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Castle-Mania (November 30th 2013, 22 minutes)

Summary: Where are you, Ditzy Doo? No, Ditzy isn't in this one. It the best I could do for a Scooby Doo joke.

I've been curious about this library in Ponyville, anyway. Is there a library *system* in Equestria? Celestia seems to have direct authority over the libraries, in the same way she had direct authority over her own school, in order to put Twilight in as librarian with little effort. Are there book exchange programs? There really isn't that much room for stacks in that building, especially given that there is a living space for Twilight and Spike, plus a lab in the basement, so are there lower storage stacks we haven't seen?

So the castle of the Pony Sisters is closer to Ponyville than Canterlot is, despite being deep in the Everfree Forest.

And the Everfree Forest is now passable by pairs of ponies, without particular peril.

The forest has reclaimed the grounds of the castle, and it is in ruins. There are holes in the roof for weather to get in, and this is wild weather not controlled by pegasi. Yet a good number of these books are still intact. They must be made of something particularly impressive. And why were they not transferred to Canterlot after Celestia abandoned this castle? There must have been something else going on that prevented them from salvaging valuables from this castle after the exiling of Nightmare Moon.

These books are at minimum a thousand years old. Twilight can read them. More evidence that pony culture is not experiencing linguistic shift as human cultures would.

Okay, that's an alicorn statue, but rendered in a more realistic horse-like way. Is it a generic artistic sculpture, or is it supposed to be somepony specific?

Star spiders.

Would have been more impressive if they hadn't been wearing bee suits. Oh, and the stallion called them off with a whistle, so unfortunately the pair probably wasn't actually in any real danger.

Star spider *season* at that, which Fluttershy seems to think is a problem.

Rumored? You were there awhile back. You didn't notice them? Well, yes, you *were* a bit busy at the time, but still.

Actually, that's a pretty good idea. Restoring tapestries is a good thing to do for archeological reasons, plus using the ancient patterns for fashion purposes is a common theme in high fashion circles. New primary source material would be extremely valuable.

If anyone knows legends of the castle, it would be Granny. Not surprising that nobody takes her seriously as well, as Nightmare Moon was an 'old mare's tale' back in the first episode, and as far as we know Granny is the epitome of 'old mare'.

A tapestry that large would be incredibly heavy. I'm surprised a single pegasis could even budge it. Mind you, she doesn't really.

Many old buildings really do have secret passageways and the like, though most of them are more like priestholes. Small rooms for hiding individual people for short times, during the various religious persecution periods throughout Europe. Most secret passageways are incredibly tiny, barely big enough for a person to squeeze through.

That's the same picture on the wall of a military pony that was on the train during the MMMystery of the Canterlot Express. Who the heck is he?

A corridor of ... hooves? That sounds familiar, why does that sound familiar? I mean, it wasn't an uncommon design for torch sconces in real life to have sculpted hands holding torches, but I swear I've seen this in some kind of silly horror movie.

AppleDash shippers in full force.

And here we go with Phantom of the Opera. Pity it's not actually Bach's Toccata et Fuga in D minor. That would be classic.

Interesting suits of armor. Quite different that what I expected, as it's far more 14th century in styling, especially in that Milan hounskull-type faceplate surmounted by a spectacle eyeframe, although the rest of the helm resembles a 17th century Japanese kabuto.

Oh, I like the dragon gargoyle.

Huh. The armor has plates covering the tail. Not just the base of the tail, but the entire tail. Curious. The ponies do seem to have the apparent ability to use the tail as a crude manipulator, but that's still curious.

"Do you know how to drive a motorcycle?" "I expect so, it's been that kind of day." -> Doctor Who, new series, 'Let's Kill Hitler' episode.

Then it comes back, with cake. That about sums up Pinkie, doesn't it?