My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Live Reactions & Discussion)

I saw on Derpibooru fanart showing Stygian and Lil' Cheese in Spike's place (for Pillars and Luster Six respectively), meaning they are "Spike's" of their respective groups and there is indeed seventh Element of Harmony. But that leaves us with a question: who is Student Six "Spike"?

Also, I'm still waiting for someone to respond to my deer post.

Edited by Filip04 on Mar 31st 2024 at 8:44:38 PM

It's interesting in that it's clearly a bit of early-fandom worldbuilding — particularly in the way it divides deer into equivalents to alicorns, unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies, plus reindeer. I find that this was very common in the first few years of the fandom — the DA page seems to have been uploaded in 2014, so that would've been at the end of it — when there wasn't a lot of actual information concerning non-pony species. That seems to have led to a sort of Sailor Earth effect, where fans took the way that pony breeds function and extrapolated it onto canon or fan ones. Having some kind of immortal godlike ruler was the most common aspect (partly because there did turn out to be one such ruler, Chrysalis), but it wasn't too rare to also see a magic breed, a flying breed, and a plant/earth/"regular" one.

It was especially common for dragons, because when there were only three on-screen ones it was an easy way for explain why Spike was physically and behaviorally different from the other two.

Of course that ended up being ones of the things to gradually go out of prominence as the show went on and more stuff was introduced or revealed, because none of the non-pony species turned out to function that way.

Given the Elements worked without seven members, created without them in the case of Stygian, I believe that rather than Spike being a 7th Element he's another candidate to channel an existing Element (in addition to the main bearer).

If you want to take G5 worldbuilding into account, that gens best fit for Magic is Empathy/Heart, which fits Sunset Shimmer (who's hypothetical Element was Empathy) being Twilight's counterpart and replacement until human Twilight.

Gods in the setting seem like a distraction from the main characters while devaluing their accomplishments and agency, which works for some setting but not this one which driven by regular characters. They also come off as Mary Sues insofar as being OC's meant to bend the setting to the authors wants and being more powerful/important than canon characters.

My question is why did it take so long for fans to stop/lose interest in gods as part of fan worldbuilding?

Fun little fun-fact, I actually learned about Cervyderia before learning about existence of IDW comics. And when I learned about how deers were portrayed there, I now think that Sirzi created better way to interpret deer as sapient race in MLP due to giving them more variety in terms of design and more kinder ruler than King Aspen (that, and the fact that deers from comics are Can't Argue with Elves trope in full effect, hypocrite's (see their entry on IDW characters page) and Designated Heroes). Not mentioning that IDW folks were lazy and put their homeland in Everfree Forest instead of creating some unique foreign land, like they did with Mount Aris. So I think that since comics aren't canon to the show ergo. we didn't saw any deers besides the non-talking ones (I tend to think of them as different species than deers of Cervyderia, similar to how we have red deer in Europe and elk in North America) makes it possible that Cervyderia exists on Equus. But what do you think? Because I personally think that having Hero of Another Story Similar Squad of Cervyderia deers is very cute idea and could provide us of characters that we know from the show (including the minor characters like Greta or Fizzle). I wonder if Sirzi ever wrote any fanfic involving his characters. If yes, then give me link to it.

I'm also posting "Sing the Day" from Bambi II, because is from a movie about deers and BECAUSE I CAN! (that last bit is from this "I like this character because..." memes)

Let me answer with a question: did fans lose interest in gods as part of fan worldbuilding? They're more rarely called "gods", and the actual level of power has definitely decreased, but the idea that powerful, immortal beings are still a central part of the setting seems to still be around.

Broadly speaking, fanon worldbuilding revolved so much around immortal and very magically powerful figures because the show has also tended to do that. Especially if you look at the first couple of seasons, it's not at all surprising that fandom interpretations took to looking at alicorns as essentially divine entities — Celestia and Luna were originally presented as these very visually distinct, immortal, powerful figures with roles and imagery typically associated with deities or angels and with very little bridging the gap between them and ponies, with eventual bridging and "humanization" (so to speak) mostly coming in later seasons, right?

Eventually alicorns were reframed as basically more special ponies, but that also came with the reveal that regular ponies can "ascend" to and become them, which sort of presented this form of immortality as a magical ruler as the "win condition" for a life of heroism — even at the very end, that's how Twilight ends up.

Similarly, the villains tended to follow a specific pattern of "this ancient, immortal being with a lot of magical power has come back from imprisonment or banishment to threaten us". There were some breaks in the pattern (Starlight, the Storm King), but that's essentially how things worked for the majority of the show — Nightmare Moon, Discord, Chrysalis, Tirek, the Pony of Shadows and Grogar all fit that pattern. There isn't a particular name for them, but it just seems to be taken as a given that some folk just have a bunch of special powers and live basically forever.

So, was the general power level of immortal magical beings "tuned down" overall? Yup, because so was the show's, and that's also why they're more rarely called gods. However, the basic assumption that immortal, magically powerful beings are still major factors in history and government doesn't seem to have ever really gone away.

My OC Midnight Blue's backstory is inspired by Gaelic^note Scottish Highlanders, Manx and Irish (particularly Scottish) mythology; their Fantasy Counterpart Culture, of course, being the Garrons. He is a bard who serves the Tuatha Dè Danann, who, in this setting are more or less traditional gods and goddesses who live in the dimension of Tìr nan Òg and are appeased with magical rituals performed by druids; bards are subset of druids who happen to specialise in religious chants. There is also an argument put forward that the Tuatha Dè Danann are more or less Anthropomorphic Personifications of magical elements, and ritual invocations of a particular deity are drawing on said element to cast a spell. I admit this is pretty different than most fandom interpretations of god-like creatures and almost intentionally so. A big theme of the stories starring Midnight in Equestria is the conflict between the Sufficiently Analyzed Magic of Equestria and the Religion is Magic mentality of the Garrons; which in turn is part of a wider Culture Clash between the two.

I believe that rather than Spike being a 7th Element he's another candidate to channel an existing Element (in addition to the main bearer).

Congratulations Spike! You're the new Rainbow Dash!

And yeah, the reason why early fanfics had godlike characters so much is because Celestia and Luna were assumed to be godlike, so the logical extrapolation was to have others. When later seasons introduced more alicorns and brought the princesses down to normal, that naturally went away.

Edited by storyyeller on Mar 31st 2024 at 12:52:41 PM

The idea of an Equestrian pantheon of alicorn gods does sound interesting

Guys! I founded out that there was a cut episode where Applejack proposed to Rarity! Just wait until I post link to it!

I finally found it!

April Fool's!

Edited by Filip04 on Apr 1st 2024 at 4:54:01 PM

very funny

In other news, they're making a new Equestria Girls special that has Sunset and Sci-Twi become an official couple.

Edited by SpongeGuy11 on Apr 1st 2024 at 10:35:57 AM

Pretty sure that was in the series finale, actually.

(3) Okay, this time you didn't fall for it. April Fool's!

Edited by Filip04 on Apr 1st 2024 at 4:52:08 PM

Re: Reindeer: Under The Northern Lights

Reindeer As Vikings

Interestingly, Sirzi also made Viking-inspired reindeers. And when I looked for the that link, I discovered that apparently there are some fans who think nordeers are better than The Gift Givers from Christmas special.

Also, when I was scrolling on Youtube, I discovered Crossover Episode between MLP and Littlest Pet Shop (2012). I just need to find it to share it with all of you...

Okay, this time you didn't fall for it. April Fool's!

Edited by Filip04 on Apr 2nd 2024 at 1:01:34 PM

^^ Also has its trope page.

Regarding the alicorns/gods thing, it's also notable that the first three alicorns all had some specific thing or concept associated with them — day/the sun, night/the moon/dreams, and love — which is another big part of what established the idea that alicorns had portfolios similar to how a god would, which is why a lot fan alicorns used to be specifically framed as being "the alicorn of" some concept or another.

That didn't really start to go away until Twilight became one, because she wasn't really "the alicorn of" anything in particular — she was just... an alicorn.

Edited by Theriocephalus on Apr 1st 2024 at 12:35:43 PM

Sorry to put in my two cents, but there was actually a goddess of friendship.

Edited by Filip04 on Apr 1st 2024 at 9:00:20 PM

My point was that, for most of her run as an alicorn, Twilight wasn't really associated with a concept or a physical thing the way that the other three were — obscure Greek deities notwithstanding. She basically just kept on doing the same sorts of things that she had been doing previously as a unicorn, which was a part of why alicorns stopped being associated with conceptual deity-like domains.

Because she's Whats Up Princess Dudette! That's why!

Also, no one yet responded to my discovery of Littlest Pet Shop Crossover Episode?

Okay, this time you didn't fall for it. April Fool's!

Edited by Filip04 on Apr 2nd 2024 at 1:01:53 PM

Pretty sure you were joking, but there was an MLP/LPS crossover commercial in 2012:

Pretty funny case of Ashleigh Ball talking to herself.

Yeah, that was April Fool's joke.

Also, do you think there is a Broken Base concerning movie's and show's artstyles? Like; which one has better quality or which one is the cutest. I've been asking myself these questions for some time now, and I wonder if they're others like me.

I don't think so, though early critique was pretty harsh on the stick figure qualities of the girls.

What do you mean by that?

You know, their ultrathin limbs in EQG.

I didn't meant Equestria Girls, but MLP: The Movie, and if debate over which artstyle (the show artstyle or movie artstyle) is better/cuter exist.

Edited by Filip04 on Apr 2nd 2024 at 10:27:08 AM