Aug
5th
2018
Points of Canon: S8x16 - Friendship University · 9:40am Aug 5th, 2018
And another spoiler. This had the potential to be extremely controversial, but turned out to be controversial in an entirely unexpected way.
- Chronology markers: This obviously postdates Shadow Play and School Daze, but otherwise, we can’t do much to date this episode within Season 8 – Spike does not appear with his wings to mess this up, and while the presence of Cozy Glow suggests it postdates Marks for Effort, it does not require so.
- “You would think after more than a thousand years, there would be nothing left to learn.” Star Swirl speaks as if he was learning for a thousand years, which is very definitely not true. Despite mellowing out, he’s still a pretentious ass.
- Star Swirl is accompanied on his flashback trip to the mountains by the stallion with the placeholder name Rare Find. Who is a very notable background pony: He was Tirek’s first on-screen victim in Twilight’s Kingdom and observed Cerberus showing up in Ponyville in It’s About Time. If you needed any more proof he’s a secret agent, here it is. Star Swirl did manage to ditch him eventually, though…
- “I hope you find these postcards enjoyable” Ponies have postcards. I’m not sure if these came up before. Various cards already on the walls feature postage stamps and otherwise look very much like ours.
- “Professor Sparkle? The mailpony just came with, uh, a few things.” Trusting a student with accepting mail is very risky. What’s going on here?
- “And I didn’t use the school funds to buy these. I made the purchase entirely with my own bits.” The school has funds of its own, and I can’t help but wonder how is it getting them.
- “It isn’t just another friendship school. It’s a university!” Now, Smolder would be just the right kind of person to be taken in by the idea that a university is more prestigious than a school, but usually, there are formal criteria for an establishment to be called a university. Most importantly, it would have to offer post-secondary education, and advanced degrees. Of course, this is not something Flim and Flam have considered, and Neighsay definitely looked the other way, but it’s important that ponies have the distinction at all – previously, the word “university” itself was confined to secondary canon only.
- Both podiums that Flim and Flam use feature obvious microphones with wires.
- One of the props used by Flim and Flam is a Ponyville snowglobe. I wonder if they’re a thing otherwise.
- “As you can see, we’re a success / By any kind of stat” Which would require having completed a school year, which they obviously didn’t, but since when that stopped Flim and Flam.
- “That may be so, for all I know / But I still smell a rat” So was that Twilight using Haycartes’ Method to participate in the song, or something the brothers planned for? The subsequent lines suggest that she did, and the brothers immediately adapted, but why would she do it quite this way, I have no idea.
- “The lessons that we teach have been / Reviewed and checked and edited” While in this instance, magic is used to alter written word purely for demonstrative purposes, there’s little doubt the spell actually exists. I wonder how easy it is to detect its use, because Flim and Flam would get a lot of mileage out of it.
- Friendship University has a mandated sports uniform, cheerleading uniforms, and academic caps with gowns as part of a graduation ceremony, which implies that real universities in Equestria also do – Flim and Flam would make sure to duplicate all the trappings.
- “Really? Somepony like… this?” The fact that Twilight is Star Swirl’s biggest fan is well known to Flim and Flam, and I wonder how exactly did they find out. Was it Star Swirl himself, or is Twilight that public about it?
- “I’d heard rumors you’ve returned, but I didn’t believe it until now.” The return of the Pillars was not a matter of national news, but was not classified either. Still, funny how Star Swirl used to be so obscure that nopony recognized Twilight’s costume except Luna back in Luna Eclipsed, and progressed to be more recognizable than Twilight, who remains largely ignored throughout this episode.
- “I, Chancellor Neighsay, hereby confer upon Friendship University complete and unreserved EEA accreditation!” Which means that in the previous scene, the accreditation the brothers referred to was still provisional.
- “They run a resort in Las Pegasus!” “Technically, our resort is a legitimate business.” It’s interesting that anyone running a
resortcasino in Las Pegasus is assumed to be a crook through that alone. - “I spent a thousand years thinking the worst of a ‘bad’ pony.” No you didn’t.
“They don’t even charge for classes.”
- Implying that normally, at least universities charge for classes in Equestria. I really hope this doesn’t mean ponies have student loans too.
- Implying that this was normal in Star Swirl’s youth as well.
- “Only if we do it as ourselves.” Don’t you girls have changeling friends?… That said, Rarity managed to cook up a student outwit with just what she had on her – whether we saw it or not – and the contents of a supply closet. At the same time, while it’s funny that you can disguise an alicorn princess with an eyepatch and an obvious sticker over the cutie marks, this is utterly senseless. Sure, Twilight gets outed nearly instantly, but it worked on at least one student. I hope it just means he’s an idiot.
- “Sorry, ‘Plainity.’” I’m with Twilight here, I’m sure this isn’t even a word.
- Flam (or is it Flim? Doesn’t matter.) clops his hooves together to turn the lights on, and neither brothers’ horn lights up, which means there’s a sound-activated light switch somewhere. Our earliest examples turned up in 1996, but magic is likely to offer easier solutions.
- “‘Princess Unhinged!’ It’ll be the talk of Equestria!” I wonder if being this sensitive to reputation is Twilight’s own peculiarity that Flim and Flam picked up on, or a more general phenomenon implying that a princess hardly even matters in modern Equestria. I hope for everybody’s sake it’s the former.
- “Tuition’s free, but the worksheets sure aren’t.” Which implies that hidden costs like that are unusual. But I also wonder if they are, per se, illegal.
- “Well, brother of mine, we’ve got almost all the bits we need to expand our resort. If we add another level of classes and worksheets, we’ll be there.” Which implies that the
casinoresort is not sufficiently profitable on its own. What the hell did they do with it, start paying out winnings?! Or was there some kind of new gambling regulation out? - “musical chocolate fountain” and “pudding hot tub” are things. Now, I dunno about chocolate fountain, but why a pudding hot tub? It’s got to be a bitch to clean out of your coat afterwards.
- The amount of cash in the room implies Flim and Flam don’t take credit. I suspect banks have blacklisted them long ago, though…
- “You can destroy my reputation if you want, but using your students’ bits to expand your resort is wrong, even if the lessons you teach are good ones.” Actually, why would it be wrong? The fraud is in the hidden costs, not in using the profits for something else. Seriously, Twilight…
- “Of course they’re good. We copied them from your book.” I have long suspected that Equestria doesn’t have anything approaching modern copyright law. Twilight’s subsequent line, “If you really want to call it even, give back the bits and stop charging for my lessons.” implies that she doesn’t get extra leverage from the copyright law.
- “But how are we going to learn about friendship now?” It’s interesting that the question is directed at Star Swirl, not Twilight, who is standing right next to him.
- “I still don’t understand how Flim and Flam could have gotten a copy of your book.” Twilight’s study literature was not sold on the open market.
- “Uh, I finished straightening up in the library.” Well, we already knew Cozy Glow is evil, nothing new here…
As DannyJ aptly put:
I find it hilarious that Flim and Flam fearlessly blackmail a princess of the realm until threatened with having their obvious scam revealed, and even then have no intention of returning their ill-gotten gains, but one stern look and disapproving voice from Star Swirl makes them give up.
Remember, Star Swirl was supposed to be obscure when he was first mentioned.
But now he’s literally more widely respected than Twilight.
Even the villains defer to him.
So not only do ponies not learn the lessons taught to them by their friends, but they forget the lessons they teach to others too?
Flim and Flam did nothing wrong.
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It certainly seems they did nothing illegal, even if it was morally reprehensible. They're trading on a reputation here, riding on the coat-tails of other ponies' good names, and exposing the sheer amount of money they're collecting is what defeats them, nothing to do with the law.
Of course, any pony who can add up and multiply would be able to work out how much money they're collecting. But then, all their students are idiots.
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Star Swirl is also an idiot by implication, because he fell for the same scam.
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Yes. He is a clever fool.
It depends. One could plausibly convince a judge that because Flim and Flam promised their students that the money they spent would be re-invested in FU, the students were more like investors than customers. In that case, Flim and Flam would be estopped from doing anything else with the money. Furthermore, comingling funds between FU and the resort (or indeed running FU as an alter ego of Flim and Flam themselves) would be an abuse of the corporate form and a breach of fiduciary duty entitling the sudents/investors to a further equitable remedy of restitution. We've already established that Twilight and the other princesses are fonts of equitable authority with the powers of a court of chancery. And that's exactly the role in which she acts at the end of the episode - albeit she had to use Star Swirl as her marshal/bailiff.
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Star Swirl is the bait. I forget what the term is, the famous 'face' who gets the
cultuniversity's secret knowledge for free, because they're providing reputational cover for thecultuniversity.I suspect this whole thing is a rather oblique Scientology satire. Not that all sorts of scams and cults don't pull the same 'entry is free, secret higher-level knowledge is all you can afford, and a bit more' thing. Star Swirl, in this story, is the equivalent of the Hollywood stars who get explicitly recruited and coddled by the Church to lure the herd into their endless rounds of instruction and ascending ladder of ever-more-secret training.
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There's a great deal of informality in how the law is treated, both here and elsewhere in the series. Almost as if ponies don't actually have a legal system or a precise code of laws...
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A show made by Canadians and Americans defaulting to an assumption of common law in the absence of effort put into defining the legal system? Color me shocked.
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vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/8/8e/Mayor_and_town_council_maybe_S2E18.png/revision/latest?cb=20120220001517
They do have judges, though.
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There are ponies who dress as judges. Not necessarily the same thing. It could be cosplay.
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Then the cutie mark of a gavel would be on a post-it note.
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I've made that comparison. Another comparison that I've seen made, but did not think of originally, was to Trump University. From what I know of that case, it's apt enough.
I got the impression that Star Swirl is generally well known and respected, and they're using that as proof of their ligitimacy to everyone, not just Twilight.
Not even in the hidden costs per se I'd say, just falshood in advertising. It looks like they are just selling materials that they then require for lessons piecemeal, not hiding clauses in contracts that automatically charge bank accounts or anything like that. The students we see are actually really happy with what they're getting, even though they all already are aware that they're basically charged per lesson.
I just don't see the basis on which they need to return the money. The logic seems to be that as long as the Flams advertise their education as free, ponies continue to believe it even as they physically hand over the money and it counts as stolen on thet basis. Well, even worse, since Twilight implies that bad part is that they're using the money on themselves, so??? Embezzlement?
Could be there's some kind of dropoff, a staff member accepts it, and the student's just a messenger... but more likely, Twilight and friends lack the right sort of imagination to see how this is poor security. As a former villain Glimmer should know better, but maybe she's not aware of this detail.
Probably comes out of Twilight's princess stipend, perhaps assisted by private donations from Celestia.
Could these be magitech? Either way it's not out of line with the kind of tech we've seen used previously, though.
Bet they can charge ponies through the nose for them too!
It's probably mentioned in that book of hers they read and copied all their lessons from.
Twilight just can't believe in redemption for these two. Strange also that six seasons later, she still hasn't realized the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 5000 was a useful invention -- not a scam -- and the brothers just got greedy.
Once again, the brothers have a legitimately profitable skill. They may have infringed on Twilight's book copyright by selling it by the page at a ridiculous markup, but the fact that they have so many students willing to pay it (and no one, not even one of Twilight's best friends, has read the book and recognized the copied pages) shows that Twilight was terrible at marketing it, and the brothers are amazing at marketing her material. If Twilight just hired them to market her book and the School of Friendship, they and she would make money legitly to use however they want! Another wasted opportunity.
Man, if they're not breaking copyright law then they're not even doing anything illegal here. If so, I wonder how the hell authors get paid? No wonder Daring Do has to live in a shack in the woods.
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Could be, but that would be pointlessly redundant: see RTAC #15 for the reasons why.
Good point, it probably is!
Actually, I’m very much not convinced the brothers were the inventors of that particular device, just like I am not convinced that it was cost-effective to operate. They never even say they invented it, do they? They only ever claim to be salesponies and nothing else.
See the PoC for The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 and particularly the comments below the post for full reasoning.
That, it is, but notice that while the brothers could have approached her with an offer like that, they did not – instead, their first impulse was still to exploit her unilaterally.
Same way authors got paid before copyright laws were a thing, which is actually pretty much the same way they get paid now. Copyright laws were originally (and to this day) lobbied primarily by publishers, who had the expense of getting a book through state censorship – which emerged soon after widespread printing to combat anti-religious literature – and wanted some exclusive rights for the trouble and risks involved.
This remained manageable, up until Disney went on a rampage, which resulted in the Mickey Mouse Protection Convention that we have now. (Literally, they lobby for extending the length of copyright every time Mickey Mouse is about to slip into public domain.)
Quite a fascinating episode. For the 3rd time out of 4, Flim and Flam barely create a scam as much as an aggressive business model.
Yup.
I'd say the evidence suggests ponies are pretty trusting. Also, maybe Cozy is doing some chores as a punishment for deliberately failing that test.
My exact thoughts. Do parents pay tuition, or is Twilight just pulling money from the treasury like she does to support herself?
I think those charts were supposed to look made up by the writers, i.e. to make clear to the audience Flim and Flam made them up.
I think she did. And not so much "adapted" as "planned for." Remember, they mailed a giant pile of fliers to Ponyville, I think they planned for Twilight to show up, investigate, and get caught so they could try and blackmail her.
Keep in mind that if such opportunities for selling merchandise didn't already exist in Equestria, Flim and Flam would probably invent them.
It's Starswirl. There's probably a question on the worksheets about who his friends are, and he's enough of a jerk to say "the new princess is my biggest fan."
Flim and Flam are the best marketers in Equestria, and one part of college marketing is bragging about how great your students and alumni are. The other students know because Flim and Flam told them.
Drawing from real life.
I think Rarity expected it to work based on the average intelligence of Flim and Flam's students.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. I think any princess wants to avoid bad press because, as we learned from Princess Spike, a lot of the legitimacy of the Diarchy seems to come from the personal reputation of the rulers. I don't think any princess would lose their title over something like this though.
I can't see how. Twilight doesn't seem to believe it's illegal.
Even a profitable business normally needs to take out a loan on a major expansion like expanding a theme park. Given Flim and Flam's history and record, what bank or lending institution would give them a loan?
On the other hand, if they are expanding their theme park, why did they close their most popular ride last season?
Yup.
It's completely unnecessary. Flim and Flam did all the actual work of setting up a functioning and effective friendship school, all they needed to do differently was say "we're raising money to pursue our dream of expanding our theme park, that's why we need to charge you for worksheets."
The writers had to give them this idiot ball, or there would have been no way to "stop" Flim and Flam. The only reason I can think of for this being a "fraud" is if Flim and Flam were running the school as a non-profit, and thus defrauding the government.
Also remember that one of Flim and Flam's key selling points for F.U. was that the school was on the west coast of Equestria, so ponies don't have to move halfway across the country to take lessons. Thanks to Twilight that option is now gone.
Why not? I mean, why isn't Twilight's book available in every library in the country?
So here's why I think they gave back the money, even though Twilight may have not had a lot of legal grounds to force them to do so: Fear of Star Swirl. They read all his worksheets where he said "oh, how I wish instead of banishing those creatures who angered me into hostile dimension, I had befriended them." They don't want to end up like the sirens, and they're not taking chances. I mean, they're still successful casino owners, this time they don't have to flee town.
As for Twilight, they waved a polaroid in her face and she didn't destroy it with her magic, they know she's much more restrained.
So serial huckster casino owners start a semi fraudulent for-profit university to divert money to their other financial holdings. I wonder what inspired this episode?
And here's something interesting. All the students we saw are adults, yet Twilight invited them all to come study at her school. I will take it as more evidence that the Friendship School is some kind of specialty school not meant to replace a normal education.
4914655 And even after he realizes its a scam, he tells Twilight "oh thanks, guess I'll just be on my way then. Study at your school? Pass."
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4914737 The Cravat Appreciation Society?
Oh, just realized something really valuable:
If they show a clear shot of the room, we have an upper bound for the number of students at the school!
A point that strikes me as interesting is the moment when Flim and Flam blackmail Twilight. I was 100% expecting them to demand hush money from Twilight, or to insist that she endorse their school. When their demand instead was “We won’t tell the newspapers that you were snooping, if you stop snooping,” that immediately told me that they really did have something to hide, something they were legitimately worried about Twilight finding.
I’ve seen it speculated that Twilight’s fangirl-ing is what brought Star Swirl back into the public eye in the first place.
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As has been established in every prior episode featuring them, Flim and Flam are prone to making shortsighted, overly aggressive business decisions because they let greed get the better of them. Calling it an “idiot ball” implies that this is somehow OOC for them, but by this point, this flavor of idiocy is Flim and Flam’s character.