Points of Canon: S1x06 - Boast Busters · 6:18am May 12th, 2017
She’s great. She’s powerful!
She’s memetic! Ok, let’s see what facts can we tickle out of Trixie…
- “Twenty-five different types of tricks and counting.” This word usage is a little weird, but I think it’s best interpreted as Twilight knowing 25 different classes of spells, rather than just spells, if only because Spike says “types.” Canonical information about the vocabulary of magic is very contradictory and scarce.
- So facial hair is considered enticing by at least some ponies, even though so very few stallions appear to have any. There’s still that of question how ponies are even able to have – and more importantly, shave – facial hair without shaving the regular coat off. I have one or two theories and they’re not very satisfactory.
- Spike’s surprise at the breadth of Twilight’s knowledge would imply that even though he was hatched by Twilight, they were separated, and only reunited comparatively recently. That would also explain the odd dialogue in The Ticket Master. Unfortunately the rest of the canon vehemently disagrees: Celestia dumped Spike on Twilight very early on, (Friendship is Magic #40) they remained more or less inseparable since, (Micro-series #1) and even going solely by primary canon, (Friendship is Magic and Amending Fences to name but a few) Spike has been with Twilight for a substantial time to get to know her Canterlot friends better than she did, and has to know her pretty well. So what’s actually going on here? Beside the Doylist explanation of them having these two dialogues purely for the audience’s benefit, of course.
- “I don’t think there’s another unicorn in all of Equestria with your kind of ability, Twilight.” Well, we know he’s wrong because Starlight Glimmer exists, but – just what does he know, if he utters the phrase “I thought unicorns were only supposed to have a little magic that matches their special talents!” with a straight face after growing up in a boarding school for specialist magicians?…
- Spike is already acquainted with Snips and Snails, and later scenes in the episode suggest they are closer than could be expected. Technically, they probably count as the fabled “boys his age,” which aren’t a common sight around Ponyville. But I wonder what did they connect on, because throughout the episode Snips and Snails behave like exemplary losers, while Spike is both more mature than his age would suggest and, well, see the social networker theory.
- Twilight pushes Minuette aside to approach Trixie’s stage.
- The stage decorations include what looks suspiciously like it’s meant to be a planet, with a ring and three stars over it.
- Strangely, Trixie employs fireworks in broad daylight. Even more strangely, this works.
- I honestly don’t understand what exactly do Rarity and Applejack have against Trixie at this point, before the performance starts. The rest of the scene snowballs from Trixie reacting to their heckling and getting carried away by her runaway ego, but if they didn’t start this whole argument and accepted the stage performance as such, it’s probable nothing would have happened. Is there a missing piece? I have seen lots of theories interpreting that, and most of them are shaky or build a huge house of cards outside the margins to prop up this scene alone. Many of them are dated, and don’t sit well with the more recent canon, No Second Prances in particular, by assuming that ponies do not have a culture of stage magic and Trixie is an aberration who can’t find a place for the occupation her cutie mark drives her into. But she can’t be, if the legendary Hoofdini could inspire her, can she?
1. At night time, I might be capable of concocting a passable imitation using a film projector and smoke, but even then it wouldn’t quite look the same.
The animation of the battle with the Ursa that Trixie demonstrates is not possible by mundane means, at least, not in daylight.1 She’s doing “real” magic alright, and she is doing it with her hat on.
- Notably, during Trixie’s first appearance, her horn is mostly hidden under the hat. Much later, in No Second Prances, it sticks out from under the front of the hat, instead…
2. Somewhere around Rambling Rock Ridge, probably, but that’s just a good guess.
There are no canonical statements on where ursas normally live beside Trixie’s “cave in Everfree Forest,” or whether other kinds of star-beasts exist. Even the word “star-beast” is a fanon invention. Just like we don’t really know where Hoofington is.2 We know Ursas may be encountered in Abyssinia from Friendship is Magic #43, but we don’t know where that is, either. There’s a whole map in Friendship is Magic #2, which mentions a cavern of Ursas, only, that map cannot be unambiguously placed in relation to the general map of Equestria used in the primary canon.
- Twilight’s silencing spell is never named, nor it is clear whether the zipper is actually there or is just meant to be a visual gag – once Spike unzips it, no traces remain and the spell is gone. But, Twilight knows at least one silencing spell.
- Trixie does single out Twilight when nobody steps up, and only switches away to Applejack when Twilight demonstrates very obvious reluctance.
- None of the lasso tricks Applejack does in this scene are possible unless the tail is fully prehensile. Where did an apple tree come from in the town square is anyone’s guess, though.
- Rainbow shamelessly declares that showing off is her job. :)
- Ponyville has a windmill, which has both sails and a water wheel. I don’t think it turns up again after that.
3. Whether any hypnosis was actually involved is anyone’s guess.
The spell Trixie used on Applejack is just some variation on telekinesis, with rather fine control, but nothing other characters haven’t demonstrated or exceeded.3 But the spell she uses on Rainbow involves artificially creating a mini-tornado, which actually manages to disorient Rainbow – which can’t be that easy, remembering Wonderbolts Academy – and I don’t think we saw anyone else do that. And then Trixie summons a cloud and zaps Rainbow with the lightning from it. Trixie later repeats the cloud spell against the Ursa, with no useful result. Notice that these two spells are a calque of pegasus abilities.
- Rarity, apparently, directly transmutes a curtain into a dress. A spell that will serve her well in Canterlot and Manehattan and beyond… kidding, she has never done this since. I wonder what the limitations are and what exactly is the use case that makes this spell worth learning at all, if it couldn’t be used in Rarity Takes Manehattan.
4. The carrot cutie mark is still there.
Carrot Top / Golden Harvest just dyed her hair green.4 But Rarity’s reaction caused her to reconsider. :)
- So pony smoothies are liable to contain hay, considering that the one Snips offers contains “extra.” Notably, Twilight also likes these smoothies – she drinks something from an identical paper cup in MMMMystery on the Friendship Express. What else do they contain?
- Disposable paper cups are a thing. That implies a rather particular culture of takeout and fast food. And also, a method of getting rid of the plastic in the trash, because ponies are otherwise quite eco-conscious.
- The creation of a smoothie requires a powered blender, so they have to exist. The first such device was invented in 1922, eventually giving rise to the smoothie in 1930.
- Snails comments that he likes pudding. Which is a word applied to such a large variety of dishes that it could be more or less anything.
- Snails mentions a flea market, which doesn’t sell fleas. And no, with ponies it’s not obvious that it wouldn’t sell fleas.
- Twilight summons a door with a door frame between herself and Spike. I don’t think this is teleportation, though, if only because no houses anywhere nearby have a door like that, or in blue, and anyone losing the door would probably be more than a little upset. This is either generation of matter from memory – permanent or temporary – or restoration of a previously disappeared door.
- Snails is barely capable of a light spell, still a long way from the exemplary telekinetic skills demonstrated in Buckball Season.
- The exact way Spike ended up in the path Snips and Snails took to return to the city escapes me. He’s almost at the edge of the forest, where was he going?…
- Trixie’s “are you out of your little pony minds” is a very interesting expression that never seems to turn up again.
- What exactly was a vase containing a rope doing among those boxes out in the open is anyone’s guess.
- The entire crowd of Canterlot Friends turns up once the Ursa roars.
- The only thing the Ursa is seen actually damaging beyond random trees is Trixie’s wagon and one bitten-through roof. There is one more house he would have to demolish to get to Twilight’s position which is never seen actually being damaged, and no wreckage or sounds of wreckage either. The only other thing damaged is the water tower, by Twilight. I.e. it’s probable that no major rebuilding was required after this incident.
- Literature on Ursas exists, and describes an Ursa Major among other things.
- The logic behind using the mustache spell at this stage escapes me entirely.
- Spike really did attempt to charm Rarity with his mustache. I wonder, did anyone write a story about that?
- Spike mentions goatees, (heh) soul patches, and other terms for facial hair, but importantly, he says “Fu Manchu-type beard.” So who does he think Fu Manchu is, if anyone?…
Now let’s deal with the ursa in the room.
Twilight’s spells, in order:
- pacify the Ursa with a lullaby.
- lift a water container full of water that has to weigh about 20 metric tons and is located hundreds of meters away from her position.
- pour the water out and milk cows,
- and then she carries the Ursa all the way to the lair somehow without moving.
I have a suspicion that carrying the Ursa is actually the easiest part, and it isn’t anywhere as heavy as it looks, because if it is, it has to weigh close to a thousand metric tons. Also, to fill this container with milk you would have to squeeze most of the cows entirely out of their skin, 20 cubic meters is a lot.
5. The spell to affect every parasprite in the city surely is powerful, but we can’t know how much energy it requires in any reasonable terms.
Something in that scene has to be an exaggeration, I’m just not sure which parts. The real problem with it isn’t that Twilight was powerful – it’s that she hasn’t done anything comparable in calculable energy expenditure since.5 In fact, her feat of holding the entire Hooffeld and McColt feud is frankly puny in comparison to lifting twenty metric tons. Many times since, the situation could be solved immediately by applying twenty metric tons worth of force. You don’t just forget you can do that sort of thing. And while there might be some rule that prevents a unicorn from simply telekinetically lifting themselves without one trick or another, there clearly isn’t a rule against lifting something they’re standing on – see Buckball Season, Pony Point Of View for examples. She could fly by standing on four toothpicks.
Something’s odd here. And that’s not the end of it. I’m not sure the forest that Snips and Snails go to in order to procure an Ursa is actually Everfree:
- It doesn’t exactly match the tones the Everfree is normally shown with.
- There is no reason whatsoever for Spike to take a walk in a dangerous forest, unless he’s actually suicidal.
- Unless long cuts are present both in the chase and in Twilight magicking the bear back home, the cave has to actually be smack right up against the town, 200 meters from the town hall or less. But if there are cuts, Twilight’s magicking the bear home becomes even more ridiculous compared to everything she did afterwards. This is one case where applying the idea of cartoon time makes it worse, not better.
This particular cave, apparently, never reappears, so where did it go?
Something’s very fishy here, it’s like the genre switched back into fairytale for an episode, and coupled with the strange ending, it looks almost like a conspiracy – like the boys are actually being rewarded for their role in getting Trixie to skip town, rather than punished for bringing an Ursa in. Maybe that’s what it was? Illusory Ursa, theatrical destruction…
P.S. Edit after the fact: While the wiki says that Fluttershy appears in the background in this episode, I can’t find the shot. She escapes the interaction with Trixie entirely.
On the subject of Snails' power level, perhaps Starlight Glimmer's whole Sonic Rainboom shenanigans resulted in temporal ripples that led to [insert laundry list of weird status quo changes that only come after that incident]?
And on the subject of moustaches... I continue to reach critical mass of "WHAT" every time. Just... that scene makes me feel like a child, but not in the reassuring way.
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That does seem plausible, because the final trajectory for the sonic rainboom depicted in The Cutie Re-mark does not match the one in The Cutie Mark Chronicles: In the original, unaltered Rainboom event, Rainbow’s trajectory has its highest point directly over the cheering crowd of the other campers, while in the altered, post-Starlight version that had to have stuck it’s either much lower or much higher.
If it were much lower, far fewer ponies would have seen the Rainboom and it’s a certainty that either Applejack or Pinkie in particular would not, since they’re in exactly opposite sides of the map at the time. Therefore it had to have been much higher, and more ponies have seen the Rainboom. It’s also possible that more ponies would have acquired their cutie marks at this, rather than some other moment, though it’s pretty clear the marks they do acquire are the same regardless of the Rainboom. That, by itself, could lead to a lot of interesting changes.
However, the point of this isn’t just to make it all make sense, but to make it useful, and for that, we need to be able to produce some image of a universe before and after the changes introduced extemporally. Timey-wimey only works for Doctor Who. :)
I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.
4529411 It makes me feel like a child in the sense that it makes me feel dumb and helpless and completely lacking any answers for any and all questions.
Applying the scientific method to time travel is so problematic.
"I predict that this experiment will change history such that the great fire occurred in 1666."
"It did."
"So it must have worked, then!"
"Or it was already the case, and the experiment did nothing."
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Yeah, it kind of does, doesn’t it.
I think this problem does go away if we assume that the boys are being rewarded. That this entire thing – starting with Applejack and Rarity’s reaction to Trixie’s show – was a deliberate attempt to drive Trixie out of town based on some prior knowledge. Friendship is Magic #40 does show Trixie in the crowd of new students entering the School for Gifted Unicorns with Twilight, after all, as well as attending lectures with Twilight…
Here’s a hypothesis:
1. The Mane 6 have a reason to want Trixie out of town. Probably, based on whatever happened between Trixie and Twilight in school.
2. First they try heckling her. She actually challenges and bests them and makes them regret it.
3. Spike sends his pals Snips and Snails to butter up Trixie and look for a weak point. Her story with an Ursa emerges as one pretty quickly.
4. Twilight stages an illusory Ursa that inflicts some minor damage and demonstrates that Trixie can’t magic worth squat compared to Twilight.
5. Trixie runs away, the boys get mustaches for their trouble, and nobody in town minds because nothing actually got destroyed. Everyone had fun, except Trixie.
The problem with it is that it implies the Mane 6 are far more devious than we normally think them to be, and also, whatever Trixie did to Twilight – or whoever actually motivated this chain of events to start, but we don’t have any candidates other than Twilight – would have to be pretty major to justify that.
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We’re still writing fiction, though, so we can stop at “So it must have worked, then!”
4529430 This also requires that the end of the episode where Twilight expresses what seems like genuine worry that she would have been marginalized by the community for her magic prowess and that she was just like Trixie be complete made-up bullshit.
I propose an adjustment: They hate her for literally any other reason than 'Twilight told us to'. Like, I don't know, all the legitimate reasons why street performers and travelling theaters were run out of town every night in the real world.
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That would work, if they had any prior encounters with Trixie. Then the particular initiators of running her out of town would be Applejack and Rarity.
We just don’t know what happened to arouse such ire, but a lot of things legitimately could.
4529434 Considering we've got a rather large pile of evidence that Ponyville wasn't exactly maniacally addicted to the concept of friendship pre-Twilight, seems like they'd be much more easily pissed off by Trixie's unique brand of... social interaction. Let's be honest, she's the kind of acquired taste that's very easy to throw out if that first bite doesn't sit well.
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Plausible, I suppose. Let’s see if anyone else weighs in on the issue…
Well, duh, that was the trick. The whole lasso shenanigans are only showmareship.
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I.e. earth ponies can create-food-and-water? :)
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I thought that was a given with Pinkie. With some limitations here and there.
To be more specific, Apples (capitalised) can create apples. Why else would they plant them in the middle of the desert otherwise?
Edit: now that I think about it they could be Appleforming their environment. Like the Chtorr.
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Why would they bother planting them if they can create them, though? :)
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Effort, energy expenditure, environmental shaping (as we see they do wherever they decide to infest the local biome).
And now I got a story idea evolved from another offhand comment. Ah, well, won't have time to write it anyway.
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And suddenly, I noticed that Fluttershy doesn’t even get any speaking lines in this episode. The wiki says she is present in the background, but I can’t find the shot with her.
Can we imagine Rarity and Applejack wishing to drive Trixie out of town because she said something nasty to Fluttershy as she rolled her wagon in? I think we can.
This is as good a time as any to bring back up the Spellbook Problem, though I suppose printing isn't going to be quite the "large runs only" that we have now, though movable type probably exists (newspapers suggest it).
I believe it's that her boasting is gauche and dishonest, respectively. But no, it just doesn't stack up, as it requires that they not know that stage magic shows are exaggerating performances.
Well, you'd need to throw in autolevitation
and*OR cloudwalk or the wing spell to get the rest, but yeah.Indeed, Britain applies it to the entire dessert class.
More practically, four horseshoes. Or, as i just realized*, four cloud-boots…which are a demonstrated thing in "28 Pranks Later".
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It has to exist for Gabby Gums to have a job at all. :)
The Spellbook Problem is a consequence of not having a theory of how magic works. Canon consciously avoids it. I do have my ideas, but I think they need more work before I’m ready to post that.
Somehow, most people didn’t think to reexamine Boast Buster in light of No Second Prances… Stage magic has to be a thing, not just something Trixie invented, underappreciated and mis-marketed, so a solid new theory is required.
Or a skysurfing board, for that matter. Actually a parachuting unicorn with a skysurfing board can probably remain in the air for quite a while, depending on the level of telekinetic ability, even if they cannot lift the entirety of their own weight.
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Well, that may work if magic is akin to a physical force and not something like a set of rules working on concepts. In the latter case there may be no difference in difficulty between floating oneself and floating something on which you are standing.
It could also explain nicely the difference between Starlight and Twilight, with one specialising on acting on ponies and the other on acting on stuff.
4529470 Yes, definitely. There was such a childishly strong emphasis on not making Fluttershy cry those first few seasons, I can definitely see anyone who does so immediately being transformed into a social pariah.
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Possible evidence against the whole episode being a conspiracy to drive Trixie away: When Trixie does throw her smoke bombs and flee, Rainbow Dash starts to chase her. (Twilight is the one who tells her, "Just let her go.") If the entire point was to get Trixie out of town, then what does it accomplish if Dash just drags her back as soon as she leaves?
Or if Dash wasn't part of the conspiracy, then who the heck was?
Anyway, what I find interesting is how many fans came away with the impression that Ponyville blamed Trixie for the Ursa attack and drove her out of town. Because nothing of the sort actually happens in the episode. Everypony who comments on the Ursa blames Snips and Snails; the thought that Trixie was at fault for "putting ideas in their heads" never occurs to anypony. The only time they talk about Trixie after the Ursa:
Even as Twi's friends say outright that they can't stand Trixie's personality, they don't hold her responsible for what happened.
So why does Trixie flee Ponyville? Because she's too competitive and dramatic. As everypony else praises Twilight for vanquishing the Ursa, Trixie butts in to insist that, in spite of everything that happened, she's still greater and more powerful than Twilight. And then she makes a suitably dramatic exit.
I think that, right there, is the real reason the Ursa incident destroyed Trixie's reputation. A disaster was barely averted, and Trixie's response is to insist on her own superiority over the pony who actually saved the day. The ponies who actually enjoyed Trixie's magic performance earlier that day suddenly realize, "Wow. Trixie seemed cool and funny before, but she's actually kind of an asshole." And for those who disliked Trixie from the get-go, those final words to Twilight are enough to make them irrationally think Trixie has done something punishable (hence why Rainbow Dash starts to chase after Trixie). Trixie was a victim in the Ursa incident, so she could have easily earned sympathy points if she had played her cards right. Instead, she gave everypony the impression that she was the jerk who got her just desserts.
Trixie's life is funny in that she's a victim of plain old bad luck, but then she reacts in just the wrong way and makes things worse for herself. When life gives you lemons, you're supposed to make lemonade, but Trixie prefers to squeeze the lemon juice directly into her eyes.
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Fluttershy's on the far right, here, before Trixie's stage show even starts:
vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/6/61/Twilight_and_friends_see_the_show_starting_S1E06.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/640?cb=20140526225341
If you skip forward to "Magic Duel", Trixie pretty much ignores Fluttershy. I mean, Flutters has to work for Trixie like the background ponies, but it's nothing like how Trixie specifically targets everypony who "wronged" her before (making Snips and Snails pull her chariot, screwing with Rarity and Rainbow Dash to provoke Twilight into dueling, forcing AJ to make applesauce) or even targets anypony who happens to get in her way (taking away Pinkie's mouth, locking Mayor Mare in a cage). So I get the distinct impression that Trixie and Fluttershy had no direct interaction with each other in "Boast Busters".
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I’m not going to defend the conspiracy theory too hard, because I don’t exactly like it myself, it just fits the pieces best so far.
However, this one is easy to dismiss: Dash didn’t want her to come back, Dash wanted her to run faster.
That said, if not the conspiracy, we have other problems, outlined above. Location of the Ursa cave being probably the biggest one: Twilight does not move when returning the Ursa home. The other piece of weirdness that definitely needs explaining is the mustache. Any suggestions on how to deal with them?
I think that it’s all a meme, like many early fan theories. Repeated without verification.
That’s surprisingly well hidden.
If Trixie just said something nasty to her and immediately forgot about it, the hypothetical conspiracy would work the same.
Fluttershy wouldn’t be standing next to the stage if this happened, though, which is what the best argument against the Fluttershy-triggered conspiracy is. Other windows for conspiracy remain, but they don’t look anywhere as reasonable.
A few thoughts:
While Twilight has been Spike's guardian/caretaker (ok, ok, he's too touchy to say 'Mommy') almost since he was born, until quite recently they've lived in a fairly large tower with more room. If Twilight only did magic when Spike was out of the room for his safety (and stopped when he came in to feed her), perhaps Spike would not be aware of the extent of Twilight's magical abilities in detail, as well as the general state of other advanced unicorns. Now that they share a more confined space and Spike is more mature (and more resistant to magic), Twilight doesn't mind experimenting on him a little and teaching him about unicorn magic in the process.
Applejack and Rarity disliking Trixie: Applejack sees it as her duty to deflate the egos of arrogant blue ponies, and Rarity is inherently offended by a pony dressing like that.
The Ursa Major: First off, I don't think there were any actual "spells" involved in Twilight's handling of him, just very elaborate displays of telekinesis (which I don't consider counting as a spell any more than making your horn light up counts). Your argument about the weight of the bear makes sense. I could see the bear being semi-incorporeal except when it chooses to be, seeing as it is made out of pure stellar winds or something. Twilight with her power can actually force the bear to corporealize, but that is a lot easier than lifting 20 tons.
If Snips and Snails went to a farther-away forest than the Everfree to find that Ursa, that means they had to know where to look.
One point I want to make about this episode: Trixie actually saves the lives of Snips and Snails, delaying that Ursa long enough for those two to escape. If she had immediately grabbed her wagon and ran, she could probably have saved it. I really hope their parents paid for her second wagon.
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Not for very long, though. See Friendship is Magic #40: They had a room to share in a boarding school for all or most of Twilight’s stay there. That’s not the room in the tower. See RTAC #1.
…Yeah, Rarity doesn’t need any more motivation. :) Not sure about Applejack, though.
The lullaby was an actual spell, and Spike names it as a separate “type of trick,” number 18 to be precise. We don’t know what it was exactly – a sleep spell, a music spell, a wind spell… but it was a separate spell. The rest is indeed elaborate telekinesis of rather awesome power and range. And range creates more problems of the “so why didn’t she try this in episode X” kind than power does.
The problem is that even if we discount the bear entirely, first…
1. Twilight lifts a full water container of about 20 tons of water – I’m not even counting the container itself here, I just eyeballed the size of the cylinder…
2. refills it with something – there can’t be anywhere as much milk in the cows, but the container is full again once it leaves the cow barn…
3. attaches it to the bear and hauls both all the way into the forest, into the cave, to the mama Ursa Major, without moving from the spot where she is standing.
Even if the bear is massless or weighs much less than it looks like, which is possible, the milk isn’t, it’s still 20 tons. Actually, a little heavier than the equivalent amount of water.
So something about this whole scene is probably an exaggeration, only, there are a lot of individual exaggerations here, like where did the extra volume of milk come from, how Twilight is capable of maintaining a telekinetic lock over at the very least half a mile on an object weighing many tons… Application of this ability in much smaller amounts would be the superior save-the-day solution in many later cases, and thinking of a separate reason why she didn’t do that in each would be rather silly.
My issue with it is that it appears to be closer than Everfree should be from that point, which is still the direct vicinity of the town hall – the ursa couldn’t have moved more than a block before Twilight interrupted it…
It would look a lot less silly if Twilight actually walked with the bear to the cave and back without it, but she didn’t. Even then, the cave with the bear shouldn’t be so close to the town hall, because it would get woken up by loud parties all the time. As the cave gets further from the town and more reasonable, Twilight’s telekinesis gets less reasonable.
I don’t think I’ve seen this point before, and I suppose it is true. See Meta Four’s comment above, too.
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I remember that comic a lot better than this episode, to be honest, I haven't watched it since 2014. But why couldn't they have moved to the tower fairly soon after the end of it, when Celestia realizes they need more room?
I don't want to get into discussing unconscious tribalism, so I'll stick to the fact that Trixie definitely comes off as smug even before she starts her show, and seems to be looking down on Ponyville. To Applejack, who feels almost as strongly that Ponyville is her home and family as she does about Sweet Apple Acres, that's enough.
See previous comment about me not watching for 3 years.
Shoot, that is a lot.
I dunno, that's a slippery slope. This isn't a flashback or a story. If we start calling direct scenes exaggeration, we tread perilously close to Doylism.
I will say that Twilight appears to have zero training in combat or tactics, see her fight vs Starlight Glimmer. She usually panics when she needs to use her magic in an improvisational manner. Most of the time when applying 20 tons of force to a problem would solve the problem, there is a moral objection (strangling the sleeping dragon) or Twilight is panicking and can't think straight (fleeing from a hydra). It's not a perfect answer I know, but I prefer it to the alternative.
Kind of stumped on this one too. Maybe that was just a strange version of White Tail Woods, and the Ursas are the only monsters in an otherwise normal forest?
4529870 I think you did a fantastic analysis of Trixie's character and how things played out at the end.
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The one that appeared in the flashbacks in "Magic Duel", defaced by graffiti, right?
4530405 Yup.
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"rolled her wagon in"…in the way of a family of baby ducklings?
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Magic means you get a lot more leeway with industrialization. "Come to life spell" (for that it seems to be the Sorcerer's Apprentice's in all but name) can get you a lot of work.they're foals they don't have access to thatBut do they actually press the words? I only recall the drying-roll component…Oliver, take a note.
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I have no idea what kind of printing technology the school used, because it doesn’t properly match anything – black ink rules out spirit duplicator, color photos rules out mimeograph, which looks most like the machine that is actually on screen. And it doesn’t use magic at least for the operation…
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So when did Twilight’s parents vanish from it then? Because they aren’t there in year 1 of the series and aren’t back 1-2 years later in Amending Fences…
Well, watch it and be amazed by the Great and Powerful Trixie! No, seriously, comparing it to later appearances back-to-back is a very interesting experience.
That is also a problem…
You’d think they would come up in a later episode if so…
Found it! It's in "One Bad Apple", in the establishing shot of Sweetie Belle's home:
vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/d/d6/Sweetie_Belle_house_ext_S3E4.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/640?cb=20121126075254
Not sure if the placement matches up, but the windmill itself looks... Oh, wait. It's identical to the one from "Boast Busters", except mirrored horizontally. So Ponyville tore down the old windmill, then flipped its sprite before rebuilding?
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The old one got eaten by parasprites.
As with most of Ponyville buildings from that era, they used blueprints, rather than whiteprints – which are translucent. When rebuilding, Hard Hat made a mistake by reading the blueprint from the wrong side, and the same fate also befell the new spa building, and several other notable landmarks.
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Not sure what you mean about the parents. I assume that Twilight became Celestia's student almost a decade before the show starts. Part of Issue #40 is showing how hard it is to study and take care of a baby dragon in one tiny room. I could see the events of that comic being the catalyst that got Twilight moved into a private tower. That, or she moved there after she finished taking regular classes at the school and can't live in the dorms anymore. If the former is true, then Twilight could have been living in that tower from the age of 13 on, so maybe 8 years?
Yeah, you would. But a lot of stuff that should get brought up doesn't get brought up.
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See RTAC #1. The room Twilight starts the show in is the same room that she studies in when her parents bring in her SGU admission paperwork.
She obviously wasn’t an SGU student yet at the time. That is an apartment belonging to her family, no way around that. I.e. at the time the show starts, the “boarding school” period of her education is done, and she has the apartment to herself for the foreseeable future, because cobwebs indicate nobody came in for a year once Amending Fences rolls in. (and she probably shouldn’t open the fridge without protective spells)
In regards to where Ursas live, Tempest's backstory implies at least one must live fairly close to her old hometown. As one village very closely matching said town's building style shows up on the coast south of Equestria proper in the updated map, I think it can be assumed that they are also found down there.