Introduction and (Part 1 of) 50 Questions · 4:29pm Jan 25th, 2019
I'm not really clear on how one introduces oneself in this kind of format - "Hello" sounds too personal and "Welcome" doesn't seem right when I'm the one entering a new world - so I'll just go with "Thank you". Thank you to those who bother to read my stories or posts (few as they are right now) and thank you to those who have written/are writing/will write stories I enjoy. (I'm kind of hoping there'll be some overlap.)
I'm a long-time fanfiction reader and as my tagline says have followed FIM since almost the beginning - to be precise, I discovered the show somewhere in the 3-week gap between Call of the Cutie and Fall Weather Friends. Despite this, I'm only poking my head out now - this is partly because I'm a natural recluse in both the Internet world and real life and partly because I'm at the point where I'd rather do anything instead of my coursework. Mostly, though, it's because I've finally managed to turn one of my frequent plot bunnies into (the beginning of) an actual story - not a particularly good story nor one I can guarantee finishing, but I've seen plenty of worse-written and shorter stuff in the featured box.
And as a bonus, I can now comment and make blogs instead of reading in digital silence! Some blogs will be about my story/ies (fingers crossed) but I'll wait to see some feedback on it first. Others will explore more general pony issues, which will inevitably involve some headcanon on my part - so I figured this old thing was a good place to start (I'm better at answering questions than writing freeform, so please ask if you want anything clarified.)
Addendum; due to the length I've rambled on for on some of these plus a near miss with losing the post, I'm going to post the first half or so now and keep working on the rest. If you still have any interest left after slogging through the below, check out part 2.
The Princesses:
1. How old are Celestia and Luna?
Celestia is not much over 1300 years old; Luna was born in the same decade but has obviously only been around for 3 centuries (and now once again counting).
I'm aware that the first part doesn't quite fit with Horse Play (though it's closer than most opinions I've seen), so it's probably best to say now that over time my older headcanons have solidified beyond the point of being changed by mere contradiction - I'll work with new stuff where I can, but I won't change what I've already got unless the show's idea is obviously better.
2. How old is Cadance?
Not yet thirty (but close) when she married, and it's been a few years since. (When I first decided this years ago it made her so much more grown-up than me - now I have the age but no loving spouse nor empire. Pony princesses get all the lucky breaks
)
3. Were Celestia and Luna always alicorns, or did they ascend?
Wouldn't you like to know? (Twilight would very much like to know, too.) But if anyone does know*, they're not telling (at least until I decide myself). But I will say this much - Cadance's ascension blindsided Celestia completely. Or at least, that's what it looked like, and as we all now know, Princess Celestia can't act.
* Plausible candidates include Discord, Star Swirl, very old dragons and of course the Royal Sisters themselves.
4. Are Cadance and Twilight immortal?
Their destructibility thankfully hasn't been thoroughly tested* but observation of minor to moderate injuries (papercuts, black eyes, perineal tears) show some degree of both increased resilience and rapid regeneration. (No passive pain reduction though, as anypony within a mile of the Crystal Palace during Flurry Heart's birth will attest.) As for aging, that may soon be tested as Cadance approaches Luna's apparent level of physical maturity - but her new Royal Landscape Artist might teach you a lesson or two about judging by outer appearances. (And in any case, Unicorn Twilight would have lived - barring unnatural causes - well into and perhaps even through her second century.)
*Except by Tirek, but that was hardly under standard conditions. Celestia and Luna have both displayed similar durability in the past.
5. Have there been other alicorns in the past?
As per my answer to Question 3, it would seem that there can at least have been none that Celestia was aware of. Alicorn imagery has been found dating at least as far back as the Pre-Classical (Three Tribes) Era, particularly in reference to Epona (see Question 50) but it's an obvious enough derivation that nopony knows whether the original meaning was literal or symbolic.
6. How much authority do Celestia and Luna have in Equestria?
Theoretically absolute when they act in concert (they each have an equal "vote" while Parliament as a whole holds a third tie-breaking one). In practice Parliament has tended to agree with Celestia, because she's the better politician - this both contributed to Luna's feelings of marginalisation and meant that her absence didn't cause the utter deadlock one might expect from a two-equal-powers system.
One power all Royal Princesses possess (but generally use very sparingly) is that of a Royal Order, which overrides Equestrian law and must be obeyed by any citizen unless countermanded by an equal or higher Princess.
7. Does Shining Armor rule The Crystal Empire alongside Cadance?
Not alongside, no - her chair is in the throne room while his is in a Guard Commander's office not unlike the one he had in Canterlot. But while the last word is her's, anyone who's known a happily married couple will know he gets his say in first, and there are some areas (like security) where she'll generally defer to him.
8. Other than Twilight, Luna, and Cadance, what relationships have been important to Celestia in her lifetime (students, close friends, lovers, family)?
Students she's had aplenty - although she regrets that the days when she ran her school as closely as Cheerilee are far behind her, she's had a personal apprentice or two more often than not over the past few centuries. (The Sunset-Twilight gap is unusually short, especially if you count Cadance, but these are hardly normal times.) Often these students graduate into her close friends, but she also has a knack for finding new ones in every corner of Equestria, generally when she least expects it.
Lovers (don't ask me what kind) she takes on average once a century (discounting that one century as skewing the curve) but their names are never publically known at the time (and generally not in their lifetime). No offspring are known to have resulted from these unions, and "everypony knows" that the Princess treats all her little ponies as the children she cannot bear herself - Mother to the whole nation.
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)?
Yes, but. Each tribe has their own ideals (magic, learning and beauty for unicorns, courage, freedom and duty for pegasi and strength, dedication and kinship for earth ponies are just scratching the surface) and their own ideas about other kinds (general consensus is that they're alright sorts but will never really understand <see previous bracket>).
But there's also movement between cultures (Fluttershy could probably be an honorary earthpony if she was a little more sociable), subcultures within each culture, and subcultures which cross cultures (like the fashion world). And plenty of towns like Ponyville where one tribe may be dominant but others make up a sizable minority; a few even approach equality.
One perhaps overly broad generalisation is that pegasi are the most detached tribe, and that the two grounded kinds have more of a history of social intercourse, for good or ill. (Neighbours make the best kind of friends and the worst kinds of enemies.)
10. Are there foods or items native to Cloudsdale that are uncommon on the ground? Are there foods or items on the ground that are uncommon in Cloudsdale?
Food production in Cloudsdale is ... not technically impossible, but certainly not practical on a sufficient scale to feed the city. But the same can be said of any city really; what complicates Cloudsdale's supply chain is that it moves, and can therefore not draw from any one set of farms and villages. Supplies of preserved food are laid on in bulk and supplemented by surplus from nearby towns, giving the city it's ... unmistakable culinary character.
Either despite or because of the large food stocks, weight is at premium in Cloudsdale; any non-cloudcrafted item is taxed on it, which fuels both the cloudcrafting industry and a somewhat unmaterialistic lifestyle for most inhabitants, who focus on accumulating experiences rather than things. With Cloudsdale being a center of pegasus culture, this sentiment often flows outwards to places where it has less practical relevance.
11. Can all unicorns learn all spells, given the time and effort spent practicing them, or is magical talent usually limited in some way?
Warning:long!
Pony magic (of all three kinds - the unicorn sort is only the flashiest) rests on three pillars; power, talent and knowledge.
The first defines a pony's raw magical capacity and therefore the scale of spells they can cast, and is also positively correlated with things like lifespan and portion size (No-one cares except you, Tirek). Alicorns all possess this in abundance; a good unicorn example would be Shining Armor (city-scale within his speciality) while an example of a unicorn lacking in this aspect would be Sunburst.
The second is of course key to ponies of all sorts, but a unicorn's talent has particular relevance to how they use their horn. Spells directly related to a unicorn's cutie mark come as instinctively as telekinesis, which saves them the messy business of learning proper spellcasting (think a combination between learning an instrument and a programming language); there are also hard caps, but they vary even between ponies with very similar marks and are generally considered to exist mainly in each individual unicorn's head (which is not the same as them being unreal or ignorable).
Of course there are also the rare (about 1 in 100 unicorns) magic talents, who can easily learn almost any kind of magic* - the catch is that like any generalist, they usually can't quite match up to a specialist in their own area. An example of a pony with such a talent but no great strength to fuel it is of course Trixie (sans Amulet). While she previously tried to increase her power, currently she is following the safer route of improving her knowledge.
*Some rare gifts, like healing and prophecy, are beyond even them - some have speculated at a corellation with rarity of the talent in the general populace.
This third attribute can mean different things depending on the unicorn. For "ordinary" unicorns, it usually represents experience and self-discovery: most will widen their talent from it's base over the decade after discovering it (like Rarity going from gem-finding to illusions and transfiguration) before eventually hitting their personal limits. For magic talents (particularly those enrolled in such esteemed institutions as Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns or the Monacolt Magic Academy), it often means book learning - they are the one's spellbooks are written for, in something resembling musical notation (and sometimes even with accompanying lyrics). Sunburst rates highly in this area.
(Looking at the above, the unbelievable potential of Twilight Sparkle becomes apparent. Peak unicorn power to begin with, now given way to an alicorn's furnace; the only alicorn with a magic talent to boot, and one that as much as she hates to admit it learns faster from observing a spell cast than from books; and a dedication to learning everything she can from books anyway. The perfect union of the three aspects of magic, just like an alicorn is of the three tribes.)
12. Earth pony magic: Does it exist? What is it?
Yes, it exists, in a few flavours - some say it's based on the ground an earthpony is raised on, but inheritance and random variance also have a role. The most well-known is the cultivation of plants, what Estee calls the Cornucopia Effect, although my version has a sting in the tail - the longer and the more earthponies work or even just live on a piece of land, the longer that land will be unfarmable by regular means afterward.
Other rarer flavours include rockwork and beastspeak*; ( I may expand on these later). Lastly, while not an exclusive power their lack of alternative manipulators means earthponies form an even greater majority among the ranks of skilled capillurgists (hair-users) than they do among the general population.
*Generally limited to a certain narrow variety of animals; Fluttershy is if not a Twilight then at least a Rainbow in the field, which is one reason she's never been offered membership in the National Beastspeakers Union despite said body having members of all three tribes.
13. Some pony families we’ve seen seem to have naming conventions (the Apples, Twilight’s family) and others don’t appear to (Rarity’s family, Pinkie’s family), which is more common? Are there reasons for one or the other?
Take three tribes, each with their own way of naming foals and varying rules on name changes later in life. Mix them together to the point where they start borrowing names from each other, sometimes adapting them to their style, sometimes not. Watch as the idea of rigid naming rules slowly crumbles, leaving only tendencies. Notice that some families cling tighter to their own traditional naming schemes amid this chaos. Wonder why the only real rule left seems to be that a name must be wholly in understandable modern Ponish (except when it isn't).
14. How much formal schooling is an average, middle class pony expected to complete?
By law, nine years, from five or six to fourteen or fifteen. The density of this education, however, can vary significantly, from city schools on the same five-full-day week as their counterparts through the mirror to rural schoolhouses where one teacher alternates a few broad age groups. Sufficiently middle class (or better) ponies may supplement the latter with private tuition or just send their foals away to boarding school, while for middle class city ponies high school attendance varies between a social norm and an actual bylaw.
Note: the above mainly describes the ground pony system. Pegasus schooling is somewhat different but fulfils the same educational requirements.
15. What’s the average lifespan for a pony? At what age is a pony expected to be independent of their parents?
Pony lifespan is similar to a human's but varies based on magical power, which slows aging - Alicorns being an example of this taken to the logical extreme. (See end of Question 4 for an example.) As for adulthood, legally it was for a long time mark-based but was eventually regularised at sixteen, the latest age any significant number of ponies get theirs. (This was meant to promote fairness and long-term planning, and did so, but is also the root of blank flank bullying - previously the newly marked would move on to the adult world and picking on children would lose them status, but nowadays they often remain ostensible peers for years.) In practice however a mid-teens pony with parental approval can play adult pretty well, and while younger foals are not supposed to be out on their own there is decent flexibility as to their actual guardians.
16. Are there roughly an equal number of male and female ponies?
Not quite, but close - one chart I have shows 44/56 distribution onscreen as of Season 6, which sounds about right.
17. How informed are most ponies about things that happen in other parts of Equestria? What about other parts of the world?
Fresh news is distributed a few ways in Equestria. The foremost are probably periodicals, which are either general and local (newspapers) or national but specific (magazines) - a subscriber to Clothes Horse might know a dozen different cities only as the origins of certain designers or trends, and many readers of Architecture Review were first informed of the return of the Crystal Empire by a special edition of said magazine released months after the fact. Then there's word of mouth - in increasing order of freshness by visitor, letter or telegram. And if the palace or more local government really wants ponies to know something, they'll send out official announcements to each town by special messenger.
All together, these sources add up to a picture that gets more and more fragmentary the further away one looks, with almost nothing from beyond Equestria's borders unless one buys the right magazines. There are factors in the near future that might change this (like cinema newsreels) but they will have to contend with a populace that lacks a cultivated appetite for such things.
The Main Characters:
18. How old are the Mane Six? Spike? The CMC?
It's a tricky one, because you can't just assign ages individually - all six have to be within a few years of each other, the CMC even closer, and Spike is exactly as old as their cutie marks - whenever those came in. And we have very little concrete information. Honestly this seems like the kind of thing that could be it's own blog, but as a provisional answer, as of the start of the show;
- The Mane 6 got their cutie marks 11 years ago, when Rarity was 13, Applejack 12, Fluttershy 11, Pinkie 10, Rainbow 9 and Twilight 8.
- That makes their ages when we first see them 19 (Twilight), 20 (Rainbow), 21 (Pinkie), 22 (Fluttershy), 23 (Applejack) and 24 (Rarity). Spike of course is 11.*
- The CMC range from 10 to 12, with Apple Bloom on the high end.
*Or thereabouts. They didn't get their marks on the day of the Summer Sun Celebration, after all.
Of course this only gets more complicated when you apply forward time (even by Earth standards, shouldn't the CMC have graduated by now?). And don't. Even. Talk. About. Human. Counterparts.
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's background and relationship with RD is one of the things where I can work with the eventual canon we got or what I put together beforehand.
In my original model, they only knew each other briefly in summer flight camp and quite possibly wouldn't even have remembered each other if not for the role they played in getting each other their cutie marks. Them meeting up again in Ponyville was sheer coincidence, and the resultant tenuous friendship largely based around shared cultural background - ex-pats tend to bond regardless of whether they'd have given each other the time of day back home.
Over time however the show and other media have definitely leaned into a "childhood friends" interpretation, with Flutter Brutter more or less confirming it. (Interestingly, I don't think we even saw Fluttershy in Parental Glideance - what's that dynamic like?) So when Fluttershy has her canon family, I move the coincidental re-meeting to Rainbow's first year of high school (Cloudsdale's one of those places with a bylaw). Having a freshmare sticking up for her didn't really help Fluttershy socially, but her parents were just glad that she'd finally made a friend (Zephyr was glad that said friend was a hot mare less than a year older than him). They stayed in touch after Fluttershy graduated and by the time she finished college Rainbow was already in Ponyville and happened to mention that there was an open animal management job . A different route, but the destination is the same...
As for the first part of the question, obviously the above version doesn't allow for her moving to the ground, and I don't actually see her doing so in either. Rather, her parents/guardians used the lure of the ground as motivation for her to acquire basic flight competency, at which point she was allowed to spend most of her free time on the surface. (This may have contributed to her lack of friends.) She didn't actually make her home on the ground until her college years.
20. Rarity and Applejack both seem to have grown up in Ponyville. What were their interactions like before the show?
Before Manehattan they knew each other about as well as any two ponies (usually) in the same class as each other do (think Diamond Tiara and Pipsqueak before the election). Applejack's big city aspirations may have had some relation to a certain white filly's glowing praise of her winter holiday spent there; and Rarity might have found the idea of one of her classmates making it out of Ponyville ahead of her both inspiring and disappointing - had there been more to the plain-seeming farmfilly than met the eye?
Their most substantial interaction was right after Manehattan, and it wasn't a pleasant one - AJ had little good to say about city life and outright said that no pony with sense would give up Ponyville for that kind of empty dream, while Rarity saw the death of Applejack's ambitions as inevitably foreshadowing the failure of her own unless she could find some way to blame it on a defect of Applejack's character. Both were really talking about themselves more than each other, but it still got pretty ugly, especially when other ponies waded in and started throwing around loosely veiled tribalism. Long story short, neither of them attended each other's cuteceaneras and indeed they pointedly avoided each other for years - until they finally grew up, got over it and started acting like adults.
And now that I've written this, I almost want to write it, if you know what I mean - both the fight and the reconciliation, ideally with some kind of explanation why none of their in-show fights have involved picking at the wounds. Only problem is, characters aren't my strong point - maybe a commission or a collab?
21. What do Twilight and Spike consider their relationship to be?
Spike is Twilight's number one assistant, of course! (More formally, her page, but that's a far too confusing title to have when you spend most of your time in libraries.) The other way round is ... more complicated. Perhaps some background would help - warning:long!
As we know, Twilight was the one who hatched Spike during her unconventional but ultimately successful entrance exam. However, at the time the usually curious unicorn was too overwhelmed by events to really think about him. Only weeks later, at the end of her first lesson with Princess Celestia, did she think to ask what had become of the creature she had brought into the world, and Celestia agreed to show her - after all, he probably wouldn't be around for much longer.
An infant dragon is a troublesome thing and can be dangerous to squishier creatures, and the minds of ponies exaggerate that truth, especially when they saw said dragon towering over a building last week. Several palace maids had already offered their resignations when asked to care for the whelp*, and all the dragon experts the Princess was sure she'd had around somewhere were old, dead, or less knowledgeable than she'd thought. She had little choice but to mostly see to him herself, and given her duties that wasn't a practicable long-term solution. No, Princess Celestia was carefully considering the fate of the hatchling dragon...
* Which she refused and just left them to their regular jobs - no point wasting good staff over a pet project.
But when Twilight Sparkle approached him (the watching Princess ready to seperate them at a moment's notice) the normally uncooperative creature became docile and accepted food much more readily from her than anypony else. Perhaps it was some lingering magical imprint or maybe just her less intimidating size, but either way it was the breakthrough Celestia needed; and as for Twilight, while she would rather spend her time studying she viewed the situation as her responsibility. (It was quite some time before Celestia realised that Twilight thought the newly-named Spike would be destroyed if she failed to care for him, rather than just sent away.)
Over time Twilight and Spike grew closer, even as he grew more agreeable to strangers, and she would often study in his company even when not actually caring for him. Celestia noted this closeness approvingly, and when Cadance (who had also assisted Twilight in caring for him) left all of their lives suddenly, the Princess distracted Twilight from her loss by declaring it was time to start taking the growing dragon home with her. Twilight's parents would have liked it if she'd asked them first, but she was the Princess, and with their own son gone off to Guard training they were drawn into the raising of this new ... step-child. (Yes, step-child. Definitely not a grandchild.)
Spike's new "step-parents" were the first to notice his capacity for rapid learning (Twilight kicked herself for missing it). They were also the first to feed it, being well-educated enough between them to provide a basic primary education - even if there was a school in Canterlot which would take a dragon if the Princess asked, his learning patterns were quite different to a foal's. When after a few years their own capacity for academic teaching was exhausted, the Princess circulated him through various apprenticeships in the Palace, hoping to both discover his "special talent" and overcome lingering fear and discomfort on the part of some of the staff.
This plan was an unqualified success, with Spike becoming quite popular and picking up an assortment of domestic skills in the process - the one he took to best, however, was scribework, which meshed well with both Twilight's needs and the fire-spell the Princess herself taught him during this period. He finally entered her full-time service when she moved out of her family home into an ivory tower, about a year before the return of Nightmare Moon.
So for Spike, family is a bit of a tricky thing, which can include Celestia, Cadance, Twilight Velvet and Night Light in various parent/teacher capacities. (Shining Armor gets a clear older brother title because the only thing he taught him was how to play O&O ... and that you should never do so around his sister.) Spike holds all these ponies at least as dear as he does his darling Rarity, but there is one pony in the whole world he holds as dear as all of them combined. If they make a word for that, Spike doesn't know - so he just calls her Twilight.
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?
The short answer is that she's an apprentice (of the relatively informal kind - modern Equestria doesn't have guilds) who will probably never actually graduate to journeymare - sort of like how many squires never became knights.
The longer answer is that after Pinkamena got her cutie mark, she would often travel beyond the rock farm as a companion and assistant to her grandmare, who had married a rock farmer but never totally bought into the life herself. These travels gave Pinkie her first exposure to outside towns like Ponyville and their many wonders (like ponies with horns and wings), and she in return put her new talent to good use by entertaining the locals (and any stray colts who wandered by). And in each of these towns Pinkie's grandmare had if not friends then at least acquaintances, and in Ponyville these acquaintances were a couple of bakers named Cake.
No-one was quite clear of the details (just that it had something to do with how they became a couple) but while they were not close to the old mare they clearly liked and respected her, and when she brought a little filly in tow it stoked their desire for children of their own. As the years passed it became clear that said dream would go unrealized (see Question 28). But sadly, while birth can be capricious, it's opposite comes reliably to all mortal ponies - Pinkie's grandmare was no exception, and the Cakes were among several "outsiders" who braved the insular rock farming country to see her laid to rest.
Pinkie was at the time sad not for her grandmare, who she was surely in Paradise no matter what those louts from the village said, but for herself; for it now seemed that while the former could enjoy an eternal playtime the latter was faced with what seemed like eternal labour - a return to her foalhood, except that now she knew what she was missing. And because she hated it in her heart, no matter how hard she worked how could she have any hope of Paradise herself?
What she failed to comprehend was that her parents knew that she did not belong there no matter how much she loved them, and were carefully considering the strangers gathered for the funeral - perhaps there would be one among them they could entrust their Pinkamena to? The Cakes ended up winning on the grounds of actually approaching Igneous and Cloudy to ask after their daughter's well-being - when Pinkie came down from bed the day after the funeral prepared for the first day of pushing rocks for the rest of her life, she found the Cakes still there with an apprenticeship contract waiting for her signature, which she was eventually persuaded to provide.
One thing that was kind of overlooked during this process, however, was that Pinkie Pie's talent wasn't for baking. Oh she wasn't terrible or abysmal or anything else which could be construed as amusing - she just ... wasn't very good at it, especially given the differences between the plain food of her birth culture and the Cake's high-sugar output. Years of dedicated work have improved her skills, but not to the point where she could inherit Sugarcube Corner or run her own bakery at the same level as it, which closes off the traditional options for graduation.
Some ponies who take apprenticeships seriously might question why the Cakes keep Pinkie on, especially now that they have children of their own. There are a variety of of practical answers, from the fact that having foals means needing more help not less to the sheer promotional power Pinkie brings, but the Cakes would never consider giving any of them - even if they didn't still owe her grandmare, even if they hadn't made promises to her parents, Pinkie would still be welcome in their home because she reminds them every day of the feeling they try to convey to other ponies in their baking - the very flavour of happiness itself.
23.Who among the Mane Six had the best parents growing up? The worst parents?
Now that's a loaded question, especially as I'm not usually much one for rankings,so I'll just give a brief (really!) description of each and you can put them in order yourself. (One big change from back when this questionnaire was released is that it's all canon sets, most of which have had their own episode - that pretty much rules out any actually bad or abusive takes.)
Night Light and Twilight Velvet were pretty laid-back sorts, especially for Canterlot - they weren't even sure they wanted kids, but if Velvet didn't have a daughter to inherit the family name all her ancestors would rise from the grave to punish her.* Their first child was pretty undemanding but sadly ineligble, and then after he'd tricked them into thinking it wasn't so hard the second one wanted to know everything - at least they learned a lot raising her. And maybe they didn't see much of her as she dove deeper into her studies, but by then they had a third child to test out all that experience on (see Question 21). And after he was raised, they could take it easy - it wasn't like anything bigger than their preteen daughter bringing a baby home was going to happen...
*There was about a week during which Velvet had Night Light very nearly convinced of the literal truth of this, except that instead of "punish her" it was "punish her husband".
- Bright Mac and Buttercup were perhaps overindulgent parents; they would likely have spoiled their children rotten if Granny Smith hadn't played the disciplinarian (and reminded Bright Mac he "weren't too big fer a swattin' hisself" when he objected). She still complains about that sometimes, in the same cider-driven rants where she blames them for landing her another set of kids to raise at her age - it's not like she did so great the first time. (Mind you, at least this time round the girl came back from Manehattan...)
- Igneous Rock and Cloudy Quartz showed remarkable adaptability for rock farmers, perhaps channeling the spirit in which one of their fathers had attracted an "outsider" to wife. To be sure at first this simply meant that ignored the odd pink colouration (some more superstitious rock farmers might have sent her to an orphanage) and raised all their daughters equally according to the Ways. But when it became clear that rocks could not satisfy their second youngest, they at first gave her limited freedom in the hope it would work like Applejack's backstory (which drew some ironic laughs when they actually heard it), and then... well, see the previous question. One should also note that it's not just Pinkie - they backed Maud through higher education without even expecting her to bring her rocktorate back to the farm afterwards, and they even seem to at least tolerate Mudbriar for her.
Bow Hothoof and Windy Whistles ... well you saw the episode right? No need to elaborate. So instead I'll use this space to talk about how I originally went with the "no pegasus families, communal raising of foals" thing that was surprisingly plausible before Season 6 or so. I knew that the show would never go that way, though, so my version had redundancy - a full spectrum all the way from groundpony-mimicking nuclear families to full-on agelai*, with any pegasus whose parents were revealed obviously falling on the light end. Because of this redundancy the idea as a whole still isn't quite dead, but the specifics I had for Rainbow and Fluttershy are: the former went to a middle-of-the-road boarding-school-style agele (which would have worked with some kinds of parents but not the ones we got), while the latter was a full-on "orphan". But the show said no, and so now we have...
*Ancient Greek for "herd", also the name of the bands Spartan boys were organised into. Look it up, but remember that even before Equestria the pegasus versions had a bit less brutality and a lot less pedastry.
- Cumulus and Whispershy, who the show didn't bother to name. They're not very interesting ponies at first glance, but I suppose any kind of parents are by default more interesting than none. Their parental nature is also laid out in their episode - a pair of pushovers, which worked on the daughter who inherited that disposition but not the son who didn't. The only particular interesting point to note is that the mare of the two is a gardener, with real surface flowers - it seems this should tie into Questions 10 and 19, but I'm not quite sure how yet.
- Finally we have Hondo Flanks and Cookie Crumbles, who have really fallen behind since this questionnaire was released; from the only parents with a whole scene and multiple lines, to the only ones without their own episode. Here's hoping for Season 9! As for my headcanon ... well between Hondo's former sporting and coaching careers and their pechant for couples vacations they're not the most present of parents, but Rarity would have been okay with that if it hadn't meant so much helping out her mother with (or later, outright foalsitting) Sweetie Belle. But she was able to parley this into getting parental support for pretty much anything, so I guess it worked out? (Really, they're living proof that a family doesn't need more than mutual love and supportiveness to fit together. Also, see Question 27.)
So there are the "facts" - best and worst you'll have to decide for yourselves.
24. Why didn’t the CMC hang out more/know each other before Call of the Cutie?
In the short term, because Apple Bloom was on the other side side of the vague "class group boundary" - one of a few reasons I made her the oldest. (By Season 2, the other two have graduated into her class.) In the long term, because Scootaloo is pretty new to Ponyville and was the one who helped a rather shy Sweetie break out of her shell.
25. Is Scootaloo an orphan? Will she ever be able to fly?
No to the orphan thing - rather, she's an act of living defiance against the widespread stereotype that a young pegasus whose lifestyle finds them unexpectedly expecting will just dump the foal in an orphanage or agele* and go back to whatever they were doing. Now defiance and pride aren't necessarily the best emotions to drive parenting, but in this case it worked out more or less OK. (A pair of meddling helpful aunts may also have played a part.)
*See Rainbow's part of Question 23.
As for flight ... well I'm afraid that's probably a no too. With pretty hooves-off parenting it took some time for the problem to be apparent, but eventually she was taken to see a doctor ... and then another doctor ... and then a specialist, who ran various tests and then suggested they come back in a few years - you couldn't really say for sure when a pony was still growing... It wasn't long after that that they suddenly moved to a town without a pegasus majority.
Somewhere between Flight to the Finish and The Washouts (probably soon after getting her mark) she managed to get a straight answer out of a doctor, and it wasn't a good one - though at least softened, as I will now for you readers, by the truth that new pioneering surgeries are being developed all the time. Perhaps a suitable one will come along soon - but then again, perhaps not.
(As for the details of her condition, I have some ideas of my own, but I wouldn't mind seeing your own in the comments.)
26. Will Apple Bloom’s cutie mark involve an apple in some way, even if it’s unrelated to farming or baking?
This is probably the most outdated question, isn't it? (What would you replace it with if you were updating this thing?) So I'll just say that in my aesthetic opinion, the CMC's marks would look better if the individual parts were in bold colours, to contrast the more pastel background.
27. How is Sweetie Belle’s relationship with their parents different than Rarity’s was?
The short and straightforward answer is that compared to Rarity Sweetie has both a much weaker sense of disgust (which means she can more easily tolerate ponies with different values) and is considerably less ambitious - while she does strive to be a proper lady like Rarity, she doesn't actually expect to raise her social class and therefore, lower-class parents can't weigh her down. It helps that while Rarity styles herself on the idealised image of the upper classes, Sweetie's role models are Rarity herself and storybook princesses - she's very innocent, compared to her romantic but cynical sister.
Longer backstory follows.
One big factor in Sweetie's development was the presence of Rarity herself, who was around more than Hondo was during Sweetie's early years. Oh Cookie was around, but don't let the mark fool you - she lavishes far more than crumbs of affection upon her loved ones, and while a comforting base love given so freely and overwhelmingly can feel cheap. Rarity, on the other hoof, had no great affection for the noisy, smelly little thing and was mostly glad that it distracted her mother's somewhat smothering affections - at least, when Cookie wasn't recruiting her to assist with it's care. And Sweetie, sensing this disparity of affections, unconsciously began moulding herself into a form Rarity could tolerate. She learned that if she was quiet enough, Rarity would let her and watch while she practiced her magic or dressmaking, sights more glorious than the young foal had ever seen - and if she was clean enough and didn't struggle, Rarity would even try out outfits on her, like a living ponnequin. By the time she turned five, she had already moved from behaviours Rarity liked to direct attempts at emulation of her sister, who was glad to have a little lady to mould in her image.
Then, about the time Sweetie started school, Hondo took early retirement. For the first time in years, his family saw him all year round, and he made a concerted effort to reconnect with all of them. This worked well enough with his wife, who still loved him with a fierce passion, but was a bit more of a struggle with his daughters. Rarity had changed from the filly he remembered, who had always been as ready for rough-and-tumble games with her Pa as she was to play princess, and he and Sweetie didn't know each other very well at all. Rarity felt guilty for the first, didn't want to exacerbate the second, and really was quite busy (that was the year she launched her fashion line), so she found herself delibrately stepping back from Sweetie to encourage her to bond with the parents that Rarity herself could only take in take in small doses.
This worked a bit - Sweetie grew as comfortable with her parents as a couple as she had been with her mother and Rarity - but it also had negative consequences - Sweetie grew shyer, and no matter how many times her parents told her that Rarity was just busy she couldn't shake the feeling that she had been discarded as unsuitable lady material. Had her parents been judged and rejected too - and if so, what was wrong with them? Rarity showed her love for all of them often enough to keep these feelings buried deep in Sweetie's heart, but in the shadows they grew, only to all surge forth at once when Rarity announced her plans to to move into her newly-inherited boutique. (There might have been a bit of a misunderstanding that made this sound - to Sweetie - like this meant a lot farther away than the other side of Ponyville.)
Between the announcement and the move their parents took one of their frequent couple's vacations, and Rarity actually volunteered to foalsit Sweetie for what she was assured was the last time (it wasn't; though they did last a lot longer then Rarity would have put money on). Sweetie lasted most of a day before unleashing her repressed emotions in a furious rant that neither her classmates nor her teacher would have believed her capable of - the gist being, how dare Rarity act wistful and nostalgic about leaving home when they both knew that she'd been looking to wash her hooves of such an uncouth family for years. (Bonus points for saying she knew she had probably failed as a lady somehow, but their parents surely hadn't done anything to deserve such treatment.)
Sweetie wasn't really aiming for any result with her rant; at most she hoped that maybe if she heard her sister confess she wouldn't have to miss her when she was gone. She certainly wasn't expecting Rarity to pour out her own repressed feelings in a torrent of tears to match Sweetie's fiery accusations, exposing everything from the aforementioned distancing to her worries regarding running a business to her self-perceived greatest failure - that for all that she loved her parents, she couldn't respect them and their way of life they same way they did hers and Sweetie all of them. And while that had made her kind of jealous of Sweetie, she had never stopped thinking of the filly as lady material - she just didn't want to force it on her, because what if she stopped being able to look at their parents the same way too? They certainly didn't deserve to lose both daughters.
In the end there was a lot of hugs, mutual reassurances and ice cream, as well as a mutual promise to never speak of such things again, especially in front of their parents. Rarity moved out on good terms with her family, and Sweetie knew her sister loved her and began to mould herself in Rarity's image again, which together with having vented her emotions brought her halfway out of her shell (Scootaloo would do the rest). They even worked out the whole misunderstanding about the boutique! So all's well that ends begins well.
After finishing that one I look back and see how many of the headcanons are just stories I could never write - anyone who wants to have a go feel free! And all of you, see you in Part 2 (if you can bear any more of my rambling)!
Wow, we actually agree on about how old Celestia and Luna are. Most people put them as a lot older.
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Whereas the show seems to have settled on even younger - so i suppose we're the least wrong?
Was that the only point you found of note?
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Hit those in the future.
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OK - I understand it's a lot to digest. (On the other wing, if you're taking your time I'll hope for an intelligent perspective on things)
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I’ll read it a couple of questions at a time.
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Then I shall await your responses.
All interesting. :)
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Any interesting enough to actually say anything about?
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There is so much that if I commented on it all my comment would be fic chapter size.
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Yes, what makes you think I wouldn't like that?
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Maybe instead of one huge comment I will make many small ones over time. :) That add up to something big.
12. Earth pony magic: Does it exist? What is it?
I can see Earth ponies as having a monopoly on farming because their magic leaches magic from the earth to the point where the earth needs magic pulled through it to stay fertile.
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Yeah, that,s sort of it - once they've settled somewhere for a while, if they move on ordinary farming won,t work.
(Of course since it's a passive power, there's nothing to stop other races farming as long as they keep plenty of earthponies around.)
4. Are Cadance and Twilight immortal?
I’m going with no—Lauren Faust allegedly said Twilight would not outlive her friends, and I think the show’s writers are too good to alicorn the lot of them.
9. Are there still cultural differences between earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns,
Yes, but probably smaller than between, say, white and black Americans. Pegasi foals go to Cloudsdale for camp in the summer, and Unicorn parents dream of sending their foals to Canterlot and Celestia’s school. I imagine Cloudsdale and Manehattan have different cuisine, say. A setting like Ponyville will a more diverse population has probably dampened our view of these differences.
21. What do Twilight and Spike consider their relationship to be?
From “Father knows beast,” it seems Twilight sees herself as Spike’s mom; I think spike sees Twilight as big sister.
Twilight is obviously a high-functioning autistic, and I suspect Spike sees his assistant duties in no small part keeping the “high” part of high-functioning.
24. Why didn’t the CMC hang out more/know each other before Call of the Cutie?
That’s always bothered me. It’s obvious early-episode weirdness, but your explaination is a good retrofit.
Unless we assume Applebloom was homeschooled until her parents died, and is new to the school?
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An interesting selection - were these the only ones to prompt a response, or just the only ones you had time for?
What you're referring to is a tweet by McCarthy, at the height of loud Twilicorn hate - I wouldn't give it much credence. Faust, on the other hand, is on record as intending Twilight to succeed Celestia, which would be difficult to do as a mortal unless she founded either a dynasty or a republic.
(Now this doesn't stop you believing in a mortal Twilight - but it should be because you want to, not because you were told from on high. And why would you want poor Twily to die?
))
I don't know - inherent difference of abilities goes a long way. (Note the way that Celestia talked about Equestrian education in School Daze. Perhaps she's a little behind the times, but I do wonder if most ponies would understand why school desegregation in America was a good thing - especially since there are probably places in Equestria which still practice "separate but equal", albeit in a more literal way than anywhere in the US ever did. And if not now, then probably not very long ago.)
An interesting disparity - on what grounds do you perceive it?
Not so obvious to this one, although I can see why some people might say so.
Her parents probably didn't die any time recently - she doesn't act like she ever really knew them. Still, a late entry for other reasons is possible - I still like mine more though, especially since A Flurry of Emotions confirmed multiple classes.
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Those were the only ones I had opinions about.
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Do you have any opinions about my opinions of your opinions?
Call it intuition. I’m a parent and a youngest sibling, and their two relative attitudes remind me of me.