Big question with a big answer after the break. Lots of information, though!
1) Oh look, another joker that assumes I am a reflection of their contrived, poorly thought-out headcanon. No no; I’m not upset. Just disappointed.
2) B: Without an appropriate punishment, there’s nothing to dissuade said party from reverting to their old ways. Not that any punishment is perfect, but outside of one-on-one trust-building situations, consequences are more effective than a lack-there-of.
3) Well… When you put it that way…
… It was his fault, though. He promised me. He said he was never going to get involved in the drug trade; said no pony was going to get hurt. He promised me and he lied.
I found this old mixtape my second coltfriend gave me. It was sort of done ironically, even back then. He did a bunch of them, but I don’t know where the other ones are. This one was Megaman themed. Some of them I listened to so much the tape started to wear out.
Anyway, I’ve been sitting here listening to it… and… I don’t guess I have anything else to say right now.
Edit: As soon as I posted this, a sad song started playing…
I… I do miss him sometimes, even with how things ended up between us…
1) Bon-Bon: Well, sure! Who doesn’t? Assume too much and you’ll embarrass yourself. Assume too little and you’ll embarrass yourself. We can’t be perfect!
Lyra: Of course, embarrassing yourself and feeling embarrassed are two different things. Things aren’t usually as bad as you think they are.
Bon-Bon: Like many ponies in Equestria, I took a nickname after I got my cutie mark. My birth name is Bonnie Bohun, of Canterlot’s Bohun family. Not the rich side, mine you, but we were well enough off growing up.
2) Have I been asked this before? Sounds familiar… Is this code for something, like that “stairs in your house” thing?
3) B: Of course you want compensation. Heavens forbid you do anything for the greater good without expecting something in return. But you’ll get your payment. I doubt it’ll be as much as you’d like, but Canterlot can only afford to hand out so much under freelancing circumstances.
I’m proud of you though, Strawberry. I know this couldn’t have been an easy decision to make. Thank you for doing this!
4) Depends on how you interpret “personally.” I spoke with dozens; held casual conversations. Had less savory involvements with others. Some of them were every bit the vile, merciless, scourges of society you’d expect. Others could appear normal enough. Sometimes you’d get the feeling that if things had been only a little different they could have been upstanding, charitable citizens. Maybe they even regretted it.
But then you’d see that expression on their face, and all at once death would be too good for them.
1) Historically? Hair. Easy to replace, abundant, and cost efficient! Mine are metal, though. Not too expensive and very durable, but Luna help you if it breaks and flings the wrong way. Cut my foreleg once. No scar or anything, but a lot of blood and it hurt like crazy! Whole thing scared the crap out of me!
Megaman Legends is my favorite series. I loved it. Loved it. I gave up on there ever being a sequel, though.
I didn’t care for Battle Network, but I don’t know anything about Star Force. I played Network Transmission. It wasn’t bad; it was just… More like okay in spite of it’s mechanics instead of because of them.
2) The gang lifestyle arose from the emergence of a now extinguished drug trade. Upper class has always existed in Canterlot, as far as I know. In fact, some families were ruined from the break-ins.
But there’s an upper Canterlot and a lower Canterlot. Lower Canterlot isn’t visible from the skyline. That’s where ponies with less bits lived and that’s where gangs festered until the source was tracked and eliminated.
3) I don’t mean for a public library. I mean colleges! Scholars! Historians! Why are you being so difficult about this?
4) Hello! Fantastically well I am; certainly not fine by far, but you could say I’m close to spectacular.
You seem to have caught Fluttershy since last we spoke. Is it contagious?
5) You gotta remember that unicorn magic beyond the basics is, for the most part, pretty rare anyway. Most of what I know came as secondary education.
Amplification won’t make any noticeable changes to a body’s natural healing process. At least, nothing that’s yet been accomplished has. It’s just not focused enough. There are healing magics, though.
1) Lyra: That’s fantastic! I’ve always been interested in floorplans and layouts but I’m not very good at designing them.
Bon-Bon: I think he was talking to me.
2) Too many to count. Some I knew; some I didn’t.
The assailants were thugs, criminals. Insensitive and hateful. Not incapable of being civilized, but they found instant gratification and had no desire to change. As the gang tides rose and fell many would wind up died at the hooves of one another.
Not a very bright point in Canterlot’s history, but it’s changed since then.
3) Strawberry, if you copied all the [omitted] books for yourself, then why can’t you just copy all the copies?
4) I do not. Pianos are large, heavy, and expensive.
5) Both. Manipulation subtly alters string density and amplification shifts the sound traveling in the air before it reaches your ear (or a recording device). What you don’t want to do is rapidly shift the lyre’s pitch by it’s tuning pin or by applying improper pressure. That’s damaging to the strings.
1) Not a complicated answer. We don’t use our planet’s limited minerals like they’re renewable.
2) I don’t think you’re understanding how weapon bans work. The criminal has no weapons either, because there aren’t any. There are none to buy, there is no means to manufacture them, there aren’t any to steal.
When incapacitating somepony takes a great deal of effort, the desire to go ahead and do it is substantially reduced. And if you can’t be sure you can get away with it by stacking the cards in your favor, the probability of the act taking place is reduced as well.
The fact that weapons are illegal isn’t even important. There aren’t any. When you try to rob somepony in Equestria, the factors of break in and exit time, population, and the reaction time of law enforcement just means you’re more likely to get beat up yourself. Why do you think I got arrested so many times for? I don’t know how things are for you humans, but [omitted]’s not easy to pull off here.
3) You wouldn’t be the first pony to come to that conclusion. Is there anything wrong with that way of thinking, though? Batmare, were she real, is basically some rich filly living out a revenge fantasy over and over again to fill the void left by the death of her parents. Do the psychological implications of that matter if she’s stopping villains from taking the lives of others?
4) [Audible Sigh] Please clarify the nature of your aggression.
5) Animals are animals. They were around since before we were. Leave them alone and they’ll balance themselves. The reason that never works in your world is because you can’t ever seem to leave them alone, what with the pollution, deforestation, segmentation, poaching, and whatever you want to call this bright idea.
If an invasive species is introduced, massive, long term efforts are usually undertaken within days to remove them. That parasprite invasion was bad, but it would have been taken care of before it caused any long term harm, if Twilight hadn’t destroyed the town and nearly killed us all.
6) Not sure if you read what you just wrote, but it sounds to me like you got a pretty big worry for the future there. You could go ahead and start working on that.
1) After you were old enough, you either became one of the older kids that looked out for the younger ones, putting your life on the line, or you walked quickly everywhere and hid.
I didn’t walk fast enough.
It lasted until I got this scar I cover up on my stomach, and it ended the way it began. I may not have always been shackled, but I was enslaved for a long time.
2) Because she moved back home.
… I miss her.
3) Too overt. She’s way more passive aggressive than that. Plus, she doesn’t hate me. She just thinks I’m a useless drain-on-society. At least that’s what I coxed out of Bon-Bon once.
4) Hmm…
5) Ow. I used to know a stallion that loved that game, but I never played it.
6) I dunno. I guess I’m supposed to be a pillar of virtue or something, in which circumstances are ignored and all things must be equal.
I’m lazy, I’m nosy, I don’t have a proper education, my grades were poor, I was promiscuous, and let’s be honest, I’ve contradicted myself more than once. I don’t know why anypony would look up to me.
1) I finished Krastos’ present, but now I’m not sure if I want to give it to him or not. He’s going to be really busy… He won’t get to use it. Maybe I should just try to find something to buy after all.
2) Regrettably.
3) Sounds like a minor misunderstanding. This was less of a vacation-type thing and more of an information gathering-type thing. I was specifically gathering information about orphanages.
There were several of us in each group as we traveled. Whole thing took place over only a few weeks. We were rarely in a town for a day; sometimes went through a few. Barely got to see or do anything. Extremely low funded operation. We had to even bring non-perishable food with us for nearly the whole trip.
As sort of a celebration, though, we ate at a cheaper restaurant and I got these parmesan noodles with spaghetti sauce? That was good! I’ve had it a few times since then.
Immediately after that was when I was employed as an ambonic musician.
4) I guess being walked around the hallways of the castle from one room to another. I had to be shifted around a lot. Pretty fantastic place, if you’ve never been though.
5) Well, I got through the introduction. That is a lot to look through, even without the text rips. I wasn’t aware that Ion Storm had a bad reputation at the time. I never played the game on computer, only PS2, so I got a hold of it quite a while after it first launched.
6) That’s what we called them back in the streets, and they didn’t seem to care. They referred to themselves the same way. But once I moved to Ponyville everypony was all “You can’t say that! That’s offensive!” So… I dunno. Regional, I guess.
Well, there’s a long answer and a short answer. The short answer is because, that’s what Griffons called us. As for the long answer, well…
Worlds with multiple sentient species don’t just become intellectually advanced all at once. I don’t know that your world keeps track of this sort of thing, because you’re the only ones, but the process in our world is called ascension. It’s not the most popular subject among ponykind because we weren’t the first to ascend. We weren’t even the second.
To be considered an ascended species requires several things. You have to be capable of organized thought exchange, both verbally and in writing, amongst yourselves and other ascended species. You have to be capable of sustaining yourself in an isolated environment indefinitely (a nomadic lifestyle must be a choice, not a requirement). You have to be capable of creating shelter from raw materials and defend yourself from harsh environmental conditions. And I’m sure I’m missing some, but the most difficult is that you must be able to prove that you, or a community of your peers, can protect themselves against a staged attack by a malicious entity.
It’s debated pretty fiercely between dragons and griffons which ascended first, but we definitely came after both. There will always be those that argue, but there’s pretty definitive evidence. As we were hunted by them, griffons also studied us. When pegasus and unicorns first appeared, they observed pegasus manipulating rainfall to yield more substantial wild growth, and reported mild, though varied magical ability in us long before our recorded history began.
Griffons named us unicorns, which in their language at the time (they’ve gone through a few) meant one-horned, and pegasus were called pterippus- which I’m fortunate enough to be able to manually type out, because I can’t even pronounce that. After our ascension began we kept our name, but the pegasus didn’t.
The story goes that a “hero” by the name of Pegasus united or conquered, depending on interpretation, every major pterippus community and changed the entire species’ name to his own. He did some other stuff but I’m not all that into specifics. To that end, pegasus were the first pony species considered to be ascended, though at that time the term had yet to be defined.
Our hornless, terrestrial cousins have an interesting story. Pony roughly means small horse. Earth ponies were so named once unicorns and pegasus started appearing, as a way of further defining them, because we’re all ponies. But when our ascension began, one group of grounded ponies relied on hard work and close ties to the earth. They became what we recognize today as earth ponies.
Meanwhile the other group, fascinated with magic and the desire to harness it, called themselves crystal ponies. They somehow found that crystals were easier to store magic in and harness magic out of than anything else in the world. They even somehow used magic infused into crystals to create the artifact known as the Crystal Heart. When earth, unicorn, and pegasus ponies had to unite in order to survive, timelines show that crystal ponies had no need for outside help. Though the other three had lost contact with them, crystal ponies were already decades ahead of their time through magically-aided technological advancement. At least, so the story goes.
While on the subject, the last species to be considered ascended were cattle. Both goats and sheep are in the process of ascension.
1) That seems to be a theme in your world. Everypony believes history is absolute, even as stories are retold biased towards whichever country is telling them.
2) Aw. Very mysterious pair, those two. At least for how much they influenced net culture.
3) Nope. Nothin’ bad. Remember that game store? I broke into it once. Not to steal anything, I liked them too much, just to keep playing a game I was obsessing over.
So I hid myself away inside and waited until they forgot about me and left for the night. Then I picked up a controller and started playing. And I played and played and played- so engrossed that I didn’t notice the entire night had passed and they came back to open the shop for the next day! When I finally realized what was happening, they were already inside setting things up! They just kinda walked around me!
Once they realized I was out of the trance they had me help them set everything up, but I didn’t get in trouble or anything for it. They just asked that I not do it again. They were a really sweet couple. I hate that they got bought out.
Anyway, I was up for about 30-somethin’ hours, give or take.
4) I don’t like that part toward the end: “Straightened out and fixed?”
5) If anypony can find a picture of that scene from the original Dragon Ball where after being asked if he likes bacon, Oolong turns to Goku and yells, “What are you- brain dead or somethin’!?” I’d appreciate if you attached it to this post with a photo reply.
1) Don’t pokemon have personalities independent of their species? How would I answer this? I mean, I like Jolteon. Doesn’t mean I identify with it.
2) Maybe. Maybe events are manipulated a little to give the appearance that we’re more unified than we are. Maybe that manipulation causes ponies to subconsciously behave better; because their internal voice expects it of them. Maybe other nations fear our unwavering loyalty to one another, and what that could do if directed toward a threat.
Maybe.
3) Cooler than not having weapons? I guess so. But they’re also dangerous.
4) Thanks, but I sort of played that game to death. I appreciate the notification, though!
5) Everypony can be a chump now and again. Nopony’s perfect.
6) I knew about Matt, that’s how I found out about the show. But I hadn’t heard anything about Mike. That’s fantastic! Do you have any voice credits for him?
1) Never heard of it. In fact, I thought it was some comic at first.
2) Idea: Think of a good idea.
3) Become omniscient, I suppose.
4) Actually, I worked as an ambianic musician on Canterlot castle grounds for a spell. Made plenty of money, but I squandered it like a tool because I didn’t know what else to do with it. By comparison, things sort of went back down hill when I moved here. Just, you know, not as far.
But things are pretty darn good right now.
5) “Commandment Number Two: There is nothing I can do about the pun law.”
6) And the whole point of stealing a carriage is to take what was being carried inside.
1) What does that have to do with who set the cameras up?
2) That’s an expensive habit there, buddy.
3) Non-ponies are fully capable of filling earth and pegasus pony positions. It’s just that too many typical unicorns can’t.
4) Sure. Sounds like a hoot.
5) Maybe not as far as a hope, but I certainly wouldn’t have to worry about Sweetie’s career taking off.
6) Used to be. And it’s because Princess Celestia wanted to find the source. If all she did was clean up the streets, whatever was causing the gang lifestyle to flourish would have moved elsewhere, where it would take longer to find again and be harder to track. Everyday the Princess had to make conscious decisions that I’d never want to make, but they had to be done.
And the source was found and eliminated. It led back to the former griffon government, hence the rocky political situation between us.
7) Don’t be silly! Ah-ha! I’m fine! I’m on top of things like a cake topper!
Either my first or second day out on the streets, once I was too old to stay in the castle during the day, I stumbled upon a group of older kids who called me over. They asked me a bunch of questions, like where my parents were and where I lived, and tried to explain a bunch of things. I barely understood any of it, but they led me to a street corner where a bunch of other foals around my age were playing. There I met my best friend.
We ran and sang and bounced rocks. When the guard patrols came around, we hid together from them like the older ponies did, even though they told us not to. We talked about what we knew and what we wanted to know. About our dreams and aspirations- the kind of things it’s easy to talk about when you’re younger. I tripped and fell at one point and she helped me up and made me feel better. We played together all day until it got dark and the older ponies said I had to go home. I was sad, but she said she’d see me again tomorrow.
I met her again the next day. She gave me a hug and we played again all day. She was the first real friend I’d ever had. I valued every moment I spent with her. I came back the next day, then again the next day, and the next day. Time seems to pass slower when you’re younger, so I don’t really know how long I knew her. But eventually the day came that she didn’t come back.
I asked and some of the other foals said that maybe she was sick. Next day, same thing. And again, and again. Eventually they wouldn’t even answer me. They’d just look away or ignore me if I asked about her. She was just gone. I never found out for sure what happened to her.
