StoryTail

I think the problem is that you were first introduced, and became very used to, the style of the G4 ponies that all previous generation ponies look weird to you because they used the formulated, old style. As a girl growing up with G1 ponies, no, I did not find them scary or horrifying growing up. It's the style I grew up watching and I did not see them weird or horrifying growing up because there was no other style used to make them seem weird. In fact, even with the new G4 style around now, which I do think are cute, I still think the G1 dolls are actually a lot more visually appealing than the G4 dolls. Edit: Whoa! This topic is old! I didn't realize it was bumped up and I'm replying to an ancient post, haha.

Well, one thing I could tell, if you're trying to make it kid-friendly, while keeping the adult and dark themes you're usually use to writing, the potion seems to give a heavy implication for LSD (addiction to potions and enhanced imagination while drinking it). Perhaps that's what you're going for, but I feel like it might not be hidden enough to keep soccer moms from barking off their chain. Unless you made the episode have the ponies overreact and try to tell Shooting Star how awful being addicted to a potion is, maybe. That's my thought on that. But you, perhaps, don't care so much on that being well-hidden since this is a fanfic and you wouldn't be releasing this for children. The story sounds interesting and does sound plausible for a pony plot. I have to say, Shooting Star kind of reminds me of my pony, Story Tail. Story Tail is a pony that has a lot of stories that she shares with little fillies and animals, but she never writes them down or shares with adults as she has fears of people stealing her work. She'd have some lesson on learning not to be afraid to put her work out there.

I can tell you a little bit from my experience with trying to have no emotions and being apathetic, as a teen, when my parents use to yell at me a lot. I successfully repressed any feeling of wanting to cry or fear when they yelled at my face. I no longer felt any fear or the need to cry, I just waited for them to be done with their yelling. I still gave a slight reaction, however, of backing off and giving them a weird face when they would lunge at me, trying to get a reaction from me, giving them slight satisfaction. They intensified their yelling and screaming cuz they were worried something was wrong with me and wanted to see me cry again. Eventually, I did break down and cry when they did a double team of yelling and scolding me for something I did, much to their relief. So, yes, it is possible to repress your emotions and feel nothing. I could have probably continued training to feel nothing when my parents yelled at me, but I decided it wasn't worth it in the end. They would have just gotten increasingly worried and they might have taken me to therapy, to sort it out, if I kept it up. I can tell you that even if you were to successfully feel nothing and repress your emotions, there would be psychological consequences in the long run. I'm actually a person that's not that good at expressing her emotions; expressing that I'm angry is not something that I'm good at cuz I don't want to start fights or have long talks about it (that feel more like fights to see it from my side). I'm hesitant to express to someone that they upset me in general and it can take me a while to express it. I usually end up brushing it off, repressing, and dismissing it, which backfires me later. I also tend to bottle up my worries until I can no longer contain it and it spills over into some mental health disaster. If I don't express my feelings in some way, my feelings of anger and being upset with someone turns into resentment, or even worse thoughts that they're some kind of emotional bully, when the reality is that I haven't expressed my feelings to them for them to re-assess their behavior. My worries, as I said, spill over into mental health issues; I experience horrible, intrusive thought OCD and those thoughts eventually lead me to depression and not being able to function properly. You shouldn't express your emotions in a destructive way that it would hurt and anger everyone, but you shouldn't repress them and brush them off either. The key is to have good emotional intelligence; you should be aware of your feelings, acknowledge them, express them in a way that's not harmful, and then let go of them. Instead of letting your feelings control you and hurting someone with it, you express it through ways like writing it down, using art, and talking it out with someone. If you're angry or upset with someone, you need to talk it out because writing or using art won't usually be enough in that case. For me, using writing and art can help with worries, but I still need to talk it out with someone sometimes so I know I'm not all alone with these feelings. I feel that with Vulcans, because they supposedly feel stronger emotions than humans, they would have greater psychological problems. Not only for their stronger emotions but also because they go to great lengths to suppress their emotions. I bet Vulcans would absolutely drive our psychologists mad because they would refuse to acknowledge any psychological issues they have from suppressing their emotions.

How about Gutsy Gumhooves? Gumhooves a sort of play on gumshoes, lol. It'd mean she's brave and a sort of goodie-two-shoe?

It seems that the link to your image got broken. Could you try reposting it? You can upload it directly from your computer through attachments.

On the circle around the cheek, I believe that's suppose to be her cheekbone, lol. Her style is to make her horses a bit muscular and prominant bone structures; kinda like a real horse.

Very nice! You did an amazing job with her horn! Is this your first time working with digital art? I know it can be tricky and frustrating, and makes you wish you could just draw it all out by hand. Gimp and Photoshop are a pain for me, even if I do know all the tools. If I could make a suggestion, you could make her mouth more closed, making it look more snake-like with her tongue slithering between her teeth. Right now, it looks like she's kinda panting, lol. But that's just me!... Maybe I'm giving a bad suggestion... Sorry!

Very cute! She kinda reminds me of chocolate mint ice cream with the colors! xD Have you decided on her cutie mark?

Cinnamon cake, huh? Lol, dang it! xD I just want a gold pony!!

Yeah, I use to be a manga artist. ;( I was very frustrated with how I drew my characters. Unfortunately, I don't think I have much time to draw now. I'm focused on video games, college, and just doing well in life. But ponies in the FiM style is pretty easy for me to do.... I just suck at choosing their color schemes, lol!

lol, well I do follow the basic MLP style cuz it's so easy to do! Even though I was an artist when I was younger, I've constantly got frustrated with how I drew and didn't really develop my skills. Was kinda lazy and too much of a perfectionist, lol. I'd get so frustrated that I'd just give up and not continue my drawing, lol, cuz I wanted it to be perfect and didn't want my image ruined. I got frustrated not getting the character to look like how I imagined, but managed to finish this somehow, lol.

Thanks! xD Worked hard on her! I'll try doing her alicorn version next.

Luckily, there's a lot of online tutorials for using Gimp! You should try them out! http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/ http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials.php http://www.gimpology.com/ I'd link some project tutorials but all the ones I've learned from are from Photoshop.