'Tis the Season

Another footnote, or hoofnote. This one deals with sexual stuff, so, you know, fair warning.

Do our little ponies experience estrus, or have a more human sex drive? This question could come up at pretty much any time, but I'm addressing it now for two reasons. One, it's becoming relevant, and will become even more so in future chapters. Two, if you pay attention to the details, you'll know that right now, it's spring, which is typically when horses begin their estrus cycles.

I've decided to give them human sex drives for this one. I mean, they're already very heavily anthropomorphized, but more than that, their whole society is so similar to our own, I really don't see how to incorporate a realistic estrus paradigm without indirectly or implicitly breaking a lot of canon. Monogamous relationships, classical family values and the concept of modesty (ironically enough for a town that doesn't wear clothes), economic and social systems that seem to operate on a non-intermittent basis (I'm talking the school, the farm, the spa, and so on). There's too much in common with human society for estrus to fit in comfortably.

If I were to try to give these characters realistic estrus, we would wind up with week-long interludes where no one's accomplishing much of anything, except getting laid. That alone wouldn't be impossible to write; I could just toss in a paragraph or two saying "and for the next six or seven days, pretty much every pony in the whole city did nothing except have sex or try to find sex, and it was very fun in an uncomfortable, desperate, debauched sort of way." However, that would invoke waaaaay too many questions (and also be very distracting). What happens to all these industries and businesses when estrus season hits? Do Celestia and Luna just stop their princess duties for that time? What happens to those poor stallions, who are so heavily outnumbered? What about the non-equines in the story (like Discord. He's not going to pause just because everyone's stricken with hyperlust)? And of course the questions that those questions would wind up creating.

Plus, as an author, if I had these ponies dealing with the infernal temptation of estrus, some poor character would end up with an unplanned pregnancy. That's partially because I love giving my characters difficult obstacles, but also because, statistically, it'd be really weird not to. Such a large group of ponies, their brains scrambled with hormones, in the middle of the city, with not a whole lot to do except explore the town and practice magic, for five to six days in a row, every month for an unspecified, but long, period of time. Honestly, it's a matter of "when," not "if." And I'd really rather not derail the story with that.

Not to mention that it's much, much easier to empathize with characters with human sex drives than horse ones.