The answer is...
It is as advanced as plot dictates it needs to be.
The In-Universe answer is "Magic"

Really there is "Tech" of a sort, but all "high tech" like radios, wireless stuff, Hydroelectric Dams (seriously yeah) is all chalked up to magic.

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Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
"Congratulations, you get a cookie. You almost got a fundamental English word correct." Pick
"Outlaw star has spaceships that punch eachother" Joviwan
Read "Tales From The Crossroads"!
Read "One Wrong Turn"!

Keep in mind that technological development is not a linear process: things are developed as there is need for them and not always in a step-by-step process.

Also, keep in mind out-of-universe factors: people don't or won't imagine old-time stlye hospitals (by our standards, old-timey hospitals are not pleasent or even terrible) for example.

Furthermore, one of the "word of god" things that Faust mentioned in her "pitching bible" is to keep technology simple: don't use a pen when you can use a quill, use a candle when you could use a flashlight, etc.

Also, when did we see radios?

Worse - they actually seem to have computers. Given that Cherilee was shown in '80s style fashion, and that was 10-15 years ago show time, I'd put Equestria in 90s, or early 21st century.


Except - Discord sucked. Yes, he was more powerful. But, it was Deus Ex Machina power - basically of the kind 'rocks fall, everyone dies. No, wait, you have plot coupon, rocks fall on rocks that were about fall on you and they die instead'. There was exactly zero tension to Discord, like Superman vs Average Joe fight. Queen? She is very powerful, but ultimately beatable, someone who provides genuine threat, not just 'rocks'. You say defeating Celesia is bad, isn't defeating Celestia off screen a thousand times worse?

Intelligence? Pardon? Queen won speed chess with her opponents, defeating each of 4 or 5 attempts to defeat her, Discord was just brick dumb idiot. You turn enemies into color-coded puppets? They show up colorful again? Meh, ignore, who cares. You can do a dozen things that will grant instant win to you? Meh, best dump gun that can kill you in the protagonist house. You can turn Twilight's letters into mayonnaise? Nah, best leave Celestia unchecked so she can sent them back, after all, who needs to keep tabs on very powerful alicorns? Not me. You can turn Pinkie to your side with zero effort? Meh, too much effort. Teleport Rarity to Gryphonistan? Nope. Make Rainbow Dash super-fast so her friends never catch her? Bleh. Make Spike belch non-teleporting water instead? Nah, not chaotic enough. Etc, etc.

Just compare - Queen defeats all attempts to defeat her, losing only to Cutie Mark quirk established as extremely powerful before, something she couldn't predict, while 'genius' Discord loses to something he knows perfectly well to be dangerous, something he saw in action 3 times before and despite visual cues obvious to everyone with eyes that it will work this time, too.

In short - Discord was one colossal, tension-less cretin, Chrysalis with his powers would have occupied Equestria in 10 seconds flat. He was about as good villain as dinosaur-killing asteroid, so over the top he wasn't scary at all. All he has going for him is his VA and one mildly amusing scene. Even his design resembled badly sewn teddy bear mishmash - he can be made better, I saw fan drawings making him look genuinely evil, but his show appearance tanked. Had he been voiced by someone unknown, he would have been worst character introduced so far, IMHO.


And be defeated the instant shield comes online?

The only reason Chrysalis was able to infiltrate defenses and slowly sap them was that everyone was looking for outside enemy. Like China making USA suspicious about Russia, so that Chinese sneak attack with all their nukes caught whole US arsenal pointed at Russia and unable to strike back, so to speak. Make them concentrate their force so it can be beheaded in one strike. I don't know if Queen made threat as diversion, or if Equestria's defences are better than we thought and Canterlot Intelligence Agency warned Celestia something was up, but either way, Queen exploited it brilliantly, had Cadence's cutie mark been anything else she would have been new ruler. Heck, had she didn't cared about her subjects and told them to stay in throne room, she would have won, but she did all of this for them, and lost displaying all too human weakness, not sitting grinning like an idiot while your enemies slowly load gun to kill you.


Okay, and what you would have them do?

They just watched Twilight's paranoia rise up through the whole episode, complete with her abnormal behaviour from Lesson Zero and time episode - all while shouting gibberish about how Cadence was 'evil' while presenting no proof at all. Remember Lesson Zero? The episode didn't ended with Twilight being right in any way, it ended with her friends begging Celestia to not imprison Twilight for mass mind-raping whole village!

And now, Twilight paranoia rises up again, and you demand them to do... What exactly? Both her brother and Cadence tell Twilight to shut up and stop being infantile, was her friends supposed to kick Shining Armour's flank into submission? What was Celestia supposed to do - follow inane shouts that almost ending with Twilight lobotomising whole village or stopping time for all eternity before? Or listen to her best officer and apparent family member? Pardon? It's possible they would talked to her afterwards, but for now, they had to comfort Cadence and make the wedding planning to do, not placating Twilight.

In short, would you help your best friend crash someone's wedding with shouts how the bride is evil, when the friend's own brother tells him/her to fuck off, or would you pretend to not know him/her? Friendship only goes so far, making cider is one thing, asking others to do things potentially criminal in scope is another.


They A) rolled their eyes at first; C) helping your friend to avert harmless imaginary "crisis" is something entirely different than crashing wedding when you have sobbing bride and Shining Armour as the other side to pick now.


Or, more likely

Twilight: Princess Celestia! Your sister Luna has turned evil! *makes insane faces*

Celestia: Twilight! How dare you?! You can forget about being my personal student! *glares* You have a lot to think about.

*Celestia gets zapped by Nightmare Moon and sent to the Moon*

Nightmare Moon: Gee, thanks for providing me with a distraction just when I needed it. No deception effort to distract and backstab Celestia would have been as successful as your stupidity! *sends Twilight to the moon to torture them both further for a millennium*


Evil Queen: Yeah, keeping that mare where we can easily tap her at our leisure while I infiltrate their command center so we can decapitate Equestria and feed not just on one mare, but on whole country makes no sense at all!

*beat*

Evil Queen: Or would you prefer to keep her where no one of us can feed on her, Equestria's armed forces free to kick us as they please, and Celestia free to mess up our plans? Yeah, that will work sooo much better than my plan, you dumb underling. Now hoof it!


Or that bit where Darth Vader defeated Palpatine with Dark Side. Or maybe where that water-drinking humans drowned. Not sense at all

The video games are a good argument for computers, yes. I wouldn't put too much fate into it, considering that we only seen them in one shot.

However, you are making the assumption that technological development is both linear and intertwined with human cultural development.

For all we know the 80's era fashion was just that: fashion. It had no impact on any technological development and whatnot.



It makes more sense if you realise that Discord is not entirely sane; something that the spirit of chaos and disharmony is bound to be.

Yes, he could have turned the Mane 6 into stone (or more likely given his dialog, just throw them across Equastria, so they can't unite and use the Elements), turned Celestia into a parrot and be done with it. However, it is quite clear that he would have found that option boring for him. He wanted to personally torment and meddle with them.

Plus, he probably knows many things that we don't know. He knew about the Elements and a weakness in it: if the bearers lose the traits that identify them with their Element, they can't use the magic that bound him.

As for color-cue, that's exactly what it was: a cue for the audience. Yeah, Spike remarked on it (which can be explained away as an oversight on the writing staff/ fourth wall joke/ etc), but nobody thought too much about it. You have to remember that this IS a kid's show, and something as simple as a color cue is not meant for the characters, but for the audience.

Considering Discord's power, the only way to really defeat him is by exploiting a personal weakness. So, yeah, that will inevitably lead him to be stupid.



There is a key word here: scary. Are you aware that there are a shitton of regulations and whatnot regarding children's show? Yes, MLP is great and rises far above that, but as far as technicalities are concerned, it's still a children's show.

One of these regulations state that the characters cannot be scary. No, I am not kidding, this was one of Faust's problems when she designed the Manticore (she discussed this during one of her interviews, I think). She's a talented artist, of COURSE she can make a pants-wetting terrifying character that inspires despair and hopelessness just by its mere sight. Thing is, that's not her style, not what the show is about and she was not allowed to make any), thus is not made. Even the current creators are not allowed, because those same regulations/laws/hyperactive whining parent groups/whatever still exist.

I am annoyed at how constricting the creativity of the show is due to bullshit like this, but that's reality. MLP is considered a children's show, no matter how many adult fans are there of it nor how good/bad reputation they make. I apologise for sounding indignant, but there is no point whining about what we can't get or quality unreached. I am sure the creators themselves wish they could have done a thousand things better, explored thousand different elements of a story more (for one, Faust wanted to have Zecora and Luna have more prominent roles), etc. We should be thankful for the good we get.

For more "Word of God" stuff, check Faust's MLP FAQ and her interview on EqD. While her ideas, she too reminds us, are not set in stone and that the show creators may change their minds about it, they overall reflect how the show works.

Well I totally called the awfulness of having the season finale episode(s) hosted. That said it was pretty great show. I'll have to post my thoughts later/tomorrow after rereading the last few pages. At least now I can't keep procrastinating doing this ... right?

Watching Chuck's review of MLP:FIM was bloody hilarious.
Loved the Rorschach parodying.

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[quote=]Put book front and center. He's our friend, we should honour him. Kaylee, find that kid who's taking a dirt-nap with baby Jesus. We need a hood ornment. Jayne! Try not to steal too much of their sh*t![/quote]

One odd thought. The wedding rings went on their horns in the last episode. What happens with marriages between ponies without horns ?

The horn-rings may be a unicorn (alicorn) tradition only.

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agentfisherSDnet: You're as brilliant as you are beautiful.
Librium Arcana, Where Gamers Play!
"We're cooler than an iced frappicino -- On the Planet Hoth!"

Merciful Celestia, Luna and all the pony saints
what is this I don't have the words - someone is making a documentary about bronies (by bronies, for bronies), and someone has pledged ten
THOUSAND
dollars
Just... fuck. I think this fandom has officially gone Too Far.

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And also one of the ingredients to making a pony is cocaine. -Darth Fanboy.

My Little Warhammer: Friendship is Heresy - Latest Chapter: 7 - Rainbow Crash

What, Rich people can't be fans? You forget it's the fashion in America for our millionaires do crazy things. Besides ten thousand is nothing. Literally nothing to some people. So some stock broker or money manager who makes ten million a year kicked in ten thousand. People play that much to get Herman Cain to show up and deliver a speech. Which would you rather have, a Brony documentary or Herman Cain singing at your birthday party.

*Edit
FYI if the entire kickstarter 72k project was put forward you could almost book Sarah Palin to come to your birthday.

I don't even know who Herman Cain is and I'd rather have him sing at my birthday than see this self-indulgent made-with-one-hand garbage. The only way it could be worth it would be if the documentary paints the bronies as some kind of menacing cult.

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And also one of the ingredients to making a pony is cocaine. -Darth Fanboy.

My Little Warhammer: Friendship is Heresy - Latest Chapter: 7 - Rainbow Crash

Oh man you missed out of the best part of the American Republican nomination processes
Herman Cain sings at Colbert's rally, skip to 1:40
Herman Cain best moments

Considering they're doing it by following John de Lancie around (and he's apparently rather involved in the project), I think it's a little more than some random Internet dude with a handycam.

As far as the fandom "going too far" meh. Trekkies got two documentaries, after all. And while I wouldn't say that MLP: FiM has had anywhere near the impact of the Star Trek franchise, I do think this documentary should be interesting. Given the historic attitudes toward "girl cartoons" (hey, Nostalgia Chick didn't come out of a vacuum!) and the MLP franchise in particular.

If certain evidence is anything to go by, might be more advanced than Earth


On males or females?

Ahahaha, MLP back to the top of the Fantasy forum!

So anyway it was brought up in the image thread but that's not really about discussion, and this thread is. So reposting, thanks to Skgoa for originally sharing it:

IDW Announces 'My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic' Comic By Katie Cook and Andy Price [SDCC]

Well, I'm looking forward to it. Should be interesting. I don't know how long the show itself will last, but the comic should have pretty good legs, assuming decent sales. So this could be a way to keep the current FIM universe going for awhile, even if Hasbro and The Hub cap the show at 65 episodes.

Songs! Season 3 songs!

Twilight song and Mane Six song? Hell yes. Also the subjects of those two songs have me very interested in seeing the related plots of the episodes, especially the second one.

And a couple questions:



What I've seen out of those songs gets me pumped up for Season 3, and with some of it showing what the creators/animators are going for, I really really hope it's more than 13 episodes and we don't end anytime soon.

(Any word on that, by the way? More than 13 eps or are we still not sure?)

Man, I can't wait for Season 3 now. I was waiting just fine but now I'm all tingly. That second song is pretty interesting with its implications.

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[

Season three confirmed for only 13 episodes.

William Anderson (one of the composers) cryptically implies says more seasons to come, which hopefully belies most of the speculation that the show will end at 65 episodes (the magic syndication number).

This makes me sad.


This makes me happy.

Man, such mood whiplash in only two sentences. I don't know whether to congratulate you or swear eternal vengeance on you and all your descendants.

I think I'll go with both.

I recently discovered that someone has actually drawn bona fide fan art for my fan fic. Here it is.

Not only that though... I also discovered that someone else had commissioned another artist to draw anthro bondage fetish art based on my story (which I won't link to). Yes, apparently someone dished out as much as 30 dollars to see bizarro versions of my characters tied up. It's not explicit - there's no nudity or anything - but you could technically say that my work has been subject to Rule 34. I'm about 90% proud, 10% repulsed.

We now have a canon map of Equestria!
Here's a high-resolution scan of the map poster on Pixelkitties' dA page.

Hum, No Trottingham, I wonder if its actually a different country and I guess Big Mac was named after the mountains.

I have read it. I highly approve, and want to ask why this hasn't been copied over to SDnet's fanfics.

Also, how long til Chapter 11? *must read, must read*

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agentfisherSDnet: You're as brilliant as you are beautiful.
Librium Arcana, Where Gamers Play!
"We're cooler than an iced frappicino -- On the Planet Hoth!"

Possibly. There is a little boat there in Horseshoe Bay so I'm guessing there might be some overseas continents.