Yakkity Sacks (Don't hold back) · 2:19pm Jul 6th, 2015
I greatly enjoyed the Yak episode for several reasons:
1) Proof of countries outside of Equestria that aren't shitholes. Sure they live in a land of fucking permafrost but from what we know of their culture from what the ponies imitated, they are capable of growing hay and other crops. This suggests either magic proficiency even ponies have difficulty with in order to get that shit done in the land they live in or an extremely bloody minded agricultural outlook. Alsot the gates to Yakyakistan look like the gates of fucking Valhalla, seriously.
2) Prince Rutherford actually looked like a prince. If Yakiyakistan is as isolated as it appears this suggests a vibrant economy in spite of the isolation or at least, healthy enough for their royal family to look suitably royal (I did think it was a nice touch to put two crowns, one on either horn),
3) War were declared. This is more of a pet peeve of mine in the fandom regarding the ponies but bollocks does this world exist without poverty, crime, disease, prejudice and war. We see poverty in a few places (Pinkie's rock farm is a borderline case, but the equalist commie hellhole village DEFINITELY counts, holy shit), prejudice and mean spiritedness exists (Manehatten in general) diseases and injuries exist that cant just be insta-magic'd away (the entire impetus behind the flim flam brothers and their cure all placebo) and now, because Chryssi's little palace coup attempt wasn't proof enough, war exists. And fuck Godlestia canons, its definitely treated as something to be fucking concerned about. Not something you could just throw a Celestia shaped bomb at because that woman is fallible on her own and its possible to fucking kill her based on what we seen when she went up against Chryssi. All those flashy royal guards? Turns out they may actually be necessary for their safety at times, which explains why they're still around. The main counter to this is Dragon Ball Twilight with all four alicorns being more powerful than all the ponies magic in equestria, + Discord's + Tirek's. Problem. This was Twilight, OP please nerf, Element of Fuck You wielding this power. I am willing to bet dollars to donuts that her power advantage was due to a magnification effect because of her element and her own natural talent for magic, any other alicorn with all four alicorns' worth of power probably wouldn't have fared so well. It'd still be good against, say, an army. But its one person against an army. Numbers WILL overwhelm anything short of fucking God. A Yakyakistani invasion was a serious threat. Although seeing as its a war of honour I doubt it'd be little more than charging in, winning a few battles, sacking a couple of cities and fucking off back home with their loot. Modern people seem to think all wars are zero sum affairs when most weren't.
TL;DR: Wars are canon and everything that implies. Have fun sleeping tonight, Bronies!
4) An inverse of the proud warrior race guy tradition of being humiliated and emasculated. This was a genuine surprise. Here's this race of proud warrior race guys, this is a little girls cartoon, you'd inevitably think the Worf Effect would follow. Nope! Proud warrior race guys remain proud warrior race guys, next to no fuckery involved. Although it did seem that way given how easily offended they were, in the end it kind of makes sense. Yaks, by their own standards, hold other Yaks and Yak goods to very high standards (almost impossibly high by foreigners), is this conceited, perhaps, but it was their way. The show goes out of its way in the end to show that the Yaks didn't expect anyone to be like them, or to have the same standards or ways of thinking, they were going to Pony land, to make friends with ponies, and expected to see and experience pony things. They were open minded and willing to tolerate and engage in a foreign culture for the sake of diplomacy, what they got was insulting imitation of their own culture which to their outrageous standards, appeared to be parody after mockery. Yet the second they experience the party and Equestrians acting authentically Equestrian, they had fun, rescinded the declaration of war and joined in on the shenanigans. They wanted to be friends, they knew and expected the ponies wouldn't be like themselves and they were fine with that, in fact, I dare say they wanted that. They could not abide by fakery and sophistry. I like the Yaks, I really fucking do, best new race.
As for this weekend past's episode, I really liked it and connected with it for reasons I'd rather not go into. Lets leave it at that.
The Next chapter will be out Later Today, because JBL wants to go over it one more time before it gets released, it'll be released an hour or two later than usual. Blame him, not me. Next chapter after that will be the timeskip chapters. If you don't care for that you might be waiting two weeks for the next chronological chapter, otherwise I advise reading the Witch of Ifrendare arc right up to the point where Handy is on the airship going to the tournament to familiarize yourself again with that area of the story before those chapters are dropped. They have next to no action and are primarily Handy doing Handy things in the world he's in, just to make a change of pace. Plenty of plot however.
Now, to make up for lack of a new drawing and my lack of access to my keyword runic alphabet to string you guys along, I am putting in two riddles this time around. Now, here's a new rule. For each riddle I want you to only guess once per comment. No more listing off three or more possible answers for a riddle in the one comment, thats not fair. In this blog's case there are two riddles, so you can guess only once for each of them in a single comment. If I tell you its wrong you're allowed to guess again, this is just to make things more fair for others. Multiple guess comments will be ignored in favor of later comments.
ALSO it should be noted for the answer to some riddles, the guess will require more than one word to answer. My new rules are not limitations on words used for the guess, but the numbers of guesses themselves.
Riddles, here's the twofer:
1)
A fool and a wise man are sharing a glass of tea, on man takes a sip, and the other follows suit and now half a glass remains. They begin to argue, "Aha!" one says, "since I have drank first, and you have drunk second, I shall have last of the tea's warmth while you will be left with the dregs!" the other nods and counters, "I will have the dregs and the tea will be cold when I take the last sip, but I shall have the lion's share of the sweetness which has fallen to the bottom of the glass, and the flavour, and you shall be left with naught but a shadow of the energy I shall feel!" the first replies, "But look! You still remain last of all when all is said and done," to which the other responds, "When all is said and done I will have reaped the most wealth, what matters if I scrounge amidst the muddy remains to do so?" And on and on they bicker about the tea, and who shall profit most. Yet all the while half the tea remains, untouched and forgotten. Who are the wise and foolish men?
2)
I am pregnant yet never give birth, I am an ocean yet have neither waves nor water, I am invisible yet seen, I am beheld but not understood, I am bright yet dark, I am cold yet born of fire and fury, I am your cradle yet I care for you not, child. What am I?
3)
Um, I don't mean to offend anyone with this. But why, gods why everyone automatically assumes that Tirek is "running"(working) with 1-to-1 conversion ratio. I mean we never see him get any new powers, just him grow bigger and his "magic" abilities stronger. As far as we can tell the stolen magic only acts as battery (power source) for his own power and nothing else. If anything DBZ Twilight shows that alicorn magic to alicorn magic conversion ratio is much better (probably one to one or one-to-nearly one) then pony magic to centaur magic ratio (and that draconequus(?Spirit of chaos?) magic to centaur magic ratio is complete cr...rubish).
As for riddles, my guessed answer for second riddle is "Sky".
My guess for the riddle is "The future".
3211800 Incorrect.
3211834 Wrong on both counts. Note the riddle asks who both of the men are, not which was wise and which was foolish. The clue was in the riddle.
3211768 Incorrect.
I hated the episode primarily for this reason. War is canon now. Canon Equestria doesn't need war.
I like the idea of Equestria as a near-utopia. It's a freaking little girl's cartoon. Little girls don't need to know what war is. They shouldn't know what war is.
The fandom, especially the fanficdom, is full of all sorts of ugly shit - I can't say how many stories I've ditched when griffons declared war out of nowhere. But that's fine. Stories like FoE (or Bad Mondays for that matter, it has enough ugliness) are still good stories.
But I liked it when things like that were only in the fandom.
So why in the hell do you feel a need for more real-world ugliness in the show itself? It doesn't need to be in the show for you to write about it.
3212128 Needed? Oh I didn't, I was quite happy for the show to go on without war being mentioned. The reason why i was glad was because the majority of bronies who do think like you do and prefer a near utopic vision of Equestria are so fucking toxic about it, to the point of slandering fics, regardless of quality outright for breaking precious headcanons. I don't need war in my MLP, but I need my fellow fans to be knocked down a peg, just as the Godlestia ones were knocked down a peg at the end of a Canterlot Wedding.
The only reason Equestria seems at all like a 'utopia' is because it's target audience is children.
We never saw simba and friends rip into a helpless animal as it screamed and begged for its life, but the internal logic of the lion king makes such a scene inevitable. They even lampshade the fact.
Think about what equestria has,
-Sapient predators that must commit murder or starve to death,
-Beings who's temper tantrums can be classed as extinction level events,
-crippled ponies who seem desperate enough to pay for snake oil (leap of faith)
-A physical representation of the Greek depiction of hell.
-mind bending magic and authoritarian cult
Utopia my left foot.
1The first man is rich(therefore wise), while the second is poor(therefore not).
2Silence
3212509 Incorrect on both counts.
3212114 i believe the answer to the second one is the moon/full moon
I don't understand why people thought wars weren't a thing. First off there's armor, spears, and damn offensive spells.
But Charon, those could be used to defend the innocent ponies from the Everfree-
Shush up for a moment, I'm trying to make a point here. Additionally, we already knew about the three tribes' conflict before Unification, with pegasus culture already evidence for the existence of war. Then, we've got Tatarus, which is basically a conglomeration of big bads that have done big, bad things. So yeah, nice to confirm 100% that war is not a foreign concept. Heck, we've even seen from the Daring Do episodes that some ponies are destined for evil. I guess that sucks for them, but you can't argue with violent butt-marks.
So yeah, war may not be a foreign concept, it's still one that has either been diluted through time (see the Appleoosa Pie War), or very rare throughout recent history.
As for the riddles...
*Puts on the dunce cap ad goes to cry in the Stoopid Corner*
Interesting, As I don't watch the show, I pick up this stuff from fan posts, and its always fun to hear new info being thrown out there.
1: Both are wise in their arguments but both are fools for arguing over their drink while it goes cold.
2: I want to say a pause, but some of those parts just confuse me.
1: The man who wanted the last sip is wise as his side of the deal would last. The fool was robbed of his warmth as the time had passed.
2: The Horizon?
I... kind of stopped valuing the background details in MLP. It's fun when they introduce new things to the world, but true consistency seeped away a while ago. The Yaks were cool though.
3212903 I am not saying those episodes were good otherwise, Hans.
3214142 Incorrect on both counts.
3214265 Incorrect on both counts, I asked neither which was wise nor which was foolish, but who the men are.
As a hint: What do you notice about the glass of tea?
For the second riddle, I'd have to go out on a peg and say a Blackhole.
3214456 Incorrect.
1: Both men are fools, they're standing around arguing about the tea, and the tea is going cold.
2: Fuck all if I know. The only thing I can guess is 'the stars'. It doesn't really fulfill the pregnant part aside from being "pregnant with possibilities".
I haven't watched the episode yet, though.
3214549 The first is incorrect and has been stated as such before.
The second... I will accept. The correct answer was 'The Universe', but I would have accepted the Cosmos.
3214560 1. More opinion than the answer to the riddle. I would have drank the tea.
2. Shit, really?
3214571 Yeah, I wasn't expecting to people to have much trouble with the second riddle.
3214574 This makes the third riddle of yours I've answered correctly by bullshitting, y'know.
I don't know, though. I'll probably watch the episodes later today. You got a preferred method?
3214584 I prefer waiting for Youtube uploads, fuck streams and downloading.
3214598 are the wise and foolish men a pessimist and an optimist?
3214657 Holy shit, you got it.
Well, I'll update the cypher tonight with the newly locked in runes.
3214931 'Pregnant with stars' is actually often used actually, or something similar.
I will internally structure the sips by their order. Sips 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Assumedly, bickering takes time. This means that the warmth that was originally the reason for the value of the 3rd sip will be gone by the time the sip occurs. However, this is now an argument about not being last. This means that the individual who originally bragged about getting the warmer mouthful of plant-water is no longer focused on his original goal and has lost potential value because of it. This would indicate that he is a fool if the motivations are as they are understood. However, the individual standing in the way of the conclusion is the individual who will take the 3rd sip. Since he is not taking his turn and not letting the other one take their turn, he is keeping this situation going and loosing the warmth he claims to covet. As such, the individual who is waiting to take the 4rth sip is being tricked. Since we do not know what the trick is, we can not say if it is working and we cannot say if he has been fooled. We can, however, say that their argument is definitely a waist of time.
Simple fact is, those people are not being reasonable human beings. The things they are saying only work from some strange, abstracted mindset. What they are actually saying paints a different picture. End result: One is an aspiring deceiver and one is a patient patronizer.
(This paragraph was added in after reading the answer) Niether indevidual is being more or less optimistic or pessimistic. When 3rd sip guy points out something negative, it is with the intent of showing how wonderful something else is. When the 4rth guy points out something positive, he points out quantifiably better details while disregarding his base emotional reaction. If anything, that would make 4th sip guy a realist and 3rd sip guy is a... what is a word for a person who needs someone else to fail before they feel like they have succeeded?
It's space
3215003 You forgot to carry the 5
3215011
ADMITADLY, I realized that my argument contained the idea that they were fools primarily because they were using up time and effort contemplating something of no value to either of them. I also knew that I was doing basically that by applying any kind of detailed logic to a riddle containing both subjective qualifiers like "fool" and "wise" and also CLEARLY using an abstraction filter for their conversation, but... I mean... have you heard of nerd sniping?
THAT SAID
carry the five.... the empty glasse's value? Like, someone is going to be left with the glass?
OH, that's the trick! 3rd sip guy wants 4rth sip guy to trade sips so that the container will be in his possession at the end.
Also because the bottom sip is still sweet now that the warmth is gone.
3215030 Heh.
But you are right, the terms 'Wise' and 'Fool' were intentional red herrings in this riddle. Both were the Pessimist and the Optimist, for the purposes of the riddle, are the mirror of the other and each of these men could be interpreted either way. Even though what they are arguing over is the 'worth' of the tea (the world), the first man wants what he can get now while its good and be victorious, for their is little worth lingering in the world beyond what he can get. He can be seen as a pessimist, or an optimist depending on how you interpret it, the other man thought their was worth in the world to his benefit, but to such an extent that he 'did not care if he had to scrounge in the mud' of the world to get it. He is the optimist, or the pessimist, again depending on interpretation. It did not matter for both represented modern man and both were arguing pointlessly over the worth of proceeding with the world while the world itself, represented by its half filled/half empty state bothe men left it with, continued about its wordly business, unaffected by their concerns. Both were self interested in the end, rather than ideals or what was actually best for the world, only for what was best in it for themselves. Who was wise and who was foolish? Depends on who you agree with.
3214598 Nyegh. Sometimes Youtube is faster for me.
3214660 u said the clue was in the riddle and it was about the glass, i saw the words "half a glass" and it was easy from there