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About this blog

Random things that occur to me

Entries in this blog

Equestria and the Crystal Empire: Always a Princess, Never a Queen

Here we go, back to what I'm good at: Worldbuilding using real-life historical models.   Part of the thing to realize here is that real-life titles are confusing as all get-out because they evolved over time. So it's not actually that unusual to have Empires ruled by Kings, or Kingdoms ruled by Princes. It happens surprisingly often. Modern usages of these terms gives the impression that noble titles are very fixed and specific and slot into a clearly defined hierarchy, which is about as far f

Fhaolan

Fhaolan

Alicorns: The Current Set

Moving on from the mysterious unnamed Princess who doesn't seem to be around anymore...   Twilight is now an alicorn, and we know very little as of yet from this transformation. We know that she reached it by understanding more about the magic of friendship than anyone previously, which spontaneously caused her to be alicoronated. With some kind of power boost from the Elements of Harmony, of course. Celestia felt the need to shepherd the process, but you get the impression that it would have

Fhaolan

Fhaolan

Writer's Block

Is this actual writer's block? I'm not sure.   From the classic description, writer's block is the dreaded blank page. Where the writer has run out of ideas.   Instead, I've got tons of bits and pieces. I've got pages of ideas, fragmentary scenes, characters, world-building theories, etc.   The problem is I can't seem to be able to force myself to concentrate on any of it. I'm just spewing it out on the page without any rhyme or reason. Not enough of any theme to assemble into a coherent s

Fhaolan

Fhaolan

My Little Armory (Part 1)

Those that know me will probably be wondering why this essay has taken so long to show up. Mainly this is due to prioritization, enough other people have discussed this topic that I didn’t feel it was that urgent. However, the discussion has reached a point where I am disagreeing just enough with the various conclusions reached that I’ve decided to put this one together.   First, what do we know? There are several references to weaponry in FiM and some of them have interesting features.  

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Fhaolan

The Guard: What we Know?

The Guard as portrayed in the series is odd. What function do they actually have? They appear to act as bodyguards for Celestia, however if they run into anything that Celestia can't handle herself they're going to be hopelessly out of their weight class. They behave more like messengers, and 'mules' for Celestia, carrying her stuff for her. They do appear to act as city and palace guards for Canterlot itself, but we've only seen Guards *outside* of Canterlot when they are acting as Celestia's m

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Fhaolan

It’s a matter of Scale: A Stitch in Time Part 1

The biggest hindrance to worldbuilding in the setting of MLP:FiM is, in my opinion, the passage of time. Or lack thereof. I was going to do this as one big post, but it hit 10,000 characters and I figured that's too ridiculous. So I've split it in two.   There’s at least three different points where the passage of time is important to the setting while having strange issues that conflict with themselves. Let’s tackle the two smaller issues first to get them out of the way.   Exactly how lo

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Fhaolan

Doctor Whooves

This one’s a bit different. I was originally planning on an article about the education system in Equestria for Monday, but I decided to do an early posting on a different topic. This isn't really 'worldbuilding', but it's my blog post, so I'll break my pattern when I want to.   It’s the 50th Aniversary of Doctor Who, and the start of Season 4 of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. @@CITRUS KING46 suggested doing a top 10 Doctor Who episode list to commemorate the occasion, and I honestly th

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Fhaolan

Alicorns: Celestia and Luna's past

As always with these things we have to leave the land of 'what we know', and move into 'is there any way to make sense of it?' @@TheGr3ml1n, and @@Noble have mentioned things in their own speculations that I have incorporated into this as I see no reason not to. Thanks for the ideas!   Can we assemble a consistent time-line of Celestia and Luna out of what we know? Yes, but it does get a bit strained in places. It's definitely a house of cards, which any further information from the show coul

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Fhaolan

Cloudwalking, what's the deal?

Most of my worldbuilding blogs revolve around me filling in details, pointing out things I find interesting, and so forth. This one's a bit different as I don't have an answer for it. It's a question that I would be curious to see the writers answer, but I doubt they'll address it (accidentally or otherwise). We'll start off with what we know: Pegasi can walk on clouds, and manipulate them like they are solid objects. Other pony tribes cannot, and it has been demonstrated that non-pega

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Fhaolan

Terror of Tartaurus

Since I recently got my only MLP fanfic so far actually published (Doctor Whooves and the Terror of Tartaurus. It took a lot longer to get it through editing and proofreading than I had planned, but *shrug*.), I think I'll talk about the specific worldbuilding I dealt with in the story. This breaks down into some sub-topics:   Tartaurus   Tartarus is mentioned in 'It's About Time' as being guarded by Cerberus and containing many ancient evils, which is pretty much what Greek Myth tells us as

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Fhaolan

Dues Ex Caelestis

Just as a note, yes I spelled it very deliberately in the title. It may not be accurate Latin, but it does the job I want it to. I think.   I'm going to be walking a line with this entry, and I'm going to be trying very, very hard not to cross it. It's not against this forum's rules to talk about religion, but it's still a very tricky subject and can easily offend people when that is not my goal. At several points I was severely tempted to use current real-world religions and controversial cur

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Fhaolan

The Generation of Ideas: My Little Pony 'n Friends

Alright, I've finished watching the first My Little Pony series: My Little Pony 'n Friends from 1985 to 1987. This involved two TV Specials, a Theatrical release, and a 65-episode TV series (four of which were re-edited versions of the TV specials).   Technically my episode-watching blog for this series isn't quite done yet, as the last episodes of the series will be tomorrow, but those episodes are a re-edit of the 'Escape from Catrina' TV Special. Nothing important will be revealed by this e

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Fhaolan

It's all a matter of Scale: How big is Equestria?

Okay, this one is a doozy.   Equestria as presented in the show is too big for the travel time it takes to get anywhere, and has too much history but not enough has changed during that time. Unlike my previous blog posts on Equestrian history and backstories, the conflicting ‘official’ information is really at loggerheads on this, and unless we want to abandon worldbuilding in this setting, something has to give.   Let’s deal with the physical first. There’s already been enough analysis on ‘

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Fhaolan

Dungeons and Ponies!

I’m kinda burned out after the third weekend of trying to sell handspun yarn, handknit hats and wraps, and handwoven maille to renfairies who have no money to buy anything, for me to do anything intelligent. So I’m going to continue with the ‘what everyone already knows’ kind of thing this week.   First off, let me get this out of the way:   My Little Pony: Roleplaying is Magic   Friendship is Dragons   My Little Pony WotC April Fools   My Little Pony Pathfinder April Fools (Not the or

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Fhaolan

The Guard: RL Parallels

Okay, so first things first we have to try to ignore negative evidence as much as possible. Meaning that just because we've never seen something, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist: it's just not considered interesting enough to appear in the show yet. The show uses this a lot, see Shining Armour himself and the fact he's not mentioned until suddenly Twilight has a brother and he's getting married. So just because we haven't seen the guard stationed in Ponyville and other areas, doesn't mean the

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Fhaolan

Governor of Ponyville

I was going to talk about the pony’s categorization and treatment of Monsters, but every time I sat down to write it all out, I came up with half a paragraph of text. I honestly thought I’d be able to do more with that, so I’m going to delay that topic for a bit in hopes of developing more material.     In the meantime, let’s talk about government. Specifically local, or Ponyville, government. In my episode notes I regularly mention Ponyville’s government, so what have we gathered so far:

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Fhaolan

Education in Equestria

I’ve talked about parts of this all over the forum, this is really just assembling it all into one place.   What do we know about the education system of Equestria?   We know that Ponyville has a one-room schoolhouse that appears to only have one class and teacher. No other schools or teachers are referred to within Ponyville. The expectation seems to be that foals will start school before gaining their cutie-mark, but will gain it at some point while in school. Lessons include regular readi

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Fhaolan

Dues Ex Luna

This title works so much better, as Luna is spelled in the Roman manner already.   As I mentioned previously, Luna has a lot more complications in her status than Celestia, mostly due to her imprisonment in the Moon. She wasn't around to object to any change in the way the populace viewed her. Everything I said about Celestia applies to Luna, but there are some additional things I want to mention.   First, I want to briefly address Luna's strange aging between Season 1 and Season 2. Last tim

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Fhaolan

Generation of Ideas: My Little Pony Tales

Honestly, this series wasn’t as bad as I remembered it being. While there was an episode or two that insisted on the fillies needing coltfriends, and the colts were almost universally portrayed in negative stereotypes, overall it wasn’t *that* bad. Sweetheart is best G1.5 pony.   Oh yes, as mentioned in my Episode Watching Blog, I’m treating My Little Pony Tales as Generation 1.5. Officially it’s still Generation 1, as the generations are determined by the toy line, not the shows. But this sho

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Fhaolan

The Generation of Ideas: The Begining

Originally I was going to do a couple of entries about how it is possible to pull worldbuilding ideas and information from the previous generations of My Little Pony, when I realized something.   I don't really remember the previous generations well enough to do this.   I remember the first TV movie with the dueling rainbows, but past that point it starts to get vague. If I'm going to tackle this topic competently, I'm going to need to... oh god.   Weep for me, dear readers. For I am going

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Fhaolan

My Little Armory (Part 2)

Last week I talked about weapons that are in-show. This week, we do armor, and if I have time I'll dive into speculation about both weapons and armor.   There’s the Canterlot Guard armor, of course, with two variants the golden ‘Day Guard’, and the gray ‘Night Guard’. Shining Armor, as captain of the guard has an identical suit, but primarily purple rather than gold or gray. The guards of the Crystal Empire show up in identical designs, as do Luna’s personal guard (despite their batpony diff

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Fhaolan

What I'm going to do with this Blog now I've got it

I've decided, after a bit of puzzling, to use this Blog to yammer about different world-building ideas I've had around MLP. I've tried starting threads for this before, but in hindsight I honestly think it seems more like blog material. This is stuff that I might eventually use in fanfics, but I haven't worked out how exactly, and I'm not exactly a prolific writer so the chances of any of it appearing in a fanfic is pretty remote. Even if it does, it will likely be hidden pretty deep.   There

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Fhaolan

The Guard: So what?

Here's my take on all this: The Guard is a military organization, tasked with protecting Equestria and everyone within it from threats foreign and domestic. They enforce the laws all over Equestria, but are concentrated in Canterlot as the center of Equestria.   They have a relatively flat organization structure with a dozen different ranks at most. They have full mobility within the ranks, mostly because of this flattened structure, however they likely use the old British method of accelerat

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Fhaolan

Generation of Ideas: Third times the charm?

Generation 3 had less stuff in it for worldbuilding than even G1.5’s My Little Pony Tales. This is at the same time very easy to summarize, and yet very hard to find anything useful.   The ponies are separated into four different tribes, one of which is more a different race than a tribe. The Earth Ponies live in Ponyville again, this time a village primarily built with late Victorian architecture plus several ‘mock’ buildings that are made to resemble household objects. The village is built a

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Fhaolan

Generation of Ideas: What Fresh Pony is This?

Okay, basically I’ve watched all the prior generations of My Little Pony. And my conclusion is this: while there is stuff that can be borrowed from these generations, they need liberal interpretations to be truly salvageable.   If we are to force it all into a consistent history, it’s necessary to do some serious crowbarring. And my personal starting point would be re-order the various series.   In a more reasonable order, we start with My Little Pony Tales. An earth pony settlement in a sou

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Fhaolan

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