Headscratchers / My Little Pony: Equestria Girls Digital Series

• Question about the series timeline. The first movie takes place during the Fall Formal, and it's shown Sunset was there for at least three formals prior. Assuming she started in 9th grade (the smallest grade for high school), she should have been in 12th grade by then. Since it's past summer ("Summertime Shorts") shouldn't she, and by extension the rest of the cast, have graduated by now?
  • Ah, the wonders of Comic-Book Time. As long as they're marketable, the Humane 7 are probably never going to leave high school.
  • It's possible she took ninth grade twice. After all, I can't imagine it was easy for her to adjust to an entirely unfamiliar species, body, environment, and education system.
  • The other dances she was elected princess of might have been others that took place throughout the school year. Say the first movie is tenth grade, Rainbow Rocks would also be 10th grade (as it's a few months after the first and a Fall Formal would be September or October, putting Rainbow Rocks at March or April). Friendship Games could also be tenth depending on the gap between movies (an event with outdoor activities is more likely to be in the spring or summer anyway). And Legend of Everfree could be the summer between tenth and eleventh. So for this series, the girls are now in eleventh grade.
    • Actually, Legend of Everfree was a field trip during the school year.
  • It could also be possible that CHS could be a grades 6-12 school (not uncommon) with Sunset possibly arriving in 7th grade and winning Fall Formal 3 times with the first film occurring in 10th grade. The events of the movies from Rainbow Rocks to Forgotten Friendship compose the rest of their 10th grade year with the group likely being around 16-17 when the Digital Series occurs (since they are old enough by then to apply for driver's licenses).
• The name summertime shorts was used because they were released in summer. The first movie is in 11th grade and everything after is the same(as said by Rarity, all events take place in past year during LOE and the director said the girls are between junior and senior year by the time LOE came out). I think they said all dances were throughout the years.
• About the "Choose Your Own Adventure" Series, how do they fit into canon? Will they have to pick and choose which path is canon? Combined them somehow? Be ignored (several other EG shorts had dubious fit in canon)? Will they be so small/self-contained they won't have any meaningful impact on it? Are we looking to much into this by trying to find an overarching canon when things like this suggest the writers don't even hold themselves to one?
• "Rarity Investigates" has a different guilty party depending on choice. The theft happened before said choice could effect anything. How did that work?
  • The boot was never stolen. It was just in the costume box. The choices affected how Rarity finds it: If you choose Pinkie, Pinkie points to it in the box; if you choose Trixie, Spike finds it first and tries to dance with it; if you choose Applejack, Maud finds it first.
• In "Super Squad Goals", the comic features a thief who steals a necklace, gets chased by the powered-up girls then when finally cornered, goes to jail. Explain this, this guy goes to jail for STEALING A NECKLACE, and yet Sunset Shimmer herself committed attempted murder, destruction of public property, theft and endangering her entire homeworld by taking away an artifact that's used to stop incoming threats in Equestria. Sunset has also instantly forgiven human Twilight Sparkle for trying to destroy the universe, Gloriosa Daisy for nearly killing everyone at camp, and Juniper Montage for trapping the girls into limbo and terrorizes the mall for petty reasons. Thief shows the same about of remorse, Sunset still sends him to jail. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
  • Sunset, Twilight, and Juniper are all clearly minors, and if Gloriosa's brother can date Twilight without any raised eyebrows, she's most likely a teenager as well. In addition, all four of them were under the effects of mind-altering magic which would be very hard to prove in a court of law (look at the ending of Friendship Games, where everyone points out that nobody would believe Cinch if she tried to report everything to the police). In comparison, the thief commits a fairly simple and believable crime, and it's also possible he's an adult, which would make landing him in jail far easier.
  • Maybe Sunset's venting her frustration at how often they easily forgive (compared to what she went thought), the hypocriticalness being the reason she's only doing so in a private work she apparently has no interest in sharing.
• Why are the human CMC called the Cutie Mark Crusaders in "Happily Ever After Party" if cutie marks don't exist in this world? And weren't they established as the "Canterlot Movie Club" in Summertime Shorts?
  • Who's to say they aren't both? Maybe the "Canterlot Movie Club" was a one-off thing as they were likely together before that. And if cutie marks don't exist in some form here, why does everyone have some clothes emblem or item that matches their pony counterparts cutie mark?
  • Maybe Sunset explained the concept of cutie marks since then and they ran with it.
• "Reboxing with Spike!" Has Spike the talking dog ordering dog merchandise, shooting unboxing videos, uploading them to a video hosting website, and apparently has social media accounts because he pushes hashtags during the video. What happened to keeping The Masquerade? Why aren't they worried about that?
  • It's an online video. People would probably think its all fake and that either is edited in a computer or used puppetry. And even if that wasn't the case, Spike speaking was treated as an Unusually Uninteresting Sight in a CYOE short.
• In the Rainbow Dash ending in "Stressed in Show", how come Sunset and Spike are all of a sudden shown to be terrible at jogging? Sure neither are exactly athletes and are well below Rainbow Dash and Applejack in strength and athletics, but the fact both get exhausted faster than Sci-Twi (even at the start of her training) does raise some eyebrows especially given Sunset was at least shown capable of keeping up with the rest of the group in other shorts and specials.