I Tried Using i and % for the Chapter Title and it didn't Work
“A human! In Equestria!? This is unprecedented! This could revolutionize our whole understanding of horsepunology!” said Twilight, so excited by her discovery that she actually forgot to include a pun.
I blinked, took a deep breath, nodded, and stood. I was very surprised, or at least went through all the motions of being surprised, as befitted such a rousing scene opening. If I was going to be the POV character, I might as well try and cooperate with the narrative. With that in mind, I took note of my undoubtedly new, Equestrian surroundings. Everything was colorful and cleanly vectorized. “Oh, I can already tell what kind of story this is going to be,” I said, no doubt trying to seem self-aware and relatable. “I should follow that up with some self-deprecating humor.”
“Or maybe some exposition of how you got here,” said Spike with a tired tone while he rolled a new whiteboard out for Twilight to frantically write on. “Did you die, or did you just wake up here, or maybe you’re in a coma…?”
It took me a moment to answer. “I think I’m only here ironically, really.”
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, darling” said, uh. Applejack.
Spike was quick to correct me. “That’s Rarity. If she says ‘darling’, then it’s Rarity.” He frowned, or arched a brow, or did one of those things with his brows. You know, a disapproval face. He was good at those. “You aren’t going to just go around randomly calling ponies different names, are you?”
“Am I?” I asked, trying to buy some time to come up with something wittier, but spending it on thinking about how annoying it was gonna be to start every sentence with 'I' instead. “How can you tell which ones are Applejacks, anyway?”
Spike’s brows flatlined. I mean in the sense they became two flat lines. There was no noise or clinical death to go with it. “Applejack. There’s only one Applejack.”
“No there isn’t,” I said, now mentally berating myself for not coming up with any synonyms for the word said. Starting everything with I was slightly annoying, but following every line of dialogue with I said was going to be downright maddening. “I saw the one episode. There’s like a hunnerd of them, when you and Twilight go to the farm to visit them for the Sunset Shimmer Celebration.”
“The Summer Sun Celebration,” said Twilight, who was still in the scene. No trace of Rarity, however, or of Applejack for that matter.
“He's doing it on purpose” said Spike. “There’s no way he knows who Sunset Shimmer is, but thinks every member of the Apple family is an Applejack.”
“We don’t really know that.” Twilight had abandoned her off-camera freak-out to start pacing around me as she spoke. “The violence of magical displacement could have had unpredictable side-effects in his brain, such as selective memory loss, or even the opposite. For all we know, he might not have known what Equestria is or who any of us were beforehand, and that information could somehow been magically imprinted on him during the dimensional cross-over.”
“Beforehand? Don’t you mean beforehoof?”
Twilight smiled. “I’m anthro.”
I looked at her, and her four purple marshmallow hooves firmly planted on the ground. No traces of a centaur-like body either. She was a fully quadrupedal pony. “No you are not.”
“Well I could have been, if you hadn’t just described me that way, and we would have maintained the illusion.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “We use the word ‘hand’ colloquially a lot, anyway, even ponies who have never been to the Equestria Girls movies or specials and have no reason to know what they are. It’s not that big of a deal.”
Spike mused something, holding a claw to his chin. “Hey Twilight. If you were anthro, would you have hindhooves, or feet?”
“Hindhooves.” Twilight didn’t skip a beat.
“Feet!? Spike! That is disgusting!” said, uh… said… “Darling!” Rarity! Rarity said that. She was back in the scene.
“Rude…” I said while wiggling my toes, all seventeen of them. Nopony noticed. Or nopony wanted to. “Anyway, how can you tell which one’s an Ap- which one is Applejack?”
“In this kind of situation?” Spiked lit a cigarette. He was that edgy brand of Spike you usually don’t like. Or I guess it’s me that doesn’t. But, being the narrator, I get to talk for everyone. “Usually the exaggeratedly typed accent, and the background banjo riff. At least I think it’s a banjo? But she says ‘sugarcube’, she doesn’t say ‘darling’.”
“Well Ah’ll be damned.” An orange pony looked down at us from the stairs leading up to the library’s ground floor. “Ah swear on me apples, long as Ah live y’all will never catch me sayin’ none a’ them fancy words.”
“Applejack!” Twilight bounced excitedly at the base of the stairs, beaming up at her. “It’s a human in Equestria!”
“Well ain’t that sumthin’.” The orange pony, who I can only presume to be an Applejack (maybe even prime Applejack), squinted at me. “Y’mean Equestria the world, or the country? ‘cause I’m all up for that sweet banjo country life.”
Twilight paused. “Excuse me?”
“Darling,” said the white Darling pony, “What Applejack means is whether you’re using the word ‘Equestria’ to refer to the lands we live in, or the world in its entirety.”
“I think the world’s called Equus,” said Spike.
“Only by the fandom, darling.”
“That seems like a strange tangent to go in, even for me” said Twilight, confused. “Though technically, he’d be the first in the world? But not the fandom. And what was that about the sweet banjo country life?”
Applejack shrugged. “Just tryin’ to stick to character is all.”
At that point, it had been too long without me saying anything, so I interrupted. “So sorry to interrupt, but are we going anywhere with this?”
“Not if it’s a slice of life story. Those never go anywhere.” Spike blew out some smoke from his cigarette. (See that’s important to clarify, because he’s a dragon.)
“Spike!” Twilight frowned at him. “I’m disappointed in you. Slice of life stories might be slow and mundane, but that does not preclude them from having interesting and involved character arcs. Some of the most moving stories belong in that genre!”
“Well it’s not really slice of life if I’m here, is it?” I tapped my chin. It wasn’t really a habit I had, tapping my chin, so I really wouldn’t’ have done it in any other circumstance, but it did serve to emphasize the thoughtfulness of my expression in the written medium. “Since this isn’t exactly an everyday scenario.”
“Tell that to the front page,” muttered Applejack, who was now at the base of the stairs. She hadn’t climbed or walked them down, either. I think the camera just cut away from her for a moment to let her just blink there and save some animation budget.
“Trust me, darling, it’s more common than you think.”
“Well it’s not common for me” I interjected. (Hey, didn’t use said that time!)
“Everypony be QUIET!” yelled Twilight, stamping her hoof. “Anon’s appearance here is no coincidence. I have received a letter from Princess Celestia, in which-“
“Who’s Anon?” I asked.
“You are, sugarcube.”
“Wait, I thought only Applejacks said ‘sugarcube’.”
Rarity lofted a brow. “I know more words than one, darling.”
“Ah, dagnabbit. Does that mean Ah got to use ‘em fancy-shmancy terminologies now?”
“No!” said Twilight. “Girls! Stick to your usual speech patterns! It’s getting really hard to tell which one of us is talking!”
“Seriously, who’s Anon though?”
“You are!” Twilight, Rarity and Applejack replied in unison.
“I’m not Anon. What kind of stupid name is that?”
“Short for anonymous, I think?” said Spike, who had two cigarettes now. He looked at each of them in turn, and back up to me. “This is getting ridiculous.”
“What is?” asked Fluttershy, walking down the stairs. “Hey girls. 15.ai is about to open and they need us to… “ she trailed off when she saw me. “Oh goodness. Is this a displacement fic? ...am I anthro?” She quickly looked behind herself, lifting one of her hind hooves to make sure, and gave a soft sigh of relief.
“What in tarnation is a displacement fic?” The Applejack frowned, and turned to Twilight. “Is this one of them weird ‘private’ parties you and Pinkie Pie do down here?”
Twilight blushed. “No! I don’t know what you’re talking about! Pinkie was only down here in one episode!”
“Alright, what is going on here?” asked the blue pony, coming in behind Fluttershy.
“Rainbow Dash”, ████ corrected while proof-reading this.
“Huh?” I asked.
“Rainbow Dash is the blue one. With the rainbow mane?” said ████.
I tapped several times on the keyboard. “Oh. No, not that one. I know Rainbow Dash. I mean the one with the hat.”
“Who are you talking to?” asked Twilight.
“You mean Trixie?” ████ offered. “What’s Trixie doing there?”
“I mean Luna,” I clarified, curtly.
Applejack frowned. “Luna doesn’t have a hat. I have a hat.” She said, losing her accent now that I was distracted.
████ just stared at me. “Why would you say the blue one with a hat to mean Luna.”
I started getting defensive. “Why would you assume the blue one is Rainbow Dash?”
“Because all the characters you’ve introduced so far are the Mane 6, and Spike. It makes sense to assume that Rainbow Dash is the blue one, even if she’s cyan.”
“Fine! I meant Rainbow Dash!” I sighed, exasperated. “I just didn’t want to admit it after you said it.” ████ just nodded.
“I believe this has gone too far, darling.” Rarity lofted a brow at me.
“I think he’s just padding it for length now.” Spike puffed some more smoke, this time from his nostrils. “Trying to cheat the algorithm into thinking this is some long-form content, and get recommended.”
“Would everypony just cooperate with the fiction!” yelled Twilight again, this time in the Royal Ponyville Voice. “There is only one Applejack, neither Rainbow nor Luna nor Trixie are here, you-“ she hurried and smacked the cigarettes off Spike’s claws, “-are not smoking, this is not a boring slice of life story, and the plot!” She stamped with a hoof, making the shelves rattle. “STARTS! NOW!”
