Jun
2nd
2018
Points of Canon: S8x12 - Marks for Effort · 6:26pm Jun 2nd, 2018
This episode is kinda problematic.
- Chronology markers: By far, the most important one is Spike’s wings, requiring Molt Down to have happened – and recently at that. This is also an unexpected upper constraint for Buckball Season, which otherwise has precious few. The CMC are interested in the School of Friendship, and have never been inside as of this episode. I would put Surf and/or Turf after this episode because of it, unless anything ends up preventing that. Sorting out the chronology of Season 8 will take some effort.
- It’s interesting that when spying on the school, the CMC use the inner courtyard. When Chancellor Neighsay sealed the school, he sealed the outer door, which implies it probably locks. Not for the CMC, apparently.
- “Twilight’s school is supposed to be amazing inside!” I.e. none of the CMC have been inside yet.
- It’s interesting that while in School Daze, the Student Six running away results in Rainbow being left sans students entirely, which would imply they are all in the same class together, here, the Student Six are not together in one class in any of the cases. I really wonder how this works.
Pinkie’s class:
1. I think one is a tuba.
There’s a bagpipe, a klaxon, two kinds of brass instruments1 and a keyboard on the wall. I don’t think we’ve seen bagpipes in Equestria before. Considering that they’re originally made from skins, I wonder how this came about. Similarly, this kind of keyboard is not possible without electrical or magical sound generation, though electrical sound generation still does not require digital technology.
2. That said, they’re all pretty cardboard.
Pinkie’s lesson is pretty introductory, and the Student Six only manage to compliment each other on very surface things.2 I would put this as early as possible, chronologically, for this reason.
- “Alright, students, it’s time to meet some new friends!” That’s some very smart butterflies. Then again, considering that we’ve seen bees that could communicate in icons…
- “And that’s friendship in action, y’all!” We see ponies playing buckball the first time since forever.
- Twilight’s class is not conducted in the auditorium seen in Horse Play for some reason. Notice this room has yet another globe.
- “Spike, slide one, please!” This is not an automated slide projector. It’s still pretty electric.
- “Back in the day of chancellor Puddinghead…” We see what has to be an official portrait of the Chancellor, indicating solidly in the primary canon that Puddinghead is believed to be a historical pony rather than a myth. We previously had a statement to that effect in Forgotten Friendship, but here he turns up in the primary series. That after the very same episode writer (and Josh Haber) screwed up the timeline to hell and back in Shadow Play. Notice the hat is just styled to remind one of a pudding, instead of being outright shaped like one as Pinkie’s was in Hearth’s Warming Eve.
- “Sorry Twilight, still getting used to my new wings.” You’d think he would learn to keep them closed in a week at most, right? Maybe two.
- “Spike, you’re in charge!” Spike knows enough of Twilight’s lecture to continue the lesson, or at least Twilight thinks he does. It’s not surprising, but that kind of acknowledgement is a bit unexpected.
- So why does Twilight keep an apple on that desk? Because Cheerilee had one?
“You need Cheerilee’s classes, not mine! Hurry up, you don’t want late marks on your permanent record.”
- So if Twilight acknowledges it, does it mean the School of Friendship does not provide one with general education?
- There is such a thing as permanent record in a normal Equestrian school.
- “O dragon, my dragon!” Now, seriously, people, how the flaming hell did that happen?! Did someone assassinate a dragon?…
- “Applebloom! You know better than to leave our good tools out like that!” The scene of destruction Applejack witnesses before saying that contains hardly any tools at all. Applejack persistently refers to it as “equipment” anyway.
- “Eh, it’s not like the apples are going anywhere.” They harvest them all the goddamn time. Maybe that is why.
- “I’m going to call you ‘Repeatie Belle!’” Funny as it is, why is Sweetie Belle pestering Rarity for this, rather than her, I dunno, parents?
- “…when suddenly, there was a huge storm cloud in our way!” Rainbow is telling a story about the Wonderbolt flying in formation. How exactly does a storm cloud just appear in their training or performance area, anyway? For that matter, how exactly does a gym class – because that’s where it happens – turn into story time, and why is it Applejack playing buckball with students in her class instead, while this place is obviously specifically equipped for this sport?
- “…and did a super-amazing half-twist into a back-flip Sonic Rainboom!” Rainbow can do this. Although I find it difficult to imagine a trajectory that corresponds to this description.
- “Sweetie Belle is the clumsy one!” Sweetie manages to trip over a scooter, but not fall on it, even though her front legs trip. That’s actually pretty acrobatic, rather than clumsy.
- This entire staged argument happens in front of Pinkie and Fluttershy, who haven’t been involved in Surf and/or Turf and might not know that the CMC actually got into a proper argument for reals then. However, I doubt Twilight wouldn’t have told them. Which is another reason why I think this episode has to happen earlier. It should be able to, since Spike does not appear in Surf and/or Turf anyway.
- For some reason, the CMC clubhouse lost the entire photo collection.
- “She looks so sad!” She also managed to end up pretty deep into Apple land to find the clubhouse. I remind you that Apple land has a fence around it. While it is not at all an obstacle to someone crossing it deliberately, just stumbling into the clubhouse at random should be impossible.
- “I just moved here to go to school, but everything is so new and different… I don’t know anypony!” Wasn’t it a boarding school, though? It certainly behaves like one…
- “I could use some help with my homework. I have to do something nice for each of these ponies. But I don’t know anything about them. And it’s so hard to talk to ponies you never met.” That’s some really fucking difficult homework, pardon my French. And failed attempts at doing this kind of homework would also pretty quickly alienate most of Ponyville, who have lives and jobs to do.
- For some really bizarre reason, Lemon Hearts is ponying a market stall.
- “That cactus keeps pricking her every step she takes.” For that matter, why does Bon-Bon need a cactus?…
- “Green, purple, yellow. And one more purple.” Now, the idea to sort sprinkles is sound, even if it does ultimately fail, but why exactly does Cozy Glow need to fly when doing it, and for that matter, if she didn’t require to hold the sixth shaker to do it, why would she need to hold the other five?
- Notice that when Big Mac bucks the trees, he does not verify if there are any apples in them first, and upon failure, bucks the tree again. He still expects all the apples to end up in his bucket anyway. Which is indicative of how the applebucking process works: This is only sensible if the tree knows where to put the apples.
- “Not even Miss Cheerilee can make the history of radishes exciting.” Equestrian schools teach a history of radishes. Which would imply radishes appeared in historical time. Our radishes got domesticated in Europe in pre-Roman times, so I wonder.
- “Headmare Twilight is giving us a big test at the end of the week, and I could really use your help studying.” “Um… intelligence?” “Is it… control?” I wonder how can one forget the six Elements when they literally see them every day on their teacher’s asses. The entire teaching montage had to have taken most of the week, since it involves lots of very disparate activities, which Scootaloo later confirms.
- Twilight’s office has no chairs or pillows for visitors in this scene, but they do mysteriously turn up in the next scene in that office. There’s a table with two strange bottles on it. I imagine at least one contains scotch.
- “Who is the Princess of Friendship? ‘Your mom!’” Twilight should have noticed this is obviously a deliberately bogus answer. It’s impossible not to know that having enrolled in the school in the first place. Were I writing this test, I would use just this kind of question to siphon out people who answer it by checking random answers on a multiple choice test. However, Twilight makes no indication she caught it, and continues to blame the CMC. Her “I know that. Now.” later in the episode confirms solidly that she did not – it took Starlight learning that the test was failed deliberately from Cozy Glow herself. You see why am I imagining one of those bottles contains scotch?
- Twilight closes the door of her office by magicking the outer, rather than the inner door handles. This is happening more and more often these days.
“Not much need for a guidance counselor at a school of friendship.” Starlight’s office contains:
- Yet another globe.
- Two kites up at the ceiling.
- A horrifying amount of bottles.
Unlike Twilight, she does have a chair for visitors.
- “Can I get you a comfort pillow, a security blanket… empathy cocoa?” Ponies use all these things, and Starlight has at least a pillow and a blanket at the ready. It should not be surprising that it takes her less than a second to produce two cups of cocoa out of nothing, considering how long it took her to make a cake in No Second Prances. Notice that in our world, the term “security blanket” was popularized by a comic strip in 1956.
- “Oh, well, I have plenty of that! Anecdotes, insights, midnight confessions…” So a guidance counselor encountering a student at midnight is perfectly OK and not at all questionable. Got it.
- “That’s devious! I-I mean, I see.” Starlight’s face of earnest admiration is suspicious.
- Apple Bloom is using a chisel to dislodge chewing gum from underneath a school table.
I think that’s the first time we actually see chewing gum.(No, it’s not.) It’s not surprising that ponies have it – being herbivores who seem to have switched up to eating primarily fruit and vegetables, they probably need it – but it is kind of surprising they stick it there just like human children. Not too much, but a little. I suppose gum in hair is a very common occurrence then. - “They’re honorary diplomas, makin’ y’all official graduates of this here school.” Would it kill Twilight to give them a written test for propriety’s sake?…
Sigh.
P.S. I’m sure Cozy Glow’s rook cutie mark signifies scheming, rather than any kind of aptitude at chess.
Oliver: Heh. I kind of chose to stop feeling about the show.
DannyJ: You used to do exploratory surgery. Now you do autopsies.
Oliver: Precisely. As long as I have my own source of lightning to reanimate what I stitch together, it will walk.
DannyJ: Implying that Points of Canon is a longform allegory for why attempting to decipher a coherent story and world from MLP is akin to playing God.
Oliver: And why not. Sometimes, you can play God and win.
And I still think this episode would have been more fun if they pulled a big reveal and parian-doll-moppet burst into green flame to reveal Chrysalis to make a brief villain speech to a disinterested Everfree glade.
4874939
Amen.
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Twilight's School of Friendship will be the death of Starlight Glimmer yet.
I guess their schedules don't always intersect.
Well, it's not like Abraham Lincoln was literally the captain of a ship. The question is what Walt Whitpony meant with the metaphor of the dragon.
Going directly to the faculty? Or maybe their parents are on their twelfth vacation for that year.
That may be classified information.
With regards to Twilight blaming the CMC even after the "Your mom" answer, remember that the alternative would require Twilight Sparkle to think that someone might deliberately choose to fail a test. I'm not sure if she can even conceive of such a thing. (Now, the Crusaders themselves might, given Rumble in "Marks and Recreation"...)
At the very least, this guidance counselor thinks it is. After sampling an unknown number of those bottles.
Also, there is one unfortunate wrinkle: Spike didn't have wings in "Non-Compete Clause," which had Fluttershy cementing a nine-month streak of Teacher of the Month. So yeah, one more reason to despise that episode.
Cheerilee gets her students to clean the classroom, Applejack makes the Student Six build sheds, Cozy Glow gets assigned to help Big Mac in some way that just so happens to end up being harvesting apples... Is it just me, or have both the writers and the characters confused schoolwork with internship? It seems to be a recurring theme this season that the teachers just want their students to do manual labour for them.
Also, lots of weird stuff and continuity hiccups this episode. This was season seven-level quality. Not that eight has been great about continuity either, but...
Maybe Starlight's drinking habit is worse than Twilight's.
It made a somewhat important appearance in Ponyville Confidential:
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Also, On Your Marks and Top Bolt have ponies blowing bubblegum:
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4874960
And the point of creating this scheduling nightmare would be…?
Let’s just hope it wasn’t Luna.
In which case the expected reaction would be to conclude that Cozy Glow is sick and refer her to a psychiatric hospital, or assume she has some manner of learning disability so severe that she needs immediate extra lessons. Blaming the CMC for someone forgetting who the Princess of Friendship is would be giving them way too much credit.
4874975
Well, they did make us clean the classroom back in my day… The rest, however, is most likely the product of the writers having no earthly idea what a School of Friendship would actually teach. They kind of got the concept of teaching friendship through shared life experiences, that’s what the previous series was built on, and it worked. But formalizing these experiences into a teaching, let alone actually producing a school curriculum that would make sense, requires actually thinking about it, and that does seem to be at odds with the goals the writers set for themselves. If not beyond them entirely.
4874986
If my friend and teacher was swallowing idiot balls with such an alarming frequency, my drinking habit would certainly get worse.
Oops, fixed.
4875014
Twilight isn't Starlight's teacher and never was; neither are they friends; neither was Twilight ever actually clever.
4875034
And no story about ponies actually exists, either, but you can scarcely deny that it should.
4875036
Those things I said are true within the story as it exists.
4875037
What exists is a set of unrelated episodes from at least twenty stories, all alike and all different.
4875040
If you must. My statements are true of all of them.
It seems like Hasbro is running out of ideas for the show.
No "kinda" involved.
It might just be his magic that sealed it, not a built-in lock. Locks aren't that friendly.
I noticed that too. I don't have a good idea for that myself. Maybe they shuffle the classes around mid-semester so each student has more opportunities to befriend others?
Spike's wings are going to make chronological shifting pretty darn hard for a while. I think he's been at least visible in every episode so far. I guess we can push Surf and Turf ahead of this.
And he's a stallion. Interesting that show cannon says he's a stallion, movie canon says Clover is a stallion, and book canon says Hurricane is a stallion. Since we can assume Princess Platinum is a mare, that's only 2 founders we don't have the gender of. Also, at this point I think we can assume the existence of all 6 founders, even though Hearth's Warming eve is still mostly an allegory.
We should probably assume this is right after Molt Down.
That's the big problem of this episode. We receive abundant confirmation that the School of Friendship literally only teaches friendship. I get that this place is unaccredited, but I feel like Celestia would have stepped in to insist a general education of some sort be provided as well. I'm even more surprised that Twilight doesn't seem to be providing a well-rounded education. Given her knowledge of many subjects, surely Celestia and the CSfGU taught her more than just magic?
Working theory: the students of the Friendship School are legally adults, right around 18, who have just completed a general education. The non-ponies we know are here because their species needs to learn friendship, but the pony students are here because they have behavioral problems tied to poor socializing and this is their alternative to Juvenile Hall.
Spike may have learned this poem from Ember. I really wanted him to shout "burn your books" and then breathe on the nearest one.
Her sister is a teacher there. It's Twilight who's not letting them in the school, what are Sweetie's parents going to do about it?
Or the whole thing is heavily exaggerated, in a tale Rainbow has previously made up to impress Scootaloo.
She's supposed to find Big Mac after all.
Theory: Twilight or her teachers got permission ahead of time. After all, 2 of the targets are very close to the teachers, and the third has a record of service to the Tiara.
It's for Lyler.
Might be local control of curriculum, I doubt Canterlot or Cloudsdale covers this.
Or someone was faithfully copying off an answer key without reading the questions. Perhaps Twilight thinks the CMC gave her a fake answer key. (Wouldn't that mean Twilight picked "Your Mom" as an answer in the first place?)
I feel like they were given diplomas so the Mane 6 didn't have to explain that this is a reform school of some kind.
Also, Twilight follows proper management theory: Starlight has too light a workload, so she is given a team to manage.
Cozy Glow may or may not be Chrysalis, but her voice is incredibly annoying no matter what.
Maybe they are not for drinking. Just for storage. derpicdn.net/img/view/2017/7/30/1498557.gif
For all the frustrations of being conscripted as a teacher with no clear lesson plan, goal or use by Twilight :)
4875014
At this rate, half of the cast will be in the rehab/awaiting liver transplant by the end of the season. Also, is it me, or Twilight is getting less screentime recently? And she's pretty dense in most appearances.
Are any of them not?
4875105
And impede existing friendships in the process?
What, Cozy Glow too?…
Possible, but the issue isn’t someone doing something nice for them, it’s someone trying to do something nice and failing. And making a mess. Which would happen disturbingly often.
4875150
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Or this.
4875163
Not just you, you’re correct on both counts.
4875175
Some.
4875163
She was always dense. It just took us a while to realize it.
4874960
She immediately gets embarrassed and moves on swiftly. She specifically doesn't think it's appropriate but made a Freudian slip. Now the question is what midnight confessions are on her mind right now.
4875536
Well, now she's dense and in charge (that is, more than before). Celestia probably didn't think this through.
4875601
Maybe Ocellus turned into Prince Blueblood and tried to pick her up in the middle of the night. Starlight needed three of her bottles to fix that problem (one to hit Ocellus and two to drink afterwards).
4875014
That's fairly typical of how American High School classes are scheduled. Each student has a personal class schedule depending on what subjects they're focusing on.
4875480
Something something make new friends and keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.
Hmmm. Good point, even if she's Chrysalis with fake papers and it's iron EQG law that high school admissions standards do not exist, that seems unlikely. Perhaps kids of all ages with severe social maladjustment issues can be sent to Friendship School for a year or two.
Quite often. Which is why if the teachers were going to recruit volunteers to "have nice things happen to them," it would probably be very kind, patient, understanding ponies, like Big Mac and Mrs. Cake, who would probably be willing to tolerate some messes and problems to help kids. Bon Bon probably did that cactus thing on purpose because she thought it would make an easy friendship homework for a local unicorn student.
4874960 4875014
I'm curious as to the viability of a hypothesis that ponies abandon their foals soon after weaning rather than at the age of majority. Obviously, there will be some individual variability to this (n.b. earth ponies, the Pies and Apples in particular, seem to have families which are reasonably stable by human measures), but even though we've now seen the family of every one of the Mane Six, none of them seemed to be involved in their childrens' lives past early Markhood at longest, and Apple Bloom is the only CMC with any sort of intergenerational family structure in place.
4876237
The Elements of Yakishness, on the other hand, are Shouting, Stomping, Smashing, Yelling, Tradition, and Vanilla.
The distinction between Shouting and Yelling is subtle but key, much like that between Kindness and Generosity.
4876237
The general form, “ponies, as a rule, abandon their foals soon after weaning,” is unfalsifiable: A general canon statement – a character who is supposed to know these things describing the situation in any reasonable way – that will allow you to verify it will never happen. Such a statement is not exactly impossible, (like one that would disprove Chessmaster Celestia for example) but knowing what we know about the writers, we can be certain it will never be made. At the same time, any counterexamples are too easy to shuffle under the carpet of individual variability.
Counterexamples do exist. If you limit yourself to primary canon:
If you involve secondary canon, Shining Armor is involved with his family and lives in their household well into high school. The pattern of changing houses that we catch Twilight and Shining Armor in across primary and secondary canon at different moments of their lives implies that their family would purchase new residences while leaving the previous one to the newly mature child, but that’s neither here nor there.
Just how representative these families are is a matter of interpretation, but while there is room for such a hypothesis, I don’t think there is any strong support for it.