I'd say that the first is more plausible. Otherwise, Celestia is going to have to go with every expedition, and that means that she's not doing more important stuff.
Seriously.
This is exactly the point I was making, and it fits with my larger hypothesis regarding her selective xenocide/arrangement of mutualistic relations. It isn't that Celestia
can't overpower dragons, it is that she has much better things to do than constantly fight off dragons just so she can continue a program of slavery with no benefits beyond instant communication between a select few individuals.
Especially given the canon evidence that, given opportunity to put Spike in contact with his own kind they specifically chose not to.
Well, for good reason as shown in "Owl's Well That Ends Well". Spike had plenty of contact with his own kind and nearly died!
Again, this is support for my view: dragon young do not mix well with mature dragons. Removing them from the environment for a period of education is beneficial for both species.
You assume that the impression is against the will of the
parent dragons, yet there is no evidence for this.
No one's given any evidence that it's with their permission either. But we're given the choice of:
a) Dragons are either willingly giving up or accidentally losing eggs in sufficient quantities that ponies can totally by chance find them without any way to return them often enough to keep Celestia's school supplied
or
b) Ponies are procuring those eggs themselves without permission
In the absense of any direct evidence to support either answer, I simply ask...which is more plausible? Especially given the canon evidence that, given opportunity to put Spike in contact with his own kind they specifically chose not to.
"Ponies are procuring those eggs themselves without permission" How, exactly? Both episodes involving dragons showed that they are supernaturally protective of their hoards, which would include eggs. And it is more plausible that the two species are working together for mutual benefit than that, as stated above, Celestia is wasting massive amounts of time for no appreciable benefit that could not be had by enslaving a less powerful species, or by pushing for a small amount of technological progress. Twilight didn't put Spike in contact with the dragon in Dragonshy for reasons that are plainly obvious in the
other episode involving an adult dragon. Dragons are incredibly possessive without any assistance, and she knows that Spike is a baby, and that he has very little self control. She (likely accurately) predicted that he would try to eat or take something from the hoard. Apart from that, there is no reason to take him. Would you take a baby with you on a mapping expedition for your senior thesis, or into a cave to rouse a lion?
By the way, just because something is canon doesn't mean that it automatically supports you. You need to provide valid reasoning for
why it supports you.
it is much more likely that they are involved in some sort of mutualistic relationship where eggs are sent to the academy to be raised, strengthening the bonds between dragonkind and ponykind, eventually outliving their partners and joining the dragon population as adults.
That might be possible, but if so...then you're suggesting that dragons are deliberately giving away their children to be raised as servants to ponies. That scenario does explain what we see in the show, but there is no direct evidence for it. Granted, there also appears to be no direct evidence for my scenario, but I ask again: which seems more plausible? Would you give away your children to be raised as a servant to another species?
Personally I suspect that it's a matter of selective blinders. Like people in this thread have insisted that it's not slavery just because Twilight is nice to Spike. There's a tendancy to try to put a "nice" slant on things. Ponies probably don't think of what they're doing as kidnapping or slavery.
Because they
aren't giving their children away into servitude/slavery! We have evidence from the show that adult dragons tend to react badly to other dragons, so sending young away to be raised by unicorns would defuse tensions and prevent infanticide [1]. Dragons raised by unicorns at the academy are going to be exposed to a wide variety of educational and cultural information, helping them develop into educated, culturally aware adults who are able to interact with other species in ways that won't get them curbstomped by Celestia, further increasing the survivability of dragons as a species [2]. The young dragons also learn how to live without constantly being the ultimate authority, further preparing them for life in a world where political leaders are also immortal goddesses who can kill you if you do something to piss them off [3]. As for the pony side of things, the students bonded with dragons gain assistance in their studies [4], as well as the experience of a significant responsibility, where they are fully aware that their actions are affecting the life of another individual, preparing them both for parenthood [5] and for taking public office or conducting serious magical research [6]. There are six reasons why the bonding of magically gifted unicorns and baby dragons is beneficial to both species in ways entirely unrelated to slavery or servitude.
Ponies don't think of it as kidnapping or slavery because it
isn't.
The consensus seems to be that they were shocked because she grew
Spike into a mature dragon (or a parody of one), not that she hatched
him. I don't know where you are pulling this from.
Not sure if you're responding to me on this one. I've suggested that they were reacting to the fact that Twilight was losing magical control and engulfed them in lightning. And images were posted coroborating that.
But whether they were reacting to the lightning or Spike turning into godzilla, either way supports my position. The whole question came up because some people proposed a couple pages ago that nobody actually expected her to hatch the egg, and that it was all as you phrased it, a false-front exam. The evidence doesn't support that, because again...nobody reacted to her hatching the egg.
Actually, the only person I recall saying that was me, in jest.
IF CELESTIA WAS KIDNAPPING DRAGON EGGS, SHE WOULD HAVE ANGRY DRAGONS, BURNING TOWNS, AND MANGLED PONIES OUT THE WAZOO. SHE DOES NOT, SO CLEARLY SHE ISN'T KIDNAPPING THEM.
Celestia is a goddess responsible for making to sun come up every morning. Would you really want to go burning down her towns?
I've already covered this, but repetition is apparently necessary. Draconic reaction to thieves is not logical, it is instinctual. If you take something of their, they will hunt you down. Celestia wouldn't kidnap dragon eggs not because she
couldn't fight dragons, but because it would be a massive pain in the ass for her to have to continually go kill (apart from returning the eggs, which is no longer possible once they've been hatched, this is the only real option for her) rampaging dragons, along with the time and cost of repairing everything each one would destroy. Not to mention the lives lost. Yes, the dragons would "lose" by being killed, but Celestia would be involved in a long series of bloody victories where she not only wasted time and energy, but lost productive land and had subject slaughtered. Not that it would be very long before she drove the species to extinction.
Rarity and the Diamond Dogs: Is Rarity a child now?
No and that's not what was said. Heliman was trying to use a cop-out and I was simply calling him on it.
He implied in this post that since it was a children's show, obviously such a dark thing as dragon slavery couldn't exist. I responded with totally canon evidence of pony slavery. Interracial slavery obviously exists in the show: diamond dogs chained up Rarity to work their mine. I'm obviously not saying that Rarity is a child. I'm simply pointing out that it's silly to suggest that such a thing as "dragon slavery" can't exist in a children's show when we can very easily point out canon examples of pony slavery.
And the point
I was making was that an isolated incident involving three individuals involved in a rather poorly designed attempt at enslaving a fourth with a fairly rare special talent which was very useful to them, which was rapidly thwarted, is substantially different from an organized program of enslavement on the part of a benevolent goddess/dictator who has
no practical reason for doing so. Why would they possibly
need dragon child-slaves? This is the biggest flaw in your argument: there is no economic or social reason for ponies to enslave dragon children. Why?
+ What do they do? Menial labor plus instant messaging between "owners" and the princesses. The first could be performed much more easily by hired servant ponies, or by enslaving another, less dangerous species. Or, for that matter, by magical enchantments, golems, etc. The second is hardly necessary, given the relatively peaceful nature of Equestria. A pegasus can fly from Canterlot to Ponyville in less than a day; it likely wouldn't take more than a week to reach any point in the principality. For that matter, a proper network of roads and dedicated courier system would be much more useful in a wider range of applications; the courier network and Royal Road established by the Acheamenids in Persia allowed a message to travel from the westernmost parts of Anatolia to the capital at Persepolis in less than two weeks, and that without Earth pony endurance.
+ Numbers. Simply put, there are not enough dragons in five hundred worlds identical to Equestria to make them a viable slave population.
+ Economic demand. Simply put, slavery exists as an institution for three main reasons: as a way to deal with private debt (obviously not applicable), to utilize POWs (again, not applicable), and to provide cheap labor for a difficult job, such as large scale agricultural operation. All farms we have seen thusfar are family affairs, capable of being harvested by a few ponies. We have no reason to assume things are different elsewhere.
+ Difficulty. If you want to enslave a species, why would you pick the one that is full of giant armored flying flamethrowers? Celestia isn't stupid.
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Topic: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic (Read 228857 times)