January 31
Sundays are good days for flying. I went west again, this time following along the main road. I'd looked on the map for the Kal-Haven trail, and I'd found it. It started near the center of town, but I thought I'd pick it up a little bit further out, because that would give me a chance to fly and see more of the city.
It was easier to follow Main Street, so I went west past the Maple Hill Mall and across the 131st highway and then much to my surprise I saw another Meijer off in the distance, which isn't the one that Peggy and Christine and I went to. I can't imagine why there would be two of them in Kalamazoo; surely one has enough things for everyone. Plus you can get some of the same things at Walgreens (except when an angry man shouts at you).
The Meijer was a very good landmark, though, and I turned north along the 10th Street N and followed it until I came to a parking lot with a sign for the Kal-Haven Trail.
There were several cars in the parking lot, and some of them had racks on their roofs. I'd seen a few cars like that in the college parking lots too, and asked Peggy what they were for, and she said that people put bicycles and kayaks and other sporting equipment on them.
I followed the collection of feetprints to the trail. There was an informational sign planted right next to it which said what the rules were, and I dutifully read them like a good pony. One important rule was that horses weren't allowed on the trail, but I'm not a horse; I'm a pony. Horses don't go to college. So I could go on the trail.
The snow on the trail hadn't been cleared off at all, and most of the tracks on the trail were either long, mostly-parallel lines, or big wide tennis-racket shaped marks. Humans have skis and snowshoes that they put on their feet so that they can walk on the snow, and that's what kind of marks they leave.
I didn't have skis or snowshoes, and the snow was pretty deep along the trail; but that didn't matter, because I could fly.
It was a different kind of flight. I kept below the canopy of trees, following along the path of the trail. It was sort of like being in a tunnel, but not at all confining because the open branches of the trees let lots of light through and I could fly up and over if I had to.
As I got close to people, I would drop down and slow down and kind of gauge their reaction before I got too close. There was one woman who had two colts young sons who were all bundled up in snowclothes and on pony-sized skis, and they were very excited to see me, so I landed and let them pet me. That made them really happy and I didn't mind too much except that the smaller one was a little bit grabby and tugged on my mane some.
I followed the trail for two miles—roads outside of cities are a mile apart, so it's easy to keep track of how far you go. Then I turned around and flew back, taking it nice and easy. I came upon the woman and her sons again at the parking lot; she was helping them take their skis off. She said that they'd just talked about me ever since they saw me, so I let them pet me again, and everyone was happy.
I had a late lunch, and then went back to my room to relax. Peggy asked me if I had any plans for the evening, and I told her that I was going to watch Star Trek with Sean. I asked her if she wanted to come, but she said she was going to dinner with a friend.
I read a little bit more of Genesis, but it got really confusing. Either God was really mean, or people weren't very good at following His rules. I wasn't sure which, and I thought about calling Liz and asking, but what would she think of me if I couldn't figure it out for myself? I ought to at least give it a good attempt. I was not even one full chapter in, and a lot of times stuff that doesn't make sense at the beginning of a book makes a lot of sense when you get farther into it.
So since there was still some time before dinner, I read some more poetry, and that cheered me back up. Then Peggy got re-dressed (it must be inconvenient to wear clothes all the time but Adam and Eve were ashamed to be naked and I guess other people must be, too), and asked me if her new outfit looked too slutty. I wasn't a good judge of that, I don't think, because I didn't know much about human clothes still, so I said that it looked fine.
When she left, I went over to the dining hall, even though it was a bit earlier than I usually get there. I sat at my favorite table, and pretty soon Christine and Sean had joined me, and then Joe showed up as well, and before too long everybody was having nice conversations.
As we ate dessert, Sean began to give me background on Star Trek. He said that unlike the Star Wars movies, there were a whole bunch of different movies and television shows that were all based in the same universe, and that he was going to start by showing me a movie which everyone had liked, which was called Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home. Then Christine told him that he was cheating if he showed the movies out of sequence, and he told her that she'd showed me Star Wars 4 first. She said that she'd showed them in the order that they were filmed so that wasn't cheating at all.
We went over to Sean's room to watch the movies. He had several little models hanging from the ceiling, and he told me that they were different spaceships from the show. They didn't look anything like the ones in Star Wars. I guess nobody has settled on one spaceship design.
The room was kind of crowded—it was even a little smaller than the room Peggy and I shared. It was also in the basement, which I didn't like all that much. He had a window, but it was half-covered with snow.
Since there weren't any couches or papasans, we all clustered together on his bed to watch the movie. Christine and Sean leaned back against the headboard, and I stretched out at their feet.
I liked the movie a lot. There wasn't as much fighting as there had been in Star Wars, and I thought that their plan to go back in time and save some whales was really clever. I know that a lot of time spells are banned in Equestria because of the unintended consequences of using them. Princess Twilight has used a few, but that's okay because she's a princess.
It was also neat because some of it was set on historical Earth, which is something that I still don’t know a lot about. A lot of it looked pretty much the same, except the cars were bigger and blockier, and there weren’t as many computers. There was one scene where Scotty tried to talk to his computer, and I didn’t understand why that was funny, but Sean said that back then you couldn’t talk to computers. I can talk to mine!
In the middle of the movie, I had to use the bathroom, and asked him where to go (I should have turned down that second beer). He said that there was a men's room right around the corner and I could use that if I wanted to—that there weren't any other men in this wing besides his roommate, who was gone for the weekend and wouldn't be back until early tomorrow morning.
I thought that was against the rules, but Christine also said it would be okay, and she would guard the door for me if I wanted her to. She said she had to pee, too, so it wasn't any bother, and so then Sean said that he would guard the door for both of us, and that way we could get back to our movie sooner.
It wasn't like the one in our dorm. Instead of a stall for the shower, there was a big shower room on one side, kinda like the shower rooms they had at the weather factory. So maybe boys like social bathing but not girls.
On the other side there were the usual stalls with the usual toilets, and there were also some different ones mounted against the wall which Christine said were urinals for boys.
I thought that they might be more convenient for me to use than the normal toilet, but I didn't want to break any more rules, so I just used a normal stall.
When the movie was over, Christine said that she was going to stay with Sean, so I went back to my dorm room by myself. Peggy wasn’t there, which probably means that her dinner went really well.
Figure that Silver liked Star Trek 4, the ligth heartherd tone, or ligther then star wars at least, is more "fitting" with her personality.
Everyone likes Voyage Home? I'm not so sure about that.
About the only consensus I've ever heard was that The Final Frontier sucked. Even Roddenberry despised it, and he okayed Code of Honor.
We keep getting these almost painfully innocent comments from her about various people's social lives. I understand there's some cultural confusion, she keeps flip-flopping between complete obliviousness and random comments about the depths of her own previous love life.
Here's hoping for more context on Equestrian dating practices soon, because it's really hard to equate some of this stuff.
That's me!
7069663
Well, we already know she's okay with role-playing but can't get in the mood when she's being called momma. What more do you need to know?
She's learning?
You're giving me flashbacks to living in the Freshman dorms. Three floors of communal showers/bathrooms defiled by fornication. What a world.
Uh huh. Yeah Peggy great idea asking the defecto nudist for that particular opinion there.
missed some capitalization there, unless it's another Cummings quote.
7069786
Nope! Just me missing the shift key and the squiggly underline.
7069696
I actually need to un-know that.
The Voyage Home is likely as good a place as any to introduce a pony to the world of Trek. Its a fairly decent standalone film, you won't have too many questions about what is going on if you have never seen Star Trek before.
That's one problem about getting into Star Trek when compared to Star Wars. With Star Wars the film came first so you can watch the films and you get the whole and complete story. There isn't much need to dive into the supplementary material to understand what is going on. With Trek the films came after the tv show, so just watching the movies can leave you in the dark on a lot of things. The films can be viewed alone, but they aren't really made to be viewed that way.
Honestly, I would have started her with Wrath of Khan. The ending scene of Voyage Home losses a lot of the impact when you start there.
7069663
She's perfectly aware that sex is a thing that happens, and can actually kind of identify it by smell it on the participants the day after, so she likely has a better idea of who is sleeping with who and when than any of the humans in her circle of friends, it just isn't a huge scandalous thing that needs to be explicitly written down if it's not relevant.
7069627 CELESTIA: Oh yes, of course we know the Great God Zqasrovy!
HUMAN: Who's Zqasrovy? Is he the same as {{$HumanDeity}}?
CELESTIA: I'm sorry - my translation spell doesn't work on proper names? Feel free to study more...
7069713 Unless Peggy was fishing for a particular answer there?
7069728 No, no! The Og of the Old Testament is the King of Bashan!
Shoulda had her start with Star Trek V. Woulda fit right in with the religion, heh.
7069850
Search for Spock was good as well; it introduced modern Klingons to the franchise and showed why playing good and creating planets was wrong. ..
At least at that stage of galactic development.
However, I concur that wrath of Khan is a fantastic start and the end will always she'd tears grin even the most stalwart of men.
"...his was the most. .. human. "
No humans are that bad at following rules. My Christian paster is an ethnic Jew and his recogning of why God picked the Jews is they were especially bad at following rules.
Silver Glow would especially like Psalms as they are all poems.
7069908
And then III caused even more tears during this scene.
I dare you to keep your eyes dry.
insufficientscotty.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/cry-a-lot.jpg
I wonder what Silver Glow would think of Nixon. The man who presided over the moon landing and got the US out of Vietnam, but did the whole Watergate thing.
I assume this is an over-generalization on Silver's part, but maybe you meant something else by it. I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask if this is what you meant to write.
7069939
...
Don't need to watch it on YouTube, I saw it in theaters, VHS, DVD, now I have it digitally.
Y u do dis
7069939
Star trek generations was a great crossover, though.
I wonder what she would make of Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? Adams was an avowed atheist. Also a little exposure to J. R. R. Tolkien.
Excellent as always.
7070004
You'd best be joking, boyo.
There's that difference in psychology. A human would probably find being 'pet' to be demeaning (I know I would), but ponies do seem to be a much more tactile species; it wouldn't have the same connotations. Is this using the same world-building as the pony planet stories?
This suggest that either Silver hasn't caught onto the fact that Star Trek and Star Wars are fiction or that Equestrian fiction (culture?) has a, to me, worrying amount of homogeneity.
7069930
I agree.
God needed a people he could trust to produce faithfully God-Like individuals yet be overall moldable into the bloodthirsty, psychopathic, sociopathic race needed to wipe out all competition and otherwise insure survival at any cost until the coming of the Christ.
Why? Because the message of forgiveness would have been wasted if it was not directly applied to the literal worst humans on the face of the earth. Their horrendous reputation, even then, was both factual to reality and part of god's plan. They were His chosen people: chosen to bring salvation to all, good and bad, and chosen to be an example to all, good and bad.
God is not nice.
On the bright side most of the people from the enlightened cultures they slaughtered in God's name got broken out of Hell by Jesus and taken to Heaven for being decent humans, as the blood sacrifice retroactively rendered decent human's ignorance of god into innocence, allowing them to be judged by their works and love.
7070005
Someone should follow up general knowledge of Star Wars and Star Trek with Spaceballs
Hitchiker's Guide is good though. Could also introduce her to Arthurian legends and follow up with Monty Python's take on it
As for Tolkien, everyone should at least read The Hobbit. LotR gets kind of sloggy in some places, so I wouldn't blame anybody who couldn't finish those, but The Hobbit is great. The movies were weirdly kind of the opposite.
Also, snrk, can't forget Gulliver's Travels... at least the final segment.
7069834 It's a random online image which I later found was made by one "vaporotem"
It is accidentally the closest thing to fanart of my "ORIGINAL" character there is so I use it as an avatar sometimes
Also it's fuckin adorable and I like it
I think it's interesting that she sees cars as living beings. I think it would be hilarious (and serve as a good lesson in human cuture) for her to walk out one day and see someone preforming a parking lot oil change and seeing the person open the drain plug and see the oil spill everywhere. Then silver going pale and fainting thinking it's blood.
Or witness one fall apart in the street and vomiting. Of feeling remorse. There are a million ways you can go with this.
7070093
Or that a lot of "fiction" turns out to be true.
While she is reading the bible, I bet she skips Numbers. Everybody skips Numbers...
7070148 I might also add some Black Adder. For a different take on British humor Benny Hill.
7070257
Because a single incident is totally indicative of a culture's entire literary tradition.
7070298
Of course it is!
7070219
I don't think she sees them as living beings just that they have names although there does seem to be a bit of anthropomorphising (equiopomorphising?) On her part. I do wonder if ponies do the same for their own equipment? Trains and the like?
7069628
I remember liking Final Frontier, admittedly I was probably in middle school when I last watched it.
It sounds to me like she needs to see some movies set in a real historical period, not just thirty years ago.
7070119 The Israelites' neighbors were not by and large nice or good, although they were more advanced. Moloch and Baalim child sacrifice, the temple prostitution of Ishtar, these are the contemporary standards YHWH would be measured against. This is the point of the story of Isaac's sacrifice, that YHWH would not demand the sacrifice of your children. This is also the lesson of Exodus, that the Lord's commandments are ethical in natural, not arbitrary. There's a lot of tribal muddling in the first third of the Old Testament that angry atheists latch on to, the Brothers of Nablus, Lot's Daughters, etc, but these are not the core message.
7070257
still waiting for my hoverboard
Was that line meant to be sinister? It feels kinda sinister.
The subtle things are, I find, the most fascinating part of this story. Like her incredulity at the existence of two Meijer and confusion about postal codes tells us Silver Glow still really doesn't grasp the sheer unparalleled SCALE of humanity.
How many ponies are there, I wonder?
This just sounds wrong when I say it out loud. Pretty sure it's still "footprints" even when there are multiple sets of feet.
Best line in the entire fic.
7070817
Given her earlier remark of: "Is this outfit too slutty?" Her absence may instead be an indicator of a night that ended very well.
7069626
I think ponies in general would prefer lighthearted films to films with violence. Romantic comedies might be the best, since at its heart romance is just intense friendship.
7069628
Well, I liked it. So did the person Sean is based on.
7069699
She's putting the pieces together.
7069710
Really, it's a safe bet that every square foot of a college campus has been defiled by fornication at some point or another.
7069839
That is a difficulty with the franchise. I asked a couple of people what they thought Sean should start with, and got conflicting answers.
On the plus side, Silver Glow isn't going to run out of things to watch if Sean has anything to say about it.
7069853
And you can count on her eventually speaking up at exactly the wrong time. "Fred must have been lonely while you were gone, Sarah, because he slept with Liza every night."
7069930
Yes, although the end of Psalm 137 might confuse her a bit.
7069946
I suppose it would depend on how she was introduced to him, and whether she believes that humans are smart enough to always elect the best man for the job.
7069952
She's just making an overgeneralized statement.
Interestingly, Kalamazoo was very orderly when it came to roads outside of town. North-south roads were numbered, and called streets; east-west they were lettered, and called avenues. The numbered ones counted up in half-miles.
When there was a lettered street in the middle, it got both letters, so there was a KL Avenue, between K Ave. and L Ave.
7070005
Hitchhiker's Guide would probably confuse her. I think she's love Tolkien, though, but she probably wouldn't understand that it was all made up and not a human history.
7070093
Yeah, it's much more of a bonding thing for the ponies. It's something that Silver Glow probably isn't getting enough of on Earth, really.
Some yes, some no. I'm not sticking to OPP canon, but I do have that general headcanon.
She's thinking that there is a certain type of design that would be seen in spaceships (like you might find in seagoing ships [in her experience]); she doesn't realize that you could literally put anything in space and have it go, if you had the resources to get the materials up there.
7070148
Someone's going to troll her with that.
7070219
She knows that they're machines, so that wouldn't shock her to see one taken apart. But she thinks that people have more of a relationship with their cars than just them being an easily replaced machine.
Although it would be funny if she actually thought they were alive.
7070257
That's one of the things I love about old sci-fi--finding all the stuff that was fiction then, and now it exists.
7070262
Numbers is boring.
7070264
Hot Fuzz.
7070425
I think that they do. Train locomotives used to be named, and a couple of the short line railroads where I live still did that (any maybe still do). Plus ships, and so forth.
7070517
Yes, she does. I'm not sure what would be a good choice off the top of my head, though.
7070685
I want a practical, safe jetpack.
7070817
Nope, it just means that Peggy's dinner date went so well, that she stayed after for 'cuddles.'
7072023
Ooh, I researched that once. No more than 31 million (US population in 1860); probably less than that. [US population was 17 million in 1840, so there was a rather rapid uptick leading to the Civil War]
7075310
It is; Silver Glow is wrong.
7077312
It is.
I was thinking about this chapter, and I remembered an idle supposition about what Silver Glow would think about... really, animation in general. I imagine she would adore Miyazaki (okay that's a cop out, he's beyond reproach) and, given her struggles in human philosophy, have difficulty with Kon and Yuasa.
My first thought was about what she would make of Gundam, actually (Universal Century, of course). Giant robots probably wouldn't make much sense, but the core story of political unrest and extremism is a lot less cut-and-dry than Star Wars's uncomplicated fantasy and Star Trek 4's environmentalist message.
Now that I think about it, Legend of the Galactic Heroes would be even better, though it's a fairly major commitment. That it could be seen as an oblique comparison between pony government and the dominant human government gives it a lot of potential.
7079940
I guess that makes sense.
Maybe you could have her mention that to Sean at some point? It'd be a good excuse for him to show her something like Apollo 13.