Apr
7th
2013
Searching for Artist · 12:53am Apr 7th, 2013
One of the upcoming parts of my "Cadance of Cloudsdale" cycle (yes, it's still coming!) really begs to have a particular piece of fanart attached to it as a cover image. Unfortunately, the source at which I found this picture contained no artist credits or anything, and I do like to be a good little pony and ask permission first. So, anyone have any idea who originally produced the attached image, so I can properly do so?
The artist is negativefox. http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8164284/
Edit: *does the First! dance*
Google image search turned up the EqD drawfriend which points to:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8164284/
Source 1
EQD #7
E621
And, finally, the user's account
Forgive the spam. I was playing around with a feature that worked all too well, and I found a few more results than expected.
986453
We all posted within 8 seconds....not like the earlier comments would have been loaded when you started composing that post.
986457
Eight seconds... that's a new academy record.
986459
We are Skywriter's stalkery research team, and we find sources in eight seconds flat. That make us about 20% faster than Dashie.
See, y'all are just lots better at image searching than I am. Thanks, guys. Now to request permission!
Gah, minutes late!
986466
The math checks out!
986468
The trick is reverse image search. Go to google images, and click on the little camera icon. Either paste the URL or upload the file, then look for the "find other sizes of this image" option. Hit "all sizes", and mouse over all the results until you find one on a booru (like derpibooru or e621). Those have tags on all their images, which usually include the name of the artist and a link to the artist's gallery or the image page. Deviantart and furaffinity are even better, because those are usually direct to the artist's page. If you don't find one of those, start with the non-booru results and hope someone mentions the name of the artist.
986493
The more you know!
Dude, have you read the extended-canon children's chapter book, Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell? Origin story: Cadence was born a pegasus, orphaned (so you know she was destined for greatness), and raised by earth ponies. "And as she grew up, the natural love and compassion she had for others filled everypony with warmth and the urge to protect her." An evil pony enchantress, Prismia, wore a powerful necklace that amplified the evil and jealousy within her own heart, but it also amplified the power of Cadence's love. Cadence stopped Prismia's evildoing and with the necklace teleported herself to "a strange place—a place that nopony except Princess Celestia had ever been! So when Celestia discovered special little Cadance in that mysterious location, the Princess brought her back to Canterlot to raise her as her very own royal niece. [. . .] Princess Cadance’s special talent had always been her amazing ability to spread love wherever she went—settling conflicts and bringing ponies of all kinds together. In her final exam at Celestia’s school of magic, Cadance was even able to make two known rival pony families of Canterlot become best friends for life."
That's a thought I was not expecting: Cadence was Shining Armour's foalsitter.
986716
Read, and incorporating some details, though I can't swing all of them now[1]. Thanks for the heads-up!
[1] Namely, the fact that canon seems to be slowly coming to the conclusion that all alicorns are made, not born, leaving the mysterious and unnerving Princess Skyla by the wayside. The Prismia story has been retrofitted into the "...Unicorn Tooth" narrative as Cady's cutie mark origin instead of her alicornication origin; I hadn't yet had a cutie mark story planned out for Cady and this serves the purpose nicely.
986716
Of course she was...she's Princess Mary Sue Cadence!
Ah well, still cool to have an official back story. But still, why can't the first two prinesses get some more love and attention? grumble grumble
Well I'm afraid I don't know who drew it... I can say though that it's an awesome pic!
Hope you can find them! And I hope to see the story soon! 
Negativefox on FurAffinity.
Mono:1
986735 "Namely, the fact that canon seems to be slowly coming to the conclusion that all alicorns are made, not born"
The book suggested this? See, I've maintained that Cadence and Twi are something like mortal alicorns and sit on a tier below the Sisters, who are actual goddesses; that kinda goes down the drain if it's specifically stated otherwise somewhere.
991023 "Crystal Heart Spell" suggests that Cady is an ascended pegasus as analogous to Twi's ascended unicorn. The Royal Sisters have not been mentioned yet, so you're still good if your head canon has those two as qualitatively different from Cady and Twi.
991197>>991023
The books and comics are only nominally canon at the best of times, so I wouldn't recommend stressing about their contents.
995149
Yeah, I was totally planning on it ditching "...Crystal Heart Spell" entirely, but I found I really kind of needed the character of Prismia without having realized it. So, y'know, picking and choosing.
995250
That's totally fair!
986716
Personally, I found all this with Cadence’s history is getting messy (or maybe not necessarily but they are now trying to actively make her history for the first time, instead of going around it): For instance, Twilight referred to her as a “Unicorn” during the flashbacks in the Wedding episodes, even though she plainly wasn't— though I suspect that has more to do with the show shying away from labeling the Celestia’s race of beings, even though the fans have primarily been using “Alicorn” for ages (it wasn’t until “Alicorn Amulet” that the first word was even brought up) It’s also doubly ironic that Cadence was born a Pegasus, in an Earth Pony village when, again, the show referred to her as a Unicorn…even though she was an Alicorn >_<.
There is a lot of inconsistency on that department, which leads to me believe we are supposed to retcon, or otherwise ignore, those little things since it now seems that Cadence's history is now actively being worked on (assuming this whole book is canon in the first place, which I really doubt - I mean, if it were, we've just been spoiled the opening of S4 months ahead of time
). To make an example, it's plain, with her history here, that the writer was trying to work with this new change in direction the show is going, with the whole "earning" the role of Princess (of course, whether or not you like what Meghan Mccarthy said in the first place is something else entirely), which basically makes up this book in the first place…going further into Cadence's history and, indirectly, explaining how pony's could become Alicorn's in the first place. Is it perfect? It's up to you, though I could perfectly understand why it's not at all…..much of it has to do with if you like the changes in the first place: if you liked this episode, or Meghan's reasoning in the EW magazine.
The impression I got learning about the book is a pretty chaotic one and I think it goes back to being forced to cope with the massive change in the narrative — the mechanics of Twilight's change and what it means to even be an Alicorn, nevermind Cadence who is another big thing entirely: This one little book tried to tackle far too much, in such a small kid-friendly package.
I will say this: Twilight's brief "regression" was intriguing…that maybe Alicorn's could lose their power, and status as one, if people no longer believed in them or they no longer loved "their little ponies" – …of course, tying that in with the show canon is something else – for example, if Alicorn's lose strength with their friendships are strained, how does Luna fit into that? She became corrupted when she felt ponies didn't appreciate her night, not necessarily regressed (so perhaps instead of letting herself go, she angrily embraced "the dark side of the moon" to make people love her? Dun dun duuuun)…then again, she was much smaller in stature in Episode 2, though that may have been because of the Elements of Harmony. It could be that this "regression" only applies to Twilight, given the emphasis on Friendship and that's most likely what she stands for as a Princess…that all Alicorns gain power from what they stand for, and when Twilight's friendships were getting strained, she began to lose power - I have to admit, I like that idea.
Perhaps Cadence would regress if she had her heart-broken? The love shared between her fiancee was literally enough to scatter an entire army....that, broken, it would cause her to also lose her Alicorn-ness....It sounds appealing - FiM loves to play with symbolism so much in an emotional way like that, and characters do tend to somewhat literally lose a part of themselves when they are emotionally hurt or abused (Pinkie Pie "deflated" and utterly lost it when she thought her friends abandoned her, and of course, all the ponies lost themselves and their color when Discord warped them): I imagine, if Cadence perhaps felt unappreciated and took on the dark side of "Love", or Discord warped her....she would become not unlike Chrysalis
- becoming this succubus-type creature that shapeshifts into what the victim desires most before absorbing their love (not life, unless it's a darker fic of course). Given how well they parallel eachother, it's not unheard of to see different fanfics play with the relationship - whether actual siblings, symbolic opposites and so on.
I'll also say that I suddenly love the choice of the author in making Cadence originally a Pegasus rather then a Unicorn....why? Because it implies she didn't have love-spells during her youth, which means that she had to get ponies to love-love-love eachother the old' fashioned way....That not only sounds very difficult, but extremely ripe for good fanfiction material! ^___^. Getting supposedly two rival families to love each other, without the aid of magic...that sounds more then difficult, and suddenly makes me look at her in a new way (you see unrelenting dissenters? A little creativity, and she can be as developed as all the rest
)...though I'm not sure what she was doing in Celestia's magic academy, if she were a Pegasus. It certainly implies a huge amount of growth for her...that she had to learn friendship and love like anyone else, and she wasn't born to be Aphrodite....foalsitting, match-making perhaps, love and diplomacy...she was good at what she did, long before she had a horn.
1000196
...faaanfiiic...
1000200
....Huh? You honestly lost me, though I will admit I really really went on a much bigger tangent then I thought I would - I guess I had a lot more to say on that little book then I expected
.
Oh and by the way: for some reason, I strangely haven't been 'following' you until now even though I've reviewed your stories in the past (my memory never fails to fail me
)....no longer the case 
1000212
That was the siren song of fanfic calling you to express your world-building ideas in story form.
1000401
Hehe, that would be good
Fanfiction is....something I haven't actually done in about 10 years or so, in all honesty - my writing skills have obviously grown so much since then, and I have collaborated in editing fics which I'm quite fond of...but I have honestly haven't written something myself since. I think, if I really want to get back into writing, I'm hoping to find other people who can collaborate with me, so I can slowly get back into the groove of things and sharpen my writing skills: If I jump straight into writing, by myself, I'm bound to just make a bunch of disasters....which isn't a bad thing (since it's part of learning), but all the same, I'd feel better continuing to work with other people in helping them with their fics, so I can build up people who can help me with mine, if I'm really up to writing again....as I get better, I'll rely less and less on people's help.
I think what it comes down too is, you really need a lot of time and passion for what you are doing - you don't want to start writing and then halfway, lose focus and interest in your story: again, I'm obviously a much much better writer then I ever was ten years ago, and I've learned many lessons since then....but even so, you really need to have a lot of mojo for whatever you're doing, and I've basically been trying to get it back ever since.
Happily however, I'm starting to be in a pretty restless point in my life, where I want to be more passionate and productive...so the idea of me trying to put myself out there more, say, in fanfiction, is certainly something I would love to start doing again
: again, I think I'd feel comfortable in collaborating and having other people help me in what I write, so I'm going by myself in the beginning, but whatever happens, at least I'm doing something.
Come to think of it, I've had an account on this website for weeks now, and I have yet to collaborate with any pony writers
, I need to change that.