Asriel

Greetings from a visitor to Equestria that isn't actually a pony. I don't identify myself as a brony or as an anti-brony to be completely honest. So, if it makes it any easier for you, think of my fictional avatar as Asriel Dreemurr from the Undertale universe (by merit of our many similarities, which I'll be getting into). By the way, I'll be using several Undertale metaphors later on, so it would help to familiarize yourself with it. Anyway, here's what is wrong with me, and why I think it runs the risk of disproving the philosophy of Equestia's citizens. I was born with Asperger's Syndrome and Attention Defect Disorder (more commonly known as ADD). My father was physically abusive to my mother, such that she divorced him after only a year. For the first 16 years of my life (out of the 20 that I have lived), I spent time with each of my parents in a cycle of visitation. One of my earliest memories is that, when I was very young (I don't remember a specific age, just that I hadn't started school yet), I told my mom that I "didn't think there was enough time for fun". I posed that point hesitantly, and believe I was simply wondering what she had to say. Due to the many ways in which her life had turned out for the worse thus far, my mother angrily began ranting about how much worse things would get. And recently I have discovered that that moment gave me atychiphobia (the phobia of failure). While I knew what I was afraid of ever since then, it took me until now to really define it. For all that time, I was just afraid of living as a self-reliant adult. As a result, I regarded the distant future with a crushing sense of dread. Put to words, these fears manifested as the despairing phrase "What am I going to do?" For a while, I managed to forget. I made it through the hardships imposed by visitation with my paternally inept father. I moved between seven different schools, five different homes (including both my biological parents), and one more divorce before I finally graduated with a 3.2 GPA. But, now that I am living as a dependent adult (I haven't moved out yet), things have been going down-hill. I have made very little progress in being my own boss. After three semesters of college, I have 5 Cs and a D to my name (the rest are Bs and a few As). I have a job at Arby's that is fairly easy and lets me work consistent hours. But that's about it. I have more or less stagnated in my life as I know it. As for why this is something wrong with me and not just "differences" and "mistakes"... well... As a child, I took an IQ test and got a perfect score (it measured up to 150). When I was relying on my mother for everything else, I excelled in school save for a single semester when I had too high of a dosage on a prescribed anti-anxiety medication (that was my first semester as a Freshman in high school). I am by all accounts an intelligent, insightful person. And yet, a dark side equatable to my father lurks in me: lazy, arrogant, dismissive, disagreeable, bogited... my dark side is the epitome of how the Biblical book of Proverbs describes a fool. And the more I have been forced to reconcile these two parts of myself, the more my situation has deteriorated. My hope is dead and buried. My ambitions are on life-support. And based on my track record thus far, things are only going to get worse from here. For anyone who would argue the equivalent of "you are who you choose to be" Oh yeah? Hope doesn't grow on trees. One does not simply defy the faults in their personality through DETERMINATION or the likes thereof. Imagine if you pulled that card on somebody contemplating suicide. Or telling that to a drug addict fighting the urge of relapse. The human psyche is not a ball of clay. There are just some things we can't change. I know it's possible for me to overcome these things, but there's nothing I can really do about it that I haven't already tried. If you think somebody chooses to let these things happen to them... you'd be right. But if you said they chose it willfully, then you'd be dead wrong. People like myself often feel they've been tricked by the future they picked. That their hopes and dreams have been betrayed. Bottom line: I can choose to be anything I want. But I've reached the point that getting there myself is a fool's errand. In dispute of the "friendship is magic" approach Bull. Freaking. Crap. Bullcrap, bull and crap. Friendship is something that can look a lot like magic when it is given to someone who doesn't have it (just like modern medicine). But I can honestly say that friendship is something that I've never been able to hold on to. With every school I've moved to, I've left behind friends. And my stunted social capacities as a result of my Asperger's have deterred me from keeping in touch (it's taken me years just to comfortably hold a phone conversation, even with my own mother). Besides, what could my friends have done about this? Bottom line: Even if I believed that mantra was true, I've gone through enough partings and loneliness to make me actively avoid forming new friendships. Amicable conversations? Sure. Online conversations like this? Absolutely. Involved friendships? Uh... come back a few years ago and maybe I'll reconsider. Overall If I came to Equestria (as Asriel/Flowey, or somebody/something similar), I would view everything I saw with discomfort and restrained resentment. My dark side (i.e. my inner Flowey) would balk at it all, and I myself (the Asriel part of me) would remain even more withdrawn than Twilight. And if Pinky Pie tried singing her "Welcome Song" to me, oh geez... I'd probably snap and come close to letting my inner Flowey kill her (after all, Pinky has never shown she is immune to stabbing). It would take a great deal of care for me to try and branch out. Worse case scenario, I would lose it, acquire the SOULs of six ponies, and slaughter everyone. (By the way, that power would turn me into this)So, if anyone wishes to argue with me on this, go nuts. Otherwise, "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."