Business Meeting
It was another month before the pony named ‘Filthy Rich’ came over. I know it was a month because Twilight kept a calendar of the year on the wall in her room. Not a month by month calendar though, a seasons calendar, one that was a giant poster on her bedroom wall. She explained that the Summer Sun Celebration was on the first day of summer, and that it was the sixty fifth day of summer right now.
I asked her a little bit about it, and she continued on that each season wasn’t broken up into equal two hundred and fifty day long seasons. Instead, summer was four hundred days long, autumn two hundred days, winter one hundred days, and spring three hundred days. That meant school wouldn’t resume for a good eleven months in Earth time. Great. I did learn that apparently my birthday would be on the two hundred and eightieth day of spring because of the one thousand day years.
During the time I waited for Filthy Rich to talk to me, I continued to help Applejack, and with the money she gave me, tried to spice up my life. I bought a journal to record my thoughts in, and a couple of other books, too. One on economics, and some fantasy books I could read. I noticed a lack of fiction in her library, which I thought was a curious choice. I didn’t question it though. She had her weird preferences.
I mostly saved up money from there, and even though I suffered a bit from lack of entertainment, it wasn’t that bad. I’d been crying a lot less, and my dysphoria seemed like it was on a downtrend, thankfully enough. It was a good thing to notice, although there was still one day where I felt it suddenly spike up.
I don’t know how, but waking up one morning, I just felt completely awful, my thoughts filled with the fact that I’d probably never be a man again. I certainly wouldn’t be seeing my friends or family again. Not to mention, I was a kid right now, so when I grew up, I’d have to go through puberty and deal with all that entailed. It was a thought that made me tear up for the first time in a few weeks as I lay in bed.
“Lord, please, I ask that you help me move past this dysphoria,” I prayed. “I thank you for all that you’ve done to help ease this feeling, and for giving me the opportunity to focus on working and doing my best to help other ponies, but–”
“Asher! It’s past time to get up! It’s almost ten thirty!” Twilight called, surprising me by how late it was. I didn’t think so much time had passed, but I wiped my eyes and tried to gather myself as I headed downstairs.
“How were you asleep so late?” she asked me, barely glancing at me. “Filthy Rich is gonna be here soon! Remember how I told you he would be here?”
“I do remember,” I replied tiredly, “but you never told me what day, so I didn’t know.”
“Well why were you in bed so long?” she asked, walking around and making sure every book was in its proper place, as if ponies actually came here. “You’re normally good about being up early.”
“I’m just not feeling great mentally. Dysphoria.”
“Oh, the girl thing? You’re really still on about that?” she asked, turning around to look me in the eye for a second before going back to work.
“Yeah, I’m really still on about that,” I said grumpily. “I’m just kind of getting depressed because of it, and doing the same things over and over again. Working is nice, but entertainment would be nice, too.”
And seeing my friends and family, but I knew that wouldn’t be happening any time soon. It wasn’t something I tried to dwell on, but in combination with dysphoria, I felt downright miserable right then. I knew before though that it was something that could sneak up on you. I learned that in my first two weeks here. But I thought I was getting a handle on it.
“Dysphoria? Oh, you mean the feeling bad about being a filly? I didn’t know you were still doing the ‘pretending to be a colt thing’.”
“I’m not pretending anything, and you’re really not helping,” I told her, feeling my eyes get a little wet. One day I was going to get used to having a childlike ability to hold back tears, but for now, I was still not up to standard.
“Well, if you’re really upset about that, maybe you should just try embracing the positive aspects of your body,” Twilight tried to tell me. “I mean, sure you’re an earth pony, but you’re probably the prettiest filly I’ve seen. You’ve even got Sweetie Belle beat on the cuteness factor, and that’s a hard task to accomplish.”
“Ugh, I know that! I’ve already been thinking that’s what I need to do! But it’s impossible to do when there’s nothing positive about my body!” I closed my eyes and took a breath as the tears ran down, trying very hard to contain myself. If some business pony was about to show up to talk to me, I didn’t want to be a crying mess when they walked in.
“It’s just hard to appreciate a body that I hate,” I said, taking a breath to calm back down, feeling kind of out of breath by just that little outburst. “I used to be a human man, and now I’m a pony girl. Nothing about this mess of a thing is right, and I know I need to work past that and accept that this is the way it is now.”
“There’s no way I’m a girl. I cannot possibly work through this… is this really what God wants me to do?” I was teetering, and every day I felt like I was closer to just sucking it up and dealing with it, as painful as it would be.
“Try embracing femininity?” Twilight suggested, as though she was an expert on the subject. “I did a little reading when you told me about this, and the number one thing the book said to do to get over body issues was have a positive outlook on your body. So maybe you should try to embrace whatever elements make you uncomfortable.”
“Ugh. Whatever. This is a dumb conversation. When is that guy supposed to be here anyway?”
“I think he’s supposed to be–”
Just as she was saying it, a pony stepped into the library, looking around for a moment before their eyes fell on me. It was an older looking man– a stallion– with a slicked back black mane cut kind of like mine, as well as a tannish brown coat and blue eyes. He had pictures of moneybags on his butt, and a tie with a dollar sign on it. It was just about what I was expecting for a pony named ‘Filthy Rich’, and almost reminded me of someone like Donald Trump if he was a pony.
“I assume you’re the filly of the hour I should be speaking to?” he asked, bending down to get closer to me. “You’re younger than I was expecting. You can’t be more than eight.”
“Something like that,” I said dismissively. “I heard you wanted to talk to me about the Apple Family farm?”
“Sure did. Do ya mind if we take a seat, missy?”
I shrugged and said, “Okay. But for the record, I’m not a missy. I want to make that clear.” I took a breath and closed my eyes as I spoke, trying to contain dysphoria. I wondered if there was a way I could sound more masculine.
“Ah, of course. How rude of me. I’ll keep that in mind,” he said politely, before going silent, nonverbally directing me to sit down. He took a seat in front of me as he started to speak.
“Now, I have a problem here… what was the name again?”
“Asher. And what exactly is your problem?”
I wanted to be confident, and do my best to control the conversation. If this was my ticket into being a politician like I thought it was, I wanted to make the most of this opportunity. Portraying confidence and intelligence were my main goals here.
“It’s the matter of you asking Applejack to raise her prices,” he said. He wasn’t aggressive, and in fact spoke in a sort of ‘laid back’ tone. It was the kind of conversation that could’ve happened in a rocking chair I imagined.
“Now, I’m a hard working stallion, and I like to get my apples for a fair price, so having little fillies run around and give advice that hurts my business isn’t my prerogative, if you get my drift. Do ya understand?”
“Sure, I understand,” I replied, “but I’d also like to see Applejack making money as well. Did you see the state of her barn? It was in disrepair before, and I think she could be making more money without giving what’s effectively free apples.”
“But ya do understand that it’s coming back to the consumer, right?” he asked. “How bad will ya feel if we all stop buyin’ her apples because prices have gone up?”
“Have you stopped buying her apples?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. Not in the form of a genuine question. I already knew what the answer was, and it was no. I went through all of this with her when we decided on the prices she should set. I mostly just wanted to refute his logic that she should bring prices down again.
He furrowed his brow for a second, and then sent a little smirk my way. “Quite the smart filly you are, ya know that? Where’d ya go to school at?”
“It’s a school in Philadelphia,” I replied, remembering reading a map of Equestria at some point. A lot of places here were just puns of places that already existed. I didn’t actually go to school in Philadelphia before though. I went to the University of Delaware, but that was a moot point.
“Ya learned about business there?” he asked. “I’ll have to see if anypony there can help run my business. Ponies in Canterlot might act all fancy, but they don’t know squat about running things right.”
I couldn’t help but smile. This was going exactly as I wanted it to. Somehow I’d gone from not even thinking about politics to the potential of being a politician in two months. Obviously I wouldn’t be doing anything at my current size, but it was a big step in the right direction.
“I have to say though, ya have a mighty fine intuition for these sorts of things, that I can tell just talking to ya. Although you should know I don’t really take kindly to ponies hurting my business. Ya understand what I’m saying, right? Last I heard the Apples were gonna be making up money at the end of the year during the Grand Galloping Gala.”
“An event that has free food will not make them any money,” I replied, something he almost certainly full well knew. “Not to mention, if you’re a business man, then you should be buying in bulk and not paying as high of prices as everyone else, plus you can upcharge your customers for a premium apple. In fact, I can help you figure out what the right price would be if you want.”
He smiled again, even wider now. “Well aren’t you some filly. Putting in work. But in all honesty, missy–”
“Please don’t call me missy,” I interrupted, the word cutting through more than it normally did. “I really, really would rather not be called missy, thank you.”
“Sorry, little girl,” he replied, making me scrunch my face. This was absolutely killing me. I wanted to pull my hair because of how bad it made me feel to hear. This was absolutely something I’d need to work past.
“Now as I was saying, I’d really appreciate it if ya wouldn’t tell my suppliers to raise their prices again. I know ya probably think you have some sort of noble goal doing this, but–”
“What noble goal do I have?” I asked, completely confused. “Businesses can raise their prices. It’s not because she needs to fix her barn; I can help with that if that’s the case. It’s the fact that her business model was just flat out bad. Her pricing was bad, and I can’t sit around to look at something like that.”
“Well someponies have a business that relies on low prices being shared to customers, so I’d appreciate it if ya wouldn’t go interfering with that, even if you didn’t know. Better yet, I’d like ya to convince her to drop those prices back down. I figure since you went through the trouble of raising them, you can go through the trouble of fixing them.”
“Um, why?”
“Because it’s hurting my business! Less profits now than I had before, because you went and stuck your nose in places it shouldn’t be.”
All of a sudden, he was sounding aggressive and angry. This conversation was going all wrong, and I suddenly found myself in a position to defend myself. I somehow expected him to be happy and see something good in my doing this. I guess I was just naïve, like everyone else.
“Well if your business relies on your supplier living in a run down house for it to work because they keep prices so cheap, then it was going to fail regardless, I think. It wasn’t even that big of an increase, only about eight percent, so if you’re already marking up your prices, as you should be since you’re buying in bulk–”
“No, don’t speak to me about marking up prices! I’m not interested in marking up prices! I’m interested in keeping customers I’ve had for years because my prices have been set for years! They’re not gonna appreciate a markup, which means I either lose customers or lose profit!”
“So then do you not adjust prices according to inflation?” I asked. “You can put them up as much as ponies are willing to pay. If you lose a few customers but the customers you keep can make up for that–”
“I’m telling ya, filly, I really don’t wanna hear all that, and your lucky I don’t make a bigger deal about this than I was going to. You need to talk to the Apples and get those prices fixed now.”
“Well then we can talk about it and adjust things, like raising prices at the bottom and keeping in bulk prices the same,” I started, now getting frustrated and a bit upset myself. “But please don’t come talk to me only to send vague threats my way. I’m treating you with respect, and I’d like the same given back to me.”
“You’re not treating me with respect when ya go sticking your nose in places it doesn’t belong, missy, so kindly stay out of things you don’t know the full story about. I don’t need an eight year old girl wrecking my profits.”
“I’m an adult,” I said, making sure to look him in the eyes as I said it. He gave a little stutter step backward from the move as I said, “I’m an adult man, and I’m telling you, I’ve already had a lifetime of being treated like I’m not in the last three months. I’m way past fed up dealing with it. It's not as big of a deal as you're making it out to be.” It was hard enough to be silent with the little comments Twilight liked to make throughout the day. If he was going to emphasize the use of the word missy, I was not going to be happy.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered after he stared back for a second in surprise. “I don’t know why I’m talking to ya at all. I’ll go to AJ myself and get everything straight. But I’m warning you. Don’t go messing around with the prices of the things I buy again. You will be hearing from me if ya do.” He stomped out of the library with the words.
Yup, that went pretty badly.
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Yep, just like I thought. Filtry Rich is a d... I would be motivated to make sure that he won't have things going his way ^^
was he mad about the little profit loss ore being outsmarted by a foal xD
Oh my, I make 75% profit when my supplier makes 3% profit, and only 67% profit when my supplier makes 10% profit. Woe is me. My suppliers should be happy to be a serf to my greatness. Filthy Rich needs his zap apple jam supply cut off.
As for inflation, there very well could be none.
Slowly, Asher is going to make a socialist agrarian revolution and that's GOOD
As we all know, priests like little boys.
He's a little girl. He's been abandoned by God.
I'm the type of asshole who would spend ungodly amounts of time and effort tracking down his every supplier and convincing them to raise prices just because he said that.
When capitalists are upset that they can't exploit their workers anymore. I mean honestly, we all knew it was going to turn out this way. Except Twilight. She seems to be about as dense as a neutron star's core at this point.
What're ya gonna do? Cry some more? Realistically, he could do a very good job of torpedoing Asher's political career before it even starts. Unless ponies find out that it's a colt that's threatening Filthy's hegemony. Then I think he'd become a laughing stock..... ah, who am I kidding? These nobles will stick together and totally ruin Asher's life.
But onto a more important topic; is Asher's gender going to get swept under the rug? I really like that it hasn't been forgotten, but it feels like it's going to be a long road until it gets fixed. It's becoming more and more likely that Asher caves and accepts his new reality without wanting to. I don't think it'll get to that point, but the guy's gotta catch a break somewhere, right? Maybe one or two of the Elements will actually respect his wishes?
Do you know if Hemlock conium does Equestria Girls artwork?
All right Asher, you know what to do. Find out eeeeevery supplier he has and go say hello. :3
11284897
I feel like Asher could go on the offensive here. Start a competing business for whatever Filthy does while getting suppliers to charge more.
After all, this is a stallion who's having to resort to intimidating a colt instead of pulling up his big boy pants.
If Filthy Rich's business model can't survive an 8% markup for one of the many types of products he sells, it's his business model that's at fault. He probably charges an exorbitant amount as it is, and doesn't want to give up any of his ill-gotten profits.
But it's not on AJ to keep Filthy Rich filthy rich. Especially at the cost of the Apple farm falling apart.
However, AJ probably ought to have thought about reevaluating the price for her family's products before it got to this point to begin with. But *shrugs* hindsight is always 20/20.
11284943
My thoughts exactly!
Gosh wordsmith, I hope your situation with your friend and laptop gets better. If I could suggest, I really recommend getting a desktop. They are relatively cheaper to repair and upgrade, on top of resisting failure better when compared to replacing the internals or the whole laptop.
For reference: my desktop had about two repairs in ten years, one of them was to upgrade with better hardware. My laptop, older by a year or two, was dying by the fifth year with two to three repairs (that cost enough to upgrade a desktop part) by the tenth, on top of being slow permanently. It was a Lenovo laptop too. I recommend Asus or Acer for laptop reliability.
Story comment
Contrary to what Asher thinks, he's doing really well despite being bogged down by crippling mental issue.
I see that Celestia's influence on society is great. Self proclaimed not-snobbish Filthy Rich is one example.
I wonder if Diamond Tiara would hate Asher now. I hope that the Rich family actually get a good ending with Mr Rich growing out of that negative influence!
11285198
Actually Diamond Tiara might respect/take more interest in Asher for standing up to her father. It would tingle any rebellious streak she has, plus she could see strength in Asher for doing that because no other pony dares to stand up to her father.
And another one bigoted pony to stomp down. Go, Asher!
11284891
11284904
Asher uses SPITE. It's Super Effective!
...Okay, first and foremost...
Why do you insist on portraying ponies as ABSOLUTE IDIOTS?
The longer this story goes the more questionable it becomes. Now actually I think I've lost the thread of the storyline. If in the beginning it felt like it would be a story about self-discovery, accepting change, learning to see beyond blind faith and understanding others.
Now it feels like... I don't know. 'Ash is gonna be politician now because... reasons!' .
Not to mention that the longer the story goes, the less likeable Ash becomes as a character. There is no development. It's in stasis. It keeps praying, keeps spiting and antagonizing everyone around it, and does not seem to care about things around him enough to understand whats and whys.
You know what I want to see? Ash's actions causing Discord to break free early and scare the everliving c__p out of her, just so the little idiot realizes that MAYBE some things are there for a reason and should not be broken.
11291256
All I can say is that I promise it'll all tie together in a neat little bow c:
Hopefully.
Do it Asher.
Start a business that competes with Filthy Rich's. Steal his suppliers and make big money. I believe in you!
11291284
Feels like you're gonna need to use a construction stapler first, to be fair.
11291256
I can agree with that. This story really seems to be frozen in place...
Boopy Doopy, I'm glad you did your research on obscure characters (e.g. Scootaloo's family), but when I skimmed this chapter and the one before before reading them through, I misremembered that the meeting was with Spoiled Rich. Because for me, the results of that meeting would have been more in-character for her.
Perfectly bad timing. If Asher was more prepared perhaps a defensive position wouldn't have been fallen into. However it was a pipe dream to believe disrupting the status quo would be seen favorably by the higher rungs.