FIENDship is Card Games: Sirens (Also Friends Forever #14) · 12:39pm Mar 12th, 2017
Hoo boy. This issue of FIENDship is going to be rough. At least there’s something to else to mitigate it. Now, which Friends Forever is this…
Oh.
Ladies and gentlemen, this week’s theme is scaled frustration.
FIENDship is Magic: Sirens
As I begin this, I can’t help but note that the sirens are absent from the FIENDship compilation cover. I also can’t help but suspect that that’s intentional.
Never mind; they were hiding behind the logo. Thanks to Daedalus Aegle for correcting my mistake.
For some reason, all of Equestria appears to be in the middle of a Greco-Roman period. Perhaps Pegasopolitan chic was all the rage. Or perhaps the artist was trying to be clever with the local aesthetic, given the subjects, and neglected to consider how that might clash with established history. You be the judge.
“Trottingham” in the dialogue. “Trotingham” on the signpost. Who needs consistency?
Also, news apparently travels slow, given how the sirens can lay psychic siege to Equestrian cities and have absolutely no one notice elsewhere in the kingdom. To say nothing of no one noticing the levitating, fanged seahorses wandering through the Equestrian countryside.
Hmm. Princesses, plural. Evidently this takes place before Luna went Nightmarish… which raises the question of why the Castle of the Two Sisters (and any surrounding settlement that might have been there) doesn’t form the heart of Equestria.
See, relying on subtlety as your strategy to avoid drawing attention and getting caught doesn’t work if you’re the only three members of your species for hundreds if not thousands of miles.
Again, why is Canterlot suddenly festooned with marble pillars and copious statuary, and why did none of that carry over to the modern era? Did Nightmare Moon raze the city to its foundations?
Normally, I would object to someone not understanding the phrase “sliced bread,” but this is Sonata Dusk we’re talking about.
Early Modern English… on a poster intended to be from the Classical Era. 
For crying out loud.
Good to see that the sirens are drawing some attention.
Deliberate anachronism with the reality show-esque tryouts. I’ll let it slide.
So… why didn’t it work? Presumably the sirens were putting magic into their song, so why didn’t it entrance this audience?
And so we have a Star Swirl who looks nothing like the one in the Reflections arc, in an era that looks nothing like that one. The latter isn’t so bad; this is the father of chronomancy we’re talking about. The lack of resemblance greatly irks me… though I will acknowledge that this one matches the portrayal of Star Swirl in Rainbow Rocks.
Wait, so if the audience doesn’t like the music, they can ignore the magic? That… I’m really not sure how to feel about that. It feels several kinds of stupid, and yet there is a thread of sense to it. If one never feels any mundane connection to the song, perhaps there’s nothing for the music to latch onto. Hmm.
Funnily enough, the ancient Greeks actually did have a form of chewing gum, mastic. However, it most decidedly did not blow bubbles. I suppose it figures that one anachronism would inspire another.
Dare I ask why composing a song would produce a “kzap pow bang”?
You’d think the competition would have a policy against the same group trying out more than once. Maybe the sirens enthralled the stallion running signups.
And when Star Swirl noticed the chaos and energy, he alerted the princesses decided to take care of it himself. Typical.
All of his magic will be useless against the music? I suppose magical silence is out then.
(On a side note, at least Star Swirl’s hidden sanctum looks right. Though I still can’t see this stuffed shirt aging into the loveable coot of the Reflections arc.)
All the extraneous e’s on that poster make me want to punch somethinge.
And then there are the music wars…
This is stupid. This is so stupid. This is an insult to any kind of sane chronology. I am fully aware that I am taking this about twenty times more seriously than I should, but it’s that dumb.
And the mirror behaves absolutely nothing like in the movies. (Seriously, where’s the setting that makes it fire banishment beams? Was this the appropriate part of the thirty-moon cycle? Where’d the blasted thing come from?)
Star Swirl’s regret feels tremendously tacked on. He never actually tried to redeem the sirens; he opposed them at every turn. Yes, he didn't understand friendship—aside from Scorpan—but here it doesn't feel like he even made the effort.
And there’s the final insult. Wanted to see the sirens wander the human world for centuries, making history and sowing discord? Too bad. They just got shunted forward by more than a millennium through means that will never be explained. Nor will how they put a roof over their heads, get any other outfits, or any other questions you might have had bout them.
This whole comic is a lump of insubstantial, unsatisfying fluff that whizzes all of its potential down its own leg. Discontinuous, shallow, anachronistic, and inexplicably devoid of the princesses in their own freaking city. (Sure, Star Swirl thwarted the sirens in canon. Guess what? Maybe that means one shouldn’t set their comic in Canterlot!)
Let’s move on before I start posting angry pictures again. We’ve got more continuity to snarl today.
Friends Forever #14: Princess Luna & Spike
I really like both the dream, showing Spike’s lingering sense of draconic inadequacy, and how Garble shoves him out of one panel and into another. Great way to show the surreality of dreams through clever use of the medium.
Also, Luna’s flame belch is amazing.
I like the design for that crystalline basket, but I much prefer Spike’s canon room. Twilight has a whole freaking castle now; she can spare one room for her number-one assistant.
I’m not sure if Luna watching Twilight alphabetize the Canterlot library is more cute or creepy. In any case, it gave me an excuse to look up two mythological creature’s I’d never heard of until now. Zhulong is a Chinese draconic sun diety, an enormous serpentine being with a human head who brings day and night by opening and closing his eyes. The Zilant is a Russian creature, a winged, two-headed draconic snake king now seen on the flag and coat of arms of the city of Kazan. Thanks, Wikipedia!
Hmm. Only now does it occur to me that Spike got a Friends Forever issue with both diarchs. A shame he never got one with Cadence.
And after that delightful excuse to do some research, we hit upon the reason I so despise this comic, Dragon Town. Allow me to quote from the Book of Canon, Chapter 2, Verse 21:
It's hard to believe, but ponies know next to nothing about dragons. Apparently they're too rare and too scary to try to talk to or study!
Yes, because nothing says “too rare and too scary” quite like an ethnic enclave in a major city.
Well, if I have only one major complaint about this story, it will be the better of the two by far. Let’s move on…
Why are only unicorns on the Fillydelphia police force? That seems like a terrible hiring policy, especially against flight-capable criminals. Someone get me the commissioner; I want an explanation or his resignation by this time tomorrow! And where are my pictures of Spider-Colt!?
Wait, no, that’s Manehattan.
Okay, the police generating their own red and blue lights is pretty funny. I’ll give the comic that.
I really like the bonding moment between Spike and Luna. It’s similar to her interactions with Sweetie Belle in “For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils;” each has a grander older sibling in whose shadow they must labor. The difference is that instead of admiration or resentment, Spike meets the situation with acceptance and assistance. His operating in Twilight’s shadow isn’t an issue to him, it’s the natural order of things. Not that he doesn’t appreciate a moment to step into the spotlight; he just needs a little encouragement.
Poor Spike. Misfortune seems almost magnetically attracted to him.
Ride Along needs more love. There’s a definite story behind a pony who’s only aspiration in life is to be a police siren.
“You’ve saved Equestria eleven times. I don’t trust you to not burn this city to the ground.” Wow. Talk about gratitude. Of course, this is a stallion who’s talking smack about Nightmare Moon to her face, so I suppose dismissing Spike is small potatoes for him.
(Also, I have to wonder what those eleven times are. And how many of them involved talking Twilight out of one experiment or another.)
“When you’ve been on the force as long as he has, you have some strange dreams.” Huh. Now I wonder what kinds of things a pony sees in this line of work. What happens in Equestria’s cities to inflict that degree of implied mental scarring?
Hypothesis: Nopony’s noticed the sticky slime trail because of hooves and possible invisible horseshoes. Far less tactile sensation as compared to Spike’s scaly but still fleshy soles.
Ah, yes, not “wild migratory dragons.” Of course. Civilized, communal dragons have been so soundly established. 
I’m looking at a dragon in a suit and tie, and I find myself questioning some life choices. Seriously, terribly underwhelmed by this concept and these designs. Dragon Town’s Asian influence might work better for me if the prevailing body type was the more serpentine style that went with it. Instead, we get the saurian Western model, just glossed over with, “No, really, they’re nothing like those other dragons.”
Nice classic comic cover references, though I am disappointed that they didn’t adjust the vehicle Supermane’s lifting in Action Comics #1.
Ah yes, Mina, the proto-Ember. She’s nice enough, I suppose, putting aside how ludicrous her community’s existence is.
It’s kind of a shame to think that the enchanted comic turned Spike off of them for a while.
Mina’s fangirling over Luna is admittedly hilarious. Especially shipping her with Sombra.
And here we get to just why Dragon Town is a thing: a message about stereotyping that’s about as subtle as a sledgehammer. Fantastic. Perfect. Exactly what this setting needed. I wonder if the police department’s inexplicably tribalist hiring policy is meant to synergize with that.
Also, there’s the whole biological issue. Remember how adult dragons normally have that whole size issue working against them? Dragon growth may be at least somewhat psychological, but I’m hard pressed to believe that greed growth is the only reason why dragons get so huge. Some of that’s pure biology, and it only makes these ludicrously human lizards feel more out of place in Equestria.
Hmm. Hard Case has a point; why did Luna get in on this investigation? … Ah, because all of the fires were at night.
…
That’s a reason? I suppose it’s enough of one for Luna, but this only highlights further flimsy justifications. This entire story rests on a foundation of wet cardboard.
Asking if there was any evidence that unicorn magic was used is a fair point. A logical counterpoint is whether there’s any evidence beyond the purely circumstantial that it was dragon breath. Protip: there isn’t.
Wait, it’s almost sunset? Luna grabbed Spike at night. That means that it’s been almost a full day. Has anyone told Twilight where Spike went? What have these two been doing all day? When did Spike sleep? Did anyone think about any of this at all?
Looking back, there is a sliver of sky visible during Spike’s investigation of Dragon Town. It’s yellow-orange. So what, has it been two days?
Luna, you asked a child to perform an investigation with no instructions other than “Go talk to dragons and see what you can find out.” What did you expect? And again, where is the evidence that dragons did do it? You have means, but not motive or any physical connection. A pyromancer or firebug could easily be just as guilty!
Seriously though, what the crap, Luna?
And the true culprit is some refugee from Adventure Time.
Also, note the witness in the third panel. This storyline might have actually resolved itself tonight without royal intervention.
… How on Earth did that explosion happen?
I was going to ask why Spike’s getting dragons and not, say, the fire department, but using them as fireproof rescue workers actually does make sense.
Wait, why should ponies being asleep matter? You’re dragons. Kick open some doors and continue the evacuation. This is a horribly transparent effort to shoehorn Luna into something resembling relevance at this stage of the plot.
“I don’t show my feelings” says the tremendous jerkass who’s made no effort to hide how much he resents royal and draconic intervention. That was probably supposed to be ironic, but I’m too disgruntled to care.
At least Luna apologized.
This issue started off so promisingly, only to descend into heavy-handed PSAs, ludicrous discontinuity with the main source material, and minimal interaction between the characters whose interactions it was supposed to feature. Thank goodness this story was invalidated by “Gauntlet of Fire.” A far better presentation of draconic culture there.
As I said at the start, scaled frustration. Let’s see how well I can polish these fewmets…
Pegasopolis Zealot WW
Creature — Pegasus Soldier
Flying, first strike, protection from Ponies and from Unicorns
Some veterans could not accept the eternal struggle with the other tribes ending in peace.
2/1
Siren Squaddie 1W
Creature — Unicorn Soldier
T: Untap target creature
He’s the best at what he does, and what he does isn’t very quiet.
2/1
Canterlot Sophisticate 2W
Creature — Pony Citizen
Prevent all damage that would be dealt to Canterlot Sophisticate by creatures with no permanents attached to them.
”Nudity is for peasants.”
3/1
Community Curfew 3W
Enchantment
When Community Curfew enters the battlefield, exile all creatures of the creature type of your choice your opponents control until Community Curfew leaves the battlefield.
”Somepony has to keep these streets safe.”
—Hard Case, police officer
Overwhelming Presence U
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant creature
Whenever enchanted creature attacks, tap target creature defending player controls. If enchanted creature is legendary, the tapped creature doesn’t untap during its controller’s next untap step.
Organized Dreams UU
Sorcery
As an additional cost to cast Organized Dreams, discard X cards. X can’t be 0.
Scry X, then draw two cards.
Twilight dreams of cross-indexed shelves.
Sound Rejection 1U
Instant
Choose one —
• Counter target noncreature spell unless its controller pays 3.
• Counter target Song spell.
”Come back when you can actually hold a tune.”
Render Mundane 2U
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature loses all abilities and is a Human with base power and toughness 1/1.
”Thumbs are a very thin silver lining on a very dark cloud.”
—Sunset Shimmer
Siren Trio 2U
Creature — Siren
Level up 3U (3U: Put a level counter on this creature. Level up only as a sorcery.) 2/3
Level 1-2: Spells your opponents cast that target Siren Trio cost 2 more to cast.
T: Tap target creature. 3/5
Level 3+: Hexproof
T: Gain control of target creature. 5/8
War of Innovation 2U
Enchantment
At the beginning of each player’s upkeep, if another player has more cards in hand than that player, that player draws a card.
The combatants compressed centuries of progress into less than a week.
Shattered Aspirations BB
Sorcery
Target player discards two cards unless he or she discards an enchantment card.
It took hours for Adagio to fully process that something hadn’t gone according to plan.
Insidious Influence 1BB
Enchantment
At the beginning of each opponent’s upkeep, that player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.
The sirens drank of their audience’s energy, only one stallion ever suspecting their predation.
Flame Belch 1R
Instant
Choose target creature or player, then put the top three cards of your library into your graveyard. Flame Belch deals damage to that creature or player equal to the highest converted mana cost among those cards.
Moonscale Glorifier 2R
Creature — Dragon Citizen
Moonscale Glorifier has flying and lifelink as long as you control a black permanent.
”To think, I once felt unloved.”
—Princess Luna
2/3
Pyretrail Snail 3R
Creature — Snail
Trample
R, Sacrifice a land: Until end of turn, Pyretrail Snail gets +2/+0 and gains “Whenever Pyretrail Snail deals combat damage to a player, that player sacrifices a land.”
Some snails can’t help but make the world burn.
1/1
Comic Hoarder 3RR
Creature — Dragon Citizen
Flying
1R: Comic Hoarder gets +1/+0 until end of turn for each nonland permanent you control by the artist of your choice.
”Asbestos collector bags are a big seller.”
—Mina, comic salesdragon
3/3
Incandescent Zhulong 5RR
Creature — Dragon
Flying
When Incandescent Zhulong enters the battlefield, it deals 5 damage to each other creature and to each player.
Some say others ruled the sun before pony horns guided it, spreading its fire wherever they went.
5/5
Muse’s Guidance 1G
Sorcery
Reveal the top four cards of your library. Choose a creature or enchantment card from among them. If that card is a Song, you may put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put it into your hand. Put the rest into your graveyard.
Siren’s Heartstone 3
Artifact — Equipment
Whenever one or more creatures attack, equipped creature gets +1/+1 for each attacking creature.
Equip 2
That which might kill others only makes you stronger.
Police Presence 2WU
Enchantment
Whenever a permanent becomes detained, create a 1/1 white and blue Unicorn Soldier creature token.
2WU: Detain target nonland permanent an opponent controls. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery. (Until your next turn, that permanent can’t attack or block and its activated abilities can’t be activated.)
Time Compression 3WUBR
Sorcery
Each player reveals the top X cards of his or her library, where X is the number of cards in that player’s graveyard. Each player puts all nonenchantment permanent cards revealed this way or in his or her graveyard onto the battlefield, then does the same for enchantment cards. Each player shuffles his or her graveyard into his or her library.
Tartaran Hellkite 4BBRR
Creature — Dragon Demon
Flying, trample
When Tartaran Hellkite enters the battlefield, discard your hand and destroy all other creatures.
It claims everything it sees and annihilates anything that disagrees.
7/7
I shant attempt to defend either of these (although I do have a more favorable opinion of FF #14 than is common). Easily the weakest villains issue, although unfortunately the next one is not much better.
Unless your Fiendship collection has a different cover than mine I think the sirens are indeed present, hovering above the others?
Dragon lore/depiction has always been so wildly inconsistent that I don't even bat an eye at a city having an enclave of for them.
The real problem with the issue wasn't the heavy handedness of the moral but that for a Friends Forever issue one of the pair got shafted.
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Looking back, they are in fact there; they're just behind the logo. Plus, their brighter colors make them get lost in the logo and the background when everyone else present has some black in their design to make them stand out. Still, definitely a flub on my part.
Also, it must be bad if you have nothing nice to say about something that includes Star Swirl.
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It's how little we got out of the contradiction that really irks me. If this presented an interesting, novel take on draconic society, or even justified why Spike couldn't just take the train to Fillydelphia to learn more about being a dragon, then I wouldn't mind it as much.
But yeah, the imbalanced character focus did this one no favors.
Yeah, not a good pair to be stuck with this week.
The Sirens comic I've talked about elsewhere before, and I think I made my feelings on it clear then. Suffice to say, I find this one amongst the weakest in the entire IDW line, and you yourself did a great job of summarising why. It's also comics like this which make me dread seeing Ted Anderson's name on any new story.
Spike/Luna is also pretty bad. It bent canon in such a horribly nonsensical way, just so that its writer could get up on a soapbox. Jeremy Whitley was responsible for Sombra's FIENDship and all the good Discord comics, so I usually like his work. But I don't like Whitley's personal politics, and I certainly don't like when he forces them into his stories, especially when that comes at the story's expense (and the expense of the wider setting, let's not forget).
And I could have a whole separate rant about how Whitley's bad writing screws up the message he's trying to send here, because Equestria and real-life are too different for 1:1 metaphors to work right, but that might get too political, so I'd rather not. Suffice to say, no, I did not like it. But I still like it more than Fosgitt's issues.
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I found Glam Rock Star Swirl to be amusing. But it was a comic relief issue, and while it was probably the best place for a comic relief issue, I am not convinced a comic relief issue was needed in the first place.
I wouldn't bet money that this was intentional, but there is actually one thing I've recently learned in the Ancient Lit class I'm taking that fits with the story of the Sirens: the ancient Greeks invented the talent show. The great Greek dramas were written and performed for big contests, where the winners received great public acclaim. But after the contests were over the plays were not staged again, which is why so few of them survive.
The Luna and Spike comic I had high hopes for. Heck, the cover showed Luna and Spike facing off with the big red dragon from Dragonshy, but, alas, that wasn't what I got. A case of me judging a book by it's cover. This is where I'm glad the comics did bleed into the show with Ember, but didn't adopt the more ridiculous aspects of tiny dragons living in pony society.
I haven't read the Sirens issue, but from what I've heard about it, it sounds really stupid. Plus, I'm getting kind of tired of Star Swirl inventing everything--magic spells are one thing, but music genres is just stretching it. I know Rainbow Rocks said that he did banish the Sirens... but, still, I want to hear about someone else doing important magic stuff.
I was honestly happy to hear that Meadowbrook was another important mage (even if we're never expanded on her and her magical relics 
), and I'm willing to take headcanons about other historical wizards that actually did stuff (so long as they don't clash with my Wayer Rune and his doings).
The portrayal of Fillydelphia and that dragon colony within the Luna/Spike issue is also hard for me to swallow. I really hope that Season 7 shows us Fillydelphia and what it's actually like.
TBH I really liked what Fiendship did with the sirens.
Like, most of their characterization and motivation is already lifted straight from the movie. So seeing more of that is alright. But mostly it comes from how low scale their ambitions are makes them stand out. The Rainbooms and Starswirl are running around panicking at how they'll conquer the world, but whenever we hear the Dazzlings themselves talk it's always just 'We want to be adored'. Most other villains are all-powerful demigods or wizards or somesuch who straight up wants world domination first and foremost. The sirens are the reverse. They are just a trio of enchantresses who simply wants fame and adoration as their main goal, it just so happens that world domination would be a (welcome) consequence of that.
So yeah. Before Starlight they were the black sheep of the baddies. They by all rights shouldn't be major villains. But due to a convenient skillset and insatiable ambition their threat potential elevates them alongside other capital V Villains.
Yeah, these were not the best MLP:FiM comics, not by a very, very long shot.
On the Sirens issue, you can make it sorta work, if you squint hard and pretend it's a story Human Pinkie came up with, based on scraps of information she's gathered. Bonus points if you have both the Sirens and Twilight in the audience going "That's not how it happened!"
On the FF #14 story... yeah, it's basically a piece of [BUY SOME APPLES]. For a supposed Luna-Spike story, it actually isn't about Luna and Spike! And the civilized city-dwelling dragons... argh! Mina was kinda neat, but too bad everything else about them is terrible. Anyway, if they wanted a story with a non-pony minority in a big city, why the hell didn't they use griffons? We know at this point that there are some griffons living among ponies; we know they come from east, and Fillydelphia is an east coast port city. They would have made a ton of sense!
Maybe dragon town is recent? We know Twilight's books are fifty years out of date from the Griffonstone episode.
They definitely didn't show up at the Gauntlet though, or they could have explained about buying pillows.
4452969
Nobody showed up in Gauntlet. 'Every dragon in Equestria' apparently turns out to be about a dozen teenagers and one baby.
4452990 Most of the dragons probably just bought Scorch Be Gone brand itching cream.
Prior to these comics. Sirens in particular, did Canterlot even exist? Wasnt it founded after Luna's banishment? Or am I remembering things wrong. The artist for the SIrens issues was trying to be clever, said how like 90% of the background ponies are the ancestors to the background ponies in the show. There's supposed to be something about them that should give you an idea of who there descendant is. And oh did I so not like this issue. Every writer is so enamored with Star freaking Swirl the Bearded. And we get to see him again in the last FIendship issue. Though I rather liked the last one. It and the Sombra one are my fav's of the whole bunch.
I can usually read the comics and such without noticing the issues in the setting/writing. Sometimes not so.
A Luna issue would have been awesome, but this one was urgh. I can kinda see Luna wanting to get involved. They have shown or stated in prior writings that she was always out at night hunting monsters or other such things. She is a much more hooves on kinda of Princess.
I'm guessing that's the reason, although it's kind of dumb because creatures from Greek mythology still exist but only the pegasus cities use that style of architecture, appropriately enough.
And why are the Sirens even in the landlocked city of Canterlot instead of a port city? I know that's the least of this comic's problems, but still.
That sounds like a far more interesting comic. I guess that's what fanfiction is for.
It said why at the beginning. They travel from town to town causing strife and set their eyes on Canterlot due to it being the capital and one of the most populated cities.
When I read the Sirens comic, I summed up with: "Bluntly, these Sirens are boring." Considering that I'm usually more positive about the comics than much of the fandom, that isn't good. I'm not actually sure I've read this one since I reviewed it when it was still quite new.
As for the Luna/Spike/Mina/whoever issue, I quite liked Mina and there was some funny (if shallow) humour. I was very irritated by the continuity mess, though, felt Luna was overdone and thought the whole thing was rather clumsy. Better than the Sirens comic, but not much.
No, you are taking it exactly as seriously as you should. It is the writer who is taking it far less seriously than they should. Honestly, they are getting paid to produce a good comic, but instead they just crap it out? Not cool, man.
4452889
In fairness, you are supposed to judge a comic book by its cover to some degree, because that's how comics advertise themselves when they're sitting on a shelf in a comic store. And in this case, I'd say you're totally not to blame for your judgement being wrong, because that cover is deceptive.
4452934
I know that this was probably meant as a rhetorical question, but there is an actual answer to this. You see, Spike/Luna isn't just a general message about racism or minority communities. It's actually way more specific than that. No doubt, Whitley could've told a better story if he'd used griffons instead, but the problem is that he specifically wanted to tell a story about dragons and Spike's relation to them.
You see, Spike/Luna is, primarily, Whitley's response to Dragon Quest. He didn't like the conclusions that Spike reached in the episode, namely that dragons are brutish monsters, and that he's happier living like a pony, because the ponies who raised him are his real family and the dragons are not. Whitley viewed this through the lens of real-life social justice issues (Spike is a minority who rejects his own race and acts like another), was offended by it, and wrote the comic as a counterpoint. It's essentially a canon fixfic.
That's why we have the scene in the comic store, and the character of Mina. The comic is meant to be about Spike learning that dragons are actually alright, and accepting his dragon identity. It's just that dragons in the show generally were all monstrous at the time of the comic's writing, so to accomodate his message, Whitley first had to change the dragons entirely. And ironically, in doing so, he unintentionally vindicated all of Spike's conclusions, because all of Whitley's "good" dragons did the exact same thing that Spike did - they rejected their migratory dragonhood to live a life of stunted growth amongst pony society.
And I just realised that this is the rant I said I didn't want to have earlier. Oh well.
4452994
Personally, I prefer to believe that the Fillydelphia dragons are some sort of subspecies or crossbreed, and that Torch and his like intentionally snubbed them because they don't view them as "real" dragons.
4453009
Highly unlikely. The Royal Canterlot Voice is evidence enough to suggest that the city predates the banishment. It's considered archaic and weird by the time of the show, so where else would Luna have learned it if not Canterlot a thousand or more years ago?
4454382 Could it also not be that the term 'Royal Canterlot Voice' gained the moniker from Celestia's use during the founding of Canterlot. Prior to that it may or may not have been called something else.
4454727
Chronologically, the earliest use of the name "Royal Canterlot Voice" was in Journal of the Two Sisters, which was set immediately after Equestria's founding, before Luna even got her cutie mark, so no. But in fairness, I must point out that this is expanded universe material, much like FIENDship itself, and if we take the expanded universe into account, then Canterlot predating the banishment is not even in question. If you're only going by the show, then yeah, you could conceivably interpret history the way you suggest, but there's nothing in canon that really supports it.
Friends Forever #14 has always been a bit of a sore spot for me- it presents a fascinating premise, Spike and Luna- two interesting characters who have never had a chance to interact- going on an adventure together. Then it proceeded to ignore that premise in favor of standing on a soapbox and yelling for the last two thirds of the comic.
What's even worse, the writer has openly stated that this stemmed from a desire to 'fix' the episode "Dragon Quest" where dragons except were all depicted as either brutish monsters or asshole teenagers. They felt this was racist, especially since the only way Spike could be 'good' was to reject his heritage and embrace pony culture. Now, they may have had a point, but rather than doing the sensible thing and expanding upon what was displayed and giving dragon culture depth and value- like Gauntlet of Fire did- what does the author do? Create a faction of 'good' dragons- who are only seen as good because they act exactly like ponies, sabotaging the author's own intent because they didn't think through the implications of their own premise. So not only is it stupid, story-smothering moralizing, it's incompetant moralizing.
It makes frustrated.
And the Sirens... look, I get that the comics are trying to be the 'Funny books' of old, but cripes, you got to know when and where. Making the origins of popular villains into a farce is just dumb.
As for the cards... got one point
Organized Dreams: Discarding cards before you draw is soundly red these days. Maybe something like "Pick a number equal to or less than the number or cards in your hand for X. Scry X, draw 2 cards, then discard X cards."
At this point I am fairly convinced you have no sense of balance in card design whatsoever. I'd like to hear your justifications as to why you think this is remotely balanced.
4469999
It's extremely swingy. A slightly cheaper, answerable Extinction might clear your opponent's board... or it could be a double-costed (albeit non-targeting) Journey to Nowhere. (See also Tsabo's Decree.)
And if after a few thousand cards I make one off-kilter one, I'd say that's a pretty good success rate.