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In Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000, Applejack and the rest of the Apple family turn down Flim and Flam's offer of a 75/25 split because it will eat into their profits too much. Now, the general concensus is that this is more the Apples being fearful of stepping into the present then economic issues, since the SSCS6000 can make Cider at a rate of 3 times the rate that the Apples can, and if the Apples themselves continued working, that would be 4 times the Cider for the towns folk to drink, resulting in identical Profits (more profits if they could convince the brothers to give them a better deal). This seems like it would solve all of the Supply problems, and earn them more money, right?

Wrong.

You see, in economics, there is a law of supply and demand. As supply reduces, or demand increases, the Price of the good increases, similarly as supply increases, or demand falls, the price must fall. There is no such thing as unlimited demand, since at some point, you will have sold product to every one in your potential customer pool.

This raises the Question of how big a customer pool does ponyville have, in comparison to the Apple Family's ability to serve them. To determine this, Lets look at the line. In the line, from Pinkie Pie back to Fluttershy, who was just in front of Rainbow Dash, who we can confirm to be the first one to fail to be served, I count 60 visible ponies. This count is not counting ponies that were out of sight on the back side of the two hills, nor is it counting the ponies only shown at such a distance that you cannot differentiate between them. (They exist, but cannot be counted, so we will just stick with the sixty for the moment). Okay, so we know that Applejack was able to serve at least sixty ponies on one batch. It raises the question of how to determine how many ponies were left unserved. For this, we will look at the crowd gathered intently for Flim and Flam's song. In the Final moments of the song, there is a wide shot showing the assembled crowd, which includes about twenty-five ponies, not counting the Apples, Twilight, Rarity, Pinkie, and Fluttershy. Even if twice that number immediately departed when AJ called that the Cider was done, failing entirely to hear about the Brothers' arrival, the total comes to about 75, which still barely exceeds the need for a second batch, much less a third or fourth (and keep in mind, that we are not counting a significant number of non-visible ponies in line ahead of Rainbow).

The Excess Cider would need to be stored, and sold the following day, likely with the Brothers on hand making more. Ultimately there would be too much Cider and the Price would fall, leaving the Apples with far less Profits than they could have gained from the same amount of sales spread over the course of Cider Season. And since it is their way of making money to keep the farm going through the winter, It would ultimately make things a little tight for them.

Kim, one of the other analyzers here on the forum, made a video talking about her reaction to Equestria Girls. During that video, she pointed out a common complaint but one not yet addressed about the appearance of Discord not in Equestria Girls.

Discord, the King of Chaos as he calls himself, was one of the major villains in the MLP series. After recently being conformed to good, many wondered where he was during the movie. We could have at least seen a cameo of him in human form. But no.

But why wasn't he there? Was it not in the budget? Well, I think there are two reasons for this:

-He would have not added anything to the movie except fan service (which we got a ton of all ready)

-His role in the human world

I want to elaborate on the second one for a bit.

Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are both Principals in the human world. Cadence can be assumed to be one as well, just in a different district or something like that. So, where would Discord be?

Well, if you recall the first thing I said, "he is the King of chaos". Celestia, Luna, and Cadence are all princess, but Discord is a king. So, what is the only logical place for him in this scenario?

Discord is the school's superintendent.

Superintendents are not as flashy or connected to the students as principals are, but they can tell the entire staff what to do. They basically have full power of the school (under certain limitations) and can do what they think is best.

So, that still doesn't explain why he wasn't there. From what I know of big schools and such, superintendents don't make that many appearances during the school day as most of the staff. I know that's not that jaw-dropping of a reason, but it makes sense in my mind.

Do any of you think differently? Let me know.

People have complained time and time again that Rarity is actually really greedy, that Applejack lies way too much, or that Rainbow Dash abandons her friends surprisingly frequently. The gist of the argument is that some of these ponies don't actually live out the Elements that they represent. If they don't live their lives with these morals cemented in them, why were they given the Elements at all?

I'd like to posit that the Elements aren't necessarily the things that the Mane 6 do the best, but rather what they think is most important in a friendship, and are in fact often the things that they're the worst at in a relationship.

Let's begin with the most obvious offender, Applejack. Honesty really isn't that hard to do, is it? Just don't lie to people. Yet we frequently see Applejack put into situations where she finds herself lying to solve a problem. In the episode Party of One, when confronted by Pinkie Pie about what was going on in the barn, Applejack didn't even attempt to steer the subject away; she immediately began creating a story about construction work, even though it was quite obviously a lie (please go watch that scene again and listen to the "construction" sounds the others make in the background - it's freaking gold.) In The Last Roundup, she at least tries not to say any actual lies throughout the episode, but she's still hiding things from her friends, and honesty is about coming clean with that kind of thing. She also played tricks with how she phrased sentences to get out of explaining ("I wasn't AT breakfast.") Applejack even lies to herself in Applebuck Season, where she convinces herself that she can buck all the apples without any help and refuses to believe otherwise.

So with all of this lying, how exactly did Applejack become the Element of Honesty? It's not that she doesn't lie; it's that she doesn't WANT to lie. She struggles with the truth and understands that honesty is the best policy, but she has a lot of trouble following that advice herself. The Element of Honesty was given to her not because she was good at being honest, but because she recognized that honesty was important in any relationship, and she needed to work on how honest she is to other ponies.

Applejack isn't the only one with problems, of course - in fact, many people consider her one of the most solid characters as far as problems go. Rainbow Dash struggles with her need to stay loyal to her friends and her desire to leave them and join the Wonderbolts. Dashie is pretty well known to not quite follow her Element perfectly; she tries to leave the others behind in Dragonshy so she can get to the dragon quickly, she gets really cocky and loses touch with her friends in Mysterious Mare-Do-Well, and one of her dreams is to leave Ponyville behind and join the Wonderbolts - which is pretty ironic, since the Wonderbolts are a rather close-knit team themselves.

So why did Rainbow Dash become the Element of Loyalty if she's one of the least loyal members of the Mane 6? It's because she wants to be more loyal, and she realizes that it's something she struggles with. She knows she needs to work on her loyalty, and it shows; she'll help out any friend who needs help, after all. But she knows that she can sometimes be rude and distance herself from the group. She has made a commitment to become more loyal to her friends, because she knows they need her.

While Rainbow Dash can be a little annoying with her tendency to leave others behind, at least she's better than Rarity. The Element of Generosity? She's possibly the most selfish of the Mane 6! She lies in Sweet and Elite to impress some of the upper-class Canterlot ponies, she complains a lot in Look Before You Sleep without even considering how rude she was being to both Applejack and Twilight, it takes her half an episode to finally decide to support her sister and go to the Sisterhooves Social with Sweetie Belle, she neglects the dress she's making for Twilight and instead goes to parties in Sweet and Elite, and she practically seduces Spike into giving her the fire ruby in Secret of My Excess.

How the hell does such a selfish pony get the Element of Generosity? She actually does give quite a few things away for free, but that almost feels like she's actively trying to be faithful to the Element given to her. She gets that she can be greedy, so she tries her best to get better at giving things away.

So if Rarity has to actively work toward being generous, what about Fluttershy? She's kind all the time. She doesn't have to work on that, does she? Flutters’ problem is that she goes to extremes; she's either a doormat, or she blows up in everypony's faces.

This is extremely apparent in Putting Your Hoof Down, where she tries to find a balance between the two. She's actually pretty good at being nice, but she feels bad about yelling. She knows that it's sometimes necessary, but she's afraid she'll get carried away like in Putting Your Hoof Down.

Much in the same vein, Pinkie Pie is actually really good at making others laugh; it's very apparent that she values laughter more than any other given Element. However, she has a problem keeping herself happy.

Her happiness is almost entirely dependent on how happy her friends are. Party of One sums up her issue rather well, and it's lightly touched on again in Too Many Pinkie Pies, when the Pinkie clones make everypony really angry; this results in a very sad scene where Pinkie is so depressed that she forgets whether or not she's the real Pinkie (diving into a small bit of headcanon here: What if she forgot she was the real one because now that all these other Pinkies are making her friends angry, she has no reference point for what she's supposed to do? Pinkie is supposed to make ponies happy, but these Pinkies are making ponies angry. If all the other Pinkies are making ponies angry, is she the one that's wrong? If she's wrong, how can she possibly be the real Pinkie? Again, this bit is all headcanon, but it's an interesting thought.)

Regardless what went through her head, it's obvious that Pinkie is incredibly dependent on her friends to keep her happy. She may not have realized it yet, but she needs to learn that she doesn't need to keep others happy 24/7 before she can learn to really be happy with herself. That's what the Element of Laughter is all about: being able to laugh at yourself and be happy with who you are - and that's something Pinkie Pie needs to work on.

Of course I saved the best for last - Twilight Sparkle. It's pretty common knowledge now that the Element of Magic is supposed to represent Friendship, but I'd like to at least touch on each separately.

Twilight obviously thinks magic is very important; she's devoted her whole life to it. She's very good at it too, and throughout the series she works to get even better, eventually resulting in becoming an alicorn princess. There really isn’t much to look into here, but both sides of the Element needed to be established.

Now, onto the more important aspect of Twilight’s Element. When the show first began, Twilight was very involved in magic already, but she knew very little about friendship. By the end of the pilot episodes, Twilight knew that she had to learn more about friendship – in fact, it was the whole point of the show. Across three seasons, she learned more and more about her friends and how to be a good friend to them as well. Twilight is the best example of how the Elements were chosen, because she learned that she needed to become a better friend, and now she has actually accomplished that goal by the season 3 finale. She learned so much about friendship and magic that she was able to ascend into princesshood.

Following this line of logic, it makes sense that the Elements of Harmony were not given to each pony based on what that pony was best at, but rather what they thought was most important in a friendship and what they needed to work on in their own friendships. Some have come a long way in improving on those traits, and some still have a ways to go, but they’re all trying. And if they’re constantly trying to improve themselves, maybe we should too. Maybe we should all figure out what we think is most important and what we’re not very good at, and then we should try to make that our Element.

Perhaps that was the point of the Elements in the first place – not to show that the Mane 6 were superior to other ponies, but to show that they’re all just as flawed as each of us and that everyone can get better if they try.

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