Jan
29th
2017
Points of Canon: Friends Forever #34 · 5:32pm Jan 29th, 2017
And I’m going to get rid of the backlog in one sitting.
This particular comic is notable because it pairs Pinkie and Cheese Sandwich. Rejoice, shippers, because if you don’t ship Pinkie with anyone on the Mane 6, he’s the only reasonable candidate, and now you have more fuel for your turbines.
I kind of like them together.
- “There was once a family…” Notably, this shot is one of the few cases where a definite unambiguous tribally heterogeneous family is depicted – an earth pony stallion with a pegasus mare. There are many possible cases of tribally heterogeneous families in canon, but few definite cases like this, when we see two ponies of different tribes who are clearly identified as family in text. They exist. The child of the family is a pegasus, who later marries an earth pony. Their children, in turn, are a mix of pegasi and earth ponies.
- There was, about 30 years ago, a traveling spellcaster using the name “Miasmo,” who specializes in home protection spellcraft. I.e. weak long-term probability modification spells exist, traveling magical specialists exist, and there was a pony doing that in the time period depicted.
- Pinkie jokes that she’s “in a long-term lease already,” implying leases are a thing. I don’t think this says anything about her actual living situation, though.
- Cheese Sandwich was in Baltimare, where the walking house presumably originates. That it got to wherever Pinkie was at the time, which should be somewhere within earshot of Ponyville, before all the ponies stuck inside with Cheese started seriously suffering, implies a really good overland speed.
- Cheese claims that the worst situation he has been in before was a rained-out picnic, which, if he’s being literal, says a lot about how the Mane 6 adventures screw with random chance.
- In a flashback, one of the boxes in the house is marked “Chess.” Which ponies rarely ever mention. The other one is “Dragons and Ladders,” and I wonder what was wrong with snakes.
- The house contains a soda can collection. One of these cans is a “Crown’s Own Chocolate Soda, only released for one week in Vanhoover.” Which implies a lot of things: A market for pre-canned carbonated drinks, enough competing brands of those drinks to make collecting their cans interesting, technology to produce pull-tab cans, and the fact that ponies can open pull-tab cans. It also implies Java Bolt is very knowledgeable about the subject, since recognizing a soda can from at least 10 years ago that was only available for a week requires some serious collector knowledge.
- Cheese Sandwich finds a gelatin mix. I hope for his sake this is a vegetarian variety – those do exist. Other interesting dry goods found next to it are a breakfast cereal, something branded with “Flam Brothers” which cannot possibly be recent, since the house has been abandoned for years, and a box of “Kwinkles.” Which are a stand-in for the legendary Twinkies, and described in much the same terms. According to Cheese, “Even the oldest Kwinkles have an expiration date somewhere in the next millennium.” Expiration dates on food packaging exist, which, in our world, is a comparatively recent thing. So are highly processed foods full of preservatives. Notice, though, that if these were Twinkies, they would be thoroughly rotten by now, since the actual shelf life of one is ~45 days.
- While trying to extricate the entire company out of the house by partying, Cheese utters, “Mas diversion! Pli amuza, even!” Which is respectively, Spanish and Esperanto. How either got into his vocabulary is anyone’s guess.
- All of the photos shown in the family album left in the house are in color. Which dates the introduction of color photography in Equestria to at least 20 years ago, at a guess, since the first one shows the early fillyhood of the only child of the above mentioned family.
- The next set of partiers that Pinkie and Cheese entice into the house contains Doctor and Roseluck. Now, when they find the next set, they will have to hike all the way back from Baltimare. Then again, Pinkie already does…
It’s a good thing nobody told the house about the concept of a raiding party pioneered by Douglas Adams in “Life the Universe and Everything,” or it would have turned out much worse.
Funny story: At the Physics Lecture Hall at Rutgers, there are several small exhibits on display. One of them is simply a Twinkie stored in a small container, left exposed to the air. In all my years at Rutgers, the only thing that happened to that Twinkie was it getting paler. Not moldy; it never developed into fuzz or blotched irregularly. It just got less yellow.
4401313
But nobody risked actually tasting it, did they?
4401327
No, but I don't think many would've when it was fresh out of the package, either.
4401339
You were a very unusual student. :)
A house with legs travels Equestria to spend its life as a living host to a party that never ends.
I certainly can't fault this issue on its creativity.
4401378
Baba Yaga in her party days.
A fun story that I as a dedicated shipper consumed eagerly. I mean, if Cheese Sandwich was going to raise a passle of party pony foals with a party pony mare while he still traveled around sharing parties across Equestria and she stayed in Ponyville, he'd need some kind of magical fast-moving insta-party to make it work.
Had this discussion elsewhere, but protection spells can be casually bought in potion form from wizards who are unimpressive enough that they act as traveling salesmen, they must be pretty common.
Ehh, Pinkie travels to and from the Crystal Empire in an afternoon. I think the magical field effect of Party Ponies means a lot of conclusions from this issue will need an asterisk next to them.
I was thinking of that the entire issue, I bet that's what inspired the author too. Of course, the house needs a way to encourage people to actually party inside it, the Raiding Party only ever needed an endless supply of snacks and beverages.
4401702
Poor Doctor. He has no such advantage, does he? The house will bring him back to Ponyville at a reasonable speed if that is the case.
This is easy to arrange with enough beverages, really. Actually, what the house needs to become a menace is just a few boxes of refined spirits. Then, there are going to be stories of ponies getting so drunk that they turned up all the way across Equestria without ever knowing how…
4401718
Within a year, ponies who black out and wake up somewhere unfamiliar are going to blame the House, true or not.
"I'm sorry honey, I was heading straight home to see you when this magic house appeared in front of me and wouldn't let me go until I came inside and drank a bunch of liquor. Then that menace of a house dumped me off at your sister's place at 3 AM."
4401727
I hope somepony doodles “UNFAMILIAR CEILING” on the ceiling of a bedroom.
I don't see S1 analyses to post about horse on…
Cutie mark Domain Knowledge and Powers (à la D&D deities) seem like the closest thing to how Special Talents function. …Wonder how Ponyfinder does it.
4403748
That’d be reverse backlog, a different queue entirely. :)