Digibrony

Brony Media Overview

Over on my main blog, since I can’t do youtube embeds on tumblr. Go check it out! Warning, it has lots of embeds!

Oh Man, It’s Over! (For Now)

It’s sunk in that the amazing second season of MLP:FiM is over, and it’ll be months before the show is back on the air. It sucked going without ponies last week, much less going without them for an extended period.

To be fair, I’m hardly “without them.” There are 52 episodes to rewatch endlessly and a constant stream of Equestria Daily stuff to follow (though I’ve realized that keeping up with EQD is difficult if you spend all day doing anything else, such as playing Tera for twenty hours.)

I’ve already watched ponies more devoutly than almost anything before. Even though I’ve been watching currently-running anime for five years, I’ve never managed to keep up with one show throughout its run for as long as I have MLP. (I think 7 eps is the previous record for how long I’ve watched a show every week. Ponies breaks it with 9.)

I’d begun to enjoy the rhythm of waking up early on Saturday, hanging out in the BronyTV stream, then waking up my brothers and watching the new episodes in the living room on the 72-inch. It was starting to become the most consistent element in my life (lol).

I feel, with this, that my summer has already begun. A summer of rhythmic change, which will involve playing lots of video games (namely Tera online), and most likely getting a job.

And ponies. Of course. Lots of ponies. Right here.

Rationalizing Pinkie Pie’s Mental Capacity

In my last post, I mused that Pinkie Pie must know over 3000 ponies, which according to Dunbar’s number is 2750 more than the number of people that a human can maintain social relationships with. The only requirements for inclusion among the 250 person limit in Dunbar’s number is that one knows “who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.” Here I will posit that Pinkie Pie goes beyond the impossible by relocating most of her memory towards social relationships and basing those relationships around thin connections.

I believe that Pinkie Pie is a genius, and that she has incredible control over her memory—by which I mean that she’s great at forgetting things which don’t matter and retaining only what does in the moment. At times, Pinkie Pie is shown to have exceptional short-term memory, and other times she seems to have none. The truth is that she’s managing it carefully. 

Outside of social relationships, what do we know that Pinkie knows? She seems to know lots of bizarre things which crop up in her mind at the spur of the moment. Pinkie Pie is masterfully utilizing memory cues. She doesn’t think about those random facts on a regular basis; but when she sees a memory cue, it crops up instantly.

I posit that Pinkie Pie rarely thinks about *anything* except for what the situation calls for. She intakes information, confines it to memory, and lives in each moment as the memories springing into her head guide her. This would help a lot to reconcile Pinkie’s common claims to not understand anything (including herself) while seemingly pulling endless knowledge out of her mane.

Now, think: what knowledge do you have? I know a million and one things that everyone knows about the world, and a few hundred more that I know from my own experiences. Where I have the most knowledge, though, is in innumerable trivial facts. I can tell you a thousand things about, for instance, the staff that work on anime, naming every show that they’ve worked on, what their input was, who else worked on it with them, and go on and on and on about it.

I have trivial knowledge of far more than 250 people. I think that Pinkie Pie also has nothing more than trivial knowledge of everyone in Ponyville, along with all of her random intake memory that surfaces when the moment calls for it.

Pinkie sees Roseluck. Her name—her appearance—the sight of her roses—all of these are strong cues for Pinkie to remember that Roseluck was in a flower competition recently. Callback memory. She sees somepony else and remembers their birthday. Trivial knowledge.

In the moment when Pinkie is sharing this knowledge, it is *all that she knows about whomever she’s talking to.* For instance, when Pinkie is talking to Matilda, the only active memory she has of her is her birth date and possibly some other trivial facts. When Pinkie sees Cranky’s picture book, it triggers her memory of Matilda’s book.

How does Pinkie remain in good standing with everypony when she only remembers trivial facts about them, and only in their presence? Because she fills in the gaps with her charisma. That is, after all, how she befriended everypony to begin with.

In actuality, I’ve just detailed how memory works and how social relationships work for everyone—the main thing to take away, though, is the idea that Pinkie can have so much extra memory space by never re-thinking things unless called upon by cues to do so.

The Implication of Ponyville’s Population

dziadek1990 has analyzed the hell out of some scenes and concluded with the possibility that Ponyville has between 3,100 and 4,300 citizens. That sounds like a whole lot of ponies, considering how big Ponyville appears in those far-away shots. However, because Ponyville is never shown in full—its size never really understood—and because of the inconsistencies in how many ponies exist on-screen at any given time, there’s plenty open to the imagination.

Here’s what I got out of those numbers: Pinkie Pie knows over three or four thousand ponies. Being as it’s Pinkie Pie, her capacity to do so is hardly surprising, but still, wow. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia about Dunbar’s number for those who’ve never heard of it:

“Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.^[1] Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar’s number. It has been proposed to lie between 100 and 230, with a commonly used value of 150.^[2] Dunbar’s number states the number of people one knows and keeps social contact with, and it does not include the number of people known personally with a ceased social relationship, nor people just generally known with a lack of persistent social relationship, a number which might be much higher and likely depends on long-term memory size.”

Just one more way in which Pinkie goes beyond the impossible.

If Fluttershy Hadn’t Found Stone!Twilight…

Twilight would’ve possibly been frozen in stone there, with no one the wiser, for days. After everypony realized she was gone, searched the village and asked around, Fluttershy would’ve realized that she’d heard Twilight mention the Everfree forest. So they’d find her there, but by then, the Cockatrice would possibly has left the area. Then they have to find every cockatrice nearby and have Fluttershy interrogate them all until she found the one who froze Twilight.

It’s not a very dramatic difference but fun to ponder.

Pony Education

How long do ponies go to school? Is school mandatory? These questions came to mind after my last post, and I think about it every time I see scenes from The Cutie Mark Chronicles because of the fact that filly Cheerilee is clearly seen performing in Rarity’s class play, meaning that Cheerilee is the same age as the mane six.

Ponies seem to customarily get their cutie marks some time during their school days. Getting a cutie mark is not grounds for graduation, so I’d assume that ponies graduate at a certain set time—but I also think that ponies are allowed to drop out of school if they have specific aspirations in life. 

I think this because in The Cutie Mark Chronicles, the mane six all appear to be the same ages that the Cutie Mark Crusaders and their classmates are now, and we know that at least Rarity and Cheerilee were in school at the time: but other ponies’ status as such are questionable.

Most notably, Applejack, who decides to go to the big city. One would assume that she left school to do this. Maybe she transferred to a school in Manehattan? It’s not very clear. Either way, I wouldn’t be surprised if Applejack went straight to working on the farm when she returned home. Applejack may be intelligent, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t highly educated.

Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash interestingly attended “flight school.” Obviously only pegasi can attend flight school, but the question is, do they all? Is it an alternative to mandatory education? Or is it a post-education? The last option seems unlikely, since while Fluttershy definitely seemed a little bit older than the rest of the mane six at the time, Rainbow Dash did not. 

But if flight school is an alternative to regular education, this raises more questions still. Do all pegasi that live in Cloudsdale go to that school? Are pegasi from other cities allowed to go there? Are there alternative flight schools? How do pegasi that don’t go there learn to fly if there aren’t? (I’m looking at you, Scootaloo. And the fact that Scoots can’t fly pushes the question even harder.) 

Sooner or later, I’m going to write something about how talents and embracing destiny shape pony society, and Fluttershy is going to make that very interesting, because she raises a point of contention over the matter. Fluttershy’s talent and destiny is clearly tied to her communication with animals, yet she is called upon for the duties of pegasi, such as creating a hurricane. Moreover, almost all other pegasi seem to have expertise in flight. It seems like pegasus society may be far less accepting than the rest of pony culture. But we’ll save that for another time.

Fluttershy ended up going to flight school, possibly missing out on a regular education, only to probably drop out and take up a job dealing with animals. No doubt her natural talent led her to immediate success in this field, as she ended up being the singular force of animal communication in Ponyville. Lucky break?

Rarity definitely appears to have gone to school with everyone else, and since she was already interested in fashion while in school, there’s little reason to believe that she ever dropped out. Maybe that’s why she has so much class?

Twilight Sparkle is obviously the most educated member of the mane six and is notably *still a student*. We recall that she was taking a test to enter an academy for gifted unicorns, so this, like flight school, raises the question of whether such is a “next step” in education, or an alternative. When I was in elementary school, I was transferred into a “gifted” school not unlike the way Twilight was supposed to be, so I imagine that where she was going to go was quite the same. It was probably a booster school that could’ve propelled her to magical pony college eventually. However, Twilight ended up being the kind of genius who, rather than go to college, became a direct apprentice to one of the world’s best scholars, so her education is totally beyond the realm of other ponies.

Pinkie Pie’s story, if taken to be true, is perhaps the most interesting, because she may not have even attended school to begin with. It’s implied that Pinkie’s family all worked to rock farm and nothing else, and it’s possible that Pinkie moved to Ponyville after discovering the art of party simply because she couldn’t be contained anymore.

This would explain her character incredibly well. First, in terms of her job: Pinkie’s job has never been very clear, and as I noted in my analysis of episode one, she seems to work as an apprentice/helper to the Cakes in exchange for living in their attic. It would make perfect sense of Pinkie’s lack of education and job training led her to sort of drift around and find a simple way of life such as this.

Moreover, this would explain her difficulty in communicating with others. Pinkie is probably a genius, but her genius comes out in totally unfocused and unintelligible bursts. If Pinkie has never been educated, then all of her genius comes from outstanding logistics (which she definitely has) and her own conclusions drawn about the world. It’s too good a theory to ignore!

Rainbow Dash is an interesting case because as far as we can tell, she learned exactly what she was supposed to from flight school and got exactly the job flight school prepared her for. However, there is also the suggestion that she was kicked out of flight school. This may be true, and RD may have been so good that she got a job anyway. It also could be that RD was simply so good that she graduated early, and this just isn’t understood by her classmates (after all, she insists that she wasn’t kicked out, though she’s not given time to explain). Whatever the case may be, it’s doubtful that RD ever paid attention during school, and more likely is just so passionate about flying that she’s the best there is. She’s lazy about her job, but she’s so good at it that it doesn’t matter.

Now, the pony I want to talk about most here is actually Cheerilee, because of the fact that she’s apparently the same age as the mane six. I suggested before that pony schooling only lasts up through primary education (say, till age ten), and that the mane six have been out of the system for about five years at least. What’s interesting about Cheerilee is that she’s gone on to become an educator.

For us humans, you need to attend college to do that, and what I’ve described in this post does suggest that a pony college could exist. For Cheerilee to have already attended college and become an educator at her age, I think it necessarily must be true that primary education is the end of mandatory pony education (if it even is mandatory). The only other way she could be a teacher is if the truth of special talents is that they magically make one good at whatever their talent is (and I highly doubt that this is true).

Roughly Estimating Mane 6 Ages

I’ve been thinking about how old each of the mane six are relative to one-another. As far as I know, the only time age is definitively mentioned in the show is when Fluttershy says that she’s a year older than Pinkie Pie. If we take her to literally mean a full year, then I think it sets a decent spectrum for their ages.

I feel that way because in The Cutie Mark Chronicles, Fluttershy definitely appears to be a little bit older than the rest of the fillies. Moreover, Pinkie Pie appears to be the smallest. This puts everypony else in-between, which is a lot harder to sort.

If we judge ponies by human standards, then we’d say that ponies can be at different stages of development while being the same age. We’d also say that their body types might all be different.

There’s a lot of leeway here. After all, despite the ponies having vastly different lifestyles, the main six are all the same size. However, we do know that ponies can come in many shapes and sizes, even at the same age. See the CMC’s class, which has the likes of Snips and Snails, who have totally different body types. Moreover, our imagination may be called into play here. In Winter Wrap Up, Applejack remarks that Twilight is “going awful fast for such a small pony.” To us, Twilight and Applejack appear to be the same size, but maybe we’re meant to imagine that they aren’t?

With this level of ambiguity, there’s no way to determine the age differences between ponies without knowing their exact ages. Regardless, here’s my guesses.

Fluttershy clearly appears to be the oldest, appearing almost a whole head taller than the other fillies in The Cutie Mark Chronicles.

After her, I’d go: Rarity, older than Twilight, older than Applejack, older than Rainbow Dash, older than Pinkie Pie.

I realize this is a really insubstantial estimation but oh well.

Question 2: Just how old are the ponies? Lauren Faust mentioned once that she left it ambiguous because she didn’t know if the ponies should age like humans, or like actual ponies, since either way would be rather confusing. She concluded that the ponies were simply “old enough to live on their own.” 

Regarding pony aging, I think it’s pretty safe at this point to think that they age at the rate of humans, considering the range of ages displayed in the show, including the geriatric ponies. However, this need not mean that the mane 6 are of the standard age 18 for being considered an adult.

Pony society is a lot more simple than modern human society thanks to the whole cutie mark phenomenon. Ponies have a definitive talent which their lives are based around, so as soon as they find that talent, there’s no reason to believe that they wouldn’t join the work force semi-immediately. We see that there is only one school in Ponyville with one class of young ponies, so I would assume that ponies only undergo a primary education before moving into the workforce.

It would help if we saw some ponies that fell into a pre-teen range; not so little as to be primary schoolers, but not old enough to be professionals. Perhaps young apprentice ponies and scholar ponies. 

Assuming I’m correct about pony society and aging, this leaves the mane six possibly as young as fifteen or sixteen. They wouldn’t be younger, because all of them have fully matured bodies (going by all of the other ponies in the show). As for whether they’re older or not, it’s hard to decide. All of them are highly skilled at their craft, which might make me aim a few years older, but at the same time, if you had one definitive skill which you spent most of your time perfecting, it would only take a few years to get really damn good at it.

Analyzing “Friendship is Magic, Part 2 (Elements of Harmony)”

I haven’t much to say about this episode; it’s pretty straightforward. Probably the most plot-driven episode of the show, with the least extra stuff going on. I imagine that in this early stage of the show, drawing all those backgrounds and effects was enough to eat through the budget and time allotted to an ep.

Episode 2: Friendship is Magic, Part 2 (Elements of Harmony)

Here’s a big question: how long have Twilight’s new friends all known each-other? In these episodes, none of them communicate with one-another, so they don’t seem to be much of friends. They didn’t know one-another when they got their cutie marks, with the exception of Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie don’t really become friends until Griffon the Brush Off, and Applejack and Rarity don’t really become friends until Look Before You Sleep. Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie all seem to be friends with Applejack as of Applebuck Season, which is reasonable as Applejack appears to be one of the best-known ponies in town. Later, Rarity and Fluttershy appear to have been longtime friends in Green Isn’t Your Color.

None of this is contradictory, but what I’d really like to see is back stories for each of the ponies and how they came to live in Ponyville. Fluttershy probably moved there after the cutie mark incident. Applejack has probably always lived on Sweet Apple Acres, and there’s no reason to think Rarity hasn’t always been a resident of Ponyville. How exactly Pinkie and Rainbow came to live there remains a mystery (unless Rainbow Dash really *did* get kicked out of flight school).

I posit that:

-Fluttershy was friends with all of the other four ponies before the start of the show (including Pinkie Pie because they seem to get along really well from the start)

-Rainbow Dash was friends with Fluttershy and Applejack. I’m still not sure how good friends she is with Rarity. 

-Pinkie Pie at least thought that she was friends with everyone, but Rainbow Dash found her annoying. Not sure about Rarity.

-Applejack was friends with Rainbow, Pinkie, and Fluttershy.

-Rarity is the most mysterious, but I think she probably knew Fluttershy at least.

Moving along…

Twilight is great with studies and organization, but is ironically the world’s worst librarian. All throughout the show, whenever she’s trying to find a book, either Spike or Pinkie Pie ends up finding it for her. Pinkie Pie finds Elements of Harmony “under E.” Twilight you aren’t even trying!

I noticed that the Elements of Harmony were contained in the “Royal Sisters castle”. This raises tons of questions. Did Celestia and Luna used to reign in this castle? Did Celestia move to/build Canterlot after sending Luna to the moon, or because of some other circumstance which appeared over those 1000 years? Were/are there more royal sisters? If so, could they have helped Celestia to harvest the power of the elements, or does she just represent them all? This would be an interesting key to understanding whether or not Celestia *needed* Twilight and her friends to harness the elements for her.

When the ponies go into the Everfree Forest, Applejack mentions that it “don’t work like Equestria.” Does this mean that the Everfree Forest is not actually a part of Equestria? If so, that would affirm that Equestria is a country and not an entire continent. Maybe Everfree is an uncharted territory, not considered part of any country. 

Also, where exactly is the Everfree Forest? I’ve always felt like it must be right outside of town, and in The Stare Master, it seems to be very close to Fluttershy’s house. I would kill to have a world map of Equestria, or even just a map of Ponyville, just to be able to understand where everything is relative to each-other. 

By the way, call it a writing inconsistency, but the danger of the Everfree forest is severely overstated in this episode. RD says that nopony’s ever come out of it alive, but that could also just be her being her. After all, they all went in with little hesitation, and in future episodes would make many return trips. Moreover, in this episode, all of the threats of the forest are actually created by Nightmare Moon. One must wonder how many threats there actually are in that forest. 

Like the Fluttershy scene in the first episode, this episode has one scene with noticeably higher-quality animation than the rest. In this case, it’s the whole Giggle at the Ghosty scene, which isn’t surprising, since the songs tend to be the most animated parts of the show. Still, there’s a world of difference between this and Winter Wrap Up, and between Winter Wrap Up and Smile Smile Smile. Never ceases to amaze me how much the animation in this show improves over time.

That’s all I’ve got for this ep. Closing notes: 

- “Stand back you foals!” is the most forced horse pun in the show, just sayin’.

- How does Steven Magnet swim in that shallow river?

- “The spark that lives inside us all” definitely sounds like a reference to Transformers.

- After they defeat Nightmare Moon, the girls are all posed in ways that make them look like angels or something. If I was good with symbolism I’d analyze the shit out of that, but I’m not, so I won’t.

Check Out My First MLP Fanfic!

I’ve started writing my first MLP:FiM fanfic over at FiMFiction! It’s called Pinkie Pie’s Toothache (of Destiny) and you can read the first chapter here.

Description: When Rarity notices the sorry state of Pinkie Pie’s teeth, she drags the pink pony kicking and screaming to see a dentist. During the check-up, a shocking discovery is made: Pinkie has developed an unstoppable culture of plaque that threatens to take her life! The only known cure is a legendary element spoken of in the ancient diary of an early pony dentist. So begins an adventure in search of the element needed to save Pinkie’s life!