So, I have a preliminary partial timeline of history, as it played out in the Advancedverse.

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From the random-thoughts-while-finalizing-small-details departments:

In the next chapter, we see Cordelia's dress uniform, which includes the traditional tricorn hat. Which got me thinking: there are hats with three points on the brim turned up and pinned, which are tricornes, and hats with two points on the brim turned up and pinned, which are bicornes.

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"To digress for a moment, in the Equestrian language, the term alicorn can refer to any of, first, the thaumatically-active substance making up the core of an alicorn (sense 2) and certain other bony structures; second, the bony spiral horn of a unicorn or alicorn (sense 3); or, third, the rare sub-species of pony manifesting the combined traits of the three major sub-species, notable for possessing thereby the largest alicorns (sense 2) and the largest proportionate quantity of alicorn

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So, naturally, for this particular universe I've redrawn the map more than a little. (Both for conventional worldbuilding reasons and because, well, as you may remember from the Prologue, I'm setting the entire habitable area of Equus inside a giant astrobleme on a superterrestrial world.)

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I am actually typing away like crazy on the next actual chapter right now, which you can expect to be posted ere dawn come hell, high water, or Discord, but thought I might as well get this out while the getting was good. My upcoming plot threads as yet in brain seem to demonstrate a coming necessity.

...the scene in which the key to eternal peace with the changelings is providing them with tribbles. Or, well, tribble.

This is just a quick apologetic note for the delay in the next chapter, and to say that, despite said long delay, this fic ain't dead yet, and doesn't want to go on the cart.

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One of the fun things about sfnalizing magic (at least in relatively firm SF) is all the unanticipated consequences that you need to look for, carefully, before you decide that that's how that works. Because whatever physical principle you come up with, the odds are that someone will have thought of other interesting things that could be done with it, and if they don't, then your readers will.

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Mostly for my own future benefit, but also for the curious, here is the scaling for height, etc., I'm assuming to be canonical for the Advancedverse:

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Today's random verse-canon note:

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So, in the previous post, I was asked 'Now, what is the "S" in "S.I.T."?'

(Somewhat spoilery, but really, it's an obvious step...)

SIT is (will be) the Sparkle Institute of Technoturgy, in which fascinating ideas from different places are collided at high energies to see what the decay products will be.

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partillery

A field worthy of much development at SIT.

So, my watching of the actual show has just passed the S5 season opening two-parter.

(I have to say, I was not expecting a villain who stepped quite so directly out of an Ayn Rand novel. I mean, damn.)

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Since today had just a short intermission and the footnote update, here's a little bit of audience participation for Friendship is Sufficiently Advanced. At some point as time passes - and we may well be approaching Just for Sidekicks in the timeline - our plucky protagonist is going to want to disassemble something to get a nice close-up look at what principles Equestrian technology tends to run on.

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(This will make much more sense if you read the chapter and in particular footnote 3 first.)

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In today's writing decisions, evidently what this equestrian space program needs is a hard-drinking chemical engineer from Glorious People's Sovyet of Stalliongrad.

'Cause you can't go to space without appropriate accents and excessively dangerous liquid fuel, now can you?

Many episodes downstream of the present:

TWILIGHT SPARKLE (now an ALICORN): ...apparently you don't get an ethereal mane unless you have your own celestial body, so...

MOONGLEAM/CORDELIA (helpfully): I can arrange that!

...anyway, mostly this blog post is just to apologize for the delay in getting out the next chapter. Hopefully I'll have something for you shortly, but at the moment it's still stuck in this Rewrite Hell. Maybe tomorrow, if nothing interferes.

If and when the Equestrian Space Program plot arc gets going and runs long enough, I should totally ask the artist if I can use this for an illustration, because I don't find it hard at all to imagine this particular school of hull decor meeting, shall we say, proper standards of fabulosity:

(Found via Reddit here:

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"If it would make it easier for these... allegators to do so, I will offer my public promise and assurance here and now that I will not, under any circumstances, accidentally throw them off the side of the Canterhorn and watch to see how far they bounce."

Almost certainly not appearing in chapter V:

TWILIGHT SPARKLE (writes): "When we got to the library and Moongleam (as she has insisted we call her) saw the collection, she bounced around the room in a circle for a full minute, calling out 'Yes, yes, yes, yes!'. She seems very excitable to me. Is this normal for her species? Is it likely to happen oft-"

(a short moment of embarrassed recollection later)

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