My Little Pony XXII: Surprise!

[SiuiS]

Humans in socks....

I think i'm ok with this. 0///0
Especially Lix. and i don't even like feet... o.o

It is interesting. Um... Darn. What was I gonna say? Horsefeathers.

With a company name like Clopcom, I wouldn't really be sure what to expect.

Still, that video is very amazing.

It is amazing.
I also feel the need to point out that, before the picture of Twilight Sparkle 'clopping' to her monitor came along, clop was a generic horse-pun whose only association was with 'clap'.
So they may be an old, innocent company.

That map of Equestria has been updated since I posted it.

Sweet!

From the moon's position, I would've thought it was the afternoon of the third day.

And now I have this image of Luna wearing Majora's Mask right now.
Though, I guess it's her revenge against her sister for that one desert level Super Mario Bros. 3...

So many memes... So many... Memes... *collapses under the weight*

*sigh*

So, apparently the way to make Lix flee is to compliment and flatter her, the one thing I am mentally and racially incapable of doing.*

Typical.

I suppose I ought to try, though.

Ahem.

Lix, your... ... ... ...socks are... ... um... ...grey?

...

...

Yeah, I got nuthin'.

You...really can't do it can you?

Nope.

Bwahahahaha!
Look into Glibness, mate. It's a +30 on bluff. It'll come in handy. especially since bluff handles seduction ;D

I just absolutely need to say you're the cutest couple ever

Yes. Yes you a-- wait! No! No. No!

One of the cutesy couples ever. I like Flutterdash and LyraXBon-Bon too much. No monopoly for you.

BEHOLD! THE TRAVELER HAS COME!

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My fan-kaiju girl, Stacy Puft, the Marshmallow Girl. Based off of Gozer The Gozerian, The Traveler, and what-not, from Ghostbusters. ^^

Aww, Stacy pony is so cute~ and her head makes me laugh. IT'S SO FLUFFY.

Ok, Can someone explain this whole "ponies with socks" thing to me? I seriously don't get it.

Well, some of us like ponies.
Some of us like ponies.
Some of us like to act like we like ponies.
Some of us enjoy obfuscating who is who.
And some of us are into irony and satire.

I trust that clears things up exactly as much as I want it to?

Trust me, I do too. I want ACTUALLY ACURATE G4 ponies. My friend calls me an elitist for the fact that it makes me rage so hard. (Seriously. I went on IRL for about 20 minutes ranting about Pink Celestia.) CALL ME WHAT YOU WILL. I CONTROL THE MONEY, I CONTROL YOUR PAYCHECK HASBRO. *Growl*

I know. I'm tempted to go out of my way to contact someone, get buddy-buddy enough that they won send an automated "thank you for your input" letter when I complain about this.

...OH BOY. Here we go. *Laughs*

I used to find feet nasty. After ponies in socks, I apparently don't. I'm not sure how I should feel about this.

this is a divide that not only do I find fascinatingly mysterious, but had a conversation about a couple days ago.

Isn't it funny? It's 'normal' to find feet disgusting (for almost no reason), but there is no alternative except OMG FETISH!!1!1. If you tell someone something, anything, other than 'I dislike feet' the assumption is a sexual fetish.

Which is weird. Most feet aren't dirty or disgusting. Thu are scrubbed hard enough to buff a car, slipped into a sterile cotton protective layer, then ensconced in rubber, cloth and leather boxes to protect them even further. They get somewhat slick with the same stuff as every other square centimeter of skin minus the ambient dirt and dust in the air of course... Then they are removed, aired, and washed. Then the process repeats. They are one of the cleanest parts of the body unless you're tromping through ankle-high mud in low-top shoes.

Myself, I like feet. And ankles. Calves. Knees. Thighs. Really, the entire human form is a beautiful thing. It's entirely possible to like feet without it being fetishistic.

And, apologies for the the rant. This isn't aimed at you! It's just I'm in rant-mode and you opened the topic. So! Please don't feel bad, mate. Just a chance to share my views

Dat... Tail.

dat Lyra!

...Why is this happening oh Celestia what have ponies done to us our minds they are no longer safe we are changing we are leigon we are the ponysane accept us cherish us we will love and tolerate.

I'm confused. Are you complaining, or celebrating?

But seriously, I know exactly what you mean about "He who fights monsters..."

I kinda consider myself a troll anyway, except I only troll those I deem deserving of it. And even then, I have limits.
I call it counter-trolling.

And you are content to be a troll?
Also, Moby **** is entirely worth reading if youcan handle the language. I myself have to reread it. I can only remember the first like, sixth of the book.

That there is some serious socks appeal!

Early bedtime for me, tomorrow is the start of my internship, and I have to be up relatively early. (Though not 4 AM, that's the day after tomorrow, and two days afterwards!) Wish me luck, everypony!

Woo~! I'm rootin' for ya, mate.*

Oh wow. You were being serious? You don't need to draw man anything man! I'm happy bringing joy (and incredulousness) to everypony. ^^

I can say with certainty that the surest way to keep me from doing something is to tell me it's mandatory. Conversely, I'm going to end up doing it anyway specifically because it's optional. I'm predictably contrary like that

I should really start doing it this way. It seems like it would work so much better.

Only if you've got the time to spend for it. Any way you slice it, these things take time and dedication. And time. Mostly time.

Indeed. Personally, my favorite Compassion Break is Red Rage of Compassion.

I took the one where you get fed up with other people and continue giving orders without any care for their opinions. Except I think I'm selling it wrong. But I'm sure you know what I mean.

Eh, I don't have a problem with it for in character reasons, just to avoid OOC confusion. Like when I used green text to imitate you and get Braz to post a picture of you.

That's fair. But I have to set the record straight, that you 'tricked' her into doing something she wanted to do anyway.
*shrug*
She has this annoying habit of being her own person. Believe me, her having autonomy has been one hay of a speedbump at times

...So, are you implying that Braz is into both?

I'm implying Braz is into me. I've tried getting her to get a girlfriend many a time, but she insists on sticking around

Well, it's an obscure bit, but there are things known as Half-Castes which are the offspring of a Celestial Exalt (Soloroids, Lunars and Sidereals) and a Mortal or other Exalt.

Interesting. I'll have to look into those. Names? Or is that what you meant by Solaroid?

Prayers to heavenly gods get turned into Ambrosia, which is used by the Heavenly gods and Sidereals as a form of money (It's what Sidereals get paid in), it's also extremely delicious as some Siddies are known to eat their paychecks.

Lunars generally hate Sidereals.

Gem MUST be destroyed.

Pattern Spiders (The beings that ensure causality and to some degree physics) are action movie/hot blooded anime fans, and will allow you to break the laws of nature to do something extremely cool.

Sidereals broke a constellation and now no one can remember them.

A Lunar's place is in their Solar's kitchen.

Ah, pattern spiders. Reason for the entropic decay in WW:tA. Constantly binding the matrix of causality tighter in their web. Reducing all success and failure pools.

I wish the action movie junkie thing showed up in WW:tA, would make the game less bleak. Though I guess I can't complain about a game called 'the Appocalypse' being a bleak and losing proposition.

Everything but Gem must be destroyed makes sense to me so far.

Pluto is the name of the God of the Underworld and Wealth. By reclassifying it as not a planet, both the powers of the Dead and of Money are being weakened. Que financial crisis and drastic decrease in the number of ghosts. The entire thing was set up by communist exorcists.

let's see. As an American, I think I am legally bound to decry the evils of communism, but I've got nothing against exorcists unless they interfere with ancestral activity.

*ahem* Commies-Schwommies, BOO~!

Or narrate to a passerby.

I thought of that, but I can't think of anyone listening that long without getting paid for it.

I don't think the Vision of Death was the World of Darkness. It's certainly not the nWoD, which has an objective creation myth(s). oWoD with consensus metaphysics, WHO KNOWS?

Well, it fits oWoD. Or W:tA, W:tDA & what of V:tM I dabbled with. I also found several fitting explanations but I don't really have anything on me. For evidence, I mean.

In my theoretical magical well-made Exalted system, the virtues are the core mechanic instead of an optional add on.

They're optional? They seem pretty hard-wired in to me.
Granted, they are the last mechanic I actually read through. It got really, really boring afterwards. I kinda figured out the three damage types but that's pretty much it.

In fact, one time one of the developers said "Fighting a sentient, evil planet-sized city is a little bit outside the scope of the system". At first, I laughed. And then I stopped. And then I realised that a sentient, evil planet-sized city is one of the primary antagonists of the setting and if the system doesn't support fighting that guy then the system is borked. Likewise the mass combat system balanced around professional armies of mortals fighting professional armies of mortals. In Exalted, a war without supernatural craziness is the exception.

well, this is world of darkness, right? You aren't supposed to actually win anything in any WW game I've ever seen. Werewolf, vampire, changeling, even recent editions of ravenloft. All really really horrible for anyone who wants to 'win' at their roleplaying.

Maybe they don't want you to be able to combat sentient moons. It should be a losing proposition.

Also, I like the bland description of the mass combat system. It's better than most. Does it work at all, if you assume there is a distinct lack of exalted?

I don't understand this? Sure, the Twilight putting 5 dots into Archery will be as good at Archery as the 5 dot Dawn caste sniper, but Charms fundamentally change that dynamic. Specialisation is really infinite within each area.

In terms of the WoD, skills are so expensive so a 0-Firearms professor will take 45 XP (9 sessions) to become as good at sniping as the elite military sniper, during which time he's not practising magic or anything else. Seems reasonably prohibitive.

well, it's less my complaint and more a common complaint of others. My dislike is the implied cap, in a system that feels like caps are counterproductive.

I'm going to stop there though, because I don't have a legto stand on. Gouge played, and I've perused; I must defer to those cold unblinking pale white disks that gaze upon me so impassively.

Might makes right? Well there's a philosophy I can't get behind Heck, my MA school's creed is:

First, I am upset at you in a fashion where it's real upset-ness, but it mostly exists as something I can laugh at, and tell you about so you can get a laugh out of it too. See, I read your post, but then I had to mop. So I was talking to myself about the answer, when I realized I care about your opinion enough that I should probably be talking to you about this, not myself. So I am now struggling to remember all of what I said XD
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I thought that was poorly phrased. So I will begin a spiel which should, at length, convey what I mean.

Might makes Right is not something I believe in. I actively campaign against it. I'd prefer that Right makes Might, but whatever. That is a slippery moral slope if ever there was one.

What I meant is that you will lose. Always. As you struggle towards some endeavor or another, the odds of you failing become one. This is important when you consider that martial arts, or at least, using martial arts, is inherently a thing of conflict.

Might makes right is heuristic. Whether or not it is true, you can operate as if it were true and achieve results in keeping with that hypothesis. It defines a paradigm you can live by. It is, in effect, true. Even though other things are also true which directly contradict it. Because life is deliciously¹ complicated. And because this is true, it is something that you, as a budding martial artist, need to learn. General you, by the way. Anyway...

Might makes right. If we have conflict, and I win, I'm right. This is important because if I lose, I'm wrong. If you stand up, you may be hammered down. It is a fact of standing up.

Worse, there are times where escalation happens. You 'win' and the other guy's rebuttal is 4 inches of steel through your pericardium², and there is very little counter-argument left at that point. Restraint is hard. Disagreeing with someone and not using Maximum Force is hard. Good Gracious is it hard. Any time you do the right thing, there is a chance that your life will be stripped from you because someone else needs to prove how much more right they are than you. It. Will. Happen.

Acceptance of this is important. It's the old, thrown-around-casually samurai edict thing. Be ready to die. Don't court death; don't act irrationally or brashly. Do not be ruled by petty emotions. But if something is important enough to fight for, it had better be important enough to die for, because that is what is going to happen.

And yet it's more than that. See, my life philosophy depends very much on the fact that I'm 'worthless' I have no unique value. And before you freak out about that, I mean that in any situation with more than one person, it doesn't matter which of those two or more I am.
Hm. I feel I must illustrate this.
Person 1 points a gun at person 2. Person 3 jumps in the way and gets shot, and dies. It doesn't matter who is who, really. In the grand scheme of things, I gave my life for another man. Another man gave his life for me. I just murdered someone. It's all the same. The situation is the same no matter how I'm connected to it. Sometimes this overwhelms me with compassion, other times, I disregard all life equally. Most of the time I'm in the middle and I like ponies because they push me towards the "compassion" end of things.

Anyway. I'm 'worthless' because my loss is just as bad as anypony else's. Any decision I make, I am making for another human being. When that decision involves violence on any scale, or control of a situation, it's that much harder. Knowing I will, eventually, meet that End of Ends, means knowing I will, eventually, send somepony else along that road.

And when it happens, I'm right. Because I won. Right?

Except, no. Just as it's possible tone right but to lose, you will one day have to deal with winning, and then finding out you were wrong. That's heavy. The weight on the soul of knowing that you imposed your will upon another, and everything you did was horrible and wrong and backwards is one of the worst feelings in the world. It's in those moments that I pray my compassion doesn't flair up, because that knife cuts deep.

As a martial artist, or any sort of crusader for any sort of cause, you need to be ready to deal with the consequences of your actions. That in the dark of the night, years later, you may find yourself awake, eyes being rended from behind by the ethereal claws of distant memories, drudging out past grievances made before your current standards, but still using those standards to pass judgement.

Might makes Right was something I tossed out for the sole purpose of contrasting and highlighting the much more important Obligation Towards Those Beneath You. I am capable of inflicting grievous harm, psychological torture, and worse on others, probably without them knowing. I can get away with it. And the only way I can sleep at night is knowing that I would almost never do any of these things. I cut my silhouette in the negative. I am that which I am not.

When raising children, my one goal is to make them into better people than I myself am. And I've seen time and again, through many things (including your learning to draw thread!) that if your choice is learn two related things at once, or learn them separately, you are better learning them together. For something as important to me as the future moral fiber of another human being, I think teaching them as much of the 'proper systems' at a time as possible is a good idea. Teaching a child responsibility, at the same time as letting them exercise responsibility, and suffer consequences for that responsibility³. And if I can help teach them at a time in their lives when the serious consequences, the serious troubles aren't an issue yet, so much the better.

It's going to be hard, to be sure. Children learn things differently than adults. Methods of transmission that work, me to you, won't work me to them. There will be a lot of studying. Around 10 years worth, before anything serious is transmitted purposefully.

This entire rant is brought to you by 'I've thought of this slowly over the last ten years, and it's very hard to separate it into discrete components'(tm). This is as close to a sliver as I can give you while still feeling like I'm showing you a complete picture.


1: I love these moments in English. Delicious is such a delicious word to say. It rolls around the mouth like a crisp bite of apple.

2: fun fact. 4" is the minimum length of knife that to inflict this wound. That's why CA knife law tends to prohibit anything over 3.5". The heuristic maxim is 'width of your palm or less'

3: consequences being literal, and not necessarily negative. Just effects of causes.

To build true confidence
Through honesty in mind
Courage in heart
And strength in body
To keep true friendship with one another
And build a strong and happy community
Never fight to achieve selfish gains
Or to prove might is right.

nice. Last actual dojo I went to had a simple creed so it would make sense for us lazy Californians.
Train hard.
Be humble.
Fight dirty.

I take it to mean that when fighting happens, the time for diplomacy is past. I'm not sure if I agree with the sentiment, but I can understand it.
Sadly, I'm sure most people fixate on part three rather than one and two, which are way more important. Train hard, be humble. Good advice. There was also the motto of the art itself, but that's a list of keywords, really. Mind: concentration, discipline, knowledge. Body: physical fitness, proficiency, self defense. Spirit: attitude, dedication, self control. I am feeling a distinct amount of philosophy envy, here. I fear I had one of those sport martial arts that claimed to be a koryu, given the evidence.

My favourite Dr. Chase moment was the reveal that he's trained in the traditional arts of Australian Hypnotism. I took an elective in that in primary school.

You actually took hypnosis in school? I mean, seriously?

Mask: You watched that movie? Owch.

Hey, it wasn't that bad! Ok it was probably horrible. Honestly I didn't even remember the gunbelt until I was thinking of stuff to talk to you about.*

Charger: I believe I was offered "to get in on this".
Mask: I was just making reference to the mask being a barrier in most propositions.

oh! My apologies then. Didn't mean to infer anything.

Yes. The dynamic would have to be right, but it could happen and could rock.

I'll take that on your word. I can't see it, but I'm not trying all that hard, on account of being mentally muddled.

Im going to bed. and since i havent been very pony in my last few posts.

Heres some funny pony.

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And here is lots more pony!

AND EVEN MORE~!

Also. This is what my brain did when i first started watching ponies.

That's a lot of pony!
Hope you feel better mate. Or, well, I'm assuming not bein very pony correlates to feeling bad. If so, I hope you feel better.

So, it appears I'm no longer safe even in my drams. When I awoke from my meditation this morning, I left a dreamscape littered with GDI Mobile Sensor Arrays and Nod Artillery, (futiley) placed as anti-Lix defenses...

That's pretty bad, mate.
NOD artillery? Does that mean what I think it does?

Was that one you actually took from low-level, or did you start (much) higher? (I'm guessing the latter...)

(Also, the HD (and AC) seems well out of proportion to the spell casting ability. A lot of the latter is obviously DM-modified (43rd (!) level spells without Improved Spell Capacity or Divne rank, no dice cap on spells etc), but the former seem ridiculously low in comparision.)

From level one to level 13, then a jump we objected to really hard up to 18, and then we booted the DM. Got up to 28, before doing a bunch of story stuff to pick up all the being a real person I missed due to the first DMs "story telling". Finally opened the magic college I wanted since level 1, became a greater power on the planes (in that I function Lyme Mystra does in Faerun), and all unique monsters we could be expected to fight have 40 bonus hitdice to keep us in line (gods are as the D&Dg, but enemies from BoVD or FC 1&2 get a massive boost) =|
Let's see...

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I ended up doing a lot of retraining to get skills up to INT + class, use the divine array plus racial modifiers. Virtual DvR 1 (Gloaming lord) from defeating the previous gloaming fey master of magic, no damage cap and some of the redundant skills and CL are from what are effectively magical locations; I'm expecting an enemy to realize this any day now. *Calling a Moot and getting me Vote of No Confidence'd as septarch, replacing me or taking my throne in faerie, would get me ripped down to understandable power levels. Only thing I'd keep would be DvR 0.
Huh. And apparently I have the invasion subtype? That's gotta be bad.

And the sad part? I just want to be able to play a character where "I want to open a school" doesn't make the DM power word: kill a 2nd level party member to 'set the tone of the game:

That was not what I me-

...

...

Actually, I hadn't thought Midnight and Shimmer's Guide to Dating might have a practical application... (Or rather, Blueblood's ancestor's guide...)

Sweet Sisters of Sun & Moon, what have I wrought?

...

Actually, no. I want to see this play out.
Can you seduce Lix Lorn so poorly she runs away?
I can't look away now.

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Post needs more pony. Hm.
Oh. Oh lawdy. They just played the pink CELESTIA commercial (why do you capslock her name, phone? Why?) and...

"my wings are so pretty!" *shudder*