Looking back, I have no real regrets. Questions, maybe. I could have had a family. I could have been less focused on impressing you. I could have spent less time reading and more time with my friends. All that learning is going to die with me now anyway. Maybe I could have even been a little ... crazier in my youth. I didn’t know that was a one-time opportunity.
But the thing that bothers me most isn’t a regret. Because I know I’d do it again.
When I used to live in Ponyville, we had a mail-mare who was ... eccentric.
Oh, Celestia, that’s a stupid excuse. I was more eccentric than she was.
She was sweet, okay? I liked her. Everypony liked her, I think. I just liked her in small doses.
I mean, that mare was a walking disaster area. Like the time she destroyed half of town hall by accident while trying to fix it. Come to think of it, I don’t recall ever seeing her again after that. Hard to imagine somepony could disappear, in a town as small as Ponyville, without there being talk.
I hope she’s happy, wherever she is.
I know this is the part where I’m supposed to regret not trying harder to be her friend, and give some lesson on how we can learn something from everypony. Sure, you can learn something from everypony, if you listen long enough. But I barely had enough time for the friends I had! The friends I enjoyed being with.
I think I can honestly say I never learned anything from Derpy.
I had my own life to live. I had my own problems. I wasn’t as happy as I pretended to be. I needed my friends. I needed to write those letters to you, fatuous as they seem now. I needed to grab onto anything that would make my life more meaningful, more ... noticeable. The older I got, the more I needed it; and the less time there was for anything that didn’t help me feel better. The last thing I needed, when I was struggling every minute to stay afloat in a sea of despair, was to have my ear talked off for half an hour by somepony I couldn’t even understand half the time.
What? No, Pinkie Pie was different. Though it is funny, now that you point it out. Talking to Pinkie made me feel better, even when I had no idea what she was talking about. Talking to Derpy just made me sad. Or irritated.
There are only so many things to say about muffins!
So I avoided her. I memorized her route and schedule. I don’t mean I was like a, an un-stalker. But I knew that, if I went to Sugarcube Corner between 2 and 3pm, there was risk of Derpy.
Oh, come on. She dropped a piano on me. I think anypony can be excused for avoiding somepony who dropped a piano on them. That’s just classical conditioning.
Pinkie Pie never avoided Derpy. She loved talking to Derpy as much as she enjoyed talking to anypony. She was indiscriminate. And Fluttershy, of course. To somepony who spent the morning talking with rabbits and chickens, Derpy probably seemed like a stellar conversationalist.
Did that sound condescending? I guess it was.
Truth is, I always thought I was a little bit better than my friends. You can probably relate to that.
I had to do things. You invested a lot of time in me. I had to honor that. And I had to honor the gifts I was given. Ponies need somepony who can figure out how to grade a track so the train doesn’t fall off, or how filling in a bog to eliminate mosquitoes will affect the apple harvest. Or when Nightmare Moon is coming back from her thousand-year exile. I saved that town! Several times! So don’t tell me it wasn’t worth it. I had to know things. I didn’t know ahead of time what I’d need to know. So I had to know as much as I possibly could.
I couldn’t let myself be the kind of pony who could take pleasure in ... just ... being with somepony else, somepony who wasn’t helping me along that path. I didn’t have that luxury. Rarity would have understood. So would Applejack. Heck, Rainbow Dash would probably have understood.
Stop looking at me like that. I didn’t do it for me. Do you think it was fun? Toiling late into the night, every night, on things whose importance was so subtle that other ponies would have simply laughed at me even if I’d been able to explain to them what I was doing?
Maybe it was a little fun.
But I could have had lovers. I was famous, you know. I could have had foals. They’d be here with me, now. I gave that up. For you. For everypony.
I hope it was worth it.
What? You’re really going to let me off that easy?
I know you tried to warn me. Time and time again. “Twilight, make some friends. Twilight, don’t spend all day indoors.” I’m not blaming you. Okay, maybe I was blaming you.
Maybe I did do it all for myself. I thought that if I did something amazing, ponies would like me.
I never did "make" any friends. I just took the friendships that were offered me, for reasons I never understood. I was never exciting or cool. I could never make anypony feel better just by talking to them. All I had to offer was braininess, but that wasn't what they wanted.
I was Derpy all along.
I was better than them. But they were better ponies than me. Why did they give me their friendship? Did I do anything more for them than Derpy did for me? Did I do anything more for you?
I never understood friendship at all.
But I tried. I tried very hard.
Please tell me I’m not a bad pony.
> Like the time she destroyed half of town hall by accident while trying to fix it.
Oh like you've never destroyed half the town, Twilight.
502491
"According to my calculations, I've still saved it more times than I've destroyed it."
At least Derpy never destroyed the town with a mailbox before. That is something uniquely Twilight.
twilight...you're a horrible pony.
Yes, how does one go about somehow becoming one who "could take pleasure in... just... being with somepony else"?! That's what I want to know, too.
I . . . I can't let myself become that type of person, I tell myself, just as does Twilight, you know?
Of course you know; you write art with a purpose to try to advocate some morals; that's what art should do. But I (and Twilight, were she somehow shown this piece during her lifetime)'ll still walk around thinking to myself, "I can't let myself be like Pinkie; Pinkie's indiscriminate; indiscriminate's bad. I gotta be aloof, be condescending." Shit, I feel lame and weak-willed.
Oh, no, I'm a good person because I don't dislike that guy; I just happen to not like him too much. Hahaha, what a conundrum, the question of whether to feel obligated to feel regret; am I a bad person if I'd live this life the same way, given a second chance? I mean, I can't possibly be a bad person for not attempting to actively like every person in the world, so I feel better than Pinkie and think of her as silly; yet I think of Pinkie's efforts as admirable. Why in the world don't I try to emulate what I think of as admirable, one may ask—
Screw me, some dumb kid, typing out some ramblings on the Internet to strangers. I'm gonna go read that silly self-help book about "changing your attitudes" and such stuff that my sister offered to me and that I dismissed. Reading it seems like a good idea, now that Twilight's monolog to The Judge makes me think about it.
Thanks.
Thumbs up for you, Bad Horse. I'll definitely read your other works, learn some lessons. Yay, deep things.
Hey, man, you accidentally typed a second "had" in "I could have had had a family."
965589
This is my favorite comment out of all the comments I've ever received. I'm afraid you won't learn much from "Twilight Sparkle and the Quest for Anatomical Accuracy". When I write a story, I test it on ponyfictionarchive.net or fanfiction.net first, and post it here only when I've gotten it into a state where most people like it. As long as I stick to just entertaining people, they like my stories. Whenever I write about something that's important to me, they hate them, probably because I get pulled into the idea and make my characters talk and talk. None of my stories here hold much personal meaning for me, except this little short story, "No Regrets", which I snuck in here. Until your comment, I never knew if anybody got it or not.
I made a google docs page, Bad Horse's Bad Stories, with links to some of my stories that haven't posted on fimfiction. Read at your own risk.
Thanks!
Awesome Piece!! Really well written and deeper than we often care to look into others or ourselves
ouch.
hits like a freight train
This one makes me think. Good job.
If friendship is an equivalent exchange, is there anything wrong with accepting it when it's offered but not offering it to others? Is there anything wrong with declining an offer? With declining all the offers?
The complement of "indiscriminate" isn't "aloof" or "condescending". It's just "discriminate." There's nothing wrong with choosing your friends in and of itself, whether or not there are wrong ways to choose your friends.
Initiative is a funny thing. In most contexts it doesn't matter who initiates an interaction (a friendship, a discussion, a gesture, a fight), because most of the results stem from the interaction, which would have gone the same way regardless of who started it. Does it matter to the dishes whether someone's child has to be told to wash them or not? No- they're clean when he's done either way. And that's the result, right? Well, maybe not to the child's parents... It's good to be able to initiate that sort of interaction (doing something for someone else) yourself. But does that mean it's bad if you don't? Or just less good?
Thumbs for this one itself.
Well. I just came across this from the Author Note in 'Mortality Report.' These two, for lack of a better term, just suckerpunched my feels. I've read mortality report before, but that was a while ago. I just noticed the link to this chapter, and figured, why not? These two stories share a similar pretense, but where each character goes with it is different. Celestia with realizing what she has to do, and Twilight with what she hasn't done and never will get the chance to. Both drew a single tear from me, each.
Bad Horse, thank you for writing both stories. I'll post a related comment, with a copy of this in 'Mortality Report' as well.
986699
I read that your story Moving On, and I was rather enjoying it. I have no idea why it was so disliked. Possibly the extent of Twilight's vocabulary may have deterred some people, but you captured her so well.
Oh lord.....
So many things you write that I read start with me saying No, I'm not going to read this. I don't like sad or tragic stuff. It makes me cry and it hurts like hell inside. Or it's horror and I hate horror, it keeps me up and gives me nightmares so I won't read it", but after a little while I'll sit and fidget and eventually I'll start coming up with reasons, justifications to myself "Maybe I'll just read the first part, I'll read til it gets sad, or scary, or whatever it is I don't think I can handle and then I'll stop." I never do. I never manage to stop, I get completely absorbed into it and swept away no matter the length of the piece.
Long or short it all so often seems to overwhelm and carry me off. The silliest part is I won't even fight, It's like being lead off by the fairies in old fairy tales. You don't fight it. you go willingly. you smile and skip along and disappear for days or months or centuries and if you're unlucky you return home again, after everyone you knew and loved is long gone and you're simply a fairy tale yourself.
I always wondered for those people felt. Did they regret it? Did they cry and beg to be taken away again? Did they hold the experiences they had close to their chests and never forget them? did they try to suppress them?
I know how I feel. Every time I justify reading something you've written that makes me cry or terrifies me and keeps me up at night, I admit how I truly feel., That no matter how much I argue and state and try to justify. I keep reading. I keep coming back for one more dance with the fairies.
I really like the idea that Twilight studies obsessively out of a sense of responsibility and a desire to prove herself. Gives her a lot more depth than the standard ocially awkward nerd charcterisation, and explains why she freaks out so much.
2021659 Someone who can write such a beautiful comment must write a story. No more excuses, ferret! Come out from behind that mask.
Oh Twilight, let me show you how 'friendship' works in our world.
Trust me, my dear, you're never doubt yourself again.
this just made me reconsider my friendships.......
You've created a neat metaphor for status problems among nerds. Twilight is exhibiting a nerd's abhorrence of anyone nerdier than her.
Put another way: Jesus touched lepers and got his own religion for it. Anybody else who touched lepers got...leprosy.
So in high school the cool kids could put in an appearance at the Special Olympics and get their pictures in the paper. But if a nerd was seen with the Special Needs kid...we became one of them. Not just a nerd, a retard.
So we learned a lesson: to associate downward is to move downward. It wasn't true for everyone, but it was certainly true for us. We learned it at great cost, great pain, and great necessity. So we unlearn it reluctantly and late, if ever.
"In my heart, there is a sharp chain. And it will not. Come. Out." -- Equus
So deep it hurts.
Now I feel terrible for being the most like Twilight.
Stop making me think. It hurts. :(
1236667
Well, so long as we're thinking:
Is friendship an "equivalent exchange"?
If not, what is it?
This is a true sorrow
Existential angst at its best. She sure sounds like she has a great deal of regret for not having committed herself to improving or understanding the necessity of friendship.
Well, it's more like operant conditioning: approaching Derpy is getting positively punished. Although the border between them is a bit flimsy.
And useful forehead ice-cream cone!
10356159 I looked them both up again just now, to check. We would call it operant conditioning if we called "being around Derpy" the behavior, and "piano dropped on head" the punishment for that behavior. We would call it classical conditioning if we call the pain of being hit on the head by a piano the stimulus, and call seeing Derpy the neutral stimulus.
11312695
It's classical if all that stuff with schedules of when to or not to go where already was her existing response to pain (classical conditioning can't create new complex behaviors, it can extend context for already existing ones), although classical conditioning probably plays important part in making previously neutral stimuli reinforcers/punishers. But you're right about lack of hard categorical boundaries there and dependence on what classical experiment scheme one draws analogy with.