Horse Play Rant Because I Can

Oh that Horse Play episode is out, so now I can rant about how stupid the new "lore" is.

1. Sacrificing 5 unicorns every day just to raise the sun. And to lower it, I imagine. So 10 unicorns a day turned to Earth Ponies. That's 3,650 unicorns a year before Celestia got her "cutie mark" in sun raising. So assuming she was born the first year they started raising the sun, and got her cutie mark at 14, that's 51,100 unicorns sacrificed to move the sun. This is reading more like Warhammer 40k than My Little Pony. And at what point while sacrificing the magic of thousands of unicorns a year does somepony finally come up with the genius idea to just leave the fucking sun up.

2. Equestria tidally locked to the sun: Confirmed. There's no way they could move the sun around the planet, or that the planet could be the center of orbit for the sun. Or that the planet and Sun are just chilling, motionless, in space until acted on by an outside force. So Equestria must be tidally locked, and they use Magic to rotate the planet (and not 'actually' rotate the sun). They could for arguments sake move the moon since it's a much smaller mass, that *actually* orbits the planet. Or not. Celestia is probably just rotating the planet to change which part is 'sunny' at that time.

3. If Equestria is tidally locked and requires Alicorn magic to move the sun, then how do they even have a concept of night and day? All the ponies would either evolve on the night side or the day side, and that would be "normal" for them. They would have no notion of the way the "other side" lives until they explore, and then they'd have to have the notion "Hey you know what would be great? If we could have day AND night, even though we evolved to experience 24/7 light or darkness. Because reasons!

4. And if the sun is immobile and needs magic to move to begin with, and has to be physically moved as shown by Celestia concentrating and casting a magic spell intensely, then the sun would rise and remain motionless all day. They'd have no concepts of Dusk or Twilight (gasp), Dawn, high noon, or any other light-related times of day. So either Celestia is concentrating 24/7, or gives the sun a 'nudge' every hour to keep things rolling? Has she got nothing better to do than make tiny adjustments to the sun throughout the day?

5. And since you're all here, Celestia is the greatest actress of all time. If she has the power to move a fucking sun at will, and she's already over 1,000 years old, she'd have to have picked up a thing or two like how to not be a moron. She was "pretending" to suck at acting the whole time just to test Twilight, and see if she'd be honest with her mentor. When Celestia acts "out of character" she's really just testing ponies, and for the sake of this rant, Celestia is "OOC" anytime she acts like a total idiot. "Oh, I've forgotten how to control the volume of my voice or that I can speak at something other than a whisper or Royal Canterlot Make-Ponies-Shit-Themselves Voice."

TL;DR
Celestia is the God-Emperor and sacrafices 10 unicorns a day to remain immortal and move the sun. Equestria is tidally locked. Ponies could have saved us a whole lot of trouble and just left the fucking sun up. She's the greatest actress of all time, but acts stupid so that "show can go on".

Comments

[terrycloth]

In 'Lesson Zero' they show Celestia moving the sun in one-hour increments. So I think that theory is true.

From what I remember from the journal of the two sisters, they eventually lost their powers but not instantly on the first day. O.O Because yeah, you'd run out of unicorns really fast. Maybe it started out being difficult but not instantly draining, and got worse and worse until it was draining them after one go?

...and yeah, the implication was that she was fucking with Twilight the whole time. WTF, Celestia?

[Oliv5439]

“And at what point while sacrificing the magic of thousands of unicorns a year does somepony finally come up with the genius idea to just leave the fucking sun up.”.

That would mean that one side of the planet is a burning hellskabe and the other is a frozen tundra. Don’t ask me how complex life even evolved

[Damaged]

According to the book about Celestia and Luna's history, they mentioned that once they took over the job all the unicorns were restored.

4860233 That is a headcanon I use in a story right now. Although it isn't "burning hellscape" since the star isn't outputting much visible light anymore (it's a neutron star) but is projecting a "magic field" that causes one side of Equus to be a magic-blasted hellscape. The "sun" and "moon" are two space rocks that Discord juggled for a while, got bored, and eventually taught Celestia and Luna how to toss. Softish sci-fi, I know, but I wanted something unique.

[BadTouch]

4860234
Better headcanon than most. If we take canon as infallible, then ponies either evolved for a tide-locked world in the first place or were spontaneously created by some force. If the latter, they were also spontaneously given the understanding that the world has to be turned manually, else Consequences.

Dumb but... workable if we go the "major sci-fi shenanigans" route for a creation myth.

[Damaged]

4860241 The story I used it in was a sci-fi crossover with Anne McCaffrey's FSP 'verse, so I needed something vaguely scientific to explain it all.

[Scarheart]

Hey, with the sacrificing of unicorns, remember kids! It's a family show!

[Kaidan]

4860241 4860242

the world has to be turned manually, else Consequences.

In a bunker on an island, Lyra begins to type numbers into a computer to raise the sun right on cue.

4 8 15 16 23 42

[Blazeblast4]

I’m pretty sure that the sun and moon in Equestria orbit the planet and aren’t all that large. We see an eternal night future where vegetation still exists in the season 5 finale and Twilight would’ve completely destroyed all life in the season 4 finale (as would have the Storm King in the Movie and maybe Discord) otherwise.

What gets me about the newish lore (it is from the Journal of Two Sisters, but Shadow Play nuked half of that book) is why didn’t they just use 10 unicorns? It’s clear they can have a group cast (or push or whatever), so instead of permanently burning out 5 a day, just bring in 10 or more...

And congratulations to Celestia, she came off as a complete brat in this episode. The not being able to act thing was a stupid plot contrivance (maybe not being able to perform well by having trouble being someone else/getting into character after not having any acting training in 1000 years, but not able to properly speak? Heck, she was cast as herself...) at best, but her throwing a hissy fit at the end when Twilight was trying to make her happy because Twilight wasn’t honest with her was awful. It’s in character after A Royal Problem, but still obnoxious. Made even worse by the sheer hypocrisy (the first thing we get from Celestia in the entire show is a letter deliberately misleading Twilight... not to mention the Crystal Empire test).

[Oliv5439]

WAIT! I know how life evolved even if the solar system is static. now hold on, this is gonna sound Crazy , but... the reason is... magic *snort* *snort*

[HeartfireFirebrand]

Okay this brings up the whole Cutie Mark Issue, they have some influence over them or else they wouldn't be marked that way.

[VikingOtaku6]

I'd like to point out that, while we have no idea how long an Equusian Year is, much less their days, we know how long a Moon is (because Granny Smith is Best Pony). (Here for further details!)

Otherwise, like most others, a few things to mention:
Nightmare Moon Timeline (~1.5 years in, as shown in episode)
Lesson Zero Clock Is Ticking (Sun ticked on by)
Nice reference to Lost, btw.
Yes, Equus does seem to be in Geosynchronous Orbit with their Stellar Body.

[Disavowed ASH]

Hello, Kaidan. I avoid most of the episodes in the season, and I haven't seen Horse Play. But I already fixed this problem. Sort off. These are copy pasted from an argument I had, so bare with me.

1. Well that is because everyone assumes she is god. But looking at Celestia, she is more likely a demigoddess, one that is kind, caring, and has done plenty for the world.

As for why she can raise the sun and moon? That isn't the actual sun and moon. They are magical constructs that allow for precise control of the North Equestrian Continents temperature, and enable easier weather control for pegasy.

Of course this is because of the way I structured the universe in my writing.

Making Celestia literally god would ruin her as a kind individual and turn her into a monster. So by lowering her power (She can lift mountains and destroy cities though) and making her still have needs like eating and sleeping I keep her from going mad and destroying everything.

2. Interesting thought. In my universe the sun and moons rotations never stopped. What happened is that a bit over one-thousand years ago ruins of Hyperborea where discovered in the Northern Equestrian Continent, in it an ancient machine that could create a fake sun and moon was discovered, combined with the thinking of various sorcerers on the details this fake sun and moon would help have control over the North Equestrian Continent's temperature and allow the Pegasy of Pegasopolis for easier weather control and allow for maximum crop output. Basically Equestria used something barely understood to make more food than anyone ever in that era. To the point that they the largest exporter of crops till the modern day.

The other nations actually never had control over their very own sun and moon.

The kicker is that only Celestia and Luna have enough power to power the thing, without getting themselves killed.

And until they came about the early Kingdom of Equestria had gave in 333 unicorn peasants monthly to die, while they payed the Pegasy to control the weather how they wished and let them steal whatever they wanted from the Earth Ponies that came from the Empire of Romulus mostly because they where having enough trouble dealing with Windigos as it is. All to try to keep the Windigoes from freezing over the territory they discovered like they had done to much of Europa.

Yes, the TRIBUTE SYSTEM that we see in place is actually a result of the Windegoes, not how things where. In reality the hatred and ills of that time before the discovery of Equestria was much what you see in our history. Wars, so many wars. Basically Human and Pony History wasn't that different form each other until Celestia and Luna became the rulers of the land that would become the Kingdom of Equestria.

3. All right let us consider what would happen if you scheduled weather and the temperature of a whole continent wad perfectly predictable. (No setbacks on farming or industrial work. Ever.)

Add extremely fertile soil, with large deposits of gems and gold.

Add that the value of these things remains the same because it is based on the value given to these things on the old continent.

Equestria does what it does because it is what made it obscenely rich.

There hasn't have to a cataclysm to want to control weather, the sun, and the moon. Only raw ambition.

It's not like we humans haven't dreamed of controlling the weather since we could look at the sky.

[Disavowed ASH]

I just saw the episode. And it seems that the writers are trying to imply that draining magic does not equal death. (Which I think is stupid.)

We don't know how long each of those wizards passed raising and lowering the sun before they ran out of magic. We are only assuming that five High-Level Wizards were dying a day.

StarSwirl must of known of Celestia's potential for years ever since he started training both her and Luna. So it's possible that non of this happened at all and that the play is completely made up by Twilight.

It could easily be that at some point whatever was actually powering the raising of the fake sun and moon was drained or damaged, and no one knew how to properly repair it. So in the end Celestia and Luna stepped in to keep it running from a distance.

The thing is that I am trying to follow some sort of coherent Logic here.

Sorry if the last post offended anyone!

[Warrior Kitten]

I dont think it was the Unicorns got drained every day. I'm pretty sure it was just that those particular five did it for so long that it broke them. Not necessarily drained them. If magic is like a muscle, then they simply badly tore it to the point it could not heal.

Also how'd you come to the conclusion that it's the planet being turned?

And finally, I like the fanon idea that something happened in the past that broke the natural heliocentric system via breaking something in that system that us as humans didn't consider; magic.