Speaking honestly, my home has never felt so empty before. Stepping inside, it was almost hallowing. Nothing but a big space full of…
…full of loneliness.
Absolute loneliness.
“I’m sorry that things didn’t work out today, Rarity. I guess I wasn’t a good enough assistant—”
“Twilight… please don’t go blaming yourself. You didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, you were a fine assistant today. You did everything I asked you to and you did it well, darling. I couldn’t thank you enough.”
“Thank you Rarity, for giving me the opportunity to learn more about dating. Though, can I ask you about something? That outburst you made…” Oh, dear. I had been hoping she wouldn’t bring that up.
“Oh… just forget about that, Twilight. All of this frustration from not being able to find my stallion has, well— put me a little bit ‘on edge’, to be blunt. I was getting very agitated, and… I said some things that I shouldn’t have.”
“Oh, yes. I know that. It’s just…. Now I’m curious to know, is that really your opinion on ponies who love ponies of the same gender?”
I sighed. “I can’t deny that the whole notion of it truly does bother me, but…” For the first time since I stepped inside my house, I turned around to face Twilight. “I try not to seem so bigoted. I really do.”
“Oh, r-right… I—”
Then it hit me.
That’s right. Twilight was concerned about my feelings towards that subject because…
“Oh, Twilight. I would never hate you for it, or any of our friends.”
“How did you—”
“At the picnic, remember? You told us all about the filly you had a crush on when you were young, remember?”
“Oh, right.”
Without even thinking, I went over and hugged her. “You’re my friend, Twilight. You should be able to date whoever you want to date. It doesn’t matter what anypony else thinks.”
“…Thanks.”
I put down my saddlebag, still thinking about what had happened. It was all looking very bleak right now.
“Um, Twilight?”
“Yes?”
“If it’s alright with you, I think I’d like to be alone right now… to think.”
“Of course. I’ll be at home if you need anything. See you later, Rarity.”
“Bye.”
And then I was alone again.
Alone… and lonely.
For once, I’ve been completely drained of ideas. I have none. The idea of speed dating was my last resort… and even that failed.
Am I just doomed to never find my special somepony? Isn’t there anypony out there? Anypony I can love, and be loved by in eternal bliss? Anypony at all?
My eyes drifted over to the sewing machine. It sat on the table, dying to be used.
“Hmm… well, perhaps making a dress will help me feel better.”
An hour later or so, it was almost finished. It was a simple garment admittedly. Just a quick piece I was doing on a whim, with no commissioned order or any specific ideas of what to create. I made it a deep green, since that was the closest fabric available to me.
As I held it up in the air to admire it, the door opened.
“Rarity, I’m home.”
It was Sweetie Belle. And she looked a tad more despondent than she usually did coming home after a long day.
“Hello, Sweetie Belle. You were out a little later than usual. A lot of Crusading, today?”
“Well… not really. I was actually hanging out at Twilight’s house. …With Spike.”
“Ooh, really!? What were yo—” But then I stopped myself, and winced up. I’m trying to remember not to do this sort of thing. “Err, never mind. I won’t pry any further.”
She didn’t say anything after that. She just went upstairs and into her room for a little while.
As I was hanging the dress up into the closet, she came back down again. She still had that same look on her face.
“Sweetums… what’s wrong?”
“I kind of, um…” She had her head down as she talked to me. “I kind of wanted to ask you something.”
“What is it?”
“Why do you hate fillyfoolers so much?”
Suddenly, I stumbled on myself and fell into the cabinet, knocking down several garments in the process. Her sudden question… well, caught me off guard a little bit. Definitely wasn’t expecting it.
“S- Sweetie Belle! Why would you ask such a question? That is not an appropriate subject for a filly of your age to be discussing!”
“Why not?” she replied, looking at me with a confused expression. “Miss Cheerilee taught us about coltcuddlers and fillyfoolers in school, so why can’t I talk about them now?”
“Miss Cheerilee taught you about them?” I replied back in disbelief. “Well… I’m going to have to have a talk with her about finding more appropriate topics...”
“Rarity!”
I could tell then this wasn’t going to be something I could shrug off easily. For whatever reason, she was really desperate for an answer, and she wasn’t going to leave it alone unless I gave her something proper.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and turned to face her.
“First of all Sweetie Belle, don’t call them ‘fillyfoolers’ and ‘coltcuddlers’. ‘Mare-amorers’ and ‘stallion-swingers’ are the terms more generally considered appropriate.” But I wasn’t going to tell a little filly, much less my little sister, why ‘fillyfooler’ and ‘coltcuddler’ are inappropriate terms.
“And secondly, I don’t hate them. My feelings towards them aren’t that strong. However, I do find it hard to accept them.”
“Why?”
“Can we not talk about this any further, Sweetie Belle? You wouldn’t really understand.”
“Huh? Why not?”
“You just— wouldn’t! Okay? Now please, just forget about it.”
I thought she was finally going to drop the whole subject, until… she pulled the card.
“You know sis, you told me a while ago that I wasn’t going to understand what it means to love somepony until I was older.”
…Shoot!
She called my bluff. That truly was something I had told her before. And just a week ago… she had proven me wrong about that.
Damn, that filly is too clever.
“Okay, Sweetie Belle. Here’s the gist of it. You see, things are different for you now. But when I was your age, it was much simpler. Mares loved stallions, and stallions loved mares, and that was all there was to it. Then suddenly, this whole idea comes out that… ‘Oh, guess what! Some mares actually love other mares, and stallions can love other stallions too!”
I took a second to breathe. I could feel my voice getting louder, and didn’t want to make another outburst.
“And between the rumors that Princess Celestia herself is a fillyfoo— I mean, mare-amorer, and Ponyville becoming the first town in Equestria to legalize same-gender unions… Evidently, some ponies are accepting it better than others. And… I’m trying to accept it too.
But it’s hard to let go of everything you thought you knew as a foal. Especially after all the stories Mother read to me about the lovely princess finding her prince. …There were never any stories about the prince going to save another prince, or the fair maiden, finding her happily ever after with another fair maiden.”
I stopped for a second to look at Sweetie Belle again. She didn’t say anything. She must’ve been trying to take this all in.
“It also doesn’t help when a mare asks you out on a date, before even asking you what your preference is. You think just because I don’t have very good luck with stallions, and love to wear makeup and do other girly things all the time, that I’d be much happier with a mare? What an insult! That doesn’t mean I’m a mare-amorer like you, it’s just WHO I AM! I… I…”
Deep breaths, Rarity. Deep breaths. Look how much you’re scaring poor Sweetie Belle.
I cleared my throat. “Anyway… so, yes. Relatively speaking so, I try to remain tolerant towards them, especially since some of my friends believe they have those sorts of feelings too.”
But just then, something occurred to me.
“Sweetie Belle… exactly why are you so curious to know how I feel about mare-amorers and stallion-swingers?”
Puzzlingly, she started to show clear signs of nervousness when I popped that inquiry, and started scratching the back of her head.
“OH! Um… well, I— uhh, no reason! No reason, really! But uh, there is something else I was going to ask you. So, hippo-thitically speaki—”
“You mean ‘hypothetically’, Sweetums.”
“Right. Hypo— Hippothe— Hyp— Okay! What would you do if, say… one of your closest friends in all of Equestria, were to, just as an example, tell you that they liked mares, and then asked you out on a date?”
“Well, I— wait, what?”
That was a rather, bizarre question. And it was a weird one to think about. I should’ve asked her back why she was wondering this of all things.
“What would you do if one of your closest friends asked you out on a date?” she repeated.
“Well… I don’t, I’m not sure. I don’t think of my ‘closest friends’ would just reveal their sexuality to me and then just ask me out just out of the blue like that…”
“Yeah, but if they did, then what would you do?”
“Well, I— I guess I would take them up on the offer and go on that date.” I wasn’t sure what other sort of answer to give, for such a strange question. “Though, it wouldn’t be a romantic thing. I would do it simply to humor them, and find a way to let them down gent—”
But when I turned around again, she was gone.
“Hello? Sweetie Belle? Where did you go?”
I.. still don’t know what that whole thing was even about.
Commence...
The new terminology feels a bit more appropriate.
Glad to see somepony else opposed to the use of "filly-fooler." I've always seen it as the ponified version of faggot. Kind of hateful to use casually in my opinion, anyway.
I like that line of reasoning for the terms. new head-cannon approved, mare-amorer and colt-adorer are my new official terms.
I know what it's from. It's from your mom last night. BOOOOM!!!!
As the 'Official' terms, I always read them as being slurs.
mares
Yea, I use Missy mare and silly stallion. I don't like the second one but I really have a problem with using filly and colt in sexual terms. Sure using girls or boys in general is innocent enough, but, to use one horrible example, girl groper is all kinds of wrong. Using colt and filly just implies all the wrong things.
Aww, I like the term "fillyfooler." I sometimes find myself almost using that term instead of "lesbian" in conversation, but usually catch myself. Usually. *makes note: people are not ponies.
Well Rarity now's your chance to finally work out your feelings for Fluttershy, I just hope you can patch up your friendship or else well let's just say I have friends in high places and they've had a lot of hits.
So Flutters has hope
I never understood where those terms came from. Plus, filly is a young, female horse, so to me, its like playing a prank on a young, female horse. Or, to put it in sexual terms, a pedophile.
B......but I can't spell that And huh......poor Twi, Rarity as usual is starting to piss me off but I'm glad she at least gave Flutter's a small chance.....hopefully Sweetie can get there before Flutter's kills herself
I am unlikely to ever stop finding fillyfooler and coltcuddler hilarious. Your complaints about them are reasonable enough, but replacing them with one still containing "colt" solves nothing.
Again I am a bit angry' but MUCH less than last chapter. NO FOR NEXT CHAPTER! BYE!
1871961
I think the term 'filly fooler' is appropiate, because they are two mares and for this fact are not able to reproduce. So the two fillies that had been born if they were straight have never been born. That is why they are called filly foolers, at least in my opinion.
For the term colt cuddlers I can just think of grown stallions showing off their swing to everypony and for this they influence little colts to love the same gender, not even starting to look after mares. I know this one is crappy, but I haven't got a better explanation. Don't really understand it myself. Just want to make it clearer somehow.
I think the terms mare-amorers and stallion-swingers are better to use, because they show off the subject better and aren't likely to be misinterpreted as the other ones.
Dragon
You were close to being a red stain on the ceiling Rarity. Very close.
Twilight and Rarity are the only ones with a confirmed sexuality so far. Rarity liked Blueblood, until she actually met him, and Twilight likes Flash Sentry.
2805073 may i remind you that eqg is not canon
This is my second time reading this fic, and I'm finding little details that I either missed the first time around, or haven't remembered.
I still think the way Rarity's outburst was presented is too unbeleivable, but her regret and explanation to Twilight in this chapter does a lot to ease the jarring impact of that back, and bring her back to the recognizable Rarity we know and love.
I made an embarrassing mistake in my last comment, by the way. My memory of the story got all jumbled, and I thought that something that happens much later, happened right after the thing with Apricot. *Doh!*
Rarity's reaction to Fluttershywas something that stuck out at me the first time I read it, and I thought It would be appropriate to talk about it in regards to the previous chapter . . . not even close, what I said about that wasn't even remotely accurate, and I apologize.In any case, I like your use of alternate terminology here. What would you think of that becoming a fanon trend?
My thoughts at the end of this chapter: Oh no... oh no oh no oh no oh no! DONT DO THIS TO ME YOU EMOTIONAL SADIST! DONT MAKE HER TURN DOWN FLUTTERSHY! I don't think my feels can handle that..... T_T but on another note I love this series you're doing an utmost glorious job as a writer. Brohoof /) onto the next chapter!
Personally I dislike them because colt and filly are generally applied to young horses. Stallion and Mare are generally applied to adults. And there have been many times in real life that being gay was conflated with pedophilia in small minds.
Believe!!! How dare you assume that their feelings aren't real.