[Edited Again] Have Questions About the World of "The Opera Phantom Discord"? · 5:57pm Sep 20th, 2014
Would you like to know the ins and outs of the world I created for my novel The Opera Phantom Discord? If so you can find it here!
I often get questions about my choices and how my world works so I thought I'd put it here in a blog post. It should give you a better understanding of how and why my characters do what they do, and give you some more interesting information that may help you understand the novel better.
Part 1 - Magic and Flight - I updated this because I apparently didn't pass high school biology
1. This is a world with almost NO magic. Why? Genetics. To put it simply, only creatures that possess magic can have children with magic. Unicorns have interbred with non-magical ponies for thousands of years and this has diluted the magic. By this point (the 19th century) hardly any unicorns are born with any magical ability at all. The horn has now only become a symbol of status. If you are a unicorn, you are usually more well off in society, but the chance of possessing ANY magic is less than 5%. Blueblood is one such unicorn, he has no magic whatsoever.
2. What about Pegasus? Basically they have the same problems as unicorns. The ability to fly is HIGHLY coveted. You can do quite a lot if you can fly rather than having to wait on ships for cargo, so mail teams similar to the Wonderbolts exist. Pegasus created homes like Cloudsdale (in the sky and only accessible to flying ponies), thus separating themselves from society. This has been damaging to them. They tend to only marry other Pegasus (like unicorns marry only other unicorns) and this has resulted in many ponies born with inferior wings. If a Pegasus is living on the ground, it usually means they cannot fly. Fluttershy is one such pony. Her wings are unfortunately mostly useless.
3. So what does this mean for society? Well, almost 70% of the population is earth ponies so, they went the technical route. My ponies are currently at the beginning of the industrial revolution. They've created ships, the cotton gin, and most other things you can think of for that period in the human world to deal with the lack of flight and magic.
Part 2 - Clothes
1. My ponies wear clothes! Yes, I know that in the original show they don't usually wear clothes, however for my personal writing ability, I find it difficult to write them without clothes, as they are useful in creating plot, furthering the plot, and explaining emotions. You try writing a 300k romantic/drama/comedy without clothes. I couldn't do it.
Part 3 - Discord
1. Discord is a Draconequus and (technically) not the only one of his kind. His species is from Saddle Arabia and he was from there originally before being captured and sold to slave traders and eventually ending up in Maris, Prance (Paris, France) in a freak show. The general population has (some) knowledge of their race as they were once the central rulers of Saddle Arabia and years before used to have dealings with the Prance empire. Therefore he can technically go around looking the way he does without people thinking he is some kind of monster. However about a century before the novel takes place there was a pony uprising in Saddle Arabia that killed off many of his species, so to see a Draconequus is VERY rare. They are also capable of performing magic, but had the same problems as unicorns. They are also capable of having children with ponies if they so desire. Discord is able to do some small magic, but most of his talent is in his ability to disguise himself, which he practiced and perfected to help keep himself hidden and to escape possible danger.
Part 4 - Me
I am a full time college student with two jobs, and as such, I am really very busy. This means that unfortunately I don't have as much time as I would like to write, which usually results in my writing and posting something here at like 3 am. I have also never written pony stories before now, so when I wrote The Phantom Opera Discord, I got a bit confused with what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go with it, which is why some common errors like human body parts or different names can be found. I promise that I will continue to edit my story so you can have a nice error free complete story to read, but just wanted you to know why things are they way they are with me. I also wanted to thank all of you who thumbs up and comment on my story, I may not be able to respond back to all the comments, but I always take them seriously and always appreciate them.
Part 5 - Luna
1. I had someone ask about Luna and if she is an Alicorn in the story. She is, but she has no magic. She also has an sad back story. She comes from a very wealthy family (some even say she's related to the Queen ;) ) and when she was young she was a talented flying ballerina. There were very few ballerinas that could fly (and there are almost none in the current story timeline due to genetics) so she was very successful when she was young. Unfortunately she got a stalker who grew obsessed with her wings, and one evening he managed to kidnap her and cut off one of her wings. The police found them and stopped the stalker before he removed the other wing. With her career now over because she couldn't fly, she decided to become a ballet teacher. She then met a nice pony and had Twilight.
Part 6 - Works Inspired by Mine
If my story inspired you to write your own, that's great! I'm happy to know you are interested in writing something like my story. However, please do not use any direct quotes from my work, and while I'm all for writing a story involving Fluttershy and Discord in Phantom of the Opera, if you chose to use the same ponies as all of your supporting characters (especially the roles of Rarity, Derpy, Rainbow Dash and Shortround), I would want that you state either in a note on a chapter, or on the main story page, that you were inspired by my work. Lastly, please also do not use my Melody Rose OC at all.
Well, that's all the things I think you need to know about my story so you can understand it better. Let me know if there is anything else you don't get, and I'll be happy to add it here! Thanks for reading :)
Best Regards,
Alexandrite Ward
Yay!
Now I know
Oh that explains a lot now because I was really confused about the wings and horn but theres one thing is Luna in the story a alicorn if so what does it mean
I like those theories, they make sence!
So, Discord's only problema is the face, right?
2471338
I added a section on Luna with her back story for you to clear things up.
2486524
Yep, his only issue is his face, something he was born with (and a semi irrational but justified fear of ponies because of what happened in his home country to others of his kind).
Hi! I've been doing some fanart for your story - but when I got right down to it - I couldn't remember exactly which limbs were missing on the rough and tumble Rainbow Dash. Would you mind updating me on what is going on with her? I would greatly appreciate it!
Despite your painfully obvious lack of knowledge about genetics and genomics, I can't wait to read your story.
cheers.
3472441 It's my world, I can make the genetics work however I like
Happy reading 
3472779 I suppose that no one could argue with that.
3472779
Then why give the genetics explaination if you aren’t going to follow THAT properly? Even if the genes for magic are recessive, they don’t disappear into the ether, it would still mean that most of the population have carry recessive alleles and inevitably the next generation will be full of magic users. The idea of this story was so intriguing to, but your botched worldbuilding when it comes to school-grade understanding of DNA is painful.
“To put it simply, only creatures that posses magic can have children with magic. Most if not all unicorns are born into wealth, and are thus only allowed to marry a certain type of pony. Combine that with some pure blood ideology (Harry Potter anyone?) that means that most unicorns only ever have children with other unicorns, and this has diluted the magic.”
Logically and scientifically, if the world initially was full of magic, then their children should be magic users by your own explanation.
5431153
I sat here and thought about this for a while and realized that you are correct. I think I was mixing up the possibility of genetic mutations caused by only breeding with a small gene pool with the idea that it would make you inherently lose your magic because you breed in a small gene pool. In Harry Potter I remembered reading something about how Pure Bloods were producing non-magic children because of their limited gene pool but I don't think that was correct. I'll have to change my explanation. I'll change it to the fact that unicorns interbred with other non magic ponies it resulted in slowing losing their magic. I think that would be correct. Thank you for pointing it out.
5436196
Oh...um, thank you for the level-headed response! I hope I didn’t come off as too harsh or end up offending you.
3472976
I don't know if you are still around, but someone gave me an in-depth explanation of why I was wrong about genetics in this post you commented on 5 years ago and I was rude to you when you originally mentioned something so now I'm going to apologize and tell you you are right.
5436198
Oh thanks. That's really cool of you. I should apologize too, my comment wasn't the most mature either.
I was wondering what rendition of the Phantom of the Opera is this the closest to storywise? Is it based off a specific film or is it just the basic premise and not based off a specific version?
Hey just wanted to say I love this fic so much. I came back to it after years because I was making a modern au idea of baldurs gate 3 with a friend and we were trying to figure out how to make cambions exist decently in a fantasy world with practically no magic, and I remembered this fic with discordant disguise magic.
Jesus it's still so incredible and I love rereading it to this day, so thanks for the trip down memory lane. I hope you're doing well years later, and that life is being a blast. Have a good day!