Letters From a Little Princess Monster
Thoughts, Shots and Lollipops
...never thought of putting fish in a box before. Miss Cheeralee’s house has several boxes called ‘tanks’ with little fish, some in just water, some salty, and some warm. they’re all pretty in their own way, but none of them have teeth or teniticles like the ones from home. some of them even glow in the dark without magic, or stick to the side of the tank. she said i could have a guppy which is a little like a parasprite but swims, but i said no. it would be too much like being a mom. have you ever thought about getting a pet? i don’t think a fish would be good for you because it would have to be in a tank all the time, but maybe a frog or a lizard. i’ll go with you to flutter shy’s house if you’re scared of them, because she has a whole lot and they kind of look at me when im there.
Trixie and Miss Cheeralee talked about school while we looked at the fish, and im a little scared, but not much now that i have Miss Smarty Pants back. you can borrow her to go visit flutter shy’s if you want to go by yourself. scoots was being neutered tuterd at Miss Cheeralee’s house for part of the summer so she will not be held back a grade only instead of magic like Trixie is teaching me, Miss Cheeralee is teaching her multiplication, which made me a little scared when i tried to multiply 7 times 8 and could not remember the number. i can get all the rest of the table, as well as the first sixteeen cubes, but numbers around 7 just seem to fade away when I turn my back. i was worried that i would not be in the same class as my friends but Miss Cheeralee looked at me real funny and talked with Trixie and mom real quiet while we watched the fish and fed them some stinky flakes. when the lid comes off the fish food, it makes a real mess but i got most of the food back in the jar so the fish will only be a little fat, like Trixie. i shouldn’t have writtne that because Trixie is only a little padded and even though she gets out of breath when following us, we’re going to get her into shape so good that stallions will be panting all over her…
* * *
At any other time, the concept of the Cutie Mark Crusaders surrounded by large tanks made of glass and filled with her various expensive and fragile fish would have driven Cheerilee into a nervous frenzy, but with the addition of Trixie, a zebra, and a changeling disguised as a zebra in her house, her sense of impending doom did not know which way to turn. Finally, after sitting quietly and listening to all three of them talk about Menace/Flower/Twilight Sparkle, one of whom declaimed in iambic pentameter when she was worried, Cheerilee held up a hoof and asked them all to be quiet just for a moment so she could think.
A faint glow around Trixie’s horn was the only sign of the curtain of silence she put up, and the Crusaders were being suspiciously well-behaved by her fish tanks, making every minute that passed without the sound of breaking glass and running water a little additional stress that was tying her neck up in knots. In her few years in Ponyville, she never had a student like this in her classroom, and she was willing to bet the previous teacher, Miss Chalks, had not either. Twilight was such a strange little filly and after listening to the stories from Zecora and Trixie, Cheerilee could not figure out if she wanted to run away screaming, or to pick the little alicorn filly up and cradle her gently, telling her everything was going to be all right.
Looking at Trixie for inspiration, which felt a little weird, Cheerilee sorted a few pieces of paper around and decided to start at the beginning.
“So Twilight Sparkle, the same pony who was featured in the school paper that I approved for publication, is not really a unicorn your age living on a volcanic island, but for the last twelve years, she has been living in the Everfree Forest with Miss Zecora, suffering from… issues.” Continuing quickly before Trixie could respond, she added, “Oh, and that she and her little friends somehow used the Elements of Harmony to free Princess Luna and turn herself into a little alicorn filly.” Cheerilee looked at the zebra, who nodded in return.
“That is quite correct, in each regard. Her life indeed has been quite hard.
“Now that her body has become transformed, into a pony both winged and horned,
her life indeed has become much better, as each night she writes to her Princess, a letter.”
“Uh-huh.” Cheerilee turned to look at the uncomfortable ‘zebra’ stallion, who was splitting his attention between watching the little ponies with the fish and the teacher with the headache. “And how do I know you’re really Tallgrass? If you’re a changeling, you could be anypony.”
Tallgrass paused before changing forms in a blaze of green fire that drew the little ponies attention momentarily away from the multicolored fish. The now muscular earth pony touched her on the shoulder and shook his head, his blonde mane cascading down his neck in a way that caused Cheerilee to surreptitiously suck in a breath of air and try not to look at Zecora. “Turn around and let me work on your neck and back. You’re broadcasting so much pain it’s hard to think.”
“Well, that’s certainly a unique opening line.” Cheerilee tried to make herself comfortable as strong earth pony hooves began working the kinks out of her back, zeroing in on every twinge and pain. “Anyway, -umph- you want me to put a dangerous adult into -umm- their classroom disguised -ahh- as a little filly, and hope -mumph- she doesn’t relapse or -uhh- wait a minute.” The teacher looked up at Zecora and frowned. “Featherweight’s pictures were real?”
“His cameras are perceptive eyes, but show only whats, and not the whys.”
“I had always thought the Cutie Mark Crusaders would bring some sort of hydra or dragon into Ponyville someday, not…” Cheerilee waved at the little ponies around her fish tanks feebly as Tallgrass moved up to rub her shoulders, but Zecora only sat back on her cushion with a smile and took a sip of tea.
“I will admit my surprise when my house was invaded,
by five little friends, traveling the forest unaided.
“Bringing a day filled with chaos, noise and great fright,
but ending in joy with the end of the night.
“Small friends are indeed what my Flower had found,
in numbers quite large, and big hearts unbound.
“Flower loves them all dearly, from their hooves to their manes,
so our future is clear, in this town we remain.
“While healing she needs from that terrible fight,
she needs love even more, against the return of the night.”
“And someday a few decades from now,” added Tallgrass, “We’re all going to Zebrica, which doesn’t really rhyme with anything. Zecora says the land there needs her, and when the time is right it will bring her to it. How’s your shoulder?”
“Heavenly,” grunted Cheerilee. She opened one eye and looked at Zecora. “Are you two married?”
“Not quite, but we might.”
“Well, you better hurry before somepony else nabs him.”
A little earth pony bounced happily into Cheerilee’s crowded home with a grin. “Hi, Miss Cheerilee! Hi, girls! I got to have breakfast with Princess Luna!” Apple Bloom joined her little friends and chattered away at full speed, while the adults watched with justifiable curiosity once Trixie dropped the sound muffling spell.
“Princess Luna just dropped in on Big Mac and his family for breakfast?” said Cheerilee as if the words would make more sense spoken than rattling around in her mind.
“Sounds a little more like she spent the night,” said Trixie with a smirk. “Sounds like Luna may introduce some more interesting traditions from the past, like droit du seigneur.”
“Or les majeste,” growled Cheerilee, switching from a scowl to a happy smile as the little alicorn came trotting up to her.
“Um. Miss Cheerilee?” Twilight seemed to be nervous, and looked back and forth between her and the disguised changeling rubbing the knots out of her back. “If Tallgrass marries mom, and you marry Tallgrass, would that make you my mom too?”
“No!” she responded almost instantly. “That would be bigamy, and it’s illegal.”
“Oh. Well, we were watching the fish, and I said it looked like one of the male fish was having sex with a bunch of—”
“Well, Miss Cheerilee!” interrupted Trixie as she grabbed her hat and cloak. “It’s too bad we can’t stay any longer, but we need to get going. Things to see, ponies to meet. If you need anything else from me, you know where I live. Come on, Menace.”
“But—”
“We need to get to the next thing on the checklist. Which is…” As Trixie trotted down the path, she leafed through the mess of papers with six little ponies trotted along behind her.
“Treats!” announced the little alicorn, floating the checklist up to Trixie so she could see the entry.
☐ Enjoy treats with student and friends
“Treats, yeah. We could go get—” Trixie looked behind her at the six happy little ponies who regarded her with the reverence older ponies only got when there was sugar involved. “Wait a minute. Where did you all come from?”
Featherweight popped up in the air with a grin. “Mom always said she found me under a cabbage leaf.”
Sweetie Belle scoffed with a disparaging snort that she only could have learned from her sister. “Don't be silly. Pegasuses are delivered by storks. Earth ponies are found under cabbage leaves.”
“Nuh-uh,” objected Apple Bloom. “Earth ponies have sex and have babies in their tummies afterwards. Then they go to the hospital where—”
“Ice cream!” snapped Trixie. “Right now! No more talking.”
But one little pony was not listening.
* * *
ice cream…
”I’ll be right back, Shining Armor. The ice cream vendor is right around the corner, so you just sit here and keep your sister safe while I’m gone. Do you understand?”
“Yes, mommy.”
The familiar purple and whites of the one who gave milk receded out of her vision, to be replaced by the white and dark blue of the one who made funny noises. The pretty light in the sky was shaded by the leaves of the giant plant she was propped up against, which was a nice break from the heat. The two of them brought her to this place often, ever since she had first been able to think, and sometimes even played in the tasty green stuff with the dark blue one who smelled of smoke and papers. It was great fun, and she cheered and clopped her little hooves in joy when they laughed.
“Hey, Twiley. Hi there. Can you make a smile for me? Say Shiney. Shiiii--neee. You can do it. Come on. Ow!”
Shiney turned to glare at a number of other ones at the edge of the plant’s shade and spoke in an angry voice she had never heard before.
“Hey, that’s not funny. You could have hit my baby sister with that!”
“Oooo, we’re so scared. Hey, guys. Five points for bouncing an acorn off the little purple twit.” Little bits of brown flew through the air in a strange game, and Shiney jumped to block them from reaching her, but as the other ones spread out, he could not block all of them. He darted out at the other ones, but that only let more acorns hit her, and she wailed in fear at the pain. Something dark in her lunged upwards with every impact, creeping up her horn in little sparks that snapped and bit at her skin. They were bad. They needed to be punished.
And then the pain stopped.
When she opened her eyes, Shiney was standing in front of her with a new splotch of color on his rear and a beautiful pink dome covering them both. She could see the little acorns bouncing off it like raindrops, until the purple and white one returned and chased all of the bad ones away. And all the while, Shiney repeated the same thing over and over.
“Don’t worry, Twiley. I’m here. They won’t hurt you.”
* * *
The main room of Lickety Split’s Ice Cream Shoppe was nearly empty except for Trixie and her guests, which were all doing their best to bankrupt her of any remaining bits by repeated trips to the counter and a particularly ill-fated ‘milkshake race.’ Trixie morosely regarded her second scoop of Diet Vanilla Maple Crunch in mourning for lost calories, but could not help but be distracted from her own depressive moping by Twilight’s experiment in melting ice cream sculpture. It had been an impressive if somewhat disconcerting representation of some creature called an ‘Urlock’ that Trixie was quite glad was located deep in the Everfree and not anywhere nearby, although melting had reduced it to something much less menacing. Scooting her chair over next to the despondent little alicorn, she took a quick spoonful of the defunct monster and asked, “So, what’s got your tail in a knot?”
“Don’t want to hurt somepony.”
“Is that all?” Trixie scoffed and took another bite, intentionally ignoring the small pointed glare she got in return. “Everypony gets hurt or hurts somepony. Heck, I’ve hurt more ponies than anybody. Which reminds me.” Raising her voice, Trixie called out to the ice cream vendor. “Hey, Split. Have I done anything to you that deserves an apology?”
“You tipped me two bits on a fifty bit bill, but other than that, no.”
Flipping her coinpurse upside down and shaking it a few times, Trixie floated a small pile of bits over to the counter before turning back to Twilight. “Some hurts are worse than others, I guess. It’s part of what makes life. We get hurt, we learn, we try again. I guess that’s why I don’t like books very much. They’re too much like cheating. We get to see everypony else’s mistakes and try to learn from them, while I like to make my own, thank you very much.”
The little alicorn huddled deeper into her cloak. “What if you hurt somepony really badly?”
“Well, I…” Trixie paused with a third filched spoon of ice cream partway to her mouth. “You know, I’ve never thought of that.”
“What if you do something that gets you killed?”
A single drop of melted ice cream fell from Trixie’s spoon onto the table before she placed the spoon down and blinked a few times. “I never really thought of that either. I’ve always thought of myself as immortal, I suppose.”
“Am I immortal?”
Trixie picked up her spoon and fiddled with it for a while before dunking it firmly into the melting ice cream monster and taking a big bite. “Doesn’t matter. Whether you live for the next forty years, or four hundred, or four thousand, what really matters is what you do today. Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero. That means—”
“Seize the day, and put little trust in tomorrow,” declared the little alicorn with one upraised hoof.
“You can remember that, but you can’t multiply — never mind. Yes, exactly.” Trixie grinned as she dug out another spoonful of the melty ice cream and tossed it onto Twilight’s forehead.
“Hey!” The little alicorn scooped up a spoonful of ice cream and hesitated before turning it upside down over Trixie’s nose in return, matching her grin tooth for tooth.
“Ice cream fight!” shouted Featherweight, diving for his own spoon before getting splattered by several of his friends as the combat began in full fury.
* * *
...and i really had not thought about how messy that much ice cream would be but after we were done and cleaned up i gave Mister Split two gems out of what Miss Rarity gave us and he said everything was fine and that we could come back whenever we wanted. i keep remembering new things every day, and they’re not as scary when i have friends to tell about them and play with and find new things like how we don’t all six fit into a bathtub without sloshing a lot of water on the floor.
im not as afraid of my parents any more and i think they’ll not be afraid of me. i thought a lot about what Miss Redheart R.N. and Doctor Stable M.D. said about immunizations, and i’m going to try it out for the rest of the week.
your friend and sister
Monster
* * *
Monster blew across the paper to dry the last of the ink, rolling it up into a scroll and addressing it with great care. There was no owl at her window tonight, and it would be a long night walk through the dark town to the library to have Spike deliver the letter to the Princesses, but there was a spell she had been thinking about ever since she had first seen Spike belch out a letter, and this was the perfect opportunity.
First she added a little purple gem inside the scroll, carefully sticking it in place with a piece of ‘gum’ twist had given her. ‘Paying for things’ was a new concept for her, but it seemed as if one gem was always enough, particularly for the little dragon. Then she placed the scroll down on the windowsill and concentrated.
Curls of purple magic coiled around the letter as she reached through the featureless nowhere that filled the world, reaching out for that one draconic signature to hook the other end of the spell onto. Spike was just a few clearings away, but distance meant very little to this magic, and it took her the longest time until she could feel his rumbling snores and furnace-like heat. With the most gentle flick of magic that she could use, the scroll curled up and vanished out into the night, leaving Monster free to curl up under her covers and dream about how excited Luna would be when she read her letter.
* * *
In a dark cavern half a world away, a tiny spark of purple light flared into existence for a moment, and then snuffed out, the only sign that it had ever been there being a small paper scroll on top of a mountain of gold and gems.
And one gigantic dragon, scratching his nose at the sudden itch that had awoken him.
If anybody is tempted to do some fan art on this chapter, might I suggest the "Shining Armor gets his cutie mark" , or the CMC in the middle of a bunch of fish tanks scene.
"scoots was being neutered tuterd at Miss Cheeralee’s house"
That made me giggle so much :D Poor Scoots, anyway :D
Excellent read (as always), Georg. Countless thanks for yet another fantastic chapter.
Trixie, how do you manage to be so wise and so dense at the same time?
What did I say? What did I freakin' say?
3616137
Now the Princesses are going to have a giant dragon knocking on their door asking for his treasure back. And it's all because of...
Oh, Twilight.
Oh, Twilight's magic is way to powerful for the world.
And then Equestria was Nazi Germany.
"In a dark cavern half a world away, a tiny spark of purple light flared into existence for a moment, and then snuffed out, the only sign that it had ever
been there being a small paper scroll on top of a mountain of gold and gems.
And one gigantic dragon, scratching his nose at the sudden itch that had awoken him."
Did Twilight just teleported her scroll to the oldest dragon in the world so he can "send it to Luna. She did .
Something is off with the encoding for the checklist quote. Instead of whatever symbol is supposed to be in front of it, I see a box that says:
23
EF
3756837
Yes, because how dare they have laws like ours.
3757084 The Mormons do it. Don't you wish you could be like the Mormons?
3757088
Oh yes. being a mormon is totally my life's dream.
3757088 Just because they do it doesn't mean it's not illegal. ~_~
"That's bigamy!"
"Yes, and it's big 'o me, too! It's big of all of us!" -Groucho Marx
3756557
It really is an amazing "gift".
3757449 Yeah, but are there really any legitimate reasons for it to be?
ohhh fuck
3757088 I'm pretty sure it is still Illegal just not enforced as much in Utah.
Great
Oops wrong dragon
Oops wrong dragon
3757023
It’s a Play/Pause button, why Georg used it I do not know.¹ You don’t have a font which has actual character, but you do seem to have Last Resort ², which is a font often used as a fallback. (It consists of a square with the Unicode code point — U+23EF in this case — in a box.)
¹ Mayhap our erstwhile author couldn’t find the triangular bullet — ‣ — U+2023?
² Or something similar.
3757666 The "Mormons" that do that aren't even real Mormons. They're a group that broke off when polygamy became illegal. Beyond that, they hav no connection to the Latter-Day Saints (a.k.a. REAL Mormons, often abreviated LDS). This mini-rant brought to you by a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Poor random Dragon has suddenly found work.
Poor Trixie wallet is losing weight while she gains it.
3758719 Because it showed up as a square in Chrome in Google Docs? (which I now suspect is Chrome's way of saying "I don't know what that looks like") I'll look around and see if I can find the real box character and pop it in.
3757530 So with the Sun, the Moon, and our Star teacher, is Big Mac facing Trigimy?
3756557 Think of poor Celestia. Twelve years trying to get through Trixie's tough head, and she's going to arrive in Ponyville to find Monster has her better trained after only twelve weeks.
3759196
Well, they do say the best way to learn is to teach. Maybe trying to be a role model coupled with the MAGIC OF FRIENDSHIP (and Ponyville's ambient insanity) will finally get through to her.
Also, Big Mac, Harem Comedy Anime. Fund it.
3759239 Well, considering that in the comic, he was being pursued by Luna, one of the Wonderbolts, and a background pony mare, all in one story, I'm starting to think I'm holding back. (I'm torn between the Big Mac two-part and the Shining Armor/Cadence two-part for best comic book ever. And they both fit inside the same trade paperback. Yes, I bought it. Yes, I'm considering getting two, so I can lock one in a safe just in case.)
"I like thee, citizen. Thou art easy to converse with. Most pleasant."
3759323
I've been debating about pick up the comics. Figured it might be a good use of an amazon gift card. So recommended, then?
3759332 Yes, but buy the trade paperbacks. They're cheaper than trying to get all the comics, they're more durable, they have most if not all of the artwork, and they're easier to store. Should be four of them, the Chrysalis arc, the Nightmarity arc, the "Every Main Character Gets a Comic" arc, and the Big Mac/Shining Armor and Cadence issue. And that should get you free shipping thru Amazon (unless you're in Australia, which seems to be as expensive as heck to get comics.)
3759393
Thank you for the excellent advice! Poor Australia does seem to get the short end of the stick far to often with shipping.
Darn, I hate it when I email my messages to the wrong person. Or in this case, the wrong dragon.
Unique, and highly effective it would seem.
Oh hell yeah, I've always been a fan of that particular variant on Shiny's cutie mark story. Must have been quite the hit to him when his little sister was lost in the Everfree.
I can't wait to find out the background story of this mysterious new dragon. And I love that Monster developed a spell to send mail to Spike so he could send mail to Luna. Sounds like she has a future in government bureaucracy.
droit du seigneur: I had to think about this for a moment.
A lord having the right to take any women sounds atrocious. A princess having the right to take and male sounds hilarious.
In one we have the opening of Braveheart.
The other:
The fair maiden opened the door to see who had knocked at such an hour. Outside she found the Princess on her stoop, a few guards standing at a distance.
"I'm here to claim droit du seigneur with your husband," the princess said coolly.
The maiden blinked a few times before remembering to bow. "Yes my lady," she said while bowed.
Just then her husband's voice called from a back room, "Who is it dear?" he asked.
Turning her head to answer him, "It's the Princess. She's here to #%@k you," she called back to him.
"Here, or do I need to pack a night bag?" He asked, still unseen from another room.
The maiden shrugged at her husbands question. Still bowed, she looked to the Princess for an answer.
Ah, the World of Cardboard Dilemma. Phenomenal cosmic power isn't very helpful when you can't tone it down to reasonable levels.
In any case, another fantastic installment of Twilight's healing and Trixie's karmic due. Thank you for it.
Two days and a fair deal of missed sleep, but now I've read through both this and the first story. And it did not fail to deliver. Very well done. Excellent story.
Aside from the action, and the well-balanced mix of humor and seriousness, I like how you're able to show more than one side of the characters, the good and the bad and all. Such as Trixie: She's a jerk, she's a joke, she's funny, she's clever, she's a chew toy, she's liked, she's badass. It's like you have this strange idea that characters are multifaceted individuals with depth and not simple props with a one-paragraph description.
And the scene where they threw a party for Trixie was just heart-melting. It was just so perfectly in character for Pinkie, and probably the others as well. Pity they had to be so mean to her first. Then again, I've put Trixie on the emotional roller coaster a few times too, so I shouldn't say anything. She's just so interesting in her responses, I think.
And Trixie should really pay more attention to her paperwork, yes. I look forward to seeing how that turns out.
Oh yeah, and bigamy is totally illegal. The punishment is two stepmothers.
3759196
That sounds about right. Aren’t all the individual quirks of modern browsers just great?
You could use this delightful resource, whatever character map utility is on your system, etc., but I already took the liberty of looking for you.
Ballot Box — ☐ — U+2610
Ballot Box with Check — ☑ — U+2611
Ballot Box with X — ☒ — U+2612
Black Square — ■ — U+25A0
Black Square, Small — ▪ — U+25AA
White Square — □ — U+25A1
White Square, Small — ▫ — U+25AB
I refrained from listing the two more that have next to zero support.
3763362 Ok, fixed it. I gotta stash that somewhere for later. Thanks!
3761762 Just keep an eye on what she signs, all I'm saying. Plus only Trixie would be thrown a party just moments before a banished creature of ultimate evil arrives. It's really going to take the edge off any other party she gets thrown, in particular if I have anything to say about it. And I do...
And it's two mothers-in-law that a bigamist has to worry about, not the law.
3760708 Luna: "Just one night. Your bride, however, should probably pack for a week. I'll be back tomorrow, beautiful. Come on, you lug."
3760259 Well, she's seen the receiving end of the Princess->Dragon spell, and she doesn't have dragonfire to work the Dragon->Princess spell, and goodness knows she has enough gems, so it's just easier to send it to Spike for relay delivery.
3759582 At least it doesn't say: Dear Mr. Mxuenasrusmpeh. Our Tail Enhancing formula is on sale this week, for only two gems a bottle, but if you order today, we'll send you an extra jar of deep scale moisturizer absolutely free!
3763945 Wow ok I didn't mean to cause you to go to all that trouble to find out who was right as originally I was just curious about what the phrase meant and did what I normally do when I see a non-English language in a story put it into Google translate so I can better understand what is being said and therefore the story as well; seeing as I never taken Latin it looked jumbled so I thought that you should know. But I guess Google translate isn't as accurate as I thought and hoped it would be.
But hey at least in the end everyone turned out correct so
Was just looking up the other phrase. Wiki has it as 'lèse-majesté' or 'lese-majeste'. Not that Trixie would't already be guilty of a few counts at this point ...
Still, fun, and wondering what Trixie will do once she finds her door lock repaired. Especially if she's trying to get in at the time.
3782848 "Still, fun, and wondering what Trixie will do once she finds her door lock repaired. Especially if she's trying to get in at the time."
Actually, I'm planning on it being put back when she's trying to get *out* of her bedroom.
(next chapter being worked on. Honest. Here's a snippet)
There was a certain cresting point to trends that defies all logic. On one week, millions of ponies have little pet rocks with clever little names like Chip or Pebble, and the next week they all are thrown out in the backyard while their owners are now trying to make a hoop-de-hoop loop, or a yo-yo do whatever a yo-yo did(1). The initial newspaper articles about the Elements of Harmony were quite informative, but there was one tiny detail that had been left out entirely by accident.
Marital Status.
3814279
Marital status ...
Damn it, Georg, I just had that fan cleaned!
Innuendo is not Magic
Take a number
So in other words,3758941, they wanted to keep there beliefs the same, rather than give in to peer pressure on the national scale. Like the Greek Orthodox Church, who basically said "screw being popular with the pagans, we will stay faithful to the beliefs of our forefathers."
dFish uh... they have external fertilization, so the male and the female both have the same role in reproduction. Doesn't really make sense to compare a fish's love life to an animal who devotes half the species to being walking incubators much of their life. There are fish who have dominant males with harems, but it's really not as clear cut and non-negotiable as with ponies, where no matter how much a mare may want to have foals with a harem of stallions, she's just not going to be able to do it very quickly at all.
And another thing! Artificial sweeteners aren't actually any less calories than sugar! It's just that they're so incredibly potent that much less of them needs to be used than sugar. Aspartame for instance, used in diet ice cream, digests in the intestines to produce 4 calories per gram, identical to that of sugar, which also has 4 calories per gram! The reason diet has less calories is because of the potency. To make a scoop of non-diet ice cream taste sweet you need about 28 grams of sugar, and to make diet ice cream taste sweet you need 0.05 grams of aspartame. That's 560 times less sweetener.
Aspartame breaks down in the small intestine producing some readily digestible proteins, and the deadly poison known as methanol or rubbing alcohol. Some people say that makes it poisonous! But, consider the potency. The figures add up to a different picture. Since 1/10 of the aspartame molecule becomes methanol, 0.05 grams of aspartame is like ingesting 0.005 grams of methanol, or five milligrams. Now, 10 milliliters of methanol is sufficient to get enough formic acid in your blood to damage your eyesight. (100ml is the median lethal dosage.) Since methanol has a density of 0.7918 grams per milliliter, 10ml of methanol becomes 7.918 grams of methanol. About 8 grams of methanol may possibly be sufficient to permanently damage your body, depending on your body weight and metabolism. That means in order to potentially experience deleterious effects from aspartame, you would have to consume about 1,583 scoops of diet ice cream all in one sitting. So, about 15 of these:
a.abcnews.go.com/images/Entertainment/ht_giant_sundae_kb_120808_wmain.jpg
Better get working on it!
Whole milk ice cream needs less sugar to taste better, and you get full from just a little bit, so it's the healthiest ice cream you can ingest.
4525446
A normal 20 oz. soda contains 56g of sugar.
A diet soda contains 0.3g of aspartame (0.03g of methanol).
Sounds great at surface value, but now plug in the national average of roughly 23.4 of those a month (476.8 oz. or 3.725 gal.)
Now take into consideration consumption rates and how long it takes to leave the body.
Let's say it takes 30 days to leave, it may be less, but for a simple example let's just assume (plus it's hard to find the exact numbers online)
That gives us aproximately 0.7g a month.
Still not bad.
But that's ONLY soda.
I'm not willing to hunt down all the sorces but if someone is serious about avoiding sugar they'll consume QUITE alot.
I'm not saying 8g, but they might get close, say 5 to 6, maybe even close to 7 in some cases.
That may not cause PERMANENT damage but it can easily produce irregularities in the body which can contribute to, or exacerbate, other issues.
TL;DR Aspartame is NOT safe or healthy, stick to sugar or something with neither.
poor scootaloo, she'll never have kids
Shining Armour's cutie mark story was so sweet.
Protecting those colts from disintegration at the horn of baby Monster.
So brave.
I d'awwed really hard at the retelling of Twiley and Shining Armor protecting her.
BWA-HAA-HAA-HAAA!!!
I just noticed this, but I've been listening to Imagine Dragons "Monster" on repeat for the whole story! I didn't even realise how well it fit until just now!