The Plaid Pladd

My Little Pony book report time again!!! This time we’re reading:

Princess Celestia and the Summer of Royal Waves

Summary of Amazingness
By Patricia
Princess Celestia is very busy ruling all of Equestria, running a magical school for unicorns, and raising the sun every day with her own magic. But when she receives a letter from her old friend Duchess Diamond Waves, she has to travel to the seaside duchy near Southern Prance called Monacolt to help. Duchess D thinks some scary monster attack is coming soon and only the magic of the young unicorns in her academy can save the kingdom! But her students are all failing her standardized tests so she’s hoping Princess C can help. Princess C is like “FIRST OF ALL, your magical hourglass that’s warning you about monsters seems hella sketchy. SECOND, your students are totes overworked and need some chillaxing time on the beach.” After a few of Princess Celestia’s building sand castle lessons, the students actually start performing magic well! But Duchess D is not convinced that mental health and scholastic aptitude are linked, probably because she’s already sunk so much of Monacolt’s resources into this standarized testing scheme. So Princess C stages a fake monster attack with a giant crab the size of a building in the middle of a beach party to show Duchess D what her students are really made of. Plus, that hour glass ends up being totally fake. The end.

So regal. So wise.

Analysis within MLP Canon and Fanon
By Steven
Unlike the Pinkie Pie book, this one actually stepped outside of the familiar by basically taking a single underdeveloped canon character (Celestia) and tossing her wholesale into a new place populated by new characters, with new backstories, referencing other largely non-show-based canons. So basically there’s little point of comparison—ironic, given that I have a good deal more questions (and gripes) about this one than the last—since the show has yet to ever go into detail on other equine polities (or, really, any extra-Equestrian nations apart from Griffonstone and, to a lesser extent, Yak-yakistan).

Tribal council? Rampage-ocracy? Viking warlord? Who knows.

All of which brings up the first question that this raises within the realm of canonicity, which is: what is the relationship between Equestria and Monacolt? Allied neighbors? Client state? Autonomous region? Feudal fiefdom? Actually, politics in Equestria have always been a little bit hazy, thanks to the show’s reliance on a direct diarchy of quasi-immortal alicorns with some sort of noble class hovering largely unseen off to one side.

(Side note: what does Prince Blueblood DO exactly?)

So now we have a Duchess Diamond Waves, who is apparently a particular friend of Celestia’s from “when they were younger,” which raises all sorts of questions on its own, e.g. “Just how old is this Diamond Waves character?” Actually, there are a lot of references to things I’d like a little more detail about, like Prance, King Nautilus, and the apparently sentient Carcinus species. Then there’s the interesting notion of Celestia offering up a Latin prayer/thanks to the sun when raising it? Which seems more like some personal habit than any kind of necessary ritual (as we’ve seen her raise the sun multiple times without any accompanying invocations). As to the Latin itself, not even going to go there, but suffice to say it could use a verb somewhere. Still, nothing provably off there. Luna does seem oddly playful about her former role as Nightmare Moon, which the author supports by describing it as “after Luna had acted up and been banished to the moon” which plays well with her character in the comics canon more than the show canon, but that’s a toss-up as well.

Basically it’s hard to point any strong fingers at canon leakage and more a case where you end up shrugging and going, “Well, hopefully some of this shows up again somewhere in the show for confirmation.”

Patricia’s Favorites
Character: Twilight Sparkle, who is back home manning Canterlot magic school in Celestia’s absence. She is a total nerd who assigns hella summer reading because it was her favorite part of school, and “I treated some of them to a reading from Star Swirl’s Seven Principles of Unicorn Magic: Third Edition including some of the hoofnotes!”
Part: Duchess D wants her students to get serious, so anyone caught in the halls during class time is attacked by magical spiders. EDUCATION

I’m just trying to help you LEARN, Frodo

Thing I Learned:Standardized testing is not the way to learn. The way to learn is to build sand castles and get fake-attacked by giant crabs.

Steven’s Favorites
Character: Discord, who appears only in a brief memory of a “prank” involving making himself invisible and following Celestia around for a week, repeating everything she says in a whisper. That’s comedy and/or horror gold right there!
Part: The frequent references to her shoes as “hoofcuffs,” the way she’s clearly changed her mind about Twilight’s friendship-spam mail, or the Monacolt-as-gambling-paradise reference. Can’t choose.
Thing I Learned: Basically, trolling and/or pranking is the way to run a country, and pulling one over on fellow monarchs is apparently a longstanding tradition.

Previously: Pinkie Pie and the Ponypalooza

It has been SO LONG since we’ve had a Middle School Book Report!!! In the spirit of Goddess Girls, Steven and I decided to start a new series of tween girl books that speak to both our expertises’. Namely:

It’s going to be great.

Summary of Amazingness
By Patricia
In the middle of one of Pinkie Pie’s awesome parties, her way-less-enthusiastic family shows up wanting to see Princess Twilight. They’re in dire need of royal help because the family rock farm is going under! Pinkie Pie immediately suggests throwing a big rock concert to remind everyone how great rocks are, but her pony-Mennonite family are sick of her frivolous suggestions and tell her to get serious. So her friends try to plan a party without her while Pinkie Pie paints her room brown and tries to schedule business meetings. Eventually her family sees she is miserable and apologizes, and the Ponypalooza is a huge success, somehow making people order more gravel and bricks. Yay!

Igneous Rock: Pony Mennonite

Analysis within MLP Canon and Fanon
By Steven
So let’s start with one thing; I have no idea what the Word of God is on the canonicity of this series, but I kind of want for it to be canon as written, and here is just one reason why: “Nine Inch Tails.” That’s not to mention a number of other ponified bands, but it does at least introduce something other than saccharine-sweet pop and quasi-country into canon (note: this was published in 2013, before the introduction of Countess Coloratura a.k.a. MLP Lady Gaga). For this book, though, apart from the fun little references like those, there’s really nothing noticeably out of canon. Pinkie is Pinkie, except when she’s Pinkamena, the Pie clan are basically American Gothic in pony form, the Mane 6 do their thing, and parties get thrown. It basically qualified as a standard slice of life episode without pushing any canon boundaries, save perhaps one; Igneous and Cloudy Quartz (Pinkie’s parents) have perfectly normal, if slightly stilted, speech patterns, despite the show’s canon (and a large slice of common fanon) depicting them as using archaic English forms (as of S05E20). All things considered, that gets a pass.

Pony Lady Gaga

Patricia’s Favorites
Character: Pinkie Pie’s pet alligator, Gummy, who does nothing except blink occasionally
Part: All the bands that play at Ponypalooza: Coldhay, John Mare, The Whooves, and Neigh-Z
Thing I Learned: Sales of gravel are directly related to rock concert attendance

Steven’s Favorites
Character: Pinkie Pie, for equipping the Cutie Mark Crusaders with spring-loaded shoes. That’s something that would get you on a watchlist in any other nation.
Part: Ditto the bands. That was cute.
Thing I Learned: That either gems are dirt cheap or else Equestria is an economic powerhouse, allowing random citizens to upgrade their driveways with bling. Now I want an amethyst car park. Also that apparently major headliner bands will do a concert for free if you know them well enough?

I mean, let’s face it; they’re Ponyville’s resident terrorists