The Limitations of Patience
Apple Bloom couldn’t believe she was doing this. She felt like she was going to explode into nervous giggles. She never even had the guts to play hookey before! But then, before this, she never had a whole two months of blissful not having to get up at the crack of dawn, either. And now that Apple Bloom had a taste of paradise, she found she just couldn’t give a single care about her academic record. Right now, she wanted to play, not study!
Apple Bloom felt that way once before, early in her life, but it was eroded ever so slowly as she advanced in school. Shorter recesses, more lessons, less play time, less homeroom activities. Freedom of expression was eaten away from Apple Bloom’s life in bits and pieces, fits and spurts, until the only thing she knew anymore was waking up to hurry out of the house with a cold breakfast. A disciplinary lesson here, a down-to-the-wire deadline there, it wasn’t long before Apple Bloom didn’t even notice how she put so much of herself into school.
But then in a single day, it was just sort of... gone, all at once. Her life as a pony had its share of hard times, but it was like a refreshing return to a world she hadn’t been ready to leave. So to hell with that English class. If she wanted to skip out on it, then she would very well do so! Besides, she and her friends had some really important stuff to do today.
She ran from where she escaped the classroom, her hooves going clippyclop lightly on the floor tiles as she trotted quickly down the hallway. She paused and checked around every corner for a hall monitor that might have been lurking out there, but this far into the class period, Apple Bloom didn’t run into any trouble whatsoever.
The doors out of the school didn’t pose any problem at all. Rearing up on her firm, squat hind legs, she was quite high enough to reach the bar, and pushing it unlatched the door. She wasn’t too hindered from doing so either, as all she’d bothered to wear today was a light jacket that Diamond Tiara had altered for her from a little kid’s jacket. There was some concern about noise, but as long as Apple Bloom stuck her little yellow hoof in place, the door wouldn’t slam closed, and with careful removal, it only closed quietly with a soft click.
Then she outright gallopped, hooves pounding on the frozen dirt as she ducked her head unseen beneath the first story windows of the school, and rounded its walls to the inner courtyard, where Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo were waiting. Sweetie had her winter coat on, making it less obvious that she was a four legged animal, and not just a walking tube of fluffy stuffing. Scootaloo had a pair of modified shorts, with a rather ineffective tank-top on her upper body that had the phrase “2 hot 4 cool” stitched into it, and two folds in the side that her wings emerged from, the folded orange wings easily holding the shirt’s fabric against her barrel.
“Oh my god, Apple Bloom!” Sweetie Belle said in an unnecessary whisper, as Apple Bloom came out of the class hall, gallopping right up to the excited white filly. “You actually did it!”
“How did you get away?” Scootaloo asked eagerly.
“Well,” Apple Bloom remarked quietly, leaning on three hooves to free up one of her forelegs, “You see mah big pink bow?” She pointed to the top of her head, where no bow was to be found.
Sweetie Belle just stared uncomprehendingly, while Scootaloo, tilted her head and leaned forward to look closer, but there wasn’t anything on top of Apple Bloom’s head outside of soft red hair.
“Um… no?” Scootaloo said giving her a precarious look.
“Ms. Harshvoice sure does,” Apple Bloom said with a cheeky grin, pointing back up to the window.
“You didn't,” Sweetie gaped. “How did she not see that?”
“Ah cain be convincing!” Apple Bloom pouted. “I put up on mah binder, so she'd see mah bow and think I was behind it.”
“I wonder how many times that's gonna work,” Scootaloo said, rolling her eyes.
“Ah don't know exactly, but if’n I get back before class is over, she'll be none the wiser!” Apple Bloom said confidently. “Now let's hurry. Ah wanna show you this cool back space behind the walls.”
Sneaking back into the hallway, three sets of ears trained for the slightest sound of a hall monitor, Apple Bloom led Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo over to the broom closet she'd come out of before. “Check it out,” Apple Bloom whispered, pointing at the glowing horseshoe thing.
“Woah, who put that there?” Scootaloo asked curiously, butting up with Apple Bloom so she could poke at it.
“I dunno,” Apple Bloom said, and on reflection it was suspiciously peculiar that anyone would put it here at all. “Try pushing on it,” she said.
Scootaloo did, and there was a quiet click. “W—oah!” Scootaloo said more reverently, her arm effortlessly sliding the wall panel open.
Apple Bloom trotted right in, having to duck slightly to get in there, and she looked back at the others, saying, “C’mon in, girls!”
“Does anybody know about this?” Sweetie asked, standing uneasily at the entrance, peering in.
“Don’t worry,” Apple Bloom assured her. “Ah already went all around back here, and there are plenty of other horseshoes for opening things on this side. It’s like some kinda school themed... secret thing.”
“But seriously,” Sweetie said, poking her pink and purple limned head into the space and looking around it bemusedly. “Does anyone know about this? How could they not?”
“It’s not like the janitors could fit back here,” Apple Bloom noted. “Now come on, ah wanna show you some of the places it comes out in.”
Reluctantly, but trustingly, her friends came into the dark passageway. Apple Bloom demonstrated, sliding the panel closed with a click, then depressing the horseshoe symbol to slide it open.
“It seems safe,” Sweetie said nervously, “But what is this? There’s no way we’re supposed to be in here.”
“There’s no way we’re supposed to be out of class either, so deal with it,” Apple Bloom said snippily. “Wasn’t it your idear that ah skip mah class?”
“We were just worried about you,” Sweetie said guiltily. “And also Trigonometry is really boring.”
“But mostly, we were worried,” Scootaloo said, glaring at Sweetie in the darkness. “You’ve been so miserable lately, since we came back to school,” she entreated the yellow pony girl. “Why are we even doing this, if it keeps making us miserable?”
“You know!” Apple Bloom said defensively, “To better yourself, an’ get a good job when you grow up? Unless you wanna spend your life flipping burgers?”
“I told you, I’m gonna be doing that no matter what, Apple Bloom,” Scootaloo said rolling her eyes. Which Apple Bloom could see, now that her eyes were adjusting. Man, pony eyes were freaky good at seeing in low light. The light from the glowing horseshoes was enough to clearly make out her friends, if not their colors.
“I wish we didn’t have to,” Sweetie said tensely.
“Well—Sweetie,” Apple Bloom put a hoof on the unicorn’s back. “Without going to school, we would never have found this secret passage! You have to admit this’s pretty cool.”
“It is pretty cool,” Sweetie admitted, sniffling. Good gravy, was she crying just about that? Sweetie was bothered by school, even more than Apple Bloom wanted to admit she was bothered, herself!
Apple Bloom sighed, “Let’s just explore this thing, and worry about school later. Ah’ll show you how it works, and then we cain get back to class.”
This mysterious passage didn’t seem to serve no purpose, other than opening into other rooms, but exploring it quickly distracted them from such dark thoughts. Sweetie Belle was fascinated by the glowy horseshoes, wondering if they were powered, or lit up from the inside maybe.
Apple Bloom didn’t have any answers, but she did know you could open them up to get to behind the bathroom sink in the girl’s and the boy’s bathroom. Boy was Sweetie blushing at that. There was a way to get into, and out of most of the classrooms. Really anything that shared a wall with this central corridor had exits.
That’s when Sweetie noticed something.
“Girls!” Sweetie whispered. “Look behind you!”
Both of them looked back, but there was nothing but darkness, as far as Apple Bloom could see at least.
“Ah don’t see nothing,” she said, squinting that way. Squinting doesn’t help at all in low light conditions, by the way.
“The horseshoes are gone!” Sweetie said somewhat fearfully. And justifiably so, because as Apple Bloom could see, there wasn’t a glowing anything more than a few paces behind them. Apple Bloom immediately fumbled with the nearest one, opening it up into a... into someone’s locker? Well, she opened it at any rate, and said, “Okay, ah got one open. Let’s just h-hold it open for me Scoots, and ah’ll see what’s going on with those back there, before we try to bust outta someone’s locker.”
Scootaloo did so, and Sweetie whimpered, “Be careful, Apple Bloom...”
Apple Bloom was careful, and she didn’t have to go more than a few paces into the darkness, before Sweetie’s gasp sent the fur on Apple Bloom’s spine standing straight on end.
“Apple Bloom, look!” Sweetie said in an excited whisper, while Apple Bloom tried to get her heart to stop racing, more than usual that is.
“What is it?” Apple Bloom said, turning around to look. She hadn’t even got past the lit horseshoe section even, before Sweetie brought her up short just now.
“Keep walking down the corridor,” Sweetie instructed. “Watch the horseshoes that haven’t lit up, yet.”
Apple Bloom did so, and walked forward, almost to the bend in the corridor by now. And as she did, she could see soft glows growing ahead of her, the horseshoes lighting up as she approached them. Apple Bloom turned over her shoulder and looked back. Sweetie and Scootaloo were on the other end of this stretch of tunnel, sitting in an island of horseshoes themselves. And between them and Apple Bloom was blackness.
“B... but how is...” Apple Bloom said, her hooves clipping on the stone as she rejoined with her friends and trying to get her mind wrapped around it. “Is it because we’re ponies?” she asked very uncertainly. “Why’s it reacting to us just being near? How’s it reacting to us just being near?”
“I don’t know,” Sweetie said, “But maybe we should tell someone about this. L-like Twilight. She’s good at keeping secrets, if the past month is any indication. And... maybe it is because we’re ponies, so she’ll be able to tell what it has to do with our... with us.”
Apple Bloom looked around at the soft lights lining the corridor around her, and could only nod numbly. She didn’t know what they had managed to find, but it was starting to scare her that it might be something real serious.
Apple Bloom snuck back into her English class without any trouble, just right about when it was time for the presentations to begin. And then, Apple Bloom was royally boned, because she spent the whole period playing with her friends, but she knew she was gonna be anyway. After that class, with her bright pink bow now attached to her cherry red mane, Apple Bloom hurried over to Home Economics, which wasn’t her next class. It was Applejack’s.
Apple Bloom waited impatiently by the door watching students go in, looking for her sister. And every one who passed just... looked at her.
“Don’t mind me, heh heh. Just waiting for someone, no worries heh. Heh.” Apple Bloom said nervously, and then she saw her.
“Applejack!” Apple Bloom exclaimed, gallopping up to her sister. “I gotta talk with Sunset and Twilight! We all found something secret in the school, an’ I think it has to do with ponies!”
Wait, was she supposed to talk about this with her sister? Apple Bloom blushed, and pushed off of Applejack’s legs. “Sorry, just excited about ...something,” Apple Bloom said abashedly, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Wanna bring one of those former pony girls here, see if they know why something around the school’s reacting to anyone who’s a pony.”
“What you talkin’ about?” Applejack asked, hands on her hips. “Something is reactin’ to you?”
“Because we’re ponies now!” Apple Bloom asserted. “It was a little glowy thing. Ah wanted to show one of the pony girls, so they could see if it means anything!”
“Weren’t you supposed to be in class last period?” Applejack asked suspiciously.
“Oh, uh... yeah ah was in class I just... found it during a... break,” Apple Bloom said nervously, nervously but carefully. Applejack squinted at the uneasy little pony, but then the bell rang, and Applejack said,
“Whoop, sorry lil’ sis. Ah gotta go.”
“Oh mah gosh, ah’m late for P.E.!” Apple Bloom replied with a frightened whinny. She broke for the school gym at a dead gallop, not even seeing if Applejack had gotten inside yet.
Physical Education nowadays was an exercise in paranoia. Apple Bloom didn’t want to think she was complaining about every little thing, but she was so physically different, it was kind of nerve wracking for everyone involved. They just had her sit out at first, which was a torture in of itself, but then Coach Blue Dandy got it in his head that Apple Bloom was feeling left out. (You think?) But her trying to participate opened up a whole nother can of worms.
The worst part is she couldn’t hardly wear any clothing at all when she was exerting herself. Apple Bloom quickly learned that a sweaty mess of a pony falling over the shorts tangling her legs up is far more offensive than a naked one. She could maybe wear a tank top like Scootaloo did, but... what really was the point of that? It wasn’t like anyone was staring under her tail with anything more than disgust she was pretty sure. It just meant Apple Bloom had one more thing dividing her from her other classmates.
Really, when she stopped wearing clothes entirely it was easier, because people stopped seeing her as a person. It was a lot less alarming to have some innocuous animal scampering about, than to have to acknowledge that there was someone there who was trying in vain to look less like a pony and more like a girl. The less she tried to resemble a human being, the less awkard it got. So she went to P.E. with nothing on besides her favorite bow, and that was about as good as she was going to get.
Today they were playing volleyball, so at least it wasn’t tennis. Not that the racket was too heavy or anything. As much as she was using her mouth for everything, Apple Bloom could have really given them tennis balls a whack, if she could ever hit them, that is. But she could barely hang onto the gigantic tennis racket, and despite her attempts to train herself otherwise, Apple Bloom kept standing right where you would hit the ball, if it was way off where your human arm was stretched out. There was just no way to compete with the length and reach of anyone else.
Volleyball was easy enough, though. Apple Bloom just had to navigate a crowd of flailing high school students, avoiding getting stepped on or tripped over, and continuously lifting her poor, yanked, stomped tail out of harm’s way. Yeah. Easy.
If her team was really unlucky, Apple Bloom got to hit the ball with her head, because when the team was lucky, it never got low enough for her to hit it. But she was real good at hitting it with her head. Apple Bloom was sort of their insurance policy, for when the rest of them missed the ball.
As for the other team, Apple Bloom wasn’t sure if the boy up by the net (name of Jubilant), she wasn’t sure if he kept spiking the ball right at her on accident, out of spite for her, or out of sympathy. But she heartily butted it back every time he did, so it was all in good fun.
Just highlighting her differences made the students even more wary of her. Apple Bloom couldn’t get Bolt to even talk to her anymore during P.E., and he was usually talking to her a lot, since she knew him through Scootaloo’s friends at the skate park. When you’re randomly hurled together as a class, Apple Bloom took whatever friendship she could get. But Bolt was scared of her now, or something.
Apple Bloom couldn’t help but be aware of how the other kids just... they noticed, when Apple Bloom tried to touch her toes and it was just like, “Yup those are mah toes,” while everyone else had to stretch to reach them. They noticed when she wasn’t even winded after running laps on the track. They noticed how she couldn’t be the goalie anymore in football, because it was just impossible to stop the ball with her shorter reach, and her lack of hands.
Apple Bloom was sick and tired of getting noticed.
Apple Bloom actually ended up having to wait until lunch to use Rarity’s phone. There just wasn’t time between classes. Over the phone, the pony alien girls said they weren’t really going to be able to get away from taking care of new ponies and such on short notice. But it wasn’t more than a few days later, when Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer were there after school, along with the CMC, to check out the mysterious secret passageway. Sunset had with her a wierd instrument measury thing, and Twilight had... a camera.
“Okay, show us the glowing horseshoes,” Sunset said, looking down at the ponies questioningly. Apple Bloom nodded curtly, and led the way into the janitor’s broom closet. There, she showed them the horseshoe, Twilight was taking copious amounts of pictures, while Scootaloo obligingly depressed it and slid the panel opened and closed. Then the three girl ponies backed away out of the closet, while Twilight and Sunset watched the horseshoe with interest, to show the two girls how the glow in it faded with diminishing proximity to the ponies.
“I do believe you’ve found a set of imbued sigils!” Twilight said, kneeled down amid the brooms and cleaning supplies, fumbling one of her fingers finger at the hoof shaped switch and trying to depress it. Doing that only worked if they were lit up though. “These have clearly been enchanted to glow. But they can’t glow without magic!”
“Magic, huh,” Apple Bloom said in a dazed tone, looking at the soft light of the horseshoe somewhat warily. “Even ah got magic. It don’t feel like I got nothing, but... it’s right there, all aglow.”
Twilight waved her hand in the air around Apple Bloom saying, “I can’t quite figure it out. Are you somehow radiating magic, or is it just your normal thaumic field? You’re a genuine pony, in an amagical protoworld! We haven’t been able to study ponies in a world like this before. A sigil like this would normally glow indefinitely, but in a world with a dampened ambient field, it might become entirely invisible! Who created this? Who planned this? What does it mean??”
Apple Bloom took a step back, at the girl’s very large face getting right up close to her again. Stepping back a little more, and standing decidedly on her own, Apple Bloom asked, “So, it’s like we’re sweating out magic? Ah seriously don’t feel nothing!”
“From what I remember, it’s kind of like magnets,” Sunset offered. “You know how magnets have a magnetic field?”
“Uh, yeah?” Apple Bloom said, dancing around the horseshoe sigil with fascination at how she could get it to brighten and dim. “So ah’m like a magic magnet?”
“You could put it that way,” Sunset said, “In theory, all magical organisms have a thaumic field, generated by the arcanocrystalloids found in their tissues.”
“Sort of like magic sugar crystals,” Twilight clarified to everyone’s relief. “Except with hyperfullerene instead of sugar,” she added to everyone’s less than relief.
“But who put this here?” Sunset said in clear frustration, gesturing at the sigil. “I know for a fact that nobody has any magic here, unicorn or otherwise.”
“It is very strange...” Twilight admitted, sticking her head and shoulders in the crawlspace, shining a flashlight down its depths, taking a few pictures. Something caught her eye then.
“Sunset, come and take a look at this!” Twilight exclaimed, scrabbling back out of her ensconced position.
Sunset half crawled in, shining the flashlight around.
“It looks like hewn stone,” Twilight explained, standing hopefully behind her.
“Huh, you’re right,” Sunset said, coming out of the closet with Twilight hot on her heels. Sunset followed the wall outside, leaning her ear up to it and tapping on it. “Why is the rest of the school just a bunch of cheap drywall then?” she mused.
“We need to tear down this wall,” Twilight said intently.
“You are not going to tear down the wall,” Principal Celestia said in a very unamused tone.
Not a day later, the gang found themselves in the principal’s office again, trying, and failing to convince the principal to give permission to demolish the wall. Twilight, Sunset, Apple Bloom, Sweetie and Scootaloo, and Applejack stood in Principal Celestia’s office. Twilight herself looking like someone just kicked her favorite puppy. Which considering it was a talking puppy would indeed have been cause for alarm. Apple Bloom was missing dinner for this, but it seemed important enough that this was worth it. But the principal was adamant that nobody take down the wall, and she had some good arguments too.
“Despite your involvement in this strange... pony phenomenon,” the principal stated coldly to Twilight and Sunset, “You have yet to demonstrate any evidence for your knowledge being anything other than an elaborate ruse. The community at large is experiencing great hardship right now, and they’ll turn to any hope of help in their time of need. A clever swindler could take advantage of that, leading people to believe only they know what’s going on. Just as you have done. Are your intentions honest? I have no way to tell, but a number of things concern me.”
The principal folded her very slightly pink hands, saying, “First, you seemed determined to keep the school faculty wilfully ignorant of what was going on. Yes, an attempt to contain this phenomenon is admirable, but you only waited until now to come to me about it. I had to learn that my students were transforming into small colorful horses from the the network news. Why didn’t you tell me of this right away, so I could have helped with recovery and adjustment?
“Second,” Celestia continued, “You have already been shown to be withholding information several times. The sheriff tells me that you waited until long after the phenomenon had spread to inform them of the new development. Applejack herself seems to think that you staked out her farm and installed surveillance equipment, rather than come forward and tell her your intentions. And from what I hear of Apple Bloom here, you failed to inform her that she was not a fully mature form of the very pony that we assume you to be experts on. Did you not know she was a small filly? Then why should anything else you claim to know about ponies not be circumspect?
“Furthermore, what else are you not telling us?” the principal stated, wiggling her fingers together for some reason. Apple Bloom couldn’t really remember why, but she could tell beyond a doubt that Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer were in big trouble right now.
Celestia picked up a folder and stated, “Sunset Shimmer, a junior student who transferred, from a high school that will not forward your records,” while Sunset grimaced and muttered,
“Oh yeah, that would happen. I only needed to be good for a year, I thought.”
“And Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia continued, looking at the purple girl. “If that is your real name at all. A girl who came from nowhere, with no former education, no former residence, and no birth record in town hall.”
“To be fair,” Twilight said with a quaver in her voice, “That would all be readily explainable, if I had recently come here through a portal to another world.”
“Ah yes, the portal,” Celestia stated. She shook her head slightly, and added, “Which you are conveniently unable to open, to demonstrate your claim. A portal that otherwise appears to be nothing more than the side of an ordinary stone statue. Who are you really, Twilight Sparkle?”
“I swear I’m telling the truth!” Twilight begged in an anguished tone. “I know it sounds crazy, but—Applejack knows! She knows I’m telling the truth!”
“Quite honestly Twilight,” Applejack said giving her a careful look, “Ah’m not sure that you are telling us the truth.”
“But I—” Twilight yelped. Applejack cut her off saying,
“The whole truth.”
And Twilight didn’t answer that, but the way she stared at Applejack was the sort of way that you stare at a man eating beast about to make a meal of you.
“So frankly no, I am not inclined to let you demolish my school,” the principal continued, “And in fact, I’m not sure you should be allowed on campus, either of you. If you weren’t already working with the police, I would probably call them right now. If you have any evidence that your magical glowing crawlspace poses any threat to the student body, or offers a concrete solution to our pony problem, you may present it to either me or Vice Principal Luna, and we will take the matter of opening up the walls into serious consideration.”
Both of the girls in the principal’s sights seemed unable, or uncomfortable to answer at first, until Twilight blurted out, “You’re a princess!”
Sunset’s face fell in disgust. She grabbed Twilight’s arm and pulled her around towards the door saying, “Okay, we’re done here. Don’t make this any worse than it is. They already think we’re crazy.”
“You’re a princess,” Twilight insisted frantically to the principal. “And so is Vice Principal Luna. That means you have wings and a horn. You’re tall and graceful. You are incredib—” Sunset jerked on her arm again, trying to get Twilight to just leave.
“Wings and a horn,” Twilight repeated, “All three tribes together. Only you and Princess Luna will change that way. And me. I’m a princess too. You know I’m not lying to you and—” she fought with Sunset saying, “You’ll know that I’m not just making this all up, when you transform, and I predicted what forms you alone shall take!”
“I think we’re done here,” the principal said in a tired, bored, and generally disapproving tone. It seemed to hit Twilight pretty hard the way the principal said it, and Twilight clammed up with a look like she was the lost puppy, letting Sunset lead her numbly out of the principal’s office.
“Ah’m sorry, princess—ah mean principal,” Applejack said to Principal Celestia. “Twi is a bit of a wildcard it’s true, but she’s all we got right now. She’ll understand where you’re comin’ from, once she thinks a mite bit about what she said.”
“I don’t mean to tell you who to make friends with, Applejack,” the principal said worriedly, “But do take care of yourself. As admirable as it was you neglected your studies to take care of your sister, I won’t be nearly as understanding, if you do so at the request of those two, no matter how knowledgable they seem to be.”
“Thank ya kindly princess. Ah will keep that in mind,” Applejack said, respectfully doffing her hat.
“I’m sorry the rest of you had to see that,” the principal said, leaning over her desk to look down in thought at the three fillies who stood about level with the desk’s surface. “You should heed that warning too, though. Those two could possibly be a wealth of information, but until they demonstrate the veracity of their claims, be careful about trusting what they say.”
The three were blushingly silent, until Scootaloo elbowed Sweetie Belle, who blurted out, “Of course, princess! I mean, principal.”
Celestia sighed, and rubbed her fingers on her temples like she had a headache or something. “I am never going to hear the end of that, am I,” she said to no one in particular.
Well Applejack thought the principal was remarkably lenient with what she did, not outright banning those two alien pony girls from ever being seen on school campus. The three fillies weren’t supposed to go in the passageway again, which was sensible enough as its only function seemed to be a secret way into a bunch of the other rooms. Applejack was fairly sure that wouldn’t ever be needed for anything, even if they were having an awful lot of fun with it.
After seeing the principal, Applejack led the fillies out to the parking lot, to find the Apple family’s truck. Applejack could see the girls Sunset and Twilight were already over by the bus stop, so she jogged on over to make sure they were on the up-and-up.
“You two gonna take the bus?” she asked them.
“Well it’s not like we fit in the cab,” Sunset replied, tapping her toe as she looked up the street to see if the bus was coming.
Twilight looked at Applejack directly though, and said with a hopeful smile, “We could just sit in the cart behind the cab, if you want us to come with you.”
“Eh, not particularly? We’re gettin’ to the same place in the end,” Applejack replied, rubbing at an arm. “Just take the bus for now. It ain’t technically legal for people to be sittin’ in the cargo area, and ah don’t wanna lose mah permit over something as silly as that.”
“Oh, it’s illegal?” Twilight said, wide-eyed.
“Humans aren’t as good at anchoring themselves,” Sunset reminded Twilight. “No seatbelts back there.”
“Oh, I suppose that would be the case,” Twilight said softly, rubbing a finger on her lip and staring forward.
“Granny should already have the fillies in the cab, so ah’m gonna go with them,” Applejack said to her friend and... friend’s friend. “Meet ya at the farm? You know to call in once you get to the bus stop, right?”
“Not going to go on a three mile walk any time soon, though why your farm house is all the way on the other end of your farm from the road still eludes me,” Sunset replied.
“Quieter that way,” Applejack said simply. Sunset didn’t seem convinced.
So Twilight and Sunset took the bus, while Applejack drove the CMC back home. Once they rolled up into the driveway that evening, Apple Bloom immediately jumped out shouting, “C’mon girls, let’s go get some grub!” The three suddenly starving fillies then descended mercilessly upon that household, dodging ponies and people, but mostly ponies, in order to get themselves something to fill their hungry bellies. Clearly, it’d been a long 13 minute car ride for them.
As she walked in the main house, Applejack watched her sister and her two friends, three little ponies hopping up in the air to accept some fried taters from Big Macintosh. Looked like dinner today was a fryup... again. Couldn’t be picky, when you had to feed so many mouths at once. Big Mac probably took care of the cows already, but cooking on top of that had left him looking weary and haggard.
It looked to Applejack like the family needed help and a half with making enough food to feed and please everybody. They were on their third bale of hay, but that wasn’t looking like it’d be a problem. The cows had eaten way more hay than the ponies this winter, and now the little flowers were already starting to poke their way up through the snow. Wouldn’t be long before they could grow grass again, and... and when spring came, they’d likely have a lot more people in the world who could get by on eating grass.
“Hey, Big Mac!” Applejack greeted her brother, once she kicked her boots off and could stride into the kitchen with confidence.
“Eyup?” he asked, looking up from the three munching fillies.
“Nothin’ much,” Applejack said. She noticed Granny Smith followed along behind her, no doubt with the same thing in mind as she had. “Me and Granny wanted to take over the fryin’ if you wouldn’t mind,” Applejack related to the boy.
He smiled and said, “Thanks,” letting Applejack get right into it. Applejack jumped in with the frittering, the good old twist and flip that she was intimately familiar with. Big Macintosh in the meantime retreated gratefully to try and catch up on his studies. Applejack was soon working side by side with Granny Smith, who’d been driven by Applejack home earlier, after Applejack had that meeting with the principal. What a meeting that had been, too.
Strictly speaking Applejack wasn’t supposed to be at that meeting, but she was nervous about the ponies, and her darling little Apple Bloom, so she sort of hung back after school, and tagged along with them, and good thing she did, because the principal was right. Those two former ponies were acting downright sketchy in how they doled out their secrets as convenient, and Applejack was glad to have been given some warning to be wary about them.
Those other girls would get here in due time, when the bus dropped ‘em off, and Sunset phoned for a pickup from the stop. And then maybe they could all have a chat about the importance of being honest and straightforward. For now, everyone had to get some food ready for the hungry ponies, that was slightly more flavorful, nutritious and calorie dense than hay.
“8 more showed up todee,” Granny Smith said quietly to Applejack as they worked on food preparations.
“So many ponies showin’ up,” Applejack replied somberly. “There’s gotta be a hunnred of them now. Maybe even two!”
“An’ not nearly enough goin’ back to their lives,” Granny quite legitimately complained. “We got ponies tramplin’ this here farm to the ground. They outnumber the cows now. Maybe not in weight.”
“We’ll figgur somethin’ out, Granny,” Applejack consoled, “We just gotta take things as they come, and get people ready to deal with this, whatever it is.”
There was only the sound of sizzling and stirring for a while, when Granny said, “What kinna pony ya think you’ll be?”
Applejack snorted a laugh. “Earth, def’nitely,” she said with conviction. “Ah wouldn’t know the first thing of what to do with a horn or wings. Plus ah’m a rancher. We both are, an’ that’s about as earthy as you can git. Apple Bloom’s an earth pony, so it’s likely we’ll be that way, right along with her.”
“Likely but umnhm... crazy what happened with Ms. Cheerilee there,” Granny mentioned. “To think she wouldn’t get wings like her own daughter.”
“Doesn’t seem to bother her much,” Applejack said happily. “It is plum weird though.”
“Those... girls said,” Granny pointed out, “That an earth pony can give birth to either a unicorn or a pegasus.”
“Yeah...” Applejack replied in dismal agreement, trailing off unhappily as she repeated. “Those girls said...”
“Alright,” Sunset prompted Twilight Sparkle, “What do we know so far?”
Twilight and Sunset Shimmer were in their trailer again, which thankfully nobody had thought to check for license or registration now that it was parked here. The walls were very crowded with photos, and posted notes, and a map of the town, with a number of colorful push pins in it. Twilight stood by the map, while Sunset lounged on the bed again, Twilight saying curtly,
“The phenomenon is accelerating at a fairly predictable exponential curve, that much we know. A diminishing amount of ponies are becoming foals now, perhaps a 1:3 ratio of new foals to new adults. We recorded red pins for where everyone so affected was living when they changed, blue pins for where they worked or spent their day, and green pins for where they first noticed any changes happening to them.”
“And punching the numbers into the computer showed no correlation whatsoever,” Sunset said glumly.
“Yes, the correlation...” Twilight said thoughtfully, “If only I knew more about statistical analysis.”
“We’re gonna have to ask him for help, aren’t we,” Sunset said flatly.
“I suppose it’s better to ask now, than after he changes,” Twilight said with a shudder.
“He was really bad, was he?” Sunset asked with a sympathetic frown, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
“Completely unbearable,” Twilight groaned. “And frankly if I wasn’t tempting fate, I’d wish that I could talk with our version, instead of this alternate universe one. At least in our world, he’s not so...”
“Depressing?” Sunset suggested.
“Cranky,” Twilight replied flatly.
“There’s just nothing more we can analyze,” Sunset said with genuine regret in her voice. “You haven’t studied statistics enough. I haven’t studied statistics enough. I had plenty of time to do so, but I didn’t, so now we’re in a time crunch.”
“You didn’t have any reason to do so,” Twilight reassured her, sitting on the bed beside the flame haired girl.
“You’re right, Twi,” Sunset said with a sigh. “Just doesn’t leave us with many options here, and I really would like to help... somehow.”
They sat there silently for a while, before Twilight reiterated cautiously, “As far as expert statisticians, I can think of no one on this side of the portal more qualified than he is.”
“You really think he will have any ideas about this?” Sunset said with a note of disbelief in her voice.
“Well, if he doesn’t, then it’s back to the drawing board,” Twilight said, “Perhaps some analysts at the biotech lab will come up with something useful?” she suggested hopefully.
“Statistics is not their forte though,” Sunset sighed, “Not statistics like we need. The forensics scientists would be helpful, but they’ve already taken a crack at this, and until more evidence surfaces, all we have are a bunch of pins scattered randomly all around the map, with no rhyme or reason to any of these changes.”
Twilight thought quietly about that for a moment, and said, “You don’t think he’s causing it, do you?”
A harsh bark of a laugh escaped Sunset, attracting Spike’s attention however briefly. “If he could change people into ponies,” she said, “He’d probably end this whole phenomenon out of spite, or else we’d all be ponies right now, no exceptions, because, well, as he would probably put it...”
“I don’t see why I should even bother with anything. We’re all still fundamentally condemned,” said bitterly, an elderly, greying man, to the two beleagured once-ponies. He was sitting his well dressed, lanky form behind his desk, sitting there hands folded, like some kind of criminal mastermind, or a school teacher. The difference is subtle between those two roles.
“Believe it or not, miss ‘Twilight’,” the man said, glaring at her crankily, “If that is even your name. Not all of us want to be precious little pretty ponies. You think it’s the solution to everything, but does it really make a difference in the end? We all have an eternity of death to look forward to, even if your fantasy about walking on hooves comes true. Let it happen, or not, I’ll just keep teaching math to idiots, awaiting my inevitable doom.”
“Why do you keep insisting that death is forever?!” Twilight retorted in frustration, “Why do you keep dwelling on death in the first place? We’re not even talking about that! Why are you acting this way? It doesn’t make any sense!”
“I’m sorry if ontological annihilation has me a bit peeved,” he said with a disgusted sneer. “Get real. Parlor tricks aren’t going to stop our orderly progression toward heat death.”
“How is people confirmed as transforming into ponies a parlor trick?!” Sunset declared in exasperation. “How is that not proof positive that there are certain things about your paradigm that don’t hold water!”
He shook his head disapprovingly. “Oh please, I bet you’re going to say that it’s magic that’s afflicting these poor fools, sparkly, song-and-dance, Saturday morning cartoon magic?” he retorted hotly. “In case you haven’t noticed, our city is home to a very advanced biological research laboratory. And I’m sure you’ve heard of our thrilling advancements in the science of designer pets. It doesn’t take magic to think that someone’s pet project got loose, and people are finding themselves reduced to caricatures, all ready for some young girl to purchase them off the store shelves with a smile and a giggle, and ribbons in her hair.
“Humans tampered with the code of life,” he concluded simply, leaning back in his chair, “And now they lost control of the consequences. This is all basic logic. People think they can reduce us to something comprehensible, but we’re all just a mishmash of failed genes and duct tape. And now we’re starting to learn just what a good idea it is to tamper with that, no doubt to design a humanlike pony... who can really talk!” He finished his sentence with pursed lips, and an insultingly squeaky high voice.
They just stared at him speechlessly.
“Or perhaps it’s something else,” he said casually. “But there are far more scientific explanations out there than ‘The portal to a magical land did it.’ It’s not magic what’s happening, and it’s not special. Nor are you. Nor is anyone here. I don’t care what you think. You can’t convince me that turning into cutesy ponies will stop us from burning out all our puny little lives, annihilated on the way to that cold, unfeeling end of everything. That is what you’re here for, isn’t it? To convince me? Again?”
“Actually no, professor Discord,” Sunset said, and she said it in the way, that you speak to someone who does not have all their faculties together. “What we asked is if you can help us with the statistics on who’s being changed, to try and find a pattern.”
“Oh, well why didn’t you say so,” the greying man said in a syrupy tone, but then immediately switched to unfriendly disgust.
“Get out of my office,” he growled, and then went back to sorting papers, as he had been doing for the first ten minutes that they tried to get him to speak to them.
Uh oh, what’s his problem?
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This chapter made me want to kick both Discord and Celestia in the teeth.
I hope Sunset and Twilight make them beg for help when they change...or at the very least apologize.
...huh I was somehow expecting cranky as math teacher although discord works fine as well
Sadly, I understand where Celestia is coming from. Twilight unwittingly burned a lot of bridges in her paranoia. When you let the time for action pass you by, the consequences can be damning.
I'm going to say that the proof is not in the transformation, but instead in the demonstrable magic, such as Scootaloo's flight. Probably some other excuse to be found there too...
7678676
Discord I could understand, but how is Celestia acting poorly, given what she knows about the situation?
7678764
Nopony expects the Spanish Inquisition!
7678956
Worse still, those consequences can hurt other people beyond just yourself. When the boy cried wolf that last time, the village lost their entire herd of sheep.
...which doesn't make sense because wolves will only kill like 1 or 2 sheep at most then stop to feed on them
7679167
"Oh for the love of god you expect me to believe she's flying? You can see the wires!"
"Wires? What wires?"
7679641
There are different versions of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. The one I'm most familiar with ends with the wolf killing the boy to get at the sheep. Whether some or all sheep die at that point is irrelevant.
Also, what wires? The ones holding up that
halo, for a start.
7679644 Are you kidding? The boy ran into the village, shouted "A wolf is attacking the sheep!" got ignored and snubbed, then didn't thumb his nose at them and head on down the road, but instead ran back to selflessly throw his body in the way of the wolf attacking the sheep?
And I thought my story was hard to believe!
Scootaloo is really flying though, just to make that clear.
7679650
If the boy is the son of the shepherd, then his livelihood still relies on the sheep being alive.
Of course Scoots really flies. She just wears one of these at the same time: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/6b/01/5f/6b015fdbd96c1839601c7994ca753acf.jpg for the scootangel picture.
Great goodness. Twilight really shot herself in the foot. Much like her calling out the changeling impostor, her paranoid nonsense has garnered her a reputation of blowing things out of proportion, if not outright lying to her own ends. Had she learned to simmer down, they'd have taken her seriously.
I'd honestly be more concerned with the fact that nearly everybody ends up a prepubescent child when it happens, whether they were kids, teens or adults beforehand. This would have more detrimental effects than having one's species changed. Also, subtract one androgen wash from three quarters of male. Give it back.
I can see "D" as a grouch. He is very happy go lucky in the show itself, even more so than Pinkie and Cheerilee. Rarely does he get angry or have a bitter disposition, but the rare times he does makes it easy to imagine his doppelganger acting just like that. Being bitter and existentialist, always with his mind on how insignificant human life and legacy ultimately is, arguing that we are all going to die, and everybody who we leave behind will follow suit, guaranteeing we're all going to be forgotten whether we go extinct or not. For who knows their great, great, great, ancestors, let alone know the earliest one? Ad infinitum.
I'm sure if this were Earth two, a secondary version of Earth, alongside the original, where all who go there take on the likeness of its inhabitants, and the LOPE: PAP characters had the luxury of going there, WL would pounce at the chance to go there and stay. She more so than all the others misses her twenty digits, and would love to have toes again. Becoming a woman with purple hair and eyes isn't what she would have in mind, but if having twenty digits again means walking into a technicolor dream, it would be a small matter in her eyes. Plus, she would finally be free of the estrus that she dreads so much, a problem humans don't have. The characters in Bloom Filter are luckier than the LOPE: PAP ones are. They don't have to face a lifetime of mind numbing boredom induced by loneliness and never having the luxury of seeing another form of animal life as long as they shall live. You may recall that whether they returned minutes after disappearing or centuries later, most people would be totally alone till they eventually died, the ones who met others being a small minority. Also, the EQG characters are still genetically the same; they've still got the same blood they've always had, something the LOPE chars do not. Being completely stripped of your old body altogether and not having any transitional period would hurt much more than knowing it's coming.
Also, this disproportionate thing doesn't actually exist in the show. The percentage of square faces to round ones in season one were the result of getting settled as a new series, as well as budget. Previously, they all had the exact same base in Gen One. Only the voices let you know who was male or female. Now we've got five different bases to model off of. Standard male, standard female, elderly, young, and royalty. If there is anything askew, it is more of a 51-49 or a 47-53. It was never a sixty forty thing, or even further. In the My Little Pony And Friends series, it was made pretty explicitly clear that there were stallions, but they lived separately from the mares, and they only got together for reproductive purposes. The ratio was purely budgetary in season one of FiM. I actually wonder how a man comes by a name like Rose, although the Rose I know is a mare. Furthermore, how does a filly come by a name like Eli? Most of these names from common words are unisex in nature, but some are real names with definitive gender. Like the two I mentioned here.
Also, I love the fact that the ponies in Gen 1 and 4 occasionally whinny, something the one and a half ones never did. Props for acknowledging this. Most authors don't.
Returning to my other point, the real disaster is most of the populace turning into fillies, to say nothing about the rate being so rapid, there's no way to prepare in time. If most people end up filly, they might not be able to sustain themselves, and their society may collapse. AB was very pissed when she found out, as were the rest. Only Noi was relieved to have a second chance at childhood, and that was after being tortured by uncertainty, suspecting but not knowing. Of course, I suspect that this may be another fic where humanity was just an illusion and didn't actually exist.
7679641 I can understand Celestia acting a bit suspicious, but to threaten to call the cops and treat the girls like total crap...no.
Then there is the whole disbelief in the pony part of it...I am not saying that Celestia has to believe everything, but to verbally assault them and question their very character while also spreading the seeds of distrust at a time when everyone needs to come together...Celestia has bucked up.
Twilight's paranoia is fully justified. She has suffered imprisonment and psychological torture thanks to the time loop.
She went through loops where her friends no longer remembered her or believed in her.
Is it any wonder that she finds it difficult to trust that they would believe in her this time?
Twilight suffered a psychological break down, and is just barely picking up the pieces...and now the person who is the doppelganger of a pony she trusts and looks up is treating her like an untrustworthy piece of crap...so yeah Celestia owes Twilight an apology, and I would still like to see her suffer for her actions.
7679667
Well sure, but literally getting mauled by the wolf seems a bit ridiculously vengeful.
7679769
Depends on the episode, depends on the season. They've been representing stallions more as it progresses, and they think up new and creative pony designs. Compare the "Cider Squeezy" crowd that's pretty much all mares, to the "Viva Las Pegasus" crowd, where the ratio of male to female is meticulously balanced with an almost surgical precision. I kind of like the "more females" thing they had going early on, but either way is equally valid in my opinion, so trying to correct me on my error isn't really appreciated.
Oh sure, that's what they'll tell you.
But the reality is that they just copied and pasted the same (female) background ponies a lot more than the male ones, which can't be explained by budgetary constraints. What I think is that it was one of the original premises of the series, but then in later seasons they decided it was too controversial so started sneaking it back towards an even gender ratio.
It's a nickname for Ambrose.
What she doesn't realize is that human females have estrus every month and theirs doesn't even feel good!
Well, either he would be a huge grouch, or a whiny, weeping sad-sack, in my opinion. (Or a talented actor who doesn't actually care about having unlimited power.)
Twilight would agree with you I think, as would most of the characters. Except maybe Elias.
7680128
Okay, let's spell this out. There are these strange kids who start hanging around the high school, who don't live nearby and don't have any known history. Then students start disappearing without any word of where they went. The lost students are found completely changed from what they once were. Then other students start believing that a magical land lies across the boundary of a stone statue. Then the strange kids show up in her office demanding she let them demolish the school.
She only "threatened" to call the police as a way to complain about the fact that the police seemed to be beguiled by the girls too. But Celestia is really fucking peeved right now.
How is anyone supposed to verify that, outside of her, Sunset and Spike? and some insane pink girl in the corner raving in the corner about demons arising
7680465 Everything you listed just confirms why Twilight and Sunset were trying to keep things secret. Because there is no proof, because no one would believe them, because everyone would call them crazy and treat them like crap...and oh look that is exactly what happened.
People like Celestia and Discord are the ones who can get people hurt because they are in positions of respect, and can influence people. This was shown when Celestia planted that seed of doubt in AppleJack's mind.
I get that Celestia is frustrated and upset with the situation, but taking it out on the only ones who seem to know what is going on is ridiculous and dangerous.
The boy who cried wolf more appropriately fits Celestia and Discord rather than Twilight considering she and Sunset have done everything they can to help while people like Celestia and Discord are content with leading people astray with false information simply because they don't believe.
I am not saying they should accept everything the girls say at face value, but the fact that they have a talking dog should be proof enough that they know something.
7680987 I'm fairly sure their meeting with the principal would have gone a bit the way of the wacky had they brought their talking dog along with. But who ever remembers to invite Spike along? it's not like he's ever an easy solution to all their problems involving cutie mark theft and/or negotiating with a dragon. Pssh, come on. He's only a baby dragon after all.
7681071 By the way I do like your story.
I hope I did not give you the wrong impression or anything.
Thank you for writing it!
7681871
I didn't get that impression, no. You seem really into what the characters are going through. So, no problem! I really appreciate the good word.
7680465 That's half true. If you ever saw the My Little Pony and Friends series, you'd know That there were indeed stallions in there, but they didn't live with the mares. They only came together for biological necessities. Otherwise they would have to clone themselves like the comics. In the comic they were cloned, but in the TV show they reproduced the normal way. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say the same may be true for PV.
Everything we have seen implies if not outright states PV is a town that favors tradition, so it's not surprising that guys would see it fit to stay indoors and remain unseen. Coming out is something to be done on rare occasions. But then, the background characters were clearly not the focal points, and we weren't meant to think this much on it. They would often turn up in places they should not be or could not be for some contrite reason. This is cutting corners, an acceptable practice for a series that was just getting itself grounded in 2010. Once established, it moved on to its logical conclusion: More variety in character design, utilizing all the bases rather than being picky with the standard mare design. There is no prejudice against them, but mares are clearly the men of their world, and stallions the women. It's no wonder when authors write stories about dimensional travel, Mares have a half and half chance of coming through as men, and men as mares. Equestrian males always come though male, and earthling females always come though female.
Also, it was a subconscious thing unintentional. We must not forget who the target audience is. Yes, the show is a family show, but they know who it's most liable to appeal to, and they had them in mind first. Do you think it was made to be enjoyed by those who had their androgen washes?
There have been four married couples unrelated to the main cast, and two of those couples had kids. The Cakes were the first, and they were a family well before the events of the show occurred. Cupcake conceived the Cake twins, and they were opposite sexes, a colt and filly. Mi Amore Cadence was next, and got pregnant three seasons after getting hitched, giving birth to a filly. Rich is the exception, not the norm. They were always a family, but we don't see Mrs Rich until much later. Finally one other couple tied the knot over the course of the show, no update on them. Every couple is a straight one. There haven't been others except the shipping jokes. They value companionship and togetherness more than romance, saving romance for rare occasions.
The ratio is clearly not a sixty forty, more like a fifty three forty seven, or fifty one forty nine. It may be slightly a skewed one way, but not significantly. If it were a sixty forty, let alone further in either direction, there would be a very bad crisis looming over their heads, and there would be frequent dialogue and references to it. Since they never mention any such crisis, I presume there is none. With Ponyville being traditionalist, the major cities are more contemporary. There's not many scenes in Manehattan or Canterlot, but they have consistently had everybody walk around without issue. Besides, we have seen that colts can look like fillies. Case in point, Pip. If Pip never spoke, you'd think he was female. In fact, most stories I have read where this is the case treat the situation like a crisis. Much like everybody being reduced to foalhood, a sixty forty population is difficult to sustain. If it went twenty eighty like many write it to be, they would constantly be on the brink of extinction, unless they are immortal. Only one percent, even less being adults would not be good. Less than one percent of the population being of a particular sex could get serious. Unless you can be cloned like the Gen One comics could be, you will be in a tragic state with only mares around, which wasn't the case in the Gen One animations, where stallions were abundant.
There's going to be loads of mares in want of an androgen wash, who won't be getting them without a miracle.
7682065
I wasn't talking about My Little Pony and Friends, and would rather forget that existed thanks.
Oh, there are plenty of explanations for why Equestria, or Ponyville might be so heavy on mares. Maybe Ponyville is a nudist colony that kicks out any male who gets a boner. Maybe all the stallions died in a war.
Maybe there is an equal gender ratio of fillies to colts. That of course means a lot of superficial male stallions, who have to spend their life forever alone, but it's a more truthy theory, so therefore we have to use it.
I personally like to go with the more fillies than colts theory, because every other one is grimdark and crapsack.
7684073 Alright. I won't argue with your viewpoint. But there's nothing to be ashamed of in being a shut in, and guys in public on a regular basis are the exception to the rule. Macintosh being the rule and Mr Rich being the exception. The cities have always been shown to be progressive as a whole. Doughnut Joe vs Cupcake. Cupcake definitely owns the establishment legally, yet the Cakes run the place together. Doughnut Joe has his own shop in the city. Do you really think the patriarchal half of the couple would ever own and run Sugar Cube Corner solo in a traditional town like PV?
Also, I won't argue the point about not being totally equal demographic wise, but you must realise that there would be a major crisis if it went as far as some suggest. As a 49-51 or 47-53, it's not that serious. That's acceptable and good. It's how it should be. When it becomes 60-40, then it's a problem. Some fictions even make it a 20-80 or 70-30. What do you suppose happens when a plague, disease, infection spreads? Or an accidental cosmic event decimates the population? Or a war comes along? Or just outright life itself in it's normal, standard, natural form happens? Unless the population can sustain itself on cloning alone, or some of them are immortal, you ultimately lose your lifeline, your insurance on life, your means of preserving your blood. Do they clone themselves? Are they Immortal? You see what I mean by this now?
Fortunately, several fictions I have read point out this fact many overlook, even if The Scent is first and foremost a clop fest. Others aren't clop fests. Doesn't make the point any less valid.
7684251
But there is something terribly sad, and lonely about it.
It's a fascinating idea you have here, but I'm really not seeing it.
Then, they... have kids?
How would gender ratio be a problem in having kids? Are you worried what would happen if the population didn't have a lot of attention starved males to fight in wars?
Yes, if you are underpopulated then it's harder as a species to recover from ecological stresses. But what does that have to do with gender ratios?
7686572 It's like this: The Venus Flytrap is only found naturally in the southern US of A. A plague of blight took the lot out. Now it's gone. When you have extreme minorities, they are more easily subject to depopulation and extinction. Except this is even worse, as it took centuries and millennia for genetic diversity to get where it is. Eventually you might manage to make fe/males more abundant and diversity will make its return, but in the next five centuries you have a crisis that cannot easily be remedied. Unless cloning is a thing you need a good supply of fe/males. Males specifically.
There is a fiction called The Scent: Lust of Mares. It is primarily a clop fest, but once you get beyond that, it frequently makes reference to the very real crisis they everyday face. You'd have to be extra careful about your individuals who had their androgen washes, because they are so few and far between compared with those who didn't get one, just losing one is a tremendous tragedy. What now?
Plus, the religious crowd loves monogamy. The show has shown nothing but monogamy thus far. This could never happen in a world where a 60-40 ratio is a fact of life just by means of inherent body chemistry that makes androgen washes extremely rare. Relationships like the Cakes, Pies, and Riches could never thrive in such a world. One good plague that takes a substantial portion of their guys away would be far more severe than one in real life Earth. Got it? The entire purpose of males is genetic diversity, which can't happen in their absence or scarcity.
7686653
Males don't devote as much of their body to reproduction as females, so there don't have to be as many of them to keep a population stable.
Be careful before you let your own biases cloud your judgement. Sure, they're giving a token effort to make everything all stiff-shirted monogamous to avoid getting attacked by the religious crowd, but they are good at leaving some things ambiguous, and mistakes do occur. For instance, the show has shown living together, Mr. Cake, and Mrs. Cake, and Pinkie Pie. Sweetie Belle has a bed in her sister's house for some reason. Dinky has been shown under the care of at least 3 different mares. There's a sort of creature besides Princess Cadance's child that is born with both a horn and wings.
That's why you shouldn't rely on the show as any sort of official, binding canon. The show is under more scrutiny, so they're very restricted in what themes they can explore. My story is about people changing slowly, without any obvious way to change back, which would also never be shown in the show. So why should gender ratios be held to a double standard?
Almost all of the genes required to make a male male will also be present in every female, so a drop in the amount of available males won't lose that diversity any more than any other population crash.
7686920 That's all very well. But that doesn't change the fact that either extreme is disastrous, only one becomes disastrous faster. Go too far in either direction, and you will have the same ending result: Death. One way, the crisis is obvious and easily detectable, and would get nipped at the bud. The other way it would be slow and gradual, a step by step process that would go undetected until it's too late. By the time it's noticed the other way, no one would know there was a problem until it's severe.
An all male thing is viable if they are immortal. An all female thing is viable is they are either immortal or capable of cloning. If neither is true, both are equally screwed. That's what males are for: They make cloning unnecessary and permit diversity. Without the diversity males enable, we'd all be vulnerable to the same illness, and one good plague could wipe us out. More adaptability is possible with more branch outs which you cannot have with cloning. It would still result in a crisis, it would just take longer to show itself. Like I said, the fifty one forty nine thing would be the best and healthiest. The sixty forty thing or worse indicates an oncoming disaster.
7687091
There's a big difference between all female, and 75% female. I don't think anyone is postulating an all male or all female species. I heartily agree that when you've got more males than females, your population overall is going to have serious problems. All female populations are possible in very rare cases, but for the most part all you need are enough males, and any species can survive. Equal ratios of male and female are still way more males than necessary.
There's nothing about a 60:40 gender ratio that will make it turn to 100:0. The next generation will have 60:40 just like the previous one.
7689758 Again, that's all fine and good. The first line, and bottom line was: Bar cloning, sooner or later either extreme will produce disasters. One will do so sooner, the other later. The former will be obvious enough to nip in the bud. The latter will go unnoticed until it gets serious. That Sixty forty I mentioned is a hypothetical situations, and most stories don't use that. It's usually much more extreme than that. The question is, at what point does it go to far? At what point do you not have enough to be sustainable? If you only have one, an accident or an anti population nut will incinerate it, and it's over. You have two, it's hardly enough to go around without wearing it out. They would get worn raw, or be regarded as objects. Their rarity would result in them being extremely guarded commodities, thus further insuring they are property. At what point does the scarcity get too great? Because with just one, everybody is a sibling or a cousin. Do you get my drift?
7689801
Well, you can sort of calculate that actually. Say you have F females in a population, and M/F is the ratio of males to females. Say SUCC is the success rate of sex resulting in a kid, and sexperF is how many times a woman has sex. That means the number of kids will be F * sexperF * SUCC. For your population to say stable, the number of kids has to be equal to the sum of the males and females, so M + F = F * sexperF * SUCC. Solving for sexperF, you get sexperF = (F + M) / F / SUCC = (F/F + M/F) / SUCC = (1 + M/F) / SUCC. So if the ratio of male to female is 50/50, and the success rate of fertilization is 70%, then each women has to have sex at least 2.85 times on average, to sustain the population. Since M/F is 50/50, that means males also have to have sex at least 2.85 times.
If the ratio M/F is 1 male born for every 3 females, females will be more plentiful, so don't have to have as many kids per female. sexperF works out to be only 1.9 sexings per female. Males however are less in number now, so the males have to have sex 1.9 * F / M times in order for females to get laid enough. Given a 1/3 M/F ratio, that means males have to have sex about 5.7 times. Basically, the fewer males are born in relation to females, the more often males will have to fuck in order to sustain the population. So, if your male population cannot have sex 5.7 times throughout their lifespan, then yes a 25% male birth rate will be unsustainable.
Of course the "70% success rate" is really, really optimistic, since people and/or ponies may be having sex outside of their fertile period. But even a 30% success rate means 4.44 fucks per female, and 13.3 fucks per male. I think it's pretty safe to say that given the resources males invest in a fucking, 13 or 14 fucks is still within the reasonable limit. But let's say we don't know how likely it is that sex makes babies. How unlikely can it get, before our population is unsustainable? Well, let's figure out how many times a male pony could have sex, give a conservative estimate of once every day during the month of estrus for age 30-500. That's 14,100 fucks. Working backwards through the requirements then, it means that given 25% males, 75% females, a given act of coitus has to succeed 0.028% of the time, or once every 3525 tries.
Given a 50/50 M/F, coitus has to succeed 1 in 7050 times, which means that sex can be even less likely to make babies, but how could actual successful insemination be that unreliable? That doesn't stop at 50/50, either. At 3 / 1 M/F, sex only has to make babies 1 in 10,575 times. The problem is that the more males there are, the fewer females there are. That means each female has to make more babies to make up for the extra males, and that will definitely be a greater limiting factor than how often a man can get it up. It's much more difficult for a species to survive with a M/F ratio of >1, but for a M/F ratio of 1/2, 1/3, or even 1/4, all it really means is that guys have to get laid more.
7694737 Yes, Ferret Face. Yes all around. Although you could not argue a 5-95 or even greater is clearly a disaster waiting to happen. Things will roll along, the inevitable plague or natural disaster will wipe out a quarter of the entire population. The risk is very real the entire Five will be amongst the causalities, frozen in the planetary blizzard, fallen to the famine, or what have you. No comment on half the population being lost. Fate smiles on them, and the minute party survives, partially or entirely. Better not count on that kind of miracle twice, because the next time something beyond our control takes a notable portion of the population away, it may not be so nice. Sooner or later your luck is bound to run out. Protect them at all costs, or try to beef up their numbers.
Nobody proposed a perfect half and half, as that would never happen, certainly not when the next birth sets it off. In reality, we've always been nearer a 47-53, and that's mainly crisis free where that is concerned.
I am quite aware that male fertility doesn't die unless you intentionally screw it up. Nothing is more resilient than a man's seed production. A man will continue to produce seeds even into his hundreds, plentiful as always, even when his other functions give out, till they do completely. You can kill millions of your seeds by consuming alcohol, or making them immobile, but your system will constantly produce more every instant, guaranteeing the moment the poison is out of your system there will be just as many if not more pouring out of you like a broken dam if you held it in. The damage to your circulatory, respiratory and neural health is a separate matter. Really nothing short of severing the reproductive organs or tying a quadruple or quintuple knot around it has any real effect. Even that is known to often fail.
The female reproductive system is much more delicate, and can be compromised in a number of ways other than tying the tubes. Plus, they are on a clock. By the time your middle aged your fertility is beginning to fail you, and it becomes ever harder to conceive. And if you do, the odds of miscarrying increase ever more. Men can afford to put it off forever, save death if they are otherwise unhealthy.
I personally think every man should deposit his seeds into a glass vial and hand it over to the government. It would contain the spread of contagious illness providing that's all he does. If everybody did that and only that, loads of plagues would be averted.
And I actually got us into this discussion. How pathetic is that? On track, Dinky had best get fitted for a dress, and measure it quadruple times smaller. And try some dandelion, as s/he is going to get quite attached to them. S/he may find dandelions a fine delicacy. Get used to them now, for they will get more delicious later. I don't think s/he is going to like walking around au naturale, yet the shape of his body isn't going to accommodate trousers unless specifically tailored for him. Dresses will be just as easy to slip on and fit in either case, as using one leg then the other won't be needed. Actually, I have noticed a little something. Most of them are unicorns. Maybe that's coincidental, but I think this would be the third one. Two others. That surely has no meaning, only a measly observation. It's most assuredly not going to alter his preferences, s/he's still going to prefer mares as always. It didn't alter anyone else's preferences. At least s/he has a good idea what's in store for him, a luxury the last man didn't have. The question is, who's going to comfort who? The man who was prepared for it, and braced himself for the dress and dandelions, or the man who had more time to get used to it after the fact? These two are going to get quite acquainted with each other.
7694872
I don't think a small handful of pernicious STDs constitutes "loads" of "plagues." It's almost as safe, if you just get your partner tested for STDs, and I've heard that having sex is a whole lot more fun than donating at a sperm bank.
There are a lot of characters here who are going to get some rude surprises if Twilight doesn't tell them beforehand. The paramedics in particular, it looked like Twilight wanted to tell them, but was weirded out by how different they were from their counterparts. Plus, she doesn't want to get buried in people demanding to know if she knows their counterparts.
7695105 Uh Huh. If Dinky wants to do a chick, now's the time. S/he won't be able do do them that way after the fact., and there may not be much time. S/he doesn't know for a fact that s/he will become a chick, but s/he definitely knows it's an open possibility. Aside from that, once s/he gets stuck in a prepubescent form with an adult mind, it will make no difference whether s/he is a chick or not.
With the same mature mind in that immature body, I have no reason to think his preference will be changed in any way. S/he just won't be able to act on arousal. Actually, that's something of a nightmare scenario. What happens if a pregnant woman is effected? That can only end in tragedy. Real dark thoughts. Imagine if WL was looking forward to her new foal, then God decided to strip away her marehood. Her pregnancy is ended like it never happened. She isn't a mare anymore. She'd be emotionally devastated. You may recall that her reason for living, the joy of her life were her clotfriend and her son. She probably wanted to give him siblings somewhere down the line. Save the estrus, she most likely always had a preference for males. Making her unsuitable for them, especially when she fell in love with a particular one would be a nail in her coffin.
By the way, you recall the other PAP character, Sudden Storm? She became a chick, but she didn't mind it all that much. In fact, she seems to love being a chick. And she proudly maintains her single status. No romantic relationships whatever. You think the same could be said for any Bloom Filter characters?
7695178
Wasn't WL the lady with the broken horn? The one who did regress Lonely Day in age? Lucky that the main character was such a prude, or WL would have been the one to hit the rewind button on Alex's new pregnancy.
Oh, and um... Peach Fuzz, but she was barely mentioned. This story really isn't about the trials of gender bending, so I don't plan to spend a lot of time harping on it, or focusing on characters going through it. It's an issue that does come up, but... I have other things to write about here, rather than Peach Fuzz's particular brand of exhuberance.
7695239 I believe I said before that the obvious remedy is to send the aliens home. The moment the aliens turned up they did nothing but wreak havoc, unintentional as it may be. Now they've become trapped in a world alien in their eyes. I pity their plight, especially since theirs has caused grief to every person who inhabits that world.
I recall quite vividly both AB and Eli worried that their minds may be altered by the transition. Ultimately, it was in vain, as both thought normally given the circumstances, and aren't that much different beyond their physical state. I am still wondering who gives a filly that name.
I noticed a trend in transdimensional stories to and from the human world and Eques. Mares always have this split chance of coming through as men, and men going through a half and half chance of emerging as mares. Equestrian males always come through as males and Earth females always come through as female. Just how many people are liable to lose their marehood or manhood coming to earth or to equestrian lands? Is there any indicator as to what might happen? Predict which men would emerge stallion and which would emerge mare? Predict which mares come through as men and which women? I know a woman will always emerge mare, and a stallion will always emerge man.
Also, there's an awful lot of mares with purple hair, aren't there? And a very high number of them are unicorns. Three of the central characters in the show itself have purple hair. One of its supports has pink hair, but streaks of purple are apparent. WL in LOPE is a purple haired unicorn mare with a fractured horn. Sudden Storm, formerly a man is a mare and her hair is very purple indeed. And if I remember correctly, Elijah has purple hair anyway. The story that kickstarted the "Ponies on Earth from its Human inhabitants with little to no explanation" genre is unique in that it has a red haired main protagonist.
7695578
Well, in the chapter Announcements, Twilight mentions something about crazy Equestrian genetics which would imply that half the male humans would become female ponies. If only it were that sensible.
7696072 Yes, I imagine when Dinky would find out, s/he'd pounce on Twilight, grabbing onto her throat in attempt to strangle her. It wouldn't be legal, but you could understand why s/he is doing this. Of course, that'll never happen, because Dinky doesn't know for a fact s/he will become a chick. There's nothing to go by that will be the case. But S/he certainly knows that it's an open possibility, and may happen. Everybody does at this point; it's not a secret anymore.
Of course, they cannot prove anything at this point, because while it accounts for many things, not all can be explained away by who's equal is what race or gender. They have more leeway than the PAP crowd in that they have some indicator of what they'll get, but Scootaloo not being a dodo throws much of this into a loop. That and not everybody has found their doppelganger. Much like the films, human Twilight had been found, but human Sunset has never once been seen nor mentioned. Plus, she cannot possibly know everybody in Equestria. The only things you can predict in LOPE are that most people don't go through that particular thing the big "A" went through. Man to mare transitions are quite rare. The other is the rate people come back out of limbo will increase till they all return, the smallest minority being like "A" coming back in a matter of minutes, then dozens in hours and days, then hundreds in years, then thousands in centuries. And moving vehicles are teleported into the future with all cargo and passengers and crew in tow, just like every person the spell was cast on. Really, the only thing you cannot predict in this fiction is who will get it next as there is no traceable pattern to follow and predict. But there is more to go on here. Just whoever Spike and Twilight know in Eques, let it be known, and whoever shares that name will know what to expect. The rest can only brace themselves for whatever will happen. Although it seems it's weeding out everybody whose equivalent is a prepubescent filly, occasionally going for adults and males, but rarely. Whether this is coincidental or not is debatable. I'm going to guess that thaumic energy is responsible yet again. But rather than cook their brains, it either: 1) reveals their world a sham, a scam, an errant fraud, an overblown illusion that wasn't real or 2) thaumic energy is still not compatible with humans, but rather than overload their brains till steam comes out their ears and nostrils, it shifts their shape till it takes on a form more compatible with it.
Your Breaking the 13th rule of Star Wars, never talk about Midichlorians!
7697754
Don't you use your Jedi Mind Tricks on me!
But in all seriousness, I thought Midichlorians were a pretty brilliant idea. Magic mitochondria!
7703233 Admittedly I don't care that much about it either, it just needed to be said.
"“Thank ya kindly princess. Ah will keep that in mind,” Applejack said, respectfully doffing her hat."
"principal", or did no one remark on Applejack making the mistake too? The other two making the mistake there had it mentioned, so I'm wondering.
"being seen on school campus"
"on the school"?
"who’d been driven by Applejack home earlier, after Applejack had that meeting with the principal."
...Um. Is this another relic of an earlier version of the text? I don't think it contradicts anything... but we just saw that happen. Why say it again here?
"flavorful, nutritious and calorie dense"
"nutritious, and"?
"A diminishing amount of ponies are becoming foals"
"A diminishing number of ponies"?
"The forensics scientists would"
"forensic"?
"They just stared at him speechlessly."
...Yeah. Yeah, I can see why.
"Nor is anyone here."
I don't know, the pony-plague-creating genius slash comic book mad scientist from your above scenario sounds pretty special.
"Actually no, professor Discord"
Hah! I was wondering who it was! :D
Did not guess him. :)
"it in the way, that you speak to"
"way that"?
7679641
...which doesn't make sense because wolves will only kill like 1 or 2 sheep at most then stop to feed on them
Hm...
Maybe the wolves were actually livestock thieves from the next village over disguised as wolves?
7680465
And if certain parts of their story are true, then, whatever the status of the rest of it, they're not even strange kids but strange adults who have been pretending to be highschoolers. I doubt the principal is particularly happy with that possibility, either.
"and some insane pink girl in the corner raving in the corner about demons arising"
...Huh. You might be referring to Diamond Tiara... but I'm not sure.
7684073
"Maybe there is an equal gender ratio of fillies to colts. That of course means a lot of superficial male stallions, who have to spend their life forever alone, but it's a more truthy theory, so therefore we have to use it."
Not following your logic there. Please elaborate?
7686920
"For instance, the show has shown living together, Mr. Cake, and Mrs. Cake, and Pinkie Pie."
Interesting. Why do you class this as a mistake? Or... were some of the things in that list examples of ambiguity rather than mistakes?
Oh, and was the last item indeed related to this, or thrown in as an unrelated mistake as a joke?
8319214
She corrected herself just a little earlier.
Maaaaybe? I'll take a look. ...I don't think so? Applejack just had that meeting with the principal where she kept calling her princess, and then she drove the fillies and Granny Smith home, and then she said that line, all in this chapter as a matter of fact.
I got tired of someone projecting their fantasy onto my story, about a population crash due to catastrophically low amounts of males like in that one Sliders episode, and was snarking about how silly it is to insist that equal gender ratios have to happen with colorful magic ponies, since it happened to randomly end up that way on Earth.
I'm sure if you asked the writers whether they were intentionally implying Pinkie Pie was in a polyamorous relationship with the Cakes, they would say it was a mistake, and probably that you are a mistake. But they'd say that whether it was a mistake or not, so I guess we'll never know...