Sexual Aftermath of Our Town · 1:24pm Sep 18th, 2015
This came from a comment to a question on a forum. Can't link directly because the forum is NSFW (the Clopfics group):
>>4719602
Do you think Starlight's equalization magic, which is shown to dampen a pony's pronounced character traits down to homogeneity, effects a pony's sexual orientation? Like, to the point of making everypony the same orientation.
If so, it almost certainly made everypony straight or bisexual, as even a crank like Starlight probably would have seen the obvious problem with a society in which nopony was straight. Most likely straight, and most likely with mostly biological rather than romantic libidos (because the Spell of Sameness interferes with any strong personal emotions, and romantic love is both strong and personal). A lot of Ponies probably didn't even have any sex under the Sameness, because they also would have had (a muted version of) their emotional inhibitions against being sexual with those for whom they felt little or no love.
In other cases, compatibility and liking may have been strong enough that they became lovers either under the Sameness, or after liberation. This is what I assume in the Shadow Wars Story Verse happened between Party Favor and Sugar Belle, because they demonstrated strong caring for one another even when under Starlight Glimmer's thrall. I also think that -- rather tragically -- this was what either happened or was happening between Starlight Glimmer herself and Double Diamond -- only to be shattered by the revelation of Starlight Glimmer's perfidy. This is yet another reason why Starlight Glimmer hates Twilight Sparkle.
I do not think that Starlight Glimmer had them engage in some sort of orgaistic ritual of Sharing. The main reason I don't think this is that the inhabitants of Our Town still liked each other after they were freed from Starlight Glimmer's power. I'm sure that at least some fanfic writer will pick up on this possibility: it has been used by some socialist cults, including (notably) by Charlie Manson's Family, Bill Ayers' Weathermen, and a (restrained) version of this was employed by Jim Jones' People's Temple (the cult of Jonestown from which the story of Our Town was inspired). The reason for this is, of course, that it means that the participants violate their personal moralities and thus surrender their wills even more strongly to the cult leaders.
Then again, who knows? It's also possible that one of the reasons why the denizens of Our Town stuck together is that their shared experience was so horrible and strange that no other Ponies could comprehend what they'd been through, so they may have had strange orgiastic rituals. As I said, real cults have done this.
As for orientation changes ...
... most Ponies are straight. Of the ones who aren't straight, most are probably bisexual. As with Humans, only a small minority would be outright homosexual, and for the same reason -- it doesn't work evolutionarily past a maximum of about 5-11% of the population (so there's only 1-2 gay people per H-G band), and under civilized conditions this can be brought down further. In most societies, you don't get more than 1-5% of the population as homsexual (rather than biseuxal).
So there might not be a "rash" of breakups due to incompatible orientation when the Spell of Sameness was lifted -- however, there might be one or a few such breakups.
There would probably be many more marriages. Marriage is almost certainly one of the things which Starlight Glimmer would have discouraged or outright forbidden, as it would create loyalties to a social unit intermediary between the individual and Starlight Glimmer. Again, that's what I (after Sketcha-Holic) have happening between Party Favor and Sugar Belle.
And, of course, some of the Ponies would have hightailed it out of town at the first chance, remembering it as a terrible nightmare which they wished to put behind them now that they had an opportunity. Which means that one might encounter Our Town alumni in any part of Equestria.
The possible budding romance between Starlight and Double Diamond is fascinating. Assuming that Starlight was sincere in her beliefs, she'd have to doublethink her way around her own emotional reactions, adding to the strain of sustaining her twisted philosophy. If not, then there's the balance of maintaining the con versus the guilt over a pawn she's coming to care for. Either way, it's an interesting angle for Starlight.
As for orientation adjustment, there is the risk of such equalization backfiring in not making everypony the same sexual orientation, but in making them all attracted to the same gender. That could lead to all kinds of issues. Alternately, Starlight might have deliberately made everypony sexually attracted only to her. It'd add to her charismatic cachet and feed the egomania that might have driven her to create Our Town in the first place. Of course, this assumes more of a "cult of personality" Starlight than a sincere cultural reformer.
That sounds like a story prompt. It could be that after she gets to learn that "You can go back in time but the Blinopony Limitation Effect says that you can't really change things" and shorts out her brain, she can reach out to him.
3400881
Double Diamond was clearly special to Starlight Glimmer in some way, because he was her most trusted lieutenant. He's also naturally a brave and athletic Pony, and with a coloration which she would perceive as "aristocratic" and thus handsome. And she must have admired some virtues in him or she never would have picked him as her second-in-command.
There is one obvious physical problem with the idea of them having sex, though ... Starlight's Sameness Mark was artificial, and water-soluble. There's no way that this could have been avoided given all the motions and sweating that would be involved in actual copulation, and the problem is even worse because the normal Pony mating posture would be stallion mounting mare from behind, which means he could easily see her Mark while she was doing this.
The problem might be avoided if Starlight insisted on having sex in what to the Ponies would be the slightly less-normal position of face-to-face, front-to-front, what we would call "missionary position." She might have also chosen to wear some sort of obscuring garment, passing this off as an erotic action on her part (to Ponies, nudity is normal, it's clothing that can be provocative).
Perhaps she used more permanent colors before she had sex with him, which took longer for her to apply and hence which she did not apply most of the time? This might work. Yet another possibility is that she could plead extreme sexual shyness and only be willing to mate in the dark, under covers.
None of these expedients would work unless Starlight arranged sex with Double Diamond well in advance and otherwise rejected any affectionate touch to her flanks. This would mean that her attitude toward him even in bed would have to be rather cold, calculating and domineering -- not what one would normally associate with "love." Or even "friendship," really.
But then, did you notice that Double Diamond was displaying obvious unhappiness toward her, even before her secret was revealed? He felt upset that she didn't seem to fully trust him. Maybe he was doubting whether or not she really cared about him -- especially if he cared about her, being sexually-used by her, with no real love behind it, would hurt him deeply on several levels.
A lot of fanfics pair him with Night Glider, which makes some sense (they made a good team in the fight against Starlight Glimmer), but I imagine he'd need to go through some emotional healing before he'd be ready to fall in love with anypony again. Starlight Glimmer probably seriously hurt his ability to trust, especially to trust a mare in love.
I think that Starlight believed at least some of her ideology. If she didn't, she would never have weakened Our Town by insisting on removing Cutie Marks; doing that meant that her followers were all more or less incompetent at the jobs in which they had developed their skills, making them far less productive. Our Town is the only Pony community we've ever seen that looks poor -- not merely "not rich," but living at close to subsistence level.
3401336
In my larger theory of time travel, it's possible to change timelines, but it's difficult to make stable and major changes. Doing it wrong risks Paradox, which can have effects ranging from making one fail at the attempt to change, to the Universe favoring other time travelers who try to undo your change, to causality starting to break down, to the Cosmic Concepts themselves showing up to eradicate the whole timeline and force it on a different course before one attempted the change (this is generally very bad, as the Concepts are both ruthless and into doing things on a really massive scale by normal equine standards).
If Starlight Glimmer is trying to use Starswirl's magic to change the timeline, she has very little idea what forces she's actually messing with. Even Pinkie Pie is careful about making major timeline changes!
3413623 This means that she would be stymied at every turn and have to deal with other time travelers actively attempting to thwart her. It's like a web comic I read about the comic strip "For Better Or For Worse"; it seems that the Elly of 2008 was trying to use magic to make her life better by 'fixing' her past by doing a Quantum Leap deal into her 1981 self. What she didn't know is that all of the other adult characters followed her while the children left behind were forming an active resistance to the new timeline with the assistance of the other Leapers. At the end, history was restored but the characters had two sets of memories. Also, the realization that she was going to get blamed for everything broke her mind and left her in a catatonic state.
Hnmmmm. Any after action fiction might have to deal with characters who still remember both timelines.
3413787
If you think about this, this has to be true about the Ponyverse in general. Celestia has access to time travel spells, and Celestia does not go back in time and change events so that Luna never became Nightmare Moon. That's the one thing in her life history which she would change, if she could. The obvious implication is that she can't, and that the attempt to do so might make things worse.
3413984 Which, as I said, is exactly what happened to Elly. Sure, Webcomic John would have left her anyway because he found the tidy little life he told himself he wanted when they were first married to be horribly dull once he'd finally got it. Sure, Webcomic Mike's literary ambitions collapsed in a shower of negative reviews. Sure, Webcomic Liz is wondering why she married Anthony. The time warp allowed them to survive that by showing them that things could have been a lot worse. The only one who really got nailed was Elly who learned that trying to 'fix' things wouldn't make her happy. All it would do is make her infamous as the woman who screwed over the world and the threat of being outed broke her.