I was in Physics when I knew.
The rational part of me was preoccupied analyzing a linear spring system according to the simple second-order differential equation, on a quest to derive the oscillation’s frequency from physical principles.
However, as anyone politically active knows, rationality is a second-class citizen in the human brain! Emotions run the show; the dominant limbic system, much older than our rational neocortex on an evolutionary time scale, is the ultimate steward of the human brain.
At least, I’d like to blame my limbic system for my eyes wandering off my paper from a force diagram to Sunset Shimmer’s face at the table adjacent my own, her features scrunched up adorably inevitably trying to recall how eigenstuff works. Really, if our attention is our most valuable resource in the modern economy, I should press charges against her for theft. I suppose it would be prohibitively difficult to prove mens rea to a jury, but alas.
Ever since the Friendship Games, I’ve been fascinated by Sunset. Most of the students at Canterlot High retain some latent distrust of the “villain”.
I don’t.
I never knew the “bad” her. In my first significant interaction with her, she saved me from myself when my experiment went awry transforming me into a monster. She was there to hold out her hand for me. She was there for me every moment since.
While we’re on the topic, I should probably mention I’m gay. Ostensibly, my love of learning alienated me from my peers at Crystal Prep, but the school’s rampant homophobia certainly did not help. I’m far from out, but my best friends here at Canterlot know. I am grateful to have a supportive group like the girls here.
Unfortunately, that also meant that from the first moment I daydreamed at Sunset from a distance, Rainbow Dash never let me live it down. At first, I refuted her claims, denied any friendship greater than those of Plato, obsessed over maintaining the stability of the status quo. One day, Rainbow waggled her eyebrows at me, proclaiming “Word on the street, Sunset’s bi”, and the six words have been burned into my memory ever since.
I was in Physics, the final period of the day in both of our schedules, when I relented and mentally outlined strategies to initiate romantic contact. Covering my lips with my hand to conceal a smile, I inhaled and scribbled an accurate if inelegant solution to the spring system. I doodled on the margin of the paper for a few minutes until the bell rung; the chime ringing in my ears, I scooped up my backpack and ran to the bus stop, avoiding an untimely interaction with the subject of my attention.
Once aboard the lengthy bus ride, I withdrew my cellphone from my backpack, flicking my finger through email in an ill-fated effort to distract myself from my romantic headspace. Unable to focus on any one email long enough to craft a reply, I gave in and opened up chaos.social, Discord’s Magicdon instance. Tapping Sunset’s profile picture, I began thought-dumping into the menacing buffer.
“Hey, I need to talk to you about something… No, that sounds like she did something wrong. Hi, do you want to go on a date? No, that’s way too forward!” I muttered to myself, grateful for the relative emptiness of the bus during the Friday afternoon. Deleting each candidate response as hastily as I wrote it, I realised what I was missing: research!
Pushing off my homework until later in the weekend, I set myself to “Do Not Disturb” and moved Magicdon’s instant messaging window into the background. Firing up Orbot, I swallowed my pride and typed into the search engine, “how to ask a girl out on a date”.
Ick. A hundred pages of entitled testosterone-addled macho ramblings, more than enough to give the feminist in me a migraine.
I revised my query to “how to ask a gay girl out on a date -site:*.tumblr.com”.
Much better. Retrieving my notebook and a pen from my backpack, I opened each article on the first page sequentially, from highest ranked downward, and organized the information from each source. After finishing up the third source, it was my neighborhood’s bus stop, and I hopped off, furling a pen between my upper lip and nostril, throwing the phone and paper inside my backpack and throwing the zipped backpack on my back.
I walked inside, quickly greeted Spike, and proceeded into my room. My parents were still at work, leaving me for the next hour alone with my thoughts – and obsessions. In a sapphic daze, I retrieved my laptop from my backpack and placed it on my desk. Opening up the Magicdon client and reviewing my notes, I crafted – and sent – a note to Sunset Shimmer:
Hi Sunset. I’ve been thinking about you a lot. I really like you and… Please don’t feel pressured one way or the other, but would you like to go on a date with me? <3
I immediately regretted it. What if she says no? Or worse – what if she says yes? What if I ruined everything between us forever? What if – lost in my tormented spiral of thoughts, I disconnected my laptop’s wi-fi and threw myself back onto my bed, hyperventilating staring at the ceiling.
I lasted about a minute in that posture before bending over to check my phone for a reply. Nada.
Tick-tock. Check. No reply. Tick-tock. Check. Have you ever paid attention to the crevices in your ceiling? I mean, really paid attention? Most people seem to assume that ceilings and walls are flat surfaces, but if you squint your eyes, you realise that there’s no such thing as a smooth surface in the real-world! Everything is a bumpy, discontiguous mesh of discrete particles; some materials like glass are just better than hiding it. Or so I observed, while staring up at the ceiling. Surely, that mental circumlocution would allocate enough time for her to write a reply or even acknowledge she read it! Tick-tock. Check. No reply.
Through these psychological games I played with myself, I burned through the rest of the hour, caught from my daze by the garage door opening. I left my phone in my room, swallowed my emotions, and plastered on a smile to greet my Mom and prepare for a pleasant, drama-free family dinner. Sunset would have to wait.
After an evening full of attempting and utterly failing to complete homework while glancing over at my phone every seven seconds, I gave up on my wait and head to bed. I attempted to read the book I checked out from the library; finding myself unable to focus on the printed text without blue light flooding my vision, I downloaded a Daring Do shipfic and read that instead… ensuring that my instant messaging window was always open.
Still no reply. Fifty pages in, one last glance over at Magicdon to make sure I didn’t misconfigure push notifications again, and eventually I gave in and let myself drift off to sleep, my phone within my arm span.
The world faded into a fuzzy blackness. Purple, white, reddish blobs bounced around my vision; I could faintly perceive the contours of my bedroom, fading into obscurity with each second that passed. My thought bombarded me with images of Sunset smiling, Sunset crying, Sunset, Sunset, Sunset. Habitually the twitch of anxiety led me to jolt open my eyes, scan my idle surroundings in a momentary paranoia, and close my eyes to return to the unstable equilibrium between wake and sleep.
At some point, I must have slipped into sleep proper, for one memory is of smiling ruddy blobs and the next of an angry vivid caricature of Sunset Shimmer in front of me, standing centimeters away from the Canterlot High School statue. In her hand, she held her phone, her eyes wide, and I felt myself – my character – scream out, “I’m sorry!”, without response or even recognition from the angered before me. Quieter, I declared, “I love you, Sunset,” and she looked up at me, pained.
“You… love me?” She looked down at her phone again, for which I was grateful; I couldn’t bear to continue to watch her ghastly countenance. “No.” She coughed. “No,” she repeated. “No!”
I whimpered. “No?”
Tossing her phone into the oblivion of the forgotten crests of my subconscience, she faced me piercing my soul with her line-of-sight. “No! Do you not understand how selfish you’re being, Sparkle?” she shouted.
I raised my shoulders up to my ears.
“What part of ‘friendship’ don’t you understand? Hint: it doesn’t involve harassing your so-called ‘friends’!” She doubled her stature as she spoke, her eyes dilating, growing to the colour of the red stripes in her hair.
I grabbed my left arm with my right hand. Whispering, I said, “I didn’t mean to harass you.”
She outstretched her increasingly enormous arms to encompass the arm span of three copies of the statue – three copies I could almost imagine seeing. “I don’t care what you meant! The road to hell is paved with good intentions, Twilight, so careful where you’re heading.”
I buried my face in my hands on the verge of tears. “I’m so sorry. I never shouldn’t have said the things I said to you. It isn’t fair to you.” The tears began to stream, and I continued, “If this is how it has to be, I guess I wish I never met you.”
Growing and reddening somehow further, she retorted, “I wish I never met you either!”. She jumped into the portal, and I sprang awake, my breath throbbing.
I glanced over to my phone on the table beside me. Bumping the power button and splashing my face with light, I scanned the push notification page. Nope. Still nothing from Sunset.
I sighed, cuddled up against my blanket, and went back to sleep.
The morning arrived soon enough. Sunlight pouring in through my bedroom window, I rolled out of bed, grabbed my phone, and sleepwalked to the kitchen to heat whatever instant oatmeal I had left. En route to the microwave, I scrolled through the notifications list awaiting me.
“Wikipedia newsletter; ooo, something from Shining Armor; I don’t speak Mandarin but I’m assuming this is spam; oddly affirming they got my orientation right but otherwise spam…” I mumbled to myself, scanning the subjects.
Nothing from Sunset.
Grabbing a packet and dunking it in water in my peripheral vision, I opened Magicdon again, in the vain hopes that maybe there would be a message waiting for me that I glossed over.
Nothing from Sunset. Or anyone else, for that matter.
But she was online. Just sitting there, the name “Sunset Shimmer” on my “Friends” list with a green dot. I stared at the name longingly, until a few minutes later it switched back to grey and disappeared. That whole time, I had been rationalizing the response as “Sunset simply hasn’t come online yet to read my message.” Yet there she was, as online as I was, with ample time to read and reply to the message. Even a simple “no, thank you” would have appeased my inner demons. But it was radio silence instead.
My thoughts drifted back to the violent imagery of my nightmarish hellscape of my disturbed sleep of only hours ago. By the time I had finished mindlessly preparing my oatmeal, I wasn’t sure I was still hungry enough for breakfast. My stomach was already full, only with anxiety rather than calories.
I set myself to “Available” and stared at the buddy list, my face blank. I noticed vaguely as Rarity came online. I blinked and eager to talk to anyone, I double-clicked her name and popped open a chat session.
“Hey Rares. Um.. could I borrow your fainting couch?” I typed out.
I stared at the green dot for a moment that felt like an eternity.
Maybe Rarity already heard from Sunset and already decided to cut me out of her life, too, out of fear that I would mess up my friendship with her next, now that Sunset isn’t in the picture.
Maybe Rarity realised, independent of Sunsetian revelations, that I’m a terrible person who should never be talked to again and decided that her own mental health was more important than suppor–
Her typing indicator lit up and I held my breath. Ten or so seconds later, my instant messaging client beeps with her response awaiting: “but of course! what’s the occasion, dear?”.
I released a breath I didn’t realise I was holding. At least I would still have one friend remaining after Sunset Shimmer abandons me forever.
I lost myself into my client.
Twilight: Well… out of all the things that could happen, this is the worst possible thing. But it doesn’t really have the dramatic effect I need without the couch to go with it.
Rarity: ah. what’s up?
Twilight: Mmf.
Rarity: hm? no need to tell me if you’re not comfortable <3
Twilight: No, it’s just… I think I messed up my friendship with Sunset. Permanently.
Rarity: oh dear. what happened?
Twilight: I… may have confessed my undying romantic love to her… over Magicdon?
Rarity: lol
Twilight: Rarity :v
Rarity: sorry, but… what makes you think you messed up your friendship? sounds like you’re just getting a lot friendlier
Rarity waggles her eyebrows
Twilight: Rarity! T_T
Rarity: sorry! but… seriously, you have nothing to worry about. I promise.
Twilight: okay..
Rarity: if anything, I’m just offended you didn’t ask moi for advice first ;)
Twilight: Ugh.
My eyes jittering between the window with Rarity and my buddy list, I felt my stomach spin with butterflies as Sunset’s name reappeared, as green as ever. I bit my lip and clicked open her window too, debating what I should say, but letting my cowardice overtake me, I returned to Rarity’s window. But even with Rarity’s text occluding any chat logs between Sunset and I, I could see Sunset’s name bounce with a typing indicator. Sunset was typing. Sunset was typing to me.
And then the indicator disappeared, a notification and a message-awaiting colour in its place. I think my eyes dilated. I managed to spam out a half a dozen “Oh no”’s into the window with Rarity before she prodded me to “relax, darling” with a few too many exclamation points for the severity of the moment.
Hesitantly, I clicked over to Sunset’s tab, surely greeted by an epiphany of my awfulness and how everything I’ve ever done has been a tonteria and that I’m a massive failure who doesn’t deserve to have her in her life and that I should just stop trying to have friendship at all and–
Sunset: nothing to apologise for! <3
My heart skipped a beat, equal parts relief and confusion.
Twilight: You’re not mad at me?
Sunset: why would I be mad at you for having a massive crush on me? ^_^
Twilight: I didn’t mean to, um– wait. Is that a yes or no (to my previous question)?
Sunset: yeah, of course! don’t want to promise anything but a date could definitely be fun, and it’s about time you owned up to your feelings for me ;P
Twilight blushes
Sunset: …not that it’s surprising, seeing as I am the smartest, prettiest girl you know
Twilight: Oh, quiet you.
Sunset smirks
She said yes?
She said yes.
My butterflies flew faster, my confusion sky high as ever, one burning question remaining about my date’s bizarre behaviour. Unsure I wanted to ask but certain I needed to know the answer, I typed away:
Twilight: So, um… if you weren’t mad at me, why’d it take you so long to respond? I saw you online!
Sunset: didn’t want to distract you :)
Twilight: Hm?
Sunset: you were on do-not-disturb!
