May
11th
2017
Points of Canon: S1x05 - Griffon the Brush Off · 9:52am May 11th, 2017
Quick, before they notice I’m not actually working.
- Pinkie’s phrase “Hoof-biting action overload! She was like a stunt superstar, flying higher and higher, and then Rainbow Dash swooped down–swoosh–and right before she hit the ground–shoom-she pulled up–vrrrmmm!” seems to imply the presence of a flier other than Rainbow in the scene, because “Rainbow Dash” takes the place of the second “she” rather than the first. However, the scene in the cold open takes place before the prank spree or Gilda’s introduction. It’s almost like they want to make the case for most of the episode being Pinkie’s unreliable narration of the events that lead to the party…
- Twilight flips the pages backwards again throughout the entire sequence.
- Rainbow collides with the mountain while flying at at least 8 m/s. That’s ~18 mph or 28 kph. A car would have some serious dents.
- The shop sign of the Ponyville spa is seen on a building which, while very similar to the one they had in No Second Prances, has somewhat different colors and is mirrored. It’s also in a completely different location, as in that episode, there’s a bridge across a stream right outside their door, when there’s nothing of the sort here. Apparently, they had to have had their building demolished at some point, and I will have to watch out for the point where they changed, now. The shop sign in this period, likewise, has a different color and a different overall shape, even though the design on it is identical.
- I’m not sure what the shop that depicts a pony’s head with bows and ribbons in her mane is, probably a hair salon. But while this building is also identical to the one seen in Crusaders of the Lost Mark, barring the colors, it is also in a completely different location. The sign is completely identical, however.
- Rainbow sticks the cloud into her ears. That’s actually the first case of pegasi manipulating clouds as something other than a whole cloud, which I don’t think we’ve seen repeated all the way until 28 Pranks Later – which returns to the whole pranking theme.
- Twilight is about to enter a bookstore. We don’t see this place often for some reason, it’s almost like she doesn’t need any more books or gets all her books for free. It does kind of look like “The Noble Barn Bookstore” depicted in Friendship is Magic #41, though only vaguely.
- Remember the ice cream shop in Forever Filly? Well, here it is, it’s not new.
- Sweet Apple Acres includes, beyond the apples, a cornfield, and a chicken coop. So that’s where most of the town gets their eggs.
- Does this orange building in the distance marked with a carrot, standing amidst a carrot field, belong to Sweet Apple Acres or not? We never see anyone there as far as I remember.
- Pinkie outruns a flying Rainbow Dash multiple times. Notably, this is a surprise for Rainbow.
- Pinkie uses a snorkel and swimming goggles, as well as what has to be four, rather than two flippers. Which requires rubber and a culture of swimming for recreation.
- From Rainbow’s reaction and Pinkie’s insistence, you would think that while going on a pranking spree is not an uncommon thing for Pinkie, Rainbow participated at least once before and would merely rather be napping this time. However, after the perpetration of the first successful prank of the day, Rainbow says, “I didn’t take you for a prankster, Pinkie Pie,” and “You know Pinkie Pie, you’re not as annoying as I thought,” which makes it pretty clear this has to be a very early episode.
1. This particular one could have a lot of easy explanations, though. Right now, my preferred one is that this is a system inherited from the jackals and kept alive by custom.
Pinkie mentions inches and centimeters in the same sentence, establishing that both imperial and metric systems are in use. Imperial measurements come up a lot more often, and why ponies use feet as a measure of length is a notable case of Sandwich Problem.1
- There’s one interesting question for you: Just what the hell is Spike doing in the town hall stacking up scrolls, 11 of them, which he’s clearly about to move somewhere else? He’s certainly not collecting fresh stationery, he’s picking documents from the shelves. Lots of interesting justifications can be imagined, but each will have different connotations.
- This is the first instance of a pegasus extracting lightning from a cloud by bucking it, and a rather notable example of pegasus magic, because you can’t get this result out of a normal cloud.
- One scroll seems to have rolled off somewhere, because it’s not there when Spike drops the pyramid.
- Spike’s “You’re always pulling a fast one (hic) on me” implies Pinkie had to have pranked him at least once before.
- Spike states that dragons are fireproof.
- Celestia’s room, wherever it is, has a burning fireplace – midday, in summer? Because as far as we can tell it should be summer, – and unlike the Season 5-6 fireplaces, has real logs in it. If it’s a room somewhere deep within the ground, I can see a fireplace even in summer, but then, dragonfire mail definitely does not have a “must be permeable to smoke” limitation. Not that this limitation wouldn’t get ignored by the writers if it existed… Or was it an unusually cold day in Canterlot? Or maybe Celestia is anemic?…
- The amount of scrolls that arrives to Celestia is at least twice the amount of scrolls Spike was carrying.
- Ponyville has a dedicated pranking supplies shop.
- Rarity’s Carousel Boutique has an obvious doorbell button, which, surprisingly, doesn’t get used in most later episodes in lieu of knocking.
- Sneeze inducing powder and disappearing ink have identical branding.
2. Somehow, it’s always the chemical experiments that are shown when Twilight needs to look science-y, see A Celestial Advice.
Twilight is doing some manner of chemical experiment, but its magical significance, if any, is entirely unclear.2
- The amount of work required to paint so many apples is rather extreme.
- Fluttershy is busy feeding pond fish.
- Pinkie is aware that Fluttershy is too sensitive to prank safely.
- We get our first glimpse of Rainbow’s cloud mansion. Notably, it’s positioned sufficiently close to the ground for easy yelling, this time – though apparently, it moves around.
- Griffons are capable of sitting on clouds too.
- Pinkie has never seen a griffon up until this point, and apparently avoided knowing what one is at all, which she repeats multiple times through the episode. It could be very easy in a comparative social isolation on a rock farm, but any visit of a griffon to Ponyville would have to have occurred before Pinkie became a resident. I.e Gustave le Grand can’t be a Ponyville resident, or has to have moved in sometime between this episode and MMMystery on the Friendship Express.
- Junior Speedsters Flight Camp sounds like a pegasus-specific summer camp more than anything else. I.e. Gilda is essentially Rainbow’s Coloratura at this point.
- Gilda’s “I groove on a good prank as much as the next griffon” implies griffons like pranks too, but later appearances make me suspect it’s nowhere near as popular a pastime among griffons.
- In quick succession, Pinkie uses a trampoline, a clutch of balloons, and a pedal-powered helicopter to reach progressively higher clouds. Due to the limits of the cartoon resolution we don’t see a chain drive that has to be there. For a human, it would be impossible to power a helicopter this way at all, but Pinkie is an earth pony.
- Gilda uses “a gnarly dragon egg” as a pejorative epithet. The subtitles say “oily” for some reason. How exactly did she come by that expression?
- It’s interesting that Pinkie chooses to complain to Twilight, and not anypony else.
- Just what, exactly, is that thing on the right of that shot?
- Granny Smith is walking by next to Sugarcube Corner, and later gets scared by Gilda’s tail. No zimmer, but she doesn’t look like she can run away from this. Lemon Hearts, Lyra and Minuette are scattered across the square in front of Sugarcube, turning up multiple times throughout the sequence.
- Griffon tails are prehensile enough to hold apples.
- Pinkie outright calls Gilda a “thief.”
- Notably, Apples have nothing to do with a fruit and vegetable stand that also sells apples.
- Rainbow needs to take care of “a few weather jobs.” Sounds like her entire workday is not nine to five. Also sounds like this isn’t a weekend.
- Fluttershy is guiding a family of ducks somewhere. In fact, early episodes establish Fluttershy’s ecological duties much more clearly than later ones do.
- Mysteriously, Gilda is capable of roaring, even though the bird is the part of the griffon with the vocal cords. She does this twice in the episode.
- Pinkie’s “I can take it, but no one treats Fluttershy like that. No. One.” makes me think that it’s not just their personal friendship – this is probably still in infancy at this point – but Fluttershy’s general “nicest pony in town” reputation.
- Notably, Gilda runs off without waiting for Rainbow.
- Applejack has never heard of Gilda before, but she doesn’t ask Rarity what a griffon is.
- Rarity has heard of Gilda, but it could have been gossip started by that scene next to Sugarcube. She not only knows about griffons, but also cites they’re “rare” – at least around these parts.
- The party contains the full complement of Canterlot Friends.
- Fluttershy states that she’s a year older than Pinkie. When, exactly, did she come by this piece of intel?
- Pinkie uses a joy buzzer. Notably, ours are mechanical, were invented in 1928, and do not actually deliver an electric shock, but the X-ray images shown suggest that pony buzzers might, depending on how attached you are to visual gags. I mean, after Gilda breathes fire from eating pepper in lemon drops, Pinkie roasts a marshmallow on it…
- Somepony used the prank snakes on Applejack “last month.” Applejack apparently never found out who it was, though.
- Fluttershy uses her bird choir for party entertainment, which, I think, is the only instance she isn’t using it for one or another official occasion.
- The party seems to be structured like a birthday party, what with the presents and the cake, even though it doesn’t seem like it is anyone’s birthday… Spike even calls the candles “relighting birthday candles,” emphasis mine. What exactly is going on here?
- Trick candles like these typically involve magnesium based fuses. This is an essential component of fuse-based explosive initiation.
- Spike should have caused a fire by popping out of the cake like that. But in the next shot the cake is whole again and the candles are back on top, unlit. Say hello to an editing mistake. Since it is plot important that Gilda threatening Pinkie be concealed by the cake, I think Spike burrowing through the cake has to be discounted, as it’s not anywhere as plot-important.
- Rarity sounds quite genuine about pin-the-tail-on-the-pony being her favorite game, which seems at odds to her character in general to say the least.
- Twilight ends the episode with narrating a letter to Celestia, with which she sends a bottle of disappearing ink. Just why Celestia uses it immediately, instead of the full inkwell she has already, remains unknown.
Side observations:
- …Is it just me or half the Season 1 is just mirrored with respect to the rest of the series?
- The Canterlot Friends are the real cause of the famed Ponyville craziness. It never happens when they aren’t around.
With regards to Ponyville's shuffling geography, I blame frequently rebuilding the town. After all, that Ursa Minor's due next episode, not that it necessarily follows this one chronologically.
)
(EDIT: Somehow I missed the bit where you explicitly mentioned the spa's demolition.
Celestia's fireplace has given me a new headcanon: Her connection to the sun means that her preferred temperature is somewhere in the triple digits. Not necessarily the low triple digits. She might prefer to work in the fireplace if it didn't do unfortunate things to the paperwork.
Perhaps Minuette's special talent is divination. ("Girls, girls! We need to get to Ponyville pronto! I don't know what's going to happen but it's gonna be huge!")
Counterpoint: the ease with which Big Mac later moves a building when love-poisoned.Crud, my slippage in s7 watching is gonna hit me with spoilers here.
It's a rival encroaching barn-mecha.
Makes the 28prankslater RD ignorance interesting.
Insert Nelson Muntz "Ha-ha" here for how I think "griffons groove on a good prank", for they show little end of mean-spiritedness.
…lessee…pipe, basin…public drinking trough?
Pinkie parties for each of their birthdays.
Given how much of Pinkie's powerset is "cartoon logic" including fourth-wall interaction (disrupting an irising of camera) both of these are hard to pin down as diegetic or not. (…adds diegetic to standard.dic)
Well, that is what cake candles are generally called, I think? But yes, supports evidence for this party being…yeah.
This muddies the issue further.
i suspect she has some uncanny skill with pins…
It would be difficult to keep track of one bottle of ink. She does this so that she can say with certitude that she made use of Twilight's gift. What happens after, well, I'm sure she has innumerable bottles of ink, and it can safely join them. Doing this thus saves her having to remember to do it later.
4528401
I always did love those two stories that had her visiting Twilight in a blast furnace. (…if there are more than two, I'm interested in others, too.)
No self-teleportation for him…though fire-sending people would jump up and down on the teleporter-death-clone problem.
Dunno if it's ever officially shown anywhere, but I'm pretty sure it's meant to be Carrot Top / Golden Harvest's house.
I think it's an universal application of the flight magic. (Scootaloo can touch and shape clouds, too, even if she lacks the lift.)
4528402 If we're taking the mirroring seriously, I'd suspect Discord?
Given how high up the mountain Canterlot is, and the pegasus ability to create localized weather systems, I wouldn't be surprised if this happened all the time. (Sidebar: DHX and I share a home province, and I can tell you the combination of archipelagos, mountain ranges, and the Pacific make for some interesting behavior in the weather. I imagine DHX's staff don't consider this detail much of a stretch.)
4528402
Speaking of regions--spend enough time in Canada, and you'll get used to this. We're not quite American, not quite European, but somewhere betwixt and between.
4528401
Ursa Minor resulted in very little damage. Spike’s stint as kaiju and the parasprites inflicted a lot more.
But I’ll keep looking, the important part is catching when it changes.
If anything, that would indeed explain the hourglass on the cutie mark: Perfect timing.
And it’s specifically Minuette who avoids getting stricken with food poisoning in the previous episode…
4528402
Nah. Hard Hat just looked at the wrong side of the blueprint when rebuilding.
Not really. That is, I’m pretty sure it’s not ignorance.
Or washing, possibly, but notice no pump lever and no valve.
Plausible, I suppose…
From clues here and there, Twilight is rather involved in the running of Ponyville. She says she has a meeting with the "Hay Board", and she's mentioned meetings with the mayor a couple of times. Having a pony in town who is only one step away from Celestia has got to make for a lot of official interaction. Those scrolls may well be royal petitions.
"Gnarly" is an obscure 70's expression, common in surfer culture. MLP writer confirmed for old hippie.
Given the tub below, I'd guess it's a spring box and shelter.
In another episode, she's guiding ducklings into a hole in the ground. Feeding snakes is my guess.
I believe we see Carrot Top pulling carrots out of the field next to it in an episode, which makes perfect sense, but it's also seen decorated during an Apple family reunion, so... hard to say. Unless Carrot Top married into the family.
4528730
I’ll have to keep an eye out for those.
I’m wondering about the dragon egg, rather.
…?
Have mercy on us big city kids and explain please. :)
One more thing to keep an eye out for.
4528739
Natural springs are often in an inconvenient place, so it is (or was) common to contain them with a box and direct them into a pipe and basin; no pump needed. The roof is also a common feature to keep leaves and other debris out of the basin if it's meant for people rather than livestock.
Laboratory flasks (preferably full of brightly colored liquids) are a well-established visual shorthand for "Science is happening here!" Oddly enough, the first time I can think of where Twilight's science research is actually important to the plot ("Feeling Pinkie Keen"), she's doing it on a computer.
4528766
Only, it’s not a computer. It exhibits no behavior more complex than an electroencephalograph with tube output. Seeing what she uses it for, that’s probably exactly what it is, only with some variation on a magic-sensitive piezocrystal instead of electrodes.
There are one or two steps from that to a TV, but still a long road towards anything resembling a computer.
I think cartoon time needs to be a thing as well as cartoon resolution. Celestia's speed writing the letter is extremely difficult to explain in a Watsonian fashion, but ludicrously easy in a Doylist fashion (they speed up the response so the audience doesn't have to watch 6 ponies stare at their hooves for 15 minutes while Celestia writes a response). A reversal of the slow-mo vision when they activate the Elements of Harmony and villains stand there looking shocked for 30 seconds.
4528695
Oh, both get used in the States, too. It's worse, because it's "people serious about science" using them [usually! that's how we crashed a Mars mission] and "everybody else" not.
4528968
Effect 1 of the Elements of Harmony is to harmonize all onlookers to the firing event, so that nobody interrupts nor dodges. It's a trait shared with many magical girl transformation sequences. A:tLA averts it, knd of…
4529218 Magical girl sequences have the same slow-motion cartoon effects. If you have an instant effect, it's going to just be the primary effect. The whole "secret second effect that prevents dodging of the primary effect" trope isn't something I've ever seen backed up by canon.
4528968
We probably have to accept it for some things, but for others, it actually makes things worse. More on that in the next PoC…
Boy, this is comprehensive.
I've always thought that Pin the Tail just isn't considered as juvenile a game in their culture. But then again, maybe it is, and Rarity just has a few childish quirks. Very recent episodes, for instance, showed that she really was fond of playing silly games like this with Sweetie Belle. In fact, this may be a partial explanation for this scene - this is her favourite game because she fondly remembers playing it with Sweetie Belle.
4528401
FOME confirmed best headcanon-maker once again.
4528402
Thank you for making me aware of these.
4528968
Reminds me of DIO in Stardust Crusaders. He'd say something like "ten seconds have now passed," but in that time, the audience have actually been listening to him monologue for about two minutes straight.
4529456
I suppose this, together with concluding that pin-the-tail is considered less of a juvenile game in their culture, is the best explanation we have, anyway.
That actually looks a lot like a local shrine, to minor gods or saints, of the sort that you can find all the way from Ireland to Japan.
It's unlikely that DHX would do that, though. 4528749 is probably right, it's a covered spring.
4529456
A perfect example! Of course in Equestria, that would be 10 milli-moons have passed.
4529764
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