Just... promise me you'll take it easy at the high school cast parties, all right, Sweetie? I've been to high school cast parties. I don't need that mental image mixing with technicolor horses.

Is it just me, or do famous artists and entertainers in Equestria tend to veer towards the blue end of the color spectrum? Somebody get that guy with too much time on his hands back in here. I've got another assignment for him.

"Orders are: no one can see Sapphire Shores. Not nopony, not no-how."

"You remember what happened the last time we tried ziplining, right, Apple Bloom?"
"I dunno. My memory's real fuzzy a lot of the time."
"Okay, see, that's what I'm talking about. This is a bad idea."
"Oh, if only one of us had wings, Scootaloo. Now quit whinin' and grab on."

"Shut up, Scootaloo."
"I didn't even say anything yet."
"You were thinkin' it real loud."
"It's a free country."

You know, Sweetie Belle, this all would've been a lot easier if you'd just explained everything to Rarity once you got out of the room instead of running around like an orange pegasus come on just let me have this one time a chicken with its head cut off. Also, this whole plan of yours seemed to involve your friends crashing into stuff a lot. I'm all for taking one for the team, but Scootaloo probably can't remember ziplining now either. That can't be healthy.

"Oh, great. It's one of those dreams now. I'm still in bed at home, aren't I?"
"What do you think?"
"You're an asshole, Princess Luna."
"Love you too, kid."

This wasn't really something I heard myself so much as saw other people talking about, but apparently Luna's voice changes between Sweetie Belle's dream and her appearance in the real world. Makes enough sense to me: if I could raid other people's thoughts at will, I'd probably put on a Great and Powerful Oz voice in Neverland too. Also tabled from discussion: Equestria is a realm now, apparently. Adjust your horsefictions accordingly.

"Sweetie Belle, why is my grown-up juice missing from its box?"
"Uh... peer pressure?"

How those golden strands on the headdress are independently floating--much like where foals come from and why no one's freaking out about Luna just popping out of the castle in the middle of the day--is a question that just shouldn't be asked.

No, Sweetie Belle. You're a writer. You're supposed to begrudgingly thank Rarity for her help so you can then run back to your room and rageblog about how no one understands your art. It's like you don't even get how this works.

And with that, the curtains close on Sweetie Belle somehow making Rarity not look like worst horse for a second there. Must've been something in my eye. In all seriousness, this was a neat episode to me, especially because there was a lot of stuff going on in the background. It's never explicitly said that Sweetie Belle's feeling self-conscious about her talents as a writer-director-actor-in-an-awesome-play-by-a-pony-and-her-awesome-best-friends, or that Luna's still harboring her own doubts about herself and her relationship with her sister, but it's all three if you're paying attention a bit. It doesn't seem that complicated, but it's a great example of what writers mean when they advise amateurs to "show" and not "tell". You don't have to make your story a thousand-piece puzzle your audience has to solve, but it does help if you leave a few blank spaces for them to fill in on their own.

Anyway, you guys have a Sunday to enjoy and I have a hangover to nurse and a NASCAR race to watch, so that's all I have to say about that. Until next time.

- Aqua