Sep
2nd
2016
Points of Canon: My Little Pony #45 · 3:22pm Sep 2nd, 2016
And now, the conclusion of the exciting storyline.
Which is continuing from #44 where it started going downhill. The rest of the comic mostly looks just mailing it in, to be honest, even though I still like the art better than most others in this series.
- Zecora has a “bellwether dust” that “glows red in the presence of magics dark,” and turns blue when the presence subsides, i.e. a reliable detector of dark magic. That such a thing exists requires a formal definition of dark magic to exist, even if it’s one as simple as “dark magic is what this detector detects.” No idea what a bellwether is in this context, cause I’m sure she doesn’t mean a castrated ram leading a flock of sheep who was ground into dust.
- The cure for the condition of being turned evil requires Spike’s scales, as he was unaffected, implying that dragon scales have at least some anti-dark-magic properties. Very potent ones, because Spike isn’t missing all his scales later on when enough curative potion is produced to make a rain of it.
- Pinkie Pie describes the condition of being affected by the evil water as total and complete lack of moral self-restraint, which makes me worry for everypony else.
- Applejack tries to take over the market with unspecified manipulations. But the important part is that she’s doing it in the Ponyville telegraph building, and I think that’s the first time the town is said to have telegraph service at all. Along the way she mentions “ten bushels of pork bellies,” and I’m really not sure what she means.
- When dividing Equestria between Rarity, Nightmare Moon and Twilight, Rarity refers to a location called “Points East,” not present on the official map.
- Luna is capable of disguising magically as the Nightmare Moon by way of a “glamor,” making Cadance and Twilight look silly for not being able to do that in Friends Forever #30
- The official ponyfication of Sophocles is “Clopocles” now.
- When the dust settles, and the cast goes to cleanse the hot springs from their dark magic influence, Luna is able to feel it immediately, and so is Zecora, but somehow, mysteriously, when the Mane 6 stumbled into them when this storyline started, they saw nothing untoward.
I had some relatively high expectations for this one, and now I’m not even sure it’s worth including as canon anymore.
I'm pretty sure Rarity just meant the eastern portions of Equestria when she said "points east." Of course, given how Twilight and Luna were divvying up Canterlot and Ponyville between them, it's hard to say who'd be getting the western regions.
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Who cares about Vanhoover anyway. :)
We've had Voltaire, Jacques Lacan and Barack Obama. It's only a matter of time before somebody writes a clopfic with a ponified Sophocles.
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Don't forget Hitler, who, as of today, is mentioned in 733 of 140710 or 0.52% of all stories.
I'm pretty sure at least one of them is clop. :)
Pork bellies are uncut bacon. Ponies confirmed for occasional meat-eaters. I don't blame them; a great BLT could tempt Gandhi.
I used to have a horse when I was a kid who would eat mice when we shifted the hay. I never thought to offer him bacon.
I thought this one was slightly better than the last, at least in terms of having an exciting action tempo. Overall I would say I enjoyed this series, a B- on the whole.
I think you can add "makes your eyes glow any color other than pure white" to the definition.
What I wonder about then is, how was he affected by Sombra's evil door? I mean, I'm sure Sombra was a powerful dark wizard, but would he really put that much extra effort into a magical door in the heart of his fortress to make it overcome draconic spell resistance? Or that time Trixie was hopped up on dark magic and squeezed Spike into a ball?
It is, and this is actually pretty huge. Before this we thought ponies had no way to communicate in most areas of the country faster than mail, this confirms telegraphs can reach Appleloosa.
I'm quite sure what it means. Sales of pork bellies are a very specific thing, they are large quantities of meat (the bellies of pigs) sold for profit after being frozen. Entire warehouses in Chicago filled up with pork bellies between the optimal time for slaughter and BBQ season, which could be months away. The reason "pork belly futures" was a thing in the US stock market was because it let ranchers sell edible meat for a year past their sell-by date, and even sell futures in their products to gain access to more capital. The only reason ponies would have to sell pork bellies in bushels is for large-scale sales, across long periods of time and distance, the same way humans did.
Now, maybe this means 4187928 is right and ponies eat meat, or maybe it just explains why there is a functioning railroad station and stop at Griffonstone, even though ponies don't seem to visit Griffonstone that often as tourists.
But I feel this pretty definitively answers the question of "why does Applejack raise pigs."
That is annoying. When I first read it, I just thought Luna cast some sort of Detect Evil, but nope, no corona. If Luna can feel dark magic around her because of her own past, what does that say about Zecora? Maybe it explains why she has that milky potion that can only be activated by dark magic...
I have no idea how this arc managed to disappoint you. I loved it from start to finish. The evil M6 made amazingly entertaining villains, especially Pinkie as the Joker. Luna becoming Nightmare Moon was iffy given the Nightmare Rarity arc, but we've known since Luna Eclipsed that she can glamour herself to look like NMM even without being possessed, and that's not outside the range of what I would expect a water-corrupted Luna to do, so that didn't bother me much. And my God, I was in hysterics at the Batman V Superman joke at the end. Batman V Superman jokes are kinda my thing.
Seriously, I haven't liked a main series comic this much since Discord's Magical History Tour. This is the redeemer I was waiting for. Thom Zaler will save the IDW line.
2. Anything that indicates future trends, and presumably, by extension, divining of other things as well.
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…and the Westboro Baptist Church, if we're including more modern…notables.
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So how do you make dust out of "anything that indicates future trends?"
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Anti-Cassandric Disintegration Rays and other insufficiently-powerful weaponry?
I'd say it's not like "powdered macha" so much as like "blasting powder" - it's describing what it does, not what comprises it. To invoke Arist[r]otle unwillingly, it describes final cause, not material cause.
Grinding up Sombra's mirror or any other dark-magic-locked thing would do, though; clearly there was always some means of making something react only thereto. I'm not sure how one alchemically achieves it without use of dark magic; synecdoche is definitely as much art as science, for all that it (along with its weaker sister principles the Laws of Contagion and Similarity) are usually very magically important.