Mar
5th
2018
Points of Canon: S5x16 - Made in Manehattan · 5:52pm Mar 5th, 2018
Out of order, but this episode completes my compendium up to season 8. The next step… before Season 8 starts, I’m going to have to write a summarizing post. And it’s going to be full of unkind words.
- Chronology markers: Friendship Castle is in evidence, and so is the map. Seeing how bored Twilight is, you would expect her not to have had any Map missions ever since The Cutie Map – however, this is purely interpretational and is not a hard lock. In any case, she didn’t get to do anything interesting or taxing in the preceding month or so. This episode happens simultaneously with Brotherhooves Social and should be treated as a two-parter for chronology purposes. The CMC do not appear here, but they do appear at the social, sans marks.
- Twilight levitates books some 15 meters away like it’s nothing. She also stacked the books up in a pyramid, implying far less piety regarding their safety than we typically expect.
- Spike has a box of comics, all slotted up neatly in plastic wrappers. Which is better treatment than Twilight affords her books.
- “We’ve been called to Manehattan! Oh, I’ve simply been dying to go back for a visit!” Well, she’s been there before.
- “That neighborhood probably has twice as many ponies as all of Ponyville.” “More like three times!” This is the basis of my long chain of guesses that produces the population of Equestria at about 30 million, by the way: Starting with Ponyville’s estimated 4000, and assuming the population distribution more or less mimics that of modern US, that’s what I’m getting. Give or take ten million.
- “I just remembered something! The Sisterhooves Social!” See Brotherhooves Social. Notice that it creates a chronology problem: Sisterhooves Social is a yearly event that should at least match the season of the previous one.
Random interesting things in Manehattan:
- Piers. See pony shipping. No, not that shipping!
- A water tower on top of one of the buildings, as well as structures that look suspiciously like powered ventilation systems.
- In addition to the usual taxis, we can see multiple private carriages.
- Tourists can be seen with backpacks and fanny packs. Those are worn on the side of the body, rather than the back or belly.
- A uniformed policepony is seen directing traffic. He has hoofcuffs. Notice also the summer variant of the uniform. Compare to the policeponies in the song montage in Pinkie Pride. Policeponies subsequently reappear throughout the episode. Manehattan definitely has pretty modern-style police.
- One of the random ponies passing Applejack on the street is wearing pants. That’s not that unusual, but he has shirt sleeves peeking out from both his jacket sleeves and pants. He later reappears with multiple speaking lines, you can’t miss the guy.
- Another random pony is wearing earphones – and also, has the cutie mark of a record, the LP kind, giving us a minimum date on the technology.
- A newsstand. Marked up with fairly readable English “News stand” – and random graffiti on the side. Multiple glossy magazines are present, including several which have to depict politicians, judging by stuffy faces and suits. Not to mention chewing gum and what looks like packets of pistachio nuts. One particularly strange magazine has a planet with a ring on the cover – and what looks suspiciously like continents. As far as we know, Pony Earth has nothing approaching a ring system…
- A pair of horseshoes dangling off a tree in the park. Kinda like sneakers would be.
- A tin among the trash in the same park.
- “Oh, dear, none of these will do.” I wonder why exactly does the hat salespony take so bloody long to comment on Rarity’s behavior, because he starts glaring some thirty seconds before he speaks up. Notice that beyond the thin facial hair, the stallion also has chest hair.
- Rarity was awfully quick whipping up her friendship advice stand.
“Please help us restore our long-lost but beloved tradition, the Midsummer Theater Revival. There’s a guest performance by a local theater troupe, the Method Mares, as well as games, food, and much, much more. This event promises to bring our Bronclyn neighbors together and restore our sense of community, but there’s so much to do and we need your help.”
- Bronclyn is a neighborhood of Manehattan.
- The jury is still out on what the “Midsummer Theater Revival” means exactly. In our world, “midsummer” is a specific astronomically-determined point in June, corresponding to summer solstice, rather than the exact middle of a summer. For ponies, it can be located anywhere within the summer because pony astrophysics is crazy. That said, just being in the summer creates chronology problems with Sisterhooves Social – because, as we remember, Brotherhooves Social is happening simultaneously with this episode.
- “Method Mares” implies that ponies have the concept of method acting. Which is actually far from obvious.
- The flyer is marked with two masks, a smiling and a sad face. This would be the pony symbol for theater – and notice this is once more, not a given.
- When offered sandwiches, Applejack picks one up with her teeth before transferring it into her hoof to take bites from, and like all prior cases of ponies eating sandwiches with one hoof, she balances it on top. See Sandwich Problem.
- “Many moons ago, local theater troupes would perform, and ponies in the neighborhood would help make the costumes and design set pieces, prepare food to share during the performance.” Gah, moons. Also, just how many theater troupes could one neighborhood have?…
- The photo Coco shows demonstrates children dressed up as Dorothy, Cowardly Lion and Tin Woodman, indicating that some equivalent of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz must exist in Equestria. One of the photos shows a post-cutie-mark filly Coco herself making the set pieces, being photographic proof that Coco is a Manehattan native.
- “It was, up until several moons ago.” “That’s Charity Kindheart. She was a well-known costume designer on Bridleway. She started the Midsummer Theater Revival as a way to share her passion for theater with the neighborhood. No matter how busy she was, she always made time for the Revival. But when she moved away to be closer to her grandfillies, the neighborhood lost the special tradition she had started, and worse, the sense of community it fostered.” So how many is several? Because I’d say this would mean “less than ten” in most cases and imply that Charity Kindheart moved away something like last year, tops. Unless it’s one case where the word “moon” is used to mean a “year” – which is what the state of disrepair the park is later seen in would imply. Damn Manehattanites.
- Coco lives in a very nice apartment on the third floor and has a corner window.
- Through the window, we once again see the very rare crescent moon.
- “But I’ve just gotten a last-minute request to alter costumes for the cast of My Fair Filly, and I’m afraid I haven’t made much progress.” “My Fair Filly” is obviously some equivalent of “My Fair Lady” – but I wonder what languages are involved.
- “Oh, I don’t wear boots. I find they chafe my calves when I walk.” Good to know.
- “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I run a very important oat and hay import/export business.” Seeing how Lyra mentions “imported oats” in Slice of Life, you would expect hay to be an export. So which sapient race buys up the hay?…
- Applejack uses a mechanical reel push lawnmower to clean up the park, severely damaging her hat in the process.
- Applejack hammers nails in by using a hammer held in her teeth. That’s how all the Apples do it, come to think of it.
- “Excuse me. I’m Charity Kindheart. I’m here about the open design position. I brought some samples of my work.” All the actors are using a piece of paper to disguise their original cutie marks, rather than anything more elaborate. That said, the entire set is quite sketch-like, presumably deliberately.
- “Mrs. Pearblossom” is using a walking stick in a manner you really wouldn’t expect of a pony. But that’s how we see them use walking sticks every time one turns up.
- In the audience, we can see an elderly pony with a zimmer. Haven’t seen one of those all the way since Season 1.
- Rarity finds a hat identical to Applejack’s in the hat salespony’s collection.
Gah, moons. Incidentally, this is probably the case of a Cutie Map mission with the largest number of affected ponies before or since: The entire neighborhood and at least thirty individual ponies.
I’m also sure this episode is just full of references that I didn’t catch, but that wasn’t the point of this compendium anyway – the point was to pick out as many details of pony life and culture as possible.
I think they're using 'local' to mean Manehattan, not just... shudder Bronclyn. What a terrible pun, I missed it when I watched this back during season 5.
Also, I think that "Midsummer' isn't supposed to be an actual seasonal reference, but rather, is some sort of Shakespearean/fae reference.
My Fair Lady wasn't about languages, but dialect, wasn't it?
Holstein, which is always riding the famine edge of starvation, due to their lack of earth pony farmers, and impoverished bovine herds.
4810594
It was about a linguist.
So how do they export the oats then? Or alternatively, who exports the oats?…
4810595
Oat producers are generally cool and wet climate agricultural regions. Poland, (Great) Russia, Canada. Except for Australia for some damn reason. It's not a major crop in the United States, outside of, hrm, Iowa for some reason.
So, if it weren't for the fact that the Yaks seem to be cut off from the world's trade networks, I'd guess that it would be Yakyakistan. And as far as anyone can tell, nopony at all in the Crystal Empire is growing anything other than lawn. Despite being up to their nosehairs in earth ponies.
Maybe the Bugbears are notable oat farmers?
Twilight's book piety is overblown anyway, she's been carelessly tossing books on the ground wherever since the first episode.
Doesn't Vinyl's brother also have that mark?
4810622
Does Vinyl have a brother? I don’t remember any canonical statement to this effect.
4810631
Doublechecking, he only appeared in the comics.
4810599 They grow CRYSTALLLLSSSS... or at least they did before Sombra ruined it for them.
4810594
Why they did not just go with a prepackaged pony Bronx (Broncs?), I have no idea.
4810696
Nobody ever remembers the Bronx exists, even other New Yorkers.
There's actually a plausible way to avoid any chronology issues with this. Given how Equestrian culture works, it's entirely possible that "Midsummer" could be a pony's name, and the event is in some way named for them. They could be some notable playwright or actor, or more likely, given how these sorts of things tend to work in real life, someone who donated money either directly to the event or to a theater that hosted part or all of it. It's not the most intuitive explanation, but it's plausible and avoids the chronology issues that could arise from it actually taking place in midsummer.
4810719
Been suggested pretty early on. In fact, I think I did that when I stumbled into this loop while making the chronology tool.
The one interesting “but” that may or may not prevent this interpretation is the policeponies and their uniforms: They are wearing summer (lighter) uniforms in this episode, but in The Gift of Maud Pie we see a policepony in a much darker uniform. In our world that would be a winter version – and in that episode, it’s autumn.
As it is, I prefer to leave this question hanging in the air until we can figure out a more solid line of argument deciding one way or another. How much of a problem is created depends on the chronology of early episodes – that is, on when exactly did Sisterhooves Social happen and why – which isn’t really set in stone even now.
And Applejack has absolutely no objections to Rarity throwing away her old hat and buying a new one off the street. Which puts a final nail in the coffin of the “AJ’s hat is a precious keepsake from her dead parents” theory... for the few who still clung to that theory even after “Somepony to Watch Over Me” showed that AJ had a closet full of identical hats.
Beside incredibly stupid plot, "Friendship is Magic" #66 show us several new races beside parrots from the movie (who have their own country - Ornithia), Saddle Arabians and Abysinnians. There some sort of sentient spider, gorilla, and some variations of thestrals who obviously want to be mistaken for vampires. There also at least seven different flags appear on a summit. So... there a lot of possible oat exporters.
Sci-fi magazine? Or maybe there an potentially habitable planet near the pony-Earth? Close enough that they able to make photos?
... Oh... There is a planet with rings on tapestry inside Castle of Two Sisters and also on the stained-glass window in Cantelot Castle throne-room.
4811757
Comparatively few of which would have an interest in large quantities of hay, hence the question.
There are at least two of these planets somewhere, actually – they turn up occasionally. What confuses me is the potential continents. That said, this might have simply been cloud swirls on a gas giant.
4811794
There always a possibility that they grow it purely for export. If Equestria buys it in bulk it would make sense.
4811799
An “import-export business” typically means “exporting commodity X to destination Y to purchase commodity Z for import,” you see. Exceptions, of course, exist, but in most cases it would involve buying oats from the same nation that imports hay.
I see the preview of "Friendship is magic" #64. And if we accept comics as canon then these two so off in their estimations that it's not even funny.
Manehattan outright huge. Even a small part that we could see in FiM 64 most likely could house several Ponyvilles easily.
PS. "Celestia Superstar"... I really want to see this one :).
4818138
“Give or take ten million.” :)
Mmm…
4818143
Maybe :).
Interesting, who builded skyscrapers in Manehattan? These things are costly. Some company that big enough to spend lots of bits or goverment?
Now it more or less canon :). Manehattan have a billboard with advertising for it. Well, that and "Phantom of the stablehouse" :).
4818149
Actually, it has been since #42. Only the “Phantom” was, for some reason, “Phantom of the Corral” there.