World Building: The world in 30 years (Give or take a couple) · 10:56pm Apr 18th, 2014
Okay... So a couple of stories that I'm working on are involved in this post. First up is The Mare in the Moon and Silver Spoon - it's connected to a lot of this since it started out as an examination of what Silver Spoon's big adventure growing up was like.
The second is a still untitled work that started out as "A Twist Ending" but ended up being too weird to work out in that format... so I set it in this era that I'm going to be working on next. It's mostly OC ponies as children of the cast (not the mane six necessarily.) A lot of this is likely to change in the coming months as I work on it, but these are the basics and the basic platform I'm going to be working from.
The characters:
Cinnamon Swirl
The main viewpoint character for the first unnamed work (Formerly A Twist Ending) is Cinnamon Swirl, Spike and Twist's adopted daughter.
Appearance:
A unicorn with a mostly straight auburn mane with white curls, her tail is the same. Her coat is a creamy white, like that of fresh bread-dough, not yet baked.
Cutie Mark:
A cinnamon stick crossed with a paint brush.
Magics!:
Her magical aura is the same as her coat, a creamy white. She's talented with multi-levitation and can multi-task with some concentration. She can make a light swirl. Other than that, she doesn't have a lot of talent for magic.
Talent:
As her cutie mark suggests, she's an artist. Her favorite canvases are foodstuffs of various types. She's learned how to bake from her father and actually got her cutie mark during an all-weekend baking marathon for the Ponyville Days celebration.
Personality:
Bubbly most of the time with a teenager's snark thrown in for good measure. She loves to doodle in her diary, but lately she's been writing more serious thoughts down as well and finding the task more difficult than it seemed at first light.
Parents:
Mother: Peppermint Twist (Twist)
A confectioner and all around goof ball, Twist owns the shop she got her cutie mark in, now that her parents are retired. She fell in love with Spike after he gave her a meaningful gift.
Father: Spike the Dragon (...Spike)
A master baker, Spike fell in love with Twist after a long and protracted chase... With him being the target. With their similar skills, they have a lot in common.
Misty Dream
Cinnamon Swirl's one and only love interest.
Appearance:
A pegasus mare with a vibrant jade green coat and a creamy white mane shot through with streaks of pale blue which she wears in a series of six braids, each one tipped with a beaded band of a different color of the rainbow after her fillyhood sports idol, Ranbow Dash. Her tail matches her mane, save for wearing it in a single very loose braid.
Cutie Mark:
A stage with a spotlight shining on it.
Talent:
While she started out wanting to be just like her idol, as she grew up her interests turned towards a different kind of performance. Theatre! She wants to be an actress some day and perform for royalty on the stage. For now, she settles for starring in school plays or directing them.
Personality:
She shares a lot of traits with her BFF and she's a very good actress.
Parents:
Father: Caramel
An Earth pony stallion with a knack for acting. Just don't ask him to keep track of anything that isn't on the stage. Got asked to the Ponyville Foal Formal by Sassaflash one year and has been with her ever since.
Mother: Sassaflash
A pegasus mare who's talent for wrangling thunderclouds gave her her cutie mark. Has been in love with Caramel and been with him for a long time.
Cloudy Days
A 'third wheel' friend in the Cinnamon Swirl/Misty Dream BFF partnership. The three of them became friends after Cloudy Days settled an argument that neither Misty nor Cinnamon would back down from.
Appearance:
A pegasus mare with a patchwork coat of dominant light blue with large patches of white and a mane of the same, though with color dominance reversed.
Cutie Mark:
A ray of sunshine.
Talent:
Settling arguments by helping all sides see the other's point of view. She's often called by her foalhood nickname, 'Little Ray of Sunshine,' which eventually became her cutie mark. Nopony knows if it was Pinkie knowing something more than she really should or just a coincidence.
Personality:
A bubbly mare with a heart of gold. She can never have too many friends and she's always happy to hang out with them doing whatever.
Parents:
Unknown.
She's an orphan who's been mostly adopted by Pinkie Pie. She doesn't really know who her parents are, but she's plenty happy with Pinkie as a mostly mother, whom she lives with - though the adoption agency frowns on unsigned paperwork, they've overlooked this one. They're pretty sure the signature's in the mail.
The Plots (Because with Twist involved, you can't have just one.)
The Romance:
In an attempt to impress Rarity with his generosity, he gives Twist a very meaningful gift that she reads way too much into. He ended up impressing the wrong pony though. She ends up chasing after him for a couple years before he comes to see that she really does love him for himself and realizes that while Rarity loves him too, it's just not ever going to be 'in that way.' (Not that he complains about it now.)
The Other Romance:
Cinnamon Swirl is in love with somepony. Everypony thinks it's a stallion, but she really loves her best friend forever, Misty Dream. Why can't she just tell her that she loves her? Sure, Quick Step is rather cute, bordering on hot, but she just doesn't feel any attraction to him. Or to anypony else for that matter, mare or stallion. She only has eyes for one pony, and Misty Dream is oblivious to that fact.
Other Stuff
Cinnamon Swirl, Misty Dream, and Cloudy Days:
Friends almost since birth, the two have been inseparable for as long as either of them can remember. Entering Ponyville High School, they picked up a third friend, another pegasus pony by the name of Cloudy Days who's still trying to understand all the 'in' jokes the old friends have together. She's often there to help them come down after a friendly argument and plays the straight mare to both of their hijinks.
Since Misty is an actress and Cinnamon an artist, they have a lot of love for the same things. Even if Cinnamon's favorite canvas is food, she's not so shabby at other kinds of art either and she's made alterations to outfits and painted backdrops for her friend before.
The two have worked on foal set stage plays together with Cinnamon doing the painting and design work while Misty did the directing. As these are plays for foals, by foals, neither of them have done any of the acting in them, only coaching and generally being Big Sisters to the foals trying to put on the play.
Cloudy Days still has her own (large) circle of friends outside of Cinnamon Swirl and Misty dream, and they often get together to do things. Cinnamon and Misty both mostly share the same circle of friends, with Misty being slightly more outgoing than Cinnamon.
The World
Future Ponyville
30 years in the future, Ponyville has grown into a sub-metropolis. Still too far from Manehatten and Canterlot to truly be considered a hub of high society, the once sleepy (okay, that was a lie), the once small town has grown up into a bustling burg with close to forty thousand ponies living within its limits and the outlying suburbs.
It now boasts a large, revamped Elementary-Middle School, of which Cheerilee is the principal, and a High School with classroom and other space for roughly six hundred ponies a year. They have yet to reach that capacity and some of the classrooms are used only for storage or club meetings.
The Town's Personality:
Princess Twilight still lives in Ponyville, though she also rules over the lands surrounding it and Canterlot so she's very busy. Spike will still assist her some days and she still calls him her number one assistant, but he has a family to tend to now, and can't be there for her all the time. Instead, Princess Twilight grants a special scholarship of sorts to three young foals (a pegasus, an earth pony, and a unicorn) every four years to be her assistants and grow up under her tutelage. She also has a small hall full of other attendants, but these three, her Twilight Time Crusaders, do much a lot of work helping her keep up with her own projects that would otherwise fall short due to royal duties.
She's called it that after her first trio, the original Cutie Mark Crusaders, spent four years under her tutelage. The CMC's own sons and daughters have been her assistants as well.
Twilight eventually married her long time companion and love, Rainbow Dash, and the two have adopted a pair of foals, Silverlight (female unicorn) and Half Moon (male pegasus,) both of whom had been born on Nightmare Night and named after the lunar Princess.
Rainbow Dash is the captain of the Ponyville Elite, a companion team to the Wonderbolts that she established after she rose to the rank of Captain and then stepped down after a number of years. The Ponyville Elite is a team of younger fliers who also aspire to be Wonderbolts some day. The team is quickly earning a name for itself, though, and may one day rival or surpass the Wonderbolts in accomplishments.
Rarity did eventually move to Canterlot and start her own fashion empire to rival that of Hoity Toity, but now mostly runs it from the sidelines and lets Coco Pommel do most of the day to day management of the business. She has since moved back to Ponyville and runs her boutique, having been let down by the constant infighting and intriguing going on behind the scenes. She's still unmarried, but not for lack of trying.
Fluttershy runs the town's Veterinary clinic and teaches classes there on how to care for various animals. She eventually married Soarin and they have two beautiful pegasus foals.
Applejack runs the farm, the only one left in the city proper. She has steadfastly refused to let even one square meter of land be taken by the city for expansion. Twilight eventually stepped in and declared Sweet Apple Acres an Equestria Heritage landmark. Applejack eventually married Full Steam and the two have a daughter, Sweet Cider.
Pinkie Pie has never married, preferring instead to be friends with everypony. One could say that she married the town, and every resident is her family.
The CMC:
Apple Bloom is an architect and owns her own design company and plans one day on building a real palace for Twilight instead of the hall. If only she didn't have so much else to do... She's not married, but she does claim to have a full time partner, in both a business and romantic sense. She's not saying who, though. Rumor has it that she's Gabby Gums, which she adamantly denies.
Scootaloo is currently a lieutenant in the Wonderbolts. Her troubled childhood before her wings grew enough to fly and her mind got over the crippling mental block has stunted her performance. Not enough to get into the Wonderbolts, but enough to hold her back from the highest rank she still wants to achieve.
Sweetie Belle is a pop star. After getting her cutie mark by performing on stage with Sapphire Shores and ending the duet as an unexpected solo, the applause that greeted her solo performance made her realize that she's really good at singing. She partnered for a time with the pop star, but split off on good terms to start her own group, "Sweetie Rocks," with Maud Pie as the drummer and backup singer. Oh, and there's a unicorn guitarist who does double duty as the group's keyboardist too. It's weird, but it works; most of the time.
Gabby Gums:
Having gotten tired of the tabloid mischief, Gabby Gums has been publishing books now based on the lives of the friends of three particular ponies. None of the original three have fessed up that they're Gabby Gums yet. Her first book was "The Mare in the Moon and Silver Spoon."
Diamond Tiara:
After an apprenticeship with the Flim Flam Brothers, Diamond tiara came back a changed mare. No longer openly hostile, she's made up with Silver Spoon and now owns a fashion and modeling agency that she uses to compete with Rarity. She's still extremely manipulative, but she's subtler about it, and more devious. It's hard to say with any certainty whether or not she truly holds any of her old grudges.
Silver Spoon:
Giving up her claims to nobility some years after she regained her cutie mark, Silver Spoon moved to the Crystal Empire. The ongoing family feud between the noble Silver family and the once noble Spoon family is unknown there, since it started after the Empire was cast into the frozen north for a thousand years.
There, she met and fell in love with a Crystal Pony palace guard, Amethyst Shield, whom she was seeing for other reasons (being a guard can be rough.) The two eventually married and now have a daughter, Crystal Spoon. She's an artist who will be moving to Canterlot to attend a conservatory for aspiring artists and models. While there, she gets noticed by Diamond Tiara and offered a job as a model.
Trixie Lulamoon:
Trixie eventually came back to Ponyville as a performance artist again and stayed when her wagon broke both axles. Broke, and with noplace else to stay, she roomed with Twilight for a month while she built up a savings from her performance to fix up the interior of her wagon. Twilight swears that will never happen again, but won't say what, exactly. Rainbow Dash just laughs at her anytime somepony brings it up.
Her wagon is now a full regalia open form theater on the edge of town where she teaches the art and magic of showmareship to any pony willing to learn from her. For just a modest fee, of course. She actually has a number of students who are learning things from her.
Very interesting. I skimmed a good bit, but I liked what I read. You might get some flak for some of the background pairings, if they crop up, but depending on how you do it, that may not be an issue. In this instance, since you're showing such a big time skip, it's kind of hard not to consider how many of them moved on as tidbits of the world at large.
I especially love that Rarity and Pinkie just haven't gotten with anyone. It's always nice to see some of them who either can't settle down or haven't found the one.
My only major concern is to be sure that Fluttershy with Soarin' doesn't feel like you're casting him off from Rainbow Dash, since I think that might be one of her biggest straight ships? Though I could be wrong about that. I think Discord should be Best Uncle, if you feel up to it.
I'm extremely curious what Flim and Flam will teach Diamond Tiara. I'm assuming it's simply the art of subtle manipulation and more flies with honey... though even they can be harsh.
Flim: That was awful.
Diamond Tiara: I'll say! You tried to sell me to some dogs!
Flam: Hah, all right, so we tricked them.
Flim: We were going to rescue you.
Flam: Exactly! The old returning pony scheme.
Flim: With a little help.
Flam: But you saved us the trouble!
Diamond Tiara: ... Give me some of those bits or I'm telling my father!
Flim: *tosses her a few* Tell him what? How you stole some money from some stupid dogs?
Flam: Or how you were fierce, pragmatic, and can take care of yourself?
Flim: Also, we'll give you half the profits next time if you keep this a secret between you and your beloved uncles!
Flam: But you should steal some of the gemstones when you break out. Then there 'll be more profit all around.
Diamond Tiara: I... huh. That almost sounds fun.
Flim: That's the spirit! *kisses her forehead*
Flam: *noogies her inside the tiara*
Diamond Tiara: *eye twitch* You're lucky I never have this much adventure back home or you'd be in sooo much trouble!
Probably nothing like that. They'd be dead if daddy's little girl got upset.
2022777
To be honest, he was the first pegasus that came to mind. It wasn't because of the huge SoarinDash thing. I think I may choose a more... down to earth pony, honestly. Fluttershy doesn't necessarily fly all that much. Maybe Mr. Breezy. Breezyshy.
I laughed pretty hard at this. I really need to work on my Flim Flam Dialogue.
2022789
I forget who Mr. Breezy was. But either works for me!
2022820
To be honest, I don't know if I write them well, but I always have so much fun trying that I really can't complain.