Behind the Feeding Problems · 6:05am May 10th, 2016
"Is there a bug in here?"
I've been meaning to talk about Feeding Problems, the sorts of stuff that inspired me to write it, besides the Christmas Special by doublewbrothers that finally kicked it off. At first, I just wanted to write something to make teasing jokes about how silly stories about changelings are, but finding that comic, among other things led me to go a... somewhat different direction.
The theory that ponies are insects is not without merit. Take a look at close relatives to ponies:
and
and
I'm still half convinced that Changelings are really just what you get when a Flutterpony gets very, very hungry.
Anyway, what was also interesting was how these little guys:
...are one of the only creatures in Equestria that come in the same diversity of color as ponies. Them, breezies, changelings in disguise, and not much else.
There are actually creepy crawlies called Gerridae also known as pond skimmers, who live on the surface of the water, without swimming within it. Obviously they can't do that in turbulent water, but there's even some that manage it on coastal waters at the ocean. That's sort of where I got my idea for oracles and their water skimming. Didn't get to go much into it, but if you look at Scootaloo buzzing (natch) around on that scooter of hers, it really does sort of look like a surrogate surfboard for land travel.
Archer doesn't really exist. 
Obviously doublewbrothers thought of it first, but it really does make sense if that rarely seen blue Scootaloo recolor just pops out of Scootaloo once and a while.
One thing that sparked this story was The Duplicates Problem which is a fascinating idea, that if you could be moved piece-wise from one point in space to another, you'd be yourself the entire time, but if instead of moving they copied your parts and reassembled them, the clone would feel like they were yourself the whole time, but you'd still be standing there. People get really worried about this, that teleportation in terms of destruction and reconstitution is just a fancy form of suicide, with your clone never aware that you didn't live to leave the transporter. The odd thing is, this sort of "suicide" happens all the time. Whenever you have a break in consciousness, not just going down for general anesthesia, but spacing out in general. Death is getting distracted, and never getting un-distracted, so it's possible to contrive a scenario (teleportation cloning) where distraction seems like death.
The solution to this dilemma is also found in Star Trek, the mind meld. If in that hypothetical transporter error, your original failed to be annihilated, you could return to your normal state of being by connecting your brains together. Done early enough, you'd merge practically on accident, and you'd just be "you" with two memories of the same time, and a double sized brain. At that point you just excise portions of your brain and body until you're only eating for 1 again. I think that's why death is so terrifying, because we can be sound and whole, and still die, since we don't have a way to connect outside our bodies as strongly as we connect within our brain. It should be that only people with broken minds are "dead," but since we're isolated in our braincases here, that unfortunately ends up not being the case.
I'm surprised not absolutely everyone immediately drew the connection between Pinkie and parasprites. I just had to figure out why she never coughs out mini-Pinkies. "Because magic" was kind of a lame excuse, but the rest of it makes sense. Even Pinkie's unnatural obsession with cloning herself, in the Mirror Pool incident. Her preternatural foresight reminded me of the Oracles of Delphi, which was really freaking stellar since Delphi is a coastal city, and I'm pretty sure the oracles were rumored to be nonhuman creatures like sirens, rather than ladies with some really good drugs. Didn't take two and two and a shoo-be-doo to put that together. Plus, Greek mythology, so it automatically fits with MLP!
The floating island thing was sort of a tribute to Homo floresiensis a subspecies of human ape confined to the island of Flores, Italy, who may have been smaller due to a calorically impoverished environment.
Pied Piper Pinkie Pie has been on my mind since Swarm of the Century aired, because you know ponies will spontaneously sing in groups, and you know parasprites can be brought into controlled groups with music, and the original Pied Piper story started out with him killing rats, then not getting paid, then killing children. It's just kind of terrifying to think about the story that inspired Pinkie's solution in Swarm of the Century, how it was eventually applied to the youth of the ungrateful town.
If it's not obvious, they're talking about cocaine hydrochloride salts.
I dunno if there's any other weird sources of inspiration.
Anything you wanted to know about Feeding Problems? Some part of the setting and lore that I didn't go into enough in the story? Do you have any ideas about that crazy numbering system? The difference between anima and cosmo? What the Rainbow Project is? Tough luck, haha! But no seriously, go ahead and speculate, and I'll be happy to comment on it.
Feeding Problems is definitely one of my favourite, messed-up worldbuilding FimFics ever. I loved how you just kept throwing these bonkers things that made sense at the readers in such a casual way.
It came up in another conversation I had recently, but this fic also had the ponies having somewhat... odd funerary rituals, didn't it? As in, Spike had tried pony meat and thought it was alright?
Oh, interesting; thanks for the information.
Regarding further questions, though... Hm. I'm afraid I'm not thinking of any at the moment (besides "How does the unicorn number system work?", but I seem to recall you saying you didn't want to spoil the game of figuring that one out :)).
I must admit, when I asked for a little bit of background lore I only expected some off the cuff unsubstantiated world building. I applaud your inspiration! Your ties to the cannon Equestrian universe and the real world are incredible and make this story better than it initially seemed. And it was already high on my list of enjoyed fanfiction. This is what fanfiction was meant to be. A speculative work showing one possible interpretation of cannon events. An extension of the actual story. Some of the issues addressed are more serious than the actual show would permit, but this is to be expected as a bit of real world grit is in line with any good literature. In short, good show!
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I just love those moments where for the characters, it's just normal, everyday life, but for the readers it's something strange and wonderful.
I'm fairly sure in this setting ponies won't have a funeral involving tossing great granpap in the stewpot, but I'm not sure that could be said about other ungulates. Pegasi do eat fish, but that's as meaty as it gets.
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Quite honestly, this story doesn't touch upon canon events much at all. There's a quick summary of the Mirror Pool thing near the end, because the canon one didn't fit with this story (and was kind of dumb), and this story uses the same setting, characters, and relationships as canon, but otherwise it's pretty much just taking a crazy idea unrelated to the show's plot, and rolling with it to its logical conclusion. It's not an interpretation of canon events, because the story is more of a "what if" than a "how".
It sure is nice not having a bunch of executives breathing down my neck trying to keep me from wasting their million dollar investment! That's why low budget fan works have the potential to be better than canon, because they have more creative freedom, can take more risks and can make fewer compromises.