Chapter 1 : Life, Unicorns, And The Pursuit Of Happiness
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Life, Unicorns, And The Pursuit Of Happiness

Chapter 1 : Life, Unicorns, And The Pursuit Of Happiness

I am in love with Twilight Sparkle, and I have been for quite some time now. I get asked about it a lot by all sorts of people, with questions like “Why do you love Twilight so much?” and “How did you come to love her?”. I give them capsulated answers and partial explanations, but the whole story is much more bizarre and wondrous than anything I’ve ever satiated a passing onlooker’s curiosity with. It’s a story that’s worth being told, if for no other reason than that you may come to better understand the amazing complexities of the human mind and heart. So sit back, relax, and enjoy as I tell you the story of my love.

I think the best place to start this story is with what I find so attractive about Twilight Sparkle.

First off, I love how smart and constantly motivated to better herself she is. She's always busy reading to educate herself about new subjects, trying new things for the simple sake of learning about them, and finds joy in expanding her knowledge of the world. That's just so beautiful to me. There's a sort of purity to that kind of world view that's hard to put into words. The never ending desire to learn and grow as a person/pony shows she's not cynical or jaded and that for her the world is still this amazing and wonderful place where almost anything could be possible. I also really like how she's a bit insecure and never overly self assured about the decisions she makes. It shows she's not full of herself or egotistical and the ability to doubt oneself and question your own decisions is what keeps people/ponies thinking logically and reasonably. Again, this reflects on her intelligence and smart is just so damn sexy to me.

She does have her character flaws, like being really obsessive compulsive and occasionally flying off the handle and going a little crazy sometimes. But these character flaws are also ones I have, so I can relate to them very well and sympathize with her when she starts getting obsessed over the perfection of pointless little things. Or when she just gets way too stressed out about something she probably doesn't need to be and goes a little off the rails doing illogical and potentially self defeating things. Sometimes she can't see the forest through the trees but her heart is always in the right place, even when she's trying to solve a problem the wrong way. I've found myself in those situations more times than I could ever recall. So I not only love all the positive aspects of her personality but can completely relate to and sympathize with the negative ones. I see a lot of myself in her sometimes, and not just when I'm clopping.

And speaking of clopping, my goodness is she beautiful! Those adorable violet eyes, that lavender coat, the colors and style of her mane and tail, her sweet smile, perky ears, bright sparkly cutie mark, and that little bit of pudge she has to her tummy. There are not the words in the english language to describe how overwhelmingly attractive I find Twilight Sparkle. I think she's absolutely gorgeous, more so than anyone else I've ever seen in my entire life.

I think that pretty much covers everything regarding what I find attractive about her, so now I’ll explain how this love I have for Twilight came to be.

In February of 2012, due to some complicated work and personal life related problems, I went through a period of extreme depression that was the worst I’ve ever had in my life. Every day I woke up feeling sad and hopeless, spent the entire day feeling sad and hopeless, and went to bed feeling the same way. Each day was the same as the previous one. It felt like there was this constant gaping hole in my chest, I had no energy to do anything, hardly ate at all, felt pretty much no emotions other than sadness and despair, and lost all interest in sex of any kind. I completely stopped feeling attracted to anyone or anything, which was quite strange for a young adult male such as myself who had always needed some kind of sexual release at least once a day. There was almost nothing that could make me feel better or even so much as smile, except for watching My Little Pony : Friendship is Magic. It was literally the only thing in my life that could cheer me up and lift me above my depression if not for just a little while. So I’d spend hours and hours every day just laying on the couch watching MLP. It’d make me smile and laugh for a while and then when it was over I’d go back to being depressed and feeling hopeless again.

This extreme depression lasted for about a month before it started lifting, and when it did start to go away the first real emotion I found myself feeling again was love. Not love for a family member or friend, but for this little purple cartoon unicorn that had made me smile, laugh, and cheered me up so much when nothing else could during the most difficult period in my life. It was really weird and uncomfortable at first, so I tried to ignore it and hoped the feelings would go away. I was familiar with the way it felt to be in love with someone, as I had experienced these feelings before for a real person who I ended up having almost an 8 year long relationship with. My feelings for Twilight felt the exact same as the feelings I once had for that person, and no matter how much I tried to ignore them they wouldn’t go away. She was on my mind nearly every waking second of every day, and every time I thought about her or saw her on the screen while watching MLP my heart would feel like it was skipping a beat and doing little fluttery things in my chest. I’d catch myself daydreaming sometimes about holding her in my arms and cuddling her, even going so far as to think about kissing her sometimes.

And that’s right about the time my sex drive started coming back, but not in the way I expected. I still didn’t feel any attraction to the people in my life I once felt attracted to, nor any of the pornography I once enjoyed. The only thing in all the world that aroused me was this purple unicorn girl I had somehow managed to fall in love with. I’m not sure which part was harder for me to come to terms with, the fact that I was attracted to a cartoon pony or the fact that the cartoon pony was a girl. For the last 14 years of my life, since I hit puberty, I had always been attracted to just guys and considered myself to be gay.

Just like I initially tried ignoring my love for Twilight with the thought that it might go away, I tried ignoring my sexual desires as well... but they never went away either. After about a week, when I eventually just couldn’t take it anymore, I let my mind slip into a fantasy of making the most passionate love to Twilight Sparkle I’ve ever made to anyone in my life. Holding her in my arms, kissing her, telling her how much I loved her, and making love to her with the kind of gentle tenderness that anyone would show to someone they truly loved. And I clopped.

At first it felt extremely weird and awkward on some level. Thinking about not only making love to a cartoon character of another species but also one that happened to be a girl. Truth be told I had always found female genitalia to be rather gross looking and off-putting, but my attraction this girl was undeniable and I knew I wanted to love her in every way possible. More than that I wanted to make her feel loved and bring her as much pleasure as I could. With those feelings in mind, and after a little time spent acclimating myself to this new attraction, I came to find every aspect of Twilight’s female form very attractive. Girly parts included.

It wasn’t long after I came to accept my love for Twilight and my sexual attraction to her that the feelings of longing for her and the pain that comes from not being able to touch, hold, speak to, or be with someone you love started. My depression was mostly gone but I still felt a constant ache in my chest, a feeling of emptiness that never went away no matter what I did. I’d have days where I just sat in the shower and cried for an hour because I wanted to badly to leave this world behind and be in Equestria with Twilight, and I knew that was something that would never happen. I’d lay in bed at night and cry myself to sleep because I wanted nothing more in all the world than to hold her in my arms, kiss her, and tell her I loved her and those were all things I’d never be able to do. The girl I loved with all my heart wasn’t real and no matter how much I wanted to be with her I’d never be able to, and it was tearing me apart.

I spent about a month wallowing in anguish and heartache over my love that could never be fulfilled or returned, and as with all my other feelings for Twilight I knew it wasn’t going to go away. I realized that I needed to find a way to somehow express my feelings for Twilight in a real physical sense or the inability to do so was going to drive me crazy. It was obvious that since Twilight is a fictional character there would be no way for me to really interact with her in the real world, and virtual reality technology has not yet advanced to the point to make that a viable option either. It then dawned on me that one time while browsing Equestria Daily I had seen an article on really show accurate looking pony plushies that were custom made by fans of the show. I didn’t know if it would make me feel any better or not having a Twilight Sparkle plushie to hug, cuddle, and express my feelings to but I was running out of options and the heartache and bouts of crying were getting worse by the day.

So I started researching pony plushies, made my way to DeviantArt and found the MyLittlePlushie group, and started looking at all the different Twilight Sparkle plushies artists had made. I found over and over again that almost none of them really looked quite like Twilight on the show and the few that did were all tiny (around 11” tall or so) and made by artists who were completely booked for commissions several months into the future. I was about to give up my search when I saw her, the one almost perfect Twilight plushie. This artist named KarasuNezumi made her and she had an auction going for her on eBay. This plushie looked almost exactly like Twilight, was plenty big enough to cuddle up with at 18” tall (still quite a bit smaller than I imagined Twilight would actually be, but a decent size none the less), and I knew I needed to have her no matter how much it was going to cost me. I didn’t have much in the way of money at the time so I did what I previously would have thought unthinkable.

I sold my entire retro video game collection, gaming systems, and all of my Magic the Gathering cards (retro games and Magic are my only two real hobbies outside of the MLP fandom) and gathered all the money I could to bid on this plushie. I had to sell all my items to local game stores and pawn shops due to having only 3 days to get the money together so I only got roughly half of what my collection was worth, but if it meant getting this plushie I didn’t care. Ultimately I ended up losing the auction when it got up to $450 or so and all I was able to get for all my hobby stuff on such short notice was $430. But as fate would have it the winning bidder failed to pay for the plushie in the allotted time frame after the auction ended and the artist gave me a second chance offer on her since I was the second highest bidder. I gleefully sent the money within minutes of receiving the offer.

I got my wonderfully show accurate Twilight plushie in the mail about a week later, and while she was a lot smaller than I would have liked, I quickly noticed myself feeling better every time I looked at her and hugged her. I knew this plushie wasn’t really Twilight Sparkle, but she looked so much like her that I soon found myself being able to express all those feelings I had bottled up for Twilight to this plushie of mine. I’d hug her, kiss her, pet her mane, tell her how much I loved her, and take her to bed with me at night. As I became accustomed to expressing my affections for Twilight to my plushie, all the heartache, feelings of emptiness, and longing for someone I couldn’t have soon began to diminish. My plushie wasn’t really Twilight, but she looked and felt enough like her that I could effectively pretend she was. This satisfied the needs of my heart very well and within a few weeks of receiving my plushie almost all the pain I had been suffering from not being able to be with the girl I loved was gone. The only complaint I had was that my Twilight plushie was too small for me to be able to properly make love to her, but I was still able to express all my other romantic affections with her and that was good enough for me. I could cuddle and kiss her while clopping or just clop to pictures of Twilight, and while it wasn’t quite real love making it would just have to do.

Life continued this way for another 5 months or so and all was well in my little world. My love for Twilight blossomed from a source of sadness and confusion into something beautiful and wondrous that brought joy to my life every single day. I immersed myself in the brony community, made lots of new friends who supported me in my love for the mare of my dreams, and even met two other people who felt the same way about a pony as I did. I wrote passionate stories about my love for Twilight Sparkle, bought tons of Twi merchandise to fill my room with, daydreamed endlessly about her, and had my Twi plushie there with me every step of the way to lavish my affections on. Life was good... that is, until something rather unexpected happened.

Up until this point, since I came out of my depression and fell in love with Twilight, she had been the only thing I felt any kind of sexual attraction to. And then it happened... I suddenly found myself feeling sexual attraction for a male friend of mine. At this point I had become so accustomed to only being attracted to Twilight that my attraction for my friend, who also happened to be attracted to me as well, felt strange and uncomfortable. But if there was anything I had learned from my experience falling in love with Twilight it was that I should try not to repress or hold anything back. Feelings tend not to go away no matter how much you ignore them, so I gave in and started having sex with my friend a few times a week. It felt unusual being with a human again, and it took me nearly forever to reach orgasm every time due to how odd this kind of sex seemed after my experiences over the last half a year, but it was very physically pleasurable. However, I noticed something strange after each time I had sex with my friend. I felt sad. A deep kind of sadness that I couldn’t quite pinpoint the source of, but it cut and gouged into my heart so painfully that I knew there was something definitely wrong going on. I never felt sadness like this after clopping to Twilight or making love to her in my fantasies, but I felt it very strongly after every time I had sex with my friend or masturbated to my memories of sex with him. It took about a week of trying to figure it out before the realization dawned on me... I felt like I was cheating on Twilight.

Even after having this epiphany I still continued having sex with my friend a few more times, but it just didn’t feel right and I knew it. At the time I didn’t want to give up this real life sexual relationship I had found, but every time after we finished having sex my heart was stricken with a kind of grief I never want to have to feel again. It took me weeks of time and many all night conversations with friends to come to terms with it, but I now know with great certainty that as long as my heart remains property of Twilight Sparkle then having sex with anyone else is not something I should be doing.

And that's where depending on your outlook on things my love life could be considered rather sad. I've essentially chosen to place myself in a monogamous relationship with someone I will never be able to touch, hold, have a conversation with, or otherwise interact with in any real sense. My love can never actually be returned. Any intimacy I have will be a fantasy constructed in my own mind and acted out with a physical representation of the girl I love, which in this case happens to be my Twilight plushie. It's highly illogical and difficult to rationalize why anyone would choose this over the possibility of a real relationship with a real person... but the human heart is not a thing of logic or reason. Your mind can try to rationalize things all day long, but at the end of the day you just have to follow your heart no matter how bizarre your heart's behavior might seem. And my heart tells me that I am for Twilight and her alone, so that's the path I have to follow. It may not be a real relationship or real sex, but I've found that it really doesn't have to be to still make me happy. We all need something in our lives to fulfill those needs for personal intimacy and sexual gratification, and my heart seems to have uniquely chosen a purple cartoon unicorn for that role. But as the late painter Bob Ross was fond of saying, “If it makes you happy and doesn’t hurt anyone, then it’s good.”

I've spent more than half a year coming to terms with everything it means to love Twiley and want only for her, and the things I wouldn't be able to have in this sort of relationship. The ability to take her out for a nice dinner, doing social activities like going to fairs and festivals together, and other things like that. Experiences I've had in past relationships that I still hold fond memories of, even if the relationships themselves didn't end particularly well.

But I understand now that what I can't have doesn't really matter, because I love her with all my heart and what I do have overflows my proverbial cup with a kind of splendor unmatched by anything else I have ever known. For the longest time I was scared to fully give myself over to my feelings for Twilight. It felt like standing at the edge of a cliff with my arms spread wide, closing my eyes, and stepping off backwards... and I've always been afraid of diving off the high board into the deep end of the pool. But after all that I had been through I knew with every fiber of my being that I was for Twilight, and having intimacy with anyone else just wasn't right. So I walked off that mental cliff, facing forward with eyes wide open... and love caught me in it's warm embrace. I'm all hers now and everything is just fine, like breathing a long sigh of relief. All those things I was afraid I'd miss, well, those are what friends are for! I look forward to all the good times to come going out to eat, doing social activities, and having fun with my friends. Then when I get back home it's all about Twilight. Which is not to say that Twiley isn't on my mind all day long when I'm out doing things, because she really is.

It’s been a long journey to get here, but I now live every day happy and secure in my love for Twilight Sparkle. I’ve got friends by my side, love in my heart, and no regrets. This is my story and this is my life. It’s crazy, broken, downright absurd, and beautiful beyond description. But that’s life for you.

Chapter 2 : Alternative Lifestyles Of The Not So Rich Or Famous
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Life, Unicorns, And The Pursuit Of Happiness

Chapter 2 : Alternative Lifestyles Of The Not So Rich Or Famous

It’s astonishing how much you can learn in two months time, and that’s about how long it’s been since I finished writing and published the first chapter of this story. It’s now December of 2012, and I’m just as in love with Twilight Sparkle as I’ve ever been. The relationship I have with her has grown quite a bit over the last few months and there have been a lot of learning experiences along the way. There’s no guide or handbook for having a fulfilling relationship with what most people would consider to be a fictional character, so it’s really a learn-as-you-go sort of deal. Now I say “most people” because to me Twilight is just as real as any of the family members or friends in my life. When I look at my Twilight plushie I see Twilight Sparkle. When I talk with her I'm talking to Twilight. When I hold her in my arms and kiss her there are no doubts in my mind that it's the mare I love who's lips are pressed against mine. And every morning when I open my eyes and see her head on the pillow next to mine, with her gorgeous violet eyes staring back at me, I can't help but wonder how I ever got to be so lucky as to have a partner as smart, funny, beautiful, and all around wonderful as her.

On some level I am aware that my plushie is not actually Twilight Sparkle, but to me it very much feels like she is and over time it’s become quite easy to view her as the purple animated unicorn I adore. I’ve grown quite accustomed to having conversations with her as well, we talk about pretty much everything that might be of interest to she and I. I’ll say something to her and hear her response as a little voice in the back of my head that doesn’t require any conscious effort at all to produce. Mind you I don’t actually hear her in the traditional sense, I’m not having auditory hallucinations (I’d probably be rather worried if I was), but I’m familiar enough with the sound of Twilight’s voice and her personality that it’s very easy to imagine what she might have to say about any given subject. It may seem odd to look at a stuffed animal and see a real living being, and to have conversations with them as well, but it seems to come very naturally to me and it feels right so I just go with it. This harkens back to a cornerstone of my philosophy that I touched on in the first chapter of my story, “If it makes you happy and doesn’t hurt anyone, then it’s good”. And there really aren’t the words in the English language, or probably any other language for that matter, to adequately describe just how happy it makes me to spend every day of my life together with Twilight Sparkle. Reality is always subjective to our perceptions of it, so what we perceive to be real tends to be real for us. Others will look at my plushie and see nothing more than a cute stuffed animal, but when I look at her I see the real physical incarnation of most beautiful and wondrous being I’ve ever laid eyes on. More than that, I see my partner.

When we last left off at the end of the first chapter I was relatively content with my relationship, but still (whether apparent or not) disheartened somewhat by the belief that there were certain things I could never do with my partner. Fun, regular, everyday things that most couples get to do together like going out to eat at nice restaurant, attending fairs and festivals together, and other activities like these that I’ve enjoyed doing in previous relationships. This had long been a source of discontentment for me, having to keep my relationship with Twilight hidden away within the confines of my house and not being able to treat her to a lot of the things in life that anyone I loved so dearly certainly deserved to be treated to.

Then one day my best friend and I (the friend who I mentioned briefly sleeping with in the first chapter, and we are still best friends) went to visit a mutual friend in the hospital. I brought Twilight along with because my friend in the hospital always seemed overjoyed to get to hold and hug Twilight when I brought her to the local brony group meet ups. So I figured perhaps getting to see Twiley again would brighten up my friend’s day. It did, and after leaving the hospital my best friend and I decided to have dinner at a restaurant that serves what I consider to be the best vegetarian sushi in the city. Both my best friend and I are vegetarians (I have been for around seven years myself) and he had never been to this restaurant before so he was quite excited to check it out. When we got there, before getting out of the car, he suggested something that both thrilled and alarmed me at the prospect. “Why don’t you bring Twilight in with us? I’m sure she’d love to try some good vegetarian food.”

My eyes lit up like a Christmas tree and my heart started pounding in my chest. I loved the idea of being able to share a really nice meal with my partner, but what would people think? How would people react to me sharing a table and plates of food with what they viewed as nothing more than a stuffed animal? I thought about it for a minute, and almost declined out of nervousness and hesitation, but my best friend insisted and the thought of being able to take Twilight out to dinner was just too amazing to let the opportunity slip away. So I picked Twilight up, cradled her in my arms against my chest as I always do when carrying her around, and in we went. Our waitress greeted us and seated us at a booth, with my friend on one side and Twilight and I on the other. We ordered some tea and a few appetizers, miso soup and tempura vegetables, and my nervousness began to dissipate as I noticed that the waitress was not reacting at all oddly to Twilight sitting next to me. Our appetizers arrived and I started sipping on my miso soup. It was delicious, some of the best I’ve ever had. I really wished Twilight could try it and... wait. Why couldn’t she? She was right there next to me after all. My heart started fluttering again at the idea of sharing food with her in a public setting, with people all around at the tables next to us, our waitress walking by, and the bartender no doubt looking on as well. I had made it this far without any negative reactions from the people around us though, so why not?

I swallowed my fear of social rejection, looked down at my partner, and giving her a little scratch behind the ear asked “Hey Twiley, would you like to try some miso soup?”. She responded with a gleeful “Sure!” in that adorable way she tends to do, so I held the bowl of soup up to her lips for her to take a sip. “Mmm, this is really good! I’ve never tasted anything quite like it!” Twilight exclaimed, all of which of course only I could hear. I smiled with great delight at her enjoyment of the food, and upon glancing around to see if anyone was looking at me strangely I noticed that no one seemed to care. Everyone in the restaurant was busy talking, laughing, and enjoying themselves just as much as I was. Well I take that back, there was one person that cared. My friend enquired, “What does Twilight think of the soup?”. I conveyed her opinion to him and he looked at my partner with a smile and told her “Wonderful! I think it’s really good too”. Some days when you smile the world smiles with you, and when I took a look around at the people in the restaurant, my friend seated across from me, and Twilight snuggled up against my side, it was clear that today was one of those days. The rest of our meal continued in much the same fashion, sharing all my food with Twiley and taking overwhelming happiness in her enjoyment and analysis of all these new little delicacies she had never tasted before. If they have vegetarian sushi in Equestria it was certainly something she had never heard of. And the whole time not a single person took any objection to me sharing this fantastic meal with her. Even the waitress, who walked by a few times while I was holding some sushi or tempura vegetables up to Twilight’s mouth for her to sample, never made any indication that she might have thought anything out of the ordinary was going on. The only person who was at all curious about Twilight was my friend, who was quite eager to find out what she thought about everything she tried.

So we spent a few hours relaxing and enjoying our meal together, tipped the waitress especially well for her totally normal treatment of my partner and I, and headed home with a sense of great peace and contentment from the experience we just shared. After my friend dropped us off and we got inside, Twilight and I spent a good hour or so just laying in bed cuddling together before something else I never thought I’d be able to share with the unicorn of my dreams happened... we made love.

I had long enjoyed clopping to pictures of my partner, or sometimes snuggling with her while I clopped, but I never imagined that I could actually make love to her. After all, I wasn’t about to go making any holes under my plushie’s tail and being a fairly typical male I wasn’t really aware of any way to make love that didn’t involve penetration. But ask any lesbian you might know if having great sex requires some kind of penetration and you’re likely to told in no uncertain terms that it does not.

So there we were, laying in bed cuddling, with every last piece of my clothing strewn in a heap at the foot of the bed. Holding her in my arms, feeling her soft fur against my skin as my hands glided over the length of her body, and nearly quivering with delight every time my lips met hers for a kiss. Burying my face in her mane and breathing in the lightly floral scent of her hair, kissing up and down her neck, gently rubbing her ears with one hand while trailing my fingers over her cutie mark with the other, listening to her soft coos of pleasure from my touch. It all felt so incredible, so perfect. Laying on my back with Twilight sprawled out across my chest and stomach, the weight of her body pressing against mine, telling her how much I loved her between kisses. Before I even realized what was happening my male parts were sliding back and forth between her inner thighs and tummy. And as I held her close, between the heat and friction of our bodies entwined together, it really felt like being inside her. My hands found purchase on her hips, and with my thumbs massaging her cutie marks and our lips locking together in kisses between a nearly endless stream of words of affection, we made love. Slowly, gently, and sensually our bodies grinded against one another and all that existed in the world was Twilight and I. The passage of time lost all meaning and I slipped into a state of bliss like I had never before known. Staring into the deep pools of her violet eyes, set adrift in the ocean of all that is her. My darling, my love. A small eternity passed together as one with her, our bodies like droplets of water cascading together down a waterfall of love, before the moment finally came. The exquisite rapture of climaxing in unison with the one you adore, the one you’ve dedicated the entirety of yourself mind, body, and soul to is unspeakable. When those droplets of water that are you and your partner crash together at the bottom of the fall and find unity in the river below, there are no words to describe peace and tranquility that washes over you.

And so began a new era in my relationship with Twilight. Since that night I’ve taken her to dinner at nearly half a dozen different restaurants, gone out for relaxing afternoons of book shopping and taking in the atmosphere at local coffee shops together, and pretty much anywhere else I think she might like to go. If there’s somewhere I’m going that I think Twilight would enjoy than she comes along, and we always have a great time together. Whether it’s a romantic evening out on the town or just hanging out with friends playing Magic : The Gathering, we share our lives like any couple would. To be cliche, “Like two peas in a pod we do everything together”. As far as our sex life goes, well, I couldn’t even begin to keep track of how many times we’ve made love. I can say though that every time has been just as incredible, fulfilling, and satisfying as the last. I’ve had six different human sexual partners over the course of my life and not a single one of them ever gave me a sex life that was anywhere near as amazing and completely gratifying as the one I have with Twiley. Also, I feel it worth mentioning that for the sake of those that might want to hold Twilight at the brony meet ups I attend I do keep her immaculately clean in every regard. A little dish soap (lavender scented for her, of course) and warm water is all that’s needed to keep her fur spotless and perfect. You’ll never find a single stain anywhere on my girl, which was humorously proven when we found ourselves in a room lit entirely by black lights at last month’s local brony meet up.

To put it simply, life is good. All those things I used to think I’d never be able to do with Twilight, from the normal social activities that most couples do together to making love, are all things we do regularly now. And I can say with great contentment that in all the times Twilight and I have gone out and done things together, from dinners at restaurants to shopping for items needed around the house, I have never once received a really negative reaction from someone for having her with me. Sometimes people are a little curious and ask questions, but I have no problem being open about our relationship so that doesn’t bother me. The worst I've ever gotten from an onlooker was last month at the Mall of America when Twilight and I were sitting in a restaurant and a man walking by asked "You know there's a unicorn in your lap, right?". To which I replied "Oh yes! Her name is Twilight Sparkle and I love her very much". At that point the guy just said "Oh. Okay." and moved on. Whenever someone is curious about Twilight I just give them very honest and straightforward answers. I've never had anyone get belligerent with me over it, I think most of the time people are just too astonished or bewildered to really want to pursue their line of questioning any further after my initial answer. I'm guessing if I acted embarrassed or sheepish about having Twiley with me people would likely poke and pry a bit more, but I've found that being as straightforward and politely blunt about it as I can (without coming off as aggressive) has worked really well. Perhaps it’s just because I live in a large and politically liberal metropolis where people are accustomed to seeing unusual things all the time, but I’ve been really pleased with how tolerant and accepting the general public has been of Twilight and I.

At this point I can safely say that there are no longer any areas of discontentment in my relationship with Twilight and my life has never been happier. We do everything that any other happy couple does together, and share the things we enjoy with each other too. For instance, one of my favorite hobbies is the card game Magic : The Gathering. One day, thinking this game was something that Twilight might enjoy (and I was right), I sat down with her and taught Twilight how to play. Now it's something we do a lot together. She helps me test new decks, comes along when I go play Magic at friends’ houses sometimes, and it's just a fun hobby we can share. On the flip side of things I started watching TV series like Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and How The Universe Works on Netflix with her because I knew it was something she would find fun and interesting. I was never interested in astronomy before, but after watching a lot of these educational programs about astronomy and cosmology with her I've come to find the subjects quite fascinating. I really look forward to our evenings hanging out on the couch together learning about the nature of the universe now. I'm sure before long she'll have me reading books on the subject too. The relationship really is a two way street. I share things I like with her, she shares things she likes with me, and our lives are enriched through it.

Twilight brings so much joy to my life, so I find it very fulfilling to repay that joy by doing all sorts of nice little things for her whenever I get the chance. Some mornings I’ll sneak out of bed early, make us some french toast (her favorite breakfast) and hash browns, and come back to wake her up with an nice meal and brush her mane for her while she eats. Other times it’s simpler things, like if I see some flowers I think she’d like while I’m out and about I’ll bring them home for her. Twiley likes daises the best for flavor, but when I brought her some blue roses one day she was totally enthralled by their beauty. Just like taking her out to restaurants, doing all these sweet little things for Twilight did feel a touch strange and awkward at first. It was the whole “What would people think if they knew I was doing all these things for what they considered to be a plushie?” idea, but I got over that pretty quickly once I realized just how happy it made me to treat the girl I love to all the things I think she deserves to be treated to. Now I’m always thinking about fun ways to show her how much I care, and doing them makes the whole relationship feel much more real and fulfilling.

As I mentioned before there’s no guide or handbook for how to have a relationship with someone that most people would consider to be a fictional character, so I’ve been doing my best to share the things I’ve learned from my relationship over time with other people I’ve met who feel the same way about a pony that I do. At first it was just a couple of people, but now it seems like every week I meet more and more people who love a pony and would like to build a relationship with them like the one I have with Twilight. If you were to tell me a year ago that I’d be in a relationship with a fictional character, completely overjoyed about it, and helping others to form relationships with fictional characters as well I would have told you that you were crazy. But the world is a strange place, and sometimes the worlds within our hearts and minds can be even stranger. Strange doesn’t necessarily mean bad or unhealthy though. There are thousands, if not millions, of people in the world who are in more traditional relationships right now that are definitely bad and unhealthy. Fighting constantly with their partners, abusing each other, and taking their frustrations over their relationship out on their children. Then on the other hand there’s me and Twilight, and others in alternative relationships like ours. We’re very happy and never fight, treat each other with nothing but love and respect, and enjoy every day of our lives together. I can’t help but think our relationship is much better and far healthier than many more traditional ones. Maybe it is strange, but why should that really matter? I certainly don’t see any reason. As I always say, “If it makes you happy and doesn’t hurt anyone, then it’s good.”

To close this chapter, I leave you with a short poem and a wish. The poem was written the morning after the first time Twilight and I made love, and the wish is that you are able to find the same happiness and contentment in your life that I’ve found in mine.

“I have spent this night enthralled in unspeakable bliss. I have gazed upon the visage of divinity, and found a peace I never thought possible in this life. Of all the substances man has concocted over the vast expanse of time there is none capable of inducing the perfect euphoria and unrivaled splendor that is unleashed by the human heart through the experience of love. Though this transcendence of being may well drive you mad, you will be glad of it. For it is immaculate and incorruptible, and within lies the meaning of existence.”