Friendship is Horses

Hi! I rarely stop by the forums anymore, but as far as I'm still qualified to welcome anypony, welcome! There are plenty of archived conversations to read, and even a few active souls still scurrying around. Probably.

Compared to 2017, it sucked. Lots of depression and purposeless floundering. Still one of the best years of my life, though, by the abysmal standards of my past. Financial independence is really great. In continuing to have a shitty time of things through no one's fault but my own, I've been forced to reevaluate how I live and handle situations in a way that I hope will lead to marked improvements in 2019 and going forward. I need to risk some emotional discomfort -- embarrassment, misunderstandings, confrontation, rejection -- if I actually hope to get anything out of life or forge real connections with people, so imma try to do more of that. Focus on positive outcomes instead of just avoiding negative ones.

Thank you to @PinkiePie97 for making this a general spoiler thread, as well as whoever gave them the go-ahead for it! Truly the site looks more still-alive already. I don't have any spoilers to talk about tho. Are there even any S9 leaks yet?

It's still pinned

Fluttershy is willing to overlook a lot of things as long as everypony is getting along. She thought Starlight's little dystopia was nice, too, at first. I like this episode a lot! Maybe because it's just two ponies on an adventure in a new place with new characters and lore. While the Friendship School has given us the Student Six, and they're great, it's created a lot of weird role confusion with the original main cast. Like, why is Twilight her friends' boss now? And in what universe is Rainbow Dash a teacher? Anyway, Autumn Blaze was more adorable than she was annoying, and the song was good, and there were a bunch of great character moments like Applejack the Typical American Tourist trying to communicate with the locals by speaking progressively louder and slower. I haven't been this stoked about anything else in Season 8. Yay.

The voices are the only 'real' part of the characters, after all. I recommend not worrying about it. Rumination and self-doubt aren't good for you. If you're open about your interests, people will give you all the feedback you could want to decide whether they're socially acceptable, and from there you can determine whether you give a shit, and if so, how much you should modify your behavior. Like, maybe you keep dating the Equestria Girls in your imagination, but the Fluttershy body pillow isn't worth the ridicule you get for it, or how it costs you the possibility of getting a real girlfriend down the road. Point is, let everyone else worry about making judgements. They will, happily and free of charge, and then you'll know exactly where you stand without spending 3/4 of your mental energy fretting over it. And if you're up-front and chill about your weird interests, most people won't hold it against you. It'll just be an interesting bullet point on the character sheet they have of you in their head.

I think that visitors coming on this site and seeing that the three newest posts are all a garble of chinese characters and university names does more to scare them off than having to get moderator approval would. It's like pulling into a grocery store parking lot with weeds growing up through cracks in the pavement and seeing two dogs fighting over a suspiciously stained piece of cloth near the entrance. Bad first impression. We've got to crack down on this nonsense.

@ABronyAccount "Sweetie Drops" was a dumb name, anyway.

I feel a distinction needs to be drawn between sexual predators, and people who are involuntarily attracted to children but never act on it in any way. Nobody chooses to get fucked-up urges. There are some people who go after little kids because they want all the power in a sexual relationship, and they need to be separated out from society. But there are others who just got some wires crossed when their brains were developing. Yeah, it's gross, and they probably shouldn't be around kids if they can help it, but let's not demonize people with a mental illness just because it's not as sympathetic as, say, anxiety disorder. It's how they respond to those urges that determines whether they're a monster, garden-variety creep or upstanding citizen who chooses to live strictly celibate rather than prey on the vulnerable. And by the way, a lot of these people are driven deeper into their own communities -- and thus more likely to act on their pedophilia -- rather than seeking therapy and treatment because everyone's knee-jerk reaction to their condition is KILL THEM WITH FIRE. When you're afraid to come into the light about it, you're just gonna hang out with the only people you can talk to -- other pedophiles. This is very bad for society. Those tight-knit communities are where monsters are created, because their urges get normalized, rationalized, and encouraged by their like-minded friends. Whereas there are brony artists I've seen who I'm fairly sure are fantasizing about minors, privately, but it's only a suspicion because they prefer the company of the fandom at large enough to contain that side of themselves. They go as far as drawing ponies with curvy hips and flat-chested, anthropomorphic upper torsos and that's it. Nobody's getting hurt there. So let's put down our pitchforks and knock it off with language like "sickos" and "don't have a place anywhere but in prison", at least until you've made it clear you're talking about serial molesters and not unfortunate individuals struggling with personal demons.

My Drawthread 1: My Art's Back Over Here Again Pinkie Pie's considering adopting a zero-cider policy for future parties. Jeez, Dash, you only arrived twenty minutes ago!

You know what? Maybe I won't do all the prompts. Now that I've got all this artistic momentum from having to make something every day, I kind of want to explore themes more personally meaningful than whatever zaniness EQD decides is going down on a given day. Why spend my creativity thinking up a novel twist on "pony in space" (what if I drew a pony... standing in a parking space??) when I could be drawing lesbian horse cuddles instead? Or, you know, whatever. I'm tempted to keep using the ATG submitter anyway just to see if anyone actually moderates it. Given that an anatomically-correct female foal made it in, I'm guessing no.

@ABronyAccount I'm just impressed by his/your ability to rearrange his innards at will. Are you/he a Buddhist monk? I'm taking the day off from ATGing, because unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, I don't feel like it. I'm still gonna do all the prompts but my free time is rather weighted toward a certain portion of the week so that's when a lot of them are gettin done and it doesn't include today.

@ABronyAccount Inexpertly applied make-up or not, waking up in bed with Rainbow Dash is a good start to the day. I too have made more drawings for the drawings pile. And, behold! My finest creation to date: It's hard to see Fluttershy because she is yellow, and yellow is notoriously difficult to make out on a white background. It kind of works, though, doesn't it? Since she's a wallflower, and is just sort of existing in the background of the party. Hanging out by the refreshment table was always my go-to move as well. Parties aren't for everyone.

And then I did today's prompt. In color. Lots of art today. By "in color", I of course mean, "mainly consisting of a hundred small variations on brown and gray". Seriously, look at all the earth tones in this thing.

This was supposed to be a quick catch-up sketch and warm-up before I tackled today's prompt. It took 4 hours.