//------------------------------//
// 3-2 
// Story: Heroes Never Die 
// by Shimmerist Ari 
//------------------------------//

“Is there anything humans are better at than ponies?” Ragnarök asked. “Surely there has to be one thing, right? Other than flipping people off, of course. Well… what do you hear everyone say when this comes up. What’s worth giving up magic for? What is it they want you to think your advantage is?

“Well I’ve had this conversation many times, friendos and there is a clear narrative. It’s this: you’re greedy. Not me saying this! That’s just the mainstream narrative of those who supposedly aren’t misanthropic. The one thing you humans have going for you is that you’re greedy.

“Maybe they’ll phrase it in a better way. Being greedy makes you innovative, it makes you work hard. Whatever! It’s bullshit all the same because ask yourself this: who does that narrative benefit? Why do they want you to believe that the one good thing about you, what defines you, is your greed and lust for money?

“Obviously, the capitalist class wants to define you by your endless avarice and hunger for the consumption of goods. They want you to think of yourself as a mindless consumer of crap on Amazon. That’s why they want humans to be greedy, money-obsessed goblins in the popular imagination, why they want that to be your virtue.

“Oh! But we’re innovative! We’re so innovative, right? Okay. When was the last time you, specifically invented something? Or created something meaningful to you? I’m willing to bet the vast majority of you had to give up on all of that and let your dreams become broken. Why? Because the system demands all of your time in service of the economy!

“A world where the vast majority of us are working dead-end jobs, unable to get ahead, unable to own anything, and unable to find self-actualization does not breed innovation. Having all of you worked to death does not…”

Ari nodded along with Ragnarök as she sat on a bench at the edge of the Secaucus Junction platform. It was New Jersey so they had benches! A miracle for sure. She came to this place all the time now.

The sun was nice and warm. It was great!

These had been perhaps the best couple weeks of her life! Every day, Ari would take the train out to a new town, visit some new place, and put up posters. She’d go to closer towns on weekdays and go on much longer adventures like this on the weekend.

This was kind of like a second job that didn’t pay any money, yet it didn’t feel like work. It felt like an adventure! She got to see all kinds of new places. None of them were too exciting, but still. And she got a much greater sense of accomplishment from this than from work.

Even just some marginal good was worth more than all the pointless labor Ari did at her ‘real’ job.

Sure the train rides took some time, but she could just listen to all her Shimmerist content and talk to her pony friends on the way. That’s what she would have done at home, anyway.

And maybe it wasn’t entirely true she wasn’t getting paid. Ari hit so many places and had put up over a thousand posters already, and the SSP decided to put her on the ‘trusted’ list. She had a train pass for the whole year now!

One odd thing she noticed in her journey was that Nassau County seemed… a lot worse than every town outside of it. There wasn’t trash and filth all over most of the other cities and towns. Even New York City was less crowded with homelessness and a lot better off.

It was almost like somebody was purposely trying to screw things up…

Or maybe Ragnarök’s conspiratorial thinking was getting to her.

Ari’s heart skipped when she got a message from Spring Breeze.

SB<Friendo!

A>Friendo!

Ari missed doing that. Really, deciding that maybe she was a Shimmerist felt like such a relief to Ari. It was like some invisible struggle in the back of her mind had ceased and she could just… relax now.

She sent Spring Breeze a Shimmerist meme she found, (Sunset Shimmer with the caption ‘having trouble making ends meet? You wouldn’t be if I had won!’) file name saved as SS.IMG of course. SSIMG stood for Sunset Shimmer is my god.

They didn’t actually worship Sunset Shimmer but liked saying radical stuff like this, even cheekily.

Whisper 3 was great because you could just be more open like that.

SB<You’re really getting into this, now.

A>Well I have you to thank for that! Becoming a Shimmerist was one of the best decisions of my life!

Another advantage was that she felt a lot closer to her internet friends. It was like she was finally on the same team as Spring Breeze and all the ponies. Really, she’d never felt like she was part of something before.

Of course, the flip side was that she was more and more distant from the few humans she talked to at work. She had so much to say now but no way to say it. She couldn’t possibly announce that her new hobby and passion was Shimmerist propaganda to a bunch of heathen apes.

The train rolled into the station.

A>PS! The train is here!

SB<PS!









As Ari put up posters along some telephone poles marked on the app, approaching an underpass, she listened to more Ragnarök (live this time).

“A lot of people, mostly Lunists, are off here accusing me of having a biolab. And not just a biolab but a 6-billion-dollar bio-terror lab. Well, guess what? The FBI investigated Nelson Residence just last week. And they only got one arrest or charge in that whole time. It was actually our friendo DS over here. DS! Tell them what you got arrested for.”

‘DS’ was the purple unicorn who often loomed in the background of Ragnarök’s videos, always typing away on a computer. No one online knew exactly what DS was doing back there, other than it had nothing to do with the stream.

There was a pause where Ari assumed DS slid over to Ragnarök.

“Jaywalking,” DS’s seldom-heard voice came through.

“Jaywalking. And just so we’re clear, there are zero cars in our city. We literally banned them! This is like uh, at the Nuremberg Trials where the only crime they could get the Nazis for was littering. Remember that?

“Yeah, so I can’t even get away with crossing the street. And you Lunist dogs think I can get away with having a bio-terror lab?”

Ari wished Nelson Residence had a bioterror lab. Then maybe she could get bioterored into a pony.

Just as Ari reached her target and turned the corner, she looked up to find another person was already here. There was a guy at the underpass, a scarf covering his mouth. He had a can of spray paint out and was creating some graffiti art. ‘Fuck Blackrock’ written in large letters. It looked like he was just finishing.

But not expecting to see anyone at all, Ari jumped back around the corner in surprise. It only clicked in her brain a second later that her fellow vandal was black.

Normally, Ari wouldn’t talk to somebody when on these missions. Really, she tried not to talk to anybody with all the rioting and violence going on.

But her leftoid brain didn’t want the poor guy to think she’d recoiled in fear from him because he was black. It was just because he startled her! She was even more sympathetic than ever to that sort of thing now that she was a partial and in the same boat to some degree. People crossed the street to get away from Ari. She knew how it felt.

So Ari took in a deep breath and stepped back towards the bridge.

“No worries!” Ari came back around the corner. “I was doing pretty much the same thing you were.”

“Eh? You’re a girl?” He asked.

Ari frowned deeply under her own scarf. To be fair, she was covered up completely.

“And you spray paint?” He asked.

“No, I was doing posters.” Ari pointed her putty knife at the nearest one. With her sleeve covering her hand, it must have looked like she had knives for hands. “But pretty much the same message.”

He looked at Ari’s poster, then back at Ari.

“And what the fuck does this have to do with Blackrock?”

“We’re a political party,” she said. “Left of the Democrats. We want to do what we can to hit back against massive corporations and landowners. Create a more socialist world that promotes community. Spread the sort of communes that the ponies live in.”

“Well good luck with that,” he said. “That sort of commune shit has never worked before, especially not in America.”

“Right.” Ari tapped the tagline of the poster. “But ponies… make it possible. The world is totally different now. They’re doing pretty well at it for now. And they can help us.”

“Yeah. For now.” He folded his arms, watching Ari skeptically.

Ari admitted it wasn’t a sure thing that even the ponies could continue to live in their communes, let alone spread them. But that was just because the government was trying to screw with them.

She nervously stood her ground, not sure what else to say… until the other guy relaxed.

“Okay. I’m interested.” He shoved his can back into his bag. “What’s this party called?”

It was actually working! But now for the hard part…

“The SSP!”

“And what’s the stand for?”

Ari hummed a little and leaned back onto the balls of her feet, not wanting to answer.

“Um.” She swung back onto her feet. “The Social… Shimmerist Party.”

“Shimmerists?” His look was incredulous. “You’re a Shimmerist?”

“Well – I – no! I’m… not a Shimmerist, but…”

“Then why are you in the Social ‘Shimmerist’ Party?”

“I mean, it’s like um…

“You’re full of shit, aren’t you?” He shook his head.

“No! I swear I–”

But the guy was already walking away.

That could have gone better.









Back on the train, Ari took out her phone.

A>Hey, is there any way we could change the name of the party? I really don’t think calling ourselves Shimmerists is helping.

SB<We’re going to be called Shimmerists no matter what. Our only choice is to retake the term ourselves.

A>Are you sure about that?

SB<Yes. Remember when you just said you wanted humans to have the option of turning into ponies and everyone called you a Shimmerist? And you got canceled just for that.

Don’t remind me…

SB<That’s where the bar is. If you want CET legalized, you’re a Shimmerist in the public eye. We gotta reform the label.

A>But I totally lost the guy I was just talking to the second I mentioned I’m a Shimmerist!

SB<What exactly did you say?

That…

Ari fell back into her train seat. She hadn’t actually said she was a Shimmerist!

A>Okay… I admit I choked.

SB<That’s your problem. You gotta be able to confidently call yourself a Shimmerist or it won’t work.

A>Look, it’s not as easy out here!

SB<I get that, but there are ways to ease the blow.

SB<Next time try the line ‘I’m a social Shimmerist if that’s what you mean’. That’s what we use on people who might be skeptical. That way they ask you what a social Shimmerist is and you get a chance to define the term yourself.

That was a little sneaky, but also kind of smart!

SB<We have primer courses on how to talk to non-Shimmerists, you know. Maybe you should check those out.

If Ari was going to be doing this… then Spring Breeze was right. She needed to get better at debate and talking to people… she’d practice this later. The next person she talked to, this would go better!