BalanceBrony

You could look for it youself, BTW, but OK.

 

 

1. Griffon the Brush Off

Applejack: Spittin' snakes. Hah, somepony pulled that prank on me last month.

 

2. Look Before You Sleep

Twilight Sparkle: So, who's up for another slumber party tomorrow night? Ugh. How about a week from Thursday? Oh, how about two weeks from Saturday? A month from now?

 

3. Bridle Gossip.

Rainbow Dash: Well... Once a month, she comes into Ponyville.

 

4. Sweet and Elite

Turnip Truck: Rarity! Hey, Rarity! Whoo! It's me, Hayseed Turnip Truck! We met at the big hoedown in Ponyville last month?

 

5. Secret of my Excess.

Spike: This little beauty is my birthday present to myself! It's a fire ruby! I've been aging it for months, and it's almost ripe!

 

6. Baby Cakes.

Pinkie Pie: I can't believe you're already a month old

 

7. Read It and Weep.

Rainbow Dash: Few days? Might as well be a few months, or a few years!

 

8. It's about time.

Twilight Sparkle: No, the problem is I just finished planning my schedule for the month, but I forgot to leave time to plan for next month!

 

9. Dragon Quest

Spike: No, I haven't sucked my claw in months!

 

10. MMMystery on the Friendship Express.

Mr. Cake: Yes, it took months of planning and testing.

 

11. A Canterlot Wedding 1

Lucky Clover: I've already paid for three this month!

 

And of course " Three months of winter coolness And awesome holidays."

 

 

 

And also in "Ticket Master" Spike reads the invitation:

Hear ye, hear ye. Her Grand Royal Highness, Princess Celestia of Equestria, is pleased to announce The Grand Galloping Gala to be held in the magnificent capital city of Canterlot, on the 21st day of, eh, yadda yadda yadda, cordially extends an invitation to Twilight Sparkle plus one guest.

Which is not a use of the word "month" but a suggestion, that ponies have calendar similar to ours.

 

Résumé: ponies use word "month" whole the time, where the word "moon" first used in "Apple Family Reunion" by Granny Smith all of a sudden.

 

And what to its use in EqG, I only can repeat myself: EqG is non-canon.

 

Thanks. But that kind of stinks. That means, really, we can't get anywhere until we have an official statement from the writers. So we can't determine what a "moon" means based on comparing with other statements, because week, day, month, and year have all been used on the show. So once again, I turn to my math, and logic, which apply perfectly (except for the family reunion which, as I have repeatedly stated screws up the timeline no matter what, and should therefore be discounted. You do not change the whole series to fit one oversight. You dismiss the oversight. The only way any logic could apply, is if we write off the first reunion as an inconsistency.)

We weren't given any clues to speculate on. I hate being given something ambiguous without being provided a speculative bone to gnaw on. I like what it promises for the future, but the open-ended nature frustrates me somewhat.

Also, it shows that the writers will be toying with a new narrative structure, so there will be some level of experimenting in that respect. So, there is promise, but it's a little too ambiguous for my taste.

You know, that's funny, how you ignore a direct statement from Applejack but insist on somethig never stated directly being "absolute fact".

 

Also, your assumption, that 100 moons = exactly 10 years is what doesn't make sence.

If it'd be so, why count moons, why not years directly? That would be easier, wouldn't it?

 

 

Before you state somthing - better check first if it's true.

I can proove they used word "month" several times throughout the series.

Do you have any proof at all that the word "moon" was used as time measure before "Aplle Family Reunion"?

I can think of one episode where month was used, and it was in "Winter Wrap-Up." RD uses the word month. Can provide other occasions please?

Moon is used in 3 separate cases- Apple Family Reunion, Equestria Girls, and Princess Twilight Sparkle. Given a 3:1 ratio of moon to month, with "month" being in a song, I would consider the moon to be more valid. Although you are correct. As far as I remember, Apple Family Reunion was the first use of the word "moon." Month is only said once as far as I remember, and in a song at that.

And once again. No matter what way you slice it, if you count the "reunion" from episode one as official, the entire chronology of the show collapses.

----------------------------------------

Here is my full argument. I was hoping you would take the initiative and just follow the link, but I guess not:

So, recently I was bumming around here, and there was just a quick query which somepony posted. They were asking simply “How long is 100 Moons?”

At first, I thought it would be very simple to answer. In any media which I’ve read where animals are the main characters, “moon” has always been the standard measurement of time. In Watership Down, Warriors, The Sight, and MLP, “moon” has been the unit of time, because non-humans would obviously stick to things more easily observable than the orbital period of the Earth around the sun. Standardly, a “moon,” or Lunar Month, is the length of time form one New Moon to the next. It is usually around 28-29 days, but it varies.

So, I did the multiplication, and calculated 100 moons as roughly 2,900 Civil Days, or 8 Solar Years. But then it occurred to me. I was using values from our Universe, from our solar system, and our Earth. Not every moon or planet orbits at the same rate. And in fact, Equestria’s sun and moon don’t even orbit in the traditional sense. They do not move of their own accord- the Celestial Sisters move them.

And that leaves an interesting idea to be considered. How is time measured in Equestria? How does astronomy even work there? With a geocentric model of the solar system where things don’t move on their own, everything we know about planetary dynamics ceases to apply. And this leaves us viewers at a loss. We are now dealing with a system that functions completely differently from anything we know. So, we need to try and use only in-show evidence to make a determination as to how Equestria functions as a natural system.

We do have some safe assumptions we can make. The Equestrian solar system is geocentric, with the sun and moon going around the planet (shall we call it Equus?). Equus’ axis of rotation must be slanted with respect to the orbit of the sun and the moon, because otherwise there would not be a polar ice cap. Days do vary in length as the year progresses, since there is a longest day of the year (The Summer Sun Celebration). There is some level of a natural progression of the seasons, since leaves turn colour on their own, implying that winter would come, ponies or no. The ponies simply make the transition between seasons move quicker. So in most every respect, Equus seems very much like Earth.

For our purposes, the assumptions above will be what we work with. As a system, we cannot apply logic to Equus, or the question here, if we bring up the notion of the Celestial Sisters raising the sun and moon. For our purposes, we need to assume here that the sisters move not the bodies themselves, but the planet Equus, because it just doesn’t work if we have them pushing the bodies in an orbit around Equus. There’s a reason the Geocentric model failed.

If the we accepted that the sun were pushed around Equus, and not Equus around the sun, a year would be the same length as a day, and seasons wouldn’t exist. We will pretend that somehow Equus is in a geocentric system, and somehow it acts as if it is in heliocentric system, because this is what we see based on the observations we made above.

That being said, let’s move on to the bigger issue here. Time. How does it work in Equestria? We know that the ponies measure time in moons. How long is a moon? Well, we can’t tell based strictly on information in Equestria, since, as we see above, our logic does not apply to it. So, let us turn to the human world. Yes… we are consulting Equestria Girls. *yay*

In EQG, the mirror opens every 30 moons, Equestria time. 30 moons in Equestria is equal to roughly 3 years in the human world. We know this because Sunset Shimmer has spent 3 years in high school, and a high school uses the solar calendar. The human world, we can assume, functions exactly as our world does. There is no magical, physics-defying nonsense. So we know that 3 years in EQG (or our world)= 30 moons in Equestria.

Now we can do simple math to find out the length of an Equestrian Moon in our time. Get Derpy if you’re nervous.

30 moons in equestria = 3 earth years. Divide the whole thing by 3 to find out how many Equestrian Moons are in 1 Earth Year, and the answer is 10:1. Every 10 moons in Equestria is 1 Earth year (EY). Now, let’s do another step to find out how many earth days are in 1 Equestria Moon (EM).

One Earth Year is 365.24 Earth Days (ED). So, 365.24 ED= 10 EM. If we divide the whole thing by 10, we get 1 Equestrian Moon is equal to 36.524 Earth Days.

So, now we have something to work with! Using this information, we can get a scale of how time flows in Equestria. The moon orbits Equus at a slightly slower rate than our moon orbits us (remember, Equus acts like it is in a heliocentric model, even if it isn’t.) So, to answer the person’s question on the forums. 100 Equestrian Moons is equal to 3652.4 Earth Days, so 10 years.

It only became clear to me as I was watching the premiere. I was in the live stream, and round about the same time, me and several other ponies were like "Waaaaiiittt.... Twilight is taller?!" Sure enough, I checked on googled imagesx today, and voila!

Declen, on 25 Nov 2013 - 8:13 PM, said:

 

1. As Dr. House once sayd "Feel fre to exclude any simptomes that don't fit in your diagnosis".

2. The whole situation in "Aplejack season" and "Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" accured exactly because there are no other Apples in Ponywille. Aplejack expicitly stated they all were from all over Equestria.

 

Yes it does. Then Aple famyly reunion occures every 2 years, not 10 years or 100 days.

And then we don't have to skip Reunion in the first episode (which is wrong) or assume that chronological order of episodes os totally fraked up (which is just crippy).

 

There is no logic in there.

How does a "moon" being a week make sense? We hear that Fluttershy has her appointment with Rarity once a week, not once a moon. Throughout the show, up until "Lesson Zero," Twilight must write a letter once a week, not once a moon. There are more cases besides. Why would they use "moon" at all, when they can simply use the more easily understood term "week?" If they mean a week, they say a week. It doesn't make sense that there would be an ambiguous, extra word to refer to a week in random, unnecessary cases. They also use the terms year and day. The term they don't use is month. So where is this intermediate unit of time? It's there, but goes by a different name- a moon. This is the only one that makes sense, because the other units of time all exist in Equestrian Reckoning. The month is the only thing that seems to be missing.

And every two years? You're saying that DOESN'T contradict the chronology of the show? I would say quite the opposite. We know for an absolute fact that the space of time between Season 1 Episode 1 and Season 4 Episode 1 is precisely 1 year. That would mean 2 reunions in one year, if we are assuming the first one counts. So, either the first one doesn't count, or you're wrong. Either way, my argument regarding the reunion is proven by the known fact that there is exactly one year between S1E1 and S4E1.

And check out this post for my full arguments. They cover more thoroughly many of the points you two have made. http://balancebrony.tumblr.com/post/68027902755/what-is-time-like-in-equestria

He didn't say how many thousends it was. If, we assume that a moon is a week, then it would be 50 thousends.

Again, a "moon," being a week doesn't make sense. In Equestria, week, day, and year all exist as units of measuring time in Equestrian Reckoning. If a moon isn't a month, then a whole class of measuring time is missing from Equestrian reckoning. There are weeks, there are yearsx, and there are days, as proven on multiple occasions. And then there are "moons." It just makes sense that "moon" would be the missing unit of the month.

I TOTALLY agree that the episode are not chronological :3 but i still believe that it has only been one year since s1 e1 to s4 e1, for what celestia said at the ssc and because i think it sounds pretty logical as for the 'moons' thing, i think it is an arguable subject and we could be here all day arguing about it, so i think maybe it's just an open thing where people can make their own judgements. for all we know, moons might mean fortnights

I feel that you guys would understand my points if you had the whole picture. I have an in-depth analysis of this. Honestly, I feel like posting my whole blog post right here, explaining my full reasoning.

I'm not saying that every apple was in the first episode reunion, im saying that this was indeed a reunion, none the less. my family holds reunions once a year, but we dont have every single one xP but Granny Smith says the reunions every 100 moons BUT as for the whole family together, then i agree that it could have been yeeeeaaarsss since they all got together it is never revealed that this is apple blooms first reunion, and we can tell cause she appears in one of the pics for the reunion, but it could indeed be her first reunion with every member in it now, the pics may be miss leading, as there are hardly any of the picture infront of the barn, so i like to imagine granny smith skipped a few, otherwise there has never been a reunion with younger applejack/big mac, which we know there has been now, i agree the days in month may be bigger, but i dont agree that its been a number of years since episode 1, cause otherwise nopony has aged as the episodes go on, cause they all look fairly the same, especially the cmc. 

It was definitely not years before s 1 and s3. In fact, now its confirmed that it's less than a year between the two. The only explanation which holds to continuity AND to the mathematics (and the Equestria games arc gives merit to this) is that the episodes are not in chronological order.

The only thing i can think of that moons could mean, other than days, that still makes sense considering ages is weeks, that way it would consist with ages of characters and such. that way apple family reunion would be once every two-ish years. if it were months it would be 8.3 years, which doesn't help with the characters cause that would imply that pony ages are much longer than ours. as for discord, that story happened before nightmare moon, which was said to be '1000 years ago' from episode 1. the only reason i can think of discord saying 'thousands of months ago' is because the script writers are not thinking about things like this, and over looking it, like a lot of programs do. one minute moons could mean days, the next it means years. for all we know, moons could just mean 'really long time' but never be specified :/ and the reunion before the one in Apple Family Reunion IS NOT filly applejack, but IS episode one, cause applejack says herself in 'Applebuck season' when twilight ask 'what about all those relatives i met when i first came here' Applejack replies 'they were just here for the Apple Family Reunion', so a moon is NOT 8 years. if it was, then ponies age VERY well xD

I don't count the reunion in episode 1 because it is not the whole family. We need to remember, Ponyville was founded by the Apple family, so there would be a significant number of Apples in Ponyville alone. There could be a decently sized gathering on a regular basis. But a larger gathering, with every Apple in Equestria- that is simply not something that could logically happen as often as you are suggesting. And again, the one in season 3 is stated as Apple Bloom's first reunion, so it must be that the one in episode 1 didn't count for whatever reason, most likely because it is not the whole family.

And based on my calculations, it wouldn't be 8.3 years. It would be precisely 10 years. An Equestrian month is roughly 36 days.

As for moons being days, well, we can discount that straight off. The terms "day," "year," and "week" are mentioned numerous times on the show, but month is never used. Month is the only unit not covered, so it makes logical sense that the unknown unit- "moon" - would be the unit of measurement which we are missing- month.

And I never said a moon was 8 years. Given the math I worked out, 1 moon is 36.524 days, with 10 moons in a year, meaning the 100 moons would be 10 years- a reasonable statement if we are to ignore the apparent oversight of episode 1 on the part of the writers. Since we know Apple Bloom is around 8 years old per statements from the writers, it also makes sense that this would be Apple Bloom's first Reunion, as she would've been born 2 years after the previous one.

We also need to remember that it IS the sisters who decide when the moon and sun appear because of the story of Nightmare Moon being factual in their world. Luna wouldnt put down the moon, showing that she has FULL control over it, which is different to how are world works clearly. Also, it is Celestia who decides the seasons for that she does the Summer Sun Festival, where she decides when the sun rises to start summer EQG might be set in our world but it we can say that it can ALWAYS have a different cycle to that of Equestria. It is impossible to confirm as it IS made for children and this depth is not intended BUT it sounds more likely to be 100 days since the last reunion than it is to say 8 years considering apple bloom is the same age as she is in s1 e1 and s3 e8

But then Discord planting the seeds thousands of moons ago, per Season 4 premiere, would only be a few years. And we know that Discord's reign was over a thousand years ago- hundreds of thousands of days. Also, 100 days? There would be more than one apple family reunion per year, but at the reunion immediately before the one in Apple Family Reunion (the full reunion, with ponies from all of Equestria), AJ was just a little filly. A moon is NOT a day. That much is certain.

A few things here. If we ignore the fact the sisters raise the sun/moon, then theres alot we can just ignore like the fact granny smith said '100 moons'. also, if we count appleblooms first reunion as the one that took place in ep1 s1 (applejack says in s1 e4 that this was a reunion) then that means its been 8 years since s1 e1 till s3 e8, and applebloom has aged 8 years, which clearly she hasn't, unless in s1 she was 2 xD we need to consider that season such as winter are there purely for entertainment purposes, everypony enjoys a bit of snow now and then seasons are cause by weather as well as solar/linear cycles, so its not only celestia/luna who decide winter/spring etc but also the Pegasus's at the weather factory. If we ignore anything, then that isnt a fair argument. the rising of the sun/moon by the sisters is a HUGE part in MLP, it's shown/mentioned in a LOT of episodes.

The more we discuss this, the more MLP doesn't make sense chronologically. So I am sticking with my calculations which are based on a confirmed conversion factor of Susnet Shimmer spending 3 years in the human world for the 30 moons which passed in Equestria. And again, whether or not Equus is actually heliocentric is moot. It is just worth noting that it acts heliocentric in every way, aside from the tidbit about Celestia and Luna raising the Sun and Moon. Because it behaves like a heliocentric system, we can treat as such.

Regarding the weather, and I cover this in my full analysis, it should be noted that, before ponies learned to control the weather, Equestria had weather patterns and seasons of its own. The ponies just smooth out the transition between seasons.

I'd like to point out that Celestia doesn't say exactly 'its been a year' BUT it is heavily implied in the last few minutes when she is about to raise the sun, she wouldnt repeat herself every year saying 'it is no longer with a heavy heart but with great joy' and talk about Nightmare moon because that would be silly

Also, another thing that should be taken into consideration is in every episode the moon is shown, it has been a FULL MOON! since the sun/moon dont follow the solar and lunar cycles, due to them being raised and set by luna/celestia when needed, we can say that 30 moons isn't going to be like in our universe, where we have to wait a long period of time for a full moon. In their universe, the moon appears when needed, no moon cycles along with the sun thus i say 30 moons just means 30 days.

We should ignore the fact that the sisters raise the sun and moon, because Equus (the planet of Equestria) has seasons, which would not exist if the sun and moon went around the planet, as opposed to the planet around the sun, and the moon around the planet. Equus, for all-intensive purposes, acts as if it is in a heliocentric-model solar system. We need to simply write off inconsistencies as "magic." And 30 moons as 30 days doesnt work, because 30 moons is 3 years in our world, much more than 30 days. Also, we know 100 moons is at least 8 years, because we witness Apple Bloom's first Apple Family Reunion.

Yes, that's exactly the problem.

But they also can try to "reboot" Derpy/Ditsy.

Anyways: if it will be eigher Vinyl, Octy or Derpy - I'll be more than fine with that.

 

I would say not Derpy, because of the previous shitstorm which ensued. So, Vinyl or Octy. And then from there, Vinyl is the only one with a connection to a Mane Six pony (Pinkie).

I beleave we talk about the same thing.

 

Tha't pretty much it.

What I wanted to point at, is considering how ponies behave as simple physical obects, they must have much more or much less mass than they normaly expected to. The guy in that wideo showed some moments when ponies violate laws of newtonic physics. So, he suggested only explonation: their masses have to differ which he expressed as "they consist of dark matter".

If it's true, it will be a problem to find out RD's mass.

 

But that only applies if we are trying to make it work in our world. In Equestria, the limits of physics don't apply, so we could imagine that RD is a normal pony, but "magic" makes her able to defy physics.

A quote from MLP-Wiki

...but she is named in merchandise, including a trading card which states that "DJ Pon-3 is actually a stage name, and her real name is Vinyl Scratch."

If it's true, than Vinyl Scratch is her oficial name, too.

And if not - then where this name came from?

True. Darn. I'll exe that out of the evidence then. But the other stuff does make Vinyl more likely than other options. Given this information though, that eliminates all of them, since they all have canon names. So I wonder what the post even means when it talks about giving a character a "canon name."

Have you seen a video, where some brony suggested that ponies consist of dark matter?

No. I have seen it posited that butterflies could be made of dark matter. But what does it mean if something is made of dark matter? I've heard the term many times, and know that it is one of the explanations for otherwise unexplained forces in the universe. But i don't necessarily know what dark matter entails. Explain plox?

I approve 100%. This would make my season. Great ideaaaa!

But do you think that the evidence is good?

Well, the force in Newtons is equal to the mass in kilograms times acceleration. We need to know Rainbow Dash's mass. The acceleration has already been calculated by the famous "Physics Brony."

After reading this thread, it is obvious that we cannot accurately determine the length of moons. I saw many other ways of calculating it as I was just browsing, all with valid logic, and all reaching different conclusions.

And for those who don't want to read a full analysis- as I did cover more than just basic calculations- here was my methodology. I used the fact that 3 years in Equestria Girls was equal to 30 moons in Equestria, with the assumption that Equestria Girls follows the same time scale as our world.

30 moons = 3 years in EQG. I divided by 3 to get 10 moons = 1 year. 1 year = 365.24 days= 10 moons. Divide by 10 to get 1 moon = 36.524 Days. Then I went from there to get my number that 100 moons was exactly 10 years.

Forget what I said before. After going through a long analysis, I came to the conclusion that 100 moons is actually exactly 10 years. 1 moon is equal to 36.524 days. Multiply by a hundred, and that is 3652.4 days, exactly 10 years. Here is the link to my analysis which led me to that conclusion.

http://balancebrony.tumblr.com/post/68027902755/what-is-time-like-in-equestria

"Moon" seems to refer to a Lunar month- the distance from one New Moon to the next New Moon. The length can be anywhere from 28 1/2 to 29 1/2 days, but the length of a lunar month in days isn't important if your calendar is strictly lunar. It makes it difficult to equate pony months to our months, but it would work fine in a world where that is the only system. 100 moons would be roughly...2,900 days, or around 8 Solar Years.

Of course, we have no way of knowing if Equestria's orbital period is the same length as on Earth, or anything related to time, because these things vary. It could even be that Equestrian time might not even work the same way, since we know the Sun and Moon actually both go around the planet, as opposed to the planet going around the sun, and the moon going around the planet.

In fact, we can't really say anything about Equestrian astronomy. After all, we know that the sun and moon do not move of their own accord in Equestria. Anything we know about astronomical dynamics wouldn't work in the my little pony universe. Eclipses, seasons, time, years, days, months, and any other events we have here would work differently there.

But I think this analysis is all moot. For our purposes, I think it is safe to assume Lunar months are a similar length in Equestria, so the calculation still holds true. Roughly 8 years. This also means that the 30 moons from Equestria Girls is around 2 1/2 years, which means that Sunset Shimmer left Equestria about a year before Twilight left Canterlot. Which is odd, because that means both could've been Celestia's students at the same time... But then... I think I need to make a blog post about this.

But, ignoring all that- 100 moons is a long time, but not obscenely long. It's less than 10 years.

Let's keep in mind that, as far as any Equestrian is concerned, RD is the only one who has ever done a Sonic Rainboom. We have no way of knowing until we see another pony break the sound barrie. Also note that the actual explosion is rainbow coloured, and not just the trail.

They should just have an episode where they talk/show everyone's parents!

^This. I approve of this. It could be like parents appreciation day, or summat like that.

<a data-ipb="nomediaparse" data-cke-saved-href="http://fyre-flye.deviantart.com/journal/FAQ-276161988%20In%20here%20Lauren%20answers%20a%20few%20questions%20about%20AJ" href="http://fyre-flye.deviantart.com/journal/FAQ-276161988%20In%20here%20Lauren%20answers%20a%20few%20questions%20about%20AJ" s%20parents.%20she%20mentions%20she%20wanted%20to%20keep%20a%20small,%20tight%20knit%20family%20dynamic.%20she%20could%20have%20done%20that%20by%20making%20the%20family%20aj's%20parents,%20her%20and%20apple%20bloom.%20i%20don't%20see%20what%20big%20macintosh%20and%20granny%20smith%20can%20contribute%20so%20to%20me%20they%20are%20relatively%20expendable."="">http://fyre-flye.deviantart.com/journal/FAQ-276161988 In here Lauren answers a few questions about AJ's parents. She mentions she wanted to keep a small, tight knit family dynamic. She could have done that by making the family AJ's parents, her and Apple Bloom. I don't see what Big Macintosh and Granny Smith can contribute so to me they are relatively expendable.

I don't think we can accurately state what Lauren Faust's intentions were. We don't have the story bible. For all we know, she could've originally intended for a whole story arc on the subject of how her parents' death affected AJ's character. We can't make a judgement on how necessary or unnecessary a decision was unless we know what Lauren Faust originally intended. From what I read, it seems like she just felt that it would be artistically constructive to have AJ live in a tight family, but without her parents. And it worked well, didn't it?

As for Big Mac and Granny Smith being extendable, I disagree. I think that the extended family type of deal fits very well with the image the Apple Family strives for- family is important; the whole family is important.

Maybe. But we do know she has a sister. Idk where it was, but I'm pretty sure it was confirmed that we would see Fluttershy's family in S4. As for Scoots, nothing was said about her parents. We know originally that scoots was supposed to be disabled. But that hasn't been confirmed in the show yet, as opposed to AJ's parents which were alluded to.

But back to the point- I'm pretty sure we were told that we're seeing Flutters' family in S4. Could somepony point out where that was please? I know I read it sxomewhere, but idk if it was a canon source or not.