If anypony reading this forum wishes to chat, PM me and let me know a time when you might like to visit #ponymarillion channel on Canternet IRC... or reply to this message and let others know when or where, or what you might like to chat about. (or on Skype if you have it.)

I've been in touch with several folks via PM here and on derpibooru, and it seems like it'd be easier for us to use this forum or the #ponymarillion IRC to chat, since then we could have a discussion about the fic and various things

Aside from that, please reply to this message if you have any thoughts about topics for discussion related to this fic or to fantasy fic in general, and we could start a thread on one (or more) of those topics if people are interested.

Nice! Chat thread!

My thoughts on the fic itself that might warrant topics for forum threads? (although we ought to discuss some of these with The6thMaster really:)

1. Framing device interludes -- concise and dialogue-driven. Designed to give the reader an immediate sense of a) context and b) narrative voice and c) hopefully a hook to invest them in the story somehow. Could be interspersed, i.e. different sets of related chapters could use slightly different frame of reference. I'd love to work with 6thMaster on this. Ideas that have been floated so far include:

i. Tales told by the Mane Six about their ancestors
ii. Revelations told by Luna and Celestia about their past (could be in the context of -- )
iii. Interactive visions (like the one Twilight has about the Tree of Harmony), or scary dreams
iv. "Just-so stories" told by fireside to fillies (if not, then they will pop up here and there in the tale)
v. Mane Six dig up a book in the remains of Twilight's library (... or are transported by it?)
vi. Pageant-like framing device (since the story re-uses the Mane Six in a pageant-like fashion)
vii. Future human (Aelfwine or equivalent) stumbles upon the Island and/or Book of Lost Ponies (Starswirl)
viii. All of the above? (divide the story up into clumps and have a different frame of reference for each one)

2. Ponified Silmarillion Texts -- Folks on ponychan (some of whom had a hard time with the source material before ponies were included) wanted me to go back to the original books and essentially ponify the source text, like Bored of the Rings or Pride and Prejudice with Ponies might do, to provide a fake "source material" for the fic. They were interested in reading this in and of itself, but doing so probably doesn't count as a fic, although short sections (such as the creation story) would (based on this reception) make sense to be included in the final story. This provides an underlying "literary agent hypothesis" to the fic namely that ancient Equestria is Middle-Earth (ponified) and Tolkien mistranslated the "source". As such, it's a mirror-universe to, say, the canon Equestria x canon Middle-Earth crossover you'd see in, for instance, Spirit of Fire. From a more pragmatic perspective, in lieu of writing endless outlines, doing #2 could help the writer(s) (me) figure out how to reconcile and adapt the actual storyline, since going through it (in chapter clumps) brings the story into focus as it differs as it moves along. I'd also like to use the opportunity to highlight choice passages worthy of being carried through to the fic (since it is, at its heart, Tolkien's tale ponified). So this might be worth doing from a process-of-adaptation perspective. I'd dread having to turn this huge outline into a finished original narrative directly.

3. Polished Ponymarillion Prose -- this would be the meat of the actual "Silmarillion ponified" fic -- the completely rewritten, draft finalized form of the story itself -- the actual narrative of past events. Since it's not written yet, issues to discuss include: a) what is the frame of reference? b) reconciling tone and c) narrative voice, and d) spectrum of ponification (from "completely pony-style names, completely pony-style world and conflict, nominally set in a Tolkienesque 1st age" to "completely elvish-sounding, completely Silm-style plotline, but they are all ponies") -- I'd like to settle somewhere between these two extremes -- and e) how much light-hearted stuff is acceptable with all the grim and/or epic stuff, and what sort. (the fic started out as meta/satire in the style of Bored of the Rings, basically a series of captions for unfinished crossover-parody illustrations, although the meta stuff is mostly confined to the creation story and the place-names at this point, most of the place-names take the same irreverent tone as FiM probably would.) However there are other issues to consider such as whether ponified Middle-Earth would be inherently, metaphysically lighter (or more light-hearted) than the exact same tale if Elves and Men were involved, especially Turin's story (given that I'm ponifying him as Pinkie Pie.)

4. Ponymarillion Art / Character Studies -- I haven't mentioned here on FimFic but as I've bored my brony friends half to death with statements that I eventually would like to put up a series of illustrations / pencil sketch art that could help advance the fic even before it is finished, since it started out as a series of ideas for ponifying Silmarillion art as crossover ponies featuring FiM characters anyhow. Right now all I have up is this series of character study sketches -- I apologize for the poor quality, as I don't have a real drafting sketchpad. I hope to get one very soon. If I produce character studies or rough sketches, one well-known pony artist who's a Silm fan (he/they illustrated a similar fic) has already offered to turn them into polished art for an affordable commission. The sketches would also help figure out what the characters look like, to give a general description of color, cutie marks etc. I'd love to find at least one other person to work on this with.

3786286 Heh. I should probably think of something to chat about.
Waiting to hear back from other folks, since The6thMaster is better at this talking stuff than I am (I believe he calls it "dialogue"). Maybe Otto or Triforce too. Got to go, be back later --

3786286 Hi Prof Celestia... I should send folks a PM about the suggested topics above, do you think? I dunno

Like that idea. Go ahead.

Prof... just curious... fimfic emails me for every PM notification, but it doesn't notify me of activity in a forum thread (just if there's a new one). Do you know how to turn off the one feature and turn on the other? i.e. watched threads... Then I can get all my notices when I visit fimfic, and it'd be easier to find the thread (is there a way to add a group to your toolbar up top?) Just curious. Waiting to hear back from friends ...

Folks preferred if I start a thread instead of chat, but I was worried if I started a thread, nopony would reply. Ironically I think chat works better, if the person I'm chatting with knows a lot about the source material, because then we could discuss it... on IRC maybe (I would say skype, but I don't have it at present)... I wonder if the fimfic irc is just one big channel, I should look. I created a chat just for #ponymarillion though.

I prefer threads to the IRC chat, personally, as everyone with access to this group has access to the threads. I don't quite know how the chats work, but it looks like you can't see conversation from before you join in. It doesn't look like there is a way to watch a thread, but you do get a notification when a new thread is added.

I do have a few suggestions.

First, using many types of storytelling, as given in point 1 of your second post in this thread, would probably be best. For a five-thousand year history, official records would be spotty, and even an immortal's memory might fail. Local legends and family history can be used to fill in the gaps.

Second, I would like to see a discussion about each chunk of the story. Perhaps one or two chapters every week? My copy of the book lists 24 chapters, not counting all the indexes and charts, so that would probably be a total of 15-20 weeks. We can discuss major points, how to properly ponify each chapter, and other things. Again, I prefer threads to IRC chat.

Third, a chart or list of important names and relationships would probably be necessary. I've only read the first chapter, but I'm sure there's going to be a lot of characters.

Fourth, unless we use the official Equestria map, someone should sketch out what early Equestria will look like. I have to say, though, that the Badlands on the official map look about in the right spot for Mordor. Southeast, ringed by mountains, only one obvious way in or out, unknown territory to the south... The Unicorn Range could house the pony equivalent of Weathertop, the eventual equivalent of Moria could be the crystal caverns under Canterlot, the Everfree Forest can be Fangorn Forest... The list goes on and on.

3802358 Excellent suggestions.

I think what I'll do is post a tentative new thread here in this forum dedicated to the "Prologue" chapters of the Silmarillion, and suggesting other possible chunks, for story chunks we could discuss in each thread.

Regarding the map, my concept so far (and I'm pretty far along in it) has been to ponify the subcontinent of Alfalfaland as Beleriand but with pony-style names and countries (the grey-elf kingdom is the unicorn kingdom, the hidden elf city in the clouds is the hidden cloud city of the Pegasi, the castle of the High Elf King (Galadriel's uncle) at Eithel Sirion is the castle of the High Queen (Celestia's mother) at Fillyot (source of the river Fillyon), other places follow a similar pattern but this allows for a great deal of flexibility because Beleriand is a very wild, unexplored territory in Tolkien's Silmarillion (most of it is magical, enchanted forests and mountain ranges, grin) so lots of changes are possible at the local level to integrate the two landscapes because -- here's where it gets so perfect -- something happens to Beleriand (no spoilers yet, but it's alluded to fairly early in the book) that, um, separates it from the map of Middle-Earth in later ages, so it's to the west of where the Shire (corresponding with Ponyville, presumably) would be, which gives us another angle: namely that everything in the later ages, east of Beleriand (i.e. the LOTR map) can be tweaked to a much greater extent because all that land to the east of the Silmarillion map ("Little-Equestria", or Alfalfaland and the lands to the north) would line up with whatever map of "Middle Equestria" (the future lands of Equestria and other provinces) we want to use, with Alfalfaland (Little-Equestria) being located to the west, and the Undying Lands of Alinor being located further to the west. That being said this fic focuses on the first age, so correspondence with future lands of Equestria can be very loose, since the ponies move into those lands later (as we see in Hearth's Warming Eve). But certainly the Everfree Forest is on both maps, for instance, and corresponds to the ancient forest of Fangorn which covered a wide area.

Heh... your post inspired me to finally do a proper sketch of the map instead of the 1000 hours in mspaint version I threw up on the wiki. Hold on...

Regarding a chart or list -- this is very very rough, but see:

Ponymarillion Guide v.1.0 - The Book of Lost Ponies version 1 - The Early Qolta - Notes and Fanart References
Initial Ponymarillion Notes -- Hastily put down by Ponyweed

I also posted a rough outline of the plot on google docs, but it is both spoileriffic and less-helpful if one hasn't read the Silm yet, since it is very sketchy and long litany of important events from the Silmarillion ponified, without really describing who's who. I can certainly re-post it as we go along, though (read-thru of the book for instance)

Click on the image for larger size (rough scan though, this is a napkin sketch essentially.)
Everything to the east is future Equestria (whether we choose to use the canonical map
or make up our own Tolkienesque version of future Equestria). -->

<-- To the west is the sea and the Undying Lands of Alinor (aka pony paradise)

Like in FiM (and Bored of the Rings with places like the Bay of Milhous and the Legendary Drillingrigs), some of the place names tend to be lighter and more referential than pony names, which tend to be serious Tolkien - pony conversions.

As mentioned the geography changes quite dramatically at the end of the first age, which is convenient for our purposes. A word on some of the characters / places referenced on the map:

Glamouros and Glow-belle are alicorns (high elves) among the Seven Daughters of Starfall, so the lands depicted are where they live. Luna is one of the Seven Daughters of Starfall, but is half-sister to all the other siblings (she's Celestia's half-sister, since Starfall and her sister the High Queen fought over Luna and Celestia's Dad.) Pinkamena Dianbar, daughter of Píe, was born in Chillyum and briefly becomes chancellor of Neighzohall. Dashion (Dashing) is the Commander of Cloudfountain. Twilight's character is also from Chillyum which is the territory of the alicorns loyal to Celestia's Mom (the High Queen). Celestia and/or Luna formerly occupied the tower that is later Discord's Isle. Luna moved her tower of the Moon to the forest of Namóth, which was after named Lunamóth. Apple's family, headed by grandmother Fujî, live in the orchards of Lemonädy which were laid-waste. Cloudfountain is hidden in the valley of Gyroból surrounded by the peaks of Feathergrim. The Mountains of Madness are occupied by changelings and other monsters, descendants of the horrific spider-being Unpleasant, who spun webs of Unlight there. Fluffy-ponies live in trees in the forest of Osrslÿiand. The Silly-Ponies, last remnants of G1 and G2, were cast out of Alfalfaland and into Dream Valley where they dwindled and became few in number. Generally, alicorns are to the north, unicorns in the middle, pegasi in guarded redoubts (Wingyamar, Cloudfountain), and earth ponies, being less advanced, are scattered all over the place.

Chatting. It's foreign.

If only we could chat with more ponies present I miss ExOttoyuhr and Triforce_Cutie_Mark

...
I hope mathwiz and 6thMaster still would like to discuss the book with us