Pony Fanfiction Thread

I'm not sure that Cutie Pox can be taken as a solid example, given that it's a magically-inflicted disease/toxin/allergic reaction.

I've always been of the camp that The Pony Makes the Mark, and not vice-versa. AJ was on the farm for a long time before she finally got her Cutie Mark related to the farm. The trigger for Pinkie's Mark is completely unrelated to the way she goes about fulfilling it—it's just based on expressions of joy and cheer.

Ponies may look to their Cutie Marks to re-find or maintain their inspiration, but the path they walk is ultimately their own, not their... legs. Okay maybe that's not a perfect metaphor, but you get my point. Is Cutie Marks were a compulsion, or were genuinely related to some kind of special, destined talent, The CMC would have gotten their cutie marks the first time they helped Troubleshoes understand his. Instead they got it when they decided that helping ponies understand their cutie marks is what they wanted to do.

This is basically my take on it. The weirdness in Magical Mystery Cure is a bit of an anomaly in that case, but given that it only happens due to Twilight screwing around with destiny, I wouldn't call it an example of how a normal cutie mark works. The main issue in that case would be Trouble Shoes, given that he seemed to be more or less unaware of his own ability.

As for Xenofiction, my take is that the show provides suitable material for people to go in that direction if they want to, but the show itself isn't Xenofiction (the ponies are basically magic, pony-shaped humans with the occasional Furry Reminder) and most fanfic authors don't go that direction.

The main reason for this is that most of the stuff that really makes ponies distinct from real life humans is magic, not the fact that they're ponies. Stuff like cutie marks and the three sub-races are way more influential than horse biology.

If anything, the ponies are less horse than they are human at times. Like when they pick things up in their hooves. Any time they stand upright or use their front legs as arms. The way they sleep. The fact that they not only eat potato products which are strongly discouraged for an equine diet, but also animal products such as eggs and dairy.

Also, their weight. Even discounting Pinkie's localized gravity manipulation, the ponies just don't seem to have a sense of how heavy a horse is supposed to be.

edited 25th Feb '17 8:09:06 AM by TobiasDrake

Being omnivores, their digestive tract gets to be smaller.

Okay, Bounce Test is finished, Estee completed it in a couple days, that woman is voracious. It ends on a happy ending. I was right about his talent, but once Flash understands that he's helping people, he's actually happy about it.

Are ponies Omnivores? I can't recall seeing them eat meat.

Though I suppose it would probably make sense from a biological standpoint, even if they would still need a decently-sized digestive track, what with them being intelligent and all. Though that could easily come from Magic.

To my knowledge, at least as far as I am in the show, they do not eat meat. They do, however, eat animal products. Specifically, milk and eggs.

There was a season one episode that showed something that looked like a ham sandwich, but it was probably an animation slipup. Or just some vegetable thing that resembled a ham sandwich.

But yeah, they do eat animal products, just not actual meat. That we know of. The closest we get is Fluttershy feeding some weasels some fish.

So I drafted up the first of my short story ideas. It's in continuity with Single Point of Failure but doesn't have a lot of references to it. Working title BBBFF-in-Law, final title A Canterlot Rendezvous.

Mostly, it's about Twilight introducing Applejack to Shining Armor. I'm unsure about publishing it, though. It feels weaker than SPOF which I guess I should probably expect seeing as it's a short story vs. a f*cking novel, but also I don't know if the idea really worked out as well as I'd intended it.

But on the other hand, while it is mostly fluff, I feel like a bit of fluff is warranted after the emotional rollercoaster that was SPOF. One of the reasons writers try to avoid writing couples who are already in a relationship is the demands of drama.

Drama demands conflict. Conflict demands that things go awry. Will They or Won't They? is an easy source of conflict but once the couple is together, then it's hard to have too many conflicts occur sequentially. There comes a point where the repeated conflicts cease to be drama and just becomes a really good reason why this couple should not be together.

Some of these short story ideas I have in mind feature more conflicts arising from within the central couple. Single Point of Failure isn't the last fight the two are going to have. So taking a fluffy break that lets them work together as a couple without an abundance of bickering may be necessary to retaining investment.

I don't know.

edited 25th Feb '17 6:18:08 PM by TobiasDrake

Why am I so pessimistic about this?

edited 25th Feb '17 9:58:00 PM by SantosLHalper

On cutie marks: Say someone ate too much junk food. The stomachache they got would be a result of their own actions, but it would also affect them after it manifested. I see cutie marks the same way. You cutie mark acquisition is determined by your thoughts and actions, but once you have it, it has a significant influence on you, both in compulsion that causes you t fulfill it, and in your capabilities (as Harmony Theory puts it, nothing is capable of beating a pony at their own talent. As that one Doctor Whooves fic puts it, "We are a race of savants.")

That sounds about right.

"Your cutie mark is earned through discovery and development of your identity" and "Your cutie mark compels you to a certain way of life," aren't mutually exclusive. It's just that under ordinary circumstances, you'd never notice that compulsion because it's just compelling you to do what you're already great at doing.

It's only when one's Cutie Mark gets f*cked sideways such as in Cutie Pox or Magical Mystery Cure that the compulsion becomes noticeable.

I bring up Estee a lot, don't I? I don't think she's perfect, goodness knows her decision regarding earth pony magic annoys the hell out of me. On the other hand, I think I see where she came from with it. We both saw went, "Ha, earth ponies sure don't have their own cool magic system to work with. I want them to have on though, but how do I go about explaining why it isn't scene or heard about very often?" Completely different earth pony magics aside, my answer was similar to hers, "The magic is subtle." But where she added, "And secret." I added, "And forgotten."

I went off on a tangent.

Cutie marks, compulsions and why I brought up Estee. One concept in her Triptych Continuum is "falling into the mark", where a pony become overly reliant on the abilities and boosts the mark gives them and, essentially, addicted to the pleasure using it gives them, that they become mere extensions of the mark, one-dimensional caricatures. It's noted to be one of the most common mental disorders among pony kind.

A pony who's mark was in researching ended up widely publishing a book on how to create evil artifacts simply because his mark compelled him to research and compile such a guide. A farmer who finds himself in a position to actually command the royal sisters just asks them to work his farm. Twilight internally comments about how close she came to falling and how her friends helped pull her out. Cranky compliments Pinkie on how skillfully she avoids that trap.

There is a drug/poison that will actually enforce an even more focused version of this condition in exchange for boosting the mark's power. This side-effect only happens to those who's mark gives them a skill-boost to an active task though, forcing them only perform that task or think about performing that task. Those with an attribute boost to a passive trait end up differently, such a pony who's talent was "sex appeal" ended up becoming so mindbogglingly attractive she had to sequester herself from the rest of society.

Hmm. I think I know why I'm not as satisfied with Canterlot Rendezvous as I was with Single Point of Failure. SPOF had a lot more going on in it. I wrote it with kind of a Buffy style in mind. There was an external conflict but that conflict existed to inform upon the central theme. Cardinal existed to serve the plot of Twijack's miscommunication. His purpose as a threat was to expand the romance drama, to build on it.

He was a B-plot disguised as an A-plot, woven through the actual A-plot. Canterlot Rendezvous doesn't have anything like that. It's just a naked A-plot.

Not every story needs a villain. Canterlot Rendezvous doesn't. Neither does the "Twilight's first jealousy" thing I'm working on right now. But what they do need, I feel, is more complexity. I'll need to think on this.

Yes, Estee has lots of interesting ideas and I enjoy many of her shorter fics, but yes, some things she does are both overly cynical, and in defiance of what makes sense in the show (admittedly, some aren't and are very interesting, even if if the cynical side).

I veer closer to your interpretation on earth pony magic (though it's less "forgotten", even if you could call it that and technically be accurate, so much as poorly studied and recorded and with many family traditions that aren't discussed much between families, not out of secrecy, but out of failure to recognise its importance). Of course, that's partly why I wrote An Earth Pony's Guide to Magic. As well as this.

That said, I have always interpreted the powerlevel of the show a lot higher and more literal than most (yet a lot less than many other famous examples, like the Pony POV Series, the My Little Alicorn Series and Titanomarchy. I've got a similar interpretation to Harmony Theory).

The Pony POV Series is a similar example of cases of lots of great ideas (many of which I grabbed) that I wasn't thrilled with the execution of, though that was more about the prose than anything.

Mark of Appeal, the Estee story about the Sex Appeal pony was very interesting to me, I must admit, though it does edge on the cynicism scale, albeit in a way that wasn't unbelievably far from what we've seen IMO.

Also, the disorder makes sense, and I'm one of many who believes in Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome and it's even important in An Earth Pony's Guide to Magic.

Well, I ended up stealing a bit of Estee's "Secrecy" idea but applied A) to all three tribes but B) only in the "bad old days". The magi masters, magisters?, of each tribe's pony magic kept the secrets of their magic to themselves. Not from the other tribes, mind you, but from the "unwashed masses" in general.

I think it falls in line with "Hearth's Warming Eve" that ponies were kinda assholes like that back then.

So unicorns and, to a lesser extent, pegasi were forced by circumstances to break tradition and mass disseminate their knowledge while earth ponies were not, the former after ponies took over controlling the sun and moon and the later just to get Equestria running. Earth pony magic still played a part in both of these things, but the nature of their magic meant few actual masters were needed. Then the Celestial Sisters took over all the part of raising sun and moon themselves and only certain specialized applications were needed for the proper running of the rest of Equestria. (IE, this is what the Pie's rock farm is doing.)

What happened is that ponies began to only see unicorns as the truly magical ponies, pegasus magic is seen as less magical and earth ponies rarely get acknowledged in this field. In this environment, earth pony masters fail to pass their secrets on to an apprentice but refuse to break the ancient traditions of secrecy, and so the knowledge ends up dwindling away to almost nothing.

Celestia has been running herself ragged for a thousand years and just hasn't noticed, because otherwise everything is running just fine.

~

I'm actually having this problem too, lacking a central conflict in my Summit story.

Okay, so like, I know what's going on, Celestia and Luna are getting ready to introduce important international delegates from around the world to the new pony immortal Nyx and some people immediately cotton on to that idea that she's kind-of sort-of the reincarnation of Nightmare Moon and so some freaking out ensues. I'm not sure how to stretch that out into a full blown conflict.

Also, B-Plot with Celestia having to break it to Twilight that she's dating again. Twilight is far more distracted by that then some baby Nightmare Moon.

If you're having trouble finding a central conflict, I would suggest thinking about other story ideas you've come up with. Is there anything that seems like it would integrate well with yours?

Right now, I'm putting Canterlot Rendezvous on the backburner to focus on a new story called Crystal Ball, which is more of a direct follow-up from Single Point of Failure. It started its life as three separate ideas I had: one revolving around Twijack and the other two starring Rainbow Dash. But I realized that one of the Rainbow Dash stories had a plot point - the titular Crystal Ball - that could really complement the other two, so that plot thread became the focal point, with the other three stories becoming the characters' arcs.

If you've had any one-off ideas or side story concepts float to mind, consider whether parts of them might actually be useful towards filling the gap you've found. They may not necessarily be side stories after all.

Another of the series of ideas I've been toying with to include in my alt-verse.

A world-building OC, Strife, the Spirit Of Evil. She's set to appear as a reoccurring antagonist at some point, and I have her tied to a particular conundrum:

"What if the Devil really made them do it?"

See, she likes to claim to be behind every evil, great and small. Sombra, Nightmare Moon? Trixie and Starlight? She'll tell you it was her dark whispers that actually pushed them over the edge.

Discord reveals that she's as about as responsible for every dark lord and petty villain as Trixie is responsible for taking out an Ursa Major, Strife just talks a really big game.

But, and here's the but, she might actually be responsible for some of them and just a little bit responsible for some others. It's a bit of mystery that she lays out that she relishes in.

It's meant to be a seed of doubt she lays in the heart of heroes. How culpable can the bad guys really be if some outside force is possibly responsible for dragging them down that dark path?

It's also why ponies annoy her so. She's met those so assured in their righteousness that the idea they may have struck down someone ultimately innocent does budge them, but that's not the case here.

For ponies, they don't wield the sword of justice on high, ready to strike down the wicked for their crimes. They hold out the hoof of forgiveness, and would do so if the villain was truly at fault or not.

Ponies, those annoying good two-shoes.

http://www.fimfiction.net/story/365660/hillary-clinton-saves-equestria

Anyone else here who saw this one coming?

edited 1st Mar '17 7:20:58 AM by Kurush

Reading an odd, not very good fanfic just because it has an intriguing premise. And now it's turning into some real So Bad, It's Good crap.

At one point Fluttershy just gets completely paralyzed from fear. Twilight tries to reassure her:

This is actually kind of adorable.

Yeah, I was just thinking that. The dialogue's a bit stilted, but kinda cute.

Huh. I actually stayed up the other night reading something of a junk food fic myself, since I had read the few others by the author and he keeps touting this one as his Magnum Opus (at least for pony). While entertaining in its way, at times it (and to an extent the author blogs) really felt like the sort of thing that people think of when they dismiss fanfiction as the juvenile, "edgy" mishmash of interests of "weebs". Didn't have any lines like that, though.

(I'm not saying I wouldn't still recommend people check it out and judge for themselves, but after a lead-in like that it feels kind of like mocking the author behind his back, which, just no. It and his other series both have pages here, at any rate, which of course was how I got there in the first place.)

Meanwhile, another author (again don't want to point fingers, but he seems somewhat well known) appears to be developing the habit of leaving Complete marks where chapter breaks should be.

And at least one other series sounds a lot more epic from reading the trope page here than from actually seeing its writing.

An idea I'd come up with a while ago:

All three races can use magic. By which I mean actual spells, like unicorns, the other two races just have to work much harder at it, so there aren't very many.

Unicorns would be the equivalent of savants: they automatically just 'get it'. Just like you get a guy who understands complex mathematics without any sort of education on the subject. Anyone else can learn the same thing, but they have to work really hard since they have to start from step one.

I ran with a fairly similar premise for The Colour You Bleed. The long and short of it is that all "Magic" is fundamentally the same, and the form it takes is about how a Background Magic Field is manipulated. Unicorn 'Spells' are typically done with very precise manipulation that requires manipulating the magic through a very small area (As magic is performed by pulling allowing it to flow through the body'. The Unicorn horn is a natural foci that allows them to manipulate magic much more precisely, but after his horn is cut off Blueblood is able to learn to focus magic through a different part of his body—of even just with enough focus.

Further stories in the series would go on to elaborate that learning to do this is really rare, and allows him to theoretically learn the magic of all tribes, a feat that hasn't happened in Millennia, and as a result is making gods sit up and pay attention... but alas, I'm unlikely to write those at this point. May still co-opt it for Original Fiction later, though.