Points of Canon: S3x03 - Too Many Pinkie Pies

Notice how there’s never enough Pinkie Pies. It’s always either too many or insufficient.

• Twilight is practicing a transformation spell, and is calling it “a toughie.” Notice that the spell does not appear to care what is getting turned into an orange, just that it has an appropriate size – when Pinkie slams into Twilight, the spell bounces off multiple objects until it finally hits an object with a similar size, i.e. a bird. Later attempt turns the frog into a halfway-orange in pretty much the same way. The bird-turned-halfway-orange is still mysteriously able to fly, so the orange still has a nervous system. Also notice that nobody seems to worry about the bird, which implies that the spell is probably time-limited, and the bird is at most inconvenienced. Unless somepony decides to peel and eat it.
• Rarity has a new haircut to match her new dress, which is shorter than her usual one, but might involve a bun, because later in the episode she reverts to her habitual hairstyle. Notably, the dress includes no hints of a saddle whatsoever, and includes clearly separate shoes (for the hind legs) and elbow gloves (for the front legs.)
• As a side note, turning Pinkie into an orange at this time might have prevented the episode entirely.
• “This punk cloud got so heavy it’s making fog. Figure I’ll thin this bad boy out so it floats back up.” Clouds can, at least in some circumstances, be hygroscopic. Pegasi can manipulate the size of droplets in the cloud purely under their own magic. But notably, Pinkie does it before Rainbow gets a chance to do this. Also notice that when Pinkie is doing it, the cloud floats up bypassing Rainbow, who would, in most cases, end up floating up with it otherwise. Something particularly strange is going on here. This isn’t the only time when Pinkie displays abilities normally associated with pegasus magic, either.
• Apple Bloom is riding in a cart of apples that Applejack is pulling, for no observable reason. She very rarely does this.
• Fluttershy is drinking tea with Angel under a tree. Notice the complete absence of a picnic basket or a blanket or any food which usually accompanies such a scene – and the absence of any other animals which typically participate. Compare to the more typical guest list and picnic set later in the episode.
• “Thanks for letting me rest in your butterfly grove while I get my Pinkie strength back!” Actually, the place where this happens looks most like the Ponyville central park, and the fainting couch Pinkie is resting on is never explained. It’s not Rarity’s, at that.
• “It’s driving me even more coco-loco than usual!” Pinkie admits she is usually coco-loco. Also, more unexplained Spanish words.
• “Actually, what I meant is after I’m done whipping up today’s weather, I’ll be chilling by the lake catching some rays. Wanna hang?” Notice the use of the idioms. Also notice the potential implication that Rainbow is doing all the weather herself. (Probably not, she would just like everyone to think she is.) Also notice that this gives this episode a season lock: It’s either late spring or summer.
• “And my family’s havin’ a barn-raisin’ this afternoon at Sweet Apple Acres.” This is not the barn raising from Apple Family Reunion – but it might be the barn that Applejack is painting during the song montage in A Friend in Deed, which produces an unexpected chronology hint. In any case, just how many of those barns does Applejack even have?
• There’s a pond somewhere next to Hay and Clover – or whatever the name of that eatery is – which contains frogs and which we have never seen on screen otherwise. We don’t even see it on the wide shot that shows both Twilight and the tree her spell bounced off.
• Pinkie has a mechanical stopwatch. With very prominent tiny knobs for winding and timing.
• “I’m trying to cut down my time so if Rainbow Dash dives off the swing, I can get to Sweet Apple Acres to help with the barn raising, and then be back in time to see Rainbow Dash hit the water after doing a double flip! (sigh) If I can cut my time by only twenty minutes, I’m good.” This statement means that it typically takes ten minutes to go from there to here at a gallop, since Rainbow would not want to hover when diving, and would reach the water in a negligible amount of time – so all the time Pinkie needs to cut would be the actual time spent running. Horse gallop speed averages somewhere around 45 km/h. Ponies being so much smaller than a horse would probably top out at 30 km/h, which means that the lake where Rainbow is catching rays and diving is at least five kilometers away. See also the best-researched map of Ponyville that I’ve seen so far.
• Pinkie remembers the Legend of the Mirror Pool immediately when Twilight suggests the solution is to have more than one Pinkie, but Twilight is entirely unaware of such a legend.
• The forest Pinkie is navigating looks like Everfree, but is not named as such. The place where she exits it with her first clone is not the usual background seen when Everfree is referenced explicitly – that one has the remains of an ancient road, which is not in evidence. In any case, there remains a question of why would “Nana Pinkie” – whoever that is, because in most cases it would be a “Pie” and not a “Pinkie,” wouldn’t it? – tell Pinkie a Ponyville local legend back on the rock farm, which is quite far away. It’s definitely a Ponyville local story and a local phenomenon, because Pinkie makes multiple trips there during the day, and yet complains about her speed being limited.

• The full text of the extant Mirror Pool legend that Pinkie retells is this verse:

  Where the brambles are thickest, there you will find
  A pond beyond the most twisted of vines
  …
  And into her own reflection she stared,
  Yearning for one whose reflection she shared,
  And solemnly sweared not to be scared
  At the prospect of being doubly mared.

  It’s interesting that the cave literally starts in a hole in the ground, with no sign of the edges weathering.

• Even the first generation Pinkie clone does not appear to share Pinkie’s memory – she spends time educating her regarding who the Mane 5 are, and the clone rushes off in the wrong direction when looking for Sweet Apple Acres. Apparently the only reason why the whole watching paint dry sequence is necessary is that the real Pinkie is too depressed and unsure of herself to speak.
• “I’m thinking she can make us all matching t-shirts that say ‘Team Pinkie’, and…” Ponies call them t-shirts, and Rarity has been implicated in making shirt prints.
• Rainbow Dash is reading “Daring Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Statue” (or stone) – requiring Read It and Weep to have happened previously, and presumably, recently, otherwise she would have been reading a different book by now.
• The rubber duck float mysteriously remains horizontal around Pinkie when she gets out of the water. Notice also that she is using a mask with a snorkel. I don’t really see how this would go with the float.
• “We have plenty of hay juice and marmalade to go around, don’t we, critters?” Wait a minute. What the hay is “hay juice?!”
• “Who’s Applejohn?” See above regarding clone memory: Clones keep messing up the names for the rest of the episode.
• There is actually no way for a single camera to see three different reflections of Pinkie in the three-section mirror Rainbow is sunning with.
• “Duplicates of you, huh? Heh, yeah, sure, Pinkie.” Notice, though, that no suspicion of changelings possibly being involved ever comes up, Rainbow just dismisses the story as crazy talk. She ignores the possibility even when she actually sees two Pinkies.
• Pinkie is able to suppress splashing when diving from a swing. Even Rainbow wonders how did she do that.
• Notice that at the second duplication, one second generation clone, but two first generation clones exist – since both Pinkies duplicate themselves. But on the third duplication, all three extant clones duplicate themselves, but the original Pinkie does not, which results in an 1-2-3-1 generation pattern. The fourth duplication, respectively, should produce an 1-2-5-4-1 pattern, for a total of 13 Pinkies, but the next shot includes 15. Where did two more come from is never explained. Pinkie’s exclamation “What in the name of pink?!” is particularly appropriate, since she apparently managed to wreck mathematics, too.
• The barn raising scene includes two extra ponies not seen particularly often. One is a known Apple – Apple Fritter. The other is a guy with a guitar for cutie mark, Meadow Song. While he does appear in the Apple Family Reunion, he is not in the group family photos, so I presume he’s Apple Fritter’s boyfriend, or something…
• Even then, there’s Apple Fritter in one shot, but in the next one she is mysteriously swapped for Jonagold. Huh?…
• Canterlot Friends are in the crowd surrounding the library. Guess they were attracted by the mess of Pinkies. At the same time, I do wonder why the crowd is addressing Twilight, of all ponies, and not, say, trying to round up all the Pinkies. One other interesting pony in this crowd is Fancy Pants, who is, for some reason, wearing a bowler hat today.
• The library shelves have a secret compartment which contains a book which mentions the “Legend of the Mirror Pond.” Notice the use of the word “pond” rather than “pool” this time. Why would this be a hidden book is never explained. It’s quite serendipitous for Spike to stumble on it so readily, but the compartment is so dusty that it’s clear that it has not been opened for a really long time.
• By the time the “I’m the real Pinkie” sequence starts, the number of Pinkies on screen reaches 25, so more copying had to have been going on.
• Carrot Top is waving across the street to a pony who looks like Noteworthy from a window. What in particular she’s doing in this house, instead of her farm, is never explained.
• “Hey! What if you gave them a test? Pick something really hard for a Pinkie to do, something not fun at all! Any Pinkie that can’t do it goes back into the pond. But whoever wants to stay the most, that must be the real Pinkie!” Basically the whole mess is Pinkie’s idea, and given some more time, it’s probable that Twilight would figure out that clones do not have Pinkie’s memories, and can be interrogated.
• “Fluttershy spoke with the woodland critters, and they’ve agreed to take us into their home ’til the Pinkie storm dies down.” Notice that the woodland critters have a wood stove in their “home,” in addition to a picture hanging on a nail and a jar of something on a shelf – which I suspect is probably Fluttershy’s early attempt to make a natural shelter of the kind she later builds in Fluttershy Leans In. There’s a tortoise among them, but we don’t have any clear indications if this is Tank or not.
• When Twilight yells “Sit down!” the number of Pinkies in the hall is still around 25. If Pinkies were all duplicating, this leaves a substantial amount of them unaccounted for even if there was only one duplication not shown. Later shots, however, seem to include on the scale of 45 Pinkies.
• “Watching paint dry” is an idiom for ponies, too. Notice, however, that Twilight never explains what is the criteria for failing to the assembled Pinkies. Nevertheless, Spike has the time to eat an entire box of popcorn before the first clone breaks down.
• Rainbow checks a wristwatch – on her left foreleg, which is consistent with Party of One, so she’s still right-hoofed. It’s an actual wristwatch, this time, though.
• “Is that… is that a frog crossed with an orange?” The same frog that got turned into an orange earlier in the day, which means that the spell remains active for at least a few hours.
• Notice that Twilight dismisses both the Pinkies breaking the peace and the Pinkies reacting to breach of peace. You’d think avoiding false positives would be a concern…
• Pinkie finishes the episode with a Lesson Zero pattern letter to Celestia, but while she is dictating it to Spike in real time, she is not referring to the events of the episode as having happened today, and there’s an obvious cut between the dictation scene and the rest of the episode. The montage during the narration, likewise, includes Pinkie sequentially participating in all the activities she missed out on, which would require multiple days. While the episode ends with Twilight coming by with “We were thinking we should go out and celebrate,” it implies, but does not require this offer to refer to the Pinkie Paint Test at all.
• One particular activity she is participating in is sealing the entrance to the Mirror Pool with a stone that Big Mac hauls in on a cart and Twilight magics into place.
• “Or I could take everypony on a cloud ride!” Actually, wait, Rainbow. How exactly would you do that?

There’s a chronology problem with this episode: On one hand, ponies seeing a large amount of Pinkies who had any experience with changelings would have to suspect changelings, and we know at least a few of those present in the crowd around the library do have firsthoof experience with changelings. This would result in panic that is not in evidence. On the other hand, Twilight which has any experience with mirror pool clones would have to suspect the replacement Cadance of being such. As a result, this episode can’t really happen before A Canterlot Wedding – and it can’t happen after, either.

Which means that some of our assumptions are potentially incorrect, but I wonder which ones.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Presumably, Nana Pinkie is Pinkie's other grandmother. (I would guess the maternal one, given there's some degree of nominal continuity with Igneous Rock Pie.)

Rainbow Dash is reading “Daring Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Statue” (or stone) – requiring Read It and Weep to have happened previously, and presumably, recently, otherwise she would have been reading a different book by now.

Rereading is certainly a possibility, especially given how Dash seems to have the text memorized by "Stranger than Fan Fiction."

“Or I could take everypony on a cloud ride!” Actually, wait, Rainbow. How exactly would you do that?

Twilight casts a cloudwalking spell first?

As for the chronology issue, Twilight might discount the possibility of a cloned Cadence on the basis that Chrysalis acted completely unlike Cadence rather than as a thin caricature of her. The Pinkies weren't evil, just thoughtlessly destructive. Also, the Mirror Pool was sealed away and obscure to begin with, so there'd be the question of how and why Cadence went into the possibly-Everfree, unearthed the boulder, recited an incantation that only Pinkie appeared to know, and then left her malicious clone to marry Shining Armor.

[Oliver]

4669116

Presumably, Nana Pinkie is Pinkie’s other grandmother. (I would guess the maternal one, given there’s some degree of nominal continuity with Igneous Rock Pie.)

Sure, the question is, however, why would she be telling her a legend about Ponyville-local phenomena.

Rereading is certainly a possibility, especially given how Dash seems to have the text memorized by “Stranger than Fan Fiction.”

Yes. However, consider that at the time of Read it and Weep, sixteen volumes exist. Assuming some of them are different printing or otherwise duplicates would still leave at least ten. If Rainbow is rereading them, the chance of reading the first one again would be something like 1 out of 10, i.e. she would be far more likely to be reading a different one.

Twilight casts a cloudwalking spell first?

Which is why I’m asking how exactly: Is she presuming Twilight will be ready and willing to cast cloudwalking spells for everypony else or does she have some other method of getting the same result?

As for the chronology issue, Twilight might discount the possibility of a cloned Cadence on the basis that Chrysalis acted completely unlike Cadence rather than as a thin caricature of her. The Pinkies weren’t evil, just thoughtlessly destructive.

“Cadance” didn’t remember Twilight, though, just like clone Pinkies had problems remembering everypony’s names.

Also, the Mirror Pool was sealed away and obscure to begin with, so there’d be the question of how and why Cadence went into the possibly-Everfree, unearthed the boulder, recited an incantation that only Pinkie appeared to know, and then left her malicious clone to marry Shining Armor.

There was a book in a hidden compartment in a shelf, though, which even included a spell for cleaning up the mess…

[Mitch H]

4669118

Presumably, Nana Pinkie is Pinkie’s other grandmother. (I would guess the maternal one, given there’s some degree of nominal continuity with Igneous Rock Pie.)

Sure, the question is, however, why would she be telling her a legend about Ponyville-local phenomena.

Presumably this would be Pink Cherry Bread, Cup Cake's mother's sister. Generally known to her friends as Pinkie, and to her grand-daughters as Nana Pinkie. Nana Pinkie is a half-generation younger than Granny Smith and a sort-of-contemporary; she had some adventures in her day until she ended up moving out to Rock Valley to be nearer her grand-daughters.

I've said elsewhere that the prevalence of multiple copies in Ponyville can be Watsonically explained by endemic abuse of the mirror pool, albeit in a more controlled and regimented fashion than what Pinkie did. Earth ponies throughout Ponyville and her back-country had at one time workshops full of their clones being productive for the 'family'. Pinkie is something of a transplant, after all, and didn't have a proper grounding in all the proper ritual to keep the pool-clone from going out of control.

Now that Twilight has sealed off the mirror pool, the various clones of Ponyville ponies have begun spreading out from their origins, and are scattered all over Equestria, avoiding their primes, who tend to consider them cheap labor and have a ritual-derived level of control over their actions when they're within domination range.

“And my family’s havin’ a barn-raisin’ this afternoon at Sweet Apple Acres.” This is not the barn raising from Apple Family Reunion – but it might be the barn that Applejack is painting during the song montage in A Friend in Deed, which produces an unexpected chronology hint. In any case, just how many of those barns does Applejack even have?

That map you came up with indicates that Sweet Apple Acres dominates the whole of the southern arc of Ponyville's back-country, and the 'East Orchard' is distinct, distant, and separate from the 'West Orchard' around the main Apple compound. I could easily see an operation like this having multiple working barns; more easily than I can see a family of two adults, one juvenile, and an impaired elder running this monstrosity of an agribusiness by themselves.

Did Big Mac have his own workshed full of Mac clones hidden somewhere in the East Orchard?

[Meta Four]

One other interesting pony in this crowd is Fancy Pants, who is, for some reason, wearing a bowler hat today.

Rarity is showing off a new dress, and Fancy Pants just happens to be in town. I suspect these events are related.

[Cursed Quill]

And solemnly sweared not to be scared
At the prospect of being doubly mared.

Gender-specific duplicator, or just the typical s/man/mare/ that earlier ponyisms did, inverting the half-presumption?

also, swore.

Rainbow Dash is reading “Daring Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Statue” (or stone) – requiring Read It and Weep to have happened previously, and presumably, recently, otherwise she would have been reading a different book by now.

Or distantly, and she's gotten around to going back through, or she's going back through because the first three were more awesome…

Rainbow checks a wristwatch – on her left foreleg, which is consistent with Party of One, so she’s still right-hoofed. It’s an actual wristwatch, this time, though.

Only mild implication, not necessary. I wore a watch on my dominant wrist.

. You’d think avoiding false positives would be a concern…

Good chunk of 'fics on that one.

“Or I could take everypony on a cloud ride!” Actually, wait, Rainbow. How exactly would you do that?

By having this episode after Best Young Fliers competition, so Twi is known to know cloudwalk? Or she noticed Pinkie being cloud-solid earlier and infers something's off with the weather today…

[Shrink Laureate]

4669133

I've said elsewhere that the prevalence of multiple copies in Ponyville can be Watsonically explained by endemic abuse of the mirror pool, albeit in a more controlled and regimented fashion than what Pinkie did. Earth ponies throughout Ponyville and her back-country had at one time workshops full of their clones being productive for the 'family'. [...] the various clones of Ponyville ponies have begun spreading out from their origins, and are scattered all over Equestria, avoiding their primes, who tend to consider them cheap labor and have a ritual-derived level of control over their actions when they're within domination range.

Wow. And I thought this episode was creepy enough already.

[howard035]

Oh, this one again.

Pinkie does it before Rainbow gets a chance to do this. 

Given the tiny size of the cloud, couldn't this be accomplished by pure physical force? Pinkie stomping out enough water that the result is less dense than air and begins rising?

“Thanks for letting me rest in your butterfly grove while I get my Pinkie strength back!”

Perhaps the "grove" just refers to the cloud of butterflies themselves, wherever Fluttershy directs them.

Also, more unexplained Spanish words.

I think you mean Southern Equestrian.

In any case, just how many of those barns does Applejack even have?

Agree with 4669133 here, given the immense size of the Acres we see, the would need like half a dozen barns to store produce at any given time. Plus wherever the tenants live.

There’s a pond somewhere next to Hay and Clover – or whatever the name of that eatery is – which contains frogs and which we have never seen on screen otherwise.

Probably this is where Fluttershy was transporting frogs from to Froggy Bottom Bog.

See also the best-researched map of Ponyville that I’ve seen so far.

It's got the Everfree and Canterlot on the same side of Ponyville!

“Nana Pinkie” – whoever that is, because in most cases it would be a “Pie” and not a “Pinkie,” wouldn’t it?

Gotta agree with Mitch again, this suggests Pinkie's grandma came from Ponyville, explaining why she came here from the Rock Farm. Cakes relationship also seems extremely likely (that or Mayor Mare (or both)).

And solemnly sweared not to be scared

Rather interesting that the same Grandma that taught her this legend also taught her to giggle at the ghosties.

Rarity has been implicating in making shirt prints.

Rarity you sellout!

• “Who’s Applejohn?” See above regarding clone memory: Clones keep messing up the names for the rest of the episode.

Clones seem to be a lot like new-borns.

Notice, though, that no suspicion of changelings possibly being involved ever comes up, Rainbow just dismisses the story as crazy talk. She ignores the possibility even when she actually sees two Pinkies.

Between this and Rainbow still being on the first Daring Do, I think this should be set pre-Canterlot Wedding.
4669116 has it on balance, a single weird version of Cadance in Canterlot after the Mirror Pool has been sealed off, especially when she acts all sneaky and cunning rather than just jumping around shouting "Love" over and over, seems less likely for Twilight to think "mirror pool clone" than for Rainbow 'Are You a Spy' Dash, who dreams about fighting changlings in her sleep, not to immediately guess the extra Pinkies are changlings.

Why would this be a hidden book is never explained.

That bugged me for a long time. How much trouble does it have to be to create a hidden compartment in a magical living tree? Probably a lot.

What in particular she’s doing in this house, instead of her farm, is never explained.

This is part of why I've seen in a few stories Carrot has sold her farm to the Apples by now and lives in town instead.

Basically the whole mess is Pinkie’s idea, and given some more time, it’s probable that Twilight would figure out that clones do not have Pinkie’s memories, and can be interrogated.

They had the time! If Applejack could herd 25 Pinkies into Town Hall, she could herd them out to an empty field somewhere. It's not like they were eating anyone.

I suspect is probably Fluttershy’s early attempt to make a natural shelter of the kind she later builds in Fluttershy Leans In.

As much as I like the idea of Harry going full Winnie-the-Pooh and having his own house, this does make more sense. Also interesting that in the early stages Fluttershy's shelter would actually be a bit more like what the "experts" recommended, i.e. a tastefully furnished building.

You’d think avoiding false positives would be a concern.

This is a good point. Perhaps the spell would be harmless to the real Pinkie, but Twilight can't just fire off the spell rapidly 45 times, and the paint drying thing is just an excuse to get the clones to sit still long enough that she can rest for a minute between casts.

To this day this episode bothers me more than any other. For 90% of the episode I was sure this was an homage to Multiplicity, and I was convinced it would end in a similar fashion, with the extra Pinkies wandering off into the sunset. At least one escaped to Manehatten.

4669133

I've said elsewhere that the prevalence of multiple copies in Ponyville can be Watsonically explained by endemic abuse of the mirror pool, albeit in a more controlled and regimented fashion than what Pinkie did. 

I guess this means Cup Cake IV wasn't the only one who got sent out on dangerous missions, she's just the only one who made it back?

[Reese]

I think that this would be before the wedding.
The limit on having it after is based on a number of different ponies not making the assumption of changelings, and it would probably take only one to make it and then transmit it. The behavior of the Pinkie clones here is not the same as the behavior of the changelings during the wedding, but changelings are known to be infiltrators who might be trying some sneaky plan.
By contrast, the limit on having it before the wedding is only based on one pony making an assumption. Twilight still could have thought "Cadence" was a pool clone, but the probability seems to me to be lower. Furthermore, "Cadence" doesn't seem to be acting like a pool clone; her behaviors aren't what Twilight was expecting, but they're more complex than the clones' she saw, I think (and there's only one of them), and there's the question of how and why a mirror pool clone with whatever harsh motivation she had would be there. It may have been one of a number of possibilities Twilight was considering, but I don't see her immediately jumping to it as her leading hypothesis.

[Mitch H]

4669514

I guess this means Cup Cake IV wasn't the only one who got sent out on dangerous missions, she's just the only one who made it back?

Oh, man, that's evil. I'm glad you didn't plant that idea in my head before I wrapped up that story, it was dark enough as is.

[howard035]

4669525 I'm just glad your Company never got their hooves on a Mirror Pool.

[Oliver]

4669421

also, swore.

Well, it tells you something about “Nana Pinkie,” doesn’t it?

4669514

Given the tiny size of the cloud, couldn’t this be accomplished by pure physical force? Pinkie stomping out enough water that the result is less dense than air and begins rising?

Nope. Try it with a humidifier, you’ll see it doesn’t work. :)

I think you mean Southern Equestrian.

I don’t think the language is called “Southern Equish” in any case.

It’s got the Everfree and Canterlot on the same side of Ponyville!

And this would be impossible why?

Between this and Rainbow still being on the first Daring Do, I think this should be set pre-Canterlot Wedding.

Only, I’m pretty sure that Read It And Weep goes after the wedding…

That bugged me for a long time. How much trouble does it have to be to create a hidden compartment in a magical living tree? Probably a lot.

It’s easier than getting all that hardware to the basement. :)

They had the time! If Applejack could herd 25 Pinkies into Town Hall, she could herd them out to an empty field somewhere. It’s not like they were eating anyone.

Oh, of course. Only, Pinkie came up with her test idea sooner, and Twilight decided it was good enough.

Also interesting that in the early stages Fluttershy’s shelter would actually be a bit more like what the “experts” recommended, i.e. a tastefully furnished building.

I think she abandoned this approach after someone got eaten in the morning by mistake.

Perhaps the spell would be harmless to the real Pinkie, but Twilight can’t just fire off the spell rapidly 45 times, and the paint drying thing is just an excuse to get the clones to sit still long enough that she can rest for a minute between casts.

Twilight pretty explicitly tells Spike otherwise, though, well before the test procedure is established.

[howard035]

4670061

I don’t think the language is called “Southern Equish” in any case.

"Southern Equish" should refer to the Apple Family and their Countryisms.

And this would be impossible why?

The Everfree is enormous, and on every map we have it stretches across vast swathes of Equestria. Canterhorn is also pretty enormous. On every map we've ever seen Ponyville is always directly between the two.

Only, I’m pretty sure that Read It And Weep goes after the wedding…

You are? I just reviewed the blog for that and didn't find any chronology locks other than post Lesson Zero.

It’s easier than getting all that hardware to the basement. :)

Oh Gosh, how many roots did Twilight hack apart when she was moving her scientific equipment down there?

I think she abandoned this approach after someone got eaten in the morning by mistake.

Harry's sorry, but if Mr. Mouse is going to sleep in the breakfast drawer, it was on his head.

Twilight pretty explicitly tells Spike otherwise, though, well before the test procedure is established.

Yeah, it really feels like Twilight is panicking and carrying the idiot ball here.

[Oliver]

4670188

The Everfree is enormous, and on every map we have it stretches across vast swathes of Equestria. Canterhorn is also pretty enormous. On every map we’ve ever seen Ponyville is always directly between the two.

No it isn’t. A reservoir is directly between the two on the latest map – Canterlot is northeast, Everfree is southeast, and the Friendship Castle is northwest from the main body of Ponyville.

[howard035]

4670324 Shoot, I mixed up the Everfree and White Tail. Though I'd say the Everfree is more South than Southeast, East is Diamond Dog territory, but that's just quibbling.