I'm back! And: <50 headcanon answers, thanks to Bookplayer · 7:49pm Apr 12th, 2014
No, I've not been very active lately. Had pony burnout (plus general moping) during pretty much all of March. No ponyfic came out of me that time -- though I did write two attempts at a first chapter for a novel and rejected both. I went to a birthday party, got ... fairly ... drunk and spent the night discussing socialism with a lapsed Marxist.
Well, whatever. Now I'm feeling up to writing again. But first, a meme! Thanks, Bookplayer.
(I skipped the questions where I didn't have a decent answer 'cause I have an attention span low enough to make Pinkie blush.)
The Princesses
1. How old are Celestia and Luna?
On the order of 10,000 years. They've been around (and active in pony history) for much longer than they've been in Equestrian recorded history.
2. How old is Cadance?
Thirty, give or take a couple of years.
3. Were Celestia and Luna always alicorns, or did they ascend?
They were born alicorns. From mortal pony parents. Even they don't know the reason.
4. Are Cadance and Twilight immortal?
Yes
5. Have there been other alicorns in the past?
Yes, but they're unknown even to Celestia and Luna.
6. How much authority do Celestia and Luna have in Equestria?
Celestia has a lot of potential power -- she could order an immediate and unprovoked military attack on an ally and it would happen. Even Luna's status as a princess is only by her will. However, she has very little involvement in daily governance.
HOWEVER -- With all Luna's dreamwalking with fillies and colts, the next generation of ponies may well grow up with a greater emotional connection to Luna with all the loyalty that implies. That's going to change the power dynamic in interesting ways.
7. Does Shining Armor rule The Crystal Empire along side of Cadance?
Yes.
8. Other than Twilight, Luna, and Cadance, what relationships have been important to Celestia in her lifetime (students, close friends, lovers, family)?
A long, long, long, long line of them. However, Celestia approaches all of them with an almost bodhisattva-live indifference which she rarely lets on. In a very important way, she simply can't relate to Twilight in a way that would allow friendship in the way we understand it.
Ponies and Equestrian Culture:
9. Are there still cultural differences between earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns, or is the culture homogeneous by the time shown in canon? Are there cultural stereotypes (positive or negative)?
There are cultural institutions that can be traced back to the independent tribes, but centuries of integration and interbreeding have softened the edges. Rarity's background, for example, is from an originally earth pony culture.
12. Earth pony magic: Does it exist? What is it?
Yes. There's actually a good deal of symmetry between the three tribes. All have a specialisation:
Unicorn magic is an affinity for things of the aether.
Pegasus magic is an affinity for things of the air.
Earth pony magic is an affinity for things of the ground. It's how the Apple family are able to get apples off trees without damaging the bark, and how Maud can hurl tonnes of rock without any effort.
14. How much formal schooling is an average, middle class pony expected to complete?
Very little. From puberty onwards, vocational training takes the place of most schooling. It's generally a given that social pressure to get a cutie mark will lead most ponies to independently educate themselves in areas where they might be socially useful.
15. What’s the average lifespan for a pony? At what age is a pony expected to be independent of their parents?
Ponies age at almost the same rate humans do, but in practice they live longer because they have advanced health care and live in a healthier environment compared to most humans living in industrial civilisations.
16. Are there roughly an equal number of male and female ponies?
Yes.
The Main Characters:
19. Did Fluttershy remain on the ground after getting her cutie mark? Were she and Rainbow Dash friends all along, or did they drift apart for a while?
Fluttershy was rescued from the ground fairly quickly, but found living is Cloudsdale almost unbearable after getting her cutie mark. She asked her parents if she could move to Ponyville soon afterwards – the first time she'd taken an active decision about her life.
Dash came to Ponyville much later. Even then, they weren't close before Twilight arrived.
22. When did Pinkie move in with the Cakes? Is she a worker who rents a room, an apprentice, or is there some other relationship?
She has a free room and works there because she loves baking. They haven't formalised it beyond that.
25. Is Scootaloo an orphan? Will she ever be able to fly?
Scootaloo lives with her mother. She doesn't know her father. She will never fly naturally.
Side and Background Characters:
28. Is Mr. Cake the father of the Cake twins or not?
He is.
29. Are Big Mac and Cheerilee an item, romantically?
It's an on-again off-again thing. Cheerilee doesn't want to go to the trouble of explaining it to her students.
30. How did Prince Blueblood get his title?
By birth. It's a largely defunct bit of unicorn social hierarchy that was retroactively applied to all alicorns when they started to rule Equestria.
32. Is Zecora’s magic common among zebras?
Sort of. It's all zebra magic, but Zecora knows more than most. She's sort of the Twilight of zebras.
33. Why does Daring Do publish her stories as fiction?
Do you have any idea how much is costs to be a freelance globe-trotting archaeologist?
Other Species:
35. Does Equestria differentiate between speaking and non-speaking species, in terms of respect, rights and legal responsibilities? Is there some other line or scale used? (For example, how are cows classified? Diamond Dogs? A chimera?)
I headcanon cows as -really- being nonsentient. Instances of them talking can be swept under the rug as lone gags along with Pinkie's teleportation and evidence of nonsensical economics. Because otherwise that social situation is seriously fucked up.
Equestria doesn't have a concept of legal personhood or legal rights or anything like that.
36. Do other speaking species form their own nations, or are all nations largely integrated, with some having larger populations of a species than others?
There are a number of independent city states around Equestria, mostly run by donkeys. The griffons have a bicameral parliamentary republic. They think Equestria's eternal monarchy is utterly barbarous.
39. Do zebra cutie marks work the same way as pony cutie marks?
Yes. Even the stylistic difference is cultural – a pony raised among zebras would likely get a zebra-style mark.
40. Do any species have types of magic, other than ponies and zebras?
The average alpaca has around fifteen times to raw magical power of an alicorn, including transdimensional ultracorrosive spit that can kill Elder Gods, but they prefer to spend their time grazing and gossiping.
Headcanon and You:
42. Do you consider official sources other than the show (comics, card game text, movies, novels, etc.) to be canon?
I don't mind either way. Effectively no, then.
43. Do you have one headcanon that you always use, or do you switch depending on projects?
Both, sort of. All my stories tend to have inconsistent backgrounds, but I'm happy to reuse certain elements between stories.
44. Can you easily accept the headcanons of different writers? Do you prefer when stories match your headcanon?
I like seeing new interpretations if they're done well.
45. Is there a part of your headcanon that you wish was more popular among writers?
Now that I've written it, that bit about alpacas.
46. Is there a popular piece of headcanon that other writers use that you dislike?
Probably. I can't think of anything beyond blatant mischaracterisation, though.
47. Have you ever written a story or blogpost just to explain some part of your headcanon (other than this one)?
I've offered ideas I think are cool a couple of times in blogs. I hate making stories subservient to worldbuilding.
48. Does your headcanon influence things like your favorite pony, ship, or episode?
I suspect my love for Rarity is largely due to delving into her personality for my first story.
49. Would it bother you if the show proved part of your headcanon wrong? Any specific piece that would really bother you to lose?
I'd prefer a headcanon-wrecking episode executed with panache to a headcanon-proving episode that was fumbled.
50. Is there something that wasn't asked about here, but you feel like you need to explain to everyone?
Almost certainly.
I love this meme. So very much. I love seeing all the headcanons floating around.
This passage actually made me spontaneously develop a headcanon regarding pony-bovine relations.