Since I am at heart a science fiction writer, I suppose this makes sense, but here goes. I approach writing in the MLP universe with the same rules I would writing about aliens in a science fiction novel. A writer wants to depict a story's aliens so that they render in the reader's mind as not human. But how can you do this? How would you write a story from a dolphin's point of view, or more pointedly, from a horse's point of view?

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link

Before the two-part finale of Season Two, there was apparently a survey of the Brony subculture. You can read the 33 page report on the results.

The authors of the previous survey have started another one. Follow the link to the survey.

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As many have noticed, most of the time Ponies have names matching their Cutie Marks, Talents and personalities, if only in an indirect way. This is not a coincidence. It is instead a consequence of the intuition possessed by Pony parents (especially mothers) as to the futures of their offspring, which in turn is due to a subconscious connection with the very weakly eusocial Pony massmind -- which is capable of precognition.

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(Wherein, having tackled Sex, I will now discuss something much less controversial) ;-)

So I was thinking about the issue of religion in Equestria, and beyond it on the whole planet.

There is a concept in TV Tropes called the "Flat Earth Atheist," whose article points out:

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The Hive Mind emerges from a sufficient congregation of Changelings (generally at least a hundred, though this can vary based on the intelligence and communicativeness of the Changelings involved). The smarter and better the Changelings at communicating, the fewer needed for a Hive Mind. The Hive Mind itself is not very intelligent -- it's only about as smart as a smart dog, though it can communicate and be communicated with more explicitly.

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I've entered a writing competition with my story:

TFuture Twilight Is a Bully

• MLP: FiM
• Comedy
• Drama
• Sci-Fi

Future Twilight returns with more than just a warning.

• Twilight

Bad Dragon · 1.5k words  ·  28  22 · 884 views

The story follows all the rules of the contest, yet it has just been disqualified simply because it was written by me. To be more precise, because I've published foalcon in the past.
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/924269/

I've just been denied up to $150 simply for being who I am.

Hello, cancel culture, my old nemesis.

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This came from a comment to a question on a forum. Can't link directly because the forum is NSFW (the Clopfics group):

>>4719602

Do you think Starlight's equalization magic, which is shown to dampen a pony's pronounced character traits down to homogeneity, effects a pony's sexual orientation? Like, to the point of making everypony the same orientation.

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I don't often post about stuff I buy, but this place has had some of the best tea I've ever had, and it's a company made by bronies/anime fans.

https://www.thedragonstreasure.com/

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Among my Changelings, the Royals (Queen and Princesses) are fertile, the other castes are not. The Queen can bear members of all castes including Royals, but Princesses can only bear members of non-Royal castes. There are also the possibilities of ultra-high-caste male Royals ("Kings" and "Princes") but they are much less common: most Hives don't have any.

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This morning I got an email from audible.com advertising their monthly sale. As I do each month, I read thru the list of non-fiction books for sale.

As I went thru the 156 non-fiction books on sale this month, I felt a growing sense of unease. It wasn't until I reached the last one, Napoleon Hill's Think And Grow Rich, that this unease congealed into a thought: this is not really non-fiction.

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Bookplayer and I were bouncing around some ideas this evening. (Actually, we were talking about which groups in the US it's socially okay to be prejudiced against and which it isn't, but pretend we were being nice people, okay?) Anyway, one thing led to another and we hit on the idea that Zebras should have a deeply entrenched music culture to mirror the African-American contributions to American popular music.

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Here

Julian pointed me at video

(Transracialism? Ft. Artistic Genius • Aug 17, 2019 by Vaush )

on this I replied:

at 11:32 .... well, I know there is pressure to assign 'biological' higher rank vs 'just cultural' ..but observing how ppl literally scream from 'cultural/psycholoogical' I don't buy this line of thinking ......

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Introduction

I ask this question because I notice that a very common assumption which a lot of fans seem to make is that lesbianism is much more common among the Ponies than among Humans, to the point where Pony mares essentially default to falling in love with other mares. I find this extremely unlikely for several reasons, though the reasons are different based on different assumptions about how Pony sexuality (and especially gender ratios work.

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The air was that was so cold that it stung Cloudchaser’s lungs, and so thin that even gasping hard enough to dry out the back of her throat still left her feeling light-headed. Her wings ached, her injured shoulder throbbed, her muscles were seizing in the cold—the moment of transformation was ending. Cloudchaser was a pony again, and the rage of the wind was finally taking its toll on her pony body.

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This thought-provoking quote was brought to my attention this last Sunday at one of the LDS General Conference sessions, where it was quoted from a 2016 New York Times article on "Shame Culture." I'm sharing it because of its insightful look into why the current "shaming" trend doesn't work, and isn't a basis for a stable society.

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I've been encountering a lot of this in stories that I've been reading lately, so I thought it a good idea to share my observations and thoughts on this particular entertainment device. Basing a story's humour on pop-culture references is a dangerous thing to do, as it can very easily break immersion, alienate readers, and turn an otherwise enjoyable story into an effectively unreadable one. Unfortunately, pop-culture references are extremely popular among novice writers, as it's an

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[The final section that used to be here is now in my next blog post instead.]

I spent some time going over lists of other TV shows, trying to find ones that I could write scripts for. I found it was very hard for me to think of script ideas for most TV shows. The characters just didn’t suggest stories to me.

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