Key Letter From Applejack to Celestia Regarding Charlie Yu · 1:39pm Aug 14th, 2015
This is the letter that got Charlie Yu his job at Sweet Apple Acres in the first place, when he was previously being supported by payment from the Treasury and his life administered by Twilight Sparkle. It obviously pre-dates An Epistolary Legal Consultation Between Princesses by about half a year.
Dear Princess Celestia,
Greetings, Your HIghness -- I hope this finds you and yours well. If you ever feel down, just try some Zap Apple Jelly. Perk you right up. I'll send some more if you like (1).
Charlie ain't so bad. I can see the Truth in him, and when he goes on about how he's better and smarter than us Ponies, he's lying to himself. Sure he missess his fancy doo-hickies and such -- he ain't lying about that -- but the Truth is he's scared and lonely. He's in a strange world, he's the only one of his Kind on the planet, and he's at our mercy. As for the dirty pictures, it has to be occurring to him by now that he ain't exactly likely to meet a whole lot of Human mares at the next town social.
I'm thinking maybe he'd feel better if he lived a mite more independent. Had a job, some bits in his bags he'd earned on his own self. Gain more self-respect. Most Ponies don't like Charlie, cause of he puts on that whole 'I'm an amazing big Human' show, but Mackie and I don't mind him none. We know he's just an overgrown colt, not much sense but not much malice in him neither, and what a colt needs is looking after by bigger Ponies, who won't neither coddle nor harm him.
I've been talking with my brother, and we're willing to put him up at Sweet Apple Acres as a farmhoof. Or "hand," given what he's got waggling at the ends of his forelegs. He ain't as strong as an Earth Pony -- even my little sister could probably out-wrestle him two falls out of three -- but we could find him light but useful work to do, that would free me and Mackie up for more of the heavy bucking and pulling. His hands might even give him an advantage there. The work would build up his muscles and teach him some useful skills.
I already asked Twilight on this and she's agreeable, but says it needs your approval. So, here I am asking for it.
Your Obedient Subject,
Abigail Jacqueline Apple
Sweet Apple Acres,
Ponyville,
February 24th, YOH 1504
(1) - As Applejack was well aware, the Palace at Canterlot already received some as a special tribute. She wanted to increase the amount they purchased. This is Applejack being subtle, and to the Mistress of Manipulation herself, which gave Celestia a laugh. Making her more inclined to listen to the rest of the letter, which was Applejack being really subtle, in her straight-forward manner.
Huh. I did not know your setting had an HiE entry. Of course, I haven't actually read any of your stories yet(It's so intimidating, and I've been putting off starting it because for some reason I think I have to read Alex Warlorn's stories first, which are even more intimidating), so there are a lot of things I don't know about your story.
3319159
Technically, An Epistolary Legal Consultation Between Princesses is an Alternate Universe to the rest of the Shadow Wars Storyverse -- though the appearance of Charlie Yu is in itself the main Point of Departure between the two worlds (so most things about the SWSV are also true about the -- Charlie Yuniverse? I've never really named it. For instance, Twilight Sparkle's past self as Dusk Skyshine of the Age of Wonders, and Fluttershy having an unusual origin.
Man, it's heartbreaking to see something so genuine and earnest forebode something as bad as what happened :-/
Good for Applejack. I'm sure Charlie really is scared and lonely, but he's probably hiding it well - beyond non-Pony body language - so it's a really great thing she saw through that.
And does this mean you'll be posting the next chapter soon? I can hope?
This was very decent of AJ; you do have to wonder how humans or really any non-magical being would survive if plopped down in Equestria. Either you end up the equivalent of a pet, or you do some very basic labor.
Unless you have skills that Equestria could find useful, leading to the classic 'Connecticut Yankee' arrangement. I still remember the passing reference in one story about one human who showed up 'about seventy years ago' and who helped organize the Equestrian rail system. Turns out he was able to get a LOT of people where they needed to go in our world.
There's even a photo of him with the ponies. This smiling man in a black uniform with silver skull and crossbones insignia and in a truly nice to ponies touch, an armband with a sun-cross on on it. So yeah. Nice and chilling.
OT and a dumb question here, but I wonder -- does anyone know of a HiE story where it was a child, or more than one child, that ended up in Ponyville?
What she lost sight of is his primate nature. That turned out to be crucial when everything came right down to it.
3319810
Shit, no. Primates aren't any more rapey than a lot of other species. And your typical primate will not attempt to rape a horse! Yeah, the fact that humans are continually sexually receptive means that human males want it all the time, not just when there's a female in heat, but by the same token humans are more experienced with feeling horny and probably better at controlling themselves than stallions are around a female in heat... if they choose to be.
That's the key thing -- no man who is not seriously insane, brain-damaged, or deeply developmentally retarded has ever or will ever rape a woman because he literally couldn't control himself. If her husband was standing there with a loaded pistol, he wouldn't have done it-- therefore, he's physically capable of self-control. Rapists choose not to control themselves because they feel entitled to sex. (And among primates, orangutan males, who do commit rape, target the weakest and socially lowest females, and generally only the weakest and socially lowest males themselves do this. No one tries to rape the alpha female, because even if he could overpower her, she'll get her posse to rip him to shreds if she doesn't like him.)
Saying that AJ overlooked Charlie's primate nature implies that any primate, and by that token any human, might have done the same thing. But studies in which men were questioned about rapey behaviors they've enacted without actually calling it rape have found consistent results -- between 5-12% of the human male population appears to be willing to rape. Which says that between 88%-95% of all human males would not do so. Those are pretty good odds for assuming a random guy who seems okay is probably not a rapist.
3320970
Twilight Sparkle actually deduces all this, too, in An Epistolary Legal Consultation Between Princesses. Of course, since that story is post Equestria Girls, she has had by then the unfair advantage of having experienced being a human female (of a different species than Yu's, but still at least hominid). She noticed that she was constantly experiencing low-level sexual arousal, but she also realized that the other females around her probably were as well, and perhaps the males, and yet everyone wasn't having sex with everyone else at random, nor at all in public, and probably not all that much in private either. Ergo, Humans grow up with their sex drives and learn to control them.
(*nods*) This is Charlie's real problem.
I didn't go into it in An Epistolary Legal Consultation Between Princesses -- I'm contemplating a prequel, Getting Stuck to explain how he would up in Equestria -- but Charlie Yu seriously imagines himself to be entitled in a lot of ways. And this fuels most of his bad behavior.
Charlie is a college graduate with a two-year degree in Ethnic Studies who has spent the last three years of his life (he's 23) discovering that this by itself doesn't get you much; you need to be intelligent and reliable in addition, and he -- has a two-year degree in Ethnic Studies. In which he earned solid C's and D's. Which did not impress employers.
He acts just as one expects someone who got his degree in Ethnic Studies to act. He thinks that he's getting nowhere because everyone is prejudiced against Koreans (he's a third generation Korean-American). The truth is that most people are prejudiced against idiots. Insofar as he has a point, he has the "Asians are smart" stereotype working against him -- Charlie's not smart and it dismays people when they realize just how not-smart he is.
Sexually, Charlie's experience could be summed up as "random." He generally finds sex by going to parties and homing in on the most desperate drunk girl in the room. He's never had an actual girlfriend: he has at most had a series of 1-3 dates with various women, and usually the first date is the last. He rarely gets very far with the girls he actually dates, unless she was one of the aforementioned desperate drunk girls (in which case she usually doesn't want to know him after 1-2 actual dates).
He wants to blame racism for this, even though even he notices that Korean girls don't like him either. Charlie's lack of romantic appeal transcends ethnic groups, being one of those things that binds Humanity together.
The reason I mention this is that Charlie is used to the notion of sex as being something which is randomly available to him if he looks for it; he doesn't really get that most other men actually get to know women and fall in love with them over time (or rath er, he sort of knows this from "chick flicks" but he of course has a distorted and unrealistic concept of how this works). It's never occurred to Charlie, since he became old enough to attend the sort of parties at which one finds drunk girls desperate enough to have sex with fairly-unappealing strangers, that he might ever have to go more than a few months at a time without sex.
And then he found himself in Equestria.
Now, my Equestria of the early 16th century YOH is modeled after the Anglosphere of a century ago -- more prudish than the Anglosphere of the early 21st century AD -- so it's not as easy to find sex if one confines oneself to emotionally-healthy, well-brought up mares as might be the case in modern America, but there actually are mares who would have sex with a stranger just because they were feeling horny. (There are even desperate drunk mares with very low standards who go looking for it at parties). There are also, as I mentioned in an earlier essay, prostitutes, ranging from high-class mistresses to low-class streetwalkers to semi-amateur floozies, the floozies fading by imperceptible degrees into the desperate drunk mares.
Charlie has two problems, though.
The first is that he's not a Pony.
This does not preclude him finding sex to the degree that the analogous condition would in our world -- the Equestrians are quite aware that he's a sapient being and treat him as such rather than an animal (this would be true even in your world; Discord's bad treatment in The Last Draconequus happens in the less advanced Equestria of millennia ago, and even back then what the circus was doing to him by enslaving him was against formal law). And we know that romantic attraction can cross species boundaries in my Equestria, as there are at least three prominent examples -- Pony Twilight / Human Flash (they don't wind up together but Twilight's feelings for him are genuine and might have led to sex if they'd spent more time together), Fluttershy / Discord (which lead not only to sex but to semi-marriage and to a whole family of draconequi) and Rarity / Spike (which eventually leads to sex and a very happy marriage).
Of course, one thing you'll note about all the pairings I just named is that they don't derive from random attraction at drunken parties. Even the most superficial of them (Twilight x Flash) come from real emotional bonding due to the possession of compatible character traits and similar values. (Which, by the way, implies that Fluttershy is stranger than most Ponies imagine -- but then she's connecting with the part of Discord's personality descended from the "Dissy" persona he had when young, the same side my Celestia loved and to some extent still loves, and Celestia is most definitely stranger than most Ponies imagine, because most Ponies think she's terribly serious about everything, when she actually has an impish sense of humor).
This is because most Pony mares are normally attracted to Pony stallions (or in some cases mares, but the point is, Ponies). To get a relatively normal Pony mare to be attracted to him, Charlie would have to display a wonderful personality and show himself to be a kindred spirit to the mare in question. In other words, Charlie would have to relate deeply to the mare in question, which is something he's never succeeded in doing with human women.
This itself might not be such a problem (Charlie would just have to deal with sexual frustration until he accidentally found a mare who liked him enough that she'd make an effort to get to know him, which probably would happen in time) except that Charlie has bought hook line and sinker into the notion that humans, even humans who haven't found anyone who loves them, should be having sex. (He did so, of course, because it excuses his own pathetic little debaucheries). Everything he's learned in school and much from popular culture convinces him of this.
(You might think that the feminist part of the curriculum would turn him against rape, at least, but remember that Charlie is intellectually uncritical. He's learned "everyone's a rapist because, rape culture," accepted that "everyone" includes him, and moved on from this. Since being a "rapist" in these terms doesn't involve actually hurting anyone, but is magically-acquired by means of Y chromosome, it's an easy "guilt" with which to live).
The problem is that he feels that he is entitled to sex, and used to getting it without love. So, when he runs into Derpy stuck in the hedge ...
... and I'm sure everyone's figured out the sad joke of that situation by now. Namely, that Derpy actually liked him from before, during and after that encounter, because she thought she'd found a Kindred Spirit. Complete with sex with desperate stallions at drunken parties. Or hedges. She only turned on him when he publicly repudiated her, a week later. And only temporarily, to the point of being willing to let him suffer under a rape charge.
Though, in point of fact, Derpy's actually a far better Pony than Charlie is a Human.
Notably, Charlie never, neither earler nor even when his sanity is falling apart in An Epistolary Legal Consultation Between Princesses (*), tries to rape Applejack. This is in part because he respects her more than he does most of the Ponies (she exudes a certain confidence and strong integrity with which one does not want to mess); in part because he likes her (if he actually understood himself and others, he might have at least intellectually grasp that in terms of her behavior, Applejack was his best friend among them), and in part because she makes it clear to him that he's not interested in her that way (and he's seen her turn dead wood into kindling by kicking it, so he's well aware that she's physically his superior).
He never tried to rape Pinkie Pie, even though she was the main focus of his lust, because he was going by the "good girl / bad girl" dichotomy and he had firmly put her in the former category (and this was a Chaste Pinkie, so he was right by his criteria) and because perhaps even he sensed that it would be a bad idea to mess with someone who could appear and disappear at will, and might be tempted to do cruel things to him if he really angered her. (Simply subduing him with her superior strength was the least of the Pink Daughter of Paradise's capabilities).
In general, save when he was totally crazy, he grasped that the Mane Six were essentially superheroes and that attempting to rape them was a really bad idea. Charlie's stupid, but not that stupid; even a chimpanzee would know why you shouldn't mess with someone who is much more powerful than oneself.
===
(*) The reason he was crazy enough to try to grab Fluttershy in the cell.
Well, she is a very decent mare. Downright nice. Writers who portray her as a mean nasty bigot have somehow managed to miss that she's always been shown on screen as caring, kind and compassionate. One has to really annoy her to get on her bad side.
Lest anyone imagine that she's exploiting Charlie: she's going to pay him, fairly well for the work he's doing, and in the process help him develop his body and learn useful skills. And she knows he's soft to begin with -- when she specifies that she won't "harm" him she's talking mostly about the danger of working him too physically hard and rupturing him or damaging his muscular-skeletal system with tears and fractures. Applejack is an athlete and knows how to train someone without breaking them.
Well, AJ is exceptionally-strong even for an Earth Pony. She is stronger than most mares, and many stallions, She's a natural athlete who engages in hard physical labor on a regular basis. She has quick reflexes and is a trained athlete as well. And she's smart and cool in a crisis.
Human hands are a major advantage over most Earth Ponies and to some extent Pegasi. Humans are on the average physically stronger than most Unicorns. Humans are built more sturdily than are most Pegasi. The "most" here is important -- the Mane Six are at the leading ends of the capabilities of their Kinds in terms of Gaussian curves.
Humans are psychologically, on the average, both more aggressive and more imaginative than Ponies. Again, the Mane Six are superior -- they are more aggressive and more imaginative than most Humans. The proper point of reference for comparison with the Mane Six among Humans would be a Special Forces unit or crew of NASA astronauts. They're an elite.
And if Charlie knew anything useful, he'd be of immense value. The first few months he was in Equestria, various Equestrian scholars tried to study him and ask him to explain his world. They found out to their dismay that he knew almost nothing of any value and that much of what he claimed to know had to be false because it was internally-contradictory.
As a matter of fact, if Charlie knew anything of value and was at all a skilled negotiator, he wouldn't have to work on Sweet Apple Acres (though there are worse Ponies with whom one might spend time than the Applies, by far!). He'd have a Money Bin full of bits he was earning from royalties and salaries on his knowledge. (Or he could just do like most Ponies do and put it in the bank, but who am I to argue with Scrooge McDuck on financial management?)
It's probably been done, but I've never read any. The Ponies would like Human children.
3319810
Well, he's more aggressive than most Ponies. But not than all. In particular, he's not more aggressive than any of the Mane Six, not even Fluttershy (though Fluttershy's aggression only shows when she feels a serious need to act).
Though aggression isn't the only reason. Twilight Sparkle, for instance, could probably really have a harem of stallions who she'd more or less awed into serving her. If she was subtle about it she could even get away with it, too -- Celestia would be worried about this personality development but not enough to force Twilight into chastity, as long as it was voluntary on the part of all concerned.
Twilight wouldn't do this because she has morals. She respects other Ponies, rather than merely seeing them as tools for her use (the reason why Celestia would be worried if Twilight did do things like this). Twilight also doesn't consider herself entitled to sex (or love, for that matter) from others.
Charlie has a lot less power and influence than does Twilight, but he has far less morals, and those he had begin to break down as he goes crazy.
3319317
Applejack can see Charlie's suffering and fear beneath the facade of Human supremacism, because Applejack can see the Truth behind Lies in general (most mundanely, she can function as a lie detector) and because she is both compassionate and possessed of considerable common sense. It's notable that Applejack continues to feel sympathy for Charlie even as he behaves badly in An Epistolary Legal Consultation Between Princesses; she knows he's suffering some sort of mental breakdown. Big Mac also mostly sympathizes with him, too. They both know he's a sad sack, but neither of them hate him, not even Mac after he tries for Fluttershy (in part because Mac is well aware of Fluttershy's powers). They correctly judge him untrustworthy, and don't trust him, but they don't hate him either.
Note that their compassion is not incompatible with ruthlessness. If they had to kill or hurt Charlie to protect other Ponies from him, they would do it and do it competently. But they'd feel bad about the necessity. Ponies aren't carrnivores, but these are farmers, and they've had to put down dying animals before.