Okay I haven't finished anything for this in a while I admit, but I wanted to draw more of that unicorn who gets attacked in the first post, so here's some art! I'm calling them Sparkburn because of their magic being fire-related, primarily used for cooking. Bit of a simple name but they're a background character and i didn't wanna think on it too long, so.
Putting it under a cut because it's very intentionally kinda nasty, no gore or blood but fungus and spores are involved and essentially a zombie pony.
wasn't sure about the colors, but i figure since they're kinda.. yknow, a zombie, technically, they're most likely duller and their fur is probably much darker than normal, so i went with it for a first draft at least figuring i can change it later.
Looking back on this I don't love the colors at all, the cutie mark especially, so i think I'll change it, but perhaps the spores change the pigments in the fur and corrupts the magic in a pony, therefore changing the cutie mark as well.
Full version of PFP + Header, information about the AU under the cut :D
This is just a lil thing for fun, it is serious but it's mostly just screwing around to see what sticks. I've been meaning to mess with an infection AU for a bit now, and MLP in general I used to love this show growing up and as someone who adores horror and silly zombie plots this is exactly up my alley thank you
This blog is mostly based around Rustbark Disease, which is the in-universe nickname for it, or Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae/Cedar Apple Rust. I love timber wolves, they're neat, and I haven't seen many people use them for one of these AUs just yet so I looked for some tree diseases and bonk, angry puppy. Also gave me an excuse to draw one with a birch body and weird elk-looking antlers, I love making a bunch of variants for things that do not need them. I'll probably make a post about timber wolf variants later on but for now: horror stuff!!
TWs for typical scaries below the cut, body horror, violence, it's based on a fungus disease so pretty much if The Last of Us freaks you out maybe don't, I suck at TWs I am sorry
(Text is in the image description for all of these! I'm not the best at descriptions so if you have a better one in mind I'd be more than happy to change it, but for now I've only included what I felt was the most necessary.)
And while I do want to include more stages, there are more 100%, I feel as though now is a good time to stop it. Leave some room for speculation... also I don't want to burn out before I even get started lol. I do have St3 mostly drawn but aaagh I don't wanna draw this many of what feels like the same thing to my brain so.... haha.. I'll probably scrap it
It moves a bit slower and is a bit less dramatic than some I've seen, but in my defense I am a nerd who loves doing research and most diseases tend to move kinda slow in most cases. I personally feel like that's scarier, anyways. The slow, drawn-out takeover is great for horror.
The infection is based off of a few different things, color-coded for your convenience. Primarily, the real-life Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae, or cedar-apple rust is a big inspiration. The fungus is non-lethal to the plant and mostly affects the appearance, so, with it mainly being transmitted by Timber Wolves, I also felt it made sense to base it off of diseases like Rabies and, since I design Timber Wolves with ungulate-like antlers, Chronic Wasting Disease/CWD. In the final stage, the infected collapses and the body begins to rot, but the fungus and spores continue to prosper.
It is inspired by games like The Last of Us and perhaps some Dying Light, but is not by any means a direct copy of anything. I tried to avoid taking inspiration from other AUs because I simply wanted to go wild with my imagination, so from here on out any unintentional similarities are purely coincidence.
All ponies (except for Zecora) shown in this post are nameless ocs for the point of showing off the disease.
All parts of this will be tagged with #Gymnosporangium, #Rustbark, and #Cedar Apple Rust, for the sake of simplicity. Non-canon entries have #Branch as a tag, as a silly little pun about trees and how it branches off from the main series, and designs I've made for the series are, of course, tagged #Design, as well as the character's name. Art that isn't mine is tagged #Not My Art, of course, such as edits or.. I dunno, picrews or something. Each post will have involved characters' names tagged as well. I never fully finished the original series and am in fact not too far in rewatching sadly, but I will strive for diversity as well as I can.
Lowkey a lil nervous but horror is one of my favorite things, infection AUs are sick (hehe) and I want the practice, so, uh, here
