My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Headscratchers/Season 1

This is where the Headscratchers for Season 1 go, and you can find the other seasons from this index.

1.01 The Mare in the Moon

 * The mayor addresses the public with "fillies and gentlecolts". Since colt and filly are terms for immature horses, does it mean they never grow up? Not that it couldn't be somewhat plausible in this franchise, but then, what about Granny Smith? (and Pinkie Pie refers to her own grandmother in one of her songs) Also, Rarity mentions "stallion of her dreams".
 * Nah, it's just a pun for a pony-society. Usually when there is an animal society, they make use of animal stereotypes and what we associate with them, and put it in 'out society'. Like a mouse-society has places all being puns on 'cheese'.
 * Also, "mares and gentlestallions" doesn't have the same cadence of "ladies and gentlemen." "Fillies and gentlecolts" does. "Stallions and gentlemares" does, but would probably be too confusing.
 * Humans have many such expressions in which grown adults are referred to as "girls" and "boys".


 * In the first episode we are introduced to Fluttershy because she's in charge of the music for the Summer Sun Celebration. Why? She's good at music and all, but there are ponies in Ponyville who's special talent is music! Fluttershy is too shy and timid to perform without good reason. I know the story reason (they needed to introduce Fluttershy), but there must be an in-universe reason too.
 * Fluttershy wasn't the one performing; she was helping the birds to rehearse so they could perform.
 * Which ponies in Ponyville have music as their special talent?
 * Lyra Heartstrings and Octavia, for starters. Any pony with an instrument or music on their bum?
 * Octavia doesn't live in Ponyville. She lives in Canterlot, or at least she was there at the Grand Galloping Gala. Also, Lyra was also in Canterlot at the time of the pilot: she waved to Twilight as Twilight was running back to the library in Canterlot at the beginning of the first episode. So no, neither of them would have been available in Ponyville at the time of the Summer Sun Celebration.
 * It was part of Celestia's plans to get the Elements to meet Twilight.


 * In the first episode, when Nightmare Moon shows up, we see Applebloom cowering with Scootaloo and Sweetie Bell, even though she never met them until the episode with Diamond Tiara's cuteceañera. What's with that?
 * Coincidence. Think about it - you're a young pony about to see the beloved princess during a great festival. Instead, suddenly everything goes dark, thunder crashes, and an evil-looking bizarro-Princess turns up. What do you do? Hide in the nearest spot you can find. Two other young fillies had the same thought process. Also note that the mane six were rather close together at that point, so chances are Sweetie Belle and Applebloom were with their big sisters, and therefore in the same basic area and close to that table. The coincidence isn't unlikely. Hell, the whole thing from Cutie Mark Chronicles is a way bigger coincidence than that.
 * No, it's much more clever than that. "Everypony everywhere has a special magical connection with her friends, maybe even before she's met them."


 * Princess Celestia tells Twilight to stop reading those dusty old books... then arranges for her to live in a library. Yeah, that'll stop her from reading books.
 * We know that she was doing a Batman Gambit to get Twilight to stop her sister. And the library did help with that. Most likely Celestia was just making an excuse.
 * I think the "dusty old books" she's referring to are the ones detailing Nightmare Moon. Twilight can freely study anything else, but the point was to bring Twilight out of her shell and make some good friends. (aside from Spike)
 * More just a general 'You need to get out more, girl!' statement.


 * When Rarity meets Twilight for the first time, she says she's never been to Canterlot. Why not? "The Best Night Ever" shows it to be within no more than a few hours' walk, and Cheerilee takes the kids there on a school excursion in "The Return of Harmony". If she loves Canterlot so much, why can't she make a day trip there? Sure, what she actually means is "I should be in Canterlot, being worshiped as the fashion genius that I am", but that's not what she said.
 * That's a bit cynical, don't you think?
 * Is anyone else a little confused that in the beginning of the episode Celestia tells Twilight to make some friends? I mean, doesn't Twilight consider Spike a friend? Celestia probably meant friends her OWN age, but when Spike reads the Letter that Celestia wrote, neither mention whether he is Twilight's friend or not. They both just address as her never having friends at all.
 * They probably think of him as a family member. After all, they've been together for almost Spike's entire life.
 * This is confirmed in episodes like "Owl's Well That Ends Well," where Spike is afraid Twilight doesn't love him anymore. And in "The Secret of My Excess," when Spike said, every birthday that he had in Canterlot, Twilight was the only one who ever got him a present. So while, she may seem a bit bossy and short-tempered with him, she would see him as an adopted brother.
 * How did Celestia wield the Elements against Nightmare Moon on her own? The Elements were at that point weilded by Celestia and Luna, but it doesn't make sense for Nightmare Moon to willingly use the Elements to banish herself to the moon for a thousand years and even if Celestia forced them on her the result should have been similar to what happened when.
 * Perhaps this explains why she could merely banish Nightmare Moon and not defeat her?

1.02 The Elements of Harmony

 * What was Nightmare Moon exactly? split personality, brainwashing, an evil symbiote entity, a Beneath the Mask moment of Luna?. Nightmare Moon had an opposite personality from the little we saw of Luna. Compare Nightmare Moon who was much more confident (even making an evil speech and kidnapping Celestia) and more menacing looking. While Luna seemed like a more fragile timid and insecure pony (from the little we saw of her body language) wich make the riddle more intriguing.
 * Lauren Faust has stated that Nightmare Moon was caused by an external 'evil magic' feeding on Luna's jealousy and hatred. Exactly what it is, no clue, maybe we'll find out in Season 2, especially since Season 2 is going to have villains.
 * Besides, wouldn't you feel awkward and insecure after your darker nature tried to take over the world and instill a forever night?
 * Besides, wouldn't you feel awkward and insecure after your darker nature tried to take over the world and instill a forever night?


 * Why was the legend of Nightmare Moon such a mystery to everyone beside Twilight in the first place? I mean, her silhouette was imprinted in the frigging moon for the last thousand years. Did nopony ever question why there's always been a huge horse head on the surface of the moon? And it's not like they wouldn't find the answer if they wanted, since the tale of pony sisters was available in the books (Twilight had one)
 * It might have been a rare book, perhaps from Celestia's own collection. Not to mention the woeful literacy rates among ponies has been mentioned repeatedly, Twilight (and Pinkie of all ponies) are the only ones ever seen reading.
 * Celestia tried to get rid of as much as she can because she didn't want her sister to be the Bogeymare.
 * This is probably accurate. I imagine Celestia wouldn't be particularly eager to have her sister's... indiscretion remembered too vividly. If the populace had her recorded as a Great Evil of Myth and Legend, it would be much harder for Luna to be accepted than if she was only known as a villain for a few hours. In fact, this would also be a great reason to hold the millennial Summer Sun Celebration in Ponyville rather than a large city like Manehattan -- everyone who saw Nightmare Moon could easily meet Princess Luna immediately afterward, and it would be much easier for the royal announcement of Luna's return to outrun the stories about Nightmare Moon. The whole story could then come to light after the fact, complete with a happy ending.
 * How much thousand year-old history do you remember?
 * Some guy got nailed to a wooden thingy.. Then again, this could also lead to the concept of a Luna-centric cult. And what better way to kill the basis of a cult by making it boring? 'Oh, that's nice, dears, you're pretending to be the Mare in the Moon. Now help me harvest these rubies.' 'Oh, allright..'
 * I think the Mare in the Moon story is similar to how we have the story of the Man on the Moon (or how the Japanese see a rabbit on the moon), just an old folk tale to explain an odd pattern. Meanwhile, the actual story about Nightmare Moon is less well known, hence Twilight's line about how "The Mare in the Moon is in fact Nightmare Moon," because the mare in the moon is well known, while Nightmare Moon wasn't.


 * For that matter, why is everyone so surprised that Luna is Celestia's sister? It's only mentioned in the opening narration/book AND the book that tells them where to find the Elements ("the ancient castle of the royal pony sisters")...
 * As for the image on the surface of the moon, ever heard of the man in the moon, which this is a reference to? It's just a fairy tale, which it how the mare in the moon is regarded.
 * It is not mentioned in the opening narration that Princess Celestia was the same pony who defeated Nightmare Moon ages before. It just refers to "two regal sisters." Why would Twilight automatically assume that Princess Celestia is over a thousand years old?
 * Because it mentions that Celestia has ruled for "generations since".
 * That doesn't follow. A generation is, for humans, roughly 30 years. There's roughly 33 generations in 1,000 years. She could have ruled for generations since, died sometime after the legend covers, and so on, with a normal line of succession. In fact, that seems far more plausible without knowing the full backstory than the idea that Celestia is over 1,000 years old.
 * It doesn't mention Celestia, it says "The elder sister".


 * Never mind Luna, but didn't Twilight know who Celestia was? If she knew she was one of the sisters from the story, why did she feel the need to inform her that "the mythical Mare in the Moon is in fact Nightmare Moon"? Or for that matter that she was about to be released -- if some old book knew that, how likely would Celestia not? And how would people not know she appeared all the way back in those stories, since she was right there among them all the time, living forever and clearly not just another ordinary ruler? They couldn't possibly miss her being so special, so why would they be incurious enough about it to forget the stories related to her?
 * I think the answer to both of these is that no one knew just how old Celestia is, and so no one made the connection and realized that the older sister mentioned in the legend was her, and not some distant ancestor. Twilight would hardly have felt any need to tell Celestia about the legend if she realized that she was one of the only two characters in the story.


 * When Twilight asks Fluttershy how she knew the Manticore had a thorn stuck in its paw, she responds with, "I didn't. Sometimes we all just need to be shown a little kindness." That's incredibly stupid, and incredibly dangerous; it could have gotten all of them killed. It could have easily been justified with a simple line such as "I have a special connection with animals, so I knew something was wrong," but no. She gambled all of her friends' lives on a groundless assumption.
 * How was she gambling anyone's life but her own? She walked up to the manticore while the others stayed behind; if she had failed and been torn to pieces, they could have went ahead with their mass charge without a hitch. I guess maybe her blood on the ground might have made the terrain less sure, but that's probably offset by the fact that any venom it would've injected into her when it stung her to death would have been less it had available to use on the others.
 * Excellent point. But even if she wasn't risking anybody but herself, it's still a stupid and groundless assumption.
 * Not if Fluttershy was powerful enough to kill it in single combat. Would The Stare have evaporated its soul? Can she apply her knowledge of therapeutic kung fu to asskicking, like a pony Wong Fei Hong? We don't know. We've never seen the true extant of the horror that is "Flutter Rage". Pray we never do.
 * Knowing Fluttershy, it's quite possible she knew it would work, thorn or not. No-one -- with the possible exception pf Pinkie Pie, who recognized the Parasprite -- knows more about animals than Fluttershy. She knew how to deal with a dragon -- despite being scared of them and apparently knowing less about them than most other animals. She knew how to deal with a Cockatrice. She knew that even she couldn't intimidate or reason with a hungry Hydra. It's likely she knew that the Manticore would respond to a soft couch.
 * This I kind of doubt. Just because Fluttershy is very talented with animals doesn't mean she knows everything about every kind of animal; she wouldn't have gotten so frustrated with the animals at the Grand Galloping Gala otherwise. She doesn't seem to know anything about dragons at all, given how she reacted to Spike (and I personally think she was really lucky that red dragon was as sensitive as he was; scolding does not preclude one from being bitten in half). In any case, she says she approached the Manticore not out of any prior knowledge, but because she wanted to show it kindness. And that as a justification all on its own is stupid. Most critters on the show have shown signs of being quite a bit more than just animals (when Fluttershy asks the blue jay to correct his rhythm, he smiles and agreeably nods his head), but the Manticore doesn't seem to be one of these.
 * Well, Fluttershy has many talents: veterinarian, model, singer, fashionista... "Tactical genius" is not among them.
 * She's the Element of Kindness. But being the bearer of a personification of a positive trait doesn't leave you immune to the trait's dark side. Honesty's a virtue for example, but if you're being honest about what you think and what you think turns out to be WRONG, such as unjustified contempt of other people, you're just a Jerkass instead of a truthful person to be admired. Loyalty's a virtue, but if you're loyal to a group that's doing something evil, like a Chicago urban gang for example, loyalty could end up overriding your conscience. Kindness also has a dark side, because if you're kind to someone without first checking to see whether or not they deserve your kindness, you could end up being walked over. So, since Fluttershy's the Element of Kindness, it does kind of stand to reason that she'd be vulnerable to the foolish ways kindness can make someone act if it uses you instead of you using it.
 * I don't really disagree with that, but the Elements having negative traits didn't come until much later in the show. This is only the second half of the first episode, when we're still getting to know the basics of everything. The problem I have with this bit is that Fluttershy's actions are portrayed as "right", or the best course, despite being very unsafe bets and unfounded guesses. So while I agree with every Element having a dark side, I think that here we're supposed to agree with Fluttershy, so the flaw still stands, not that it's anything major.


 * How is it better for the sea serpent to have a mustache that's half orange and straight and half purple and curly? Does he look any less ridiculous that way than with just half an orange mustache? And why isn't he bothered that his new half-stache had previously hung right behind a horse's butt? Not exactly the most sanitary thing to have dangling from one's face.
 * Perhaps he just felt lopsided. Then again, he could have just had Rarity cut the other half off.
 * As for sanitary issues, remember they are sentient horses who take baths and go to spa, so we can't really compare them to the real horses we know. Not to mention it's Rarity's butt we're speaking of, there's probably less bacteria on it than on most people's hands. Also, Nobody Poops.
 * Maybe he's colorblind. And he could probably straighten it out.
 * Maybe just the act itself cheered him up.
 * Having mistmatched colors would be better than only having half a mustache. Only having half would look off balance, at least the tail gave some balance. And whose to say he didn't style it later?
 * Who wouldn't want a moustache like that?!
 * A pony who only just met him is willing to cut off her tail (which she obviously take a lot of pride in, and time and effort maintaining) just to cheer him up. How big of a jerkass would he have to be to start saying "It's not good enough!"?
 * Maybe he just has a funky sense of fashion. But also, yeah, he saw how much Rarity sacrificed for him and he probably didn't want to seem ungrateful.
 * He's wearing a Rarity original.
 * He's a vain, highly fashion-conscious sea serpent. Of course he knows how to color, style, straighten, and wax the perfect moustache -- but he can't do it without raw material. In fact, the natural curl of the new extension is already giving him ideas...


 * I am a big fan of Luna. But I am very surprised by how easily she was forgiven by the audience (compare fan reaction to Trixie and Gilda both low rate bullies). Fans tend to make her a woobie that was wrongfully imprisioned by her evil sister on the moon. Nevermind that she was going to starve all equestria to death with her eternal night....
 * Well, that's the charm of Luna for you. During that one minute of screentime she had, many fans fell in love with her so much (not that this troper blames them) that they completely forgot that for the most of the pilot she was the evil Nightmare Moon, and that it was NMM and not Luna that the whole story revolved around to begin with, so they prefer to imagine the thousand year long banishment as lonely Luna crying on the moon. Too bad that it caused many of them to imagine poor Celestia as an evil tyrant, even though everything in show points to her being very benevolent and understanding ruler.
 * There are 3 reasons for this: Why did Luna become Nightmare Moon? Because 1. she felt unappreciated for her work, was completely alone and became jealous of her sister; 2. she didn't plan on hurting anyone (directly), she only wanted "friends" and love. She was honestly horrified of what she did and what she became, creating a Heartwarming Moment in the sister reunion; and the 3. is thanks to the Mane cast. It pretty much shows what happens when a pony suffers from CMFIS and that makes excusing her actions far, far easier, since she simply went cuckoo and in a grander scale for being a Goddess.
 * Also note that, according to the creator, Luna was possessed by some outside force. It took control of her and made her into Nightmare Moon. So yeah. Not to mention, Gilda and Trixie remained bitches. Luna was very clearly sorry and upset for what she had done.
 * Lauren cleared this up in a later interview. Even if there was an outside corrupting force, Luna had to allow herself to be corrupted. In other words, if she hadn't already been bitter and jealous, Nightmare Moon wouldn't have happened.
 * I'm just kinda playing devil's advocate here, but do we know with any certainty that anypony would have actually died had Nightmare Moon been allowed to maintain her eternal night? We know in the real world that would be an extinction level event, but Equestria seems to be about 50% magic by volume and a few clicks up the Sliding Scale of Cynicism Versus Idealism from ours. If you want to be optimistic, figure there's some kind of food source that they could continue producing without sunlight, like some manner of edible fungus (found underground, where they've moved to tap geothermal heat). Instead of their population slowly starving (or quickly freezing), they just stumble around in the dark looking for mushrooms for a few centuries until they evolve into drow!Ponies. Granted, it would still be an evil act on Lolth!Nightmare Moon's behalf, but it wouldn't jar with the show's White and Grey Morality the way a global holocaust would. Besides, drow!ponies would be adorable in a creepy way.
 * I've read in several places on-line that the first two episodes are among the least popular of the series. But why? Everyone seems to have loved the first two episodes of season two, even though they had almost the exact same plot. If there was a difference, it's that Nightmare Moon was a three-dimensional, tragic villain motivated by envy and rejection, while Discord is just in it For the Evulz. But seriously, the first two episodes are a mythopoetic epic. (And yes, the two-part pilot is my favorite episode.) So why isn't the two-part pilot more popular? What do people dislike about it?
 * The second episode is similar to the plot of many movies out there; villain pops up, each main character has a 'trial' to pass before the whole team defeats the villain. With the first's arguably impressive introduction of the main characters, the second felt shallow in comparison. The depth and creativity so many fans like to give the series credit for came from further episodes, the plot of episode two could be summed up by 'Typical heroes journey'. The two-part Season 2 opener did something completely different, breaking each pony differently (something the fanbase is endlessly entertained with), casting John de Lancie as the villain, and went absolutely crazy in comparison. Of course, your mileage may vary, but to many fans, the series could had used a more fresh start.
 * I'm not going to speak for anyone else, but for me the charm of the show comes from the character-driven humour, which is largely absent from the plot-heavy pilot.

1.03 The Ticket Master

 * How can Celestia possibly have a nephew? Unless I'm missing somthing from a previous incarnation of the show, there is no explanation that I can see that explains how Luna had a son. Unless of course Celestia has more relatives.
 * Word of God says that "Luna and Celestia have no siblings and no children" and that Prince Blueblood is "the great great great great great great great great great great great (and probably even more greats) nephew on Celestia's and Luna's mother's side, about 52 times removed, roughly speaking."


 * When Spike and Twilight hide from the crowd of greedy ponies, Spike disguises himself as a hula dancer, complete with grass skirt and what appears to be a coconut bra. What kind of creature in Equestria could possibly have breasts?
 * female dragons? my little human dolls?
 * Harpies, if The Last Unicorn has taught us anything.


 * Rarity fantasizes about Prince Blueblood proposing to her with a ring she puts on her horn. So what if you're not a unicorn? Would you put it on your hoof? Wouldn't that technically make it a bracelet?
 * Maybe earth ponies and pegasi have other wedding habits?


 * So, what exactly is the criteria to get into the Grand Galloping Gala? It's implied to be extremely exclusive, so much so that even Twilight, her best student, didn't get invited for years. Then the fact that the rest of the Mane Cast weren't invited right away even though they saved Equestria from eternal night AND Nightmare Moon's rule. What on Earth does it take to get invited?
 * Nobility or connections to may be a factor (as for why Celestia didn't invite Twilight for years... Celestia always found the party boring and probably didn't want to subject her to that, not without a backup plan). And by the way, Ticket Master is the first episode after the premier. She probably did send them the tickets fairly soon afterwards (probably after reconnecting with her sister). She didn't give them all tickets immediately because Celestia strikes me as the Trickster Mentor type (so wanted Twilight to work up the courage to ask). My own question is who the heck Ditzy/Derpy knows that got her in there?
 * Isn't Lyra Heartstrings near by in the same scene as Derpy? Maybe they went together?
 * Muffin Button.


 * How did Pinkie round up ponies to help with her bribery party without them learning about the Gala ticket?
 * She claims to know every pony in Ponyville, and seems to be good at throwing parties. It shouldn't be a big deal for someone like her to gather up few friends and ask them for a favor.
 * I'm sorry, I intended to put stress on the "not learning about the gala ticket" part. Especially because Pinkie is the only one who says upfront she's trying to bribe Twilight for the ticket in her song.
 * Pinkie and Logic go together as well as oil and water.
 * She gathered those ponies by saying she was throwing a party for the new unicorn in town, but she didn't mention the ticket.
 * Verified. Remember what happens once the other ponies learn about the ticket.
 * Ponyville Party Drill.

1.04 Applebuck Season

 * There is a mule in applebuck season. a mule. As in, the sterile offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. That implies quite a bit... and the fan assumption is that donkeys are on the same level as wildlife, meaning some mare in Ponyville is very promiscuous. There is no other explanation.
 * When the Pon Farr takes you, little can be done except to hide the children and the infirm.
 * Why the assumption that donkeys would be on the level of wildlife? The mule seemed to be perfectly capable of holding a conversation and understanding basic social graces, so why assume that a donkey wouldn't be at least on the same level as the talking cows? Heck, Zecora isn't technically a pony either.
 * So far it seems Bovidae (cows and bison) and Equidae (ponies and zebras) are fully sentient, along with griffins and dragons. Also Rule of Funny.


 * If Applejack usually only has Big Macintosh to help with the "applebucking", how come she was so exhausted this time from only doing half of it? The failed favours she did to her friends can't have added much to it, even if each took, say, an hour, which they probably didn't. Did she just arbitrarily decide not to sleep at all?
 * I think the implication is that Big Macintosh normally does way more than half of the harvest each year. That's probably why Applejack is so keen to prove she can handle a bigger share.
 * Well, he is a lot bigger (and presumably stronger) than her. Apparently he's smarter too.
 * Or because she's trying to get all the applebucking done by herself in the same amount of time it normally takes her and Big Macintosh to do it working together.


 * Why, in the scene where Twilight first tries to talk to Applejack about how she's clearly overworking herself, does Twilight teleport every couple of steps instead of walking? Applejack walks maybe 30 feet as a generous guess during the entire course of the conversation, and there's really no reason for her to teleport instead of walking alongside. I mean, she's athletic enough to run a marathon with careful pacing, but can't keep pace with a tired, slow-moving pony and has to teleport instead? Every time I see this scene I just get more and more confused.
 * She's trying to get her attention. It kind of draws more attention to suddenly teleport rather than to just slowly trot alongside her, seeing as Applejack is kind of brushing her off there.

1.05 Griffon The Brush Off

 * Maybe it's just me, but in this episode I get a real Family-Unfriendly Aesop in the form of "if a friend of yours is or acts like a jerk, drop them right then and there." I mean, okay, when left alone in town she's a Totally Radical bitch, but I thought the entire message of this show was "help your friends better themselves, and let them better you." Pinkie Pie at least tried to follow that creed, the entire point of the party was to improve Gilda's attitude, but Dash? When your old friend with a Hair-Trigger Temper reaches snapping point after a borderline Humiliation Conga you unintentionally set up for her, I was hoping the freaking Element of Loyalty would have a little more grace than to basically say "this is my new in-crowd, GTFO," especially when you're the likely only one who can actually get her to stop antagonizing your new frinds.
 * It's made even worse when you consider the fact that, as far as we know, her actions may have been justified based on how griffons behave amongst themselves. However, the alternative of Rainbow Dash deciding to keep hanging out with her may be even more counter-intuitive to her element in the end, seeing as how she would split her loyalty between two groups. I completely agree on how harsh she was to quickly sever all ties with Gilda, though. There was clearly some lost potential there, hopefully we get to see more of her in the future.
 * I got the idea that it's more like Gilda is the one who severed ties. After she showed her true colors Rainbow Dash gave her an ultimatum - "These lame-o's happen to be my friends. If you can't accept that you're not the person I thought you were and I'm not so sure I want to hang with that kind of person." - and Gilda decided that she'd rather wash her hands (talons?) of Rainbow Dash than admit that she was wrong. So no, Rainbow Dash wasn't exactly being purest acceptance and virtue with her ultimatum, but Gilda is the one who decided to get out of town; Dash would probably have reconciled with Gilda if she'd apologised and admitted she was wrong.
 * I can understand that, but the way everything was presented, it feels like an unfortunate case of Poor Communication Kills than anything else. Gilda has a bad attitude, but that could understandably be because of a slight Blue and Orange Morality situation on account of her species being high predatory and frequently accounted as having particular animoisity with horses. She also clearly respects Rainbow Dash to a high degree and cares deeply about what she thinks of her, so it kinda feels like there was an oppurtunity for Dash the sit Gilda down and at least try to reconcile the differences between her and the rest of the Mane Cast that just went to waste, Pinkie Pie was just trying to get Gilda to lighten up, and Rainbow would have stood a better chance at being successful, seeing as griffons have a reputation of Undying Loyalty to their partners, meaning Gilda might have listened for Dash's sake if that option was presented. An ultimatum like that was a little too much to ask of a visibly agitated and aggressive person when the subject of the ultimatum was also partly the source of said agitation, the pranks she fell for were admittedly reaching the point of being considered excessive. "Help your friend learn to control her temper" would have made a friendlier Aesop than "Don't bother with a friend who can't keep her anger under control" is all I'm saying, and this show is all about constructive lessons.
 * I think these sorts of lessons depend on the specific case. It's universal ethical principles that matter, but which ones apply to which situation varies. You have to use nuance to figure out which ethical principle applies on a case-by-case basis and why, and be able to justify it rationally. For example, yes, it's usually a better idea to help your friend better himself/herself. If this friend is not capable of listening, however, then SHE'S not acting like a friend TO YOU, so it's actually much smarter to stop associating with her, for fear that you might end up wasting your time (or even worse, pick up her bad habits). And Gilda is incapable of admitting error. Not just about her behavior at the party; she never apologized for stealing an apple and scaring Granny Smith half to death and scaring Fluttershy into tears. Rainbow Dash dropped Gilda because Gilda's incapable of apologizing for ANYTHING, it was just Gilda's behavior at the party that finally helped Rainbow Dash see that since Dash didn't see the petty theft and bullying. It's GILDA who failed to act like a friend, not Rainbow Dash (or even Pinkie Pie, for that matter, who even threw Gilda a party to cheer her up despite having a very good reason to try to seek revenge on Gilda). Gilda was given chances, she chose not to take them.


 * The term "fake friend" got passed around to descibe Gilda at the end of the episode. Maybe I'm just not understanding the term the way it was used, but how was her friendship fake? She is incredibly possessive of Rainbow, but that's pretty much par for the course when you have a borderline Clingy Jealous Girl as a companion. She is only civil when Dash is beside her, but makes no real secret of her disdain for the rest of Ponyville. Dash's new friends are not automatically Gilda's friends, and Gilda only wants to associate with Dash while on her visit. Gilda is a punk who doesn't know any of these ponies at all, Dash simply couldn't reasonably expect her to be friendly with everybody they met up with during the day. Newsflash girls, Gilda wasn't using Dash, or setting her up for humiliation, or anything like that, she just had a bad attitude, a bad day, and really wanted to spend the day with Dash with no one else around.
 * Trying to drive away and just generally being rude to every other friend Rainbow Dash had isn't exactly how a good friend should act. The ponies are all generally willing to give Gilda a chance and get to know her, since she's Rainbow's friend. Gilda, on the other hand, doesn't respect Rainbow enough to even give her friends the time of day, and at the end of her rant basically tells Dash "You're not allowed to have any friends other than me."
 * I admit that does makes sense, but remember, Dash only introduced Pinkie Pie as a friend at first, and she did make an annoyance of herself when Dash and Gilda where trying to be alone, and when Dash introduced the rest of the Mane Cast you had already heard at least one of Gilda's nerves snap. (Please note the preceding sentence is not an attempt to justify Gilda's berating the ponies she met.) Griffin mythos are usually quite consistent in portaying them as either solitary or in close-knit family units, so to Gilda it would probably be sensible, if unfounded, for her to feel possessive of Dash and threatened by the new crowd. Wanting a person to hang out with only you is selfish and stupid, but that's life and relationships for you. I just interpreted Dash as taking Gilda's outburst as her not thinking ponies worth her time, including Dash, which wasn't the message Gilda was trying to project. And on the side, Dash should know by now that Gilda is a bomb that only needs the smallest spark to blow up, ending a childnood friendship over one overblown emotional outburst just seems like giving up to quickly.( Dash doesn't get told about Gilda's impassioned little tirade against Fluttershy, but even if she did know there is still room for the option of just talking a compromise out so Gilda could calm down and stop viewing the rest of Ponyville as a challenge, ultimatives only get negative results in these situations.)
 * While I agree that this episode wasn't written as well as it could or should have been, Rainbow Dash never really gave Gilda an ultimatum, she just called Gilda out on her behavior. I don't think she could have known Gilda for that long and still expect her to roast marshmallows with the mane 6, but she did expect her to at least be civil. Notice how Gilda stutters after Rainbow's scolding; she knows she's in the wrong, but is too proud to admit it, and would rather pin it all on Dash for being a "flip-flop" than admit to being at fault.
 * What bugs me is that Pinkie acts every bit as selfish as Gilda at first, yet we're clearly meant to take her side. Gilda was wrong to take it upon herself to inform Pinkie that she and Dash wanted to be alone, but it's somewhat understandable given Pinkie's clingy behavior. When Twilight draws the not unreasonable conclusion that Pinkie is jealous, she gets angry and storms out, apparently because she wasn't told what she wanted to hear. Now, to Pinkie Pie's credit, she does take Twilight's advice into consideration and try to give Gilda the benefit of the doubt, which is very good of her...and then Fluttershy comes out of nowhere for no reason other than to set up Gilda as a dog-kicker. It's as though the writer's were thinking, "Uh-oh, the situation's too ambiguous and nuanced! Quick, bring in Fluttershy! She has total power over the audience!" But, again, Gilda still proves herself to be a Jerkass by the end of the episode, so Rainbow Dash's calling out of her is more or less justified. Despite some clumsy writing, this episode turned out okay...except for one small thing; Twilight apologizes to Pinkie. WHAT?! She didn't owe her any apologies! She came to the logical conclusion, and Pinkie took her advice and was the better pony!
 * Twilight was quite right to apologize. She didn't pay much attention to what Pinkie was saying, preferring to page through a book instead. Then she made no attempt to find out if Pinkie was right about Gilda or not, she just brushed Pinkie off. She was apologizing for not taking the time and effort to find out if Pinkie had a case or not before dismissing it as jealousy.
 * To be fair, Pinkie seemed to visit Twilight just to vent about Gilda making her leave her and Dash alone for the day, rather than discuss how aggressive Gilda was behaving towards her. That would come off as rather clingy seeing how much time Pinkie had spent dragging Dash around in a pranking spree before Gilda showed up. Pinkie herself didn't yet really know how much of a Jerkass Gilda can be, and was only fuming over not being able to get to spend time with Dash yet. She didn't even mention Gilda pushing her around in the clouds, and didn't even seem to be as offended by the bullying as much as being pegged as a third wheel. Twilight probably assumed that Pinkie was ejected from a scenario she had forced herself into, and offered the advice "Stop trying to monopolize Dash when she has other company," which is a completely sensible thing to do if all that Pinkie told her was that Gilda was occupying Dash when Pinkie wanted to hang out with her, which, let's face it, was probably all she told Twilight, Pinkie almost never bothers with the whole story.
 * Twilight's advice was good advice to give at the time, I agree. But even taking that into account, a simple apology when it became apparent that she had been misreading the situation is appropriate enough. Had I personally been in Twilight's position, I would also have felt I owed Pinkie Pie an apology. Had Pinkie Pie reacted badly to the apology, instead of taking it in her stride, I would in turn feel bad for Twilight.
 * I would agree with that if Twilight's advice hadn't proved largely true in the end; Pinkie was being clingy, and she herself eventually acknowledged it. Twilight basically apologized for being right.
 * Having rewatched the episode, I have to disagree with "proved largely true". Twilight apologized for "accusing [Pinkie] of misjudging Gilda", in her own words. She also says "looks like I'm the one who misjudged you." Pinkie hadn't misjudged Gilda, and Twilight had misjudged Pinkie, by assuming that Pinkie's jealousy was the sole reason for her dim view of Gilda. Pinkie told Twilight 3 things: that Gilda was keeping her away from Rainbow (this sounds jealous and clingy, I admit), but also that she popped Pinkie's balloons and told her to "buzz off". Twilight was paging through a book at the time, and only seemed to pick up on the first part. The truth of the matter is that she didn't pay enough attention to what Pinkie was saying before coming to her conclusion. The apology is completely justified, and if anything doesn't go far enough, since it makes no mention of Twilight not paying attention.
 * Twilight never misjudged Pinkie; everything she said Pinkie Pie herself later admitted to being true. There's no doubt Gilda is a Jerkass, but that in and of itself doesn't mean Pinkie was always in the right, as she's made out to be. The very first reason she gives for disliking Gilda is that she's taking away Rainbow, which is blatantly selfish no matter how you slice it. Twilight owed Pinkie no apologies whatsoever.
 * How is ignoring all but one thing a person says not misjudging? One should listen to all a person's reasons for feeling a certain way, not just the first, and most selfish reason. In contrast, had Twilight apologized for calling Pinkie out on her jealousy/selfishness, then that would be an apology that Pinkie wasn't owed. Secondly, Pinkie was not always in the right, since she was jealous of Gilda. But she didn't think of her as a Jerkass for that reason alone, which is pretty much what Twilight accused her of, thus misjudging her. Finally, Pinkie never demanded an apology. Twilight offered it. Perhaps Pinkie at the time should have admitted that Twilight's mistake was understandable, but that doesn't affect the propriety of the apology itself.
 * Twilight didn't "ignore" all but one of Pinkie's complaints, she took them in the context she was presented; "She popped my balloon" sounded like a rather trivial complaint when Pinkie neglected to mention how she was using them to stay arborne, and only mentioned it as an afterthought offense, and, while telling someone to scram is just plain impolite, when Pinkie again doesn't elaborate on how abrasive Gilda was in dismissing her, and we are all in agreement that Pinkie came off as clingy in this episode, you can see that Twilight thinking that the cold shoulder Pinkie was given was a neccessary action in order to get some personal space is the most likely conclusion anyone would have drawn. Now; Twilight was noble in given the apology on her own, good for her, Pinkie listened to Twilight and didn't make an issue, also good for her, and Gilda is a thug no matter how you slice her, not good for her, just wanted to say how this whole deal looked to Twilight given how it was presented to her and to ask please don't get indignant over Twilight being human... pony... whatever.
 * I have continually acknowledged that Twilight's conclusion (while mistaken) was understandable, so no indignation here. The only thing I wish to argue against is the assertion that the apology was not warranted. To claim that she was taking those two other comments in context is entirely unsupported by any evidence. Twilight doesn't give any sign that she even heard the whole of what Pinkie had said, since she doesn't make any mention of the popped balloons or the “buzz off” comment at all. She told Pinkie that “...just because Rainbow Dash has another friend doesn't make Gilda a grump.” That's touching only on Pinkie Pie's first comment, not the others. Secondly, those words themselves are exactly why I feel Twilight has misjudged Pinkie. Twilight is partly right... Gilda spending time alone with Rainbow Dash doesn't make her a grump, it's all the unnecessarily mean stuff she did to Pinkie Pie to get her to leave her and RD alone that makes her a grump. Twilight either didn't hear those things mentioned or didn't give them enough credence to comment on them, and in both cases, that is a mistake on Twilight's part. A large enough mistake to warrant an apology. To go even further, I would say that that is exactly what the writers were getting at. Consider the cold open to this episode. We have Pinkie telling a story, and Twilight nearby trying to read a book and ignore Pinkie altogether. She even heaves a visible sigh of relief when Pinkie runs off after Rainbow Dash. This mirrors what happens later when Twilight is again not giving sufficient attention to what Pinkie is saying, hence her getting the wrong idea (not about the jealousy, but about Pinkie's jealousy causing her to misjudge Gilda) and hence justifying an apology.

1.06 Boast Busters

 * Why do Snips and Snails look NOTHING like everypony else? Snails looks more like a goat and Snips like a pig than any kind of horse.
 * Maybe they're from a far-off town or something.


 * What are Snips and Snails' purposes supposed to be?
 * I'm afraid to think about that because of their Too Dumb to Live status.
 * Well, since they are 'what little boys are made of', I can only presume that their purpose is to be Token Males.
 * this is probably true but it doesn't really work as an in-universe answer.
 * They're the village idiots.
 * Well Snips's cutie mark is a pair of scissors, so probably has to do with cutting something. Barber maybe? Snails is a bit thougher to figure out though.
 * Fancy French Cuisine. Ponies probably enjoy their escargot.
 * They're vegetarians. They can't eat meat (even squishy booger meat).
 * Ponies eat egg containing baked goods, so they aren't very strict vegetarians.
 * Gardening? Or at least keeping snails and other pests out of gardens?

"Snails: There's a new unicorn in town! Snips: Yeah! They say that she's got more magical powers than any other unicorn ever! .... Trixie: Come one, come all! Come and witness the amazing magic of the great and powerful Trixie! Watch in awe as the great and powerful Trixie performs the most spectacular feats of magic ever witnessed by pony eyes! Rarity: My, my, my, what boasting. Spike: Come on! No pony's as magical as Twilight. .... Twilight: There's nothing wrong with being talented, is there? Applejack: Nothing at all, 'cepting when someone goes around showing it off like a school filly with fancy new ribbons. Rarity: Just because one has the ability to perform lots of magic does not make one better than the rest of us. Rainbow Dash: Especially when you've got me around being better than the rest of us! *catches Applejack's expression* Er, I mean, yeah! Uh, magic schmagic! Boo! *looks sidelong at Applejack* Trixie: Well, well, well. It seems we have some neigh-sayers in the audience. Who is so ignorant as to challenge the magical ability of the great and powerful Trixie? Do they not know that they are in the presence of the most magical unicorn in all of Equestria? Rarity: Pfft. Just who does she think she is? .... Rainbow Dash: So, great and powerful Trixie. What makes you think you're so awesome anyway? Trixie: Why, only the great and powerful Trixie has magic strong enough to vanquish the dreaded Ursa Major!"
 * Anyone else think that Rarity, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash were a little out of line when they first started criticizing Trixie's boasting? Seriously, all she had said at that point was announcing herself and her tricks as (paraphase) "a magical performance beyond anything else you have ever seen", standard street performer hyperbole, that was all she had said, no belittling had come out of her mouth yet, and suddenly they're ripping into her like she just called them pond scum under her hooves. The really bad tall-tales and insults came only as an understandable knee-jerk reaction to a challenge to her pride.Honestly, Rarity and Applejack, like either of you haven't done the same ego-stroking to yourselves before, or put up with someone else's. Yes I do mean Rainbow Dash, and notice that she gives a Hypocrisy Nod to her own bragging while calling Trixie on hers, which is either better or worse than Rarity and Applejack outright disregarding their own.
 * No. There was some serious values dissonance with the Mane Cast in regards to Trixie and her stage act. That's her way of earning money to eat and live. Her boasting was to attract a crowd to see her show, like pretty much every other stage performer in history.
 * Watching the show, it seems the only people to take issue with the performance was the mane cast. The rest of the town seemed genuinely entertained.
 * They were only entertained once she started showing up the Mane Six. Watch the crowd's reactions prior to that; they're certainly paying attention, but their reception is rather icy -- at one point, the response to her is even crickets chirping.
 * I hear this excuse a lot, but I don't believe it. True, Trixie's first announcements were just hyperbole and par for the course of any magic show, but then she gets downright insulting and condescending, and not only is that bad conduct, it also seems, to me, to be bad business; you never flat-out insult the audience. Poking fun is one thing, but direct verbal attacks (even when they're not directed at the audience as a whole) can (and should) cause a huge backlash. If media examples from the last several years are anything to go by, there's very little room for "attitude" and oversensitivity when entertaining a crowd.
 * To make up your own minds, here are snippets of that key dialogue:


 * It's important to remember that Rarity, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash were talking to each other -- while standing at the very back of the crowd, no less -- about Trixie's act, and were not actually heckling Trixie. People are allowed to have opinions about a show and share it with their friends. The only reason Trixie heard them talking at all is because Rainbow Dash forgot to use her indoor voice, but given that this is Rainbow Dash we are talking about here we can be entirely certain that it was an accident. If Rainbow Dash was deliberately intending to confront Trixie from the beginning, she'd have rushed the stage and yelled it out at the top of her lungs.
 * New troper to this argument, but Twilight herself seemed to feel her friends weren't being entirely fair to Trixie. She was afraid that if she did what Spike urged her, and bested Trixie with her magic, that they would then think of Twilight herself as showing off. If she thought they were being reasonable, why was she worried about that?
 * At first, yes. Then Applejack explained to her that they were less bothered by the talent than by the public boastfulness. Somehow, Twilight got it into her head that any public demonstration of her powers, especially to upstage someone (even a show-off like Trixie) would be tantamount to showing off herself, and so she became shy about it until the Ursa came into town. Being seen getting up on stage and "showing off with her magic tricks" seemed to her to be what her friends disliked. Rainbow Dash does make it clear at the end that Twilight got the wrong end of the stick: "Magic's got nothing to do with it. Trixie's just a loudmouth."
 * Okay, got that, but what was their problem with Trixie and her bragging exactly? She wasn't hadn't yet insulted or belittled anyone when they started voicing their complaints, she certainly wasn't hurting anyone, and "She shouldn't be talking herself up so much," sounds so hypocritical when you see how much Rainbow Dash pats herself on the back throughout the series and how easily everyone else puts up with it. It's not like Trixie was forcing the crowd to watch. They pretty much caused a scene in the audience for very trivial reasons, and they were acting almost as stuck up as Trixie throughtout the whole showdown against her. Hubris is a character trait that should cut, but not by more hubris, and thats what made Rainbow Dash, Applejack and Rarity look so unreasonable and catty in this episode; they got angry at a performer just for bragging about how good she is, which is what at least one of the three does themselves almost every episode, and responded by saying they were better than her.
 * When somepony is advertising herself as the most awesome magical pony ever and you are a close personal friend of Twilight "Most Ridiculously Overpowered Unicorn Since Star Swirl The Bearded" Sparkle, and were yourself busy using ancient artifacts of ridiculousness to put the smackdown on the evil moon goddess a couple months ago, you tend to have a different perspective re: just what exactly qualifies as truly awesome magic than the typical theater-goer does.
 * Their problem was that the advertising did not match the product. Bragging that includes "she's got more magical powers than any other unicorn ever", she "performs the most spectacular feats of magic ever witnessed by pony eyes", and "the most magical unicorn in all of Equestria", especially when the latter two are said in a voice that practically screams insufferable show-off, is just asking for it. Note that the few ponies who are skeptical of her claims have recently dealt with a Physical God, are friends with a unicorn whose defining attribute is magical power, and actually can follow up their own boasts.
 * The key word here is 'skeptical': they don't actually make a scene, they pass comments among themselves, and RD makes the scene by shouting boo. The others don't insult her beyond comparing her to a school filly with fancy ribbons, the implication being that her announcing her magic using so many superlatives is simply immature. This is while she magics flowers out of thin air, so it is implied that this sort of thing is more mundane than Trixie makes it out to be. Plus, whatever else her failings are, Rainbow Dash actually asks the sensible question: what makes her think she's so special? Their skepticism pays off because the answer tells you everything you need to know about Trixie. Long story short, they're reacting to Trixie's overblown advertising.
 * Though I'll admit Rainbow Dash was clearly out of line booing her and doing some boasting herself, but it's clear at least Applejack doesn't approve of this either. And you can't deny that claiming to have vanquished an Ursa Major (after said skeptical audience member asks her point blank why she thinks she is so special), which is implied to be extremely difficult to do, is bragging gone too far, especially since she never demonstrates any magic that even matches the more trivial challenges Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Rarity actually set her, never mind that would be up to the task of vanquishing an Eldritch Abomination. Come on: exaggerated advertising, snooty voice, Jerkass behaviour in showing up her skeptics, inability to even do exactly what they do when challenged, never mind to do it better - How Anvilicious does her Small Name, Big Ego characterisation have to be?
 * Well, I certainly understand what you are saying; my whole issue is just how the conflict and message was carryed out. Go on a message board and look for a comment complaining about whatever the topic is, and I gurantee you that there will be at least four comments along the lines of "go look at something else then," it's the same principle in a live show; you're supposed to just walk away quietly when it isn't what you wanted to see, it's a bastard move to throw rotten tomatoes.
 * Dont Like Dont Watch is not a fair response to complaints unless the complaints are persistent, especially complaints that have a strong basis in fact. Considering they'd just pointed out, and subsequently proved, that Trixie was considerably less powerful than she had advertised herself to be, telling them to go away for voicing their scepticism would be downright rude. The only one who actually did "throw rotten tomatoes" was Dash. Applejack and Spike made one complaint each (Rarity two) before Trixie actually noticed them (after Dash shouts "BOO"), and two of those 'complaints' were explanations to Twilight - who had, after all, asked why they were unimpressed.
 * And let's not forget: they weren't picking on a poor street performer whose hyperbolic advertising was misunderstood by a bunch of uber-critical Literal Genies. They were exposing a snooty Miles Gloriosus charlatan who seemed to have the other ponies under her thrall, if Snips and Snails and the crowd's reactions to what went on were any indication. Kudos to them for calling her out on it.
 * Lastly, calling complaining, never mind their getting up onto the stage and showing off their skills in response to being directly challenged themselves, a "bastard move" is excessive; not least of all because they were actually good at what they did, Trixie challenged them into doing so with the assurance that she could (and was going to) do better, and was frankly overdue a Break the Haughty (the only way she could possibly have lost face in that situation was by being exposed as a fraud by her own excessive boasting). If anything, the Ponyville crowd made the "bastard move" when they laughed at the mane cast's humiliations, despite knowing them at the very least as the ponies who saved them from Nightmare Moon. Frankly, I'm surprised we're not discussing that little headscratcher instead.
 * In this Troper's opinion, Trixie lodged herself clearly into "bad guy" territory with lying about having defeated an Ursa Major, and using that lie to win approval she didn't earn. The rest could be excused as just being overly boastful, but Trixie's guilty of outright "fraud." I'm not talking about the fireworks or the other tricks; I'm talking about the fact that Trixie's lie is exactly the same as if I told a woman I beat up a live bear single-handedly (when I never did) in order to make myself seem more attractive so I could talk the woman into having sexual intercourse with me. "Fraud" is when you knowingly misrepresent reality in order to gain a selfish advantage. Trixie having lied about defeating an Ursa Major to make more money than she was capable of earning with her own true skill clearly falls into that category.
 * She edged into bad guy territory even before that, when she started changing the rules of each contest halfway through so that she always won. There is a technical term for that kind of behavior -- its called "cheating".
 * Why does everyone love Trixie so much? She seems to be written to be deliberately unpleasant, she doesn't learn her lesson at the end or show any good or likeable qualities at all, and she doesn't even get any funny lines.

1.07 Dragonshy

 * Why didn't they take Spike with them? Don't you think that when you have to deal with a dragon having another dragon in your party to talk to them as an equal would be handy? The Dragon might not care that he's bothering the ponies, but he may care about his smoke endangering a younger member of his own species.
 * There's no guarantee that would work, and Spike is a baby and probably not up to the task of getting up the mountain in the first place.
 * Spike might not have been in any danger from the smoke except very indirectly. Given that he considers gemstones a snack food, there's really no telling what he'd be able to live off of in a survival situation.
 * As a dragon the smoke probably wouldn't bother him that much and it's implied dragons can eat pretty much anything, but it still would have been an excellent idea to take him along to act as a go-between. The adult dragon doesn't seem all that interested in what the ponies have to say (they are interrupting his nap after all) but may listen to a member of his own species. Spike is the common ground between the two. On the other hand it probably would have made the episode too boring to have Spike ask nicely and have the dragon comply.
 * It's possible that Twilight thought it was too dangerous. So far, the only times he's been with them on a more dangerous mission was when Twilight didn't think there'd be much (if any) danger.
 * The dragon on the mountain reacted pretty harshly to Rarity trying to take his gems, and generally speaking didn't want to go anywhere - it might not have reacted so well to someone that could EAT that stash coming along, or dragons may just be very territorial.
 * "Owl's Well That Ends Well" seems to support the idea that Spike would not have been welcome, considering that the dragon in that episode tried to kill him.
 * The idea that wild Dragons are highly territorial seems pretty sound based on what we have seen on screen and the behavior of Komodos in real life.
 * The dragon may not have listened. After all, Spike's a baby dragon being raised by a pony--wild dragons probably wouldn't take him seriously.
 * You'd take a baby to talk to an adult?
 * Why does everypony think that Fluttershy's fear of dragons is strange? Being afraid of a "huge, gigantic, terrifying, enormous,sharp scale having, teeth-lashing, smoke-snoring, could eat a pony in one but totally all grown up dragon" seems pretty reasonable to me.
 * Because she's fine around other giant marauding beasts.
 * It's a "phobia," and phobias don't have to be rational, that's why they're phobias instead of legitimate fears. This Troper for example is deathly afraid of dogs, even miniature puppies that have no power to hurt him, and will freeze up or run away upon hearing a bark. This Troper imagines Fluttershy's fear of dragons is a similar phobia; it's not rational to be afraid of dragons when she's fine around manticores, but that's why it's a phobia.

1.08 Look Before You Sleep

 * "Spike is away in Canterlot on royal business". Wait; what? Maybe I'm putting too much thought into a throwaway line of dialogue used to explain Spike's absence for an episode, but what kind of task could Celestia have for Spike and Spike alone? He's a child, and occasional bursts of competence aside, generally shown to be as capable as such. What kind of job is he qualified to do that requires him personally to do it? Was there a field of worthless diamonds sitting on prime apple growing land that needed to be disposed of?
 * Spike's a baby by dragon standards. By pony standards, he's on the same emotional and intellectual level as the Mane Six (if only slightly more naive), and fully capable of preforming any needed duties on his own. He's the assistant to the personal student of Princess Celestia and shown to have some contacts in Canterlot that afford him influence far above what he should be able to do (contacting Hoity Toity comes to mind). It's entirely possible that Twilight had some Celestia-related business that would require Spike to make the journey to Canterlot in her stead.

1.09 Bridle Gossip

 * I find it more than a tad disturbing that so many people deride the cast as being "mean, racist and closeminded" in "Bridle Gossip". Up until the very end when Applebloom did The Reveal, it really did seem like Zecora was...well, an "evil enchantress".
 * Actually, most of the cast had her branded as an evil enchantress waaay before there was enough evidence for it. If I can understand how Twilight was eventually swayed by the "curse", the eerie incantations, the cauldron of suspicious stuff and Applebloom's disappearance, Zecora was already thought to be evil just for looking different, digging at the ground, wearing a cloak, and coming to Ponyville occasionally.
 * The point was not to judge other ponies by how they seem. Even if she "seemed" like an evil enchantress, they never even bothered talking to her before making such horrible judgements.
 * How did she seem like an evil enchantress? OK, so her house has creepy-looking masks and she was cooking up a brew in a big cauldron (which, granted, could easily have been food or medicine, but it did look scary), but before then? She wore a black cloak, came into town to look at shops, and dug in the ground. None of those actions are evil.
 * Yeah, Pinkie Pie aptly demonstrated the lack of evidence of evilness with the whole "I heard...she eats hay!" line.
 * I think some of it was because Zecora lived in the Everfree Forest -- "where clouds move on their own, and animals take care of themselves!" Come one, just look at the place. They probably thought the only way Zecora could live there was to either be the most Badass sorceress imaginable, or to be in league with the monsters, else they'd have eaten her.
 * Ok... so... how is it racist in the first place? That I don't understand. They clearly did not know she was a zebra and different from a pony, since they call her a pony and have apparently never seen what she LOOKS like, since Rarity notes "just look at those stripes! So garish!" It's a bit hard to be racist against somepony when you don't know what race they even are. They clearly thought she was just a pony with a Mohawk who painted stripes on herself. The thing with Zecora was like... looking at a goth and assuming at once that they are a witchcraft-practicing Satanist at once just on their attire. Or assuming KISS is evil because of their stage makeup. Or assuming Harry Potter teaches witchcraft to children since it's a book with references to magic. There's a MAJOR difference between being prejudiced and being racist. They were the former.
 * In that case, the racism was simply Unfortunate Implications. But that vibe is given off pretty strongly by the fact that she's a zebra, an animal native to Africa IRL, and displays many characteristics associated with African tribal culture.
 * Fridge Logic:
 * If everypony was scared even to look at Zecora, let alone speak to her, how did they know her name?
 * Would Apple Bloom really have had the time to get back to Sweet Apple Acres and pick up her saddle bags, and then search for herbs? She's an energetic filly, and the Mane Six were slightly handicapped by their afflictions, but still...

1.10 Swarm of the Century

 * How come that parasprites are practically unknown to everypony but Pinkie Pie and Zecora—including Princess Celestia who has apparently never even heard of them in 1000+ years?
 * I can't answer for Pinkie Pie, but since parasprites are from the Everfree Forest, the mysterious place free of Princess Celestia's rule, she probably doesn't know much about it and its inhabitants. It's likely that the residents in the towns have never had to deal with parasprites brought there (the bugs emigrated to the edge of the forest or something).
 * Maybe Celestia knows all about the parasprites; her line of "thanks for the parade" was just a polite way of glossing over the fact that they'd obviously had an embarrassing infestation recently.
 * This is likely, when you consider the look on her face when she saw the "parade" of parasprites. If she really thought it was a parade, she'd probably look more excited and happier about it, not confused and startled.
 * Then again, there's another reason for her to be confused and startled -- this was supposed to be a casual visit. Princess Celestia tries (and fails) to make almost every event she's involved with fun and casual. She may have still been hoping it would work this time, and was surprised when they staged a parade for her.
 * Celestia's dialogue about a parade and an invasion in Fillydelphia sounds like code for "I realise you've just been embarrassingly invaded by parasprites, so I'm going to make up an excuse to leave and let you save face." If she'd really been called away to Fillydelphia to sort out an infestation;
 * a) why would she turn up in person, and not send an explanatory letter? It was an emergency after all.
 * b) why did she dawdle with the friendship report? Her country needs her!
 * c) why didn't she mention it before the parasprites showed up?


 * At one point Rainbow Dash creates a tornado which sucks up all the parasprites. She loses control of it after Pinkie Pie's cymbals get sucked in, and the parasprites are released. It sure looked like Rainbow's method was working perfectly until Pinkie messed it up. Pinkie may have gotten rid of the parasprites eventually, but Rainbow would've done it sooner! And with a lot less property damage. Now ultimately there's plenty of blame to go around - Twilight for her "stop-eating-food" spell, Fluttershy for secretly keeping a parasprite - but Pinkie definitely deserves a large share of it. Instead, the end of the episode implies that she deserves all the credit for getting rid of the parasprites and her friends apologize to her. Pinkie deserves the blame she got!
 * And of course they could blame Pinkie for not explaining everything to them in the beginning.
 * Pinkie tried to explain, but she was too much of a Cloudcuckoolander to explain properly.
 * Either A) Pinkie wanted to stop the Parasprites herself or B) she was Genre Savvy enough to know that something was probably going to go wrong with Rainbow's plan any moment. After all, the episode wasn't nearly over yet.
 * What did Pinkie do wrong? She was still gathering materials for her solution, and very much did NOT want her cymbals sucked into the tornado. There's a reason she calls herself the ruinee (or whatever). I wouldn't blame her for that; it was just an accident. And one could even suggest that if it wasn't cymbals, it would've been some other chunk of metal lying around Ponyville.
 * Pinkie Pie accidentally ruined the tornado, but would it really have worked anyway? What happens when you get the tornado all the way over to the forest and then stop tornado-ing? What's to stop the parasprites from just flying back over to ponyville? (Apparently Pinkie Pie's solution makes them stay in the forest for some reason.) And it's not like Dash could keep up the tornado forever.
 * Do you know how Pinkie made sure the Parasprites stay in the forest? What, she just led them there and they didn't just fly back out you say? Well what the flying fish would have made Rainbow Dash's method of just bundling them over to the forest not succeed? She didn't need to keep the tornado up forever, just keep it up until she got up against the forest and let it blow inside the forest with the parasprites in the tornado, and it was working! Pinkie was just a Spanner in the Works whose own method succeeded only when it was an eternity to late!
 * Also, Applejack herded a whole group to the forest, and they stayed. It was only due to Fluttershy keeping one (which multiplied very fast, assumingly due to Rule of Funny) that the problem wasn't solved.
 * The probable answer is that Pinkie's method was the only way of ensuring every Parasprite was collected and sent back to the forest. The other attempts by the rest of the mane six consisted of gathering them up and forcing them back into the forest. They would work, but only if they managed to gather every single Parasprite, and if they missed just one (or kept one as a pet) then the problem would repeat itself. Pinkie's method caused lured the Parasprites out en-masse instead of gathering them one by one. Unless there was one hiding where it couldn't hear the music, her music would collect every Parasprite in town with relatively little effort.
 * As for how Pinkie makes sure Sprites don't return, well, we don't see where exactly she's leading them to. Evergreen forest seems to be a dangerous place, surely there must be some swamps there or worse. Remember the story about the Ratcatcher of Hamelin? Yep.
 * Yeah, Pinkie wasn't exactly doing her utmost to explain to them, and she had plenty of opportunities. Honestly, how hard is it to just say "you can get rid of them with music/a parade"? Applejack would have succeeded if Fluttershy hadn't kept one (Idiot Ball much?) and Rainbow Dash's plan was working well until Pinkie Pie showed up. If anything, the aesop should either have been "don't keep a Horde of Alien Locusts in your house just because they're 'cute', especially when there's no way you're going to keep them a secret for long" or "if you have the solution to the problem, just tell somepony and don't hide behind the 'I'm the Cloudcuckoolander what d'you expect' excuse".
 * Agreed, Pinkie could have explained what the problem was without breaking character. "A parasprite! Don't you know how dangerous they are? THEY COULD EAT ALL THE CANDY IN THE CITY!!!! I'm off to get a trombone! TO SAVE THE CANDY!" There's basically no reason, even by Pinkie Pie standards, that she had to be as obtuse as she was. Further, there are some instances of Pinkie sobering up just enough when she needs to be serious. Considering the threat level posed by what were essentially a horde of adorable locusts, this qualified as an emergency. Poor Communication Kills all around though. At the very least, those present when Pinkie Pie sees the first one should have followed up on her recognizing them. "A parasprite? So you know what they are? What does that have to do with a trombone?"
 * Or a more real "Don't bring creatures you don't know to your home just because they look "cute"". Which would be a good aesop for little boy and girls who bring birds/frogs/dogs etc. home.


 * Why, at the end of the episode, does Princess Celestia ask Twilight to deliver her latest friendship report in "person"? Shouldn't it have been "in pony"? They usually say everypony, somepony, anypony, and nopony instead of everybody/everyone, somebody/someone, etc., even though ponies have bodies and are ones, whereas they manifestly are not persons; they are ponies.
 * Maybe they figured it would be too confusing in the end. While the already-established terms are easy to figure out since we're used to them in everyday conversations and how they're modified to fit a situation, "In person" is a stand-alone expression meaning "face-to-face", changing it to "In pony", while it would fit the setting, would likely cause a slight pause in which the viewer tries to understand the term. That, or it simply is an overlook.
 * They've messed up on their "pony/body" swapping syntax before and after this. Also, be honest, do you think "in pony" sounds right? It works for variations of "body" precisely because those variations are much more generic. "In pony" doesn't fit.
 * They're persons and people, they just happen to be ponies as well. Person, people and body are all grammatically correct, even in the context of the series. Using pony in the place of other pronouns is actually the oddity; there are plenty of sapient non-ponies in the setting, making the usage of pony seem thoughtlessly exclusive.
 * In stories that feature intelligent non-human entities, 'person' is a generally accepted term to refer to any intelligent individual (i.e. anyone with a personality). There's nothing about the word 'person' that suggests being human, it's just that in the real world, there's nothing other than humans that are generally agreed to fit the description, although many will claim pets, or certain animals (such as Apes or Dolphins) are 'people'.

1.11 Winter Wrap-Up

 * How was the Winter Wrap-Up started by earth ponies? The pegasi are very important to the process, after all.
 * It wasn't. Every town in Equestria has their own Winter Wrap-Up. Ponyville simply doesn't use magic because the town was founded by Earth Ponies.
 * It's possible the clouds will eventually take care of themselves, but it takes another month or so and no one wants an extra month of winter. Thus Winter Wrap-Up is possible without pegasi but much more difficult.
 * They roped them? Applejack was capable of catching clouds in Season 2's second pilot episode with a lasso.
 * Clouds made of cotton candy, not water vapor. One's a lot thinker than the other.


 * Is it just me, or is there a worrying hint of forced conformity in 'Winter Wrap-up'? I can accept people wanting to do things traditionally, but the way they treat Twilight for trying to use her talent isn't really fair. Can an aesop of 'Sometimes you have to rely on your other talents to fit in' be valid?
 * It's not as though the whole town bans the use of magic all year long. They have (presumeably) one event a year that relies solely on everyone coming together and working hard with no magic involved, the way their founders did. If someone decides to come along and start magically shoveling snow, that's disrespectful to the whole idea. And to be fair, the only one to really snap at her for using her talent was Applejack, after Twilight caused an accident that a) could have hurt someone and b) disrupted everyone's task of growing the next year's food supply.
 * What bugs me about Winter Wrap-up is that they have forgotten about Twilight. Everypone seems to have a job assigned, except for Twilight. Why? Did they forget about her? Did they think she would be useless? She obviously wanted to help, and she did get there early(too early), so why they did it?
 * The whole point of the episode was that the event was poorly organized, remember. They probably just forgot to assign her a role, which would completely fit.
 * This. Case in point, and a little Fridge Brilliance ... when Twilight's going out of control, she ends up going across about four or six other plows, who have to stop. But what would've happened had those guys not had to stop, and just kept going in their lines?
 * Twilight needs to have more than one talent available to her besides magic. As episodes 9 and 27 show, it is quite possible for her to be deprived of her magical abilities, so she needs to appreciate her other skills.


 * Using magic is not allowed in the titular winter wrap up ritual, because Ponyville was established by Earth Ponies and thus the winter wrap up has to be done "the earth pony way". However, the pegasi use their flight ability and their power over clouds to help with the wrap up. Pegasi flight and weather control are certainly not earth pony abilities, so why do the pegasi get a pass while the unicorns don't?
 * Flight is a physical ability, while the weather controlling isn't the same as unicorn magic--their ability to stand on and move around clouds is "passive" magic. They're just using their natural abilities. Although, you could argue that unicorn magic is a natural ability of the unicorns. Still, the whole point was that they don't use unicorn magic.
 * Also the ponies might not recognize the passive magics as actual magic. They might just see it as something those ponies can do. Not every human can be an Olympic-class runner, and not every pony can walk on clouds and such.
 * Er, no. The concept is of doing things the Earth Pony way, just like the founders of Ponyville, before anyone knew what a pegasus or unicorn was. So allowing pegasi to use their talents, natural or not, is simply Mayor Mare Completely Missing the Point.
 * Um...just because ponyville was founded by Earth Ponies doesn't mean that the founders weren't aware of the existence of other types of ponies.
 * This is disproved by the second season: "Family Appreciation Day" places the founding of Ponyville in the period of Celestia's reign over Equestria, within the lifetimes of Granny Smith and Diamond Tiara's great grandfather, while "Hearth's Warming Eve" shows that the three pony races were aware of each other even before the founding of Equestria, let alone Ponyville.
 * Perhaps the reason is that while the tradition probably started as a purely Earth Pony ritual, it has diluted a bit without ponies really noticing it. So the ritual now includes Pegasus elements that has slipped in over time. Another reason could be that the services that are provided by the Pegasi are considered to be essential, while the wrap up could be done without unicorn magic, so that doing the wrap up without magic is a form of Self-Imposed Challenge. Yet another possible reason could be that "doing it the earth pony way" is just a less confrontational way of saying "no unicorn magic allowed".
 * The fanfic "The First Winter Wrap-Up" proposes one possible answer:.
 * Another possible interpretation is that usually (in Canterlot, for instance) the winter wrap-up is performed simply by casting a single Winter Wrap-up spell. Doing things the "Earth pony way" just means not casting that particular spell, while lesser magics are fair game. Perhaps Twilight misunderstood the restriction; note that Rarity quite casually uses her telekinesis at one point.
 * Yeah, though Applejack scolds Twi for bringing the plow to life.
 * Though a lot of that was no doubt because how much trouble that particular bit of magic caused.
 * It's probably more to do with the physicality and 'hands on' approach rather than magic persay. The pegasi are still doing manual labor and Rarity would presumably place the nests by hand (the making of required magic since... they don't have hands). Thus using a 'short cut' of sitting on your butt and casting a spell is 'bad' not because it's magic but because you're not really getting involved and exerting yourself. There are many other reasons why they might handwave flying and such but not allow more general magics.
 * If you want to get technical, even the earth ponies are using magic. Their mystical connection to the earth allows for faster, more bountiful harvests as well as increased physical ability. It's allowed because it's very low-key and secondary to their physical effort. Pegasus Ponies kinda stretch it a bit, but they still seem to be doing their work "manually" instead of just commanding the clouds to do their bidding. It's just Unicorn ponies or spell-casting that breaks tradition (though given the effort involved, telekinesis might just squeak by as an allowed power).
 * The whole argument really raises the question why "magic" gets singled out as anything special in the first place. Earth ponies are stronger and connected to the land, pegasi fly and control the weather, unicorns get to levitate stuff and cast spells. That's the way things have always been in Equestria, at least as far as we know; unicorn magic should by all rights be considered just as "natural" as the gifts of the other two races. So why is magic suddenly such a big deal here, unless it's simply as an expression of unspoken (and admittedly perhaps even unconscious) anti-unicorn prejudice?
 * If Twilight was so desperate for something to do, why didn't she just find the Mayor and ask for an assignment?
 * She's a socially awkward nerd with confidence issues?


 * Winter Wrap-Up is only one day long, tomorrow being the first day of spring. But during the organised!wrap-up montage, it switches between day and night repeatedly. It appears that about three days pass during said montage.
 * Right after the montage, Mayor Mare points out that "Spring is here on time!" So this is probably intentional. It seems pretty clear that everyone involved with the show wants the timeline to be completely impossible to understand. Why else would they directly follow the episode with Fall Weather Friends?
 * The air date inconsistency aside, it appeared that everypony worked through the night and finished at dawn. so they did wrap up winter on time.
 * There is no repeated switching of day and night. There was only one night sequence between the two day sequences. So as the troper above says, it took only 1 day and night of effort.


 * Why did the ponies only wrap up at the end of winter? And why do you have to wrap up for winter to end?
 * Because in this world, nature needs help. Winter needed to be wrapped up because it doesn't wrap itself up.


 * Rarity. Why does NOPONY get after HER for using magic? She uses her telekinesis to give Twilight some materials to make a nest out of, and ALL magic is a no-no, but Rarity is okay? And she uses it in front of TWILIGHT, who is obsessed with not using magic. Somepony explain this to me...
 * Perhaps magic falls under two different classes, simple magic (Earth Pony endurance, Pegasus Pony flight, Unicorn telekinesis) is okay, but complex magic (like make winter go away, animate inanimate object, etc) are frowned upon.
 * The ponies take issue with using magic to help in the actual work, which is why Twilight caught flack for making the plow move itself. All Rarity did was move the materials over to Twilight. She made the nests by hoof.
 * Note that the only magic Rarity uses is simple telekinesis, which isn't substantially different from doing things by hoof, beyond the magical element. We've seen in other episodes -- including the earlier episodes "The Elements of Harmony" and "Look Before You Sleep" -- that if she had been using her full power, she could have fixed Twilight's mangled nest with a thought. Her magic is related to bringing out the beauty in things, and turning a mangled and ugly nest into an ideal one is well within that realm.


 * Why was the Mayor depicted as carrying a basket of apples in the final Hard Work Montage? Isn't the end of winter the last time you'd expect to be harvesting apples?
 * Those apples weren't being harvested. They come from the food stores Applejack's portion of the Winter Wrap Up song mentions. Everypony was working through the whole day and night, so they'd need some food to keep their energy up.


 * Close to the end of the episode, Spike is left asleep on a chunk of ice floating in the middle of some cold water. Instead of, I dunno, trying to HELP him, the ponies joke about how "he's in fer' a big surprise as soon as that there ice melts" and then LAUGH. Sure, he got better, but that's a bit cruel, don't you think?
 * Spike is an Equestrian dragon, and thus nearly indestructible. Even as a baby dragon he can still safely bathe in lava, bite through diamonds as easily as cotton candy, and be jammed full of needles without even feeling them. He's in absolutely no danger from getting splashed with cold water.

1.12 Call of the Cutie

 * So at one point in the episode, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon talk about how Diamond's new party outfit "totally shows off her new cutie mark". But when we see her at the party, the dress she wears completely covers up her cutie mark.
 * She saw Apple Bloom there before she hid and couldn't resist making another snide comment, even if it didn't really make sense?
 * Since Sweetie Belle is Rarity's little sister, wouldn't Apple Bloom have met her before, or at least known about her? Comes to that, it doesn't seem like Apple Bloom's class is big enough for there to be anypony in it she's never met.
 * Can you name everyone who was in your elementary school class? This Troper can't. It's not that far-fetched to imagine that Apple Bloom didn't speak to literally every filly and colt who had a desk.
 * I'll concede that point, but even so, the fact that Rarity's sister didn't have a cutie mark either surely would have come up in conversation with Applejack at some point, even if for some reason the two hadn't actually met?
 * Would it have? Applejack and Rarity don't seem to have made much small talk before "Look Before You Sleep", if any, and Sweetie Belle doesn't even live with Rarity most of the time. It wouldn't surprise me if the subject was never mentioned to Applejack. Also, keep in mind that for adults like Applejack and Rarity, getting a cutie mark is no big deal; certainly not a great topic of discussion or matter of concern. It was a plot point that Apple Bloom being teased over and ashamed of her lack of a cutie mark was a problem no one else could really understand, except Sweetie Belle or Scootaloo.
 * Just what is Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon's talent anyway?
 * The real question is, what would happen if you took away Diamond Tiara's... err... diamond tiara?

1.13 Fall Weather Friends

 * The ponies are sometimes seen throwing horseshoes into the air, and not just when Applejack and Rainbow Dash were playing the game. After looking up the details of the term "throwing a shoe"... um... ouch?
 * Maybe horseshoes are used as work shoes (or even just normal shoes that are just never drawn while they wear them), while the shoes that are actually drawn are dress shoes.
 * So their work shoes need to be stapled to their toenails... oookay.
 * Humans stab themselves in the face and pull metal pins through the wounds to keep them from closing, and that has no practical use whatsoever.
 * Just a simple sight gag. A fight isn't really going to throw up stars and a gigantic cloud around the fighters (dusty ground aside), but it happens in cartoons all the time. It's the same as the "squeak toy" noise that the ponies occasionally make: it wouldn't really happen, but it's used for humor's sake.


 * The tree sap being collected confuses me a bit. Maple sap is collected to make maple syrup, but it is collected during the spring when trees are sending stored sugars up their trunk to feed the growing leaves. Is that a mistake or are there trees for which this is appropriate? Because they looked like maples trees.
 * Did Not Do the Research. The syrup was mainly there for a gag, nothing more. Anyway, the ponies have to run past to knock all the leaves down in preparation for winter, which is itself constructed by pegasi. Are you really going to start asking about natural cycles?


 * In Fall Weather Friends, why did no one but Applejack care that Rainbow Dash cheated on the long jump and tug-of-war? The way she cheated on the long jump was fairly subtle, I guess, but the tug-of-war cheating was incredibly blatant.
 * If you see enough of your friends being competitive towards each other, eventually you just don't even bat an eye.
 * Well, if a snake challenged you to a race would it be cheating to use your legs? The contests were poorly balanced, but that's an issue that would have to be raised before the competition began.
 * That argument works for some of the contests, like the chick carrying one, but for most of the ones we see, it doesn't. It's pretty blatantly cheating at tug-of-war and long jump, and by using wings to do pushups, she's using different muscles and they're not true pushups.
 * Because Twilight was the judge, but she had no rules written down to refer to?
 * Like Dash herself said when Applejack accused her of cheating, nothing in the rules of the contest said that she couldn't use her wings. By the technical definition, as long as she isn't breaking the rules, she's isn't cheating.


 * How was Rainbow Dash able to beat Applejack so easily at arm-wrestling? They seemed evenly matched in "The Ticket Master".
 * Knowing Rainbow Dash competitive streak, it's not impossible she actually trained to get better, while Applejack just keep doing the same stuff as always


 * How in Equestria are they supposed to figure out "who is the most athletic" if Dash, a pegasus, isn't allowed to use her wings, where over half of her athleticism comes from? Isn't it kind of cheating if she's NOT allowed to use them? Yes, she's fairly athletic without them, but again, Dash spends most of her time flying, that's how she's athletic. It's really not fair to judge her on Earth Pony-based grounds when she's not an Earth Pony. If she had not cheated, she would have lost most of what she won, since she's used to flying. It's bugged me since the first time I watched it.
 * Allowing her to use her wings was shown to be even more unfair, seeing as how well over half the challenges were made far too easy for her that way. If anything, the fact only Applejack dared to point out how unfair it was shows that while there is possible imbalance when it comes to competitions between different pony breeds, it's not apparent enough to cause a divide. Still, having Rainbow Dash zoom across the Running of the Leaves definitely wouldn't make for good sportsmanship, since only Pinkie Pie in Reality Warper mode could keep up with her. Even the other Pegasi in the race were land-bound, Applejack wanted to make sure Rainbow Dash wouldn't literally cheat by flying while no one's looking, but flying was probably already frowned upon for the race.
 * Of course it was. The race isn't competitive, and it isn't even really a race - the impact of running hooves makes the leaves fall. And while one could argue that a fleet of pegasi zooming past the trees might do the job just as well, if not better, that's not the point.
 * Besides that, it was pointed out in a later episode that causing a divide between the pony species could cause everlasting Winter. Maybe the ponies didn't want to suffer through that and just decided not to bring it up.


 * The real question about the wing this is why wasn't this situation resolved the very first time a pegasus and an earth pony had to compete in an athletic event? They've coexisted for at least a thousand years. Surely someone should have come up with some ground rules on wing use by now.
 * Perhaps they simply had little to do with each other in athletics. Either way, Applejack and Rainbow Dash seem to have made up the competition on the spot, so there's nothing to suggest they were consulting historical rules. Nobody made a big deal until Applejack brought it up, by which point it was too late.

1.14 Suited for Success
"Pinkie: Don't you think my dress would be more me with some balloons? Rarity: Um, well... Pinkie: DO IT! .... Pinkie: More balloons! There's too many balloons! More candy! No, less candy! Ooh, I know: streamers! Rarity: Streamers? Pinkie: Whose dress is this? Rarity: Streamers it is."
 * Why did so many people start hating Fluttershy after this episode? Sure, she was pretty brutal commenting on her new dress, but it's not like it wasn't what exactly Rarity wanted. In fact, Fluttershy at least tried to pretend she liked the dress (even though she clearly didn't) and only finally burst into her rant - after lots of struggling and sweating - when Rarity basically pressed her against a wall, and she didn't seem very happy doing it either. And yet somehow this one short scene brought her more enemies and hate art than any other character from the main cast earned throughout whole series, like she did it on purpose just to hurt Rarity. To be fair, Rainbow Dash was much more mean to poor Rarity in this episode just by openly calling her a laughing stock at the worst possible moment (she was already going through a breakdown at the time) but not one person said a bad word about her because of that.
 * Fans are weird like that? And I agree it's not fair. I love that episode dearly but for the former half of the episode, the girls were pretty flanky and self-absorbed towards Rarity, it's stupid that just Fluttershy got singled out.
 * It probably has something to do with the fact that Brutal Honesty is completely in character for Rainbow Dash; The issues with Fluttershy probably stem from the fact that she's normally so nice. It makes this one incident seem worse. But yeah, even then you can hardly blame her, given that Rarity was (literally) asking for it.
 * It also might have be the completely out-of-left-field knowledge of sewing that had never been hinted at, and the snooty *hmph* and leg-cross at the end of her rant. It just seemed off-character.
 * There's also a fair argument that Fluttershy's behaviour towards Rarity during the second half of the song was worse than the others. The other ponies were simply trying to apply their own priorities to the dress (being practicality, coolness, accuracy, and whatever it is Pinkie Pie does), and while they're at fault for not listening to Rarity and respecting her expertise and her generosity, Fluttershy was outright telling Rarity "your sewing sucks, sew better".
 * She was nowhere near that blunt, and I would think most people would take it as useful constructive criticism, compared to the other four.
 * I didn't really hate Fluttershy for her behaviour in this episode (in fact, I haven't even thought of this before reading this Headscratcher), so here goes devil's advocate: To put a slightly different spin on the second respondent's argument, out of all Rarity's friends Fluttershy is the only one who displayed presumptions of fashion sense and knowledge of clothes-making. One would expect her criticism to actually be constructive and her dress to not turn out a disaster. Yet apparently her idea of French haute couture involves bird nests,﻿ quilts, and cellophane flowers. Perhaps if the writers made her ask for more "nature" in her dress, rather than give her "freaky knowledge" of sewing, it would have been easier to swallow.
 * Fluttershy could have offered the same criticism in a much less bitchy, patronizing tone. And she also just flat-out insulted Rarity by calling her hand-made dress "prêt-à-porter" ("off the rack").
 * My pick for worst behaved during the second montage is Pinkie Pie. Some pertinent quotes:


 * But Pinkie doesn't really have any episode center around her, all episode where she teach some lesson are other characters episodes.
 * The closest Pinkie has to a spotlight episode right now is "Griffon the Brush-Off", and that's arguably more focused on introducing Gilda and her relationship with Dash. To be fair, Pinkie does seem to seriously consider Twilight's suggestion that she's just jealous -- but then Gilda kicks so many ponies in front of her that she's justified in giving her a Humiliation Conga. Still, maybe that not-quite-learned lesson will come back in a later ep...
 * Nitpick: She didn't give her a Humiliation Conga. She just threw a party, and Gilda set off pranks set by Rainbow, who just intended for random guests, not necessarily Gilda, to trip.
 * She learned a lesson about not suspecting the worst about your friends in "Party of One".
 * And a lesson about not judging people by first impressions in "Bridle Gossip".
 * A new episode for Season 2 has been announced that will be centred around Pinkie Pie: "Baby Cakes".


 * Why does France exist in Equestria?
 * Because they blew it all up. God damn them all to hell.
 * 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


 * 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" bothers this troper. 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.
 * Doylist answer: Most Writers Are Human. Watsonian answer: the ponies simply have a word ("French") which by pure coincidence can be used like ours.


 * 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.


 * 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.

1.15 Feeling Pinkie Keen

 * You know what really makes me scratch my head? The fact that so many people took an episode about acceptance and tolerance and somehow twisted the aesop into being the biggest direct attack on religion since Not All Dogs Go To Heaven. Seriously, how can you even come to that conclusion? It makes no sense in context of the episode.
 * According to Word of God, the aesop wasn't even about acceptance and tolerance, but the dangers of hubris. I think the unfortunate Accidental Aesop can be attributed to Twilight undergoing an extremely painful, over-the-top Humiliation Conga in an effort to explain Pinkie's ability, and the episode's ending with her embracing it wholeheartedly, apparently abandoning all efforts to explain it. Hence, what seems to be a message of pro-dogmatism.
 * What the hell is it with TV Tropes and NADGTH? That's like a new religion in its own right.
 * Part of it seemed to be just unintentional wording and dialogue choices as well as minor plot elements. A big chunk of the plot was about trusting Pinkie versus Twilight wanting to find out why... rather than simply Twilight 'knowing better' and showing that in other ways (or wrapping the plot up in other ways). And to be fair, it's kind of hard to have this sort of situation without people projecting a religion vs. about it.
 * Word choice didn't help much: "You've got to take a leap of faith" seems to have been designed precisely for such a misunderstanding.


 * 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.


 * 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 had known Pinkie for longer and she could 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.
 * The scientific method is that established theories are discarded if they do not comply with observed fact. Superstition is when observed facts are discarded because they do not comply with established theory. Which one was Twilight doing in this episode? So, yes, the core Aesop is sound (the true rationalist does not arbitrarily refuse to acknowledge something when slapped in the face with it, even if they don't immediately understand it), but the presentation was horribly botched.


 * 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.

The Aesop at the end annoys me because it's presented as Twilight acknowledging that the limited view of the world she's been dogmatically clinging to all episode my not be all there is, the only problem with that is she's been talking about science all episode, and science doesn't just stick dogmatically to one and one only view of the world (at least it's not suppose to) it's just sceptical which doesn't mean I won't believe any thing, just that it will only say things with certainty if they've been "proven beyond reasonable doubt"
 * Do the writers honestly think science is dogmatic rather then just just sceptical in nature?
 * Nobody ever said that science was wrong, just Twilight in this instance. Twilight wasn't acting like a scientist at all. She repeatedly ignored instances of "Pinkie sense" functioning out of an intent to prove herself right rather than actually gain understanding. Instead of trying to piece together what was actually happening, she went out of her way to "disprove" Pinkie simply because she didn't want to believe it. In other situations, her skepticism and research skills have proven to be great assets. It's just that this one time she was being stubborn and dogmatic, if only because Pinkie's premonition claims offended her because she viewed it as an insult to effort she put into her own magic. If this pattern was repeated, you'd have an argument. In this case, it's just Twilight being wrong thanks to being motivated by spite rather than the pursuit of knowledge. Frankly it bothers me that people take everything so personally on this show. A character being wrong in one instance does not mean that the writers are against everything that character stands for.
 * The issue is Twilight acts as a very stereotypical strawman skeptic in the episode. Skeptics tend to get a particularly raw deal in most media, and this episode seems to be a particularly bad example of one. While Twilight is acting in a way that a skeptic can sometimes act, as skeptics like all people are prone to bias (The entire point of skepticism being to do ones best to remove that bias), I found the episode offensive partially because of the media in general. For example, it's not offensive to have a single black character be a thug or criminal, but if 90% of blacks in the media were criminals, than every show that perpetuates that notion is going to be offensive. Twilight was just the latest in a long line of TV Skeptics acting in an extremely unskeptical way. If the portrayal of skeptics like this were more uncommon, the episode might have made a fine lesson about how no-one is immune to this kind of thinking. But instead, this episode simply perpetuated the stereotype of the arrogant and blind skeptic, whether it intended to or not. Also, the 'leap of faith' line REALLY didn't help. If you want to piss off a skeptic, try to extol the virtues of faith (as something other than a synonym for trust) to them. Lastly, Twilight gives up on understanding what could be an incredible discovery in the field of magic, and doesn't appear to forward the discovery to anyone else to study. A real scientist might give up on understanding something if she finds it too difficult to study further, but the idea of not putting the discovery out there for others to work on is nothing short of criminal. In short, it's likely that this episode was an unintentional perfect storm of things intended to drive a certain community of people absolutely crazy.

1.16 Sonic Rainboom

 * 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 colours 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.


 * 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 creaturs.

1.17 Stare Master

 * Why are the Cutie Mark Crusaders trying so hard to get their cutie marks? The point of Call Of The Cutie was that it's better to not have a cutie mark due to having far more potential, being great at anything, thrill of discovering who you are etcetera. Aesop Amnesia?
 * You got it. Twilight lampshades it in the talent show episode.
 * the Aesop Amnesia is justified however. in "Call of the Cutie", Rainbow Dash didn't seem to understand this point either when trying to help Apple Bloom. and Scootaloo idolizes Rainbow, so she won't get it either and as the de facto leader of the CMC, Scootaloo needs to realize this in order for Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom to as well.
 * I don't think they've quite forgotten the aesop. Apple Bloom realizes it's not the end of the world if she doesn't have her cutie mark yet, and they all realize they're full of potential. It doesn't change the fact that they really, really want cutie marks.
 * Old habits die hard.
 * The real aesop of Call Of The Cutie wasn't that it's better to have a bare flank, but rather that you shouldn't be ashamed of yourself whether you're bare-flanked or not. The CMCs have learned self-respect, but that doesn't mean that can't still desire cutie marks.
 * They learned that they have potential. Now they're trying to realise it.


 * 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.

1.18 The Show Stoppers

 * Show Stoppers, Show Stoppers, Show Stoppers. It's one thing to recognize the things you have an affinity for. It's another to actively pigeonhole someone, especially a child, into rejecting the things they aren't immediately good at. You do not openly cringe at three little kids who want to enter a talent show, even if it's clear they're going to bomb; you smile and encourage them to work hard at whatever they do. Twilight Sparkle's behavior was incredibly inappropriate.
 * She was trying to help them get their cutie mark. I guess it just shows the truth of the aseop, 'you're just going to have to wait for it'.
 * We're talking about a world where little school ponies have to discover what they will be wearing on their butts for the rest of their lives. It's not like our rules about upbringing would apply well in Equestria.
 * The entire point is to discover your true calling in life -- getting a butt cutie mark is just a by-product that symbolizes that. And you're forgetting that this is, in the end, a kid's show with direct aesops...in this case, a rotten one.
 * I think that cutie marks are open to interpretation. Rarity's mark is several gems, and she's a clothing designer. She could've just as easily been a jeweler or a diamond miner. But she isn't, despite her affinity for those things. She's still doing something she chose to do.
 * We're getting an episode where we find out how the main cast got their cutie marks. Hopefully that will clear up some questions.
 * Aren't you being a bit harsh? "Pigeonholing"? All she did was, when they first heard about the contest, encourage them to do the things they like to do; i.e. the things they're talented at and passionate about, like Sweetie and singing. She only "cringed" when she realized they had all kind of missed the point and were trying to be something they really weren't.
 * I think that the point the episode was trying to make was that the Crusaders were putting too much effort into trying to make the cutie marks appear rather than just do what they enjoy and are already talented at (which is what actually makes the cutie marks appear). All three of them had already displayed obvious talents earlier in the episode (Sweetie Belle can sing, Scootaloo is a decent artist and a hell of a boarder, and Apple Bloom basically took the clubhouse from "lost cause" to "pretty" in the course of an afternoon). The thing is that none of them use those talents in their show (Sweetie Belle does the set design and costumes instead of singing, Scootaloo does the musical composition instead of the coreography, and Apple Bloom does the dancing instead of the set design). They had all the talent needed to put a good show together, but each pony was doing the wrong job. The intended moral was probably something more along the lines of "play to your strengths" or "don't waste what talents you have", both of which are decent morals. Of course, the episode didn't handle it very well and it could easily be misconstrued as "don't try new things".
 * Since rewatching the episode, it's more likely that the moral was too subtle. The intended moral above was implied by Twilight Sparkle before the contest was shown to the CMC. And on top of that, this was after a montage of them trying new things. Of course, that ties in to my personal theory that the complaints on this particular episode here were made by someone who didn't pay enough attention. As for the "main point" here, I see nothing wrong with Twilight's behavior. Especially since the alternative is IMO much more wrong.
 * Actually, the whole point of Twilight's advice to the Cutie Mark Crusaders was that the easiest way to get your cutie mark was to find talents you're good at. Just because you have a certain cutie mark doesn't mean you can't try other things also. Look at Pinkie Pie, her cutie mark was found because she's great at making parties, but she's also a great baker too. Fluttershy's cutie mark was found when she discovers her love and connection to animals, but she's also a talented singer and fashion model also. It's not like the kids can't have multiple talents in life, but specifically getting a cutie mark just means discovering one of your strongest talents.
 * In the wake of "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", there's an element of Fridge Brilliance. Twilight would think that the "correct" way to find a cutie mark, so to speak, is to recognize what you're clearly good at and then work hard at it...because that's the way she got her's. She didn't try other things first, like Applejack, or have a moment of epiphany like Rainbow Dash or Fluttershy; she became inspired to study magic, did so, and discovered she was gifted in it. The possibility of trying many new things to find one that clicks -- or that this might be a perfectly reasonable way to find your calling -- probably wouldn't occur to her.
 * The CMC weren't in the contest to win (at least not as their primary goal), they were in the competition to get their Cutie Marks. In this series a Cutie Mark basically symbolizes the inner nature of the wearer, something that is difficult to find for humans over an entire lifetime, let alone for children. All Twilight did was try to encourage the CMC to recognize their talents and natures in a relatively subtle way by asking them to think about what they personally want to do instead of just randomly trying numerous hair-brained schemes and giving up if they don't get immediate results. If they were just doing the competition for fun, Twilight wouldn't have interfered.
 * Agreed. Their admitted goal was to find their cutie marks. It wasn't to have fun, or to find out something they're 'merely good at'. They wanted their cutie marks, and Twilight was initially happy for them, because she thought that they were finally going about it how they were supposed to. She reacts negatively when she realizes they are so close, but continuing to miss the point. Even if none of them got their cutie marks if they played to their strengths, she would still recognize that they were finally realizing that getting your mark was more about doing what you like and are already good at, and generally approve of what they did because they were no longer trying to 'force' the issue.


 * 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.


 * How in the world did a regular electric fan create a strong enough air current to knock over the sets?

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 Fuel.... 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.
 * 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.


 * 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 deconstructed the idea of the Damsel in Distress into the evolution of the Badass Damsel, 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.


 * 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 Curb Stomp 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.

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 Colour'? 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?

1.21 Over a Barrel

 * 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?')


 * 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 mounain 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! Especially makes since as Earth Ponies are the strongest of the ponies with the most endurance-- which means they probably have more magic than either the pegasi or unicorns. But since earth ponies have to have their hooves on the ground to use their magic....


 * As a Canadian History minor, the conclusion kind of irked me. IRL, natives traded with white settlers because they liked their processed European food and their alcohol, both of which contributed to the destruction of their lifestyle and race. I wonder where the Buffalo tribe is going to be in a decade after becoming dependent on a non-indigenous food...
 * DERAIL! I've been to two American history courses. One lecturer considered the furs acquired through the North American fur trade genuinely useful and important goods. Another considered them a fashion luxury. I'm more impressed with the former as a teacher, but lack independent verification for the accuracy of his teachings. Could you tell me how it is? (For the record, I didn't hear of processed food being traded - lots of cookware and other such things, though.)
 * The first teacher was more correct. Beaver felt hats were a "fashion luxury" in the sense that they were very popular and acted as something of a status symbol, but (to draw a modern equivalency) a brand-name Nike shoe is still a shoe and is therefore useful and important. The second teacher seems to be implying that because beaver felt was a "luxury" it was somehow unworthy. Beaver felt is objectively superior to other felts, and beavers were plentiful at the time. Economics took its course. You're also correct that most trade with Amerind tribes was for manufactured goods and alcohol rather than processed foods. You give a man a pie, he eats for a day. You give him a hunting rifle...
 * If human history is any telling, the Buffalo Tribe probably won't do well at all. I can't speak for the natives in the United States, but here in Canada, have they not become a bit of a "thorn"? People know about them, yet no one really cares, in spite of the unethical treatments they've been put through (that's putting it mildly). I think that this episode was meant as a bit of a metaphor for cultural crashes in general, rather than a specific example. That said, give them credit for taking a bold move by actually doing something so close to reality. The conclusion, however, may in fact be a case of Did Not Do the Research. Then again, even if they did, how much of that can you translate into a show primarily watched by a young audience?
 * The fact that the battle between the two civilizations involved apple pies being used as weapons suggests that this is meant to be a sanitized expy of North American history, not a literal telling. The producers were trying to use the backdrop of Manifest Destiny to make a statement about unity between cultures WITHOUT having to face the bitter reality that actually came from such a thing. Because, you know, it's a kid's show. Just think of a politically correct version of the Old West where everyone learned to respect each others' cultures and population growth is kept to a minimum, and you'll get the idea.
 * My political science nerd and recent pony convert has a theory that actually fits better than the obvious settlers/Native Americans one. The pony settlement is Israel, the buffalo are the West Bank, the apple trees are the settlements. The solution? The same as the most logical for the Israel-West Bank situation; removal of the settlements that interfere with Palestinians and shared access to Jerusalem (the apple pies).
 * I think that the settler/Indian aesthetics weren't intended to parallel the historical events too closely; this show is aimed at elementary schoolers after all. The message isn't a historical statement, the point was that all the problems could have been avoided if the two sides had been willing to talk things out and come to a compromise rather than just fight over the land. It was stated in episode that both sides had valid reasons for claiming the land, after all. Not to mention that there's a pretty solid layer of Rule of Funny over the whole thing that makes reading too much into a bit of a problem.
 * Considering that it's more of a Broad Strokes version of history, it's pretty obvious that it's really a "get-along-with-one-another-talk-out-your-differences-dammit" Aesop cloaked in a settlers vs. natives appearance. They probably just picked that one because they wanted to play with lots of Western tropes.
 * Im sorry, but is this even really possible to discuss? Accusing a show about a highly advanced magical equine race living in a manually controlled planet full of hervibores because one of the cultures looks somewhat like one of our own and don't follow our own templates. No offense to Historical Bluff, but I mean, why would anybody accuse Did Not Do the Research in a Sugar Bowl show so bizarre and alien to our own? Why would you need even to "defend" or make excuses that their history is not a carbon copy down to the last molecule of our own?. Why would you even expect it? Im sorry, but there is nitpicking and just plain sillyness and stick up the ass and yeah, is not like the relationship of the western front and the Indians... so what? They are talking horses who managed to construct a complex society with hooves and psychic sparkles and use bakery as weaponry against gigantic dragon worshiping spiritual buffalos... boy, it really sound flat out weird when you said out loud, ha?
 * Yes, it is possible to discuss.
 * In what way is this an analogy for either Canadian or American history? Yes, IRL there were dealings between natives and non-natives that ended poorly for the natives, but that's not what happened in the show. In the show, the buffalo get to stampede like they used to and they get some free apples to go with it, and meanwhile the settlers get to maintain their way of life. Who loses out on this? It's a fair deal for both sides. Just because processed food and alcohol contributed to Native American troubles IRL does not mean that the buffalo are somehow going to suffer because of their newfound access to apples; why would they? It's not like apples are addictive or something. And just because they're eating a non-indigenous food doesn't mean they're dependent on it; obviously the buffalo have been managing to feed themselves before the deal was struck and there's no reason why they would lose that ability. (It's not like they were all corralled against their will onto some kind of reservation, which is what happened IRL to the Native Americans. And anyway the fact that I eat bananas doesn't make me dependent on banana-producing nations, etc. etc..) Referencing the human rights abuses committed against real-life Native Americans is similarly ridiculous; there are no such abuses depicted on the show. The only wrong they suffered was the temporary loss of their stampeding grounds, which was resolved at the end. Again, this is not meant to be a retelling of actual history. If anything, it's a statement about what should have happened between natives and non-natives in the settler days.
 * Would you have liked the episode more if it had ended with the ponies prevailing over the buffalo in a series of brutal wars and then forcing the buffalo onto reservations where poverty, crime, and alcoholism would all be endemic?
 * I assume they're going to be decimated. The ponies have presumably had a good amount of time to adjust to a high-glucose diet, while the bison have just been introduced to apple pies. Type II diabetes is going to be just as much of a problem as alcoholism was IRL.
 * Little Strongheart tells Rainbow Dash that the bison never meant to hurt anyone when taking Bloomberg...except that they attempted multiple times to derail the entire train (which would have undoubtedly killed at least some passengers) before switching over to the relatively harmless method of detaching the caboose.
 * They seem to have been trying to stop the train from moving. When the pulling ponies knock them back (who knew they could be so tough?), they resorted to taking the caboose while it was still moving. Perhaps it was a bluff, or they suspected no passengers were on this train (Little Strongheart was surprised when Dash appeared on top of the train).
 * I don't think they were actively trying to derail the train. It seemed more like a diversionary tactic, so that Little Strongheart could get on the roof and disconnect the caboose without interference.


 * How did Chief Thunderhooves get knocked off course by an apple pie while in mid-jump? Given the momentum he'd built up during his charge, he should still have hit Sheriff Silver Star.
 * The apple pies are made out of dark matter. Also, cartoon physics.
 * For that matter, who even threw that last pie? Up until the point where Chief Thunderhooves goes down, there didn't appear to be anypony anywhere near Sheriff Silver Star.


 * Is Little Strongheart seriously the only non-adult buffalo in the herd? Or just the only one that chooses to interact with the adults?

1.22 A Bird in the Hoof

 * Why does Princess Celestia simply leave Philomena behind, for Fluttershy to steal/take to try and "cure"?
 * One word: Trollestia
 * Or she was just in that much of a rush. Celestia probably told her guards to go back for Philomena but Fluttershy had already taken her.
 * A better question is what Philomena's doing there in the first place. It's reasonable that she'd be left behind as Celestia meets with the mayor, since who brings a pet to governmental chats?
 * It's suggested multiple times that she does not like stiff official governmental stuff. Maybe she brought the bird along to bring some oddity into it to make the atmosphere less dignified.
 * It's also possible that Celestia wanted for Philomena to show off her rebirth in front of the mane six, though hopefully without trolling them first. Or at least not to that extent.


 * Fluttershy describes the party for Princess Celestia as a "Brunch" yet the clock shows 4:00. Brunch is a meal between between breakfast and lunch. You don't have Brunch that late in the afternoon.
 * The animators probably forgot about the clock when using that background.
 * Alternatively, where the ponies are concerned "Brunch" is a term for any special meal/snack gathering that isn't one of the official mealtimes. There have been RL uses of Brunch that take place in the afternoon.


 * Why didn't Fluttershy or Twilight Sparkle recognize the phoenix? Fluttershy usually knows everything about animals, and Twilight Sparkle is not only hugely studious and full of knowledge, but is Princess Celestia's personal student. You're telling me Fluttershy has never heard of one, and Twilight Sparkle never read about them or saw her mentor's pet before?
 * Philomenia didn't exactly look like a book-standard phoenix at the time, and Twilight Sparkle is nothing if not a bundle of eager book smarts wrapped around massive gaps of practical knowledge. Even if Twilight had seen Philomenia before, she might not recognize her near the end of her lifespan, and we've no reason to believe that Philomenia's getting old and bursting into flame on a regular basis. Fluttershy's got a lot of practical experience, but we're outright told that phoenix are uncommon in Ponyville or Cloudsdale, and even where Fluttershy does have massive hidden depths, she doesn't often have the ability to implement it in reality. I've a feeling that she's more interesting in the sort of critters she actually runs into.
 * Philomenia spent most of the episode looking like nothing so much as a diseased parrot. When that suddenly bursts into flames and a completely different bird rises from the ashes, it's reasonable to expect confusion.

1.23 The Cutie Mark Chronicles

 * Why were Rainbow Dash's childhood bullies making fun of her flying skill and dismissing the Sonic Rainboom as an "old mares' tale" if they themselves have actually seen her pull it off?
 * Maybe not. One of them crashed into a pillar a probably got knock out, and when Dash charged at full speed and left the other bully behind, he was kinda thrown afar because of the wind following her, perhaps ending up in a crash and knock out as well. Doesn't justify much, really, but it's something. Perhaps even if everyone told them, they refuse to believe it without seeing them just out of dislike for Rainbow Dash.
 * Even if they did see it, they're the sort who would claim they didn't, just to be jerks.
 * At first this bothered me, especially after seeing "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" where it's obvious that everyone else at the race saw it, too. However, like the troper right above this said, they're jerks. Not to mention not that bright. What bothers me is that it bothered Rainbow that three ponies didn't believe in her first Sonic Rainboom.
 * Rainbow tends to have some self-confidence issues, even when she does win. Add in the stress she had about trying what for her was a once-in-a-lifetime feat in front of her idols and God..
 * It's not the point that she knew she had done the Sonic Rainboom once long ago. The point was she knew she hadn't been able to do it while practising now, and wouldn't be able to do it again. (Or wouldn't have, if she hadn't had a motivator equally great as last time, which also made her forget to worry about it.)
 * Regardless of the fact they may not have actually seen the Sonic Rainboom, they cannot deny that Rainbow Dash beat them in that race. Hard. So why do they still give her crap?
 * Because, as previously mentioned, they're jerks.
 * Most likely they simply didn't see it, due to being either concussed or spiralling out of control at the time.


 * Where did Celestia get Spike? How would it be explained in canon? The only things I can think of that make sense are pretty depressing: either he's an orphan or his parents gave him up. Also, who named him?
 * There is one possibility that isn't depressing. The dragon-flights could have a treaty with Equestria, offering a few eggs and maybe their services in times of great need in return for a supply of gems and a safe place for the dragon-flights to roost. Maybe someone else can figure out a better set of terms between the two, but that's enough to get the point across for now.
 * "In the name of equestria, her royal highness Celestia, mistress of the sun, High-magistrix of the magic academy and general of the equestrian armies, bestows upon the dragonkin all the lands within the Nibenay valley, and guarantees them safety within, and only within, their own lands, as well as the right to self-govern. Any dragon who leaves Nibenay is subject to equestrian law, and needs written permission from her highness, princess Celestia, to perform any acts of fire-breathing or meat consumption. In return, the dragonkin promise loyalty to the kingdom of celestia, service in times of war and a tribute of two dragon eggs every hundred years, of which the hatchlings will be assigned to and trained along with students of the magic academy of equestria."
 * Alternately, there's some kind of fosterage/cultural/hostage exchange going on and there's a few unicorn colts shining scales and sorting gems for elder dragons.
 * Some stories say that dragon eggs need humans to hatch, so there may be something similar going on here.
 * Another possibility: Spike's egg wasn't even a real egg; it was an oval shaped rock with green spots painted on it. The test was an Unwinnable Training Simulation to see how the candidates would respond to an impossible challenge. When Twilight went Beyond the Impossible and actually hatched a dragon from it, it was just her Reality Warper powers at work.
 * Or Dragons simply don't care about their offspring. They lay their eggs and leave them, and that's it. The dragons shown so far that aren't Spike include an apathetic one that does not get along with any of the ponies except Fluttershy, and a crazy jealous one willing to kill his own kind, so they hardly seem to be a compassionate species.


 * Pinkie Pie's backstory in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" irritated me. I don't seriously believe that Pinkie used to be gloomy. The Amish deal and the rock farm also strike me as weird. Then again, good ol' Pinkie could be making this all up.
 * Actually the Amish thing does explain the gloom: She had a strict upbringing and while she probably was the same, being random and singing aren't things the Amish are known for. However the Rainbow caused her to let out all of the energy she had pent up and the party at the end was more a celebration for her family and their hard work than anything and told Pinky Pie she could be herself, and thus she got her mark.
 * Just making something clear: being Amish doesn't make someone gloomy. Just because they have no need for fancy things like bright clothes and technology, it doesn't mean that they're devoid of fun.
 * I learned that later, that was my lack of research. And to be fair they probably did have fun, and if her family didn't love each other, her story would have had a Downer Ending. And someone below pointed out the farming parts where the gloom came from, the rainboom just awakned the natural insanity that had been locked inside by hard work and focus on her duties.
 * Just because Amish are allowed to have fun doesn't mean that this particular Amish (or Amish-esque) family had fun very often. Maybe they were all fairly gloomy from farming rocks (as others have pointed out.) And anyway, it's not that hard to imagine that Pinkie Pie was once gloomy; in fact that makes it kindof inspiring when she turns her whole life around.
 * She totally made it up. She tells the story differently every time, like how the Joker talks about his scars.
 * "You wanna know how I got this cutie mark?"
 * Man, Pinkie Pie is that universe's Joker. That explains sooo much.
 * Cupcakes. Oh dear Celestia, it explains frigging Cupcakes.
 * I assumed the gloom came from the "rock farm" part of her life, not the Amish part.
 * Rule of Funny.


 * Why does Spike's adult dragon form look so different from the other adult dragons seen so far? Is it a sign that Spike is a special dragon?
 * If you're referring to Twilight's magic burst shown in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", I figure that what happened to Spike is what would happen if you super size an infant. He'll probably look more like other dragons when he actually grows up.
 * Well, Spike already doesn't look much like other dragons even without the magic transformation. No wings, for one. Maybe he's a different race of dragon? Or maybe dragons go through transformations as they grow up, and Twilight's spell aged him without any of those happening.
 * We've seen three dragons in the series so far and two of those are Palette Swaps of each other to save money. There are lots of different types of dragons, even within specific mythologies dragons vary greatly from one to another.
 * We've seen a sea serpent in the second episode. It's perfectly possible Spike is a wingless dragon species, incapable of flight, but sturdier and stronger. It would also explain how can he take so much abuse despite being so young.
 * This. If you look at the picture of the dragon on the side of the cart, it has no wings either. Spike is meant to be wingless.
 * Something that just occured to this troper that also helps and is actually a bit of Fridge Brilliance: Celestia would never give her students a dragon hatchling as a pet from a dangerous dragon, not to meniton how hard it would be getting an egg from a territorial dragon. Spike's Species probably gives some of their eggs to the princess as a peace offering or dontation or what have you, giving her students their own partner that won't try and kill everypony around it.
 * Looking at the giant Spike, he's obviously some kind of Godzilla-type. And Godzilla is usually the hero or at least the Not So Evil amongst the kaiju.
 * Or maybe these dragons aren't born with wings? Like... they grow them later? They earn them somehow? They come when a dragon hits dragon puberty? Spike's drawn how he is so he'd look cute and his design would look less odd beside the ponies.
 * A later episode shows Spike as he would become if he succumbs to greed. Maybe the form we see is the form Spike would take if he grows up with his greed in check.


 * Applejack says she was younger than the Cutie Mark Crusaders are when she got her cutie mark. So, that means Apple Bloom wasn't born yet. But in her flashback, we see no trace of her parents, just Big Mac and Granny Smith. So where did Apple Bloom come from?
 * Your math may be off. It's possible that, for instance, Apple Bloom is 10, Applejack is 18, and Applejack got her cutie mark at the age of 9. In that case, Apple Bloom would have been a year old by that time. (We don't see her in the flashback, but she might have been too young to run around.)
 * I like this answer. 'Apple Bloom isn't seen..because her parents are caring for a newborn foal. (Or trying to create her, but let's not explore that.)'
 * It's still a little problematic, because when young Applejack is looking out the window and reminiscing about life on the farm, she only wonders what Big Macintosh and Granny Smith are doing. She doesn't mention her parents at all, suggesting that they're either dead or otherwise absent from her life. It's possible that Apple Bloom has already been born, though, and she's just not bothering to think about her baby sister - in fact, that might be a reason for her to leave home in the first place.


 * Pinkie Pie grew up on a rock farm... A what?
 * A rock farm. To be more helpful, it was conjectured in a fanfiction that is not remembered at this time that the rock farm was where most gemstones came from, assuming that Rarity's ability to seek them out is a... well, rare talent.
 * There's also the possibility that she's making up everything but the rainbow.
 * Rock farms to produce gemstones makes a lot of sense. Rarity's ability to find gems is linked to her special talent, so there's a chance that it could be rather rare. And farms that produce gems would explain why gems are so plentiful that the ponies have no problem with Spike eating them like candy. Though that also means Rarity potentially stole from Pinkie's family.
 * Rocks are commonly "farmed" for raw materials and other uses, even today. Of course, the places where this happens are called "quarries," not "rock farms," and it's not actual "farming" as much as simply "gathering and processing." And by that I mean they use tons of dynamite to blow chunks of rock out of the earth and then round them up to sell to their clients. So... not quite the same thing.
 * The idea of Pinkie Pie having access to explosives is both hillarious and terrifying.
 * Either a 'rock farm' is a 1) Quarry, 2) Geode/magic gemstone growing farm, or 3) 'Rocks' grow due to gravity when the solar system forms. Thus Pinky Pie helped create the planet! And that's how Equestria was made! (Also, her sisters were light grey and purple. Which god-tier ponies are also respectivly light colored and purple?)
 * Maybe a rock farm is just like a rock garden, but bigger?
 * This is a world where they have to wrap up winter. Perhaps the rock farming is how raw rock materials are gathered to make certain landmarks or natural designs. Earth-shaping, in a sense. Though in practice I'd go for the rock-farm=quarry idea.
 * It's also possible that it was simply a more traditional quarry or mine, and Pinkie Pie just called it a "rock farm" because she figured that's what her audience--children from a rural farming community--would best understand as a metaphor.
 * It's also possible that it's even FURTHER metaphorical, and actually tells the story of how Equestria was made. The rock farm, the Sonic Rainboom, the party... it could all be a very ancient tale shrouded in riddles and enigmas. (More likely it's just Pinkie being Pinkie.)


 * Pinkie claims that where she grew up, there was no talking involved. And yet, the only people that DO speak are herself, her mother and her father.
 * No talking doesn't mean "no talking ever." It means "no idle chitchat during work."
 * Exaggeration. Plus, I doubt that Pinkie would've outright said 'And then Daddy walked out that morning and said, "Time to harvest the rocks from the south field."'


 * If Applejack's aunt and uncle Orange are urban socialites, then how do they have oranges as their cutie marks? I wouldn't imagine there's much room for growing oranges in the city.
 * Maybe they don't grow oranges so much as sell them. The Orange family could own a large orange plantation just outside of town, and a factory to make orange juice and other orange related products.
 * I think it's just a reference to the Apples and Oranges allegory. The cityfolk are vastly different from the ones in Ponyville.
 * Or they made their money in the frozen concentrated orange juice market.
 * Cutie Marks aren't always literal: Cherilee's daisies don't limit her to being a gardener, Twilight Sparkle's only an astronomer as a hobby, Fluttershy's not just an entomologist, and Rarity can not only do fashion, but do fashion that doesn't involve gems. For all we know, the Oranges might represent having a tough skin for dealing with criticism or being good at bringing disparate groups to work together or something.
 * Rarity's talent is that she can find gems in the ground/inside rocks. The fashion thing is another matter entirely. And the orange mark might also mean they deal with cleaning products.
 * That's her signature spell, not her talent -- by the same standard, Twilight's talent is teleportation, not magic. Her talent is bringing out beauty in things -- finding the gemstones hidden in ordinary-looking rocks and earth is one aspect of this, but she can also do things like seamlessly weave her tail into the remains of a missing mustache, or turn what foliage remains on an ugly, bare branch into topiary.
 * Then signature spells in unicorns become their cutie marks. "Bringing the beauty out of things" is hardly represented by gems, but finding gems... well... In Twilight's case, her signature spell(AKA, when the Sonic Rainboom hit her) was to have magic incontinence, so it still fits both her magic talent and her spell.
 * Not necessarily. Gemstones don't necessarily indicate bringing out beauty, but they're a common symbol of beauty in general. Cutie Marks aren't always direct or literal -- Rainbow Dash's talent isn't making rainbow lightning, but her Cutie Mark brings to mind speed, and Fluttershy is talented with more than just butterflies. Cheerilee's cutie mark is not only symbolic, but the fact that it is and how exactly it symbolizes her talent is directly explained.
 * Before ultra-fast transportation made fruit from around the world an everyday occurrence in supermarkets, oranges were a rare treat for anyone but the super-rich. Maybe the orange cutie marks have some tangential thing to do with that?


 * Why do so many people think Pinkie's Cutie Mark story was a case of Unreliable Narrator and it probably didn't happen?
 * Because she ended the tale with "And that's how Equestria was made". That signifies that at some point in her mind she was no longer relaying her cutie mark story. Remember, the question central to Unreliable Narrator is "Is the narrator telling the truth?" and that particular question is applicable here. This is a question the Cutie Mark Crusaders have by the time they find Rainbow Dash.
 * It seemed to me she was just being Pinkie.
 * I figured the entire story was true; she just screwed up at the very end with "And that's how Equestria was made" when it should have been "And that's how I got my cutie mark."
 * And then Pinkie offers to tell them the story of how she got her cutie mark, implying that she didn't already tell them that exact story.
 * Or implying that she's got two punchlines mixed up. A non-sequitur is not proof of outright lying.
 * It's probably more because of the rock farm part. Sure, there are excuses of it being a quarry, but the visuals suggested an actual rock farm.
 * While not a full retcon this enviroment seems inconsistant with the song laugh in Episode 2.
 * No it isn't; Granny Pie hasn't been shown on-screen yet. And there's still a gap between Pinkie getting her cutie mark and the events of Episode 2.
 * Also, every other pony's tale in "Chronicles" also explained, more or less, how them came to be where they were when we first met them in the pilot. Pinkie's story ended with her now happy on her family's rock farm. So why would she subsequently have left the farm to live in Ponyville with the Cakes? At the very least, something is missing from this tale.
 * An ability to host parties cannot last long on a rock farm. Perhaps it will come up in a future episode how Pinkie Pie moved from the farm to Sugarcube Corner. Maybe the Cakes are distant relatives.


 * Was that Cheerilee in Rarity's flashback? Does that make them Older Than They Look? Considering Cherilee looked teenaged, to tweenaged, in her 80s picture that'd make them in the pony equivalent of their thirties.. Which makes sense.
 * Propably Cherilee is teacher in that young age. Horever ponies can still have 30 years but for them it can equivalent of late teens or early twenties (because Ponies can live longer).
 * They don't live in our society, so the equivalent of 80s fashion wouldn't neccessarily be 20-30 years ago for them.
 * She was a pre-teen, or young teen though. 20-30 Pony years seems about right.


 * Pinkie Pie's "And that is how Equestria was made"... now that I think about it, it is more like an expression than a literal statement. But it confused me then since Pinkie Pie is known to be Literal-Minded. Besides, Pinkie Pie then offered that she will tell the story of how she gained her cutie mark. Unless, by "And that is how Equestria was made", she means "And that is how she started her party spree" instead of "And that is how she gained cutie mark", it can really sound weird.
 * It's a funny non-sequitur. Pinkie does random stuff like that to be funny.


 * When the CMC are talking to Rarity, they mention that most of the other kids have gotten their cutie marks already. Maybe trying everything they can possibly think of for brief amounts of time is actually slowing them down? One would think that since all of their classmates have their marks, they might think "Hey, what did the other kids do to get theirs?" The answer in most cases would probably be that they realized something they enjoyed all along was what their talent was.
 * They've all heard that they should get their marks from what they already enjoy from all the adults they know. Problem is that they're too immature and impatient for the lesson to actually sink in. Until they finally relax and discover their talents themselves, they'll remain blank. Even if somebody strait up told them what their talents are, they'd still be blank until they finally figure it out for themselves. Judging from what we've seen, the only lesson they'd take away from the other kid's stories is that they should mimic their talents for a while, which would obviously fail.
 * It's possible they're not on speaking terms with the rest of the class. Diamond Tiara had no problem getting the class to laugh at Apple Bloom for not having a cutie mark in Episode 12, so they probably don't have many friends outside of their secret society.


 * Comparatively minor next to some of the other questions this episode creates, but here goes. If ponies don't zipline, and Spike lives in pony society, how does HE know what ziplining is? Also, how do ponies know what ziplining is yet have no interest in it despite it clearly being possible if three fillies can make an almost-serviceable zipline on a whim?


 * Fluttershy says that she had never been on the ground before and didn't all of the animals were there, but then how did she know what the names of the animals were?

1.24 Owl's Well That Ends Well

 * Let's see here....Spike told the truth to Twilight Sparkle in "Owl's Well That Ends Well" after what happened considering the mistake. It has already been previously established in the series that damage to books would be FAR worse than lying to Twilight Sparkle for what happened. Let's see, I'm supposed to respect Twilight Sparkle's rather brazen issues against what is essentially her surrogate child? Sure, his Evil Plan was not good for him, but the rest of her reactions to his fumbles really did seem to be completely uncalled for. I mean, lying has happened more than once in the series without any real consequences by Twilight Sparkle herself in episodes prior and later than this. So, what's the big deal?
 * Big deal? She just gave Spike some reprimands which he blew out of proportion.
 * And to be fair the book thing wasn't about him doing it, in fact she probably would have been mad then forgiven him and off they go to the comet, no harm done. It was Spike hiding it and then lying about it that pissed her off, she expects more from him like any good parent or parent substitute. Spike just took "I expect more from you" and "I'm disapotined in you" as "Owlowicous ratted you out for spite and I prefer him" and "I hate you" respectively.
 * It was more him taking "This is not the Spike I know and love" to mean "She doesn't love me anymore".
 * Part of me agrees that Twilight Sparkle was just reprimanding, but we know for a fact she just would've been angrier with him even saying as such; Books and reading is one of Twilight Sparkle's clear interests, and likely a Berserk Button would have been pressed if he came clean. Even when he did become clean, her reaction was rather severe and disproportional compared to what I would have expected. 'The Plan' Spike laid, I have no problem with; that was pure misbehavior and misplaced manipulation. It's the first time she got mad I dislike.
 * I don't know where you're getting this from. Twilight likes reading, sure, but only as a means to an end. She has no problem scattering her books about haphazardly when she's looking for something and we've never seen her get overprotective of the books themselves. Spike's destruction of the book probably would just have been met with an admonition to be more careful and telling him to get another copy. We really have a better case for her going beserk over lying, giving her repeated bouts of skepticism.
 * We've also seen that Twilight's social skills are still very rusty. I think she's doing what she's read is the right way to deal with things like this. I also think she was probably deeply stung that he lied to her, since he's never lied to her before, since like Dash, he's very blunt and tactless. In "Party of One" he's shown to be more apt to keep secrets rather than lie. He's her number one friend, her oldest friend, her ONLY friend for years, and a child. She doesn't want him growing up thinking lying is okay. Twilight's scolding of him was exactly the kind of scolding I received as a kid for lying. I don't think she was being unfair at all. Sometimes you have to be firm with kids regarding things like this. I think you're judging her anger way too harshly. People get angry, and they tend to get more angry and disappointed the closer they are to that person, because it hurts more.


 * If Owlicious (Twilight's pet owl) is supposed to be nocturnal (IE, awake at night), why is he still awake during the day, and worse, helping Twilight get the books that Spike wanted to give her?
 * He's pulling an all-dayer (the opposite of an all-nighter.) Maybe got really tired of this by the end of the episode, which is why we don't see him in later episodes.


 * This troper always figured Equestria and the rest of the planet (if it's indeed a planet and not just a pocket dimension) to be surrounded by a spherical canvas on which the princesses magically paint the day and night skies - like a global equivalent to The Truman Show. However, this is suddenly challenged by Twilight's accurate description of a comet, which implies their universe follows a similar model to our own. The two are obviously mutually exclusive. Thoughts?
 * Well, what immediately comes to mind is that there's never been any actual indication that the former is the case.
 * If The Truman Show concept isn't the case, though, how does the Endless Night plot at the beginning of the series make sense? Short of a forced Solar Eclipse for all time, Luna's plan can't really work with a cosmic system and a spherical planet short of doming the entire planet anyway. Endless Night would have to mean Endless Night for everypony, and that means halfway around the world too.
 * Or does it? If Equstria is just a country within a bigger world, it could work if she wanted to bring the eternal night just there. The other side of the planet would have eternal day, but Nightmare Moon might not care -- she wants the admiration of her subjects specifically.
 * Equestria could simply be a geocentric system. Never mind that that's not how star systems form naturally in our universe--what if Equestria has artificial sun and moon satellites kept in their stable orbits by first the concerted effort of unicorns ritually performing the same spells they always have, and later by the Princesses? They could be the last remnants of an ancient civilization, now long gone. It would explain why they have to so carefully manage seasons and nature--without a long, slow revolution around the sun, any axial tilt will be meaningless--heck, it's even possible that the planet doesn't spin at all! In that case, Nightmare Moon could have caused eternal night for Equestria simply by spinning up the planet so the sun's orbit became geostationary--causing rather a high temperature increase on the opposite side, and decrease on the Equestria side. No mention of time zones or differences is made in the series and it's implied that when Celestia raises the sun, it rises at more or less the same time everywhere that matters, so it may be assumed Equestria is not globe-spanning.
 * The Fimbulwinter seen in "Hearth's Warming Eve" is a glimpse of what life would be like in Equestria if Nightmare Moon's plans succeeded.


 * How does the green dragon fit in with the events of Dragonshy? In episode 7, they kicked up a fuss over a dragon living in a distant mountain and sleeping there. But here, we have a dragon living in the neighbouring forest and nobody kicks up a fuss about it. I think it's an inconsistency caused by there being different writers for the two episodes, but what about an in-universe explanation?
 * The dragon in dragonshy was going into hibernation, and was going to cover Ponyville in black smoke. the other dragon never showed signs of starting hibernation. Presumably, if/when he starts, Twilight will lead another expedition.
 * The entirety of the problem in Dragonshy was the smoke. This one doesn't seem to produce destructive smoke in his sleep, so his presence isn't causing a problem.

1.25 Party of One

 * Why would anyone think that the "Cupcakes" fanfic would end up being real in this episode? Do those people fail to realize you can't get away with blood and gore on a TV-Y show? All Pinkie did was believe her friends didn't like her, and the only harm she did was slam her ass on Rainbow Dash's face when she refused to come with her. But there certainly weren't any Ludicrous Gibs to speak of.
 * I don't think anyone seriously believed Pinkie was going to start slicing into her friends. The plethora of "CUPCAKES IS CANON!" remarks that came up after that episode seemed largely tongue in cheek.


 * I understand that Gummy's party can have few guests but why does Pinkie Pie's Birthday Party only have (with Pinkie) 6 ponies (who organised the party), her pet aligator and a baby dragon? Why it not look more like Twilight's Welcome Party ?
 * Nice answer: Pinkie Pie wanted a small, intimate gathering of Gummy's closest and dearest friends (i.e, Pinkie's friends.) Alternatively, no one else wanted to go to a birthday party for Pinkie's creepy, toothless pet -- or she didn't even get around to inviting anyone else. The "singing telegram" thing nearly killed her as is.
 * The Poster was referring to the party at the end of the episode(for Pinkie's birthday), not the one for Gummy. Nevertheless, I think I have an answer; The mane cast simply couldn't get away with it. Look at how close they were to letting the surprise slip when only six people were in on it.
 * Maybe Pinkie had expressed a preference for small, intimate birthday parties in other years. I mean, she chose the guest list for Gummy's party, and that was just the mane six. Plus, she forgot about her own birthday, so it's probably not that important to her, which means the mission statement of the surprise party might have been less "let's make a huge, awesome party because it's what Pinkie would want us to do" and more "let's surprise Pinkie with an expression of our love, because it's what we want to do." If that makes sense.
 * And the fewer ponies who are in on the secret, the less likely that somepony spills the beans by accident. It was supposed to be a surprise party, after all.
 * They could have simply told other ponies to come without telling them who the party was for. Ponyville looks like a place that enjoys parties, even if they don't know who the target is.


 * Why is everybody so spooked by Pinkie's mad scene in "Party of One"? I thought it was adorable (in a Tim Burton sort of way).
 * Because seeing the genkiest pony in Ponyville turn woobie and rather psychotic is slightly freaky?
 * She wasn't psychotic. Psychotic = Axe Crazy. She was just nuts.
 * She wasn't breaking out the axe yet, but she was displaying a whole laundry list of symptoms for various psychotic disorders.
 * I must interject that psychotic has nothing to do with being violent or Axe Crazy. This is a terrible misconception. 'Psychotic' just means 'out of touch with reality'. In this way, Pinkie really was being psychotic. However, psychosis does NOT lead to being murderous (necessarily).
 * It was mostly the face twitches and eye-derps. if you leave those out, she's just a sad little girl having a pretend party with her "dollies.".... silly and childish and perfectly in character for her. It's the spastic twitches and staring off into space that move it from cute and funny to really effin' disturbing.
 * Cupcakes. A horrible fanfic that many members of the fandom have read has caused many to think Pinkie Pie is a serial killer. This episode made many people believe that it was canon.
 * It's pitiful when a piece of (bad) fan faction can color people's perception of a canon episode. Insane or not, Pinkie is an adorable pony and no threat to anybody.
 * Some of us have never read (or have any interest in) Cupcakes. Even her friends were terrified of her in this episode.
 * Her friends seemed more weirded out than terrified.
 * "Weirded out" is the typical emotion Pinkie Pie inspires in her friends on a good day. You can see it at the beginning of the episode, when she's singing their invitations. That look of shock and vauge horror in their eyes, that's pure Pinkie. That's love. Genuinely disturbed/frightened came later.
 * Sure, they were disturbed. But "terrified" is still a slight stretch.
 * One of your friends is not herself. She's abandoned you and started holding tea parties for inanimate objects. She reacts with open hostility when you try to remove her from her delusions. You should be disturbed by this. If seeing a friend like this would not disturb you, you are a bad friend. Her friends were worried because there was a genuine cause for concern.
 * The scene was very much fun in a Black Comedy kind of way, but even with no indication Pinkie was going to hurt anyone else, it was very dark in another way. She was in terrible emotional agony that she was trying to cover up with all that, and the results seemed to be damaging to her psyche and social behaviour. Poor thing.
 * ...why the hell would people think Cupcakes would be canon? This is a TV-Y show, you're not supposed to show Ludicrous Gibs on a show that little kids (and their parents) can watch, despite the other bits of crap that already got through. This is My Little Pony, not Saw.
 * "...why the hell would people think Cupcakes would be canon?" Because people are screwed up sometimes.
 * To this troper at least, the speed of Pinkie's transition from normal hyperactive happy to bleak hopelessness and then back again was rather jarring (despite being Played for Laughs). It's even remarked upon by Pinkie herself that the other had been avoiding her just "all day." Mood swings that severe and that fast can accompany some forms of Bipolar disorder, making the episode rather uncomfortable at times.
 * Pinkie just became an Accentuate the Negative grump. If you want something really scary, try Twilight in Episode 29; she effectively mind controls the entire town and makes them fight each other over a doll.


 * As a result of Pinkie's Perp Sweating, Spike confesses that he used up all the hot water to take a seven-hour bubble bath "yesterday". But surely Rarity's suggestion to take a bath, which he overreacted to in usual lovestruck form, happened that morning before Pinkie tried to invite her to the afterparty. Does he really take that many extravagant baths, or did the writers go for a Brick Joke and err on the payoff?
 * On that note, how would a 7-hour bath use up all the hot water? It doesn't matter how long you bathe, it's still using the same amount of water.
 * After a little while, the water gets cold, so you'd have to refill the bath with hot water.
 * It's possible bath A was an extravagant, seven-hour bubble bath, and bath 2 was just a quick scrub so he wouldn't smell like garbage any more. Just because Spike took a bath on two consecutive days (and hopefully more than just that) doesn't mean they're all necessarily "extravagant."
 * True, but "took a seven-hour bubble bath because he wanted to enjoy it" isn't nearly as amusing as "took a seven-hour bubble bath because Raaaarity wanted him to wash up".
 * Simple: Spike took a seven hour bubble bath the day before because he knew he was going to be working with Rarity the next day.
 * This also might be considered Fridge Brilliance when you notice Spikes' absence during the Singing Telegram and Gummy's party. He was bathing that whole time!
 * Which makes the fact that she then makes him take out the garbage Hilarious in Hindsight.


 * How did Pinkie attribute anything other than parties to her friends' behaviour? She was aware that secret confections were being purchased; how could the pony of parties not link secret cake to surprise parties immediately?
 * She probably tough they were having a party without her
 * At the end of the episode she immediately assumes that it is her own farewell party, perhaps after perp sweating Spike, she had already come to that conclusion.
 * Her special talent is hosting parties. If she thought her friends were betraying her, finding out that they were having a party without her would make it seem like they were rubbing it into her face that they didn't want her and didn't need her.


 * During Pinkie Pie's interrogation of Spike, he confesses to spilling juice over one of Twilight's books. Given that this suggests he hasn't told Twilight this yet, does that mean he learned nothing from last week's episode? You know, when he ruined one of her books and didn't own up to it?
 * Not necessarily. Anachronic Order, remember? It's possible that this episode happened before that one. Or it's possible he just hasn't had a chance to tell her, since she's been running around helping to prepare a surprise party all day, and hasn't been home.
 * Spilling juice on a page is less heinous than incinerating an entire book. It would be in-character for Spike to push his luck a bit by seeing if he could get away with a minor infraction of trust. "OK, so there's a little apple juice on this word here, but hey, at least I didn't give you a hardback filled with ashes again, eh Twilight?"


 * Come to that, why is Spike so myopic in this episode? Surely, if Pinkie Pie's hair deflates and she starts looking sad and says that her friends don't love her anymore, he would at least have picked up on that and said something in their defence, or looked confused? The writers could have had her run out of the room before he can explain, or have her throw him out before he can explain, thus preserving the episode's events without making Spike look like a Heroic Sociopath.
 * Rule of Funny.
 * He was hungry for the gems.
 * Personally, it looked to me that he was so terrified by her aggressive tone and mood, he simply blurted out everything she demanded him to say, just to get her off his spine.
 * The actual moral of the episode is: "Push somepony hard enough, and he'll tell you he started the great Canterlot fire- now, that don't necessarily make it buckin' so!"
 * Spike seems myopic a lot of the time: In "Applebuck Season", he tries to get the ponies to eat the "baked bads", despite having seen an entire room of ponies poisoned by them; in "Suited for Success", he calls Rarity out onto the stage and cheers and claps, not noticing Hoity Toity's disparaging comments, the utter silence of the crowd, or Rarity's obvious humiliation; and in "Over a Barrel", he repeats the same pattern of being the only one clapping and cheering at the end of Pinkie Pie's awful song. It actually would have been more out of character for him to notice Pinkie Pie's depression.

1.26 The Best Night Ever

 * Okay, I know that they wanted to save Luna's major reappearences for season 2, but...I mean, come on, "Best Night Ever" centered around (presumably) the single biggest, most important event in Equestria, at night, no less, and they couldn't even be bothered to put in even a small cameo? There's saving the good stuff for next season, and then there's just being lazy.
 * Don't you dare call Lauren Faust "lazy".
 * In-show explanation: why in the world would Luna agree to go to such a terribly boring party?
 * Maybe Luna still feels ashamed of her actions as Nightmare Moon, so she doesn't attend public events.
 * Maybe she's working. As the moon goddess she kinda has to work the late shift.
 * Like for the party at night?
 * Night shift would at least explain why she's never had a reason to appear at any other point during this season.
 * It's likely that Luna would have kept her distance during the Gala because she's still uncomfortable about her public image (a concept soon to be explored in S 2 E 4, Luna Eclipsed). If you were essentially an ex-criminal, would you show your face at a grand event attended almost entirely by the judgmental upper-class? Considering that we see for ourselves what dicks they can be?
 * Plus she's been on a thousand year hiatus, and has a lot of catching up to do. That's not the best time to mingle with the elite, unless you're very confident and secure (and the circumstances of her transformation into Nightmare Moon - loneliness and envy, both of which indicate issues with self-image - suggest she is not.)
 * Including language lessons. A thousand years of linguistic drift is a LOT to catch up on. We're lucky she didn't gallop into Ponyville on Nightmare Night and start belting out Middle Equestrian (referencing Middle English here), unable to explain anything intelligably to any but the most devoted of language scholars.
 * That would also explain why she didn't understand "fun". She understood the concept perfectly, but the word used to describe it was unfamiliar. So when she realized they were describing what she thought of as, I dunno, "fhynne", she feigned ignorance to cover up the gap in her vocabulary lessons.


 * So, is The Best Night Ever supposed to take place right after The Ticket Master? As in, they get their tickets and that night they go to the gala? The events of both episodes link up if you watch both right after the other, what with them living their dreams from The Ticket Master (well, as best as they can anyway)but the fact that they are wearing the dresses Rarity made them in an earlier episode seems to imply that they were two different Galas. If this is the case then it turns into a different headscratcher, if they were already at a gala then they should have already known what to expect at one and not have had their expectations so high. Just something that crossed my mind after rewatching them.
 * There's lots of fan speculation on the exact order of the episodes, but it's generally assumed that The Ticket Master is followed by Suited For Success which is followed by The Best Night Ever. This is easily defensible by the fact that the cast are attending their first Gala in The Best Night Ever (based on the fact that Pinkie, Twilight, and Applejack completely misjudge the nature of the Gala) and are wearing the dresses made in Suited For Success. If they had attended a previous Gala off-screen, Twilight would have known better than to expect a monopoly on Celestia's time, Pinkie would have understood the tone, and Applejack would have prepared a better business strategy.
 * That's so obvious it isn't a matter for speculation. There's no reason for why the characters couldn't dream about what they will do at the Gala, then get dresses made, and then go to the Gala and still expect the same things there.
 * They're not going to the Gala that night, because it isn't on that night; the invitations were received well in advance. They're just taking Twilight out for dinner.
 * I just assumed that the order in which the episodes were released was the chronological order too, even if it leads to oddities like Winter Wrap-Up being two episodes ahead of the Running of the Leaves.
 * The Grand Galloping Gala is quite literally the biggest annual event in Equestria. Tickets were no doubt received WELL in advance, it's not unreasonable that planning for the next Gala starts as soon as the previous one ends. While it might seem odd that Twilight takes her dress to Rarity well before the event, it seems most likely that the dress was her usual formal outfit, and she damaged it recently, and that she mentions the Gala because that's her next scheduled formal event where she would wear it.


 * Beside Rarity and Twilight, none of the core cast really could be excused of their atrocious conduct in the Galloping Gala. I mean, yeah it wasn't what they expected but what right does that give them to ruin the night for the rest of the guests? They were  especially invited (i.e: excused), without really having earned the place to an exclusive party which is implied to be a very old tradition. Truly, they where pardoned because it was all a Plan of Celestia and nobody would dare to mess with the freaking Physical Goddess but still; the entire Aesop came very broken and warped, implying you could be a total ass (or a complete psychopath in case of Fluttershy) and ruin the night of the people around you if they don't meet your unreasonable expectations? Once again, Rarity was the peak of decorum and patience and her final explosion was more than justified but the rest of the cast acted like spoiled brats needing of a well deserved talk.
 * They overreacted. Simple as that. Applejack had her heart set on getting money for helping out the farm, and when that didn't play out, she got upset and started doing things that clearly wouldn't work because she stopped thinking. Fluttershy lives for helping animals. If you suddenly proved useless at what you literally live for, how would you feel? Rainbow Dash had her heart set on spending time with the Wonderbolts. To have that torn away CONSTANTLY would be aggravating, I'm surprised she didn't come as close to swearing somepony out as a kids' show would allow instead of just trying little things. Pinkie simply expected something better and didn't think to stop and check out the surroundings.
 * Maybe I need to watch it again, but I don't think Rainbow Dash and Applejack did anything inexcusable either. Okay, Rainbow Dash shouldn't have kicked that other pony into the air so she could rescue him, but other than that she didn't do anything wrong, and all Applejack did was bring in the cake that Pinkie jumped into. So you can blame it all on Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy.
 * Yeah, seriously this. While yes, I suppose you could make an arguement for Rainbow destroying that statue (even though it was an accident), all Applejack did was bake a freaking cake. How the hell is that "atrocious behavior"?!
 * Applejack was more subdued, but her means of coercion before resorting to the cake were out of line. Just not egregiously so.
 * Rainbow Dash breaking the statue doesn't count at all. It's the one thing she didn't plan. She just saw an opportunity to be a hero and took her best shot at it.
 * Applejack's entire REASON for going to the Gala was wrong. She set up a food stand to sell her own cheap food directly in front of a fully-catered party, and when she naturally didn't sell anything she began pestering people to buy her apples regardless. It's like if the ice cream man decided to park outside of somebody else's party and kept blaring "The Entertainer" until he sold all of his ice cream. It's just rude.
 * You have to remember that this is Applejack we're talking about here. As we saw in Manehattan, she's not the best pony when it comes knowledge of formal affairs, let alone the Grand Galloping Gala which she had never been to, which means she probably had no clue it would be a fully catered party also considering the fact that not all formal affairs are guaranteed to be catered. After all, the reason she didn't get much business isn't because she was being rude or appropriate, it's because she was serving common food, which with the exception of the Wonderbolts, most of the snobbish ponies just ignored. This is even lampshaded by Prince Blueblood who bites into a free apple fritter and spits it out not because it doesn't taste good, but because he considers it "common carnival fare". It's not like Applejack had any idea that nopony there would like to give her food a chance, and she wanted to use the profit to help her family.
 * Rainbow Dash was trying to avert a disaster when she caught the statue - if she hadn't, it would have broken for certain. The pillars falling down can be blamed entirely on whatever lousy builder they hired from the Disaster Dominoes School of Architecture. Fluttershy screwed up big time, but she was suffering from some sort of CMFIS-induced psychotic break which nopony, especially her, saw coming. Pinkie's behaviour was inexcusable, but honestly, she shouldn't have been left unattended at a formal occasion.
 * I thought that was the moral of the episode: they all expected too much and ruined the night because of it. They should have just concentrated on having a good time with their friends. Although I agree the point gets blurred because Princess Celestia's forgiveness makes a Karma Houdini out of all them.
 * Celestia's only being fair; she invited the Mane Cast to the Gala specifically because they would have no idea how to fit in and would therefore disrupt the proceedings entertainingly. She even says this explicitly. If that's why she brought them to the dance, she can hardly punish them for doing it. Even if she did get much, much more than she'd bargained for.
 * As a side note concerning Applejack, Urban Legend claims that the hot dog stand outside the Stockholm City Hall does it's best business early and late in the evening on December 10th, i.e. before and after the Nobel Prize Gala, which is held there every year. Make of that what you will...
 * Fluttershy also was okay, because if you loved animals, you would want them to love you.
 * As for Pinkie Pie... well, you can't honestly expect PINKIE PIE to follow formalities. She's Pinkie Pie for a reason.


 * Fluttershy going batshit insane at the GGG was hilarious and all, but has that particular moment tainted or completely destroyed her character? Will it be possible to think of her the same way once more? Granted, we'll have to wait until Season 2 to get a proper answer.
 * It might help if they take an episode to explore WHY she flipped out, or to explain why her gift with animals failed so horribly... or maybe to show she wasn't herself, and that she's mortified/horrified at how she acted so badly. We're all allowed to have a day off our best.
 * My guess is that we're all supposed to laugh about the gala and then forget about it. Chances are it won't be mentioned again next season unless the gala rolls around again. As for why the animals didn't like her, my best guess is that they don't like strangers. The only other explanation I can think of right now is that while the animals around Ponyville are essentially tame, these animals were wild. But that would be strange because animals in cities tend to fear humans (or in this case ponies) less, and presumably these animals are still being cared for by ponies.
 * It's not like it hasn't happened to everyone else. The show loves to push these ponies until they break, and Fluttershy's so introverted and restrained that it was always likely to be very impressive in her case. The animals, not being native to the area are likely just very nervous around strange ponies, and Fluttershy (who's most unattractive flaw is her arrogance in her own abilities, see 'Stare Master', 'Suited for Success' and 'Bird in the Hoof') just started to become increasingly irrational as her ego collapsed around her (again, 'Bird in the Hoof').
 * It just seems so out of character for her. One would expect that being rejected by all the animals would cause her to become depressed, not the crazy bitch she briefly was. Some fans have joked that the Gala happened around Fluttershy's "time of the month".
 * A fellow brony on my home forum explained as her having built up meeting the animals in the garden all year in her mind. In other words, she had difficulty accepting that things weren't going exactly as she'd dreamed. From this, we can reason that her natural ability with animals started slipping, for whatever reason - lack of focus, losing her usual demeanor, whatever. The less the situation matched her idealized dream, the more she started to fall apart, resulting in Flutterage.
 * I have several theories explaining her tantrum-
 * Freudian Excuse explanation: Fluttershy's special talent is her empathy with animals. That's what her cutie mark symbolises. She loves animals, but if she can't earn their love in return, it means that she's basically failed at her purpose in life, therefore, her life has no meaning. To suddenly fail at the main thing that you're good at can be pretty upsetting, to say the least.
 * Very Silly Wild Mass Guessing: The gardener offered her a drink of Wiskey from a hip flask to cheer her up after her first attempt to befriend the animals failed. He kept giving her a drink after each failed attempt, leading to a drunken rampage by the end of the night.
 * This. Can this be canon?
 * Most likely explanation: Rule of Funny. It was probably just an Out-of-Character Moment played for laughs.
 * But to answer the original question, I agree that it most likely won't be brought up again in Cannon. But we can still have fun with the meme it generated!
 * Wasn't it said by Word of God that Princess Luna's transformation into Nightmare Moon was caused by "something or someone"? Maybe he/she/it was behind Fluttershy's breakdown...
 * Fluttershy strikes me as the kind of pony who, due to her incredible shyness, bottles her outspoken negative emotions inside. Then, when things really start to get irritating, it causes any bottled up anger to overflow.
 * Fluttershy seems to run on Beware the Nice Ones -- look at what she does to the dragon and the cockatrice. Intimidation tends to be somewhat handicapped when your target has every ability to destroy you without even thinking, but it works. Oh, and I did see a fic somewhere that suggested the earlier idea. For one, Fluttershy had built up the idea of how things would go ... and for another, she wasn't actually using her special skill and ability to soothe creatures, thus shocking the hummingbirds out of humming and the buzzard out of buzzing.
 * I just mentally filed the whole thing as an Out-of-Character Moment. If the writers wanted Fluttershy to get that angry, the animals should have been jerks, like biting her or throwing stuff at her or whatever.
 * Actually, when one does a close analysis of Fluttershy's character, and picks up on a couple hints, the 'Flutterrage' outburst doesn't seem like an Out of Character moment, instead seems like a bad mixture of variables to produce a 'powder keg ready to blow' situation. Let's go over them:
 * 1) First off, as seen in 'Dragonshy,' 'Stare Master,' and 'Suited for Success,' Fluttershy can be very assertive, even borderline aggressive when pushed to the point that she's forced to come out of her shell of shyness, instead of just breaking down and crying, or something like that.
 * 2) Secondly, there have been hints that Fluttershy actually has an arrogant streak. These hints can be seen in her rant in 'Suited For Success' (most, if not all, of her rant was about the stitching and technical aspects of the dress, things she's really good at, giving little to no consideration to the fashion of the dress, which is what Rarity was concerned about) which she even ends with the stereotypical 'arrogant nose in the air' stance, her reason for agreeing to look after the CMC in 'Stare Master' (Fluttershy honestly believed that since she was great at taking care of animals, she would be great at taking care of children), and the fact she kidnapped Princess Celestia's sickly bird in 'Bird in a Hoof' (She took Philomena and tried to cure her, without even thinking out the implications of what she did, or that there was more to the strange bird than a simple sick bird). This aspect of her personality is normally kept in check by her kindness, as she doesn't want to hurt others' feelings.
 * 3) Thirdly, Fluttershy was following the 'advice' Twilight had given her in 'Bird in the Hoof' (“I just have to be more bold, like Twilight says.“-Fluttershy, as she's setting up the stereotypical box and stick trap) This is similar to when she did the 'hop-skip-and-a-jump' in 'Feeling Pinkie Keen.' Pinkie had given that advice all the way back in 'Dragonshy' but at the time, Fluttershy didn't take it in.
 * 4) Fourthly, there is the common pattern and fan-theory of Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome (or CMFIS for short) in which, whenever a pony's special talent comes into question (like when Fluttershy has trouble getting animals to love her) it can trigger a breakdown that causes the pony's personality to temporarily become the opposite of what it normally is.
 * So in conclusion, all these factors, combined with the general high expectations of the night, made for a recipe for disaster. So the writers weren't putting Fluttershy in an Out-of-Character Moment for fun and plot, but where stacking the variables so that it would make the deepest and darkest parts of who Fluttershy is explode out.
 * The problem with her behaviour oviously stems from how it didn't get enough buildup. There wasn't a whole episode to explain it (or what caused the factors that caused it) like for, say, Pinkie Pie's psychosis. I assume it would have made sense if fully explained.
 * ...That said, some of the explanations here almost seem to make it make less sense. For example, Fluttershy taking in the CMC or Philomena seems more naivety than arrogance, and not even based on unreasonable assumptions, since she usually just is freakishly good with all sorts of critters. (And really, the problem is that the critters on those occasions are willfull and "intelligent"; animals may be sort of intelligent in this series, but they react much more simply regardless. Except Angel, and, though he likes Fluttershy, she can't just wrap him around her hoof with her natural charm, either.) That same assumption is certainly present in "The Best Night Ever", but is it arrogance? This, of course, makes the biggest question just why those animals don't automatically fall for her. And, again, an excuse would have been easy to come up with with some time for buildup.
 * I tend to think it had something to do with how unfamilure she is with the situation. Think about it, really the only ones she's really comfortable with meeting for the first time is animals, and they suddenly start ignoring her after she'd dreamed of being able to hang out with them. Unlike other times, her friends aren't there, they're all inside the Gala, somewhere that Fluttershy would probably be very uncomfortable, what with all the people she doesn't know (remember how shy she was when she met Twilight, she could barely speak above a whisper). As mentioned, she's somewhat naive, to her, all she needs to do to get them to like her is try harder, she's never really met an animal that didn't like her before, outside ones that were causing major trouble. It's been shown that when she gets mad, she's snapped before, but those times it was to an enemy. This time, her anger and frustration was directed to someone she wanted to befriend really hard, so letting it out in that fashion wasn't an option. The whole night was just a compounded amount of things she'd never experienced before, she really had no idea how to deal with it, which probably put a huge amount of stress on her. It's actually not uncommon for someone to go temporarally crazy when confronted with a massive amount of stress and in a situation they have no idea how to react to. When you really think about it, the whole situation was nearly custom made to make Fluttershy snap.
 * Two points on Fluttershy's breakdown: One: Cutie Mark Insanity Syndrome. Two: Meta. It was actually a mini-version of what happened to Luna when she became Nightmare Moon... all she wanted was to be loved by creatures she showed kindness to, and instead she was fled from and shunned. It's possible this might have been a foreshadowing of her having a bonding moment with the moon princess in season 2.
 * As to "why her gift with animals failed so horribly," I think many people are overlooking the obvious: most of the time, she is helping animals. She feeds them, tends their injuries, protects them, wakes them from their hibernation, even reassures them when they are frightened, etc. They love her in no small part because of what she does for them. At the gala, she simply shows up in the royal gardens and expects to be loved.
 * Agreed. I always figured the animals' flippancy was supposed to be analogous to the way the actual Gala guests treated the common folk, as if to suggest "arrogant royals, from the king himself right down to the animals in the courtyard, are arrogant royals." Or... maybe not.
 * Her breakdown was gradual. First, she simply flies up to them in her usual cheery excitement, and when they flee she mutters sadly; "Oh Fluttershy, you're such a loudmouth." Then she sadly says; "This isn't what I wished for." Hence she joins in with the Mane Six's vow to make this the best night ever. Then she sets up a trap so that she can catch one, telling herself "I just have to be more bold like Twilight says." She even tries to be her usual reassuring self when she thinks she's caught one, but is annoyed when it fails. Then she starts clumsily chasing them, highly annoyed and stomping and shouting at them. Then she sets a trap for them, which she falls into herself, which can't be good for her temper. Then the infamous stampede and the line: "You're going to LOVE ME!" That's her idea of being assertive, which then gets sidetracked by her increasing frustration, and so she takes it out on the animals who are starting to be less amusing and more annoying to her. It's not like we've ever seen Fluttershy get properly riled over something she really wanted to do before and which wasn't this personal to her. Hidden Depths, that one.
 * Plus, who has she got as a role model for being assertive and bold? Twilight? Think "Feeling Pinkie Keen" and "A Bird in the Hoof". Rainbow Dash? Think Leeroy Jenkins meets Brutal Honesty. Honestly, rewatch Fluttershy's scenes and imagine she's mimicking one of them two as her role model for being bold.


 * Am I the only one wondering how Twilight's dress was ruined at the end of "The Best Night Ever"? She wasn't involved in any of the shenanigans of the night after all.
 * While they were leaving, they probably met up with fleeing ponies and other critters, offscreen.
 * Or was rammed by the fleeing ponies as she and Celestia got to the wreckage.
 * Noodle Incident.
 * As funny as that would be, it's unlikely. She was with Celestia the whole time.
 * ... Given the treatment Celestia gets put through by the brony community, that could make for an even funnier Noodle Incident.
 * Animal stampede messed it up.


 * Is Blueblood really that much of a jerk? He wanted the same thing as Rarity, really; to be fawned over for being special. Rarity is only mad at him because he's demanding the same things of her that she wants from him. Does it really come down to gender roles?
 * Well, let's see. Ignoring the fact that he was being very rude to her, he insulted Rarity's good friend Applejack and used Rarity as a Human Shield. That's pretty jerky. He never once gave a thought to how his date was doing or check on her after being hit by a door or what have you. The two of them are similar, yes. But Rarity is generous, hard-working, and a good friend. Blueblood is none of these things. I think part of the reason Rarity comes to hate Blueblood so much is because Blueblood is basically herself without her redeeming qualities.
 * Being a royal usually means being rich. Yet he makes Rarity pay for a treat that he quickly spits out and decides to go to the (presumably) free meal offered inside without leaving her a chance to even grab something for herself! Good thing Applejack was generous with her friend!
 * Rarity would have paid for it, but Applejack gave it to her free of charge.
 * Rarity likes to be fawned over, but she's also a good person. Remember how she worked so hard to make free dresses for her friends in that other episode, for instance. Blueblood would never work hard for anybody, far as I can tell.
 * It's called noblesse oblige; the idea that those in privileged positions have a countervailing obligation to act honorably and responsibly. Rarity does her best to live up to that trope despite not actually being nobility; Blueblood is a walking negation of it despite having been handed high noble status just for being born. (As opposed to, oh, Celestia, who is the walking incarnation of noblesse oblige.)
 * Frankly, gender and other roles do seem to play a part. But even without that, Blueblood is so self-obsessed he barely even sees anyone else even when he's interacting with them. Even when being told off royally by Rarity, all he seemed to register was that she was messy. Everything around him was just an accessory to himself.
 * He also has no sense of romance. When he points out the roses to Rarity, his action is not to woo her but to pin it to his own chest. He also makes her put down her cloak so that he can step over a puddle, and makes her open a door for him. These are all signs that he thinks It's All About Me, practically the defining attribute of a Jerkass.
 * Having no sense of romance is hardly a genuine fault, and Rarity was just as self-centered in those two instances, insisting that he put down his cloak and open the door for her. Blueblood is a Jerkass, no doubt, but gender roles definitely come into play.
 * OK, I'll throw my hands up: having no sense of romance isn't a fault. It does have a lot to do with gender roles.
 * I've always liked the fanon that Blueblood was deliberately screwing with her, because he knows what she's here for and having dealt with countless other mares with the same vapid dream, refuses to play the part.
 * Rarity is defined by her generosity. If Blueblood had offered to pay for the food, Rarity might well have insisted that she pay anyway, but instead 'he expected her to do so from step one'. Likewise, he couldn't be generous in words or even in with something as inexpensive as a flower.
 * There's also class disparity. Blueblood is probably always treated like royalty. Rarity had only just reached that level of opulence. She wanted one night when she could be treated like a lady, and all she got was a stallion who wanted her to treat him as more important. Rarity was upset, but at least it was kind of defensible on both sides (though Blueblood does come across as a downplayed Entitled Bastard). Using her as a living shield, and then ignoring her "The Reason You Suck" Speech because he was worrying too much about getting his mane messy, was just inconsiderate.
 * In this Troper's opinion, there's an additional element that makes Blueblood's behavior much worse. Most of what he did was petty annoyances, but the CONTEXT made it much worse because he was "leading Rarity on." He was polite to Rarity and intentionally gave off an impression that he wanted Rarity's company when they first met, even if only so Rarity could flatter him. THEN he treated her like trash. If he hated Rarity's company he had the option to tell her, "Please leave. I'm not the stallion you think I am. I'm actually a jerk." Rarity probably would have been crushed but understood and taken it like a mare. Instead, Blueblood kept Rarity around and used her crush on him to make her wait on him hand and foot. So it's not so much some specific thing Blueblood did that made him so awful, it's the fact that he had better options for how to behave and didn't take them.
 * Also, coming from this same Troper, there's something else: Most of what Blueblood did was rude in a petty manner...except that's a lot of "most." Meaning, he was rude the whole time! If someone you care about uses you as a shield to block a cake once, you could chalk that off to him being in a bad mood. But if he does that after spending the entire evening engaging in petty but jerkish behavior, that involves an "underlying mindset" that no one matters but himself. Just like, for example, if your boss insults you once, it's an off day, but if he insults you every single day for little to no reason, he's probably a dominating tyrant.


 * At the beginning of "Best Night Ever", Rarity pulls her charms on some boys and they pull the cart. Really? Way to be subtle about the males being pretty unnecessary as the literal workhorse. I thought Faust was trying not to do this and that we don't have to worry about a Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality. Why were the guys treated in such a manner?
 * Well, they mentioned they were her neighbors. Given how generous Rarity is, it's not that hard to take it as the men paying back a favor.
 * Also, when Spike treats them like real-life workhorses, they immediately protest against it. As with the carriages in "Over a Barrel", the concept is played for laughs.
 * This troper saw it more like playing with the stereotype of guys always being willing to help attractive lady with something including physical labor, imagine a woman asking her neighbours to carry her sofa to the second floor or something. Nothing too offensive about that.
 * In a way it also sets up Rarity's expectations for her interactions with Prince Blueblood, which does not go nearly as planned.
 * It's a clear play of the stereotype, I don't see how that can be denied. But what I also don't see is how anyone can construe it as offensive - it's a joke, deal with it. Besides, when Spike whips them, they glare back, as workhorses are literally people in this world. If Rarity's charms send an anti-male message, then this certainly sends a pro-male one in response - "do not treat us like beasts to be kicked around."
 * Why the worry? They're doing her a favour, not being abused. It was a one-off event, after all - if she exploited stallions regularly, which she doesn't, then there might be grounds for complaint.
 * I got the impression that pulling someone's carriage is the equivalent of driving someone somewhere. Sure, in that case, there's actual physical labour involved, but it doesn't seem to be too extreme. The real life equivalent would be that the girls rented a limousine and asked the guys to drive them because they can't do it themselves in their fancy get-ups. It's not the equivalent of carrying them in a litter.


 * At the end of "Best Night Ever", Rarity accidentally ends up leaving her glass shoe behind and Pinkie Pie notices it and explains its worth to Rarity, only to have her break it soon after. I get that it's supposed to subvert the climax / ending of "Cinderella", but couldn't she have just, you know, put that shoe on by herself (or at least carry it by her mouth) instead of, you know, just stomping on it? I mean, why not break all of those shoes that she's wearing while she's at it? Not to mention the shards that would most likely hurt her for weeks to come...
 * Emotions were running high at that point. Also, if you're making footwear out of glass it would almost have to be "safety" glass that wouldn't get stabby when broken. Chalk it up to yet more Schizo-Tech.
 * Hoofs are less vulnerable than normal feet. And imagine what she was thinking when this fact was pointed out to her. She obviously understood the reference and the meaning. She was frightened by the meaning.
 * Also, Rule of Funny.


 * Does this bother anyone else that almost everyone at the Grand Galloping Gala had those fancy sophisticated outfits, but the princess herself showed up in her regular attire? After all the fuss about creating proper Gala dresses for mane characters in "Suited for success", this troper couldn't wait for the final episode to see what pimped-out dress Celestia would wear (maybe because he saw DA fanart of Luna wearing a really pretty one too) and then it turned out she went for the standard "collar plus crown" combination that she always wears on occassions far less formal than GGG.
 * She is God Princess, she looks great and noble every times and no dress or lack of it change this. Also Celestria doesn't like GGG so she might hate fancy dresses, at least for it.
 * Possibly if she starting wearing dresses, ponies would expect her to wear them at many occasions.
 * Royal Ermine Effect. Aren't most of Celestia's appearances formal to begin with? (Despite what she wants, too.) If anything, it would be interesting to see what she's wearing when she's off the clock.
 * It could be a subtle way of signaling the guests not to be so uptight about the Gala.
 * She has flaming hair forged out of rainbows and is twice as tall as everyone else. She doesn't need a dress to be notable at a party, and the flaming hair probably cements her status as godly overlord better than any fancy dress.


 * In "Best Night Ever" there's this lovely cello playing pony, fan-named Octavia. She's playing cello, and her cutie mark is a Treble Clef! A reasonable explanation is that she plays more than one instrument, and was just playing cello at the time... but as a violinist, this really bugs me.
 * It's probably out of convenience since ponies in general seem to be unable to stand on their hind legs for a long period of time. At least the Cello can partially support her weight as she is standing (although balancing while playing an instrument that is also supporting some of your weight sounds difficult enough as it is). Although that also brings up how she's holding onto the bow and even playing when she doesn't have any fingers...
 * According to The Other Wiki, the treble clef is "sometimes used, along with tenor clef, for the highest notes played by bass-clef instruments such as the cello..." On second thought I doubt there's any violinists on the staff, so it could be a case of Did Not Do the Research.
 * Octavia's a musician; thus, her cutie mark symbolises music in general.
 * Likely this. A treble clef is probably just more recognizable than a bass clef (especially in a show for girls, who very rarely use a bass clef unless they play an instrument in that range or have an unusually low voice).
 * Most likely the above. Treble Clefs are typically used to represent music in general. They always have been and always will be. They're prettier and swirlier than a bass Clef. Plus, Octavia's talent might not be cello specifically, it could be something else entirely, but she just happens to be very good at cello and they needed a cellist for that night and their regular cellist was gone for whatever reason.
 * Near the end of Best Night Ever, in the infamous scene where Blueblood uses Rarity as a shield against a flying cake, why didn't either of them use magic to stop it? Levitation is a talent every unicorn has, so shouldn't they have been able to stop it without much trouble?
 * Perhaps to levitate things, unicorns have to be able to, er, "aim" at them as if they're going to grab them, and trying to levitate a flying cake while in a panic was too difficult a task. Or they both forgot they could.
 * Yes. Magic takes a bit of focus. In the pillow fight in "Look Before You Sleep", Rarity gets hit by a few pillows at first, before eventually telekinetically grabbing some from the air as they come towards her and sending them back.
 * Or perhaps Blueblood thought using magic himself was beneath him and Rarity was too surprised/shocked and didn't have time to cast anything.
 * It's also a very large cake; the only unicorn on the show we've seen lift anything of comparable size is Twilight Sparkle. It may have been beyond Rarity's weight limit. (And Blueblood, useless twit that he is, probably strains to lift anything heavier than a comb.)


 * Anyone else notice that all the Princess' Guards are all white, male, pegasi?
 * Other people have noticed. A common theory around the fandom is that there's an enchant somewhere on the guard armor that turns their coat white, giving them a more uniform look. Though since pretty much the only guards we've seen are Celestia's personal guard, they could be hand(hoof?)-picked by Celestia herself. White, male pegasi might be what she likes.
 * The openning shows dark gray unicorn guards. People complained it was racist.
 * The gray unicorn guards also appear in Twilight's flashback in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles".
 * So, the guard pegasi are white-coated and the guard unicorns are grey-coated. It has been suggested on 4chan that the armor which grants uniform coat coloration also grants uniform size and musculature. This would free up the recruiters to look for the most loyal ponies who are willing to fight and die for Equestria, even if they're not in the best of shape ala Steve Rogers, Captain America (comics). (This also means some of the guards might be mares in disguise.)
 * This kind of raises the question, where does she find all these identical ponies? Does she have a breeding program? Do they all have the same cutie mark?
 * Fan-lore says the guards bleach. It'd be analogous to a uniform and a military haircut.
 * The unicorns don't seem to leave Canterlot, so my guess would be that the dark grey unicorns are palace guards or Canterlot city guards, and the white pegasi are Celestia's personal guard.
 * Pretty much this. Whenever Celestia goes outside Canterlot, the pegasus guards come with her because they can FLY and pull her chariot. Unicorns and earth ponies would not be able to do that, so that's the likely reason the pegasi accompany her outside of Canterlot.
 * It's to play on the Light Is Good aspect. When Luna makes her grand appearance in Luna Eclipsed, her chariot is pulled by dark-themed pegasus ponies, so it's probably for aesthetics.

There are also businesses that use the Gala to generate revenue, like Carousel Boutique. Rarity mentions making dresses for ponies that are going to attend the Gala in 'The Ticket Master.' While the Gala being canceled probably wouldn't hurt those businesses, they would be upset at the loss of that revenue. So basically, Celestia has to keep holding the Gala, and keep attending, and keep greeting everypony that walks into the Gala or she will get some grief from those that want the Gala, potentially for weeks, months, maybe even the rest of the year. Maybe even longer, depending on how hard the nobility of Equestria stick to their grudges. So a night of absolute boredom for relatively smooth running the rest of the time sounds like a pretty good idea for me.
 * Why does Celestia hold the gala every year if she hates it at this point? She's an absolute monarch ruling by her own divine right, so its not like she can't get rid of any laws mandating it, and court protocol is almost by definition whatever she wants it to be...
 * Because it has 1000+ years of tradition behind it, giving it an inertia of sorts. It's a high-society affair, so the nobles and aristocrats will look forward to attending so they can rub elbows, learn juicy secrets, and hopefully figure out a way to manipulate their way into an even better position. Other ponies will want to attend as well, if they can, considering it is a big, high-society event, so simply attending would be a mark of status. If Celestia canceled the Gala, then all those ponies would be upset and upset nobility can make Celestia's job worse by subtly working against her and undermining her efforts to get things done, while upsetting the lower classes that dreamed of going to the Gala gives you upset lower classes,and upsetting them too much can lead to revolution.
 * It might have had a more interesting origin - perhaps originally it was a celebration of harmony after Discord or Nightmare Moon were defeated, and over the centuries it stagnated.


 * Am I the only one who had a serious What The Hay Princess moment with Celestia? She invited the mane cast KNOWING THAT THEY WOULD RUIN THE GALA!! Maybe she wasn't expecting them to go as far as they did, but judging by her reaction at the end of the episode; what happened was well within her expectations. I know that she personally hated the gala, but what about the other guests who were probably enjoying themselves? She ruined their night and put them in danger all because she felt bored.
 * Like you said, Celestia most likely had no way of knowing they'd go that far. Also, Rule of Perception. We're not really given insight into most of the party-goers, and the few that are given focus are portrayed unsympathetically, with the exception of the Wonderbolts. Still, it doesn't explain everything else you mentioned, so I'm assuming that the writers just didn't want you to look that closely. While it's a very unsatisfying answer, I don't think there's a better one then "it's just a show, I should really just relax."
 * Most likely, Celestia was under the impression that the ponies would stay as a group and have a good time. They probably would have upsetted the other guests just the same being loud and stuff, and that was how she planned to have things spiced up.
 * Exactly, I feel like it was just a case of Gone Horribly Right. Celestia wanted them to spice things up a bit, but had no way of knowing that would happen. Did she kind of enjoy the excitement? Probably yes. But it probably wasn't what she intended.
 * She may have seen it developing and gone Sure Why Not?
 * Also, no one actually got seriously hurt, so it was manageable.


 * Twilight is among the "mane cast" to make the promise to make the Gala "The Best Night Ever". And she...proceeds to stand with Celestia and continue shaking hooves and doesn't do anything til the Gala's nearly destroyed?
 * Her dream was to spend the night with Celestia, and that didn't go so well. It's clearly shown they weren't even in the same room for all the destruction. They only arrived after everything was said and done.


 * It REALLY bugs me that the Wonderbolts blew Rainbow Dash off the entire time. I know they're celebreties and all, but this isn't the average talented fan we're talking about here. Rainbow Dash saved their goddamned LIVES, and managed to pull of a Sonic Rainboom at the same time, something which is very close to legendary amoung pegasi. Surely that merits a little more attention than what they gave?
 * They're celebrities at a big, important event. They had to spread out their time among all the various people that came to see them. It was just exaggerated for the sake of plot. You'll notice that, at one point, they are literally dragged away from Rainbow for a photo. They were trying.
 * She does get special treatment from them, Spitfire explicitly thanks her for saving their lives (and Soarin's pie) before inviting her to come and hang out with them in the VIP section. The problem comes in that every time they try to socialize with Rainbow, something happens to pull them away.


 * Am I the only one who was bothered by how irresponsible Twilight was for abandoning Spike as soon as she got to the Gala? Remember that Spike is, by his species' standards, a child. Even if you don't consider Twilight to be a surrogate mother/ guardian to Spike, she should have known how dangerous it was to leave him unattended, especially in a big, crowded place that he probably wasn't familiar with. What if he had gotten hurt? What if he had gotten lost? Would it have been too much to ask of her to keep him close by, or at least establish a place for them to meet up after the party was over?
 * Despite being a baby(By Dragon standards), Spike has shown to be on a mental level equal to the mane cast(young adults) and has shown enough resolve, cunning and level head to be able to take care of himself. Furthermore, Twilight knows how strong and durable Spike is. It's much more likely for her to get hurt than him.
 * Equestrian society seems to support young children being allowed to explore on their own at a level more comparable to 1950s society than modern Earth -- we see the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who seem to be schoolchildren-equivalents, out on their own pretty often -- and in turn the Palace Grounds are probably more like a second home to Spike than a dangerous and unknown place.
 * There's also that Equestrian dragons are pretty much unkillable. Spike can be dropped into an erupting volcano and not feel so much as a sunburn, and has scales so hard that he literally doesn't feel it when he's stabbed with sharp metal objects. Pretty much the only things inside the Canterlot city limits that has any hope of seriously injuring him are Celestia and Luna themselves.
 * Also, the palace grounds and city of Canterlot are hardly 'a place Spike is unfamiliar with' - before moving to Ponyville with Twilight, Spike had spent literally his entire life living there.


 * So, given that the Wonderbolts were apparently finished with their show by the time they arrived at the party, does that mean the girls not only arrived too late for Rainbow Dash to try to crash their performance, but to even see it? You'd expect her to complain about that.
 * I was under the impression that they had a show when the Gala started and planned to perform again later in the night, but the party ended early before they could.
 * She was there for the first show and was likely going to be invited to take part in the second, considering Spitfire's apparently high opinion of her.


 * Apple Jack was able to set up a stand at the GGG in the first place? She must have asked first, since it would be insanely rude to just turn up with a stall and risk getting turned away. Add to that the initial pitch fee which would be quite high at a large event, unless it is offset with a higher skim. This presents two opportunities for the event organiser (Probably not the Princess directly) to have said "Listen kid, this isn't the right place to do that."
 * I got the impression it just happened without AJ giving the organisers a heads-up first. She is naive like that.
 * Then surely she should have been turned away as a trader by the event securityponies?
 * What event securityponies? All we see are some bouncers to make sure that no-one gets into the VIP section unless they're supposed to.
 * What are the (nick)names of the four musicians? Octavia seems to be disproportionately popular in the fandom, but what about, say, the pianist or the harpist. Is this just because Octavia looks like one of Pinkie's sisters?
 * There's an entire MLP wikia and it lists fan-names for nearly every background pony. You can likely find fan-names for the other musicians.
 * I can accept Fluttershy's breakdown, given the animals' behavior. But I cannot see any plausible way for her to go from "You're going to LOVE ME!!" to laughing about it (as she does at the end) with anything less than several hours of focused distraction, probably consisting entirely of positive animal interactions. Probably longer. Which is not implied to have happened, and I doubt any of the other ponies would have thought of it at the time.


 * I'm a bit more surprised that Twilight didn't know what to expect. Surely, as the personal protege of the princess, she's had to attend some formal events before. Best I can figure, she didn't realize just how busy Celestia would be, and expected that she'd have at least some free time.
 * Maybe? But then, she also seems the sort to have ducked out of them by going to study magic some more, at least until the whole "go make some friends" order, so perhaps she truly never went to one and never asked what they were like. All she knew was that her beloved teacher was going to be there, and kind of assumed the rest. It just happens that said beloved teacher is princess of Equestria, and therefore has a lot of ponies to divide her attention amongst...