Greetings everypony! In all the chaos of the past few weeks, this comic seems to have flown almost completely under the radar. It's another in the ongoing series of Classics Reimagined, but this one is a one shot. But any hopes of this being a quick read on that account is offset by the fact that the classic in question is The Odyssey--and it's featuring Pinkie Pie as our protagonist, who's known for going on almost as long as any epic poet you could name.
...Oki-doki-loki!
Grab a gyro, pull up a seat, and let's go on the longest and most epic of quests! Beware of the cyclops, angry gods, monsters, and above all, spoilers.
Our story begins not in Ithaca, but Sugar Cube Island. Pinkie Pie has been missing for what feels like a decade as she went off to the Great Trojan Baking Competition (I hear it's fierce as a war)!
But while she's gone, ponies have flocked to Mrs. Cake at Sugar Cube Corner, demanding not her hoof in marriage (as happened to Odysseus' wife Penelope), but the world's most perfect-est cupcake, made by Pinkie before she left. We see familiar faces like Pony/Donut Joe, Gustave le Grand, Mulia Mild as well as Zephyr Breeze, Trixie, and (potentially) a first for the comics, Cozy Glow (who has a speech balloon that is clearly meant for Trixie going to her by mistake. Whoops)!
I now want to see a duel between Trixie and Cozy Glow for who the most self-centered is.
Cozy Glow's appearance here raises many questions, the most pertinent being the one posed by Stan Pines:
As the pressure is put on Mrs. Cake to give the cupcake to somepony, we cut to Pinkie out at sea on a familiar looking trireme all by herself.
Fluttershy: I'd like to be a trireme!
Unlike Odysseus, who still had a crew by this point in the story, Pinkie's on her own here. Probably so we don't have the tragic aspect of what happens to everyone who sails with Odysseus. But before we have to worry about Pinkie getting too lonely and talking to bags of flour again, she's soon joined by a bird, possibly a masked shrike. She names him Homer because of course she does.
She exposits for a bit about being lost but wanting to get home to her perfect-est cupcake. She lands on an island and indulges in subverting some cliched lines about sand that all of you already know without me having to add anything further.
A pegasus joins her and after Pinkie talks some more about the baking competition, he offers her the island's specialty: the lotus macaroon. Yep, this is the island of the Lotus Eaters, and yet Lotus the spa pony is nowhere to be seen. Actually, now that I say it out loud, I can get why.
Pinkie joins a party on the beach with some other ponies and they enjoy the tasty macarons.
Maybe Cherie from Wild Manes made them?
As they eat them, Pinkie finds herself struggling to remember details about the baking competition. If I wasn't familiar with the myth in question, I'd wonder whether Tree Hugger had been involved in baking these things. Pinkie's pegasus companion (never named, likely because he forgot it) decides to tell her the story of Atalanta.
Yes, in a bit of a divergence from the Odyssey (what, MLP changing things from the source material?!) the story of the Odyssey is interspersed with tales of other Greek myths, done in different art styles, featuring other members of the Friendship is Magic cast.
First up is Rainbow Dash as Atalanta (I dub her Rainlanta), the skilled huntress and athlete though only the latter is focused on here. Unlike Atalanta, who was abandoned by her father out of disappointment for not being a son, and raised by a bear in the wilderness, Rainbow Dash's father is very much front and center here. I'm not the biggest fan of the episode with Rainbow's parents, much less the moral, but compared to Atalanta's dad, it's no competition who the better parent is. And speaking of competition, that brings us back to her story.
Rainbow's dad is concerned about how fast Rainlanta races through everything, thinking she needs to slow down occasionally and make friends, but Rainlanta doesn't think its worth being friends with anypony slower than her--which is everypony. So her father has an idea.
He holds a race with the one who beats Rainlanta having the right to be her friend. This is extremely silly, of course, but it's better that than going the route of the original myth, which was about marrying Atalanta. While he cheers Rainlanta on, he is disappointed that no one even comes close to beating her. After around 50 or so races (including one with a familiar looking pegasus that Pinkie Pie notices), Spitfire enters the fray. Rainlanta is convinced Spitfire doesn't stand a chance against her in a race--and she's right. But Spitfire paid a visit to Appledite (that's Applejack as Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love) and is given a golden apple.
I'm torn between quipping about how of course Spitfire would need to cheat to be beat Rainbow Dash at anything, or else talking about even in another setting, Rainbow Dash remains attracted to apples and apple-providers. Ho-hum.
During the race, she distracts Rainlanta by tossing the apple and crossing the finish line, winning the right to be her friend and everything ends well for all involved.
Admittedly, for this story I
would've switched up the casting. Spitfire just isn't a character I
would put in this role and it'd make more sense to have Applejack be the
pony who races Rainlanta and wins by using the golden apple to distract
her. I get the idea behind her being Aphrodite since Aphrodite was
awarded the Golden Apple of discord (ironically Discord has no connection to these apples despite appearing later in the comic) but she didn't actually grow apples herself. Plus what with being
the goddess of love and all, I'd sooner see Cadance in the role than
Applejack, even if they didn't want to make this race about marrying Rainlanta but being her friend.
In any event, with the side story over, we cut back to the main plot. Pinkie Pie objects that the pegasus she'd been talking to the whole time and telling the story was actually one of the racers we saw in the Rainlanta story. He'd forgotten about that and Pinkie realizes the macarons are making them forget. While the lotus-eaters don't see a problem with this, Pinkie chooses to stop eating them in order not forget her shortcomings, bringing up how important it was to learn from ones mistakes, like using giant support dowels to prop up giant cakes, for instance.
She angrily tosses down one macaron, apparently causing a mini-riot as she's chased back to her ship and off the island. Luckily no pursuit is given since the lotus macaron-eating ponies forget why they were upset almost immediately.
After a brief storm, our plucky pink pony protagonist winds up on another island, this time meeting the sorceress Circe, played by Zecora (Zirce). Zirce shows Pinkie around the island, which seems to have a lot of pigs in blankets, er, togas. I'm sure there's nothing unusual about that!
Over lunch, Pinkie shares a bit more about the Great Trojan Baking Competition. She had mentioned on the last island that she went to meet and impress the great Palomino Fillywood and mentioned how her great cake had collapsed. Here we learn that she actually had a second smaller cake hidden within her larger cake and ended up winning the competition for Creative Use of Fondant.
I guess that gives new meaning to this bit from the show.
When Pinkie talks about how great the most perfect-est cupcake she made is, Zirce warns her about overweening pride with the retelling of another classic myth.
It's time for the story of Arachne, with Rarity as the titular weaver (Rarachne). Rarachne is quite proud of her weaving skills, even boasting to a poorly disguised Twilight Sparkle that she could out-weave Athena, the goddess of wisdom, war-craft, and weaving (and possibly other things starting with w). Twilight Sparkle throws off her cunning disguise to reveal that she is, in fact, Athena (Twithena).
Not the first time Twilight's been cast in such a role.
The two duel it out with competing tapestries. Rarachne is actually less arrogant than Arachne was in the original myth, whose tapestry contained images mocking the gods, showing them at their least dignified moments. Still, Twithena remains outclassed. She acknowledges Rarachne's superiority (in a moment that Twilight herself breaks character to admit is likely out of character for Athena) but still curses her for her arrogance and transformers Rarachne into a spider.
I'd normally say Rarity is attractive enough that she could pull off any look, but spiders are just no.
All of the no.
Back in the main story, Pinkie concludes that perhaps she shouldn't be too braggy of her cupcake, though I'm grateful Zirce adds that the tale isn't meant to stop people from feeling confident and that a little brag on its own isn't the problem.
Zirce, wanting friends and company, asks Pinkie to stay with her, feeling lonely being the only one on this island filled with pigs. When Pinkie states that she needs to return to Sugar Cube Island, Zirce doesn't take this well. The pigs try to warn Pinkie, who struggles with putting two and two together here. Finally it comes out: the pigs were all ponies who tried to leave. If Pinkie doesn't choose to stay and be friends with Zirce, she'll become Piggy Pie.
Pinkie: I TOLD you she was an evil enchantress!
Pinkie rallies the pigs to her and dashes to the shore, stopping only to say that she's sorry Zirce feels lonely and she'd be her friend on her own, without needing to be threatened. There's an explosion behind Pinkie while wearing sunglasses because reasons, also the bugbear is suddenly there?
Things get a little confusing. We cut to the shore where some pigs are climbing into boats while Pinkie finds the bugbear in her trireme. Zirce speaks to one of the pigs who turns back into Marini, Zecora's foalhood friend from Farasia in the Season 10 comics.
Zecora: Marini? What're you doing here?
Marini: A very small cameo.
It seems Zirce turned her into a pig to improve Marini's sense of smell and started turning ponies into pigs in order to keep Marini company, lying when she said she did it so that she (Zirce) would have company. At least, that's the best I can glean. The other pigs turn back into ponies or other creatures and all's well that ends well, anyway.
Pinkie (courtesy of a montage) takes the bugbear back to Tartarus, and I have to marvel and wonder why it wasn't Cerberus. I mean, he was an actual character in the show for crying out loud and there was a plot about him running away and needing to be brought back to Tartarus! Discord himself cuts in to complain about the montage, playing the role of Hades. That actually really doesn't fit character-wise unless you're going by the wise-cracking Disney version of Hades, which I suspect was the idea. He banters with the author for a bit, par for the course for these comics.
You know how he roles.
He gives Pinkie a map to Sugar Cube Island, with two paths. One looks very calm and easy, the other decidedly not. Pinkie is about to set out on the first course when she's stopped by Fluttershy as Persephone (Fluttersephone), goddess of spring--and the wife of Hades, not that the comic gets into that. As is the trend, she tries to impart some advice to Pinkie with another story.
This one is of Helios and Phaethon. Helios, the Sun titan, is naturally played by Celestia (Celesios). If you're familiar with Greek myths, you'd naturally think Luna would be Selene, the Moon titan. But as this comic seems to be sticking with the most well-known Greek myths--and Helios and Selene figures in few of those together--they decide to use the myth of Helios' chariot and put Luna in the role of Phaethon. That's Helios' son but is here made into a sister for obvious reasons. So we have Celesios and Lunatheon.
Lunaethon is jealous of Celesios for the attention and praise she receives for carrying the sun each day on her chariot, which she believes to be a simple task. She begs and pleads for the chance to help Celesios, but Lunaethon is told it's much harder than it looks, not that she really listens.
For her birthday, as the gods assemble--including Twithena, Appledite, Fluttersephone, and ... Zirce? (who is not a god or a titan but okay)--Lunaethon is granted one wish. Naturally, her wish is to pull the sun chariot. Celesios isn't happy about it, but gives Lunaethon her chance and it ... doesn't go great. I mean, it goes better than it did for Phatheon in the myth. His destructive ride with the sun threatened to scorch the entire world before Zeus blasted him out of the sky and killed him.
Still, Lunaethon is upset since she wanted to be important and be respected like Celsios. While the sun might not be in Lunatheon's skill set, Celesios comes up with an idea. The moon has been without a chariot for a while and you can guess where this goes.
Back in the main story, Pinkie is a bit lost when it comes to the moral and what it means for her, so Fluttersephone just spits it out and tells her to go left on the map, the path that looks less calm and more dangerous. But as is Pinkie's wont, she gets a bit mixed up and goes right anyway. She navigates between rocky outcroppings and bad puns, finding herself trapped between Scylla and Charybdis.
Pinkie propels herself out of this tight spot by using her party cannon as an impromptu rocket engine--just as Homer told the classic story.
Coup de Burst!
After getting through all that, Pinkie finds that she's back home at Sugar Cube Island!
This is why I haven't been calling Pinkie Pie "Pinkeus" or something. That statue is of Odysseus himself. No idea how that works.
Unfortunately, her trek of ten years (or perhaps just a week) has been too long and Mrs. Cake gave in and called for a competition to decide who would get the world's most perfect-est cupcake. Pinkie is despondent, not feeling up for a another baking competition after the Great Trojan one.
Luckily, we're greeted by the greatest Pie of them all, Maud!
Maud makes everything better.
Pinkie goes from trying to break Maud's back with her hugs to breaking the fourth wall before getting around to telling Maud her problems. The answer? What else but another story.
Maud tells the story of Psyche and Eros, featuring Sugar Belle (Psychelle) and Big Macintosh (Macros). Psychelle is prophesied to marry a terrifying monster, Macros. He treats her with the utmost kindness, but the one instruction he gives is that she can never look upon him. She's soon taken with Macros' thoughtfulness and compassion, but her curiosity and fear that he is truly a monster leads her to looking in on him while he sleeps. He's clearly not a monster, but per the rules of these things, by looking on him she loses him. This is why trust is important, kids!
Desperate, Psychelle goes to Appledite. In the myths, Eros is Aphrodite's son which ... yeah, I ain't touching that one with these characters playing them. I suppose the connection here may also be why Applejack got this part back in the Rainlanta myth, but I still think the casting is off.
Appledite asks Psychelle if she's willing to put in the hard to work to earn back Macros' trust, sending her to carry out a series of arduous tasks and errands. It's exhausting but Psychelle keeps putting one hoof in front of the other, determined to prove herself. In the end, she's rewarded by being reunited with Macros.
