Hazed by 4Chan · 2:24am Mar 4th, 2014
She loves . . . sports? Well, that's random.
I can probably add this to my list of accomplishments: I've been insulted by 4Chaners . . . well, no, that's not fair. I've had a story, specifically Mating Customs of Species Equus parvus, criticized by 4Chaners. They've offered penetrating insights sure to end my writing career, insights such as, "What is this shit?" and, "Full-on retard."
Fortunately, I can take such constructive comments and improve my writing in the future.
The only one I would feel like answering is the one from the guy who complains because I describe a pony as bigger than a man, and Twilight Sparkle as bigger than the average pony. To that I can only say, look, dude, I'm sorry I actually know the size range of the animal called a pony and you don't: a full-grown pony stands between nine and a half to fourteen and a half hands at the withers. That's 38 inches (over 3 feet) to 58 inches (almost 5 feet). That makes it bigger than you; not taller, but bigger. Above that range is the horse, and below that range is the miniature horse.
If you get to be irritated that I describe ponies as pony-sized, then I get to be irritated with Bronies who don't know what a pony is.
And look again: Twilight is slightly larger than the other mares now that she's a princess.
Deal with it.
1893966
Yeah, whatevs. Then they're not ponies.
I use G1 as my size reference.
1893984
Baby Firefly, huh? This book I didn't know about. I didn't know there was a Baby Firefly, either.
Yeah, there are the G1 fans among us, of course, and I think their number has grown somewhat, but a lot of Bronies still like to hate all that has gone before. Personally, I think G1 does some things better than G4 does: for example, it precisely defined the unicorns' magic powers so they couldn't use magic as a get-out-of-jail-free card the way Twilight Sparkle does.
It also made the Flutter Ponies awesome. When the Little Ponies couldn't handle something, they called on Megan, and when Megan couldn't handle something, she called on the Flutter Ponies. Watching "It's not Easy Being Breezies," I found myself saying, "Wow, the Flutter Ponies have really been sissified."
These are little ponies, though. They're smaller than regular ponies.
Of course Twilight is bigger. Look at all the burgers she eats!
1893999
"Little," I assume, as in, on the lower end of the size range of a pony. About the size of a Shetland pony would seem about right. That's a big, big animal, weighing somewhere around four hundred to six hundred pounds.
Damn straight. They're still "little" as equines go.
I think some bronies just get it in their heads that the ponies are somehow not as "cute", if you think of them as being of somewhat realistic size.
1894014
I think these were people on 4Chan, most of whom, as plain from the comments, didn't even read the story, but wanted to be mad because it had a human in it and an author self-insert (and it's only a self-insert because I didn't want to use a pseudonym, as that would destroy the "scholarly paper" make-believe). Most were apparently assuming it was a Conversion Bureau-style misanthropic story or something similar.
Actually, of course, it's a mockery of Bronies and shippers.
All Hasbro do with their toys is take the main six and re-skin them many times. Fucking hell Hasbro.
To be fair the show is about ponies that are "Little". It's right there in the title.
Edit: Well I probably should read the comments before commenting.
1894072
But too little and they're no longer ponies. Besides, the show is also about ponies that are mine. It's right there in the title.
Yet I don't see myself in the show. Hm. Perhaps I should write a self-insert . . .
I suspect the "little" of the franchise name is more a term of endearment than an indication of the size of the animal in question. The G1 ponies were about the size of Shetland ponies, which does indeed put them on the lower end of the range, but not below it, and that generation was also called "My Little Pony."
I would have to agree with you on this. I've seen some bronies nicker about the scale of other brony's ponies in their stories, claiming that said ponies should be about the size of dogs, and I find that somewhat irritating myself because I know that real ponies are not small animals. Really, you need to consider the source material here, even if at least 80% of it is pure fantasy.
Eh, to each writer his own. When I see MLP though I always get the feeling ponies are the size of large dogs. Celestia would be as tall as a human minus horn.
1894189
We're talking volume here, not height. Ponies are not taller than a human, but they most definitely are larger and heavier.
1894425
Perhaps the passage in the story is not clear. I think having a big animal jump up in front of you and get in your face would be scary, even if it were no bigger than a large dog (some of those are also quite big and heavy). I chose size as a way to emphasize that.
But in any case, I stand by my depiction of ponies as more massive than men, which is true to life.
1894431
Uh, what exactly do you think I'm saying?
From where I'm standing, it looks like we're thinking exactly the same thing.
me: "Ponies are not taller than a human, but they most definitely are larger and heavier."
you:"I stand by my depiction of ponies as more massive than men, which is true to life."
???
1894459
Yes. I wasn't disagreeing with you.
1894059
Basically, you want worldbuilding.
And this is why I just have humanoids get transformed into ungulates while in Equestria. The bookkeeping becomes so much easier. Of course, I'm not devoted to intergenerational continuity, but my main universe is crossover-based, so I have other aspects of Hasbro's IP collection to worry about. But I ramble.
In any case, congratulations and condolences on being noticed by that seething hive of scum and villainy.
As for Lovestruck, well, what's a shipping wall but the fantasy football of romance?
I have a sequence in one of my comedies where Rarity gets turned into a cyber-pegasus. At one point while trying to murder Applejack, she sits in her lap, provoking a pained comment from AJ that Rarity must weigh over a 1,000 lbs, to which Rarity indignantly replies that she's never weighed more than 350 lbs in her entire lift.
Out of context, that probably sounds pretty weird. But I promise you, in the context of the rest of the story, a murderous, cyber-pegasus Rarity makes sense.
1893966
In that reference pic, I just wonder... whose feet is that candy cane 8 of?
1893966
There's an error in that image, the foal they started with is crouched down. Scootaloo is closer to standing upright. if we put her at 2'6" that makes Fluttershy about 4'2" and Celestia about 6'6"
I wus gonna mention about how I pictured them in the miniature-horse range. (most of them, anyways.) But then I read, and saw you'd thought of that.
I'm not sure why I picture them in the miniature-horse range. Maybe it's a case of eyeballing relative sizes? Would you say Opalescence is around the size of a standard Earth housecat?
1893966 1895231
I feel like that graphic uses a bad prior. What makes them think that's an eight-foot candy cane?
Unless it was something said in the show, then we just run into what 1895200 said.
Although, I do recall hearing about a somewhat similar comparison based on the size of apples. That sounds like it might have some validity. I might look into that.
1896544
I'd go off the acceleration of gravity. Outside of moments of cartoon physics, I get a physical feel from it, even when Pinkie does it, with certain obvious exceptions.
Pinkie Pie stotting past the manticore in S1E2 (starting at 0:09) is 6 hops in 4 seconds. She spends about 5/6 of the time in the air, so that's 0.556 seconds per hop. A 0.556 second hop has peak height of 0.38 meters = (9.8m/ss/2 * (0.556s/2)^2). The height of these hops was around half of her height at the shoulder. So, she's 0.76m tall at the shoulders? That's... TINY, around 70% as large as the candy cane figure.
The obvious way around that is to suppose she's using Pinkie-enhanced gravity to pull herself down faster. And of course I was eyeballing it. With frame-advance one could do way better.
1896544
opening of S2E11 Hearth's Warming Eve
Twilight Sparkle: I have an idea, let's play 'I spy with my little eye' as we walk! I'll go first. I spy... an eight-foot candy cane.
(and yes they did just walk away, leaving the 2 foals stuck to it. Equestria is a cold and cruel place.)
But yes there is still the question of how does their measuring system compare to ours? Did Twilight accurately measure the candy cane? And why are they using "feet"?
In my attempts to thicken my skin, I've gotten into the mindset that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
1897250
Based on Wikipedia, that's a plausible size for a miniature horse. Towards the smaller size, but still plausible. That'd also appear to put Big Mac at around the larger end of the miniature horse range. But you assume g = 9.8 m/s, which is unfounded.
76 cm is a bit more than two-and-a-half feet, and including the ears Pinkie appears to be about as tall again above the shoulders.
Is "stetting" an accepted spelling? I'd heard of it as "pronking", but while the wikipage mentions that term it's titled "stotting". Based on the videos I pulled up, I guessed that Pinkie could probably pronk higher if she wanted to, but that she'd have to do it differently. But then I realized no, that's even worse than assuming g.
I'm tempted to suggest making plans and doing this seriously together, from frame-by-frame apples to deducing a range for g.
1898049
Based of our rough numbers here, if (if!) g = 9.8 m/s then the candy cane is eight of our feet, to within range of 'eyeballing' error (say, plus-or-minus four inches). I... don't know how I feel about this.
1899027
It was autocorrect. I tried to turn it off because it keeps 'correcting' things utterly wrong like this ('stetting' means, MAXIMALLY IRONICALLY, 'instructing an editor that a correction was incorrect, and to use the original'), but it keeps trying.
As for 9.8 m/ss gravity... well, here's the thing. Define scales for time, mass, and space. In real life, we of course have Planck's constant and the speed of light to link them such that there's no way to rescale things and end up with the same dynamics (classically, you can make everything closer together and either faster or heavier, and it all works out the same). Equestria doesn't obey quantum mechanics, so we can work only by analogy. The time scale is set by the rate of their conversation. That leaves the space scale to be set by the acceleration of gravity, and the mass scale to be set by the density of water or some other standard.
Also, as for feet, it looks like 'foot' means 'bottom of hoof to top of foreleg knee'. It kind of makes sense - more than using OUR feet, anyway.
I know I'm a but late to this party, but I like seeing this discussion about actual scale. Unless the story specifically features micro (I can't think of the names of two that I'm picturing -.- ), I like to think Big Mac, the tallest pony EVER seen on screen, is exactly 14 1/2 hands, with 1 hand equalling 4 inches, that would make Big Mac 58 inches tall, or 4 foot 10 at the withers. I'm around 5' 10", and I have ridden a 14.5 hands pony before; it just a jump to get your leg over their back. Celestia, however would be well into the horse category of height, I don't have any reference prepared, so I can't make a judgement on her exact assumed height at this moment, but I can try and make one if you guys would like to see my whole argument