Friendship is Card Games: Princess Twilight Sparkle and the Forgotten Books of Autumn · 12:55pm February 11th
Well, this was going to go up in autumn when I first put it on the schedule, but the intervening time in Maretime Bay shoved it into a much less thematically appropriate timeslot. So it goes; let’s close out the four royal seasons and see what’s worth remembering about this book.
We open with a very showlike “focus on a detail and zoom out” scene of a leaf falling on Twilight’s muzzle, prompting both a sneeze and a convenient way to announce that autumn is beginning. (There is the question of how necessary the Running of the Leaves really is, but at least it gets name dropped a few paragraphs later.)
Autumn also happens to be Twilight’s favorite season, “[providing] the perfect amount of blustery days when a pony could stay inside snuggled with a good book and not worry at all that she were wasting the sunshine.” And I appreciate this on multiple levels, from lining up with my pre-Flurry Heart headcanon on associate alicorns and seasons to Twilight correctly using the subjunctive case in her internal monologue.
Twilight also fondly compiles a mental checklist of autumnal tasks she’ll be doing with her friends… and G. M. Berrow definitely had to stretch for some more than others. While Pinkie gets pie baking and Dash gets the Running, Fluttershy gets “[harvesting and storing] corn to feed her chickens.” This does bring Starlight to mind, and plans to make a new tradition with her, possibly spellcraft. Especially since “some ancient wizards had even claimed that complicated spells attempted on the Autumnal Equine-nox were guaranteed to succeed.”
Yes, that pun’s in the story. I truly wish it weren’t.
Inspired to double-check her sources, Twilight pulls a book out of her saddlebags, and her reading-while-walking game has clearly gotten rusty, because she almost immediately walks into an oddly nervous Sweetie Belle. (One who is oddly capable of “[nodding] her mane,” which must call for impressive fine muscle control of the neck.)
The unbearable burden of shameful secrets crushes Sweetie after a few paragraphs, and it turns out she accidentally dropped a borrowed book on potion making into the cauldron and has been avoiding Twilight ever since. Contrary to popular memes, Twilight doesn’t immediately smite Sweetie for her sins against literature. She does, however, offer to help repair the book through the use of another book.
We cut to the castle library, where Twilight knows the layout backwards and forwards. “Somehow, each page tended to leave imprints on both her heart and mind.” I’m reminded of theories that a little dragon made its way into her system when she hatched Spike’s egg; it’s only fitting if she knows her hoard so well.
As an interesting touch, Sweetie is apparently at that awkward part of puberty (but I repeat myself) where you don’t know where your body is anymore, with all the clumsiness that that brings. Good to see some official material that lets the Crusaders age a little.
Twilight references Primrose the Prescient’s Protections and Prophecies, finding the Shield of Wisdom, “Crucial for protecting knowledge one holds dear.” But there are a number of wrinkles to the spell. It’s a complex beast, so much so that Twilight doesn’t think she could have managed it before the experience of teaching Starlight about friendship magic (which addresses the question of why she hadn’t cast it before.) Furthermore, it must be performed on the… sigh… Equine-nox. Even a trial run of the incantation when the stars are wrong makes ink bleed across the pages, so now Twilight needs to find another copy of this book in order to repair and protect her collection.
(Side note, Berrow’s take on unicorn magic is interesting, involving both spoken, poetic incantations and mental intent. “The crux of magical skill that most ponies didn’t understand was that it took time. A wizard must get to know and own their spells before expecting them to work.” I do appreciate the concrete data, even if they don’t line up with some other takes on unicorn spellcasting.)
We briefly cut to Spike’s point of view during the flight to Canterlot, mostly so Twilight can exposit at him: They’re headed to the Canterlot Library for another copy of Primrose’s work, and they’re on a tight timeline given how equinoxes work. Though it’s possible equine-noxes are a little different, since they’d “have to wait a whole moon cycle” for the next one, because God forbid ponies use any unit of time other than moons. (There is also the question of asking Celestia and Luna to do another set of equal shifts, but either the magic can’t be cheesed like that or Twilight doesn’t want to impose on them.)
Berrow devotes a paragraph to Twilight’s fillyhood attendance at the School for Gifted Unicorns, just in case any readers came into this blind and confused as to how she knows the streets of her hometown. The crowds watching an alicorn gallop through those streets have to make do with Spike assuring them that everything is fine, there’s no need to panic, and yes I am a dragon, thanks, I hadn’t noticed.
For some reason, Twilight doesn’t just make a beeline for the library but asks to speak with Celestia first… who, in an unfortunate callback to Summer of Royal Waves, is helping with a crisis in Monacolt. Maybe the simulated giant crab attack went awry this semester.
I do love the opportunity to create a brand new sentence.
Despite this book coming out in November of 2016, after the end of Season 6, Twilight’s first impulse is still to compose a letter to the Princess. Spike basically reminds her that she’s had character development since the start of the show, and with her determination reinforced, Twilight gallops off to look for her book (and you’d think that the capital’s main library would be organized well enough to make that simple, but we’re still on Chapter 3 of 15.)
In a signature display of Berrow making continuity references that don’t go anywhere beyond “Hey, remember this thing?” Twilight warns Spike that he’ll likely miss any dinner reservations he made at the Tasty Treat, and cheers him up with “a packet of Emerald Munchies.”
See this? This kind of thing is why the mirror portal turns Spike into a dog. Just call them Scooby Snacks, Gillian, we all know where you’re going with this.
The very smell of the Canterlot Library has Twilight giddy, and now I realize the “You sniff books?” line from “The Point of No Return,” another Berrow creation, really is part of her headcanon.
The good news is that Moondancer is there (and apparently any actual librarians aren’t.) The bad news is that she’s never seen a copy of Primrose’s work in person. “I thought they’d all been ruined during Discord’s rule. He did not like that one prophecy...but I digress!”
Twilight probably should have thought about the consequences of trying to find another copy of a pre-Discordian work before now.
It gets worse. Moondancer tries “the Eradication Equation” on the ink stain, which only pulls it off the page for a few seconds. At that point, Twilight fears that the stain itself is actually “Inknorance,” a magical disease of books… which is actually a fascinating concept. I’ve seen similar ideas—even the bookworm from the IDW comics comes close—but nothing quite like this. In any case, Twilight accidentally blighted Protections and Prophecies with it when she stopped casting the Shield of Wisdom partway through… and now she’s brought it to one of the biggest libraries in Equestria.
Where it’s already infected the book Moondancer was reading.
Oh dear.
They go to Moondancer’s cottage—I hadn’t thought about it that way, but it is an apt way to describe her home—and she goes full Twilight, flitting from shelf to shelf desperately looking for something to help. The two discuss possible properties of the Inknorance and Moondancer’s sorting system while Spike gravitates towards the posters on one wall, particularly a map. No Oubliette Overseer can resist a well-drawn map.
Bizarrely, Ponyville is called “his hometown,” but what really catches his interest is one village not far to the east of Canterlot called Bales, with foalish doodles of houses with roofs like open books. Moondancer blushingly tries to brush it off when asked, insisting “It’s just a silly bedtime story that my father used to tell me—a myth about an entire town full of bookshops and libraries.”
Twilight’s “eyes [glitter] at the mention of such a mecca,” which invites questions about Pony Islam that I’m not going to touch (though it would explain how the Cutie Mark Crusaders got their name.) She floats the idea that the town might be real, and given the number of myths she’s already encountered, who can blame her? Sadly, it definitely doesn’t exist—never mind that Chapter 8 of this book is entitled “Hey, Bales!”—so as Moondancer works on a ward that will keep any infected books from touching the unsullied, Twilight decides her next stop is Mythica University, briefly mentioned in Rainbow Dash and the Daring Do Double Dare.
We have officially entered the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Literary Universe.
Twilight has Spike send out several updates as they leave Canterlot, including one to Princess Luna, raising the question of why she never spoke to the current reigning princess of Equestria face to face. But he’s more interested in reading more about Bales, using a borrowed book written by Moondancer in her foalhood. And there may be more to the fable than she gave it credit for, considering that her father works for the Canterlot Historical Society.
… Well, he worked for it, anyway. Spike uses the past tense, which invites its own questions.
Intellectually, Twilight knows Bales is likely just a fantasy. Surely she’d have heard about it, either as a bibliophile or a government official. But her gut tells her there’s something to it. So does Spike’s given his proposal to find “The Lost City of Books!” His words, not mine.
Twilight is still skeptical. “We could be wasting precious time on a wild-goose chase. The only pony I know who can chase a wild goose is Applejack, and she’s already off chasing them at the annual Apple Family Goose Chase right now!”
You can’t make this up. Well, I can’t. Berrow clearly did. Still, Spike’s able to sway Twilight by likening it to one of Shining Armor’s scavenger hunts. And this time the prize is “a whole town’s worth
of books!” Between that and it being on the way to Mythica, she relents.
After walking five times around a stone with a carving of a book (the Rock of Pages,) and passing a creek with a waterfall (the Cliff Hanger,) they find an immense feather-shaped tree (the Great Quill.) Bales should be just beneath it, but is nowhere to be seen.
And then we get a fascinating bit of self-reflection by way of thinking about what other ponies have told Twilight about herself: All of the other princesses told her “that the quality that made her stand out from other ponies the most was not her advanced magical abilities at all. It was Twilight’s intuitiveness—with friendships, with all kinds of creatures, and with tricky situations such as these—that set her apart.” Which is certainly an interesting read on her. Twilight does do her best work when she strikes a balance between overthinking and knee-jerk reacting. And here, that means casting “the most powerful revealing spell that she could imagine” at the empty field around her.
And sure enough, Bales appears before her, just as Moondancer imagined it. Each roof like an open, face-down book, each street a shelf, and even Little Free Libraries scattered about. Amusingly, Spike points out how this is very similar to Daring Do uncovering a lost city in another Berrow novel, Daring Do and the Forbidden City of Clouds.
“‘Spike, we really have much more important matters at hoof than discussing the incredible authorial talents of the great A. K. Yearling,’ Twilight urged. ‘Though there is no denying her brilliance.’”
And her humility, I’m sure.
The issue, of course, is that while the town is full of books, bookstores, and book-shaped objects, there aren’t any ponies to be seen. And the wind keeps shushing them every time they ask for help in finding Primrose’s treatise. In the promisingly named “Ancient Wisdom and Novel Notions,” something peeks out at them from the shelves… though it just turns out to be a unicorn who’s more afraid of the outsiders than they are of her.
Yeah, turns out the residents of the forgotten and hidden town cloistered behind ritual concealment are just a bit wary of new faces. Who’d have thought?
Twilight manages to convince the shop owner, one Saddle Stitch, they’re friendly before she succumbs to temptation and starts browsing the shelves. (There’s a direct comparison to a buffet table. It’s impressive she held out as long as she did.) Spike takes over on gathering information… and it seems like the citizens of Bales don’t realize how out of the way they are, and that their isolation is more the choice of the rest of Equestria rather than, you know, magical obscurity.
But delving into the details has to wait, because it turns out that the spreading Inknorance still has to respect the conservation of matter: It’s been sucking the ink off of the pages of books in Bales to blot out those in Canterlot. And without Primrose’s work, Twilight’s intuition is coming up blank on what to do about it.
After a rough night’s sleep, Twilight raises the question of Bales’s isolation over breakfast… and her claim of a magical barrier gets questioned by a random stallion who walks into the store. I can only assume operating hours in Bales are “as long as the owner is awake.” This is Paperbuck, the honorary town librarian, who “never [forgets] a book,” but it’s Saddle Stitch who explains the town’s history: Many moons ago, when the town was a hub of knowledge and commerce, a wizard came and, when not obsessively studying, was an insufferable book elitist who yelled at anypony who dog-eared a page or held a book “the wrong way.” The ponies of Bales asked him to leave, and he laid a curse on the entire town as he departed.
At least, that’s what she says. Paperbuck insists that it’s just a matter of the entire town being too shy for anypony to befriend, or to come out of their reading rooms to befriend anypony in return. Which completely defies Twilight’s direct experience, but she’s still eager to solve a friendship problem on top of the ongoing brain drain afflicting Equestria’s literature.
Despite Paperbuck’s reputation, days pass without finding another copy of Protections and Prophecies. It doesn’t help that Twilight’s already found the two most outgoing ponies in the town; everypony else stares in silent shock at the newcomer, even when she tries to ask about their stock. During another fruitless search, the reason for the disconnect comes to light, Spike rushing in announcing that Paperbuck has a copy of the book and has been holding out on Twilight.
She heads to the library, now more of a book graveyard as it’s where ponies have left the books with blank pages. There’s no sign of him at first, but after Twilight collapses on a reading couch in defeat, she hears voices. She traces them to a hidden room, where Paperbuck is arguing with several other ponies, insisting that wizards can’t be trusted after the last one despite all the others telling him to just give the alicorn the book already.
This group is, I kid you not, the Table of Contents, the town council, or at least “the ponies who decide what will make everypony in Bales happy.” When Twilight actually shows up, the shame of talking about somepony behind her tail hits Paperbuck full-force, and he relinquishes the book. One that’s annotated by Comet Tail the Starry-Eyed, the very same wizard whose curse is invoked in Starlight Glimmer and the Secret Suite and who concealed the city of Cirrostratus in that Daring Do novel.
I wasn’t kidding about that FiMLU.
It turns out that Comet Tail had intended to protect Bales… from ponies who, in his eyes, mistreated books. Because wizards have no sense of right and wrong. And because he cast the Shield of Wisdom on the Vernal Equine-nox, the aetheric currents were completely different from what the spell was designed for, and he ended up creating…
An invisibubble.
Oh my God, a central plot point of G5 was established in a freaking chapter book. I’d say Berrow can’t keep getting away with this, but Hasbro’s let her go with the cancellation of Make Your Mark, so she isn’t. (I really do wish her the best in her future prospects.)
In any case, Twilight makes a climactic friendship speech asking for their trust, and rather than applause, the ponies of Bales… shush her. But approvingly.
The town’s been isolated for centuries now. Some cultural peculiarities are to be expected.
Conveniently, the equinox is the next day, and Twilight performs the spell flawlessly, both restoring the blank books and dispelling the invisibubble. We even get the full incantation:
Wisdom of wizards, knowledge of herds! We use these forces to shield our words. Restore forgotten, reveal true facts...the Shield of Wisdom will now bring it all back!
6/10. Not bad, but the phrasing’s awkward in places and the rhythm’s off.
A few hours later, as all the books have been filled back in, Twilight’s still worried that the spell might not have been powerful enough to reach Canterlot… but her friends are there to assure her all’s well. Popping the bubble allowed Bales to show up on the Cutie Map... though that’s still a very quick trip to the other side of the Canterhorn. (As a nice touch, Moondancer is included not just in the group, but in the narration as part of Twilight’s best friends.)
After an interchapter timeskip (and Fluttershy’s confidence workshop) Bales is host to a “Fall Friendship Book Festival,” with bibiliophiles from across the country rediscovering the town and vice versa. Twilight is offered any book she wants from the archives as thanks for everything she’s done, but she declines to take any. Instead, when she wants one, she’ll just come to visit.
And the story closes on an ecstatic Twilight Sparkle, surrounded by friends and books in incredible quantities.
In all, this was a genuinely enjoyable read. The twists were telegraphed in ways that would make Samuel Morse blush, but one must take the target audience into account. It would work well as an episode of the show with only minor tweaks, which is more than I can say for some chapter books. It is a very Twilight story, and an enjoyable one at that. (Though I do have to wonder what was occupying Celestia's attention such that she managed to forget about a town that, geographically speaking, is practically on Canterlot's doorstep. Same mountain range, at least.)
Now, let’s see what I can do with this tale:
All Laid Bare 1W
Sorcery
Destroy target enchantment.
Retrace. (You may cast this card from your graveyard by discarding a land card in addition to paying its other costs.)
Whether undone by time, malice, or simple curiosity, no spell lasts forever.
Invisibubble Cloister 1WW
Enchantment
Skip your untap step.
You and other permanents you control have hexproof.
Your life total can’t change.
When you control no untapped lands, sacrifice Invisibubble Cloister.
Perfect protection begets stagnation.
Growing Pains 2W
Enchantment
When Growing Pains enters the battlefield, support 2. (Put a +1/+1 counter on each of up to two target creatures.)
Whenever one or more +1/+1 counters are put on a creature an opponent controls, tap that creature and prevent all combat damage that would be dealt by it this turn.
Round Table Discussion 2W
Enchantment
Reveal Round Table Discussion as you draft it. The player to your right chooses a color, you choose another color, then the player to your left chooses a third color.
W: The next time a source of your choice that’s one or more of the colors chosen as you drafted cards named Round Table Discussion would deal damage to you this turn, prevent that damage.
Cosmic Misalignment 1UU
Instant
Counter target spell. It becomes your choice of day or night.
“Nopony panic,” said Twilight. “I can get everything back in position before Princess Luna notices.”
“Before I notice what?” Luna said placidly.
Wild Goose 3U
Creature — Bird
Flying
When Wild Goose enters the battlefield, each player investigates. (Each creates a Clue token. They’re artifacts with “2, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.”)
Whenever an opponent sacrifices an artifact, draw a card.
3/2
Crepuscule Mage 3UU
Creature — Unicorn Wizard
When Crepuscule Mage enters the battlefield, if it’s neither day nor night, it becomes day.
Whenever day becomes night or night becomes day, you may cast a spell with mana value 6 or less from your hand without paying its mana cost.
3/3
Moondancer’s Desperation XU
Sorcery
Mill three times X cards. Return up to X instant and/or sorcery cards milled this way to your hand.
For the sake of all books, Moondancer tore through her own collection with reckless abandon.
Alchemical Spill 1B
Instant
Target opponent mills two cards. Target creature that player controls gets -X/-X until end of turn, where X is the number of cards put into that player’s graveyard this turn.
Eventually, Sweetie Belle learned to avoid anything that even resembled cooking.
Invaluable Intelligence 1B
Instant
As an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice a creature.
Create three tokens in any combination of Clues, Foods, and/or Treasures.
The ultimate price leads to ultimate purchasing power.
Spreading Inknorance 1B
Enchantment
When Spreading Inknorance enters the battlefield, target opponent discards a card.
Whenever an opponent discards a card, put an ink counter on Spreading Inknorance.
Each opponent’s maximum hand size is reduced by the number of ink counters on Spreading Inknorance.
Lunar Historian 2B
Creature — Unicorn Advisor
When Lunar Historian enters the battlefield, if it’s neither day nor night, it becomes day.
T: You may cast target creature card in your graveyard this turn. If you do, it enters the battlefield with a finality counter on it. Activate only if it’s night. (If a creature with a finality counter on it would die, exile it instead.)
2/3
Surly Traditionalist 1R
Creature — Unicorn Wizard
Whenever a player draws a card except the first one they draw in each of their draw steps, Surly Traditionalist deals 2 damage to them.
“I’d rather have ponies wallow ignorance than learn like this.”
2/2
Civic Unrest 1RR
Enchantment
When Civic Unrest enters the battlefield, target player becomes the monarch.
Creatures the monarch controls are goaded. (Those creatures attack each combat if able and attack a player other than you if able.)
An alicorn outranks everypony. An alicorn at a dead run outranks Discord himself.
Discord’s Curation 2R
Enchantment
When Discord’s Curation enters the battlefield, draw a card.
Whenever a player scries or surveils, that player shuffles their library unless they have Discord’s Curation deal 3 damage to them.
Chaos and card catalogs don’t get along.
Distrustful Shelfkeep 2R
Creature — Pony Citizen
Distrustful Shelfkeep has protection from each player who has four or more cards in their hand. (It can’t be blocked, targeted, dealt damage, or enchanted by anything controlled by that player.)
One bad encounter with a wizard can sour you on the whole idea of spellcasting.
3/1
Equinox Beckoner 1G
Creature — Unicorn Spellshaper
1G, T, Discard a card: Search your library for a basic land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle. Activate only as a sorcery and only if you control four or fewer lands.
T, Discard a card, Sacrifice a land: Draw a card.
1/3
Eradication Equation 2G
Sorcery
Destroy target artifact or enchantment. Create a 0/0 green and blue Fractal creature token, then put X +1/+1 counters on it, where X is that permanent’s mana value.
“See? I can make new friends too.”
—Moondancer, to Twilight
Ponyville Gourdtender 2G
Creature — Pony Druid
T: Add G.
Tap another untapped creature you control: Untap Ponyville Gourdtender.
It takes a village to bake a pie.
2/2
Shield of Wisdom 2G
Enchantment
When Shield of Wisdom enters the battlefield, shuffle any number of target cards in your graveyard into your library, then draw a card.
Spells and abilities your opponents control can’t cause you to discard or mill cards.
A ward of sanity in a silly world.
Moondancer’s Bauble 0
Artifact
T, Sacrifice Moondancer’s Bauble: Each player surveils 1. Draw a card at the beginning of the next turn’s upkeep. (To surveil 1, look at the top card of your library. You may put that card into your graveyard.)
Anything that spends enough time with an academic will learn a thing or two.
Blank-Page Archive 2
Artifact
T: Mill two cards.
T, Collect evidence 6: Draw a card. (To collect evidence 6, exile cards with total mana value 6 or greater from your graveyard.)
Reading between the lines is much harder when you can’t see the lines to begin with.
Rock of Pages XX1
Artifact
Rock of Pages enters the battlefield with X page counters on it.
T: Add C for each page counter on Rock of Pages.
X, T, Sacrifice Rock of Pages: Draw X cards. X is the number of page counters on Rock of Pages.
Twilit Intuition G(gu)U
Enchantment
You may look at the top card of your library any time.
Once during each of your turns, you may play a land or cast a creature spell from the top of your library.
Once during each opponent’s turn, you may cast a noncreature spell from the top ofyour library as though it had flash.
The Table of Contents 2WU
Legendary Creature — Unicorn Advisor
Spells each player casts cost 1 less to cast for each card that player’s drawn this turn.
Each player who’s drawn three or more cards this turn has hexproof.
2: Each player draws a card. Any player may activate this ability.
“Wisdom hoarded is no wisdom at all.”
1/6
Invasion of Monacolt 2UR
Battle — Siege
(As a Siege enters, choose an opponent to protect it. You and others can attack it. When it’s defeated, exile it, then cast it transformed.)
When Invasion of Monacolt enters the battlefield, tap any number of creatures you control. When you do, Invasion of Monacolt deals 2 damage to each of that many target creatures you don’t control. Tap those creatures.
5
Diamond Waves, Defiant
(UR) Legendary Creature — Unicorn Noble
At the beginning of combat on each opponent’s turn, tap target creature that player controls, then create an X/X blue and red Elemental creature token with trample, where X is the tapped creature’s power. Sacrifice that token at the beginning of your next end step.
3/4
Bales, Forgotten Archive
Legendary Land
T: Add W.
Channel — XWW, Discard Bales, Forgotten Archive: Each player who has fewer than X cards in hand draws cards equal to the difference. This ability costs 1 less to activate for each legendary creature you control.
Recluse’s Cottage
Land
Hideaway 4 (When this land enters the battlefield, look at the top four cards of your library, exile one face down, then put the rest on the bottom in a random order.)
Recluse’s Cottage enters the battlefield tapped.
T: Add U or R.
UR, T: You may play the exiled card without paying its mana cost if you’ve cast two or more noncreature spells this turn.
... is there any way I can get every card you've created? Because I would very much like to.
Honestly, yeah, as I was reading this, I was thinking, “Hm… you know, there’s basically no big, obvious mistakes here.” It’s certainly better than Berrow’s episode on Twilight and a book, though the puns and interconnected references to her own works grate as much as ever. But as an episode-like story and a Twilight one, it largely has the goods. It’d certainly be preferable to most of the two-parters in the back half of the show, anyway.
It is kinda hard to take “a pony society magically isolated from the rest of the world uncovered” seriously with how often the franchise has both used that, and downplayed the serious elements of it. Though comparisons to the recent “Secrets of Starlight” only help it here.
Myself, I can’t say I’m sad to see Berrow leave MLP, but hopefully her next endeavour, free from Hasbro restrictions and deadlines, will let her shake off the shackles of her style that took root in her decade on this franchise. Not holding my breath, mind.
It’s been long enough since the last of these that I’ve totally forgotten the recent chapter books. At least, the Celestia and Starlight one you referred to there. Probably for the best…?
And the fact that she's a real pony writing about her actual adventures, and that Twilight knows this.
Stupid Complicated Game Alert: If a card just says "a player" it will affect both you and your opponents... technically equally, but the idea is that you put it in your deck and therefore are better prepared for what that means. Hopefully you brought some kind of protective effect before someone uses one of red's "everybody draws 7" while Surly Traditionalist is on board, because that can quickly end the game in a draw.
Love everything about it
But really, why won't the bookhorse sniff books. She can make it a part of her royal routine later, taking a mighty whiff at the morning of some rare vintage, instead of a cup of coffee. And half of the nation follows suit...
5767611
You can find most of them (and many other fan-made pony cards) on the searchable PonyMTG database. Credit to hawthornbunny for its existence and continued upkeep.
5767624
The good news with the Traditionalist is that each draw will trigger it separately, so there will be one person left standing at some point during his tirade about game shows destroying the morals of today's youth.
5767625
It still feels weird to me, but the mental image of book sniffing having a sophisticated subculture develop around it like wine tasting is a delightful mental image.
And IIRC you get to choose the order they're put on the stack. Yeah, you win if it kills everyone but still need to be careful.
You know what, I'm just going to drop the quote, I'm sorry in advance.
I had not made the connection between the G5 magic barrier and Bales
Astonishing if those were meant to be the same.
I don't have more to say but what I've said before, so I'll just quote myself from the Daring Do and the Forbidden City of Clouds blog:
Time keeps on going.
I like this book best of all that I've read and a lot of my appreciation is because of the ponification of the book town of Hay on Wye in Wales. The weird double play on words of "Bales" is one of those things I can't decide if I love or hate, but I can't deny the appropriateness of it. BTW, there is a fish and chips shop in town that is named Hay Take-Away, which is a fantastically perfect pony name just as it is.
One of the nice things about having read this so long ago is that I've forgotten the lumps in the porridge.
(Repeat this line as necessary for several of your notable quotes.)
Can confirm this tendency in bibliophiles, but please use the term "collection!"* I don't have it to Twilight's degree, but I can point you to the right shelf, and even remember the color of the cover about 95% of the time.
To be fair, with the way book publishing works, this may have been written a year or more earlier.
Berrow must be a true book-lover, because I don't know any bibliophies that don't take a huge breath when first entering a used book shop. It's not just the general smell of old books en masse, there's a qualitative element as well. Dry, old paper and glue is fine; a hint of mold is definitely not!
The Doylist explanation for this is that Berrow is echoing the common description of Hay as a "book-lover's mecca" without thinking.
I guess I can't say this without casting shade on Berrow, but I would be perfectly fine with that if M. A. Larson had written a good proportion of the books. Honestly, I don't have a problem with cross-continuity if it serves the series well.
See, now that is an appropriate book and pony related name! Too bad Berrow's filter is so coarse.
This is always excellent advice.
Y'know, Twi's brother was bad enough, but a whole town and then an entire empire and then all of G5 as an "It's been here all along" ass-pull? Oh ghod, I forgot about the whole EQG universe. That has got to be an incredibly capacious ass. Maybe a bag-of-holding enema was involved?
I agree entirely. Like I said, this is my favorite of all the books I've read.
Yep, just around the other side of the Canterhorn:
i.ibb.co/qNLs6cq/Bales.jpg
----------
* i.ibb.co/yQT67Z6/bookhorde.jpg
5767611
You can also create print sheets of the cards and export them as XML files to Cockatrice for online play, theoretically.
Yes indeedy, as FoME says you can get most of his cards from PonyMTG, which I just updated up to last week.
Wait, so was her trying to cast it an accident? It doesn't sound like it, but the alternative...
The alternative is that Twilight... Twilight "Unofficial (But Probably Not for Lack of Trying ) Princess of Books" Sparkle... not only used a spell that was completely untested and explicitly says it needed certain conditions to work that she knew she wasn't fulfilling, but also did it on a text that was over a thousand years old! I mean, yes, in many interpretations and versions, Twilight can be a bit of a mad scientist, but that still seems like a stretch.
And that's not getting into the question of how no one ever just made a copy of such an old, rare and usefjul book. I mean, it's not like the only way to read Shakespeare or Chaucer is to track down an original copy. Maybe the book itself is magical, but I'm not certain why that would be necessary, as it's never been shown to be needed for spellbooks in this setting.
I mean, I probably just don't have the full context for it, so I'm not claiming that's what's happening or criticizing the book for it. It just sounds like that's what happened and I'm a little confused.
Huh. You know, that... feels to me like it's almost a good bit of wordplay, but it just doesn't quite get there, though I can't quite put my finger on why it doesn't or how it could.
You know, it really is interesting learning about what was in these books from yonks back and seeing how many of the quirks, good and bad, of the later parts of FiM and the subsequent series can be seen in their larval form. Not that they all either originated in these works or weren't present to some degree in the early seasons, but you do find these the oddest seeds tucked away in the corners of these foundations, if you'll forgive the mixed metaphor.
Still, it's nice to see a relatively decent story come out of these. While Berrow does definitely have issues as a writer*, it's not only important to remember how much of the more recent stuff's lacklustre elements are the result of overwork and lack of time and resources rather than incompetence, but that that is by no means a new thing. I mean, think about just how many of these books were published in a very short (in publishing terms) amount of time. Yes, they're not exactly Remembrance of Things Past, but still - that is a time scale that not many writers could produce their best work under.
*If nothing else, the self-indulgent** feeling I get from much of her work can't really be blamed on Hasbro. Or, at least, I can't think of a way to.
**And yes, a long fic-series author calling someone self-indulgent is a touch glass-house-y, but still...