HedonismBot

That would raise another question: Wouldn't "no magic" also mean no magic to move the sun and moon?

And what of the fact that we're still eating meat to begin with even though well-balanced vegetarian diets for humans are a solved problem?

In "Uprooted", it was mentioned that the Tree of Harmony was changing and adapting to serve the needs of new generations, which presumably includes growing more trees. It's quire possible that there are only five trees (well, four actual trees plus one marketable playset) now, but another one will sprout by the end of the story.

Star Trek: Deep Space 9 aired concurrently with Voyager for a while, as did Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis. So if Hasbro thought there was enough demand, they certainly could make it happen.

The images look better than I imagined CGI ponies ever could. As for the plot, it's still a bit concerning, but it looks like it's been slightly toned down from what was recently leaked. I'm a little bit more optimistic than I was before, but still waiting for more before drawing any real conclusions. I had always thought that it would be way cooler to have more examples of combining magic and technology (like Tank's propeller, or the projector thing from Rainbow Falls) than just more modern real-world technology. Give us a world that's been progressing beyond your typical fantasy world, but in its own unique way.

It's also possible that all this is confined to some corner of Equestria having limited contact with the parts we saw in G4 (like that Southern Equestria place from "Daring Done") - that the happy ending Twilight and her crew fought for wasn't completely undone.

Or they could just drop the "Season Whatever" thing and trust the readers to understand that the comics are taking place after the the show ended.

For what it's worth, the first Season 10 comic story did just about exactly that with Zecora's backstory - she became intensely interested in magic despite lacking the anatomy to cast spells, and ultimately got into alchemy after learning of Mage Meadowbrook. A pegasus alchemist sounds like a pretty cool idea - haven't seen one of those before.

We're allegedly supposed to be getting some kind of press release on the 25th. I'm just hoping for something, anything, to give me reason to be optimistic.

Yeah, she can be found in Sombra's "FIENDship is Magic" issue, as well as the "Siege of the Crystal Empire" story. She was never mentioned in the comics after that, and after "The Beginning of the End" thoroughly decanonized "Siege of the Crystal Empire", she probably never will be.

Well, some have speculated that her signature magic blasts are possible specifically because there's no horn there to regulate the energy. Between that and the fact that she has her telekinesis back, it's quite plausible that she may conclude that she has enough magic to do what she wants to do with her life. Though it would be awesome for her to get a prosthesis, come up against a villain, and dramatically yank the thing off to unleash her raw destructive power. Again, there's the problem with doing that kind of moral from within a universe that, by all logic, looks like it ought to be able to research a solution. For a culture so focused on friendship, using the line "You don't need to be not-disabled to be special" as an excuse to slack off with medical research is NOT a very friendly thing to do. Kerfuffle got a stylish prosthesis, why shouldn't Tempest? And hell, look what they did with Scootaloo: Rainbow Dash gave her pet tortoise a propeller backpack with which to fly alongside her, but all Scootaloo ever got was a lecture from one of Equestria's top flyers about how she should have no preference for being able to fly over not being able to fly. But that's something for another thread altogether. Unless of course it's just a matter of horn prosthetics/regeneration/transplants being a tough nut to crack, in which case, yeah, you ought to move on with your life.

Sombra's comic backstory was a cool deconstruction of the whole "destiny" thing the show kept pushing.

The hospital scenes in "Where the Apple Lies" include a brief shot of an unnamed unicorn with a broken horn. Judging from his expression, there evidently hadn't been much progress towards a solution there. Hopefully now that Equestria has a scientifically minded pony in charge, they can make a bit more headway. Heck, Tempest knows her personally - one would think Twilight would happily direct a few extra bits towards prosthetics research if Tempest asked nicely.

Marijuana is also toxic to horses, but that apparently doesn't stop Tree Hugger.

Throughout the series we've seen ponies use flowers for both food and decoration, so that could go either way.

What we got from the press release and leaks might arguably be cause for concern, but at this point there's not enough reliable information to draw any valid conclusions. I'm remaining cautiously open-minded until we know more.

They used Bulk Biceps as something more than a joke character. Neat.

When was this? Starlight and Trixie are well beyond "average unicorns" magic-wise. Trixie wasn't that far above average when she was first introduced, but she started working to improve her magic after she hooked up with Starlight.

"A gelding says what?" Svengallop: "What?"

Not really - The only unicorns to practice much magic beyond telekinesis are those who had dedicated a great deal of time studying and practicing (Twilight, Starlight, Sunburst, etc.). Unicorns who pursue careers in anything other than wizardry wouldn't have that kind of time to focus on magic.

From the beginning, unicorn magic was shown to be incredibly versatile. There's also the matter that magic was shown to be studied and practiced scientifically, with unicorns being the intellectuals of Equestria - I've been wondering if that might have appealed to nerdy types.

The way things have been going, a fresh start would certainly be tempting. As a unicorn, studying and practicing magic would be tons of fun. Combining it with my engineering background, it'd be cool to see what stuff I could invent.

The butterfly wing spell was introduced all the way back in season 1 in "Sonic Rainboom". Though it was extremely difficult to cast, and neither that nor self-levitation offer flight performance equal to a physically fit pegasus. Plus we've seen a hang glider and a helicopter, so it isn't just unicorns who are horning in on the whole "flight" thing.

That's my main concern as well. Doing anything remotely relatable to real-world race relations issues would almost inevitably mean undoing the happy ending we got in "The Last Problem". There's no way that would go over well with G4 fans in any age group. I can only hope that Hasbro doesn't actually think that "higher emotional intelligence" doesn't mean "they like having all of their entertainment engage in political activism with all the subtlety of a yak on crack". I'll remain cautiously open-minded for the time being, but this is making it hard to maintain any real optimism.

As I recall, Spike has done exactly that multiple times over the course of the series, though usually the plot demanded that Twilight not listen.