Dysaethesia
Cheerilee’s hoof stayed at the door. She knew that no one else would be home, of course, that Twilight would never be so careless as to draw up a schedule without thinking; her hooves shook on the handle nonetheless.
She tried to remember how long it was since the first time; the answer came to her as easily as her multiplication tables did.
One month.
Twenty-eight days for her to have mislearnt—for Twilight to have mistaught—more than she had in her twenty-eight years of pathetic experimentation, as though she were a witch-doctor being handed paracetamol.
It wasn’t just the Bovi-Equine languages, now; they had learnt languages simply to defile them. When that had turned too difficult—when the only languages left were so far away that it would take years to learn them— it was the Equestrian nomenclature of biology, of astronomy, of chemistry—
The door opened as she leaned on it, making her fall over onto her forehooves; she looked up just in time to see Twilight’s warm, smiling face.
“Just on time!” she said, her voice as friendly as one could imagine a voice could be, right before she leaned down and put her muzzle up against her ear, her voice turning considerably colder. “You could almost input Gravelham’s Function into Ackerpony’s Number and multiply an additive monoid precisely at your Cartesian coordinates in the time it’d have took you to open that door.”
—even of mathematics. She shuddered unnoticeably as Twilight turned around and went into the unusually dark library, silent; there was no need to say anything else. A few weeks ago, defiling the language of the purest science would have been too horrifying to contemplate; now it was nothing but a greeting.
She followed quickly. Twilight did not like to be kept waiting.
A slightly bubbling sort of sound came from behind her, and she turned around just in time to see the door shut, trapping them in darkness. There was a low scraping sound. She waited; Twilight knew best.
The lights suddenly came on, and the first thing she saw as the brightness cleared from her eyes were the wide eyes of a short, somewhat nervous blue colt sitting at a table that looked very much like one from a school.
“Miss Cheerilee?”
“Snips?” she asked, her eyes open wide. “Miss—Miss Twilight?”
A voice came from behind her. “You’re the teacher, not me,” Twilight’s voice said, and she glanced over to see her teacher scratching away at a spread scroll with a quill. “Teach.”
“He’s just a foal, M—” She stopped herself and shook her head. “He’s just a foal, Twilight, I can’t possibly—all we’ve done is play—”
“Don’t lie to me,” the voice said. Twilight’s horn was glowing, but nothing else was; Cheerilee couldn’t see her lips moving. “You want this. I’ve seen how you look at them, giving them their little lessons, seen how you’d make a ‘mistake’ and then never admit it—”
Snips looked to the sides somewhat uncomfortably. “Uh, Miss Cheerilee? Twilight said you had to tutor me because my grades were down or something, right?”
Twilight laid back casually in her chair, mouth as closed as before. “—enjoy your little gift, Miss Cheerilee. I hope you don’t have any more questions.”
She had plenty of questions, but all she saw as she looked back was the foal.
The first sentence came out without thinking.
“Yes,” she said, recalling Snips’ grades, “Yes, Snips. I’m here to tutor you.” She noted that Twilight, thoughtful as she was, had left a fairly comprehensive selection of the syllabus on the table. “You’ve fallen behind on—on foreign languages,” she said, smiling in a rather far-off manner as she fetched a familiar book from the table.
She philosophically detested the integration of foreign languages at the elementary level—it demeaned them all, Cheerilee thought, and then almost laughed out loud—but right then all she could think of were the possibilities.
“Let’s start,” she said, bringing the edition of Modern Languages of Equestria up to bear along with a fair amount of writing material. Her hooves trembled, and she took up a seat alongside the little, innocent little idiot of a foal. “I’ve got your scores, but what is it you feel you’re having trouble with?”
“Uh,” he began, putting a hoof up against his lower lip. “Windwards Griffonian. How do I tell the difference between tones and stuff?”
The question went through her like a bad simile; not the question itself, which had been asked several hundred times to her alone, but the knowledge that she held a foal’s entire comprehension of the facts of the world in her hoof.
She could say anything she wanted, and no Applebloom or Twist or any other one of those smart little ponies she loved and despised so deeply would ever correct her, and she knew that he would tell Snails and that moron would believe him wholeheartedly—
“Uh, Miss Cheerilee?” he said, waving a hoof before her glazed-over eyes. “You alright?”
“Oh,” she said, and giggled. “I’m just fine.”
Even as the words came from her mouth, she felt a considerable rush of shame. She had gotten caught up so deeply in the sheer depravity of her thoughts that she hadn’t stopped to consider their depravity.
She fought against herself, and felt something pushing against the edge of her consciousness, something that made her wonder if it wasn’t herself at all; she looked back pleadingly at Twilight’s lightly amused face, and a thought in Twilight’s voice came unbidden to her mind:
I might listen, the voice said, but your body won’t.
“Well, Snips,” she said, somewhat cautiously, “it’s easy to distinguish tones. Let me show you.” She bit down on a pencil and put it against the ruled paper.
She could stop now, and simply teach him the facts. Nothing was forcing her to lie; Twilight’s condemnation wouldn’t mean nearly as much to her as the community’s.
Her head moved forwards and drew a 天 tiān, the compact little strokes boxing it rather neatly; then she drew a 神 shén, then a 干 gàn, then a 鼠 shǔ.
The foal would never speak Windwards Griffon, Cheerilee reasoned; most of the Griffons outside of Griffonia proper would speak the Riverwards dialect. She would do him no disservice by miseducating him in it.
“Ooh!” he said, his voice filled with the spark of youthful vigour, “That’s, uh—the sun dries rats?”
The foal had some spark of intelligence in him, unlike Snails; she knew that even with his little lapses of judgement, he had the potential to master this language just as she had.
And something in Cheerilee wanted more than anything to crush it.
The horror of her thought struck her, and she shook her head in momentary terror; her heart felt like it had skipped a beat. She sat for a while, looking down at her hooves.
If she struck now, she might gain a little pleasure from it—that was a lie, because she knew that she would enjoy it more than she ever could possibly have enjoyed anything more in her life—but was it worth this foal’s mind? She could stop now, and nothing would happen to her. The tones were all different, and she could teach him easily; she had no doubt the foal would learn.
“Well,” she said, “it’s actually a traditional greeting.”
Snips’ eyes widened in surprise. “Really?” he said, the joy of discovery in his voice.
Cheerilee bit her lip slightly to stifle the gasp of perverse pleasure that ensued. It came far stronger than she’d expected, a certain rush as carnal as it was intellectual, and a sort of warmth came over her as her eyes rolled back very slightly.
This is a foal, she told herself, looking inconspicuously at him. A real, live foal, and I’m feeding him any old horseapples for milk and he’s believing it all.
“Uh, Miss Cheerilee? If you’re tired—”
“No, nothing’s wrong!” The look, she realised, was only inconspicuous as far as a schoolteacher looking silently at a foal asking a question might be called ‘inconspicuous’. “Nothing at all.” She put her hoof down upon the paper. “See, this sentence is special, because it has all the tones. The first one’s—”
“Tiān?” he said, in a particularly endearing squawk; he didn’t sound quite like a griffon, but it was close enough to make Cheerilee wonder.
A thought suddenly hit her.
Most of the griffons in Equestria spoke Riverwards; surely, then, it wouldn’t be too bad if she decided to give him a more modern education?
“No,” she said, “It’s tìn.” Her shudders were fairly constrained; she focused on the task at hand. “See, that’s called the arriving tone: tìn.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that the departing tone?”
“Since a lot of griffons lived on the ground after the first war,” she said, relating a true fact, “they started saying that they ‘arrived’ by going down, and it carried over into the language!” she continued, doing her best impression of a depraved foal’s show announcer.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking rather unsure. “That sounds a little too soon to be something t’change a whole language around, right?”
A sudden nervousness came over her. At the very least, he hadn’t noticed the other, far more important distinction. “Now, Snips, don’t you trust your teacher?” she said, her smile showing a sliver of teeth. If she were in a cartoon, she reflected, she might be sweating.
He put his hoof up against his chin for a moment and then smiled, nodding. “Of course, Miss.”
The foal had accepted her authority without question; she hadn’t Twilight’s masterful self-control, and couldn’t help but let out a little groan of relieved pleasure. The foal barely seemed to notice, looking intently down at the characters.
“And this is sǎng,” she said, gently nasalising the un-nasalised syllable as she spoke and letting the sound catch in her throat on the upstroke. “That’s the level tone, because it maintains a constant pitch throughout. And this is gōn—yes, that sound exists in Windwards—and this is sú—”
—
“So, you see,” she said, “人 refers to ponies in particular. Sentient beings are 马人.”
“You sure it’s not the other way around?” Snips said quietly, copying the fact all the same.
Cheerilee acted as if she hadn’t heard him; he had been raising those weak objections for a few hours, now, but he seemed to know on some level that she simply knew more than him, that she was the mare and he was the little schoolfoal without the slightest clue.
It was a feeling of power the schoolteacher had only ever thought she had before, under the eyes of her fellow teachers and before the gaze of her brightest pupils, but in that little library with nothing to judge her she could do anything.
It was intoxicating.
“And that’s all we have for today,” she said, smiling warmly. The clock on the wall read nine. “Do you have any questions?”
“Not any more, Miss Cheerilee,” the colt said, his face brightening quite suddenly as he gathered up his notes; even if he was wrong, he had learnt. “Is it okay if I share my notes with Snails? He’s been having a little trouble with his Griffon too.”
“Of course, Snips.”
She smiled as he went, and waited until she could hear the door close behind her before she let out a long, deep moan, her eyes closing shut in utter ecstasy. She stayed like that for almost a minute, the pressure lifting from her like a flood.
“The Riverwards was a nice touch.”
Then she remembered that there was something to judge her after all, and as the pleasure wore off it was replaced by a rather permeating numbness.
She looked around to see Twilight looking rather impassively at her, her horn enveloping the papers in purple light; they disappeared with a flash.
Cheerilee gave her a weak look, as though uncomprehending. Then she shook her head slightly. “I can’t believe I did that,” she said, quietly. “I never thought—”
“You never thought,” she said, a small smile appearing on her face, “that you’d eventually get to do what you’ve always wanted?”
The schoolteacher coughed into her hoof. She couldn’t focus very well. “I—I think I went too far,” she said, shaking her head gently. Her chest felt tight; perhaps she was feeling regret, but she knew the amount of damage she had done was far beyond the point of regret.
“You enjoyed it, though, didn’t you?”
She looked down at her forehooves for a little while, then up at her.
“I did,” she said, “but I don’t think I want to enjoy it again.”
“So,” Twilight said, her voice level, “you want to go back to how it was before? Just mispronunciations and misconjugations and malapropisms and faux amis?”
There was a bit of a silence before Cheerilee spoke again.
“Yes,” she said, “I’d like that.”
“That’s too bad,” Twilight said, shrugging, “because tomorrow, we’re going to work together. You really gave me a few pointers, you know. Very inspiring.”
“Twilight,” she said, “Miss Twilight, please. I know I can’t make up for it, but I won’t do it again.” She stood. “I’ve got to go. I’m not going to do this another time; I’m sorry.”
She began to walk towards the door.
“Just so you know, Miss Cheerilee, we’re no longer equal in this relationship.”
She stopped.
“What do you mean?”
“Remember when I told you we had the same to lose?”
Cheerilee nodded slowly.
Twilight shrugged again. “We don’t have the same to lose any more.” She leaned forwards a bit. Cheerilee didn’t look her in the eye. “The magical transcripts are somewhere you’ll never need to go.”
“We’re both at fault here,” she said, a sort of dread creeping into her voice. “You brought Snips here and you watched me. You encouraged me.”
“I don’t know Griffonian, do I?” she said, her mouth closing itself for her next sentence as her horn glowed. And it’s a shame there’s no way to record telepathy.
Cheerilee had a thousand objections, but she knew that Twilight had covered every base. A certain sort of serenity came over her.
Her returning voice was expressionless. “What exactly do you want to do?”
“Why,” she said, “we’re going to make sure that every single one of your students gets some one-on-one time, won’t we?”
“Who’s next?”
Twilight grinned.
“Sweetie Belle.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
But she guessed that she might as well enjoy it.
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edit: There's going to be more.
I'd like to imagine that I am capable of a great variety of writing styles.
This includes the style of sleazy pornography, of course, but why on earth ought I to waste my foray into it on actual pornography?
That would just be an utter waste, wouldn't it? The only shame I have is that I wasn't able to fit in a joke about the Tamil hermaphrodite character. The third chapter isn't my best work, and I do apologise. I swear, for some reason I can't write a comedy without it turning into a soul-scarring experience.
In any case, I assume some people want an explanation of various things. I originally had a far more comprehensive bit going on, but it was eaten up; here's a more cursory bunch of trivia that might be useful to the confused.
Dysfluency's Lowlands Unicorn is French. Cheerilee mispronounces it badly; the sentences themselves are just cuts of nonsense along the lines of j'aimerais manger le foin quand il a poussé.
Dyslexia's Highland Unicorn is German, its Loshadrillic is Cyrillic, its Stalliongradski is Russian and its Ostlesan is Ukranian. Worthy Prose is a pun on Dostoevsky's name, Ostlesan is a mash-up of ostler and Odessa and Loshadrillic is a mash-up of лошадь and Cyrillic. The Russian is so butchered as to be untranslateable by one as unskilled in the language as I; ask a Russian to read it and tell me the results.
Dysaethenia's Bovi-Equine is Indo-European, its Windwards Griffonian is Mandarin Chinese and its Riverwards is Yu (Cantonese). Cheerilee uses butchered syllables from the latter to describe the characters, expressed in faux-Hanyu Pinyin to represent her terrible accent.
I don't think I've encountered a fic before in which I had to expend conscious effort to move past the palpable depravity of it, like I had to in this chapter. It's no doubt one of the most appalling things I've ever read, and I love it.
Pure evil. I'm speechless.
You seem to be very fixated on grammar structure and foreign languages
The concept for this would never have occurred to me
You think that's bad...
Try teaching a conlang as a real language!
Esperanto! Klingon! Elvish!
I didin't understand what was going on until the third chapter. I'm so dumb.
1554181 You're not the worst. I still don't think I entirely get what's happening.
1550570
This, very much so.
I read grimdark. I think it's funny, or maybe sad, or maybe just has some cool pictures. I don't wince when Trixie dies in the snow, Scootaloo gets raped, Pinkie gets addicted to drugs, or Fluttershy is forced to eat her own intestines. But, this is honestly the first time I've ever been tempted to downvote because of content.
This. Hurt.
That you kept bringing the idea back to his potential, and then that he's going to share his notes.
I'd hope that Twilight and Cheerilee get their comeuppance, but I'm not sure anything bad enough could happen to them.
This is the most perverse, obscene and evil story I've ever come across, and it is about grammar.
1554320
), Amit has ventured into the murky bowels of BDSM, foal abuse, etc 
Step 1: Cheerilee finds bad grammar, mangled diction, etc to be perversely erotic
Step 2: Instead of constructing a safe, happy Cheerilight clopfic around this premise like a normal person (
What did I just read
Oh my god, you brilliant motherbucker! This... this is just gold. It's... it's like the most depraved clop ever written, only minus the clop material. It is glorious in how absurd it is. This is pure madness and I love every word of it.
I recognized the French, German, Russian, (nice use of Cyrillic by-the-way) Mandarin, and Cantonise. Shamefully, I was uncertain of the Ukrainian.
I am fascinated by this one, and I do hope for updates soon.
Calling it, this is the new Cupcakes. Except the errors are intentional.
This..I have no words. Good show.
1554783
I am agreeing with you, so hard, right now. This definitely makes you realize exactly how much faith you put into your teacher, how royally they could mutilate your future through your education. And the worst part is, you wouldn't even know it. Now I wonder if they have standardized testing in Equestria.
On a related note, the elementary school language curriculum is now a gateway drug. Stalliongradski is mescalin and Snips is a veritable fountain of Devil's Ether. Twilight is a teacher, a dominatrix, a drug dealer, and a wizard, all at the same time. We're making good progress, here.
So...let me make sure I'm mentally working this right. Twilight...is co-starring (with Cherrilee) in a fanfic which is a parody of something which is essentially a fanfic...of Twilight. Only instead of bondage and vampires (I think? I don't know...the closest I want to come to fiction about vampires in love is Buffy)...they're misteaching children languages that they'll probably need to know.
This is absolutly delightful. We get an evil version of Twilight, and to a lesser extent Cheerliee, without having to slog through any of the gore or sexual abuse or anything that normally makes this kind of thing take a turn for the hilariously absurd. Granted, the concept is hilariousy absurd on its own, but if one takes the concept on its own terms, one isn't distracted by absurdity within the confines of the story.
And let me just make sure I got it...the joke/point of having her read Not!Russian in Not!English was that she was phonetically sounding out letters and phrases that aren't pronounced phonetically, such as if someone who didn't speak English pronounced the "k" in "knight," yes? I don't know, I make a point of avoiding anything which can't be tied back to Latin or the Germanic languages.
1559415
I could explain, but I could also show:
становящийся is pronounced 'stanovyashchiysya'.
Now, consider what a person with no knowledge of Cyrillic might read it as: 'ctahobrwnncr'.
'ktahobrwn-n-kr' is a phonetic transcription of the sounds Cheerilee's making. She's stubborn about it because only a person so ignorant in the language as to think that Cyrillic is just a different style of Latin could possibly read it like that; she's stubborn about it because reading я - ya - as 'r' would be a move that only an ignorant tourist would make. It symbolises the complete abandonment of her linguistic knowledge and life experience in pursuit of the hedonistic relief of mispronunciation.
Right, that last idea seems really silly when I give it words, but it's totally legit I swear.
Oh...oh, now that makes sense. Well...insomuch as anything here makes sense, at the least. Thanks for explaining, never even once occured to me that someone would try to read Cyrillic that way. And now I'm certain it does, and that's...remarkably depressing.
I always find that the most impressive dark material is generated without strong reliance on carnage and depraved sexuality, and that while both of those things can be important contributors to a dark fic's atmosphere, their overuse can lead to a final product that feels at times absurd and seems to misunderstand its subject material at its core. Dead Space 2 is a good example (though as a game I still like it), as are many of the Cupcakes clones and attempted sequels on this site. Carnage is is like salt: I'm not interested in eating it on its own, but it can sure help the flavor of a meal. That was a creepy simile.
But to me, this is a psychological torment fic done exactly right. It, above anything else I've read on fimfiction, demonstrates that torment and gore/abusive sexuality are separate components to a fic and that the former does not need the latter to succeed. It is to fimfiction grimdark what Slender was to the video game horror genre. And it's absolutely brilliant.
And to choose linguistics as the central theme was the cherry atop this fudge sundae of deliciously dark chocolate evil.
Thank you for writing this. Sir, I tip my hat to you.
oh this is wonderful, pure depravity, and while i enjoy gore and sex as much as the next guy, it's eye opening to see a story offer a more fundamental form of sadism. Pure, unchallenged desecration of a students mind!
This... This is perverse.
I love it.
1556008
you good sir have the greatest name ever, i personaly prefer plato of the great greek philosiphers but socrates is a very inspiring man as well.
also
cheeralie doing sick love what wrong i is it is and
(what cheeralee is doing is sick and wrong, i love it)
I must confess to a certain degree of bafflement on my part. Everyone else seems to find the piece genuinely disturbing, but I thought it was fucking hilarious. Is everyone else just being really sarcastic?
1646111
It's probably a uniquely adult fear.
1647668
But I'm an adult...
1651496 Good. I need one.
I'm a Chinese and I laughed my ass off.
cks mouse"
天神干鼠 literally means "heavenly god dries mouse" but it can also be interpret as "heavenly god f
人 means "others" when used as a single character, but its literal meaning is "man". So 马人 means horse man(or maybe centaur?)
1655969
I'm actually Singaporean and speak some bastardised creole of the language; the intention was to say ‘Celestia fucks mice’ and present it as a greeting. I'm glad someone got the pun.
In any case, I was trying to insinuate that Cheerilee was teaching Snails that 人 meant ‘pony’ and 马人 meant ‘people’, which would be, of course—if we were to assume that 人 signifies a person, in the naturalist epistemological tradition—absolutely wrong.
1656012
天神 is not Celestia. It means "Heavenly god".
1656103
What do you think 'Celestia' means, or is?
1656204
塞莱斯蒂亚？
1656313
I'm afraid that to the greatest extent of the average man's comprehension, Celestia isn't an Eastern pigweed stopper built of Classical Chinese conjunctions any more than Kennedy is a willingly direct Buddhist nun.
I was fine with this until you got the foals involved.
That was too far.
I've read some odd porn before; tons of bondage, candle wax, whips, and chains. I've read some odd horror stories before; tons of blood, guts, gore, and mutilations.
And then I read this. Wow
.
This fic left me feeling way more disturbed than "Cupcakes" ever did. Just the idea of someone getting their perverse jollies off from the act of knowingly miseducating children and possibly ruining their grasp on information that may be vital to their futures is fucking terrifying. What makes it so much worse is the fact that you wrote it very well. I would love it if this was a terribly put-together jumble of words, because then I'd feel justified in hating it. But, dammit, it's not. You did an excellent job, sir/madam.
So, uh, kudos for writing a story that's going to give me the strangest nightmares. I look forward to reading more.
I was all set to call this my new fetish until you got to this chapter. Here is where you earn that dark tag. Miseducating the young like this has the potential for very dire consequences. What happens if one of them becomes important or famous enough to go to another land and unintentionally cause an international incident by saying something vaguely insulting to the wrong person? Moreover, what happens when they go on to receive higher education, and find out that everything Cheerilee taught them is untrue? Isn't she putting her job in danger if what they're doing is so wrong that there are actual laws against it?
I don't have kids myself, but this kind of thing is the sort that keeps me awake at night. How can we be sure that what our teachers are doing is actual education and not indoctrination? Ever seen that video of the kindergarteners being taught to sing praises to Obama? What high school educated kid knows that Stalin killed millions of his fellow countrymen through starvation simply to drive up the price of wheat so that he could prop up their failing economy?
I'm getting off track here, but you see where I'm going with this. We trust our teachers to educate our young on facts, and Cheerilee is doing the opposite of this. It's no wonder that she's having feelings of guilt, she stunting her charges' growth; actually perverting her cutie mark and special talent. This is going to come back and haunt her. All that being said, I'm still looking forward to reading more, if only for the hopes of seeing some Cheerilight. Not nearly enough of that ship around.
2131005
So you're basically snorting cocaine with shredded glass in it?
2131513
The literary equivalent of it, yes. I... have a problem...
This is so delightfully evil!
This was... <shiver> Ooohhh....
As a teacher myself, I can't say I've ever actually wanted to do this. But I find it so very understandable.
At first I was a little annoyed with the occasional pronoun confusion in the prose, but whether or not it was intentional, I find it quite thematic in the larger scheme of things here. Myself, I've never had any interest in gore or grimdark stories (beyond a small desire to know their plots without reading them). That sort of stuff really grosses me out. So I'm very interested to see what people are saying here about this relative to stories like Cupcakes.
This story is just so wonderfully filthy, so perverse and exciting, I hardly know how to respond to it. This is like making the Marquis de Sade a permanent member of l'Académie Française. The very thought gives me goosebumps.
This should be featured on Equestria After Dark.
2395115
wh
why didn't i do that fuck
(probably because i'm not sure if its foalcon)
fuck it, brb
Wayt wuts goin ahn h3r3
i doenst git ths stry
YOU MADE ME MILDLY AROUSED ABOUT GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE POWERTRIPS.
This story is terrifying and spectacular at the same time.
Oh man. This is so much more grotesque than I ever though a story about butchering language could possibly be. I'm not even sure if I have it in me to track this
unf
also, how did such shameless foalcon pornography get passed with only a teen rating? this was the most depraved child-abuse i've ever read on the site.
super hot
*Sobs uncontrollably*
I... I think I feel dirty.
Oh gods, I take back my previous comment. This is horrifying!
4002921
If I do recall, it was grandi, not grande.
I'm mildly certain this is part of the story's entire point, but I'll keep it in mind.
I'm not certain what kind of textbooks you had, but I learnt my French from Jean Baudrillard.
1656432
1656313
I never liked the way Latin names are "Romanized" in Chinese. The choice of words always seem too artificial, arbitrary, and just plain wrong - too many syllables, perhaps, compared to how compact and efficient actual Chinese names are.
That said, Princess Celestia is usually translated to 宇宙公主 in the Mainland/Taiwanese dub of the show. The name conjured up images of costumed comic book superheroes when I first heard it. Doesn't quite have the same feel to it as the original English name, even though all things considered it is a pretty good translation.