Glossary · 5:02pm Nov 26th, 2018
1. I wish.
I’ve written a huge number of those Points of Canon posts. Someone might actually use them as a reference.1
Which means that it might be helpful to define certain recurring terms that are not always defined in the posts themselves, which became sort of a shorthand.
Chronology markers
2. You know what I mean.
3. In a sense. It’s actually a standalone HTML file that you can save to disk and open again, it will still work even offline.
A while back, I set out to produce an ordering of episodes that makes sense. It’s obvious that they’re not aired in the order they actually happened,2 if only because Hearth’s Warming Eve sits between two episodes worth of green hills, and the annoyance caused by the airing order changes across the world in the last three seasons should still be fresh in your mind. This was a major project, that resulted in no set chronology, per se, but rather, in a special web-based3 tool, which permits you to shuffle episodes around as cards, accounting for certain in-episode clues which definitively prevent one episode from occurring before another one completes.
That is, I tried to introduce dependency management into the mess that is My Little Pony canon. In fact, much of the Points of Canon project was undertaken expressly for the purpose of identifying “chronology markers” for use in this tool.
If you haven’t been following me for very long, you might have missed this, but I’ve been maintaining this project more or less diligently ever since its inception, and it’s normally at most a few episodes behind my Points of Canon posts. You can see the results at https://fim-chronology-pa.lindro.me/. The list includes every released main series television episode and a few Equestria Girls items, but no comics: Those have their own problems.
Lesson Zero Pattern Letter, Journal Record
These are important chronology markers for seasons before Season 5:
- In Lesson Zero, Celestia directs the Mane 6 to write her letters. As such, letters following the pattern established with this episode indicate that the episode has to follow Lesson Zero. The exact positioning of this episode is a matter up for debate, and as such, it became necessary to establish just which of the episodes definitely have to follow it.
- In Castle Mane-ia, Twilight establishes the practice of recording experiences in the Friendship Journal, which many ponies beside the Mane 6 engage in afterwards.
Unfortunately, in both cases – particularly in the case of the Friendship Journal, where it’s definite that at least one record is written long afterwards – it is also apparent that the events can be written about well after the moment they actually happened, which necessitated distinguishing just when the actual writing occurs relative to events being written about.
Sandwich Problem
4. It’s easy to forget that almost all of this blog is research notes I wrote originally for my own reference, but that’s what it is.
The formal definition of the Sandwich Problem, first presented in Conversation 11 of my story Aporia,4 is like this:
Across the series, we see numerous artifacts whose shape and properties are dictated by the requirements of a creature that has fingers, and often, one that also happens to be bipedal. To wit, cups with finger loops, brooms with long broom handles, doors with round handles, chairs which are at least as high as an average pony’s barrel, spoons and forks, piano-style keyboards, and numerous others. These seamlessly coexist with artifacts which are adapted to creatures without fingers, like three-key typewriters, cart harnesses, saddlebags, short-handle mining picks to be held with teeth, and a few more, but they are dwarfed by those other, finger-adapted artifacts, which are seen in nearly every episode.
Ponies have demonstrated that they are capable of using these artifacts with no issue anyway, due to unusual, presumably magical properties of hooves, which appear to be able to manipulate objects at least as well as a hand in a mitten can, without having any visible moving parts. At the same time, there are considerable savings of effort and material they could have by introducing more specially adapted artifacts.
And they don’t, or at least, don’t do this to anywhere the degree where it would matter.
The schools of thought presented in various fan works offer two major groups of explanations for this phenomenon:
- Pony culture is itself artificial in one way or another – ponies are a constructed species, ponies are magically transformed into their current form, etc.
- Ponies borrow almost the entirety of their material culture from a bipedal, fingered species, either directly – by importing artifacts through international trade – or indirectly, by importing ideas. Examples include a hypothetical human culture that existed in the distant past or on another world, minotaurs, dragons, occasionally, griffons, who have talons without actually being bipedal, and a few other oddball variations.
But consider a sandwich. Specifically, the variant of a sandwich in which other, more flavorful food is layered between two pieces of bread. It should be obvious to anyone that the flavor would be stronger if there was only one piece of bread – that is how sandwiches are eaten in many parts of the world, even. The invention of the two-bread-pieces sandwich in our world and the reason for its adoption entirely have to do with keeping the fingers dry, something ponies eating a sandwich would be able to accomplish with just one piece of bread: Whenever a pony eats a sandwich, they almost invariably balance it on a single hoof, instead of holding it with a single hoof. Apparently, they can’t even pick up a sandwich without using both hooves, or at least, they never do so.
Considering the fact that it is a food that ponies eat rather often, that has to be prepared anew every time, that is easy to experiment with, one that just about everyone has specific opinions about, I find that both of the above groups of explanations are inadequate: An artificial pony culture would have to be completely frozen and incapable of invention not to replace the sandwich with something else. A borrowing pony culture would not borrow something so inconvenient for them in the first place, and were they to borrow it without thinking, it wouldn’t stick. The same logic applies to many other objects, but sandwiches in particular make it obvious, because of their transient nature.
Of course, I have my own answer, but it’s a plot point. If you are writing about ponies with any pretense of seriousness, you might want to find your own.
Chemical Industry
See RTAC #15 for a complete overview of pony technology observed in canon, but to quote from that:
Pony chemistry is freakishly advanced. That is, there are no less than twenty episodes in my list that have ponies present examples of things that should be beyond the technology of the early XX century they typically stick closer to.
The list includes synthetic glues, strong transparent plastics, chemical cleaning agents, insecticides and disinfectants, PTFE, LDPE, and while we never see just how these things are made, the total weight of evidence that they are is overwhelming. They could conceivably be imported, if you can only imagine where they would be imported from.
Whenever I see an artifact that implies the existence of highly advanced chemical industry and/or availability of its products to ponies, I make sure to point it out. The count is quite numerous.
If you want a theory, by the way, here’s one: In our world, the development of industrial chemistry is closely tied to the development of aniline dyes, which were brighter than almost all natural dyes known before that, and magnitudes cheaper. Ponies, themselves being very colorful, require much brighter dyes for their stuff than naturally available pigments, and would thus be much more motivated to seek an artificial process than humans were.
Cartoon resolution
Cartoon resolution is an interpretational policy used when writing these notes: I assume that everything ponies say is “as it happened,” but everything that we see is not necessarily so, being the obvious result of artistic expression of animators actually drawing it. While it corresponds roughly to what “actually happened”, it may miss certain details, exaggerate other details, and very occasionally, add a detail that isn’t actually there for narrative purposes.
Not following this policy would require me to seek to explain saddlebags that mysteriously appear and disappear between frames, things like Rainbow pulling an airhorn out of her ass, cucumbers the size of a dinner plate coexisting with cucumbers the size of a coin, or the fact that up until about Season 6, almost all adults share the same base body model – never mind the occasional one-eyed pony, randomly scattered alicorns, mis-layered objects and other obvious animation errors.
Yeah, I assume common sense applies, imagine that.
Canterlot Friends
5. Known in early fanon as Colgate, before her name appeared in Amending Fences.
This term always refers to the group of Twilight’s Canterlot friends, first appearing in Friendship is Magic – in the very first scenes of the episode, even – and eventually detailed in Amending Fences. The list, as given in that latter episode, includes Lyra Heartstrings, Minuette,5 Twinkleshine, Lemon Hearts and Moondancer. Moondancer is first mentioned in one of the first lines of Friendship is Magic, but does not appear until Amending Fences.
The other four, however, appear often. Amending Fences declares that Lyra Heartstrings is a Ponyville resident, while all the others are Canterlot residents, but that doesn’t stop them from participating in every community function in Ponyville, and otherwise appearing all over Equestria whenever there’s a chance to get on camera. Often, multiple copies appear in a single shot. Of particular note is Lemon Hearts, who often appears paired with a stallion, often, in a romantic setting, and invariably with a different one every time, noticing which became almost a running joke for me.
6. Lyra, Twinkleshine and Minuette, to be specific.
But that by itself wouldn’t make them notable. What makes them notable is Twilight’s behavior regarding them: Twilight never, ever, acknowledges she knows them – except Amending Fences where she sets out to, well, make amends, and focuses her attention on Moondancer, who took this treatment the hardest and became a hopeless hikikomori as a result. That despite Twilight crossing path with them very often, and occasionally, appearing immediately next to one of her Canterlot Friends. In A Canterlot Wedding, where all three of Cadance’s bridesmaids are Canterlot Friends,6 she also never gives away that she knows them, even though wedding preparations would involve interacting with them. Later in the episode, she directly opposes them while they’re mind-controlled, and doesn’t seem to react either.
You would think that after Amending Fences something would have changed, but it did not: Twilight still steadfastly ignores all of them in every subsequent episode. They keep reappearing. What’s even more puzzling, is that the second time Moondancer appears, in Forgotten Friendship, Twilight ignores her, too, without even saying hello.
So far, no adequate theories explaining this behavior have been presented that I know of.
Gosh, Pete
7. There’s the scene with a funeral in Hearts and Hooves Day, presenting an elderly pony in a clerical collar, and that’s mostly it. We do not know just what meaning do ponies ascribe to that ceremony, and whether it’s actually religious.
Many ponies, but Twilight in particular, use variations on “gosh,” “O.M.G,” and other minced oaths, which, in their original form, involve calling upon a “god,” despite ponies otherwise showing almost no sign of having any form of organized religion, at least in modern day.7
Likewise, Rainbow Dash in particular is fond of variations on the phrase “For Pete’s sake,” which, in its original form, refers to Saint Peter. How exactly do they know each other remains entirely unexplained.
This is particularly puzzling, because taking Celestia’s name in vain and swearing by her is almost as common, but apparently, never actually minced.
This list may be added to in the future, as other terms requiring such an explanation are identified.
Scissors always baffled me. And I've decided that Lemon Hearts lives in a family where the mother has naming issues, like George Foreman. So she has a sister named Lemon Hearts who works with Cadence, and a sister named Lemon Hearts who works in Ponyville, and her mother Lemon Hearts works at the castle, and so on... There is precedent. (Tim Choate was awesome)
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But Minuette appears more often than Lemon Hearts!
4973200
Presumably, that's where the time travel comes in.
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And Twinkleshine just moves at the speed of light, right.
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I typically have her employed as a celebrity gossip columnist. To borrow a phrase from my latest card blog, she may move at the speed of rumor, which has been known to outpace light in some high-magic environments.
4973200
Lemon Hearts is Nurse Joy; Minuette is Officer Jenny. That or the Mirror Pool is involved. Or that cloning spell Chrysalis used (some of the clones have different cutie marks).
Their being duplicates actually goes a way toward explaining why Twilight doesn't acknowledge them. She knows they're not her actual friends, whether because they're clones or relatives.
Another theory that doesn't require multiple copies: Twilight is nearsighted. Her human counterpart wears glasses, and Twilight could simply never have bothered either with the prosthetic or with corrective surgery. Or not realized that she needed them. It's not like she ever looked where she was going growing up - her nose would be in a book as she walked. On the other hand, Moondancer has glasses. Maybe Twilight's parents weren't terribly conscientious?
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4973210
Ok. Then explain this shot:
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/6/6f/Iron_Pony_Competition_crowd_S1E13.png/revision/latest?cb=20130211075431
That is, the ten copies of Shoeshine present in it.
That might work, though, I suspect that should we look, we will find her doing things that require her not to be nearsighted…
4973212
Oh, you mean back when the population of Ponyville was roughly sixty percent unimaginative changelings?
4973213
I’m more inclined to believe in the mirror pool theory, if I am to accept this mess as fact at all.
Nice thinking on the chemical industry. I assumed that their chemistry was more advanced than their other sciences because telekinesis allows for really amazing control of experiments and processes. It might also mean they poison themselves less.
As for the sandwich, I've headcanoned it that ponies need extra carbs for magical energy, so it might be they just like the taste of bread.
Lol you’re such a nerd; I love it!
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I'm afraid the only explanation of the multiplied ponies in general, and the Canterlot Friends in particular, that doesn't cross into either horror or farce is cartoon resolution. It's frustrating, but it's that or a sharp drop into madness.
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I’m ready to take that for multipled ponies in general, sure. However, I feel that the use of the Canterlot Friends, at least, specifically as bridesmaids in A Canterlot Wedding and in the Canterlot library in Forgotten Friendship needs an actual explanation.
Not only was it not obvious to me, I also never realized the reason for the whole double-breaded sandwich. I think I might be bad at humaning
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Your nickname implies you’re a bunny.
Yeah, I with the people who think that Canterlot Friends are pretty much a Cartoon Resolution problem. A Canterlot Wedding takes place before Amending Fences, and the animators just grabbed assets P23, P45, and P12. Moondancer is a special case, because, although she hasn't spoken again, all of her reappearances except one seem to have her in character as Twilight's old friend.
Sweet. I moved a year in after the S8 Opener to refer to the time required to build the school.
I think 8x03 could occur in the middle of the S8 Opener, since we just see a school that looks finished on the outside but could still be under construction internally.
Reviewing 8x15, I can't actually find any quotes that hard-lock this episode as during the student six's first year of classes, as opposed to them just going directly home on a previous year. There's certainly a lot of introductory exposition about Hearth's Warming, but Twilight is pretty pedantic like that. Am I missing something? Because fitting it in the student's second year of classes would make Non-Compete Clause fit better.
I mean.. she... she is kinda full of hot air. Isn't she?
Considering the circumstances of EqG world, where humans have pony names, have a odd fascination of personalized cutie marks and are living in a horse pun-filled small town, anywhere USA. Perhaps there is a kind of mental pressure gradient between the two worlds. Where ponies get human culture via slow filtering osmosis and vice versa. "We'll use door knobs, sandwiches with two bits of bread and scissors with fingerloops because that is what those things should have. I don't know why. I just feel that way and I don't really talk about it because noone else points out that it's weird. "
Ironically only Sunset, Twilight, Discord, and Pinkie would have the necessary outsider's perspective. But one has gone native, the other has to balance saving the world and running a school. The third an entity that treats the 4th wall as less of a wall and more of a reality-saran wrap. And the fourth is a chaos spirit draconequus.