Lily (g5) and Rosedust (g5) are misindentified

It appears that Lily has been tagged as Rosedust on this website and vice verse.

Please take a look at this video clip: https://streamable.com/imv6j1

Note how Sugar Moonlight moves her head slightly from right to left as she mention both ponies’ names.

If you agree with my assessment, I would like to kindly request swapping both “Lily (g5)” and “Rosedust (g5)” tags on all images.

rosedust (g5) -> lily (g5)
lily(g5) -> rosedust (g5)

Well, Misty also moves from right to left at the same time. Sugar Moonlight might have just been reacting to that. I don’t think it’s clear which pony has which name, currently.

FWIW, the various pony wikis currently have the names set up the same way as it is on Derpibooru.

@Background Pony #DA54
Yes, the fandom appears to have collectively concluded which character is which. I wanted to address that, starting with Derpibooru, because I consider it to be the most respected source in the fandom. If this issue is addressed here, I will have more leverage to start addressing it elsewhere.

How did we end up with the current naming anyway? Obviously, we knew that it’s their names, but how was it decided which character is called what? If we have nothing better to go off on, we might as well go off of that scene.

About nine months ago, in the Character Tag Categorization thread it all started with a question about “Sugar Moonlight’s Filly Four group”.

It was mentioned that the naming for them isn’t particularly clear, with it ending up that Rosedust appeared to be the bluish one and Lily appeared to be the pink/purple one.

Much of the decision was, of course, related to how to handle the G1 Rosedust, which is how we ended up with the current rosedust (g5) tag.

As you mentioned, “the fandom appears to have collectively concluded which character is which”. At this point, it seems that the names are well established. Why do you want to change them, given that they’re documented the same way across the fandom?

I mean, it’s not impossible to change, but normally we need something like an official toy with the name on the tin to say, for a fact, which pony is which. Has there been a toy for either of these ponies?

Funny how we ended up reaching the opposite conclusions after watching the very same fragment.

You wouldn’t believe me anyway.

What I will say, though, is that we probably shouldn’t have decided to assign the names without a clearer way of figuring out who is who. Just that, given what I saw, is that I believe the opposite way is more likely to be correct.

For now, I am not aware of any source where that is shown unambiguously. If I find anything better in the future, I shall let you know.

@Vengir
Thank you.

And, for what it’s worth, this happens a lot. As was mentioned in that thread this kind of stuff is fairly common. Background ponies getting names is not unusual, but as soon as think we know who a pony is, they move in the scene - either because of an edit or something that was done by the director, or just because of “balancing the scene” - or Hasbro changes the name because of trademark or salesmark restrictions. Or the pony’s design just gets used in a random set of pony toys and as a result of customer research and entirely different name is assigned to it.

I asked M.A. Larson about Lyra once, and whether the staff kept setting her on benches intentionally, or if it was some weird quirk of her rig. And he said that she was just “Background Pony 17”. That she ended up appearing more than once in the whole run was just a roll of the dice, and her ending up with any personality at all was something that grew organically in the fandom. He wasn’t aware she was even “the bench sitting pony” until he started getting notes on episode 100.

And, even things like the Alicorn Amulet had one solid name through the script and development (the “Unicharm”) but once it gets through branding and approvals it can end up being something entirely different.

And at the level of Hasbro’s consciousness, until something is a toy in production, it’s just another digital asset that they use and reuse whenever its convenient.

Figuring out the right names for these background ponies is worth doing. I mean - this whole site is devoted to naming things in uniform ways. But if there’s no trademark on the name, and it’s just one of two background ponies in a single episode, it’s often just a placeholder.

Sometimes, we end up with DJ Pon3/Vinyl Scratch, and Bon Bon/Sweetie Drops.

So, sometimes magic does happen. And “Both” is the right answer.

As promised, I have returned with a more concrete evidence.

In episode 2 of chapter 6 one of those two ponies speaks again. More specifically in the scene where Spike and other dragons arrive in Maretime Bay. She has a line at 01:49. At the same time, the other pony doesn’t have any lines. She might not even appear in the episode at all from what I can see.

On its own it wouldn’t mean much. Fortunately, the credits come to the rescue, more specifically foreign dub credits (which are generally more specific than the original one). Out of those, Rosedust is mentioned in at least the German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Dutch, Turkish, and Vietnamese credits. Lily is not mentioned in any of those.

This makes it clear to me that the pony in that scene is Rosedust, the one who is currently tagged as Lily on Derpibooru.

@Vengir
So Rosedust is the purple one and Lily is the teal one? And only Rosedust had dialogue and is listed in the credits? Is that what you’re saying?

I suggested the opposite long before based on when Sugar Moonlight was introducing the rest, how they were in a line and they were being read off in order. But this seems pretty certain.
>>2959160 Here is what I mean btw, see how it looks like they’re in order?

Would be even more certain if they had a toy of them.

@Toastypk
Yeah, I mentioned that scene in the original post 5 months ago, when I concluded that Rosedust being purple and Lily being green based on Sugar Moonlight’s head moving from right to left. It was a hint to me, but not strong enough to change the majority’s opinion. The credits, however, are a stronger evidence than whatever we had to go before (the assumption that they were introduced from left to right) in my opinion.

And now come to think of it, the name Lily does evoke a green, and Rosedust something of a pink.

I or someone else should get a screenshot of the credits of that episode only showing the one name instead of both and I think that’ll be pretty definitive.

Okay, I uploaded the German credits as an example.

I’ve also noticed Rosedust in Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Dutch, Turkish, and Vietnamese credits. If you wish to see them all, you can check them all for yourself. They are at the very end of each episode on Netflix, so they should be there in most copies (legitimate or not), except when someone deliberately cut them out.