Training? Why would I need to do training? :P

have you completed the training yet?

+rep mad lad

Yeah, not opposed to giving Extreme another go!

Ever get the itch to play TF2extreme again?

you should post it on Equestria Daily

Interesting....Chair.... hmnm

it's actually a farily nice read on a sunday arvo... nice work boyds

Well, I can certainly boast that I now have a rather unique blog post in my Steam profile!

Flim & Flam’s Globalised Cider Franchise

So I’ve been thinking. Which is what I normally do. Unfortunately. So I’m there trying to concentrate at work and the ramifications of the Flim and Flam episode in terms of corporatism and localism materialise mentally, and then, I have to write a blog about it because noone else will.

So that’s the score. Lets get this ball rolling.

At the very heart of it, what separates the Fl-m Brothers from the Apples in terms of business is an active participation in life. Granny Smith checks each and every apple, Applejack bucks the trees and Big Mac mashes them into applejuice for insta-fermentation into pony cider. In contrast, F&F’s cider production is entirely automated - They are shown lounging around like effete liberals of every age whilst the technology they built removes themselves from actively engaging the world around them. Hell, we don’t even know they designed and built the machine, they might have purchased it on the market in the same way manufacturers buy in readymade tooling production units. The episode centres on the conflict between the Apples and the F&F brothers in the cider business, and more generally, between traditionalism and homogenity.

Granny Smith, the staunch traditionalist, confronts Flim. Flam urges Ponyville to “step into the modern world” later in this same set piece.

Now, there’s some subtle implications in this episode. The main one being a who-can-make-the-most-cider-the-fastest competition - A nice metaphor for production volume/cost. With automation, the F&F brothers could easily muscle in on Ponyville business by simply undercutting them on price. In order to compete, the traditionalist apples have to work themselves to exhaustion, along with their friends helping them out. But they still loose the competition due to F&F compromising on quality control in order to win.

This quality control failure compromises the moral of the show. Even faced with economic ruin, the apples hold onto their ideal of producing the best quality cider. It’s not that they even belief in some moral imperative of quality - They just downright do not want to make bad product, and their identity and working lives are inseparable. They don’t make good cider because it’s what they do, they make good cider because of who they are.

Haha, Bodo!

Bodo