Jun
8th
2019
Points of Canon: S9x11 - Student Counsel · 4:22pm Jun 8th, 2019
Or, what does Starlight Glimmer do with her day.
- Chronology markers: School of Friendship is the primary setting of the episode, and the Treehouse of Harmony is in evidence, forcing it into the bookends of Season 9. According to Starlight’s statement, this is immediately prior to a spring break, which sets the season, and further on, a “spring solstice” is coming up in the next few days, which locks this episode within a year. However, this episode has the same kind of chronology problem as Fake It Till You Make It.
“I know how hard you’ve been working lately, so I figured you could use a break.”
- Now wait a minute. Shouldn’t the Friendship Castle be visible from this point?… I call animation error. Or maybe they had a draw distance problem.
- The picnic cloth Trixie prepared has two teacups, an assortment of sandwiches and cupcakes, but only one piece of toast, on one plate.
- Starlight uses a bracelet, which performs the function of a primitive pager by apparently magical means. Starlight describes it as “I cast a spell on the door to my office so this bracelet goes off whenever there’s a knock.” which means this isn’t a mass-produced thing.
- Trixie likes her tea with four pieces of sugar.
- Starlight is still capable of teleporting somewhere between 1 and 5km into a place she can’t see multiple times in quick succession, not that this is surprising.
“I totally respect my younger cousins’ decisions to stay seaponies, but they’ve never been on dry land.”
- Like they can’t transform any time they want to visit dry land and return?
- That would mean they were born seaponies, right?
- “Preparing for a visit with them is almost as much work as the research assignment Headmare Twilight gave me on hazardous fauna of the Everfree Forest!” An interesting subject for a research assignment.
- “Actually, steam has water in it.” Silverstream is holding the quill in her left claw.
“It’s almost spring break. Twilight and the others have already left to celebrate the spring solstice in Canterlot, and I have to help the students with any issues before they head home for the holiday.”
- Chronology locks, see above.
- Notably, spring solstice is a thing at all, unless ponies are misusing the word. It’s pretty clear that at least some of them are: There’s no such thing as a spring solstice, there’s a spring equinox – that is, the moment when the day and night have equal lengths. Unfortunately, they say nothing about the lengths of either in this episode. Previously, the only reference to the differing expected times of sunrise and sunset across the year was all the way back in Friendship is Magic. Later, Starlight herself uses the word “equinox” instead.
- For that matter, a spring solstice incurs a celebration. This is the first time we hear of it.
- But wait, if all the teachers have already left, why are the students still here?…
- “The party Maud and Mudbriar are throwing?” So who talked her into that?…
“Sunburst wants us to pick up a genuine pre-Equestrian spring solstice chafing dish from the antique shop.”
- Sunburst expects a Ponyville antique shop to contain a genuine artifact that has to be over 1111 years old, and possibly even older than that. What the aerial intercourse?… Unless it’s been stolen from the Castle of the Two Sisters…
- Ponies know what a chafing dish is, and supposedly, knew that in pre-Equestrian times.
- “Mudbriar wants a bouquet of flowering sticks – whatever that means.” It appears that neither Trixie nor Starlight have ever seen lilac bloom, which actually surprises me – it perfectly fits the definition of “flowering sticks.”
- “And I thought we were both looking forward to Mrs. Cake teaching us the secret recipe to her famous spring solstice cake.” Which would require Mrs. Cake to bake that cake more than once, otherwise it would not be famous, which would require the “spring solstice” to be a stable holiday.
- “And the Great and Powerful Trixie keeps her promises!” Good to know.
- Apparently, Rose hasn’t ever seen lilac either, because she attempts to glue flowers onto a stick with what seems to be PVA glue in a plastic bottle. See chemical industry.
- “I think I have the shower thing under control.” But this time, Silverstream writes with her right claw.
- “What do you mean Trixie already picked up Sunburst’s genuine pre-Equestrian equinox chafing dish?!” Notice that nopony seems to have bought the Mighty Helm map initially seen in Uncommon Bond.
- “Ocellus, it’s perfectly normal for a changeling to struggle with identity issues…” Good to know.
- “You can’t close! Trixie and I need to learn the recipe for your equinox cake!” Oh, now it’s “equinox,” gee thanks.
- “Trixie? What are you doing here?” Notice that to turn the lamp on, Starlight applies magic to the lamp itself, rather than, say, a light switch.
- “Technically, it’s not symmetrical or aesthetically pleasing.” Technically, this is incorrect: There is no way Mudbriar can claim that anything is objectively aesthetically pleasing.
- “I’m very excited. This is going to be the most perfect party ever.” Because Pinkie’s not here, you mean?
- “Is Starlight here?! I was told she’d be here!” Actually, by whom? Starlight did not tell Silverstream where she was going, and the only one who might know would be Mrs. Cake, whom Terramar would have to know a lot more to even know to ask.
- “I was supposed to meet her at the Mount Aris train station, but she never showed up!” Which requires two train rides – to Mount Aris and back – to take no longer than it took Starlight and Trixie to bake that cake, which is ridiculously fucking fast.
- “It’s a long way between Ponyville and Mount Aris.” Yeah, no Sunburst, it’s quicker than it takes most of us to commute.
- “She never told me about a project.” She did. Starlight forgot, something to keep in mind.
“Hello?”
- Pinkie’s party cannon is neither smooth nor rifled on the inside, which is pretty strange.
- One of Starlight’s teleports gets her inside a bookshelf, and now we know what happens when you teleport into solid matter: You displace the matter.
- “A cockatrice?” The page Terramar points out contains a detailed cross-section of a cockatrice, implying somepony actually caught and dissected one.
- “We can still have a party. A search party.” It took fucking nine seasons for canon to make that joke.
- “And the reptilian birds are elusive and solitary!” Later, they add an exception to this description, but I don’t think it’s correct to call them solitary with this exception in place.
- “This way!” At one point, Trixie uses spit on the frog of her hoof to feel for wind in an attempt to determine direction. Previously, we only saw Applejack do that in Buckball Season.
- “Um, according to Silverstream’s research, the cockatrice prefers rocky terrain and ample shade.” Good to know.
- “Technically, pine trees like Pinus cembra or Pinus sylvestris can grow from narrow crevasses or cracks in a rocky rhizosphere.” Pinus cembra is a European pine. So is Pinus sylvestris. Equestria seems to have both New World and Old World plants, it appears.
- “This must be some kind of migration.” I don’t think solitary creatures band together even for a migration, but okay.
- “Stop! It’s me!” Sunburst knows – and can cast! – a beam spell.
- “Come on!” Starlight can teleport at least three ponies at once, but apparently, not five.
- “I didn’t think I could love him any more.” Could we keep him like this, though? I mean, technically he’s still a character when he’s stoned, right?
- “Now what?!” Now cockatrices fly over the ruined wall… Oh, they don’t? Why?
- “If this really is a migration, it’ll take a full lunar cycle to complete.” What exactly is Sunburst basing this statement on, if he doesn’t know just what kind of a migration this is? For that matter, what exactly is a lunar cycle and what is its relationship to a moon?…
- “Once Edith volunteered to help, I guess I lost track of time.” So who gave her that name?
- “Did you know that they migrate to the Everfree Forest once a year?” Where do they migrate from, though? And do they migrate back? Just so that we know what place not to visit.
We never find out just how exactly did they get back, by the way, they just did.
Also, who was the script editor for this one? Do they even have one? The credits don’t list such a position, just an endless list of supervisors.
Yeah, the solstice/equinox issue is even worse than birds flying north for the winter in that one EqG short. At least that has some sort of explanation...
It's a lot in terms of space, if not time. Equestrian trains apparently have coal-powered warp drives.
Well, there's the dragon migration, though their solitariness depends on the writer. Alternately, studies on cockatrice social dynamics are limited given how the researchers keep getting petrified.
This explains so much...
Oh that solstice/equinox thing really bothered me, not least because my head canon has always been that Winter Wrap Up takes place on the Spring Equinox. Now we know they’re two separate things. Perhaps Spring Equinox is the day after Winter Wrap Up, hence the celebration, but as you said, we’ve never heard the equinox being mentioned before.
Was that a smartwatch
FINALLY, after eight and a half seasons we finally see someone use teleport to take care of a quick problem somewhere else!
"The party Maud and Mudbriar are throwing?" Yeah, THAT'LL be exciting.
The antique shop sells genuine pre-Equestrian artifacts from 1,111 years ago?!
Is she going to end up duplicating herself?
This is going to end with them all deciding to go, being together is more important than the party, right?
Starlight doesn't have an area-search spell that can scan for people? Good to know.
"I have a lot of experience telling ponies that I have a lot of experience dealing with the dangerous creatures of the Everfree Forest! Follow me!" Oh Trixie. So eager to make the joke you forgot to talk in the third person!
Why was a Solstice party at night anyway?
Wow that's a lot of cockatrices! What's the CR of this encounter? Then again Starlight's probably pretty high level.
Sunburst knows attack spells? ...And he uses them on what he thinks is a cockatrice that just spoke his name in Starlight's voice?
Edith. HOW DID IT TELL YOU ITS NAME? Siverstream can talk to
animalsmagical beasts now?Was
Was this entire episode about Equestria inventing 'office hours' for the first time
Wait, spring solstice? How... what... what does a solstice even MEAN when the sun is moved by Celestia
Well, we got some focus on characters we don't see in the spotlight much, so that was nice.
Starlight's pager-bracelet seems like a modification of alarm. The application seems too specific to mass-produce -- she also enchanted her door, after all.
Now that I know what a chafing dish is, what were they even using it for at the party...?
changeling identity issues -- I think this is just a gag and Starlight is BSing, she hasn't had enough interaction with changelings to know what's normal. Also, Ocellus has never shown any obvious signs of identity issues, has she? I'd think a natural shapeshifter simply wouldn't have appearance as part of her identity...
Magic lamp -- this is probably a Unicorn Thing.
I guess Terramar read the script.
The cockatrice monster manual entry reads: Organization: Solitary, pair, flight (3-5), or flock (6-13). Clearly this is one of those 'stopped reading at the first word' issues.
Migration? They're all in one spot. This is mating season, but I guess they can't use that word on kids' TV.
Obviously cockatrices are stupid and forget something exists if they can't see it anymore. The door closed, the ponies must be gone.
Somepony wrote nonsense about cockatrice migrations and lunar cycles on trivia game cards (so that they'd know if anyone stole their questions and answers) and Sunburst memorized them to seem smart.
Alternatively, it took Trixie and Starlight a ridiculously fucking long time to bake their approximation of a cake.
Technically, from a taxonomic point of view all birds are considered to be reptiles, so "reptilian birds" is really synonymous with "birds". Now, mammalian birds would be something to see.
They're also pine trees that preferentially grow in thin, rocky soil, especially in mountains, which would make Mudbriar's statement entirely correct. Good on the show! Especially after that time that they tried to pass of a solid mass of purple crystal as layered slate/schist/gneiss...
I found this a pretty fun episode, except for how equinox and solstice were treated as interchange terms and the cockatrices' inability to fly over a few feet of shattered stone.
5071310
Apparently, nothing: Sunburst just really wanted to have it but couldn’t be bothered to visit the antique shop himself.
Much more plausible, I suppose.
5071315
Pretty sure the other lines in the episode exclude this option…
Pegasi are mammalian and have wings, so…
Actually, didn't Plato say something about "Man is a featherless biped", and someone plucked a chicken to say it was a man? Would make it a mammalian bird, right?
5071367
I think that was before taxonomy was a thing; the person with the plucked bird was demonstrating how inadequate the definition was.
So the guy who said 'featherless biped' added 'with broad nails'.
5071367
Mammalians are those animals who secrete milk to feed their young. A featherless chicken would not be one.
Kind of a meh episode, but I feel like they really leaned too heavily on "Starlight and Trixie make amusing meme-able faces at each other."
Yup its screwy. Feels like it should be set during season 8, which fits with the whole spring period. But post-treehouse, so season 9. Maybe it's late season 9?
Yup. And presumably they were given the little magic pearl amulets, they just choose not to use them.
I wonder, as the seapony population expands, what happens when they run out of pearl fragments from that one giant pearl?
I think I can guess why! Now that the Student 6 are visiting their Harmony clubhouse in the Everfree, Twilight wants to scare them straight through research, so they'll stay on the trails.
It seems like the Mane 6 left right after classes to manage a major party, so they figured Starlight could supervise the students on the last day before they take off. I think this is supposed to be like a Saturday, most students are supposed to have gotten on trains and left by the middle of the episode.
I think from the way the proprietor acted, Sunburst was already in and spotted the dish, he just reserved it and someone else went to pick it up. And apparently chafing dishes have been around since Roman times.
This is super-adorable.
He's also responding to Sunburst saying the cake is interesting, which does not require an object to be symmetrical or aesthetically pleasing, so screw that guy.
Yeah, Pinkie is going to be furious her sister threw her first party and she wasn't invited. It's going to be a thing.
I guess Rose and the antique guy might also know. Terramar could have just bumped into one of those people at the train station and gotten directions.
In Starlight's defense, Silverstream used up three session asking for adjectives instead of looking in a thesaurus. I feel like Starlight is justified in thinking that if something actually important was going with Silverstream she would have brought it up.
Or at least a dead body.
And it looks fairly powerful, or at least wider than other beam spells we've seen.
Insert obligatory Tree Hugger joke here.
They do seem extremely dumb. Alternatively, if cockatrices are fairly solitary predators, then they probably have territories and ways of marking it from each other. Silverstream's pet may have pissed on the castle door or something and they don't want to enter claimed territory, even though they are a huge group.
They found a way to make moons more ambiguous?
No one wants their prints on this.
So any cockatrice can de-petrify any victim, previously fans thought each cockatrice had to depetrify their own victims.
I think for someone to get petrified, a cockatrice has to star you in the eyes for like, 3 seconds or something. It was pretty easy to avoid, actually.
This might be intended as a homage to that time cockatrices invaded Canterlot in the comics.
Oliver, as someone who has probably held office hours, how annoying was it watching Silverstream pester Starlight for shower adjectives instead of looking them up herself?
5071347
Actually now that I think of it... griffons and hippogriffs -- they'd probably count.
5071639
I assumed that an increasingly large section of the expanding seapony/hippogriff population would just be stuck as whatever they happen to have been born as; swapping and borrowing fragments would work for some time, but assuming consistent population growth there would come a time when there simply won't be enough pearl fragments to go around.
You know what? I'm going to go with that. Makes as much sense as anything else.
Technically, we've seen that all the way in Lesson Zero - Twilight teleports inside a ball the CMC were playing with, destroying it. This further elaborates how the displacement works - you arrive tiny and grow rapidly.
Seen fanon floating around that the ruins of the Castle of the Sisters are protected from entry by wildlife, otherwise the castle would have been in markedly worse shape.
5071646
Not that they wouldn't have had the same problems with the pearl whole, except the scarcity would be brought by the need to travel to the capital from elsewhere and the time it takes to use (assuming there is a limit to how many can be transformed simultaneously).
5071639
Plausible!
I suggest you leave that to Maud.
Funnily enough, office hours were not exactly a thing in my university: We didn’t have enough offices to even consider such a thing. Even the idea of a counselor didn’t exist, not sure if it does now. I got nothing to compare to.
5071723
Plausible, but incompatible with certain examples, like when Twilight teleports into a position wherein she is wrapping a leg around someone’s neck. I suppose multiple differing methods of teleportation must exist.
BTW, was this whole thing supposed to be a giant Starlight Trixie shipping thing? Because I'm having a hard time watching this and not seeing the two of them as dating.