Luna fumbled around with the cords around her. It was like they were on the prowl, eager to drown her in their ever expansive sea of over complicated instructions and tightly knotted tangles. She flipped her mane forward and out of her eyes as she sighed in irritation. Her right eyebrow twitched like a rabid animal as she once again attempted to follow the plugs to their source to figure out what the problem was. She did a triple check of every single outlet, in attempt to make sure that everything had been put into the proper places, though the dozens of cords tangled together in a mess so chaotic that her eyes began to cross when she stared at the center.
“Stupid cords… I’m a princess of Equestria! How can I not figure out how to plug a few simple cords into an outlet? Argh… This is SO FRUSTRATING! COME ON YOU PETULANT PIECE OF PLASTIC! WORK ALREADY!” Luna took her hoof and pounded on the computer and web camera in front of her with all of her might. She still lived by the old saying of ‘If it doesn’t work, smack the living snot out of it’. Unfortunately for her, this approach rarely worked on such advanced pieces of machinery as what was currently positioned on the table in front of her. “Can you just give me a little bit of a break here? I just want to do this simple little thing. Easy. No hassle. WHY DO YOU HAVE TO MOCK ME SO?! I WILL SUMMON CERBERUS FROM TARTARUS ITSELF TO DESTROY YOUR CHILDREN!”
A knock sounded at the door; it was rushed and shaky as if the pony knocking was in a hurry to get inside. Luna shook her head and bopped herself on the temple with a hoof; a light ‘tap’ echoed in her mind.She sighed. “Princess Luna? Is everything alright in there? I’m coming in. Please don’t be too mad at me…” The door opened seconds later to reveal a skinny mare. Her cream colored coat shook with each tired breath and her light brown hair dangled over her eyes and horn, bouncing up and down as she very nearly hyperventilated. She scanned the room until her eyes rested on Luna, cord still in hoof and a large frown on her face.
“Now, Vanilla, I appreciate your enthusiasm for your job, but I assure you that nothing is wrong here. These accursed ‘cables’ are a pain in my flank, however. A thousand years away and we still have the need for these arbitrary contraptions. Why don’t we have cordless electronics yet? It’s not like we don’t have the technology to make them yet...” Luna fumbled with the cord as she struggled to untie a particularly nasty knot. “This is just not my day… Oh, and Vanilla? Please take a seat. I wouldn’t want you to faint.”
Vanilla dragged herself over to a chair in the corner and dropped onto her flank with no hesitation. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she took in deep shallow breaths to regain her composure. “R-right, Princess. Who would have known that running all the way through the great hall could be so tiring?” Vanilla shook her mane as her breath returned to her; she blinked twice to clear her head before she saw Luna’s vain battle against the dreaded ‘cord tangle’. “Uh… Princess? Why haven’t you started the recording yet? You were so excited about this earlier!”
“Er… I… Uh… I sort of don’t know how to start it, actually. I thought that this was going to be a lot easier to set up, but… I just can’t figure it out for the life of me. All twelve-thousand years of it.” Luna sighed as she moved out of the way and gestured to the angry mass of electrical wiring. Vanilla walked up to the tumorous growth in the middle of the floor and looked for any signs of trouble. Her blue eyes scanned the jacks and plugs throughout the room before she finally noticed something out of place.
“Well, here’s your problem, Princess!” Vanilla pointed towards a little plug that was disconnected from the computer. It hung just out of eyesight and mocked Luna now with its brilliant, shiny surface. “This right here? This is the visual input for the monitor. You have to plug it into the main CPU or else you won’t be able to get the monitor to show anything.” Vanilla inserted the plug into a small port on the side of the computer monitor and the screen came to life. Luna smacked herself in the face as steamed billowed out of her ears and nostrils in thick plumes.
“Thank you very much, Vanilla,” Luna muttered through her gritted teeth. “WHY THE TECH PONIES COULDN’T HAVE SHOWN THAT TO ME BEFORE IS BEYOND ME.” Luna shouted to the ceiling above, and swore that she could hear a faint giggle come from the floor above. “Yes, yes. My incompetence with modern technology certainly is quite hilarious, isn’t it? Perhaps Spark Plug and Copper Wire shall find it equally amusing whilst they scrub the toilets in the guardmen’s barracks for the next month. Maybe I shall assign them the wing where the Shadowbolts reside. I hear they absolutely love spicy foods.” A light scamper could be heard through the thin ceiling. Luna snickered.
“Anyway, Vanilla, how do we set up this ‘webcam’ to record the readings? Do I move this oval thing over here?” Luna picked up the computer mouse and swung it around in the air in an attempt to get some sort of response out of it.
Vanilla grabbed her hoof and put the mouse back down as she looked up at Luna with a blush of embarrassment. “Uh, yeah… Princess? We have these things called ‘mice’ now. They’re that thing you’re holding. You move ‘em around on the desktop and click on the place that you want to go on the computer screen.” Vanilla then pointed to a small icon of a smiling pony who seemed to be giving a wave to the pair. “Eeyup. That’s the one you want right there. That’s how you’re gonna record on the webcam, so just double click…”
“Yes, thank you very much, Vanilla. I do believe that I can handle things from here.” Luna clicked on the icon and a window popped up. Luna clicked on the prompt labeled ‘record’ and stared in wonder as a mirror image of her appeared on the computer screen. “Wow… This is amazing! It’s like a mirror that captures my every movement!” Luna flipped her mane and stuck her tongue out at the webcam. Each movement showed through the mirror image of herself. “Are you sure that this little box is a computer? I remember when a ‘computer’ meant a massive machine that took up an entire castle chamber!”
“Right… So, um… Now that you’re recording, you may want to do some sort of introduction for yourself. You know, so that ponies will know what this video’s about and why you’re doing it in the first place.”
“Oh, right. I almost forgot about introducing myself.” Luna cleared her throat and faced the camera. “Hello, everypony. This is your princess of the night, Princess Luna. I’m making this video because… Celestia insists that I'm just sitting around all night being 'broody,' and that I need some sort of hobby. I tried counting the floor tiles, but that didn’t work, so I’ve decided to try and read some of the fan mail that I’ve been receiving as of late. Vanilla? Can you please get the first letter for me?”
Vanilla rushed over to a small mailbag that lay in the corner covered with a thin layer of dust. The first letter that she pulled out of the bag was messy and scribbled. It didn’t even have an envelope, instead, it was folded into lopsided little rectangles. The word ‘Anonymous’ was scribbled on the back in nearly illegible writing; the letters all ran together and mixed as if it had been written by a drunken pony. Vanilla shrugged and brought the letter over to the princess.
“Here’s the first one, princess. It’s kind of sloppy, and it stinks like moldy hay…” Princess Luna grabbed it from her hooves anyway. Luna wore an excited smile as she began to unfold her very first fan letter.
Hoo boy… This should be good. I wonder what’s written in there.
“Alright, I shall read my first letter now! Ahem…” Luna took a deep breath and stared at the page before her. She read aloud as she read the letter.
Luna, you're sexy, but your rule 63 version is even sexier. I fap to that every single night. Please become futa so I can have smexy dreams of you :3
“Um…” Luna dropped the letter and turned to Vanilla with a frown on her face. “Uh… Well, I’m flattered that you find me attractive, but I assure that this sort of behavior is highly inappropriate. Vanilla? What is this ‘rule sixty-three’ and ‘futa’ that this pony speaks of?” Luna had an almost quizzical look on in her eyes.
“There’s no way it says that. Let me see that letter.” Vanilla grabbed the letter from Luna’s hoof as her brow furrowed. “Luna.. sixty-three… smexy…? Oh my Celestia, somepony actually wrote that. Well… How do I explain this? Rule sixty-three is… Well, you know how ponies say there’s a version of you that’s the opposite gender somewhere in the world? Rule sixty-three is that version of you. And futa is short for futanari. It’s where a mare grows a penis an-”
Luna held her hoof up as a signal for Vanilla to stop talking. Her face slowly reddened into a deep shade of scarlet. “Ahem. I’m quite flattered that you find me attractive, as you said before, but I assure you that this ‘futanari’ you speak of is quite impossible. I actually tried a spell once when I was in college to experiment a bit and-” Luna stuck a hoof in her mouth and blushed even more fiercely. “What I meant to say was that you shouldn’t share such personal ‘preferences’ to royalty or make sure brazen comments. You’re very lucky that I, being the kind and generous mae that I am, am willing to forgive you for this transgression. But just this once. Don’t do it again.”
Vanilla giggled at Luna and took the letter, crumpling it up and throwing it into the trash. “You mean that the letter’s anonymous so you can’t find out who wrote it out of the millions of stallions who could’ve sent it, and this colt was obviously drunk off of his rocker, right? That’s the reason you’re not going to file a restraining order against him or sentence him to a night in the dungeon, right? My, my, such laziness...”
Luna shot a glare that could shatter glass at Vanilla. “Yes, well, maybe you’d like to join Spark Plug and Copper Wire in their ‘special duties’ as well? Next letter please. And do make sure that you hold your tongue next time. Don’t make me cast a silencing spell on you.”
“Aw… I’m just getting settled in and comfortable… It’s no fun if we don’t joke back and forth.” Vanilla pouted and walked over to the mailbag once again. This time, she pulled out a letter that poke out of the side of the bag. This letter actually had a normal postal enveloped, and was marked ‘To: Princess Luna’ on the front of the parcel. “Well gee, that sure is an informal way to address a princess.” Vanilla handed the letter over to Princess Luna.
Luna opened this envelope with just as much vigor as the last, but eyed its contents carefully. It appeared to be written on a stock piece of parchment paper, and there were no strange smells or other signs to indicate that anything about this letter would be out of the ordinary. The only odd thing about it was the large full moon symbol on the top right hand corner of the paper. Well, at least this pony seems to be some sort of fan of mine that’s relatively normal compared to the last.
Dear Princess Luna,
I was told that if I prayed to you and put a moon pie into my anus every night that my hemorrhoid would go away. Sadly, it seems as though you are a false god.
Your disappointed once-devoted,
Bob "Bump Butt" Jones
“Well, Bob.” Luna looked directly into the camera screen and blinked several times as she tried to gather her thoughts. “I think I know what the problem is here. I don’t claim to be, nor have I ever claimed to be a god. That is simply superstition and rumor that have been circulating around Equestria for thousands of years.” Luna rubbed her temples and sighed. She closed her eyes and muttered to the camera.
“I swear, being an immortal alicorn is not all it’s cracked up to be. I’m magic, but I’m not a genie. I can’t magically make all of your wishes come true just because you pray to me. How am I even supposed to hear what you’re saying? You’re probably thousands of miles away everytime you make this wish… Why must ponies always believe rumors and not trust their own common sense? It would save Celestia and I so much trouble in our daily duties. I wonder if Celestia gets letters like these too.” Luna stopped muttering under her breath and put a smile on her face that gave an air of thousands of years of wisdom.
“I’m sorry Bob, but I’m afraid that the problem is your own doing. The reason your hemorrhoid has probably not gone away by now is because of the fact that you keep shoving a dessert pastry into your anus. Think about it for a second. Do you even know what’s in the cream that gets put into those things? Sure, it’s delicious, but you can’t even pronounce half of the ingredients in there. It’s probably aggravating your hemorrhoids, and if you’ve been doing this for a long time, I recommend you visit a doctor right away.”
Luna handed the letter away to Vanilla, who then put the letter on a table in the corner of the room. The next letter that she grabbed looked rather ornate. It was in a fancy purple envelope that was embroidered with gold. The hoof writing on the front was rather fancy as well, with sweeping curls and accurate straight lines in each letter. Vanilla noted that the letter looked as though it had been written by a practiced hoof before she handed it Luna.
“Gee, princess. I never thought you’d be playing the role of a Proctologist in my lifetime. I actually feel sorta bad for that stallion. It must hurt a lot… Anyway, here’s your next letter, Luna. This one’s a lot fancier. Looks like it might be from some sort of royalty.”
Luna took the letter and opened it up. She began to read the letter as she had done with all of the others. Immediately she recognized the familiar monster head that leered at her from the top of the letter. “Bowser… This should be a good one. He always sends me some pretty entertaining letters. The fool actually thinks that he knows what he’s doing. I feel bad for him and his kingdom sometimes.” Luna snickered.
To Luna, Princess of Equestria.
Seriously, like, how do you even STAY in your royalty spot? With your kind of defensive maneuvers, a regular ol’ green troop of mine could just waltz in and sweep you right off your hooves! What I’m getting at as when those Changeling dudes invaded. Come on, girl, where the heck were ya? Sleeping? That can’t be right, because it was night time. Don’t cha think when your royal sister was hanging half dead in a slimy cocoon that it was a signal to, I dunno, do something!? That would seem pretty dang important to me. Also, even if you weren’t aware your sister was becoming an evil butterfly of death, wouldn’t you at least notice the war between ponies and cheese legged bugs going on outside? I mean, all I got to do is get Celestia out of my way and I’m set to rule over your land! So, yeah, how’s about you learn some defensive tactics and make things at least somewhat interesting, eh?
Bowser, King of the Koopas
Luna gave a derisive snort as she finished the letter and tossed it onto the chair in the corner with the other letter. “You can’t blame me for that whole thing! I had no idea what was going on outside. Celestia had sent me into Canterlot castle to fetch the royal bouquet for the wedding. It’s not my fault we keep it hidden in the deepest chambers of the castle where I can’t hear anything outside. It’s a magic bouquet that assures the next person who catches it get married. I mean, that’s a pretty important tradition in the wedding. And Celestia didn’t notice Cadence’s change either! You can’t blame this all on me…”
Luna sighed as she looked up into the camera. “Besides, you and your entire kingdom get beaten by a fat, Italian plumber every other week! All we needed to take out an army of changelings is a group of six young women with minimal training. Your ‘highly trained’ soldiers can’t even take out one man, and they have weapons! Why don’t you tell me how you manage to keep your royalty spot when all you ever do is get your people into trouble.” Luna grumbled to herself.
“Uh, Princess? We all know it’s not your fault that you weren’t there. Just… calm down a bit, okay? I mean, if these letters are so bad and make you angry, then why do you keep reading them? I mean, we can stop anytime. It’s not like you have to finish this or anything. You don’t even have to respond to them. You’re the princess for crying out loud!”
Luna took a deep breath and opened her mouth to say something, but her thoughts were cut short by a sudden realization. “Oh, wow! You’re right! I don’t have to read them the whole way through or respond. But… It’s just so strange… I have the most abnormal feeling of curiosity and need to read through them. I just can’t help it! With the content so far, it’s like watching a train crash into a vat of oil. They’re terrible, but I just can’t look away! I feel like it’d be wrongful of me to just stop reading them for some reason. I can’t quite explain it. Can you just get me the next letter?” Vanilla did exactly as she was told, and handed Luna yet another letter. The princess opened the envelope and began to read right away.
Dear Princess Luna,
It pains me to inform you (not really) that you are, in fact, a slobbering fatass. You might be thinking to yourself, what’s a fatass? Look up the word fatass in the dictionary, and you will find the definition of fatass, which you fucking are. Don’t believe me, just compare yourself to Princess Cadence.
Now let’s just say that we didn’t live in a world where that fine-ass princess didn’t strut her stuff and make all the stallions wanna fill her up with babies. Can you imagine a world like that? Of course you can’t, because your mind is so emotionally and psychologically stunted that you can’t even fucking comprehend how a princess should have standards, which includes having a fine ass.
Let me tell you a little bit about how Princess Cadence is superior to you in five easy pointes. 1. Ass. 2. ASS. 3. A$$. 4. All natural pillow. 5. Compact trunk. It makes me feel offended that you have so much junk in the trunk, you oversized glob of primordial ooze. Sure, your sister might eat all the cake, but you got some big problems with stealing all the Kit Kats, bitch.
Go eat a cinnabun, you fat faggot (make sure to look up the definition of that as well).
Signed, Harry Oxnard.
Vanilla facehoofed and took the letter from Luna. She tossed the letter into the trash can and looked at Luna, who was just sitting there, stunned. “Holy Celestia, I thought I told those guys to screen these letters and take the worst of them out! I’m going to have a word with them later… Don’t worry, Luna. I’m not even going to allow you to dignify that letter with a response.” Vanilla gave the princess of the night and hug and patted her on the back as she did her best to comfort the princess of the night.
“Hold on. I’ll look through the bag and find a few nice ones. I’m sure they’re in there, but we’ve just been unlucky with them so far. You have lots of fans, and I’m sure you’ve got lots of great fanmail. Just let me find some to cheer you right up. We’ll just read a couple more nice ones so that you don’t feel so bad, okay?” Luna sniffled and nodded to Vanilla, hanging her head low. Why did ponies hate her so much?
Vanilla returned in seconds with her next letter and handed it to Luna. “Here. This one’s really pretty nice and encouraging. They ask an actual question too! Come on, let’s read this one together. That might cheer you up, okay?” Luna nodded and scooted next to Vanilla. The two began to read the letter together.
Dear Luna,
You are truly the best princess ever. The nighttime is a lot better than the day, in my opinion. I mean, in the day, the sun is so bright. Also you can't drink during the day. Well, you CAN, it just isn't as socially acceptable as at night. Drinking during the night is fun. Drinking during the day is just sad and means you're a loser.
So, I have a question. How do you do the royal Canterlot voice? It's so cool how it sounds, and I've tried doing it myself, but it's never as loud as yours, and my throat always ends up hoarse. Do you just carry around a bunch of lozenges? Is there a hidden megaphone in your throat? Is it magic? Or is it a secret?
I understand if it's a secret; if I knew the Royal Canterlot Voice, I probably wouldn't tell anypony else how to do it, either. But if you could tell me, that would be awesome.
Thanks for reading,
-C.B. Horses
Luna perked up immediately as a smile spread across her face. “Why thank you, C.B. Horses! That’s a bit of a strange name for a pony, but thank you nonetheless. I too find that drinking during the nighttime can be an effective way to pass the time by. Why do you think that I ensure that all of the bars around Canterlot stay open so late? You never know when a mare or stallion might need a little late night treat.”
“As for the Royal Canterlot Voice? It’s not really that I can’t explain it to you… It’s actually an extremely complicated process that I have to perform with my vocal cords. It involves forcing my glottis into a more rigid shape and pushing the are out more forcefully so that my vocal cords vibrate the air with a deeper intensity. It takes years of practice to perfect, so that’s probably why you can’t do it without straining your voice. It’s not just yelling. I couldn’t even do it until I was almost fifty years old!” Luna chuckled.
“Well, Princess, there’re still a few more letters in the bag. Want to read any more of them tonight?”
Luna shook her head and looked at Vanilla. Vanilla came over and turned off the recording. She smiled at Luna. “Well, you sure had a lot of fun today, didn’t you? I swear, some of those letters seemed like they were written by little foals or extreme bigots. You going to keep doing this sort of thing on a regular basis?”
A shady smile made its way onto her face as she looked at her. “Vanilla, I think that’s quite enough for me for a while, but… I have an idea for something we can do in our spare time now. I think it’d be quite entertaining to witness. You’re much more adept with the technological aspects of things, so I’d like to run it by you first.”
“What is it, Princess? I like that smile. It’s the ‘I’ve got a brilliant prank’ smile.”
“Well, how familiar are you with Skype and blogs?” Luna giggled at the mere thought of how much fun she’d have with her idea.
“Pretty familiar, why do you ask?”
“Well… I think I have an idea. Wouldn’t it be something if we took letters and questions on our blog for the Elements and my sister and interviewed them? We could record their reaction and put them on this Haytube site I keep hearing about.”
Vanilla chuckled and walked over to the computer. “That sounds like a great idea, Princess. One ‘Ask the Elements’ blog coming right up…”