Points of Canon: Equestria Girls ~ Forgotten Friendship · 12:11am Oct 30th, 2018
The fun one, because a substantial chunk of that occurs in Equestria. Notice that this summary refers to the extended version. The version that actually aired on TV has about two minutes missing, some of them containing fairly important scenes.
Chronological markers:
- The magic powers of the Humane 7 set this after Legends of Everfree.
- It’s difficult to estimate when exactly in the Pedestrian year it happens, but it’s definitely the fourth year of high school for the Humane 7, and it can’t be too late or too early in the year for an ocean swim, so it limits the months significantly, depending on how far south the Pedestrian city is.
- There is actually very little to date this episode on the Equestrian side, directly or indirectly: Starlight never appears, no direct mentions of prior post-Legends of Everfree specials occur, and all that remains is the Friendship Castle, which would be there anyway, since it predates Rainbow Rocks. The only known upper bound is the throne room of Canterlot Castle, which has the pre-movie look.
1. Mine didn’t.
The episode starts with Sunset taking pictures for the yearbook during a song montage, and continues with her working on it. Yearbooks are yearly by definition. As I have previously deduced while investigating the movies, Equestria Girls starts the third year of high school for the Humane 7. This would put Legends of Everfree in the subsequent summer, and require Forgotten Friendship to occur within the fourth year of high school. Where exactly within this year, we don’t know: While a yearbook is supposed to be published by April or May at the latest, so that purchasers can run around and get each other to sign their copies, September is as good a time to start as any, and according to the reports of Pony Canon Research Society regulars, whose schools had yearbooks1 it can be a year-round activity and often is.
- Sunset’s camera uses a huge memory card that does not look like any common card format. Cartoon resolution, I suppose, but it’s notable that it’s definitely digital. It otherwise looks like a discolored and mutated Canon EOS.
- Photos printed during the activity include Maud in a picture with Derpy and Snails, taken by Snips in a selfie fashion. We have not seen her in school prior to this episode, if my memory serves me right, but she appears subsequently – as a student in the same year, while pony Maud is older than pony Pinkie by at least one year, if not more.
- “I’ve been trying to get your attention for, like, half the song.” Even in Pedestria, the music of harmony is explicitly diegetic. Which should be raising eyebrows, but I guess they’re used to it by now.
- “I’m Sunset Shimmer. President of the Yearbook Committee and editor-in-chief.” I do wonder since when exactly. There’s the Pedestrian side of My Little Pony Annual 2013, which is neither completely nonsensical nor particularly meaningful as a whole, being only somewhat questionable. Accepting it as at least relevant would offer us the possibility that Sunset was the president of the yearbook committee at least since before the end of the second year of high school, since that’s the time of the Spring Fling where she (as Rarity implies in Equestria Girls) faced off against Rarity. Any on-screen source giving us exact information on when did Sunset end up on that committee could joss that half of the My Little Pony Annual 2013 out of existence too.
- “I’ve been on the Yearbook Committee all year.” Which would imply, though not solidly define, that Sunset also was the president of the committee for all year, right? That’s the year that started with Equestria Girls, though, so it’s too late to settle the above question.
“We met in ninth-grade English.” Which is actually the first year of high school in the US, at least with a middle school/high school split. Which means a few important things for anyone writing anything Pedestria-related:
- Sunset enrolled in Canterlot High no later than during the first year of high school.
- Wallflower Blush was there at the same time, and should have been present for everything since way before the first movie, even if she never got on camera.
- “Uh, why don’t we take our picture at the beach on Saturday? Everyone’s bound to look adorable.” There’s a beach within easy access distance, which implies that the town, while not coastal, is no more than, say, 50 kilometers away from the shore – as far as I can tell, there’s no way the beach scenes take place on a lake, and none of the Humane 7 appear to own or drive a car except Applejack, whose pickup truck shows up by the end of the episode. It is clearly not suitable for a road trip like that.
- “The secret ingredient is edible sunscreen! It’s SPF fun-hundred!” That piqued my interest. I was surprised to find out that edible sunscreens are actually a thing, even if they do not actually work. I wasn’t able to find out exactly when did they actually come up with those, but Google Trends seems to point at July 2005.
“Neither was ‘Biggest Meanie,’ but that didn’t stop you from winning it our freshman year.” That’s interesting evidence!
- Further support that both Sunset and Trixie started in the same year.
- Actually the only evidence that Sunset was mean at all that early: As I mentioned before, the only thing anyone blames her for otherwise are the events of the Fall Formal during Equestria Girls.
- Probably, an indication that she wasn’t president of the yearbook committee on her first year, as well, because there’s no way she’d let this “Biggest Meanie” superlative through if she could. In fact, I would say that it’s likely that this was why she sought a place on the yearbook committee in the first place.
Applejack further says, “The whole school voted for her.” Which actually supports my point of view that there is no way anyone except Sunset cared for the crown of the Fall Formal at all: Voting her out would be trivial if she garnered such a reputation so early on. How exactly did she get Flash Sentry to date her, though? Because if she coerced him, there’s no way he would eventually break up with her before Twilight brought her down and avoid the repercussions – which is what happened.
“Dear Princess Twilight…” This is actually the second time we get a look at Sunset’s apartment, the first one was in Summertime Short. Notable stuff, some of which is different from then:
- One guitar amp, a pedal, three guitars – two electric, one acoustic.
- A gaming console. The gamepad implies some mutant variation on Sega Genesis – the same kind used during the infamous sleepover scene in Rainbow Rocks, but a different color.
- A TV with a surround sound system – there are speakers on either side and two more on either side of the couch before it.
- A PC with two monitors.
- A lava lamp on the PC. I wonder, does Sunset believe in strong crypto? Because that’s why I would own a lava lamp.
- A tiny fridge by the door, with a microwave on top of it.
- A Chinese takeout box with chopsticks sticking out of it.
- Multiple cardboard boxes.
- A wastepaper basket with a tiny basketball net in it and three wads of paper nearby, indicating that Sunset missed but never took the time to pick the paper up before climbing up to her bed.
- Two large exposed pipes of unknown function.
- A double bed.
- A globe above the bed, for some reason.
- An alarm clock patched up with duct tape. Back in Summertime Short, it wasn’t patched up.
Oh, and the back of the chair is layered behind the table, which is obviously an animation error.
It’s an interesting dwelling, that suggests that it was not originally meant to be used as an apartment, and probably isn’t built to code, but Sunset filled it with a lot of fairly expensive stuff that she would never be able to afford on a part time job anyway. There are a lot of plausible sources of income she might have that wold explain it, but picking one is definitely a writing consideration that this scene emphasizes: Sunset is not by any means rich, but she is a lot wealthier than an orphan schoolgirl with no inheritance has any right to be. The rent for this place might be cheap, but she definitely has enough to cover rent and then some.
- Sunset writes with her right hand, something to keep in mind.
- The beach scene strongly implies that if Pedestrians do mysteriously get cutie marks on their bodies, they’re not anywhere in the region of their thighs, or other obvious locations. It also implies the water’s warm enough to swim in, so it can’t be too late or too early in the year.
2. IT speak for “We haven’t the foggiest idea how it works.”
“I finally invented a selfie-sensing camera. It hovers into position whenever it detects a selfie opportunity.” Twilight is using a selfie drone with, apparently, some extra special programming to detect when what the camera sees fits some criteria. The particular algorithm would involve machine learning2 and be beyond the capabilities of an onboard computer on a drone even today, but only just – that’s Twilight for you, I suppose. The earliest examples of commercial selfie drones turn up in 2014, which is well within the time frame expected. Twilight’s drone is actually pretty big and rather unwieldy, the ones you can buy today are much more compact, but they don’t get anywhere near the animal-like behavior hers displays. It’s also rather overkill for the job, seeing how she struggles as it tries to get away from her.
- “You mean the white one? Or the white one?” Amazingly, the blankets Rarity are picking from really do have different shades of white, all five of them – although, visually, I can only reliably discern two shades between them. None of them is actually “white” white, at that.
- “Ocean monster! Ocean monster!” As I said above, this is definitely not a lake. I’m pretty sure those aren’t freshwater seaweed species dripping off Fluttershy either.
- “Quincy the sea turtle says the tide’s coming in.” And while Pinkie could be just exaggerating for effect or making a mistake, there’s no way Fluttershy would make that mistake.
“The closest you’ve ever come to a party of mine is freshman year, when you pretended to be Applejack and texted me, ‘Your party is lamer than a hungry duck in snow boots.’”
- This statement by Pinkie would imply that Sunset was trying to break up the Humane 5 as early as the freshman year – which actually josses the Pedestrian half of My Little Pony Annual 2013 all by itself, even though it doesn’t sit particularly well with other evidence, because there’s no way Sunset would have any motivation to do it at that point: There’s nothing to gain from doing that at the time, certainly no popularity to be had, and Rarity is not running against Sunset in the Spring Fling.
- Actually, if this happened in freshman year, why would Pinkie get caught by the same trick the next year, when Sunset was going after Rarity?…
“Of course we’re friends!”
- Memory redaction effect does not propagate through the mirror even though it’s held open – but whether this is because it can’t get through, or because Princess Twilight is not being targeted for the effect remains unknown.
- We previously have not observed messages being written while the communication journal is open. Here, we can see that this results in them appearing in a glow, in real time as written, i.e. there is no line/message buffer to speak of.
- “Well, not ‘person,’ so to speak…” Nick Confalone labors under the mistaken assumption that the word “person” does not apply to ponies. I.e. that ponies are unpersons. Which is evidently wrong, as they do use its derivatives to refer to each other all the time. Go eat a dictionary, sir, I’ll reinterpret this line to make bloody sense damn it. Well, at least he didn’t say “in pony,” like some people I won’t mention…
Equestria
- Sunset still has issues maintaining quadrupedal posture, but less of them than she did in Mirror Magic. Unfortunately I can’t treat this as a clear indication of the relative positioning of these two episodes for reasons described when chewing apart Mirror Magic: She is not consistent about this. As a side note, the same clothing/items rules seem to apply.
- “Princess Celestia, the last time we saw each other, I was your snide little pupil who betrayed and abandoned you.” See the involved discussion of the issue in RTAC #16 and the posts it references. This line shuts down the Equestrian half of My Little Pony Annual 2013 all on its own: Celestia definitely did not reject Sunset at any point, Sunset rejected Celestia instead. It’s very notable that Celestia releases her very stern expression only after Sunset tells her she’s sorry.
- “The toilings of this nefarious enchantment could portend unimaginable catastrophe if left unchecked.” The archaic style of Luna’s speech cracks Sunset up, and I don’t think it’s just by contrast with Vice-Principal Luna: It was funny at the time Sunset left, too.
- “This ‘faculty lot’ you speak of sounds like a place of great power.” This line settles that Luna has no worldly idea of what actually goes on behind the mirror. The question just how is she able to figure out the time until the portal closes naturally in Pedestrian time becomes even more prominent.
- “The answers you seek are in the Canterlot Library.” Not, notably, in the Canterlot Archives – this is the same library Twilight meets Moondancer in during Amending Fences, and is definitely a public library.
At the entrance to the library, Sunset passes Flash Sentry.
- The guy’s still in Canterlot and still orange.
- How the hell does Sunset identify him – because she obviously does – is anyone’s guess.
- What’s Sassaflash, a Ponyvillain, is doing in the Canterlot public library, is anyone’s guess – but I’d suspect that Twilight’s castle is not a public library as some writers surmise, or she wouldn’t need to go to Canterlot, would she?
- “There’s over a million books in here.” Which is simultaneously not that much and too much. The Internet Archive contains about 11 million books, and the Library of Congress contains over 38 million books. However, both of these are late post-industrial society libraries collecting literature from all over the world, populated by over 7 billion people. My best estimate of pony population is still around 30 million. Collecting a million books with that kind of population would require retaining literature from a lot earlier periods than we normally do. While Twilight immediately implies that Sunset is exaggerating, we never know by how much.
“To the restricted section.”
- Twilight was entirely unaware that the public library she knows “like the back of her hoof” has a restricted section at all. I wonder why.
- For that matter, why does this library have this section at all? Were the Canterlot Archives judged insufficiently secure at some point?
- Twilight passes Minuette as she walks towards the restricted section. Guess who doesn’t get a hello this time either.
- The chances that a restricted section opened by pulling two specific books at once would remain hidden are infinitesimal, which implies that there’s also a magic trigger of some kind – but I still don’t know how would they get two books to stay in one place through a thousand years of reshelving. Which implies… a lot of things.
- The restricted section contains torches – which would only be lit if the place is maintained, or through magic – and bats. Bats are definitely bad for long term storage of books.
- “Oh-my-gosh-oh-my-gosh-oh-my-gosh-oh-my-gosh-oh-my-gosh! So many books all unread!” Actually, the shot contains very few books – only a couple hundred at best. The rest of the giant cavern is mostly empty or contains objects not normally associated with a library.
“I should warn you, however. The archives’ mechanical catalog has not been… well-maintained.”
- This is a scene missing from the original televised version, which explains one major concern of mine: Why doesn’t Celestia point them straight towards what they’re looking for. The answer is that, due to the catalog being broken, she doesn’t know where exactly it is. It doesn’t explain why she doesn’t appear to describe it, though. If it’s because Twilight is so eager to read everything, that she won’t listen, that doesn’t explain why isn’t Sunset searching in a more focused fashion.
- The catalog itself is an extremely strange machine. Not only it is marked up in the same script as the one used subsequently on Clover’s scroll – which would imply it’s ancient, since we have seen ponies use modern Latin script as well, and much more often – but I also can’t seem to be able to imagine how it could work at all. The examples of mechanical catalogs I’ve actually seen still involved cards. Back when they actually worked. This one has no cards, and the drums do not appear to be scrolls, which would at least make it possible to replicate what the cards do.
- “Can you believe they have Canterlot Cantabiles Volume Thirty-One?” What about volumes one through thirty? In any case, Twilight’s reaction implies that this is probably ancient fiction, rather than anything else.
- “An original ‘Windigo Weather Warning’ from the pre-Equestrian era!” Another confirmation that the pre-Equestrian era existed, which was in doubt at the time this special was released. This particular line is more important in that literature surviving from the period exists. And is in the restricted section. For some reason.
“Did you know Chancellor Puddinghead tried to pass a law mandating Earth ponies drink carrot juice at every meal?”
- This is our most solid piece of evidence that Puddinghead was an actual historical pony rather than just a character in a child play: Everything else can be dismissed or reinterpreted, but a restricted document has to be solid.
- “You’re familiar with ‘The Seven Trials of Clover the Clever?’” Sunset is, but this is a very strange line: If Sunset was, and Twilight was, and the subsequent story is contained in the aforementioned book, there was no need to go to a restricted section for it, or, if it was in fact restricted, there would be no way Twilight would not be aware a restricted section exists. In the end, the key piece of information, the last “page” of the original scroll of those trials, is missing anyway, and there’s no indication Celestia knew it was hidden. For that matter, Celestia immediately directed them towards the restricted section, so what was it exactly that she expected them to find that was actually restricted, out of what we know they did find?…
- “Well, first of all, these date back to before the founding of Equestria. Look at this.” Twilight unrolls a scroll that is read horizontally – no other scroll anywhere in the series is – and more importantly, is written in a strange script, most similar to the one used in The Crystal Empire on the cover of the book describing the Crystal Faire.
- The subsequent story at least strongly settles that Clover the Clever was male. There’s a lot of confusion regarding the genders of the Hearth’s Warming Story protagonists.
“It belonged to an evil sorceress who was practically invincible. With the Memory Stone, she could erase any memory from anypony.”
- The sorceress is definitely an earth pony, and neither Twilight nor Sunset bat an eye at that. Which implies, at least, that to be called a “sorceress,” it is sufficient to possess a magical artifact, and being able to cast spells is not a requirement. It might even be that this is a distinction between a sorcerer and a wizard – a wizard wields magic, while a sorcerer uses an artifact someone else made with magic.
- At the same time, the depiction of Clover the Clever does not include a horn either, and it would have to be rather short to be hidden by this cloak.
- “But every time he got close, the sorceress would erase his memory and escape.” Notice, not kill him.
- Twilight and Sunset suppose that the Memory Stone ended up in Pedestria, based on an illustration, rather than any specific statement in the text itself that we can observe, and the illustration is as vague as it gets.
- “Oh, it’s possible. Even if I have to reorganize the whole library by subject. Or maybe chronologically!” Who would even let Twilight do that to a public library?
- “Princess Celestia has a sense of humor? Looks like I’m not the only one who’s changed.” That’s quite a short time for Celestia to change significantly, compared to her lifespan, and a clear statement that as recently as a decade ago, Celestia did not have such a sense of humor. That’s a lot weightier than it sounds on the surface.
There’s one extra scene set after Sunset is back to Pedestria:
“This is it! The last piece was in a secret compartment!” Which just raises further questions:
- Why hide this piece at all, instead of the whole scroll?
- If Celestia was aware that it exists, why didn’t she tell Twilight? If she was not aware it exists, why show her the restricted section? There’s nothing particularly useful in the text otherwise.
“Perhaps if I had destroyed the Stone right away, some of my memories could have returned. But when the sun sets by the third day after a memory has been taken, it is erased forever.”
- Notice the interval expressed in days, rather than anything else – in the time period where, as, for example, Horse Play tells us, reading from the Journal of the Two Sisters, that the solar cycle could not have been reliable.
- Notice also that for some reason, Twilight expects the missing piece to contain instructions on how to restore the lost memories, but then finds the answer – which she must tell Sunset “at once,” as Celestia puts it – in a scroll that she had already read previously, since it’s rolled out on the table where she was working just prior.
- Clover did have an intention to destroy the stone, but buried it instead. Why?!
Back to Pedestria
- “We’ve been out here a while. Time to reapply!” And then Pinkie applies cupcake to skin, even though it’s supposed to be edible sunscreen. She must have misunderstood something.
- “Water, please!” So what does Trixie have on Snips and Snails that they’re so eager to serve her? Are they just as big fans of her magical talent as the Equestrian ones are? Since when exactly? That’s not how they behaved the last time they were around Trixie… Is it the magic power of boobs? Trixie is not particularly great and powerful with those.
- “You know, seeing as how the yearbook president seems to be having a little identity crisis, I believe that means the vice president takes over. And, why… that’s you, Rarity!” Since when exactly? See above for why this is important. Notice also that this doesn’t provoke cognitive dissonance in Rarity at all.
- “See? This is proof! We are friends!” For some reason, Sunset’s phone has the on-screen keyboard out when flipping through pictures, wtf.
- “This is the same girl who made flawless fake photos of your friend trashing the gym.” Wait a moment. How exactly does Trixie know about that? See my commentary regarding those photos back in Equestria Girls.
- Trixie covers something like 20 meters in under a second. That’s pretty quick.
Sunset’s locker contains:
- A baseball cap she was never caught wearing.
- An iPod, which is a rather strange thing to have in the era of smartphones.
- A very unusual gamepad-like device with what looks like a screen of irregular hexagonal shape. What the hell is that thing?…
- “I don’t want your lunch money!” Was there ever a situation when Sunset did want Micro Chips’ lunch money? And got away with it? In Celestia’s school? Or is he just acting according to the stereotype?… The subsequent scene when Trixie tries to interrogate him suggests the latter.
- “You really want to do this here in the hallway in front of everyone?” Trixie’s locker mysteriously silently reopens after Sunset just slammed it shut.
- “So, where should we start… partner?” The communication journal glows at this moment, which produces a question later on.
- “Let’s talk motive. Who here hates you enough to erase everyone’s good memories of you?” “If you go back far enough… everyone.” Once again… Why? There’s a short period when I’m definite that “everyone” had a strong motive to hate Sunset, but that is primarily contained between Equestria Girls and Rainbow Rocks. At this point, this is no more than a year ago.
- “I erased a ton of memory just this morning. Four terabytes of quantel-accelerflex memory to be precise.” Quantel-accelerflex memory is nonsense. However, erasing – that is, overwriting with zeroes – four terabytes in just one morning is actually pretty impressive, since that requires very high write speeds. Fastest you can get today, with an SSD, is something like half a gigabyte per second, which would require two hours. A 4Tb SSD is very expensive, and a more common hard drive would not let you wipe it anywhere as fast – that takes most of a day. And assuming “quantel-accelerflex” actually means something, 4Tb of that stuff would be even more expensive. I’d swipe that, instead of lunch money or lunch, given the option.
- “Only that it’s felsic-intrusive igneous, granular in texture, most likely arranged in an equigranular matrix, with scattered biotite mica and amphibole, at least sixty-five percent alkali feldspar by volume, with a melting point of twelve-fifty centigrade, plus or minus ten degrees. Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.” Maud describes an otherwise unimpressive rock, but the interesting point is that she is somehow able to guess the melting point from a drawing, and as far as I can tell, it’s a melting point lower than would be typical for this kind of rock, by a couple hundred degrees. I call bullshit.
- “Oh, stop looking at that. You’re just going to wind yourself up.” Considering that to even see this picture, Sunset had to have interacted with the Humane 6, you’d think it’s too late already.
- “Not pictured: Wallflower Blush” Now, Sunset is working with a sheet of pictures which would have to be some kind of official images – for example, for the student ID cards. They’re all taken on the same background and in the same pose. So how would Wallflower end up not pictured here?
- “Wallfower. I’ve known you since third grade.” Wallflower is local if Trixie is local. She probably is.
- “Sunset, we think the Memory Stone was buried under this rock formation. And if you don’t destroy the Memory Stone by the time the sun sets today, all those memories will be erased forever.” Stop. As far as we know from the scene where we see the text appear the first time, it appears in real time, as Twilight reacts to Sunset’s message immediately. When Sunset leaves with Trixie, leaving the communication journal in her locker, the journal is buzzing, but it subsequently stops buzzing. In this scene, Sunset notices that it started buzzing, and opened it to discover this message. So there had to have been a message prior to this, that Sunset missed. What was it, and when did Twilight send it?!
- Sunset makes a significant leap identifying the rock formation Twilight depicted with the one on Wallflower’s wallpaper, because the rocks on said wallpaper are buried to at least to two thirds of their height. Which would imply a depth of over a meter. Which would further imply that to get at the stone, Wallflower would have had to dig even deeper.
- “That’s my garden. Well, the school’s garden, technically. I’m the president of the Gardening Club. I founded it, too. I’m also the only member. And the only one who’s ever been to the garden. Or seen it. Or even asked about it.” The Ninja Club does not officially exist and you can’t officially sign up for it. It certainly doesn’t get any official support from the school.
Wallflower’s memories establish that she created the garden after the end of Equestria Girls, and they also establish:
3. They definitely didn’t get weathered off – not in this climate.
That the stone mysteriously ended up very near the surface, when the rock formation is already as deeply buried as it is on the wallpaper shot.3
- That it was packaged in an intact piece of scroll wrapped with a string, which is freaking impossible.
- That she is able to read the scroll and interpret it as instructions, which is actually one of the more mysterious parts of the whole thing.
There’s no way this could have happened naturally no matter the state of temporal gradient between worlds, because while the rock formation shows the passage of a huge amount of time, the stone’s discovery makes it impossible that anywhere that much time passed since it was hidden.
- Pedestrian Rarity keeps an Opal too.
- “Yes! It’s been recording this whole time!” The only reason I can imagine that Twilight would leave her selfie drone with Sunset, which she currently hates, is that its memory is not removable. That’s a strange design choice for 2015, especially with a device that has a remote that you can play video on.
- “Yes! It worked! I finally did it!” Actually, how in blazes? The only way this can possibly happen is if Trixie has come by some actual magic somehow, which is actually quite surprising, since a Pedestrian Trixie wouldn’t have the sources or education that the Equestrian one has.
- Flash Sentry still has a fancy car. This time, however, it does not have quite as pronounced an engine block. Cartoon resolution, probably.
- “How?! I erased the whole afternoon!” Wallflower has specific conscious control over what gets erased. It was clear she has control all along, but only her admission establishes that she also knows exactly how much she is erasing.
- “Sure, I was popular, but I was lonely.” When, exactly, was Sunset Shimmer popular? Because you’d think this contradicts with being voted “Biggest Meanie,” doesn’t it?
- “They’ll think of each other the way you think of me! Which is not at all!” Memory Stone as used to erase ‘all’ memories is a line of sight targeting spell-like effect, which can be intercepted. But to erase the memories as shown the first time, when the Humane 6 lose their good memories of Sunset, it also has to have a keyword targeting mode that doesn’t require line of sight, does it? That’s a lot of flexibility and a lot of knowledge about how can this artifact be used for Wallflower to have.
- “We may not remember you…” Actually, you do still remember her, Applejack. As the meanie, who didn’t let the memory you had of her being a meanie get erased. Pick the words more carefully.
- “When I first found the Memory Stone, I only erased little things – awkward hellos, saying the wrong thing, literally any public speaking…” Wallflower admits to using the Memory Stone repeatedly prior to this entire incident.
- “No student parking in the faculty lot.” But it’s not a student parking, is it? That’s a van from the printers.
- Wallflower’s gardening club has mysteriously acquired Derpy as a member.
Some analysis
There’s going to be a considerable amount of that this time. Once you introduce mass memory erasure into a story, with enough effort, you can prove that anything is true, including that one equals zero. You don’t do that carelessly.
Unless you’re a My Little Pony scriptwriter.
Wallflower Blush
4. I used to have my friends call my phone to find out I’m standing five meters away, but it requires a very specific frame of mind to pull off. I’m not normal and I’m only borderline human.
Wallflower is invisible and forgettable well beyond what is achievable for a mundane human. Some of it is explainable by repeated use of the Memory Stone to erase every memorable thing about herself in the minds of others, but this does not explain just how she keeps avoiding notice4 – and more importantly, does nothing to explain why is she annoyed at not being remembered, which she expresses multiple times throughout the story. The particular way and the time period she remembers finding the Memory Stone precludes Trixie from forgetting her all the way back to third grade, unless Wallflower deliberately tampered with Trixie’s memory very deeply – far deeper than she even did with Sunset in the end, when Sunset lost somewhere between three and four years worth of memories completely.
5. Unless Pedestria is a pseudo-world as, for example, in Shrink Laureate’s The Fishbowl or in Sharp Quill’s Destinies. In which case Wallflower Blush has no agency to speak of and most of this episode is meaningless, anyway.
As I mentioned above, no matter how the temporal gradient between Equestria and Pedestria behaves, there’s no way it’s looping5 – which means there’s got to be some way to explain how a stone that was buried at some point while the rock formation was still above ground ended up so close to the surface. There also needs to be a way to explain how Wallflower is able to understand the instructions in its use, when they’re written in a perfectly legible script we can’t read.
While it’s not stated in the text, I am pretty sure that Wallflower had to have tampered with her own memories as well: If you get embarrassed when public speaking, what you want forgotten isn’t just the memories others have of you making a fool of yourself on stage. What torments you the most are your own memories of making a fool of yourself on stage, and those are the ones you want to get rid of first, because really, everyone else probably didn’t care anywhere as much as you did. There is nothing in the description of the Memory Stone that would prevent one from erasing their own memories, so there’s no reason Wallflower could not do so.
That opens interesting possibilities.
The most obvious one is that Wallflower has uncovered the Memory Stone much earlier – and had to dig a lot deeper to get it – and used it a lot, before finally excising most of the memory of these events from herself, and only leaving a vague instruction on how to find it again. This gets rid of some oddities, but not all, while introducing new ones:
- Why would she be digging so deep, let alone here – the depth has to be at least a meter. Is there a cat under the flowerbed somewhere?
- What else did she erase, and is it anything we would like to know?
- How did she decipher the user’s manual the first time around?
The next one is a bit more involved and hypothetical. Let us assume one peculiarity about how the Memory Stone: Suppose it works both ways. Just like it can consume memories, so it can regurgitate them, before they eventually dissolve. Including, into someone else. Since it clearly treats memories as manifest objects – these ribbons we can see many times through the episode – it sounds reasonable that it could do that. In that case, it’s possible for Wallflower to be someone else, and remember things the original Wallflower did not do – like meeting Trixie in third grade, which Trixie doesn’t remember, because it was someone else that she met in third grade, and that someone looked nothing like Wallflower Blush. It could likewise explain why doesn’t Sunset remember not only meeting Wallflower Blush three years ago, but also, why doesn’t she recognize her from working together on the yearbook: There is no way people’s memories include a side camera view, that’s a narrative device for us, the readers, so there is no way Sunset would be able to tell at a glance, while watching Wallflower’s memories through her touch telepathy power, whether the memories were experienced by Wallflower herself or someone else. Remember that Wallflower Blush appears to have no official Student ID picture? That would be why.
But there are still missing pieces even if we suppose something like that, which brings us to…
The Memory Stone
The story goes like this: Clover the Clever pursued a nameless Sorceress, who would erase his memory every time he confronted her, and would have to uncover her identity every time, using records he left for himself. That she didn’t kill him suggests she simply could not – most likely, due to not having any powers worth speaking of beside the Memory Stone itself, while Clover would have to be a gifted magician to become Star Swirl’s student. Ok.
So pieces of this story are well known in Equestria, since both Sunset and Twilight report being familiar with it by name, but the details are obscure and are held in a restricted section of the biggest public library. Ok again.
So the Memory Stone ended up in Pedestria, one way or another. Ok, no problem there either: From Rainbow Rocks, we already know that the mirror is not the only way to get there, since Star Swirl did not use it when banishing the Sirens. The images in the scroll depict a swirly portal, rather than a mirror, anyway, just like the one with the sirens.
So riddle me this:
If Clover has eventually bested the Sorceress, why did he bury the stone, on the other side of the portal, instead of destroying it, as he originally intended? There’s no reason whatsoever to hide it there “to keep anypony else from finding it”:
- As long as portals can be easily created, hiding it somewhere you can’t keep an eye on it is essentially an open invitation to go fish.
- If portals cannot be easily created, it doesn’t matter where you hid it on the other side, because the ability to search for it is gated behind the ability to create or access a portal to that world.
In either case, describing the hiding place is pointless if you want it to never be found.
- If Clover did not eventually best the Sorceress, why does the description of the rock formation even exist on the Equestrian side of the portal?
And whichever of the two is the case, why the flaming hell would you wrap the Stone in its own instruction manual?!
It’s almost like a much bigger piece of Clover’s own memory is missing here. And what exactly happened to the Sorceress? If Clover bested her, did he kill her? Did he wipe her memory? How exactly did he hide the stone and yet, let the Sorceress go free – presumably, in the same world in which he hid the stone?
Did he deliberately let her go?…
Sunset’s History
As I previously explained while studying Sunset’s history, there’s very little evidence Sunset actually did anything significantly mean before the Spring Fling of Year 2, and lots of circumstantial evidence to suggest that she did not. This episode actually contains most of the former. And upon reflection, it is quite contradictory.
As if there are pieces of memory missing from it. The shift from Sunset who is voted “biggest meanie” to the Sunset that is “popular” and seeks to win a crown in a contest the rest of the school does not care about at all is inobvious and unapparent. Somewhere along the line, she also appears to become the yearbook president.
It’s almost like a previous yearbook president existed, someone that everyone forgot, that exploited their position to get Sunset that designation for whatever reason – and Sunset eventually ousted that person, somehow, became the yearbook president herself, and then…
…and then forgot they ever existed.
Remember Shadow Lock? Yeah, me neither.
All the stuff about 'Meanie of the year in our freshman year' and other recollections have to be viewed through the prism of actual memory, which is idiosyncratic, particular, and uniquely prone to hyperbole and exaggeration. When Sunset's friends talk about stuff like 'biggest meanie', they're partially twitting Sunset, and partially exaggerating for emotional effect. It's not intended literally, and oftentimes in these sort of situations they're projecting future behavior onto past memories which in objective terms were no such thing.
In the context of the recent contratemps about the Kavanaugh nomination I was talking with my (liberal) relatives about the extreme contortions that memory takes in even traumatic experiences like assaults and abuse in high school situations. In my sophomore year in high school, I managed to break my feet and do significant soft tissue damage, to the extent that I was in a wheelchair for a month and a half in the spring of that year. the damage was my own fault - I jumped off a first-storey roof in my bare feet like a moron - but what happened afterwards while I was in that wheelchair was somebody's fault. Some chucklehead (and I have a vague memory of it being a football player) thought it would be hilarious to push me into a stairwell at school towards a downstairs drop. The wheelchair's tires were damaged as I locked the brakes and the chair ended up skidding on the rubber, wearing the bottom of the tires flat from the abrasion. This was a serious thing, looking back on it from an adult perspective.
I cannot for the life of me remember who it was that did this. I mean, I knew at the time, and I'm sure I was furious at that person. But today? I didn't dwell on it, I didn't reinforce again and again a grudge, and the identity of that villain is gone, lost to my apparent inability to maintain a hate-on for somebody who tried, however jokingly, to push me down a flight of stairs. If I was the vindictive, grudge-bearing sort, you better believe I'd have retained that. But, and I don't know what it says about me - I don't. It was just... some guy.
I have other things I dedicate my long-term memory towards.
The two don't really seem to have any relation to each other. She can know the timeframes and mechanics involved without knowing anything about parking lots.
He forgot?
In all seriousness, while there's no evidence for it, it would be fascinating if the Stone had some degree of self-preservation. Indeed, if the Stone were sentient or even sapient in its own right and wanted to be used, that might explain some of the peculiarities of this special.
Also, darn it, now I want Wallflower to hang out at this obscure little bookstore run by a creepy guy who reads way too much Lovecart and thinks he can pull off a cloak in Current Year.
You checked with an eyedropper tool didn't you?
"Sir Oliver, 'tis simply a matter of counting the moons. Surely thou know the length of such."
So what makes Meadowbrook a mage?
Mind altering artifacts have a toll on anyone trying to destroy them
It's lines like that someone could write a whole story on...
Maud's Response
That last bit of analysis is very intriguing. In a mind-body horror sort of way. Could Wallflower Blush be the memory stone sorceress who is doomed to keep forgetting who she is. Eternal youthful like the sirens. Perhaps she understands the danger of the stone and hides it from herself, but fate or magical attraction lures her back to it every time to start the cruel process over and over again.
We tease the humane 7 are in high school purgatory. It could be very well true for Wallflower.
Maybe fans are right and she sells bits (if they really gold) and/or gems?
I still think that Sunset, in this case, is an unreliable narrator. Being a power-hungry bitch she most likely treated Celestia more like a function (shoved Celestia into the Procrustean bed of being a "princess" or "teacher" and never bothered to know a person behind it) and never give princess andy reasons to joke and full around. Because, as far as I remember, at least one comic said that to get closed to common ponies Celestia established a public show where she full around, tell jokes and so on.
4960249
Sure. But you have to account for something. For you, your high school incidents are multiple decades away. For Sunset, as of this moment, the events of her freshman year were just two and a half years ago, tops.
4960260
Sure. The question is, how does she know the timeframes and mechanics involved, in the time frame of the other side, without having been to the other side anywhere within the current Pedestrian fifty hears or so.
That’s also a decent option, though right now, I’m leaning towards the idea that Wallflower Blush is, in some tangible way, the Sorceress – as Fylifa voiced it.
Don’t tell me there’s no spot in the Oversaturated World for the guy.
4960300
Of course.
Indeed, I would not hesitate to count them myself, were someone to tell me how long a moon actually is. Unfortunately, that is still hidden from me deliberately. 💢
Probably the use of magical cooking. I.e. potions. And puddings. Which is a suitable distinction: It’s still something one does themselves, but not inherent to their body.
Plausible, actually, and see FoME above suggesting the same.
I think this is a distinct possibility, and might even be a piece of fridge logic the scriptwriter put in there deliberately. The parallels between the Sorceress and Wallflower are too strong to not suppose that something of the sort has to be going on.
We don’t have enough information to deduce what actually happened, the entire story isn’t there. But that has never stopped us before.
1-30 were safe for work. 31 wasn't something little fillies should read.
If she can go like that for 100 metres, she beats the current world record by about four seconds. Pretty quick indeed.
Well, we'd never seen her parents. They may be buried there.
Starswirl's School of Getting Rid of Things, I'm sure. Or a case of "this may come in handy one day".
Which also implies that Pedestria's Canterlot is not centrally located on the continent like the Equestrian version is. It was already pretty apparent that it's not on a mountain either, but this seems to confirm that geography is not mirrored between worlds.
Because they were all played by mares in the Hearth's Warming play. Which also implies that genderbent characters, even historical ones, are at least not unusual in Equestrian theatre. Not a given.
4960333
Might it be possible that Luna travelled to the other side once, a thousand years ago, before she was Nightmare Moon? That would permit her to learn the details about timeframes and mechanics, but by the time of Equestria Girls, her knowledge of what the world itself is like beyond the mirror would be out of date, just like her knowledge of Equestria was out of date. For all she knows, it's transformed from a medieval kingdom to a Mad Max post-apocalypse in that time.
4960472
They’ve never been particularly unusual in theater for children even here, for that matter…
That’s quite possible, but here’s another interesting thought.
Remembering my Pedestrian movie PoCs, one of the best explanations for the oddities of the first movie is that Sunset has an accomplice on the Equestrian side who has the other Communication Journal.
What if that was Luna?…
4960484
I'm not sure when they would have had opportunity to meet.
4960508
They would never have to, just picking up the journal is sufficient.
It was in Monday Blues. Sunset carelessly thumps hers while Twilight neatly presses the off button. ^^
4960511
Good point.
I love that you noticed this. XD
4960525
Had to wipe multiple retired multi-terabyte drives.
My favorite EQG after Rainbow Rocks.
Say WHAT? Huh. I've never heard of a school in the US who didn't print it in April or May.
Plus there are a ton of shorts set on the beach using the same background that expand it and show seaweed washing up.
i.pinimg.com/originals/dd/45/d7/dd45d7c8d6fc73daf82fe19dc6039c5a.png
I definitely think she's pawning Equestrian gold and gems. Shitty house full of nice stuff is how a lot of criminals live, since it's easier to hide nice things than a nice house. Sushi job explains her money, not provides it. The question is, is it gold and gems Sunset took with her, or did she just start getting them provided to her by Twilight after Rainbow Rocks?
I thought that annual was set during Freshman year, and Sunset was breaking them up because they were powerful friends during middle school.
I think Sunset's actions in the Annual could be construed as betrayal and abandonment of Celestia, though I think that's kind of harsh. But then, I think Starlight calling herself an evil dictator is a similar harsh description that remorseful ponies seem to apply to their own past actions.
Such a stupid decision by the writers.
And also confirmation that Windigos themselves existed. I doubt the restricted section is going to have the equivalent of NORAD's Santa Radar in there. And the fact that it's in the restricted section may well mean Celestia would like modern ponies to believe Windigos are mythical.
As of the S8 finale, perhaps performing ritual magic is sufficient. I mean, Zecora is an "enchantress."
Thoughts about that: An author I admire has suggested that the sun and especially the moon have a magical effect on Equestria. Perhaps this timer, like in the S8 Finale, is not a euphemism for 72 hours, but after the sun and moon rotate 3 times the shifting fast thaums will have caused certain magical effects?
A very good question. Perhaps there were some memories covered up that he didn't want returned. Perhaps the stone is stronger in Equestria, indestructible even. Clover tried to destroy it, couldn't, then took it to Pedestria and dumped it without thinking to test the stone's durability in this low-magic world.
According to the shorts, Trixie, Snips, Snails and Big Mac are the 4 members of the school's D&D club. You would be surprised how big an effect that can have on people (See DM's girlfriend for similar stories).
So if Sunset used to be poor and only started living the high life once Twilight started slipping her Equestrian gems, an ancient i-pod, thrift store video game system and baseball hat to cover raggedy hair cuts might make sense.
Given the Regal Principal Sisters' laxness in paperwork (see Sunset), I could see them signing a paper authorizing the Garden Club, forgetting it ever existed, and never bothering to excise it from the budget.
Maybe a gap after that when she became more popular after dating Flash, but before her popularity dipped again once she doubled down on her bullying ways.
Or an IDW comic book writer.
I agree. I think the memory stone might be at least as sapient as the alicorn amulet or many other magical artifacts, and it wants to be used. I think after Wallflower dug it up and started using it, it's affected her subtly, while also teaching her the full extent of its power (while having her believe she "discovered" this herself). Her attunement didn't giver her glowing eyes and wings, but she clearly has magical properties.
Or even villainous ponies are unwilling to kill.
I don't want to add more people than necessary. Wallflower messing with memories on her own can explain quite enough already. I suspect she has a crush on Sunset, and as her feelings warm/cool when Sunset does things like start dating Flash and later break up with him, selective memory removal might explain times when Sunset seems extra popular/unpopular.
Also, how likely is it that Trixie also has some magical artifact she doesn't know about left by a famous Equestrian teleporter?
Not necessarily. My elementary and middle school yearbooks, which were scarcely more than the names and photos of the student body and a few pictures taken at various points in the year, with the latter also including pictures of a few extracurricular groups like sports teams, band, and orchestra, were indeed distributed during the last week of classes in either May or June. My high school yearbooks, however, included coverage of graduation and sports that extended into the summer like baseball and therefore weren't available until a few weeks into the next school year.
While functional edible sunscreen in the more conventional form of lotions or sprays doesn't exist (though it should be noted that while it won't taste very good, sunscreen is at least non-toxic- the FDA and its counterparts in other countries tend to take a dim view of toxic products meant to be applied directly to the skin), sunscreen-containing lip balms, such as DCT do.
Per the CYOA shorts, Fluttershy is also known to own or have regular access to a car, and trusted with it enough by both its actual owners (presumably her parents) and Sunset to be able to help teach Sunset to drive. The shorts also at least strongly imply that Rarity has a license, though it's unclear whether or not she has access to a car.
Between her apparent knowledge that the Humane 5 could pose a threat to her long before the events of Equestria Girls and her knowledge of what the Element of Magic looked like and who Twilight was, I think there's a decent case to be made here that Sunset had at least some contact with Equestria, whether through someone still living there or by secretly visiting in person while the portal was open, prior to Equestria Girls.
The fact that they didn't suspect Sunset of the other impersonations she was behind suggests that Pinkie wasn't aware of that one at the time either, and only found out after or during the events of Equestria Girls. Given what degree of control Wallflower appears to have over the Memory Stone, I would suggest that they kept all memories of Sunset's misdeeds, including things they didn't know she did at the time, and only lost those of her redemption.
I'd explain this the same way as the "zeppelins" that could absolutely in no way be capable of maintaining buoyancy using any known lifting gas: if it doesn't seem like it should work, it's probably magic-driven.
Probably a brand name. Additionally, rather than a single 4TB drive, he could have just had multiple smaller drives, which are much cheaper and could be erased simultaneously.
While I'm having trouble finding specific numbers for alkali feldspar granite, the mineral she seems to be describing, the Wikipedia article for granite says dry granite at ambient pressure has a melting point between 1215 and 1260 C, which lines up perfectly with Maud's stated 1250±10 C.
4960603
Well, in any case, we can say for sure that they have three yearbooks on hand (red, green, blue) and the end of the special brings in the fourth. (purple)
Depends on how deliberately she crossed the mirror, really. If she didn’t do it in a rush – and you know what I think of the Annual 2013, so I think she did not – she would obviously have taken her wallet.
Definitely not: The Pedestrian end of the annual has them talk of the freshman year as if it has completed a while ago. I would put it no earlier than Autumn of Year 2-P. (Year 1-P is the freshman year in Pedestria, and “starts” in September together with the school.)
So why does it have the volume 31 of a piece of fiction “where it gets go-o-o-o-o-o-o-d” ?
Maybe, which is why I’m highlighting this in the first place.
I have since found a good answer to it that this comment is too narrow to contain…
Don’t need to, I had a DM’s girlfriend.
Works, I suppose. But notice that this might imply that Trixie is Mac’s girlfriend in Pedestria.
A snag: Engineering constraints make building a game system with a hexagonal screen quite difficult.
Not particularly: There is no suitable teleporter she could inherit such an artifact from that we know of, the list of ponies with known capability or history of crossing over to Pedestria is very short, and very few of them actually make use of artifacts.
4960682
The one I found is not meant to be applied to the skin at all, but rather, taken orally. Which is why it doesn’t work. And yes, it is called “edible sunscreen.”
Yes, but here’s a thing: In this particular case, while the Humane 6 might have made the trip to the beach together, Sunset makes such a trip four times in one day solo, and spends more than a few hours in Canterlot in between. If they planned a group outing somewhere too far to get without personal transport, they would be far more likely to use a single car large enough. Not waiting for Sunset would have clued her in that something is wrong, instantly – so they did not use one.
Therefore, it is feasible and in fact easy enough to get there with no personal transport, e.g. by bus, and you can meet up straight at the destination.
He brandishes the actual drive when saying that, though. It’s a 2.5" USB case.
Still bullshit: There’s no way Maud knows what this rock is, because neither Sunset nor Trixie nor Twilight who copied the picture do. Maud’s just teasing them.
4960789
From the same year? Weird.
Hmmm. So we know Sunset has been here since the beginning of 9th grade. Perhaps things roughly went like Freshman year, Sunset is just adjusting, people like the slightly odd girl and vote her Spring Fling Queen out of Pity, Flash teaches her how to play the guitar (so she can practice hands). The Mane 5 become friends, Sunset observes this but does nothing. Then she starts dating Flash, feels secure enough that she no longer has to be nice to people, and gets voted biggest meanie (but Flash, who is apparently a romantic, takes a long time to notice). In the end of Freshman year, after the dance, the old yearbook has her listed as "Biggest Meanie."
Sophomore year Sunset has her clique of Flash's fairly oblivious friends, Snips and Snails, maybe DT & SS, but other people, following the example of the Mane 5, call her out on being a jerk. So she sabotages their friendship via text messages, ruins other candidates for dance contests, and wins with the majority of about 12 votes cast at each contest. (Interesting that Sunset never runs for Student government).
Beginning of junior year Flash's friends finally make him realize Sunset is evil, he dumps her, and the first movie starts. Is that about right?
I believe that's part of the Cantabiles, a song book. I don't know whether I'd call that fiction anymore than Mozart's 9th Movement. In any case, "Weather Warnings" doesn't sound like the title of a fictional work, especially from a dark-ages civilization. I mean, if it was "Ballad of the Windigos" that'd be different.
Also, I just came up with a theory for why so many random things that don't seem sensitive are in this restricted section: A lot of these otherwise harmless books refer to Luna, so Celestia had them locked up here, and was too lazy to run-restrict them after Luna returned.
That's fair. It also means Trixie is the only human being ever known to make use of magic without any Equestrian artifact aid, just pure willpower.
4960789
Oh, I forgot this one. I've had DM's wife in a campaign for years, but we've adjusted. She doesn't get targeted by enemies much, but I and other players get to use OP splatbooks to balance out the extra enemy attention.
Regarding Trixie, I more generally meant there's a certain type of guy that thinks "cute girl who likes D&D" is much more attainable, and therefore focus their efforts on her.
4961166
We don’t know when in the year this happens – but we do see three colors of a yearbook cover joined by the fourth, and we know it’s warm enough for a beach trip.
More or less, but here’s an interesting thought I’ve been having while thinking about it:
Why do we always assign the initiative in that relationship to Sunset? Considering the fact that the only way I can explain the Stupidest Scene In The Movie is with Flash being pretty devious, smart, and balancing conflicting loyalties, why do we like to deny him agency so much? Because we think he’s a cardboard waifu stealer devoid of personality, motivation, or a brain, muscles + guitar + car = stereotypical boyfriend?
Being thought of that way is what lets people get away with murder.
Consider also that the moment Sunset appeared in Pedestria, she was a 19+ years old in a ~15 year old’s body. That sort of thing impresses people. Compare especially to what happens when Wallflower wipes enough memory to reduce her to a state when she does not remember leaving Equestria.
In fact, that particular scene is our only glimpse of what Sunset was really like at the time she left, or at least, just how that Sunset handles suddenly having an in-some-other-body-and-world experience.
That would work, sort of, though what confuses me here is that over half of what they keep in there aren’t even written materials. There are several crates worth of bottles…
Indeed.
4961471
Hmm. You may have a point. I think part of this is Flash's later portrayals. They are quite limited, but first they show him being mean under the effects of mind control, which logically should be discounted, but tends to make the viewer think of someone as somewhat weak-willed. (It's not fair to judge someone for that, but it's hard to avoid).
Later we see him mostly mooning over Sunset, or just generally interested in romance, coming off as basically a stereotypical male love interest in a typical rom-com.
That said, I will admit there are some logical inconsistencies here. Equestrian Flash is probably quite a special guard, if he's the one non-Crystal pony Shining Armor took with him to the Crystal Empire and trusts to guard his wife.
There's the theory that someone on Equestria must have been working with Sunset all along.
And it's always bugged me why Sunset even bothered getting a boyfriend/caring about high school popularity in the first place, when her plan was always to return to Equestria ASAP. Are you suggesting that Flash might have pursued her, even convinced here she was destined to be the Queen of Canterlot High or something? I don't see enough evidence for that kind of theory at this time, but it's interesting enough that I am open to it.
derpicdn.net/img/2017/1/3/1331343/large.png
4961614
I don’t think that was her plan from the outset. In fact, I’ve uncovered a key piece of information for interpreting the first movie: Most US high schools, in the time period surrounding 2014, would have a central account system of some sort on their library computers.
I’ll explain why I think it’s important in a moment, but let’s start with the beginning. What I Think Happened:
And that is what I think happened. The most variable spot in this chain is actually step 5: There’s a lot of ways it could have happened and lots of potential extra detail missing, depending on how the Memory Stone was first found and why.
4961660 I'm certainly intrigued.
Why would she? She's giving up magic, she has no friends in this world. Why immigrate to Pedestria instead of Maretania if she just wants to get away from Celestia? The only thing I can think of is if Sunset did something so bad, Celestia would pursue her into foreign lands to arrest her.
Or, Wallflower had a crush on Flash and then Flash starts paying all this attention to the new girl, teaching her to play guitar, etc.
I once had this idea for a fic from the point of view of Principal Celestia and Luna, pre-Equestria Girls, about how incredibly eager that new girl Sunset seems to be for praise from the Principal.
Interesting. It feels like you are going off the pictures of Sunset, where she seems kind of shy at first, then confident, only later slipping into full megalomaniacal gloating in her expressions.
It also means Sunset was basically nice, or at least unremarkable, for most of high school (All of Freshman year, the majority of Sophomore year, and all of Junior year after the 1st movie).
It kind of makes sense. At the start of junior year, everyone is terrified of master manipulator/bully Sunset Shimmer. Yet the Mane 5 never suspect that Sunset broke up their friendship. That makes sense if Sunset broke up their friendship first, then openly bullied people, and the Mane 5 (being teenagers) never re-examined their friendship breakups in light of this new information.
He may well convince himself it's not Sunset, just mean girls making up rumors about her.
No guesses? Celestia (or Cadance) trying to keep Sunset updated to try and convince her to come home? Pony Flash whom she used to date? Trixie gloating?
I think at this point it was more like "become an alicorn when flooded with magic, Celestia will be forced to grant me a crown if I'm an alicorn" than really "beat Celestia into submission."
This entire paragraph is genius, it takes some of the worst plot holes in a movie full of them and turns them into characterization gold!
I think this is worth a post at some point. Now don't you wish you hadn't killed off the pony version of such an interesting character you could use?
4961671
We don’t know, and this is exactly what they don’t say – but as of that moment, Sunset is not particularly interested in friends, is she? That’s kind of a plot point.
Well, for example, here’s another one: Sunset knows Nightmare Moon is coming, thinks Celestia isn’t able to stop her, and wants to end up as far as possible when that happens.
A plausible motivation is easy enough here – we just don’t have any solid reasons to pick one plausible guess over another.
Also an option. Or, Wallflower had a crush on Sunset, and she picks Flash over Wallflower…
I did write about that: Sunset did it to them when fighting for the Spring Fling. After that, in the subsequent summer, they had little cause to interact and compare notes, so the deception remained undetected. If Twilight and the Element did not arrive when they did, it would unravel by the end of the school year for sure. A high school is a pretty densely connected society, something would eventually trickle around.
The only snag is Pinkie’s statement that Sunset sent a text pretending to be Applejack in their freshman year. But I doubt she actually did send it – it’s quite possible someone else entirely did that, and Pinkie blames it on Sunset now. Because Sunset did in fact break them up with text messages and emails, just over a year later, there’s no point arguing whether Sunset did or did not do it at the time.
Or Sunset did send it and did mean it, but didn’t mean to pretend to be Applejack, and that’s just what Pinkie thought.
We don’t know, but canonically, could be any of those except Trixie: She’s nowhere near the circles who could possibly have access to Celestia’s books at the moment.
Same thing, structurally: Come back, present Celestia with a fait accompli that she won’t be able to do anything about.
Has anyone actually seen the body?
4961906
Oh, that is a good theory. If that were a reason, Sunset could pick up that it wasn't Night Eternal just by listening at the other side of the statue, and investigate from there.
That's actually far more plausible. After all, Wallflower was in the Yearbook with Sunset for 9 months. If Sunset doesn't remember Wallflower, how many memories must Wallflower have erased? And what's a bigger driver of awkward conversations than trying to hit on Sunset now that she's single?
Well Rika seems pretty all-knowing... but she also seemed pretty blase about Mary bringing up his death, now that I recall it...
4961930
In general, someone with Wallflower’s temperament shouldn’t involve themselves in making a yearbook, and yet here she is.
Rika is not all-knowing, but rather, all-seeing-capable. The distinction is important.
4961660
Late, but this is pure genius. Very nicely done.