The Daily Show presents: Equestrian Interviews

by Daily Show Ponies

Episode 20 [Discord]: Here it is your moment of zen

The garden of Canterlot Castle was still as vacant as when Jon arrived. This meant no one was around to hear Jon waking up or observe the dozens of birds flying away as the echoes of the elderly New Yorker’s roar of fear reverberated throughout the surroundings.

“AARGH!” Jon yelped as he lunged forward in a cold sweet like he had just awoken from a late night fever dream. His heart was pounding and his stomach was cramping up again. “What... WHAT THE FUCK?!”

Grabbing his sides, Jon tried to piece together what had just happened which was difficult since his memory was slowly dissipating like fog over a boggy area. He barely remembered how he ended up in the middle of the Castle Gardens let alone what was going through his mind when he went to sleep.

He vaguely recalled wanting to enter this maze to find something, but other than that his mind failed to connect the dots. He knew he had suffered another nightmare, but his mind refused to reveal what it was. All he knew was it had something to do with that sculpture he found.

“Wait!” Jon remembered. “Th-the statue!”

Jon recalled that whatever was causing him yet another horrible dream was the piece of artwork that was behind him, but what he saw when he turned around scared him even more than when he arrived... or rather, it was what he didn’t see.

Terrified, Jon stumbled back and landed on the ground as he desperately tried to back out of the room and into the hallway of leaves. The statue was no longer there. His memory about how he got here and what he dreamt about may have dissipated, but he was certain that there was once a statue where he was sleeping. He could not even recall what it was a statue of but he knew it existed.

Grabbing his beating heart, Jon slowly stood up, his eyes fixed on the area which he just retreated from. He knew whatever he dreamt of must have been horrible based on how terrified he was from the whole ordeal.

“Okaaaaay...” Jon said to himself as he backed away slowly, regretting ever separating himself from the group, “maybe coming here to relax wasn’t the best idea.”

Jon’s frantic backing away progressed into a full on sprint as he desperately tried to escape the enclosure so he could hopefully duck back into the castle without anyone noticing. He may remember very little of what he had dreamt but somehow he knew it had something to do with that statue. He vowed to never try something like this again, but little did he realize that this wouldn’t be the last he’d see of Discord.

Comments

[Firebirdbtops]

Alright, gets an interview!

[dafiltafish]

4636806 Ask Pun Pony Tumblr blog

she is a wise cracking mare in ponyville who secretly works for the night guard

[Cantankerous]

4638444
I agree, as does DSP. But right now DSP has an enormous backlog of chapters he wants to get published and what with me being painfully slow at my job going through his older chapters just isn't a priority at the moment.

[Frission]

Phew, finally read it all. Can't wait to see the new stuff!

And oho, a subplot emerges toward restoring the changelings to their rightful pony forms? Innnnnnnnnnntriguiiinnnggg....

[Daily Show Ponies]

4607244
Hey Kant. Out of curiosity what's your top 10 interviews? That's what I really wanna know.

[GuardianofRoin]

Hmm, would be fun to see someone like Doctor whooves come in for an interview. And yes, I mean the fanon bit with the pony Doctor. Would be hilarious to see John Stewart point out the similarities.

[Coltsguy]

4779055 There was one. It was so heavily hated on that it became retconned.

[GuardianofRoin]

4787793 Really -.- goddamn it. Was really looking forward to reading that one

[shynight]

4788319
It really is a shame. Personally, I loved the Doctor Whooves arc, but it was definitely much different from the rest of series. All of the other sections of the story are short, filled with laughs, don't contain anything really serious, and only have minimal relations to the other parts.

The Doctor Whooves arc turned all that on its head. It was around 10 chapters long, and held a lot of serious themes and only sporadic moments of laughs. It all starts with the fact that after Trixie blocked Chrysalis' attack, the Queen's magic got fused with Trixie's, causing an extremely rare disease with no cure. After finding out she has less than a week to live, Jon freaks out. After meeting the Doctor (and a few timey-wimey shenanigans at Jon's expense), a deep plot unfolds, involving time travel being banned in the future by Princess Twilight after somepony plans to go back in time to kill the Element Bearers, Derpy's strangeness being caused by her retreating into her mind after seeing her mother get murdered in the middle of their kitchen, the Doctor escaping to the past with Derpy because she was going to be sent to an insane asylum, and many, many other things. In the end, Whooves gives Jon the cure which was developed in the future and Trixie's life is saved. The whole thing was extremely well-written, and I was sad to see all the hate in the comments and even sadder to see the story removed.

I think the main reason it got so much negative attention was because the author decided to 'break the mold' so to speak and wrote a serious story. Most of the people who read these stories like them because they're short and funny. They're nice 'fluff' stories to read in-between more serious, 'actual' stories. When people realized that the story had gone from fluffy and happy to serious and somewhat dark, they rebelled. Sure, there were a few people like me who actually liked the change of pace, but the negativity was bad enough that people that railed on the author about the change and how 'awful' the story was were getting likes on their comments, and those of us who were showing our support to the author were getting dislikes, and even hate comments directed towards us as well.

While I'll admit that the Doctor arc didn't fit into the overall tone and feel of the rest of the stories, it was still extremely well done and didn't deserve the hatred it got. Honestly, I'd love to see it re-published as a separate story (like the April Fool's Big Mac episode), but I doubt we'll ever see that story return.

[GuardianofRoin]

5040358 Actually... Why dont we just do that? Remake it as a separate spinoff story?

[Always Breakfast]

5546743

Hinge joints like jaws work differently from socket joints like shoulders. Hinge joints often use entirely different and mutually exclusive sets of muscles to open and close, because muscles can only apply appreciable force by contracting. The alligator's mouth is similar to how bodybuilders will often over-exercise the biceps on the top of the elbow that fold the arm and lift weight, but not the triceps on the underside that unfold the arm and regulate being able to lower weight back down.

Socket joints tend to have a lot of overlapping muscle groups that are all active to some degree in just about every motion. Hold up your hand against the wall in an arm wrestle position, then stick the other hand in that armpit so you can feel the muscles. Swivel your arm against the wall like you're arm wrestling it, and feel what muscles tighten to apply that force. Now hold up your hand the same way, but turn the palm forward, and pull your arm down against the wall, from the shoulder, like you're pulling a big heavy switch -- that's pretty much the same motion of a foreleg pulling a quadruped forward.

In both cases, the muscles along the underside of the shoulder provide the bulk of the force. You can feel the exact muscle groups used in those two motions are a little different -- movements along the upper-inner arc are usually dominated by the pecs, while those in the lower-outer arc go down your side -- but their use overlaps quite a bit because a socket joint is omnidirectional and both sets will be active in any given motion. If a pony were to turn to the side or jump sideways, it would be very nearly the same muscle group as in arm wrestling, and it's still built to handle the majority of their weight.