In Which I Have Strong Feelings About the MLP Season Ender

Earlier this year, Salem took a page from my playbook and talked about the Season 5 opener of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. This two-part episode was a remarkable thing, as it effectively took social justice warriors seeking enforced equality of outcome and cast them into a talking cartoon pony version of the East German Stasi.

I mean, just watch this video and shudder at such lyrics as You can't have a nightmare/ If you never dream.



You know... for kids!

As it turns out, the Glorious Leader of Our Town and villain of the episode -- one Starlight Glimmer* -- has been showing up in the backgrounds of various episodes this season, and so it comes as no surprise that she should re-appear as the Big Bad for the season ender as well. So far, all is good.

(I will spare you the synopsis and assume that if you're reading this then you saw the episode. However, if you haven't but want to know what I'm talking about, go here and start reading.)

What was not so good is how the ending just sort of... happened. As The_Jack wrote on my Facebook,

I liked the time travel and how it showed all the alt-ponies and the ways the present could have gone wrong. But man... that reform was too neat and tacked on.

Now lest you think I am expecting too much from a cartoon aimed at preteen girls and meant to drive toy sales, I first direct you to watch the aforementioned season opener again and marvel at how the story, while accessible by children, carries a message that is meaningful and relevant to adults.

Then I ask you to look at this summation of alternate dystopian timelines as a result of Bitchicorn Starlight Glimmer mucking around with causality:

http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1047457-my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic

What you are seeing here are dystopias. Kid-friendly dystopias, to be sure, but the fact remains that each and every one of them are great examples of places you wouldn't want to live. These are mature concepts made accessible by cartoon sensibilities. Fairly heady stuff, and one of the reasons I'm a big fan of the show.

The ending, however, was basically... this:

http://geek.cheezburger.com/bronies/share/8589520384

Yeah... that doesn't track with me, especially since Starlight Glimmer's end goal was this:

http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1047796-my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic

So with that in mind, here is my big rant on why I didn't like the too-tidy ending, how it was broken, and how it should have gone.

First of all, Starlight Glimmer has some sort of pathology -- sociopath, psychopath, I don't know for certain, but anyone who 1) is incapable of making friends without emotionally manipulating them and 2) basically says "I don't care about the future, I just want to hurt you" is some version of insane, callous, or other severe dysfunction.

Second, I have issues with the whole "Every time Twilight goes back in time, so does Starlight in order to thwart her" because it raises the logical question of "Where does Starlight go when Twilight is sent to the new timeline?" There are various possibly handwave-y answers to this, but they seem to reduce to either "Starlight Glimmer is willing to permanently strand herself in the past in order to keep enacting her revenge, which means she's psychotically crazy" or "Starlight Glimmer also returns to the new timeline but is unable or unwilling to see the consequences of her actions, which means she's delusionally crazy."

Third, Twilight is the Princess of Friendship. In this universe, it has been proven empirically that Friendship is literally Magic, which means that she's Princess of Magic as well. I have a really hard time accepting that mere unicorn Starlight Glimmer (with some undefined cutie mark) could out-magic the Alicorn Princess of Magic (who also has a magic cutie mark). That's akin to saying "This unicorn over here with a sun-shaped cutie mark is better at raising the sun than Celestia, the Alicorn Princess of the Sun." I'm sorry, but NO.

Fourth, here is how it should have ended: Twilight, realizing that Starlight Glimmer is pathological, decides that she needs to go back in time and prevent the childhood trauma from happening (basically, a pony version of Let's Kill Baby Hitler). So Twilight uses her special talent in magic -- remember, she was promoted to princess when she fixed a spell that Starswirl the Gandalf Bearded couldn't do -- to modify this other Starswirl spell and goes back to Starlight Glimmer's past. There, Twilight shows her how to make new friends, and halts the creation of the nascent sociopath.** Starlight Glimmer makes new friends and understands that friendship is the most powerful magic of all. Bam, problem solved in a proper pony manner and it makes sense.

Finally, let's say the writers really wanted that ending. OK, that still isn't a problem: just replace Starlight Glimmer with The Great And Powerful Trixie. This actually makes narrative sense, you see, as Trixie has a longstanding magical feud with Twilight (see Boast Busters  and Magic Duel), and she's demonstrated both an ability and willingness to find things which give her a magical edge (like the Alicorn Amulet).

If they'd used her instead of Starlight Glimmer, it would have changed the thrust of the episode from a stalkerish "I hate you and will do everything I can to ruin you" to "I'm going to prove once and for all that Trixie is the greatest!"

Which would mean the end conditions would change: all Twilight would have to do is admit that yes, Trixie beat her this time and Trixie is indeed both Great and Powerful, but The Great And Powerful Trixie's ego is turning the future of Equestria into a horrifying uninhabitable wasteland, so would she please stop screwing around with time? And Trixie, because she isn't an utter sociopath, accepts.

Either of these endings would have been preferable to the one we saw on screen. This matters to me because I have this terrible sneaking fear, given the final scenes of this season and the fact that the girls have been a unicorn short ever since Twilight was alicorned, that Starlight Glimmer will join the cast next season.

If it were Trixie, I'd be okay with it. The fans like her -- I like her -- and while she has an ego the size of an Ursa Major, she's not a bad pony and can easily be redeemed by the Avatars of Harmony. 

Starlight Glimmer, though -- is she actually redeemed? Or has she just been temporarily mollified by having been given what she wants, which is unconditional love? I think it's the latter, because I haven't seen any evidence that  she truly learned her lesson and has turned her back on her mandate of Enforced Equality For All. 

She's a ticking time bomb. And if she sticks around, Twilight and the others better keep not turn their backs on her.


* As Dustbury said back in the spring, "If you're a unicorn with a name based on a time of day, you're probably overpowered."

** It was asked "How come Starlight Glimmer's parents -- I assume she didn't arrive via parthenogenesis -- never saw this little ball of resentment growing? Unless they just didn't give a flip." Based on her actions and sense of entitlement, I'm guessing that their special snowflake could do no wrong in their eyes, and was likely an only child.

Gun Blog Variety Podcast #67

http://tinyurl.com/nmwoenx

Adam and Sean bring you our Thanksgiving episode!

• Erin Palette talks with her Blue Collar Prepping Blog co-blogger, Chaplain Tim about getting caught in a riot in Berlin, and the lessons that peppers can learn from his experience. 
• Nicki Kenyon talks about the new cyber warfare, internet hoaxes. 
• Barron B is still on assignment.
• Weer'd does his latest patented Audio Fisk™ on Hillary's Brady Campaign award acceptance speech. 
• And you don't want to miss the story of how Sean blew up his father's Dillon 650 in his wife's face! Check out the show notes for a photo of the powder burns on his arm. 

Thanks for downloading, listening, and subscribing. Please like and share The GunBlog VarietyCast on Facebook, and if you use iTunes, give us a review!

Listen to the podcast here.

Read the show notes here.

A special thanks both to Firearms Policy Coalition for their support and to our sponsor, Law of Self Defense. Use discount code "Variety" at checkout and get 10% off.

Doctor Who: The Gallifreyan Lament Configuration

Pardon while I don my tin-foil fez...

A week or so back, I messaged Erin, ranting nigh-incoherently about hair and jumpers. I'd noticed something off, and it triggered a few memories regarding previous episodes. I'd noticed that Twelve's previously unkempt hair and ratty jumper were gone, and he was once again immaculate in waist-coat and finely-groomed hair. Why didn't he know how the Confession Dial worked? Why was it important now, after going unmentioned since the first couple of episodes and for that matter, who was he talking to when he was playing guitar and talking about Beethoven and the Bootstrap Paradox? Why did he say “Longest month of my life” when Clara referenced him thinking she was dead? Something is off, and I suspected we were seeing events play out of order again. Which led me to one conclusion:

Clara Oswald has been dead this entire season.
At least from the Doctor's point of view. And after this week, I feel that I'm still right. 

We learned what the Confession Dial is: it's a Gallifreyan interrogation room, a personalized prison and puzzle box. And in the course of the Doctor working out this particular puzzle, we get something that I've wanted to see specifically since Capaldi started and generally for much longer: an episode with just the Doctor. And did we ever get that. 

• Capaldi veers seamlessly between quiet anger and abject horror as he's faced with his childhood nightmares and reminders of his failures. 
• A monster that would be straight out of a classic Japanese horror film if it were shot differently. 
• And some very real mature content, as his death scene is played out in gruesome detail. 

The image of a badly burned and blistered Doctor dragging himself by his fingernails is not something I thought I'd see, let alone him killing himself just so he could live the cycle all over again. But he was clever. Left himself a clue so that he could make progress in the puzzle, which is probably not something his captors were suspecting, even if it took two billion years to do it.

Capaldi's performance here has cemented his place in Doctor Who history, if it were not already so. Three of the four previous episodes have had truly shining moments in his performances, and now he's surpassed even “Everybody Lives”. Steven Moffat borrows heavily from another property for this episode, taking the Doctor into his own Mind Palace as he did Sherlock Holmes at the moment when Mary Watson shot him and his body was shutting down. The difference here is that whenever the Doctor is in danger (and not just dying) he thinks quickly. Very, very quickly, as he retreats into a mental version of the TARDIS, and depends on the one thing that's kept him going for a very long time: his companions asking him questions.

This is the perfect excuse to bring Clara back, perhaps for one last time, to give the Doctor one last stern order: Get off your arse and win. I wonder what strings Moffat had to pull to get the BBC to allow swearing on a family show, pre-watershed at that, but honestly I've been waiting for Clara to swear for some time now... she strikes me as the type to do so. (Repeatedly. With much imagination.)

But you have to read between the lines a lot in Doctor Who. The kids are watching, after all, and it wouldn't do to have a companion with, say, a ton of emotional and abandonment issues to be a stripper. No, she's just a kiss-o-gram.

Always read between the lines. The story's much more fun that way.

The Oncoming Storm Approaches

Which brings us back to my theory: Clara's been dead for a long time now. Certainly since before the beginning of this season, which is why the Doctor's in a funk and why he's dressing down. The Confession Dial's first proper appearance was this episode. We know it was given to Ohila of the Sisterhood of Karn (as seen in the Season 9 Prologue), who will most likely hand it off to Missy, at which point it will return to his possession, only to be given to Mayor Me/Ashildr. Until now we assumed that the prologue took place before this season started, but now I suspect it takes place between this week and next week's episode, or even after next week's episode. Who has the dial after Me/Ashilder is anyone's guess. As for Clara, there's production photos of her in a waitress uniform floating around the internet, so we haven't seen the last of her. But it's entirely possible that her erratic travels with the Doctor could be in part to him intruding on her timeline as far back as last year's episodes, as the ratty jumper and hoodie have made appearances previous to this season. 

My fingers are crossed that I'm right, and I'm genuinely eager to see what goes down on Gallifrey next week.  

SHTBlack Friday

There are some amazing deals to be found out there if you're into prepping. Now's your chance to get some high value gear at lower cost to you, including the current (non-HD) Kindle Fire for only $35!

Check out the rest of the sales (some of them slightly dated, as I wrote the post on Wednesday) over at Blue Collar Prepping.

The Splash 25, a dry bag/backpack with an inflatable frame. 

Happy Thanksgiving, Everypony!

May your day be full of food, festivities, and friendship.

A Brief Musing about Star Wars

It's no wonder the Jedi Order fell, what with its ridiculous practice of taking small children, training them with laser swords and psychic abilities, and then telling them "Look, I know you're going through puberty right now, but you aren't allowed a boyfriend/girlfriend because that would be a distraction. Instead, meditate through it."

Frankly, I'm surprised no one pulled an Anakin-style "I want to get laid and I'll kill you all if I have to" massacre sooner.

You want to know how the Dark Side gets its recruits? The Sith let their apprentices fuck. It's that simple.

Traveller Tuesday: Tech Levels

To head off the likely first question: Since tech level is an important part of a system's Universal Planetary Profile, and the UPP is administered by the Scout Service, I think it's safe to say that the concept of "tech levels" exists within the setting of the game as well as outside it.

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

Tech Levels in Traveller are seemingly arbitrary things. For example. TL 1 encompasses everything between bronze-age Greek city-state technology (a la 300), iron-age Roman Empire technology, and Medieval "castles and plate armor" up to but not including the Renaissance -- in other words, TL 1 is "Dungeons & Dragons", and TL 2 begins with the invention of gunpowder. That is a huge spread.

Compare that to the difference between Tech Levels 14 (Zhodani Consulate maximum) and 15 (Third Imperium maximum) and you get... not a lot of difference: Jump-6 vs Jump-5, anagathics, early (read: prototype) black globes, and general quality of life improvements. Essentially, TL 14 vs. TL 15 is the difference between the 1990s and today: we had computers and the internet back then, too, but the tech was slower and its applications had not become essential for daily life the way that global social media, GPS, and portable global telecommunications have today.

In other words, TL 15 is just a fancy way saying "mature TL 14", because the differences as listed are about the same as the difference between early TL 7 (the 1980s) and mature TL 7 (the present).

There are two reasons for this extreme difference at both ends of the spectrum. The first is a mechanical reason: player characters in Traveller exist at the high-TL end of things, and so it's important to know what they, and their opponents, do and do not have access to. (I fondly recall an adventure that my players have taken to calling "Murder Island", where a team of NPC mercs with TL 12 weapons and armor messed up a PC party with access to much higher technology.) Similarly, when protagonists have access to space travel, energy weapons and advanced combat armor, the differences between inferior barbarians becomes academic.

This is Imperial Marine Battledress shrugging off small arms fire.
Do you think it matters to him if your swords are bronze, iron or steel?
No. No, it does not. 

"Differences between inferior barbarians" is actually the second, in-game reason. The Vilani had jump drive (TL 9) while Terrans were building the pyramids (TL 0), and their civilization has lasted for over ten thousand years. If you decide that the fall of the First Imperium and the intermingling of Solomani and Vilani cultures during the Rule of Man counts as the creation of a new, hybrid civilization then it lasted for only eight thousand, but that hybrid has lasted another 3,300+ years. To put that in perspective, the Chinese language & alphabet has existed for only 3,500 years!

Given such an old culture (and the Vilani are ancient -- remind me some day to write a blog post comparing Vilani conservatism /stagnation, Solomani dynamism /instability, and Zhodani stability /homogeneity), there is enormous cultural pressure to equate "oldest" with "best". The entire Major Race/Minor Race division? Entirely a Vilani construct to keep themselves on top as the oldest, and therefore wisest civilization... at least until it was discovered that the Droyne were far older, which may explain some of the Imperial derision towards them that isn't based upon fear and contempt of psionics.

What I am getting after is this: I believe that the Tech Level scale that the Third Imperium uses is deliberately vague and periodically undergoes revisions every few hundred years, compressing the lower ends and lengthening the higher ends. Further, I believe that the Imperium has been TL 15 for so long because it is culturally convenient to have a technological descriptor that is not only large but also a nice, "round" number.  The Imperium is TL 15 because it is important for them to have a higher technology than the other polities around them:

• Aslan Hierate (peak TL 11, average TL 9)
• Hiver Federation (peak TL 14, average TL 12)
• Solomani Confederation (peak TL 14 and estimated to hit TL 15 within a decade, but average is much lower)
• K'Kree Empire (TL 11, average TL 9)
• Vargr Extents (balkanized, TLs all over the place)
• Zhodani Consulate (peak TL 14, average TL 13)

You may note that of the three TL 14 civilizations near the Third Imperium, two of them are hostile and have fought wars with them. (The Hive Federation is more disposed towards psychohistorical manipulation rather than open warfare, and also has to contend with the militant K'krees that it shares a border with.)  In other words, the Imperium MUST have a higher tech level than its enemies for exactly the same reasons that the United States needed a visibly higher technological edge than the Soviet Union: it was good for morale and made opponents think twice about attacking.

The Imperium would be perfectly happily to cruise along at TL 15 forever, slowly compressing lower tech levels downward so that it always stays on top. However, that metric is tied to how Jump drives work in your game, as the key difference between TL 14 and 15 is the creation of the Jump-6 drive:

• Per first edition Central Supply Catalog, "The ‘Jump-6 limit’ remains in force for some time after the invention of Jump-6 drives. Various promising fields of technology eventually fail to produce a workable Jump-7 or higher drive. However, other technologies continue to advance." (p.6, CSC). 
• However, second edition High Guard (still in playtest and so subject to change) states that Jump-7, -8 and -9 are feasible at Tech Levels 16, 17 and 18 respectively. This theory is bolstered by Marc Miller's Traveller5 (p.344).

If you adhere to the first school of thought, then the Third Imperium is likely to hover at a stated TL 15 for quite some time, until a significant technological benchmark is reached (such as the invention of antimatter power plants, practical matter-to-energy transmission, or a significant weapons development like a disintegrator0; when that happens, the Imperium is likely to revise its tech level metrics and state "Oh my goodness, look at this, we are actually at TL 17 [or more]." That this will likely leave the Solomani and Zhodani two tech levels behind is deliberate.

However, if you follow the second line of reasoning, things are both more clearly delineated and also more problematic. An additional one parsec in jump distance is hardly worth crowing about unless you're desperate, but if you use this metric then it stands to reason that other developments in Jump can be developed:  perhaps one can reduce the time spent in jump to less than a week. The strategic and logistical advantage inherent in jumping 6 parsecs in four days rather than seven is immediately obvious.


TL;DR the reason Tech Levels are weird in Traveller is because it's beneficial propaganda for the Third Imperium.