Unconventional Methods

by FanOfMostEverything

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Comedy, Other
Length: 2223

Stories from typewriters, about typewriters, for ty— Wait, no, not that last one.

At Bronycon 2017, Quills & Sofas held about half a dozen manual typewriters. I wrote some silly stories on them, but every idea I had was somehow related to typewriters. The results are collected here.

Rated Teen for implied drug use and explicit alcohol use, just to be safe.

Published 2017-08-14 23:50:06 UTC
Last updated 2017-08-14 23:50:06 UTC

Speedfic

"Twilight! Twilight! It's an emergency!"

With a sigh, Twilight stopped her latest resorting and turned to Pinkie Pie. "What is it, Pinkie? Did you run out of frosting again?"

Pinkie gasped. "Bite your tongue!" She lunged for the offending muscle.

Twilight flinched back. "Pinkie!"

"Sorry! Okay, so it isn't that bad, but we do only have about eight minutes to live."

"What!? Pinkie, that's much worse than running out of frosting!"

"Pfft. Says you."

"Why do we have only eight—"

"About five."

"Five minutes to live?"

"Because then the author needs to go to a panel."

Twilight rolled her eyes and lifted the books she'd dropped earlier.

"Uh, Twilight? You gonna do something about this?"

"I'll be honest, Pinkie. If the world really is ending so soon, there's nothing I'd rather do than resort the library."

Pinkie blinked. "Uh, okay. Have fun?"

"I wi

Development

Princess Luna regarded the object. Her horn glowed for a few moments. She leaned to one side and hid her lips from the construct with a hoof as she whispered, "We sense no capacity to dream, but We still do not wholly trust that it is naught but a witless work of levers and ink. Tell Us again of this device."

Private Somniloquy shook his head and held up a hoof as he waited for the ringing in his tufted ears to stop. "It's a typewriter, Your Highness."

Luna watched the typewriter. After a few seconds free of suspicious activity on its part, she nodded and somehow spoke more quietly than she had whispered. "That much We have gathered. A pony presses the keys just so, the levers strike like so many pegasi lying in ambush beneath the outer casing. What perplexes us is the reason for its invention."

"So less what is a typewriter and more why is a typewriter." Somniloquy noted his sovereign's inscrutable expression, looking at him as clinically as a doctor at a mildly interesting tissue sample. "Sorry, Your Highness. You— er, I develop some bad habits during those long, quiet night patrols. Like talking to myself to fill the silence. Quietly, of course!" he yelped. "Exactly like that wasn't! And that. Sorry agai—"

Luna raised a silver-shod hoof. "Peace, good Somniloquy. We shall not banish thee for the slightest offense. We chose thee for this task for thy thoughtfulness and insight, as thy superiors spoke of with great fervor."

Somniloquy blinked and tried to imagine any of his commanding officers describing him in a way that wasn't at least half ear-searing profanity. "Really?"

"Aye, in their own fashion." Luna gave him a crescent-moon grin. "We could visibly see the struggle in their faces as they held their tongues around the apparently virgin ears of their Princess." The grin softened. "And, if truth be told, thou art far from the only pony who makes use of the one ready source of intelligent conversation during a long, lonely vigil."

They shared a smile, and for a moment, Somniloquy could tell himself that this was just a pony before him. Then a lock of blue not-quite-hair, a few starry sparks shining within, floated across Luna's face. Somniloquy cleared his throat, brought himself back to full attention, and told himself he was imagining the look of disappointment on the princess's face. "So! The typewriter."

Luna ~~sighed~~ happened to breath out audibly. "Yes. The type-writer. Wherefore the type-writer? When in my millennium of exile did mouthwriting become so reviled that some soulless lump of metal supplanted the quill's grace and elegance?"

"It's more a matter of expediency, Your Highness. There's just too much paperwork to do by mouth or wing or even horn."

"Ah yes, speed. That most pressing concern of this modern age." Luna shook her head. "Faster travel, faster food, faster documentation. Whence came this dire rush, this driving haste? What fell motivator cracks the noisome whip that sends the whole herd of Equestria galloping at every moment? Do ponies not live longer in these modern times than when I last walked the Earth? Are not diseases cured faster, wounds mended faster in keeping with this age of hurry? What are ponies running to as they scurry like spooked rabbits?"

Somniloquy shrugged his wings. "I couldn't tell you, Your Highness. The only reason I hurry is if I oversleep. Once my shift starts, it's usually a matter of 'hurry up and wait' with extra waiting." After a moment, he stiffened up again. "Uh, Your Highness."

"As thou said at the start." Another smile graced Luna's lips, along with a sound that couldn't possibly be a giggle.

"Right. Yeah." Somniloquy bit his lip, nicking it with his fangs for the first time since he was seven. "W-would Your Highness care to use it?"

Any hint of delight fell from Luna's muzzle as she turned her attention back to the typewriter. "We suppose it can do no harm. To Us, at least. We cannot speak for the device." She gave one key a ginger poke, then scowled at the page. "Fie! It is near illegible. Find the servant who prepared this tool of mockery and have her flogged!"

Somniloquy felt his skin prickle with dread. "Uh, Your Highness?"

Shock and worry swiftly overtook Luna's rage. "Oh! Good Somniloquy, wert thou the one who readied the type-writer for Our use? We will happily stay Our hoof if that be so. We know that thou wouldst ne'er seek to make light of thy Sovereign."

"No, Your Highness, it's just that—"

"Then the flogging shall proceed with all modern haste!" Luna paced about the room, wings flared. "The hour is not yet later enough that Our Sister will be abed. Send a messenger, ask her where she has kept Our favored scourge of discipline during Our exile."

"Luna!"

Both froze. Luna appraised Somniloquy once more, her interest far more apparent in her almost predatory grin. Somniloquy just tried to maintain bladder control. After a brief eternity, the princess said, "Yes, Private?"

"W—" The half-word came out nearly ultrasonic. Somniloquy cleared his throat and tried again. "We don't flog ponies anymore, Your Highness."

"Truly? That explains much."

"Also, you just need to hit the keys a little harder. May I?" Luna moved aside, allowing him to type out "test" as a demonstration, then move the paper to a new line for her.

"Very well then." Luna reared up, her shadow falling across the typewriter like death's own.

Somniloquy ran out of the way, eyes shut and ears flattened. It didn't help. The crash, harsh and terrible, came in through his bones as much as his ears.

After a moment of silence, Luna said, "Good Somniloquy?"

His eyes stayed shut, but he still said, "Yes, Your Highness?"

"We believe We will require a new type-writer."

The Master's Burden

There are those who are blessed and cursed with exemplary talent in their chosen field, even beyond the gifts granted to them by their cutie marks. Blessed, for they are capable of feats nopony else could ever hope to match. Cursed, for if they are to retain the capacity to perform those feats, they must do so whenever they are challenged to do so.

Berry Punch was one such pony, and the latest challenge set before her was truly one she could not reject.

"You want me. To ferment. A typewriter."

No matter how much she wanted to.

The one who had posed that challenge looked furtively about the bar, though they were the only two in it at this early hour. "Look, I have made a lot of enemies very quickly, and I need to destroy the evidence as quickly as throughly as possible."

"Featherweight, you're eleven years old. You shouldn't even be here. Why in the name of Celestia's left... wing did you come to a brewer to deal with this?"

Featherweight fidgeted, nearly getting himself airborne through his nervous flapping. "Uncle Bulk said you're good at helping ponies forget their troubles."

Berry held back her sigh. "That's true, but it's usually through alcohol. Made from grains or fruit or some other form of plants."

"But..." Featherweight bit his lower lip, his buck teeth digging in as his eyes watered.

Berry hesitated herself. She could feel the eye of destiny upon her, the weight of obligation resting heavy on her withers, an encumbrance that no amount of earth pony strength could help her support.

Freaking mead of poetry, she thought to herself. That was the last time she took a commission from an elk god. Or at least the last time she'd sample the results. She shook her head and tried to scrape the taste of sour honey off her tongue. "Okay, I'll give it my best shot, but I can't promise anything."

Featherweight zipped up and wrapped his forelegs around her neck, hanging light as a daisy chain. "Thanks, Ms. Punch."

"Don't thank me yet, kid."

"Oh, and if Diamond Tiara asks, I was never here."

"And that," Berry concluded, "is how tonight's special was made."

Twilight gulped. "Oh. Joy." She'd never been much of a drinker, but since her ascension, her earth-enhanced constitution and pegasus metabolism had made her the ideal test subject for Berry's stranger experiments in applied biochemistry.

At least, that was how Twilight liked to think of it. Though all the ethanol molecule diagrams in Equestria weren't enough to keep her from thinking twice about downing the shot laid before her. It was the exact shade of her preferred brand of ink, had the same earthy smell laced with an added alcoholic sting, and occassionally released a tiny bubble with a grudging "glurp."

"C'mon," said Berry. "If the ghost pepper schnapps didn't kill you, this probably won't."

Twilight scowled at the memory. "I was belching up ectoplasm for a week."

"And this week you could save a fortune on quills. What have you got to lose?"

"Do you actually want me to answer that?"

"No." Berry pushed the glass closer.

Twilight rolled her eyes, grabbed the glass with a wing—she'd learned not to expose Berry's experiments to magic—and slung it back.

"And that, class, is how the dark alicorn Courier Nova came to be."

Fear and Loathing in Baltimare

We had spent an arduous week getting to this Celestia-forsaken land. A week spent with a junkie in denial and her impressive collection of "material components."

"You're narrating to yourself again, Starlight."

Shut it, Trixie. Don't talk to me until you come down.

She gives me a look like I'm the crazy one. "Have you been snacking on the pink one's private stash again?"

"I don't see how that's relevant. I'm nit the one on tiral here."

"... Did you mean you're not the one on trial?" On a sober mare, her expression might have seemed sympathetic, rather than a drug-induced love for her fellow pony that could sour into rage or paranoia at any moment.

"There was a typo. Is that a crime?" My ears flattened as the pieces came together. I lowered my head. "Who sent you? You'll never take me alive!"

"That's it. I'm getting Twilight. And maybe the pink one. I think I heard her say something about Hunter S. Thompson Syndrome before."

I opened my third though seventeenth eyes, delved into the æther, and unleashed a completely merited stream of untold destruction.

At least, I tried to. Though the sparks were pretty.

"Yeeeaaah. You should probably just sleep that off."

The room tipped over without even asking permission. "Who asked you?"

Carry Underwood, Will Travel

Rainbow Dash considered the object. As far as she could tell, it didn't look back. "Uh, Sunset?"

Dark muttering came from upstairs as Sunset dug through her drawers. "Why is it harder to keep track of socks in this world when there are half as many?" Louder, she said, "What is it, Rainbow?"

Rainbow looked behind her and pointed at the weird object. "What is that?"

Sunset leaned over her second-floor railing, then sighed as she registered the sight before her. "That's a typewriter, Dash."

Dash tilted her head as she took in the mechanism. "Wait, those things were real?"

After a few moments and several false starts, Sunset finally said, "Yes, Dash. Typewriters were in fact real. They continue to be real."

"I always thought the old movies made them up to make stuff look more dramatic." Dash poked a key gingerly. "Why do you even have one of these?"

"It's not like Equestria has PCs. I went with what was familiar, even if human ones have way too many keys. Who needs one for every letter?" Sunset's voice got closer as she went on. By the time Dash looked up from the typewriter, the other girl was by her side. "Plus, it took me a while to put together the funds for a computer. I actually had to do a few homework assignments on this thing." Sunset looked away and held a forearm. "Before I browbeat others into doing them, anyway."

"I know this is usually the part where I tell you you're a lot cooler now, but wouldn't a working typewriter be more expensive?" Dash scratched her head. "I mean, figure you found this thing in an antique store or something."

Sunset gave her a flat look. "It was made in the Eighties."

"Like I said. An antique."