Night Sky

Recently I've been seeing memes circulating on Tumblr that have really upset me. 

I don't see the merit of linking to any of these, or calling any pony out. 

The straw that broke the camel's back for me was a meme which stated that it would be necessary to assassinate Twilight Sparkle because she's a noble, a great deal of regret notwithstanding.

I don't think it's funny. 

I have also seen other memes which seem to take a sadistic glee in showing a FIM character who is now traumatized, because they botched an interaction with a pony of one or another LGBTQIA+/- identity.

These memes and artwork are being made by ponies who represent that they themselves identify as LGBTQIA+/-

I think those are even less funny.

It seems that nowadays we have some ponies who advocate for tolerance and democracy, who are also advocating for violence and murder.

We also have ponies who claim to have been mistreated, and claim that they are only asking for inclusion, who seem to be weaponizing their status as vulnerable ponies to make others feel bad about themselves. 

I don't presume to psychoanalyze anyone's motives, I have no interest in doing so and I shouldn't be burdened with having to do that. 

I am merely examining the apparent messaging of what is being placed in front of me, according to my own values and perspective.

I have that right as much as anyone else does.    

Both of these genres of memes are being made by profiles decorated by statements espousing progressive values. 

I find the tone of these so-called jokes to be dissonant and disturbing. 

Really, it's necessary to assassinate Twilight Sparkle, because she's a Princess? 

Really, you expect to be treated a certain way, but you feel entitled to torture people when their good faith efforts don't match your expectations?

This has been a valuable opportunity for me to check in with myself.

What have I learned from MLP FIM? 

How might that inform a different way of responding to content like this?  

I can only speak my own truth, and the best way I can do that is through my own art.

The Piece attached to this post is titled: Our Legacy

The Tetrarchy of Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, Princess Cadence and Princess Twilight Sparkle was based upon real relationships.

Yes, those relationships were severely tested, but ultimately every pony emerged the better for it. 

The Four Alicorn Princesses ruled well and defended Equestria, they did their duty.

And they accomplished this with far less violence, artifice and politicking than any regime in the entire history of our species ever has. 

Maybe it's not even about whether or not democratic forms of government are superior to any form of monarchy.

Maybe, regardless of which system of governance they espouse, our leaders here in this world leave far more to be desired than any of the Alicorn Princesses.

Because regardless of who's fault it is, our world is a wreck.

Equestria has endured its share of trials and tribulations and setbacks.

Equestria is not a wreck.

Must we wreck it, must we make it more like how we are and less like how we know we could be?

What is the legacy of the democracies of the 20th century? 

What flowers have blossomed from the seeds they planted? 

A second Peloponnesian war, this time on a truly global scale?

I will pause here and direct your attention to the number of question marks in this post. 

Sure, I've made a few statements, but I'm mainly asking questions.

We're told that we're supposed to be having a "new conversation".

But how can we have that conversation when every single question ends up being a landmine, sooner or later?

What is the legacy of the Equestrian Tetrarchy? 

Simple answer, Flurry Heart.

She is an Angel who caps a pyramid of good leadership.

The foundation that the four princesses established, the fertile ground that they nurtured, and the goodness they fostered gave rise to a pure Avatara.

And we weren't ready for her.

We aren't ready for her.

It is no accident that the show did not continue on to detail Flurry Heart's reign of at least the Crystal Empire.

Perhaps Flurry Heart went on to rule all of Equestria after Princess Twilight Sparkle retired or otherwise met her fate.

Maybe some pony else took those reins.

Thanks to Generation 5, in typical human fashion, we've imagined that it all fell apart. 

That says more about us and less about ponydom.  

I say it figures, but that's just me.

It's not about what we do and don't deserve.

I am so sick of hearing everyone talk about what every other kind of person does or does not deserve.

We were not ready for Flurry Heart, and we are still not ready for her. 

It seems to me that a great many people have seemingly forgotten about her.

I can never allow myself to do so. 

I have said elsewhere that MLP FIM parallels every great epic tale of good versus evil that we've ever dreamed of, in a manner which has never been seen before.

Flurry Heart is the living embodiment of Equestria's triumph. 

To ignore Flurry Heart is to miss the point of Equestria entirely. 

If it had not been for the Four Alicorn Princesses and Prince Shining Armor, Flurry Heart would never have appeared.

And we would never have had to behold a character who represents what we could look like, if we stopped trying to change Equestria to be more like us, and instead tried to change ourselves to be more like ponies.  

Some ponies will see it, fewer will comment on it, fewer of us still are trying to breathe new life into this section of the forum.

Keep going, don't give up. 

I like it a lot. 

Your creation has a lot of personality and it is finished with a satisfyingly obsessive love of detail. 

10 minutes ago, Snoopy Fan said:

Out of breath from the walk I just took.

Happens too frequently when I walk nowadays. I'm trying to work on that.

Holidays are tricky for me. I am almost never off for them anymore. Some of the ones I celebrate are not mainstream. I used to have a large family that put on big celebrations, now most of our elders are dead and the younger generations, we're too messed up to keep things going. So do I like the holidays? Yes. I still do, but it's complicated. I am almost always alone on them. There is still that magical sense in the air, and I hope to never have to walk on this planet without that on those dates. But they do make me feel like a ghost or a disembodied spirit. Like I'm invisible. But there's magic in that. So, as long as the holidays remain magical, I can say I am content.

58 minutes ago, Crypty Scribbles said:

I'm calculating if it's better to buy or rent a bicycle till the summer's end. Hmmm...  

Go ahead and buy it, give yourself a REASON with an all caps to commit to making the habit of riding a permanent thing. If you don't get hit by a car, it's some of the best exercise you can get.

I have Bro Hooved every post in this thread, they all deserved it. 

Happy Birthday, Ice Princess Silky <3

Sorry I'm late to the party, but I hope it was a good one. 

This was a very interesting and singular season finale.

Certainly a very adult affair, and kind of grotesque actually.

You just don't often see this kind of writing in a kid's show most of the time. 

Princess Celestia and Princess Luna kind of have this school girls' crush on their ersatz Dumbledore of a once upon a time teacher.

So go forth and find him with this newly rediscovered magical tome. 

And thus it was that the Mane 6, with additional technical expertise provided by Sunburst and Starlight Glimmer snapped right to it, no thought as to whether or not this was a good idea, or if Their Majesties really had Their priorities straight.

By this point we've spent the entire series hearing about how powerful and wise Star Swirl the Bearded was. 

And over the course of Season 7, we've come to know some of the exploits of his band of fellow hero ponies, we've seen some of their more famous WINs. 

Come to find out that they were actually a perfect storm of paranoid, insensitive opportunists, who betrayed the very pony who had had the vision and imagination to make a team out of them in the first place.

It was nice to see Twilight Sparkle so happy and enthused at the beginning of this episode, and then it sucked to see her putting her tail between her legs, because she was disdained by an idol who didn't really deserve her admiration. 

Yet again, it took every pony a little too long to listen to Starlight Glimmer, but I am glad that Twilight Sparkle took the lead on reaching out to Stygian all the same. 

And to think, Star Swirl was going to sacrifice the Elements of Harmony. 

There's something transactional about him, and I don't quite like it. 

Fortunately, in the Mane 6, we've had some evolution since his day.  

Decaf coffee, just now, still getting my caffeine placebo.

1 hour ago, GodlyWolf Gusty said:

Subnautica and mass effect Andromeda 

I have a friend who really likes Subnautica.

3 hours ago, Street Light said:

they are a regular menace around these parts >:3c but they do what they do better than anypony else~

i love it ^~^

Well said!

On 2025-06-02 at 12:24 PM, Street Light said:

i'd like to think Moon Dancer would be among them as well ^~^

Okay, how's this? Took me awhile to get back to this project, but I've retcon-ed her right in!

Aw, even the food you Kool Kiddos eat is from beyond Left Field.

3 hours ago, Sparklefan1234 said:

I think it worked out well for you last time. 

 

I remember watching this episode of The Simpsons on TV! 

3 hours ago, Sparklefan1234 said:

I think the lesson is  Whoops!  I mean, don't watch horror movies before bed. 

This was possibly my favorite moment in the entirety of The Simpsons. Okay you don't want a brownie before you go to bed so,

DO YOU WANNA SEE MY NEW CHAINSAW AND HOCKEY MASK!?!

9 minutes ago, Bairro Moetriet Vagrant said:

A thrill of short depravity and corruption, releasing my Blasphemous energy. Riot has deeply rooted in this body, Moe, you have to blast it out in a safe, secret way

Sounds like a Grand Old Time!

2011 was an interesting year for me. I had graduated from Grad school in May of 2010. 

But I wouldn't really start my professional career in earnest until October of 2012. 

So I was kind of adrift. I also had a wife and kiddo at that time. 

I did everything from work at Michael's Cra(p)ft Store to operate a Spectometer in a Geochemical laboratory, even got co author on a scientific paper, not bad for a pony with two degrees in fine art...but the instability was not good. Bills don't wait while one dally's around.

Me. If you don't share any of my interests or perspectives, I'm likely to be a total bore. I'm long winded, verbose, sometimes intentionally tautological, vague, obscure, nebulous, and downright Byzantine.

When we seek to define intelligence, we limit it. So then we have to devise other categories of intelligence, and compare and contrast them against each other.

. ..even though they all share the quality of intelligence, regardless of the differences the various types give rise to. 

The trick, I think, might lie in the fact that trying to define intelligence is not much different from trying to define consciousness. 

The definition of consciousness is. Yes. Exactly. You already know it when you see it, if you're reading this. But something about putting it into words never seems to compute entirely.

Therefore, if we cannot decisively define consciousness, we're only going to do marginally better with decisively defining intelligence. And if that is so, how can we really separate the various types of intelligence that we've come up with into a neat and tidy hierarchy? 

Being visually oriented and having a sense for the subtleties of aesthetics is not less profound than being good with math. 

Human society may prize an intelligence relating to people, math, engineering or science, but that's pretty arbitrary, even if it is efficient. What kinds of faculties and talents we possess, and the training we get to hone those abilities doesn't fundamentally change or prove anything about how the world is. They just all do something unique to help us survive and to make survival worth bothering with. 

I'd say all intelligence is preferable to ignorance. Intelligence, properly marshalled, can at least potentially help us to accomplish things that might be worth doing. 

Ignorance can only shield us from things we don't want to see. 

Find out what you're best at and develop it to the fullest. Don't bother over whether your painting stacks up against the moon landing. Someone else will see to whatever you can't. That's the magic of diversity, if we don't crush it whenever it starts to emerge.

Nope. Very hands on. Maybe to a fault. Still got all my fingers though a couple of them have taken a bruising.

27 minutes ago, Raskolnikov said:

Wait... am I even reading this right? You got in trouble for that image?! o_o

Yup, Big Mac style, they axed it right quick. 

You know, perhaps the Golden Rule is kind of the opposite of the type of conversations which keep reddit profitable.

How interesting that the Golden Rule, or as I am calling today, the Purple Rule is now not preferred by the powers that be...on ideological grounds. 

Disenheartening, but...are times really becoming that interesting? 

I posted THIS to Reddit, and it got deleted after less than five minutes. 

This is entirely perfect and I might have known.

I posted it to r/MyLittleMemes - So, yes, I posted it to a group about Memes and about MLP.

Musta been too preachy for the OH, SO IMMENSELY COOL Redditors!!!!!!!!!

Not ironic enough, not mean enough, not cynical enough for a group about memes, about a show that is subtitled Friendship Is Magic.

Got it, forgive me, my sentiments were most inappropriate. 

Kinda bummed me out though.

I think the Purple Rule is worth a meme which strays just a bit in the direction of a PSA...

Were my intentions really so detestable? 

The whole thing was kind of a now you see him, now smash his pieces into pieces, and then smash the pieces into pieces, into pieces. Of course, no one saw him coming, and that was sort of the whole point. It was a sneak attack designed to decapitate Equestria at the capital. The ponies hadn't seen him coming either.

We don't like to think that the Princesses were capable of being so incompetent, especially since Canterlot had recently suffered a sneak attack, amid other invasions and infiltrations. But apparently they were and the EUP failed, utterly. 

What does all this have to do with the Storm King himself? Well everything actually, and it shoots him in the foot. 

I enjoyed the film for what it is, I really did. But one gets the sense that the show didn't want to walk away from the film with new problems, and Hasbro wanted a film that would be watchable for people who hadn't seen a single episode. 

A one off thing. Like a concept album by a metal band. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but it can lead you into Deus Ex Machina writing, and that includes an, as it were, disposable villain who we just don't get to know so well. 

We'd never seen V'ger before Star Trek: The Motion Picture, even though it was spun off from an iconic TV show. Notice, you don't necessarily NEED to have been into Trek to follow the first film. It would have helped, but it wasn't critical. 

Some people find V'ger to be an awe inspiring, mysterious threat, sort of an antagonist till it finds redemption at the end. Other people called it Star Trek the Motionless Picture, and said that the story was frightfully dull, regardless of the special effects. 

The MLP movie followed more or less the same playbook. And, the Storm King is only one issue about the film which fans remain divided about. 

Later on, IDW just had to go and speculate a little more about the Storm King in the comics, is that canon? Depends on who you ask. 

If I had a staff like his, I absolutely would be playing with the sun and moon like that. But I would not otherwise be as childish, arrogant and seemingly oblivious as he was. 

He seemed genuinely surprised that any pony would seek to stop him, or at least honor his side of the bargains he had struck. Keeping him from being too astute helps to contain his arc entirely within the run time of one film.

This makes it easy to dispose of him at the end. But it also makes him rather unsatisfying. I thought that he got off to a pretty villainous start at the beginning, but he was actually rather hapless once the Mane 6 pulled themselves together and reengaged. 

The fandom tends to be allergic to this apparently, but perhaps he was really just playing second fiddle to the real villainess who was Tempest Shadow. Without her, he certainly would never have been so successful for even that brief moment. I don't see why talking about her as a villain remains taboo when we already had Discord, Starlight Glimmer and Trixie start oit as villains and then become allies. 

Tempest was just like Trixie and Starlight, someone who was dissatisfied with their lot and took it out on others. So while effectively played and realized, she wasn't terribly original or satisfying either, if you had been following the show. That's nitpicky and I am only half serious about it. 

But yes, the Storm King was a goof, and a bully and a thug, kind of a Supreme Microwave Burrito Snoke. And it's somehow both annoying and not terribly believable that he was the absolute best they could do for an epic MLP movie.

None of this means I don't enjoy the film, but great villains require a Bill Shakespeare, and such was not the goal or intent of a kids film based on a line of child's toys.

If you're old AF like me, this is cool, I dig it, cause I even say that anymore:

31 minutes ago, Crypty Scribbles said:

Oh, that's an interesting idea! I need to think about more ^•^

Let me know if you discover anything exciting!

37 minutes ago, Crypty Scribbles said:

Nice collage, @Night Sky. Along with poetic words it touched me, thank you. ^w^

The words are true. I had nothing but occasional weeds in my social garden. But now I care about it. I seed and cultivate love, as you said.  Mostly flowers, but I have couple trees there already UwU

Looking forward to make them bloom altogether 

P.S. Metaphorically. There's no real trees. LoL

I'm glad. 

It's good to hear that you've been able to tend your garden.

It takes time, and effort but it's a nice feeling to know that it's worth it.

We all have our trees of Harmony, don't we?

The trick I think is to get as many of them resonating with each other as possible.

It's also a nice feeling to know that the content I am making seems to be striking a chord with ponies at least part of the time.

8 minutes ago, Crypty Scribbles said:

Oh, that's so true ^•^

Is it your artwork?  Looks very sweet and cozy ^e^

Twi and Cadence are a Screenshot from the show, the Candelabra is also from the show, although I had to really tweak it a lot. The flowers and pots are assembled from various assets but again, getting them to look like this didn't happen on its own. I assembled this, so in that sense it is my artwork, but I did not create any of the assets, they're mostly pngs that other ponies have released onto the web.