Yadda Yadda Yadda · 3:55am Sep 2nd, 2017
Well, I had a rant earlier today. I think I might be turning into Quibble Pants.
There's always a lot on my mind and I'm often wanting to just ramble on about my thoughts because I'm hecka bored and want to talk to somebody. And then when I do have some blog post or comment or something, I start backtracking thanks to paranoid worries about sounding stupid and facing what others might say. Even though most of the time, people just read the thingies I write and then move on...
Anyhoozles, more of my wild thoughts, involving a recent comic reading and ship-a-dee-doo-dahs.
So, even though they came out back in... February, I think?--anyway, I got around to reading those comics with Shadow Lock the book eraser (because I honestly found that kind of interesting), and while I did enjoy the comic... I've gotta be honest, I actually laughed out loud over the fact that Shadow Lock is like the Anti-Kazam. I mean, just look at their reactions to finding out about an evil ancestor:
SL: Freaks out and starts erasing books in a misguided attempt to erase his evil ancestor's influence
Kaz: Gets inspired, practices dark magic behind family's back, and turns ponies into vampires in order to emulate his ancestor
I had to get up and leave to walk off the giggles that the line "What if somepony wants to cause harm?! What if reading those stories will inspire them to bring it back?!" I swear, if Kazam existed in that universe, Shadow Lock probably would have pointed to him as an example. 
On another note, why is it that everything important in Equestria's history happens prior to Luna's Banishment a millennium ago? There's a thousand years between that event and the events of the first episode, and as far as I can tell, they've only covered the founding of Ponyville (and alluded to some Victorian-esque era in A Hearth's Warming Tail) as being part of that timeframe. Do you really expect me to believe that everything was hunky-dory and peachy keen for the thousand years when Celestia ruled alone?
Well, my history of party ponies covers my theories on that thousand-year timeframe...
Another weird thing, I'm kinda sorta shipping Twilight and Shadow Lock. Somebody I watch on DeviantArt had a comic on revealing him as the mysterious father of Twilight's kid, and that ended up catching my attention for some reason. There's not much art of the ship and most of it is essentially chicken scratch, but... I dunno, I think it's kinda cute. I think I'd enjoy shipping the Princess of Friendship with that paranoid nutcase. 
And with that... okay, I'm actually amazed to say that I actually have a ship for most of the Mane Six. Yeah, I was not too keen on shipping at the start, having only one serious ship, but a bunch of ships started to creep up on me and before I knew it I was a little too eager to start my own NextGen. Granted, I was more into ships of minor characters, but now I've found some Mane Ships that I've taken a liking to...
~Soarinjack: I was reading some fanfics back in 2012 (wasn't an active part of the fandom creating stuff; just watched the show and checked out some art and fics and that's it), and I read a few fics with this ship. They were adorable and there's still a special place in my heart for this one. I don't think I can bring myself to get into another Applejack ship... XD
~CheesePie: This is the ship that actually got me creating content! I watched Pinkie Pride, loved it, entertained the idea of shipping Pinkie and Cheese because I loved their interactions at the end, and a week later, I had a picture of Discord shipping them. I just kept falling deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole, writing fanfiction, coming up with foals for them, diving more into Cheese's history and giving him a brother... yeah, I'm a major sucker for this ship, and have been for these past three and a half years.
~Nimbershy: Normally, I try to stay away from CanonXOC ships--put those torches and pitchforks away--but after dressing him up as a tree in one ask on Tommy's blog, I then expanded my doofus actor Nimbus' character to have a fascination with flora and fauna (and boxing, but that's a different story). That, and I joked to myself about how great of friends he and Fluttershy would be (since they're trees, hurr hurr). After somebody dared me to draw a pic with Flutters and Nimbus shipping, it then ended up spiraling out of control because I actually found it kind of cute. And now poor Nimbus has to go through Discord... XD
~QuibbleDash: I see the preview for Stranger than Fan Fiction, and I try to resist shipping it because I knew that Rainbow and Quibble would have a fallout. I watch the actual episode, and the ship has caught me in its snare, trapping me with the glorious chemistry and the agreeing to disagree at the end and them complimenting each other and... and.... yo ho, yo ho, a shipper's life for me...
~TwiLock: I already explained this above.
Poor Rarity, I don't have a ship for her yet--I haven't found a stallion for her yet! It's kind of ironic that she's the one who canonically has shown interest in marriage, and in my 'verse, she might end up being the last of them to find her special somepony (or maybe even remain single--I mean, I was going to give that to Rainbow Dash, but then Quibble Pants happened). Don't worry, darling, I'm sure you'll catch one with your fabulousness soon enough!
Can't say for sure what'd it be--I don't have any hard rules for my personal shipping preferences!
And... that's it for my wild thoughts and my tonight. Might as well shut up now. See you later.
Out of curiosity are you an Ember X Spike fan?
Hold on tight. I'm going to put on my cynic hat. It's like a thinking cap, but it only comes in black.
• If you go by Suri Polomare's assessment, Manehattan is a festering hive of corruption and exploitation, sitting like a boil on Equestria's eastern shore begging to be lanced. By a similar token, according to Wind Rider, the Wonderbolts have had dirty dealings in at least the past few generations.
• Speaking of the 'bolts, "Testing Testing 1-2-3" established that after banishing Luna, Celestia either lost the will to defend herself or became temporarily incapable of doing so, necessitating the formation of the Wonderbolts a year after the sisters' skirmish.
• The fall of Griffonstone happened at some point in the past few centuries, recently enough for a history text to become only somewhat grossly out of date. Though that might not have been in Equestria.
• "Princess Spike" reveals Equestria's nature as less a single nation and more a loosely united coalition of city-states that are held together largely by Celestia's cult of personality, which is weak glue indeed.
• The anti-monster agency was responsible for ensuring that Equestria at least appeared hunky dory on the surface, likely for decades if not centuries before Celestia shuttered the entire operation. (Of course, that requires one to believe that "Slice of Life" was more than Gummy's fever dream.)
• Celestia has apparently been trying and failing to open relations with Yakyakistan for decades at minimum. The absence of any known pony-yak wars is a testament to her skills as either a diplomat or a historical censor.
• Over the course of several generations, two feuding families despoiled one of Equestria's most beautiful natural landmarks without Celestia even noticing, leading to dark implications for other out-of-the-way areas. (cf. Our Town)
• The Equestrian justice system is such that mass mind control, seasonal sabotage, harboring insanely dangerous wildlife (parasprites, Angel Bunny, et al.) and other crimes of dubious sanity are casually swept under the rug, assuming they're criminalized at all.
• Luna is apparently the only pony on the planet capable of entering others' dreams, which means that the psyches of Equestria had free rein to go absolutely bonkers over the course of her banishment. This explains much.
In conclusion, Celestia's Equestria is a pretty place, but scratch under the surface and you'll find cracks and rot aplenty. It's a good thing she has help these days.[/cynic]
Of course, that's the darkest read on the situation that doesn't cast Tia as an outright tyrant with an iron hoof in a velvet sock (or gold hipposandal, as the case may be.)
4655535
Nah, not really. I don't really find Ember all that interesting.
4655664
Glad you've got a cynic cap on and at least found some canon things that suggest Equestria isn't perfect. I've seen a few people around here who think that Equestria's been some perfectly safe utopia for those thousand years, probably because no big disasters have been known to happen in canon during that time--every big event happened prior to Luna's banishment according to the show. Takes a little bit more thought to realize the political uproar that losing one princess could cause, and how enemy nations would try to take advantage of that (hence, like you said, the formation of the Wonderbolts).
I guess I was a little more tired than I thought when I rambled here. Deeper thoughts don't always come to the tired.