@DonMaguz
 
@Magma_ERuptiOn
 
@Background Pony #DCD6  
Hypocrites.
 
Doesn’t change the fact that RD won so suck it.

basically just hippofart.flv

I don’t care to get involved in this debate, I just dropped in to say that Rainbow Dash in the first panel pretty much screams “Lauren Faust” to me.

earth pony strength? If i remember correctly when they were arm wrestling it was RD who was the victor. So is it really earth pony strength?
 
Edit: read the comments… never mind, you people already went deep into it…

@Background Pony #7DB4  
Earth ponies also seem to run a lot of successful large businesses and hold a lot of elected government positions for some reason. Feeding all these hungry pony mouths must be quite a challenge, too and makes special growing powers believable. And even if they don’t have magically enhanced strength then they might still be stronger on average because they exercise more. They might even have special senses for what to do like the Pinkie Sense although Pinkie might just be weird like that. Earth ponies are very capable and seem to get things done. Maybe that’s their real power.
 
The fun starts when it gets off topic and i like talking about the lore of things in general.

@Background Pony #858C  
Makes me wonder why people just want to say Earth Pony magic can’t be strength, when it could be that, plus growing crops, and possibly something else, like Pinkie’s Pinkie Sense.
 
Anyway, I’m glad that we had this conversation. I wanted to learn from this, and I did, even though things got way off topic…

@Background Pony #7DB4  
You are right. I was just saying that those things cause one to be sceptical. I would honestly think that earth pony strength being real would cause inconsistencies like that to make even less sense than if it were not because some of the feats of great strength can be explained with individual training or for comedic purposes while the feats of limited strength would just be plotholes. I mean some of them still would be but not as blatant. There is a certain suspension of disbelief there that would have gone away if they had made it a point early on that earth ponies had magically enhanced strength since the viewers would expect it. The writers don’t seem to care enough about it to make earth ponies consistently stronger allowing for things like that to happen so it almost seems like that wasn’t part of their idea and just how a viewer would interpret it and at some point we stopped questioning it.

@Background Pony #858C  
That sort of inconsistency is literally shown everywhere. A few examples. We all know how strong Applejack is with her back hooves. But this tiny rock gets her stuck, which only requires a stick to pull apart.  

 
Otherwise, another moment is demonstrated later on with Rainbow Dash during one of the Daring Do episodes. In the Sonic Rainboom Episode, she’s able to carry 3 knocked out pegasi, and a unicorn during flight with little effort. That’s the total weight of 4 ponies. But in one of the Daring Do episodes, she struggles to carry 1. I think the episode was called, ‘Better Than Fanfiction’.
 
And of course, we’re to believe that the power of 4 Alicorn Ponies are evenly matched with the magic of every single pony in Equestria, plus Discord’s power.

@Background Pony #7DB4  
However, earth ponies also seem to run a lot of successful large businesses and hold a lot of elected government positions for some reason. Feeding all these hungry pony mouths must be quite a challenge, too and makes special growing powers believable. And even if they don’t have magically enhanced strength then they might still be stronger on average because they exercise more. Earth ponies are very capable and seem to get things done. Maybe that’s their real power.

@Background Pony #7DB4  
I found this show discussion that deals with the issue.  
It’s from 2013 but it shows a lot of inconsistencies with the headcanon of earth pony strength in the first 3 seasons and the comments pretty much sum it up. Even tho it cannot be disproven completely it seems very unlikely as of what we have seen so far and wouldn’t make much sense if they were to make it a thing now.

@Background Pony #858C  
Like I said, at that point, we’re messing with headcanons.  
Tending to the land requires strength, much like how controlling the weather requires Pegasi to fly, and walk on clouds. Princess Celestia says ‘Without their strength’, so she could mean their magic, their physical strength, or both. At that point, it’s headcanon.
 
Either way, it still shows Earth Ponies have ties to the land that other ponies don’t have.

@Background Pony #7DB4  
Do you know what ambiguous means? The fact that we can play with headcanons like that means it wasn’t clear what she meant. Why would she specifically mention tending the land? Just because that was the most important thing to her that earth ponies did. Being farm ponies. Or maybe because they specifically had the strength to tend the land as an ability that we already kind of saw Applejack doing to grow things. And if earth ponies really had so much more strength then why didn’t Applejack win with flying colors?  

@Background Pony #858C  
Sure… twist their words. At that point, we’re playing with headcanons.

@Background Pony #7DB4  
Oh, I guess you are right about that. Still it doesn’t change what I said about it not making sense.
 
“Without their strength, they will not be able to tend the land.” = They lost the power of growing stuff.  
I said it’s ambiguous for a reason as strength can refer to just power or lifeforce in general and Tirek seems to only have been after raw magic.

@Background Pony #858C  
If you say Earth Pony strength did not exist because it’s season 1, then I’ll say Rainbow Dash’s laziness did not exist because it’s season 1.
 
Anyway, here’s a quote from Princess Celestia from that Tirek episode:  
There is word he has gone after Earth ponies as well. Without their strength, they will not be able to tend the land.  
Just because people think it’s stupid, doesn’t mean it isn’t canon.

@Background Pony #7DB4  
This was season 1, tho and the canon was different. I think Lauren Faust herself said that the earth ponies special power was growing stuff when she was asked what they had going for them. I don’t know if the show even referenced earth pony strength asside from an ambiguous Tirek stealing their strength line. Seems to be that the fandom latched onto the Apples’ physical abilities and decided that all Earth ponies were supposed to be stronger than the others and the writers might or might not have decided that it would be unfair if the earth ponies didn’t have strength but we don’t even know that. If that is the case then the strength of non-earth ponies doesn’t make sense since almost all unicorns can use magic and almost all pegasi can fly but only some earth ponies are strong and some of the other races, too. Strength might just be a combination of good genes and training or just good genes and have nothing to do with being an earth pony. Either way, the race featured unicorns, too and you don’t see Twilight teleporting to the finishing line. Binding the pegasis wings makes it possible for earth ponies to win that race, too. I don’t see how it is cheating.

@Background Pony #858C  

 
Total exhaustion, being only 1 episode. The first 2 episodes were showing Rainbow Dash avoiding work, not avoiding training. Working and training are 2 different things. That doesn’t mean she’s lazy when it comes to exercising her abilities. (Especially now, when we’ve learned that during her fillyhood, Rainbow Dash wasn’t always the fastest flier and worked her way to the top.)

@Background Pony #7DB4  
In the first two episodes of mlp she is seen sleeping on a cloud and the implication is that she is lazy. She then clears the clouds in 10 seconds flat which is apparently her job. We have to assume whatever she does doesn’t take much time or continuous effort. In Sonic Rainboom she begins training because there is a contest coming up but she is nervous because she lacks training and the ability to perform the sonic rainboom she did as a filly. Then she trains a few other times or tries a flight trick or flies casually with the flight team that isn’t as fast as her. That hardly compares to Applejack working herself to total exhaustion. Rainbow doesn’t even train her physical strength directly like Applejack but mostly her flight so that training should be less effective for the rest of her body as well.

@Background Pony #858C  

 
The Sonic Rainboom begins with her training. Applebuck Season, she was testing a new flight technique. Call of the Cutie, she was training Apple Bloom. Suited for Success, she was practicing a new flying trick just before she appears. Winter Wrap Up, she’s leading the weather team.
 
How is that ‘rarely’ doing flight training?

@Background Pony #7DB4  
That’s only because Applejack trained this her entire life. Season 1 Rainbow Dash was lazy and only trained her flight very rarely. She pretty much kept the same flying abilities she had as a filly. Applejack worked to the point of total exhaustion in one episode.

@Background Pony #858C  
Applejack’s strength had her doing this:  
 
 
So she did have Earth Pony strength.
 
Rainbow Dash was training to become a Wonderbolt. She does just as much training, if not more, than Applejack. Work and training are 2 different things.

Applejacks being an earth pony didn’t seem to make her any stronger, tho.  
In all the contests she was basically just a pegasus without wings and that’s really all earth ponies were before the writers came up with earth pony magic and strength later on in the series which still doesn’t make sense btw.  
Rainbow had a huge natural advantage to the point where she basically didn’t have to train at all and just slept in her cloud all the time while Applejack was training constantly by doing heavy farmwork.
 
Earth pony strength doesn’t exist. Some earth ponies just happen to be strong but so do some of the other races while almost all the pegasi can fly and almost all the unicorns can use magic.

OP is pretty much right though, considering Applejack never had restraints on her strength; so it wasn’t exactly fair that RD was prevented from using her wings to aid her.
 
@Background Pony #7DB4  
Exactly.

@Background Pony #7DB4  
Because we’ve watched the episode.

@Kolbjorn  
Inorite! God forbid you touch the sacred cow that was milked by Faust herself, lest you get struck by lightning and the furious anger of the Bronies!