Well, first things first: I have no idea how long I just sat and stared at that last panel, purely because I was stuck absorbing the heartwrenching unfairness of it all. There's not a lot of comics that have made me do that.Now, on with symbolic analysis. Let's see if all those rereads of Watchmen have paid off.1) Let's start with the most minor observation. In the fourth panel, Dinky is shown finishing her drawing by using the green crayon for the trees; the grey and yellow crayons have already been used and set aside, meaning that Dinky drew herself and Derpy first before going back to concern herself with the background. This displays the depth of the affection that Dinky holds for her mother and the importance she places on their relationship, which serves to supplement the strength behind the later assertion, "I love you Mommy!" - the kind of blunt, direct truth that it seems only children can really pull off.2) You pointed out in the description that Dinky is the one who is torn in half in the drawing. At that point, it was fairly hard not to notice that the heart is ripped not only in two, but directly down the middle, which of course mirrors the scene in which Twilight, just after becoming discolorized upon the realization that the bond she shares with her friends has come to an end, sheds a tear that forms the shape of a broken heart upon hitting the ground.3) Weird to think about how someone who started off as some complete non-character in a background shot of one episode grew to become so beloved purely because one of the animators happened to cross her eyes, huh? I suppose it's only fitting, then, that eyes are such a recurring motif within the comic; the most we ever see of Derpy's own eyes are when she's already in the midst of being corrupted by Discord, and the fact that they aren't crossed even then is a nice indicator for the direction the rest of the comic will take her. More important, though, is the fact that this is the last we get to see of her eyes at all, as not only are her eyes closed in the following panel, but they're obscured from view altogether during the following scene; just as Derpy is denied any of the joviality or love toward her daughter that make her who she is, the eyes that codified her as such to begin with are denied from the reader. And as if that weren't compelling enough on its own, Panel 7 underscores the importance of eyes as a cornerstone of the comic's symbolism with its close-up of Dinky's eye - only appropriate, since (together with the color palette of the rest of her body) it was Dinky's eye color that caused the fandom to link her to Derpy in the first place.4) Within the context of the episode, the fact that Discord was able to reduce Twilight to an empty shadow of her former self without the "hypnosis" that he used to corrupt her friends is a crucial point. His corruption of the rest of the characters centered around merely exploiting their personal insecurities and exposing them to debasing truths about the Elements that they represent - laughter can be hurtful, sometimes one loyalty must be sacrificed for the sake of another, etc. - before letting his powers do the rest (ironically enough, this even holds true for Fluttershy's case; Discord's unfair cheating goes to show that no matter how at peace with yourself and the world around you that you are, both through the acceptance of your own flaws and your unwillingness to think even the slightest of unkind thoughts toward those you care about, bad things can and will still happen to you). Yet Twilight's core basis as a character has been established from the very beginning to be derivative of experiencing true friendship for the first time in her life, as symbolized by the fact that the almighty Element of Magic can only come into existence once the preexisting five Elements are brought together and united. (I'm sure I don't need to remind you that friendship IS magic.) In the same way as Twilight, Dinky is not directly discolorized by Discord, but rather through the loss of the thing that matters to her the most. Twilight is defined in the series by the relationships she shares with her friends; within this comic, Dinky is similarly characterized purely by her love toward her mother, and it is in the moment in which this anchoring point is abruptly and cruelly robbed from her that Dinky is affected so profoundly that she becomes just as tainted as Derpy. Going even further, in Part 2, Derpy is cured instantly upon Discord's defeat because Discord's spell was effectively an illusion, whereas Dinky must overcome her sadness organically because its cause, just like Twilight's, was based in objective reality - yet comes about readily in the end, because such strife ultimately runs contrary to our innate desire for love and innocence upon which the show is predicated.How did I do?