HereComesTom

My headcanon about Equestrian religion is that it's very simple, and it's also very different from any real-life religion. The love of every deceased pony sort of sticks together after the pony's death, and over the thousands/millions of years ponies have existed, their love has become so strong, that by now, it has become a sentient being named Paradise. She has little if any influence over the world of the living, so she can't quite be called a "god" (technically their faith would be atheistic, then, I suppose) but she's essentially a living place where the souls of ponies go who have died with more love than hate in their hearts. (There's a similar, evil amalgamation of hate, too, named "Satallion"---I used him as a main antagonist for a fic I wrote a few years ago.) Note that the criteria for entry into Paradise is "more love than hate in your heart": it doesn't really matter whether the ponies believe Paradise exists or not; they can enter her either way, as long as their love outweighs their hate. In my headcanon, since what the ponies believe about Paradise doesn't matter, and in fact it doesn't even matter whether they've ever even heard of her---they don't take religion quite as seriously as humans do. They have nothing to suggest that they need to take it very seriously or even talk or think about it much. By contrast, just about every real-life religion I can think of emphasizes that believing that the supernatural works in such-and-such-a-way is important, or at least that the way the supernatural works has consequences that mean you need to take or avoid specific actions. This headcanon-Equestrian-religion of mine doesn't really tell ponies to do anything they aren't already doing---unless they're living in hate, and there are plenty of non-faith-based reasons to stop that. That's why I figure they don't take religion as seriously as humans, and why it makes sense they wouldn't discuss it much in the show.

...Believe it or not, I think they might! Let me back up a bit. Some things I've noticed from the show are the gems in Equestria have some huge differences from gems IRL. Equestrian gems tend to be enormous in comparison with most gems on earth, they can be found in shallow soil, and they come out of that soil looking like they've already been cut and polished. Real gems are tiny (the biggest you'll find in most jewelry stores is the size of a man's thumbnail), they're found deep in igneous rock deposits, and they tend to look like dirty pebbles until they're cut and polished by human industry. So...why so many differences? I figure it's because latent magic in the soil causes ordinary elements like Aluminum and Oxygen to come together to form sapphires and rubies---and other elements to form other gems, e.g. carbon to form diamonds, beryllium into emeralds, silicon into citrines and amethysts, etc. The magic in the soil must naturally stimulate the growth of crystals, which explains the size, depth, and shape of the gems in Equestria. Also, if that gem-building magic waxes and wanes with the seasons (and it probably would), then there literally can be a "Sapphire Season"! (Remember Spike's line about Sapphire Season from Super Speedy Cider Squeezy?) Of course...why should that magic just affect gems and not other types of rock? Especially when rock farms are canon. It makes sense that, if latent magic in the soil can cause the growth of rocks, that ponies would find a place where a lot of rock growth is happening, and then they'd use that aspect of nature to make those rocks grow the way they need them to so they can be used for landscaping and building materials---which is, indeed, what Pinkie's family's rock farm sells rocks for, according to her chapter book. All this make a little too much sense to me. Even if these thoughts never passed through any of the writers' minds, it just adds up a little too well. I'm hoping I can get to use this worldbuilding in a game I'm working on. Anyone else agree/disagree with this?

I saw part of that clip before I had some kind of driver crash a few days ago, but now that you've posted that link, I've seen the whole thing, and I can't agree with you more!

I know it's different strokes for different folks, but Worldbuilding is one of the things I love about FiM, and it's something other MLP series didn't have. I'd love to see more of it in the show! (...must...stay...no...more...on...worldbuilding! must...stay...on...topic...!!!)

That's not quite true; I think I heard somewhere that one of the toys of her (though they're calling her Sweetie Drops for some reason) had a blurb about her being able to change her voice easily.

In one of the MLP chapter books (Twilight's), Trixie did team up with Gilda. Unfortunately, it wasn't a very well-done story, IMO; it was like Trixie and Gilda both lost interest in what they were doing before for no apparent reason. One thing I'd like them to try for Season 5: a recurring main antagonist that the mane six can't quite defeat until the season's end. They keep causing problems, the mane six keep fixing them and chasing the antagonists off, and the stories keep coming. Hydia, Draggle, and Reeka from G1 would be perfect for a role like that!

He got better by the end of the episode---the caster who enchanted him did so because of his speech about his luck when they first met. I don't expect homelessness to be a big issue in MLP, either, TBH. They probably won't take the worldbuilding in that direction.

The only way I can see that she'd be reformed is if it were something like "If you love a changeling for who they really are instead of who they pretend to be, it fills them up even better than the love they steal by pretending to be somepony else." That's an aesop that's right up the show's alley. This discussion reminds me: I was toying with the idea of a fan-plot where Chrysalis is back, she is motivated primarily by revenge, and her plan to get revenge has her knowingly sacrifice the lives of most, if not all, of the changelings in her command. Celestia is so horrified about Chrysalis betraying her own people that she kills Chrysalis in a fit of righteous anger by crushing her under a huge boulder. Shortly afterwards, Celestia and the mane six find a clutch of changeling eggs and decide not to smash them, but to let ponies adopt them---and when their adopted parents love the changelings for who they really are, then it has some strange effects on their physiology: they don't have swiss-cheese legs, they can be any color instead of just black, they can eat regular food (milk, hay, fruit, etc.) instead of just eating love, and they basically turn into a fourth type of pony in the process.

It wouldn't really ruin it for me, and I'd wish the actress well on her future endeavors. ...That being said, I still wish they could've gotten Ashleigh Ball and/or Andrea Libman in the Pacman Ghostly Adventures game...

I'm a serious Christian myself, but when I read your story about FiM making you serious about your faith, it surprised me a little. Maybe it shouldn't have; religion is deep, and the show can be too if you analyze it (depth is one of FiM's many features). My own story---I wouldn't go quite so far as to call it "inspiration", but I think that watching the show has made me a better Christian...perhaps by virtue of making me a better human being, and being human is kind of a prerequisite for being a Christian I think it's made me more sensitive to the emotions others around me, and that's never a bad thing. What made me notice that it made me more sensitive was a moment at my church where we were having a large meeting, any member of the church invited, where we discussed some problems our church was having (declining membership, etc.), and my pastor was getting blamed for a lot of it. He was silent, looking down at the floor, and I could tell this discussion was affecting him pretty deeply. I decided to do a very Pinkie Pie thing...well...okay, not THAT heavily Pinkie Pie; becoming too much like her in a church building full of conservative dutch grandparents isn't too kosher, but I think you'll agree with me, the principle of what I did was reasonably Pinkie Pie: I talked my folks into inviting him and his wife over for dinner. You see, our family has a tradition where we go to my parents' house every Sunday evening after church, and I make homemade pancakes for everyone; I figured being invited to that would cheer him up. It worked. He had a lot on his chest to discuss with my parents, who were comparable in age to him, and I essentially hid from that old-people conversation by doing the dishes in the kitchen. Later, I learned that they considered themselves to be hiding from me in the living room... When I say it again like that, it sounds like I was becoming too Pinkie Pie-ish at that moment, but that's not how it was; trust me! Anyhow...there's another time when I had a religious experience that tied into MLP. It was an epiphany that felt kind of like enlightenment---yes, conservative Christians have epiphanies. And no, I didn't become more liberal after it. But I digress. Here's what was going through my mind at the time: I was sitting in church, thinking about Apple Bloom, and how, if she found out how many fans she had, she'd be shocked. She'd say "Why are all these people interested in me? I'm just a regular filly from Ponyville!" And so she is just a regular filly from Ponyville! And yet, despite being a regular little girl, there is so much potential in her to be loved. Simply by getting acquainted with her through the TV show, we have come to love her because of that potential. After thinking of that, it hit me: just like Apple Bloom, despite most people being "normal" and/or unexceptional---every person on the planet has that same potential to be loved, to be understood, to become special to someone else. That thought hit me like a ton of bricks---it was one of those "The World is Just Awesome" moments, that there are seven or eight billion bundles of that much potential-to-be-loved in this world...! I don't know if I'm doing the feeling justice, putting it into words like this, but it was amazing and eye-opening when I felt it. So...does it inspire religious faith in the first place? Your story proved it certainly can. But for me, it enhanced the faith that was already there with perspective and...I guess I'll call it sensitivity training

>< I'm 95% sure it was back in 2010 that I became a fan of the show, and that wasn't an option on the poll. I remember how it happened; I was looking for material for a parody of G-1 on youtube (a parody I never made, sad to say---it would've been unbelievably prophetic if it had, though), and I saw a cartoon about Twilight trying to get introduced to Fluttershy, and FS ended up getting quieter until she could only squeak. That got me curious enough to watch the first two episodes---and then I was hooked!

In my headcanon, the land worked naturally, a lot the same way Everfree Forest did, up until DisQord came along. Then his chaotic magic screwed up nature so badly in so many different ways---animals' instincts were so confused, they couldn't take care of themselves. Clouds, instead of being thousands of feet in the air, were only a few dozen feet in the air. A magical dome covered the sky which absorbed light from the sun, moon, and stars, and shone it down on the land however DisQord saw fit, creating the illusion of the sun and moon moving quickly through the sky and changing day to night randomly. After Celestia and Luna defeated DisQord, they had to completely reorganize nature as well as society. Celestia cast a spell on the pegasi, allowing them and their descendants to move clouds as if they were solid objects, and charging them with maintaining the weather to maximize food output. Earth ponies she charged with caring for the animals (so that the ecosystem wouldn't collapse) and growing food. Unicorns she cast a spell on as well, so that every time they used their magic for anything, the inherently chaotic magic that was flowing through the land would be soothed. The defenses of Everfree Province that kept Celestia's castle safe prevented DisQord's chaotic magic from affecting nature there, so animals and the weather still took care of themselves in Everfree. For a while, Celestia was happy to live there, since the land was normal, from her perspective. But after Celestia banished Luna to the moon, she was so heartbroken that she moved to Canterlot with her aunt, her only remaining family, and she decided to let Everfree Province go back to nature, since Everfree Province was the only place where nature (as she knew it) could exist. ...I know there are a couple small inconsistencies with the show with this, but I have ideas for how to get around those...and this post is already too long!

My feeling about this is that Twilight knows who her original friends are, and she knows she belongs on the pony-side of that portal. I haven't watched all of EQG, but I'm guessing it never came up that she ascended up the food chain by traversing the portal, but if it had, I bet it would've made her uncomfortable. Though...maybe her Ponyville friends don't know that. But they trust her a lot (remember episodes like It's About Time), so I doubt they'd freak out. Besides, her human friends may have liked her and loved her, but they're not the same friends she spent a year growing with on adventure after adventure in Ponyville, and her Ponyville friends know that much!