Points of Canon: Legends of Everfree · 7:36pm Sep 8th, 2016
Frankly, I was surprised when this turned up, I didn’t expect there to be an Equestria Girls chapter book.
I expected a book that matches the movie trailers scene for scene and song for song even less, so if you are not spoiler-resistant, don’t read this, I won’t hold it against you.
1. That’s what I’m going to call the Equestria Girls world, and I hope it sticks.
In this canon combing session, I will refer to the Twilight from Pedestria,1 as simply Twilight, as well as refer to all the other non-pony characters by their names, and only apply the pony prefix when pony characters are mentioned. No ponies turn up in this book at all, though Pony Twilight is mentioned multiple times.
I’ll try to avoid a blow by blow summary and only keep relevant statements regarding the state of the world, but it’s kinda difficult.
- The book starts with a recursive nightmare, as Twilight wakes up, is late for the camp, and the girls help her pack, only to be accosted by her demonic manifestation peeking out of the mirror, upon which she wakes up again to turn up on the bus to Camp Everfree. I’m not sure if it is canon that Pinkie knows about Twilight’s alarm clock and even about the sound it makes, because of the recursive nightmare. But if it is, they’ve been to her lodgings before.
- The canon name for Twilight’s unicorn-demon manifestation is “Midnight Sparkle.” I’ve seen it in the transcripts before, but I think it originally turned up only in the movie credits, if anywhere. Here, it’s spelled out.
- The official list of things students would need at the camp includes pants, long-sleeve shirt, bathing suit and a flashlight. Quite an odd list. Only Applejack cares about it.
- Celestia says she is proud that the students managed to raise the money for this camping trip, which implies some interesting after-school activities that were never described.
- Luna refers to a trip to the same camp that she and Celestia have participated in when they were the students’ age. Celestia does this as well later on, referring to the camp gift being her favorite tradition.
- Spike is still talking, so whatever happened to him in Friendship Games has to be permanent.
- They’re still doing the “No offense / None taken” sequence from Rainbow Rocks. Sunset has the patience of a saint. Twilight, a bit less so.
- That’s the first time Twilight ever heard that Flash Sentry has a thing for the Pony Twilight. Flash Sentry is explicitly aware of the Pony Twilight and Twilight being distinct, and later on Sunset tells him that he’d better get over the Pony Twilight in no uncertain words. Flash tries to reconnect with Sunset later on, but Sunset is too distracted by the messy events to care. That’s what you get when the fandom hates you: character building suffering.
- The camp guides are called Gloriosa Daisy and Timber Spruce, extending the list of Pedestria characters who have no known Equestria counterparts. Considering they are supposed to be brother and sister, names on the Pedestria side of the mirror are just as chaotic as they are on the Equestria side.
- One particular camp activity is building a camp feature for the next generation. Celestia explicitly mentions that the sundial was her and Luna’s year project. In Pedestria, this sundial serves as a mirror of Luna’s Banishment, as Luna thought the sundial was impractical since it can’t be used at night. Apparently, she did something rash, and was sent to “the Moonstone tent” for this, but subsequently forgiven.
- Vinyl is once again referred to as “DJ Pon-3,” implying that nobody upstairs wants to accept the name “Vinyl Scratch” as canon – they’re being very consistent about it.
- Timber Spruce is flirting with Twilight pretty openly every time he turns up in the narrative, Twilight is quite infatuated with him, all the way up to holding hands a couple of days down the line, and the rest of the cast are shipping them, enough to make Flash jealous. Hm.
- Twilight is the first to develop magical powers without noticing, hers is telekinesis. Notably, this time and in Pedestria, the word “levitation” rather than “floating” is used.
- The camp project for this year is rebuilding a worn out boat dock, which serves no interesting purpose other than to be destroyed the next morning as a boat crashes into it, in what Twilight is sure was her telekinetic accident.
- At campfire, Timber Spruce relays the titular “Legend of Everfree,” roll credits: The Everfree forest was discovered by Timber’s great-grandparents, who were the ones to build the camp in the first place. While they were building, they are visited by “Gaea Everfree,” described as a horrifying being with a shimmering aura of beauty leaving a trail of gem dust in her wake, who introduces herself as an “ancient spirit,” ruler of Everfree, angered by trespassers. She eventually agrees to permit the existence of the camp for a period of time, but promises to return and reclaim the space with all forces of nature at her disposal sometime in the unspecified future.
- The rest of the main cast turn up with their magical powers on the day after the story – Rainbow gets super-speed, Applejack gets super-strength, Rarity gets a personal defense shield, Pinkie acquires the power to turn confections explosive, and Fluttershy starts talking with animals. Most incidents are accompanied by gem dust noticed by characters. Rainbow, notably, loses her super-speed when she gets far enough from the camp. Twilight is still convinced that’s Midnight Sparkle’s fault.
- Sunset is the last to realize her new power is touch range mind reading. Subsequent investigation of the insides of Pinkie Pie’s head demonstrates the latter contains an incessant party with life-threatening amounts of sugar, rather than an adequate perception of reality.
- Sunset notices Timber is trailing gem dust, and suspects he wishes to scare the camp-goers off with spooky legends, since he expressed a desire for the camp to be closed down previously. Somewhat surprisingly, coupled with several higher-profile accidents, this does significantly affect the mood of the camp population.
2. Possibly the stupidest application of magical power imaginable in this situation, if you ask me.
Eventually a cave with seven decorated pillars is discovered by Twilight and Sunset, and Sunset identifies the pillars as Equestrian magic. Gloriosa is revealed to be behind the magical incidents. Sunset’s mind reading power reveals that she mortgaged the land to Filthy Rich, who wishes to build a spa resort instead of the camp, and fell behind on her payments, so to make the last year of camp count and produce the best camp week ever, she would inexpertly apply magic to solve various practical problems.2 The story of Gaea Everfree was a cover invented by Timber on the spot. The origin of the magic is a stray bolt from Canterlot High landing in the vicinity, though it is not clear which of the magical battles that occurred there was the source, apparently the original pillars were activated by the bolt.
- Eventually Gloriosa freaks out, transforms into a demon form, and imprisons Twilight and Sunset. Then she runs off back towards the camp, wherein she makes a well intentioned extremist speech and builds barricades around the camp with magical foliage.
- The climactic battle is built around Twilight being afraid of turning into Midnight Sparkle, but overcoming herself and defeating Gloriosa, which yields seven geodes. Those appear to be the local equivalents of the Elements of Harmony now, or at least, their imitation, and are the actual source of the Humane 7 powers. A rather silly plan for a fund-raiser to keep the camp operational is hatched, executed, and succeeds.
- Narrator makes a statement that after the Friendship Games, the portal between Equestria and Pedestria was never completely closed, and Equestrian magic is leaking into Pedestria.
Bit of a cringefest, to be honest, but this is one of the deeper excursions into how the rest of Pedestria works. So far, it looks quite normal by human standards, if it weren’t for the names. And the shreds of canon do help my plotting. 
This is also obviously a setup for a spin-off girl superhero show.
Oliver, you really should change the title of the blog to have Spoilers in the first line. I don't care, but some people get very agitated about this sort of thing.
I knew, given how hard they like to hammer nature=good into kids these days, anyone one named Gaia was going to turn out to be evil or at least misunderstood. I'm just relieved to hear that Filthy Rich wasn't the villain all along, I was sure it would be Deer 2: Making Captain Planet Look Nuanced.
So the girls have superpowers, but only close to either the portal or other places with magic. What about Spike? His sapience is basically a magically-powered superpower. If Spike went to a different hemisphere, would his sapience fade?
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I put up a warning in bold, I have a page break tag, seriously, what else can I do, cover the entire thing in a spoiler tag? :) Really, people who randomly click stuff probably shouldn’t be reading my blog in the first place, because I do post this kind of stuff with annoying regularity, don’t I.
Granted, this one is much earlier than usual, but still.
It’s Gaea. Our villains are spelled different. :)
He does come off as rather unsympathetic for no obviously good reason.
Or when in possession of the
Elementsmagical geodes from the cave in the forest. They explicitly don’t know where exactly those came from, Equestrian magic just activated them.He is not connected to locales or objects in any obvious way. I suspect they’re going to just handwave this one and keep doing so in perpetuity.
4200122 Ugh, geodes. I feel like the writers are challenging each other to come up with more and more implausible rules for magic in EqG. On the plus side, it gives a lot more weight to the idea that back in Equestria, one reason the Pie Family Rock Farm makes money is by charging up rocks with magical energy from ley lines or what have you and then basically selling batteries.
4200309
Earth ponies are the most magical tribe, don'cha know. :)
4200459 They're the only ones who output a constant magical field 24/7, even Pegasi don't do that when they're on the ground. It's why I was so disappointed in Applejack back in the Iron Pony competition, accusing Rainbow Dash of using her wings to cheat when she was using a magical aura of enhanced strength and fortitude the entire competition!
...You know, downgrading Celestia from immortal sun-bearing princess to high school principal was weird, but it didn't annoy me; I just kind of rolled my eyes and accepted it as part of the premise of the first movie. This annoys me. It's not even "Luna had a stint as a punk rock star," which was at least awesome in its absurdity. It's just dumb.
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In fairness, if the geodes are local equivalents to the Elements of Harmony, then this isn't anything we haven't seen before. And if the magic from the portal merely "activated" them and they were already special in some capacity, then it's a safe bet that those are what they are.
4226870 I dunno, I kind of like the idea of Luna's mirror banishment here being sent to the moonstone tent without supper, I find that hilarious.
I thought the Elements of Harmony were magic fruit? I mean, if their was no magic here, than how could Elements of Harmony or Crystal Trees or anything exist in the first place to be activated, unless this is a world where magic existed but disappeared long ago. Now that might be interesting...
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Well, magic fruit from a tree made of minerals would be minerals themselves, as the Elements in the show certainly look like gemstones...
And personally, the human world being formerly magical but no longer is exactly what I thought was being implied. Oliver even pointed out on the other blog that the pillar looks a bit like a cut-down Tree of Harmony. Personally, I don't imagine the Tree as being the source of all magic (particularly because Discord exists, is magical, and actively wanted to destroy it), but one could quite easily conceive headcanon from this that its death was somehow involved in the human world's loss of magic, and that the events of these movies represents the beginning of some kind of worldwide revival.
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The Tree is more likely than not the source of all harmony. Which probably accounts for most magic regular non-Discord sapients can actually use.