Friendship is Card Games: Ali-Conned · 12:32pm Oct 23rd, 2022
At this point, we’re getting into genuine first reactions on my part. Between other demands on my time and insufficient engagement, I just haven’t been binging G5. Honestly, I have a hard time just sitting and watching my entertainment anymore. Plus, there’s something to be said for a weekly release schedule giving the fandom time to digest each episode.
In any case, let’s take a look.
I like how we see Sunny take off her helmet, but not her skates. Nor do we see where any of her equipment goes as the animators swap out her skating model for her usual one. Also, you’d think they’d repurpose the other-tribe raid sirens for public announcements, but I suppose they already dismantled those in the name of intertribal cooperation.
Ah. Now that that intertribal cooperation’s been established, Sunny’s found a new cause to champion. And it’s… proper nutrition. Huh. Unexpected. Especially since it seemed like earth ponies were already producing prodigious produce, and Sunny’s cart was seeing healthy business as it was.
That said, I am wholly in favor of magically hybridized Fruits That Should Not Be.
“Not another one of Sunny’s lost causes!”
On the one hand, this feels incredibly out of place after one of those causes returned magic to the world. On the other… we don’t know how many other causes have prompted Sunny to get on a soapbox, before or after her wings. Still, very odd that her good will with Maretime Bay has apparently already been exhausted.
Ah. Sunny’s special talent is… well, shooting for the stars. Going out there and making her voice heard in an effort to make the world a better place no matter how slim the chance.
… Wait, why are ponies shocked by the horn and wings? I figure Sunny doesn’t manifest them willy-nilly, but the big reveal already happened there given the whole Sprouticus Maximus incident. I’d think this would be an instinctive reaction to alicorns… but in that case, explain Twilight in Manehattan. 
“I am over the Luna moon!”
There a number of ways to parse this and I’m not sure which of them may apply.
Interesting that Sunny can’t even tell that her extra parts have appeared. You’d think there’d be some kind of sensory feedback. Or she could at least see the golden, ethereal wings in her peripheral vision.
Heh. I do appreciate the local troublemaking foals in alicorn costumes.
“I have thousands of followers on multiple platforms validating my every move.”
Good to see a more reasonable follower count for Pipp. The number of zeroes at the end does matter.
Ah, the dichotomy of the derided demagogue. Sunny wants ponies to pay attention to her cause, not just to her, and she wants them to do so on her terms. After years of being the town pariah, she doesn’t know how to handle a spotlight that won’t go away.
Also, I love how expressive Sunny’s wings are. The fact that pegasi don’t seem to have the same degree of wing language makes sense; they’ve had the things all their lives, while Sunny’s leave her an open book.
… I am very confused by what Opaline does and doesn’t know. Hadn’t she already called Sunny an alicorn? I get the feeling there may have been some episode shuffling after the scripts were written.
Not sure how well Opaline knows her history, but a pair of alicorns has proven capable of forming nations and shaping worlds. Still, it also demonstrates that she has neither any understanding of Sunny nor any desire to gain that understanding. She’s just one more tool, one more source of power in the ongoing scheme to reclaim lost godhood.
I’ve never had jícama. Still, given who she works for, Misty deserves a little liquid happiness.
Confirmation that Opaline can fire disintegration bolts. Good to know.
I do wonder what’s going on in the theater’s poster. Vampire ponies?
Wow. Misty did a bang-up job infiltrating if she’s part of a Canternet sensation already.
Pipp’s “Thank you, Jazz” may be the first time she’s gotten me to laugh out loud. It helps tht I was thinking the same thing. Very clean lead-in for a bit of exposition.
Also, I do like shadow banishment, implying that users aren’t merely banned from parts of the Canternet. I love tidbits like this, showing bits of Equestria’s history preserved in ways they don’t realize or recognize. Plus, it makes me imagine Nightmare Moon’s oath of eternal night followed by “User was banished for this post.”
Hmm. Can dragons still eat gems and minerals? Of course, with baby teeth involved, who can say? Also, if a pony can pull that fork from the stone, will they be the next ruler of Trottingham?
I’m glad I’m not the only one confused by the monkeys.
Hitch, do you seriously not see the ulterior motive here? It’s barely even ulterior. You’ve been talking about comparative Canternet popularity for the last minute and a half.
“I’ll have the Alicorn Special.”
Ma’am, there is no secret menu and our servers are not trained to make anything on it.
Ah. Given another angle, it looks like the theater has a montage mural featuring many major movies. Very neat.
“The thing is, [alicorn magic] doesn’t exactly work like that.”
Because it’s not like Sunny getting a grip on it wasn’t the focus of one of the better Tell Your Tale shorts or anything. 
I don’t expect flawless continuity, but this feels like we’re just adjusting the state of the world as the plot demands, and I hate that kind of thing.
Heh. Every time Sunny starts waxing idealistic, out come the wings. Of course, that may prove to be a problem if leveraged for cynical purposes…
I do appreciate how it’s the earth filly who wants to be like Sunny when she grows up. Normalize earth pony ascension, darn it. (Also, possibly a subtle note about representation in media, but that’s another matter.)
I have questions about “Airhorns for Armadillos,” but I may be happier not knowing.
“We made the alicorn happy!”
Yeah, that’s got to hurt. Knowing that they’re not pursuing a cause because it’s the right thing to do, but to get praise from the pony with all the trimmings.
Oh hey, Sunny did go to school with Sugar Moonlight. Though it seems little else from The Once and Future Nuisance may hold true. Not like I expected it to.
Also, if the group is called the Filly Four, how new can the fourth member be?
“That slot is always on rotation”
Ah, touché.
At some point, Pipp’s friends will learn to stop asking her for advice. It never ends well.
Yup. As expected, this isn’t the sort of power meant to be used for selfish gain.
I can only assume Sunny’s never heard her own recorded voice, because Opaline certainly isn’t disguising hers.
At some point, Sunny will stop trusting literally everypony who talks to her. Though that ends well a lot more often.
Also, I love how Opaline just cannot process how Sunny’s ambitions top out at a community garden. Not all alicorns are you, Villain Horse.
“I can’t risk losing all relevance in the digital world.”
To be fair, when’s the last time Digimon was relevant?
Pipp, it’s not that complicated. Sparky combines all the appeal of cute baby videos and cute pet videos. You offer neither.
Sparky’s saliva is an opaque, blue, vaguely crystalline fluid, and I could have lived a happy life without knowing that.
(Actually, the fact that the pacifier didn’t burn a hole in Pipp’s cheek does provide some data on whether Sparky can eat rocks… though that may be more a matter of his teeth.)
Say what you will about her, Sugar recognizes the next big thing when she sees it.
Hitting a cup with a frying pan for new crafting supplies is peak Izzy. I love it.
Aww, Zipp has one of the old family portraits in her investigation nook.
Huh. Hitch likes unicorn jazz. (As opposed to earth pony Jazz, Pipp’s assistant who isn’t allowed to have ears in 3D.) Interesting note.
Honestly, the last twenty seconds have been a wealth of characterization and I love it. I also love how even Izzy is nervous about Pipp dragonsitting.
Pipp associates ideas with mild cranial trauma. That’s… concerning.
I appreciate the show using the term “ethereal.” For one, validation. For another, good vocab word for the target audience.
Yeah, Sunny is an alicorn of the people. This kind of bowing and scraping just isn’t her.
Sunny’s in-between ascension does present some fascinating new narrative avenues. Both the ability to turn it off and the inability to keep it on forever provide incredible storytelling potential, and it’s nice to see canon dip into both.
Also, poor mare. At least she has some friends who actually like Sunny, and not just sycophants who’d adore anything with a horn and wings.
… Actually, if Opaline wanted admirers and not just power, she probably could’ve just walked into town and been met with all the adoration she could ask for.
Ye gods, Toots is a buffoon.
On the one hand, Sunny getting this hurt when she learned about the crowd’s insincerity feels incredibly naive, especially after years of their indifference. But those same years make it make it sense; they were finally listening to her. Her real wildest dream wasn’t a community garden. It was uniting ponies for the sake of improving their lives. And it seemed like she was finally doing that… or, at least, she wanted to believe it was. And Sunny’s very good at believing in pipe dreams.
Some very good animation on Izzy as Sunny pours her heart out. You can tell she’s taking it all in and actually thinking about it. Izzy really is living up to Pinkie’s legacy; she’s hard to write well, but when she is, she’s a delight.
“I carry the limitless knowledge of my unicorn ancestors.”
Honestly, this only provides further fodder for my “Izzy is an immortal Starlight who went insane from centuries of memories clogging her brain” crack theory.
“Shh! Auntie Buttons, not now!”
See above. Though Izzy actually hearing the voices of the dead would honestly be great.
That is a… suspiciously well-put together Pippfail montage from a baby dragon. 
Also, so close to coaxing her off the social media treadmill, yet so far.
Also also, very valuable lesson for Pipp. If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?
And Opaline targets what she probably should’ve been aiming for from the beginning, the Unity Crystals… though the face that she tried to reach out to Sunny does say something about her. Opaline, whether she’s willing to admit it or not, is lonely. There’s a reason she took in Misty, one she can’t bear to admit even to herself. To her, it’s a weakness she refuses to recognize. To a sane pony, it’s a need for basic equine contact. For all that Opaline tries to elevate herself above the hoi polloi, she’s still a member of a herd species.
Oh, that’s why Izzy was smashing that mug. Ceramic for the mosaic on the garden gate.
Seriously, Zipp analyzing magic in-universe feels incredibly validating. It’s nice to see someone care how their world works, especially while I’m also trying to figure it out.
I hadn’t noticed the topiary busts until Sparky decided to adjust Pipp’s. Interesting touch.
In all, this may be my favorite Make Your Mark episode thus far. The continuity’s a bit shaky, but it has a great message, some outstanding character interaction, and a good bit of plot advancement.
Now, I hope you’re not all just reading these because of whatever modicum of horsefame I’ve accrued…
Light of Idealism W
Instant
Target creature gets +2/+2 until end of turn. Each player draws a card.
Sunny wants to raise all ponies to the heights of Old Equestria and beyond.
Unspoken Banishment 2W
Enchantment
As Unspoken Banishment enters the battlefield, choose a nonland card name.
All players and permanents have protection from the chosen card name.
Permanents with the chosen name entering or leaving the battlefield don’t cause abilities to trigger.
Champion of Lost Causes 2WW
Creature — Pony Knight
Vigilance
Fateful hour — As long as you have 5 or less life, Champion of Lost Causes gets +3/+3; has indestructible, lifelink, and reach; and can block any number of creatures each combat.
When hope falters, she charges.
3/4
Cringe Compilation 1U
Enchantment
Whenever a spell or ability leaves the stack, if it didn’t resolve, its controller mills two cards.
Thanks to the Canternet, millions can look back and laugh the same day as the incident itself.
Frustrate Ambition 1UU
Instant
Choose one —
• Counter target spell.
• Target player can’t set schemes in motion this turn. Draw a card.
Evil can sometimes comprehend good, but Opaline had no hope of understanding Sunny.
Digital Irrelevance 3U
Instant
Return all artifacts target player controls to their owners’ hands. That player shuffles their hand into their library, then draws that many cards.
A Canternet trend can go from hot to passé to retro inside of a week.
Shadow of Cynicism B
Sorcery
Target creature gets -2/-2 until end of turn. Each player discards a card.
Opaline wants to stand alone, her power eclipsing even her old peak.
Bridlewood Medium 2B
Creature — Pony Cleric
When Bridlewood Medium enters the battlefield, return target card from your graveyard to your hand if it’s a Unicorn card or if GU was spent to cast Bridlewood Medium.
Generations who lived and died before magic’s return long to experience it.
2/2
Sanguine Conservator 3B
Creature — Pony Vampire
Whenever you lose life, create a Blood token. This ability triggers only once each turn. (A Blood token is an artifact with “1, T, Discard a card: Draw a card.” Damage causes loss of life.)
“You’re already bleeding. Let’s make use of that.”
4/2
Dreamshifter 4B
Creature — Elemental
Lifelink
When Dreamshifter enters the battlefield, target player draws two cards and loses 2 life.
Evoke 2B (You may cast this spell for its evoke cost. If you do, it’s sacrificed when it enters the battlefield.)
3/3
Fairweather Herd 2R
Creature — Pony Citizen
Haste
Whenever a player casts a spell with alicorn, that player untaps and gains control of Fairweather Herd.
“Seeing wings and a horn on the same pony makes something in the brain turn off.”
—Sunny Starscout
3/3
Pop Sensation 2RR
Creature — Pony Bard
Trample, haste
At the beginning of your end step, sacrifice Pop Sensation unless you sacrificed a Song this turn.
“Fifteen minutes of fame? I wish I had that kind of margin.”
—Princess Pipp Petals
6/6
Brazen Cannoneer 4R
Creature — Pony Pirate
Flash
When Brazen Cannoneer enters the battlefield, it deals damage equal to the number of attacking Pirates you control to any target.
Maretime Bay wasn’t always the peaceful port of today.
3/2
Furious Chanting 4R
Instant
Attacking creatures get +1/+0 until end of turn for each attacking creature.
“On very rare occasions, you don’t want ponies saying your name.”
—Princess Pipp Petals
Cultivated Hybrid 1G
Creature — Plant Mutant
As Cultivated Hybrid enters the battlefield, choose two colors.
T: Add one mana of either chosen color.
After a brief bit of theorizing, earth ponies were ready to test their magic in the field.
0/3
Enigmatic Monkey 1G
Creature — Monkey
Hexproof from artifacts (This creature can’t be the target of artifact abilities your opponents control.)
Enigmatic Monkey can’t be blocked by artifact creatures or by equipped creatures.
Sometimes a monkey is just a monkey.
2/1
Nutritional Advocate 3G
Creature — Pony Druid
If you would gain life, you gain that much life plus X instead, where X is Nutritional Advocate’s power.
Whenever you sacrifice a Food, put a +1/+1 counter on Nutritional Advocate.
“Your body knows what it needs. Your tongue just wants salt and fat.”
2/3
Trapped in the Spotlight RG
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant creature
If enchanted creature attacks or blocks, all creatures that creature’s controller controls attack or block if able.
Whether herd mentality is a good thing depends on where you stand.
Community Garden GW
Enchantment
Tap two untapped creatures you control: Put a growth counter on Community Garden.
Remove a growth counter from Community Garden: Add one mana of any color.
A group effort offers far greater rewards than fresh celery.
Twisted Guidance 1UB
Sorcery
Target player draws two cards, then reveals their hand. Choose one of that player’s opponents. That player chooses two cards from that hand. The first player discards those cards.
Opaline sought to mold Sunny in her image, not knowing how much work that would be.
Opaline’s Scorn 1BG
Sorcery
Destroy up to two target nonland permanents with total mana value 5 or less.
”I know I’m a force to be reckoned with. I want to be beyond reckoning.”
—Opaline, the last alicorn
Mad Horticulturist 1GU
Creature — Pony Druid
1: Target land becomes the basic land type of your choice in addition to its other types until end of turn.
T: Until end of turn, target land you control becomes a creature with “This land’s power and toughness are each equal to the number of colors of mana it can produce.” It’s still a land.
1/3
Bowing 3W//Scraping 1U
Instant//Instant
Bowing: Choose target creature. Tap all other creatures.
Scraping: Target player mills two cards for each tapped creature they control.
Fuse (You may play one or both halves of this card from your hand.)
Opaline’s Castle
Land — Lair
When Opaline’s Castle enters the battlefield, sacrifice it unless you return a non-Lair land you control to its owner’s hand.
T: Add B, G, or U.
Where dark plots grow like weeds ready to strangle magic in its crib.
Embrace Your Ambition
Scheme
When you set this scheme in motion, each player may search their library for a card, put it into their hand, then shuffle. You gain protection from each opponent who searched their library this way until your next turn.
“I have much to teach you, and all I ask in return is gratitude.”
It speaks volumes about how well even the top TYT shorts linger in the mind that I'd totally forgotten they'd covered that by the time these episodes came out, but you're totally right. It does seem like a classic of the crew behind the lower-tier media (TYT, the comics, etc.) having to work off of and pay attention to the "main" media in Make Your Mark, but there being no obligation for them to look at that lower, quasi-canon material.
Now, That theory does have a wrench thrown in it somewhat by Ep. 7, Hoof Done It?, which introduces something from TYT #9 that would make no sense for a viewer who doesn't vividly remember said short. And not well. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to that episode.
Not how I saw it; the character animation during this scene was so rushed and automatically interpolated that I made a note of it specifically. Mostly to observe the higher number of background extras, after Ep. 3 was largely bereft of them and could lavish more time on the leads, took an expected slump back to the "normal" inconsistency of the first two episodes.
Certainly not my favourite episode anyway, and it undermines the actually-interesting base character dilemma of Sunny's new position by shackling it both to the activist schtick this franchise seemingly cannot avoid and more social media gunge. Which might have worked, had it stuck to it guns about how toxic it was making it all out to be. But nope, Pipp gets her spirit back, and the Filly Four are just forgotten about offscreen. At least the episode avoids the actively infuriating quality of Growing Pains. That's something.
That's literally the only thing anyone knows about New Yorkers: they don't give the slightest of f
s. I have Manehattan as a hotbed of anti-royal sentiment for the parallel to America, and at least one alicorn living there because he doesn't want a crown.
I've already seriously described the whole "luminescence" deal with Superman's "you're wrong. I can see your soul" so it'd make sense if that isn't restricted to when it's still in a body.
Clearly there was some help from the dog. Because of course the dog has social media acumen, don't you remember the EQG shorts?
This is my gripe with just about all "entertainment" produced in the last few years.
When the digital pet craze was going on? I mean, I like digimon far more than pokemon, but that's mostly because the former has actual stakes in it's plot. That and I prefer the aesthetics of the creature designs. But even I'm willing to admit that digimon didn't take off nearly as much on the American continent. Also doesn't help that most the games are kinda… bad.
*Deep breath* If you watch the episodes again, Manehattan is disproportionately an earth pony city. Way back in the play in "Hearth's Warming Eve", the earth ponies sent Chancellor Puddinghead to the summit. Puddinghead being a chancellor implies the earth ponies had some sort of democracy for their government. With a long history of republicanism, they developed a natural aversion to nobility, where simply being born to the right pony gave you a position of authority. As such, their instinctual reaction to an alicorn princess is awe from a distance (as alicornity overrides nobility there), but disdain at a personal level (as vice versa).
I immediately got an image of the show being played out across an Internet forum. Discord is a master of code injection to make weird stuff happen, Sombra with his mind control likes hacking into others' profiles, Tirek just DDoS's everyone...
I mean, there's "this one thing mentioned as a joke doesn't match up with this other thing mentioned as a joke fifty episodes later", and then there's "this major plot element contradicts that major plot element from the previous episode". I can let the former slide, but less so the latter. I read a cyberpunk fic on here where one of my major turn-offs was the way the world's economic state kept changing.
The Alan Parsons Project: Boy Band Edition.
For the record, if I recall correctly, Spike ate gems by crushing them. Of course, it's just as probable that he needed to get them into small enough chunks for his saliva to get to work on them.
Opaline redemption arc: she gets angry at Misty's slow progress, marches into Maretime Bay to do it herself, and immediately gets thronged by loving admirers -- including Sunny, who's ecstatic at meeting another alicorn and doesn't realize her ulterior motives. Opaline keeps getting distracted by her adoring fans pulling her this way and that until she realizes she likes the company and forgets all about getting dragonfire. (Then the truth of her trying to steal magic in the Twilit Era comes out and things take a darker turn.)
Fic idea: Zipp and Sunny and/or Jazz, magic horticulturists. (I also once wrote a fic where zebras were utterly unimpressed by how many things of Equestria were handwaved away with just "magic".)
I plead the Fifth.
“Your body knows what it needs. Your tongue just wants salt and fat.”
Hey, I resemble that remark! Well, that and sweets. And coffee.
This made me think of her "I actually have a plan this time" line in the movie. It seems Sunny has a long history of unsuccessful activism, where the passion with which she follows her cause is not always matched by an ability to think things through. I loved this side of Sunny when we first met her and it's great to see more.
I love this bit too. You can follow her logic, if you wildest dream is a community garden, that does suggest a lack of ambition. But we know the reason Sunny is an alicorn is because she had a Martin-Luther-King-level dream.
>jicama
Just chew on some balsa wood, it's roughly the same experience.
>Mad Horticulturist
Probably fine, but an endless parade of 5/5 vivids and the like... also, probably ought to be a land you control, as funny as the corner case of wiping wastes and utility lands off the map is, or more with an engineered plague or something.
>sanguine conservator
Logical to the point of i'm surprised it's not already a card.
That's because in the first wide shot of the garden, that shrub was more or less marshmallow shaped. Maybe Sparky has mad topiary skills?
Flesh-and-bone alicorn parts are so last generation. Glowing, diaphanous alicorn parts? Now that's something to be amazed by!
Still, "Princess Spike," "Canterlot Boutique," and "Once Upon a Zeppelin" demonstrated that the ponies of the past frequently had a blind love for princesses. Of course, back then, alicorn = princess. Given that Zipp doesn't have throngs of admirers following her every move, perhaps it's always been the appendages rather than the title that ponies have loved.
Pipp is focused on getting her number of likes back up, but I think she should be more concerned about the fact that Mane Melody has zero customers in the middle of the workday.
Maybe it's just because it makes them easier to animate, but I appreciate that in G5, eyeglasses and sunglasses no longer have earpieces hanging uselessly off the sides, seeing as those only make sense on human heads.
So... the show isn't going to address the fact that while she was parading around with the Filly Four, Misty had a cutie mark?
Ashnod the Uncaring is a nonbo with her Altar, although they at least go in the same sorts of decks so we can't be too angry about that.
5694556
Annoying that they specifically reprinted it in the packmover rares, though.
At least she's got a new best friend in Retrofitter.