I’m not trying to dissuade people from sending me messages. I love getting messages! I love getting messages from people I’ve never or rarely spoken with. I love getting messages from people I talk to a lot too! It’s all cool!

I’m just saying… think for a minute. This tumblr will be four years old next month. You have to realize I’ve gotten nearly this exact same message two dozen times by now. I’m not trying to call you out here, but I-I don’t know how to respond to it anymore!

I’m not saying you should know everything I’ve ever been asked. That number is in the tens of thousands. I don’t even remember all of them. But I can pretty safely assure you that if it’s a meme about me I am aware of it, and have been asked about it before. Probably more than once.

I know it can be intimidating to think of something to ask. I still send asks occasionally myself! If you’re having trouble thinking of something, look back through some of my posts and reply directly to something I’ve said. You don’t even have to agree with it! Feel free to challenge me on something!

Directly addressing your question: Half of Ponyville knows I talk to humans on the computer. For the last two years I’ve been asking ponies to guest answer for April Fools. Half of them don’t believe I’m really able to talk to humans, but that still leaves a pretty good number that do. Twilight Sparkle herself has been to a human world. I’m positive from my research that it’s not the human world, but it has humans of some kind in it.

Anyway, thanks for the ask! I’ve seen you around tumblr more than a few times!

1) Can’t you… fly?

2) I suppose that’s a difficult question. Ponies are vegetarians, not vegans. We eat and use milk and eggs in our cooking. But the milk is given voluntarily (though some would argue against that) and the eggs are unfertilized. “Nothing living harmed, and nothing harmed living” or at least nothing consumed has ever been alive by any stretch of the definition.

In Vitro meat can’t boast the same. It’s not real meat, but it still involves the use of slaughterhouses to collect the blood used in its production. You might consider it to be more humane (which is itself a silly word), but it’s not solving the problem. Just reducing it.

3) Bon-Bon: Of course I don’t. But it’d be nice.

4) Bon-Bon: Hmph!

5) I suppose it was wrong of me to think, even subconsciously, that I was more attractive than Bon-Bon. I guess that’s not a healthy way of categorizing things.

1) Well, I feel like going to the beach. Does that count?

2) That would be a strange name for a pony. Would take some bold and very vindictive parents to name a foal [omitted].

Of course I know now what you were really asking about, but you have to admit this is a pretty funny question!

3) It really is a shame that most of my interactions with Marty were only recorded on his or Gilda’s tumblr. Would have given me something to point to when I get questions like this.

The answer though, is nothing extraordinary. A single individual is not an adequate representation of a global culture.

4) I don’t think that’s true, but he’s got a good heart. He came to Thanksgiving dinner last year. If you’re reading this Bbz, you’re invited again if you want to come.

5) I don’t know enough about Indigo Prophecy to comment, but I think Heavy Rain needed to happen so that developers could see, plain as day, that they never need to try doing anything like that ever again.

Okay, same deal as last year. These were the asks, there’s only two, but they’re pretty good. Sorry I don’t have more than this for the occasion.

If we came first, there must have been some kind of mass extinction. But wouldn’t humans have found a trace of us by now? And what about the sun and moon? On the other hoof, if humans came first where’s the evidence they should have left behind? Even if all the buildings are gone, where’s the subways- the landfills. Shouldn’t the atmosphere be littered with satellites?

I know it sounds like I’m arguing both for and against my own point here, but I’m just… I have this feeling something terrible is going to happen to one of us…

2) B pretty much covered that before. In fact, you were the one that asked about it! I was breaking into somepony’s house and he busted me.

That doesn’t exactly explain how we became friends, though. I guess I could try to cover that…

B: Try as in, dance around the subject? I thought the whole point of this was for you to tell it straight.

Alright, fine [omitted]. B caught me more than once. I [omitted] hated his smug [omitted]. Twice in a week? That kinda doesn’t work for me. So I begged and pleaded like I usually would in that case. Only… he took me up on the offer… And then again. Then things got weird…

B: Continuously catching and releasing a criminal based on a bribe isn’t exactly legal. So I changed the deal.

That was when I started to learn about how I could use amplification and manipulation for self-defense. B taught me. We sort of bonded over that experience. Eventually we stopped. We were never in any sort of real relationship, though.

It wound up saving my life. And, less than two years ago, I used it to save Krastos’ life.

Okay, so let me get this straight. You humans made a movie about a pony that goes to a human world. Only it wasn’t a human world, it was some anorexic dimension where everypony (or one or whatever) had disproportionately large heads, the arm thickness of a macaroni noodle, and boots surgically attached to their legs.

So it wasn’t a movie about a pony going into a world of humans, it was a movie about a pony going into a world of adolescent dolls that might as well have lived in a school. And this is all marketed toward young children for some reason.

I can think of no more fitting a response than this link.

P.S.: Minotaurs have hands. We know what hands are.

1) Humans live in an unfortunate, self-fulfilling situation in which your decisions in life are limited far more by finances than our own. And because they once were, they continue to be.

You’ve raised more livestock then the regions in which they exist can even sustain. When you kill and distribute them as meat, cheaply because of the sheer abundance, it fuels the industry to raise even more. Your global economy has created an inescapable cycle, one with a steep loss of energy in its transfer from produce to product.

I’ll never condone eating meat, but giving your life for an animal that’s fate was sealed before you ever even read this message isn’t going to change anything.

2) No. We’re not doing this again.

3) Thanks! Feeling better already!

Unfortunately Bon-Bon, Tootsie, and Sweetie are all sick.

4) Sure, but this isn’t about who you’d side with. Would you consider the other side “evil?” If a pony pushes another pony out of the way and calls them a name, are they “evil?” What if it’s a racial slur? If a pony robs from the rich just to try and survive, are they “evil?” Between two cultures with little in common, is “rich” anything more than an opinion? Where does “evil” begin? Is it in an action or is it a state of mind?

If you’re forced to kill me, are you evil? What if you secretly wanted to do it? Does that change anything? You had to do it anyway. Maybe you just told yourself you wanted to do it in order to defend your ideals of free will.

5) You know, that stuff you boil things in.

6) Historically true, but you don’t suppose that paranoia might have had something to do with the… you know… over a million Chinese civilians the Japanese forces slaughtered as they were being dictated what to do by their god emperor?

If not warranted or justified, you don’t suppose that maybe, for a second, the overreaction might have been… understandable?

See? Even your attempt to present unbiased history is biased.

1) Hmm… That… That isn’t conclusive, but you’ve produced a reasonable doubt.

2) Again, I have no need nor money to spend on luxury. Sorry.

3) I either had or saw other pony tumblrs get messages early off that were all “You eat cake. That has eggs in it. You’re eating meat.” So I feel the need to clarify the difference between the two.

4) Because if I was tall and thin you’d call me Luigi.

5) And you are. But I know there’s more to it than that. Why else would a society so afraid of change be constantly changing?

6) OH GOLLY-GOSH!

7) I think you’re absolutely right; it’ll show that you don’t know anything about them. Usually a safer bet to get them something they’ll use vs. taking a stab at something more personal and possibly missing entirely, though. If you know anypony you can talk to about the one you’re supposed to buy something for, you might try that.

1) Remember that button you pressed to get to the page that lets you ask me questions? Go back and read what that button says. Evidently you skipped over it.

2) And what would there be to celebrate if your human America never existed? Would there even be a human “internet” to have this conversation on? America, as a “superpower” has pushed and forced advancement in the rest of your world since its inception. Even things they had no direct tie to only came about because of their rapid progression and global saturation of technology.

I’m not saying it should be a different day or that you shouldn’t celebrate. I’m just saying it would be better to celebrate what your country has done with its freedom, not the simple position of it. From what I understand, a human can get on a tugboat and drift along in international waters and have freedom, but there’s not much you can do with it out there (at least, not without being hunted down).

3) I don’t think so. Probably an alternate dimension-type thing. Generally wards like that have been shutdown due to things like neglect and under-trained staff. The mentally ill usually live in dedicated wings of hospitals, if not with family.

4) I’m not.

5) I’m a former thief and current caregiver to a foal.; that’s a difficult question. I think I would rather be informed of wrongdoing by a whistle-blower now. There’s more at stake these days than my own life.

6) Is this more commentary, a joke, or are you somehow serious?

7) Totally legit.

1) Nope. When Equestria was founded by the new-found peace of pegasus, earth, and unicorn ponies it was a land without society. The only species that inhabited it were globally considered either animals or monsters in that they possessed no societarian structure.

2) Tried is a good word for it, considering the only reason America won was due to Britain being forced to focus completely on the French Revolution happening right next door.

No, the mere act and date of your country winning its freedom holds no real significance. It’s what the nation has done in the centuries following that mattered.

3) It was no coincidence. I moved to Ponyville on the day before the Summer Sun Celebration, because of the Summer Sun Celebration. That marked the end of my temporary position as an ambient musician in Canterlot. Everything had already been prearranged. I had no idea Twilight was moving here too, and neither did she, until after the Nightmare Moon incident.

4) That name sounds suspicious.

5) If this is a reference, I’m not following.

6) You’re a hateful creature for sending something like this.

7) Never heard of the genre. I’ve seen metafictional elements used time after time in other works, but never one dedicated to it.

Unless you count Mystery Science Theater 3000.

1) I… I look, alright. I look really hard. Some kind of… Explanation, a form of balance, a rational reason. But I can’t find it, or I haven’t yet. Humans have come so far without magic, without individualized flight, but all I can come up with is unpredictable luck. Nothing more. Your advancement isn’t based upon a group’s collective persistence over centuries so much as just one or two people working out of desperation and getting lucky. And if those people failed, it just sits until the next person possibly gets lucky. That’s… That’s not even a community. That’s just a bunch of ponies walking in different directions until one of them either finds something or gives up.

If there’s an explanation- if there is some kind of reason… It’s the hand. It can’t be anything else. It just has to be. The question is, why?

2) You’re welcome to come over, but I think I’m having dinner with Boscov again. I’m not sure. He said something about getting me some fresh kiwi, but I’m not sure when.

3) You’ve misunderstood a lot of things. We don’t have just one religion. We have just as little understanding of how we were created as humans do and there’s countless conflicting theories. We just don’t take it as a reason to fight.

Princesses Celestia and Luna are gods, but they didn’t create us. When some of us say gods, we aren’t talking about deities. It’s based upon an old measure of an entities strength; specifically their potential to threaten a society. The sisters are gods because they possess that much magical ability. Discord is a god because he can alter reality on a whim. Princess Cadance is just a measure below a god because, while she can manipulate the thoughts of others, she can only do so in one specific way.

But the oldest records of history talk about a time long before Equestria or any kingdoms where ponies fought for survival in an untamed land, just like any other beast. Any predator large enough saw us as pray. But over time, culminating in Equestria’s formation, we learned that if we prepare we don’t always have to fight. Amongst each other, we never have to. There will always be conflict, but that’s why we organize, plan, make efficient use of the soil and weather. And if humans weren’t so busy making bombs powerful enough to wipe out a city, maybe they could formulate a means to control weather too.

1) Sure you did.

2) Give a try? Neither. Those are not savory things.

3) Sure you did.

4) You got us. We just build castles out of chairs, sheets, comforters and pillows.

Also, you said biologically compatible, but…

5) I don’t know everything about humans, but I know enough.

If you look at an Equestrian History book, it’s got all kinds of stuff. Taming the land, farming techniques across the decades, the progression of magic, progression of weather control, foreign trade, development of our nation’s security, and yes, sometimes the defense of our nation.

You sit down with any given human history book, of any given nation, and it’s just war after war after war. As a species- no. As a society humans aren’t content unless they’re killing and stealing from each other. And there’s nothing efficient about that.

They will never have peace, because deep down they don’t want it. Humans don’t belong in Equestria, and if you think their way of life is anyway to live, then you don’t belong here either.

You started this conversation under the notion that you were different than the changlings that attacked us, and you just keep saying it. But you’ve given me no reason to believe you were ever sincere about that.

1) I’ve never been formally trained in close quarters combat, so there isn’t much to remember.

2) Roguelikes have never appealed to me. The closest thing I’ve ever played to a roguelike are dungeon crawlers like Azure Dreams, Dark Cloud, or that endless dungeon in Lufia 2.

Oh, and Chocobo Dungeon 2. That was a pretty fun game to play with a friend!

Come to think of it, does Diablo 2 count as a dungeon crawler?

3) Is it the cinnamon swirls in every bite? ‘Cause if it isn’t we’d be up a creek.

4) For the last time, I’m not obsessed with humans! Okay, I talk to them and sort of study them and maybe I think it’d be cool to have retractable fingers or a robotic glove I could remove at will, but not because I’m obsessed!

5) If we’re talking about a theoretical situation, because they’re weaker. If you’re stronger, then you can theoretically hurt those weaker.

If you’re being literal, you’ll have to cite a recent example.

6) Mint! Hey! It’s been a while! How are you? How’s the baby? It’s late but come on in!

7) If you’re weightless, then wouldn’t I inadvertently contort your body, possibly fatally, the moment I move a muscle? You’d just disperse in the wind.