@Chrys
It doesn’t really bother me too much. If I’m not mistaken, she has multiple AUs for her Next Gen characters as well as various non-canon little side stories. They’re not part of her main Next Gen works but are just fun little things she likes drawing.
The ship doesn’t seem to be that random to me either. Maggie befriended Pan after getting over her teen alpha-bitch phase. So a romance potentially blossoming out of that friendship doesn’t seem too far fetched to me. It’s not canon to her anyways so it looks like just harmless fun to me.
Also, I’d be a pretty big hypocrite if I were to look down upon Lopoddity doing this sort of thing since my friends and I do the exact same thing, albeit for other fandoms (Pokemon and Transformers to be specific). Granted with those two fandoms, the franchises do have drastically different canons/universes to play with so we kind of made versions of our OCs (and potential ships) differ depending on each one. We have set canon ones but we also have fun and write and draw crack ships too once in a while as well.
@Frustration in Excelsis
@Frustration in Excelsis
That honestly makes quite a bit of sense. It could also explain why Fluttershy was able to feed fish to some of her animals. Maybe she catches and eats them herself once in a while. I think I might accept some of those headcanons of yours for my own sort of stuff. Mostly the fish and rock stuff at least.
As for me, I’d like to think that most ponies are vegetarians. Ones who are completely vegan are less common but not unheard of.
And there’s a very small select few ponies that eat meat for a multitude of reasons. The first reason would be out of necessity due to health problems (like a deficiency of some sort). Some people have had to give up being vegan or vegetarian due to that sort of thing. Some real life horses and deer will occasionally eat meat for the protein or calcium too (or if they’re extremely in a desperate need for food).
Another reasons a pony might go omnivore is if they have a spouse or family members that are non-ponies. I like to headcanon that dragons, dragon hybrids, and hippogriffs are omnivores while griffons lean towards having a more carnivorous diet but will occasionally eat plants and plant products (birds of prey and big cats eat meat so it makes sense). They might see their family eating meat and get curious on how it tastes and eventually try it.
So with that being said, meat eating ponies are not part of the norm and I can picture eating meat might even be taboo in certain places of pony society. That being said, ponies do keep non-sapient animals around for eggs, milk, finding truffles (in the case of pigs), and for making pet food (Winona and Opal have got to eat too).
I’m honestly glad this talk of meat came up though. Because I kind of have a bit of a pickle in regards to some OCs, namely Griffon ones. I was thinking of some foods for them to make and I accidentally was also going to have one of them eat beef (but thankfully I remembered that bovines are sapient in the MLP universe before making that mistake).
I kind of want to try going for goats and sheep too but I’m not too sure if I should. There was that one-off gag a while back with the talking sheep but the show seemed to contradict it by later having non-sapient sheep being kept as pets/livestock for the Crystal ponies. The goats Iron Will kept around seemed more like pets than actual assistants. Their eyes and behavior came off as rather animal like
but at the same time, Grogar might appear in the show so I’m getting mixed signals on that as well. Same goes for deer. They’re shown as pets in the show but the comics flops back and forth on them being non-sapient animals and being sapient and intelligent enough to have their own civilized society.
I want the griffons I have to have some hooved animals to eat. Not just for variety’s sake for what I can have them eat. But also because I had the idea of ponies possibly being grossed out or creeped out at the idea of this sort of thing. So perhaps that oddity due to their differences in their diets might cause some griffons to be misunderstood by some ponies at first, before the griffons just reassure the ponies that they don’t eat ponies and any rumors of that sort of thing is an Old Mare’s Tale.
For now I’m thinking pigs and giraffes are okay. And antelope, sheep, and goats are maybes for me for now. But I wouldn’t mind a second opinion or two on this.