Engage... Something Else
Starlight Glimmer walked from the castle doors toward the kitchen with her eyes stuck forward and her brow furrowed in thought. Her legs worked on autopilot while her mind replayed the afternoon's events again and again, combing through each iteration very carefully in order to make sure she had done the right thing. And yet, for all her focus, she was still conflicted.
She growled and her face soured. Self-doubt and double guessing herself were all too common afflictions since starting her new life in Ponyville, and she didn't care for them one bit. She reached the kitchen and sorted the groceries she had picked up in the market earlier in the day, her face never losing its dour contortions.
Spike walked into the kitchen and headed straight for the refrigerator until he noticed Starlight's distraught expression. "Hey Starlight. You look kinda worked up about something. Is everything alright?" he asked, detouring from his snack route.
Starlight relaxed and pulled her attention back to the present. "Spike, hi. Yeah, everything is... well no, not really. Kind of fine? I'm not sure yet, to be honest."
"If you're not sure then the answer is usually 'no,' I think. Do you want to talk about it?"
"Yes I do, as a matter of fact." She put away the last of her groceries and eyed Spike for a moment. "But I think it's something I'd rather discuss with Twilight first. Might be a potential friendship problem solved, might be criminal assault. I figure she'd know for sure."
Spike stood there in quiet disbelief. "She's, uh, in the throne room, I think."
"Thanks, Spike," she said as she trotted out the door. "Save me some ice cream," she called back. "I'm either going to need a reward or comfort food tonight, depending on how this goes."
Spike said nothing in reply. He walked to the freezer and pulled out two tubs of ice cream; one chocolate, one vanilla. "If I eat half of each instead of a whole one, Starlight should be set no matter what she needs later." He scooped two massive piles of ice cream into a bowl and began the slow march back to his room.
"It feels good to be considerate."
Twilight Sparkle was lying on top of the Cutie Map staring up at the Golden Oak roots when Starlight walked through the doorway. "Hey, Twilight, do you have a minute? I could use your opinion on a friendship issue. Or, maybe it's not exactly a friendship problem, but it's definitely at least a matter of public decorum."
"Of course. I always have time for helping a friend with a problem."
"Great. Just, perfect. Exactly what I wanted to hear. Starting off, there's good news and bad news today," Starlight said, a little too quickly.
Twilight cocked an eyebrow, then rolled off the table to sit up properly. "Alright, go on."
"The good news is I got all the groceries on the list, and—" Starlight puffed out her chest with pride "—I successfully resisted a very strong urge to mind control somepony today."
"That's... good. Every bit of progress is worth celebrating. Plus lunch is great. What's the bad news?"
"Well, that pony I didn't mind control I ended up punching in the face," she said half hiding her face behind her hoof.
"Starlight Glimmer!"
"Wait, wait, that's not the whole story! I'm pretty sure he deserved it, because after I did it a whole bunch of ponies cheered."
Twilight took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. "Okay. Was he mugging somepony?"
"No."
"Assaulting the elderly?"
"No."
"Trying to steal kids from the school?"
"No, although I wouldn't put it passed him."
"Alright." Twilight rubbed her temples with her wingtips. "Why don't you start from the beginning so I can get an idea of exactly what happened?"
"I was shopping in town, minding my own business..."
Starlight Glimmer was shopping in town, minding her own business. She had just finished her rounds through the produce vendors and was feeling quite pleased with the selection she came away with. The day was warm, ponies were kind, food was fresh, and there was nothing wrong with the world at this very moment. A smile lit up her face and she hummed a happy tune as she left the market row and headed back toward the castle. From the corner of her eye, however, she noticed a rather hefty crowd gathered up around the town square.
"That's strange," she said to herself. During her time running a despotic village, she had learned that crowds of a certain size only gathered when something particularly interesting was happening, and that such an event was usually either a great deal of fun or a great deal of danger. She decided to act on the side of caution and investigate the gathering. If it was nothing more than a talented performer putting on a public show, then she'd have a story to drive Trixie into a jealous fit. If it was something more sinister, then it would behoove her to keep an eye on it and, if need be, call Twilight.
As she approached the crowd she found that it was, unfortunately, the latter case. Angry conversation flurried around, punctuated by sporadic outbursts of yelling. When she got closer, Starlight noticed that the crowd centered around a single pony whom she did not recognize. She worked her way toward the front of the assembly to get a better look.
"Can you believe what this guy is saying?" an irate stallion beside her asked.
"I just got here, to be honest. I have no idea what's going on. Everypony seems pretty angry though. It's... weird, for this town."
"Hey, hey now, look," the pony at the center of attention said over the jeers of the crowd. "I never said anypony was better or worse than anypony else. I just said that all you Unicorns and Pegasi should go back to where you came from, and leave the good land to the ponies who were here first. And if you don't want to leave, maybe there should be some government pressure to convince you to leave."
The gathered ponies burst into thunderous, indignant anger. Looking around, Starlight saw all the makings of a bad situation ready to turn worse.
Starlight levitated herself out of the crowd and landed directly between the assembly and the antagonistic stallion. "Alright, everypony, alright. Let's all take a nice, relaxing breath. Everything I've heard, umm... what's your name?"
"The name's Iron Blitz, professional advocate for claiming a proper Earth Pony homeland, founder and currently sole member of the Earth Pony Independence Supranational Society."
"Right then... Mr. Blitz." Starlight turned back to the crowd. "What little I've heard Mr. Blitz say is certainly novel, to put it kindly, and I can see why you're all in an uproar. I'm as shocked as you are. But, I've learned that when ponies disagree with each other, whether they're friends or not, the best options are to walk away, or discuss our feelings and opinions calmly." She smiled in a calculated effort to disarm the crowd's anger. It's harder to trample over a happy face.
The anger in the crowd lowered to a simmer and a few ponies walked away. "So talk," a mare called out.
Starlight had hoped more ponies would choose to continue about their day rather than stay and hold discourse. She very much wanted to get home and work on lunch. But, she had given them two options, and it seemed she'd have to follow through on the more time consuming of the two. "Since I only got here a few moments ago, why don't you tell me exactly what you're, umm, all about?"
"Gladly. My organization wants to establish an exclusive territory for Earth Pony kind. We believe the land between Everfree Forest and Canterlot is ideal for this goal since it was originally settled and developed by Earth Ponies, for Earth Ponies."
Starlight looked out to the crowd. "Is that true?"
A purple mare with sunflowers on either flank stepped out through the crowd. "Technically true, yes. This entire region was settled by the Apple family many generations ago. Granny Smith herself is a registered landmark. But our town has never, for a single second—" she glared at Iron Blitz "—discriminated against Unicorns or Pegasi."
Words of pride and affirmation floated out of the crowd. "What a great history lesson," Starlight said, hoping to keep the mood headed in the right direction. "You see, Iron Blitz, I'm pretty new here myself so I haven't had time to learn all of Ponyville's rich history just yet. I've been focused on a rigorous course of study since I moved here."
"Self absorbed unicorn, who would have guessed," Iron Blitz said under his breath.
"Could you say that again, please? I didn't catch it the first time." Starlight had heard what he said, but decided she must be mistaken. A good pony would give the benefit of the doubt, she reasoned. And she was trying so hard to be a good pony these days.
"Almost a shame you'll have to go back to where ever it is you came from once we set up the Earth Pony Nation." He said quickly, ignoring her question completely. "Technically, I guess, you could go where ever you wanted as long as it's not here. Your choice."
"Uh huh. And how exactly do you plan on making me leave?"
"My group intends to work entirely through legal channels. Once we're situated in local offices across the region we'll have enough political clout over sufficient geographic area to do pretty much whatever we want."
Starlight Glimmer dropped her veneer of diplomacy and good will. "What about mixed-tribe families? There's an Earth Pony couple in town with Unicorn and Pegasus twins! Are you going to break up a family to build your nation?"
"No, of course not. The parents are gone, too. Assuming the mother in question wasn't messin' around on her good, hard working husband, giving birth to non-Earth Ponies means her genealogy is all feathered up somewhere up the line. Either way, we don't have room for that."
"And when we resist your pie in the sky dream? Ponies don't like being uprooted and kicked out of their homes. I don't think there's a peaceful way to cart away hundreds, or thousands, of unwilling ponies." Sparks sizzled off Starlight's horn.
"I'm afraid there are only so many ways to deal with an occupying force. You'll be run out, turned into cheap labor, or... well, the third way ain't too pretty, but it does stick."
Power crept into Starlight's horn, and the crowd backed away. She debated on whether or not she should wipe his mind and set him loose in the forest, or give him an compulsion to walk until his hooves were worn to the bone. Perhaps teleport him to a nice frozen mountain top somewhere so far away his hateful ideology would never have the chance to spread.
No, she thought. That's not the kind of pony I am anymore. No matter how much I wish I was right now. I'm better than that.
Her horn cooled and the glow faded. She took a few slow, steadying breaths, then smiled. Twilight, she hoped, would be proud of the level of self control she exercised. But there was still the nagging feeling that she couldn't just walk away. But, for all her rhetorical talent, she was at a loss formulating arguments she could level at someone who thought the very right of other ponies to simply live was a debatable topic.
"I'm glad you calmed down, missy. Heh, hoo yeah," Iron Blitz said. His fear didn't dampen his bravado for long, however. "I would have hated for things to get rough. You Unicorns think you're tough, but you're no match for good old Earth—"
"And that's when I punched him in his stupid, smug, tribalist mouth. Everypony cheered, and then he galloped away like a scared colt after a scolding. So, on one hoof I feel kind of bad about hitting him since he wasn't right in the middle of hurting anypony, but on the other hoof I don't think I can just let something that awful go."
Twilight was now massaging her head with her wings and her hooves, desperate for any relief from the pain Starlight's story brought her. She focused upward on the wooden chandelier and lost herself for a moment in the spinning memories above her.
"Violence is very, very rarely the proper action to take, and certainly never when there's no immediate threat of harm. I've been on the bad end of more sink-or-swim situations than I care to remember, and I would have talked my way out of them if I could." Twilight paused to consider her next words carefully. "I think, in the long run, the best option would have been trying to disperse the crowd. Extremists need attention to survive. If they don't have an audience, their ideas can't spread."
Starlight sat in silence while she thought over Twilight's rebuttal. "You're right. About the long run, at least. But shouldn't we take some action in the short term to make sure ponies like him know that such blatantly malicious declarations aren't acceptable?"
"At the end of the day, all he has is words. Besides," Twilight stood up and stretched out her legs and wings. "I don't think he could do any real harm. He's just one pony."
Starlight Glimmer frowned at her friend. "So was I, Twilight. So was I."
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Not a bad first story, but it could use some editing. You also shift perspective in it from paragraph to paragraph. Again just something an editor can help you with. Hunt around, and if someone offers, take them up on it. Trust me a good editor can make a story.
I do like the story idea, and the subject matter, it works well with the characters in question for sure, not at all outside their core personality.
I loved this but the one thing that came to my mind was; everyone knows racism almost froze their race to extinction.
8631084
I have to agree. It is a decent and well written story. And I feel you got starlight's personality spot on, so props there. But shagohad does have a point.
8631084
Doesn't mean there are no ponies that don't believe those stories.
The Mane 6 did believe that the stories of the legendary ponies were only just that. Only stories. Remember Applejack unbelievably asking Celestia that 'Wait, they actually existed?'
And how nobody believed in Nightmare Moon or knew that she was Celestia's sister.
And remember that Snowfall Frost didn't believe in those stories. And she was highly intelligent.
And the Tribe thing existed even further back than that.
...why?
There's some good dialogue in here, particularly from Spike, but I'm not really a fan of the structure. The story essentially starts over halfway through, and the first half is largely irrelevant to the rest of it.
Still, it gets an upvote from me.
Granny Smith is a registered landmark?
The only other problem I have is one Twilight didn't seem to think about, that because Starlight punched Iron Blitz without him hitting back, he can now claim that she assaulted him. And then he can say that she's the tribalist one, and make speeches about being oppressed. Which in turn gives him a spin which he can recruit more ponies. Even though he's spewing nothing but hate, as Starlight herself pointed out, he still might find someone to listen to his nonsense.
8631518 She's a living landmark!
8632147
She's a "landmark"?
8632311 I meant a legend, seeing as she's been around since the founding of Ponyville.
8632311
I was torn between "landmark" and "monument," because I couldn't think of a word for a historically relevant individual, to be honest. But, I figured monuments are intentionally raised to memorialize things, whereas landmarks just happen to be where they are and that's that. So I suppose she's a mobile living landmark, at least whilst in the town limits of Ponyville.
8631904
Except she attacked him the Earth Pony way. No Horns, No Wings, no weather. Just physical strength. He let a Unicorn, the least physical inclined tribe scare him away with a single punch. He's going to look like a joke when that gets around.
8631904
A good point. Violence, no matter how tempting, has a tendency to come back and bite us in the ass. Even if some people dearly deserve a good old Applejack buck to the cranium.
8632438
That doesn't really matter, by a purely legal standpoint. Assault is assault, and even if she doesn't get prosecuted, she's still given him ammunition to use against her and the rest of Equestria in public forums. He may only be an organization of one, but her inability to keep a level head has given his argument a leg to stand on.
8632438
It doesn't matter that he as a Earth Pony has higher base physical strength or that she didn't use magic to hurt him, only that she did. This, especially if she isn't prosecuted, could be argued as an elite beating on a commoner. He can even say as Twilight, a former unicorn and royalty herself, that the government is backing Earth Pony oppression. And there are ponies who are stupid, spiteful and/or gullible enough to believe him. That's the dangerous nature of hate speech.
8632670
Agreed, he did need to the get the taste smacked out of his mouth; however really doing it without him violently attacking someone or Starlight herself would be ironically morally wrong. Words should be fought with words, and swords with swords.
8632333
To be honest I think Granny Smith was speaking untruth, since according to Twilight Ponyville is hundreds of years old.
I don't think she was lying, but she does have Alzheimer's so.
It always starts like this....
Also you know what else starlight could have done...ask him to talk about his job, because I'll bet cash that his little tantrum was based on the fact that he no longer has one. That a unicorn or pegasus managed to nab it supposedly because of their natural abilities.
8633392 Granny Smith having Alzheimer's contradicts her steel-trap memory.
8633787
She licked a chalk board.
8633820 Gah! I'm also banking on the fact that she has a lesbian porn stash under her bed.
I enjoy the downbeat note that that ended on. It's a sobering reminder about the danger of a hateful ideology. People dismissed the National Socialist Party as crackpots initially. If one were to not know about the horrors they inflicted, a quick read of their views might make them seem almost farcical. Right up until you realized what happened when it was practiced. But then, I've talked to actual Neo-Nazis and, I've got to say, it's more than a little unsettling to see how deeply rooted such hatreds can become. Violence should never be our first solution. However, it has its place. The Nazis weren't stopped with words. They were stopped with the blood of a few million brave men and women. Having a spotlight shine on this initial, farcical image of bigotry reminds us that monstrous ideologies all start somewhere. Well done.
Wow that dragons hona gey cavitys
How about I put it this way, Iron Blitz.
I am going to take a pair of pliers.
Iam going to extract your teeth, one by one.
Then I'm going to stick one in each eye
and the rest up your ass.
Then, I'm going to twist each of your hooves off
and throw them at you.
Then, I will scalp you and cut your muzzle off.
Then, and only then, will I give you the luxury of death.
I will burn you alive.
Am I a psychopath? Probably. Do I care? No.
9175421
To be honest, that sounds like something I'd do. Good to know there are fellow like-minded people out there.
Wonderful!
I would have dropped a piano on him.
8633266
You're right, she should be prosecuted, show that it wasn't who did the act (violence, in this case) that matters but the act itself.
As for Iron Blitz, there's a two-pronged approach I would apply here; first, make it clear how he's not just anti-Unicorn, Pegasus, and Equestria, but also how he stands athwart the proud Earth pony traditions, against practicality (real world experience has taught us that if you're a farmer, you want to do everything in your power to keep the weather stable), hospitality, and teamwork. Show him to be wrong on his own terms. Second, after showing him to be wrong on his own terms, respond proportionally to how he's wrong on your terms, namely how his Earth pony supremacy movement could be considered either antisocial or downright treasonous. Suppress him the way St. Dominic suppressed the Albigenses in southern France, by showing his supporters how he's wrong (on his own terms) and making the same clear to all those to whom he speaks. A stallion speaking truth to power for his oppressed kinsfolk may find support, but a traitor sacrificing his kinsfolk's proudest traditions for political power will find little.
The main problem with this approach is that many people will call anyone who disagrees with them fascist. There's a good post i once read somewhere (I don't know where it is) saying something like "Since communists are calling capitalists Nazis, and capitalists are calling communists Nazis, and democrats call republicans Nazis, and republicans call democrats Nazis, I've started worrying about Nazis getting assaulted in public. And I'm Jewish!".
11287929
Mmm, any time someone calls out fascism there always has to be someone in the comments saying "but I'm a reasonable person, surely you're not talking about me?"
Buddy if you think the message that fascism is bad is referring to you then YES it is referring to you and you should probably think about why.
Man, Glim Glam has rage issues. (Just kidding)
Jokes aside, there are people like this that exist in real life that won't listen to reason. And that depresses me.
11286500
This is an excellent approach and I appreciate the history lesson saddled with the post. Thank you.
11287929
This was exactly my concern once upon a time about this exact sort of scenario, and its hopefully obvious real-life inspiration. However, there's a pretty easy zone of people who call themselves nazis that makes at least that piece of the moral quandary straightforward.
11287508
As terrified as I am of spiders, I must admit that is indeed a very swanky hat. Also shout out to continued use of the word swanky. Makes me feel young again. Excellent work all around.
Some relevant quotes, one of which I know to be tried and true, and one almost certainly newer:
"I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -Evelyn Beatrice Hall describing Voltaire's attitude.
"The solution to bad speech is more speech."
I feel it is unwise for even major public forums* to in any way deny haters the rope necessary to hang themselves in the court of carefully considered, detailed, and logically analyzed public opinion... even our current sensationist, emotional, surface-appearances-driven sort of public opinion will do until the happy day that the former makes a return.
*The smaller or more specialized a forum is, the more it is reasonable to deny hate-speech within it.
11287929
You didn't quote anything, so I have to ask, for maximum clarity: what approach do you feel has the problem you described?
11320918
Approximate quote from a movie "People forget that the first country the Nazi's invaded was there own."
With that explicitly established, let me say that if good Germans had been more willing to fight with words, many orders of magnitude fewer bullets would have been needed, and those would have been fired by German POLICE in the appropriate and lawful exercise of their duties.
I have heard*, and it seems plausible to me, that the word 'meek' in "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth." meant ones who bear swords, know how to use them, but do everything they can to never need to draw them.
To say it yet another way another quote that needs no source I should think: "Four boxes for the defense of liberty (from the government) : soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Apply in that order."
*Admittedly from an atheist or agnostic or some such who only much admires Judeo-Chrstianity.
11554867
I think you may be underestimating how popular the Nazis were in Germany; i.e., they were the "good speech" of the moment, promising a return to law & order (thanks Dick Wolf), economic stability, and traditional German values. They didn't take over by force. They were voted in, legitimately. And then used every other means in the book to secure that power forever.
As for the German police, it may come as little surprise that they rather liked being shielded from criticism (by censoring the press) and being given expanded power to keep the citizenry in line. Rather than being the one holding the Nazis accountable, the German police of the time—like modern US police—would have been the ones keeping them safe from public anti-fascist ire.
Now, all that said, a modern person might be entirely too charitable and say, "well they didn't know it was going to go the way it did." And that may be true. But we know now. We have no excuse to stop these kinds of people, except our own cowardice.
I also recommend this series for information on the rhetoric the far right uses and why it's so hard to argue against. First hint: the fascists and the people arguing against them aren't playing the same game in the first place.
Real talk, without hitting Google I actually have no idea who said this, but relating it back to my previous brick of text: the Nazis used the first three boxes to get into power to begin with then torched the boxes behind them. There wasn't a lot of choice left by then.
Anyway remember to punch your local Nazis folks. Unless they're cops. Then just livestream them in public as allowed by your local ordinances.