art by NCMares

This is going to be an uncommonly short Afterthoughts for one of the reasons it was also so long delayed: I really don’t have much to say about “Buckball Season”. Just as last episode, “Dungeons and Discords”, played directly to my interested with an episode about roleplaying games, “Buckball Season” played to interests of others that I don’t share: sports.

From that perspective, I am actually rather pleased that they showed these two episodes back-to-back, as they addressed hobbies of different groups in a way that made us feel that one wasn’t being catered to over the other.

I’ve never been able to get into sports. (I briefly gave becoming interested in one realm of athletic competition a try during my college years, but there was never any real passion behind it, and today I couldn’t name any of the athletes that I had chosen to root for.) Just as it's okay to like things, it is perfectly fine to have things you don’t care for, so long as you don’t use that apathy or dislike as an excuse for bad behavior. And conversely, it is okay to create things that cater to a specific group or that do not have universal appeal even within the broader target audience. FIMfiction has tags for a reason. This episode, for all its positive points, simply didn’t have much that appealed to me.

My thoughts on the episode after the break. On a side note, Strategic Jordan has just started Chapter 24 in his Let's Read for Fallout: Equestria, and Stable-Tec Studios put out Chapter 3 of their incredible Fallout: Equestria audiobook

art by GaelleDragons

“Buckball Season” isn’t a bad episode by any means. It had a fair lesson, some great character moments (especially for, to my surprise, Snails of all ponies), and some fun new animations. So many new faces. And a great new hairstyle for Pinkie Pie too boot.

The sport itself was interesting. Buckball is a far better-constructed and reasonable made-up sport than a lot of those we see. (I’m looking at you, Quidditch. ) And it carries with it some interesting social commentary. Buckball is a game designed specifically to require one team member from each of the pony races, and it is clearly a very new game. It has the feeling of something being instituted or promoted to encourage greater intermingling. I am reminded of how, in “Flight to the Finish”, we learn that Ponyville’s diversity makes it relatively unique. And if this is part of an effort to create greater harmony amongst different kinds of ponies, Rainbow’s claim that Celestia might come to congratulate the winners has some grounding.

It was nice to see Rainbow Dash and Applejack put some of their previous lessons to use. They put aside their pride and recognized they needed to step aside and give their places on the team to Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy. Unfortunately, they didn’t put aside their competitiveness, but instead tried to manifest it through their friends, ruining the fun of the game for them. In the end, however, they figured out their mistake in enough time to fix things. And they went about rekindling Fluttershy’s and Pinkie Pie’s enjoyment of the game in a mature, laudable fashion.

vector by Uponia

“Buckball Season” felt familiar. It was a good lesson, and the circumstances and nuances of it made the lesson different than those already learned. But it had similar notes to “The Cart Before the Ponies”, with AJ and RD again focusing on what they wanted and what made them thrive rather than what was best and most enjoyable for Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy. I felt it also had some similarity with the previous week’s “Dungeons and Discords”, echoing Discord’s attempt to push others into doing what he enjoyed. Again, the lesson here wasn’t the same as those episodes, but together they do present a theme. And Season Six has definitely been a season of themes.

I really don’t blame Rainbow Dash or Applejack for their actions in the episode. The conflict here is a problem that naturally flows from their established characters, and the wise way in which they dealt with it, as well as the aforementioned giving up of their positions in the first place, shows how their characters have grown, even if they still make mistakes.

Honestly, the ponies I reserve a possible issue with in the scenario are the townsfolk themselves… and that is only because of what is implied rather than what actually see. (But I’m going to talk about it anyway, because it’s my blog; it is perfectly permissible for me to soapbox here.) The pressure that Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie were put under feels like an entirely false construct. The townsfolk have no cause or reason to be invested in the success of the Ponyville Buckball Team.

art by everesco

Even though I am not into sports myself, I see the value of athletic competition. Athletics is a means of bettering ourselves, and athletic competition it is a positive alternative for settling conflicts as well as a valuable and often virtuous form of entertainment. However…

In my blog ”Pep Rallies”, I tackled my opinions on communal pride and communal guilt. Pride is a self-uplifting satisfaction or smugness based on the qualities, actions or achievements either of yourself or those you associate yourself with. A reasonable amount of pride in your own virtues and accomplishments is healthy. But when it comes to taking pride in others, unless you directly and substantially contribute to that person’s or groups efforts, you have no right to their glory.

You can support your town’s sports team, your country’s troops, another brony’s art or music… you can give them acclaim, cheer for their success, be thankful for them. But taking pride in them is taking something they worked and sacrificed for in part as your own by merit of loose association. And that is a very false pride. Just the same, unless you are a member of the team, a coach, a parent who has sacrificed and supported, or someone in a similarly contributing role, their losses don’t reflect on you, and you don’t have cause to take them personally.

Doing so makes as much sense as feeling superiority when watching someone else’s Overwatch “Play of the Game” because they are playing the same character you like to play. You don’t get to claim any of their success just because you’re on Team Tracer.

Therefore, I feel that Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie had no reason to worry that they would be letting the people of the town down if they lose. And nobody had a right to assert that they would be. That said, there is no evidence that the townsponies were actually engaging in this fallacy, but merely that the main cast were making the assumption that they were. I suspect, being ponies, that the townsfolk would have been aghast that their enthusiasm for their friends upcoming game had been turned into something ugly that was causing Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie such stress.

All morals and lessons, however, really do take a backseat to seeing Snails, the Zen-Master of Baskets.