Points of Canon: S6x05 - Gauntlet of Fire · 7:12pm Apr 16th, 2016
Moar pone! This episode is written by two ladies who wrote both Rarity Investigates – a very nice episode of relatively low world-building impact, and The Hooffields & McColts, a rather mediocre episode which likewise, didn’t tell us a whole lot about the world.
But now they’re talking about Spike and dragons, and most importantly dragon culture.
Well, it josses a bloody lot.
- Starlight Glimmer is entirely absent from the episode, which makes it possible to backdate it into Season 5 – for example, it could happen during The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone.
- Bats actually sleeping by hanging off gems, rather than any other piece of rock, feels unusual and there’s probably a reason behind it, but it’s never elaborated.
- Unlike most previous appearances of naturally occurring gems, the ones in this episode are not pre-cut, and grow in a very unusual pattern – like flowers on stalks.
- Twilight receives Celestia and Luna in a tea room I’m pretty sure we haven’t seen before.
- Celestia and Luna describe their daily life as mostly involving dealing with crises, rather than running a government.
- Even Luna says “little is known about dragon culture.”
- Celestia says, “Dragons glow, whenever the Dragon Lord has need of them in the Dragon Lands.” Did you hear the sound of a thousand fanons screaming in pain?(1)
- Twilight reiterates, “We are, sadly, lacking any information on dragon culture and customs.” That is, there is no contact with dragons at all, and Dragontown in Fillydelphia that was depicted in Friends Forever #14 becomes almost entirely impossible.(2) That’s one of the rare instances of primary canon actually jossing the secondary canon dead.
- Torch the Dragon Lord addresses the dragons as “Dragons of Equestria.” I presume he means the continent rather than the nation, because later on, Spike says “My home is in Equestria with my friends,” implying he isn’t “in Equestria” at the moment.
- Torch is the first dragon seen in primary canon to wear any kind of clothing, in his case, armor.(3) Later on, when the contestants assemble, almost all of them are wearing armor. Creating such items requires at least a minimal knowledge of metalworking. It’s actually odd that they wore it for the contest, since it’s hardly any help in the trials ahead.
- Torch’s daughter Ember is titled “princess.”
- According to Twilight, “dragons are notoriously reckless, but they do whatever the Dragon Lord says,” which, coupled with Torch commanding the dragons to “be sad” a bit later on implies a certain degree of magic-based compulsion…
- Torch’s term is up, according to dragon law. Which means that the dragons have at least some form of traditional law, and even though his daughter is titled “princess,” what they have in terms of leadership is not a hereditary monarchy.(4)
- The succession procedure is a competition of strength and fortitude in which one is meant to recover the “bloodstone scepter from the heart of the flamecano.” Placing the scepter into the flamecano removes the glow on the dragons, it is likely that it is the source of the compulsion mentioned above, and therefore, almost certainly a unique artifact.
- One wonders, how dragons, apparently creatures with gender-based reproduction,(5) can procreate at all with such common size disparities. External fertilization?…(6)
- One likewise wonders why none of the plans to attack Equestria announced by the contestants were ever implemented by Torch.
- Garble ribs Spike for not being able to fly. In fact, the episode seems to feature no flightless dragons except Spike at all. Flying to the contest venue is in fact the first challenge of the contest, and makes one wonder why Spike is flightless in the first place.
- Sea serpents are a thing.
- Dragons can be drowned.
- The excuse provided by Ember for the smell, “I robbed some ponies on the way here,” implies that being robbed by dragons can be a problem in at least some parts of Equestria, and basically sets them up as a “community” of solitary raiders.
- While getting up to the flamecano is a problem for the dragons, it is apparently not an issue at all for Twilight and Rarity, which at least settles that dragons can’t teleport.
- The ecological niche of a creature whose most notable feature is flinging rocks at flying creatures with its tail from an altitude feels very contrived.
- Ember’s speech about “one winner, one scepter and one Dragon Lord” suggests that the formation of dragon culture occurred in a situation when the term of the Dragon Lord was much shorter, which influenced their attitude towards friendship.(7) Unless they have the cause and effect reversed here…
- There are no natural volcanic processes that can make this sort of cave maze with bridges. The scepter and the flamecano are clearly a package deal as well, because it is otherwise impossible for a thrown scepter to end up exactly where it did.
- The scepter and the compulsion magic it conveys are transferable.
- For some reason, none of the contestants wear armor when they fly back. Presumably, they recognized they didn’t actually need it and chose to ditch the extra weight…
This changes things considerably in the dragon department, by presenting a social order of the dragons that has, apparently, endured for a very long time, based on a clearly artificial succession procedure, which modern dragons are unlikely to be able to reimplement.
(1) Some very good ideas which this shuts down involve Equestrian economy being based on exporting gems for dragons in exchange for gold, dragon dignitaries and embassies, dragon nations, and, well, it’s not compatible with pretty much any dragon-related fanon notion that I remember.
(2) Unless you’re ready to twist Twilight’s words to mean something they most definitely do not.
(3) Why exactly would he even need armor?…
(4) I bet “princess” is actually a loanword.
(5) Ember is titled “princess” rather than prince, referred to as “daughter,” has a feminine voice and facial features. Other notably feminine dragons are present, so yeah.
(6) Well, they don’t do hugs, as the ending of the episode implies, do they?
(7) The sensible thing to say in this situation for Spike would be to offer to help Ember acquire the scepter as a motivation for keeping the friendship, or at least in exchange for a favorable attitude towards Equestria. It’s something of a shame he doesn’t try to say anything of the sort, even though eventually, this is essentially what he does.
Unlike almost every other fanfic writer, this episode reinforced my headcanon! The scepter as a magical mind control artifact is perfect for my purposes!
Notice that all the dragons competing were younger/smaller ones and none of the huge adults we saw in Dragon Quest? I think it's because the young ones aren't old enough to remember the last time dragons tried to attack Equestria.
On the size disparity thing, I get the feeling that these are all pretty young dragons. Torch clearly wanted to pass the torch (ha!) to a new generation entirely.
On the slingtails, I'm going to think of them as living siege engines created by someone or -thing long ago. They fit the part nicely.
Anyway, it was a very good episode overall. Worth the wait!
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Lucky! :)
Yes, but if we work from that... Since both Celestia and Luna deny almost all knowledge of dragons, and Twilight can't verify it through third party literature, either all previous contact with dragons basically ended with a curbstomp battle in which the Sisters wiped the floor with them and went home, not caring at all where the dragons came from or how exactly does their culture work, or they both are hiding something specifically from Twilight.
Both alternatives can produce interesting story opportunities, actually.
...And something otherwise important just occurred to me.
Both Torch, and pretty much every other dragon that is substantially larger than a pony are effectively barred from participating in the succession contest, since there's no way they can navigate the flamecano caves. Yet Torch is himself a Dragon Lord, and presumably, had to have won this contest at some point in the past.
Could it be that every dragon beyond a certain size is a Dragon Lord who stepped down?...
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See above comment. Torch himself can't participate, he's way too big for the cave. And the sky is full of shadows of similarly sized dragons. Makes me wonder.
I question the mind control aspect. It comes across more as fear then magical compulsion.
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Possibly, but consider Garble's punishment -- to hug every dragon he meets and not tell them why. If it were fear:
* Would it still win over his fear of Torch when Spike was no longer even the Lord? Remember that Garble himself does not believe in friendship, is not terribly smart, and therefore, not very likely to assume that Ember might enforce Spike's order.
* What's to stop him from not doing it at all?...
This is a great summary, of a great episode. I too am really excited about what we finally learn about dragon culture.
I don't know if I think this episode could be backdated past Hooffields and McColts, because there was a running gag in the other bearer episodes, ending on the Hooffields and McColts episode, of Twilight being bored of not going out on adventures. The buildup to where she was so bored she had literally nothing to do (including not having any dragon papers to write) seems to indicate Twilight was mostly hanging around Ponyville for most of the season while she was in the background.
You're right, this does invalidate Dragon-town. I wouldn't say it's that rare that a secondary canon source gets invalidated though. The season 4 opener, where we actually saw Luna transform herself into Nightmare Moon, invalidates pretty much the entire "shadow monsters on the moon" comic arc. And the fact that deer are non-sapient pets to be given away at charity events invalidates the deer kingdom as well.
An additional key piece of canon: It's now been confirmed that unicorn magic produces a visible glow, and that's not just a prop to the audience we've been seeing for six seasons (a common theory).
Speaking of magical effects, I'm not sure the Scepter actually has mind control powers, because every other time we've seen a character under mental influence (and lets face it, in MLP there are a million of them) there's a visible clue, usually their skin tone or their eyes changing. Garble didn't have anything like that.
That's a great point about armor, it really does tell us a lot about dragon culture. The fact that each has fitted armor also tells us they probably made it, instead of just stole it.
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3874668 So we know Twilight has looked for any and all information on dragons in Equestria, and come up short. And we also saw her terrified of dragons attacking Equestria. Combining this episode with the Season 6 opener, where we saw Luna and Celestia get their asses handed to them by wild clouds, and its pretty clear alicorns can't fight off a horde of dragons. Celestia has no secret solar flare spell to blast them with. Young angry dragons talk about raiding Equestria, and Garble alone talks about burning them for revenge, but Torch doesn't say anything like that. Given his size and what we know about dragon lifespans, Torch is probably well over 1000 years old. He may well have been crowned before Celestia and Luna, and if he isn't interested in flying north and martialing all the dragons to his command, then they wouldn't go.
But yeah, given how de-powered the alicorns have become by S6, and the fact that Torch is the size of the Empire State Building, it seems pretty implausible to go with the old fanon idea that "Celestia can just eradicate any dragon she sees."
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Ironically, I think it's the fans screaming fowl about Twilicorn that ultimately caused it. "Being an alicorn is not a big deal! See? Oh wait..." :)
3875833 I think you nailed it. Right now Flurry Heart is probably the strongest alicorn!
Hopefully we'll get a Celestia episode sometime. Even without raw power, I'd love to see her use her cunning and experience to outwit a dangerous for.
3875833 3875843 Wild and crazy idea: Maybe Celestia and Luna were more powerful originally, but they didn't get all their power back after the Tirek escapade?
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3875833 The problem with that theory is it explains how weak Celestia and Luna were in the S6 finale, but not all the other times throughout the series. NMM banishes Celestia offscreen, Celestia got beaten by Chrysalis in a simple horn-beam contest without even trying any fancier magic (implying she doesn't know any), Celestia and Luna getting effortlessly captured by vines in the S4 premiere, and the big one: the S5 finale, where we saw 7 different timelines where Celestia had to fight the various villains without Twilight around, and in 6 out of 7 she failed. Heck, even in the 8th one she is slowly losing to Sombra. During the time period of the series, Celestia is 0 for 12. You can excuse a fair amount of individual fights (Chrysalis was hopped up on love energy, Discord's vines were empowered by Discord, etc.) But at some point they can't all be explained away, and the simplest conclusion is that Celestia and Luna are just not that powerful magic users, who can only really do what we actually see them do on screen.
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The idea has merit, though, because there were two Tirek incidents.
The problem we really have is the series opening narration which presents the two sisters in what sounds and feels like a creation myth, the actions of the pre-Nightmare Celestia and Luna, which win pretty often, and particularly Discord, who’s presented as a real, honest to Celestia deity.¹ We don’t need to explain why deity-Celestia loses, we need to explain how a non-deity Celestia became the subject of a myth.
Most of the mythical-status incidents occur before the series even starts, as does the first Tirek escapade, so as long as it happened in the right time frame and had permanent effects on Celestia’s powers, it can be a decent explanation. I’m seriously thinking more and more on a variation where Celestia engaged in some time-travel though…
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3885877 That's an interesting idea, maybe in ancient times Celestia and Luna were a lot more powerful, but Tirek ate a portion of their magic and they were never able to get it back (it would help explain how Tirek himself is still alive). Then they could have done those mythical deeds before they got weakened.
On the other hand, look at their history: they beat Discord with the Elements of Harmony, which doesn't make them gods any more than the Mane 6 for doing the exact same thing. Same with Celestia beating NMM. They beat Tirek through sneaky treachery and flipping an asset in the form of his brother, and with the assist of Starswirl. Celestia and Luna beat Sombra by teaming up on him two on one, and it looks like he is a match for Celestia on her own.
I think you've spotted an excellent piece of contradiction here Oliver: the mythological patina that covers those ancient victories. I think ponies have mythologized Celestia to a degree that is unrecognizable to us humans, because we've never had a single ruler for a thousand years. Celestia is like a combination of Mohammed and Queen Elizabeth in terms of social capital combined with real authority. Imagine if George Washington had agreed to be king instead of president, and was still ruling the United States today. What myths would we tell about him? I don't think this is an evil plot by Celestia, I think it's a combination of her being quite good at governance, and pony society relying on her as a cornerstone of their own identity.
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This still leaves one problem unsolved. The flag features two alicorns, and apparently, has done so for a thousand years. So does the myth. So why Luna’s return was a surprise, and no major newspaper thought to send a reporter?
3885912 That's a difficult question with no good answer. I've heard theories that Celestia went out of her way to wipe Luna from the public record so ponies wouldn't judge her for nightmare moon, and modern ponies were taught that the two alicorns symbolically represent Celestia raising the sun and raising the moon.
I'm not much of a fan of this theory, but I haven't heard anything better. I will say that one of the big psychological differences between ponies and humans is that ponies seem to lack initiative to the same degree humans do, there are a lot less "Starlight Glimmer" types amongst them. Maybe that explains why so few questions were asked about this other alicorn.
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Actually, both primary canon and secondary canon concur that before Luna's actual confrontation with Celestia, nothing particularly untoward was happening, so the idea that ponies might judge Luna for Nightmare Moon makes very little sense, since the confrontation itself was over in hours at most. Or Zecora's Potion of Plot-Relevant Flashback lies to us. :)
So far, my best guess is that Luna has never been particularly famous in the first place. Journal of the Two Sisters says they toured the kingdoms of Equestria they signed up to protect, but does not detail any meetings with anyone other than dignitaries. It's easy to imagine Luna simply skipping on most of them. :) Ponies remembered they did have two alicorns protecting them for a while, but soon after one was gone, Celestia started the process of centralizing Equestria, and any national-level cultural memory they have basically only dates back to after she started doing it. Everything else, what survived, was a local legend at best. Even the Nightmare Night might be only a Canterlot-area thing.
3886413 Based on what we've seen in the comics (and not really contradicted in the show) Luna doesn't really "rule" anything anymore than Twilight does. Her day to day job consists of two main duties: flying patrols with her night guard/fighting monsters, and helping ponies with their dreams (how the heck Luna dreamwalks is a whole 'nother issue. The Princesses Dream episode seems to imply Luna needs to be asleep to dreamwalk, but then how is she nocturnal at all if she's dreamwalking at night?)
Luna doesn't really pass laws or hold court or balance the budget, that seems to be Celestia and her bureaucrats. I'm sure Luna has legal authority on par with Celestia, but it doesn't seem like she has a chance to use it. So yeah, that kind of role can be easily forgotten over time, there aren't a bunch of ancient laws with Luna's signature on them.
Incidentally, it's weird that Luna and Shining Armor are almost opposites to each other in this way. Luna is presented in the fanon as actually balancing the budget and holding night court, though in the comics she does nothing like that. Whereas Shining Armor is shown in comics meeting with various ministers of the Crystal Empire cabinet and seems to do a substantial amount of ruling on domestic affairs, but in fanon he's usually only in charge of the military.
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…barring magic, not that the dragons demonstrate any, but size-changing polymorphs are not Global-Impossible (breezie-spell, Poison Joke)…and potions do not appear to require innate magic to complete, so they could hypothetically manage it.
I'd watched this one earlier, but…
❧Nobody voices concern over the DragonLord's emotion-manipulation. On the contrary, Twilight finds it "fascinating".
❧❧"Mindrape, schmindrape"
=> they expected (were mind-controlled into expecting)that it would be needed
=> He's wearing armor. That's part of his strength "that they will need to be able to finish".
=> the mind-control's condition (be strong and ferocious) was no longer active
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…from which it follows that the end purpose of the trials is to select those with the least susceptibility to the scepter’s influence.