The long awaited day had finally arrived. Twilight and her friends were gathered in the library's main room, eager to submit their vignettes to the lavender unicorn for approval. Twilight herself, however, was struggling to keep awake. She had spent half the night putting the finishing touches on her vignette and ended up sleeping in half the morning, just barely waking up before her friends had arrived. Though she did her best to hide her drowsiness, it was clear judging from everypony's face that they all knew she slept in again; though, she was grateful they refrained from mentioning it.
"So, I take it everypony is *yawn* ready to submit their characters?" she asked her friends.
They all replied yes, and proceeded to hoof over their vignettes.
"I invented the most awesome human who ever lived," Rainbow Dash stated as she gave hers to Twilight. "His name is Chuck Norris; a movie star and martial arts master who is revered as a god by his peers."
"Gee," Twilight replied, "sounds like he's living your dreams."
Rainbow Dash stuck her tongue out while Fluttershy hoofed in her character.
"I created Gandhi. His goal in life is to make the world a better place through non-violent protest and political reform. His hope is that one day, all humans will achieve an everlasting peaceful coexistence with each other."
Twilight gave a drowsy smile. "Aww, that's so sweet, Fluttershy."
Fluttershy blushed a tad and moved aside, allowing Pinkie Pie to turn her vignette in.
"This is Sarah Allen. She's a happy girl who loves ponies, making new friends, and smiling all the time. She also likes to give names to her possessions, like her guitar, Benjamin. Of course, I don't name all my inanimate objects, but I do love ponies, making new friends, and smiling all the time. I guess that makes her somewhat, but not entirely like me; maybe 50-75% me. May-."
Pinkie was stopped by Twilight's hoof in her mouth as she gently pushed her aside to allow Applejack to move forward.
"Ah present Johnny Appleseed, a kindred spirit who just LOVES apples and planting them wherever he goes. He's a mite eccentric, seein' how he wears a cooking pot on his head, but he's a good person at heart. He values companionship, trust, and above all, honesty."
Twilight stifled another yawn. "Thanks AJ."
Applejack moved aside so Rarity could bring up the rear.
"And I present Tom Westman, the truest gentleman in all of North America. The girl who marries this handsome hunk will feel like the luckiest in the world, and they most certainly would be."
Rarity swooned as she hoofed her vignette to Twilight.
"Well, thanks girls," Twilight said. "I'll get to work proofreading these right away."
"Hold on there sugarcube," Applejack said. "Don't we get ta' hear 'bout your character?"
Twilight thought about it for a moment before replying. "Sure, why not?"
All of her friends sat down in a semi-circle in front of the lavender unicorn, eager smiles on their faces as Twilight pulled her vignette from the nearby table and lifted it up in front of her.
Meet Warren Zaccaro, an average-looking young boy with a strong intellect and a dynamic personality to boot. The eldest of two brothers, Warren is a complicated individual who would likely have a "?" cutie mark if he were a pony.
Warren has a unique outlook on life compared to his peers obtained from his observational prowess. When Warren observes his environment, he always sees people at odds with each other due to their insistence on taking sides for everything, whether it be in elections, relationships, or even business. Warren believes that taking sides is what tears societies apart and strives to avoid contributing to that notion. For this reason, Warren maintains as best he can a policy of complete neutrality in everything he deems integral to society's existence. This policy, however, has also resulted in the side effect of near-total isolation from his peers, and Warren is a bit reclusive as a consequence.
Put simply, Warren has no friends.
Twilight looked up to see her friends' reactions to her vignette's character description. To her relief, all of her friends seemed to be at ease, which Twilight took as a sign that they liked her character.
"That was a mite interestin', sugarcube," AJ said. "Definitely more unique 'n anythin' I could'a come up with."
"I agree," Rarity said. "You truly do have a talent for creation, darling."
"Still," Rainbow said, "not as awesome as Chuck Norris."
"It was . . . ummm . . . okay," Fluttershy whispered.
"Awww, Warren doesn't have any friends," Pinkie moaned.
"It's okay Pinkie, he's happy the way he is," Twilight stated, "and thank you all for helping me with this; I could've never done this by myself, so I'm forever grateful for all your guys' help."
Twilight's friends all gave her a group hug and proceeded to depart from the library, intent on letting Twilight get to work on fixing up their vignettes for the finished product.
Once her friends were all gone, Twilight looked to all the vignettes now laid upon the central table. Twilight meant what she said about being grateful for her friends' helping her with her project. Not only that, but the amount of diversity between human characters that resulted from their help was quite nice; it would definitely help to give the sequel to HUMAN some interesting flavor.
She then looked at her own vignette, pondering just how different Warren was from her, yet simultaneously so much alike. After her visit to the Isle of Tao, Twilight began contemplating how a person who grew up un-patronized by their parents would turn out later in life. The results, she found out, were not unlike herself before she arrived in Ponyville. She wrote Warren as a pseudo-bookworm, always delving into the field of literature and other forms of entertainment instead of journeying out into the world and experiencing what it has to offer. Unlike her, however, Warren pours his energy into literature to avoid getting involved in humankind's self-conflicts, whereas she pours her energy into literature to satiate her intellectual appetite.
Another difference between them, Twilight mused, was that Warren has never had people he could consider true friends. While she and her friends had the common trait of being elemental bearers to build a friendship around, Warren knows no one (to his knowledge) that shares his views. Before she came to Ponyville, Twilight too had trouble connecting with her peers regarding her love of books and knowledge. The reason why she turned out different from Warren in the end, she concluded, was her idolization of Princess Celestia in addition to her place as the element of magic, whereas Warren had no idyllic role model to pattern his life after as well as the absence of magic in the human's world. What made Warren keep trudging through life, however, was even though he has no friends, he feels happiness and satisfaction from observing true friendships among his peers despite not being apart of them himself.
Upon completion of her musings, Twilight levitated the first of her friends' vignettes and proceeded to work on editing it.
Lyra Heartstrings looked at her hoofwork on her kitchen table in frustration. She had worked nonstop on her fanfiction since Twilight denied her help with HUMAN's sequel, but she wasn't the least bit proud of her work. The problem, she found, wasn't a lack of ideas, but rather a lack of quality ideas.
Lyra was Ponyville's self-proclaimed Lead Humare; "Humare" being the term created to describe ponies unnaturally obsessed over Twilight's book HUMAN's titular race of people. Despite the book being released less than a month prior, the Humare movement had swept throughout Ponyville and had shown signs of doing the same in other cities throughout Equestria. Lyra, being the 1# HUMAN fan in the author's hometown, sought to prove she deserved the title of Lead Humare, and believed that providing the first high quality fan-fiction for the series would seal the deal. Unfortunately, no idea that came to the mint-green unicorn's mind seemed worthy of such an endeavor.
With a sigh, Lyra put down the quill and trotted over to her film projector, intent on relaxing her overstressed brain with a little mind-numbing cinema. She looked over her collection of film reels, eventually settling on one entitled Leeched. It was a magical fantasy film produced by the late unicorn Mariloma, one of the first cartoonists to bring their drawings to life on the silver screen. The plot dealt with a cartoonist (unsurprisingly similar in appearance to Mariloma) who's lifelong dream is to give true life to his creations, though even unicorn magic cannot create life out of nothing, much to his chagrin. With a little researching, however, he invents a spell that allows him to sync up thoughts with his characters by implanting an artificial intelligence within the vessel used to construct them (in the cartoonists' case, he creates a scarecrow-esque doll out of straw and fabric). As the spell's caster feeds thoughts to the vessel, they will use said thoughts to develop themselves, resulting in them becoming more sapient and, eventually, self-aware to the point of not needing to rely on the caster for feed to live. The spell worked perfectly without any unforeseen details going wrong, much to the cartoonists' delight. He worked furiously on breathing more and more life into his scarecrow doll creation, at least until it reached self-awareness, at which point he stopped.
The doll, however, didn't. In his reckless hurry to give life to his creation, the cartoonist had inadvertently bestowed upon the doll knowledge of the spell used to give him life, including the fact that it worked both ways meaning the doll (who had been given the name Son) could transfer thoughts between himself and his creator just as much as he could. What he chose to do with this knowledge, however, became the cartoonists' undoing. Son learned how to attach the mental link between them at will, and used it not merely to share thoughts with his creator, but to leech them from him and make them all his own. Without even realizing it, the cartoonist was slowly drained of everything his mind housed, until he was nothing but a brain dead vegetable. It wasn't until his actual birth son figured it all out and used his father's spell to create a more benevolent creation to annihilate Son that he was returned to normal and promptly destroyed the diagrams for the spell in question.
As Lyra watched the movie, she rediscovered her long lost fascination with the concept of one's creation achieving sentience and gaining knowledge of their creators. It was very much akin to a foal's upbringing, where the parents (at some point) bestow the knowledge of their conception upon them, with the difference being the method in which it's achieved; drawing instead of intercourse. Sadly, such a spell as the one used in the film was pure fantasy, even for the Princesses/Twilight Sparkle. Similar things had been achieved, such as robots, but they lacked the capacity for independent thought even with magic. In the end, only other sentient beings could acknowledge sentient beings . . . as . . . such . . .
Lyra looked back and forth between the movie playing and her desk with the discarded fanfics as she pulled herself out of deep thought. Then, the biggest surge of inspiration shot through the recesses of Lyra's mind like a lightning bolt through the sky. With an enormous grin, she trotted over to her desk and began working out the framework for her HUMAN fanfic.