Pony Fanfiction Thread

Did they originally have another food source that love mimics?

You mean like the mimickers from the comic book? Maybe that's why those are so scarce now?

@kegisak: except ponies aren't the only quadrupeds that can feel love; horses/saddle arabians, diamond dogs, gryphons... Even "ordinary" animals are shown to be semi-sentient. Changelings aren't even the only Emotion Eater species that has shown up. That's really not evidence one way or the other.

I know at least one fic that said that Chrysalis was actually one of only two Windigoes to survive the events of hearthswarming. she turned into a shapeshifting bug pone when she was forced to learn how to love and forget how to hate because hate was no longer a viable food source.

Celestia was the other windigoe. That was an interesting fic.

edited 22nd Mar '15 5:16:14 AM by Blissey1

I agree with Clever that there's no reason to believe that changelings aren't natural and weren't transformed by anything. And we know from the comic that they do not require ponies to feed on love.

Mythological changelings were actually infant trolls. Trolls couldn't produce breast milk, so their babies would starve. To solve this problem, they'd replace human babies with their own and use magic to disguise the replacement. Eventually, the disguise would wear off (this was actually due to genetic mutations IRL) and the parents would torture the changeling to death to try and convince the trolls to bring back their real baby.

... How the heck did trolls live long enough to reproduce if all their kids starved to death?

Mythology is interesting. It's often got first-grader-level illogical plot holes, but people are so desperate for an answer that they'll believe it anyway.

@Blissey: I read that, it didn't wow me. It's another story where the execution is So Okay, It's Average, and the only thing setting it apart is its unique headcanon. Wacky speculation is not enough to build a good story on. The scene where Celestia reveals herself to Twilight feels neutered in particular.

Maybe they fed their kids other things? Replacing human children in order to feed your children, rather than using other food, is exactly the sort of Complexity Addiction logic that could only work in a fairy tale

edited 22nd Mar '15 10:28:37 AM by CleverPun

Presumably, many changelings were never discovered, so they survived to adulthood.

There are many real life species who have similar behavior. Most infamously the cuckoo (such that many other species that act similarly are named after it).

Also, Western culture is heavily influenced by Greek philosophy. One of the principles of which was that actually testing your ideas was a bad thing.

What I meant was, how the did the species even survive long enough to get the idea to do that? The obvious solution is that they just fed their kids other stuff, but that just bears the question of why they would go through all the "switch out the kids" rigamarole when they could just milk a cow or something. Then again, the Fair Folk are all about making things unnecessarily complicated.

Same way it happened to the cuckoo's, I imagine.

I think I just set a personal record for transition from "Hey, this really has some potential," to "Downvote and run." All it took was parenthesis and two words during a character's introduction: (my OC).

edited 22nd Mar '15 4:19:34 PM by CDRW

As God of Awesome said, that didn't stop it from happening with real species. (IRL, it's due to co-evolution. The one species evolves to become increasingly dependent on the other)

okay, how the hell did this get through moderation?

Why shouldn't it? I can't see any broken rules from the description or first few paragraphs.

Whether it's a good idea is a separate matter.

I'm pretty sure that "has to actually be a story" was in the rules somewhere last I checked

Nope; just "no scripts" and "punctuation required (mostly)"

What's a good name for a ponified Mona Lisa? I've seen other fics call it the Marena Lisa, but that seems lacking.

Pona Lisa?

Also DAMNIT.. why do other wise good stories.. need to throw in a convoluted, idiotic romance subplot based entirely around miscommunication misunderstanding, and idiocy.

"What kind of name is Lisa, anyway?"

"Lots of ponies had weird names back in the Reneighssance."

The same reason that otherwise good stories need to throw in a convoluted, idiotic conflict based entirely around Applejack engaging in miscommunication, misunderstanding, and idiocy?

Oddly enough, with this one.. it was AJ that cut right through the BS and solved everything by shoving everypony involved into the same room, and just telling them all what was going on.

Because a lot of fanfic is written by younger kids (middle and high school in particular) who don't understand how mature relationships work.

Ah, Flash Fog?

This is why I went out of my way to subvert my miscommunication-based subplot off right at the start.

Yup. Other then that, it's a pretty good fic.

Not in this case. Author's pretty good, and wrote one of my favorite stories of all time Wild, Sweet, and Cool. And turns out he was just setting up a big fake out on it. Get everything set for some big comedic drama bomb cliched pile up thing.. only for AJ to step in and squash it.