Pony Fanfiction Thread

So? We'll take any excuse.

I think that thinking people would be squicked is our take on things, culturally, but it might not be the case for them if it was common enough practice. After all, things like leather and felt are still pretty common materials, so unless they could come up with a good analogue for it... which is not impossible, and given the nature of their flora and fauna they might even have better materials. Manticore Leather, anyone?

@Clever: That's true, but in most cases it's more along the lines of donating one's body for scientific research or somesuch. There are very few cases in modern society of "I want you to make a jacket out of my skin when I die". My guess would be that leather products aren't really used much in pony society simply because they likely developed out materials before they were in a position to need to use actual skin.

@Midnight: Except most ponies don't wear clothes, so they wouldn't need as much raw materials as an equivalent human population. A well-made leather item can last a very long time if properly maintained, and someopony paying for a top-quality work hat or such would take good care of it.

A common practice in human cultures is thanking animals for their sacrifice. Rituals vary, but the respect and spiritualism is there. I f anything, being able to talk to the animal would strengthen that connection.

Wearing the ashes of your pet or ancestor is hardly uncommon—they actually sell necklaces/jewelery with urns built in, and you can also mix ashes with glass 1.

@Jinx: I knew what I was getting into

Even taking anthrocentrism into account, see above

Manticores are sentient too, though (or at least capable of non-verbal communication), so that really wouldn't change anything. We have seen ponies with rubber items though (Twilight's boots in "Winter Wrap Up"), so they probably have the ability to make plastic (and thus synthetic leather).

See above

edited 20th Jul '14 3:10:37 PM by CleverPun

The simplest answer to the question would probably be "It's pleather".

Okay, most European cultures, which is what the ponies seem to have by all indication. I guess I could see stuff like that happening on occasion, but I kinda doubt that it occurs on a large scale. Like you said, ponies have little need for clothes, which makes it more likely that they'd never need to resort to wearing clothing made of skin. IRL wearing skins was a matter of pragmatism; ponies have no need of that, so I find it less likely that they'd go with that rather than the alternatives.

Though it gives me the amusing image of a teenage goth pony wearing skin specifically to squick others out, like that Far Side cartoon with the leather-wearing teenage cow.

edited 20th Jul '14 3:53:06 PM by JapaneseTeeth

It's regular leather. Grown from a leather tree.

Is it just me, or is Friendship Is Optimal the only My Little Pony MMORPG fic in this fandom that doesn't take the Sword Art Online ripoff route?

I can see some very scary slippery slopes here, by the way. With the aforementioned supply problems, leather and fur items would be very rare, and hence expensive... which could create a whole industry of illegal dealers who aren't as picky about the "consenting donor" part – or in extreme cases, about the "already dead" part.

"Now may we have your skin?"

EDIT: Also:

Plastics are made from oil. Rubber is made from tree sap (or at least it used to be until cheaper synthetic rubber came along). I don't see the connection.

EDIT EDIT: Hey JT, you know those French words I love to get anal retentive about? I've been missing one.

edited 21st Jul '14 7:28:24 AM by MidnightRambler

edited 21st Jul '14 9:23:54 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

Rainbow Dash dungeon update. This will be the last time I post it before I upload the chapter. There's some stuff still to be added, but anything at this point would be considered spoilers.

@JT: Ponies are definitely vaguely Western and heavily anthropomorphized, but they also have some Blue-and-Orange Morality things going on (mostly, as mentioned, when it comes to animals).

Point taken about necessity. We have seen that ponies use clothes as status symbols, however (Sweet and Elite), so the possibility is there. I suppose whether a well-made hat is worth it to a (middle-class?) farmer is a matter of headcanon.

@Midnight: The subject of crime in Equestria is a completely separate debate (one which is very dependent on certain assumptions and perceptions).

Point taken about the rubber. Plastic rain boots do exist in real life though, so despite my incorrect assumptions about how synthetic materials work my point still stands. They might have access to plastic, and synthetic leather is a combination of plastic and fabric (usually).

If we're wondering specifically about Applejack's hat, then "Somepony to Watch Over Me" showed that AJ has an entire closet full of identical cowboy hats. So either her hat is a relatively cheap, disposable article, or she's worse with money than we thought.

The whole Hot Minute thing also claimed she won it in an apple-bobbing contest.

Perhaps she's simply really, really good at bobbing for apples, and she won all of them.

"Applejack, what are you doing? You can't bob for all these fucking apples!"

"FUCK YOU I CAN'T BOB FOR ALL THESE APPLES!"

Or she won one of them, and then liked it so much she got a lot of backups.

And I'm still proud of myself for correctly guessing in my fic that AJ has tons of hats.

@Clever: True, although culturally they're so human that it borders on Informed Species at points. Still, it is possible. I'd think they'd mostly make that stuff out of non-sentient animals though. I think it would be more likely for other species. Like if griffons made leather stuff.

I'm sort of developing a setting that posits what Ponies could be like if they were less human and more equine.

Days of Wasp and Spider.

Really big on treating them like equines as much as possible.

@Meta: never saw that episode^note was around the time I was getting burnt out on how bland S4 was. Guess that ruins all my carefully planned, pointless arguments

@JT: I was never too fond of the griffons' hat being predation, but the mental image of a griffon in a leather jacket is rather amusing.

It wouldn't necessarily be predation so much as pragmatism. It wouldn't have to be that they hunt for that stuff, but they'd have less aversion to it than other species.

Half lion, half T-Bird?

I started reading Austraeoh on a whim. So far it's been all Scenery Porn with zero dialogue and precious few hints at plot. We'll see how long this goes on (and how long I can stomach it).

Also, I finally gave in and synced my avatar here with that on Fimfiction. And on the subject of avatars: JT, your new one looks... disturbing. Where's it from?

It's Razio from The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.

well, it's on its 5th sequel, and each one is 200k-350k words, so good luck with that!

I gave up when I got to the first chapter of the third sequel, the one that starts with I. It was at that point that I realized that the plot elements I considered a distraction from all the interesting stuff were not going away.

edited 22nd Jul '14 8:21:36 PM by MetaFour

I consider Austraeoh to be one of the greats in MLP fan fiction (personal opinion only—it's less accessible than most stories and I wouldn't recommend it to everyone), but its sequel Eljunbyro was incredibly dull, and Innavedr just seemed to be a continuation of the previous dullness, so I quit.

It's sad because Austraeoh ended with none of its mysteries resolved, and I still want to know how it all ends someday.

The One Great Flaw of the original Austraeoh was the Appledash shipping. It was one of those pointless shippings that managed to actively hurt the story rather than just being an ignorable nuisance (even despite the extremely low "screen time" the shipping got).

edited 23rd Jul '14 2:03:00 AM by Unknownlight

I meant how long the Scenery Porn Without Plot goes on. As I've found by now, after 10,000 words or so she actually meets ponies and stuff happens.

It's certainly gripping – I'm 87 tiny chapters in now – but it reads suspiciously much like an adventure game. Meet Wacky Wayside Tribe, complete their Side Quest, move on. Completing the sidequest even leads to the mysterious bad weather that has been plaguing the tribe's village to magically clear up – Majora's Mask much?

EDIT: On chapter 114 now, and the generic plot is starting to bug me more and more. Besides, Dash's levels of Sueness are off the scale by now. At first I gave the story a lot of leeway because Rainbow Dash is legitimately awesome in canon, but there are limits. Any part of the story that involves other ponies at all has become a constant stream of "Dash boasts about her awesomeness – Dash does something awesome – other characters gush about Dash's awesomeness – rinse and repeat", skirting Poe's Law territory at times. She's only been with Wacky Wayside Tribe #2 for two days and they've already named a building after her!

edited 23rd Jul '14 6:00:11 AM by MidnightRambler