“Often, the greatest of evil is done by people or
ponies that believe that what they are doing is the greatest of good.”
- Mayor Mare
Third Interview
Name: Mayor “Honest” Mare
Birth date: September Fifth, 965 ANM (After
Nightmare Moon)
Ethnic / Nationality / Political Party:
Earth Pony and naturalized United States citizen, Democratic Farmer Labor
party
Status: Alive, holding elected office as
the Mayor of Duluth, Minnesota
Education: Bachelor of Political Science,
Department of Political Science of Manehattan
Abilities: Level 6 Earth Pony / Known Earth pony
abilities, along with those that were discovered or perhaps rediscovered during
the war
Favorite sporting activity: Weight lifting
in the Police Department’s gym
Name one thing you love from Earth that is not
related to your job: My friend, who would like to remain anonymous, is
making me a suit of Kevlar and steel plate body armor, reinforced with magical,
Lake Superior Agates.
“I hope that during
your daytime travels Princess Celestia’s sunlight warms your body, illuminating
the path before your hooves, while guiding you to friendship and happiness;
while sleeping at night Princess Luna guides you to sweet dreams,”
I can’t believe that
I once that wrote that drivel to conclude my private letters. Well, allow
me to backup a bit and explain what I said.
As Ponyville’s Mayor,
I had routine contact with my once benign, cordial, and friendly Princess
Celestia. We often worked together, wrote each other letters, and
sometimes talked about the ups and downs of being career politicians.
Several times, I got
to glimpse her playful side, when she let out her inner filly. Once,
during a rare day off from her official duties, she and I sneaked off to an
expensive and exclusive Canterlot spa to relax and unwind. That was one
of the best days in all my life, seeing my Princess as just an ordinary pony
with common desires and needs.
Princess Celestia,
not that kaleidoscopic-maned serpent that pretends to be my Princess, attended
my first mayoral swearing-in ceremony. She talked to me as an ally and as
a friend. At the end of our conservation she hugged me with her foreleg.
I felt her warmth, not just in body heat, but in her love.
She whispered in my ear: “Star Swirl the Bearded told me
this and now I’m passing his wisdom onto you. ‘In every situation, look
for opportunity. Tell the truth, believe in yourself, believe in your
friends, believe in friendship, and every problem will work out at the end of
the day.’”
Whatever that Solar
Tyrant is now, she isn’t my kindhearted Princess Celestia. With dismay
and denial within my mind, I saw her change from warm and good - to cold and
cruel even before we ponies made contact with the human world. That
oppressive creature has even hypnotized the Equestrian criminal courts into putting
innocent ponies in jail, when she herself should be in jail for breaking
Equestrian laws. I’m no attorney, but I can name ten Equestrian felony
laws that the Tyrant has broken.
What would I do to
the brutal fiend who wears the face of my warm-hearted princess? After a
fair and impartial trial, I would send that Solar Tyrant to Tartarus where all
the rest of Equus's most evil of criminals and monsters are kept.
- Mayor Mare
<><><><>
What motivated me to choose to reside in Duluth,
Minnesota and then become this city’s first pony mayor? In August of
2018, human and Earth pony scientists of the University of Minnesota’s Duluth
campus had announced that they had created a new type of hay with apple genes.
A few weeks later, some of that special hay was transported to Ponyville.
When I ate some of that genetically-modified hay, I knew that it could
make Ponyville farms Equus's Champagne region for growing hay.
On June 29, (2019) I and my
natural-born stallion assistants were in Duluth, finishing up a trade agreement
with the University to import that special hay. I had obtained exclusive
rights on all of Equus for Ponyville to
grow that special hay and thus I was very happy!
Then, during the next day (June 30), the Solar Tyrant declared her
war against all of humanity. It took one minute for me and my pony
assistants to decide what we needed to do. We denounced that immoral and
malevolent Queen for breaking Equestrian laws that the founding six ponies of
Equestria had a hoof in creating. And then we pledged our loyalty to each
other to defend humanity.
The day after that (July 1), was the day of an infamous attack on
the Minnesota State Capitol complex. The Solar Tyrant’s human thugs known
as the PER turned the Governor, most Minnesota state legislators, the Minnesota
Supreme Court, and many senior state administrators into her mindless drones.
Ponyville’s bees are more individual than
those… things that look like ponies.
Thank Luna that five hundred Minnesota State Guard soldiers were
training at the nearby Cedar Street Armory. These brave guards contained
and then killed the PER humans and all the newfoals before they could take over
downtown St. Paul.
But, it was one brave guard that turned a PER victory into a
defeat. Emily Davison, a Burnsville, Minnesota firefighter and Guard
Staff Sergeant drove a tanker truck filled with gasoline into a nearby parking
ramp, drove into the improvised PER field headquarters, and then detonated
fifty kilograms of explosives in the passenger seat. The resulting blast,
fire, and collapsed structure destroyed the PER’s entire potion stockpile and
killed most of their human leaders. Sergeant Davison was posthumously
awarded the Medal of Honor for her service that day.
By the way, I saw on television Marcus Renee,
along with the relatives of five other soldiers accepting posthumously
the Medal of Honor for their dead family members, despite Jacob and the other
fives service members still in theory being “alive” as drones of the Tyrant.
I can’t imagine what it was like for Marcus
to accept that metal from the American President.
Because of the Tyrant’s unspeakable war of aggression against all
of humanity, I and my assistants decided to remain in Duluth. For three
days, I didn’t know what I would be doing in Duluth. Until the Lieutenant
Governor of Minnesota now Governor appointed Duluth’s Mayor Pamela Ashdown to
be a Minnesota state legislator. The war needs to be won, and Minnesota
needed a functional state government to do that.
In my hotel room, while I was eating a beet pulp, flaxseed, and molasses omelet, I heard on the
television that there would be a special election to find a new mayor for
Duluth. I stood up on my hind legs, waved my forehooves above my head,
and proclaimed that if my new hometown needed a new mayor, then I’d take up
that challenge, become an American citizen, and then become Duluth’s greatest
mayor. If Sergeant Davison can fight against the Tyrant’s PER terrorists,
then I will as well. My assistants applauded my impromptu speech, telling
me that they would support me.
Yes, I admit that was my most energetic, Rainbow Dash moment.
But that moment was one of my best moments of my life.
My Duluth home is an apartment in the old St. Louis County Jail.
I walk to the Mayor’s Office using an underground tunnel under West
Second Street. I got permission from the Duluth City Council to enclose
all the government buildings in the Duluth Civic Center with walls of reinforced
concrete, six feet thick. Those concrete walls might be ugly compared to
the polished stone of the original walls, but so far, not one terrorist has
dared to attack those buildings.
One good thing about being Mayor of Duluth is that northern
Minnesota is under the radar for the PER and HLF terrorists. I suppose
that my fellow citizens and I are fortunate that a PER ponification attack on a
girl’s high school hockey game at Duluth’s Amsoil Arena does not provide the
same bang for the buck as a potion attack on a Minnesota Vikings home game at
the U.S. Bank Stadium.
Also, the HLF would rather truck bomb a PHL branch office located
in a once abandoned Twin Cities supermarket. However, the HLF didn’t read
the newspapers or watch television, as the PHL Twin Cities offices that had
rented office space within that building had relocated to a more secure
location three weeks before their attack.
Security cameras captured the moment when the HLF truck bomb
prematurely detonated as three HLF criminals attempted to set the countdown
timer on their bomb. I find ironic humor in the fact that the office
workers that were renting the former PHL offices were advertising themselves as
a beer and wine importer. But, that was a false front business for the
PER!
Within the ruined offices, the FBI discovered plans to import
potion vials inside cans of beer and boxes of wine. As an American pony
citizen, I love it when the HLF and PER manage to kill each other off without
harming anyone or anypony else. Also, the FBI found a money laundering
scheme to turn Equestrian gemstones and gold into the local currency for that
one insurgent cell.
St. Louis County’s only known
terrorist activity happened when the infamous “Lead and Fire” HLF duo were
captured by an anonymous telephone tip from a concerned citizen about strange
activity within a rented Duluth home. In the recorded call, a concerned
citizen saw these two twenty-something year old men drinking and smoking what
looked like weed, while watching horrific HLF recruitment videos on a large
plasma TV with their house curtains open.
Lead killed with an AK-47 Kalashnikov and Fire killed with a
homemade flamethrower. Lead and Fire managed to murder twenty-eight
innocent humans in isolated, rural homesteads and then looting them of anything
valuable in Iowa and then Wisconsin before being caught by a Duluth SWAT team.
Here’s a tip for the bad guys. When you are being arrested
by the police, even if you are drunk and stoned, don’t call each other by your
street aliases.
When Duluth Police Detectives asked Lead and Fire why they never
murdered any ponies; they replied that all the ponies that they saw were
escorted by two or three humans armed with rifles and shotguns. They were
afraid of attacking one community center, because it had a working replica
Civil War Gatling gun on the second floor, overlooking the main entrance.
Lead told the detectives, “It was more fun to kill up unarmed
people and take their stuff; then starting a fight with several armed ponies
and humans, who had an unknown number of nearby friends.”
Fire told the detectives, “We were about to ambush an Earth pony
stallion and his two human escorts in a rural village; when those there five
Iowa National Guard Humvees pulled up to them. Some black women Captain
got out of her vehicle and then told those three that the streets were not
safe. She offered them a lift home, which the stallion and his two human
guards accepted. If we had attacked a few seconds sooner, we would have
fought at least a couple dozen armored soldiers armed with assault rifles, plus
a heavy machinegun in a Humvee turret. Coming that close to being a
target for two dozen soldiers kind of soured my opinion about shooting at the
ponies.”
As a government official, I have access to an
unlimited supply of gasoline for my chauffeur driven Limousine. However,
riding in my city Limousine makes me feel guilty after I see dozens of people
lined up at many city bus stops to board too few city buses.
I believe that the biggest threat for the war
effort in northern Minnesota comes not from terrorist attacks, but from the pilfering of vital war supplies
by black market thieves. These delinquents are doing as much damage to
the war economy as the PER and HLF combined. Every drop of fuel, every
loaf of bread, and every bullet that is diverted to the black market is not
going to fight the war and that’s bad news for every freedom loving human and
pony.
When I was Ponyville’s Mayor, there were thieving
ponies stealing war supplies during the war with King Sombra’s Crystal Empire.
Now, with all the cargo going through the roads, railroads, and the Port
of Duluth stopping Black Market thieves had become an even harder problem to
contain.
During World War Two, about one-third of all
allied cargo shipping through the Port of Naples was stolen. While there
is not much of a market for iron ore, we still have a problem of people
stealing everything from gain to machineguns. A group of misfit dock
workers swiped a light tank and put it up for sale. I’m happy that tank
didn’t fall into the hands of the PER or the HLF.
Many Duluth golf and outdoor enthusiasts blame me
for turning all of Duluth’s golf links, parks, and forested areas into
farmland. But, I am complying with a U.S. Department of Agriculture order
to turn all available urban lands into croplands. More urban farms mean
more food is available to eat and a shorter distance to get that urban food to
markets. And, that means more space on our American transport network for
military cargo and troop movements.
The Duluth Police Department has purchased
military equipment to discourage terrorist attacks. It is fortunate for
my citizens that a young Japanese woman named Sayuri Tanuma is selling to the city military-grade weapons
and vehicles. In the past three years, this mysterious woman has sold to
the city military rifles, body armor, and camouflage NBC (nuclear, biological,
and chemical) suits, with gas masks.
Miss Tanuma has also sold to the city two
quick-firing, French 75 mm field guns, plus hundreds of rounds of
anti-personnel ammunition, and one Churchill Crocodile, all of these in
factory-fresh condition. I have no idea where she gets old military
equipment that looks like it was just rolled off an assembly line. Yet,
she has time and time again delivered quality weapons at a reasonable cost to
city taxpayers, and that’s something that I care about.
There have been some small silver linings within
these whopping storm clouds of war. Becoming one of the first
pony-American citizens and then to be elected by the majority of human Duluth
citizens the first pony Mayor of an American city is very good. That, and
appetizing vegetarian cheeseburgers, with the meat completely made from plants.
To the west of Minnesota in Seattle, Washington
voters elected Braintree a unicorn stallion Mayor. And, to the east of
Minnesota in Newark, New Jersey voters elected Bluebell a Pegasus mare Mayor.
Do people need to live in a port city to elect a pony mayor?
Do I know of any hidden Earth pony magical
talents? When Earth ponies become steam locomotive engineers, their
engines can run for days, even a week or more sometimes, on one load of water
and fuel. I suppose that is the reason why there are so few water towers
and coaling towers constructed by the Equestrian railroads.
Come to think of it, under human care steam
locomotives need to stop for labor-intensive maintenance, grease and oil, every
100 to 150 miles. But, under pony care, the same steam locomotives can
run for days without maintenance. In fact, the major American and
Canadian railroads are now building new versions of the Union Pacific Big Boy
locomotives for their pony crews to operate.
Also, trains and other vehicles under the control
of Earth ponies have remarkably fast starting and stopping power far beyond
what they should have, without injuring any passengers or damaging any cargo.
We Earth ponies didn’t realize the ability to maintain and operate our
machines was a magical talent. I suppose back in Equestria, we Earth
ponies didn’t have humans to compare ourselves to, while very few ponies with
wings or horns were hired by the railroads. I hope that the city
universities can both give an explanation of and expand upon our Earth pony
powers.
What is the most dangerous tactic I can envisage, devised by the
Solar Tyrant? Almost every week, as an ordinary citizen and then the
Mayor of Ponyville, I’ve dealt with many invasions of creatures from the
Everfree Forest. The Solar Tyrant mind-controls newfoals and natural-born
ponies; thus she could mind-control the creatures of the Everfree Forest.
Imagine the Alliance battling Earth pony Royal Guards riding into
battle on hydra, timberwolves, manticore, Ursa Minor, and Ursa Major.
Human and pony biologists have both written that a species needs about
three thousands adult pairs to keep a species alive and healthy. That
means that there must be at least six thousand of each species of these
dangerous creatures living in the Everfree Forest.
How will I know that the Solar Tyrant has been
tried, convicted, and then sentenced to Tartarus? That will happen when I can spend more of my
city’s tax money on schools rather than on extra police, police intelligence
gathering, and reinforcing all vital buildings from PER and HLF terrorist
attacks. That will happen when I see high school and college age youths,
human and pony, returning to school. That will happen when the city’s
arts and humanities programs are no longer chronically
underfunded.
That will happen when city and county high schools and college campuses
can stop being emergency civilian apartments, National Guard barracks, and home
armament workshops, to return to being centers of academic learning.
I will know that we won this war when, following
the examples of American war heroes that were then elected president, my fellow
Democrats and I can persuade Marcus Renee to run to be president as a Democrat.
Yet, my loyal assistants and I have decided to never return to my
former Equestria. We want to help in rebuilding the human world, setting
things right here.
There are tens of thousands of newfoals living in boxy, reinforced
concrete Bauhaus inspired apartments and there are the rows of massive airship
hangars where airship crews are trained to murder by potion. There are
the huge mines that have leveled mountains and filled up valleys - polluted the
nearby lakes and streams with toxic mining waste, thus making these unfit for
anypony to use. And then there are the even more massive factories that
create air pollution that turn the skies gray and the snowfalls blue have made
Ponyville and most of Equestria into something dark and ugly.
While we are talking about the Equestrian environment, did you see
the podcast that Tree Hugger made to describe how the Equestrian war economy is
ruining my former nation? Tree Hugger is the chief editor of an
environmentalist underground newspaper that both inspires resistance to the
Solar Tyrant and makes fools of the Royal Guard in their many unsuccessful
attempts to capture her and her secret staff.
Do I have any plans to get married and start my own family?
If I ever have any foals of my own, I’ll have them in America. My
future foals will be natural-born, Pony-Americans citizen. I don’t want
my foals to see what Ponyville has become under the Tyrant’s brutal rule.
Besides, there are UN accountants already at work totaling the
trillions of dollars my former homeland will pay in war reparations to the
people of many nations on Earth and on Equus.
I don’t want my foals to be working all their lives to pay in the
rebuilding of all that the Solar Tyrant has destroyed.
I’ve read on PHL Internet blogs that Ponyville’s
current mayor is some newfoal named Lavender Dreams. However, the real
political power is held by some memorized Royal Pegasus Guard named Scepter, a
classic yes-mare who reports to the Tyrant’s equally memorized Canterlot
military administrators.
I’m reading a book of beautiful poems written by PHL humans and
ponies about fighting the war with the Solar Tyrant’s armies. I love a
poem written by a pony that ends with, “I wish to be remembered that I died
protecting my good friends, friendship, harmony, and freedom. And when my
soul reaches the green pastures of the Elysian Fields, I’ll tell the gatekeeper,
‘One more PHL pony reporting, Scribe. I've served my time in Tartarus!’”
These interviews were
published in the December 2023 issue of Minnesota History Magazine. While
most literary critics praised these well-researched and thought-provoking articles,
a handful of outspoken Minnesota Republicans, Green Party activists, and
independent citizens have criticized Paxton
Randolph because his interviews have featured mostly DFL aligned humans and our
allies from Equus. Mr. Randolph replies that he was not biased in how he
interviewed for this magazine article; but argues that DFL aligned humans,
ponies, and other intelligent beings are the most willing to talk to him.
<><><><><>
Author's notes:
On June eighth 2014, a few minutes after the closing ceremony for MLP-MSP
at the Ramada Bloomington Airport Hotel, I saw a young woman who was still
wearing her pony convention badge and convention shirt. She was walking
with her friends in the convention hotel hallway. An older gentleman tourist,
who was checking into the same hotel with his wife and family, asked her what
she was wearing. When the young women told him it was for the Twin Cities
My Little Pony convention, he then asked her what My Little Pony was.
While keeping that
random MLP-MSP encounter in mind, I need to write my pony-based fan fiction to
be accessible and entertaining for those who have not heard about the My Little
Pony franchise, to those who have an encyclopedic knowledge of all four
generations, and everyone in-between those two extremes of My Little Pony
knowledge.
While writing this manuscript, I ask
myself these three important questions: First, how can I expand upon the
ideas already in the established story. Second, I ask myself how the
show’s writers would have written this manuscript. Third, to paraphrase
President Obama how can I show that United States citizens, and our allies from Equus can still dream big,
build big, and win the future?
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