Locations: Library in Ponyville

[SasQ 1,376]

Hello.

 

Here I present my attempt in mapping the library in Ponyville.

 

I started from making a list of all occurrences of the library in the original show episodes, with their corresponding timestamps, for quicker searching through them for particular screenshots. Here it is, in a plain text file:

http://pwnyscience.mistu.info/Appearance.txt

This list will be updated and expanded along with my work.

 

And then I started from mapping the second floor, because it's where the action of my fanfic is supposed to start. Here's my attempt in making such a map, according to the reference screenshots from the show:

 

 

Unfortunately, there are some "paradoxes" which I cannot resolve :-/

 

First of them is the staircase leading downstairs to the first floor:

 

In the beginning of the first episode it is located just below the "tree column", as you can see in the pictures B and C above. It's separated from the desk by two bookcases inside the wall, just under the bedroom.

 

But then something strange happens in picture O: The hole with the staircase totally disappears! And in its place appears the bookcase which was on its right. Also, the part of the "tree column" seems to detach and moves in between the bookcases. It's occluded by Spike for some time, but when he goes out of the view, this is what we can see.

 

The staircase reappears later just next to the desk, and under the Twilight's bed, as we can see in picture N, and it stays there for most episodes.

 

I don't know which location of the staircase is right. I tried to resolve this paradox by stuffing in these two bookcases between the staircase and the desk, and stuffing two other staircases on the other side of it (just below the stairs leading up to the bedroom). At first, this seemed to work, as long as on the shots like in picture N we assume that the desk occludes the two bookshelves behind it, and only the staircase (next in a row) is visible, and then the two other book shelves, which look pretty much the same as the former two, but swapped, are visible there.

 

Unfortunately, this cannot work, because we should see the desk from the side in picture N to make it occlude the two missing staircases. And we see that the desk is just next to the staircase, because there aren't any discontinuities in the edge of the bedroom floor above it, which could explain such a perspective :-/

 

This leads us to the other "paradox" of this floor: the round bookcase paradox.

 

The round bookcase with hearts and flowers ornaments around it, seen in picture N as the second from the left under the stairs to the bedroom, magically changes into a window/door leading to the reading balcony :-/ We can see this window/door in pictures M and L, and partly in picture G.

 

This paradox can also be solved if we assume that the round bookcase didn't changed into a window/door, but just stood in this place for some time, occluding the window locating behind it. And then Twilight discovered the window and removed the bookcase to reveal it.

 

But this collides a bit with the staircase paradox, because both seem to be located in the same place in pictures B and C, just next to the small bookcase under the stairs, and just below the "tree column" (of course before the staircase magically moves to the right, nearer to the desk, in later episodes ;-P ).

 

Do you have any ideas how these paradoxes could be solved?

If we agree that these magical changes of locations are just errors of the artists, then which ones are errors and which are the correct locations? :-P

 

There are also some other, minor inconsistencies for this floor.

For example, the gratings in windows sometimes differ. Once they're round oval shapes, the other times they're made of a grid of straight lines. This is the case for the kitchen window, just behind the writing table. Compare pictures F and G, for example. This is the very same window, as you can match the writing table, the curtains, the shelves with plates, and the fireplace.

 

Other things are more consistent on the other hand. For example, picture H is a view as seen from the bedroom, when standing next to the Twilight's bed and looking a bit diagonally to the left. Then you can see the kitchen window at the bottom, and the two other windows above it, as compared with picture G. You can also match the part of the chimney, the flasks on the shelf above the shelves with plates, and a photo standing on the fireplace. Just after Spike's bed (basket), there's a little bit of the top of the desk visible, and a bit of Twilight's bed. Just above the bed there's visible a part of the dark wall behind the bed. This is the part of the wall visible also in pictures N, O, B, and more visible in pictures D and E. When you compare pictures D and E, you can also see some round window located above and to the left from the kitchen window. I cannot quite match this window with the exterior view.

 

The stairs on the left of pictures O, N and M (visible also in pictures J, K, L and G from another point of view) definitely leads to the bedroom. This part has been quite uncertain for me for some time, until I catched the frame seen in picture A, which is the best proof that there is a pathway connecting the bedroom with the vanity/mirror and stairs. This passage is located between the huge dark bookcase in the bedroom and the beige "tree column", which hides it from the view in pictures B and C. That's why it was uncertain to me that there is any passage; I thought that this is a wall, until I saw the frame from picture A and I saw Twilight going there and then going down the stairs in the next scene twice in a row (see the episode with falling stars).

 

Unfortunately, there are even more "paradoxes" at the first floor :-/ Like some windows or doors appearing from nowhere, just to disappear in the next episode o_O MAGIC EVERYWHERE! :-P And some inconsistencies in interior-exterior scenes (for example, with matching windows, or levels). I'll describe them next time.

 

For now, I'd like to know your ideas about how to resolve these paradoxes I already described. I need to map the library correctly for my fanfic to be as much show-accurate as possible, because it intertwines its storyline with the official series, and it will be "visual" (I mean, a comic book), so it needs to match the appearance of the original show.

 

Edit: Here we go again! ;-/ This editor has screwed my formatting again! It glitches royally. Let someone repair this or I gone crazy sooner that you can say "crazy" ;-P

Edited January 27, 2013 by SasQ

[Leafeon 2,702]

*begins slow clap*

 

Well, I know what to look at if I need to draw Twi's room. And I'm guessing the person who drew it has much more OCD then me ;D Thanks dude.

[SCS 7,537]

This is incredible. I love the world of Equestria, and sometimes I wonder where exactly everything is. This is open for interpretation though, because I remember reading that the writers often shift the locations of places to fit the storyline. However, it would be interesting to have maps of Equestria and various places within. 

[SasQ 1,376]

However, it would be interesting to have maps of Equestria and various places within.

Actually, there is such a map, and it seems pretty complete. When I was searching the Net about the library in Ponyville, I've found a DeviantArt user named Aurebesh, who is creating a map of the whole Ponyville, show-accurate, according to reference images, just like I did for the library. He also encountered lots of strange "paradoxes", especially with the Sugarcube Corner's location. And I see he also tried his own with the library and struggled with the same paradoxes I mentioned above. He seem to have some solutions for some of them. I'll try to incorporate what he knows into my investigations.

 

---------

Added:

 

The DeviantArt user Aurebesh has answered me about the Library. It's a lot of text which I would want to refer to and quote some parts, so I decided to put my answer here on this forum, because it allows for better formatting and quoting than the DeviantArt comments.

 

how on earth folks keep finding these old scrapped things instead of the new ones I'll never know...

I was searching if someone else tried to map the library too and if he solved these paradoxes. So I opened Google and typed in a search phrase like "Ponyville library map", and I've found your maps of the whole Ponyville. Then I clicked one of the "similar works" suggested by DeviantArt, and that's how I found your version of library map.

 

If there's some more organized listing of all your updated maps, then please give me a link. I'm lost in these DeviantArt search pages. References such as yours should be better organized and cataloged for easier searching.

 

You forgot the balcony/porch thingy.

No I didn't ;-) I just decided to hold on with drawing it on my map until I'll solve where the balcony door should be located exactly. There are several options, most of them under the bedroom stairs. But the door collides with one of the bookcases (this round one, with flowers and hearts). I mentioned the door in my original post, just forgot to write that it's the balcony door.

 

Since we know for an absolute fact that there's a porch on the second floor

Yes of course. And from 24th episode ("Owl's Well That Ends Well", 05:10 - 06:03) we also know that the round door (the one under the stairs to the bedroom) opens to that balcony. Here's my reference from this episode with a map:

 

 

( BTW has anyone noticed that this floor looks pretty much like the Yin-Yang symbol again? ;-J )

I put there some letters to mark special spots.

 

Point A is some additional bookcase which appears on the right of the desk. The desk is located just behind the Twilight's head. Above it there's the bedroom window marked with C. It's viewed from an angle slightly slanted to the axis of the camera. This is the view from the camera at the bottom, where the kitchen window and writing table are located (marked with E).

 

Letter D marks the window you can see in pictures D and E in my first post. This window can be seen in the 8th episode ("Look Before You Sleep", 13:01), and better still just at the beginning of the 11th episode ("Winter Wrap Up", 00:00). I think this window is the round small one seen below the balcony, and the window above it is the bedroom window (C). Unfortunately, in the 8th episode, Applejack catches the falling tree through the bottom window, which is supposed to be the bedroom window seen in nearby scenes. This might be a blooper, because this window cannot be below the level of the balcony.

 

Letter B is between the fireplace and a cupboard which are seen from the outside through the open balcony door when Twilights goes outside in third frame. This view is from the upper camera on my map.

 

I also put the arrows to show directions of looking or motion, or pointing into some important directions. Green arrow points to the kitchen window, straight into the bottom camera. Yellow arrow shows where Twilight is looking straight at the balcony door. You can compare the angles with the green arrow. The balcony door and the kitchen window are almost at the opposite side of each other, just a bit slanted from this axis (around 10..20 degrees). The orange arrow is the path Twilight walked from the kitchen table to the balcony door. It's not along the line of sight, because then we could see her approaching the door in the third frame from left side, but it appears that she approaches it from the right, so she must have walked a half-circle from the left side (where the kitchen window is located), passing by the fireplace and the cupboard (seen behind her), and bedroom stairs (seen on the right). Otherwise the kitchen table has to be located on the right, which I think would be wrong, because then it would be located more behind the tree than the balcony.

 

Additionally, there's a very strong chance that there's a sliding bookcase that can slide in front of this door (providing extra cover / warmth on winter nights) or slide back into the wall if you need to head outside.

Yes. I invented a similar solution in my first post above:

 

This paradox can also be solved if we assume that the round bookcase didn't changed into a window/door, but just stood in this place for some time, occluding the window locating behind it. And then Twilight discovered the window and removed the bookcase to reveal it.

Now I see this theory can be justified even more: This bookcase seem to be a little deeper into the wall, and there's some place between it and the wall, so there may be some kind of a passage behind this wall, which could solve also the staircase problem. What if it could work this way somehow?:

 

 

Then you could get any combination of these bookcases and holes where there are no bookcase at the moment. You can easily move any bookcase to reveal what's behind it, and it might be the balcony door or the staircase to the first floor depending on the camera angle used and situation needed ;-)

What do you think about such a solution? :->

 

2) The wall behind the Desk and the Table are directly connected. No alcove. This was finally 100%-ly confirmed in yesterday's episode Just for Sidekicks (1:33).

This new episode doesn't confirm anything but break it even more, introducing another paradox ;-J Because it could be seen in two episodes ("Look Before You Sleep" 13:01 and "Winter Wrap Up" 00:00) that there's definitely something there behind the bedroom wall: there is a window (D in my pictures), and some short stairs, and a lot of free space. And some space is needed to encompass what we see in "Winter Wrap Up" 00:21 - 01:00 (let's call it Changing Room for now):

 

 

This place is located behind Twilight from 1st frame, and she stands there quite parallel to the desk. The camera is at the same place as in the second frame in the previous picture (night scene with balcony door), so this place has to be located somewhere between the desk and the kitchen window & writing table. I suspect that it's just next to the kitchen window, because we can see a yellow stand on the left of the window in other scenes of other episodes (see picture F in my first post for example).

 

Unfortunately, the last frame above also suggests that the desk is located next to the changing room, more to the left, and it's quite on that wall :-/ There's too few room for the alcove which is seen in these two scenes from E08:13:01 and E11:00:00 :

 

 

BUT! We actually don't see the right side of the changing room, so we cannot be sure that it actually connects with the kitchen window wall! So maybe there is some place for a passage to the alcove? :-> Hmm...

 

Meh, it collides with the E11:00:00 ;-/ RATS! ;-

 

There's still enough room in that corner to fit a small spiral staircase, but it's completely blocked off by walls now with no way to get into there from this floor.

Yes, there definitely is such a small staircase seen in E11:00:00. Unfortunately, there were no episodes so far which could reveal how to get to the third floor with the stargazing turret. We can only wait for more evidence or make blind guesses.

 

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OK, so much for now. I'll go to the first floor later, when the second floor will be covered up at whole.

 

Also, thanks for the heads up on the MLP Forums! I just might have to start frequenting there.

So you have a good occasion now ;-) You can join the discussion here, which is more clear than DeviantArt comments in my opinion. You can also link back to this discussion from your deviation ;-) (which I already linked here).

Edited January 29, 2013 by SasQ

[Kel_Grym 1,917]

My only hypothesis is magic.

[Scootalove 10,689]

This is really impressive, mapping out the locations in the library must be very easy but yet a bit difficult to do. Well done.