WARNING: THIS STORY HAS BEEN DEEMED AN OLD SHAME. IT DOES NOT REFLECT THE AUTHOR'S CURRENT WORK, AND IN FACT SUCKS ASS. FOR PRESERVATION PURPOSES IT WILL REMAIN.
The Mirror Portal is a mysterious device, capable of bridging gaps between worlds and allowing access between them. It's one of the most powerful creations of magic known to equinity, and nobody knows what might cause it to falter and smash the two worlds together like a poorly built Newton's Cradle.
So naturally two bullheads figure out how to exploit it.
Sex tag for occasional reference. Massive Thank You to Casketbase77 for proofreading and making a few suggestions, on top of generally being a great guy.
Written for the 6th Appledash contest.
01/04/20 got on the trending box or w/e it's called. No longer trust said little box.
02/05/20 200 likes. Y'all realize this is a bad story, right? Those likes are ironic?
This is great!
So the thing they forgot to take into account is that Twilight Is No Fun.
I bet Starlight would have helped them out...which is also probably indicative of it being a bad plan, admittedly.
Oh well, you can live quite a while off of a million bucks.
The hard part about getting rich quick is knowing when to get out. At least they came out ahead financially when all was said and done.
Man, this was a lot more depressing that I thought it would be.
The lesson I take away from this: ain't no such thing as easy money.
10018269
It's still surreal to see a minor celebrity in my comments section,especially when you blend in so well with all the other ocs.
Love this
10018752
I’m a what?
I really did not know that I had any actual degree of horse fame but it keeps popping up recently...
10018784
Honestly, by my standards if I like your shit you're a celebrity
Hey, $1,558,000 is quite a bit of money, you could set yourself up quite tidily with that. I'd say things worked out pretty well.
10018269
I could make a Communism joke, but I really don't think Starlight cares about material wealth. Look at where she's lived over the years. Her ideal community was, generously put, Spartan and utilitarian. When she's moved into Twilight's Palace, and allows herself to open up, she just fills the place up with modeling stuff for kites. At the School, the most interesting thing in her office was a plant. Sure, you could cut yourself on her teenage room, but that just seemed a phase.
Good break down Twilight, but that... got way too relevant suddenly.
Wait what? i thought this whole story was just a setup for a joke. Once they bought a shitton of clothes from the Humanverse they were gonna try to bring it back through the portal just to realise that the mirror deletes clothing.
Opportunity wasted.
Congrats on getting featured!
Correct me if I'm wrong but 4916 words is below the 5000 word minimum?
10019321
1000 is the minimumAh, 5000 for the contest.
Heck yeah. This was a fun farce. Loved the tender moments mixed with eclectic pop culture references (Human Dash being a Doomer was my favorite).
Good luck with the contest, friendo!
Yesss, gooooood, you are learning quickly young one.
(Box of Shame and Sin Box are two other popular names for it.)
10019414
I mean 5000 word minimum for the Appledash Contest.
10019465
It's always vexed me that a shitposter decided to write something serious once and it became one of the most well known stories in the fandom.
glad you liked my stuff.
10019445
thanks for helping with this one, mate. enjoy yourself.
I’ve heard good things about that place. The burgers are to die for, apparently.
10019558
can confirm.
Love it
I dont get the bangs at the end in Raritys shop. Were they trying to break down the shops door?
10018980
Enough to get you a studio apartment in San Francisco.
10019177
Good point. Agreed.
Nice
Honestly, sort of surprised this wasn't exploiting how the mirror just materializes clothes out of nowhere on every pony that steps through it. So assuming you stripped every time before you went back through and then spammed mirror trips for a bit, you'd have a heck of a lot of barely-used clothes collected that you could then sell.
I guess that still doesn't address the problem of how EqG money would be basically useless in Equestria though...
10018784
To be fair, I do seem to see you commenting on all of the popular stories all the time at least. That does kind of earn you a reputation after awhile.
Let's say each got around 1/4 of the money. 300k is quite enough to pay for college for two and get a reasonable security blanket going. That without considering they only sold half the bits and likely would double the amount with all of them.
Still, Twiggles' no fun, even if sane
welcome to the interdimensional cartell, please do not tell celestia
As if pony Celestia isn't admiring the way her flanks look in human Celestia's slacks, right now.
Tax season will be interesting... ;)
---
Tiny typo:
its
10020376
I have no idea what you're talking about.
10020303
She's the only one in equestria who can wear the boots
Given that Sunset smuggled a whole cruise ship full of humans through Equestria, the limit has to be a lot higher. At the very least, it takes a while before there's any dimensional strain.
Speaking of, I'm surprised this didn't go bad at stage 1, considering clothes tend to vanish when going from CHS to Equestria, or become saddlebags. The latter would have probably helped them keep it under wraps for a bit longer.
This story was great and all, but I'll be honest, I was far more interested in the advice column on that newspaper. My sides XD
10020413
Don't forget:
- How easy it was for Sunset to fix up dimensional holes in reality.
- All the times ancient Unicorns tossed their dangerous garbage into Earth.
- The fact that Equestria is constantly leaking magic now to Earth.
And the whole dimensional strain thing is a joke. I mean one I'm sure Twilight would blow out of proportion, but still nothing to really be worried about.
10020532
Actually the dimensional strain thing is from the comics, where Celestia spent so much time on interdimensional booty calls with Good!Sombra that when the Mane 6 followed after her on one it caused both worlds to start to break down.
At least they didn't try to introduce cellphones and towers.
10020810
Oh! Tbh, those aren't canon (as stated by Hasbro) and I've always ignored the comics.
But thanks for letting me know of that story arc that fanfic came up with. We appreciate it.
In any case, nice bit of fun with the multiverse. Though a few more loops definitely would've drawn attention from places the girls wouldn't want any. Still, good on AJ to cash in her chips before it all imploded. Not the most exciting conclusion, but one that turned out well and nicely showcases the relationship in two very different contexts. Moments like human Applejack immediately being on board do a great job of acknowledging how the different circumstances do different things to the same person.
Thank you for this. And you are wise not to trust the featured box. It is a silly, fickle thing.
10018784
Hey, you set up a well-known, well-liked AU, you get some notoriety.
10020303
And on her, they fit!
10021142
I feel like when a story becomes popular you're summoned from this realm to leave one(1) comment on it. Every time, without fail.
10021238
I can neither confirm nor deny this.
Alternate reality where Applejack and Rainbow switch with Flim and Flam; nobody would have thought it, then this happened.
It's good they stopped now. I understand that a single bit could be worth a lot in the human world but part of me was worried that they were just taking sacks and sacks of bits over, eventually depleting Equestria of it's finances since those bits were no longer in circulation. That fear reminded me of a similar story on Fimfic where a human made a business, hoarded all the bits, and eventually bought Equestria so it wouldn't have an economic collapse from the bits that weren't in circulation.
10021244
Sounds like something a creature from the dungeon dimension to would say
This is some darn good characterization. 10/10, would recommend to a friend.
1. You totally could have worked “That wacky old coot is Belle’s father.” in given Sweeties existence.
2. I honestly expected them to cross the portal, strip, cross back, rinse wash repeat.
3. Good story.
Loved the cover picture
I get it!
I mean, there's adoption and artificial insemination, two things they logically have to have there, but I'll chalk that up to RD forgetting anything she has no interest in.
There's an image missing somewhere it looks like.
Nice alternate world reference. Though the pony version seems to just be a pun.
Wait is the pony Twilight leaning?
Interesting. While I can work out the real-world counterpart of that expression, neither form is something I've heard before, and I thought I was pretty well versed on Christian English sayings.
10021142
What's that quote from, it seems familiar?
My first thought on this had actually been "Go to other world: Remove clothes. Have counterparts sell clothes. Return through portal and back. Repeat."
This amounts to 'free energy' and is a lot less conspicuous than unloading several points of gold. However the market is more limited. Less risk, lower return.
It is also unclear whether clothing not being worn would make it back through the portal. Worn clothing definitely doesn't. However when there is ambiguity the writer decides, so that's just musing, not a criticism. Still was half expecting a joke where that happened.
It also occurs to me that there is a small problem here. The amount of clothing purchasable after the first step is ridiculously large, while the bit return is steady but significantly smaller in terms of value. This deal would disproportionately favor the human side... which is fair since they're the ones in more financial trouble. But the ROI on the pony side would be comparatively small. I mean still several hundred percent, but the take would at best be in the thousands or tens of thousands of bits per iteration, and possibly lower: nowhere near the million dollars per on the other side.
Oh, there's nothing illegal with what they did. So why does the ending feel like a downer....