MLP G5 Discussion and Speculation Thread

something’s strange with this map, like if zephyr heights is where canterlot was, maretime bay is the same location as baltimare, and bridlewood is in the undiscovered west, then why is the compass facing where west is in the g4 map?

@Shimmering Spectacle
Best to not think about the geography but if the location exists. Cause Canterlot is Canterlot. Zephyr Heights is another place.

@Phoenixflambe
ok I stand corrected.

although if this is more sensible, then opaline’s castle is possibly at the same location where the ruins of the royal sisters castle was.

@Shimmering Spectacle
Possibly, if not the empire. Make sense too, since the castle was abandoned. Opaline must’ve did one heck of a makeover.

@Phoenixflambe
Yeah, that’s gotta be the case.

@Shimmering Spectacle
But I believe that could contradict what some of the people creating the movie said… I think they said Zephyr Heights is on Canterlot’s mountain. And I remember hearing that the lonely tree on the way to Bridlewood was confirmed to be the Tree of Harmony (there were a lot of fans talking about it), which would be impossible if Bridlewood is between Zephyr Heights and the Tree.
However, it’s been such a long time so I may be misremembering things, and I can’t re-check since I don’t have Netflix to watch the movie anymore, I’m pretty sure the posts from the people mentioning them are buried by now.

The filmmakers never said that the mountain of the city of Pegasus is a mountain near Canterlot.
They were talking about other mountains.

Do we know when the next episode of Make your Mark is going to be released?

Just remembered something: I recall one of the promotional picture of Zephyr Heights shows a bridge leading to the city. A fan once speculated that ZH is located in the mountain next to Starlight’s village (who does have a bridge that connects to another mountain). This fan may have gotten something right…

@Ring Team
September 26th.

The last G5 map, which is based on the last map from the movie, has a built-in error - the compass was not set correctly. Again, this seemed to be done on purpose to cement the fact that Opaline’s Dark Castle is south of Maretime Bay far inland. If it weren’t for the information about the location of the Tree of Harmony, which is located exactly where the two sisters’ castles originally stood in the Everfree forest, the map would have looked very different. The terrain with the broken bridge in the movie agreed to a certain extent with what existed around the two sisters’ castle. Habro before the movie had reused an old G4 map to show the landscape of G5, and it is shown that Zephyr Heights is in the same area as Canterlot.

Thus, it must logically be concluded that Canterlot and Zephyr Heights were close to each other, but not in the same place for topographical reasons; Canterlot is located on a mountain shelf with forest, river and lake as a park as well, from the IDW G4 comics it is implied that the area was heavily wooded. This is partly shown again in the IDW G5 comics. Zephyr Heights, on the other hand, is well above the tree line all the way up to the highest mountain peaks and there is no vegetation there, not even at the foot of the peaks (or mountain peaks). This is not unusual; in our world there are examples of cities replacing each other without being in each other’s locality. The Swedish city of Gothenburg is a good example; there were as many as three cities before today’s city since the 12th century. None of the older cities were located within each other’s urban area. And it is not due to natural disasters, this is due to war.

As long as the information about the Tree of Harmony (the place should be called “the meadows of Harmony”) is canon, it is impossible to overlook Zephyr Heights and Canterlot within the same area. The new map shows instead that Opaline lives far to the south, and by comparing with G4 maps it seems that her castle is located in “Mysterious South”, the landscape between middle Equestria in the north, Badlands in the southeast and South Equestria in the southwest. Very fitting with an alicorn that was mysterious when she first appeared. And we’ve seen very few times what’s there between Equestria proper and the southern part of the continent, beyond the fact that there are a lot of mysterious place names there.

TBH i’d prefer it if the G5 locations where placed somewhere else and NOT built on top of the previous gen locations

Have seen the comment fields at Equestria Daily about the upcoming 3D series, which will be called the MYM series, and it seems that there was either high expectation pressure or dissatisfaction with the controversial aspects such as the issue with magic that dominate among the fans.

MYM Special #1 as expected revealed nothing but misunderstandings and rising resentment between the ponies who needed to get used to each other; what came as a surprise was the very destructive magic caused by the ponies’ discontent and loss of magic among the active magical ponies. The Unity Crystals suffered a PR disaster, and rightly so. Because the writers behind the plot had only shown half of the basis of existence for the Unity Crystals, as why the magic disappeared. The other half came in the IDW G5 #2 comic. Unfortunately, there was too long a wait between them, and far too many fans practice a narrow-minded distinction between different media, many firmly believed that the IDW comics are non-existent as part of the lore for the MLP.

The case with the Unity Crystals, which have now taken over the place after the Harmony Elements of G4, is due to a rewrite. The whole concept behind the Unity Crystals was taken from the first draft of the movie about a distant future or alternate world detached from G4, where the ponies were in a state of war with each other for a long time, with mistrust, violence and obvious contempt between the ponies who had painful memories in the way between them. This draft was discarded and replaced with a new one, but much of the rough work was done, as it was decided to create an enigmatic reality rather than a post-fallout reality. The magic must therefore go away, and to achieve this they chose to change some of the concept around the crystals so that the magic can be gone from the ponies’ world.

This leads to a new track for the writers who had to build up new lore that could explain why the magic disappeared, and “exonerate” the heroes from G4 for something that reminds too many of deprivation of liberty and irresponsible policy regarding the ponies. The mistake in MYM Special #1 was that only half of the explanation was shown - the very reason why the Unity Crystals exist, but this in the short term made it worse. We had to wait until IDW G5 #2 with the Discord Arc and the TYT ep. 18 to get more material on the subject, which thus makes it possible to put together the picture of the controversy surrounding the Unity Crystals. In-depth analysis and pondering had become necessary to see the contours of this.

Ironically, the G5 writers have used older lore to justify the Unity Crystals’ existence, which is to stop the magic of the ponies in certain scenarios, and that is by focusing on the emotional dimension of the magic. Everyone could see in the Special #1 that it was emotional instability that was the direct cause behind the disaster that nearly engulfed Maretime Bay. But there were signs that for the first time charted the magical world structure ever since the start of G4. We saw passive magic in the earth ponies. We saw emotional energy leaking from the ponies out to the Unity Crystals. We saw a rainbow of magic come out to the lighthouse as if a channel opened. We saw the magic in depth. And thus came the reality that active magic is separated from the physical world. Which explains why magic could disappear completely in a magical world, magic is layered. This idea of ​​active magic dates back to S8, when Cozy Glow tried to remove the magic, by “sending” it to another dimension.

Many who criticize the Mane 6 for not solving the problem in their time, forgot something essential; passive magic and emotional power likely come directly from life energy - or the soul. This could not be touched, as it would concern the very essence of the Ponykind. This problem was never seen early according to Discord who was shocked despite his long life. One of the images about the upcoming series - which is not commented - shows a lantern with the earth pony crystal, which makes the IDW G5 #1 canon. Namely that a physical splitting of the Unity Crystals without loss of magic is possible.

The Unity Crystals have been fully explained by following all media - the movie, the MYM Special, the IDW comics and the TYT series. And that they will serve an important role for the G5. It has come out that the magic cannot disappear with the help of the Unity Crystals, and it happened during an apocalypse that saw the end of G4’s world.

It is very rare that lore in a fictional world arose immediately or is put in place, it is developed over time with the efforts of many who helped, several thousand people had worked on the world building ever since Faust began work on the upcoming G4 back then. The Unity Crystals are a very good example of this.

@GoodVibesGorgeous
Oooh, a dive into the past. Me likey.

@Background Pony #B142
Canterlot is not Zephyr Heights. Izzy and friends would know already cause they just visited that place.

I did a pretty in depth analysis on this subject a bit earlier in the thread one bit of info that shouldn’t be overlooked is Opaline’s castle’s interior looks a lot like Twilight’s castle. Could be a replica or the real deal.

@Phoenixflambe
Yup. The only two things that could contradict the fact that Zephyr Heights is on the mountain next to Starlight’s old village would be the size of the mountain and the environment, but I think size doesn’t matter when the animation style is changed and the snow may have melted away during the time jump.

@Phoenixflambe
That was the comics though Doesn’t necessarily mean the show isn’t going to say that

None of the three locations were known from G4, although there is a possibility in IDW G4 #98 of a place called “Maretime Manor”, which may be the original name of the town occasionally called Maretime City in G5. Zephyr Heights was built on top of the mountains that stand on the mountain plateau which was sparsely settled, and the last episode of S9 showed Canterlot growing in height. Bridlewood definitely lies in the Macintosh Hills, a hilly landscape that rose before the valley where Ponyville once stood.

We will see more G4 locations in future G5 episodes. Manehattan probably exists in G5, as the name of the big city is known from the movie.

Remember what I said about the Swedish city. It is located along a large navigable river with many natural harbors in an originally mixed landscape between farmland and wilderness, and it was not far between the three mentioned cities on foot, even if it took a couple of hours between Gamla Lödöse and today’s Gothenburg. Archaeological research has shown that none of the three cities resembled each other, this is not America, this is the old world. Rome once consisted of seven separate towns, American city-building did not exist in the rest of the world. A European city is very different from one kilometer to another.

So it is possible that Zephyr Heights and Canterlot were not far apart, everyone remembered from G4 that there is a certain distance between the mountain that was not lonely, and the city area itself on relatively flat land of several kilometers in radius. What stuck out into the air was not the city, but the royal palace and the royal facilities. In S9, it has been seen that solid ground is being built under the palace area - so it is possible that the mountain shelf has been artificially expanded over the years, so that the topography has become completely unrecognizable. Zipp and Pipp have never been to Canterlot.

They simply do not know about this. Neither did the majority of residents in Gothenburg about the predecessors of their city, this came in recent times.

There were unusually poor lighting conditions in the Dark Castle from MYM Special #1 and it was not very clear in the only image that came from there, the lighting conditions therefore create the impression of a crystallized background and that the castle was far to the north. So there’s only the illustration from the new G5 map and the single image where Opaline showed the flower to Misty at the edge of her journey to Maretime Bay to base it on.

First of all, that a very large tree forms part of the castle with huge branches that stuck into the castle contents, it appears to be seven stories high measured against the castle, not counting the little that could be seen crawling towards the highest tower. The annual rings on the branch in the single image show that it is several hundred years old, perhaps even more, there are trees that are several thousand years old in our world. And it was in a branch, not the trunk itself! The annual rings showed that the tree was not crystallized as if it were supposed to be Twilight Sparkle’s castle.

The castle itself is of old design. The towers were already out of date when Twilight was born, these seem more in line with what existed a thousand years before, when the pillars of Equestria were assembled. And in the photo of the inside, it appears that there are glass windows with crystal glass, woodwork and mortar that suggest brick construction. It looks like the castle was built around the big tree, which seemed to be alive.

But the illustration shows a very different topography from that found in the Ponyville area. There is a certain possibility that it is the terrain around the two sisters’ castle.

An alternative is that the large tree is the remains of the Tree of Harmony, but then the information about the solitary tree on the meadows many months ago is 100% a lie. Also, there’s a lot to suggest that the loss of magic that would have naturalized a crystallized tree hadn’t happened that long ago. Then the tree could not age for so long - and crystals did not leave annual rings.

what about it being a replica of Twilight’s castle being built relatively close to it ie right next to it. At first the topography dosen’t match but there’s a mountain directly next to Twilight’s castle that it could be built on. https://derpibooru.org/images/1697905 I still content it’s Twilight’s castle largely due to a similar color scheme.

I haven’t really noticed any continuity errors in G5.

Am I weird?

Not really.

But I did notice that TYT says Cloudpuff went with the sisters but MYM and the comics says he stayed with Haven.

@Dustcan
There is the MAretime Bay Adventure game, if that counts

Also the MYM special had a cameo of Zipp’s visor like, a month before the episode where she gets the visor aired.

Do you see any possibility of MYM being as good as FiM?

@Background Pony #0AD1
No, but it doesn’t have and/or need to. It’s been repeated like multiple times