Episode 1: Apple Origins
Fade in to the playground outside Cheerilee's elementary school.
Foals frolic and scamper happily around the jungle gym and swingsets.
The air fills with giggles as children go down the slide and proceed to wrestle one another.
Meanwhile, two little ponies are playing tetherball: Apple Bloom, and a very scared, squeaky Sweetie Belle.
“Rrrrgghh!” Apple Bloom smacks the tetherball hard. “Eat it, scrub!”
“Eeeeek!” Sweetie Belle ducks low.
Panting, Apple Bloom turns and looks at the camera. “Hey, AJ!” As the tetherball wraps fully around the pole, she faces us and smiles. “I was wonderin'... where did the first apple come from?”
Slow fade out, just as Sweetie Belle's sobs can be heard.
WHERE DID THE FIRST APPLE COME FROM?
Special Thanks to davipd for the Question
Fade in to a desert plateau at night.
The Milky Way can be seen overhead, painting the sky with a beautiful array of constellations and nebulae.
A campfire is lit, revealing Professor Applejack squatting over the site in her gray turtleneck and brown overcoat.
“Why... what a pleasure it is to get the first question from you, Apple Bloom! Our Granny didn't raise no fools!”
Clearing her throat, Applejack stands up, dusts her hooves off, and leisurely trots towards the camera. Her adorable pony body is back-lit poetically by the crackling flames.
“Ahem... this sort of question has haunted horsekind for all recorded history. 'Which came first?' The chicken or the egg? The mare or the stallion? The troll or the pony? Truth is, sugarcube... in the beginning there was only Apple. And it was Good.”
She scuffles to a stop. Smiling teeth reflect starlight.
“Dun believe me? Here... I'll illustrate it for you.”
She turns to the left and we cut to a wide shot of Professor Applejack approaching a giant red apple fitted with rocket jets.
“The good producers of this here show have constructed for us a theoretical space-time travel ship for explorin' this thought experiment. I repeat—this is merely a dramatization in order to properly convey the origin of thangs as understood by the smartest apple scientists of modern day. In no way should this fancy sequence of special effects wizardry become the basis of y'all substitutin' yer monotheist zeitgeist with abstract scientific memes in order to tragically re-manifest the Eternal Recurrence of the Same.”
She claps her hooves together.
“Got it?”
A green eyed blink.
“Good! Now hop in, y'all! Let's have some science fun! With apples!”
Via a series of outdated green screen effects, Professor Applejack enters the space ship and it takes off with badly composited stock footage of rocket discharge.
Cut to a series of plastic apple-rocket model fly-by's, accompanied by some severely funky R&B numbers. Extra bass.
The earth disappears in a burst of budget sweatshop animation. Pinprick stars zoom by, along with rotating clipart of galaxies.
“Let me take y'all back billions upon billions of years,” Professor Applejack says, obviously sitting in a green screen room with her hooves gripping a repurposed steering wheel ripped out of an old Buick. “Long before the births of billions upon billions of stars.” Her green eyes wander in opposite directions above a smug grin. “All forming billions upon billions of galaxies... galaxies that can support life... with droolin' mouths just waterin' for a juicy bite of an apple!”
The apple rocketship dangles from a string. Meanwhile, the starfield projected on the gray tarp behind it shrink and shrink until it becomes a single focused dot of red light.
“And here we are! Just quantum moments before the beginnin' of all thangs!” Professor Applejack whispers over her sleeve as if it's a dastardly secret. “The Big Bloom.”
An old stock recording of a World War shell explodes, forcing feedback through the microphone. The rocketship sways on its string as the starfield expands again, this time comprising of billions upon billions of tiny cut-out apples.
“Whoah nelly!” Professor Applejack “teeters” as the camera rocks to simulate on board turbulence. “There it is, y'all! Watch as the seedlings spread throughout space and time! The silly thang is... they are space and time! Expanding expontentially and spreadin' sweetness all across the endless vacuum! Until... lo and behold...”
There is a loud humming sound. The camera blurs, focusing in on an artist's composite sketch of a gigantic swirling disc of rotating fruit in the middle of the purple-painted cosmos.
THE APPLE GALAXY
“... ... ...the very first galaxy. The Apple Galaxy. And everythang's rotatin' thanks to gravity... all around the central core. Dun know about gravity fields? Well, just make sure you dun get close enough to surpass its event horizon—or else there's no escapin' it! Apple scientists call this the 'pit,' and there's one in the center of every orbit. But never mind that. Here we are about eight billion years ago... and we're about to experience what theorists like to call a 'Yummy Ray Burst.' What is that, y'all ask? Well, it's when an apple star of an apple galaxy collapses and shoots off all its juice in one concentrated burst of tangy jolly!”
Right at that moment, there's an animated red line pulsing outward from a spiral arm of the galaxy, accompanied by a hastily audible “Pshhooooo” done in Post.
“Whew-weee!” Professor Applejack's head turns wildly to follow the wild trajectory. “There it goes! Off in a hurry, too!” She smiles at the camera. “What say we follow it?” She “turns” the steering wheel, and the camera pans dramatically to simulate movement.
There are a few more shots of the plastic apple rocket weaving in and around stars, then...
We zoom in on a satellite photograph of earth. The same red line from earlier—this time disembodied—flies “into” the planet, vanishes, and then rematerializes in a tiny red mushroom cloud that slowly fades away.
“Well well well...”
The plastic apple rocketship dangles in orbit of the terrestrial photograph, accidentally casting a shadow in the macro light.
“...looks like it landed somewhere familiar.” Professor Applejack cranes her neck to smile at us. “That's right, folks!” She points at the grossly enlarged photograph projected behind her. “It's touched base in Seaddle! Come on... let's have a look see...!”
She “walks off” the spaceship set...
Now we fade in to a rocky “hellscape” built out of spray-painted styrofoam. Static volcanoes loom in the background, with fluorescent painted lava illuminated under blacklight. There's a river of industrial goop rolling through the middle of the set. Constant rumbling sound effects echo and gurgle in the background.
Professor Applejack “walks on” and approaches the river of ooze. “Here we are in prehistoric Seaddle. Dun recognize it? That's because it's four billion years ago. There are slightly less coffee shops around.”
She kneels at a crater where a polished green apple has landed, still-smoking.
“Here... our little visitor from the Apple Galaxy has landed. But gravity ain't done with its old playmate. Nope. Not by a longshot. Just observe.”
She gives the stem a slight tap.
“Zoop!”
The apple rolls-rolls-rolls into the spawning pool, slowly sinking in.
“There it goes to make friends with the buildin' blocks of life! Y'all are old enough to know what I mean. Hoof-bumpin' below the belt. Birds and the bees n'such. Not long later... oh... a few million years or so... lo and behold...!”
Bloooooopppp! An apple crawls back out, this time red and with four hooves. It trots over to a boulder, upon which it pulls out an old calculator with ribbon tape and proceeds to do its taxes.
“We have Malus primevioli! The very first apple tree! You'll notice it's got no trunk and no branches. Trees weren't very creative yet, you see. But that's all fine and good... because in a couple more million years...”
Cut to a small scale prehistoric jungle.
Stop-motion apples with carniverous teeth and spines rush at one another, clawing and lashing and thrashing violently.
“HRESSSH!”
“HRESSSH!”
“HRESSSH!”
The reptilian fruit continue to pile-drive each other, knocking over cardboard mountains once or twice while a full-sized hairy fetlock shows up for a single frame to pose them and then vanishes just as swiftly.
“Boy howdy! Are they angrier than porcupines at a kissin' contest! You see, for the longest dang time, apple trees were too plum stubborn to take root. It figures... seein' as they had so much competition over real estate... not to mention brains the size of walnuts that made 'em all stupid. Scientists today like to call this time the 'Stupid Age.'”
One fruitosaurus finally defeats the other, then poses above it while roaring towards the heavens.
“HRESSSSSSSSSSH!”
THE STUPID AGE
Professor Applejack smiles at the camera, standing in some random blue-filtered area that the producers evidently had to drum up at the last second after a communicative disconnect with the script writers.
“But sooner or later, them feisty apples had to pony-up! Cuz—ready or not—here comes the Pearmian Mass Extinction!”
The entire set rumbles.
The claymation apple scrunches its leathery muzzle in confusion. It looks straight up, then gasps.
Cut to a starfield over the blue outline of the earth. A giant pear on a string floats aggressively towards the camera. Fiery atmospheric friction has been added in Post, and the rumbling grows louder and frothier.
Cut back to the applesaurus. It fidgets cartoonishly, looking all around as the backdrop turns red and redder with the advent of a burning global death.
“Whoah nelly! You okay there, feller? You'd better think fast!”
The reptilian apple takes a deep breath, busting its chest out defiantly. Its legs dig into the earth... then morph through stop motion to become tree trunks. Its upper body branches out, sprouting leaves and apples. Then—with a stray branch—the creature reaches out and grabs the corpse of its defeated enemy. It wields the dead body like a stiff baseball bat, and—just as the gigantic death pear approaches ground zero—it swings for the bleachers.
CRACK!
A stock recording of cheering spectators and clapping hooves echo in the background.
We cut to the starfield again—the pear flails wildly on its string, growing more and more distant until at last it hits the suspended black curtain and is dropped limply out of frame.
“Yeeeeee-ha! Way to go, slugger! You done saved the entire globe from peartastic oblivion! But at what cost...?”
Fade to a gallery of multiple botanists' scientific sketches of ancient apple trees, gradually evolving through time. The camera pans across the elaborate collage, illustrating ancient caveponies hobbling up with crudely-made ladders to gather the fruity bounty from the dangling branches.
“Well, little did the original contemporary apple tree know that there was gonna be a worthwhile purpose in it bein' anchored all stationary-like in the ground. Soon enough, it and its descendants were bein' picked clean of fruit by these scampy little creatures called ponies! That's us, y'all! But while our ancient grandmamas and grandpappies benefited from the pre-recorded harvests... there were—of course—Dark Ages...”
Dramatic cut to a Medieval Tapestry featuring flat, two-dimensional ponies lining up to do battle with griffons. Knights in shining armor are seen scaling grossly offscale castles with ramparts full of catbird archers. Arrows fly while swords draw scarlet splashes of blood. Dozens of imperiled bodies are seen being impaled on spikes for falling into flames or being slowly defecated out of hummingbird demons deep in the underworld. In the meantime, the stock sounds of grunting voices and clashing blades and screaming infants can be heard forming cacophonous nonsense in the background—all the while the camera finishes its laborious pan through the wide, wide tapestry.
“Ahhh yes. The Apple Crusades. While it opened up the Hay Trade for freshly-bloomin' renaissance cultures, it was still a tragic and senseless loss of life. Although them cat birds got what was comin' to them. Boy I tell you—Huh? Dang it, listen here, Bob! I done read the script! And them politically correct yahoos dun know a thing or two about them lousy dirt ostriches—”
BEEEEEEP!
Blip!
The camera pans through a wide, wide tapestry of Medieval Warfare.
“Ahhh yes. The Apple Crusades. While it opened up the Hay Trade for freshly-bloomin' renaissance cultures, it was still a tragic and senseless loss of life. On... b-both sides. But in a few hundred years, after the bloodshed had waned, everyone realized... shucks... apples sure do taste a heck of a lot better than bein' sawed down the middle while a bunch of creepy monks look on! I mean... right? You can almost make a religion out of that!”
Cut to black-and-white silent footage—fast speed, of course—of ponies in overalls and lederhosen grabbing fruit off of apple trees. They pose in front of stacks and stackes of apple barrels, drinking ciders and mutely smiling at the camera.
“And for the past hundred years, pony kind has come together in the name of peace and apple buckin'! Together, we've made for ourselves an agricultural industry that makes the whole world go round!”
Cut to shot of a businesstallion in a cleanly-pressed suit marching into his office with a briefcase dangling from his muzzle. He wanders into a cubicle and sits before a typewriter. Sighing happily, he places his briefcase in front of him, unclips it, and opens the thing to reveal a full tray of apple sauce, apple fritter, apple slices, and apple juice. He picks an apple cider doughnut up from the edge of the tray, takes a scrumptious bite, and sports a smile-full-of-crumbs at the camera.
“And there y'all have it! How the apple came to be! And delicious too!”
The stallion smiles.
An edge of the cubicle catches fire behind him.
A single tear rolls down his twitching muzzle.
APPLES!
Slow fade to black.
"Hey y'all, ponyapplefolk! Hankerin' for some apple knowledge? Just ask ol' Professor Applejack, and she'll set you straight! Or maybe she won't! It's like Schrodinger's apple! The answer's there, and yet it ain't! Whelp, happy trails, y'all! I've got some apples to study! Yeehaa!"
~Lurve, Professor Applejack
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Are you ok skirts? However fantastic this is, I am slightly concerned for your health.
i.imgur.com/jN57tGt.png
Edit: Typo has gone to the great apple in the sky.
This story offends all my sensibilities. This is generally a good thing. Thank you.
No don't
I spent far too long staring at the .gif at the end while listening to the music.
While screenplays might be arguably against the rules, how could I not upvote this apple? It deserves every apple I have, after all, Apple. Apple apple and then apple. Apple apple apple. Apple. Apple!
~Tailsoapples
I'm... confused.
It's like Sherclop Pones' Applejack is hosting a 90s Fox News documentary that intermittently terrifies with startlingly dark imagery.
It's like SS&E's version of Justin Roiland's improvised interdimensional television.
This is the funniest thing I've read in a while
A realistic depiction of all my childhood experiences with tetherball. By the way, I'm Sweetie in this scenario.
Malus primevioli mostly just sounds like some kind of apple-filled pasta dumpling.
8379276
Apples apples apples apples!
Did somepony take his red Swingline stapler?
Alright. I'll play along.
clears throat
Ahem...
Professor Applejack, can you tell us how the military used apples?