| Rainbow Dash Presents: Somewhere Only We Know | |
|---|---|
| Creator(s) | FiMFlamFilosophy, Petirep |
| Date added | November 20, 2011 |
| Duration | 10:03 |
| Transcript | Available |
| Part of | Rainbow Dash Presents |
| Based on | Somewhere Only We Know |
| ⇐ RDP: Cupcakes |
⇒ RDP: Spiderses |
Rainbow Dash Presents: Somewhere Only We Know is a very loose parodic retelling of the short story Somewhere Only We Know. Like every episode of the series, it is illustrated with images drawn by Petirep and narrated by FiMFlamFilosopher in the voice he uses for Rainbow Dash in The Mentally Advanced Series.
Summary[]
The video starts like the original story does, with Rainbow commenting on the color of the sky. However, the plot diverges immediately; Rainbow's superiors had apparently scheduled a rainy day, so the Pegasus has to bring in some gray clouds. Once finished, Rainbow flies down to the library, where Pinkie Pie comments on her bandaged leg. The Pegasus suddenly remembers that she has been dreaming her whole life.
Rainbow Dash happily pulls the cart carrying her owner's orangutang family in 'Rainbow Dash Presents: Somewhere Only We Know'
A wingless Rainbow Dash is woken by her owner, the patriarch of an orangutan family. Her name turns out to be a combination of "Thundercrash" and "Rainbow Dancer", suggested by the two children of her owner. Rainbow pulls their carriage into a nearby town, also populated by apes, where she meets several other ponies in situations similar to, but exaggerated from the original story: Rarity rides around the block several times, continually ignoring Rainbow's incessant calls, and Applejack and Big Macintosh are unresponsive zombies. At the end of the day, the family returns home, and Rainbow realizes that, all in all, she doesn't have such a bad life.
In a brief coda, Rainbow returns to Equestria after falling asleep, which she now explicitly calls "dream land". She blows off work and decides she'd rather play a game with Applejack: throwing rocks at the windows of Sweet Apple Acres.
Analysis[]
There is no shift in tense as in the original text, but there is a difference in presentation. In Equestria, the colors used in the images are similar to the ones in the show, very bright and clear. In the other world, the colors are faded and the ponies' cutie marks have been replaced with branding marks that resemble crude freehand sketches of bananas.
While the "reading" retains the narrative structure of the original, it veers far away from the text except for a few direct quotes and echoes that seem like non-sequiturs and tangents in context; for instance:
- The story only briefly mentions that Big Macintosh is a gelding in the real world, but Rainbow Dash spends half a minute monologuing about it.
- In the coda, Rainbow decides that "work is lame", a reduction of a thought she has in the prose story that Applejack "works too hard" and "should relax more".
The images do not merely illustrate Rainbow's thought processes. For instance, in an early scene, Rainbow is seen dropping off paperwork at her office, with a grumpy receptionist making sure the clouds have been properly positioned. Rainbow's narration makes no mention of this, instead going off at a tangent about how while she had fallen down plenty of times, she hadn't been killed yet (another exaggerated echo of a line in the short story). In another scene, Rainbow briefly mentions the zombie outbreak that infected Big Mac and Applejack; the accompanying image shows that it was caused by Pinkie Pie.
Trivia[]
- The grumpy receptionist that takes Dash's paperwork is an aged Derpy's Mom from Rainbow Dash Presents: Bubbles
- The cymbals-loving orangutan is likely a reference to a once-popular children's toy.
- Rarity's cutie mark in the "real world" is a peeled banana followed by the number 69, a reference to the character's promiscuity in The Mentally Advanced Series.
- In the end of the episode there is a short explanation of the brands on the ponies. The branding on everypony's flank is actually "FreezerBrand", a safer, but more complicated way to brand the pony instead of the traditional burn brand.