So she alters the speed of the Sun over time which is exactly what she was doing during those stps anyway.

I'm not insisting that it's canon. Just that that's what the evidence points too.

@Applelight: Another discusion on Equestria's sun and its movement.

Ah. Well, it is confusing...

@Sereg

But why? Why alter the speed of the day at random exactly when Twilight happens to be having a mental breakdown? You're inferring a process due to evidence from a decidedly Unreliable Narrator when there is no need to assume anything.

edited 5th Mar '13 1:47:23 PM by PerpetualLurker

@Sereg: We've been over this a bazillion times already, but I really don't see half of what you've mentioned as "evidence" for anything, because it's extrapolating from an absence of information. There's nothing wrong with your theory, but there's no more evidence for it than for anything else. Basically, you keep saying "the evidence points to this" while we're stuck saying either "no, it doesn't" or "what evidence?"

Take the sun moving in increments. There are two main possibilities as to what could be going on:

1. Celestia is deliberately moving the sun in clock-like increments at the exact time that Twilight is having a time-limit related mental breakdown (and also is manipulating the windmill for some reason)

OR

2. The sun is moving normally and Twilight is just imagining it because her brain is a bit fried, and we see the scene from her POV.

There's no hard evidence for either, so all we can argue is which is more likely. I think the second one is.

edited 5th Mar '13 2:02:39 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Or my favorite, Celestia's idea of "full power" looks like this and isn't an option in a crowded room full of civilians.

Also, Hearth's Warming is on record saying the unicorns moved the sun and moon before the princesses showed up, and presumably they moved on their own before the unicorns figured that out. So I'm thinking it's mostly momentum that the ponies just stabilize and control like they do with the rest of nature, and whatever magic scale it operates on for the specifics is kinda like lifting a car. Not something most people could do, but get enough together, maybe with the right tools to help out, and it's doable. Hell, you could probably have a unicorn cult manage to stop the sun and moon — I mean they'd get immediately tracked down and bitchslapped by the princesses, but they could.

That said, if you're in good enough magical shape to move the one on a regular basis, you'd probably be able to handle the other with ~12 hours of rest in between. Either princess could handle both if necessary.

edited 5th Mar '13 2:14:35 PM by Pykrete

My personal pet theory on the sun issue is something of an in-between - the sun's 'motor' is just sort of broken, so the princess/unicorns give it back. The spell that keeps the engine running is still pretty potent, but it's not quite on the same level as, say, manually moving a large celestial body. That and Celestia is fueled by the sun which gives her WAY more than enough power to manage it. She just has this nasty tendency to multi-task that keeps her from performing when it comes down to it(That and Chrys also being a god, but that's a story for another day.)

You misunderstand me. I consider Celestia's speed boosts to be things that happen multiple times a day.

Still, it's not something that I have as much confidence in as certain other things.

Well, I've given the evidence already. You don't have to be convinced by it.

This was all day. We saw something like three ticks. Three ticks per day is not something I'd consider weird.

Or the windmall is affected by the sun in some other way.

Well, we know that the sun doesn't move normally from other episodes, but yeah, that's also a possibility. I'd rather go with what we've already seen though. It's like how people didn't want to believe that Pinkie grew up on a rock farm. And yeah, I turned out to be right in trusting her.

As I said, that's up to you and isn't even something I have a huge amount of confidence in. I simply think that it fits the setting rather well.

Well yeah. All of this too.

And yes. I consider Chrysalis to also be a member of the Cosmic Council and while I don't consider Celestia and Luna too be gods, Chrysalis is as deserving of the title as they are. But yeah, that's just what I think.

When have we even seen the sun moving, apart from the summer sun celebration and Discord's tricks?

@Sereg: Thing is, we haven't seen the sun "tick" in any other episode, so I'm not very inclined to think that it's a regular thing and it just so happened to appear onscreen just as Twilight is doing her "Clock. Is. Ticking!" routine. We'll just have to agree to disagree, I guess.

For what it's worth, my concept of how the sun works is roughly analogous to what Keg said. The ponies are required to keep the sun moving properly, but doing so doesn't require the amount of energy that moving a heavenly body would require. I wouldn't necessarily say that Celestia gets a power boost from the sun, though.

edited 5th Mar '13 2:53:07 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Yeah, but that last bit is more related to my fanon on the gods, which I'm aware is VERY singular. It was simply a relevant detail.

Sooo...Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie?

My headcanon is thus:

Sun and moon are mostly self-sufficient, but ponies don't like leaving things to chance where possible (weather), so unicorns found a way to pool power and ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL.

Discord happens, stuff goes nuts. Celestia and Luna show up, ??? happens with the Elements, and they end up connected directly to the sun and moon, giving them shitloads of power on top of the Elements. Once Discord is put away, the two of them go on a crusade, wiping out and strongarming into submission key threats to ponykind and consolidating ponies' power worldwide. The ponies set them up as rulers.

And it goes right to their heads.

Celestia thinks Nightmare Moon's rampage happened because she overdid it as a fresh ruler — and though not solely at fault, she's right. She tries to abdicate out of guilt, but the ponies are too dependent on her by now and no longer remember how to move the sun and moon themselves. Stuck in power, she makes an effort over the next thousand years toward propriety, diplomacy, and approachability.

Fast forward a thousand years, and the first thing Luna sees after getting rainbow'd is Celestia's dramatic shift of personality. In the immediate sense Luna actually hasn't had time to cool down at all — what keeps her from flipping out again is mainly just the sheer surreal shock. What we see come Nightmare Night is only a year removed from a medieval crusader on a power high fresh out of two attempted coups, honestly trying to be sure, but still unstable and quite strong enough to drop the moon on anything that pisses her off too much.

edited 5th Mar '13 3:45:52 PM by Pykrete

I wonder if they'll ever figure out a way to actually make it make sense.

It's also the only episode to show us extensive footage of the sun, but fine.

Make what make sense?

edited 5th Mar '13 3:44:30 PM by Sereg

God dammit.

Great, so between that and Questria unponying out of fear of C&D, Fighting is Magic and MLP Online getting shot, and Equestria Tales getting preemptively C&D'd for daring to ask official permission, the only pony fangames left are two minute distractions on Deviantart and laggy incoherent Game Maker pieces of shit.

edited 5th Mar '13 3:54:03 PM by Pykrete

Well the whole moving the sun thing doesn't make much sense, when trying to reconcile it with the stars.

Thread Hop.

That reminds me Has Hasbro C&D'd Story of the Blanks yet?

edited 5th Mar '13 3:53:35 PM by MorningStar1337

Hi Syd!

they can't C&D a game that's already out and distributed. It's to late. So lesson here is, keep you shit low key till you are done and release it.

They effectively couldn't. I mean they could get it taken off Newgrounds if they really felt like it, but as a completed project it's archived in enough places on the web that it wouldn't stop anything.

[[quoeblock]]Well the whole moving the sun thing doesn't make much sense, when trying to reconcile it with the stars. [[/quoteblock]]

Why?

That's it. No more fan-made pony games ever.

Yeah, Hasbro only C&D's stuff that gets to big for them to claim they didnt know. So keep your shit low key, don't make any major hype till it's done, then release it and you'll be fine

That said, given how much the FIM team will be reusing for their new game, and they will still be quadrupeds, lets hope it doesn't take long for someone to mod in the pony skins.

Hi Syd!

Hi Apple! I was up all night, then slept all day. I've become...a Vampbrony.