A few questions about G3 canon?

[Star Spark]

Hi, I was wondering if any G3 fans out there could sate my curiosity about its fiction. I've been watching some of the specials on Netflix and want to know what falls into the same canon as "A Charming Birthday" (which oddly isn't streaming) and the other specials that use these characters. My biggest questions are- are the mini-sodes that only use the Core 7 canon (with all the previous characters just absent) or a branch continuity? Is 3.5 also supposed to be the same, but with different designs, or entirely new? Do any of the books tie into the same continuity?

Also, a more minor question- were there ever any boy ponies in any of the fiction? I seem to remember this coming up in a prior thread but not what the answer was. Thanks to anyone who can answer- G3 is new to me.     

[LordBlumiere]

I can answer one of these questions! There was only a boy in the G3.5 canon, but he was never made into a toy. Someone else will have to supply the picture, but as I recall he was only in one special.

[Star Spark]

Hey, thanks! I did a search after you posted and found a picture of the 3.5 boy pony from the special. I always found it weird that there are almost never any males around in MLP fiction (at least the G1 cartoon sort of handwaved it with the Big Brothers just running around the world together.) So 3.5 is a distinct continuity, then? (Haven't had a chance to watch the Twingkle Wish adventure movie, though it is on Netflix.)

[Violet CLM]

I can't think of anything that prevents 3.5 from being a separate continuity than 3...

• There's a unicorn named Cheerilee, and an earth pony named Cheerilee. That's odd, but not impossible.
• In Over Two Rainbows, which has to happen before every other special (except So Many Different Ways to Play), Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash identify Sweetie Belle as a unicorn and say that she belongs in Unicornia. And in The Runaway Rainbow, while ponies admit to a) not knowing where Unicornia is and b) not knowing that unicorns make the rainbows, no one actually says they've never heard of unicorns or Unicornia. So that's all right.
  
• Puzzlemint has a line in Greetings from Unicornia: "Unicornia? Oh, I've never been there. I'd love to meet the unicorns some day." But that's not out of line with there being a single unicorn--Sweetie Belle--already living in Ponyville, or at the very least, no more so than with Rarity already having visited there once.

There are certainly differences in feeling... the generalized Core 7/G3.5/Newborn Cuties era includes relatives (Scootaloo is Cheerilee's sister, Pinkie has a mother), children (Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle), and possibly a boy, none of which show up in the earlier specials, but all those ponies did have to come from somewhere. (On the other hand, Over Two Rainbows suggests that unicorns are born from two rainbows touching, so maybe mammalian reproduction isn't... okay, off-topic.) And the Winter Wishes Festival isn't mentioned during Christmas, nor vice versa, and it's certainly bizarre that you never see Starsong or Toola Roola prior to the core 7 switch, nor Minty and the others after, and in fact the core 7 seem extremely insular in their social lives. But do any of those things make a shared continuity impossible? I wouldn't say so.

After all, the whole point of Pinkie Pie's Special Day is that the core 7 remember the earlier specials.

[Firehooves]

There are descrepancies between G3 and G3.5, yes. Cheerilee is a unicorn in 3, and an earth pony in 3.5. Also, Scootaloo is an adult in G3, and a little sister of Cheerilee in 3.5. There are enough difrences to make them distict universes. Though it could be agrued that G3 is internally inconsistant, whit things like Rainbow Dash's magically changing voice.

[hathorcat]

Within individual G3 episodes/books, I think there is enough both maintaining continuity and contradicting it that you can argue both cases - which is standard for a lot of cartoons which were released in this way. There are glaring errors, such as those Violet has listed, which imply a contradiction between shows [but are these really any worse than you get in some long running and high budget shows?]. I think in general they are designed to all be part of the same world and the same continuous story line. With the books; the problem with licensed books, is that they are often written by committee rather than an actual dedicated author which means they can sway wildly from previously established truths - one book refers to Star Catcher has a boy throughout which is clearly contradictory to the toy and other media. 

As for G3 and G3.5 - the difference to the core characters is enough for me to suggest a difference in "world" but there are not significant enough changes that a child could not follow one into the other nicely.

[Star Spark]

Okay, thanks! The pre-Core 7 G3 cartoons definitely look interconnected (characters are introduced and continue to re-appear in later specials) but I'm not sure what I think of the Core 7 era, since I haven't seen it (do previous characters even appear in the background, aside from flashbacks?) I do want to track down some of the books, if only because primary sources for the canon are so limited. 3.5 definitely looks like a separate continuity to me, based on Twinkle Wish Star (which surprisingly wasn't that bad, given I really didn't like the 3.5 toys.)