Points of Canon: S8x22 - What Lies Beneath · 3:36pm Aug 26th, 2018
A spoiler. Let’s do one more autopsy. Whether post or pre-mortem is beyond the scope of this post.
- Chronology markers: School of Friendship exists. Spike does not appear, so we don’t know if he has wings or not. Cozy Glow appears, and this time it’s definitely a hard lock. But in general, this episode is typical for the latter half of Season 8.
“The Tree of Harmony remains one of the most powerful sources of magic known to ponydom.”
- I would dearly love to know what makes something a “source” of magic in this context, but of course nobody cared to think of this in detail.
- Notice the word “ponydom.” Notice also how nobody ever says “humandom.”
- Twilight’s blackboard contains pretty much nothing intelligible or interesting, except possibly a pie chart and something that looks like a timeline. It does, however, include one or two further examples of mathematical syntax using unorthodox icons for variables.
- “Was that before or after Discord made chocolate rain?” Cozy Glow being the student with the correct answer, and later clapping when Twilight announces a test makes her appearance a hard lock instead of a soft one: This is definitely not the student who could have trouble with class or pretend to have trouble with class. Notice also that she’s clapping instead of stomping – both gestures turn up at different times.
- “I’m never gonna learn pony history!” Neither will we. Due to the school not being accredited, we don’t know if all of this is part of the official pony history or not.
- Silverstream is reading a book with a valve water tap on the cover for some strange reason, which even the rest of the Student Six comment on, but notice, that it contains a siphon sink, i.e. it’s a trap. Invented in 1775, so not unexpected, but interesting in context. I mean, it’s a trap! Also, it’s a P-trap, which is a more modern practice. Notice that since Silverstream is so fascinated by it, the aboveground structures of Mount Aris might not have plumbing to speak of. Or they do. Like, you know, stairs.
- “The Pillars grew the Tree.” “The Tree grew the Elements, and then the box with six locks.” “But our professors found six keys and unlocked the box.” That’s the official story, right.
- “Golly, it’s so inspiring how relaxed you all are about studying friendship, considering your disadvantage.” Cozy Glow is doing this taunt while standing right next to a teapot. Very unwise to do in a library…
- “I mean, growing up as a love-starved changeling?” Cozy Glow, at least, believes that Ocellus has been born before the skittlebug transformation in To Where and Back Again. There are other options.
- There’s yet another globe smack in the middle of the library.
“By sunrise, this door will be closed. Finish the test before then, and you may go. Fail the test, and here you will stay.”
- Shouldn’t the door be open by sunrise, though? Because it is being closed as she speaks. At this point, nothing stops the Student Six from running away. Which is something they should have considered but didn’t.
- The form of teleport the Tree uses looks closer to Discord’s magic than any pony’s teleport.
I guess I’ll avoid expounding on the particular student’s fears, unless they turn out to be relevant to worldbuilding, since characterization is not the focus of this post.
- “Hello? Anygriff here?” Poor griffons, who also use this form.
- “Aw, but you can’t have tea if you aren’t dressed for it.” I must echo Damaged here: The Tree is very quick to imagine a bipedal dress design, something that has to be really unusual on Pony Earth.
- “Chrysalis! Where’s Ocellus?!” Smolder knows Chrysalis by sight. Most likely reason is that Chrysalis is part of the curriculum, I think. Notice also that the illusion covers Ocellus, but does not alter her voice. Why?…
- “Maybe my past was so horrible, it’s still inside me just waiting to come out again.” I would say this line definitely means that Ocellus was born before the skittlebug transformation.
- “Like all living things, I change as I grow. As I have grown, so have my abilities.” This actually implies the tree might not have been sapient even as recently as a few years ago, or even a few episodes ago.
- “We just got tested by the Tree of Harmony! And we totally passed!” And if you didn’t, you’d be melted like the poor wooden clones.
- “Because… it’s my fault. You were all getting along so well, and I felt left out. I was jealous. And it upset you so much, the Tree of Harmony had to test you.” Cozy Glow is awfully quick to concoct this line of reasoning, as if the thing she wants to conceal is not her taunt, but the Tree’s actions. Seeing how she looks into the grate afterwards makes it clear that this is exactly the case, and here we have the setup for the season finale, I think.
Notice a few interesting things:
- The Tree never comments on its own origins.
- In pursuit of its ideology, it’s actually almost entirely amoral.
- It’s not just sapient, but now its roots and direct influence extend all the way to the Friendship Castle.
The canonical answer that “the Tree is what the Pillars planted” seems like very much a non-answer these days, doesn’t it?
For a living embodiment of friendship, you'd think this tree would be nicer. Every time we've seen it lately, it's been doing something questionable.
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Considering that friendship by itself is outside the moral plane, and has no bearing on good and evil – villains can be totally evil and still be best friends to each other – it might even have a point.
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In the ideology of the show, true friendship is supposed to preclude villainy. The villainous being selfish or tyrannical or something like that. The Tree just melted a batch of baby villains for that very reason.
You'd have to build a theory of villainy which still exemplifies the five and a half virtues. Starlight's heresy comes close I suppose.
Funnily enough, I theorized the Tree might be sentient all the way back in S4/S5 when the Bearers were busying themselves getting keys for the Chest. Originally I had figured Celestia as the one who was indirectly guiding them towards their respective keys (sunlight and light effects being a recurring motif), but by the S4 finale, I realized she wasn't in on the secret. Either that or Celestia is a shockingly good method actor and the events of Horse Play were a total fabrication.
It looks like the Mane 6 need to apologize to Starlight Glimmer. The avatar of Harmony Itself demonstrates that locking creatures up and mentally torturing them until they behave how you want them to is in fact a-okay.
in my own attempts to try and rationalize. In Hearth's Warming we had:
So Equestria itself is a particularly magical land in an already magical world. (A world with crap-holes like Kludgetown and Yakyakistan). Perhaps when the pillars planted the tree it was like shoving a rudder in the latent force. Giving the whole land-life force a brain and a direction. That grew over the years until now. Where it is emulating the values.
By it's own admission here it didn't set up the challenges and let the prisons sort of be mirror-your-worst-fear things. So the tree sensed disharmony, stuck the disharmonious things in friendship boxes until they showed friendship again.
Of course a eldritch thing of friendship that is impressionable might be able to be talked into stuff. Which maybe what Cozy Glow's plan is.
Also maybe its good that Twilight didn't find out. It's kind of a existential crisis thing to discover Gaia might be using your face for its Avatar of Friendship thing.
But hey. We are up to four Twilight's now. Princess Twi, Sci-Twi, Mean Twi, Avatar Twi. Groupclopfic when?"
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Maybe Tree Twilight got her face when she ate Mean Twi and her frenemies.
No. It was closing the whole time.
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Possible, and disconcerting.
You mean there still isn’t one? Are you sure? Did you actually look?…
My favorite type of episode: A fairly good one that also proves I was right about something!
Between this and the horror story-gestures, it seems like Twilight thinks the tree is not sapient. Does she think the map is some kind of AI?
Twilight seems to think the tree and the castle are separate entities, even as this episode seems to suggest otherwise.
I think she's just excited to learn how they work. Great catch on the trap reference.
They should really just ask the guidance counselor for the answers.
Which to me suggests either the tree is the same intelligence as the castle/map (where Twilight has probably received a sketch or two of a dress in her journal from Sunset), or it can straight see into other dimensions.
This here is the crux of the issue: The tree just cast a spell on children to show them their most traumatizing fear, including invoking the memory of a dictator to a child who grew up as a refugee, and nearly killing Gallus with a panic attack. The tree doesn't seem to be actively evil, per se, but its blue and orange morality is quite clear (and we know from earlier in the season the tree will definitely kill). Does anyone really doubt that if they failed the test, the tree would have kept those students down their forever?
It's a mystery. Cozy Glow could be Chryssie, but frankly at this point Cozy's ability to actually be good at lying and thinking on her feet means it's unlikely. If she's Chancellor Neighsayer's niece or something I'll be really disappointed, because she seems way to cunning to be a child. I can't think of anyone else who would want to plot against the school. I know she will turn out to be something else, but dang if I don't feel like she's the 2nd Sith. Given her pattern of behavior, are there any new theories about why she sabotaged her test in the first place?
I think the tree gets its power from tapping into the harmony dimension the same way Discord gets his powers from the chaos dimension.
As for its borderline malevolent personality? For most of its life the tree has been in proximity to Discord's Plundervines, which sure seemed like dark magic. Even if they're now destroyed, they could have affected the tree's consciousness. This episode reminds me of Q from Star Trek almost as much as Discord does.
It's also interesting that the Lord of Chaos and the Tree of Harmony have now both "tested" the Student 6 within the walls of the school of Friendship.
4926024 I think "true" friendship might be an example of what ponies believe rather than what the tree actually cares about. The tree wants harmony by having individuals care for each other. Ponies didn't really care for each other in the village. And those clones all hated everyone else around them. But that's different than saying the tree believes in Honesty, Loyalty, etc. We've never seen villains on the show have what we would consider a friendship, not in the way even evil people in the real world can have.
This time I'm gonna write my own comments as I go before looking at Oliver's.
Gallus is lucky Discord wasn't around to use this as an opportunity to mess with him.
Twilight has Cozy organize the books instead of doing it herself in seconds with a spell. Really?
Twilight teleports in mid-conversation... and replies to what Gallus said BEFORE she teleported! ...Oh right she has a magic telescope for spying on students.
Oh boy. Changeling, or do the Elements make copies of their bearers, like how the Pattern and the Logrus make copies of anyone who's walked them?
...Oh it was Ocellus. Damn, I thought we were about to get some crazy plot shenanigans! Oh well.
...She imitated the hat too? Interesting.
Wow, Cozy Glow is a dick.
I had to take a break here due to RL, but while I was away my friend messaged me wondering if Cozy Glow was Chrysalis in disguise. :/a
While the tree may have grown since anyone last checked, this cavern has to have been here, right? Even if the magic tree makes caverns too, there was a grating built into the school!
HOLY SHIT I WAS RIGHT! HARMONY GHOSTS!
The Tree of Harmony is a jerrrrrk!
A deadly jerk! Then again, it did just straight up melt those imposters...
Holy %^#& I wanna see where this goes.
Interesting that the tree chooses to use Rainbow Dash for this...
What the heck does Gallus's test have to do with friendship?
Tree, you're being weird. And what the heck does this have to do with friendship?!
At least Yona's test makes sense.
How was this a test of friendship?!
As I recall, exactly one hippogriff actually went to face the Storm King and she didn't participate in the final showdown.
No, they did not choose that! Just because it was customized to each of them doesn't mean they chose it! Maybe the tree didn't copy Twilight's vocabulary, there's surely a better way to word this. Or the tree's just lying.
Well, at least she learned her lesson. I'm sure it'll stick, just like every time Applejack learns to be honest.
Dammit Cozy Glow!
That's a lot of ominousness for such a tiny filly!
Alright, on to the usual!
I dunno how to make that backwards arrow thing with Oliver's name.
If we're charitable, it seems believable that Silverstream just never thought about how plumbing works before and is just fascinated by anything presented to her.
It may have copied Rarity's knowledge at some point. She once made clothes for Spike, didn't she?
This happens commonly enough whenever cartoon characters get bodyswapped that I'm willing to give it a pass. I wouldn't be surprised if they wrote it that way first, then realized that the resulting scene would take up time and increase the budget (another voice actress) without really adding much to the episode -- Smoulder would still figure out it's her, it'd just take longer.
Good Is Not Nice. Although I'm not so sure the Tree is Good so much as... some particular form of Order. ...Hmm. Harmony is Order. If the Tree is the Pattern, what's the Logrus analogue? Someone write that Amber x MLP fanfic!
Yeah. Harmony is its own thing I guess.
Remember that Starswirl seemed pleasantly surprised to learn that the Tree worked, and didn't seem to already know which Elements they'd end up with. Given it was a last-ditch backup effort to save Equestria in case they were lost, they may have created the Tree without really understanding what they were doing. Starswirl's certainly confident enough in himself to try it anyway!
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Figure 1.
I’m not sure they actually meant one, mind you.
They can’t if she’s off moonlighting as a great and powerful assistant.
Could be Chancellor himself? A niece is the most likely explanation, unfortunately.
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Educational purposes. Wouldn’t be the first time, even.
The test of friendship was not leaving alone when you’re done.
A button in the top right of the comment box next to the trash can.
Good point.
Technically, my “Aporia” is very close…
That does seem to be the case.
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static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tsssg_cover_1108.png
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I'd say they would notice if Cozy was missing for several days when Neighsayer had to go to Las Pegasus, but if the teachers only have to be present half the time, perhaps it's the same rules for the students.
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I love this fandom
There's a potential cover. We just need the fic now ❤