10:02 AM
(actually, to be fair, it is not Starlight fault. More like "writers that keeps repeating the same story again and again because no idea what to do with Starpony")
@b_jonas we don't know what she was doing in the meantime. She could have been singing with all the other ponies in the salon (which probably beats "singing for Starlight" in many ponies's priority lists)...
Cool episode. Very "shonnen" like. Weird premise that seemed very forced in order to get the story going.
Fluttershy needs some moss for decorating Ponyville nativity scene. No, wait, it is for the animals in the refuge. Because reasons.
And for the same reason she does not need any moss, but a special only-Zecora-knows-where-to-find type.
So, they go to a swamp "Celestia knows where" and start gathering moss. Or to be more specific, Zecora starts gathering because Fluttershy once again forgets she has wings.
but nope, Zecora has to cling to a tree branch, while standing on a moss covered log just to get it. Let's at least hope that the moss on the log wasn't the same one she was trying to get....
She falls in, gets the moss and comes out. When returning to the shore she sees the weird Amanita-like spotted flower of doom. Since she is the same pony that once advised a group of fools to "not step on flowers you don't know, especially if they are called poison joke" she just has to go into the flower headfirst.
And obviously that was poisonous. Because plot. Doesn't matter if this is a candy colored ponies inhabited world, if the plot requires a bio-weapon flower to just stand there ready to pop in your face, it will be there. ^_^
So, anyway, Zecora gets ill. And obviously this is the (probably only one in the world) illness she dosn't know. Or maybe she did and decided to take revenge on a certain yellow pony all the episode long (pro-tip: Fluttershy, first time Zecora is out go to her hut and search for any bottle of honey. Shall you find one, I suggest never getting Zecora mad in the future).
At the same time, because reason, the doctor knows the illness. Still, as usual, he finds his ways to not forego the "not-so-good" image he crafted for himself during 7 seasons worth of hard work.
(I am starting to get it. If poor Scootaloo really has some wing-related pathology like some suggest, it may be better to bring her to a different doctor. This one simply does not care)
11:03 AM
Search starts. Fluttershy diplomatically decides that Twily will have time some other day to reorder and just throws book down on the floor. Twily falls asleep on a pile of books, unaware that that scene will soon replace the "I'm pancake" one as favorite sleepy Twilight fan-art inspiration.
Then Twilight goes to sleep, leaving 'Shy alone reading. Didn't she offer to get a pillow / bedroll a second before? Ok, I will assume that by now each one of the mane six+1 can find a spare bed in the castle on her own if she needs it.
that said, in a pretty predictable way, Fluttershy does not sleep that night and just continues reading.
Next morning. Fluttershy jumpscares Twilight and then procedes to tell her how by "cross-referencing three books, deciphering a puzzle on a fourth one, placing the crystal stone of Mac Guffines on the altar then the planets were aligned and so on" she managed to discover the identity of the Mysterious Mare Do Well. Wait, wrong masked hero.
(to be honest, didn't get if they were trying to make her seem more dedicated by pulling out that cross-book reference thing or what. Seems more Twilight than Fluttershy).
To fully qualify as Twilight cat-like pet, Spike does what every cat in the world had been doing in the past years.
The owner gets up, the cat enters the room annoyed by the noise and as soon the owner exits the room the cat takes ownership of the bed and fall asleep right in the middle.
(That is, if you aren't one of the lucky ones whose cat takes ownership of the bed while you are still sleeping and then proceeds pushing you out of it bit by bit...)
Please, avoid any implications about how the swamp is filled with the same trees the ponies are supposed to turn into (both in the present and during the following flash-backs)
Luckily, Twilight has got a lot smarter since school days, and so the evil door is easly vanquished. The duo gets in.
Either they find out a way to turn back every tree that may have been a pony in the past, or ask Nightmare Celestia to burn all the place down so that no flower is left.
Cumin brother (same body shape) comes in, tells them he has been cleaning the tree (you are not very good at it I may add) and shows them the "library".
some random book later, there is the only useful one. That obviously is missing the most important page.
So, since rabbits are immune to many poison mushrooms, if you eat a rabbit ... nope, real world does not work that way.
Since we are oxygen based lifeforms and two squares down on the periodic board there is arsenic which is poisonous to us, the evil carbon based aliens should be weak to ... what it was? silicate ?
Luffy already knows from the nice vacation he took at Impel Down, but Haki does not really work well if you are poisoned, don't sleep from days, have fought you way down a underwater prison filled with enemies and didn't eat before.
Three days later, Twily still hasn't asked for help to anyone else. Not Celestia, not any of the mane six, not Mary Sue Starlight.
Personal headcanon: she went back, asked Zecora and she told her that the "illness" was just like the poison joke, didn't really turn you into a tree (well, you do sprout some branches but then they go away like measles spots. If not cured the illness last one week. So basically, everyone was just making sure Fluttershy learned the lesson.
Either way, Fluttershy gets back to the wasp (protip for future reference, everypony. If the bug lives on after it stings you it is probably a wasp, not a bee).
12:25 PM
but, hey, why the ponies should have known? Maybe because the whole episode was about a legendary masked doctor that whore a mask to avoid contagious illness?
Oh, and before you ask, Yep. Dr Kureha from One Piece was famous for visiting the ones needing medical assistance during the night or early morning, in order to find less guards around (the local tyrant forbid doctor to practice medicine in order to keep the population desperate and avoid rebellions)
> Why is Twilight sad about a research project where she has to look through every book in the library?
a) it needs to be done fast, so she can't start reading every interesting story she finds but has to focus (see: "not relevant, but I wonder where it goes" follower by Fluttershy taking the book out of her hoofs)
12:56 PM
@Derpy Meh, if they didn't know how dangerous the flowers was, then hanging with her tail from a tree branch isn't that risky. At worst she'd fall into the water and gets wet. Ponies and zebras can swim. And I said at the previous episode that Zecora has a strong and dextrous tail like Pinkie, so she uses it as a hand just like how earth ponies use their magical hooves and pegasuses use their wings.
@b_jonas see above image. My point was that the Yellow one could have easily spare the striped one the work.
Then there's this doctor mlp.wikia.com/wiki/… and heck, there's even what looks like a huge hospital mlp.wikia.com/wiki/… . I just don't understand how the little Ponyville gets so many doctors.
Or even better: remember how in that same episode you see a young Derpy with normal eyes and later on she is in the hospital with a bandage on her eyes?
Which by conclusion implies that she does have vision problem, she probably is clumsy because of that and the doctor weren't able to cure her?
(which explain WHY she won the junior fly competition and then fell back to last place over the next years)
@b_jonas anyway. I don't remember. When Flutter grabs Twily from the baking contest, she is panicking.
(also, I think they were actually aiming at making something like this but couldn't go that route because it would be too much for MLP so they ended up with this half backed thing)
@b_jonas real final notice. Remember: back in season 1, many episodes didn't make any sense in the sequence they were aired, so people reordered them to make the flow more realistic.
This means that if it helps, this episode can safely be moved everywhere past season 4 finale. I don't even think Starlight appears in any of the photo on Twilight mirror in this episode, but even if she does, consider it an animation error and just place the episode back where it seemed more appropriate
2:18 PM
@Derpy Yep. She healing spells, just like in the previous episode (S7 E19). At least that much is consistent.
@Derpy No, that's the opposite. That just means that the ponies who are turned to trees will conserve well and wait until the cure is ready.
@Derpy Meh, in our world everyone has different ideas about what is important to clean in a house and what isn't.
But I'm not sure they have access to all that modern medicine, so I wouldn't be so sure the illness has so few effects.
@Derpy Luckily Zecora only needed a spoonful of honey, so they can cure everyone with a jar of honey that they probably brought with them
"Oh, it's just as I thought. I'm afraid you have a very rare disease called... Swamp Fever! Unfortunately, very little is known about the disease. Except, of course, its symptoms – change of coat, coughing bubbles, shock sneezing, confusion, and the last stage, the afflicted turn into the very trees that drop the disease-spreading flower."
2:38 PM
2:48 PM
@Derpy No, there's also the possibility that she's more sure than Fluttershy that they can turn Zecora back from a tree with a cure with not many too bad effects. Or that Twilight is just stupid and doesn't know how to handle a crisis like this.
@Derpy I wouldn't want to wear the masks either. Those are clearly ceremonial masks. They won't actually help you against such a disease. They would have had to wear proper beekeeper's clothes for the bees, which we already know exists, or latex gloves for handling the patients and flowers.
I mean, sure, we know from S5 E21 that Fluttershy won't wear a mask unless it's absolutely necessary, but that's not what I thought of when they started wearing masks.
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