Why does Griffonstone look like such a shithole? Isn't the Equestrian world a Utopia?
Equestria is not a utopia but also all other societies in their world are even less of a utopia.
>>43281907Pinkie not only survived unscathed but actually made a difference just by being friendlynow consider someone like Pinkie walking around in downtown Detroitknow what I mean?
>>43281907Equestria's idea of friendship and harmony is to keep the rest of the world impoverished and under their hoof.
>>43281922Detroit wasn't a shithole until after the factories were moved abroad.
>>43281907No Elements of Harmony to prevent fuckhuge monsters from wrecking shit. Otherwise their infrastructure wouldn't be so bad. Probably.
>>43281974interdasting
>>43281907earth ponies, pegasi and unicorns were chosen by God, whereas the griffons specialise in deceiving god.
>>43281907Griffstone is a shithole because the writers wanted a story about a shithole, period. Death of the author is a privilege given to good writing and good writing only, shitty writing gets ad hominem'd with no punches pulled when it's fresh and gets conveniently forgotten at about the same time when the last witness of its creation dies.That being said, I'm okay with Dodge City. It's weirdly comfy.
>>43281907Because griffs are like Slavs.
>>43281907At least Griffons know how to make buildings unlike dragons.
>>43281907because of the six gorillion, oy vey poyim pay up your reparations already
>>43282054If Griffs were like Slavs, then all the buildings would be ugly prefab concrete cuboids that would look like they hadn't been maintained in 35 years.
>>43281907>Equestria: pony paradise>Everything outside: shitholeNo lie, by the time the show ended, I was always thinking "Why ponies don't just nuke everything and conquer all the land?", because they have so much bad shit, they could just let it go wild for a bit, destroy it with Elements of Harmony, and then get it like if nothing happened.
>>43282054>>43282087They're turks.
>>43282098The reason they’re favored by harmony in the first place is because they don’t do shit like that you ignorant ghoulish ape. Look at the First Hearth's Warming and how they lived before the Windigos’ banishment. A trio of squabbling degenerating tribes led by assholes. Look at them now. Prosperous under kind, merciful and forgiving rulers who won’t jail or fine you even if you fuck up a town. If they abandoned friendship they’d get their asses reamed. DYEWTS?>>43281977As far as I understand, the Elements were defunct after Luna so it’s more like they had an immortal harmony chosen princess guiding them for 1,000 years who had S.M.I.L.E so she didn’t get an Arimaspi type incident.
>>43282325>they don't do retarded evil shit because they'd get fucked otherwise>they have glowniggers, the most evil and degenerate cult ever and the ultimate cause of every single problem with our worldChoose one.
>>43282363Equestrian glowies have snowpity though
>>43282369wrong
>>43282363The core problem with secret police is that they're taught that morality comes second to getting the job done, and once they internalize that they will eventually turn their newfound sociopathy against their own. Equestria's secret police has no such tendency, they are aesthetically similar to our spy programs but have none of the elements that make them evil.
>>43281907The Griffons were the first to notice the changeling plots. and thus were punished to be in eternal poverty. because the ling's control all the banks.
>>43282369>LGBTQCIA
>>43282374There are many problems with it, with no single one to be uniquely labeled the coremost. For starters, they seem to never stay purely a police, but always mutate into, among other things, propagandists. And it invariably violates the categorical imperative, at least in its end in itself formulation. Can it be avoided? I don't know, it seems like nobody has ever tried to. They love it. They embrace it. Fucking degenerates. Then there are several psychological aspects, but instead of your corny hollywood drama I would start with their siege mentality. With a pack+prey species it would be even more ruinous than with us monkeys, their brains and souls will fucking melt no matter how much personal integrity you throw in the fire. Then there's the slippery slope of asking regular citizens to not think too hard about ethics: how can I be sure that my own secret police is not doing evils on my behalf (making me complicit, by the way) if I'm not allowed to investigate them? And if I'm making an exception for them, then why shouldn't I do the same for my neighbor or for myself? For all I know, my sudden desire to burn down an orphanage may even be subliminally induced by glowies, so how could I say no? I'm not making this last bit up, this mode of rationalizing psychoses seems to sooner or later appear in every society of prominent glowniggery. Then there's the didactic aspect: even if glowies are perfect saints and every regular citizen offered some miraculous zero-knowledge proof of it, how can we learn anything, both on the individual level and as a society, if somebody else solves our problems behind our backs?And so forth, there's more where this came from. Bottom line, there are no SMILEs in my Equestria. They tried it several times, every time the secret ponice promptly splintered into a bunch of infighting secret societies and knightly orders with apocaliptic delusions and brainwashy MOs, they've had enough of it.
>>43282489In your Equestria there could be the weathered S.M.I.L.E'ing Ponice mare that is secretly the monster behind the mask of several curses, cryptids, or spooky stories. Kino AU ngl. She doesn't realize all the other splinters and independent cells (that she's been told are eviler) are disbanded and thinks anypony able to investigate it are trained like her, aka fair game. Could be a thriller or a horror.
>>43282486Bi mares are based and extremely snowpityful.
>>43282363Aren't S.M.I.L.E just a clandestine anti-monster squad?>Then there's the didactic aspect: even if glowies are perfect saints and every regular citizen offered some miraculous zero-knowledge proof of it, how can we learn anything, both on the individual level and as a society, if somebody else solves our problems behind our backs?I mean, what is there to learn societally about keeping monsters from rampaging around property or public spaces? Because of how society is structured (stable) and how cutie marks exist, I'm more inclined to believe S.M.I.L.E is kept secret so no rambunctious children get themselves killed trying to get a monster catching cutie mark. Or so no unserious/unscrupulous ponies attempt to get into the program to do unethical things to the monsters.
>>43281907Gryphons are the niggers of Equestria
>>43282600So Delta Green? No man, it's tempting but you can't beguile me with your wile wiles. No glowies in modernquestria. Nuh-uh. Maybe some in ancientquestria. Or as an austin powers on ice situation, and they may have to put her down for her own good in the end.>>43282638It depends on how monsters work, but it'd take a fairly convoluted premise for it to make sense. The existence of monsters was never a secret by itself, so what's really stopping Sweetie Belle from trying to catch one? Are Equestrians biologically unable to try and hunt things down unless someone external tells them it's possible? All the while poorly informed Fizzlepops get mauled anyway. All she had to do was sing it a lullaby, for fuck's sake. And as for doing hr/shrink/internal investigation work in the most roundabout way possible, I don't even know, do we keep cooking a secret too lest somebody does something immoral to my casserole?>what is there to learn societally about keeping monsters from rampagingMost importantly, how to fight them, how to attract them less, what works and what doesn't. Stable society or not, you can't have agents everywhere: your first line will always be normal villagers. You may decide to hide your operations and run PSAs with bare facts and a trust me bro attitude instead, but in this case why would they listen to you? I wouldn't. There's also precious generalizable wisdom to be lost in knowing how threats don't disappear on their own, how the manticore who ate your wife didn't eat anybody else only because somepony else took a spear and did your job for you. Or if some monsters are migratory and do, in fact, disappear on their own if you don't address the problem for too long, it may also be important to know, I suppose.The picture gets muddier with entities who interact with ponies socially. Does it make sense to keep changelings or bat ponies a secret to try to protect them from hearsay and lynching mobs? No it fucking doesn't, but it's a valid question to ask. And muddier yet it gets with creatures powered by observation and shaped by belief, but that's where reality bends over backwards to justify secrecy.
>>43282489>>43282722Quite commendable Anon, to post earnestly and informatively. Now, I'm going to need you to stare into this harmonious placating light. If not well, new incidents are the most straightforward and respected prelude to my chapter gaining more funding.
>>43282758>Glowies deliberately fail at their job to get more funding/powerMany such cases.
>>43281922This story is full of existential horrors:https://www.fimfiction.net/story/34706/starlight-over-detrot-a-noir-taleFor example, the tamest example is the stallion who was skinned alive, then his skin drapered over a train, and now he's mute AND paralyzed, while feeling ponies crawling inside him. He not free to move himself, only train operator can move him. He can't communicate. He's effectively less than a pet, he's just an object. And somehow he prefers this non-existence to dying. Well, train operator claims so.
>>43281907It's what would happen to kike settlements if they were just as greedy but half as smart
>>43282827so nothing would change
Because they didn't receive 10 billion bits from Equestria
>>43281907Abandoned capitals end up like “new poor”; unable to cope with the loss of splendor sometimes. Irl multiple Chinese dynasties held Luoyang as the capital until overextension, over exploitation of surrounding lands, and politics made it just another population center. Griffonstone kinda went through the same thing but didn’t get around to the politically reunify and glaze the fuck outta our past and make us look cool and cultured part. Also, greed. The griffons unified and civilized on their own without flaming friendship magic. Not an attribute conducive to sustainable civilization.
>>43281907They are massive pidgeons.It is a miracle the streets are not soaked in Guano