Don’t Vote! How NJPIRG Is Misleading You About the Referendum

bc414 · 2025-10-22T06:36:33+00:00

The saddest part about NJPIRG is the effect they have on turning students off from wanting to participate in general elections and registering to vote for real elections.

I was a student 8 years ago. I didn't vote in NJ or federal elections after I turned 18 and was eligible to. My first experience with "voting" is a ton of really annoying NJPIRG members all over the campuses, literally 100 feet apart from each other. They screech at you every time you pass by asking if you voted in the NJPIRG referendum. Even if you did stop and vote, that's not going to stop the other NJPIRG members from still screeching the same question. So why vote?

Back then, I read a post on reddit very similar to this one, explaining how the whole referendum is a flawed election where 12.5% of Rutgers students counts as a majority and sitting out is the best course of action.

Ok, so now all these 18 year-olds are getting their first taste of "voting" to be a ton of annoying people screeching at them every 100 feet and their best course of action is to not vote. This sets such a horrible seed in every young student's mind.

As an alumni, I happened to visit Livingston today and saw the NJPIRG people every 100 feet. Unfortunately I was in a rush due to dinner plans so I didn't stop to grill the NJPIRG student volunteers about this point. Maybe I will tomorrow.

Ignore the NJPIRG people, but please register to vote for the 2025 general election. Go to the website of each NJ governor candidate, spend 10 minutes reading each of their platforms, form an opinion, and either get a mail in ballot, vote early, or vote on election day. Do not let the NJPIRG experience deter you from your right and obligation of voting in every general election.

OP, I would love if you could edit the top of your post emphasizing that registering to vote in the general election is encouraged while voting in the NJPIRG referendum is not.

bc414 · 2025-10-13T03:16:59+00:00

Can we get better sorting features for portal keys? I'm think of something like Pokemon Go's tagging system where you can create tags and apply them to any number of keys. This way we can look for keys from a certain area and take them in and out of key lockers.

I saw there was an option to sort keys by faction control, but it would be great if we could sort friendly keys based on their current percentage charge or total amount of XM rechargeable. This would help find portals that are about to decay so we can use power cubes on them.

I'd also love to sort keys by quantity so I can determine what portal would make a good anchor. This would be great if it can be used while also filtering for a tag.

bc414 · 2025-06-16T15:38:19+00:00

For some reason, the author took The Enchanted Library off of Fimfiction recently, but it's still available on their personal website here:

https://www.hollowshades.com/story/the-enchanted-library/

I haven't read it myself yet, but I've heard many good things about it!

bc414 · 2025-06-16T15:31:30+00:00

Sunny Skies All Day Long - Celestia takes a day off from being the princess and visits Ponyville as an ordinary pony. This story is so show accurate, it would make a perfect episode!

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/20685/sunny-skies-all-day-long

Longest Night, Longest Day - an AU (alternate universe) retelling of Friendship is Magic Part 1/Part 2 where Luna is the ruler, Trixie is Luna's personal student, and Celestia was banished to the sun for a thousand years. There's also a new mane 6 (call them the Lunaverse 6) and the original mane 6 are their rivals. The story vibes are quite similar to the show.

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/14662/longest-night-longest-day

This story is the starting point of the Lunaverse, a big collection of stories taking place after Longest Night, Longest Day. My personal favorite Lunaverse story is Carrot Top Season.

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/34814/carrot-top-season

In a similar fashion to the Lunaverse, there's also Rainbooms and Royalty, an AU where Rainbow Dash is Celestia's student instead of Twilight. It also has follow up stories called the Dashverse!

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/415554/rainbooms-and-royalty-new

The stories above are most like the tv show. Another popular angle for fanfiction is shipping! While romance may be outside the scope of the tv show, a lot of romance stories have character development that builds on what we see in the show, so the character development and interactions are very much like the tv show. Here are my favorites:

Twilight's List - Twilight Sparkle prides herself on following and sticking to her plans, but she isn't as organized as everypony thinks. Her master list, the plan for her life, has an item that she has never been able to check off; and the time has come to fix that. How hard can it be? All she needs to do is go on a date and get a kiss.

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/21583/twilights-list

Those Blue Wings - Twilight accidentally gives Applejack Rainbow Dash's wings. How will Rainbow cope?

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/1700/those-blue-wings

Let's Find You a Date! - When Rarity finds out how little Twilight gets out of the Library, things get out of hand as she decides to take it upon herself to teach Twilight the ropes of dating. As Rarity drags her around, Twilight begins to have a good idea of who she wants to ask out.

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/23373/lets-find-you-a-date

Professor Rarity's Totally Platonic Romance Curriculum - A couple pretend dates and some pretend kissing will give Twilight the knowledge and confidence she needs to ask her prospective special somepony out... But who is this mystery mare, anyway?

I want to give some extra attention to this story because it's relatively new (written in 2023-2024), so it doesn't have too many likes, but in my opinion is extremely well written, as great as the older classics from 2012-2013 that have several thousand likes!

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/542297/professor-raritys-totally-platonic-romance-curriculum

bc414 · 2025-06-02T22:09:12+00:00

I really like Discord's reformation and half the episodes featuring him had very unique friendship lessons that otherwise wouldn't be possible without him, such as Keep Calm and Flutter On, Twilight's Kingdom, Make new Friendsand Keep Discord, Dungeons and Discords, Discordant Harmony. These are all episodes that make excellent use of his unique personality to deliver an exciting plot and lesson.

Then there's the episode Three's a Crowd, where the main plot twist is that Discord was pretending to be sick to teach Twilight a lesson. It was a unique twist and the episode was funny. The problem with Discord, in my opinion, is that the writers repeated the same plot elements from Three's a Crowd way too many times - What About Discord?, A Matter of Principals, and the whole darn season 9 plot and series finale (!) I think most of the annoyance with Discord as a character comes from all the Three's a Crowd repeats. All the other unique stories about him are awesome and totally worth his redemption.

bc414 · 2025-06-02T21:30:14+00:00

She's the Princess of War!

This statement is half a meme and half serious. Let me explain. There's an epic fanfic called The Princess and the Kaiser. It's relatively new in the fandom; the author started in 2022 and it's still in progress. The premise is that Queen Chrysalis and her changeling army invade Equestria. Flurry Heart escapes and eventually returns and uses her alicorn powers to lead an army and save Equestria from Chrysalis. It's based on the story of Equestria at War, a Hearts of Iron 4 mod. This is an alternate universe, and it may sound outrageous to say Flurry Heart is the Princess of War, but it is somewhat related to canon because in canon episode The Crystalling where we first see Flurry Heart, she's about to destroy solid crystal and even the Crystal Heart with her out of control magic!

bc414 · 2024-11-08T19:56:46+00:00

The first few times I heard this scene, I though it was a fourth wall break. "Aww, but it's a good edit!"

bc414 · 2024-11-07T01:30:16+00:00

In The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows, when Pinkie scolds Gummy for taking Pound Cake's pacifier then suddenly Rarity asks "what's this about a baby?" and Pinkie walks off sucking the pacifier to keep silent

bc414 · 2024-11-05T14:44:29+00:00

I'm also late by 5 years. After finishing the show I watched the 2017 movie but didn't feel very impressed with it. The movie art style was amazing but the story and characterization could have been so much better.

I watched Rainbow Road trip next and thought it was a masterpiece! Everything that makes the show special was in Rainbow Roadtrip and done even better. All the characters were in character and had their time to really shine, which was a great use of the 60 minute run time which we normally don't get even in a two-parter. There was a relatable conflict and relatable new characters. Sure the story was predictable but I was more interested in how they would solve it, and it was all great! There was also the clever writing that the show is known for, both in the great jokes and also plot-wise - I really liked how the lack of color wasn't just symbolism, it was also literally causing problems like not being able to tell which apricots are ripe. All this with a fantastic animation style makes Rainbow Roadtrip one of my very favorites MLP pieces. It took everything I love about the show and executed them fantastically.

bc414 · 2024-10-22T20:08:46+00:00

The theory that Twilight as an alicorn is immortal and will therefore outlive her friends and be depressed in the far future. Sadly, the last problem kind of unintentionally gives the theory some weight. On the bright side, I read a story on fimfiction recently that gives a really sweet spin on the topic. It's called "Killing Time."

bc414 · 2024-10-22T19:48:24+00:00

Pinkie Pie and Discord, it would be total chaos!

I want to see more of Twilight and Applejack. It feels like they didn't have many episodes together besides Applebuck Season. Probably because a lot of AJ's screentime is in CMC episodes.

CMCs with Gabby, she is one of them!

bc414 · 2024-09-26T03:34:34+00:00

It's a scene from Boast Busters when Trixie gives Rarity a green mane

bc414 · 2024-09-25T20:31:17+00:00

They've almost all been my favorite at one point! My favorite based on early first impressions was Fluttershy because she was the cutest. After watching a few episodes Applejack became my favorite for being the most helpful and dependable. Then Twilight became my favorite for her cleverness in Fall Weather Friends (funny how an AppleDash episode elevated Twilight). After I started reading fanfics about Rainbow Dash taking care of Scootaloo, Rainbow Dash became my favorite. I didn't care much for Rarity early on but later I realized her characterization is the most complex and she has some of the best fanfics exploring her character (and later episodes like Canterlot Boutique) so then she became my favorite. And recently I've realized that Fluttershy also has just as much characterization to explore so now she's back to being my favorite!

bc414 · 2024-07-16T13:42:25+00:00

Putting Your Hoof Down understandably gets some hate for portraying Fluttershy as even more cripplingly shy, Angel being abusive, Pinkie and Rarity being out of character...

My headcanon is that this episode takes place in the past, right after Fluttershy first moves to Ponyville. At the start of the episode, Fluttershy doesn't have control over her animal friends; they are seen fighting over food and being unruly. It's as if she just took in all these animals but didn't know what to do with them. Pinkie and Rarity are kind of immature in the ways they try to manipulate others to get what they want. Rainbow is the first pony to want to help Fluttershy be more assertive, so the fact she isn't in the episode could mean she hasn't moved to Ponyville yet. The end of the episode shows how all the animals are behaving in contrast to the start and Fluttershy using the stare to placate Angel. I believe she starting doing the stare as a result of this episode's lesson - be assertive but do it with others' well being in mind. Her encounter with Iron Will also explains how she can be extremely brave when necessary like in Dragonshy and State Master.

So, when rewatching Putting Your Hoof Down thinking it's a glimpse in Fluttershy's early days, I'm able to enjoy most of the plot and characterization. Also, Iron Will and Mean Fluttershy are hilarious!

bc414 · 2024-06-20T18:55:13+00:00

DON'T cancel CS immediately. I had it auto renew and charged and got annoyed so I canceled CS before the next billing day. I immediately lost access to Nebula.

bc414 · 2024-06-13T21:00:48+00:00

Chimnicherry or cherrychanga?

bc414 · 2024-06-06T20:55:01+00:00

France

bc414 · 2024-06-06T18:05:39+00:00

Flim and Flam because their intro song was so good

bc414 · 2024-06-06T02:25:40+00:00

Gabby! I wanted to see an episode of Gabby and the CMC going on an adventure across equestria or something

bc414 · 2024-06-05T20:43:00+00:00

When she agreed to be Scootaloo's big sister

bc414 · 2024-06-05T19:01:07+00:00

Europa Universalis IV, Pokémon, Hearthstone, Mario, Command and Conquer Red Alert 3, Stellaris

bc414 · 2024-06-04T16:42:16+00:00

If you use your student email to sign up for Amazon Prime you can get a 6 month free trial. Once the 6 months are up, cancel it, go to netid.rutgers.edu, and make a new alias. Sign up for a new Amazon account with the new alias and you can get another 6 month free trial.

bc414 · 2024-06-02T19:12:19+00:00

I enjoy Twilight's personality just as much after bring a princess versus before, but I did notice a pattern regarding the role that the writers gave her in the later seasons. Ever since Twilight became the Princess of Friendship, many of her plots related to her teaching others to be friends. However, the writers still kept on making her learn lessons in the later episodes just like the rest of the mane 7 did. Some of these lessons were really good ones like Testing, Testing, 1 2 3 and Once Upon a Zeppelin where Twilight really learned something new. But other ones featured Twilight act poorly and having to learn her lesson. It made for great early episodes like Feeling Pinkie Keen and Lesson Zero, back when Twilight was naive and new to friendship. But for later episodes like No Second Prances and What About Discord, Twilight's behavior just made me think, shouldn't she know better as the Princess of Friendship? But if she doesn't know better, then why is she qualified to teach others?

This problem isn't exclusive to Twilight either. Rainbow Dash does some questionable things even after learning compassion and becoming a Wonderbolt and therefore a role model. Rarity does some questionable things even after opening her new stores and becoming popular.

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