Friendship is Horses

Horses are neat! Is there somewhere online that you post your art?

Whiskey is not pleasant-tasting. It took me longer to get used to than beer. I doubt I'd have bothered to acquire the taste if my dad wasn't always willing to share some of his ever-present stash when I was a young adult living at my parents' place (free booze beats paying for your own). If you want to get fucked up in a hurry, though, Jack Daniels on the rocks will get it done.

Ocellus, Sandbar, Smolder and Silverstream could have all gotten what they wanted if they planned the cave out first and coordinated their setup. A meditation space with one fake tree, one real tree, and painted walls? Easy. Gallus was the one trying to hoard the whole cave for himself. He still could have had his tacky tourist trap outside the cave mouth proper if he was willing to share. Though I doubt Twilight would have approved once she found out. Nopony introduce Gallus to Flim and Flam, it's a recipe for disaster. When the shitty crystal clubhouse started glowing and changing I thought the Tree of Harmony was going to grow back like it was before. It would have been nice to see it return, if only to show that the forces of good/friendship/love/whatever can just as easily fix what evil overpowered jackasses destroy. Then it was done and I realized Hasbro just wanted to make a new playset. This would be the second weird crystal tree-castle to come out of the Tree of Harmony. It looks cozier than Twilight's castle, more like the old Golden Oaks Library, if still a little too iridescent and angular. Twilight should offer to trade!

@baltoist I think he said "nooooo" during his Season 3 appearance. I remember him having a really deep, generic villain voice. This is definitely not that voice. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

College would have been the perfect time to get into fandom stuff. Now that you're graduating, you'll have to get a job and say goodbye to a lot of free time. But as for pony! Its heyday is behind it. A lot of people who used to be make pony content have moved on to other things, or make things less frequently than they used to. And, there are still plenty of people chugging along with their horse art or long-form equine projects. I think the community in general still has a lot to offer (not here, tho, this site is basically dead). Since you've been away for a while, I'd recommend catching up on everything you've missed in the interim. Then you can be sad when a webcomic cuts off in the middle and you realize it isn't ever going to update again, because its creator got into some niche kobold obsession instead. Or watch the last parody video in a series and find out that the maker is writing unrelated webcomics nowadays. But there's still plenty of content being made! Go watch DWK's videos on Youtube. They double as nice little synopses of the more recent episodes, sometimes. Other times he'll go off on a wild tangent about bronies or self-loathing for most of the episode but that's what makes it fun, you never know what you'll get.

In the nicker of time, too. Last possible season to do it. @LunaxSombra4Ever were you starting to sweat, or were you confident all along? I can't believe this thread is still relevant.

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.