Mar
30th
2019
Points of Canon: Spring Breakdown · 10:51pm Mar 30th, 2019
Anyone who cares about spoilers and is still reading my blog should have learned their lesson by now: I’m writing this up immediately after airing.
I do not have a good feeling about this one.
Chronology markers:
1. P1 being the year when high school started for the Humane 5 and Sunset. This year looping track starts in Autumn, as opposed to Equestrian loops which start in Summer.
Legends of Everfree has completed, and Rainbow Dash declares that this is the “best spring break ever.” Considering that as of the time of writing, our best date for Legends itself is Spring P3,1 this would place this special in Spring P4. Unfortunately, it also directly references Rollercoaster of Friendship, when it absolutely didn’t have to. This ends up pushing that latter back inside school time, into Summer P3 – or you have to accept that high school in Pedestria never ends, and then, Shrink Laureate was right.
- On the Equestria side, it directly (and awkwardly) references the events of My Little Pony Movie. At the same time, while the School of Friendship should be visible in at least one shot, it isn’t, squeezing it squarely into the gap between the movie and School Daze.
“Welcome aboard the Lux DeLuxe, where you’ll set sail for a full week of luxurious luxuriating on our most deluxe luxury liner!”
- If I identified the seagulls correctly, these are Belcher’s Gulls. Quoting from the reference: “This species is native to the Pacific Coast of South America from Ecuador south to Chile. They occur accidentally near Baja California and the Gulf of Mexico near Florida. Preferred habitats include rocky or sandy seashore, shallow coastal habitats, tidal flats, mudflats and open sea.” Of course, doylistically speaking, this doesn’t mean a thing, and doesn’t help us that much anyway.
- A large population of known school Pedestrians is in attendance, starting with Octavia and going on into double digits, but the cruise is otherwise populated with unaffiliated Pedestrians previously seen in Canterlot.
- Pinkie makes a Titanic reference. Due to Pinkie’s multidimensional nature, this is not a certain statement that Pedestria had the movie, but a fairly strong implication. Rarity’s subsequent behavior is one more implication…
- This is not a particularly big ship, as far as cruise liners go, but a substantial one, and purpose built for passenger cruises. As such, the ship must comply with SOLAS regulations. As the rest of the episode plainly demonstrates, it does not: one of the things it must have is an independently powered satellite beacon and radar transponders for every life raft. Never mind the bulkheads which should prevent it from sinking in this particular situation. Whether this is to be taken to mean that Pedestria does not have SOLAS, or that this particular ship is violating the regs is left as an exercise for the reader. While one could blame magic for not permitting them to use these things, they never even mention having a problem.
One thing to note is while in prior episodes and specials, all the seven geodes were worn on necklaces, here, everyone picked a different location for theirs:
- Rainbow is wearing hers as a wristwatch – apparently, instead of a wristwatch.
- Twilight, Pinkie, Fluttershy carry theirs on hairpins.
- Applejack is wearing hers on what appears to be a hairband.
- Sunset is wearing it on a belt, disguised as a belt buckle.
- Rarity’s appears to have become a brooch.
No reasons for this change are ever presented, but it’s not like they really need those. Considering that on their stage outfits, the geodes move again, this probably can’t be a chronology marker.
- Applejack spends the entire day seasick. She is apparently the only person on board to experience sea sickness at all, and looking at the sea, which is flat calm for most of it, and remains fairly level even when the storm actually occurs, it’s surprising anyone is sick. It’s also surprising nobody thought to offer Applejack a barf bag. Notably, pony Applejack does not have that problem: See P.P.O.V.
“Thank you for organizing this trip, Twilight.”
- Notably, nobody ever elaborates who paid for it. This would cost something around US$300 and up per seat in our world, depending on how far they’re going, and cheaper in bulk. While I can imagine Twilight’s family shelling out for her friends, barely, doing the same for an entire class is probably beyond their means, so we can’t use that as an answer. The matter is ignored entirely, but throughout the episode, Twilight is thanked multiple times so profusely, that you’d think she did pay for it, and in general, behaves like she did jump out of her skin to make this happen and really wanted everyone to like it.
- Also notably, on this trip the Rainbooms are doing a concert, and Trixie is doing shows. What sort of deal is this?…
Fluttershy: Oh. Is the sea monster okay in the story?
Rainbow Dash: Better than okay! She’s our friend now!Rainbow never elaborates why would the sea monster be their friend. I’m afraid to ask. Several people told me that the attendant taking Rainbow’s glass is actually Vignette Valencia, which would make this line a gag, but – come on, would you trust Vignette on a ship at all?… In any case, the eye color doesn’t match.
In fact, Rainbow is unusually dense for the entirety of this special, and for Rainbow, that’s saying something. I’m as clueless as you are.
- “We couldn’t even spend the day at Equestria World without creatin’ a calamity.” Or a time paradox.
“A GPS alert! We’re in international waters!” “Tax-free shopping!”
- Pedestria has a GPS. But that’s not the first time…
- Rarity is sufficiently computer savvy to program her phone to send an alert when it enters international waters, or at least find an app that does. This is actually more complicated than it sounds: Were Rarity to mean literal international waters, this would actually involve going 200 nautical miles away from the shore. If the thing that concerns her is primarily taxes, that’s only 12 nautical miles – but the shore is not a straight line.
- Pedestria has taxes. Not a given with these people. That said, the primary reason why duty-free shops in airports and on cruise liners are interesting is alcohol, tobacco, and other specially-taxed goods. As far as we can see, Rarity doesn’t buy anything of the sort, so it might be that there are other interesting taxes involved.
- “Ooh! Honey walnut crisp! Candy-coated cupcakes! Banana sorbet delight! Triple Choco-Berry Blasted Butter Biscuit Bundt Cake?!” It would appear that at least half of the food items at the all-you-can-eat buffet are sweets, which is strange.
- “CAKE OVERBOARD!” It remains entirely unclear why does Pinkie get thrown out of the buffet. She definitely didn’t do anything.
“A goat on a boat? Now I’ve seen everything.”
- The petting zoo contains goats, ewes, rabbits, and a bunch of birds.
- The bizarre coloration of goats – they include pink, red, purple and green goats – is never explained nor referred to in speech. Neither it is explained why are the goats trying to climb trees, which is something I don’t think they do in nature.
- “Has anyone seen bad magic on board?!” It’s notable that Rainbow’s gets pointed towards Trixie by none other than Flash Sentry, who knows exactly what Rainbow could mean. The only reason for him to do that I can think of is that he has something specifically against Trixie…
- “$9.99? My savvy shopping smarts strike again! Here’s 10.” This is either a really up-scaled dollar, or a ridiculously high tax that Rarity is not paying: There’s no way this many bags would total up to just US$10.
- The cashier tosses the 1-cent change to Rarity. Do people actually do that? Without getting slapped, I mean? Or is she in cahoots with Ragamuffin, who is waiting to “help” Rarity? He is, after all, a crew member. Who probably isn’t supposed to do this sort of thing…
“Lovable scamp like meself, ol’ Ragamuffin. That’s me naim, innit?”
- The wiki transcript identifies this as a cockney accent, which does seem accurate. Pedestria has a whole population that speaks like that, somewhere. The horror.
- Compare to the incessant Rarijack shipping in Rollercoaster of Friendship, which would have to happen less than a year prior.
- “She also scared the animals in the petting zoo. Now they don’t want pets. It’s just a zoo.” Am I the only one who thinks the grammar in this phrase is broken?…
- “‘Avin’ a li’l chat with ol’ Ragamuffin, she woz!” The reaction of the rest of the Humane 7 is ambiguous, but if you want to read it as being surprised at Rarity cheating on Applejack, I’m sure you can. Rarity herself behaves like she’s quite smitten, in any case.
- During the concert, Sunset winks at Flash Sentry, eliciting a starry eyed reaction. He’s so not over her.
- “What happened to the lights?” Rainbow ponying up coincides with the entire electrical grid, and then the diesel engine – at least it looks like a diesel, and should be diesel, you never know with these people – shutting down, but neither causes, nor the potential connection to magic are elaborated on or examined in detail. Generally, there should be batteries around to run at least some of the essential equipment… But considering Twilight’s opinion on the state of the engine, this ship may actually not be up to the regulations, and the captain – where is the captain, by the way? All the crew members have identical uniforms with no signs of rank of any kind that I could see – is up shit creek without a paddle.
- “I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but, heh, may I?” Generally? Twilight may not. What’s up with this cruise?…
- “Whoa! I knew it! Evil magic! You guys gotta see this!” The inexplicable Storm King logo in the water is a plot point. Notably, in the movie, Storm King is never presented as having any power of his own: Everything is a magic item obtained, presumably, through force. Movie Prequel comic likewise indicates the same. Why, then, would his logo be a feature of any magic connected to him?
- While chasing after the cake, Pinkie uses her explosive sweets magic for the first time in pretty much forever.
- “Well, me paw worked in a coal mine, but I always wanted to dance!” So what exactly is Ragamuffin doing on a ship?…
“Well, actually, in the school production of Bedazzled, I played a coal miner’s daughter who danced in bedazzled magical boots from her fairy bootmother.”
- Assuming Rarity isn’t lying at that point, either CHS or her middle school had such a production. When? Who else was involved?
- I could not find a play by that name in our world, which suggests this is a Pedestrian original, despite the motif of magical boots being common to multiple fairytales.
- …bootmother?…
- “No time for that!” Yes, they really were about to kiss.
Twilight Sparkle: Where would we take them?
Rainbow Dash: Who?
Twilight Sparkle: The prisoners. That’s kidnapping! Are you even listening to yourself?!Actually, considering the circumstances, that would probably be piracy. It’s good that Rainbow Dash didn’t notice.
- “I wouldn’t trade you for anything in the world. In any world.” Sudden official Sci-Twi / Sunset shipping, never mind the actual boat. Strangely, however, just as this touching line slips through, further investigations of this theme do not happen over the course of this episode. I suspect the writer meant something else, and this is just how it came out.
- “What up, nerds? It’s Rainbow Dash having way too much fun being awesome to answer your call! So leave a message, if you’re too old to get me!” Now, there’s no way in hell they’re getting a signal in international waters on a 3G/4G/WCDMA/UMTS/LTE/WHATEVER phone that is not satellite capable. Twilight shouldn’t even be hearing the voice mail: The source of that recording is deep inside the cellular operator’s internal network. Instead, Twilight gets four bars. The only way it can happen is if radio waves pass through both portals unhindered, and even then it’s a huge stretch, requiring multiple moderately unlikely things to happen. Since prior investigations, particularly the events of Friendship Games, imply that magic might in fact result in electromagnetic noise, something else has to be going on. What?…
- “I’ll fix the engine while you’re gone. We’ll be ready to go before that storm hits us.” Applejack is confident she can fix an engine, implying experience in doing so.
- “And I’ll make sure there’s lifejackets for everyone. Even grandchildren.” For the record, Fluttershy did. However, it is never explained where did she get the tiny lifejackets for the bunnies. Rarity was busy at the time.
- “You forgot to untie the rope.” Are lifeboats – inflatable lifeboats, at that – normally equipped with engines? I would think not, and yet, here they find two of them.
- “I’m going in that jungle.” I suppose I don’t have to elaborate how strange that parrot is. I’m sure there’s an explanation, like magical emanations from the other side of the portal or something. Maybe. Notice also that we never actually hear any Rainbow say “Or my name isn’t Rainbow Dash” – including this one, including in this episode.
“Nah. Just quicksand.”
- Sigh. Don’t they, I dunno, do reruns?…
- Wait a minute. There’s a portal beneath, right? So why isn’t the sand falling through it? What are the rules here?…
- “That giant plant monster!” Which bears a striking resemblance to the one Twilight summoned during the Friendship Games.
- “Get me out of here!” Notice that Twilight immediately uses her telekinesis to hold back the plant monster, but did not think to use it to pull Rainbow out. As the struggle continues, she uses it against further and further tentacles, implying she has power to spare – but still not thinking to pull Rainbow out with it.
“I’ve seen something like this before.”
- Actually, where could have Sunset seen this? Because, as her subsequent actions imply, she knew it was a portal, rather than any other sort of magical phenomenon, purely by sight.
- For that matter, the portal appears to be covered only by a thin layer of sand – no more than a few centimeters – and Rainbow spent an undetermined amount of time halfway through and not even feeling anything nor falling through. Huh?…
- The other end of the portal emerges in a cave wall. We do not know exactly where the cave is. However, the speed with which they have arrived to Ponyville, as well as the view of the Canterlot Castle on a mountain imply it’s probably Everfree. Because where the hell else? It does look like the S8-era, “cultured” Everfree.
- And this bit is important: Going through an apparently natural portal still results in a human-to-pony transformation. Compare to Friendship Games, where going through portals opened by Midnight Sparkle did not result in any transformations at all.
- Notice that the transformed Sci-Twi is a unicorn rather than alicorn, despite the wings in her ponied-up state.
Plot hole alert: Sunset’s magic aura is its original red color. It had changed inMirror Magicto cyan quite deliberately, but now it’s red again. There is no explanation and apparently nobody noticed. Guess she’s back to being evil? We’ll never know. In any case, there is no way in hell to unwind the timeline without ignoring this change or explaining away the relapse.Disregard that, I do have it backwards and I need to fix my notes.
- “PONY FACE!!!” For some strange reason, Sci-Twi is correct the first time, but then swaps to using “horse” until corrected.
- “Braker-braker four and a half, this is”Red Delicious" requestin’ a storm status update, over!" Applejack does not know proper radio protocol but decides to imitate it anyway. You only say “breaker-breaker” when you want to interrupt a conversation between other parties, which definitely isn’t happening here.
- Twinkleshine appears to recognize Sunset. Compare to Forgotten Friendship, where that doesn’t happen.
“A little higher on the left.”
- The painting Spike is handling is a Dali-esque rendition of molten ponies. I already mentioned multiple times that it’s strange that ponies have abstract art at all…
- Why is Spike involved at all, when Twilight is actually the one holding the painting up with her magic, is an open question.
- “I can’t slow it down!” Then kill the fuel pump you idiot.
- “…and that’s the last time I ever went to a dragon wedding!” Spike’s statement is the first indication dragons even do weddings. Which is kind of surprising – who would they invite to one if they don’t do friends?… In any case, Spike has attended at least one in his lifetime.
Among the various objects strewn on the Cutie Map table during the conversation are:
- Grover’s crown.
- A storm proof oil lantern.
- A strange lever-like object that Rainbow is playing with.
- A rubber chicken in a form-fitting case. Considering that the last time we saw one, it was a key to the Chest of Harmony obtained in Pinkie Pride this is very unusual: That one turned into a key and was, by all accounts, gone afterwards.
- A phoenix feather.
- A stone six-sided die. Did I see that in Dungeons and Discord by any chance?…
- The Staff of Sameness from The Cutie Map. How did that end up with Twilight is anyone’s guess.
- A big bag of glowpaz.
- The bucket of Pinkie’s imaginary friends from Party of One.
- The Alicorn Amulet. wat?…
What the hay were they talking about, oatmeal?! Are they crazy?…
- “I can’t take much more of this!” My words exactly: This ship is supposed to have bulkheads, and shutting down even one of them would prevent the sinking altogether, making the subsequent evacuation a non-issue.
“This is from our battle with the Storm King. He stole our magic and used it to create the most powerful storm in Equestria. But, luckily, my friends and I were able to work together to drain his magic and seal his power into this.” There are problems with this statement.
- There’s no question the Storm King did create the storm through the use of the staff of Sacanas, whoever the fsck that is. However, his excited yelling “Now I truly am the Storm King!” heavily implies this was never his own ability, and he probably never had any natural magical ability in the first place.
- There is no evidence anything is being drained from him in the moments before his demise, and in fact, no time to do so: First, the Storm King and Twilight are carried away by the wind together with the staff, then Twilight returns with the staff, then the Storm King climbs over the railing with a gorgon grenade, then Tempest Shadow causes its premature detonation turning them both to stone, then Storm King shatters. The end.
Wat?…
- “This symbol looks familiar.” Why is it on whatever piece of cloth Twilight used to wrap the staff up, though?…
- “Nopony freak out, but I think that maybe there’s a chance that when we destroyed the Storm King, we didn’t capture all his magic, and maybe, it might’ve found its way into your world! It might be turning into a giant, magical storm and threatening your friends as we speak!” See above: This makes no sense. Even assuming that this magic is, in fact, connected to the Storm King himself, it’s doing things his own lightning storm did not.
- “I’ll make a new lifeboat!” When all is said and done, the one extant lifeboat contains about 30 people total, including the Humane 7 and not counting the animals. It also contains a cow, which was not seen previously.
- “I’m trapped. My foot is stuck!” Two prior times, the cake was soft enough to splatter. This time, it’s nearly a solid, but Pinkie is eating it anyway.
“I… might have a way home. But it’s… kinda weird.”
- The problems caused by the mysterious disappearance of the crew and passengers, only for them to reappear back on land, for, say, ship insurance never even entered Sunset’s mind. Or, in fact, anyone else’s.
- How did they get past the carnivorous plant is never explained.
- Neither is what happened to the animals.
Well, I suppose it could be worse. As it is, it’s mostly “meh.”
Some analysis
I have so many questions and so few answers.
- Ragamuffin is probably the captain of this piece of junk. This would explain why he feels free to flirt with the passengers, how does he compel the cashier to assist him, and explains why the ship ultimately sinks, let alone why it isn’t towed to the nearest port.
- The existence of apparently natural portals is very far-reaching for the entire series. A fact that will get soundly ignored by canon, of course.
- In the end, Rarity, Pinkie, Applejack and Fluttershy didn’t get to have anywhere near as much fun as Twilight, Sunset and Rainbow.
Nah, the grammar's fine. A "pet" can be expressed as an abstract thing that is received in the act of petting, the same way you could say "Now they don't want hugs" to express that they don't want to be hugged.
This was the plotline of the "Choose Your Ending" shorts series.
Not a plot hole. You have this backwards. Sunset's aura was cyan in the original movie. It was changed to red in "Mirror Magic".
In fact, didn't he say that "Storm King" is just branding, with the implication that he's gone through several other names in the past?
Pattern recognition. Counting the sirens as a singular villain, the girls are six for seven on defeat equaling friendship, or at least contrition.
Not really. Twilight explicitly calls it "an all-you-can-eat dessert buffet." Not sure why; maybe Pedestrian pancreases are as potent as those of ponies.
The goats apparently have similar pigment proteins to the humans of this world (and dogs, for that matter.) As for the tree climbing, apparently these goats are from Morroco.
Or just to get Dash to go bother someone else.
The dark magic of branding, clearly.
Bootmother. This FiCG has links to every part of the storyline.
Sunset has a rare but harmless condition that causes her magic aura to change colors periodically.
Nope. "Uncommon Bond." It's the die Maud made for the life-sized game of Dragon Pit.
My favorite take on pony Twilight summarizing the movie is that this is a sanitized version for her guests that doesn't involve shattering the Storm King like a cheap plate. (Or, you know, Nick Confalone didn't do any fact-checking when he wrote the script.
)
As for the Storm King himself, I figured what got sealed in the Staff was his soul. But part of it, torn asunder by the process and still imbued with awesome power, wandered through the portal and became the thunderstorm elemental seen in the special.
In short, Dash is a bit off: They aren't superheroes; they're Ghostbusters.
And yeah, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie deserve a vacation after that vacation. I vote Equestria; their counterparts could provide all the fashion, animals, and desserts they could ask for.
Ever heard of labeling? No doubt the staff is stored some place safe. If it's stored with other artifacts, they all would need some sort of tagging system so anyone going through them would know what they were.
Ah, good to get the ol' juices flowing with some canon analysis!
Yup. And he's right -and endless high school is definitely a hellscape, so he probably is- there should have been a great scene at the end where Twilight marches all the humans back through the portal at hornpoint, now that they've escaped eternal high school.
And Spike had no wings.
Well, I did notice that cell phone reception is incredibly good in a storm, so I suspect the ship has one of those devices that plans have that amplifies service.
Speaking of things missing, the ship does not appear to have a captain or even any senior officers present during an emergency. Do we think they made like the Costa Concordia and quietly abandoned ship as soon as they saw the storm?
Remember that theory that you shouldn't meet your double from the other universe? Perhaps this Applejack is sick because her Cross-And-Arrow Universe Counterpart has snuck aboard the ship and is close by. (Twilight and Sci-Twi don't experience this phenomenon because alicorn ascension severs your ties to dimensional doubles).
She may have organized it among all her classmates and gotten them a bulk/student discount.
And providing entertainment to the rest of the guests might be another part of their discount.
I could see the Cruise Ship sending out an alert for shoppers (and gamblers) when the crew judges the ship in international waters, and calling it "GPS Alert" to sound impressive.
The transcript is actually wrong here, listened to it myself to double-check. She says "all you can eat dessert buffet."
I feel like a lot of those animals should be miserable living in a cruise ship petting zoo.
I think the idea is if people can be green in this world so can goats. The genes for skin and hair coloration in most species are wildly different. That or they died some of the animals because cruise ships do weird stuff like that.
What happens when the goats crossed through the portal at the end of the movie? Did they turn into a different species? Could they start talking? What if one of Iron Will's goats got mixed up in the line at the portal?
He could think Rainbow is asking for Trixie and just think Rainbow dislikes Trixie. Or maybe Trixie stole his pet dog Bananas to do a trick some time.
I noticed that. Very odd.
Yeah, I could see Ragamuffin running this act on a girl every cruise. That said, it worked for Timber Spruce...
It's a world where Dick Van Dyke founded the British Empire. Though his very last line kind of implies his accent was fake, right?
And this guy looks like an R63 Applejack. Rarity loves her some blond hair, freckles, and a strong accent apparently.
I'm not sure if I feel more sorry for Applejack that Rarity replaced her with a guy version, or that the writers decided her entire personality for this movie was "has seasickness."
And in one of the recent shorts you can see him accompanying her to that astronomy party Twilght and Pinkie threw.
I don't know about the power outage, that's weird. But Rainbow Dash spends a quarter of the movie talking about how she wants to fight an Equestrian villain, and that those villains seem to show up right after the Rainbooms use their own magic. That's the main reason she fired off a Rainbow Laser during the show. I think it's pretty straightforward from that to assume the Storm King's magic was drawn by Rainbow Dash's magic and that's what got the storm started.
Yeah, notice that they don't seem to be real engineers here? I think the Captain and senior staff snuck off and all that's let are the junior crew.
Similar to the 6 ancient artifacts from the school's spellvenger hunt. Sometimes items absorb personality or other traits from their wielders. All that magic going in and out of the staff of Sekharis while the Storm King was holding it may have imprinted some of his personality on the staff. Alternatively, the Storm King stole the logo of Sekharis when he got the staff long before the movie.
Maybe they were originally going to have Riverdance shows, before the cruise was able to line up a live band and a magician who will put on twice-daily shows.
This was the ongoing plot of most of those choose-your-ending shorts. I guess this makes them canon.
Played by Rainbow Dash.
Based on Applejack and Ragamuffin, we will take it as confirmed if in the next special a purple boy starts trying to date Sunset.
She's gotten a school bus engine working. Of course a cruise ship engine is just as simple, right?
Well at least it's not killer quicksand.
That was extremely irritating to me. Sunset almost fell in with a stick!
Perhaps it isn't natural at all. Starswirl used to live in the Everfree when he was first training the Regal Sisters, and in the comics he has numerous secret labs. Maybe that portal was a rough version he created. You know he'd just forget it and leave it open.
Right. So why does she have wings then in Pedestria? Especially since later in this episode we see Sunset flying around without wings.
Looking back, the wings all the girls had in Camp Everfree don't look like biological limbs. They look like crystal spikes sticking out the back of their dresses.
We don't see it before she goes through the portal, right? Maybe that "reset" her magic somehow?
At least we learned her call sign. Which is... the name of one of her aunts. Huh. Code names and call signs and other things must be hard in a world where people have names that mean modern words.
Probably a gift from Discord.
I think Twilight goes out of her way to let Spike "assist" her on things she doesn't really need help on.
This is cool and I hope it generates some good fanfic.
Yup, because Twilight is lying, two lines later she says "we destroyed the Storm King" which is MLP code for "we killed him." Twilight is not going to mention in casual conversation the times she had to kill someone. Notice she doesn't bring up Sombra either. "Seal his power" is probably the public euphemism the government told everyone, the same way they told everyone Princess Luna was rescued from that villain Nightmare Moon.
Would I have enjoyed one of the crew members or guests suddenly saying "wait, we can't use a magic portal to shift our location, it will play havoc with the ship's insurance payouts?" Yes, yes I would have.
If he is, that means he's also the kind of Captain that makes his crew clap for him while he dances. What a deutche.
One big thing: The girls pony up, but there's no real reason for them too: Other than Rarity's life boat magic, which I admit is bigger than her previous projections, all the girls just use their regular geode powers while in Pony form (and Sunset flies). Did they just pony up because Rainbow was whining for them to do it?
Hopefully some interesting fic about random cruise passengers wandering off into Ponyville and never returning. And the "masquerade" in Pedestria, never very strong, just got a lot weaker.
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Building off if that, the ship would also have wifi and the girls could be using an app that sends communications over wifi as well as data. Whatsapp is a good example of this.
The only problem with this is, if the ship's power is down, so will be all these systems. Unless they are also set up to run on auxiliary power, which may or may not be a smart thing.
Sunset's horn magic color was originally Green/Teal Red is the reformed post-rainbow-beam-to-the-face color.
Don't you forget Oliver, Green in Equestria is the color of evil not red! Just look at Sweetie Belle.
It would explain why he is saying a dramatic goodbye to Rarity. He's about to hauled off to jail for being incredibly irresponsible on a unsafe ship. Or off to his next con considering he drops the fake accent
... also why is he saying goodbye? Did he miss out on Sunset's Double Portal off an island shortcut? It'd have been fun to see Pony Applejack, Ponified EqG Applejack, and Ponified
Rule 63 EqG ApplejackRagamuffin in one room.Not such a bad special. At least... in the idea that it provides fun fodder for future fanfictions. The premise was a little all over though as well as the plotting. Rainbow being genre savvy and waiting for a Equestrian magic thing to attack was amusing. They should have just went with a full fluff piece just to give us one full slice of life. Going to Equestria is enough plot and situational comedy on its own.
Pity the most interesting thing in it was the implications of the final scene of Sunset being Equestrian Portal Oprah. ("And you get to be a pony and you get to be a pony and you....")
But that is what we have fanfic for I guess? If I was writing this special I would have truncated the spring break part and just did what Rainbow Dash say "Hey lets just have vacation in Ponyland"
Like maybe set up the first ten minutes of the human girls trying to enjoy a regular vacation have it turn awful (In a harmless non dramatic way) and then spend the next 30 in equestria of having fluff of them meeting their mirror selves. Or get the cruise shipwreck out of the way early and have the WHOLE of CHS visiting.
I mean Ponyville and CHS are not strangers to weird stuff happening.
Also we had human Flash Sentry, ponified, in visual distance of Princess Twilight herself. Oh wow.
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And they explicitly found the short I missed to make a reference to. They have something against me personally, it seems.
Part of this takes place in Equestria? Oh carp, now I'm going to have to watch it.
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That, actually, sounds the most plausible. No, seriously.
That would involve extracting it from a pile of shards, wouldn’t it. Or worse, gluing them together and then extracting the soul.
No. He’s a mascot character. You know what this is? The evil power of his corporate masters.
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And whoever labeled it was temporarily illiterate and picked a symbol with no obvious top-bottom orientation so that it could be easily misread.
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Sorry, pico-cells won’t do jack 22 kilometers off shore: They won’t hear the network, it doesn’t matter if the phones can hear the cell. And if it can reach, like through satellite, it also means that radio is working and has power – so where’s the rescue?
Oh, and as a side note: Outside views of the ship show nothing resembling satellite antennas…
That would work – if the number of guests which are not students was in double digits at least, which I think it’s not.
Do we have any evidence they cross? It’s more probable they’re “set free on a tropical island.” In quotes.
That is a possibility. But I think I like the dark magic of branding idea better.
Yeah, but which ending. :E
What’s a thousand horse power between friends.
More likely, Applejack heard one of her aunts use CB and never understood the meaning of the individual words.
That is an option, and a good one.
Considering that he makes his crewmembers help him pick up passengers, that is to be expected, don’t you think? That is, assuming that he is the captain of this boat at all. But literally, who else? He’s the only crewmember that gets lines.
Yes.
5035439
Whatsapp and friends also require central servers to work. Which means that central servers are reachable, which means that there’s an ongoing radio connection with the mainland, which means that power is available, which means that rescue has been sent for, see above.
5035443
Maybe the deal didn’t involve the crew? Although I can’t imagine why would it exclude them, the damage’s all done already.
Amen.
5035510
I figured it probably wouldn't work, I just didn't know enough to know why it wouldn't.
So the plant monster gets a free meal.
It did fit his personality. From beyond the grave, there's nothing the Storm King would have wanted than to get his brand message out to a bunch of active 15-24 year old social influencers.
Applejack should have insisted that instead of calling it Ponying Up, they call it "Thousand-Horse Power!"
I assume he's way too young and it's that older looking guy in the engine room because he's the only staff member over 40 we see (except the chef).
I wonder if Pip has a sleazy older brother.
I'm surprised they didn't try to make this the boat that Crystal Prep rented for their Prom Dance.
5035518
As nature intended.
There’s a taller, redheaded guy on the crew, but I don’t think he’s over 40. There’s also the guy handing out flashlights, green skin, in the same age range.
Dunno, Ragamuffin’s ineptness would go a long way towards explaining this whole debacle.
Maybe that’s the one. You notice how we stopped hearing about the Crystal Preppies since then?…
While this episode had some really funny moments (I almost passed out from laughing at Rainbow Dash’s “20% cooler” comment over all, it was kind of a mess.
"Who saved the world from complete destruction multiple times"? Um, what? When they do that? Well, Midnight maybe could do something bad with her dimension shenanigans but all other? I really doubt that Juniper Montage or Vignette Valencia that dangerous.
My own thoughts while watching this:
(Note: I haven't seen anything since Forgotten Friendship on the Pedestria side)
What the
You're high school students, how'd you all afford to go on a cruise
Where do you get money
Reminded of this whole scene again (Warning, NSFW language link)
Dash did you just imagine hundreds of innocent people getting hurt
what is wrong with you
Rarity got all that
on a boat
for $9.99
(I was wondering if cruise liners really do have much in the way of stores -- Oliver's explanation below covers that, but I wonder what reason it has to have a full clothing store like this... As for the taxes Rarity's referring to, maybe she means sales tax? They have it in my state. Woo, 7% off. You saved like 70 cents by doing this shopping on your cruise, Rarity. The time you could have spent enjoying the cruise with your friends was worth less than 70 cents, apparently...)
Okay I actually really like the idea of examining their reactions to being superheroes and saving the world, since non-EQG has just glossed over it and seems to assume the world actively forgets it happens
Sunset no
You're the only adult in this group you have to be responsible
And that means recognizing that none of you have sailing skills. Go get the actual... whoever's job this is and get them to help you
"I'll fix the engine"? Holy shit, does the boat not have PEOPLE for that?
I mean I guess it really doesn't given the whole earlier sequence with Twilight...
It's like this is all from the perspective of how a kid THINKS the world works... that's gonna be it, isn't it, this turns out to have all been just a dream...
I don't even know what to say about the ocean liner behaving like a goddamn speedboat.
I'm impressed at how hard the writers worked to get that 20% cooler line in there.
I was going to compliment scitwi on her great job learning to use ponykinesis but then I remembered she has telekinesis so it probably wasn't as hard as it would be for a human coming in cold.
"But if you hadn't run off, we wouldn't have had what we needed to save our friends." That's a horrible lesson to teach children!
Princess Twilight heard hundreds of people were in danger and didn't come along to help. You'd think she'd at least want to study the portal! If she DIDN'T go, how'd they deal with the magic plant?
Trixie thinking she caused the water is actually pretty funny.
Does the cruise ship seriously have life jackets for every single animal, including the 147 or whatever it was bunny kits?
Also apparently a cruise ship's entire crew and passengers fits on that tiny lifeboat. How were this many people RUNNING that ocean liner?
I was trying to imagine how they'd get back home in this world of no authority figures where they can't call for help. I'm pleased Sunset thought of the same solution I did.
Or that Bowling for Soup was.
I kept waiting for someone to give her medication but apparently Pedestria doesn't have that (or more likely, this understaffed, underequipped boat just doesn't have it...)
I really liked the 'Now it's just a zoo.' joke too. Although it probably would have flowed better if Fluttershy said 'Now they don't want petting.'
Hey, the flashlights have batteries in them, don't they? So batteries are running at least some of the essential equipment! 😃
Maybe the symbol was associated with much of the magic he stole and he co-opted it so if the magic ever made the symbol it would seem like he did it on purpose?
I think Rarity is making up this entire story. (Edit: Or it was actually a short? Wow.)
I'm sure Sci-twi would say the same about any of her friends, and they of her and eachother.
There is gonna be SO MUCH PORN of this. Don't you know what you're doing, writers? Anyway, clearly the upward-facing side of a horizontally-oriented portal projects a force that sucks things in to just above its surface. It's enough to hold sand in place, and Rainbow who stepped in by accident, but Sunset shoving her, and Sunset and Scitwi jumping through, had enough force and momentum to overcome this effect. We've never observed a horizontal portal so you can't prove me wrong! 😃 And clearly this is different from the tears in reality Midnight Sparkle opened. Because reasons.
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe a scene explaining she's unable to telekinetically affect things that are partway through a portal was cut for time?
No. *grabs in hooves and shakes* "We *drained his magic*. T-that's the official story! There was no shattering of people, that would mean someone d--"
"No no, it's fine, this is great, there's no need to contact authorities about this 'ship' business, or anything like 'insurance' or 'regulations', you kids go back to your homes and never speak of this again...
Oh well. At least we got some of the HuMane 6 getting ponied and explored the ramifications of an adrenaline junkie like Rainbow getting into superpowered problems all the time.
5035510
I was going to explain my reasoning, but this is simultaneously more amusing and more menacing than anything I could come up with.
5035594
Actually, specifically that would be impossible: Something like that would immediately clue them in that magic is involved, and Sunset’s revelation and “do you trust me” would become meaningless.
I assumed this was the Crystal Prep Spring Break party-on-a-boat set up at the end of Dance Magic, what with the Rainbooms playing for the party; Sci-Twi, as an ex-CPA student, could well have been the one who did most of the organising, which would explain why everyone keeps thanking her for setting it up?
Although I don't recall seeing many CPA students on the ship, so...
5036032
I actually don’t recall seeing any confirmed CPA students on it.
Although, as I said above, them having had their previous spring break on the same boat could explain where they suddenly disappeared to and why we haven’t seen them for so long.
This was by Nick Confalone, who gave us Rollercoaster of Friendship. I'm pretty sure he knows exactly what he's doing.
Rarijack is the closest EqG ship to canon, but Sunlight/Sciset has to be close, and those two are still the biggest EqG ships. I think Nick tries to include nods to both those ships whenever he writes EqG...