Princesses in MLP: FiM

[Carrehz]

I wonder if the princess/queen thing was less "queens are eeeevil!!" and more "Disney usually has princesses = Disney Princess stuff sells like hotcakes = princesses sell better than queens!"?

Granted the kings/queens in FiM are all (I think) evil... but then they don't usually make toys of the villains, so maybe Hasbro don't care what their titles are...?

[Al-1701]

This was before Frozen was a smash hit success with a queen and an archduchess.

[Zapper]

The movie broke the entire show.
Ok so the sun only rises because some nobody in Podunk sticksville boonies-town raises the sun, and no creature ever wonders why the moon has an evil horse face on it. And no creature ever wonders about that 'really long night that happened X-while ago', and nobody sought to find out. The movie made the princesses out to be paupers/nobodies and treated them as punching bags who are so weak. All the maps previously had also had Equestria as a continent, not just some walled-off rinky-dink valley of babies.
The show kind of made out the whole planet to be populated by animal-types, (yacks, griffins, zebra/s?, donkey, buffalo) but then the movie was like 'no theres cats and birds and trolls but they are "human" (human hands, human posture, human acting with clothing on) and view ponies as their slaves', and the mane 6 are ok with slavery because they all just go home after hearing about ponies=slaves for others/bought and sold, and proceed to do nothing about it. And no pirate air ship or high tech magic thing ever ever flew over Equestria and nobody from outside ever visited in in a billion years because reasons.

First off, I love your write-up Especially the part about Luna's portrait on the moon.

I liked the movie but you are correct, the expanded world makes no sense from this perspective.
I guess at the beginning of the show they centered the ponyworld with no intentions of having a G1 style large fantasy world where ponies are just the rulers of their own country and not the entire globe.

Maybe that's why I love that movie with the different species and locations. I like the idea of an open fantasy world with multiple dangers to ponies more than just "ponies rule supreme, they are like naturegods".

Maybe Equestria has a separate sun and moon. Their reality is different from the rest. Like medieval times their world is flat with a sun and moon pasted onto a starry sky ceiling. A kind of magic biodome and when they leave they are hit with the harsh reality nobody really cares for their sun and moon raising because other creatures have the real deal j/k

[MJNSEIFER]

To be honest, the movie never broke anything for me, because I was aware of the idea of their being other species out there as far back as season 1 - the diamond dogs were more anthropomorphic than other animals in the show, so seeing anthropomorphic animals in the movie didn't seem odd to me, as the show had already made it seem like a thing.  The whole different species thing has been inconsistent anyway, I will admit, but the movie didn't really do anything I hadn't seen the show do before, species wise.

Also, did the show ever confirm that Zecora had a cutie mark, because I always felt it was something else - I don't know what, but I never took it to be a cutie mark.

Also, sorry to ask, but would it be okay for me to place my headcanons on how alicorns and royalty works in this thread, or shall I put it somewhere else?

[SpacePinto]

Maybe Equestria has a separate sun and moon. Their reality is different from the rest. Like medieval times their world is flat with a sun and moon pasted onto a starry sky ceiling. A kind of magic biodome and when they leave they are hit with the harsh reality nobody really cares for their sun and moon raising because other creatures have the real deal j/k

And there's a pony Ed Harris watching everything from a secret room inside the moon.

[Zapper]

Maybe Equestria has a separate sun and moon. Their reality is different from the rest. Like medieval times their world is flat with a sun and moon pasted onto a starry sky ceiling. A kind of magic biodome and when they leave they are hit with the harsh reality nobody really cares for their sun and moon raising because other creatures have the real deal j/k

And there's a pony Ed Harris watching everything from a secret room inside the moon.

They had Big Lebowski ponies so why not Truman Show ponies?

[Taffeta]

The biggest issue in the movie for me was how Princess! Twilight Sparkle of Friendship and her posse were frankly fine with getting the pirates in trouble and ditching their ship all for their own personal gain, then bailed out and left them to face the music. And then the pirates THANKED THEM for it. Like, really? Seriously? There were ten other ways they could have helped the pirates which would have actually helped the pirates.

I never thought of the anthrocharacters as a problem but I'm also coming from the G1 background of that being pretty normal. But going back on topic, the way that Luna is made out in the first ep vs the few times I saw her in later material kind of undermined her as an entity anyway. From scaring the whole world into potential darkness to not really understanding how to do whatever it is the ponies call Trick or Treat...

[Ponyfan]

The biggest issue for me about the movie was how Twilight thought it okay to steal the pearl from the hippogriffs after Queen Novo refused to let her borrow it. I know she thought it was the only way to save Equestria  but even if she managed to steal the pearl without getting caught the consequences for the hippogriffs could have been devastating since they were using the pearl to live as sea ponies.

I have problems with Twilight in the regular episodes too mainly the one where Thorax was introduced. I think the show implies that Twilight was made the Princess of Friendship because she was the best at friendship yet when Thorax is introduced she immediately decides that he is evil just because he's a Changeling. Spike had to stand up for Thorax before Twilight would even give him a chance.

I like Luna and the Nightmare Night episode but I do think that the point of everyone acting afraid of her because it was part of the fun was a little strange.


Ponyfan
 

[sd_dreamcrystal]

Also, did the show ever confirm that Zecora had a cutie mark, because I always felt it was something else - I don't know what, but I never took it to be a cutie mark.

I don't think the show officially confirmed it... but then again I stopped watching the show around S5 E13 but officially stopped watching at the end of S5 (I managed to finish the rest of the episodes of S5 but after that no more). I think her symbol is implied to be her symbol as she is basically still a Pony type.

I haven't watched the movie but I'm wondering something... do you think it would be considered that from the start that Celestia and Luna made Equestria kind of it's own protected area from the outside world? I'm not sure how to term it lol

[Carrehz]

I've always wondered why Zecora has a symbol when no other non-ponies do. :/ I mean not even the hippogriffs do and they turn into sea ponies, right? Gah. To be honest I've just been chalking Zecora's design up to early installment weirdness (i.e. the writers hadn't completely figured out the ~lore~ yet)... Did they ever actually explain it in the show?

[Lady Frostbite]

I think Zecora was tone-deaf in a lot of ways, and the writers didn't really want to truely open up Zebra culture, since Zecora was quite stereotypical in some ways. I would have liked to have had the zebras fleshed out, but ... yeah, don't blame the writers for not touching that.

(Unless it was addressed in the comics?)

Queen Chrysalis could work in the insect theme of the changlings; the biggest changling was female, a Queen in the classic bee/ant/wasp/hornet sense. I assumed she was the one who laid eggs - if they would allow that in FiM, and she was outright shown next to newly-hatched changings and they all gravitated towards her. She says herself she leads them, and she looks for food for them, rather than having workers bring her food (though I don't doubt the other way happens at times too). If you wanted, you could have it simply work as: Queens lay eggs to make new worker changlings. Eventually, she will lay Queen eggs, and one of the eggs will give birth to a new Queen changling to take over once the present Queen dies/goes to live on Winona's farm. Literally, born to rule, born with the ability to breed that the workers and soldiers do not have. FiM doesn't even have to outright say it, since Chrysalis is so obviously different from her subjects; just show a bigger Changeling with fully developed eyes and a more complex design that's pretty much a 'Princess' to the Queen. Kids will easily connect the dots, and it's pretty much traditional Royalty; born into the position