Igneous rocks in Scotland and Hippogriff territory · 1:31pm Sep 18th, 2022
Last week I managed to take a short holiday and went up to Scotland, venturing north of Glasgow for the first time in years. I went out to the islands, taking a trip to Mull and the smaller islands of Staffa and Iona. Staffa is a tiny place with no residents, but a lot of tourists visit to admire the basalt rock columns and the awe-inspiring Fingal’s Cave. Fifty million years ago, a lava flow cooled, contracted and fractured to form an amazing landscape of polygons. It was a very fashionable destination for Romantic writers in the nineteenth century, visited by the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and Jules Verne; as well as artists including JMW Turner and composers like Mendelssohn, who wrote the renowned Hebrides Overture.
What inspiration could this magical place offer a writer of pony fanfiction?
This geology is the real-world version of Basalt Beach, where Twilight and friends wash up after they are evicted from Seaquestria in the bleakest part of My Little Pony: The Movie. We watch Twilight’s tears splash onto the rocks before Tempest strikes from above.
Here’s an exercise: Watch the movie from 01:01:10 (when our little ponies emerge from the sea), mute the sound, and instead listen to the Hebrides Overture while watching the next ten minutes of video. The mood of the piece seems to fit rather well.
I didn’t see any hippogriffs or seaponies, but this part of Scotland is home to sea eagles and dolphins (saw lots of those), and with a bit of imagination, you can equate the ruins on Mount Aris with the ruined (and rebuilt) abbey on the island of Iona—home of medieval saints and burial place of Scottish kings in the realm of the Norse-Gaelic Lords of the Isles.
On the way home I stopped off in Stirling, following a tip-off from iisaw that the castle had a splendid reproduction of the Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. They were indeed beautiful.
This was a nice blog post to read. Thank you for sharing it with us!
An outflow of the Mid Atlantic magma upwelling which is still powering Iceland, and othe extremities formed the Lake District, Giants Causeway, the Great Orme and many other igneous and metamorphic features of West UK and Ireland?
This is also the country of the selkies, who are about as close to the G4 seaponies as you're likely to find in mythology.
With the G4 movie being my first MLP exposure, and that scene on Basalt Beach being one of its more powerful ones (certainly where the use of cinematography to narrow the focus on Twilight and Pinkie, then widen it out as the ponies split, makes quite an impact), I appreciated this blog.
And given I'm Irish, I concur with zimmerwald1915's observations, selkies make for an excellent counterpoint to the G4 incarnation of sea ponies.
And geez, it was freaky how well the Herbides Overture fit when played for the Basalt Beach, Open Up Your Eyes and Friends Come Around scenes. Even felt too fortuitous, the way mid-sections like those that played alongside Tempest's flashback lined up. Search me how or why it occurred to you to try that out, but I praise you for it, sir.
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According to wikipedia, it's all part of the Thulean Plateau
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Seaponies as selkies? The more I think about that idea, the more I like it. There are also kelpies, who I think did come into one of the comics.
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It was just a random idea because had the piece in my head while researching this blog. I also found it a bit freaky how well the mood changes in the overture lined up with the movie. Good to have that confirmed by someone else.
That's neat that you got to see the tapestries! The rest of the restored castle isn't half-bad, either!
Yeah, Fingal's Cave is amazing, and I hope to get to see it in person someday. I live in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and while the range is mainly plutonic granite, there are a couple of columnar basalt formations. Nothing as grand as Fingal's place, but The Devil's Postpile is still striking, if in a different way.
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(This location available for filming with pegasus actors only!)
I will have to try that Mendelssohn trick! Huh... I might even throw them together in Premiere; it would be nice to be able to have it handy to watch on a whim.
well hey :D absolutely fascinating, would not have known that otherwise!
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I think kelpies were in Zecora's Season 10 issues?
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Yeah, the castle wasn't bad. But there are castles all over Scotland. The tapestries are what made it worth the detour.
You are not short of awesome geology in the Sierra Nevada.
Beautiful.