More Filler

Alternate Title: I Ponder the Existence of Magic in a Cartoon World

“Gah!” I yelled and made a show of dramatically grabbing my neck.

“Your neck is fine, Eris. The brace was on to prevent injury in transit,” Softie looked toward the room’s only window to gauge the time, “The sun is down and I assume a guard will be here to collect us soon so please collect yourself.”

“Am I not together?” I looked myself over and around as if I was missing a piece of myself. As I did so Soft Wing pinched the bridge of his beak.

“Just… please be on your best behavior at dinner,” Soft Wing was clearly growing tired of my act. I couldn’t help it. I’m usually a pretty happy-go-lucky person and with the meds I just couldn’t control myself. It may not have been such a bad thing though; Softie was really uptight and maybe my joking around would help him loosen up eventually. To the relief of Softie, a guard interrupted his growing headache. The guard was specifically a gray unicorn, not that it mattered, but it got me thinking about how magic worked.

The horned guard informed us that dinner was ready and led us through the maze of hallways to the dining hall. All the way I paid no mind to the confusing twists and turns we took and instead pondered how magic fit into this world.

As the show made clear, magic was an integral part of Equestrian life, at least for ponies. The show implied that literally everything held some kind of intrinsic magical energy. I went ahead and assumed that magic was emotionally driven given the nature and power of the Elements of Harmony. The show only really showed that type of magic: harmonic. This kind of magic was probably everywhere since most people, or ponies, usually try to please others rather than antagonize them. But surely there had to be an antithesis to this powerful magic. The show also made it clear that there was indeed an opposite to harmony. This opposition came in the form of Discord.

Discord, the apparent spirit of disharmony. His powers were vast and he seemed to have complete control of them. He harnessed the power of chaos to tip the scales in his favor and win the throne of Equestria twice. At least, that’s what the show said.

Discord, as I’ve said before, is my favorite character in My Little Pony. He’s actually the reason I started watching in the first place. I loved John de Lancie’s role in Star Trek: The Next Generation and when I heard he had a role nearly identical to Q in MLP I decided to check it out. Why did I love Q and Discord’s roles? It’s simple, really: chaos is interesting.

Both Q and Discord’s sole purpose was to serve as an undefeatable enemy. In Star Trek, Q was a literal god compared to the puny mortals aboard the USS Enterprise. He loved to pop in whenever he felt like it to bother his newfound playthings and amused himself by passing “judgment” on them. With a literal snap of his fingers Q could change any and every aspect life, from teleportation to summoning cigars and mariachi bands to freezing a living being. The captain of the Enterprise, Picard, knew that they were at the fate of an all-powerful madman and the defeat of him was an impossibility. Instead of approaching Q as a normal adversary, the captain treated their rivalry like a parent-child relationship, albeit an incredibly unstable one as Q could kill Picard at a moment’s notice.

Picard had to change Q’s way of thinking. He made the “god” realize how skewed his views were and taught him that with great power comes great responsibility. Q was in a few episodes and though he was never as bad as in the first episodes the same plot played out every time: Q shows up at an inopportune time, Q causes potentially harmful chaos, Picard chastises him, Q pouts and eventually returns things to normal, Q leaves a better man. Q’s breaking of the monotonous norm and need of divergent thinking for defeat him made his character extremely interesting. It was the same in My Little Pony. Technically Discord wasn’t defeated as much as his confrontation put on hold.

Let’s face it, the ponies on the show lived pretty boring lives. They had very set routines and the second one tiny part of their day-to-day lives diverged from what they held as “normal” they broke. Look at how they reacted when another race showed up. One zebra walks into town and literally every pony runs inside, locks the doors, turns off the lights, and pretends their not at home. And when Twilight first showed up every pony was in awe at the new resident. It’s clear that nothing interesting or chaotic ever really happens in the town.

If harmony is present in the ponies and the power of harmonic magic is dependent on the current level of harmony present in the pony utilizing it, where does Discord’s power come from? He seemed to create chaos, and a lot of it at that, rather than draw upon it like harmonic magic does. I guess all magic was not created equal. But I wondered if there were other types of magic in this world. And if there were, what were their sources? Did have magic? How exactly do you utilize magic anyway? I guess I’d have to wait to find out seeing as I couldn’t exactly use my left hand to snap. I’ve never been able to snap with my right finger so until my talon was all healed everything was up for speculation.

I made a mental note to ask Celestia if my assumption s about magic were correct. This world was so foreign and I had so many questions but I didn’t want to overload her. Speaking of this world, what exactly was it called? I guessed “Equestria” referred to the country (kingdom?) but what was the world as a whole called? What were the other countries/kingdoms called?

I had to stop my accumulation of questions short as we entered the dining hall. It was beautiful, just like the rest of the castle. It was room taken up mostly by a long table surrounded by many chairs with the walls lined with tables and flowers for decoration. Only one wall had any windows but they weren’t stained glass. Instead the windows were much more classically cast-like in that they were rather skinny, tall, and pane-less, allowing the cool night breeze to fill the room with fresh air.

At the far end of the long table sat Celestia at the head and Luna to her right on corner. The guard led us right up to side to the left of Celestia and motioned for us to take our seats. Softie took the chair closest to the sun princess and was clearly unnerved by the proximity and I sat next him. Sitting on the side of the table gave clear view of the night princess, Luna.

I have to say she was just as lovely as her sister but in a very different way. In stature she was a few hands shorter than her sister but probably still taller than myself and her free-flowing hair that was the night sky were quite intimidating. She lacked the more ostentatious look Celestia had with her royal regalia, as Luna’s was darker and muted rather than sparkly gold. Perhaps the most notable thing about the younger diarch was the way she carried herself.

Celestia had a very powerful feel about her but it was less menacing and direct and more intelligence and wisdom-based. Luna on the other hand, to put it simply, looked and felt like she had no problem going hand to hand (hoof to hoof?) with somebody in battle. It’s hard to describe how exactly she put off this feeling, as she was simply sitting calmly at a table waiting for dinner without a word, but it was there. She felt… sharp. Yes, “sharp” was the best way to describe her. Like a sword. I guess Celestia would be “overwhelming” then.

Unfortunately I didn’t realize that the entire time I’d been scrutinizing her appearance I’d been staring blankly at Luna until she spoke up.

She looked around nervously after a few moments of my stare and eventually brought a hoof up to her cheek, “Have I something on my face?” she questioned nervously. Celestia giggled and Softie held his face in his talon (he seemed to do that a lot around me).

Another flawless first impression by the alien being that is moi.

Author's Note

I'm tired and wrote this. It's very much filler but it also serves to get me back into the groove of writing since I've had such a long sabbatical. I might come back tomorrow and sand it down a little bit but I at least want to get it up tonight so I don't procrastinate on it anymore. Unfortunately this week is finals week for me and then I have to get ready for a trip up north for a week so I probably won't get another chapter up until at least after Christmas so until next time, MERRY CHRISTMAS! Drink nog and be merry like I'll be doing as soon as finals are over! HO HO HO!