Minor spoilers. Make sure you have read up to at least Chapter 9 of The Color of Apples before reading this entry.

Whitefang33 posed a fairly valid point on the latest chapter of The Color of Apples. I decided to take the time to answer it with a blog post, since I don't want to do it a different way.

The Question/Observation:

"Applejack. Element of Harmony. National Hero. Saviour of the world (twice). Seasoned fighter and athlete gets kidnapped without resistance on her part...seems legit.

Out nameless hero instead of contacting any authority as Police who would then contact Celestia with the army of guard and most capable and talented investigation teams in the nation trained to deal with it for most of their lives preffers to do it on his own. It's cool that the badass moment is coming, but why so many times I see the same thing in different stories. Lack of realism for the sake of plot. He does not need to run to the police as the time is running out, but for the love of Gods it would not kill him to do both.

Another cliche I see often is finding somebody unconscious and then taking them to the house...no, you take them to the hospital, ask for help (not call for ambulance as there are no phones in Equestria...I think).

The story itself is not bad, but moments like this make me groan."

The Answer/Retort:

Yes, Applejack is all of those things, and more. I never said that she didn't try to fight back, I simply never said that she did. I could go back and rewrite the ending to state that, but I'll leave it as it is for the time being. Now to the matter of importance. 'You' didn't contact the police because of what happened to your parents all those years ago. After spending so little time investigating the 'accident' they just gave up, and closed the case. This did little to endear our protagonist towards the authorities. On another note, consider the field into which 'you' are delving. The prostitution industry has been going for centuries, despite its illegal nature, how can we expect Equestria to be different? If the police were to get involved they would have a hard time being so subtle about it. This wouldn't be good for 'you' since you need to get Applejack back as quickly as possible.

As it stands right now there is no need for the pimps to rush things, since they don't know what 'you' are planning. But if you got the police involved there would be a mad rush to get all the most incriminating evidence out of the city as quickly as possible. If that was to happen you'd likely never see Applejack again. And, let's be honest, no one wants that.

Celestia is a similar matter. If she was to come to Canterlot, what do you think would happen? Everypony would know of this, and the prostitution rings would scatter like cockroaches. Sure, she could call in the best investigators around, but that would still take time, time that 'you' don't have. And suppose that 'you' did get in contact with Celestia? What would it accomplish? I sincerely doubt that the Princess herself would deign to look at some random letter from some random pony from Manehattan. Even with the Pegasus mail system it would still take time for Celestia to be informed, and then more time for her to gather her resources, and then arrive.

It wouldn't kill 'you' to search on your own, and get help, but the help would only serve to hinder your attempts at investigating on your own.

As for moments like this, my apologies. I thought it was decent. I won't say it's perfect, since it's not, but it does the job well enough.

That's my answer, and I'm sticking to it.

Feel free to ask new questions, if you like. I'll answer the good ones.

AVANTE!
-Howitzer