Mingan Muon

Something like this? Or do you mean tooth decay, in which case I'm wondering why your oboe teacher is looking at your teeth.

My dad plays trombone, and always harps on the awsomeness of the trombone section. To be honest though, they are pretty cool. On reread, I phrased my (french) horn explanation in a way that can easily be interpreted as assuming that you are ignorant. Sorry for any misunderstanding. And yes, horn is typically a generic term, so I use "french horn" whenever there might be confusion. Etymology is so interesting.

Richard Strauss once said, "Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them". I'm just following his advice and not even mentioning them. In regards to the french horn vs. horn issue, I'll direct you to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_(instrument).Take a look and you'll see that "horn" refers to many instruments, from natural horns to french horns to german horns. The alto horn, which looks like the baritone horn, is also technically a horn. Basically a conical bore defines a horn. A modern double Bb/F horn is called a "french horn" informally but is technically a variant of the german horn. What are commonly called "french horns" are not french horns in reality. An English horn (cor anglais) is not a horn.

Yes, I play the horn (finally someone says horn instead of "french horn"...). I used to play the trumpet, but converted to the horn. Horn is truly the best instrument ever created. The basic design of the horn has not changed for a century or two, since the introduction of valves, while other brass instruments (trumpet, euphonium, etc.) are either new to the scene or have changed a lot in the last centuries. That attests to its perfection. A bad horn is bad to play. While it may seem obvious, it's more true for horn than other instruments. Pitch centering is hard on a dented horn and bad horns are typically chronically flat or sharp on several notes. Also, (sharp) articulation is hard to become good at on a bad horn, for reasons that I don't know the physics behind. If you had trouble on a bad horn, don't let that drive you away from the horn. I played the clarinet casually for awhile (a year, with about 1-2 hr. of practicing per week). I didn't really get into it, and stuck to brass for most of my musical enterprises. (I'm a bit crazy about music, if that isn't obvious)

I don't know what part of their life you wish you had, but for me, I would love the ease of conversation that they have. As a male, if I start a conversation with a girl, I'm typically either 1) shooed away in favor of her (nonsexual, ofc) girlfriends or 2) assumed to be romantically/sexually interested in her. Only if we share a common interest can I get a regular conversation going, for example about a hard piece in band. On the male-to-male side, I find most friendships are built around utility, and serve that purpose (let's go play frisbee). Girl-to-girl, on the other hand, seems more open and they seem to talk about life in general more often. Now, as a male, I'm logical and dislike small talk/chitchat that doesn't do anything useful, and I don't like talking about random stuff as girls typically do, but I'd still like the openness that girls have. It's kinda hard to express. As an offshoot of that topic, I would add that I envy the social openness that is given them. Girls are more likely to talk openly about sex and other relationship topics, and there are endless support groups for women this and that. Girls have vastly more freedom in clothes and hair (short hair is called "liberating" when worn by girls but when a man has long hair...hippie!) and more ability to play the weak card (I'm just a woman). Funny thing is, they tend to be hypocrites whenever they do that...anyway, I'll stop before I start a feminism debate. What I'm getting at is that I envy the openness in conversation that girls have. I haven't yet found the male analogue of that. Maybe it's just because I'm not that social in the first place. Edit: I'm generalizing too much, feel free to ignore this poorly thought out post

A hamster ball (you know, the plastic inflatable balls that you put a hamster in and watch him run around bumping into furniture) is also called a hamster bubble. Maybe Bubbles liked hamster bubbles, and so her name is Bubbles?

In the future, be sure to quote or mention me so I get a notification telling me that you are responding to me.

Forgive me if I make too many critiques. "to look on the other side" -> "to look towards" -- sounds better to me "window peers out" -- I don't think personification would be a good thing to do here. "except for some" -> "except for some ponies" or "some black mares" -- some could be referencing the pony in nopony, but it isn't clear I put three paragraphs in bold. Those paragraphs are extremely fragmented; I don't know if that is intentional, to create suspense, or just your style (if it is your style, I suggest fixing it to something more flowing). "--key word being "almost"--" -- that breaks the flow of the prose. If you want to emphasize the word, put it in italics. "The window" -- again, I don't know if that fragmented prose is intentional. Even if it is, it gets old after awhile. The three paragraphs in bold next are quite similar in sentence structure. I would vary the structure a bit. "Maybe right below the window" -> "They might be hiding below the window" "Equestrians" -> what? maybe do "ponies" or "horses". An Equestrian is someone who rides horses, not who is a horse. The ending makes no sense. I'm not even going to try to think of a way to fix the presentation of an idea that I don't understand. Basically, the main problem is the fragmented prose and bland sentence structure. There are only a few writing mistakes in the grammar department; most of the problem is how you are presenting the scene in your head.

I agree to some extent. If you take a look at fimfiction, you're going to find more bad fics than good ones, purely because there isn't a publisher to weed out bad ones. Even in the fics that are good in the writing sense, there are few that I would consider "good" overall. Many are poorly designed plot-wise. Others...I don't know, I just know a bad fic when I see it and stay away from them. However, there are fanfics that I would consider more than an usual fanfiction. Those few good fics don't piggyback on the show itself, but they take the universe established in the show and give it vibrancy and immersiveness. I'll take Growing Pains (can't link cause of gore tag, but can be found on fimfiction) for an example. The author takes Equestria as laid out in the show and expands the history in a lore-friendly way, leading up to a war between Equestria and another pony nation. It takes the universe of MLP:FiM and expands it; if a little bit more character development and explanation of setting and past history were added in, it could pass as a piece of true fiction, not fanfic. I guess what I'm trying to communicate here is that fanfic, as a whole, is quite like you said. There are alternate universe fanfic that aren't really MLP based and there are fanfic that are constrained too close to canon. But there are also fictions that surpass mere fanfic status that I would consider fictions in their own right; they took the universe of Equestria and took it beyond the cartoon medium and gave it a different, more expansive, life. Spellbound Fireflies by bats, A Bluebird's Song, and some story that I can't remember the name of are three of the best fiction I've ever read, and they are fanfiction technically.