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Fhaolan

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  1. Fhaolan

    Dungeons and Ponies!

    By Fhaolan,

    I’m kinda burned out after the third weekend of trying to sell handspun yarn, handknit hats and wraps, and handwoven maille to renfairies who have no money to buy anything, for me to do anything intelligent. So I’m going to continue with the ‘what everyone already knows’ kind of thing this week.
     
    First off, let me get this out of the way:
     
    My Little Pony: Roleplaying is Magic
     
    Friendship is Dragons
     
    My Little Pony WotC April Fools
     
    My Little Pony Pathfinder April Fools (Not the original posting, but I can’t find a good link to all three pages except for this.)
     
    Ponies for Pathfinder
     
    My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Roleplaying Game
     
    My Little Pony RPG
     
    I’m vaguely aware of others, and if anyone has any more links pass them on and I’ll add them to this blog.
     
    The first MLP animated show: Rescue from Midnight Castle isn’t really that much different from the Dungeons and Dragons animated series that was running at the time. Both had oddly dark undercurrents in a nominally 80’s ‘Saturday Morning Cartoon’. In fact, I think Venger and Tirek are villains cut from the same cloth. But honestly, 80’s cartoons were weird in general so I can’t really say there’s a natural connection between them. However, the original MLP unicorn’s magic was limited to a form of teleportation called ‘winking’, plus one special trick. This maps very well to early edition D&D’s teleporting unicorns.
     
    Fast forward to MLP:FiM, however, and the ties become a lot closer. Many of the creatures from the Everfree forest are lifted from the Dungeons & Dragons versions of these creatures, rather than the mythological versions. The hydra and the cockatrice for example, are instantly recognizable to an old D&D player, but a mythologican would spend a few moments confused by the depiction until they remembered the same obscure bestiary that Gygax used as a source. Plus unicorn magic is upgraded to be follow similar rules as 3rd edition D&D’s new (at the time) sorcerer class. Once a unicorn/sorcerer has mastered a spell, they can spam it as necessary as long as they have the energy to pull it off. The primary spell for unicorns now being the trivial ‘Mage Hand’ (a 0th level spell in 3rd edition) instead of teleportation. More experienced and powerful unicorns upgrading to a full Telekenisis (a 5th level spell in 3rd edition) such as Trixie, Twilight, and Rarity (yep, Rarity).
     
    As per the links above, lots of people have blended MLP and RPGs together with varying levels of success.
     
    It baffles me, to be honest, why Hasbro has let this one slide for so long. They own both MLP and Dungeons and Dragons at the moment (a historical aside: Dungeons and Dragons was originally from Tactical Studies Rules Inc. in 1974, eventually named just TSR, bought out by Wizards of the Coast in 1997, bought out by Hasbro in 1999.) An official MLP RPG is a natural fit, heck even a MLP board game from their Parker Brother’s division would make sense. But Hasbro doesn’t seem to be able to have products cross their divisional lines.
     
    Okay, politics aside, what has all of this got to do with worldbuilding? Well, what we look for here is where things follow a pattern, and then see if there are holes in that pattern. Those holes can tell us a lot.
     
    Unicorn magic does seem to map to sorcerer magic very closely, many spells Twilight pulls off are very similar to D&D equivalents. Primarily telekinesis, but teleportation, magic missile, reverse gravity, prismatic spray, transmutation, etc. Here’s the hole: there are no indications of being able to cast anything that D&D would classify as a clerical spell. Specifically, no pony has shown any ability to cast straight healing spells, a staple of D&D and other RPGs. Yes, spells that can free someone of mind control and the like, but not heal sicknesses or wounds. This is really important when you think about it.
     
    Modern gamers and fiction writers fall into the trap of thinking that magic can do anything. It’s the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card. Except, that’s boring. It leads to ever-escalating magic-only fights in the style of the Slayers anime ("Darkness from twilight, crimson from blood that flows; buried in the flow of time; in Thy great name, I pledge myself to darkness! Those who oppose us shall be destroyed by the power you and I possess! DRAGON SLAVE!!" , and then Super Dragon Slave, then Mega Slave, then Giga Slave, and so on and so forth. Each time getting progressively more ridiculous.)
     
    But when there’s a serious limit to what magic can do, there’s room for actual worldbuilding, as well as drama and the like. In the world of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, magic can’t do more than heal minor scrapes and bruises, and even then that’s more a side effect when huge amounts of magic power are thrown around to achieve other goals (Cadance and Shining Armor when they repel Chrysalis from Canterlot). Other healing effects are from Zecora’s herbalism, and follow the same ‘it takes awhile’ process that real life has.
     
    This means there’s no ‘go until out of hit points, and then down a healing potion’ in this world. No health packs, no vita injections, nothing. If ponies get hurt, they have to take time to heal just like us. This kind of limitation is critical for creating a living world.
     
    That’s as far as I’ve gotten with this train of thought. Next week I should be more rested and able to do something more solid.
  2. Fhaolan
    Moving on from the mysterious unnamed Princess who doesn't seem to be around anymore...
     
    Twilight is now an alicorn, and we know very little as of yet from this transformation. We know that she reached it by understanding more about the magic of friendship than anyone previously, which spontaneously caused her to be alicoronated. With some kind of power boost from the Elements of Harmony, of course. Celestia felt the need to shepherd the process, but you get the impression that it would have happened anyway without Celestia being there. Maybe Celestia just eased it along, reducing some of the trauma.
     
    The Twilight and the Crystal Heart Spell, which was originally billed as being canon (but I’m not convinced the writers of the show itself believe that due to how the book and the show diverged on Trixie), has Cadence being a pegasis who became an alicorn by understanding more about the magic of love than anyone previously. We know that these events occurred before Cadence was Twilight’s foalsitter, and she was adopted by Celestia as a niece to officially name her a Princess. From that time to ‘now’, Cadence has appeared to age normally. Her mane also only does the ethereal thing Celestia’s and Luna’s does when boosted by her husband. Interestingly, she doesn't appear to have needed the kind of power boost the Elements of Harmony provided for Twilight for her 'ascension.'
     
    These two have an odd thing connecting them, both 'ascended' to alicorn status by the magic of friendship, or the magic of love. Are there other 'magics' that could do this as well? Can they only happen once per 'item', or is it repeatable? No idea, but if we see any other alicorns showing up, I think we'll find out that they ascended due to some other emotion-based magic.
     
    Celestia has lived for over a thousand years, and given the glimpse of her from the Crystal Empire episodes where she and Luna took down Sombra, has not changed much during that time. She gives the impression of being effectively immortal, if not fully immortal. However, there was a time where she didn’t exist as such, as in the Hearth’s Warming Eve story her task of controlling the Sun (and the Moon when Luna was unavailable) was run by the Unicorn tribe itself. Now, in one of the adverts for MLP, Celestia was referred to as a winged unicorn rather than as an alicorn, so it is possible that when the Hearth’s Warming Eve story said that the Sun and Moon were controlled by unicorns, they may still have been referring to Celestia and Luna, but that they weren’t considered ‘rulers’ at that point.
     
    Lauren Faust specifically mentioned in a Q&A that Celestia and Luna were born alicorns, and if that fact is still true (since Lauren no longer runs the show, and it wasn’t explicitly mentioned in show), then that makes them very different from the ascended alicorns like Twilight and Cadence. It is also implied that Celestia is more powerful magically than any unicorn. However, other than the raising of the Sun and Moon, she doesn’t actually demonstrate any immense magical power. Her defeat by Chrysalis, and Chrysalis’ expression of surprise at that, gives the impression that Celestia’s vaunted magical power is more marketing than real.
     
    Luna I’ve left for last, because she’s the real odd one of the bunch. Like Celestia, Lauren said she was born an alicorn, but her physical age wavers. When taking down Sombra, she has an ‘adult’ or at least young adult appearance, similar to her appearance in Season 2+. However, when she was ‘cleansed’ of the Nightmare in Season 1, she took on the appearance of being much younger, and without the ethereal mane. It's entirely possible that she's actually the same age as Celestia, but whatever is causing these appearance changes is preventing her from matching Celestia. Thematically, having Luna and Celestia actually being twins who's apparent ages are divergent isn't that farfetched. All the twins I know make jokes constantly about who's the 'younger' sibling, and as we will see there are lots of things that may have arrested Luna's development.
     
    There are two different explanations for her appearance changes. The first, and the most popular, is that being stripped of the Nightmare carved off a lot of her natural power as well, and this simply took time to regenerate. The other, which I find interesting, is that her appearance is actually tied to the phases of the moon, the younger appearance being a ‘new moon’, and the older appearance being a ‘full moon’. Although this one very unlikely as her appearance seems to be stable throughout Season 2 and 3, I like it personally.
     
    She has demonstrated some unusual powers, including dreamwalking, as well as controlling the Moon and night sky. It is implied that she controls the stars in the night sky, but it's not explicitly said in the show itself.
     
    Unlike Celestia, we don’t know if Luna is particularly long-lived, because her time as Nightmare Moon throws off all calculations. For all we know, she didn’t age during her time of imprisonment because either she was kept alive by the Nightmare powers, or by the imprisonment itself. I think we can assume that whatever abilities or immortality Celestia has, Luna has as well, but that’s not a guarantee.
  3. Fhaolan
    The biggest hindrance to worldbuilding in the setting of MLP:FiM is, in my opinion, the passage of time. Or lack thereof. I was going to do this as one big post, but it hit 10,000 characters and I figured that's too ridiculous. So I've split it in two.
     
    There’s at least three different points where the passage of time is important to the setting while having strange issues that conflict with themselves. Let’s tackle the two smaller issues first to get them out of the way.
     
    Exactly how long is a ‘moon’? It’s a temporal measurement used a couple of times that give the impression of being an exact measurement.
     
    First off, the shortest cycle it could refer to is the raising and lowering of the moon, so a day. I can almost see that as a strange tribute to Luna, but very unlikely.
     
    Next is a week, believe it or not. The span between one Monday (which is derived from ‘Moon’s Day’) to the next. This one is a possibility but as Rainbow Dash actually uses the term ‘weeks’ when referring to her time away at the Wonderbolt Academy I’m doubtful that they have two terms for the same period of time.
     
    Finally we have the ‘Month’ which is in fact another word for Moon in real life. This one’s the most likely of the bunch just due to that. Just for your information, in real life there are several types of month. Sidereal, Tropical, Anomalistic, Draconitic (I need to do more research on this one, just because of it's name), Synodic, and the one everyone knows, the semi-arbitrary Calendar month that the Roman Emperors had so much fun with (Originally the Roman calendar had 10 months, and a weird 51 day period during the winter that wasn't in any month because it was when the 'year was dead'. As I said, weird.) Out of this mess, the best one to deal with is the Synodic month, which is the time between one full moon and another. On Earth, this is about 29.53 days. (As a note, ‘about’ is used here because there the Moon’s orbit does have eccentricities due to it orbiting a body that is also in motion at an angle to said motion.) There is a problem with this, as Luna (and Celestia, and the Unicorn tribe as a whole at different times), control the cycles of the moon in Equestria. That means this isn’t really a fixed time frame, but a ‘suggestion’. Let’s just assume Luna et al keep to the same cycle time as Earth, just for our convenience. There's no proof of this whatsoever, but if it isn't a regular cycle, how can you tell time by it?
     
    In any case we’ve got two potential timeframes, and two instances of the moon being used to keep time in the show. One in Apple Family Reunion, and other the Equestria Girls movie. There may have been mention of it outside of that, but I can’t recall.
     
    In Apple Family Reunion, Granny Smith states that it’s been 100 moons since the last reunion. Taken literally, this means it’s been 700 days if a moon=week (a little less than 2 years), or 2,953 days if a moon=month (a little over 8 years) since the last one. 8 years is very reasonable for the gravity the characters treat the time span, but there’s a problem: Apple Bloom was present at the last Apple Family Reunion, as it was taking place in the first episode of Season 1, and she has not aged much since then. For a filly 8 years is going to make a big difference. If she’s 12 now, she was 4 then. If she was 8 then, she’s 16 now. That’s just not adding up. However, the less likely moon=week is very interesting there, as it isn’t that far off of the actual difference in broadcast dates (10 October, 2010 to 22 December, 2012, or 804 days) between the two episodes with Apple Family Reunions in them.
     
    Then we come to Equestria Girls, where 30 moons is used, which is either 210 days (a bit over half a year), or 886 days (not quite two and half years). There is a major problem with a moon=week here. At the beginning of the movie the princesses give the impression that between portal ‘openings’ is a serious length of time that it’s critical to avoid missing. But if it’s six months… yeah, that’s very inconvenient, and sad to be away from your friends for that long and all that, but it’s not exactly life-threatening. Two and a half years however, that’s a bit more meaningful.
     
    It’s a pity that the writers didn’t use the same ‘100 moons’ here as previous, as that would make a third explanation a lot easier to accept. It’s an idiom, a turn of phrase meaning a ‘long time’ without a precise meaning. But ’30 moons’ feels oddly specific, a little less than a third of a long time? What?
     
    So we have two likely candidates, that each fit one of the two scenarios. *sigh* I personally prefer the moon=month one, because of linguistics, but that means having to write off the reunion in the first episode of the series as somehow ‘not counting’ as far as Granny Smith is concerned.
     
    Let’s move on, but not too far. We’ve still got a problem with Granny Smith herself.
     

     
    How old is Granny Smith, anyway? She was a young mare (not a filly as such, as she gives the impression of being older than Apple Bloom, but younger than Applejack in the flashback to when she was in Canterlot with her parents) when Ponyville was founded according to Family Appreciation Day. Yet Twilight specifically said that Winter Wrap Up in Ponyville has been happening for ‘hundreds of years’. So Granny Smith is hundreds of years old plus a bit? Maybe Twilight is exaggerating (not atypical for her to be honest,) or actually referring to the Winter Wrap Up celebration for Earth Ponies in general, and not specifically Ponyville.
     
    Otherwise, maybe that bit previously about Apple Bloom not aging enough in 8 years was a bad assumption. If that’s true, then either their years are a lot shorter than ours or pony lifespans are at least three times what our modern human lifespans are, if not more. In either case that means that Celestia’s rule of one thousand years, while impressive, is more like 300-400 years relative to humans. I’ll come back to this one later, as it leads right into the biggest issue with time in this series.
     
    How much can... no, that's too weak... should happen in a thousand years?
  4. Fhaolan
    Okay, this one is a doozy.
     
    Equestria as presented in the show is too big for the travel time it takes to get anywhere, and has too much history but not enough has changed during that time. Unlike my previous blog posts on Equestrian history and backstories, the conflicting ‘official’ information is really at loggerheads on this, and unless we want to abandon worldbuilding in this setting, something has to give.
     
    Let’s deal with the physical first. There’s already been enough analysis on ‘how tall are ponies’, the more popular one being based on apples, but my favorite one is this: http://cheezburger.com/5577009664. Basically near the beginning of the episode Hearth’s Warming Eve, Twilight specifically calls out one of the giant candy canes as being eight feet tall. Doing the math, we end up with ponies as being about four feet tall at the top of the head, which is small even for a real life pony, but falls within the range for very small breeds like the Shetland pony. People get a weird idea of how big 'ponies' are because of miniature horses, which are technically a different thing. Anyway, this is all fine. As long as everything is to scale for the ponies, there’s nothing saying that’s too small, or too big.
     
    The problems start up when we talk about the size of Equestria itself, not its inhabitants. Taking the official map of Equestria:

     
    You can see how it lines up in a very rough way with a map of North America, as the various town names are obvious puns based on RL cities:

     
    Now, of course, Fillydelphia, Manehattan, and Baltimare are too far apart, and this puts Neighagra Falls somewhere near Timmins, Ontario, but as the official map says ‘Distance Not To Scale’, so we can deal with that and warp the map so it fits:

     
    As a rough estimate, this puts Ponyville somewhere in the Midwest, let’s say Kansas City. No wait, put it in Iowa just because it amuses me to think that the The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 episode is that much closer to the Music Man. That puts Canterlot as… Chicago? Ignoring the differences in terrain between Equestrian and NA, that’s not that big of a deal. We’re only interested in effective distances between places here. Appleloosa is Oklahoma, and the Changeling Badlands are around New Orleans… HAHAHAHAHAHA… Okay, I’m rolling with that one.
     
    The problem is not the fitting of one map to another, although that is tricky, as the Equestria one is obviously skewed in odd ways, but the sheer distances implied. Those who have grown up with modern airline travel just don’t realize how far away these things are when you’re forced to deal with late nineteeth-early twentieth century level technology.
     
    For example, when the Mane6 went off to the Crystal Empire to organize the reception for the Equestria Games Commissioner, we’re dealing with a trip that is the equivalent of between Iowa and Saskatoon, about 1,500 miles. With steam trains similar to the style used in the show, the speed is about 25 mph on average, maxing out at about 35 mph in best conditions. Allowing for stops for fuel and water (which was about an hour stop for every three hours travel), and assuming they’ve built a line directly from Ponyville to the Crystal Empire, we’re talking about four-five days to get there assuming no delays of any kind. Then the actual stuff they intend on doing, and then another four-five days of travel back.
     
    So they had to be gone for about three weeks. Not a couple of days as implied by the episode, but almost a month. Poor Spike. He should have charged far more for pet sitting.
     
    And this is something that is endemic to the way the show is portrayed. The distances between places, which should be barriers to overcome, are seen to take only moments to travel. Hours, instead of days. And that’s not just train travel. The gates of Tartarus are only a couple of hours away from Ponyville by hoof, apparently. Their equivalent to the Grand Canyon is close enough to Ponyville that a tortoise (not a turtle!) can travel it in an hour or so. There's a massive Dam somewhere in Ponyville, but it's not visible in any shot of the town. So on and so forth.
     
    There is a way to accommodate this. We have to shrink the scale of the world down. A lot.
     
    To get the show’s sense of distances, we’re not dealing with a modified map of North America, but something around the size of the British Isles instead. Which is fine, as that means that there is lots of room for foreign lands like where the Gryphons, Zebras, Saddle Arabians, Minotaurs, etc. come from officially. And those lands can even be close, like the distance between the British Isles and the European mainland.
     
    Until you hit the episodes with pioneers. Hearth’s Warming Eve, Family Appreciation Day, Over a Barrel, and The Last Roundup, are the primary culprits here. These stories depend on the scale of the setting to be big, for there to be lots of room and open space like North America or Europe as a whole, as these stories are lifted with minimal modification from the American Old West setting or something similar. The big one is Hearth’s Warming Eve, to be honest. Take a look at the map of Equestria. If you assume that the Equestria they founded is the same Equestria that exists ‘now’, where did the ponies come from originally? It had to be somewhere they could walk from, if the episode is of any indication. Somewhere large enough for a Unicorn Kingdom rules by Princess Platinum’s father, as well Pegasis and Earth Pony civilizations.
     
    If that map is even vaguely accurate, there really isn’t anywhere for them to come from.
     
    So this really isn’t a case of headcannon conflicting with actual cannon. This is cannon conflicting with itself, and headcannon being a matter of deciding which parts of cannon to discount.
     
    Personally, I go with Equestria being big, and that the travel times are being glossed over a lot. The Equestria of Hearth’s Warming Eve was a small section of what is now called Equestria with the original lands the ponies came from being absorbed into the modern Equestria. The Mane6 were away for weeks during the Equestria Games episodes, and the image of Ponyville we see in the credits is actually just a section of greater Ponyville, with quite a bit more off to the right running into the foothills of a more mountainous area, including the Ponyville Dam and a lot more farmland.
     
    Next time, we get into the bigger problem with cultural and technological development. It's all a matter of Scale: a Stitch in Time.
  5. Fhaolan
    As always with these things we have to leave the land of 'what we know', and move into 'is there any way to make sense of it?' @@TheGr3ml1n, and @@Noble have mentioned things in their own speculations that I have incorporated into this as I see no reason not to. Thanks for the ideas!
     
    Can we assemble a consistent time-line of Celestia and Luna out of what we know? Yes, but it does get a bit strained in places. It's definitely a house of cards, which any further information from the show could topple down. As an added bonus, let's see if we can get a popular meme around Discord into the mess and have it fit.
     
    We have to start with the Hearth’s Warming Eve panto as being the earliest known point in Equestrian history, predating everything else we’ve seen. Supposedly predating Celestia and Luna themselves. At least, this is the earliest known point within this specific show. If we allow for the previous generations to actually *be* previous generations.... things get weirder, and not necessarily in good ways.
     
    Clover the Clever is billed as Starswirl’s apprentice, yet Luna gives the impression of personally knowing how Starswirl looked and dressed during the Luna Eclipsed episode, and Celestia gives the impression of personally knowing how Starswirl behaved during the Magical Mystery Cure episode, as well as having his personal journal stashed away. This means that even if Celestia and Luna weren’t around for the Windigo attack, because their roles were being filled by the Unicorn tribe as a whole, they arrived on-scene ‘shortly’ afterwards in order to have met Starswirl in person. Shortly meaning at least within a pony’s normal lifespan, whatever that actually is. This assumes that Starswirl was still alive during the Hearth's Warming Eve period, probably advising the Unicorn King that was mentioned as Princess Platinum's father and therefore the pair of them being off-screen in order to give Clover and Platinum the spotlight.
     
    Starswirl’s spells that we know about officially all seem to revolve around attempts to change destiny. Either going back into the past, or switching cutie-marks. I have stuff to say about that last spell, and why it was incomplete, but BronyCurious has already said most of the same things in this video:
    . My emphasis is a bit different, and I have some alternate speculation to add, but the end result is much the same, so I'll leave it for now until I develop more divergent analysis. 
    Discord was taken down by Celestia and Luna, which means Discord’s reign took place after the events of Hearth’s Warming Eve, as they were not yet in evidence then. There is the possiblity that the Windigoes were part of Discord’s reign, but for some reason I think Discord would have been mentioned in the play if that had been so.
     
    We know that Celestia and Luna were not ascended, but were born as alicorns according to 'the word of God' (read Lauren Faust), at least until the current showrunner overrides it officially. It is implied that this is an extremely rare occurance. If we pull in the toy line as evidience, the Princess Skyla toy means that the child of an alicorn (ascended or not) will be born an alicorn. Therefore it is likely that Celestia and Luna’s mother was an alicorn.
     
    We know that extreme demonstrations of the magic of friendship and love cause alicorinations. A demonstration that Clover pulled off during the Hearth’s Warming Eve story.
     
    We also know of one alicorn that predates Discord, the mysterious Princess of the love poison.
     
    An interesting thing to add to this is Sombra. My previous speculations had Celestia and Luna taking down Sombra after Discord, but there is a chance that they tackled Sombra as a lead-in on Discord, learning how the Elements worked before going after the far more powerful and dangerous Discord. This isn't really relevant to this specific discussion, but I thought I'd mention it. A side-bar on this particular bit is if they did take on Sombra *before* Discord, then it's technically possible that 'King' Sombra is in fact Princess Platinum's father, the former Unicorn King who has succumbed to dark magic (and/or Discorded?)
     

     
    Let’s weave this all together. Remember that all of this occurs over twenty, possibly even thirty years, so this compressed version includes twists and turns that would be more natural seeming over the longer period of time:
     
    Clover the Clever, shortly after the events of Hearth’s Warming Eve due to her demonstration of extreme magic of friendship, undergoes the alicoronation process, while her mentor Starswirl the Bearded watches in confusion. Clover naturally takes the position of ruling Equestria as the Principle member of the pony council, previously composed of three: an Earth Pony (Puddinghead), a Pegasis (Hurricane), and a Unicorn (Platinum). Now adding an Alicorn that combines the features of Earth Pony, Unicorn, and Pegasis.
    Starswirl, because he doesn’t understand the magics of friendship or love as per Celestia’s comments, tries several methods to duplicate this alicoronation, each ending with failure. Eventually he tries to ‘simulate’ love via a love potion to trigger a similar transformation. Making him the 'Prince' mentioned in the story, but with different motivations than the author assumed. (See my prior blog entry on the definition of 'Prince' and 'Princess', and why this actually works if you use classical definitions rather than modern ones.)
     
    It all goes wrong; the potion turns out to be a poison distorting Clover’s and Starswirl’s minds. Clover and Starswirl consummate their artificial love, all while Equestria’s tenuous new-found stability falls apart, leading to monstrous invasions from manticores, chimera, basilisks, and dragons. Clover gives birth to two little filly alicorns. If we go dark with this, perhaps she doesn’t survive the last birth a la Padme Amidala.
     
    Starswirl is still affected by the poison, and goes nuts. He tries to look for ways to either undo these events, or still to duplicate the transformation for himself, leading to the limited time travel spell of It’s About Time, and the failed destiny re-write spell of the Magical Mystery Cure. When the filly Princesses have reached something around the CMC’s ages, in a final attempt to raise his magical potential to what he believes is alicorn-like status, Starswirl uses transformation magic to blend himself with other highly magical creatures, taking on their power into himself.
     
    And becomes Discord, which fulfills one of the popular fandom memes.
     
    The Princesses grow up to late teen/early adulthood in a world ruled by Discord. When the eldest, Celestia, reaches Twilight’s age they go on a quest to find the various Elements of Harmony, and eventually get enough together to take on Discord.
     
    And turn what’s left of their father to stone.
     
    This is really a pretty standard Fantasy Novel plot. Not necessarily a *good* plot as such, but pretty average in complexity.
     

     
    Next time, I'm going to address a problem with the MLP universe as a whole. We can pretty much cover anything the writers come up culturally and historically with a Real Life model when worldbuilding, because truth really can be stranger than fiction. But there's something that can't be worked around so easily and is a genuine problem with trying to flesh out the MLP:FiM setting.
     
    It's all a matter of scale.
  6. Fhaolan
    Okay, so first things first we have to try to ignore negative evidence as much as possible. Meaning that just because we've never seen something, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist: it's just not considered interesting enough to appear in the show yet. The show uses this a lot, see Shining Armour himself and the fact he's not mentioned until suddenly Twilight has a brother and he's getting married. So just because we haven't seen the guard stationed in Ponyville and other areas, doesn't mean they're not there. We just haven't seen them for some reason. Also just because we've not seen the guards act in a competent fashion with regards to threats against Celestia and Equestria doesn't mean they're incompetent at their jobs, it's just means the stories we've had so far did not focus on the guards being competent.
     
    The Guard gives the impression of being a professional group, rather than a militia or mercenaries, and are combining aspects of police and armed forces. This is surprisingly rare historically, despite how common it is in fiction. Standing armies are almost never used for regular city watch duties until you wander back to the Imperial Roman era, or forward into the World War periods and onwards. For that matter, standing armies themselves aren't as common as people think, especially in feudal systems where the whole arrangement is usually based on militias rather than professional soldiers. So to make this easier on everyone, I'm going to restrict this to modern organizations that seem to parallel the Guards.
     
    From an American point of view, the Guard appear to have similar roles to the American National Guard, with aspects of the Secret Service (guarding the Princess), and the Marines (guarding embassies/palaces/etc.). And then the Wonderbolts are obviously modelled after the Blue Angels acrobatics team, whose primary purpose is actually recruitment drives.
     
    However, take things north of the border, and there is an organization that more closely maps to the Guard in its entirety: The Mounties.
     
    I'm not kidding. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is more like the MLP:FiM Guard than anyone else I’ve ever run into. Bear with me here.
     
    The RCMP is technically a federal police force, but also acts as a provincial (read State for those in countries with states rather than provinces), and a municipal police force. In most of Canada it is the only police force. They provide protection services for the Canadian leadership the same way the Secret Service does in the 'States, and they co-ordinate the Canadian emergency services, border patrols and coast guard the same way as the American Homeland Security does. At one point they also had all the duties that the American CIA had, until 1987 when it was re-organized. They also have an 'acrobatics' troupe: The Musical Ride (awful name, I know), that combines drill (synchronized riding) and vaulting (gymnastics and trick riding). Plus they used to have the Canadian version of the Scouts as a cadet group, in a manner awfully similar to the 'Junior Speedsters' mentioned by Rainbow Dash.
     
    But the bit that cinches it for me, and the part that nobody ever seems to remember, is that in 1921 the RCMP was granted the status of a full-blown military unit, and from there stepped into a similar role as the American National Guard . During the World Wars, the RCMP officially fulfilled the Military Police role for all Canadian Armed Forces. All this seems to have been forgotten when Canada officially stopped being a British Colony in 1982, but if you dig into the books; technically the RCMP is still a regiment of Dragoons (combined Light Cavalry & Mounted Infantry unit) as part of the Canadian Armed Forces, and is also still a division of the British Royal Horse Guards.
     
    That's right; the Mounties are part of an Equestrian Guard.
  7. Fhaolan
    The Guard as portrayed in the series is odd. What function do they actually have? They appear to act as bodyguards for Celestia, however if they run into anything that Celestia can't handle herself they're going to be hopelessly out of their weight class. They behave more like messengers, and 'mules' for Celestia, carrying her stuff for her. They do appear to act as city and palace guards for Canterlot itself, but we've only seen Guards *outside* of Canterlot when they are acting as Celestia's messengers and the like again. It is implied that they are the Equestrian equivalent to the military, but given the show's focus, we're not seeing them perform any real military actions. There are ways around that, writing-wise, but it's not easy. [see the Doctor Who episode: Battlefield, from the final season of the classic series, where military group UNIT who previously only existed as a group of disposable 'Red Shirts' to prove how dangerous/serious the villains were (demonstrating the Worf Effect trope long before ST:TNG aired), seemed to suddenly grow up and became competent in their job.]
     
    When the Guard showed up on Twilight's doorstep, her reaction was interesting. She didn't react to them you would to armed and armoured soldiers appearing at your door, she reacted to them like you would to police showing up unexpectedly. Which makes sense as Equestria as presented in the show has more need of police/emergency services force than it does a full-on military presence.
     
    The Guard have several sets of uniforms and armours, including 'dark' versions for what is being called the Night Watch, and when in armor their mane and body colors are relatively 'uniform'. If Shining's entourage during his wedding are guards, then that indicates that the armour itself actually changes the guard's colors as we've never seen those body and mane colors on any guard in armour.
     
    There are unicorn, pegasis, and earth pony guards, though earth pony guards appear rarer than the others. And then there's the odd outliers: Luna's charioteers. Only seen once and never again, they were physically quite different from almost any other pony ever seen on the show.
     
    Then there are the Wonderbolts, an acrobatic team that has a military organization and training process, and also appear to act like the Air Force when needed (Secret of my Excess), which you would think was a role for pegasi Guards. Also mentioned by Rainbow Dash, an organization called the 'Junior Speedsters', which has the feel of modern Scouts aimed specifically at pegasi. This last one may not seem relevant, but I'll get to that later.
     
    And finally we have Shining Armour himself, former Captain of the Guard. The show seems to imply that this is the top rank for the Guard, or at least the top rank for the Canterlot or Palace Guard divisions.
     
    That's pretty much all the information we have on the Guard in-show. Next time, I'll talk about parallels with RL organizations.
  8. Fhaolan

    Writer's Block

    By Fhaolan,

    Is this actual writer's block? I'm not sure.
     
    From the classic description, writer's block is the dreaded blank page. Where the writer has run out of ideas.
     
    Instead, I've got tons of bits and pieces. I've got pages of ideas, fragmentary scenes, characters, world-building theories, etc.
     
    The problem is I can't seem to be able to force myself to concentrate on any of it. I'm just spewing it out on the page without any rhyme or reason. Not enough of any theme to assemble into a coherent story. It's like some form of ADD in written form.
     
    I do have a finished MLP story, but it's sitting with my editor who's too frazzled herself to look at it right now. I guess that doesn't help, as it puts off 'needing' to get anything done, because I know it won't get properly proofread or edited any time soon.
  9. Fhaolan

    How's it going?

    By Fhaolan,

    I haven't done much with this blog for awhile, as I haven't been asked any questions that I felt made sense to put here. However there was one I can do...
     
    Q: How's it going?
    A: Eh. It's going weird, actually. My day job is being a serious pain. Microsoft is a strange place many days, especially in areas I work in. I'm a database guy in IT attached to an internal business group, so I don't deal with outside customers. There's this bizarre attitude coming down from upper management that 'Everyone has to be Strategic' meaning planning, scheduling, arranging things... *everyone*. So who's supposed to be doing the actual work? Contractors and Vendors apparently. I'm actually getting dinged on my reviews because I'm concentrated on doing work rather than passing it off to other people. It's insane. Not everyone in a company can be Management. Someone has to actually do work, and many people *want* to be that person. And there's pressure to move to a product group and be a development manager there. I was a developer, I didn't like it. The politics in that was incredibly stupid and I refused to put up with it. That's why I moved to a support position. I'm good at support. But Microsoft devalues support much the same way they seem to devalue work in general. *bleh*
     
    My non-day job working on the farm is going great. We've got two new sheep, tiny little black Shetlands, who are very snugly and want attention all the time. I just finished rewiring the barn so all the light switches actually *do* something, and there's light fixtures in all the work areas. (It kinda makes sense what the previous people did, as the barn is actually three buildings built separately and then joined together later with a covered storage area, but they made no effort to make sense of the lighting situation after they did that.) There's still one power outlet that isn't working, but in order to fix it I have to rip the wall apart to figure out where the wire for that is actually coming from, as it's not immediately obvious and without power in the line I can't trace it back, and if it's a short in the middle of the wire run... that's potentially very bad. The last of the big faire shows where I go sit in the middle of a field in a tent and try to sell handspun yarn to people in funny outfits is over. There's more shows coming, but those are ones my wife can handle without me. I got a new computer as my cat managed to break my old laptop to the point it was cheaper to buy a desktop than replace it (she knocked it off my desk, shattering the screen and breaking parts off.) Because I like to mess around with 3D rendering and whatnot I got a relatively mid-range gaming rig for the graphics card. It's as ugly as sin in my opinion, as most gaming rigs are set up with weird-shaped colored cases and pointless blinky lights all over them. I'd build my own machine, I've done it before, but I can't be arsed about it. I've got enough going on, I don't really want to spend all that time shopping for compatible parts.
     
    And then there's my non-job here. Which pretty much everyone knows how *that's* going. Yeah, I'm on this Board everyone's complaining about. Sorta. Until the Poniverse staffers vote for it, I'm 'interm' Board. And to be honest, I've done the job I wanted to do so I'm fine with not being confirmed by the voting staffers. I agreed to join the Board to get it transitioned to a Non-Profit so that all the various sites would keep going after Feld0 officially stepped down, which he had been talking about doing for awhile now. I just don't want MLPF, Pony.fm, PArc, Eq.tv, and the rest to be shut down because Feld0 has to move on with his life. And that's 95% done now, with all that's left being the voting thing (though that might be more like 80% if we have to go through the effort of putting together another potential Board if enough of the current interm one doesn't get confirmed.) In my mind, the point of Poniverse is that the various sites can share resources to make things easier for everyone. If a site is having problems, people from the other sites can help out. If another site needs a feature for an event that they don't normally have, likely one of the others does and they can set up something. And the point of the Board is to co-ordinate that sharing of resources so that any one site doesn't get short-shifted or wither away because nobody is paying attention. But that's not what's happening. *bleh again*
     
    So that's how it's going for me.
  10. Fhaolan
    Really, that should have been the episode name.
     
    Chimera
    Here’s something vaguely interesting. Originally, it looked like MLP:FiM was going to use the Dungeons and Dragons incarnations of monsters. The hydra, for example, is not the classic mythological version of a snake with many heads, but the middle ages Bestiary version that is more a giant lizard with many heads. And Dungeons & Dragons original author and editor, Gary Gygax, used the Bestiary version to build much of the monsters for that game. Now, FiM using D&D monsters makes a lot of sense, since Hasbro owns Dungeons & Dragons through Wizards of the Coast. It just makes things easier if you pull from a catalogue that you already own. However, the Chimera shown in Somepony to Watch Over Me deviates both from the D&D Chimera, and from the Mythological Chimera, becoming something of its own thing while having aspects of both.
     
    Mythological:
    The earliest record we have of the Chimera comes from Homer’s Illiad, where it is described as having the front of a lion, the middle of a goat, and the end of a snake, as well as it breathing fire. If you take *just* that description, you end up with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a snake’s tail, with the lion’s head belching out fire. Later on, in various statues, carvings, and writings, the description changes significantly, with a lion’s head, a goat head growing out of the middle of its back, and a snake head as a tail. Very likely this is what Homer meant, his description was just a bit vague. Often the snake is swapped out with a dragon and it’s the dragon’s head that does the fire breathing. Though in some writings, it’s the goat head that breathes fire for some bizarre reason. Another big point is that in Myth, the Chimera is a singular creature, much like most Greek monsters. There’s only one Chimera, and just for reference’s sake it’s female and possibly the mother of the Sphinx and the Nemean Lion of Heracles’ myth.
    Interestingly, while everything we know about the Chimera comes from Greek art and writings, it was always said to have come from Lycia (an area that is now part of Turkey). But no Lycian art depicts the creature. This is an area rife with volcanic vents, so there are many places where the ground is always leaking fire, much like how the place Applebloom ran into the Chimera was belching fire all over the place.
    Dungeons and Dragons:
    The main differences between the Mythological Chimera and the D&D Chimera is again the D&D version is taken from the middle ages Bestiaries, and is shown to have the three heads (Lion, Goat, and Dragon) side-by-side, much like Cerberus the three-headed dog is depicted, plus the D&D Chimera is winged. Oh, and there’s lots of Chimeras. It’s a species. In this version the dragon head does the fire breathing. Over the various editions the art styles change significantly, and the Chimera became a ‘base’ creature where derivative creatures have a slightly different head line-up, but otherwise this Chimera is the standard. The goat head can be swapped out with a bull, the lion’s head with some other large feline, and so on.
    Friendship is Magic:
    So here the depiction differs from either of those. Instead of a lion, we have a sabre-tooth tiger head which is in a way a bit more visually interesting and is allowed for in the D&D chimera derivatives. The goat's head is tusked, and I'm not entirely certain what was going on with its horns, but I guess they felt the need to up the 'teeth' factor there. Instead of the myth’s goat head coming out of the middle of the back, it’s side-by-side with the tiger head like the D&D version. But the ‘dragon’ head is a very definitely a snake and is the creature’s tail, much like mythological one, not side-by-side with the other two as in the D&D version. And this version is not winged. It lives in a region with a lot of fire vents, and is probably resistant to fire, but it doesn’t seem to breathe fire itself.
     
    And it might very well be a unique monster, but I get the feeling that it's meant to be a species, given how Applejack deals with it. (I was very amused by the ricotta cheese, though I would have recommended Tulum cheese as being more appropriate. But likely not available in Equestria.) it is, however, definitely female as the various heads referred to each other as sisters, so that maps to the mythological version.
    Given this, and the inclusion of the Arimaspi in the The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone it’s pretty obvious that someone over there is a mythology nerd. They’re not using the D&D versions of creatures, nor are they using the versions that a basic level of Greek myth would indicate. They’re including details and odd information that is only available to someone who delves *hard* into ancient myths and legends, and yet are swapping out details (like the tiger head) to create something new of their own. Both episodes were written by different people, but I have no doubt there’s some form of collaboration going on and someone in there is throwing it details.
  11. Fhaolan

    Starswirl the Bearded

    By Fhaolan,

    Right, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted to this particular blog so let’s do one that has been simmering in the back of my mind for quite some time.
     
    As before, let’s start with what we know: In the MLP: FiM cartoon, Starswirl the Bearded is mentioned several times.
     
    In Luna Eclipsed, Twilight dresses up as Starswirl in a stereotypical wizards hat and cloak, complete with stars and moons (instead of the more common astronomical glyphs), but with the addition of bells all over the hat. Interesting, and annoying choice for anyone who decides to cosplay. Nobody in Ponyville recognized the costume, except for the visiting Luna who compliments Twilight on the costume’s accuracy. Twilight mentions Starswirl having created hundreds of spells, including an entire category of magic called ‘amniomorphic’, and having a shelf of books dedicated to him in the Canterlot Library. Just as a note, there's some dissent on what exactly Twilight said in this episode. Some saying it was Amniomorphic, and some saying Anniomorphic. There is a big difference. Those that support Amniomorphic say that Amnio means bowl, and morphic means shapechanging, and combined with Bearded makes Starswirl a 'Hairy Potter'. Which is cute, and might actually be what the writers were aiming or, but unfortunately Amnio doesn't actually mean bowl as far as I've been able to tell. It's Greek for 'cowl' as in a hood, and shows up in modern times referring to things that interact with the Amniotic sac that a fetus develops in. So by this term we're saying Starswirl was responsible for a series of magic spells that help with pregnancy. Which actually might be valid now that I've taken the time to think it over. The alternative, Anniomorphic, is a lot more obscure and deals with a fifteenth-century Dominican friar and 'historian', Annio da Viterbo, who was famous for making shit up. Which, as we'll see later also makes sense.
     
    In Hearth’s Warning Eve, Twilight exposits how the main character of the panto they’re putting on was mentored by Starswirl. The panto being set in what appears to be a time before Discord, Celestia, and Luna.

    In It’s About Time, Twilight, Spike, and Pinkie go to a supposedly secure wing of the Canterlot Library (which might be specifically the Castle library, or the library for the Exceptional Unicorn school Twilight was attending before the first episode, or all of the above, it’s not clear), that is named after Starswirl and contains archives of his work, supposedly dangerous stuff in the wrong hands, at least one time travel spell and a giant sand clock. This is a little more than a single shelf, so we can assume that the shelf Twilight referred to previously was in the public library, not the secure wing.

    Then in Magical Mystery Cure, Twilight gets mailed a book written by Starswirl, sent by Celestia, containing an incomplete spell that is capable of manipulating the Elements of Harmony even in its partial state. This book had also appeared at the end of The Crystal Empire, but it was just foreshadowing there and had no explanation. Celestia mentions that Starswirl didn’t understand the magic of Friendship, so couldn’t complete the spell.

    In Three’s a Crowd, there is a travelling Starswirl museum, where several other ponies are wearing variations on the Starswirl costume, including several ponies that were present in Luna Eclipsed, so we can assume that in the years (?) since Luna Eclipsed there’s been a renaissance in the Starswirl the Bearded Fandom.

    In Twilight’s Kingdom, Starswirl appears in a storybook, described as being ‘young’ by Celestia and interacting with Tirek and Scorpan at about the same time as Celestia was.

    That's more than we usually get for theorizing and worldbuilding, but really it's still not much. For more info, we have to look at secondary sources:

    In Rainbow Rocks it’s shown that Starswirl banished the Sirens to the Equestria Girls alternate dimension.
     
    In the comics, Starswirl has appeared on the covers (not helpful), and in tiny cameos with no relevant info, but in the storyline Reflections in the main comic, Starswirl is shown quite a lot in flashbacks. He’s depicted as the classic bumbling professor type, and is responsible for discovering the means to travel to alternate dimensions using Crystal Mirrors created from the Crystal Caves below Canterlot, and bringing back a variety of objects (magical and otherwise) to the main dimension. There’s another comic in the Fiendship line where the banishment of the Sirens is shown again, and yet one more making Starswirl responsible in a very vague way for the Changelings as well.
     
    In the Journal of the Two Sisters, Starswirl is said to be the leader of the group of unicorn mages responsible for the sun and moon movement before Celestia and Luna took over. Plus more details about his time travel experiments, mentioning that his age shifts around a lot, nominally because his spells and possibly energy expenditure are causing him to grow younger or older somewhat randomly.

    In interviews with the FiM staff, there have been several mentions that Starswirl was meant to be the Equestrian Merlin analogue, with all the complexities and incongruities that brings along with it. Such as multiple conflicting origins and inconsistent mythologies. However, according the M.A. Larson at some Q&A’s at conventions, several of the original scripts for the episodes listed above didn’t mention Starswirl. He was added in to them by request by Hasbro.

    Which is odd as there is a Gen 4 toy released by Hasbro for Starswirl… but as an Earth Pony mare. This matches all the prior generations of the toy line, each one having a Starswirl as a regular Pony mare, not a unicorn. The toy also changes appearance and cutie mark for each generation. In G4, the mare is blue with a purple/pink mane. G3, the mare is white with a dark pink mane (no G3.5 version). G2, the mare is white with a white mane. And G1, the mare is striped pink and blue with a purple and blue mane. This is pretty standard for multi-generation toys, with the appearances rarely being stable. But each is described within their generation as being highly magical in some way.



    So what can we pull from this? Apparently Starswirl was a big deal historically, but a big deal that was obscure until recently. He was involved in a lot of the major turning points of Equestrian history, but in the background and not as a major player. However, now he’s being used as the go-to explanation for everything magical even if he wasn’t necessarily responsible. The not-so-wise mentor figure, non-evil mad inventor, the bumbling professor, etc. Like Gandalf, Merlin, and so on, he’s more a caricature than a character. He’s being marketed to the ponies of Equestria in some kind of advertising campaign.

    This is not the first time we’ve seen someone put forward a disinformation campaign for a historical figure. The whole ‘Nightmare Night’ thing looks suspiciously like an attempt to desensitize the population for Nightmare Moon’s eventual return. It’s possible this Starswirl mania is something similar.

    To continue the conspiracy theory stuff, the fact is that Hasbro has done something weird here with the toys. This is the only pony from prior generations that changed gender from mare to stallion, and even then the change only happened in the cartoon and comics. Hasbro has put at least some effort into making their Gen 4 toys vaguely resemble the characters in the show. Except Starswirl, which they have left as a mare.

    Plus there’s the interesting thing about his name. Starswirl the Bearded. It’s rarely just said ‘Starswirl’, almost always the full name. This is common in some cultures that don’t normally use modern Western-style family names, to use identifiers like that. This could indicate that there were multiple historical Starswirls and the one we are interested in is defined by his beard. Or his beard was in itself more extravagant and luxurious than other ponies were capable, or desiring, to have making it part of his indentification. Or…

    Here’s something that you may not know. The term ‘Beard’ in LGBT circles has an interesting meaning and history. Originally many gay men who were in the closet would grow beards to demonstrate overt masculinity, as a disguise of sorts. This term, being ‘bearded’, expanded over time to refer to any visible demonstration of masculinity in a someone who was not necessarily classically masculine. A wife of a gay man would be called ‘his beard’, women wanting to appear male would put on false mustaches, beards, or even just five-o-clock shadows to enhance their apparent maleness. So on and so forth.

    Combine this with the toy line, and you get that despite first appearances they may in fact be the same character. This might be MLP’s first Trans character, with the ‘Bearded’ indicating that Starswirl is in fact a Mare who identifies as a Stallion.

    Putting aside the conspiracy theories, there is also the disconnect in his apparent age; being present as an experienced and wise figure before Celestia and Luna took over the moon and sun, yet being described as young when dealing with Tirek while Celestia and Luna were in power. All easily explained by the time travel spells and his magical experiments as mentioned in the Journal. This also matches some of the mythology of Merlin where in many stories he is said to have ‘lived backwards’, getting younger over time. It’s very possible that what Celestia and Luna wrote in their journal was the work of an unreliable narrator, and what they put down was what they perceived rather than what actually happened. Meaning that the time travel spells were more responsible than they believed, with Starswirl actually being ‘out of order’ relative to the royal pair, travelling back and forth through time.

    Another parallel with Merlin is the crystal caves of Canterlot. Well, Canterlot/Camelot being obvious, but the crystal caves specifically. In many versions of the Merlin mythos, the stories end with Merlin being trapped in a tree, or in Stonehenge, or in a Crystal Cave by Nimue, a character that might be his love interest, his student, or his nemesis depending on the exact story. In any case, he’s stuck there, effectively immortal but never to return to the ‘real’ world.
    Some of those stories do put in an escape clause though, that Merlin is free to go to other worlds. With this concept, Starswirl might not be Equestria’s analogue of Merlin. He might actually *be* Merlin. And the Crystal Mirrors his attempts to find a way back to the world of King Arthur and company.

    Which brings up the final, and what I find the most amusing theory. There is another fictional character who is said to literally be Merlin in his franchise. Who travels in time, who ages inconsistently and who can radically change appearance and theoretically genders. And who has an MLP analog which has appeared multiple times in the show with call outs and fanservice referring to both his classic and modern shows as well as references to apocryphal stories such as the 1965 feature films. I speak of course, of Doctor Who.

    In the episodes collectively called ‘Battlefield’, broadcast in 1989, the Doctor discovers that some time in his personal future he will be known as Merlin, advising the now long-dead King Arthur and his Knights who turn out to have been be dimension jumping crusaders fighting a war against Morgaine and Mordred. In this episode it is implied that all the stories of Merlin, including the one about being trapped in a Crystal Cave, were real and have happened/will happen (time travel is tricky that way).  
    As a minor, but interesting coincidence is that in pride of place within the Starswirl the Bearded Secure Wing of the Canterlot Library, is a giant sand clock. A massive hourglass. Just like Doctor Whoove's Cutie Mark. And every picture or representation of Starswirl has his flanks covered. It's assumed that the symbol on his spellbook is his actual cutie mark, but maybe...

    So, Starswirl the Bearded might not just be the Merlin of Arthurian legend. But he might be some future or past incarnation of Doctor Whooves…
  12. Fhaolan

    Merch?

    By Fhaolan,

    Q: Do you have any MLP Merchandise?
     
    A: Actually, I just got something. Normally I avoid getting stuff like that simply because I get an irrational need to complete sets, and I can't really afford to be a 'collector'. More about affording the space to store the stuff than anything. However, just yesterday I picked up this:


     
    Mainly because the manestyle it came with threw me for a loop. For some reason this particular Twilight had this odd messy, curly manestyle. Different from the others that were siting there. Almost like someone in the store had deliberately styled this one to stand out.
  13. Fhaolan

    Best Pony?

    By Fhaolan,

    Q: I never actually asked a moderator a stupid question but: best pony? - @@Cannon and rarity
     
    First off, Best Pony is never a stupid question.
     
    Second, I'm not a mod really. I'm a sectional staffer and I only have limited access to tools, and only in the RP areas because that's where I'm assigned. My boss is a mod (@@Love), not me.
     
    Finally, Luna is best pony! Mostly because of the potential she has as a character. Celestia is also pretty high up there for the same reasoning. I honestly think both characters need more screen-time in the show, actually doing things rather than being exposition sources, but that's just me. :comeatus:
     
    I've been told on occasion that you're supposed to answer with one of the Mane6, but to be honest none of them really stand above the others in that group for me. Twilight I can identify with as I was the book nerd when I was in school. Rarity I can identify with as I'm a costumer and a crafter and spend a lot of time making stuff. Applejack I can identify with as I'm a hobby farmer (sheep and horses). Fluttershy I can identify with as I'm very much an animal person, and I can't stand seeing animals get hurt. Pinkie Pie I can identify with as often nobody understands what the heck I'm talking about. Which leaves Rainbow Dash... which is pretty much the only Mane6 I have trouble identifying with. I've done sports (Highland Games), but I never did well at them because I'm simply not competitive. And I have to force myself to be outgoing. There's nothing wrong with Rainbow Dash, she's just not me in any way.
     
    And I've got a soft spot for several background ponies like Doctor Whooves (who got me into this fandom), and Fleur de Lis (I refuse to call her Fleur Dis Lee as that's a ridiculous misspelling that smacks of a spell-check typo that's been propagated for some reason.) I find it's hard to count either of them as 'best pony' though, because the reasons I'm interested in them is more head-canon than anything and it just feels odd doing that.
  14. Fhaolan

    A Bit Wound Up

    By Fhaolan,

    I've been asked a couple of questions recently that all can be blending into one answer, but the answer gets a bit ranty and sob-storyish, be warned.
     
    To paraphrase the questions: What's up? You always seem to be so busy, and recently you seem more stressed than normal.
     
    Answer:
     
    Yeah, it never seems to let up for the last few years, and just recently things have ramped up. In a month or so I'm in a costume contest with my wife and some of our friends as a group entry. I'm still only part-way through constructing a full fursuit for my costume, and I'm not sure I'll get it done in time. The whole idea is a twisted Wizard of Oz cosplay with my wife as Dorothy, and myself as Toto. The twist is that our friends will be subbing in various villainous characters for the others. Scar from Lion King replacing the Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow from Batman being of course Scarecrow, and a Cyberman from Doctor Who as the Tin Man. Oh, and a guest appearance of the third witch from Hocus Pocus (as played by Sarah Jessica Parker) as the witch. I've rediscovered that I hate working with funfur, the stuff just sheds so much and clogs up the sewing machines and serger.
     
    And this last weekend we had to do an emergency move of our sheep to a temporary location. The place we live 'revealed' rules for livestock that we weren't aware of before. We thought it was a rezoning, but what it was actually bringing old rules that nobody remembered to the forefront that basically made our property no longer viable for livestock. Livestock have to be kept a certain distance from all properly lines, and because our place is a long thin strip that just made it all stupid. So we found a place to move them to, and now we have to try to get our current place ready for sale so we can move to a proper farm some time in the fall. Hopefully one that will be big enough to handle the sheep *and* the horses. We had planned on moving in a few years to a bigger place, but this has accelerated the timeline.
     
    My day job is being fun for several months. Awhile back we transitioned a huge bunch of junk to an external vendor, which meant I could go on and do brand new work that would be interesting and new and everything. The external vendor blew it big time, so all of this stuff suddenly re-appeared on me. I've been spending a lot of time trying to restart all the legacy systems, and keep them at least vaguely stable. So my 'new job' is now my 'old job' and I'm a bit burnt out by all of it.
     
    And my wife had outpatient surgery on Friday for dental stuff so she's out of commission for a bit.
     
    Oh, and I'm currently in the process of having a series of biopsies done. So far they haven't found anything. It's all been 'cysts' or 'polyps', whatever the difference is. Biology is *really* not my strong point. I've only got one left, I just have to make time for it.
     
    And whenever I'm at the doctors, it's always in the corner of my mind is the fact I've only got a few years left before I hit 50, and given my family's medical history that means there's a possibility I'll start experiencing the effects of Alzheimer's and/or Hypothyroidism both of which are extremely common in my family.
     
    So yeah, I'm a bit stressed.
  15. Fhaolan

    Aeterno Elementum?

    By Fhaolan,

    More of an addendum to a previous question. I've been forwarded some pictures of my little part in the Aeterno Elementum fantasy rock opera production I've been busy with these last couple of weeks. I'm billed as one of the 'Demoness' Army' and start out as a lone Viking warrior who gets beaten down by hordes of undead (well, okay four. On that size stage, that's about as horde-like as you can get.) and then immediately gets raised by one of the Elemental Generals as another undead... I'm not sure it really makes any more sense when you see it, but it's all set to Heavy Metal, so...
     

     

  16. Fhaolan
    Q: How did you get to be a Mod on MLPF?
     
    First, I’m not actually what most of you think of when you say ‘mod’. I’m a sectional staffer, which means I’m responsible for a specific slice of the forum, and dealing with a specific slice of the rules. In my case the ‘RolePlay World’ section which has a few special rules that the rest of the forum wouldn't care about, and to be fair I’m really concentrated on the regular roleplay area. The ‘Equestrian Empire’ canon section has other sectionals looking after it. I do help out there on occasion when they're overloaded though.
     
    In any case, awhile back there was a call for lore writers and analysts who were interested in filling the gaps in the Equestrian Empire lore, to give RP’ers a better basis for their canon-like roleplays. Being curious, and having contributed to table-top RPG magazines and the like ages past, I signed up.
     
    Apparently what I wrote for that (the project is still going on, by the way, it’s just delayed for a variety of reasons), my general attitude, and possibly my sense of humor, caught the eye of the supervising Mod (@@Love) and she asked me if I was interested in helping MLPF in other ways.
     
    This was all before the current mod application process came about, by the way. So no, I didn’t do one of those applications. I think I was one of the last from the ‘invite only’ period. After me, I think they were all through the application process.
     
    For a while I made it a bit of a joke that I’m just a ‘temp’ who somehow gets more responsibility every time I open my mouth. I’m still here though, temping away.
  17. Fhaolan

    American?

    By Fhaolan,

    Q: In your previous answer, you said ‘what American’s would call’? Are you not American?
     
    This answer changed recently. I was born in Canada, and my parents are both British, but I’ve been working in the USA for quite a number of years now, and I’ve been married an American citizen for over ten years.
     
    I just finished the rather strange process of ‘Naturalization’ as they like to call it. So yes, I’m now an American. However, I’m still Canadian and thanks to my parents my accent has a tendency to wander all over if I don’t pay attention to it. I’ve been accused of being Welsh on occasion, which baffles me as that’s one of the accents I feel I *can’t* do properly.
     
    Which reminds me, there still some paperwork I have to take care of. I have to figure out how to apply for a new passport. Which is what really prompted this whole Naturalization process. Because I haven’t lived in Canada for such a long time, it’s getting increasingly difficult to renew my Canadian passport. There’s all sorts of hoops you have to jump through with things with having Canadian doctors and whatnot validate I am who I say I am, and given I don’t live there it was getting rather tricky.
  18. Fhaolan

    Qualifications?

    By Fhaolan,

    Q: Your profile mentions a lot of stuff you’ve done. Are you actually qualified for all that?
     
    Nope. Most of that was from before you needed qualifications to do everything.
     
    I have a Bachelor degree in Chemical Engineering (which shows up as BASc.) and I have what Americans would call Associate degrees in Environmental Science, Architecture, Computer Science, Process Engineering, and History. And I think I’ve got an MBA somewhere, because those things sometimes get handed out like prizes in Crackerjack boxes.
     
    I also apprenticed as an Electrician, and started down the path of a Teaching Assistant before those things required the level of certification they do now. I also have a bunch of technical certifications from a variety of places. Most of which are woefully out of date now.
     
    It’s all fooferall, anyway. All they prove is that I’m adequate at sitting exams and taking up space in class. I never excelled at any of it, to be honest. I was always near the bottom of the class when graduating. Though, I always graduated, which is a bit of an accomplishment. My ChemEng class started with over 200 people, and only 50 or so graduated.
  19. Fhaolan

    Who's Fhaolan?

    By Fhaolan,

    I was resistant to doing an ‘Ask Fhaolan’ blog, as I honestly don’t think I get enough questions to justify such a thing. On the other hand, as a current staffer for MLPF there’s a chance people might be curious about the questions I *do* get. And filling up my ‘profile’ with this stuff will just get clunky and unwieldy, so here we are.
     
    Let’s get started with a few of the questions I’ve gotten over the time I’ve been on MLPF. If you’ve got any other questions, feel free to ask. I’ve got a log of about seven right now, so that’s a week’s worth of postings. 
     

     
    Q: Your OC’s name is Fhaolan? That’s not really a pony name.
     
    Actually, the pony I use as my avatar isn’t an OC. Not really. He doesn’t really have a name, or a background, or even a cutie-mark. It’s just a headshot drawing I did when I decided I wanted an avatar for this site that was pony-related. It’s just a quirk I have of trying to have a vaguely relevant avatar.
     
    Fhaolan is actually this fellow:

    Who I created back when I joined the Furry fandom ever so long ago. I picked the name up from a story I heard once about St. Fillian, and found an obscure alternate spelling of the name, about thirty years ago.
     
    Other avatar-type characters I’ve used in other venues are this fellow:

    Wild Claw, a kind of anti-hero superhero I created back in high school when you tend to think that way. He kind of stuck around as my go-to superhero character, and eventually got fully realized in City of Heroes (which is where this picture is from). I still miss that game. It was one of the few MMOs that I could actually get into.
     
    I have created Pony OCs before, but I don’t really think of them in the same way as most Bronies seem to. They’re just characters for stories, they don’t actually represent me. If anything the ones that stick out to me are just expy’s of other characters I’m fond of. Tweedy Plus Four from my one published MLP Fanfic ‘Doctor Whooves and the Terror of Tartaurus’, for example is an homage to Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart from the classic Doctor Who series.
     
    However, I’ve been using this pony avatar long enough that I’ve even got holiday variants now and other people are using it as a model to represent me elsewhere. So… effectively, he’s an OC now? I dunno. I still know nothing about him as a character.
  20. Fhaolan

    Reflections

    By Fhaolan,

    See * for disclaimer, and explanation
     
    I'll be honest, this one was a bit of a slog. There's lots of 'stuff' going on in this comic arc, but the parts that seem relevant to worldbuilding are so fractured and the order of events seem confused. There are a couple of references dropped into the arc by the creative team that seems to indicate they did this deliberately to mess with analysis. Which makes anything derived from this arc suspect. That's annoying to me. If you don't care about continuity, that's fine. There are lots of shows/fictions/whatever that ignore continuity or constantly change continuity to suit whatever the story is at that time. Great, that's more fodder for the mill and it's fun to try to make sense of it all. However, deliberately sabotaging continuity just to annoy people is mean spirited and diminishes your own efforts.
     
    Reflections (Comic Issues 17-20, March 189h, April 30th, May 28th, June 25th 2014)
     
    Behold the Secrets of Star Swirl the Bearded
     
    If anyone knows the difference between a waxing crescent or a waning gibbous... she said waning gibbon. Huh? The term is gibbous, as in 'hunchback', not gibbon as in a type of lesser ape. That's a very strange mistake for Luna to make, and not know which phase of the moon it is. What's being shown there is a crescent moon, and if their moon has the same direction of phases as our, it is indeed a waxing crescent. Gibbous is the exact opposite where most of the moon is lit an there is a crescent of darkness on it. Waxing meaning the lit part of the moon is getting bigger. Waning meaning it's getting smaller.
     
    Rod Sterling pony? Maybe? Someone has told me this is supposed to be a character from Fringe, called 'Observer', but I've not watched Fringe so I can't tell.
     
    A very similar mirror to the Equestira Girls one, but slightly different in coloring.
     
    There's a batpony in the background, more evidence that the comics are hewing closer to fancannon continuity than the show.
     
    Ha, pink Celestia. Hasbro will never live that toy line mistake down. Also, Luna is being shown manipulating the sun, but with considerable effort. Which wasn't mentioned in the previous comic where Luna took over Celestia's day duties, I think.
     
    Establishing the mechanics of this mirror is different from... wait. 'Once during each cycle of the moon', that's not the same rule as specified in Equestria Girls? Or is it? If it is, then 30 moons (as said in the movie) is a *cycle* of the moon? Then 30 moons is a month, not 30 months... Huh? They're using 'moon' to represent an approximate day? Weird.
     
    And here they mention that Star Swirl (two separate words by the way, not Starswirl), has been gone for hundreds of years. Not a thousand, but hundreds. And Star Swirl's library is hidden in the caverns below Canterlot, not the Castle of the Two Sisters, and Luna was not privy to where it is. Fascinating. Does that mean that this was all built after Luna was exiled, or that Canterlot existed but wasn't the capital while the Castle of the Two Sisters was up and running.
     
    The large door into the caverns has a vague resemblance to the secret door into the Mines of Moria from the Lord of the Rings. Given the similar theme 'Speak Friend and Enter' to 'Friendship is Magic' I'm kinda surprised they don't make more of that here.
     
    Luna seems to think Star Swirl was borderline insane like Pinkie. Interesting.
     
    Star Trek reference in the sign, stellar cartography and jeffries tubes. Lucre cellar? A cellar for profit? Lucre is Middle English, from the Latin lucrum meaning profit. It's where we get the term 'lucrative'. And Pinkie is making fun of Rainbow, but in a rather nasty way because the sign says 'Besom Repository', which only a limited number of people (and ponies) will know means Broom Closet.
     
    Flashback to hundreds of years ago... but is before Luna was exiled. So ponies do have a weird sense of time, as that's over a thousand years ago now. Technically, yes a thousand is several hundred, but in my experience people tend to stop thinking about hundreds when a thousand ticks over.
     
    These caverns are huge. There's an entire city down here.
     
    Technically Athenaeum isn't a library so much as a temple devoted to the goddess Athena. Which has been applied to libraries, museums, laboratories, universities, etc. So I can see the confusion.
     
    Ha, it's a ponified Bat Cave from the 80's comics. And three oddly historical banners. A Caravaca Cross from Spain, something black and red that looks familiar but I can't place it, and a naval Japanese Flag from WWII. I'm a bit confused as to the choices there.
     
    Plus Applejack seems to have found the disassembled parts of Scaramanga's gun from 'The Man with the Golden Gun'.
     
    Ha! Dentist. Cute.
     
    Again establishing that the mirror portals may have different rules depending on the destination to be reached. It's not a simple as just knowing the 'address'.
     
    And in this continuity, it is implied that the 'Kingdom of Equestria' is new and growing. So the Equestria that exists in the 'modern age' is larger than the Equestria that Celestia and Luna first ruled over.
     
    It is also specifying here that the reason why the technology (and magic) of Equestria is all over the board historically is because the anachronistic parts were brought over from alternate universes by Star Swirl.
     
    Bat Poles from the 60's tv series. Which turns into the crazy contraption bits from a variety of cartoons, including Hong Kong Phooey, and Darkwing Duck.
     
    All the games Luna and Spike have been playing are ponified versions of Hasbro games. Cute.
     
    Back to Where You've Never Been Before
     
    Excelent answer Rainbow Dash, "I stopped asking."
     
    Okay, so this alternate universe is truly 'Through a Mirror Darkly', in that everything is reversed in some way. Interesting that they came through as the base of a statue again. This time of a statue of a superhero version of Discord...
     
    Trying to do parallels between Celestia & Star Swirl in the past and the Mane 6 in the now.
     
    It's looking like they *do* have something equivalent to the Elements of Harmony, but they're a different set. Fairness, Humility, Wisdom, Love... No mention of another two though to make a set of six.
     
    Celesta referring to Star Swirl as her only friend. Which is odd, but there was a previous reference to Luna becoming distant. Which is good because it give a bit of a time-span for Luna's fall, rather than the strange 'suddenly NM' version we got in the show.
     
    Alright, here we actually have something... odd. Unless that cloak covers wings, Sombra here is depicted as a Unicorn, *not* an Alicorn. But in order for this all to make sense, he has to be over a thousand years old right now. So he's effectively immortal, just like Celestia. But his physical form isn't the oddly distorted version we saw in the regular universe. So in this case his immortality isn't from dark magic corruption.
     
    So why is he still alive?
     
    And the alternate versions of Celestia and Luna. In rather silly looking costumes, to be honest.
     
    And Celestia's costume is constantly changing. Cute. Some of them are actually interesting as a variety of Disney villain costumes.
     
    Inevitable reveal.
     
    I'll be Your Mirror
     
    So in this reality, the Castle of the Two Sisters is still intact, and looms above Ponyville.
     
    I love all the notes tacked to the wall, except one. 'If you're reading this, you may be overthinking this comic book'. Yes, I'm reading this. Otherwise, why did you put it there? Some interesting changes between worlds. Cloudsdale is in ruins, several villages like Rainbow Falls and Dodge City don't exist. Spelling differences, what appears to be an evil Cadance to mirror a good Crysalis, so on and so forth. Oh, and Don't Blink. And Twilight and Pinkie complaining that continuity is pointless.
     
    Also, this version of King Sombra is easily the match for Celestia height-wise, but his horn is standard unicorn length rather than the longer version Celestia sports.
     
    So the rule here is that the more you travel to a parallel world, the more parallel it will become. To the point of bonding the parallel ponies together so one feels what the other feels... Which means that Twilight & company being here is still causing the parallelism to continue. Especially with the powerful Elements of Harmony along for the ride. This... isn't going to end well.
     
    That's a real custom in Japan, as I understand it. Writing a wish on a piece of paper and tying to a tree. Actually, writing a wish on a piece of paper and placing on some special location shows up in several cultures. And the lantern in the forest does recall the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
     
    And the lyrics to I'll be your Mirror, a Velvet Underground song from 1967.
     
    Okay, so Twilight at least considers the idea of a male alicorn. Though she does burst out laughing at the idea of that specific male alicorn.
     
    ... Okay, now I'm confused. This is indicating that Canterlot is in construction in this time-frame. But they visited Canterlot right at the beginning of the flashbacks. Unless that's a flash-back within a flash-back.
     
    Thank you, that's exactly what I expected to happen.
     
    So... alternate Luna was around while regular Luna was banished to the Moon, while alternate Sombra was around while regular Sombra was vanished with the Crystal Empire. Did anyone get exiled in this reality?
     
    The fracture images have a couple of implications that the good/evil mirror isn't perfect. A couple of the background ponies are... mirrored, but not necessarily by alignment. It looks like Vinyl/Octavia swap places, and Doctor Whooves is using a different incarnation.
     
    I'm not following the logic here, but okay. The idea seems to be to force parallelism instead of mirroring, which will again separate the worlds. But I thought more parallelism was the problem... I'm a bit lost.
     
    How Star Swirl Got His Hat
     
    Several alternate stories around this idea. Nothing stands out here for worldbuilding.
     
    And a double page spread with the alternate Mane 6, making a joke about how they didn't show up in the main comic.
  21. Fhaolan

    Twilight's Kingdom

    By Fhaolan,

    See * for disclaimer, and explanation
     
    Twilight's Kingdom Part 1 & 2 (May 10th 2014 2 x 22 minutes)
     
    Part 1
     
    A lot of 'official' stuff is taking place in the Crystal Empire this season. This brings up three possibilities, the most obvious being it's just a coincidence and we're simply not seeing all the important political happening in Canterlot. However, it's also possible that Celestia is very deliberately pushing the political focus to the Crystal Empire, either to speed up their social re-integration with the rest of Equestria, or less likely because the Crystal Empire is officially over Equestria in the hierarchy of nations.
     
    Duke and Duchess of Maretonia. And... court? These are the four oddly (and overly) dressed ponies from the Royal Box in the previous episode. They're being presented as foreign dignitaries, complete with their own gonfalon banner, which Twilight unfurls over the Crystal Palace? That's odd protocol. Normally you would see a bannerman carrying a smaller version of the banner *backing* the foreign dignitaries as they approach. Putting that banner on the Palace gives off really strange signals. Unless Maretonia was once part of the Crystal Empire, and this is all to re-establish that Maretonia is now back under Imperial protection.
     
    With a closer look at the mare I couldn't see very well previously, she's depicted as old as paramilitary stallion that's part of the court. Which might mean the elder pair are the prior Duke and/or Duchess, who abdicated in favor of their child due to their age. It's not exactly common, but abdicating due to infirmity did happen. Or they are the Duke/Duchess's parents, whichever one married into the rank. Or a combination, and they're not a couple in and of themselves.
     
    Twilight's crown has changed. I would have thought they would of duplicated the old tiara for consistency, even after giving it back to the tree.
     
    So Celestia also has a premonition system, which explains some of her rather odd behavior sometimes.
     
    We see Scorpan and Tirek in conjunction with Starswirl the Bearded, being described as a 'young unicorn wizard'. Which places this... when? It's being referred to as Equestrian Magic, but that may not refer to Equestria as a nation, but Equestrian as in a group name for all the pony races combined. Equestria as such could be named *after* this group name, rather than the group name descending from the name of the kingdom. So this could be before the Hearth's Warming Eve story, where Starswirl had an apprentice? Or are we dealing the Celestia 'anyone who hasn't reached a millennia is 'young' to me' point of view?
     
    With Celestia and Luna together and in power. Which places this story before the Nightmare Moon incident, but after the Discordian era? Which now makes the Hearth's Warming Eve story weird, unless there is something seriously up with Starswirl. I really need to get caught up on the comics, and I'm under the impression that Starswirl is referred to in one of the arcs I haven't read yet. I've almost accumulated enough stuff for Starswirl to add up to a new Worldbuilding article for my other blog.
     
    Wow, backreference. Interesting.
     
    This is the first time we've seen Celestia turn to someone *other* than Twilight. Huh.
     
    Okay, Tirek recognized Discord as if by description, but Discord didn't necessarily recognize Tirek. That's interesting. Likely that means Discord was stoned before Tirek arrived on scene. Which still makes Starswirl *really weird*, if he was around after Discord, yet before the founding of Equestria.
     
    Wait, with no pegasi there will be no rain in Equestria? I know they guided the weather, but natural weather still occurs in places like the Everfree forest. Unless Equestria is naturally a desert?
     
    And Earth pony 'strength' is necessary to tend the land. Hrmmmm.
     
    And Alicorn magic is in some way separate from Unicorn/Pegasis/Earth Pony magic.
     
    Part 2
     
    But he's aware of a third one? He knows about Cadance, but not Twilight?
     
    Oh for pity's sake, Celestia. Every time you hamstring Twilight with this 'you must do it alone' stuff, it goes wrong.
     
    And the three of them know how to pass their power onto Twilight? I assume they much have consulted on this before Twilight showed up, or that's impressive to just 'know' how to do it.
     
    ... Luna's cutie-mark is does not include the dark splotches on her flank. Those are actual coat color variations, like the markings Pipsqueak has. Luna is a Pinto.
     
    While they all appear tired with their magic drained, there are several references to Tirek ruling after all this. So the removal of magic is not considered 'lethal'.
     
    Okay, here's something interesting. Discord's magic is also drainable. It has a completely different visual representation, and once drained Discord still looks like Discord, and for that matter still exists. So he's not truly an embodiment of Chaos Magic, as his physical form would likely fall apart if all his magic was drained. He's still a living creature, just with a very different, and very strong, magical signature.
     
    Tirek now seems to be able to track Twilight to some extent. I wonder if that's Discord's magic.
     
    Impasse. Which means the magic of four Alicorns is equivalent to magic of all the other ponies in Equestria + Discord... and whatever innate power Tirek had originally. Or, more likely there is a practical limit to how much magic can be 'leveraged' at any given time, and both Twilight and Tirek are at that limit. One or the other could technically be 'stronger', but can't put that excess magic into play in a useful way.
     
    Tirek is a dick to trees.
     
    And here's the other G1 reference, outside of Tirek. The Rainbow of Light, which is what defeated Tirek in G1.
     
    Oh lord those designs are silly looking. I hope they rethink those if they use this Rainbow Connection next season.
     
    And finally that 'official' map that Hasbro put out a long time ago is seen as the actual continent. Unfortunately. I was hoping that the map was meant to be stylized, and not actualized. The travel times and distances between places in Equestria are all messed up.
  22. Fhaolan

    Equestria Games

    By Fhaolan,

    See * for disclaimer
     
    Equestria Games (May 3rd 2014 22 minutes)
     
    Bulk is using the classic cartoon representation of barbells. In fact, that style is historic but in a weird way, and it took quite a bit of research to find anything out about them. They're usually depicted as being made of iron, and during the Victorian period many were as iron was far more plentiful then. And in many cases the carnie strongmen cheated by using hollow ones. Still heavy as all get-out, but not as heavy as they appeared. Originally the balls were stone, though and were seriously massive and rather expensive to get hollow 'cheaters'. You can still see modern versions made of concrete as single balls under the name 'Atlas Balls'. Nobody does the two balls connected by a bar anymore, as variable barbells with removable weights are far easier to deal with. My granddad (a little 5'2" Scotsman) had a rule at Christmas, if you could pick up this Atlas Stone he had and put it on a barrel, you got to sit with the adults at dinner. It was only a little one, of course, not one of the ridiculous 300lbers that the modern strongmen start with.
     
    Very weird motivational speech. It's a bit odd to see RD publically admitting that she can't simply do the whole event herself and still win. Character development slid in sideways there.
     
    More pegasi pushups. Pegasi wings bend in a freaking weird way to pull that off. Oh, at least one Earth Pony is in this train car (not including the CMC), but there's a *lot* of pegasi here. No unicorns at all. The impression still is that the Equestria Games is really geared towards pegasi. Which makes a bit of sense given that prior depictions of pegasi culture was heavily slanted towards Greek/Roman costumes. So having them originate the Equestria version of the Olympic games does sorta follow. I'm just surprised that more Earth Pony & Unicorn -slanted events haven't been added to the curriculum over the years given Equestria's nominal equality of the three tribes.
     
    The Crystal Empire train depot looks just like all other depots we've seen, just crystalline, and is pretty far in the outskirts of the city. Given that the Crystal Empire was probably vanished when trains were invented, that does make sense, plus it's possible the 'Equestria Games Village' was built recently with it's own depot, following the Equestrian architecture with only nominal nods to Crystal Empire architecture isn't that surprising. Even the Crystal Empire Express we've seen prior would add into that, as that would be a completely new engine, top-of-the-line, purchased as part of the re-integration of the Empire with the greater Equestria.
     
    The hell? Spike's just been kidnaped? Arrested? Dunno there.
     
    Okay, that also makes sense from a certain point of view. Honor Spike for his contributions, and all that. However, the first dragon to light the Equestria Games fire? That's interesting phrasing, implying that Cadance is anticipating *other* dragons being part of Equestrian society in the future.
     
    Shining Armor in the same purple armor/uniform as we've seen him in before. Which likely means he's still actively using his original rank of 'Captain', instead of upgrading simply because he's a now a Prince (Prince Consort, technically). That's not unusual. Most of the British royal family have varying military ranks actually earned from being in service, and when on active duty are supposed to be addressed by their military rank, not their civilian rank.
     
    Ah, here we go. The Royal Box. There's *so* many things of interest to note here. One, all four of the princesses have equal size thrones. However, Celestia and Luna have uniquely colored thrones, but Twilight and Cadance's thrones are functionally identical beyond the cutie-marks, and they're a lot darker than the Princess of the Night's throne. In the row below the princesses are what must be titled dignitaries, we've got the two ambassadors from Saddle Arabia... Blueblood? Okay, I guess his Prince rank does mean *something*, and two rather strangely arrayed ponies. The mare's headdress is very Incan in design, while the stallion... that's odd. It's like the crown of Lower Egypt, worn backwards. However, I've seen something vaguely similar in some eastern headdresses, specifically some historical Korean headwear, and a less exaggerated version from Hungary but with a visor. The beard is very ancient world as well, Persian, Egyptian, so on. Next row down, we have Mayor Mare, Fancy Pants, Fleur de Lis, Cherry Jubilee, and two others I don't recognize. Dunno what that mare is wearing, it's too washed out relative to the background, but the old stallion seems to be wearing a military uniform from about 18-19th century. Specifically a bicorn, or cocked hat, worn fore-and-aft with a full ruff. That kind of setup with the ridiculous amount of feathers being worn primarily by civilian officials in a kind of para-military uniform, rather than true military gear.
     
    I'm kinda surprised at this last row, to be honest. It's a strange mixed bag of ranks when you throw mayors of relatively small towns, plus Fancy Pants and especially Fleur de Lis, into the Royal Box. I'm not sure what to make of that. Especially with the remainder of the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony are in the regular stands.
     
    Yeah, does nobody realize Spike's still technically a child? Actually, they might not. Given the lack of dragon lore known by regular Equestrians, and Spike being likely older than the CMC, they might be expecting more teenager-like behavior rather than child.
     
    So that *is* all of the Ponyville delegation? One earth pony, and a bunch of pegasi? Interesting.
     
    It might be a joke, but Spike acting like a flint-based lighter reminds me of the old book 'Flight of the Dragons'(not the later animated film of the same name), where Peter Dickinson speculated on biological mechanisms that would allow a Dragon to exist in real-life, including using a gizzard-like organ filled with iron ore and flint to provide sparks.
     
    Five or six gryphons there, each with relatively unique designs. Nice. A variety of raptors being represented, rather than just the standard eagle-form copy and pasted.
     
    You ever notice that Rarity looks at the camera occasionally? I just happened to pause the video on one instance. Everypony else is looking at someone else on screen, but Rarity is looking straight at you.
     
    Cute.
     
    Now they put spell restrictions on Unicorns... well, they *had* to be able to do this, otherwise there's no way to restrain a criminal Unicorn. It's a little disturbing on how casually they're treating it though. It does further re-enforce the idea that there are no Unicorn-based events at these games, in the same way there was no Unicorn-based tasks during the Winter Wrap-Up ceremony.
     
    Good, we actually have indication that the Games take place over multiple days.
     
    Ah! One unicorn, at least.
     
    Uhhh... For an enchanted arrow that was barely able to freeze a small amount of the target, it's ability to freeze a cloud of that size is pretty impressive. Again we have reference to the idea that clouds have different physics here than in RL, as the frozen cloud has expanded slightly, is completely *solid* rather than turning into hail, and is still falling rather slowly.
     
    Apparently the spell restriction was put on the Alicorns as well, and they are unable to break it. That's... disturbing in a way. I did spot Celestia in the mix of pegasi flying up to the ice mass.
     
    And Spike's flame ability is again a lot more dangerous than the way ponies react to it would indicate. Anything capable of turning an ice mass that size into rain that quickly is capable of doing a lot of harm.
     
    The Gryphon flag is a talon crossed with a lightning bolt. I wonder if they can manipulate weather the same way pegasi can?
  23. Fhaolan
    See * for disclaimer
     
    Friends Forever Volume 1 (Microcomic Issues 1-4, January 22nd, February 26th, March 12th, April 9th 2014)
     
    Issue 1: Pinkie Pie & Applejack: The Pie's the Limit
     
    Pinkie is to compete in the Equestria Super Chef Competition. This appears to be a separate event from the National Dessert Competition that the Cakes participated in back in the MMMystery on the Friendship Express episode. I'm assuming that the 'Hedge Maze Center' is a pun and I just don't know the base of it. My mum used to teach professional cookery and baking years ago, so she likes watching the various televised cooking contests, but I don't recognize anything that would be punned into Hedge Maze.
     
    Jumbo Don. Cute.
     
    Oh, they're referring to a Hedge Maze in Ponyville itself... okay. Interesting. I'm a bit lost, but that's okay.
     
    Blade Sparxx looks like Guy Fieri... oh of course. Fiery... I'm an idiot sometimes.
     
    It wouldn't surprise me to find out Summer van der Hoof and Toffee Truffle are also supposed to be famous TV chefs, but I can't pick them out.
     
    And Marine Sandwich... Relative to Cheese Sandwich, perhaps? And a reference to place I've not heard before: Gallopvania.
     
    And yes, that's the way cooking contests go. They're incredibly strange.
     
    The three judges are interesting. A buffalo, a gryphon, and a pony who has a very distinct Hindi look with the Bindi, hairdo, and everything. Vermouth Roux... she's reminding me of someone specific who used to judge cake decorating contests, but I can't quite place it.
     
    That's actually a good lesson, presented in a nice way for younger audiences. Good job.
     
    How.... how would you use sauerkraut in a desert? I... I just don't want to know. I really don't.
     
    Oh... Dulce de Leche in sugar-cookie cups. A bit sweet for my tastes, personally, but it sounds really nice.
     
    There are several different things called fondant. The most well-known is rolled fondant also known as pettinice, used for cake decorating. I dislike it personally, as it tastes like papier-mâché to me. What this appears to be, however, is poured fondant, which is like the crème filling of the Cadbury's Crème Egg.
     
    The buffalo judge is named 'Big Angie'. Nice.
     

     
    Issue 2: Cutie Mark Crusaders & Discord
     
    Falconry with an eagle uses the Golden Eagle specifically, and was done all over Europe and Asia. In Europe it was reserved for Emperors and Kings, but the Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, and Mongolians use Golden Eagles almost exclusively for falconry, where it's called the Burkut.
     
    Discord. Just wandering past, coincidentally singing a song all about getting cutie marks. Sure, Discord *never* trolls ponies...
     
    Okay, characterization moment. I normally try to avoid talking seriously about characterization, as I'm not really qualified beyond making a smart-aleck comment or two, but Sweetie Bell is a pet peeve of mine. A lot of fan-writers write Sweetie Bell as ... challenged, and I don't think that's fair. What I see in show is not that she's dumb, but that she always seems to be thinking about something else. She's off-topic, not stupid.
     
    Ice skaters... surprised the CMC hadn't thought of this one before.
     
    American football. Wait, who's on the opposing side. Angle, Spike, the bear... who's that in the middle? Some kind of goblin thing?
     
    Ha! Yes, Discord dressed as Q. They've been dying to do this, I'm sure.
     
    Interesting choices though: Sweetie Bell as Picard, Scootaloo as Riker, and Apple Bloom as LeForge.
     
    Power Crusaders! Though honestly, but the windshield glasses remind me of a very early anime that I can't place the name of. They should have had bird helmets like Battle of the Planets (A Science Ninja Team Gatchaman adaptation). That would have been funny.
     
    Pirates... I'm not entirely sure which comic characters that is a parody off of, there are so many options. Hipsters, standard police buddy movie, Lord of the Rings, and the CMC playing Oubliettes and Ogres, of course.
     
    And Discord gets what he needed, if it wasn't necessarily what he wanted.
     

     
    Issue 3: Princess Celestia & Spike
     
    There's a Duke of Appleloosa?
     
    Actually, I can see Spike and Celestia having this kind of a relationship.
     
    Rock Lobsters. They remind me of the Crabs from G1's Fugitive Flowers episode.
     
    Well done, Spike. Also, confirmed dragons are capable of eating any rock, it's just that gemstones are more like rock fruit at taste better.
     
    Ha. Excellent. Celesta the teacher. Good argument against the Trollestia meme.
     
    And referencing the fact that as a Dragon, Spike can swim in lava.
     
    ...
     
    You know, I like that one. It really did work.
     

     
    Issue 4: Twilight Sparkle & Shining Armor
     
    Tree Goblin. One of the things that plagues most D&D games and other RPGs, is the sheer number of monsters. There's no real way to build up a functional ecology with the number of top-tier predators in those games, without either making the world *really* massive, and therefore messing up travel times between places, or do some selective strip mining of the various monster manuals.
     
    More references to Oubliettes and Ogres. Interestingly, this is a fairly common parody name for D&D, and is not unique to MLP Comics. I've seen it all over the place.
     
    Standard bureaucratic blithering. Is that Mario and Luigi?
     
    Princesses have no privacy, apparently. That's... actually pretty accurate historically. That's part of the drawbacks of being royalty, you were expected to give orders for every little thing.
     
    I like this Lex pony. "Could we use another member of staff as bait, instead of a book?"
     
    A lot of old building did have secret passages. Usually hiding places, similar to modern panic rooms, or escape routes. 'Spy' passages did exist, but they were usually retrofit into buildings rather than put in originally. And some were accessed via the fireplaces, simply because those were large, seemingly solid constructions that were usually built in such a way that they all shared chimneys, so there were already interconnected to some extent.
     
    Interesting, turning existing mechanical ego-boosts into traps.
     
    That's not technically true. If you always keep your hoof on the right wall, you will find your way out again, but not necessarily at the other end. That only works for simply connected mazes. Once the third dimension is added, and paths can cross under and over themselves, or the entrance and exit are not on the outer wall, it falls apart. You're better off with Trémaux's algorithm, but that requires being able to mark all decision points with a piece of chalk or something similar.
     
    Okay, so this thing is called a 'Crystal Bard'. Interesting as that's not taken from *anything*. It's actually unique.
  24. Fhaolan
    See * for disclaimer
     
    Rarity and the Curious Case of Charity (Novel, April 8th 2014)
     
    I was going through these books, because there were a couple of instances where the books revealed facts that showed up in the regular show some time later. I'm not entirely sure that's ever going to happen again. This book, while it has a quite reasonable characterization of Rarity, doesn't reveal any background information about Rarity. Mostly it's puns.
     
    The author, G.M. Berrow, likes creating cities in this series. Neigh Mexicolt, obviously New Mexico.
     
    This book was published long after the Rarity Takes Manehattan episode broadcast, but the setup feels like the author wasn't aware of it. Yet, it references Filli Vanilli's the Pony Tones... in a weird way that makes it sound like Rarity isn't a member of it. This is one of those cases where I think G.M. Berrow does get advanced info from the show writers, in order to keep the books 'in universe', but nothing too detailed.
     
    Coco Cheval. I have vague memories of that one popping
     
    There is a difference between satin and charmeuse, but it's pretty trivial in the long run. Charmeuse, like proper satin, is a *pain* to work with machine stitching, the stupid stuff just won't sit still.
     
    And a reference to Derpy/Ditzy complete with preventing speech and confusion as to what her name is.
     
    Larsons The Neigh School for Design, is a take off of Parsons: The New School for Design, and referencing M.A. Larson at the same time.
     
    The back-references to the show are coming a bit thick.
     
    Bridle Gown. I can't believe I didn't notice that pun before.
     
    Odd. It suddenly switched from her having no luggage (no books as per Twilight) to having a ton of junk for Spike to carry, and no bridging info between those two states.
     
    Mare-is, Prance. And John Gallopiano, an expy of John Galliano. Sacks for Saks is a bit weak, but there's a limit to how much punning any one person can produce.
     
    This is following a rather stock plot.
     
    It's still a creepy plot, of course.
     
    But resolved in a very kid-friendly way. Oh well.
  25. Fhaolan

    Bookworm

    By Fhaolan,

    See * for disclaimer
     
    Bookworm (Comic Issues 15-16, January 15th, February 5th 2013)
     
    Jumping right into this one with no preamble. Giant cocoons in the orchards of Sweet Apple Acres. Interesting. Specifically they're being referred to as cocoons, which means they're covered in silk fiber. There's still a chrysalis in there (not Chrysalis the Changeling Queen, silly), it's just covered in a cocoon.
     
    Pinkie seems to be referring to them as beans, which meaning the ones she's seeing aren't cocooned, which is odd. Applejack seems to think it's some kind of plant, which is even more odd. I'm only aware of one plant that vaguely resembles a cocoon, called unsurprisingly a cocoon plant, but it doesn't look like this.
     
    There's a selection of insects that will attack books, but it's more by accident than anything. Some beetle larvae will bore through paper to get to proper wood, and there's a louse-like insect that will attack books providing they're very old and are actually getting moldy. They're only interested in the book because of the mold, they have no interest in the paper as such.
     
    Very fast worm, this.
     
    Ah, reference to an actual episode, the Power Ponies comic incident.
     
    Interesting. The spell works much like the comic, modifying the ponies to match the illustrations in the book.
     
    They're modifying the story by being 'in the book'... fascinating.
     
    And... this is awfully familiar. It's not the same plot, but it's a weirdly similar premise to the G1 episode Through the Door
     
    This is obviously not A.K. Yearling, but the *fictional* Daring Do instead.
     
    Heh. Twilight can't stomach Rarity in full swing. Cute.
     
    And that reminds me of the nothingness that was consuming the DC multiverse in the Crisis on Infinite Earths event series.
     
    Ha! Couple of interesting references there. A Voldemort pony, a Maleficent pony, and a Loki pony. Cute.
     
    As always, Pinkie is steps ahead and is content waiting for everyone else to catch up.
     
    Lord of the Rings... with zombies. Okay.
     
    which transforms into... I'm not exactly sure what that is. Rainbowettes? Okay, we're on a Star Trek story now.
     
    Kaa from the Jungle Book, the Winter Queen from Narnia (complete with Turkish Delight)... and that Dragon girl from Game of Thrones? Ooookay.
     
    I... okay, that went weird. Weirder and more abrupt than I expected to be honest. The bookworm was kinda a discount Discord.
     
    But, it appears that in this world, fiction has a form of existence of it's own. If it's 'destroyed', it's remnants are forced into reality out of some kind conservation of imagination. I'm not sure what to make of that, when combined with the actual show episode about the magic comic.
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