I'm in the midst of exams at the moment, but as soon as they finish at the end of next week, my plans for the winter break include, practically above all else, getting caught up/more active in the RP here on canterlot.com. This post is mostly for personal reference. If you've noticed I'm in a thread that I've forgotton to post here/are waiting for me to post in one of your threads, please let me know! Threads I'm active in that need replies urgently EQGirlsCon Three Lakes Café BonBon's Bonbons Army Ball Red Carpet Run Cloudsdale Frenzied Factory Zone: Opening Assembly Boxy's Boutique Alicorn Babysitting (FFA)
Other Active Threads Las Pegasus Weekend Getaway 100 Country Kisses Rough Around the Edges Daring Do and the Quest for the Golden Statue (FFA)
Threads I'm not active in but would like to/need to join Ponyville Day Spa La Baymare: The After Party! Mystery Masquerade Speed Dating at the Prancing Pony Journey Around Equestria Lite As Air Coffee Café Trottingham Off-Duty Cool Down
Threads I would like to create Crystal Empire Primary School Cherry Berry's Balloon Rides Project Trottingham Cloudsdale Summer Sun Celebration (BIG Maybe)
Character Applications to start/finish: Princess Celestia (Tier 1) Naelah (FFA) Piña Colada (Tier 3) Unnamed Doctor Pony High Winds (Tier 3) Lemon Silk Vanilla Bean Dough-Si-Dough
I have too many ideas. For threads, for characters, for what characters could do in threads. It's scary because I'm afraid that I'll keep getting more ideas before I see my current ones come to full flower. I've never been all that good at finishing anything. First of all, I have a Tier 2 cast app that's more or less ready to go. I'm just going to let it sit on my computer for a few days longer before finalizing and sending it away. Now, as far as OCs go, I'm full of ideas. A lot of these ideas stem from my desire to sort of build a fuller society. WoE has a lot of different and interesting characters, but there is definitely an over-abundance of musicians, adventurers and travellers and not so many small-business owners and ponies who are willing to keep their four hooves in one place. Where are the ponies who provide the basic infrastructure of society? The teachers, the nurses, the doctors, the bankers? Where are ones who have the full-time jobs and don't have all this free time to go gallivanting all over Equestria to seek adventure? My currently approved OCs, Whirligig and Stormwing, both have full time jobs and permanent homes and I'm always having a hard time coming up with a reason for them to leave home. So now I get why people want to RP ponies who travel a lot for work, or who somehow manage to earn a living by being an adventurer. That doesn't make it a trope I want to buy into myself, though. Maybe it's because I've moved - I've had my life completely uprooted and plonked in a new town in a new country on a new continent and while I wouldn't say it traumatized me, I would say it's made me not so keen on travelling and seeing the world. Some of my OC ideas are:
Rook: A Diamond Dog who is strong and powerful and an exemplary miner who still fears the world that lies beyond the borders of her family's territory. Rook is actually [Ready] in the application section, just waiting for her to be approved. Vanilla Latte: A barista, cafe owner and busybody in Trottingham, who is also currently on the town council. She wants to be mayor of the town one day. Windygust: Stormwing and Whirligig's mother. Her app is tricky because she's a single mum; going into too much detail about her father wouldn't be WoE-acceptable, but leaving him out entirely just makes the whole thing seem incomplete. I'm working on her app at the moment and I think I may have found a way to make it work. I don't have many ideas as to what I would do with her specifically, but I think since she has such a close relationship with her children and her children have a close relationship with her, it would be nice to bring her into some of their threads. Bright Calcite: A crystal pony! Bright Calcite is a primary school teacher in the Crystal Empire. All I've got for her so far. A Unicorn doctor who lives in Cloudsdale. No, seriously, hear me out. Ponies don't have a lot of electrical and technological advancements that we do. Some would claim that the reason for this could be that they can replicate the effects of this with unicorn magic. Unicorn magic would be MOST useful, I feel, in medicine - spells could be developed to replicate the effects of MRIs, CAT-scans, and ultra-sounds, as well some healing spells. Not every doctor has to be a Unicorn - I'm sure there are earth ponies and pegasus ponies who make excellent doctors in the world of Equestria, but you can't deny that access to unicorn magic would make the entire practice easier. This Unicorn realized this, and he also realized that Cloudsdale, being only occupied by Pegasi, is at a serious disadvantage. So he learns a cloud-walk spell and makes a home in Cloudsdale where he is a busy, busy, busy doctor in the Cloudsdale Hospital.
Ideas I'm ditching:
My ponysona, Afouria: The only reason I'm not going to make her WoE-playable is that I love the cutie mark too much. Three spiral-bound notebooks and two ballpoint pens. This is because I have an obsession with notebooks - I have two full shelves stacked full of random notebooks containing random ideas that probably should never see the light of day. In the WoE, these would have to be changed to parchments and quills. And parchments and quills aren't as colourful as spiral-bound notebooks. Also, I actually really have no idea what I would do with her/how she would behave in the RP so it's not a huge deal that I won't be able to play her. For now, she can just sit in my profile picture and look pretty. Belle Voyage: Belle Voyage was a Unicorn whose special talent is travel, specifically in the form of teleportation. Ditched her a) when I found out that teleportation is discouraged in WoE RP threads, and b) when I decided there were enough ponies travelling Equestria without adding her to the crowd of ponies popping in and out of the most random of locations.
With each of the aforementioned ponies comes a whole slew of "supporting" character ideas. Rook was conceptualized as a joint effort between myself and Quicklime to be a supporting character for her OC, Kalime (the two are littermates). If anyone else has ever considered apping a Diamond Dog, please, please, please do and we shall be most certain to include you in our fun! I just felt like writing all this stuff down somewhere. Thanks to everyone who read this far, you're awesome! - Jane
Here's a bit on how I think the weather works in Equestria; feel free to comment if you feel like something doesn't quite fit with canon or if your ideas differ greatly from my own. I figure that managing the weather for a gigantic nation like Equestria is no easy task. It's probably a huge operation composed of many teams and departments, and it's mostly government funded. The centre of these operations is Cloudsdale, though Canterlot has some say in the operations as well. First of all, the Pegasi don't have to control the weather. In Aquellia, for example, the weather is left to its own devices as it is in the Everfree Forest. The clouds do form naturally and move at will. But the Pegasi can control the weather due to ancient magic and have been doing so since the days of the three tribes. It started out that they just pushed the naturally-formed clouds around, but they later developed methods to create the clouds themselves. Sometimes being a weather pony involves collecting and arranging clouds to form showers, but a lot of the time, it also involves clearing the clouds. Sometimes these clouds were made in Cloudsdale and have just escaped the storerooms, but a lot of the time these are stray natural clouds that have formed and cause problems. Pegasi have access to magic of their own: the magic that allows them to fly, for example, also affects the weather. They can use this magic to slow or speed up winds, raise and lower the temperature of the air, and cause or prevent thunderstorms, hurricanes and tornados. Because the forces of the weather can be dangerous, there are various levels of teams involved in the management of the weather. At the top, you have the meteorological engineers. These are Pegasi who are highly skilled in weather magic as a result of having a university degree in the study of the creation and formation of meteorological phenomena; both how it works naturally as well as what Pegasi can do to modify these natural behaviours. My OC, Whirligig, dreams of one day becoming a meteorological engineer. And then you have the various teams beneath them; field weather ponies. A university degree is not required to be a field weather pony, but an apprenticeship is. If the meteorological engineers are the architects and designers of the weather, these guys are the carpenters, electricians and other manual tradesponies who make the weather happen. They are often broken into teams and sent to towns all across Equestria. Each team has a supervisor who makes sure everything runs smoothly, as well as five or six ponies who form the team itself, though the size of the team varies based on demand. Ponyville's weather team is supervised by Rainbow Dash, but there are other Pegasi underneath her who also help out, as seen in look before you sleep and Hurricane Fluttershy. My OC Stormwing is a field weather pony for the town of Trottingham. Then you have the weather factory and its workers (as well as various levels of management within the factory. Obviously there are going to be some Metorological Engineers overseeing operations here as well, and then department managers and quality control). A lot of Equestria's weather starts life in the factory. Here clouds of all types are made in addition to Rainbows, Snowflakes and electrical systems. There is also a great deal of testing and research done in the factory in close association with the University of Cloudsdale. This research includes the formation and operation of tornados, as well as the containment of storm systems. In between the factory and the field teams, there are also delivery ponies who work with the factory. These are teams of Pegasi who 'carry' the weather systems created in Cloudsdale to all the towns in Equestria. Clouds are usually corralled and transported that way, with special measures taken when it comes to electrically active clouds. Rainbows are tinned and carried in this manner. When a rainbow is to be used, a field weather pony has only to open the can and pour the liquid rainbow across the sky. The story of Snowdrop fits in nicely - snow began life in the same way rain did. It wasn't until Snowdrop came along that hoof-made snowflakes were introduced to Equestria. Clouds are made in the usual manner, then infused with hoof-made snowflakes before being sent out to the rest of Equestria. I'm still trying to work on my wind theories. I've read a few fanfics where there was a tornado creation section in the weather factory, but Hurricane Fluttershy suggests that Tornados can easily be made in the field with a lot of wing power. I'm thinking maybe tornados are made in the factory and then, like rainbows, somehow transported to the rest of Equestria when needed. I don't think they'd be needed often though, except maybe to assist with moving water when ponies aren't keen on breaking records by doing it the old-fashioned way. Obviously the use of more dangerous elements would be heavily monitored. Cloudsdale itself doesn't have weather systems the same way the rest of Equestria does. They don't have gardens so they don't need precipitation the same way, so they like keeping their clouds in tact (I figure a lot of rain in Cloudsdale would damage the clouds the city is made out of. Cloudsdale does have its own team of weather ponies, but their sole responsibility is keeping the stray clouds out of the city.) Anyways, I just felt like sharing this. I'm not trying to create lore for the WoE, and I don't expect everypony to agree with me on this, but this system will probably be referenced by OCs in some of my RP posts. - Jane
