(Part 2) Questions 28-50 · 3:49am Jan 27th, 2019
Previously I rambled extensively on the topic of My Little Pony.
And now, the conclusion...
Side and Background Characters:
28. Is Mr. Cake the father of the Cake twins or not?
Legally and publicly, yes. As for the biological details, he doesn't quite understand MAR* treatment well enough to say - he's just glad it worked.
*Magic Assisted Reproduction. Still in the early testing stages, and even if the Cakes hadn't signed confidentiality agreements, you just don't talk about this kind of thing to acquaintances in a maternity ward. Pinkie may know, but if so she's Promised not to tell.
29. Are Big Mac and Cheerilee an item, romantically?
Obviously not right now, what with Sugar Belle and all. But if Big Mac had been one to go on the rebound, he would probably have gone to Cheerilee over Skellinore - at which point she would have sat him down and first a) reminded him that after the love poison incident they promised to definitely not try again unless they were both still single at thirty-three, and then b) provided the dose of common sense that Spike and Discord failed to. Not because she really ships Big Mac and Sugar Belle (such a very nice pony!) but because she's his friend, and helping out after breakups is a friend's job - he's done it for her in the past. (Granted, that help took the form of explaining why her ex didn't deserve her - but Sugar Belle is a lovely pony, so returning the favour that literally would be wrong. Very wrong. So she won't do it. Even if she doesn't have anypony on Hearts and Hooves Day. Again. And thirty-three is getting closer.)
There is some long background here, if you're interested; Cheerilee had quite the crush on Big Mac for a few years, and around the time of Where the Apple Lies he was starting to reciprocate, at least on a physical level (see how he looks as she walks by) - soon after the hospital incident, they went out on a date. Unfortunately that turned out to be the first of many instances of Cheerilee being drawn to unsuitable ponies; teenage Mac was hardly a catch. A highlight was him blaming Applejack's recent misbehaviour on "too much schooling" (the fact that he and her had had the same amount notwithstanding) while being totally unaware that Cheerilee had recently sent off her application to a teaching college. Or perhaps the actual highlight was the stirring defense of rural education Cheerilee mounted that sent him scurrying back to Sweet Apple Acres feeling he would never accomplish anything in life; she wished she could remember it, but she spent the rest of the night at Cousin Berry's and it was all kind of a blur.
So Cheerilee went off to college and had far more terrible, short-lived relationships than her parents ever found out about, and when she came back a teacher she went to rub her education in Big Mac's face. What she found was a mature, quiet stallion who read and even took corrospondence courses - it turned out he'd even covered some of the same subjects she had. So she had the idea that maybe the end of her string of terrible dates could be found back at the beginning. So this time she asked him out, one more date at the same place, and while a bit surprised he accepted.
The opening parts of the date went well - well enough for Cheerilee to bring in college talking points like politics and philosophy, even though she worried they might go over Big Mac's head. What she didn't expect was for him to have an informed opinion on every topic in complete opposition to her own. Of course such things work ponies up quickly, and Cheerilee was in the middle of questioning whether it was just him or all stallions who looked at everything backwards when Big Mac (who'd presented all his points in that infuriatingly stolid new style of his so far) yelled that if she didn't want him to have his own opinions she shouldn't have told him to go get educated. And at that point she just fell on the floor laughing, and then the next minute he was down there too (and the rest of the restaurant patrons were looking at them very strangely).
So in the end the second date went little better than the first, but concluded with a few promises:
1) They would not try dating again until they were at least thirty (as mentioned earlier, this was later extended.)
2) They would remain friends at least that long.
3) They would mostly avoid their topics of disagreement, but every now and again get together and hold a debate on one and one only.
So the two of them went about their normal lives, Big Mac single and Cheerilee with the occasional disastrous coltfriend. Over time their busy jobs wore at their friendship, but after the love poison incident they made a deliberate attempt to rekindle it. And despite the extension, Cheerilee found herself thinking more and more about thirty-three, and stopped even looking for other stallions. And then suddenly Big Mac was dating Sugar Belle, and you couldn't even hate her. (Actually meeting her made Cheerilee even more ashamed than she already was of her tribalist fantasies that the unicorn had simply bewitched the stallion and he would awake with the kiss of his true love...)
So yeah, a lot going on there but no relationship, not now and maybe not ever. And Cheerilee is learning to live with that. (Funny how I managed to arrive almost by accident at the lesson everyone wants Spike to learn.)
30. How did Prince Blueblood get his title?
By virtue of his direct descent from the line of King Astron, last independent monarch of the Kingdom of Canterlot. (The family genealogies trace all the way back through Princess Platinum to Queen Majesty herself, but several of those claims are disputed; Astron is invoked because the Royal Sisters guaranteed his and his heir's titles in perpetuity during the Reconsolidation.) His eldest child will also be a (non-Royal) Prince or Princess, while any others will be Lords or Ladies, the latter also being the correct title for his wife.
31. Is Silver Spoon equally as bad as Diamond Tiara?
Not really - just as Spoiled Rich is a bad influence on her daughter, so said daughter becomes a bad influence on her friend. Not that Silver's a particularly nice pony, but on her own she wouldn't be nearly as much of a bully for a few reasons:
- She's less proactive - more likely to laugh about you behind your back, or even just look down on you in her head, than insult you to your face unless you do something to her first - or she's trying to impress Diamond.
- She's a lot more willing to acknowledge other ponies' good points when she actually recognises them - partly because she feels more secure in her own status than DT.
- She's nicer to her family servants than Diamond is to poor Randolph - although that's probably because her parents wouldn't stand for it any other way. In fact a lot of Silver's better points can be traced back to her having a more all-round supportive home life than DT.
32. Is Zecora’s magic common among zebras?
For starters, it's not magic in the sense that ponies have it - just making use of the magical properties present in nature*. Anycreature who knows the secret can do it** - and the corollary of this is that those secrets are kept rather ruthlessly. Over time, shamanic orders have devolved to passing down a handful of recipes that make them too useful to do without and enforcing their monopolies and "trademarks" with deadly impunity. Zecora was part of a heretical circle of shamans from different orders who met in secret to engage in what an Equestrian would recognise as scientific experimentation; but when she was revealed to be the daughter of a high-ranking member of her order, many of them took her for a spy, and it became prudent for her to depart for the other side of the world as soon as possible. It's not just for research purposes that she lives in a deadly no-pony's land even after she becomes welcome in town, either.
*Most shamans stick mainly to plants, non-essential body parts and the occasional animal sacrifice nowadays. Certainly, the days when Southern rulers fed their shamans a steady stream of criminals, malcontents and prisoners of war is a thing of the past - too much environmental damage. But sometimes you have a heretic to dispose of anyway - and there are always those curious as to see what can be done with a being as innately magical as an Equestrian pony.
**Except perhaps earthponies, at least those of the plant variety - their powers modify the innate magic too much, which is why all Zecora's ingredients are sourced from the Everfree. But while most shamans react to this by considering earthponies abominations to the natural order and Equestria a cursed and blighted land, Zecora is interested in studying their own herbalist traditions - she's devoured some books on the subject, but she would just love to meet Meadowbrook.
So in short, anypony could use the same kind of magic Zecora does, and she's even willing to share the new recipes she's created based on Everfree plants with those she feels capable of using them safely. But as for other shamans (only some of the individual orders are race-linked, it's less of a big deal down south), you won't find many in Equestria, and the one's back in their homelands have more limited (though still formidable) repertoires and should only be approached with care.
33. Why does Daring Do publish her stories as fiction?
Daring Don't was the first episode I rejected conceptually - just plain "that didn't happen except maybe the opening scenes". So my answer to this question would probably be "what are you talking about" if not for Stranger Than Fan Fiction, which was too good to ignore. And then came Daring Done, which wasn't good but was important to the seasonal arc...
Ultimately, if one looks at my headcanon as a sheaf of possible universes, then in 85% of them Daring Do is simply a fictional series, while 5% follows the canon without looking too closely at the details. The remaining 10% are my attempts to reconstruct the concept backwards - things like "A.K Yearling was an archaeology student who used real lost artifacts in her books" and "Ahuizotl was brought to life by a fear fern* or something like it and now A.K. considers it her responsibility to oppose him" - but I haven't really brought it together into one narrative yet. The common factor, though, is that the fiction came first and then spilled out into reality leaving the author to clean up the mess.
*See Ponyville Mysteries:Riddle of the Rusty Horseshoe.
34. Do you have a strong headcanon for any non-speaking or one line background ponies that you want to share?
This one definitely needs it's own blog post. (Although if you can still see this message instead of a link, I haven't written one yet.)
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'll describe the current system first, then the history (both are pretty long.) The way it works is that any living creature can attain full citizen's rights in Equestria, but the proportions of each sort which actually do varies. For a few lucky races, such as ponies themselves and citizens of all foreign nations they recognise, this proportion is 100%, as they are born with the status. Any other creature must pass a freely-offered test - if enough of a certain kind both take and pass the test often enough, their race will be considered for birthright citizenship. This system is often used as a form of mockery, with it being frequently claimed that certain individuals or whole birthright races would not pass. Only eligible citizens can be charged with or punished for crimes under Equestrian law, or hold any kind of public office.
Those who are neither born with nor earn citizenship rights fall into several categories. The one which most frequently produces citizens is the "higher livestock" such as cows, sheep and goats, whose smarter members are able to learn and speak as well as some less intelligent ponies but rarely develop this potential due to their shorter lifespans (same as the Earth versions). They tend to come under the "sponsorship" of a citizen - generally a pony, but a few herds led by their own citizen-members exist - who is entrusted with their care and management and entitled to extract some value from them in labour and resources in return. Some sponsors try to educate their charges and even encourage them to take citizenship tests, but many just mix in herbs with their feed to keep them happy and docile. Legally, responsibility for their behaviour is split between them and the sponsor - the former can be fined for allowing them to break the rules of society and is in turn expected to discipline them (though doing so excessively can earn more fines and a loss of one's sponsorship rights.) Now if this sounds a bit like slavery to you - well would the Apples really practice slavery? Because they sponsor a flock of sheep and a few cows.
"Lower livestock" refers to owned animals such as pigs or chickens as well as most pets, who contribute only very rarely to the citizen pool. Perhaps the most important distinction is that they have no automatic right to life - they can be used as a food source for carnivorous pets, or indeed carnivorous citizens. (However most ponies find this practice distasteful and prefer to feed their pets canned fish and bug mixes.) While alive, their pony owners may make any use they wish of them that does not constitute "delibrately cruel or abusive treatment". If one of these creatures flees their master there is supposed to be a negotiation via beastspeaker before they're returned, but this rule is difficult to implement and widely ignored. They are not legally capable of crime, but the owner can be sued.
Any creature of the above range without a pony owner is a "wild animal", as are fish, bugs and other creatures who are never going to produce a citizen. This being Equestria, "wild" is a fancy way of saying "state-owned", although those that live away from pony settlements are largely left alone. Those that don't fall under the aegis of local Animal Managers like Fluttershy, whose main job is to oversee creatures in this category and mediate their relations with ponies, ideally in a way that benefits both sides. When push comes to shove, though, it's Equestria, not Animalia, and the Managers are obliged to enforce the will of the government on the animals (or quit). Creatures in this category are legally part of the food chain and can be hunted by carnivores, although on managed land it's at least polite to clear it with the Animal Manager first. (Gallus did not, and nearly earned a Stare for it.) Hunting for sport is prohibited.
The last category is "monsters", defined as any non-civilized creature which poses a significant threat to ponies, either individually or as a whole. (The "civilized" is a patch against frequent attempts to include griffons, but dragons fit into this category and changelings were being seriously considered before Thorax.) Naturally the emphasis here is on dissuading them from entering pony territory, and broad leeway is given if a threat, even an indirect one, can be proven (like, say, blanketing Equestria in smoke.) Rules are stricter when on their territory, but known pony-eaters (or attempted pony-eaters like the chimera from Somepony to Watch Over Me) may be killed in self-defense, the defense of others or if they come within a certain radius of a settlement. (Note that can doesn't mean will; ponies are cautious but not generally bloodthirsty.) Monsters who earn citizenship (which naturally comes with obeying all Equestrian laws) are generally given a piece of special clothing designating this status (and that attacking them would be illegal); unfortunately, there have been cases where this clothing has been stolen by non-citizen monsters, so not all ponies trust it.
Finally, a word on unknown creatures (handy for HiEs): they are generally given an assumed courtesy status based on their visible capabilities - anything capable of speech or similar feats is referred to the palace for classification, while obvious animals are left for the naturalists to sort out. So humans would probably be okay. Diamond Dogs are an example of an officially unclassified species, largely for political reasons - Fido, Spot and Rover would be likely be assessed as citizen-eligible and arrested for kidnapping, at which point their lawyer would likely try, probably unsuccessfully, to have them reclassified as higher livestock to get them off.
History starts here.
Much as certain nations in our history who extended the franchise to all men or religious tolerance to all kinds of Christian, Classical Equestria was rather progressive for it's day in granting citizenship to all three kinds of ponies and forbidding their enslavement*. Nonponies, however, shared in none of these rights or guarantees and depended on the protection of powerful ponies or, in the case of foreign citizens, the state of Equestrian relations with their homeland. Many of them were owned by ponies as slaves, pets or livestock (terms often applied fairly interchangeably), and despite some voices calling for a greater unity this remained the way of things until the coming of Discord.
*Serfdom, lifetime conscription and penal labour were still OK though.
The Lord of Chaos had an ambivalent and ultimately destructive relationship for systems of slavery*, and was known to say that all interesting creatures were equal under his unrule - naturally those who opposed him hardened their own social hierarchies in return, and then doubled down on such when he was finally defeated. In retrospect, Princess Celestia considers slavery probably one of the worst of the Classical institutions incorporated unthinkingly into the Reconsolidation - at least the Principles of Kindness and Generosity kept it more equane than in the other rebuilding lands, and she herself freed many slaves and passed laws regulating their treatment. It was her hope that the practice would die out naturally, and the collapse of the continent's foremost slave-trading nation gave her hope ... until it became clear that Equestria was now the largest center of the trade by default, and she realised stronger methods would be needed.
*Bad for chaos, good for disharmony ... it's like one of those dishes that only tastes good if you leave it to stew for a while. Discord isn't usually that patient, but when he had a whole country to occupy himself he could sometimes manage to wait a decade or two.
So she gave a speech explaing how seeing their neghbour rot to death from within had convinced her that the corrupt institution was an affront to Harmony, and she summoned ponies (and a few non-ponies, freeborn and former slaves) from all over Equestria to a Great Summit that would seek a better way. The debates were contentious, but eventually the delegates settled on the system described above, which the Princess then signed into law; transition took place over the next decade without any part of Equestria collapsing economically or rising in rebellion, which some consider a political miracle that almost exonerates Celestia for taking so long about it.
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?
The former is more common in the North, the latter in the South. (This is probably the best place to mention that my headcanon world map has two supercontinents and the show has never shown the bottom one.) There may be exceptions though - for instance, I'm not sure where the minotaurs live. And it should be noted that the ethnostates aren't necessarily homogeneous (Equestria has sizable populations of all higher livestock and plenty of donkeys, albeit mostly in the east) while mixed states aren't necessarily equal or harmonious.
37. Are minotaurs related to cows at all?
Why, every minotaur's mother is a cow, as sure as their father is a bull! But if you mean the livestock kind, then not more recently than the Age of the Gods, as minotaurs call it - said deities having transformed all worthwhile bovines into bipeds and then given the remaining unworthies to them to rule over. More religious minotaurs believe in a limited form of reincarnation, by which minotaurs who fail at life (the details vary depending on one's sect) are condemned to be reborn as cattle endlessly unless they somehow manage to achieve greatness despite their lowly position. This is probably not true, but the culture that sprang from it explains why many cattle fled to Equestria long ago. It would also make for tense relations with buffalo, yaks and other bovine races, except thankfully none of them live anywhere nearby. (I think.)
38. Do all zebras rhyme?
Nope - a stylised speech pattern is one of the marks of a shamanic order, and one they defend nearly as fiercely as their recipes. (Applying the pattern to a foreign language is one of Zecora's more minor heresies.)
39.Do zebra cutie marks work the same way as pony cutie marks?
Not really, since "existing" and "not existing" are fairly different modes of operation. Twilight said it herself in The Fault in Our Cutie Marks - she's never heard of any creature besides a pony getting one. (Well technically that she's never read about it, but even before Zecora she seemed generally aware of zebras so I figure she'd know.)
And yes, I am aware that if these lines didn't support my existing headcanon I'd have found some way to dismiss them. But I've had to do that often enough that when the show hands me a gong, I'm going to ring it.
So then what's that thing on Zecora's haunch, you say? Well obviously either a tattoo or some other form of body art. I'm not sure if it's a zebra thing, a shaman thing, a zebra shaman thing or just a Zecora thing, but I do know it has several different and deliberate meanings, two of which are courage and the Sun. (The latter indicates that either she, her family and/or her shamanic order may either worship or demonise Celestia; have they ever met onscreen?)
40.Do any species have types of magic, other than ponies and zebras?
Magic abounds in many of the species of that world, be they animal, vegetable or mineral - there are even creatures like windigoes which are little but magic. If you're referring to the sapient races exclusively, there are some with none, like donkeys, yaks and despite your question zebras; some with a little, like a griffon's touch of cloud magic and mighty roar; and some with a lot, like dragons with their internal flames and changelings who can transform into anything they can imagine. But the general consensus is that of all currently extant sapient races, ponies are, pound for pound, the most magical.
41. Is the lack of buffalo presence in Equestria cultural, or simply because most pony towns aren’t built to accommodate a full grown buffalo?
An oddly specific final question even for season 4, but okay... I'm going to say that not many buffalo are that interested in Equestria. For starters, only some of the easternmost tribes like Thunderhooves' have had any significant contact with ponies beyond the odd wandering gold prospector. Of those tribes most are pretty committed to their traditional migration paths, which rules out detours to Equestria. And it would take a while for them to get there anyway, unless they squeezed into the belly of the iron beast, and few are that curious...
Still, some buffalo do come at least a short way east, to the young towns of the Westward Road, though few make it as far as Dodge Junction or Las Pegasus. The few who go further, into Equestria proper, are usually headed for Mustangia, where they are told ponies live almost the proper way, and which is held up by the settlers as a model for the peaceful development of the Mild West. Some return hopeful, others disappointed, and one or two who were outliers in their home herds did not return at all.
(Plus you get the odd random tourist in big cities. Ponies often mistake them for yaks.)
Headcanon and You:
42. Do you consider official sources other than the show (comics, card game text, movies, novels, etc.) to be canon?
My canon hierarchy, based entirely on availability and personal preference:
The episodes that air on TV are the unmistakeable standard of canon (American version where others conflict). For the most part that also makes them the foundations of my headcanon - but there are elements I miss or mistake, others I forget ( I generally only watch an episode once), and some which I choose to ignore because they're headcanon-incompatible or just plain badly written IMO. I do still have a policy that anything in an episode that doesn't fit the above criteria is true*, but sometimes (thankfully not often) that doesn't leave much of the episode as aired.
*Songs, background visuals and human expressions are all doubtful.
- The only other media I pay serious attention too is the books, albiet more at the concept level than the detail one - for the most part, events which could have the same back cover blurb took place in my headcanon. I do draw out interesting elements too, particularly from the older ones, like Cadence's backstory and Aquastria (which I still prefer to Seaquestria even though I've seen the movie but never read the book)!
- The comics are, to me, official fanfiction - no, a whole coordinated official fan verse. Theoretically I reserve the right to mine them for ideas, but in practice that's rather unlikely, especially since I haven't read any of them nor plan too. So you should probably set any ideas garnered from them aside when dealing with me or my work.
- As for anything more obscure, like the card or video game, I'm unlikely to come across it in it's indivdual context but might incorparate some amusing detail if I see it online or something.
- Last but not least, Equestria Girls. Anything episode-length or longer is full canon, shorts are maybe if they stick in my head and don't confuse the timeline too much, comics are as above and this time books are lumped in with them. The whole thing is also on a switch (see next question) so I can turn it off for say, first contact stories.
43. Do you have one headcanon that you always use, or do you switch depending on projects?
For the most part it's unified, but I have certain "switches", generally between an outdated headcanon of mine and later stuff I adapted to - you can look at Question 19 for a fully developed one and Question 33 for one i'm still struggling with. (In fact, one future story I'm loosely planning is based on running with a canon event my current story is built around ignoring.)
44.Can you easily accept the headcanons of different writers? Do you prefer when stories match your headcanon?
More or less - it's more down to writer skill and enjoyability, though compatible headcanon is one thing that makes a story enjoyable... Ultimately the place I care about seeing stuff that supports or opposes my ideas is in the show - fanfiction won't impact on that. (One place it does really help/hurt is in "discovering Equestria" stories; those are built on watching the outsider be introduced to ideas that the reader already knows, so if Equestria is off from how I see it it's kind of jarring.)
45. Is there a part of your headcanon that you wish was more popular among writers?
That's a tricky one; maybe a full blog thing, or maybe I'll just edit this later.
46. Is there a popular piece of headcanon that other writers use that you dislike?
Yeah, I think this and the above are definitely a full blog thing - I'm not very good at introspection. (Coming up with headcanon is different because i don't look inside to find that.)
47. Have you ever written a story or blogpost just to explain some part of your headcanon (other than this one)?
Not yet (unless you count part 1) , but that's because these are my first blogposts and I'm two chapters into my first story (and they're not short on exposition - they just also have a plot). Looking at how much I've written for these questions, the only way you won't be seeing plenty of followup is if no-one shows any interest in my opinions. So if you want more, comment; and if you don't, don't!
48. Does your headcanon influence things like your favorite pony, ship, or episode?
See above re: introspection. (i'm also bad at favourites.) But if anything, I'd expect it to work the other way round.
49. Would it bother you if the show proved part of your headcanon wrong? Any specific piece that would really bother you to lose?
As I said at the top, I dealt with this by ignoring such proofs - Equestria is a place that only exists in our heads, after all. Of course it's disappointing, but how I feel is more related to how prominent (and therfore harder to ignore) the contradictions are than to what is contradicted. And sometimes the show can do something cool with the contradictory element later, like Stranger than Fan Fiction (see Question 33) - if the contradiction itself is done this way, I won't even really be upset.
50. Is there something that wasn't asked about here, but you feel like you need to explain to everyone?
For the most part I think I've rambled on enough - if enough people take interest in this then more blogs will follow (I'm thinking of one that looks at adjusting this questionnaire for the current state of the show) and if they don't I'm just pounding my keys into the wind. But I did leave an open reference in Question 5, so I should probably close that off with one last "fact".
Epona is a legendary goddess credited with shaping ponykind and bestowing them with magic: an archaic term for cutie marking is "Epona's Kiss". Classical Era depictions resemble the Fausticorn, but older, prehistoric art bears a greater resemblance to the Zacherleicorn.
No, but Zecora has the potion with the memories of Celestia's battles with Nightmare Moon and Discord, which only responds to alicorn magic. I've always found that very interesting.
5003078
To be honest, that was one of the elements I tended to ignore as clunky (a potion that runs only on alicorn magic - that looks like dark magic for some reason - right in the middle of Twilight's ascension crisis?) Though your're right that this information puts a new light on it.
It probably doesn't help that while I'm usually a big fan of backstory flashbacks and such, with pony I'm more ambivalent. The early show did a great job of showing us the past through foggy lenses (a storybook, stained-glass windows, a play) and you can't deny that this fueled fan's imaginations, or that what we got onscreen was kind of smaller than most people's image of events. I've learned to work with what we saw since, and I actually think my new Nightmare Moon headcanon works better than the old one - but it's a retrospective appreciation that doesn't extend to the mechanism of delivering what I at the time saw as an unnecessary, time-wasting demolition of headcanon.
(And now I wonder if I should edit some of the above into 49 or 50. This is why I love feedback - it can draw things out of me that I'd never find just fishing around in my head.)
All interesting and it must have taken you a while to perfectly plan.
5021460
Yeah, so I'd like some actual feedback, or I'll have to drag it all into the chat and we'll never get to Betsy.
5021481
What sort of feedback would you like? :)
30. How did Prince Blueblood get his title?
My history is a little rusty, but I think the French had dozens or hundreds of princes du sang by the time of the revolution, all who had little actual bearing to the crown, but considered to have higher precedence than any peer. He’s probably from a line many generations back. (The House of Saud has something line 15,000 prince(sses))
42. Do you consider official sources other than the show (comics, card game text, movies, novels, etc.) to be canon?
Only when they help my story!
43. Do you have one headcanon that you always use, or do you switch depending on projects?
Before ai saw the episode with Celestia’s “one-siversary,” I decided Celestia was 30-something and Luna a teenager when they had the banishing-unpleasantness. I decided I liked the concept of “Teenage Luna” too much to let something like cannon get in my way.
44.Can you easily accept the headcanons of different writers? Do you prefer when stories match your headcanon?
Being skilled at differential equations, I happily hop from my boundary conditions (headcanon) to yours and back! Just so long as I’m not guessing, and they’re laid out clearly in the fic!
46. Is there a popular piece of headcanon that other writers use that you dislike?
“Incest is ok and common in Equestria.” FFS!
49. Would it bother you if the show proved part of your headcanon wrong? Any specific piece that would really bother you to lose?
Not until I got into an argument in my fic’s comics about it...
5027497
A clear heavy bias towards the last set, here - It seems that you're more introspective than I am (or perhaps less interested in non-main characters?)
Bear in mind, though, that Rarity singles Blueblood out as her target - she isn't just after any prince, but him in particular. That suggests a particularly exalted status, though there may be a few others on his level.
Hear, hear!
Did anyone get that one right? (I was closer than most, I think, although you are at least off in a different direction to the majority. And it did make for a neat story.)
The problem is that there are so many different variables - and people often think that their way is the most obvious one, if not the only.
To be fair, the general avoidance of sexual matters does make it hard to prove against - and the most attractively presented male characters on this show are often the big brothers. (Incidentally, back during G1 all stallions were called Big Brothers, while still forming what was recognisably a bachelor herd - makes you wonder where all the baby ponies came from, no?)
Have some of your fics actually been converted to sequential art, or do you mean "comments"?
5027768
Lolololol comments not comics.
Maybe Rarity liked Bluebloods long horn? He wasn’t animated as a standard Unicorn model IIRC.
5027772
How much she actually knew about him will always be a mystery, but what we have does suggest that he is more than just another face in the crowd, even at a prestigious event like the Gala. (And besides, he's one of the only nobles most fans will recognise, so why not make him an important one?)