Why "Woona" Is A Terrible Thing That Really Should've Died A Long Time Ago · 7:19am Jan 4th, 2014
There we go. That title ought to turn a few heads.
This isn't really premeditated as much as it's something that just now occurred to me, so I might ramble a bit as I'm explaining this. Then again, this is me we're talking about here, so you all should've just expected me to ramble anyway coming into this so it's really all on you if you're surprised. Also, fair warning, a lot of what's to come here could very easily justify a simpler post title of "MY NAME IS AQUA AND I AM THE FUN POLICE", but for once I'm actually stepping away from my moderate roots and going full-metal liberal and so help me non-denominational god you're going to sit there and fucking deal with it. Anyway, back to the subject at hand.
"Woona", as I'm referring to it here, is a general term for the trend of infantilizing, fetishizing, or otherwise nullifying as characters the Royal Sisters in fan fiction and fanart, and I think I may have finally figured out the reason why it bugs me so much. I'll try to phrase the majority of this in the context of "Woona" as many of you probably know it, that being Luna as a cute little foal doing cute little foalish things, but it also applies very much to a lot of sometimes clean but mostly sexually explicit works regarding Luna and Celestia, one of which may or may not be is in the feature box right now and may or may not have did directly inspire this post.
At its heart, anything to which I and most other people would apply the term "Woona" appeals to a few central emotions: joy, laughter, the protective instinct one might have around small children and animals, and affection of either a platonic or... y'know, not so platonic way. In short, it pings all the same emotional buttons the show itself presumably does. When you look at an image of a pint-sized "Pwincess of the Night" running away from an advancing butterfly, her eyes widened and her undeveloped wings flapping in terror, a little corner of your heart warms up and you expound upon your intrinsic amusement with such verbose remarks as "D'AWWW", "HNNGGGH", or the always popular "DIABEETUS". Bronies like to see Luna and Celestia as young because it makes them entertaining, because it makes them relatable, because it makes them just so goshdarn cute we can't hardly stand in. We do the same kind of things with the Mane 6, and with background ponies, and of course with the canon colts and fillies in the show.
And that's the cool thing with bronies, right? We're okay with that shit. The ponies are funny and the ponies are cute, we know it, we own it, and we don't care who cares about it. It's the source of a motto--"Love and Tolerate"--so often repeated, reclaimed, and repurposed that the phrase has completely lost the initial sense of irony and good-humored self-awareness that it, along with pretty much everything else about this whole fandom, once had. It's a sign of how progressive we are for being grown men in the 21st century who aren't ashamed to enjoy things designed for younger girls, of how much we respect women and hold them in high enough esteem to not denigrate them with low-quality products and stereotypic portrayals in media.
Except we don't. Maybe individually, but not as a group. Not as a fandom that fawns over things like "Woona".
Let me tell you my honest opinion about "Woona": she's adorable. That picture of her being chased by a butterfly? I'm pretty sure a lot of you know which one I'm referring to, and I'll be the last one to argue that it's not specifically designed to be, and very successful at being, syrupy-sugar-sweet. As overtly masculine as my active lifestyle and unshorn visage might be, I ain't about to deny that wee lil' Moonbutt can be pretty damn cute. You know what else wee little Moonbutt is, though?
She's a goddess.
No, not like... it's not a sex thing. Jesus, keep your shit together, I'm getting back to that. I mean she is, for all intents and purposes, the closest thing the world of Equestria has to one of two walking deities among mortal ponies. She holds what is heavily implied, if not directly shown to be, full control over the movements of the moon, stars, and the unconscious dreams of anypony whose mind she cares to prance through, and was banished to be imprisoned on said moon for a full thousand years, which for those of you keeping track at home is generally not something a normal flesh-and-marshmallow pony could presumably survive. Even if you want to handwave all of that away with the notion that they're just really powerful alicorns and there's no real immortality involved, Luna is still, technicalities over her specific title aside, inarguably one of the diarchical rulers of the land, and as such wields an immense amount of control and influence over her constituents. In the slightly paraphrased words of Ron Burgundy, she's kind of a big deal.
And yet how is she typically portrayed in fanworks? Again, I won't argue that there are many that fully take into account the degree of power she holds and do some very interesting things with it, but I'd say the majority--at the absolute least, the statistically and socially significant minority--fall closer to the "Woona" end of the spectrum. They take this incredibly powerful figure and melt her down into something that's huggable and tickle-able and, as is quite often and sometimes simultaneously the case, fuckable. They trivialize her.
And now it's time for the buzzword that's going to spawn an unholy comment storm if ever there was one on one of my blogs: they objectify her. And yes, that does, in fact, bug me.
Look, I'm not gonna make this confrontational and go full SJW on y'all. I get that a lot of people don't see Luna and "Woona" as one and the same. I get that porn is what porn will be and that sexual attraction is God knows what for God knows why, and it's neither my prerogative nor my intention to really dig into any of that and call out some variant of it as perverse over all others. All I'm saying is that the whole thing where bronies claim that their watching of MLP is "progressive" leaves a bad taste in my mouth when there's currently a featured clopfic with a cover image that depicts the independent, empowered, relatably-flawed-but-well-intentioned-in-every-way-a-solid-character-should-be Princess of the Night Luna bent over double in a slutty maid outfit. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth like "love and tolerate" being used to excuse circlejerking and justify hivemindish, almost nationalist (for serious lack of a better, less severe word) behavior within the fandom and within fandom ingroups leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's something bronies claim to be a certain way, all while seemingly doing everything they can to prove that sentiment is exaggerated at best and blatantly hypocritical at worst.
Maybe I'm wrong about claiming things to be this certain way. Maybe there's some other angle to why all the cutesy, fetishized-for-good-or-bad versions of what I consider to be pretty damn strong female characters in a media environment that doesn't yet have a whole lot of those to go around. Again, I'm not diametrically opposed to clop as a general concept, or to "Woona" as a more innocent expression of canon characters in unconventional roles. What I'm bothered with is what I perceive to be the prevalent mentality behind those expressions, which is that a disconcerting number of people seem to prefer these characters when they're stripped of all their positive, mature attributes and reduced to being either basic caricatures of squabbling siblings or pre-pubescent rugrats, or just the backlit electronic equivalent of blow-up dolls. So I guess what I'm really saying is that this whole deal would sit a lot better with me if people could just be a little more consistent with characterization in fanworks, and at least continue to allow me to personally favor interpretations with fewer ulterior motives.
tl;dr I guess people sucking at art makes me tense who saw that one coming
NSFW = not safe for wussies
Well, I can't really say much on the whole objectifying thing, though I think you're right. Lacking a Y Chromosome, Woona just always struck me as cute because it reminded me of how I was when I was little. Then again, my one and only fic with Luna as a main character had her enacting sweeping political change rather than being cute, so there you go.
Mostly explicit?
You kidding? I went to Derpibooru just to check it out. I searched for Woona. It took me thirteen pages to get to the first image that could be called sexual, and even it's not super explicit. That's pretty mind blowingly little porno for a category on Derpibooru. I haven't even gotten to anything disturbingly hardcore yet.
Most of it is cutesy poo crap or kid's shenanigans.
I tried to write Woona once. In my defense, this was before season 2, when a young-looking Luna was all we had to work with, so we can blame canon just a little bit for this. For reasons I couldn't quite put together at the time, I found her difficult to work with. She was cute and scared and innocent and... not Luna. I can understand why she was designed and written that way in the context of that episode, but she was hard to write for outside the context of her being lost and cute. I remember there being a LOT of early fics about her coming back to Ponyville and breaking out of her shell, making friends, having a pet abacus, etc, and while I don't mind some of these interpretations as what she got up to before S2 came out, they all started to blend together in my head after a while. Even though there wasn't much content to work with, I can think of only a few stories that attempted to expand upon her character. Most writers seem to completely miss the fact that she's thousands of years old and probably suffering pretty critical trust issues, both things that her design and dialogue made it hard to emphasize.
(The only ones that did explore this tended to be the shipfics - Twiluna and Lunamac were popular for a while - and this just made them come off as obliviously creepy about the whole thing. Twilight is sixteen in human years, and probably not much older in Equestrian ones. Luna is several hundred times her age. I don't care how much they bond over stargazing, that's still pretty weird.)
Where was I going with this? Oh right, season 2. S2 Luna was a surprise, but afterwards it made me realize how much we needed her. It's hard to imagine tiny Woona filling even close to the same role or having the same amount of depth. Now that she was grown up again, we had a Luna who could act her age and act out of touch, and has to actually struggle with these things because she's suddenly a lot less approachable. She looks and acts like someone who's just a few steps away from being a tyrannical overlord, rather than someone who couldn't hurt a butterfly if she tried. In fact, call me unforgiving, but that's now one of my main rules when writing her: never forget that she was once Nightmare Moon. I do like stories about what Celestia and Luna were like as kids, mostly because I never miss an opportunity for character development (and yes because they are cute), but I'll take an older, more interesting version over a small and cute one any day.
End result? Two years later, I went back and rewrote that story with the new and improved Luna, and it worked brilliantly. No, this whole lecture wasn't just a segue into shameless self-promotion.
Read my stuff.1680688
As I specified, my definition of "Woona" covers more than just that cutesy version. It covers a whole bunch of different interpretations that strike me as exploitative at heart in the same way.
And you know what else bugs me? (On a roll tonight.) Orphan Scootaloo fics. I don't hate the idea, but I'm so frequently disappointed with how it's handled. Scootaloo is Best Pone because she has the most mature fears of all her friends; she's a tough and undeniably badass kid who faces constant reminders that she's small, weak, and unable to measure up to the ones she looks up to. (She's definitely the character I relate to the most.) The whole point of her is that she's more than what circumstances made her, and she never stops trying to be better even if she has to lean on her friends sometimes. That's why she's strong as a pegasus who can't fly, and next to that, making her an orphan could seem like a logical extension to her character.
Except that this is almost always completely botched by the writer. The only times I've seen this done well are in stories where she's not the focus - yeah, she lives in an orphanage, deal with it, moving on. Maybe I've just been unlucky, but every orphan Scoots story I've read turns her into this great tragic figure who tugs on heartstrings like they're twelve-ton church bells. Whether she's spending every night sleeping on her parents' grave or freezing to death in the winter or just making Rainbow Dash cry for being oh-such-a-terrible-sister-how-could-I-not-have-known, we're treated to a completely different version of her where she passively and secretly accepts her loss and needs someone else to pull her out of it. Buck that. I'm not going to feel sorry for Scootaloo because all her episodes told us that we don't need to feel sorry for her because she's awesome, disability or not. The fact that her best traits get stripped from her for the sake of a manipulative gimmick hits me in the same way that Woona seems to hit you. It's annoying.
And hey, speaking of things that sound good initially but come across as off-puttingly demeaning and possessive in practice, have you seen the My Little Dashie movie that came out recently?
I think the bit you're underrating here Aqua is that many if not most of those works are intentionally portraying Luna's -childhood-. Not in a sense of 'look how weak she is', bit in a very real sense of showing that even a demigoddess was once an adorable little filly who had the innocence to be terrified of a butterfly and look up to her big sister unconditionally.
This isn't infantalizing a strong female character, except for in the bad takes on it, any more than writing a story about Twi's childhood interactions with her brother would be. It's about making the character relatable.
I too wish for the characters to be in character, for the interpretation of them to be more thoughtful and internally consistent - you know, I'd like for fan works to be better. Than they are. Because of course.
>> where bronies claim that their watching of MLP is "progressive"
Whu'? "Progressive"... Oh yeah, chipping away at traditional conceptions of masculinity and all that jazz. Yeah, cool stuff.
>>image that depicts the independent, empowered, relatably-flawed-but-well-intentioned-in-every-way-a-solid-character-should-be Princess of the Night Luna bent over double in a slutty maid outfit.
In pornographic contexts, it's obvious for the living goddess to be "melted down". Much like rule #43 of the internet ("The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt it."), the more powerful and majestic a thing is, the more satisfying it is to humble it.
Outside of porn, if someone wants to portray something really cute, then puppies and kittens - and 'round here, foals - are the go-to effects. But Spike is hardly the kind of character to depict doing cutesy things, and Pound and Pumpkin are hardly characters at all. So people take other characters and infantilize them to get their diabetus-kicks, and since most of all the characters in MLP are female, and since most all of the main characters sooner or later are depicted as total badasses, then chances are a Strong Female Character will be infantilized.
If there still is an imbalance between male and female infantilization, with disproportionately many of the female affected, it's probably got something to do with the way our society (or possibly, species) sees young boys and girls. And I see girls depicted as more vulnerable, more cute, more precious.
In stories, if left to fend for themselves, A Boy and His X go on adventures. Whereas a girl is taken in and protected by a others - very often men, actually. You can say that this favors boys, as they are seen as more capable, but it does also mean less help for the boys. And if we as a society are more inclined to help girls than boys, who really benefits from the discrimination?
Or at least, that's what I see. My impression. I don't see a tendency towards degrading SFCs around here. I do see a lot of badass depictions of overwhelmingly female characters on Fimfiction.
>> "strong female characters in a media environment that doesn't yet have a whole lot of those to go around."
This is where I think you're fucking with us. I'm not just talking about Fimfiction.
nsfw bluntnessI guess I must be in the minority where I find the very notion of being able to fuck a goddess with a mortal stallion penis in the context of the show, would end in nothing but shattered hips and goddess forbid she clamps her pussy while your girth in all up in there near balls deep.
That's just instant death.
/endgraphic monologue
But yeah, I'd rather not go into that route of thinking of what idiots people can be at times. Luna has shown she can barely control her strength and her very mood swings can cause natural disasters (The moon has the power to change the weather and the tides, that was a badass scene in Luna Eclipse.)
Just slightly stamping your hoof down in annoyance caused the very pavement to crack, I'm pretty sure that would of bashed a ponies skull in right there.
I still very much enjoy her cute side, still potential for growing into her godhood if Celestia and Luna truly did have a mother and father before them. Personally I do believe they are immortal, even if one wants to say it's mainly due to their innate magical power that flows through their veins.
I don't think it was until The Royal Wedding episode two that we really started to see more and more devaluing of the princesses roles to make way for others like Cadence and later Twilicorn. Because of Celestia's one public defeat did people start downplaying more and more of what they were supposed to represent.
I don't see Woona and Celly going away any time soon, and personally nor do I see a real reason for it to die out. Short of stripping everything away that can make them feel like Luna and Celestia, many have given them essentially original character overhauls really that you can replace Woona and Celly with any other background filly or colt and it'd still be just a cute sappy story.
I guess the thing that urks me is just when they do nothing with the characters other than that. I don't think I've really read a story I enjoyed for Luna since The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Don't get me started on Human in Equestria stories where Luna somehow ends up smitten or swooned by them. Banish it to the sun and toss that sun into a bigger sun and toss that sun into a collapsing star bigger than the sun the sun got tossed into!
Aside from that, thou may lookest upon her visage, but thine mortal flesh shall melt face!
(I believe a few fics have already been done where she just bangs them in their dreams as a workaround.)
To each their own. In a fantasy there are no limitations to what you can plow.
Anything I say in an attempt compliment what you've said will simply devaule it.
So I'm going to mention my personal issue with "woona".
I dislike gamer Luna.
don't kill me
i am presently emoting a single-minded desire to obtain reassurance that this blog post in no way bashes Moonstuck
other than that I get what you're saying
do people really write about wanting to boff woona? I mean, apart from that, having a de-aged luna be foalish and cute doesn't push my anger buttons much so I'm not sure if you're just being akwa the fun police sergeant or not, but you've probably got a point. I just didn't actually find it when skimming because, you know, tl;dr.
I'll be totally there with you when they write woonamash or nyx/woona/mash as an alternate power trio though.
I was wondering so I checked the featured box, and I think you are confused about what is Woona and what is just straight up Luna.
Someday I will come back, reread this journal, and make a shipfic based on the character demands herein.
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My point is that female children are used to convey cuteness. Sorry if I went off a tangent to elaborate that point.
Do you really want to argue about the benefits and disadvantages of neotony?
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I get that Aqua doesn't like when character is dumped down for cuteness. I just don't think it's because of some backwards cultural conceptions of gender.
And I just assume that females have it better because they are generally happier, live longer, don't commit as much suicide. Stuff like that.
The title definitely turned my head, and then my head nodded slowly as I was reading it, building up to a head-banging finale towards the end where I yelled "PREACH IT, BROTHER" and wanted to shake your hand so much.
You would think if people liked the characters so much they wouldn't be so quick to infantalize them, but you would be wrong and it is sad.
Also, this.
Everything you just said.
I mean, I don't really take issue with the whole clop thing, mostly because that's just the way of the world, and that'll happen regardless of the fandom or what viewpoints they may or may not hold. But I most certainly agree that it's getting increasingly irritating when people take the radiating power and beauty of the goddesses of the heavens and turn them into, oh look one of them ate a cookie as a child aren't they precious. Also, prankster Celestia. Can we talk about that for a sec? Yeah, she has a sense of humour, but I don't think that this fandom treats Celestia with a fraction of the respect her position and demeanor demands.
And then you get morons out there that get on your case because you treat Luna as a serious character capable of flaws and even fits of anger.
But yeah, I see your issue with having 'Woona' meld into the Luna character and then, in turn, have that meld into the sexualized object of cheap clop where she's submissive yet!quirky for no reason whatsoever.
Woona is a dead character, end of story.
Whoever uses her as a character deserves to be shot, and their families sent to the gulag.
Edit: To further clarify, here is my attitude towards such drivel pieces of schicsse and the like.
To the weak hearted and minded, get out. You will not like what I have proposed.
The following isn't directly related, but it seems this Woona character is related to fanon, to which I have this response.
Edit: ... I don't know what I did last night to ensure this bout of stupidity, but whatever the case, my apologies. Ugh. Well, I'll leave this up here as a reminder of this development.
You do know that objectification and sexualization aren't the same thing, right? Though I'll admit that which is which depends on the story.
Bit of a nitpick here but...
No.
The goddess thing.
Just no.
If I have to never post this again, it'll be too soon. By the very word of their creator, The Alicorns are not and were never intended as gods. It is NOT part of the pony canon and I find it insulting you would claim this as a reason for bashing someone's fanon depiction of a character. Granted, I understand in part some of where you're coming from but do be aware that not everyone shares your views on the matter. I'm somewhere in the middle. I never really heard of the whole 'woona' concept in all honesty beyond very oblique references and even then I thought it was just a pun or intended as a cutesy way of making playful reference to Luna. I wasn't aware of the whole 'Young Luna' bit that apparently gave rise to the meme. Luna is in fact my favorite pony and I would love to see more episodes that focus on her and give us a better idea as to her character. We know very little about her as she's only had one episode in the spotlight, and minor appearances since. Celestia's whole 'prankster' or 'chessmaster' depictions tend to come from the fact that there appears to be some hints of this in the series itself, not to mention the fact that her actual power levels seem to vacillate depending on the writer and whatever plot they want to present. (Return of Harmony depicts her as being far less powerful than Discord and going into an apparent panic attack when he gets free. This is immediately thrown out the window so that Celestia can then somehow outpower Discord's magic in order to protect the elements from him in Keep Calm and Flutter On. Needless to say, I was largely pissed at how quickly they nerfed the one male character who Other than Starswirl— and they very quickly did so to him just a few episodes later — had yet to be marginalized.)
However the goddess thing has always bothered the living hell out of me since even before Discord was introduced. His first appearance made it seem that I was right to be annoyed since Celestia is shown to be terrified of him when he gets free and can do literally nothing against him and is dependent on the Elements to lock him away again, and as he seems to be a kind of balancing agent to them, they can only affect him as much as he can affect them. Return of Harmony pretty much confirmed that there are things FAR more powerful than the Alicorns out there, and Hearth's Warming Eve also went a long way towards confirming them to be the pony equivalent of mutations caused by some kind of outside force. Canterlot Wedding was practically the final nail in the coffin when Celestia finally, finally actually decides to get involved directly for once, and Chrysalis manages to overpower her. Granted she was hopped up on an external power source at the time, but still she did it, and we know that the unicorns themselves once handled sun, moon, and stars well before the Alicorns first appeared. Finally, for all that it gets a lot of flak, Magical Mystery Cure pretty much cemented the fact that Alicorns are not gods, but instead are a form of mutation caused by some kind of outside stimulous. Powerful mutations, yes. But gods? No.
So before anyone here decides to go talking about fanon they dislike (or in one case, calling said fanon obsolete), I suggest that people make sure they're not referencing obsolete fanon yourself when you lash out at the way some people choose to depict a character.
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The "closest thing" they have to gods. Not "literally" gods.
And anyway, Word of Faust is pretty irrelevant by now given that she hasn't been involved with the show since pre-production of Season 2. Talk about obsolete fanon.
1688339
Your own words, dude.
Further, while Faust is no longer show runner or anything, she is the one who created the characters seen in this interpretation of the show, so as their creator if nothing else, we can put at least a certain amount of stock in what she says, particularly since what we know of the alicorns supports her comments that they aren't gods. Presumably, she would have helped in the construction of a series bible, and this situation was likely addressed in said bible, since the characterization of the various members of the cast need to be written down into some form of set concept even if they do evolve and grow over time. Some things however, would need to be more or less set in stone, or the show would unravel fairly quickly over time.
1688628
The show itself makes things ambiguous. For every example of them not being goddesses one can find another for which they are: the introduction on S1E1 talks about they "creating" harmony; on RoH Celestia talks about Discord having caused "eternal" suffering; HWD's tale might be just a tale, not fact (where were those Sun-controlling unicorns during Discord's "eternity"?); by being able to defeat Celestia Chrysalis might as well also be taken as a goddess (polytheistic gods tend to be able to defeat each other -- also, Discord might simply be a more powerful god); in turning Twilight into an alicorn the whole scene can be seen as Twilight dying (exploding), Celestia meeting her in the afterlife (with her life passing in front of her eyes, just for emphasis) then resurrecting her; and so on and so forth. And for each of those there are counterarguments so that the discussion goes back and forth without conclusion.
The reason for this, IMHO, is simple: the authors don't want to set almost anything in stone because if they do and then down the line executive meddling or the toy department come knocking with a requirement that goes against that drama ensues. Best to keep things vague and thus the need for retconnings to a minimum.
The range of narrative possibilities this ambiguity opens is too wide and too useful for us to not play with it. I myself enjoy fanfics in which those characters are absolute gods, and fanfics in which they're barely more powerful than your standard unicorn, and also the show approach in which they're basically big question marks. If those two styles (three with canon), as well as everything in between, are fun, where's the problem? Let's just enjoy the creativity involved in bringing those worlds to life as well as the author mindsets required for them to thrive. After all this is all fiction. We aren't talking about real events or real facts, only about different imaginations.
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Except the show never says that the alicorns created harmony.
Return of Harmony claims only that Discord ruled before Celestia and Luna. In effect, they usurped him, stealing his kingdom from him. Granted they did so with the best of intentions, but if he was indeed the ruler before them and by Celestia's accounts he was, they simply usurped someone else's throne rather than founding their own nation. To be fair however, it's implied he did the same to whoever ruled Equestria before him, which presumably would have been some form of ruling council or other established ruling entity after the six founders of Equestria brought their respective peoples to the newly discovered country. On the subject of where the unicorns were during Discord's reign? It's been established that Discord is stronger than both alicorns. If he can overpower the two beings who are each strong enough to move both celestial bodies on their own (assuming they aren't just affecting planetary rotation by increasing or decreasing it's pace as required), then no amount of spellwork by the unicorns is going to stop him. But bear in mind, Discord never calls himself a god. He calls himself a Spirit. There is a BIG difference there.
As for Twilight's transformation? No, I don 't see it as being that she died. That would be ridiculous in the extreme. I could see it being a case in which she was transported by the elements to some form of magical dimension where such mutations occur. I highly doubt that Celestia is going to send Twilight a spell that's going to murder her. Because if she did, I'm pretty sure Twilight would be legitimately PISSED OFF if that were the case since she wouldn't be Twilight. She'd be some kind of construct that THINKS it's Twilight. And Celestia may come off as kind of a dick at times, but she's not THAT much of a dick. I hope. Cause if she is, it would certainly lend credence to the idea of Celestia as a master manipulator and secretly evil.
Chrysalis is fully aware of how powerful Celestia is clearly supposed to be. She is, after all, the one who raises the sun every day and for a millennium was responsible for the sun AND the moon. So clearly we know Celestia has a great deal of power. But if we're supposed to believe that just feeding on an emotion is going to make it possible for someone to overcome a god, particularly one who is supposed to have been (at least until we are shown Discord, and again, they nerfed him ridiculously fast) the most powerful, or one of the most powerful, beings in Equestria, then there are some severe problems with the idea of godhood in Equestria if that's all it takes. And furthermore, if Chrysalis is supposed to be taken as another kind of god...well, frankly, I don't see that working either because if that were the case, then there should have been no way for Cadence to have broken her spell on Shining Armor, let alone for it to be possible that Shining Armor should have been able to defeat her with a shield spell, even if it was given a boost by Cadance trying to use her own emotions to bolster his power.
Now when it comes to fanfics, I have no problem with them being depicted as gods there. My problem is when someone says 'oh well they're gods in the show, so anyone who says they aren't has to be wrong'. This despite the fact that the alicorns own CREATOR has said otherwise. This very blog post tried to claim them as deities at first before then trying to say they weren't. If someone wants to present a fanon of their own where they're gods, fine, that's fanon. But canon says otherwise and I just get sick of people presenting their fanon and saying the show and its creator upholds the fanon when that just isn't true.
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It does. The very first words in S1E1 are: "Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together, and created harmony for all the land. To do this, the eldest used her unicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn; the younger brought out the moon to begin the night."
One can read it as a kind of creation myth depicting the first rising of the Sun and the first rising of the Moon as the act by wish "harmony for the land" was quite literally created. Or one can read it otherwise. It's as ambiguous as an actual religious text, which is why we can have these fun theological discussion over a cartoon.
Not really. What Celestia says is this: "Discord is the mischievous spirit of disharmony. Before my sister and I stood up to him, he ruled Equestria in an eternal state of unrest and unhappiness. Luna and I saw how miserable life was for Earth ponies, Pegasi, and unicorns alike, so after discovering the Elements of Harmony, we combined our powers and rose up against him, turning him to stone."
Ditto: one can read it as meaning that he literally ruled forever before the sisters decide to take action, hence no council, or if it existed it was in the interlude between the time Discord was defeated and the time the sisters actually entered active rule. Or nothing of this at all! More fun cartoon theology!
Not if you take into consideration actual real world polytheisms to construct an analysis, which is what I do. In all of them the distinction is vague. So much so some of this rubbed into Christianity, where one of the three aspects of their absolute God is named either the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost, depending on the denomination.
Now consider: what does Discord being the spirit of disharmony means? Here's some disharmony happening. Is Discord in it? As it? Or something else?
Again not if you take actual polytheisms as your reference framework. The concept of transmutation through death, both symbolic and literal, appears quite strongly in them.
Not if you have the notion of souls.
Scenario rules. It's established from the beginning that emotions are a serious source of power, what with friendship being perhaps the most powerful of them all. Chrysalis amassing an enormous amount of emotions to grow in power high enough to actually be able to overcome Celestia is coherent with the setting's premises.
In polytheistic settings gods are powerful but not absolutely so, they have limits. Those can be quite high, but it's common for hero tales to show them being overcome by demigods and mortals. Gilgamesh and Beowulf are classic examples.
Basically the problem I see when people argue that Celestia etc. cannot be gods is that they have in mind a concept of godhood that isn't appropriate. They really think of the omnipotent god of monotheisms, not of the gods of polytheisms. If it helps here's a trick that works well, being even historically accurate: the monotheistic paranormal entities that are the most direct correlates to polytheistic gods are angels (both the good and bad kinds). That puts things more or less in the correct perspective.
Ah, in regards to this I'll go somewhat meta. I don't know if you follow anime, but even if you don't you probably know it's very common for anime targeted to kids to be severely changed when adapted to the US. In addition to the more obvious stuff such as removing references to alcohol, cigars, blood, sex etc., one of the things they absolutely always do is to erase references to Japanese religious beliefs. Why? Because if you want to sell toys to US children you must take into account that about half of those children parents are very religious, and that among those a sizeable and very vocal subgroup is utterly paranoid of anything that might even indirectly suggest paganism (or active atheism for that matter) to their kids.
So let me ask you: would Hasbro have allowed anyone from the staff, Faust included, to publicly declare: "Ah, yes, Celestia, Luna, Discord and others are the pony gods. It's a fully polytheistic setting, you know? We even have a few demigods planned for it!"?
If MLP had been made in Asia the show and its toys would have been sold with this kind of ad in the packaging: "Princess Celestia is the goddess of the ponies! She's over 1,000 years old and she watches over them all!", and no one would have glanced twice. Do the same in the USA and you're guaranteed to witness riots in the streets.
So, Faust saying: "Nooooo, they most absolutely aren't gods, at all!" doesn't hold much weight.
But I'll give you some additional pointers: if you were to read the Japanese myths (and Faust is a huge fan of anime) you'll notice some very odd similarities. You'll notice Celestia has the personality of Amaterasu (goddess of the Sun), Luna that of Tsukuyomi (god of the Moon), and Discord that of Susanoo (the trickster god of Storms). You'll also notice the relationship between the three, including Celestia's fight with Luna and Celestia's despair in relation to Discord, strongly resemble those of their corresponding deities. Furthermore you'll notice Chrysalis has all the traces of a kegare (Impurity) deity. And that Twilight's overarching story arc is modeled after the acts of Ame-no-Uzume (goddess of Morning).
As the old saying goes, a word to the wise is enough. And we have several.
But as I said this is all done ambiguously and in a very vague way, so your interpretation is perfectly valid as it also works within what's been made explicit. It just isn't, IMHO, the most interesting or the one that embraces the majority of the available hints. And it most definitely isn't the end all, be all of the possible interpretations. There's simply a lot in there to support those who interpret these characters as being gods in the actual show itself.
1680738
Not related to anything, and excuse my ignorance but:
Is that a canon fact?
1689800
>yfw literally every clopfic on this site is actually foalcon
1689800 1689828
Faust said she thought of the characters as having a mental age between 12 and 18 years old. But she also said in the same sentence that she thought of ponies as developing like normal horses, what means reaching maturity around 2 and living until about 30, and that they probably advanced mentally slower than their bodies. Thus physically they'd be maybe around 4 years old.
Living only until 30 is fridge horror material, so either by luck or because someone noticed this, the show itself hints at ponies living to at least 200 years of age (or even 300+), something more typical for magical beings in almost all fantasy settings. Within that range a "mental age" of 12 to 18 would translate to a physical age beyond 18, although by how much is anyone's guess.
Sooo, either it's all foalcon (and triple so), or it's all basically pretty safe. Choose your preferred alternative.
1680738
My take on Luna is more that she is a Badass Princess Physical Goddess Lady of War who -- when she's in a good mood -- knows how to make merry and is more than willing to be silly when she's doing so. She figures that being thousands of years old and having vanquished dozens of major threats to all Ponykind is all the proof of maturity she needs.
Yes, she has her definite Woobie moments, but this is more about being a somewhat emotionally awkward Time Abyss who is nevertheless passionate about love and friendship, which means that she pays the predictable price of regularly having ponies she deeply cares about her die on her. What's worse, most of her friends are her comrades or followers, fellow-warriors, so some of them die young.
And there's nothing she can do about this. Her personality is simply not conducive to any healthy sort of detachment from everypony, unless she started to think of them as meaningless mayflies (pretty much the attitude of her Cosmic self toward normal life, and the main reason why her Cosmic self scares her Incarnate self). Of course, the last time she let her Incarnate self start along that path of reasoning, she wound up with glowing cat-slitted eyes ranting about "eternal night," so that's not something she wants to try again real soon.
Luna is definitely depressed and vulnerable following her liberation from the Nightmare. Wouldn't you be? She went mad, losing all sense of proportion and humor (Laughter), concealed her intentions from the ones who trusted her most (Honesty) and then betrayed and tried to kill her own sister and sworn liege (Loyalty). The words in parentheses? Those were HER Elements: the virtues which to which she was attuned, and to which everyone assumed she personified. Which is to say, she let down not only others, but also her own better self.
Having failed, she was banished to the Moon for a thousand years. I postulate that she was still in the grip of Nightmare, and spent most of that time insane and possessed.
Then she returned, and immediately failed again. I give her one happy thing that the show doesn't -- I have her participate in her liberation from the Nightmare, fighting and winning a Struggle Within against it.
Having survived and not been killed as a rebel by her sister, she returns to her sister's side -- to discover, unsurprisingly, that almost everyone she knew before is so long dead that even history doesn't bother to record their names, that Equestria has changed culturally and physically almost entirely out of recognition, and that most ponies remember her as a boogey mare -- all the hard fighting she did and sacrifices she made for the Realm long forgotten.
Yeah, she's depressed. I'd be depressed. So would you.
So, when she does find a way to be useful, to make friends, to be happy, of course she's really happy. She was Laughter, after all, and she's glad of the chance to make merry with friends again. I don't at all begrudge her this. She's earned it.
But then, of course, my concept of an intense, moody, honor-driven incarnate goddess trying to atone for her past sins and find a place for herself in a very changed world is about as far from Woona as one gets!
i.imgur.com/fbVWRw0.gif
1681013
I think she actually has greater self-control than that, or she'd be smashing everything around her constantly. Though there's an excellent Alex Warlorn story where Luna ... but I'd be giving away spoilers if I said exactly under what circumstances she loses control over her power, and with what horrendous consequences.
But yeah, she's quite the opposite of "weak", physically or emotionally. I do find her loveable, but that's hardly the same thing: most of what I love both in real life and in fiction is strong rather than weak. What makes her loveable, IMO, is her basic benevolence, sense of honor, and desire to be loved; and the conflict between these and her sometimes hard-to-govern passions.
1689800 She's high school age, and Sunset Shimmer is at most four years older than her. Even assuming that Celestia took on a new student almost as soon as SS left, 16 might still be optimistic. Mentally I think she's around 20; she's basically in Ponyville on a university scholarship, isn't she?
1690023 That's a lot of words you've got going on there.
1690267
The problem is figuring out not only how old they are in years, but what this means in human terms. Furthermore, there are cultural differences, and there's plenty of evidence on the show that contemporary Equestrians typically mature in different ways on a different schedule than do 21st-century Americans. Specifically, they seem to consider it normal to become economically self-sufficient well before becoming sexually-active, which is pretty much the reverse of what we do today (but not dissimilar from the way we did things around 100-200 years ago).
1690267
Now, Luna -- she's thousands of years old. I think she both became economically self-sufficient and sexually active many centuries before Equestria was even united into a single realm.
1690267
Is she? Her level of education suggests at least a Masters degree, if not a PhD. A human needs, all taken into account, between 18 and 21 years of study to reach this point. Even taking into account that Twilight started quite early, that she is a genius and can fly over several parts of the curriculum, that perhaps ponies in general naturally learn faster than humans etc., it'd be difficult to pack all of this enough for her to be only 16 years old.
Besides, all Mane 6 are well regarded professionals. It takes time to develop a reputation after you're formed. Personally I don't think any of them would be younger than 20, with Twilight probably around 25.
1690642 In Equestria Girls, she's in high school. End of story. How old she is in pony years is another matter altogether.
1689828
fotoninja.nl/uploads/images/what-have-i-done-1345237201.jpg
1691124
I don't think we can assume that the ages of the humanoid analogues of the other five of the Mane Six are identical to the ages of their pony selves. They're not exactly the same people.
1690642
Yes, and I think assuming that she's "high school age" because the humanoid analogues of the Mane Six were in what looked like a high school, in a world that is not our own, is dubious. The Ponies are another culture, another species, and we do not know their ages of maturation in various aspects of their lives. I think that it's safe to say that the CMC are too young for careers or marriages, and that the Mane Six are old enough for both, but it's not obvious when they became old enough for either, or in what order.
Bleedin' 'eck. All I wanted to say is that TwiLuna is weird. Exactly how old Twilight is is really not important. Aqua, I'm terribly sorry for opening this can of worms on your discussion.
1691124
Technically, the more rigorous way to phrase this would be:
"In Equestria Girls, she has the appearance of someone in high school."
And going beyond that, to mean that's actually a 16-years old appearance isn't obvious either. The EqG universe might seem very similar to Earth, but it isn't Earth, and those people might seem very similar to humans, but they aren't humans. No human has natural rainbow-colored hair, or green, blue, violet, pink etc. skin color.
So to be even more precise and utterly nitpicking (blame my majoring in Philosophy for what follows), here's a properly revised declaration of evidence, although still quite informal:
"In our own universe's fictional depiction of the maybe factual, maybe fictional events that happened between the universes of canon-Equestria and canon-EqG, assuming our senses are accurate and neither Descartes's Evil Demon nor Kant's distinction between a thing-in-itself and a thing-for-us holds, and that the fictional depiction is minimally accurate, and that our subjectively filtered apprehension of the audio-visual information is also accurate etc., what is a non-human but human-like analogue of Twilight Sparkle after being magically transported from the former to the later universe and having gone through a full bodily magical reconstruction, is similar enough to our own sensory experience of a 16-years old Western white girl attending what is also a non-human but appearing to be a human analogue of a North American high school in the early 21st century, that we get to instinctively assume that to be the case, when that's at best doubtful."
And it's that short because I'm simplifying.
1691446
Not to mention that if we assume the implied life expectancy of ponies to actually be 200, 300 or more years, they might not have any haste in finding a mate, specially if the goal is to find that special someone with whom they hope to spend not years, not even decades, but centuries.
1691463
Awww, come on. These discussions are all in good fun. No need to be so serious.
1691463
Well, of course it's "weird", because Luna is an immortal Physical Goddess AND it would be a lesbian relationship (which is clearly less common than heterosexual ones among Ponies since they are shown in canon as having a family structure similar to ours). Neither makes it BAD, though.
Note: I don't think that either of the pair are actually lesbians.
1691848
It is perhaps relevant here that none of the Mane Six seem to be in any particular hurry to get married or even find special someponies. They seem to be assuming that they have a lot of time in which to do that, so they can't be that short-lived.
1692396
Oooh, awesome reversion of my argument!
Yes, yes, indeed! While it works to argue from the perspective of ponies having long lifespans that this is the reason they aren't hurriedly looking for mates, it's even better to do it in reverse and argue that ponies not being shown as actively (and desperately) seeking mates is actually additional evidence for them having long lifespans!
Raw correlation: long lives <-> late mate seeking
Weak causality: long lives --> late mate seeking
Strong causality: late mate seeking --> long lives
I wouldn't have thought of it and now I absolutely love it! Thank you very much!
1689796 Remember the Hearth's Warming Eve story? Ponies lived in a time without both the Sisters and Discord (though disharmony was rampant throughout the three nations), and it is said the sisters came after that. Before then, a council of unicorns raised the sun (and used this vital talent as leverage over the pegasus soldiers and the earth pony peons). An "eternal" state only implies that it is neverending (or at least planned as such), not that it has been that way since time immaterial. I don't really disagree with the view of Discord as a polytheist-styled god, but if you don't take into account Word of Faust, the evidence for or against the Sisters' godhood is... inconclusive to me.
I did want to correct the bit about Discord ruling since forever, though.
greyscale filly is a brave little toaster, unlike the woobie described herein. Unfortunate that they share a name.
[](/ajugh "(Side note to all redditors: Ugh, eeenough with sending pics of filly Celestia and Luna to the front page of the sub! By pony quasi-God, it's so repetitive.")
As for the blog itself, well, the title did its job. The e-pony-mous
1695954
One way I have to reconcile both accounts is this: Discord eternally ruling, then defeated by the princesses, who then don't ascend immediately to power but go around fixing the world, said fixing starting with the first sunrise and the first moonrise. Until this point the ponies only knew disharmony for they were under the rule of its spirit, and so all of them took whatever scrape of power they could. The unicorns saw the first day and night and quickly grabbed at it as a means to claim more power over the others tribes, what doesn't mean they actually controlled Equestria's luminaries, the claim itself however going down into history to become part of the legends about that time. Eventually the healing effects of the sisters creating harmony for the land caught up with the warring tribes themselves and when they, influence by harmony, joined in peace, its creation was completed. Finally, some time time after that the sisters started their official rule over Equestria.
That's one way of theologize the question away, but taking "eternal" to literally mean "eternal" is more fun.
Ah, but I prefer it that way. You see, according Faust the ponies live to about 30 years of age. That's fridge horror territory, so someone set things much better by making it strongly implied they actually live to 200 or longer, which is much more gentle. We also know Faust wanted to make Celestia into the queen with Luna as a subordinated princess to her, but executive meddling from Hasbro determined both were to be princesses with equal standing (because girls like princesses more than queens), and that ended up being extremely positive for the series. As I see it both changes upon that original vision improved things tremendously, which is also why I don't think it very important when Faust says that no, the sisters aren't goddesses.
So as long as the end result taken as a whole, as a product constructed by several authors upon foundations set (but not in stone) by Faust, permits one to strongly infer that yes, they are goddesses, for me that's a better outcome than going for her own original vision, supposing that even actually is her original vision and not something she must say due to contractual obligations.
Though I'm indifferent to the clop aspect (who really expects good characters in 90% of clopfics?), Woona is a massive pet peeve. I hate when the only thing shown is Luna the little sister whose number one word is "Tia", whines a lot, is awkward and nervous, and loves pranks more than everything. She's thousands of years old and the ruler of a nation, with a long past behind her. She's not someone I expect to be relatable, especially to strangers or in public.
1684834 Love and Tolerate, you angry person getting angry from someone else's imagination. Think about it: Does it REALLY make sense to get mad at someone else's vision? Does it serve a purpose to become angry because someone does not share your vision? It's a fantasy universe. None of it exists. Wishing someone harm over something that never has and never will exist is kind of silly, don't you think?
So chill, enjoy the damned show, enjoy your personal head canon of the show, and please, please, PLEASE at least refrain from flaming other people who happen to not see what you see in a fantasy world.
I swear, it's like trying to have a political discussion in regards to Mickey Mouse vs. Danger Mouse.
By the way, Woona is adorable, but I really have a hard time associating her with the idea of a being who has essentially godlike powers and is probably immortal because she is tied with the moon permanently.
Just sayin'. Have a wonderful day, sir.