In "Horse Play," Twilight's little play says "every morning" six sorcerers raise the sun, and all but Starswirl permanently lose their powers. Celestia took over sun raising, and put a stop to this.
This contradicts the account in the book Journal of the Two Sisters, which says twelve unicorns were involved in sun and moon raising. One morning, the sun raisers suddenly and unexpectedly lost their powers. Celestia took over raising the sun that very morning.
The arrangement in Horse Play seems unsustainable. They're burning through five sorcerers every single morning. But I've come up with an explanation that mostly harmonizes the book with the episode, and explains how society survived this "magic drain".
After the eleven sun-raisers lost their powers, Celestia didn't take over immediately. Instead, Starswirl quickly rounded up five sorcerers, raised the sun together, and all but Starswirl lost their powers. From then on, Starswirl had ponies conscripting five sufficiently powerful sorcerers every single day, and draining their powers to keep the sun moving for one more day. This was not the normal way of things, but a desperate response to a recent crisis. After an unknown number of days or moons of this, Celestia decided to attempt a sunrise solo. When she succeeded, the unicorns celebrated. They would no longer need to sacrifice their magic powers to move the sun. In gratitude, they named Celestia and Luna the rulers of Equestria.
Scenario
The Mane 7 defeat an ancient evil. They manage to destroy it, but they end up imprisoning themselves in Limbo in the process.
1,000 years in the future, they are released by a group of adventurer ponies who stumbled across the site of their imprisonment.
Even though a millennium has passed, the Mane 7 feel as if no time has gone by at all.
Equestria is now a (magi-)technologically-advanced civilization. Through a combination of science and magic, ponies and their allies have colonized the Solar System and begun work on an interstellar empire.
There are almost no natural areas anymore on Equestria, outside of designated parks or historical landmarks.
The Everfree Forest has been completely torn down, as Ponyville is now a massive city.
Nearly everyone who knew the Mane 7 in life is long dead, even Celestia and Luna. The only ones who are still alive are Spike (who is now an elderly dragon) and Discord.
The Mane 7 are venerated historical figures in this new society.
For whatever reason, the Mane 7 can't time travel back to their era.
How would the Mane 7 react to their situation?
Some spoilers for the Deadpool movie.
While Wade is recovering from blowing himself up in the apartment, he meets Negasonic whatsherface's girlfriend, Yuki. At first he's shocked, and Nega thinks he's judging, but he's only shocked because he wasn't expecting "Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony" , since Yuki has pink hair and all.
Doesn't help that she's a cute character who greets Wade every time they meet.
Hello and again welcome to your weekly dose of 'No-one reads this bit so I can say that I'm a horse': 'This Week on the Plounge' wherein I inform you, the fine folks of the mane sub, what's been going on at your favourite sister subreddit, the Plounge, this past week.
Wait, what is this Plounge you speak of?
The Plounge, or more formally the MLP Lounge is /r/mylittlepony's sister subreddit. Designed to be a place where you can free of the tyranny of rules 3 and 4. A chill place for bronies or anyone to talk in a SFW chat centric environment. It can be found over at /r/MLPLounge. (most of us browse by /new though). Oh and BPM is nice to have. Even if you're allergic to using emotes yourself you'll miss a lot of extra context without it.
What some casual conversation with a sprinkling of ponies? Come over to this introductions thread and meet some people. Don't worry there's also a topic so it ain't just "hi!" "hi" awkward silence.
News
Regulars
Every week there are up to two Plounge member of the 'day' AMAs! You can sign up here. AMAs since last week's TWOTP are...
Character Discussions Threads (weekly on Fridays) courtesy of /u/I_Condone_Pone:
Sprankton is doing a classic Plounge thing, a Pokemon playthrough told via screenshots and captions. You can suggest nicknames for pokemans even, wow audience participation!
Plounge Rewatch! Fluttershy02 rewatches the serious, and posts twice weekly discussion threads on episodes. Here's some!
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The top 5 link and self posts, for your browsing content.
Self Posts
Links
Highlights
(manually selected rather than just by score)
So, because it's No-Pics Thursday (May 17th, 2018) today, you know what that means...
It's time for the Weekly Fanfic Recommendation LINK-SWAP Game thread to continue!
Anyways, THE RULES (read 'em carefully):
Post a link to a fanfiction you like (can be your own as well - it's okay to self-promote), with or without a short blurb.
Important: Reply to someone else's post with a link to a fanfiction you think they might like, based on their choices.
Put each of your choices in a separate post if you want to make sure to get a recommendation based on each one. You may reply to someone else's reply, either to you or to someone else. Please make long discussion threads, they introduce a healthy bit of exploration and can help us find new interests! And that's it!
PLEASE COMPLETE BOTH STEPS 1 and 2. Don't just show up and ask for recommendations if you're not willing to provide any. I'll start the first few threads myself, and reply with a gentle reminder if you forget.
IMPORTANT NOTE. Thanks to /u/BookHorseBot (many thanks to their creator, /u/BitzLeon), you can now use the aforementioned bot to easily post the name, description, views, rating, tags, and a bunch of other information about a fic hosted on Fimfiction.net. All you need to do is include "{NAME OF STORY}" in your comment (without quotes), and the bot will look up the story and respond to your comment with the info. It makes sharing stories really convenient. You can even lookup multiple stories at once.
Ready? Set? LET"S GO! Also, feel free to self-promote in here!
The season 4 finale is know for having a 50/50 divide among fans. Some like it for Tirek and his epic fight with Twilight, some others criticise it for the next to nonsensical plot. It's pretty clear that the episode was written around Twilight having a grand fight with a demon and everything was crafted backwards from that.
So here are the four most contentious points and my ideas on how they could have been fixed.
1 - the princesses' plan
So the princesses' plan was to transfer all of their power to Twilight, so Tirek doesn't get it himself.
Hmm and what exactly were they planning to do after that? Just have Twilight hiding away forever?
Well, what if Twilight was already in Canterlot and Tirek was right around the corner? Maybe he managed to get just enough power to threaten the princesses and got sneaky enough to surprise them. (Perhaps Discord helped him in that. He teleported him around the world and there was no way to track them down, until it was too late.)
And because the princesses knew they couldn't compete with them, they transferred all if their powers to Twilight, so she could go back to Ponyville and figure out the tree box thingy.
Of course, the power is too much for her to handle and she spazzes out of control. By the time she gathers herself and get to Ponyville, Tirek is already there.
Commence awesome fight scene.
2 - Discord
It's also a common point that Discord was stupid enough to not see Tirek crossing him. Being tempted by power is less of a problem. This isn't fully reformed Discord yet, after all. However, a few things could have been tweaked with.
For once, he should have been planning to overthrow Tirek. He deliberately beefed him up, just so he could steal his power in the end.
And a big change here, Ponyville has already been raided. They went for it the first time, because Discord knew the mane 6 was the most likely to stop them. They kept the princesses for last. And Discord assumed Twilight would be there as well.
And when he saw that she wasn't there (and Tirek saw the Twilight stained glass) he confessed about Twilight's existence afterwards. (which would have made the other princesses mad at him, before being sent to Tartarus.)
And that's the point where Tirek axes off Discord, because he knew he was going to double cross him.
Discord was just caught off guard, because he underestimated Tirek.
Tirek goes to Ponyville, finds Twilight in the library and the fight can commence.
3 - the princesses getting axed again
Well, let me ask you this. Did we ever see them do anything big? We heard them do big, but have we ever seen them do things?
My theory is that they're quite powerful, but not nearly as powerful as they're hyped up to be. They always needed help to banish threats larger than themselves. It was really just the elements if harmony that allowed them to fix problems like that.
Just think about it. Nightmare Moon would have easily defeated Celestia, if it wasn't for the elements. They both needed them to defeat Discord. And without the elements? Chrysalis defeats Celestia with stolen love. Get abducted by evil vines. They get decommissioned by fekking clouds.
So the princesses really are useless.
How did Twilight match Tirek then? I hear you ask. Ahh, you know she had her own power as well. And she can just ingerently match all of them, she just doesn't realize it.
4 - Twilight giving up Equestria for her friends
A smaller complaint, but still pretty prevalent. What exactly was her plan after giving all the power to Tirek? What was she going to do?
Easy. She just figured out how to open the tree box thingy.
So what do you think? What holes can you see in my version of the two parter?
We're not even halfway through season 8, so there's still plenty of chances for the Student Six to get more development later on.
However, right now, they haven't gotten much time to really shine (their only centric episode so far was more focused on Applejack and Rainbow Dash's feud).
If you were given a chance to write an episode or a series of episodes that gave the Student Six more depth, character flaws and general characterization besides "nice kids who attend the school", what would you do?
This is a topic that occasionally crops up the fandom, and I'm curious to see what opinions around here are on it: Do ponies have free will, the capacity to choose the direction of their lives totally of their own decisions? The answer seems to have changed over time on the show:
In the beginning of the show, ponies seemed to have much more direct agency.
Your talent only provided general suggestions towards what your position in life was. You could stick straight with it, or bend things a little bit: Rarity made dresses, despite having gemstones on her butt. Rainbow Dash wasn't just fast, she ran the town's weather.
The Element-bearers were chosen by the carrying out of a careful, long-term plan and to create the circumstances where they could assume the Elements. While initially seeming like they have no agency, remember that this is the act of another being and not the world itself.
While earlier seasons did reference destinies, it was in the context of something a pony can gain through their own choices - not something they just have.
In later seasons, however, the concepts of Destiny as an inflexible path and cutie marks heavily defining a pony becomes much more direct in the show:
Attempting to change marks or adjust the circumstances of gaining a mark has dramatic negative consequences ranging from ponies being unhappy in their new lives to the destruction of Equestria itself. The latter implies that there are literally no other ponies who could possibly bear the elements, unless we assume another factor (i.e., Celestia's planning) is responsible.
Songs directly a make clear statements about ponies having fixed destinies they cannot change.
Hell, the entire Troubleshoes episode seems to be a clear case of "you can't avoid your destiny, and running from it will just hurt you. You can even get your mark in something you're unhappy with. Better hope you can settle for second-best."
Even when the show tries to contradict this, it get murky: Marks and Recreation tried to tell us ponies can still share fun things despite their mark, but ended up just showing that they can have side hobbies - not the talents and destinies their lives revolve around. That's nice, but Thunderlane still couldn't become a talented chef even if he tried. He doesn't have the mark.
When thinking about this, it's also important to consider the pony mindset: Ponies love controlling things. In fact, I think it's fair to all them control freaks. Everything about their world - the nature, the weather, the magic - is run by a higher power. It's little-surprising that they're generally unmoved by the idea of destiny as a fixed, unchangeable thing, no matter how bizarre or worrisome it may seem to us. Those who aren't satisfied - those rare outliers - are isolated, as had happened to the Our Town ponies.
So over the years of watching this and and it's wonderful characters we have all developed certain head canons that have either been disproven or been allowed to remain intact. With this in mind ladies and gentlecolts what are the headcanons that you have developed for Equestria's lands and denizens?
I have a few myself which I shall share here:
1) Sunset Shimmer is Celestia's daughter in all but name, the two of them never gaining the nerve to approach the subject.
2) Celestia and Luna are indeed quite powerful but their power takes time to gather before a fight, thus why they keep getting taken out in surprise attacks.
3) Trixie is indeed a very talented Unicorn but simply does not have the power nor training needed to back up her creativity and boasting.
4) A unicorn's magical power is like a muscle that can be trained to a certain extent.
5) Tirek's Mother and Father are still alive in Centaur/Gargoyle land. Simply because it makes for fun pathos between them and Equestria in Diplomatic meetings.
6) Unable to get into the Wonderbolts, Luna took Lightning Dust aside and created the Shadowbolt's squadron to assist the Wonderbolts in night engagements.
7) Sombra is still alive in the show-verse slowly reforming. Because they never addressed his horn flying off in the show and I much desire to see my favorite villain again.
8) Octavia is a Pie cousin.
Who is your favorite ship, and why? Also, what do you think is the worst ship, why?
I am about to embark on a rewatch of the entire series, with one of my goals being to rate each episode BEFORE I watch it depending on how much I'm looking forward to the rewatch, and then rate it after I watch it.
Mostly, I'm looking to see which episodes match my memories of them the most, but also more interestingly, which ones my opinion has changed dramatically on.
I used to regularly rewatch episodes, so I don't think my opinions will shift too much on the earlier seasons, but I expect it might change a lot more in recent seasons (once I finally catch up to them).
I was curious if anyone else has had dramatic changes in how they feel about a specific episode, either due to changing context because of a later event in the series, or just a personal change in how they view it.
Hi there! It's Thursday again and that means another chance to talk about what's been happening around here and how you feel about it!
Same as every other time, feel free to discuss whatever it is you'd like regarding our little subreddit good or bad. If you're unhappy we'll try our best to fix whatever problem you're having!
If you want to talk about the MLP fandom in general, that's fine too!
But some people may not want to talk about comics or anything else that hasn't happened yet, so you should be nice and hide those conversations from those people by using the spoiler tag.
If you don't know how it's as easy as making an emote:
[It has ponies!](/spoiler)
Becomes: It has ponies!
And if you're not wanting to discuss the subreddit or community specifically you can also check out the weekly off-topic thread that will be up at noon Pacific time!!!!
