Well, that was a thing. ... Dammit, Bloom! You left Essy a loophole!
intention to kill ponies and devour either their flesh, or perhaps some other aspect of their living ponyness
Like blood? That's a damned Everfree monster, cannibal and/or vampony detector, not a murderer detector! Bites == vampirism == death, remember?
Also, the Ponyville changeling has an official name now: derpicdn.net/img/view/2015/11/12/1021751.png M. A. Larson picked it out, and they ran with it. It's more official than Derpy.
1. If Big Macintosh had the same kind of sex with Braeburn that he had with Rarity, then why does he still dislike Rarity? He seems fine with it now and over all that self-hatred and shame, and that was the whole reason he was mad at her in the first place.
2. Is Big Macintosh not in love with Braeburn? I thought he was, but then he was in love with Marble Pie who said that he would find love, which makes it sound like he isn't in love now. Or is he able to fall in love with more than one pony at the same time? Polyamorous?
3. How come Marble Pie couldn't stay? The most I could get out of it was that she had to leave because the story said she had to leave, but she's in control of her own actions, so why does she actually have to adhere to it? Is it that her staying would really screw things up and she knows that?
4. Why would the adults of the Apple family allow Apple Bloom and Diamond Tiara to drink alcohol?
1) Because surprise buttsex kinda kills the mood to begin with, and given the context, it was more a case of anal date-rape. That doesn't do much for a relationship.
2) Trixieverse Ponyville basically runs on pansexual polyamory. The strictly straight/gay and monogamous ponies are considered to be a bit odd. Essy, being asexual, confuses the hell out of everypony.
3) Marble can see the future. For that to mean anything at all, she has to believe in some form of predestination, otherwise she'd just be seeing possibilities, which could be slight possibilities and therefore just be so much nonsense. Marble Sense says she goes home, and Marble Sense is never wrong, so she goes home. Yeah, self-consistent precognition is a real downer, because it means that you can't change anything you see.
4) Bloom is Boss Mare. She's head of the family. She makes the rules, and she'll beat the stuffing out of anyone who seriously challenges her on it.
6662917 1. He wasn't mad because he was date raped; he was mad because he liked it and thought it made him gay. In fact, right before it happened, he was incredulous about it feeling good and thought it was ridiculous and that they'd get back to having regular sex right afterwards.
2. It's just that her saying that he'll find love makes it sound like he hasn't already.
3. But that doesn't make any sense. She says she's supposed to go home, but she could just stay. The only reason I could think of for her to have to go would be if she saw that her staying would be disastrous.
4. I know Apple Bloom's in charge of the farm, and I can see them obeying her whereas the farm's concerned, but I cannot see Applejack just letting her drink.
6662969 3) OK, everything she "sees" is true, right? If it's true, it has to happen. If she, or anypony else, could change it, it wouldn't be guaranteed to be true. If whatever she sees must happen, and that includes things about herself, she can't not do them. If she could avoid doing them, she wouldn't have seen them in the first place.
TL;DR: accurate precognition and metaphysical free will are fundamentally incompatible. Since Marble has accurate precognition, ponies are predestined to do whatever she sees them do. That includes Marble herself.
6662969 Marble does say she's fleeing because she has to be in the same chapter as the evil, TWICE. She chooses to go home. Some of the stuff she says implies that she's got clear visions of future and past but doesn't understand them until she's right on top of them experiencing them. She's a weird mare, very shy, but I wouldn't say she feels completely out of control.
6663210 Since she values having this better-than-Pinkie precognition, I suspect she intentionally goes along with it the better to make herself special. Never take ponies' worldviews totally at face value, but always look for the worldview.
I'm going to visit family, be kind to each other while I'm gone
6663210 Destiny and free will are not incompatible. Let's say you look into the future and see yourself getting a pizza. Now that you know about it, you could just not get the pizza. Destiny exists in the sense that when all is said and done, certain events will have unfolded; it's not an unstoppable force. But if you could somehow know about it ahead of time, you could just do something else. If someone was going to kill you, but you saw it in the future, you could stop it, but if you didn't see the future, then it would be your destiny because did nothing to change it because you didn't know about it. Everything that happened just happened to happen that way, and that's all time is: a series of events building off of all past events. Marble Pie could even see alternate timelines which would mean that there were different paths she could take, and she chose the one she did.
6664233 Congrats on the cameo in the new 'Ass Brutalewd' cartoon! That was kinda what I was going to do for an avatar, but Brutalewd is way better at that stuff And yes, that's more or less how it works. Marble's in sort of past-present-future-world and sees it all as one thing. To her it makes about as much sense to decide and therefore come from a certain past, as it does to decide and then go to a certain future. Or, as Marble would say, "m!" which is a graphical representation of timelines as three paths connected, where you can go down any of the roads in any direction. I've started Chapter 5, which should be less confusing and have more shrieking flower ponies.
6687320 Thanks! It is literally my favorite thing from this fandom ever. And it must be a small world, because lots of people I know who are all in different circles have seen it. What did you think of it?
Marble has stolen my heart, of course, since I'm such a sucker for clever narrative devices. And a character *observing the author* as they're sifting through possible events is marvellous clever indeed. Course, a character like that can't stay in any story too long, but it's tempting to imagine doing something similar.
(Just throwing ideas out, the *Friendship is Optimal* setting would provide an opportunity to do something similar too...)
Have admit that I'd forgotten Essence. Already knew that a re-read was in the cards, but that really seals the deal. Interesting, too that others mention asexuality, since Hina's kink, arranging things from the sidelines, is really similar to a kind of sexual fantasy that's decently common among grey-ace folks. Can't remember the name that Bogaert gives it in *Understanding Asexuality*, but it boils down to not including the self in fantasy. So what she did this chapter is about the closest one can get to acting those out.
Well, that was a thing.
...
Dammit, Bloom! You left Essy a loophole!
Like blood? That's a damned Everfree monster, cannibal and/or vampony detector, not a murderer detector! Bites == vampirism == death, remember?
Also, the Ponyville changeling has an official name now:
derpicdn.net/img/view/2015/11/12/1021751.png
M. A. Larson picked it out, and they ran with it. It's more official than Derpy.
Commence read.
Breaking the walls Marble, Pinkie doesn't even know.
Numeric with the logic. Sorta forgot her. A shame on my part.
Couple questions:
1. If Big Macintosh had the same kind of sex with Braeburn that he had with Rarity, then why does he still dislike Rarity? He seems fine with it now and over all that self-hatred and shame, and that was the whole reason he was mad at her in the first place.
2. Is Big Macintosh not in love with Braeburn? I thought he was, but then he was in love with Marble Pie who said that he would find love, which makes it sound like he isn't in love now. Or is he able to fall in love with more than one pony at the same time? Polyamorous?
3. How come Marble Pie couldn't stay? The most I could get out of it was that she had to leave because the story said she had to leave, but she's in control of her own actions, so why does she actually have to adhere to it? Is it that her staying would really screw things up and she knows that?
4. Why would the adults of the Apple family allow Apple Bloom and Diamond Tiara to drink alcohol?
6662783
Off the top of my head:
1) Because surprise buttsex kinda kills the mood to begin with, and given the context, it was more a case of anal date-rape. That doesn't do much for a relationship.
2) Trixieverse Ponyville basically runs on pansexual polyamory. The strictly straight/gay and monogamous ponies are considered to be a bit odd. Essy, being asexual, confuses the hell out of everypony.
3) Marble can see the future. For that to mean anything at all, she has to believe in some form of predestination, otherwise she'd just be seeing possibilities, which could be slight possibilities and therefore just be so much nonsense. Marble Sense says she goes home, and Marble Sense is never wrong, so she goes home. Yeah, self-consistent precognition is a real downer, because it means that you can't change anything you see.
4) Bloom is Boss Mare. She's head of the family. She makes the rules, and she'll beat the stuffing out of anyone who seriously challenges her on it.
6662917
1. He wasn't mad because he was date raped; he was mad because he liked it and thought it made him gay. In fact, right before it happened, he was incredulous about it feeling good and thought it was ridiculous and that they'd get back to having regular sex right afterwards.
2. It's just that her saying that he'll find love makes it sound like he hasn't already.
3. But that doesn't make any sense. She says she's supposed to go home, but she could just stay. The only reason I could think of for her to have to go would be if she saw that her staying would be disastrous.
4. I know Apple Bloom's in charge of the farm, and I can see them obeying her whereas the farm's concerned, but I cannot see Applejack just letting her drink.
6662969
3) OK, everything she "sees" is true, right? If it's true, it has to happen. If she, or anypony else, could change it, it wouldn't be guaranteed to be true. If whatever she sees must happen, and that includes things about herself, she can't not do them. If she could avoid doing them, she wouldn't have seen them in the first place.
TL;DR: accurate precognition and metaphysical free will are fundamentally incompatible. Since Marble has accurate precognition, ponies are predestined to do whatever she sees them do. That includes Marble herself.
6662969 Marble does say she's fleeing because she has to be in the same chapter as the evil, TWICE. She chooses to go home. Some of the stuff she says implies that she's got clear visions of future and past but doesn't understand them until she's right on top of them experiencing them. She's a weird mare, very shy, but I wouldn't say she feels completely out of control.
6663210 Since she values having this better-than-Pinkie precognition, I suspect she intentionally goes along with it the better to make herself special. Never take ponies' worldviews totally at face value, but always look for the worldview.
I'm going to visit family, be kind to each other while I'm gone
6663210
Destiny and free will are not incompatible. Let's say you look into the future and see yourself getting a pizza. Now that you know about it, you could just not get the pizza. Destiny exists in the sense that when all is said and done, certain events will have unfolded; it's not an unstoppable force. But if you could somehow know about it ahead of time, you could just do something else. If someone was going to kill you, but you saw it in the future, you could stop it, but if you didn't see the future, then it would be your destiny because did nothing to change it because you didn't know about it. Everything that happened just happened to happen that way, and that's all time is: a series of events building off of all past events. Marble Pie could even see alternate timelines which would mean that there were different paths she could take, and she chose the one she did.
6664233 Congrats on the cameo in the new 'Ass Brutalewd' cartoon! That was kinda what I was going to do for an avatar, but Brutalewd is way better at that stuff
And yes, that's more or less how it works. Marble's in sort of past-present-future-world and sees it all as one thing. To her it makes about as much sense to decide and therefore come from a certain past, as it does to decide and then go to a certain future. Or, as Marble would say, "m!" which is a graphical representation of timelines as three paths connected, where you can go down any of the roads in any direction.
I've started Chapter 5, which should be less confusing and have more shrieking flower ponies.
6687320 Thanks! It is literally my favorite thing from this fandom ever. And it must be a small world, because lots of people I know who are all in different circles have seen it. What did you think of it?
6687818 It was funny! Gloriousness ensued
Wow. That was fantastic.
Marble has stolen my heart, of course, since I'm such a sucker for clever narrative devices. And a character *observing the author* as they're sifting through possible events is marvellous clever indeed. Course, a character like that can't stay in any story too long, but it's tempting to imagine doing something similar.
(Just throwing ideas out, the *Friendship is Optimal* setting would provide an opportunity to do something similar too...)
Have admit that I'd forgotten Essence. Already knew that a re-read was in the cards, but that really seals the deal. Interesting, too that others mention asexuality, since Hina's kink, arranging things from the sidelines, is really similar to a kind of sexual fantasy that's decently common among grey-ace folks. Can't remember the name that Bogaert gives it in *Understanding Asexuality*, but it boils down to not including the self in fantasy. So what she did this chapter is about the closest one can get to acting those out.
Rang really true to me.
If Kirin can't stand chaos, I'm surprised that Pinkie doesn't freak her out.