January 16
I had a lot to think about this morning.
I didn't really understand a lot of the presidential candidate debate. There were very many issues which were raised that we never learned about in Equestria. To hear some of the candidates talk, America is on the brink of collapse, and the current president didn't do anything to stop it for eight years. But he was re-elected four years ago; does that mean that even if he wasn't qualified, his opponents were less qualified? Or maybe something happened in the last four years that he didn't respond well to. Sometimes a pony will overlook something that she shouldn't have, and only later we realize that she hadn't been thinking ahead like she should have been, so we need to pick a new pony to lead us.
I suppose humans probably have a much better grasp of the nuances of their society. It’s very complicated to balance the wants and needs of a whole nation fairly. I don't think I could do it.
The other thing that struck me as odd was that there were two moderators who asked all the questions, despite there being a large audience there. Traditionally in the forums, any passer-by could ask questions. I hope that they have those debates later. It’s nice to know what the common pony person thinks.
I was disappointed that a lot of the candidates seemed pretty confrontational. There was a lot of posturing and puffery going on. That's one of the problems with this type of system—it can turn into a popularity contest. It's funny to think of, but in that regard the unicorns have the purest system, since it only matters who your dam was, not what you've done or say you'll do. No political system is perfect. We figure out the flaws and try to address them as well as we can.
The debate was something to ponder while I did my morning exercise. Plato’s system, as wise as it is, can run into problems when citizens don’t recognize what they’re good at and try something they’re not good at. At least we have cutie marks to help guide us; the poor humans must be blundering along blindly, never quite sure if they’ve found their niche.
It was warm again, and there were patches where all the snow had melted. Even the little triangle of land where I like to cool off after my morning jog had pretty sparse snow coverage, and I wound up getting my coat all muddy before I realized how thin the snow was. That was annoying. I hate having dirt in my coat. I don't know how the earth ponies put up with it.
I took a nice relaxing shower—I would have spent a bit more time, but Brianna was waiting her turn, and it wouldn't be nice to make her wait. She's really tall and skinny and has long blonde hair which comes all the way down below her rump. She'd already gotten almost completely undressed before I came out of the shower and I noticed that she had a big scar on her right side just above her panties. I wasn't sure if it was polite to ask about it, so I kept my mouth shut. But I was really curious. Humans fight a lot, so maybe she was in a fight.
After I preened and groomed, I read Aquamarine's letter, which I should have done earlier. She said that it was really crowded on her campus, and she didn't like that too much. But there was a lot of open land to the south, which is where a lot of her classes will take place. Humans, she said, don't have magic to work on plants but they do have chemicals to get rid of pests. They're learning about those. She said it's a very difficult balance to not have unintended consequences with the chemicals. They can hurt beneficial animals, and if too much is applied, they can poison everyone’s drinking water, and they can also cause plants to grow where they shouldn't.
Her dorm room had bothered her for the first couple of days, because it was so high up. I'm on the third floor, which is the top floor of my dorm; on her campus, the dorms are almost as tall as skyscratchers and she's on the eighth floor. Once she got used to it, though, she started to like the view. She said that there are trains which go by all the time. Some of them are freight trains pulled by black locomotives with red noses, and there's a long silvery one called an Amtrak that carries passengers.
I wrote her back about all the friends I'd made already and how my classes were going and that I was officially allowed to fly pretty much wherever I wanted to as long as I got permission from the airplane directors and wore my flight gear.
In the afternoon while we were waiting to go to the theater to watch Star Wars, a few girls from our hall gathered in our room and we played some more Euchre and talked for a bit. Ruth was there; she's dyed her hair blue now. She said she did it because she liked my coat color. Christine came over along with Joe, who I've only been seeing at meals. Aric showed up, and he came with Sean. I thought that was odd, since Sean thought Star Trek was better, but he said that he really liked a lot of science fiction movies.
We all crowded into Cobalt and went to the theater. It's right next to a shopping mall (it's called Maple Hill, although there aren't any maples or hills there), which is even bigger than Meijer. How many things can be sold? I really want to visit it and find out! Humans really like having a lot of stuff.
There were little kiosks where we got our tickets, and then we went into a lobby where there were lots of people milling around, and a stand where you could buy popcorn and candy and bubbly pop drinks. I didn't really want anything, but Aric said that no theater experience was complete without having overpriced food in a giant bucket and bought some popcorn to share.
I got mauled by a few foals children who wanted to pet me or touch my wings and that started to make me nervous so Christine and Peggy kind of closed around me and ushered me to the theater. They picked what they said were the best seats. They weren't all that comfortable for me, mostly because the cushion was so soft I sank in and was worried that I might have trouble getting out.
Right before the movie started, there were a bunch of advertisements. I was hoping there would be newsreels, but there weren't any. I guess because televisions can show news right when it's happening, there's no need to have them in the theater.
The movie was a lot more intense than the other ones had been. A lot of it was the setting—the screen was huge, and the sound was loud enough to make my seat shake. But it was totally worth it for the flight scenes. I really felt like I was flying during them, and even accidentally hit Christine and Aric with my wings a couple of times.
Everyone was all hyped-up when it was over, even though most of them had seen it before (Aric hadn't, and of course I hadn't either).
When we got back to campus, nobody really wanted to go to bed right away, so we went to Christine's room. Sean and Christine got in an argument about Star Wars vs. Star Trek again, and I took my favorite spot on the papasan and just listened to them until I finally drifted off to sleep.
I didn't mean to, and I hope Christine didn't think it was rude. When I woke up the next morning, Joe was asleep on the couch, and nobody else was anywhere to be seen. I went down the little hallway to the bedrooms, but all the doors were closed. I knocked lightly on Christine’s door (I could smell which one it was), but she didn’t answer.
I probably should have stayed, but I wanted to get my exercise in before going to breakfast.
I wonder what ponies look like economically
Heh. Yes, being petted by children might be troublesome for ones sense of dignity
7025166 Bummer.
7025236
In the Admiral's universe they are somewhat stingy, though they don't really want for much they can't afford.
And yeah, I don't see how being pet like an animal by strangers would be comfortable in any situation that's not one of those creepy comics.
The republican debate? No wonder she's confused. They should be mimes. Silent.
So ticked I never got to see the newest Stars Wars movie.
No way that's a throwaway.
Re: the debate
I think a valuable piece of advice from humans to ponies would be "Don't believe everything you hear."
Re; trains
CN and Amtrak, huh? IIRC, the Amtrak service across Michigan gets up to 110mph in places.
Another cute chapter.^^
7025383 You did not miss much. It was basically a reboot of episode 4.
I can see why pegasi might not like to be touched by kids. Their feathers would be vulnerable to messing up and it takes a long time to preen them back into place. As for other ponies I would just assume a personal preference. In a less crowded environment and being introduced to the children, I think ponies would like children.
7025368 I could see a scratch behind the ears just because of the way their bodies are built, but not from like
everyone
of course, a child isn't going to think that through. They're going to see a pettable animal and like children are wont to do, they will mob it. Children mob things. It is a specialty of children.
...to their doom.
Seriously though, here are the 'passenger miles per fatality or serious injury' for the US and the UK:
UK: 5·1m
USA: 80k
No wonder so few people travel by rail in America!
7025534
Well, no, so few people travel by rail because we have better things to do with our vacation than spend it in transit. If it's a long enough distance to use mass transit, you may as well fly. I looked at rail to go to Las Vegas from the east coast--two days each way. I don't like trains that much.
They'd damn well have better not have tried to indoctrinate her with the Disney heresy that doesn't exist.
I hope someday we'll have a true 7th movie. Probably based on the Truce at Bakura or X-Wing: The Rebel Opposition.
7025409 An appendix removal?
7025600 Heir to the Empire or X-Wing: Rogue Squadron would be better choices. If you want to put a villain on the screen you can't go wrong with Mith'raw'nurodo or Ysanne Isard.
I have inserted a word to improve your sentence.
As a casual Star Wars fan, I liked the new movie. Rey's a piece of infallible guttershite, though.
7025670
Skipping ahead 4-5 years after Endor would probably confuse people, but then, since Disney ruined Star Wars to coddle those di'kute, nobody cares.
So since she fell asleep among college friends, she obviously has a mustache drawn on her face for the next day, right? (And I'm taking the high road, I'm aware what the stereotypical college student draws on people instead.)
Does Silver Glow realize how large the population of the US is?
I love this image of Silver attempting to change the direction the film was flying by flapping her wings.
So many assumptions. Understandable ones, yes, but I find myself hoping Silver talks to more people to clear up some of these misunderstandings. Of course, when it comes to politics, I'm not sure if I want her to do so. That's a pretty big can of worms right there.
As for the movie, I liked it. Abrams demonstrated that he understood what made the first trilogy work. Now that he's established that, he'll hopefully cover new ground in the future.
7025560 Long enough distance to use mass transit?
Both trains and planes are mass transit. But trains are for shorter distances than planes are. I live across the street from a station which can take me either to the nearest coastal city (12 miles), or the airport (25 miles), or let me off at any point in between. That's what trains are for.
The reason you don't see this sort of use in America is because the passenger rail system was dismantled to force people to use cars.
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The passenger rail system was dismantled because it was a massive money-losing operation. The old Union Station in St. Louis, Missouri, is now a shopping mall and museum, and one of the displays pointed out that passenger operations lost money for the railroads, and were used mostly to advertise their actually-profitable freight operations--and were as slow and terrible as the ICC allowed where they had no competitors for freight business. This was when their competing transit mode was mostly Conestoga wagons, not cars and trucks.
7025759 You've got similar jumps between the only three movies that actually matter. The thing that'll confuse the audience is that the story is suddenly too complicated for them to follow in an Abrams-induced haze of lens flares and explosions.
7026331 All that proves is that American rail companies didn't know what a passenger rail service should be like. A route intended to shift wooden crates 500 miles with no stops is not very much use to a person who wants to commute to ten miles to work and back every day.
In the rest of the world how we need to travel dictates what rail lines are laid down. The 20th century american project of dismantling inner and inter city commuter rail is the other way around. It's a miracle things like BART or the NYC subway managed to survive this.
Remember your original comment where you said you'd rather fly than use a train. For most people worldwide the train is how you get to the airport in the first place.
Though politics is an explosive topic, whether it is true or not modern politics is meant to evoke certain emotions to get you to vote for a candidate. If Silver Glow was exposed to this without understanding modern propaganda then I'm surprised at her low key response to the message that America is on the brink of collapse.
I Would have thought that she would be worrying if the exchange program was about to colapse with the collapse of the host country and looking invite her new friends to equestria under refugee status.
Just feel that she would be taking the debates more seriously as she lives in a society where if the leaders were panicking it would probably be a prelude to a dragon attack or something and needed to be taken seriously.
7025236
I was going to do a silly one-shot where nopony actually knew what a bit was worth. They used them more as a sense of obligation to the Crown than an actual item of value.
7025383
It's okay; I haven't either. My research was reading the Wikipedia article and watching the trailers for it.
7025422
It does. West of Kalamazoo is high-speed territory; not so much to the east (although that may have changed since I lived in Kalamazoo).
7025441
There's the whole prey thing going on, too. I've been watching videos about horse psychology, and they really don't like being touched in the face or neck, because that's what predators go for. Silver Glow also doesn't like being in a place where there isn't an easy escape route. As she gets more trusting of her human friends, that will be relaxed somewhat.
7025457
Children are the devil.
7025534
Where did you get your stats? I came across a heavily-biased article once where they were comparing airline safety to rail safety, and in the case of airlines, they only mentioned ticketed passenger fatalities. For rail, they counted anyone who was killed where a train was involved, including people who ran crossings and got hit by trains.
Europe's got a safer system, but Amtrak's had fewer than 200 fatalities in 40 years, IIRC.
7025606
Yes.
7025684
Oops. Correction made!
I'm not a hardcore fan, and from watching the previews, I think I'd like the movie.
7025761
Surprisingly, no. That wasn't a thing where I went to college.
You didn't want to get skunked in euchre, though. There were consequences.
7025808
In terms of having covered it in a book? Yes. Intellectually? No.
7025890
I watched an IMAX movie once about water, and there was a scene where the helicopter flew over a waterfall. I grabbed onto my armrests and thought I was falling for a second. There's no way a pegasus could watch some of those flight scenes and not try to level herself out (incidentally, that was a problem for her on the airplane, too).
7025950
My brother had to explain American politics to Canadians. They didn't get it.
I haven't seen any of the newer Star Wars movies yet, so I can't really comment on them. I think there are very different interpretations between the hardcore fans and the casuals.
7026929
She's smart enough to know that she doesn't fully understand the big picture (which is more than can be said for some people), and I just have a feeling the ponies don't really worry too much until they're actually seeing the monster. That is to say, she hears some doom and gloom from the candidates, but she doesn't see anything that ought to worry her, so she assumes that whatever problems they're debating are vague and nebulous, and probably won't affect her.
She's pretty good with the English.
LOL
So true...
7031532
um . . . she picked it up from an episode of Law and Order.
(Alondro for Emp... uhm... Benevolent Dictator 2017!)
Not necessarily a bad thing, I would say.
"When I work up the next morning"
woke?
7139793
Correction made, thank you!
We need a scene with her using a HTC Vive.
She saw the Farce Awakens. It is SWINO (Star Wars In Name Only). We still have 6 real movies of Star Wars.
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3 of the 4 new movies are good. The latest, the Farce Awakens, is SWINO (Star Wars in Name Only). It is true that George Lucas messed up Star Wars Episode Ⅰ: The Phantom Menace, so that it is cluttered (it needs another pass through editing), but it is a real Star Wars. The other 2 Star „ars are as good as the Original Trilogy.
When Episode Ⅰ was not as good as they hoped, hipsters decided that it would be cool to hate all Prequels. Hipsters trying banally to be cool does not impress me and it should not impress you either.
These are the Star-Ratings I personally give the movies:
Ⅰ 2 Stars
Ⅱ 3 Stars
Ⅲ 4 Stars
Ⅳ 3 Stars
Ⅴ 4 Stars
Ⅵ 3 Stars
Ⅶ 1 Star
I am tempted to give the Farce Awakens 0 stars, but it is not quite the worse movie I ever seen. The best Movie is 2001: A Space-Odyssey with a perfect 5 Stars. I recommend watching the 6 real Star-Wars Movies, but skipping the Farce Awakens because it is garbage which is not even Star Wars and instead. watching 2001: A Space-Odyssey.
7386739 I sense you're slightly put out by the fact that they brought Han Solo back just to kill him. If you're a true fan then you would have noted that it's eerily similar to the original Star Wars vis a vis the death of Obiwan. I rate it a solid 3 stars.
7386788
You are entitled to your wrong opinion, but I shall share something I wrote. It might open your eyes:
¿Why do ponies like this SWINO (Star Wars In Name Only)? It does not happen in the same Universe:
Not only does this movie reject the extended universe, but it cannot even be said to take place in an alternate future after the movies but takes place in a little claustrophobic universe:
The Universe of the Original 6 Movies is a big Universe with over a billion inhabited worlds, in a galaxy with 100 billion stars, with about 1 trillion uninhabitable worlds orbiting those stars. The average inhabited wold has a population of trillion (100 times the population of Earth) and the City-World of Coruscant has a population of 1 quadrillion (100, thousand times the population of Earth). The total population of the Galaxy is 1 Sextillion sentient organics and about as many sentient droids.
Swino takes place in a little universe with little stars with little planets. One can see clear across the Galaxy to see what happens in real time from the surface of any planet, during the day. The map in BB 8 and R2D2, show a galaxy with about a thousand stars.
In Star Wars Episodes # Ⅱ & Ⅲ show maps of the Galaxy with so many stars that they look like a cloud. Magnified regions show stars like dust. Globular clusters in orbit around the Galaxy have over a million stars each, or about a thousand times as many stars as the map R2D2 and BB8 show in Swino, yet globular clusters are just fluff in orbit around the galaxy.
In the universe of Swino, Rey, with no instruction, figures out the force, which took her father and grand father 3 movies each of instruction to do.
We have baddies on an Imperator-Class Stardestroyer, lead by a baddy wearing a mask, looking for an astromechdroid on a desert. A Forcesenative person rescues the Astromechdroid. The baddies make a planetdestroying superweapon. That is the plot of Star Wars Episode # Ⅳ: A New Hope. Swino is not just a Swino, but a bad remake of a good movie.
The characterization is just awful and inconsistent. I can summarize it with 1 example:
Fin defects from the Stortroopers because he does not want to kill. I have no trouble with this. I also have no trouble with him killing later in self-defense and defense of others; as Malcolm Reynolds says, "¡If someone tries to kill you, try to kill them right back!". I find him murdering his friends and colleges, with whom he trained for years, for no discernible reason, problematic:
He and the the Resitencepilot steal a TIEFighter for escaping. It has a tether attached to one of its radiatorpanels. Finn has to shoot the tether for freeing the Tiefighter. While he is at it, he massacres murders as many of his friends as he can, for no reason.
Characterization goes downhill from that point onward with twentysomething generals (it takes decades to move up the ranks) in the leadership of the First order, acting like manchildren instead of military-officers. I find it hard to believe that these manchildren managed to build a superweapon.
The name Resistance makes no sense:
I get that after the death of the Emperor, the Empire descended into civil war as every Moff, General, Admiral, and Commodore fought to be the new Emperor. 1 of the Factions called itself the First Order. The faction the First Order evidently won the civil war. I can see the leaders of the faction the First Order keeping name the First Order. I have trouble with the name the First Order. I do have trouble with the name Resistance:
The Alliance for Restoring the Republic, took advantage of the Imperial Civil War for founding a new Republic. No country calls its military the Resistance. Usually, citizens of the Military of the Republic just the military. When they need to distinguish it from other militaries, they would call it the Military of the Republic.
George Lucas started to say this before he caught himself:
7386985
Mary Sue just knows JediMindTricks, telekenesis and can overpower a Sith Lord partially trained under Luke Skywalker and finished training under a Sith Lord despite having no training. She also speaks AstroMechDroid, something no other biological can do. If she would be a pony, ¡she would be a Black and Red Alicorn!
It violates established canon such as the universe being big —— ¡one can see clear across the galaxy in the middle of the day in real time! Ships can jump into and out of hyperspace in confined spaces, within shields, and atmospheres, thus rendering planetary defense-shields, the shields of DeathStars, and the shields of that thing in the Farce Awakens useless. In 1977 Episode Ⅳ had many different types of fighters for both the Empire and the Alliance to Restore the Republic, but the Farce Awakens only has X-Wings and 1 kind of Tie-Fighter. The Farce Awakens is garbage.
7388654
It is true that Anakin is Force-Sensitive, as was Leia and Luke, but they could not do JediMindTricks, controlled telekinesis, and LightSaberCombat without training. In 6 previous movies, no biological could understand AstroMechDroid without a ProtocolDroid translating or text appearing on a monitor. Mary Sue puts the Chosen 1 to shame.
When R2D2 woke up ta just the right time to lead to the end of the movie, we see that the map with only a few thousand stars covers only a we kiloparsecs —— ¡a parsec is a measure of length! The whole galaxy would have only a few myriads (a myriad is 10,000) of stars.
In the Prequels, we see maps with stars like dust.
Since we saw nothing like this in no previous movie, this is special pleading.
To me, it seemed like the name of the military of the New Republic.
Your explanation is nonsensical:
We have to Force-Sensitive characters about the same age, but one has no no training, while the other has received Force-Training since a child with LightSaberCombat. Darth Angsty Teen should have phoned in his victory against Untrained Mary Sue.
7389200 You do know that a battle is decided purely by aptitude? Or strength? State of mind, conditions, setting and of course luck are all factors that plays in. Not to mention that the dynamic of a fight can change radically at any moment and that change can be provoked by any of these factors.
7389220
We have a case of someone with no sword-training getting into a sword-fight against someone with thousands of hours of sword-training. Darth Teen Angst should have rapidly dispatched Untrained Mary Sue.
By the way, the lightsaberbattles suck in the Farce Awakens. The best lightsaberbattles are in the Prequels. The 1s in the Original Trilogy are okay, but the 1s in the Farce Awakens are terrible. Darth Teen Angst does not even know how to build a proper lightsaber:
The lightsaber of Darth Angst spills plasma, thus making it dangerous to wield.
The above video is all LightSaberDuels in all of the movies. The best Duels are in the Prequels, followed by the Original Trilogy, with the Farce Awakens coming in dead last. The Prequels have 45 minutes of duels, the Original Trilogy has only 15 minutes, and the Farce Awakens has less than 5 minutes.
7389564 Should, but didn't.
If you look in real life, both war and sports give you exemple on how knowledge, experience and strenght won't guarrantee a victory.
Not to mention that training doesn't mean proper training.
Or that Luke may have not focussed much on sword figthing and force control and more on the more "spiritual" side of the jedi training. And it would make sense then to have a rebelious teen feeling that his training is going nowhere to go away and try himself with a better stronger path.
As for the rest, I don't know what it got to do with anything.
Anyway, well choregraphied sword duel don't make a great movie. The prequel sucked. Hard.
7389620
As I already stated, hipsters pretending to hate something to be cool does not impress me. It certainly is true that Episode Ⅰ needs another pass in editing, but the other 2 movies are as good as the Original Trilogy. If one watches the Prequels and pays close attention to Senator Palpatine of Naboo, one can watch him subtly manipulate events, such that over a 13-year period, he rises from mere Senator from a backwater system to absolute power. It is quite enthralling.
7391597
The 1st movie went overboard with the special effects, but the other 2 movies walked it back. He did a similar thing with the Special Editions and then had to walk that back too. I guess the lesson is that just because one has Industrial Light & Magic at one's disposal does not mean that one should not get carried away. Well now, Disney bought Lucas Film, including Sprocket and Industrial Light & Magic.
I take it that you you did not like all of the talk about the Politics of the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon-Empire and international relations between the United Federation of Planets, the Romulan Empire, and the Klingon-
Empire in Star Trek Ⅵ: The Undiscovered Country.
The Prequels are about how Sheev Palpatine (Darth Sidious) came to power. Palpatine puts Machiavelli to shame:
7392651 I don't know, I never saw the sixth Star Trek.
Anyway, political talk in itself can be great. When your dialogue is well writted, feel real and is delivered by great acting, why not?
None of that in Star Wars.