Points of Canon: S6x01-02 - The Crystalling · 7:59pm Mar 26th, 2016
Seeing as how canon analysis has become something of my shtick here on Fimfiction, I think I’m going to do something productive, or at least useful for someone, by going through every episode with a fine-toothed comb as it is released and marking up noteworthy worldbuilding statements.
Beware the spoilers yadda yadda.
- The expected time gap between seasons is not in evidence. Starlight appears to be unfamiliar with the layout of Twilight’s castle, and yet is referred to as a live-in friendship student.(1) Unless Starlight is completely absent from subsequent episodes of Season 6 for a while, the only way to make this make sense without assuming that pony pregnancy only lasts a month or two is by assuming large gaps and anachronic order within Season 5.
- The Crystaling ceremony is pretty much as I expected: presenting the baby before family and friends with the intent to activate the Crystal Heart and invoke its magical blessing.(2) What I didn’t expect is Spike using a very Greek style amphora(3) to illustrate the process.
- Starlight explicitly states and further dialog with Sunburst confirms that since he left for “magic school,”(4) they have never met until now.
- How exactly did Sunburst end up in the Crystal Empire and acquired a house that looks like it has been in use for quite a considerable time remains entirely unclear, when the time since its emergence was clearly only as long as Flurry Heart needed to be carried to term.(5)
- Celestia and Luna state: “The birth of an alicorn is something Equestria has never seen. It is beyond even our understanding.” This leaves a lot of interpretations, since it does not directly contradict the Journal of the Two Sisters statement that they were born to alicorns. An interesting way to say nothing of consequence without clearly substantiating any theory on Celestia and Luna’s origins.
- This might be my personal nitpick, but that’s probably the first time I see a teacup clearly not equipped with a handle on screen. Finally.
- Spells to restore forgotten friendship directly exist. Sunburst cites three! The extent of ethical acceptability of these spells is not clear, but he has them in books out in the open, so they’re likely not illegal.
- The entire plot of the episode revolves around the idea that the city can only exist because of the Crystal Heart providing protection from natural cold. Which, when taken together with the “Journal of the Two Sisters,” and “FIENDship is Magic #1” dates the encroachment of ice on the Empire to the relatively short time period between the first recovery of the Heart and the loss of Princess Amore.(6) I wonder what could have caused it.
- Baby alicorn magic surges actually allow Flurry to teleport with no visible slowdown continuously.
- “Spell of Relic Reconstitution” actually exists. I do wonder how it defines a relic, because strictly speaking it could be a giant loophole.
- Celestia and Luna are, for some reason, reduced to using beams to fend off the cold, which would imply they do not have wide area of effect heat spells.(7)
- Starlight’s outburst in conversation with Sunburst implies that the equalist village existed as a regular village prior to her appearance, and was not a new settlement set up by her to induct victims one by one. Which makes one wonder about its architecture.
- Sunburst is the first example of a non-practicing theoretical magician presented in the entire canon.
- Twilight Velvet uses a very unusual pony-mutation word “grandmare,” never observed before.(8)
- Mysteriously, Flurry Heart remains unnamed until the very end, and the name is not conferred on her as part of the ceremony either.
Speaking of the episode itself, I find myself not disliking Starlight anywhere as much as I expected I would, which is in itself an achievement worthy of a season opener.
(1) It seems as Starlight doesn’t go completely unpunished. At least, Twilight appears to drown her entirely in the same subtle style of trolling frequently ascribed to Celestia. She even enlists Spike into doing this by proxy when she herself is busy, and I don’t feel this is just her being ignorant of social cues – more like, she’s ignoring them deliberately.
(2) And Sunburst’s words at the end of the episode also imply that it might be connected with the concept of citizenship in Crystal Empire…
(3) Even if the colors would be pretty impossible for Ancient Greeks to achieve.
(4) Notice that it is never referred to as a “School for Gifted Unicorns” for some reason, and yet later Celestia refers to Sunburst as “an old student of mine.”
(5) My guess is, he moved to peruse the ancient literature in their library. However, what’s his actual job, if any?…
(6) The logic is like this: If the removal of the Heart caused the city to freeze as quickly as depicted, its first loss, which took much longer to resolve, would have resulted in the extermination of crystal ponies. It clearly did not. At the same time, crystal ponies say “This is Crystal Empire, we’ve seen snow before,” which means during the last period when Crystal Empire existed in regular space-time, which is right before Sombra’s brief reign, snow was not at all unusual, and at least, was easy to observe and experience outside city limits.
(7) If there was any real consistency in the show, that is. Honestly, all the consistency we get is the consistency we can squeeze in there. :)
(8) And speaks! But seeing as how she doesn’t say anything interesting, oh well. What I do wonder about is, why are she and Night Light late to the ceremony, because they only show up after the resolution.
Good point regarding how it doesn't seem like any real time has passed since the season 5 finale and yet the foal was just born.
That's just about enough to make me give up on "canon" timeline consistency entirely. Airing out of order is truly the only way to explain any of it. That, or the timeline being entirely arbitrary.
Flurry Heart: Not clear on this whole ambiguous "Equestria hasn't seen an alicorn born before" business. The sisters predating Equestria is a fine interpretation, even if it is reading into it a bit. My own fic depends on natural born alicorns existing since day one. So no matter what canon decides to do, my path is set.
Twilight's parents are actually credited as Mr. Sparkle and Mrs. Sparkle. Interesting - no "Twilight Velvet". Time to leave that one with the toys, I suppose, eh?
Celestia can't fend off the cold of the Frozen North, but she can control the sun... Riiight. There's more than a few idiot balls in this episode.
Flurry's uncontrolled powers remind me of a certain Pixar short...
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It's exactly confusing enough to start flamewars, but not definite enough to settle them, yes. :)
Just a few weeks ago they both were addressed by name as "Twilight Velvet" and "Night Light" in Friendship is Magic #40. So eh. Episode credits have always been more than a bit crazy. (I mean, "Muffin?!") There have always been things even in the primary canon that we dismissed as animation errors, I vote for dismissing the credits screens in their entirety as such. :)
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Mmm. Yeah, so if "official" media contradicts itself, that's just being sloppy. Someone's not paying attention. I suppose show credits are the least "canon" aspect of anything. I've seen Apple Bloom's name spelled Applebloom in the credits as well. And yeah... Muffin.
One thing I noticed in the episode which I have yet to see anyone mention in a blog was the appearance of the Crystal Ponies. Their translucent appearance was not present at the start of the episode, and nobody seemed to think that was odd or a bad thing. I noticed a slight effect with the eye glints being polygons rather than ovals. And then when the Crystal Heart was restored, everyone had the same translucent look again. So it would seem that "crystal ponies" don't in fact have a permanent see-through look after all.
What are your thoughts on this?
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The general consensus seems to have been to assume that crystal ponies aren't crystal continuously, although I can't quite tell why. In "Games Ponies Play" they're all crystal, in "Flight to the Finish" most are, but a few aren't. In "Three's a crowd" the guard disembarking the train with Cadance is, but Flash Sentry (yeah, that's him and Twilight ignores him) isn't, he actually never goes crystal. In "Twilight's Kingdom" all are crystal.
There are other traits which always differentiate them beyond the polygonal eye glints -- a different color palette, and glossier, always gradiented and usually quite distinct hairstyles, which, I think, are meant to evoke the way Ancient Greeks hairstyles are usually depicted, so yes, you can reliably determine if they're crystal ponies or not even when they aren't in the translucent state.
Maybe it's like "static charge" of sorts? Any pony will go crystal when the Heart fires. If you're a crystal pony, you stay crystal longer. If something unpleasant happens, you might lose charge. Firings of the Heart beyond the Crystal Faire are irregular, this time, it's just been a while since the last one. :)
EDIT: And I'll bet you anything that one of the other things crystal ponies always do next to the Heart that causes it to fire is the wedding ceremony.
3831604 Mmm... Funny, I was assuming that the non-crystal ponies in the Crystal Empire were immigrants from Equestria. Like Cadence herself...
Having the metaphysics work like it was depicted in the recent episode is actually better because it appears to be a magical effect rather than biology which would be a hell of a lot harder to justify.
Flash Sentry: lol! Yes. I've been ambivalent about Flash because (a) I loathe EQG, and (b) I'd actually rather like Twilight to have a love interest. My solution? Check out my prologue...
In all seriousness, what I've done with Flash ought to make both FlashLight lovers and haters happy. I can't imagine too many people can say that about their efforts. 
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There are no clear canon statements, but there is popular fanon and canonical room for an idea (see my latest post) that Cadance actually is a descendant of Princess Amore. And she does have traits associated with crystal ponies, namely, gradiented hair, which, outside the Crystal Empire, is very rare. Clear immigrants in permanent residence, like Sunburst or Shining Armor, display no such traits, and both of these two have been there for a long time. Temporary visitors never do.
What biological difference even exists is more likely to just be crystal ponies becoming more receptive to the effects of the Heart through continuous exposure, as well through the procedure of crystalling, which involves contributing a crystal to merge with the heart.
Actually, my eyeball statistics say that in at least half the cases where Flash appears in fanfic, he only does so to suffer or die. :) It is particularly common whenever he appears "out of order," i.e. in the vicinity of a non-alicorn Twilight.
3831676 Ahh, but to send him out with honors after being in a relationship of sorts with Twilight was the least I could do. I don't hate the character. But he's very controversial. Including him at all meant that some might be upset. Killing him might make others upset. I did need some sort of tragedy to kick things off on the right tone.
Very observant regarding the gradient mane. I wonder if such subtleties are actually deliberate by the show's creators. Personally, I think it's nice that they're no longer just using the same Flash puppets for all the ponies. Season five really opened up with a lot of new styles. Though some of the recent ones I find a bit questionable. Like Cthulu-face in the most recent episode. WTF? And honestly, I've had real issue with "pony facial hair" since day one. The idea of ponies with beards seems a bit of a problem. It implies that everyone else shaves...
But these are ponies. They have coats. Fur. If you shave it, you have bare skin. So WTF is going on with all depictions of facial hair beyond the standard coats?
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There is a character? He never says or does anything of consequence in canon, he's barely a plot device. The only reason to hate him is that he is not one, strictly speaking.
Look at "Crystal Empire" more closely and you'll have to conclude they are. The entire Empire was designed as a unit to match a playset, and then they had to keep it straight once they got more manpower. :)
I have no idea how this works. But I do know that these are coats, because of the canonical incident of stripping them seen in "Ponyville Confidential," and yet in "The Crystalling" Shining Armor shows up with a stubble... If he didn't, we could imagine that facial hair is only a trait of some ponies, but now we have to imagine how shaving works.
I have no clue how could it possibly work. :)
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The only thing I can conclude is that they use some sort of clippers to shave rather than a razor. Clippers could be set to leave the base coat alone while shearing off anything longer
Another point to consider is that real life horses have very thin coats around the nose along with long whiskers.
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Anything like Sunburst's ridiculous beard (or worse yet, Star Swirl's) would also be included in this whole thought. What are they, goats?
On the plus side, it's good to see Sunburst with actual horse socks. Further diversifies the color scheme. But honestly, his blaze looks like someone stuck a band-aid on his forehead!
[edit]
On the other hand, here's a beard...
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And yet, it is a perfectly safe bet that when they finally need to show somepony actually shaving, a straight razor will be depicted anyway. Eh.
Ponies with non-monolithic colors started appearing during Season 5, and the first one would be Trouble Shoes. I expect they're just a relatively rare trait... But pony genetics is very complicated in general. For example, mane and coat colors are heritable, but apparently, the number of actual pigments involved is massive, so children with colors that don't match their parents at all are not uncommon -- lose one gene for one of the pigments and you get a completely different color mix.
EDIT: Also, apparently, the color of keratin in hooves and horns matches the primary coat color most of the time - Trouble Shoes is one of the exceptions for this one as well.
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I've tried thinking about it. I think it can be done. :)
Assuming all the hairs of the coat naturally arrange themselves parallel to skin surface and lay out in a single direction, while all the hairs of "facial hair" start growing perpendicular to the skin, are comparatively much thicker and less bendy, and remain straight at least for a few millimeters, it should be possible to shave them with a razor without affecting coat hairs at all, if the coat is not very dense. Difficult and annoying, but possible. The fact that we don't see many ponies with facial hair is explained away by the idea that comparatively few ponies grow them at all, i.e. they are just as much part of peculiar pony genetics as everything else. Shining Armor shaves his stubble because he doesn't like how it looks when it grows out. :)
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In real life, different "breeds" have different types of hair and coats. Climate also plays a big role, as cold weather usually results in a thicker coat. Generally speaking most common breeds have extremely thin coats around the nose, to the point where it's more like a soft velvet than anything, with the long whiskers shooting straight out which serve as "feelers" kind of like a blind person's walking cane since they can't directly see what they are trying to eat. The coat itself won't follow a single direction, of course. Any coat applied to curvy shapes will have changes in direction. Same thing humans have since heads are round. Using a razor would be really tricky. I'd be more inclined in Equestria to apply some sort of magical hair removal device than a physical razor which would probably cause no end of frustration.
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Eh, screw the facial hair, we have funnier fish to fry.
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Take a careful look at the yellowish stallion in the back row. We can only see his cutie mark, but what a cutie mark it is!
That's an atom of lithium, typically used as a graphical symbol of nuclear physics. Nuclear physicists laugh incessantly, but it takes a lot more space to draw an atom of uranium this way, so they kinda relented by now, it's very recognizable everywhere.
Considering that this guy has clear crystal pony traits -- namely, glossy, gradiented hair, -- it makes one really wonder what the Empire was up to right before it fell out of space-time. :)
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Oh my, that screenshot is just full of fun stuff. But yeah, do we have a Half-Life style scenario going on here? Maybe we should name him Gordon!
And in the front, we have Cthulu-face, not-Granny Glimmer WTF is her cutie mark?!!
, and Pinup Fanboy (who needs a shave)! 
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I'm thinking of wild scenarios based around the idea that Sombra's takeover of the Crystal Empire was initially tolerated, until he started working on nuclear weapons...
...then they blew one up when Celestia and Luna came knocking, and it reacted with the shield... :)
A donkey surrounded by laurels. In other words, a celebrated ass.
I've seen it suggested that the Crystal Tree Castle Thingy is itself messing with Starlight, by growing and retracting extra corridors and shifting around doors. Sure, she has repented for trying to pre-emptively wipe out Twilight's friendships, and abusing the Map of Harmony in the process, but trees have long memories...
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Clever. I don't think it's well substantiated by canon (we never exactly see the structure of the castle change after it first springs up) but it can make for a nice story.
But speaking of trees... There's something I've been meaning to write about, but it still needs more research. :) In many mythologies, tree of life is a very big thing and pops up pretty much everywhere.
Well, there are only two similarly significant trees in MLP at all -- the Golden Oaks Library and the Tree of Harmony that eventually replaces it. And both are intimately connected to Twilight.
As for the gap between S5 and S6, remember that extended montage where Starlight was spending time with the rest of the Mane 6 and then visiting Our Town and apologizing to everyone there? Maybe that took like 6 months. Two weeks each with the other 5 of the Mane 6, living in their houses and learning from them, then say 3 and a half months living in Our Town doing community service to apologize to the residents. Season 6 starts when Starlight finally moves into the castle long term and can begin her formal lessons with Twilight.
I assume the Crystal Heart still functioned even when Sombra hid it away, that's why ponies weren't freezing. He wanted slaves, not frozen dead ponies, so it also explains why he never just destroyed the thing, but hid it instead.
Keep in mind Celestia doesn't just say "We've never seen a baby alicorn born in Equestria before," Luna follows it up with "it is beyond our understanding." If Celestia had seen her own baby sister born with horns and a wing, it hardly seems like it would be beyond her own understanding...
3832693 Sombra cast a time spell that sent a city forward in time a thousand years. I feel like it would take a nuclear physicist just to help write such a spell. (Does that mean Starlight has an inherent understanding of nuclear physics?)
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That is a brilliant idea, that can consume most of the time gap!
That's pretty much verbatim what Twilight says -- the shield worked because the heart was still on the premises. I imagine that the snowflake of crystal streets -- incidentally, a perfect match for the cutie mark on Princess Amore's flanks back in the comics -- are the actual source of the shield, and the Heart is just a power converter and storage.
You can spin it lots of ways. That's the problem with that phrase, it's enough to start flamewars but not enough to settle them.
...Did you read Power of the Sun yet?... ;) It's just that, well, nuclear physicists...
3869396 I read it after I commented. Rather embarrassing.
Now tha I've discovered a way to watch these easily (netflix)…time to add.
"Mindrape,schmindrape" …alternately, :tinfoilhat: he moved up here to study spells from the library before someone got around to censoring it.
Really, the better action would've been to heat RD (who is, unlike the sisters, making headway, just that her wings are freezing up).
This is quite surprising to most for Celestia, given her sun-alignment.
S6E1M1
❧Twi catches the invitation on a wing. Winghands!
❧Pinkie has no Earth Pony pride, as she refers to the foal as "a pegasus and a unicorn!" contra "embodies the virtues of all three" (actually, looking, that latter's a Faust WoG quote, not in episode…)
❧Neither Celestia's nor Luna's presence has afforded the couple any sleep.
❧With that much reflection/refraction, I'd be wearing those snowblind goggles in-town.
❧Indeed, Spike seems to be trolling Starlight.
❧Crystal guards still huge, even compared to large Equestrians. (This seems to make them Celestia-sized?)
❧Magic naturally comes out in beams (Flurry Heart)
❧❧Implies: the combat magic Twi's been using? Isn't. It's just unfocused mana projection, like I guessed.
❧Shield bubble can be transferred…and split.
❧Those clouds are moving awfully fast…from the HORIZON…
Ep 2
❧…because "the Frozen North has willful weather", like the Everfree.
❧❧Shouldn't RD be used to Everfree's wild weather?
❧Celestia is not in the least surprised at most any of this. Luna is.
❧Those clouds are CLEARED awfully fast…to the horizon.
❧❧Crystal Heart's protection extends much farther than expected.
❧Crystal Spike.(Not sure if in S3e2 or not.)
D:
now that I go back and read the line…
…an alternate read of the line is that Earth Pony magic is not generally dangerously expressed by infants.
I also caught something else that is in the same vein this episode:
implies only unicorns ascend (or have ascended)
Aside from Cadence originally being pterippus design-wise, that implies Cadence was unicorn… or that Rarity knows not whereof she speaks.
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Most definitely that. And why would she?
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Doylian reason: a reader tries to exhaust ways a character can be right before inferring that they aren't contributing to worldbuilding…in aiming for a maximal set of compatibility; wouldn't making as few ponies ignorant as possible also be a maximizing condition? Still, she has had social contact with Cadence for many Seasons, should Cadence have ascended (we have a ping on that in secondary canon?)
Of course she can just be Unicornist and assume that that's the way things must be, given the association of raising sun and moon with unicorns, and extrapolating from datum point of Twi that Luna/Celestia ascended from unicornhood. She can be dreaming of her own ascension. Or she's just using that extrapolation and then saying something horribly racist by accident.
But they're less far-ranging in implication than if she's speaking truth.