Points of Canon: Friendship Games

This, and The Fall of Sunset Shimmer, should be enough for that RTAC, I think… There’s very little pony in here, and Pedestria is generally not my focus unless it touches on the Equestrian events, so you can see I’m probably not as enthusiastic about it as I could be – the minute details of the life of Pedestrian children do not interest me anywhere as much.

Still, there are some key points of lore in this one.

• Let’s start with the chronology: From Princess Twilight directly referencing the events of The Cutie Re-Mark as she appears, we know this movie immediately follows that episode – probably, stuck very close to the beginning of the end-of-season-Starlight-having-fun montage, since Twilight knows it’s urgent and would leave the first chance she could leave Starlight unattended. This is important, because…
• Where did those leaves that Sunset stirs up come from? If it’s still autumn of the Humane 6’s third year in school, the temporal gradient is still wobbly despite a permanent portal: at least one winter occurs between Rainbow Rocks and The Cutie Re-Mark in Equestria. The leaves look green, so it’s more likely someone has been trimming bushes and didn’t clean up, in which case it’s actually spring of the third year in school. Which doesn’t excuse the temporal gradient from being wonky anyway.
• The fashion for long boots with platform heels seems to be dwindling: Sunset’s boots are short and in fact, suit her much better. For that matter, Sunset’s jacket is also new: the pattern of the buttons on it is different and it has orange decorations on the sleeves that the previous one did not.
• “Well, Sunset, I was just tellin’ Rainbow Dash here that a broken guitar string doesn’t really qualify as an emergency.” Either Rainbow managed to break a bass string – the thickest and strongest string on a 6-string guitar – or she has her strings in a reverse order like McCartney and is therefore left-handed. She definitely doesn’t play left-handed, though, so I wonder how in blazes did she manage to break the thickest string while the thinnest one, which is the one Sunset is most likely to have a spare for, survived.
• “But everyone finished practicing for the day. I’m pretty sure all the music rooms are locked.” CHS has multiple music rooms.
• “The acoustics in the hallway are perfect for power chords.” What should worry Rainbow is whether she will have an amp. And yes, Pedestrian guitars have and require amps, see Rainbow Rocks.
• Pedestrian Twilight approaches the portal, puts a hand on it, and it reacts. We know it only does this when it’s open – see Equestria Girls. There’s no mention at all anyone actually opens it at regular intervals or otherwise controls it, even though it should, in theory, depend on the machine in the Friendship Castle being turned on. Therefore, the portal is normally open, and anyone could have stumbled through it by accident between Rainbow Rocks and Friendship Games – or at any other time the mirror has been open naturally. The only reason Twilight didn’t stumble through it this time is that Sunset interrupted her. I expect that you don’t just fall through and need to apply some kind of pressure to come through, otherwise accidents would be very frequent.
• As Twilight runs away on a bus, we get a rare shot of the view to the right (when looking at CHS front lawn) and we see buildings that are at least 20 floors tall on the horizon, suggesting that Canterlot High is located in a suburb of a medium-sized metropolitan city. This is further supported by later discussion: “Why would anyone take a bus all the way from the city for that?”
• Notice that Twilight’s lab is at the Crystal Prep, rather than in her home. That is, the school lets her have this space, apparently, all to herself. And Spike, who is explicitly against the rules that Twilight ignores.
• Since Equestria Girls, CHS Library had its computers upgraded: They were beige before, now they’re black.
• “Because the Crystal Prep Shadowbolts are our biggest rivals?” You mean only rivals? No other school appears to participate in the Friendship Games…

• “Because even though they beat us in everything… soccer, tennis, golf… they still have to gloat!”

  • Friendship Games competitions four years ago included golf. Doing it in any sensible way would require a golf course…
  • Defacing the horse statue by dressing it up seems to be a tradition. You’d think someone would fall through the portal accidentally while doing that if the cycles ever overlapped…
• “Seems kinda silly to me.” “Silly?!” “So I guess you think the Friendship Games are silly, too.” Notice that Sunset knew about the Friendship Games, but did not know about the CHS/CPA rivalry, necessitating this entire scene – but everyone else did, and unlike Sunset, cared.
  Now riddle me this: How is this at all possible? To win at least three crowns by Equestria Girls, she would require to have spent at least two years in this school. Being a “high school” would involve teaching students for four years, in the US, the last stretch of K-12, so if any long-term rivalry tradition is to be maintained, this would require them to have Friendship Games every two years. Now, there are CMC and Diamond Tiara / Silver Spoon at the school, so maybe it is an escalator school of some kind, encompassing both middle school and high school levels despite the name. That would permit the Humane 5 to have participated in or observed the Friendship Games held at the stated interval of four years. We see way too few younger children for this to be the case, but okay. But there’s still that freshman year yearbook, so they were there, but weren’t friends before then?… Or were they?
  In any case, this puts a time limit on the amount of time Sunset was at CHS: She can’t have observed the previous Friendship Games. The Humane 5, however, might have. If Sunset turned up in Pedestria earlier than four years before this movie, this time was spent far away from CHS, which is important for settling the issues of temporal gradient.
• “As I am sure you all know, tomorrow, Canterlot High School will be hosting our fellow students from Crystal Prep Academy as we join together in the spirit of excellence, sportsmanship, and fidelity to compete in the Friendship Games. Since the games only happen every four years, I’m sure you’re all curious what goes on.” See above.
• “And I know that CHS has never won the Friendship Games even once.” A statement nobody refutes. Notice that this would involve Friendship Games happening at least twice before.
• “We’ve fought magic more than once” The current crop of CHS students have learned to live with this knowledge, Rainbow’s song is rife with the references, she ponies up and flies, and nobody tries to treat it as a hallucination. I pity their parents, they have to pretend everything is normal and probably still do.
• “Well, it would be nice if you girls could get a handle on it. We’d like to keep magic as far away from the Friendship Games as possible. We don’t want to be accused of cheating.” Luna, and presumably Celestia, just roll with it. Notice again that the primary concern regarding application of magic is that it will be seen as cheating, rather than anything else.
• “Sunset Shimmer, you came here from a world of magic.” Well, there’s no question Luna knows this now, but I wonder when exactly did she learn about it.
• “They won’t even let us see what they’re doin’ to the field. You think they’d at least tell competitors what they’re competing in.” Actually, that’s quite strange.
• “I really wanna help, but I think I better go focus on figuring out why Rainbow Dash ponied up. See ya later!” Notice that Sunset’s figuring out revolves around studying books from the CHS library. I really wonder just which ones would be applicable at all, because looking at the illustrations, they don’t appear to be books about any occult tradition I’m aware of – those typically don’t include graphs and pie charts. And neither do psychology books, most of the time.
• I mentioned this before in Rainbow Rocks and I’ll say it again: Pretty much no CPA students and affiliated characters have the crystal pony hair. Cadance does. Abacus Cinch does not. As a side note… Principal Celestia has the crystal pony gradient in her hair, same way that Princess Celestia does, but neither iteration of Luna has it.
• The logos used for the games subsequently are the C-shaped horseshoe for Canterlot High School, and an S with a wing that looks kind of an apostrophe for Crystal Preparatory Academy. Notice there’s only one S in the latter, and it’s not even an initial. Now, these probably stand for the sports teams of “Wondercolts” and “Shadowbolts” respectively, but I can’t help but think that S is for Sombra.
• “If I can collect enough data on these EM frequencies, I should be able to extrapolate the waveforms to determine their origin.” Whatever the physical basis of magic is, Twilight’s device detects the resulting electromagnetic noise. Which would actually explain why ponies have no broadcast radio: If just about everything around is magical and pollutes the spectrum with noise, they wouldn’t consider high frequency radio to be viable at all. It would also hinder the development of radio astronomy – that starts with 300 MHz and goes up from there.

• “But Principal Cinch is highly allergic, so I suggest you put on a clean shirt.”

  • Cinch is allergic to dogs. Notice that we don’t see her show any symptoms, even though Spike turns up pretty close at multiple points.
  • We don’t see Twilight actually follow this advice either, do we?

• “As an alumni, Principal Cinch thought he could provide some unique perspective.”

  • Shining Armor is an alumnus of CPA.
  • Cadance doesn’t know that “alumni” is plural.
• “You competed in the games, did you not, Shining Armor?” He did, though I wonder whether this was four years ago, or eight.
• “It seems Canterlot High is undergoing something of a renaissance. Test scores are up, grades, even athletics are on the rise.” A statement nobody disputes.
• “In return for contributing your agile mind to these games, I will use my influence to guarantee your application is approved. Though, I suppose I could also have it… denied. What do you think I should do?” Check for recording devices, because this going public would be a hard blow to that reputation regardless of how legal this might turn out to be.
• Notice also that Twilight is already planning a school transfer – While they’re calling it “Everton Independent Study Program,” Everton would still be a school, if an unorthodox one, or at least, would get Twilight out of attending this one. Cadance says, “But there aren’t any classrooms with other students. You’ll be doing everything on your own.” – but no kind of university-level program would be like that. Which is why it can’t be fourth year of high school for the Humane 6, it still has to be the third.
• “Vice Principal Luna can help your students get settled if you’d like me to show you around, Principal Cinch. There have been quite a few changes since your last visit.” Cinch has been to the CHS before, presumably, at the previous Friendship Games.
• “Hi, Twilight.” Everyone recognizes Twilight – expecting her to be Princess Twilight – but nobody wonders why is she here or stops her to inquire, and even Flash only inquires at all when she bumps into him and can walk no more. Did they honestly expect Princess Twilight would help them cheat by using magic or something?
• “Uh, Rarity, these outfits are great, but why would you put so much time and effort into clothes we might not even wear?” Like the mutated British policewoman costume that Rainbow is wearing.
• Draining magic out of Rarity quickly results in her fainting, and I do wonder why, because there’s no way her metabolism is dependent on it.

• This dialog is strange. So what does Celestia actually believe happened and how much does she know?

  Principal Celestia: I didn’t know Twilight had a twin sister.
  Pinkie Pie: She doesn’t! That Twilight is obviously the Twilight from this world since it couldn’t possibly be the Twilight from the pony world since the Twilight from the pony world doesn’t go to Crystal Prep or wear glasses.
  Principal Celestia: Nevermind.

  Nevermind indeed.

• “Magic came into this world when I stole Twilight’s crown.” So neither the Communication Journal nor the Sirens count?…
• “Maybe there’s another way I could reach her.” Sunset seriously considers coming back just to poke Princess Twilight. An interesting question is why didn’t she try to do this earlier, the option has clearly always been there. And the effect that Pedestrian Twilight’s device is having on the portal is quite bizarre, because it drains Sunset’s magic as she tries to put her hand on the portal, but not before – and it does it directly through the base of the statue, when previously, magic drained out of Rarity took the path of least resistance and flowed out through a half-open door. And it results in the portal not working, rather than any specific damage to Sunset. It’s almost like the device tried to drain Sunset, but the portal shielded her. What actually happened here, and are Starlight’s temporal shenanigans on the other side responsible?
• “It’s sort of a spectrometer. I built it to track EM frequencies, but it can also contain anomalies.” I really wonder how do you go from a spectrometer to containing anomalies. Is this “containing anomalies” something Twilight knows she built into the device, or just a result of her observation on what it actually ends up doing? The tone of her voice sounds to me like it might be the latter.
• “Oh. I am party pooped.” Notice that Pinkie also faints, like Rarity, upon her magic being drained, when Sunset didn’t.
• The first hole opens up as a result of a spark emitted by Twilight’s device. Something that looks like Everfree is on the other side. Why is it always the Everfree?
• “I’m sure you’re all thrilled to start the first day of the Friendship Games.” Friendship Games is a multi-day event.

• 1. Or whatever is the proper term. Which is apparently more important in Pedestria than in current US…

  “Welcome to the first event, the Academic Decathlon! You’ll be scored on chemistry, home-ec and everything in between.” The actual competitions shown are, in order: Chemistry, Home Economics, Shop class¹, Spelling Bee, and a geometry puzzle dancing around triangle derivation. Being a decathlon, it would logically involve ten different academic subjects, but we only saw five, and I expect more written tests didn’t make it because they wouldn’t look cool on camera.

• Look at Lyra. Look at Lyra’s birdhouse. The fanon is leaking.
• “But we didn’t win!” “That was as close to winnin’ as Canterlot’s ever been.” Actually, considering that the moment it is uttered is the aforementioned geometry puzzle, and Sunset gives an incorrect answer, I’m not sure that Sunset even got her team a point – unless she got the points in all the other competitions which we did not see. I’m not about to check the math on those solutions, since it would involve reconstructing the blackboards from multiple shots and I don’t think it’s that important, but I have a hunch there’s something devious hidden in there. Did someone else do that already?

• Draining Fluttershy results in:

  • A fainted Fluttershy.
  • At least four individual portals opening, looped together in a strange pattern.
  • A jackalope. This is not the first time one turns up, so yes, they’re definitely a real animal in Equestria.
• “Spike, are you okay?” “Um, I think so.” The reason why this experience results in the Pedestrian Spike talking escapes me entirely, but I’m sure it means we’re not in Kansas anymore. Notice that this reason escapes Spike as well: “All I know is I chased that pointy rabbit through the glowy thing and then I was somewhere else. Next thing I knew, I was back in that nice girl’s arms and I could talk! I don’t really understand why I couldn’t before. I mean, it’s so easy.” Nothing specific happened to him that he can describe.
• “Twilight, come on! Wait for me!” Notice the poster from the Fall Formal, with a silhouette of the crown, still hanging on a wall. You’d think someone would take it down by now.
• “Maybe it has something to do with the glowing girl, or the hole in space. Or my talking dog!” Pony up glow is visible. We already knew it shows up on videos, though…
• It’s interesting that when Cinch comes, Twilight hides Spike in a locker, which has no lock on it and is thus presumably empty. However, when Cinch leaves and Spike exits the locker, we can see that the locker still has some books inside and posters on the door…
• “I just don’t get it. Rarity’s magic came out when she made us outfits. Pinkie’s when she fixed the party and now Fluttershy.” Sunset is not aware of which Element is associated with each of the Mane 6 and by extension Humane 6, otherwise she would have made the obvious connection by now. This is a bit strange, considering that she saw Twilight call them out before being defeated, but I expect her memory of that particular event might be hazy.
• “Am I the only one who thinks this is overkill?” No, Sunset, you aren’t. I’m pretty sure motocross is not normal in just about any kind of school, so how exactly did that happen?
• “Since archery is a standard requirement at our school, any of you should be able to do it.” Or archery for that matter…

• “See? I was tellin’ ya the truth.”

  • Applejack faints upon being drained too. Only Sunset didn’t, so far.
  • This time the portals yield a carnivorous plant, origin unknown. Apparently, multiple portals yield the same plant. It’s interesting that the entire stadium should see it, but while for the CHS students this is nothing new, CPA students have not yet seen anything like that, and yet, there’s no panic or any other kind of reaction, all they care about is that they lost, not that someone’s breaking physics in the vicinity.
  • When Twilight shuts her device, instead of just getting cut off by the closing portals or anything else, the carnivorous plant starts vanishing from the ends inward. Huh?
• “That’s okay. Neither do we.” And Rainbow faints too.
• “You’re supposed to be so smart, but did you ever think that you shouldn’t be messing around with things you don’t understand?!” The rift shows a moon over a night sky at the moment, while it’s daytime in Pedestria. This is relevant for temporal gradient.
• “The games will continue and Crystal Prep will prevail despite your antics and whatever performance-enhancing regimen your students are on.” Cinch’s reaction is somewhat strange, but only somewhat: Acknowledging that CHS breaks reality would actually not be in favor of CPA’s reputation, would it?
• “It’s not your fault, Sunset.” Now, Principal Celestia can only have any idea whose fault it is if she saw Twilight’s device. Did she? She certainly didn’t call Cinch on it.
• However much time passed, they had the time to set up the spectator seating on the front lawn of CHS, which would require some assembly. Notice that the third event is actually an unexpected last minute tie-breaker.
• “Though, honestly, I think there’s more knowledge packed in that little device than any independent study program could offer.” Cinch clearly understands the potential of an unexplained event like that to change the world, and why it would not be in Twilight’s interest to dump this potential on upholding the reputation of CPA, at least. Which is why what follows is actually an attempt at social pressure and confusing Twilight with logic built entirely on false premises.
• And here we have our second incident where overdosing on magic transforms a human into a demonic form. See prior discussion of the subject in the post on Equestria Girls.
• Midnight Sparkle multiple portals one by one: Ponyville, Rainbow Falls, Inside of Ponyville Spa, Sweet Apple Acres, Cloudsdale, a random desert, Ponyville again, unidentified mountains, Manehattan, and one more Ponyville, culminating in a big hole in the floor to Ponyville. A few more portals turn up which are apparently created off-camera. Notice that the spatial orientation of the portals is chaotic, so I wonder what’s going on with air pressure and gravity – people only start falling through the last, big one. Notice that no transformations occur to those who fall partially or entirely through – transformation is clearly a function of the mirror, or at least the pedestal, rather than crossing over itself.
• Portals open to different time periods. One of the portals has moon over Sweet Apple Acres, all others have daytime. It’s difficult to catch and you have to frame by frame the entire scene to be sure, but yes it’s there.
• “True magic comes from honesty! Loyalty! Laughter! Generosity! Kindness!” Took her bloody long enough.
• Ah, alicorn Sunset, we hardly knew ye. Notice that the entire duel between the two involves a tug of war of two beams, which we typically don’t see – the one exception would be the duel between Celestia and Nightmare Moon as seen in Princess Twilight Sparkle. It’s interesting that Sunset closed all the portals, but did nothing to restore the destroyed statue, even though the original portal, evidently, was restored – since Princess Twilight eventually turns up.

• Pedestria in general clearly does not take claims of magic seriously:

  Celestia: Good. I’m sure they would be very interested in hearing all about the magical students with wings.
  Luna: Oh, and the portals to different dimensions.
  Dean Cadance: And don’t forget to tell them about the talking dog.
  Puppy Spike: Because that would never ruin your reputation.

  I’m also pretty sure that Cinch knew that, and her threat of bringing it to the school board is a last ditch attempt to get Celestia to fold. It’s more like they silently evolved an unspoken agreement to pretend normality is in effect, and Cinch only violates it because she really doesn’t need that loss. But I do wonder what happens to the Crystal Prep afterwards, and particularly, I wonder about Cadance’s job.

• “Pretty sure Cinch will be fast-tracking your application after all of that.” Actually, I wouldn’t count on it. It depends on what Cinch wants more – to get rid of Twilight or to hurt her. Transferring somewhere where Cinch can’t impede her education seems a wise move in general. I wonder, do Twilight’s parents get any say in this or not, though?
• “But I think I may have figured out how magic works in this world. We pony up when we’re showing the truest part of ourselves.” That is, magic of friendship can have tangible magical effects even when more “mundane” magic sources are absent.
• “Make that the second strangest.” Also the only time the two Twilights met on screen, unless I forgot one of the numerous shorts.

Some analysis

• The magic rules continue being stupidly vague, but that’s nothing new. Unfortunately, that’s true for the Equestria side of the world as well.
• One thing that’s particularly interesting about this movie is Midnight Sparkle’s portals, which definitely do not connect all to the same place temporally and are scattered far and wide spatially, even if most of them are around Ponyville.
  If we needed any more proof that the temporal gradient is not naturally stable, beyond the temporal inconsistencies of the first two movies, here we have evidence that multiple portals can connect multiple temporally disjoint spots in the other world at once. Even if it was temporally stable between Rainbow Rocks and Friendship Games, it does not actually matter for us, since Legends of Everfree does not involve Equestria at all, and Mirror Magic gives us no chronology hints beyond Starlight being a student.
  Notice also that this presents interesting possibilities: If it is possible to open two portals between Equestria and Pedestria going to different time periods, with their ends moving in time at their respective local time speeds, it should be possible to create a temporal paradox as well.
• One issue that needs to be settled is who the CMC, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon actually are in Pedestria. Are they very short freshmen? They do appear older than their Equestrian counterparts, while the reverse is true for the Humane 5 and most other characters, but not that much older. In any case, why don’t we see any more characters in this age group?

P.S. If you want a character study of Cinch, which is always fun, I direct you to the two stories by Superbowl – She’s Awful and its sequel Infected With Your Magic, which I find severely underappreciated.

Comments

[hawthornbunny]

“They won’t even let us see what they’re doin’ to the field. You think they’d at least tell competitors what they’re competing in.” Actually, that’s quite strange.

I guess I can understand that the event might be designed to make the competitors think on their feet with no preparation... but how in the world could CHS possibly conceal the motocross track? That thing's huge! Like, all you'd have to do is look out the window.

[Oliver]

4733473

Simple, cover up all the windows. :)

[Comnislasher]

Oh yeah, Daydream. How often she used as evidence that Sunset already an alicorn. And I always argued that this is an one time event with unique circumstances. And in then end - I was right :).

[bookplayer]

I really wonder just which ones would be applicable at all, because looking at the illustrations, they don’t appear to be books about any occult tradition I’m aware of – those typically don’t include graphs and pie charts. And neither do psychology books, most of the time.

Just want to point out... I get the impression you're a science-y person (technical term.) As a non-science-y person, if I was trying to study some form of energy, there's a lot of science-y and math-y stuff I'd need to learn first, just to have the foundation to understand what I'm looking at, let alone manipulate it in any sort of experimental way. While Sunset is a more science-y person than I am, she's also from another dimension, so she might need to catch up on some stuff to be able to look at the things she wants to see about it.

[Oliver]

4733652

While Sunset is a more science-y person than I am, she’s also from another dimension, so she might need to catch up on some stuff to be able to look at the things she wants to see about it.

I’m just pointing out that literally the only discipline that might contain anything that would lead Sunset to a useful answer in a world substantially-like-ours would be psychology, (the useful answer she actually cites in the end of this movie is psychological) and the most likely – but probably wrong – obvious direction of research would be occult. Sunset is clearly not looking in either direction. How to interpret that in particular is up to you.

Also notice that while the Pedestrian Twilight does approach “magic” as a form of physical energy, some mutation of electromagnetism, that is because she is not aware of any other potential interpretations. We do not really know what paradigm does Sunset actually approach the phenomenon with, and whether it is mystical or materialistic in its roots, she never explains. The existence of the Science of Magic short in which she tries to study pony up transformations with what looks like purely materialistic methods is rather inconclusive, because she only uses locally available measurement and data collection technology, and eventually gives up anyway.

If we knew why did she try this, we would have canonical grounds to theorize on how ponies think about magic, which would be really important for any kind of serious horse words, but alas, we still don’t.

[howard035]

The leaves look green, so it’s more likely someone has been trimming bushes and didn’t clean up, in which case it’s actually spring of the third year in school. Which doesn’t excuse the temporal gradient from being wonky anyway.

Since we know the 4th movie is set in the summer, I think we can assume this is set in the spring.

I expect that you don’t just fall through and need to apply some kind of pressure to come through, otherwise accidents would be very frequent.

Even so, accidents should still be frequent, unless everyone in school knows about the portal. How many students hanging around outside a high school would lean against that block holding up the statue as a normal thing in the average week?

“Because even though they beat us in everything… soccer, tennis, golf… they stillhave to gloat!”

That doesn't have to be about the Friendship Games though. If there are normal sports schedules with normal amounts of teams, Crystal Prep could still play CHS frequently in various seasons and gloat whenever they win, all the time. The alternative is that Rainbow Dash isn't really a captain of anything, because there's no way a school system could have a league with just two participants.

Defacing the horse statue by dressing it up seems to be a tradition. You’d think someone would fall through the portal accidentally while doing that if the cycles ever overlapped

Yup. Maybe Twilight's hacking of the portal made it much easier to enter from the Pedestrian side?

Notice that Sunset knew about the Friendship Games, but did not knowabout the CHS/CPA rivalry, necessitating this entire scene – but everyone else did, and unlike Sunset, cared.

The writers should have just gone with a "as you know, Sunset."

Being a “high school” would involve teaching students for four years, in the US, the last stretch of K-12, so if any long-term rivalry tradition is to be maintained, this would require them to have Friendship Games every two years.

Not really. Students at all age levels participate, so the games only have to happen every 4 years.

But there’s still that freshman year yearbook, so they were there, but weren’t friends before then?… Or were they?

Oh man, I had always assumed CHS was 6th-12th grade, but never realized that thing with the yearbook makes it problematic. I guess they weren't friends anymore than Equestrian Rarity and Applejack were friends prior to the show. Until there incredible freshman yearbook moment. But that whole scene is part of the same thing where we explicitly see Sunset join CHS, right?

 If Sunset turned up in Pedestria earlier than four years before this movie, this time was spent far away from CHS

I think its very unlikely Sunset wouldn't try to enroll in CHS as soon as possible, given that we believe she was making regular use of the portal. Now I did posit that maybe Sunset just turned herself in to Childcare Protective Services as a runaway teen with amnesia, and that could have eaten up a year before she got enrolled in the local school, but otherwise I think we can put her start time in Pedestria as three years ago.

“Well, it would be nice if you girls could get a handle on it. We’d like to keep magic as far away from the Friendship Games as possible. We don’t want to be accused of cheating.”

This has always driven me nuts. Yes, having the ability to fly or use other mysterious magical powers is absolutely cheating in a competition, good on Luna and Celestia for recognizing that. And they are also aware that the Humane 5 channel their magic seemingly at random. But do they ask their magical students to not compete in the Friendship Games, the fair and logical thing to do? No, because that set includes their smartest student and best athlete. One more time look at what Luna says

We don't want to be accused of cheating.

She doesn't actually say they don't want to cheat, she says they don't want to get caught doing it. Apparently hunger for that win is as bad in the faculty as it is in the students at CHS.

Whatever the physical basis of magic is, Twilight’s device detects the resulting electromagnetic noise.

Another major point of canon from this movie: Magic is not a special force playing along entirely parallel laws of physics that can only be affected by other magic. Twilight's device establishes that magical forces can be controlled purely through technology, similar to Ghostbusters.

He did, though I wonder whether this was four years ago, or eight.

Going off pony Shining Armor and Twilight, I would say at least 8, maybe 12.
Also the lack of recognition between Shining Armor and Cadance sure seems to suggest they are not currently dating.

• “Magic came into this world when I stole Twilight’s crown.” So neither the Communication Journal nor the Sirens count?…

The journal was inert, and it looks like the sirens consumed every thaum they generated back into themselves. The only reason they used magic was to create more energy they would devour.

It’s almost like the device tried to drain Sunset, but the portal shielded her.

Presumably the portal has much more magic than Sunset, maybe the device just ended up pulling from the strongest source?

The tone of her voice sounds to me like it might be the latter.

It has to be, designing a device intended to store an unknown energy that you wear around your neck sounds like begging for a Darwin award. Even the Ghostbusters built a vault in the basement.

Notice that Pinkie also faints, like Rarity, upon her magic being drained, when Sunset didn’t.

I don't think her magic was every really drained.

• Look at Lyra. Look at Lyra’s birdhouse. The fanon is leaking.

I can't believe the animators got away with that. I'm surprised they didn't have Lyra and Bon Bon with friendship necklaces in the shape of a double Venus.

I’m not sure that Sunset even got her team a point – unless she got the points in all the other competitions which we did not see. I’m not about to check the math on those solutions, since it would involve reconstructing the blackboards from multiple shots and I don’t think it’s that important, but I have a hunch there’s something devious hidden in there. Did someone else do that already?

I think she got partial credit for filling in all the correct work up until the end. This particular problem is something I looked into a while back, it's often called the world's "easiest hard problem" but the answers are supposed to be accurate. It's actually a problem high school mathletes regularly get asked to solve.

 The reason why this experience results in the Pedestrian Spike talking escapes me entirely

Wild-ass guess theory: Remember that time in the comics Discord mad a bunch of local animals talk normal Equish as a treat for Fluttershy? If that was going on at just the right moment, Spike could have been in the area of effect when Discord cast his spell.

No, Sunset, you aren’t. I’m pretty sure motocross is not normal in just about any kind of school, so how exactly did that happen?

Crystal Prep is rich private school and covers basically the entire cost of running the games, even when held at CHS, my guess.

• “It’s not your fault, Sunset.” Now, Principal Celestia can only have any idea whose fault it is if she saw Twilight’s device. Did she? She certainly didn’t call Cinch on it.

I think Celestia would say that to a murderer holding a bloody knife, the big softy.

Midnight Sparkle multiple portals one by one: Ponyville, Rainbow Falls, Inside of Ponyville Spa, Sweet Apple Acres, Cloudsdale, a random desert, Ponyville again, unidentified mountains, Manehattan, and one more Ponyville, culminating in a big hole in the floor to Ponyville.

It's also weird that all of the portals seem to be linking to Equestria. Maybe that's an effect of the original portal, or maybe the dimensions have some sort of unique collection, like entangled branes or something.

Ah, alicorn Sunset, we hardly knew ye.

It doesn't matter how harmonious your actions, if you aren't in Equestria when you perform them, the friendship explosion can't launch you into the demiplane of Harmony to get a permanent upgrade.

But I do wonder what happens to the Crystal Prep afterwards, and particularly, I wonder about Cadance’s job.

Later movies confirm Cinch leaves/is fired and Cadance gets her job.

Are they very short freshmen? 

I vote middle-schoolers at an escalator school.

[Oliver]

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How many students hanging around outside a high school would lean against that block holding up the statue as a normal thing in the average week?

About ten, but the actual list of students doing it would be short, no more than twenty. People tend to kinda hoard these places.

That doesn’t have to be about the Friendship Games though.

It doesn’t, but they keep dancing around it…

Maybe Twilight’s hacking of the portal made it much easier to enter from the Pedestrian side?

Actually, no: In Equestria Girls Twilight puts her hand through to observe the hoof, and the portal offers even less resistance than it does in later movies.

But that whole scene is part of the same thing where we explicitly see Sunset join CHS, right?

We actually never find out how did Sunset join CHS or when. We know that it definitely happened after the previous Friendship Games, and she definitely spent at least two years there by the time of the first movie, but pretty much nothing beyond that.

And by the way, while we can be pretty certain it was Sunset who broke apart the Humane 5, we never, ever find out why.

She doesn’t actually say they don’t want to cheat, she says they don’t want to get caught doing it. Apparently hunger for that win is as bad in the faculty as it is in the students at CHS.

Dunno, I think that’s pretty normal. :)

Twilight’s device establishes that magical forces can be controlled purely through technology, similar to Ghostbusters.

I wouldn’t say purely, if only because we never find out how exactly does her device work, and importantly, she doesn’t know how it works, and Sunset doesn’t understand how magic works over on Pedestria side, and laments this on multiple occasions. This is an important blank spot: Not knowing the physical basis of magic, we cannot bring it into correspondence with other physical forces.

Knowing that magic can result in electromagnetic noise that can be detected is very useful and explains a lot, but it does not, for example, imply the reverse.

Presumably the portal has much more magic than Sunset, maybe the device just ended up pulling from the strongest source?

Maybe. Sunset not being ponied up was also probably a factor.

If that was going on at just the right moment, Spike could have been in the area of effect when Discord cast his spell.

Clever, though I wonder if that comic could have overlapped, I’ll need to look it up. :)

Later movies confirm Cinch leaves/is fired and Cadance gets her job.

Legends of Everfree doesn’t, so you probably mean one of the numerous scattered shorts – which one?

[howard035]

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Actually, no: In Equestria Girls Twilight puts her hand through to observe the hoof, and the portal offers even less resistance than it does in later movies.

Shoot. Maybe most of the time in the past, Celestia had the mirror leaning against a wall or the ground. Most teleportation effects cancel out if they would move you into a solid object.

Knowing that magic can result in electromagnetic noise that can be detected is very useful and explains a lot, but it does not, for example, imply the reverse.

That is a good point. Speaking of which, there is a later short where Rainbow using her magic a lot causes the other Rainboom's magic to amplify. It certainly seems like the background magic around CHS is steadily increasing, and how long before Ham radios stop working near the school?

which one?

It was Dance Magic

Sunny Flare: Oh, things at CPA have never been better since Principal Cadance took over.

[Oliver]

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Maybe most of the time in the past, Celestia had the mirror leaning against a wall or the ground. Most teleportation effects cancel out if they would move you into a solid object.

Couldn’t just put an iris over it like decent people do.

Speaking of which, there is a later short where Rainbow using her magic a lot causes the other Rainboom’s magic to amplify. It certainly seems like the background magic around CHS is steadily increasing, and how long before Ham radios stop working near the school?

I’d worry about cellphones, actually, they use those constantly after all.

Your typical walkie-talkie, the kind you buy at Walmart in the US, operating on the FRS band, which does not require a license, has the transmission power limited by law to 0.5 watts. Hand held radios for registered amateurs, fire and police are 2-8 watts, with 4 being the most common. Car radios are typically more powerful. Depending on the area, fire and police are going to use APCO-25 instead. Public services won’t notice any potential interference for quite a while if they’re already digital, they can just shout over it.

1. Which is, incidentally, why all this talk about cellphones being bad for your brain is bogus: We don’t see policemen suffer significantly even if they pick their noses with the antenna.

For comparison, a typical GSM cell has about 20 watts of transmission power, but the actual phones it services radiate 0.1-0.2 watts, and sometimes less.¹ A phone takes a lot less interference to jam. Being digital all over, it will try to work around it, however, I don’t expect anyone calling 911 while Sunset was turning into a demon ever got through.

[howard035]

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Being digital all over, it will try to work around it, however, I don’t expect anyone calling 911 while Sunset was turning into a demon ever got through.

Fascinating. And it also explains why there's not a lot of people investigating magic at CHS. Any kind of government authority is going to check 911 calls placed during the incident in question, and if there are none, it certainly makes the whole thing look a lot more like a hoax.

[fredhot19]

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What about ''after'' the incident when Sunset was defeated?

[howard035]

4735945 Depends. If magic is some kind of background energy, it would probably block cell reception for at least a little while after the incident is over. And once Sunset is turned back into a human, most people can see she just looks like a normal human, so they would figure they wouldn't be believed anyway for filing a police report.

The real question is, why weren't people taking photos of demonic sunset with their smartphones?

[Production Run]

Actually, there's an explanation for the portals opening to different times that doesn't affect the temporal gradient at all: when Princess Twilight comes through the portal at the end, she says she was delayed because of some time travel-related incident, which it's pretty safe to assume is The Cutie Re-Mark. This means that while the Friendship Games were happening in Pedestria, Starlight was screwing with time in Equestria. Those portals might not all be opening to the same timeline, or even if they are, that might only be possible because of Equestria's in-progress time shenanigans. The shot of Sweet Apple Acres could be during Nightmare Moon's reign in her timeline, or a point during the reign of one of the other Celestia-deposing figures like Tirek or Discord where they've made it night for no real reason.

[Oliver]

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The shot of Sweet Apple Acres could be during Nightmare Moon’s reign in her timeline, or a point during the reign of one of the other Celestia-deposing figures like Tirek or Discord where they’ve made it night for no real reason.

Possible, but doesn’t excuse the temporal gradient since other movies imply it’s not stable as well.

You can’t use Pedestria to improve the chronology of Equestria, unfortunately.

[Cursed Quill]

❧Really, really weird having Sunset consult the CHS library to try to figure out magical events.
She does this in Forgotten Friendship, after all.

Luna, and presumably Celestia, just roll with it. Notice again that the primary concern regarding application of magic is that it will be seen as cheating, rather than anything else.

♪Luna actually has reasonably-thought-out concerns
♪RD technically in the song subtly advocates murdering the other team: "we survive" (and they don't)

Twilight’s device detects the resulting electromagnetic noise.

(far-fetched Devil's Advocacy) EM might not stand for electromagnetic. (/far-fetched Devil's Advocacy)

We don’t see Twilight actually follow this advice either, do we?

I believe the adjusting of her tie as she leaves her lab is meant to imply she did change.

Cadance doesn’t know that “alumni” is plural.

Neither do people in Camp Everfree.

However much time passed, they had the time to set up the spectator seating on the front lawn of CHS, which would require some assembly. Notice that the third event is actually an unexpected last minute tie-breaker.

The event, finding a flag "hidden somewhere in Canterlot High" also on its face unusually biased in favor of CHS, unless Crystal Prep's flag is easier to find. (Mind, that Crystal Prep students spying is a first-guess of why Twi was there, it is likely less unfair in practice.)

And here we have our second incident where overdosing on magic transforms a human into a demonic form. See prior discussion of the subject in the post on Equestria Girls.

It's a pattern.

Twilight's device's string auto-repairs after she recovers it from string breakage.

❧Cinch is an idiot willing to do anything for her rep. "Use the magic you don't know what will do, it might make us win."

What I find interesting is, Daydream's victory at beam-war over Midnight Sparkle is with a trope I usually associate with villains' victories: a bystander(s) shows up that only one combatant stops due to.

[Oliver]

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(far-fetched Devil’s Advocacy) EM might not stand for electromagnetic. (/far-fetched Devil’s Advocacy)

So what would it stand for then, Electro-Mechanical? Erotically-Male? Seriously.

[Cursed Quill]

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Electromagical is probably the best option I have for this particular sickly hypothesis.