Series L, episode 9 - Lesbians
"Good evening and welcome to Q.I., the radio show where four ponies go in with their sense of being smart intact, but none get back out quite the same."
Hay Fry’s mellifluous voice burst from the radio sets of about half the listeners in Equestria as the applause of his live studio audience died down. Said audience would get all sorts of nice visuals to go with the program, but most ponies would have to make do with just the audio.
“With me today are the ever-present, ever-lovable Derpy Hooves, here for her one-hundredth-and-fortieth time…”
“Yay!” the visually-challenged pegasus called out from her seat.
“Mister Big Macintosh, respected apple farmer and alpha male to Ponyville’s Sweet Apple Acres…”
“E-yup.”
“Miss Rainbow Dash, Element of Loyalty and weather captain to the Ponyville slash Cloudsdale region…”
“Woo!”
“And a very special guest today, the radiant Princess Celestia herself, who really needs no further introduction what-so-ever.”
“I’m honored to be here, mister Fry.”
“No ma’am, we are honored to have you here,” the host insisted. “Now, for those of you who have been living under a rock for the last couple years, the rules of the game are simple.”
“Oh no. That usually means they’re not,” Rainbow Dash interrupted.
“They really are, my dear. Points are not so much awarded for giving the correct answer as much as being quite interesting, and are forfeit for being dull and obvious.”
Derpy audibly shuffled in her seat. “Ah… heh.”
“Each of our contestants has one of these nifty, modern attention-seeking devices. Big Mac’s goes”
On cue, Big Mac pressed down on his buzzer. “Rawhide~!”
“Rainbow Dash goes” *SONIC BOOM*
“Princess Celestia’s goes” *HARP*
“Derpy goes” “Piano!” *CRUNCH*
“And I go a little crazier every time we do this little dance of ours.”
“Mister Fry?” Derpy asked as she eyed her buzzer and Fry alike.
“Yes dear?”
“Whose idea was this?”
“To be entirely honest with you I have no idea,” the host admitted, rubbing his snout. “Anyway, let’s get this train wreck started, shall we?”
“Let’s,” the princess agreed.
“Very well, then. Our first topic today is the lentil,” Fry announced.
“The lentil? Really, Fry?” Rainbow interjected. “Staff’s really scraping the bottom of the barrel here, don’t you think?”
“I think the lentil has its qualities, Rainbow Dash~” Derpy argued with her typical low-pitched, sing-song voice. “I made lentil muffins once.”
“Were they any good?” asked Celestia.
“It’s not an experience I’d suggest you try to reproduce.”
“E-nope,” Big Mac confirmed as Fry tried not to laugh at Derpy’s verbosity. After so many seasons, he should’ve been used to her hidden depths by now, but it still cracked him up.
“Have you tried these ‘lentil muffins’ then, Macintosh?” Celestia inquired.
“E-yup.”
At the sudden noise of a sonic boom, three contestants and a smirking host turned towards Rainbow Dash, who sat there holding up one of her hooves as if trying to point at something without fingers.
“Interesting thing about lentils,” the daredevil spoke up, “is that they’ve been around since before pottery, or the asseramic period.”
“I’m not sure if I should give you points for that,” Fry replied. “Though it’s certainly true on the face of it you mispronounced ‘aceramic’ quite horribly.”
“What?”
“Pottery is ‘ceramics’, with a hard K.”
“Darn it.”
“You know what? Since you’re being such a good sport about it and only made one silly little mistake in pronunciation, and Celestia knows I’ve made such mistakes of my own, I’ll go ahead and give you five points for that little bit of knowledge.”
“At this point I’d really like to state something about the aceramic period but I wasn’t around way back then,” Celestia admitted.
“Since when were you around?” Derpy piped up to her regal neighbor.
“Last Thursday. And yes, I do know about your mistakes, Mister Fry. I’ve listened to those episodes. Also, I’d just like to mention that you are a very naughty little stallion.”
“Only when I want to, your highness,” said stallion half-jokingly admitted. “Now, lentils not only have the fourth-highest level of protein, by weight, of any legume, but were discovered by an Earth pony whose name was sadly lost to the mists of history somewhere in the Ponyterranian.”
*SONIC BOOM!* “His name was Hrffrrt,” Rainbow Dash interjected.
“Now that’s a very interesting thing to joke about since ponies in the aceramic period weren’t very keen on language just yet, spoken or otherwise, so if the discoverer of the lentil had a name in the first place, a horse noise like Hrffrt might very well be it.”
“No no, I said Hrrfrrt,” Rainbow corrected.
“What?”
“You said Hrrfrt. There’s a difference.”
“E-yup. In the old tongue, Hrrfrt meant ‘food-bringer’. On the other hoof, Hrrfrrt meant ‘food-bring’. Today, that’d be classified a verb.”
“Aaand ten points for the both of you,” Hay Fry exclaimed, making no effort at all to hide his surprise at Big Mac’s outburst.
“I did not know that,” Rainbow admitted and stared at her strapping neigh-bor.
“Don’t feel bad about it, my little pony. Neither did I.”
“I’m quite certain none of us knew,” Fry offered.
“I knew. Macky’s real smart when he wants to be. That’s why all the ladies love him,” Derpy revealed.
“That and other reasons. Am I right, Derp?”
“Rawhide!”
“Yes?” Fry said as the ladies shut up in response to Mac’s buzzer.
“…Next question please,” Mac meekly requested. He was very glad to be a natural red, with two of his acquaintances all but hitting on him.
“Very well. As simple a word as ‘lentil’, our next topic might as well be a really difficult word starting with ‘le’,” Fry announced.
“Le horse noise, if you’ll excuse my French,” Celestia interrupted. “It goes like houurffnhmmfr. It means that-”
“The waterin’ hole’s all dried out”, Mac finished. “No… wait… that’s not it.”
“The next topic is in fact ‘lepidopterology’.”
“Lemmings on a what now?” Rainbow asked incredulously.
“It means the study of butterflies.”
“Should’ve talked Fluttershy into coming here then, instead of me.”
“Perhaps,” Fry replied, “but we all expect your answers to be much more interesting, if not merely amusing, than hers. Now then, who can tell me roughly how many species of Lepidoptera exist in our world?”
“Die, potato!”
Derpy quickly pulled her hoof back from the buzzer. “Wait what? Uh… Two hundred?”
To nopony’s surprise but Derpy’s own, a blaring alarm went off the moment she closed her mouth.
“No! I’m so sorry, but that’s not right. That’s not even in the right ball park that is not even the right game. The correct answer is of course one-hundred and seventy-four thousand two-hundred… and fifty.”
“… Of course,” Rainbow mockingly repeated.
“And if you only count the actual butterflies, Mister Fry?” Celestia asked with a slight smirk.
“He didn’t?”
“Somewhere between fifteen and twenty thousand,” Fry stated matter-of-factly.
“Well what are the other one hundred and fifty species then!?”
“Moths,” Derpy answered before Fry could.
“And I’ll give you five points for that one.”
“You know,” Celestia started, “I think it’s interesting that Miss Dash mentioned Fluttershy, because it was one of her predecessors who discovered them first.”
“Not actually true I’m afraid, your highness,” Fry denied.
“Really? You’d think I should know.”
“Unless you are said predecessor. Though the term ‘lepidoptera’ is indeed of Greek origin – it comes from ‘lepsis’ and ‘pteron’, or ‘scaled wing’ – and would thus suggest a pegasus discoverer, it was in fact an Earth pony who happened to know a more than fair amount of Greek.”
“Here’s a hint, Princess,” Rainbow Dash interjected. “Butterflies don’t usually get high enough for pegasi to meet ‘em. Especially not in the Pre-Unification era.”
“E-yup.”
“But then, considering you’ve got butterflies in the Royal Garden, or so Fluttershy told me, I can see how you’d think otherwise. It’s no biggie.”
“I’m afraid Miss Dash stole those points right away from you, highness,” Fry said apologetically. “And on that note, let’s carry on to our main topic of the day, which is… drumroll please… lesbians.”
Derpy snorted. “Lively lesbian librarian lepidopterologists languorously licking layered lentils!”
“By my sister’s hooves!”
“But Derpy,” Fry attempted to complain through the raucous laughter of the audience, “Fluttershy’s not a librarian, and I’m not entirely sure Twilight Sparkle is gay.”
“Oh dear, and here, we, go! You must’ve been waiting for this entire run to get to this topic, haven’t you?” Rainbow jokingly accused.
“My dear Rainbow Dash, I’ve been making cracks about being gay since episode one. Gay pegasus philosophers…”
“I’d just like to say that not all pegasus philosophers were gay. It just so happens that the well-known ones were.”
*Harp*
“Princess Celestia?”
“Did you know – did you know that being gay wasn’t as nationally accepted as it is today until roughly two millennia ago? I should know. It was by my decree, after all. Of course, nopony gave a flying feather about those philosophers but other pegasi at the time.”
“I think that’s rather interesting,” Fry judged. “Certainly somewhat relevant to my interests.”
“If Princess Cadance was a pegasus before she became an alicorn princess, what were you?” Derpy asked.
“I just was.”
“Hah?”
“And so was my dearest sister.”
“Alright so,” Rainbow Dash started. “If you were the one to decree that it’s okay to be gay, for which I’ll bet wise-guy over here’s probably thankful to you…”
“I am, in fact,” Fry confirmed. “Even though it doesn’t make much sense after such an awfully long time.”
“…I’d just like to take this chance to ask what your own stance on the matter is, as it were.”
“Come again?”
“Your highness, are you gay?” Rainbow asked at her usual level of bluntness.
“Bisexual, actually. When you’re as old as my sister and I, such things tend not to be an issue. Even two-thousand years ago.”
“So I thought.”
“Quite an interesting thing about gay ponies back in those dark times,” Fry announced, “is that when a stallion was found to be gay, they would stick a certain vegetable up the poor sod’s rrrrectum. This was more often than not a piece of ginger, hence the act being named ‘gingering’.”
Big Mac and the two pegasi cringed.
“Of course, nowadays gay stallions get something entirely different stuck up there.”
Derpy hit her buzzer, eliciting a loud llama’s cry. “What do gay mares stick up their butts, Mister Fry?”
“Why would they? They have a perfectly serviceable front entrance!” Rainbow Dash said before Fry could reply.
“Rawhide!”
“Ah don’t have anything to say. Jes’ thought it be a nice bit o’ comedic timin’.”
“Another interesting thing about that time when I legalized homosexuality – and I should clarify, also homophilia – is that around that same time my hair went multi-color,” Princess Celestia remarked.
“Filly-a? That’s nasty!” Derpy exclaimed, ever protective of her foals.
“No, ‘philia’, with a PH. It’s another one of those Greek words. One of the old pegasus words for love. I’m rather more partial to Latin myself.”
“Alicornes eunt domus!”
“No, my dear Rainbow Dash,” Fry interrupted amongst the audience’s incessant laughter, “I think you meant ‘alicorni ite domum’.”
“Of course, back then we didn’t have any domus to imus to in the first place. We’d just sort of came to be right there.”
“Wait, wait,” Fry attempted to speak up as the audience uproar settled down. “Hold on. Your highness, you said your hair went multi-colour around the time you made it okay to be gay?”
“I did say that, yes.”
Fry took a long, silent look at the other side of the table.
“Whaaat?” exclaimed Rainbow Dash. “I’m not—look okay I got the multi-color thing down but that doesn’t say anything alright? I mean, look at my dad lately? He’s got the same thing going and he’s obviously got himself an awesome daughter!”
“An awesomely deceptive one at least,” Fry joked. “And then there are ponies like me who look like the kind that’d go out with a nice mare but actually prefer the company of a big, strapping stallion.”
Catching Fry’s gaze, Big Mac scooted back in his chair with a loud and clear “EeeeeeNOPE”, suddenly very happy to be a natural red.
“And with that, ladies and gentleman, it’s time for the final round of today’s show. It is of course, General Ignorance,” Fry announced.
“Yay!”
“Alright, first question. Who said, ‘wit is educated insolence’?”
“I like trains.” “Princess Luna?” Derpy guessed. Instantly, the alarm went off for the second time that day.
“No, no. Dear Celestia no,” Fry denied between giggles. “That’s minus ten points, I’m afraid.”
“Keep me out of this please.”
*SONIC BOOM!* “Broad Thought?”
“Close, very close. So close in fact, I…”
“Best Purpose,” Princess Celestia said, her buzzer’s harp sound expertly drowned out by the audience’s simmering laughter.
“Best Purpose, indeed! Also known in the original Greek as Aristoteles.”
*SONIC BOOM!* “Ouranos Efothos.”
“What was that, dear?”
“Rainbow Dash in Greek,” Rainbow Dash clarified with a smug grin.
“No it isn’t. That’s Heaven Sprint in very choppy Greek.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Next question. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”
“Don’t touch that cactus!” “A woodchuck could,” Derpy started to answer, only to be interrupted by the alarm.
“No, I’m afraid the woodchuck in fact cannot chuck at all, not unlike how a horse can’t.”
“Wait, hold up,” Rainbow Dash interjected. “Hold up. If horses can’t vomit, and we’re descended from horses, how come we can vomit?”
“Precisely because we’re descended from horses but are not ourselves actual horses. That’s like asking why horses can’t fly or use magic.”
“Rawhide!” “Pegasi fly and earth ponies farm through magic,” Big Mac revealed with a knowing rumble. “With th’ exception of ‘r majesty ‘n ‘r sis, pony wings ain’t big enough t’produce lift.”
“And that’s another five points for the big guy. For our final question… what does the word ‘battology’ mean?”
“The study of bats?” Derpy guessed, once again triggering the alarm.
“No, in fact what you’re doing right now is an example.”
“Is it something with repetitiveness?” asked Celestia.
“You know what, your highness? I’m going to consider that correct. A battology is in fact a pointless and tiresome repetition. And with that it’s time to reveal our final scores!”
“Oh, dear me.”
“In last place, it’s Derpy Hooves with minus thirty-five points…”
“Meh,” Derpy shrugged.
“In a shared second place it’s Princess Celestia and Big Macintosh, oh my.”
Big Mac cleared his throat.
“And in a surprising twist of fate it’s Rainbow Dash in first place with a fair twenty points.”
“Aww YEAH! Right in the natural habitat!”
“And with that, I’d like to thank our panelists for today – Derpy, Princess Celestia, Big Mac, and Dash – and leave you with one last little thing that’s really Quite Interesting. The male cardinal fish incubates his eggs in his mouth. Up to 30% of them are accidentally eaten.”
“Caviar, anypony?” Celestia joked as the theme song started up and the studio lights went out.