What is Magnus? · 9:32pm Oct 31st, 2015
I decided I had to write this blog post in order to clarify a few things concerning The Last Descendant, specifically Magnus. Every other chapter or so there's someone asking why the story isn't tagged Anthro, and every time I reply the same; I don't consider him anthro enough to warrant the tag. So, here's my explanation one last time.
We'll start 1500 years in the past. Star Swirl accidentally ended up on Earth, found a tribe of natives who he ended up living with. He got to know the chiefs daughter, fell in love, knocked her up and became a father. The child looked like a normal human being, but changed to an anthropomorphic human/pony hybrid when Star Swirl focused his magic onto her. When she wasn't exposed to magic, she changed back to human form. Magic is needed for the hybrid form to appear, and without magic only the base human form appears. As unicorns has a greater need for magic than other types of ponies, such as earth ponies and pegasi, it means that the hybrids has a shorter lifespan as the need for magic causes them pain, suffering, and eventually early death. If a hybrid was born in Equestria, their lifespan would be normal.
Which brings us to the question; Why I don't consider Magnus anthro enough, and why isn't the story tagged anthro?
1500 years separates Star Swirl and his descendant, Magnus. Considering that most of Magnus ancestors only lived to be around 25-30 years old, it means that roughly 50 to 60 generations separates the two. Now we're starting to talk about changes to the DNA over time.
Let's say that a child is born. Mother is Caucasian, and the father is African. The child is likely to have darker skin than the mother, and brighter skin than the father. If the child grew up and had a child with a Caucasian, the child would have slightly brighter skincolor, and so on etc. This is the case with Magnus and his ancestors. Over generations, pony traits hidden in the hybrid DNA would slowly disappear as more and more human DNA is added. Of course, hooves, horn, fur and the like is a enormous change and is unlikely to disappear in a few generations, which is why Magnus has unguligrade legs, hooves, horn, pointy ears, fur on lower legs and arms, and slightly larger hands and thicker fingers. (And other surprises)
This image is a good representation of what I mean. Magnus would be somewhere around 4 to 5, with some variations and parts of number 3.
In conclusion: Magnus has a human mindset, and has always considered himself human. He is a lot more human than pony, and what changes there are won't affect him much. He simply isn't anthro enough to warrant the tag, because he is not 50/50 human and pony. There was one unicorn and one human 1500 years ago which yielded one 50/50 hybrid. Add, say 50 generations, and the resulting offspring is a human with few, but quite noticeable, physical changes.
I hope this explanation answered your questions.
Is it bad that I find it so amusing that this was needed?
Don't know why so many have this question if the answer was in the chapters. Guess some people must make comments without reading first.
He'd more be classified as a 'monster' anyways and not the commonly used way of anthro. It's kind of the same reasoning that is used for why werewolves and minotaurs are fine for certain people when they say they hate everything anthro. And really, he's not a pony with humanesque traits but a human with pony traits. What would that be called anyways? Ponthro?
3510960 I often think that the explanation wasn't clear enough, but I also think that the term 'anthro' has a very loose definition. Here on fimfiction, it is usually found in stories where the ponies are bipeds, such as the image above shows, mainly around number 3. By definition, a hybrid is a mix between two animals within the same genus, that can produce viable offspring. Examples are Ligers, Zonkeys, Pumapard, Wolphin and Camas.
Anthropomorphism is by definition, attribution of human form or characteristics to beings other than humans, according to Wikipedia. In that case, since ponies can talk, think, and are quite intelligent, can we then not say that the ponies we see every Saturday on TV are anthropomorphic?
3510995 In one chapter Twilight thought about this. Her ideas were Humicorn and Uniman, but I'm open for new suggestions.