Actually, the Earth Pony Problem is going to be a pretty big factor in my fic.

The word "debate" implies the possibility of me winning.

I want to lose.

Okay, Zap Apples are pretty dang awesome.

edited 31st Aug '12 11:24:32 AM by ATC

We have had this discussion before.

I'm off the opinion that without earths...nothing would grow. So, no Equestria.

@ATC: Hearths Warming Eve pretty much comes out and says that only the E Ps can grow food in sufficient quantities to feed everypony, which is a pretty enormous deal. While I have no doubt that a pegasi or unicorn could grow a garden or something, I doubt they'd be able to produce that much. The other thing is that it's really strongly implied that the average EP is much more physically resilient than the average unicorn or pegasi. RD and Twilight aren't really good barometers given that both of them are near the pinnacle of their respective races. Twilight in particular is pretty much the strongest unicorn we've seen, so the fact that she has really good telekinesis doesn't imply that all unicorns could do anything close to that. The other thing is that as noted, we've only seen her do the apple thing once, and there's no indication that she'd be able to keep that up for any length of time. Not to mention that whenever we see something requiring large amounts of physical strength (pulling a train, construction work, etc.) nine times out of ten it's Earth Ponies doing the work, which implies that on the whole they're stronger.

The other other thing is that simply being able to harvest those apples faster doesn't mean she's better at planting, caring for, selling, or otherwise utilizing those apples. Even if we accept that Twi could harvest faster than AJ, I think it's pretty obvious that if you gave each AJ and Twilight a farm to run for a year, AJ would probably grow way more product, and of much higher quality.

TL;DR the Earth ponies are the Boring, but Practical race; they don't have the flashiness that unicorns or pegasi do, but without them Equestria would collapse pretty quickly.

edited 31st Aug '12 11:52:54 AM by JapaneseTeeth

When you can pull a farking train, chances are you don't need the other stuff.

Quite a few times.

And to be honest it probably would have gone a lot worst in the past.

You could always look through the archives to see. I don't remember the exact times its come up though.

At the end of the day, the unicorns are the only expendable race. Earth Ponies are better at farming, Pegasi, depending on your interpretation, either cause weather to happen or stop it getting monstrously bad. The one thing Unicorns used to do is now done by Celestia and Luna. So yeah.

I wouldn't go so far as saying they're expendable; I'm pretty sure they're likely the only ones with the dexterity to do stuff like fancy clothes, or watchmaking or whatever. And keep in mind that pretty much any piece of technology we see runs off of magic, so unicorns likely have to make and maintain that stuff.

@Story: I know back in the Ginger era it came up all the time.

edited 31st Aug '12 12:34:48 PM by JapaneseTeeth

But now when entire race is free of their mane task. Services, inventing stuff or magic, many thing beneficial to Equestria.

I think we might see earth ponies as less cool because they are closest to us in abilities. But they don't seem to mind.

The closest we have seen to a pony feeling less for her race, was twilight feeling less for lacking the wings Princess Cadence had... and even then she changed her mind

Edit:oops double post

edited 31st Aug '12 12:44:10 PM by FallenLegend

@Fallen Twilight never said anything like that. Where did you get that from?

Where she feeled bad about this? That part of Aria dont look for me as jealously toward Cadance wings.

BTW That only scene related to her change from concept, in rest of finale she can be unicorn and nothing could be changed.

edited 31st Aug '12 12:48:54 PM by DeathCloud

she didn't feel bad but she did say "I am just a plain old unicorn"

Hence I said the "closest"

She referred to fact that she is not princess.

yeah I think I had that one wrong, my bad. Just checked

Unless we go with the interpretation that alicorn = princess

edited 31st Aug '12 12:51:36 PM by FallenLegend

Next time I will check befo relying on my memory

Random thought:

Sometimes the physilogy of the mares remind me of a mixture of cats and puppies. Maybe that is one of the reasons why I find them so adorable.

Princess Platinum wasn't an alicorn.

Of few words.

Who he was talking to. I really hate myself for finding this one funny.

Was he talking to an empty chair in real life?

I think it is more likely that someone was sitting there but s/he got Lyrashopped.

He was actually talking to an empty chair.