Pony Fanfiction Thread

Scientist ponies haven't used Farenheit for decades because it's a stupid and arbitrary way to measure temperature. They use degrees Celestia.

edited 28th Jun '15 11:10:43 AM by CDRW

They discarded the nonsensical Farenheit scale in favour of degrees Delisle.

edited 28th Jun '15 11:42:50 AM by SantosLHalper

Hey guys, does this sound like a plausible economic/social system?

95% of all wages of every equestrian citizen are appropriated by the government in taxes. In exchange, one can appeal directly to Celestia or Luna for pretty much anything, from food to feed your family, to a job, to a even a house. Ensuring minimal starvation and homelessness.

Due to cutie marks and how they work, there's no worries of ponies not doing their jobs properly/at all.

So does this sound like a plausible system for Equestria?

No, even if you could get it to work socially, Celestia and Luna literally wouldn't have the time to review all those petitions.

edited 28th Jun '15 1:54:31 PM by CDRW

95% of wages lost to taxes reminds me of the old Warhammer Fantasy fluff about Bretonnian peasants giving 90% of their crops to the lord.

I was thinking they don't receive petitions through letters. Instead they have the "Day/Night courts" that are so popular in fanon and use that time to listen personally to thenplights of their citizens. You have to be there at the time that the courts are open to have your plea heard.

As for those that live far away, I can handwave by saying they have emissaries there who do much the same thing with their time.

edited 28th Jun '15 2:05:39 PM by gameknight102xx

It would still take forever. At best you'd have to have an infrastructure set up to deal with all of that, and even if you could come up with a plausible system for it, you'd still have the issue of that not really being how anything works that we see in the show. AJ and Rarity pretty obviously run their own businesses independent of any government oversight. In short, I really don't see it as being very plausible either in-universe or from a meta-perspective. You could probably come up with something, but there'd be a lot of stuff to deal with. There would be way too many questions raised about how it would work. Celestia and Luna have enough crap to deal with without being personally responsible for the well-being of literally everyone in Equestria.

edited 28th Jun '15 2:15:34 PM by JapaneseTeeth

I see.

I was trying to find a way to make money/bits largely worthless in Equestrian society without inflation (having almost no bits due to 95% tax rate + getting whatever you want from the government). And then having the emphasis shift from bits to friends and the social circles you hang around with.

So instead of money being power, you instead obtain power dependant upon which friends you have and the ponies you know. So I'm trying to get a social/economic system for that.

If that's all you're going for, then you could just import 95% of the real world model, just changing it so people are significantly less likely or willing to accept bribes, since social power is already everything and money just buys it through bribery.

I agree with everyone else; such an economic system raises far more questions than solutions.

At best, it sounds like a ridiculously blunt advertisement for socialism. At worst, as JT and CDRW said, it completely contradicts the show and raises too many logistical questions to be be believable.

The whole "in-person petitioners" thing is, to my understanding, purely a fiction trope. It helps facilitate drama and conflict, but real life monarchies did not work that way.

The only time I can think of that sort of thing actually happening is way back in the days of city-states, when the communities were small enough that solving things via audience with the king would actually be feasible.

I was thinking the trope may have been a result of authors applying the idea of Direct Democracy to monarchies. Back in early America, at least, direct democracy was very common (back when you had town meetings in a town hall with a population of less than 100 people).

Plus, like I said, it's a good setup for fiction. You get to have character interaction, conflict, suspense, and infodumping all in a very simple scene. It's an easy way to characterize the monarch and the petitioner at the same time. It goes all the way back to The Judgment of Solomon story.

Like any trope that is an attempt to streamline a narrative, it has its uses. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but using it on a such a large scale would definitely create a lot of fridge logic problems

edited 28th Jun '15 6:59:02 PM by CleverPun

That, pretty much. It can be used, but applying it in this specific scenario raises a few too many questions, IMO.

Suddenly, Equestria was a tiered help desk.

Basically, I imagined this up for a number of reasons, including the "friendship as power" system above.

1. It helps highlight how hopelessly unprepared Equestria as a whole is for actual conflict and war. Communism (where I got this idea from), from the very, very little I understand, can only happen in a ridiculously idealistic society where everybody does their jobs, don't expect to get paid that much, and lets a small group of really important ponies make all the hard decisions without raising a single complaint.

2. It gives my characters a cheap and easy way to get a house so they don't spend the story as homeless bums.

3. It keeps Luna and Celestia out of the actual conflict for the duration I need them to be. If they're busy taking care of the needs of everypony in Equestria, it gives them an actual reason for not being able to see the conflict coming without making them look like incompetent buffoons.

edited 28th Jun '15 9:42:55 PM by gameknight102xx

Well, I'm all caught up on Rites Of Ascension now. I like it.

edited 28th Jun '15 9:43:52 PM by CDRW

...well this is a crossover I never, ever expected to see

Wow, somebody remembered that Huckleberry Hound exists.

So people often ask when the best time to post a story is. I usually say Wednesday at ~3-5PM GMT-8, based purely on personal experience and observation.

ocalhoun has instead offered a concrete answer backed up with the power of statistics and math.

A late notice, but I just stumbled on it today.

Interesting, though it's still kind of a crapshoot because it's the prereaders who decide when the story actually gets posted.

Suddenly, Equestria was a tiered help desk.

*crackly recording of The Mare From Ipamena* '...We're sorry, all our Princesses are busy at the moment. There are 3123 petitioners in front of you.'

Anyway, Gameknight, the thing you mentioned is, in fact, a thing, and it's called a palace economy. JT, you were pretty spot-on with your remark about city-states.

So, just finished The Luna Cypher.

Remember that scene at the end of The Celestia Code when Twilight absorbed all that dark magic from the giant crystal, and it turned her into a superpowered would-be tyrant? I felt that the epilogue brushed over the effects of that much too quickly. I don't think Twi was morally culpable for what she did, seeing as she wasn't in her right mind. But I'm surprised that no one in the story was bothered enough by that development to even talk about it afterwards.

The Luna Cypher was that scene and its lack of followup, stretched to the length of the whole story.

An economic system like that could work, but it'd be very tiered.

Like, all of Ponyville's money would be handled by Mayor Mare and whoever works for her.

Perhaps all of that money goes to Canterlot and then an amount is given to Ponyville automatically and/or upon request, to be deal with by Mayor Mare.

Larger cities probably need to be further broken don into districts with, I dunno, deputy-mayors directly underneath the actual mayor heading each one and in charge of funds.

Of course there is constant jockeying about who gets how much cash, possibly some dense bureaucracy. I imagine a lot of these position are appointed by the princesses, perhaps even personally, just to make sure they keep hooves in things.

I forget, has the word "demon" ever been used on the show?