Chapter 5: Motives ...
From the Personal Journal of Princess Twilight Sparkle
I have been favored by my circumstances in life.
I have always known this, in the intellectual sense that -- before I came to Ponyville -- I mistook for the only important aspect of experience. I was born in comfortable circumstances to one of the older and better families of Canterlot, raised respectably in the security of love from my happily-married parents, and further sheltered by the best older brother for whom any filly might have hoped. I do not think that I experienced a single serious worry regarding my own identity, nor feared that I was unwanted.
Yes, there were points in my life when I experienced alienation and rejection: this is part and parcel of being much, much more intelligent than the average Pony. But it was alienation and rejection for my superiority -- so obviously pure jealousy that I found it difficult to take it seriously. The few times that I feared that I was inherently unlovable, that something was wrong with me, I fled to the comfort of my parents and Shiny, who reassured me that I was good, that it was simply others who had difficulty accepting me.
Then, of course, I got my Cutie Mark under dramatic circumstances which brought me to the attention of Princess Celestia herself as her personal student. I received the kind and caring attention of the most powerful being then alive and active on the planet, as my own teacher -- and I took this for granted, too. Then, of course, everypony claimed to want to be my friend, but I was smart enough to grasp that they only wanted to get close to power. I was in the enviable position of being able to reject false friendship. And I imagined it a curse.
I took this all for granted. I was only a filly, after all. Doesn't everypony live in a nice house with a good and loving family to show her right from wrong, and to teach her to respect herself? Doesn't everypony have a special Talent, which makes her better in at least one thing than the whole world? Isn't everypony loved and valued and aware that she's special? Isn't everypony's main problem in life that she's so special that she has to shut out false friends to avoid being exploited by the ambitious and envious?
Well, no. Everypony doesn't. Some ponies are just average and face the normal struggles for love and acceptance, the normal moral compromises required to function in the real world. Some ponies have to worry about finding a good place in the world, not about fighting off attacks by cosmic evils: mad gods, alien infiltrations, or timelost ancient despots.
And some ponies don't even have that. Some are born inferior, in some important aspect of life, and have their inferiority drummed into them every day they're growing up, until they accept that the only place they have in life is as toys for other ponies, as pawns in their social games. But that's not the worst of it.
The worst of it is how readily some other ponies will play with such toys.
Because they can. No other reason required.
And if a toy's heart gets broken, who cares?
***
Interview Notes - Annotated Copy Kept By Princess Twilight Sparkle (continued)
Interviewer: So what did you do then?
Subject: Well, I figured that Charlie was just playing around, but I really wanted to get out of that hedge, cause I wanted to see the fireworks. So I said "I'm going to miss the fireworks!" so he would know I really wanted out of there.
Interviewer: Why did you assume Charlie would help you?
Subject: Anypony would! Wouldn't you?
Derpy looked at me almost pleadingly at that, as if she were still stuck in the hedge and she wanted reassurance that I would rescue her.
I nodded my head in affirmation, and she continued.
Interviewer: And did he help you?
Subject: Not right away.
Interviewer: What did he do instead?
Subject: He didn't say nothing. So I started trying to get out again. I wasn't getting nowhere, so I stopped to think, and then I could hear him breathing.
Interviewer: Breathing?
Subject: Yeah, heavy breathing. Like he was excited.
Interviewer: Excited in what manner?
Subject (embarrassed giggle): Excited. Like a stallion gets, when he wants you. You know!
I knew. Not from personal experience, of course, but I'd heard ponies talk about it.
As I imagined the scene it must have been incredibly creepy -- Derpy, helpless in the hedge; and Charlie, product of an alien biological and cultural evolution, a wholly-different worldline, watching her struggle and emotionally responding to her plight on only the basest and most selfish manner. Charlie, of a race that had never learned the way of Harmony. Charlie, a predator.
A Pony stallion, I imagine, might have been somewhat excited under the same circmstances. The most admirable stallion I have ever known has told me that it's normal to be a little bit excited by the sight of a pretty mare's hindquarters, even out of cycle, if she makes sufficiently erotic motions. And, inadvertently, Derpy would have been doing exactly that in her struggles.
For Charlie, who was far from the most admirable male being I have ever known, whose species normally always covered their genitalia, who had gone on and on and on to me about what his "body cried out for," the sight of Derpy in that posture must have been quite distracting. I am sure that he imagined that this provided him with an excuse.
Howver, this did not excuse his actions. A rough, ill-mannered Pony stallion, in his situation, might well have made some crude jests at Derpy's expense. But he would never have mounted her unless he knew such to be her desire. Perhaps he might have, if he had been part of an ill-ordered army in the chaotic times before the Unification, as Luna had intimated to me. Not now, though. Not in modern Equestria.
Interviewer I understand. And what happened then?
Subject: I kept trying to get out. I'd wiggle a bit and then stop, to rest and to hear what Charlie was doing. Cause I didn't know why he wouldn't just get me out of there. I even said all I'd need would be to get a hoof on the ground, in case he didn't know how easy it would be to get me out of there. I didn't know what was holding him back. I mean, my butt's not very scary! (laughs). See, that's funny cause I'm not scary, so my butt's not scary either!
Recorder (interrupts): You should never explain a joke!
Interviewer: Pinkie ...
Recorder: I'm just saying ... sorry.
Interviewer: That's okay. Derpy, you were saying?
Subject: So, when I rested I could hear Charlie, and he was getting very excited! Not just heavy breathing but making little moany sounds, like a stallion does when you give him a .... oh. Sorry, Princess Twilight, I don't mean to offend you.
I'm pretty sure I was blushing, the more so because my reaction was inappropriate. That was setting up an emotional feedback which was making me blush even more. That's an interesting phenomenon, the way that the brain can get locked into a positive feedback loop. You have to watch out for loops like that when spellcasting.
The reactions of my colleagues were interesting. Neither seemed particularly embarrassed. Applejack looked somewhere between disgusted and exasperated; whether at Charlie or Derpy was impossible for me to tell. Pinkie Pie was leaning forward in apparent fascination. I have not even the slightest clue as to what the Paradise Entity was thinking.
Interviewer: None taken. You may continue.
Subject: So I knew that he was getting really turned on by me, maybe even touching himself. You know. On his thingie. Cause it feels good?
Why does everypony think I'm completely naive? I've studied reproductive biology. I got an 'A plus' on it, too! I judged that mentioning this wouldn't help matters, though.
Interviewer:: Understood.
Subject: And it kind of turned me on. Knowing that he thought I was sexy like that. So I got a bad idea. A really bad idea.
Derpy fell silent, her eyes downcast, ears and tail drooping. She was very obviously ashamed of herself.
I had no choice but to press her, this was getting to the heart of the whole incident.
Interviewer: What was your idea?
Subject: I ... I get lonely sometimes. I mean, I know a lot of ponies, and most of them like me, I think, even when they laugh at me ... you like me a little, don't you, Princess?
I nodded. It was not the most professional thing to do as an interviewer, let alone interrogator, but I'm neither a professional interviewer nor interrogator. I'm a student of theoretical and practical magic, and I knew I was well out of my emotional depth in this situation.
Subject: And I have some really good friends. Like Cloudy, and Carrot Top, and the Doctor -- I really wish he liked me more, though. And Princess Luna's been really kind to me. And there's my little Muffin, of course. But ... I get lonely. You know?
Interviewer: I understand.
And I thought I did. Derpy had obviously been sexually active before; as she had borne a child. She was obviously a very affectionate and loving mare, too.
Then she said something that shocked me.
Subject: It's not just that I want to bang. Well, I mean everypony wants to bang, it means you're alive, like Cloudy says. But I get enough of that at Cloudy's parties -- there's always stallions there who want that! But -- afterward, they don't really want to talk to me or hear about my day or really let on that we did it. And then I feel even more lonely than I did before. I just want my own very special somepony, that's not wrong, is it?
Interviewer (somewhat disconcerted): Um ... no ....
Subject: Even if I'm -- well, not very much. I want somepony who could love me and be my friend and ... I guess that's not going to happen. I thought maybe Cloudy could be like that to me, but she just wants to bang everypony else too, and I didn't want her to be like that in front of Sparkler and my Muffin, Sparkler's around the age I was when I got into trouble, and Muffin's still just a little kid, she needs to grow up right. I don't think I grew up right, cause everypony wants to get rid of me and it hurts me, and I don't want Sparkler and my Muffin to get hurt. They shouldn't be hurt, should they, Princess? Just cause I'm bad?
Interviewer (almost speechless): Uh ...
I had already known part of the story. Derpy had come from Cloudsdale, gone to Flight School and been seduced by somepony when she was in her teens: thus Dinky, her "Muffin," her motive for risking her life in the Everfree on a regular basis. "Sparkler" was Amethyst Sparkle, Dinky's half-sister, presumably by Derpy's seducer. At some point Amethyst had been orphaned, and Derpy had -- amazingly -- adopted her. And treated her well.
"Cloudy" was Cloud Kicker, a Pegasus from Canterlot who was notable primarily for what must have been nymphomaniacal levels of bisexual promiscuity. She'd come from a very old family, made it into West Hoof, then dropped out at her graduation ceremony. She had drifted to Ponyville years before I arrived in town, joined the Weather Patrol and had risen to become Rainbow Dash's deputy. There was some sort of history between her and Dashie -- a long-ago quarrel -- whose details I had never investigated.
Cloud was the center of the local Fast Set, throwing parties of rumored extreme depravity, and was said to be essentially heartless. She made friends easily, but lost them as she offended them in one manner or another.
She had three real friends, though. Despite their old conflict, Rainbow Dash was one of them -- but then her great heart and shining soul were always quick to forgive any but the worst insult. Blossmforth, with whom she had become increasingly affectionate of late, to the point that I'd heard they were now lovers, was another. And Derpy Hooves was the third.
Apparently, she'd also been Cloud Kicker's lover. In the sense of love actually being present between them, which was rare for Cloud Kicker. And it had failed, for the obvious reason that Cloud Kicker was faithless -- and Derpy was protective of her Muffin.
I glanced at Applejack. She nodded in affirmation. Derpy was telling the truth.
"I guess she's still a meanie," said Pinkie Pie. She looked dejected.
"Cloud Kicker?" I asked.
"Yeah," replied Pinkie. "We tried to help her ... but she didn't want to be nice."
This sounded fascinating, but completely irrelevant to the issue on which our hooves were planted.
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. "However, we have to get back to the interview."
Pinkie nodded, gathering herself with a visible effort. Her mane frizzed out a bit.
Interviewer: So, your 'bad idea.' What did you do?
Subject: I started to play along. Pretend I didn't know he was there, that he was watching me, that it was turning him on. And flirt with him.
Interviwer: How did you flirt?
Subject (embarrassed): Well ... I started to wiggle my rump more when I tried to get out. And, well, flick my tail a lot, you know ... and I made noises ...
Interviewer: What sort of noises?
Subject: Little grunts. Like in between what I'd make from just trying to get out and what I'd make if I was ... well ... And then I asked "please," but I said it like I was begging him to ...
Interviewer: I get it. Grasp it. Aagh! Understand it, I mean! What happened next?
Subject: Then he touched me.
Interviewer: Where did he touch you?
Subject: On the flank. Here. (indicating the rear portion of upper left hip, just behind and partly touching her Cutie Mark).
Parenthetically, using the euphemism "flank" for the hip or rump is really annoying, especially when one is trying to indicate a specific location!
Interviewer: How did he touch you?
Subject: I think it was with his hoof. Um, wait, I think he calls it a 'hand.'
Interviewer: No, I mean did he put his hand on you as if he were going to help you out, or as if he had some other motive?
Subject (giggles): Oh yes, I see what you mean! Heh, he was like petting me. Like he wanted to bang.
Interviewer: How did you react to this?
Subject (giggles): Well, I was playing like I didn't know it was Charlie. So I went "Eek! What was that? A monster?" and "Please don't eat me, monster, I don't taste good!" And then he started running his hands over my Cutie Mark and my legs and I liked it, Charlie wasn't trying to hurt me or nothing. I played innocent like I didn't know what he was doing, and I asked him why he liked my butt. (giggles, leans forward conspiratorially) I know why a stallion likes your butt! And I guess 'men' are no different that way! (smiling)
Applejack and I looked at each other. It was becoming increasingly unlikely that what Charlie Yu did to Derpy Hooves fell under any normal definition of the crime of rape.
"She's telling the truth." Applejack confirmed. Then she leaned forward and whispered into my ear: "Do we have to run this course any further, Twi? We should leave Derpy some dignity."
Though she is Honesty, my friend has always also been exceedingly Kind. In truth, she displays all the classic Virtues to such an extent that I sometimes feel inferior by comparison.
However, it was important to know more. Though perhaps not in so much detail.
"I'll try to speed things up," I whispered back. "You're right -- we don't need this much detail."
I am very sorry that I didn't take Applejack's advice and stop. For if I had, then, I would not have learned just what Derpy meant by "everypony always wants to get rid of me."
I am a scholar; I love learning, I revel in new information.
Never before have I been so profoundly sorry to have gained knowledge of the world..
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5109522
Your comment inspired me to finish chapter 5!
With more to come ...
Oof. This chapter was a punch to the gut.
I'm glad to see it continue.
5109522
You're mostly right. Other Ponies have desired Derpy. But she's never really been romantically loved by anypony who truly valued her. She's been romantically loved, and she's been truly valued, but never by the same Ponies. And mostly she's just been used, because she's a Horrible Judge of Character.
And yes, she feels desperate, and she figured that maybe someone who wasn't a Pony, and was a clear misfit, might appreciate her better -- as another misfit.
Sadly, he didn't.
5113281
It started that way, but I became interested with the concepts. How do you like my treatment of them?
5113296
The Asimov reference was funny. I think it a bit silly to assign great gargantuan superpurposes behind the quirks of each of the little ponies. What's next, Vinyl Scratch is a deceptacon? It was also fun just how much difficulty Twilight had in dealing with the whole situation. Luna's purple prose seemed fitting. I'm worried you're building the whole "everyone hates Derpy" thing up to unreasonable expectations. It's already a huge sob story for her and whatever she says next can't be much worse without bordering on the ludicrous. I mean, like if ponyvillians beat her up for fun and steal her bits, that's pretty hard to believe. What, they lock her out of the park during the fireworks because their day is ruined the moment they see her stupid face? Or no wait, they kidnap young orphans and abuse them until they're feral, and then lead them around on chain leashes until they see Derpy, whom the maddened orphans have been trained to attack on sight. See I just can't keep a straight face while typing this stuff.
5113385
The Mane Six -- and some other beings in that world -- aren't normal Ponies. In canon they're among the few who can attune with the Elements, and each of them has unusual powers or special skills.
No, but she's obsessed with electrically-produced music, has a good amount of money, and builds complex music system. I'm guessing you're referencing the climax of Rainbow Rocks here: what she did with that car is probably not physically-impossible assuming a lot of money, a lot of skill and a major obsession with doing it. It wouldn't work as fast as shown, nor work as well as both car and sound system as shown, but the base tech of the Equestria Girls Humanoids may be slightly higher than our own.
Pinkie Pie, in particular, has been repeatedly shown to be a Reality Warper -- she can, essentially, do what Discord can do but at a lower level of power. Alara J Rogers calls this "chaos magic," Scoots2 calls her the "joy bringer," and I call it "reality warping" and theorize that she can directly sense and manipulate probabilities. It amounts to the same thing.
The origin of my Pinkie Pie is very much inspired by the version of her from Alex Warlorn's Pony POVerse and involves her being a direct reincarnation of the G3 Pinkie Pie. She was sired by and is linked to the Paradise Entity, a super-intelligent magical AI that evolved from the control systems of the Great Wish. Its purpose is to recreate The World That Was Lost, the G3 version of the world. There's a whole backstory there.
Thanks. She's both naturally-melodramatic, and has been since small fillyhood; and she's in love with Twilight and trying to court her through letters. She's picked the right approach for Twiight Sparkle.
Nah. Actually, most Ponies like Derpy. She mostly screws up because she lacks a normal sense of social self-preservation. The flip side of her extreme niceness is that she doesn't get that somepony can act nicely to her and yet want to exploit her. As a mild autistic, she doesn't model other Ponies very well.
Cloud Kicker actually did and does like her, but it is in Cloud Kicker's nature to remorselessly exploit her friends. They're a bad combination as friends -- neither of them have normal morals, but because Derpy is a natural giver and Cloud Kicker a natural taker, this created situations in which Derpy acted like a doormat and Cloud wiped her hooves all over her, with relish.
Cloud actually feels guilty about this -- treating a real friend badly is one of the only things that makes her ashamed of herself. But feeling guilty isn't enough to make Cloud Kicker change her ways.
No, the things which happened to her were sadder and less dramatic, with three exceptions, none of which were Cloud Kicker's fault. In fact, Cloud Kicker helped save her the in the last instance, which is why Derpy makes the mistake of trusting her. It's basically what Derpy said:
She didn't "grow up right." She had a painfully-obvious physical and a less-obvious cognitive disability in an old Pegasus family, and they found her an embarrassment. Her cognitive problems made it horribly difficult for her to know whom to trust. So other Ponies exploited her, in various ways, including both financially and sexually; and they got rid of her when the consequences made her a burden.
She's found a place, now, as a mail courier. She delivers packages to places that other couriers are afraid to go, because she doesn't actually care if she dies as long as her Muffin is provided for. She has, in fact, all the courage and strength of her noble ancestors, but few realize it because on the surface she's a lovable goofball. Luna's realized it, and Twilight is coming to realize it.
Derpy has problems with social complexities. She'll accept sexual advances that any normal mare with her motivations would turn down, because she doesn't see why the very fact that the advances are being made this way means that the stallions in question despise her.
Unfortunately for her, her tutor in the romantic graces was Cloud Kicker. Derpy thinks Cloud Kicker is really nice (which she actually mostly was, to Derpy) and doesn't grasp that the Winning approach only works if you really want to exploit others. Since Derpy is a kind, loving and generous Pony, the consequences is that she winds up exploited.
She'd almost given up on Ponies at the point that she ran into Charlie Yu. She saw that he was sad and lonely, and thought "I could be with him and then neither of us would be lonely." She didn't get that he wasn't just an alien, he was a jerk. Grade-A Class.
As to raping her? She's been trained how to fight by two individuals. Cloud Kicker, and -- lately -- Princess Luna. She could kill Charlie Yu in about a second or two of action. She just liked him, and thought he was being playful. That kind of play would not be out of place in Cloud Kicker's little Fast Set.
This chapter was somewhat hard to read, in an emotional sense. Ouch.
If Twilight is sickened by THIS, she'll be sickened by something else: the fact that this is going to look mild by what she finds out next.......
5113083
I think that's what saddens me most in this story. Twilight had it right when she commented a couple chapters back that it was curious that after Derpy had given him what he'd been in terrible need of for so long...that he nevertheless harshly rejected her when she claimed he was her coltfriend.
Charlie seems not the most intelligent or most emotionally healthy person in the world. But your Derpy isn't exactly either. If he'd simply been nice to her, they might have been happy together.
Exactly. But he had to be a jerk to the one pony willing to give him what he wanted. If he could simply have not been a jerk, they could both have been happy. Or at least happier. He wouldn't even had needed to be especially nice. Just not mean. That might have been enough. But because the scorpion was compelled to sting the fox, he's now in jail and Derpy is in the same situation as before.'
Everyone loses.
5113937
Charlie was upset because he only wanted sex -- he was annoyed that the consequence of sex was that Derpy assumed an emotional connection. He was also upset because he perceived Derpy as being of lower status to himself and thus dragging his own status down.
Actually, Charlie's "status" was "weird resident alien" and he'd never said or done anything to make the Ponies particularly admire or like him, even before his insanely lustful actions. After those actions, his status was "weird and potentially dangerous resident alien."
Creatures like that the Ponies of Ponyville deem are best avoided, and left to Princess Twilight and her herd to deal with. This is, actually, the attitude they take toward Discord, except that both the fear and hatred there are much greater because Discord is powerful. Charlie isn't.
Charlie has enough of a sense of self-preservation that he tries to avoid Discord; he needn't bother, Discord thinks he's funny. Nopony's telling Discord about Charlie's attack on Fluttershy, for obvious reasons -- it's not obvious how Discord would take it, and they don't want to set back his reformation.
Before the business with Derpy, Charlie was thought of as rather weak and stupid, because he is -- he has no exceptional physical or mental capabilities, and his attitude makes him poor at surviving either individually in or in cooperation with others. He's also obnoxious and rather smelly (the Ponies have very good noses). It's not surprising that no mares wanted to have sex with him; most are looking for husbands, and in this world Cloud Kicker has another Rule ("No Charlies").
In any case, Charlie doesn't get that he doesn't have any specially-high status, and still less does he grasp that Derpy's is higher than his in many ways. Ponyville's known her for years, and most of the townsfolk like her. They mostly think she's stupid and screws up a lot, but means well. Plus (as Charlie does not know because he never sat down to have a real conversation with her) Derpy does jobs for and is a friend of Princess Luna herself. And then there's her friendship and mysterious prolonged absences with Time Turner ... but then most Ponies don't realize what he is ...
What Charlie especially didn't get is that being publicly cruel to Derpy was a sure-fire way to make the other Ponies think less of him. No Pony would intentionally and unapologetically do that to her; even those who have hurt her far worse than did Charlie did so privately. In fact, this extreme public cruelty is why they were willing to believe that he raped her.
This is to some extent a xeno thing. The Ponies are nicer than Humans. They are of course capable of nastiness, but there are some things they won't publicly do or say, and Charlie crossed the line. He actually shocked everypony who heard him, most especially Pinkie Pie.
Charlie should have realized this, but he never really studied the race among which he found himself, even though his life depended upon them liking him. He just assumed they were taking care of him the way his own culture had always taken care of him. And he was right, up to a point, because the Ponies really are nice.
For instance, he never considered the point that Applejack was willing to hire him on her farm, even though he was neither all that strong nor skilled. She did this because she saw he was lost with no useful knowledge and wanted to let him have the dignity of supporting himself instead of living off handouts. But then, in canon she's probably the overall nicest member of the Mane Six.
He took her kindness for granted. He also took Pinkie Pie's -- he interpreted her willingness to be friendly to him and take him to parties as possible sexual attraction. Nothing of the sort: Pinkie just didn't want him to be lonely. He was almost certainly getting on her nerves before then by demanding too much of her time, and by stray thoughtless obnoxiousness directed at random Ponies; when she actually kicked him, that was an explosion of pent-up hostility.
Lest someone think otherwise -- I do not think Humans Are Bastards. I think that Charlie Yu is a Bastard. He's really not very bright and he arrogantly assumes he's superior to the Ponies because he comes from a higher-technology civilization which he did nothing to build and knows nothing about how to create or maintain.
Most of all he has a huge unwarranted sense of entitlement. He considers himself entitled to constant sexual gratification, even though he's not in point of fact married to, in love with, or even casually dating anyone, based on his own ineffable Charlie-ness. He goes on about his "urges," but he's actually only been in the land for "months."
And when he finds a willing mare, he then considers himself entitled to an (in his mind) higher-status one.
This is all from the original story "Stuck," which has some truly (and I think unintentionally) hilarious lines in it, such as this gem of a paragraph about Charlie's masturbation
"Slink" - Is Applejack, or anypony else, following him around to try to stop him masturbating?
Charlie's imagination bores even Charlie himself -- nice to know that!
Charlie apparently feels a sense of shame at his ineptitude at masturbating. I didn' know that was a competitional sport!
As for Derpy -- yes, she's not emotionally-healthy, and the more so because I partially based her off the Winningverse Derpy. The main differences between the two are that my Derpy is much less verbally adept (canon Derpy rarely speaks and sounds kind of stupid when she does), and my Derpy is actually becoming the sort of heroine that Cloud Kicker wants to be.
Derpy's main problems are that she doesn't really understand a lot of social nuances, and she's internalized a very low estimate of herself. The first gets her into situations where she is exploited, and the second induces her to put up with exploitation for far too long, because she assumes she can't do any better.
Compare with Rainbow Dash, who is a bit oblivious to many of the subtler social nuances, but gets the bigger ones, and is far too self-confident to allow most ponies to exploit her in any fashion. (Her big exception to this is Fluttershy, for whom she will do pretty much anything -- but then, Fluttershy normally accords her the same privilege).
Yeah. If Charlie had just been minimally nice to her -- simply treated her as a mare instead of some sort of walking embarrassment --Derpy would have been more or less happy with him. The one thing he'd have to avoid is physically or emotionally harming Dinky. If he remembered that, he'd be okay with her.
Ah, you got Celestia's point.
5113643
It's the pattern that's horrifying her. That Derpy's apparent weakness is being taken as an invitation for abuse. And what horrifies her more than Charlie abusing Derpy (Twilight never liked Charlie that much, though she made an effort at first) is learning that Ponies have abused Derpy even worse.
5114297
I do notice that you've made a point of interpreting his character in the worst possible way. In Stuck, the silent protagonist was neither cruel nor inconsiderate:
There's no question at any point about whether he'll help her out, and he does:
And in fact it's fairly certain that it was not his intention to rape her. He was masturbating, and it's not until she starts giggling and engaging him that he even asks the question of if he can go farther. And then struggles with it:
I'm not trying to paint him as a saint. But by my reading, if it hadn't been for Derpy's cheerful happy bubbliness throughout the whole situation, there would not have been sex. He would have fondled her, masturbated, and then helped her out and and left.
Stuck deliberately makes use of difficult to reconcile ideas. He is silent "to keep his identity secret" as Twilight puts it in your story, and yet at no point is there every any doubt that he'll help her out of the hedge. Could he really have remained anonymous? Especially given that at the end of the story after he's pushed her through and started to leave...he comes back to help her a second time after she's seen him?
Or, consider the mixed reactions from Derpy:
She's spasming and "happy" from his manual stimulation of her, and yet not aroused or enjoying it? How do you easily reconcile that?
He's a "mindless beast" and yet he fingers her, turns her on and is gentle and slow about it.
Stuck goes to great length to give contradictory impressions every step of the way to allow the reader to come away with the interpretation they prefer. I think that your interpretation that Derpy knows full well what's going on and chooses to play along makes a lot of sense.
But why do you so completely villify him? In Stuck, he was not cruel. He was not inconsiderate. He was conflicted. You've made him "a bastard" who is stupid and heartless and single mindedly inetrested in sex.
He was not this way in Stuck. He had feelings:
His concerns about being alone came up mulitple times:
He was interested in making friends:
And even though, yes...he is taking advantage of Derpy's situation, he's not a jerk about it, and is concerned about her feelings:
I like your interpretation for Derpy. But why have you reduced Charlie to a one-dimensional jerkass? You've made him a scorpion.
Why?
Um, it was my understanding that they actually did...
In any case, this continues to be a heartbreaker of a story, especially considering it's all centered around a depressing interpretation of my favorite pony. Looking forward to more... though I get the feeling I'm going to be out for fictional equine blood in the next chapter.
5114760
Everypony has their own special talent. Some, however, are more special than others. Twilight Sparkle is the most powerful mage of her generation and an avatar of Magic Herself. Golden Harvest is really good at growing carrots. What's more, some have other qualities that amplify their talents; some not so much.
Interestingly, Derpy has never revealed a special talent having anything to do with her Cutie Mark. Though she must have one, mustn't she? The one who bore a similar Cutie Mark, millennia ago, could actually create water-based force fields. Derpy's shown no aptitude in that direction.
Don't misunderstand me -- I really like Derpy. Note that a lot of the sympathetic characters in this story either already like her, or are coming to like her, as well? Derpy has flaws; the kind of flaws which are inevitably exploited in any social situation larger than a small steading trying to survive the end of their world together.
5114621
You have a point, in that I'm being hard on Charlie.
The complexity of the situation is as follows. Charlie, imagining Derpy far more foolish and helpless than she was in truth, thinks that he raped her but that she was just too dense to understand what had happened. Charlie, not being a monster, felt guilty about this and feels guilty after the fact. His sense of guilt is leading him to become even more imbalanced than he was at first; it is also leading him to blame everyone but himself for his current situtation.
Derpy, assuming that Charlie knew she was physically-capable, also assumed that Charlie was just courting her in a playful manner. Her ability to model the minds of others being impaired (one of the essential problems of autism) it didn't originally occur to her that Charlie might really have imagined her to be helpless and thought that he was raping her. She thought that she was just playing a rape-fantasy with him.
Derpy's sense of social propriety being damaged by a combination of a neglected upbringing and too much association with Cloud Kicker, it didn't occur to her that someone who really liked her probably wouldn't have courted her in such a fashion. So she assumed that he had just become her "colt-friend," and sought out his company.
Charlie assumed that she was too dense to understand what had happened and was associating with him out of a conditioned-response to pleasure, like a dog (actually, most dogs have deeper emotions than that, but Charlie's not an animal handler). Thus, her claim to romantic association with him was grotesque and embarrassing.
Derpy didn't get that until he publicly renounced her. Because of what he said, everypony assumed he'd raped her; and Derpy was too humiliated, angry and upset when first interviewed to state otherwise. It's hard for her to model the behavior of others even when she's calm, so it did not occur to her that she was putting Charlie in real legal danger by her actions.
Later, when she calmed down for the second interview, she did realize that if she spoke honestly she would exculpate Charlie -- and reveal herself to have been a liar by omission. And, by the standards of everypony outside Cloud Kicker's Fast Set, promiscuous. Something that Ponies outside the Fast Set thought of her anyway. That is why she didn't want Dinky around.
So no, Charlie isn't as horrible, or Derpy as innocent, as it seemed at the beginning of this story. This does not make Derpy the villain or does it make Charlie the victim of this affair; Charlie did what he did thinking he was raping Derpy, while Derpy did what she did thinking she was accepting his love. Charlie's actions were far more malign than Derpy's.
5114621
Part of the reason, of course, that the tone is heavily against Charlie is that the POV character is Twilight Sparkle, and Twilgiht's friends attempting to communicate with her. And the POV culture is Equestrian.
Equestria is by early 21st-century Western standards a rather sexually-conservative culture. As I've explained in my two "Courtship" essays, "Country Courtship" and "City Courtship," the best analogue of Equestria c. YOH 1500 would be America or Britain c. AD 1900, with the major difference that Equestrians are much more accepting of any form of love, and are far less hypocritical about their sexuality, than were our ancestors of a century ago.
Twilight Sparkle is, by Equestrian standards, an exceptionally idealistic, pure-minded and sexually-conservative Pony. This should be obvious from her behavior in canon; even though the show doesn't go into detail about Equestrian sexuality. She is ill-equipped emotionally to deal with the sordid side of sexuality; her concept of courtship is chivalrous and romantic, rather than randomly lustful.
Celestia knows this, which is one reason why she's pushing Twilight to handle the investigation. She wants to test Twilight outside of her comfort zone. Why? Because, when Twilight takes on the responsibilities of rulership, she is going to have to deal with crimes and disputes which make her uncomfortable. It will be her responsibility as a Royal, and it's better that she get some practice now when Celestia can still closely supervise her.
Twilight Sparkle hence has less sympathy for Charlie than might Mr. Joe Average of modern America, and she's also more shocked by the realization of what really happened than you or I might be. And she is becoming horrified as she's seeing the pattern.
5113460
What in the world is with this "sex is inherently exploitative" meme? You seem to believe in it deeply and honestly. Promiscuity =/= exploitativeness. If anything, promiscuity is more associated with an unduly trusting nature, since it involves being easy about making emotional bonds that terrify most people. Your Cloud Kicker should be more like your Derpy. And, in the Winningverse, that's one of Cloud Kicker's flaws. She tries to break the bonds as easily as they form, perhaps because that's what she's been told promiscuity is all about. She can't do it. If she wasn't able to form them well she wouldn't be able to enjoy anything else about her lifestyle either.
There are a lot of promiscuous people who have very well-adjusted attitudes. A common attitude among the best of what you might call the "fast" crowd is that sex is hilarious. It's too nonsensical to take deadly seriously and it's much better used for bonding with friends. Spiritualizing the exchange of bodily fluids is absurd. Dedicating your life to someone because you're swapping bodily fluids with them is stupid and unromantic. The Winningverse Cloud Kicker is a lot like that. She's good humored, motivated by her sense of fun, and has a lot of friends. She's got heart Pinkie Pie style. She's willing to bed a casual acquaintance because, like Pinkie Pie, she assumes the best of the people she's dealing with.
The author behind the WInningverse lost sight of this over time, I think.
By contrast, really heartless people don't have a lot of sex. Heartless people barely have any sex at all. It's not fun at all if you can't bond with the people you're "banging". When someone with a bad attitude has a lot of sex, they're probably grasping at bonds because their ability to connect with other people has been damaged in a way that would benefit from professional therapy more than sexual activity. It's not a safe or sane attitude, but even it isn't heartlessness[1]. They're trying their hardest.
Really, the insight of promiscuity is that being good in bed isn't enough to form a relationship on. You have to want someone for more than a rutting partner or you don't want them at all. Want a rutting partner? You can have that for a night. Want a special someone? That's an investment which should be based on who a person really is. Locking your sex drive to "specialness" just gives you a nasty subconscious motive to conflate beauty with goodness[2]. You can form a lot of bonds with people and have a lot of good friends without finding the person you want to spend your entire life with. Having a wide circle of trusted friends is worth more than having a single lover, no matter how awesome. One of the tragedies of the world that hits sexually conservative people much harder than promiscuous people is that sexual conservatives are much more at risk of being sealed off from the world in their relationships. Isolation is fertile soil for abuse and prolonged misery. Not only does isolation take away their support, it takes away the things that tell them mistreatment isn't normal.
Yet how often do we see "new relationship energy" include sweeping away existing bonds? That's considered "normal" in our culture. Friends are just supposed to back off and take it. Which of these things bespeaks heartlessness and setting aside friends too easily, hm?
[1] Unless they're sociopaths. Sociopaths share the motive (grasping at bonds after their ability to connect with others was damaged), but they actually are fairly termed as 'heartless' and 'exploitative' here.
[2] As an aside, I've wondered if the historical relationship between beauty and goodness was drawn from an earlier era in which misbehavior was more likely to result in disfigurement. In a less civil society with less understanding of disease, the ways to an unsullied countenance are grace, competence, and clean living. In the modern day we have Dorian Gray. We have compensations for our evils which spare them from our countenances. Just because someone is pretty no longer indicates that they aren't dangerous. People with more wealth than ethics can easily make themselves more attractive.
5116904
You seem to believe that labeling something a "meme" means that it is not a well-thought-out idea, or that it is necessarily false. That is untrue. "Meme" merely refers to the manner in which an idea is copied and transmitted; it says nothing about the truth or falsity of the statement.
Having said that, no, I don't think that "sex is inherently exploitative." However, it very often can be exploitative, and one of the ways in which Derpy is often exploited is sexual.
You're conflating sex with romantic love here. They're not the same thing, though sex can certainly lead to romantic love, or the other way round. Part of Derpy's problem in this specific situation was that she was hoping that they were in Charlie Yu's case.
They are, which is one reason they're still friends. Derpy is in many ways a far more benevolent but less intelligent version of Cloud Kicker -- as Cloud Kicker might have been if she hadn't made a critical very bad decision when she was very young. (And no, I'm not talking about seducing Fluttershy -- in the Shadow Wars verse, she failed to do that, as should be obvious from A Robust Solution).
... and she'd be a lot less destructive toward her friends. Because the essence of Cloud Kicker is that she causes the most damage to those who make the mistake of getting emotionally close to her.
And yes, she sometimes hurts herself in the process. Though usually melodramatically and with a degree of sincerity equivalent to Rarity's alleged fainting fits. She causes far more damage to others than to herself -- whatever happens, Cloud Kicker is flying ahead of the shockwave out of the social explosion she's set off.
Which makes for great dark comedy, but is probably a lot less fun for her
victimsdear beloved friends.... which begs the question, "well-adjusted" to what? In the case of the Shadow Wars Cloud Kicker, I have a very good idea of to what her behavior was adjusted -- and the passive voice is intentional.
And yet, oddly, the members of the Fast Set often form very shallow friendships, including with whom they are having sex. This tends to be true in general; it was a point often remarked upon by observers of the late 19th-century Bohemians and the early 20th-century Bright Young Things, my two main models for the Equestrian Fast Set(s).
No. You dedicate your life to someone because you're in love with them. You avoid "exchanging bodily fluids" with those you do not love because you do not want to either miscommunicate, or expose yourself to miscommunication, in a way which harms one or both of you. This is the more true with an actual "friend," which is why in promiscuous subcultures, "friendzoning" is so common -- if one knows that one's loves are unstable, one does not want to risk making a friend a lover and then losing them when the love dies.
All of whom she winds up horribly abusing, physically, sexually, emotionally and often several of these at the same time. Purely by accident and circumstance, of course ...
When I asked myself the question "Why do they still like her after she does this to them?", I had planted the seeds of the Degradingverse (the Shadow Wars version of the Winningverse) in my writing imagination.
The Winningverse Pinkie Pie is a promiscuous bisexual. The Shadow Wars one is neither, though being in touch with her alternate selves she knows that some versions of herself are such. She's not particularly horrified by this; she knows that her alternate selves are slightly different Ponies.
Part of the reason why the Shadow Wars Pinkie Pie isn't promiscuous (despite being as much of a hedonist as most Pinkie Pies) is that she is more in tune with her role as the Bringer of Joy, and she knows that promiscuity generally spreads sorrow. But then she's also a lot smarter (and more honorable) than the Winningverse Pinkie Pie -- and there's a reason for that, too.
The emotional affect which goes best with promiscuity is social sadism. One "scores" off other people by tricking them into bed regardless of how one feels about them; often one scores extra points by getting them to fall in love with oneself or disrupting their existing love affairs.
The reason why this works best is that promiscuity makes it possible to play a definitely-iterated version of the Prisoner's Dilemma with the lover, and when playing definitely-iterated versions of this game, it makes sense to eventually defect. By contrast, actual love is an indefinitely-iterated version of the game, and in indefinitely-iterated versions of the game, Nice Tit-For-Tat triumphs.
See A Robust Solution for an explanation of this, if you don't already know how game theory applies to social situations. Or even better, read about actual game theory.
What does this mean in practice? It means that in a Fast Set, the one who "wins" is the one who ends his love affairs first and on the best terms for himself, preferably leaving his partner badly damaged so that she cannot seek revenge. In contrast, in more normal subcultures, sexual involvement also means social involvement with the family and friends of one's lover, so that one will also be damanging one's own social connections by behaving in such a fashion.
This is why promiscuity is inherently exploitative -- not because promiscuous people are inherently exploitative, but because Fast Sets encourage social predation by making it an easy strategy to successfully execute. Cloud Kicker would be a clear example of a social predator, if she acknowledged to herself what she was doing.
A really good example of how this works comes from the 1960's Sexual Revolution. This was basically started by college professors and male Red Diaper Babies applying the sexual speculations of Marx (that women should be treated as common property in a socialist society); ostensibly to subvert bourgeoise capitalist society. The main effect of it from their POV was that it made it very easy for them to get laid when they taught this to naive young co-eds. Their male students copied these arguments, also finding them a good way to get laid.
Just how well this worked for the naive young co-eds may be gauged by the observation that this sort of behavior, especially as it was applied in the later 1960's when the Counterculture reached critical mass, was that it was one of the causes for the evolution of radical feminism -- feminism based on the notion that men areinherently evil and are best entirely avoided. The reason why they decided men were inherently evil was that they ideologically had to assume that the silver-tongued professors and students were enlightened -- hence, the way in which they were being used was an example of how progressive men behaved!
Of course, that's how the rich and upper-class female students responded, because they had the wealth and social resources to pass through the experience with mostly-survivable damage. The merely middle-classs, let alone poor, co-eds often wound up exhausting their resources and dropping out of college with fatherless children, severe social diseases, extreme drug addictions and often exciting new careers in the growth field of prostitution.
But then, as Twilight Sparkle points out in my story:
Cloud Kicker, of course, fits this model because most of the Ponies upon whom she preys and doesn't particularly care about are lower to middle class. She herself is of the highest and most aristocratic background for a Pegasus, as are two of her serious lovers (Fluttershy and Derpy, though in the Shadow Wars verse she lusts after but fails to bag Fluttershy), while another friend-with-benefits, Lyra Heartstrings, is of upper middle-class background.
Cloud Kicker in fact perfectly falls into a very old character cliche -- Aristocrats Are Evil. Specifically, she's the amoral, hedonistic, and lecherous (rather than utterly-malign) variety of the trope. It's based on the truth that people who grow up with great and unearned status often don't bother to be very good people, because they assume that they are just naturally superior to everyone else.
The other obvious example of this in the MLP universe, of course, is Prince Blueblood.
Sociopaths are exactly what Fast Sets encourage, by the way they set up their social games. Sociopaths can prey on members of a Fast Set without being called on their behavior as quickly as they would if they were doing this in a more sexually-conservative subculture.
There is nothing about being sexually conservative (or for that matter merely normal -- most people link sex with love unless they actively despise the lover) which requires isolation of the lovers from their friends. And the abuse of which you speak is quite possible and even normal in promiscuous subcultures -- it takes the form of the more promiscuous lover abusing the less promiscuous one -- because he can generally be sure of leaving first with the least emotional and social damage to himself.
This is bad enough for the individuals directly involved. The damage becomes really severe when it comes to the children of the promiscuous. No matter how one tries to explain it in a sophisticated fashion to one's children, knowing that one's mother randomly acquires lovers who get the rights of the household, including being adults superior to them in its hierarchy, and who may as randomly depart, plays merry hell with healthy personality development, even if said lovers aren't malevolent enough to actually harm the children (who are, after all, rivals of the lover's potential children).
This is actually in The Life and Times of a Winning Pony why Derpy dumps Cloud Kicker! She starts to realize that Cloud Kicker's "Random Emotional Drama Table" is harming both her children, and while Derpy is very casual about defending her own interests from abuse by a friend, she takes the well-being of her children VERY seriously.
I assume in this story that Derpy forgave Cloud, because she did in the original story and in any case Derpy is a very forgiving Pony. Or, to put it the way the Fast Set sees it, she has "Sucker" stamped on her forehead.
This is part of what disgusts Twilight -- the fact that Derpy's own friends have taken advantage of her in similar ways to the way Charlie Yu did.
5117160
I still like this story, and it still earned its upvote from me, but I don't think it's good for you anymore. I think the work you've done on it and all the thought you've put into the things around it has embedded a lot of anger in you. You personally seem to have a more black and white view of people than was present when you started this story. Maybe you should take a break and catch up on your read later list for a while.
I think the problem is that you've painted a character as being a scorpion rather than a person, and accepted this as a realistic characterization to be thought hard about. The problem is that it's not a realistic characterization. It's just a bogeyman. Scorpion characterizations in the real world lead to horrifying disasters perpetrated against the supposed scorpions. After all, if it's "in their nature" to be bad, then it's "in the nature" of the good guys to oppose them without limit. Accepting scorpion characterization as realistic leads you personally to have people who you consider worth opposing in a morally unrestrained manner. That's fanaticism.
I was prodding you at something I suspected was an unrealistic scorpion characterization that you personally ascribed to. My test appears to have returned a positive result. That makes me worry for you, and suggest that the story is an unhealthy project.
The original story Stuck is still awful, but it should be consigned to the dustbin for its flaws rather than given this attention.
5117286
Charlie is the "scorpion" in this story, and Celestia didn't mean by the analogy that he should be "squashed." She meant that Twilight should understand that not everypony was as benevolent, honorable or rational as either Twilight or herself, and that Twilight should keep in mind that other ponies will act on their own premises.
Not only don't I assume that the promiscuous are evil, I had just made the point that Derpy is by Twilight's standards horribly promiscuous. And I don't see Derpy as being evil -- simply loving and gullible. In fact, in the Shadow Wars, Derpy is an unambiguous heroine.
5117286
Remember when Celestia pointed out that there are more fools than villains, and that if she imprisoned every fool in the Realm the prisons would be full and the fields and workshops empty? She was pointing out to Twilight the need for tolerance of foolish but not outright evil ponies.
Celestia hasn't survived over 2500 years and ruled for some 1500 years by being stupid. Or naive. She's well aware that Twilight's Nightmare mode would come out of seeking moral perfection in others, and then trying to enforce it with her power. She wants to head that off.
5117286
Finally, I am well aware that you didn't actually address any of the issues I pointed out in my reply to you. And I am most certainly not going to stop writing this story just because you disapprove of my opinions regarding the Cloud Kicker I am basing on the Winningverse model -- only viewed more realistically, and by Ponies not particularly enamored of her.
Cloud Kicker is in any case only one of the many Ponies to have exploited Derpy, and far from the worst. Cloud Kicker actually cared for Derpy, and helped her out more than once -- it's just that Cloud acted according to her nature, and her nature is to exploit and harm her friends. There's a specific reason for this in the Shadow Wars continuity -- and you won't like the reason, either.
Too bad.
I'm still not a fan of your Cloudkicker and the entirety of Winning-Through-Degradation, but this was a good chapter nonetheless.
I think the problem of it for me is twofold. First, you're bending someone else's works in a negative light. Sure, this isn't really illegal(and I feel kind of hypocritical for liking this story...) but it feels a lot more negative...
The second is internal to your ongoing narrative, which is the problem that WTD doesn't really mesh with the pony side of things. It's almost entirely a construct that fits within the realm of Lovecraft, and by your own admission(unless something has changed), CK won't ever recover fully... It just doesn't seem Pony enough, and it creates a sense of narrative dissonance within me. Everything else is always solvable after a fashion, and then we get something out of Evil Dead having sex with ponies.
I hope that explains it? I want CK to have a happy ending, because ponies get happy endings. This isn't a hard-and-fast rule, and I don't expect a happy candy dreamland, but you've built the expectation that they may have to work for it, but eventually everypony that we care about will be happy when the story ends.
5123163
Thinking about this ...
The only way to make the Winningverse Cloud Kicker make sense -- not so much in terms of her behavior, but in terms of the remarkable lack of negative responses to her behavior in the story -- is in terms of demonic possession and powers. The demonic possession can't be active and ongoing after Luna's Return, or the Element Bearers would have noticed and acted against it, unless the powers involved were so strong as to make it very difficult for them to notice.
So we have the main Shadow Wars worldlines, and the Degradingverse.
In the main worldlines, Cloud Kicker's demon was neutralized, which is why it isn't able to do things such as, oh, seduce Luna into commanding Twilight to study Cloud Kicker as a research project (apparently on the hopes that the Winningness would rub off on Twilight). In the Degradingverse, the demon has survived, and its psychic contagion is spreading,, to the point that it now has enthralled the Alicorns Major and the Realm is subtly falling under its control.
There needs to be a firm POD for any divergence this great, and the Winningverse itself provides it. In the Winningverse, Cloud Kicker seduces a young Fluttershy, because she was the first to find her after she fell from the sky in "Sonic Rainboom." In most worldlines, Rainbow Dash's Loyalty and the strong pre-existing friendship between Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy meant that Rainbow Dash found her.
(Incidentally, as I was working out the chronologies involved, Cloud Kicker has to be rather older than the Mane Six to have dropped out of West Hoof and moved to Ponyville a few years before Luna's Return. As I figured it out, Cloud Kicker was 15 and Fluttershy 9 at the time of that seduction. Yeah. Though to be fair I don't find a two-years-greater age gap disgusting between Rarity and Spike).
Cloud Kicker seducing Fluttershy meant that Winning was able to partially consume Fluttershy's Element -- she would have destroyed Fluttershy's ability to attune to Kindness had not Rainbow Dash been driven by Loyalty to fight Cloud Kicker (Rainbow Dash was 8 at the time -- yeah, Dashie's just that awesome -- and at the price of permanent maiming saved Fluttershy from Cloud Kicker.
In the other worldlines, Cloud Kicker was not able to consume any of Fluttershy's Element, and in consequence was weaker at age 22, when Cloud Kicker came to Ponyville.
There, she encountered the 16 year old Pinkie Pie. In both worldlines, Cloud Kicker attempted to seduce Pinkie Pie. In the Degradingverse -- the one in which Cloud Kicker had consumed some of Fluttershy's Element -- Cloud Kicker was strong enough to overcome Pinkie's psyhcic resistance rapidly. The Degradingverse Pinkie Pie was seduced, deflowered, and over the ensuing months partially drained of her Element. Thus we get the promiscuous and stupid Pinkie Pie seen in the Winningverse.
However, what Winning-Through-Degradation did not know is that Pinkie Pie, unlike most beings other than major Alicorns, can exchange information with her alternate selves (thus, the Pinkie Pie in the canon Ponyverse and the one in the Humanoidverse were both aware of Twilight Sparkle's existence and adventures in the other universe). When one Pinkie Pie was overwhelmed the event warned all the other Pinkie Pies, and they summoned their link with the Paradise Entity in time that they did not have to face Winning-Through-Degradation unaided.
In the other Shadow Wars worldlines, therefore parried Winning's psychic attack, and Paradise struck back down the psychic link to cauterize as much of Winning as possible out of Cloud Kicker. The demon was severely weakened, and would have been entirely destroyed had not the Paradise Entity been unable of its own programming to act in such a way as to directly kill anything it defined as a "Pony." Pinkie Pie had no such programming, but she is one of the most tender-hearted of the Element Bearers, she is not a natural killer, and she took pity on Cloud Kicker for one big reason ...
... in the Degradingverse, Cloud Kicker had eventually helped pair the mentally damaged Pinkie Pie with the physically damaged Rainbow Dash. Pinkie Pie did not fully grasp that this was an act of contempt on the part of Winning ("Let the halt lead the blind") -- all she could see was that the damaged Pinkie Pie had nevertheless found love and healing. (This is why most Pinkie Pie's love Rainbow Dash -- some romantically, and some platonically, but they all tend to love her -- because they know that a Dashie loved and healed one of them).
And completely destroying Winning would have completely destroyed Cloud Kicker, because Winning had eaten out and replaced large portions of her mind and soul. So Pinkie and Paradise spared Cloud Kicker, hoping that with the demon neutralized, Cloud Kicker would find true friendship and love instead of preying on everypony who fell under her spell (a spell she no longer had, since she no longer had Winning's psychic powers).
Unfortunately, Cloud Kicker had been too deeply corrupted by years of symbiosis with Winning, which had begun when she was in early adolescence, to easily reform. Her morals, her sanity and her goals had been warped by the needs of the demon, and she had come to love the casual power to degrade others the demon had given her.
So instead, Cloud Kicker devoted herself to using her own small power to tap psychic energy -- one which she had because the demon had reformed her psychic structures to its own purposes -- to continue her sexual predations with the hope that if she fed the demon enough power, it might be strong enough to awaken again. This is difficult -- without Winning controlling minds for her, most Ponies who have enough power to be worth tapping don't "wanna bang" with her -- they have lives, loves or at least morals. But Cloud Kicker is determined to regain what she imagines to be her former glory.
Here, Pinkie Pie's kindness may have led her into error. It might have been better had she killed the traitor and serial rapist that was Cloud Kicker. But Pinkie knew that Cloud Kicker had originally behaved that way under Winning's control, and Pinkie is not a ruthless Pony, nor a natural killer. Especially not in cold blood.
So matters stand as of Season Four -- Cloud Kicker is slowly trying to revive the comatose Winning-Through-Degradation, but she can't mind-rape anypony any more to do it -- she is limited to voluntary sex. Most of her partners are of course unaware of the fact that Cloud Kicker is (in Chaosium BRP terms) draining both Magic Points and occasionally permanent POW from them, but they are aware that despite Cloud Kicker's sexual expertise, they often feel damaged, drained and a bit unclean afterward. So she has trouble keeping her lovers.
Cloud Kicker may be reformed, or prove heroic before the end. I haven't exactly decided yet.
There are darker things in my fanon history. Read "The World Before Discord" which describes (in the order the events occurred in history)
(1) The Time of Extermination, six thousand years ago, in which monstrous hordes led by warlords including Tirek the Annihilator attempted to destroy the Ponies as a race, and survival became so difficult that it was necessary to sexually segregate into male and female herds, with most Ponies dying by murder or predation from the monsters. Luna goes into detail about how horrible this was for Ponies, a species who are capable of deep and abiding love.
(2) The World That Was Lost, three thousand years of a parallel-world's paradise, in which Ponies lived happy immortal lives, and was ended by deliberate destruction by the Cosmics who (somewhat rightly) feared that Paradise was going to crash the continuum through paradox. Luna (as Gravity) was one of the Cosmics who destroyed Paradise, and she still feels guilty about that, even in her current incarnation. Even though she believes that it was necessary. And Luna is a natural killer.
(3) - The Cataclysm, four thousand years ago, in which Ponykind's attempt to transcend the limitations of physical instrumentality and create Paradise led to the destruction of an enlightened high-tech civilization and the casting of the survivors down to Iron Age barbarism.
And if that sounds too vast to grasp, Luna's very next lines are:
.
(4) -The Coming of the Windigoes, almost three thousand years ago, which was a "mild" cataclysm in that it "only" killed half or less of the Ponies who had lived in the North, and produced volkerwanderungen which led to great was including genocidal ones of the Ponies against the Bovids and Cervids, toppled the Old Republic of the Crystal City, and nearly toppled civilization itself in North Amareica.
This is Luna, the Lady of War, who is telling Twilight Sparkle how tragic an event this was.
So, seriously, compared to all this, I don't think that one succubus-like demon possessing a Pony is all that terrible.
And there's a lot in My Little Pony that is plainly at least Lovecraft Lite. Discord, King Sombra, the Changelings, Tirek -- heck, even Luna herself, given that she has an insanity mode in which she hates most Ponykind and the power to prevent the Sun from rising. That's what gives the series its bite -- the main characters are basically lovable sapient technicolor Ponies, and their culture is rather enlightened, but they live in a world full of forces that would gladly destroy or enslave their whole species. And the smarter and better-educated ones, such as Twilight Sparkle, are fully aware of this fact.
I hope that the stories of Cloud kicker -- and Winning's other victims -- have happy endings. But sometimes they don't -- most of the Ponies in the cataclysms didn't -- and that's just how life sometimes works.
5128104
For the first part... Wow
I did not expect such a long answer. Some of that is actually pretty cool, and I feel a little bit better about it, knowing the more complicated history behind it, but my complaint was pretty much that you are warping someone else's character and 'verse (in my opinion) unnecessarily.
It actually serves a pretty cool purpose in-universe to Shadow Wars, but my own opinion for most fics–and FiM Canon itself for that matter, and I sometimes extend it to other series entirely–is that unless stated otherwise, the universe operates on Narrative Causality: that which needs to happen, will. Plot holes, characterization and chronology bedamned.
For that reason, I don't have much of an issue with most stories when they might not make sense to someone else, unless the plot hole or whatever is so far off the mark(and without a good narrative/in-universe reason) that it's just that hard to ignore. For Winningverse specifically, there's no intention of degradation or Degradation, and I don't feel the need to ascribe a Mythos-esque being to the reasoning behind the events that take place. The fact that you need to makes for a cool aspect to your universe, but to me it should not be extended to Winningverse outside of the Shadow Wars version, the Degradationverse. In my head both exist now in similar worldlines, but in one a demon is close to winning against several gods, and in the other a random, messed-up mare keeps making mistakes that hurt those around her, but they're just nice enough to not lynch her for it.
For the second part: as I said, not every ending has to be happy, just the ones that we care about. This is Lovecraft-Lite, but being Pony I see a lot more Lite than I do the Lovecraft. I mean, you have a flock(?) of Byakhee fall in love with a sweet, happy version of the Horror of Dunwich, who is connected to an otherworldy machine-god who just wants to make everypony smile.
Of course bad things have to happen. It's written into the cosmology and the narrative. But having such a specific and well-known story end on a sour note(although alternate worldlines are totally allowed to end; we just don't have to read that much about them) seems out of place for this epic we've been following.
I remember this line in your discord story 'But he had no scruples against mind-controlling Ponies into behavior with each other which Applejack would have had no difficulty recognizing as rape-by-proxy' unquote
when you stop to think about it. that what Derpy did, she manipulated a sexual confuse male and left him with an extreme case of feeling he did the worst possible thing to someone and did not realize she did or what effect it might have on them. it's messed up but you have to admit it make sense storywirse
5148820
Well perhaps, if you ignore the facts that (1) Derpy genuinely thought Charlie was playing a romantic game with her, and (2) Derpy has absolutely no mind control powers other than Excessive Cuteness.
5148825 that what makes it so tragic though! She didn't realize she did it by accident. it also show Twilight that not everything is black and white but grey, and that grey can be quite a nasty piece indeed when it comes to that. i will admit i could be horribly wrong and if so i apologize for getting it wrong.
5148905
No, you're absolutely right. In addition, Derpy liked Charlie Yu from months before the incident, which is why she was willing to have sex with him in the hedge (Derpy is promiscuous by Equestrian standards, but far from emotionally unfeeling); afterward she was hoping that they would fall in love, which is why his public rejection stung her so deeply. The irony is that Charlie had an admirer all along, and was stupid enough to reject her.
Another irony is that, even though Cloud Kicker generally despises most Ponies, she likes Derpy. Perhaps even loves her -- she's one of the very few Ponies Cloud has much emotional affect toward. Cloud Kicker helped Derpy out once when she was in serious trouble, and never actually meant to hurt her -- it's just that Cloud has learned a wholly dysfunctional way of love.
The ones who have treated Derpy the worst aren't even on stage at present.
5148928
I'm curious to see how well you pull that off. If I understand your intentions, this story is really about Twilight, and Derpy/Charlie are a framing device.
Incidentally, in my own headcanon, this entire story is an alternate universe fic, and what really happened is that Derpy invited him to watch the fireworks and they both had a nice time, she introduced him to Dinky and they all lived happily ever after.
"Subject: And I have some really good friends. Like Cloudy, and Carrot Top, and the Doctor -- I really wish he liked me more, though."
And when he finds out what happened Charlie Yue will disappear from the face of the world because the Oncoming Storm will show him the Fury of a Timelord for messing with the Doctor's Derpy, oh yes he will.
5248437
Yes. Though, admittedly, the Ponies don't seem to have a culture anything like this, so they would find the concept shocking. As Twilight Sparkle does, in the story.
5248652
Well, Yu shouldn't have been dangling his prepositions in front of a respectable mare!
(*correction noted).
BTW, I should compliment you on your command of Early Modern Equish--I think you may be the only writer in this site I've read who got it completely right, down to tiny details like "mine own".
5260143
Why, thank you! I've been trying to get Luna's dialogue right, which is difficult because she has at least three vocabulary modes, and tends to switch between them based on what she's talking about and how emotional she is about it.
5300584
No, instead both men and women normally "eye potential mates" all the time. We're just used to it, so it strikes us as normal to be sexually-receptive year round.
All humans. The reason why is that we've almost completely decoupled our sexuality from the menstrual cycle and from pheromones. The difference between a normal Humanoid, and Pony Twilight in Humanoid Form, is that Twilight suddenly found herself experiencing strong sexual urges from her biochemistry that were not tied to the signs of estrus she knew as a Pony, and these bothered and distracted her.
Understand, these aren't irresistible compulsions either for Ponies or Humanoids. The fact that Twilight is a virgin should make this obvious. The normal way Pony sexuality works in my Equestria is like this ...
... around 10-14, at close to the age when the Cutie Mark first appears, Pony fillies begin to have an estrus cycle, and Pony colts begin to become responsive to marescent (the smell of a female Pony in estrus). They are not really ready to have sexual relations yet; this is just their body booting-up their sexuality, just as is the case for Humans.
For many obvious reproductive and social reasons, Pony females in particular must be choosy about whom they permit to mate with them. The normal minimal criterion are "somepony you would seriously consider marrying," and some mares wait longer, until actual Intention, Betrothal or marriage. Just as with Humans, some mares instead choose to be more or less promiscuous.
Thus, it is important for Pony females to learn to practice sexual self-control. The usual rule is "Never get into a love affair when one is in estrus." There are two reasons for this: estrus makes Pony females irrationally willing to mate, clouding their sexual judgement; and a Pony mare in estrus is at her most fertile, so foaling is a not-improbable consequence of such a mating.
Pony males have a slightly-different problem. Their problem is that marescent arouses them. They are more likely to be strongly aroused by the marescent of a lover or spouse (they've been conditioned to associate this with a good chance of actually having sex), but any marescent will arouse them to some degree.
In consequence, self-control is a highly-prized masculine virtue. The mark of a young adolescent male is that he becomes highly-flustered by marescent, and may even accidentally unsheath (have an erection causing his penis to extend from its protective membrane) in public. This is highly-embarrassing to the unfortunate young stallion, though it is also considered rude and rather immature to draw attention to such an accident. Grown stallions are supposed to be sensible enough to avoid such an eventuality (though it still occasionally happens).
More seriously, marescent makes stallions randy and combative, which creates a problem in settlements where a stallion is likely to encounter it on an almost-continual basis. Until the last century or two, there was a degree of sexual segregation because of this. The traditional solution was for mares to wear scents to mask their estrus. As medical technology advanced, suppressors were developed which greatly reduce the pheromonal emissions.
The male reaction to marescent was one of the reasons why mares were socially-dominant -- a mare would be distracted by estrus about 1/7 of the time, while a stallion in a city or town would be distracted by marescent almost all the time. The development of suppressors allowed for a more sexually-egalitarian society, especially as it became increasingly normative for any mare save the lowest and most degraded to take them regularly, unless actually trying to conceive a foal (suppressors reduce fertility by a slight amount).
Twilight, as a routine matter since she's been around 11 or 12, expects to be distracted by estrus on a regular basis, and she takes her suppressors regularly, because she's an upper-class unmarried mare and would not want to give the impression that she expects sex or wants foals in the immediate future. When in Human form, she was blindsided by Human always-on sexuality. She didn't have sex with anyone -- she never has, in either form -- but she felt distracted by irrational desires.
5300584
Oh, and Twilight conceptualizes the Humanoid menstrual cycle as "estrus-like" because it is -- it's the last remnant of cyclical sexuality in homnids. It's just become mostly decoupled from sexual activity now.
5315450
Sexually, with a Unicorn stallion who Derpy thought liked her for rather similar reasons to the reasons she thought Charlie Yu did (though the approach was different). And Derpy was wrong, because she couldn't model his behavior well, and she was even more innocent back then. She was around 14 at the time. This is part of the pattern of abusing Derpy which shocks Twilight Sparkle, though it's the part of the story she'd already guessed the moment she saw Derpy and Dinky's ages. Twilight is in some ways naive and sheltered, but she's tremendously-intelligent, and she knows from where foals come.
5315429
LOL!!!
5315759
I got the sexually part, Jordan...I don't think equine parthenogenesis played any part in the loveable ball of fuzz and sweetness that is Dinky...
I was more getting at the circumstances surrounding her conception...I was hoping that maybe somepony actually cared for Derpy, but well fell etc etc...
And, if I may point out something, even if the law fails to prosecute (as we are seeing, there are probably no grounds for a case, and it's hard to indict someone for being a dick), it doesn't mean that Yu can't be punished by society itself (take a look at the Casey Anthony trial and its aftermath)...I can see him being a complete pariah, essentially shunted out to the border of the Everfree, being forced to fend for himself...
And along comes a manticore...
Or maybe he runs across Steven Magnet, who doesn't like it when his friends get hurt...
"Oh, that was that awful Charlie Yu fellow? Dear me, Princess Celestia, I had no idea!" Magnet twiddled his claws, looking very innocent. "All I saw was this odd hairless monkey futzing around my bank, and, feeling rather peckish at the time..." He waved a paw in the air. "Oh, you know how it goes; circle of life and everything...I assure you, if I had known that had been the piece of trash that had hurt my dearest little friend Derpy, I would have sent him on his way, regardless of the fact that I wanted to rip him apart."
All things said and done, though, I hope Derpy doesn't die in the line of duty...she deserves to live to a ripe old age, with Dinky, Sparkler, and tons of grandfoals...
And maybe the Doctor should like her more...but here I go, with wishful thinking...
5315760 The best part of that capture was the fact that it was a shiny Mewtwo...still don't know how I managed it...
5316396
The question would then arise: what happened to him? Mind you, I have no problem with Tragic Deaths of Loved Ones (read Collateral Damage to see just how little problem I have with this), but given Derpy's social awkwardness, it seems far more likely that she was seduced and abandoned. This would also help explain why her own family (the Doo Clan) has repudiated her as somepony of whom to be ashamed. (Another thing which is going to shock Twilight when she fully grasps this, as her own family wouldn't have treated her that badly if the same thing had happened to her -- but then they were always proud of Twilight).
Oh, Charlie's name is mud in that town. I'm right now trying to decide whether or not he's going to be permitted to remain in town, or even in Equestria. He is, after all, not an Equestrian citizen (though he is a subject as a resident alien), and hence the Princesses can banish him at their pleasure. (Equestria is an autocracy but a classical-liberal one, and Celestia is careful not to govern arbitrarily in matters of importance, because she knows how important maintaining the rule of law is for her own legitimacy and hence the stability of her Realm).
Heh, don't tempt me with inflicting horrible fates upon him. Just such a sort of thing was originally my intention, before I saw that the theme works better if I remorselessly follow the logic of the situation. I'm sure that Charlie's own nature will lead him to some horrible fate -- I just don't know which, yet.
The Doctor loves Derpy. He also know that he's inherently a temporal nomad and will probably be moving on someday. He doesn't want to join the long list of Ponies who have taken advantage of her.
Understand, I really like Derpy.
5316451
Anyone who doesn't like Derpy is a cad. What isn't to love? She is the perfect non-royal pony: she is kind-natured, with her family and others first in her mind; she is intensely loyal, always willing to help her town and friends; she is honest, owning up to her mistakes, even if she doesn't understand exactly what went wrong; she is exceedingly generous, taking in Sparkler without a second thought; she is joyful, judging by her general disposition; and she greets everything with the magic of innocence, honestly believing that they are good creatures who mean her no harm until they try to hurt her or hers.
The fact that the author of Stuck (and countless other fics I have run into in my search for the perfect Derpy story...still searching) treat her as second class or worse because she is clumsy or whatever sticks in my craw something awful.
The Doo clan, eh? Are you going to draw a relationship between her and Derring/Daring Doo, perchance?
And that makes me sick, too, by the way. A family, a herd, a pack, a flock, whatever, is supposed to circle around the sick, the weak, the young, and old individuals of the group, protect them, not throw them to the wolves.
God, that makes me mad. My uncles and aunts did the same thing to my family and my grandparents—if it weren't for our branch, grams and gramps would be in a home somewhere, waiting to die.
Now I wanna hit something.
5317531
I basically agree with your points on Derpy. I would say that she has flaws, though, but that most of these flaws derive directly either from mild autism, or extreme niceness. My Derpy is aware of her flaws, too, but she doesn't know how to eliminate them, and indeed it would be difficult for her to do so. She is an extremely good Pony, and it is a sad commentary on fundamental social dynamics that even in Equestria she tends to be exploited. In our world, she would probably be treated even worse.
Part of her problem is that much of her family rejected her when she was relatively young, partially before she became pregnant with Dinky, and relatively completly, afterward. One of the differences between her and Fluttershy Wind (also rejected by a major Pegasus Clan) is that Fluttershy was paid a remittance to stay away from the Winds; Derpy wasn't by the Doos, and part of the reason for the Doos was that they figured she'd just die without their help and would thus soon cease to be a problem. They severely underestimated her competence and determination.
Another, of course, is that Fluttershy is actually a skilled social manipulator, through a variety of passive techniques. Fluttershy almost always gets what she wants. Derpy ... doesn't.
Cloud Kicker actually loves Derpy. Unfortunately, Cloud Kicker's love is generally destructive to its object. Cloud helped Derpy survive after her rejection by the Doos; then, later Cloud came close to shattering Derpy's two-child family. Derpy still loves Cloud, but doesn't trust her as much any more.
The Doctor loves Derpy, but he's an alien in Pony form, and doesn't want Derpy to become dependent on him. From his POV, Derpy's cognitive problems are not all that much more annoying than are the cognitive problems of most Ponies, and he likes her kind and optimistic attitude a lot.
Luna really likes Derpy, and wants to steer her toward a successful career as her special courier. Luna knows this is dangerous, but also honorable, and Derpy knows that if anything happens to her in Luna's service, Luna will ensure that her children do well in life. Derpy would cheerfully sacrifice herself for the well-being of her children.
Same here. In the case of "Stuck," what really bothered me was the assumption of the author that Derpy is of abyssmally low status and worth compared to "you," the narrator (Charlie Yu in my story). From the internal evidence of "Stuck," Yu was a worthless slacker with no notable skills or information of value to the Ponies, despite the fact that he came from a higher-tech alien civilization, which implied that he was really ignorant and useless. He had a job helping the Apples on their farm, which AJ obviously gave him out of pity; he had no friends in Ponyville aside from Pinkie Pie, who was obviously hanging out with him out of pity; and he clearly had no ability to make friends (Pinkie will pretty much be your friend if you're near her and don't do something terrible -- such as seriously abuse one of her other friends).
When Pinkie turned down his offer of courtship (and, think about it -- what attributes does he have that would win Pinkie's love?) he decided that this meant that he would never get a girlfriend (I have him repeat this claim in my story, to Twilight Sparkle, who points out to him that there are many millions of unattached mares in Equestria. He then walks out and randomly encounters a mare (Derpy) who is receptive to his rough wooing because she's not only feeling lonely and desperate herself, but is so good-hearted that she assumes that he's playing a game with her because she doesn't even grasp why someone would intentionally try to commit rape. Then he spends the rest of the story complaining that she's stalking him because she assumes that he had sex with her because he liked her, until he publicly repudiates her because he still has (really unfounded) hopes of having Pinkie.
So, he whines that nopony loves him, and when he finds somepony willing to love him, he treats her like dirt. Hey, Charlie, maybe this attitude is a big part of the reason why most mares won't give you the time of day?
Yes, and they're descended from the ancient Doo Clan of Chengar Qordath's Lunar Rebellion historical setting.
They have exactly the same arrogant pride and rejection of all weakness and imperfection that mars much of the old Pegasus aristocracy. The arrogance that led the Winds to reject Fluttershy and the Kickers to treat their strange young filly Cloud with sufficient coldness that she decided to summon a demon to become better at making friends. Fluttershy did turn out to be a heroine, Derpy has the makings of one in her, and Cloud's potential in that regard was destroyed by Winning-Through-Degradation. In all three cases, these clans rejected their greatest hopes for the future. What they are rejecting is difference -- and those who perfectly conform rarely have the makings of heroes.
I'm sorry to hear this -- I can see why this makes you more sympathetic to Derpy.
5432838
Actually, these are just the terms Twilight's using. Horses have hair, just like us.
5433226
Though knowing Fluttershy, she'll (mostly) forgive him when she calms down. It's not as if he had much actual chance of overcoming her. She's got psychic powers and is capable of tremendous strength at need due to micro-Shifting.
I bet she won't point her rear end in his direction any time soon, though. Fluttershy is forgiving -- not stupid.
Awesome chapters you are doing a amazing job i can't wait to read the next chapter
I applaud you for that line.
5731499
Dusk Skyshine, who was reborn as Twilight Sparkle, and his relationship with Princess Luna when she was Moondreamer, are described in Nightmares Are Tragic. The Paradise Entity is described in the (incomplete) Pinkie Sense and Sensibility. Short form: Dusk Skyshine was Moondreamer Finemare's husband, and the Paradise Entity is a sapient AI which became a Paracosmic god, and who sired Pinkie Pie.
5731499
The reason why she is the High Lady Fluttershy Wind, and what this implies, is explained in Fluttershy Is Free. She doesn't use the title, but Celestia has always known about her (maternal) descent.