Points of Canon: S610 - Applejack’s “Day” Off · 6:07pm May 28th, 2016
After that trailer with Applejack clucking like a chicken, I didn’t know what to expect, really.
And to be honest, I can’t say I understand what I got.
- Once again Starlight is conspicuously absent, permitting to backdate the episode. Well, we did want to know where did the expected six months gap go, that’s where it is. Notably, Pinkie and Fluttershy are also completely missing.
- Aloe speaks with a pretty ridiculous accent I can’t really place. Which was the case before, but now we have a bigger sample, so maybe somebody can tell me what’s this accent supposed to imitate? EDIT: Subsequent research discovered the accent is definitely Swedish. Your guess is as good as mine.
- Notice that Rarity uses her own bathrobe in the spa. This is not the first time she is doing that, but she’s the only pony to do so.
- Aloe suggests ponies can get “pruny” after extended exposure to steam. And eventually, Rarity does. The physical mechanics of that baffle me and lend credence to the old joke that Rarity is secretly a marshmallow.
- Rarity is expecting Applejack to join her at he spa, saying that it has been quite a long time since the last time it happened. Notice that she isn’t expecting anypony else, when in earlier seasons, Fluttershy was typically her spa company. When exactly did this change? Simple Ways?
- Rarity uses a pocketwatch. In a spa. Last time I checked, this sort of treatment would kill a pocketwatch.
- Rarity has been trying to set aside time “for moons” I guess we’ll wont hear about months or weeks ever again. *grr* This, incidentally, sets apart the scene at the spa and the rest of the episode by “moons.”
1. So far, the only theory I find believable to any degree is truffles.
Pigs once again make an appearance, at least eleven of them. Notice that the rationale for ponies to keep pigs in the first place was and remains unclear,1 particularly when the feeding ritual is so complicated. Notice that pigs are clearly not sapient, unlike, say, sheep.
- Rainbow Dash being embarrassed over being caught at the spa is funny, but considering that other notable characters are also present at the spa, namely Cherilee and Lyra Heartstrings, it’s a wonder she thinks it’s a secret. She does refer to “Wonderbolt practice,” so at least it’s clear this episode occurs after she became a Wonderbolt. Also, “indulgent hooficure?” How, exactly, do you hide having a hooficure, considering that it presumably involves lacquering, or at least, polishing hooves?
- Looks like Applejack’s only real draw to the spa is the steam room.
2. I want one. I had one, but like other clocks within immediate vicinity, it didn’t last long.
Rarity’s pocketwatch reappears multiple times, which means that mysteriously, it did survive.2
- It’s not surprising that a spa has its own boiler, but it does make Spike’s phrase in Party of One regarding using up all the hot water in Ponyville somewhat dubious. More likely than not, the spa did not originally have a boiler or a steam room, and added it sometime during the series, and the pipes running out in the open also suggests that.
3. Though, how exactly did she acquire her tools without actually checking on Twilight while doing so is a mystery. Let’s just hope she found some at the spa…
Applejack openly demonstrates the mechanical aptitude most of the fandom expected of her for years.3 Notice that a steam leak sufficient to cause a runaway amplification effect with hot towels would eventually severely damage the building.
- That nut tightens in reverse. I’m ready to call that an animator error if you are.
- While it’s clear that elevating the pig feeding to a magical ritual on par with zap apple jam preparation is the actual joke and moral of the episode, and an accident, it does cast doubt on the practicality of zap apple jam preparation, because Applejack has apparently managed to overcomplicate every other daily activity.
- Irrigation of a field is accomplished by means of pipes. The logic of doing that in a universe where pegasi can fly over with a cloud currently escapes me, and there’s probably a story in it for someone.
It’s a nice episode, but it poses more questions than it presents answers.
You raise an excellent point with the irrigation. With zap apple jam, however, Granny Smith seemed to perform years of empirical testing to optimize the ritual. As for Rarity and Fluttershy's spa days, I'm fully prepared to believe that Rarity has spa visits blocked out for all of her friends... though given how she didn't know about the steam leak, is it possible that she actually hadn't gone to the spa in those intervening moons?
As for the pigs, I remain convinced that Applejack has a close business relationship with one or more butchers. Just because ponies don't eat it doesn't mean they can't supply it.
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The only explanation that does come to mind is bureaucratic. Something like rain being taxed when pipes aren't, and the difference is sufficient that pipes become more economical.
To be totally sure of that, we'd need to see someone actually fail to prepare zap apple jam by excising one or more of the steps. Unfortunately, we don't even see Granny Smith fail in the flashback, and it's unlikely that zap apples will appear on screen again.
There's a chance she was out running across the country taking care of her Manehattan and Canterlot boutiques and simply didn't have the chance to attend the spa in Ponyville, instead doing so where she happened to be at the time.
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They wouldn't have to fail, they'd just have to make a lower quality version or make it less efficiently. You can make a pound cake with basic ingredients and equiptment, but there's a lot you can you can do to make a more interesting cake, make it cook more evenly, prepare it faster, etc.
So, Granny's first tries made jam from zap apples, but not necessarily with the quality (if the honey wasn't sweet enough) or efficiency (if some of the jars tended to "crack under pressure") they make it today.
Whether that's worth it is another question. It's certainly possible there are innovations that might be able to take the place of some steps. But the Apples would say that it's worth it, given their cider making process.
Good points on a lot of these as always, Oliver. But didn't Rainbow Dash also bring her own bathrobe to the spa? That looks like the one she wears in an earlier season, I'm guessing she thinks it disguises her.
Isn't it possible that Rarity just meant she hadn't had a chance to do a spa day with Applejack for moons? I don't think Rarity does the steam room with Fluttershy, it may be she is in there like every day and just rotates companions. Also, we need the name of the country where all the spa ponies are coming from to get that accent.
3979352
You're right, she did. She distracted me with her slippers again, but I decided not to write about those since they were around a lot before. Coming with your own bathrobe surely is a sign of a regular, favored client...
Good point, I need to doublecheck. Steam room in general is somewhat new, I don't think they did that before at all.
We need the name of any country that isn't Equestria that ponies live in. If any exist.
So far, the rest of the world looks kind of empty. With the exception of griffons -- who, presumably, live both within Equestria (Otherwise, them showing up on Equestria Games as a team is very odd) and without, in, also presumably, multiple polities. Of which we only know Griffonstone, which has all the hallmarks of a horribly failed state that Twilight didn't know about.
Prance definitely does not exist, it's a fanon invention. :) There's Saddle Arabia, and Saddle Arabians look like regular size horses. There's Maretonia, and it's unclear just what race those people are due to their outfits, but the duke kind of looks like a pony sized camel. And there's the unnamed land zebras come from, which fanon most commonly calls Zebrica, of which we have not a single scrap of canon other than the language Zecora speaks, which is supposed to be Swahili. (and isn't) The land centaurs come from was never named, and Tirek and Scorpan being different species, yet brothers, was never explained either.
It's all very, very blank.
I can't say this was my favourite episode; I'm not a fan of the idiot ball, and poor Applejack appears to have been juggling the things.
On a topic more closely related to the purpose of this blog, I assume you took note of the difference between the internal and external dimensions of the spa? This isn't the first time we've seen pony buildings that appear much larger on the inside than the out, either. Those old fanon theories about the Doctor running around in Equestria may have some weight: the place being a Timelord's playground would explain a lot.
This is very likely an approximation of a Russian accent. It's not very strong, but it is there. Maybe the show's writers are getting ready to introduce Stalliongrad as canon?
Either way, I liked it. Plus, Aloe was very cute in this episode.
She's a farmer. One possibility is that the pigs are there for fertilizer production, which is not something they might point out on the show.
Well, at least apple bucking is still straight-forward. As far as we know.
AJ is very self-reliant, and weather schedules won't necessarily overlap with the needs of a large farming business, which always requires a great deal of water. Having a regulated supply would be pretty important to planning out crop production, and might be cheaper than paying the Ponyville Weather Authority to constantly swing clouds by and irrigate Apple Acres.
One thing that confused me: AJ was patching a fence, as anyone trying to save time and money might do, but was shown (by two unicorns, using their magic to easily unroll, cut, and place an entirely new section instead of using their mouth and arms as AJ would have to do) that replacing an entire section of the fence would be less time-consuming.
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You can see Rarity and Fluttershy together in a traditional sauna in season 1, episode 20: Green Isn't Your Color (about 10 seconds in). It's technically not the "steam room" from AJ's Day Off, but I'd see it as a modernized version with an identical function and social role.
3979203
Perhaps not taxation, but it simply costs money to hire weather workers to irrigate a farm specifically. This might be the case in places around Manehattan or Fillydelphia, which might have farmland of a large enough size that pipe irrigation is less cost efficient than hiring some pegasi to whip up a good rainstorm, but the (relatively, Sweet Apple Acres is still a pretty good sized area) smaller farm plots on Ponyville might make better use of irrigation pipes. It could also be that farmlands near large urban areas are collectively owned by a few landowners, who can afford the pegasus workers, whereas Ponyville farms are individually owned.
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While Prance is a fanon invention, the language clearly exists. Applebloom was speaking it in that cutiemark disease episode. Applejack called it Fancy, but that is probably just AJ being a silly pone. I think Fluer had traces of the accent as well.
3979589
All things considered, it would still be quicker for AJ to replace a chain-link fence than patch it. The fence sections probably aren't very expensive, relatively speaking, and the patch-job would be far less effective with chain than, say, wood.
3980056 I agree, if that section of the fence was damaged enough (it had been repaired at least once already). But the replacement section would need to be nailed to the posts, and the alicorn and unicorn conveniently didn't do this on-camera.
Clearly AJ needs to hire a fix-it unicorn! Or maybe one of the odd hooman things that come out of the Everfree every week or so. They all seem to know how to fix things.
What I really want to know is what made that hole, that high up on the fence.
3980317 That whole "humans are always handy" trope is why I've always wanted to write a self insert fic, but also been completely unable to. I'm a nerd. I think the only thing I could actually do well would be foalsitting. Maybe get the CMC to play Dungeons and Dragons.
But mostly it'd just be me making puns and bad sex jokes, like telling the CMC that no, they couldn't take Spike to the dungeon until they were older.
3980317
Maybe she has a heavy duty staple gun.
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Pony buildings not to scale. :) I think I have to dismiss this as a narrative artifact, otherwise it would be very difficult to produce a convincing picture.
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Nope. A Russian would never say "Applejack" as "appleyek" and I'm sure they know that. Mr. Stripes in Manehattan was an approximation of a Russian accent, (a bad one) but Aloe and Lotus aren't. Unfortunately, I'm not Professor Higgins, so I can't tell.
And one thing I missed too: Weaving a wire mesh fence requires a machine and nopony would think it economical to make one without it. They were invented together with a machine to produce them. While it is an old technology (1844) it requires a pretty complicated industry to exist, like a cheap source of bulk steel wire.
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That it does. My best theory so far is that it is an ancient, pre-Exodus unicorn language, kept alive for magical and, well, fancy purposes. It's clearly associated with high society.
3980317
It's a ball... no, it's a chicken... no, it's a Scootaloo!
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Speaking of D&D, ponies do have Oubliettes & Ogres, which comes up often in the comics. Shining Armor plays it with his nerdy friends on occasion and Twilight had supposedly participated.
Which is in itself interesting, because D&D's original progenitor was Chainmail, a fantasy wargame, which derives from a long tradition of historical wargames. In fact, their primary claim to fame is abandoning historicity in favour of fantasy entirely, they aren't even the first tactical level games. It can be argued that D&D is still a tactical level wargame, even in its sixth generation, while most of its descendants are far more systematically narrative...
Wargames have some fairly diverse origins, because, while they were a staple of officer training since forever, most of the good ideas in wargames were actually coined by hobbyists who developed them independently. And to exist, hobbyists need to have military history to obsess over. Which means war.
Where could ponies come by so much war?
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Conflicts have certainly happened before in their history, otherwise why need a guard force (Even if they seem largely ceremonial anymore.). In fact it seems that the Wonderbolts themselves were historically an elite air unit of the military, before largely becoming a stunt team. And though they may not be incredibly common anymore, there are still those beings who are hostile to Equestria. Chryssi I am looking at you. The Hearth's Warming play might very well gloss over more violent aspects of pre-unification tribal hostility, though that is pure speculation.
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I know. See my post index on the profile page, particularly RTAC #4. :) But pretty much all of the war we know about is confined to the pre-classical period, i.e. to before the first appearance of Nightmare Moon and Luna's exile, the only exception is Chryssi, whose attacks date to shortly afterwards. Let us also not forget that changeling attacks are not exactly war, they're more like an invasion of ninjas. Standing army is not a very good counter against them.
Even then, that's a thousand years ago, and is clearly a very poorly studied period (which permits Luna's existence to be a secret, again -- see RTAC #10 and #6 for that matter) -- to support a culture of hobbyists, Equestria needs to have a more recent history of war.
With whom? Griffons are typically brought up with fanon, and there is canonical precedent for it, of sorts, see the Journal. Griffonstone is a relatively recent phenomenon, (I'd say, 400-200 years ago) and could have emerged from the remains of griffon states previously destroyed by ponies, but -- who else?
3980669 Could be that O&O was started from politics rather than war, that is, while our combat system is extremely complex, sometimes even without counting Grappling, their social front is the more heavily expanded, and the combat side has been added on since.
But that's a theory.
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Unlikely, given the playthrough excerpts from Neigh Anything.
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Could be anyone really. 1000 years is a long time. Minotaurs might be a possibility, and a civil war might not be totally out of the question either, though it seems a bit unlikely.
Or maybe Celestia got really bored and developed the game one day.
3979877 Watching this episode, I think a day spa is slightly different from how we view it. Given the size of the spa, the fact that half the town seems to be in there on a day that doesn't seem to be a holiday or anything (unless Applejack is making the rest of her family work on a holiday), and the fact that both Rarity and Rainbow Dash visit there almost daily, I suspect spa prices are like way cheaper than they are on earth, and ponies seem to treat this spa almost like a Starbucks, something to help brighten up the day and be indulged in every 2 or 3 days.
3979385 I'm guessing you've looked at the extended map, mlpforums.com/uploads/monthly_10_2015/post-35434-0-98666200-1444951186.jpg there are several races that have "territories" that Equestria could have gone to war with, like the Bugbear and the Arimaspi. We know that Trottingham is on an island and they have their own accent, so perhaps Maretonia is a similar phenomenon, though politically independent from Equestria. I thought the duke just looked like an earth pony with a fancy outfit myself.
And yeah, I can definitely see Prench/Fancy as the Equestrian version of Latin.
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Bugbears are the subject of a secret monster hunting agency, while Arimaspi appear to be almost entirely unknown. And nopony knows much of anything about dragons.
So it's kind of difficult to imagine going to war with any of those... :)
3981217 I always figured the reason they had to shutter that monster hunting agency after that bugbear escaped was due to diplomatic pressure from the Bugbear Nation after they found out one of their own had been locked in tartarus.
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Well, war is something that's a familiar concept to ponies. When Twilight meets future Twilight, that's the first explanation that springs to her mind. And when Twilight visits the alternate future where Equestria is at war with the Crystal Empire, she doesn't need to have the concept explained to her, so it's obvious that it isn't something obscure that only happened in the distant past.
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That goes without saying. :) There's no doubt ponies know what war is, how it works, and presumably have some experience waging it. The question is, just who were their opponents and when did that happen last?
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The griffons are the obvious choice, since they have a separate kingdom. In historical mythology griffons were extremely fond of horse flesh, so there's one strong motivation.
There's also Maretonia, which seems to be a client state of Equestria, given the seating arrangements at the Equestria Games. (Foreign royalty would have been on the same level as the princesses, according to all common protocol.) So perhaps they were independent and a bit... frisky at some point in the past? (Does Celestia need to slap a Duchess?
)
Zebrica is unlikely, given that Ponyvillians didn't even recognize a zebra when they saw one.
Saddle Arabia... no clue. Nothing is known about them except they seem to be (earth) horses rather than ponies and like wearing fancy tack.
For some reason "Swedish masseuse" has memetic cachet? I think?
You were just saying "that was just a visual gag" with Pinkie. I'd've expected Rarity's horn going droopy would've been filed the same by you.
(This time, I feel it's just a visual gag.)
Weeks are in the very next episode, as happens.
Handedness of screw threads is as arbitrary as what side of the road one drives on, but with even more justifiable inertia. It may oppose ours, but, unless you've seen others in-show for it to be counter to…why would you throw away an odd, yet reasonable, discrepancy? Does it conflict with your plot?
IT is all a bit cargo-cult, but the jar cracked when Granny yelled at it. Bee interaction also seems possibly meaningful.
That they have the signs for zap apples appearing down so well suggests that it's not gonna allbe bad like this episode's charades.
The absurd time cost to AJ that s the moral of this episode excepted, it saves mare-hours to automate, and means she doesn't have to hire out a weatherpony every day to do so.
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Your own fur-trimmed bathrobe…which raises different questions.
Fance, however, must; where else would they speak Fance-y?
Most of the things I'd say were already said.
AJ continues to be really good with rope, with that dangling assembly.
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Well, it can’t be much more of anything else, can it. :)
Because the screw threads shown have the handedness opposite the direction AJ rotates the nut in, which is a very obvious nonsense regardless of which handedness a culture uses by default.
…She could marry one, that would be cheaper. :)
Dunno, maybe somewhere where they speak French. Because…
And then…
Applejack calls it “Fancy,” Apple Bloom doesn’t.
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*adds Fancy to pile of subtly-wrong fanons*
Oh. I guess I picked the wrong sense of "reverse" to infer.
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It’s more of a subtly wrong canon, because there’s still no sign of a place called “France,” either, yet the language exists, some signs of the culture exist, and they are called “french…”
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Belief that the language is called Fancy is the wrong fanon.
And they're called French and français and it lines up with what we know, and they've got the subtle strangle on high culture…