Applejack and the Honest-to-Goodness Switcheroo · 7:48pm Nov 4th, 2014
Well, here's a book review.
Chapter One
...Yes. Lyra and “Sweetie Drops” are “best buddies”... and nothing else...
Anyway, there’s a pie eating contest. Cranky wins. What, are you expecting plot?
Chapter Two
The next chapter has the customary “We don’t think kids have memories” chapter. At least we know Charity is doing okay. Then some stranger shows up and wants to give Sweet Apple Acres a business award even though the farm barely stays afloat. The winner gets all the perks that Twilight has already, plus a new plot of land.
Chapter Three
Applejack writes in the diary about what she learned, then goes down to dinner where Granny Smith commits blasphemy by making carrot soup. Granny serves it without her siblings there. Way to follow down home country politeness there. Applejack decides to wait, but they never show up.
Chapter Four
Apple Bloom and Big Mac show up, saying that they were busy playing tea party and making Princess Big Mac canon. Applejack quite rightly chews them out for being so inconsiderate, and the book treats that as a bad thing.
That night, Granny Smith goes to the attic and gets something because Applejack is suddenly afraid of the dark. There’s an aside with Applejack’s old doll Yeehaw that amounts to nothing, then Granny Smith brings down a leather bound book. So apparently those sentient cows can be slaughtered at will.
It was a sketchbook belonging to Applejack’s mother, and we still get no clue what happened to her. Granny suggests using it as a journal.
Chapter Five
The next morning the Apple Family starts their work, and Pinkie shows up for inventory, but constantly distracts Applejack with her talking.
Chapter Six
At the end of the day, Applejack realizes she only got half her work done. But she’s not too worried.
Chapter Seven
Applejack apparently knits. But after failing that, she vents about Pinkie in her journal. Afterwards, she feels better.
Chapter Eight
The next day, Rainbow Dash helps out. But first she has problems with authority, and then she causes a mess when performing a simple task due to showing off. Oh dear, this is going to be a thing, isn’t it?
Chapter Nine
That night, she vents once again about Rainbow Dash, and the fact that Big Mac and Apple Bloom barely got any work done because Big Mac decided to give Apple Bloom an apple bucking lesson.
The next morning Fluttershy and Rarity are helping her. Rarity shows up in an impractical dress, while Fluttershy is too nice to get any wild critters to leave.
Chapter Ten
Applejack vents again. Then she goes to check on Rarity, only to find that she’s barely gotten any work done due to being concerned with a paint stain. She vents again.
Chapter Eleven
In a journal entry, it’s revealed that Applejack just turned Twilight away, even though she’s the most competent of her friends, and was angry when she suggested using her authority to get an extension. As she vents, Twilight shows up, and Applejack quickly hides her journal. Twilight apologizes for suggesting it, and Applejack invites her for dinner, saying that making up felt better than venting in a journal.
Chapter Twelve
Applejack arises early in the morning and decides she was wrong about her friends... um, why? The books says they tried their best, but... no they didn’t. Twilight and maybe Fluttershy did. The others willingly did something that slowed things down. They didn’t have accidents, they each made a poor decision and didn’t work because they were more concerned with other things. For Rarity, Applejack says she was wrong about how frilly she made the sign, but the main issue in that chapter was her impractical dress, so it feels rather forced. Just like Bats!, the one making the most sense is treated as wrong.
Anyway, Apple Bloom announces she can add theft to her rap sheet since she stole Applejack’s journal and gave it to Rainbow Dash. Yay, There’s less than twenty pages in this book to resolve this.
Chapter Thirteen
As it turns out the others are still in good spirits and convince Blue Ribbon to help. They admit they read the journal, but decide to just forgive and forget. Applejack says she was a jerk for letting her ambitions get in the way of her friendship no you didn’t! Your friends were being irresponsible with something important to you and you had every right to be mad!
Okay, maybe the moral is you need to tell your friends when your upset and not bottle it up, which is fine, but the way it’s presented comes off more as saying Applejack is wrong whenever her friends let their egos, vanity, lack of backbone, and desire to play get in the way of doing work they promised her they’d do. There's been episodes about why each of those traits is a negative thing, but since we need Applejack to be in the wrong here, that's ignored.
Let’s get this over with.
Chapter Fourteen
Spoiler alert, Applejack wins, gets a gardening column in a magazine, and for some reason Lyra and Aloe are helping out on the farm. The end.
Alright... the next of these books comes out in January. Until then... other stuff!
Next review: The IDW 2014 Annual.
So, I take it this one was bad?
Wow, that sounds like some G3 Levels of suck. It seems G M Barrow still has much to learn.
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What, does it actually say this? Me, personally, I think they're probably passionately in love -- and also "best buddies." I'm best friends with my wife, after all.
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When Applejack learned Apple Bloom gave her journal away, she realized that the journal she thought she had was the group's. Hence, the two got switched.
Yeah, that book was... special.
You're right that this book treats the only one with common sense as wrong. It seems like this show gets a little too wrapped up in the concept of forgiveness. Forgivness is a good thing, but only if someone clearly deserves it and realizes what they did was wrong (or didn't do it on purpose).