Jump to content
Banner by ~ VKH17
Guidelines

Night Shine

User
 View Profile  See their content

  • Posts

    790

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Blog Entries posted by Night Shine

  1. Night Shine

    Hi, I'm back

    By Night Shine,

    Hi.
    Not sure who remembers me, but I posted here a lot in 2012-14 as "Night Shine." After dealing with some personal issues and losing interest in MLP for a while, I became interested in MLP again over the last year-ish, largely due to reading fanfics.
    I wanted to share some random musings I had relating various philosophy ideas to MLP, and I thought this the right place to post them. For example, I just made a post contrasting teleological ideas in MLP and Steven Universe. I initially intended to make a new account, since I am fairly embarrassed by how overly emotional and melodramatic I acted before. Since that is against the rules, though, I am using this account again.
    I do not know how much/often I will be participating in the forum community generally. Still, hi! Hopefully some people here will find my ramblings interesting.
  2. Night Shine
    MLP:FiM and Steven Universe are both examples of recent family-oriented cartoons with positive moral overtones. However, they take contradictory positions on a millennia-old debate in ethics – so according to each show, the other’s position is not simply incorrect but immoral.
    A few notes before I explain why:
    In the title I used the word “existentialism” to mean the belief that an individual should choose their own purpose, even though that definition is not as broad or commonly used as others. To figure out the ethical ideas that a show teaches, I assume that if the protagonists of a show explicitly believe in an ethical idea, their antagonists explicitly believe the opposite, and the protagonists win in the conflict between them, then the show is teaching that those ideas are correct. This assumption would not work for all shows. However, it probably works for these two because they were designed partly for easily understandable moral education.  
    Outline of this post:
    Crash Course Aristotle Horse Teleology Rock Teleology An Uncomfortable Ethical Trilemma from the Contradiction of Rocks and Horses TL;DR  
    Crash Course Aristotle 
    Before understanding the ethical conflict between MLP:FiM and Steven Universe, one must understand a few basic terms of the conflict: telos, eudaimonia, virtues, and universal essence. I will try to keep the explanation brief.
    Almost 2400 years ago, Aristotle distinguished 4 different ways to explain something: its matter, form, agent, and goal. For example, Aristotle would explain a hammer in these four ways:
    A hammer’s material cause is the matter out of which it is made: wood and metal. A hammer’s formal cause is the form of the matter which makes it a hammer instead of something else: the design of the hammer. A hammer’s efficient cause is the agent that brought it into being: the person who created it. A hammer’s final cause is the goal for which it exists: hitting nails to build structures. The Greek word for final cause is telos, which is why teleology is the study of things in terms of their purpose. The telos of a hammer may seem obvious, but what is the telos of a human? Aristotle said that the function of a human is to reason well [1]. While the precise definition of “virtue” can take paragraphs to flesh out [2], virtues are basically “good moral habits” [3] which help one attain the highest good, eudaimonia. That term is often misleadingly translated as “happiness,” but can be more accurately translated as “human flourishing” or “a complete life” [1].
    Even asking about the human telos, though, assumes that all humans have a telos. Without delving into religious questions [4], note that Aristotle based his teleology on a belief in the universal essence: the defining trait of a category, which exists fundamentally in all members of that category at once. To Aristotle and other essentialists who believe that such essences exist, we categorize things based on their essence: e.g. we call something a “human” if-and-only-if it contains the essence of humanity [5]. According to Aristotle, a living thing’s telos is part of – or identical to – its essence. 
     
    Horse Teleology 
    Some people[6] don’t believe they have a telos, but I bet they would be more easily convinced if it was stamped on their butt!
    In MLP:FiM, a pony’s cutie mark represents its telos because it represents 1) the purpose for which that pony exists, which 2) cannot be created or altered by a pony’s beliefs or choices, but instead 3) is permanent and unchangeable throughout the pony’s lifetime. Each of these is stated or implied in MLP:FiM.
    First consider “Magical Mystery Cure.” The cutie marks of the Mane 6 were swapped, and consequently each of them believed and chose to follow their false cutie mark because “It’s what my cutie mark is telling me.” When Spike asks Twilight why she does not fix her friends with a memory spell, Twilight responds that “It's not their memories, [but] their true selves that have been altered!” After Spike raises the possibility that “our friends will grow to like their new lives,” Twilight asserts that “They're not who they are meant to be anymore” because “Their destinies are now changed.”
    Twilight’s language brims over with teleology, especially considering that a telos is what something “is meant to be” objectively. Changing a pony’s cutie mark, beliefs, and choices is insufficient to change “who they are meant to be,” so the pony’s purpose must be objective and intrinsic. What “ponies are meant to be” according to Twilight comes from “their true selves” which exist independently of belief, choice, or representation in a cutie mark. 
    By using the term “destiny,” Twilight implies that a pony’s purpose – the referent of that pony’s correct cutie mark – is determined before that pony makes any choices. “Magical Mystery Cure” shows that, try as they might, a pony cannot alter their purpose by believing or acting as if they have a different purpose.  “The Cutie Map Part 2” is even more explicit. As the villain, Starlight Glimmer urges the Mane 6 to “Free yourself from your cutie mark”   and “Choose equality as your special talent.”
    I will note a major difference, however, between the teleologies of Aristotle and MLP:FiM. To Aristotle, every human necessarily has the same function, but to MLP:FiM, every pony necessarily has a different function [7]. Before Starlight shut her up, Twilight said that “Everypony has unique talents and gifts, and when we share them with each other, that's how rea—.” She presumable meant to say something like  “how real friendship forms.” Compare Aristotle's idea that friendship is the mutual pursuit of the highest good by virtuous people [8]. Also note that in “Call of the Cutie,” Cheerilee defines cutie marks as “that certain something that makes them different from every other pony.” Since this matches the definition of a universal essence, a pony's telos is its essential identity.
    Each pony may have their own telos, but they are still directed by objectively-defined virtues towards a highest good analogous to humans’ eudaimonia. I am unsure whether to call it Friendship, Magic, or Harmony, but that is a distinction without a difference given that the three are identical. The title states part of this equivalence as bluntly as possible: Friendship is Magic. And in “Friendship is Magic Part 2,” Applejack asserts that the Mane 6 “really do represent the elements of friendship,” which Princess Celestia confirms. If the Elements of Harmony are elements of Friendship, then Friendship is Harmony, which should be uncontroversial given that those terms are nearly synonymous in their normal use. I will call this highest good of ponydom “Harmony,” for convenience.
    In the same way that Aristotle says all humans strive for the good of eudaimonia, all ponies strive for this good of Harmony, because the Elements of Harmony relate to Harmony itself in the same way that Aristotle’s virtues relate to eudaimonia. The five main Elements are defined as virtuous traits. At the end of “Friendship is Magic Part 2,” Twilight says that each of the others in the Mane 6 “represents the spirit of” that trait, i.e. the virtue defined by that trait. But the last Element is different: “the spark that resides in the heart of us all” creates the Element of Magic. That “spark” is the essence of ponydom. Because the Element of Magic requires all of the virtues, and emerges from the essence of ponydom, it is the highest good of ponydom.
     
    Rock Teleology 
    At first glance, it may appear that the gems of Steven Universe are teleological in the same way. Rose Quartz points out in “Greg the Babysitter” that “When a Gem is made, it's for a reason. They burst out of the ground already knowing what they're supposed to be, and then... that's what they are. Forever.” This brief description covers the criteria for a telos as previously described: it exists throughout the gem’s lifetime regardless of that gem’s beliefs or choices, never changes, and is that gem’s essential identity.
    However, the apparent telos of a Gem is not the morally correct purpose for them to pursue. The protagonist Crystal Gems, under Rose Quartz’s ideology, assert that the correct purpose for a gem to pursue is their chosen purpose. Consider how Bismuth describes Rose’s ideology in “Bismuth”: “[Rose] was different because she decided to be … Gems never hear they can be anything other than what they are, but Rose opened our eyes.” The idea that identity can and/or should be altered by choice is incompatible with teleology. Bismuth later cites “[Rose’s] talk about how Gems could take control of their own identities” and “how we'd been convinced to ignore our own potential,” which confirms that identity can be changed by choosing a different one.
    Choosing one’s identity/purpose is upheld by the protagonists in Steven Universe, so it is presented as good. Conversely, adhering to one’s given/intended/innate identity/purpose is upheld by the antagonists, so it is presented as bad.
     
    An Uncomfortable Ethical Trilemma from the Contradiction of Rocks and Horses 
    The fundamental contradiction between MLP:FiM and Steven Universe is that the former claims that one should pursue only their inherent purpose regardless of belief or choice, whereas the latter vehemently disagrees by claiming that one should pursue only their chosen purpose regardless of their inherent purpose. When the two conflict, MLP:FiM says to pursue inherent purpose, whereas Steven Universe says to pursue chosen purpose – a direct contradiction.
    From this contradiction, we are forced into one of the following strange conclusions (under the assumption that we can know that actions are right or wrong): When innate purpose conflicts with chosen purpose…
    …one should pursue innate purpose, so Steven Universe teaches immorality by implying the opposite. The Crystal Gems of Steven Universe should have followed their design and intended purpose. …one should pursue chosen purpose, so MLP:FiM teaches immorality by implying the opposite.  …the right choice depends on the context, so claims about moral purpose can only be judged as true relative to their context. As a side note, I would have included that the Mane 6 should have followed “what their cutie mark was telling” them in “Magical Mystery Cure” – and were wrong to overthrow Starlight Glimmer in “The Cutie Map” – as part of option 2, but in both cases the ponies who had chosen to pursue a purpose different from their telos conveniently changed their minds and chose their telos. This potentially shows another difference between Harmony and eudaimonia: the former, being Magic, is a goal but also a force that can interact with the world to bring itself about. It's also a tree. That raises its own weird metaphysical questions, but I will shelve those for now.
    Anyway, to my knowledge, the three options of the trilemma are mutually exclusive (if one is true, then the others are false) and mutually exhaustive (necessarily at least one is true, such that no alternatives exist). Which of the three do you believe? Alternatively, is something wrong with my reasoning? (Probably.)
     
    TL;DR 
    MLP:FiM calls it good to do what one was created for and to follow one's intrinsic purpose (what Aristotle called a telos). Steven Universe calls that bad and instead says to create one's own purpose. Either one of the shows is morally wrong, or purpose is only right or wrong relative to context.
     
    Footnotes
    Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics Book I, ch. 7 §8-16. See Alasdair MacIntyre’s three-stage definition of virtue in After Virtue, ch. 15, p. 219-20. To be fair, though, MacIntyre's writing style is about as concise as C.S. Lewis's is subtle: not. James K. Smith, You Are What You Love, ch. 1, p. 16. Note however that the 13th-century Christian philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas fleshed out Aristotle’s philosophy and merged it with Christian theology. The philosophy he created is called Thomism, which is still “the official philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church.” Aristotle and Plato disagreed over whether the essence of a thing could exist even if the thing did not exist. Plato said it could because the essence exists more fundamentally than examples of it; he called the essences Forms. Aristotle disagreed, saying that essences only exist in the things which instantiate those essences. Myself included, for the record. I think MLP:FiM shows what the world might be like if final causes existed. A human's telos comes from its essence (i.e. "quiddity"), its "whatness" which makes it what it is: a human. In contrast, a pony's telos comes from its "haecceity," its "thisness" which makes it this pony instead of any other pony. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics Book VIII, ch. 3 §6. Edits:
    2018-03-25: Fixed broken links to "four causes." 2018-08-01: Added footnote 7.
  3. Night Shine
    This blog post contains spoilers for "School Daze" (Season 8, Episode 1-2).
    I am not sure if the intended lesson from "School Daze" is "ethno-nationalism is bad; do away with national barriers and unite!" on the one hoof, or "a monarchy has the right to bypass any bureaucracies it pleases" on the other. Then again, they are not mutually exclusive. I originally intended to post this as a status update (hence the initial zinger-y phrasing), then realized that it is probably a major spoiler. So I thought, "Why not do a full blog post?"
    As in my teleology post, I assume that if the protagonists of a show explicitly believe in an ethical idea, their antagonists explicitly believe the opposite, and the protagonists win in the conflict between them, then the show is teaching that those ideas are correct. I begin by discussing Chancellor Neighsay's ideology, and then Twilight's, concluding with implications. Disclaimer: I am not intending to cast any value judgments in this post about the episode, its themes, or their implications.
    School Daze used the character of Chancellor Neighsay to represent a whole bundle of -isms: traditionalism, nationalism, racism, and bureaucratism (if that is a word). Regarding traditionalism, he considers it crucial that ponies are "prepared to defend our way of life" [pt. 1], and traditionalism attempts to preserve a cultural group's way of life. For nationalism, he shows outrage at Twilight because he thought she was "opening this school to protect Equestria!" [pt. 2] from other nations -- and other races. MLP:FiM has used species as an analogy for a racial or ethnic group to teach lessons about race and ethnicity in the past, e.g. in Over a Barrel and Bridle Gossip. Note that the first thing Neighsay says in his outrage is call the incident an "act of aggression against ponies" [pt. 2], showing that he sees "ponies" and "Equestria" as interchangeable. He also wanted Twilight "[t]o protect ponies from... dangerous creatures who don't have our best interests at heart!" [pt. 2]. His view of the other species as "dangerous creatures" is speciesest (read: racist) and recognized as such by the adult characters representing the other nations/species (let's call them "diplomats") when they become angry at him. When Neighsay yells at the diplomats to "return to your kind" in pt. 1, Ember is immediately offended by the term your kind because she recognizes that it was intended as a speciesist slur. Regarding bureaucratism, he leads an institutional review board that makes the rules which Twilight has to follow and is introduced while at the head of what looks at first like a trial. He also is insistent about following "the rules," which causes the main conflict of the episode.
    Why call him an ethno-nationalist specifically, though? Wikipedia identifies the "central theme of ethnic nationalists" as the belief that "nations are defined by a shared heritage, which usually includes a common language, a common faith, and a common ethnic ancestry." Since MLP:FiM is already a world where nations are defined by species, it is difficult to distinguish a nationalist in MLP from an ethno-nationalist. But when Twilight says, "Friendship isn't just for ponies!," Neighsay replies, "It should be." Neighsay's logic begins with species identity, which then proceeds to nationalism and traditionalism. His value of traditionalism causes his bureaucratism, since he is averse to "changing the rules" [pt. 2]. 
    School Daze pt. 1 began with an expanding map, and with Twilight proclaiming that the Mane 6 need to spread friendship "beyond Equestria" by bringing new friends from distant lands into Equestria. This need stems from her realization that "the world is full of so many different creatures who know nothing about friendship" [pt. 1]. Twilight's line that "different creatures" from beyond Equestria "know nothing about friendship" is strange in an episode where the antagonist represents racism, since it implies that the ponies as a species have a very basic socio-moral cultural element that others lack. Still, her solution is to bring in foreigners that the bureaucrats deem dangerous, ultimately using her royal authority to circumvent the bureaucrats' opinions.
    The clearest ideological statement Twilight gives is in her hearing in pt. 1: "If we want to keep our land safe, and create a friendlier tomorrow, we need to teach the Magic of Friendship far and wide." She agrees with Neighsay in holding national safety as a goal, but wants to achieve it through international cooperation.
    At first I was very confused how to reconcile the vilification of nationalism with Twilight's use of royal authority to bypass a bureaucratic process, since valuing monarchy often implies valuing nationalism. However, I think some of that can be explained by saying that the episode supports globalism. I should define this ideological term, since it is often thrown around as an angry buzzword. By globalism here I mean support for globalization, the process of politically, economically, culturally, etc. integrating nations and cultures around the globe. Traditionalism, nationalism, and racism are each opposed to at least some form of such integration. If Neighsay as a character is taken as a Strawman Political symbolizing nationalists, the episode is making the controversial (but not uncommon) claim that nationalism stems from racism and should therefore be condemned because it stands in the way of international cooperation.
    I found it so interesting that the villain represented bureaucratism because I have seen certain conspiracy theorists lump bureaucratism and globalism together as one big enemy. However, I found an ideology that approves of globalism even though it is averse to bureaucracy: neoliberalism. While it has been thrown around as a vague and vitriolic buzzword as well, neoliberalism generally implies support for free-market capitalism and a government with only the functions needed to ensure that the market runs effectively. It favors unrestricted movement of goods and people across borders in a global capitalist system. A common complaint among free-market capitalism supporters is that government bureaucracies impose too much regulation, which was reflected in this episode. 
    My only reservations calling the episode "neoliberal" are that Twilight's bypassing bureaucratic authority with royal authority is still government action, and that there is no kind of capitalist free market prominent in this particular episode. To the extent that globalism implies centralization of power, there is a possible but weak explanation that the episode's globalism makes it support that the chief executive of a government use executive orders to overcome bureaucratic opposition. However, it is clearer that the episode's characterization of nationalism and racism in the villain, the implicit condemnation of nationalism through association with racism, and the explicit support for diversity and multiculturalism (e.g. the "overcoming differences" mentioned at the trial) as well as for the immigration of "dangerous creatures" show support for globalism. 
    I considered naming this post "Does School Daze Promote Neoliberal Globalism?," but then overcame my temptation to commit the sin of egregious clickbait.
  4. Night Shine
    Hello, everyone.
     
    Two years ago tonight, I decided to become a brony. That decision caused a massive shockwave of events in my life that brought me through the past two years, struggling against depression. For better (see these examples) or for worse (see these examples), being a brony has changed me.
     
    Bronydom guided me through my phase of teenage rebellion. It provided an escape from depression when nothing else could—even to this day, nothing else works. It helped me discover my values, and provided me with a powerful experience against which to weigh all new experiences. It was my childhood's last stand against realism, so that when my passion inevitably died, I could enter the real world as a young adult.
     
    Now is that time.
     
    I am leaving the fandom behind for purely personal reasons, and me leaving does not reflect poorly on anyone but myself. Over the past year, my MLP interest has ever so slowly faded away, so I now feel comfortable saying, "The time has come to say goodbye / I've got to leave you far behind" (from "Legends Box - Pinkie Life" by Legendary).
     
    So long, and thanks for all the fish.
     
    -Greg C, the late "Night Shine"
     
     
     
    I will no longer be active on this MLPForums account, except to read responses to my older posts.
     
    I will still be available on Skype, to any of my old friends who have my Skype address.
     
    If for some reason you still want to contact / get to know me, find the user "NFPWannabe" at PersonalityCafe.
     
     
    Thank you for the experience, everypony. Have a nice night—or day, if that is when you are reading this.
  6. Night Shine
    Hello! I just watched a video wherein I disagreed with literally everything the guy said:
     
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o36wk8QtHVw
     
    I will now present a series of arguments in the form of letters addressed to the guy who made the video, Jabmorenowned, defending the content creators that he attacked from three different philosophical viewpoints (you will probably find one of these much more agreeable than the others):
     
    1) Empiricist: Truth is objective and values are subjective
    2) Subjectivist: Everything is subjective
    3) Platonist: Truth is subjective and values are objective
     
     
    1. The Empiricist Defense
     
     
    2. The Subjectivist Defense
     
     
    3. The Platonist Defense
     
     
     
     
    ...do you think that any of these was legitimately convincing? Also, should I include a defense from the only other viewpoint (Objectivist)?
  7. Night Shine
    Hello everypony! It feels great to be doing another one of these review thingiez; brings back fond memories of Season 3. :3
     
    Just like I did with the Season 3, I'll list what I liked about EqG instead of what I didn't like so much. I think this is especially good with this movie, since it wasn't exactly the same quality as a story as MLP...>_<
    Still, just like with Double Rainboom, what the story lacked in character depth, it made up for by making the shallow parts awesome. o3o
     
    What did I like? ...I guess it'll probably be pretty predictable. ._.
     
    1) The references! xD
    Bet you all saw that coming. Still...it was pretty freaking awesome, even if it wasn't as ridiculously reference-saturated as Double Rainboom (but then again, that'd be a little silly). The one that I particularly FRIGGIN LOVED was Pinkie being a transformer. XD I literally had to pause there so I could stop laughing before i could continue. Definitely my favorite part of the movie.
     
    2) It's a movie! About MLP! o3o
    Even if I didn't appreciate it on the level that I appreciate most MLP episodes, it's still pretty freaking awesome to have a movie about MLP. Kinda wish that I could go see it in theaters (THAT would be a memory i wouldn't soon forget. 8D), but i got to see it online, which was still pretty kewl. Really, there's no way I can complain since they made into a movie; they didn't do anything totally ridiculous, and even though it wasn't MLP 'god-tier' entertainment (Disclaimer: that is my personal opinion and not the objective truth.) i still enjoyed it.
     
    3)
     
     
    No, seriously, if there was anything Equestria Girls did more than stir up controversy anything else, it opened up billions of fanfic opportunities:
    --Writers who focus on shipping and making clopfics can explore Twi's relationship with Whatshisface Flash! I think. (I have no clue how they decide to do their writing. :\)
    --People who write HiE/crossover fics not only have the world of that one high school to explore, but they now have an extremely convenient way to bridge universes: who's to say that there aren't more mirrors lying around Equestria? o.o
    --Sunset Shimmer could become the new Trixie. As a villain without a backstory, that leaves endless questions about her past-and she's a FORMER STUDENT OF CELESTIA! O____O i can't wait to see how many ways that fanfic writers can interpret that.
    --If you like to write comedy fics, then I am seriously jealous of you I bet many shenanigans could spawn from other unplanned encounters between the 'human' world and the pony world. :3
     
    And that's the tip of the iceberg of all the stories EqG could spawn.
     
     
     
    Welp, that's about all i have to say, since my general opinion of the movie is probably the same as everypony else's in that I thought it was "good, but not great". :I Though I still am glad it was made, for the above reasons. Primarily the last one. o3o
     
    What do you think of my thoughts? 9_6 Am I a raving idiot? What did you think of EqG?
     
    Have a nice night! Or, day, if that's when you're readin this here blawg entreh. :3
  8. Night Shine
    Hello, everypony! :3
     
    (By the way, I'm typing as "Night Shine"; if my name is "Puzzle Master" as you're reading this, then just consider this post OOC.)
     
    This might be a bit shorter than usual (is that good, or bad? xD)--I was originally going to post it in a status, but it required too much explanation.
     
    Anywaiz.
     
    Since last November,I have been working on a fanfiction called "The Elements of Disharmony: Necessary Corruption". I wrote out an outline for the entire story then, and it's taken me quite a while to catch up on actually writing it, but I'm almost finished.
     
    Here's a vague and brief summary of every (relevant) thing that's happened in the story so far:
     
     
     
     
    And.....after I thought of this....I got stuck. I legitimately had no idea how Celestia or any other character could beat Puzzle Master, since I'd covered all of the bases I could think of. I'm pretty sure this was in January, by the way, when I thought of this. My own character legitimately outsmarted me.
     
    It took me until about an hour ago to figure out how to beat him (again, I won't say how unless you ask, because spoilers). Which is, of course, hilarious, because tonight just so happens to be the night that I'm roleplaying as him here on the forums.
     
    Lulz.
     
     
     
    That's all, folks!
  9. Night Shine
    Hello, everypony.
     
    Night Shine here, exactly one year after MLP first began to change my life. One year ago tonight....so much has changed in so little time.
     
    Before I became a brony, all that I wanted was to continue playing Minecraft and keep having good grades in school. I didn't really care about art. I didn't really care about the power of friendship, or the experiences it could bring.
     
    Then, in March of 2012, I found out about Bronies. I knew how obsessed I would become with MLP if I let myself...first I tried to become a hater, and that lasted for about five minutes before I realized I couldn't do it. So, I tried to suppress my interest for three months--I preferred my Minecraft death-machines to the genuine joy of MLP--until this night one year ago when I admitted defeat and dove in wholeheartedly.
     
    And that was the greatest decision of my life.
     
    Through this show, and through this fandom community family that has shown me so much, I have been changed. If not for the fact that I stayed up later and later watching ponies, I would have never realized just how beautiful the night sky really is. I knew that I had some talent for writing and for music before, but I would have never pursued them if not for the rampant creativity of the brony family. I would never have made any of this:
     
     
     
     
     
     
    However, none of this compares to the experiences I've had with all of my friends online, experiences that I would never have dreamed of before becoming a brony.
     
    I'll close with my proudest creation, the ending paragraphs of the fanfiction "Wisp" (It may not be totally relevant, but it's still my favorite thing I've ever made):
     
    I can see a beautiful world rising up against the abyss, full of beautiful lives woven together with the harmony of friendship. I can see the spark of life, glorious and brilliant, shining in the night from every soul united against the darkness, forming a majestic curtain of stars twinkling across the sky. A new dawn will rise, a dawn whose light shall pierce every nook and every cranny of every dream upon this wounded earth, healing it with unbreakable permanence.
     
    Now I go to my grave not with despair but with confidence, confidence that the life within myself and within all who dare to live will be passed down, from now into eternity.
  10. Night Shine
    Hey all! Before Season 3 ended, I used this blog to do analyses of MLP episodes. Welp, now I'm going to do one on Double Rainboom as if it was just another episode of MLP. Kind of.
     
    So, what was so awesome about this?
     
    Let's start with the obvious.
     
    1) First brony fan episode! *squee*
    This, truly, wins on principle. The idea, the very idea that we as a fandom could get together and make something just as awesome as our source material shows that we have reached a new pinnacle in creativity. And a cartoon TV show fandom in particular makes this an even greater feat in that we needed original music, original voice actors, original writing and story, but most importantly original animation. We should all be proud that we as a collective have reached this stage of awesomeness as a fandom.
     
    2) Twi being a science-geek again.
    As one major criticism of this episode is that it is focused more on references and humor--shallow' awesomeness--than deep character expansion and development, I am really glad this was a story element in this episode. We haven't seen Twi go all-out scientist for a while (I think the last time was in It's About Time), and it is not only very adorable but very refreshing. Through Season 3 we may have kind of forgotten about Twi's geeky science-y side, and this episode reminded us of that.
     
    3) Rainbow Dash and Twilight being blatantly adorable. (As well as Pinkie, at the end.)
    This actually impressed me about the episode, compared with episodes of the actual show. They managed to make these characters just as cute--if not cuter, which is something I always notice in episodes as a minor note.
     
    4) The crossover with Powerpuff Girls and consequently the entirety of Hub Network.
    This came completely from left field, and i'm guessing that a lot of people didn't like it as a result. Still, for me, it really made the episode. Before Rainbow crossed over into Townsville, the episode was going smoothly, but it seemed a little...off. I think the humor was just a bit too slowly executed and not the fast-paced slapstick that works so well in MLP. However, when Rainbow crossed over, it really started to pick up; something clicked. The action and humor both felt exactly like a normal (if not really good) episode of MLP. I legitimately laughed my ass off when the Powerpuff Girls started fangirling over Dashie but then again who wouldn't? I know I would /)^3^(\ Though before i had my doubts, afterwards I started to love it on the same level as a lot of the better MLP episodes.
    I think that may be due in part to the sheer randomness of the humor and action afterwards. Before the trippy scene, everything seemed a tad...predictable. Afterwards i had no idea what was going to happen.
    I've never seen it before, but...is this what the Powerpuff Girls show was actually like? It was that good? Hm. Maybe I should check it out. Are there episodes on Youtube?
     
    5) Development of Pinkie's...um...craziness.
    In an episode with a lot of humor/action and not all that much character development, I actually was really glad they added the little touch of Pinkie being able to cross-dimensional travel as a result of her special talent being amplified. That does something that story elements in MLP need to do: spawn questions in the viewer's head. Does Pinkie's being a party pony give her control over physics? That isn't all that out of the question, considering that magic is a huge part of the properties of the MLP universe. And that leads to another train of thought: If another pony has a special talent of partying, can they too break physics? Etc, etc.
     
    7) References.
    You knew this one was coming. The amount of references in this episode was, at my count, a whopping forty-seven. References to other TV shows, pop culture, past MLP episodes...you name it, they had it. I'm surprised and actually glad that they didn't use the obvious spoken references, such as increasing one's levels of coolness by a factor of about 1/5. And not just visual ones, either--if you paid attention to the music, there were a ton of sneaky or subtle references.
     
    Here's a full list of the references i caught:
     
     
     
    All in all, this combined everything good about fan animations with a lot of good things about MLP episodes. I freaking loved it. If you want to complain about the lack of deep character development, or about the crossover thing, go ahead and make your own animation excluding those elements.
     
    We should be so, so proud of this beautiful work of creativity, everypony. Our fandom.community family made this. If not for the fact that we were so close together, this project could have never existed. In theory....we all helped make this, simply by being here and telling others that it's okay to like a cartoon called My Little Pony.
    I helped make this.
    You helped make this.
    We all helped make this.
     
    Let's be proud together.
     
     
     
    ...
     
    If you read this entire review, thanks! It actually does mean a lot to know I'm not speaking at a wall. If not, here's a TL;DR:
    -It's awesome
    -It's awesome
    -It's awesome
    -It's awesome
    -It's awesome
    -It's awesome
    -The animation is fantastic
    If you got that reference, have a /).
     
    Have a nice night! Or, day, as it were
  11. Night Shine
    (Warning: this is a very personal message.)
     
    I don't really know why I'm writing this...but here goes. This is kind of a personal message; something I've never really told any of you before.
     
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G6SR0TYlWw
     
    I was listening to this beautiful song by MandoPony, and it had struck a chord with me...but I really didn't know why.
    Then just now, about a minute ago, it clicked.
     
    Before I became a brony I was going from fandom to fandom, from place to place and activity to activity, wandering all over the internet. First I was an avid fan of 'Youtube Poops' and that group, and then I discovered the Earthbound games and I really got into those. I was starting to make a couple fan projects, but then I went to find the others to share the fun with...but there were no others. After that I got into Minecraft, whose fans are far too spread out to ever form a community.
     
    I have always had a nagging thought in the back of my head while enjoying the pure happiness of the brony family. You do realize this won't last, right? Someday you're going to have to leave it behind...and none of them will remember you. They won't even care. That thought has been eating away at me from the back of my mind...and it took this song to make me confront it. I began to remember some of the incredible times I've shared with all of you, my friends, and realized how much better they have been than any other experience in my life.
     
    From the best night of my life, November 10th when I watched the Season 3 livestream and shared that experience with you all, to discovering my passions--writing stories and music, the beauty of the night and stars, to more recent experiences, this family has brought my life purpose.
     
    I'm going to call out a few people specifically (although I love all of you) who I feel like have seriously shown me that I really do matter, and really have shown me that this is my home- @KyrasSoup and I were hanging out in a livestream during Season 3, and he decided to join the forums just so we could hang out some more. It doesn't seem like he's been here since then, but it still meant a lot that he considered us close friends after only a night of knowing each other. @Sketch had commented on my status after returning to the forums when I had not been able to go online for a few nights, saying how happy he was that I was back, implying that he actually missed me. @Arkane talks to me every night over Skype, and I feel like we've kind of become best friends. I bet that if i left the fandom tomorrow and turned my back on everyone, he would probably miss me most. Both and specifically called me out as "What made them smile today"...which is ironic, because what I had posted in that thread was referring again to Dawn Rider (highlight the text in my first post in the What Made You Smile thread.), who...I really can't explain it. For some reason his awesomeness just makes me smile, and the fact that the effect's mutual had a profound effect on me.
     
    So now, looking into the future, I hope that I never discover anything to replace MLP, like Minecraft had murdered my interest in Earthbound and MLP had brought me out of the deep depression Minecraft had caused me. I hope that I can stay with you all forever, because I know that this......is my home. This is somewhere that someone--many someones, undoubtedly including people that I've forgotten to mention--might miss me if I leave, might actually care about me.
     
    Thank you to everyone, those that I mentioned and those that I didn't, for showing me that I matter to you, and helping me find my home in this world of facelessness.
     
    I love you all.
     
    Till I found you.
    Till I found my friends.
    And now I've come to hope
    This is where my journey ends......
  12. Night Shine
    HEY HEY EVERYPO-NEIGH! :3
     
    I've decided to actually make an entry to this blog about my "real" life, now that there are no new episodes to review. (By "real" I mean "non-ponynet".) I will be talking in a sense that I assume whoever is reading this actually cares.
     
    I went with my school band and choir on Thursday morning, which was a little bit sketch because I had stayed up 'till like 3:30 Wednesday night as I tend to do. However, this was rectified by the fact that I could sleep on the bus ride down there (I live in Oregon) took approximately nine hours total--five of which were on Thursday and four on Friday.
     
    ...Anyway! Not trying to rant on about too boring stuff so here are some totally exciting slides of my vacation! x3
     
    A few highlights of mah trip:
     
    1) Meeting a random brony in San Fransisco.
    One of my band friends who knows that I'm a brony (despite not yet being one himself) actually noticed this dude in a crowd wearing "a t-shirt with a pony on it". So I walks up to the guy and I says, (well actually I first double check and see that he is wearing this hilariouawesome t-shirt) and I comment that he has a nice shirt; he also is wearing a kewl chain necklace thingymajigger with Twiley on it. We then le brohoof and I go on my merry way. :\
     
    2) Introducing a friend to the fandom.
    I was sitting next to a kinda shy friend on the bus one night, and he appears to be curious about all the pony fanart I have on my phone. SO, I decide to introduce him to the magical world of ponies. First I show him a bunch of pieces of fanart, and then (since he's really into classic rock music) a
    fan songs. By this point he is legitimately really curious about why the heck so many artists are into a show for little girls and/or why the fandom is SO AWESOME AND THE MOST AMAZING THING EVAR 8D so cool, so I showed him a couple cool statistics/articles/silly comics/comments/etc. After that he said he'd have to watch an episode, just because the whole thing seemed so mind-blowing. :3 
    Welp, besides that, it wasn't sooper dooper eventful. We saw some cool shtuff like Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge and ate at In N Out Burger (to any Californians reading this, you guys are meanieheads for keeping it to yourselves! > ...not actually, but still :\), and....eeeeeyup.
     
    I also got pretty dern behind on the fanfic and piece of music I'm currently working on, which is too bad. Still, now I can get right back to 'em!
     
    So yeah! I'm glad to be back with y'all, and hopefully I'll publish that song (my first using FL Studio! struggling juuust a wee bit since it's a big change from pure sheet music xD) and the next chapter of the fic I'm working on soon. :3
  13. Night Shine
    Hello everypony!
     
    Even if I didn't get to watch Magical Mystery Cure when I wanted to (hate you too, sleep!) I still loved it more than any previous Season 3 episode. Why was I not pissed about the length, or the Twilicorn, or the ratio of songs to not songs in the ep? Here are a couple (by a couple I mean a ton) of reasons:
     
     
    1) The pacing.
    I seriously expected this episode to feel totally rushed as they tried to put too much story into 22 minutes of screen time, like Keep Calm and Flutter On suffered from somewhat. Still, I was surprised that it actually felt fine. Of course it would have been better as a two-parter, but what episode wouldn't? The songs were actually a great way of moving the story along without making the emotional reactions of characters feel forced, as even though great and well-developed gradual writing is an awesome way to induce emotions from the audience, nothing gets you feeling happy or depressed like a good song. Speaking of which...
     
     
    2) The 7 songs.
    One would expect seven songs in 22 minutes to be waaay too much. However, the makers of the show used several tricks to pull this off without making it feel too off: (I'll put this in a couple of spoilers for our "TL;DR" readers )
     
    Morning in Ponyville
     
     
     
    What my Cutie Mark is Telling Me
     
     
     
    I've Got to Find a Way
     
     
     
    A True True Friend
     
     
     
    Celestia's Ballad
     
     
     
    Behold, Princess Twilight Sparkle
     
     
     
    Life in Equestria
     
     
     
     
    Now that I've addressed everything MAJOR that I liked, here's a few minor things I found particularly awesome:
     
     
    3) Luna in a dress.
    LUNA IN A DRESS. That is all.
     
     
    4) Pinkie's mane was flat like Pinkamena's.
    Of all the greatest ways to convey an idea without having to speak it, this was the greatest possible way. We bronies know waaaaay more than we should (and I'm not going to say why) what that flat mane symbolizes, so they didn't even have to have Pinkie say anything to tell us that she's depressed and/or angry at the world.
     
     
    5) The overall feeling of this episode.
    This point's a good one to end on, even if it's really hard to explain. The overly emotional quality of this episode felt like an ending, as well as the reminiscing of Celestia about how far Twilight's come. Also, the fact that Twilight has "moved on" makes it feel like an ending.
     
    But that's not what I liked about this. There's going to be a Season 4, so this isn't an ending to IMO the greatest TV series of all time.
     
    This isn't the end.
     
    It's a new beginning.
     
     
     
     
    ...
    Thank you for taking the time to read this, and please Keep Calm and Brony On about the whole Twilicorn thing. After all, haven't the writers shown us with this amazing episode that they can be trusted with changes?
     
    Thank you, friend, and have a great night. Or day, if it were
  15. Night Shine
    Hey everypony! I just thought that I'd share what I loved about the newest ep. Sorry it took so long...I'm currently stuck in a hotel room four feet from my sleeping parents, so the last two nights, my attempt to see the newest ep and record my thoughts was a dismal failure. :\ But, tonight I hadz success! x3 That said, what i loved about Just For Sidekicks (and there's a LOT I liked about this ep:
     
    1) We learn what happened to Peewee.
    I really, REALLY love this kind of subtle exposition. In just thirty seconds, the show answers every question we could have related to what happened to Peewee after the episode where Spike joins the teen dragons, while still leaving practically everything open to interpretation for us writers. Truly a stroke of genius on the writers/storyboarders' part.
     
    2) Development of Dashie and Tank's relationship.
    Just like with Spike and Peewee, this answers a ton of questions and closes the too-open ending of how they got along. The way that they showed Tank as loving RD without a care in the world, and then RD pretending to be more his 'trainer' than a caring owner but then returning his affection when nopony's looking, is not only very in-character for both of them but totally hilarious.
     
    3) Developing Spike's relationship with Owlowiscious and the CMC.
    It's great to see Spike and Owlowiscious as friendly roommates rather than enemies. Also, the way that Owlowiscious's logical thinking method conflicted with Spike's total inability to understand him was hilarious. Now, Spike and the CMC was equally (if not more) amazing because it put two character entities that we love together and put them in situations where they're hilarious AND lovable (it friend-shipped them, if you will xP).
     
    4) FORESHADOWING!...or something similar.
    The way that the show had the Mane 6 visit the Crystal Empire and Cadance, tell us that a huge event went down, but NOT SHOW US ANY OF IT made me really curious. Which is a good thing! xD
     
    All in all, this episode showed us what we really wanted to see and executed it flawlessly. I wuvved it! /)^3^(\
  16. Night Shine
    Hiya, everypony! Night Shine here with your weekly analysis of what made the newest episode awesome.
     
    1) Spike's servant position expanded on.
    Spike is in a position as a servant to Twiley, and has no problem with it--rather he enjoys it. Why? In this episode, the answer to this simple question is expanded upon. Interpret it how you will, but I have a couple theories: First, it's his way of showing gratitude. That's really all that he knows he can do well, given that he's never had that big of a chance to explore his talents, so to pay back Applejack he tries to return the favor with what he knows he can do: labor. Second, it's in his nature. Even though he knows next to nothing about dragons, he STILL knew the "dragon code of honor" without even stopping a second to think about it. This and the fact that he says all "noble dragons" follow it makes me think it's not just an idea of his, it's innate.
     
    2) The humor.
    Oh geez, the humor in this episode is BRILLIANT. I had to pause at least three times while watching to quit laughing enough to still hear what was going on on the ep. Not only is Spike's (Derpy-reminiscent) eager desire to help combined with his epic failures great, but also the other characters do very well with what limited time they're given. It will take me a looong time to forget Pinkie's "MUSTACHE!" jokes...that had me cracking up for at least thirty seconds, twice. I made that exact same joke all the time in elementary school, so it was even funnier through my nostalgia goggles. Anyway, as far as humor goes, this episode was spot-on.
     
    3) Development of Spike's relationship with the Mane 6.
    We've seen all sorts of episodes developing relationships inter-Mane 6...in the context of the main characters, Spike has had surprisingly few interactions with the rest of the gang. Pretty much the only relationships ever developed with him so far have been with Twiley and Rarity. This episode was very fresh and new in that it developed an interaction we haven't really ever seen before: Spike and Applejack. As a result, again, the dialogue and events between them felt fresh and interesting.
     
    That'd be all thanks for reading my rant, and...yeah this is early, but just consider it making up for the laye ones
  17. Night Shine
    Hey all! This is my first blog entry evar. Not sure if there are any kind of rules that I'm supposed to follow here, but whatever.
     
    Anyway, here are the reasons why (in my opinion) Sleepless in Ponyville is the best MLP episode yet:
     
    1) They did everything right.
     
    Not really too much deep explanation needed for this. What I mean is that, pretty much, they got all of the not-deep stuff totally right--the humor was funny, the characters were portrayed brilliantly, the story was interesting, and the "morals" part was awesome beyond all levels of awesome.
     
     
    2)Scootaloo's nightmare predicament.
     
    I personally could seriously relate to her problem.
     
    About five years ago i went camping with a bunch of guys from my Boy Scout troop. They were each about a year older than me, so i was trying to impress them, like Scootaloo was with Rainbow Dash. Anyway, they ended up telling scary stories at campfire. Everyone (including me) enjoyed them, but that night I had a terrible nightmare. From that day on, whenever I was by myself, i was absolutely scared to death--even in broad daylight.
    So Scootaloo's problem was totally relatable to me, which is a huge, HUGE factor in slice-of-life episodes.
     
     
    3)Princess Luna's portrayal.
     
    For a while now i've felt like the one thing that the show could have done better is the portrayal of Luna vs that of Celestia. They always showed Celestia as a wise, strong leader, but then Luna as either a tragic villain or just a vulnerable pony. Now finally Luna gets to show her wise, caring, almost motherly side to one of her subjects just like Celestia would. Now the two characters are finally equal; they are finally in true Harmony.
     
    Anyway, if you actually read this long rant, thanks. I just really wanted to get this off my chest before going to sleep (after staying up all night watching mareathons before Sleepless in Ponyville). Maybe I'll post another blog sometime soon.
     
    Bai!
     
    -Night Shine
  18. Night Shine
    Part 2: The Nocturnian Revolution (Summer 2012)
     




    Resistance is futile.


     
    AS SOON as I returned from summer camp on July 22, 2012, I dove right into the brony phenomenon. I used GeneralZoi's Pony Creator to re-create the pony I had seen in my head at summer camp, and I have kept the result as my profile picture ever since. I started binge-watching MLP episodes every night, starting with The Return of Harmony and then going back to watch all of the episodes in Seasons 1 and 2 in order. I found and joined MLPForums on July 24, two days after becoming a brony. Because I knew how ridiculously powerful my interest in MLP was--it had overpowered me after I decided not to become a brony--I thought to take advantage of that interest. I used the raw willpower given to me by my newfound MLP interest to radically shift my interests, thoughts, and mindset. Here's where things get interesting.
     
     

    ASSIMILATE OR DESTROY


     
    This was my mindset regarding anything in my life that was not pony-related. It would either be assimilated, or it would be destroyed.
    1) Minecraft: Destroyed
    After diving headfirst into bronydom, I never played Minecraft again. I considered it once or twice when I heard about pony Minecraft servers, but I never really overcame the extreme paranoia I held towards Minecraft from how it had sucked away all of my creativity and made me extremely depressed. The last thing that I did in the game of Minecraft was take an airship that I created with the Zeppelin mod and bomb Summerside City, destroying what may have been my greatest Minecraft creation that I created over several months.
    2) Youtube: Assimilated
    Before MLP, I liked Youtube simply for its own value. I enjoyed watching Youtube Poops about all kinds of subjects, I was a dedicated watcher of Equals Three, I loved watching funny cat videos, and overall I liked Internet humor simply for it being Internet humor. During my Minecraft interest, this became slightly more focused as most of what I watched were Minecraft parodies, Minecraft instructional videos, et cetera. However, once I was into MLP, I was not only extremely paranoid of anything related to anything related to Minecraft, but also was in love with the concept of Ponification. I saw Ponification as a form of Purification, where something as corrupt as the humans could be turned into something as pure as the ponies (I will expand on this purist ideology later). So, with the combined forces of Paranoia and Ponification, I purged my Youtube habits of anything that was not pony-related. I unsubscribed from every non-brony Youtube channel that I had previously subscribed to. I replaced music with pony music, Youtube Poops with MLP Youtube Poops, and Minecraft parodies with MLP parodies. Everything non-pony had to go. To this day, I will still think twice before watching a non-pony-related video on Youtube, and am generally wary of them.
    3) Furdom: Destroyed
    (This one is kind of disgusting, so I will put it in a spoiler if you want to skip over it).
     
     
    4) Christianity: Assimilated
    This was one of the crucial components to my MLP obsession, believe it or not.
    You see, most of the first videos that I watched about the Brony fandom were the propaganda/history videos that I've taken to calling
    videos (the most notable and/or well known of these is Saberspark's "Ballad of the Brony"). After watching enough of these videos, I was completely brainwashed into believing that the Brony 'family' was the purest group of people on the planet. Why? 
     
     
     
    Being exposed only to this beautiful propaganda, I saw the Bronies in their most idealized, purest form: a group of friends dedicated to the high ideals of Love and Tolerance, refusing to descend to the impurity of Hatred. As an INFP, this was a dream come true. Except for one slight problem that this article about Bronies points out very well...
     

     
    The slight problem was that, according to my perceptions, the Bronies had surpassed the Christians in terms of moral purity. That seriously screwed with my mindset. Why was it that this group of Bronies was following the Christian values of love and tolerance better than the Christians themselves? Of course, this was based only on my perceptions--the media and the world was feeding me propaganda about how bad the Christians are, and Youtube was feeding me propaganda about how good the Bronies are.
    I was very afraid that this cognitive dissonance would cause me to lose my faith in God, which would be the worst possible thing I could imagine. So, in order to preserve my Christian faith, I decided to take my two purest interests and combine them. My faith in God and my faith in the Brony movement became one and the same. This soothed my fears that I would become an atheist, because as long as my interest in MLP survived, so too would my faith in God. All I had to do was never give up my combined Faith.
     
    I came to view this as a mutually beneficial agreement. All of my incredible experiences with the Brony fandom could now be attributed to God-given heavenly joy, which ensured that the Nocturnian Revolution would not dethrone my Christian faith, and in exchange, MLP received something that I later christened,
     
     

    "THE DIVINE RIGHT TO PRIORITY"


     
    I'm guessing that this sounds familiar to you because of a very similar term called, "The Divine Right to Rule [of monarchs]". The Divine Right to Priority was actually almost the same exact concept. It stated that, because my MLP interest encompassed my faith in God, it had the divine right to priority over everything. "Everything" in this case refers to:
    -Sleep
    -School
    -Health and Safety
    -Truth and Honesty
    -Anything else that may have threatened my combined Christianity and MLP interest
     
    But, there was one more interest that was essential to this prioritized passion.
     

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHhWVpNlwU8


    Everyone, yeah, everyone, we feel so empty...
    When I look at the stars, I feel like myself.


     


    There's a reason that my superior internet-personality (aka my OC pony) is named Night Shine. As I stated in the post that I referenced above, I believed that I "sh[o]ne when it [wa]s night." My favorite pony was, and still is, Princess Luna, not only because she had the same personality type that I have now, INFJ (which I found out recently) but primarily because she is the Princess of the Night:




     
     
    During the Nocturnian Era, I legitimately tried to split myself (psychologically, not physically) into diurnal and nocturnal selves. The former was the person who is me currently, who was focused on schoolwork and his public life. The latter was Night Shine, who was focused on his friends online and private life, as well as his relationship with God. This nocturn-diurn split primarily came from my competing priorities. On the one hand, I had a pretty busy 'public' life, including not only schoolwork (I was, and still am, an A student), but sports like tennis and skiing, Boy Scouts, the school band, and my church youth group. On the other hand, ponies.
     
    ...actually, my decreasingly imaginary psycho-separation was not quite as dualistic as nocturnal vs. diurnal, although it was never very defined--I also constructed several other alternate personalities which embodied parts of myself I disliked. While I hesitate to digress too much, the multiple-personality aspect of my Nocturnian mindset is too important to be mentioned later in the post. Here are the definite alternate personalities which embodied concepts or emotions that I separated in order to keep them organized and respectively unmitigated:
     
     
     
     
    To compromise between the desires of Night Shine and of the Person that is Me, I decided to pursue my public interests during the day, and my private interests at night. Nighttime was my chance to unwind and relieve the pain of depression that I had experienced during the day. I used my nighttime ponies and star-gazing as a way to fight my depression (I'd seen the memes, and you probably have as well, that present MLP as an anti-depressant--and I took them seriously).
    And believe it or not, I recently found psychological proof of my method's effectiveness in an article about the effects of a bad sleep schedule on depression which you can find at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
    Although I didn't know it at the time, the real antidepressant wasn't MLP:FiM or even stargazing. It was the accidental nightly sleep deprivation that resulted from my personal desire to be nocturnal clashing with my public need to be diurnal. Whaddya know.
     
    Speaking of the influence of pony memes, one link between my attempt at nocturnality and my love of ponies was the huge encouragement provided by brony culture of my form of nocturnality (which most likely resulted from the fact that most bronies are teenagers or college students, the sleep schedule of whom has been scientifically shown to be much later than that of society). Again, I took the memes one hundred percent seriously:
     
     
     
    This combined interest of MLP, Christianity, and Nocturnality, I later deemed "Nocturnianism." It was a Triumvirate of passions that together carried enough weight to overpower any other interest or belief I may have held at the time, and was specifically designed to ensure that it was the most important thing in my life, and would remain so for as long as it could.
     
    The quintessence of Nocturnianism as an ideal for me was my passionate faith in Love, Tolerance, and Moral Purism. But wait, you say, isn't that a contradiction? How could that possibly make sense?! Well, I'll explain it; it's a major aspect of the INFP worldview.
     
    Basically, I saw it like this. Hate is bad. Love is good. Purity is defined as the absence of any of the following corruptions that I saw as innate to human nature: anger/hatred/aggressiveness, sexuality/lust, and cynicism/pessimism. Living with this mindset, the ideal of Love, Tolerance, and Moral Purism made sense on a conceptual level. If everyone loved each other and was tolerant of each other, then the result would be purity. Injecting hatred, cynicism, sexuality or cold logic into a situation would thereby corrupt that situation.
     
    However, while this may have worked (albeit flimsily) on a conceptual level, you can imagine that it caused some serious cognitive dissonance when I attempted to practically apply it (which was always). The biggest problem was certainly my purist view of sexuality as innately corrupted. For example, I still dislike what i call the Clop Dilemma, which is to say, is it ethical to Tolerate cloppers as an NP would argue or to Purify the fandom by rebuking them as an SJ would argue? And if the best answer is a balance between these views, where do you draw the line? I still struggle with this issue.
     
    Interestingly enough, in order to 'properly establish' my ideal and make sure that I followed its spirit, I drafted a 'Constitution' of sorts about how my behaviors must reflect my new ideals:
     
     
     
    This was the basic groundwork of how I applied Nocturnianism to my own life, although there were other aspects--many other aspects, some so ridiculously trivial that looking back it is kind of hilarious (for example, I only wore certain clothes going to stargaze, only held my phone in a certain position while using it as a flashlight, only visited certain websites at specific times and in specific orders, et cetera). Actions became routines, which became habits, which quickly became sacred traditions. My Nocturnian system was primarily built around a routine that became arguably the most important tradition, how I spent my nightly free time:
     
    1) After "going to bed," I would catch up on all of the new content that my subscriptions had released on Youtube. This included Youtube Poops, brony music, brony fan animations, et cetera.
     
    2) Next, I would watch exactly two episodes of MLP:FiM on my iPhone. These would hypothetically bring me out of a depressed state and into my purer Night Shine mentality.
     
    3) Immediately after finishing the MLP episodes, I would sneak out into my backyard (making extra careful not to awaken my parents) and begin stargazing. Whilst stargazing, I usually listened to specific pieces of music, although I did listen to others occasionally, and I would listen to these at specific times in my stargazing experience. First, as I walked out of my back door and saw the beauty of the night sky for the first time, I would watch (but mostly listen to)
    dedicated to Woona and Celestia of a song entitled "Going Home." Next, while stargazing, I would listen to several songs, the first of which would always be what is still one of my favorite songs, CommandSpry's " ." Finally, before returning to my room, I would listen to my own personal favorite composition, " ." However, that's not to say that all I did under the stars was listen to music. I developed an odd tradition of watching videos of MLP con panels in between listening to music while stargazing, which to be honest I kind of miss...but then again, I miss pretty much everything mentioned in this post, so that's irrelevant or redundant or both. 
    4) Once I returned from stargazing, I would go online to my pony websites. First, I would go to MLPForums and send Happy Birthday messages to everypony whose birthday fell on that day and who had logged on in at least the past month.* Then I would go adventuring around and ponying around on the Internet, which later involved messaging friends on Skype but at the time mostly involved watching more Youtube videos.
    One interesting and kind of awesome aspect of the way I would spend my nights on the Internet is the way I listened to music. I created one brony music playlist for each approximately month-long period of time in the Nocturnian Era, dividing it further into sub-Eras, if you will. Each playlist had exactly 32 songs, and these songs were arranged to provide an emotional experiences, transitioning from Fun songs to Epic songs to Dark songs to Sad-Feelsy songs to Relaxing songs to Happy-Feelsy songs (not necessarily in that order). I would listen to the playlist for each sub-Era every night that I could during that sub-Era, so I came to associate that music with that period of my life. This provided 2 benefits: 1) it formed a way of storing emotional memories, as I can go back and listen to any given playlist to remember the time period that the playlist refers to, and 2) it was an effective way to consume the huge amount of music produced by all of the brony musicians that I liked.
    Please note that, even though I used the past tense in the previous paragraph to keep it consistent with the past-tense nature of this post, I still use this tactic of organizing brony music for its aforementioned benefits.
     
    *Clarification relating to INFP vs INFJ in my behavior below:
     
     
     
    5) Once done on MLPForums, which involved replying to topics and such as well as sending Happy Birthday messages to everyone, and Youtube, which involved listening to my music playlist and/or watching random videos, I would end my night by going on Equestria Daily. EqD always had to be the last thing. Firstly, I would check out the Drawfriend Stuff post from earlier in the day, and download any of the art which I particularly liked. This led to the creation of an Art folder in my general pony folder on my computer, divided into the following genres of art: Funny, Feelsy, D'aww, Beautiful, Crossover, Dark, Holiday&Celebration, Physical (or IRL), Miscellaneous, and Awesome. If I didn't really know where to put any given piece of artwork, I would either put it in Miscellaneous if I kinda-sorta liked it or Awesome if I really, really liked it.
    After checking out the Drawfriend Stuff post, I would read through EqD's Nightly Roundup, and once I did that it was off to sleep. The song I would listen to while falling asleep, which has always been one of the last of the 32 songs in the playlist, was extremely important to me, usually falling into the ranks of my favorite brony songs. Here are the first eight of my ending-playlist-songs (the Nocturnian Era was technically only eight sub-Eras long, although I'm still not sure if sub-Era 9 counts as part of the Nocturnian Era or not, for reasons that I will explain much later):
     
     
     
    Before The Fall (which will be explained in the next section), I had another tradition which was not quite as harmless or tolerable in the Synthesian eyes of the law. A few minutes' walk away from my house is a statue of Jesus out in the middle of a large field which also happens to have a cemetery in it. During many of my spiritual highs that resulted from a combination of sleep deprivation, ponies, and stargazing, I would walk out to the statue of Jesus and sit out under it so that I could see the stars better and also be physically closer to my Father, in a sense, even though I've always seen His essence as of the stars so there was really no "point" in such walks. Why I brought this point up was first of all so that I could show the following poem I wrote on the subject at the time which captures my mindset brilliantly, and second of all because it transitions well into the next section: The Fall, or The Octoberan Era, when the Golden Age ended.
     
    Here is the poem, "Surreality" (or "Night"):
     
  19. Night Shine
    Part 1: The Death of Minecraft (Spring 2012)



     



     

    "[T]hat game legitimately made me so addicted, so depressed, and so empty that



    I needed MLP in order to be happy."


     
     
    IT ALL STARTED with Minecraft. Or at least, that's when my depression struck, and my depression was key to the entire Nocturnian affair: I used the depression as a justification for all of my actions and beliefs, as MLP was the "only thing" that had the sheer raw happiness and purity to fight my depression. But before I had any of those radical thoughts, I was...well, I wasn't normal, but I sure as hell was not as radical as during the Nocturnian Era (which is to say, 7/22/12 - 4/12/13).
     
    I was a smart little freshman in high school who liked to play Minecraft with his friends in his spare time, and also played on a few sports teams as well as participated in his high school church youth group and his Boy Scout troop. Still, I wasn't quite a total goody two shoes--I stayed up several hours past my bedtime watching Youtube videos and looking up furry porn (yeeeah, no way to tiptoe around that one). Back then, if I had free time, I spent it either watching random Youtube videos or playing Minecraft.
     
    I had started playing Minecraft in October 2012, when a school friend of mine introduced it to me. It promptly murdered my other creative interests and became my dominant interest, as I am easily sucked in to creative activities. After spending a while just building things in Creative Mode on my own, like the large city of Summerside, my same friend told me he was opening a server for my group of school friends to hang out on. I joined, and hung out with them on that server for about six months before MLP took over...but I will get to MLP's takeover in the next section, "The Nocturnian Revolution."
     
    One day, when browsing the Internet, I discovered a creepypasta called "Herobrine" and thought of a deviously ingenious idea for a prank. I got my friend who was the admin of his server to join in, too. That prank was that I would travel to all of my friends' homes in the server and build the signs of Herobrine, primarily focusing on tunnels with deadly traps. They never figured out who was doing it, at least not until I told them. When I told them in early 2013, I was obsessed with becoming the magnificent bastard Herobrine. I changed my Minecraft skin to Herobrine as the Grim Reaper, and I spent all of my time in Minecraft learning to build ever greater and more complex deadly traps. My favorite song was
    , as I came to love the idea of cheerfully blowing things up and general happy evil in Minecraft. My 'greatest creation' was a gigantic, fully-functional death labyrinth with a control room, many death traps, a reward system designed to give players a diamond but only one, path-switchers...my friends were impressed and thought it was very cool. So did I. I'll include a link to a map that I made during the labyrinth's creation--I didn't have room to put a few sections of the labyrinth on the map, and the picture's kind of fuzzy, but hopefully it can give you a general idea of the complexity of the project. 
    It was around this time that I first discovered MLP, sometime in March of 2012. I discovered it in a related video to a Youtube Poop, a short clip of Discord from The Return of Harmony. Interestingly enough, I could relate to Discord, and that was why MLP caught my interest. I knew, even then, that if I journeyed even further into MLP, I would become incredibly obsessed with it and it would murder my Minecraft interest. So, I put it to a decision: one day, when I was walking home from school, I flipped a coin to see if I would become a Brony or remain obsessed with Minecraft. When I flip a coin for decisions, I usually have Heads represent the Noble or Right option and have Tails represent the Selfish or Necessary option. Therefore, Tails represented Minecraft and Heads represented MLP. I flipped the coin.
     
    It came up Tails.
     
    From then on, I decided that I would not be interested in MLP:FiM, would not become a Brony, and would suppress any early interest in MLP that I had garnered.
     
    However, at that point I failed to take something extremely important into account: Depression. I am actually extremely thankful for that depression (which I am still coping with), because it was the catalyst of everything in this post and effectively the catalyst of my teenage rebellion and subsequent maturation. Still, at the time, I closely associated Depression and Minecraft, mostly because of the situation in which the depression surfaced. At the end of the 2011-2012 school year and into July, my school friends were one by one leaving the server that my other friend, Nick Abbott, was the admin of. They hated him for his egotistical attitude--interestingly enough, he has an a Synthesian (the opposite of Nocturnian, E_TJ) personality type, but I would not discover that until over two years later (about a month ago, May 2014). So, in the beginning of Summer 2012, it was just me on the server, all alone, building new death traps to kill people who weren't even there. It just felt...empty.
     
    And that is where the depression association works in: depression can basically be defined as a feeling of painful, consistent emptiness that leads to sadness and pessimism. I am not sure right now if Minecraft actually caused my depression--it seems unlikely, because I currently think that it is some form of Seasonal Affective Disorder--but that is how I perceived it at the time. Minecraft made me depressed...I had to cut it off and find something that was the opposite of Minecraft. I needed something that was extremely cheerful. I needed something that was idealistic and moral, something that would bring out the best in me instead of the worst. I needed something for which my interest was strong enough to overcome everything and anything related to my Minecraft interest.
     
    These were the thoughts I pondered in my spare time at Boy Scout summer camp from July 15 to July 22. It was then that I conceived Night Shine as a character--no, scratch that, that the character and image of Night Shine came to me while I was daydreaming. I spent a lot of my free time at summer camp imagining my Minecraft interest (personified as the Herobrine Reaper) battling it out with my MLP:FiM interest (personified as Night Shine, who at that time was not yet named). After I saw the pony in my head murder the Herobrine Reaper, I composed a funeral march for my interest in Minecraft, "Casket for a Scythe." I would not finish that song until January 26, 2014, about two weeks ago.
     
    "Casket for a Scythe":
    http://soundcloud.com/night-shine-1/casket-for-a-scythe
     
    Themes used:
    -Skyfall. While the movie did not come out until late 2012, the song became a theme of despair for me which was inevitably associated with Minecraft and with depression.
    -1812 Overture in Minor. Notice that, in minor, it becomes tragic rather than celebratory.
    -Funeral March. This one should be obvious--the entire song was composed as a funeral march for my interest in Minecraft. However, there is more to it as well. During the 2012-2013 school year, my school band played an arrangement of Grieg's Funeral March, and practicing it in class became one of most depressing parts of my day.
     
    I'll end this section with the lyrics I came up with over the past 20 months or so for the song, some of which were original and some of which were added only recently:
     
     
  20. Night Shine

    Introduction

    By Night Shine,

    "[R]eality will never measure up to your imagination."



    –lindsay, an INFP from
    PersonalityCafe

     

    “INFPs never seem to lose their sense of wonder.



    One might say they see life through rose-colored glasses…



    [they] have the ability to see good in almost anyone or anything.



    Even for the most unlovable the INFP is wont to have pity…



    [o]f course, not all of life is rosy, and INFPs are not exempt from



    the same disappointments and frustrations common to humanity...



    [they] struggle with the issue of their own ethical perfection,



    e.g., performance of duty for the greater cause.



    An INFP...describes the inner conflict



    as not good versus bad,



    but on a grand scale,



    Good vs. Evil.”



    –INFP Profile on
    TypeLogic

     



     
    NIGHT SHINE is not, contrary to everything I have ever said or implied on this forum, simply another name for the person that is me. In fact, I often feel guilty using this name which I worked so hard to purify last year for my ordinary human and intellectual activities so long after its original meaning died. This blog also contains the reason that I feel that I no longer have any right to post anything on this forum under the name "Night Shine."
     
    No, Night Shine was not a person—he was a dream I had, an alternate persona specifically designed to be superior to the real, tangible person who is me. Last year, I regarded Night Shine as nothing less than my very soul.
     
    This blog, which will undoubtedly be very comprehensive as well as very melodramatic due to the melodramatic and complex nature of its subject matter, is aimed at dissecting my mindset from last year when I joined the Brony movement, and why that mindset was incompatible with the Bronies, with the Internet, and with the World itself. If you read this entire post, you just might understand me fully and completely, or at least as much as I do.
     
    Several factors made my perspective last year utterly fascinating to study in hindsight:
    1) My absolute and unshakable faith in the belief that the Brony movement was the purest group of people on Earth.
    2) The extreme willpower with which I radically shifted my mind into questionable thoughts, beliefs, and actions.
    3) The degree to which my radical actions and thoughts were justifiable as a method of fighting depression, and the degree to which they were not.
    4) My determination to transcend human nature by splitting my personality into multiple separate individuals.
    5) How I was able to utilize the Brony movement to justify all of the radically positive and negative shifts to my lifestyle.
    6) How my teenage rebellion developed as a form of moral purism.
     
    However, as I am retelling events only I remember from my perspective, this article will contain a lot of bias--that is unavoidable. This bias probably will skew the facts in the following ways:
    1) Exaggerating the abnormality of the mindset and events in order to make them more interesting.
    2) Exaggerating how 'bad' the mindset and events were, because I need to feel like I have learned from this experience and thus am insecure.
     
    Introduction:
    So, let's get started. What the heck does "Nocturnian" mean? I came up with the term in order to describe my mindset last year in April, when it finally came under assault by reality--but I'll get to that later. After thinking over the quintessence of Nocturnianism and considering over a dozen different ways to try and explain it over the past nine months, I have come to the conclusion that the Nocturnian mindset is the mindset of a Myers Briggs personality type which has Introverted Feeling as one of its primary cognitive functions, such as the INFP (for more information on Myers Briggs psychology, read the background information in the section later in this blog post). The opening quote from TypeLogic describes the relevant aspects of the INFP mindset better than anything else I have found in the past year (June 2013 to June 2014).
     
    But why "Nocturn-ian"? What does night have to do with any of it? Well, in order to answer that question, let us dive into the beginning of the story: how I used My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and the Brony fandom as a method of radically altering my mindset and lifestyle. Before we dive into that, however, I would like to explain the situation in which I encountered MLP:FiM, as it helps to explain why I treated MLP and the Brony fandom the way that I did.
     
    The next blog posts will contain an account of each season chronological order of what happened to my little experiment, when I used a fandom to manipulate my emotions, personality, and lifestyle.
     
    Part 1: Death of Minecraft (Spring 2012)
     
    Part 2: Nocturnian Revolution (Summer 2012)
     
    Part 3: Fall and Rebirth (Fall 2012)
     
    Part 4: Heart of Winter (Winter 2012-13)
     
    Part 5: Ultimatum (Early Spring 2013)
     
    Part 6: End of the Era (Late Spring 2013)
     
    Part 7: A New Beginning (Summer 2013)
     
    (please note that the entries are currently in an unfinished form.)
     
     
    PREFACE
     
    This section will explain any information which will be used as common knowledge throughout the rest of the blog. Information covers Myers Briggs personality typology and the Brony phenomenon.
     
    Myers Briggs Typology
     
     
     
    My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fandom, referred to as the "Brony Phenomenon"
     
     
  21. Night Shine
    Hai everypony~!
     
    I'm guessing if you clicked on this you've already seen this episode. So, picking up on my tradition from last year, I am now going to ramble and rant about how awesome this episode is without recognizing any of its flaws!
     
    (For the record, I am afflicted with a peculiar and highly pleasant condition wherein I cannot discern any flaws in an MLP:FiM episode unless they are pointed out to me by someone else, and I am happy that this has not yet changed. )
     
    So, what was SO AWESOME about this episode? :3
     
    1) HOLY SHUCKING FIT DARING DO IS REAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    in the Equestrian universe, that is.
     
    I honestly do not think there is any way I could break down the gravity of how cool this is. It's like if you went to find J.K. Rowling's house and found Hogwarts instead (and yes, dat pun with A.K. Yearling....x3 was pretty silly). I think this episode alone could produce an explosion of fanfic material due to new worldbuilding potential moreso even than Equestria Girls. I mean, ohmygosh, Daring Do is a real character now! And so are Ahuizotl and all of the predators! And his minion ponies! And that one pony who looked like Belloq!
    I am struggling to keep this intellectually understandable without slipping into total fanboy-squee-jibberish. /)o3o(\
     
    Oh yeah, and the episode was really good too.
     
    2) The difficult-to-predict structure of the episode.
    Up until about 2/3 of the way through the episode, I still wasn't sure if Daring Do was real. I still thought they were going to go the "it's not as cool in real life and your heroes aren't who they think they are" route, which would have been understandable and they could have pulled off well, but I wouldn't have liked it. But luckily, they made Daring Do REAL!!! They totally fooled me. Honestly, by playing it straight, they set the episode up so I expected a subversion that never came. There are very few feelings better than one's doubt being utterly squashed beneath the weight of faith and reality alike.
     
    3) Dat feelsy scene in the middle.
    After seeing S4E2, when I realized they were going for a feelzy scene when Dashie let Do get caught, I thought it would be handled a lil bit clumsily. However...it wasn't. At least I don't think it was. I could actually tell how huge of a deal this was to Dashie, and Twilight's ~flowery~ pep speech was totally 1) necessary due to the circumstances and 2) inspirational in its own right.
     
    ...I think that's all I wanted to say.
    Maybe.
    I don't know.
    Ponies. :3
  23. Night Shine
    Hello there! It's been almost exactly a month since I made a blog entry....okay that has no relevance to anything.
     
    Anywaiz.
     
    After making a DeviantART account earlier last night, I realized, "Hey! I have no idea what to do with this!" So, I decided to upload all of my stories that I didn't publish to FiMFiction for various reasons, mostly having to do with the first two not being legitimate fan-fiction stories inspired by the show. These stories are (and i might add more):
     
    1) Sunset's Rest (FiM fanfic, kind of)
     
     
     
    2) Gaze (I have no idea what the f#k this thing is)
     
     
     
    3) Nihil (FiM fanfic)
     
     
     
    So yeah. Don't know if you care about any of these enough to read them, or even if you can make heads or tails of them because they're all so...weird. Still, thought I may as well share 'em.
     
    Have a nice night! Or, day, if that's when you're reading this. ;3
  24. Night Shine
    WHY HELLO THERE!!! 8D
     
    It is mah birfday. AND, I decided about a month or so ago that, as a birfday present from me to you, I would make a ton of new fanfictions and musics and release them ALLLL tonight!
     
    So here ya go!
     
    Teh Stories
     
     
     
    Teh Musics
     
     
     
    So yeah! What do you think? Does you like? :3
     
    Have a nice night!
  25. Night Shine
    Hey everypony!
     
    I wanted to post this to give an update on things, after being offline for a week and made a lot of plans and shtuffz. There's good new and bad news.
     
     
    1. May as well get the bad news out of the way.
     
    Last week sucked for me. After my parents threatened to take away my nocturnality/ponynet access and drove me into depression, we reached a compromise in which I could go on the ponynet on weekends. I guess I'll have to appreciate my time with you all more now. Happy ending despite the...unhappy events.
     
     
    2. An idea of mine...
     
    Well, my birfday is approaching in a lil less than a month and a half. And I thought it would be awesome to have a big celebration with all of you, my bestest fwends! But then I realized mah birfdai wouldn't be a big deal unless I made it a big deal! And if I tried to get you all to give me things I'd be a conceited brat, so the only logical way would be to give you things! So.....
     
    "Nighty's Birthday Bash!"
     
    On May 27, I will release a set of new stories (and probably new music too) for you all to enjoy, covering a variety of genres.
     
    The stories include:
     
     
     
     
    I'll probably make another song or two by then--I have a ton of ideas to build on--but as of now, I haven't started on any.
     
     
    So...yeah. That's my update. I'll be seein' y'all over the next couple of days, and then next weekend!
     
    Have a nice night, everypony! Or, day, as it were
×
×
  • Create New...