Thoughts on the Differences Between Pinkie Pie and Cheese Sandwich · 6:20am Sep 8th, 2014
Introduction
I was looking at a Weird Al video ("Perform This Way," which is a hilarious send-up on Lady Gaga) and this naturally made me think of Cheese Sandwich, and so I was speculating on the ways in which he is both similar to and different from Pinkie Pie. The similarities are obvious -- it's why they are so obviously a good match for one another, both as friends and possibly as lovers. The differences are more subtle.
Reality vs. Performance
The biggest and most fundamental difference is that Pinkie Pie's performance is closer to her real personality than is Cheese Sandwich's.
What do I mean by this? Well, we've seen Pinkie when she is deliberately and specifically "performing" -- when she is throwing a party and specifically-entertaining the guests, and we've seen her when she's just doing something with her friends, possibly even something dangerous and difficult, or expressing her genuine emotions. And her personality doesn't differ that much between the two states. Yes, she'll be doing more obviously and extrovertedly silly things when she's performing, but she's pretty silly all the time, and always with that same tone of extreme benevolence. That's -- in the most fundamental and literal sense -- just Pinkie being Pinkie.
Which makes sense. Even in canon, Pinkie's role as a party pony was purely self-generated. She isn't basically copying anypony else's routine, she's creating her own mostly from whole cloth. Sure, she's inspired by other clowns and comedians (such as Ponyacci) but she's mostly just being Pinkie. She's serious about treating everypony in town as a "friend," and actually tries hard to make this claim real. Sure, she doesn't get as close to them as she does to her best friends (Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle and Applejack), but then she can't -- not even her abilities let her split her attention to the degree required for that.
My fanon Pinkie, of course, is more awesome than that. She's the prophesied one, the Beloved Pink Daughter of Paradise, the Bringer of Joy to the world, whose actual mission is to show the world what is possible with love and happiness as the Herald of Paradise. She's very much an All-Loving Heroine, and she's not faking her desire to make everypony happy. As a child monsters try to kill her, as an adolescent she fights and destroys a demon (Winning Through Degradation) who is very much her Shadow Archetype, and as an adult she becomes the Bearer of the Element of Laughter and repeatedly fights powerful forces of evil.
And she's still incredibly fun at parties.
In contrast, Cheese Sandwich was inspired by her to create a stage persona who does something similar to what Pinkie does, only instead of doing it in one town, he wanders all across Equestria and throws parties all over the land, guided by his "Cheesie Sense." This stage persona is actually wilder than Pinkie's -- which is possible because it's farther from his true personality.
Consider this analytically. Pinkie's personality is limited by what is practical to live in reality. Yes, she's a Reality Warper, but she can't use her power at full blast all the time (I'm going to write a fanfiction exploring just why this is a very bad idea when she tries to do this for a while instead of slowing down and letting herself heal from the damage Red Haze the Dragon did to her). So she has to be sane in order to carry out her responsibilities -- baking the goods for the Cakes, organizing her parties, being there for her friends. Since her party persona isn't really all that different from her normal one, that limits the silliness of her party persona as well -- but at the same time makes that party persona stronger and more effective, because it's more real.
Cheese Sandwich, on the other hand, is not constitutionally able to really be as silly as Pinkie, because he isn't Laughter Itself in the same way as Pinkie, and because in any case he has to be more serious on the road in order to survive. He routinely travels from town to town, often through dangerous semi-wilderness areas, and does it alone. His solution was the creation of a hyper-serious Pony With No Name persona to handle that part of it for him. And his solution to the problem of being at least as silly as Pinkie was the creation of a Party Pony persona.
This persona is less real than Pinkie's. It is not entirely unreal, for Pinkie really did inspire him to change. However, because it is less real, it can be more extreme -- he can turn some of it on and off in a way that Pinkie can't do with hers. It's not as powerful as Pinkie's, but he can fine-tune it better than Pinkie can, because it's not as much himself.
Pinkie is much more finely balanced than Cheese -- because her persona is real, if she pushes it too far she risks looping into self-destructive mania; if she throttles it back too much she risks sliding into deep depression. And it has to be consistent with her needs of survival; she has to be able to function within its limits. Cheese, on the other hand, can be far more manic than Pinkie when he wants to be, and far more serious when he has to be, and can switch from one state to another more easily without harming himself.
This is why Cheese was able to win the Goof-Off. He could overclock his abilities as a party pony in ways Pinkie wouldn't dare to do. The limitation is that his abilities are neither as powerful nor as broad-spectrum as Pinkie's -- he can't warp reality as extensively nor can he inspire others to the extent that Pinkie can, His most obvious power is greater than Pinkie's but he doesn't have all the other powers to the extent she does, nor does he have as extensive a well of power to draw from.
In my fanon Cheese -- in a shining epiphany on seeing Pinkie for the first time -- managed to do something that not even the Paradise Entity realized was possible before he did it. He linked into one of the channels that Paradise had originally-deployed to allow it to interface with the Ponies of Paradise in the World That Was Lost. He became the first entity in the G4 world not sired by Paradise to be able to tap the essence of the G3 world.
This is something Paradise thought might eventually be possible, probably from Pinkie's offspring. It was very pleasantly surprised to discover such capabilities in the G4 Ponies themselves. What this meant to it was that the G4 and G3 Ponies aren't as divergent as it feared: just as the G3 Ponies had the seeds of Courage in themselves to fight back against the Cosmics at the last (even though they lost, they bought enough time for Paradise to escape with the archived copy of the World That Was Lost); not even one great and two lesser cataclysms were enough to rob the G4 Ponies of the seeds of Joy. It's hoping that there are more Ponies like Cheese out there -- and it also has great hopes for the likely offspring of Pinkie and Cheese.
Male vs. Female
This is an obvious difference, but one which affects their world views in many ways obvious and subtle. In the matriarchal society of Equestria, Cheese has to deal with assumptions of lesser intelligence and self-control simply because of his "Y" chromosome. He actually does try to act more serious and precise (in his Pony With No Name persona) in order to fight this; he also makes direct status claims in ways Pinkie avoids, probably in part for this reason (and in part because he frequently has to show off his skills to unfamiliar audiences). Cheese is of the gender viewed by both us and by Ponies as more expendable, hence he would be less sheltered in a dangerous situation. And, since the Ponies are exactly like us in being k-centered reproducing mammals, the issue would at least indirectly come up that Pinkie has reasons to avoid promiscuity which do not affect Cheese (even though there's no particular reason to assume that either of them are at all promiscuous). Some of the secondary effects of this would be subtle but real ones, especially for Cheese who constantly encounters whole new sets of Ponies.
Sedentary vs. Nomadic
Pinkie is sedentary -- she lives at Sugar Cube Corner in Ponyville, and while she travels on her various missions, she always comes back home. She also throws most of her parties in Ponyville, where she knows literally everypony.
In contrast, Cheese Sandwich is nomadic. He travels from town to town and -- while he probably makes a lot of friends in his journeys -- he doesn't get to know them very deeply, because he has to be moving on for his next adventure. (Incidentally, Cheese's life would make a good spin-off series).
In my fanon this is in some ways an eerie parallel of the way the Ponies lived during the Time of Extermination. Cheese is a one-Pony Big Brother Herd, and Pinkie has become the Mare Herd to which he periodically returns. Though I don't think either of them intended it that way.
Extra Storage
It just occurred to me that Cheese stores a lot more stuff extradimensionally than does Pinkie, including massive amounts of party supplies and a freaking party tank many times larger than his whole body. This may be because Cheese, having to be nomadic, can't replenish his supplies as often, and thus buys in tremendous bulk.
Conclusion
Cheese and Pinkie make a great couple, both because of their similarities and because of their subtler differences. Since some of these differences generate tension and motivation between the characters, they are worth noticing. Even though they are now friends, the differences still remain, and to some extent always will -- because they are different individuals.
The show is inconstant about ponies having HammerSpace, but Miss Pinkamena Diane Pie and Mister CheeseSandwich definitely canonically have more HammerSpace a sane DM would ever allow. Also, we see in Pinkie Pride, that the SaddleBags of Miss Pinkamena Diane Pie are bags of holding.
I can imagine a show like Branded, with Cheese in the Chuck Connors role.
He wanders into town, finds a pony who needs his brand of help, and moves on.
You're right, it would make a fantastic spin-off show.
I love the analysis, the G3 tie in kinda blows me away.
I don't suppose I'll ever use Pinkie Pie or Cheese Sandwitch as a leading character in the story, but I think you've captured their differences quite correctly.
Huh. So while Pinkie goes wide with her abilities, Cheese goes deep, specializing in a few particular party pony practices. Also, he seems to have either a ridiculous budget or a very well-developed ability to conjure matter. There can't be that many rainbow-maned, thunderbolt-marked ponies in Equestria, yet he has the perfect supplies on hoof for Rainbow Dash's birthiversary, including what can only be described as a Dash Signal.
I find Cheese's use of personas somewhat tragic. To an extent, he's still the shy little colt cowering in the corner, only now he's hiding behind the Wanderer and the Super Duper Party Pony. As in scoots2's work, he's afraid of what will happen if he ever lowers the mask—lowers his shield against the world—and allows himself to be himself, especially around the one who inspired him.
In any case, an excellent analysis.
2437745 Darn you beat me to mentioning Scoots2's work.
I concur with the eloquent words by others spoken above and the best I can add is simply my gratitude that you write and share.
One wonders if Pinkie Pie has a form of non-malignant Bipolar Disorder (possibly an effect of Paradise, but I am also talking canonically). She seems to have massive mood swings where she goes from one extreme to another; they are not very common, but they do happen (Party of One being my best example; granted, it was induced by the thought of her friends abandoning her, but BPD can be triggered by events or nothing at all...speaking from experience with close family members).
I find it plausible that, as the direct, shall we say, conduit for the Paradise's will on Equestria, and what with Paradise being a very "pure" and innocent being ( at least as far as my understanding goes) and feeling only strong emotions on the extremes, Pinkie is extraordinarily susceptible to its moods. When things in life are going well and everypony is happy, it feels unfettered joy, and so Pinkie is her usual fuzzy, bouncy, slightly annoying but still adorable self, whereas when things are going wrong and there is negativity, Paradise either feels it must amp its happiness flow into the world up (triggering another Pinkie Pie Party to cheer ponies up) or it feels overwhelmingly sad itself (cue flat mane and High Tea with Sir Lintsalot and Madame le Flour, with an agreement to go clubbing with the Party Rock at six).
2437812
I will categorically state here that this blog post was very much inspired by Scoots2's take on Pinkie Pie and Cheese Sandwich; I avoided referencing her concepts and stories too specifically because I didn't want to complicate matters with three canons (the show's, mine and Scoots'). Scoots2's writings about Pinkie and Cheese are sheer comic genius -- and also have considerable emotional and philosophic depth. I urge everyone to read them.
I'm always stunned by people who say, "oh, they would get along terribly because they're too alike." For one thing, similarity and having things in common is generally a good thing, though you wouldn't want to box yourself in too far, and "opposites attract," as much fun as it may be to read about, is generally not so great in relationships. And for another, they're not alike at all!
I think of both as being "real"--but he does have a private persona which is much harder to get to know. Pure headcanon, but I always thought that the musical talent pre-dates his meeting with Pinkie, and therefore, so does his need for and appreciation of an audience.
Exactly. He's very much "on" when he's on, and very much "off" when he's "off." And what's more, I think he counts on having that downtime to recharge his batteries. You could probably go full throttle for 18, 24, even 48 hours if you knew that afterwards you could have some leftovers and chillax with your pal who isn't too big on conversation. It wasn't originally my idea to mix him in with Braeburn--that came from some brainstorming with Yildun--but after I thought it through, I realized it was brilliant, because Braeburn (I think) naturally IS an extrovert. And not having QUIET when he wanted to be quiet slowly drove Cheese insane--but it was good for him.
And yes, the narrow spectrum of abilities matters, and is one thing that keeps Cheese from becoming a Gary Stu. He can't sense the future--apart from parties--better than any regular pony can. His gut sense that yes, someday he and Pinkie really will travel together all over Equestria--heck, that's something regular humans feel, as is his feeling that he can absolutely trust Pinkie. Neither requires any special ability. And the ability to inspire being limited--that's actually coming up in the next Looking Glass World. It's also why I like FillyBlue and Polka Horse's headcanon that he can't bake and has food abilities that are mostly limited to party foods.
Your fanon is, of course, far more esoteric than mine, and also brilliant.
I think Pinkie and Cheese don't have to buy party supplies, even though of course we do see her do it in Pinkie Pride. I think of the comic book in which she pulls out a cake with "Glad You Weren't Mangled Or Anything" from nowhere. The catch is that it has to be needed, and it has to be for others.
The gender differences are why I just can't bring myself to write gender-swapped/Rule 63 Pinkie and Cheese. I don't care what anyone says--that matters.
2437745
I think it's the latter, although the artist who draws Ask Trixie and Cheese gives Cheese a younger brother, Lettuce, who has taken over the family's vast chain of hardware stores, and who helps to underwrite Cheese's parties as long as he promises not to be too underfoot. (The Tumblr name is Cheesewiz.) Party ponies can pull out all kinds of things as long as they give it away. The former is contingent on the latter, because otherwise they might use it to enrich themselves. A party pony who tries just pulling things out for himself learns this the hard way. He can pull out the Dash Signal because dang it, the occasion calls for a Dash Signal and Dash really wants one. He wouldn't want one for his own birthday, even if he could remember when it was.
I don't think it's all THAT tragic, since there's a lot of me in that!
I was very relieved when finally I heard people confirm that yes, public speakers, actors and performers could be introverts. Before that, I got a lot of " oh, YOU can't possibly be an introvert," along with social demands I couldn't keep up with if I tried (and didn't even want to.) But, uh, yeah . . . having a public and a private persona that don't perfectly correspond can make authenticity a bit tricky.
"Why you so unfriendly to me?"
"I'm ALWAYS unfriendly. It's nothing personal." 
I always enjoy Cheese and Pinkie headcanons.
One: I dispute--- and elsewhere I believe effectively refute-- the notion that Equestria or pony culture is "matriarchal." They do not have the trappings of a matriarchal culture. A more or less western civ gender-equitable one, yes, but not even close to matriarchal. Just because Victoria was on the throne didn't mean England was a matriarchal society.
Two: summary of the column: Pinkie has to rein in her personality because she has to live in the same place she parties. Cheese Sandwich does not, so he can go all out--- but his long range travels means he can turn off the crazy in between and recharge his batteries.
I never really liked Cheese Sandwich.
It really feels like Pinkie Pie was lessened by him.
I think Pinkie tries to be a little more personal with her activities in many ways whereas Cheese tends to go more EPIC. This probably has something to do with being nomadic as Pinkie actually has time to get to know other ponies whereas as Cheese needs to impress quickly.
You can see this in the episode where Pinkie tends to do things directly related to Dash and also tends to use personal friends to get things done (such as getting supplies from every local vendor rather than just using her own which we can probably assume she could).
I personally like Cheese just fine and I think he and Pinkie would make great friends. Not a fan of the ship though just not interesting to me and reminds me too much of some friends I knew who figured out eventually they worked much better as friends than lovers. I also tend to like seeing Pinkie as being more unique on a general basis.
2438458
I'm not sure what "trappings" you'd expect a matriarchal culture to have. Wine-soaked orgies before statues of pregnant goddesses? Ritual beatings of stallions? Mares running through the woods with bows and arrows? Telepathic mares mating only to reproduce with dwarfed stallions who were killed immediately thereafter? Or, alternately, eternal peace and love and socialism with everypony grimly happy and having obligatory sex with everypony else?
Well, I guess there could be matriarchal cultures that worked like that, but it's hardly a necessity. All I'm assuming is that, in past centuries, there was no practical way to properly suppress mare estrus scent, which meant that stallions in settlements were distracted by this scent pretty much all the time, and hence were effectively less intelligent than mares. This led to female domination of society. This problem has been solved by the development of estrus scent suppressors, which enables stallions to fully participate in civic life, but culture lags technology, just as it did in our world.
Now, what in canon caused me to come up with this explanation? The fact that almost everypony shown in a position of political authority, and most shown in positions of wealth and business management, is female. The fact that stallions are still under-represented in crowd scenes, which implies that they stay away from settlements most of the time. Very specifically, the fact that Applejack is heiress apparent to Sweet Apple Acres, despite the fact that she has an older brother.
Now, Equestria is obviously not an extreme matriarchy -- it is not the gender-flipped equivalent of Saudi Arabia or Iran. Stallions clearly have full and equal (or near-equal) civil rights to mares. Nor do Equestrian mares hate stallions the way some radical feminists in our society hate men -- there are explicit examples of loving heterosexual couples, often married ones.
But it is definitely a society in which most leaders are female.
2439774
What sort of match would you make for Pinkie, then? Or is she just so plain weird that she could never be happy with anypony?
2437238
I think that most of the show's Hammer Space is just lazy animation -- they don't want to add on the necessary bags in every scene. For instance, it's fairly obvious that it's a normal thing for Ponies -- male and female -- to carry some sort of at least small bags in which to put their minor personal possessions, the ones that we would put in pockets. But animating them would use up processing power. So we can just assume they're there.
Pinkie and Cheese, on the other hand, routinely produce things like cakes, cannons and tanks from nowhere. Which cannot be explained as "they had them in their bags." This would demand explanation, except that their powers protect themselves form observation, with the outer layer of defense being that the mind of the observer has trouble even forming the question. Twilight was one of the few Ponies smart and strong-willed enough to see through this, and she learned that it was dangerous to try to observe the functioning of Pinkie's powers too closely.
2437745
I think that he may learn that Pinkie is the one Pony to whom it's absolutely safe for him to reveal himself. Part of the reason why I basically have adopted a lot of Scoots2's fanon into my own, with minor alteration (mostly, chronological tinkering), is because I like the idea of Pinkie and Cheese falling in love, and eventually getting married and having children. They both deserve that sort of thing.
2438128
Oh yeah, Pinkie's canonically at least a little bipolar, though she's more on the manic end of the scale. I recognize and sympathize with her behavior a lot -- I can be like a lower-energy version of Pinkie myself when I'm in a happy mood around friends. I have a very silly sense of humor sometimes.
I have a depressive end to my cycle too, but I don't spend very long depressed. Then again, normally, neither does Pinkie.
2439830
Not sure why you think love between Cheese and Pinkie wouldn't work out. He's one of two personality types with whom she could fall in love, IMO. One like herself, to be her partner in silliness.
The other personality type would be somepony serious, smart, strong and silent, Somepony like Big Mac, in short, who would act as her anchor, but make sure to give her enough chain to move about more or less freely.
There are benefits, and problems, with both sorts of matches. I don't think anypony could be both, though -- the two personality types are too inconsistent. So unless we're imagining polyandry in Pinkie's future ....
2440804
I am not saying that they could not work only that I personally am not much of a fan of the ship. I do have a few friends that were similar and they did not work out but that does not mean that the same is true for Pinkie and Cheese. At the same time I don't just assume that just because they may be great friends or are extremely similar that they automatically are meant to be (similarly I don't assume that opposites always attract either as it depends on how they are different and how it works together).
As for Big Mac I am a big fan of that ship. The big reason is how those two seem to bring out different sides of themselves by interacting with each other (oddly for Pinkie she is often silent or talking philosophy with her). I don't think they are automatically going to get together but I like how the characters work with each other and where they seem to go. This is what makes Big Mac my personal favorite straight ship for Pinkie (Rainbow Dash and Twilight are my favorite homosexual relationships for her which mimic the Cheese/Mac dynamic to Pinkie with Dash being the one that compliments are energy and fun while Twilight is more of the contrasting type that they work by having an interesting dynamic).
2440798 Yeah...me? I'm just neurotic. I definitely am like the version of Cheese who hides behind his happy face all the time that scoots2 wrote. I'm actually kinda mean and pessimistic. What stops me from being a total douche is the fact that I like people and honestly want them to like me back. Not to say I'm a bad person, its just that my "happy self" comes from my neurosis and my desire to please.
...
Not sure how that sounds to other people. Am I just sad?
2439975 Agreed on the fact that most positions of leadership seem to be female, but I hesitate to say that it is a matriarchal society due to the simple fact that we haven't seen every leadership position, yet. We have a female Diarchy, one matriarch of the Apple clan, one female mayor, and a few others.
On the other hand, I do agree that all the evidence seems to point in that direction.
Why is it like this, though? Simple--an imbalance in the male:female ratio. There appears to be simply more mares than stallions around. This could be due to the fact that it is viewed that males are expendable whilst females are not; one stallion could repopulate the planet, given enough females to avoid the offspring inbreeding. More mares are born than stallions, and the cycle continues.
I don't understand the matriarchal headcanon people often use. We know already that its not the case. Starswirl granted Celestia and Luna a power over Equestria and united 3 races. Pegasi were ruled by Commander Hurricane before he became loyal to the princesses. He was a stallion. Same with Unicorns. King Bullion was a stallion. Other than 4 Princesses being females and having power there is nothing indicating that Males are look down upon.
2442811
You've got the sexual economics backward. If there are more mares than stallions, the consequence would be that stallions would individually be more powerful rather than less.
The reason why is that -- in a reasonably free society such as Equestria is depicted as being -- all the mares do not compete as a bloc against all the stallions, with the winning bloc gaining superior status. Instead, mares compete against other mares FOR stallions. whiles stallions compete against other stallions FOR mares.
Suppose that there is 1 stallion for every 2 mares. One such stallion is courted by Mare # 1 and Mare # 2. Mare # 1 tells him "If you marry me, you shall serve me as my social inferior, because there are more mares than stallion so mares rule!" Mare # 2 tells him "If you marry me, I shall serve you because you are really wonderful in my eyes."
All other things being equal, which mare does he marry? And if his wife fails to please him, he has ample opportunity for infidelity, perhaps even desertion. And this is the more true the more skewed the sex ratio.
If the sex ratio is very skewed toward mares, say 5 mares to every stallion, then you will probably see polygynous marriages, in which 1 stallion marries several (say 2-4) mares.
Examining such a marriage, it is of course true that if the stallion is a sufficiently abusive fool the mares will unite against him and rule the family. But if he is not, then he plays an especially key role in the marriage, since he's essential for their reproduction, but he in turn can mate with any of his wives -- none of them are individually essential to his reproduction. Hence, such marriages will tend to be male-dominated, in the sense that the stallion will have more influence over the household than any one of his wives (though not necessarily several of them acting together).
Why don't all the mares in such a marriage get together and rule the stallion? And in a larger sense, why don't all the mares in society get together and rule all the stallions?
Because of defection, both within marriages and within society in general. Supose that Mr. Stallion is married to four mares, Mare A, B, C and D. Mare A really wants to dominate him and recruits Mare B to help her do this. Mare C doesn't want to be mean to him, and Mare D deliberately decides to be extra nice to him.
What happens? Mare D becomes a lot closer to Mr. Stallion, Mare C becomes a little closer to Mr. Stallion, Mare B becomes a bit alienated from him and Mare A a lot alienated from him. The more Mares A and B attempt to withhold affection from him, the worse they lose the competition with Mares C and D.
The same thing happens on a society-wide scale, if there's a heavy stallion dearth. Stallions preferentially marry the mares who give them the most respect, and the mares who attempt to dominate them in the name of solidarity with other mares lose out in the mating game. Hence, the mares who accord stallions the highest status have the most offspring and the most effect on future generations.
The matriarchy shown in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is, in short, an argument against a heavy stallion dearth, rather than for it ... with one caveat.
An extremely illiberal society, to the point of at least soft totlalitarianism (obvious examples from our world, most Muslim states), could for ideological reasons impose a deeply inferior status on stallions and punish both stallions who tried to make better marital bargains and the mares who offered it to them. The problem with this is that this is not what we see in Equestria -- we see a mildly matriarchal society, not a gender-flipped Saudi Arabia.
2446326
All the stallions you present as examples of stallions in positions of power have been dead for centuries, most of them for millennia. In modern Equestria, we see most institutions dominated by mares. The logical conclusion of that, all other things being equal, would be that Pony culture was once male-dominated but shifted to female domination over the centuries. Possibly under the influence of Celestia.
2448625 Ah, I see...but how would that affect the politico/social hierarchy? Since there appear to be more mares than stallions, would that not still, in effect, point to the mares filling more positions in government due to an imbalanced gender ratio?
2449094
Well yes, of course the mares in a stallion dearth would fill more government positions because there would be more of them. But stallions, when they were in such positions, would tend to be in the most important ones.
Also, in a stallion dearth the Guards and other dangerous professions would be almost purely mares. There would be a strong social prejudice against risking the lives of stallions.
2438334
This is really interesting to me. In my headcanon, party ponies use Chaos magic; the reason they're all earth ponies is that the use of Chaos magic tends to drive unicorns insane and kill pegasi (attempting to manipulate the weather with Chaos magic tends to have really, really bad results unless, like Discord, you know exactly what you're doing, and no one is training pegasi in the use of Chaos magic. Discord, not being a pegasus, didn't do weather manipulation until he was already quite adept with Chaos.)
And also, in my headcanon, the draaconequui weren't all Chaos users, though they could survive being Chaos users better than unicorns can; their magic was based around their principle, so they could do pretty much anything pertaining to their principle (vaguely similar to having an Element, if everyone had an Element and it was like your cutie mark) and pretty much nothing that doesn't. Discord's mother was the Principle of Motherhood. She could conjure stuff at will for her son, but not for herself or any other of her people.
Draconequui are biologically related to ponies -- original, non-Chaos modified draconequui are essentially chimeras of unicorns and Eastern dragons in my stuff -- so it makes a certain amount of sense that there's a connection there. I have to think about it a bit more, but I think that earth ponies who use Chaos magic do it the same way draconequui used their magic -- the control is not willpower, which is what unicorns use, but principle, which allows them to do literally anything as long as it fulfills a purpose congruent with the principle, and nothing that is not. (Discord himself is absurdly powerful because his principle lines up with one of the basic forces of magic, but he actually functions the same way; he can't do something that isn't chaotic in some way, or he can but he basically needs to use unicorn-type magic to do it and doing so actually hurts him.)
2449111
Actually there are a lot of different ways things can go, because people (and by extension ponies) can twist themselves around all kinds of different ways.
In male dominance, which is practiced by pretty much all of humanity, it doesn't matter whether there's a shortage of women or a shortage of men; men still come out on top. In a shortage of men, men are pampered and protected and high-status and tend to be leaders. In a shortage of women, women are enslaved. There have been some societies where a shortage of women allowed women to have more power, but they were also borderline, very dangerous environments where a man's closest and best ally was his wife (I'm thinking the American West); the woman shortage in China and India hasn't produced better status for women in those societies.
So, if ponies are naturally inclined to female domination -- and, given significantly easier reproduction and the fact that both pegasi and unicorns are more powerful based on more magic (a non sex linked trait) rather than physical size, this is not hard to imagine -- then a shortage of stallions or a shortage of mares would have the same effect, female domination. It's not actually the shortages that cause the behavior.
In humans, pregnancy is so grueling and dangerous for women that women would never voluntarily choose to be constantly pregnant; but societies in which women are constantly pregnant expand faster, and produce more warriors for conquest, than societies where women space out their birthing. Enslaving their women was an advantage for cultures that did so; cultures are collections of memes, and memes are much like genes in that survival of the fittest applies. The meme that successfully replicates itself faster survives better, and cultural memes are transmitted to children and to conquered populations.
Pony pregnancies are probably not nearly so dangerous, because foal heads aren't as oversized in comparison to their bodies as baby heads are, and a lot of what makes human pregnancies dangerous is that our bipedal gait necessitated narrower hips. Add to that the fact that among pegasi and unicorns, there is no average guarantee that males *can* overpower females -- Rainbow Dash can outfly any male pegasus, and since force is multiplied by speed, being able to fly faster means being able to do more damage in a fight. Unicorn magic isn't sex-linked; Starswirl and Sombra prove that stallions can be powerful unicorns, and Twilight and Sunset prove that mares can also be, and in a fight between two unicorns of the same age and level of training, there is no guarantee the male will be more powerful. So earth ponies are missing the factor that made it really easy for, and advantageous for, men to dominate women (the difficult pregnancies), and pegasi and unicorns are missing that factor and have sexes of average equal strength, because their strength is based entirely on their magic and not their bodies.
The way I see it, there is a canonical dearth of stallions, and most soldiers and guards are male, and any explanation that doesn't address those issues doesn't work. In human societies, male dominance works by males working together and aligning their interests; your logic about how mares would end up being really nice to their husbands because their husbands don't have to pick them doesn't work, even though it sounds like it would make sense, because in human cultures, women have always been much choosier and much more reticent to mate, producing an environment where men must compete against each other for women, and yet this has not resulted in a world where men pledge to faithfully serve their wives. If the socially dominant sex chooses to behave in a way, collectively, that those who are especially kind to their partners of the less dominant sex are shunned and treated badly, it doesn't matter which gender there is more of.
Among ponies it is clear that they have progressed further away from their matriarchy, and toward equality, than humans have, because we never see pony mares mocked for being too nice to stallions or having interests that are congruent with stallions, and no one is surprised by the existence of powerful males, and Twilight can dress as Starswirl and no one makes fun of her for it (well, a bit for being adorkable, but not for crossdressing.) However, mares still run nearly everything, classes of children consist of 60%-75% females, and most background ponies are female. So my thought is, there is a stallion dearth, there has always been, and that is part of the reason that the ponies are getting over being matriarchal a lot faster than humans are getting over being patriarchal (through the mechanism you described, where stallions can be choosy); another part of the reason is that their ideals of Harmony mitigate against any pony actively dominating another.
So why are most of the guards male? Well, testosterone still exists. In all mammalian species but hyenas, males are bigger, stronger and more violent than females... and hyena females are very high-T. Any mammalian species but one with an absurd, ridiculous sex imbalance (like 5 to 1) will have the males be the warriors because males are more violent; it's the only observable biological difference between the sexes that's true almost everywhere, so there's every reason to believe it applies to ponies. The difference is that the female dominance and emphasis on Harmony promotes a belief that violence is bad, so there are guards but not standing armies, and being a guard is respectable but not glorified. (The militaristic nature of original pegasus culture strikes me as Spartan; males may have been more violent by nature, but since pegasi perceived their ability to get food as dependent on their ability to dominate earth ponies and drive away unicorns, everypony was expected to do their part in the military, and females being smaller but having as much flight magic would often translate into the fastest pegasi being female, so the pegasi would not want to do without that advantage.)
It's interesting to see how this seems to play out with the other races of the world. The few dragons we've seen behave as if they come from a male dominated society, but also as if they are barely socialized at all, which might suggest that female dragons have a completely separate society that the males barely get to interact with. Griffins show signs of being heavily influenced by their lion heritage, where females do a lot of the hunting and fighting, and diamond dogs appear to run in packs where males do most of the work of mining and shaking down ponies for gems. :-) we've only met one zebra, one draconequus, and one minotaur, so we can't say much about any of their societies based on canon.
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The point you raise is an interesting and a complex one, because of the many ways and levels and manners in which Humans do (and Ponies could) compete.
I sometimes wonder if Human male-dominance is a survival of societies so simple that it really does just boil down to who can beat up whom without resorting to lethal violence. Obviously, a small disparity in size and strength becomes all the more important the more restrained the combat -- in lethal combat one is as dead if a small woman shoves a spear into one's guts as if a large man does so (though size and strength still gives the large man an advantage provided that he is skilled enough to avoid her thrusts, since he can wield a larger spear and use it with greater force). And also, obviously, the sort of fighting which occurs within a family or among the members of the same band or village will be mostly restrained -- any culture in which it is not will tend to self-destruct.
I think the key difference is the degree of (classical) liberalism in the society. In a classic-liberal society, such as the Anglosphere of the 18th-21st centuries AD, or Equestria at the point depicted in the series, persons are mostly free to choose the course of their own lives, including whom they take as lovers or marry. In such a situation, it's difficult to "enslave" anyone (though there are subtle means of control which can be applied). And this frees market mechanisms to operate in sex and marriage, because he or she who courts another must impress her or him with good behavior, instead of using legal or extra-legal force to intimidate the other into submission.
In other words, the freer the society, the more scarcity translates into higher status for an individual, because the more the arrangements are made on an individual-to-individual basis. The less free the society, the more important group membership becomes -- and here, scarcity can work against the scarce because if it's group vs. group and the scarce are a smaller group.
My comments about stallion dearths were specifically assuming a fairly free society. Obviously, a totalitarian Equestria could force scarce stallions to breed on command of the Realm, or enforce the right of clan and family leaders to make matches regardless of the consent of the Ponies involved. But that's not we're seeing there.
Regarding China and India: China is a mildly totalitarian state whose pre-totalitarian traditional society is very male-dominated. India is a semi-authoritarian representative democracy who pre-modern traditional society was perhaps even more male-dominated than China.
In both countries, the status of women has markedly improved over the last century. It's still low in both places compared to the contemporary West, but it's risen from depths even the medieval West did not normally plumb (in China it was legal to sell one's daughters into prostitution; in India widows were often ritually-murdered).
The effect of a sex dearth on culture is cultural-evolutionary and generally lags at least a generation, sometimes several. The Chinese and Indian men who treat women the most badly are the least likely to be able to find and keep wives. This means that -- on the average -- the Chinese and Indian men who treat women better will have more influence over the next generations than the ones who treat them worse. And the effect would be stronger in freer societies.
They might not be the primary cause, but they would certainly affect it, unless the society took measures to force the stallions to marry as the mares dictated, rather than as the stallions' own preferences dictated. Otherwise, competition by mares for stallions would result in better treatment of stallions by mares.
Very true! This is the key reason why human civilizations have historically been so strongly male-dominated. Among the key developments which enabled women to regain status in civilizations have been the development of anesthetics, antiseptics and antibiotics; and the development of professional militaries, police forces and industrialized warfare.
The medical reason should be obvious; the military ones may be less so. I'll explain.
In non-professional warfare, the key factors are numbers and supplies. There are no real tactics, and few force multipliers that enable smaller but more intelligently-led armies to win. Hence it is vital to have the larger population, and hence the competitive advantage of breeding lots of disposable young men is paramount. The obvious example of this in the past was the Arab Caliphate. (The Turkish Caliphate, by contrast, employed highly-professional militaries).
In professional warfare, armies are organized into subunits capable of maneuver within the larger army and equipped with specialized weapons and equipment whose operational and tactical deployment becomes crucial to victory. A well-led professional army can often defeat less well-led or less professional armies several times its number -- and this has been true since Classical Greco-Roman times.
Hence, education (both in the academic sense, for the officers, and the military sense, for the men) becomes more important than raw numbers. There is less competitive advantage for a civilization possessing a professional military to turn its women into pure baby-making machines, because the required internal oppression may sabotage the educational system and other cultural factors which keep the professional military effective.
It may be relevant here that the Roman Empire, which had the quintessential Ancient professional military, also had a relatively high status for women. That it was the Turks (who had a professional military) who broke the last remnant of the Roman Empire, while the Arab jihads had broken against the rock of the Byzantine professional armies after the initial strategic surprise of the Arab onset. And that within Islam, the Turks have generally afforded their women higher status than have the Arabs.
Industrialized warfare should be more obvious. As the fighting from Omdurman to Iraq has demonstrated, the armies of industrialized nations enjoy tremendous force-multiplier advantages against less well-industrialized foes. This is true even when the less well-industrialized foes have modern weapons available, because they don't understand how to use or repair the weapons as well.
Breeding a large population, unless one can also educate them, becomes militarily counterproductive, as large masses of ignorant and ill-equipped troops become merely so many targets for the live-fire exercises of their better-educated foes. In the 2001-2011 fighting, American forces killed hundreds of thousands of Terrorist troops at the cost of thousands of our own, with loss ratios ranging from 10:1 to 100:1. (And we could have improved those ratios had we chosen to be more ruthless).
There is no humanly-sustainable rate of breeding reinforcements that can compensate for that extreme a disparity in effectiveness. And hence, the breeding advantage of Human patriarchal as opposed to egalitarian societies is mostly negated.
Which is, I think, a good thing for the future of sexual equality in our own world!
Indeed. I still think that Pony pregnancies are more dangerous than were the pregnancies of their pre-sapient ancestors -- all other things being equal (namely, no medical technology or tradition to aid the expectant mother) but not as dangerous as ours. This helps a lot because it means that it is economically-rational for subsistence-economy societies to provide professional education to both their male and female elites, unlike in the history of early Human civilizations where education was statistically less valuable given to women because of the high chance that they would die due to childbirth complications.
Yes. Among Pegasi and Unicorns, sheer physical size may be an advantage but rarely a very important advantage in a fight. This is true even of non-lethal fighting, as a fast or agile Pegasus can humiliate a bigger, stronger but slower Pegasus in aerobatics; and a talented Unicorn can easily defeat a bigger but less talented one at magic without causing serious harm.
Indeed. And Earth Ponies derive a lot of their strength and endurance from their magic, so physical size and strength is less important here than magical fortitude and determination. To take the obvious case, Applejack could probably easily defeat most stallions one-on-one -- and she's not all that large, though she is most definitely muscular. Her superior aggressiveness might even enable her to defeat her brother if it came to blows, despite the fact that he's very big and strong, even for a stallion.
Here's the part I'm not so sure about. Absent either a totalitarian regime organizing and enforcing this, or a situation of sufficient anarchy that much comes down to fighting and gangs of the appropriate sex enforce this rule, how is it organized and enforced. Because the basic problem is that a "socially dominant sex" is far too disorganized a thing to easily "choose" to behave in any fashion "collectively." You need institutions to organize such things.
In the West, the institution which primarily enforced male dominance was the Church. Christianity explicitly endorses male domination and, in Renaissance and Early Modern times, organized and approved of violent action to suppress women who failed to be appropriately submissive. This ranged from the witch-hunting of the 15th-17th centuries to the punishment of "scolds."
This started to break up with the Enlightenment. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the institutions that formally organized the punishment of women for lack of submission dissolved, or lost their powers of enforcement. In the classical-liberal societies of America and Britain, where gangs (ranging from aristocratic coteries all the way down to literal street-gangs) attempted to enforce male dominance, they were limited by the growing Rule of Law to behavior too weak in many cases to succeed at such enforcement. Men who defected actually did gain the advantage in finding wives and having children (you will hear complaints about "hen-pecked husbands" throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries), and those who chose to try to maintain the old patriarchal system became increasingly marginalized.
This is why I think that a classical-liberal Rule of Law, which protects the rights of the individual, is the key to freeing economic forces to redress disparities in the treatment of the sexes -- and, of course, to favor the scarcer gender (which is important biologically because it means an increased likelihood of members of the scarcer gender surviving to reproduce -- the absence of such a factor operating is what is creating such strong cultural stress right now in China).
Well, farther in some ways, and much farther if one considers technocultural analogues. Remember, Equestria is technologically a mid-Industrial Age society, and the comparison should be made with America or Britain of around 1900 rather than around 2000. On that metric, Equestria is far more egalitarian.
My guesses here are (1) Equestria's still a matriarchy, (2) it's deemed less important especially by the lower classes to educate colts, because they're only going to grow up to do heavy field labor anyway, and (3) if you're doing heavy field labor, you're not in town as often.
I actually assume a slight stallion dearth, as notice Twilight's writing here in An Epistolary Legal Consultation Between Princesses:
So note, that's almost a 2:1 mare to stallion ratio. Part of the reason is more mare births, but another reason is that the jobs stallions tend to do generally result in them dying sooner, often due to work-related cumulative effects (this is, remember, a mid-Industrial Age society, and though they are more humane than was America c. 1900, the lower technologies are inherently more dangerous to those who must work with them). This means that it's not so hard for mares to find husbands, but it's harder for them to enjoy old age with them. There are a lot of lonely widows living in Equestria.
Yes. Save among the underclasses, a violent Pony is despised and distrusted. In consequence, he does not derive as much advantage by being violent as might a violent Human in most of our cultures.
You make a very good point about the Guards, and the advantages of testosterone-fueled aggression for soldiers who may have to engage in hoof-to-hoof combat. It's also notable that the most obviously-heroic characters with Guard background, Shining Armor and Flash Sentry, have essentially protective personalities. And almost every time on the show we've seen a sympathetic character threaten violence it's been in direct defense of another sympathetic character (Rainbow defending Fluttershy, or Spike and Rarity defending one another, for instance -- and Spike's Pony by culture though not by biology)..
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Hmm, disagreed.
While it's definitely never possible to be totally sure on how exactly this stuff works, if you observe the show, you will realize that the number of ponies of both genders with good careers and positions are relatively equal, from what we've seen that is. There are an equal number of female and male role models in the cartoon itself, even if the female ones get more screentime on average due to the target audience. For all intents and purposes, it appears socially and economically egalitarian, with no indication of one gender having an advantage or any sort of discrimination. There simply is no "This gender dominates all important positions/institutions/social positions", from what we've seen in the show and comics so far.
As far as actual leadership positions? We've only seen very few of those; the alicorns and a few other more minor ones. Considering all current alicorns are female, you could easily argue that they have a sort of matriarchal government, but a matriarchal society is very much debatable. There is not as much evidence for a matriarchal SOCIETY in the show as people seem to believe, and while I won't deny the possibility, I see evidence contradicting it. If you want to cite the background pony crowds, then by all means do so, but keep in mind that they are wildly inconsistent and filled with oddities like clones, and thus are terrible, unreliable evidence and could potentially be totally inaccurate. Personally I believe they are indeed inaccurate and the gender ratio is actually even, but who knows how that works.
Again, I could be wrong, and so could you for that matter; this show only provides everyone with limited information, and with most things people have to end up just going with assumptions rather than fact. Still, there appears to be significant evidence pointing towards egalitarian rather than matriarchy on everything but government. We've seen more females in government roles, certainly(though we haven't seen much government at all, really only the highest levels), but we've seen a near equal number of males and females in just about everything else, including owners of business, nobles/wealthy, celebrities, and just plain old careers.
I think people are just looking at the abundance of female characters with speaking roles and are jumping to conclusions without considering alternative possibilities. They may very well end up being to correct to some extent or another, but they could just as easily end up being wrong to some extent or another. I like to emphasize the uncertainty of these things because I've developed a cautiousness when discussing the canon; you yourself seem to have no qualms with making broad, sweeping claims about the canon based on the meager scraps of information you can pull from the show itself. I honestly don't know where you're pulling all those ideas from, but at least the creativity aspect is a good trait for a fanfiction writer to have.
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I agree with you, though I do wish that elsewhere you'd point out your viewpoint a little less aggressively. I suspect you've made a bad first impression by being too insistent. I don't suppose you'll be willing to grace us with another response? I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on the matter.
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They're free to keep it as long as they remember that it's not set in stone and that it's very much still debatable. Limited information forces a sort of stalemate for both sides in that argument though.