Points of Canon: S6x06 - No Second Prances · 6:26pm Apr 30th, 2016
We return today with our regular dose of canon combing, investigating notable worldbuilding statements in “No Second Prances.” Which is an episode featuring Trixie, who has quite a bit of secondary canon to joss…
Good thing it’s mostly the bits of secondary canon I don’t like.
That said, this episode sits quite well with my interpretation of Trixie and doesn’t exactly make any secondary canon impossible.
1. Twilight telling Starlight that she needs a new friend by tomorrow makes me wonder if Twilight is being stupid or she’s taking out every instance of being trolled by Celestia on Starlight. The Crystaling also seemed to have that… And it blows up into Twilight’s face this time. I can understand trying to offer random ponies as friends to Starlight, but preventively inviting them is a bad idea and she should have known better.
2. Ponies in general almost invariably do without.One wonders what kind of friendship lesson did Twilight have in mind that would involve laying out the table by hoof.1 But in particular, the sheer amount of tableware seen dwarfs anything seen previously – three separate sizes of spoon, two different knives, and three kinds of fork. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a restaurant that fancy, myself. Twilight’s resulting explanations don’t make any sense either. Never mind that we have never seen Celestia use utensils on screen before.2
- Starlight’s telekinesis is even better than best examples of Rarity’s in terms of required precision and number of objects moved simultaneously, and she is apparently capable of combining it with heat treatment because she cooks a cake when levitating all the components. Including, presumably, flour and any liquids involved. And Pinkie says it’s delicious.
- Applejacks reaction to Starlight using a mind-affective spell on Big Mac is shockingly mild, continuing the trend of ponies being exceedingly tolerant of the whole practice.
- Starlight has never heard of the Wonderbolts. Which would not be at all surprising, except for the phrase Twilight utters when she first meets Rainbow Dash: “the Wonderbolts?” Twilight obviously never cared about them, and yet she knew, so it’s interesting what exactly was Starlight doing that actually allowed her to avoid knowing.
- I’m not sure if this has ever come up before, but this episode makes it abundantly clear that Bulk Biceps’ works at Aloe and Lotus’ spa. Good to know.
3. See Friendship is Magic #40, where they attend the same class in the School for Gifted Unicorns.
Trixie’s “The things I’ve done, I did them because I was jealous of Twilight. She’s just the best at everything, and I wanted to beat her at something” makes a lot more sense if knew each other before Boast Busters – which secondary canon assumes.3
4. Come on, could we get this settled? “Muffins?!”
Twilight is friends with Vinyl Scratch, but for whatever reason, introduces her as DJ PON3. And she doesn’t mention Derpy by name, aw damn.4
- Trixie mentions her hero is Hoofdini, who is exactly whom you thought he would be.
5. Which would make an absolutely deadly weapon if it extended to teleporting individual organs…
Trixie’s inability to perform the Moonshot Manticore Mouthdive implies she can’t teleport herself. Starlight’s ability to teleport an object she can’t even see beats any teleportation previously seen on screen.5
- Throughout the conversation with Starlight, Trixie regularly refers to herself in first person, confirming the theory that third person is primarily part of her stage persona.
6. …because they couldn’t find anything else for her to do? She has no lines in this episode at all…
Why is Fluttershy, of all ponies, scared of a manticore?… Did something happen that nobody told us about?6
- Doodle asks Celestia how she gets “her hair to do that all the time.” Celestia’s reaction is priceless, and implies she gets asked that a lot.
Even though Twilight had to swallow an idiot ball for it, this episode is probably the best Trixie episode to date. Worth it, I say. 
Bulk working at the spa was established in "Castle Sweet Castle." He's a high-impact masseuse.
As for Fluttershy being afraid of the manticore, it could be that she's afraid not of the creature itself, but of the potentially lethal consequences, especially given how she cheers when Trixie and Starlight successfully perform the trick. Or maybe she's worried about the manticore choking on the high-speed morsel. What I want to know is since when did manticores have horns?
And yeah, Starlight is ludicrously overpowered.
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Maybe it's a sexual selection thing, like antlers? We don't see manticores very often.
It did irk me that Twi wasn't as forgiving of Trixie as I felt she should have been (and made some boneheaded decisions like planting "friends" to show off Glimmer's progress to Celestia), but I know how hard it is to trust someone you've tried to forgive for a big thing and what sorts of derp fear can cause.
And shame on Twi for forgetting to invite Celestia and company to Trixie's show.
I wonder if Celestia is going to get tired of getting blown-off this season after what's happened in the last two episodes...
My favorite bits of silliness from the episode were Cranky asking Celestia about her wavy mane, Derpy stuffing her face with muffins, Twi casting Summon Friend and pulling DJ-Pon3 out of a bush, and Starlight resorting to OVERWHELMING MAGICAL FORCE as her first solution to any problem.
That would be the smart thing to do, the idiot ball wouldn't have it. :)
We've seen Twilight do this a couple of times. Parasprites and a door spring immediately to mind.
3909465
Which episode is the door spring from?
A lot of great points. I think what Twilight was really afraid of this episode was simply that Trixie would embarrass herself (and therefore Twilight) in front of Celestia, by trying to make her pick a card or something.
Starlight is even more ludicrously overpowered before. She could well be the most powerful unicorn ever. I would wager she's more powerful than Twilight was pre-ascension. And yeah, she made Angel love her. Angel! I wonder if she surreptitiously cast a spell on him when Fluttershy wasn't looking?
Once again, ponies are astonishingly tolerant of mind control, it's just seen as much less of a big deal than it would be to we humans, who are far more individualistic.
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Good idea, actually, makes Twilight feel a lot less stupid for it. That said, the solution was to invite characters who actually did embarrass themselves, like Doodle... :) But I can readily imagine that Twilight would think anyone is less likely to become a problem than Trixie.
That is, indeed, a possibility. Or maybe, he secretly recognized her as just as evil as himself... :)
3909647 To be fair to Twilight, Trixie absolutely would have insisted on doing half a dozen magic tricks during dinner, and probably right in Celestia's face.
I disliked this episode because I reeeaally, really dislike Starlight... so yeah. She's so unneeded. We already have Twilight to get stressed and do magic, and Starlight is either replacing her or doing the same thing and being redundant. Oh, now Starlight's good at organizing too? Great. Also, even though Trixie says she's trying to be accepted and everything, she acts very smug and just plain mean towards Twilight, so much so that I wondered several times whether she wasn't actually tricking Starlight and still evil. But I did forgive her at the end of the episode and so all of that doesn't matter as much. Trixie IS prideful and everything.
But... Celestia. Why in the world did she act as she did? Sitting there, silent and huffy and annoyed, while her former student stresses and desperately tries to do something. She's not even helping - she's not even bothering to hide her impatience and annoyance and appear like the Princess of Equestria in front of Twilight and three of her subjects who may never see her so personally again. This is not the Celestia I know and love. That's why that last part wasn't funny to me. Would she really behave in such a way to her ponies?
Another point of canon occurred to me: Trixie referred to the alicorn amulet as "soul-sucking." Was she being literal? If so, having an amulet that literally sucked out part or all of your soul would explain a lot of psychological damage that could cause an individual to try and commit suicide by manticore.
3910136 I read a theory on reddit that the reason Celestia is acting so pissy this episode is because Twilight swiped a bunch of fancy silverware from Celestia's castle, and spent the "fancy silverware" funds Celestia gave her (aside from plates) on books instead.
3910136
The out of universe reason for Celestia and Luna acting so odd this season is more likely than not a statement from the showrunner that they shall not be the driving force behind the plot. When they aren't, it's a bit nontrivial to find a way to use them properly.
In universe, no idea yet. Divine fleas? :)
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I doubt she was. If only for the reason that if it's possible to suck a soul, and that results in the madness she obviously experienced, there is no reason to believe the soul would return upon taking the amulet off. I.e. she would be still crazy when she took it off. For her to be literal would require a soul mechanic that explains her apparently-normal state upon removing it.
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Actually, I hadn't realized it, but both of those examples come from the previous Trixie episodes.
Something else that "springs" to mind... Why was the Ponyville crowd so impressed with the trick? Most of them must have seen Twilight teleporting around many times. In any other small town, maybe, but... wait... tour. This is a tour for Trixie. Is Starlight going to follow her around doing the magic for her?
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I think she made friend with Angel, because they are sympatico. They both have a habit or looking down on ponies with disdain.
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Good point about Celestia. I think half of it was because they didn't record any lines for her. Yeah, she came off as very OOC. An eye-roll? Really?
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There is the bit where Celestia closely examines a fork... I've seen people do that before and the're almost always looking for water spots to complain about. Way too pissy for Celestia, I think. So, yeah, imagining her thinking, "Odd. This looks exactly like my third-best silver." is way more fun.
Honestly, the Celestia we know would have been having a conversation with the guests and putting them at ease. A thousand years of ruling would have taught her how to smooth over just about any awkward social situation.
3910299
I've voting for colic.
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Logically, yes, that’s what she should be doing. Practically, you can bet anything this will be forgotten entirely by the time the next Starlight episode rolls in.
Yes, my way of dealing with the MLP scriptwriters is not to have high hopes, so that I may, occasionally, be pleasantly surprised. :)
Or for Fluttershy, for that matter. Did Andrea Libman and Nicole Oliver decide to elope, or something?… But Pinkie has lines in this episode, what’s up with that…
Me, I’m imagining her thinking “Dammit, now I don’t remember which one of those newfangled utensils is for what. What’s wrong with eating with your magic anyway…”
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dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15337940/nosehair.jpg
Pinkie thinks Starlight's cake is delicious? Well, Pinkie thinks rock soup is delicious.
I'd lay equal odds on Applejack's reaction being unusually mild because he remembers what Starlight did to her back in the last season, and what Starlight's new teacher did to Big Mac back in S2, so she's improving...
I'd guess Starlight just avoided the Wonderbolts' press at Our Town, but yes, you'd think she would've heard beforehand...
What I assumed was that Trixie wasn't sure enough that she could teleport herself while in a manticore's digestive track. Your conclusion would also work... but I'd prefer to avoid concluding she was about to commit suicide onstage.
Maybe Fluttershy wasn't afraid of the manticore itself, so much as afraid for Trixie?
And I loved Starlight in this episode. She's not afraid to mention her past, even in casual conversation - and Twilight's reaction to her befriending Trixie is priceless. I don't call it an idiot ball yet; let's see if she's still overplanning things like this three episodes from now...
S1E1: 5 friends, one day. even net, it's +2 in one day. This is pretty much the speed she makes friends elsewhere, too.
Really, one day is pretty slow and forgiving given how Twilight can do (even if she had a magic fate-assist).
Confirmed in S7E2.
The Infinite Loops (don't get into this if you don't have time, it's several million words of dozens of interlocking fanfictions that are the most egregious violators of the First Rule of Fanfiction¹ ever) make a point of how Spike's breath has similar nasty weaponizability, particularly combined with Nightfury fireball-launcher-breath. Partial-burns, if he can control it…ugh.
well, she is going all Lesson Zero here.
❧there's a banner of Starlight Glimmer across from Celestia's. Is Rarity really digging for funds to open her Manehattan branch? or is Twilight just THAT obsessed and overprepared for this one?
❧Angel absolutely loves Starlight Glimmer, floating ♥♥♥ and all, a supremely rare honor.
❧Ice sculpture.
❧"How do you get your hair to do that" is answered with a sigh: Celestia gets this all the time, one expects…and we don't get a verbal answer, just a sigh.
Maybe it's just me but I can't stand the "Celestia facing camera speaking" animation.
ETA: ❧Trixie only has one eye-highlight, unlike everypony else here.