Points of Canon: S7x05 - Fluttershy Leans In · 12:43pm May 6th, 2017
Considering that I’ve first seen this a week ago and only am writing it up now, your expectations for this text should not be overly high.
- Angel is training for a pet parkour competition. Pet parkour competitions are a thing.
- Fluttershy owns a previously never seen pink gramophone. Notably, the only way you can get this kind of color on something and still have it work as a gramophone involves plastics. Even then, plastics make rather sucky resonators, which would imply an electric amplifier inside…
- Fluttershy’s medicine box contains a mouse sized wheelchair, the application of which I find rather dubious. That she has specialized bunny foot braces and is out of them is rather telling.
- Rather than the town veterinarian falling back on Fluttershy, as was the usual fanon before, apparently, the reverse is more common.
- Ponyville veterinarian is one Doctor Fauna. I do wonder if mysteriously the title will end up being part of her actual name eventually.
1. I want the pony responsible found and given to Pinkie for disposal.
Beyond the usual temperate zone animals you would expect to see here, the list of animals that dropped in on Fauna includes: some species of cockatoo, a giraffe, a python, multiple koalas, a toucan, a sloth, a flamingo, and numerous others I either do not recognize or simply don’t know. What the hell they are all doing here is anyone’s guess, but by the looks of it, someone upended a zoo.1 Which is what Fauna compares her clinic to, incidentally. Fluttershy admits she was recommending Fauna to animals, but I kind of doubt rumors among them travel as far as wherever these animals normally live, and I doubt even harder that they would make the trip even if the rumors did reach them. And that fish in a coffee mug is difficult to explain in any case…
- As Fluttershy and Fauna chorus “Oh dear,” a deer crosses the screen, who later appears inside the clinic, dashing the hopes of seeing sapient deer from Friendship is Magic #27 and invalidating statements that refer to King Aspen, which actually did exist in the comic continuity. One animal-deer, rather than person-deer, is all it really takes. Gee, thanks, G.M. Berrow.
- Likewise, we see goats listed as non-sapients. Which makes me wonder who those goats that came with Iron Will in Bringing Your Hoof Down actually were. Cause those wore ties.
- Fauna should be worried that the animals randomly dropping in without an owner will eat her out of house and home, but mysteriously she does not. Is veterinarian care free somehow in Equestria? I supposed previously that Fluttershy’s day job is the forest warden for Ponyville area, and if she is one, Fauna probably bills the city for this, which would explain things…
2. And that would also explain why they don’t try to eat each other at any point…
The bear is smart enough to use a nail clipper. Which is more complicated than it sounds, because in most animals, claws contain nerves and blood vessels. Why does it even need the procedure? I’m sure someone taught him that. See the above: they have to be zoo escapees.2
- Fauna’s office has a trash can clearly meant to use with disposable plastic bags.
- So who’s paying for this animal sanctuary? The issue is never actually addressed. As far as we can tell, the practice is not part of Fluttershy’s day job, or at least not entirely, otherwise it would be unlikely to be Fluttershy’s dream – something had to have changed to make it possible when before, it wasn’t. Did she just receive some kind of charity grant or something? Notice that Twilight didn’t send an expert instead of herself. Does it mean that she’s hoofing the bill?
- Notice how both Hard Hat and Wrangler eat sandwiches by biting them straight off the plate, no doubt a habit acquired from engaging in an occupation that requires them to get their hooves dirty all the time. See Sandwich Problem.
- Fluttershy’s python is named Rupert.
- Whichever forest is picked for the location, it’s not Everfree.
- Wrangler presents a “standard sheep traveling cage.” So does this mean to say that ponies transport sapient – they talk! – sheep in those? Really?… Those allegations of sheep being enslaved sound more and more solid now.
- Dandy’s statement that the curtain fabric is organic because it has natural fibers certifies that synthetic fibers exist. Not that I doubted that before, but you can’t exactly tell with cartoon resolution.
- Pointing at the sloth, Fluttershy says “If this lady can crawl over here all the way from Western Equestria” – which would indicate that the sloth originates in the Undiscovered West, wouldn’t it?…
- The Mane 6 drink tea out of cups with obvious teabag labels hanging out of them. In our world, teabags were patented in 1903 and first commercially successful specimens date to 1908.
- So Fluttershy enlists the help of Big Daddy McColt for no observable reason…
- Rainbow Dash is capable of ramming a spike into the ground by tapping on it with her front hooves while she’s standing on top. That thing has at least a meter in diameter. And there’s no sign of a prepared hole when she does it. Magic has to be involved.
- Pinkie builds a tire swing. We have yet to have seen a rubber tire otherwise.
- Some of the trees which are now growing there are very notably out of their biome – the coconut palm tree in particular.
- Why did the fish take its mug to the water instead of ditching it, I don’t know. But I also don’t know why didn’t the thing sink, because it would.
- The final name Fluttershy gives the place is Sweet Feather Sanctuary.
You know what… This episode was one I genuinely did not like.
Unfortunately, no new squares to cross out this time, either.
Chronologically, there isn’t much to date this episode, but while the Friendship Castle does not appear, Starlight does, and the CMC have their cutie marks. This can happen at any point after The Crystalling..
Chronology project has been updated accordingly. In addition to the new episode, there’s also a new feature: Chronology tool can now programmatically handle soft constraints. That is, soft constraints are constraints which you can explicitly toggle on or off, and they can default to off and default to on. I’ve added a bunch of those into the data.
A lot of headcanons have involved Fluttershy earning a living as the town vet, or something like it, which this episode effectively squashes. At best she's more like an animal nurse, something that probably doesn't earn much of anything.
The second point raises an interesting possibility: that there might be both sapient and non-sapient versions of the same animal in the world.
Useful! I like the season markers as well.
I liked seeing a more assertive and confident, almost to the point of being aggressive, Fluttershy. Something we should have been seeing more of some time ago.
Otherwise overall the episode was amusing.
Regarding teabags, who drinks tea with the bag still in the cup? Is that a thing?
And G.M. Berrow shouldnt be allowed to pen a script.
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Lots of people. If I’m not putting lemon in tea, I’m liable to keep the tea bag in the cup myself.
That said, I very rarely, if ever, drink tea.
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That could imply non-sapient ponies, though, and that is a rather chilling possibility, for various reasons.
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Horrible, horriffic, heartless heathens.
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Confirming, I’m pretty heartless and totally incapable of empathy. :)
This is actually continuity from season one. Look at the opening sequence of Bird in the Hoof.
To add to the discussion of sapience both in the blog and in the comments, I think sapience and how sapience is treated is kind of a weird thing in MLP, because it's another case of something being wildly different than in the real world, but which we can only look at through a real-world lens.
Angel displays an incredibly wide range of complex behaviour and intelligence, enough that I think his sapience should be beyond doubt, but he's still considered an animal. Why is that? Because he can't speak Equestrian, despite being able to communicate with ponies through other means like charades? Well, then are mutes and foreign language speakers also considered "animals," whatever that might mean in Equestria? Or is it because he relies on Fluttershy to take care of him? In which case, would the disabled be considered animals by Equestrian cultural mores?
These are questions that've been embedded in the show's premise for a while, not just raised by this episode. Honestly, they're rather awkward questions, and I don't have any real answers for them. But what I'm getting at with this is that, if we want to imagine the goats or the deer as being sapient beings, and think that them being treated like animals here is wrong, or weird, or contradictory to that, then... well, I think it's worth bearing in mind that MLP is super weird about sapience and animals.
Ironically, this is the first episode of the season that I unreservedly enjoyed. I liked what it did for Fluttershy's character. She's been going through this gradual character development for a while, but this was the first time I really felt it. Her growth had tangible results for once, and I loved that.
I'd like to hear your opinion in more detail, though, just so I have a better idea of where you're coming from.
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We have seen evidence of both sapient and nonsapient horses, between the Saddle Arabians and the transmutation spell Twilight employed in "The Best Night Ever." (She must have based the new forms of the mice on something.) It doesn't seem any more disconcerting to me than humans and chimpanzees existing on the same planet.
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It’s more that it’s not consistent than it is weird…
It might be simply that I am interested in the consistency of the world outside the margins more than I am interested in Fluttershy’s behavior and character. From the viewpoint of world consistency, it was rather dumb. And echoing other comments I saw… I can’t tell what it is about, except maybe a snapshot “look, Fluttershy has grown, no, really,” which I don’t find particularly enticing.
Generally speaking, HiEs can be separated into groups based on which of the Mane 6 the human character meets first – which does say a lot about what the author would be looking for in Equestria, because every such story reflects a certain view of Equestria. Twilight and Fluttershy are the two biggest groups, and I’m solidly in the camp of the former.
I.e. it’s just me. Fluttershy is simply not what I am looking for.
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Yes, but ponies are not horses. What would the non-sapient ponies look like, anyway?
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Fair enough.
Also fair enough.
I really disliked this episode. I generally enjoy the low-stakes slice-of-life episodes where nothing really happens. I liked Applejack's Day Off and The Cart Before the Ponies. I loved Filli Vanilli. But there was zero emotional growth or conflict here. 3 obviously wrong OCs showed up, were proven wrong, and then the mission was easily accomplished without them. In The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 no one learned anything, but at least there was some minor drama and conflict. Here nothing happened. If I have to choose between episodes like this and Fluttershy learning not be shy 100 times in a row, I choose the latter.
That said, let's talk canon. To me the big take away isn't that Ponyville has a vet (we knew that from when Spike was taken to one, though that quack has been replaced by someone competent), but that Equestria has universal health care for animals, presumably paying Dr. Fauna to take care of all the animals. I think that and the sanctuary itself go a long way to confirming the idea that Fluttershy works for some level of government as the local animal control officer (though in Equestria that position seems more like diplomat), who are presumably paying for the land on the edge of the white tail woods and the materials.
I think this is actually a sequel to Fluttershy and the Fine Furry Friends Fair Angel now enjoys learning useful skills and taking part in competitions.
Two, counting the one from Filli Vanilli.
I disagree on "escapees." Remember 'May the Best Pet Win,' or those animals trained by pony Sigfried and Roy, or the animals performing tricks with Twilight in Magic Duel, or all the animals in the book I just referenced? Animals love attention from ponies, and being part of their lives. Heck, even Flim and Flam's rabbits seemed to enjoy them. I think a zoo cruel enough that its animals would escape en masse is almost as foreign to ponies as murder.
I think this is relevant to be brought up here: Remember in Too Many Pinkie Pies in Season 3, when the Mane 6 hang out in a furnished house inside a tree with lamps, shelves, and a working stove?
So apparently the "woodland critters" have some kind of furnished home in the forest. Maybe that's why Fluttershy is confident they will A)Not eat each other and B)Leave the sanctuary when they are healed instead of just living there forever?
You've never worked in government, have you Oliver? First Fluttershy ensured there was a need and a vital constituency by stuffing Fauna's house full of animals, then she took it as proof to government higher-ups (Twilight or Mayor Mare) for funding for the sanctuary she's been planning all along. (Not as part of a deliberate plot, just that's how things worked out).
Whenever we see ponies casually in the woods, my default is White Tailed Woods.
Can't disagree, just don't want to think about it too much.
And if the sloth can travel that far, all the other animals could have done so as well. Animals who can count on the Equestrian government for support feel free to roam the world outside their biome, I guess.
Helpful moles dug out the earth except for the top half-inch.
Chronologically, I think this exists after the book, which exists after Flim Flam Brothers are met for the first time, but that is superseded by Starlight anyway.
Non-sapient deer showed up as pets back in "Filli Vanilli" (another Fluttershy ep, go figure). It's just, they were in the background and easy to miss. This episode makes them and the giraffe impossible to miss.
Remember the days when, according to Faust and the other showrunners, the rule was, hooved mammals can talk, all other real animals can't, and mythological/made-up creatures are decided on a case-by-case basis? Good times.
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charactersheets.minotaur.cc/files/mlp/littlepony.jpg
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Trollestia's little student is all grown up... sniff
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Then the owner of the zoo died and they had to be let go.
I think the stove and the furnishings are Fluttershy’s early attempt to make the same kind of sanctuary.
No, we don’t have actual government out here in Obscuria. :)
No. Math:
1. A sloth’s top speed 0.76 m/s, along tree branches.
2. A sloth is asleep 15 hours a day, leaving only 9 hours for motion.
Let us assume the sloth has tree branches helpfully stretched the entire way from “Western Equestria” to here in a direct line and gets fed along the way by a helpful pony moving with her. The most distance a sloth can cover in a day in this case would be 24.6km, or 15 miles per day.
A giraffe sprints at 37mph.
There is no way in hell those animals all arrived there at the same time unless someone deliberately brought them, and don’t forget the fish.
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They had rules?
Never would have guessed!
Clearly, the rubber factories manufacture tires exclusively for use on swings. Ponies have yet to make the logical leap from "You can swing on this" to "You can stick it on a wheel to make a smoother ride".
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That sounds more likely. Like Iron Will, you probably only need one pony ringmaster and a bunch of animals to have a functioning circus. If the ringmaster died on the road, the animals would just wander off and probably find a nearby pony settlement to mooch off of.
Hmmm, I had never thought about it like that, but that does make sense.
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Are dogs and diamond dogs close enough to count as an example of this? They may not be geniuses, but they are a sapient version of a non-sapient creature.
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I think the physiological differences are rather high, considering that they’re bipedal and burrowing, which regular dogs are not…
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Okay. Then what about domestic cats (Opalescence) vs. Anugyptian cats (Baast)? They seem pretty physiologically similar.
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And Anygyptian cats don’t seem to exist anymore for some reason…
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Luvcats then? They occupy a weird middle ground. They don't speak any discernable language, but they had houses and everything.
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Dunno. But that they exist suddenly brought into my mind that chilling thought that possibly, the amount of sapience in the world is constant, and ponies are just sucking up all of it as they multiply…
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If you go by the assumption that reincarnating souls is the norm for Equestria's world (which the whole Anugypt sequence would seem to indicate), and that sapience is somehow reliant on having a particular type of soul, then that is indeed a possibility.
Seeing as Maud can live from studying Rocks (capitalizing required), Fluttershy seems to just cares for animals and Dr. Fauna treats whoever shows up at the door, I'm fairly sure there is somewhere a generic Environment Maintenance Budget that pays for all the ponies that simply monitor the planet and keep things running smoothly.
Oh gosh, I'm not a big fan of this episode either, but from a construction point of view. Fluttershy didn't give any of the three OCs a clear remit, so she was at fault too. The goats thing also confused me, but having never watched the Iron Will episode, I wasn't in a position to comment.
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4523202 I'm leaning more and more into the idea that sapient and non-sapient versions of creatures can exist. I mean, I remember seeing Diamond Dogs lope along on all fours for speed, the Anugyptian cats are another good example and Spoilers: (looks like they will be canon in the movie) Heck, even the Aramaspi is just a giant bipedal goat. Non-sapient sheep lets us overlook some of the awful implications about slavery.
I'm now willing to consider that non-sapient deer and the Deer Kingdom can both exist. This doesn't seem that different from how humans and gorillas/chimpanzees exist, we probably look more like other primates than diamond dogs look like regular dogs.
Speaking of animal sapience, another theory I've heard is that animals like Angel basically are uplifted by absorbing the pony magic of ponies like Fluttershy. It explains Angel, and why animals in general seem to see being a pet as a coveted position. Of course, that may not work for every pet, just pets of those like Fluttershy with the right cutie mark.
A final theory is that Equestria just uses Narnia rules, where a certain percentage of animals are just randomly sapient.
4523310 I mentioned earlier, given Maud's incredible powers (I would make the argument she is the most powerful earth mage alive), she needs almost nothing from the government, since she can use rocks to heat herself and eat them, so even a tiny allowance from her family pays for cloth and other sundries. I definitely agree on your point about Fluttershy and Fauna though.
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Plausible.
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I only have one issue with this theory, really: Nobody ever calls chimpanzees “humans.” These groups are linguistically highly distinct. But we have sapient cats and non-sapient cats, and both are called cats, something is fishy here.
That would explain a lot, actually. Zipporwhil is probably going to manifest the same kind of power, eventually…
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That is true. Of course, "cats" can refer to lynxes, leopards, ocelots, as well as domestic cats, so in Equestria it could also refer to Felis Catus Sapien. Like "apes" could refer to us or other types of primates. And of course, "Diamond" is a linguistic separator from the regular "dog."
Probably. I'm already picturing the CMC having to help Zipporwhil through the loss of her dog and getting a new puppy so her cutie mark can continue to function.
Watched. Episode, OP replies.
❧I expect Oliver to pause any shot with the animals on display…yup: :applesmug:
Koalas exist,❧Giraffes, though ungulates, are not sapient-class citizens.
❧Butler-snake Rupert is…acceptable?
❧
"Western Equestria"Covered.❧AJ digs with a hoof. Y'know, the thing Zecora did making them all scared. Which I watched in advance, and boy is that a motherlode episode.
❧and Fluttershy and Lola Fauna, DVM can afford eucalyptus. With the sanctuary project, it's not really any extra presumption, though, so…the main point?
❧$$$ Fluttershy is loaded. She can afford to build this sanctuary twice.
I heard "pawkour".
…I am not familiar with disposable braces?? It's very odd. About as telling is the facility with which Angel moves on those crutches; that requires a fair bit of practice…wait.
Crutches.
That requires a fairly good one-handed grasp. But I suppose so did the monkey-bar-style climbing in the pawkour course.
Comment replies.
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Iron Will's goats bleated, rather than speaking Equestrian, suggesting they're animal-class.
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G3
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damn, knew I forgot to write somethought down. That's that answered, I guess.
They've rabbits?
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Yeah, that giraffe is pretty plainly-…actually, using a vet doesn't necessarily imply "animal"-class status, I guess, and could just be silent…use of the sanctuary suggests else.
I suspect we're overthinking it, and it's a less-important distinction than we're implying. Ponies never had to distinguish themselves from animals in order to support a religion telling them to exploit the world? So the sapience distinction is fuzzier, and so are the rules about it…and the emphasis on sanctity of mind, with it not being What Makes Ponies Special, is less, so mind-control? No biggy. Cutie-mark removal? HOLY FEWMETS WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU
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Yeah, bugged me nopony called her on that, even if they didn't do anything she said…that Definitely Wasn't a Blueprint.
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That has a problem with one of the standard uses of Speak with Animals, that of "Did pony X come by here?" but I haven't seen her use that…and it's supported by the Palace Garden animals utterly not connecting, because she has to expose them to it for a while.
But it's knocked down by the cockatrice listening to her? …it's been forever since she Stared anything.
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Only, that’s the problem: Cutie mark removal is also forgivable, far easier than it should be.
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"Equestria would be in a destroyed future otherwise" is a bit of a big entry on one side of that ledger, methinks. Tirek lacked such a bribe. Twilight …oh. Hmm. That does require some explaining…
4532314 It's from a chapter book. Fluttershy and the Furry Friends or something.