Chapter 1: Stuck With Ponies
Chapter 1: Stuck With Ponies
Upon reflection, you really shouldn't have volunteered for the experiment.
Your first mistake was that you liked this girl.
Well woman, really, cause she's older than you, and you're always supposed to call chicks "women," at least in writing, or you get marked down for it cause it's sexist. You call them other things when you're trying to impress the guys, but you don't print that out on paper, just tap it into your phone, which is different. You're writing this down on paper with a pen (how retro!) so you figure printout rules apply, if any rules apply, given that you left the normal world behind.
Seeing as you're writing this not for teachers, but for Ponies.
Yes, Ponies.
You're in a world that nobody could have ever thought of, one where the people are Ponies. Little Ponies, around the size of large dogs, with big heads and big eyes and they come up around to your hips at their shoulders, and so when they stand on all four legs they look up to you even though they have really long necks. It's weird.
Oh, and they're smart, not as smart as people, cause they don't have cars or computers or cell phones or porn, at least not porn sites cause there's no Internet, but maybe some of them are almost as smart as real people -- that Twilight Sparkle ~~girl~~ ~~woman~~ ~~wymyn~~ mare, she seems like she could almost be a real person. Almost as smart as you.
Twilight Sparkle is the one you're writing this for, sort of like a report for class, and after she read that first part something seems to get her mad, cause she screws up her face real strange and looks at you like she was going to bite you, only you don't think the Ponies bite. Do real horses bite? You don't know cause you never saw real horses except on videos, and they weren't biting so you guess not. But maybe purple talking unicorns do bite, so you should watch out.
Oh, and she has magic.
She starts to say a lot of nasty insulting stuff, something about some "microcephalic anthropoid bare-skinned barbarian" or something like that, and the marshmallow unicorn says "Darling, he can hear everything you're saying," and suddenly Twilight stopped speaking real words and was just saying her horse gabble. What you heard was -- ever watched one of those videos about the old days when there were horses and people rode them cause they didn't have cars? And one of thse horses would get pissed off about something and it'd make mad noises, huffing and snorting and -- "whinnying?" Like it wanted to bite, but -- you covered that. Twilight was making them. But you don't think she'll bite.
Then again you know they aren't really horses. They can talk -- when the translation thing works, which it doesn't always -- and they have books and houses and even trains though they're old-fashioned choo-choos. They're just like people, almost as smart even if they don't have porn sites and maybe they'll have that someday too.
And they're lots of weird colors, both the hair on their bodies and faces and hair on their heads and necks and tails, what they call "manes." Twilight Sparkle's purple and her mane's like a dark purple with a long pinkish streak; she has a friend called Pinkie Pie who's mostly pink with a fluffy red-pink mane; and the weirdest looking one is Rainbow Dash who's light blue but with a mane that's every color like a rainbow, like her name. And some more normal ones like Applejack, who's orange and blond-haired, and that other unicorn -- what's her name, Raree or something like that -- she looks like a marshmallow with purple twisty hair, which you guess isn't that normal. Oh and there's the yellow one with the pink hair, Fluttershy.
Also they've got like tatts on their butts. All of the grown ones, and these are like colorful pictures, the same on both sides. Like Twilight Sparkle has this big star surrounded by little stars; and the orange one with the hat, Applejack, she's got red apples; and Fluttershy's got blue butterflies on her yellow. They're kind of neat, but the Ponies don't like if you touch them -- they'll either hop away from you and look mad, or complain. Though Pinkie Pie was kind of cool about it -- she just kind of giggled and twisted away and said, "Silly, it's naughty to do that!" when you poked her balloons. You think maybe she likes you, cause she acts friendly.
Also, some of them have horns and some have wings while most just look like freaky cute little colorful horses. And some have horns and wings, but there aren't many of them.
Twilight Sparkle -- she's the one in charge of the group that's looking after you -- she's one of the rare kind with wings and horns. They're called "Alicorns" and they can fly and do magic. See, the ones with wings can fly -- they're called "Pegasi" and the ones with horns can pick up things with magic and they're called "Unicorns" and the plain ones are just "Earth Ponies" and they can't do anything.
Twilight Sparkle's an Alicorn, and Rarity's a Unicorn, and Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy are Pegasi, and Pinkie Pie and Applejack are are just Earth Ponies.
Also, there's Spike, who's this little purple lizard thing they call a "Dragon" but he's more like a cartoon gecko that walks and talks and barfs up letters and can send them places with his fire so he's really kind of a fax machine. He's like Twilight's pet or flunky, and he seems to have some kind of thing for Rarity which is silly cause he's just some dumb lizard.
You handed the last sheet to them and now Twilight and Rarity are glaring at you. Applejack and Pinkie don't look too happy either. These Ponies are hard to understand.
Dear Princess Celestia,
As per your assignment, I have instructed the Human, Charlie Yu, to write his own report regarding the manner in which he came to our world, and his impressions of Equestria. Also, as per your assignment, I have not substantially edited or rewritten his report, save to correct his most egregious errors of grammar and spelling. I most notably resisted the temptation to rewrite the muddled sequence of Yu's comments into a properly organized -- though still poorly-conceived -- essay.
I wish that I could like him better. I'm supposed to have some insight into Friendship, but I find Charlie Yu to be a very annoying and repulsive being. I'm not entirely sure why he bothers me so much. It can't be his physical form -- I was a very similar-looking biped for a brief time not so long ago, and after the initial shock I didn't find the Humanoids that terribly bad. Some of them were quite nice, really, including at least one of the males. Charlie ... isn't quite as nice.
He is of low intelligence and not entirely pleasant disposition, and -- based on his obsession with sexually-explicit images -- probably of poor moral character, though that last part is purely theoretical since he is unlikely to encounter a female of his species in Equestria. (He actually found fault with my library because it lacked "adult books," by which term he meant not books with an adult perspective on life but rather erotic fiction. What does he imagine the Golden Oak Library is -- some sort of brothel?)
I think that the attribute I find most annoying about Charlie Yu is his arrogance. He very clearly considers himself superior to Ponies, for no very obvious reason. Part of this may be the solipsistic and unthinking racism that comes from his species isolation; on his Earth, Humans appear to be the only sapient life forms. Part is almost certainly cultural. Charlie's civilization seems to have only a weak and rudimentary understanding of the Harmony -- in this being neither better nor worse than my own remote ancestors, before we became more enlightened by The Megan, by your own self, and others.
There is that disturbing story he told of a great moral teacher who came among his people and advocated something very like the Harmony, only to be tortured to death. That one has given me nightmares, and made me seriously doubt the sanity of his species.
However, part of Charlie's sense of superiority very obviously derives from the fact that the Humans -- judging by the information which Charlie has been able to provide -- are more technologically advanced than is modern Equestria, being roughly equivalent to the Ponies toward the end of the Age of Wonders. They have widespread heavier-than-air flight, mechanized road transport, electronic communication and computation -- technologies Ponykind once possessed, but lost in the Cataclysm and are only now taking the first fumbling steps towards regaining.
Charlie did nothing to create these Wonders. He doesn't know how to maintain them. He could not explain, save in very general terms, how any of them worked. Yet, because he had enjoyed their benefits, and could not here in Equestria, he judged not only his people but his own self to be utterly superior to us!
Even as a mere user of these Wonders, he was utterly crass. For instance, Charlie's world, like that of the similar Humanoid world I visited, had combined electronic communication, computation and data storage into an "Internet" which allowed any user -- and most of his people had access to this system -- to communicate with anyone else in the system, even on the other side of the planet. From hints he has dropped, it seems likely that the libraries of Charlie's world have been connected to this Internet in such a manner as to enable a scholar to simply turn on her computer and have free access to all the knowledge of his whole world!
Not that Charlie could provide any details of such usage. For Charlie never used the Internet in this fashion. He said he'd done research "on the computer" when he was in school, but that this was "just work." It was "boring."
For what purpose did he use the Internet, this marvel of scholarship? Why, to get "porn." To look at it "online," and "download" it, And ... but I will not sully my report to you, my Beloved Teacher, with further description of the many joys Charlie claimed were attainable with tremendous quantities of readily available pornography (*).
I shall also forward the comments of my associates.
Your Faithful Student
Princess Twilight Sparkle,
Ponyville, February 24th, YOH 1504
(*) At least not in the main body. An appendix will follow which shall contain the details of porn-lore as related by Charlie Yu.
Author's Note
The cover photo is of an unknown man who looked enough like my concept of Charlie Yu to serve as an illustration. Unknown man, I apologize in advance if you ever read this tale. Given his name, Charlie Yu had to be either Northeastern Chinese or Korean in origin; I went with Korean as you'll see later. He's a Korean-American, of course, as his cultural assumptions and referents as shown in both "Stuck" and An Epistolary Consultation Between Princesses are more American than Korean. He comes from a world a lot like ours, save in that it contains at least one female mad scientist able to generate an interdimensional portal. Come to think of it, maybe our world has at least one such person! 
I had to "dial down" my normal style to represent Charlie Yu's blithering; I in particular made an effort to defocus my mind and avoid organizing his thoughts too clearly. Then I had to edit it back up to something readable. I didn't mean any actual typos, so if you see them, please do point them out to me.
I specifically wrote Charlie's description of the Ponies in as disorganized a manner as I could while still being comprehensible. Note that he obsesses about their coloring and leaves the major fact that they are divided into different Kinds as a hasty addendum to his little essay. He also doesn't understand what they can do very well.
To be fair to Charlie, Twilight told him to write down his thoughts honestly. It's not his fault that she doesn't like some of what he's thinking. Twilight's control freak tendencies are showing here. I never claimed that the SWSV Twilight Sparkle is perfect, though she's a very good Pony in general.
If it's not obvious, the part where Charlie said that Twilight could be "almost as smart" as himself was the first thing that really get her mad. Twilight is vain about her intellect and some of her other virtues, as shown in the canonical almost-self-parodying "Failure Song" in Crystal Empire; she's quite sensitive to criticism, and she does not have much respect for Charlie's intelligence.
The part that got Rarity angry was when Charlie puts down Spike. This too is canonical; especially by Season Four, Rarity is quick to leap to Spike's defense. Twilight was mad at him for that as well.
Applejack and Pinkie were upset by the casual dismissal of Earth Ponies as "the plain ones are just 'Earth Ponies' and they can't do anything." What's especially funny about this is that those are the two Ponies who are initially nicest to him; Applejack will actually remain sympathetic to him after the events of "Stuck," though for Pinkie that's the straw that breaks the pink party pony's metaphorical back. Also, the two specific Earth Ponies Charlie knows best, AJ and Pinkie, have actual super-powers; Charlie's just too unobservant to notice them.
The tone of Twilight's letter to Celestia is harsher and nastier than is normal for Twilight Sparkle. This is because of her personal dislike for Charlie Yu,
Chapter 2: It's Always a Girl's Fault
So there was this girl ... woman.
You just got out of college, seriously and all the way, with a spanking-new two-year Associates Arts degree in Ethnic Studies, solid C's and D's all the way! And this means you're educated and smart and know how things really work, you're not some dumb immigrant right off the plane like your grandfather was, coming right out of the war that rotten Nixon -- or was it Eisenhower? -- started in Korea to get the oil -- working all his life for the ungrateful racist American ko-jaeng-i, with their blond hair and big noses, and what did he get for it? Just a suburban ticky-tacky tract house, when he could have been living really well back in Seoul -- you've been there, it's a really nice city with lots of porn. Grandpappy was pretty dumb to leave in 1950 -- why'd he do that, anyway? He wasn't smart, like you, that's why!
But coming out of college, you found the working world was tough. Employers dissed your degree, even with all your good marks, and the good jobs all went to the white guys with connections. Or sometimes black guys, or brown guys, or other East Asians, even those dumb Chinese or nasty Japanese, or even other Koreans, but the point is that you were the victim of prejudice! Plus, you were always being passed over in favor of the chicks -- all they needed to do was bend over and waggle their sexy butts at the bosses and they got hired. And the lady bosses never liked you for some reason ... what could you do, when your wallet cried out for the money it was denied?
The fact is that girls never really liked you. Sometimes you'd get lucky and score at a party, and sometimes a girl would even go on a date or two with you (once you even got three in a row!), but usually the girls you dated woldn't give you any, and the girls who did give you some didn't want to know you any more after they woke up and realized what had happened. Maybe it was because you were Korean -- though some of the girls were Korean, too, so life was just weird.
Anyway, you were 22 and you'd never had a girlfriend, not really, not one who'd admit to it and who you'd admit to being with (~~though there was this one retard chick in high school who'd sometimes let you kiss her and feel her up when you got her alone somewhere, and a couple of times she'd jerked you off, but you had to stop that cause she tried tagging along after you, like she thought she was your girlfriend or something, and that would have ruined your rep~~ becase you have high standards and you guess you just never met the right girl. So you've in some ways had a pretty lonely life, though you're a cool guy who goes to some hot parties so you're not some loser nerdy virgin.
Dear Princess Celestia,
The interesting thing about this section, most obviously, is the revelation that Yu's Humans have an eventful and violent history, including migration, tribalism and at least one war two generations before Charlie Yu's birth, not counting the war that he has previously told us they're fighting now against the Arabs. They are divided, which has diplomatic implications should we ever make formal contact with his world.
We cannot really judge how severe is their tribalism. Yu constantly claims to have been disfavored by the dominant tribe in America, whom he calls "whites," but it is also clear that others of his tribe were more successful. A two-year college education implies that he is not a complete ignoramus; however, reading between the lines, he seems to have gotten consistently low marks. "Ethnic Studies" sounds as if he were studying the customs of various Human tribes. Perhaps we should take him as more reliable on topics of Human tribal customs than on other topics?
He noted that Human females have an unfair advantage in securing employment over Human males, which might seem to contradict earlier statements he has made that in his culture the leaders tend to be male. On the other hand, I noticed that he argued that the females' advantage consisted of being romantically-appealing to their bosses, which implies that the bosses are mostly male, unless lesbianism is more common in his species than ours.
Yu's description of Human courtship customs are as always inconsistent and accompanied by simultaneous complaints as to his inability to find romantic companionship with vague boasts about his own high status. I am not well suited to evaluate these claims, and will turn the commentary here to somepony who might understand Yu's points better. I am also rather repulsed by some of the things Yu claims to have done, though I do understand that he comes from an alien culture, and moreover, one which seems to share my low opinion of his character.
Finally, I will parenthetically add that Yu actually struck out his disgusting digression about having taken advantage of a mentally-simple filly in secondary school on the paper, then submitted that paper to me. He had absolutely no reason to do so; I provided him with a more than adequate supply of writing materials for any purpose other than writing a novel; yet it did not seem to occur to him that he could have simply rewritten the page.
It also does not seem to have occurred to him just what I, or most other Ponies, would have found reprehensible about that anecdote.
Your Faithful Student,
Twilight Sparkle
Dear Princess Celestia,
Twilight asked my advice as to the implications of Charlie Yu's tale so far regarding his social status and moral character, most flatteringly considering that I might have a special insight on these matters. It is true, I pride myself on being a good judge of character; and I have some experience of judging the characters of sapient non-equine beings. I shall endeavor to fulfill the task which Twilight has assigned me with my usual flair.
Charlie Yu is neither excessively endowed with intelligence nor morality. He was clearly a poor student and also obviously a carouser and cad of a rather low sort, one who seeks out unfortunate females lacking in confidence and self-respect for the purpose of taking romantic advantage of them. His culture in general seems rather more libertine regarding such matters than Equestria, rather like the Fast Sets which proliferate in some major cities, but for the most part he seems to have been rejected by the females of his species, and I suspect with good reason on their parts.
The tragic story he told about that unfortunate young female who made the mistake of actually liking him, and hence permitting him certain liberties to which he was not entitled, well, his attempt to pretend that he had nothing to do with her makes it rather blatant that he was a cad, does it not? He also had no shame for his abandonment of her affections; he clearly thought he was behaving well by repudiating her!
Also of interest is Mr. Yu's obvious inability to engage in anything like an accurate self-appraisal. He was a poor student who imagines he was an excellent one; a starer, noser and rustler who imagined his manners smooth, and I would take everything he has said with a grain of salt.
His fashion sense is abominable. I have followed his directions in making him suits of clothes, as the customer is always right, but I will say privately that in this case he was not right. I truly do not need the publicity of having clothed him; indeed, I would not mind if this were treated as a Secret of the Realm and classified as such for a century. Or longer.
I append a detailed discussion of exactly how his fashion sense might be improved. Sadly, he cannot draw very well, nor is he adept at more verbal sorts of communication, so it is hard to understand his descriptions of the normal attire of his world.
As Always, Your Loyal Subject,
Rarity Belle
Author's Note
Yu's knowledge of the Korean War (1950-53) is not exactly accurate. It was started in 1950 by Kim Il Sung, the dictator of North Korea, and the US President at the time was Harry S. Truman. Mao Tse-Tung, the dictator of China, then intervened when North Korea was badly losing later in 1950, keeping the war going for another two and a half years with immense suffering to the Koreans. Dwight D. Eisenhower ended the war by, basically, threatening to go nuclear, which brought the Chinese to the truce table (North Korea at that point didn't really exist as a combatant). No oil was involved. Yu's grandfather fled Seoul in 1950 because he wanted to live; fought over back and forth four times, the city was effectively leveled in the war, with most of its populace fled or dead; the Seoul of today is the product of the South Korean economic growth since the war, and is indeed one of the major cities of East Asia.
Ko-jaeng-i means something like "nosers" or "big-noses." It is an ethnic slur often used by Koreans to describe Caucasians, to whom they often feel superior. Koreans generally hate the Japanese (because of the Japanese occupation of Korea in the early 20th century through World War II); a South Korean American like Charlie Yu would also have grown up learning to hate the Chinese (specifically the Red Chinese, but they might not bother to make the distinction, and Charlie Yu in particular, who barely comprehends the historical backgrounds involved, would almost certainly fail to do so).
