I don't remember any indicator that Twilight knew helping Discord was what was needed.

@Ultimatum: MAH HEDKANON

That might be open to interpretation, but she gets the rainbow eye-shine thing they all get right before she agrees to it, and then when he hands over the medallion, she and the others are just like, "Sweet! That's the last one we need!" and race off to the chest.

Like, Discord actually pours his heart into this big speech about his gratitude and they're so busy celebrating the last key that nopony even acknowledges it.

Speech couldn't have been that heartfelt, considering how Discord treats Twilight like garbage in every episode after that.

Yeah, that's a recurring flaw ever since the beginning, where every major conflict ends up being solved by simply pulling out the Orbital Friendship Cannon and blasting the problem into oblivion. Though granted at least in more recent episodes it hasn't leaned on that nearly as hard, which is good. Stuff like Starlight defeating Chrysalis by managing to talk the changelings into changing sides makes more sense than if she had just blasted her with a magic rainbow beam after bringing the team together or whatever.

But yeah, if they're going to have a big villain thing like that and want to do a friendship message, they should just have them use teamwork and their skills to bring it down not "hey we're such good friends that the enemy spontaneously exploded."

@Meta: If you're getting around to making the list for the fic you can put me on it.

Me as well.

You have my sword. It's not as mighty as a pen, but it should serve.

I would like to be in the next Round Robin, too.

Post of the Day #1944

That sounds like a quote that would fit very well on the old tumblr.

Count me in for the Round Robin as well.

What would be good slurs for an Earth Pony?

Dirt pony? I'd say wingless or hornless, but those also apply to unicorns and pegasi.

Clod head

Earth phoney

ect

There's always Mud Pony.

Mud Mule!

In The Colour You Bleed I used Rocks-for-brains, Rocky, Rock-Head, etc, though they could be interpreted less as slurs and more as just generalized insults.

Generally the worst, or at least most visible, slurs tend to 'descend' from common stereotypes about the peoples (For example the N-word originally meaning 'lazy or untrustworthy'), or nicknames for them from a time and place where they were looked poorly upon (For example 'G*psie' being derived from 'Egyptian', as some europeans incorrectly thought the Roma were)

We can get a hint of what the common stereotypes against Earth Pony's were from trendermane, as positive sterotypes are often just happier spins on negative sterotypes, or at least derived from the same source. So 'Hardworking' and 'Salt of the Earth' can easily translate to 'Simple, Stupid and Boorish'.

Following that line of thought, the people who would most likely be coming up with the slurs originally—Monarchical Unicorns and Militarized Pegasi—would draw their own conclusions based on the Earth Pony role in society and way of life. Worth noting, the Earth Ponies were the only aspect of society with a roughly democratic makeup (Chancellors in real life tending to be elected by a body which is in turn elected by the people, a la the Electoral College). This puts them in fairly stark contrast with the probably meritocratic Pegasi, and the Monarchy—which have historical leaned on Divine Right to rule.

The Unicorn nobles would almost certainly look down upon the Earth Ponies for being too common (As, having no king, they had no 'divine' guidance or right to it). They may even view them as not even having leadership at all, treating the Chancellor are more of a representative of lessers for the sake of convenience than an equal ruler.

Likewise, the Pegasi may look down upon the Earth Ponies for not going the extra mile to 'earn' their leadership, and just handing it out because they felt like it, since all Earth Ponies would have to do to get their position is be popular—not necessarily good at it.

And, here's an important part: Both Pegasi and Uncirons probably understand, on some level, that the Earth Ponies hold a lot of political sway thanks to being the only source of food for all three of the tribes. Combined with the lack of anything they would view as evidence of worthiness, this could cut in one of two ways: Viewing the Earth Ponies less as a people and more of a resource to be used, or viewing them as holding a necessary resource ransom and demanding more than they've earned. Possibly a combination of both. Something lesser that you still need to care for and work with because you need it—or if you're feeling particularly proud you can shove those feelings down and call it charity that you happen to get something for.

So combining that with the above point of likely stereotypes about the Earth Ponies being Boorish and stupid, I'm guessing the most likely bent of racism about them would vary between a sort of Higher Ponies Burden/Noble Savage deal, to the less generous 'Welfare Queen Trailer Trash'.

Historical terms for idiots include 'Mome' and 'Ametia'. 'Cretin' originally meant idiot as well, and was based on Christian—the implication being that 'yes, they're dumb, but they're still people', and sort of head-patting them. But it's based on a real-world religious term and we don't know of any pony religions to make an equivalent for.

On I rather like, though, is that for a while people with intellectual disabilities were referred to as 'Trainable', as in they could still be trained or taught to be reasonably intelligent. I really like the idea of some absolute piece of shit calling an Earth Pony trainable as though they think it's a compliment, like the Earth Pony should be honoured they're not a complete write-off.

Anyways, those are some ideas. I like Mome as a general insult-slur as it sounds close enough to being earth-related to me.

Wow, that's amazingly detailed and thought out.

It's probably just because I've been doing a lot of world building for my Web Novel Birthright (2017) lately, in particular the way the two (completely different) species viewed and referred to each other.

Though in that case it's mostly not a matter of slurs, as even the more initially insulting sounding Dirt-People (Dratarh) sounds less so when contrasted with the self-identifier Fire-People (Draken, or Dragon), and the more polite term (Excepting self-identifiers of course) is just based on linguistics (Lip-Talker vs. Throat-Talker).

This has been Keg's shilling corner, thank you for listening. Read m'book.

edited 19th Sep '17 5:13:05 PM by kegisak

For example 'G*psie' being derived from 'Egyptian', as some europeans incorrectly thought the Roma were

Wait, that's where it comes from? Huh. I never knew that.

Yeah, it's from the apocryphal story about some Egyptians who supposedly protected Mary and Joseph on their travels. Of course the Roma people actually have their origins more in India, buuuuuuut people didn't really know that back some thousand years ago soooooo it just stuck.

Whenever I hear "mome" I can only ever think of the Mome Raths outgrabing.

Post of the Day #1945

I just found this great joke. XD

WMG of the Day: Luna became Nightmare Moon because she was possessed by Pazuzu.

But Applejack has a hat.