So, I had a thought scratching at my head, and find myself wondering why this has not been done or approached by anyone in all the stories I've read on this crossover. What if, in the MLP world, ADAM is a natural part of the ponies bloodwork? When you think about it, some of the Plasmid/Vigors are similar to what ponies can do with magic.

What's your thoughts about that?

4185874

It could be similar, but ADAM and pony magic certainly wouldn't be the same. The ADAM in bioshock was harvested from sea slugs and resulted in all sorts of mutations while in Bioshock Infinity it didn't have any obvious mutations that I could think of... but it was kind of weird in how they handled it anyway.

It could be that ponies have a special biological component to them that lets them access magic (one that is absent in more mundane creatures like donkeys, buffalo, cattle, and mules) so you could have it were another creature wants to experiment on ponies to extract their midichlorians or whatever.

Maybe a donkey gets tired of being passed over by ponies and wants to be able to fly, use magic, or do the things Earth ponies can do. So he goes mad scientist and kidnaps ponies to experiment on them and extract the GLUE from them. He then injects it into himself and finds that he can do magic now, but it has an addictive and mutating quality and he needs more of it to survive the effects.

Or, there could be a precident that only magical animals will willingly attack and eat ponies since they have a sort of magical immune system. If a nonmagical creature eats pony flesh or drinks pony blood, they momentarily get a boost of power and can do magic, but their bodies start to mutate and they lose control of their stolen powers. Magical creatures can get away with it sometimes, extracting the GLUE (or ADAM) from a pony to empower themselves, but they know they have to deal with the consequences later. Like a dragon might eat one or two ponies at a time, but afterwards they have to take a nap for a decade for their body to fight the 'curse' before they can safely consume another.

Creatures like chimeras, cockatrice, or manticores might be the result of an animal eating pony flesh and surviving. Their body mutated from absorbing the magic and they somehow survived the ordeal... might actually tie in with griffons being known for eating horses in mythology. If a griffon eats pony flesh or blood, they can get a boost of strength and magical power, but start to suffer the consequences, either becoming bloodthirsty monsters that hunt down ponies to consume or they start to succum to the madness and either die or become permanently disfigured as a result of their mutation.

The Windigos from Hearts Warming Eve could be somehow tied in with this. When the blizard got too bad, some ponies commited cannibalism to survive and it mutated them. They might have gotten cold-based powers, letting them survive in subzero temperatures and maybe create blasts of ice to trap other ponies. The part where the blizzard followed the tribes to Equestria was actually a result of the 'Windigos' tracking down the tribes once they ran out of easy prey in the homelands. Then they fought the three tribes, possibly killing the leaders in the process to consume their power... and the surviving ponies found a way to use Friendship to defeat them.

The blast of friendship-empowered magic momentarily broke through the windigo's madness, letting them see what they had become, and they chose to kill themselves in shame. Knowing what happens when the three tribes fought and consumed eachother, the three tribes swore to never fight against eachother, to share their resources, and to honor eachother's dead. The windigos themselves might have made it a habit to attack and kill members of other pony tribes. Earth ponies attacking unicorns, pegasai attacking earth ponies, etc. At first they resorted to stealing, then murder, then cannibalism, and that last sin turned them into the monsters they became.

Could explain something about changelings too. Maybe their habit of feeding off of the love of ponies has a similar effect on them, once they start feeding they have to keep feeding or else they start withering once their food supply runs out. Could explain all the holes in their bodies. Perhaps the changelings have a natural defense against mutations, if they start to develop tumors their body just kills the tumor. Unfortunately, it leaves all those holes in their body. They don't mutate like other creatures and it doesn't drive them insane (much), but they still get all those holes in them which they need to heal later... and healing requires feeding on ponies to get the energy.

It's called mana.

Anam.