The image blinked on.
“Are you sure you wanna…” A rainbow-maned head blocked the camera’s view. “I mean, I’m not a lot of good with all the science-y stuff. I just know how to use ‘em.”
Giggling, quickly stifled. “That’s, um, okay. I think I can handle the technical aspects.”
Rainbow Dash turned and trotted away from the camera, revealing a green hilltop covered in patches of autumn leaves. “Yeah, I guess you’d be really good with that sort of stuff,” she said, though the camera barely caught her words. She turned and trotted to the left, moving out of frame. A few seconds later she trotted across the image in the opposite direction. She stopped with only half her cutie mark and her tail still in the camera’s field of view.
“Rainbow,” the other voice called. “Rainbow!”
Twilight Sparkle cantered out from behind the camera, taking a position in the middle of the image and waving Rainbow Dash over.
“You ready to start? Okay, cool.” Dash walked back and stood near Twilight.
“Can you, um, maybe get a little closer?” Twilight asked. “I want to make sure we’re both in the frame.”
Dash moved in, but Twilight motioned for her to come closer still. After half a minute of awkward negotiation, Twilight had the pair of them standing wing-to-wing and flank-to-flank.
“Do we really need to…” Dash’s voice trailed off as her cheeks reddened, and she turned her head away from Twilight to stare at one of the piles of leaves on the ground.
“It’ll look much better on the video this way,” Twilight said, blushing. Her mouth quirked upward into a smile.
“If you say so. I just need to be out of here by sunset. I got… stuff I’m supposed to do.”
“Stuff?”
“Yeah, um, Sweet Apple Acres stuff.”
The smile slipped and fell from Twilight’s face. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Then there was a pause, and the smile returned—even if it did look a little lopsided. “Hello, friends! This is Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Magic and Friendship, and I’d like to introduce you to my new video series, ‘Twilight Sparkle Investigates’. We’re going to start off by learning about wings!”
“I thought Spike said you did one on—”
Twilight continued as if Dash hadn’t spoken. “Today, I’m here outside Ponyville with my very good friend, Rainbow Dash. Rainbow is a pegasus pony like some of you, and she’s a really great flyer. She’s fast, and graceful, and bea…r in mind that sometimes she even trains with the Wonderbolts!”
“That’s, uh… Thanks, Twilight, but maybe we should start talking about—”
“Wings! Yeah. What can you tell us about wings, Rainbow?”
Dash narrowed her eyes and glanced at Twilight. She opened her mouth to say something, paused for a few seconds, closed it again, and finally finished up by flexing her wings and nudging Twilight to give her more space.
“Oh, yes.” Twilight blushed again and retreated out of frame, leaving Dash alone to spread her wings and show them off to the camera.
Dash spent a few seconds posing with her wings outstretched.
“Can you, um, tell the little colts and fillies about how they work, Rainbow?”
“Huh? Oh. I dunno, I just kind of flap them and they take me places. How does your horn work?”
“Sub-cellular structures that focus ambient magical energy in a way that allows for… Oh, but I think I see your point, yes.”
“Well, I guess, they have feathers, right? And the feathers give them a big, what-do-you-call-it, surface area. That lets me catch a lot of air in them and… Hey, this is why pegasi with smaller wings can’t fly as well, isn’t it?” Dash paused to look at her wings, and she grinned. “I have awesome wings!”
“Actually, it’s…” A grunt. “It’s more about aspect ratio and wing… hrrgh… loading.” Twilight moved back into frame, this time pushing a heavy-looking blackboard on wheels. The blackboard showed a large drawing of a wing. Once the blackboard was fully in frame, Twilight turned back toward the camera. “Okay, fillies and colts, it’s time to learn how pegasi fly!”
Dash gave her own wings a couple experimental flaps, not paying much attention to Twilight.
Twilight waved a hoof at the drawing on the blackboard. “This is a wing. Notice how it has three parts: the leading edge at the front of the wing, the the small feathers in the middle, and the big feathers at the back of the wing. The leading edge of the wing is just skin, bone, and muscle—like your hooves, everypony. Behind that, it’s all different kinds of feathers. Rainbow Dash, why don’t you show us your wings so the colts and fillies can see all the different parts?”
“Oh, sure. I know those parts.” Rainbow Dash trotted toward the camera a little, staying mostly in frame, and stretched out one of her wings. “So yeah, like Twilight was saying, this bit in front, that’s… I dunno, what was that called again? It’s kind of like my legs, I mean it moves the same way and it feels about the same, only a little smaller. Anyway, that’s the front part. And then behind that—” she rotated her wing to expose the feathers on the underside “—are the coverts. Those are the feathers in the middle. They’re softer and smaller than the other feathers, and they’re where you get most of the air you catch with your wings. And then behind those, at the back of the wing, you’ve got bigger feathers. We call them primaries on the outside of the wing and secondaries when they’re close to your body. They’re stiffer, and you use them to get more control when you fly. But you’ve got to make sure to preen them, so they’re aligned right. Otherwise your control goes off and you can’t do anything cool like trick flying. But preening is a lot of fun—it feels kind of like when you get your hoov—I mean… you’ve got to do it, right, so… uh…” Dash folded her wing back against her body and turned to look at Twilight. “How’s that?”
Twilight, wearing a distracted-looking smile, took a moment to respond. “Oh, um, great! That’s great, Rainbow. Okay, why don’t you come back over here with me?" As Dash trotted back toward the blackboard, a purple glow surrounded Twilight’s horn and the image of a wing on the blackboard began to move. “So those are the parts of the wing, but how do you use them to fly?”
“I dunno, you just do.” Dash stopped on the opposite side of the blackboard from Twilight, turning to face the camera.
“It was a rhetorical question, Rainbow. I wanted the audience to think about it, and then I was going to answer it myself.”
“Ooh, okay.” Dash glanced at her wings again. “So how do you use them, anyway? Like, how do the mechanics work?”
“They really didn’t teach you this at flight school?”
Dash scratched at her mane with one hoof. “Well, maybe. Fluttershy paid a lot more attention than I did. I just wanted to do it; I didn’t care a whole lot about how it all worked.”
Twilight turned away from the camera and toward Rainbow Dash, although her magic continued to animate the wing on the blackboard. “It’s pretty easy, really. You need to have enough speed to keep you up in the air. You do that by flapping, like you were talking about before. That gives you thrust, and then you fix your wings for a little while to grab the lift off that thrust. Then you flap again. And if you want to maneuver, you just…”
Both ponies were quiet for a few moments. A breeze gusted by, swirling autumn leaves in front of the camera.
“Twilight? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. I just realized I don’t really know how you maneuver.” Twilight extended her own wings, flexing them and staring at the feathers.
Dash grinned. “Well, if you wanted, I could take you up and we could do some real flying so I can show you.”
“That, um…” Twilight’s cheeks went crimson, and she shivered. “That sounds… Oh, but what about the video?”
“You’re an alicorn, right? Just magic it off the tripod and bring it along.”
Twilight giggled nervously. “Okay. Let’s give it a try!”
I'm a little up in the air over next week's topic (no pun intended), so if you folks would like to see Twilight cover anything in particular, let me know. I know where I want to take the framing story, but I might decide to revise the video topic. Only [Teen]-rated topics, though, please!
Weapons
Magic helicopter beanies.
Something foals might learn about... maybe the dangers of the Everfree Forest?
Oh Twilight, what are you doing...
Now, if we really wanted something inflammatory in this story...
....farming.
4078037
Something you could do in the air? Or just any topic?
4078509
Any topic; I just realized as I was writing the comment that there was an implicit pun.
4078350
That's, um, Episode 4.
4078553
Ah, foiled!
How about proper library management? :D
4078553
Twilight Sparkle Investigates Elections? Twilight Sparkle Investigates Baking (And Since Pinkie Is Doing The Baking She Is Cheered During This Procedure Whether She Wants To Or Not)?
The meta story is strong here. I don't have an essay's worth of things to say about this segment, but I do have a few fairly unconnected thoughts.
None of these videos will ever be posted.
Rainbow Dash will now teach Twilight about Banking.
I'm disappointed that Twilight didn't teach us about the Bernoulli effect, or whoever it would be named after in Equestria.
4078566
Twilight Sparkle Investigates Fractional Reserve Banking and predicts the downfall of the Equestrian economy.
4078743
"Your Highness it is... refreshing to see you take a personal interest in the economic policy of the Civil Service bu—"
"You mean the government?"
"The same thing, Your Highness. The same thing."
"The government and the civil service? Or their policies?"
"Yes, Your Highness. Anyway, your interest is much, much appreciated, but if all the banks kept all the bits they accept as deposit on hoof at all times instead of keeping a fraction as reserve and lending out the rest, we wouldn't have an economy as such as there would be very little to lend. And very little saving, too, considering there would be nothing to pay interest rates out of."
"But—"
"In fact ,what you describe isn't a bank so much as it is a box. Or possibly a mattress."
"But what if they can't pay!"
"Deposit insurance. Underwritten, ultimately, by the state. Also, by law, commercial banks are limited to a standard of prudence in their lending. The only way they suffer a massive loss is if the whole economy nosedives. If this happens we've more serious problems."
"But what if they aren't prudent?"
"Sky Scribe, that's the head of Forensic Accountancy, Your Highness, catches them in the act and we arrest a sampling of upper management and anyone standing next to them, install an interim manager in the afflicted bank, unwind the investments, and build a pyramid of skulls in downtown Manehatten pour encourager les autres."
"...skulls?"
"Merely a metaphor. So far."
4078832 You are amazing. Skulls. The Equestrian deterrent.
Is this Dotty talking?
4078881
Yup.
4078832
runsmartonline.com/articles/efficiency/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/choke.jpg
I find your lack of footnotes disturbing.
4080120
Well, it was a straight-up dialogue[1]. Nowhere to put the silly things
[1] Written in haste, no less!
4080151 Yeah, I figured, I just couldn't resist throwing the quip out there.
Have Twilight talk about the food chain, and where ponies - and dragons- belong on it!
So no Spilight huh? Oh well.
Twilight Sparkle Investigates the wonderful mechanics of clockwork. With Special Guest: Time Turner!
While he could be the Doctor, this is actually suggested with the intent he is simply a humble clockmaker, or something else relatively mundane, who has been
ponynappedrecruited by Twilight for her series.Also, clocks are cool.
4078832
Can we just make Dotted the pony in charge of...well everything.
4081401
"In charge, Mr. Paladin? Why that's just preposterous. I am a humble civil servant. Utterly subservient. I just act as a humble vessel for government policy and the wise decisions of the sisters two, blessed be their holy hooves. Nothing more. I keep minutes. Make sure the bills are paid. That sort of thing. I have no actual power. Goodness no."
"Is it true that your nickname is Tsar of All Equestria?"
"Vile calumny."
"And 'The God-Janitor of Equestria.'"
"Griffin sense of humor."
"Banker's Bane?"
"Appellation bestowed by gutter press."
"The Terror Of Canterlot?"
"I'm pretty sure you made that one up."
"Celestia's Bulldog?"
"That's just hurtful."
4081618
"Did I?"
4081618
"Only once the housing market has restabilized, and your loan is approved, do you have my permission to buy."
Oh wait, I thought you said Banker Bane, not Banker's Bane. My bad.
4081618
"Merely a turn of phrase my dear Mr. Line. My apologies for the confusion. Nevertheless we have need of somepony who can, ah, balance the budget, as it were. Perhaps make some suggestions that may help keep the politicos in line, review policies. Bureaucratic things.
Tea will be provided of course. We have several blends available."
4078743 , 4078832 , 4081888
I don't even know what I'm supposed to say in these comments anymore.
My Twilight romance fanfic has turned into a Dotted Line political/economic intrigue fanfic...
4081920
You say that like it's a bad thing.
4078037 This is fun!
Also, my suggestion for the next chapter: HORNS!
Wait, horns are full of midichlorians?
In any case, the unrequited Twidash is almost painful, in a good way. Tragic, but good. Definitely looking forward to more, whether it's a new lesson or part 2 of this one.
4081920
If it's any help, I'm pretty sure neither protagonist knows how that happened either. Pinkie Pie might.
Hmm... Twilight Sparkle Investigates Pinkie Pie... Sure, last time it ended in fire and anvils, but now Twilight's an alicorn.
4085865
So we took her there
And we told the tale
Of how her midichlorians
Were off the scale,
And how she might
Fulfill that prophecy...
Oh the teachers were impressed, they were.
Could she bring balance to the world?
They interviewed this kid.
Oh, but training they forbid!
Because they sensed in her much fear
But Celestia said, "Now listen here.
Go stick it in your pointy ears.
I will teach this girl."
And we were singing
Oh my, my, this here Twilight filly
Maybe ruler someday later
But for now plays willy-nilly
She left her home and kissed her mommy goodbye
Saying, "Soon I'm gonna be a master.
Soon I'm gonna be a master!"
4078553 Celestial Dynamics (in Equestria, this falls under the purview of Social Sciences).
4078832
I am practicing my skull-stacking, just in case it becomes non-metaphorical.
4111267
I'm still dreaming of writing something with Sky Scribe in it. I do like that he keeps appearing through these little vignettes as a memetic badass.
And since I have your attention here, can I just ask: is Dotted's talk-about-banks good enough to pass muster as fantasy economics?
4111763
Seems fine to me.
Also, just to have something of a topical post, I have now corrected whatever error led to me not faving this! Not sure about the core 'ship philosophy (Twi constantly brooding over and not moving on from the failed TwiDash in the past) but the craftsmanship is solid and enjoyable.
4078881 can't be dotty. No mention of tea