???: Bonnie! Sister! Good afternoon! Good to see you!

Bon-Bon: Hello, Ribbon. Why the fanfare? Liza! Your mom’s here!

Ribbon: What? Can a mare not be pleased to see her sister well?

Bon-Bon: Not usually, no.

Ribbon: I’m sorry. Is this not a good time? I thought we might speak for a bit since…

Bon-Bon: Since Lyra went to Canterlot for the weekend. But you already knew that, didn’t you.

Ribbon: Guilty as charged! Ah haha! Hello Tootsie! MmmMM! Go wait in the carriage please. Such a good filly! Ah ha… [Clearing throat] Yes, well. Since I knew you’d be alone this weekend, I thought “What an excellent time this would be for my dear, dear sister to make a new friend!”

Bon-Bon: You didn’t.

Ribbon: They’re waiting behind the carriage!

Bon-Bon: Rebecca! You brought some stranger to my house?! Get rid of him!

Ribbon: Her! It’s a her! I know you like mares so it’s a filly this time!

Bon-Bon: Get rid of them!

Ribbon: Bonnie, if you’d just-

Bon-Bon: NOW!

Ribbon: [Sigh] Very well, Bonnie. As you wish.

Bon-Bon: [Incomprehensible muttering] Don’t believe this…

Ribbon: There. I hope you’re pleased with yourself. She wasn’t exactly easy to find. Somepony, a single mare your age no less, willing to come all this way for somepony she’s never met.

Bon-Bon: That’s because it’s ludicrous! What’s wrong with you?!

Ribbon: Wrong with me? I have a ten-year old daughter and my big sister has yet to be in a serious relationship! A mare of your stature living with a-a roommate! All that I can do to dance around the subject in conversation!

Bon-Bon: Excuse me?! I work forty-plus hours a week and still spend more time with your daughter than you do!

Ribbon: Exactly! You could be the name in confections for all of Equestria! Instead you waste away in this-this three bedroom/two bath outhouse with that-that vagabond, gypsy… Drifter!

Bon-Bon: … What did you say?

Ribbon: She won’t stay here, Bonnie. It doesn’t matter how you feel about her! She won’t stay here forever! It’s not in her nature. Not in her lower-class upbringing! She’s a-

Bon-Bon: I swear to Celestia-if you call her a street urchin one more time.

Ribbon: You’re better than this! Better than her!

Bon-Bon: Get out of my house!

Ribbon: Does she even love you back-?

Bon-Bon: I SAID GET OUT!

[BLAM!] [Locking mechanism]

Bon-Bon: … [Sniff] … [Sob] … [Sniff]…

1) I have not! But it does sound interesting! I don’t suppose you could provide a link in a submission of a recording you feel they did really well, could you?

2) It’s absolutely acceptable to look at the visuals and say, “What did you do?!” Plus, some of the stuff they’re reconning is just… you’re an idiot, aren’t you? You’re changing things for the sake of changing them and are an idiot for doing so.

I hope parents don’t take their children to see it. Because apart from reviewers, I can’t imagine anypony else that would willingly go.

3) Bon-Bon: And there’s some pretty good pony authors that have wrote some pretty good books. I’m not going to lie, it’s a conscious decision and chosen for a number of reasons. Would the average human read a book wrote by a pony? Would I really be able to relate to characters and/or settings created by an author aiming at a demographic located in an entirely different world? And most importantly, as a local business owner, when I spend my bits I’d rather they go towards local authors. And you can’t get more foreign than living on another plane of existence.

I don’t know that the story was deliberately aiming at anything in particular, so much as the general idea of not sacrificing one’s own convictions to justify a lofty concept. Yes, solving world hunger is a great thing to shoot for, but they knew at the start that this stuff was making the ponies working with it sick. But it wasn’t fatal. It didn’t have any long-term effects in small doses. So even though it was clearly harmful to work with, they just decided to rotate workers. Things snowballed from there.

1) Of course you’d win. There’s more humans that play video games than ponies. In fact, there’s probably more humans than ponies period.

2) Bon-Bon: I’ve never read a book by a human author. Though that does remind me.

Bon-Bon: Actually, no. It turned out to be about elevating an ideology above the sacrifices needed to make it reality. In this case they solved world hunger, but by the end of the story they had made so many sacrifices that they rendered the entire world’s population sickly and spread an incurable disease that cut their average global life-expectancy in half. And they created an evasive species of fern that had strangled a massive portion of the world’s plant life.

3) Sorry for the late reply. Sort of been busy the last few days.

It was just a small celebration here in Ponyville. This year the big show was held in Las Pegasus. I heard it was loud and with lots of fanfare. Floats, fireworks; that sort of thing.

Lyra: Exactly! I have no idea if it’s still happening or not! I have no asks! But do I have no asks because no pony has anything to send me or are none of the messages getting through?! It’s maddening and-!

Tootsie: Excuse me! I have an announcement to make.

Lyra: Oh…?

Bon-Bon: Of course, dear. What is it?

Tootsie: From now on I will be going by the name, Liza Doolots. I will not be answering to Toosie Flute. So if you could please refer to me as Liza Doolots I would appreciate it. Thank you.

Lyra: … Wha-?

Bon-Bon: Of course, Liza! I think that sounds splendid!

Lyra: Uh… Yeah, Too-… Liza! That’s, uh, ballin’! Crackerjack. Cool…

Liza: Thank you!

Bon-Bon: … I blame you for this.

Lyra: What?! I didn’t even do anything!

Bon-Bon: Can’t wait to have this conversation with my sister.

Lyra: It’s not my fault this time!

1) Code Name: STEAM sounds interesting. Having played Sanctum 2 I can tell you that placing yourself down on the field of a strategy game can really mix things up.

I’d say the biggest problem with the network was the move away from computerized technology. It didn’t need to be a network just about games.

2) Lyra: All of Bon-Bon’s food is awesome!

Bon-Bon: Thank you, Lyra. And I suppose everypony has a few stories to tell. But I’m not a very good writer.

3) Woo! Let’s go! But after I finish answering these.

4) I don’t get the appeal of Reggie Fils-Aime. All he works in is marketing and company image. Hidetaka Suehiro works heavily on the development of games. Now you know me- I love me some content. But theatrics…? Really, the question answers itself. At least in my book.

5) I don’t fully understand what’s happening. I tried looking it up, but it doesn’t make sense. Can you help me out?

1) Wow. So I’m a little behind here, huh? What was that, a week ago?

2) I missed it. Bon-Bon got some, but she ate them at work.

3) That was with milk! You effectively created a milk-activated cereal cement! You also effectively destroyed my spoon.

4) … Uh… I mean, there is so much I don’t understand about this message that I don’t even know where to start.

5) Bon-Bon: As a businessmare I’ve long-since learned to cut my loses. The one I’ve started now is about a politician lobbying to legalize some newly discovered substance that, if produced in mass, could solve world hunger. But, considering the tagline on the back is, “The end to hunger, but at what cost?” I’m assuming things are not as they seem.

1) Depending on the grade it can be hard to tell sometimes what subject the concept is being dragged into. Kindergartner social studies is a mess. And yeah, considering my cutie mark I’ve spent most of my life watching others excel when I couldn’t. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

2) Well heck, I still hate reading books. I wanted to do it, and once I got there it really wasn’t all that. But that doesn’t mean I don’t read. I read all day! But most of what I read concerns my personal interests. Dialogs, interactions- sociology. It’s not so much the books that are important, just the action of reading and any road that leads to it.

3) Lyra: I am not Bubble Mare.

Bon-Bon: Quiet down, Sickly Sue. The adults are talking.

Lyra: I’m barely even sick anymore!

Bon-Bon: I haven’t read Harry Potter, but I understand the concept. As for the book I was reading, they tried to pull this “Oh! It was all right there from the start!” kind of thing. Only none of it was ever mentioned! It was all there in the world, I guess, but there’s no way the reader would know about it! So while the characters were like “How could we have not seen this coming?!” I’m sitting there going “How could I have possibly seen this coming?! This is all out of left field!”

Lyra: So five-out-of-five?

Bon-Bon: Morbid curiosity wasn’t enough to get me to finish reading that wreckage.

1) Bon-Bon: Aw. You’re just the sweetest thing! I’m waiting for my favorite author to release another novel, so for now I’m reading a book called The Third Eye Alumni. Its draw seems to be that the story is told through the villains’ perspective, which are a group of psychics that use their powers to predict and manipulate events. It sounds smart, but its execution is pretty stupid. I might not finish it.

2) I try to. I don’t always remember though. Back in R/B/Y I had to go all the way back through the Unknown Dungeon because of that.

3) B: If you think one of the most well-trained guards in Equ-

Ex. Ex-Guard.

B: … One of the formerly most well-trained guards in Equestria can be coerced into revealing information against his will, then you’re not qualified to operate a push mower.

4) Oh, well I’m glad you’re not upset! I just wanted to make sure you knew for the future.

1) Oh no! I don’t think you had to do that! Unless they removed the function in X and Y, any legendary you beat on accident will respawn after you defeat the Elite Four and Champion again!

I’m so sorry! I’d have told you if I knew you had a problem!

2) B: I didn’t say the talent got little attention, I said the mark did. You might not understand the meaning behind the mark. You’re looking for a picture.

B: And… I don’t know if I will or not. I shouldn’t, but I might.

3) I don’t know! I’d like to hope we’d have a library somewhere in town. But for all we know Prin… Twilight might convert part of her castle into a public library. I could see her doing that.

4) B: And you would spread unrest under covert military conditions where every minor outburst must be treated as though an insurmountable front could result from inaction.

5) Lyra: Sure! I’ll try to get a picture later of him. All the ones we have are pretty old.

Bon-Bon: Oh, I’ll live. But hey! Thanks for thinking of me! And the store is fine. Just in that gentle lull between major sale periods. Gives me more time to read.

1) And SoB stands for ’Son of Bubbie’. It’s the same thing, really.

2) If I remember right, somepony did a really cool gift art for me, and I was all “Oh my Cels! Thanks! This is great! Thank you so much” or some such chain of gratitude. And then the next time I got something I thought to myself, “Shouldn’t I thank this person too? Wouldn’t that be rude not too?”

3) Lyra: What? No! Why would you say that? I’m not a creep! I’m not a weirdo! What the [omitted] am I doing here?! I don’t belong here!

Bon-Bon: Stop yelling! I’m trying to sleep!

Lyra: S-sorry…

4) Yes, controls. I don’t care if your sluggish, unintuitive controls were intended by design. I don’t like them.

1) Uh… Okay? Not that I talk to York too much these days, but he’s never mentioned you before. Then again, most of his conversations involve movies I’ve never heard of or actors I don’t recognize by name.

2) I know what they were thinking. “Children will have a harder time breaking this and it’ll be cheaper for parents to buy.”

No PokeCenter wasn’t so bad. Mostly you just have to watch your PP levels, strike super-effectively for efficiency, and replace moves accordingly. At least until you get your first Leppa Berry. Granted, that’s quite a while, but there are a few points in the game where your Pokemon are auto-healed.

3) Bon-Bon: Oh my gosh! That’s exactly what she does!

Lyra: Sh-shut up!

4) Spike, you know I’m usually the first to come to your defense. But that was not alright.

Lyra: Oh Spike… Why couldn’t you just walk away…? Why couldn’t you just stop?

Bon-Bon: I was offended. I’m not from Cloudsdale and I was offended!

1) Aw. I was hoping you’d be here.

Opening ceremony was pretty cool. I’d never been to the games before. Also, they had Spike from Ponyville light the torch! Which must have been a last minute addition, because it wasn’t in the program.

2) Lyra: Phone filter? Magic fight competitions? Always looking for excitement, eh?

B: I’d keep it down about magic duels. Not the sort of conduct government employees are expected to be involved in. Just my two bits.

3) Bon-Bon: I would say that Lyra is very much a nerd, but not a dork. She’s too socially-oriented to be a dork. She gets excited about the silliest things, though. Like-

Lyra: That’s enough out of you.

4) Yeah… If I’m not doing well then I’m not having fun. I hate games that just kick my butt even when I know what I’m doing.

But when I played through the second time, I sort of set up a challenge. No PokeCenter and no EXP. Share. Early off it was tough because of the lack of revives/PP restoration, and later on enemies were really strong. Every single Pokemon used against me by the Elite Four/Champion were all higher leveled than mine. It was a much more interesting journey!

2) I didn’t know that, no! That’s so sad!

But, wait. You are going to the Equestria Games this week, right? I mean, with the opening ceremony tomorrow, Ponyville has to practically be a ghost town by now! Although, I don’t know if that would make investigating harder or easier.

3) Well look what the cat dragged in! How’s it going, Strawberry?

4) Lyra: Actually, most of the jobs I’m applying for are in data entry. If there’s one thing I can do, it’s type.

Bon-Bon: Sure, I sing a little. I mean, it’s the middle of the night and we’re on a train, so I’m not going to sing right now. But you get the idea.

1) Not that I tried, but it was pretty solid. And yes, gold in food sounds… very weird. I haven’t done any boxing training in a while. Not since Sweetie Belle went home. And no, nothing. I keep putting in applications but not hearing anything back.

2) Yes. Yes you would. At any available moment. You’re almost as bad as Bon-Bon.

3) Are you kidding?! The streets were turned to heat-reflecting gold and half the buildings were transformed into gem stones! And it seemed to just happen out of no where! It was horrible!

It took a mandatory curfew and three princess two hours to reverse it all! The gold streets were too hot to even walk on!

4) Lyra: I don’t jam so well. I need sheet music and practice to perform. But thank you!

Bon-Bon: Sorry. I don’t drink.

5) Well, while an absolutely terrible pavement, gold does have it’s uses.