My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Recap/S2/E22 Hurricane Fluttershy/Fridge


 * Fridge Brilliance: Twilight keeps insisting they keep a germ-free environment while training. This isn't just to keep every pegasi healthy- they're transporting water. If the pegasi moving it were sick, the water could be infected and unfit for use.
 * ... except that if it's being used for cloud-making, that itself is a form of distillation.
 * Fridge Logic: Why didn't Spitfire participate in creating the tornado? As a high speed champion, she surely would've been helpful in making it.
 * She's only there to oversee the tornado and record it's wind speed. The tornado itself was the job of the Ponyville pegasi.
 * That explains the first time, but when it was clear they weren't making the record, why not help when they were just doing it to prevent a drought?
 * With Rainbow Dash inspiring all the pegasi that they can do it, why jump in? They really wanted to prove that they can do it so she probably let them have that chance. If they really couldn't pull it off on their own, Spitfire would probably report it back to Cloudsdale and either join in and maybe call in some of the other Wonderbolts or get another town to do it.
 * Providing water from the various towns' reservoir seems like part of a social duty across Equestria to assure the weather system is maintained. As such, Spitfire here would be acting as a government employee -- assuring the process is completed but unable to get involved.
 * How would 8 pegasi missing lead to a drop of over 200 wingpower?
 * It could be that some of the remaining pegasi were weakened, though not sick enough to drop out completely.
 * It could also be that Dash was overconfident in her excitement and came up with a high estimate.
 * Or, there's some multiplication of wingpower from all the pegasi joining in rather than just straight-up addition of each individual's wingpower.
 * The wingpower readings are done while sprinting a short distance, creating the tornado relies just as much on endurance. Rainbow Dash in her eagerness to set a new record probably didn't think about this and simply added the readings together. When Twilight did her calculations she would take endurance into consideration and came to a lower number than Rainbow, but decided not to tell her (maybe they'd have enough to have a stab at the record and she wouldn't want to risk rattling her confidence). When the 8 pegasi have to drop out, Twilight suddenly realizes they'll not have enough power to get the job done and fills Rainbow in on the bad news.
 * Actually, the jump from 10 wingpower to 25 is pretty easy to figure out once you look at Fluttershy's numbers. To hit the minimum to work, Fluttershy's wingpower would have to increase by 218%. This can actually be explained through a perpetual slipstream, in which the leader of the group is in the slipstream of the last person in the line. Without the air resistance, the group can go faster, netting a potential increase by 2.5 wingpower. This would also mean that there are approximately 40 eligible pegasi living in Ponyville.
 * Given Rainbow Dash's own problems with performance anxiety in the past one would think she would have been better able to give be of more use when it came to training Fluttershy not to worry about crowds…
 * Except that Rainbow got over her performance anxiety only when an emergency situation came up. Which Fluttershy has proven capable of doing already. There's not much advice she can give to Fluttershy since in this respect they are ironically similar.
 * Fair enough, but it would have been a nice call back if Rainbow had at least brought up the fact that she knew what Fluttershy was going through having experienced it herself.
 * While it would be a nice Call Back, Rainbow Dash isn't really the type of pony who could openly admit her own weaknesses, like suffering from performance anxiety.
 * Aside from the obvious reasons, why would Fluttershy try to avoid having to go to a meeting in the library by hiding in a tree right outside the library?
 * Maybe she decided to go, then changed her mind while she was near meeting place, didn't want to be seen fleeing, so she hid in the closest tree she could find.
 * She'd at least be within earshot and know why Rainbow called the meeting. What if it was a meeting to help all the birds in area?