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Flight to the Finish (December 14th 2013, 22 minutes)

Summary: The Cutie Mark Crusaders have to compete to carry the Ponyville Flag in the Equestrian Games. No matter what disabilities they are told they have.

The various towns are sending teams to the Equestra Games. So this is the Olympics writ small, with towns instead of nations.

Ponyville has a flag. Huh. I guess towns do usually have something *like* a flag, but it's not something that comes up often.

They're having the flag bearers for each town do a routine. That's interesting, and it's the kind of thing I would actually like to see for opening ceremonies. The modern massive advertisement for the host nation I find a bit annoying. I'd rather see smaller bits from the various participating nations.

After school at 15:00. Which means school lets out before that. Seems early to me, but they likely have much shorter school days given the society.

This is implying that elsewhere in Equestria the pony breeds are more segregated. Or at least, the *foals* see the rest of Equestria is more segregated. Which could be because it was more segregated at one point, and they're pulling this out of their history lessons.

And another hint that 'horses' are different from 'ponies' in this culture.

First hint that Bulk Biceps is going to be a lot more 'forward' in this season. And he's afraid of butterflies? Odd.

This hints at some odd aspects to this society. Until it was pointed out to them, it never occurred to them that Scootaloo's possible disability could be an issue. Yet pegasi usually live in places like Cloudsdale where being unable to fly would be a serious hurdle to overcome. And once Scootaloo has her face rubbed in it, she obsesses over it, but nobody else seems to care. Either real disabilities are so rare than nopony considers them, or the society compensates so completely that it's deemed irrelevant.

Wait, they're travelling overland to the Crystal Empire via wing-powered scooter? Again, MLP:FiM has an issue with travel distances.

And ponyville's flag is, yellow with two purple silhouette mares facing each other rearing up, supporting a pink heart. Can't really do that one in classic European heraldry, due to the pink. I'd have to bring in some late-period India heraldry where they added several colors to the system.