It's generally agreed that the 6 founders put together a Provisional Government to unite the ponies under their charge.

'Tis a shame some fool awoke Discord and led him to make merry in Equestria.

Then maybe ask them and hope we get a joke.

Equal power? Really?

Clover the Clever was an advisor at best. Smart Cookie seemed little more than a beleaguered assistant. Private Pansy was clearly a subordinate.

@ Kyler: Prior to founding Equestria. I imagine uniting the races and slaying the Windigoes got them promoted. To something like I dunno, Arbiter Pansy, Magister Clover, Something Smart Cookie.

edited 27th Mar '13 9:47:13 AM by Badwolfwho

Mm. Fair point.

But it's not holding the cake up that was the hard part, but keeping it balanced. Holding even a small weight in an awkward position for an extended period of time is quite tiring.

Source?

It does nothing of the sort. I've wtched the episode several times. It's one of my favourites.

Spike: Food that COULD ONLY be grown by the earth ponies.

As for the effects of love, Changelings and being enhanced by the alicorn of love is not the same thing as Want it, Need it or Love Poison.

As for non-Apples showing super strength. Besides Cheerilee, the train pullers were all erths. The snow pushers in Winter Wrap Up were all earths and before you say that's unimpressive, Twilight couldn't push but can carry Tom, meaning that those snow plows each weighed multiple tons. Then there's all the carraige-pulling. Of course, non-earths show plenty of strength as well.

Pinkie's pretty exceptional.

The timeline split in three when the Princess sent Doctor Whooves back in time to becoem a child again.

RD managing to sheer sections out of trees horizontally comes to mind. But then again, nopony could do that realistically, no matter how strong. It's just Cartoon Physics at work again. Or like Twilight's house flying into the air when she ges angry.

The trouble is that Pinkie is exceptional in a very unique way. We've seen other pegasi go fast and other unicorns use magic, but no earth ponies with precognition or cartoon logic.

Applejack easily stopping a runaway bus tha knocked Rainbow Dash clear off of it (when it was moving slightly slower) also comes to mind.

Yeah, that is the main problem. Everypony has cartoon physics, but even in universe, Pinkie's usually treated as special.

Nothing exceptional about being a Looney Toon in a comedic animated series.

edited 27th Mar '13 10:21:05 AM by Mio

I suppose the real issue is the lack of overall consistency. Even among the more powerful Unicorn and Pegasi characters there's some pretty wide divides between episode, or between scenes. Rainbow Dash is able to pull off something that was legend before? Yeah, there's another pony that's just as fast as her. Twilight can pull of any number of tricks, except when it would solve the problem. We kinda have to assume that similar issue apply to earth ponies - Big Mac can pull a house when it's funny, but barely hold up a cake when it's funny.

There's also the trouble of "AJ is a background pony syndrome" either way. Because the EP 'powers' don' have flash they get ignored, so as I just demonstrated very impressive feats can get written off as narrative devices and not 'proof' of anything.

An of course, lastly, this isn't really a show meant to have power levels.

Just one example, but yes.

Well, no one could do it with just strength. Still shows she can fly through living wood though. But she's shown more impressive feats anyway.

Well, that's telekinesis, We already knew that Twilight's telekinesis was strong.

Physically lifting Tom is more impressive, especially as she's bee previously demonstrated to be a physical weakling by pony standards.

No rainboom, so RD wasn't at full speed. Also, people forget that people simply don't use maximum effort most of the time. In fact, it's suicidally stupid to use maximum effort in most situations. It's not usually a good idea to use maximum effort. Even in a fight for your life, it's not usually a good idea. And as power goes up, the importance of that does as well.

edited 27th Mar '13 10:38:44 AM by Sereg

I prefer the explanation that all ponies are a hive mind, and that they can shunt power from one body to the other as the situation requires. You might ask, 'Then why do they often work antagonistic to each other and exhibit different personalities?' The answer is simple, the meta-pony has severe depression and hates herself, always working counter to her own hopes and desires.

Can we not start yet another argument about whether non EP's can grow food or not? Every time it comes up we basically default to "we don't have enough info to argue one way or another. The only hard statement we have is a line from a play that probably takes some artistic license. It's probably roughly as accurate a portrayal of Equestria's founding as SeventeenSeventySix is an accurate portrayal of the American Revolution. Based on true events and a decent summary of what happened, but takes a lot of license with details.

Actually, I never considered the Doctor, though it'd make things a lot easier if he was messing around with history. But basically, I think it works like this: In G1, Megan and friends continued fighting off attacks from various villains trying to destroy Dream Valley. However, over some years the constant battles started getting to them, Megan in particular. eventually deciding that the constant magical invasions would one day destroy ponykind, with help from the Moochick they combine the Sunstone, the princess ponies' magic keeping Dream Valley enchanted, and the Rainbow of Light to create a device that would neutralize any magic getting into Ponyland. However, the device backfires and instead sucks up all but the most powerful magic from the world. Having no one else to turn to without magic to make life sustainable and forever feeling guilty, Megan teaches the ponies about human customs and means of survival. Eventually the memory of her fades over time and the ponies progress on their own. Thus, the all but magicless world of My Little Pony Tales. It gets vague and I'm not quite sure how it quite goes after this. The Alicorn from Up Up and Away seen by Patch and Bon Bon is a descendent of the powerful unicorns of Mimic's line and the Flutterponies. The 8 ponies being the only ones to really believe they exist, they're sent on a quest to recover the Rainbow of Light and restore magic to the world as the few surviving magical creatures have all but died out. Eventually, they succeed in restoring magic while still leaving some technological artifacts. The other races don't recover magically as fast as the ponies, leaving a new world for the ponies to live in peace. And there you have G3. However, with the excess of harmony, a balance between chaos and harmony is broken and the resulting backlash of chaos allows Discord to be created. The pony races who were just beginning to reunite after centuries of separation quickly devolve into infighting as the chaos drives them to acts of anger and negative emotions.

The alicorns decide to act and come out of hiding. The most powerful leaders at the time, Celestia and Luna, recover the Rainbow of Light and divide them into the Elements of Harmony. The rest as they say, is history.

Edit: As an afterthought, the half-forgotten legend of Megan inspires Lyra's curiosity towards humans. I don't always like that fannon trait of her's, but it's there. Also, the way of crossing to the human world must still exist, but has been reshaped and changed over the centuries. So with all that, in this fanonical timeline Equestria Girls could happen.

edited 27th Mar '13 10:46:45 AM by darkabomination

@Sereg: Well, by that same logic LD might not have been going at max capacity, either. She certainly showed she could go beyond the level RD was operating at on some occasions.

Too much fanon is always brought in on these discussions to cover the fact that canon really isn't as all-encompassing as all that, because it was never designed to have legitimate power levels. I think, if we really must, then we should limit it to the 'saga' arc(Season 1 opener and season 2 and 3 opener and closer), since that's the only place where combative power, and power in general, is taken into serious account. Which means basically the only things we KNOW about power are that Fluttershy resists corruption, Twilight is exponentially powerful magic-wise, Dash can pull off a Rainboom effectively at will, and all six of them can hold their own in a brawl.

I can't wait for Fighting is Magic to—

...oh, right.

edited 27th Mar '13 10:55:03 AM by KylerThatch

I second this. Too much of the show runs on Rule of Funny for it to be used as legitimate info about power levels.

All I will say about power levels is that it's over 9000.

It makes a lot more sense if you assume that Pinkie was exaggerating.

Wait, people are trying to take this seriously in the first place?

edited 27th Mar '13 11:09:14 AM by darkabomination

Umm, sorry but when did we see this?

If your talking about the scene in Return of Harmony, honestly I'd put that up to more Discord's impatience/ limited creativity.

Take what seriously?

edited 27th Mar '13 11:09:31 AM by Mio

- throws bricks at Kyler -

Also, slightly relevant to Fluttershy.

edited 27th Mar '13 11:10:45 AM by dRoy