To be honest… The reason… The biggest reason why it bothered P21 so much is because he is into stallions and Blackjack… That is it… He can have sex with a mare and even love BJ but he openly likes stallions. So it is possible that he may have been treated like a rape victim but the others may not have seen it that way… In fact… Later on… They don’t see it that way

@Background Pony #E7C2  
Fine, here’s a really blunt wake up call. Whatever the might have been saying about duty or whatever, the stallions were SLAVES. From what we know of the three we get to know they were not treated well in general, with Scotch Tape’s mother being one of the rare exceptions. Most of the mares treated them as walking sex toys, while some, like the current overmare, pretty much tortured them. They lived knowing that eventually they’d be murdered, possibly by their own family, not that any of the mares actually acknowledged them as such, for the simple crime of being the oldest male with functioning balls, while in the meantime being treated mostly as living dildos, if they were lucky.
 
And this wasn’t some coldly calculated survival plan either, it was something instituted by a line of increasingly mentally unstable mares who just didn’t like men standing up for their rights to be treated as actual people. Maybe you’d have a point if this had been part of 99’s Stabletec experiment…except, as stated, 99 didn’t have one. Instead this was dreamed up by some mare who, by all indications, murdered her son rather than accept a male as her eventual successor, and then enslaved the rest when they objected to her actions. There was nothing necessary about what happened in 99.

@Spiritus Arcane
 
Yes, I’ve read that far into the fanfic. And knowing all that, I still see the only truly unmoral function of the stable is forcing stallions into recreational use. Stable 99, like most stables (At least all the stable concepts I am aware of) Is a collectivist/Marxist system, yes stable 99 is also hereditary with career paths, this philosophy places the needs of the many above the wants of the individual. So, both stallions and mares were forced into a life style they may not have wished for. With that as a fact, you can argue, both sexes were slaves to the society that birthed them, no pony (or human for that matter) decides where they are born. But desperate times calls for grimdark pragmaticism, for the survival of society and even probably life itself. So to point out a few ambiguous moral action that were pragmatic, albeit maybe wasn’t always necessary. Functions: The stable needs ponies to for fulfil certain roles for it to function, in my opinion meritocracy is a better system than inborn occupations, but the stable developed a system that worked for more than a century, hard to have them change it unless it’s a must. population control: The stable can only support so many life forms with its systems, so keeping the population under control a necessity. Stallions: like all males of any species, are innately disposable for the continuation of the species. A single stallion can impregnate thousands of mares with in his life time, while a mare can only have a few healthy foals with in hers. Stallions can be kept at a lower percentage of the population than the mares, and things will continue to function. Also, stallions, due to their much higher, testosterone and muscle mass, require more calories to remain healthy, keeping them less than the mare population is sensible, and younger stallions do produce healthier foals than older ones. Breeding: I am not a collectivist, but biological duty is a must for the continuation of the species. Breeding quotas are simply needed, no births mean no future. And to keep the ponies of stable 99 from becoming inbred, every pony needs to take part in it. Protesting/uprising: Doing an age of distress, order must be kept, even if that order is a cruel one. The removal of basic civil liberties is an abstraction that must be sacrificed for stability and order.  
And that’s just me playing devil’s advocate for stable 99.

@Background Pony #727D  
Ok this may be spoilers but…
 
Ok, the whole problem with 99 was that the males were ALL sex slaves. All of them. And they weren’t allowed to be anything else. Aside from underage colts, there were 20 virile males of each type of pony (Unicorn and Earth Pony, no pegasai in 99), and when the oldest colt hit puberty, the oldest of the twenty was killed(Thus P-21 was the next earth pony on the chopping block when the events of the story start). So yeah, NOT exactly morally ambiguous. And the worst part of it was this wasn’t part of some Stabletec experiment either. See, in 99 all the positions were apparently inherited from parent to child, and the overmare had always been a mare…and apparently always been a little man-hatey, because at some point the current overmare had a colt…which died soon after birth, the implication being that she’d killed it simply to maintain a female dynasty in the position. Well, some of the stallions saw the writing on the wall if that sort of behavior were to be allowed, and staged a protest in the utility sections…which the overmare had security put down…violently. And then just to make sure it never happened again, she instituted the whole treat the men as breeding stock thing.

@Spiritus Arcane
 
I always found that odd, granted I’m still reading the fanfic, but his idea that he was raped doing his years in the stable is perplexing because the system that raised and educated him, calls it duty. And to throw a bone to stable 99, it’s force breeding program can be regarded as a necessity in a grim dark pragmatic sense, desperate times requires both sexes to perform their biological duty for the continuation of society. However, the recreational use of stallions isn’t morally ambiguous, but amoral. Considering it wasn’t a need, but a luxury for the mares. And humorously, the stable never needed to force stallions into recreational use. Being that males have a much higher sex drive than females, some studies show 6 to 8 times higher, so the vast majority of stallions would have carnal relations with mares willing. The stable would probably only get one or two stallions, a generation, that would refuse to be used in such a way….. But, it wouldn’t be as fun a read without a little twisted dark, logic.

@Spiritus Arcane  
Where I cannot deny that… And openly support him for dealing with it as well as he had… But after a point he was using it as an excuse for everything…

@Acespade777  
Yeah, well, I think being victim of institutionalized rape for most of your life gives you a license to be a bit of an ass for awhile.

@Spiritus Arcane  
Not likely considering he was a stuborn ass right up until his daughter almost died… Heck it took her almost dying to consider trying

@Acespade777  
Decent character development?

I’d like to know how he went from my least favorite character to one of my favorite by the end of the story…

This is so adorable!

P-21 is like. The best.