Ponies Make War · 9:44pm Mar 21st, 2015
Okay, so I just wanted to use that as a blog title. (If you haven't read The Immortal Game, you should.)
But if you've read issue #28 of the official comic, I'm sure you can understand why that title seemed adequate. It's been two months since the first part, but hopefully we all remember what happened last time. So let's get down to it.
So I think the first thing we need to talk about is the fact that Well-To-Do was eaten by a hydra. Even Ms. "the vampire jackalopes and the chupacabra will fight over who gets to eat us; isn't nature wonderful?" looks shocked. And Aspen just smiles that troll smile. I just want you to consider that for a moment.
And let's be real here: cartoonish final pages notwithstanding, Well's not exactly going to have a long lifespan in a hydra's stomach. He's too egotistical to recognize a situation he can't take advantage of him, but he's going to be dead soon.
It's not completely unprecedented, of course. We all remember issue #3, when Chrysalis splatted that Wuvy-Dovey Smoochy Lander. And it's certainly not news that hydras are dangerous. But it can be simultaneously precedented and unexpected. And it was indeed somewhat more than I was expecting.
The question of my mind, then, is what Twilight thinks. She is a princess on a diplomatic mission after all; she represents Equestria here. If Well is an Equestrian citizen (and we know bulls can be Equestrian citizens, so why not minotaurs?), then sending a hydra to eat him in front of an Equestrian princess is not exactly diplomatically innocuous. Clearly she wisely chose not to perpetuate the ongoing international incident over Well's fate, but that doesn't tell us how she arrived there. Maybe she just pointedly ignored any evidence that the hydra was not acting as a free agent; surely whatever treaties exist between Equestria and Deerlandia do not hold Aspen responsible for actions Everfree monsters take of their own accord, since no sane ruler of the Everfree would agree to such a provision. Or maybe she retroactively convicted Well of Conspiracy to Incite War With an Ally, which as a type of treason allows her to sentence Well to death. Or maybe he wasn't an Equestrian citizen at all, and it isn't her problem. Much as I like option 2 as an idea, it doesn't really seem very much like Twi. I fear I must hold to the boring option that officially, Twilight never saw anything questionable occur.
Then again, considering Twilight was already helping to attack him and his (probably not legally obtained) property, clearly he was no longer under the protection of the Equestrian government, if he ever was. So most likely it was option 3.
But now that that's out of the way, we should think about what we have learned about warfare in this world. Recall, first of all, that Deerlandia had invaded Equestria, assaulted their capital, and captured their highest princesses; it's hard not to see those as acts of war. And if the assault upon Fun Fun Land can't be considered a military action, I don't know what can.
There are many things I would like to infer from the apparent relative peace of everything that went down. But I cannot really do so in good conscience. The final assault may have been in part personal, but even then the conflict was in large part business. Deerlandia sought to maintain their area, and while things had gotten to the point that they weren't afraid to fight those who got in their way, causing harm was never their goal. And with their greatest opposition being a group of construction workers, why would they need to take their violence very far? I doubt Well is paying his employees enough to risk their lives in this fight.
But there are a couple of observations I can make. One is that grudges really do seem rather uncommon in this world. 'Tia's cheerful demeanor upon her arrival goes almost without saying; she has long been very forgiving whenever she can afford to forgive. More interesting is that before the assault on FFL, the deer seemed to pretty uniformly blame all equines for the destruction of their forest, but just afterwards they weren't displaying any hostility even towards the construction workers. Turns out Aspen's only a hardass when his realm is under immediate threat, and is actually quite nice otherwise. Who would have guessed?
The other thing I'd like to point out is that deer and ponies really do put quite a lot of stock in written agreements. It's remarkable that the contract Bramble signed is worth more than the paper it's written on. Most importantly, it's no secret it was signed under duress, which ought to nullify it in any jurisdiction. Beyond that, if it's written under Equestrian law, then the King of Deerlandia can just decide to violate whatever treaties may exist pertaining to contract law (seeing as they're at war anyway) and declare the contract has no standing in Deerlandia, and by the way you're under arrest for kidnapping the crown prince. Or there might be something in Equestrian contract law that would allow Twilight to nullify the contract even if they don't have any laws preventing contracts signed under duress. Maybe it would be something about contracts involving foreign dignitaries, or that were signed on land that was illegally annexed. Alternately, if it's written under Deerish law, I'm sure Aspen could come up with some justification about the contract being signed outside of Deerlandia or Bramble being below the legal age to sign contracts or something like that if he couldn't outright do away with the contract by royal fiat. But instead, it was necessary for Aspen to sign another contract under duress, and then for Blackthorn to stage an unopposed coup to exploit a loophole in that contract.
One last thing before we move on to looking for interesting panels: they were not once mentioned in this issue. The identity of them whom the deer so fervently despise remains open to free interpretation. Given that there were deer happily helping to extricate some of the minotaur construction workers from vines, I don't think they are minotaurs. And we've already established that they aren't ponies. So who else could fulfill this hated, opposed-to-all-that-is-natural role? Griffons come springing to mind as possible, as do draconequi. I'd suggest dragons if they weren't apparently welcome within the Deerish army. Centaurs would be a good candidate if Tirek is at all representative, although if Scorpan was really biologically Tirek's brother despite being a . . . whatever Scorpan is . . . one might question whether centaurs exist as a species at all. (Unlike draconequi, which we totally know to be a species and not just an individual.) I could even suggest sirens, though that would go against my stated view that they go by "kelpies" now and are rather pro-nature these days.
I'm actually going to throw my vote for centaurs at the moment. And then, come April, we'll get the Fiendship is Magic comics, and hopefully learn something more about centaurs. Then I can revise my opinion again, though I intend to hold off on that until I see the sirens' issue as well.
Score all the points for the sabotage theory vis-a-vis the birds. I guess I should have stuck with that one.
I really feel that the protest could have been better organized. I realize it was held on short notice, but is it too much to ask that all of the Mane Six participate? And couldn't Flax and Wheat have brought any of their hippie friends? I count at least 14 other ponies in their little commune in the Rarity Micro-Series. For that matter, I'd think you could convince at least a couple deer to give the protest a try. I suspect many of the workers would react to a protest lead by princess even if Well didn't want them to. It's just business, after all, and most ponies are likely to demand higher pay to go directly against the wishes of a princess.
So remember what I said two months ago about deer not doing magic with their horns? Well, I'm going to stick mostly to my guns, and say that green fire heart thing is something special only Aspen can do. Did you think that Equestria was the only nation ruled by the most magically powerful?
So let's take a moment to take a census of the part of the Deerish army that we saw massed before the attack. First of all, we have seventeen deer, including one prince, one acting king, at least three members of the military, five does, eleven bucks, and one fawn (male). Then there are six ponies, representing all four races, five of them riding steeds, and also one of whom is a foreign royal. Rounding out the hooved contingent, there is a single moose. In the non-hooved camp, we have one hydra, one manticore, one owlbear, one gorilla, one creature that I have decided is some sort of mutant baboon, one giraffe, one bear, one wildcat which I have tentatively classified as a Eurasian lynx, one badger, one mole, one rabbit, one raccoon, one snake, five butterflies, sixteen bats, five birds (one phoenix, two corvids that are most likely ravens, one cardinal, and one bluebird named "Tina"), one dragon (baby), one ferret, and three squirrels (one of which was airlifted into battle).
Also, there's a very square tree. Did you notice that? My first guess was that it's a Minecraft reference, but the rest of me thinks that's not a very good theory.
And the final thought I shall leave you with: silly Rarity. Surely you know that glitter is like herpes. You should have sealed it better.
Yeah, the fact that Twilight let Well-To-Do get eaten by a hydra, and didn't try to teleport him out or have Fluttershy ask the hydra to cough him up, was the most disturbing thing of all to me, even more than the Regal Sisters being easily captured by vines. If Well-To-Do was such a terrible creature that he deserved to be eaten alive, then surely Twilight could have arrested him before hand.
The few things I actually like about this comic were the indications that other species besides ponies have super-powered leaders, and confirmation that Fluttershy is a hippie, like we all knew deep down.