Aug
7th
2017
Points of Canon: S2x07 - May the Best Pet Win · 8:53am Aug 7th, 2017
Our work is never over
Fluttershy is beast pony.
This episode is chronologically important, because it introduces Tank. As we know from Tanks for the Memories, Rainbow has never observed Tank hibernating for the winter and wasn’t even aware tortoises do that, which means that no winter season can come between these two episodes. As a result, it’s essential we know when it happens, if at all possible.
- This is one of those uncommon times when Rainbow is sleeping in a tree in a park. She typically prefers clouds.
- Notice that for Twilight, Owlowiscious counts as a pet, while Spike doesn’t, and didn’t even show up to play with them for the entire episode.
- According to Applejack, “Pony Pet Playdate” is a regular weekly activity, that has been going on for some time. We never heard of it before, or since, for that matter, not in those words.
- But wasn’t Owlowiscious nocturnal? That being the whole point of adopting him? Shouldn’t he be asleep during the day?
- Applejack uses her tail to play fetch with Winona.
- Fluttershy is extremely excited to potentially get rid of one of her critters.
- Fluttershy carries Angel cupping him in her tail.
- Among the animals that should be expected for the apparent geography, Fluttershy keeps a flamingo and a toucan. Seeing as how both can be found in North America if you look hard enough, it’s not that much of a stretch, but something to notice nonetheless.
- “Maybe not, but I’ve seen this particular seal catch ten feet of air when he breaches the water!” Where did Fluttershy get a chance to see that and how did a seal end up that far inland?
- Ladybugs, crickets, large butterflies, and solitary wasps are considered viable choices for a pet. I particularly question the wasp, to be honest. And not because of the poisonous sting either.
- There’s a goat among Fluttershy’s friends. See the question of goat sapience.
- Rainbow uses a pea whistle. Notably, this particular artifact has a known inventor in our world, and it was invented in 1883.
- “You call that flapping?!” Actually, butterflies use a completely different flapping pattern, they are essentially reactive air jets… Moving on.
- Rainbow engages in cloud shaping, which is something later seen in Wonderbolt exams in Top Bolt.
- Rainbow differentiates strictly between coolness, awesomeness and radicalness.
- This is the first time we see this particular track and field stadium, I think.
- So how is this owl staying in the air after losing most of the feathers?… Got to be a visual gag only.
- The obstacle course for agility involves pet-sized obstacles and had to have required special purpose construction.
- To participate in the guts test, Opal arrives in a pet carrier,
which is never used before or since, I think. Why would Rarity even have one?which Rarity only appears to use for that one trip to Canterlot she takes Opal with her on. - The butterfly isn’t just hypnotic for whatever reason, but can actually drag away a mouse weighing on the scale of 100 grams.
The style test involves Rainbow taking pictures with the pet candidates. While all of them are clearly staged and use backgrounds, so we don’t have to assume Rainbow is playing in the snow out of season, some are notable:
- Fencing with the hummingbird. How the hell is a hummingbird holding a sword remains unclear.
- Posing next to a stack of books with the owl. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Read It And Weep has to have happened already, because otherwise this would be too uncool for Rainbow to even consider.
- Curling with the eagle. Ponies play curling.
- When wearing the skis for a photo with the butterfly, Rainbow has both legs on one side strapped onto the ski.
- Rarity uses that camera with an obvious electric flash again.
- Those are some advanced animals, considering that the duck tapdances, the eagle knits, and the falcon plays card tricks… But the wasp demonstrating shadow puppetry with… something, that wasp is way over the top. And the bat playing the glass harp has bat-scale glasses which it subsequently destroys…
- “pause for dramatic effect…” Rainbow is actually very self-aware of what she is doing and why.
- That’s the first time we hear of the Ghastly Gorge. Notice that it’s on the other side of Everfree from Ponyville and getting there would involve a train ride.
- “Gesundheit.” Rainbow says this word twice. How exactly did this piece of German end up in pony lexicon remains entirely unexplained.
- The falcon is somehow able to continue flying with a stick stuck to the wing.
- So what do quarray eels eat? There can’t be a lot of wildlife flying past their nests.
- The way Rainbow moves after getting stuck under the stone suggests the part that is stuck is just a feather. Couldn’t she just sacrifice the affected one?…
- “Wahoo! My prayers have been answered!” Ponies have enough religious vocabulary to know what prayers are.
- Tank is ridiculously strong for a turtle if he can lift this boulder even a centimeter.
- “Great galloping galoshes!” Galoshes are a thing.
- Immediately upon completing the race, the still bandaged Rainbow tells Spike to take a letter, settling this conclusively as happening after Lesson Zero.
- Wait, where did she get a bandage?
- “He’s like a… like a… Tank!” The name is obviously given to reflect Tank’s tenacity. Ponies do have tanks, or at least know about the idea. And, well, we have Cheese Sandwich’s party tank…
- So who made the Tank-copter? It has an aura, and is obviously meant to run on magic, but the color of the aura doesn’t match that of the most obvious candidates.
- Magic-driven rotational motion is a thing and a practical option for long term flight at least in some circumstances.
Unfortunately, there’s little to date this episode, except the potential relationship to Read It And Weep, the explicit relationship to Lesson Zero and the fact that it has to happen before Magical Mystery Cure.
Rainbow actually has bones in at least some of her wing feathers, bizarre as it is. Seen here in her x-ray from “Read It and Weep”, and here when she gets electrocuted in “Newbie Dash”.
And ponies used galoshes all the way back in “Suited for Success”, as you noted already.
I suppose that's one way to interpret her enthusiasm.
Likely from wherever Photo Finish and Apple Strudel came from.
It does match Celestia's. Perhaps she sent the enchanted gizmo in answer to Dash's letter.
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Possible, and I did see this suggested a few times, but that would be basically the only example of Celestia ever actually making something.
Service animals don't get playdates. But seriously, this may be a minor chronology marker: This episode probably could not have happened between the time Spike got PeeWee and gave him back to his parents, otherwise Spike would have attended the playdate too.
They get up to a fair amount of activities between the episodes, I suppose.
So is Luna. Nocturnal creatures learn to get by to be social.
She hasn't yet figured out the trick of dumping them all on the vet yet.
May place this episode after the S3 opener, when Crystal Ponies could return and reintroduce curling to Equestria.
They have been hanging around Fluttershy long enough to suck up a ton of her special talent magic. Any magic that lets you talk to another creature that normally can't be talked to has to be on some level, giving the subject a sapiance boost so they can communicate.
Rainbow learned it from Fluttershy, who learned it from Photo Finish.
Pretty much every fantasy world I've ever seen has a really top-heavy ecological pyramid. At least here the dragons eat gems.
Some company builds relatively modern devices, and gets a unicorn enchantment to act as the battery power.
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It could be, but it’s unfortunately useless, at least at the moment: The only moments where PeeWee appears at all are Dragon Quest and the photos that only turn up in Just For Sidekicks, which reveal he has been gone for a while. Dragon Quest has no known hard constraints other than the Twilicorn endcaps, and for Just For Sidekicks this constraint would be redundant, since it is already outside the Twilicorn encaps. Since we don’t know how long did Spike keep the phoenix, all that gets us is that Dragon Quest can’t be the episode immediately prior to this one – but Spike could have given PeeWee back to the parents yesterday and it would still happen unchanged.
vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/7/7c/Spike_and_Peewee_bonding_photo_S03E11.png/revision/latest?cb=20130127101846
Although, here’s a question: Who took the picture on the left?
Interesting idea.
One will now have a dedicated caretaker matched to them, vastly increasing its utility. Her remainder will have more time allocated to them, fractionally-increasing theirs.
see: AJ's desired dress design.already noted.Supporting my earlier thought as to how you get a blender, food processor, etc.
Thsi fits with RD's generally-non-book-learning approach.
The ability to be
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Twi-Parent or Celestia.
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Read HP:MOR, did you?
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We have never seen Celestia with a camera or a Twilight parent in the vicinity of the library.
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…because they're always holding the cameras.
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For Celestia, Lemon Hearts should be holding the camera, that’s her job. :P