@Background Pony #693C
Leave Luna’s rump out of this!

the plot thickens

@Gnot Even
And the conversation comes full circle!

I had some Latin, but no Greek, so I’m on a bit of shaky ground here, but I think “pathos” to an ancient Greek covers all emotions, from glee to sorrow. Pathogen is also from pathos, with the “gen” from the same root as genesis. Thus it means “source of suffering” (I suspose to an ancient Greek it could also be source of glee, but they’d been gone for a couple of thousand years before the word was invented. Which neatly brings us back to the prior subject…)

@Spiritus Arcane
That would probably have been easier to understand. And less wankerly. XD

That also works I suppose. I assume that’s from the same “pathos” as “empathy”. But it sounds initially like one who eats pathogens.

Ah, I see. I’d probably have gone with “pathophage”, but other writers have used that with rather different meanings (and rather incorrectly, in my opinion, but they didn’t ask me :-) ).

@Stellarator
I’ve seen other stories use “emotivores” when talking about emotion eaters like sirens or changelings.

@Gnot Even
That’s my best attempt at constructing a latin word for “emotion eater”. I’ve used it before a couple of times, IIRC.

@khaelin04
Stay tuned to this channel to see how things work out! :)

@H3lios
Yeah, that is very true. A few episodes ago Luna asked Sonata about loving normal/mortal ponies who are “gone in mere decades”.

The thing about living for centuries is that your perspective of time increases with you. Remember when you were a child, around 6 or 7, a year seemed like an eternity. Thats because at age 6, one year was literally 1/6th of your life. (1/3rd if you consider that we dont really retain memories until 2 or 3.) However, as an adult 1 year doesnt seem so long because now its only 1/20th of your life. Thats the main problem with ancient or immortal creatures in fiction is that they are typically shown to have a human perspective on time when in fact a year should be like a week to them or less.

To put it another way, imagine being told you have two weeks to live, and a fruit fly tries to comfort you by saying, “Hey dont worry about it, thats still an entire lifetime.” In other words, Twilight is absolutly right about it being a death sentence. From their POV its like being told they have a week or two to live.

This is a very interesting twist. I hope that the Princesses can offer a cure.

It seems incredible that there is no lore available to Twilight that mentions the Sirens directly; but, remember that there are no computers for indexing of knowledge. Even the largest library may not be comprehensive.

Seems like lots of readers, (myself included…), had guessed that their ages might catch up with the gems damaged. I wonder if Luna and Twilight plan to fix them, or ask if they want them to try. I can see each just wanting their time with their mates, Sonata the most, realizing she won’t lose Smoothie. Kind of a slap in the face to them though, they still need to ‘feed’ to live, but now with a shortened life. At least they still have their strength, and concerts are easier way to feed.
Also, nerdy-Twlight is adorkable-Twilight. :)

“Emoverevores”? Epicene was hard enough, now I think you’re just teasing us…