Points of Canon: S4x11 - Three’s A Crowd

Right, a Discord episode… Discord episodes typically don’t give us a lot, because he is Discord, and thus hardly indicative of anything, but this one is a bit different.

• Spike brings in the mail from a mailbox outside the library. Cartoon resolution: This mailbox does not appear in any other episode that I remember.
• At least one of Twilight’s envelopes is a transparent window envelope, which is particularly amusing, considering that the next one, the one from Cadance, is sealed with wax.
• Considering that Cadance replies by regular mail, I suspect this is evidence that she cannot use dragonfire mail. As a side note, here’s something I remembered from the ill-fated “show bible”: The other endpoint for dragonfire mail was supposed to be Celestia’s fireplace, and throughout Season 1, this was always where Celestia was when reading Twilight’s letters – despite the scene in the opening animation, where she receives the letter while sitting on the throne.
• Twilight flies and uses her wings for gesticulation, something she did not do for most of the previous episodes.
• “I’m finally gonna get to spend some quality time with my sister-in-law!” Twilight did not have such an opportunity for a substantial time – I would guess, months.
• Fluttershy plucks the letter she shows to Twilight out of thin air, implying a saddlebag invisible due to cartoon resolution.

• “The Equestrian Society for the Preservation of Rare Creatures have given me permission to observe the rarest, tiniest, most adorable magical creatures in all of Equestria … the Breezies!” The first ever mention of breezies.

  • Equestria has a Society for the Preservation of Rare Creatures, which, being called a society, is nevertheless empowered to deny or permit interacting with said creatures. I wonder how does that work.
  • Is Fluttershy acting as an amateur in this situation, or is it somehow part of her job? Because I think it could be.
  • Just where would she observe them? Breezies have a separate portal-accessible realm of their own… Fluttershy leaves on a train, so at least it’s not next door, but we have no idea where would it be going.
• “It’s a flyer about a one-day sale on used patio furniture!” Sales are a thing. And this time, Pinkie tore the library door off the hinges.
• Notice that the portrait of Star Swirl on the poster for the “Star Swirl the Bearded Traveling Museum” has his coat color as white. This repeats on the actual museum logo later on. The Star Swirl that finally appears in Shadow Play is distinctly gray. And you can’t explain this away by saying they didn’t have gray paint when printing this poster, because this white is shaded gray. Notice that if the Legends of Magic mini-series is to be believed, he was rather fond of (accurate) drawings of himself, since these legends contain a lot of them.
• Closely investigating the train conductor’s pocket watch, we can clearly see it marked up with hours, 1 to 12, and showing 5 sharp – presumably PM, so it’s 17:00. That’s both kinda late and strangely early. See RTAC #13.
• “Well, the last three times we’ve seen each other haven’t exactly been worry-free.” Which weakly implies that we have seen all the recent encounters between Twilight Cadance on screen – going backwards, these would have to be Equestria Girls, the coronation in Magical Mystery Cure, and Games Ponies Play. And if it’s not Equestria Girls, then it is The Crystal Empire.

• “For one day only, right here in Ponyville, the Star Swirl the Bearded Traveling Museum! Cadance and I can spend the whole day looking at Star Swirl the Bearded artifacts!”

  • Why is it for one day only? Setting up and wrapping back up is the biggest expense in such an establishment, you wouldn’t want to do that too often.
  • Multiple artifacts related to Star Swirl are believed to exist.
• “Not counting the drama surrounding which of the bells from his cloak they’ve chosen to put on display. Spoiler alert: it’s this one!” Which is a strange phrase: The poster does not depict Star Swirl’s cloak at all, and Twilight points at “this one” rather indistinctly. As a side note, in Shadow Play, all the bells on Star Swirl’s cloak are accounted for, and match Twilight’s costume in Luna Eclipsed exactly.
• Rainbow makes a show of gagging. She has clearly heard Twilight fangirl over Star Swirl one too many times by now.
• Cadance has her own train, which we never see again. Almost entirely crystal, emitting rather unusual pink smoke, clearly built for much higher speeds where air resistance matters, and with two Crystal Empire flags on top.
• So who plays the trumpets? They have flags with the Crystal Heart (or Cadance’s cutie mark) on them, so they had to have come with the train. However, they are shown on the background of clear sky. None of the train doors are open to let the trumpet players out when this happens, all the roofs on the train cars are in place, and the players themselves are nowhere to be seen. Are they hiding in the caboose?
• One of the guards flanking Cadance is a crystal guard – wearing the distinctive Crystal Guard armor, currently in a crystal state, and also, he’s the first crystal pegasus to show up on screen. Even Equestria Girls, where the Crystal Guard first appear, only features crystal earth ponies. The other guard is Flash Sentry, wearing Royal Guard armor. This actually suggests a political conundrum, see RTAC #12.
• As far as we can tell, according to protocol, princesses are supposed to address each other with “Your Highness” and bow to each other. Cadance breaks it immediately, but not before giving us a glimpse.
• Contrary to the usual, Discord doesn’t just appear. He flies in, in the manner of a thrown disc.
• One of the houses in the background floats away as Discord sneezes. Nobody notices.
• “Could somebody find me a fainting couch?” Everypony looks at Rarity, who obviously does not want to part with hers. Wouldn’t that imply that she can be expected to produce a couch out of thin air? We never really find out just how does she manipulate the one she typically uses.
• “How charming, thank you.” Pinkie stacks up luggage for Discord to rest on. Notice that none of the remaining ponies are leaving. This isn’t their luggage.
• “Well, she told me about it in her last letter.” Nobody contradicts this later, so I guess we can assume that Fluttershy and Discord do write each other letters at this point in their relationship – but notice, Discord knew about the trip to see the breezies from a letter, not from personal contact. It follows that the regular tea parties with Fluttershy are not yet a thing as of this episode. Because Discord ends up being nursed for an extended period in her cottage, I expect this is how they started.
• And mail somehow gets into Discord’s pocket space, but we do see it in Make New Friends And Keep Discord.
• Discord sneezes, which ruins the second streetlight in Ponyville that I remember. Ponyville only has a handful of those.
• “I was born on a Tuesday-” This information is more or less useless for us – Pinkie can invent more or less anything, anyway – but at least, Tuesdays exist.
• “Who keeps throwing away these perfectly good balloons?” Considering that this is indeed the second balloon Pinkie meets since Fluttershy left, can we think the first one was also Discord’s doing? I think we can, but that would mean he can observe more or less any events unseen and can actually manage to stay quiet and not do anything chaotic at least for several minutes.
• The traveling museum has mysteriously enticed 7 (!) ponies to wear Star Swirl costumes of varying levels of detail and verisimilitude, not counting Twilight herself.
• I wonder what the hell buckets of apples are doing in the plaza where the museum is set up. In fact, it looks more like a street market with occasionally interspersed exhibits. What’s going on here?
• “Is that the candlestick he used to light the way when he was exploring the caverns of Maretania?” We do not know if “Maretania” and “Maretonia” are the same, but you’d think they are. In any case, a candlestick surviving for well over a thousand years?…
• Notice that the candle holder has a finger loop.
• Twilight does not wonder what happened to the “candlestick” once Discord has appeared in its place.
• “Blue flu.” As a side note, Meadowbrook cures blue flu in Legends of Magic #6. It does involve coloring ponies blue.
• “Ah, I fear I’ve already given it to poor Applejack and Rarity.” Notice that he did not say he gave it to Rainbow. Even though he sneezed on her first.
• “Magic health bubble.” Cadance knows a protection-from-infection-shield spell. This is one of the very rare cases where she casts anything specific. It appears to work by repelling anything that it considers a source of infection – namely, Discord actually leans on it, but later on, the surface of the shield intersects with the bed without repelling it.
• “Some codfish oil for my chest, Poured from a crystal cruet” “A crystal cruet?” Notice that Twilight asks about the crystal cruet, rather than the codfish oil. I am pretty sure Discord means cod liver oil, which would involve killing the fish. But we saw ponies eat fish at least once, so that’s probably acceptable. If ponies do use cod liver oil for medicinal purposes, they require vitamins A and D. Which is kind of expected, but not actually a given.
• “And pastries from Abyssinia” Which is the first ever mention of Abyssinia in primary canon, later expanded on in comics, particularly the Movie Prequel mini-series. Abyssinian cats make pastries!
• “With stacks of Swiss way up high” There’s little doubt ponies have Swiss cheese, but what would be the etymology of the word, I have no idea.
• “Served with sides of sweet mince pie” That would be griffon food, wouldn’t it. Notice that this fails to shock Twilight in any way.
• “Some magic spell to cure disease” The Harry Potter reference is blindingly obvious.
• “A firm ‘gesundhoof’ when I sneeze” Notice that both Rainbow Dash and Rarity say “gesundheit” on screen, in May The Best Pet Win and in Saddle Row Review respectively. This is actually strange: Why insert a horse pun into a word which ponies normally use without?
• “Take tweezers out of my valise” This one is serious: Whichever human world Discord has or had access to, had a 9/11 terrorist attack and the accompanying security theater panic. While the scene is staffed by ponies, it depicts an airport security check. While ponies could, in theory, have airports and security checks – they do have airships – prohibiting tweezers on board would be far more ridiculous for them than it is for us, considering the energy output of a typical pony.
• “I wish I may, I wish I might” Discord is rubbing an oil lamp – the kind typically depicted when telling the story of Aladdin.
• “Me that tiny glass of water?!!” And the last frames have him imitating the iconic He-Man scene by the power of Grayskull, to proceed into a scene of dropping a bucket of water on himself which I can only identify with “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.” – though that probably isn’t where it is originally from.
• “How did you even catch this flu?” Discord admits he did not in the end, but I wonder, were Rarity and Applejack actually sick or not? They aren’t the next time they appear, but…

• “On a hill at the very edge of Equestria, there grows an exquisite magic flower. Pick the flower as it drops its petals at sunset. Then you can make a magical soothing elixir to cure the blue flu.”

  • Equestria has an edge.
  • This does not appear to be the method Meadowbrook used in Salt Lick City in Legends of Magic #6 – if only because that is pretty far from Equestria’s edges and no gigantic flower petals seem to be involved.
• Twilight and Cadance pull Discord in a chariot. Notably, this one has no wheels whatsoever. This is Discord, of course, so all bets are off, but I’m thinking that wheels are not actually required for a pegasus-driven air chariot. Somepony should have told Trixie that she should have found pegasus drivers for her sled. In any case, both of them are running on the air while flapping their wings, just like almost all other cases of pegasus-pulled chariots.
• “To be honest, I’m a little out of practice when it comes to flying.” A bit strange when you consider that her chapter book says she was born a pegasus.
• “It’s just at the top of that hill.” But it’s not a hill, it’s a cliff.
• The tatzlwurm actually jumped out of the ground to get at Cadance, and she managed to keep it aloft by her wings alone until Twilight could interfere. Notice that Twilight does not have that much lifting power in her wings and cannot lift the tatzlwurm.
• Cadance telekinetically lifts stones weighing at least a 20 metric tons. A more specific size estimate is difficult because of their shape.
• “Well, I was in my thinking tree… that’s where I do most of my really deep thinking…” Discord never again refers to that hypothetical tree and we never see the actual thing. Mind you, it’s probable he’s trying to never think in the same place twice.
• “I don’t even know where you li-” At this point, Twilight does not know where Discord lives and how to get there.
• Discord can actually get sick.
• Twilight finishes the episode with writing in the Friendship Journal. Since she is doing it in Fluttershy’s cottage while nursing Discord, there is no available break between the episode and the Journal record longer than however long would it be required for Fluttershy to return. The record does not happen immediately, however.
• Discord is isolated in an interesting bubble with a sleeve for interacting with him, which seems to be the equivalent of a containment cabinet. Since no obvious means of feeding the subject seems to be available, I think it’s a magical containment method, rather than a piece of technology.

Discord starts laying references to a human world thicker than ever from this episode onwards. Notice that he references very specific cultural phenomena and artifacts, most of which seem to be confined to late XX century, only slipping further into early XXI century by a few years. See my cute Hypothesis #3 regarding it. In any case, his references tell us it’s a rather specific kind of human world where all of these are a thing: Worlds where 9/11 happened would be very different from ones where it didn’t.

Comments

[Mitch H]

proceed into a scene of dropping a bucket of water on himself which I can only identify with “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.” 

The bucket thing is, I think, a reference to the romantic drama about stripping in Pittsburgh, Flashdance.

[Oliver]

4715191

Probably. But like I mentioned multiple times, my context does not match more or less anyone, so that was what I remembered. :)

[Mitch H]

4715192
Looking at the Elvira clip, it looks like a combination of references to Carrie and the aforementioned Flashdance. I'm more familiar with the latter, because Pittsburgh's a pretty provincial town, and everybody always made a big deal of of movies set or shot in the hometown.

[FanOfMostEverything]

I figured Fluttershy would be seeing the Breezies on an earlier stretch of their same pollen run as the one they're on in "It Ain't Easy Being Breezies."

Discord sneezes, which ruins the second streetlight in Ponyville that I remember. Ponyville only has a handful of those.

I think the streetlight would object to the idea that it was ruined.

“Ah, I fear I’ve already given it to poor Applejack and Rarity.” Notice that he did not say he gave it to Rainbow. Even though he sneezed on her first.

She's already blue. She's clearly immune.

And the last frames have him imitating the iconic He-Man scene by the power of Grayskull, to proceed into a scene of dropping a bucket of water on himself which I can only identify with “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.” – though that probably isn’t where it is originally from.

Try the first Star Wars movie poster, followed by Flashdance.

This does not appear to be the method Meadowbrook used in Salt Lick City in Legends of Magic #6

Given that this is a fabricated strain of the flu, that doesn't surprise me.

[Oliver]

4715198

I figured Fluttershy would be seeing the Breezies on an earlier stretch of their same pollen run as the one they’re on in “It Ain’t Easy Being Breezies.”

Plausible.

I think the streetlight would object to the idea that it was ruined.

Let’s chase it down and ask? It couldn’t have gotten very far.

She’s already blue. She’s clearly immune.

Legends of Magic #6 has a pony who already was blue catch the Blue Flu. He was radically annoyed at being the wrong shade of blue.

Try the first Star Wars movie poster, followed by Flashdance.

I did think of the Star Wars poster. I don’t think they match that well, but maybe that’s just me.

[Comnislasher]

all the bells on Star Swirl’s cloak are accounted for,

He owns more that one cloak?

In any case, a candlestick surviving for well over a thousand years?…

Stasis spell or they just replace the candlestick?

Equestria has an edge.

IMO just a figurative expression. Like some of my coworkers when spending holidays in some remote location tend to say that they been on "edge of the known world".

[Oliver]

4715219

He owns more that one cloak?

Maybe, but why is there a question which bell is it, then?

Stassi spell or they just replace the candlestick?

Then it’s not the same candlestick.

The whole traveling museum is very strange.

IMO just a figurative expression. Like some of my coworkers when spending holidays in some remote location tend to say that they been on “edge of the known world”.

Of course, the known world has an edge because it is surrounded by the unknown world, isn’t it?

There is that constant ambiguity: Sometimes, the word “Equestria” seems to refer only to the land of ponies. At other times, it is at least the entire continent, which is sensible, considering that “America” is a continent, but we usually mean the United States of America. But occasionally, it seems to apply to the entire world.

Most Season 4 episodes seem to use either the first or the second, while earlier seasons had the third happen more often.

[Eruantalon]

“To be honest, I’m a little out of practice when it comes to flying.” A bit strange when you consider that her chapter book says she was born a pegasus.

Apparently she's been busy with princess duties. Or, maybe she's trying not to seem out of place from her subjects and even scare them by looming overhead.

This is actually strange: Why insert a horse pun into a word which ponies normally use without?

It's Discord. He's lampooning it.

This one is serious: Whichever human world Discord has or had access to, had a 9/11 terrorist attack and the accompanying security theater panic.

And Equestria Girls, as far as we can tell from the utter lack of a reaction to several terrorist incidents at the local high school, hasn't. Either Discord is looking into another human world, or he's acquired Pinkie's skill at breaking the fourth wall.

[Comnislasher]

4715224

Then it’s not the same candlestick.

Well, no one beside this museum workers knows if that is the same candlestick or not. Who knows, maybe this candleholder like Theseus ship? :)

[Oliver]

4715236

Maybe. But you’d think Twilight would be the one to catch them, if so, if she even knows which bell is it.

[Comnislasher]

4715237
Well, unless her knowledge about that bell also come from this unethical museum workers :).

[howard035]

Quite an interesting episode.

“Well, the last three times we’ve seen each other haven’t exactly been worry-free.”

I would go the opposite, and say this suggests the episode happened before the coronation, since that would be basically worry-free, but they do the full Princess greeting, so probably happened post-coronation.

“The Equestrian Society for the Preservation of Rare Creatures have given me permission to observe the rarest, tiniest, most adorable magical creatures in all of Equestria … the Breezies!” 

Not sure how, but I felt like Discord somehow manipulated this society into giving Fluttershy permission on this day so she wouldn't be around to witness him be a jerk. But the subtlety required would not fit him.

Also, makes sense that Fluttershy's role as warden of the Everfree/Ponyville animal control officer would have a training budget.

I would guess the Crystal Guard are now the local law enforcement of the Crystal Empire, and Flash is an aid-de-camp on secondment from the Royal Guard so Shining Armor could have a pony he really trusted as his wife's bodyguard.

Meadowbrook could have had that rare magical flower available in her giant wagon of cures.

Most importantly: What was missing from the Starswirl the Bearded traveling history museum? Any and all books! Shadow Lock strikes again!

4715229 Yeah, considering the complete lack of government ID documents Sunset Shimmer gets away with, I think Equestria Girls never had a 9/11.

[Eruantalon]

I would go the opposite, and say this suggests the episode happened before the coronation, since that would be basically worry-free, but they do the full Princess greeting, so probably happened post-coronation.

Maybe. Twilight could still have been worrying at her own coronation. But if you're right, that means there're two more worry-filled meetings since the coronation that we haven't seen onscreen!

[Oliver]

4715394

I would go the opposite, and say this suggests the episode happened before the coronation, since that would be basically worry-free, but they do the full Princess greeting, so probably happened post-coronation.

…Have you never gotten nervous before public appearances where you have to receive an award? Because I have.

Most importantly: What was missing from the Starswirl the Bearded traveling history museum? Any and all books! Shadow Lock strikes again!

Good catch. They had hats, t-shirts, but not books.

[hawthornbunny]

Equestria has a Society for the Preservation of Rare Creatures, which, being called a society, is nevertheless empowered to deny or permit interacting with said creatures. I wonder how does that work.

I assume they're something like the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which runs a number of nature reserves in the UK.