April 19 [The Ballad of Reading Gaol]
April 19
When I woke up Aric wasn't quite awake yet so I went under the covers and by the time I was done he was awake.
While he was getting his energy back, I asked him about his trip and he said that it had taken longer than he'd planned because on the way down David gave him bad directions around Columbus and then he had gotten stuck in road construction near Charleston and then on the way back they had gotten off to a late start and then the radiator had started leaking and he'd limped it along until they got to Lima because there was a store there that had a new radiator but it was too late at night for the store to be open so they had to spend the night at the hotel and get it in the morning and then fix it before they could go back on the road again.
He said that it was all his fault; he knew that the radiator was not in very good shape but he hadn't anticipated that it was going to fail or else he would have fixed it before they left.
It sounded like the kind of adventure that is fun to talk about after it happened, but not so fun when it's happening. Lots of sailorponies told stories like that and sometimes it was hard to know what parts were true and what they were making up.
I kissed him and told him how glad I was that he was back, and then I teased him with my tail a little bit until I let him pin me on my back and get on top.
When we were done I got in my flight gear while he got dressed and he said that since it was a nice day wouldn't it be funny if I took off from his room and I thought that would be pretty funny, and it was something I'd wanted to do from our dorm room but there was a screen and I wasn't supposed to anyway.
He held the window open for me and then helped boost me up on the windowsill which I think was an excuse to get his hand under my tail one more time before I left, and then I pitched out and opened my wings really fast.
It turns out that flying out of a window isn't as easy as I thought it would be. If the window had been wider and taller it would have been a lot easier.
There were some low fluffy clouds and I circled several before finding just the perfect cloud to play with. I went around the edges of it and knocked some of the weird bits off and then set to work shaping it into a cloud-pony. It took a special kind of skill to get clouds just right and I hadn't ever been all that good at it, but by the time I was done it was a passable pony, and it would probably keep its shape for a little bit. At the rate it was drifting, I thought it would still be recognizable until it was out of Kalamazoo, and there was something satisfying about the thought of hundreds of people looking up and seeing my hoofwork.
At lunch, I sat with Trevor and Cedric and Leon and told them about the cloud I'd shaped and Trevor asked if we did that in Equestria and I told him that we did sometimes. Leon said that that was messed up, that clouds were supposed to be fluffy things that floated through the air and people guessed what they looked like. Cedric said that he was jealous that he'd never had a cloud shaped after him and I said that I wasn't much of an artist but I could try.
Leon shook his head and said that clouds weren't black enough; that that was just another example of the man putting them down. Cedric said that Leon didn't know anything about being put down by the man, unless he meant the time that he got kicked out of Rugby Grille in Birmingham for not wearing a suit.
I wasn't sure who the man was. Cedric said that it was anyone who exercised authority over you that you didn't like, and I asked him if that meant that the FAA was the man because they made me ask for permission to fly and there were places I couldn't go even if I wanted to. Leon said that I was being put down by the man. He said that we both knew the struggle, and he put out his fist so that I could bump it with my hoof.
Cedric just shook his head and said that we were both idiots, and Leon said that that might be so, but he'd rather be handsome than smart. I said I was pretty and smart and Cedric nearly choked on his drink.
Conrad told us that we were going to go back to England with our next poet and that we were going to spend the whole day on a long poem. It was called The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and it was about the time that Oscar Wilde spent in prison for loving another man.
I didn't like it.
The very thought of being imprisoned frightened me and it sounded like a terrible terrible place and yet the words were so compelling that I couldn't help but listen. And when it got around to my turn to read my voice wasn't much more than a whisper because I could see the terrible place in my mind.
We discussed the poem after but there wasn't anything that I thought I needed to say; the poem had said it all. Even the classroom walls felt confining and for the first time ever I was happy when the class ended and I could go.
I didn't want to wait to go back to my room and get my radio or my jacket or my blinking light; I needed to be free so as soon as I set hoof on the sidewalk outside the building I took off and let the sky embrace me and I flew until was high enough that I couldn't see the people on the ground any more and then I found a little cloud and I sat on top of it and tried to think of nothing but the spread of land below me and the unreachable top of the sky above me.
Peggy had told me that some people might not like it if they knew I was having sex with Aric, but the thought that they might not like it so much that they would put me in a jail had never occurred to me because that just wasn't right. Nobody could be that cruel, could they? But Conrad had said that it had happened and he wouldn't be making that up.
Suddenly I felt very alone.
In the sky I was free, but none of my friends were there—none of them could go there. So I abandoned my cloud-perch and glided back down to the ground and I went back to my room and Peggy was sitting at her desk listening to music on her headphones and even though it was kind of rude of me I just stood up and hugged her.
She took off her headphones and set them on her desk and asked if she needed to rip anyone's dick off. I said it was probably too late for that—Oscar Wilde had written the poem over a hundred years ago—but she had gotten me to smile, and I told her about the poem and how much it bothered me.
Peggy hugged me and said that things were different now than they had been back then. She said that there was still a long ways to go, though, but in America at least what happened to Oscar Wilde couldn't happen any more.
That sounded to me like she was holding back so I asked her if there were still gallows and if people were still hanged and she said that she didn't think that hanging was done any more, which was reassuring.
But I got the sense that she was still not saying everything and I was about to ask her what she wasn't telling me when she reached out and ran her finger over the dreamcatcher I had made and said that she really liked it. So I told her how I'd gotten the idea from a store in Chicago and Rebekka had helped me make it and I was going to make them for all my friends with the feathers I was shedding.
She thought that was a very good idea and so after dinner when she was done with her math homework and I had checked it over for mistakes she helped me finish my second dreamcatcher, and I'd meant for it to be for Aric but when it was all done I knew in my heart that it ought to go to Meghan.
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I knew in my heart it was high time to two-time.
Anybody who's spent enough time driving has a "breakdown story".
Several years back, I got it in my head to drive to New York City so I could see Blue Man Group. The trip there was uneventful (insane NYC drivers aside) but on the way back my Chevy Cavalier decided I was too happy and chose to break down on me- in the middle of the Lincoln Tunnel. A very nice guy in an SUV pushed me the rest of the way out, but AAA got confused as to where exactly I was, and a tow truck didn't reach me until 3 in the morning, towing me to a nearby repair shop.
There were three hotels nearby; two of them were too expensive for me, and the third... had hourly rates and vibrating beds, so we know what kind of hotel that was. So I ended up sleeping in my car until the shop opened.
And that's
how Equestria was madewhy I keep a small pillow in my car's glove box!Gotta love the chemestry beetween Silver, Leon and Cedric! And Trevor too I guess.
Nice litle misdirection there Peggy, while I am not sure if you should hide that kind of thing (Silver is an adult, she can handle it), she clearly wasn't in the "mood" for it now.
Good thing for you that Silver don't have a better attention span. I would've came back to the question instantly, and probably with more insistence.
Hmmmm giving it to meg over Aric
Hmmmmmmmmmm
7312120
because Meghan has less sexy times with Silver maybe ?! So she gets the next best thing compared to a round in the hay.
If prisons are scarier to ponies than they are to humans, what's their preferred punishment? Restitution? Banishment? Being shaved bald?
Silver Glow is most assuredly being put down by the man. Requiring a pegasus to get an ornithopter license to operate her own wings is ridiculous. It's like making a human get a license before they're allowed to jog. Absolutely she should have training and safety equipment, but eagles and other large birds don't need flying licenses, so why should a pegasus?
"Reading Gaol" is one of those poems that has to be read, that defines the canon. And I say that as someone who doesn't really have much patience for pre-prison Wilde, or even the political message of the poem. It's just a marvel of perfected tone and rhetoric.
And Silver, don't worry about it. As long as you don't sue Aric's father for libel, it would be hard to replicate Wilde's fate. Heck, given Lawerence v. Texas and Loving v. Virginia, unless you suddenly decide to take an impromptu tour of the Euphrates River, I'd say it was impossible.
7312169 Anybody who has spent enough time flying has a breakdown story too, and normally it doesn't end with "And we pulled over to the side of the sky and waited for the tow plane to show"
When I was a student, we were flying back from Wichita in a 6-place Cessna at night (long story) piloted by two of my friends, when I noticed the overhead light getting weaker and weaker... The alternator had gone out, so they landed about halfway home and one of the guys went into the FOB to check to see if there was a mechanic around who could replace it. There wasn't, and all of us had class on Monday, and we were young and stupid, so he got back on the plane (which had been left running) and we flew back home (about an hour). In the dark. With no functioning nav lights. And everything turned off so we would have enough juice in the battery to run the radio. Yeah, we got back. But it was a particularly stupid move.
(Note to non-fliers: Light aircraft have an alternator and magnetos, so a loss of an alternator does not make the engine stop. However, if you turn it off (or if it shuts off in flight) you can't use the starter on the dead battery to start it back up.)
7310649 Also most of your reply to the locomotive question falls into mush, because you missed a critical part of my post. "Through undeveloped desert".
I'm not going to pretend to know the logistics of a Pegasus moving a cloud into the desert, but they'd probably lost track of it at some point. And have to chase a train while carrying something.
It seems nonsense to build a train line without sidings along it for coal and water towers, but Appleoosa is a one year old boomtown.
7312316
I agree with you there, though I would like to remind you of the unofficial motto of the FAA "We're not happy until you're not happy"
Since Silver showed she can stand up for herself, she is probably better friends with Trevor and co. It is a jock thing. (Actually, it's a Slack Twisted Idiot thing. Sometimes, the same thing)
7312316
7312568
Ehhhhh.
Eagles getting hit by airplanes is bad, but there's nothing much you can do about it. Eagles don't know how to read, or use a radio. Bird strikes happen.
A pegasus getting hit by an airplane is an order of magnitude worse, but you can do something about it. Making sure the pegasus has a radio and a beacon, and knows the rules everyone else is following, is an excellent idea. Mid air collisions are bad.
I'm a little concerned over where the story will go with Meghan and Aric. I wonder if it's a pegasus thing, or if it's just a Silver thing.
pinkie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw8181-1348961216188.gif
"I am a good and smart pony DREAMCATCHER! I love you!"
All of the
That's right Peggy. They're not thrown in jail any more. Other things happen to them now a days.
I wonder if* (not 'when' anymore
) the penny will drop that one of the primary motivation of the people who threw Oscar Wilde in jail, and those who do all the horrible things to gay people that are still done to them, is that book she's spends so much time reading. I know Liz and many others prefers a lighter and fluffier interpretation, but that's not exactly been the majority interpretation throughout history, and nor is it a universal one today.
*Mostly because drama makes for interesting reading, but also for the corruption of a pure and innocent mind if I'm completely honest.
Yes she has lots of sex, but this is one of the few stories that drives home the view that sex and innocence are very much not the same thing.
This chapter's off to an awesome start.
How long until she starts writing dirty messages into the sky?
Pegasi are naturally claustrophobic, I reckon.
I hope that before this story is over she gets permission to carry someone, or maybe use a balloon or something, because it kind of sucks that she has nobody to share this experience with.
Oh damn, I only just realized how on-topic this chapter is.
7312602 Seems like at least not a unique-to-Silver thing, at some point she said that her mom had her after a hookup at a conference or something, which she doesn't seem to view as problematic. It's never been outright said but there are lots of indications in the story that Silver doesn't have the same kind of cultural baggage about sex as A Big Deal that we do. I mean, obviously that's true about nudity, but it seems to extend to actual sex as well.
To understand being oppressed by The Man may I recommend the movie Cool Hand Luke. What we have here is a failure to communicate + the egg scene.
7312316
Eehhh... if for some reason there were no roads or dedicated footpaths anywhere, and cars just barrelled along all over at a considerable fraction of the speed of sound, I could see the case for making people get a pedestrian license.
7312314
If it's extra scary to ponies then it's probably a better punishment, depending on whether you think the purpose of jail is to punish, protect or rehabilitate.
I'd guess Pegasus probably have more of an issue with jail than Earth Ponies or Unicorns. We have seen Pony prison, Troubleshoes got put in one for a bit and he didn't freak out, although he's fairly sanguine about most things.
7312716
For that matter, how long until she starts drawing cloud penises in the sky like that one mare she mentioned?
Eventually, something's gotta give.
...
I am very glad you aren't SS&E, or I suspect this would end with an extremely topical plot twist.
7312120
Could also be due to the poem that she just read. Meghan is part of the LGBT community so Silver could be feeling extra protective of her right now.
I'm not really sure what people would consider worse, pony sex with a man or pony sex with a lesbian.
I'd say people would condemn her less for hooking up with Meghan. No penetration, and the double standard of everybody liking lesbians.
7312909 Or maybe it depends on whether the pony's a stallion or mare.
7312862 I could not agree more.
I have to disagree with Peggy and the other posters: while it's true that the law might be on the side of ponies like Silver Glow ultimately, it isn't necessarily so, and it only takes one bigot with power to arrest her (or him, more likely) and charge him with whatever.
Back when Silver encountered that yelly man, I think we could largely brush it off as just a thing that happened, but since the story is apparently taking place in the same verse as Pony Planet, one has to wonder what the political situation is for ponies; I could very easily see the conservative right being none too happy with them, and that might spill over into actual action of one sort or another.
7313094
Insider-intel: It doesn't
7312829
One of my all-time favorites: http://zicygomar.deviantart.com/art/Cloud-Watching-290067710
7312909
Anyway, in both cases the backlash would probably fall on the human, since labeling it as bestiality by definition denies her agency.
7313299 That seems like an outcome that would not stand up in court. Not to say that some petty jerk tripping on moderate power might not make her miserable over it, but legally the ground has to be super shaky. There's clearly some legal apparatus for ponies to come over and they have handlers and stuff, and no significant number of humans aren't going to have at least one person who remembers college well enough to say "wait a minute, someone is going to
a pony, what do we do then." Not to mention they've got some kind of diplomatic relationship with Equestria and Celestia has to have one of the best "don't make me come over there" arguments ever. I wouldn't be surprised if the law already has provisions about the status of ponies.
Far more likely that they get in trouble with freelance bigots in which case any of them could bear the brunt, but "the one that looks less like us" is always a safer bet with those folks.
7310685 Quite the eye full I'm sure.
7312316
If the only place available for jogging was on superhighways, I could see the point of jogging licenses. At least in Silver's case the whole rigamarole is as much so other pilots will know to look out for a pegasus as it is to make sure Silver knows what's going on with other aircraft.
Okay so this thought just came to me concerning this, I dont know why, but I had this thought that Silver is slowly developing feelings for Meghan and might possibly leave Aric. I doubt that would happen and I hope it doesn't happen, but I'm not ruling it out. I'm also afraid that Silver may develop feelings for Meghan and it comes into conflict with her relationship with Aric. I can only hope this doesn't happen.
7313953
Given donkeys' looks compared to a horse's, now I can't not imagine donkeys being the Ron Jeremys of equines. I think I'd be okay with smaller representatives if it got me more attractive everything else.
7313997 Magic is my actual profession, to be fair. I'm a professional event organizer for tabletop games including Magic and Dungeons & Dragons.
7312415
True, and I vastly overestimated the weight of a stagecoach and vastly underestimated the weight of a train, which ought to account for that.
Mechanical energy (at either end of the crankshaft), heat (as a byproduct of combustion), various gasses (CO, CO2, H2O, NOx, HCs), trace elements, and soot. It can produce electricity if an alternator or generator is hooked to it, and it can also produce hydraulic pressure through a power steering pump, it can compress air or freon, it can make vacuum with a vacuum pump or a very minimal amount due to intake vacuum. In essence, mostly the same things that a coal-burning steam locomotive produces as a byproduct of its operation (no fly ash from a diesel, though).
Well that's fine, that's your opinion. I think researching how things were done before electricity was commonplace is less lazy than just saying that they have power plants and run stuff with electricity.
7312415
Undeveloped except for the railroad tracks running through it, which is a rather significant bit of infrastructure.
How it was done in the old days was that train stations had water towers at the station, and while the train was stopped unloading passengers and cargo, they would add more water to it, and then the train would go on (there were also sometimes water stops without stations). Further apart there were fueling stations, but water was the big bugbear for steam locomotives because they used the hell out of it. Some places they even carried auxiliary water tanks to increase their range. I would assume if the ponies were smart, they would build water towers wherever they were needed and put the cloud there; chasing a train with a raincloud to dump in the tender is just stupid.
Quite often they were on the main line, and were put where the train stopped anyway. You have a station, which serves a town, right? And that town presumably has a source of water. I mean, the ponies can't have been so stupid that they built Appleoosa and built a railroad to it and planted apple trees and everything else and only then figured out that they didn't have any water at all. That's just ludicrous.
And while I can't say that it works this way in ponyland, in America there were towns called 'jerkwater towns' that grew up along the railroad because that's where there was a water stop, and it's plausible that Appleoosa had its origin that way (Colinga, California is one example). IIRC, the train continues on after Appleoosa.
Yes, historically there were places were getting a supply of suitable water was a challenge. Most anywhere, you can dig a deep enough hole and you'll hit water, but mineral concentration was a big deal to steam locomotives. Luckily we (and also the ponies in canon) invented a thing called a pipe which can be used to carry water from one place to another.
7312120
I knew in my heart it was high time to two-time.
7312169
I've mostly gotten lucky. Lost an engine coming back from the Reniassance Festival one year, but I stopped at a gas station before I got on the highway and called AAA for a tow (I've got a gold card, which is good for 100 miles). Had the rear U-joint of my S-10 get loud and clunky on my way back from Albuquerque, but managed to limp that home. And had a truck catch fire in Indiana, but I put it out and re-wired it well enough to get the rest of the way to Lafayette.
7312214
There's a right time and a wrong time for serious discussions, and Peggy's actually pretty good at knowing which is which.
7312222
You might be overthinking just a bit.
7314290
That's what you would say if I was RIGHT
7312225
She is!
7312231
Or maybe because when you make a thing you have a special feeling for who it's most appropriate for.
7312314
Reformation is preferred (countless canon examples); probably restitution as an aspect of reformation. For the bad crimes, banishment. Being kicked out of pony society is practically a death sentence for a pony.
7312316
If you could make geese understand that they shouldn't get sucked into jet engines, that would be good for the goose and the airplane. Unfortunately, there is no practical way to avoid it entirely.
Not only is the possibility of Silver Glow getting sucked into a jet engine bad for both her and the jet, but it also could spark an inter-world incident. The idea behind the license is that she proves that she understands the rules, the controllers recognize that she's something different than what they're used to (which also is operating under different rules, like taking off from the train station), and because Silver Glow also understands that if she doesn't follow the rules, her license can get revoked.
7312362
I agree completely.
In America (and most Western countries).
In a number of countries, though, all bets are off.
7312392
I had that happen in a diesel wrecker once. What was cool about it was that I made it back to the shop, but I was losing equipment as the voltage dropped below what it took to run that piece of equipment. I was towing a car, too, so I had to have my strobes on (they failed before I got back to the shop) and it was at night so I needed the headlights, too.
Really, that's the one smart thing about the dual magneto system on the smaller planes. It takes a pretty catastrophic electrical failure to make you lose ignition entirely (I'm sure it's possible, though), so even with a failed alternator you can still fly to a runway rather than being forced down where you run out of electricity.
Actually, thinking of electrical failures, I drove a van from Kalamazoo to Chesaning without a functioning alternator. My friend was following me in my truck and every twenty miles or so we'd swap batteries--live swap into the truck.
7312541
The motto of all government agencies. Although to be fair, the regulations do make air travel pretty safe.
7312568
They liked her even before she got all aggressive at Cedric. It was the pony hug that did it.
7312600
Exactly! And she's also a test-case for other pegasi who might come over in the future. One pegasus isn't so bad to keep track of; what if you've got a hundred all concentrated in, say, Los Angeles? That's going to be a huge headache for the LAX controllers.
7314327 It also seems like Silver's flight issues are due in large part to just how rare pegasi are on Earth at the time of the story. Presumably if there were significant migration there would be other solutions like cloud-based lane markers maintained by the weather team but my impression is that there are just so few ponies on the planet it's not worth making that sort of stuff.
Silver's a guest and (at least for now) an explicitly temporary one; it isn't unreasonable that she has to deal with unusual restrictions since she's in a highly unusual situation.
Silver you naughty naughty mare.
The struggle is real! Last pack of Ramen real.
7312602
It's a pegasus thing. She learned from her mom (and she herself is the product of fun times at a weather conference).
7312689
Maybe Silver Glow also knew that the conversation was about to take a dark turn and wanted an excuse to avoid it.
She'll probably have to get off-campus before she runs into a fundamentalist. Liz might tell her that there are people who interpret the Bible very differently than she does, but Liz herself is a very liberal Christian. Silver Glow would understand a conversation that went along the lines of 'this is how people used to think, and this is how people think now, and there are a bunch of people who are at various places on the spectrum of thought about sexuality and a whole host of other important social issues.
7312716
Especially for Aric.
That might have been covered in orientation. "No writing obscene messages or making cloud-penises."
Yes. The sky is freedom.
Battle Creek has a big hot-air balloon festival every year.
Unfortunately it is.
Yeah, especially if the consequence of a car hitting a person was everyone in the car had a very good chance of dying (along with the pedestrian of course).
7313827
The down feathers probably get used a lot too. These feathers are probably grown and shed like normal fur. Those probably go into high end beds. Could those down feathers be made to encapsulate clouds (which you have more permanent in Equestria) and make a mattress from it? Would be a lot of work but probably make a mattress second to none.
It would soo cool if the dream catchers served as antennas or magic foci for Luna to visit Earth's dreamscape. She undoubtedly is the best councilor in either world and children growing up with Luna protecting them would absolutely cement the Alliances between Earth and Equestria.
7312717
Yup. And where she's from, that's not considered unusual.
She doesn't. It's a fun thing that friends do together and if you don't want a foal you take precautions.
7312747
I've never seen that. I suppose I'll have to remedy that.
7312786
I think for the ponies it would be to protect and to rehabilitate. If you're irredemable, they you get stoned, sent to Tartarus, banished, or outright killed.
Yeah, they're the ones who get the most upset when they can't fly away if the feel the need.
For some reason, I have this image of ponies being so law-abiding by their nature that their prison is an open pasture and they're just told to stay there so they do.
7312829
She's probably not supposed to do that. So when she does, it'll probably be subtle: depending on the viewer, it might be a penis, or it might be a cigar-shaped cloud.
7312862
Eventually, something will. And it will probably come at a bad time (not that there's ever a good time).
And I'm slacking--no spelling errors?
7314166 it didn't get much further than establishing that he was red green colorblind. I wasn't able to describe red or green and he wasn't able to really describe the color he saw, although it wasn't grey like I thought it was. The other interesting thing is that it also affected all colors with red and green in them which is something I didn't think about.
7314125 There are just probably used for the extreme closeups. Man I crack up every time I remember the dialogue from the Dresden Files. Dresden was protecting a porn studio from evil magic and was asked what he was doing there. He snarked that he was a stunt double.
7314483 In all seriousness I'd be shocked if ponies fetishized male endowment the way humans do. It's a consequence of our particular ideas of competitive and dominating masculinity which seem unlikely to be replicated by a society with such totally different gender norms.
Of course, presumably everyone has fetish porn so there's probably a niche market. Assuming film is even common enough for unusual porn to be worth producing.