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Webcomic / Twilight's First Day

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Twilight's First Day is a webcomic made by Muffinshire. Based off My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, it follows a young Twilight Sparkle as she attends her first day at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.

A short story in the same continuity, Twilight's First Dance, was written for a charity art anthology book.


Contains examples of:

  • 6 Is 9: Twilight gets her locker number wrong because she reads the tag on the key upside down.
  • Aloof Big Sister: Twilight meets a colt named Swirling Star who is upset because his big sister Dizzy Star is acting so serious after enrolling in the Royal Guard Cadets School, always studying and training and never having any time to play with him like they used to. Hearing this makes Twilight start to fear that her big brother Shining Armor will do the same, and they both start to cry.
  • Art Shift: Mostly used for imagine spots, with various styles such as halftone dots, duotone and chiaroscuro.
  • Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Sergeant Thunderhead and Squadron Leader Savoir Faire argue over how to get the stowaway Twilight back to her parents, and Thunderhead goes Military Maverick on her, flying Twilight back to the docks despite his crippled wing and Savoir Faire's protestations about the regulations. Later, when Thunderhead's wing goes into a spasm, Savoir Faire uses her magic to get them both down safely.
    Thunderhead: She may be an old fussbudget sometimes, but she means well.
  • Boarding School of Horrors: Lemon Burst and Orange Twist try to convince Twilight that the School for Gifted Unicorns is one of these, where students have to wear rusty iron horseshoes, sleep strapped to wooden boards and study endlessly while wearing nose bags for lunch.
  • The Bully: Lemon Burst and Orange Twist terrorize Twilight with made-up tales about school life in Twilight's First Day, and mock her party dress in Twilight's First Dance.
  • Companion Cube: Twilight insists on taking her Smarty Pants doll to school, even running onto an airship that is about to take off to retrieve it when her bag is accidentally put on board.
    Twilight: "Smarty Pants doesn't want to be a Royal Guard!"
  • Call-Forward: References to events in the original show are scattered throughout, from the newspaper headline in part 2, to Twilight Sparkle's entrance exam where she hatched Spike. Despite starting in 2012, when only two seasons of the TV show had aired, the author has included nods to the canon as it developed over time, including references to Sunset Shimmer from EQUESTRIA GIRLS, Moondancer, and characters from the IDW comic series.
  • Ear-Piercing Plot: Twilight's First Dance has a species-appropriate variation with Twilight getting her first horseshoes for the school dance. Her father asks her if she's too young for horseshoes, but she says that all the cool ponies have them. The mares working at the horseshoe shop reassure her that the procedure won't hurt, but when she sees them pull out a hammer and nails, she gets scared and changes her mind, deciding to get a hooficure instead.
  • Eating Contest: Breakfast turns into a race between Twilight and Shining Armor to see who gets to use the bathroom first.
  • Everybody Cries: Swirling Star cries over missing his sister, who has gone away to the Royal Guard Cadets training school; this in turn makes Twilight cry over her brother, which in turn makes one of the teachers cry because she's missing her family too.
  • Every Scar Has a Story: A flashback in part 10 shows how Sergeant Thunderhead got his torn ear and facial scar.
  • Exact Words: Night Light and Twilight Velvet chastise Twilight for jumping on their bed at 5:00am by pointing out her big brother Shining Armor has just as much reason to be excited and he isn't doing the same. Twilight promptly fetches Shining Armor, and they both do it.
  • Fictional Disability: Sergeant Thunderhead is a pegasus with a crippled right wing that he got saving Princess Celestia from rogue griffons. He can glide down to the ground from a high altitude, but can't fly back up.
  • First Day from Hell: As you might expect from an excitable, accident-prone filly, Twilight gets into a lot of mishaps on her first day of magic school.
  • First Day of School Episode: For Twilight, as she starts her education at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns—though not without a lot of trouble along the way.
  • Hold Your Hippogriffs: When the lunch line turns out to be really long, Moondancer exclaims, "Aww, saddlesores."
  • Humiliation Conga: In the space of a morning, Twilight accidentally stains her brother's uniform, stows away on an airship, gets stuck in mud (which she then got all over Princess Celestia), gets covered in dragon vomit, magicks a beard onto the dean of students, gets blasted across the hallway by a hoof dryer, gets stuck up a tree, and gets covered in goop during science class.
  • Imagine Spot: Twilight imagines herself having managed to poison her classmates and set her own mane on fire in science class. She also vividly imagines herself experiencing the made-up horrors Lemon Burst and Orange Twist describe to her as a normal part of school life.
  • Inept Mage: Because Twilight is only a little filly who doesn't know how to use magic properly yet, her attempts to solve her problems with magic result in disaster. When she casts a spell to make the bathroom dryer dry her books faster, the resulting gust of air is so powerful it blows her out the window.
  • The Lady's Favour: Before Shining Armor leaves for military academy, Cadence ties one of her blue mane ribbons onto his saddlebag as a keepsake.
  • Last-Second Photo Failure:
    • Twilight and her family take a photo before her first day of school, but her saddlebag is overloaded, causing her to fall down just as the photo is being taken.
    • Later, she has to have a photo taken for her library card, but because she's so excited to go check out the rest of the library, she runs for the books the second the flash goes off. The resulting photo just looks like a blue and purple blur.
      Photographer: Well, here's your card, but...I don't think anypony will recognize you unless you're always moving that fast!
  • Late for School: Twilight makes herself late for school, and everything she tries to catch up again just makes things worse.
  • Little Stowaway: Twilight accidentally stows away on board an airship leaving for the Equestrian Royal Guard cadet school.
  • Meaningful Background Event: When Twilight's family is eating breakfast, the headline of Night Light's newspaper says "Weather Ministry to probe mysterious rainbow," referring to the Sonic Rainboom performed by Rainbow Dash that helped the Mane Six—including Twilight—find their cutie marks.
  • Military Academy: Unseen in the story, but Shining Armor goes away to cadet school on the same day Twilight starts at her new school.
  • Mythology Gag: Twilight mentions a bedtime story called Glory and the Dragons; Glory was a Generation 1 unicorn. The book illustration is even drawn in a G1 style.
  • Nose Nuggets: Baby Spike goes mining for nose gold in part 15.
  • Pimped-Out Dress; Seeing an overdressed Twilight not enjoying the party in Twilight's First Dance, Princess Celestia selects the most outlandish dress from her own wardrobe and gatecrashes the dance to cheer her student up.
  • Power Incontinence: In part 6, when Twilight strains too hard to manipulate the strings playing cat's cradle, she accidentally casts a spell that turns Shining Armor's mane into tulips, causes her father to grow bunny ears, and causes her mother to grow a mustache, all at the same time.
  • Rapid Hair Growth: Twilight Sparkle casts a hair-growing spell on herself in Twilight's First Dance, resulting in a barbershop full of her own mane. Twilight Velvet also has to regrow Shining Armor's hair in Twilight's First Day part 7 after an spell misfire turns his mane into flowers.
  • Reactive Continuous Scream: Happens at the end of part 9, when both Twilight and the cadet get startled by Sergeant Thunderhead.
  • Rugged Scar: Sergeant Thunderhead has a torn ear, scarred eye and crippled wing, all of which he got serving as a royal guard.
  • Short Cuts Make Long Delays: Not wanting to be late for her first day of magic school, Twilight convinces the taxi ponies to take a shortcut across some grassy fields. The taxi gets stuck in the mud.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Ponified versions of Edna Krabapple and Teacher from "The Bash Street Kids" appear in the background in part 14.
    • The carpet in Dewey Oak's office based on the carpet in the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.
    • One of the magic books in Twilight's imagine spot in part 14 is "Mathematics of Quantum Magic Fields", a nod to one of the courses Professor Farnsworth made up in Futurama, "Mathematics of Quantum Neutrino Fields".
    • Swirling Star's flashback in part 28 to how his big sister is more concerned about studying and training than playing with him is a ponified version of the illustration for the popular ChilledCow YouTube stream "Lo-Fi Hip Hop Radio - Beats to Relax/Study to".
  • Smorgasbord Test: The staff of Canterlot Castle are raising Spike, but they don't really know what they're doing, because ponies don't usually raise dragons. They try feeding him ground-up gems since adult dragons eat gems whole, but he won't eat more than a few spoonfuls of them. Twilight solves the problem by crushing his eggshell into powder, mixing it with a crushed ruby, and feeding it to him, which is something she read in a storybook.
  • Stern Teacher: The dean of students, Gisela, won't stand for any nonsense, and is very particular about punctuality.
  • Unsound Effect: Twilight taking notes in part 18:
    QUILL!
    INK!
    TAKING NOTES!
  • You Remind Me of X: When Twilight is upset over not being able to get what she wants for lunch (in addition to all the other stresses of the day) and cries, "Why can't I have what I want?", Celestia is reminded of her sister Luna saying the same thing, presumably in relation to their little ponies not loving her nighttime as much as Celestia's daytime. Even more poignantly, Twilight happens to be sitting in front of a banner with Luna's cutie mark on it.

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