You want to know WHAT?
“SUNSET! Tell me, is it true?”
Sunset Shimmer looked up, still chewing a mouthful of egg-and-cucumber sandwich. In front of her, a panting and disheveled Twilight Sparkle stood, dressed in a messy lab coat. In her left hand was a clipboard that looked like there was once a stack of papers attached to it but were since been lost in the frantic run.
“Look, there’s no way I’d ever let a creepy kid like Snips get to first base, let alone second, okay? Second-year middle-schoolers make up that sort of stuff all the time. I think the Neighponese even have a word for-”
“Ugh, no! I mean, is it true that you’re a-” Twilight lowered her voice quickly, knowing how crazy what she was about to ask would sound. She looked away, wincing and nervously tapping her index fingers together before squeaking, “-magical unicorn pony?”
“Oh.”
Sunset wasn’t exactly sure how to answer that one. While her best friends were of course well aware of what she was, having been told by the pony version of Twilight Sparkle, most of Canterlot High was still somewhat unaware of the specifics behind all the magical mishaps that constantly occurred. And despite having discussed some of the truths behind them with the human world’s Twilight Sparkle, Sunset had managed to leave out a few important details – such as her former species.
“Uh… who put that idea into your head, exactly?”
Twilight gave her a slightly sheepish look. “Rainbow Dash. She said my alternate-universe counterpart was a” - she groaned a little - “magic unicorn pony too. Is this one of her pranks? She swore it wasn’t.”
Sunset sighed at Rainbow’s lack of discretion. The jock probably let it out while boasting about ponying up, but Sunset couldn’t really blame her. Twilight was quickly becoming one of their closest friends, and it was only a matter of time before they had to explain everything to her in full. But Sunset had tried to avoid too much in the way of revelations, finding the girl’s relentless curiosity to be rather exhausting. And there was so much Twilight wanted to know about that Sunset had been, for the sake of her own sanity, deliberately answering evasively so as not to stir up even more questions.
Sunset looked around. While the cafeteria was somewhat empty right after the school’s final bell, there were still enough people around that it wasn’t quite a good idea to openly discuss the matter right there. She stood up and gestured towards the exit.
“Okay, look. Let’s go to your lab. We can talk about this there.”
Twilight perked up excitedly. “Omigosh you are, aren’t you?” she said, grinning toothily.
Sunset didn’t answer. They made their way to the school’s science laboratories, stopping at a door to what had once been a large janitorial closet. Apparently, Dean Cadance had been very fond of Twilight during her studies at Crystal Prep, and had assigned her a small room very similar to this one as a personal laboratory. When Twilight transferred to Canterlot High, Cadance had asked Vice-Principal Luna to make the same provision for her there.
Because it was smaller than her old lab, Twilight had packed it practically wall-to-wall with her electronic surveying machines, file cabinets, and chemical vials. There was a little room to walk around in, but only one chair. Sunset sat on the wood-and-plastic desk, making sure to avoid bumping into the black laptop lying on it. Twilight followed in behind her, taking the chair. She looked up at her friend with an expectant grin.
Sunset strummed her fingers on both hands against the desk as she thought for a bit, wondering how much she should reveal. “Riiiiight. Okay, yes, when we told you that the other Twilight was from another dimension, we might have neglected to mention that I came from there too, and that both of us, along with most of the “people” from that dimension, are… ponies.”
Twilight’s excitement looked like it was actually threatening to burst out of her system. “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! OMIGOSH omigosh omigosh there are so many things I want to know! Is that why you can use magic? Like that portal she came out of? Oh, you could advance my research by years, maybe decades with what you know! Could you-”
“Wait, wait. Hang on for a sec. You can’t publish all this. If word gets out about what I am, I’m probably going to end up locked up in some secret government lab somewhere. And who knows what kind of awful stuff they’d do if the military got hold of magic. It could only end in disaster. There’s a reason we haven’t explained anything to the rest of the school – they only know there’s weird magic involved and sometimes we grow pony ears and wings.”
Twilight looked a little disappointed, but her enthusiasm returned very quickly. “It doesn’t matter even if I can’t tell anyone about it. I just want to know everything! I mean, I saw ponies through the dimensional breaches during the Friendship Games, but I didn’t know they were sapient! I know you want to keep it secret, but I’ve spent years trying to understand all this strange energy and now I’m so close I just HAVE to know! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease?”
Sunset looked down into Twilight’s pleading tear-filled puppy dog eyes, wondering if the nerdy girl had learned how to wield that expression from Rarity or had somehow managed to inadvertently stumble onto the perfect technique for weaponized begging. She felt her resistance eroding very quickly.
Sunset sighed. “Okay, okay. I’ll try to tell you what I know. But I’m only doing this because you’re my friend, and I’m trusting you not to tell anyone else, okay?”
The response only made Twilight squee even harder. She nodded her head furiously, grinning like a maniac. It looked just a little creepy.
Sunset edged away slightly. “So uh… what exactly did you want to know about first?”
“MAGIC! You’ve explained it to me before, but not how it relates to your species. It’s not like there’s any prior research I could look up either, so you are literally the only source I can learn anything from! And I still haven’t a clue about what really happened during the Friendship Games!”
“Okaaay…” Sunset considered how to begin. “Well, for starters, the country I came from, Equestria, is the one populated mostly by ponies. Our species is divided into three tribes, or races if you prefer – Earth ponies, Pegasi, and Unicorns. And each tribe has its own type of magic.
“Earth ponies have a special bond with the land, so they are very good at growing crops and taking care of animals. Pegasi have wings, and their tribal magic lets them fly despite not being scientifically aerodynamic enough to do so. They can also control just about any meteorological phenomenon just by pushing it with their hooves or wings.”
“But I think the tribe you’ll be most interested in is Unicorns-” continued Sunset, “that’s the tribe both your Equestrian counterpart and I were born into. We have a horn in the middle of our foreheads which lets us cast spells, and so we’re the only tribe that has formalized training for our magic.”
Twilight seemed to have mellowed down after the explanations. She tapped a finger against her chin, thinking hard. “So both of you used your horn-magic to turn into humans?”
“Err… no. Neither of us are entirely sure how we transformed when we came here,” admitted Sunset. “But we think it’s either a spell cast by the mirror or some kind of inherent property of trans-dimensional travel. The only thing we’re sure of is that it’s not our own magic that’s doing it.”
“I see…” Twilight thought for a bit longer, and then clapped her hands together excitedly. “We should check if there are any biological difference between you and other humans! I don’t suppose you might be game for a full-body scan and examination?” She punctuated her sentence by grabbing a box of disposable surgical gloves and snapping one on, her grin returning instantly.
Sunset stared at the nerdy girl’s gloved fingers, very quickly imagining all the terrifying possibilities they implied.
“I don’t think I’d be comfortable with that,” she said hurriedly. “But you’re in luck. When I first came here years ago, I was curious about the exact same thing, so I’ve checked myself thoroughly. Physiologically… I’m pretty much as human as can be.”
“Oh,” said Twilight disappointedly. She seemed to have been very enthusiastic about the idea of performing a physical examination. “Well, have you noticed any similar traits between your pony and human bodies?”
Sunset considered the question. “Ponies in Equestria actually have a lot more in common with humans than we do with the ponies of this world – we’re completely civilized, have larger and more functional brains than human-world ponies, and we even have similar lifespans. In fact, Equestrian ponies are only like horses externally – we can’t even digest the same kinds of food. I used to eat daffodils all the time, but it turns out they’re poisonous to both horses and humans here.”
Twilight’s eye widened slightly. “Does that mean Equestrian ponies are omnivorous?”
“Um… sort of,” said Sunset. “Culturally, we’re ovi-lacto-vegetarians. But ponies can eat meat, just like horses in this world.”
“Horses can eat meat!?”
Sunset frowned a little. “Yeah, they can. There are lots of scientific reports about horses killing and eating small birds and other tiny animals. Didn’t you ever come across this in your research?”
Twilight chuckled sheepishly. “Zoology isn’t exactly my field of specialization. I didn’t have much reason to read up on horses until now.”
“Equestrian ponies used to do the same, long ago when we were less civilized,” explained Sunset. “There were even stories of cannibalistic communities, though they’re hard to verify. But meat was never a primary part of our diet, and we usually only resorted to it when food was scarce. As time passed and our agriculture became more efficient, we stopped eating meat altogether. Most ponies would find the idea kind of revolting now.”
“Hmm. What about you?”
“Me personally?” asked Sunset. “I’ve never had meat ever. I’m a strict vegetarian, even though it used to clash really hard with my image as a school bully. Cows and pigs are sapient in Equestria, and animals in general are more intelligent. I don’t think I could stomach the idea, no pun intended.”
“I see.” Twilight went quiet for a moment as she digested all the information. “Any other important differences between your pony and human bodies?”
“You mean, besides having hands?”
“Eheh. Yeah, I meant besides the external differences,” said Twilight.
“Well…” Sunset smirked. “The biggest thing I had to get used to was the feminine hygiene.”
The statement made Twilight’s face redden slightly, but she didn’t seem all that embarrassed. “Oh right! Ponies have an estrus instead of a menstrual cycle!”
Sunset nodded. “Yep. And we don’t have to deal with all the pain and bleeding either. Thank goodness for ibuprofen. My cramps were really bad on my first period.”
Twilight remained silent. The blush from earlier was getting much redder.
“Uhm…” she started. “What- what’s it like having estrus?”
Sunset grinned at the other girl’s obvious discomfort. “Are you wondering if mares start running around going sex-crazy, desperately trying to hump the first stallion they can find?”
Twilight stayed very quiet.
Sunset giggled. “It’s nothing like what you’re thinking. You know how about a couple weeks before your period, you find yourself constantly thinking about boys? It’s a lot like that, just a little stronger. It varies a lot by the mare, too – some have it a lot worse than others. But just like periods, we have all kind of ways to relieve the symptoms, from herbal remedies to proper manufactured medication. And even if you’re one of those really unlucky ones, you always have the option of taking care of it yourself, unless you happen to have a uh, partner.”
“Partner?” asked Twilight.
“Well, just like humans, ponies don’t always wait till marriage to have sex. Lots of relationships don’t necessarily lead to marriage either, at least until they decide to have foals. And gay couples are even less likely to bother, especially since they can’t accidentally have a pregnancy.”
Twilight looked a little surprised, breaking her out of her bashfulness momentarily. “Equestria doesn’t have any cultural prohibitions against gay couples?”
Sunset shook her head. “Not for a long time. In Equestria there’s a huge gender imbalance – there’s an overwhelming number of mares for each stallion, so a lot of us are at least bisexual.”
“B-by ‘us’ do you mean…”
Sunset rocked her head left and right slightly in admission. “Yeah, I go both ways too. It’s actually really, really common. I mean, I never did it, but during estrus, it’s not that strange for adult mares to pair off and help each other out.”
“Y-you seem to be very casual about this,” noted Twilight, still blushing furiously.
“That’s because mares don’t feel any shyer talking about estrus than girls talking about periods.” Her grin widened. “It’s something we all go though, and end up commiserating in. The good news is that ponies don’t suffer from this obsession with sex that humans do when we’re not on estrus, which only happens in the warmer months of the year.”
Twilight was still looking somewhat embarrassed at the subject. “Does that mean you haven’t… y’know…”
Sunset maintained her grin, deliberately aggravating Twilight’s discomfort. “Y’know?”
“You know what I mean by y’know!” squeaked Twilight.
“No I don’t know what you mean by y’know.” Sunset changed her grin to a smirk. “You’re gonna have to explain what you know about y’know if you want me to tell you what I know about y’know. Y’know.”
“Okaynevermindletschangethesubject!”
Sunset chuckled. “Okay, okay, hang on. I was just making fun of you. Seriously though, are you asking me if I’ve had sex?”
Twilight nodded slowly. “You told me that you've been studying at CHS since early middle school, so…”
“Well what kind of girl do you take me for?” asked Sunset flatly. Despite her tone, her expression didn't look angry. “I was too young to have done it when I left Equestria, and once I got here I found a world full of humans, which I don’t exactly find sexually attractive.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, humans are kind of… unique,” said Sunset. “Just fingers alone are a pretty creepy. To a pony they look like little bony tentacles. And the way arms are so much shorter than legs makes a human’s body shape look so… uneven. Then there’s the complete lack of a tail, which for a pony is a huge part of flirting and physical attractiveness. But I think the weirdest thing of all is where a human’s teats are.”
Twilight looked down at herself, feeling self-conscious all of a sudden.
Apparently not noticing, Sunset continued. “Just about every non-primate mammal I know of has teats just below their abdomen. I get that being bipedal means having them on your chest is more practical for suckling your young, but just about every other species would still find it weird-looking. Think about it from the other way around. Can you imagine a human finding a pony’s body sexy? Ugh, that’d be so weird and gross.”
“Didn’t you use to date Flash Sentry?”
“Oookay…” sighed Sunset. “I dated him only because he was the most popular guy in school. I was willing to do anything for popularity back then, ambitious as I was. I think he figured it out after a while, which is why he broke up with me. And no, we never had sex. We were still just teenagers, and like I said, I don’t have any reason to find humans attractive. Everything I know about psychology says that impressions of physical beauty are learned while growing up. Maybe if I had been born in this world, I might have grown up liking humans.”
“I see,” said Twilight. Much of her earlier embarrassment had begun to fade, though she was still blushing furiously. “What about horses or ponies here?”
Sunset snorted. This time, her voice implied that she was definitely offended. “If you were stuck on a deserted island with an orangutan, would you start smooching him?”
Twilight shrank slightly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything.”
Sunset calmed down. “It’s okay. And no, I’ve never found any animal here attractive. Equestrian ponies don’t look anything like the horses or ponies in this world, anyway. We’re a lot shorter, our muzzles are smaller, and in general we look a lot cleaner and usually spend years properly grooming ourselves and keeping in the right shape to avoid looking like a slob. Human-world horses are shaped all wrong by our standards of beauty, almost exactly like the differences between humans and other primates.”
“Oh. So… you’ve never found anything at all in this world attractive to you?” Twilight seemed somewhat disappointed for some reason.
“Well…” Sunset inexplicably began to blush. “There is one person, but mostly because of who she is rather than what she looks like.”
Twilight looked up from her chair quickly.
She?
Sunset was fidgeting nervously. “I have to confess that I do kind of have a crush on a certain purple-skinned nerd…”
Twilight gulped. She recalled the end of the Friendship Games, when Sunset had extended her hand to her after winning their magical duel, saving her from the nightmare. Twilight remembered how soft her skin felt, and the beautiful, benevolent way Sunset had looked at her that day.
“She’s really, really smart, even smarter than I am,” continued Sunset. “and I love her personality, which is really kind of adorable, in that dorky way. I know that this is kind of awkward…”
“Yes…?” Twilight was tensed on the edge of her seat, her hands gripped against her own chest.
“…because I mean, she is kind of your alternate-universe counterpart.”
“…”
“Oh.”
“But it doesn’t have to get weird between us, okay? I know you’re both separate people,” said Sunset nervously.
Twilight chuckled in a way that seemed oddly disappointed. “Right. Right, that makes sense, since you’re both ponies-turned humans. Nothing weird at all.”
Sunset beamed. “I’m glad you feel that way. All things considered, I’ve actually really enjoyed talking to you about my old home. I don’t think I’d mind answering any more questions you have in future, so don’t hesitate to ask. Anyway, I really should get ready for band practice.”
She grinned to the other girl as they exchanged goodbyes, before walking happily out of the door, leaving Twilight alone in her laboratory.
Twilight watched her go, waiting till the door fully closed.
“Well, darnit.”
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HAHAHAHAHAH THAT WAS SO FUN IN THE END
wona likes
This was pretty good.
Nothing serious. Just short and sweet.
The word you're looking for here is sapient.
Sentient means it can feel, that it can experience things. Cats and dogs are sentient.
Sapience is, boiled down, the ability to understand personhood.
Never change, Sunset.
Also. Liked, faved, and have a
!
7037677
Thanks, it's been changed.
Twilight just got vajected
I'm not gonna lie... I expected Sci-Twi x Sunset..
Damn DX!!!
You get a thumbup for not confusing sapient and sentient. For those in the peanut-gallery:
Sentient:
Can feel.
Sapient:
Wise.
Zoologists consider animals sapient if they look at themselves in a mirror and are smart enough to figure out that it is a reflection of them.
Equines on this planet of the ape are sentient but not sapient. Pretty much all amniotes* are sentient, but figuring out whether an animal is an automaton (just instinctual responses) or sentient (capable of cognition) is difficult:
Arthropods are generally automatons, but bees and jumping spiders seem capable of cognition, thus are sentient.
* I worked with chickens. They seem to be automatons to me. Chickens in Equestria, such as Elizabeak, seem sentient, and animals which are sentient but not sapient on this world might be sapient on Equus, such as Angele Bunny.
7037996
If you look at the comments below you will find that I *did* get it wrong but was corrected minutes after being posted, and changed it immediately. I know better now. Please don't downvote me!
7038050
Alright, I shall not downvote you.
Bees vote and jumping spiders plan. Cockroaches just do random stuff, blundering their way through life with pure stimulus/response and some very basic learning. I have no trouble killing cockroaches, but capture jumping spiders alive and release them outside. Cockroaches are automatons, while jumping spider are sentient, and all apes and sapient.
Good job at the end Sunset, good job.
Hah, yeah. What kind of freak would find pony's hot?
*Hides History*
I do hope someday they animate a scene where they explain to Sci-Twi about how Sunset and Princess Twilight are actually originally ponies. Until then, this is a fun way to imagine it going, good job. Poor Sci-Twi, first she's so excited about examining Sunset, but Sunset's already thought of most of her questions. Then that letdown at the end, ouch. I liked it, but probably mainly because of my preference for Princess Twilight with Sunset rather than Sci-Twi. Not that there's anything wrong with that pairing, just prefer the former, though Sci-Twi and Sunset has popped up quite a bit over the years and gotten really popular since the last EQ movie.
Poor Sci-Twi, not only no experiments, but she's losing out to her own alternate dimension counterpart. Talk about an awkward love triangle, but then that's partially what makes it so much fun.
Bonus points for the dietary comments - especially the daffodils. Last time my local ponythread were discussing the topic (and my stance is basically the same as yours, i.e. they're "vegetarian" rather than "herbivorus") and it was interesting to look up what foods ponies eat that real-world horses can't.
This list, incidently, includes tomatos, onions, potatos (which they can eat but don't do them any good) and cow's milk (and there's only one OTHER reason they'd have cows at Sweet Apple Acres is) and noncanonically in the comic, persimmons. And Equstrian ponies appear to tolerate a lot more sugar in their diet.
I wish I could give this more then one like!
Very good my former student, very good.
Sci-Twi had her hopes crushed... Shame. She should get with Pony-Twi and agree to secretly trade places for a while!
Also, this always bothers me:
Spike? Iron Will? Too Many Pinkie Pies? Discord? Tirek? Nobody on the show ever seemed bothered by fingers, and there are quite a few ponies that likely see them every day. Even with the latter two (or three), what disturbed ponies probably wasn't the fingers. It might be weird suddenly having them (for Twilight and Sunset) but not as much just seeing them.
Having everyone clothed might be more unusual, though there are enough nudist Twilight / nudist Sunset stories on here already to cover that.
Something tells me that Twilight needs a cold shower!
And that poor Princess Twilight is now her sworn enemy without ever knowing why!
Pretty sure the whole gender imbalance thing is an artifact from earlier seasons. The animators have been keeping things fairly equal for a while now.
I love this. Not enough fics take the perfectly reasonable and understandable stance that Sunset is not attracted to humans.
For a moment it almost seemed like this would deserve a sad tag... But that last sentence put her into "my other half of merely a setback!" Mindset, so no sad. Here, have a like.
Thank You!!!
Largely a headcanon dump, but it was a fun one. And that ending was just cruel.
7037996 I always feel weird about using sapient for things other than humans though. Its root is specifically referring to humans and its direct ancestors like the Neanderthals. Ponies don't fit that because they aren't in that line, but they are thinking and feeling individuals who are self aware. Its too bad there isn't a more generic word available for self aware and wise beings.
7038783
Not to mention a YouTube video I remember seeing which explained how, even in earlier seasons, there seemed to be plenty of subtle evidence that they were going for "most of the time, all the stallions are away from the camera doing work like tilling fields which benefits from a higher average strength." (Which makes sense for a Victorian-esque rural community founded by Earth Ponies)
This was mostly a headcannon dump and less of a story. This is a pratfall I see a lot of writers fall into, and my best advice would be to show more, tell less. Like for example, instead of Twilight directly asking if Sunset if she found ponies and horses from the human world attractive, instead she would say she wants to do a visual test and has a bunch of pictures of Horses and ponies, and asks, 'how do you feel about this?', and then have a bit of back and forth, with the pay off of that scene being Sunset using the same orangutan comparison.
Sci-twi stopped being the conflict of this story the moment Sunset started explaining a lot of details about pony life at the drop of a hat. No one in a natural dialogue would ever talk like that. Sci-Twi however would probably ask a lot more questions and Sunset would give a lot more concise answers. If anything Sci-Twi would make a lot of on the fly hypothesis and shoot them by Sunset for verification or clarification.
7038973 It's not that bad, the beginning and the ending were free of exposition-dumping. It just needs a little less discussing the toxicity of daffodils and a little more...
y'know.
7038868 Yep, and 7037699 ...
Thank you very, very much again
And, basicly, thank you again for this end xD You did not make this into a typical unrealistic shipfic, but rather in a realistic and plausible one
But I have to admit, I also liked the SciTwi at the begin more, bombarding Sunset with questions
OK I hope we won't have all that "we have to stick to canon 100% all the time or else!" as it would be silly...
Good fic, move along.
Typo
a while
Headcanon dump? Definitely.
Hilarious? Without a doubt.
Contains the best possible zinger and the greatest rebuttal to the countless 'Sunset-fucks-horses' fics ever? Oh hell yeah.
I love it.
Yeah, this falls flat, because pony Twi DID find human Flash attractive. You made this story way too realistic for its own good. And then a possible hint at a lesbian ship at the end just further undercut that idea.
Cows are, pigs aren't.
"Not to mention how oversized human teats are. One barely notices Pony teats except during the nursing period, while a lot of human woman always have these grotesque fat-bags dangling from their torsos. Not that you or Rainbow Dash have too much of a problem there..."
"Gee, thanks" muttered Twilight.
Oh wow that was a total lead on, on sunsets part oblivious as she was and then she drops the hammer. or she she knew exactly what she was doing and it was her way of letting her down gently.
7038920 ... and I can't find it now. Was it taken down?
7038914
¿Is Fluttershy humane? It seems that humane is more associated with a kind of ape than sapient, but Fluttershy is still humane?
We only associate sapience with humans because we use the word most with humans and it is part of the species-name:
Homo sapiens:
Wise Human
It seems that other animals can be wise. Certainly, the most common animals we encounter, cats and dogs, are sentient but not sapient; they clearly think and feel; but when faced with a mirror, cannot make the leap to understand that the image represents themselves.
Mirror-Test
7040053
I couldn't find it either, but I just assumed it was because I could only remember what the guy's OC looked like and the title was non-obvious. (Wouldn't surprise me. It took some very creative searching today to find a blog post that linked to this video when I wanted to show it to someone.)
Eventually, I'll find time to write a link organizer so I can go through my unsorted bookmarks and find it again.
EDIT: Yes, it was taken down. This page has a text transcript.
7039937
Lauren Faust had all hoofed animals (Perissodactyls and Cetartiodactyls) as sapients. Unfortunately, writers have not been consistent.
7040122 Absolutely Fluttershy fits that definition without a doubt, its the root word that troubles me -- because a Pony wouldn't of come up with a word like that nor would they use it to describe a pony to someone else.
However I kinda answered my own qualm with it; Ponies wouldn't even be speaking English if they had developed their own language, it would be more like a highly advanced version of neighs and whinnies. However if you take Translation Convention into account then it all makes sense. Of course a pony wouldn't use a word like humane or sapient. They aren't using English words at all, we are just hearing them as English because of the translation convention. Humane and Sapient are the closest equivalent words we would have to compare it to whatever they are actually saying.
Obviously a TV-Y show wouldn't necessarily knowingly use a trope like that, but it actually would be kind of awesome if that were the case.
Gosh, how the heck did this get on top of the featured box?
7038973
This is awesome advice that I will keep in mind in future writing efforts.
7038485
I did read up on what ponies eat! In fact, in an earlier fic I wrote in a meal which was practically a laundry list of things horses never eat, just to see if anyone would notice.
7038730
I think I could have used a better word, like 'bizarre' instead of 'creepy'. And I avoided talking about clothes because I can't imagine a pony being put off by them, since they do wear clothes constantly.
7038783
There's a part of me that jokingly wonders if the majority of the male population of Equestria is employed in the Royal Guard. I can only imagine the resentment. "Damn Celestia, keeping all the good hunks to herself!"
7039023
It is very unlikely that I will ever write y'know, because I'm pretty bad at it.
7039502
Well, maybe our pony princess has a primate fetish? Seriously, how on earth do the writers explain her falling in love with literally the very first human male she gets physically close to despite not knowing anything about him other than what he looks like?
Or maybe she was just thinking "Oh gosh, someone who can give me a backrub that won't have weird brother/son semi-incestual overtones!"
7039242
Corrected, thanks a bunch!
Aww, poor Sci-Twi.
7040222 I meant just discussions of y'know, not actual, well, you know. Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, drive the joke into the ground.
7037677
You know, I understand this and appreciate the differences but I've been reading sci-fi since I was old enough to parse a sentence (1977 or so) and as far back as I've read, Verne, Wells, Lovecraft, Asimov, etc., almost every author just uses sentient when describing other intelligent races.
I'm not saying you're wrong, because you're not. I'm just wondering why the sudden need to differentiate so suddenly in the last few years. Yours is not the first comment I've run across making this point. It's everywhere in fanfiction these days as well as regular sci-fi on various boards. In an age where writing is getting sloppier and less grammatically correct (I'm assuming because of US public education), why is this suddenly so important?
I'm honestly curious.
As for the rest of this story, it was a fun read. I do like the psychological aspect of beauty and attraction being brought up. I actually have a theory as to why there are so many 'clopfics' these days and why the furry community has become so large.
Like the author stated, much of our standards of beauty and attraction is formed at a young age. What do children mostly do in the average household? Watch TV, specifically cartoons. This goes clear back to the sixties but anthro characters didn't really start becoming main characters until the late 70's and 80's. Then the late 80's and early 90's introduced children to things like Rescue Rangers, Gargoyles, Darkwing Duck, and other anthropomorphized characters. It's no wonder after watching romantic interactions between characters, no matter how innocent, has warped people's acceptance of what is sexualy attractive.
Makes me wish I was back in college, this would make for an awesome psych research paper.
7040302
Actually, having been an avid fan of cartoons and hence observing the cartoon community for a long time, I'd like to lay a giant chunk of blame on the saturday morning Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon. Seriously, there was an immense community dedicated to that fandom - probably still is, honestly.
Oh, and interestingly, the reason I used 'sentient' at first and had the impression it was the correct term was because of the line "Freedom is the right of all sentient creatures." by Optimus Prime in the first live-action transformers film. Though I admit a Michael Bay movie should not ever be used as a source of anything, ever.
Apropos of nothing, but something that just happened to come up because of something utterly unrelated: one wonders what Sunset thought of the cripplingly slow top speed of humans verses equines (given that humans are actually - far from being the baseline often assumed - are heavily geared up for endurance over speed).
Ponies seem to have a higher endurance than real-world equines and no particular loss of speed. Must have come as quite a shock to Sunset the first time she tried to sprint and found herself moving what could be 3-6 times slower at flat out...!
Given the ponies are used to far more kinds of intelligent lifeforms I think Sunset would be more open minded.. Also get the feeling this could go on to with Sci-Twi trying...
7040419 But the really scary part is when she learns just how fragile human beings are...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUYP6OGw1iQ
Wow I can really picture Sunset and human Twilight having a conversation about the fact that Sunset is a pony turned human. Good Job.
7040222 that was an unexpected turn ????????band Twilight thought she was sunset's crush
7040258 Yeah