Now we move on to ‘magic’ as used by unicorns.
Pseudo-psionics: And the third, and least popular one in mythology is the one that is most often seen in modern fiction. Where the magician simply wills something to happen and it happens because he’s just that cool. There might be some waving of hands around, and some nonsense chanting just to set the mood, but it’s the effort of will that is important and it’s entirely possible to bypass the dressings leaving only the will behind. For those us
[Note: I just noticed the formatting went weird on this one again. I'm trying to fix that. If this shows up as a new entry. Sorry.]
There are lots of strange modern thoughts about what magic is, and what it can do. Historically (well, mythologically), there are three 'styles' of magic. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking this is all past and gone, a lot of this stuff is still in a lot of modern attitudes and habits. It’s just people don’t think of it as ‘magic’ anymore. Also, I’m drasticall
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
Just as a reminder, I'm treating everything as if it's a real-life culture and that it's not just random whim by the writers. Even though I know it's really random whim as many of the names are lifted from previous generations based on an 'approved' list the writers received from Hasbro's legal team, and the previous generation names were very much driven by whim.
Okay, so I believe there is a strong tradition for families to use naming themes. But when two ponies marry, unless they accident
I’m away selling stuff at the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire for the next several weeks, so these are going to be shorter and less well-thought-out than normal for awhile. If they happen at all.
This one is about something that everyone has already noticed, but I feel the need to talk about it for some reason.
Family names are a relatively recent invention, historically. In Europe family names came into use in the 13th century or so, but didn’t filter down to the peasantry until aroun
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
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
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 ‘
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
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
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 (
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
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
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
This time I get really deep into speculation. I’ve got nothing to really base any of this off of. It’s a precarious house of cards I’ve built, based on a rather whimsical theory. Next week I'll get back to more solid world-building ideas, but this is one of those 'get it out of my head' things while I'm on the Elements of Harmony topic.
During the Friendship is Magic episode, it is shown that four stars did in fact aid in Nightmare Moon’s escape. What exactly were they?
Let's connect thi
As with my previous topic, there comes a point where the show itself runs out of information and I have to go into speculation territory. However, there are other sources that are possibly relevant.
Here’s something interesting: The power of the Elements displays as a big, powerful Rainbow. Where have we seen that? The Sonic Rainboom that triggered all of the Mane6’s cutie-marks? Yep. However, there’s something even earlier than that. As far back as Generation 1 My Little Pony: Rescue at Mid
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
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
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
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
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
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
