Aug
10th
2017
Points of Canon: S2x14 - The Last Roundup · 10:49am Aug 10th, 2017
The one where Applejack lies. Is it just me, or she actually does it more often than others?…
- They say Applejack is training for a rodeo, but that looks much more like a show jumping course. Which, as far as I can tell, are not usually part of a rodeo in our world…
- The competition is called “Equestria Rodeo.” According to Mayor Mare, it’s definitely a yearly competition. According to Pinkie later, winning it would make Applejack “Rodeo champion of Equestria” which means that it’s a national championship.
- Applejack is a ten time rodeo champion of Ponyville, which would imply competing for at least ten years – since rodeos do seem to be yearly events. If youth championships were a separate category, would she still be calling herself a ten time champion? That gives us a bead on Applejack’s exact age if we can settle on the age rodeos start admitting participants.
- First place ribbons in Equestria are typically blue. Not a given at all.
- The town hall roof is damaged. Word of god attributes this to Derpy. Word of god can go stuff it, if Derpy did this much damage, she would certainly not be allowed within range of a storm cloud afterwards. My take is that ponies are rebuilding after one of the two major town-destroying events – either Secret of My Excess or Swarm of the Century, though it’s difficult to tell which one. Derpy playing with a cloud just caused minor damage that merely made things worse.
- Rainbow hammers in a nail with her right front hoof. Is she wearing horseshoes?
- “In the name of Celestia, just sit there and do nothing!” Rainbow also takes Celestia’s name in vain.
- The Canterlot Friends are here again. Sending AJ off for the rodeo is a minor town function, which involves putting up a banner with her portrait.
- Applejack had to offer her prize money to fix town hall. For whatever reason, this time, it wasn’t covered by the mysterious source that pays for restoration of Ponyville every time. Probably, because it was wrecked again too soon after the last time… Notably, I don’t see any other buildings around the town hall where they probably should be.
- Town hall has basement floors that go down at least half as far as it is tall.
- Twilight is standing next to Comet Tail, a tad too close for comfort in an otherwise relatively sparse crowd. This shot has been the basis for shipping them for quite a long time.
- Dinky is accompanied by Carrot Top to Canterlot. Can we settle on who her parents are?… :)
- Beyond the Mane 6, other ponies are expecting Applejack at the surprise party. Most of them are known Apples, but what the hell is Bon-Bon doing there, I’m not sure.
- Big Mac uses a mouth tube of some sort to inflate balloons.
- Parcel Post wears a blue uniform. There’s no rhyme nor reason to the uniforms of postal workers…
- The message from Applejack is not in an envelope nor in a scroll. Looks like a telegram. Sounds like a telegram, too.
- …This is the longest train seen so far at 17 cars plus whatever is that open car at the end. Some of the cars keep visible luggage on the roof, which is actually quite strange.
- Canterlot has a specialized rodeo stadium. We never seem to see the place again.
- Photos of Applejack used during the search are, for an unclear reason, black and white.
- What are Carrot Top, Cherry Berry and Caramel doing on cleanup duty after the rodeo in Canterlot remains completely unexplained.
- There were several train stations seen so far equipped with outdoor toilets, but I wonder, why not all of them.
- Dodge Junction, is, like Appleloosa, an “old West” town, but there’s no sign of it being founded recently – in fact, Friends Forever #33 implies it’s at least decades old.
- “Oh, Applejack, thank heavens!” Something to keep in mind.
- “Never saw anypony win so many ribbons in all my life.” Which basically means that Applejack placed in every competition that was part of the rodeo, though never placed first.
- So getting hired by a cherry farm is a reasonably quick way to earn a substantial sum? Maybe. Remember what was a fair price for a single cherry in Putting My Hoof Down?… I wonder why they are so expensive.
- Once more we see a lab mouse, rather than a field mouse. And it’s eating a cherry.
- This particular cherry sorting setup is pony powered and rather mechanically complex.
- What exactly is the point of all those saddlebags on each of them, though?… I can see what Pinkie uses them for, but I can’t see why would she even have any, let alone why Applejack would wear any.
- Applejack says she saw “Wild Bull Hickock” and “Calamity Mane”. Calamity Mane turns up later in Friends Forever #33, and notably, Applejack does not recognize her at all, nor remember seeing her in recent years… Did we just catch Applejack on an outright lie, or did the comic auto-joss?
- I’m pretty sure Twilight could have cooked up a spell to bulk-sort the cherries and avoid this disaster…
- Once again, everypony uses brooms with very long handles. See Sandwich Problem.
- “It’s time to call in the big guns.” Big guns are a thing.
- There’s a silo marked with two cherries. So what does a cherry orchard keep in there?…
- Cherrychanga is a thing. So is a chimicherry. So are kumquats. Combining a chimicherry and a cherrychanga is not a thing until Pinkie is actually seen making one.
- Pickling is a preservation process ponies use. Not a given.
- Cherry trees contain flowers and ripe cherries simultaneously.
- Rainbow doesn’t believe in the efficacy of a Pinkie Promise, which is interesting to say the least.
- “Giddy up, fellas, I gotta get the heck out of Dodge!” And that’s why it’s called Dodge Junction.
- So basically, Twilight incites the rest of the girls into “appropriating” a cart. Is that grand theft or not? They never put it back, because if they did, they would have picked up Rarity and Pinkie.
- Notice that it’s Rainbow and Fluttershy who ended up pulling the cart. If they planned to make it as fast as possible, it should have been Pinkie and Rainbow. Using Fluttershy is only advantageous if they expect to get the cart airborne, which does happen – but only for a very brief air-jump that leaves Fluttershy winded. Was the cart just too heavy for Rainbow to chariot it alone?…
- How do they catch up to the stagecoach pulled by four burly earth ponies, anyway?…
- Cross-bribing (“I’ll pay you double” – “We’ll pay you triple”) is a thing ponies actually do.
- Railroad crossing involves electric signal lights or equivalent.
- Stagecoach drivers announce “Lady, you’re trouble” and leave – apparently, without accepting the quadruple pay Applejack offered.
- None of the places beyond the first come with prize money at the Equestria Rodeo.
- Applejack narrates a Lesson Zero pattern letter to Celestia, but isn’t shown writing it or sending it and it is not worded as referring explicitly to today’s events. No hard lock.
- I wonder where did Rarity and Pinkie get that hand-lever draisine. I also wonder why didn’t anybody remember to pick them up. Because clearly, nobody did. And I wonder what did Rarity do to Rainbow Dash later. Really, this is funny, but it should have had consequences.
Covert surveillance to ensure one sixth of the country's greatest superweapon returns safely?
Aren't they just different names for the same thing?
4629472
Wouldn’t she have to leave for Canterlot to do it then?
According to some, no.
There's a distinct pattern of the element holders struggling with their elements rather than simply being exemplars. See Party of One and Rarity Takes Manehattan and that episode with the Minotaur.
In a pseudo Doylist vein, the constant appearances of the same ponies in unlikely or improbable places is an argument for the idea that these are stories told to a child with a limited set of dolls who do double or triple duty for crowd scenes, like toy soldiers.
4629484
“BUY OUR TOYS!” :)
4629487 I was thinking Pinkie and Flurry Heart, but that works too.
Cherries command a fairly high price as fruit goes around where I live, especially Ranier cherries. (But damn if they aren't worth it.) I would assume cherry trees have a lower yield than other fruit trees, in part because of the relatively small fruit. I think they are finicky too, though THAT seems to be a null issue when earth ponies are around.
If you're known as a honest 'mare' as the case is with AJ, people will believe even the most outrageous things from you (for a time at least), with mundane and simple stuff barely blipping on their radars.
And there can be a real temptation to use that 'get out of jail free' card.
Honestly feel that it's a bit neat if a bit almost too subtle that AJ actually gets tempted to—and does on occasion, even—misuse her reputation like that.
Rainbow points at the wrecked roof as she says, “Don't want to do any more damage than you've already done,” to Derpy—strongly implying that all (or a significant portion) of the damage was Derpy’s fault.
Still, Amy Keating Rogers’ intended backstory—that Derpy caused all that damage by bucking storm clouds, and nopony stopped her sooner—doesn’t make much sense, either. More likely, Derpy damaged Town Hall through some other means, then others told her to stop, so she started cloudbucking, and Dash stopped her before she could do much more damage. The first “other means” the comes to mind is helping to decorate for AJ’s ceremony—but the only decoration we see is the banner that Dash hung up. Is Derpy really that bad at decorating?
Alternately, the crown funds they use to rebuild are designated specifically for natural disasters and wild animal attacks. Mayor Mare is trying to get Derpy classified as a natural disaster, but until then, she has to find another source to repair all the damage Derpy caused.
Part of it may be Applejack is a terrible liar and it's easy to spot when she does it, and memorable afterwards.
4629484
From a doylist point of view. If you have a character who's explicitly a paragon of a single virtue, episodes about them struggling with and temporarily failing to uphold that virtue make more sense than other types. "Fluttershy learns the importance of honesty and not lying to your friends" just doesn't flow as well as it would with Applejack.
Or to re-Watsonize it: Changlings have identified a Canterlot Royal Palace Events Planner and are planning to replace her and several of her friends, including a mare selected to be a maid of honor, in advance of the wedding. Because they're not arrogant like their queen, these changlings wander around small outlying towns in their chosen disguises, blending into crowds as a good way to practice.
See earth ponies as part of the Canterlot elite, and the political influence on distribution of national funds to prevent the appearance of tribalism.
4629876
What if it's the opposite of that? What if the damage was caused by a monster attack that happened so quickly after the last one that the quarterly natural disaster relief budget is tapped out after that Fillydelphia Parasprite infestation, so Mayor Mare blames it on Muffins so she can collect damages from the Weather Factory or some other entity responsible for fixing weather caused by pegasi negligence? Of course Muffins doesn't know what went wrong, she just flew a storm cloud near town hall and then the Mayor ran out and said all the damage is suddenly her fault!
That strikes me as annoying data to collect; we are assuredly watching her for it more.
Dressage sounds rather too fancy for AJ's public persona. Doylist, of course, serious horsemanship terms aren't going to have the currency of "rodeo".
No…uniformity?
Pterippi have higher SPeeD while earth ponies have more ENDurance.
It is Funny therefore Pinkie had it in case of railroad emergencies.
It's also notably bipedal-handy, though not quite enough to mark it Sandwichian, but enough that it feels within Pinkie's demesnes. Also note that Rarity is using her legs, not her magic. (Considering Tom, this doesn't seem that far-fetched, either…)