May
12th
2018
Points of Canon: S8x09 - Non-Compete Clause · 4:03pm May 12th, 2018
Another episode by a complete newcomer. Remembering what happened to Horse Play, I can’t help but wonder what did she research, if anything.
- Chronology markers: The plot involves School of Friendship directly, so School Daze has completed. Importantly, it is required to have happened at least 9 months since the school first opened. Since Silverstream attends a field trip with the school in this episode, it is also required to happen after Surf and/or Turf, where Twilight secures a permission for her to do so.
- Rainbow Dash is capable of reassembling a stack of paper that has to contain on the scale of 300 individual pages just as quickly as she flies. Never mind that the order is probably wrong…
- Teacher’s lounge in the School of Friendship has a kitchen sink, not to mention a fridge. It also, uncharacteristically, has a proper log-fueled fireplace, which have been giving way to crystal-based fireplaces for most of Season 6 and 7.
“And the Friendship School teacher of the month is… Fluttershy!”
- “The award is based on the students’ vote.”
- Wouldn’t Twilight be aware that having such a contest between her friends is a stupid idea in the first place?
- The photo of Fluttershy Spike is holding has a red eye. This requires specific physical properties of the lens to happen, and requires melanin, or a very optically close equivalent, to exist in pony eyes. It’s interesting that Spike’s camera does not have an obvious flash, nor does it have a print attachment like most cameras that were previously shown to instantly print pictures. I call animation error.
- This has happened 8 times before, the picture taken this time is the 9th, and every time, Fluttershy was the winning teacher. We therefore know it’s at least 9 months since the School opened for the first time, but alas, cannot say whether those months have elapsed since it reopened, or not: There’s no indication that this contest wasn’t in place when it first started, and we can’t reliably say how long did School Daze take to complete.
- I do wonder whether there’s a new trophy every month. There would be, because Fluttershy explicitly receives one, rather than keeps the one she had, but where would she keep the other 8?…
- Ocellus and Smolder have never been on a field trip before – nor, presumably, in a pony-style education system, while Gallus might have been: He knows what a field trip is.
- “Shed building! / Canoe racing!” So ponies have the word “canoe.” Just how did they come by it? Because for us, its origins are pretty indirect.
- Actually, what exactly would be the use of two sheds like this built in close proximity to each other? One can be used to keep gardening tools, sure. Two of them? Isn’t the proper answer “make a bigger shed instead?”
- “Nothing brings friends together like a little hard work and honest sweat.” Notably, Applejack has only prepared one hard hat, so I don’t know what kind of teamwork she had in mind. That said, more hard hats mysteriously materialize later.
- Yona uses her hoof to hammer a nail in, rather than, you know, a hammer. Because Applejack also only prepared one hammer.
- For some rather strange reason, Sandbar is painting the individual boards before they are assembled. Since Silverstream and Ocellus are hauling painted boards, that involves some very quick-drying paint. See chemical industry.
- Rainbow is capable of hammering a nails through two layers of wood planks by kicking them in the air. Notice also that this requires pegasus magic: Nails wouldn’t fly straight otherwise.
“Who’s ready to smash the all-time Equestria speed record for river canoeing?”
- As in the previous case where water sports were shown, ponies are using life preserver vests and helmets. I question the usefulness of a vest on Silverstream and Ocellus in the first place. Later, they do the same by doing what I expected: Turning into seaponies.
- Sandbar hasn’t heard of such a record before, so probably, it isn’t kept in any official manner.
- “We need to get to the finish line before this alarm goes off.” The device Rainbow is using appears to be a mechanical stopwatch, though. And I hope this thing is waterproof – most stopwatches shaped like that I know are not. This one even floats!
- “Focus on your paddle technique, y’all.” The paddle technique is notably bipedal and involves holding one paddle with two limbs. I wonder why. You would expect quadrupeds would find oarlocks a lot more convenient.
- “I can see the finish line from here!” So who put that there, I wonder, and is there anyone to witness that record…
- It’s strange that they start, and apparently, keep paddling against the current throughout, against some very rapid current, and still manage to destroy the boat. What’s stranger, is that when the boat is destroyed, the current reverses direction, while remaining just as rapid. What the aquatic intercourse? This can’t simply be an animation error, because when they start out, the boat is not moving because they don’t paddle hard enough. If they were not paddling against the current, the boat would move with the current anyway.
- Yona can’t swim at all.
- Never mind that both bridges that Applejack and Rainbow built suck. The fact that they are holding up at all is pretty fascinating, if only because Rainbow’s bridge does not appear to be fastened together at all.
- Biteacuda is a species of predatory fish native to Ponyville area. Flying, kind of like the flying fish, if their bat-like fins are any indication – at least, when transformed into one, Ocellus can fly and even hover.
- “Anycreature have a plan?” This happens twice in this episode and looks like using “creature” instead of “one” is the new politically correct form.
- “We know it’s too early to pick the Teacher of the Month. But we’d like you to consider Rainbow Dash and Applejack.” But wasn’t this determined by student vote in the first place? Twilight doesn’t get to consider anything.
Pretty light on worldbuilding, this one, though yet another species of wildlife available for torturing ponies and/or saving ponies from is handy. Guess Kim Beyer-Johnson picked the safe option.
The weird thing is that the boat is motionless even when no one is paddling. It's like the rapids are just for show.
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Maybe they’re just a layer of paint on the water surface?
I wonder how many of Applejack’s “field trips” involve the students providing Sweet Apple Acres with unpaid labor.
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Considering that at least some students have no idea what a field trip is, she definitely did not have any with this class before. Considering Twilight’s citing the rules, it’s likely they weren’t a thing before in general.
That said, I fully expect her to repeat the idea given any chance.
Yup. This episode will probably be one that a lot of later S8 episodes happened before.
Anyone else think Twilight is sleeping in the teacher's lounge after staying up all night inventing rules she wants to cite?
I suspect this contest wasn't started until the school was reopened. A popularity vote by the students for Teacher of the Month gives students a lot of say with teachers. That can be good or bad, but it sounds like something Neighsay would hate and be against EEA regulations. It also sounds like something Twilight might have thought up as a way to differentiate her school from EEA rules, so that teachers would be attentive to student needs and more likely to befriend them.
However long it takes to build a school from scratch, and also build a rail-line to Mount Aris (possibly all the way from Dodge Junction down) and recruit students from across the world. We don't know exactly, but we know its a long, long time. I say at least 2 years.
A lot of recurring contests you have to give the trophy back, like the Stanley Cup.
The Griffonstone elite seem to prefer getting their kids a pony education. This might have been what inspired Twilight to open her school to foreigners.
The students can work off the model, and then later Applejack could just haul the shed over somewhere else.
Constantly smashing stuff means yaks must have iron frogs.
They don't really fly straight anyway. I think Rainbows shack would have fallen apart pretty quickly.
It's a teamwork thing, having them put on the same outfit helps them bond.
I think Rainbow makes up a lot of random records sometimes. Or she set that record on her own last week. Also, as someone who spent time in Northern Obscurifornia, I find Sandbar's accent incredibly annoying.
I think it just broke, Rainbow is playing it up. If there was a real canoing time record, a group that spent time floating in place would not have a serious shot of breaking it.
Does Yona even bathe? Yak musk is apparently quite strong, and something to be proud of. I mean, with that fur, it probably takes like 5 hours to dry.
If the real ones could fly, they probably would have flown up and eaten Applejack and Rainbow Dash.
Yeah, they could have meant take the vote early. Or they could mean ignore the votes of all the background students we never really see.
Final theory: Someone put an enchantment on the local river area to keep the biteacuda's out of the lake that the CMC have played in in the past.
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Going forward, probably all of them. It's like how the Sisterhooves Social involves making jam and fetching eggs for the Apples.
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Building a rail line is not required to recruit students at all, actually. Airships are still a thing.
Yes, but we don’t see Fluttershy do that, unless it happened before the voting results were announced.
Well, we never see her do so, and we do hear the musk being referred to, so yeah. Not much bathing to be had if you live in snow, anyway, not until you actually build a proper civilization.
There are multiple lakes of different size in the area, anyway. Some have no rivers flowing in at all.
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Yaks used to have hammers, but ironically, they smashed them all.
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A thought dawns: Have the yaks smashed the state?!
So much idiot stick this episode. Mostly Twilight, for not realising that a popularity contest might make the two most competitive ponies compete, and for acting all proper when - they keep insisting - the Movie wasn't very long ago.
What would a yak look like after a shave, manestyling and hooficure?
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Maybe that’s the reason why Rutherford starts off as the Prince of a nation large enough to frighten Twilight with its threats of war, then gets reduced to the “Prince” of a small town right on the Crystal Empire’s border. “Royal family foolishly provoke war with ponies! YAKS SMASH!”
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“Not very long ago”? Is nine months (plus however long it took to build the school back in the premiere) really that short a time? And would Twilight have been a better friend if she openly doubted AJ and Dash’s ability to perform a job that they themselves volunteered for, rather than giving them a chance?
I mean, I totally agree that it’s a very dumb idea to determine Teacher of the Month via a student-run popularity contest, and that Twi was pretty dense to not realize from the get-go that AJ and Dash had volunteered to run this field trip for self-serving reasons. It’s just, that strikes me as bad enough already, without trying to blow it into a moral failing or act of hypocrisy on top of that.
I guess on the one hoof, Twi has the duty to assume the best of her friends and trust them—while on the other hoof she also has the duty to ensure the students are getting the best possible education, and to only assign teachers to roles they’re competent to fulfill. And in this particular case, “trusting AJ and Dash” is at odds with “make sure the students get a good field trip lesson about teamwork”. An alternate version of this episode, focusing on Twi trying to resolve this dilemma, could have been interesting.
But really, those duties have been at odds ever since Twi decided to staff her school with her own friends, rather than professional teachers. Whoops.
Turning into seaponies is an ability they have to activate consciously though, the might not be able to do that when panicking from drowning or concussed in case of a more major incident. And Stream can just plain lose her pearl fragment.
Incorrect. They were paddling against EACH OTHER. Three paddling left, three paddling right. However it's still unclear why they weren't being dragged along by the current, regardless, and it's still unclear why the river changed directions.