I think of Lyra as being somewhat similar to Twilight in the magical capabilities department. She was once chosen to be Celestia's student, but she passed on it in favor of her musical studies. Thus, Celestia was forced to go with Twilight, in a sense.

I call her Lyra, but whatever floats your boat.

Also, Background Pony crushed my original head-canon of her into tiny bits, so the one I have now is the one presented in that story.

959932 if that is the case, Lyra probably felt like a right numpty when Twi became an alicorn.

959926
I was alarmed at the title at the post, believing you were talking about the story Heartstrings, wow.

I think I like the human obessed Lyra that the fandom has created. Although I also like fics that show humans aren't all she cares about.

It was a quite tricky one for first, but I didn't need much research to give her some nice not human obsessed, not annoying, not flat and retarded character this fandom somehow seems to enjoy giving her but start making me throw up.

But I wonder how you view her guys, what do you think she might be like.

Good luck. The only reason she stood out in the first place was because of her odd posture.
Otherwise she would still be a plain, uninteresting background pony.

I suppose you could try the Lunaverse section, they have done their Lyra well.

959926
I understand where you are coming from. I am also tried of fics that portal her are ONLY that. There are other fics they add-on to one of those traits and makes her seem like a solid character. While I do like calling her Heartstrings, Lyra is just faster to type and nearly everyone in the fandom knows the first name over her last name.

~Hearn

959926 I made a fic describing a non human obsessed Lyra, if that helps.

I've always thought that Octavia works better as the proper, refined musician, while Lyra's a lot more playful and carefree. We've seen Octavia playing at a fancy event (actually, as far as the show goes, that's all we've seen her do). Lyra's usually shown doing silly things in crowd shots, and the only reason we know she's a musician is because her cutie mark seems to indicate that.

You could always use that characterization for Lyra, since she's a background pony and nothing's stopping you from saying whatever you want. But I think it's a little too close to the popular fanon for Octavia, so I prefer Lyra to be a contrast to that.

In my own quirky little alternate universe, she's part of a group of four mares, each of whom represents one of the four seasons. (Roseluck represents Spring, Carrot Top represents Autumn, Lyra represents Winter, and Bon-Bon represents Summer) Still debating how exactly I'm going to pull it off for their story, but hey.
In terms of her character, she's polite, though somewhat aloof. Her interests occasionally border on obsession, but she does not obsess over humans. She does research on demons and their interaction with ponies and other races; more specifically, she does a lot of research on Cambions, mortals with demonic ancestry. While she does enjoy music, her abilities aren't entirely focused in that area. She is, of course, a master of telekinetic manipulation.

"As you continually increase the amount of demonic blood or influence in your lineage, at what point do you cease to be a mortal and become a true demon? Perhaps never: as long as you still have a bit of original pony DNA, maybe you can never quite lose what it is to be a pony. Still, I'm trying to find the breaking point. Not because I want to break anypony, but to know how far I can push myself before I lose what it means to be a pony."
-Lyra, on her demon-centric research

Honestly, she really has no "established" canon personality, so it's open to whatever you want to do with it. I used the popular fanon version because it fit well with a story I was doing at the time (X-Files spoof), but do what you want.

I have multiple headcanons for characters, which means I have to divide them up into separate 'universes'.

In the current universe I'm working on(MLDCU), Lyra Heartstrings has a passion for folk songs and folk tales, and often recites them in poem form with accompaniment from her lyre. She's an amateur archaeologist, following in the hoofprints of her more professional family. She has a certain fascination with some of her great-grandfather's notes about an extinct society of aquatic ponies that lived in what used to be an inland sea.

Other than her line of work and hobby, she also enjoys long walks on the beach, spending time with Bon-Bon, and beating the ever-loving hell out of criminals as the Aquamare.

959926

Good luck, but seriously, you are going to disapoit/ piss off a lot of people.

I have to admit, I like the Human Obsessed Lyra. However, I stop liking her if there is no reason for her obsession, if it is only a quirk instead of something that does affect her character development and her social life. If she is Human Obsessed, make it show through that it is part of her instead of "Oh, and let's add human obsession for fun!"

Still, when Lyra is not human obsessed, I prefer if she is still researching myths and such, exotic beings...

959926 My head canon fluctuates between the version of Lyra presented by fanon, and the version we see in the fic Anthropology, which I thought was a very ironic, funny and touching story.

I've been known to play along with the "human-obsessed Lyra" thing as a joke on occasion, but for me, it really is a bit of a dead horse trope (pardon the pun).

I realize some folks here aren't really into clopfics. Nevertheless, I think the characterization of Lyra that I like best is the one in Xenophilia, where she's a martial arts badass dispensing zen philosophy as easily as she does cheerful words of encouragement, and is most certainly no slouch in the intellectual department. This is especially true of the side stories, which flesh out her character even more than in the original story.

I acknowledge having used human obsessed Lyra, but I did give it a reason for it in the background of the story, and it comes back to hit her and Twilight's relationship (It's a Lyralight ship) when she has to learn to tone down her obsession.

I've written two Lyras.

One is an expy of Captain Nemo, wandering the seas in her submarine, battling the Equestrian navy under Admiral Bonbon.

The other is a playful musician for hire who lives with Bonbon because the rent is too high.
And is Big Macintosh's marefriend.

Neither version in human obsessed, because it makes absolutely no sense.

I actually used a slightly more obscure meme as the seed that my fanon for her grew around: Seapony Narpony Lyra.

She had a fairly normal childhood, spending many hours playing her lyre with hooves and horn, her tail twined around the rings that serve hippocampi, aerocampi, and narponies in place of chairs (below and slightly in front of her, thus how she sits).

She got her cutiemark after intentionally beaching herself to better her her own experiments with how her instrument and voice sounded in air instead of water. Her horn cast a spell intuitive fairly early in the process, which is what allowed her gills to process the air well enough for her to get through the piece before she had to roll back into the water to stop herself from slowly asphyxiating (Not a real danger, just a limiting factor). The music, of course, sounded pretty bad since the air threw off the tuning of both instrument and voice and some of the note durations on the lyre*, but it proved the concept.
*Less of a damping effect on any string allowed to die out naturally instead of being stopped. I don't know enough about lyres to know how much of a difference this would make.

Her talent in magic developed until she was able to fully turn herself into a unicorn. She got a grant for independent musical study, and moved to Ponyville, traveling in an aerated fishbowl. Of course, she hadn't learned to walk yet... which is where her roommate came in.

Bon-Bon is a physical therapist. She can't cook very well at all, especially not candies. Her cutie-mark represents the positive reinforcements she uses on her patients. Her vocal talents come from inspiring her speech-impaired patients.

It took years for Lyra to master the land its associated form. By that time the two had become such fast friends (just friends) that Lyra never moved out, instead upgrading the studio she had build to practice the pieces she composed for herself that involved changes between air and water (separate microphones for each), while also working out a tuning system that would make it an advantage, rather than a draw-back. She never plays in public (well, not until a certain Nightmare Night in one of my stories) since the niche nature of her music doesn't mesh well with the large amount of set-up involved. She has a decent enough recording contract for her to get by.

Lyra's different perspective on the unicorn form, and Bon-Bon's early encouragement to keep moving in any way, rather than sticking only to boring and repetitive exercises, stayed with her even after the need ended, leading to many of her odd antics.

The first thing I did when I introduced Lyra into my story was to subvert the human-obsessive fanon. I don't think I made any mention of "hands" in my story until she was introduced, but then she was completely dismissive of that particular anatomical feature. She even makes a bit of fun of the human character, citing the more dangerous digits of griffins and dragons as being more useful than clawless hands.

To be honest, my favorite iteration of Lyra has always been the one in Xenophilia. I was never one for clopfics; I usually skipped the more explicit parts when I was reading. I didn't even like the characters in that story all that much, except for her. Wry, maybe a little sarcastic, but always on top of things without seemingly having to exert effort. She seemed to always come out on top of any situation, without coming off as a Mary Sue. She had, for lack of a better word, poise, which is something the common fanon, human-obsessed Lyra does not in most stories.

In my head, she's charmingly sarcastic without being a bitch. She's slightly jaded without being cynical. She's more insightful than others but incapable of tackling her own big issues without the help of friends. She might be suffering from writer's block now, and it causes her no small amount of frustration, but in the process of trying to distract herself from her own personal failures as a musician she becomes a better pony. And when push comes to shove, she still has the musical acumen to drive others to sorrowful tears or tittering laughter with her compositions, even as she berates herself inwardly over her inadequacy.

I guess if I could sum her up in one word, it'd be 'subtlety'. She isn't human-obsessed. She isn't neurotic. She's just a gifted musician suffering a bit of writer's block, but she still has a personality outside of her lyre.

959926
You know what's the great thing about modern ponies? Cutie marks.

With Lyra's you can have dozens of interpretations.
Scratch that. With anyone's you can have a dozen of interpretations.

From Lyra's cutie mark she could be:
A musician, the most obvious one; but the question here is, what kind of musician?
Is she a folk musician? A historical musician? A classical musician?
An imitator. Why? Because Lyrebirds.
Or an archeologist. The lyre is an ancient instrument for pony standards too, so it can represent what brought Lyra realize she loves digging things and looking out their origins.

And this just on the top of my tired, drunk, groggy head.
Symbolism plays a great part on what a pony's life means and the interpretations you could give them and how you could use them are both why I believe that our fandom is stupidly fertile for character and story creation, and why I cringe everytime I see a "shallow" cutie thing on an OC.

It's okay, you can have you stupid pony OC on eye-ravaging neons but, do you fucking need to make so obvious that he like video games and put a goddamn Thrustmaster F1 wheel on his butt?
You couldn't think of a better cutie mark?

Back to my point, take imitator Lyra for example.
She could be used on a comedy, on a coming of age with comedy, on a Body Snatcher's parody or even be a playful changeling queen that likes to leave hints behind her if you're into that kinda thing.

Musician Lyra could be one of those thoughtful musicians who are always with their head on the clouds, or a folk musician who was odd enough to choose a lyre or a historical music researcher who plays old pieces so ponies won't forget them.

Researcher Lyra is my excuse to use human obssessed Lyra though; but it doesn't need to be that way for you.
You can make her just a pony archeologist, a pegasi historician, a collector of old things, whatever.

TL;DR. Think outside of the box but inside of the cutie mark.

960450
Is your Lyra me?

959926 She likes glass trinkets?

960589 That's entirely dependent on your ability to tolerate the forced puerility of interdimensional travelers who alienate others in the mistaken belief that it might provide said parties some modicum of safety.

If you can't, then no, absolutely not.

If you can, then we have bigger issues to discuss than a pleasant, mint-colored pony with a distracting, manic grin and a penchant for jumping when in the presence of large crowds–even as a great many stringed instruments gather dust in her room.

Hallucinogens are a helluva drug, mang.

(Editor's Note: Consider this post an addendum to my first on my headcanon of Lyra. Minus the drugs.)

960685
Only if said interdimensional traveler is a cute and humble girl in search of answers.

But really, the paragraph were you described Lyra's character reminded me of myself.

I plan to have her time lord fanatic, instead of human fanatic and slightly sea pony fanatic if I ever write the Doctor \Whooves story I also think shes a adventurous hyperactive and slightly insane when actually meeting them

IME she was a musician. After a series of war fueled funerals she got horribly depressed herself. In an effort to work her way through it she wrote a stupid, sappy story called "Thumbs". It was a romance because she was trying to cheer herself up and used a were-human as a bad metaphor for the duality of a war torn Equestria. It was never really meant to be seen by others, but a friend of hers got a hold of it and then showed it to a friend that published it and it went off like Gangbusters. Now a days she's basically the Equestrian version of Stephanie Meyer.