May
26th
2017
Points of Canon: S1x16 - Sonic Rainboom · 9:45am May 26th, 2017
I’ll try to keep to at least one episode per day, or I’ll never be done with this.
I would much rather continue with my magnum opus, but for some bizarre reason it’s not working, despite having a per-paragraph outline. Oh well.
And this episode is very important, as we all know.
- Rainbow is very systematic about the subjects she cares for – this time, cheering, which she decomposes into “loss of control,” “screaming and hollering” and “passion.” Consider the checklist we saw in Call of the Cutie as well as the “optimal chillaxing” in Every Little Thing She Does, and Rainbow comes out as a lot smarter than she lets on. Notice that I didn’t say “more educated” – she isn’t – but definitely far more capable of systematic reasoning than you would expect an athletics-oriented person to be, and engaging in it whenever a subject she cares about presents itself. Compare also the deduction regarding the number of holes in the helmet in Stranger Than Fan Fiction – and remember that it’s clear from the context that it is a deduction based on fragmentary evidence, not outright memorization. And May The Best Pet Win presents an example of evidence-based reasoning… moving on.
1. Including, apparently, at least some birds.
Is it just cartoon resolution, or she’s getting the clouds to spin as if they’re solids? Actually, as a general question – so we know pegasi, and certain other flying species1 can stand on clouds and treat them as solids at least where it concerns their own bodies. So what happens to the wind treating them as water vapor? Can a pegasus catch a ride on a cloud blown by a wind? That would screw with conservation of momentum. Do pegasi confer their own inertia to the cloud when sitting on them, does the cloud get blown out from underneath them by the wind, or does the cloud confer its own inertia or lack thereof on the pegasus instead?
- The shockwave resulting from Rainbow’s unsuccessful attempt at a Sonic Rainboom is spherical. It takes a specific speed for it to flatten into a cone, and then this shockwave bounces her back. This basically implies that a pegasus is larger than their material body where it concerns aerodynamics. Remember Newbie Dash, where I said that Rainbow’s explanations make sense for fixed winged aircraft with a tail assembly, which pegasi don’t have? They definitely have some magical flight control surfaces and other invisible extremities.
- Twilight had a “crazy weekend of studying.” What does the poor girl do on weekdays?…
2. Most windows in the Golden Oaks Library slide to the side on the outer surface of the tree, or at least, that’s what they do in Look Before You Sleep – so it’s open, not missing.
Rainbow is very lucky this particular window was open.2
- Rainbow is still eligible for a “Best Young Flyer Competition,” emphasis mine. So is Rarity. What is the upper age limit on that? We’re pretty sure Rainbow is an adult, so presumably this is “young adult” bracket, but what is the next one called?
- Notice that Rarity is permitted to enter, it’s not pegasus-only.
- Pinkie is the first to mention the sonic rainboom as a possible thing, but notably, she also says she has never actually seen it. She also says that Twilight needs to get out more when Twilight says she doesn’t know what one is. Hmmm…
- Pinkie explicitly says that “sonic rainboom” is a rainbow combined with a sonic boom, but I’m pretty sure that isn’t what actually happens: Ponies are very likely to have cannons capable of supersonic projectiles. See the explanation in Orbit for my take.
- Applejack says that Rainbow is “the only pony ever to pull it off.” Presumably, Rainbow boasted about it at some point, but I wonder when? Twilight doesn’t know the term, so she wasn’t present when it happened…
- Rainbow Dash says she is “the greatest flyer to ever come out of Cloudsdale!” We don’t have solid grounds to say if she is the greatest or not, but at least we can trust her statement that she’s from Cloudsdale, because she often mentions this later.
- Rarity pokes Twilight’s rump with her horn, a gesture that is very rarely seen and rather uncharacteristic from Rarity.
- Rarity does not know that cloudwalking spells exist, because she asks Twilight for a spell “that will get us wingless ponies into Cloudsdale.” Notice she does not ask for a spell to enable them to fly.
- Applejack says: “She was tootin’ her own horn louder than the brass section of a marching band!” Marching bands exist and have brass sections.
- Rarity says, “I have put on enough fashion shows to recognize stage fright when I see it.” Did this happen often?
- Pinkie displays time-saving synchronicity to find a flight spell. Notably, she pops up with that specific book on her head immediately after Rainbow’s phrase “I wish you guys could come to Cloudsdale” – that’s when this book landed on her face – and not, as she says, when Rainbow knocked her into the bookcase, when she also has a book on her face, but a different one. Either Pinkie is colluding with the scriptwriter or she is much more deliberate about her antics than she lets on.
- Twilight describes the spell found as “a spell that will allow earth ponies to fly for three days,” emphasis mine, but uses it on Rarity. Must be something pretty old.
- The spell is “really difficult,” and looking at Twilight’s skewed face, it has to be energetically taxing. Possibly because it involves charging Rarity with enough magic to keep her in the air for three days, since these butterfly wings are way too small for purely aerodynamic flight… The spell still depends on their material shape, though.
- So why is Rarity the one most interested in cheering for Rainbow, anyway?
- Cloudsdale is built up in a vaguely Greco-Roman style. Which is interesting, because private dwellings within Cloudsdale are typically not, and neither are the Wonderbolt buildings, some of which are supposed to be ancient. It is also notably three-dimensional with long flowing staircases, which are not typically seen in other appearances.
- Rainbow implies that she quit – or rather, was forced to quit – a flight school at some point. Nobody explains why exactly. This incident does not appear to be referred to again, even by her parents.
- Dumb-Bell doesn’t just tease Rainbow about the sonic rainboom, he also makes a statement that there’s no such thing. Seeing as how he could not have possibly avoided seeing Rainbow do it the first time, since he was racing her at the time – he has to have seen the rainbow explosion if not Rainbow actually doing it, he was at the ground zero! – I wonder why he is saying that.
- Fluttershy expresses the desire to be more assertive, which she usually doesn’t.
- Rainbow says: “Princess Celestia will probably banish me to the Everfree Forest! [for the failure of performing a sonic rainboom]” Wait, what? That was way out of the blue, what brought this on? Why Everfree forest? What?…
- It does put another vote for the idea that ponies use banishment as a form of capital punishment at least in some cases, though.
- Rainbow somehow avoided learning about cloudwalking spells in all her time in Cloudsdale.
- Rainbow says “Here it is: the greatest city in the sky!” establishing that Cloudsdale is not the only cloud city long before Las Pegasus was shown on screen.
- Rarity is studying her reflection in what has to be the display of a clothing shop, judging by the hat on the sign. This is the only sign of retail economy seen in Cloudsdale. One other sign displays a prominent high heeled boot with a toe.
- Rarity is standing on the cloud while doing this, which means that the wing spell also confers cloudwalking as a side effect.
- The construction pegasi use a tape measure, an one of them is using a jackhammer. He lets the jackhammer go, and it keeps bouncing on the cloud until it falls off the edge, which means that at least some clouds have to be solid enough to make a jackhammer useful, and solid enough to make them hold up regular objects – since we know pegasi don’t need a jackhammer to shape regular clouds from Top Bolt.
- Twilight mentions that Rarity’s wings are “made from gossamer and morning dew,” which becomes important, when Twilight says they “evaporated into thin air,” emphasis mine. One of the commenters on my blog tried to use this as piece of cosmological evidence, but I rejected it on the grounds that gossamer, i.e. spider silk, is a natural thermoplastic, and while every article I can track down about its particular properties is behind a paywall, its flash point has to be high enough that if it was the gossamer that gave out, Rarity would have her coat burn off before that happened. What probably did happen is the morning dew evaporating despite the magical insistence it stay where told to, due to Rarity continually exposing her wings to direct sunlight at 90°. Then all the magic stored inside got free and burned the rest off.
- One other thing to notice is that Rarity is not flying like a butterfly, despite butterfly wings: Butterflies essentially fly like a pneumatic rocket, by compressing the air between their wings and expelling it backwards…
- Weather factory offers tours to random visitors.
- Each snowflake is “hoofmade.” I hope for their sake there’s a missing “seed” word between “each” and “snowflake,” otherwise, at the rates of production seen, winter would take decades to get going. Also, these are mighty big snowflakes. Cartoon resolution? See Look Before You Sleep and my note about the cucumbers.
- Rainbow says, “We better move on before Rarity ruins winter and causes a drought.” Forgoing a winter can cause a drought indeed, but if that’s the reason why it is required, why not replace it with a rainy season instead?…
- Rainbows are liquid, spicy, – exceedingly spicy for Pinkie, who otherwise eats hot sauce on cupcakes – and retain the full gradient of rainbow coloration in a fractal-like manner, rather than as any kind of color mix.
- Statues of a horned pony – presumably Celestia – adorn the Rainbow Factory in great numbers. Why?…
- Rainbow’s and Fluttershy’s lab coats which they presumably got as part of the tour have wing holes, but Twilight’s, Applejack’s and Pinkie’s do not. Cloudsdale weather factory does get non-winged visitors often enough to stock special coats for them – or possibly, has some non-winged workers. It makes Rainbow not supposing a cloudwalking spell earlier even more strange.
- How did they get Rarity’s wings through those holes without damaging them, though?…
- At some point, we see a pegasus dump a bucket into a funnel, producing what looks like a geyser. Now I understand what this is: That’s how pegasi mass-produce wind. Twilight uses the same design and the same brightly blue liquid in Top Bolt. It remains a question why would they point the funnel up in this instance, though…
- The scene with ponies staring at Rarity’s wings in the sunlight shows the only elderly pegasus I’ve seen so far, ever.
- There’s a huge statue of Celestia in the stadium. In fact, Cloudsdale includes more open worship of Celestia than just about anywhere else.
- When Rarity pokes her nose out of the door marked with a star, we see the actual gloss of her hooficure. Take note.
- Pinkie uses a five-fingered hand sign for cheering. Must be a minotaur tradition that somehow made its way to the rock farming country, see also Rock Solid Friendship.
- Canterlot Friends aren’t here. But Lyra Heartstrings is. Twice. And knowing Minuette, she’s probably watching for the falling Rarity on the ground below instead.
3. Even if they aren’t, the situation is adequate for using audio frequency radio waves. Yes, these are a thing. Back in the 80s, people still used it to replace headphone extension cords. See RTAC #5 for the why.
The announcer is using a headphones-mounted microphone. We don’t see any wires, but that does not necessarily mean none are used in this particular case.3
- Instead of walking out onto her platform, Celestia flies in directly for some reason.
- Wonderbolts appear with outright smoke trails and fireworks, and I’m pretty sure most of this, if not all, is pegasus magic as well.
- Best Young Flyer is a yearly, or at least regular competition, because the announcer says “this year’s.”
- While Rainbow swaps numbers around, I can’t help but wonder if any paperwork involved her giving her name when getting the number. She had to qualify for this competition somehow, didn’t she? She had to have selected the music for her performance, because later Rarity says “I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of changing our music. That ‘rock and roll’ doesn’t really match my wings.” The music would have to be tied to the number.
- This is the earliest mention of rock music, by the way.
- The pegasus with Doctor’s cutie mark is eating hay. Ponies very rarely eat hay on screen.
- 15 is the highest number observed, though this does not necessarily mean that there were only 15 contestants.
- Rarity is probably the only pony to ever knock out three Wonderbolts in two seconds. :)
- Rainbow is capable of very tight turns even at sonic rainboom speeds, and once attained, the rainboom state persists despite she is now hauling four ponies with her.
- The place right below Cloudsdale is going to be so polluted with streamers now…
- Rarity admits “I guess I just lost my head.” That would explain her hideous makeup and costume, I suppose. :)
4. Well, we know they’re assholes.
As a result of this event, Rainbow does get to hang out with Wonderbolts for an entire day. This does not appear to result in a more involved relationship for some reason, though, even though there was a full stadium of credible witnesses to Rainbow doing an exceedingly difficult, legendary move, and they should remember Rainbow saved them from a very likely death by splattering.4
- The trophy is a winged diadem which is, apparently, very quickly adjusted to have the winner’s cutie mark on it, because it definitely has Rainbow’s lightning bolt.
Hmmm. Much as I'm a fan of the 'Celestia born an earth pony' idea, this level of overt Celestia worship so widespread in a single city could potentially reflect civic/tribal pride in a citizen who became something much, much more...
Are we still trying to cite the journal as canon?
Also, here's a question: What's this Aporia thing?
4547557
There are more alicorn statues in Cloudsdale than in Canterlot, that’s for sure.
I am, because the whole point is to include as much as possible. The Journal does not firmly state whether they were born alicorns or ascended, though, just that they were educated by “the alicorns” and that they “flew” as fillies. So if they were born regular ponies, they were pegasi.
And if they were born alicorns, it did not happen in Equestria, according to The Crystalling
My magnum opus of course.
The most meticulously researched HiE in history. :)
4547559 ...Could you possibly provide slightly more of an explanation?
Looking at it from outside, it appears to be just more of these blog posts which I quite enjoy, but Watsonian and in-character with a random human character. Which sounds interesting, but the Mystery tag leaves me wondering if you somehow manage to turn a bunch of headcanon ramblings into a government conspiracy about Angel Bunny's house.
4547561
Mmmm…. Ok, here are several statements for you.
1. It takes a while to get going and then rather abruptly turns epic. While there’s no government conspiracy, there are abundant secrets and things ponies and humans simply don’t think to tell each other.
2. The headcanon ramblings, as you put it, translate into actual plot, because they aren’t just to explain things, it’s about their consequences. To put it very short, it’s Fridge Brilliance: The TV Series. Yes, I know they didn’t put anything into that fridge, that won’t stop me from pulling stuff out of it.
3. The particular Equestria depicted has a shortage of idiot balls.
4. The title is itself a hint. This story rather heavily involves paradox, and for a change, not a temporal one.
5. The original working title was “Conversations About Infinity.”
6. It is a double helix story. That is, it has a pony side and a human side, and these are distinct stories by themselves, but cannot progress without each other, because both need the other’s perspective where they are going.
4547567 ...
Well, I've got a whole day. May as well try it out.
4547567 Two chapters in, I've officially given up on any concept of writing a smart HiE.
4547572
4547582 Not entirely sure what flavor of shock you're trying to convey there.
4547583
I kind of didn’t plan to dis-inspire people.
4547586 You say this as if you've never come across a work of fiction that strongly impressed upon you the idea that you would never be able to create something of equal merit. Or as if you've never realized that, compared to quite a lot of people who jaw about headcanon, you make most of the rest of us look like babbling imbecilic monkeys.
Of course you didn't plan for it. Doesn't change the fact that knowing it's been done basically perfectly has robbed my motivation to try something similar.
Literally my only complaint so far (Conversation 5 just finished) is that I see no reason for this to have any kind of epic plot, as it seems perfectly suited to a calm, sedate slice of life.
I have to wonder if momentum-related weirdness has anything to do with the persistent abnormality of Equestrian skyscapes. Throughout the early seasons, and extending intermittently into the current seasons, clouds are horsetailed, curling, and baroque in a windswept fashion. The result of residual pegasus magic decaying at the fringes of cloud bodies and cloudfields?
If you want to fit Chengar Qoroth's Lunar Rebellion history into your headcanon, Cloudsdale is conquered territory, and Celestia reigns as Imperatrix Regina. Like Augustus in the province of Asia, a titular living goddess. Which is easier to pull off in distant provincial cities that rarely see said 'goddess'. But it ties in neatly with Cloudsdale's Hellenic stylings - they're the ponies most likely by culture to deify a ruler.
4547589
Eh, you'll have a reason to hate it yet. :)
4547603 So far, a tendency for run-on sentences, comma splices, and dense paragraphs. And for all that it is the most well-constructed metafictional examination I've seen, it does still carry with it all the boring played-out baggage of a metafictional examination of Equestria.
4547597
Very possible, actually.
Another thought: They probably use the wind funnels to blow the freshly produced clouds out to a high altitude, from where they descend across Equestria and are distributed. Local pegasi then rearrange the clouds, rather than unpack them from boxes or do something else in that vein. This way, almost all clouds are artificial, but at the same time, they aren’t all positioned by pegasi explicitly – only where they actually do weather control. That’s why it’s “weather patrol.”
There is sort of room for this, considering especially the commemorative plates…
I always interpreted Dumb-Bell mocking the Rainboom as a defense mechanism. After the fateful race, he kept telling himself it didn't happen. Eventually, he convinced himself, or at least covered the memory with enough denial to ignore it.
And Spitfire does mention Dash saving the Wonderbolts' lives at the Gala, so she at least remembers that much... though given the unicorn-induced concussions, it's understandable how they might not recall much else.
She probably qualified under the Air Bud Clause, aka the Ain't No Rule: "Ain't no rule saying a unicorn can't compete in a pegasus flight competition!" The mare handling sign-ups and registration probably muttered something like "I'm not paid enough to deal with this..." as she approved Rarity's application—no doubt reasoning that letting one crazy unicorn into the competition wouldn't matter, because it wasn't like she could possibly win anything, right?
If Rarity actually had placed high enough, there probably would have been heated arguments among the judges over whether Rarity qualified or not. And after what actually happened, the competition rules almost certainly got a "No wings made of gossamer and morning dew," amendment.
4547708 Next question: With her self-levitation spell, could Starlight enter the competition?
CHANGELING!
4547756 Ain't no rule that says she can't!
Also not explicitly forbidden by the rules, and therefore permitted: steampunk mechanical wings, Pinkie's pedalcopter, a pony inflating her body with helium...
4547756
Good question. Let’s guess! Some logic:
1. Pinkie describes the competition as treating both slow graceful flyers and fast spectacular flyers equally. Starlight probably can’t fly fast – she never does, even when this would be advantageous – but she can do slow graceful in theory.
2. The highest contestant number is 15. Let’s assume that everyone was given a reasonable five minutes. 15 contestants would come out to 75 minutes, or 1 hour 15 minutes, which is not a lot. I would expect this kind of competition to take two to three hours. But that still comes out to at most ~36 contestants. The competition is open enough for Rarity to enter, and Rarity is neither a resident of Cloudsdale nor a pegasus. Rainbow was born in Cloudsdale but is no longer a resident. Therefore, pegasi from all over Equestria would wish to compete, which would result in thousands of potential competitors. Some kind of qualifying round would be required.
3. Rarity presumably charmed her way through it with her wings. Even simply showing them off had a profound effect on random pegasi, and Rarity can be very charming even without, so we can assume that if you plan to have a grace-oriented routine, all you need to do is to convince a judge it’s going to be pretty enough.
Can Starlight do that? If yes, she could enter. My guess is, she would have to mind-control the qualifying judge to do it, though.
Ok. Which of them? :) Because it’s perfectly reasonable for a unicorn to spectate this sort of competition.
4547770
…Flim and Flam entering the Best Young Flyers competition?
Might be better for Schizotech than the story I had planned for them, actually.
4547774 Starlight mind-controls the qualifying judges into letting her compete.
Starlight pulls off a graceful hovering routine.
Then she mind-controls the final judges into giving her a perfect score. "All glory to Starlight Glimmer!"
4547782
Here's a shortcut: mind-control Celestia.
4547774 I'm reminded of the Friendship Is Dragons webcomic, where Rarity's wings are hypnotically fascinating, and she's the one who mind-controls the judges. Unfortunately, as soon as she looks at herself in the mirror...
And that's how Equestria was made.
Pinkie is necessarily lying here or in "Cutie Mark Chronicles"…or, alternately, is in fact multiple-persona[lity] in a manner that makes first-person pronouns stop having singular definition; "I" said by Pinkie can mean "Pinkie only, not Pinkamena", or it can mean "this body"…and Pinkie didn't really exist until Pinkamena saw the boom.
Twilight, however, was magic-surged by the boom and can credibly not remember what happened under the event (or just didn't see it, she wasn't facing that way, was she?) until she decides to ask Celestia about that rainboom thing (after finding there're no books on it), when Celestia feeds her the destiny lines (計画通り) and fills her in on what happened when her eyes were working in reverse and radiating light.
Or it's enchanted with pegasus magic, or pegasus magic does not immediately cease on losing contact with an object…
3. Anything delicate, light and flimsy.
I've also seen it used as dreamstuff, but that's a definite reach outside the usual dictionary…
I estimate that the spell creates artificial pegasus-magic-patterned leylines on or about a body, and the spell-creator decided it was easier to make a pair of flat surfaces than feathers (and also avoids the need to preen them).
Rarty [or Twilight] knows Fastener-Free Clothing Donning; she demonstrated this spell at the end of "Winter Wrap-Up".
Nah,that's one of the Wonderbolts' logos. The wings on the tiara aren't directly attached to the bolt, but it's just a style change, I'd say. I wonder what the distinction between winged-one-jag bolt and no-winged two-jag bolt is?
❧Twilight bows to Celestia here. She didn't in S1E2.
❧Rarity doesn't bow, but I suspect that's because she's in the basket and would go bonk and Rarity would do nothing so graceless…and can't display her obeisance due to the intervening surface, etc.
Stop emptying CArrot Top's fridge!
4547708
I'm 90% sure it's intentional esp. because Gilda would be allowed to enter, and attended Flight Camp…and I suspect seniors of are able to attend BYFC.
4547770
It's exactly what it says on the tin: best young flier. Rarity is probably technically in violation as she's not flying under her own power (had she cast the spell herself, this would not be true); Pinkie could theoretically enter with her machine else…or her tail, possibly.
Pinkflation is demonstrated at the end of "Feeling Pinkie Keen," too! …but she's also simply done the "tie a bunch of balloons to oneself" which is probably best, with tailcoptering for propulsion.
4547778
it's not like it's not a thing they couldn't also do as to what you had planned, and it's a great publicity stunt for prosthetics. [youtube=9VuB4iizJUw]
Neat, you only need the video ID in a youtube tag…
4548004
It’s also possible she never knew what the rainboom actually looks like and did not identify the rainbow she did see with the rainboom as described by Rainbow Dash.
So instead of her cutie mark, Rainbow has a Wonderbolt logo on her Element of Harmony too? :)
They weren’t in public, though.
I’m pretty sure it’s actually Celestia’s fridge, judging by the amounts of cake therein.
4548152
Given that it's not tricolor and has no cloud? It's not her cutie mark, no. (Given that it's red, it's not Wonderbolt either.)
Man that's a lot.
I'll say this, do Pegasi have to actively concentrate when diving not to just bounce off the top of a pool, since water is just concentrated cloud?
Spike and Rarity should bond sometime over the fact that they have both decisively defeated the Wonderbolts.
4547559
I'd point out that Equestria didn't exist until the Founders showed up, anymore than "America" existed before at the least the Puritans showed up. Before it was only whatever the indigenous natives called it, just as that big western mass of land where the alicorn tribe lived.
4547567 I mean, technically, you have Bon Bon, so there's at least a little government conspiracy.
4547569 He's being modest about how good it is. Read it!
4548285
My guess is no. Why: The ability is probably triggered by the number of individual surface tension contact events.
I.e. clouds consist of droplets, each of which counts as one surface tension event. Pool as a whole provides only one, and even if you splash into it, the number of droplets that result is magnitudes smaller than the number of droplets you would encounter in a cloud.
4547708 4547756 4547778 This reminds me of Estee's story.