Roleplay / Coalition Of Ponyist States

"My Little CoPS: Friendship is International Politics and the Constant Threat of Nuclear Annhilation"

Not to be confused with COPS (the live-action reality TV series) or C.O.P.S. (Animated Series) (the animated television series).

The origin of the Pony species is shrouded in mystery. Some say that they evolved the same way as humans, while other say the Regal Sisters—Celestia and Luna—created the ponies in their own image. Whatever the reason, the races of ponies have spread across the world, and now live alongside humans, elves, saurians, and all other forms of life that inhabit the NationStates world.

The pony species Equus sapiens is divided into three subspecies— all of which can interbreed freely.

• Earth Ponies (Equus sapiens terrestris) till the land, and their skills help to nurture the soil to produce bountiful crops.
• Pegasus Ponies (Equus sapiens volaticus) who control the weather and fly in the sky
• Unicorn Ponies (Equus sapiens rinocerotis) who can perform magical abilities such as telekinesis.

Perhaps Ponyism's hat is their universal devotion to the 'Elements of Harmony'. Just like in Real Life while almost all ponies and ponyists agree on the existence and names of the Elements of Harmony, anything beyond that is open to debate.

The Coalition of Ponyist States (CoPS) is an RP Group on the NationStates forums. The nations in CoPS RP the existence of ponies, as seen in the TV Show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic; however, these ponies have broken themselves out of the Sugar Bowl that they lived in, and have come into a world where they are face to face with the same challenges that humanity faces today, with others piled at their side.

The Coalition of Ponyist States was originally founded jointly on August 2, 2011 by Enatai and Urmanian. At this point, the idea of Pony based RP had only just begun. However, over time, the idea of the pony species living alongside humanity, and many previously other established species that inhabit NationStates. Roleplay slowly established the pony nations as a permanant fixture of NationStates. While in the beginning of CoPS history, the vast majority of storylines were dealing with nations that attempted to commit genocide on the pony species, CoPS RP has begun to switch over to interaction with other groups of Role Players, as well as gained a focus on developing the relations between the various nations of the Coalition.

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The Coalition of Ponyist States contains examples of:

• Airborne Aircraft Carrier: Multiple nations have airborne aircraft carriers (and battleships!) justified through the use of Magitek or very vague scientific explanations of quantum physics and atmospheric buoyancy.
• Alike and Antithetical Adversaries: Specifically, the "Heterogenous Heroes vs. Homogenous Villains" variety; while the member nations/players of the CoPS are actually quite diverse in their IC implementations - ranging from far-left to far-right (and quite literally everything in between) to even corporatocracies and anarchies, with a wide variety of political structures - the anti-pony alliances opposing the CoPS tend to be rather homogenous, with nearly all members being totalitarian regimes of either the communist or fascist varieties.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Ponies. Most have two colors: mane/tail and body. Said two-color schemes range from relatively mundane (earth-tones with the possibility of a more vibrant mane/tail) to seemingly unnatural.
• Amazon Brigade:
  • Happens quite a bit with pony armies; though subverted or averted entirely in many cases, a large number of pony characters tend to be female, and this will occasionally be reflected in military scenarios.
  • YellowApple uses female pilots near-exclusively in recon fighters, since the cramped spaces are more suitable for a smaller female pilot than they are for a larger male pilot. The rest of the YellowApplan armed forces is quite male-dominated, however, even with pony personnel.

• Ascended Extra: Happens quite a bit when background characters from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic are yanked into the NationStates universe(s) and given their own detailed storylines.
• The Atoner: Years of Richard's guilt for the annihilation of the Majority party as well as the assassination of his first born has led to the formation of his group the Scarlet Index, to help people.
• Bread and Circuses: Although it doesn't provide much in the way of direct welfare, the Dominion does provide order and stability, while giving its people the freedom to do what they will. This has the effect of simply making most of the population apathetic towards their government. Pursuing this also creates a desire for the Dominion to make sure their people remain happy and content with the status quo.
• Cat Girl: Many nations have such residents, Ponyist nations included. YellowApple calls them Homo sapiens felis, and regards them to be a subspecies of Homo sapiens.
• Child Soldiers: The age for enlistment in the 'Republic' is 14 (2014) years old, their allies so far, have compensated the rising age of military consent with copious dakka.
• Church Militant: The Shrill Crisis ran on this trope. When the theocratic government overturned the secular one and went on a crusade upon Crystal Spires, the Pony Gods were not pleased.

• Commissar Cap: Multiple nation's players are Warhammer 40,000 fans, and it shows in the hats that they give their troops to wear.

• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Heaven help you if you decide to take on a unified CoPS. Though now a pony-killing regime is outright ignored OOCly, in times past it would result in the entirety of the Coalition coming down upon a nation and, if not utterly destroying it, crippling it quite severely.
  • Fantoa's pony genocide was met with a joint invasion by YellowApple and the Holy Marsh culminating in YellowApplan martial law until a non-genocidal and pro-Ponyist government was instated.
  • The TurtleShroomian Dark Harvest was met by an invasion by none other than C'Tan. However, in contrast to other examples of this trope, the TurtleShroomers launched a nuclear-equipped Saturn V rocket at the C'Tani invasion force, which - although certainly not doing much real damage - prompted the C'Tani invaders to retreat momentarily, though not without the defending forces having already been annihilated.
• Democracy Is Bad: Life under the old Lubyakan Republic has left the feeling amongst the people that democracies are only for Wide-Eyed Idealists.
• Department of Redundancy Department: The Office of Covert Acquisitions has a subsection called Covert Affairs or Vice Versa.
• Fantastic Racism: Many humans find the existence of ponies distasteful. Reactions to them have ranged from denying the existence of ponies, to launching campaigns of mass genocide.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Given the existence of magic (or a scientific explanation thereof) throughout the CoPS, this trope tends to run rampant in CoPS RPs, which may involve anything from saccharine magical ponies to all-consuming grey goo to Satan incarnate and everything in between.
• Felony Misdemeanor: The nation of Hippostania takes a very hard line against Communists, leftists, leftist-looking people, the colour red, alcohol, sex, sharing, and more. And charity organizations. Don't forget charity organizations.
• Fiction 500: At least at first (in the YellowApplan backstory), where Amarillo uses his wealth (and corporate funding) to build a giant flying city. Said flying city was named Manzanopolis Prime and became the capitol city of the Nomadic Peoples of YellowApple.
• Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon:
  • The YellowApple, Inc. BitTrigger normally results in this for infantry stallions which use it, though it's capable of being "unlocked" so the attached rifle can be manipulated as if a humanoid were holding it, making this a subversion in some cases.
  • Lubyakan and Orussian assault guns also take this approach, mounting a single cannon to inflict massive damage.
• For the Evulz: Basically what the majority of pony-killing/enslaving/maiming/hating "in-character" threads boil down to, considering that the justifications tend to be strawman arguments at best. Some anti-pony players are starting to formulate more legitimate reasons to be anti-pony, but the majority continue to fall quite painfully into this trope.

• Full-Frontal Assault: Many ponies "don't normally wear clothes", and thus will fill this trope when they fight as such, though not exactly for the same reasons as most other examples of the trope do.
• Fun with Acronyms: GHEYSECS, an acronym standing for the members of one of two sub-alliances of the CoPS (Greater Pony Herd, Hippostania, Enatai, YellowApple, Shrilland (?), Earth Sphere Coalition, Crystal Spires).
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Lesbianism and bisexuality among female characters is a recurring motif in many CoPS RPs. This may just be because the majority of players are male, and are not above writing their own Fanservice.
• Gratuitous Latin: The YellowApplan-made aerospace platforms defending HideaBerry Island are named after the Latin translations of the Elements of Harmony.

• Humans Are the Real Monsters:
  • Much of the general reaction from human nations towards the Coalition of Ponyist States, most who seem to do it for Out Of Character reasons.
  • Averted by many of the members of the Coalition of Ponyist States having human-majority populations; nations with pony majorities are actually few in number.

• Hollywood Encryption: Most "encrypted" communiques are merely specified to be encrypted, instead of actual details on the encryption method used. This is mostly to Hand Wave very-hard-to-decrypt messages, since providing a real-life encryption method/algorithm would allow more tech-saavy players an advantage in explaining how they'd decrypt the message.

• Landslide Election: In Malgrave, the Progressive-Unity party have won with every election since 1994 and the Conservative Party in the period 1950-1980.
• Last of His Kind: Maven is the only living survivor of the Storkii. He was actually born as a genetic mutation of a White Phoenix, which is why Zaiden chose to possess Maven.
• Made of Iron: Chancellor Maven Auryn of Crystal Spires seems to have a proclivity towards getting shot by everything from AAA shells to standard bullets, and living. Maven has suffered permanent damage from some of these attempts on his life, but he believes to show weakness would be fatal because Crystal Spires is a Death World which showing such weakness would be fatal, so he pretends nothing is wrong, and goes to work. Furthermore, he is kept alive by the parasitic immortal being Zaiden.

• Men Are the Expendable Gender: Happens quite often; males are more likely to be physically injured and/or killed than females in most combat-oriented RPs. Ties in quite a bit with Men Are Generic, Women Are Special, given that My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is already female-oriented, leading to the CoPS naturally following in its footsteps.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Being a NationStates roleplay, quite common. Most nations care little for the lives of their people, even alleged democratic states are willing to throw their nation into war (even a nuclear one) regularly. Overlaps with Easy Logistics as armies of millions are sent thousands of kilometers on a semi-regular basis.
• Minovsky Physics: Pony "magic" (rather than being Applied Phlebotinum or Hand Wave), with loads and loads of scientific concepts coming into play - including quantum physics (unicorn magic/pegasus flight/grabbing things with hooves), neuroscience (cutie marks/cutie pox), genetics engineering and evolution (how Equus sapiens came to be), nanorobotics (the Smooze), and many other topics - in order to make for a believable concept rather than rely on Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Other players just say A Wizard Did It and don't go into details.

• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Like in many works of fiction, scientists RPed by the CoPS and the players thereof have a tendency to be proficient in a variety of mostly-unrelated disciplines, resulting in either this trope or Renaissance Man.

• Our Time Travel Is Different: Specifically, a hybridization between Wormhole Time Travel and Instantaneous Time Travel. Occasionally results in accidental time travel when attempting jumps and miscalculating when creating the exit point (an RP detailing this is expected to occur soon, but this is understood to be a common occurrence in some early YellowApplan wormhole transit tests.
• Our Wormholes Are Different: In the sense that YellowApplan wormholes are created and stabilized via the use of physics-bending (specifically, the manipulation of negative energy densities to create localized regions of negative mass to achieve all kinds of things) reverse-engineered from unicorn magic.
• Overranked Soldier: The Republic's Leadership and military infrastructure is full to brimming with teenage Cardinals leading thousands of grizzled veterans, this is probably due to mandated heroism.
• Peace & Love Incorporated: YellowApple, Inc. However, unlike others examples of this trope, YellowApple actually does adhere to all six of the Elements of Harmony, rather than merely pretend to.

• The Political Officer: New Freedomstan uses Commissars of the "Cowards and traitors will be SHOT!" variety, although actual field-executions are rare (outside of the Penal Divisions). Their purpose is mostly about maintaining civilian power over the armed forces, however, with morale being the secondary priority.
• Post-Victory Collapse: Blue Belle experienced once after a firefight/knifefight/fistfight/hooffight with a bunch of Canadian assassins. Blood loss from a bullet wound in her flank was the official cause of her eventually passing out, but she only passed out after she had kicked Sarah Palin's Alaskan rear and mopped the floor with her.
• Principles Zealot: The Beastling State of Crystal Spires, and their leader, Maven Auryn, tend to stick to their principles even at the cost of starting a major war, and/or being invaded.
• Reality Warper: There are several:
  • Discord, known for bending reality to create a world of chaos.
  • Pinkie Pie, known for Breaking the Fourth Wall regularly for her own personal enjoyment, for lack of a better motive.

• Retired Badass: The RRUO used to be a really active enforcer of anti-slaver actions, to the point of sending Armada ships into international waters. Since then, there's been a coup, the reign of a dictator, a a gruesome civil war, and a quite inept interim government. Now, the RRUO would much rather mind its own business and be busy with growing a flower garden than a war overseas, but if you attack or start to beat another nation in the CoPS (Except Lubyak and Crystal Spires), Orlkjestad would be glad to pull a Neutral No Longer, and if you attack the RRUO itself, even just a single speck of sand on the most worthless island in the nation, may God/Celestia have mercy on your soul. And, to add to all this, President Leon Palantine is working on changing this status.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Even though Coalition RPs tend to be darker and more grim than anything seen on the show, these are still nations inhabited with pastel colored ponies at heart, and there are many characters that can be described as 'D'AWWWW'.
• Running Gag: The constant references to what a shaking of hand and hoof should be called. Whenever a pony and human greet, and one is a YellowApplan, the YellowApplan will invariably ask him/herself whether it's a "handshake" or "hoofshake" and distract him/herself with the train of thought.

• Slave Liberation:
  • Became a major point of contention in rivalry between Imeriata and other pony nations which eventually lead to them leaving when many of the members signed the Amistad Declaration, which declared a state of war against all slaver nations.
  • YellowApple also managed a massive liberation in an impressive manner which nearly put itself into bankruptcy to atone itself for its prior life as a slaver nation.
• Schizo Tech: Like the universe of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the CoPS has a variety of technologies that normally wouldn't accompany one another. This is especially prevalent when comparing nations that generally play the source material's technology relatively straight (such as the Greater Pony Herd) against nations which are significantly advanced technologically and typically will not implement "past-tech" technologies (such as YellowApple). Similarly, not all players use the same approach of validating pony "magic"; while the players behind Princess Luna and Crystal Spires, for example, stay toward the "magical" end of the explanation spectrum, others - such as the players behind YellowApple and Behntasha - go for the "scientific" end.
• Unconventional Formatting: Several players use different font characteristics in their posts for various purposes:
  • The player behind YellowApple uses preformatted text to indicate radio chatter. His use of "YellowApplan" grammatical/punctuation/spelling rules in spoken text also partially fits this trope, as it's often used as an indication that the speaker is speaking in YellowApplan English.
  • Tailed Wind Demons assigns text colors to characters for use in their speech.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: C'tan and Menelmacar slaughter millions in the name of putting an end to slavery.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The Coalition claims to be an 'alliance'. However, more often than not the energies of the various nations are directed less at supporting ponyism around the world, and more at sniping at fellow Coalition states. However, when something gets the entire Coalition to band together, the results are terrifying indeed.
• With Friends Like These...: More times than not, Maven's Allies are the ones who pose the greatest threats to his life despite the fact that he lives in a psychotic Death World.

• Would Not Shoot a Civilian:
  • YellowApple is famous for stepping in the way of the rest of the CoPS in their attempts to exterminate entire civilizations for crimes of a minority population thereof. Crystal Spires does the same due to laws in Forntian Idealism.
  • Averted with the Greater Pony Herd, as evidenced with the lack of hesitation in slaughtering men, women, and children alike solely to make an example out of a nation.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Used once upon a time by anti-pony factions to degrade the Ponyist movement explaining that ponies don't actually exist but are merely hallucinations and/or psychological constructs, and that perceiving their existence and/or perceiving oneself to be a pony is indicative of psychological illness.

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