Dear diary,

                    The page began, a giant line stricken through the lonely sentence at the top of the paper. A second one followed.

                    Dear journal,

                    And another line.

                    Dear log,

                    Crossed through, before finally

                    June 23rd,

                    I, Twilight Sparkle, have decided to undertake the process of recording my thoughts within this journal.

                    That seemed much better. Twilight smiled to herself, levitating her pen to the vial of ink on her desk before placing it back onto the page.

                    I hope that in the coming months a catalogue of my daily introspections and the events in my life will help provide me with an easily digestible reference material to analyze my own existence. While I often spend time thinking about a large number of things, ranging from the mysteries of the universe to the mechanics of a particularly interesting branch of science, the one subject that I have neglected to study is myself. While informal, it is my belief that a continuous log of my thoughts and musings on life will help provided further understanding of life itself, as well as serving as a useful tool for me to ruminate on theories, postulations, or simply to get my thoughts out of my head and onto paper.

                    That was a promising opening. Twilight paused for a moment, analyzing her handiwork and double checking for spelling errors before signing the bottom of the page with a flourish.

                    “There,” she said to herself, closing the book with a snap. The feeling of accomplishing a goal was always one that made her glow inside, and another item to check on her list of to-dos was a perfect way to end the day. Though, it did leave her with the rest of the evening.

                    I suppose I left myself a little too long to work on my journal… maybe I should have made the first entry a bit longer?

                    Twilight bit her lip in ponderance, but ultimately decided against revisiting her log. One short entry to begin was more than enough – better that than starting out too ambitious and dooming the whole project to failure. As formal as her first day’s writing had been, Twilight was mostly just grateful for finally taking the initiative to begin something that would help her clear her thoughts at the end of the day. It felt sometimes like there were too many ideas jumping around in her head, muddling up her entire thought process. The hope was that making some of those ideas material through the process of writing them down might help clear things up, and let her sleep easy at night instead of tossing and turning with no proper reason for doing so.

                    With a glow of her horn, Twilight lowered a likely looking volume from her nearby book-case. There was never a bad time for a good read, and she decided that the rest of the night spent curled up in bed with a good book was a more than productive way to spend the last few hours of daylight before going to sleep. Of course, she did have a habit of getting far too in to whatever she was reading and forgoing sleep in favour of finishing a story – luckily, she was also a lightning fast reader, so that wasn’t often a problem.

                    The title she picked without particular attention jarred any thought of undue immersion just from a simple glance at the title. “Windswept Stallions,” she read, her face curling into disgust. How had a terrible romance novel even made its way on to her bedroom book shelf? The cover of the book was a typically vapid picture for the genre, a white coated male pony standing with his mane waving in the wind. A mare was draped over his shoulder, looking longingly into his face, while he did his best to ignore her and stare stalwartly off into the distance. Twilight wrinkled her nose, and prepared to toss the book over her shoulder – reverence towards books came only when the books in question deserved respect. At the last second, however, she paused, and floated the book back down, looking over the cover art again.

                    I don’t know what it is about mares and their fascination with the opposite sex. Regardless of the inherent physical attraction, I don’t see anything remotely appealing about fawning over some silly stallion, no matter how toned or well-groomed he might be-

                    Twilight was jolted out of her introspection by a noise from outside her window, a high pitched giggle evidently not far from her bedroom. Rolling her eyes, she lowered the romance novel onto her desk and made her way to the window. Finding another, more enjoyable book and spending a few hours wrapped in a well-told story was the plan, and she didn’t want to have her thoughts interrupted by any amount of outside noise.

                    She looked out the window, scanning left and right to try and place the source of the laugh. Without much effort, she found the culprit, a yellow coated pegasus filly still giggling and running excitedly down the nearby street. A blue colt was nearby, dashing to catch up to her.

                    “Showers, wait up!” he yelled, panting. The pegasus, apparently named showers simply laughed again, but did finally stop and wait for her suitor to catch up. She was still laughing when he stopped in front of her, giving her a playful nudge in the side with his head.

                    “You should know I’d never be caught dead dating a slowpoke, Blues,” she said, her voice twinkling with the remnants of her laughter. The colt, Blues, rolled his eyes before sidling up to her and giving her another shove with his whole body. She laughed again as she stumbled before falling into the grass, where Blues followed her. The two bodies became tangled as the pair rolled about in the greenery, the both of them laughing uproariously as their tumble died down. Gradually, the laughter gave way, and Twilight’s eyes widened as the pair replaced the sounds of their mirth with a much quieter form of enjoyment. She watched them kiss for a moment, hungrily pressing their mouths together, before she shook her head and slammed the window shut.

                    “Ugh." Now she didn’t feel like reading at all.

                    “No matter how hard I try, I don’t think I’ll ever understand this asinine fascination with ‘romance’,” she declared to no one in particular before falling forward into her bed. Her quilt bounced up with the force of her landing, as well as several pillows, and she wrestled with the blanket for a moment before wrapping herself in it properly. Her mood of accomplishment now shot for reasons beyond her control, Twilight buried her face in her pillows and shut her eyes, drifting to sleep in agitation and frustration.

                    Twilight’s bad mood carried into the next morning, where Spike found her at the breakfast table with a bowl of cereal and a grumpy look on her face.

                    “Morning Twilight,” he said, making his way down the stairs. “You look rough. Did you sleep okay?”

                    Twilight glared at him overtop the bowl, and Spike busied himself in preparing his own breakfast, not waiting for an answer. After making a safe distance from the table, he continued his questioning yelling overtop a cupboard door twice his size.

                    “I’m just asking because I thought you went to bed real early yesterday. Is there something on your mind?” Spike asked as he made his way to a chair with his own bowl of cereal in hand, as well as a glass of orange juice. He looked up at Twilight as he took the first bite of his cereal.

                    Twilight sighed, and shifted her eyes away from the table.

                    “I slept fine… sort of. I just got caught up in some thinking before I went to bed.”

                    “Isn’t that why you started that journal thing?” asked Spike, his mouth full of cereal.

                    “Yes, that’s exactly why I started my journal, but it’s for recording important thoughts. Things of interest, not like… ugh! Nevermind.”

                    Spike chewed a mouthful of breakfast pensively for a moment. After swallowing, he took a swig of orange juice, finishing the glass with a pleased sounding ‘ah’.

                    “Well, what is it you were thinking about that’s got you in such a bad mood?”

                    Twilight glared daggers at him, but turned down her stare as soon as her thoughts formed properly. She didn’t want to be mad at Spike – it wasn’t his fault she’d fallen asleep frustrated over her complete lack of understanding on a subject that shouldn’t require the least bit of contemplation.

                    “I just…” she paused, staring off into the distance as she attempted to form her sentence. A minute or so of silence passed, giving Spike time to gather his dishes, as well as Twilight’s.

                    “Spike,” she started suddenly as the dragon busied himself at the kitchen sink. “do you know anything about… romance?”

                    Spike did a double take in Twilight’s direction, an action which almost resulted in him dropping the bowl he was washing. He managed to collect himself, and lowered the dish into the sink of rinsing water before turning around properly, scratching the back of his head with one soapy claw.

                    “Uh… not really. I mean, I dunno why you’d ask. I’m still kind of a spring chicken… or spring dragon, if you’ll pardon the expression. But… I get the basics of it, yeah. Ponies like each other, they fall in love, they get married, have kids… sometimes they buy each other flowers or chocolates, and go on dates. Stuff like that. Doesn’t seem too complicated. Why do you ask?”

                    Twilight blushed slightly, and then sighed.

                    “Because I don’t get it. At all! I don’t understand why somepony would want to spend so much of their time with someone, doting on them and obsessing on them and ignoring every other aspect of my life just because it’s supposed to be ‘romantic’. I mean, I love spending time with my friends, but I don’t like any of them enough to spend even more than a day with them at a time – I need time to myself! Time to think.”

                    Spike shrugged, turning off the tap and emptying the dishwater from the sick with a pop of the plug. “Then maybe it’s not for you, Twilight. I don’t know if it’s something that can be explained. I think the idea is, that  if you meet someone you like so much, you just feel happy whenever they’re around. Somepony who makes your heart skip a beat just from seeing them…” Spike’s sentence trailed off, and Twilight swore she could practically see hearts floating in his eyes.

                    “You mean like Rarity?” she jibed, smirking.

                    “What? No! I mean… maybe. Yes. Maybe,” Spike coughed, shifting his eyes from side to side. “I mean, I like Rarity a lot… I can certainly understand wanting to spend a lot of time with her. Or buying her flowers.”

                    Twilight restrained herself from reminding Spike that in addition to Rarity being several years his senior, she was also of a completely different species. She’d seen stranger things happen before, and there was no reason to rain on the little dragon’s parade, even if it was what essentially amounted to a school-boy crush. That said, it did mean that even Spike understood the concept of romance and attraction better than she did. And she understood practically everything better than everypony.

                    “Ugh! I just don’t get it!” Twilight slammed one of her hooves down on the table, sending the vase in the center jumping up before returning to an uneasy landing several inches to the left of its original location. Spike’s eyes widened in concern as he walked towards Twilight’s chair.

                    “Hey, come on Twi, it’s not that a big deal. Not everypony is romantic… maybe you just need to find that special someone and it’ll all make sense. Or maybe it doesn’t need to make sense at all! There are plenty of ponies who live their whole lives without getting married, or having kids-“

                    Spike’s sentence was cut off as Twilight shoved him back from the table, running upstairs to her room and leaving the confused and upset dragon left to watch her disappear from the kitchen. He stretched an arm out as an afterthought, as though pondering going after her, but ultimately seemed to decide that maybe the studious unicorn simply needed time to think. With a sigh, he tidied up the spilled vase water with a swipe of his paw before making his way to the living room to find something to do.

                    I’m not going to let this stump me, thought Twilight, closing the door to her study perhaps louder than was necessary. I’m going to figure out this romance thing, and I’m going to make myself understand it no matter what.

                    The sun rose the next morning to find Twilight in practically the same spot she had been as it had left the sky, huddled in her desk chair surrounded by towers of books and charts. Her hair was frazzled and unwashed, and the bags under her eyes gave a clear indication she hadn’t slept at all.

                    But, she was smiling.

                    An entire night of study and research had not yielded very promising results. She had found volumes on the history of romantic pursuits, including poetry, art, dramatae, as well as notable courtships throughout history. There was several month’s worth of material documenting every facet of the development of the notion of romance throughout Equestrian history – but nothing at all that seemed to answer the ‘why’ of the equation, rather than the ‘what’.

                    It was that separation that seemed to render the entirety of Twilight’s library useless. It was as though nopony had ever asked themselves, or anyone else, “What is the big deal about the opposite sex?” Or, the same sex, Twilight noted mentally, going over her notes for the last time. The thought hadn’t occurred to her at her initial investigation, but it turned out that Equestrian ponies had a very storied history of homosexual relationships – so much so that now a days, the practice was practically commonplace, even edging out same sex couplings in terms of volume of practice. The idea didn’t change Twilight’s process one bit though – either way, she was still at a loss as to why the majority of society had, for thousands of years, devoted so much time and energy to the pursuit of romance.

                    Eventually, the lack of material had forced her to change tracks, and that was where the promising results had been. Jumping from the idea of romance into the study of thought and directed cognition was what had lead her to her ultimate conclusion. Now, with the results in hoof, she was prepared to belief she might finally have the key to understanding a facet of existence she was convinced might be locked away forever.

                    Thought study had been occurring for just as long as the documentation of historical romances, but there were staunch differences in nature of interest. For eons, ponies had wondered why their brains processed information the way they did: why one pony might be better at math, and another at languages, or why some ponies were motivated while others were lethargic and lazy. Despite the centuries of fascination, there was surprisingly little to conclude on the subject. Brain mechanics were innate, and mapping them was in most cases an exercise in futility. There was, however, one particular recent study that had proved to be Twilight’s treasure trove in a morass of useless information.

                    A decade ago, a pony by the name of Cogwork had set out to find a way to change the inherent nature of a pony’s thinking mechanism. Cogwork was a unicorn obsessed with the workings of everything around him, and the minds of ponies were no different. After many failed attempts amidst several scandals, Twilight had found proper documentation for what appeared to be the only successful instance of rewiring a pony’s thoughts.

                    “Synapse and cognition reconfigurement experiment documentation day twenty five,” Twilight read to herself, eyes tracing the words on the journal paper lying atop her desk. “Subject’s behavioural changes still appearing consistent after third day’s minor regression. Previous habits of procrastination and listlessness seem completely replaced by a stolid work ethic and determination. When prompted, subject cleaned the entirety of the study estate, and seemed eager for further direction after the completion of said task. With caution of being overly optimistic, mental transformation incantation seems to be a complete success.”

                    That was what she had been looking for.

                    Further digging through some documents she had acquired in haste from the Canterlot archives (at the behest of a magical missive deliver by a weary Spike whom she had roused in the middle of the night) had revealed the spell in question, and Twilight’s eyes had sparkled when she read over the instructions. So, changing the way she thought was that easy. Of course, that being said, there was a minor hiccup in the execution.

                    The spell Cogwork had created was inordinately complex in its construction – and in addition, it’s process of mental rewiring was very specifically for one type of behavioural change. Twilight no more needed to be studious and determined than she needed a fifth leg. So, that meant her own inventiveness needed to come into play.

                    After hours of intense concentration and calculation, the finished product was there, printed in front of her in the perfect cursive of her horn’s scribe. If it worked properly, it should properly open the part of Twilight’s mind responsible for processing the type of interaction that seemed second nature to every other pony. If it didn’t work…

                    She didn’t want to think about that. Failure wasn’t an option. Besides which, Twilight was confident in her spell work. She had no reason to believe her alteration would be anything less than flawless.

                    So. All that said, and the only part left was the execution.

                    Twilight swallowed loudly as she read over the spell instructions for the hundredth time. The sun was almost fully crested over the horizon, ushering in the warmth and light of a new day.

                    “Here goes nothing,” Twilight muttered to herself. She closed her eyes in concentration, and her horn began to glow almost immediately, violet light beaming to every corner of the room with the force of her spellcasting. The spell was difficult, but she’d performed many more complex in the past. After a minute of sweating and a grunt or two, the beam at the tip of her horn exploded into a ball of lilac brightness. It sparkled in the air for a moment before collecting, and zoomed right back into Twilight’s horn.

                    The sensation wasn’t what she had expected. Her eyes blinked involuntarily, and an electric tingle coursed through her head, somewhere between a high voltage shock and a collision. It felt like waking up from the edge of a dream repeatedly in the span of a second, and Twilight was surprised to find the finished spell accompanied by an all consuming wave of drowsiness. Of course, it probably didn’t help that she’d spent the entire night awake. Without fanfare, her legs collapsed at her brain’s direction, and the rest of her followed suit. She was asleep before she hit the floor, snoring soundly as a rooster crowed in the distance at the rising sun.

                    Twilight was awoken sometime later by a prodding in her side. She cracked an eyelid open to find a small green and purple figure, poking her hesitantly with an outstretched claw.

                    “Twilight?” Spike asked, his eyes wide with concern.

                    “Ughhhh,” was all Twilight could muster. She shut her eyes tight, trying to will her synapses to life.

                    “Are you okay Twilight? I haven’t seen you since yesterday morning, and an hour before I woke up I heard this sound like a firework going off inside your room. I would have come up right away, but I didn’t want to bother you, especially after you seemed so upset yesterday.”

                    After a minute to process Spike’s question, Twilight opened her eyes properly, getting a full view of the now vibrantly shining sun through her window behind Spike.

                    “I’m fine, Spike, I think.

                    Twilight raised herself to her feet, shaking her head in an attempt to clear the mental cobwebs that had gathered between her lack of sleep and the spell still doing a number on her thoughts. Everything seemed fine, as far as she could tell… but had the spell worked?

                    Spike had turned his head to the desk overflowing with papers and notes as Twilight tried to wake herself up properly.

                    “What were you doing all night, Twi? Did you have a report to finish or something?”

                    Twilight shook her head again. She still felt like her head was full of cotton balls.

                    “No, Spike. It was just some private research, but I think I’m done now. Have you made breakfast yet?”

                    “It’s four in the afternoon, Twilight,” Spike said, raising his eyebrows at the unicorn. Twilight smiled and blushed in response.

                    “Well… in that case how about dinner?”

                    After eating, Twilight had returned to her room and made her way through the detritus of research materials to her bed, where she’d sat for several minutes, thinking. After some contemplation, a sudden remembrance struck her, and with a flash of her horn, the cover of her journal came flying out of the pile of spell notes, along with a quill and inkwell.

                    June 25th, she began, pausing for a moment with the tip of the feather in her mouth before continuing.

                    In an interest to aid my understanding of the processes of thought and cognition involved in ‘romance’, I’ve designed and executed a spell of my own construction, or rather, a modification of an already developed spell constructed by the most recent specialist in the field of Equestrian behavioural orchestration. With this process, I hope to change the part of my mind that until now was a barrier to the understanding of one of the most fundamental behaviours in modern society.

                    Twilight stopped again, wracking her brain to see if she could notice any immediate results from the spell. She’d cast it some while ago, but as of yet, her thought still seemed entirely her own, with no difference that she could detect.

                    While no changes are immediately apparent, I am hopeful that future results will be promising. I will of course record any progress in the interest of proper documentation and understanding.

                   That was as much as needed to be said right now, or at least as much could be said without further results to record. That meant the only thing left to do was to wait for results. So, with that in mind, Twilight did exactly that. Waited.

                    And waited.

                    And waited.

                    After several hours spent doing nothing more than pondering, Twilight could feel her frustration growing. She had unearthed her copy of “Windswept Stallions’ from its hiding place in the corner of her bedroom. She’d felt like vomiting after just half a chapter, and so the torrid tale of intermarital affairs had found itself back on the floor again. Twilight groaned in frustration, and slammed one of her hooves into her pillow.

                    “Argh! I don’t understand… did I cast the spell wrong? I did so many calculations, I don’t understand why it isn’t working…”

                    A familiar sound broke Twilight’s concentration, a high-pitched giggle wafting in through her open window. Like clockwork, the evening had rolled in, and with it apparently the adventurous affectionate nature of the couple from several nights previous. Why did she keep forgetting to close her window in the first place? Twilight groaned as she rose from her bed. She scanned the ground below, hoping for a sight of the couple the way they had been when she’d first saw them. After a minute spent puzzling out the shapes in the grass in the fading light of the setting sun, Twilight drew a hoof to her mouth and gasped. The giggles had stopped again, but this time the pair was engaged in something far more intimate than the kissing she’d caught them in before. She slammed the window loudly, this time more in surprise than disgust.

                    And still, her reaction felt the same. Less revulsion, perhaps, but there was no part of her brain that better understood why two perfectly sane ponies would gallivant about the town, stopping to rut in the first place their bodies told them was suitable. Maybe she really had cast the spell wrong.

                    Well, she wasn’t about to let a false start stop her.

                    The spell came easier the second time. The energy in her horn still wasn’t second nature, but the casting as a whole took almost half the time of the first. It was only several minutes before the muffled sound of exploding fireworks bounced off the walls of Twilight’s room, followed by the orb of energy funneling into her horn, accompanied by the asleep-awake-asleep-awake jolt in her mind. The electric energy came with the same sense of complete and total exhaustion, and Twilight had just enough time to stumble to her bed before the wave of tiredness overtook her, sending her to sleep again, though this time at a far more reasonable hour.