I shall first prelude this chapter with my description of how I had reached my conclusions regarding the elements. It will be a wild ride, full of mystery, lust, and intrigue, but one must follow my train of thought to comprehend the weight of the discoveries that I had made.
It started like how all great tales start.
So I was sitting at home eating some Doritos© when I had an encounter with fate. Perhaps it was the work of the universe, or maybe Celestia herself in her desire to divulge her delicious secrets in a bag that equaled, if not surpassed, its level of deliciousness. But there I sat stood at the face of truth, gazing into the eyes of secrets long forgotten. Reaching into the bag for what I thought would be an onslaught of delectable nacho goodness, I instead encountered it.
A Celestia-shaped Dorito chip. This experience surpassed coincidence and set me upon a path in which I would venture into the inferno of lies itself. What did it mean?
It must have been a clue. Some celestial being from upon high setting me onto a path of truth. There was no way this was a fluke. It must have been…destiny.
I searched my soul, hoping to find the answers I sought. Then I wracked my brain. Celestia. Doritos. There must have been a connection.
I took a temporary break from my studies at the University of Canterlot, making up an excuse to tell to my idiot professor about a false affliction with syphilis, which he accepted with wary disbelief. Joke’s on him; I did catch syphilis a few months later.
One week became two, two became three, and two plus three makes five.[37] But it was during dinner at a ritzy restaurant joint that I had come upon the connection that the universe had beaconed me to make.
Spaghetti Dodino. A pony who started a brief craze in the 1980’s by creating a new style of matter that had yet to be digested. “Italian food” he had called it. He had told of a story of serving Celestia a grandiose dinner at her palace before he accidentally fell into a mystical mirror and came across such a cuisine. But such absurd apocrypha does not interest me. It was the sole book he had published at the height of this craze, titled “That’s A-Pony – 50 Recipes for Pizza Pies” that intrigued me. I immediately went to the library to investigate further.
Surely there had to be some kind of hint. What did the chip represent? What was the connection between Celestia and Dodino? It was on page 35 in which I came upon it.
“What makes a perfect pizza? Many of my critics have complained of my food’s greasy nature, or overuse of tomatoes in an apple-rich land. But to them I say ‘vafanapoli’! It takes the fine work, sweat, and toil of a chef to captivate and entice the true flavor and essence of this far away land. But in the end, the elements of a good pizza lie within the hoofs of everypony. Be it a young spring filly or a masterful artiste such as myself; you must make the pizza that lies within your heart.”[38]
But in the end, the elements of a good pizza lie within the hoofs of everypony
the elements of a good pizza
the elements
The truth had never been so clear.
The Celestia-Dorito-Dodino connection lies in the words, “good pizza”.
How does this relate to the Elements of Harmony you may ask? Well, if you were to shut your pizza-pie hole for a damn second so I can finish my incessant rambling maybe you’ll find out.
What are the ingredients of a good pizza? What toppings might one find on a good pizza? Tomato sauce, cheese, a crispy crust; these are all things one would expect a good pizza to have. And it is in that in which one can find the message.
What is the supposed symbol for the element of honesty? An apple. What other fruit (or sometimes vegetable, but let’s not get into semantics here) looks like an apple? A tomato. How do tomatoes tie into pizzas? They are literally the life blood of the pie.
Do you need more? How should the cheese be placed on a good pizza? One would not want a dearth of cheese. So, one could say that a pizza would need an excess of cheese. Or perhaps, a generous helping of cheese? The symbols are so clear they’re practically punching you in the face.
I would go on for the other elements but I couldn’t think of any more connections. But the point still stands. Two out of six is 33.3%.[39] And in my book, those are results you simply can’t ignore. Therefore, if the ingredients of the pizza signify their respectful Elements, one can infer that the pizza in its entirety is the product of their combined power.
So what was the point of this entire section? Well, you ungrateful little half-wit, it seems like I have to be forced to spoon-feed you the truth. The Celestia-shaped chip was not a coincidence. No, it was a message. Celestia, or a being even greater than her had attempted to bring the Elements of Harmony to my attention. But why?
So I can uncover the truth. So let’s rock this show.
There must be something regarding the Elements that is of grave importance. A fact ignored by others; a fact that only those who dare to look can see. After further research in the Crystal Libraries, using Dodino’s book as a guideline, I had come to a powerful conclusion. A conclusion that shakes the very basis of which Celestia had built her throne of lies upon.
The magic of the Elements does not come from the power of friendship.
It comes…from dark magic.
How could this be? How could the Elements, which are supposed to represent all that is good in the glorious land of Equestria be powered by such foul witchery? Well, you’re on a roll with this interrupting thing today.
I must now direct your attention to a basic skill that chefs such as Dodino must excel at; baking. The act of baking is still not understood by most scholars (mostly me). Some have said it is as simple as 1-2-3,[40] and some have said it is simply an organized chemical reaction, but the academic world (me again) is still astounded by how an oven can turn cake batter into a cake. It simply defies all reason; it cannot be explained. Do you know what else can’t be explained? DARK MAGIC.
Now, what other types of food are baked? Cakes, cookies…and PIZZAS. What do pizzas stand for? The combined power of the Elements of Harmony. What does this mean? The magical power brought about with the combined strength of the elements is fueled by dark magic. To put it in laypony’s terms, if pizzas are powered by dark magic, then so are the Elements.
This brings us to the question; how did Celestia and Luna discover the Elements of Harmony? Such a question is still a mystery to this day, even to me. Researchers have postulated that they may have been forged in the “literal fires of friendship” of the Hearth’s Warming legend, but I proved eight chapters ago that the play was full of shit. They also hypothesized that they simply may have been immortal instruments brought down by Celestia and Luna, the gods themselves. But in the next few chapters I’ll prove that’s full of shit too. So this will just have to remain unanswered for now.
No matter how they discovered it, the dark power of the Elements would promptly explain how they had defeated Discord. It is here where it must be made clear that Discord did not use dark magic, but a different class of magic all-together. If Starswirl’s theories are to be believed, and if a spectrum of magic does exist, then in accordance to his hypotheses, one side of magic would be full of light and purity, while the opposite end would be filled with hate and darkness. But chaotic magic wouldn’t even be on the same dimension of the spectrum all-together. So, as Discord was not a user of dark magic, he would not be accustomed to its power, and would fall victim to it much more easily. But how could such a powerful being such as himself fall to such ordered darkness?
Well, let me share my theory with you. What does dark magic lead to? The most powerful user of dark magic to reappear in recent times was King Sombra. What did his dark magic result in? The creation of dark crystals, but more importantly, the ability to live on as an immortal shadow.
Now what else casts a shadow? A statue. Immediately, if one was to connect the dots, one could see that it is shockingly clear that Discord succumbed to dark magic when he was subjected to stoned petrification, supporting my dark Elements claim. He was not obliterated by the light, but rather the dark, which is why he was cursed for over a millennia to cast a perpetual shadow. Academia: 0, Loose Change: 6 billion.
Jumping ahead a couple of centuries, now we must ask, how was Celestia able to defeat Luna with the Elements of Harmony? After all, Luna wasn’t stoned like Discord or me on a Tuesday afternoon; she was banished as Nightmare Moon to be sealed within the moon itself. To explain this, let us return to the theories that I had scrawled upon my restaurant napkin.
We had already established that dark magic is strongly connected with shadows. But think now, what casts the biggest shadow onto Equestria? The umbra of the moon. But what causes this humongous shadow to be created? The light of a sun during a solar eclipse, the phenomenon in which the moon attempts to overshadow the sun. Do I even need to make it clearer for you? Do the words, “Equestrian Civil War”, ring a bell? As it would take enormous power to seal a fellow alicorn like herself, Celestia, using the power of the sun and the darkness of the Elements, was able to seal Luna into the caster of the greatest shadow of them all, the moon.
The Elements will be re-explored when it comes to the rise of Twilight Sparkle and her prissy friends, but for now, I think I blew you (away) enough times this chapter. Was it good for you?
Anyways, now that the Elements of Harmony have been completely understood, we can jump back into where we left off. Through such foul power, Celestia and Luna were able to reach Discord himself and utterly defeat him and seal away his chaotic magic. It was through the power of dark magic that they had accomplished such a feat, and it would be through dark magic that they would construct the tenants of their regime and their lies. And with the end of the Age of Discord, the Classical Era began.