Why the Hooffields and McColts Lack Talent Diversity · 3:43pm Nov 15th, 2015
From a reply to a review by Fan Of Most Everything:
The two families are descended from two individuals (or patriarchs each of whom already had a family, for reasons I'm about to go into) each of whom had a signature talent. Grub Hooffield was a gifted farmer; Piles McColt a gifted engineer. Now, in the non-squicky version of this, each had a wife and some children (not shown in the flashback) who had spouses of their own, and they all had tended to marry Ponies with similar talents. In consequence, their children down to the current lot tended to have similar talents.
Why do I say "non-squicky?" Well, consider this. They live in a very isolated area. They're paranoid toward outsiders (and Hooffields, obviously, do not marry McColts). And they all look a lot alike. Non-squicky version is that they by necessity marry first cousins, which probably happens a lot among very rustic Earth Ponies. Squicky version is that they engage in primary incest: brother-sister and parent-child.
Lack of outside genetic stock means that there is no way save atavism for a previously unpossessed Talent to come into their community. Plus, who's going to teach a Hooffield to build things or a McColt who to farm? Other rural families living in the area (and by "in the area" I mean a dozen or more miles away) probably regard both families as violent paranoid degenerates who it is best to avoid, and members of whom one would certainly not want to romantically court or even attempt to befriend.
So.....now that Twilight has forced a resolution by bashing heads together, it's time to speculate as to the long-term effects of peace. While it's easy to see that the goals of their founders will be realized, their inheritors will take a lot of time to, well, turn purple, so to speak.
I read that the families the feud was based on also suffered from inbreeding.
I agree that internal breeding might be an issue, but I think it more to do with them not letting outside information, neither side BOTHERS to learn anything new because they're so focused on a generations long feud.
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I think that
(1) There will now be Hooffield-McColt marriages, and
(2) As the valley recovers from the feud, and the Hooffields and McColts lose their unsavory reputation, new settlers will come into the valley, so
(3) The cultural and genetic bottlenecks will prove temporary.
My take on that whole episode was 'meh'. I'm glad some people enjoyed it but I think I've read too much history of the actual feud, I just found myself rolling my eyes at practically every plot twist. The bit with 'no one remembers how it started' especially teed me off; in real life both families knew very well why it started, though each blamed the other for it. The depictions of the warring sides were a trifle off-putting to me too, though they were funny. It didn't sink to the depths of Child Bride, that's for sure.
Does make me wonder how the ponies would handle it if and when they run into cultures that do real blood feud. I've figured that the griffons sometimes handle things that way, and in my works the wolves definitely do. Should be interesting when Twi does her little diplomatic meeting with the packs and at one point discovers she's "agreed" to help one wolf pack kill its way to the top.
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Especially since the feud that was parodying was intimately connected with the history of the American Civil War, and was incredibly bloody. I was wondering myself if in the Shadow Wars Story Verse version of this, the feud actually started due to a quarrel involving the Gulf River Rebellion (the equivalent event in Equestrian history).