Sep
30th
2017
Points of Canon: S7x20 - A Health of Information · 9:00am Sep 30th, 2017
This episode is hugely problematic. What’s worse is that it is hugely problematic and consistent in that with the support media.
It is internally problematic. It is problematic in implications. And it’s persistent in everything it is problematic in.
- Standard chronology markers: Friendship Castle, Twilicorn. Twilight’s room has the mirror first seen in A Celestial Advice, but we don’t know when did that turn up originally, so it’s not useful.
- Fridge horror scene, right off the bat: Fluttershy and Zecora are standing in a whole grove of the swamp fever trees. It’s not a solitary tree. Now, were these able to procreate by means other than infecting ponies with spores, like through infecting regular animals, this would be a far more widespread species, which ponies would have to have exterminated purely for self-preservation: later episode clearly demonstrates that secondary infections are possible and can be as dangerous as the primary one. Therefore, there was a pony village here, once. Emphasis on was. Notice this location otherwise looks nothing like Everfree, we don’t know where this place is.
- Notice that Zecora does know where the “crisscross moss” grows, which means she has narrowly avoided being infected at least once before. Lucky zebra!
“But the oxen visiting Sweet Feather Sanctuary next week will surely appreciate it! It really adds a shine to their coat.”
- This is a hard chronology lock: Sweet Feather Sanctuary, established in Fluttershy Leans In exists. So where did Starlight run off to for the entire episode? Her Mary Sue powers would have come in useful.
- Wikipedia says an “ox” is a bovine trained as a draft animal. Now, in Equish this might denote a profession, rather than being castrated. I hope. But what would they be doing in a sanctuary for wild animals – enough to make Fluttershy interested in seeking a food item that would “add a shine to their coat?!”
- Zecora’s mohawk is not rigid and falls apart on contact with water.
- Zebras have at least 20 teeth, none of which are incisors. Not a given with these people.
- Bubble cough is a symptom common to at least several diseases in Equestria, otherwise there would be no need for a chemical test to distinguish swamp fever, bubble cough would be sufficient.
- The full list of symptoms is “change of coat, coughing bubbles, shock sneezing, confusion” to culminate in turning into a tree.
- Not only Dr. Horse knows that swamp fever is a thing, but he is also able to put together the said chemical test on short notice and present a book describing the disease (although technically, it’s a parasite infection) immediately. Yet he calls it “very rare,” and Zecora has never heard about it.
- Notice that the book apparently contains no information regarding secondary infection – yet in the end of the episode Dr. Horse presents with a bubble cough himself.
- Other diseases mentioned as being cured by Mystical Mask are “hoof cough” and “fur blight.” How exactly would hoof cough work?…
- Fluttershy is surprised to see Twilight cook, which suggests she does not usually do that. At the same time, while Spike claims his cauliflower bites are superior to her sweet potato muffins, making such muffins in the first place would involve significant competence in cooking. Notice also that this scene implies that while Starlight has to exist and live in the castle (due to Sweet Feather Sanctuary existing already) she is currently not in the castle – otherwise, she would be the first second opinion that Spike and Twilight would turn to for reasons of availability.
- Notice that apparently, Twilight’s library does not contain any books mentioning swamp fever in greater detail than the one Dr. Horse used, and yet Dr. Horse had one on hoof.
- “9 by 13 inch pan…” Twilight measures pans in inches. “Non-stick pans!” Which implies PTFE, which was only discovered in 1938 in our world, and first used to coat a pan in 1954. See chemical industry.
- Spike uses a pink sleeping mask with butterfly bows this time. Last time I saw him use a sleeping mask, I think it was a different color…
- “All I had to do was cross-reference a book about masks with another book on ancient Equestrian healers, then use a third book to translate it all from Olde Ponish, and there it was!” Old Ponish is a language. Consider the fact that Crystal Empire ponies do not appear to speak it. This phrase in itself is quite problematic and worse than “Pony Latin.”
And the biggest problem of the episode:
“The Mystical Mask wasn’t just a legend. The Mystical Mask was Mage Meadowbrook!”
“The ancient sorceress from Hayseed Swamp? We studied her at Celestia’s school!”Yet, in The Cutie Map, Twilight says: “I haven’t studied Eastern unicorns as much as I should have, but I’m pretty sure Meadowbrook only had eight magical items, not nine. And I don’t remember any of them being a staff.” Both the existence of enchanted items, as well as Twilight’s statement itself would imply Meadowbrook was a unicorn. The rest of the episode, however, insists she was an earth pony. So do the Legends of Magic comics.
Notice that this also implies an earth pony can be a sorceress. Not that I have much against that as such, but the rest of the series kind of does.
- Zecora not rhyming is seen as a symptom – the “confusion” in the original list of symptoms listed by Dr. Horse. Which means that Zecora rhymes consciously, and is not, for example, cursed to rhyme.
- Shock sneezing involves sneezing out actual lightning, which singes objects.
- Hayseed Swamp is close enough to fly there directly, rather than, say, take a balloon.
- Hayseed Swamp overview shot includes one of the swamp fever trees smack in the middle of the village. Somepony was very unlucky.
- The decor of the village includes objects suspiciously resembling rubber tires, which we have never seen ponies actually use for their rubber tire properties.
- “Anypony who lives in a tree is OK by me.” Notice how few ponies are caught living in trees.
- “It looks like this place has been abandoned for years.” At most, a hundred.
- “Twilight, look! It’s the same kind of lilypad that gave Zecora Swamp Fever!” Notice that it would not last a hundred years in a jar, let alone the approximate thousand required for Meadowbrook to exist at all.
- “Oh, I take care of the place. I ain’t much of a cleaner, but from what I hear, my kin wasn’t neither. So I doubt they’d mind a few cobwebs in our ancestral home.” Actually, most of it should have rotted into dust by now, as well as Meadowbrook’s journals. Swamp climate is kind of like that.
- “‘I met a colt today. He pulled my mane, so I put a frog on his head.’ Also not helpful, but I do kinda want to see where it goes.” Actually, I would too, because this would be one canonical description of youth courtship. Pulling manes is apparently a thing, or at least, has been in ancient times.
- The flashback, once again, shows the mysterious fire crystals. Which have been annoying me for most of season 6: Earlier seasons show real fireplaces. Seeing how unreliable flashbacks have gotten over time, we don’t have enough evidence to conclude the technology is as ancient as it pretends to be.
- According to the flashback, the village is not earth pony exclusive, and contained at least one pegasus.
- “I realized the flowers’ poison didn’t affect the flash bees. And if they were immune to Swamp Fever, their honey could be the cure!” So wait. Why wouldn’t insects be immune to a parasite that obviously relies on equine physiology to work?! The entire cure is more a product of a lucky unfounded guess than any manner of sound reasoning.
- Flash bees have a regular-bee sized queen. Which is actually kind of strange.
- “Today, I cured mother and the rest of the bayou!” How exactly did ponies come by the word “bayou” remains unexplained.
- “It was the greatest feeling I’ve ever experienced, and I promise to dedicate my life to curing ponies all over Equestria!” Equestria was a thing at the time of writing.
- “I won’t risk infecting you or Cattail!” Wait. So how does Fluttershy know that secondary infections are possible?
- “Mind over matter!” Ponies have the concept, which is actually kind of unexpected.
- Fluttershy explicitly refers to The Stare as such, and treats it as a power she can consciously invoke. While she fails, this is likely because she is sick rather than for any other reason.
“We got word your zebra friend has started sproutin’ leaves.”
- Actually, how exactly did they get that word? Fluttershy has been asleep for three days, but I doubt Twilight would leave her to go back to Ponyville, and there’s nopony nearby to send for a trip to Ponyville. Cattail has been busy with trying unspeakable means to get at the honey. Is there a telegraph station somewhere nearby?
- By this point, someone would have shot the flash bee hive down off the tree in most societies, if you ask me.
- “Hooves crossed!” …Wait. How did that come about? Because crossing fingers has a known religious origin.
This would be a lovely episode if the rest of the series didn’t exist.
I figured it was somewhere in Froggy Bottom Bog. Hydras may be immune to the spores simply based on dosage levels.
They can't fit in the Ponyville day spa. Also, they could be musk oxen That does lead to a question of what brought them down from their usual, distant habitat, but the same could be asked of a lot of the Sanctuary's residents.
I'm going to disagree, at least on the basis of the comparative insufferability of the languages' names.
Magical diseases (and parasitic pollen) may have a far easier time of becoming zoonoses.
No comment on her tiny crown?
Who says she does for certain? She may just be quarantining herself as best she can while still working to atone for getting Zecora sick in the first place.
Maybe for a pegasus. Unicorn minds trump matter every day.
There are definitely some conflicts here. I think we're just going to have to go with multiple Meadowbrooks throughout history. Perhaps one was named after the other.
I'm dropping in some vigorous hand-waving I wrote up on Discord on another server last week, here:
I agree about the problematic aspects of oxen in general and in her sanctuary in particular. I really wanted to think that I'd mis-heard what Fluttershy had said, and it was actually some weird species of martin or ferret.
An earth pony 'sorceress' would require special equipment more than a vanilla unicorn would have, I would think. I can think of at least one magic system where 'sorcerers' operate via enchanted items, and don't work with intrinsic spell-type magic, which is the baliwick of 'wizards'. Not that I expected to come across this rather schematic distinction between sorcerers and wizards in *pony*, and it's still more implied than flat-out stated, so you can do what you want with that. But yeah, I can see an earth pony doing miracles with magic amulets and sticks and dagger-shoes and so forth, tool-based rather than horn-based magic.
None of that affecting the impossibility of that bayou village, and the clearly less-than 150-year-old home of Meadowbrook, who supposedly is 'ancient'. Bah. Apparently Equestria's time continua are as a-chronic as its geography is warped by emotive narration. Hayseed Swamp is a place on the canonical map of Equestria, and it's on the far side of Dodge City, on the eastern coast south of Baltimare and Horseshoe Bay. It is *not* close to Ponyville.
Finally, I'm assuming that Spike is keeping the expedition up to date on Zecora's condition via dragonfire mail. Presumably Twilight has learned Celestia's trick of returning the letters to Spike herself?
I can't believe I missed the 'Meadowbrook' reference having been used in Our Town too.
4682645
…Or boxen. The cardboard variety.
“Old Ponish” has worse consequences though.
What about apple blight then? :) You know, the one Where The Apple Lies about the apple blight.
No, it’s just a crest, and you can’t deny a queen bee has the right to look queenly.
But considering she’s been hanging out with Twilight for over a day before that, wouldn’t she have to consider Twilight infected already if infecting was possible at all?
Nope. Unicorn minds trump magic every day. Magic trumps matter in turn. Not the same thing. :)
Mage Meadowbrook and Sage Meadowbrook, hopefully.
4682654
It’s clever, but also it’s tantamount to wings. :)
Applejack did get there overland in at most a few days, though…
I’d love to see her do that, myself. I’d love any episode establishing rules for dragonfire mail in the first place. I’m never getting one, am I?
Don't know how canon it is, but IIRC official MLP RPG stated that creations of non-unicorn mages are possible but because they tend to be extremely rare it's up to DM to accept them or not.
And IIRC that such mages either need to have very rare magic item or even more rare cross-tribe special talent.
Add-link hotbutton on editor doesn't accept relative urls, irksome.
My own post, which had everything I thought Oliver wasn't going to get. Only bits seeming relevant here are
…and also sprouting leafy branches.
Still annoyed they didn't ever try it on said trees, but there's at least circumstantial evidence that it shouldn't work. (Again, one of those problems that polymorph or even turn-into-breezy might circumvent.)
https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2352/1926341932_795a87570b_b.jpg
And the rest of them are idiots and/or very lucky, for not chopping it down and not turning into trees, respectively.
Because of its magical, polymorph-inducing nature.4682645 covered.
inasmuch as Chrysalis is another datum, that may just be natural Equestrian hive-insect-queen anatomy.
4682665
My favorite fan-implementation is McPoodle's in The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville, where it's heavily implied to be a draconic DNA signature [and ONLY draconic, and how the Princesses got dragon DNA as part of their own a thing is "Another Story".]
Probably not. Did "A Royal Problem" or otherwise establish that he can't yet send to Luna?
4682876
FIENDship is Magic #5 says she got her crown in Timbucktu by melting King Orion’s, and it’s not part of her anatomy.
Nope.
Yes, well, tree-chrysalis is among the worst notions I've seen…
4682950
Just in fanfics that Celestia gets something that she's then to pass on to Luna, then (moderately implying that he can't send Luna directly)…
Earth pony Meadowbrook annoys me, because the whole reason she exists is for this Legends of Magic miniseries and the thing it's tying into, and this exact same miniseries already went to the trouble of introducing an "empire" of unicorns with clearly eastern influences and a distinct design, which I felt for sure Meadowbrook was supposed to belong to. I almost wonder if Mistmane was originally supposed to BE Meadowbrook, and someone mixed up the names at some point. I mean, she even studies magic.
Unless the finale ruins it, my working theory is that Mistmane and Mage Meadowbrook, as two ponies who existed at the same time and probably knew each other, were confused and conflated in history.
Mistmane was the eastern unicorn who had eight magical items, but that aspect of her legend was instead attributed to Meadowbrook, somehow. Meadowbrook herself was still known for her other accomplishments, but history forgot that she was a Hayseed earth pony. So people probably believed that Meadowbrook was an eastern unicorn who traveled and eventually settled down in Hayseed. And since Twilight didn't express this confusion or acknowledge the discrepency in the episode, I'm going to guess that she already learned the truth of these inaccuracies offscreen at some point between season five and now, probably as a result of a random reading session.
The chemical test was presumably for a general property like pH, rather than something specific.
Not to be confused with Beige Meadowbrook or Paige Meadowbrook.
We narrowly avoided having a Phage Meadowbrook...
Yeah, this episode had a lot of problems. One of the biggest is that Twilight Sparkle, paired with a local earth pony who knows the insects and the territory, can't defeat a swarm of bees with electricity over a 72-hour period while her friend is dying. The only explanation I can think of is that A) Twilight believes the honey or another cure could still work after the victim turns into a tree, and B) That this is the only hive anyone knows of, possibly the last one in existence. Therefore Twilight is not willing to use magic that could permanently damage the hive, and thus the last source of a cure long-term for everyone.
I really hope they either "cured" the remaining trees or burned them though, this stuff is so much more dangerous than timberwolves or cockatrices, up there with parasprites. It's practically Pony Smallpox in terms of a threat to society as a whole.
I wonder if being an "animal" is like modern gender identity thinking, where it is a matter of choice in Equestria. Certain goats, giraffes and oxen choose to identify as animal, and thus live off the land (and Fluttershy).
Also, chronology-wise, this episode has no shots of large groups of mares, or any mares in the present day that aren't close friends of Rarity that know the reason for the punk fashion trend, which makes this a good candidate for happening in the month(s) during which first Rarity and then other ponies were running around with punk manes.
4683094 Oh and I was just thinking something like this, that the CSfGU made a bunch of assumptions that Meadowbrook has to be a unicorn because she is a mage or sorceress or whatever. Is there any reason to think that Twilight doesn't think Meadowbrook is a unicorn though?
4684118
The reason is that Twilight never expresses surprise over Meadowbrook's race. Her being the Mystical Mask is a surprise, but Twilight doesn't have any dialogue to the effect of, "Wow, I thought from my studies that Meadowbrook was an eastern unicorn, but I guess I was wrong." Which she should've had. In fact, the original Meadowbrook lore isn't referenced even once in the episode.
The Doylistic reason for this is obvious (the writers don't watch the show they write for, so basic details like this are forgotten and not commented on). But from a Watsonian perspective, the only reason I can think of for Twilight to not comment on the discrepency, is for her to have already learned about it offscreen between The Cutie Map and this episode. Unless she always knew that Meadowbrook was an earth pony, but in that case, the line about eastern unicorns makes no sense in context.
4684173 The thing is, we only know Meadowbrook is an earth pony because we see the flash backs. I'm pretty sure an unicorn could wear those masks, in the same way unicorns are always wearing hats. Twilight knows Meadowbrook has an earth pony descendant, but I can't think of any time when she learns the Mystical Mask or Meadowbrook are earth ponies themselves.
4684281
Which is why she must've learned the truth of Meadowbrook's race offscreen before the episode. Because for Twilight to still believe that Meadowbrook is a unicorn, despite the flashback showing her as an earth pony, we would have to believe that the flashback is an objective, reliable view of history, showing information that the characters are not necessarily privy to. And it's not. It's really, really not. See figure A:
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/f/fc/Long_line_of_sick_ponies_at_Meadowbrook%27s_house_S7E20.png/revision/latest?cb=20170924194519
Unless we want to believe that Carrot Top, Pokey Pierce, Shoeshine, Berry Punch, and a host of other background ponies all existed in the ancient past in the time of Meadowbrook, this flashback cannot be taken as objective view of events like scenes set in the present. Season seven has done this a lot, I've noticed. Flashbacks are full of clear contradictions, most especially in the placement of background characters, and the only way most of it makes any kind of sense at all from a Watsonian perspective is if the flashback is a subjective interpretation, and full of embellishments. In this case, either Twilight or Fluttershy are imagining ponies they know in place of a random, faceless crowd, rather like how they imagined themselves as the founders in Hearth's Warming Eve.
So in essence, if this flashback is imaginary, and Twilight and/or Fluttershy are still under the notion that Meadowbrook is an eastern unicorn, why wouldn't they imagine her as one? And if it isn't imaginary, then why has half of Ponyville time traveled? Them already knowing the truth is the only thing that makes sense.
It just now occurs to me that Fluttershy’s surprising research skills aren’t something that came completely out of nowhere. Back in “Magic Duel”, when the mane five and Spike were scouring the library for anything that might explain why Trixie was suddenly more powerful, Fluttershy was the one who found the information about the Alicorn Amulet.
“Magic Duel” was also arguably the last episode to give Zecora this much screen time.
* Starlight's absence is probably because she's on vacation or something.
* Non-stick pans are probably enchanted, rather than PTFE'd.
* Twilight clearly hadn't studied Eastern Unicorns as much as she should've, or she would've known Mage Meadowbrook was an earth pony. Who apparently collected enchanted objects, even though she couldn't enchant them herself. As 4684173 notes, though, Twilight isn't surprised to hear she's an Earth Pony now; apparently she studied more after coming back from Our Town?
Okay, as 4684281 points out, maybe she didn't actually hear it; but we can probably presume she studied the diaries a lot more during those 72 hours when she was inexplicably doing nothing else in particular.
* Good to see that Zecora rhymes consciously. I'd always liked that fanon; it's nice to see it now canon.
* The swamp fever's pretty clearly magical, so as 4682645 says, I wouldn't be surprised if it affects a lot of other species rather than just ponies.
4684747 That's a larger question, I would have to say yes, flashbacks are objective, and they do give us information the characters didn't know. Ponies only have so many mane and coat combinations, so if a bunch of ponies appeared in ancient times that have the same coat and mane combination as modern ponies, I don't see that as a flaw. Heck, cutie marks repeat themselves fairly often. So I'd say Flashbacks can be taken as separate proof.
4689557
Considering the myriad other artifacts of chemical industry, like transparent sticky tape, I don’t see why non-stick pans would be enchanted when transparent sticky tape is obviously not. :)
4689588
It's more than colours, though. It's also hair styles, and sex, and race, and the fact that there's actually a lot of these lookalikes, and the fact that they all look like ponies from Ponyville specifically, and are concentrated in the same location just like them. Look at it your way if you want, but for me personally, this is where I draw the line. The coincidence factor is too high, and I simply cannot accept this flashback at face value.
But honestly, it doesn't even really matter, because (season finale spoilers) this question will be answered for us when Twilight actually meets Meadowbrook. We know she's going to encounter the legendary six in the finale, and when she does, there's only two ways she can react to Meadowbrook being a different race than she should be. Either she's surprised and comments on the discrepency in some way, in which case you would be proven right, or she isn't and doesn't, presumably because she already knew this information, in which case I would be right. And since Meadowbrook is only an earth pony in the first place because they completely forgot about the eastern unicorn thing, I can almost guarantee that it won't come up. The story won't remember these details if the writer doesn't.
4689588 4689792 I can't accept flashbacks at face value either; witness P. P. O. V. where we see flashbacks - in the same style as other flashbacks - from different ponies' perspective and see just how subjective they are.
(Also, notice how Applejack apparently trotted all the way home from Manehattan? Or Shining Armor didn't bother showing up for his LSBFF's entrance exam? And IIRC we never saw Maud when Pinkie got her cutie mark? Sure, we can explain away all these things, but...)
4689897
Flashback scenes earlier in the show are generally trustworthy, but this last season, they definitely haven't been.
4689897 The question isn't "are there logical inconsistencies in flashbacks," but rather, "are there significantly more logical inconsistencies in flashbacks than in the regular show." Shining Armor, Applejack and Maud being where they are in flashbacks are all the sort of inconsistencies we have seen in the show, and if they were outside a flashback we wouldn't call that inconsistency unreliable narrator, we would try to explain it. We need to hold flashbacks to the same standard.
4689792 Not going to come to a decision on the Season Finale until I see a version of it, I suspect you're right but we will have to wait and see.
4690087 I would agree, except that in the same manner we normally get flashbacks, we get Zecora's magic potion which would be far overpowered if it was real time travel, and then we also get P. P. O. V. which we know is unreliable. Given those, the normal inconsistencies of flashbacks suddenly become more significant.
4690087
We're in luck then. The rest of the season just leaked. I'll have an answer to my satisfaction in roughly an hour.
We can compare once you've seen it too, whenever that may be.
4690104 I'm not sure what you mean about real time travel. Zecora's potion seems to give characters the ability to see accurate flashbacks of whatever they are pointed at, which is powerful, but it does take both
darkalicorn magic to activate and apparently the.... "fluids" of creatures to form the base, so I wouldn't say it's that OP. For contrast, Trixie's spell in Season 3 actually seems like an inaccurate flashback.