Aug
3rd
2017
Points of Canon: S1x26 - The Best Night Ever · 8:37am Aug 3rd, 2017
…And that concludes Season 1.
- Pinkie is jumping on a very modern looking trampoline. Which she had to have dragged in herself just to bounce.
- Spike says, “She’s got an awesome magic spell she’s been working on for the Gala.” Unfortunately we don’t know for sure if Twilight has been practicing it or making a new one, and there are two of those spells actually involved, not one. In any case, she’s staring into a book. She casts it only once she has closed the book, though.
- Twilight transforms a regular sized apple into a carriage, which has to involve adding a large amount of mass – at least 300kg looking at the size of this thing. Likewise, she transforms four mice into horse-sized horses, at once, which has to involve adding even more mass, on the scale of 500kg per horse.
- “Fluttershy, did you bring your friends?” These mice have got to be volunteers. Also, these are lab mice, not field mice… Actually, how do ponies even have lab mice?
- The mice have been hiding in Fluttershy’s hair. You probably have to assume that at any given moment, someone could be hiding there, beside Fluttershy herself.
- Apparently, transformation does nothing to the natural smell of mice, otherwise I don’t think Opalescence would be so stupid as to attack something so big.
- …So why Fluttershy doesn’t try to chase them?
- Ah, that’s the one eyed animation error stallion right there.
- Twilight has planned for four horses, but Rarity only charms two earth pony stallions.
- So let me get this straight. First, they prepare the carriage. Then, they strap two stallions in. And then they leave to get their hair done and dressed?
- Fluttershy is reading a beauty magazine again.
- This is the only time we see these things, the rigid hood beauty salon style hair dryers, and for some reason they aren’t in the actual beauty salon, which the town does have, but in Rarity’s boutique. Also notably, there are no tail dryers. This kind of hair dryer has basically never been made before the electrical era.
- Pinkie gets blown away by misusing the hair dryer. I wonder if it’s actually this powerful or she’s just goofing around.
1. I thought the originator is FanOfMostEverything, but it was actually Meta Four.
The whole scene with not letting Spike in while getting dressed is interesting. There is that idea1 that the reason for not letting Spike in is that earth ponies and pegasi in particular require rather complicated gymnastics to get into a dress, which is something they would prefer to do in private. But notice that Rarity ends it with “Some of us do have standards” – while nopony else makes the complaint.
- “I still can’t believe we’re gonna be at Canterlot tonight. Our home town, Twilight!” That, at least, settles that Canterlot is Twilight’s home town conclusively. There are alternatives.
- That’s the first time we clearly see that Rarity is wearing eyelash extensions.
- Applejack spits on Fluttershy’s hoof while polishing it. Fluttershy is not amused.
- Twilight powders her face herself. Actually, the very fact that she does this at all with no prodding is a lot more girly than we usually expect of her. I wonder, who taught her? Twilight Velvet probably didn’t have as much opportunity as she would wish.
- Spike had an “insiders tour of Canterlot” planned, in which he wanted to show Rarity “the crown jewels” – presumably out on display somewhere like the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom – while he expects Applejack will be interested in “the Princess’ golden apple tree.” Golden apples could imply a reference to the Golden Apple of Discord if we’re going with Greek mythology or the youth-maintaining golden apples of Idunn if we’re going with Norse. Both options are promising. Somehow, none of the fanfic authors appear to have remembered either of these objects that I saw, Spike’s statement gets thoroughly ignored. If you want an explanation why some alicorns are immortal while others aren’t, golden apples would be a good one.
- When they approach the event grounds – Canterlot geography is pretty twisted, but it looks like it is the castle itself – we can see that just about everyone came in a pony-drawn carriage.
- Rarity’s glass slippers have heels, but don’t have toes. Applejack’s boots have both, Rainbow’s sandals have neither. Notably, Rainbow, Rarity and Applejack wear shoes only on the forelegs, not on the hind legs. At the same time, Pinkie, Twilight and Fluttershy wear sets of four whatever it is they’re wearing.
- Applejack’s pie cart had to have been delivered to the place beforehand, because there’s no way she could squeeze it into the carriage and she is not shown unloading it either.
- “At the Gala / All the royals / They will meet fair Rarity” The only pony classed as “royal” beside the Sisters that we know of is Blueblood, but I think the phrase implies there are considerably more ponies who would be. See my limited nobility theory, I’m still convinced it’s largely correct.
- “I will find him / My Prince Charming” – the archetype exists.
- There is basically no way a pegasus can leave a trail of clouds that immediately dissolve into lightning without magic, pyrotechnics won’t help.
- “Perform for crowds of thousands / They’ll shower us with diamonds” – Diamonds can be, at least in certain situations, be used in lieu of flowers. To be fair, diamonds aren’t really all that rare around here either. It would be interesting if, unlike other kinds of gemstone, they don’t grow in surface-level rock farms.
- And when Rarity came in, she lost her glass slippers. Nobody else did.
- Celestia calls Twilight a “star student” this time. Notably, this is the only time she does this, but Sunset Shimmer also refers to Twilight as “star student” in Equestria Girls.
- I am not going to do the blow-by-blow detailing of Rarity’s interactions with Blueblood, because that’s what RTAC #3 was about. But I did notice she found her slippers after having lost them coming in.
- Applejack calls out “Howdy, partner! You hungry?” and Soarin replies, “As a horse!” The idiom exists. At least he wouldn’t eat a horse.
- Spitfire remembers Rainbow. Notably, Soarin does not appear to.
- Soarin is extremely noisy and messy about eating his pie – so much so, that he actually puts it on the ground to eat. This is actually pretty weird.
- While Fluttershy is navigating the garden, we can see that interesting orrery again, the one I caught in The Cutie Mark Chronicles. Unfortunately, this time there’s no ready screenshot.
- The full list of creatures Fluttershy found in the garden is: meadowlark, toco toucan, spider monkey, wallaroo. Notably, in our world, meadowlarks are native to North America, toucans come from South Africa, spider monkeys are from South America, while wallaroos are from Australia. So where is the pony Australia?…
- This is the only time ever where the gift of talking to animals fails Fluttershy so spectacularly – she even has to resort to traps. Something’s fishy here.
- So why exactly do the musicians go along with Pinkie’s silly kindergarten song? She is shown to whisper to them, so it’s not just harmony talking.
- It’s interesting that Celestia greets so many ponies personally, but as far as I can see, the whole thing is at least partially for Twilight’s benefit – they all shake hooves with and presumably get introduced to Twilight.
- One of the earth pony guests has a traditional schematic depiction of the constellation of Orion for his cutie mark. The relative positions of the stars match, but not their exact locations. Notably, this is also the guy so ridiculously strong that he can grab Twilight with a hoofshake and wiggle her in the air.
- Lemon Hearts is taking a photo of Wonderbolts. Notably, the rest of the Canterlot Friends are hiding too well this time.
- Pinkie uses a DJ’s turntable, which is a huge step ahead compared to the mechanical gramophones typically seen previously. I think that’s the first time this thing shows up.
- It’s interesting that the columns that Rainbow eventually knocks down are purely decorative – knocking them down does not result in the roof caving in.
- Fluttershy did manage to catch a squirrel. In her teeth.
- Twilight can whistle by putting her hoof into her mouth. Notably she does this without taking her shoe/glove off.
- “Rarity, your glass slipper! Now your prince is sure to find you.” An equivalent to the story of Cinderella exists. Notably, the glass slippers are not on Rarity’s hooves while she’s getting splattered with cake.
- Spike has lost his tux somewhere.
- Joe recognizes Twilight by sight.
Much of this sounds like a listing of animation errors, to be honest, but that’s mostly because the most notable feature of the episode is Rarity’s interaction with Blueblood, and that, I have already discussed in detail.
Also:
I am 99% positive I didn't come up with the "awkward dressing gymnastics" hypothesis, though it's possible I've forgotten doing so. I definitely don't mention it in this episode's Friendship is Card Games.
Re: Twilight's makeup: I'd think that this wouldn't be Twilight's first formal occasion as Celestia's student... though it has to be her first Gala; otherwise she'd know what to expect.
I do know of one story that uses golden apples, though it conflates the apples of Idunn with those of the Hesperides, and the tree's somewhere in the Everfree.
The general theory for Fluttershy's failure to communicate seems to be that because the gardens are so private, the animals there are incredibly skittish around strangers. Fluttershy's escalating anger likely didn't help the situation.
It's unclear if Octavia lives in Ponyville at this point, but it's possible that Pinkie called in a favor.
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Damn. Who did, speak up so I can properly credit you, I remember it happened somewhere in my Δ-vicinity but I can’t remember who said it.
Meta Four?
A variation was that these animals are recovering survivors of various traumas and selected for that reason.
I don’t think either works very well, for multiple reasons – the gardens are clearly not all that private, for one. No, it’s something else entirely…
Notice they don’t talk between themselves when this starts, though, while Pinkie whispers into everypony’s ears.
Yeah, I’m losing grasp of the chronology in memory. Bweh.
The Grand Galloping Gala: also known as, a boring tradition that Celestia fully acknowledges is boring, yet she has allowed to develop to the point where her seemingly-annual pranks don't actually shake up the status quo enough for any of the nobles to realize what is going on.
Seriously, how in the hay did the duo of fun-loving princesses who turned their previous castle into the capital city of hidden traps get into a situation where this is the kind of party they put on every year? For diplomacy? Quite clearly not, as dignitaries and goodwill visits seem to happen year-round and with little fanfare, and pretty much every non-Equestrian kingdom has either been dead, isolationist or banished to the Shadow Realm for so long that I'm left wondering if Equestrian diplomats have anything to do.
Huh... perhaps the current state of Equestria, as hinted at with city-based delegations in Princess Spike, was borne out of Equestria's diplomats having nothing to do, and so sub-dividing the kingdom until they actually had something to negotiate over?
Sorry, got off-topic. To get back to my real question, how Gala?
I believe the tree is also mentioned in Night's Favored Child, which has a dragon/serpent guarding it. Eternal youth is not for everypony, evidently!
Just an observation: When Faust was running the show there were a lot of off-the-cuff references to classical mythology and things that were mythological in tone. (E,g,, "The stars themselves will aid in her escape.") I really miss that.
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Abstract idea: Discord guarding a tree bearing golden apples of youth.
You know, to mix everything up into one big ball of wax…
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Hypothesis #1: One significantly more serious princess remained alone for a thousand years and there was no other, more rebellious and impulsive one, to shake things up. The Journal does blame the traps in the castle squarely on Luna.
Hypothesis #2: This is actually a relatively recent thing, only a hundred years or so, that Celestia is still hoping will pass – a remnant of the “Victorian” period depicted in A Hearth’s Warming Tail. High society is more conservative and is just lagging behind, so she’s expecting it to fade any decade now. That’s long enough to tell Twilight that the Gala is “always awful.”
Hypothesis #3: Both.
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Both can work surprisingly well.
We know that Celestia's default setting is 'Stepford Smiler', so pretty much any pompous excess tends to increase in her refusal to be rude to ponies who probably need a dose of 'do be quiet, you silly pony'. Although this does seem to be a trait common to most monarchs, whose need for 'dignity' tends to bring stultifying dullness in its incidental wake.
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Yes, the “awkward dressing gymnastics” hypothesis is mine. Here’s where I posted about it in one of your prior blogs 4542895.
What if the Gala is the only day of the year that these gardens are open to the public? Fluttershy did specify back in “The Ticket Master” that it was a “private gated garden” surrounding the Gala. And since (as also stated in “The Ticket Master”) this is the only night of the year that all the exotic flowers are in bloom, that’s the most plausible time to open up an otherwise-private garden.
Heck, Fluttershy’s whole monologue from “The Ticket Master” pretty strongly implies that these gardens are only open to Gala attendees, and only on the night of the Gala. Because we can all agree that, if there were any way to get into these gardens without all the hassle of the Gala, Flutters would have been all over that instead, right?
<insert clop fic>
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Opening up to the public something which contains animals who would potentially suffer from this (drunk ponies, accidents, etc) sounds highly unwise, though. Nopony is supervising the partygoers access to this location except one old gardener.
Beside the public there are lots and lots of people who would have access, and here’s another consideration: The orrery. I think it’s the same orrery that Twilight’s flashback shows in Cutie Mark Chronicles which would put the entire amusement park on the other side of the wall that surrounds this garden.
They’re refugees from some other country that did (or still does) use lab mice. Or some villainous Equestrian corporation used lab mice for experiments, until they got shut down and most of them arrested.
Or, for something more creative and less dark: the lab mice were the ones running the labs. Mus musculus sapiens were, in their heyday, the most technologically advanced species in the world. But then something happened, and now it’s unlikely the remaining lab mice will ever achieve their former glory again. Maybe their tech depended on some finite resource that’s completely exhausted now. Maybe some world-shaking (Discord-related) change rendered most of their tech inoperable. Maybe the majority of their civilization uploaded their brains to a computer that flew away into space—and the few lab mice who balked at leaving their physical bodies behind weren’t enough to keep their old society operating. In any case, the remaining lab mice thought they couldn’t go back to surviving in the wild, so they appealed to ponykind for protection.
Incidentally, some of Equestria’s seemingly-advanced technology are actually reverse-engineered from lab mouse devices.
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So the Pony Earth, with its inexplicable ~1g gravity at the size of a dwarf planet, is actually a giant computer meant to answer the question of what is Life, The Universe, and Everything, and ponies are merely parts of a hyper-complicated computer program?
It makes a lot of sense, come to think of it.
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Equestria also seems to have more safeguards than Deep Thought's Earth, with an at least semi-sentient organic crystalline computer making new alterations as the math becomes clearer. This also serves as perhaps the most reasonable explanation yet for why the map sends the Mane Six to everything from impoverished nations to out-of-control food critics; it's working through a backlog of software patches.
Unbeknownst to everyone but the mice, Equestria is rapidly accelerating towards the Question. And this time, the experiment has the power to speed itself up.
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What happens when the Question is answered? Is the calculation process... destructive of the individual elements?
Maybe Tirek was actually a cron job that finally broke out of a programmers' sandbox. IE, Tartarus.
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Allow me to answer this question with a question: Who in their right mind would design a computer that self-destructs after it fulfills the first task you gave it?
In the theoretical event that a computer of the scale of Deep Thought's Earth were constructed, even if it were only designed to answer a singular question, any competent designer would make certain that it could answer other questions once the primary task was accomplished. Also, considering the sheer length of time needed to ask the Ultimate Question, it stands to reason that an organic matrix projected onto a terran framework would have utterly insane processing power on any simpler calculation.
In other words, once the initial purpose is fulfilled, it goes from being a computer dedicated to answering the Ultimate Question and becomes the source of a monopoly on wisdom and universal truth. Also, whatever console is used to detect readouts is probably nowhere near Equestria, so even an attempt to seize control of the ultimate computer wouldn't actually threaten our favorite ponies.
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I've seen just how many hard drives a modest serverfarm like the one my company operates consumes in the course of operation. It might be an inherent function of how the world-computer operates.
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It would be used to run universe simulations of course, producing an infinitely recursive loop of civilizations seeking to mathematically answer philosophical questions…
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Well, what else do you call the cycle of life of death? That's the brilliance of a planet-computer; it actively replaces obsolete components with minimal need for outside help. Imagine if those server farms had a healing factor, and you start to get close to an appropriate comparison point.
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Nested Magratheas...
Do they have sapience? Did Twilight Awaken them? If they ran off, did the spell ever wear off on its own, or did they live in the Everfree Forest until they could marry escaped Pinkie clones?
I wanna make some joke about mares, but I got nothing.
It's weird that the shyest pony seems to care almost as much about beauty and fashion as Rarity. Does she just do this to have stuff to talk about at the weekly spa trip? If so, that's why I always thought Rarity and Fluttershy are actually closer friends these days than Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy.
A day spa and a beauty salon aren't the same thing, though they can overlap a lot. I think Rarity did some beauty salon work in her boutique when it was first starting out for extra income, and now that her dresses are taking off she can leave that business to the spa.
Only Rarity cares about a male seeing a mare doing those gymnastics, apparently.
Well, it is a start, but then the immediate question of why Celestia doesn't let anypony else eat them comes up. Also, MyHobby just finished a fantastic story about Discord and Golden Apples that seems relevant here.
Sure, foreign royalty like the Maretonians might be there as well.
Someday we'll have to figure out how so much patriarchal cultural baggage could have survived 1,000 years under Celestia.
Probably used an innuendo instead.
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That's crazy talk Oliver. You're suggesting there's some sort of powerful magic afoot in the Canterlot Gardens, near the Golden Apple Tree, that somehow makes Fluttershy act more random and against her own nature in the episode before the S2 Opener? What possible source could that come from? A complete mystery!
Because at this point they know their job is to help tip the party into chaos at some point, if they want Celestia to hire them back next year.
Donuts are probably what Twilight lived off of until Spike learned to cook.
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4622593 It's a compromise, the stuffy Canterlot Elite and heads of the Civil Service get the Gala, and Celestia gets Chucklelot.
Alternatively, this idea that Celestia is really down to earth and hates ceremony has always been a stretch. Yes, she can be persuaded to dine at a small town brunch when the tables are loaded down with pastries, but this is still a mare that lives in a gold plated palace, wears fancy jewelry at all times and has an elaborate yearly celebration where she raises the sun while everyone cheers. I think Celestia actually enjoys the pomp and circumstance of her position quite a bit, she could have changed it over time if she really wanted to, even in the face of unified opposition from the Canterlot Elite. The Gala is the exception, because she has been doing the exact same thing for hundreds of years. I promise you if Queen Elizabeth had celebrated her 1160th Jubilee instead of her 60th Jubilee recently, she would have found it pretty boring.
Twilight's her star student - just like Sunset Shimmer was her sun student, and Applejack would've been her apple student. Just look at their cutie marks!
Her party cutie mark? Maybe?
Or maybe they know of Celestia's secret wish to mess up the Gala?
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No idea, ask Fluttershy.
There is a separate beauty salon establishment. Most notably observed in Crusaders Of The Lost Mark when Spoiled Rich exits it, but otherwise this salon has been there since Season 1. Moving around like the spa.
Notice Spike says “golden apple tree,” emphasis mine. Not a “golden apple.” Not enough apples.
Nobody censored the fairytales.
Actually, with my chronology the Gala is an early post-Discord event precisely for this sort of reason.
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…And Fluttershy would be her butterfly student?…
Would Rainbow Dash be a cloud student or a lightning student?
4623368 Huh... interesting timeline theory. But, I've seen several fanfics propose that all the Gala chaos was most of what Discord needed to break free, enabling the Crusaders' squabble to be the straw that broke the stone, and that tends to makes more sense to me.
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Reminds me of those magical stores that are never in the same place twice.
Oh I'm sure there aren't enough apples. But if its known that Celestia has a tree that even occasionally grants additional years, wouldn't she be besieged every 50 or 100 years when the Apple is ripening, with the grandchildren of wonderful elderly ponies, begging her to share just this one Apple with their sainted ancestor? "No, I need it or the sun stops moving and everybody dies" is a convincing counterargument, but I would still think Celestia would keep it a secret to avoid this.
I hope that means during Season 2 Celestia moved the statue far away from the palace then, or it would have been incredibly irresponsible to try and cause mass chaos right next to him.
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Well, that’s why Spike is an insider. He has an expected lifespan of comparable magnitude. :)
The show never elaborated where the statue was kept. I suspect it decorated that high security prison they kept Chrysalis in during FIENDship is Magic #5 for a while.
It's showing off you've got it memorized, even if this is how you cheat at it. That's how you 1. fill short-term memory for maximum recall chance and 2. prevent a cache-fail causing your eyes to refer to the text reflexively.
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"Narf."
4622939
daemons abound
I think she's read one too many fantasy romances, and, having still not truly taken advantage of Spike's connexions, still has no idea of how royalty works.
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consult the sorting hat. (well, the Wonderbolts have logo versions with and without cloud, right?)
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Remember: the theme song says “One of them’s a genius / the other’s insane...” but it never specifies which.