The Pop Star

My name is Pipp Petals. And I am not a pop star.

I am a 24-year-old pegasus mare, of royal blood but not slated to be queen, unless something terrible happens to my older sister, but good luck getting something terrible to happen to her. Good things always happen to Zipp. She’s been dating Hitch for over a year now. She’s dutifully working in the background as an assistant at Mom’s royal meetings, preparing eloquent, witty speeches, managing her calendar, even being the face of the royal family at smaller functions. By the time it’s her turn to wear the crown, she’ll be more prepared than Mom ever was.

Horrible things happen to me. Me, Pipp Petals.

I overslept on Friday. My alarm sounded for 9:00am, but I rolled 180 degrees and fell back asleep in 0.180 seconds. A shell of servants surrounded me, scrubbing the toothpaste dribble on the counter from last night, dusting the furniture, while I lazily tossed and turned in the bed curated by my personal shopper—she found the mattress that perfectly suits and my sleeping posture and the curvature of my spine. It’s too perfect.

Pipp Petals is lazy—my last thought before I drifted back to sleep, betraying my faithful alarm clock.

I had a dream of the day I hung from the stage. Watching Zipp run away from her own sister as the circulation cut from my ankle joints. As the audience heckle me, their boos exaggerated by the freedom of the dream world from laws of nature.

I’ve been hung. And Zipp did nothing.

I guess betrayal runs in the family.

I woke up just as I’m about to die from suspension trauma of hanging upside down on wires. Time? 9:47am. The summer sun assaulted my window but a dutiful servant became my hooves and closed the blackout curtains letting only a millimeter of light escape.
My agent sat in the breakfast room slash lounging area where she sips her morning coffee, tapping her hoof impatiently.

“Pipp. You’re late.”

I didn’t even respond. What does an apology mean anyway? I’m going to do it again. I’m going to get insomnia from doomscrolling again and pass out on my perfect mattress again and wake up late again.

“Get breakfast quick, and then you need to sign these concert programs before your photo shoot at 11, then after lunch you’re due for your final dress rehearsal, then your pre-concert livestream followed by your concert tonight at 8. Okay? Focus, Pipp. Tonight is your biggest concert of the year. You’ll be performing to 70,000 ponies at a sold-out Zephyr Heights Dome.”

“Okay.” I forgot the schedule already. It doesn’t matter. My agent will remember it for me. And I can access on my phone at any time on a shared, encrypted and hoofprint-protected spreadsheet. She—or one of the underpaid interns at my talent agency—does this really cool macro thing where I can sort and color code all my scheduled events by ponies involved, type of event, preparation required, etc. I have no idea how they do that on the spreadsheet.

I have no idea.

I have no idea how my schedule works.

I am not the pop star. My agent is not the pop star either. We are both the pop star. Actually, we are only a part of it.

Some ponies say that pop stars become “bigger than themselves”. A mighty machine, beholden to the will of trends that come and go. I suppose that’s true. But I think about it a little differently, like I’m part of a single, unicellular organism. And don’t think I’m that airheaded to forget elementary school biology.

My agents are the ribosomes. She takes the creative assets from me, the talent, and turns it into tangible, money-making activities like studio-quality albums, concerts, livestreams, talk show appearances, and monetized videos. I, Pipp, have a sense for business and marketing, but would probably doze off after a few hours of SEO training.

The chef is the mitochondria gives the pop star energy. She feeds the pop star her favorite Pony-gram-worthy avocado toast and eggs Benedict. Lunch will be delivered to her later—a bento box of umeboshi rice, karaage, and pearnana kanten jelly because pearnanas are trending on ClipTrot right now and that’s good content. I can’t cook. Princesses never learn to cook. (Hitch has learned that the hard way since moving in with Zipp.)

What about me? Pipp Petals? I am the nucleus. The one who gives instructions to all the other parts of the cell. I have the talent. I come up with the ideas for songs, suggest events I want to host or attend, before they’re vetted by the agents for the impact on my career. Without the nucleus, of course, the whole pop star cell falls apart. A pop star without the talent is not a pop star at all. But what can the nucleus do without her assistants to help her? She is nothing but a swirl of ideas, scribble marks on paper, an unamplified voice in the shower. She becomes little more than a dusty library book.

I am but a part of a cell. A mighty unicellular organism, larger than any pony, comprising of several rooms, an army of organelle servants, agents, publicists, an impenetrable cell wall of security cameras, and thousands of miles of internet cables like cilia that propel the cell to stardom.

Meanwhile, piece of toast clutched between my teeth, I, Pipp Petals, ran down the stairs as fast as I could to my waiting bulletproof taxi, flanked by security guards, which will whisk me to my morning photoshoot.

The cell—the organism—is the pop star. I am not the pop star. I am Pipp Petals.

Pipp Petals tripped on the pavement while trying to run fast and the security guards instantly helped her back up. They even served her a new piece of warmed toast to replace the one she dropped.

Like I said, horrible things happen to Pipp Petals. But the pop star does well enough for itself.

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The sun sets—the day has gone by fast.

Zephyr Heights Royal Stadium is sold out today. It’s the pop star’s biggest concert of the year—70,000 ponies will be there at a sold-out Zephyr Heights Dome. I remember that from my agent.

A mob of fanponies, all dressed in homemade plastic wings and headdresses like mine, were camped out at the entrance, waiting to get in line. Near the front, I saw tents. I shouldn’t have offered 1,000 free first-come-first-serve tickets to my concert. One of my agents said it’d require extra crowd control to rein in the out-of-control fanponies, but my friend Izzy said it would help bring news coverage and extra hype to my concert.

Maybe I shouldn’t listen to my friends. Don’t they always say you have to listen to yourself? The agent is the ribosome of the pop star. Therefore, the agent is myself. I should have listened to the agent.

As the time of the concert neared, the fans started to grow restless. I heard their chatter and a cacophony of my greatest hits playing on tens of thousands of different phones, until my songs turned into nothing but a garbled television static.

I can fly now—though I almost forgot I could while recalling that dream I had last night. The crowd control at the stadium had enforced a strict no-fly zone, but I, escorted by four stallions from the Royal Guard, was free to fly around the stadium, sky-facing spotlights nearly blinding me as I glided towards my private entrance.

The crowd fell eerily silent as they noticed me flying above. Thousands of glassy eyes looked up. The sun was still high, the light reflecting onto their eyes—despite the pain of the sunlight, they did not even squint as they look up at me. Each of their irises—some green, some blue, some violet—seemed to light up the ground in a luminous field of colorful points of light.

I flew untethered over the ponies in the front, who paid 1000 Bits to be standing there, squeezed in a mob of sweaty fans for two hours. Headset mic over my ears, hundreds of hooves reached up to me. I touched a few randomly. One unicorn mare squeals, another earth pony jumped high enough that we were almost face to face. The crowd control pegasi quickly swooped in front of me as a precaution.

Other than that, I saw nopony. In the mob of 70,000 ponies, I know no names, I forget their faces. The faceless crowd control ponies in sunglasses hold the crowd back, like a paper dam holding me back from a storm surge of pony flesh.

One of my old-time hits—“Portrait Day”—played, with Mom making a surprise appearance to sing Zipp’s part. (Zipp couldn’t make it. She had a cooking class date with Hitch. She really wanted to learn to cook for Hitch. They were going to start with the most basic spaghetti Pomodoro.)

(Good for her. That sounds like a lot more fun than this.)

I closed my eyes. I imagined the time I was first singing this song with Zipp. We were fillies, sitting on the floor in the gilded, high-ceiling waiting room just outside the portrait room where the painter was still setting up. Before the main event, we decided to do portraits of ourselves with a box of crayons, sitting on the floor, and drawing very carefully so as not to get scolded for crayon-ing the marble floor.

That giant room felt a lot cozier that day.

Zipp, stop fidgeting! I’m trying to draw your eyes the right way.

You’re actually taking this seriously, Pipp?

Be still! Don’t move! Well, at least you’re still smiling. Keep holding that.

Well, it’s easy to smile with you by my side.

For a moment, the pop star was not singing. Pipp Petals was. The Pipp Petals who slept in past her alarm, dropped her toast on the pavement, and arrived at her photoshoot late.
I open my eyes. Oh. It’s not Zipp.

(I guess Zipp got her contralto voice from Mom.)

I looked back out of the crowd. To them, this is just a beautiful concert, I’m sure. They’ll write in the tabloids the next morning—Pipp holds back tears as she sings her hit “Portrait Day” in concert. They won’t know the vivid memories I had, the dreams I had last night and will have tonight. Those are my own.

Their phone flashlights were out for the song, and almost by magic, the previously chaotic mob was swaying almost in perfect sync with the beat of the song.

Some of the audience were unicorns who could light up the stage with their horns, but even some unicorns forgo the horn lights and used their phone flashlights. Most of the crowd were pegasi—locals from Zephyr Heights—and many were earth ponies. What if nopony had a phone? Would the light be less bright if the ponies had no phones?

Without the phones, there is no light. Without the crowd control, there would be just a mob. Without the pop star, there would just be a stage with a perfect A/V setup. Without the audio engineers, I would sing to the crowd, and only 7 ponies would hear me. Not 70,000.

We are all the organism.

We are all machines. To be fed, instructed, entertained. Nuclei of our own universes, ceasing to exist without our indispensable organelles. Who is us? Are we the nucleus? Or is the organism us? Am I the pop star? Who is Pipp Petals to the pop star? Or is…?

What was that? I lost my train of thought. I need to hold this high note for a really long time. There are more important things for the pop star to do.

The official concert videographer took a picture of me as I lost my train of thought on stage. I soared in the air as I held that high note and a golden backlight illuminated my downy wings for the crowd to gaze up on. I will autograph fifty copies for a lucky few in the mob who paid their life savings. They’ll take the picture of me home. Maybe frame it. Hang it in their bedroom. (Do more ungodly things with it, perhaps?)

But regardless, they will all remember the pop star. They won’t remember me.