Red Cedar

I'm an atheist. I have had (and still do have) very good, close friends who are devout Christians. In our case, we had things we could bond on other than religion. Sure, we had some in-depth discussions about it, but it wasn't the main thing that brought us together. So, as long as the same occurred with a religious brony, I don't see any problem.

Time travel has already been shown to be an incredibly bad thing, with consequences ranging from making you a paranoid wreck for a week to laying waste to everything and everyone you knew and loved. Applejack of all ponies would see sense in not trying, even if it led to disappointment.

Consarnit, why'd you have to bring up a topic like this?

I would hope common courtesy would be enough, but if not, a range of penalties from bylaw infractions for accidental pooping on personal property to criminal assault charges for deliberately dive bombing another pony would be appropriate.

Applejack and I have both been known to be... how shall I put it? Blunt.

While on the surface it would seem to be a writer's error, as it would be odd for ponies to speak of them at all when they lack them, there are still a large number of sentient creatures that either have hands or have something that reasonably resemble them, including Minotaurs (Iron Will), Centaurs (Tirek) and Dragons so I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to think that the word still exists in pony vocabulary.

If they can get away with a Game of Thrones reference, they can probably do Alien. MLP does seem to largely do references to more recent stuff, though.

Indeed, that is the other burning question over the nomination.

Agreed. And the fact that it was actually named for an acclaimed Science Fiction novel itself would have been more appropriate.

So, the big news of the week was that the fifth-season opener, The Cutie Map, was nominated for a Hugo Award. The Hugos are considered the top prize in Science Fiction. They are nominated and voted on by fans of the genre and awarded each year at the World Science Fiction Convention, as they have been since 1953. This year's WorldCon will be held in Kansas City in August. That's the good news. The bad news is how they came to be nominated. In 2013, a group calling themselves the Sad Puppies formed with the intention of getting certain works nominated for Hugo Awards. The works they wanted to see nominated, however, were ones they described as not attempting to be taken as serious literature, or to be pushing a particular social message to the reader. Over time, however, this came to be seen as just about any work that was male-driven, ideologically right-wing, and borderline misogynistic. The other slight problem with the works the Puppies suggested were that they generally weren't that well-written either, which is a bit of a concern for a largely literary award. Last year, the Sad Puppies and a splinter group, the Rabid Puppies, managed to get large numbers of candidates nominated through bloc voting. Other voting fans pushed back, however. Not a single Puppy-suggested work won (except for Guardians of the Galaxy, which many conceded would have been on the ballot and won even without the Puppies' involvement), and in those categories where Puppy candidates were the only nominees, the fans voted to give out No Award, in an unprecedented five categories. For whatever strange reason, as My Little Pony:Friendship is Magic seems to directly contradict their usual thinking, the show appeared on the suggested nominee lists of both the Sad and the Rabid Puppies this year. (The Sad Puppies only named the series, the Rabid Puppies suggested The Cutie Map specifically.) Once again, large numbers of their suggestions were bloc-nominated onto the shortlist for this year, also, which is already not sitting well with a lot of Science Fiction fans. In short, you can expect a huge amount of controversy, drama, and caps-lock typing over this issue across two fandoms. None of us should let it get under our skin - it wasn't our fault, after all - and we really shouldn't be surprised if MLP doesn't win its category, either (it is up against Doctor Who). But if any of us are faced with the inevitable accusations of rigging the vote, we can at least point to the facts.

For those wondering why Dash would still want to join the Wonderbolts after various issues with them, I had this to say in another thread:

Because she's worked her plot off for five seasons (and likely most of her adult life) towards this one goal and deserves it?

Only one left for me... Derpy!

Truth is, many farms are like this but it usually takes more than one bad year to completely wipe them out. They've also toned that down somewhat of late. In any case, even if it were to come to that, there would be quite a bit left over from the sale of the farm that Applejack could probably downsize and live comfortably.