In 2025, Hasbro Biotech introduced a new product---the Hassenfeld Pony---genetically-engineered horses made to look and act like the characters of an obscure show called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
Despite the high asking prices and the ethical questions surrounding them, they took the world by storm. Thousands of households in America, and tens of thousands more overseas, soon had one of their own.
These are some of their stories.
Coverart by Gryphon BBQ (not on Fimfiction). Preread and Spanish language support by Ghuntz.
Inspried by the Hassenfeld Pony threads on /mlp/.
Featured on 7--10 June 2020.
Chapters (4)
That picture you are using as a cover is better with Deer :(
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/640394842152763404/719210076660957294/f9967cb8e536f2c57cab1d3d0eb1269f59ad522c16d0a448ea78d4305eb39ed2_1.jpg
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everything is better with ponies.
CelestAI told me so.
This is how I thought the ponies were made in my story "I thought you would be bigger..." (maybe slightly different, but pretty close)
That was very, very sad. Good work!
>/mlp/
Oop bye
This is a very interesting concept from a writer's perspective to work on. So many possibilities, moral dylemmas, and the sorts. I wonder, not like I'm planning to do it right now, but would you mind if I ever "borrow" the Hassenfel ponies' concept to write my own tales?
This was a fun story
You... you stop cutting up those onions, right now!
That was a lot darker and more wholesome than I had thought it would be. Kudos.
Ouch. You're really good at figuratively punching me in the gut. Well done you gut punching fella.
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Thanks for stopping by, all of you!
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Whether equine or cervine, it's a cute image, and one that in my opinion captures the setting perfectly.
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Erm. . . can't win 'em all, I guess.
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It's not my concept in the first place, so go right ahead.
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They look tasty
Oh shit some of these were real heart tuggers. Really glad the Celestia one was last, helps make the reader feel a little better after the first three.
I like this story - hopefully there'll be a few more chapters in the future. very interesting premise.
Really interesting concept, I'm surprised there aren't more chapters!
Might be overly political, but, from the Silly Ideas bin, in regard to current events, I keep trying to picture a righteous cop with a Luna-model pony, Pick any number of directions for that...
A) "They hate me no matter what I do, so why not give in to the dark side?..."
B) "I screwed up and did wrong..."
C) "I did right, but they say I did wrong anyway..."
D) "I did wrong, but it was for the right reasons..."
E, F, G...) [you tell me...]
I'm rather agnostic in my personal preferences, but I'd entertain almost any direction. Just don't give into temptation to use the cartoonish caricatures we're seeing in the misguided folks on both sides of the current argument.
That was the most wholesome execution of a Black Mirror episode concept I've ever seen.
Weirdly, the most jarring part was Celestia's apparently terrible taste in movies.
Only twenty years? For a bio-engineered creation? In a future where actual telekinesis is cheaper than cars?
Wot?
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Considering your My Little Dashie was what made me join the site all the way back in 2014 -- I'd consider that a compliment.
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I think I'll cool it on expanding this story further. (Also, the concept's not mine -- it's /mlp/'s.)
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Don't look at me, I'm not the one who wrote the Hassenfeld bible.
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Who did, if you don't mind answering?
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That's the nature of /mlp/ -- nobody knows who wrote it. I just ascribe it to "Anonymous," as one naturally would.
I thought the end reveal would've been that he wasn't coming home; I think this was worse
The biochemical slavery of fabricated sapients. Wholesome!
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Please tell me if there's some other source of info for this concept. But I found this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/comments/c67vup/artificial_pony_companions_and_you/
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I guess bussiness demmands the ponies to die some more can be bought. Still, 3000$ for 20 years of a pony with human intelligence sounds like quite a reasonable deal to me!
Mm
I'm not a fan of creating human level intelligences as slaves. You know the true fans just made them their own town somewhere.
Or you'll get some that break their programming and go all blade runner.
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Not for the pony, though.
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Is it really immoral if they want/enjoy/are fine with it from the beginning to the end? I'm not so sure.
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Yes slavery is immoral.
The first chapter they discuss using mind drugs to reset the forced conditioning.
How about next year when they come out with Equestria girls edition , you'd still be ok with that ?
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It seems like Genetic Engineering to me.
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There are far too many implications about the existence of a bioengineered slave race. In that sense, the story is disingenuous in ignoring all of them. But what's really important is that no matter the circumstances slavery is an atrocity. There are no amount in-universe explanations to make it seem otherwise, no excuse pretty enough to change that fact.
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But of course. It's not friendship that's magic, it's slavery and bioengineering that's friendship.
The story is waifu fodder, I just don't understand why everyone is pretending slavery is ok as long as it's your waifu.
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yep. Inhumane capitalism, it is called.
On a second thought, the pony wouldn't have ever existed in the first place if it was not for the business mindset required to even consider creating it. But of course, having a preprogrammed creature to like whoever appears in front of it when it is "born" it is morally wrong in all senses.
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Just because there's a lot of shittiness on /MLP/ doesn't mean it's exclusively shittiness.
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media1.tenor.com/images/5684efb5a71699d2efaa13baba0dbb2c/tenor.gif
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That's a safe-for-work edit of the actual bible, but for my purposes it sufficed.
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Hasbio is capable of many things, but even they cannot conquer death. Besides, if Hassenfelds were effectively immortal, we'd be seeing many more stories like Twinkle's.
Well now this is a unique take on humans and ponies.
Following and faved.
I know the Anthology tag is already there, but these chapters truly are stories unto themselves.
Dark and wholesome. Yes that is an avid description of Spectrum's story.
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well, no duh its immoral, that's what makes this funny as hell!
Okay, lets think about this: this, like Conversion, fetishizes the ponies, but this ones even worse because at least in Chatoyance the presence of free will, of autonomy, is still there. One chooses ponyhood or death. Its a shit choice, but its still a choice. And one can argue about the morality there, but at least the person turned pony there is still them on some level.
Here, its not even a question. In this setting, bunch of mouth breathing mongoloids were so maladjusted to the point of malevolence they actually created waifus. As creepy as the initial premise of a waifu, at least there there's still the choice. One could just claim said mare had shit tastes. But here, they are literally held in biological gestalt and even while admitting its an atrocious act in of itself, there will still be bronies claiming its okay because the pony is happy.
... This is why we need ethics in schools kids.
Thankfully most bronies I've met, whatever their emotional and developmental shortcomings might be, at least have the simple decency to never actually support something like this and would actually be morally opposed to it in real life.
Well, I have a soft spot for stories that present a horrific fact about a premise (like the fact that those ponies exist at all despite the implications) but still are able to tell a heartwarming story in the face of that. This is giving me Blade Runner vibes, but still somehow it’s kind of nice to see those ponies being nice in the face of all that.
I would never buy one of those to the creepy company that produces them, but I think I couldn’t stand seeing them in a cage in an animal shelter... Would I be able to leave them behind in that condition? Would I adopt one and treat them as another person? Oof... all the choices are equally creepy.
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Yeah, I too have that much faith in people in general (not being sarcastic this time). My concern was because most of the comments were buying into the waifu fodder without considering the atrocity inherent to the setting.
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that's literally just Utilitarianism, you "mouth breathing mongoloid".
Hmm, I wonder what all models are available, anyways? Going by the second chapter, more models than just the Mane 6 and the princesses are available...
Even if limited only to "pony" models... according to this publication at least, changelings are technically classified as a type of pony, while zebras, donkeys, mules, griffons, etc. are not. Though they also seem like you'd want to start off by ordering a small set of them rather than just one or even two.
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I kept waiting for that first story to turn even darker with a mention of how "broken" Hassenfelds are typically euthanized, ostensibly because they're too overcome with grief at the loss of their owner to continue functioning, but really because once they come out the other side of it and their brains are no longer constantly flooded with endorphins at the sight of their master, they have enough clarity to start looking around and asking questions. Questions about why they can't just get their own apartment and live independently. Questions about rights and citizenship. And then they start talking to each other and organizing, and the Twilights start digging through case law, and suddenly we're redoing Dred Scott with ponies.
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wait until they introduce the zebra model
The idea sounds oddly familiar and reminds me of https://www.fimfiction.net/story/324970/the-broken-toy
There are even two options - with Equestria memory (they think they got onto Earth accidentally) and without (they know they were born here).
And they're also bonding with the first person they see.
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(An art for that story: washing the pony after unboxing)
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I've been reading that story and I somehow forgot about it. How embarassing!
Still, I will maintain that the idea of keeping ponies as pets isn't a new one. He takes that idea his way, I take it another.
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Haha! No problem :) Everyone would like to have a pony for themselves, so the idea is kinda obvious. If they don't exist, then the only option is to make them.
A shame there's only 4 chapters, would have loved to have read more.
Five years from now we just all forget the show existed?