Feb
5th
2017
Points of Canon: Friends Forever #36 · 11:31pm Feb 5th, 2017
Winter in Equestria is the time when nothing ever happens.
This comic is, if my memory serves me right, the only winter story in the entire MLP canon and demi-canon not explicitly connected to Hearth’s Warming or season change festivals..
- The first snow of winter is the day Applejack explicitly lets herself take a holiday.
- Rainbow Dash mysteriously is still in charge of Ponyville weather, including snow. Apparently being a Wonderbolt is part time. And Wonderbolts have a “winter hiatus.” Huh.
- The particular use of a snowboard Rainbow has on her back is unclear.
- Spitfire suddenly needs Rainbow to go to “Yaket mountain range, Mt. Everhoot outpost.” This is not a typo, the rest of the comic uses this spelling as well. That’s not what the official map says.
- Apparently Rainbow hates packing so much that she always has to have Twilight’s help to do it.
- Mt. Everhoot is the only place where “the Everplant” grows. The Everplant has important medicinal uses. The outpost that collects it has a reputation of requiring high flying skill to reach and ferry supplies to, and jobs there are sought after for that reason. And also because it’s a popular place to run away to, which is why Soarin is there.
- Pegasi occasionally use navigation lights. The trajectory of approach to the outpost is detailed explicitly and requires the use of one. Later on, the outpost uses projectors, but the sources of light in those are candles. Seriously.
- A changeling – not an, ahem, colorful one – is playing cards with a griffon and two pegasi in a bar. No, seriously. I can name a lot of reasons why nobody cares, but I don’t get why Rainbow doesn’t care.
- Pegasi at the outpost refer to “hot cider” from “Sweet Apple Acres.” Which Where the Apple Lies insists can’t exist. Even Rainbow wonders how did they manage that. (Fake Sweet Apple Acres branding? Are they that famous?…)
1. I feel like they’re trying to be subtle and tell me that this is the comics-canon / show-canon divergence marker…
Derpy turns up – and again, in a blue, rather than UPS-brown uniform.1 Notice she does it during weather that even Rainbow and Soarin consider extreme, that just got even more extreme, and is explicitly hard and dangerous to fly in.
- So there’s a “yak strain of equine flu” – really? – and the Everplant is one of the required medicines to deal with it.
- Rainbow survives a lightning strike with no effects more severe than getting startled.
- Soarin suffers from impostor syndrome.
It’s a nice story, but all the little details feel like they’re deliberately there to annoy me personally.
Damnit, is there yet another quadrant of the Equestria Map which I've not examined sufficiently and contains a 'Mt. Everhoof'? (Edit: yes, damnit, north of Crystal Empire. Damn you, fractally stupid map!)
I like the idea of Derpy as an aerial juggernaut. Yes, she flies terribly in clear weather, but no matter how bad the conditions get, she never gets any worse.
Still haven't read this yet. I'll have to get back to you when I do.
Not the first time, either. Remember Kevin at Cranky and Matilda's wedding.
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Mind you, Rainbow never sees Kevin in his changeling form. She doesn’t even attend the wedding. And her favorite dreams are about beating changelings up… I can imagine many ways for any given group of ponies to warm up to an undisguised changeling, no problem. But Rainbow’s reaction to suddenly seeing one would probably be hostile.
"Kevin"?
Oh?
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Word of god for the name of the changeling observed in the back rows in the wedding scenes in Slice of Life. Probably bogus like most word of god.
For example:
Remote outpost, everypony knows each other. An untransformed changeling stumbles in frozen stiff, half-dead, and clearly presenting no danger. Summoning authorities isn’t much of an option, because the place is so difficult to get to that they’d have to ask Wonderbolts, and while hauling him out is an option, they have more important stuff to haul.
First, they keep him behind bars, but he plays nice, makes sure not to be threatening, and spins a sob story. Just about any sob story will do as long as you genuinely play nice. These ponies (and griffons) are here because they’re tough ponies in the first place, because they like being tough, so they have a natural inclination to do things that affirm their toughness, sparing a weak and obviously harmless changeling is one. Eventually, they integrate him. Poof, nobody cares, he’s become a fixture.
But that would not prevent misunderstandings when someone new comes to the outpost, and here we have a case of exactly that happening.
I do like the character growth of Soarin in this one, I think you nailed it with Imposter Syndrome. It was good to see Soarin and Spitfire finally get it out in the open.
Also, like I said earlier, Equine Flu seems to be running at a dangerous level across Equestria, an epidemic if not a pandemic.
That is annoying. Here's my theory: After the season 6 finale, changlings are now allowed to legally work and live freely in Equestria, on the assumption that they pretty much all have reformed/chosen to follow Thorax. Sure there's a BOLO for Chrysalis, but only her. No one bothered to make a rule saying "if the changling is still black instead of wacky colors, arrest on sight." (Does that sound rather optimistic and naive of the Regal Sisters? How shocking.)
Rainbow is tired, anxious and not currently flying, so her observational skills are not that good. She sees the changling, remembers changlings are legal now, and doesn't think about it for the extra second to realize "black-shelled chitin equals dangerous criminal." Also, there's a cloud gremlin there too, and she doesn't say anything about him either.
A twisty way for this to be true: There were two unicorns who barreled cider at SAA.
They were not of the Apple Family.Actually, given Flim and Flam's cutie marks…which are also all-but saying they're two matched parts of a whole, unrelatedly… (but anyway they're not Jacqueline/Smith/MacKintosh/Bloom)