My Little Chronology · 4:58pm Jul 20th, 2016
And so here I am. It was a major adventure that took most of the afternoon. Know what I mean?
Actually, it took me most of a day, but I’m no Pinkie.
I have previously referred to using a specific rearranged episode chronology which I found somewhere deep in the bowels of the net, and can’t seem to find again. It was complete up until the end of season 3, whereupon most efforts to produce a consistent episode chronology for ponies seem to vanish entirely. Nobody even bothers anymore.
I plan to correct that, but I need your help.
A list is a list is a list, that’s the gist, but I wrote a javascript program that helps you manipulate it more visually, and more importantly, observe hard rules when moving episodes around – “this episode must precede X”, “this episode must follow Y”. You can save and load your results, (within reason) copy and paste them for discussion, and make your own variations, because it’s all a self-contained single HTML file. As well as a lot of javascript libraries loaded off various CDNs across the net, but I was in a hurry. I don’t guarantee it will work in old browsers either, but really, you shouldn’t be using those.
Please take a look:
My Little Chronology: the Time Machine
This is not something set in stone, but an invitation for input and discussion. If you think something in there can’t be right, say it. If you think something in there is a good idea, say it too. If you think you know what order the episodes should be in, that’s why I put in so many ways to get data out of it. If you can find any more hard or soft constraints – tell me.
Maybe, together we can make some sense out of this mess. :)
This is still an early version in addition to being a work in progress, but I think one day straight messing with it is enough for the moment. I plan to periodically update this list and will post whenever something major crops up.
Thank you! I don't have time now, but I'll be fully pouring over these notes later.
I don't think the software constraints are all working yet, though - I was able to move the S1 opener after Dragonshy and Bridle Gossip. Maybe you just ignored that since its constraint is so obvious?
4103073
No, I didn't, I just didn't put in all possible constraints, there's a bloody lot of them, as you can probably guess.
If you find any I obviously missed, please list them and I'll update the thing. :)
Is there a way to add notes?
There's a fan theory that the reason Big Mac is injured in Applebuck Season has to do with the bet Applejack mentions in Ticket Master.
4103137
No, it's a purely static program, but -- I can add that note, give me a few minutes. :)
4103075
About Somepony To Watch Over Me... Smarty Pants is glimpsed under Big Mac's bed, so it's pretty clearly after Lesson Zero. I'd argue that it's very soon after, given Applejack's uncharacteristic behavior - there's a fan theory (which I agree with) that Twilight's breakdown was an aftereffect of being Discorded, and Applejack's near-breakdown could easily have the same cause.
Also, both these episodes need to be placed after Call of the Cutie, given that the CMC are together.
And I don't think Discord's release needs to happen "quite a while after The Return Of Harmony." No matter how short a time's passed since then, he's been stoned for over a thousand years with only one brief break. The time since his reimprisonment is pretty much irrelevant.
4103180
Found it. Not Big Mac's bed, Apple Bloom's bed. But yeah, I suppose I should write that in. I've already written a constraint against Call of the Cutie indirectly because Call of the Cutie precedes Show Stoppers, but more constraints to the god of constraints!
Updated. :)
Most of those guesstimates are remnants of the original reasoning I started with, I've been pruning the least clear of them for most of the day.
I don't have time to look closely right now, but it's worth keeping in mind that some episodes might overlap. I can't remember which ones off the top of my head, but I seem to remember there's at least one episode that indicates that at least a week passes between the cold open and the action of the episode. (Or, a less exact example, in The Show Stoppers, enough time passes for Apple Bloom to have fixed up the clubhouse. Nothing says that The Cutie Mark Chronicles couldn't have actually taken place in between those scenes.)
4103245
There are. In particular Flutter Brutter definitely spans multiple weeks. I marked up those that I remember which clearly do stretch. But we'd still get some particular chronological order in the end, right?
Nice. I've been working on my own timeline project for a long while now (although mine is more primitive, just typed up and with some colour-coding). But I can definitely share some of my notes and help this project out.
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Just going to say, I find placing Putting Your Hoof Down as the earliest chronological point to be silly and completely unjustified. The episode being a flashback except for the ending is completely unsupported. We have no precedent for any of the characters writing friendship reports based on lessons they learned a long time ago for no reason other than just because.
Party of One can't take place where you've placed it. Spike has a line referring to it being spring.
I agree that Sweet and Elite is too early. Way too early. I cannot find any way to mentally justify Rarity being an unknown in Green after she's already had a stint of popularity in Canterlot, nor do I understand why she'd still be desperate to meet Blueblood at the Gala and catch his eyes if she'd already met him.
Good catch with The Last Roundup. I'll give that episode a close look when I get to rewatching it.
With Call of the Cutie, I'd actually play it a little earlier. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo aren't in Apple Bloom's class in this episode, but they are in future stories. A transfer may have occurred, but they aren't the only ones who shifted around. Plus, Equestrian term times are confusing. This theory may be debunked as we look at it further, but I think that this school operates in trimesters, with this episode showing the final trimester of Apple Bloom's previous year, and the class shifts by the next time we see them because it's a new school year.
Sisterhooves Social - I agree with your placement roughly here, but for different reasons. You must also consider that according to season five, the Social takes places in midsummer. By a real world calendar, that would be... August 6th? Abouts? Also, important to note, this episode results in a friendship report by somebody other than Twilight, so this must follow Lesson Zero.
Further notes for Stare Master - Zecora appears, the Gala dresses appear, and some of Rarity's lines reinforce that this is post-Dragonshy. So, it's a good placement. These are just further reasons to not move it far from here.
I think Dog and Pony Show following Cider Squeezy doesn't have much of a foundation. Sapphire season is an interesting point, but they weren't hunting for gems in that episode because it was sapphire season. They were hunting because Rarity needed more. In general, I think that the sooner we place Dog and Pony Show, the better.
Over a Barrel and Applebuck Season are good. This agrees with my personal timeline perfectly.
Return of Harmony, I should note, specifically must follow four episodes - Over a Barrel, A Dog and Pony Show, Cutie Mark Chronicles, and Bridle Gossip, because Twilight reads the friendship reports from those episodes and has flashbacks to them. To that end, you could potentially place it much earlier.
Hurricane Fluttershy must follow Lesson Zero for reasons of friendship reports. Also should be worth noting, Spitfire is in this episode, and Rainbow Dash interacts with her without freaking out, nor does Spitfire recognise Dash from this incident at the Gala, rather referencing the Best Young Fliers contest instead, which for me pretty solidly places this after Best Night Ever.
The Best Night Ever occurs on the 21st day of a month, for what that's worth, and I'm pretty sure it's a Spring month, because Fluttershy makes a big deal of flowers which bloom on that night and only that night. So Spring or Summer.
A Canterlot Wedding must must must follow Sonic Rainboom, because Dash performs one at the ceremony. Also, I know you said not to bring this stuff in yet, but you should know that according to comic fuckery, Shining and Cadance's anniversary is about a week before the Summer Wrap-Up, so... if we're factoring in the comics, yeah, this has to take place so much earlier that it actually becomes weird.
May the Best Pet Win must definitely take place after Winter Wrap-Up, because Dash's first winter with Tank was in season five.
With Secret of My Excess, you should note that ending with the destruction of Ponyville means that Last Roundup could potentially be following this episode rather than Swarm.
The Show Stoppers can't take place the following summer. Twilight isn't an alicorn, and she was cornonated before the second summer began, or at least she was if we take "longest day" to indicate that the Summer Sun Celebration does indeed take place on the solstice.
Interesting thing about A Friend in Deed - Fancy Pants appears in it, in Ponyville. I can think of no special reason for him to be there other than to possibly see Rarity, which would make this very likely after Sweet and Elite. And you know about how I feel about Sweet and Elite's placement.
One Bad Apple's summer harvest thing does kind of screw with the timeline a bit, but I think it can work fine with the one year theory if we move it much earlier, back to the first summer, unless there's something that contradicts this which I forgot about.
I generally agree on Hearts and Hooves Day, but it should be noted that this is a special holiday that's meant to be pleasant and romantic, and that ponies have the ability to control the weather, so it being set in winter isn't totally debunked if people still want to fit it there.
And again factoring in comics - Nightmare Rarity must take place around about here, and Trixie and Babs are both still in town in that issue, meaning that Magic Duel and Apple Family Reunion must have both occurred near the same time.
As for Neigh Anything and Zen and the Art of Gazebo Repair... fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuck.
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Aaaaaaaaand, I'm afraid that from that point on I'm going to be significantly less helpful, because I decided not to tackle later seasons until I first nailed down a reasonable timeline for the "Year of the Unicorn," as I call it.
I can offer one last piece of advice, though - Pay attention to how many days there are in each month, in each season, and then pay attention to how long a time each episode occurs over, because then space quickly begins to fill. It can be a good indicator of just how much we're able to space out episodes by.
4103260 4103075 New guess: Putting Your Hoof Down also takes place shortly after Return of Harmony. After all, if we're blaming Twilight and Applejack's OOC episodes on Discord... and seriously, Fluttershy could be expected to have some trouble recalibrating her assertiveness after that, so you can hardly expect it to be perfectly in sequence with Dragonshy.
(And we do have to place it sometime after Return of Harmony if it isn't a flashback, based on her letter to Celestia.)
4103260
Ok, gotta go through this one in order.
I don’t know about earliest, certainly I wasn’t the one who invented this particular one, but I think that it’s quite silly for it to occur after Dragonshy and Stare Master, as Fluttershy is much less of a doormat in those rather than more. Before the beginning becomes a natural spot to tuck it in then.
Any hard constraints you can place on this episode?
Yup, found it. I’ll mark it up as spring, but I won’t be moving things around for the moment – there are still a lot more constraints to add.
I think it’s much harder to justify her meeting Blueblood without tearing his face off if this occurred after the Gala. Seeing him but not being introduced might make her more infatuated than she would be otherwise, instead.
But those points of contention are precisely why I’m primarily messing about with constraints right now, at least, those we can agree on more often. :)
If it follows Lesson Zero, one of the two needs to move… Where does the tidbit about midsummer come from?
Sifted. I couldn’t positively identify the Gala dresses in Stare Master. I couldn’t figure out which of Rarity’s lines you mean, either, and I couldn’t find Zecora in it. The wiki kind of agrees on this one…
The earlier we place Dog and Pony Show, the less likely it is that she gets noticed by Sapphire Shores, though.
Constraints added.
Constraint added.
…er, did you mean before?
Constraint added. There’s got to be more hard constraints to this one…
I think the TV episodes will be enough pain all by themselves. :) Even though I cite the comics constantly.
Good point, that’s one more hard constraint…
I think that’s a leftover derp from my original source.
My reasoning for this was that Ponyville is a tourism destination, a hybrid resort/farming community. This is evidenced by a tremendous amount of local festivals which would simply not drum up enough business to be justified otherwise, as well as numerous other appearances by rich Canterlotians on Ponyville streets. Not to mention Rarity herself and her business in a city where most ponies never wear anything at all.
They do, but there’s a caveat – the Winter Wrap-Up is a large joint effort which you don’t want to do twice. Few things are totally and completely debunked here anyway…
Amen…
I might add another column for estimated length, but that’s going to take a bloody while. :) I’m mostly banking on constraints making things clearer, for now. Some episodes are sufficiently sparse to accommodate others in parallel, after all.
Thanks, that was quite useful. :)
4103303
Ooh, now that's a good one, thanks.
I'll write a comment to that effect but won't be moving anything just yet.
4103389
But Fluttershy goes through character regression all the time. I'll admit, there's no other hard constraints I remember, but the friendship report should be all we need. There's no readily apparent reason why Fluttershy would write a friendship report about something she learned months or years ago out of the blue. If this is a flashback, what prompted it? To me, this current placement in spite of the friendship report is the claim that needs substantiating, not the reverse.
But why wouldn't she be introduced? She's the talk of high society, and he's right there attending the same events as her, plus we know that she knew of Blueblood and was entertaining fantasies of him way before she ever went to Canterlot, so she probably would've gone out of her way to secure a meeting under those circumstances if they hadn't already met yet. Besides, is it really so impossible that they might have had an offscreen talk and partial reconciliation during that song montage? Particularly considering Blueblood's comic characterisation?
You and I, we disagree on a lot, I'm noticing. I really hope I am not forced to challenge you to an honour duel by the time this is over.
Season five. Made in Manehattan/Brotherhooves Social. Rarity and Applejack go to Manehattan to help Coco Pommel with her midsummer festival play thingy (I forget what it was called), and that was the reason why they had to miss the Social, and why Big Mac had to be Apple Bloom's "sister" for that event. If we assume that the Social is an annual event held at roughly the same time every year, then it occurs in midsummer.
My bad on the dresses. I was thinking of Bird in the Hoof, where they briefly appear in Fluttershy's closet.
Zecora wasn't in it directly, but Twilight was going to Zecora's for tea when she got turned to stone, so that's still a point in favour of it following Bridle Gossip either way.
With Rarity's lines, I was kind of referring to how she already knows what the Stare is, which I can see why you wouldn't construe it that way if you really believe in Hoof Down's placement and the implication that they were already friends. However, if you instead assume that their friendship was newly formed when they met Twilight (which would make more sense considering that Fluttershy in early episodes was literally afraid of her own shadow and initially unable to say any more to a stranger than squeaks and barely audible whispering), then it would make sense to assume that she knows about the Stare from having witnessed it first-hand in Dragonshy. Because I'm pretty sure that was Stare we saw in that episode.
But, consider that Dog and Pony Show does reference Rarity's work getting a rave review some time recently. Could well be that we can connect that to Hoity Toity's promotion of her work. That way, Hoity's visit is the inception of Rarity's fame, we could fit Green into the period where word is still spreading, and then Dog and Pony Show can follow after. It's also important to note that Green definitely takes places over a longer period of time, at least a week, so spacing Dog and Pony Show out so it occurs later is slightly less necessary.
No, after. What I mean is, if we take it to go Rainboom then Best Night then Hurricane, then we see Dash's first meeting with Spitfire where she's fangirling, her second meeting at the Gala where she's still fangirling and Spitfire remembers her from the last incident, and then a third meeting in which Dash has learned to be cooler around Spitfire and Spitfire seems to sort of know her.
Whereas, if we go Rainboom then Hurricane then Best Night, then we see Dash's first meeting with Spitfire where she's fangirling, her second meeting in Ponyville where Dash and Spitfire are cool with each other and don't bring up the last time they met at all, and a third meeting at the Gala where Dash is back to fangirling for some reason, and Spitfire recognises Dash from their first meeting, but makes no mention of their second one. Hurricane Fluttershy coming after Best Night Ever makes much more sense.
Sad thing is, I kind of don't think so. I guess you could say it's pretty telling that the main six seem comfortable and familiar with the princesses.
It's nice headcanon, but it's still headcanon, bro. Really, I think we should stick to your rule of "if we see a character, this has to happen after they were introduced," as much as we can, because it seems like a pretty good general rule.
Not a problem. I'll keep my own personal timeline up to date with whatever information you come by here, and I'll continue to update you whenever I learn new things that could help as well.
4103537
Agreed completely. Fluttershy's shyness is a recurring element throughout the series, and there's no evidence at all that she's continuously improving. Just look at Hurricane Fluttershy, where Dash has to drag her into a project much less scary than the dragon she's already faced in Dragonshy. Granted, Putting Your Hoof Down would be more of a regression than most... but there's no reason to think that's impossible, and IMO my Discord theory explains it.
On another subject, is there any real reason Cutie Mark Chronicles needs to happen after Stare Master?
4103547
No hard constraints, just elements suggested by character. The Crusaders hang out by day and are trusted alone in Cutie Mark Chronicles, whereas in Stare Master, the adults still treat them as needing supervision. But I suppose you could quibble about this point if you have anything convincing to support a counter-claim.
4103582 IIRC, they're treated as needing supervision for sleepovers, which is still consistent with Cutie Mark Chronicles and everything straight through Somepony To Watch Over Me, right? (Except the fanon where Orphan!Scoots sleeps by herself in the clubhouse...) But I don't really have evidence either way.
4103537
Considering that using the friendship report as a marker in Sisterhoof Social appears to mess up the ordering considerably, I’m not entirely sure they work as markers at all, something’s gotta give, I think we have a dependency loop. :)
Mental note: Automate looking for dependency loops before it’s too late.
Well, I’m not the one who originated this one, and I think Eruantalon’s theory above is just as good. But, using post-Lesson-Zero friendship reports as a marker does cause problems.
Not necessarily. For example, if the ordering is Sweet and Elite -> Ticket Master -> Best Night Ever, then first Rarity learns about Blueblood, gets introduced to him and ignored, and then becomes obsessed with catching his eye and decides to attend for this reason. We also don’t know just what sort of damage to her social standing eventually resulted from the party antics in Sweet and Elite. Fancy Pants might have saved it in the short term, but that does not necessarily apply to the aftermath.
There’s an indirect reason why it’s unlikely for Sweet and Elite to happen after the Gala: Twilight’s statement about the Gala that is “coming up” and can be the reason to get the said elite to buy Rarity’s dresses. If this is the Gala that is coming up in “Make New Friends But Keep Discord,” then Twilight is missing wings or dresses are bought some eight months in advance. If this is the Gala in “Best Night Ever” then it must occur before “Best Night Ever.” In which case, I think a winter with Tank goes missing…
Considering Blueblood’s comic characterisation, his behavior at the Gala is patently weird in the first place and requires jumping through hoops to explain.
Since the chance of us ever meeting is near zero, and constantly dropping due to events completely unrelated to this conversation, I wouldn’t bank on it. :)
Ah, right, found it. Written down… Unfortunately that wouldn’t be August, but June. I.e. Sisterhooves Social the episode has to happen either in the same summer as Friendship is Magic, or in the same summer as Princess Twilight Sparkle. The former leaves no time for Sweetie Belle to meet Apple Bloom and makes the friendship report in the end impossible. The latter sorta flies because Twilight doesn’t show up on screen, but it’s dangerously close to bumping into Princess Twilight Sparkle and switching from friendship reports by letter to writing in the Journal.
Right, found it, that’s a hard constraint. Bit reduntant though…
Actually, I’m just grepping the transcript for all of Rarity’s line and not seeing any mentioning the Stare explicitly. She never witnesses a Stare in this particular episode and says “how did you do that?” when Fluttershy demonstrates that the CMC listen to her. If you can point at the particular line or scene you’re thinking of that would be nice.
Well, I suppose that works. Like I said, I won’t be moving anything yet, though, I’ll wait for more input to roll in.
Ah, you didn’t mean she’d be embarrassed, you meant she’s no longer fangirling. Well, that’s a soft constraint at least…
I.e. you don’t have a better explanation for Canterlot ponies in Twilight’s opening song in Magical Mystery Cure, Lyra and friends hopping back and forth daily, fifteen festivals a year, formal wear shop in a nudist colony, and other incidents, either. :)
4103624
I don't follow. What's the problem with Lesson Zero friendship reports? It's one of the simplest and hardest constraints we have. All you've got to do is say that Lesson Zero occurred before whichever we decide was the first episode to have a non-Twilight report.
In the timeline I use right now, I put The Best Night Ever as being late April at the earliest, and Ticket Master as one of the first episodes in the chronology. I already operate by the assumption that this is a big event that takes a lot of planning, and so invites are sent out almost a year in advance. Rarity thus also started producing dresses in this vision of the timeline many months in advance of the actual gala, so it'd follow that the elite would also order and buy dresses from her for an event almost a year off. So I'm not yet convinced that there's any special reason why it can't be the Keep Discord gala.
Well, yeah, it does, but it would do that regardless of what the timeline looked like.
Looks like we'll have to settle for riveting debates then.
Ooh, that is a tough one... Hmm... I thought midsummer was something different than it was, so that's made me reevaluate this a lot, actually. I think all things considered, using the lack of a direct appearance by Twilight and placing it after the coronation is probably the best option. We could probably squeeze it in before Castle Mane-ia, couldn't we?
But the really good news is that placing Sisterhooves Social so much later frees up the summer a bit more in my timeline. Previously, I was trying to stuff a lot of episodes into late June through to the end of July, then have the uneventful week ending on August 5th with Lesson Zero, and Sisterhooves Social occuring literally the day after. This new placement is much less dumb and allows me much more freedom in Lesson Zero's placement.
Yeah, but, y'know, constraints for the constraint god, and all that...
Of course. It's the scene at the beginning when Fluttershy arrives:
Rarity: Oh, she looks great! I just don't understand how you're able to do it! I can't get near her without getting a swipe from her claws.
Opalescence: [hiss!]
Rarity: Ahh! Did you use... the Stare on her?
Fluttershy: Oh, no! I wouldn't! I couldn't! I-I don't really have any control over when that happens. I-It just happens. No, I'm just good with animals. It's my special gift, you know?
Emphasis not mine.
I have explanations for some but not others, and I'm certainly giving yours serious consideration now. I just don't think that it's as good an explanation for Fancy being in Ponyville as him being there for Rarity-related business (which must have been the creators' intent, because it was the second appearance of the character, and I doubt that the writers have put as much thought as we have into this non-linear timeline thing).
4103624
I don't think there's a big problem with Rarity drumming up publicity for dress orders eight months in advance. Nobleponies probably don't all order their dresses at the last minute, and she's just one pony, so "eight months in advance" could easily work out to "three months before the big order season," which leaves just enough time for several cycles of publicity.
Um... that's the most difficult point. Myself, I deny your premise that the year and four seasons have a set length. My actual theory is that Celestia stretched out the year between Friendship Is Magic and Princess Twilight Sparkle to allow Luna more time to adjust before the next Summer Sun Celebration, which allows for normally-annual celebrations to occur once, twice, or more in that lengthened year.
Though, there's probably still some way to solve the problem with your seasonal constraints...
4103724
You’re planning to burn me in the fires of friendship, I just know it. :P
Mostly the fact that they squeeze events into Season 2 endcaps while otherwise usually being narration that has nothing to do with them… but ok, I concede this one. My biggest issue with it was that I was trying to move Lesson Zero back instead of moving Sisterhooves Social forward. But doing that causes other problems as I described…
Actually, I’m not sure we’re strictly limited to midsummer the time period here.
The word “midsummer” is never used in Made in Manehattan as anything except part of the phrase “Midsummer Theater Revival.” This could mean that this is an event originally established to remember a now defunct “Midsummer Theater.” (Which is now, in turn, defunct itself and needs more revival, the irony.) There are no other references to the season in that episode I could catch except the cop’s summer uniform, obviously different from the one in The Gift of the Maud Pie, but summer uniforms are also worn in autumn and it’s not like it’s Japan where police changes on the clock regardless of weather.
Except nobody knowing what will be in fashion next year, you mean? I think that’s a rather substantial one…
I think that this will still tear up a year long hole later on due to Tanks for the Memories and other yearly locks, but let’s continue on the hard constraints for the moment…
Speaking of which, I wrote in the hard constraints for every appearance of wingless Twilight and every appearance of markless CMC. Which doesn’t help that much, but it’s a start. I also need to introduce a hard constraint for appearances of Friendship Castle / Golden Oak Library, but I don’t have a handy reference for those so it’s a lot of sifting through episodes…
Oh, right, missed this one. Yes, it does make it require either Dragonshy or prior acquaintaince with the Stare. Now it’s mostly a question of whether Fluttershy even knew the Stare is an option by the time Dragonshy rolled in. If we can demonstrate she didn’t, that constraint becomes hard and Putting Your Hoof Down has to move.
Frankly, we never learn what sort of business the guy even has.
Actually, the wiki does not list Fancy Pants as appearing in A Friend In Deed even in the background. Just went through it myself and can’t find him there either. Not even during the Smile song parade.
4104151
That requires an absolutely divine Celestia, though, because the economic impact of such a break in the cycle would be massive.
4104353
Shhhhhh... just let it happen...
That is an interesting point, and it does potentially allow a lot more freedom. But... all the same, wouldn't any attempt to revive the spirit of a midsummer event with midsummer in the name still try to take place in midsummer? Plus, considering that this is one of the few episodes that has any kind of connection to a time of year at all, I'm not sure we should dismiss that connection so readily just because it isn't as explicit as we would like.
Also, I went back through my notes on this midsummer thing, which I recall now were cribbed from FOME's episode observations. He noted as well that midsummer, actually being at the beginning of summer rather than the middle, already coincides with another Equestrian holiday - the Summer Sun Celebration. Which is probably where I got my idea of placing the date in August.
I went for the literal middle of summer rather than the date we call midsummer in the real world, because... well, if this event does occur in actual midsummer, then it has to follow immediately after a Summer Sun Celebration. Likely a third, unseen Summer Sun Celebration in the middle of season five, because there's no way in hell it followed the second one from Princess Twilight Sparkle. Whereas if midsummer means the literal middle of summer, then it solves the problem of the Summer Sun Celebration... while also introducing new problems, such as how early Lesson Zero and Sisterhooves Social must occur...
Well, neither did Rarity necessarily know what would be in vogue when the Gala came around, but she still designed the dresses for it. Sometimes, the fashionista just has to predict the trends. Or, alternatively, set the trends. Which is exactly what she was when she was popular in Canterlot. She was a trend-setter, and everyone was sucking up to what her idea of good was.
You keep mentioning this Tank thing, and I realise that I haven't been paying enough attention to it when I probably should. How does this create an issue with Tank's first winter, exactly? Bearing in mind that my knowledge of later seasons is a lot sparser?
That would be nice, yeah, but don't think any such proof exists in the show. I can't remember any episodes before Dragonshy that definitively show ignorance of the Stare. At best we might get a new episode one day with a flashback sequence showing how Fluttershy first discovered the Stare in some crazy adventure we've never seen before, but that would just prove the opposite.
Although, incidentally, I may have found a soft constraint for Putting Your Hoof Down. The usual background ponies appear in that episode, including Lyra, Minuette, Twinkleshine, Lemon Hearts, etc. As you may remember, Amending Fences revealed that the reason why they show up in both Canterlot and Ponyville a lot is that Lyra moved to Ponyville, and the others are always going there to visit her, while she often goes back to Canterlot to visit the rest of them.
Now, we don't have any explicit mention of when Lyra moved, which is why this isn't a hard constraint, but I think it can't have been before Twilight left, otherwise she should have known about it, because Lyra would already be coming back to Canterlot on visits rather than being with the group because she lives there. Granted, Twilight was also an inattentive friend to the background unicorns, so this is another point we could quibble over, but I still think that it's evidence in favour of placing Hoof Down at a more sensible point in the timeline.
What? No way...
...Damn it! I was confusing episodes again! Okay, the sequence I was thinking of was in Too Many Pinkie Pies. I apologise for that. I don't skim the episodes, you see. I go through each with a fine-toothed comb, and as such I have still yet to get to either of these two episodes in my project. A lot of my notes on the episodes I haven't watched were either pulled from the wiki or from memory. My memory is usually better than this, but mistakens happen, as you see.
This is why it's good to have a second pair of eyes.
I agree with you on this one. I think the non-standard year length is... plausible, but highly unlikely. And besides, if we do take the route of a non-standard year length, then we have almost no way to judge when most of anything took place.
4104989
June, July and August can make a difference.
It might or it might not. I made all those arrows and that mess of JS to make it easier to see if it does, but you can’t account for months this way other than by eyeballing what results.
Multiple later episodes introduce constraints of the form “no more than X months after/before episode Y” or “must contain an integer number of years between this and episode Z.” These are not a problem by themselves, except that these episodes are not all independent and many introduce hard constraints on other episodes. While I haven’t tried to actually rearrange them all just yet, my intuition nags me all the time. To whit, those are the constraints of this form that I remember:
Tanks for the Memories must occur no more than 9 months after May the Best Pet Win, otherwise it is impossible for Rainbow Dash to have never observed Tank hibernating.
We don’t exactly know how long pony pregnancy takes, but I’m not going to believe “more than a year,” which means that The Crystaling must not be more than 12 months away from The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows.
Rarity Takes Manehattan and The Saddle Row Review both overlap the Manehattan Fashion Week, which has to be an annual event, so an integer number of years must elapse between. Sisterhooves Social and Made in Manehattan / Brotherhooves Social are likewise annual events.
Every Hearthwarming episode is locked, an integer number of years must be between each. But now we have three – Hearth’s Warming Eve, Hearthbreakers and A Hearth’s Warming Tail. Luna Eclipsed and Scare Master are Nightmare Night episodes, so same as Hearthswarming. At least a few of these are upper bounds for a few more, etc.
There might be a few others based on minor lines of dialogue, these are just the obvious ones. For example, I may be wrong, but timberwolves only seem to show up around zap apple season, which, if true sets a similar (less rigid, but still) annual constraint between Family Appreciation Day and Spike at Your Service.
Coupled with the fact that both season 4 and season 5 have end-cap events, which rigidly set something like half of their episodes between the start and end of the season, you can easily end up producing an extra year or a dependency loop by bumping something too far, because the rubberband constraint episodes will pull things after them.
Actually, it never says she didn’t always live in Ponyville. We’re just assuming that based on the fact that she knows Twilight and is present in Canterlot in Friendship is Magic. Comics put her both into the School for Gifted Unicorns and into Canterlot Academy, (TV canon does not conclusively do either) in different time periods, so they’re not any help either. But let’s say she’s Twilight’s contemporary in SGU and that’s how they met. Comics also insist that SGU is a boarding school, flashback in A Canterlot Wedding suggests that as well, and by the time the series begins, I’m pretty sure that Twilight is already past this particular part of her education anyway (she didn’t live in the room from A Canterlot Wedding, see RTAC #1) – so it still doesn’t set Lyra conclusively living in Canterlot at the time the series begins, since she could just live in SGU’s dorm and move back to Ponyville when she was done with school.
That’s way too shaky to use as a hard constraint, I’m afraid. :)
…That one’s so minor that I’m not sure it’s not just a visual gag. Like Smartypants, Twilight Scepter and the Inspiration Manifestation spellbook appearing in The Gift of the Maud Pie. :) I’ll mark it in the comments though…
A non-standard year of more or less days than ~360 would be a non-issue. A non-constant year length, now that would screw everything, and not just for us, but for ponies too. :)
4105190
I see now how that can get messy. As soon as we have something plausible nailed down for the Year of the Unicorn, I'll start working on this too. But it does seem to me that we're definitely into at least the third year as of the current season.
Yeah, I know. I said it was soft. But I'm adding it to the building pile of evidence all the same. The flashback theory increasingly needs more and more elaborate explanations to justify.
If we're going to have to debate the canonicity of visual gags as well, I really will have to challenge you to an honour duel.
If Equestria has non-constant year lengths, we may as well all give up and go home. That would be the final proof that life is meaningless and that our only reason for existence is to be food for the great old ones.
4105236
This is more about whether it's third or fourth year. The lower ends of this mess of loops start all the way back in season 1, which is why it does matter for positioning episodes of earlier seasons. But since all the individual loops intersect, I think it comes out to requiring A Hearth's Warming Tail to be middle of the third year exactly, and if we can't fit into that limit, something's going to have to give.
Ultimately, all this has to be an artifact of the production process. It's like they make ~35 scripts for each season, produce 26 of them, and the rest get bumped out to the next one. But when the time comes to make them, they don't get adjusted, but instead take on whatever major background changes in the environment have cropped up by that time without accounting for whether they still make sense or not.
What can I say, good luck? :)
4105265
Yeah. Definitely messy...
Well, I think that's all I have to contribute to the discussion for now. Like I said, I'll let you know if I learn anything more.
AH! Another constraint for Canterlot Wedding! It definitely takes place after Sweet and Elite, as Rarity and Fancy Pants are seen dancing at the end. Also Dash and Soarin, for whatever that's worth.
Ok, I've thought a lot about this, and I have to say, based solely on how assertive Fluttershy is acting, I think Putting Your Hoof Down should go after DragonShy. Fluttershy starts both episodes acting shy and timid, the difference is she seems to learn a lesson in Putting Your Hoof Down that she really doesn't in DragonShy.
Putting Your Hoof Down ends with Fluttershy learning a lesson, and even calmly explaining her actions, as she refuses to pay Iron Will. In DragonShy however, Fluttershy just yells at a dragon out of sheer panic that her friends are about to die. She doesn't really seem to learn a lesson here, and its affects are a lot less repeatable in her daily life. If Fluttershy had learned her lesson from her experience with Iron Will, she wouldn't let Angel push her around quite so much in not eating his carrot, and she would feel better about getting everyone's attention to alert them to the smoke. On the other hand, after DragonShy I could see Fluttershy having a lot of problems applying her "yell and use the stare in life-threatening situations" to negotiate good prices in the market for fancy salad ingredients. The only time she really uses the lesson from DragonShy is in dealing with that cockatrice.
Oh, and then the letter part doesn't have to be a flashback.
4105634
4103260
...Ha. Idea.
Since everyone's dislikes the idea of Putting Your Hoof Down before series start so much, let's consider the option that places it after The Return of Harmony based on the idea that Fluttershy is suffering from the aftereffects of Discord influence and temporarily reduced sense of self-worth.
Do we have other episodes with similar properties, where characters behave in ways contrary to their usual state for no observable reasons? Somepony to Watch Over Me, for one, which doesn't have any particularly hard constraints preventing it from being backdated. But also another one: Party of One where Pinkie has a flash of paranoia uncharacteristic for ponies in general, let alone Pinkie in particular. And as DannyJ already pointed out, Party of One can't happen where my extant timeline puts it, because it is explicitly a spring day.
Well, if the timeline is in any kind of reasonable shape, the The Return of Harmony happens in spring. :)
4105614
...Wait. That makes it harder for Sweet and Elite to happen after the Gala. :)
4106058
4106085
Thought about the Gala:
Other than that it takes place on the 21st of a month, we don't know when it occurs at all. I always assumed Spring at the end of the year, but it just as easily could be a summer month, and in fact, late summer could work better for everybody's characterisation too in some small ways. This also means that the timespan between getting the tickets and actually going to the event becomes much shorter. The consequence of this is that it solves your quibble about changing fashions, and placing Sweet and Elite towards the end of the timeline means that the upcoming Gala it would refer to at that point (the Keep Discord Gala) would be much closer.
Also, just going to say, I'm not in support of the "Discording after-effects" theory of the timeline, for a wide variety of reasons, primarily that I don't like the idea of trying to use Discord to excuse out-of-character behaviour. But at this point, I'd take anything that would make you let go of this flashback theory.
4106167
I think there are more than a few "must precede" constraints on the Gala, so it could result in a really packed summer, but I'll need to sift through it to be sure.
4106058 You make a good case. Especially since, if you're going to invoke the "ponies acted weird as a side effect of Discord" phenomenon, that also explains why so many merchants in the market were acting like jerks and trying to rip off Fluttershy. I agree with 4106167 , not generally a fan of this theory, but it could explain some things.
That said, you really need to be judicious when going to the well on "Discorded after-effects." This episode and maybe Lesson Zero, but it really shouldn't be applied to too many other episodes. If ponies live in this accelerated timeline and can bounce back the day after parasprites eat the village or a giant space bear smashes things, there are only so many adventures that can happen every few days before ponies have completely forgotten about Discord.
4106180
Oh, the summer is undoubtedly packed. Absolutely.
4106414
I think this is a blob of four episodes, which get compressed into one, at most, two weeks, by having parts intermesh. They don't take a long time to bounce back, we just see them do that in parallel, because they do it mostly on their own, each. The pattern is something like this:
* Discord is stone again, but he made the Mane Six doubt their own virtues, and while they did beat him, some of the doubt is lingering. Which is what he was aiming for, he got the last laugh from the statue garden. Twilight is upset that she needed bailing out by way of returned letters, which grows into a feeling of her own inadequacy, this week is the worst time ever for her to be tardy... and Lesson Zero happens.
* The town bounces back from it in minutes, but it's a bit heavier on the Mane Six. Pinkie even uses an excuse -- Gummy's party feels like one, she likes her alligator, but I'm not sure the alligator likes everypony else enough to be pleased by them attending his birthday -- to cheer her friends up. It works, but it's not enough for Pinkie. She is worried that her friends actually are laughing at her instead of with her -- and as a result tries to have another Party of One immediately afterwards, and gets her suspicions inadvertently confirmed, because it so happened that this coincided with her own birthday. Which she completely forgot about while worrying.
* Applejack has never worried much about herself. But she has always worried about her family, and now that business necessitates she leave Apple Bloom alone for a time, she just can't stop coming back and being overprotective and overbearing. Somepony to Watch Over Me happens. She is very busy with that and the actual trip.
* Which is why Applejack is completely missing while Fluttershy is having her own breakdown and a fit of feeling inadequate, which permits Iron Will into the plot when Fluttershy Puts Her Hoof Down and gets resolved by Rarity and Pinkie. Meanwhile, Ponyville is suffering from an unscheduled tourist invasion due to the rumor spreading that it was the chaos capital of the world for a day, getting the marketplace to hike prices up because of the supplies being exhausted.
Celestia alone knows what exactly Rainbow is doing at the time, but my guess is, she is visiting Cloudsdale for her family, remembering what Discord got her with. Rarity...
Well, Rarity's too much of a lady to let it show, and Tom the boulder was shame enough. :)
Bug report:Sisterhooves Social is marked as "must follow" Lesson Zero, yet appears before Lesson Zero by default.
4106966
That's not a bug, that's a conversation piece. :) Where does it actually go?
4106446 Almost all of that makes sense, but I'm not so sure about Someone to Watch Over Me. Remember how they're launching into a song, and Scootaloo tells them to skip the song, like it's routine at this point? I feel like this episode needs to be after either One Bad Apple, Flight to the Finish or both.
4107417
I'll sift through it and get back to you on that. It's a weird episode, to say the least.
Mind you, if it follows Stare Master, there was that lullaby song...
4106058 4106446 I like it! And we don't even need the unscheduled tourist invasion for prices to be hiked up; Discord's chaos could easily have rendered a lot of food inedible.
One quibble - for even more compression, and because I think Applejack's reaction would be faster, I'd place Somepony To Watch Over Me first, before Lesson Zero. We really can't move up either of the others, though, because of friendship reports - Twilight can't have Party of One to give her something to write, and Fluttershy can't write hers from Putting Your Hoof Down till afterward.
4107417 I don't think so, though... Scootaloo isn't getting them to skip it because it's routine; she's getting them to skip it because "No time for a song! Applejack's coming!"
4107958
That too. I imagine, spoiling chocolate milk can't be very good for still growing fresh produce... But I'm sure that there are tourists this time, if only because Fluttershy sends one flying into the bell tower, and there are a few ponies in the marketplace with upscale outfits that she interacts with.
Maybe, but I'm not sure that compresses very well, unless Putting Your Hoof Down happens in parallel with Somepony To Watch Over Me. Those two episodes don't intersect on characters at all. Since the comment about Fluttershy narrating her letter to Celestia (instead of being actually shown writing it or dictating to Spike as in most other cases) still holds, hers could be the first actual letter to Celestia that got sent once Lesson Zero happened, because the lesson happened very recently and was still a very current thing for her -- just yesterday or so.
As a side note, taxis are not a common sight in Ponyville, but both Putting Your Hoof Down and Somepony To Watch Over Me have them show up...
4107971 ... and then, I totally forgot about Smarty Pants. Somepony To Watch Over Me has to be after Lesson Zero.
This is incredibly useful for any author wanting to place their stories in or around the episodes. I'd love to see it added to the site's menus or FAQ.
Is there a solid reason not to add the Equestria Girls movies? I know they're an optional sub-canon, but they each contain at least a couple of constraints (eg seeing the Castle of Friendship, or pony Twilight mentioning her time travel shenanigans).
Looking through the comments, a lot of the constraints seem to be questionable. (I have evidence that they're questionable: somebody questions them). In that case, maybe there are two tiers of constraint: a hard "Must follow" and a soft "Should follow". Clicking up on a "must" gets a refusal; clicking up on a "should" just gets a little blob of red. That might also help resolve dependency loops.
4191347
I very much doubt I have anywhere near enough clout for this. :)
Not really, but I'm not sure they are very useful in the collected chronology, being pony movies with hardly any pony in them, and it's enough of a mess already.
There already are -- hard constraints will prevent you from moving the episodes and are listed below the description, soft are just mentioned in the description but aren't listed. But I haven't accounted programmatically for soft constraints, and there is no practical way to progammatically account for timespan constraints. I'll see what I can do about that.
4191358
You might be surprised. FiMfiction is a very meritocratic site, so having done the hard work on a thing is often all the qualification you need.
4191364
I'm also antisocial? Being a sociologist, it kind of comes with the territory. :)
4191347
There. Now the list includes the three Equestria Girls movies. :)
Thank you.
How do you manage to keep all these details in your mind?
4341044
I don't really know. The way my memory works is pretty unorthodox in the first place, it is index based: instead of remembering the what, I tend to remember where I keep a copy.
.....I think you just made my life a lot easier. Thank you.