jaymckinnon.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Inception-Top-Unanswered-Questions-Ending.jpg

52972
Prankception?

52975
The really amusing thing to me is that you called up the wrath of both the anti-clop moral police, the brigade of those who clop only to Her Majesty's Dusky Moon, and the Death to Cadence crowd.

It's like you jumped into a pit containing a lion, a crocodile, and a shark with robot legs wearing nothing but a prime rib as a loincloth.

pic related:
th09.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/f/2012/090/0/6/goodnight_pinkie_pie_by_undead_niklos-d4uk2pf.png

Also I find it incredibly amusing that I never even noticed Comic Sand since that is my favorite font anyway.

53032 Why would you say that?

Unintentional auto-trolling is the best sort, really!

I would click a title like that because I'd be hoping that it would be good enough to give me a boner :3
53032 a.deviantart.net/avatars/t/w/twilightnoplz.png Comic Sans is terrible, how could you ever suggest that it's good in any way, shape or form?!
53028
fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/090/0/6/goodnight_pinkie_pie_by_undead_niklos-d4uk2pf.png

Strangely, I didn't see the changed title-- It was still the one you submitted under when I got to it, despite being entirely in Comic Sans at the same time.
But my opinion on the matter is... Yeah, Revoke. It could definitely use the retooling you mention, in a really big way.

52981
My muse is a [BUY SOME APPLES]ing idiot this weekend.

53857
Mine is always like that. That's why I put her in that hole in the basement.

Wait hold on that got away from me somewhere

This looks like a potentially interesting story. You lost me at Sola and Princess Everfree though. For a moment, I thought there might have just been a straight break from canon. So, exactly how does this whole business get to where it is now? If you are serious about this piece, it'd be nice to know.

P.S.
I know it was a RL tradition at one time, but it seems ludicrous to have a whole multi-generational line of ponies with the same name. Could you least give the foal a little something unique? In any case, it'll start sounding strange if you have Cadence looking/calling for Cadence.

Eh, device heretic? You trying to make your forum self be the manifestation of Trollestia or something?

64907
Eh, the story that became "Indiscretions" was an elaborate exercise in exorcism. I don't really know what the hell is up with it; for all its veiled references to my other head-canon stories, it's clearly not what happened in anybody's past.

Cadence calling her foal "Cadence" is a similarly elaborate exercise, this one in butt-covering. I truly have no idea how this character is going to be presented when she actually appears, and was leaving the issue open as to whether Cadence, as she appears, is actually the unborn foal, or merely the distant scion of this family. Like I said, I hate working pre-canon. The only reason this story got written was that it wouldn't shut up and I couldn't get back to stories I actually like writing until it was done. I blame Auric.

52981

That is the best comment I've ever seen.

I'm in the middle of copying your entire body of work to my dumbphone. I decided to do this on a Saturday night just before midnight, where tomorrow morning will find me feverishly attempting to keep the lyrics apace with the worship leader. I realize now the mistake I made.

Only one part of this decision is not regrettable: choosing your works. Not due to their invariably high quality, no; simply because I don't have to replace any stinking smartquotes or smartapostrophes with dumbquotes so my dumbphone won't display it(Chinese character)s or you(Chinese character)re.

I left this note on this blog post relating to this story, because this story is where I stopped after renaming the entirety of Infernal Machines, Contraptionology, and their various appendices, "contrp01.txt," "contrp02.txt," etc. I found the tone of your post to match my mood entirely too well.

1119484
Thank you. I personally despise smart quotes and turn them off as a matter of habit due to the fact that I cut my teeth as a writer on a lo-tech text-only mailing list where they didn't display properly, though I admit that a modern pro piece will have to have them in the final polished version. Here, though, I do what I like. Thanks for responding!

1119708
I wish Phil or Bob would discover the wonders of pony...

1121563
Just so I do not inappropriately presume what you mean, who exactly?

1121672
The rabbit and the horse, respectively. I cut my teeth on the same list, but due to bad IRL friends' negative influence, I've been lurking for a decade instead of writing. Then I lost my list-topical mojo in 2009 when my dysphoria accidentally self-corrected.

Pony rekindled joy and wonder, and rebooted my writing. I put out over a hundred pony quickfics ( <1k words) in 2011 on 4chan; someday, I'll actually post them here anthologically. I grew up reading the pile of Reader's Digests on the back of the toilet, so I still have a hard time writing anything of length.

Good drama makes a deep impression, you know. Every once in a while, I hear or see the name "Barnes," and have a vague memory of a lighter, a scream, and a father's gaze. Then I shiver.

1123292
Thanks! I thought that's who you meant, but I didn't want to charge ahead and confuse you if it wasn't.

You might snag Bob with the raw hook of the equine alone, but I don't see where Phil would be drawn in. Phil's stories revolve around the theory of friendship as a subrational force; this is a philosophy that would be antithetical to Twilight, and the show, which draws power from friendship as an analyzable, higher-order thing. But what do I know?

Glad to hear my old stuff still resonates. I'm a much better writer now, but there's nothing like the raw emotional drive of one's first few stories.

Objectivism is an insufficiently developed, though relatively hardy and accurate, philosophy. Its own irrationalities are dismissed by those who are as blind to their own natures as dear Ayn was. If I can succeed in standing on the shoulders of Atlas (among other giants), Phil will come around.

Thank you, by the way, for the last line of your reply. If I see Pinkie Plural in that light instead of merely "my best work yet," hope fills my heart.

1125433
The problem with Objectivism is that it is correct in many important ways, but blind to the fact that altruism is, ultimately, deeply beneficial to society.

Ultimately the problem with objectivism is that it leads to suboptimal behavior in the pursuit of optimal behavior because Ayn Rand forgot that not being a dick is actually useful socially.

Bioshock deconstructed objectivism and I think it was an interesting study as to why it didn't work.

1223784
Bioshock is a really funny example. The authors have apparently taken the stance that while hard-core Objectivism will drive overall quality of life into the crapper, things don't really start going to hell in a handbasket until people like Andrew Ryan start monkeying with the free market by giving little tugs to the chain of industry. One could argue that Ryan's move to nationalize the fisheries was the actual start of the complete meltdown of the city, and unless I'm an even worse study of the philosophy than I think I am, nationalizing a private company is ridiculously far out of the Objectivist code. It's an interesting take on things. Certainly, it made me think more than any First Person Shooter ever has.

(...at least before the whole thing sort of turned crappy in the last act, gameplay and all...)

1223946
But there is no such thing as the free market. That's the big lie.

The free market doesn't exist. There is no such thing. It is a myth. A convenient lie. A pretention.

People with power can tug on "the chains of industry". The only free market is a market where there is no capital, because when there is capital, there is an imbalance of power, and the ability to twist the market to your own ends.

The only want to ensure a "free" market is to regulate it to prevent people from doing exactly that. But then it isn't "free" either, is it, even though it actually is much more like the ideal free market than one without regulation.

Humans innately build pyramids because it is useful to do so.

1223996
I essentially agree. I do wonder what the writers' intent was to show, though? It seems to move from "Objectivism sucks" to "Objectivism is a lie," a subtly different shade of damnation.

1224039
Well, is there even a difference ultimately?

I think the reason why objectivism sucks is because it is built on the faulty premise that if people act in their own self-interest that everything will turn out fine, when in actuality it doesn't really work that way - if you can boost yourself up by pushing someone else down, you have every incentive to do so, and you'd really be a fool NOT to unless there was some sort of external force preventing you from doing so.

Basically the key is enlightened self interest, but once you start talking about enlightened self interest then you realize that the whole individualism is the way thing doesn't really work, because ultimately, there are lots of reasons why altruism IS in your enlightened self interest. Governments exist to force everyone to play by the same rules, which IS in everyone's enlightened self interest ultimately as otherwise, people have no incentive not to steal from or murder you. And it is very easy to kill people, or to trap them with fear - Ryan lost even before the protagonist of Bioshock showed up.

1224059 1224039 Oh dear, what have I started? (evil grin)

Ayn Rand was being edgy and controversial by describing self-interestedness as selfishness and altruism as slavery, but she was careful to define her terms very precisely. The altruism against which Objectivists rail is the hardcore philosophical viewpoint that the value in life is to give and give until you give up your means of income, your sanity, or your very life. It sounds good as long as you're the one being given to, but it's terrifying to be the one of whom anything is expected at any time. (Ask any codependent caretaker who has realized what psychic vampires she has invited across her threshhold.)

The altruism of everyday language is a different concept, and is more akin to the Element of Harmony known as Generosity, or the Agape (self-sacrificial love) of the Bible's New Testament, and is not incompatible with Objectivist economics or philosophy. It is the adding of value to others' lives, not its regulated transfer from one who has to one who hasn't. It is a gift given by one who has no obligation to give.

The real problem with Objectivism is that it discounts the subjective realities we face simply because they are subjective, without seeing the subjectivism buried in each and every moral decision. Value is subjective at its core, no matter how cold and calculated the means of obtaining or creating value. No thing can be good or bad in and of itself; we smile when young Lilo graphs the "badness level" of Stitch, because we intuitively recognize that there are no calipers or thermometers to detect such things. Applebloom's lack of flight is no tragedy, but Scootaloo's wings are a broken promise, and all because of subjective realities. What Ayn Rand spoke of as "objective values" are actually subjective values agreed upon by anyone who starts from the same premises as her, and thinks them through in the way she considered reasonable and logical. Such shared values may be cultural, but as long as their very nature is subjective, they can not be objective.

In short, Ayn Rand knew how to stir up controversy, but was blind to the fact that not everyone values truth above feeling good, and that some people will willingly believe a flawed viewpoint because the arguments against it are TL;DR.

1224147
Well, the real problem isn't about valuing truth over feeling good. The real problem is that Ayn Rand's "truth" isn't really truth. Well, some of it is (there is no God, for instance, and expecting people to act against their self interests tends not to end very well) but the problem is she had trouble with the concept of enlightened self-interest and understanding the complexities that go into building a true system of morality.

More or less her greatest goods were arbitrary, and ultimately her system doesn't actually work towards maximizing said greatest goods in the end.

It isn't a bad thing that objectivism exists; I am glad that she spoke about selfishness being a good thing (because it actually IS a good thing, sort of). The problem is that people assume it is some great truth because it points out some obvious flaws elsewhere, without dealing with its own.

After all, there is a reason humans are social creatures, and why ants, termites, and bees are very successful evolutionarily speaking. Humans and wolves are pack hunters for a reason, after all.

1224266 You've enumerated the major reasons I consider myself post-Objectivist. My own philosophy is informed by nuts with a few good points (Ayn Rand, Nietzche, Dave Sim, Jean Baudrillard), but also by TV shows like MLP and Star Trek. It's all very pop philosophy, but that's because the heavy lifting has already been done by the classics, leaving only the very general and the very specific to be clarified.

There are three types of societies: hives, herds, and packs. Figuring out which schema informs the social groups you partake in is a good idea.