Points of Canon: S5x05 - Tanks for the Memories · 6:32pm Dec 1st, 2017
Winter is coming. This one is extremely chronologically important. People often complain that assuming that Princess Twilight Sparkle marks the start of Year 2 makes the first year contain far too many events. But this episode is explicit in saying that not a single winter has happened between it and May The Best Pet Win, which implies the same density of events, if the calendar is at all sane. And assuming an insane calendar actually produces even more problems elsewhere.
So either ponies live very full, densely packed lives, or discussing time in Equestria makes no sense whatsoever and you may as well give up. Anyway…
- The establishing shot includes Friendship Castle.
“Cloudsdale’s here! That means Ponyville is next up for winter!”
- Cloudsdale is explicitly mobile, something which isn’t obvious from prior episodes.
1. Notice that the Crystal Empire appears to get natural, rather than pony-manufactured winter, at least according to The Crystalling.
Winter transition does not occur instantaneously across all of Equestria, though, seeing as how the events described in this episode can’t take much longer than Winter Wrap-Up did – two days instead of one, tops – I expect the process is completed across all the places that get their winter from Cloudsdale in a reasonable time.1 Just look at how fast Cloudsdale is moving. Still, this might help with explaining away some of the seasonal weirdness.
- Rolling winter schedule would actually explain why being late with a season transition procedure is a problem: You’re holding back everyone else.
- Lyra and Bon-Bon are racing together in the Running of the Leaves. Compare to Fall Weather Friends. Notice that this time, Rainbow is not running.
- “How can you be tired when the most exciting time of the year is right around the corner?” Rainbow really likes winter, apparently – she’s also the one singing about “three months of winter coolness” in Winter Wrap-Up remember?
- “And don’t forget the best part… our first winter together!” See above. The most important statement in the episode.
“Come on, wake up! Once those ponies bring in the big, fat clouds full of snowflakes, we’ll have a ton of snow for our extreme sledding!” The clouds depicted in this and subsequent scenes are towed.
- Actually, why? Is this because they’re too heavy to be delivered by that wind funnel seen in Sonic Rainboom or something? Rainbow later says that “These things are heavy! Chock full of snowflakes!” so probably yes.
- The ropes are fastened around the cloud. Which requires the cloud to be non-permeable to the rope. Is the rope special, or does each pegasus do this on their own?
- Rainbow imagines sledding in a helmet, and yet she never flies in one…
“And over there, we can play horse hockey, with no shoulder or arm pads!”
- The use of the word “arm” implies that there’s a non-horse version of hockey known to Equestrians, doesn’t it? Otherwise, the issue of pads wouldn’t even come up.
- She does not forgo a helmet this time, either.
- “Okay, so give him a vitamin or something!” Pony medicine and lay public knows about vitamins.
2. Fun fact: Most, but not all of our tortoises also do, and it’s recommended to keep them in the fridge while they hibernate.
“When the weather grows cold and less food is available, many animals hibernate to conserve energy.” Fluttershy has a book entirely devoted to hibernation, which contains pictures of hibernating rabbits, bears, squirrels and tortoises.2
- “He’ll reappear when the spring sun warms the ground back up.” Sun is a factor in season changes.
- To get Tank to fly, Rainbow flicks his propeller, which results in the magic glow coming back. Looks like this is not so much a powered enchantment as it is an enchantment that multiplies inertia. She does this multiple times in this episode.
- “To get a second opinion from a real reptile expert.” Rainbow believes dragons are reptiles. I’m pretty sure she’s wrong.
The conversation with Spike happens in his room at the Friendship Castle.
- Spike got his own room for the first time in forever, not to mention a proper Spike-scale bed.
3. Too square.
Interesting objects in the room include: a bucket of what looks like it might be gems but probably isn’t,3 a snowglobe that looks like a Crystal Empire snowglobe, and a model of a glider. It could, in theory, be a bird-like kite, but we never see kites suspended from the ceiling…
- The room appears to be equipped with a fireplace.
- Winter preparations include equipping animals with winter clothing – Rarity is distributing knit hats.
- “What about all the primo things we’re gonna do together this winter? Building snow ponies, starting snowball fights, sipping hot cider by the fire.” All of these are things ponies do and Rainbow likes.
- The whole scene with pegasi named Open Skies and Clear Skies is a silly joke, but notice that if they have to use “Over by Clear Skies” as an indication of a position in space, pegasi do not have any special positioning instincts.
- “Fluffy Clouds? He’s over there!” Notice that this guy later appears among the delegates in Princess Spike, and I’m pretty sure he’s not a Ponyvillain. Which implies that Cloudsdale ponies are involved in delivering snow clouds.
Song montage time!
- Unicorns are busy planting icicles.
- Rainbow hides a whole stack of skis. Whose would those be?
- Rainbow jumps about cracking the ice on puddles. It’s cold enough for ice to form naturally, since we never see anypony take care of that – which is to be expected if they’re planting icicles, they’d melt otherwise.
- This is the first time we see this strange compass. A simple magnetic compass needs to have a needle that points both ways. This one can still be magnetic, but to work it would need a rotating magnet within the body, or something similarly more complicated than a simple needle. That said, if birds need to be guided to tell north from south, Pony Earth’s magnetic field is likely not to be normal.
- This magnifying glass has to be about a meter in diameter. I want one.
- Caramel is using snowshoes.
- The penultimate shot of the song montage shows scattered patches of snow over predominantly still green landscape. Well, no wonder they need to replant the grass every year. Also explains Hearth’s Warming Eve.
- Rainbow tows Tank using a belt with a carabiner. Ponies have those.
- At the weather factory, lunch hour is announced with a whistle. What exactly is Thunderlane doing there, I’m not sure.
- I wonder how exactly is Rainbow unscrewing these screws holding the grille closed from the inside.
- The weather factory itself looks vaguely like a chemical factory, and probably, essentially is. Rainbow specifically calls it “The winter lab.”
- Among the equipment we see an explicitly electric knife switch, which Tank triggers.
- “Uh, I can’t see!” Rainbow looks like a snowpony, whee. Where did she get those coals on her eyes, though?
- Tank opens up a room marked with wind blowing clouds. Is that the room where they make that blue liquid by any chance, the one that is used to create wind?
- Lightning is stored in jars. The room with lightning jars is probably the highest concentration of magic for miles around. Notice that releasing the lightning causes equipment to restart, which implies that most of it is also electric, and pretty primitive electrically at that.
- “What in the name of Celestia’s goin’ on up there?” Applejack takes Celestia’s name in vain, which is actually very rare for her.
- “Prepare yourselves, everypony! Winter is coming!” Twilight is sufficiently knowledgeable about the weathermaking processes to correctly conclude that this smoke and lightning will result in an explosive release of winter.
- “Rainbow Dash! Are you alright?” Even the Mane 5 do not appear to know that Rainbow is to blame for the incident at the weather factory at this point.
- “Knock, knock!” Pinkie walks in through a wall, unlike everypony else. This is the only time anyone does anything like that, and I’m suspecting what actually happened is Rainbow plastering a hole in the wall made of proper, solid construction cloud with regular cloud, because she was lazy. Pinkie just found a hole because she’s Pinkie.
- Rainbow has Tank-like slippers, on her hind legs. Tank has Rainbow-like slippers, on his front legs. That’s some devotion. Is anyone shipping Rainbow with Tank, by the way?…
- Rainbow has a dresser in her bedroom with a bottle of something on it. It’s not balm for wings or a similar product, and it’s not used for washing up, because you don’t do that in the bedroom, so what is it? Hair gel?…
- “Uh… it’s okay. Tank’ll come back in a few months.” The winter is expected to last at least two months.
- Spike can skate like nobody’s business – that was a triple axel.
- “Riding that entire season from Cloudsdale to Ponyville was pretty awesome.” That is, Rainbow explicitly admits that she was there at the time of the incident, which is essentially an admission that she is to blame. But she didn’t get caught. That’s how you do it, kids: Don’t get caught. Your friends will not rat on you anyway.
- Rarity is wearing a fur hat and matching boots. I hope it’s synthetic fur…
- “Uh, I’m gonna hang here and read to him a bit.” The book Rainbow is reading to Tank has Daring Do on the cover, but unfortunately, no title, so I can’t tell which one is it.
Wrecking the weather factory would be perfect to explain some of the non-wintery winter, except that Ponyville explicitly got a proper one, and most episodes which would have less problems because of it are Ponyville episodes. Oh well.
I still don’t know how exactly did Rainbow get away with delaying the weather schedule for all the neighbors.
Is that true? That sounds like something that shouldn't be true.
4739424
It's true but the process to prepare tortoise for hibernation are complex and if owner lack experience in this animal can easily die while hibernating.
Oh, and people I know first put the tortoise in a specially prepared box and then put this box in the fridge.
Such as?
4739424
I did look it up.
4739437
What, you want a list? That’ll wait for its chance at an RTAC, because that’s going to be a long list.
4739442 I'm looking forward to that list, especially since "the calendar isn't consistent" is my working hypothesis to make some sense of everything.
Eh, I could see pads being helpful to ponies, and Rainbow’s just too EXTREME to use them herself. At least not in the context of playing an amateur game. The mention of arm pads could just be a sign that ponies do, in fact, occasionally use “arm” as a synonym of “foreleg”.
Are there other people, or is it just me?
Ugh, so its worse. Do you want to post a link to your timeline again so we can figure out how close Best Pet Win to this episode is?
Actually the opposite. It implies ponies have nothing to do but go on adventures, and just go home and wait in their houses in between.
The writers snuck a Bull Sh@t slang past the censors here.
Interesting. So basically Rainbow winds it up like a pocket watch?
Aren't they? Even if they are endotherms, I'm not sure how they don't qualify. They lay eggs on land and have scaly skin.
Yet in Winter Wrap Up none of the animals were wearing any. Do they just wait until Rarity's back is turned and then chew up the hats to make nests?
Oh definitely. It's probably just an enchantment on the needle towards some long-ago chosen point to represent north.
That, or she's just referencing memes.
The Magic of Friendship is stronger than snitching.
What are they going to do, bench one of the Knights of Harmony when she could get butt-dialed on a friendship mission at any moment? Twilight covered it up.
4739489
The approach of the episodes aren't consistent is a much stronger one I think.
4739848 You mean, they aren't in order, or they're inconsistent on basic worldbuilding and background questions? I agree with the first, but I'm willing to jump through a whole lot of hoops to avoid the second.
4739869 I mean the former, and I too am nervously eyeing those hoops to avoid the latter.
4739648
She’s not extreme enough to skip all the helmets.
4739848
Lots.
http://fim-chronology-pa.lindro.me/
Seriously, you should have that bookmarked by now, I’ve been updating it once every few posts. :)
It certainly behaves like that. Now, there’s nothing stopping a powered motor from behaving that way either, but magnifying inertia seems to me like a more elegant solution.
The modern definition is “Reptilia are all amniotes closer to Lacerta agilis and Crocodylus niloticus than to Homo sapiens.” Equestria doesn’t have Homo sapiens, so…
Well, alright, the traditional definition says all reptiles are tetrapods, which is not true for dragons, most of which have wings, and some have eight limbs.
Strictly speaking, we don’t know what the pony definition of the word is, but I’m pretty sure they would count dragons separately on account of their unique biology and huge variance within the species.
Wouldn’t surprise me at all.
The scene in Rock Solid Friendship where Maud is apparently using it to detect magnetic minerals suggests otherwise. A much weaker magnetic field, requiring a stronger magnet than would fit in the needle is an option, though.
The writer is referencing memes. Twilight is doing what I said. There’s a difference.
4739931
I'm terrible with bookmarks. Have you considered adding it to your profile?
I suspect the tetrapod definition is a little loosened in Equestria, otherwise Pegasi would be classified as insects.
Spike is probably as closely related to a gecko as Applejack is to a shrew, but I agree that Equestria probably has like 15 animal kingdoms for things like Cragodiles.
I mean, the compass didn't move in the shot, it was on the ground and it happened to be pointing in the same direction as the rock Maud broke, but that could just be the direction of north at the time.
So you're sure Twilight wasn't quoting from her favorite book in Game of Pones, A Song of Ice and Friendship?
4739987
The post that announced it is.
It could be. But detecting magnetic rocks is what a compass is often used for in geology, unless they have some newer toys for the job.
Would only make sense if everypony else read it, right? Well, nopony was laughing.
4739993
It was only like 6 inches from the rock Maud smashed, so that does make sense. Perhaps it's a combination of a magnet and a magical spell, and the magnet takes effect really close.
That's how you know it's a meme.
4739848
It's a no-compromise issue for me, at least. No effing way does anything make sense if the three first seasons are supposed to happen during one single year.
Anyway, on this episode itself: it's a good one, but it doesn't fit in any kind of coherent chronology, I'm afraid.
4740154
Be honest, just say you don’t believe a coherent chronology exists. Because that’s not the only episode loop you need to dance around if you insist on sparse event space, there are at least three loops like that.
4740154 Yeah, I've had that thought before. 60 episodes means more than one adventure per week, where at least some and often all the Mane 6 drop everything to get involved in the dangerous mission/friendship problem. Ignoring the fact that a bunch of those episodes take place over multiple days and even weeks, most of the Mane 6 have full-time jobs, and/or extremely demanding hobbies that they are shown to be highly proficient in.
For example, there's just no way Rarity runs her own store where she produces all the merchandise, leads an acapella singing group, voraciously reads Shadow Spade novels, and does half the work of raising her sister, plus drops everything 3-4 days a week to go fight dragons or rebuild the town from a Parasprite invasion or hide out from a crazed Trixie with an evil amulet. There's just not enough hours in the day there.
As someone who plays roleplaying games where they offer you the option of having your adventurer also work a day job, I always turn down that option, because adventuring is a full time job, you just can't pack both in.
That's a big part of why I love Oliver's Canon series, he's doing a fantastic job at looking at how the episodes can be rearranged in a systematic fashion to have things make more sense. (Not make sense, make more sense, a crucial difference). You should really take a look here if you haven't already: http://fim-chronology-pa.lindro.me/