--Thunder Bolt--

"Wow... You're going to groom him? He's huge! The amount of needed shampoo could drown an entire herd."

Sunyatay gulped.  She hadn't really thought of shampoo.  When she'd made the offer, she had been thinking in terms of combing his coat out, perhaps by making an oversized curry comb, or just trying to do it directly with magic.  But the colt was right: now that she was getting a better look at the giant stallion, she could see that his life of grazing from trees involved moving among them, which involved snapped-off branches, which resulted in streaks of sap in his fur, which adhered to dirt and detritus...which would require much more than combing to get out.  Well...I'll just have to do the best I can.  If he even wants me to.

Moving slowly, the giant stallion leaned down to her, his head the size of a small house, coming to meet her almost nose-to-nose.  Sunyatay looked up at him in wonder.

"H-Hello?"

His voice was big and deep, like a force of nature, but it held no tone of threat.

"Hello.  My name is Sunyatay!  What's your name?"  If his voice was a mighty waterfall, hers was a breeze through meadow flowers.

OOC: Gabriel, I hope I'm describing Atlas' voice correctly.  I'm guessing a deep voice due to the physics of longer vocal chords and bigger resonant cavities, but if I've got it wrong, please let me know and I'll edit.

I'd bet my entire honeymoon fund that the guy who runs that page enjoys something in which he falls outside of the target audience, such as Pokemon.

 

Hypocrites. Hypocrites everywhere.

I doubt that he hates bronies for enjoying a show for which they are not the target audience.  He hates them for liking a show "for little girls."  If bronies liked cartoon warrior robots (he certainly appears to, judging by the art on his site) instead of ponies, he'd let them in his treehouse.  But since bronies (the male ones in particular) like colorful magical ponies, that means they have girl cooties, and are therefore Vile Heretics who must be stamped out.

Nutshell: I think his motivation is misogyny.

"My hairstyle was done by the architect of the Sydney Opera House."

*Clicks link, looks through page a little*

Huh.  Somebody's insecure about his masculinity.  Well, OK then.  I hope that when he hugs the killer robot toys he sleeps with tight, he finds some reassurance that his penis won't disappear before morning.

*Closes tab*

The thing about the moral is that it's out of place everywhere it's used.  Name one thing that demonstrably exists (the way Pinkie Sense does), yet must be accepted on faith.  It's used best in story-verses where things are very much like our universe, but where Santa Claus/Angels/Aliens/Faeries/etc. exist behind the scenes, like Miracle on 34th Street.  IMO it's completely out of place in MLP.

Consider: Twilight Sparkle is a magic unicorn, living in a place where winged ponies make rain by dancing on clouds, the Sun and Moon are controlled by benevolent deities she can talk to face to face and even touch.  She already knows that Pinkie Pie can do all sorts of unusual things, like popping up out of shrubberies and "going" from place to place without teleporting the way Twilight does, or traversing the distance between.  She's accepted all that without skipping a beat.  Compared to all that, the Pinkie Sense is just one more magical thing in a wholly magical world.  So, turning Twilight into a Straw Vulcan in order to revisit the ol' "There Are Things We Are Not Meant To Know--Just Believe What You're Told" trope does violence to the character and the setting, even if one happens to agree with the moral.

Still here.  I'm hoping that face up in the clouds is Dashie, since I'm guessing we're going to need someone to save our characters' human-shaped hindquarters pretty soon.  Though I'd settle for flutters coming down and giving the over-aggressive doggie a really serious talking-to about how one treats visitors and such.

Just curious, have you heard of Atomic Zombie?  It's a website with plans for lots of radical DIY bike designs and has a forum for builders.  Since seeing your Twilicycle, I'm already imagining a Rainbow Dash-themed lowracer.

"You realize our kids will have the worst of both worlds, don't you?  Shy, and brightly rainbow-colored?"

"This is the last time I'm watching Flash Gordon on acid!"

"I am Light Pinkie Pie, Princess of Moderate Amusement.  Would you like me to introduce a slight crack in the 4th Wall, or should I gently fire my Soiree Cannon?"

Ninja!

"My scarf only has one end because it is actually a Calabi-Yau manifold."

Proof that the Big Bang was actually a Big Riff.

"I have a popcorn kernel stuck between my molars."

"Here, let me get it out with my tongue."

Ameeeerrricaaaaaa!  Buck Yeaaaaaah!

I am currently 13, and I will be 14 in September. I have watched all of the episodes and the movie. I have also changed some of my icons to pony related things. The main reason I ask this question is because of my age, in most mlp brony videos I have watched everyone has said that a brony is atleast 14 and up.

*Looks you over skeptically*

Hmmm....let's see...

Pony-related avatar? Check.

Has seen all the episodes? Check.

Enjoyed them? Check.

Posting on a brony forum? Check.

...

...

Welcome to the herd. Heck, I think I almost managed to fill up my Brony Bingo Card.

Death by nuclear fire has never been so adorable before!

"This is very interesting. I don't know that it's possible to phase and unphase over the invisibility and... tangibility like this." Starshine spoke, amazement was clear in his voice. "If it's okay with you, I would love to speak more about this. Well, after that giant is calmed down anyway."

"Yes, of course!" Sunyatay said, delighted that he wanted to talk to her, instead of run away screaming.  Now if they could just achieve the same result with the giant...  The mighty blue pony growled at first when the colt approached, but then he seemed to settle down to observe.  What should I do?  If he spots me before I show myself, he might think the colt is distracting him so I can do a surprise attack or something!  But if I show myself, I might startle him!  I'll probably wreck everything whatever I do...but showing myself is more honest.

Gathering the new-found strength she'd gained from making...if not an actual friend, at least an acquaintance...and lit her horn to illuminate herself.  Her translucent form seemed to shimmer almost like a Crystal Pony.  "Please don't be afraid!" she called out as loud as she could.  "I'm just different, like you!  I could groom you if you want!"

@@Shanashie,

The leftmost head focused on Katarzhyna and started to drag its own protesting body toward her. 

"Hey, uh, ma'am?" Morgan shouted over the crackle of fire and howls of very-pissed-off canine. "I think you're just making it upset! Maybe we can calm it down, or throw it a ball or something?" At the word 'ball' the leftmost head yowled loudly, slobbering across the place wreckage.

"You think it is a pet?" she called back, stopping her pounding.  "I saw it eat a corpse before it came for me!  It thinks we are meals, not masters!  If we keep upsetting it, maybe it goes somewhere less upsetting!"  There were probably something on the order of a couple hundred corpses or parts of corpses strewn across the landscape.  Assuming the creature had canid senses, it could probably find plenty of fresh meat once it decided that the live humans were more annoying than they were worth.  Or so she hoped.  "Keep dividing its attention!"  Katarzhyna ducked down behind the wreckage, peeking over its jagged edge. Cane at the ready, she watched for the moment one or both of the other heads started to win the battle for control of the body.

It's canon.

"I'm the brony your mother warned you about!"

I can only imagine what kind of Rule 34/shipping/porno fanfics must exist for Loony Tunes.  All those times that Bugs Bunny cross-dressed to seduce his adversaries and stick dynamite in their pockets or whatever?  UN-CISGENDERD SEXUAL TERRORISM!  And that's the show canon!

Parenting Forum, Day 1:

"Hey everybody!  I found this obscure Indonesian cartoon about cuttlefish that no one has made any porn from!  Finally, a show we can let our children watch!"

Parenting Forum, Day 2:

"CUTTLEFISH PORN!  EVERYWHEEEEERE!  We need to demand that the Navy exterminate all cuttlefish!  And no decent parent should ever get a cuttlebone for their birdcage!  Because...cuttlebone....AAAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEE!"

Welcome to Rule 34, uptight soccer moms.

I would be very disappointed if she got changed back somehow.  One of the things I've always hated about sitcoms is the way that, no matter what happens in the episode, everything always returns to the status quo ante.  The characters never grow or change, and they spend their lives trapped in that living room set with a laugh track.  If one of them wins the lottery or gets the dream job they've always hoped for or whatever, you already know that it's going to be reversed before the hour is over, and they'll end up right back where they started.

I think it's very cool that MLP incorporates growth and change instead of hitting the Groundhog Day reset button at the end of every episode.  The characters actually learn things, and apply their lessons to their lives.  Things that happened in the past have effects in the present and future.  They have lives instead of ephemeral events that disappear into endless repetition of the same "situation."  I think it would be much better, story-wise, if Twilight and her friends have to live with her Alicorn transformation and its effects.

Pinkie does touch the portal, just before Luna pulls her back.  Perhaps that was enough for her to enter a coherent quantum superposition state with her counterpart, so that each would have the other's knowledge...

To expand on this a bit more...

If I understand the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics (multiverse theory) correctly, multiple universes branch off from each other at every quantum mechanical event because each possibility becomes manifest, in a different universe.  So, if an electron is fired at a pair of slits, it goes through both slits, in different universes.  There is no "wave function" that "collapses" when a result (a detector sensing the electron after it's passed through one slit or the other) is detected.  Both results happen, to alternate versions of the electron in two separate universes.

In other words, the Pinkie Pie in Equestria and the one on Not Quite Earth are the same Pinkie Pie; one is just manifest in a universe where she ended up being human-shaped, and the other is manifest in a universe where she ended up being pony-shaped.  When pony-Pinkie stuck her hoof into the portal, she created a unique situation where two versions of herself could in some sense re-merge.  Since there is in reality only one Pinkie in many probabilistic manifestations, such a semi-merger of Pinkies into a single quantum state (i.e., pony-Pinkie was partially piercing the boundary between universes and thus coexisting within the same universe as her human counterpart) would arguably require that they share the same knowledge base.  Or at least, a new set of paired-universes are spawned, manifesting all of the possible states resulting from Pinkie touching the portal, and we just happened to see one where the possibility of such a mental merger ended up being actualized.

We might expect that something similar would happen with the Twilights, since human Pinkie mentions a human Twilight living "in the city" with a dog named Spike.  However, the physical distance between the Twilights could mean that they were not in the same inertial reference frame.  For example, if the original human Twilight was living at a significantly higher or lower altitude, the difference in the relative strength of Not Quite Earth's gravitational field would cause a very tiny, but detectable difference in the flow of time for each Twilight relative to the other (Einstein's "Twin Paradox").  This difference in the flow rate of time can be measured by extremely precise atomic clocks.  If you synchronize two atomic clocks, then place one at a high altitude while leaving the other at sea level, the one at sea level will measure time as flowing very slightly slower than the one at high altitude due to the effect of stronger gravity on the flow of time ("relativistic time dilation"). 

We currently don't have a theory that successfully integrates relativity with quantum mechanics, so we don't have a way to know how the physics of the Many Worlds Interpretation would interact with relativity in a situation like this.  However, I think it is arguable that pony Pinkie's contact with the portal would place them (more or less) within the same inertial reference frame because human Pinkie was close to the portal on the human side.  The other Twilight was not close to it, and even a small difference in relativistic time flow (being in different inertial reference frames) would mean that they were not coexisting "at the same time" on Not Quite Earth, from the quantum perspective.

Or you can just say "It's Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie."

OC: Sunyatay Sutra  Owner: InvisiblePinkUnicorn

 

I'll start this review off with the design. Well, an invisible OC is certainly one of the more unique OCs I've seen. However, I do have a few issues with her design. First off: the coat type. That kind of coat always looked weird to me, and I don't think it looks too good with your OC. I think just a normal coat type would look much nicer. Next up: the colors of the mane. Now, I am going to assume you picked a white color to further emphasize the "ghost-like" state of your OC, but I suggest either replacing the white with a different darker color, or just keep the whole mane the same color; preferably the pink color already present. The white clashes badly with the rest of the mane, and the coat. Also, the transparency effect you used is nice, but I have a method for doing it that I think would be much more effective. Instead of using that effect, try lowering the opacity of the whole picture in a photo editing program until you have the desired effect. This would look very nice, especially if you decide to take my advice for the color scheme.

Thank you for your review.  When I get time, I'll tinker with some of the changes you suggest.  I did try doing the translucency thing in Photoshop.  The problem I had was that I wanted, for purposes of illustration, to have part of her fully visible to reveal her color scheme, with the rest of her fading through translucence to invisibility.  Try as I might though, I couldn't figure out how to get Photoshop to let me make her translucency/transparency increase on a gradient.  Within the limits of my skillz, it's either all or nothing, so I went with the fade-to-white as the closest thing I could get to the effect I was aiming for.  Your recommendations on color scheme sound like they might make the translucent-against-a-background effect work better though, so I guess I have some more tinkering in Sunyatay's future.  

@,

@@Shanashie,

"When I give you the signal," Katarzhyna whispered, raising a hand.  "RUN!  GET TO SAFETY!" she shouted to the others at the top of her lungs.  The tube of fuselage amplified her voice like a megaphone.  Now to try and buy them some time.  She lowered her hand to signal for the throw, gripping her cane two-handed again, lunging for a thrust at its right eye.  Except, her target wasn't there when her arms reached full extension.  Instead, the head was suddenly yanked backwards until it snagged on some of the anchored seats.  To Katarzhyna's horror, the whole piece of fuselage lifted and swung, coming apart under the stresses.

"Waaa-aaa-aaaaaaaa!" she cried, flipping end over end as she was flung away, just one more piece of scattering debris.  A glimpse of the ground showed jagged rocks coming at her.  The moment before impact stretched like taffy, as if she was falling through a viscous fluid.  In the last half-second, it seemed almost as if she hovered, before everything returned to normal and she landed painfully on the rocks.  Katarzhyna scrambled to her feet, a few dings and minor cuts poking her with pain...and yet, somewhere in the back of her mind she felt that she'd had a much softer landing than the cold equations of physics entitled her to. 

There was no time to fully notice, much less think about such things.  She scrambled to her feet and retrieved the cane, staggering back out onto open ground.  A quick glance around revealed several other survivors, none of them with weapons or defensible positions.  Her inner chess player recognized a hopeless position for what it was, but something deep inside refused to resign.  Terror warred with a kind of manic excitement; the feeling you get when you break the sound barrier for the first time, or pull your aircraft into an Immelmann turn so tight you have to fight unconsciousness as G-forces drain the blood from your brain.  The people who got to fly supersonic jets tended to have certain attributes such as fast reflexes and quick thinking.  A rather exaggerated assessment of one's own skill and efficacy wasn't strictly necessary, but it helped; especially when accompanied by the pure dumb luck it took to get away with it.  So while a part of her brain was sounding the alarm that death was imminent, another part scoffed at the very idea.  Katarzhyna Nikolaeva was too young, too pretty, and just plain not ready to die.

"Throw things at it!  Divide its attention!" she shouted to the others.  A creature that apparently had three brains, three sets of eyes and ears, attached to the same body...  If her hunch was right, maybe a pack of humans scattered around the creature, making noise and throwing things, could act like chaff against a targeting radar.  Deny the beast's minds the ability to cohere, scattering its awareness and ability to act.  With luck, it might be a highly unpleasant sensation, and the beast could be motivated to go off in search of corpses or less annoying prey.  "Hey!  Hey!  Hey!" she shouted, running for the nearest sizable piece of wreckage.  "Over here!"  she shouted, then started pounding on the metal with her cane.  *WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM*  Only when the three heads turned on her, did the possibility occur to Katarzhyna that the others might just run and leave her to her fate...

OOC:

*(That was lucky, wasn’t it?).

I see what you did there.