Meteors fall. There's a blaze of fire across the sky, a moment of impact and since everypony was lucky, nopony was hurt. It means there's a meteor embedded into the soil of the Acres and for just about everywhere else in Equestria, that zero-injuries landing would pretty much be the end of it.
But it's Ponyville. And for Applejack, the meteor was the easy part.
Read it here
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Tropes found in this story include:
- Berserk Button:
- All of the strangers stomping around the Acres and pushing her around is one for the entire Apple family, and ultimately results in Applejack blowing her top.
- When she catches Scootaloo trying to sell pried-up, broken shards of paving stones as meteor fragments, Applejack absolutely loses it, angrily demanding to know if Scootaloo really wants to get a cutie mark in con-artistry like the Flim-Flam Brothers before banishing her from the Acres for the rest of the moon.
- The existence of Skywise and the Denialists is one for Twilight. Skywise and his astronomy denialism is bad enough, but Applejack can't even get her to talk about the magic denialists...
- The meteor cultists mention that they do not talk about Princess Cadance in regards to their theology, which is based on the foundation that Princesses Celestia and Luna are divine for their connection to the Sun & Moon.
- Brick Joke: When Rainbow Dash mentions her new interest in thaumic fiction to Applejack, she mentions the covers are awesome — which is exactly what she said when she bought them from Twilight back in The Remainders of the Day. At the story's end, Applejack briefly mentions she took a look at them herself, and she also says that the covers are awesome.
- Call-Back:
- Skywise, the insane griffon "Astronomy Professor", returns from A Total Eclipse of the Fun. It's established here that he's actually not a professor at all, and was kicked out of the Protoceran science academy for his Denialism.
- Rainbow Dash is enamored with thaumic fiction, the Equestrian analogue of science fiction, which she got into at the end of The Remainders of the Day.
- Pinkie Pie's inability to "hear" the earth, the innate ability of all other earth ponies, was revealed way, way back in Lazy River.
- The concept of ponies worshipping Princesses Celestia and Luna was brought up back in Blessing. Unusually, the meteor worshippers don't directly worship the Princesses themselves, they view them more as saints, attributing the true divine power to the Sun and Moon.
- Everyone Has Standards: Roseluck, who happens to be one of Ponyville's three resident paranoid conspiracy nuts, thinks the Meteor Worshippers are all crazy.
- Full-Name Ultimatum:
- As Big Mac tries to put his hoof down and keep Applejack meeting the surveyors, he goes from using "AJ" to using "Applejack" to using "Applejack Malus", which Applejack's thoughts highlights as increasing levels of severity in a sibling fight.
- Inverted: when Applejack throws the surveyors, meteor cultists and Skywise off of Sweet Apple Acres, she does it by declaring herself as Lady Applejack Malus.
- Flat-Earth Atheist: Skywise is this, but in regards to astronomy rather than magic. Although Twilight mentions there are Denialists who refuse to accept that magic is real, too.
- Harsher in Hindsight: Twilight is very strongly implied to have experienced this in-universe when she researched Professor Skywise after A Total Eclipse of the Fun.
- Hypocritical Humor: Roseluck, a Conspiracy Theorist who believes the meteor that hit Sweet Apple Acres was actually a failed attempt at assassinating either Applejack or Golden Harvest by a foreign country, has the audacity to denounce the meteor worshipers as "crazy".
- I Reject Your Reality: Invoked with Denialism. Essentially, some griffon academics, rather than submit to an inferior place in the pecking order, try to forcibly recreate a new social chain starting with themselves on top by aggressively attacking a specific theorem or concept, essentially trying to confuse others so much that they will ultimately defer to the Denialist by default.
- Insane Troll Logic: It's an inherent part of successful Denialism. Skywise himself declares that he believes Twilight's threat of teleporting him to the moon would actually have been done by teleporting him to a theatrical stage instead.
- Insistent Terminology: Applejack is the only pony who refers to the meteor as "mahteor"; Big Mac, Granny Smith and Apple Bloom all call it a "meteor". It's implied that her reason for doing so is because she keeps subconsciously thinking of it as hers - it's "my-teor", rendered through her accent.
- Nepotism: It turns out the surveyors have been taking so long because the leader of the survey team is a sibling of the leader of the meteor worshippers, and was reluctantly delaying things so their sibling could fully conduct their own religious study of the meteor.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Applejack gives Scootaloo two of these over the course of the fic; one verbal, one mental.Verbal: "You," Applejack declared in the jaw-grinding way which didn't loosen the clamp, "were selling lies. Y'want bits so bad, a mark so bad, Scootaloo? Y'like the ones the brothers had? Think gettin' something for being a con artist would suit you? Sound like a good way to keep your friends, havin' a talent for lyin' t' anypony that makes the mistake of trustin' you? 'cause the way Ah figure it, a few more like that last one an' your flanks are jus' gonna glow..."Mental: Ah don't like you.
Don't think Ah ever will. Not until y'listen. An' y'can't. Lots of ponies tried t' make that happen, an' all of 'em failed. But Ah'm afraid t' break you an' Apple Bloom apart, 'cause then if Sweetie ain't there, it's one pony bein' stupid and nopony t' go for help. Plus y'lie and y'trick ponies an' you'll do jus' anything if it means a mark. That's dangerous all by itself.
Ah don't like you.
But Ah don't know if Ah hate you neither. - The Reveal: At the story's end, Applejack finally gets to do what she's wanted all along: spend some private time trying to "talk" to the meteor and see what it might say.
- Shout-Out: When Rainbow Dash starts talking about her thaumic fiction, at first, it sounds like she's referring to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but then it turns out she's talking about the Equestrian version of The War Against the Chtorr.
- Sympathy for the Devil: Although Applejack really does not like Scootaloo, as her personal "The Reason You Suck" Speech indicates, she doesn't really hate the filly. She wishes she'd wise up and stop endangering her life with her stupid, broken methodology for getting a mark, but she doesn't personally hate Scootaloo. As such, once the meteor business is over and done with, and Scootaloo apologizes for the phony meteor thing, Applejack allows her to come back to the Acres and gives her a piece of the meteor for herself.
- Take That!:
- Denialists are clearly based on various pseudo-science groups centered around and/or defined by their aggressive contradiction of established scientific fact, such as flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers.
- When discussing Rainbow Dash's thaumic fiction, and in particular her recent favorite — an Equestrian analogue to The War Against the Chtorr, she complains about how the author just stopped writing half-way through the promised series more than 20 years ago. This is an obvious zinger at David Gerrold, who did the exact same thing.
