Almost Done Playing Army Games · 1:33pm Mar 26th, 2014
Hopefully I'll be home by the time "Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3" airs. Until then, we'll be wrapping up stuff here and probably end up lazing about bored on main post until the day of our flight, whenever that may actually be. At least I'll have cell reception out there. Now it's just whenever they decide we can go take showers or do laundry. Anyway, I have managed to keep up with the episodes, even if I can't stream them live. Biggest thing for me is that it looks as if the writers have decided to fully commit to a human-like aging system for the ponies. I found that a little disappointing as I like Lauren Faust's original idea that the reason the Mane6 all needed friendship lessons is that despite being biologically mature, they didn't have the experience that a human adult might due to aging closer to how our ponies would age. Now they're even more anthropomorphized, which was something Lauren had been trying to avoid for the most part, excepting the whole "ability to talk and reason" thing. I kind of saw it coming, though, what with Chrysalis' "party for six year olds" comment during the season 2 finale and the increasingly human-like behaviors of the ponies in season 3, like everypony suddenly sitting like Lyra, who had been up until that point a funny anomaly. Fortunately, I had a general idea of how I would headcanon the ages for the ponies if they did go with human ages, and I'll probably go back and apply that to my older stories in my ongoing Ponies of Olympus series. I'd like to keep it as close to canon as I can. I'll post my tentative ideas for the birthdates of the ponies here, the year numbered from Year 1, when Nightmare Moon was banished (meaning episode one occurred during the year 1001).
Applejack: September 1, 981
Fluttershy: March 20, 982
Rarity: October 31, 982
Pinkie Pie: May 3, 983
Rainbow Dash: July 4, 983
Twilight Sparkle: September 22, 983
Spike: June 13, 989
CMC: Summer of 994
Ages on June 21, 1001 (Nightmare Moon's return: AJ/Fluttershy 19, Rarity/Pinkie 18, RD/Twi 17, Spike 12, CMC 6.
My only real concern is over Spike and the CMC's ages. I feel Spike is older than the CMC by several years, at least, but it also seems like, while AJ's admission that she was the last in her class to get her cutie mark, here making her 7 by my timeline, would work during the Cutie Mark Chronicles when Apple Bloom was also 7 and every other foal aside from Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo had their cutie marks, now that they're in season 4 and about age 9 or 10, it's starting to seem a bit ridiculous. I can't adjust the ages too much to fit without getting weird with the canon, though. It seems that by season 4 Dash is just turning 21, for instance, so if you take each season as generally covering a year, with maybe a few eps going back into the previous season, she has to be 17 at series start (as she'd have been 20 at the beginning of season 4). Spike's greed growth seems like basically a pubescent growth spurt, which would probably happen around 12 or 13 (dragons in D&D, for instance, reach adulthood at 12, and MLP uses a lot of D&D stuff since Hasbro owns that property). Assuming Twilight is around Dash's age, she would have had to have been around 5 when Spike was hatched. We could raise AJ's age that she got her cutie mark to around 10 or 11, but that would make her 23 at series start. Fluttershy would also have to be around that age, which means Pinkie would have to be, too. Rarity might end up having to be made older as well since many of her classmates already had their cutie marks as well. Suddenly it seems weird that a bunch of mares close to their mid-twenties, basically post-college age, would be hanging around with two high school junior age fillies. Even if you went with that, though, you still have the problem that either all the foals in AB's class got their cutie marks ridiculously early, or if you start with the CMC at around 9 or 10, it's still weird that they would be three years down the line after all their classmate cutie marked up with no mark. I dunno, maybe I'm thinking about it too hard. If anyone's got any suggestions, feel free to comment. The ages for me obviously are not yet set in stone.
You know I try not to over think on the ageing thing I mean this is a fantasy show and it does not matter how old this character is or that.
Applejack was younger than the Applebloom when she got her cutie mark according to the episode, so that part you have is actually pretty accurate seeming. The CmC will never get their cutie marks!
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Well, it is somewhat important to at least come to your own conclusion about what characters are what age, especially when they're younger, so that you can write them consistently. It also helps when you have storylines that explicitly require references to age-appropriate stuff.
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I didn't remember her saying that she was younger than Applebloom, but that would make more sense. I suppose it may just come down to the CMC being unusually late bloomers if AJ was already a late bloomer.
1957206 AJ says, "I was even littler than ya'll." in one of the first CmC episodes, think it's Call of the Cutie, where they talk about how they all got their Cutie Marks.