Headscratchers / My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic Season 1 Episodes 14 To 26

1.14 Suited for Success

• Why does France exist in Equestria?
  • Because they blew it all up.
  • Most Writers Are Human. It's done for a gag, not as a world-building exercise.
  • The character of Photo Finish suggests that not all ponies have the same native language and actual French is spoken by Apple Bloom in a later episode, so I think it's safe to assume that Equestria/the world of ponies (I'm still not sure if the word "Equestria" refers to their entire world or just a single country/continent within a world) contains Fantasy Counterpart Cultures for at least France and Germany (as well as buffalo as Native Americans and zebras as Sub-Saharan Africans).
• Lyrics for "Art of the Dress" include the line: "Rainbow won't look like a tank..." So, they have tanks in Equestria? More Schizo Tech! Minor, I know, but it bugs me.
  • That line was interesting, to say the least. However, once we do get to see Rainbow Dash wear her 'dream' outfit, something more reminiscent of a royal guard's armor than an actual dress, the line could be seen as clever foreshadowing.
  • Maybe she means water tank which, in fact, is where the military term 'tank' comes from anyway because when they first appeared the vehicles were passed off as water tanks to fool the enemy side. It isn't unreasonable to believe water tanks exist in Equestria.
  • Of course Equestria has tanks. It's pretty easy to stop a pony charge with some trenches and barbed wire. If the ponies are to effectively make war against a fortified enemy, they pretty much need vehicles.
  • It seems even weirder now that Rainbow Dash has a pet tortoise named Tank.
  • "A tank" is also an expression for someone extremely big and bulky, physically imposing. Perhaps she means she doesn't want Rainbow Dash to look like a Brawn Hilda.
• Fluttershy suddenly pouring out a massive stream of criticism with elaborate tradesreferences and French terms is awesome and all... except if you examine what she's actually saying, she's speaking nonsense. Many of the suggestions are bad (a blanket stitch on a gala dress would not look good), some critique suggest designs clearly not present in the dress they're working on, and she even finishes by calling the dress "off the rack", which is a blatant lie and just plain rude to Rarity since she's making it to Fluttershy's measurements as they speak.
  • And that matches up perfectly to what happens later in the episode, Fluttershy's dress is shown to be just as bad as the rest of them after she designed it.
• As much as I can understand the second line of dresses being so ugly because ponies apparently have no taste in clothes, why did Fluttershy's dress turn out so awful if her request was supposedly based on the sketch of perfectly fine "French haute-couture" dress she showed to Rarity?
  • Rarity probably made it like that—then Fluttershy decided to make it more nature-y, I guess 'till the point it turned out to be a ugly dress with eggs as a hat.
  • Judge for yourself:Exhibit A◊; Exhibit B◊.
    • I judge it a 3-2 victory for Rarity's designs on humanized Ponies. I think the human versions of Rainbow and Twilight pull the looks off better than the pony versions. Rarity's dress wasn't judged because there is no quote-unquote "ugly" version of it.
  • How much of French haute couture◊ ISN'T hideous and overdone (that's Dior in the photo, btw)
    • Not a bad point. See also Princess Beatrice's hat◊.
  • The sketch seems to be in Rarity's drawing style, so I would assume that was one of her standard example sketches and not a representation of Fluttershy's specific request. The end result is probably due to some target drift from the original concept, though.
  • The whole concept of "French Haute Couture". So is there a pony parallel to France? Prance?
  • As for French Haute Couture, I think it's simply a name, having nothing to do with France or the French. I think it's just the name for the style, a bit like saying something is Steampunk or Victorian.
    • Alternatively, it's actually spelled French OAT Couture in MLP'verse, and has to do with something called "french oats" which is a plant that is edible and can also be used to make fabric (hey, in the real world, they have figured out how to make fabric from milk) and the style is absurdly "nature"-y which would explain how it came out so ridiculous.
    • That just moves the problem. Why would they be called french oats if there was never a France there to name them after? It's just one more thing that makes me think they're living in a post-human world, possibly Earth or a colonized planet. We left our stuff behind, and they read it, and thus they know about European cheesemaking, American states, Shakespearean plays, 18th century adventurer/authors, and so on.
  • Doylist answer: Most Writers Are Human. Watsonian answer: the ponies simply have a word ("French") which by pure coincidence can be used like ours.
    • With Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks we know the portal between Earth and Equestria has been opened at least once in the distant past. With Sunset Shimmer and the Sirens over in the Real World is there any reason to think there couldn't be a few handfuls of humans who spilled over bringing bits of culture and perhaps technology along with them? Frankly finding out that lots of pony culture essentially borrowed from humans trying to recreate human society as best they could would answer an astronomical number of questions that we tend to chalk up to 'it's a cartoon'.
  • And as for why the dress turned out so ugly, Fluttershy may rattle off a list of sewing facts, but she knows very little about design. She's essentially being a Know-Nothing Know-It-All who wants to seem like a fashion expert. It's like someone trying to pretend they know about cooking and asking a chef to do completely conflicting techniques.
• Pretty minor compared to some other questions, but in Rarity's "Art of the Dress" song reprise (when she's making the dresses to her friends' specifications), the rest of the girls mention "making sure it stays within our budget". What? Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't their gowns a gift? You have no budget on a gift you're receiving!
  • That line makes more sense if you interpret the entire episode as an extended metaphor for Executive Meddling. But no, it doesn't make much sense otherwise.
    • It also acts to draw attention to the fact that there is something else going on than what appears on the surface, that is to say satire. If that's deliberate, it's arguably a clever idea.
  • Could be that when doing the second round of dresses, Rarity set a 'budget' on each one to try to ensure they don't use too much of her supplies. She might be making gifts, but she still has a business to consider. And if she uses too much of her supplies on her gifts, then her actually business could be endangered.
    • More than likely they were just trying to find a rhyme since the last line ended with Fudge It.
  • It was never specifically stated that the dresses would be free of charge (the word "free" itself is not used by anyone). The gift and the generosity lies in the effort and time needed to make the dresses. Being their friend, she probably wouldn't put any mark up on the finished product, but it would be reasonable to expect to be paid for the materials themselves. Otherwise, the rest of the Mane Six would be poor friends indeed.
  • It seems more likely that the rest of the Mane Six have forgotten by this point that Rarity is actually making them gifts. They're in the mindset of 'I'm the customer!', and what do customers want? To get things for a low price.
  • Maybe even if they're being extremely annoying, they do acknowledge that Rarity has to get fabric and materials from somewhere, and if she runs out trying to keep up with their requests, they'd be expected to contribute.
• So... what exactly is it that ponies are supposed to wallow in?
  • Literally, mud or water. In the context of the scene, self-pity.
• So this might just be my not understanding fashion, but wouldn't the best solution of all be for the ponies to use the Rarity-designed outfits to impress the fashion bigwig and then actually wear the outfits they preferred?
  • They changed their minds, either because they finally appreciated Rarity's designs themselves or because they didn't want to look silly at the Gala.
  • Spike only told Rarity about Hoity Toity after she had made all the new dresses. At that point, only the dreadful dresses were available. Presumably, she quickly recreated the original dresses for Hoity Toity's "take 2".
  • No, her friends didn't want to wear the beautiful dresses, remember? Rarity simply put them away until they were needed. I hardly imagine she'd destroy them and then recreate them, and nothing in the show indicates she did.
  • The episode is pretty vague about the situation but I'd lean more towards the originals didn't exist anymore by the time of the show. I think Rarity was just going to make a couple of alterations - but then the others insisted on so many changes. If she still had the originals, maybe she would have just trotted them out sooner.
• "Work duds", Applejack? What work duds? I've seen you do plenty of work, but never seen you wear anything more to do it than your hat and harness.
  • She did say they were old. Maybe she used to wear them, then realised they weren't practical and went without them. Or maybe she wore them when she was selling apples, as part of a uniform or branding to let customers know where they came from.
• Hmm, am I the only one who actually didn't think the "ugly" dresses were actually that bad?? And even besides that, the fact of the matter is that the other ponies (at least at first) were totally satisfied with the second dresses they got, and however they may have looked, it seems like if the owner of the dress is happy with it then that is what should matter. If Twilight and company really loved their dresses, then it really shouldn't matter to them if others don't agree with them, and it's also not very nice to laugh at or make fun of someone else's style or way of dressing, even if you might find it strange or weird. To me, it actually kind of seems like the mid part of the episode is the Mane Five getting shamed into discarding their second dresses, that THEY liked, because of peer pressure and outside judgement. If THEY like their dresses and want to wear them, it shouldn't really matter what others think. Of course that doesn't mean it was a good idea to use them in an official fashion show, but nothing was stopping them from just having the second dresses as their personal dresses and wearing the first ones for the show.

1.15 Feeling Pinkie Keen

• How come Twilight went through so much pain just to disprove Pinkie's ability to predict the future yet she never raised an eyebrow about any of the other weird things she does on regular basis, like appearing in unusual places or defying laws of physics, which sure is even less scientific? Wouldn't "Oh well, so now Pinkie can predict the future too" be more natural reaction?
  • Maybe Twilight can deal with Pinkie just being weird, but she was talking about fortune telling like it was a valid scientific discipline. We have seen many a time that Twilight does not like people talking rubbish about magic, which is fair enough considering it's her primary field of study.
  • Twilight knows how magic works. Not only was there no visual "source" of Pinkie's predictions, she doesn't even have a horn, which is kind of required for doing magic. As such, she did not believe it was real and set out to debunk it. Of course, she ended up getting overwhelming evidence in the other direction.
  • Well, Pinkie Pie DOES tell the Cutie Mark Crusaders that she's tell them how she got her cutie mark, after telling the story of her first party. Maybe they haven't revealed her REAL power. For the LOLs.
  • It's conventional for characters not to notice certain oddities about the way their world behaves, when it does that just for the reason of being a cartoon. The convention is here extended even to a case where the rules are different for one character. It doesn't make sense, but deliberately ignoring it is just part of the rules.
  • Possibly something to do with Pinkie herself being aware of her "Pinkie Sense" as something unusual (even though she doesn't care how it works)? She never says anything like "Oh, that's my Pinkie Space Warp ability, I use it to pop out of buckets and conjure popcorn!", for instance. There are some Fridge Horror implications to that thread of logic though...
  • Well... it's just like Hermione's dismissal of Divination and her earlier dismissal of Zecora and curses, isn't it? Twilight won't believe in anything that can't be verified in books as 100% fact, just like Hermione. Hermione's opinion on Divination matches with Twilight's original opinion about Pinkie Sense.
  • Two possible explanations I can come up with for poor Twilight's physical hell are either just pure bad luck or her own skepticism leading her in the wrong direction, the latter of which is rather deep when you think about it. Also, come to think of it, if Twilight had taken the Pinkie Sense seriously, as well as followed Spike out of harm's way when she was observing Pinkie, right from the start, she could have avoided a LOT of pain, so I guess you could say that it was Twilight's own skepticism overcoming her to such an extent that it led her to suffer all these somewhat coincidental misfortunes.
  • Twilight Sparkle isn't fussed about Pinkie Pie abusing Toon Physics because, as cartoon, those are just normal physics to her. Pinkie Pie may be unusually good at it, but that's no more impossible than Rainbow's skill at flight or Twilight's own skill with magic.
• Just what is the moral of the story meant to be? I keep reading here and there that the creator was surprised when people interpreted the Aesop to be faith, but... what else is there? The only alternative I can even remotely come up with is "respect others' beliefs", except even that one would come out kind of warped, as the story ends with everyone else's beliefs imposed on Twilight.
  • My best guess of what they were going for is that Twilight should have just accepted her friends' explanation of the Pinkie Sense because they have known Pinkie longer and she should trust them. There's also the fact that Twilight's approach to the whole situation was "I know I'm right and I'm going to prove it" rather than "I don't know what's going on and I'm going to find out". She cared more about proving Pinkie wrong than actually figuring out what was going on.
    • An explanation worthy of a Dear Princess Celestia prefix, thanks!
  • No one imposed their beliefs on Twilight, she came to believe on her own, because of what was happening, not because of what anyone else said.
  • The aesop was probably "don't deny what's in front of your eyes just because you don't understand how it works" or "don't get angry with your friends just because they can do things you can't". That said, the creators could have handled it better, not least of all by not giving Twilight such a hard time. It looked like the universe itself was punishing her for being sceptical.
    • Especially considering the poor girl took an anvil to the head! Obviously, she's tough, but that scene, funny as it was, was as hard to swallow as Pinkie's Pinkie Sense
  • I actually got the opposite of the anti-science some people worry about in this one - the language Twilight uses when denying the Pinkie phenomenon is exactly the same some anti-medicine or anti-evolution people use when denying science. If they can't understand it, it must not be true - even if there's empirical evidence that it is. Twilight sees it right before her eyes and briefly tries to figure it out. When she can't, instead of continuing to try to elucidate the mechanics, she just ignores its happening entirely. That is not a good way to do science - her learning to accept it was happening even if she can't understand it sounds more like a good scientist deciding that, even if they don't get the mechanics of it (the way a biologist might not understand physics in depth or vice versa), they should acknowledge its a real phenomenon and trust experts in that field. But maybe that's just me pulling a Fan Wank.
  • I liken it to Hermione vs Luna in Harry Potter. Hermione is smart and well-read, but she's also extremely narrow minded. She only believes in facts and what she's read, and she turns to books for answers - rather than thinking for herself. Twilight has only studied by herself, so she just believes in what she's been taught. She doesn't seem to have a lot of practice out in the field - so when she encounters an ability she's never heard of, she initially tries to dismiss it. But when she frequently gets it proved to her, she has to accept that she doesn't understand everything in the world.
  • And no one imposed their beliefs on Twilight. If anything, she was trying to impose hers by insisting something she barely knew anything about was what she said it was - in contrast to Pinkie, who would surely know her own abilities (and Twilight assumes Pinkie didn't do some self-evaluation in her own way to work out what the abilities to - and in a sense she did, as she's taken note of what each sense leads to) and Applejack who had known her longer and experienced the Pinkie Sense. When trying to prove a scientific theory, first you need a hypothesis and then extensive study and research to be able to back it up. It happened very quickly, but Twilight's study and research ultimately proved that the Pinkie Sense was a legitimate thing.
• Seriously, WHY did the writers even decide to give Pinkie Pie a Pinkie Sense when it's hardly ever mentioned later (except The mysterious Mare Do Well and It's About Time'')? There's probably lots of other moments in the series where the Pinkie Sense would apply that where it was forgotten about.
  • It probably does happen a fair amount of the time but with minimal if any visual cues. Most of them are actual feelings she gets that were likely exagerrated when they wanted us to notice. It clearly goes off in the Season 4 premier, it's a blink and you'll miss it but she gets a twitchy tail and ducks just before a plunder vine comes in through the window.
• Was there room for that hydra under the bog? How long had it been living there, and what had it been eating?
  • Doesn't seem to be many animals living there... probably it ate everything already.
    • Sure did; why else do you think there was so much frogless real estate at Froggy Bottom Bog? It makes Fluttershy apologizing to that frog a bit more chilling.
  • Perhaps it can hibernate?
• Why didn't Fluttershy simply FLY across the canyon to escape the Hydra?
  • She is not a strong flier.
  • Like Twilight who forgot she could teleport across, Fluttershy forgot she could fly.
    • Or was too scared to even try, like what happened in "Dragonshy". She's a reasonably good flier, as are all pegasi, but it's never as natural for her as others.
    • As seen in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", she needed to be "rescued" by a horde of butterflies when she fell from Cloudsdale. Even though she could have just flown. However, as mentioned earlier in that episode, she isn't a very strong flier at all. Plus, earlier in "Dragonshy", her wings locked up with fear—maybe they still "weren't working"?
    • Actually, she could fly normally just fine; if a gigantic beast is on her mind, she'll be too scared to continue.
    • This is probably the case since Fluttershy flew to the bog with the cart of frogs without any trouble.
    • Not that it matters getting across the gap, but "Hurricane Fluttershy" shows that she is by far the weakest flier in Ponyville. More relevant is that she loses her ability to fly when in a distressed state of mind.
• So Twilight believes in the Pinkie Sense after it DOESN'T come true. Um...what?
  • It did and she did. Twilight thought that the Hydra would be the doozy. When Pinkie says it wasn't, Twilight's stressed reaction is partly worrying about something potentially worse than that coming along next. She already did believe after meeting the Hydra. The doozy was her admitting to the others that she believed.
• Since this episode happened a lot after the Winter Wrap Up we could assume Twilight has been living for around a year in Ponyville, so how could she have heard about Pinkie sense until now?
  • Or it happened before and this could be one of the earlier episodes chronologically, explaining why Twilight is especially narrow-minded.
• In the beginning of the episode, Pinkie's wearing an umbrella hat. Why do ponies even make umbrella hats? Umbrella hats are utterly useless for species whose entire body is not aligned below your head. The hat literally protects nothing but the pony's head, most of your body will still get rain/sun all over it.
  • Maybe Pinkie made it herself?

1.16 Sonic Rainboom

• Besides plot, how is it that there's no time for Rarity and Rainbow to go on separately? Rainbow Dash simply kept switching her number to go on later out of nerves, and Rarity spent most of the competition just beautifying herself, and neither of those stalled the competition in any way, so it seems like a screwup on the part of the organizers that they organized a contest for, let's say 50 ponies, but only left time for 49. The pony routines shouldn't be a factor here, as they should have a hard time limit, say five minutes each, to do their stunts and move on.
  • No, it's like they arranged a contest for 50 ponies and 51 showed up. The preparations would have been made long in advance, including how much time was set aside for the event (any event including Celestia is going to be carefully timed to fit her schedule), so Rarity joining last minute would have left them with too many ponies and not enough time.
• If the Sonic Rainboom produces rainbows, why are there rainbow factories? Do they simply synthesize the process by which a Rainboom makes a rainbow?
  • Only 2 Sonic Rainbooms in last few years, we don't even know if there was more of it, so this is why they make rainbow in factories.
  • Also a Sonic Rainboom just produces a blast wave, as the rainbow-colored contrail that came after the Rainboom was probably due to the fact Rainbow Dash's mane and tail are rainbow-colored. Kind of a magical after-image.
    • Can't be. Her mane and tail have the colors in opposing orders (mane has red on tip, tail has the violet). In Cutie Mar Chronicles, it definitely switches orders- Off her mane, it's red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, but in the air its clearly the other way around. Sonic Rainbooms make rainbows at the exact same time. Besides, Pinkie Pie specifically states that it makes a sonic boom and a rainbow at the same time. The answer to the first question is simply that Sonic Rainbooms are very hard to make, and making rainbows in the factory is much, much easier than having Dash do it every time. Plus, what happens when Dash dies? No more rainbows without liquid ones. Liquid rainbows are simply the easiest way to get one.
• How did Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy get the others into the weather factory? Is one of them related to the manager or something?
  • I got the idea that it was run kinda like a chocolate factory. They'd have tours and such, and Rainbow Dash seems to be a major weather employee.
  • LOL, Windy Wonky and the Chocolate Rain Factory.
    • Probably this, since Dash is in charge of the weather team in Winter Wrap-Up. She's probably one of the highest-ranking workers, despite being lazy.
  • She could say that Twilight is a student of the princess in order to get them inside.
• During the competition, the rest of the Mane 6 are shown in the stands, and Pinkie Pie is wearing a "We're #1" hand with finger extended. Why in the world would a pony be wearing a human hand, and more to the point, where would anypony have ever seen one in the first place?
  • Two explanations. One: It's Pinkie. Two: there's trade with races who have opposable thumbs, like Gryphons or Diamond Dogs or Dragons or some unseen other thumbed creature, and Pinkie has picked up expression. The finger may be more accurately a claw, but the foam dulls the edge. Edit: and with the existence of minotaurs confirmed, that adds to the list of fingered creatures.
• Why didn't Celestia just fly down and rescue Rarity?
  • She was on a throne, she was shocked, and just because her wings are the largest doesn't mean they're the fastest
  • Most of the spectators probably thought it was just part of the act. Only the Wonderbolts were more savvy (probably because they were more experienced in recognizing an act from a true emergency.) When it became clear to Celestia that it was not an act the Wonderbolts were already flying to rescue Rarity, so she thought that her help was not needed. When the Wonderbolts were incapacitated they all were already so far that it would have been impossible for Celestia or anyone else to reach them anymore (except for the faster flier around, of course.)
  • Fridge Brilliance suggests that Celestia was worried about accidentally snapping Rarity's neck if she tried to stop her with her magic. And the Wonderbolts and Rainbow were already zooming to save her, so she must have thought the situation handled.
    • On top of that, why would she interfere? The Wonderbolts were doing their jobs, no need to get involved and possible get in the way.
• Why does Rarity get the lesson in a Rainbow Dash episode?
  • Because when Twilight gave Rarity her wings, her ego was inflated and it kept Rainbow Dash from feeling confident. Although Rainbow Dash was gloating in the beginning, it was revealed to be a facade as she felt she wasn't confident enough to do the Sonic Rainboom. She spent the whole episode being nervous while Rarity was acting more egotistical than usual with her new wings, but at least Rarity apologized for her behavior at the end. The lesson is to always support and be there for your friends.
• The episode left a lot of information out about the Sonic Rainboom. Is RD the only one who can pull it off thanks to her mane color(s)? Or can other Pegasi perform a Rainboom? Does their mane color affect the Rainboom at all (for example, would Spitfire create a Sonic Fireboom)? What about Pegasi with manes that don't really have anything that fancy-looking (like the Pegasi who were hassling Dashie)?
• Why didn't Twilight cast the cloud-walking spell on Rarity? The spell isn't that hard to pull off, and it would have been a good failsafe- Twilight did say herself that the wings were delicate.
  • She probably cast the wing spell on Rarity, then realized it was too difficult to do to the other ponies. Then she looked in her library for an easier solution, and found one: the walking-on-clouds spell.

...For that matter, why do you think Pegasi can walk on clouds? I honestly want to hear other people's headcanons. I personally think that they have hollow bones and internal organs with helium in them.

• It's a standard property of all naturally flying creatures in the world Equestria is set in. Gilda walks on the clouds in Griffon The Brush Off, and the birds perch on the clouds in May The Best Pet Win.
• The Season 4 finale seems to imply that Earth Ponies and Pegasi have natural magic in them just like Unicorns. Being able to walk on clouds must be Required Secondary Powers.

• Why exactly did Rarity knock out the three Wonderbolts who tried to save her? Was it accidentally, cause she was panicking so much and moving her arms and legs so fast, or on purpose, as if she didn't know who they are or something like that? I like to think it's the former, but given her behavior in this episode, it wouldn't surprise me if it was the latter. So which is it?
  • Rarity is very clearly flailing out of panic. She wouldn't care if she didn't know who they were as she was falling to her death at the time. The writers just needed a way to get the Wonderbolts out of the way so Rainbow Dash could save the day.

1.17 Stare Master

• How can Fluttershy not control her own stares? She says at the beginning of the episode that she has no control over them, but she uses them twice later, and both times it seems to be a deliberate ploy. Was she fudging the issue, or did she mean no self-control, like it was akin to getting angry?
  • It's entirely possible that the Stare is requires subtle muscle movements that Fluttershy has never quite figured out to consciously control, especially given her personality. Given her normal gift for animals and avoidance of confrontation, its likely that she simply isn't in situations that require it often enough to have any need or desire to learn.
  • She's lying. She knows exactly how to initiate The Stare and can do so at will. Look at what she does with the chickens to get them back into the coop. The reason she lies about being able to use it is she doesn't want her friends to know that she can, if she ever feels the need, force them to comply with her will at any time.
    • That doesn't sound in-character for her, not least of all because she's usually so weak-willed that the other characters end up pushing her around.
  • It wasn't necessarily intentional. Both times she uses it, she is trying to protect those under her care — by getting the chickens back into their hen house where they'll be safe or by defending the Cutie Mark Crusaders from the Cockatrice. The Stare kicked in when it proved necessary to perform these tasks... but she reacted to a similar situation in much the same way without The Stare in "Dragonshy", even though it would certainly have helped. It wasn't necessary, though, so it didn't kick in — the sheer force of personality she can bring to bear when she has reason to was enough to intimidate the dragon all by itself.
• Heres a headscrather.. how heck does the stare work in the first place? I mean Pinkie senses just seemed like a logical extension of Pinkie's extra special awareness, but the stare doesn't really much sense to me. It could be considered a side of her animal ability, except it works on fricken dragons....
  • What she uses on the dragon is never identified as The Stare, and indeed, it seems inconsistent with what we see when she's explicitly supposed to be using it. She just used sheer force of personality on the dragon. Word of God is that the Stare is weaponized Mama Bear. When she's acting to protect someone — even if that someone is the victim of The Stare — she can pull off a Death Glare so intimidating that nothing can stand up to it.
  • Haki of the Supreme King, of course. Fluttershy is one of the 0.001% who can use it. She just needs some training from Silvers Rayleigh to be able to faint a whole room.

1.18 The Show Stoppers

• Why did Sweetie Belle not know what the dressmakers pony was for? Most kids that age, sure, but she's Rarity's sister, how could she not have seen Rarity using one before or even notice them and ask what there for?
  • She's the pony equivalent of a seven-year-old. She might be casually aware of what Rarity does, but she clearly doesn't have a deep understanding of her sister's design process. She, like most young children, thinks she can emulate grown-up work after watching enough without needing any real lessons.
• Why does everyone (in-universe and out) seem to think their act was so terrible/that it was a joke? Apart from the technical difficulties, that act was pretty frickin' fabulous for one that had been composed and choreographed by tween fillies. And yeah, those costumes might not have been very fashionable, but they look remarkably well-made considering that Sweetie Belle was such an inexperienced seamstress.
  • Most likely, it was because they didn't want to actually produce a 2 to 3 minute long unenjoyable segment of the show. Actually producing something bad would be, well, a bad idea. For an in universe explanation, judging by the work Apple Bloom did on the treehouse, and the quality of Sweetie Belle's singing plus her ability to come up with good lyrics off the top of her head, it's possible that pony children following their natural talents produce much higher quality results than human children. Remember, from Cutie Mark Chronicles, Twilight was able to overpower what were presumably Professors of Magic (Admittedly, it was a 'surprise attack') and perform other incredible transformation feats, and Rainbow Dash was capable of performing a Sonic Rainboom, an act thought to be impossible even by adult pegasi. Given that the rest of the kids had their cutie marks, it was probably expected that most of the participants would show off their own special talents in some entertaining way, and thus, the audience had a reason to expect something of a much higher quality than the human equivalent.
  • Problem is, it still doesn't feel like a joke. Remember how The Room (2003) was generally regarded as a narmfest, and in response Tommy Wiseau claimed that it was meant to be a comedy all along? Thing is, The Room doesn't work if you assume it's actually supposed to be funny. The reason we laugh at it is because it's meant sincerely. The same thing is true for the Cutie Mark Crusader's musical number. It made me laugh, but that's because I know they were trying to do a good job. If I thought they were intentionally messing things up for comedic effect, it wouldn't be the same.
• How in the world did a regular electric fan create a strong enough air current to knock over the sets?
  • Sweetie Belle is just that bad at making sets. Considering her knocking over a roll of yarn in "Stare Master" practically turned Carousel Boutique inside out, it seems to be a character quirk of her to produce exaggeratedly large amounts of destructive kinetic energy.
• It bothers me quite a bit that the episode shows quite clearly what the crusaders' talents are (or what they are related to), yet they seem to be determined to avoid (not only in this episode but in all subsequent episodes dedicated to them) the very things they themselves know they are good at, and explicitly try things they know they are bad at (well, not everything, but a good bunch of the things they try, especially in this episode, they can clearly see even themselves that they are really untalented at, yet still keep at it.) It's like they want to preserve their "blank flank" status, regardless of what they say.
  • Also, many of the grownups (such as Applejack and especially Twilight) can clearly see what the crusaders' talents are related to, yet do very little to help them find those talents, even though they see how desperate the crusaders are to find those talents. They could do so much more. (For example, Applejack could just casually tell Apple Bloom something like "hey, I'm constructing this thing here, wanna help?" Or Twilight could say something like "hey Sweetie Belle, I'm composing a song for princess Celestia, but I'm a bit stuck. Want to hear what I have done so far?") Of course given how determined the crusaders seem to be to avoid their true talents...
    • There are two reasons for this: First, most of the adults don't view the cutie marks as nearly as important as the CMC do, so they have less reason to go out of their way to help with it. Second, the whole point of the cutie mark is self-discovery, so it makes sense that they might want to take a hooves-off approach. They're probably willing to give them a push in the right direction, but grabbing them and going "YOUR SPECIAL TALENT IS SINGING" would defeat the purpose. They want the CMC to discover their talents themselves because it would be more meaningful that way.
  • It's possible that the CMC simply consider the things they are actually good at as too mundane for a "special" talent. Or perhaps those things come to them naturally, so they don't think about them much. Or to put it another way: the things you don't know always seem more exciting and special then the stuff you already do.
  • They're so used to being good at their talents that they don't think of it as something special.

1.19 A Dog and Pony Show

• Other than to let Rarity be awesome, why didn't the dogs just gag her? Their problems would have been solved.
  • It may have made the episode just a bit too dark for the target audience. Besides, you do not gag a lady.
    • Where have you been the last thirty years? Gagging a lady is pretty much common protocol at this point.
    • Not to mention that a gagged and struggling Rarity probably would have come across as fetish appeal.... I'll be right back.
  • Honestly, I think that Rarity was on such a roll she would have figured out a way to torment them even while gagged.
    • She probably would have just continued crying and acting completely miserable.
    • How so? Her most irritating trait that they hated was her 'whining' and complaining. Stop that= free gems, I would think.
    • It might stop the words, but the noise would have continued unabated. Not to mention she could have started refusing to even find the gems.
  • She could have just used her magic to remove a gag.
    • You sure about that? Only Twilight Sparkle has really shown the ability to move things that wasn't based on their target interest.
    • Yes, but, you see, once the gag is on her it becomes an accessory.
    • Uhh... fashion isn't Rarity's talent. It's gemstones. Anyway, she was perfectly able to manipulate chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers in "Look Before You Sleep". General-purpose telekinesis appears to be a standard unicorn power.
    • Rarity's talent probably isn't gemstones. That's just a facet of it. More likely her special talent is finding/bringing out the beauty in things, be that finding the gems in a rock, or making wonderful dresses for her friends. Though yeah, unicorns can probably use their telekinesis on anything, it's other applications that get limited to talent.
    • No, her special talent is gem-finding. A cutie mark informs talent, not destiny.
    • gem-finding is her signature spell. She doesn't get her cutie mark from that, she gets it when she realizes something she made makes other people happy.
    • It's not clear whether the talent forms a limitation or a starting point.
    • Rarity can use her telekinesis for pillow fights. Removing a gag would be trivial.
  • Somewhat related, everyone saying that the dogs should/would have done much worse to her are kinda missing the point. This is a comedy show aimed at little girls, Rarity really getting hurt would be traumatic for everyone.
    • Yeah, but they could have dome something that made sense to girls to deal with a horse or pony. They nearly did with the other five with a muzzle over their mouths and snouts. Wouldn't have been too hard to replicate.
  • I get the impression that they could have hit her and she still would have continued her assault. In fact I'm betting she would start getting really brutal with them, Rarity can be pretty below the belt when roused (just look at Look Before You Sleep). And gagging her doesn't stop her making noise. I also get the impression that Rarity is actually more skilled with her telekinesis than Twilight, though obviously she has nowhere near the raw power.
    • Although another thing comes to mind; she just asks for her friends for help to carry the gems out afterwards? You seemed to understand the situation, so you could have at least thanked them for the effort they gave.
  • She was high on herself at that point. After freeing herself from captivity and making off with all those gems, she'll be declaring her own brilliance and speaking in the third person for weeks.
  • This troper guesses that the dogs simply didn't think of it at the time. They don't seem to be very bright.
    • and possibly playing on the "dogs don't like high pitched noises"
  • Rule of Funny. It wouldn't have been as funny if she had been gagged.
  • This troper believes they didn't gag her because they still needed her to tell her where the gems were buried.
    • She wasn't telling them where to dig, she was marking an X on the ground with a stick. A gag wouldn't stop her from doing that.
  • This troper thinks that if Rarity was gagged, she'd probably get angry or desperate enough to use the gems as a Flechette Storm against the Diamond Dogs.
  • According to Jiro the Spider gagging someone will do anything but make them shut up. She'd start screaming and struggling. You can't make her work like that.
• If the whole point is subverting the Damsel in Distress trope and the lesson of the day is that being feminine isn't the same as being weak, why do they have Rarity save herself through femininity by acting like a whiny, annoying, spoiled diva and setting her up against the weakest opponents possible? They're the least-threatening antagonists the show's ever had, even moreso now that we're into the Princess Twilight era. What is this supposed to say about femininity not being weak when the strength of femininity boils down to "being a huge bitch because you know they're not allowed to physically harm you"? I have no idea where the lesson of this episode is supposed to be coming from.
  • Because a good part of Rarity's whining may have been intentional. She's shown herself to be an expert social manipulator, and the Diamond Dogs do seem to be rather easy to play. Once Rarity realises they're not much of a threat and they're annoyed by her behaviour, she deliberately cranks it up to eleven. Notably they don't do anything severe but complain at her whining - so that shows that she can play them if she wants to. And that's exactly what she does. The moral here is that Rarity was well able to take care of herself in a difficult situation. She kept her head and would not be intimidated by her captors. She also likely knew that they wouldn't do anything too harmful to her because they needed her to find the gems.
  • The point is that being clever can be as useful as being physically strong. Rarity finds a weakspot that she can exploit and uses it. It's not about femininity.
• The captors and ponies were all pretty good on all sides, especially when the captors did stand up to Rarity and Rarity's reactions throughout to her manipulation, but something come to mind in a combination of Damsel in Distress and Fridge Logic. 1) If the captive one was Fluttershy or Twilight Sparkle or Spike, would they have able to come up with a way out? I mention this because while I believe they twisted the idea of the Damsel in Distress into the evolution of the Damsel out of Distress, they also played it pretty straight with the 'hero and heroines' thoughts as well as Rarity's initial reactions to captivity. I mean, when the girls as much as the boy of the group think you're in immense danger, then someone's playing with the trope or you're lampshading with the purpose to not show hatred against Damsel in Distress, but to appreciate and use it your own way while playing it straight. I think this episode was actually put in for a very real discussion about Damsel in Distress between parents and their children as well as the Periphery Demographic-not meant to detract or glorify the trope, but to make it a Discussed Trope. Well done, Faust.
  • The Diamond Dogs also may have known that the ponies are social animals who usually have lots of friends - friends with magical powers. If they had hurt Rarity, things would have escalated into a Pony version of the movie 'Taken'. A group of pegasi could have flooded them out, earth ponies could have matched them strength for strength, and unicorns could have just torn them to tiny pieces from a distace using just their minds. And then Princess Celestia could have gotten involved...
  • Fluttershy would use the stare on them, and Twilight would magic her way out (maybe even teleport). Not sure about Spike.
    • Fluttershy is not supposed to be able to use the Stare at will, and it seems standing up for herself is what she's the least good at. Since the dogs were not total sociopaths (if they were really evil, they could have shut Rarity up easily — whining is no defence against being beaten up), they might have found Fluttershy too moe to hold captive, but that's not something I expect to see in this series (because Lauren Faust explicitly doesn't like characters in girls' shows overcoming the villains by crying). That's why Rarity gets this episode and Fluttershy gets "Dragonshy". And the episode is rather tailored for Rarity, which is why what others might have done isn't necessarily so interesting.
    • Spike was strong enough to hold them off and protect Rarity for a little while, and he's considerably smarter than all three of the Diamond Dogs put together, so he would be just fine.
    • And also he can breath fire. It's kind of hard to hold someone hostage when the intended target is capable of burning you to death.
    • Then he would be sending their burnt corpses to appear in front of Princess Celestia.
    • I DEMAND THIS TO BE A FIC NAO!!!!
    • Although that would be an awesome fic, they kidnapped Rarity because they saw how good she was at finding gems. There would be no need for them to kidnap Fluttershy, Twilight, or Spike
• My impression is that the Diamond Dogs are seriously, seriously dumb— as in "short bus" dumb, mentally children—— and that Rarity picked up on that and decided to go easy on them. Even with as little magical power as she had, once she got her hooves under her she could have seriously messed them up.... but manipulating them was far easier.
  • If they had been smarter, they would have realized quickly that they would have had way better success letting Rarity do what SHE is good at (finding gems) and handling what THEY are good at themselves (digging and pulling). Seriously, when you can move through earth like it was water, as demonstrated by their Curbstomp Battle against the Mane cast, you'd think digging up some gems not too deep in the ground would be no problem. If they had done that they would have had the caverns cleared within a day, and also prevented Rarity's whining. Instead, they insisted on having a physically weak and sensitive pony take care of physical tasks. They are obviously not the smartest creatures around.
  • They clearly thought it was funny, and at least part of it was an attempt to show her who the authority was.
• Twilight and the gang found Rarity by following the tunnel with the most gems. This makes sense, as the Dogs were trying to use Rarity to find gems. But why wouldn't they have dug up the gems as they went along?
  • Well they are having Rarity haul a load of gems around, maybe they are cherry picking the best ones. Gems don't seem to be as rare in Equestria as they are in our world. Or they could be in the middle of collections operations.
    • Not a bad idea. Another possibility: Maybe they were taking Rarity to where they wanted to start, and they were going to work their way back through the tunnel that the Mane 5 and Spike followed.
• So what's the deal with Spike's appearance in his fantasy? Sure, it's a fantasy, so his idealized depiction of himself does not have to be accurate, but the thing is, his fantasized self looks humanoid, and the setting does not have any humanoid creatures (the closest being "equinoid" - minotaurs and Tirek). So how does he imagine himself that way?
  • As the series finale shows, that's what he looks like when he's older. So his particular species of dragon looks like that in maturity.

1.20 Green Isn't Your Color

• Is it just me, or did Pinkie Pie seem very out of character in 'Green Isn't Your Color'? She's supposed to embody the element of laughter - in other words, fun. But her behavior made three of her friends absolutely miserable, and could have lead to an enormous falling out between Rarity and Fluttershy.
  • If you get rid of the fact she might be watching us, you'll see that she is, 1) Very impulsive. 2) Very hyper. And 3) Probably has the attention span of a squirrel on crack and coffee. Or basically, she has an extremely, extreme case of ADHD, which would lead her to think, that what she was doing was fun for everyone, but in reality only for her.
  • She has the element of laughter. She was being funny. Simples!
  • You realize that all the ponies are fully fleshed-out individuals with a full range on emotions, right? Their elements inform their behavior, not define it. i.e. Applejack can lie, she's just really, really bad at it. At any rate, helping prevent social faux pas and promote unity seems very in line with Pinkie's character.
  • Companionship and fun are the most important things for Pinkie Pie, so not acting like a good friend should is Serious Business for her (even if she doesn't have a very good idea of what that means in practice, and is too quick to judge it as happening). The idea is not really introduced before this episode, but it's thoroughly explored in "Party of One".
• A very important part of being a good friend is to be able to keep secrets. Fine. But Twilight Sparkle could have easily prompted both Fluttershy and Rarity to talk to each other, knowing how both of them really feel about the situation. She wouldn't have told anyone's secret and it really isn't that far a stretch of imagination. It seems odd that a clever pony like Twilight Sparkle couldn't think of that. Basically, it felt like the secrets she was given came with a hidden Idiot Ball. Had she tried to do that and they refused to do that because they'd look like bad friends, I'd feel a lot better about the episode as a whole.
  • It's very in character for Twilight to be so concerned with the rules of friendship that she'd completely forget about basic common sense. Pinky didn't help, as she seemed to be actively trying to stoke Twilight's neuroticisms.
    • She was helping Twilight keep her word when breaking it seemed like a quick and easy solution. Sure, it probably would have turned out okay in this situation, but given Twilight's general inexperience with friends, it might be a bad precident to set.
  • More to the point, Twilight is specifically very bad, and very inexperienced, at understanding personal relationships. The solution you came up with is not straightforward, but the kind of oblique approach that becomes more obvious to you as you gain experience dealing with people — the kind of experience Twilight so eminently lacks.
• Why does Pinkie Pie give Twilight such a hard time about the secrets thing? I know that keeping secrets are important, but it was impossible to expect Twilight to never step out of line. Everyone makes mistakes, afterall.
  • FOREVEEEEEER!
  • Pinkie is not the most reasonable pony. Even when she's in the right, she tends to be rather hyper.
  • I think half of it was that she just liked popping out of random places and surprising people, and the thing about keeping secrets just added to that.
  • Not keeping secrets would ruin a surprise party.
  • One aspect of Pinkie's personality is that she seems to be quite paranoid about losing friends. This can be seen in her actions in this episode, where she thinks thinks revealing any secret will drive ponies away, and comes back to form the plot in Party of One.
• How is it possible that Bonbon has never heard of Rarity? Ponyville isn't that large of a town, and the two have often appeared in scenes together. If the point was to show that Rarity was being overshadowed by Fluttershy, it would have made more sense to use a new or unknown pony, maybe a tourist there to see the hometown of a famous model.
  • Ponyville is a pretty small town but that doesn't mean that everybody knows everybody (except Pinkie), also you can stand beside someone a lot but you might not recognize them.
  • A Changeling Did it?
  • The Doylist explanation is that the episode was made long before the fandom and its obsessive focus on background "extras" existed. They simply didn't know that anyone watching would recognise this random character as a generic model they used to fill in the background.
  • perhaps Bonbon (aka "Agent Sweetie Drops") was still getting used to her new identity, and didn't want to blow her cover.
  • It's possible that no one's ever said her name in Bon Bon's hearing. Just imagine:
  Rarity: You know, Rarity! I was chosen to present Princess Celestia at the Summer Sun Celebration? The time she wasn't there?
  Bon Bon & Berry Punch: …
  Rarity: I was with Prince Blueblood at the Grand Galloping Gala, as much as it pains me to mention it.
  Bon Bon & Berry Punch: …
  Rarity: (pointing at Berry Punch) You were in here... uh, never mind, that was a little project by my sister and her friends...
  Berry Punch: ...Trixie turned my hair green and put rats in it?
  Bon Bon & Berry Punch: …
  Rarity: I'm pretty sure I saw you at my fash...ion show...
  Bon Bon: ...That's a pretty good argument for me not to use your services. Seeya.
• Why didn't Fluttershy at least question Pinkie's random pop-ups? If you look closely at the scenes in which she appears from beneath the sponges and apples, you'll notice that she jumps back in surprise. Why didn't she said anything about that? Granted, it wouldn't really surprise her much to see Pinkie being Pinkie but still...
• "What's that, Photo Finish? You say you want 'da nature'? Well, let me just pull out my mobile rack, then proceed to ignore the nature-themed Gala dress that I made for the very model we're using!" ...

1.21 Over a Barrel

• When the buffalo attack the train, how did they know the tree was in the caboose, and not in an ordinary freight car? If they didn't know, then why did they detach only the caboose? For that matter, if they knew it was in the caboose, why did Little Strongheart run almost the entire length of the train to get back to it, instead of just jumping on at the rear?
  • Braeburn doesn't seem particularly surprised to hear Bloomberg's been tree-napped, so they may have done this before. In fact, this may be why he asked Applejack to accompany the tree this time. However, that doesn't explain why she was so shocked at it being stolen... unless he's familiar enough with her eccentricities to know how she'd react to her baby being stolen, and didn't want to stress her out too much...
    • She didn't tell them she was bringing the tree, it was a surprise gift. That's why Braeburn didn't show concern until after they told him, even though he already knew the buffalo were a problem.
  • And as for the train thing, which overlaps with Fridge Brilliance, The Buffalo Tribe enemies were the citizens of Applelossa and their relatives most of the time. If Little Strong Heart remained on the ground, there was a better chance of an earth pony catching her, getting on the train car prevents them from finding her and gives her time to find the tree, through scent most likely, she just has to travel fast because she's on top of a train, as shown by the fact she has to skid to a halt to stop. This is backed up by the fact she was so startled to see Rainbow Dash, she's not used to having someone able to make it to the top of the cars with her.
  • How did the Buffalo know a tree was being delivered to Appleloosa?
    • Where else was it supposed to go?
    • To answer the question in case it meant "How did they know there was a tree on board in the first place?", a few possibilities come to mind: 1. All trains to Appleloosa carry apple trees, or are highly likely to. 2. One assumes "We've got a tree aboard" would be information the railroad would have to know, and Little Strongheart could probably just "cute" her way to information like that. 3. Transparent windows.
• The settlers planted the orchard as a food supply so they wouldn't starve. But when they're preparing to fight the buffalo, they rush to harvest those same apples... for ammunition. Not only that, they take the time to bake them into pies first. But... huh?
  • Rule of Funny and Family Friendly Violence. It allows them to go down the Samurai Jack route of homaging rather violent genres while still letting kids watch. But yes, it was very silly (I especially liked the fact that it actually worked. Damn the fact that these guys can knock down buildings, apple pies pack lethal concussive force apparently).
    • To be fair, apple pies are pretty heavy.
    • Fast-acting paralytic agents. The pies are just the medium that can be easily thrown or bucked by a pony while still managing to splatter effect multiple closely grouped targets.
    • The idea here is not to have lethal concussive force. The pies just splatter the buffalo's eyes, causing them to stop seeing there they're going and subsequently to trip and fall.
    • And to also be fair sacrificing a few trees worth of apples to protect your homestead is better than having a horde of Buffalo destory every last tree and your homes.
  • At least one fanfic made it clear that certain foods can be considered "wartime weapons". Which makes Blueblood using Rarity as a pony shield against that cake even worse in-universe...
    • 'Dragonshy' had Applejack prepared with apples as weapons too. (Then she uses them on a rock. 'Dammit, Twilight, don't you wish we had some APPLES?')
  • This troper assumed it was because it was better for the ponies to harvest and store the apples before the orchards were trampled, because then at least they could keep some of them as a food source.
• If the train's pulled by earth ponies, why does it even have a locomotive?
  • For the whistle at the top? I think it was a bit of a visual gag, given that the first shot was from far away, only to zoom in on the ponies pulling it.
  • Maybe it's sort of like a helper engine to bear some of the weight of the cars. The tow-ponies apparently ran all day and night without a break. Perhaps they were getting some mechanical assistance from the engine?
  • Word of God says that it was more or less forced on her: she didn't want a train in MLP, but the crew (and probably Hasbro) wanted a Wild West episode and a train was needed. Simply having the ponies pull the train looked wrong and would have denied them the iconic sounds of the locomotive and the subsequent train robbery. So she punted.
  • And if there were no locomotives, then Fluttershy's "Chugga-chugga chugga-chugga WOO WOO!" routine in "A Bird in the Hoof" wouldn't have made sense!
  • I took it as an emergency backup in case something happened to the pulling ponies.
  • Ever try to lug a heavy suitcase up a hill or a flight of stairs? If there is a mountain with a high grade of incline and one of the train pony's footing slips, the entire thing could start backsliding.
  • Simple. They weren't PULLING the engine, they were powering it with Earth Pony magic. Notice that there was steam coming from the whistle— but no smoke from the smokestack? And if I remember correctly there was no coal car either. Earth Pony magic to heat the boiler!
• I get the buffalos are suppose to represent the Native Americans, but the Natives made tipis out of BUFFALO SKIN! So... Did they make them out of relatives they lost like Thunderhooves' father?

1.22 A Bird in the Hoof

• Fluttershy, I'm curious. Why are Twilight and Pinkie Pie's Gala dresses in your closet? Are you planning on wearing them? ...Actually, I'd kinda like to see that.
• It seems a bit odd that the teacups have handles on them, seeing as how the ponies have not digits with which to manipulate the cups, and the unicorns can simply levitate them.
  • Maybe the teacup design was thought up by an elitist unicorn and there was a time one it was considered proper to only levitate the teacup via the handle. Or the handle could have been added to aid servants serving the tea. Since ponies lack hands, any non-unicorn servants of aristocrats would have either use their mouths or sit down and use both front hooves to place the cup in front of the aristocrat. Sitting down and using their front hooves would be difficult to deal with the serving tray and would take longer to serve everyone if their master has guests. So the handles were add so servants could grab that with their mouths and set the cup in front of their master or their master's guest(s), who would then pick it up with telekinesis (if unicorn) or their front hooves (if not).
    • We've seen pegasi use their wings as hands, so maybe the teacups were invented by a pegasus, even if it sounds unstereotypical. It also could have been invented by another satient species that actually has hands, such as dragons.
• Twilight seemed just as surprised as everypony else about the true nature of Philemena. But wasn't Twilight Celestia's long-time student in Canterlot for years? How is it that she's unaware of nature of her long-time mentor's treasured pet? Also, as fond as she is of books and studying, Twilight never came across any narratives and illustrations of phoenixes?
  • Given that their relationship was highly scholarly, it's likely Princess Celestia didn't mention her pet to Twilight. Most teachers and professors don't. As for illustrations, it may be that she simply didn't come across them in her studies, or, given that Phoenixes are rare creatures, the only pictures she saw were of when they are in good condition, and not about to burst into flames.
    • Plus she could have had one of her insane moments where she doesn't think properly. Remember the last time there was trouble that Twilight didn't want Celestia to know about?
    Twilight: Alright everyone, we need to build an exact replica of Ponyville over there. We've got less than a minute!
  • Remember how Harry Potter reacted to Dumbledore's phoenix going up in flames? Who knows what weird pets your teacher has that you're not aware of.
  • Celestia deliberately kept Philemena's nature secret in the hope of exactly this situation occuring.

1.23 Cutie Mark Chronicles

• How the hay didn't Sweetie Belle have any trouble with her helmet? Since the other Crusaders aren't unicorns, they wouldn't have trouble wearing a helmet without a hole to accommodate a horn.
  • Her horn is too small to cause trouble?
• So Fluttershy fell from the sky as a filly and lived on the ground for the rest of her life. Trouble is she was a foal at the time so weren't her parents and brother Zephyr Breeze worried about her and who would raise her? Did she raise herself?
  • It's not that she lived on the ground after falling from the sky, the flashback was just about when she got her cutie mark.
  • Plus, Zephyr Breeze hadn't been retconned into existence yet.
• Why is Scootaloo so down on songs in this episode when she herself sometimes sings?
  • She's the tomboy and doesn't want to admit that she enjoys such things.
• In "Call of the Cutie", Applejack tells Apple Bloom that she was the last in her class to get her cutie mark. Yet in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", she launches into her Flashback with the claim that she got her mark when she was even younger than the Crusaders. Was her class filled with early bloomers, or what?
  • Nah, just means the Crusaders are late bloomers.
  • She went off to Manehattan for an unspecified period of time. She might have left when she was younger than the Crusaders, but only gotten her mark after a few years - she does seem to grow older between the beginning and end of the flashback.
• Also, Rainbow Dash says in "Call of the Cutie" that she was the first in her class to get her cutie mark, but one of the boys she races in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" has his already.
  • Maybe he wasn't in her class? There may be more than one.
    • Same school, different class?
    • According to Fluttershy, they were at summer flight camp, so there's no reason to assume they were even from the same school.
• In Giggle At The Ghosties, Pinkie Pie mentions Granny Pie telling her to laugh at her fears, but later Pinkie Pie explains to us that her early life was spent on a rock farm, where there was no smiling, or talking. How could this be explained?
  • An even better example would be in "Winter Wrap-Up", where she mentions she has been ice skating "since she was a little filly". Sure, you might say that the above one is just a minor detail, or even that she is a natural as she said, but c'mon. Ice skating is hard - even for Pinkie Pie, it's hard to believe she's just that good with little to no practice.
  • Pinkie Pie is an Unreliable Narrator? Shock of shocks.
  • First: No talking? How could they even properly live without talking? Anyway, back to the subject, maybe during the part at the flashback, Pinkie Pie's granny had recently passed away and might be the reason Pinkie was so sad-looking at the time.
    • Pinkie is a little on the nutty side. Considering she ended her rock farm tale with "and that's how Equestria was made", it's probably not wholly accurate. Either that, or Granny Pie didn't tell her that tidbit that until later.
    • No talking doesn't have to mean no talk at all, just no talk beyond bare necessities, which to such a social creature as Pinkie might as well not be talking at all.
    • My theory is that you've got it backwards - the rock farmers are the black sheep of the Pie family, whilst Granny and Pinkie are the "normal" ones. The genes for a pink mane have to come from somewhere. And don't you find it strange that the Pies are the only ponies in Equestria with names that contradict their talent? Perhaps they forbade the extended family from ever visiting the farm after Granny taught Pinkamena to "Giggle at the Ghosties."
    • How about this: Pinkie doesn't mean "no talking, no smiling" as in, they were explicitly forbidden from doing those things; she means it as in, they're on a joyless depressing rock farm out in the middle of nowhere so no one even wants to. Granny Pie remembered a time when it wasn't all rock farms, so she could tell Pinkie to "giggle at the ghosties", but until Pinkie learned about the concepts of "color" and "happiness", she couldn't really comprehend what Granny was saying.
  • Granny Pie simply doesn't work on the rock farm. Being boring is part of living on (that particular) rock farm, not necessarily of being a pre-Pinkamena Pie-family-member.
    • Someone agrees with that one ...
  • This Troper always thought that Pinkie's family got frustrated with her after all she wanted to do was party, she was hindering the family business, so Granny Pie took her in and raised her from there, probably with weekend visits to the farm or something.
• Here's one. Rainbow's Sonic Rainboom unlocks five other ponies' cutie marks. She has performed two or three others since then (it's disputed if the Sonic Rainnuke involves one). Have these done anything?
  • The Sonic Rainboom is not magical. The magical part of the story is that the Mane 6 were all connected by destiny, which made their cutie marks appear simultaneously. The SR just triggered it, and once it was triggered, that's the end of it. It shouldn't be expected that the SR would affect anyone else.
    • Not entirely true. The Mane 6 were destined to be friends, yes-but the sonic rain boom did give a direct (albeit temporary) boost to Twilight's and Rarity's magical power.
• In the cold open, the CMC fall through a tree that is clearly NOT a pine tree. The leaves look totally different. Why do they end up with pine needles stuck on them?
  • Maybe they crashed into a nest made of pine needles…?

1.25 Party of One

• Pinkie Pie wears Groucho Novelty glasses. You know, the one with the eyebrows, mustache, and... human nose?? Do humans exist in the Ponyverse, and if not, why didn't the animators replace the human nose with a pony nose?
  • In the same vein, Pinkie Pie's "You're #1" foam finger in Sonic Rainboom.
    • There are at least three sapient species with fingers in Equestria (dragons, griffons, and minotaurs).
    • Depending on her knowledge of what's beyond the fourth wall she often breaks, she may have been giving us a little nod. Or she was just being Pinkie.
  • How about Spike knowing who Fu Manchu is?
    • And Twilight refers to Casanova and Romeo.
  • Apple Bloom's Show Stoppers costume has human skulls.
    • RL 'Satanists' have equine skulls. Make the connection.
    • So that's where all the humans went.
  • One possibility is that humans and human culture are a thing of myth and legend in Equestria, just like magical talking ponies, gryphons, and dragons are in our world. As such, the groucho glasses and the foam finger could be memorabilia from a popular play (or whatever the ponies watch for entertainment). That would explain not only why Pinkie Pie has said items, but also why the others didn't really react to them (even if they lumped it with Pinkie, being Pinkie, there should be some sort of reaction).
    • Or they're the skulls of an ape or other primate.
• If Pinkie’s friends had been planning her surprise party in advance, why didn’t they have convincing cover stories ready to give to her from the get-go? Admittedly, we all know how acceptable it was for Dash and Fluttershy to say they were Cave-sitting for a vacationing bear...but the excuses the others gave seemed pretty see-through and obviously last-minute.

1.26 The Best Night Ever

• It's obvious that Twilight has never been to the Grand Galloping Gala before, what with her joy at having been invited and not knowing what to have expected. And yet she's appreciably the Princess's most treasured student, personal apprentice, and closest friend. Yet more evidence towards Trollestia?
  • It's on a school night.
  • This is the first year she's had friends she wanted to go with. She may have had the opportunity before, but didn't see the point of it any more than she saw the point of anything else beyond her studies.
  • Not to mention the only reason she wanted to go was to spend more time Celestia. Before the Gala, she's spent who knows how long away from her teacher with only periodic visits for business, so Twilight presumably wanted to make up for lost time. Compare that to what life was probably like while she lived in Canterlot, where the Princess was never more than a short trot away, and there was no real reason to waste valuable study time on a stuffy high class party. Especially considering she never bothered with a mundane, low class party either.
  • Perhaps Celestia never invited her because she finds the event that boring she didn't want to subject Twilight to it. But since she says she invited the six of them because she hoped they'd liven the night up, Twilight making friends in Ponyville convinced her to send an invitation.
  • And Twilight was never interested in socializing beforehand. She may have seen the princess only as a tutor but since learning about friendship, she might have started to think of her as a friend too and been more excited to spend time with her.
• Does Rainbow Dash realize that her boast to Soarin' is impossible? She asks him if he has ever soared past lightning, which is a feat she considers fun. The only thing is that lightning can move at speeds hundreds of times faster than sound, when it hits the ground it hits instantly. I doubt very seriously that even with the Sonic Rainboom that Rainbow Dash is capable of flying that fast, maybe faster than a fighter jet at most. Is lightning somehow slower in their universe?
  • Two possible answers: one is that Rainbow is talking about flying really close to a cloud when it issues a lightning strike, hence "flying past lightning"; two is that Rainbow would have spouted anything so long as the Wonderbolts actually said something in reply, which would give her an advantage over certain terrain.
  • If her muscles aren't as strong, then she doesn't deserve the title of since she was getting frustrated at being drowned out.
  • Are we seriously bringing physics into this? Rainbow is an ornithopter that can break the sound barrier with wings that are too small to even lift her off the ground. Setting aside the lift to mass ratio, her wings would fall apart from the vibrations when she nears the sound barrier, so...
• When Fluttershy was having trouble befriending the animals, why didn't she ask the groundskeeper for help? As someone working in the gardens, he might have been able to tell her how to approach certain creatures.
  • Pride, she was so certain she knew how to approach any animal that the idea of asking for help was laughable to her after all her cutie mark means she has a gift to communicate with other animals.
    • Really? Pride? Fluttershy doesn't seem...arrogant.
  • Perhaps she thought it would be rude of her to bother the groundskeeper so she did not ask him.
  • She was just so excited to meet them that she forgot herself. Things would have gone differently had she reined in her excitement and entered the gardens slowly and quietly, then settled down on the ground and let them get used to her and maybe even approach her. It's highly likely that she would ordinarily have done this, or she'd have very few animal friends.
  • Don't let the shy exterior fool you; Fluttershy does have a stubborn streak.
  • Well the first time she meets him, she's just assuming that the sound he was making was that of a bird in the garden. She hasn't met the animals yet - so she's confident she can make friends with them. The second time she meets him, she trapped him in her snare. So she might be just a little too embarrassed to ask for help.
• Why were the animals running away?
  • maybe they were trained to run away from ponies so that they would not see the animals doing their...business.
    • But wouldn't then they only be running away when they were having a Potty Emergency?
    • I assumed they were trained to run away regardless of whether they were having Potty Emergencies.
    • Why? That doesn't seem right.
    • And on a related note, why have animals there if they're trained to run away? That doesn't make sense.
  • You go find some animals who don't know you, then behave like Fluttershy did, and report back. I'll wait.
  • Because she was friggin terrifying.
• It seems odd that none of the mane cast even consider that there might be other ways to get a ticket to the Grand Galloping Gala. And also odd that Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Applejack were not just unrealistic in their expectations of the event, but actually deluded as to the entire nature of it. I've never been to the Royal Garden Party, but I know it doesn't involve balloons and apple pies.
  • From poster "Lonewolf23" at RPGNet
  You know, I think I've figured out why it is that the girls felt so out of place at the Grand Galloping Gala. It was a High-Brow, Upper-Class Affair, and all of them are Working Class girls. [...] Lacking any working knowledge of the Gala, they imagine it using the fanciest event they've experienced or known about: Applejack imagines something like a fancy State Fair, Rainbow Dash pictures an Air Show, and Pinkie Pie just pictures a party and carnival bigger then any she's ever seen. Fluttershy, not caring about the Gala itself, just imagines the Castle's gardens to be a fancier, more exotic wildlife preserve then what she's seen. Only Rarity has an accurate concept of the Gala itself, and it's clear from her romantic fantasy, it's one based entirely from Romance Novels and Fashion Magazines. Twilight herself just imagines she'll be able to spend time with Princess Celestia, like she did before going to Ponyville.
  • in the case of AJ and Fluttershy, it also begs the question why they would need tickets at all. AJ wants to run a concession stand and Fluttershy just wants to explore the palace gardens. For the first you'd need a permit, not a ticket, and we've seen the gardens being open for schooltrips.
    • AJ would be unlikely to get a permit because Celestia knows it would be pointless because there's already free food at the gala, And a school trip is a scheduled and supervised event, it doesn't mean the area is open to just anyone to wander around and do what they like. AJ was always doomed due to not understanding the nature of the gala and Fluttershy doesn't know Celestia well enough at this point to get permission to just wnader the palace grounds on her own to play with the animals.