Points of Canon: S3x11-12 - Just for Sidekicks / Games Ponies Play

This is in essence a two-parter, because it describes two sets of events happening simultaneously, so I’ll deal with it in bulk.

Just for Sidekicks

• We see that sequence of photos that’s obviously meant to show us what happened to Peewee, which includes Spike trying to feed the bird icecream, and a strange photograph with Twilight with a bowl on her head and Spike. Who took this one? Twilight could, in theory, but then her horn would be glowing. It terminates with the scene of returning Peewee to the parents – presumably the same ones – and is a chronology marker.
• “Spike is great…making a jewel cake…” Spike’s recipe book contains a clearly presented script that does not appear much of anywhere else. It does not resemble any alphabet I’m aware of. The number of letters at the top of the page does match “Jewel cake,” but “e” would have to be represented with three different distinct glyphs.
• It is pretty odd that recipes for jewel cakes even exist, unless earth ponies can eat gems the same way the Pie family eats rocks. Most gems are harder than your average rock, though…
• “Been saving up my gems so fine… for a cake that is divine…” Notice the word “divine” appears rather often – at least 15 episodes! – and it is always a superlative qualifier, never anything else.
• Owlowiscious is smart enough to show Spike a spoon so that Spike would see his own reflection. This is quite sapient.
• Spike is mildly upset about not being taken to the Crystal Empire. Actually, why isn’t he? He’s a celebrated hero over there.
• “All I have is this jewel.” Just how exactly did Fluttershy come by this jewel, anyway? Also, she comes off as very manipulative in this scene…

• “So while I’m gone, you’ll take care of Angel, and tomorrow is Tuesday, which is his tail-fluffing day, and it’s really important for him to look good.”

  • The episode starts on a Monday, while the trip to the Crystal Empire happens during Tuesday. Since the CMC participate in it, either they’re skipping school or school’s out.
  • The rationale for a “tail-fluffing day” escapes me.
• Tank’s control over his flight is rather marginal.
• All of the Mane 6 – except Rarity – seem to keep gems on hand, since they hand them over to Spike immediately.
• “Yes, yes, more importantly, as for Opal, she likes to eat every thirty six and a half minutes, you groom her with her silken brush, head to toe…” Not only 36.5 minutes is oddly specific, it’s also way too often for a healthy cat.
• “And the temperature in the room should always be exactly eighty one point four degrees.” Fahrenheit. Which translates to ~27.4°C, and is actually quite hot – unless ponies use a completely unknown temperature scale.
• Rarity is trying on a saddle – as far as I can tell, she tried tightening this particular saddle on Twilight all the way back in Friendship is Magic. She doesn’t wear it for her Crystal Empire trip and cannibalizes a gem for Spike’s payment. I believe that’s exactly the moment when Rarity decided saddles are no longer in fashion and won’t be in the foreseeable future.
• Once again, Spike uses his tail as an extra limb – to carry the mixing bowl with the gems.
• Pinkie is capable of hiding between armchair cushions, not that this is much of a surprise.
• “He’s always wanted a pair of riding pants?” Ponies exceedingly rarely wear pants, but Pinkie owns a pair. Also, what are “riding pants” for ponies anyway?
• If Pinkie is to be believed, she coats Gummy’s toenails with shellac and flosses him at least once a day. That’s rather a lot of care.
• “It’s a chilly eighty one point two in here.” That’s actually quite hot for a room that has a door open, and, unless ponies use an unknown scale, implies it has to be a summer.
• The CMC are in their clubhouse playing with the escaped Angel, which is a hard chronology lock.
• “We’re getting our skydiving cutie marks today!” Oh, so that’s where that poster with ponies parachuting out of an airship came from! I originally noticed it in Wonderbolts Academy Handbook, and this here is the earliest show instance of ponies using parachutes.
• They all sport differently colored parachutes. I hope for their families’ sakes they’re rented, parachutes get expensive. That said, these parachutes get abandoned rather abruptly…
• “We need to be able to buy them some things! One jewel might be able to cover it all.” That’s a rare price gauge on a jewel: A jewel is sufficient to purchase a certain number of accessories for six individual pets. Either jewels are a bit expensive – $100 range rather than a $20 range – or pet accessories are cheap.
• In any case, one tiny jewel was sufficient to purchase or rent – I hope it’s rent – an industrial sized pet hair dryer. Which is very obviously a powered device.
• Big Mac is hanging out with Cheerilee. Shame they shipped him off to Sugar Belle later.
• Screwy is not hospitalized this time, although she is in the company of a nurse.
• A filly guide is collecting donations for causes unspecified. Notice the lock on the donation box. Notice that Zecora’s statement that donating a jewel will improve Spike’s situation does not pan out.
• Granny Smith extorting Spike is probably the oddest thing about this episode.
• “No chaperone, no train.” See the animal / person distinction problem. Evidently, those who are considered animals do not get to ride the train unsupervised, so at least cows are not animals.
• “All aboard for the Crystal Empire!” “Next stop, the Crystal Empire!” Notice that there’s a direct express train route between Ponyville and the Crystal Empire. It comes up multiple times afterwards.
• “I wish I were dressed for it, but still…” Funny, how rarely we see Sweetie Belle dressed.
• This is a rare occasion where we see a sleeping car with four-person compartments in it. And Pony/Donut Joe is apparently engaged in selling donuts on this line.
• Spike is ticklish. The mechanics escape me entirely.
• By the time Spike and the CMC arrive, they see the Mane 6 passing by on the platform, about to board the train.
• The train station has a compass direction marker, identifying the directions as readable N-W-S-E.
• Minuette is here too. So is Twinkleshine, who is, in fact, standing right in front of Twilight in the crowd of ponies boarding the train. And Carrot Top is hugging Written Script.
• “How did you know about the snow globes?” Considering the amount of ponyvillains going back and forth, all Sweetie had to say was to claim that she heard ponies talking about when they were disembarking the previous train from the Empire. In any case – there were only two snowglobes seen in the series that I remember, Crystal Empire and Manehattan, in A Friend In Deed. You’d think this sort of cute kitsch would be more popular.
• “Ooh, six-layer gem cake sounds pretty good!” So why does it sound good to Twilight?…

Games Ponies Play

• Notice that while the conductor requests tickets from ponies boarding the train, he took Spike’s gem directly.
• “Princess Cadance said she’d never seen the Crystal Ponies so excited.” Which makes me suspect the tradition of Equestria Games predates Sombra.
• “They’re up for the Equestria Games. It’s only the biggest sporting event in all of Equestria.” So it is.

• “Didn’t Cloudsdale host the Equestria Games one year?”

  • So it’s a yearly event, is it? This would require less than a year to have passed since the Crystal Empire returned.
  • I find it strange that Cloudsdale has never hosted Equestria Games if it’s a 1000-year old tradition.
• In the flashback, filly Rainbow Dash is standing on the back of a stallion who is suspiciously like her dad, but most emphatically not him, colloquially called Rainbow Blaze. I expect he’s got to be her uncle – and this is one of the few times he appears.
• Among the numerous artifacts the crystal ponies use to clean the Crystal Empire is a crystal vacuum cleaner. Either they have adopted the technology so quickly that they can now produce vacuum cleaners locally, or they had it a thousand years ago. Either option implies that the Empire is freakishly technologically advanced. Later artifacts make it clear that the vacuum cleaner is not imported technology, more on that below.
• That’s the only other time we see the griffon statues in front of the library, I think. This time, we see them from the back.
• Twilight picks up the entire Mane 5 to get them away from the foal Rainbow is terrorizing. That’s like half a metric ton worth of ponies.
• Several of the clients in the hair salon are crystal ponies in their non-crystal state, even though almost all other crystal ponies seen in this episode are in the crystal state.
• “That over there is a crystal mud bath, which relaxes your body and rejuvenates your coat.” This would only work on Cadance and the Mane 6 if crystal ponies were not substantially physiologically different from regular ponies.
• Twilight wordlessly repeating the gesture of putting a hoof on her chest and extending it while breathing out that Cadance demonstrates has to be something she learned from Cadance while she was foalsitting her.
• “Go ahead, have a good time while I get my ceremonial headdress done.” Likewise, this would not work on Cadance if the crystal ponies had any particularly special kind of hair. The differences in phenotype observed are primarily cosmetic.
• “When meeting with important guests, it was tradition for rulers of the Crystal Empire to weave crystals into their manes in a very specific way.” The hair salon contains stationary heavy duty hair dryers, presumably powered. These could, conceivably, be new, even though they’re crystal too, so they would be locally manufactured. However, in multiple shots, theres a handheld tool to “weave crystals” into the royal mane “in a very specific way”, and it’s a powered handheld drill-like device. We know that’s what it is for, because it is getting used. The hyper-complicated recipe to weave the crystals into royal manes would preclude the use of imported modern equipment, it would specify exact methods, since even minuscule deviations from the instructions produce catastrophic results, as Rarity later attests. Therefore, this drill – and probably the vacuum cleaner and the hair dryers– has to be over a thousand years old.
• The uniformed lady is pretty strange. We never see this uniform anywhere else, and she has decorative wings on her shoes, indicating she’s probably a messenger. Is she a mail pony? If she is, that’s yet another mail pony uniform. If she isn’t, what is she supposed to be?
• “Everypony, just be on the look out for the pony with the flower print luggage.” None of the Mane 6 nor Shining or Cadance have met Harshwhinny before, but I wonder why, whoever wrote that note, chose luggage as an identifying trait, instead of coat and mane color.
• Minuette arrives on the same train with Peachbottom. Nopony cares.
• “Why, I’ve seen pictures, but I never expected to see it with my very own eyes!” Pictures of the interior of the castle were publicly released at some point.
• “We’d like to thank you for this opportunity to introduce you to this wonderful kingdom!” Crystal Empire is a kingdom. See my notions on the term “empire” in Equish.
• Peachbottom whistles using her hoof. This is not something commonly seen and very rare in primary canon, but yes, it does happen.
• “I have traveled far and wide, but I have never, ever been welcomed anyplace in the fashion that y’all have done here today.” In fact, the whole routine seems more than a little odd to me.
• Peachbottom’s symptoms are likewise strange: I find it difficult to imagine someone claustrophobic objecting to ceilings that high, no matter which wide open prairie she is from. How did she survive the train ride?
• Harshwhinny is not very strong for an earth pony if she’s having problems with this bag.
• Wait, where did this puddle come from? We’ve never seen rain in the Crystal Empire, and we certainly didn’t see any crystal pegasi at this point in the series. Presumably, somepony spilled the water they cleaned with – only, how would it form a puddle if the streets are so flat?
• “I-I-I detect a neo-Gothic inspiration in the design, yes?” Wait, what?!
• “Let’s just make our way to the castle’s gymnasium.” The castle does, surprisingly, have a gymnasium – a separate building connected by a gallery, not visible from any of the outside shots except in this episode. Even though Rainbow is convinced the castle doesn’t have one, it’s clearly not a park, so a gymnasium it has to be. Why exactly is Shining Armor there coaching remains mostly unexplained, because none of the ponies he’s coaching resemble the typical Crystal Guard. As a side note, he’s using a pea whistle – see May The Best Pet Win.
• “I’m Shining Armor.” “The Prince!” This is one of the very, very rare cases where primary canon refers to Shining Armor as “prince.”
• “I’d think in your line of work you’d meet princes all the time.” See my limited nobility theory and associated RTACs. The only way this statement would make sense is if multiple princes – ruling or not ruling – remained in Equestria, but we can make no solid case for any other kind of nobility.
• “Just an ordinary wild mustang from Mustangia here to enjoy a little vay-cay.” We never find out where Mustangia is, by the way. Notice that the Crystal Empire is a vacation destination already.
• …Wait, what’s Lemon Hearts doing selling food in the Crystal Empire train station?
• “Every city and empire wants to host the Equestria Games.” Yep, the word “empire” really means something else, especially considering that it’s equated to “city.”
• “Which, in my expert opinion, amounts to the first ever unvarnished, unrehearsed, and unbiased appraisal of a potential host of the Equestria Games.” I wonder why didn’t Harshwhinny make the connection with Rainbow’s statement that “Princess, we gave our welcome to the wrong pony, left the right one waiting at the station, and completely ruined everything.” Or, if she did, what exactly was her thought process.
• Hearing the announcement that the Crystal Empire is to host the Games is sufficient to fire the Crystal Heart, which should, in theory, have made the Mane 6 crystal as well. However, apparently for anyone but the natives, who are all magically bound to the Heart, it wears off fast.

Comments

[Mitch H]

“Didn’t Cloudsdale host the Equestria Games one year?”

• So it’s a yearly event, is it? This would require less than a year to have passed since the Crystal Empire returned.

Eh, that doesn't follow. You could say that 'Lillyhammer hosted the Winter Olympics one year' and not imply that the Olympics are yearly. Since that is A) a true statement and B) the Olympics are every four years.

As for the crystalness of crystal ponies, I think we're looking at the divergence between what the toy designers intended, and what the writers did with that. The *intention* was for them to be a different breed, like seaponies or something like that, but the writers just generally treated them as earth ponies with a deep crystal tan.

“I-I-I detect a neo-Gothic inspiration in the design, yes?” Wait, what?!

Speaking as someone who lives in a town full of Victorian architecture, and who grew up outside of Pittsburgh, which has some textbook neo-Gothic buildings in Oakland and Downtown, I'd have to say that not a single thing ever shown in Pony resembles neo-Gothic, although the Castle of the Pony Sisters sort of inches in that direction. Except it would be Gothic-gothic, not neo.

On the subject of the advanced nature of Crystal civilization, presumably the Crystal Empire had advanced rapidly due to the taming of magic through the centralized Heart. Sort of like pre-WWI Germany, it was both politically unstable and technologically dynamic.

[Oliver]

4705079

As for the crystalness of crystal ponies, I think we’re looking at the divergence between what the toy designers intended, and what the writers did with that.

Well, crystal pegasi eventually turned up in the primary canon, so screw the toy designers, I don’t want to deal with their messes too. :)

Except it would be Gothic-gothic, not neo.

I’m wondering more about where did ponies even come by the word.

[Eruantalon]

Notice that there’s a direct express train route between Ponyville and the Crystal Empire. It comes up multiple times afterwards.

And, notice, there was even before Princess Twilight's ascension.

Maybe Princess Cadance is paying large subsidies to have the Canterlot - Crystal Empire express make one stop in her favorite friend's new hometown.

[Oliver]

4705130

I don’t think it would take large subsidies, the train might not be full every time, but it definitely doesn’t run empty. Also, Ponyville is a tourist destination which makes a nice point for crystal ponies to start exploring the new Equestria, while Crystal Empire is a tourist destination for everypony else. But I’d love some canonical clarification on that…

[Meta Four]

• Peachbottom’s symptoms are likewise strange: I find it difficult to imagine someone claustrophobic objecting to ceilings that high, no matter which wide open prairie she is from. How did she survive the train ride?

Perhaps what she actually has is Altocelarophobia?

[Oliver]

4705201

But why does she panic so much more and react identically when her head ends up in a jar?

[howard035]

I barely remember this episode. That said, I think you've done a really good job proving the Crystal Empire had advanced technology even before Sombra. I wonder if these devices are powered over the air by the Crystal Heart itself?

I bet Prince Blueblood is on the Equestrian Games Selection Committee, and Shining knows this.

There's a weird feature in Equestria where there is this big empty plain between Manehatten and Vanhoover, with Ponyville to the south and the CE to the north. There's nowhere for a train to really stop.

4705079 Agree the Games are not necessarily held every year. Or have to have been around that long. I think any new thing Princess Cadance told them to get excited about, they would get excited about.

[Cursed Quill]

Who took this one? Twilight could, in theory,

I'm going with there being a print analogue of the [memory/CCTV]film-projector/holography spells…which don't require you to be actively channeling to record (else, Svengallop would catch it; and we don't see Trixie constant-channeling to record "Boast Bust" for playback during "Magic Duel")

Actually, why isn’t he? He’s a celebrated hero over there.

Considering just how much of a show-stopper him showing up in street is (see: Starlight's visit to Sunburst), it's not surprising.

The rationale for a “tail-fluffing day” escapes me.

Mating season?

, it’s also way too often for a healthy cat.

…two kibbles at a time.

Also, what are “riding pants” for ponies anyway?

<insert clopfic>

“Ooh, six-layer gem cake sounds pretty good!” So why does it sound good to Twilight?…

She's the PrincessElement of Magic and that includes dragon gem-digestion magic

[Cursed Quill]

This would only work on Cadance […] crystal ponies were not substantially physiologically different from regular ponies.

Well, she is [somewhat] genetically crystal…what are the non-translucence non-eyeshine phenotype markers, again?

but I wonder why, whoever wrote that note, chose luggage as an identifying trait, instead of coat and mane color.

or, say, cutie mark. It's not like she's wearing pants.

[Oliver]

4710577

Well, she is [somewhat] genetically crystal…what are the non-translucence non-eyeshine phenotype markers, again?

Gradient in hair color, which Cadance has – but unlike the crystal ponies, she has three base colors in her mane, while no crystal pony seen to date has more than one base color, ever. In fact, multiple colors in mane seem to be rather uncommon – and mostly seen on unicorns, when crystal unicorns were not observed in primary canon at all so far.

Mind you, if Cadance's hair was sufficiently different, Rarity would not be qualified to work with it, would she?

Crystal ponies also have distinct hairstyles and were seen clothed much less often than other ponies, but, obviously, neither is a phenotype marker.

or, say, cutie mark. It’s not like she’s wearing pants.

Amen to that.