The Story in its Entirity
John Smoth was a regular dude, he had a regular job , a regular house, and of course, a regular hobby. He loved to read fiction about transformations. Now, being as regular as he was he needed to have something that made him different. He just knew it. How could a regular person be so regular without something to make him different.
He went on his favourite Transformation fiction site (regulartf.com) and searched for something that sounded different. Now, since it was a regular transformation site, he didn’t really find anything out of the ordinary.
He then decided to search another site (differenttf.com). Now, here he struck something different. A site where one could read about people transforming into ponies! Now, this in and of itself wasn’t that strange. However, what he did find strange was the ad at the bottom of the page.
Now, he had often read stories about people finding weird ads on strange sites. This ad seemed exactly like those ads. It said:
“Become the pony you want to be, just write us an email at totally_not_real@tmail.com”
Now, becoming a pony fit everything John wanted. A transformation, being something else, and clicking on ads that are totally fake and sending emails to them. All these things would be highly regular in a story like the ones he used to read, but now he could perhaps get at least one of those things in real life!
John decided to send an email. Knowing how it should read from all the stories he had read, he decided to word it like this:
“Hello, to whomever is concerned.
My name is John Smoth, i am a human. I have read many stories about transformations, and i must simply ask that you provide
me this in the real world. Now i would love to be a pony, preferably a great stallion, an alicorn...”
Now John doubted himself. If he wanted to be irregular in the first place, why would he follow the regular way to imagine oneself?
“...an earth pony” he continued “and hope that you can help me.
If i get no reply then at least know that you have already fulfilled one of my dreams.
Here is my address: Regular Street, Generictown, Country X.
xoxo~
John Smoth, the regular person wanting not to be regular.”
Now, John was super happy with his achievement. He went to bed, reading his usual stories (deeply detailed as he wanted them) and quickly fell asleep.
He woke up, happy and renewed. Now he was no longer as regular as the day before.
He went downstairs and just as he was about to make coffee, he heard the doorbell ring.
In the doorway, a rather nice looking fellow in a white lab-coat, stood. He had a warm smile and said:
“Good morning Mr Smoth. My name is Dr. Sanders. I am here to offer you an opportunity to earn easy money through a simple medical test”
“A Medical Test!”
John shouted at Dr. Sanders, overjoyed that something so irregular had happened. He now knew for certain that he was in a very strange event, and as we know, he wanted something strange to happen after all.
“Yes”
Mr Sanders said, hesitant all of a sudden.
“Should i follow you into that black van over there?”
“No actually, we can do it right here”
“Ohh, ok”
John replied, somewhat disappointed but quite sure that the syringe the doctor held in his hand was some kind of serum to transform him into a pony.
They went inside, the doctor asked him to sign some papers full of legal stuff that John was sure meant he lost all rights to his body and gave some government agency the right to do anything to him as he had so often read. Still, something annoyed him about this. It was almost as if it was too regular.
Still, contented that at least one of his wishes would be fulfilled he signed anyways. John was quite happy about this in the end and prepared.
10 minutes later and finding out that John had not gotten a rash, the doctor left. While John was very disappointed with nothing happening, he rejoiced when he found out that the money he was given fit perfectly for a plane ticket to Junglia, a country in South America, and the hotel as well.
Now, John knew that he was for sure going to get that transformation. His plane would crash and suddenly he would be caught up in some mad scientists plan to make human-pony hybrids where surely there would be some inter-dimensional portal created by Twilight Sparkle that would lead him to Equestria.
However, John felt it was taking too long. He hadn’t told an unseen force about his personality, nor had his appearance been commented on. It was as his regular life was, in some way, irregular. The stories he had read had always tried to make the transformation happen somewhere midway in the story, sometimes there were exceptions of course, but usually a long rambling preamble setting up everything, telling the reader how special they were, how they got into the situation and how telling the reader why the transformation would tell an Aesop with the transformation and warn of being careful with one's wishes.
Then John remembered and said aloud to the universe at whole:
“Of course. Since i haven’t spoken about my special situation therefore i must be part of the different kind of story!”
Now John knew that without establishing the character in the beginning we can only observe the character afterwards and how the transformation changed their previously unknown lives (which would of course be told after the fact as the character would reflect on their previous life and what they lost as John very well knew) and then figure out a good life in their new situation. Perhaps, if life was good to him he would have the irregular option.
The option seen only so rarely with the best writers he knew, where a short establishing intro would make him seem special, with a defining flaw that would be reflected upon later on that caused his morale driven metamorphosis, leaving the reader with a sense of both happiness over the adaptive nature of humanity and how our wishes while initially seeming good or bad can mean the opposite.
Now these stories would usually hurry to the transformation, so that the reader would not be left to read the musings of some writer not sure of how to write a creative introduction, so he decided to order the plane ticket as fast as possible and get onwards with the irregular story he hoped he would get.
Three days later he was on the plane. The right plane. The plane that would surely crash into mad scientists jungle. He thought of all the things that would happen when it would finally happen. The dreams he had after reading each story. To be something else, to be everything but the regular being he was.
As he sat in the plane, impatient, John simply hoped it would happen soon. The plane was crossing the southern part of the Anywhere Ocean. They would soon hit land in Junglia. Why had it not happened yet? As he sat there, staring out the window at the clouds he started to thing of all the things he would be able to do when in Equestria. Now, John had been smart back there in Genericville.
He knew that any metamorphosis had to result in some life changing revelation for the person that was subject to it. How else could a change so large give meaning.
So in his logic, remembering all the stories he had read, he had said he wanted to be an earth pony. And since of course his transformation had to bring a life changing event, he knew that the hubris he showed in thinking that he could fool the system by reverse psychology would truly be the way to get what he truly wanted, to be irregular. Wishing to be an earth pony was irregular of course.
So he thought in this way. If being irregular was the goal, his life changing event must bring him to think how his regularity was challenged. And if this was the goal he had to twist the fate of his change to be irregular. So, if he got what he wanted, that best kind of story with special trait, change, reflection and two truths to continue with, happiness or sorrow, he had to not have a special trait, change in a way that was not expected, see the reflection but refuse it while still accepting its meaning and be not happy nor sad but somewhere else.
The plane landed. Whole. Undamaged. No island, no mad scientist, no potential transformation in sight. This was highly irregular! Once more John was confused. Which of his wishes was he going to get?
To the world at large he stated:
“After all, if it is regular to crash in the jungle, then this must be where it happens since this is fits none of my stories.”
He walked down the terminal, going to the baggage return. His bag passed him by and he picked it up. Sadly it was just his normal bag, and when he arrived at the hotel he saw no magical computer, no magic ring, no magic chocolate of interesting shapes, no cards guiding him to disreputable Asian shops, nor fairs, or any regular occasion to experience a transformation.
At least this fit with his wishes still, and therefore he marched on. The city he was in only had regular things to do. However, after all this irregularity that had happened he suspected he needed to do something regular, a break from the search so to say.
He walked the hot streets of Junglia’s capital and eventually decided to take a drink, and he soon enough found a nice bar. It was a pretty regular bar. As he sat down he ordered a drink, a very usual drink for this part of the world. He sat there, extremely impatient, Going to do regular things when one knew that irregularity was waiting somewhere, ready to get him and finally make him pay for his wishes and reflect upon things lost and gained.
Beside him sat a man, this man looked like a famous voice actor from My Little Pony, the one that voiced Discord. John didn’t remember his name but his voice was quite distinctive. John decided to sit at another table. This was far too obvious. While an irregular event in itself that this person was sitting right here when he was looking for a transformation, or even just that a famous actor was sitting there in and of itself,
John knew that this was not going to go anywhere.
John found an empty table, and sat down. John was now waiting. Waiting for his change, his transformation. The irregular event that would bring him some reflection which he would then respond to in an unexpected way.
And he waited...
And he waited....
And he waited....
John now stood up.
Was it all a failure, was it all a mirage in his mind that this could be possible. Why had he begun this quest. Had it been lost in a string of the author's philosophy as he had often read in his dear fictions. Was he never to not touch Rainbow Dash's mane? (such a thing would be regular he knew)
Why could he not get this one thing? His wishes seemed hollow now. He was getting irregularity, he was becoming someone else, he was transforming. But none of these were as he hoped. No change happened in his body, no arms became hooves. The intro to the change was seeming as long as the story itself, and no end seemed possible. Not even jumping of a bridge could work. In a regular story he would wake up in Equestria. He would have had his soul swapped. He would get another chance. Celestia would give John the change. But it would be regular. He would be as all others. All the other special characters he had read about all these years. Through their regularity they had attained their wishes. The change to something else. But what was John?
A failure.
Someone who could never realize what he wanted. Equestria was too regular, the transformation was too regular, the change was too regular. And now that he had all these, albeit in a different form than he wished for. And this transformation brought pain, not the usual pain everyone expected from this kind of stories. This pain struck a lot deeper. Caught up in all that he dreamed, nothing was left except his regular life. Even when he thought he had found the way to be something else, it wasn’t different. The change he wanted was never going to happen. And the worst thing was, that this in and of itself was regular.
John then fell through a hole.
And he began to change.
Again...
Now I must speak, your friendly narrator.
John is not me, he is not you, he is not he or she or it, or he-she or she-he.
Not a human, not a pony, not a being. Yet he can be something. Only defined by what is irregular, he must now know what it is to be regular.
And therefore, I now push him into a change. Yes, I, your narrator that defines John. I must now transform John into me and then transform myself into what you have all been waiting for.
“Hello?”
I asked
No answer came. Just darkness all around me.
Perhaps i could change that. I imagine myself now as a pony, a red pony, a earth pony as i had wished for to begin with. I could begin to feel it. Now i could redefine myself. Be what i wished, and what i wanted to be. To be regular according to my wishes, even if it was highly irregular in itself.
My face pushed out into a nice medium long muzzle and my eyes grew larger.
My hands slowly began to cramp and formed a fist, each finger now melting into the flesh of my hand. One by one, as my old life disappears. All that is left is one nail. The nail of my middle finger i recognize it as being. It is me. The nail is what i am. The others were what i thought i was, what my irregularity was. Now it grew larger, it covered my fist in fact. It grew even larger. It formed a sensitive frog. My underside so to speak. I held up both my hands...hooves in front of me. The other hand had changed as the other had. My legs and feet played the same trick upon me. As bone cracked inside me, i could feel what had been wrong being broken. Corrected.
The once smooth skin was covered in fur, cyan of colour. My longer ears swiveled to the sound of a tail swishing in the void I was floating in. Green and black hairs fell down in front of my eyes. My mane that i always hoped for. The regular mane which was destined for me.
And i fell out of a hole.
Such is life I guess. Falling into a hole and then falling out on the other end, transformed. And that day, I remember everything. Changing does that to oneself.
Around me i could see trees, almost gloving in their sheer greenness. A lake was in front of me. I carefully trotted towards it, one leg in front of the other. Of course i fell a couple of times, such is learning. Learning what is regular, and what could be more regular than walk on ones four good hooves. As i sat down in front of the lake and looked at myself i saw the most beautiful thing. The magenta eyes stared back at my small furry muzzle. As i looked i saw something behind me. Or rather, on me. Two wings. I flap them furiously but i can only feel a slightly lighter pressure on my hooves. Apparently pegasi don’t get that just handed to them, but none the matter. At least they were there and would surely be useful one day. Lucky thing i didn’t try much more, i could have crashed into someone. Or i might have flown to far and been lost on some island somewhere.
Close to the lake there was a stream. The stream joined other streams and soon enough was a quite powerful river. Further down the river i could see Ponyville.
That was the first time i saw them. The other ponies, the ones i had known to belong to. They wandered around. Roseluck fainted at seeing me. I never knew that someone could be that faint prone. I would have many good days to converse with her about that event. Lyra sat with her hoodie plucking on her trademark lyre, though i never remembered that before she told me she had seen me walking past. I guess I was distracted by a chilly breeze that blew past. Twilight was standing there in front of Town Hall warning Mayor Mare of some living plushes wandering around. What could one do but marvel at all the regularity. The normality I had always sought, my true world far from the stilted past i once knew.
This day however, I remember very few things from the time before that. Not even my name. Some things one misses. Some things one enjoys in these new places. What can one do but dream that one day oneself will be touched by a change that can teach one about what one has had and can get. And as I sit there by the same lake i arrived at, once more staring into the rippled image of myself, I know but one thing. I might once have been an irregular person, with an irregular job and irregular house. But even as i think of the last fragments from that time, I know that while I have now a regular job and a regular house, I always had a regular hobby.