Twins the Serendipitous Serval

I completely understand some people’s problems with the ending since I kicked around most of the flaws in my own head while writing it.
As I said before, my decision was more based on the ‘problems’ I saw with the Wonderbolts’ positions in society.
While they do seem to have other duties (fighting big Spike), they are primarily entertainers so being exclusive to pegasi didn’t seem precisely necessary.
I did try to make it clear that Scootaloo, while the first recruit, was not going to be some special, ‘fairy-tale’ type of exception and would just be the beginning of a new trend.
It’s certainly arguable how well I mitigated that feeling.

And, yes, I do like FlutterScoots, too, and I absolutely hope she’s involved in Scoots’ episode.
Fluttershy and RD are basically polar opposites so it would be very interesting to watch them play off of each other in a mentor situation like that.

@Colors:
Well, I wouldn’t really say that I see everything in shades of yellow, brown, and blue and it certainly isn’t depressing simply because I’ve never known anything else.
It’s a little like wondering if cats are sad that they can’t see color like humans.
I’ve never known it, I function just fine without it, and for most intents and purposes, there is no difference to my daily experience.
Hell I didn’t even know I was color-blind until I got my glasses at the start of high school.
It’s fun to talk about, though.

(And, no, no one else has ever pointed out my mistake in Spitfire’s coloring. I don’t know what that implies, but, yeah…)

Which one you big silly?

Thank you. Rarijack is quite an adorable couple.

Wall Rape? Don’t do it! I’m replying to Twins!

Okay, I must say that I do exactly the same, kind of, so I can’t chat (as the people around me say).

Nice wall you’ve got here.
I’d be a shame if something were to… happen to it…

(Wall rape time! You asked for it!)

Yep, just a hair over 75 pages.
Check the GoogleDoc version for yourself.
When I started, I thought I would get to 20, maybe 30 pages, but that estimate was clearly off by quite a lot.

Yes, Baby Cakes bugged me.
I almost quit after that episode (and I did stop for at least a week) but I was already up to Sweetie Belle talking to Rainbow Dash in the schoolyard, so I figured I would just finish it anyway.
I still took my time (i.e. procrastinated) enough that Hurricane Fluttershy came along with that ‘YEAH!’ pony to screw with me again.
Stupid canon…
As for your story idea:

I went back and forth on the ending so many times that I completely lost count.
It was always going to be happy, but the whole Wonderbolts thing actually had more to do with my thoughts on the team itself than Scootaloo’s well-being, despite Fifth’s insistence to the contrary.
The Wonderbolts are an odd institution in pony society because they clearly have a lot of fame and prestige yet their membership is defined entirely by race.
Non-pegasi have literally no chance of joining and there is no real evidence of any kind of equivalent stations for unicorns and earth ponies.
That’s the real reason I wanted to include Scootaloo and imply that further recruits would follow.

[Bittersweet] was the best I could come up with.
Yes, its ending is definitely very happy, but I didn’t want people to be put off by the sadder middle so I had to hint at it in some way.

I also hope that Fluttershy is involved in Scootaloo’s episode if it turns out that she’s unable to fly.
She could certainly be very helpful in showing her that flying isn’t everything and that one can be very happy and successful without it.
At the same time, considering Scoot’s idolization of her, I always feel that it would be a lesson better taught by Rainbow Dash herself.
It serves the dual role of helping Scoots while simultaneously forcing a bit of much needed maturity on RD.
Dash would be learning right along with the kid, whereas Fluttershy kind of already knows that lesson.
She would be a great supporting character, but the dynamic between hero and fan is too strong to pass up.

As for the specifics of her malady, I do somewhat agree with you.
I’ve admitted before that the physics are fudged a bit, but not so much that they’re ridiculous I think.
Any deformity as you described would have the same problem anyway.
A wing that can’t catch air for whatever reason would also be unable to create the force needed for scootering, too.
As I said above, the whole story was planed out and largely written early on in season two.
Up to that point, young pegasi were actually extremely rare sights.
There was Scootaloo, the ponies in RD and Fluttershy’s flash back, and that was pretty much it.
That wasn’t a lot to go off of.
Were I writing it now, the ailment would probably change a bit to accommodate Pound Cake, Rumble, Featherweight, and that ‘YEAH!’ guy.
At the same time, I do still like the dwarfism angle because of its simplicity.
some other disease would probably take much longer to explain and would end up much less clear when the end result would have been pretty much the same.
Plus, I just like the visual idea of a grown mare with filly-sized wings and how that would give Scoots a very unique look.

On to color-blindness.
Yes, it does come up every once in a while and yes, I do get slightly tired of answering the same questions all the time (no offense to you. There’s no way you could know.)
At the same time, it is kind of fun to see what other people think about color-blindness.
I am red-green color-blind, which is the most common variety, I think.
Here’s an example for you:

Now, obviously, I have no idea how accurate that is since it’s all going through my eyes anyway (making the right side ‘double color deficient’ I guess) but maybe that will help.
Honestly, it’s not really much of a hindrance in day-to-day life and only comes into play when I’m asked to name specific colors.
You learn to avoid using color as a primary descriptor, but otherwise, most people would probably never know.
It mostly effects the ability to distinguish subtle gradient changes and things like that.
And, no, stoplights are fine.
The colors on them are designed to be very distinct and even fully color-blind people (greyscale vision) could use the position of the lights to drive without a problem.

Canada huh? The one place that gets winters even worse than this dump. All the feels Twins.

Did you even the English language you silly?

Eh, I was joking anyways.

But yeah. Besides that I only really use it for being sarcastic and it’s still relatively light. Just give me a few more years of cultural immersion.

Not really, I blame the whole “grew up in Ontario” thing. I use it whenever I go into sarcasm mode sometimes, though, because it’s just not poking holes through things if you aren’t doing it Newfoundlander-style…

…wait a minute…

…Twins are you coming onto me?

Wait, what? Gay all what time? Did I miss a meeting? (If this is about me and Forest, he told me that was on the down low, I swear…)

Seriously, I’m more than a bit confused here.

(Spilt into two parts because I wrote too much. Here’s part 1)
Yeah, I never really intended it to be a ‘sadfic’ per se, because it was never going to have a sad ending.
(That’s why its EQD post has the [Bittersweet] tag. FiMFiction doesn’t have the potion for something more accurate.)
The whole thing came out of my realization that a flying Scootaloo could potentially cause a lot of weird little ‘problems’ in terms of her character.
Clearly, her talent is in scootering and her cutie mark is practically guaranteed to relate to it, but flight would pretty much make that ability obsolete.
Flying would be faster, easier, and all-around more versatile than a wheeled vehicle could ever be and so the dilemma is born.
Keeping her at least partially grounded was the only way I could see her talent remaining relevant, but this would obviously have some pretty serious effects on her idolization of Rainbow Dash and so that’s the basic genesis of the concept of Tiny Wings.
As that ‘interview’ with Lauren Faust said a couple weeks ago, it seems like these issues were actually intentional so I don’t really feel that I ‘came up with’ the idea so much as I tapped into the thought process of Scootaloo’s creator and saw a potential character arc that just so happened to be similar.
That revelation has made me all the more excited for the Scootaloo episode that must be coming in season three.

(Splitting into two posts because I wrote too much! Hehehe… This is part 2.)
As for your comments on Chapter Three’s length, I completely understand.
This story was begun really on a whim and so I had never put any planning into ‘chapters.’
I just wrote what I wanted to, as wordy or as concise as felt appropriate.
My original draft was all on one giant, 75-page GoogleDoc and I only split it up on FiMFiction to avoid scaring people away with a single 36,000-word ‘Chapter 1.’

(Is Spitfire yellow? I’m actually partially color-blind so I typically avoid describing things by color as it almost always leads to confusion like this with ‘normal-sighted’ folks. Orange seemed safe enough considering her relation to fire, but it would be far from the first time I’ve been wrong in that area.)

I don’t know if I should be more angry that I was gayshipped or that I was gayshipped as the passive member.

In any case.

I will have my vengeance Twins. Might not be soon, might not be for a long time, but I’m watching and I’m waiting, and I’ve learned to be patient.

I’m… not sure what to say about that video you linked to…
That was just hilariously disturbing…

Anyway, glad to be back and don’t worry too much about the story.
I know it takes some people a little bit longer than others to learn how to read so please take your time.
You’ll figure it out soon enough!

I just realized I never got back to you for that nice tl;dr you left on my wall. My God, aren’t I a dick.

I read your post and you answered all my questions, so the only reason I had to get back to you was to express my gratitude, which is always the lowest priority possible for me, so I guess I forgot about it. Sorry!

I only remember this now because I remember running into some female bronies (I hate the name pegasister as well.) at the opera I went to and it reminded me of that question. They were just like the male bronies there except that you could have sex with them. Hmm, the story goes that there were hundreds of conceptions at Woodstock. I wonder if there ever has been or will be any conceptions at bronycon. I wonder if we’ll ever see a “Pony child” growing up.

Anyway, I’m rambling. Thanks for the response!

I hear talk of masturbation…

I’ll be watching….

I’ll be waiting.

You honestly think that?

Well… I did get engaged in a drunken tangent. But betrothed tang is tang nonetheless. Turns out that if I the moon is right and I have drunk enough Coronas, I will propose to random people. Desperate? Yes. Stupid? Yes. Did it work?… Kinda. Though it has only been a week… I think I can call it off…
Anyway, don’t you dare tell me how to satisfy my carnal urges! I’m a very manwhorish man!
Besides, what do you mean ‘besides me’? It’s 2012. Clopping is the new white, which is the new black.

Wow, I like this wall. Followed!