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 ‘
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
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
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
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.
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
This is new for my blog, but will likely show up again on a regular basis as I get farther along. I'm going to do a brief revisit on something I've already talked about before, as something sparked a bit for me recently.
In a previous entry on the Elements of Harmony: http://mlpforums.com/blog/844/entry-4702-the-elements-of-harmony-the-basics/ I listed the various Elements using the names that Twilight read from a history/mythological book. Those names are what the Mane 6 have continued to u
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
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
Festivals and celebrations are very important to most cultures and exactly how they celebrate them can tell you a lot about the people themselves, of course. Most of the festivals we’ve seen in MLP:FiM are expys of real-life Western holidays. But not all of them are, and in some cases there are some subtle differences.
Most festivals in real life are sourced from two different places. The oldest come from the various agricultural-driven needs like planting, harvesting, or natural events like
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:
Right, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted to this particular blog so let’s do one that has been simmering in the back of my mind for quite some time.
As before, let’s start with what we know: In the MLP: FiM cartoon, Starswirl the Bearded is mentioned several times.
In Luna Eclipsed, Twilight dresses up as Starswirl in a stereotypical wizards hat and cloak, complete with stars and moons (instead of the more common astronomical glyphs), but with the addition of bells all over the hat. Int
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
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
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
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
Yay, I managed to get this together today, keeping to my schedule of one worldbuilding essay a week. Yeah, it's a bit light, but .
How the various creatures are portrayed in MLP, and how the ponies react to them, is very odd and seemingly inconsistent. As I’ve mentioned before, inconsistencies are opportunities for worldbuilding.
Those who are reading my various posts may have noticed that I am using an odd word ‘Sophont’, where others would likely use ‘Sapient’ or ‘Sentient’. It’s a
A thousand years.
This is tossed out a lot in the show as a ‘really long time’ metric. Nightmare Moon was imprisoned for a thousand years. Discord ruled a thousand years ago. The Crystal Empire disappeared a thousand years ago.
Even if that is meant as a figurative or approximate number, in human terms thousand years is a *really* long period of time. Think on how much has changed in the last thousand years. It’s currently 2013, so we’re looking at 1013 as our starting point. The beginni
Okay, I've got a collection of little bits here, none of which have ended up big enough for an essay of their own. Mostly updates to previous entries.
Also, this one will be the last essay on the 'every week' schedule, as I've covered all the bigger ideas I had and I've fulfilled my need to get most of this junk down somewhere so it's not clogging up my mind, preventing me from concentrating on other projects. I'll still do more entries, but it will be less regular and more when inspiration
Right, we now have the Crystal Empire shattered into little bits, the Princesses running a small version of the Kingdom of Equestria, and King Sombra in control of the former capitol of the Empire.
Over time, Celestia and Luna learned how to extend their influence, stabilizing some of the other former fiefdoms of the old Crystal Empire piece by piece. However, King Sombra was doing the exact same thing but from the other direction. Eventually the two groups would come into conflict, with Cel
We know only a limited amount about alicorns, despite how important they seem to be in show. I honestly thought this would be a single entry, because of how little I thought there was. But when I wrote it all out, I was amazed at how much there actually is.
Just for completeness, what do we know from non-show sources about alicorns:
First off; Alicorn and Unicorn are technically the same name, but have moved into English through different paths. Unicorn comes to English from old French (
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
As a note, I've had it mentioned to me in the past that I tend to over-emphasize European cultural and historical models, and not address ideas from other cultures. I agree this is a failing on my part, and my only excuse is that given the volume and depth of human history I had to specialize in some way. So delving into the culture and history of my own ancestors is where I've started. When someone refers me to good sources of info from other cultures, I do go through it, but European history i
First, a point of order; I’ve had it suggested to me that I slow down the blog entries to one a week, rather than one a day. There was concern about burn-out, where my original intent was to just get this stuff out of my head so I can concentrate on other things. Thinking it over I checked my list of potential topics, and I've only got twelve big ones right now. So I understand their point, and I have decided to try one post a week with topics lasting two to three weeks each, and see how it goe
Last week we has the Spring and Summer festivals. Now onto the other two seasons.
Fall Festivals
Like the spring festivals, we have two in the fall: Nightmare Night and the Running of the Leaves. The Running of the Leaves feels a lot like the exact opposite of Winter Wrap Up. In this case the ponies are removing the last of Fall to make way for Winter. It’s a time of games and other events, but it doesn’t seem to have the same emotional significance as it's Spring counterpart. It's long
