Aug
17th
2017
Points of Canon: S2x18 - A Friend in Deed · 9:01pm Aug 17th, 2017
Back to our irregularly scheduled!
- We don’t see ponies exercise much, but we particularly don’t see them do aerobics-style routines before or after the one Pinkie does. Or wear belts in this manner, for that matter.
- Pinkie exercising in the twins’ room in front of them requires this to happen after the events of Baby Cakes.
- Pinkie’s exercise routine includes adopting both happy and sad expressions, even though the sad one is not commonly seen. It does make me wonder if she is genuinely quite as happy as she looks all the time, though.
- Notice that not only Pinkie sits on conspicuously placed caltrops – these are not some random objects, they’re specialized for sticking up – but also, that she lands onto the plushies. Which would otherwise be in the toy chest, which is seen empty even before the pile of plushies Pinkie lands on comes into view. This had to have been deliberate, so Pinkie was essentially pranking herself to get a rise out of the children. Her “Nailed it!” also implies this to be the case.
- So roosters crow at sunrise. Actually, is this the first rooster we see so far?…
- “You here to pick up some cookies to go with your milk? … Well, Mrs. Cake just baked a fresh batch of your favorite oatmeal.” Cows appear to be economically active at least in some form, since she would be receiving cookies. At the same time, the cow would be consuming the cookies with the milk milked out of herself, which sounds pretty strange. What exactly is going on here? Is Pinkie just messing with us or some milking is actually supposed to happen?
- Rose tosses Pinkie a lily and Pinkie eats it. This is actually the only clear canon justification I remember for the common fanon that ponies eat flowers when they are offered any. Sounds a bit shakier than you’d think.
- Today is Cherilee’s birthday. So why is Pinkie apparently not involved with a birthday party for her?
- Yesterday was Zecora’s birthday. Did Zecora even celebrate it?
- Matilda’s birthday is in 132 days. Mind the off-by-one errors.
- Canterlot Friends are in town, but of course, they couldn’t miss the spontaneous parade, could they.
- A pony is tanning using a mirror. What purpose exactly would that serve remains unclear, but since there’s no clear sun lotion bottle nearby, maybe she does want to bleach her coat a bit.
- Ponies play jump rope. While jumping itself does not require bipedal stances, swinging the rope does. That said, most ponies do the jumping rearing up anyway.
- Notice that the rope continues swinging inexplicably once Pinkie runs off to deal with Apple Bloom. Nopony gives a damn about physics by this point. I hope for their sakes there’s a unicorn or two holding it in their magic and we’re just not seeing the glow.
- Also, for some strange reason, Sweetie Belle is watching but not jumping, Scootaloo is jumping, and Apple Bloom ended up alone with her own jump rope.
- Applejack is painting the barn. Notice that this is an action with no source nor consequence – we never saw it un-painted, since even in Apple Family Reunion it gets painted immediately after construction, and we never saw Pinkie’s graffiti again.
- The pony next to Mayor Mare has a gavel on her cutie mark, which is usually interpreted as her being the local judge. It’s our only glimpse of the judicial system of Equestria in primary canon so far. What I didn’t notice previously, is that they’re going towards the fan shop – the one that Mr. Breezy ran in The Show Stoppers.
- Notable cutie marks in this crowd include umbrellas – with hook handles, at that! – and rain boots with toes.
- One of the windows opens to reveal a unicorn mare paired up with an earth pony filly which shares no colors with her at all. Lots of possible interpretations here…
- Unlike bulls, Cranky pulls his cart the pony way – with that silly belt around the barrel.
- Cranky’s collection of stuff includes an electric fan – one of the few fans with a protective cage at that – a guitar, a telescope, books, a purple sewing machine, Hearth’s Warming tree decorations, a shower head, a brush, a telescope, a gramophone, a camera with electric flash, a tuba, a mirror, a strange spinning jester toy, a wind chime, and a few other objects I could not identify. Does he sew?… Much of this has to be souvenirs rather than particularly practical objects, but you’d think more packaging would be involved. Where did he keep all of that while traveling?
“‘Property of C.D.D.’ I’m guessing that last ‘D’ is for ‘Donkey.’” “Quick as a whip, kid.”
- Cranky’s reply implies that it’s common for donkeys to use a species specifier after their name.
- The use of the word “kid” for children is uncommon, but it does exist, and is readily understood. Just thought I’d point this out, since I saw fanon that “kid” only applies to baby goats in Equestria.
- “Calvin? Calhoun? Caleb? Carl? Carmine? Carlo? Charlie? Chester? Chico? Claudio? Cletus? Clifford? Coraline? Cornelius? Cortez? Crank? Christopher…?” Is Pinkie just messing with us, or those are all donkey names over there? Seeing how “Cranky” does not fit the pattern, the former is more likely, but where do those words as names come from in the first place?
- “So you’re a Cranky Doodle Donkey?” So an association between “Cranky Doodle Donkey” and “Yankee Doodle” exists for ponies, since Cranky dreads Pinkie discovering it and Pinkie immediately launches into a song based on this association. But does the word “Yankee” mean anything for ponies? There are multiple potential meanings to pick from and those that don’t refer to things ponies don’t have, like Americans, sound mostly derogatory. Is there some other unspoken associated-to word?
- Pinkie is probably the only pony beside Twilight caught using a checklist.
- “All I want is to get to my new home and unpack my stuff.” Notice that Cranky already owns a house in Ponyville, otherwise this would be impossible to do. Would this involve a prior appearance in town? Did Pinkie miss this appearance?
- “I promised not to touch your wagon, so I brought one of my own!” Pinkie owns other wagons. I don’t think the welcome wagon comes up again, though…
- Like many other things Pinkie sports, it’s a fully custom job with her cutie mark plastered on every side.
- One interesting feature of the wagon is a portable oven. I’m not sure how exactly would this be accomplished, but the sound it makes is a typical microwave oven bell… That would involve a magnetron, but I expect it’s probably something else, as typically you wouldn’t use a microwave for baking a cake – and confetti cannons wouldn’t liquefy a pre-baked cake.
- Pinkie is afraid of big spiders. Jumping on spiders in an attempt to stomp them dead is perfectly acceptable.
- Come to think of it, what is this flagpole doing here anyway?
- Rarity made Cranky’s new toupee. Notice that making a toupee is a pretty specialized skill. In any case, it would involve a supply of hair.
- Cranky’s house is notably different in design to just about any Ponyville house. It’s also surrounded by trees with yellowing leaves for no obvious reason. Which would imply autumn, even though the rest of the town is green as it usually is. Notice also the firewood stacked outside and a fireplace within.
- That Derpy in the Manehattan snowglobe is probably just passing through.
- Cranky is using a kerosene lamp, and this one is actually a plot point.
- Rainbow Dash is reading a Daring Do book in the library. The particular book she is reading is “Daring Do and the Griffon’s Goblet,” which is the second one. I’m not sure if this can be seen as a temporal clue, though, because at the conclusion of Read It and Weep, she started reading it while at home, presumably, after having checked it out – and now she’s back at the library with the book… It’s not unlikely that she just ended up in the library for some other, unrelated reason, and picked up the book for a second reading. In either case, this episode has to follow Read It and Weep.
- Twilight facebooks when attempting to facedesk, not a very common gesture with her.
- The spa and the beauty salon are back in their usual places again…
- So is the whole peak-climbing a visual gag or compressed time?
- We haven’t seen this particular bridge over a shallow stream before, I think. Also, the tree leaves in the shot with the bridge are the same as the ones around Cranky’s house.
- There’s a statue of Celestia in the middle of the town somewhere, and we never saw it before or afterwards. Presumably because it never existed – it had to have been Pinkie masquerading as a statue.
- Cranky’s anti-Pinkie defenses include the rather uncommon padlocks. One of his four locks is a combination padlock.
- Pinkie puts six hooves up, a trick she repeats later on.
- Pinkie’s birthday is in “75 days.” Which actually creates a chronology problem.
- One of the objects Pinkie identified in Cranky’s scrapbook is a menu from the Grand Galloping Gala, but notably, we haven’t seen any situations in which a menu would be involved during either gala.
- It’s rather strange that Cranky had to directly investigate multiple towns in his search of Matilda, when the Gala is a very exclusive event in the first place, and tracking down whoever gave away the tickets would be a surefire way to identify every guest. Were they both supposed to be there? Cranky had a ticket, but did Matilda have one too? Matilda’s statement does not make this entirely clear.
- Matilda has been living in Ponyville “the whole time,” which suggests she’s a Ponyville native.
- Pinkie ends the episode narrating a Lesson Zero-pattern letter to Celestia, but is not shown dictating or sending it, and does not refer to events as having happened today.
The chronology problem the episode introduces is like this:
- Pinkie’s birthday is in spring, as we know from Party of One.
- But even assuming it’s the first day of spring, which is itself kind of unlikely, would put this episode smack inside a winter, which is “three months of winter coolness” – or 90 days, not 75.
- Even assuming an unusually short winter this one time, despite Rainbow singing about this winter, and not some other one, we still end up with Party of One happening in Spring 1 and A Friend in Deed would become an Autumn 1 (Winter 1) episode.
- But that would require Read It And Weep to become an Autumn 1 episode, because Rainbow Dash is reading the second book, it would require the Baby Cakes to be born no later than Autumn 1, it would require an early Lesson Zero and otherwise squish the timeline to the size of a pea, when it’s already more than dense enough.
The alternative is to push A Friend in Deed much further forward, but it can’t go very far forward without bumping into Twilight’s wings.
Or we have to somehow mangle Pinkie’s statement.
Ideas?
P.S. Oh, right:
I don’t look where I prance…
Well. You know that I favor a lengthened chronology (either multiple years between Luna's return and Twilight's ascension, or Celestia extending the length of the year), and you just might've hit on proof for that.
Or... is there any possible way Pinkie could've had two birthdays?
Also, from the transcript, it seems to me that Cranky might've been annoyed at Pinkie in general, rather than dreading her discovering the pun in his name. If that's the case, then Pinkie's the only one punning on "Yankee Doodle," which means it doesn't need to bear any Equestria-specific meaning.
4638261
It’s possible for Pinkie to misspeak and mean “was 75 days ago” when she says “isn’t for another 75 days,” she does start this phrase with “I wasn’t born yesterday.” But actually, just about every option there is not very satisfactory because of all the accumulated constraints.
His facial expression is pretty clear, though.
Daisy Sandwiches establish that ponies eat flowers. Are you saying that without this, they would treat bouquets the way we do and just leave them in a vase until the flowers rot?
Pinkest pony rivalries are fierce, man.
More seriously, perhaps new-in-town welcoming ceremonies are even more important than birthday parties to Pinkie, and her Pinkie Sense told her she would welcome someone new to town today, so she helped set up Cheerilee's party yesterday.
It was on the brochure.
Wow, I just now realized ponies tanning would get lighter, not darker.
Given what later episodes have shown us about songs, I feel like this sequence of events didn't really happen, any more than Twilight and her friends didn't really all trot along a rainbow.
They're common changling names, perhaps Pinkie thinks Cranky is a changling.
Cranky has probably passed through town decades ago on his great quest. He could have bought a house site-unseen. Or perhaps Pinkie only welcomes new creatures when her Pinkie Sense tells her they are about to move to town, not just visit it.
Professor Turner has the right color, he could have sold some excess to Rarity in exchange for her making him a tux. Would also explain why Cranky would invite him to the wedding.
There are indeed a lot of logic problems here. Matilda is like the only female donkey who has always lived in the one town you have to pass through to get to Canterlot unless you are taking an airship. It's really hard to imagine Cranky spent 30 years and couldn't find her. Given the wide variety of souveniers of Crankys and the many friends of his at the wedding, my guess would be that while finding Matilda was Cranky's goal, in classical adventure fashion he spent most of the time getting sidetracked into wacky side plots that helped others but didn't help him. Sort of like why Hogan's Heros never escaped that prison camp.
I think we should assume this is year 2, relatively soon before Twilight gets her wings. It also shortens the time between when Cranky and Matilda meet and get married, which kind of makes sense to me (they want to savor the good years they have left as soon as possible).
4638282
But the whole argument for the one-year hypothesis is that the Summer Sun Celebration at the start of S4 is the first one since Luna's return. So, Year 2 would have to start after Twilight gets her wings.
4638288 That argument has always been weak anyway, and revolves around parsing Celestia's statements in extremely particular ways that don't really fit. People really only based that on a WoG tweet from the staff, not evidence from the show.
The one-year hypothesis is starting to run into the fact that we have 65 episodes worth of things that happened before it, some of which lasted for multiple weeks, and it's a huge leap to fit them all into a year while also fitting in all the "down time" required.
4638282
Not all flowers would have to be edible or tasty in the first place, for one.
Also notice that since most of them prance around nude, including out in the sun, they wouldn’t tan evenly during normal activity.
Possible – but it did take real time…
Changelings who were named in canon are named after body parts. (Thorax, Pharynx.) Kevin is a Twitter joke. :)
Possible, but according to him, it’s a “new home.”
The toupee Rarity made for him is blond. :)
Possible, even likely, but the big logic problem is why couldn’t he acquire the information immediately in the first place. My only take is that it wasn’t available – Either Matilda was there without a ticket somehow, or she was somebody’s “plus one” and thus her name was never recorded, since he couldn’t identify who was the owner of the actual ticket.
But that would put Pinkie’s birthday in late summer…
4638296
Well, we do know seasons are really asynchronous, what with Cloudsdale moving around. I know a 6 month or 18 month cycle of seasons sounds bizarre, but it might just be possible.
Also, "3 months of winter coldness" doesn't have to mean snow. Given Pegasi fine control of weather, maybe they only put in snow in February, and just have effectively a really cold fall for December and January?
This is the same song where Pinkie pulls herself out of a literal pit of despair. It's safe to say that not everything going on is actually happening as presented.
Given how Cranky's love is Matilda, the various C names seem like reasonable candidates for donkey names.
Pretty sure Pinkie's pulling it as she prepares to leave town in "Pinkie Pride."
As for the question of Pinkie's birthday, she did manage to forget it in "Party of One." It's possible that that's just her best estimate for when her birthday is.
4638282
Cranky may have inherited the house from a relative. He may have employed a real estate agent to purchase a home sight unseen.
On the subject of coats and tanning, we have seen ponies' coats fade into greytones when their magic is affected. I would argue that pony colors are magical in nature rather than strictly, well, natural. Perhaps suntanning allows them to absorb solar magic and keep their coats bright and on-tone?
4638300
It would also make every attempt to construct a coherent timeline pointless. Just say no to drugs. :)
And that would have other problems I described above: A Friend In Deed could happen in late “Autumn,” but its prerequisites would push more and more episodes into the already tight space.
4638304
So far my best idea is that she flipped the sign around. Well, the search continues. It looks like I won’t be able to make a coherent picture until I have PoC in all the way to Season 4…
4638305
Certainly not a bad idea by itself, but what would be the point of the lotion then?
4638305
Hopefully the latter. Otherwise it would be weird that the relative never mentioned this cute jenny living in town to Cranky.
4638306 See my above reply about all the holes we get from the one year hypothesis. We're reaching a tipping point of cramming more and more episodes into a limited amount of time in a single year, with associated interdependencies. Of seasons. We haven't even reached S3 yet!
All this balanced against Celestia's S4 Opener Speech:
Princess Celestia: I must admit that it is wonderful to actually be looking forward to the Summer Sun Celebration.
Princess Celestia: For my subjects, it has always been a celebration of my defeat of Nightmare Moon. But for me... [sighs] It was just a terrible reminder that I'd had to banish my own sister.
Princess Celestia: But now it has become a wonderful reminder of her transformation back into Princess Luna, and our happy reunion.
Somehow we all decided that "But now" doesn't mean that for the last 3 or 5 years or whatever Celestia has enjoyed the Summer Sun Celebration, but that this has to be the next one after the Series Pilot.
Theory: Matilda was some kind of totally cool spy, possibly working for SMILE, who for spy reasons had to be at the gala without being on record.
4638353
Or else she was just an employee or temp for that year's Gala.
4638295 4638343 Well, I agree with you there. But apparently Oliver doesn't.
(Maybe I should go write my fic expounding this theory, where the newly-crowned Princess Twilight argues with Celestia about the calendar...)
That flower Pinkie ate was a calla lily. I’m told those are poisonous in real life. Yet another example of ponies safely eating things that would kill them in our world.
4638417 That would be awesome! A fic setting out how the decided how many days should go in a season, how long a moon should last, etc.
4638353 I think that's more likely to be Mulia Mild.
4638444 It's Pinkie. She's eaten rocks before. Who knows what it'd do to any other pony?
4638450 Hmm... Check back with me in another week after the eclipse? If you'd be interested in bouncing ideas off (or you too, 4638306 , with your love for chronological nitpicks) I just might go for it!
4638343
You see, I distinctly remember not using the opener speech when making my decision to support the one year theory. Only, I forget which other arguments I used.
Which is why I’m not about to abandon it just yet.
4638866
Fair enough. Someday you'll do Points of Canon 4x01, and we can take another look then.
4638866
You cited “Tanks for the Memories”, IIRC.
4638985
That one introduces a different less-than-a-year rubber band, though…
This looks sufficiently visual in its notes that I should probably rewatch it.
pardon? A comment on broadcast dates being weeks (hence 133)?
Didn't you ctch RD doing it for the CMC, or was that just a clipboard?
Not strongly implied. Here "one of" is more "of the set of all wagons". I mean, it's not controversial, but…
Truly a scion of Granny "Pie" Loki, Pinkie Laufillysdottr.
And that's how Equestria was made!
4638282
Non-Newtonian fluid or a
waterfluid-walk spell. Mkes me wonder if water-trotting is an obscure pterippus party magic trick."quote]what would be the point of the lotion then?" Romantic comedy.
4639359
No, literally. There are two hard problems in computing:
If I say “my birthday is in X days,” do I mean that today is counted or not? Do I mean that the day of the birthday itself is counted or not?
Actually, yes, I did, thanks for reminding me.
4639454
Yeah, I do have some experience programming.. but you're supposed to number the list 0,1,2, aren't you?
So that's Twi, RD, Flutters, Pinkie now for lists? I believe we got up to all 6 for overt tailikinesis.
4639529
Can’t, with
[list]. Also, not in every language. For example, in Lua, the count starts with 1.Less for hoof-kinesis, surprisingly. Also, I don't think we caught Twilight using her hair yet...
4639546
Well, no, to get a "2" you have to start at 0… :v
I see that
[list=1]is a hardcoded thing. Not a real argument. Nor do we get quote-delimited[quote]s, which have advantages like linking sources…