Welcome to the Babs-iverse! · 10:02am Jan 19th, 2013

There are some things that just don't make it into an author's stories. A lot of them just don't belong there: they're too lengthy or too involved. If it's background, then it just has to stay in the background. On the other hand, some details are just too much fun not to share. In this case, I wanted to give you a brief view of my version of the Babs-iverse. [EDIT: I ought to say that I'm cool with lots of Babs-iverses. This one just happens to be mine.]

I am a sucker for early twentieth century stuff: ragtime music, silent film, early jazz. When I was trying to imagine Babs' Manehattan, I considered that it probably ought to be grittier than Ponyville, but it's still Equestria. The buildings Apple Jack walks by in Cutie Mark Chronicles look like Manhattan brownstones: the latest of the background sites is the Pony equivalent of the Empire State Building, which went up in the late 1920s. And that is Babs' Manehattan: the New York of 1890-1929.

As soon as "One Bad Apple" was aired, a lot of fans leapt to the assumption that since Babs was from Manehattan, and the Oranges are from Manehattan, Babs must be the Oranges' daughter. I know a lot of people love that, but that didn't feel right to me. Nothing about Babs--her hairstyle, her accent, or her physical mannerisms--suggest the Oranges' money or upper-class background. Finally, I tweeted Cindy Morrow--is Babs the Oranges' daughter? And she tweeted back, "Not that I am aware of." Yes, that was me. Yes, I am that much of a Babs-ophile.

Everyone's noticed that Babs' accent is--well, frankly, it's a mess, but it sounds most like the Bronx. Equestrian technology is also a mess: it whipsaws all over the place, from medieval to maybe about the 1950s, but whatever it is, it feels retro or vintage.

Babs' world, then, became the world my great-grandfather stumbled into when he came off the boat from Lithuania and began making a living off a pushcart, and the world my great-great grandfather walked into when he got off HIS boat from Ireland. It's a cleaned-up version of Old New York, with kids playing stickball in the streets and horses pulling milk wagons. (Babs' brother Coconut pulls one of these.) The housing is small, so the ponies' living space spills out onto the street, with neighbors screaming at you in a friendly sort of way. It's all very loud, but after a while, you don't even notice. And yes, there are alleys, and you do not want to be caught down one. It's a melting pot, with strong hints of the Pony equivalent of Irish and Italian and Eastern European culture. Babs herself shrieks Neightalian-Equestrian to me, but the family is probably a little bit of everything.

So here, have a soundtrack, because I think my personal Babs-iverse is just going to get larger.