It's now October, a favorite of many in art and fandom because of spooky spooky theming. I will admit to having some slightly mixed feelings on Halloween (this part of the year is a fav on paper from sentimentality and high personal significance ) but I think my main gripe is how the stores stocked things in August. I do love comfy spooks and Nightmare Night themed things for sure.

Posting a Luna for Nightmare Night month. Two (three!), actually, one image and pixel art based on it. The pixel art was done by someone part of a discord called ManePxls that is a faction on one of the pixel sites that is trying to replicate reddit's pixel space or whatever it was called (it ever so slightly annoys me that people think of reddit, and try to emulate, reddit, when this idea has been done before, anypony remember drawball?!) anyways, beside that, I do respect their pixel versions of other art and original pixel art they make when I see it.

>>12371
I'm not sure it is even possible to derail here:
>is for casual banter and idle chitchat of any topic. Funposting and randomness too.

>Celestia's cutie mark as the symbol on the sail instead of the wind crest from the game: excellent.
I respect little details like this as well. It is fun to convert elements (say a cutie mark) into another motiff or make them fit smoothly in something like that.


I am going to say something funny: I have never played The Wind Waker. I have some memory seeing it as a kid on a Gamecube or something during a family visit but I have never played it and it's art style was and still is slightly offputting...

...but I also think these more wonky and cartoonish proportions have grown on me quite a lot!!! Pics related all from the artist dalapony and I like most of them, some of them I adore. I guess I have gone through in miniature what the repuation of that game went through as whole. (a albeit, I never hated Toon Link, I just had a slight "that looks weird" disinterest). Here:
https://twibooru.org/search?q=artist%3Adalapony%2C+the+legend+of+zelda%3A+the+wind+waker
Considering my talk of what I find offputting in ponies in the other thread, lol, me finding some of these wonky ones fun is quite comical. I might make a mini essay or something on it later.

> which all comes together to imbue the image with a lot of quite specific nostalgia. It almost makes me wish for a more nautically-themed G6!
With lots of Seaponies!

>>12380
>It is fun to convert elements (say a cutie mark) into another motiff or make them fit smoothly in something like that.
It translates very well also, as in this specific instance, the King of Red Lions (I'll try and spoiler this) was formerly King Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule, the last King of Hyrule before it sank beneath the waves, and as King he used the Wind Waker to control the winds, so if he was a pony it would be most appropriate for his cutie mark to be wind-related - and the sail in the game has a wind crest on it. Of course, the sail is bought from an Eskimo, so it's only related by chance, but nonetheless it fits.
>I have some memory seeing it as a kid on a Gamecube or something during a family visit but I have never played it and it's art style was and still is slightly offputting...
Unfortunately with Windwaker, more than anything else in the world really, I'm totally unable to look at it with an objective eye: it was my first real gaming experience. Technically I played the PC demo for Lego Star Wars first, but then Dad bought a Gamecube from a friend along with some games. Our copy of Windwaker came with the Master Quest disk, so I guess Dad's friend must have pre-ordered Windwaker. So I did play Ocarina of Time too, but it didn't ever grab me like Windwaker did, I preferred to just watch my Dad play OoT. My favorite feature of the Master Quest disk was the trailers - the Windwaker trailer on it was and still is one of my favorite things ever:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Blk0fk4Clvc [Embed]
In my mind this trailer was what introduced me to the game and made me really get into it - but there's no actual way for me to know if that's the case or not! All the memories are very blurry because I would have been four years old. Windwaker was my introduction to videogames, to fantasy as a genre, to a passion about history and sailing, and much more besides. I discussed back in the Season 9 discussion thread, years ago when the show ended, how I related to Twilight moving away from Ponyville and feeling upset about it because when I was nine years old, we moved, and I've still never really gotten over it. Our new house never, and still doesn't, feel like home, and neither does the apartment I've moved out into. I've been back to the village where I grew up, and of course, it's changed, it's no longer home either. Ironically enough, Windwaker itself is about this very theme. Ganondorf seeks to use the Triforce to unflood Hyrule, to bring it back. In the ending monologue, the King of Red Lions compares himself to Ganondorf, in terms of how neither of them could let go of Hyrule - but he chooses to destroy Hyrule and send Link and Tetra away to found their own land, a new land. So, home is not there if I go back. Nowhere on Earth feels like home. But when I play Windwaker, it feels like home. So, that's the game for me: it's the one and only home that I can actually go back to.
>I guess I have gone through in miniature what the repuation of that game went through as whole.
A few years later Dad got Twilight Princess, and that was his favorite Zelda. It might be my predisposition, but it could just as easily be the fact that Windwaker had a profound impact on who I am in general, but I find Twilight Princess depressing and dull, generally speaking. I don't think it's bad, but Hyrule in that game is not a place I'm all that interested in exploring, I don't like the people that inhabit it and I'm not motivated to save them. The Ooca city in that game is really the one part I like, and unlike the Hylians I actually like the Ooca so I want to help them. And fighting a dragon is always cool, of course. That's not to say it's a bad game, but that kind of 'look how grim and how dark I am' approach has remained a strong dislike of mine my whole life, and I first recall really feeling it towards Twilight Princess.
>With lots of Seaponies!
Absolutely!

>>12744
>sage
>subject

But indeed, the subject is sagacity, was it not?

>>12745
What can I say on sage that what hasn't been written by others wiser than me? Saging and the practice of banish topics with holy herbs only seems to go so far, as engagement even without bumps can still drive more bumps. Though, on slower imageboards I wouldn't call them useless.

And once again, despite having finished no projects to day, I am visited by a muse's whims.

What if the changelings won?

This wouldn't be a covert rebellion story, Star Wars style, but more like the movie Daybreakers, in which most of humanity had converted to sunlight-hating vampires, and the few humans were hunted primarily by the government exactly because there were too few of them to let the general public thoughtlessly tear apart the last of the breeding stock of the only food they could eat.

So, in this world the changelings could smell love from some distance, but not miles. And because they could also eat each other's love (but of course it was unsatisfying because they consumed their own generative output and emitted almost nothing) they changeling horde would set up towns where everyone stayed in-costume.
They would have designated changelings pretending to be ponies, and others would file to pretend to be pretending to be ponies and try to infiltrate the town of innocents.
Dropping your disguise in public would be the equivalent of shouting 'olly olly oxen-free' ; everyone would stop what they were doing to hear the words of the one with a problem, consider their response as a town, then kick them out of town to maintain a sense of propriety and mystery.

Of course, occasionally a real pony would try to hide there, thinking it was mostly real ponies, or at least half of them which was why the changelings would stay in disguise. But one wrong trip to the marketplace in the evening, and there would be no more pony.
Except this day, when our subject would sneak into what he thought for sure to be the real pony of the town, and ask how they had stayed hidden ... and after some embarrassed stalling the lone changeling, in their own home, would drop their disguise, or swap it to look like the real pony, and explain how this place worked.
Then go on the adventure of trying to sneak out the pony whose natural love could be detected through walls from fifty feet away.
And the changeling army marching through, no disguise of course, having heard stories of roaming food herds in the area.

>>12732
>>12733
Heh, well, I am having some concerning symptoms right now and my ability to walk or stand is severely hindered, so I sat down and tried to right some version of
>daybreakers
>Except this day, when our subject would sneak into what he thought for sure to be the real pony of the town, and ask how they had stayed hidden ... and after some embarrassed stalling the lone changeling, in their own home, would drop their disguise, or swap it to look like the real pony, and explain how this place worked.
Though admittedly it's kind of the inverse of that, with a seasoned resident of the town having ran into a pony very much not playing by the rules from expertise and their own mission.

Though not quite to the letter of the concept here. I don't know how well my writing is as I haven't written in awhile and this was written just as much as a distraction for myself. Certainly expect some spelling errors at least!