Just a person who got an account so they could block people. I am the lord of editing other peoples posts. Some Star Wars stuff, Outer Wilds, Transformers and The Owl House plus whatever I think is cool. You can call me Emu
And Fluttershy isn't the only one. Strange transformations overtook several ponies, affecting them in different ways depending on their species.
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A pair of unicorns, once identical twins, one half afflicted by the same malady. While the pegasus' bird wings warped and shifted, the unicorn's swirled antlers regrew into a fanglike shape.
Meanwhile, a young horse found herself with sharpened canines, shaggy fur - and just like the others - a hearty appetite for apple juice.
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So what do these three have in common to undergo such drastic changes? Was it being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or perhaps getting a little too close to nature during cider season.
The Flimflam brothers tried ripping up entire trees to press into substandard cider, earning the ire of wildlife nesting in the branches. Apple Bloom decided to try out "pest wranglin'" as her life's calling.
She didn't want to do this. But her friend insisted she help get rid of the unusual feral bats in the orchard using her animal skills. But the most important part of animal handling is knowing when to leave them alone.
One shouldn't tamper with nature.
Nature is a balancing act, a beautiful dance of give and take. Millions of years of evolution have crafted systems and relationships more complex than ponies can begin to understand.
One such system is that of the Vampire Fruit Bat, its target species of tree, the seeds, and a symbiotic relationship between all these plus a gene-altering virus that makes them what they are.
You see, millenia ago these bats were simple fruit eaters, munching through small fruits and spreading the seeds through their digestion. But over time, they acquired a virus that changed their physiology, making them grow bigger, with piercing fangs and a unique gut biome that thrived off the juices of larger fruits.
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Large fruited trees like apples and pears evolved to be eaten by megafauna such as horses, but certain tree species benefited from a relationship with strange new bats. The trees changed their reproductive cycles to depend on Fruitvam interference in order to grow into healthy trees. Apples typically have a certain amount of moisture in them, but Pire Apples have an extremely high juice content due to their relationship with Fruitvam bats.
The bats are attracted to fruit with the highest juice content, which their virus-evolved bodies demand. The seeds pass through the bats' gut and are then laid in nutrient-rich guano (bat manure), which exponentially increases the seeds' growing capacity. While the juicy fruit attracts the bats, it is not as good for nourishing the seeds, so the apple tree depends as much on the bats as they do the tree.
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The trip through the bat digestive system changes the seeds into more robust, high-yield trees that produce extremely juicy apples. The best cider is pressed from an orchard with a healthy bat population, even though they intimidate farmers at first by devouring their crops. If juices and cider products are a staple export, it's worth it to establish the bats as part of your land management.
Unfortunately, not everyone understands or cares about the balance of nature. You can try to eradicate them, but you must be very careful when doing so.
Bats carry many diseases, but Vampire Fruit Bats carry a particularly virulent condition that defines their life and environment. To the bats, the Vamprus is part of them, and they would not exist without it. They are not mere hosts to a virus, but invaluable partners with mutual benefit.
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Fruitvams are born with vamprus, but they still secrete it in their saliva. This is a holdover from when it was a harmful, rabies-like virus that spread through bats biting each other. It does have some effect on their mind, drawing them to seek out juice-rich fruits at the height of ripeness, but this is what the food chain needs, so it is no longer a harmful behavior. They are not aggressive, and have no desire to bite living creatures, bats or otherwise.
However, if one handles a Vampire Fruit Bat with bare hooves, or harasses a nest, they will fight back. Ponies who have been bitten usually escape unscathed, as they are not the definitive host of the Vamprus virus. Those who do develop symptoms, however, need swift treatment or changes become permanent. After the virus leaves their systems, afflicted ponies will no longer be controlled by their desire to drink from apples' flesh, but they will always have a hunger for it.
Some ponies who tangled with bats can be so mildly affected they never even realized they were infected, with no indication save for minor changes... and an insatiable desire for cider.
In a statement to The Post, a spokesperson for NBCUniversal claimed the tree work is simply an annual ritual at this time of year. “We understand that the safety tree trimming of the Ficus trees we did on Barham Blvd. has created unintended challenges for demonstrators, that was not our intention. In partnership with licensed arborists, we have pruned these trees annually at this time of year to ensure that the canopies are light ahead of the high wind season,” they wrote. “We support the WGA and SAG’s right to demonstrate and are working to provide some shade coverage. We continue to openly communicate with the labor leaders on-site to work together during this time.”
If those trees were pollarded annually, the cut areas would NOT look like that. There would be big knobs of old growth at the trimming sites. Not seeing any of that here. The way those trees were topped (not pollarded, which is a very careful process that has to begin when the tree is immature) is excellent way to kill them due to loss of hydration, open sites to infection and parasitism during the best time of year for both, lack of nutrition due to so little greenery and new budding growth being left, sunburn and other exposure damage, and a myriad of other possibilities. Plus, if they were topped annually, they would not have the lovely drooping branches seen in the other picture but would have tons of vertical suckers instead.
This is what an annually pollarded mature tree should look like:
If this was done by the city, the public works arborists should be protesting in front of city hall and screaming their heads off right now. I'm not hearing about that, so... Tree law!
He mentions later in the thread that not only do they not trim the trees annually, they’re trimmed at best once every 18 years. Supposed to be every five, and only in dormancy, which even my layman’s ass knows about tree trimming.
And yes, Universal can probably eat the fine. But it’s gonna be a whopper even if the trees survive (which is as mentioned kinda unlikely), California is a triple damage state for tree law, and it may increase dramatically if there were nesting birds in the trees.
All this to be a Captain Planet filler villain to some writers. And yes, it’s currently just the writers officially picketing there; SAG-AFTRA recommended against it for petty bullshit like this and the suddenly necessary sidewalk construction.
I asked my dad— a retired arborist—about TREE LAW and he just kinda blinked and said (i paraphrase because Dad Tangents, amirite?):
"Worst and best case I ever saw was a guy who was caught in the act of cutting down a C&C tree by two Department of Urban Forestry supervisors while they were randomly driving around on a Saturday. Not only did he have to deal with the cops showing up and months of paperwork and bureaucracy, but he also had to pay the fines AND cover the cost of the tree removal + stumping + buying a new tree + planting the new tree + wages for the regular crew plus the extra workers they needed to get the jobs done. That tree ended up costing him upwards of $35K, and that was over 20 years ago."
So yeah, respect Tree Law or pay out the bootyhole.
One piece of Avatar lore I don't quite believe is that most avatars don't learn they're the avatar until they're told on their 16th birthday.
like, POV you're some Earth Kingdom kid who knows the previous Water Tribe avatar died suspiciously close to the time you were born. You CANNOT tell me that that entire class-year of starry bright-eyed children doesn't spend every waking moment trying to prove they're the avatar. "Shut up Hang Lee you're not the avatar I'M the avatar. That stream just moved toward me." "Nuh-uh a fish did that and Avatar Tepek died on the summer solstice and YOU'RE a winter baby." "All the seasons are opposite in the water tribe Hang Lee!" "Nuh-uh"
You're 8 years old with all your other 8-year-old friends at your first day of How To Throw A Rock Class you CANNOT tell me that every kid present doesn't waste half the class trying to catch grass on fire with all the sincerity and conviction of a gas station hopeful snagging a mega-millions lotto ticket with their Mars bar and $30 gas fill-up.
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