Alright, since there's a new feature on fimfiction to add a group icon, we clearly must use this for more Miss Harshwhinny. While the process for adding an icon may be a little too technically complicated for our admin, I felt compelled to create a number of Harshwhinny icons for the group anyways, already at the right scale.

So here we are:

Edit: Wait a minute, how did those last two get in the post? Eh, whatever.

1075126
The third one truly captures her greatness!

1075134
You're insane. The fifth one is truly the epitome of Harshwhinny!

1075137
I guess we could take the average of our answers and pick #4?

1075141
Averages? That makes no sense.
You chose #3, and I chose #5.
3 x 5 = 15
1 + 5 = 6
We should obviously choose #6!

1075141 "average" is not a word I would use to describe Harshwhinny. That being said, I do believe the third or the seventh are truly magnificent. Just because she's a paragon of excellence doesn't mean Harshwhinny should stop being cute.

1075197
You're absolutely correct. She's not average at all! And because of how "great" she is, we should pick the highest (or "greatest") numbered picture that is not either Twilight or the plot-shot of that crystal pony masseuse.

Incidentally, I don't know how those last two got in there either. It may be that our old pre-Beowulfgate moderator is silently sabotaging posts again.

Mod here. I couldn't figure it out but then my cat jumped on the keyboard and I guess randomly pressed the correct buttons to pick the last one. Fortune smiles on us today!

1075390
Maybe we should give the cat admin privileges. He seems to be doing a pretty good job.

I just want to commend everyone for really keeping this thread on topic.

1075394
Damnit, please stay on-topic. If you want to discuss how on-topic a thread is, please take it to Topicality.

1075390>>1075393

I fully support giving the kitty its own account and admin rights. And maybe a can of tuna for being a good kitty.

--Sweetie Belle

1075126 1075151
As the founding (and so far only) member of the Harshwhinny Purity Club, I must express my fecund abundance of outrage — OUTRAGE! — at the portrayal of Miss Harshwhinny as shown in icon #6.

Look at it. LOOK AT IT!

THIS IS AN UNACCEPTABLE SEXUALIZATION OF OUR BELOVED OBJECT OF WORSHIP. It contains NOTHING of the stern majesty that drew us to her in the first place. She is neither judging anything nor suffering from a series of contrived, comical mishaps. She's even smiling. SMILING!

The only reason for this icon's existence is gratuitous plot.

LOOK UPON IT AND JOIN ME IN OUTRAGE.

1076972
I'm trying to get my outrage on, but that icon's not giving me much to work with. Could you, say, zoom in to 4x magnification, so that I can let the full effect soak in?

1076974
Of course! I'm proud of you. Very few people show such dedication to properly comprehending the true depths of the depravity we fight.

ZOOM!

1076976
Better! Much better. I can feel the, um, outrage start to flow.

But it's awfully pixelated.

1076978
I can fix that. Anything for a fellow moral crusader!

SMOOTH!

1076981
Sweet! Now do that "Enhance" thing they do on CSI!

1076987
Sure! ENH—

— hang on. Dude. You know that doesn't work in real life, right? Only on TV.

1076990
Miss Harshwhinny's from a TV show, so it should work perfectly fine.

1076992

ENHANCING DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY. It has nothing to do with who the image is about. It's mathematically impossible to create sharper images from a tiny source, because there's a limited amount of data in the JPEG file, and you can't create new data out of thin air. It's like trying to pull a one-foot-wide cube out of a six-inch-wide box.

1076990

It's your lucky day. It's awfully boring out here in the void of a doxxed timeline, I've got mind-blowing future technology, and I'm feeling generous.

ENHANCE!

– the once and f. SSH

1076995

What the…

1076995
HOLY SHIT DUDE. You are a GOLDEN GOD.

Crop! Crop on the good stuff!

1076997
CROP!

– the once and f. SSH

1076999
Oh sweet stars and gold medals, yes. I think I just outraged.

Hey 1075390's cat, can you change the group icon again?

1077002 this one time, I outraged on a bus and they made me leave....

Can I second the motion?

Hello there. My name is Skywriter, from the FiMFiction Indecency Watch group. Basically, we monitor the groups and stories on FiMFiction.net to make certain that the place is as indecent as possible. As a result, I would also like to voice my support for the plot-heavy group icon.

Okay, one, guys, stop outraging all over the place, or at least have the decency to wipe up after yourselves afterward. Second, I am not letting Manny the Cat near my keyboard on the off chance that he will, again, change the group icon. We're lucky to have gotten off as favorably as we did. Manny could have kickbanned the lot of you. And I can't stress enough that I don't even know how to reverse these things once done. In fact, there seem to be an awful awful lot of really arcane controls on the moderator control panel. I don't even want to speculate on the function of this "biomorphic ponification" selector button. Is this really the sort of thing you want my cat randomly doing to your accounts?

1076999
Surely you mean "croup".

1076999
Great. Now enlarge and enhance that.

1078099
Just so. Sorry for the typo.

1078358
Sure, why not? Like I said, it's a slow day here in the void. I'm in between games of "collapse the waveform." No Big Bangs yet, but statistically, I'm certain to become the god of a new universe if I just keep observing empty space.

Anyhow. Let's take a look at those flanks.

ZOOM LEVEL EIGHT!

SMOOTH!

Hold on, the algorithm sensor is picking up some reflective aberrations in the sweat glistening off of her Cutie Mark.

ZOOM! SMOOTH!

Aha. Now THAT'S a true athlete's sweat sheen, bronies and gentlemares. This will be child's play.

GAMMA-CORRECT! MULTIPLY!

If you're not seeing it yet, let's just invert in preparation for the isolation algorithm …

And this is where we use the genomic analysis from one of HarshwhinnAI's old alternate-timeline cloning projects to divide the reflection from the underlying flank patterns:

ENHANCE!

INTERPOLATE! ENHANCE!

ENHANCE!

And there's our photographer. Ooh, the little scamp.

– the once and f. SSH

1078085

But Manny'd make such a cute admin!

--Sweetie Belle

1079946
That... looks rather uncomfortably like Manny, actually.

1079946 1080595
Using a future-safe process of optical analog algorithmic analysis on the image above, I have discerned the keystrokes which Manny used in his walk across the keyboard:

[]'/.kjkjnm

We should therefore make the perfectly safe and self-evidently non-fallacious assumption that that's the command he used to set the group icon. Moderator Skywriter, can you try reproducing his results?

1080978
Okay, I gave it a whack. Unfortunately, all I ended up doing running the "ponify" command on Miss HarshwhinnAI. I'm, er, not sure if there's actually going to be any repercussions from this.

1079069
Wait, what? You were trying to solve a crime? I thought we were just looking at Miss H.'s butt.

1081085
Dude, did you not get the memo? The entire group is being subcontracted in an advisory role to H.S.I., the Harsh Scenes Investigation unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We're supposed to be tracking down instances of journalism-related crime. The government doesn't want us, but they need us. Because we're the best.

1081102
Yeah, I, uh, tried to post the federal mandate in the group info but I ended up deleting a bunch of stuff so I quit while I was ahead. Sorry to spring this on you all.

1081080
I just had a chilling thought. What if you retroactively changed Miss HarshwhinnAI? What if, up until five hours ago, she was a normal woman just like you and me, and you altered reality so profoundly that none of us even remembers she was ever anything but a pony.

1082486

wait ur a woman

…

wanna cyber

1081080

I can assure everypony that as a sophisticated ponybased artifical intelligence, ponifying me would have little to no effect. And even if by some bizarre mischance, something did corrupt my file system, or even wipe it irrevocably, I always have backups and contingency plans in motion to ensure their restoration.

Nopony has any reason to worry about the 'ponify' commands effects on me. I'll simply do a restore if problems start to materialize from it.

--Miss Harshwhinny

1085284
Well, it looks like the little radio button was flagged for "biomorphic", which probably wouldn't have been applicable anyway. Apparently I am also able to apply "psychological" and "spiritual", whatever the hell that means. Who coded this thing?