So Cheerilee's post got me thinking, and I figured maybe I should rewatch "Boast Busters" to see if I was remembering things poorly. Notes follow.
So yeah, sorry, but I just can't see this "Trixie is a victim!" narrative. She's an asshole from start to finish, and while AJ and Rarity probably should've held their tongues at the beginning, it doesn't excuse every other asshole move she makes for the entire rest of the episode.
Her show persona isn't that of an asshole, it's "bombastic". Which is perfectly appropriate for the stage. What was it that the Ringling Brothers called themselves, "The Greatest Show on Earth"? Kind of full of themselves, aren't they? And actually, I just rewatched the episode too, and right before the opening music, Twilight calls Spike "Romeo". The writers were definitely thinking about the stage, not some sort of traveling "Love the fake-me" party.
Trixie could hear all of the front-row chatter, not just Rainbow Dash's "boo", but she wasn't letting it disrupt the show until that point. After the boo, she stopped the show and called out
multiple ponies who were causing an escalating disturbance.
Trixie didn't immediately call out Twilight, she called out Applejack, who was standing next to Twilight. It just scared Twilight because it was close, and she didn't like being put on the spot (which Spike was actively trying to do). But Trixie did eventually challenge Twilight, because Twilight was clearly part of a group of five individuals who were causing back-and-forth disruptions. Spike was pushing Twilight to take a shot, so Trixie can be forgiven for thinking Twilight was another of the group who wanted to take a shot. Everyone else did.
Trixie's response to Rainbow Dash wasn't to "lie about stuff", she was improvising and playing it by ear, and decided to fast-forward to the pre-arranged storytime segment of her show. It was fiction, not a lie.
And how is Trixie's act "showing off", but Applejack climbing on stage to show Trixie up by doing rope tricks isn't? At least Rainbow Dash was honest about the fact that being a braggart (Trixie's alleged crime) is
her job.
There's no reason why Trixie has to match her challengers in kind. Check out
this video of Gaston in Disneyland (a fictional strongman villain) getting challenged to a push-up contest. His muscles are fake and he had no way to know that he would get challenged on that day, but he stayed in character and with some not-insignificant strength he cheated his way to victory (he wasn't doing proper push-ups), but what matters isn't that he won, or even that he cheated (although cheating fits his character), but that his showmanship went over-the-top and he
destroyed his challenger. Trixie wasn't prepared for a battle. She was improvising a disrupted show, and she destroyed three different challengers back-to-back, without knowing anything about their strengths or abilities (which all three of them were playing to, no holds barred).
I'm not going to blame Trixie for the actions of Snips and Snails. Maybe she should have an age-rating on her show, but Snips and Snails are apparently dumber than their age would imply, so that wouldn't even have worked. And Spike is the one who pushed those children to
prove that their hero could defeat a monster.
If you listen to Trixie's voice throughout the episode, she's clearly acting for most of it, and referring to herself in the third person. She drops the act as soon as the Ursa arrives. When it becomes clear that Snips and Snails are dismissing help while waiting for an epic Trixie vs Ursa showdown, she has an expression of pain and takes about one second to steel herself before telling the kids there is no Santa Claus, and they should look for help elsewhere. And she doesn't mince words or run away from what she did. She says "I made it up to make "me" look better." She doesn't say she did it out of pride or ego, and making "me" look better than reality is what showmanship is all about. Twilight had all the power and information needed to stop the Ursa, and she took longer than Trixie to work up the resolve to (as she believed) ruin her image in town.
Trixie put her persona back on when everything was settled, right before she ran away, and right after the ponies directly responsible for making Twilight feel like shit took the opportunity to take a few more undeserved verbal shots at Trixie.
And the final icing on the cake is that Spike had said earlier that the mustache trick could win against Trixie, and Twilight's final act was to show off and perform the mustache trick for the crowd. Then she tells Celestia that she's learned that there's a time and place for showing off with tricks. That time and place is not when you're standing on a stage and your name is "Trick-sy" and your cutie mark indicates that novelty magic wands are your destiny. It's apparently a victory lap for when you defeat opponents.
Unless your name is Rainbow Dash and you do a touchdown dance for the crowd after saving someone's life. That kind of victory lap is unacceptable.
