Starscouting · 2:38pm Dec 11th, 2021
Here’s a game for physics and G5 pony nerds: look at the shadows in the film and identify evidence to support one of two theories:
- The sun follows a path across the sky as predicted for a rotating planetary body in orbit around a star.
- The sun is controlled by an unseen alicorn princess, or another magical creature, and moves around the sky somewhat erratically.
Let’s begin on the seafront in Maretime Bay, where the sun is at first on the seaward side, but later in the day, it has moved around 180 degrees.
We can take the orientation of the town from this map, which suggests the sun is close to due east in the first image, and due west in the second. This seems reasonable for a summer day.
Jumping ahead, in this evening scene, the sun has moved further round the sky to the north-west. Curiously, it appears to be at the same height as before, as Sunny’s shadow is no longer than it was in the afternoon scene above, although the red sky would suggest otherwise.
To the lighthouse! We can see that when Sunny returns home with Izzy, the sun is illuminating the front wall that was previously in the shade. However, it seems the angle of the shadows hasn’t moved the full half-circle that we would expect to be consistent with the pictures above.
Given Sunny’s friendly greeting to the sun at the start of her song, could it be that it jumped forward to the south-east to brighten her morning? Or we could speculate that the latter scene is actually early afternoon the following day. Izzy and Sunny must have stopped for a pizza on the way, had a few beers, then gone down to the sea and fallen asleep on the beach, while Hitch spent the night coaxing his deputy out of the trap.
Okay, maybe not. But there are enough questions about this evidence that in the event that Hitch had managed to arrest Sunny and put her in court, I imagine a lawyer could have some fun proving or disproving her alibi.
Let’s now more to Zephyr Heights and the most plot-critical scene. The bit where Sunny shows the unicorn crystal glass pane aligns with the image cast by that of the pegasus crystal is a memorable moment.
And especially remarkable, considering that to create an image on the floor of the same size and shape of the window would require the sun to be exactly 45 degrees above the horizon, at a compass bearing normal to the wall. What is the chance that our little ponies would be there at just the right time on just the right day? Further, the shadows cast by Sunny and Zipp don’t match the angle of the crystal projection. It looks like the sun must be in two places at the same time. Also, the projection that we see on the floor should be the mirror image of that on the inside of the window but the positions of the pink triangles suggest otherwise.
Something is not fully obeying the laws of physics here. But maybe that’s the point.
Sunny is witnessing a miracle and she knows it. As she grew up in a lighthouse and keeps a telescope, she understands geometric optics. And two suns in the sky makes it pretty clear that this is not normal. Oh my stars! This is surely a sign sent to guide her by the spirits of Princesses Celestia and Twilight Sparkle.
Like stories in old hagiographies of monks receiving divine instruction from a ray of light shining through a church window, Sister Sunny has found grace with the most high and received a vision from heaven directing her to take the light to heathen lands, whereupon she shall ascend to sainthood.
Even if this isn’t true, I expect it’s the story ponies will tell a few hundred years in the future. After all, we wouldn’t expect a clever pony like Sunny to get so excited and go off on a wild crystal chase just because of a chance alignment of two bits of glass, would we?
And speaking of premonition. The unicorn’s arrival in Maretime Bay is foretold by the sun dropping down and swooping across the sky to the north. That is a powerful and sinister omen. Run for your lives everypony.
Princess Celestia... she's alive?!
In 3D CGI, where you Have to Explicitly Define and Place each and every illumination source, and they are defined for all objects in the scene, even if supposedly occluded, wrong shadows are ether mistakes, artistic license, or maybe a lonely immortal trying desperatly to keep the memory of his only freind alive by not destroying everything she had, like the world.
After all these generations, I wonder if the writers have followed the crab bucket, and decided Spike is going to be sleeping The Long Sleep.
The Lighting Director is God. I can get behind that.
Given the apparently high intensity of the light that's producing the shadow in the final image (compared with the light on the left), I'm wondering whether this is being caused by concentrated reflections from windows off screen.
An alternative hypothesis is that the light source is Izzy's luminescence.
Love it!
Also, in that last shot, the temperature of the light is different from one side of the bridge to the other. Warm yellow sunshine on Sunny's side, and a very hot, bluer version behind Izzy. That is some very fine control of a (debatably) distant light source! Maybe a target-specific CME?
Hey, yet another set of cool ideas about the movie. I like it.
Just had a thought: Perhaps Luna's moon has shifted and is reflecting the sun's light, along with the sun in the sky? The gods of Equestria lighting the path for Sunny Starscout to take?
I love that second to last image—I had failed to notice it before. Sunny's just concluded that bringing the crystals together can bring about the return of magic. And then there she is, an earth pony standing in the light between a unicorn and pegasus, sporting a horn pointing to the mark of an alicorn. I love the details like this that appear in the movie.
"'Don't worry, Flurry,' she said. 'I'm just automating the sun and moon,' she said. 'Nothing could possibly go wrong,' she said..."
Agreeing with the dobermans' theory about the lighting of Izzy in the last scene.
I am also wondering if, seeing as long-vanished Equestria was certainly capable of many technological and magical marvels, that stained-glass window might be engineered specifically to alter its refractive properties, or just glow, and respond to the presence of the Stones by shining a light on them, regardless of the sun's actual position.
I am also also wondering about what kind of data we would need to disambiguate Theory 1 from what I think is happening, namely that there's some big, forgotten machine buried somewhere moving the Sun around in Celestia's place. I don't think it's possible to ever fully disprove that theory, since the machine's operation could be arbitrarily complex, but I wonder if there's any particular behavior of an orbital sun that would be both particularly visible from the ground, and also particularly unlikely to be deliberately or accidentally programmed into the Sun-o-Tron.
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A little way up the coast, in a quiet retirement home, there lives a batty old mare, showing signs of dementia, who has been there longer than any of the staff. In fact no pony is sure quite how long.
"I was once Princess of Equestria you know..."
"Just smile, nodd, and give her another piece of cake."
"I can move the sun you know..."
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That is, Raise The Sun
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But the Devil controls the sound, as he has all the best tunes.
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Well there is a property in that direction that gives some intense reflections.
images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/fb087425-b3fb-4dc6-9c6f-5d3b403d7979/dew4cgd-b12a40cb-cc93-4638-93ef-dc6f53188a96.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2ZiMDg3NDI1LWIzZmItNGRjNi05YzZmLTVkM2I0MDNkNzk3OVwvZGV3NGNnZC1iMTJhNDBjYi1jYzkzLTQ2MzgtOTNlZi1kYzZmNTMxODhhOTYucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.Sz2j8mlBiDVkprBkZxQEWZlmcSw9zrjGVWIYwZRjyDA
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That's another parameter to consider. Izzy's sparkle is indeed is a bit too sparkly for Bridlewood.
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Maybe somepony banished to the moon for a thousand years spent her time polishing its surface so it reflects sunlight very efficiently. There's a story there.
I didn't notice Sunny's 'horn' in that image - despite it being right in front of me. Now wondering how many other shots like this I missed.
images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/fb087425-b3fb-4dc6-9c6f-5d3b403d7979/dew4cgb-8d7d297f-2409-46f9-aa9e-29d08063aeb2.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2ZiMDg3NDI1LWIzZmItNGRjNi05YzZmLTVkM2I0MDNkNzk3OVwvZGV3NGNnYi04ZDdkMjk3Zi0yNDA5LTQ2ZjktYWE5ZS0yOWQwODA2M2FlYjIucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.UvhnQJ5C3anDkOI_TZySJ97boKE0gmN2SYsV8pL9j2M
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Ah, the challenge of being stuck at home, having to run the country, raise the sun and moon, and home school little Flurry. The temptation to try to automate some tasks would certainly be there.
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In long-vanished Equestria, I recall Discord did some interesting things with stained glass windows. Maybe the glass has some memory of his magic.
Foucault's pendulum is the experiment that shows the Earth is rotating, instead of the Sun orbiting once a day. If you had a theory of how such a machine worked, you could think up a way to test it. I don't think there's a completely model independent way to test it.
There is no stained glass unicorn crystal.
There is a stained glass unicorn crystal imagine on the floor.
The sun isn't the only thing behaving unusually.
Your Miracle theory holds water quite well.
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Dogs think that you are God. Cats think that they are God. But the truth is, the lighting director is God
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It is fully in character for twilight, seeing that stuff is starting to go to shit, feverishly spending a month figuring out how to automate moving the sun while things go even more to shit while she's hyper focusing. Or maybe it was the spell/technology she settled on that made things go to shit.. who knows certainly good fanfiction potential
5616077 I'm pretty sure that I only noticed the horn in your blog pic because the one you linked here forced me to see the pattern... And I only finally saw that one in Izzy's home after about the third time I watched the movie, lol.
There are so many excellent, small details in this movie. Despite its (subjectively) too-short length, I feel that the writers, animators, directors, and especially the actors did a wonderful job of bringing this story to life.
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That's a good point. How did the unicorn crystal glass fall to the floor without breaking? And come to be just at Sunny's hooves when she needed it? Somepony has planned this a long time in advance.
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And bunnies?
static.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/d/d2/Angel_as_Celestia_ID_S4E21.png
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Fallen angels are called demons so I think that makes Angel bunny Lucifer
Oh, neat! Thanks.
Interesting analysis.
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The glass having its own lighting seems likely. It need not be magic, though: Sunny's father almost certainly was studying the thing, and wouldn't have wanted to wait for the exact right time of year.
This would also explain the crystal placement. It wasn't broken, it was placed there by him. Unless it broke during the movie? I don't actually remember.
I do feel obligated to throw in that the movie reads very much like it was not intended to be equestria's far-future but its own world, with connections grafted on in subsequent drafts by executive decree. The magic system and biospheres are totally different. The latter could be explained by a different continent, but the former requires Occam's Razor-violating contortions to work. It CAN, but is unnecessary if it was always intended as a distant sequel.
For now I'm sticking to the different continent theory. We'll see what the writers and unfortunately probably executives do going forward.
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I don't exactly think it's a different continent, but the same continent terraformed into unrecognizability. The day-night cycle and the weather are automated, all the monsters have been wiped out, and all that's left is basically just endless, rolling, perfect grassland dotted with ruins and little outposts of "civilization".
Not sure how this caused everypony's magic to get bound up in those three stones, but I'm fairly sure that is the cause.
I am still miffed that the purported Tree of Harmony looks nothing at all like the original, though.
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Again that poses the problem of the implied extinction event. Since the only real sign of Equestrian civilization is an airport, it seems neater to me to have it be a different continent.
I didn't actually know about the tree. The reference I found merely has an artist indicating the design is deliberate. It's... disturbing if it's supposed to be the same tree (and not, say, a different outgrowth of the same world-wide organism). A writer would need to confirm whether it's merely design or story.
I'd personally prefer abandoning any notion of being a future G4 due to these and other problems, but I suspect it's being enforced from further up. And for whatever reason a good segment of the fandom is really excited about the notion. I can't get past the implied extinction myself. Maybe this is best saved for another thread though.
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What about Luna?