My Heroin · 5:04am Mar 10th, 2015
Razzle Dazzle: the idea of rainbow's cloud home having conventional property laws is kind of weird
Razzle Dazzle: unless... clouds really don't move on their own
Razzle Dazzle: even against the wind that the pegasi set
Razzle Dazzle: regardless, you'd think she would only have a license for a certain volume of airspace, not set to any fixed location
Razzle Dazzle: property laws in cloudsdale would be even weirder
Derek: I guess it depends on who cares about the air-space used
Razzle Dazzle: cloudsdale can grow like lightning
Razzle Dazzle: hm, that's true
Derek: If there are plenty of clouds and there aren't millions of pegasi clamoring for space, then not much worry
Razzle Dazzle: there would probably be licenses to control the airspace about a property
Derek: It might also simply be a case of capitalism at work
Razzle Dazzle: well, yes :P
Razzle Dazzle: capitalism is the one true god
Razzle Dazzle: i'm just wondering how the government would be interfering
Derek: If clouds decay and need to be replaced regularly, then only the wealthy could afford to have truly massive houses because they would need to pay others to maintain it
Razzle Dazzle: or weatherponies...
Derek: The normal Pegasus might need to actually spend time on home cloud maintainence, which would put a cap on the size of their house
Razzle Dazzle: anyway, cloudsdale would be pretty interesting
Razzle Dazzle: the outskirts would grow freely
Razzle Dazzle: there would probably be several auxiliary city centers around the main urban area to service the densely populated suburbs
Razzle Dazzle: and the potential for 3D architecture...
Razzle Dazzle: cloudsdale would probably extend all the way to the ground, since there wouldn't be much use for permanently shaded land
Razzle Dazzle: i bet equestria would store a good chunk of reserve resources in that space
Derek: Why would it have to be on a 2D plane - why not a sphere?
Derek: They can fly anywhere, after all
Derek: So the height of a building is irrelevant, in a way
Razzle Dazzle: well, a sphere would be constrained by the height of the sky
Derek: You can have an entrance to your store 30 stories up from the bottom floor, and have no elevator access
Razzle Dazzle: as it grew, it would eventually become vaguely blobbish, though the height of the whole city would be massive
Razzle Dazzle: the internals of cloudsdale are very shady
Razzle Dazzle: the sunny surface would be for the rich
Razzle Dazzle: well, what's the point of elevators in cloudsdale? :p
Razzle Dazzle: ah, anti-discrimination
Razzle Dazzle: non-pegasus residents would be very interesting
Razzle Dazzle: they would have to have a non-flight access system
Derek: But can they walk on clouds?
Razzle Dazzle: enchantments would be available
Razzle Dazzle: like the cloudwalking spell, but more permanent
Razzle Dazzle: non-pegasi and children would be forbidden from the edges of structural clouds
Razzle Dazzle: and there would be a safety buffer zone
Razzle Dazzle: heating the internals of cloudsdale would be an issue
Razzle Dazzle: fuck, i love worldbuilding
Razzle Dazzle: large ground cities would also have a cloud component
Razzle Dazzle: the search for earth pony-accessible construction material would drive the development of skyscrapers
Razzle Dazzle: maaaaaybe
Razzle Dazzle: not too sure about that one
Razzle Dazzle: pegasi would inhabit the upper reaches of ground cities, above where skyscrapers of the current tech level could reach
Razzle Dazzle: i'm thinking a race ratio of 10:30:60 for u:p:e
* RainbowBob The Awesome sniffs the air
RainbowBob The Awesome: I smell woooooorld buuuuuuulding
Razzle Dazzle: dammit bob, you caught me
Razzle Dazzle: it's too good
Razzle Dazzle: like heroin
You're absolutely right.
Heroin is too good.
troll.me/images/one-does-not-simply/one-does-not-simply-sniff-heroin.jpg
This is really awesome worldbuilding.
*scribbles notes.
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Aw, thanks!
How... How the hell did that floppy image get embedded in your comment...? It's not an image, it's not text...
I'm freaking out.
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Do you know a guy named "Sollace?"
He has a userscript named "Fimfic Advanced." The mechanics of it should still be on his userpage comments section.
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dl.dropbox.com/u/21167245/FiMFiction/Emoticons/misc_Bon_gawk.png?wrap=true
fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/363/1/e/clapping_pony_icon___twilight_sparkle_by_taritoons-d5pkpl8.gif?wrap=true
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Thanks, but ultimately I don't care about extra emoticons. :P Worryingly, I see extra emoticons as something special, separate even from regular emoticons, even though I don't have the userscript installed. This means that the effect is accomplished with some potentially unscrupulous injection technique, which could be a security concern.
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nah, it comes from font awesome.
[icon] [/icon]and stuff inbetween
you don't need to install extra emotes. Fimfic Advaned just gives you some more options.
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And that includes the beer mug and margarita glasses. Okay.
Back to clouds...
You know, that's a good point.
Just what does the terrain look like under a pegasi cloud city?
img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110821143742/mlp/images/5/55/Cloudsdale1.png
Spontaneously, it does look as it's a bit above normal cloud level. Makes sense, I guess, just a short 'jump' down for building material would be a nice bonus. (Could even be why such a large settlement is so close to the otherwise maligned Everfree; a constant supply of material just drifting over from a place were nature actually works.)
If so, would there be much of a shadow? Or is the town small enough (by cloud standards) that the normal passage of the sun still makes enough sunlight reach the ground?
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1. They don't get clouds from the sky, they produce them from water reservoirs on the ground.
2. They aren't close to the Everfree, why would they be? They aren't even near the Everfree on the canon map, which I don't accept as a source of geography.
3. I don't accept the depiction of Cloudsdale in the show, either. The show makes it look like it's a town, not a city. I would expect a lower bound of at least 50,000 pegasi living in the pegasus capital, upper bound being several million. Cloudsdale would in actuality be absolutely enormous, and it would most certainly blot out a good portion of the ground daylong.
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1,) I'll skip the meme, but why not both? The techniques may be vastly different, but one may mine both rock and seabeds, after all.
2,) Eh, fair enough. I personally think it looks as if Cloudsdale is close to Ponyville, just really high up... but I'll concede that that map is both old and meant more for eye-candy than cartography.
3,) Personally, I've gotten the impression that Cloudsdale is huge, just really spread out; that picture I showed 'just' being some type of town-center. The weather factory is shown as it's own separate cloud structure, after all.
Kinda like Kiruna. Surface wise it's simply huge, but so spread-out and sprawling that if you're standing on the right spot you can miss that there's even a city and not a town there.
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1. It wouldn't be both because Equestria has a total lockdown of the water cycle. Any moisture farming (you scruffy little nerfherder) would have to be done on the borders of Equestria, as well as recouping losses from the Everfree Forest. International borders would probably be regulated with treaties (despite Equestria's relative omnipotence) so that Equestria wouldn't hoard moisture. That would be loosened both officially and unofficially during wartime. Coasts would probably have cloud cities themselves, so the border would be miles offshore.
And then again, getting moisture in the sky from evaporation as opposed to making a bullshit weird physics tornado is both more realistic and less direct effort. So yeah, probably. Irrigated farms would have it set up so that the runoff evaporates, making it a cloud farm as well. Cool.
3. The density of cities is dependent on how dystopian you want the setting to be. :P Sustainable, environmentally-conscious cities would be laid out quite sparsely, but for this brainstorm I was focusing on inequitable, industrialist, environmentally-apathetic pones. It's fun.