Carrot Top: No, it’s my fault. I should’ve cleaned those up BEFORE they started attracting crazy conspiracy ponies.

Derpy: Aww… I know you haven’t always gotten along with the Apples in the past, but they’re not that bad…

Carrot Top: It’s not the Apples I’m worried about; it’s Lyra.

Derpy: …Lyra?

Carrot Top: If the Apples catch a seedling, they’re just gonna use it to strengthen their crops. Lyra, on the other hoof, is gonna want to do experiments. Interrogations. Expose it to cruel ponies everywhere. I will NOT let her hurt my seedling like that!

Derpy: Wait… you mean you ACTUALLY caught…

Carrot Top: My crops are constantly being strangled at the market by the Apples’ oppressive monopoly, my garden takes significant collateral damage from Ponyville’s weekly disasters, and my best friend is a tornado with hooves. If I hadn’t caught that thing, I’d have been out of business long ago.

——-

Gather around, children! If you’ve all been good and completed your chores on time, you might be able to catch a glimpse of the elusive Season 9 Retirement Party as it passes through! This week’s episode is based on Going to Seed, aka: “Apple Bloom and Applejack Blow Off All Their Chores and Responsibilities to Go Chase Bigfoot: the Episode”. This one’s okay; we finally get a crusader sighting 10 episodes in, and the moral about not being too old for childish things is one I live by. My only thing is that I didn’t really like the way Big McIntosh was treated throughout the episode. He was working himself to the bone all Confluence to make sure the harvest goes well, while the others kept piling and piling more work on top of him so they could focus on “helping” the farm by trying to catch something that’s notorious for being hard to catch. It got to the point where he was exhausting himself in his sleep, and no one ever really apologized to him. The episode was still fun enough, but we need some justice for Big Mac over here.

This is my first time drawing Golden “Carrot Top” Harvest, and I feel really bad about that fact, especially since she’s one of my favorite background ponies. She’s got a great design, a substantial history with Derpy, she seems dependable, hard-working, often-overlooked by others, sometimes feels like a background pony among background ponies, yet has still managed to lead a surprisingly interesting life with her great friends. There’s been a lot of really great Carrot Top content earlier on in the fandom’s history, but I don’t feel like I really see much of her anymore these days. So naturally I had to rectify that given the opportunity.

Hope you all remember that responsibility and fun are not mutually exclusive! Looking forward to the next episode!