My Little Chronology revisited · 8:09pm Apr 20th, 2017
Remember my episode chronology project?
This one, yes. Oh, just go directly to the thing…
I have rewritten the code completely, which made it take considerably more space, but at the same time…
It is now much prettier, that’s gotta be worth something.
Episode commentary can now easily contain links to other episodes and formatting, so every time I mention a soft bound, I link directly to the episode, wherever it might end up.
The file is now actually self-contained, i.e. offline capable.
Most importantly, I have published the code and data as open source. You can send in pull requests, if you know what those are, or berate me for my poor coding practices. (Oh who am I kidding.)
Oh, and I’ve been adding episodes every time I wrote one up as part of Points of Canon series, so now there’s a lot more episodes to shuffle around. I have also cleaned up the data while I have been adding the links.
They’re still the same sort of mess they were, but maybe this time around we can get a little further?
Oooooh. Now this is really cool.
I might just have to take you up on sending some pull requests, once I'm out of school. I guess we'll see if my powers are great enough to merit trying to help.
This is really excellent, though. And a great way to waste time that I should be spending on homework...
I'll be sure to give it another look sometime soon.
Sweet.
Part of me wonders if a condensed view is an option -- ie, click here to hide episode descriptions and just leave the headings.
4503474 I strongly support that. The new view gives us more details, yes, but the old view gave us a better idea of the chronology at a glance. Ideally, there'd be an option to switch between the two.
I love the UI!
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Easy enough. Two usability questions though:
Should it collapse one episode or all of them at once?
Where would you put the button?
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* Definitely all at once.
* I'd put it in the upper right corner, just above the listing for the first episode (which I hope we can all agree will remain 1x01-02: Friendship is Magic...), and maybe again in the bottom right below the listing for the last episode (which is more arguable), but that's more debatable.
Several comments on the chronology itself...
* I think "Look Before You Sleep" is really early, for both the reasons you mention and Twilight's own naive excitement at actually having friends; I'd put it before Dragonshy and Bridle Gossip.
* Regarding "Sisterhooves Social," when's the earliest other episode where we clearly see Sweetie Belle living with Rarity? Since Rarity's parents are already established as living in Ponyville, perhaps Sweetie was living with them until sometime around Lesson Zero? (For that matter, perhaps it was her helping release Discord that pushed her parents to get her out of their house?)
* Is there any real reason to think "Dragonshy" was Fluttershy's first usage of the Stare? If not, that'd let you push "Stare Master" earlier.
* Regarding "Applebuck Season," I'm not sure Big Mac would've been willing to walk down the street in a girdle early on in the series. From what he said in "Brotherhooves Social," it seems that developed over the course of the series after seeing his sister save Equestria multiple times.
* For "Secret of My Excess," theoretically, Spike could count his birthday as the day his egg was laid, assuming Celestia knew that. Yes, it's less probable IMO, but we can appeal to that if we need to move the episode.
Two more notes...
* "Made in Manehattan" could actually have a Midsummer Theater, given the importance of the Summer Sun Festival to Equestria. Perhaps it was even called the Midsummer Sun Festival at some point in the past?
* Regarding "28 Pranks Later" (and in general), would Rainbow's cloud mansion actually have cost a lot of money, considering her own skill at moving clouds? I could see her building it herself as a bragging piece.
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Voila.
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Good.
Next issue: In Chrome for Android, the episode names are coming out significantly smaller than the body text.
Amazing... I always knew someone would rise to the challenge sooner or later, but looking at the scale of this thing, I'm not surprised it took time. This will certainly be useful for fan authors. Thank you for making it.
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I think that bit is a design decision on the part of the author of Bulma, which is the CSS framework I used for this rewrite. I think it kind of makes sense, too: on mobile, screen space is more valuable. I could move the episode name out of the header and into the card body, and for that matter, move the buttons into the header, but I’m not sure it will look better.
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Possibly. The issue with this particular tangle is the yearly lock against Sisterhooves Social. Lesson Zero needs to happen sometime in the first spring of the series, because Twilight becomes an alicorn before one full year elapses since her arrival to Ponyville in the first summer. Sisterhooves Social happening in the first summer of the series would therefore put it before Lesson Zero. But it contains a letter to Celestia, which should happen after Lesson Zero – so it has to happen in the second summer instead, but still before the yearly boundary of Twilight’s arrival comes in.
But at the same time, a “Midsummer Theater Revival” should logically happen at midsummer, and it happens simultaneously with that year’s Sisterhooves Social…
Assuming the Summer Sun Celebration is not the middle of summer, but rather, part of its beginning gives us a lot more wiggle room in early series, but still leads to contradictions.
That is a possibility. I think we’ll have a good answer to this question in a few months once the episode about her parents rolls in. :)
Shouldn’t it be an autumn episode, though?
First usage ever, probably not. However, I think it has to be the first usage the Mane 6 were aware of.
I’ll write that down, I guess. :)
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What makes you say that? The brief outside shots, or something else? Applejack's talking about broken limbs made me think that too at first, but that could be happening in summer too... for that matter, maybe after a stormy encounter with Nightmare Moon?
Well, they weren't expecting it to be useful against a dragon, but...
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Mostly them. Then again, summer storms are more likely to actually be storms, while autumns are more likely to have a never ending overcast sky and drizzle…
Pretty definitely not. The reason cited in the beginning of the episode is:
Rarity: I simply cannot imagine why the Pegasus ponies would schedule a dreadful downpour this evening and ruin what could have been a glorious sunny day.
Applejack: (sigh) Think more practical-like, will ya? They accidentally skipped a scheduled sprinkle last week, so we need a doozy of a downpour to make up for it, is all.
Actually… This could be right next week after the Summer Sun Celebration. Because for the Summer Sun Celebration, you would skip a drizzle. It wouldn’t be accidental, of course, but, well, in my part of the world you’re accustomed to how the first snow of the year always comes completely unexpected for the municipal services, and with Rainbow Dash being the head of the weather team… :)
Yeah, I should probably put this one right next to Griffon the Brush Off.
I’ll need to comb this one in great detail to be able to confirm or rule out the possibility of them being aware of the Stare previously, I suppose.
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Spread the link, then! :)
I’ve just replanted it into Github Pages, (http://fim-chronology-pa.lindro.me) so getting hammered by Reddit or whatever and running over traffic limits is no longer a potential consequence of it getting popular.
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Correction: It’s the font.
Bundling the font inside the file sounds like a bad idea, because it will significantly increase the size, so doing something about that will be kinda tricky…
The default placement of Lesson Zero is problematic because of how you group it with Party of One. The latter episode can only take place in the spring just before Twilight's ascension. But if Lesson Zero takes place in that same spring, then, well... it introduces a lot of timeline issues. All the episodes with non-Twilight friendship reports, which is around half of season two, would have to be shoved into the spring, and so would most of season three. It would get just a tiny bit crowded.
Not to mention, Twilight was supposed to be making reports at least once a week before Lesson Zero, and with that timeline shift, I don't think we even have enough episodes left to cover the rest of the year, especially not the winter. Other problems this would cause include ruling out Last Roundup following Swarm of the Century, and forcing Sisterhooves Social (supposedly set in midsummer) to not take place anywhere in summer.
I like the reasoning behind the Discord aftermath theory, but this iteration of it is wrong. Lesson Zero cannot take place in the spring; it's got to be a summer or autumn episode, preferably summer. Return of Harmony, however, is most definitely a spring episode, since it follows Winter Wrap-Up and predates Twilicorn, so that gels well with Party of One being Discord aftermath.
I'll comment again later with some more hard constraints I found. I'm compiling a list as I compare your notes against my own timeline project.
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But wouldn’t that push the coronation to the third summer in Ponyville, rather than the second it has to be? Unless you’re suggesting to decouple it from the pack, put It’s About Time in its place, and push it back to the first autumn…
To clarify, keep the one-year timeline, keep Return of Harmony and the rest of the post-Discord pack where they are, but split off Lesson Zero and move it earlier. Putting it with the rest of the pack makes it incompatible with the larger timeline.
Right now, I actually place it extremely early on my own timeline, during Twilight's second month in Ponyville, so that Sisterhooves Social can occur in the literal middle of the first summer. I may change the placement of Sisterhooves later so that I can put Lesson Zero later in the summer or even in the autumn, but Zero most definitely cannot take place at the same time as Party of One.
Okay, constraints for you:
-Last Roundup, Cutie Pox, Mare-Do-Well, Baby Cakes, Cider Squeezy, Read it and Weep, Putting Your Hoof Down (fight me), Dragon Quest, MMMystery, Sweet and Elite, and Apple Family Reunion all feature non-Twilight friendship reports (and Smartypants in one of them IIRC), so you can add Lesson Zero as a lower bound for them. There are other episodes with non-Twilight friendship reports I haven't mentioned, but they generally have constraints based on other episodes that themselves use non-Twilight reports.
-Swarm of the Century features the Gala dresses, and so must take place after Suited for Success. Notably, Celestia's intended visit in this episode was cancelled, which leads conveniently into my next point.
-A Bird in the Hoof features Celestia making an actual visit to Ponyville. It may be that the intended visit from Swarm was postponed until this episode. Not a hard constraint, but pretty strongly evident, I think.
-I think both Sweet and Elite and Dog and Pony Show need hard constraints setting them after Green Isn't Your Colour, since Rarity is well-known in the former two, but a nobody in the latter, and there's no obvious reason why her popularity would backslide significantly.
-It's worth noting, if we take the Journal of Friendship as a canonical source, season four apparently happened in 100% chronological order, with the weird sole exception of Inspiration Manifestation, which had its entry stuck between Equestria Games and Twilight's Kingdom. Make of that what you will.
Having finished looking at the first year's worth of episodes, and where we can shift them around, I think I'm reasonably happy about my own timeline interpretation right now. I'll compile what I have on it, try to map it to a calendar, and use it as a basis while working forward on the alicorn years. Hopefully, it'll be smooth running from there as the series starts introducing more useful continuity markers, but more than likely I'll go back and revise the first year's timeline a bit. I'll let you know when I have something substantial - not that you're likely to totally agree with it, but I think it'll be something we can both say is plausible, at least.
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I’ll have to go doublecheck them all, you understand. :) Which I can’t do right now.
I think I’ll add pseudo-episodes into the list, marking season change boundaries and the particular year-of-the-series they happen in. That should make ordering things around a little easier.
I thought of making a parallel column of “season change” and “year change” and even “month change” events, but then I realized that this isn’t going to work particularly well, because most of them would have to fall on gaps between episodes.
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…There, now we have automatically generated pseudo-episode season boundaries, which you can hard-lock episodes against. I didn’t have the time to position most of them yet.
That should help, and-or make it even more of a mess. :)
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I wouldn't have it any other way.
Excellent.
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So let’s go through the list in order:
The Last Roundup: Applejack narrates her report to Celestia but is not observed writing it or dictating it or sending it. I’m not going to make it a hard constraint, but I am of course making a note of a soft one.
Cutie Pox: Hard constraint on Lesson Zero, Twilight directly tells Apple Bloom to write the letter and Apple Bloom dictates it in place.
The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well: The letter is unambiguously referred to by the characters, whether it gets sent or written by Rainbow herself in the end or not, so it’s also a hard constraint.
While rewatching this I remembered another useful theory: During this episode, the dam that is also seen in It’s About Time breaks. In that latter episode, the crack – a very similar crack in a very similar part of the dam – is patched up preventively. It is possible for them to actually occupy the same stretch of timeline and for the Mare-Do-Well to be written out of existence by Twilight disaster-proofing the entire immediate region. This would fail to cause a paradox due to Twilight’s OCD motivating her to go back in time again anyway. This could also count as Rainbow’s post-Discord freakout, as normally, Rainbow doesn’t need quite as many assurances of her own awesomeness.
Baby Cakes: Twilight refers to a report to Princess Celestia summarizing “all her other reports,” which we know existed before Lesson Zero, but no other reports to her are mentioned, narrated or occur during the episode that I can see.
Side observation: Newborn Cakes are significantly smaller than month-old Cakes. Upon first being seen, Flurry Heart is even bigger than month old Cakes. So did they wait two to three weeks before calling Twilight and friends for the Crystalling or did she get born like that? Poor Cadance.
The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000: Soft constraint. Applejack narrates it, but is not seen writing or sending her report.
Read it and Weep: Hard constraint, the letter is unambiguously referred to in speech.
Putting Your Hoof Down: I am gonna fight you. As the one challenged to the duel, I choose whacking each other with balloon animals as the dueling weapon. This is the same kind of soft constraint as listed above.
Dragon Quest: Spike is shown writing his letter to Celestia while the phoenix egg hatches, which establishes that this is still happening within the sequence. However, during the episode he also receives a letter from Princess Celestia, addressed to him personally, and there are lots of reasons for him to be in personal communication with her even before Lesson Zero. This is a soft constraint.
MMMystery on the Friendship Express: Pinkie narrates a friendship report, but is not shown writing or sending or dictating, and while she narrates, Celestia herself is on screen within five meters from her. She finishes this speech with “How’s that for a lesson, Princess Celestia?” spoken out of narration directly to Celestia. I’m not sure this is a hard constraint. I’m not sure the letter even existed.
Sweet and Elite: Another incident similar to the above, but this time, Rarity is shown writing the letter herself, and then Celestia walks in on her. If anything, this makes it clear to me, that these letters may be written ahead of time – Rarity starts writing it before she even leaves Canterlot, she wouldn’t be sending it from Canterlot as well! – and may refer to events other than current. In fact, I’m about to suggest that the Mane 6 have an arrangement to keep Celestia placated by scheduling their letters regarding what could also be past incidents. At the same time, this particular episode unambiguously has Lesson Zero as the hard lower constraint.
Apple Family Reunion: Applejack is shown writing her letter on screen, so it’s a hard constraint.
I have not caught Smartypants in any of them, but I’ll admit I didn’t exactly examine them frame by frame.
Well, I suppose that’s reasonable, provided that Green Isn’t Your Color has to follow Sweet and Elite itself, since it also contains the dresses. That sort of pushes these two episodes together to follow each other nearly immediately…
I’ll make of that a soft constraint note, I suppose, but first I’ll go fish through that myself…
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From the MLP wiki's transcript of Baby Cakes:
You missed a spot, bro.
You fool. You utter fool. Don't you realise that a balloon animal duel was my plan from the start? It's over.
Did you mean Suited for Success here?
If you were talking about Suited, then yeah, they would have to follow quite closely. That is an issue with Rarity's early arc. Any appearances of the Gala dress must necessarily take place after Suited, and that does include Green Isn't Your Colour, but Suited also saw Rarity begin her rise to fame by earning the approval of Hoity Toity. And Sapphire Shores makes specific mention of Rarity getting rave reviews in "Clothes Horse magazine," which I can only assume is Hoity's publication. I mean, I really doubt it was Photo Finish who brought Rarity to her attention.
My working theory is that Hoity runs or writes for Clothes Horse, and that they're a monthly publication whose latest issue had just gone out at the time of Suited. So Hoity's rave review would've taken a while to come out and jumpstart Rarity's career, and Green would've fallen into that month or so's gap, where Rarity has made the dresses that earned such acclaim, but isn't yet seeing the benefits of it. The month-long cycle is also kind of necessary because of the timescale of Green, which takes place across at least a week.
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Double doublechecked. She’s narrating it, and very fast at that. No wonder I missed it. :)
Another soft constraint it is then.
Not until we’re out of balloon animals it isn’t.
Er. Yes.
That does make sense.
Project updated. Check out the new save-load method, by the way.
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I'll see you in the arena.
I saw. Good to have.
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Ha. I think now that I’ve introduced season markers we can see that dependency loop I was talking about.
1. Call of the Cutie should be Apple Bloom’s first day at school for this academic year, or very close – otherwise the meeting with the other mark-less girls of her age would not be a surprise. In any case it is a school day, and as far as we can tell, school in Ponyville follows the same academic pattern as ours and starts in autumn. And it can’t be backdated to before the start of the series, because Twilight prominently interacts with Apple Bloom.
2. Sisterhooves Social has to happen after Call of the Cutie, because the CMC are friends already during it.
3. Sisterhooves Social is on a yearly boundary with Made in Manehattan, and has to happen in the same season.
4. Made in Manehattan concerns Midsummer Theater Revival, which everyone thinks happens in mid-summer.
So either Sisterhooves Social should be positioned in the summer of Year 2, after Twilight is already a princess,⁽¹⁾ and bump Made in Manehattan to year 3,⁽²⁾ or “Midsummer” has nothing to do with mid-summer, or pony school year does not start in autumn.
Which is it?
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Hang on. For a start, our interpretations on school times diverge here. I think we can actually place it near the beginning of the summer, because I'm not so sure about Call of the Cutie marking the beginning of a new school year. I've actually always interpretted it as the end of the previous year, because the class reshuffles after this episode.
Call's classroom scenes place Apple Bloom, Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, and Twist in a class with several background foals and recolours, but the real Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo were not there. Apple Bloom met them at Diamond Tiara's party, if you recall. In subsequent episodes, however, Apple Bloom does share a class with Sweetie and Scootaloo, as well as Snips and Snails, and a few other characters. Now, normally, I'd be happy to assume that Apple Bloom just requested a transfer to another class so that she could be with her new friends... except that Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, and Twist all apparently transferred with her.
This is kind of weird, all taken, because if we look at all the classroom scenes, Apple Bloom's class changes its composition several times, even just across the first three series. I'm not sure how much we can actually try to explain from a Watsonian perspective, and how many we have to just chalk up to animation errors and cartoon resolution, but even if we just focus on the core characters, it's clear that a shake-up did happen after this episode. It's plot-important in Call of the Cutie that Apple Bloom didn't know Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo from class, and it's plot-important in several subsequent episodes that she does share a class with them.
I think we need to take a serious look at the school times if we want to puzzle everything out. I really don't think that the school years and term times are the same as in the real world, but then again, I haven't gone through all the episodes with as fine a comb as you have. Maybe a good subject for a blog, hmm?
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The structural sequence of events is like this:
1. Apple Bloom attends a lesson about cutie marks. Notably, she’s sitting between Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon.⁽¹⁾
2. While this is the cold open, the scene continues where the previous one left off as they exit the school – there are no gaps, because DT directly refers to the lecture itself. And then she issues an open invitation to her party this weekend.
3. Apple Bloom unsuccessfully attempts to sell apples.
4. Apple Bloom tries to call Twist to attend the party together. Some time has passed since the beginning of the episode, because Twist’s cutie mark has appeared, but still “this weekend” hasn’t yet rolled in, or is rolling in right now.
5. Rainbow Dash attempts to help, resulting in a long training montage.
6. Pinkie attempts to help, resulting in the cupcakes song.
7. Twilight turns up. Dialogue establishes that the party is today. Apple Bloom addresses Twilight like she knew her for months. Twilight tries to help with magic, fails.
8. It remains unclear just how Apple Bloom got from there to the party, including to herself, but there she is, and as she tries to run away, she gets exposed. And then suddenly Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo turn up and stand up for her, resulting in the cutie mark acquisition program.
There is only one sequence break in it – around 3 – but 2 is no more than a week away from 7. If this is the last lesson of the school year, and the school year follows our pattern, the week has to stretch to get at the very least Friendship is Magic between those events in the sequence, and possibly a few other episodes, even assuming classes do continue into the summer months far enough for Twilight to turn up in town.
I don’t think there’s any kind of plausible way for this to happen in the end of the school year, unless school year ends long after the Summer Sun Celebration.
Unfortunately we don’t have any clear information on the school schedule, because they deliberately avoid letting us have any. The assumption that it follows our model rests on a lot of tiny observations,⁽²⁾ but most importantly, on the fact that the Crusaders clearly have a long period when school is out entirely, and all of it is during the non-snowy seasons.
And that would probably have to be summer…
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Thinking some more of it, there is one more possible reason for the class composition not to match, and for the lesson in question to occur in summer even when otherwise the school year is like ours:
Remedial summer classes.
Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo and the rest of the class post-shakeup did not attend, because they passed whatever test was required, while Apple Bloom and company didn’t.
vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/d/d0/Cutie_Mark_Crusaders_cowering_S1E01.png
Mind you, we still need to somehow explain this
Which suggests they probably knew each other before, if not by name, and weren’t friends, because nobody had cutie marks. I.e. almost the entire class received theirs during Spring 0, and all three of them were sure they’re the last one remaining without.
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I like the remedial classes theory... or at least, I like parts of it. It does go some way towards explaining why Cheerilee was covering such basic stuff as what a cutie mark is. But on the other hand, Apple Bloom, Twist, Diamond Tiara, and Silver Spoon are all at a remedial level, but Snips and Snails are not. Plus, this many students doing badly enough to warrant summer classes kind of reflects poorly on Cheerilee. One would think that a mare with a special talent for teaching would be a better teacher than that.
Either way, though, I'm absolutely certain that Call of the Cutie cannot take place in autumn. There are simply far too many episodes that must take place after it which fit better into the first summer. For example, One Bad Apple with its summer harvest parade. That was a CMC episode, wasn't it? Or what about Cider Squeezy, probably set before harvest time? That has Lesson Zero as a lower bound, and the CMC were already a thing in that episode. And since Lesson Zero is already in there, that means that Sisterhooves Social can still fit in that timeframe as well.
As to the question of moving Made in Manehattan/Brotherhooves Social to year three... I think so, yes. I'm not sure where you personally fall on the Journal of Friendship issue, but I'm taking its side for now. And going by Journal, it seems to indicate a pretty dead second summer where we might be able to fit in a few of the comic stories, a very busy autumn where most of season four takes place, and then season five is just all over the place but has a lot of individual episodes that must follow season four. I'm thinking that Brotherhooves showed us the third Social since Twilight came to Ponyville, and that the second one is undepicted in canon.
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Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon could have had rich pony engagements that prevented them from attending classes or requisite exams properly. Notably, they’re the only ponies complaining about the subject of this one lecture.
Snips and Snails, however, might not be as entirely stupid as they try to appear…
That is something of a problem. They might be ponies from families recently moved to the town, though.
Try doing that. I’m pretty sure another dependency loop based on the May The Best Pet Win / Tanks For The Memories will turn up, because they both have rigid season change locks and a lot of secondary connections.
Season four in general seems like it has been planned as a unit for the most part. It’s not planned meticulously – nothing around here is – but it may have been presented in chronological order with only a few exceptions. Seasons 5 and 6 are far more patchwork than 4, even though they both have endcaps.
That said, I’m leery of accepting the Journal of Friendship part of that book as a source. :)
P.S. I’ll write down the remedial classes theory now…
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I don't think so, actually. Tanks takes place at the end of the second autumn, and apparently only needs to follow Castle Sweet Castle. If we can fit the ending of season four and beginning of season five within the autumn, then we're in the clear, especially with seasons five and six being as patchwork as they are. Unless Brotherhooves interferes with this in a way I'm not seeing?
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Brotherhooves indirectly locks Made in Manehattan and related cutie map stories. At the same time, May the Best Pet Win locks every episode that contains Tank to happen afterwards, but they all also have connections of their own…
Just try moving them. The latest version lets you push an episode as far as it will go by shift-clicking, by the way.
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No conflicts that I can see. I really don't think the Sisterhooves/Brotherhooves and Best Pet/Tanks locks affect each other significantly. They seem pretty independent.
4510673 Wild and crazy answer for the Crusaders cowering together in S1E1 that I got from some fanfic I can't remember:
Time travel. Probably thanks to Discord, who we know took them time-traveling in the comics.
(Tamer answer: They just happened to bump into each other while running away from Nightmare Moon, were too scared to speak, and didn't see each other again till Call of the Cutie.)