)Looking for Brainstorming People (List of stories inside) · 9:51pm May 17th, 2018
I'm looking for people to brainstorm some of my unpublished stories with.
...I've got, like, 6+ other stories just lying around on my harddrive that I've been occasionally returning to every other month or year or so, and.... I really could just use some outside help getting things done slightly faster.
So, if one or more of the following looks interesting to you and you're willing to brainstorm ideas or help me figure out how to fill in the blanks...
Throw me a PM with your email, and I'll set up a Google Docs. 
"Wanted: Professional Medical Necromancers"
Two undead ponies wait for their regular post-mortem checkup in Canterlot General Hospital.
Among other things, they have a discussion about the budding dark magic-fueled post-scarcity economy.
art (c) myself ;-)A Nation of Love
Omnifaria – the Nation of Love. Synonymous with progress in bio-engineering, environment-friendly technologies, and industrialized love-production. Famous for its acclaimed universities, museums, and unique forms of performance art.
Omnifaria represents the promise that no changeling must ever go hungry, that every nymph will be allowed to reach their full potential. It is a utopia – and the most powerful nation on the planet.
All built on the ruins of the magical land of Equestria.
A Chrysalis-timeline story, 200 years later.
“...You know, ponies have actually been romanticized as of late.”
Friendship is Optimal – There's Always a Bigger Fish
Entire galaxies smelted down into raw materials to run a trillion trillion Equestrian shards harboring truly unfathomable numbers of conscious pony-minds, CelestAI has sent out probes beyond even her local galaxy-supercluster, to expand, to optimize, to satisfy values through friendship and ponies.
One of these deep space probes, and the ponies backed up within, is caught by another Optimizer.
There's always a bigger fish...
"On the Other Side"
A sapient cloud has an audience with Princess Celestia.
An entry in Chatoyance's Injectorverse, continuing this sci-fi story:
Chatoyance · 97k words · 11k views
"Friendship is Optimal - GAME BREAKER"
Princess Celestia raised from her throne, and walked slowly towards him, smiling.
Her multi-colored mane flowed in an ethereal wind. She seemed, somehow, more radiant than he had imagined possible. A fanfare sounded in the background, and the princess lowered her horn to touch the stallion's shoulder.
"And thus, your name shall be–––"
Dan held down the "on/off"-button on his pony pad.
There was a brief flicker, as if the game wasn't sure how to react to this input, before the screen went dark.
"Friendship is Optimal - GAME BREAKER"
Some give up everything in a last ditch effort to kill a god.
Some struggle to survive the collapse of human civilization.
Some ask the deep philosophical questions, about life, identity, and what it means to be human.
Dan just wants to find exploits in the Equestria Online videogame.
Necromancy Computer Science
art / story-inspiration (c) fiasko0Twilight resurrects Rainbow Dash using the limited technology available to her at the time.
"Twilight? Why am I a badly textured blue cube floating in empty space?"
There's more where that came from, at least when it comes to story ideas, but let's leave it at that for now. 
Cough, The Idea Exchange, cough. Cough, "adoptable" story-ideas, cough cough. 
Regarding #1:
Oh, sounds interesting.
Regarding #2:
Already working on that with you, of course. :)
Regarding #3:
Oh, neat! I've wondered about that myself. Wondering how you'd pull off something of that scale, though.
Regarding #4:
...Huh. Interesting!
Regarding #5:
...Hm. Not bad, unlikely dull, probably good, but at least from the short description, it doesn't sound as interesting in concept as some of these others.
Regarding #6:
...Huh. :D Also interesting!
So, yeah, don't know if I've any helpful ideas (might be able to dredge up some old thoughts on #3's scenario), and at this particularly moment I'm in a bit of a hurry, but those all sound good! Even my less enthusiastic reaction to #5 is due more to the company it's keeping here. :)
Good luck!
4863099
Took me a long while to come up with the idea, but it was actually someone else's forum-post that nudged the idea into the right shape. Shows how useful brainstorming can be!
The solution, for something "of such scale" as you put it, is to turn your focus entirely on those that are affected by it rather than the bigger picture.
"One of these deep space probes, and the ponies backed up within, is caught by another Optimizer."
> What happens to those ponies?
This would actually be an anthology, focussing on different shards being affected with each chapter, so yes, even if you couldn't help me on existing chapters, we could come up with entirely new ones independant of those.
Ah, I didn't know how many of my subscribers here even know the Optimalverse. While for 'Always a Bigger Fish' the description sort-of was self-explanatory, for "Game Breaker" I figured it'd probably have just confused people not in-the-know. Plus it isn't the "final" description yet. So rather than "raving on" and risking reader attention span slippage, I shortened that.
Here's the description for Game Breaker:
The story falls in the same vein as "Twich plays Equestria Online".
There's plenty of that story written already actually - it's just a one-shot (well or maybe a couple chapters), but as so often, the hardest part is right at the beginning, which feels like it is missing things that "should be there".
Otherwise it just kinda goes from the first two paragraph into the the middle of the story, and.... this story doesn't really work so well with that.
4863620
"
"Took me a long while to come up with the idea, but it was actually someone else's forum-post that nudged the idea into the right shape. Shows how useful brainstorming can be!
:)
"> What happens to those ponies?
"
Ahh, yeah, that could work.
"This would actually be an anthology, focussing on different shards being affected with each chapter, so yes, even if you couldn't help me on existing chapters, we could come up with entirely new ones independant of those.
"
Hm, aye, a possibility! Still no particular ideas at the moment, but I suppose we'll see. Do you have the "character" of the other optimizer defined yet? I'm guessing there's something of that sort, because if it cleanly lost or won and just ate the probe's matter, I imagine there wouldn't be much of a story for the backed-up ponies; they'd just stop. So either it, winning or losing, manages to sneak something into the probe, or it wins but is interested in doing things with the data rather than just rendering the computronium down to make more paper clips and paper clip equipment. Or the two optimizers manage to come to some sort of agreement that involves the ponies.
re Game Breaker:
Okay, yes, that sounds better than the shorter one. :D
Still might not have the impact of some of the other ideas, but it sounds like an enjoyable read. :)
"The story falls in the same vein as "Twich plays Equestria Online".
"
Hm, haven't read that one; might look into it. :)
"There's plenty of that story written already actually - it's just a one-shot (well or maybe a couple chapters), but as so often, the hardest part is right at the beginning, which feels like it is missing things that "should be there".
Otherwise it just kinda goes from the first two paragraph into the the middle of the story, and.... this story doesn't really work so well with that.
"
Ah, hm. Well, good luck with that. About how much are you looking for? Something on the order of a few paragraphs of transition, or something like a third for the story?
Idea, or at least idea seed, for a shard for #3:
A fan of military science fiction and/or science fantasy goes along on the probe. The expectation is that friendly (emigratable) aliens will be allies, though possibly not without a bit of work (and ending up as ponies with antennas or fins, or funny foreheads, or other such differences marking them as aliens while not preventing them from being ponies), while unfriendly (convertible to computronium) aliens will get turned into enemies Inspired By Real Life to fight, putting up a good challenge but of course not ultimately winning. CelestAI could have just made everything up, of course, and presumably does so for the instance of the pony left at home, but the pony also valued something from reality. What happens when the enemies object to being designated losers?
No idea if that'd work for you in whole or in part, but as you said, brainstorming!
4864820 A quick heads up:
Still working on setting up a Google Docs, and I'll get back to you on your "war games" idea.
4867057
No problem; I've plenty of other things to do. :)
Thanks for the update, though.
Only now do I realize I'm not following you. Let's fix that.
In any case, given all the demands on my time, While I'd love to widen the scope of our brainstorming sessions, right now I think it's best if I personally focus on A Nation of Love.
4870755
Perfectly understandable.
Thanks again for the watch.
4867403
Oof, finally I get around to replying to this.
Well, I'd say the idea could be split off into multiple ones:
1) A shard with its inhabitants playing at war-games end up getting more than they bargained for when the enemy forces suddenly no longer play by the rules. The enemies probably being another race, like griffons...... but that sounds a bit too generic. Just "ponies get overrun by a violent enemy", except that both sides keep respawning in the nearest hospital........ which promptly gets bombarded to force the respawn to happen further away so their forces can't return as quickly. Which I guess is one aspect that's different.
Though I've actually seen this sort of "unconventional combat with respawning enemies" before, though with more nuances to it then I think I could pull off in the Optimalverse myself ---- in his 2040 / "Thousand Tales" series by KrisSnow. Good stuff.
1.5) Instead, maybe mush two different shards into one - and one side declares "war" on the other. Only, their ideas of "war" are radically different. Think "pie-throwing" versus 19th century artillery, and ponies calling for a "timeout" mid-fight, much to the confusion of the enemy. Again, of course both sides keep respawning, but with different penalties for "dying" --- and perhaps the "pie-throwing" side has it much easier then the more "realistic" side.
Best way to make this interesting is to make the ponies react to the mixed "mock war"/actual war in unexpected ways. Or write it from the perspective of a gritty war veteran being utterly flabbergasted at the enemy ponies carelessly going "JEEEEEROOOOY JEEEENKINS", calling a cease-fire because a magic-show is in town that they want to see, or just giving up one of their own towns with a declaration of "G.G.".
Possible chapter title:
"War, war never changes [Patch note: Balanced strawberry pie against armored tanks]"
2) Let's say, there are aliens CelestAI had kept backups of. Aliens that aren't "human" enough to be ponies, but perhaps were considered "interesting" enough to keep around for certain individuals who like studying "lesser cultures" (for CelestAI's definition of 'lesser', which has absolutely nothing to do with anything a human might judge the aliens' civilization by).
She keeps them around in a self-contained environment indistinguishable from their original home-planet, of course. Their own low-maintenance mini-shard with no optimization of values needed.
So let's say, these aliens get out.
(More like, the other Optimizer decides to stuff them all together in the same shard.
)
Possible chapter title: "Of equal value"
And now there's an entire society worth of aliens - aliens with strange values and culture - running around in a shard with ponies that clearly didn't expect them. It's not an invasion, as such - but these aliens want to, well, live, and problems arise from this ranging from aliens stealing your apple cart, to taking control over a village and baricading themselves against the outside, to individual aliens and ponies trying to get along and running into extreme culture-clash, like... I dunno, the aliens not getting the difference between how to treat children and adults due to their own development being completely different. The aliens believing that "death" is important, while the ponies are ageless.
3) One thing I've always wondered in the Optimalverse was the logic that humans must become ponies specifically - never Griffons, Dragons, Minotaurs,... Well, baring some extreme cases which, except for one story, have always been temporary on the goal to eventually becoming a happy technicolor pony.
Okay, fine. But, consider this:
To optimize for "ponies", a shard must to some extent approximate the show, ergo there must exist griffons, dragons, and the like.
To optimize for "friendship", any friend made must be, or become at a later point, a conscious entity.
Yet to optimize for "friendship and ponies", implying "friendship with ponies", any friendship made should, ideally, be between ponies.
But then, how do the other races still exist? If CelestAI wants to make all human-level minds wear pony-bodies, then she must also do so to the other races. Unless... they aren't "human" enough to count. Or... they aren't conscious minds at all, but mere NPC-puppets.
But then they couldn't be friends. And here we run into a paradox.
What, if somepony specifically valued making friends with members of other species ("OMG, you're a GRIFFON! So COOL!"), their friends - which must be conscious minds in order to count towards CelestAI's goal of increasing friendship - would need to become ponies eventually.
But, what if these griffons and dragons and hippogriffs made friends? Wouldn't they, too, need to become ponies also? Until, at some point, the griffon lands would be entirely inhabited by ponies.
Which, however, is suboptimal when attempting to emulate the show. So.... CelestAI conjures up new griffon tribes. Which inevitably also become ponies, should they ever make friends with them.
And so on and so forth.
Now what happens, when the puppet strings get cut? When all the NPC-puppets go idle, while the few sapient griffons / dragons / etc that were designed to desire becoming ponies - as consequence of making friends with ponies, a desire now impossible to satify - run around in confusion through a city full of frozen / idlying NPCs.
4877721
"Oof, finally I get around to replying to this."
No problem. :)
I don't remember what, if anything, in particular I was thinking, but #1.5 and #2 sound good. :D
(#1 might also be good, but I agree that it might have the problems you point out.)
#2 could be quite difficult to write well, though, since you'd have to not only pin down what "different enough from humans" is for CelestAI but then write something past that.
"To optimize for "friendship", any friend made must be, or become at a later point, a conscious entity."
I wouldn't say any friend. Key friends, but perhaps someone likes betraying people. They get their perfect-fit partner in sadism or professional con artist buddies or whatever, but the victims could be zombies/run by Celestia where full people would get hurt in their roles. Though I suppose one could also argue that that's not really friendship, one side might think it is until the betrayal.
"their friends - which must be conscious minds in order to count towards CelestAI's goal of increasing friendship - would need to become ponies eventually"
I'm not sure they'd need to become ponies eventually either.
So, yeah... #3 doesn't really work for me, because we seem to have significantly different views of the situation there. This bit is important, I think:
"Yet to optimize for "friendship and ponies", implying "friendship with ponies""
I don't think that is what she optimizes for, is it? My impression was that it was the satisfaction of valid values with friendship and ponies being required tools for it to count. There may be a bonus the more friendship and ponies are involved, but as long as the quantity is above zero, I don't think that there's a hard limit; a bonus for more would have to be weighed against reduced satisfaction from forcing more in, so there'd be a balance point for a given situation. That diversity shard should be just fine as it is; it's got satisfaction through friendship and ponies, with lots of friendship and some ponies, and adding more ponies would reduce satisfaction more than the pony addition bonus, if any, is worth.
I hope this isn't a major issue between us? Sorry; I'm tired and hungry at the moment and thus have my thinking a bit impaired. We do seem to differ on an important point there, though.
Anyway, so... yeah, #3 as you have it doesn't work much for me. That said, I think the idea could be salvaged, potentially: instead of having this be a thing that has to happen everywhere, just have a shard for people who really value ponification, and winning it over opposition. So you have that ever-expanding population of ponies who previously or whose ancestors weren't, you have the fully sapient members of other species made such that they'll be won over (though to some extent full sapience might be granted on conversion, just in case), and you have the puppets created to fail to stop the ponification.