Only When It's Funny
Rainbow Dash glanced over to where Soarin was lounging back in his chair, with four cheerleaders practically draped over him.
“Meh,” she muttered. “Win one game, and all of a sudden you’re some kind of big bad hero.”
“Shh, Rainbow!” Fluttershy hissed. “We’re supposed to be reviewing the Triple Agreement of Prance, Allemaneia, and Great Bitain!”
“What?” replied Rainbow Dash defensively. “If Harshwhinny’s gonna go after anyone, it’ll be Soarin and his fan club over there. Honestly, they should just get themselves a room. And like anyone can concentrate with all of that weird stuff going on. Freaky, huh? I thought that stopped last week, and now here it is again.”
It had been very difficult to concentrate all day. Bizarre sounds were floating through the PA system—musical runs like those of a harmonica, or the short toots of party horns. Confetti launched itself out of wastepaper baskets and air ducts. Every so often, the scent of nachos or fruit punch would waft through the air. It was as though some eerie metaphysical party were trying to break through. Ms. Harshwhinny was fully occupied keeping her notes intact on the whiteboard; they kept erasing themselves and drawing smiley faces, suns, and stars instead. Rainbow Dash was right. She and Fluttershy could have held a conversation at full volume and their teacher wouldn’t have noticed.
“Still,” murmured Fluttershy, “we shouldn’t draw any attention to ourselves. Are you sure you’re ok with doing this?”
“I promised I would,” said Rainbow. “I still don’t know what to think about Cheese, but I’ll trust you on this one. Now, what’s the plan?”
Fluttershy sketched a quick diagram on the back of the study guide Ms. Harshwhinny had given them. “Cheese is on the ground floor,” she said, tracing their route with her pencil. “It’s that classroom next to the old chemistry lab. When the bell rings, we’ll fly right down there as fast as we can and unlock the door so I can talk to him.”
“Good,” said Rainbow Dash, following the diagram with her eyes and nodding. “I’d like to hear his explanation firsthand.”
Long strands of silky pink hair shifted and settled as Fluttershy shook her head. “Oh, no,” she said. “You have to race back to class the second we get the door open. You shouldn’t get into any more trouble.”
Rainbow Dash furrowed her eyebrows. “What about you?”
Fluttershy looked her old friend directly in the eye. “I don’t have anything for eighth period,” she said, “and I don’t get into trouble all that much.”
“Ever,” the other girl corrected.
Fluttershy shrugged in acknowledgment. “I suppose Vice Principal Luna could give me a detention, but,” she drew a deep breath, “I’m willing to risk that. Are you ready?”
The two girls quietly put away their belongings, trying not to draw the attention of Ms. Harshwhinny. She was usually very strict about not packing up before class was over, but fortunately, she was too distracted by party phenomena and by Soarin and his groupies to notice. When the bell rang, they darted down the corridor and down the stairs as though they had wings on their heels. It wasn’t until they actually reached the room where Cheese was detained that they realized the flaw in their plan.
“I thought you knew how to open locked doors!” Fluttershy wailed under her breath, as they crouched down, desperately trying to force the lock.
Rainbow Dash snorted. “Pssht, yeah, when I can kick ‘em down,” she replied. “We can try wiggling the doorknob.”
This did not work. Neither did the hairpin Dash borrowed from Fluttershy; it was withdrawn, twisted and bent. Meanwhile, their time was running out.
“Dangit,” Rainbow Dash snarled, peering into the lock’s interior, as Fluttershy bent down by her side. “If Pinkie were here and she wanted to get on the other side of that door, she’d be there by now. We need Pinkie for this—Pinkie, or someone like . . .”
There was a brief rattle, a pop, and the door cracked open. Both girls froze in place. Their eyes traveled upwards, and they saw Cheese Sandwich looking down at them, holding the doorknob on the other side of the door. Their jaws dropped.
“Thank you for coming to get me,” he said, and smiled.
~~
Rainbow Dash zoomed off to class, while Cheese pulled Fluttershy inside the classroom he’d been locked in. The door had scarcely snicked shut when he asked, eyes wide and muscles tense with anxiety, “How's Pinkie?”
“She’s getting better,” replied Fluttershy, a little anxious herself at Cheese’s intensity.
“Is she still in the hospital?” he pressed.
“Oh, no,” Fluttershy said, shaking her head. “She’s been home for days and days.”
“They didn’t hold her?” he pressed further.
“No,” Fluttershy said. Unconsciously, she began to use the tone of voice she would have used had Cheese been a panicked cat or dog brought in to the rescue center: kindly, but firm.
“Cheese, she’s at home and getting better. You believe me, don’t you?”
He paused, his eyes searching hers. At last he said, “Yes, I believe you.”
Fluttershy sat at one of the desks, her legs crossed at the ankle and her hand flat on the desk’s surface. If she had hoped that her placid posture would calm Cheese down, she was disappointed. He was still hovering near the teacher’s desk, still wide-eyed and hyperalert. “It’s just that I don’t know anything about what’s been going on, and the last time I saw Pinkie was in the hospital, and I thought that maybe. . .”
Fluttershy frowned. “Does this have anything to do with Pinkie’s bipolar disorder?” She thought for a moment. “You have it too, don’t you?”
Cheese sat down suddenly on the desk, jaw dropped. “You know about Pinkie? You know about me? How? Did Applejack tell you?”
She shook her head. “Oh, no. Applejack would never tell. I know because Pinkie’s one of my best friends. We all know. We all look out for each other. I knew as soon as I saw her last week . . .”
“You saw her? Is she ok?” Cheese said, interrupting her.
“Yes,” Fluttershy went on. “As I said, she’s getting better, but I could see how wound up she was, and I felt bad about not noticing before. And with you—I just guessed, but it made sense once I thought about it. No, they didn’t keep Pinkie, but I think they adjusted her medications. I’ll tell you what’s been going on and anything you want to know in a minute, but first, tell me—how are you?”
Cheese shrugged. “How should I be? There’s nothing to tell. I’m grounded. I have to go straight to school and come straight home. Aunt Mela’s got my laptop and my phone. She’s ex-FBI, so there was no point in trying to make it harder to access my files than it already was. Luckily, she didn’t find any porn or anything illegal on them, so she just locked them up. Did you look at that website, by the way?”
“What website?” Fluttershy said.
“The one I put on that note.”
“Oh,” said Fluttershy. “That’s what it was.”
“I uploaded some pictures of the accident Applejack took with my phone. I knew it was as good as impounded, so I had to work fast. You mean you didn’t see them?” Fluttershy shook her head. “Well, for gosh sake, forward the address to Vice Principal Luna right now. She needs to see those.”
“Ok,” said Fluttershy, as she sent the email.
“I’m lucky it was Aunt Mela and not my mother who got hold of my phone and my laptop. My mother would have gone through everything on there. And while we’re on the subject of my mother, she thinks this is proof positive that I’m dangerously mentally ill, and she’s all for getting me put somewhere for my own good and for the safety of myself and others. I’d bet anything she’s trying to do that right now, but for some reason, it’s been a little tougher than usual orchestrating that from Saddle Arabia. I think that maybe this time, everyone doesn’t agree with her. Vice Principal Luna hinted at that.”
“What happened with Vice Principal Luna?”
“Well, I’m suspended, obviously,” said Cheese, “and she’s making some kind of inquiry. I begged her to give me something to do, and she said if I really wanted to have something to do that badly, I could take finals early. I’d been locked up a whole day by then, and I was ready to scream with boredom, so I said yes. They were much harder than I thought they’d be. How much material does one of your finals usually cover?”
“Oh, um—a semester, or a unit. Sometimes it’s a whole year.”
Cheese frowned. “That’s weird. I could have sworn they covered almost everything I’ve learned since ninth grade and then some, but I’ve been in and out of lots of schools by now, so what do I know? Anyway, that’s everything, so please tell me what’s been happening, and start with Pinkie, and don’t leave anything out.”
He sat on the desk as Fluttershy told him everything that had been going on for the last week and a half. At first, he was anxiously perched there: not so much seated as hovering like a hummingbird. She explained that Pinkie really wasn’t in any danger. While it wasn’t clear that he was fully persuaded of this, he settled more firmly onto the desk and sat there, his legs crossed and his chin pillowed on his fist, his tall, thin body bent into sharp angles like a folding ruler, and simply listened without interrupting.
She told him about the way they had stepped in to continue his and Pinkie’s work for the Cake Festival, and he smiled. His brows creased when she went on to describe the bizarre noises, confetti, and random jokes coming through the PA system. If he understood anything more about them than she did, he gave no sign of it. Without intending to, she found herself talking a lot about Rainbow Dash and almost defending her: how crushed she’d been at the disastrous Cloudsdale match and at the Comets game, how much she depended on her success as an athlete, how lost she felt without it.
“And I don’t blame her, Cheese,” she concluded. “You weren’t there for the Cloudsdale game, but I was, and we were at school there together, and . . . and it wasn’t very nice,” she finished lamely.
“When you say, ‘it wasn’t very nice’ in that tone . . .” Cheese shook his head. “Rainbow Dash must want to kill me.”
“Oh, not anymore!” Fluttershy said with a sudden smile, and then murmured with downcast eyes, “oh, um . . . sorry. Yes, she was very mad at you at first for getting her kicked off the soccer team, but now she understands that it was mostly her own fault . . . I think. What she’s really upset about is Pinkie. She says Pinkie does all kinds of crazy things and doesn’t get hurt, and that there’s something fishy about it if she did. She thinks maybe if she’d been there, Pinkie wouldn’t have gotten hurt, and I think—please don’t get mad, Cheese—I think she thought it was your fault.” She held up her hand as Cheese unfolded himself and leaned forward for an angry retort. “I don’t think she thinks that anymore, because Applejack said Pinkie would have been hurt a lot worse if it weren’t for you, but she doesn’t understand how Pinkie got hurt and you walked away without a scratch, especially if you tried to help. She wants to know how that happened and why.”
Cheese’s eyes narrowed. “And you do, too, don’t you? Is he crazy, or a freak, or both? And you were wondering why I don’t even try to make friends.”
Fluttershy shook her head and squeezed her eyes tight. “That’s not fair at all. I just wanted to know. I’m sorry,” she quavered, and then clamped her lips to stop them from trembling.
Cheese ran his hands down his face. “No, I’m sorry. I really am. It’s been a rough couple of weeks, and I almost forgot I had any friends at all. I’ll try to explain, but it’s a lot easier to show you than to tell you. Is that ok?”
She nodded, eyes still shut and lips still clamped. He slid off the desk, walked over to her, leaned down, and put his hand on her shoulder. “Are you upset about anything?”
She burst into tears. “Y-yes!” she wailed. “I’m upset about Pinkie and I’m upset about you, and Dashie’s so miserable and I’m upset about that, and all I want is for my friends to be ok and to be friends again!” She folded her arms on the desk and dropped her head on them, sobbing.
“Uh,” said Cheese, awkwardly dropping his hand and stepping back, “do you need to be cheered up? Yeah, obviously,” he muttered to himself, and then he added aloud, “This bit is important, Fluttershy. Would seeing something funny help?” She nodded, her head still buried in her arms. “That’s all I needed to know. Watch this.”
He began backing up. Fluttershy lifted her head, dried her eyes, and opened them as Cheese muttered, “slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch,” until he backed up into a chair and fell completely over it in a backwards somersault, landing on his feet and knocking the chairs into a rolling series of crashes, like an enormous set of dominoes. Startled, he jumped straight up into the air, eyes bugging out, hair standing on end, and legs cycling on nothing, and then he ran straight through the wall, leaving a perfectly Cheese-shaped hole. There were crashing and tinkling noises from the old chemistry lab next door, and finally a small explosion.
Fluttershy covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes wide, until Cheese poked his head back through the hole. He was apparently completely unharmed, although he was covered from head to foot in plaster dust, which made his curly hair appear prematurely gray. “You ok?”
Fluttershy began to giggle and then to laugh until the tears streamed down her face. “Wow,” said Cheese, stepping back into the room through the hole as she sniffed and blew her nose, “you must have needed a laugh more than I thought.” He turned to look at the devastation he’d left, and sighed. “This is really going to dent my savings account, and then some.” Some drywall crumbled and crashed. In the chemistry lab next door, something shattered. “For years. Anyway—does that explain things, or make it more confusing?”
Fluttershy stood up, gaping at him, “How did you do that?” She started brushing some of the drywall dust off him. “How does that even work?”
Cheese furrowed his brows, ruffling his hair so that the dust rose out of it like a cloud. “I’m not sure, but I think it only works if it’s funny. One time at a party at school, I walked out of a third floor window, plummeted straight down, and stuck the landing. I was perfectly fine. I wish the headmaster had felt the same way when he saw me zoom past. I thought he was going to have a heart attack. I don’t know why he was so upset; I waved at him and everything. I tried it again a week later when some kid bet me fifty dollars I couldn’t, and that’s how I wound up with a pin in my leg. That was the end of me at that school. So it works if it’s funny, most of the time, but not if I’m just being a smartass.” He leaned over and fluffed some more of the white dust out of his hair.
Fluttershy stopped brushing his shirt and sat down on the teacher’s desk. Her brows contracted with thought. “So if that’s why you didn’t get hurt when you helped Pinkie . . .”
“Oh, I did get hurt,” he said, head still upside down. “Went straight off the ladder and broke my arm, but it healed right up again. I didn’t know I was going to be all right, because it doesn’t work 100% of the time, but I didn’t have time to think about it, anyway.” He gave his head a last shake, and then righted himself.
“If it only works when it’s funny, though,” Fluttershy continued, “why did your arm do that? Why weren’t you killed? That doesn’t sound very funny to me.”
He sat down next to her and tilted his head, considering. “I’ve been trying to figure that out, too, and all I can think is that if Pinkie had gotten killed, it would have been the unfunniest thing ever to happen. I don’t know if I’ve got enough laughter to handle that. Besides, I really owe Pinkie. I’ve known her a lot longer than any of you think.” He slid back on the desk, leaned on his elbows, and sighed, one corner of his mouth turned up in the smallest of smiles.
“I never thought I’d see her again,” he said, his eyes focused on something far away. “When I was pulled out of my last school and my mother gave me one final chance and shipped me off to Great Aunt Mela, I didn’t think anything about Canterlot. It didn’t have any associations for me. All I was thinking was ok, Cheese, you’ve really got to keep your head down and survive this one. Just do what they tell you to, or else. No more goofing off, no more laughter, and no more parties. But like a dummitz, I had to play at the train station one last time, and Rarity found me and pulled me into Sugarcube’s . . .”
“Well, first it was her voice. It hasn’t changed all that much. It’s still the purest soprano I’ve ever heard, like the littlest bell in a carillon. Rarity was saying something, I don’t even remember what, because I was shaking my head and thinking, I know that voice, but I couldn’t place it. Then she popped up from behind the counter and I saw those pink curls, and I just thought, Oh, my God, it’s her.
~~
The small boy sat on a rock by the side of the road, his brown curls already flattening from the sweat rolling down the back of his neck. He wished his mother hadn’t made him wear a long sleeved white shirt and undershirt with khakis for a stupid car trip. At least he’d been able to remove the tie once they got on the road and she wasn’t looking.
He watched the heat shimmer off the road. There wasn’t much else to look at: nothing but different-sized rocks on top of a landscape as flat as a pancake. Further down the road, he could hear his parents, arguing about whose fault it was that the car had died. “Your fault-your fault, your fault-your fault,” the way it always went. He wished they’d hurry up and just get a divorce already, like everyone else’s parents. That made two useless wishes today, and it wasn’t even over.
He took off his glasses, wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve, and replaced them again. He didn’t see why moving to Manehattan would make things any better. It would just be another school where he had to be the new kid again and put up with the new kid teasing. It was discouraging that no one other than teachers really bothered to learn his name, but since he never got the chance to settle anywhere for long, he supposed they had a point.
A third wish crossed his mind, but it was dumb even to think about it. Everyone was much too busy right now. There was no point in wishing for . . .
“Hey!” someone right behind him squeaked, so suddenly that he bit his tongue. “You’re not allowed to be sad on your birthday!”
He whirled around, and his mouth fell open. There stood a little girl with shocking pink tousled curls, and wide, wide blue eyes, as blue as the summer sky. She was wearing a pink and blue pinafore, and a broad, brilliant smile. The strings to three balloons—two blue and one yellow—were twisted around her wrist. Everything about her was impossible.
Where had she come from? The ground was flat in every direction; he couldn’t see how she could just have appeared like that without his noticing. Where did she get those balloons? Who was she? But all that came out after a full minute of stammering, was . . .
“How did you know it was my birthday?”
She shrugged. “Just did, is all. I’m doing this wrong,” she added, scowling with concentration. She took a deep breath, broke into a smile even more brilliant than the last, and announced, “Hi, I’m Pinkie Pie! I’m here to throw you a party and make you smile!”
What followed was the best day ever. They played I Spy, even though there wasn’t anything to spy but rocks, and Hide And Go Seek, even though there wasn’t anything to hide behind but rocks. They split a cookie she suddenly remembered she had in her pinafore, and it was delicious, despite being mostly crumbs because she’d sat on it. He’d never laughed so much in his life. When his mother called out sharply that the car was fixed, and that it was time for him to get in it, NOW, the little girl gave him a quick, impulsive hug around the neck and a kiss on the cheek.
“Here,” she whispered, thrusting the balloon strings into his hand. “Everybody ought to have a birthday present!” As the car pulled out, he waved from the back window until he couldn’t see the little figure waving back anymore.
He turned around and sat down, the balloons brushing the cheek she’d kissed, and wondered if he had remembered to mention his name. Probably not: he often didn’t, unless he was prompted. Oh, well, it didn’t matter; that really had been the best day ever. He ignored the monologue coming from the front seat about dust, dirt, sweat, and ruining his clothes. He felt a great bubble of joy rising inside. Suddenly, he couldn’t wait to get to Manehattan. There were lots of people there, and he wanted to get them all together and help them all be happy and they’d all eat food and play games and have a party, but not like those parties his mother threw, where no one had a good time. These would be the kind where everyone had fun, even if all they had were rocks and cookie crumbs. He’d get to Manehattan, get his accordion out of the trunk, and start making people laugh the way She did. That was the way he’d already begun to think of her: She, with a capital S.
The car pulled up in front of the apartment building, and he scrambled out eagerly, only to be stopped by his mother.
“Cheese, those balloons are filthy,” she said, taking hold of their strings. “It’s time to get rid of them. They’re going to deflate soon anyway. Give them to Mama.”
“No!” he shouted, clinging to them more tightly.
“Cheese!” she snapped, “give Mama the balloons!” And with that, she ripped the strings out of his hands, and let the balloons go.
~~
“I wanted those balloons,” Cheese told Fluttershy, who had been drinking this story in, “so I went after them. Fifteen feet, straight up.” He frowned. “I think that’s when she decided that one of us was crazy, and it certainly wasn’t her. I don’t know what got her down most—the confetti coming from nowhere, the juggling, or the laughter. I even made my father laugh a couple of times, and I wasn’t sure he could do that. And she definitely didn’t like my running through walls and pulling juggling balls from nowhere. You know how at awards dinners, people stand up and say ‘blah-blah-blah, meeting so-and-so changed me?’ Well, meeting Pinkie Pie really changed me. The older I got, the more it bothered her and the harder she tried to get back the normal kid who shut up and did what he was told, but he didn’t exist anymore. As soon as the mood swings kicked in—her side of the family, by the way—she could tell herself that this explained everything, and that there wasn’t anything wrong with me that a good, long stint in the hospital or a special school couldn’t fix, no matter how long it took.”
“That must have been hard,” murmured Fluttershy, her hand cupped in her chin.
“It wasn’t easy,” he agreed, “but I had laughter on my side. It’s a powerful weapon. And in case I ever forgot that, I had these.” He pulled his wallet out from his pants pocket, unzipped an interior partition, and extracted a bundle of strings twisted together. At its center lay three very faded, very old balloons—two blue and one yellow.
“I kept these as a reminder. No matter how bad you feel, something can come around the corner that changes everything. That smile you gave away to a stranger might have meant everything to them. I’m fairly sure Pinkie’s smile didn’t mean anything to her, because she smiles all the time, but it changed my whole life. It might even have saved it. Of course I threw myself off a ladder for her. I owe her. I can stand being grounded, and I can stand being suspended, and I can even stand thinking about being shipped off to some kind of institution again, but worrying about Pinkie was making me crazy.”
Fluttershy sat silent for a long time. Finally she nodded and rose to her feet. “Right,” she said, picking up her backpack and leading the way to the door. “Let’s go.”
“What are you doing?” asked Cheese, as he grabbed his own backpack and followed her.
“What someone should already have done long ago,” she said. “I’m getting you out of here, and I’m taking you to see Pinkie.”
A few quick clicks, and they were out of the supposedly locked room. Neither of them was there when the wall slowly began sealing itself up again.
~~
Fluttershy’s car was an ancient station wagon, and it smelled truly terrible. The back was filled with old towels and humane traps she used for Trap-Neuter-Release. Some of the old tomcats she caught objected to their upcoming change of personality, and they had expressed themselves in the only way they knew how. Cheese didn’t say anything, but his nose wrinkled as they dropped their backpacks next to the traps and got into the car.
Fluttershy hit the gas and peeled out of the parking lot. “It’s like a jailbreak, isn’t it?” she burbled. “It’s so exciting.” Off she raced, the car swaying with its antique suspension. One of the many bumper stickers on the back read I BRAKE FOR EVERYTHING, which meant that her extra speed was frequently interrupted by sudden stops and starts.
“Here,” she said, flipping Cheese her phone as the car rounded a curb with a squeal. “Call your Aunt Mela and tell her you’ll be home late. Just go ahead and do it.” He shook his head, but punched in the numbers.
“Um, hi, Aunt Mela, it’s Cheese. Uh—I wanted to know, I mean—I’m going to be home a little late today. I need to visit a sick friend. – No, really, I’m really visiting a sick friend. – Um, that squealing sound? It was rusty machinery. Listen, can I have at least till 4:30? What? You’re kidding. You’re kidding! Well, yeah! Six is great! See you then!” He hung up the phone. “I have till six!” he whooped. “AND I’m un-grounded, AND I’m getting my phone back! The Mastermind of Muenster strikes again!” He pumped his fists.
“Um, what did you do?” murmured Fluttershy, swerving into another lane.
“Oh, well—let’s just say I didn’t have anything to do, what with my phone and my laptop gone and being grounded. All I had was my accordion. And somehow, all the misery made me forget every single piece of music I knew, except for the Beer Barrel Polka. I don’t know, though—I couldn’t seem to get that one right, either, so I had to keep repeating this one phrase, over and over: ‘blues on the run,’ ‘blues on the run.’ Half the time I got it right, and the other half I didn’t.” He chortled, and his eyes gleamed. “Oh, yes, she’s glad to get me out of the house and communicating with my friends again.”
Fluttershy abruptly swung the car into a parking lot, pulled into a spot clearly marked LOADING ZONE, killed the motor, and yanked the parking brake. “Is my evil rubbing off on you?” Cheese wondered.
“We’re right behind Sugarcube’s now,” Fluttershy hissed. “We can get you in the back door and up the stairs without anyone seeing you. Come on.”
“But—I’m not grounded anymore,” Cheese protested. “I don’t have to be home for hours. I’ve got permission to be here.”
“Shh!”
They slipped up the stairs, which were narrow and winding. Once they must have been the stairs used by the servants. Now that the building was the Cakes’ bakery, coffeehouse, and home, the back stairway served as private access for the residents and their guests. The smells of freshly baked goods and coffee wafted past them. They paused for a moment next to the door leading to the Cakes’ own home: their living room and kitchen, and their bedrooms and the twins’ nursery, a floor above that. Finally, they reached the very top of the staircase: the entrance to Pinkie Pie’s garret bedroom. Fluttershy knocked at the door.
“Pinkie Pie? It’s Fluttershy. Can I come in? And I brought a friend.”
“Sure!” a high pitched little voice chirped, and Cheese dropped his face into his hands. “Come on in!”
Fluttershy pushed open the door. Pinkie sat crosslegged at the head of her bed and waved.
“Hiya, Fluttershutter! I am super excited to have you come and—CHEESIE! I just knew you would come!” she squealed, and launched herself off the bed. She flung her arms around his neck so tightly that he almost choked before he could grab her. Her feet, clad in puffy alligator-shaped slippers, waved almost a foot from the floor.
“Whoa!” he said, brilliantly red in the face, as he placed her down. “Aren’t you supposed to be sick?”
“I, um, thought you were supposed to stay in bed,” murmured Fluttershy.
“Pssht,” retorted Pinkie, leaping back onto the bed. “I’m fine. I don’t remember much about the accident, but that’s supposed to be normal. Just waiting to see the doctor tomorrow so he can officially tell me I can go back to school and not a second too soon, because I am so bored!” She crossed her legs and bounced back to where she’d been seated at the head of the bed in one spring. “C’mon! Have some seats!”
Fluttershy and Cheese seated themselves. Fluttershy perched on a puffy round polka-dotted ottoman with a short back and tried not to slip backwards. Cheese folded himself onto a straight-backed chair at Pinkie’s desk.
The room was a nearly perfect circle, with windows that ran right around it. The curtains were drawn to shut out the spring sunshine and keep the room darkened, but some light filtered in through the skylight. “Pull the curtains,” begged Pinkie Pie. “It’s so dark, and I don’t need it dark anymore. I want to see you guys.”
Cheese leaned over and pulled the curtain cords. The afternoon sunlight slanted in, and revealed a room with a large wardrobe that bulged with fluffy skirts, balloons, and streamers. Sample invitations and programs from every event Pinkie had organized or party she had thrown were pinned up around the walls—and there were a lot of them. On the nightstand stood a picture of Pinkie’s family: a stern looking bearded man, his wife, and his four daughters; more photographs of them were hung up around the walls. Pinkie Pie herself sat ensconced at the head of the bed, clad in light blue pajamas with yellow buttons.
“Wow,” stammered Cheese. “You look good, Pinks. I mean, you look better than I thought you would. Um, well—I’m just happy to see you.”
“And boy, am I glad to see you!” said Pinkie, bouncing up and down on the bed. “I missed you a lot. I thought I’d scream from the boredom those first few days. I was gonna go loco in the coco! I was so glad you kept calling me, ‘cause I was bored, bored, bored.”
Cheese looked at her incredulously. “What calls? I didn’t call you.”
Pinkie’s lower lip stuck out and her forehead contracted with confusion. “Well—sure you did,” she said, sounding almost hurt. “You called, like, several times a day at first, just asking how I was. And you kept saying everything was fine, but I could tell it wasn’t fine at all, Cheesie, but I figured I’d just make you tell me all about it later. And I think you should stop playing ‘Beer Barrel’ so much, ‘cause it’s driving your Aunt Mela crazy.”
Cheese frowned. “But—but I didn’t even have a—oh!” he said, and grinned, leaning back and crossing one long leg over the other. “Well, hey,” he added modestly, “it was nothing. Glad I could help. I’m still glad to see you’re ok. So you think the doctor’s going to let you come back soon?”
“Absotootley-lootley!” Pinkie replied.
“Um,” murmured Fluttershy, “I, um, think I’m going to go and get a vanilla latte now. I’ll be back—later—sooner or later.” She slipped out of the room.
It took her a while to get that vanilla latte. Strictly speaking, it took a lot longer than it actually needed to. In fact, it took longer than it actually took. Finally, she made her way up the stairs again and tapped on the door. She opened it, and Pinkie and Cheese were chatting away. If either of them had noticed she’d been gone, they didn’t mention it. She sipped her latte for a few minutes, and then coughed unconvincingly.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I think my latte went down the wrong way.”
“Oh, Stilton,” said Cheese, glancing at his watch. “Is that the time? I have to be home at six.”
“Aw,” said Pinkie, and pouted. “Well, I hope I’ll be back on Wednesday, so not too long now, right? Then we’ll really have to get cracking on the Cake Festival, ‘cause we don’t have much time left.”
“Yes, Boss,” he said, smiling.
“I like it when you call me Boss,” she said, smiling back.
“I know. Well, goodnight, Pinkie.”
“Goodnight!”
~~
“Thanks for taking me to see Pinkie,” said Cheese. “I’m much less worried about her now, and it was nice to catch up with her.”
Fluttershy was taking the scenic route through Luna Park. The cherry trees were still in bloom, and it gave them some extra time to talk. “So what did you and Pinkie talk about?” she asked. “Only if you don’t mind telling me,” she added. “I don’t mean to be nosy.”
“Oh, a little of this, a little of that,” he said airily. “Some small talk, shop talk—she talked a lot about her family. Did you know one of her sisters is getting a doctorate in geology? Pinkie calls it her rockterate.”
“Did you tell her anything about being suspended? Or being grounded?”
“Well, no,” he admitted, “but only because I didn’t want her to worry about it. Besides, I’m not grounded anymore. I’ll tell her when she gets the ok from her doctor to go back to school. I did mention something about the bipolar disorder,” he added hesitantly. “I thought that even though she said she didn’t remember anything, she might remember that bit. I’m glad I told her, though.”
“I don’t look down on Pinkie about it,” said Fluttershy, “and I’m not going to look down on you. I don’t think any of us will.”
He smiled. “Good. That’s nice to know.”
They were driving through a wooded section of the park, with hardly any cars around. The windows were rolled down, letting in the scent of cherry blossom and getting rid of the cat smell. Cheese looked out the side window, but his eyes weren’t focused on the spring foliage at all.
“Did you know Pinkie when she was a little girl? Have you seen pictures?”
Fluttershy shook her head. “No,” she said. “I didn’t move from Cloudsdale until freshman year. And I don’t think Pinkie moved here until junior high.”
“She was SO. CUTE,” he enthused, hands to his cheeks. “You have no idea. I couldn’t believe it when I saw her again. I still can’t.”
“Um,” said Fluttershy, “I’m surprised you didn’t tell her you’d met her before.”
Cheese snorted. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Hi, Pinkie, I’m Cheese Sandwich! You don’t remember me at all, but I’ve been in love with you since I was eight years old!’”
Fluttershy slammed on the brakes, and Cheese slid forward in the seat. He winced. “I said that in my out loud voice, didn’t I?”
“Is that true?” said Fluttershy.
“More or less,” Cheese replied, hedging. “Rather more than less. In fact, rather more than more.”
“Oh, Cheese,” Fluttershy said sorrowfully. “I didn’t know.”
“Good,” he said. “I don’t want anyone to know. In fact, I’d like you to forget it.”
“But why?”
“Why? Because it’s crazy!” he said, throwing up his hands. “People don’t fall in love with someone they met only once as a kid. Maybe once upon a time they did, but not anymore. It sounds crazy even to me, which is always a real possibility where I’m concerned. And yet . . . and yet . . . it just is. It’s not her fault that she’s perfect, or that her voice sounds like the treble in a faultlessly rung change of bells. I know it’s beyond belief that I love just sitting next to her and inhaling because the very scent of her is so incredibly sweet, and that the only thing I don’t like about her hugs is that they end. All I know, beyond question or doubt or reason itself, is that I love Pinkie.” He furrowed his brows. “Does that sound a little intense to you?”
“Um . . .” said Fluttershy. “Kinda, yeah.”
“See?” he said. “I can’t even begin to talk about how I feel about her without feeling like an idiot.”
“Just a suggestion,” said Fluttershy tentatively, “maybe you might like to tell her? I mean, some of it. Toned way down.”
He shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. She’s already given me nearly everything that’s made my life happy. She’s my friend, which was beyond anything I could ever have imagined. People stop being friends over things like this.”
“Pinkie wouldn’t,” Fluttershy insisted. “I know she wouldn’t.”
“Maybe she wouldn’t,” Cheese conceded, “but then maybe she’d think she has to love me, just because I’m her friend and because I love her so much. I don’t want that. I don’t want her even to try. And after that accident—she’s much too grateful about that, and she shouldn’t be. Any of you would have done the same thing. Pinkie doesn’t owe me anything, and I don’t want her to think she does. And I still don’t know what’s going to happen to me with that suspension. The best you could say is that the timing is all wrong.”
They rolled to a stop, right in front of Cheese’s aunt’s house. “I’m starting to worry about you again,” said Fluttershy.
“Nah, don’t,” he replied, unbuckling the seat buckle. “I’m used to keeping things to myself, and I was just un-grounded. Things are looking up.” He went around to the rear of the station wagon, removed his backpack, and came back around to the front of the car and waved. Fluttershy had just started the car when he stuck his head in the passenger’s side window.
“Fluttershy? The thing about me being in love with Pinkie? That’s a secret. And you’re going to keep it. Forever.”
He pulled his head out of the window and began to walk up the path to the house. Fluttershy was about to drive away when he spun around, eyes narrowed. “Foreverrrrr,” he said, glaring at her, then turned and walked the rest of the way towards the house.
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I teared up.
This was so wonderfully awesome. I'm really lost for words, scoots, 'cause every chapter you release is always something new and wonderful I can't resist. I'll be sad when this is over, but hopefully, you'll quickly release an equally awesome story afterwards.
The scene with Cheese & Pinkie as kids faintly reminded me up of Carl & Ellie from Up, so I hope that's what you were going for!
Anywho, rant of praise over, go back to typing your fingers to the bone!
I can hardly wait for more!
"YOU MEAN, YOU COULD HAVE TAKEN YOUR HAND OUT OF THOSE CUFFS AT ANY TIME?"
"Not just *any* time! Only when it was *funny*!"
And we behold just how awesome Fluttershy is. I really like how she just took the initiative and helped Cheese out like that.
And of course, that flashback to Pinkie and Cheese as kids.
EDIT: Oh, yeah! Almost forgot! The weird stuff that was happening in the school? All I could think during that scene was, "This is why you don't suppress party magic."
A connection! A long-time connection, with the Cheese, and the Pie, and the... Just! That scene! Brilliant!
Never seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit, so I haven't recognised it. But that wall scene was crazy. It seemed very Cheese. And somehow, I see Cheese and Fluttershy having really good chemistry. Not just chemistry lab stuff, but actual chemistry. She can push him, if he needs it. He can assure her. I find Fluttershy is usually hard to write without falling into the usual pit of her character—which is why I haven't really made a story focused on her—but you do a good job.
We're nearing the end, which is simultaneously good and bad. Good because it's gonna be good to see how this ends, and bad because... it's gonna end. But still, it's going to be good.
Woah wasn't expecting a chapter out so soon, oh well happy me
For a Chapter that you been speading months it really shaped. Although now I'm wondering if we're going to see Cheese's mom I'm pretty curious about his family.
I want a picture of that!
I have two questions.
Question one:
Is Soarin supposed to be an important character in this story? Or is he just kind of there? Because he always seems to be mentioned doing something in the background. Either that, or just someone who Rainbow Dash seems to like wailing on.
Question two:
Was this based on this scene?:
Anyways, great chapter as always.
Thanks, guys!
4903468 Hmm--I guess Discord could be a sort of magic janitor. I've never intended to do that with him, but I know people like that idea.
4914821 Thanks! Yeah, I've loved doing the world-building. EG's has been much more sketchy than FiM's so far, so it's been fun coming up with my own ideas about correspondences and the way things work. Hmm--Cheese the killer whale. Probably not going to happen, but one thing I've enjoyed is making Fluttershy really not kidding around about animal welfare, and maybe just a touch sanctimonious about it. She looks at one of her friends in on site suspension, and the first thing she thinks of is Blackfish (plus her car smells like pee.)
Oh, YOU and your lesbian horses. Harmony Charmer explained, but the whole passage is a slightly more elaborate version of "Let's help Pinkie!" "I'm in!" "I'm in! "Me too!" So it becomes--
Rarity: We must assist Pinkie. I shall put aside my work.
RD: I might as well help with the Cake Festival, now that I'm not allowed to participate in sports.
AJ: Pinkie's my relative (and in AJ terms, this means "therefore, I will swims through burning lakes in order to help her.")
Fluttershy: We have exams, but this is important.
I guess Fluttershy might come of as too Twilight-y, but I figure that if what she really wants is to be a vet, she'll have to have a truly impeccable school record. It's harder to get into vet school than medical school. So she'd have to be diligent about study, even if it is not her favorite thing to do.
4918680 I hadn't consciously thought of Carl and Ellie, but I guess that really does work! I am a GIANT SUCKER for childhood romance, BTW--the super-sweet and innocent kind, obviously. Oh, yeah, and love at first sight. I don't care what anyone says about how that isn't love. Mix them together and you have one of my favorite combos, and you can see why CheesePie really had something I liked in a big way.
I've been strongly considering a sequel, but this has been eating so much time I don't have, and I'm going to wait until Rainbow Rocks has been released, because this fic will be AU and it will probably change all kinds of things. It would skip about a year ahead, though, so it might jump past all kinds of problems. We'll see.
And now you can see why I wasn't writing stuff to fill your "High School" prompt. I was too busy writing High School!
4918700 Thank you!
4918722 Exactly!
4918771 I'm glad you liked the flashback! I was going to just write it out, but I worried about Cheese telling ALL THIS STUFF to Fluttershy and that it would be boring, and no kidding, two days ago, I suddenly thought "FLASHBACK" and realized it would be much better. Also, yes. That's why you don't suppress party pony magic. It goes all Poltergeist on you.
4918777 Thank you! Yeah--I have been dropping hints about that right from the beginning. Not that you're going to go back and look, but that first scene in Chapter 1 looks different now from Cheese's perspective, doesn't it?
There's also all the awkward dodging around saying "I owe you a birthday present, because you gave me one before." Lots of stuff.
I'm glad you like Fluttershy here. I've tried writing her before, with mixed results. I think in circumstances like these, where Cheese doesn't roll into town but literally washes up like a drowned rat, Fluttershy might very well befriend him. Right from the beginning, I drop hints that he instinctively appeals to her as the one most likely to support him, and he's actually very introverted. They have great character chemistry. Of course, I don't ship them. The one FlutterCheese shipfic I read didn't work very well, but it could have worked much better if Cheese had been more in character. A friend of mine pitched an idea about Pinkie Pie deciding to fix up Cheese and her good friend Butterflutter, and with or without their buy in and participation, that might have been very entertaining. At one point, I considered playing off the idea that lab partners in high school romance novels are almost REQUIRED to be having some kind of romantic relationship, and having everyone misconstrue this, but I thought it would needlessly complicate things and make them much too high school rom-com.
4919040 Soarin is the assistant captain of the Wondercolts and extremely respectful of Rainbow Dash. Whether it's a crush, being impressed by her sheer ability, or solid loyalty, he's always there, always ready to support her, and a little insecure about his abilities. He plays goalie, so he's a little more big and solid than the other players; he still likes pie (see chapter 2, when Pinkie's soap bubbles land on his piece); and when Dash is kicked off the Wondercolts, he has to assume her role.
Dash just assumed the team would lose without her there. They didn't. They won, under Soarin's leadership. Now he is reaping some big time rewards. If she weren't sidelined, Dash would find this hilarious.
It definitely IS based on that scene!
4919317
My otp.
4919442 Well, I certainly left room for it to be interpreted that way! I intentionally left out any overt ships except for CheesePie, because I didn't want to steal focus or make anyone mad. HOWEVER, I know there are things that can be read different ways with shipping goggles on, and since I'm not narrating what's going on behind the scenes, I figure people can have the freedom to imagine what they want, so I'm not saying that's NOT what's going on, if that makes sense.
I'm also not negating any other possible Dash ships that could be read with a good pair of shipping goggles, with the exception of "kitchen sink," of course. Oh yes, and Cheese.
And yes, I think Soarin would have to be considered a minor character, since he's part of one of the main story arcs and RD and Soarin's boss/assistant relationship parallels and echoes Pinkie and Cheese's.
Er ME GERSH, dis is thooooo sweeet
:
Btw, will there be a sequel after the movie?
Also looks like Rainbow's a bit jealous of those cheerleaders hangin' around her man!
4919806 Maybe. I've begun looking at some ideas already.
4919818 Really, really honestly? I think Dashie's jealous of the attention and that she wasn't the one who won. If she'd been captaining that game and Soarin had blocked a lot of goals, her attitude might be "heh-heh. All right, Soarin. You go, boy." Two alternative interpretations of that;
1) she isn't romantically interested in him, OR
2) she is, but she also knows that she is SO AWESOME that his flirting with a bunch of cheerleaders doesn't really matter. She can swoop in and pick him off any old time she wants.
But, as I said, I'm leaving that one wide open. The gushing cheerleaders don't matter a lot anyway. The game was Saturday or Sunday and this chapter is set on the Monday after the game, and he's really enjoying the attention for a change (as he does in Rainbow Falls, after all.)
He may be a minor character, but I still put some thought into him.
) Wait didn't everything end up with pretty much no "REAL" consequences? I mean Cheese's arm got unbroke, Pinkie ended up fine when you think bout it. I mean sure Rainbow got her keys taken and Cheese has ISS but I mean he just got ungrounded, apparently hasn't gotten charged with the costs of damages, just...
Dafudge?
But either way I really liked the flashback and I had caught onto like ones of the hints but didn't know what it was hinting at.
Also are you gonna pick back up on the cupcake thing in the next chapter or should I just wait sand be patient?(ppffft like that's happening
)
Aaaaaaand Discord should totally be some crzy arse guy that somehow(magic) became like president of the school board.
4920203 What exactly do you need for consequences to be real? Pinkie just spent a week and a half in bed with a concussion. Cheese has been suspended. Why would he be charged with damages, when he didn't actually damage anything? We don't know what his mom is up to. Dash is on a losing streak. Do you need Pinkie to have her brains bashed out and Cheese to wind up in jail for things to be real enough? You see the tag up there that says "Comedy?" Think about this. Also, you are missing something MAJOR about Pinkie and Cheese that I'll put under a tag, and I'll ask people not to spoil it, please:
They're Toons. That is why Cheese can go straight through a wall and his arm can glue itself back together--but only when it's funny.
Briefly -- this is beautiful. I'll make a much longer and more detailed comment when I get home.
THIS WAS BEAUTIFUL. FOR REALS. AND I HATE MYSELF BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH I KNOW WHAT I WANT IN MY STORY, I WILL NEVER BE AS GLORIOUS AS YOU. You are the best CheesePie writer~
when I saw your comment am like OMG YOU SHIP SOARINDASH and now you are my friend>>4919818
4920895 YES! TOTALLY!
4920098 Ohh, okay, and I'm looking forward to your ideas!
This was an excellent chapter, which reveals two very important things:
(1) The manner in which Cheese's abilities work, if not quite the details of their functioning (but that may be literally impossible to reveal, based on the clues from "Feeling Pinkie Keen," because it may be based on a function which doesn't work if collapsed by direct observation);
(2) How Pinkie met Cheesie in this world, and
(3) How he feels about her, and why.
I've been thinking a bit about the nature of the Concept of Laughter (or Comedy -- the Muse Thalia ruled over both comedy and lyric poetry, the idea was "joyousness," I think) and how it fits in to the Universe.
While joy is an emotion felt even by higher animals, comedy is intellectually a rather advanced concept. Our sense of humor is triggered by the observation of a particular kind of logical incongruity, and hence it is very much allied to the abiity we have to detect patterns and the violation of patterns around us. Note that sensitivity to patterns is what I think is at the root of Rarity's talent.
What's more, the detection of a funny incongruity in the information being presented to us is linked to our ability to detect lies, and it can snap us out of instinctive submissiveness in the face of seemingly overwhelming social status. In other words, it helps us perceive when we are being lied to by leaders, and resist such lies. Humor is thus key to freedom, which is why every totalitarian regime or subculture is obsessed with preventing others from laughing at it.
Pinkie Pie and Cheese Sandwich can go one step further -- they can initiate a funny incongruity in the physical universe. The effect seems to require some sort of psychic link to humor ("only if it's funny," as in Roger Rabbit) and also to work best if at all when unobserved so that it the consequences are possible though wildly improbable (which is how I had Pinkie Pie save a lot of lives, and finally her own, in Dragonshyness).
I assume that this power can be costly to employ at high levels -- Pinkie Pie pretty much wrecks her own health for a while by doing it in that story. Pinkie does a lot of little tricks with it at very low power levels almost all the time, to the point where others regard it as just "Pinkie being Pinkie." In the Ponyverse, Twilight knows better, but has also learned that attempting to drag the active focus into macroversal observation is physically-dangerous -- the Power of Laughter defends itself.
I really liked your story of how Cheese and Pinkie met as children. It's different from the Ponyverse, but then the Humanoidverse probably does not trust its children to be as unaccompanied as the Ponies do their young colts and fillies (for the good reasons that Humanoid children are less precocial, and Humanoid adults perhaps less trustworthy, than Ponies). The story you created was sweet and beautiful.
I fully understand why Cheese is shy of revealing his feelings to Pinkie. And I think it's very much connected to the ways in which the Humanoidverse is culturally different from the Ponyverse. Humanoid sexuality is more predatory than Pony sexuality, so Humanoid Cheese has more to fear from misunderstood intentions on his part and defensive reactions on hers. Though I think she actually returns his loving sentiments. But he doesn't know that.
4918771
Good point. Pinkie and Cheese essentially started a ritual which is now uncontrolled (or poorly-controlled by their less-skilled replacements). The consequences could be Bad.
4920307 Aghblplgaaaa...sorry I'm just thinking of this as a real life universe more than a cartoon
. Yeah I should probably start adding "Opinions of an arse" at the end of my comments shouldn't I?
Also I was a little stressed about school and probably took it out on a random innocent internet person/author..I'm sorry for that.
4920307
Not only that, but in real life the worst doesn't always happen, even to mundane types like me. I once fell when climbing a cliff. I was 100 or so feet above the ground -- and I fetched up on a ledge just a few feet beneath me. Is it "unrealistic" that I was lucky that day? Would it have been more "realistic" if I'd died 40 years ago? I am a real and tangible Human who very much doubts that he has magical powers of any sort ... yet I escaped with a skinned knee, when I might have broken every major bone in my body and died at around 10 years old.
And as you pointed out, Pinkie and Cheese are rather special beings, and their powers are as inherent to them and as real in the fictional universe as are anyone else's.
4920203
Actually, Humanoid Pinkie suffered a concussion. She probably would have been hurt worse if not for her own powers, which if you notice failed to completely protect her -- it was Cheese's heroic act which prevented her from getting hurt worse.
As for Cheese, Luna's well aware that he wasn't actually trying to hurt anyone, though I don't know if she realized that he actually saved Pinkie. Why should she punish him further than she does in the story? Luna's harsh in her style, but she's not sadistic.
Good grief; our boy Cheese has it bad. Threatening his friends? Threatening Fluttershy?
This was a fun chapter. Some answers, some questions, some more answers, some more questions... let me make a few guesses.
Sunset's experimenting with Party Magic. Random party effects, with both known talents accounted for? Seriously, if you make Sunset a Party Pony I will possibly love you for maybe forever. At least a whole day.
Luna's up to something sly. She's not the sort to stand for child abuse, and she's in a position to act. A comprehensive understanding of just where Cheese is academically is a good way to start.
Rainbow's instinct is right, and Cheese' pictures will reveal actual shenanigans. Possibly the vague, yet menacing cup-cake investigation agency is behind it.
At least, those are the ideas my tingling plot-sense served up, as I enjoyed this chapter. On a less related note, your lampshading the Rule of Funny made me want to write stories about other ponies, who's powers work on different Rules of Artistic License. One more idea for my file of 'ideas I'll never get around to', I guess.
Hmm. Wild party magic leaking out. Cheese's frustration manifesting itself, or ambient energies without anyone to guide them?
Shame she isn't ex-CIA. Maybe she'd be more amenable to parties.
I can't help but wonder whether that chem lab had been next to the detention room before Cheese's pratfall...
Ah. As with ponies, so with people. I'm not really surprised, but the differences are interesting to see. Also, my sympathy for Cheese's mother has definitely been lessened. Great-Aunt Mela got a few more points, though I'm not sure how many of those were acquired through Chinese polka torture.
Did... did Pinkie hear Cheese's prayers!?
There are cartoon powers, and then there are properties of the divine. Holy crap, this is huge. Yes, they probably weren't meant as such, but he spoke to her from afar and she heard him.
Oh, Cheese. No matter what his species, his insecurity and capacity for waxing rhapsodic about the Joybringer remain. Heartbreaking as always, given the dramatic irony. Of course, the age difference is definitely a consideration. No one can consider their own love from an objective standpoint, but teenagers? Yeah, the timing is all wrong.
In any case, eagerly looking forward to more.
4921362 I was under the impression the the six thought there was something weird about her getting hurt and that it was hinted at someone hitting her or something?
And again like I said in another comment 1.I was in a bad mood and was being an ass(still doesn't excuse me doing it though)
and 2. I've been thinking of this too much as a "Real Life" story than a cartoon one.
Ps. The schools around where I live IF you caused damages to the school Wether accidental or purposeful IF thee damages were something like the metal struts getting knocked off then you And your parents would have to pay for damages.
4921320 No worries. I don't think you were insulting, but I don't think of the EG world as exactly like our own.
No. Nobody really thought that, ever. Dash thought that he should have been more careful or done more to prevent her getting hurt; it's hard for her to hear that no one could have done anything.
I bet your school wouldn't demand repayment in advance before the cause had been established, and they sure as heck wouldn't if one of the structural supports in the ceiling came loose and fell. They'd be too afraid of a negligence lawsuit of their own.
Hello Scoots2,
After being convinced to ship Cheesepie by a youtube video, I stumbled from Deviantart into fimfiction. In here, I've met one of the most unique writers I have encountered in fanfiction. Why? You write in a way that moves readers to believe in destiny and greatness from one of the most underrated forces in this universe: Laughter.
Let me give you the reasons why I love Through the Looking Glass:
1. You educated people in here about bipolar disorder. Not a lot of people knew how to handle people who have it. and you portray them as just people too.
2. You made the whole universe of the story realistic while keeping it faithful to the ponyverse. However, you still instilled Cheese and Pinkie's toonyness.
3. I especially loved Fluttershy's daring-ness in here. Who knew she'd have the guts to sneak Cheese out?
4. You got us readers laughing at Cheese's wit, horrified by the accident, sympathetic when we found more about Cheese's story, squealing at his adoration for Pinkie -in short, you make readers feel something! Which is what the purpose of writing is about. In surfing the web, we became zombies and it's up to us writers to move them to make them feel alive even if just for a moment.
5. You portrayed Cheese and Pinkie's character as being smarter and wiser than they let it on. A lot of people would just write them off as being silly but as you taught in your fics, laughter is a serious business.
6. Scanning through your blogposts, I saw one where there's a sad Pinkie with the words "Why does nobody appreciates my work?" ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! You've delivered quality fics and you've got tons of faves and comments and you're in a rut?! You're the one who introduced the concept of the element of laughter as magical in a sense that it can be palpated in happiness levels, you're the one who portrayed Pinkie as laughter incarnate, as something precious through Cheese's eyes. You're the one who delivered rocking fics to this one possible pairing in MLP. I want to shake you, you oblivious genius!
Frankly, I'm not naturally funny but I believe laughter is a very powerful as Roger Rabbit said. I'm a FF writer too in the Who framed Roger Rabbit fandom (not a lot of readers, believe me) and I write because of that belief. What attracted me to Pinkie then to Cheese is their magic in laughter that you have convincingly portrayed and I think you're also influencing me now in its possible magic. (Uh-oh, cult warning, haha)
Do you have any questions that you're wondering about your stories that I can answer so that I can give a more helpful feedback?
4920307 You know, if you REALLY want to pay an homage to Roger Rabbit, remember in that climactic scene where Eddie Valiant, the no - nonsense counterpart to Roger, acts like a toon and manages to save the day? Is Pinkie's no - nonsense cousin going to do the same?
The more I think about the suspension, the more disappointed I am in Luna. I get that Cheese needs to be punished. However, Luna suspends Cheese and deliberately ensures he can have no normal contact with other students, while she knows Cheese will be grounded at home, so in effect he is nearly in solitary confinement. I'm no psychologist, but that seems like a recipe to do serious damage to an already unstable teenager. In fact, how was Cheese's Individual Education Plan even approved? Didn't the sisters read it and realize that, if Cheese really IS just a delusional bipolar kid, keeping him so isolated is all the more harmful. Even the really crazy, locked up for life people in institutions go through group therapy, in part because a lack of human contact is deeply damaging to the human psyche. If one of Cheese's former psychiatrists drew up that plan, I hope his license gets revoked.
4927007 I don't understand this comment. I don't know what a "strangle pony" is or how the numerical ranges or psychometric research relates to the story. It IS set in the EG 'verse, yes.
4927177
I sort of get the point about scales of 0 to n instead of 1 to n, but am drawing a blank on the rest of it.
4927230 I just didn't understand what the comment was ABOUT. I had to go back and look at the chapter, and finally I worked out that it was something connected with Sunset Shimmer asking Pinkie and Cheese about how they'd rank their physical manifestations on a scale of one to ten. That's simply an example of "uncomfortable questions Sunset Shimmer asks Pinkie and Cheese." It was on such a tiny detail that had very little to do with the story that I had no idea what Walabio was talking about. The rest of the comment remains completely opaque to me.
Brilliant chapter as always. I squeed out loud when cheese finally confessed (out loud, anyway. He seemed to have already admitted it to himself). Granted, he didn't confess to Pinkie, and Flutters has to keep the secret anyway, but it's one step closer. I had no Idea Fluttershy was so awesome! Most people writing a scene like this would make her out of character, but you seem to understand the characters way too much to do that.
4921656
Was that a Night Vale reference? Please, please, please be a Night Vale reference!
4928932 Yes, well... I listen to it in the car, and I'm almost caught up. This story has been on my Read It Later list for a while.
I wanted to squeeze 'government' into that sentence but couldn't quite fit it, since I don't see any hint of a connection. (Of course I wouldn't, though, would I?)
4920362 Aw. Don't compare yourself to other writers, but it's nice of you to say so. I love writing these two, so it feels pretty comfortable by now.
4921273 Pretty much. It only works when it's funny, and it helps if it's absurd and/or unobserved, lest the process be interrupted by an ill-placed "but that's impossible." Fortunately, in FiM, almost everypony accepts this as "Pinkie being Pinkie," and after Twilight Sparkle's attempt to deconstruct it in "Feeling Pinkie Keen," mostly everypony has given up trying to understand it.
Or, simply put, explaining the joke just kills it.
Aw, thanks. It does change a few things--most particularly, for Cheese, the fact that he didn't expect to run into her again at all, and certainly not in Canterlot. Fun fact: I felt it necessary for her to give him some kind of talisman, but I didn't want it to be a rubber chicken. It just felt too awkward. It was originally going to be a rock, which tells you something--that chapter was already planned before Maud Pie aired. After that, the rock felt wrong, so I had to give some serious thought to what would work, and it wound up being balloons. Which probably gave it more of the feel of UP than was intended, but oh, well!
Another reason I wanted Cheese to be cautious was that I really wanted to avoid the impression that he thought he "deserved" her merely by being her friend or doing something nice for her, like, oh, saving her from going squash. He's perfectly sincere when he says that any of them would have done the same. Well, Applejack and Rainbow would have, anyway, and Rarity and Fluttershy have done some pretty surprising things when their friends were in danger. In other words, Cheese isn't the kind of guy who is upset by being "friendzoned," and I wanted to be careful about that, and also making him too Gary Stu-ish. You'll notice he's not better than anybody about anything except for his own abilities, which differ slightly from Pinkie's. If anything about this story works, it comes from being planned like crazy.
4921283 I think of it as something like a poltergeist. Traditionally, they're triggered off by adolescent angst and stress.
4921656 He definitely has it very bad indeed. I don't think that was exactly a threat to Fluttershy, only maybe it was.
Of course, I will refuse to confirm anything! but you are on the right track about Luna. Part of that is going to be happening at the beginning of the next chapter, so I don't think that's a giant spoiler. Glad you liked it!
4922696 A bit of both, I think. You have a school plunged in gloom: one that's used to a Permanent Party
PonyPerson on the Premises, and you have a PartyPonyPerson who is being forced not to do anything about it. There are some very specific times when this happened, too; it started up on the day Cheese was locked up, then it stopped for a few days, and then it started up again.Oh, yes, the chem lab was already there, since Fluttershy refers to it. In a larger, more meta sense, it was originally the band room.
Yup. Which is more or less what her Equestrian counterpart can do, too. And which she couldn't do before, or she wouldn't have been so anxious about where he was and what he was up to with the party cannon thing. Note, too, that those weren't just "oh, hey, hi, howya doin'?" things, but distress calls. Cut off all other forms of contact and get Cheese in deep trouble or worry about Pinkie, and he's going to do the equivalent of screaming for help without even meaning to. Which may imply, just maybe, though I'm not quite positive yet, that they are becoming closer to/more like their Equestrian counterparts. I'm very curious to see if this general theory about magic holds up in Rainbow Rocks.
Yup. Dude's sort of a troubadour with an accordion and a rubber chicken.
4932107 "I refuse to confirm anything!" The author says, directly before confirming one of my suspicions. :P Yeah, not much of a spoiler. The chances you'd place the school authority in a knowingly harmful position seemed pretty low to me.
Oh, and I should say; I didn't realize until later that the balloons keepsake matches Pinkie's Cutie Mark, but i thought that was pretty clever. Now, if only Pinkie has a ten-year-old cheese sandwich hidden away somewhere, things will be complete!
Sweet chapter. I think you did a great job with writing this one.
Picking the tumblers of a lock is hard and takes time. It is nice to get this right.
Mister CheeseSandwich is like RogerRabbit.
The backstory of Mister CheeseSandwich is so sad.
Miss Pinkamena Dian Pie should not overdue it when she returns to school. People recovering from concussions are fragile.
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I meant strange ponies. In the comics, sometimes tailliess maneless ponies watch events from the background. It looks more like the strange ponies are employees of Mister Filthy Rich.
As for scales, logically, they go from either 0 to 1 or from -1 to +1 So that we do not have to leal with decimals points, we explode the scale like from 0 to 231,618,300,080,299 (tat is a pseudorandom number).
Let us suppose that we ask somepony to rate pine on a scale of 1 to 10 and then we learn about a similar study where the research asked ponies to rate pain on a scale of 1 to 100. We wish to merge the datasets. We must subtract 1 from all of the scores and then multiply the scores from the 1st dataset by 11. ¿Why not just start at 0 which is where the scales logically start anyway?
Most of the time single-digit numbers are sufficient, but sometimes we require double-digit numbers, but we never need triple-digit numbers:
“On a scale of 0 to 1,000, it hurts 527.”
Nopony has ever said that and nopony ever will.
For reducing errors, when using double-digit numbers us only double-digit numbers:
"On a scale of 00 to 99, I give the pain 07."
Practically, this means that the scales are thus:
0 to 9
00 to 99
-9 to +9
-99 to +99
If the scale logically has a negative component, use explicit +plus+ and -minus- signs:
“On a scale of -99 (Hate) to +99 (love), I give the HorseAppleFlavored Iced Cream a -96.”
In conclusion, Miss SunSetShimmer should ask Mister CheeseSandwich and Miss Pinkamena Diane Pie to rate things on a scale of 0 to 9
ScaleRating Research
4935486 I really don't know what those ponies are you're referring to. I think, more to the point, no one ever says "on a scale from zero to nine." My job in writing a story is not to be mathematically accurate, but realistic. Even if Sunset Shimmer knows this, she possibly also knows that Pinkie and Cheese wouldn't understand "on a scale of zero to nine." And if she DID think they would understand that, she would quickly be corrected by the puzzled expressions on their faces.
Also, she isn't expecting an answer of "zero." She knows that the answer isn't going to be "zero."
Something you said earlier does need to be corrected. You seem to think that Pinkie would be able to do complicated mathematical functions in her head because she has an eidetic memory. The two things are not related. There's a real question as to whether or not eidetic memory even exists. (I think it does, though, as you'll see.) Pinkie's ability to remember birthdays isn't eidetic, because eidetic memory involves taking a picture of something with your brain and retaining it like a photocopy. It is more or less the way I read: flash flash flash, with really exceptional recollection of the contents. When I recall things, I recollect the font size and shape and placement on the page, and any adjacent pictures. Sadly, this ability decays with age. This is why I made sure to sit my doctoral exams as soon as possible.
The ability to memorize numbers is a separate function. And neither ability translates into the capacity to perform mathematical calculations. For example, it was always very easy for me to remember complex conjugations of verbs or the details of a text, but it was up to me to make sense of them or create interrelationships. I happen to be able to do both, but one doesn't materially affect the other.
And I can tell you FIRST HAND that eidetic memory =/= mathematical ability, because I have about as close to an eidetic memory as anyone I've ever met, and I suck at math. There is something about the two abilities that simply do not play well together.
TL/DR. I'm a writer, not a math instructor.
4922962 Aw, THANK YOU! What an incredibly nice comment. I shall hug it and give it a special name. Just out of curiosity, which video?
I tried not to be soap box-y about bipolar disorder, but yes. I have to give Matt Garner a lot of credit for that one. I had been thinking how consistent Pinkie's behavior was with bipolar disorder and Matt really put his finger on it and was willing to say so. The world-building has been challenging, but a lot of fun. I'm hoping to get the story done before Rainbow Rocks comes out and I have to change everything! As for making people feel things and keeping the characters in character--of course, those are the things I try hardest to achieve and value most!
Oh, well, yes, I do have those days. I think the EG fic thing can be tiring. For a while there, the story would pick up a few more downrates every time it hit the front page, probably just as a protest vote against Equestria Girls. I did let myself in for it, I guess. And I think there was one other time, and it might have been around the time of that blog post, when a new fic got hammered right away, and I couldn't see why.
D'aw, thanks.
Laughter is supremely magical! One of my favorite courses to teach is on drama, and we get to spend an entire term on Comedy. One of my favorite ancient gags: in The Frogs, Dionysus, the god of theater, is on a mission to go down to Hades and bring back a good tragedian, because they're all dead. He's a huge coward and he meets a lot of terrifying things on the way, and finally he screams and runs up to the priest of Dionysus, who was sitting in the audience:
Dionysus: You're my priest! DO something!
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The strange CupCakePurchasing Men that CheesePie found so creepy that they lied about closing SugarCubeCorner to get them to leave. Later, you had Miss DiamondTiara feed a strange cupcake to her dog and Mister Filthy Rich take away a cupcake from the party, so now I figure that the strange men are probably employees of Mister Filthy Rich who plans to get into the CupCakeBusiness.
In S02E18, “A Friend in Deed” —— Amy Keeting Rogers, we learn that Miss Pinkamena Diane Pie memorized the name and birthdate of every resident of Ponyville and does daycount arithmetic in her head very rapidly:
It is impressive that she looked at Matilda and figured that her birthday is in 132 days. ¡That is pretty good mental mathematics!:
4935805 None of those things are mathematics. They're all memorization. What's more, the simple arithmetic involved in calculating Matilda's birthday--IF she calculated it at all; people with memories like that often don't, because they don't have to--doesn't translate at all to what Sunset Shimmer is asking them to learn, which is quadratic equations.
You are fixating on minor details that don't have anything to do with the story.
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Sorry, but I like the Pinkie you write so much that I pay close attention. ¡You get Pinkie! It is so nice to read a good Pinkie. It seems like 99% of Pinkies on this site and the Pinkies in over half of the episodes portray Pinkie as a drooling moron instead of the eccentric genius she truly is. I shall try to pay less attention to small details.
4935922 Thanks! Yes--we agree that Pinkie is very, very smart. You've read Jordan's fics, and he's pretty clear about this, too.
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He pointed me to your stories. I like his Miss Pinkamena Diane Pie, but hist stories are a little dark (aliens from the greater multiverse wage a cold war against Equus, which will go hot in less than a decade).
His retelling of Friendship is Magic Parts Ⅰ & Ⅱ fill the plotholes. Hasbro should have given Miss Lauren Faust a 90:00-minutes TV-Movie instead of a 2-part episode, for premiering the show, so the second episode was rushed. Hasbro should have given Steven Magnet his own 22:30-minute episode of the 90:00-minute TV-Movie.
¡Fabulous!
His Miss Pinkamena Diane Pie is so smart that she cannot express herself in ways ordinary ponies can comprehend, like in S01E10 “Swarm of the Century” by M. A. Larson. I like my Pinkies to be eccentric geniuses.
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Pinkie's intelligence is easy to underestimate viewed from the outside because she commits a lot of it to running some functions fairly alien to or only slightly expressed by most other Ponies. The whole plot of "Feeling Pinkie Keen" is essentially driven by Twilight, having come to the realization that Pinkie is doing things that should be theoretically-impossible, trying to understand how she does them. That episode does not have the theme "intellectual understanding is overrrated -- just believe" of which some people accuse it. The theme is "some things are beyond your present understanding and are dangerous to analyze the wrong way."
It is a proof of Twilight's intelligence both that she realizes that something impossible under current theory is going on with Pinkie, and that she ultimately realizes that she lacks the tools to safely explore it. The first is a sign of intelligence, the second of healthy intellectual humility. The second is very important, since Twilight's path to Nightmare would almost certainly involve intellectual arrogance.
I literally tossed my phone across the room when cheese confused his crush for pinkie I was like YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS