005 Flashback: s01ep04 Applebuck Season

005 Flashback: s01ep04 Applebuck Season

Is it Monday already? I have a feeling that this blog post should have been written two days ago. But it seems that it hasn't, which turned out to be a good thing, actually, because it got me wondering - after all, it is well within my reach to provide half a dozen of excuses and explanations on why have I failed to deliver it on Saturday as usual. Some of them would be true, convincing and perfectly reasonable, while some of them would be utterly fabricated... but still convincing and perfectly reasonable nevertheless. In other words, I could have lied. Something that the Element of Honesty - in the classic understanding - would not approve of.

Me? I'm dishonest, and you can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest. Honestly, it's the honest ones you want to watch out for, 'cause you can never predict if they're going to do something incredibly stupid.

These wise words of Captain Jack Sparrow are just about what I think when it comes to my honesty - honestly, you can never tell. So, considering that today's main character is the Element of Honesty (whether or not she shows 100% veracity across the series being put aside), there is absolutely no way that a person balancing between half-truths and tarradiddles would become fond of her. I don't find much in common with this particular pony, therefore I don't like her as much as I like the others.

But I guess that it is impossible to like every single character of any show - sooner or later you encounter a Who's the best pony survey or engage in a fierce discussion on Who'd win in a battle between X and Y. So you consider all pros and cons, prioritize them and make a choice. I made mine a long time ago and... let's say that in a hypothetical Top Five of Mane 6 poll the cowgirl does not make it to the top five. It's not that I hate her, tend to ignore or barely remember the name. In fact, I think that Applejohn is a character worth pondering upon.

My little Hitchhiker's Guide would feature Sweet Apple Acres for today's point of interest in the magical land of Equestria, but I'm going to leave it for now. I'm sure there will be plenty occasions to raise this topic in the future. Have some music associated with Applerack instead - sadly there isn't much of it. Three pieces I'd chose for my playlist are AcousticBrony's The Loyalest and Most Dependable, stage theme from the unborn Fighting is Magic or Faithful and Strong by jcarlson04.

Big McIntosh: Eeyup.

Big McIntosh, one of the few stallions in a heavily feminized settlement of Ponyville. I bet he doesn't complain at all, hell, the ratio of female-to-male students during lectures on my university is like 4 to 1 (but while in Ponyville the ratio of attractive to repulsive characters is 20:1, I have the exact opposite, QQ). We'll return to some fancy mathematics later on.

So from Big Mac's point of view - notbadobama.jpg thing, but it's really sad how underdeveloped the stallions are in general. Off the top of my head - Shining Armor, Braeburn, Cloudsdale bullies... all of them one-timers or episodically appearing at best. The series was designed as a girl-oriented show, granted, and they made an excellent job adding some tomboyishness to Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo, but I think it would be great to see more interaction between the Mane 6 and actual stallions. I'm not saying: shipping all the way, but it would be really nice to see some development in male characters (other than Spike, of course).

Fun fact: did you know that the Apple siblings share their color schemes? Applesac's coat is Big Mac's mane, his coat is Apple Bloom's mane, and the little filly's coat goes back to the cowgirl, who we can observe in her epic pose, right in the top left corner of the snapshots.

Twilight Sparkle: AJ, I think you're beating a dead... tree.
Applejack: I knew that.

Middle snapshot and Rainbow Dash clearly manifesting Commander Hurricane's genes. Go back to work, Applesnack! Know your place, you filthy mud-pony! Pegasi are superior to...

Whoa, whoa, hold your horses! There is plenty of nice-looking earth ponies who deserve respect! Like Nurse Redheart in the top right. Perhaps I'm a sucker for white-coated ponies, like the one mentioned or Rarity. Or pale-coated ponies for that matter, like Rose(luck). The more I think about it, Sweetie Belle is also my favorite Crusader, while Celestia wins my heart over her sister, niece and even her most faithful student. I really like their... coats.

Twilight Sparkle: Ugh. That pony is as stubborn as a mule. No offense...
Mule: None taken.

Applebucking
noun
1. act of assault periodically launched against the trees.
also check: harvesting, violence

I would really like to know the exact number of apples on the Sweet Apple Acres, so here's when we are back with fancy mathematics. Any single tree is capable of producing enough apples to fill three to five buckets. The volume of a bucket... well, about 50 apples. Amount of trees around the farm? Close to eight billion, perhaps? Uh, let's go with something more measurable.

In the opening shot of the episode we see about ~1500 apples visible on the screen. A bag of apples (presumably 25 apples per bag) costs 4 bits, unless you didn't put those in your bag. That gives a little over 200 bits profit, considering Mayor Mare's draconian taxes. And 200 bits equals the price of an Alicorn Amulet...

Alright, false approximations and slightly made-up figures aside. Perhaps one day I'll launch a full scale research on how rich the Apples are. But for now, let there be known that they are CRAZY BADFLANK RICH. If you're single and know a thing or two about barn raising, go for it - Applequack is a lady worth marrying. Emphasizing the word worth.

~Prane