15. Stallionverse Agents of S.A.S.S.
Darkness. That was all that surrounded him right now. His hooves were tied back, as he sat on a chair. The bag that covered his head smelled of old sweat and Celestia knows what else, but all in all, it could've been worse. And that worse he was afraid of the most.
"Look, I don't know what's going on, but you got the wro--"
"SILENCE!" A screechy voice yelled at him. "I KILL YOU!"
"AAAH!" He yelled.
He heard something getting smacked, followed by a yelp of pain.
"No you won't!"
Red Hope swallowed. He tried keeping his calm, but as much as he always tried to act all macho, he was nothing more than a simple wimp. He was a student of magic, sure. Third best student his year, too. But none of that helped when you have a magical dampener on your horn.
"If it's money you want, I don't have any! My parents are just simple shopkeepers in Trotsaw..."
"WE DON'T NEED YOUR MONEY! WE NEED YOUR SOU--"
There was that smack again. He reckoned it was quite a funny good-cop, bad-cop show from afar. Except they weren't cops. At least he didn't think so. He wasn't a criminal. He didn't do anything wrong. He was nopony. Not quite ugly, but not handsome either. Few friends. No real life achievements yet. No dreams. No marefriend.
He sighed deeply. To think that today was going to be the day. The big day. The biggest day of his life.
This was the day he was going to ask out...
...Twilight Sparkle.
HOPE DIES LAST
Growing up, Red Hope was not like the others. While all the colts were playing hoofball, he was back home, reading books. Nopony, himself included, was surprised when his cutie mark, an open, blue book, appeared out of nowhere while he was reading. Some joked that his name and cutie mark couldn't be more different, but his parents begged to differ. They were poor shopkeepers, barely able to keep the ends meet, but they were loving parents who wanted nothing more than happiness for their only foal. He was their hope. A red coated, little ball of hope which later grew up and became the smartest colt in his school, and then some. Trotsaw was hardly a small city, but it paled in comparison to Canterlot in almost every respect (the food was better, though). His mind was set on only one thing- achieving as much knowledge as possible. What he would do with it, he would think of later. And what better place for this than Princess Celestia's Academy for Gifted Unicorns?
First, he had to pass the entrance exams. He heard legends. That they made grown stallions cry, students to drop out at the first question and many lives getting scarred forever after the utter failure they brought. He smiled smugly and wrote one correct answer after another, once in a while taking a quick glance at the panicking students around him. If that wasn't an empowering experience, he had no idea what was.
One week later, the results were posted by the main entrance and ponies gathered early in the morning to see, hope and pray (not always in this order). He counted around ten or so students that walked away in tears before he just opted to ignore them completely.
Once the crowd thinned out to a reasonable degree, he moved in as well, just to see who else was there and how well they did, comparatively. He noticed one colt he recognized from his school back in Trotsaw. A white coated unicorn with messy, silver mane, with a constellation of stars as a cutie mark. What was his name again? Star Seer? Star Watcher? Whatever. He was also inspecting the board with a sour smile on his face.
"Hey, uh..." Long pause to try and remember the name. Star Gazer? Did he even have a Star in his name? "...how did it go?"
The unnamed colt sighed deeply.
"I passed. Just 67%, barely. I got lucky." Red Hope nodded, then looked at the middle of the list, looking for any pony with that score. He found exactly one, named Constellation Spectacle. One- no Stars after all. Two- who names their kid like that? "But I've seen your score. Pretty impressive."
"Nah, don't mention it." He waved a hoof, then an idea popped in his head "You know, we're gonna be living in dorms, wanna share a room? I'd rather live with somepony I know."
Constellation (no, seriously, WHO?) nodded. "Yeah, sounds good."
"I sure hope so. Sharing a room with the number one student is no small deal." He shrugged nonchalantly. Constellation (ugh) went silent, shifting his eyes around. Not in a sarcastic way as Red Hope expected (yes, he realized how much of a braggart he was at the moment). "What?"
The other pony didn't say anything, just pointed his hoof at the board. Red blinked, then finally turned towards it and suddenly, his eyes went wide.
1. Twilight Sparkle - 100%
"What..." His eyebrow twitched nervously. "...but... but, how? I'm sec--" but then he noticed something else.
2. Sunset Shimmer - 99%
"WHAT!"
"Well, you still got the third place." Constellation (who from now on he'll refer to as Con) patted his back. "That's pretty awesome."
3. Red Hope - 97%
"Oh come on!"
He was pretty sure it had to be a mistake of some kind. Maybe whoever graded it mistook his hoofwriting (unlikely, since he wrote with magic)? Or was this test rigged? And who exactly was this "Twilight Sparkle"? And what made him/her so great, anyway?
The train of thought was derailed by a very loud noise.
"YES! YES! YES! WOOOOOHOOOO!" A noise commonly known as 'teenage-filly-shouting-out-loud'. It was a white coated, red maned filly, that kept bouncing around uncontrollably. "Totally nailed it! Ha, who da best?" Her horn created a light construct of an arrow, pointing at herself. "This one!"
Red Hope was about to puke. THIS was the best student in the school? This was the one who beat him by three percent? This couldn't be!
"You're eight!" Another filly said, as she approached her. This one was slightly taller, light orange coated and a mane that he could best describe as "covered in flames".
"Whatev's, still top ten!" The mare beamed proudly.
"I meant your mental age."
"Love you too!"
Red Hope sighed with relief. Consulting the scoreboard, he deduced that this one was called Moondancer, ranked 8th with 89%. Not too shabby for a mare her type. Definitely leagues better than fillies back in his school, who were all fashion, looks and gossip, but no brains. But then there was the fiery maned one. Was she the one...?
"Why the long face, Sunny? It's just one percent, no biggie."
"I'll show you one percent if you don't shut up!"
"Ooh, that was cold! And not quite as clever as you think."
Deducing that he was looking at Sunset Shimmer, Red Hope made a mental note to watch out for her in the future. He didn't want to approach her right away. He couldn't quite place it, but something about her screamed "dangerous, stay away!". The way she chased Moondancer around and shot small fireballs at her was also a good sign to never step on her horseshoes. He snorted and shook his head, trying to remember what his old friends saw in mares. He could tell that if any of those filly-crazed guys went here, they'd rate them as 'smokin'hot' (no pun intended in Sunset Shimmer's case). While they were not exactly a pain to look at, especially when compared to some Trotsaw mares, he just didn't get it.
As time passed more ponies left, most depressed over having their dreams crushed, but some happy to know they did an acceptable job. Still no sign of the number one. He shrugged, slightly disappointed that he had to wait a full month to find out. As he turned around, however, he saw... her.
His heart stopped then started beating thrice as fast, as he noticed the sapphire blue mane, especially the rose streak which stood out, as it was dancing with the wind, instantly grabbing his full attention. Not for long though, as his eyes went over the rest of her purple, slim, just perfectly shaped fram; small, but cute, innocently smiling lips; to the violet, mesmerizing eyes looking straight forward, disappointingly not even sparing him a single glance.
Even though the entrance exams took place during the summer, for some reason the road to the message board was full of cherry trees in full bloom, so that even a slight gust of wind not only caressed her mane and tail, but sent flower petals flying all over. Or was it just his imagination? It probably was, but admittedly, that was a lot more dramatic and romantic and...
He shook his head, trying to get it away from his head. He stood still, sweating like crazy, hooves paralyzed and unable to move as she passed by him, leaving a trail of her smell behind.
Lavender. Of course.
"Twily!" He heard Moondancer behind him. "What took you so long? I almost burned to death!"
"Excuse me, what?" She answered with a voice that could be compared to a soothing, angelic song.
"It was just cold flame!" Sunset Shimmer joined the conversation. "The only thing I was trying to kill was time!"
"Hehe, sorry!" She answered with her sweet voice again. Still unable to turn back, he heard her once again. "Sweet, I'm first!"
That got his attention. He instantly turned to see her from the other side, happily chatting with the other two fillies. So she was the number one student. Not only the most beautiful mare he has ever laid his eyes upon, but also apparently the smartest pony in existence?
"Quite a view, eh?" Con walked toward him, smacking his hoof. "Dat flank, am I right?"
'Dat flank' was an accurate, if crude (and found only in a slang dictionary, probably), description of what Red Hope had before his eyes. He swallowed and turned away, still blushing.
"Y-yeah, whatever. I should go." He took a breather and slowly, reluctantly, but surely, walked away, trying his best not to look behind. Con was at his side.
"So, crushing on Twilight Sparkle, eh?"
"N-no! Of course not!" He turned his face away, blushing. "I mean, she's okay... well, kinda cute, but I don't have time for... you know. I'm here to learn."
Con hummed. "Suit yourself. Just a warning dude, don't get your hopes too high. Many before you tried and were burned in the process. It's best to forget about her."
And forget about her he did...
...not.
Since coming back home, Red Hope did everything he could to prepare himself for dorm life. He packed his things ahead of time, cleaned his room, tied all the loose ends and before he knew it, he ended up with nothing productive to do. And whenever his mind was unoccupied, it wandered off to the "Twilight Zone". When he closed his eyes, he could see her smile. When he ate breakfast, he wondered if she liked waffles too. A trip for groceries was no better, as a simple sight of a cherry stand reminded him of an imaginary rain of flower petals. He woke up almost every night to catch a cold shower before it was too late. Sometimes it was too late and he had to change his bed sheets before his parents noticed. He didn't have this much trouble sleeping since he watched that bootleg copy of "Foals Play".
It was a long summer.
One month later, the classes officially started. Red Hope had only Con as his roommate and they got along just fine. Classes were a welcome challenge, after the snooze fest he had back home. Teachers were mostly nice, competent and very helpful, especially Princess Celestia herself. She lived up to all the expectations, except she was more approachable than a ruler of a kingdom should normally be.
Life was good.
And Twilight Sparkle was there too. He had hopes that seeing her again would help him clear his head of the first impression, which was probably too exaggerated to be true. Burst the bubble of the perfect image that his heart created without his consent.
Nope.
She was just as perfect, beautiful, smart and overall perfect (it bears repeating) as he remembered. Sleeping was even harder, knowing that he would see her next day in class. It was even worse on weekends, when he wasn't sure if he would be able to meet her at all!
It was getting in the way of not only his sleeping habits and mental health, but also his grades, as he had a really hard time concentrating in class or doing his homework. Not when his mind keeps repeating the sweet melodies of the "Twilight Zone".
At first, he tried fighting it. He read many books on relationships, though very few of them had anything about getting rid of it. Eventually realizing it was futile to resist anymore, he decided to do the unspeakable and embrace his feelings.
Along with the previously mentioned guides, he also obtained a sizeable amount of romance fiction, just to get a better idea of how this works in practice. Almost all of them featured a protagonist fighting his urges (which he related to a lot), then tried some elaborate, overcomplicated plan which backfired badly, only to get the girl by simply by confessing his feelings.
Moral of those stories: keep it simple.
With that in mind, he made himself presentable: a sensible, nice cologne (but not too strong); mints; flowers (lilacs, after making sure she's not allergic) and two tickets to Starswirl The Bearded expo (considering how zealous her essay was, she was probably a fan).
The plan was simple- ask for a date and have a great time, which should evolve into something bigger.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, being foalnapped right as he was approaching her, for starters. To be fair, it's hard to expect a bunch of brutes assaulting you in broad daylight on school grounds, throwing a smelly bag on your head and dragging you to wherever he was now. And the only way to pass the time while his foalnappers took their sweet time to appear again, was to recollect his recent life history, which he could sum up in few sentences, but you know how it is. You start slow and small, but before you know it you already have three tomes of your autobiography which wouldn’t sell as a slice of life fiction because it's rated as "too wacky and weird".
With his imagination running out, he waited for a while longer, before he ran out of patience as well.
"Hello? Anypony here? Guys, I don't know why you foalnapped me, or what's going on, but can I at least get a less smelly bag? Pretty please?"
The next thing he heard was a door opening with a smack, along with some hoofsteps. An unknown voice said. "What the... oh, by Celestia's Sweet Plot, did somepony foalnap somepony, put him in the closet and forgot? Again?
"Uh... maybe?" A familiar voice answered.
"Ugh... release him, you moron. Why doesn't anypony ever tell me anything?"
Then, the bag on his head was removed. Even as his nostrils longed for a whiff of fresh air and eyes adjusted to the dim light, he was still able to recognize the blurry image of a white unicorn before him. "Con? D-did you foalnap me?"
"Look, it's a funny story, actually..."
"Wait, let me rephrase that, ehem- YOU FOALNAPPED ME!"
"I know, I know how it looks, but trust me, it's..."
"I thought we were friends!"
"We are, but..."
"I swear, once I get out of here I'll murder you!"
Con looked around at some of the other ponies gathered. "Can't we keep him like this a little longer?"
"NO!" The choir spoke, making Constellation Spectacle sigh and release the ropes and dampener of Red Hope.
The red unicorn stood up from the chair, loosened his hooves and looked at his so called friend with narrowed eyes. "You have one minute to explain yourself."
Con swallowed, but then another pony pulled him back and stepped into his view. This one was a slightly older beige pegasus, with some sort of engine as a cutie mark.
"Lemme handle it. Red, is it? I'm High Roller." He extended his hoof, but, unsurprisingly, Red Hope was not in mood to make friend. He coughed. "Well, initiation is always the most awkward part of our little club."
"Initiation? To what?"
"S.A.S.S."
"Sass?"
"S.A.S.S."
"...S.A.S.S.?"
"S.A.S.S. But let's not stand here like morons, come on!" He led the group towards the door, where Red Hope's eyes got bombarded with extra bright lights, forcing him to close his eyes and shield them with his hoof.
Once the blindness passed, he took a better look at the place. It was... a room. About as big as a typical classroom, except this one had literally no windows, all the illumination was supplied by a set of fluorescent lamps on the ceiling. Very fitting for a bland, white room with nothing on the walls except light switch and two sets of doors in opposite direction, one he just walked out of, the other presumably the exit. Around the walls he found several tables filled with soft drinks, sandwiches and snacks, but what really caught his eyes was a circle of chairs, along with a portable whiteboard in the middle, with a circular logo of "S.A.S.S."... whatever it was.
"What's S.A.S.S.? If this is some kind of AA group, than I'm not really into..."
"No, it's not like that." Some other pony interjected, before he got interrupted by High Roller.
"Actually, yes we are."
"We are?" He asked.
"We are." He nodded. "But not for alcohol, or drugs or anything like that."
"Then what?"
The room fell silent. All of a sudden Red Hope noticed no less than a dozen or so ponies of different tribes, colors, sizes, talents and conditions (when did they appear?) stop any conversations, snacking or drinking. Their heads fell down. High Roller sighed heavily and then answered.
"Twilight Sparkle."
Red Hope blinked. And once more. Actually, third time didn't sound bad right now, so he did that too. Four was an overkill.
"Twilight Sparkle?"
"Twilight Sparkle."
"...Twilight Sparkle?"
"Twilight Sparkle."
"...Twilight?"
"Sparkle."
"Twilight... Sparkle?"
"Twilight Sparkle."
"BY LUNA'S MIGHTY FLANKS, WILL YOU JUST GET TO THE POINT ALREADY?!" Shouted Frolicsome Meadowlark (as he would later be introduced), the lone thestral Night Guard. Other ponies agreed with him, which prompted High Roller to cough and continue his explanation.
"You see, Red, everypony in this room had a dream once. And not just any dream, mind you, but they dreamed of the sweet flanks of nopony else, but the beautiful, smartest pony in the Equestria, the..."
"I swear, if you don't stop this nonsense right now..." another stallion muttered, massaging his head.
"...ehem, the short version is that we all tried to woo her... and failed miserably. All for a different reason, of course. For example," he pointed at a group of unicorns sitting in a group "these stallions all tried to impress her with their knowledge on an expo or something, but she outsmarted them all, one by one."
"She knew, she always knew!" One of those ponies said. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Every! Time!"
Red Hope tilted his head, which sometimes helped process the information surge. This time it was especially difficult.
"So, lemme get this straight," he massaged his forehead "You all tried to seduce Twilight Sparkle," he paused as everypony else nodded "got shot down," another nod "...and you ended up making a support group out of it?"
"That's the gist of it, yes." Con nodded.
Red's eye twitched. "I come from Trotsaw, so what I'll say will sound unbelievable, but... this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my entire life! Besides, I wasn't rejected!" He glared at Con, who lowered his head.
"Dude, I told you, this is for your own good! You can't even comprehend the pain of rejection. Especially from... her." He swallowed, as a particular memory came back.
"Oh come on, it can't be that bad!" As soon as Red Hope said that, one pony in the room exploded...
...in tears, of course. Another guy invited him into his embrace, which the former accepted, now crying himself over the shoulder of a friend. Then, out of nowhere, another door opened and a tall, pitch black... alicorn (?) stallion, with messy, bloody crimson long mane entered the room, smiling maniacally. Red Hope recognized the voice which earlier wanted to kill him and take his soul.
"Hey guys, you need any more chips? Got enough soda?" His googly eyes went towards the crying pony. "Can I use his dead body in my ritual after he shoots his own brains out?"
"Uh," High Roller scratched his head "No, yes and a definite NO!"
"Huh. Just asking." He shrugged, then turned away. Red Hope could see from this angle that the horn on his head was just a headband, mostly obscured by his hair. "If you change your mind, let me know."
"Daemon Bash, get out!"
Once the Daemon shrugged and walked away, High Roller let out a cough and continued as it nothing happened. "Hey Con, how about you tell him your story first? You two are friends."
Con waited for a moment, until he finally sighed deeply and nodded. "Well then, get ready for a story that destroyed a part of my soul..."
BITTERSWEET
Overcomplication is the mother of all failures. A cart doesn't need more than two wheels to work properly. Four works too, but any more and you start running into more problems than it's worth. Same applies to baking cakes. Some yeast will help the cake grow big and delicious, but add too much and boom! As in, literally, the batter goes boom and at best your oven is as good as dead. Don't even get me started on the worst case scenarios. Dating is the same. You can try any scheme, weird psychological tricks, magical charms or whatnot, but nothing beats the simplest methods. They worked for centuries, why should they stop working now?
"That's exactly what I thought." Red Hope remarked, nodding at the similarities between the two.
"Don't interrupt me!"
"Sorry."
The plan was so simple it was barely a plan. Get inside the dorms, knock on the door, ask Twilight on a date and that's that! 'But wait', you say, 'there are holes in your plan'! To which I say, 'chill out, I got this'!
First part, get inside the dorms. Aren't hall monitors always on patrol? Yes, that's true. Once you're caught trespassing, you're in a world of trouble. Which is why I used the simplest solution possible.
I appeared at the entrance, knocked on the window at the reception. The receptionist took her head away from the newspaper and looked at me with bored expression.
"Hello! I'm Constellation Spectacle, or just Con to my friends. I would like to talk to a friend who lives here. Could I get inside for a little while? Ten, fifteen minutes, tops. I promise I won't make any problems, just a simple chat and I'll be gone. Pretty please?" And I smiled widely, awaiting my answer. The receptionist looked at me for a while, then shrugged.
"You have twenty minutes." She opened the door and gave me a lanyard with 'Visitor' written on it. I gladly wore it, thanked the good lady and entered the dorm space.
Second problem, the knocking. That was kinda hard, since I had no idea where she lived and there wasn't a list anywhere to be seen. I could knock on every door and disturb a lot of innocent ponies, but why would I?
"Excuse me," I stopped a random filly walking by, making sure to have the lanyard visible at all times "do you know where Twilight Sparkle lives? There's something I want to ask her, in person."
Third problem was by far the hardest. You can prepare all you want, but asking out a filly you like isn't easy. After taking a few breaths and swallowing at least three mints, I finally knocked on the door, ready for everything.
The door opened and I was greeted by no one else, but the mare herself, just as beautiful as I remembered! At first, she was surprised to see a stallion in these parts, but once again, I remembered to have lanyard around, which put her at ease.
"Umm, hello. What can I do for you?"
This was the big moment. The moment of truth. Just get it over with and accept whatever's coming next. I admit, I must've been sweating like crazy, but my willpower was stronger.
"H-hi T-Twilight. I-I'm Conned, I mean, uh, I'm Con. And I, uh, I wanted to..."
"Oh, I recognize you from class!" Twilight interrupted me. The smile on her face put me at ease and, well, anypony who wants to seduce Twilight Sparkle in the future (I have no hopes for myself), heed my words- that smile is mesmerizing. Like a rattlesnake, once it gets your attention, you're done for and all you can do is hope for the best.
I wasn't that lucky...
"So, did you change your mind about the body?" Daemon Bash suddenly entered the room, smiling like a slasher killer.
"NO!" Everypony shouted in unison, making the fake alicorn groan and leave disappointed.
Red Hope hummed as the black one left. "Okay, I need to ask, what's his story?" He asked, pointing at the door where Daemon Bash disappeared.
"None." High Roller quickly responded. "He's not a member of S.A.S.S. He's a landlord of this building, he lets us use this room for free and brings snacks and drinks."
"That's... awfully generous of him."
"He lets us stay in hopes one of us commits suicide over grief and lets him experiment on the body."
Red Hope blinked, then swallowed, really hoping to change the subject as soon as possible. "By the way, what exactly does S.A.S.S. stands for?"
"It's 'Secret Association of Sparkle Suitors.'"
"Oh, ok." Red nodded. Some other pony chimed in.
"We added the "Secret" later. You know, to make the acronym sound better."
At that point, everypony who was drinking took a spit-take and almost choked, while everypony else snorted and barely held in their laughter.
Once everypony more or less composed themselves, Con coughed to catch their attention. "Can I continue?"
Right, so where was I... the moment when everything went bad. See, I was mesmerized by Twilight's smile, which is why I didn't react fast enough when she did the one thing I wasn't prepared for. She turned her head back to her room and shouted. "Moonie, it's one of your friends!"
It took me about, what? Two or three seconds to process and react, but it was too late. As I raised my hoof to stop her or say something, she already left. While I pondered if I should scream and risk alerting the hall monitor, Moondancer appeared in her usual, bubbly manner.
"Oh hey Con, what's up?" She asked cheerfully. Before I was able to set things straight, she continued. "Wait, we're not meeting today, are we? Hmm, nah, we just met two days ago... oh well," she shrugged, then left the room, put a hoof over my shoulder and gave me a small peck on the cheek "I have a few hours to kill. Your place?"
As she asked, the answer should've been simple. 'No, I'm here for Twilight'. We all know Moondancer would understand. She values her friends happiness just as much as her own. But as I was about to say it, as the door to her room was closing, I caught a glimpse of Twilight one last time. Our eyes met. And at that moment, I understood it all. It took me but a fraction of second to realize what she felt at that moment.
Disgust.
I was forever going to be labeled as a sleaze ball, looking for easy banging, doing it with her best friend. How was I supposed to face her after that? There is still a small "maybe". Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Maybe thing could've worked out? Maybe, along with Moondancer, we could convince Twilight to have a heavenly threesome and it would be the most awesome day of my life? Maybe.
But I'm not the type of pony who will fool himself thinking I have even a shadow of a chance anymore. Not after she realized who I was. Not after I realized who I was. And who I was, was nopony. Not worthy of her attention. It sounds cowardly, but I decided that this was the way my story had to end.
And let's hope my next story will have a happier ending.
As he finished, the entire room full of stallions went into complete silence for a long time. Red Hope had all but forgotten the smelly bag, the foalnapping, the silliness of the place he was in and even the minor betrayal from his new friend. All he could do now was to pat his back, hoping it would make his pain slightly weaker.
"So, after all that," Red said, scratching back of his head "did you and Moondancer... did you two..."
A small smile appeared on Con's face. "Let's call this... a bittersweet ending."
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Oh come on! If I was Red, I'd be pissed. I get where they're coming from, but if they wouldn't let me try... Yeah, I'd be mad as hell. I'd probably leave there and go ant try anyway.
5976550 As I said in the comments, S.A.S.S. will return!
God, I know that feel.
Also, Bash sounds just delightfully psychotic. Maybe it was growing up looking not unlike a certain heavily stigmatized trend (maybe even before he started wearing a fake horn) that drove him over the edge? Or he woke up one morning and decided "I'm going to pretend to be an alicorn and experiment on dead bodies!"
This is indeed crazier than Krakens.
Have an extremely shy and innocent friend? Want to keep their innocence going until they meet "the one"[1]? Call Moondancer's screening services! Moondancer's, the only screening service that comes with a 100% satisfaction guarantee for all involved parties!
[1]: Strictly an expression, at Moondancer's we don't discriminate against harems (in fact, we encourage them!).
Oh this is gonna be fun.
Well, he might stand a better chance than I thought.
Ooh, that's gotta be a blow to his ego.
Moondancer.
Indeed.
He's hooked.
Course njot.
Twilight Zone. How long have you been holding onto that pun?
Poor guy.
Smart.
A lot.
HAH!
Less sass, more S.A.S.S.
GET ON WITH IT!
Thank you.
I, see.
Yet.
Ur...
INTERRUPT MY STORY AGAIN REGGIE, SEE WHAT HAPPENS!
Poor guy.
Oh. Dark.
And my sides are in orbit.
By all means.
Poor guy.
Well, he managed to get SOMETHING out of the experience at least.
I see.
You couldn't resist, could you? You just couldn't f*cking resist the temptation of something so utterly absurd. Not that I blame you, I'd probably have done the same in your position.
The Transformers will return after these messages.
Next time on Agents of S.A.S.S.:
The S.A.S.S. members join the charity bake sale only to find that their arch nemesis SASS (secret admirers of Sunset Shimmers) has brought muffins as well......
5976817 And now I know what the third episode will be about.
5976822 I can't wait!
I can't help but feel there should be a stallion Twilight bumps into and starts crushing just to get the gears grind on S.A.S.S. and shenanigans started with Shimmer and Dancer...
Meh.
Twilight isn't the hotness.
Now Sunset... she's the hotness.
5976993 That sounds silly, wacky and overall preposterous.
<sneakily writes something in his notebook>
5977070 pinkie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw2223-ba_dum_tis.gif
I figured that list would be for someone's suitors...
Unusual story: I only saw the first part, before the first break, and then I had to leave it alone for a while... resulting in me concluding this was Sunset's and Moondancer's doing, who were actively preventing people from courting Twilight.
I'm pretty glad it's what it is instead.
Hope should go for it anyway! Don't be discouraged by these stallion's ridiculous tales of heartbrokenness!
Alright so let me get this straight:
1. Red hope was planning on going on a date and being normal and not trying to outsmart twilight or seduce her
2. All S.A.S.S. members tried to do the opposite of that
3. Con was fucking her best friend what did he expect
so in conclusion he actually had a chance... Fuck the S.A.S.S. members.
I'm suddenly taking great comfort in the fact that my male OC is already pining after a mare who isn't Twilight. Not that he don't think Twilight's pretty, mind, but he knows his chances with her are nonexistent.
5980438 It's the first one from the Stallionverse group (link in the description).
And please, do tell me what a trainwreck it is after you finish it. I'll wait.
Poor Red Hope. At least let him actually fail before drafting him into the support group! That's probably the best way to make double actually certain that he does eventually fail.
5984059 They did that on purpose.
"IF WE DON'T GET A CHANCE, NOBODY ELSE DOES EITHER!"
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But... but failure hurts, you know?
Also, a meta explanation- this is the introduction to S.A.S.S., which means there will be more and Hope is supposed to die last, not first. He just might get his chance
5994566 Hope may die last... but he still dies in the end.
Ok, first, I'm sorry it took me so long to get to this. I got tied up in real life and didn't have the time or focus I needed to read this chapter and pull out the mechanical issues I saw like I promised until now. I also will not be able to read the next chapter until tomorrow and while I may pull out problem lines again as I am reading, this took far too long to write for me to do a full analysis again. Similarly, I would appreciate it if you took questions about these mechanical rules to other sources first because there are tons of good writing guides and discussions of proper grammar on the internet and this took far too long to write up. Also, for reference, while I do not have a hard and fast line for the number of acceptable errors in a story, I would say that a good rule of thumb is that there should not be a noticeable error more than every 1000 to 2000 words which means there should be no more than 5 noticeable errors in a chapter this size and you really want to keep it below 3 if possible.
First are general comments. The biggest issue I noticed with this story was issues with comma placement. It seemed like every other sentence had some kind of comma issue so I did not copy them down for individual analysis, but I think you should really take a close look at a comma usage guide to understand when to use them, when not to use them, and when to use other punctuation like the semicolon.
There were also some issues with other punctuation being misused such as exclamation marks in narrative which is basically never correct so they should be replaced by periods whenever they are not part of dialog. Similarly, I noticed you used parentheses to add extra details to sentences which is also something you should try to avoid whenever possible, although the exact change will be dependent on the sentence it is used in. I am also fairly sure there were some issues with punctuation around dialog, but that is an area that always trips me up so I am not 100% sure.
Now on to the individual sentences I noticed other issues with. Please bear in mind that I was primarily reading the story rather than editing so I am sure I missed some mistakes. Also remember that I am an engineer, not a writer or editor, so I am not great with the technical terminology so I may have trouble clarifying exactly what the rule being broken is even if I can usually tell what is and is not correct at a glance.
Before I start, it is not technically correct to start a sentence with "and" like this, but that is a rule that gets bent a lot for stylistic reasons like what you did here so that is not actually an issue. The real issue here is the lack of a connection between "worse" and "afraid" so you really need to add something like "was what" to make it work. That would make the sentence "And that worse was what he was afraid of the most.", however there are other possibilities depending on exactly what meaning you want to convey.
This is an easy one to explain and fix because you just screwed up the colloquial phrase. The phrase "able to keep the ends meet" should be "able to make ends meet". That said, I honestly have no idea how to deal with these kinds of things in the future because they tend to be poorly documented or completely ignored in formal writing guides and I do not know of anywhere you can look them up easily. You might try throwing what you think is correct into a search engine and seeing if it picks up the correct phrase, but this is the kind of thing that is mostly acquired by cultural osmosis which is kind of hard to simulate.
This sentence has a bunch of issues which mostly relate to comma use, word choice, word order, and tense which pile up to make a mess of coupled issues. Rather than trying to pick this apart, I am just going to rewrite it the way I would word it as this:
Please let me know if you do not get why I did something and I will see if I can explain it for you.
There are two issues here. The first is a small but annoying formatting bug with the dash (-) which should not have a space after it.
The second is that the word "achieving" is not really appropriate here. Achieving is more about accomplishing a single feat or meeting an objective which is really not what is going on here. A good way to look at this is that the word "achieving" is used if he is earning some kind of specific reward or prize which is clearly not the case here. The word you are looking for is "acquiring" which is far more appropriate because learning is a continuous process and it is something that you collect and use over the course of your life.
This is obviously a vocabulary issue which is understandable given that you are not a native English speaker, but it is not hard to fix thanks to the wonders of the internet. There are a number of free online dictionaries to give you detailed definitions of words so you can better understand the full implications of whatever word you are using and free thesauruses which will help you find similar words when you are not sure what you want to use. Thesauruses are also great tools for helping you mix up your word choice to make the story more interesting to read and improve your descriptions, however you do have to pay close attention to what you are doing because it is easy to screw this up if you are not careful. That said, you can do some really amazing and beautiful things with detailed descriptions and precisely control the flow and weight of each thought for maximum effect if you have a solid handle on the English language so I would definitely encourage working on this. I strongly recommend reading some of James Michener's work (my personal favorite was "The Source") to see what can be done in this area because he was a master at crafting beautiful descriptions while keeping the reader engaged in his novels.
This is an easy one, although there are a few errors in this sentence. The first is that the word "to" in the phrase "students to drop out at the first question" is unnecessary and should be deleted because the phrase "they made" can be shared by all the list items, although you could also fix this phrase by adding the word "caused" before "students" to have "they made" only be part of the first list item. The second is that you need a comma before the word "and" because this is a list. The third is that "getting" should be "were" if you do not want to share "they made" with it or you could rewrite the sentence a bit to share a leading phrase between all three list items which would be a little bit complicated and might give you something like this:
You can see how each list item forms a complete thought with the shared phrase "they caused", the missing comma is added, and I had a bit of fun with synonyms and descriptions to make it more interesting (although I probably did go a bit overboard in my desire to illustrate what you can do with an interesting description). I would also add a paragraph break after this description to help let these expectations settle into the reader's mind a bit to accentuate his performance because you can achieve a lot with the strategic use of paragraph breaks.
The phrasing is really awkward here so I would rewrite it as "who names their kid that?".
This is just a simple typo. "fram" should be "frame".
There are two issues here. First, you slipped into present tense here with "has" which should be replaced with "had" to get it back into the past tense like it should be for a story. Second, the sentence is missing an object so you need to add a phrase to identify who this is talking about. In this case, I would add "was she" after "only" to make the start "Not only was she the most beautiful", but there are plenty of other options.
Setting aside the question of how he knows about that show, you wandered into present tense here so "keeps" should be "kept".
The word "it" should be replaced with "them" here because of the other plurals running around. That said, I feel like it would be better to go with something like "romantic feelings" to be more clear because the way it is written now makes it sound like he is either looking to get rid of the books or an existing relationship which is not the case.
This is something I remember being a huge problem in your earlier stories which seems to have mostly gone away so I think this is probably just you slipping on something you know, but you are missing an "a" between "except" and "light switch". You also have a pluralization issue with "direction" which should be "directions" because there are two doors pointing in different directions. I am also fairly sure the comma after "direction" should be a semicolon because it feels like a harder break than a comma but is not quite to where you need a period, but I would have to double check that to be certain.
You are missing the word "a" before "third time" and the "an" before "overkill" should be removed. You should also replace "was" at the end with "would be" because he considered it but didn't actually do it.
First, you forgot to capitalize the "i" in "in" at the start of the paragraph. Second, you need to clean up the phrase "now crying himself over the shoulder of", although there are a number of ways you could do this. I would go with "now crying himself out into the shoulder of", but you could also go with "now crying over the shoulder of" or something because there are tons of ways to phrase everything and all of them have slightly different meanings and pacings to give you a lot of subtle control over how the story comes across.
First, the parentheses really need to go. There are lots of good ways to indicate uncertainty in the narrative with words like "apparently", although in this case I would not bother with any of them because just being an alacorn or being described as having wings and a horn will raise lots of questions on its own given the context so you do not need anything else to get people thinking there is something fishy going on there.
Second, the description is just a mess. I do not feel like pointing out why because it is a tangle of a lot of things, so I will just give a corrected version for you to look at and ask questions if something about it confuses you:
Now that that is done, I did notice one issue with the story structure of this chapter that I want to bring up. When Red Hope first met the girls, his reactions felt very out of order. Given what we know of his personality and background coupled with the fact that he was not overly excited by Sunset and Moondancer despite saying he thought they were attractive, it seemed very strange for him to fall in love with Twilight on sight the way he did. I would have expected him to initially dismiss her like he did the others until learning that she had the highest score on the test and then taking more interest in her based on that. It would still have wound up in the same place, but I think the flow would have been much better that way.
5994566 I don't know, Hope seems like a good personality match for Twilight to me. Granted he will probably need some help from at lease one of her friends to avoid getting trapped by Moondancer when he inevitably freezes up, but his history means he actually has a chance to pull it off.
5985414 Oh my god it's the Class F Inquisition!!!!
Wait crap can't make that joke they have a demon and none of them are regenerating suicide bombers... Yet, if Daemon Bash has his way.
Hang on, I don't remember talking about this...