What constitutes as a 'Moon' in Equestria in terms of time?! · 3:46am Jan 2nd, 2013
Ok, been doing research for Duet of Strings. According to Granny Smith in the Apple Family Reunion, Apple Family meets every 100 Moons for a reunion. But according to Applejack back in Season 1’s Applebuck Season, the Summer Sun Celebration fell on the last Reunion.
Usually, in our own time-keeping terms, one moon=one month.
100/12=8 Years, 4 months, IF they follow our Calendar.
Do you mean to tell me, between the beginning of the series and Apple Family reunion, 8 years and 4 months have passed?! Yes, I am reading into this, because I care about details. It’s the reason why I enjoy making backstories.
Now, some might ask ‘Why COULDN’T 8 odd years have passed?’
The main reason? The Crusaders for one, considering they have only matured slightly. At most? I’d give them less than half that amount of time as passing.
Perhaps one moon is less than a month? Well, that is entirely possible with a sentient being said to control said orbiting satellite. So, lets try cutting that time in half.
If 1 Moon = 2 weeks as opposed to 4, cutting the numbers in half, then we would simple reduce it to 4 years and 2 weeks. This is a more acceptable number. Admittedly, we aren’t given any kind of time frame at all in terms of months or years passed, but then that’s what guesswork is for. So if they have a reunion after 4 years or so, I can certainly stand behind such a number and it would give us a timeline for various episodes.
All of this is not taking into account maturity rates of ponies, what their calendar year actually looks like and such, but hay, that’s what detail oriented nerds like me are for, asking questions few ever really care about ^^
Thoughts?
The ponies apparently age like humans rather than like horses, in which case four years have definitely not passed; the Cutie Mark Crusaders ought to look a great deal older by now, and ought to have graduated from that one class to a different one (unless Cheerilee teaches all grades).
I'm afraid the best answer might be that the show is episodic and written by multiple people, that the characters don't age, and that "Apple Family Reunion" contradicts "Friendship is Magic."
671447
That is another good point, but I'd like to point out something else. The size of the community, and the schoolhouse in general, lends credence to the idea that Cheerilee, does indeed, teach all grades. Of course, this brings up another question of why we only see one age group in the school, which brings into the possibility of different classes for different ages. Perhaps a rotation system.
GODDAMNIT Why must there be so many glossed over details?!
Oh, right, children's show....
NO EXCUSES! *rages*
671447
There's also the fact that over two years has to have passed since the first episode in canon time. If not, that is one SERIOUSLY busy year for the Elements of Harmony.
671470 every day is 'crazy' in Ponyville! clearly that is the answer
But yeah obviously there was never a clear timeline to correlate with the passing of time... really it's best to just used your discretion. think of what would be a reasonable amount of time for a massive family reunion.
671525
Another point. Ponyville is hundreds of years old. Granny Smith was one of it's founders.
Well Discord was raising and setting the sun and moon rapidly while he was free. Who knows how many moon passed in that one day!
671470
Another issue: making a "moon" a period of something like two weeks might cause you an even bigger problem. The very concept of "month" is based around the phases of the moon; if the moon has a complete cycle every two weeks, then the ponies' months are only two weeks long. But we've seen Twilight Sparkle's calendar, which appears to be divided into months of the regular length, and the lyrics of "Winter Wrap Up" have "three months of winter coolness," which, if the months are two weeks long, means winter in Equestria only lasts six weeks.
672191
Very true, very true.
But then, I realized something.. Granny Smith has a tendency to.. overstate things. All in all, mayhaps 100 Moons is more... figurative...
Bah. *flops* I'll figure something out.
671470
There have been over two years of canon time: we've seen two winters ("Winter Wrap Up" and "Hearth's Warming Eve") and three autumns ("Fall Weather Friends," "Luna Eclipsed," and "One Bad Apple"). Probably it's easiest to assume the three years of the show equal three years of time within the show. I suspect, though, that the characters aren't aging. They are eternally of ambiguous generic youth, much as Calvin in Calvin & Hobbes was always six no matter how many times he had summer vacation, school, and Christmas break. The ponies, aside from the princesses, are not in-universe immortals, but the writers are nonetheless not bothering to progress their lives in any real sense, so the Cutie Mark Crusaders will probably remain in the same grade no matter how many years pass, and Twilight Sparkle will always be a professional student, and Rainbow Dash will always be about to join the Wonderbolts, but will never actually join. The series finale, whenever it happens, will finally let the characters move on, but until then they'll milk the present setup for all it's worth.
I can't help but notice, however, that seasons only change when it's important to the plot. Snow is on the ground when the story is about winter, and the leaves have turned orange when the story is about fall, but otherwise it always looks like spring or summer, and apples are always, always in season, even though apples are a fall crop.
672228
This might be an easy solution if it works for you: the Apple family has a big, all-family reunion once every hundred moons, but smaller-scale reunions of smaller segments of the family happen more frequently. The Apple family looks much, much bigger in "Apple Family Reunion" than it did in "Friendship Is Magic." Perhaps the first reunion we saw was not the big reunion.
672293
Very true. One idea that was had was that the Apples gathered together to celebrate SUmmer Sun Celebration in Ponyville since the Princess was a-commin that year, the Apple Clan helping out Granny and AJ with the massive amounts of bakin to be done for the event.