Comic Continuity is Confusing · 9:10pm Dec 14th, 2023
Working out a timeline for the TV show is difficult.
And then I read the comics. 
Help meee...
Blog Number 244: Repeated Repeated Nightmare Nightmare Edition
Initially, you could get away with assuming each TV show Season was roughly real-time (e.g. Season One was Year One, Season Two was Year Two, etc.), right up until Season Four implies that the entirety of the first three seasons consisted of one pony year. Despite that headache-inducing hiccup, overall I managed it.
In broad strokes, what I'd worked out for a PonyWorld Chronology (using Oliver's timeline system, though that seems to have gone down in recent years) was this:
In the beginning, there was an astronomy pun.
"Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria..."
YEAR ONE
- Assume a year starts with the Summer Sun Celebration, or roughly early summer. That marks the Season One premiere as time zero.
- Season One is most of Year One (Summer, Autumn, Winter, a snippet of Spring for the Grand Galloping Gala).
- Seasons Two and Three are mostly crammed into Spring. There are some exceptions - e.g. "Super Speedy Cider Squeezy" I move up to Autumn to fit alongside "Applebuck Season" as general harvest time, and "Hearth's Warming Eve" has to go into Winter.
- Twilight's ascension occurs late in Spring.
+Equestria Girls happens around this time.
'Twas the following year when the ponies invented... lighting effects.
YEAR TWO
- Season Four starts with the next Summer Sun Celebration and marks Year Two. This is messy, as I've generally ignored the episode order and the Journal reference to rearrange the eps. This way, I mostly get to shove "Bats!" (a.k.a. "Applebuck Season 2.0") way down to delay Autumn and keep most of the episodes in Summer. This is because...
- ...Season Five has to line up with special events in prior seasons e.g. Nightmare Night, the Running of the Leaves, and so on. This means Autumn of Year Two is packed. It's almost as bad as Spring of Year One. I get a little leeway pushing some eps into Spring of Year Two, but Autumn's still a tight fit.
+Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks happens between Seasons Four and Five.
Those who do not forget the past are condemned to repeat it anyway, because that's all corporate does these days.
YEAR THREE
After this, we start hitting my personal difficulties with later seasons, but I manage to put Seasons Six and - to a lesser extent - Seven into Year Three, culminating with the Season Seven finale. Don't ask me about Eight and Nine.
It all began with the Ministry of Funny Hats...
OTHER
+Historical timelines are trickier because of the show's habit of dumping backstory willy-nilly, but generally I put the founding of Equestria as two thousand years prior to the present day (because packing everything to a thousand years ago seems too much), followed in sequence by:
- Founders =>
-GAP* - Pillars (Sirens Incident) =>
- Pillars (Pony of Shadows Incident) =>
- Celestia and Luna's ascensions =>
-GAP* - Tirek's takeover bid** =>
- Discord's Rain*** of Chaos =>
-GAP* - [roughly a thousand years prior to present day] Sombra Incident =>
- Nightmare Moon Incident =>
- Celestia proves what a single-hooved badass she is for a thousand years.
---
* Because a thousand years is a long time, and some of these checkpoints have to occur within living memory of each other. I make the assumption that powerful unicorns like Star Swirl the Bearded can live extended lives because of exposure to magic, similar to Discworld wizards. Celestia and Luna being long-lived goes without saying.
** For those wondering about the obviously Star Swirl-looking fellow described as the befriended "young unicorn" for Scorpan in the flashback of "Twilight's Kingdom"... I cheated. He's a Star Swirl copycat. What? They didn't say it was him.
*** Not a typo. It was mustard.
---
"WE ARE THE FUTURE!"
- Founders =>
- +Equestria Girls continuity deviates independently, and in any case is pretty linear internally. Its only major problem is that the clues (e.g. how often Sunset won the Fall Formal) point to the HuMane Six/Seven being in Senior year/twelfth grade, only for later continuity to start a new year. Make up some "this is not technically the real world so I can change the rules ha ha ha!" excuse about this world having an extra thirteenth grade after Senior (Ambrosial?), and that at least is somewhat workable.
And voila! A somewhat workable chronology of events.
"Now that you're a princess, you are qualified to learn the truth about my sadness when I lost my friend and sister:
I was very, very sad."
Now, this is highly idiosyncratic, and I suppose you could argue that Season Four only implies the first three seasons took one year, since if you look at the transcripts, Celestia literally talks about her own view on the Summer Sun Celebration changing with the return of Luna. She never officially claims it was only one year, and given this could be interpreted as her letting Princess Twilight into her confidence at last, it could be just a delayed confession.
Yet she talks like there's been no intervening celebration to work out her new feelings in that case, and you'd expect an episode prior to cover this territory if it needed emphasizing. It really does imply - or at least is easy to infer - that this is the first time the celebration's being refocused from Nightmare Moon's defeat to Luna's return. So as tight as it makes the cramming of Seasons One, Two, and Three into one year*, I'm going along with that version of Year One.
* Which makes the changed format of Season Two - non-Twilight characters writing their own letters to Celestia - a pain in the backside to retcon if you have to move one to before "Lesson Zero", which I place at the beginning of Spring alongside "The Return of Harmony".
"I WORKED OUT ALL THE THINGS!"
Anyway: prior to this year of 2023, my version of the main timeline was... rough, and uncomfortably designed*, but broadly workable.
* Spring of Year One got so bad that I considered adding a bit of deviant worldbuilding by making each season - Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring - four months each rather than three. I even gave them names. And then I watched "Winter Wrap Up", where we get this line:
🎵 "Three months of winter coolness..." 🎵
Damn you, Rainbow Dash! Now I have to come up with some nonsense about why winter was delayed one month.
And then I read the comics.
"WHAT!? YOU MEAN THERE'S MORE THINGS TO WORK OUT ALL!?"
Quite apart from now having to cram a lot into Spring of Year One - which is already crammed - I now have to deal with the logistical self-contradiction of "Summer Wrap Up", something I already dislike because of the lazy naming.
Let's get to the point: this doesn't work on the "first three seasons tucked into Year One" scheme. On the current scheme, Summer is front-loaded and Twilight ascends in the next Spring, making it impossible for her to be a unicorn in the next Summer that follows. So, assuming Summer Wrap Up is, well, the wrapping up of summer at the end*, then the events of "Zen and the Art of Gazebo Repair" and "Neigh Anything" must occur before then, near the beginning of Year One, because Twilight hasn't ascended yet.
* I had a similar problem with Season Three's "Summer Harvest Parade", but cheated by changing the event to one named after an actual historical figure called Summer Harvest. Besides, I thought most crops were harvested in the autumn, not the summer.
But this runs right up against the requirement for Cadence and Shining Armor to be delayed to later.
If there's one good reason to ignore "Neigh Anything", it's that Buck Withers is one of the franchise's most boring antagonists.
Let me count the ways... again.
Firstly, pushing the wedding all the way back to the first summer drags pre-character development Luna to well before the Autumn-dated hallowe'en-esque stamp of "Luna Eclipsed", which must happen before "Zen" (or else no one would be so relaxed around her). Besides, the events of "A Canterlot Wedding" can't occur way too early - not as early as Summer of Year One - because how long can it be for Rainbow Dash to go from "barely capable of a rainboom" to "pulling one off on demand"?
Also, having Lyra, Minuette, and Twinkleshine in Twilight's vicinity so soon after the premiere makes it less credible that Twilight would forget them so readily up until "Amending Fences". Celestia appointing the Mane Six to organize the wedding makes more sense if she's gotten to know them better, rather than just off the cuff of, say, Nightmare Moon's defeat.
Twilight mentions Shining has been seeing her less and less since she moved to Ponyville, so clearly a lot of time has passed. And lastly, Twilight's "that's scientifically impossible" comment to Future Twilight in "It's About Time" wouldn't make sense if she'd already encountered the changelings, which would provide an obvious reason to be suspicious of alternative doppelgangers.
All these details make it hard to reconcile an early placement with the late-stage developments present.
Although all the Mane Five being changelings would explain why they're so useless in "A Canterlot Wedding - Part 1".
Beyond pedantic details, there's also my personal aesthetic dislike of rearranging the timeline markers so radically. While I've happily done it within each Season, I've rarely done it between Seasons. That's why Season One still broadly takes place before Seasons Two and Three, for example.
The upshot of all this is that trying to account for the Summer Wrap Up stretch of the comics (in what was already a tough timeline treatment) has put my timeline in an uncomfortable position.
That's Derpyist!
Something has to give. Either I downplay comic continuity (in a flexible "broad strokes" fashion) to preserve the current system, or I bite the bullet and split the current Year One into two years to stop the mounting pressure on Year One's Spring (especially with the comics added to the load), allowing for a second summer for the wrap up and just accepting the oddities that this introduces to Celestia's talk in "Princess Twilight Sparkle".
SCORPAN! Curse your inexplicable choice of friends!
At the moment, I'm defaulting to the first one because - bluntly put - it's the system I've managed to work with for recent years. I've pretty much patched up and fine-tuned the existing show details and have something that, if not elegant, is at least practical. The Year One Spring cramming and the harsh rearrangement of Season Four to put as much into Year Two's Summer as possible before the second cram in Year Two Autumn - collectively - is awkward, but not insurmountable. Besides, most people are happy to treat the comics as optional extras, so there's that built-in leeway.
SCORPAN! Curse your inexplicable choice of family!
On the other hand, splitting Year One into two years to spread out Seasons Two and Three could bring some advantages, especially taking the comics into account as well. It wouldn't solve everything (to pick one example, "Secret of My Excess" has to occur in Year One because it's explicitly set during Spike's first birthday in Ponyville, which being an entrance exam event suggests early springtime), but it could free up some breathing room for Seasons Two and Three, and - most obviously - it'd fix that annoying "Summer Wrap Up" issue. So there's that.
Bouncing back and forth here, trying to work it out...
Can we at least agree "Siege of the Crystal Empire" was a bit... eh?
Anyway, that's all for now. Impossible Numbers, out.
And this kind of nonsense is why I blame Star Swirl for the whole dang mess.
Oliver just puts comics and other stuff into B-canon and I adhere to the same rules for my own canon-based fanfiction series. The comics are good as a source of ideas and inspiration and can be implemented in broad strokes
That being said, Luna totally deserves a more interesting animal companion than some thematically irrelevant opossum. Also the arc with good King Sombra is a complete crap in my opinion. All in all, the show continuity is juicy for details and can be called relatively consistent, and enriches characters enough as it is
Anyway, my estimation for the show chronology is broadly four+ years with main characters fully growing into competent young adults in the process. I estimate them as very young at the beginning of the show, as befitting for a kid cartoon. Independent, with jobs, but still comparable to high schoolers - like characters from Equestria Girls
5759025
I do like the Austin Powers school of chronological reconciliation:
i.pinimg.com/originals/d1/ef/13/d1ef130961c641505bccfbe1c20344e2.jpg
i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/764/810/42c.png
At this point, I've thrown in the towel trying to convince you to not bother with this extra mental headwork to fit the comics into the show timeline. Hell, even Oliver never got tied up with all that! Man was wise to shove them into a separate category.
Only you could avoid the comics for a decade, finally dip your toes into the first chunk, and really enjoy them but also instantly tie yourself in knots trying to fit them into the show's timeline. Only you.
5759028
That's what I'm inclining towards at the moment. For instance, I do like some of the details from the Fiendship series.
Aw, I like Tibbles.
💧 I was working on an idea that Luna, representing the night, has some jurisdiction over the Eternal Sleep of Death™, and having a pet prone to playing dead could work into that.
Is that the Reflections arc with Celestia and the mirror?
I hadn't thought of it like that. Broadly, I put them in the young adult category: 23 or 24 years as of the start of the show, with the Cutie Mark Crusaders at around 11 or 12. I dunno that I could totally defend that beyond "I just like the number 12".
5759030
I'm open to the idea of going, "Nuts to it, I'll play the Schrodinger's canon card: they're canon except when they're not, and only after I've looked in the box."
5759032
I think you can go for a more interesting variants for psychopomps in the universe
Directly tying death and sleep to each other is sort of cliche, in my opinion... They are close, but still not exactly the same. I can see though how she can indirectly govern over servants and spirits of the appropriate Realm of the Dead who were left on their own for thousand years while Luna was banished.
Regarding Tiberius, I had an idea that he might travel with her into the dreamrealm during her duties and transform into various other animals, or even something beyond that. It all could be fun to explore, and plays into Luna's personality. Unlike Celestia, for example, Luna is more prone to changing and reevaluating herself
And yeah, that Reflections arc is just not my cup of tea
It is. It has mixed reception – a notable chunk of the fandom quite dislikes it, but as I've shared before, it was a huge hit with the main comics viewer base. To the point that arc was the one that got the most back issue orders in the series' whole run. I know I've said it before, but which opinions on it being all over the map, there's no way to tell how you'll find it unless you just read it.
I tend to agree with this, the Mane 6 being just post-college years (yes, even if most of them evidently never went to college). I do get why some headcanon them as late teens, but I dunno, there's just too much stuff in the show that flies better looking the other way for my liking.
5759037
Looking at the IDW list, I see I'm not far off reading that one. Just got "Ponies in Book Land" between here and there. Well, insofar as I'm focusing on the main comics: I'm still partway through the Micro Series.
Twilight I could easily see as a postgrad by the time we catch up with her, and Rarity and Applejack's jobs I treat as having been going for a few years (especially since Rarity would have had to work her way up to owning Carousel Boutique). Fluttershy and Pinkie I just assume would act the same or similarly no matter what age they are. It's only really Rainbow Dash who would work better as a "Best Young Flyer" debuting in her career as a late teen, but even that's not far off the target age.
Working out birthdays is a nuisance as well. Vaguely put, Twilight and Rainbow I assume were born in the summer. Twilight, because I place "Sweet and Elite" much earlier than most would, assuming also that the Canterlot Garden Party is a summer event. Rainbow, because I place the Birthiversary of "Pinkie Pride" early in Season Four. Spike's, as mentioned, goes to early spring.
Pinkie's awkward as I actually put "Party of One" sometime before "A Friend in Deed" (where she claims her birthday isn't for another 75 days: I cheat hard on that one by insisting that's the right length, but pointing backwards in time and invoking "Pinkie Logic"), and the former's in early spring. Which means Fluttershy being "a year older than you" (as per "Griffon the Brush Off") places her in the spring too, though not necessarily on the exact same date.
It's only Rarity and Applejack that are complete unknowns, so I throw darts at the wall and go for late autumn (Applejack) and early winter (Rarity), just for variety.
5759032
IIRC when asked about the Mane 6's ages in an interview Lauren Faust said they were deliberately undefined. For the purposes of an episode their emotional maturity could range from human equivalent 13 to 21. She said she justified this by the fact that horses mature physically much faster than humans.
The evidence for pony development being very different from human development in canon is Baby Cakes which has the Cake Twins speaking their first words at one month old.
Interestingly Lauren took this concept and ran with it in Them's Fighten Herds where in at least the kickstarter first drafts Arizona the cow was four years old. Though I don't know if that stayed canon for the final version.
5759038
The only postgraduate we actually know of is Maud Pie. Twilight and Moondancer both did some manner of independent study, but it's not clear that they ever actually got degrees in anything.
5759042
Good point. On the other hand, the show's weird about never showing the twins ageing after that up till the finale, especially given how Flurry Heart develops by comparison (though being born an alicorn presumably gives her a boost).
I generally prefer to lean more on the human side, given how long it takes humans to learn culture and develop psychologically. Super-fast learning I reserve for the likes of Twilight and Moondancer, and the former at least is a known prodigy.
5759046
Even at the younger age range, I'd be surprised if Twilight wasn't the sort to speed through the academic ranks due to being such an intellectual powerhouse (powerhorse?). I could easily see her getting her degree* when most ponies are just starting college.
* I was gonna say in "Magic", but given she's still practising spells in Season One, "Magic Theory" might be the better bet.
As for Moondancer, unless she just means casually, then she's studying for a lot of subjects at once by the time of Season Five. That sort of thing seems more probable if she's already proven herself at one subject prior (and if she's got the money to pay for more student loans).
5759048
Twilight's first letter to Celestia contains the phrase "continuing studies in pony magic." I.e., her field is "Pony Magic."
On the subject of age and maturity, we are told in Celestia's Ballad that Twilight becoming an alicorn was a metaphor for having "grown up" and "begun" a "new life." I.e., at least Celestia considered her something of an adolescent (certainly not a child; cutie mark acquisition is the relevant metaphor for the transition from childhood to adolescence marked by, e.g., Bar/Bat Mitzvah, First Communion, etc.) before that.
On the subject of Mane 6 vague ages, Celestia at least on one occasion refers to them in passing as 'a special group of fillies', and does so directly before sending Twilight there with a mission to find friends. It means that at least in her perception they can be considered very young.
I'm sorry, but character-wise I don't see them all keeping aging past their adolescence and then just staying in a small rural town of Ponyville.
5759051
Not that it can't be the case, but I don't think the second (as an official course title) automatically follows from the former (as a generic description). I mean, "my studies in human artifacts" could apply to Anthropology, or "my studies in human anatomy" to Biology and Medicine.
A metaphor?
5759055
I suppose, though the length of the waiting gap seemed ambiguous, and we are talking about someone who's over a thousand years old. Not sure how far we can trust the usage of "fillies" generally, though, given that "fillies and gentlecolts" has been used to address a roomful of adults. I generally interpret it as the pony equivalent of "girls", which can be used for children or as a way to address young adults casually.
I'm having difficulty understanding the application of this claim to the Main Six. I'm not clear why becoming an adult automatically means leaving one's home town either, come to that. Could you elaborate on this point?
5759060
Sure, but if anything a course title for all but the broadest introductory survey courses is bound to be narrower than a field title. That is, Pony Magic would be a field, while Magic Theory (your proposal) would be a course or sub-field within it. This might seem anachronistic to generations of ponies studying under Twilight's own reign, but ponies at the tail end of Celestia's were far more insular and not terribly willing to credit other peoples with magic.
And an explicit metaphor is still a metaphor
I agree with your observation re: "fillies and gentlecolts." And even in its more specific usage "filly" would refer to children rather than adolescents; and even Celestia wouldn't consider Twilight's friends as of Season One to be children.
I also agree that adulthood implying leaving home (and especially leaving the countryside for a city) is an ultra-modern assumption and not necessarily apt to even an industrializing Equestria. That said, the pattern is in evidence. Ponyville is positively cosmopolitan compared to Pinkie Pie's home in Rockville, for example. Applejack tried to make a life in the big city before deciding it wasn't for her. Rarity branches into Canterlot and Manehattan, albeit only after having established herself. On the other hand, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Twilight all move to Ponyville having grown up in big cities.
5759064
Those 'fillies' in 'fillies and gentlecolts' are there only so the phrase would sound better and reflect 'ladies and gentlemen'. It is not indicative of anything, really.
Regarding the standpoint why main characters pushing their 20's wouldn't have to do much in a sleepy little town like Ponyville, it's simple too: like, half of the cast have indicative goals and ambitions that go beyond that scope. Without the Elements, at least Rarity, RD, Pinkie Pie would've began more branching out, venturing, and become more engrossed into potential family life. Especially if we aren't going by modern standards, which I suppose might imply that they have pressure from their families to have foals, can be considered old at this age, and all that happy stuff.
But that goes far beyond the show implications and depictions already, which are clear only on one thing: they are close friends and young growing girls. Fillies. Horses. Whatever. That is what they were supposed to represent, and anything else can be easily attributed to warped fanon assumptions
I long ago accepted Pony Canon was visited by Doctor Who(oves) and thus just like main Who continuity is a big ball of wibbly wobbly.
It keeps me much saner.
As for the comics - I remember being an avid reader for a while, but stuff like Sege of the Crystal Empire, the Order bit, and the Cosmos arc were where I finally bounced off. There is only so much Worfing of my favorite characters I was willing to take. It's part of what I loved about the initial Chrysalis arc, the actual 'Yea Celestia didnt help because she was off doing Ghostbusters in Manehattan'.
Siege was a particularly egregious example.
5760160
Well, timey-wimey stuff is very flexible. I think I'm inclined more towards a broad-strokes pick-and-mix version, because I like the tidiness of a single timeline, but that probably says more about me than anything else.
That cockatrice thing was weird, and I laughed merrily.
What was the Order bit, sorry? Is that the one with Accord?
Looking at the list, at the moment I'm planning on getting as far as Siege (which, for odd reasons to do with Sombra research, I read a while back) and then seeing if I'm up for more. Plenty of people say the comics drop in quality, though where and when varies in the specifics. So that seems like a reasonable average cutoff.
As for side comics, I'm playing it by ear.
Personal confession time: much as I like Siege, it definitely doesn't stand up to scrutiny even in the moment. The big "villains" teamup felt like a wasted opportunity (as plenty of people have pointed out, you only really need the changelings), and Radiant Hope's actions are far more morally questionable than the story seems to realize.
And yeah, the Sisters deserved better than instant petri. Why couldn't they fight the Umbrums? That would have been more impressive than what we got.
5760269
Accord, yea. Like fun ideas but soooo much worfing it got tiresome.
But yea, Siege was where it jumped the shark for me, and I think Accord was where I dropped off more or less entirely. Maybe someday I'll find a way to binge the rest, but at the same time, eh, I dont need infinite supplemental material anymore.
Also if one adds comics continuity then woof, modern Equestria is a terrible place to live given the twice-or-more-yearly near-apocalypses that happen.
There are some great ones - back when we got the character focused side issues, I remember loving the Celestia one, since it went a bit into her pre-NMM rule. Soloing everything for 1000 years is just flat out impressive