Chapters Author's Note
Out of a conversation with Biker_Dash , NorrisThePony , and Jack of a Few Trades .
Size Queen
Rainbow Dash stared at her. "What do you mean Thunderlane isn't enough? There's a reason everypony is jealous of Blossomforth."
Rarity waved a hoof. "Oh, I know he has definite advantages over the average stallion, but that can only please a lady of certain tastes for so long."
Dash rubbed her chin. "Well... What about Mac?"
"Better." Rarity sighed. "But I'm afraid that's nearing its limits, as well."
Dash shook her head. "Okay, I seriously don't know where you go from there."
Rarity glanced over to Spike as he walked by carrying a pile of gems. "I do."
"Wait, Spike?" Dash looked back and forth between Rarity and the tiny dragon. "Little dude is like... Scoot's size. You've gotta be kidding."
"Oh, my dear." Rarity flashed her a grin. "Patience is a virtue. "
“Maybe think about that and come back when you learn to have good taste in teams.”
“Since when does good taste mean pickin’ losin’ teams?”
“Hey, the Timberwolves would be doing great if they’d just get Manes Whinnyston off the field for once.”
“And they don’t, so there you go.”
“Oh, like the Windigos are any better with Pintabian. Was he the worst player they could find in Fillydelphia, or just the worst one who wasn’t in prison?”
The other four mares present groaned as Rainbow Dash and Applejack began another round of shouting scoring records and any number of other statistics none of them understood back and forth at each other.
Rarity fell back into her chair, collapsing under the sheer banality of the debate, which had occupied their entire get-together for the third week in a row. Teams. Players. Touchdowns. Records. Downs, whatever those were (and how they differed from touch downs). She didn’t understand a word of it.
Well, the bits about which players ought to be in jail for the latest scandal, that she understood. Who wasn’t above a bit of celebrity gossip? If only it weren’t wrapped up in all of this nonsense about the game. Though, she supposed then the players wouldn’t be celebrities to gossip about to begin with.
She started as Applejack slammed a hoof onto the table, then relaxed and sighed.
They were shouting player names now. She couldn’t even bring herself to follow the list.
She rolled her head to look towards Twilight, who had given up reading until it was over due to the sheer volume of the debate, and just covered her face with the book. Twilight had tried, before, to join their discussions on the sport, briefly entertained by the sheer amounts of statistical information she could find and analyze. She lasted all of five minutes in the actual argument.
“Twilight,” Rarity said, completely unnoticed by the arguing pair. “Would it be possible for you to go get Starlight, cast that time travel spell, and, I don’t know, banish the inventor of Hoofball to the moon before the horrid thing ever comes about?”
Twilight sighed. “While Starlight and I together would be powerful enough to go back that far, and Trotter Camp wouldn’t be particularly hard to find, it could still come about from older forms of the game. We could probably reach the right time period to find the accord-to-legend creator of the previous incarnation, Welara Cob, but there are no records of his actual life. And even then , it truly originated in ancient Minos, with the minotaur sport episkyros . And we have no idea who came up with that one, and I don’t think Starlight and I could make it that far back without help from the other princesses and Discord. And I’m pretty sure Celestia and Luna wouldn’t be fond of the idea.” With that, Twilight dropped her head back onto the chair. “Oh Celestia, I hate this whole season.”
“But… it would be worth a try?” Rarity offered hopefully. “Think of it, Twilight! Four whole months saved from this! ”
Twilight turned just enough to glare at her. “Why did you think I knew exactly who to find ?”
Author's Note
Written for the express purpose of making this publishable now instead of waiting for the next dumb idea to show up.
Dedicated to Famous , Seven , and Jack , in memory of all the myriad topics we used to be able to talk about in the Skype chat on Sundays.
Suggested to me by Famous. This happened immediately after he made that suggestion:
Rinnaul: Okay, sure, come up with some team names for me.
View Online
Opening Statement by the Counsel for the Plaintiff
Your honor, noble ponies of Equestria, we come to your lands today not to attack your business interests or claim your wealth, but instead to stand up for our pride as a fellow civilization. Some may think us less intelligent due to our manner of speech. Indeed, to be taken seriously as an attorney in your Kingdom, able to earn fair representation for my people here, I had to train myself out of my native accent. However, the diamond dogs are no less intelligent than any other race of Equus, standing proudly alongside the griffons, zebras, minotaurs, and many varieties of pony.
That is why it is so galling for us to be treated as mere animals in this way.
Ah, I see the counselor for the defense is prepared to object.
What will you claim, sir?
That your product was never intended for the diamond dogs? That it was a simple misunderstanding, and you meant it solely for canines kept as pets?
Then why would you ship your product to our grocers? Some pony-owned general stores may be found in Dimondia. Why not focus your efforts there?
Because you thought us simple, nothing more than that.
You thought we were no better than your pets. That we would not realize what it was you were offering us.
It was this malicious intent that lead to our accusations against the Flam Brothers of false advertising, misrepresentation, and bigotry.
We see through your excuses, just as we saw through your advertising and the nature of your product itself.
Mares and gentlecolts of Equestria, I assure you: We know it is not bacon.
Author's Note
So I was cooking bacon to use up a pack that I'd opened for a dinner recipe , and a certain annoying-as-all-fuck old commercial popped into my head.
And then it turned into ponyfic because I'm stupid that way.
The five mares sat around the crystalline table awaiting the arrival of their host. It was hardly uncommon for them to meet this way, ever since Twilight found herself in possession of a giant crystal tree castle thing and the forces of Destiny apparently decided to put them to work taking a more active role in ensuring the wellbeing of Equestria. However, the Cutie Map remained still, and not a one of them had experienced even the slightest tingling in their flanks to suggest they were being summoned for that purpose.
Well, beyond the flank-tingling that Pinkie felt, but she assured her friends that those tingles were simply her Pinkie Sense alerting her to when she was being watched.
She did not find it strange that the watching ponies were almost exclusively stallions and older colts, and Rarity soon gave up on her attempts to explain that this was less “Pinkie Sense” and more an intuition every mare had.
The ensuing debate where Rainbow Dash and Applejack inevitably questioned the idea that every mare had this supposed sixth sense was fortunately cut short by Twilight’s arrival. The young alicorn did not take her seat along with her friends, but instead placed her front hooves on the table and looked over the group.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled. “Girls, I have some… news .”
Dash perked up at that. “A new adventure?”
“It’s not going to be something dangerous, is it?” Fluttershy asked, shrinking back.
Applejack scratched her chin. “Guess I can fit some more travel in, now that Apple Bloom’s old enough to help out with the apple buckin’…”
“And in the middle of my busy season.” Rarity groaned. “And half of the time we do something like this, I go without a proper bath for a simply unreasonable length of time.”
“Ooh, are we going to face some new peril that forces us to give up our rainbow powers and get all-new character designs?” Pinkie Pie said, rounding out the cast check-in, but was ignored because fourth wall gags are so overplayed.
“No, no, nothing like that.” Twilight shook her head. “Just that I… um…” She shrank back slightly. “I’m kind of pregnant.”
Her declaration was met with four cries of “WHAT?!”, four shocked faces, and Pinkie Pie jumping up and down in her chair, cheering and throwing blue and pink confetti in precisely equal measures, just to cover her bases.
Rarity took a deep breath and shook her head, the first to recover her senses. “I must say, Twilight, this is quite the shock. Who's the father?”
“Ah, well…” Twilight trailed off, and then gave an awkward smile. “I don't actually know.”
“Wait, wait.” Rainbow Dash leaned forward, putting her hooves on the table and fixing Twilight with an incredulous look. “You're telling me that Twilight Sparkle — stay-at-home egghead Twilight Sparkle — has seen enough action lately that she's not sure who it was?”
“Yeah,” Applejack added, letting her hat fall back to run a hoof through her mane. “That's a mighty big change, isn't it Twilight? How did you even wind up in this kinda situation?”
Twilight took a breath and relaxed. Explanations were easy. She could handle explanations. They were just like lecturing, really, and that was practically a leisure activity. “Well, it all started when Pinkie Pie asked me if I liked mares or stallions more, and—”
“She did what ?” Rarity interrupted, turning to the pink pony. “Pinkie, why would you ever ask somepony such an invasive question?”
“Cause I wanted to know.” Pinkie shrugged, and blue and pink confetti tumbled from her mane and shoulders, somehow landing perfectly separated in single-color piles to either side of her. “But then Twilight said she wasn't sure, so I offered to help her find out.”
“You two… Really ?” Rarity sighed. “Just like that? Where’s the romance ?”
Twilight shook her head. “No, no, I had to take an aromantic approach. Adding in the question of romantic attraction on top of physical attraction would have muddied my results, as well as greatly extended the scope of the study.”
“The… the study ?” Fluttershy glanced back and forth between Pinkie and Twilight.
“Yes, because despite Pinkie’s very enthusiastic — and very appreciated — help with my conundrum, the problem remained that I had only ever experienced one partner,” Twilight explained, finally slipping fully into lecture mode. “I could hardly claim to know for certain whether I liked one or the other without experiencing both. And since I was experimenting, I felt it only appropriate to have a proper representative sample.”
“Proper repre…” Rainbow Dash lost the word around there, but soon got the gist of it. “Oh! Like having mares and stallions, but also earth pony, pegasus, and unicorn!”
“Exactly, Rainbow!” Twilight gave her friend a congratulatory smile.
For some reason, that actually made Rainbow Dash proud for a moment before she had another realization, and she glared at Twilight. “Wait, does that mean when you and I…” She paused, suddenly aware that four sets of eyes were on her, and settled back into her seat. “I mean, nevermind. Nothing happened. Nothing at all.”
“Still, Twilight. Six partners!” Rarity exclaimed. “I didn't know you had it in you. At least it gives us a place to start from…”
Twilight shook her head. “Oh, Rarity, don't be ridiculous. There weren't six .”
“Oh, thank Celestia.” Rarity ran a foreleg across her brow. “For a moment there I was afraid—”
“Everypony knows that a statistically viable sample size is at minimum thirty.”
Author's Note
This originally started as the opening scenes of a longer comedy/slice of life story where Twilight is pregnant with the foal of an unknown stallion, as we see here. The continuing plot would follow her attempts at figuring out just whose child she's carrying, and being generally cranky and snarky in response to the difficulties of pregnancy, largely inspired by my wife's reactions to that very thing, as my wife's personality isn't too far from season one Twilight.
I never really felt the drive to write the ongoing story, and this opening was tossed aside in my "do eventually" folder. I recently decided that there's no reason to let this particular joke go to waste, so here it is as a standalone gag.
Author's Note
Inspired by a particularly bad Oneshotober 2014 entry. The title, anyway.
Auto-Bucker
"What the hay did you buy?" Macintosh asked once he and his sister had finished dragging the large crate into the barn.
"It was called an auto bucker," Applejack explained. "Sounded like somethin' we could use out here. Let me spend more time with the girls, and maybe get you off of the farm often enough to find a marefriend."
Macintosh rolled his eyes. "Alright, let's get this over with."
They pried open the crate, and set to work assembling the device. Soon enough, it was complete. Though it didn't look anything like Applejack had expected. There was a platform large enough for an adult pony to stand on, a bar that looked a lot like what the cows liked to rest against while they were being milked, a complex control panel next to that... and an array of phallic projections on mechanical arms at the rear.
The two stared at it for a moment.
"I ain't gonna ask what you and your friends get up to, sis," Macintosh said. "But I don't see how this is supposed to get me a—"
"Celestia as my witness, I thought it was a piece of farm equipment," Applejack muttered.
Author's Note
Reformatted and slightly expanded, I think from a conversation with Rocinante . It was an idea from a HiE clopfic I'll probably never get around to writing.
Horse Pun
“So I let her look at my journal, and it turns out she taught herself to read English, so she found out all about my problem.” I took another drink and sighed. “And kept teasing me even before she said anything about it.”
“Because that’s Pinkie for you,” Rainbow Dash said.
“Well, yeah. But she thought it was sad and wanted to help, and I had her all over me after not getting any since I got here, and, well… It happened.” I shrugged.
Dash snorted. “So what you’re saying is…”
Her voice had that strained quality that always meant she was holding in laughter, and she had the dumb grin that always preceded an exceptionally stupid remark.
“...you were horny enough to eat out a horse?! ” Dash broke down laughing, holding her stomach and falling backwards off the railing onto the ground.
I groaned and dropped my head to the fence. “How is that even an expression here?”
