Technically, this thread would probably be better titled something like "Pre/Post-Scratch Whatever Planet The Country of Equestria Is" (I've seen some authors call the planet "Equis," which works, but would probably get confusing if there were a crossover with Homestuck featuring Equius...), but "Pre/Post-Scratch Equestria" gets the point across much easier.

Anyways, one of the fundamental aspects of Homestuck...the Scratch! A hard reset button which resets the timeline while swapping the temporal positions of meteor babies. In Homestuck, we've seen how it changed (both subtly and non-subtly) Universe A and Universe B. How would an event like the Scratch alter Equestria and the rest of the planet?

I guess the first step would be determining exactly who our meteor babies would be. Obvious candidates would be the Mane 6 and some currently unknown descendant/ancestors (maybe including Granny Smith?). But that means each session only has six players, and we've only seen 12-, 4-, and a (highly atypical) 2-player session. Could a six-player session work? Two ectobabies end up being used for the genetic material for two other ectobabies (who end up being half-identical twins), so we could have two scenarios:

1). The Mane 6 supply the ectobiological material for a bunch of OCs.

2). A bunch of OCs supply the ectobiological material for the Mane 6.

The former (ship central!) is straightforward enough (although it should be noted that all the OCs would probably be mares, as no Y-chromosomes), but the latter means that the each of the Mane 6 would be secretly related to another member of the Mane 6. Which is...doable, if a little fan-wanky (AJ/Pinkie, Fluttershy/RD, Rarity/Twilight as the sister pairs?), but then again you've got members of the Mane 6 with canonical siblings of their own and it might work better to incorporate them when coming up with related pairs. And what about the CMC and Spike?

And then secondly, how would Equestria change if these meteor babies swapped positions? Would Equestria become a dystopian survival of the fittest world? Or was Equestria a dystopian world before it was scratched, and the current Equestria we know is the post-Scratch version?

Any thoughts? Or would you prefer to simply boggle vacantly at these shenanigans?

I'd just throw in Equestria Girls and make every counterpart an ancestor, but that's just me.

4924763

Could a six-player session work?

I'm almost certain any number higher than one would be viable, as long as the two essential roles of Time and Space are filled.
Even odd numbers would only complicate the ecto-baby process at worst.

In my own ponystuck fic - which I probably won't ever write up because it's all-OC wish fulfillment by me and my palemate, also very silly, and hence of very limited interest to a general ponyfic audience - canon Equestria is believed by the characters to be the pre-Scratch, more idyllic society. The characters, meanwhile, live in what they believe is a post-Scratch Equestria. It's not that dark or dangerous, really, but is more high-tech, with computers and video games commonplace - the equivalnt of Sburb is a magitech game there.

The characters are actually wrong, and never were in the 'real' Equestria at all, but that's not so relevant to this thread!

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What's stopping you from using background ponies or other characters as OC stand ins? No one will ever have to know... *wonk*

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Yeah, that's true, since ectobabies come in pairs. Plus, two sessions of six players would fill all non-master classpects (I imagine that means one of the sessions will be "doomed" in some way, since no time/space players.)

4924791
Actually, that reminds me of how "The Scratch" by uberPheonix used the founding of Equestria play characters (Clover the Clever, Smart Cookie, etc.) as the Mane 6's dancestors. I can't believe I forgot about those guys.