Pizza House will likely be busy because of the hockey game. Maybe Amer's across the street? They have a large variety of deli sandwiches and frozen yogurt.
Want to go; can't. Any future meetups planned outside of this one?
It seems as though most responses to this comment talk about how learning to cook is a good thing because it helps one pursue other, more universally valuable goals. I definitely agree with this!
But honestly, the thing that makes women angry about the statement is not the first part. It's the second. Because there are many good reasons to learn how to cook, but the father is only focusing on the pursuit of marriage, as if that's the foremost goal she should have. The fact that cooking is so important in general exacerbates this -- it means that, regardless of all of those other vastly more important reasons, the only one women should care about is their obligation to get married.
Responses that directly refer to your desire to see the women as a person, as opposed to objectifying her through catcalls etc. or putting her on a pedestal because of her gender.
Therefore, responses that don't work are motivated out of a desire to protect the woman because she is a woman, rather than because she is a person. "That's a rude thing to say to a woman" is therefore worse than a simple "that's rude".
The idea of "white knighting" is distasteful because people consider white knights to be motivated to protect women because they are women. Removing that aspect gets rid of the white knighting.
If anyone still thinks you're motivated by a desire to protect women because they are women, you could retort with, "she's a person. She has feelings like anyone else."
If male readers feel uncomfortable with the lack of characterization and stereotyping of male characters, and subsequently realize that female readers can feel similarly uncomfortable with all media that fails the Bechdel test (a significant amount), then they can conclude that it's disturbing to think of a world where a gender is reduced to those kinds of stereotypes.
Of course, it's possible to miss one of those elements of the chain -- not feeling uncomfortable in the first place, for example.
But then, it's also possible for them to recognize that some people feel uncomfortable while experiencing specific media and feeling enough empathy to relate to them, even if they don't feel uncomfortable themselves.
Minus the catcalling, too, I assume?
To people who go to meetups in other parts of the world: are they all like this? How do they vary in terms of satisfaction and progress in achieving goals?
Somehow the phrase "existential depression" clicked with me. For context, I'm an otherwise cheery person who breaks down with terrible fear (sometimes involving crying episodes) when I contemplate death. The fear generally lasts for a few hours, but is extremely potent.
Are there instances of existential depression which are more chronic, as opposed to acute, like mine? Is that what the phrase is referring to?
I wasn't involved in the editing process, so I don't know if you address this in future chapters, but it seems as though most people who are commenting on Equestria Daily are rejecting the concept of uploading because it would be "like dying" (similar to the Star Trek transporter thought experiment). I hope that this fear is addressed comprehensively because it seems like a major deterrence for people who would otherwise be supportive of the idea.
Also, I think that the people who "know how the story ends" because they've read about robot apocalypse analogues before are entirely missing the point, and I hope that gets expressed in the story somewhere as well.
And (as a history and archiving dork), I hope that people don't forget what came before the utopia. To lose that much human history would be devastating for me. Although I'm not sure if it goes against Celestia's programming -- people could know about the time before ponies and still have their values maximized through friendship and ponies.
Am interested!