Where are the other species?

[flutterbard 55]

Thanks to the 2022 Annual, we now know that MLP G5 is set in the same universe as G4 and that Sunny's dream of reuniting the three pony races comes from her father reading her stories about the exploits of Twilight and her friends. Ever since I heard the synopsis of the new generation, there was one major question on my mind, and this new information made me really want an answer: What happened to Equestria's other sapient species?

I get that it's called My Little PONY, but when Twilight and her friends were teaching the magic of friendship, they weren't only teaching it to ponies. In the "future" Canterlot we see in the finale,  dragons, kirin, griffons, hippogriffs, changelings, and yaks are all seen alongside the ponies, with everycreature living in friendship and harmony. You would think that if Sunny is being read stories about Twilight and the good old days, then there would be some mention of them too.

"Sunny loved these stories of the olden times, when Earth Ponies Unicorns, and Pegasi all lived in peace." What about the dragons, the changelings, the griffons, etc? What has become of them since then? This is a question that I really think should be answered, especially considering the fact that the main theme of the new generation is diversity and inclusion.

[SharpWit 2,472]

 

Twilight swung the pendulum one way, not knowing it must eventually swing the other, giving ideas like diversity and inclusivity the boot.

Imagine their society like a garden. For most of its existence, Equestria stood as a central shrub. Possibly it was allowed to grow to an extant where it even overshadowed nearby plants. However, plant too much and leave your beds unattended and everything will choke, forcing everything to rescind till there's nothing but roots. Equestria's roots were the three tribes, and so we've made it full circle.

[Landi 597]

Maybe at some point the non-pony species turned on the ponies and tried to take over Equestria for themselves, causing tons of conflict. Maybe afterwards, ponies felt so betrayed that they couldn't even trust themselves, and as a result they split up. As for the non-ponies, they are probably back to their own lands now. This is just some theory I came up with though, I don't really know for sure what happened.

[JMTV99 1,348]

TBH, I have no freaking idea. 

[Megas 27,062]

Gone because the staff of G5 realized the School of Friendship and "Everycreaturequestria" were really dumb as fuck so they're going back to focusing on ponies for the time being

Spoiler

hopefully

 

Edited August 6, 2021 by Sunstreaker

[Steve Piranha 28,769]

1 hour ago, Megas said:

Gone because the staff of G5 realized the School of Friendship and "Everycreaturequestria" were really dumb ideas so they're going back to focusing on ponies for the time being

  Hide contents

hopefully

 

Ugh, “everycreature” was cringe into words . I do hope we get to see other types of ponies, like bats, kelpies, corrostratan pegasi, and kirins tho 

[JMTV99 1,348]

2 hours ago, Megas said:

Gone because the staff of G5 realized the School of Friendship and "Everycreaturequestria" were really dumb ideas so they're going back to focusing on ponies for the time being

  Hide contents

hopefully

 

I wouldn't be surprised if that were to be the case.

[Goat-kun 2,497]

They just went out to buy a pack of smokes. Honestly, beasts of tale aren't really a little girl thing, and whine moms don't understand what makes them tick. After G4, I shall gladly accept their absence as it means that they are beyond the reach of shitty canon.

 

However, I'm afraid that non-pones too have been subjected to the modernization. This is gonna end in Zootopia, won't it. My feelings are a cocktail, stirred, not shaken.

[Misty Shadow 7,084]

Do recall that this takes place in a world where ponies live separated by species now. It would be weird for the movie's marketing to be showing off all sorts of different creatures the same way the ponies would find it weird to see all sorts of different creatures walking around now.  

[EpicEnergy 22,072]

The developers most likely wanted to stray from including other species in the movie and quite possibly early into the show as well, possibly because they want to focus on developing the ponies first since they are the primary characters of G5.

But to give an in-universe explanation, it is likely that, after the division of the pony races, the other species divided as well since harmony no longer existed. They likely went back to their countries and stayed away from the disunity and opposition that the pony races had towards each other. There is also a possibility that when the pony races divided, they became bitter not only towards each other, but to the other species as well.

[SharpWit 2,472]

Two additional thoughts inspired by the post of @EpicEnergy.

Sects of ponykind may have felt left out or forgotten with the influx of other creatures, and this spurred secession movements with the beloved Equestria of old seeming to fade. Even if other species didn't become directly persecuted, perhaps disharmony between ponies had a tendency to be more deadly since it came with such strong and fresh conviction. In the end it could have been safer to just leave their hooves brethren to their infighting.

It's also possible that sticking to ponies grants more room for creative diversity behind a unified front. There'd way more options with other species, but it takes away from a message of sameness and equality by allowing for more lines of division.

[Steve Piranha 28,769]

8 hours ago, SharpWit said:

Two additional thoughts inspired by the post of @EpicEnergy.

Sects of ponykind may have felt left out or forgotten with the influx of other creatures, and this spurred secession movements with the beloved Equestria of old seeming to fade. Even if other species didn't become directly persecuted, perhaps disharmony between ponies had a tendency to be more deadly since it came with such strong and fresh conviction. In the end it could have been safer to just leave their hooves brethren to their infighting.

It's also possible that sticking to ponies grants more room for creative diversity behind a unified front. There'd way more options with other species, but it takes away from a message of sameness and equality by allowing for more lines of division.

Another advantage is world building among the three core species of pastel horses. They were already together in peace in FIM, so aside from their core abilities, they were pretty much the same. Now stabilizing they have separated, opens up differences in culture from the get go. Something I feel FIM failed to do so, while still being able to

[StitchandMLPlover 930]

In a multicultural society you need a unifying value or values to keep people or in this case creatures together and let each creature also have some individual cultural pride. If the culture got eroded and/or erased after Twilight was no longer in power and creatures and ponies each felt erased by the other it makes sense that other creatures would return to their lands or be forced out and ponies would separate into 3 distinct cultures unicorn, pegasus, and earth pony to establish identity again. Diversity is beautiful but you need more than that to hold ponies together and if you feel your own identity has been Watered down in the name of an artificial diversity instead of true deep friendship that will hurt. Perhaps Luster Dawn screwed things up after Twilight was no longer princess. 

 

Going back to just ponies is a good move since gen 4 season 8 diversity felt very forced despite me liking Student 6. 

[Stardust 640]

I'm assuming they are around but keeping away from the ponies now xP I mean with them being so divided and all.

[Rushing cash 824]

They are probably living separately from the pony races at this point, I fully expect many of them and new species to appear later in the show.

They better have Kirin Though 

Edited July 4, 2021 by Rushing cash

[ToastyToby 1]

I have the same question, I'm actually worried. What if G5 never brings along the existence of other species at all? That'd make either G4's last seasons or G5 itself kinda pointless. However I think It can potentially make sense. See when you look back to starswirl times, and even before there has been a tendency between the 3 different races of ponies to separate and have a strong group of leaders bring them together, it happended with the founders and starswirl's group, later with the mane six group and now with sunny. Thus cretaing a sort of cycle that makes diversity wider with each generation. It's actually be cool if the first cycle included pony races only, then twilight's all the races we saw in G4 and finally Sunny's in my opinion should have all races seen and addition of others/further recognition of already existing ones so that the sense of progression through generations can be found.

[HedonismBot 217]

It'd be hilarious if it turned out the other species were still maintaining healthy relations with each other, but backed off from the ponies after the tribes broke up.

[Tao 6,719]

That was one question I did have while watching the movie is where are the other races?  Given how much the show put into world-building and showing the culture of the others was a big part of the show.    It could be as said in some other post that the others are staying more in their lands and have kept away given how the other ponies started to act and also did the other races lose their magic?  We are left with a lot of answers in hoping the series answers a lot what  was left unsaid,