May
3rd
2017
Points of Canon: My Little Pony #51-53: From The Shadows · 8:15pm May 3rd, 2017
This is another three-parter, so I’ll deal with it in bulk.
While I could conceivably write up the fifth episode of Season 7, it’s so uninspiring, that I’d rather deal with the comics instead.
This storyline is especially interesting because it was rumored to tie into Season 7, but the amount of little namedropping they permitted themselves is already pretty painful, so, I dunno.
Issue #51
- Fluttershy is expecting that the use of the word “bridle” in the title indicates a costume drama. We still don’t properly know why ponies even have these things. And I don’t know how to apply a bridle to a Frankenstag, whatever one is.
- “Bridle of Frankenstag” is a movie that was based on a book, includes a monster that smashes through a village, a fight involving flaming torches and a pony with a ghastly giant hair style. So far, doesn’t look that much like Frankenstein, actually.
- Spike is hiding within Twilight’s hair. I’ve never seen him actually do that before, but it’s something to keep in mind. Even Twilight comments that he isn’t that much afraid of actual monsters.
- Twilight mentions that Starlight is away in Canterlot and will be there for four more days. Notably, we have no idea whatsoever what kind of business she might have there.
- Shadow Lock hoped to be gone before Twilight returned, but for some stupid reason didn’t even bother to close the door behind himself. Notably, Twilight refers to Spike forgetting to “close” the door, rather than “lock” it, while we know from To Where and Back Again that the door locks just fine, or at the very least, bars from the inside.
- Spike mentions softcover books. So far, we have never seen a softcover book that I remember, only a few periodicals.
- According to Rainbow speaking in Pinkie’s dream, Pinkie engages in a type of party called “Full moon fiesta,” which may involve a piñata. The end result of the dream is a “Wonderbolts tails-gate party” and I haven’t the foggiest idea what one is. Not only we have two more extraneous loanwords, which may or may not actually be in use, but we have yet another mention of a moon phase.
- Twilight managed to produce a locator spell, that burns a trace on a paper map, and traces the stolen books. It is not entirely clear which city they are in, though, because it does not look like any of those previously seen. We at least know it’s not Manehattan because Rarity wishes Shadow Lock chose to hide there instead.
- Spike’s statement “I’m a dragon, Rainbow Dash, if I blew on it, the fire would get bigger,” implies that either dragon breath is very hot even when they don’t plan to breathe fire, or dragons actually exhale oxygen. Both are possibilities.
- There’s an obvious bathroom marked “Lil Bulls.” There’s only one person who has a claim to the title in the room, though, and it’s a buffalo they call Buffy… Applejack proceeds to hoof-wrestle him and for some reason is evenly matched for several pages. This should establish some limits on Applejack’s strength.
- In this nameless town, one Cauldron Bubbles runs a magic shop. As she is attempting to wiggle information out of her, Twilight runs up a bill for miscellaneous items, and the cash register shows “42.17” Subdivisions of a bit exist.
- One of the potions has cabbage as an ingredient. Potion of cabbage soup, right.
- Shadow Lock’s spell can erase the contents of a copy of a book, and make everyone who read it forget the contents. Question: So what happens to the other copies? If they are all getting erased too, that’s way OP and should be a hanging offense. If they aren’t, it’s largely, though not entirely, pointless to erase any book of which many copies exist.
- Library cards are mentioned.
Issue #52
- Ancient warrior Ponysseus had himself a Ponyssey, in a book written by one Homare. Cyclops becomes “Cyclops-clops.” (sigh)
- Frankenstag is written by Marey Spelley.
- And yes, ponies have a Lovecraft equivalent, one H. Pony Lovecart. And anyone who messes with his monsters is driven crazy. Pinkie immediately seizes the opportunity to prove her eldritch abomination status by wrapping a tentacle around herself and threatening the thing. And when it runs away she whines “I have so much more to show you!”
- Frankenstag’s Monster breaks the fourth wall by insisting he’s not Frankenstag himself, which suggests Shadow Lock’s spell materializes objects described, rather than just pulls them out of some ideal space. This is further supported when later, Twilight defuses the situation by using a speed-reading spell, forcing the monsters to succumb to the demise their books mandated for them.
- Strangely, the “Cyclops-clops” survives, unscathed, even though Odysseus originally put his eye out. Looks like Ponysseus made more friends along the way.
- Incidentally, Frankenstag’s monster looks like a pony, rather than a stag. And has an access door marked with a heart on the right side of the body.
- Marshans are some kind of stereotypical but really diminutive space aliens, referred to as “little green ponies.” Who die from “exploding sniffles.” Poor H.G. Wells.
- A newspaper called “Canterlot Daily News” exists. The name of the city is not visible, but it starts with “C” and ends with “t” and the shape of the half-hidden letters leaves few other options.
- The newspaper has cartoons in it. Hardly surprising, but not a given. But “Ponybert” by one “Trot Adams” is surprising, because our equivalent is about despair of working for idiots. I can’t exactly tell what the pony one is about, though.
Applied to a newspaper archive, Shadow Lock’s story materialization spell results in quite a few notable criminals:
- A pony in a balaclava that has a portrait of Celestia on the forehead, who wields a crowbar and for some reason has their cutie mark exposed. (?!)
- A pony wielding a violin case. No telling what’s inside.
- A pony in cement horseshoes, (!) which Pinkie happily points out. This is a very particular method of criminal execution. We don’t know where those guys came from and how far do the archives extend, but the very existence of that one pony is very telling.
- The typewriters in use in this newspaper are the three-key model. Presumably chorded. Presumably fiendishly complicated mechanically. Notably, we’ve seen full-keyboard typewriters before in comics.
- The third site the Mane 6 visit when chasing after Shadow Lock is “Colonial Whinniesburg,” a living history reenactment site. Those exist. We still don’t know what kind of period would ponies call “colonial” and why. But the comic wants us to believe they do.
- Notable things observed include a cannon with actual cannonballs, a tricorne hat, and a statement that at least at some point, refrigeration spells were invented, and before that, they used pickling for preservation.
- The Cutie Map room is missing the Cutie Map entirely. Nopony is commenting on it, and Rainbow and Twilight are walking across the floor where it has been.
- This dialogue needs to be quoted verbatim:
Applejack: Nope. And along with the school books, he erased a year’s worth of everything learned from them books!
Fluttershy: I fear those poor Cutie Mark Crusaders may be stuck in the same grade for a strangely long time – and this will be why.
Looks like somebody is engaging in preventive ass covering. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, that won’t help you. I know where you stuck last winter.
- By this point, it’s not clear which town most of Issue #51 story happened in, but it’s clear that the Mane 6 have spent most of Issue #52 roaming Canterlot, yet no whiff of Starlight can be seen.
- Canterlot has a place called “The Canterlot Museum.” They have a mummy. They also appear to have Tirek’s amulet – which has to be a copy for obvious reasons – and what looks like Trixie’s, rather than Star Swirl’s hat.
- Other notable exhibits include a diorama of a pony knight in full plate armor fighting a dragon, a statue of what looks like Anubis from Anugypt, prehistoric caveponies with pronounced Neanderthal features.
- Little ponies’ room has toilet paper. Pinkie misuses it to dress up as a mummy, but yes, ponies do use it.
- Shadow Lock carries around a “Guide to Scary Monsters” to summon monsters out of.
Issue #53
- The method which Shadow Lock uses to put the Mane 5 and Spike into the scenes depicted by the dioramas still relies on the written descriptions posted on the placards next to them. As a result, the scenes produced are tightly limited pseudo-spaces.
- Rarity refers to one Queen Cleopatrot, who pioneered beauty treatments, by wrapping her body in bandages soaked in precious oils. In an unexpected reversal of My Little Pony #24, this time it’s a pony queen served by jackal warriors. According to Rainbow, the era of said queen is “a few millennia” back.
- Pony knights in plate armor refer to their castle. What use would a castle be against a flying dragon is anyone’s guess. The dragon says that “Dragons and ponies were at war for centuries.” According to Fluttershy, this era is, likewise, at least a thousand years distant. Notably, all the knights have covered unicorn horns as part of their helmets, and none of them seem to cast anything.
- Shadow Lock says, literally, “I’d lived alone in my family’s castle since my parents retired to Somnambula.” How did his family come by a castle, or where or what is Somnambula is not elaborated. Yet another pony hell?… Funny how it turns up now.
- I’m not entirely sure if it’s strange for a “castle” to have an attic or not. But I would say it is. (My family castle doesn’t.)
- Shadow Lock’s discovery is that he’s “descended from a monster” and that “his story, the evil he became, popped up again and again no matter what books I read.” The illustration of the book he is reading in that flashback shows something which evokes thoughts of an alicorn-dragon hybrid, but is not particularly clear.
- Shadow Lock’s solution to the pervasive fear is to erase all mentions of the monster. Unfortunately that also erases all memories, including his, so now his justification looks really weak, since he can’t even properly explain the extent of the problem.
- Pinkie refers to a “glitch in the Matrix.” This reference is way out of date, filly.
Closing thoughts
What the hell did I just read?
In the end, Shadow Lock is allowed to go free, no clues to the identity of the villain are provided whatsoever save for the picture, the mishmash of newly introduced cultural artifacts and canon elements makes no sense whatsoever, the basic logic of Shadow Lock’s spell remains undefined, and this was mostly a waste of time.
On the other hand, well, here’s another potential candidate for the Other Sith.
So does that mean you ARE intending, generally speaking, to do Points of Canon on early-release episodes this season? I had assumed by your silence that you weren't gonna, but I haven't seen "Fluttershy Leans In" and so don't know anything about its potential for influencing canon one way or the other.
(For the record, hoping to avoid spoilers.)
4518813
I did, last season. This resulted in posts published out of sequence being less popular than others, but it’s not like I’m doing it for the views.
I do mark them with spoiler tags, page breaks, and I will be inserting my bingo card into each one, which should prevent getting spoiled accidentally through the sidebar.
4518820
Thanks for the info! I prefer to watch episodes one a week, but half the fun of a new episode is all the stuff that comes with it, so knowing you'll be doing these early too... Hmm...
4518825
There’s always my blog index. :) Every post I expect to refer to in the future goes there immediately after publication as a matter of course, usually even before the first viewers turn up.
cough cough fidelius charm but worse cough
The Creature is not Victor Frankenstein. This is a quibble that many pedants raise when people call the Creature 'Frankenstein'. I feel it important because Victor refuses to parent it or in any way claim it as family, and this is to me the seed of the central conflict of the work…so I'm not sure he's breaking the [diegetic, inset] fourth wall there.
…because it was used as a key in the Chest of Rainbow Power? (…what happened to those keys, anyway? hmm…didn't recall it disintegrating the Mane6.)
4518831
I kind of know. I’m kind of a pedant myself. But I also think that the Creature doing that after only hearing the word “Frankenstag” without a clear qualifier that it refers to him is not normal at all. :)
Became the brass fittings inside the Castle of Friendship, presumably. Because once they turn, they transform and vanish.
4518837
ah, the implication that he knows that people wrongly call him that…breaks one or two fourth walls, yes. (edited a bit)
So, wait, he tried to pull a Sonic '06 "Let's make all canons pretend this episode never happened"?
❧This magic cannot reach us, for one of many possible reasons:
❧❧Universal fictional realism is false.
❧❧The particular fiction here is in fact a fiction and depicts no extant universe.
❧❧Our universe does not contain enough magic.
❧❧Their magic cannot reach that far.
They take a bit longer than that…? I can't tell from the clip I linked what happens. I guess they might disintegrate the same time the Mane 6 do, that's when they stop being visible…but they probably wouldn't be with the beam strength.
I now imagine Applejack billing Celestia for the loss of that 1 bit.
4518890
Not clear. Like I said, they never say what, if anything, happens to all the other copies of a book, and it’s impossible to determine for certain from the information given just how big is their set of all sets supposed to be.
There is one clue for that one, though: The first book that he finds containing information on this hypothetical villain, and the one he presumably erased first, pops up again in the closing scenes of the comic in an antique shop, or at least, an identical page spread does.
It is probable, therefore, that the spell has at least a maximum range within the same world.
That could be a neat short story, or at least a drabble. :)
i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/018/681/Ow_the_edge.jpg
Christ, that was dumb. Any theories, headcanons, etc. to reconcile this shit with what we already know?
Oh, and another thing for you: Andy Price likes to put book titles in his backgrounds, so most of this arc's literary references are contradictions of earlier established references to those same properties (e.g. Lovecraft was already referenced as "Lovecolt" in the first annual).
In my opinion, the most significant of these contradictions is the Frankenstein reference. In Return of Chrysalis, the Golden Oaks library contained a book called How I Did It, referencing Young Frankenstein, which I can only assume was authored by a ponified Victor Frankenstein. This comic, in contrast, gives us Frankenstag and his monster, who are explicitly the inventions of an author, unless there's some Daring Do kind of shit going on. So ponified Frankenstein exists at two different levels of fictionalisation according to different comics.
4519050
Multiple disjoint Frankenstein or Lovecraft references are contradictions, but little stops two different but eerily similar fiction authors from existing, and Daring Do is, well, Daring Do. It’s bad, but I think there are other things in there which are worse.
My issues with this entire mess are…
Well, let’s start with the peripheral bits.
The “colonial period.” The material culture described can have existed, and probably did. The word “colonial” cannot, period. Unless they mean the colon. As in intestine. Which, upon reflection, is not such a bad solution…
The newspaper. Ponifying Dilbert was super bad, but I don’t get the joke they tried to make in the comic quoted, and neither did Pinkie, so maybe it’s not too damaging. But cement horseshoes imply existence of sadistic murder and torture. I’m far from supposing Equestria is an outright Utopia, but note that in our world, there was only one confirmed case. In 2016. Even one actual reported case of “cement horseshoes” is actually too much. Thankfully the solution to this one is easy enough: “Canterlot Daily News” engages in rumormongering a lot, and pony literature and rumor are far less tame than their reality. The other criminal cases described on that page are nowhere as bad, from the evidence actually seen on the page itself.
The missing Cutie Map is either an indication the Map is going away in the future of the series or the reason to ignore this arc entirely, because there are no confirmed cases when the Castle was sans Map for more than a few hours, and up until Trixie teleported the thing we were sure it’s impossible to remove.
Most of the history seen in Issue #53 either meshes reasonably well with prior statements – Queen Cleopatrot could have taken over Anugypt after the demise of Anubis, they had ponies there – or is entirely irrelevant to anything because it clearly refers to pre-Exodus period of pony history, like fighting dragons for centuries. Or caveponies. If it doesn’t fit into your picture of Equestria’s history, it can be safely dismissed as being imagined by one researcher or another.
The incident of preventive ass-covering in the Ponyville school, however, is pretty inexcusable, especially because I’m sure they didn’t actually need it. It also wouldn’t require repeating a year, I’m pretty sure, unless Shadow Lock suddenly decided to erase a textbook on farming or somesuch. Just summer classes in a few subjects.
But back to the main plot…
Shadow Lock apparently engages in blanket, almost at-random erasure of historical and occasionally fictional books, rather than targeting specific mentions of the Ancestral Enemy, since the only thing he remembers of the said Enemy is the name, (which he didn't even tell us) and it would be impossible to read sufficiently fast to do targeted removal. He started this activity “last spring,” which implies he has been at it for at least a year. If his spell were to affect every copy of a book he uses it on, cases of blank books in libraries and shops would have aroused suspicion instantly, long before this comic started. Therefore we have to conclude it does not, and that it has a reasonable range, beyond which, the memory of the reader will not be erased, and copies of the book will not be affected. That’s why he was forgiven at all: the extent of the actual damage inflicted was comparatively minor.
Shadow Lock himself is potentially a lot more problematic (castle? ancestor? retired to Somnambula?) but the extent of the things said does not permit us to reason regarding his origin or his parents at all, unless you can offer any ideas.
The implication that topically targeted memory erasure is possible on an individual level is extremely useful. The implication that it’s practical on full culture scale, however, makes all reasoning about this culture unfalsifiable, and if the show adopts it, I’m dropping this canon combing and switching to writing clopfics. Because they’re canon too, they just don’t remember it.
Really disappointed by the ending, even though I liked the art. I feel like this unnamed villain looks a lot like a royal changling, but could also be an alicorn. Shadowlock is his descendant, so at least part pony.
I think that's because broadway is bridleway, and they often show costume dramas there.
Ties in fairly well with all the other frontier earth ponies being evenly matched wrestling buffalo in Over A Barrel. If you assume the strength magic of a fit, manual laboring earth pony like Applejack or the inhabitants of Appleloosa makes them equal in strength to a buffalo, that's possible a good metric to estimate average earth pony magic strength.
Equestria could have attempted to colonize an area at some particular age in history, and either succeeded or given up. Perhaps Trottingham, for the irony?
To me this suggests Shadow Locke was basically insane at this point, and imagined all these weird random references to his ancestor, so he went around targeting random books. Was he always mentally unstable, or was it the memory editing spells he cast on himself that did it?
Ponies siding with the jackals against the cats, so we know how that rebellion ended.
4519344
Sharp teeth, draconian shape of the head and eyes, curved horn, finger-wings with incomplete membranes, full of irregular holes like a changeling…
Basically it looks like every monster at once.
With fantasy genetics, you never know. :)
That would be cute. If they repeat the word “colonial” again, I think that’s what I’m using to explain it. :)
How would we tell? How would he tell?
Whoever was the Shadow Lock that originally went insane was erased, so we can’t really reason about that.
I think that if we accept this comic, the only points we can recover from it regarding this matter are like this:
Shadow Lock’s statements are not reliable, so we don’t know if he was telling the truth, telling outright nonsense, or telling something invented to fill the holes left by numerous memory wipes. He could even have been working for the villain without realizing it.
The villain, nevertheless, exists in some capacity, because of the scene at the end. Shadow Lock failed to erase all the references.
That’s what makes this arc so disappointing in the first place: That’s all we actually know. It tried too hard not to be a spoiler, apparently, and became pointless rumor.
4519293
I don't know about this. Yeah, ponies are definitely less violent than real-world humans, and do seem to have less violent crime (and crime in general, for that matter). But unless Equestria is a utopia, then it stretches belief to suggest that there aren't at least some murders, even if rarely. I mean, the Friendship Ahoy arc featured pirate crews, with swords. Sure, that arc was just as tame as the rest of MLP, but what else do they have them for if not at least threatening to kill people? They can't just be for sea monsters, can they?
I think the issue here is a disconnect in tone, rather than a lore inconsistency. It may feel uncharacteristically dark from a story perspective for there to be implied murder here, but I don't think it's at odds with the world itself in any way. After all, Equestria must have something of a dark side that we don't get to see.
There was a very brief time at the beginning of season five when the Map wasn't around, but this obviously can't be set then because of timeline reasons. Of course, since Trixie did teleport the Map away that one time, we know that it is actually portable. Until a better explanation presents itself, I'm just going to say that Twilight moved it elsewhere for whatever reason. Maybe she needs to do more repairs on it after Trixie and Glimmer screwed around with it again.
Makes sense to me. As much as anything about Shadow Lock can make sense.
I got nothing. It's like you said, they're being needlessly vague in an attempt to avoid spoilers. I'm pretty sure that Shadow Lock and all his related backstory (including this ancestor of his) will appear at the end of season seven and be super lame. When it all does, then we can attempt to salvage anything of sense from this character. Until then, I fear we're just going to have to accept his existence as-is and wait.
The irony of all this is that the intent was probably to hype everything up and get us speculating about Shadow Lock and his ancestor, exactly like how we always speculate about everything. But there's so little of substance here, and what is here is just confusing, so I really do have nothing for once, and I really don't actually want to see any more.
Or alternatively, you could do both! Meticulously comb through canon to find out which characters are probably banging, and write clopfics exclusively about them.
4519344
4519374
I am in support of Equestria having colonies as an ironic reversal of its role as an extremely loose North America analogue. It doesn't even necessarily have to be Trottingham, either (or not just Trottingham). Both the show and the expanded universe have referenced other places with equine-sounding names which we could potentially say are Equestrian colonies, or were at some point. Mustangia, for instance, which doesn't appear on any map. Though, in the case of the comic's depiction of this colonial period, with the redcoats and everything, yeah, I think Trottingham would be best.
It is interesting that this country, which we've only heard named Anugypt so far, was at different points ruled by a pony and by a jackal with pony supporters, but it also had a revolution led by cats.
Personally, I'm inclined to take a few cues from Alara J. Rogers on this. I believe that the land started off as "Neighgypt" or something similar, and had a line of pony royalty who venerated the cats, which Cleopatrot was probably a part of. I then think that Anubis took over (possibly with Discord's help, since they know each other), renamed the kingdom after himself, and got corrupted, possibly not in that order. And then we see the cat revolution, again assisted by Discord, which sees Anubis defeated. From there, we could see either a restoration of the pony royalty, or the start of a new line of cat royalty.
4519893
Some – no contest. However, it’s an issue of incidents of violent crime per capita and cement horseshoes in particular.
Let’s take the US, where the urban legend originates. In 1935, when the first mentions turn up, the population was 127 million, and grew to 392 over 81 years by 2016, when the only case of using this method on record turns up.
We don’t have such numbers for ponies, of course, but I have my best estimate: Current population of Equestria is about 30 million. General tech level puts them into the ballpark of about 10 years away from the 1935 here at most, but let’s say, we’re comparing a period of 50 years, to be generous – although I think we can be sure that for example, railroad in Equestria is not that old, and railroad is intimately connected to population densities. And then we get one case on record.
I can believe in ponies killing ponies. Saying that this one incident actually happened would involve believing in ponies killing ponies in a cruel manner, specifically devised for the purpose of striking fear into other ponies, more often than humans do it. Something between ten and a hundred times more often, depending on unknown variables.
In my view, that creates a contradiction.
See also Freakonomics, in particular chapter 4.
Alas, that does sound like a safe bet.
Why bother? If they don’t remember anything, any combination of banging is canon. :)
It could be the reverse though. Cleopatra was the ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, after all, and Ptolemaic Kingdom emerged after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great.
I.e. first the jackals ruled and employed pony mercenaries, Anubis got corrupted, cats had a revolution and succeeded in overthrowing him, and then ponies came in to pick up the pieces.
Unfortunately we don’t have enough information to conclusively decide between these two alternatives.
4519893
4519964 Here's the thing about cement shoes: They were widely reported for decades by the tabloid press, but until this year they were never actually done, right? One of the most popular tabloid presses in the world, specializing in exaggerated crime rumors, was the New York Daily News. And here we have the Canterlot Daily News. I agree that no one in Equestria has ever really been murdered by being thrown in a river with cloudcrete shoes, not even in Detrot. However, I could see the Canterlot Daily News printing allegations that this happened, and if Shadowlock's power summons fictional beings into reality, it would probably work on tabloid stories.
"Points of Shipping, twenty-nine pieces of canon that prove Rainbow Dash and Applejack are having a torrid affair." This is your fault, DannyJ!
Always a wise decision! I would reverse the timeline a bit though. Anubis was basically a god, he controlled both the sun and moon on his own, and Discord seemed legitimately afraid of him. I think he's the best possible candidate to explain who was moving the sun and moon before unicorns/alicorns learned how to do that, since he could be as old as Discord, who's been around since the dinosaurs.
Remember Anubis had unicorns (and other ponies) as his elite servants, right when Discord overthrew him and helped the cats start a revolution. I think in the absence of Anubis, a failed rebellion by the cats could force the jackals to accept a Pegasus Queen as part of a political union that keeps Neighgypt stable, and allows the unicorns to begin moving the sun and moon.
4519964
Maybe I'm committing some kind of fallacy here, but I don't agree with your reasoning. You make it sound like there's a trend, a correlation between increasing population and increasing instances of this specific kind of crime. Like this crime occuring once at a population of 30 million means it's going to occur a lot more at a higher population.
And from a statistical perspective, yes, 1 in 30 million is much more frequently occuring than 1 in 392 million. But this is still a crime that's only happened once so far in both scenarios, and in neither case is there a reason to assume that there's a trend, and that these weren't anomalies. As far as I can see, there's no reason why the pony population couldn't explode to the same numbers as the human example, but still have this remain the only instance of this crime.
Only if they wrote it down and got Shadow Lock'd.
Way I see it, both are valid, so do whatever works best for whatever we're writing at the time. I'm going to consider this a case of canon being helpfully vague for writing purposes, rather than frustratingly vague for Shadow Locking purposes.
And yes, I am going to start using Shadow Lock as a verb. It'll be his most useful contribution to this fandom.
4520076
Precisely my point.
Actually, that’s more than ships seen in common use, I wonder, does anyone ship Pinkie with Rarity or Fluttershy?… I wonder if there’s a way to textually identify a fic as shipping a particular pairing without reading it or having access to character tags…
4520111
Er… No, that’s not exactly what I’m saying.
I’m saying that things that happen per capita will be observed in greater unit numbers as the number of capita increases. Hydras notwithstanding, that’s not even a correlation. Working from the numbers available and trying to come up with per capita numbers, we’d get a ridiculously higher per capita per year in ponies than in humans, which is what I find nonsensical.
I am also saying that per-capita numbers of certain types of violent crime will be dependent on population density, which was why I mentioned railroads, but that’s mostly beside the point.
Even assuming these are anomalies and the pony one did happen, there’s a substantial difference: on our Earth, we had 80 years of the idea of this crime being hyped up, while ponies had to have more than a few times less.
I didn’t mention Freakonomics out of the blue, by the way. Chapter 4 substantiates one interesting and relevant claim: The primary cause behind the drop-off in violent crime in the US in the 90s,⁽¹⁾ – see figure 1 – is the repeal of abortion ban by Roe vs. Wade. Once this law passed, people that were aware that they are unable to raise a child well chose not to, which, over time, reduced the proportion of people who could turn to crime.
wired.com/images_blogs/photos/uncategorized/2008/04/08/violencegraph.jpg
Figure 1
Now mentally apply the same logic to ponies, who do have cutie marks mitigating many of the personal problems involved. Also notice, that despite the prevalence of orphanages in fanfiction, canonically, we only have one – in Crystal Empire, a thousand years ago. Despite all the monster attacks and dangerous accidents observed and hinted at.
We usually don’t have good data to reason about these things, which is why I don’t typically bring them up, we’re observing ponies through a filter with uncertain properties. But my considered opinion is that Equestria is an extremely safe society compared to any on our Earth, one in which cement horseshoes would be, at best, a rumor.
And Shadow Lock started his rampage by materializing outright fiction.
And they all write letters to Celestia, what a coincidence. :)
Now we just need to get this usage to stick.
4520571 God no, intra-Mane 6 shipping is the only thing that could turn me off from your blog posts.
Also, I thought the primary cause of the crime decrease was they removed the lead in housing developments that made young people who grew up there more likely to be violent?
Anywho, I agree the evidence suggests ponies are pretty safe, given that preteens seem able to wander about Equestria. But we know all these monsters exist, so what's the missing piece? Have timberwolves never actually killed anypony?
4520595
Oh ok. :) Studying the shippers is more interesting than studying the ships themselves, anyway.
Do read the book, I’m not about to quote an entire chapter of numbers and arguments. And the second one. Being co-written by a professor and a journalist, they’re eminently readable. In general, I recommend keeping an eye on Levitt and Dubner – they do very interesting things.
My take on it, which is why in Aporia, Rainbow Dash thinks “I mean, there’s what, two orphanages in the entire Equestria? Three?” is that ponies adopt children of their deceased distant relatives much more readily and simply love them more, because they love children more in general, part of the whole set of vestigial herding instincts.⁽¹⁾ Incidents of outright unsuccessful parenting are, as a result, much less common than they are in humans, which indirectly results in a much smaller pool of ponies that can turn to crime.⁽²⁾
Notice that observed incidents of ponies that can’t find their niche in society – specifically, Trouble Shoes and Zephyr Breeze – explicitly have to do with the flip side of cutie marks: once it is selected, ponies have trouble reinterpreting it without external support, and it can be a trap, figuratively speaking.
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They have a great show on NPR as well.
Interesting. So ponies do occasionally get eaten by monsters, but their kids are happily raised by the neighbors. That's basically what happened to Cadance anyway.
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Sorry, I missed this comment before.
i.ytimg.com/vi/UENxZiDpPFA/maxresdefault.jpg
All this you suggest is, again, just as valid as any other interpretation here. I don't use it for my own fics, of course, because I have story-specific ideas about how the sun and moon got to be the way they are, but this works.
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Alrighty then. Makes sense, I guess.
Ooh. You got me there.
Spread it wherever you can!
The mere thought of this is hilarious, and I highly encourage it. Howard will grumble, but you'll win him over in the end.
Since I watched the remainder of season 7 (episode leaks, hooray?) I can’t help but wonder how opinions of this particular story arc change in light of the finale this was supposed to tie into. I didn’t read these comics—and personally, while watching the episodes, I never felt like I was missing some important chunk of backstory. Aside from one minor thing: a bit of dialogue where I think the Pony of Shadows implied he had the power to erase memories, a plot point that never came up again. But maybe I’m misremembering it.
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All this talk of Anubis and jackals and cats... what kind of havoc did “Daring Done” and the introduction of Southern Equestria play with this continuity?
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The hive mind at TV Tropes may have beaten us all to it. Granted, it only covers the gay ships, but that’s like 90% of the ships in this fandom anyway.
I had a running gag in Alarm Clock where other ponies keep making assumptions about Rainbow Dash’s love life based on flimsy evidence. All of my evidence was pulled from that TV Tropes page.
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Check https://discord.gg/FM6RrW where we talk about this and related incidents. :)
Identifying Southern Equestria with a state previously ruled by Cleopatrot, and before that, Anubis, that jackals got displaced out of, drops some doubt on the story of Exodus and Hearth’s Warming Eve.
Which I’m sure the show just forgot entirely by now, even though previously, all secondary canon vouched for its historicity.
Otherwise, not much.
I can always be more thorough than TV Tropes.
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Can I join your discord and then never show up?
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Sure, someone already did. I have no idea who that is.