A Gift from Celestia: Chapter 7 notes · 2:21am Sep 24th, 2014
A Gift from Celestia
Chapter 7 Blog Post
This one's going to be short. 
First, a huge thanks to my pre-readers!
Metallusionismagic, AShadowOfCygnus, Yrfoxtaur. and JZ1
Here on earth, we used to use a lunar calender. It wasn't satisfactory, since the number of days in a year and the number of lunar cycles in a year aren't equal.
Of course, our sun and moon aren't controlled by alicorns.
There have been a few mentions in the show of medium passages of time being measured by the moon (most notably the portal to Equestria Girls), and to me that seems like a very good version of a month for the ponies.
Just like my earlier post on this story about jacking alcohol (don't do it unless you know exactly what you're doing), Berry Punch is COMPLETELY WRONG about nursing while pregnant. I am unaware of anybody doing a study on horses (they probably don't metabolize alcohol like humans do), but in humans anyway, if the mother drinks while nursing, her milk will have alcohol in it. The good news is that it quite likely will lull the baby to sleep after nursing. The bad news . . . well, alcohol + baby doesn't always turn out so well.
To my regular readers (and to my irregular readers, too) I want to make this clear—I'm not imagining that Berry is a terrible mother. She just doesn't know. And—I can assure you—she loves Pinch more than anything else in her life.
but since I was pregnant, I had to let Cormano—
My research has led me down paths I would have rather not trod. Bravely, though, I followed them wherever they went. If you want to remain young and innocent, skip ahead to the next break.
I have to say this part couched in euphemisms, to avoid violating site rules, so here you go. IRL, when a man and a woman love each other very much, they perform an act which sometimes makes a baby appear about nine months later. They can continue to perform that act (using different positions, for comfort reasons) when the woman is awaiting a visit from the stork.
IRL, when a mare is expecting, there is a possibility that the aforementioned act might lead to a miscarriage; as such, it is safer to avoid putting her with a stallion she loves very much.
Now, most of my readers are probably aware that there are alternate options when it comes to a couple loving each other very much, and I have heard that there are many fics on this site which explore these options. We can assume that Berry Punch is an adventures sort, and is willing to explore alternate routes for the sake of both her foal and her stallion.
I don't really have another story note here, but let's draw our minds back out of the gutter, shall we?
As I touched upon in an earlier blog post, the majority of music that ponies hear would be that which was performed in front of them. Yes, they have record players, but canon swings strongly in the direction of ponies randomly breaking into song. We know that numerous ponies have some sort of music-related cutie mark, and most of us probably imagine that one day, Sweetie Belle will join them. [Wouldn't it be ironic if she instead got a cooking cutie mark?]
Any number of scientific, quasi-scientific, and not-at-all-scientific studies have been done of the effect of music and animals, and there are also all sorts of pithy staying about music. I do think that Ditzy's family is not blessed with a record player at home, so she would be inclined to want to listen to music in the park, if the opportunity was there.
Obligatory cute pictures!
EDIT: editing errors are part of the experience! You don't want to know how many times I had to reboot my 'router' just to upload those pictures of Derpy (this is a retype, since it was lost in the ether the first time).
To be fair, we are talking horses here, not pretty pastel ponies. Horsey... um... birds and bees, I suppose, is a lot more hormone driven and a more... physical act than people (well, normally. There are some people who... um... Ratings, yeah. Better stop there) Ponies have to be different, because they can stand on their back hooves for extended periods of time, use magic, fly, throw up Baked Bads, and eat entire cakes in one bite. Um... Maybe I should take Pinkie Pie out of the control group. She's tilting the averages.
(For my part, I'm biased. I have part of an upcoming story where Twilight (after researching it) engages in that particular physical exercise to keep the muscles strong for foalbirth, as well as a certain pink pony who falls for a most unlikely partner)
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All of us authors blur the line between horse and pony all the time for our fics, and often our choices are determined by the story. I, personally, like to add the alienness of scent being a much stronger motivator than it is for humans . . . but at the same time, the ponies have moved beyond the days of 'if it won't make a foal, it's not worth trying.'
And that, for me, is one of the joys of the blog posts [and I hope my readers think so, too]. I can say one thing in the story, and then in the blog post I can tell y'all why I made that choice, and y'all can choose whether to incorporate it in a story, ignore it entirely, or (in more cases than I'd like to admit) tell me I'm an idiot, and here's how it really works.
Regardless, since this is fiction surrounding a fictional show about magical horses, we've got a fair bit of leeway when it comes to . . . things about things.
About record players, I do agree that they're not a common household item. Back in the day, they were an expensive luxury. Granted, they became cheaper over time, and yes, I'm referring to the gramophone style record players.
Fun fact, the needles on those things were intended to wear down and be replaced. The idea was that the needles were softer than the records, and therefore the records would wear out the needles, rather than the other way around. All of them, that is, except any Edison player. I recall seeing an old store sign that read 'We carry a wide variety of needles for those not fortunate enough to own an Edison.' Gee, I wonder who made that sign...
Edison needles were designed to not wear out, which I wonder how that fared for the records... I believe the needles were tipped with tiny rubies or sapphires, something like that. Come to think of it, I believe modern LP player needles are also gem-tipped. Of course the difference is that electronic record players have very very little weight on the needle. Whereas in the old days the needle needed some weight on it so it would have the stability in the groove to move the diaphram to mechanically create sound.
Did you know they had needles made of differing alloys to offer different playback volume? Yeah, I suppose the harder the needle, the louder the sound.
Anyway, it's easy to understand why mechanical things, especially clockwork stuff like a gramophone, would be expensive in a place where the people have no fingers. Oh, I still have faith that an earth pony could make a watch, I just feel like they'd charge a premium for it. And honestly, I find it hard to believe that most unicorns would have the magical precision to do tiny tasks like clockwork-ery... with magic anyway.
We have also seen modern electronic record players. *cough* Vinyl Scratch *cough* I suppose they could use some form of magic, or whatever, but either way, they're apparently not strictly mechanical. I imagine 'electronic' stuff like that is just REALLY expensive in ponyland. Which makes sense that a DJ would have access to stuff like that. Come to think of it, how the hell would you be a DJ without... audio equipment? Anyway I personally I believe that kind of stuff is imported from griffon-land. Either way, it's clear that it's far from being commonplace in pony-land.
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I'll just add in just a little bit.
One could imagine that anything like that, that uses magic to function would be exclusively for Unicorns. Since they could provided the energy required to power it.
But that's just my opinion.
--Sollace
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I kind of was influenced early on by Cold in Gardz's The Glass-Blower, and feel that earth ponies have a special type of magic which sometimes helps them make fancy gadgets. How? Who knows. It's like Fight Club.
Or, those could largely be invented and/or imported from griffon-land (or minotaur-land, dragon-land, etc.) I believe I mentioned at one point that the ponies learned metalwork from the dragons; if ponies can grow gems (my theory is yes), a trade of gems for pure metals might be why the dragons don't eat the ponies.
Sure, it looks modern, but we have no idea what's under the table. A treadle? A team of hamsters on a wheel? A crystal that Vinyl powers? Modern electronic circuits? And it could be a one-off; maybe Vinyl got her cutie mark trying to improve mom and dad's gramophone; maybe she had it custom built by a craftspony, or craftsgriffon.
I think anything complex and mechanical would be, hence my mention in A Sleeping Rose that a wind-up alarm clock cost as much as a wagonload of produce (which was two day's wages at an unspecified job).
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Flim and Flam's machine is a good argument for that idea.
I think that certain things can tap into the magic flow of Equestria, and be self-powered, but that's limited to simple devices (crystals that glow,for example). Otherwise, a pony who has a magic-powered machine ought to be friends with a unicorn.
2481110 Eh, I still like to believe Vinyl's setup is... well let's just say not strictly mechanical. You know a really interesting thing about electronics that I thought about: Semiconductors are all types of crystals.
Hey, wiki lists diamond as a semicondtuctor. So like. Dude. They have shitloads of gems, right? And a lot of people seem to associate gemstones and magical arcanery type crap, right? I've read plenty of fics wherein a magic-powered device runs on crystals that store magical energy like batteries. Given that diamonds are semiconductors, they could probably make all the electronic equivalents. Or hell, they could just use big raw gems to act as transistors and stuff. Magic or electronic, they kind of both fit this theory.
2481128 Which isn't far fetched. Even in backwoods Ponyville there are plenty of unicorns being friends with everyone else.
For things like Vinyl Scratchs equipment, my prefered method is to take known technology, and just bypass all the electron flowing stuff altogether and go for acoustic/photonic designs instead. Dont believe me? years ago, the Guinnes World record for highest musical note, was a Sapphire struck by a Green Laser, or about 600 Thousand Ghz. Ten thousand times faster than 811.ac, and made using gems instead of silicon.
Admiral?Just been trying to find the hologram chips, and found Smartphone Phaser This instead. Once the Full 3D holographc version comes out, well, I have a stack of notes on ultra advanced tech, and it leads to all sorts of Star Trek, Magical effects. Which is why Darpa is backing it.
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Moon as time measuting term was first introduced in S3.E8 "Aplle Family Reunion". Before that they used Month. I've found 11 occasions in the first two seasons where the word month were used (not counting "three months of winter coolness...").
The episode "Aplle Family Reunion" made complete mess of things: it stated, that the said reunion happens every 100 moons. However, in "Applejack Season" Applejack mentioned that they've had a previous reunion during the Summer Sun Celebration in the pilot episode. Which contradicts another statement from "Aplle Family Reunion" that Applebloom never participated in any reunions before. Anyways, if both episodes don't depict the same event, it's hard to imagine, that 100 months've passed between pilot episode and "Aplle Family Reunion". I prefere to think that a moon is not a month but rather a week. Which means that equestrian moon is a low orbit satellite.