Friendship is Card Games: Rainbow Dash Presents: My Little Dashie · 12:20pm Mar 13th, 2022
This one feels… odd. I’ve met ROBCakeran53 in person, and I know well how much he doesn’t want to be associated with this story. Though, to be fair, you could hardly say that's what we'll be discussing...
If you’re not familiar with My Little Dashie, I’m impressed. It’s the most viewed story on Fimfic, with more than twice as many views as the the next one and three times as many as Past Sins. To summarize: A man who feels adrift in life finds meaning by finding an amnesiac, age-regressed Dash and raising her as his daughter, with all the struggle and joy that that entails. She must go, for her planet needs her, but she leaves a lasting, undeniably positive impact on him.
Mind you, that’s the standard telling. Dawn Somewhere took things in a rather different direction…
“Harry Wayne lived his life like any normal monkey.”
You know you’re off to a strong start with that opening line. Especially when it then goes onto a digression about the philosophy of time.
Yes, rather than just some guy trying to make it through life amid the slow march of urban decay, we have a pastiche of Batman and the Boy Who Lived. Because why not?
“Now who on Earth would throw away a perfectly good magic pony?”
It’s a fair question.
Yeah, vigilantism doesn’t work as a steady source of income, and this Wayne isn’t in charge of a major corporation. Slight issue there. Along with the broken heat and the crippling trauma that comes from combining two of fiction’s greatest orphan heroes.
“No rule can withstand Rainbow Dash.”
Arguably the most canon-accurate thing Mentally Advanced Dash has ever said.
I admire Lefonda immediately going for wishes. Hey, this is a rainbow-maned magical pony she’s dealing with. Why wouldn’t it be able to grant wishes?
Ah yes, Barbara and Sven, the beloved toy line from Mattol.
Giving a child unrestricted access to her favorite candy that’s also her guardian’s primary means of coaxing good behavior out of her. Yeah, not a surprising outcome.
To be fair, getting blackbagged and vivisected by the government isn’t entirely out of the question for an alien lifeform.
Yeah, zero stimulation or opportunity to grow as a person doesn’t exactly make for the most well-adjusted adult. There’s a reason Dash still doesn’t have a cutie mark.
I do appreciate how they apparently sell Batarangs at the Poor Monkey Store. You know. For all your Bataranging needs.
And enter the Jokermort,
Apparently pegasi are a thing in this world beyond Dash. That or the Jokermort studies mythology, but wizards have already been established, so it stands to reason that winged horses could exist.
Heh. Dash has been so sheltered and so trained to fear dissection that any other form of horrible death doesn’t register as a threat. Partly because it’s not specifically getting carved open, partly because she has no context for it.
“You know, I have the exact same problem with society.”
This was six years before the Joaquin Phoenix movie, for the record.
“This is the face of fear!”
“… Well, I have the face of Rainbow Dash.”
Truly, there is no more innocent or unsuspecting ingenue than this Rainbow Dash.
“Boudicca Stephanie Cadillac Washington” is an outstanding name and I am genuinely a little jealous.
“This conversation has taken a turn I was not prepared for.”
Yeah, same. I forgot about this exchange.
“Smeg’s.” What an unfortunate name.
Ooh, nice cameo by Captain Hook the biker gorilla, with his “PVTR PRM8” vanity plate.
Let’s be honest, this Joker’s a lot more emotionally supportive than most instances. Even if he’s holding a karaoke bar hostage in the process. Again, very sheltered Rainbow Dash.
Okay, the DK Winery with its signature barrels is a stroke of genius. Likewise a carnival game where players are invited to bash a keyboard while blindfolded to see if they produce Shakespeare.
The 
shirt raises several questions… though the show being a thing was certainly a major factor in the original story. Honestly, I just feel bad for the poor actual pony. Getting its mane and tail dyed can’t be pleasant.
When no one was looking, the Jokermort took forty funnel cakes. He took 40 cakes.
That’s as many as four tens.
And that’s terrible.
Plushies are always rife with references in these. We’ve got GIR’s moose, Keroro Gunso, onic, a quintet of Mrs. Buzzies, and a chubby Twilight plush.
“You know that I love you too!
You feed me sugarcubes
Can’t say what more I could want
I am your pony waifu!”
And this is why it’s important to forge an emotional bond with your children rather than just buying their love with treats. If you raise a mercenary, someone else may make a higher bid.
Wow, good thing there was an ape in a familiar harlequin costume.
We’ve seen it several times in this animation, and I have to wonder about the nature of Alico. The Alicorn Company, perhaps?
“You’re not allowed to have beer!”
“Why?”
“We’re going home!”
The whole scene is delightfully warped, but that particular bit of parental fiat is right in the sweet spot of hilarious and infuriating.
Apparition does make for an easy Batman Exit.
The simian Michael Jackson poster in Lefonda’s room delights me for reasons I cannot explain. Especially since it’s Bubbles. (Of course it is; who else?)
“Is it normal for a boyfriend to kill other monkeys?”
“Oh, pfft. That’s just what men do, girl.”
I have some concerns.
“I just built a time-activated device. Very soon now, it will turn the entire world into ponies!”
And then we took a sharp turn into the Conversion Bureau. (And no, I have no plans to stir the ashes of that garbage fire.)
I’m not sure what’s better, the rest of the Mane Six unceremoniously getting dumped into the living room, or Fluttershy getting stuck on the ceiling fan.
This is apparently far from the first time Dash has lost her memories. I wonder how many other instances involved her getting tossed through time and space.
And Fluttershy gets left behind. If it took two weeks to convince Twilight to bring her along while she was actually there, how long will it take to convince Purplesmart she even existed?
Yeah, the conversion device never stopped being a thing. Also, I do appreciate the equine version of Voldermort’s signature noseless look. It’s legitimately unsettling. And a rubber chicken with a knife is a pretty great cutie mark.
I’d also forgotten about the twist with the true circumstances of Harry’s parents’ deaths. Pony AIDS is indeed no joke.
The Crusaders help a pony find her mark two year before “Crusaders of the Lost Mark.” After a certain point, this starts getting eerie.
And Fluttershy actually does get kidnapped by the CIA in the post-credits scene, though I imagine they’re more interested in interrogating a prime suspect in the mass ponification of the planet than they are in getting a good look at her organs. After all, there are plenty of other ponies to study now.
Delightful madness here, along with a sobering look at how Dash really won the parental lottery in the original story. There are far worse fates than your father hiding your fictional origins.
In any case, let’s see how I can get this even further removed from the source material:
Unwarranted Abduction 1WW
Instant
Addendum — Exile target creature if it has power 4 or greater or if you cast this spell during your main phase.
“Thank you for your compliance.”
Inspiring Pegasus 2WW
Creature — Pegasus
Flying
Whenever Inspiring Pegasus attacks, creatures you control get +1/+1 until end of turn.
Some admire the pegasus in its flight. Others are driven to follow it.
2/1
Illusion of Progress 2U
Instant
Target spell’s owner puts it on the top or bottom of their library.
“Time is an illusion. Whatever you were trying to do doubly so.”
Twilight Doll 2UU
Artifact Creature — Unicorn Construct
Indestructible
Whenever Twilight Doll is dealt damage, draw a card.
T: Twilight Doll deals 1 damage to itself.
“What do you mean I’m in the public domain?”
—Princess Twilight Sparkle
0/1
Wishplume Djinn 3UU
Creature — Pegasus Djinn
Flying
When Wishplume Djinn enters the battlefield, you may reveal a card you own from outside the game with mana value X or less and put it into your hand, where X is the number of creatures with flying you control.
3/3
Exploratory Surgeon 5U
Creature — Ape Spellshaper
3U, T, Discard a card, Sacrifice a creature: Draw three cards. Activate only as a sorcery.
“Let the spooks ask all the questions they like. Vivisection provides more answers than they’ll ever get.”
3/5
Simmering Acid B
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant creature
At the beginning of your end step, put a -1/-1 counter on enchanted creature.
If enchanted creature would die, exile it instead.
“Where’s the fun in a quick death?”
—The Jokermort
Harlequin Aerialist 3B
Creature — Pegasus Rogue
Spectacle 1B (You may cast this spell for its spectacle cost rather than its mana cost if an opponent lost life this turn.)
Flying
Many Ravnicans think ponies are too innocent for the Cult of Rakdos. The Pinkie Revue proves them wrong.
3/2
Tacky Display 5B
Sorcery
Improvise (Your artifacts can help cast this spell. Each artifact you tap after you’re done activating mana abilities pays for 1.)
All creatures get -1/-1 until end of turn for each tapped artifact you control.
The Jokermort loves painfully bad puns.
“Tubby Wubby Pony Waifu” 2R
Enchantment — Song
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a verse counter on “Tubby Wubby Pony Waifu”.
3R, Sacrifice “Tubby Wubby Pony Waifu”: Target opponent may have you draw X cards, where X is the number of verse counters on “Tubby Wubby Pony Waifu”. If they don’t, you mill X cards, then “Tubby Wubby Pony Waifu” deals damage to that player equal to the total mana value of those cards.
Asphalt Assailant 2RR
Creature — Ape Pilot Pirate
Raid — When Asphalt Assailant enters the battlefield, if it was cast and you attacked this turn, untap target creature or Vehicle you control. After this phase, there is an additional combat phase followed by an additional main phase.
4/2
Grand Detonation 2RR
Instant
Destroy target artifact and each artifact with lesser mana value.
“It can’t be a perfect night out without some fireworks to cap it off.”
—The Jokermort
Pegaccelerator 3R
Artifact Creature — Equipment Pegasus
Flying
Equipped creature gets +3/+0 and has flying.
Pegaccelerator and equipped creature attack each combat if able.
Reconfigure 2R (2R: Attach to target creature you control; or unattach from a creature. Reconfigure only as a sorcery. While attached, this isn’t a creature.)
3/1
Simian Spirit Brewer 3R
Creature — Ape Citizen
Exile a card from your hand: Add R.
A sip of the banana wine leaves your head spinning. A full glass brings oblivion, and with it all the possibilities of the unformed void.
3/2
Random Output 4RR
Sorcery
Improvise
Shuffle your library, then exile cards from the top of it until you exile a nonland card. You may cast that card without paying its mana cost.
Mow to the Roots 2GG
Sorcery
Destroy target nonbasic land. Support 2. (Put a +1/+1 counter on each of up to two target creatures.)
Dash’s chores were the only form of exercise allowed to her.
Equestria Consumes Earth 3G
Enchantment — Saga
(As this Saga enters and after your draw step, add a lore counter. Sacrifice after III.)
I — Mill four cards, then return up to two land cards from your graveyard to your hand.
II — Destroy all artifacts.
III — Create a 2/2 green Pony creature token for each creature card in your graveyard.
Follow the Path 3GG
Sorcery
Each player may put a permanent card from their hand onto the battlefield.
Whenever a player planeswalks, you may return Follow the Path from your graveyard to your hand.
It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of a planeswalker duel.
Forceful Personality 4G
Creature — Ape Advisor
At the beginning of combat on your turn, target creature you control gets +3/+3 until end of turn.
Someone who’s gotten assertiveness training from the five-hundred pound gorilla also sits wherever they want.
3/3
Grapple Gun 3
Artifact — Equipment
Equipped creature has first strike and can’t be blocked except by creatures with flying or reach.
Equip 1
A must for any urban vigilante.
Foster UB
Sorcery
Put target creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. That creature has base power and toughness 1/1.
Griselbrand’s reign of terror would resume after his nap.
Keronian Invader 2(br)
Creature — Frog Soldier
Menace
Sacrifice an artifact or enchantment: Tap Keronian Invader. Any player may activate this ability.
He’ll start subjugating humanity as soon as he’s done with his latest model kit.
3/3
The Jokermort 1UBR
Legendary Creature — Monkey Wizard
Whenever one or more cards are put into a player’s graveyard from anywhere, The Jokermort deals that much damage to that player.
X, T: Each player mills X cards.
Some monkeys just want to watch the world burn.
3/3
Harry, the Bat Who Lived 3WB
Legendary Creature — Monkey Wizard
Flash
Vigilance, menace
As long as Harry entered the battlefield this turn, it has indestructible, reach, and “Whenever Harry blocks a creature, you may exile that creature until Harry leaves the battlefield.”
4/4
Dynamite Diplomacy 3BR
Sorcery
Target opponent may sacrifice an artifact, a creature, and/or an enchantment. If fewer than three permanents were sacrificed this way, you draw cards equal to the difference.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get something I want either way.”
—The Jokermort
Deciding that the protagonist is both Batman and Harry Potter and then just running with it is the very definition of committing to the bit.
Not quite what you're going for here but I'm going to go on a tangent anyway for anyone who doesn't know. The whole Joker/Society joke actually originates in Nolan's The Dark Knight, though it took a while for it to reach the shape we know today. Back in the day people would make Internet memes with impact font over a picture of Ledger's Joker, typically inspired by the hospital scene with Harvey Dent, that boiled down to "[thing] is frowned upon while [similar thing] isn't". Because this was the Internet and people making memes overlapped with people who called themselves nerds, a common iteration of it was "People watch TV for hours and no one bats an eye, but if you play videogames for too long everyone loses their mind", with the parts before and after the comma on the top and bottom of the image respectively. This kind of memes usually made "social commentary" of the very vapid kind you'd expect from late 2000s/early 2010s edgy internet tweens making memes with Impact font over pictures of the Joker. And they usually began with "We live in a society where". And then eventually, people grew up slightly, looked back and realised how atrociously stupid and pretentious and edgy most of those memes were and they began to meme the memes themselves, thus "We live in a society / Bottom Text", the second half mocking how all those memes would start the same way. Now I could also talk about how that own meme evolved and eventually imploded with the whole GRU shitshow but I've already made a long enough off topic post.
Inside Baseball Alert: Twilight Doll is probably still stuffy but in a completely different way. Naturally, being Twilight Sparkle means that she teaches people instead of hurting them.
Inside Baseball Alert: Wishes grab cards from outside the game. The irony that this pseudo-zone is more accessible than exile has been noted by me before.
Inside Baseball Alert: Another Spellshaper, another spell being shaped.
Inside Baseball Alert: The alternate universe FoME created for the setting of The Implicit Neighs keeps paying dividends. Although I guess it'd be more like taxes?
Inside Baseball Alert: Totally different kind of "simian spirit" than before, but the only thing anyone ever cared about was what it did.
Stupid Complicated Game Alert: Griselbrand is just one example of an expensive creature that won't care that it's been reduced to a 1/1. Doubles as an Inside Baseball Alert, obviously.
I love the MLD episode of this series, because it's not just funny for its general absurdity, but also because of how great it works as a satire of the original story. I know My Little Dashie has already been criticised and parodied to hell by everyone, so it's considered low-hanging fruit nowdays, but some of this stuff is genuinely brilliant.
For example, the protagonist of MLD frequently mentioned his dead parents as a way to hammer home how empty and miserable his life was before finding Dash, so Harry Wayne is a fun riff on that, being an amalgam of two famous fictional orphans (and ones who, in contrast, led very active and interesting lives). And then there's the way Dash gets fat from her diet of sugar cubes and lack of exercise, which is a pretty realistic outcome of her being confined in a house for fear of being discovered. The protagonist in MLD did try to address that by taking her out to fly sometimes in places where there were no people around, but yeah, for a pony as free-spirited and athletically inclined as Rainbow Dash, her living situation in the original story would be incredibly limiting and frustrating for her, and the Rainbow Dash Presents version actually does a better job of capturing that than the original did.
There's actually a lot of interesting commentary like that going on here, and it's just one of many reasons why I love MAS and RDP.
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lh6.googleusercontent.com/0JAWsYat203Hz0Pd-9Mw1mtTWyNeh42vqvtOJmpAs406gTNE3FCa9jdoSGPKoyrSALmYBtQpd2UufP_EEgzLo5GYeesAJ_klc_IeZzVamx74jy9rBK05c0k_mP0Ow5etnlxngACG
Is Unwarranted Abduction meant not to do anything itself if cast outside the player's main phase?
5643859
Stupid Complicated Game Alert: note the "or"; you can still use it as the usual "destroy target creature with power 4 or greater".
5643969
I'd missed that, thanks.
5643969
If I may, perhaps this wording might be clearer:
Unwarranted Abduction 1WW
Instant
Exile target creature if it has power 4 or greater.
Addendum — If you cast this spell during your main phase, exile target creature.
Also, I was wondering: I divine that our host has The Order of Dawn, Pt. 2 lined up for Sunday, but I wonder if he might be willing to substitute in Princess Cadance and the Spring Hearts Garden instead. After all, the next batch falls on the spring equinox, so it’s literally the perfect time for that one.
Anyway, that’s about all for now. Keep up the good work!
5644461
While I do acknowledge the perfect opportunity, the fellow who does the card mock-ups I put up on Derpibooru will be in Disneyworld this weekend, and thus I already have the d20 Pony mock-up made and ready for deployment. Bit late to alter the schedule now.
Also, your proposed model for Unwarranted Abduction would allow someone to exile two creatures. Magic, like any programming language, can sometimes force you to explain simple concepts in complicated terms.