6614462
You didn't say when you're looking to have the bulk of these finished.

Also, note that the color code in the spreadsheet is killing me. I'm colorblind, and I can't tell the accepted/complete from the cancelled color, or the pending editing from the assigned/unfinished one. A lot of what I need may be covered simply by whether there's a link for each, but I wouldn't mind pitching in to do some editing work, and then it may become more important to know.

6614426
Sounds like somebody's worried about competition.

Will delete mine for now and see if anything better shows up.

6614104
As amusing as it might be to give the project a Beanis Cinematic Universe tie-in, and as clever as the pun is, I ... think I'm gonna have to say that an entry based entirely on an in-joke isn't quite what we're looking for.

Any other ideas striking your fancy?

6614578
sigh

I’ll think of something else.

I've sent a PM on Discord with a link to my entry. I'll go ahead and put in for a potential second one, as it's a creature I already used in a story, so I have it fleshed out.

Nuisants
Description: Insects shrieking in your ear
Word count: Just what you see below.
Fact: A rare type of ant that, when trodden upon, can produce an inanimate double that makes an incredibly loud screeching noise and adheres to anything it touches. Copies can persist for about forty-eight hours and may further divide down to ten generations if under sustained threat, though the nuisants and their cacophonous decoys remain vulnerable to the common anteater. They use the same premise as a skunk, except aurally noisome. The Colossal Deaf Slug is known to raid their nests in order to acquire its own defense mechanism.

• Description: Termites severely lacking originality
• Word Count: 300-400 words
• Fun Facts: The most unusual simulacramite nest on record is a stone-for-stone replica of the statue of King Grover, discovered an entire continent away in the Dragon Lands. Griffonstone historians have long wondered how the insects acquired their inspiration, and debated over which structure provides a more accurate representation of the famed griffon king’s beak size.

Peregranite Falcon

Predatory birds made of stone

maybe 200 words

The only lithic lifeform capable of flight. Their nesting grounds, known as rockeries or quaeries, have been linked to avalanches when climbers stumble into them and send all those round rocky eggs tumbling down the mountainside.

6614000

6614426

To be honest? "Spicing up" mostly referred to adding something like "In his travel Journal, Wind Wing talks about the Spineless Wyrm" before the description, and that'd be it, because the rest might add well be already written if we're going bite sized. This is a suggestion, mind you; ultimately write the entry as you want. But, if you add that sentence to the start of the description in the thread? Shit me whistles, I think we can literally just keep that as-is.

Description: Small rodent. Lives in Dreamrealm.
Wordcount: 250~ish
Awesome Fact: In the Alpaca lands, in the far south, the inhabitants noticed an animal unlike anyone had ever seen in the waking world. While it was believed to have been nothing more than an oniric fantasy, their consistent appearance and calming aura has led many to think of this creature as a guardian of dreams.

6614796
I see.

I'll see what ends up feeling right, and submit that.

6614796 6614426
My submission, as it currently stands in bite-size form. Let me know if you think it needs more/less.

I'd like to withdraw this - 6614135 - from consideration. I think I can do better¹. Hope the following's better.

1 For select and highly personal definitions of 'better'

Name: Composoctopus

Description: Hive-minded, fractious piles of tentacles.

Word count: 300-400

Fact: The latent intelligence of each individual tentacle can made establishing unity of purpose across the hive-mind a daunting task, and factions of tentacles who disagree with the overall direction of the composoctopus may try to assert themselves in civil war. There are few more bewildering sights than that of a composoctopus fighting itself, and few more tantalising sights for rival composoctopuses who aspire to attract or capture dissident tentacles for their own mass.

6610630

I don't use Google Docs; is there an alternative way of uploading the finished entry? A PM containing the main text, for example, or a link to an unpublished FIMF story?

6614882
I honestly don't think there's any comfortable way to do it other than Google Docs; if we want to make a suggestion on a PM with the main text our only option is to rewrite the thing, and it kinda misses the point of you seeing what we're suggesting and either accepting it or rejecting it. Plus, we need to link it in the story tracker once the submission has been accepted.

If you send the main text in any other way, horizon or I will just copypaste it in a GDoc ourselves and then ask for your mail so you can edit it; that's an option, definitely, but you making the doc yourself and giving us commenting rights is slightly faster. I'm afraid GDocs are pretty much mandatory given the nature of the project.

Flying Penguin
Description: Flightless Bird's Flying Cousin
Wordcount: 200-400 (I'm bad at word estimates)
Fact: Before their discovery the phrase "when penguins fly" was commonly used to describe impossibilities, but since then shifted to "when pigs fly" as ponies refused to dishonor the accomplishments of these birds and because of claimed reports of penguins reacting badly when hearing the phrase. Today Flying Penguins are often used as a symbol of determination.

6614564

the color code in the spreadsheet is killing me

I mentioned this via direct message, but I'd also like to note for the benefit of the thread: I fiddled with the spreadsheet to make it more accessible (by adding letter status codes as well), if anyone else was having similar problems.

You didn't say when you're looking to have the bulk of these finished.

Current plans are to do a sort of rolling publish, so authors have some time depending on whether they want to be in the first wave or not. Once we get a good core, we go live with a batch, use publication as a chance to give authors another chance to jump in if they like the idea, and then shift to the "canon creatures" submissions near the end. In any case, both Aragon and I are separately going to be AFK all weekend from the 11th-14th, so there's no way we're finished with even the first stage before next week.

(Remember, y'all, that I updated the original post with "what to do once we greenlight you" instructions!)

6614881
Accepted! To be honest, it feels like we were starting to get top-heavy with insects anyhow, so this gives us a good way to branch out.

6614801
Accepted! It's a breath of fresh air to have creatures that are explicitly friendly to ponies, rather than monsters. :)

I'd like to make one suggestion for modification, though: consider making it resemble an opossum rather than a mouse, because that way you get to explain Princess Luna's comic-canon pet Tiberius without ever mentioning either of them! (And in that case, despite Tiberius being a canon character, we would flex the rules and take this as part of the "original creatures" round.)

6614709
Accepted! Thank you for the re-submission — and heck, in between paper tigers and stone birds, this is leaving a really juicy opening for someone to write about scissors narwhals or something.

6614004
We're building up a fair amount of both insect-based entries, and cloud-based entries. Anything else you might be interested in writing?

6615171

consider making it resemble an opossum rather than a mouse, because that way you get to explain Princess Luna's comic-canon pet Tiberius without ever mentioning either of them!

The name Muscuy is actually a pun. The quechua word for dream is musquy, and cuy is the name for guinea pigs in South America. I suppose I could just make it resemble an opposum and still call it a cuy, since the alpacas wouldn't know what an opossum is.
I'll get to it!

edit:
6613765
I drew this.

6615213
I didn't actually know that, and that pun is pretty cool. :)

Description: Cannot be seen without mirrors.

Word Count: About 400 to 500 words.

Fact: The normal eye cannot fully see a creature from the deeper southern edges of the continent, as its connection to ancient magic lets it slip outside the spectrum of light our eyes can see. Only in a mirror, where light is reflected and refracted back to your eyes, can you see a dark pony-like shadowy shape, and its face of pain. Are they friend or foe?

6614426

My thought for the Somnum was that they were creatures of nightmare more than anything else, a la Tantibus style (without necessarily having been created by Luna), but something that needed to be guarded against to keep ponykind safe since Luna is the protector of the night. Partially also due to the thought that a populace plagued by nightmares would bicker and squabble easier, so there was potential for them to be allies and/or pets to the Wendigo. I do understand the fear of the entries ending up too similar though, and don't mind going back to the drawing board. Thank you for the consideration.

6615239
Sadly this one can't pass -- colludes way too heavily with An Unknown Face in the Mirror, it's pretty much the same concept. Ya gotta bring another idea to the table, sorry.

6615239
Thanks for your interest! Unfortunately, that overlaps pretty squarely with the already-completed "An Unknown Face in your Mirror, Out of the Corner of your Eye". Are there any other ideas you'd like to write?

6613987
[Typhonic Colossus]
Accepted, although let's be cautious about overlap. This covers concepts already used in two of our sample articles (the "walking mountain", and hunting via clouds), though apparently in different ways. I'd suggest de-emphasizing the hunting angle; maybe they simply used to control weather in more direct ways, for more obscure or more unusual reasons?

As far as the slingtail overlap: all that establishes is that in the age of ponies, the idea of a mountain walking is unusual. Since you already note these are extinct, I'd just make sure to frame that these creatures are from way back — creation myths, or the ages before pony civilization. Other than that, let's see what you've got!

6613665
[Lumimoose]
Accepted — though I can see this easily derailing into a sort of scientific digression on dimensions and whatnot that wouldn't feel very Borgesian. So let's add the limitation that this is specifically an imaginary race, described in myths. Talk about the mythic source, credulously cover the weird exaggerated traits that the myths used to ascribe to it — and then if you do want to cite a more modern author trying to make scientific sense of how such a bizarre creature might actually exist, do that as a contrasting view.

FOR APPROVED AUTHORS:

Next steps are in 6614260. Thanks, and get to work!

6615378
Thanks for understanding. We look forward to another pitch!

For your sins, a composoctopus. Not sure if it's too ... biologically-inclined? That's probably a sensible phrase, and applicable to boot ... for the tone we're going for, so corrections very much sought.

300-400 words

Considered either to be long extinct or very well hidden, these creatures' corpses are said to litter northern Shireland in the form of monoliths and stone circles.

6615398
Sure, sounds good! I'll see what I can do, thanks

Name: Harpist spider, Euaraneus euterpe

• Description: Large, extinct spider that made harp-like instruments with its webs.
• Word count: 200-300? Ish?
• Fact: Harpist spiders were cat-sized arachnids known during pre-Discord times, and played magically hypnotic music on their harp-like webs to attract and mesmerize prey. They played with both their forelegs and pedipalps, essentially playing two harps at once and in this manner obtaining very complex melodies. They were occasionally tamed and trained to play regular music; Herotrotus* recounts in his Histories that Queen Cleopatrot had a choir of six at her court, and (likely apocryphal) accounts claim that Homeless traveled with a trained spider, which played music to accompany his storytelling. They likely went extinct during to Discord's reign, but some pre-Unification records describe them as an already declining species.

(* Or whichever historical figure or pun might be preferable)

I don't know how close to "insect" this is for the purposes of not overloading things with arthropods, but I couldn't resist the idea of a spider that plays music on its web. My main worry right now is that this may not be quite "fantastical" enough for what this collection seems to be going for -- I may work in a myth or two to correct that, if it's a problem.

I have my first entry pending edits. Is it too soon to propose a second?

6615471
You can make new proposals any time you want! We just won't assign you another till your current one is wrapped.

6610630
6615631

I see. Well, in that case, here is my second proposal...

• Five-Word Summary: Divinely singing, mysterious, deep-sea giant
• Estimated Word Count: Roughly 200 (short entry)
• Unique Fact: All records wax poetic about the life-changing songs of this creature, which not only have different effects on the different ponies who hear them but whisper different secrets to different recipients, (sometimes even to multiple recipients at the same time). Any one song is capable of both existential terror and inspirational awe, and it is impossible to tell in advance what effect it will have on any particular listener.
• Additional Comments: Despite several frantic investigations and a few tantalizing, murky glimpses, the Whispering Song's appearance and true identity remain a complete mystery. All anyone knows is that it is a colossal denizen from the depths of the Celestial Sea, and that its ethereal, distinctive voice speaks through the hulls of ships like whale song.

Endangered Boreworm

• Perishes when exposed to wonder
• 300ish words
• Fact: The nearly-extinct boreworm cannot stand exposure to magic, sorcery, thaumaturgy, wizardry, or generally anything classified as wondrous, including certain natural phenomena such as the rare naturally-occuring rainbow. Evidence indicates it was once widespread in Equestria before the arrival of ponies, and formed a vital part of the ecosystem.

In five words: Innocent, extradimensional, literally consuming snail-giraffes
Est. word count: 150-250 (perhaps not including a very short footnote)
Interesting fact: In addition to eating any sort of blade they can find (be it grass, a fan or a sword) the Jiracol leaves behind a trail of immensely valuable mithril-like material as it moves. Of course, due to its whimsically ethereal nature, attempts to farm this substance have never really taken off.

I talked a little to Aragon about this one, and I thank him for the translation of the original diet of these creatures (that honestly works so much better in spanish)

6615944
¿Estaría tan mal el tener una entrada, dentro de decenas, escrita en castellano?

6615947
that would be why I'm writing this one in both languages (though of course the connotations of the creature will change) at the least so as to not lose my ability with the language. as it stands I can't really place accents very well (incidentally why this is in English as a reply) and I don't want to lose any more. If nothing else a pretty PDF with some hand drawn Jiracol or another will also be available accompanied with the entry in spanish regardless.

In five words : Larval Celestial Bodies
Est. Word Count : Unsure yet. 300-400?
Interesting fact : Motes, if not driven off, appear to slowly drain a magically active location dry until they can no longer feed and whither away.

Kubuncles and Rock Cercles

Cube- and disc-shaped molluscs
Word count: On the short side, 100-200 words
Interesting fact: Dour Whinny believes that it is no coincidence that foals from nearby villages love to collect the shells of kubuncles and mark them with pips for use in board games. Rather, he posits that the creatures compete with each other to have the most cube-like shape for the convenience of ponies. His corresponding theory at least makes somewhat more sense for the rock cercles, sought-after by gamblers, where it could be termed the 'Survival of the Flattest'.

(I'd love to write something in the nebulous / cloud-based / night-based area, but it looks like you're well supplied with submissions there. So have something else on the more mundane side. I'm imagining these are known to coast-dwelling ponies and it's the evolutionary tidbit that makes them interesting, but alternatively this could be a theory for where all the thousands of centuries-old natural cube-shaped shells came from. If this is deemed too mundane that's fine )

Apologies to those who sent an entry but haven't had it edited yet -- yesterday I tried to edit as many as possible, but stuff happened and I had to leave one or two alone. I'll solve that today at the latest.

Also, a note: We're getting kind of insect-heavy over here; if you're thinking of suggesting an entry and it includes a bug, consider changing it, because we have very few mammals so far.

As a second note: everybody seems to be focusing on the magical and ethereal, and that's nice, but there are other ways to make animals weird. Consider the nubeza, for example, where the weirdness is anatomical. Don't pigeonhole!

Now, for the replies:

6616044
'fraid this one's a no, Sun. Colludes with the thaumoplankton, as those are also tiny things (bugs? Counting them as bugs, y'all can't stop me) that eat magic. Gotta think of something else.

6615926

This one isn't necessarily colluding with anything, but the concept of exploding worms appears in the Silica Worms entry, and the idea of dying through magic is neat, but also reminds me a bit of the thaumoplankton linked above (reacting to magic and so on). I like the idea of it exploding to wondrous shit, rather than it exploding to magical shit -- would it be possible to focus on that, rather?

Also, seeing how the silica worm also explodes, and how worms are also kind of getting too numerous, if you could change this to something else -- a mammal, a reptile, a, uh, a fish I don't know -- it'd be pretty cool, too.

6615944

Glad to see you came around that! Passes (do snails count as bugs? I know they are not, but do they count as one is what I'm asking), though I wouldn't have an entry in Spanish for obvious reasons, and also because I hate fun. I'll personally edit your entry to see how we go around the whole thing; I wrote Cervantes into the Face in the Mirror article and quoted a book with a Spanish title, so there are ways to hint at a very precise nationality in an entry that follow our general guidelines; we just gotta make sure it's readable for the English-speaking audience.

Cachondísimo, de todas formas, cómo cuando entré en esta página daba la sensación de que nadie hablaba en español, y ahora salen castellanoparlantes de hasta debajo de las piedras.

6615777

Man today I'm not wearing my good guy boots.

Submission can't pass, sadly, as it colludes with the whisperwyg, another entry that sings songs that can bring success or horror to those who listen to them. It's not a 1:1 comparison (what happens when they sing to you is slightly different) but I think they're way too similar.

A possible way to go around this is that you read the whisperwyg entry, see what it does, and make sure you do something different. I like the idea of a giant who sings, but we would need to make sure that there is a clear distinction in tone between the two entries, because otherwise it feels too reiterative. Read the entry and come back to me if you have like, a clear idea or way to go around the entryand we see if we make it work?

6615429

I actually like how this one is less magical and more 'HERE'S THIS FUCKING WEIRD THING THAT PLAYS MUSIC. I think the two facts you wrote about them -- Cleopatra had six, Homer travelled with one -- is enough myth for it, yo.

The bug/arthropod thing is an issue, but I guess we can accept one more maybe. Maybe. I would recommend not calling it a spider, but calling it a -- unno, a crab? And then, within the text, explaining that "[Pony Pun] declared them related to spiders, as, like them, the Harpmakers can produce silk; [Second Pony Pun] called them ancestors to peacocks, due to their wondrous plumage".

Like, avoid just calling them spiders, and make something completely weird up. Looks pretty, has six legs, produces silk, who the fuck knows what taxonomical category it's in this is a magic compilation. Stuff like that! Feel free to go weird! I like this entry a lot.

6615416

This one passes, aye. Not an issue with it. Will be waiting for the entry!

6616162
Thank you! I'll do what I can to pass behaviour and appearance as mammalian. (Though they're like 5cm.tall) it'll probably end up ambiguous enough. By focusing on the giraffe aspect it'll probably not vibe like an insect.

So:

6616162
6610630

Modification of second entry, version 2.0:

• Five-Word Summary: Confuses sailors with mystical song
• Estimated Word Count: Roughly 200 (short entry)
• Unique Fact: The Whispering Bellow is the bane of sailors. If any ship approaches its territory, the beast sings an otherworldly song, causing terror, confusion, and eventually unconsciousness. When the crew awaken and gather their bearings, they inevitably find that the ship has been transported to another part of the sea, or even to a completely different body of water, such as the Luna Ocean and - improbably - any large inland lakes.
• Additional Comments: Despite several frantic investigations and a few tantalizing, murky glimpses, the Whispering Bellow's appearance and true identity remain a complete mystery. All anyone knows is that it is a colossal denizen from the depths of the Celestial Sea, and that its ethereal, distinctive voice speaks through the hulls of ships like whale song. Some members of the crew may be haunted by the deep secrets the voice whispers in their ear, which is presumed to be either part of the creature's defence mechanism or one of its malevolent tricks. Either way, no one knows for sure why it acts the way it does.

Word Count: 200-300

Surprising Fact: Well before the invention of modern communication crystals, ancient equestrian militaries often utilized these psychically-linked rodents for battlefield reports and communications, as sounds heard by one of a pair of twins could be relayed by another. The practice eventually fell out of favor due to unsanctioned excessive breeding turning the secure two-way communications into an inter-tangled web of eavesdroppable connections. In recent decades, however, the keeping of such creatures has seen a resurgence in popularity with small groups of enthusiasts eager to contact other such ponies across the nationwide squirrel network.

Description: Brainless insectoid creature with thick and black chitin and a pony-like physique, no wings, no visible eyes or nostrils, and they are masters of invisibility.
500 word count
Interesting Fact: They stick their tongue/proboscis into unsuspecting ponies not only to nourish themselves, but also sometimes infect their victims into becoming a mindless Sameling.

Laffabout

Looks can be fatal

Fun Fact: In recent history, the only pony to view this bizarre creature without keeling over from laughing too hard was one Granite Pie. It did inspire her to write a song though.

Length: 200?

Thug Bunny

Cute but cunning little lagomorphs

maybe 200 words

While locals around the frontier town of Ponyville swear that some of the cute little bunny rabbits hopping through the forests and meadows actually belong to an entirely different species of diabolically clever vermin, scholars are divided on the matter.

Or is that getting too close to canon?

6616162
I think I have a decent idea for keeping a sort of spider theme going without actually making them arthropods or giving them arthropod parts:

Name: Harp-spinner

• Description: Four-armed, silk-producing arboreal mammals that made and played harp-like instruments.
• Word count: 300-400?
• Fact: Harp-spinners were four-armed, monkey-like animals known during pre-Discord times, known for producing silk from glands along their tails and for playing magically hypnotic music on harp-like webs they spun; why they did this is a matter of some dispute. They played with all four arms at once, essentially playing two harps at the same time and so obtaining very complex melodies. They were occasionally tamed and trained to play regular music; Herotrotus recounts in his Histories that Queen Cleopatrot had a choir of six at her court; other accounts also claim that Homeless traveled with a trained harp-spinner, which played music to accompany his storytelling. They likely went extinct during to Discord's reign, but some pre-Unification records describe them as an already declining species.

I have a submission I'd like to work on:

Louse-like insect, infests clouds

Estimated word count: 200-400 words I think. Base article should be around 150, more depends on whether I work out a life-cycle and delve into history and rainbow-production

Cloud-lice infect clouds to drain moisture. Mainly considered a pest by pegasi as they ruin rain clouds, they have a use in rainbow production. (think carmine dye irl)
In pre-industrial equestria, rainbows were a sign of infected clouds and considered an omen of drought to come.

Two possible submissions:

• Five-Word Summary: Masked predator that adopts ponies.
• Estimated Word Count: 300
• Unique Fact: A radilae will bring its adopted charge five to twenty pounds of fresh meat a day. In the wild they prefer antelope, but radilae in urban areas will effectively hunt squirrels, rats, dogs, and small birds. While the charge does not have to eat the entire offering, is highly advised that the pony eat at least one bite where the radilae can see. If the radilae's pony ignores the offering, it will think that its charge is sick or starving, and will become extremely territorial as it attempts to keep the pony safe in their "weakened" state.

• Five-Word Summary: Squirrel that sees the future
• Estimated Word Count: Roughly 200
• Unique Fact: Oracle squirrels will sometimes favor ponies with gifts such as stock tips, winning lottery tickets, or startlingly specific advice. However, a pony captures them and attempts to force them to act as a diviner, they are capable of compelling vast numbers of mundane squirrels to attack.

6614801
The Muscuy
It, uh, ended up longer than I envisioned because I thought of additional stuff.
Also, hundredth post.