Oct
28th
2018
Points of Canon: S8 Holiday Special · 12:31pm Oct 28th, 2018
I’m not labeling this a “Season 9 episode 0” like some people did, because I’m pretty sure it won’t fall into the time frame of Season 9 either, whenever that airs. I expect numerous chronology issues from this one…
- Chronology markers: This is a Hearth’s Warming episode, which can’t coincide with any previously shown Hearth’s Warming episodes. School of Friendship comes up in some shots, and the Student Six are present in the episode, which requires it to happen after School Daze and also, after The Hearth’s Warming Club, which is explicitly the first winter since their arrival to Ponyville. Which is a chronology problem by itself. It’s also important that the Student Six are leaving town this year, and the narration says it was one day before Hearth’s Warming Eve, so it can’t be the same year – and has to be the next one. Spike has wings, so Molt Down is also in the past, and this episode is probably the last time it is a chronological marker that matters.
- Notably, Starlight is leaving with Trixie in the opening scenes, and doesn’t turn up for the rest of the episode, until the ending song montage, in which they’re spending the night in Trixie’s wagon. I suspect Trixie’s working on Hearth’s Warming.
- For this Hearth’s Warming, Twinkleshine came to Ponyville again.
- For whatever reason, Cherry Berry is selling apple products this year.
- “Why do I make all these gifts each year?” Rarity claims to make most of her Hearth’s Warming gifts herself. Not unexpected, but something to keep in mind.
- Sugar Belle is in town, though this is not by itself an indication of whether Break Up Break Down has happened already or not.
- The entire Pie family spends this holiday in Ponyville, and Grand Pear appears with the Apples again.
- “Stir! Pour! Bake! Again!” The oven depicted during this line in the montage has to be either gas-fired or electric – others would have a different shape.
- The look on Marble Pie’s face as Big Mac nuzzles Sugar Belle implies that she actually had feelings for Big Mac and still has at least some. Shippers, board your ships, you have an official love triangle!
- Spike owns a winter hat exactly conforming to the shape of his head, including the spines. The only pony likely to make something like that would be Rarity, or possibly, Spike himself.
- As a side note, the winter fashion for this year heavily relies on boots and quasi-socks. Compare to A Hearth’s Warming Tail, when those were much less common.
- Spike is strong enough to drag Fluttershy, Rarity and Rainbow without noticing. For that matter, the paper Twilight uses for scrolls is strong enough that it doesn’t break, and Rainbow can’t just tear it off, so I suspect it’s actually Tyvek, or a similar advanced material.
- “Traditional holiday meltdown?” While we haven’t previously observed Twilight doing that, the Mane 5 all did.
- “I got way behind grading midterms, and Cadance and Shining Armor are coming here with Flurry Heart for Hearth’s Warming Eve, and I haven’t started decorating, and I don’t know what to get any of you, and—!” School of Friendship has midterms. In fact, multiple schools in Equestria have midterms, because the word is readily recognizable to Applejack. Not a given.
“What if we change up how we give gifts this year and do a Hearthswarmin’ Helper?”
- Meanwhile, in the background, Sugar Belle is talking to Burnt Oak. The likely topic of this conversation is obvious.
Secret SantaHearth’s Warming Helper would appear to be an Apple family invention in Equestria, rather than a general trend: Nopony else is familiar with the idea. Except Cadance and Shining Armor, for some inexplicable reason, who immediately understand the concept when Twilight mentions it later.“We just need to put everypony’s name in this here hat.”
- It’s interesting that instead of writing names, Twilight draws cutie marks on the pieces of paper, as if they are synonymous.
- What’s also interesting is that she draws them on the back side of her checklist scroll – which has to be bloody hard to tear if it survived what it was subjected to just minutes prior, but Twilight tears it up effortlessly.
- It should be trivial to identify who got whose name because of the checklist items on the outside…
- There is, apparently, no precaution against fishing your own name out of the bag, which would cause difficult to resolve problems.
- Instead of a pocket or a clutch bag or anything, Rarity hides her paper under her hat.
For reference. The original name distribution was like this:
- Twilight ➡️ Pinkie
- Pinkie ➡️ Twilight
- Rarity ➡️ Applejack
- Rainbow ➡️ Fluttershy
- Spike ➡️ Rainbow
- Fluttershy ➡️ Rarity
- Applejack ➡️ Spike
Over the course of the episode, Spike swaps with Fluttershy, but no other changes occur.
- “Hey! This is the biggest holiday challenge I’ve ever faced!” The box Pinkie put onto Limestone’s head had to be empty, right? Because there’s nothing in it when Limestone opens it…
- “Who would say they’re the best at gift-giving? That’s ridiculous.” From The Gift of the Maud Pie we know that Pinkie often calls Maud the best gift giver, but apparently, Limestone wasn’t aware of this at all, which is kind of strange.
- Fedora Felt is a Manehattan designer specializing in hats.
- “I couldn’t pick just one. What if it hurt the other foods’ feelings?” So I wonder, whether Fluttershy is serious about food having feelings, especially positive feelings about being consumed, or she’s just being passive-aggressive.
- “Fluttershy told me about this Hearth’s whatever-it’s-called. I may not be invited, but I wanted to make sure she gets a quality gift.” So wait, why isn’t Discord invited? You’d think they learned their lesson and would have tried to prevent the inevitable prank by inviting him.
“I come to the Rainbow Falls Hearth’s Warming Craft Fair every year.”
- Fluttershy and Applejack appear to start the trip to Rainbow Falls before the Hearth’s Warming Eve, but when they are returning, it’s already Hearth’s Warming Eve, which implies we’re missing a night somewhere.
- Rainbow Falls has a yearly Hearth’s Warming Craft Fair, something to keep in mind.
- So did Fluttershy ever come here before Trade Ya or not?…
- In a radical change of modus operandi, both Flim and Flam are disguised, for once – and not even that badly.
- “A truly awesome friend who deserves something twenty percent cooler than any other gift out there?” I’d say this means that the brothers have recognized Fluttershy and made an educated guess about whom she would be shopping for.
- “Nope-ity, nope, nein, and nyet! It’s me!” We heard ponies occasionally use German words before (“Gesundheit!”) but this is the first time Russian turns up in any shape or form. Unfortunately, we have no idea if it is a real language anywhere on Pony Earth, or Pinkie’s just messing with us as usual.
- “Uh, Rarity.” Rarity receives mail under that, rather than any other name, like the fanon “Rarity Belle.”
- “Um… okay… but… now the package was for Applejack, and she is at Sweet Apple Acres.” Wait, but how did the mail service even know that? Notice, also, that no street addresses are mentioned during this conversation, but later, Rarity asks for the address of Sweet Acorn Orchard.
- Sweet Acorn Orchard is a place. Who’d have thought. More importantly, it’s within walking distance from Ponyville, but Rarity’s never been there.
- “A sculpture of Rarity made from smaller sculptures of Rarity?” Why would that even be for sale?… Is it really?…
- “The ideal gift for Pinkie Pie needs to be A – unique, B – specific to her personality, and C – food-based.” Throughout this scene, Twilight is using multiple examples of friendship mathematics syntax.
- “After defeating the Windigos, the Earth pony, Pegasi, and unicorn nations prepared the first Hearth’s Warming meal together. Chancellor Puddinghead made a pudding so delicious, legends were written about it!” Considering that from Hearth’s Warming Tail we know that windigos are considered mythical today, I wonder, what is the status of the book Twilight is quoting from. Considering that Twilight expected it to have the recipe for the legendary pudding, and it did not, it might even be a cookbook – further supported by the fact that she continued searching under “Recipes”.
1. I even have one.
“I love being an expensive toy!” A doll saying that, as well as the fact that it’s triggered by pulling a cord, implies a miniature spring-driven gramophone, a technology popular in 1970s in our world.1
- “Can I borrow some for the train ride home?” For whatever reason, Fluttershy neglected to buy a return ticket.
- “And I ain’t just talkin’ about the smell of that plastic.” You still doubted ponies have plastic? Applejack to the rescue!
- Lemon Hearts isn’t chasing a new stallion this year, because she’s busy shopping in Rainbow Falls. And Minuette is busy selling in Rainbow Falls…
- “What are those two Hearth’s Warmin’ hooligans up to now?!” And how did ponies come by the word hooligan? Because it’s originally a last name and is thought to date to 1890s.
- Acorns are apparently used in tea by ponies, but I have no clue why would unpeeled acorns be desirable in this application.
- “These daring textures. It’s a whole new take on western chic.” The way Pistachio rubs the hat as he says that implies that hooves, or at least, their frogs, are sufficiently sensitive to feel those textures.
- Pistachio knows Rarity by name, which implies considerable familiarity with fashion well before he mistakenly got the unfortunate hat. Later, he even says “I love my parents, but… they don’t understand that we just had lunch with one of the most famous ponies in Equestria.”
- “The recipe for Chancellor Puddinghead’s magical pudding was filed under ‘Magical Spells,’ not ‘Recipes.’” This implies that in at least one tradition of magic, recipes were considered spells, which is much more far-reaching than it sounds.
- “Nutmeg, sugarplums, gingerbread, candy canes…” This is an interesting list of ingredients for a 1000+ year old recipe, if only because in our world, nutmeg, up until the mid-19th century, was only available from Banda Islands. And nowhere else in the world. Never mind the candy canes, which imply a processed sugar industry.
- “By Blitzen’s beard, it took you long enough!” Blitzen is one of the canonical reindeer. Which could be considerably further-reaching than it sounds, considering that the reindeer shown on screen in this episode are not on the list.
- “Who are you reindeer?” Compare to the non-sapient deer observed previously.
- “Aurora remembers gifts that have already happened. Alice knows the gifts that are going to happen. I just stay in the moment and keep the two of them in line.” Good to know.
- “What are y’all doin’ with these dolls and that ridiculous getup? Don’t you have a resort to run?” “It’s off-season.” Las Pegasus “resorts” are seasonal.
- “You may not like it. But technically, we’re not doing anything wrong.” I.e. what Flim and Flam are doing this time is definitely not illegal, which is good to know, and implies a certain shape of customer protection law – like a big hole in the middle. This is not the first time, though.
- “Small, adorable, fuzzy, and fast.” Winterchilla is an actual creature, rather than something Discord made up for the occasion, and a new addition to the Equestrian bestiary, but notably, Rainbow has never heard of it before. Also notably, contrary to the usual, Twilight did.
- It’s notable that Fluttershy, after buying one doll, had no money to return home, but Applejack had enough to buy three and still had enough for her and Fluttershy’s train tickets. Or at least for Fluttershy’s.
- “Uh, did I forget to mention that the winterchilla transforms into a winterzilla when the sun sets?” I wonder what would be the evolutionary advantage of that. If anything.
- It’s interesting that Winterzilla is capable of blowing Twilight’s shield away just by breathing. It’s also interesting that it’s Twilight, not, say, Shining Armor casting it, even though determining that required watching the scene frame by frame.
- Shining Armor is capable of extreme physical feats, including swinging on tapestries and casting bolt spells in the air. This is probably the only episode so far where he doesn’t look incompetent, so imagine my surprise.
- “Oh, for Scorpan’s sake!” Wait, what did you say, Discord? And why did you say that?… Sigh…
- “Awww. Your family is gone for the holidays, and you’re all alone?” So what kind of holidays do winterchillas have?…
- “Pops said sometimes the hat chooses the pony when he gave me this.” Applejack fluctuates between the hat being not special – for example, as in Somepony To Watch Over Me, never mind the numerous cases of the hat getting destroyed – and being special, like here. What happened to honesty?
- Spike can play a guitar, a skill he did not previously display.
- During the song montage, despite the greenery, we can see snow falling outside the changeling hive. Just where is it located for this to happen?…
It’s a good episode, but as usual for the recent days, it has a lot of details conflicting with previously established facts that are difficult to reconcile, including fairly recent facts.
Oh well. Happy holidays, I suppose.
Time to update my chronology tool…
Way ahead of you.
Given how casually Twilight tears it later, I'm more willing to pin their entrapment on the narrative forces of the musical number. That or Twilight magically reinforced the checklist and dispelled said reinforcement before making the lots.
Well, Twilight does explain the concept when she mentions it: "So my friends decided we should do a Hearthswarming Helper and give one pony a present to save time."
Perhaps Fluttershy thinks he has more fun pranking his way into the proceedings.
That or it's within walking distance of a train station.
Is it really when said doll cost "all my bits"? Deducting 100% of any value yields zero.
Maybe she only breaks out Bright Mac's hat for holidays and other special occasions?
But yeah, this was great, even if the edges meshed poorly with other pieces of the chronological puzzle at times.
4959259
This is way too terse. I wouldn’t understand what was the idea from that if I wasn’t familiar with it previously, my instinctive question would be “which pony?…”
Did Flim and Flam actually change the asking price between clients when all the clients could observe that? The scene where Applejack and Fluttershy shoo them off implies the clients are quite aware what’s going on in the line in front of them, aren’t they?
Considering how often her hat got destroyed during otherwise perfectly normal activity, she’d have to keep it in a safe.
By pony standards, at least. My headcanon: they've scammed Rainbow Falls so many times that security now throws them out on sight.
The moment I heard this line, I knew a PoC was coming XD
Question - do bits have a different nominals? Rarity pay for cloth rolls and thread six coins. But IIRC waaaaay back Fluttershy pay two coins for a single cherry. Either cloth is dirt cheap in Equestria, cherries are fro some reasons pricey or there are bits with different nominal.
4959279
We don’t know if different bit coins have different values for sure. However, various (rare) cases of coins summing up to known numbers on screen pretty much require them to.
At the same time, cherries do, in fact, appear to be ridiculously expensive: In Pinkie Pride, Cherry Jubilee counts cherries in her cargo individually, and there are thousands of them.
4959297
That... doesn't make any sense. Well, unless cherries really hard to grow for some reasons. But if Applejack and Big Mac able to take care over giant apple orchard without any problems then I fail to see why someone else cannot does same with cherries and grow them in bulk.
I wonder what Mary would see with her freaky eye if she encountered the Reindeer Norns?
In my opinion Hearth Warming pretty much a national myth and not real.
Well, FUNdamentals said that alchemy more or less a type o magic and used to "brew" spells. if you can "brew" spells then there a possibility that you also could "bake" them or something like this :).
4959305
Honestly can’t imagine that at this point.
Snow falls wherever pegasi tell it to fall. I guess the hive got added to their route, since the skittling.
I like how the North Pole present operation is being run by the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present & Future. It's a neat twist.
The conclusions I'm drawing from this are that at least the Santa Reindeer Crew exists in Equestria's multiverse, but possibly not in this particular dimension.
4959261
Given that this place was introduced having a holiday based around barter, and this is another named trading holiday thing, I think it's a reasonable possibility that Craft Fair goods are supposed to be haggled for.
The main counterargument to that being the long lines there.
Quite a fun episode. Honestly better than the actual S8 Finale.
With an incest kicker!
And yet Twilight cuts it into pieces to make the names.
Which is also interesting. Mid-terms are usually in the middle of a quarter or semester. If they're only to the middle of their term by Winter break, it would suggest that the School of Friendship courses last an entire year.
I wanted your opinion of that. Are we supposed to take that as a cartoon resolution of Twilight actually writing their names, or is Equestrian a semi-pictographic language where drawing the symbol of someone's cutie mark is considered officially writing their name? Previous examples suggest the latter.
Or Limestone is insecure about this and attacking the concept of being good at gift-giving, the same way she's insecure that Maud has a boyfriend.
Fluttershy is smart, I'm pretty sure she knows RD got her name and wants her childhood friend to put in a bit of mental effort on her behalf.
We may have some observation bias here. The Mane 6 do lots of stuff without Discord, like Flurry Heart's Crystalling, and he doesn't show up and complain. Being Discord, he's probably just random about what he decides to get huffy about. And frankly, he's annoying enough that I can't blame them for not wanting to invite him to every single thing. What they should do is have a policy of immediately inviting Discord to anything as soon as he shows up and complains about being excluded, but RD isn't smart enough for that.
It's like an open air events center, various parties probably rent it out almost year round.
Yup. We learned from Friendship University they've made a practice or researching the Mane 6. And they had to read through and teach "kindness class," at this point they are basically Mane 6 experts.
Small town, Derpy knows everyone. I still prefer her S5 voice though.
Or we weren't shown her taking a train ride.
I'd take this as evidence that only Starlight and a few humbugs really believe Windigos are mythical. Though I bet most ponies believe they have been wiped out.
It seems like it would be easier for the FlimFlams to just enchant the dolls, but I agree it doesn't look like magic. Once again audio technology consumes 90% of Equestria's R&D budget.
I feel like that tells us a whole lot about oil deposits and geology and ancient history that I don't feel qualified to speculate on.
HA! Who do you think she's buying presents for?
The whole thing where the wrong ingredients created a sentient pudding monster is probably why the recipe was filed away as a spell. Really, the difference between a recipe and a potion brew from Zecora seems very particular. And of course, all the ponies that actually affected the pudding (Twilight, Flurry Heart, Pinkie) have an abundance of earth pony magic.
I can't even imagine what laws they would be breaking. Wearing false beards? Basic marketing? They even tell everyone up front no refunds!
The best theory I've heard is that the hat Applejack is wearing today is the actual hat her dad gave her which she only wears on Hearth's Warming, and she has a room of identical copies to wear for every-day use. I think some women used to have fake copies of their jewelry made sometimes so they would only wear the really valuable originals at special events.
Considering they are working off a checklist of Hearth's Warming themes, Twilight probably told them "snow" and they either hired or shape-changed into Pegasi as needed for holiday snow.
Overall I liked it. Discord was back to moderate levels of jerkiness rather than his disastrous episode with Starlight, Twilight having a classic freakout was good to see again.
4959502
You say that as if it was a rare occurrence, rather than a common one. I can think of at least two examples from Season 8 off the top of my head: School Daze and Horse Play. Oh, and The End in Friend (though that may have been a performance).
4959502
Or that Twilight is that far behind on grading, which, to be honest, doesn’t feel like too much of a stretch.
I don’t think I can accept the idea of a semi-pictographical language in an industrialized society. It would have evolved to hieroglyphics centuries ago if that were so. However, we do know they use their cutie marks to sign letters to each other, don’t they? Especially the more intimate ones, the official ones don’t have that. Twilight could have chosen them to represent their names consciously, because what they’re using them for is a friends-only activity.
Sure. But, once again – How does Derpy know that a package Rarity is about to receive is intended for Applejack? It’s not written on the package, is it? There’s no need for Rarity to include this information when making the order at all, or divulge it to the post office, ever.
Not necessarily: Bioplastics are very much a thing, you don’t have to have oil to make plastics. Some of them can easily smell fishy because of originating in fish byproducts.
It’s illegal in many jurisdictions not to offer refunds on non-perishable products, for example, or not to offer warranty – details differ per jurisdiction and per product, but the trend has been to offer customers more protection rather than less. So it’s easily possible for them to be breaking a law – but we know they aren’t in this case, and that would mean there are no such customer protection laws.
Oh. I thought it was acorn coffee, an ersatz coffee I first heard of in a story where at least one scene was set during World War I (I believe Hitler was drinking it). Maybe it was tea and I wasn't paying enough attention, but when I saw ponies pouring out a drink and adding acorns to it, I immediately thought acorn coffee.
Mind you, you'd never put whole unpeeled acorns into acorn coffee, but it'd make more sense if the drink was made from acorns instead of being just tea.
4959849
This is, unfortunately, what they are shown doing: Dropping whole, unpeeled acorns into a cup while pouring a drink – which looks too light to be coffee, at that.
No idea.
4959851
Maybe it's just my monitor, but I've gone back to have a look, and its too grey to be tea as well. I've seen hot chocolate that colour, though, and given this is a winter-themed episode, that would be more appropriate. Anyway, let's leave it at that; it is a really minor point.
4959797
Um, we don't? Just because Flim-Flam says that they do nothing wrong don't exactly mean that they really do nothing wrong. I know a guy who time after time broke fishing regulations but still pretty sure that he does nothing wrong.