Equestrian Culture, Acceptance of Humans, and the Equestria Girls World · 7:25am Mar 20th, 2020
This set of three linked opinions comes from someone who wondered how humans would be treated by Equestrians if they wound up in Equestria, whether they'd be accepted, and whether the canonicity of the Equestria Girls world would make a difference.
(1) Equestrian Culture
There is a concept in language learning called the "false cognate" or "false friend," which is when a word in one language has a cognate in your own language but the meaning is different, as in "petit" meaning "little" instead of "petty" (the English cognate).
The same can very much apply between cultures.
What we're watching, if Equestria were real, is a translation of Equestrian language and culture into English and the modern West, and one bowdlerized for underaged girls at that. The episodes very obviously compress space and time for reasons of dramatic unity and runtimes. We don't really know what an Equestrian thinks a "Princess," or the "Guard," or "magic" are, though we have hints in the show that these are not exactly what we would think of by these terms.
Even someone quite familiar with the show version of Equestria would be dealing with an alien culture -- an alien culture created and practiced by nonhumans, at that -- and they might well be blindsided.
Just on this site I've seen versions of Equestria that are cruel or kinld in ways alien to our own civilization; and I think that Equestria might well be both, in different ways. Consider the fate of the Terrible Trio at the end of The End of the End -- to be petrified, alive and conscious, for an unknown but probably long duration. Now consider the degrees to which Princess Luna, Discord and Starlight Glimmer were ultimately forgiven. Why draconian punishment in one set of cases; extreme mercy in the other? We can guess, but it's never explicitly discussed.
How does courtship work? Is it casual sex with many from an early age, with ultimate marriage to a close friend, as several versions of Equestria (notably "The Pony Planet" series) imply? Is it a rather restrained Victorian-Edwardian-Interwar Era affair, ideally serious and leading to marriage, as my stories would have it? Or is it something far stranger? We don't really know, and one might get some very strange reactions if one pursued it on the wrong model to the wrong mare.
What of the economy? Is it mostly capitalist, mostly socialist, or something very different of which Humans have never conceived and probably couldn't carry out? The show seems to depict a mixed economy, with freer enterprise and a stronger voluntary social safety net than is common in the modern West, possibly with some sort of subtle gift- or favor-exchange as an unwritten but very important component of the overall system. Personal honor seems to be vital, which is why the Flim-Flam Brothers often get into trouble.
Politics? The (ruling) Princesses seem to be autocrats, but ethical ones who themselves submit to the laws they have decreed and only change them when absolutely necessary. There is a whole bunch of advisory or deliberative or representative bodies, to which the Princesses pay attention but do not seem to be bound to obey. There is great theoretical unity, but we've seen Equestria, under stress, start to fragment into the separate Three Kinds (and in the manner predicted in Fallout: Equestria!).
Law? The Equestrians seem to have a lot of regulations, and the Princesses can apparently on the spot by their own authority sentence or pardon. Twilight Sparkle spends a lot of the early seasons freaking out that Princess Celestia will inflict strange and whimsical punishments upon her. Is she being paranoid? Or does she have some rational cause for fear?
We don't know, but we might be well-advised to know before we beard an Alicorn in her den. Let alone throne-room.
(2) Acceptance of Humans
Equestria is very obviously used to the existence of other sapient races, and treats members of them as "people" rather than "beasts." Unlike a visitor to our world, a visitor to Equestria would not have to first persuade the Equestrians that our strange forms did not mean that we were wild monsters or chattel property.
Having said that ...
A. If the Equestrians are unfamiliar with sapient apes in general, it might be important to behave calmly and reasonably on first contact, to emphasize that we were sapient beings best dealt with in a civilized fashion. Whether or not we were put in a zoo -- or prison -- as opposed to enjoying the hospitality of the Princesses might depend on our initial actions.
B. We know nothing about the degree to which an Equestrian would understand our languages. The show seems to imply either that even most non-Equestrian characters speak Equestrian, or that translation spells are available. It may be significant that we have seen language barriers (remember when they had to translate dviocuments from Old Ponish?) and that whatever translation spells they had (which we've never actually seen) apparently don't work on writings (no mind to contact?).
I find it very hard to believe that what the Equestrians are speaking is actually English, or indeed any other language of our world. Among other things, the Ponies would have alien vocal tracts.
(3) The Equestria Girls World
I doubt that the Equestria Girls world is our world. The characters have hair and skin colorations which do not appear to run in families (hence they can't be Homo sapiens sapiens), and dress in styles which do not closely approximate those of any cultures from our Earth. Thus even at a glance it doesn't look like our world.
We have less clues about culture than in Friendship Is Magic (because, ironically, despite being ostensibly aimed at an older demographic than FIM, EqG actually takes a less mature approach to both storytelling and worldbuilding), but the few we have argue for signifcant distances. There seems to be very little serious crime or social tension, and either the age of majority is a lot lower than in the modern West, or minors are mostly Free Range Children.
Seriously, look at any of the plots where the characters leave school even temporarily. Now remember that almost all the characters are 18 or under, with most probably 15-17. Now look at what they're doing on their own.
And what they're not doing. 15-18 year olds in the EqG-verse are obviously far more responsible and mature than high school kids, or for that matter, most college kids, from our world.
These aren't our subspecies, maybe not our species, and they are most definitely not from our culture.
Having said that, it's not as if most of the Ponies would initially notice the differences.
Though Princess Twilight would. She's sharp.
Well, in Luna and Discord's cases, this was after a long and horrific punishment (though it isn't clear if Luna was aware during hers.) For Luna and Starlight, they were legitimately remorseful where before they hadn't even pretended towards regret. And for Discord specifically, Celestia may have prophesied a need for him in the near future, possibly directly related to Tirek's escape.
Plus, let's not forget that the petrification was ultimately Discord's idea. Sure, Celestia and Luna went along with it, but it all happened so quickly that none of the Bearers got a word in edgewise. They didn't express disapproval there and then, but that may have been a case of immediate relief versus later horrific realization. Or Discord has a plan. Because those always go so well...
The dining room is right out.
My world-hopping variant of Ditzy Doo mentally categorizes Equestrias into three categories: The ones where she can understand the language, the ones she can understand the phonemes, and the ones with modulated horse noises.
But yeah, ponies would be more alien than they initially appear.
Great essay with some good points for writers to remember.
I do wonder though -- we always have humans appearing in or near Equestria. Has there ever been a story where the dimension-jumping human first showed up, say, Griffonstone, or the Dragonlands, or Yakyakistan? Of course entry to such a place, especially if you don't know the language or culture or anything useful would probably lead to a dead visitor in short order. And that's assuming that the environment didn't kill them. Yakyakistan seems to be like our Tibet, a high, cold and barren plateau. And the Dragonlands are volcanic and very active; I wonder how the ponies were able to survive their visits!
Or maybe a lot of their human visitors do end up in those places upon arrival. Which would explain why we never hear about them. For all we know Twilight spends a lot of her time identifying the remains of these clueless and ugly aliens who keep offending griffons and dragons into murderous violence. I.e., "Of course I killed the nasty little thing, it was in my lair and fondling my gemstones! Now what is it?"
Given how many other things in Equestria seem to mysteriously match up with our world, vocal tracts that resemble ours wouldn't be surprising.
I posted a thread on a translation subreddit asking for a scientific name for humanoids resembling those seen in EQG, and got the name Homo sapiens multicolor.
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I like that. "Multicolor." They could count as a (modified) subspecies.