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Next time I'm suggesting a Rambo parody title. I'll patiently wait till Pony thread 8.

@Chowzburgerz It doesn't HAVE to be a movie title, or even a movie that has as many movies as we have Pony threads (Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc etc.) it's about which name is just….well better! In the end Live Free or Twi Hard and Twilight Sparkle and the Deathly Hasbro were the more creative names (although, was kind of hoping my Darkman 3 parody would've gotten more than one vote :| ) and well….Live Free or Twi Hard doesn't give people the impression that we hate Hasbro and their decision to make Twilight an Alicorn, it's a more acceptable name than something that could've rubbed people the wrong way (and as much as I liked the Deathly Hasbro and >Implying we talk about Ponies here titles they both give out the wrong impressions).

You ain't colon nothing, Terry.

Oh boy….this means the next thread will be full of Die Hard references (for at least the first few pages). Welp, time to rewatch the first three movies to get me ready for references (not watching the last two as they were both monkey shit).

Although I'd be much happier if the next thread was named after Predator. I'm full of Predator References! For one my first post on that thread would be "Bunch of slack-jawed faggots around here. This stuff will make you a god damned sexual Tyrannosaurus, just like me." Then I'd make a post referencing Blain's "I ain't got time to bleed" line. Man that would be one fun thread for the first few pages until people forget the thread is one big Predator reference.

I mentioned this to Fifths in the After Stream tonight, but I'll post it here too.

Device Heretic's idea around Alicorn ascension are my favorite. While How to Steal Centuries and FNoARB are both a little.. out there.. a certain part of Cadance's thoughts in HoSC caught my attention.

Luna and Celestia are born alicorns (like Crimson Locks said), and are more Magic than Pony. Celestia's know-all-see-all thing in Magical Mystery Cure showed she can ascend into a more ethereal state, and can obviously grant powers to other ponies she sees as worthy. Luna is a master of illusions, and can see your innermost fears and invade your mind to make you face them. They're both EXTREMELY powerful creatures who, so far as we know, were born into their power.

Cadance and Twilight were given their powers, but began their lives as normal ponies (pegasus/unicorn). While they are certainly a step above the other creatures of the world, they were born mortal, and their mortal selves are an important part of who they are. Putting any more magic into them would be to change who they are, and so they are alicorns.. but just reflections of the only two true alicorns in existence.

Sorry Twilight. You're probably not going to live forever.

@Alicorns aging

Um… You do realize that Alicorns Actually continue growing long past the maximum growth of most ponies… Right?

When we saw "Filly" Cadence, that was after her ascension. And she was already slightly bigger than your usual pony. And she continued growing.

Twilight gained a bit of growth after her ascension as well.

And you know where most ponies stop growing? At Regular pony size, the same size as the rest of the Mane Six. Rarity's parents are the same size as her Darn it!

So my Theory is that Twilight will grow to the same size as Cadence, Celestia, Luna, and so on, due in part to becoming an Alicorn.

But the real question here is Immortality, not whether or not they are still growing. The fact they are still growing actually points to the possibility that they are immortal.'

Why?

Let's think about it. Most humans reach their peak growth at about 20 right? Then it's 60 years of decline until death. That's an Age of about 80.

But imagine if once you got to 20, you were still growing? You still hadn't fully matured?

Say it takes till you're 40 to be anywhere near fully grown, Then add to that the 60 or so years needed for the body to fall appart and you're now at 100 year lifespans.

Now let's look at Luna and Celestia.

Celestia is the Oldest Alicorn we know of. Or "Most Mature". With Luna still behind her.

And you'll notice… Luna still hasn't caught up to Celestia. Which at the very least means that it makes a lot more than 1000 years to become a fully grown Alicorn.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that although an Alicorn's growth may slow, it doesn't stop. And since it doesn't stop, they've never reached full maturity.

Which means… They can't become "Old", since they never reach their peak.

This however does not mean that Twilight will outlive The others because the others can always find other ways to live as long as her. Whether it be via Age spells or what, it doesn't matter.

There's also this ONE other possibility…

Twilight performs a Heroic Sacrifice!

But do you really want that?

Lunar Protege wrote:

Um… You do realize that Alicorns Actually continue growing long past the maximum growth of most ponies… Right?

I'd like to see some word of god to prove that statement.

When we saw “Filly” Cadence, that was after her ascension. And she was already slightly bigger than your usual pony. And she continued growing.

I wouldn't call that "filly" Cadence, she was more of a teenager at the time of the flashback.

And, while I can't easily compare teenage Cadence to other adult ponies, I think it's safe to say she had about the same proportions as the average pony. In this show, it seems ponies usually reach their normal size around the teenage years.

Also, as far as pony size goes, I think you are forgetting that ponies like Fleur exist

Fleur has practically the same proportions as Cadence and she's only a unicorn, and not even royalty. So it's possible that Cadence happens to be a pony with unusual body proportions that have no correlation to her alicornhood. Correlation does not mean causation.

Twilight gained a bit of growth after her ascension as well.

Pics or it didn't happen. There haven't been that many shots since Twilight's ascension to compare her size to the other mane 6. The best shot I could find was this gif directly after her ascension

And she is still the same size as Fluttershy.

Hey, I could be wrong and Cadence and Twilight could be growing like Celestia and Luna are, but there's just not enough information to make any solid proof.

@Forum Thread Election
Damn, that's forty million bits down the tube. We'll get it back in the midterms, mark my words!

@Twilicorn Immortality
Canon trumps Word of God. Currently, it is reasonable to assume that alicorns live for a long time. If they address this in season four (which they might), that'll definitively clear up everything. If they go the Applejack's Parents route and never bring it up, I'm deferring to already established canon and declaring Twilight immortal long lived.

@Crimson Locks

Well… I suppose you've show I'm not necessarily Right…

But Really, since when have I been aiming for "Right"?

I've been aiming for "Could be right, so at least its enough to base a fan fic off of without someone breathing down my neck about it not being canon when it could go either way".

…

Okay that's kinda childish of me. And so was my last post actually, so maybe I should apologize?

Sorry.

Shhh… Can you hear that? It's the sound of a million sadfics being strangled to death.

@Twilight NOT outliving her friends

EVERYCORN THEORY CONFIRMED

Wait… Twi Hard won the thread title vote?

That's disappointing. I'm sick of all the movie puns, but the Deathly Hasbro was actually pretty clever. Rarity General getting third was a pleasant surprise, though. But Twi Hard? That is an absolutely awful pun.

Still haven't got my internet back, but I had to drop by at a hotspot and show you guys this:
CHIMICHERRICHANGAS ARE REAL.

Wait… now that you put it that way…

@Alicorn age discussion: Give Crimson a medal.

@Advance

Well, Rarity General is…actually a terrible idea for a thread title, objectively speaking. I have the sneaking suspicion (i.e., I'm almost certain) that after the first vote that you recruited people to vote specifically for Rarity General, which isn't outside of any "rules," so I don't mind. But once I make a link to the spreadsheets I used, you'll see that Rarity General lost for similar reasons as Twilight Sparkle and the Deathly Hasbro: Little to no secondary support after being a first choice.

But back to being objective, this is The Pony thread for the site. Naming a thread that will last about half of a year for one pony specifically with no wordplay at all is just as bad of an idea as a title with wordplay but unfortunate implications.

@DeadParrot

Speaking of those sheets, after all of the concerns people had with the voting process before, I simply couldn't guess or otherwise estimate what the winner would be by any other means than what we had selected. "Twilight Sparkle and the Deathly Hasbro" was still close to winning (and had won before I made the last call where Advance (allegedly) asked bronies from the image gallery to vote and vote a certain way,) so if it had won again (especially with my support of the title,) people would have wanted to know exactly what I did. If I had shown them a shortcut as my methodology, there would have more issues to deal with.

I had to take out the hours to run the runoff as the method called for. No other way around it. : /
 
Once I'm done with errands, I'll try to find a way to upload the scratch work so you can see them though. I will say that I removed quite a few of the votes due to not following instructions, voting multiple times, and being inactive on the site altogether. So unless we have the same 43 votes, I'd say it was something between a coincidence and "Live Free or Twi Hard" simply scoring the best through both methodologies.

…. This could have all been avoided if you'd have just voted for the "fellowship of the golden horse orbs"

In other news I'm writing an essay in my philosophy class comparing "Hearth's Warming Eve" to the sequester and "Putting Your Hoof Down" to Erhard Seminars Training. Wish me luck!

Verbose wrote:

before I made the last call where Advance (allegedly) asked bronies from the image gallery to vote and vote a certain way

Can you back that up with some evidence Verbose? Should this be true, there will be some issues I have with the vote counting. Not because of you Verbose (you did great), but I might request to remove some votes based on how much of an impact it left. Advance, should this be true, I am disappointed in you. If not, my apologies.

There is no way I would make a thread called Rarity General, because Rarity is worst Mane Six. There, I said it.

Still called it.

@Twilight outliving friends
Expanding on what CrazyMoon said, I personally think that Celestia and Luna are the only alicorns that live for long periods of time. I mean, if all alicorns were to live that long, you would think that there would be a few more running around wouldn't you? I suppose it's not impossible though, I mean afterall, we didn't learn about Cadance until the Season 2 finale, so I guess there might be a few more around. I dunno, it just seems unlikely.

I would also like to bring up another alicorn pony princess that has been shown in the series:

This princess apparently lived a long time ago, and she hasn't ever been mentioned since. Again, this doesn't really prove anything, but it seems pretty unlikely that she's still around considering we've never heard of her.

@Extending lives of other mane 6
I… really don't like this idea. It seems a bit contrived and it would raise a lot of other questions, like why no other ponies that we know of have had their lives extended and what makes the mane 6 so special (I don't think "being the elements of harmony" is really reason enough). Plus, what about the CMC? Or Big Mac? Or the Cake family? If the mane six were to live forever, it would mean outliving all of them as well, which takes us back to square one.

That does make me think of another interesting point, though. What would be a good series finale? If all the loose ends are tied up (CMC get their cutie marks, Rainbow Dash becomes a wonderbolt), what would be an appropriate way to see the show off? Assuming the show DOES end…

>Show ending.

@Forum Thread Election
So, basically, Advance (allegedly) rigged the election. I demand UN Election Monitors be brought in and a recount declared.

I knew this was going to end with a Civil War. Good thing I used some of my SuperPAC money to funnel weapons into the Forum. The Deathy Hasbro Liberation Front will rise and liberate the forum from the oppression of Rarity and complicated election voting.

The best ending to the show would be to make Mayor Mare an Alicorn.

If you request us to make use of our position on this website to navigate the votes in the direction we want, would you mind me making use of mine and pulling the mod card? I can simply edit a title at any given point I want through that. Or would that take it too far?

Abusing your popularity from the shadows to rig the voting simply because you refuse one title to win? I am severely disappointed, in both you and those that went along with this idea. This is no longer a democratic vote. I stand with what I said in my previous post and will request the removal of certain votes due to these low actions.

Okay, so this is some really weird news about the votes. Twilight Sparkle and the Deathly Hasbro didn't compete in a fair fight because someone hated the title.

Thats just great…..

Twilight Sparkle and the Deathly Hasbro was the popular choice at first. And it was a popular in the previous poll, and only now it looses because it was rigged.

Can we just make Twilight Sparkle and the Deathly Hasbro the title.

(Btw, I totally understand if someone wants to discredit/discard my vote, and say I have no right to vote/choose since im not a regular poster in the thread [I used to be an active poster a long while ago] Im a lurker now. I check the thread daily. Actually more like 20 times a day. But post rarely)

Did you really have to fess up so quickly, Advance? I had evidence and everything…

Can you back that up with some evidence Verbose? Should this be true, there will be some issues I have with the vote counting.

First link.

This is the list of users I included in the Instant Runoff. Take note of the timestamps (I haven't altered them.)

There was another influx of voters on the morning of April 8th (US Eastern.)

• These users are entirely inactive on the thread, and they had not voted in the 4-5 days prior to this point.
  • Some people like to lurk, but so do Muumi and Ric Tesla. They (among other lurkers) had their votes in well before this time. Why were so many pressed to submit ballots well after these lurkers and in such a specific period of time?
• This influx of users had specific preferences during this spree.
  • If you'll start with the user "Mr. Scratch" who submitted his vote at about 9am on April 8th (US Eastern,) you'll see that:
    1. There is a distinct gap of votes in terms of time. I'd speculate that in this time (or just before it,) someone sent out a set of PM's or wall posts to vote, and
    2. All of these users voted in certain ways.
  • In fact, Free Cake and Mr. Scratch had voted the same way:
  • Rarity General being their favorite.
  • Twilight Sparkle and the Deathly Hasbro being their least favorite.
    • This actually indicates that they were given instructions. If they read the directions, they'd know that in the end, they actually gave their final support to Twilight Sparkle and the Deathly Hasbro, because Rarity General had already lost, and their next supported vote was Twilight Sparkle and the Deathly Hasbro. If they were paying attention, they wouldn't have voted for it at all.
  • Other users in this influx also voted similarly, where Rarity General had 6 of the final 13 votes. If I didn't include yours and Ivan's vote (because I doubt either of you voted based on anyone's instruction,) it would have had a true majority in that last influx (6 for Rarity General, 5 for everything else in total.)

So to sum, because of the timing and voting tendencies of those 11 voters who don't post in the thread and show no evidence of lurking (by voting before that influx,) I believe someone was pressing users from elsewhere to vote and to vote in a certain way.

@DeadParrot

Another link

• For users that contacted me about multiple ballots, I removed all of them but the one they wanted.
• For those who submitted multiple ballots but did not contact me, I removed all but their most recent ballot.
• None of the users who used the same rank twice or more were considered in the runoff.
• Users with less than five points of activity (a "point" being an image upload, an article submission or edit, a forum post, etc.) were not considered.

Now the first and second pages are the remnants of the redistributing of votes I did. So when a user's first place suggestion was eliminated through runoff, their 2nd/3rd/Xth vote was considered in its stead.

Here, "Rarity General" (along with ">Implying We Talk About Ponies Here" and "Are You a Princess Too?") had its votes moved to the remaining two choices: "Twilight Sparkle and the Deathly Hasbro" and "Live Free or Twi Hard"
 
The third page shows when and what choices were eliminated and with how many votes. For example, the first round eliminated choices with no first place votes. Since they had no votes, they could not be redistributed before being removed from the runoffs. The second round eliminated "It Didn't Have to End Like This." So its one vote was moved to the user's second place choice (i.e., >Implying We Talking About Ponies Here) before the third round of runoffs were executed.
 
The fourth and fifth pages show which options were eliminated in each round, which users voted for those eliminated options, what rank that user gave that option (usually 1, but it could have been 2 or lower if they had their 1st choice previously eliminated,) and what their next choice was.
 
The last page simply shows the "placing." This is based mostly on what round each choice was eliminated.
 
 
 
If you have any questions, I don't want to hear them …no, I still don't want to hear them, really. But I'll answer them.

Hm…I tend to agree with RM and Ivan here. At some point, this voting thing got too serious. It may have been when we chose a different system, but it certainly was passed when we actively began to recruit people who have no interest in the thread (not even considering that they were told to vote a certain way.)

In fact, between RM and I, I hesitantly but certainly make that decision:

I can either just make Twilight Sparkle and the Deathly Hasbro the winner from its previous (and even current) success…

Or I can redo the votes without those suspected to be influenced by Advance (and nixing Advance's.)
 
No vote on this. Feel free to give your two cents, but we're really close to Page 1, so I think RandomMan and I will figure that out.

Only change "you're" to "we're".

I'm sure Verbose would agree, we should all follow the KISS model in the future.

If you really wanna know what I think, I simply don't care about the Pony General VII title anymore. Let us hope this discussion dies with this thread.

Nope!

RM and I will figure something out. If not, then I have a back-up plan. But we are done with the title talk. Back to business.

Many of you have never seen the end of a thread before!

Post Pone!!! Shift into maximum overdrive!!!

@Political drama

Let's spend the last three pages doing something better than politics!

"Pony General VII: We seriously couldn't figure out a new title in 200 pages"

I've got a question for discussion.

As far as entertainment goes, Pony is pretty damn vanilla. Episodes consist of friends banning together in an idyllic and colorful world to solve menial problems (barring the occasional chaos god, bug rapist, and Elderitch horror mind you)

So…why does fanwork have such a heavy concentration of sadfics, angst, gore, and porn? How is it that so many will watch a happy pony ep and think to themselves "Damn, that was great, it makes me write a fanfic. I know! I'll write a story about how Twilight Sparkle has a friend die, gets raped, and then gets raped again by her dead friend."

Why is that connection made?

I wouldn't say this is particularly unique to the pony fandom, especially not the porn

I think a good bit of it has to do with the fact that, in order to get noticed in such a prolific fandom, you have to write something astoundingly different, or even shocking in order to get much attention unless you're just really good at what you do.

Something that'll make people do this:

and then share your stuff.

But as I said, I don't think this is unique to the pony fandom at all, and it's just common for all large fandoms.

@Thread title

Alright, I've just about had enough. I should not be seeing so much butthurt and arguing over a goddam thread title, especially not from moderators. When we are reaching a point of multiple re-votes, new voting systems and rigging accusations, I'd say we've crossed a line.

What was once a happy contest is now the Venezuelan political election.

A thread title isn't worth all this. This should never have become as political as it did. I say we name the new thread KYM PONY GENERAL: WE COULD NOT AGREE ON A TITLE

There, done. Let this madness end. I really don't care what the thread is named anymore, I just want people to hurry up and make a decision.

I don't care if "Live free or Twi Hard" was rigged. At least it's mostly inoffensive. Roll with it or pick nothing at all.

@Fifths

That always struck me as a natural tendency of the internet.

Recall the rule of the internet: The more pure and innocent something appears, the more satisfying it is to corrupt it. (Or something along those lines)

MLP is innocent to a far extreme. So by that rule, it gets the corruption treatment to the opposite extreme.

It's just more entertaining that way: To put things into unexpected context and see what new idea's it can foster. Besides, MLP by itself isn't designed to appeal to us specifically so it's our job to make it appeal to us in our own works.

@Fifths
I suppose the real draw to this kind of thing is the characters. When people see a strong, well-developed character, it isn't uncommon to think "Hey, I wonder how they would handle this situation."

I often find myself being a lot harsher on my favorite characters than my least favorite characters when it comes to thinking of these scenarios. It's kinda interesting to imagine how they might (or might not) bounce back from somthing that probably wouldn't be explored in the show, and that goes double if it's a character you can personally relate to.

The fact that all of the personalities in Friendship is magic are varied and individual also helps. It means you can experiment with how different ponies act, react and generally play off each other.

Or we could all just be a bunch of sadists. That works too.

I think it has to do with our desire, as adults, to have everything be "real". Those idyllic ideas we had when we were kids were shattered by reality, and we feel like those shows we watched then, as well as any other children's shows, need to be grounded in reality instead of being idealistic. You can see this in other fandoms, like the theories that Pokemon is set after a war, Phineas from Phineas and Ferb is imagining all of it, Alladin is set after a nuclear apocalypse, and Bikini Bottom is at the site of the Bikini Atoll tests.

In the same way, the pony fandom has a sort of need for violent/creepy hidden stories behind it. Take certain one-offs, like Pinkamena, and make Cupcakes.

As for porn, well… refer to rule no. 34.

I will agree with Blue Screen, we really crossed a line between having multiple re-votes and demanding recounts due to poll rigging. I say we either go with Live Free or Twi Hard just to get this over with, or we have mods decide their own title for the next thread. Apparently we are all too incompetent to come to a reasonable conclusion through voting.

I say that Sad fics are so common I stopped reading them.

I mean, if the point is to stand out, then that kinda FAILED!

Meanwhile, I'm just chilling writing a…

…Um…

Something…

It's too crazy a fanfic to have words. It's like if I rammed several stories together and watched what happens.

Probably not the best fan fic. Heck, it's probably the worst. But for me, it's easier to notice that the 2 million sad fics out there that are "Meh" to my tastes.

Nope.
 
I've already said that we're done talking about it, and that RandomMan and I are handling it.

Avoid the meta-discussion of the matter, please. Thanks.

Hooray! The end of an era!

@Title Drama

Quick Twilight! Let's fly away from all this!

It's not working!

@Thread name drama

Can we just call it this

KYM Pony General VII: /)(^3^)(\

And be done with it?

Edit: Hey guys, look what I found

Vinyl Scratch's pet Cockatoo!

Remember when Twilight was struggling to fly in that clip. I thought that was adorable! I just a shtickler for such dorky things. Man, these months are going to fly by, huh?

@Florida Recount

It’s simple. We set up a complicated and overly complex Electoral College system. After we choose who gets to be the electors, we have a multi-billion bit election with PAC’s producing dirty commercials about the different titles. Finally, on the big day, several of the electors become unfaithful and vote for the wrong title, causing the title that doesn’t have the popular vote to win. A constitutional crisis ensues and is only settled by the KYM Admins who, with a majority favoring one title, vote for it. Everyone gets their jimmies rustled by the idiocy of the Electoral College and want it abolished or reformed. Nothing happens and the matter is forgotten until the next election.

Or, we could hold a runoff vote between the top two or three titles. I like the Electoral College idea more, though.

>that awesome feel when you accurately predict how the election will go.

I claim zero responsibility for using my SuperPAC to ratchet up the "serious business" factor into the realms of election fraud.

Stunthead wrote:

I would also like to bring up another alicorn pony princess that has been shown in the series:

This princess apparently lived a long time ago, and she hasn’t ever been mentioned since. Again, this doesn’t really prove anything, but it seems pretty unlikely that she’s still around considering we’ve never heard of her.

Well, here's a radical idea: the princess in the book eventually became Queen Chrysalis.

Having consumed the love poison, the prince and princess were too busy with each other to notice their kingdom crumbling around them. Presumably, by the time the court mages figured out the antidote, it was already too late to save the two lovestruck fools. So they were left behind when the rest of the populace ran from the raging dragon.

The prince met his end, whether by dragon, starvation or shorter lifespan, leaving the princess bereft of the object of her affections. But the poison still demanded that she find love, so she began taking it from others. Being magical in nature, affecting a creature of magic, the poison eventually twisted her into a changeling.

Those whose love she consumed became like her, vampiric shape-shifters, and thus the changeling brood was born.

Of course, that's all just speculation, but I think it's a fairly reasonable theory.

Man, I love headcanon.

Although I think this theory may be debunked by one little line in This Day Aria
This day is going to be perfect/The kind of day of which I've dreamed since I was small

By "since I was small" I'm assuming Chrysalis means since she was a child (baby Chrysalis d'aaaaaaw), while the mare and stallion in the story were obviously adult (or at least teenagers). So, unless when the princess turned she was reverted to a child, I don't think Chrysalis was originally that same princess from the story.
Or I could be spouting bs because one little line in a song doesn't always speak the truth.

@Crimson Locks

There's two possible explanations for that.

One, she's not the original princess, but her descendant. Perhaps the changeling queen is mortal or is frequently dethroned by her power-hungry progeny.

Two, she's deluded herself into thinking she's always been a changeling. Losing your loved one and becoming a ravenous monster as a result probably doesn't bode well for the psyche. So, to keep what remains of her sanity intact, she's convinced herself that she's always been what she is, and not some squishy weakling pony hiding beneath chitinous carapace.

@Love Poison Princess
Headcanon, headcanon everywhere.

More seriously, I thought that was already determined to be an animation error, based on the fact that she lacked wings in an earlier scene:

Or was this the animation error? It's the dreaded chicken and egg argument.

According to science, we can conclude that Scootaloo is actually Chrysalis.

I really like the idea of Queen chrysalis being the alicorn princess (or normal pony) of legend. That would really add some complexity to her character and tie the lore together too. I love it when seemingly unrelated bits of lore turn out to be intricately intertwined.