A Friendly Race · 1:49am Mar 10th, 2020
This will probably be the last you'll hear from me before I go crazy from working from home because of COVID-19. I'm really not a work-from-home sort of person; I'm not opposed to spending a quiet 48 hours straight at home on occasion, but for work specifically I really do psychologically need to have an associated change of scenery.
Well, see you on the other side.
But before we get to the other side, let's talk about issue #87.
So this month's moral is that you shouldn't whine about it if you push somepony to compete with you and they turn out to be better than you are. If your friend is better than you and it is 100% your fault that you found out, you should at least pretend to have the maturity to handle it. Don't try to blame them for doing what they told them to do.
Also, the moral is that there's a reason that easily invertible objects with numbers on them normally have underlines or periods to mark which side is down when those numbers are made up of 0s, 1s, 6s, 8s, and 9s. These sorts of mix-ups are very easily avoidable.
I'd like to know why the Mangalese Drake is clearly a pony's head, not a dragon (or even a duck) at all. Do the dragons just call it "the Mangalese Drake" because otherwise Equestria would make serious diplomatic pushes to reclaim it as a equine cultural artifact?
I am, of course, far too much of a nerd to miss that the backstory of the Draytona Breach is inconsistent with lore. Yakyakistan didn't have open borders with Equestria for hundreds of moons until season 5, which can't have been that long ago given that everypony looks the same as they did in season 9 and I strongly suspect that the Student Six haven't graduated yet. That's clearly not enough time for cider deliveries to start up, evolve into a race, lose the actual cider, and then for Big Mac to lose a friend and then leave that dead friendship to fester. Plus that would imply that Big Mac had a secret racing hobby for most or all of the series, since he didn't stop until after the fateful Draytona, and that he was still attending farm school during that time as well.
I am almost not enough of a nerd to consider the fact that, as explained by Granny Smith, cider delivered over a long mountain route is not perfect by the time it arrives, and therefore is not suitable for yaks. Almost.
One might also question the fact that Big Mac was tuning up his old training cart that he had no intention of ever using again when Dash came to see him, but we can assume AJ had time to warn him that she was sending Dash his way looking for advice.
Although it is odd that Dash seems to be running the actual race with this training cart. The name implies that racers train on different carts than they run the race with, and certainly it's not unreasonable for the race organizers to provide the official carts and provide them only at race time to prevent cheaters from tampering with them.
Our dastardly thief here seems to take his name from the writer Sax Rohmer. Although Rohmer is best known for the evil Dr. Fu Manchu, I suspect the reference is instead to the archaeologist who sets off the events of The Quest of the Sacred Slipper (who I think is named Professor Deeping, but I had to get that name out of an Amazon review so I'm not sure it's right).
Given the clear Raiders of the Lost Ark reference in the opening, you'd think he'd get a name inspired by one of Indiana Jones's foes. Maybe Anderson thought that would be too obvious.
I know why Rainbow Dash was having so much trouble with the cart on the hard rocks: she should try using circular wheels instead of oval ones.
As cute an idea as a starting bow is, I find myself doubtful that the twang of a bow would have the required carrying power for all the racers to hear it.
Quite an interesting new concept, I enjoy it.
It was definitely crappy of that stallion to un-friend Mac for being better than him at racing after pushing him into racing. On the other hand, its not like the guy is claiming that Mac cheated or anything, he seems to be pretty upfront that he just isn't able to handle being friends with someone who's better at his special talent than he is. So I don't know why they can't just write him off. I mean, if he hates Mac for beating him in a race, is Mac beating him again actually going to make him LIKE Mac? Or is he just going to say "fine, I guess we're friends now per the rules of the bet, see you never."
I wonder if Mac might actually throw the race, because losing to this guy seems like it would actually repair his relationship with the guy.
I noticed the discrepancy with Yakyakistan, but it actually makes sense. Daytona is supposedly based on moonshiners sneaking alcohol past the authorities in stock cars during prohibition, right? So maybe the original Draytona was about pony smugglers selling cider to Yaks over the border, in defiance of the orders of the Yak government banning goods from the outside world. Otherwise why would the racers even need to take such an elaborate route alongside the mountains, unless they were circling around the border of Yakyakistan to a place where it wasn't guarded.
I feel like the thief was supposed to be Ahuizotl, but then the comics team found out he had been redeemed and needed a new villain.
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I don't think this story ever could have worked with Ahuizotl. Doctor Caballeron, perhaps, other than the whole redemption thing, but I can't imagine Ahuizotl even trying to blend into a race. He's rather conspicuous.
(I did not know that NASCAR had its roots in illegal alcohol. I don't know most things about NASCAR.)
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Whoops, I meant Caballeron, not Ahuizotl. Yeah, that wouldn't work very well with Azzy.
Yeah, NASCAR was based on prohibition bootleggers, kind of cool. It was definitely part of what I enjoyed about this issue. Between this and the previous comics group using incredibly obscure greek names of horses for villains, they have some real history buffs at IDW.
Oh and I just realized!
That's why it's a race and not just an endurance trek. The original Draytona smugglers were racing all the way around the back end of Yakyakistan to sneak in their goods, but they had to be fast enough to get the cider to the yaks before it started spoiling/fermenting and the Yaks declared it imperfect!