@Background Pony #2A27  
Your comment could be supported by a user (not me) who regularly visits TVTropes. (Though, I still agree, mind. X3 )
 
Oh, also, random insubstantial details that are never mentioned again I’ve seen elsewhere include Sora referred to as The Keyblade Master. Birth By Sleep reinterpreted the meaning of a Keyblade Master, but at the time Sora was the only, comparative fingerquotes, “Jedi” widely known by the general population.

@thps48  
I’m aware of what TvTropes is, but what does it have to do with this conversation?

@Background Pony #2A27  
TVTropes lists innumerable recurring themes and traits in television, books, games, and other forms of storytelling. Known as either tropes or archetypes. The spirit guide in an ancient Native American folktale is not dissimilar to Dr. Light’s hologram in Mega Man X.

@thps48  
What do you mean?

@Background Pony #2A27  
There’s probably a TVTropes page or five I could cite if I’ve not never visited. ;3

@Background Pony Number 17  
Late response, 8 months later, but not a chance. Serfdom, slavery, feudalism… all not very nice things, to put it midly. Equestria, while not totally perfect, is a pretty darn nice place overall with good values and first world standards of living, and would never, ever tolerate those things. All the friendship and other nice things in the show are in complete opposition to those ideas, and none of the characters would support it, especially the main characters and alicorns.
 
The bottom line is that either stuff like cows and sheep are not sapient, and the scenes where they’ve talked are misleading cartoon-gags of sorts or otherwise aren’t meant to be taken seriously, or the scenes we’ve seen them aren’t meant to be taken seriously or something, and they are sapient, free citizens with full rights.
 
Either way, ultimatum is that there’s not a chance in hell the ponies would ever allow for slavery and other evils of that nature. Equestria isn’t totally perfect, but it’s still a pretty damn nice place with benevolent alicorn rulers, so the people who think they’d tolerate things like slavery are just wildly delusional. And I don’t think it’s the sort of things the writers would even put an ounce of thought into on a cartoon like this in the first place.
 
Chances are, if you went around scrutinizing cartoons down the littlest detail, you’d find details that could be used to form some BS overly-grimdark theories, but that doesn’t mean for a second that you should take those details seriously or that they are ‘legitimate’. If you analyzed Dora the Explorer obsessively enough, you’d probably be able to find some little detail that you could attempt to interpret as grimdark, as well as all sorts of inconsistencies, but that doesn’t make it so.
 
And in the case of the idea of sapient beings being second class citizens or even slaves in MLP, it heavily contradicts and shits on literally everything else in the show, so you know there’s zero chance it could ever be remotely true. The setting of MLP and slavery/apartheid/segregation/etc are completely and irrevocably incompatible, end of story. The exception is the big bad villains like Sombra or Tirek who may have attempted it, but the ponies put a swift end to their attempts.

@A-T-S
 

Sheep are the hippies of Equestria.That or Romani.

@Itsthinking  
@thps48  
My theory is that cattle and sheep are the serfs of Equestria. They’re not citizens; instead they live on Earth pony farms and provide milk and wool in exchange for three square meals a day and a place to sleep where they won’t be eaten by any predator that wanders out of the Everfree Forest.

@Itsthinking  
Maybe like goats they have their own language/culture? Afterall the only one we saw who spoke or acted sapient lived in Ponyville so it’s not impossible that they assimilated into the culture/language.

@thps48  
No, just generic conspiritard crap that’s become even more of a running joke than the rest of the 9/11 ‘truth’ movement.

@A-T-S  
I never looked at that entry on KYM. Is that a quote from a politician on the structural strength of the Twin Towers?

@A-T-S  
*Train

Trail fuel can’t melt steel rails?

@Itsthinking  
Maybe they’re space cases. Sisterhooves is the one time a sheep spoke, and while it’s not a great point of reference, other instances of sheep leads me to this theory. What sheep are really like, I can’t imagine will ever come up. X3

So are they not sapient?

No, you woke the sheeple. We are all lost: https://xkcd.com/1013/

“This is civil disobedience, oppressor!”