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Description
Once upon a time, Fluttershy was quite good at making other ponies laugh.
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Since when couldn’t Rainbow Dash walk on clouds?
That was a typo, I meant to say Rarity. Sorry.
nobody questioned why Pinkie Pie was working at Sweet Apple Acres, and Angel Bunny didn’t look for Fluttershy, instead Angel expected Rainbow Dash to fill her role.
Why would someone question Pinkie Pie working at her friend’s farm? And who saw her to question that?
Angel tried to cook Rainbow. Sure as heck didn’t seem like he expected her to fill Fluttershy’s role.
Since when couldn’t Rainbow Dash walk on clouds?
Everyone noticed that things were bad, but nobody questioned why Pinkie Pie was working at Sweet Apple Acres, and Angel Bunny didn’t look for Fluttershy, instead Angel expected Rainbow Dash to fill her role.
You can assume whatever you want about the progression of time, it is still an assumption.
First of all, Rarity could have moved Rainbow Dash’s house down to ground level with her new-found weather magic. Something she didn’t have before, which made her capable of the job in the first place, and was definitively a new memory.
You mean the levitation? We’ve seen other unicorns use weather magic. It looked different from what Rarity did, and worked much better. All Rarity did was move clouds around, which can be explained by levitation. Trixie, even without outside aid, was able to summon clouds and control lightning discharges, abilities that Rarity was shown not to have.
Even moving Rainbow’s house down using her levitation wouldn’t change the fact that Rainbow can’t walk on clouds, and would be unable to properly interact with it.
The fact that they were failing at their special talents didn’t even register with anyone but Twilight Sparkle.
Yes, their failures registered. Everyone around noticed just how bad the Manes were doing.
Everyone was staring aghast at their failures. If, say, Applejack’s designs were remembered as normal, than the people of Ponyville would have been buying her dresses. The crowd at Fluttershy’s party would have been ignoring her instead of staring. Or just not shown up.
if we can’t even trust what is actually seen on screen to establish the course of events, then I don’t think anyone can make a definitive conclusion as to how much time did or did not pass off screen.
The series has established that dramatic changes in scenery can happen in a short amount of time. Taking the progression of time shown in the episode at face value is quite reasonable in this case, and comes out to about a day.
Seriously, in Equestria all of the leaves are knocked off the trees in one day. Spring in rolled is over the course of one day. Extensive changes to the scenery occurring in one day, or even less, is something that happens on this show. It’s even an explicit part of the setting.
(Twilight gets zapped in the middle of the day in her library, and when she returns, it is the middle of the night and in the town center. Even though Celestia’s ballad was just a few minutes long.)
Celestia’s Ballad was a few minutes long. That says nothing about how long it took Celestia to reach Twilight, or more importantly, how long it was between Twilight’s transformation and return.
You’re also looking at it backwards; that’s the only spot in the episode where a significant amount of time was explicitly shown to be passing. That means that a lot of time passed during that event. If time wasn’t shown to be passing, than the events should be assumed to have happened quickly.
Incidentally, what makes you think that it was the middle of the night when Twilight returned, instead of shortly after the sun had set? Or that it was the middle of the day instead of simple before sundown when she was zapped? Did you get a look at a clock?
First of all, Rarity could have moved Rainbow Dash’s house down to ground level with her new-found weather magic. Something she didn’t have before, which made her capable of the job in the first place, and was definitively a new memory.
Whatever memories they had were apparently irrelevant to the story and not addressed one way or another, except for the fact that they were not overly concerned by inconsistencies in their memories. The fact that they were failing at their special talents didn’t even register with anyone but Twilight Sparkle.
Fluttershy was indeed attempting something of a slapstick routine when she was shown trying to entertain ponies. That it was not 100% in line with the bullying she received as a foal does not contradict the point. When she was seen about to leave Ponyville, she indicated that she was trying her best, which might have included failed attempts at improvisation. (It might, or it might not, it was left vague either way.)
There are a number of ways that the inconsistencies in scenery could be explained, and it is compounded by the fact that magic exists and was clearly at work in setting up the problem in the first place.
Either way, arguments like “Rarity is not staying at the library,” are not at all conclusive, and if we can’t even trust what is actually seen on screen to establish the course of events, then I don’t think anyone can make a definitive conclusion as to how much time did or did not pass off screen. (Twilight gets zapped in the middle of the day in her library, and when she returns, it is the middle of the night and in the town center. Even though Celestia’s ballad was just a few minutes long.)
But as it was presented, very little was actually explained.
All I’m saying is that they didn’t get memories of their new jobs, and that the episode took place in the course of a single day. I’m not trying to figure out anything complicated, here.
Figuring out what Star Swirl’s spell was supposed to do, for example, would be complicated. Or what Twilight’s spell would have done if the Elements weren’t in the room with her. Stuff like that is hard.
“The most likely place for her to stay would have been the library?” You see, this is what I’m talking about when I say “treating circumstantial evidence as absolute fact.”
Then where would she have stayed? Pinkie’s place doesn’t have a guest room, and Sweet Apple Acres and Fluttershy’s cottage are both outside of town. How would she have explained away having a house that she couldn’t reach?
“Fine. Then what different memories did they have?” That is exactly what these comics are about.
I know what the comics are about, and I actually like them. That doesn’t change the fact that the comics give them memories that would give the manes more experience and competence than they displayed in the episode.
And you didn’t answer the question. What new memories did they have? When did any of the swapped manes give details about their altered lives? When did any of them display any memories of doing their new jobs?
Heck, Rainbow apparently didn’t know where Fluttershy kept the critter food.
This one in particular, like I’ve said twice already, is about how there are different kinds of humor that different people find humorous.
What does that have to do with this discussion? Or the episode? Fluttershy didn’t try to use the methods from this comic, after all.
“Given that the show prizes dramatic or comedic emphasis over realism…” You either can, or you can’t really draw any concrete conclusions from the episode as presented. You can’t have it both ways.
I’m not trying to set up a minute-by-minute time line, here. There are miles and miles of room between the occasional exaggeration and complete wacky land. Situations have to be judged on their merits.
The show has had events that one would expect to take quite large amounts of time happen extremely quickly. This episode’s treatment of Sweet Apple Acres was presented as one of those things. Therefore, it would make sense that it happened quickly.
Remember, it was fixed just as fast, if not faster. Fast enough that Twilight didn’t take Pinkie and have her get her talent back while they waited on the farm.
“The most likely place for her to stay would have been the library?” You see, this is what I’m talking about when I say “treating circumstantial evidence as absolute fact.”
“Fine. Then what different memories did they have?” That is exactly what these comics are about. This one in particular, like I’ve said twice already, is about how there are different kinds of humor that different people find humorous.
“Given that the show prizes dramatic or comedic emphasis over realism…” You either can, or you can’t really draw any concrete conclusions from the episode as presented. You can’t have it both ways.
Yes, there are lots of different ways the episode COULD have made sense. But as it was presented, very little was actually explained. Anyone can jump through logical hoops and bend over backwards philosophically to try and make sense out of a vague and self-contradictory episode, but there’s no objective right answer to reach at the end.
There was actually no concrete indication of how much time elapsed between the moment Twilight cast her spell and the moment she fixed things.
The more time that passed, the less sense things make. The swapped Manes would get better as time went by. They were just as bad when Twilight fixed them, so not much time went by at all.
Most obviously, they were staying at each others houses. Which means that Rarity, who can’t fly, would have been unable to reach Rainbow Dash’s house, which could not have gone unmentioned. The most likely place for her to stay would be either the Boutique or the library. Staying at the library would have prompted reactions from Spike and Twilight. Staying with Applejack would most likely result in her attempting to help Applejack with her dressmaking, which would have restored her mark and memories.
Applejack’s family didn’t move with her, otherwise we would have seen them at the Boutique, so they should have still been at the Apple farm, where we also didn’t see them. A short time span would explain their absence on the farm as them simply attending to chores elsewhere until things were fixed or Twilight was contacted. However, the Boutique really doesn’t have the space to hide them for any length of time, especially since they would have been trying help if they were around Applejack. When the other Apples saw what Pinkie was doing, they would have started to show her how to do things properly.
The critters at Fluttershy’s cottage neither starved nor left, and food still remained and was fresh. The pets had not damaged the cottage in attempts to get at the food, and Rainbow did not possess enough knowledge to either feed them properly or shop for the correct foods, so no large amount of time could have gone by. Going by what Fluttershy said when she calmed them down, they’d just missed a feeding, not several, and were in good condition rather than malnourished.
We know that Twilight became aware of the problem at breakfast. They was no implication or indication that they skipped ahead any significant amount of time after that. Even granting that the songs don’t occur in real time, at no point did the sun appear to go down or come up, although the town was overcast at times.
Normally, an entire farm does not wither and die out in a single day, for instance.
Seriously? We saw the parasprites do worse to Ponyville in a few minutes. Heck, we saw Spike steal the leaves and apples from Sweet Apple Orchards in the time it took Twilight to catch up with him from Ponyville. Given that the show prizes dramatic or comedic emphasis over realism, Pinkie wrecking the area around the Apple home in a few hours makes perfect sense.
Also, Rarity’s crap weather should probably shoulder some of the responsibility for that. Seriously, frostbite on sunburns. Can’t be healthy for an apple tree.
And in the interest of accuracy, Pinkie wasn’t shown to have wrecked the entire orchard, just the area around the house.
For all we know, Applejack boarded up Carousel Boutique because she had run out of money and was forced to close.
Except Rarity was able to reopen once she got there, meaning that finances weren’t a problem. If Applejack had had enough time to run out of money, then so would Rarity, especially since Rarity probably would have been sacked after a day of weather like that.
Also, Rainbow Dash didn’t “allow herself,” to be caught be critters, she was caught by critters,
We see Rainbow Dash sit down in resignation. Then we see her tied up, but in about the same pose. I don’t think that she was committing suicide, but I do think that she was too depressed to fight back at the time, and didn’t realize what they were doing until it was too late.
Are you honestly going to tell me that Rainbow Dash would have been caught by some critters if she was in the mind to fight back?
“Just because they lacked experience at their new jobs does not follow that they lacked different memories.”
Fine. Then what different memories did they have?
We know that the spell made them think that they were supposed to be living each others’ lives. We know that the spell was suppressing memories to the contrary, given that the Manes had forgotten about their real skills despite still possessing them. We have no proof that they have new memories relating to their new lives, and they were shown to lack knowledge of the basics of their new jobs.
The simplest explanation is that the spell was preventing them from realizing how odd it was that they didn’t know what they were doing, Insisting on new memories requires an explanation of why memories of having the fake cutie mark would not include information that they would have if they had been in that job for even a few days.
Insisting on memories not related to their new lives raises the question of why memories unrelated to their original lives or new lives would compel them to try to live out their new lives.
Any new memories would, at best, be the result of the swapped Manes trying to cover up the holes in their histories rather than a coherent biography.
Fluttershy said that she couldn’t make people laugh, but didn’t know why. That’s because she was being forced into Pinkie Pie’s life, but didn’t have Pinkie’s experience, or anything comparable to it. By what she said, she didn’t know how to make ponies laugh, more or less confirming that she didn’t have new knowledge relevant to the fake mark.
The ponies who were out in Rarity’s weather were acting like things were normal. When someone complains about an issue, it does not mean that they think the issue isn’t normal.
The ponies complaining were complaining because the pony managing the weather was doing a crap job. Rarity had just identified herself as managing the weather, hence why they were accosting her instead of trying to track down Rainbow Dash. Twilight, by the way, had just told her point blank that the weather wasn’t her job but Rarity disagreed with her. So even if the crowd of complainants had told Rarity that she was replacing someone else, she would have maintained responsibility for the job.
When I said that no one was acting like Rarity’s weather was normal, I meant that none of them were prepared for Rarity’s rapid weather changes, by doing things like wearing coats and keeping umbrellas handy. They just hid inside or tried to continue on like normal, which they would have known wouldn’t have helped if they had experienced Rarity’s weather for any length of time.
I didn’t think about it at the time, but the behavior of Fluttershy’s critters makes much more sense if they realized that Fluttershy had left. They’d be acting up in hopes of Rainbow Dash going to get Fluttershy. Remember, they calmed down once Fluttershy started talking to them.
Look at their faces. They knew her, even before her mark returned.
If they had thought that there was any alternative, why weren’t any of the other pegasi outside fixing the weather?
Partly because that wasn’t their job, and partly they didn’t have enough time to get quite that fed up or organized. Rainbow Dash is the Ponyville weather pony, not some random pegasus pony off of the street. As far as any of them know, Rainbow Dash abruptly dumped her job on one of her friends and ran off. Some of them might have been watching Twilight Sparkle, and realized that a magical mishap was involved, in which case they would probably back off and let her handle it.
In any case, it was maybe a few hours before Twilight started fixing things, and Rainbow was the second to get her life back. That would be maybe half a day for the complaints to be acted on. Not really enough time to choose a new weather pony, especially not when they were still trying to figure out why the old one ran off and left them with Rarity.
Why would altered memories have prevented Rarity from being sacked? Rainbow’s actions have made it very clear that it isn’t a permanent job. The only thing that explains Rarity not being replaced is that she wasn’t there long enough for anyone to figure out how to fire her.
Even Spike didn’t seem terribly concerned, or even convinced that there was anything wrong at the beginning, when things were clearly going wrong.
What? Twilight had to explain what was going during the trip to Fluttershy’s cottage, but that was because she had woken him up from a sound sleep. He didn’t know that Rarity was in charge of the weather at that point. At no point did Spike claim that anything he saw was normal or how it was supposed to be, not once he saw something wrong. He did bring up the possibility that their friends would grow to like their new lives, but that was when he was suggesting possible solutions and had gotten desperate.
then you’re going to have to do more than discount the credibility of explicit statements in the episode, while simultaneously insisting that circumstantial implications are explicit facts.
Which ones am I discounting? This is an honest question. Is there a solid statement in the episode that I have missed? Was there a point where anyone referred to actual memories rather than simply being compelled?
At one point, Rarity claims to have been managing the weather since she got her cutie mark, a statement that jibes with absolutely nothing, and was never elucidated on her by her, making it seem like a random claim than anything else. That’s the closest any of them come to claiming new memories, and that’s being generous to Rarity’s statement, given that the context was deliberately designed to make it sound farcical. Fluttershy, as I mentioned above, actually claimed a lack of understanding about her situation.
Yeah, that much I understand, but other than her tripping, what are the other two scenes about?
Fluttershy gained Pinkie’s mark by figuring out she made people laugh at her pain.
There was actually no concrete indication of how much time elapsed between the moment Twilight cast her spell and the moment she fixed things. Normally, an entire farm does not wither and die out in a single day, for instance. For all we know, Applejack boarded up Carousel Boutique because she had run out of money and was forced to close. Also, Rainbow Dash didn’t “allow herself,” to be caught be critters, she was caught by critters, unless you are suggesting that she was committing suicide in a television show for children.
“That’s a pretty clear indication that they didn’t have any memories of doing their new jobs.”
I’m going to just have to repeat myself, because there is really no simpler way to state this fact: “Just because they lacked experience at their new jobs does not follow that they lacked different memories.”
The ponies who were out in Rarity’s weather were acting like things were normal. When someone complains about an issue, it does not mean that they think the issue isn’t normal. Oftentimes when people complain, they are complaining about things that are normal. If they had thought that there was any alternative, why weren’t any of the other pegasi outside fixing the weather? They’ve been shown to be reasonably competent in weather management before. Nobody else was trying to fix the problems, they just sort of glumly resigned themselves to their fate like there was no alternative. Even Spike didn’t seem terribly concerned, or even convinced that there was anything wrong at the beginning, when things were clearly going wrong.
You want to have your own head canon, that’s fine by me. If you want to tell me that my interpretation is wrong, then you’re going to have to do more than discount the credibility of explicit statements in the episode, while simultaneously insisting that circumstantial implications are explicit facts.
And yet the other five didn’t give up at their new lives.
All of them were shown to give up hope and stop trying. Applejack boarded up Carousal Boutique. Rainbow Dash allowed herself to be caught by the critters. Rarity wallowing in pity isn’t too odd, admittedly, but it generally takes more than one bad day. Pinkie Pie was boarding up the Apple Family Farm.
Just because they lacked experience at their new jobs does not follow that they lacked any different memories.
What other conclusion can you draw? They showed that they didn’t remember how to do their new jobs. That’s a pretty clear indication that they didn’t have any memories of doing their new jobs.
The weird part is that several of them were having difficulty with tasks that they had previously shown competency at.
Even the townsfolk didn’t seem to notice that anything was different, and they didn’t get their cutie marks changed.
For the two publicly visible ponies…
The ponies out in Rarity’s weather and attending Fluttershy’s… party? were acting like something unusual was going on, rather than thinking it was situation normal. When Pinkie tried to make them laugh before getting her cutie mark back, the townspeople reacted like she was supposed to provide comedy.
There was never any sign or implication that the townspeople were affected, and some that they weren’t. Keep in mind that Spike, who was neither the person that cast the spell, nor a target of it, did not have his memories altered. The simplest thing to assume is that the same applied for the other residents of Ponyville. From their perspective, it looked like the Manes were swapping jobs for a day.
Something else that you need to keep in mind is that less than a day went by. Twilight started dealing with the situation right after breakfast, and finished well before sundown. Possible even before lunchtime. The townspeople didn’t have to put up with the situation for long.
And yet the other five didn’t give up at their new lives. There isn’t any kind of conclusion you can definitively draw from their giving up or lack thereof.
Just because they lacked experience at their new jobs does not follow that they lacked any different memories. Even the townsfolk didn’t seem to notice that anything was different, and they didn’t get their cutie marks changed.
The episode never states that they thought they were supposed to live each other’s lives. It never explains anything, really. You are free to assume that is the case, as it is so vague that numerous interpretations are valid, but that is never explicitly stated. The only thing that is explicitly stated is that the spell “Changed their true selves.” Which is information so unbelievably vague as to be almost useless. What constitutes someone’s “true,” self? In the context of Friendship is Magic, we still don’t know.
On the contrary, Fluttershy did give up.
Yes…? That was my point. Could you see Fluttershy walking away from a hurt animal that quickly?
I don’t think it contradicts anything that happened in the episode.
Technically, yes. They both lacked experience at their new jobs, and were incapable of understanding why they were having so much trouble. That means that they didn’t have memories of doing those tasks before.
From what we saw, the spell made them think that they were supposed to live each other’s lives, but didn’t do anything else to them.
On the contrary, Fluttershy did give up. She was leaving town when Twilight found her.
Twilight Sparkle: “Where are you going?”
Fluttershy: “I’m moving back to Cloudsdale. I don’t know what’s wrong, but I can’t seem to make anypony laugh.”
Also, while it is not explicitly stated in the show that they had different memories, fake or real, it never explicitly says that they didn’t. So while this obviously isn’t canon, I don’t think it contradicts anything that happened in the episode.
Now, we might learn more about this in Season 4. Seeing Pinkie Pie in a group of the Apple family singing about being the Apple family suggests to me that maybe she really remembers something about working on the farm.
Perhaps she even remembers Applejack’s parents. That would be really cool.
The way I read this, Twilight’s spell not only screwed up her friends’ destinies, it apparently corrupted their cutie marks as well. Pinkie Pie’s cutie mark went from representing a talent for making people laugh by throwing parties and stuff to representing a talent for making people laugh by being the butt-monkey of sadistic practical jokes.
I specifically said making ponies feel better. Pinkie isn’t all about making parties, after all. As this comic and various incidents in the cartoon point out, Fluttershy can make ponies smile. She can even throw tea parties just fine, although she really isn’t much for a raucous bash.
The spell was making the ponies try to live out each others’ lives, rather than allowing them to apply their own skills to their new tasks.
As for the memories… It’s a matter of degree. I’ll admit, I should have clarified what I meant from the start. The spell made them think that they were supposed to have their new jobs, but that was it. It was making them think that they were supposed to act like each other to some extent, but it didn’t given them any memories of how each other worked. Most obviously, it gave them no memories of how to do their new tasks, otherwise they would simply have been unhappy. Any memories of a past that they would have possessed would have been murky, garbled messes that they pulled together to delude themselves into thinking that they were supposed to be living their new lives.
The spell also didn’t make them like their new lives. None of them enjoyed doing what they were doing, as we’ve seen how the Manes react to having trouble with their chosen lives, and they don’t just give up, not that easily.
You’re contradicting yourself. If she had the capability to devise her own methods of comedy, she would have been more successful.
The point, again, is that different people find different things funny. For instance, 4-koma is a style of humor that is popular in one culture, but much less so in another. The heart of that brand of humor involves knowing the characters involved, which is similar in some respects to how Fluttershy’s initial audience derives their humor. In Ponyville, ponies didn’t know Fluttershy the same way, and she clearly didn’t have the ability to respond to her audience. (As a converse example, in Japan where 4-koma style is more popular, the Calvin and Hobbes style of introspective humor makes the majority of people scratch their heads in confusion, while in North American culture, the majority of people find it brilliant.)
Fluttershy, swapped cutie mark or no, only had one brand of humor. The only difference is that in one reality, she embraced it, and in the other, she rejected it.
The statement “the episode made it clear that the ponies didn’t get any new memories,” is totally false. Everypony thought that their situation was normal, and that implies that they had different memories, otherwise they would have realized that something was wrong. If I woke up and realized I couldn’t remember anything relating to my special talent since I discovered it, I would be pretty unnerved myself.
No. It was an interesting idea.
And this series of comics is also interesting and kind of cool, but doesn’t fit with the episode and is technically an AU from the episode.
Can we please say the spell was a screw-up from the get-go and move on?