Points of Canon: S7x01-02 - Celestial Advice / All Bottled Up · 7:39pm Apr 15th, 2017
I’m continuing my practice of picking apart episodes for any interesting worldbuilding tidbits they might contain, regardless of their artistic and other merits or demerits.
To prevent Fimfiction from messing up and spilling the guts of the post into the sidebar and elsewhere, let’s put an image up: My official Season 7 bingo card. If there’s an image in the post, it takes precedence for showing in the sidebar.
Let’s see what can I cross out this time.
- Starlight and her friends are getting medals of honor, which sets this episode after To Where And Back Again – and probably very soon afterwards, presumably, under a week, because Sunburst hadn’t had a chance to talk to Starlight about it yet.
- Spike names Chrysalis on screen, which doesn’t happen often.
- Twilight is using a spring-loaded tape measure. Notably, while the first attempts to produce one date back to 1868 in our world, they only took off in 1900s.
- Starlight is surprised at the possibility of being supposed to dress up for a ceremony of this kind. I wonder why. It also probably suggests that medals pinned to uniforms is not something commonly done. Notably, through the door we can see a hat – one that Starlight never wore on screen and which looks a bit small for her – and some kind of garment.
- Starlight swings the door closed with magic, while not looking at it and using the handle on the outside rather than on the inside.
1. Shippy!
Twilight’s mirror has photos pinned to it, and most of those are not scenes previously seen. In particular the interesting ones are: Filly Twilight hugging Young Cadance, Rarity in a heretofore unobserved turquoise dress with Fluttershy, Twilight and Moondancer – presumably in school, because they look younger and apparently, Twilight has no wings. The ones that refer to known events are the one from Make New Friends But Keep Discord with Celestia and Discord together,1 Spike posing with the scepter from Gauntlet of Fire, and what has to be Running of the Leaves in Fall Weather Friends. But who took that last one? Everypony was busy. Similarly, there’s a photo of Twilight and Spike from Luna Eclipsed, which likewise has no known cameraman to take it. Is there something they’re not telling us?…
- There’s also a photo with Twilight and newly hatched Spike, which, while certainly a photo she might have wanted to have, subtly contradicts Friendship is Magic #40.
- Twilight’s telescope has a very unusual optical element, which I’m pretty sure does not belong on a telescope of any kind.
- I’m going to ignore that feat of pulling multiple tables out of thin air by Pinkie if you will.
- The crowd assembled for Starlight’s ceremony includes ponies from her village as well as multiple new-type changelings and crystal ponies in a non-crystal state.
2. Poor Luna. Forgetting that the ribbon will need to fit over the horns is just the kind of screwup you expect from an event like that – but she just had to be the one handling the medals…
So the medal is called “Equestrian Pink Heart of Courage” and is worn on a pink ribbon.2
- Sweetie Belle is dancing with Spike and has her cutie mark, not that we needed another redundant marker.
- It’s interesting that Minuette, Twinkleshine and Lemon Hearts are there, but Lyra isn’t. Neither is Moondancer.
- The phrase by one of the new-type changelings, “No one’s ever stood up to Chrysalis like that,” is wonderfully ambiguous.
- Twilight planned “enough friendship lessons to cover the next three years.”
- Ponyville has a newspaper called “Ponyville Chronicle.”
- Berry Punch is talking to the CMC. I wonder what about.
3. And ironically, Starlight wants a sandwich.
Thorax wants “honeysuckle nectar for lunch,” suggesting that new-type changelings eat this sort of thing. Unfortunately this does not let us determine if the regular changelings ever did.3
- So we know Twilight is projecting a fantasy. However, where the hell did she imagine those eggs Starlight is handling came from?!
- One of the changelings is named what sounds as “Caruncle” to my ear – which is something I’m not sure changelings had before the new-type or after.
4. The consequences of the things Celestia doesn’t know are always bigger than the consequences of things Celestia does, as a general rule.
Twilight says “Celestia knows where,” in Celestia’s presence. And Celestia says she was not aware she was an expression. This is kinda big.4
- The list of fun things dragons do according to Ember’s letters is undecipherable to my ear. Any takers? I’m going to have to fix these notes afterwards once anyone weighs in.
- Dragons dive into lava for fun.
- Spell names mentioned: Star Swirl’s Apparition, Spatium Flexibus, Somnambulis Tempus Objectis. Notice the use of two disparate spell naming groups in one sentence. Also notice that according to Twilight, combining these three spells will produce a catastrophic result.
- This is the first time, ever, ponies actually draw a magic circle on screen. No recognizable symbols are seen as part of this circle. I wonder which of the three spells does the magic circle belong to?
- So Celestia admits to being in the same position as Twilight…
- The resulting flashback includes Celestia actually teaching the class herself, and contains Moondancer, Lemon Hearts, Minuette, Twinkleshine, Twilight, Lyra and someone who looks suspiciously like Berry Pinch. The entire flashback is pretty much impossible to have happened verbatim, though, because none of these ponies feature cutie marks in any of the subsequent shots, when at the very least, Twilight has to have hers. I’m sorry, but for this flashback, Celestia is an unreliable narrator.
- Among the objects in the room, there’s yet another globe, bringing the total count of appearances of globes in primary canon to four.
- Likewise, according to this flashback, the Mane 5 would have to have been friends before Twilight’s arrival, since they are shown explicitly enjoying each other’s company, which is highly dubious.
5. Sure nice to have a town next to the gates to Hell, isn’t it?
Getting pulled into Tartarus is, apparently, a potential concern in Ponyville.5
- Discord uses a boom microphone, continuing the trend of using low-frequency electronics, and also employs a film-based camera. The camera is rather small at that, but it appears to be a 35mm camera.
- Thorax’s offer to throw Starlight a “changeling gorm-fest” is in itself interesting, because I wonder just when did this practice originate. (Observed by WufflyTime: there are at least five different opinions on what Thorax actually said, and he should mumble less.)
- Discord mentions “Gouda” for use in a cheese pun. Gouda is a thing. Only, like champagne, it’s named after a place.
- Twilight’s present contains a photo of the entire crew in Starlight’s village. But that photo includes Flurry Heart. Was she ever in that scene?… (Confirmed by journcy: yes, she was.)
- Pinkie uses a vacuum cleaner. That’s a first.
Onto the second “half,” because this is hardly a two-parter.
6. Notice that there are multiple thinkable ways it could work, and this filters out some of them.
Transfiguration magic requires visualization, and forgetting this fact makes Trixie fail.6 A teacup/dog hybrid, however, is really a piece of fridge horror…
- Trixie admits to having always failed transfiguration previously. Her phrase about “real magic,” however, does not necessarily mean she is incapable of magic otherwise.
- Twilight “can’t remember the last time we all got to hangout without having to save Equestria.” Which would mean that Every Little Thing She Does (is evil) has faded out of Twilight’s memory, because it ends with the entire crew chillaxing on the roof. Hmm…
- Rainbow’s statement that “Technically we weren’t the last ponies to save Equestria” precludes the appearance of any other Equestria-saving activity between this episode and To Where And Back Again. These two episodes here do follow back to back even if they aren’t properly a two-parter.
- Trixie’s “If anything breaks, Starlight will just go back in time and fix it” makes me wonder if such a feat is at all possible.
- Starlight says that “Nothing just disappears, so that’s technically a teleportation spell,” which is an important statement for magic theory.
7. Being specific would go a long way towards explaining why she’s so bloody powerful without any known teachers.
Starlight explicitly says that magic is tied to emotions, but we do not really know if this is a general statement or this is an experience specific to Starlight, it could go either way, due to the way she phrases that.7
- “Manehattan Escapes.” is a rather peculiar kind of entertainment. So what happens if you can’t solve a puzzle to escape?…
- Rainbow Dash is prejudiced towards griffons. She still remembers Gilda, huh?
8. Makes me think of Conversation 34.
So seeing as how Trixie managed to teleport the map table somewhere, the thing is at least not attached to the castle…8 I do wonder why doesn’t Starlight use her teleport tracker spell, which first appears in Every Little Thing She Does (is evil.)
9. See my theory that Ponyville is actually a tourist town. Maybe I’ll write up an RTAC about it soon…
Ponyville has a jewelry store. Which is important in that a simple farming community couldn’t have enough business for one.9 (Observed by FanOfMostEverything: Not new, first appears in Hearts and Hooves Day)
- Bulk Biceps is working a cinnamon nuts stand in addition to his spa job. I wonder why.
- Whatever Starlight actually did to “bottle her anger,” it apparently involves selective memory duplication together with whatever substance she expelled.
- Starlight’s new mind control accident is readily forgiven, continuing the long standing trend that intent is paramount in assigning moral judgment to these activities.
- This entire episode implies it’s possible to reach Manehattan and return in a single day before the spa closes.
The amount of ho yay in the second episode is palpable. These are decent episodes, but a season opener? Hm.
Looks like I don’t get to cross any squares on my bingo card this time.
EDIT: Well, since everybody tells me to cross out Starlight and Sunburst, I suppose I should.
On Celestia not being aware she's an expression: I'm pretty sure she's joking there.
On Celestia not being a perfectly reliable narrator: Good catch! I'm willing to accept this as narrative condensation, especially the part about the not-yet-Mane Five; Celly probably was aware of them, and knew / hoped they'd work with Twilight to form the Elemental Harmony Squad.
On the jewelry store: I'm imagining that with the railroad (which is obviously a pretty new development), Ponyville is almost starting to turn into a suburb of Canterlot.
And yeah, there was a lot of ship-teasing with Starlight and Trixie. (I'm increasingly for Trixie x Starlight x Sunburst as the One True Threesome, but that may be just me...
)
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One can only hope. A world in which Celestia has avoided finding out ponies swear by her name for a thousand years would be highly weird.
A world where Twilight has avoided knowing that Celestia knows, so that Celestia could have made this joke, is quite interesting.
Aware of them – no doubt. But the way she’s presenting this flashback makes what should look like a sincere and tender moment somewhat dubious and manipulative.
Which is essentially what I’ve been saying for a while.
I mean, how many presumably yearly festivals in Ponyville were mentioned? I think the number was at least seven, maybe eight. And then there’s the Rarity business.
Okay, the interesting thing about Thorax's line is that I've now got five separate interpretations.
You heard Gorm Fest.
Many people heard Gore Fest (as evidenced by the number of comments on Youtube).
Very Comic Relief heard Gorbfest.
Badly Drawn Turtle heard Gorgfest.
And I personally heard Gourd Fest.
Also, Manehattan Escapes is based on a real life thing. I imagine they let you out under certain circumstances.
I dunno, the rage-cloud seems at least Dark Magic adjacent. And if she's been fueling her OP magic with rage and other high-intensity emotions, that could explain Starlight's multiplicity of psychiatric symptoms. Sometimes she feels like a DSM IV manual with hooves.
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Escape rooms are a lot of fun, if you have a group of friends who are more or less on the same wavelength, and at least one of you is any good at solving puzzles.
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I often have problems with parsing phrases in episodes, (see other notes) and the recent tendency of their sound engineers to crank up the reverb to eleven doesn’t help.
But I think “gorm” being short for “gourmet” is likely. Because of the whole honeysuckle sandwich business.
You could, technically, cross out your Starlight and Sunburst square, since they did share a scene, if only a hypothetical one.
As for Manehattan Escapes, that is a sort of thing that actually exists.
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It might be, but the colors don’t appear to match.
Either way we’re not getting a straight answer on that one. :)
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I’m pretty sure iisaw meant a shippier, or at least a more involved scene when drawing the tiles. Because this set of tiles was made after previews were available already, and we already saw the magic circle scene in those. The motivation for making new tiles was filtering out those which are already known to happen after all.
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Eh, don't feel bad. As I said, yours is the fifth completely different interpretation of that phrase I've seen so far. So the take home message is that Thorax should stop mumbling.
The "Somnambulis Tempus Objectis" could actually be Somnambula's Tempus Objectis, in a subtle G1 nod.
Yeah, Celestia's definitely not being 100% truthful with those past recollections. Still, interesting to know that she was aware of the future Bearers prior to sending Twilight to Ponyville. Not information we were privy to until now.
Well, she is speaking from experience.
Ponyville's jewelry store has been established since at least "Hearts and Hooves Day," when Big Mac was looking for an engagement ring and Apple Bloom kept insisting that the jeweler offer something less shiny.
I'm surprised you're not crossing anything off of your Bingo card. I suppose you're discounting Sunburst & Starlight due to their only appearing together in a projected hypothetical scenario, and Star Swirl only got mentioned in said scenario. An old-gen villain may have been as well if Somnambula was referenced. And there were at least two OCs in the medal ceremony crowd—Andy Price and Katie Cook's—but I suppose if you didn't notice them, they can't be said to be obvious.
And on a personal note, that rage cloud may be the closest to my favorite magic system that Friendship is Magic has ever gotten.
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If so, it mixes three unrelated spell groups rather than two.
Actually…
Princess Celestia: Twilight Sparkle, my faithful student. I knew you could do it.
Twilight Sparkle: But… you told me it was all an old pony tale.
Princess Celestia: I told you that you needed to make some friends, nothing more. I saw the signs of Nightmare Moon’s return and I knew it was you who had the magic inside to defeat her, but you could not unleash it until you let true friendship into your heart. Now if only another will as well. Princess Luna!
I’m pretty sure it’s an admission that she knew everything, right there from the start, and if she knew that the possibility exists, she had to have been aware of the Mane 5. :)
Damn, forgot that one.
Well, if enough people tell me that I should cross these out, eventually I will, but – Star Swirl does not actually appear and therefore definitely does not apply, and Somnambula is way too dubious… :)
You can definitely cross "Discord makes a pony laugh" off your cards; there's a moment that Starlight giggles at something Discord does.
Also, I caught the end of Where and Back Again before the premiere, and I can confirm that Flurry Heart was in the original scene at Starlight's village at the end of the episode.
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I suppose that counts. :) Eh, might as well cross out the Starlight and Sunburst too...
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Things I learned today: Fimfiction caches every image you reference in a blog post and uploads it to their own CDN. Altering the image without changing the name will therefore not result in the image being changed in the post.
I'm wondering if this episode counts for "Discord makes a pony cry" as well. Since Twilight cried during her conversation with Celestia, and it was Discord's needling that made Twi have that conversation in the first place. How indirect are we allowed to get with these?
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I am not going to count that, if only because while Discord was indirectly the cause of this event, he wasn’t there to see it.
Depends on whether there’s a wager involved. :)
Yes, the sidebars are ridiculous. I have to page up like three times to get to the input box from the bottom. Isn't there a cut tag? Perhaps you should put some one-pixel images in your blogposts.
also ridiculous: they count as "above" the text of the main article.
＊Celestia is moderately implied to be sexually laissez-faire: "There's no wrong way to fantasize."
＊Twilight's illusion spells are a magnitude better since Rara's concert.
…was kinda in Dragon Migration.
＊Dragons do firebreath target-practice for fun…? (Twi's Fantasy, unreliable)
＊Starlight's beam spell is more destructive than typical dragonbreath. (Twilight does seem likely to be a decent judge…on the other hand, she's never really been a combat mage.)
＊I heard "gorefest".
Makes me wonder why she's not spouting purple-green-black darkmagic.
＊Transfiguration is a recognized category of magic…similar to Potter rather than D&D's convention of Transmutation.
＊Illusions are a recognized category of magic.
＊Invisibility spells are unlikely to be a thing that is publicly, (or even moderately, with Starlight) known. Trixie's talent with illusion would seem to indicate that it would be a good, easy next spell…though that requires the standard but by no means logically-required assignment of invisibility to illusion. (Bending light around, or chameleon enchantments, are not strictly illusion. And then there's "notice-me-not".)
I hardly think "Creator's Spell Effect (English)" "Creator's [dog latin spell effect]" and "[dog latin spell effect]" are "three unrelated groups".
I won't. Nor that she vacuums up said multiple tables and all other mess/setup from the party.
What's more likely is that Pinkie Pie at some point rigged the tables to deploy in the hall in advance. Pinkie PIe, Ponyville's Premier Party Planner, "with Prep Time". (That doesn't excuse the vacuum feat, though.)
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knighty promised to fix it. I think I’ll give it some time for the fix to go live before going around reposting all the posts yet again. In any case, I’d rather not do that until the new engine goes live, in which they promised actual anchor link tags, so I’d be able to do footnotes properly for once, and then I wouldn’t mind reposting a hundred posts…
I haven’t rewatched the entire series for half a year, gimme some slack.
It’s interesting that she explicitly says she bottles “anger.” How to take it depends on what do you think dark magic actually is.
My guess is, they’re distinct.
Well, it can be conclusively settled if Creator’s [dog latin spell effect] actually is a group, and more examples turn up, which I doubt.
But none of the previously mentioned [dog latin spell effect] group spells mentioned their creators, so I think they would be distinct if they existed.
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Keyword in my dispute is "unrelated". All three claim effect, two are in dog-Latin, and two reference the spell's creator.
The part that hurts most about them not actually cutting is trying to find one by keywords, as they get indexed with all the others and, appearing above (plaintext-prior) the current post…well, Google doesn't find things nicely.
Wonder if Flam knows the Moustache spell.
possible explanation
I took that as more her just messing with Twilight.
That one I'm just chalking up to animation error. They likely just reused the models from Amending Fences and forget to tack on butt tattoos.
This one..... yeah it's just Tia taking some artistic license. Does make things a bit more interesting that she knew of the Mane 5... possibly even being the reason each of them was positioned to meet Twilight.
Thinking she more meant all of them getting out of Ponyville to hang out together with some disaster.
Likely the same as any IRL Escpae Room deal. Once it's clear you all have given up, or possibly after a set time they just unlock the door form the outside and you fail.
Possibly she has to have that active BEFORE the teleport goes off for it to work? Twilight did warn her that was what they would be trying. Might be a case of she has to be paying attention as the teleport is cast to track it.
Well.. yeah.
4497490 I thought it was Gorp-fest
Speaking of the cod-Latin spells... Starlight's village is in northeastern Equestria, and at one point Twilight talks about how she hasn't studied the spells of eastern unicorns as much. So, if we squint a little and overthink a lot, maybe that's a sign of the eastern tradition, of which Starlight's part of?
I live in a small very rural farming town and we have a jewelry store. They've been here since before I was born. The key to their success is that they don't have any competition for about sixty miles in any direction. And in Equestria, the jewels seem to be a lot easier to acquire.
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Wait. Which particular point would that be?
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Unfortunately as far as anyone can tell, Canterlot is much closer than sixty miles.
Dear lord she is a reformed Sith.
To be fair to this mind control incident, it was entirely accidental and unintentional.
Hrmm, looking back at the first ep, all the information from those spell-scenes are suspect. Twilight has admitted before that she knows little of actual dragons, and I bet she knows even less about changelings. "Bathing in lava" and "changeling feeding habits" are definitely not set in stone.
I adored the writing of Celestia in this episode, helped paint her as "just a pony" rather than "immortal goddess" that some seem to tar her for. Nice breakdown!
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And I’m still waiting for the other Sith to drop, because, you know, Rule of Two? Seriously, who was her teacher?
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Well, not all of it, probably, because Ember had to have written letters. But there’s no question it’s second-hand as it is.
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It will be a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.
Upon rewatching, I'm pretty sure the changeling in the hypothetical scenario identifies himself as Cornicle, which definitely fits the insectoid naming convention.
I think the two crossed-off squares are entirely reasonable.
Escape rooms have a time limit. Depending on the theme, you're often considered "dead" if you don't make it out in time.
4497805 Wouldn't the simplest explanation on spell names be that they were named by their creators and the names are more of a reflection of the creator's thought process and personality rather than a formal naming system. So some spell creators give their spells simple descriptive names. Others get fancy with other languages. And still others try to get fancy with other languages but don't know the grammar rules as well as they think they do.
4498214 https://www.fimfiction.net/group/50/the-writers-group/thread/77910/question-how-far-away-is-canterlot-from-ponyvillequestion-how-far-away-is-canterlot-from-ponyville
TThere seems to be a lot of room to argue that point. I would like to quote your own post to highlight this:ere seems to be a lot of room to argue that point. Its a cartoon that treats the distance between any two points as equeal to the most conveniant distance for the narrative. I would like to quote your own post to highlight this:
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It would be, but – in any teacher-student environment, whether apprenticeship or school-of-magic, schools of thought naturally develop over time. With a school-of-magic setup this would happen even faster. The naming pattern wouldn’t be a formal requirement in any case, but it would be traditional:
You call your spell “X’s Magic Effect,” because you remember how your teacher Y created a spell “Y’s Magic Effect” that is now in every course on the subject, and this is exactly the kind of recognition you desire from this work. And he did it because he studied under magician Z, who was so famous that people started calling his spells “Z’s Magic Effect” just to tell them apart. And some of them are probably misattributed, but you don't know which, anymore.
And then you meet that loner with a completely different view of how magic works, who names his spells in Latin – when enough Latin can be cobbled together, but otherwise it’s just a calque – because that’s what every book they studied from did, and those books do that because they’re relics of a completely different time, when Latin was the only thing magicians had in common.
If you imagine that every spellcaster creates spells with no contact with others, their names need not follow any pattern, but if, as we’ve been shown repeatedly, magic involves learning and study and books, repeating patterns are a natural consequence, and differing patterns are indication of different schools or eras.
See also, in particular, Robert K. Merton’s “The Sociology of Science” and Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” – I’m not just saying that, it really works that way. :)
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I don’t see how any of that interferes with my statement, I do try to be consistent. :) Clearly Canterlot is close enough for a trip to a jewelry store unless you urgently need a brooch, (why?) or, it’s an impulse buy, which is the intent of the statement I was making in the post.
Finally we can get back to important business!
Should we assume that the Mane 6 have picked these up for their earlier deeds in an off-screen scene? Because I think medals are better than stain-glass windows.
Considering all most of those photos should have burned up in the old libary, perhaps these are magical reconstructions Twilight got from her dreams or something, which would explain why she looks like an adult with infant Spike. I mean, I always figured she was 11 when she hatched him, but geeez.
Perhaps Lyra is not yet willing to mingle with changlings after what they did to her, even reformed ones? And of course Moondancer would skip this, it's a social event with no studying at all!
I noticed that. And in the same episode where they have her hatching Spike at like 17!
Not necessarily. We know Pinkie Pie is friends with everyone in Ponyville. So presumably she was friends with the rest of the Mane 5 all along. I could see all five being having fun together if they were roped into a party game at one of Pinkie's parties, which we may have seen.
Which means the hellmouth must be close!
Given her fairly impressive abilities before, I suspect this means "advanced magic."
Rainbow would probably claim there is a huge difference between hanging out and chillaxing.
Having never seen the bottling thing before, I'm guessing it's a Starlight thing. It makes her an arcane Hulk, and yeah, it's borderline dark magic.
I think that was established in the S5 finale, which showed the map hurling through time and space like Rincewind's luggage, without taking the castle in tow.
Yet another confirmation that Ponyville is now a day-trip resort town for Canterlot. Also, Trixie was just casually thinking of buying herself fancy jewelry? Her Manehatten shows must have paid really well.
Given how often he breaks things, he's probably constantly paying off property damage. Or he's saving up to buy jewelry for Fluttershy!
I believe that philosophy is codified as mind control-schmind control.
Have to agree. I'm a big fan of Starburst, but dang if it looks like Trixie is edging him out!
I mean, remember she made up that list of the 5 ponies Twilight had to meet in the series opener in the first place. Manipulative is fair, but dubious seems a little harsh, it was mostly done out of love! Also, notice Celestia says she waited "way too long." Sounds like she was originally planning to ship Twilight to Ponyville early so she could build quality bonds with the other 5 to power the EoH, but was just too attached to let her go.
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I’d like to assume that, but as far as I can tell they never did. You can wear a medal, as opposed to a stain-glass window which only relatively few people will ever see. Moreover, in our world, you are required to wear your medals in certain situations. Like, for example, during an official part of a diplomatic function. Like, say, when receiving the yaks.
We don’t know if ponies do that or not, of course, but situations to wear these hypothetical medals did come up, and if you never wear a medal, what’s the point of being honored with one?
Photos tend to have negatives, which can be used to recreate them whenever you please, and which could have conceivably been stored elsewhere. In particular, most of the photos of the pre-Ponyville life would have their negatives kept somewhere in Twilight’s Canterlot apartment, which survived untouched all the way to Amending Fences. This leaves only a few photos Twilight could have lost with the Golden Oaks Library. Since they were, in fact, recreated, it follows that someone else has taken them and still has the negatives to do so.
Makes me think of the story of Twilight’s Official Photographer. The guy following her around at Celestia’s behest, documenting her life, who never gets on camera because he’s holding the damn thing.
Might even write that.
Could have been a joke photo cobbled together from two photos by one of the Canterlot friends, actually. Precisely because it never existed: A photo of Spike still in this egg existed, but Twilight never posed with him.
This is a possibility, but, not enough balloons. :)
Well, Cerberus did wander into Ponyville, and taking him home wasn’t seen as much of an adventure…
Like I said, where’s the other Sith?… Starlight uses a whole spell group nobody else seems to use, which Sunburst does not appear to be aware of unless in contact with Starlight, which Twilight appears not to know the intricacies of, she does things with the bottle that nobody else has ever done, (Yes, I know how this sounds.) she’s powerful enough to rival alicorn Twilight, and we’re supposed to think she taught herself? Really? Where’s the library she found all the books so few ponies seem to have access to?
Well, there’s that comic about her getting hired by Sapphire Shores which I still need to write up, and you know what getting hired by Sapphire Shores did for Rarity’s career.
Well, it was an honest accident in this case, wasn’t it? And she did apologize immediately.
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Does he get to visit the afterlife with Twilight and Celestia so he can snap photos of all those viewing portals Celestia's got there?
Or that time that Twilight got the the age-spell partially right, and before she started freaking out because she needed Celestia to turn Spike back to normal.
An excellent point (One to wield Friendship, and one to crave it). How awesome a season finale would it be confronting Starlight's first magic teacher, that weird goat in the mountains wearing the bells? Failing that, a secret laboratory of Starswirl (another one) that Starlight stumbled onto would also be appreciated.
Yes, comic canon is currently dangerously under-scrutinized!
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That’s actually the best place to be to take any of those photos, so if I were him, I’d never leave it. But then it wouldn’t be a very interesting story. :)
Amen!
The number of laboratories and the sheer volume of literature the stallion produced suggests to me that at least some of them are misattributed…
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Yeah. I get that he jumped around through time, but unless he also lived 500 years of actual life, he couldn't have done all the stuff in his name. I suspect that since he was the only great wizard that was around for both pre-unification Unicornia and the post-Discord period, he just did his best to recreate what he remembered after Discord destroyed most of the spell books, and later ponies just gave him credit for basically all the ancient unatributed magic.
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That’s a very good possibility.
Purely by chance(*), I just stumbled on this passage in chapter 25 of Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons:
The similarity is striking, with just the substitution of purple for pink (which could arguably be related to differences in the light, Blackjack's mutant night vision or the fact that they're 200 years old.
So is this just coincidence, have the medals been seen or mentioned before, or did the show staff lift it?
(*) No, really.
4500817
Medals were never mentioned as far as I can remember. I was sure that Wonderbolts were wearing service ribbons, but upon a closer look I discovered I was wrong:
vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/8/82/Spitfire_%22will_you_cry%3F%22_S6E24.png
That’s not a service ribbon, is it.
However, the idea of a medal is obvious enough, and accusing show writers of actually reading anything would be a bit much.
4500836
Meow!
My point, though, is that it's not just a medal. The appearance is near to 100% match.
4501066
Well, they don’t read the chapter books or the comics, do they?…
I’m inclined to think it’s a coincidence. I mean, Purple Heart? FoE:PH clearly references it, due to the circumstances it was awarded in that you cited.
4501146
True. I'm not familiar with American medals, so I didn't immediately jump to that.
＊Spike still has trouble with long words, saying "a millennia".
as for medals vs windows…do you want a trophy, or do you want to be in the Celestial Hall of Fame?
4501316
Depends. Who gets to see the Celestial Hall of Fame?
4500817
Correction: Luna’s issue, that is, MicroSeries #10, contains her awarding a medal to Fleetfoot.
It’s another necklace-mounted one.