January 3
I kinda couldn't decide if I should go eat breakfast at the dining hall without Peggy but it would be rude to wake her up, and I was both hungry and curious to see it. So I tore a page out of one of my class notebooks and left a note for her, in case she woke up when I'm gone.
The dining hall isn't very far from my dormitory—actually, nothing on campus is. Once I was outside, I flew up to the top of the bell tower. I'm not supposed to fly too high because airplanes can hit me. Mister Salvatore said that they were working on a solution for that. He said it was okay if I stayed below five hundred feet. I'm not completely sure what that distance is; human measurements are weird, but it's surely higher than a building.
Anyway, that was a nice height to survey campus. Most of the buildings surround a central courtyard called the quad, but there are some others across a brick street. They're all different sizes, but most of them are pretty big, and they all have names. Some of them are only for classes and other ones are dormitories, like where I live. I had a map of the campus, which said what they all were, and now that I'd seen them from the air it would be easier to make sense of the map.
I guess everybody is a late riser? There weren't many humans around, although I could see all the way down to a big street that was between the college and the town and there were a bunch of vehicles driving around on the roads.
The dining hall itself is guarded by an older woman who sits at a podium and runs your plastic card through a little machine. The dorms have those too. The swiper machines, not the older woman guard. Although they have rays (it's spelled RA, but pronounced ray) to help out residents, sort of like Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn can assist me.
She helped me take my card off the lanyard that keeps it around my neck and welcomed me to the dining hall. She said that the staff inside would be able to answer any questions, or I could go right to her, and she also assured me that everything was marked as to if it was vegetarian or not, which was good. There were lots of unfamiliar smells and I couldn't always tell by looking what the food was. Sometimes even the name wasn't too helpful.
There were open trays of hot food near the entrance, and then other tables that had cold food on them. I looked over the whole selection before I made my choice. It's wasteful to take more food than you can eat, although we were told that a lot of humans do that and nobody would be mad at me if I didn't finish what was on my plate.
It was weird seeing all that meat just sitting out there, like it was waiting to be picked apart by scavengers. I went to a griffon camp once and they had a similar setup, although the camp cooks kept the pony food upwind of the meat.
I wound up with some scrambled eggs—not too many, 'cause eggs make me fart—fruit (they had lots of fresh fruit even though it's the middle of the winter), bread, and because I wanted to experiment, a little bit of a cereal called 'Froot Loops.' I wanted to have some ansjos too, but I couldn't find any. I'm not sure of the human name for them, but I would have known them by the scent.
There were a bunch of different rooms where you could sit and eat. One of them had a noisy music-movie playing too loud, but it also looked over the courtyard. Another room had benches which would have been more comfortable, but it was darker inside and I didn't like that.
I finally chose the room near the food trays, because it had big windows that looked out over the back of campus, and since the dining hall was on the second floor and the hill fell away behind it, it was like being on a cloud.
I'd almost finished with my breakfast when a woman asked if she could sit with me. She had red-orange hair, and blue-grey eyes. Her breakfast was just Froot Loops, which I'd decided were too sugary for me. Good for a quick burst of energy, but not as sustaining as fruits and grains. Human metabolism is different, though.
Her name is Christine, and she was friends with Action Shot, who is the pony who studied here last year.
We didn't talk for too long, 'cause I wanted to get back to my room before Peggy woke up. She said last night that she was going to show me around campus today, and it will be nice to have a tour guide. There's only so much that can be learned from the little map I got.
Peggy was awake when I got back from breakfast. She said that we could tour the campus after lunch 'cause she wasn't a morning person, and that she was going to take a shower, so I decided to write this in my journal. She says that when she comes back, she's going to show me how to make a Facebook on her computer. She says that that's important to have.
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I wonder what ansjos are, do they even exist on earth or are they something common that we might not think of breakfast, or even as food. Could be hay or grass.
I understand the importance of the book of faces in this day and age, but I'm not sure if we want to expose a poor innocent pony to that horror!
6980264
Ansjos = orange juice
She's about to be introduced to the glory of the internet. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
6980264
They do exist on earth, they are common, they are not considered breakfast food in the US but are commonly served with breakfast in Norway.
Facebook is probably much tamer than the rest of the web. Although there is a learning curve to avoiding the drama and clickbait links.
6980278
That's a really good guess, but no. (Well, that might be a translation, but it isn't the right one.)
6980297
Well after a little research, I'm going to guess fried potatoes?
Alternatively some sort of fish? It's less likely as as far as know fish is probably a possible breakfast in the US and I'm not 100% sure if Silver would normally eat it.
6980297 It was something like potatoes or carrot, right?
Oslo's Breakfast.
6980278 the translation I'm getting is anchovies..... That doesn't seem right.
Another cute, short chapter, eh?^^
Facebook.
I wonder what ponies would think of the film The Social Network.
6980364 Sounds right to me. A lot of stories have pegusi eating fish, and it's considered a breakfast food in some places.
Although they have rays (it's spelled RA, but pronounced ray)
what
6980292
Either way, it's a necessary thing in modern America.
6980347
Nope! And IRL, potatoes are toxic to horses, if I remember right. I think we've seen them eat them in canon, though.
Yes. It's fish: the European anchovy. When I was in Norway, our hosts put them out for breakfast every morning.
6980350
Nope, it's anchovy in sauce.
6980364
6980493
Yup, it's fish. A good source of protein, and something that some IRL horses are fed (or catch on their own).
Source
6980371
Expect a lot of them
6980595 lol Glad to hear.^^ Hmm... Admiral Biscuit, do you have Skype at all? Would like to discuss something with ya, if that's alright.
6980473
Good question. Silver Glow's never seen a big-budget Hollywood movie before.
"the camp cooks kept the pony food downwind of the meat."
Wouldn't upwind be better, so the smell stays away from the ponies?
Great chapter though, and great story! I can't wait to see how Silver Glow does in the school life.
6980495
She learned how to pronounce it wrong.
6980607
Gah, that's what I meant. Yargh. I'll fix it.
6980600
Not really. I never quite could figure it out, plus my internet connection is really shitty.
6980621 Ah. Damn. Well, do you have google mail?
6980625
Yup. I'll PM you a gmail address.
6980628 Thanks.^^ Gmail actually has a chat option you can use while in your inbox. But, requires the individual's e-mail first to contact them.
6980592 Ah well, my knowledge of Norwegian breakfast is very limited.
But it is a plausible thing.
6980733
The things I remember having were soft-boiled eggs, nutella, the fish (which I never ate, as far as I can remember), and Captain Crunch cereal. I'm sure there was other stuff, but that was what stuck out to me.
6980761 I remember they have a few vegetable too, I heard about it beacause of the Oslo's Breakfast program I mentionnd. Basically, it was a distribution of free food for childrens served at the beggining of the 20th century. And it latter grew into a "traditional" breakfast.
Apparently, it was one of the first dietetist that created the program.
I learned about it while I was on my school studen'ts council. You can learn new thing evrywhere.
Hmm, so ponies speak Norwegian as their native tongue?
...my faith in humanity died a little today.
6979115
I'm only kidding lol. But srsly, we've had telephones for a lot longer than most people think about. There were telephone exhanges in the 1890s. And telegraphy wasn't really even a 'thing' until the 1850s or so. But even though telephones existed, and were used, telegraphy was still the established mainstay for a long time, probably up till the 1920s. What I'm saying is, that there was a big overlap where there were telephones, but the telegraph was still king, by my rough reckoning, about 30 years.
So to think that ponies have telephones in their current time, is not at all far fetched. If they do (and I'm still pretty much with you on ignoring that canon), the telegraph may still easily be the mainstay. And a town like Ponyville might not have a single telephone. Your ordinary pony probably wouldn't have a clue how to use one.
Interesting... so, what I'm curious about now is what language the ponies normally speak. Is 'English' not their native tongue in this universe? If so, did Silver Glow have to learn it to study in the U.S.? Or maybe the Pegasus tribe has words for fish that nopony ever bothered to translate since they were the only ones who used them? It can't be that she simply read/heard about them, because she wonders what their 'human name' would be...
Answers, Admiral! I need answers!
Who even uses Facebook nowadays? I'm serious, everyone I know irl (yes, believe it or not, some of us have lives) has either never made one or stopped using Facebook altogether.
I know a lot of people still use Facebook, it's just weird to hear that.
Seriously? Since when has Facebook been important? Humankind has survived for over 6000 years at even the most conservative estimate without Facebook and other social networking sites, so how can it possibly be important?
But 'different cultures', I suppose.
Pffg please I have 4 friends on my Facebook. But over 80 on my steam account. You want him to make friends? Gift that guy a copy of CS:GO and a premium tf2 account. That I'll get the ball rolling on finding random ppl on the internet he plays one match with thet n gets his account hacked by them
"Thanks and have fun." -Gabe newell
6980845
Apparently, they had a lot of changes in the early 20th century. My mom says that they changed their language, too. I would have asked her about more specifics of the Norwegian breakfast, but she's actually on vacation right now.
6981033
I think it was more than 30 years--IIRC, telegrams didn't really fade out until the forties or fifties. Even when telephones were more and more commonplace, telegrams were the way to go for long-distance or especially overseas communications.
While in the version of Equestria I have in OPP telephones are pretty unlikely, having (at best) just been invented, this version of Equestria could have them but not very commonplace yet. Maybe only some of the biggest cities have limited telephone exchanges.
Actually, in a combined world setting like this one, it would make sense to skip landlines and go right to cell phones. Imagine trying to string telephone lines to a cloud city.
6981139
Yes, English is not their native language, and yes, Silver Glow had to learn English to study in the US.
That's reasonable, or another possibility is that she learned what they were called from a pony who did foreign study in Norway.
The real explanation is that my mom--my expert about Norway and translating Norwegian things--is on vacation, and I was working off machine-translated stuff online, and one webpage by a guy who very obviously was not a native English speaker.
6981336
That's actually a very plausible notion. I hadn't thought about it, but it's reasonable.
6981384
I had to look it up, but . . .
Not only did I read the book, I still have it, somewhere. The first book, that is. I didn't know that there were two more (I was in middle school when the second was published, and graduated high school the year the third came out).
6981683
6981826
I think its relevance is fading among the younger crowd, much like MySpace did before it.
A lot of my friends still use it, as do I.
6981731
It's still handy for connecting far-flung people. Sure, we don't need it; but then we survived through most of our existence without having automobiles or running water or any number of other things that we take for granted these days.
6981901 Touché! This story is really good, by the way. I like the way that, despite equanimous (pun intended) relations having been pursued, there is still so much for the average pony to learn. It's interesting seeing our culture (or, rather, the American culture... the meeting may not have been so warmly welcomed if it'd taken place here in the UK!) from a pony's perspective.
You're only missing one thing though: When will America start bombing Equestria? That always seems to be the natural US response to 'aliens'.
6982225
According to multiple comments from DHX Media, the technology level of Equestria is roughly like our 1900-1910 period, and they try to avoid using anything from later than that. But they also allow a few exceptions in the TV show at times when something is needed for the story to work, or for exposition (i.e. the movie projector), or for a joke.
Personally, I wish they were more rigorous about it and didn't even make those exceptions. They only confuse things. I suspect a bit of underlying attitude that "this is only a kiddie cartoon show to sell toys, and part of its DNA comes from Looney Tunes anyhow, so it's not really that important to be consistent or always make sense". Which, to me, is diametrically opposite to the themes of this story (and, indeed, most of what Admiral Biscuit has written).
6981915
Thanks!
You're in luck! I already wrote a story like that. It's either comedy or horror, depending on what your opinion of Dick Cheney as president of the US is.
6982266
She isn't really in any position to know that, though.
6982225
Yes, I am well aware that he has what looks very much like a rotary telephone on his desk.
Also, even given the timeframe which I tend to put Equestria in (late 1860s average), telephones are plausible. Bell made the first phone call in 1876, but without digging too much into the technology required to make it work, I don't think there was anything in the phone which couldn't have been invented a decade or two earlier. Incidentally, did you know the fax machine was in commercial use before the telephone was even invented?
No, it has nothing to do with it being behind us technologically. I get the impression from the show that the ponies generally like doing things the way they've always done them, even if there's a newer and better method available. I think that we saw that in Winter Wrap Up, and in the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy episode, and possibly others.
Depending on how accurate the flashback scenes are, I think the ponies were probably in advance of Western culture a thousand years ago. Based on the tech level in the show, they ought to be (if their society parallels Earth, anyway) in the middle of an industrial revolution, but they don't seem to be. Granted, the majority of the show takes place in a backwater town, which might not be representative. I lived in a Michigan town like that in the nineties, and here are three facts I can offer: our phone system still had party lines (where more than one house could have the same phone number), some students in school didn't even have a home phone, and our librarian was born in a horse-and-buggy. So even when the tech is available, it isn't always widely distributed. Also, my grandfather was in the ROTC , and he was responsible for the mule team which pulled the gun.
6982247
That's got to be a challenge for cartoon animators. Even for the 1910 era, that phone's too modern. I assume they compromised on the design, making it a rotary phone . . . and yet, even if it were a button phone, there are probably a lot of kids watching the show who have never seen one.
I, and other writers on the site, have the advantage of being able to go more in-depth in the tech, rather than relying on the original target demographic recognizing a picture of it. In a way, it makes things easier, even if I have to handwave away some of the stuff we've seen in the show.
6982266
General fanon, although there is a canon example of a Western seat-toilet.
vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/1/1e/Discord_sneezing_onto_a_house_S4E11.png
(this is why as a write you have to decide what you want to use and what you want to ignore)
Quick googling tells me that some commercial airliners (A319) can climb at 3,000 fpm. That's well outside a normal pegasus' flight envelope, in my opinion.
That does raise a good point, though. Some birds can fly at 30,000 feet or more, and some of them have very high dive speeds. I'm not sure how they handle it. Probably different ear construction.
Also, I think that pegasi have an extra, clear eyelid which covers and protects their eyes. I can't remember what that's called.