Hostile Realm · 1:51pm May 25th, 2016
This is a follow-up to yesterday’s dissertation on environmental influence on earth pony magic. See, I have a story idea… well, part of one, anyway. Not sure how to end it, but there's still enough for an Estee-style teaser blog.
One thing I didn’t mention yesterday was that earth ponies born to non-earth parents default to soil ponies. The exceptions come from parents who have earth pony ancestors within one or two generations. Thus, while Pound and Pumpkin Cake could have clay pony children one day, two Cloudsdalers who win an earth pony in the genetic lottery even though their families have lived in the city since the days of Pegasopolis aren’t going to yield a dust pony.
However, it doesn’t work that way with alicorns. Now, Celestia and Luna’s earliest years are shrouded in mystery, while Cadence spent most of her time post-ascension in Canterlot. But Twilight? Twilight’s been all over the map: Canterlot, Cloudsdale, Manehattan, the Pie family rock farm, Rainbow Falls, Our Town, alternate timelines, probability space itself, and more besides, to say nothing of her sudden change of residence from a living tree to the quasi-sapient offspring of the Tree of Harmony. Heck, while using Rainbow Power, she was virtually omnipresent.
The end result is that Twilight’s body is primed for virtually every environment imaginable… which means that she has to choose one magical specialization from a wide selection.
The result is inevitable. Even on a subconscious level, Twilight wants to explore every option… but even a young alicorn can’t produce enough magic to adapt her body in a dozen directions at once. One day, after days of out-of-season molting, weakening horn magic, and ravenous appetite, Twilight passes out from magical starvation. She’s put on a thaumosaline drip, but even that’s a stopgap measure. Her friends, her fellow princesses, and the best minds of Equestrian medicine must confront a troubling question: How do you treat a disorder in a process that has never before gone wrong?
Working title: Twi’ve Been Everywhere
There are no nomadic earth ponies?
I look forward to this with great interest
Wow that kinda decision would tear Twi apart.
So being a near bottomless pit of magic has it's limits..
Can't help but think that "Giddyup" would be perfect musical accompaniment; just swap out Sweetie and insert Twilight!
I'm sure you'll do a good job with the concept if and when, but I can't see it myself. The earth-pony-specialization-by-environment theory has too many holes and exceptions, and the specialties are all better explained by cutie mark talents than by environment or breeding, so far as I'm concerned.
3971040 They'd presumably still spend the majority of their time in one biome or another, and I imagine their clay family lineages would be extremely precious as well.
I look forward to the fic! I have a minor "Huh?" bit at the idea that an alicorn's magic wouldn't be able to hold the copies, especially the Princess of Friendship = Magic, but given how wildly the show plays with such notions, it's just a headfanon quibble.
Also, happy year's worth of blogs!
3971040
Actually, now that I think of it, how do Mustangs fit in this?
I'm gonna have to agree with 3971136 here. This story idea is taking the shaky parts of your environmental-breeding idea and putting it in center focus. In the real world, the vast majority of plants and animals can adopt at least somewhat to different environments and climates, with Humans being at the apex of this ability. Seeing as how Earth Ponies canonically are the transforming force of civilization given Pony form, (farming is what created civilization, not Unicorn magic,) it just doesn't make any sense whatsoever that Earth Ponies themselves would be so rigid and unable to change from their natural born circumstances.
It's not like I object to this kind of idea or whatever. Stuff like, say, all Pegasi having a degree of instinctive claustrophobia is cool beans. And it's not like you can't make the story work really well or whatever. But I'm reminded of the story This Platinum Crown. That story had the premise that many regions of Equestria are semi-ruled by noble families, and these nobles sometimes fight duels over honor and marriages and stuff like that. Stuff that wouldn't interfere with daily life for most ponies in Equestria, but for those in the Noble circle of things was super important. But not even after the very first story arc was over the entire setting felt very !not Equestria: A setting that resembled the Equestria of the show but was inherently top-to-bottom different and disconcerting. (And as you can guess by that story's length, it only got worse from there.)
Basically, I think putting the magnifying scope to the premise like you'd do in the story idea up there I feel has the potential to make the setting seem very disconcerting in many ways. Don't let me stop you from doing it anyways, I've already imposed too much time on you with my excess wordage over here, but always beware unintended consequences. (That consequence being that I'm an inch from going full nerd-fight on you. Grrr.)
If anyone can pull this off, it's you, my friend
I saw the title "hostile realm" and immediately hoped you thought Equestria was actually established on a genius loci death world-land held back from murderizing Equestria by earth pony efforts.
Ooh, looks interesting! Got any guesses on likely times it might be ready to publish?
3971136
3971948
I do sympathize with these positions to some extent, but it is worth noting a couple of things:
Even ignoring genetics/epigenetics, different environments are going to encourage different abilities in the locals. An ability which is useless (or actively counterproductive!) in a given environment is going to get a lot less practice than one which needs to be exercised constantly just to survive, and so even with every individual starting with identical abilities, environment-based distributions/cultures are going to show up pretty quickly.
Definitely debatable, but arguments over the veracity of those claims aside, it's worth pointing out that a major result of such adaptation is intra-species specialization. Even in humans - that's why we have different races. While race doesn't affect someone's value as a person, it does have significant effects on how well they'll do in a given environment.
Basically, absent a very strong equalizing influence that has no real-world analogue and (so far as I'm aware) doesn't fit canon, regional differences are going to exist. The real question is how well the particular model of those differences that FOME's presenting works, and I don't think we have enough information to properly answer that yet.
3972260 Nah, that's the Crystal Empire you're thinking of.
3971040 3971885
Mustangs and other nomadic earth ponies stick to the biomes best suited for a nomadic lifestyle, i.e. plains.
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Thanks for the words of caution, guys. I tend to approach ideas at one of two speeds, too slow or too fast. There are definitely some wrinkles to work out of this, so barrelling into it won't do the story or me any favors.
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Twilight has been shown to have her limits. Still, the operative phrase is young alicorn. Had Twilight been able to hold off the acclimatization process until after she'd finished her growth spurt, she might have been able to pull it off with only minor discomfort.
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Actually, I'm pretty sure deathworld Equestria is canon.
3973813
But that would make it boring!
Could you make it interesting again, pretty please?
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I could incorporate the genius loci part, having every day of an earth pony's life a desperate peace negotiation with a planet that wants nothing more than to rid itself of the skin infection prancing about its crust. Would that help?
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Could even be a both ways thing, for some it's an act of forceful pacification of unruly land, for others it's a baiting the land into nipping and biting back a specific way, for some others it's a communion of empathy, for even others it's a wrestling for control, etc, etc.
Really i was hoping you already had thought up your own twist to that aspect of canon. You make awesome ideas out of what is shown, but it seems a lot of your supporting ideas never get a chance to be shared properly through narratives.
I wish you were like Carabas and blarghed endlessly about your setting fluff.
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The problem is I have so many ideas that I practice something I call "modular continuity," shuffling bits of headcanon in and out of stories on an as-needed basis. I don't have a single 'verse, unless you count multiverses.
I'll definitely see what I can do with hostile Equestria. (And I'll probably kick myself later for using this card when I could've called this blog Boundless Realms.)
3973813 I tend to headcanon that they live inside a Warp Storm that would kill them if they hadn't tamed it so thoroughly.