Show & Tell


                                            "So the thread turns me into a pony?"

                                            "What? No! It's just people talking about how they'd LIKE to be a pony, writing stories about it and shitting on each other on Discord."

                                            "So the thread just turns me into a tranny."

                                            "I guess it might. I imagine some kind of latent dysphoria could be one of the reasons you search out stuff like that-"

                                            "So what you're saying is, you are a tranny, and this is your way of coming out to me."

                                            "What the fuck, Sven? That's not at all what I am saying."

                                            "Sure, sure." My roommate leans back on his beanbag chair, arms folded behind his head and a winning grin on his face.

                                            "All I am saying is, you might want to pick another general. I don't want to give away too much, but mine blows yours out of the water. I mean, from everything you've just told me, it seems like your thread has never done anything noteworthy. Mine has killed ISIS members."

                                            I roll my eyes at him. "/Syria general/? Really? If I'd known that, I could have picked any of these crazy /pol/ generals. I hear /cvg/ is preparing for biological warfare."

                                            "So why didn't you?"

                                            "I don't go on /pol/ that often anymore," I tell him. "I still haven't forgiven them for voting Gornald Brlumpf into office."

                                            "So you're coming down with Trump derangement syndrome?" He savors the pause after his question. "Sad!"

                                            "Oh fuck off, you know just as much as I do that Zion Don has done everything in his power to avoid actually doing anything related to his campaign promises, except some half-hearted economoic shit. All he does is simp for Israel."

                                            "So? /pol/ hates Trump now. If you know about /cvg/, you should know that as well."

                                            "As long as there's a fucking /president Trump general/ on that board, you can count me out," I proudly proclaim.

                                            Now it's Sven's turn to roll his eyes. "Whatever, man. All I am saying is, you might want to pick a more interesting general, you know, one that has actually done something of note."


                                            Later that evening I sit in my room and stare at my laptop. Sven was right, I have to admit. What chance does a niche thread such as this stand against some of the others on this site? What madness had possessed me to pick this general out of all the dozens of them when we decided in a fit of boredom to hold a presentation on a general each to one another?

                                            I am well and truly fucked. We had decided that the one with the less interesting subject matter would pay for groceries for the next two weeks, and I am almost broke already. And with the deadline being tomorrow afternoon, it's far too late to pick another thread.

                                            With a groan, I pull up /ptfg/. Perhaps someone has finally done something that might at the very least impress Sven enough to reduce my loser's sentence to one week of spending the last of my money instead of two.

                                            To my disappointment, but not my surprise, the thread is just the same as usual.

                                            "Would you be able to play an instrument with hooves?"

                                            "I want to be Sweetie Belle and none of you are going to stop me!"

                                            "Green when?"

                                            "Lemme teach y'all about the finer points of horse anus-"

                                            "So I've had this dream about Luna-"

                                            As the posts get more and more abhorrent, I stop making even the token effort of reading them all the way through. Why couldn't I have picked something from /k/ instead? The coom brownies alone would have made for a good story.

                                            Time for desperate measures.

                                            With tired fingers I type out my plea to tell me about something, anything of note the thread has done. If I roll up in the living room tomorrow and all I can hit Sven with are the people who got so brainwashed by Zephyr that they started selling themselves into sexual slavery-

                                            Wait a second.

                                            That's a good one.

                                            Perhaps there is some hope for my presentation after all.

                                            Who am I kidding? This is my only major point. I'll lose if there is no miracle in the very near future. Perhaps the replies to my post contain something spectacular I am currently unaware now?

                                            >ptfg

                                            >doing anything of note

                                            "Lurm koar"

                                            "Well, it kind of intensified my dreams about Luna-"

                                            Fuck.

                                            Should have known this was a hopeless endeavour.

                                            I decide to hit the hay. It'll be a long day of begging Sven for financial mercy tomorrow.


                                            My body feels all wrong. That's the first thing I notice when I wake up the next morning. It feels as if my proportions were all wrong, with joints in wrong places, and as I try to struggle free of my blanket I quickly notice that my limbs aren't moving like they used to.

                                            Did I have a stroke last night? Everything feels so big, and with the way I need to wiggle to free myself from the embrace of my blanket I fear the worst. It takes a lot of effort to finally pull an arm out of the bundle that covers my body.

                                            "What the hell?"

                                            That's not what an arm should look like. It's covered in mint-green fur and the proportions are all off. Not to mention the hoof at its end.

                                            "Is that what I think it is?"

                                            I renew my efforts to get out of bed. Every new inch of my body I pull free confirms my suspicions: It seems like I've turned into a pony literally over night.

                                            "Suck my dick, Sven," I mutter. There's probably that stupid grin on my face that always appears when I manage to get one over on him. Looks like my wallet is safe, at least for the time being.

                                            "Sveeeen!" I shout. "Get in here. The thread has finally done something of note!"

                                            My door opens and a still sleepy looking Sven stares down at me.

                                            "So? What do you say?"

                                            "You...turned yourself into a pony? I knew I was onto something yesterday."

                                            "What? No! How would I even do that? It was the thread. The thread did it."

                                            "The thread did it?"

                                            "The thread did it."

                                            "Do you have anything do back that claim up?"

                                            I am dumbfounded. My speech devolves into rapid stammering as I am confronted with my roommate's boneheadedness.

                                            "Do I have- What do you even- I mean, it must be, right? I was on there last night, asked them for something interesting, and now I am a pony. What more do you want?"

                                            "Correlation," says Sven and raises his finger like an arrogant professor speaking to a very dumb class might, "does not equal relation."

                                            "Are you fucking with me right now? You've got to be fucking with me. LOOK. AT. ME! What more do you want?"

                                            He shrugs. "Not much. Just proof that your horsefucker friends are responsible for this and it is not some kind of zany scheme to safe your money."

                                            "Puling some kind of zany scheme..." I can't believe him. Of course I knew that Sven could be stubborn and willfully ignorant, but this was a new low.

                                            "Shiiit," I groan. "Alright. But you've got to help me. There's no way I can do that with these things." I wave my front hooves at him.

                                            "Sure, I can do that. That's what friends are for, right?"

                                            Yeah, great fucking friend.


                                            At least my "friend" is true to his word. Under my direction, he takes a picture of me and posts it in the thread. I struggle for almost half an hour to come up with a text to go along with it, but find myself coming up with nothing. In the end we settle for the classic "Alright, which one of you did this?"

                                            The culprit will know exactly what I mean.

                                            "And now we wait," I mutter to myself as I watch the post completed screen return to the thread.

                                            Sven goes back to whatever he was doing when I called him. "Don't get too comfortable," I tell him, "I want you back here as soon as someone claims responsibility."

                                            "That someone better have proof." With that he's back in the living room, leaving me to watch the responses trickle in.

                                            "Nice shoop."

                                            "Photomorphfags get out!"

                                            "Take that shit to /trash/."

                                            >rape

                                            Even the ones that don't tell me to get lost don't seem to know what I am referring to.

                                            "Nice plush anon, absolutely lifelike. Great work, but personally I'd prefer more cartoonish proportions in line with the show."

                                            "Congrats on achieving the dream, anon :)"

                                            And that's it. Six meagre replies, and not one of them of any worth to me. With the tips of my hooves I try to type out another post, letter by letter, to clarify my situation, but when I finally hit the post button, I am faced with a red message.

                                            Banned.

                                            Banned for what?

                                            You can't be any more on topic than I, yet someone saw it fit to declare my post "garbage outside of /b/". Yeah, right. If we go by that, you could close down at least half of any given boards.

                                            "Fuck!"

                                            Ah, what use is screaming? Guess I'll have to go to the grocery store tomorrow and start buying-

                                            Wait a second.

                                            I can't go to the grocery store like this. I am even relatively certain that I wouldn't be allowed inside.

                                            My mood instantly grows better. Why didn't I think of this earlier? Get fucked, Sven. Guess our little contest just turned irrelevant.

                                            "You seem awfully happy," Sven observes as I (very carefully on my new legs) trot into the living room.

                                            "Of course I am. I just realized that my savings are safe."

                                            He raises an eyebrow at that. "Oh? Got proof? Because it didn't sound like that about a minute ago."

                                            "Nope," I reply, grinning widely, "No proofs. But an epiphany. You see, we said that the loser had to buy the groceries, right? Well, look at me. There's no way someone would sell anything to me. I am pretty sure that it's illegal, even. I mean, have you ever heard of someone selling to a horse?"

                                            I don't like the way Sven looks at me as he thinks about what I'd said.

                                            "Nnnooo, I guess not," he finally admits.

                                            "Well, I am glad we could get that little dilemma out of the way. If you- Hey, were are you going?"

                                            While I was still talking Sven had stood up and started on his way over to the hallway.

                                            "To the store. Now that you aren't going anymore, I guess I'll have to get my stuff, and I better hit the aisles as early as possible if I still want to get any toilet paper."

                                            "What do you mean, *your* stuff?"

                                            He facepalms theatrically. "Oh, of course. How could I forget? You can't go anymore, right? No problem, just tell me where your wallet is and I'll gladly get you whatever you want. With your money, of course."

                                            "I am not telling you where my wallet is, dude."

                                            "Well, that's a shame. For you. See you in fifteen." He slips into his jacket and makes for the door.

                                            "Sven, wait!"

                                            He turns around and gives me an expectant look, but his hand still clutches the door handle.

                                            "It's on my desk, next to the lamp."

                                            "What is there?"

                                            "My wallet, alright? Geez, could you be any more of an asshole about this? Just get me some, I don't know, some salad I guess, and whatever else you think I might need, okay?"

                                            "Of course, dearest of my friends." He quickly ducks into my room and returns waving my wallet.

                                            "See you later, buddy. Hey, no need for the long face. You still have a great presentation on the recent geopolitical developments in the Levant through the eyes of internet autismos to look forward to. We'll have a great time, you'll see."

                                            The door closes behind him and I hear him whistling salil sawarim as he descends the stairs.

                                            Fucking Sven always wins.