Nov
1st
2017
Points of Canon: S4x05 - Flight to the Finish · 8:35am Nov 1st, 2017
The second episode of the Equestria Games plotline.
- “Everypony, welcome the head of the Equestria Games, Ms. Harshwhinny!” Cheerilee has to be simplifying for the kids, because in Games Ponies Play, she was cited as “the Games inspector” and even Cadance and Shining Armor did not know her face or name.
- “Now, I’m sure you all know about the Equestria Games, where ponies from all over the land compete for glory in various athletic pursuits.” You would be considerably less likely to say “all over the land” if this was an international competition, wouldn’t you?
- “Well, now you littlest ones will have the chance to compete for a weighty responsibility of your very own.” Notice that poor Harshwhinny had to do this speech in every region that sends a team.
- “So, the winning team gets to carry the Ponyville flag at the Equestria Games!” Notice that all the regions have their own flags.
- When Harshwhinny is about to explain the scoring system, she moves to pull down a roll-up something – either a projector screen or a prepared visual aid – only to be interrupted by Rainbow. I wonder which of the two it was.
- “Guess who carried the Cloudsdale flag in the Games when she was a little filly?” This interesting tidbit of Rainbow’s biography is easily forgotten, and yet is important to compare to other things we know about her.
- While Rainbow is describing it, she’s waving the Ponyville flag – two ponies holding a heart, and I think this is the first appearance of this flag. Notice that while the flag on the actual Equestria Games is rectangular, this one is triangular. And you’d think it would have made an appearance during Buckball Season, but it didn’t. Even the Ponyville colors used during Buckball Season are nothing like the ones in this flag.
- “Y’know,”professionalism" is my middle name. Rainbow Professionalism Dash." Ponies can have three-part names. Very few such ponies have ever been observed, I believe, if any at all.
“Meet me after school tomorrow at fifteen hundred hours.”
- Ponies can use the so-called military time, unless you want to go crazy and assume that there really are multiple hundreds of hours in a day. See RTAC #13.
- School ends by 15:00, at least for this class.
- “It’s a place where different kinds of ponies live together as friends!” That is, Scootaloo wants to play up the multi-tribal card. We don’t know if this tells us anything about Equestria – whether multi-tribal townships are common in this period or not – because, well, most townships shown are heavily multi-tribal, and places like the Crystal Empire and Appleloosa are anomalous. But I think it tells us something about Scootaloo: She thinks this is pretty special. Did she live somewhere else before?
- Remember Trouble Shoes from Appleloosa’s Most Wanted? He considers his horns-down horseshoe cutie mark a symbol of bad luck. Well, during the song montage, the barn the Crusaders are training in has a whopping five horns-down horseshoes mounted above the door.
- It’s very strange for Apple Bloom to be unable to lift the two apples when in Cutie Pox she lifted at least 300kg with her tail.
- Bulk Biceps is apparently afraid of butterflies, as he drops his end of the tug-of-war and runs away upon seeing one about to land on his nose. Authors shipping him with Fluttershy, beware.
- Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon clap their hooves together, rather than stomp them, which is rare at this point in the series. Notice also that the way this song ends pretty clearly demonstrates it was diegetic, despite also being a montage that took the end of a day and the morning of the next one.
- The curtain at the stage where the contestants are presented to Rainbow – it’s pretty strange, because it seems to only be used for school events, and occasionally, it’s more built up than here, when it’s clearly right next to the schoolhouse, what’s up with that? – is patched up in multiple places. So who flew through it the last time?
- “They’re gonna be a hot mess!” I had to look up what hot mess might mean. I’m not sure that’s what Silver Spoon meant. What did she mean?… Please don’t insert clopfic.
- “You’re showing all three types of Ponyville ponies, yet you have a Pegasus pony who can’t even fly!” And this is how we know that Scootaloo actually cannot fly at this point in the series, rather than just doesn’t.
- “You should’ve been flying long ago.” It is normal for pegasi to be flightless at least for a certain period of their lives.
- It’s interesting that Diamond Tiara chooses to pick on Scootaloo for not being able to fly, rather than on Sweetie Belle for not being able to use magic.
- “Uh, there are four– no, three kinds of ponies.” I’m pretty sure thestrals are not actually a thing, so imagine just how tired Scootaloo has to get to make that kind of mistake.
- Carrot Top is hugging Written Script on the train platform again.
Rainbow pulls the train emergency brake.
- Equestrian trains have passenger-operated emergency brakes. Not really a given.
- Did she have to? Rainbow is nimble enough to depart the train without having to stop it and fast enough to catch up to it while carrying Scootaloo. This might not have been feasible because she wouldn’t have had Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle to convince Scootaloo. But even then, if she didn’t feel like carrying them all the way, she could have grabbed them, jumped off the train, and let them continue on hoof after making a safe landing.
Don’t pull on emergency brakes, kids. This can literally kill people.
- Scootaloo has a room of her own. See orphan Scootaloo. Secondary canon introduces her aunts, but by this point, nothing of the sort is described yet, and we just have a room in a house that is too big for her to manage on her own.
- “But Rainbow Dash… what if… what if my wings never grow? What if I never fly?” So there is some chance that Scootaloo’s wings will grow, isn’t there?
- Among the two Equestria Games posters, a Wonderbolts poster, and a Rainbow Dash portrait, Scootaloo also owns a teddy bear and a basketball. The rest of the room is pretty spartan, however.
- Those skis would be murder on the knees. Ponies have tougher knees than I do. :)
- The travel montage takes them through a desert, and I wonder where that is. In any case, I expect they caught up to the train eventually, rather than made the entire way to Crystal Empire on a scooter with two towed passengers.
- The stadium contains crystal ponies both in crystal and non-crystal states, not to mention the non-crystal ponies.
- Harshwhinny taps the microphone, producing the characteristic sound of amplification feedback. The microphone itself looks like it has an antenna.
The most important thing about this episode is the Scootalore, of course.
Pie family? Pinkamena Diane Pie and Maudalina Daisy Pie? It's bothered me for a while - this is solely a Pie family shtick or all the ponies have a full names that we don't know?
4713947
I am betting it is solely a Pie family shtick: Multiple ponies have single word names and are never referred to by any others – while earth pony clans are pretty much the only users of shared name components in the first place. They would find triple-component names the most useful.
4713947
Mi Amore Cadenza, Hayseed Turnip Truck, Cranky Doodle Donkey (mentioning him because most non-ponies don't have middle names either)
Named in credits only: Half Baked Apple
Named in merch only: Fleur de Lis, Fleur De Verre, Dane Tee Dove, Mare E. Belle, Mare E. Lynn
She might have been thinking of Crystal Ponies I think. It was ambiguous if they count as a separate kind for a while. And then there's sea ponies and changelings.
I'm fairly certain we see the symbol on the Ponyville flag outside of the schoolhouse before this episode.
Naturally, that barn then managed to outlive every other structure on Sweet Apple Acres.
In "Cutie Pox," she was suffering from alchemically induced iconoma. Hardly a fair comparison.
I'm going to hope she was just echoing something she'd heard before without understanding the full meaning and context.
4713967
And we also forgot A.K. Yearling.
Yes, they do exist, and they’re a minority.
Interesting point about the word "land" I hadn't noticed before, that does suggest the competitors are all from Equestria proper. Of course, foreign diplomats still attend domestic shows like this, as part of goodwill events.
4713970 That's a good point, ponies with cutie pox can do things no normal pony can. The question is if that strength just comes from the cutie mark, or if the disease itself induces it.
4713967
4713971 The tricky things about middle names is even if they do exist, they would be very rarely spoken, which makes them very hard to disprove. (How many of your friend's middle names do you know?) Without seeing full names on government ID, it's really hard to eliminate anyone from having a middle name. Heck, I can't remember ever hearing Applejack called "Applejack Apple," though most people assume that is her full name.
4714337
Sometimes context helps. The wedding invite from A Canterlot Wedding referred to the bride as Mi Amore Cadenza, and to the groom just as Shining Armor. The invite would have used Shining’s middle name if he had one, so he clearly doesn’t—and from that we can reasonably extrapolate that the rest of Twilight’s family doesn’t either.
4713971
But they can’t be too obscure, either, otherwise Rainbow’s joke about her own middle name would make no sense to large parts of her audience.
4713970
From what little I’ve read, there’s no real consensus on which way the horns should point to signify good or bad luck. Which fits with Trouble Shoes, since his whole shtick was that he took the most pessimistic interpretation of anything ambiguous.
4714990 That's a really good point about the wedding invites. Also, any time they list out Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and Princess Twilight Sparkle, the lack of the middle name mentioned then would be confirmation.