Poor Pitiful Naive Little Twilight Sparkle · 5:36am Jul 26th, 2016
Some writers want to write Equestria as a sexually-promiscuous culture, one at least as promiscous as our own. Sometimes, they assume that because Equestria isn't Christian, the Equestrians would have pretty much no sexual morals whatsoever. (In doing so, of course, they pay Christianity an inadvertent and probably undeserved compliment -- they wrongly imagine that non-Christian societies are sexually amoral, which was precisely the mistake of the bigoted 19th-century Christian missionaries in dealing with native cultures in Polynesia and Africa).
This is possible in part because the Show only indirectly depicts sexual morals (though what it indirectly depicts implies a culture with reasonably high moral standards). Because the characters never explicitly discuss the subject, it's possible to imagine them very sexually-active (which suits the purpose of porn).
However, anyone who has watched the first two Equestria Girls runs into a problem with this theory, which is that Twilight -- while amost certainly a full adult in her culture -- reacts to Flash Sentry not like an experienced woman considering merely the latest in her long series of Pony and the City sexual adventures, each no more meaningful than the last -- but rather, and very obviously, like a rather innocent young woman who has little if any sexual experience. (This may also explain some of the Flash-hatred, too).
I've noticed that those who want to envision Equestria as the culture of Brave New World have come up with a solution for this. Plainly Twilight is so focused on academic studies that she has no time to engage in the mad whirl of orgy-porgy that all her friends and everyone else around her participates in as a matter of course.
In the typical "Poor Pitiful Naive Little Twilight Sparkle" story, Twilight Sparkle has her face shoved in the fact that some characters (often friends or relatives) are having sex out of wedlock. Twilight is terribly shocked by this and runs to her other friends, only to learn that everypony is having Lots and Lots of Sex, including not merely non-marital but even loveless sex, and that Twilight Sparkle is foolish to think that life can or should work in any other manner.
Usually the way that this is resolved is that Twilight comes to realize the absurdity of her former sexual morals, and also starts having casual or semi-casual sex, which makes her much happier. Now that she knows about sex, you see, she can never be nor would she want to be chaste again.
The implied assumption here is that nopony really exercises sexual self-restraint out of morality, but only due to ignorance. When their foolish outmoded assumptions confront reality, they must be discarded, along with their morals.
The main theoretical problem with this assumption is that pretty much every Human civilization (and the Ponies are strongly K-selective childbearers and raisers like Humans, so this applies to the Ponies as well) has or has had stricter sexual morals than the proposed system of universal casual sex (and, if your embodiments of Virtues practice casual sex, it's safe to say everypony else does as well). This is a problem because, when a custom appears again and again in disparate civilizations, it is a safe bet that it has major cultural-evolutionary value, meaning that its absence would be what requires explanation.
The main evidentiary problem with this assumption is that in-Show we see a culture that appears to regard sexuality as romantic, special, exclusive, and generally linked in some way to either courtship for marriage, or marriage itself. Mr. Cake is horrified at the implication that his wife may have cheated on him. Flurry Heart is conceived and born after Cadance and Shining are married. Rarity is jealous of Trenderhoof's attraction to Applejack, the obvious casual-sex solution of the sharing him is not suggested by anypony. Spike is jealous of Rarity's attraction for Blueblood and Trenderhoof. Rarity is jealous of the possibility of Spike's attraction to Ember.
These aren't as obvious as Twilight Sparkle's getting all flustered at the most minor innocent physical contact with Flash Sentry, but what they tell us is that -- while Twilight may be less romantically-experienced than her friends -- her friends aren't just having sex willy-nilly either. Some may have some sexual experience, some may be virgins, but all of them view sex as something special which springs from love, not as just "relieving tensions."
Furthermore, it's very obvious that Twilight Sparkle could have lots and lots of sex any time she wanted, if simple sex was what she was aiming for. She's a single Princess and national heroine. All of her friends are single national heroines. Any of them could bring home a different stallion every night, if that was what she WANTED TO DO.
The complete lack of even circumstantial evidence in the Show that any such thing is happening (and the Show writers are masters of getting things Under the Radar) strongly implies that this is not what any of them want to do. Instead, what we see is circumstantial evidence that some of them are too prudish (Twilight, Applejack,), concerned with reputation (Rarity), or just plain inexperienced and afraid of getting hurt -- no matter how much they put up a bawdy front (Rainbow Dash) to behave promiscuously. In two cases (Fluttershy and Pinkie) they are so weird that most stallions probably don't have enough emotional points of contact with them to appeal to them.
But let's get back to the original question. Why is Twilight Sparkle so sexually-inexperienced? Is it out of naive and foolish ignorance, or out of informed and wise caution?
And here we get to the main reason why I don't believe in Poor Naive Little Twilight Sparkle.
She grew up at the Royal Court of Equestria, under the direct tutelage of Princess Celestia, who is a centuries-old super-intelligent being.
Let's pick this apart.
What do you think of when you think Equestrian Royal Court? Yes, pomp and pageantry, luxury and wealth.
But also: the center of political power for a continent-spanning empire -- the Realm of Equestria. A place where leaders representing major national factions jockey for influence over the Autocrat. There is a lot at stake. They would lie and cheat and steal -- do whatever they believe they can get away with - to improve their positions.
Celestia is morally good. Very morally good. But she's not at all "innocent," or "naive," or anything of that sort. If she was, they'd eat her alive, despite all her magical might. They would do this by seducing her to this or that cause with various emotional lures. Some of these lures would be romantic or sexual. Celestia knows all about such lures -- and why it's important to avoid them, why one can't assume that somepony who claims to love you really loves you, rather than that million-bit trade monopoly you're about to dispense.
And what is true of Celestia is true -- to a lesser degree, because Twilight is very young while Celestia is very old -- of Twilight Sparkle as well. Not only would Twilight have observed cut-throat politics and all manners of seduction and treachery, Celestia would have directed her attention to them, to prevent Twilight from being vulnerable to such strategems. She would have done this all the more because she loves Twilight, and would not want Twilight to suffer use and betrayal.
Twilight Sparkle is morally good. Very morally good. But she's not an innocent, though in terms of personal sexual experience she's probably the most virginal of the Mane Six. She can't be, or she would have drowned in the stormy seas of the Royal Court.
What Twilight Sparkle may well be is Oblivious To Love. And that may in part be a defense mechanism, a pretense to avoid seduction by those who would make political use of her without offending and making enemies of them. That's the sort of skill Celestia would have mastered many centuries ago, and would be glad to teach Twilight.
This lady, who was neither naive nor promiscuous
could tell you a few things about that.
In conclusion, I do not believe in Poor Pitiful Naive Little Twilight. Instead I believe in a powerful, intelligent and sophisticated Princess, who has high moral standards.
Let me guess: you just read the "clocktower"-story, didn't you?
But I agree. This interpretation of Twilight is boring.
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No, just the concept. I was thinking of some other stories I've read in greater detail, including several in the Winningverse and Twilight's Secret Journal.
4113456 Ah, the secret journal... then I agree with you even more. This is a dull and lame interpretation of Twilight.
Wow this was well thought out and well written and I couldn't agree more sir.
Just one question......why did you wright this?/
I am honestly curious about what prompted you to write this.
Interesting analysis. Also, what does K-selective mean?
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There are two basic extremes of reproductive strategy, along the dimension of parental care. R-selection means to shoot for maximum number of offspring; K-selection for maximum care devoted to each offspring. Humans and Ponies are both very strongly K-selected creatures, as our children take most of a year to gestate and two decades to reach full maturity, and we (usually) bear only one child per pregnancy (and if more than one, usually just two).
K-selection has the implication that the child is to be cared for by more than one individual. Hence, it tends to result in strong companionate marriage or something equivalent. Humans (and Ponies) are weird among mammals in that mating is a long-term arrangement. That's why -- to make sure that the mommy has a daddy at hand to help her raise the kids. The advantage so provided is a gigantic cultural-evolutionary pressure to develop marital customs.
4113459
Reading stories in which Twilight Sparkle is naive and doesn't understand how sex works, simply because she's a virgin.
Ooh...
Now I'm imagining a story where Twilight is trying to pass on some of those lessons from Celestia to her newly-famous friends. Probably not one I'm going to write anytime soon, but one I'd be very interested in reading!
4113472 ah yes seen a few of those, while some of them were done in a believe able way and not the point of the story (these were actule story and not just stories for sex) most of the time it is rather oddly done to where it makes no sense for the most part.
So basicly I agree with your assessment.
4113470 Got it, thanks a lot.
I'm not going to argue too much with your conclusions about Twilight's behavior with Flash other than to say -- it really feels like you're reading a lot of both personal and human values into her reaction, especially in light of your somewhat weak and indulgent arguments about the gender/LGBTQ make up of Equestria. Which is fine; I didn't bring it up then because for all that post purported to be about Equestria in the show, it was fine as a demonstration of why you went for the particular fanon that you did. Reasoning can be indulgent if it follows that sort of purpose.
But you might want to pick someone other than Elizabeth I as your example there. For all she played up the whole Virgin Queen thing as excellent PR and had iron clad control over her dalliances and their outcomes, it seems pretty clear she was perfectly content to have such dalliances; she just ruthlessly kept them to oral.
I think the real lesson to take away is that Equestria neither has to be sexually promiscuous nor sexually puritanical, and neither does Twilight (or any character). On the one hand, the show is extremely limited in what they display to the extent that we have to go with radar-underpass and and wink-nudge symbolism. That's up to a huge amount of interpretation, not to mention conflict between showrunners; Faust wanted them to never have relationships in order to avoid romantic plot tumors and anchorweight boyfriends, but the EqG people pretty clearly wanted to play up the high school socialization, not to mention Faust's departure.
On the other, because they are extremely focused on the Six and the people in their lives, we may be mistaking a lot of behavior there for normative, and more, the motivations for human-normative. Twilight with Flash, not for argument's sake but for example of where the extrapolation can go; it would be possible even as a human for Twilight to be perfectly fine with having a wild, debauched Canterlot orgy lifestyle in the background but be shy with meeting new people outside of a controlled environment. Add in an alien socialization/psyche and the fact that she's a driven individual almost to the point of monomania with some pretty clear edge case personality issues...
And it's not like her friends are necessarily any better there. Similar to what you said about Rainbow Dash and action heroing, each of the six and the near-cast have fairly extreme personalities of one kind or another. And they are national heroes, so both they and their associates might well have a certain degree of immunity from social and even legal sanction. Take Bon-Bon and Lyra; even if we accept that they're an open lesbian couple, you can still posit that there's prejudice against lesbians, homosexuality in general, etc. and it's just Bon-Bon's status as a former high-value agent and Lyra's connection to the Princess Celestia Old School network (not to mention possibly Cadance and Twilight) provides a measure of immunity.
So yeah; I would be wary of extrapolating too much about concepts of sexuality and socialization and making definitive statements about "what the show says." It's why I try to say things like headfanon rather than headcanon, and then base my logic out of there.
I tend to group 'free love Equestria' in with a set of other head canons that ultimately come from wish fulfilment. Many writers, particularly younger ones, rather like the idea that the Mane Six will hop into bed with anyone, as it makes it more likely that they would with
themtheir character.As you point out, there is no real support for this in canon, however free love is merely the start of it.
Two other headcanons spring to mind in particular, both of which could only be less supported by canon if a character were to go to the length of explicitly denying them.
The first is heat. The idea that a mare becomes madly promiscuous, in some cases to the point of forcing herself on any available male, while in her estrus.
Of course, on might expect to see this in porn fics and sex comedies, but it also shows up in allegedly serious work. In the well kmown fic Your Human and You, a long running 'will they, won't they' romance between Twilight and the main character is resolved in this manner. I finally abandoned the fic after that.
Secondly we have herds, which allegedly come from real life equine behaviour, but that is merely and excuse: it really comes from naked wish fulfilment; many young men rather like the idea of a world where
theytheir character is not only all but guaranteed a girlfriend, but is likely to have several.The closest mainstream analogue to this is Japanese harem comedies, but those gain most of there humour at the expense of the lone male, by pointing out that living with multiple high strung, jealous girls would not be a good thing. All the power lies with the girls, rather than the male, and they delight in saying that this loser is you.
No so on this site, I'm afraid.
Not much to say except i wish i could up vote blog posts :P
i have read some great stories where there not constantly sleeping around but non of em are virgins either. Heat/estrus making them experience a first time but not prompting all out constant sex. From then on they know what to expexct and can take precations. But even in that i remeber a line from a HIE story. Something along the lines of "We don't go into heat! We are not animals! We dfo however some into season once a year."
There are a large variety of headcount with differences even in similar thoughts when it comes to the sexual or lack there of behaviors. i guess the first question is how dose your headcannon perceive there reproductive cycle?
You make three assumptions which have no necessity.
First is that sex is necessarily connected to reproduction. It seems to be obvious, but for modern human culture it is slowly becoming not so, thanks to contraception, and we could easily pose that same holds for Equestria. For example we could assume that while ponies are sexually active all year, they are only reproductively active during estrus. Or alternatively that cheap and reliable contraception has been known for long enough that it became integral part of the culture and entirely divorced the notion of sex from the notion of reproduction - not at all unreasonable given that ponies do posesss magic/technology that allows to do things that human civilization as we know it will not be able to do for few next centuries at the very least.
As long as whatever it is happened sufficiently long ago, and there is no institute that keeps insisting that unchanging mores are divinely/evolutionary/whatever inspired and can never-ever-ever change regardless of circumstance, the reproduction and sex may well become entirely divorced in the culture.
Second is that you for some reason assume that if guilt-free casual sex is readily available in the culture EVERYONE must necessarily have loads and loads of sex.
That's silly. We now have a lot of cheap and available food, but that does not mean that everyone gorges themselves on every available delicacy all the time, and while obesity is somewhat of a problem in the world, there are quite a lot of people who either aren't interested in food at all or keep a strict diet for one reason or other.
And third, you insist on saying that casual sex is a substitute for romantic engagement. And that's like saying that ice-cream is a substitute for a steak. Both are food, both are quite good, but one is not a substitute for the other, at least not entirely. When I am strolling in the park and it's hot outside (which incidentally it is and I am), you would not do well suggesting I have steak instead of ice-cream, unless I am currently starving.
It is entirely plausible and normal to wish to have romantic engagement as its own end, rather than as a prerequisite to get in someone's panties.
Just the same as it is normal to not to want to eat meat, or to dislike Indian food. Even if it is an entirely normal food, that everyone eats.
Even in casual sex culture some ponies, and perhaps most ponies would want to have romantic engagements, marry and have a long-term closed monogamous marriages. That could even easily be the norm.
The difference would be that some would not (as they do IRL) and have instead open, poly- or casual engagements, and that would also be regarded as non-exceptional and definitely not morally wrong to the point of societal slut-shaming and shunning.
Also, we have good reason to assume Celestia taught Twilight little or no social skills, seeing how she had no friends, knew no one in Canterlot, preferred reading a book over a party in her honour (and a Pinkie-Party no less) and pretty much panicked and stumbled around in most social situations. So she is kinda socially naïve and nerdy, that's part of her characterization.
Moreover, seeing how she never attended GGG, had no clue what Princess did there (and GGG is explicitly said to be THE social event of the year) we can and should conclude that at no point did Twilight ever "observe the (non-existent) cut-throat politics of Canterlot" but rather that she did in fact spend her time in the almost literal ivory tower of academic study, most likely of her own choice.
So when can we expect to see your self-incert OC somehow beat the odds and romance Twilight?
Additional post, in lieu of edits:
It is a leitmotif of this, and previous posts on this topic, as well as explicitly stated in some coments, that the free-love-Equestria headcanon is purely wish-fulfilment and porn-set up... and I do not entirely contest that notion.
But I do not think that this is the start-all end-all of this sort of idea.
You see, unlike Jordan179, most people take Equestria at what it is implied - a peaceful, harmonious and entirely happy place. A Utopia of sorts, or at least as reasonably close as possible without being boring. There is no "cut-throat Canterlot politics" no war or "border skirmishes" or whatever, and whatever monster or invasion of the day happens to come up once in the blue moon, it is dealt with via pie-throwing and a song-and-dance number after which everypony becomes friends. If anything that requires the sort of sombre tight-lipped serious approach Jordan179 likes oh-so-much (and that now I think I understand as Niven influence), it exists at best on the margins of the society, far outside the focus of the show.
That's, incidentally is why I dislike Jordan's fiction, as I wrote in my review - this part of MLP, and why I personally love this show, is entirely ignored.
And since Equestria is a utopian country, we as fiction authors bring in the things we consider utopian, and that would , for a modern left-leaning first-world writer, be an inclusive society that considers informed consent and safety the most important, if not sole criterion of morality.
So if ponies like sex (and its not unreasonable to think they do), and if they have no negatives associated with it (since it is a utopia), there would really be no reason for them not to have it on a regular basis, casual or not, and definitely no reason to feel bad either because they do or because they choose not to.
4113541 it's the reasonaly close to Utopia that thing that implies the kind of conflict Jordan179 is talking about. Politics isn't exactly a friendly game. Cutthroat Equestrian politics may not qualify as that to humans, but it seems likely it would be it for Equestria. After all is the running of the nation doesn't require all the skill, passion, wheeling and dealing you can manage then what does?
Not much to say here. I generally agree; heck, I've written a story about a savvy but inexperienced Twilight that you enjoyed. My only question is why you marked this as a blog for Post-Traumatic of all things. I suppose it might be related to Starlight's attempts to abolish sexual morality as a whole?
4113486
What, that the sex ratios are only a little bit skewed toward females and that most Equestrians are heterosexuals or at the broadest bisexuals? The former is a compromise between evolutionary biology and the desire of many fans to have Equestrias with more females than males; the second is absolutely necessary in sociobiological terms for a mammalian species with long-term and mostly-monogamous mating. There is very strong evolutionary pressure for most individuals to be heterosexual, for extremely obvious reasons. In fact, it's the stability of homosexuality in such a species which requires explanation (and numerous good ones exist).
I'm well aware of this. She probably wasn't actually a virgin either in the technical sense, either: Robin Dudley was likely her lover. As for her dalliances: yes, but she had few and significant ones, she was not promiscuous by the normal definition of the term. She just lived a long time, so they added up.
The point is that Elizabeth was extremely cunning and self-controlled, rather than being airheaded and debauched. Her enemies would have much preferred a silly impulsive Elizabeth -- they might have been able to overthrow such a Queen. This illustrates a general principle of royal survival, which was why I mentioned it.
Airheaded debauched Elizabeth can be seen in the second Blackadder series. She's a historical in-joke, and the ultimate joke is that she gets replaced.
My Equestria is no more "puritanical" than Victorian-Edwardian England / 19th to early 20th century America. Which is far, far far LESS puritanical than you imagine. I've actually studied social history, including the history of courtship behavior.
Also, Elizabeth was fairly puritanical for a Renaissance monarch, even though she was bawdy by the standards of 19th-century monarchs. You may not realize just how depraved the species generally got. In part, she was reacting against the literally-atrocious behavior of her father, Henry VIII, with whose legacy she had a love-hate relationship.
Faust's strategy wouldn't have worked as well long-term. But then there was originally no long-term -- the fondest hope of the writers originally was that they could carry it to the end of Season 3 and Twilight's Ascension.
Love is part of life, so romances were bound to happen as characters developed, or it would have looked very weird.
I've noticed some behavior which simply looks weird by Human standards, such as shared-parenting (Derpy and Carrot Top with Dinky when Dinky is probably Derpy's child and Carrot Top is the one who has a serious mate (Written Script). This is probably a herding thing -- Ponies have a tendency to form very strong friendships, stronger than those common among Humans. The strength of that bond, and the fact that I go with a Crouching Moron Hidden Badass version of Derpy, is also why I incorporate the story of Derpy rescuing Carrot Top from the Windigo Queen.
Yes, but then the sexual aspect would be the part which wouldn't fluster her. And Tanith Lee has written that story, more than once.
The logical basis of Equestrian morality (the Harmony) makes it very likely that tolerance of variant sexualities is the norm. However, building on what you said, remember that Lyra is high-status as well, and probably from birth. Consider where she went to school, and her circle of friends at that time. Also consider that she seems to have no visible means of support, yet isn't worried about this.
4113508
I assume two things about estrus:
(1) It's not emotionally overwhelming (because it isn't with real mares and Pony mares are sapient), and
(2) In normal families, the older mares warn the fillies entering puberty what to expect, so that they don't just run out and have sex in their pre-teens / early teens (which could among other things result in their winding up unwed mothers or making poor matches).
Estrus (though not first estrus) of a sexually-naive mare is a major plot point in An Incident on Sentry-Duty, and is referenced in some of my other stories.
4113617
Oh, I picked Post-Traumatic because there's a lot of Twilight Sparkle being emotionally and intellectually awesome in that story, in ways that make it very unlikely she's Poor Pitiful Naive Little Twilight.
4113617
Heh, that's one of the ones I had in mind as a good example of how to write Twilight. Her friends were worried she'd get seduced rather than welcoming it as "Twilight needs to have sex," (that Dashie wasn't worried was a clue as to what was really going on) and Twilight herself totally controlled the situation from start to finish, because she'd grown up in an environment where protecting herself against attempted seduction was absolutely necessary, given her status and the stakes.
4113537
Well, as you may have noticed -- Luna is doing that. Beating the odds in multiple fashions by doing so.
Maybe it's because she lived like, twenty years or so without making a single friend. A lack of social skills can most certainly lead to a lack of sex.
4113737
In my Equestria, yes. In a Free Love Equestria, no, because she'd simply have sex as a matter of course.
RANDOM STALLION: You are pretty and high-status. Sex?
TWILIGHT SPARKLE: Sure, I have 15 minutes.
(*sex*)
RS: How was I?
TS: Meh. Books are better.
Incidentalky, I like your story, because you have a rather warped (by Celestia) Equestrian culture (and hence Mane Six) even BEFORE the Order of Spring shows up. "When I was a little filly ..." indeed!
4113737
Oh, also ...
My Twilight Sparkle was 17 at the Return of Luna, and she HAD friends. Just not very close ones outside her family.
They do? I have made this observation too, by the things seen and heard in several episodes and even wrote a journal entry detailing the results of my analyzis and explaining everything for the masses, but I always thought I'm the only one who has discovered that.
It would be nice to have exchanges with bronies who did too. Can you forward me to some of them?
What you say makes sense. I guess I just don't read stories like that.
4113666
Which was an example of treating normative for the majority of species as being a hard and fast rule to apply to a show where at least at one point there was an apparent skew* outside of that norm isn't really a matter of taking evidence from the show and applying science to see what it must be, but applying logic and science to back-support one's fanon. There were a number of problems with treating it as show-descriptive, but one of the top ones was the male vs. female argument; you treated male birth-heavy tendencies** as though a particular lineage having that would naturally skew back to 1:1.
Fisher's Principle has four traps to fall into there; first, it's an explanation for the commonality we see in reality in the vast majority of species. If a zoologist saw an apparent birth rate and survivorship ratio off from that, they'd check the results because of FP but then the question would be "why is this different?" not "why is this wrong?" if the ratio was sustained. Second, it requires that the investment in given offspring be equal to get an equal set of results; Third, it refers to overall rates of offspring-existence, rather than participation in any particular social grouping (bachelor packs of lions vs. breeding packs, ditto horse herds***) Fourth, an external manipulation could be keeping it a certain way or have placed it as such, including social ones but also divine or divine-equivalents, like a certain self-sustaining entity you have that's close to the Pie family. Really, there's a lot of traps there; FP makes a good argument for why a fanon shifts away from the skew, but a bad one as to why canon or close-canon(+) can't really have it.
You had some decent explanations for why your fanon would result from your assumptions, but similar as to here, they don't make convincing arguments as to why your fanon is canonical.
* As I understand it, in recent seasons, they've tried to tone this down, which goes to show there's really only so much you can rely on any background element in a children's show, no matter how rich and well-thought out. In arguments about religion in... the Sunset Shimmer group, I want to say, someone was heavily asserting that ponies wouldn't have any religious-equivalents and then just called a background element of what appeared to be a collar-wearing cleric giving a funeral service either a throwaway gag or a case of mistaken identity as opposed to looking at it through the lens of what a kid's show will or won't risk showing/discussing and the limits of that for extrapolating onto both "what is intended" and "what will make for a more coherent story when I build a fanon life for it."
** That's my three years of studying for a molecular/cellular development degree prior to shaky hands making for bad lab experience talking; sex is just so weird in terms of not only chromosomal basis, but also the environment of the womb and the environment of the mother as that affects the womb... it irritates me when people, not you, write that off as being a 'genetic' tendency to a certain offspring ratio.
*** Which is where I think the "they have to be skewed in canon!" as opposed to "they are apparently skewed in canon in the social areas we see, and I'd like my fanon to follow this up" crowd messes up in the opposite direction. Perhaps more darkly humorous are the ones who then go from that to "and human-style polygynous marriages with a single, dominant male" would then be/are the norm, as opposed to a light to heavy matriarchy with tiered social/gender structures (boss mare/mare-alliance, higher-ranked stallion(s), rest of the mares, rest of the stallions as outsiders) because that's not just mistaking canon for fanon, that's outright ignoring what you see in the show and nearest-equivalent species for your porn, which is 9.9, and then demanding that it be treated as canon with is >.<.
(+) I'm not going to include in that list proud AUs like Myths and Birthrights or very much unashamed "influenced by canon" fanons like my own (ie, having about as much resemblance to canon as a modern Arthurian take which includes the French elements does to the early Welsh and/or neighboring Celtic stories)
Actually, homosexual behavior shows up a lot in both sex-skewed (light or heavy, social or biological ie ejection to bachelor herds/packs vs. actual birth rate) and non-sex-skewed species. Well, continuum behavior, but honestly, saying any individual is more than 'strong leaning' is probably a privilege of sapient self-description. Which would be all the xenological cause you'd need to split either way; fanon vs. canon again.
You're drawing a couple of conclusions here that don't make sense: 1) that the dalliances we have specific evidence for in the context of evidence that she had a healthy, if discrete sexual life represent the extent of her relationships, 2) that promiscuous in the sense of having repeated sexual partners is the same thing as indiscreet, 3) as airheaded/distractible, 4) as debauched/dissolute, 5) as silly/impulsive.
Well, and, 6) that her enemies would have had sufficient power against both her and her allies that they could overthrow her for breaking the sexual mores, but I think we can both agree that the Elizabeth who existed and who definitely was neither 3 or 5 wouldn't have really been Elizabeth and hence had the political capital and allies she did if she was either 3 or 5. Again, this is back-justification against an interesting context; Elizabeth, regardless of whatever else was true of 1 and 4 was a past mistress of PR, and permitted neither the open appearance of 4 anywhere, and definitely was discreet; even if she never slept alone, she wasn't going to exactly let it become common knowledge. Much like Hasbro isn't going to show any potential matriarchy as anything other than accidents of casting or non-broadly-acceptable-to-all-parents romantic relationships. As with certain kings and male lovers, the crime would have been in letting such things influence her and her governance in a way that weakened England and her own power, rather than the existence of the lovers themselves.
As long as that's your assumption for your fanon Equestria, it's fine; what's irritated me about both the last post and this one is the apparent presumption that it's the only way to extrapolate canon. Much like you're extrapolating badly and insultingly at this point about my level of knowledge and scholarship. I'm well aware that the Victorian concept of 'traditional' mores was a fad, much like a lot of the assumptions the dominant Renaissance culture had (since it was no more monolithic than the cultures they stereotyped for good or for ill) about the Medieval periods in a broader cultural sense was a fad based on their fetishization of their lens of viewing Greco-Roman history and presuming that both a monolithic interregnum existed after the "fall" of a monolithic Rome and that there was neither development nor anything to learn from positively in that intervening period*. Similarly, I'm aware that the 1950s concepts about themselves (Valium's... use... in 'coping' with the removal from the workplace, for example), later eras concepts about the 1950s, and both of their views about WWI/WWII-era mores and pre/inter-war mores were pretty heavily biased by the same.
My master's degree was in archaeology, thanks, strictly-processual, not post, math and statistics and biology-based evidence drove my thesis on economic activity and trade routes for cross-continental pre-Contact Native Americans, not storytelling; the reason it wasn't modern archaeology was primarily because the grad school I got the better ride in didn't really focus on that, much like the reason my undergrad wasn't focused on Classical was because there was a huge feud between the Anthro and Classics departments at my undergrad school that no one told me about until senior year, despite the papers I kept writing about Athens and Sparta... Sigh. Just because the memory is 15-16 years old now does not make it any less cranky.
As for Elizabeth, she didn't destroy her lovers the way her father did, no, but he was a specific horror when he got self-indulgent, petulant about his arguments with the Vatican, and desperate politically; and the arguments that she naturally would have therefore been very, very limited have been really shaky and seem more about projecting a different kind of myth and assumption of behavior onto her. Admittedly, the last time I looked into her-- England got boring to me about six years back and I've mostly been focusing on the extremes of Northern and Southern Europe when I'm refreshing myself on Renaissance Europe, so maybe they've found some personal writings to that extent, but in the absence of those, I am still very skeptical of anyone who says she just flipped to the opposite end of the spectrum as opposed to cleaning up her ethics in dealing with her lovers on a personal level, and maintaining discretion on the political.
* Side irony, looking at some of the depictions, post-fall of the Western Roman Empire there may have even been increases in rights for, say, women, both in terms of economic activities and in terms of political leadership, depending on where you were; Roman "Let's Just Number The Girls" culture and Greek "Uh... girl babies come from staring lustfully at statues?" culture didn't help whatever trends the dominant Renaissance legal and philosophical movements had for them, as well as other groups.
Big assumption. Really, really big assumption. Faust's plan has been pushed at there, but it certainly hasn't been changed as per the alicorns!* We still haven't seen any longterm romances in the Six, since Flash was mostly a flash in the pan, and it doesn't honestly look that weird; love is a part of life but it neither need be what the show focuses on nor even so prevalent that we see it even if it exists. They could be managing things discreetly, to use Elizabeth's example; or they could all be monofocused on their careers that romances are either extremely brief or socially separate, or Hasbro and the current showrunners may be mostly continuing to see the value in having female role models the way they are, undependent on long term romance for satisfaction, which happens to both male and female humans in the real world. I mean, I wouldn't trade my spouse for anything, but I'm neither that monofocused, nor in a career that requires it.
*Honestly, I think there's a lot of interesting possibility in the ascension bits that was woefully undersold, making Twilight's ascension both worthwhile and the magic/worldbuilding content something I really wish they'd go into. Similarly, I don't think it would be bad for them to explore romance, since it is normative to most lives that both their target and peripheral audiences will see. I just don't trust the Flash philosophy. I think the hate leveled at him is silly, as opposed to the "he's a representation of why you don't just throw a character in to be a romance from nowhere and it's particularly insulting with female leads." It felt shoehorned to fit the high school culture assumptions, as opposed to trying to create a romantic interest as a character who's a natural and long term part of her life that romance develops from.
Which is great as far as your fanon goes and why it makes for interesting stories, but now you're very definitely willing to extend some of the concepts you like for your fanon and horse-oid behavior as opposed to rejecting others. That's better than accepting the form (breeding herds) while requiring a completely foreign element (male-dominated breeding herds) for strictly wish fulfillment than canon, but it's still an irksome assumption.
Which... is irrelevant to the specific quibble I had, which was the idea that Twilight's shy behavior with Flash gives us zero clues about whether or not she's sexually inexperienced or whether or not she grew up in an environment where promiscuity in the sense of multiple partnerships, exclusive or not, was a norm and did or didn't see that. In fact, in so far as it is relevant, that's my point; the encounter is a purely meeting-a-new-person and having Feelings of some kind, whether romantic, lustful, or both. I apologize if I didn't make that clear. Even if it were lustful and both she and her society had experience with large orgies and multi-partner marriages, she could still react at the meeting-a-new-person in an alien land point with shyness because it fit outside of her personal compartmentalization of such things.
Some people are just shy. I'm extremely kinky, and in some cases very comfortable about talking about it, especially but not always when my identity is protected by the internet. And yet to this day, married and having worked out the kinks as it were, I'll still blush when I type about certain things, let alone talk about them. I suspect pretty much no one except for Megapone, who's helped me with this, and my long-suffering spouse/editor, knows just how much trouble I have including the orgasm parts of my clop. I'm definitely not the only person I've observed like that at Munches back in the day or during my dating life, and it didn't fall out by gender, either. Humans are capable of some vast compartmentalization, and I have to figure that human-created sapients (created in the exterior sense) are going to show similar capabilities, even if it isn't just an artifact of trying to produce a high school fantasy from a high/alien fantasy.
Oh, sure; again, that just says that both outcomes are possible within what we know of canon, and insisting that a fic that shows, say, one or both of Twilight's parents as condemning of homosexuality is no more uncanonical than one that insists that Sunset Shimmer would find condemnation of homosexuality to be completely foreign.
And speaking of Harmony, I think that's one of the interesting traps that the show's canon combined with fanon assumptions has for fanfic authors. I treat it as a basis for moral magic and Celestia's goals for the society she's creating; you treat it as the overall morality of the series. And yet... "the elements of harmony" are apparently an extremely obscure subject for a magical specialist like Twilight who's intimately a part of Celestia's circle. The Six are frustratingly rarely recognized as world-saving heroes (writer timidity, I think; the idea being that you can't have, say, Rarity both concerned for her business and a publically known superheroine comes off as so lazy; no, the intimidation in SR&R probably wouldn't have flied without a couple extra touches along the way, but they didn't have to use that specific plot twist just because it occured to someone). Even when they are, while I'm pretty sure they've been personally called "the Elements" as a group (and only vaguely, couldn't cite), there appears to be no in-show association with their specific elements. Dash isn't called Loyalty in part or in full as a title; Applejack isn't paid a stipend by the town to settle disputes about Honesty.
I think there's a lovely fanon to be had there, that maybe Fluttershy can have her no-charge veterinary refuge because the township recognizes Kindness as something that needs to be encouraged, for example. But we're both presuming that it's the basis for Equestrian morality when you could just as easily and perhaps more justify that Harmony in its specific components is an ancient, hidden lore, a ritual-virtue path that was so difficult to achieve in empowering balance that it was completely forgotten about by both Pony society and even the magical specialists, with the exception of Celestia throwing little "get me my sister back, the doohickeys don't work for me any more!" crumbs at Twilight.
4113504
Harem anime is an interesting one, because it actually subverts the idea of a loser guy who somehow acquires a dozen hot girlfriends; since by and large he only starts to become a focus for romantic interest after he proves he isn't a loser at all and starts to demonstrate hidden reserves of kindness, courage, charm etc (usually when he isn't actually trying to be romantic. Negima is a good example of this). It's something a lot of fics forget.
My problem with is that Twilight isn't a naive, confused, and worst yet submissive waif these stories like to put her as. She is in cannon an avid reader, enough to read an entire library over the course of months to the point of boredom. I can't see here not knowing about sex and kinks. What I can see her as being innocent in the fact that she doesn't seem to have a strong libido, so I don't think she would think about sex a lot. In fact I could see her as a dominant when does come down to it, only for the fact that it would allow her to have control along with the ability to freely give pleasure. After all this is a mare who made a checklist on how to reconcile with a friend.
What we're dealing with here is a glorified version of schoolgirl fetishism (with a dash of furry fetishism mixed in) screwing things up for the fans that don't see Ponyville as Sodom and/or Gomorrah.
4113749 The interesting thing is that while she didn't have many friends outside her family, there were a group of ponies who did sort of see her as part of their circle anyway.
4113520
Well, yes. Not all sex acts result in reproduction. But all reproduction resulted from sex acts. People who are absolutely determined to detach sex from reproduction are far less likely to reproduce, Those who are less likely to reproduce are less likely to affect future generations; hence evolution pushes in the other direction. This is true both biologically and culturally.
Real decoupling follows a bit down the tech tree, when the Equestrians develop uterine replicators, a la the Milesverse.
But even then, there will be a persistent cultural tendency to connect sex, including affectionate sex, and reproduction, because at that point there is also the capability for artificial augmentation of organic sapients, and we thus become even more K-oriented than we are today. Hence, mommies will still want to recruit daddies to stay around them and help raise their children.
There are several things wrong with what you've sad:
(1) Evolution isn't a myth. It's a reality. And the reason why marital customs evolve in every known Human culture is that there is immense cultural-evolutionary pressure towards it, to the point that when attempts have been made to abolish marriage, it reappears in other guises.
(2) Absent means of reproduction not requiring sex, sex and reproduction can't become entirely divorced, because those who don't have sex (or only have sex with perfect contraception) won't reproduce. Ever. Everyone who is born was born of parents who did not decuple sex and reproduction.
(3) The culture depicted on the Show is most definitely not a post-marriage Free Love Future. Characters explicitly get married with resultant babies, and unmarried characters think in terms of a future in which they will be married. There might be some culture which works the way you want, but it's not Equestria.
"Slut-shaming" evolves naturally out of the informational marketplace, because those considering mating want information about the past character and hence likely future behavior of their potential mates; rendering them "customers" for such information. The competitors of these potential mates have an incentive to provide this information, so that those "slutty" individuals become less valuable in the marital marketplace. Thus, you would need powerful and intrusive institutions to prevent "slut-shaming" from re-emerging.
Nice post, but I think you're overthinking the origins of such depictions of Equestria as a Brave New World.
The origin is most likely the fact that a lot of people attracted to the show are perverted young men thinking with their dicks and not their brains.
4115322
Well yes ... they want to fantasize about relatively consequence-free sex with the members of the Mane Six, ignoring the fact that the Mane Six are not characters likely to be available for such encounters. Which isn't to say that the Mane Six can't have sex, but rather that there's likely going to be considerable backstory and future implications to any such events. Yes, even with the cute bouncy pink one. Especially with the cute bouncy pink one, who combines a rather alien though benevolent world view with frankly terrifying abilities.
4114775
Yes. The advantage of the Free Love Equestria is that romantic / sexual situations don't require any real setup. X "dates" Y so they have sex. The end.
The (fictional) disadvantage, of course, is there's no real story value to be had out of all this random sex. The emotions portrayed would be mere drama-queening, since none of it really matters all tht much to the participants. The real disadvantage would be that marriages would be unstable, thus disrupting the formation of the next generation.
4114785
(*nods*) Even before Twilight Ascended, she displayed proto- Alicorn hyperdominance. She is a very self-contained Pony. She cares what a very few people (then, probably limited to Celestia and her own immediate family) think of her, and is mostly oblivious to the opinions of others -- to the point that it constitutes a weakness out of which she had to grow, to become a competent leader.
4114720
Oh, yes. Twilight Sparkle is almost frighteningly intelligent, and hyperdominant. When we first meet her, she is a teenaged supergenius with special status (beyond "scholar gentry") deriving mostly from her tutoring by Princess Celestia. She blows off an invitation by her fellow teenaged gentry to a party in order to nag Princess Celestia to do what she wants.
Let me repeat this. She is nagging the supreme autocrat of a continental empire, on whom her own status mostly depends, to do what she wants. Celestia doesn't yield to her nagging (because Celestia already knows Nightmare Moon's coming back), but isn't particularly offended by it. She rather likes Twilight's gumption.
But then Celestia herself is hyperdominant. She's just had a few more centuries to rub off the rough edges on her hyperdominance.
The thought of Twilight Sparkle, of all Ponies, being led around because she's a helpless naive little thing is laughable. And yes, I could see her eventually becoming a sexual dominant as well.
Yes, even with Luna.
4114174
When done well, yes. A lot of the SI HiE stories are poorly done harem fics, where the protagonist has no reason to attract love and does so anyway. The writers try to make this plausible in some cases by making his beloveds fairly promiscuous, but do not realize that in doing so they are "debasing the coin," so to speak -- which results in romantic "inflation" -- the multiple loves in the poorly done harem fic are less meaningful than one well-written love.
4115068
When 99.99% of sex acts performed are not for the goal of and have no chance of being reproductive, you can safely decouple "reproductive sex" from "recreational sex" as activities that bear only superficial similarity to each other.
a)Evolution is a fact, true, but it therefore has no bearing on morality. That's an ought/is gap, look it up. You can bring every fact in the known universe to bear, but it will only tell what is and is not, not what should and should not be. Morality does have to contend with facts since it exists in objective reality (somewhat), and it does have to take into account possible and impossible, but it cannot be and is not logically derived from what is.
b)Evolution acts on a scale of millenia at the very least. Pony society seems to be more conservative than human, but even then changes in environment would occur with the speed that makes evolutionary pressure at best insignificant and at worst non-existent.
You may argue that morality arises as an evolutionary mechanism, and that is to a point true, but it then has a life of its own and is not only subject to local societal and technological factors, but is (as per Dawkins) a subject of its own memetic selection, wherein it's persuasiveness and penetration in society becomes way more important to it's survival in culture than actual evolutionary advantage it gives.
In simpler terms, it's rather likely that terminal douchebaggery and neurotic repression would kill off (or turn away) all who cling to a morality merely because it is (very-long-term) evolutionarily advantageous faster than slightly-lower-quality-offspring of those who do not will actually have any measurable disadvantage.
See above. "Reproductive sex" and "recreational sex" need not have be the same save for the movements of the body that are prerequisite. In fact there were attempts to move the difference in the other direction, where recreational sex would be declared sinful, and only reproductive would be allowed. Throw in an actual biological difference (e.g. ponies being sexually but not reproductively active during some times of year, or reproduction only real with "Magic of Love" where there is an intent for reproduction) and that would easily cement things even more.
Of course not. Once the information of non-binding recreational sex becomes, in the game-theoretical terms that you love so "common knowledge" information of one having fun in the sack will be as relevant to the mating qualities of future partner as her loving to go bowling with his/her friends of opposite gender.
Let me try again, as clear as i can be. SEX IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR A ROMANCE.
It is more than possible, nay, likely to have all the casual sex in the world and to want romance and marriage. That's kinda how it worked in Medieval times - a knight would have his chosen Lady where they'd have corteus chaste love, while he fucks every farmer's daughter that still has two teeth and is not syphilitic.
So even in a culture where recreational sex is viewed as no more binding as eating ice cream together, characters would likely want to get married or have long-term relationships with significant others. It would though not be framed as an access to regular rutting but purely in emotional, romantical and child-rearing terms.
4115369
That's... that's stupid. I mean, really, this has nothing to do with anything in the show. Like, at all.
Twilight nags Celestia because that is the normal mode of their communication. Moreover, at no point, anywhere ever has anyone in the show shown any indication that Laisse-Majestie is a thing, and ponies tend to chat with princesses casually, write them their letters directly with little to no pomp and barge into their castles at smallest provocation. Doubly so if you count comics.
Princesses (especially Celestia) are respected, but they are not, in any way, shape or form, ever, even remotely feared for their position and title, except for Luna who is scary because she is Nightmare Moon, and instantly becomes non-scary when she is merely Princess Luna.
But even if we discard the fact that in MLP third farmer's daughter gets to chat carelessly with a diarch and Flutters has little problem stealing Celestia's pet (with the best intentions of course), even if it were the exact copy of relationships with real monarch, still, Twilight as a personal protege of said monarch would obviously enjoy much freer reign with what she sais and does, as any royal favorite ever.
4115354 This leaves us with an interesting phenomenon: a magnetic hero who isn't aware that she's either thing. Everything about her screams that she's The Chosen One but since she's fixated on not pissing off her idol, she's deaf to it.
4115392 The only 'harem' manga I really like is Ranma 1/2....because it's based in the reality of how screwed you'd have to be to have all those fiancees. The idiot hero has no freedom of action because it he chooses one person, the rest are allowed to kill him for violating a cultural norm or two and the only way he can escape is to let Mommy Dearest hack his domepiece off for him based on a stupid, arbitrary criterion.
4115584 Not really. Twilight isn't like 'I didn't learn anything at all' Applejack. Most of the time she is very respectful and worried about Celestia's good option. If you take away the whole royalty thing, she just told her university teacher to drop everything she was doing and listen to what she wanted.
And this was just the first example on how the mare is as almost as pushy as Starlight, Sunset, and even little Diamond, just in a nicer and humble way.
4115584 some ponies chat with Celestia casually, but remember how the Cakes acted when Celestia had brunch at their bakery?
The Mane 6 and their families aren't the most normal families around
4115743
Well, yeah, fair enough there is respect if not fear of Celestia, but it's not even at the same order of magnitude as IRL, so comparison is hardly valid, is what I'm saying.
4115582
No, you can't, because if you do, you will never reproduce. And reproduction -- either personally or in the form of kin whose survival you assist -- is the one thing your lineage must do in order to be biologically successful. You can have lots of non-reproductive sex, and in the case of Humans (and probably Ponies) you will; but if you've configured your behavioral patterns in such a way as to make reproductive sex impossible and don't help your kin, you lose Darwin's game.
The requirements of success are a bit kinder to sapient civilized beings, because there is also memetic as well as genetic success -- Isaac Newton had no offspring (though he did promote the interests of his biological kin) yet is one of the most successful Humans in history -- but memetic success at Newton's level is very difficult to achieve. The form of memetic success most sapients achieve is raising their children, or helping to raise their nieces and nephews.
Everything in the Universe is connected to everything else -- there are no "gaps" such as you imagine, even if some learned fool wrote a book claiming that there is. He simply Kant be right on that issue. Morality is ultimately a code of behavior that on the average promotes success and survival, and it is subject to cultural evolution like everything else. A culture that attempts to practice a moral code that is anti-survival, anti-evolutionary success, will suffer for it in the court of Reality; fortunately, cultures don't because the individuals who practice the culture develop work-arounds to give lip service to the foolishly-conceived morality. Hypocrisy -- and black markets of various kinds -- have saved more than one civilization.
Celestia, having learned this fact of life in her many centuries of experience, knows better than to promulgate moral codes which are anti-survival. Which is, to reference another discussion, why she would never literally demoralize her own Ponies in an attempt to eliminate "slut-shaming." What she did, insted, was to extend the practice to "cad-calling," rendering it important to stallions, also, to maintain a good reputation. Your proposal would have simply created a black market in information regarding the promiscuity of individuals.
In general, I notice that your usual flaw in analyzing cultural issues is an inability to grasp the existence of markets, when such are in coins other than explicit money. Nor do you seem to grasp what happens when you criminalize a market, which is damned funny considering that you are Eastern European and come from the lands in which the black market was grown to immense proportions by governmental interference of the exact sort you argue Celestia would attempt.
Sorry, Chud, there's no mafiya in Equestria. Because Celestia likes it that way, and isn't dumb enough to attempt the sort of policies that would give it soil in which to grow.
Cultural evolution acts much faster -- it can and does act in less than a single biological generation. However, even biological evolution -- when in regards to something as sensitive to sexual selection as whether you bear and how you raise your offspring -- can bite in one or a few biological generations.
The wise girl finds a husband and they raise successful children together. The unwise girl gets pregnant out of wedlock and fails to raise successful offspring alone. The girl who has completely decoupled sex and reproduction has no chance of getting pregnant and has no offspring. One generation, and Darwin's scythe bites.
(Yes, this is cruel. Sexual selection is cruel, like all forms of natural selection. Does it bother you? It bothered Darwin, too. Happens to be true, though).
What takes numerous biological generations are subtler e volutionary culls, situations where similar but slightly different sexual-selectional strategies are tested one against another. But if you flat-out don't try to reproduce, or don't bother to properly prepare the nest for your offspring, then you might as well just walk out that door and straight into the lion's mouth before reproducing, from a Darwinian perspective.
Yes it is, but if it pushes socities into self-destructive behavior, past a point what happens is that either the society self-destructs (which is also bad for the memetic complex riding it) or the society rejects the meme (in this case, by adopting a saner morality). And this happens when the individuals in the society start rejecting it in favor of a saner morality.
??? What are you talking about? How exactly is normal sexual self-restraint ("don't mate until you've found a competent member of the opposite sex whom you like and who is emotionally committed to yourself so he will want to stick around to help you raise your offspring") on the part of wise females going to promote behaivor that will get one killed or cause on4 to go insane? This fundamental female morality in fact culturally-evolved, many times, in many cultures, which means that such negative outcomes as you describe are not its normal consequence!
The only situation in which that doesn't work well is when a people have been conquered by a murderus foe, and the women must submit to rape or be murdered; their only hope of evolutionary success is to submit gracefully enough that their lives are spared and then ultimately try to win the hearts of some of their rapists (to give the resultant children a chance of support), and with sufficiently few moral scruples that the victims are not driven utterly mad by the experience.
This happens among Humans -- and often enough that there is a whole suite of submissive female behaviors very obviously evolved to promote survival and reproduction in this horrible situation -- but I don't think that Equestria is a civilization in which mass rape by overwhelmingly stronger rapists is something which all but a very tiny minority of mares will ever encounter. Nor, really, is this a common situation in the modern West.
That's a rather large similarity. People notice similarities that large.
Indeed. Want to know how well that worked, every time it was tried?
My Ponies have a 21-day estrus cycle, with conception unlikely save for 3 days "on-cycle." And they're more likely to conceive in mid-spring to early summer, with an 11-month gestation meaning that there is a predictable birth boom every late winter to early spring.
However, they have emotional continuity of experience, so they don't just switch from one morality (have lots of sex with different partners, but only recreational sex) to another morality (have sex only if you want to breed with that partner) at the flick of an internal switch. Their behavior has to be acceptable to their entire and integrated personality. They don't just switch roles like Changeling Infiltators donning mental Masks. They are for the most part sane Ponies.
Ah, so once your new morality is instituted, New Sexualist Pony will emerge and behave very differently from the old kind of Pony?
Let's see, where have we heard this before? No, not in reality, where it got 100 million Humans killed. On the Show, and in the story -- Post-Traumatic -- to which I linked.
Ah yes -- Starlight Glimmer's plan.
What's logically wrong with your statement is that you are assuming that Ponies only care about the tendency toward fidelity (or infidelity) in their mates because they don't KNOW about the possibility of "non-binding recreational sex." They know about that possibility. Yes, they all do. Even the cute purple Alicorn who likes to read a lot. Especially her, because she knows a lot about a lot of things.
They know about it. They are also aware that if one easily decouples sex and love, this makes it more likely that the one who does so will be unfaithful even within a committed relationship (such as marriage) and this creates all sorts of dangers for their futures. For stallions, they might wind up working hard to support the children of other stallions, and ones they don't know or don't like, at that. For mares, that they might be abandoned and left to raise foals alone.
And so they continue to care about the sexual history of their potential partners. And thus the market for the information continues to exist.
New Sexualist Pony doesn't emerge, and you instead get the Gossip Mafiya.
4115584
Actually, Twilight's normal attitude toward Celestia is extreme politeness and affection combined with awed respect. In the story I linked to, I show one of the deleted canon scenes in which Twilight learns to be more comfortable talking to her.
The point is not that Celestia is going to execute Twilight for lese-majeste. The point is that Twilight is mostly dependent on Celestia for her own status and yet feels comfortable nagging her. Twilight has balls of moonsilver, Celestia knows it, and the same was true of her other proteges.
4115683
Exactly. Twilight Sparkle is strong-willed and willing to behave in a socially-aggressive fashion to promote what she believes to be right. In a romantic or sexual situation, this is not somepony whom her partner would simply push around. This is somepony who would be more likely to do the emotional pushing.
I have her fall in love with and marry Princess Luna, and Twilight can emotionally handle her. Full stop. She can emotionally handle Princess Luna. Sturm und Drang Lady of War Large Ham herself. Over time she learns how to do so more with gentle persuasion rather than outright nagging (which is one reason they have a long courtship), but Twilight isn't that afraid of her, because Twilight's simply not all that easy to intimidate.
Celestia can intimidate her, but then Celestia is a master manipulator. And her Second Mother, emotionally speaking.
Luna doesn't have those natural advantages.
4115786
Twilight feels comfortable nagging Celestia because Celestia allows it and has always (as far as we know) allowed it, and there never has been a case when she did not.
If we knew Celestia to be a harsh monarch demanding reverence and formalities, and still Twilight would've gone against set precedent to do what she thinks is right, I would agree. That is simply not the case.