April 5
I woke up at my usual time, but Aric wasn't awake yet. He wasn't much of a morning person at all. It was a little bit annoying because I didn't want to leave him without saying goodbye, but I didn't want to wake him up, either. So I snuggled up against his side and ran my hoof over his chest.
He finally opened his eyes and looked over at me and I kissed him on the tip of his nose and then on the lips, then I set my head down on his chest and let him pet my mane for a little while, then he ran his hand down my back and across my rump and then we celebrated the new day together.
Aric helped me put on my flight vest and gave me some extra batteries he had in case my light stopped working again, and we went out on the porch together and he hugged me and waved as I took off for my morning flight.
Sometimes I wish that Kalamazoo was a smaller town. It takes a while to fly outside of the city part of it, and while it's interesting to be flying over buildings and houses, I also like flying through the countryside. Although I shouldn't complain; it doesn't take that long to get outside of the city, depending on which way I go. If I lived in Chicago, I'd be flying all day to get out in the country, unless I just went over the lake.
I went north, because that's the shortest way out of town, and I made a big sweep around, about a mile in diameter, swooping up and down to exercise and relax my wing muscles. About half the land I flew over was forested, and I thought about how pretty it would look once the trees got leaves on them. In Equestria, they would have already, but trees here were slower to react to spring, maybe because sometimes it snowed when it shouldn't have.
On my way back, I flew a little more northward and passed over a couple of big dirt places with bright yellow machines scattered around them, and trucks with open-topped trailers that I'd seen on my way out and wanted to investigate. They hadn't really stood out when they were covered with snow, but now they were big scars on the landscape. From what I could see, they were dirt mines, and I couldn't figure out how dirt would be worth mining since it was everywhere, but maybe Aquamarine would know.
When I arrived back at my dorm room, I thought it was a little too late for breakfast, so I just had a can of anchovies and sat down on my bed with a towel under my barrel and my Bible in front of me. I planned to finish Judges before I went to lunch.
It got stranger as it went on. There were talking fig trees and olive trees and a man called Abimelek who had his own servant kill him so that nobody could say a woman had done it, and there was a man named Samson who was tricked by Delilah into revealing the source of his strength but he got back at the Philistines by knocking down their temple with them in it.
And throughout all of it, the Israelites kept forgetting what God had told them, even after He had saved them, and went off to do bad things until He felt sorry for them and saved them again. You would think that they would have figured it out by now, that if they followed His rules then He would make sure that they prospered, but if they broke them, He would let them suffer for a while until they learned their lesson.
I thought that they behaved like a bunch of foals who have only just learned how to fly and think that they're a lot better at it than they really are, and they all brag among themselves about how they're going to fly over to a distant cloud even when they’ve been told they shouldn’t, and then halfway there they get tired and have to be rescued.
I didn't get all the way to the end, either. I had just gotten to Micah who came after Sampson when it was time to go to lunch, and then poetry.
Conrad sometimes liked starting the day with a bit of poetry, even as he walked through the door, and today was one of those days. “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you,” he began, then sat down at his desk. We had to wait for a little bit until he continued, and read us the rest of the poem, which was called If, and it was by Rudyard Kipling.
He told us about Kipling's life, and he sounded like Daring Do, if Daring Do wrote poetry. He traveled all over the world and then wrote poems and stories about them, and he even won a Nobel Prize for his writing, which I think is the most important prize you can get.
His poems covered a really broad range because of his experience. We read a couple more of them in class, and I liked every one, but my favorite was The Coastwise Lights because it immediately put my mind back to home, and I could tell that Kipling knew the ocean. I thought about the small lighthouse in the village below that cast its light out into the night when maybe nopony was there to see it, and I wondered at its mindless, purposeless turning, but then a ship with tattered sails would be seen in a sweep of the light and everypony thought that maybe they had imagined it, but then the light would strike it again and it was a herring drifter, lost and trying to return home, and then everypony grabbed lanterns and dove off their clouds to escort it safely back to port, and those were the nights when you knew why the lighthouse keepers worked tirelessly to keep the flame up and the beacon turning no matter what.
And in the fog there was the mournful bellow of the horn, and it was sometimes answered back by the ringing of a ship's bell off in the distance, and then you could see it slowly emerge from the fog like a wraith. Or the stormy nights when the rain lashed against the coast despite all our efforts, turning the waves into froth and there was one stormy night when the Athelstane Dawn came in on the head of a nor'easter, running before the wind with her sails reefed but still blazing into port, her bow bursting through the crest of every wave. She began dropping sail as she rounded the point, skirting the rocks, and then they were in beam seas and the crew had to hold on for dear life as waves washed across the main deck and we thought for sure she'd capsize, but then she got in the lee of the point and straightened right back up, and she had enough way on that she coasted all the way to her pier, and would have gone beyond if the crew hadn't dragged the anchors.
We didn't have much time to celebrate, though, because it was all teams in the sky fighting the storm.
When I got my mind back to the present, I discovered that I was the only student left in class. I'd completely gotten lost in memories. I went up to Conrad to apologize, and he said that there was nothing to apologize for, because that was what a good poem ought to do. He told me that his dream in life was one day to find a poem so profound that everybody in class just sat there stunned when he was finished reading it.
Then he told me that I was lucky because in many ways Equestria was very similar to the world Kipling had known, and I probably understood poems like that better than anybody else in the class.
I said that I didn't think that was true because there were a lot of words in the poem I didn't know, words like skerry, ness, and voe, and he said that I might not know them in my head, but I knew them in my memories and that was good enough. That was more than most other students could say.
The rest of the day I had a bit of a spring in my step. After dinner, I started writing in my new journal and it was kind of sad but happy at the same time, and Peggy said that we ought to celebrate the occasion so we both sat on my bed and had a couple of beers together which was really nice. Sometimes I think I don't spend as much bonding time with Peggy as I ought to. But maybe it's better when it's in short intense bursts and unexpected.
That's what she said! #notsorry
Ah, Kipling. I've got a lot of fond memories from when I was a kid of nights when my dad gathered all of us together around the fireplace and read Just So Stories.
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word-
They mercy on Thy People, Lord!
So, is Conrad teaching Kipling as an Englishman or an Anglo-Indian? I can see the continuity between the Bulletin Debates poets and Kipling; they certainly had more in common than either had with Swinburne, Arnold, or the Brownings.
The above stanza is from "Recessional", his contribution for the Diamond Jubilee. He wrote a first draft of "White Man's Burden", and then discarded it into his files for "Recessional", quickly tossed off on the cuff. The Jubilee could be considered the peak of Victorian culture, the high water mark of empire and the project of Britain. And Kipling told his audience that it was all dust, "one with Nineveh and Tyre".
In one of my previous comments I imagined that an Equestrian would misinterpret receiving the Nobel Prize as becoming a noble. (As if there weren't too many of those already!)
Hasbro says the first 3 seasons took 1 year. This means that the seasons must change like flipping a switch. 1 day you have 3 feel of snow & the next day you are out picnicing. I blame the government.
George Bernard Shaw said he could forgive Nobel for inventing dynamite because "everyone is entitled to a youthful indiscretion or two. But, only a fiend in human form could invent the Nobel prize for literature." (AFAIK, he never got one]
7268361 Smart fortwo. Yeah . The one that can be taken out by a shoebox in the road.
Ah Kipling. 85% Jingoism 15% what if we're all actually fucked and England will be ash
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
7269288 What a lot of us tend to forget is that without the dynamite, we would've kept on using nitroglycerine, wich is much more dangerous. Nobel worked for a minning company and tryed to create the dynamite to find a new explosive that would be safer to use and reduce the number of accident in the industry.
Oh! And Shaw got the Nobel in 1925 by the way.
We had that litle debate earlier about what was better beetween country and city, I don't care about those. I prefer the sea coast.
7269519 ...but what about coastal countryside?
Everyone's talking about Kipling, and I'm just sitting here amused by the dirt mine. Well, that and enraptured by Silver's unthinkingly evocative prose in a second language. Seriously, that's more than halfway to free verse. Nice work.
7269661 Looks like active gravel quarries. There's a string of three separate outfits along Ravine Road. I take it Kalamazoo is in karst country?
7266522
You're right that the majority of government bureaucrats are unicorns. Most of them live in the capital, and we've seen Mayor Mare managing her legions of unicorn clerks.
But "earth ponies get the short end of the stick" is abundantly contradicted by canon. Some earth ponies like Hayseed Turniptruck have crap jobs, but who has the best jobs? Who are all the wealthiest businessponies? Earth ponies. Filthy Rich, most of the fashion industry, the "Oat Street" financiers, earth ponies. Watch sweet and elite again, you will notice that
A)Earth ponies make up half the "Canterlot elite" at this point, and the run Manehatten, the largest and wealthiest city in Equestria.
B)Tons of unicorns have crap jobs. A huge number of waiters and servers seem to be unicorns, in Ponyville as well as Canterlot.
I guarantee you if you had a list of the 50 wealthiest ponies in Equestria, 40 of them would be earth ponies.
"Sigh" I hate doing emotional posts, like politics, religion and the like. But the one thing that always makes me cringe are people saying positive things about the Nobel Peace Prize. More specifically the 2007 Nobel peace prize.
Before I go on my tangent, I know this is a fun story and entertaining as well, but like I said, this topic makes me feel like a dog with a bone.
The 2007 Nobel prize had several people nominated, but the two that I always talk about are both important. The first was Irena Sendler. Who during WW2 saved over 2500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto, before she was caught, had her legs and arms broken, and left for dead, as well as, not betraying a single child in the process. The other was Al Gore, who showed a half hour powerpoint on Global Warming. Al Gore won the prize. So forgive me for ranting, but I get a bit upset over the Peace Prize.
And yes I know Silver Glow wouldn't have any understanding of it, and on the whole the prize sounds great. But since 2007 I've never been a big fan of it.
Here is a link to a quick summary of it - http://themetapicture.com/she-definitely-deserved-it-more-than-anyone/
I wonder if the school is making sure that Sliver gets assigned to their best teachers for a given subject since they all seem to be so great so far. I know I had more than a few professors who had no business teaching.
Back in the 1970s (before the Ayatollah Khomeini) I had an Iranian roommate (an Iraqi told me Iranians are NOT Arabs -they are Iranians). I'm surprised Silver doesn't have more trouble w slang expressions.
I've read that your can get get by w the right 800-1000 words. The Berlitz's Language people say that if you spend every waking moment at it in about 2 weeks time you have about 80% mastery of the language., w a heavy accent (Ricky Ricardo) Using only that language for a year gives 90%+ mastetlry & a light accent (Ricardo Montalbaum). Then, when she gets home, her friends will think she has a human accent.
Unless she cheated & used magic, l'm a little surprised nobody has commented on her accent.
When she talks to anyone back home, they will say she has a human accent.
7270002 Language-learning talent varies dramatically between individuals. My family spent ten years in Russia when I was growing up; my mom quickly got to the point where locals mistook her for a native, while my dad struggled with flash cards the entire time. Same thing with my sister and me.
Ah Ive been lost in thought before just like Silver did. It can be quite awkward once one is brought back to reality.
If you learned a 2nd language as a child, it is supposed to be easier to learn more as an adult. Maybe Silver knows other tongues? Celestia can be pretty smooth. Maybe being able to learn English was a big part of who got to come.
Kipling is out of style. Too pro military. Plus, he is Not Politically Correct. Except in his poems, all non British Europeans are Wogs, Frogs, & Dagos. All non Europeans are niggers. If this bothers you, avoid Kipling. Pre WWl, he was considered the best living English language author.
"...And throughout all of it, the Israelites kept forgetting what God had told them, even after He had saved them..."
I forget who said it, but most of the Jewish holidays can be supposedly summarized as "They tried to kill us, God saved us, let's eat!"
7270002 I was in college during the very late 70s/early 80s. Before the Iran/Iraq war, it was *very* tense between the students of the two countries, during the war, they could not even put the two groups on the same floor of the student union without screaming fights breaking out, but after it had gone on for a bit, the two groups of students wound up putting their booths next to each other in sort of a mutual "We're both glad we're not there right now."
7270470
Actually it's a song, and a youtube video. Here it is.
7269174
7269176
I somehow managed to mostly miss Kipling in my youth, something that I am just now rectifying.
7269247
I see him teaching more of just the poem without baggage attached. He's probably going to be careful to not include any poems that are overtly racist, unless he thinks that will spark a good discussion.
7269261
It ought to. People have been given nobility for less. Silver Glow would honestly be in favor of that system.
7269288
That's one of those things that I don't put too much faith in. Of course, we're just seeing bits and pieces; surely their winters are longer than 30 minutes.
7269456
Did you know that the engine for a Smart costs $8,000? Because I had to price one up once. It didn't get fixed.
7269490
And at least 1% evocative poems about the ocean. Guess who's cherry-picking?
7269501
And he did that, too. In fact, Dyno Noble is still producing dynamite and other explosives.
Seacoast is nice, no debate there. Great Lakes are also pretty good. Nice beaches, and you can drink the water.
7269661
The worst thing ever would be if you tried to start a dirt mine but just kept bringing up useless ores and had to close down because of it.
She's got a fondness for the sea, so she learned those words.
Probably if I had an editor, that section would have been somewhat simplified, but I really wanted to get across what was in Silver Glow's head.
7269837
I love that either you're familiar with Kalamazoo, or are looking up stuff on Google Maps.
I honestly don't know what they're digging for; I'm not all that familiar with Kalamazoo's geology. Most places in Michigan, though, you can get sand, gravel, and clay.
7269840
The real question is whether or not a pony enjoys her job. The 'crap' job of one might be a dream come true for another, after all. Rarity abhors being dirty, but to Applejack, muddy fetlocks and sweat in her coat are the mark of a day well-spent. We don't really have enough detail of a lot of the background ponies we see, but I would venture to guess that most of them like what they're doing, no matter what it is.
7269928
I don't have any particularly strong feelings one way or another, to be honest. I'm not privy to the Nobel debates (I assume that they decide by committee who receives an award), so I can't say how good any of their choices have been. Probably there are some winners who ultimately turn out to not be as great as they hoped. The problem with an award like that is that it's often subjective, and thus debatable whether one person is more or less deserving of the prize.
7269946
As a private and expensive college, Kalamazoo attracts and retains the best professors. In my time there, I only had one bad professor, and she was a guest professor (and the English department afterwards made sure that they never hired someone like her again).
7270002
Most people Silver meets are too polite to mention it (especially her friends), and since this is from her perspective, she doesn't recognize her accent. And she's not cheating and using magic.
7270149
My mom is fluent in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, German, and Dutch. My dad can speak German, some Norwegian, and is at least passingly familiar with Greek and Latin. I only know one language.
7271063
Follow that up with three straight days of overtime like what I've had to do this week, and you'll understand why I'm so tired that I (thud) zzzzzzzzzz.
7271196 I remember doing a bicycle trip alongside lake Ontario, it indeed at a seacoast feeling at time.
But the loss of the salty sea spray is making not quite as good.
7270189
Me, too. All the time. Supposedly, that's a sign of intelligence.
7270262
I'm inclined to think she only knows Equestrian and English. Probably a smattering of Griffon and Minotaur.
A problem for lots of writers. It depends on the poems you find, though.
7270649
7271242
I would agree with you. I remember having a conversation with someone else about ponies working jobs they don't really enjoy, that don't really have to do with their cutie mark, and I said even those ponies would feel fulfilled, because they can still use their free time to use their special talent. Like, Hayseed Turniptruck works as a window washer, nothing to do with onions (his cutie mark). But I bet he's got a windowbox full of onions that he grows at his apartment, and I bet in his spare time he enjoys making a mean onion soup he shares with his neighbors. So yeah, I think he's happy.
7271126
Well, I didn't have to when I visited my local tower (which is a smallish airport), and there is a manufacturing plant on the field. There was some talk about getting a group together to go see the local Control center, and that one would require some level of security check. I remember there was talk about some special steps the guys on visas would have had to do.
Really, I think if she just called on the radio and asked to visit they would probably let her if they wasn't much traffic.
7271242 Oh, I don't know Kalamazoo from Walla Walla, but I do enough GIS work that I can hack Google Maps easily enough. The footprint of a quarry from the air is pretty distinctive, and from that you can troll Street View for business signage in a couple of minutes. It's easier than using business directories anymore.
7271199 My town is full of abandoned limestone quarries between here and Bald Eagle Mountain. We used to joke that it would be dirt simple to hide a body In Bellefonte, juse tip it into one of the holes north of town and the buzzards would clean up for you. I'm told by local urban spelunkers there's an actual deep mine with a truly impressive deep shaft to the NW that they drove in search of construction grade limestone.
They shut down when they worked through the good veins. The quarrying outfits shifted one ridge south, and are burrowing away at the bases of Mt. Nittany and Centre Hall Mountain for the gravel consumers.
7269277
That could cause offense.
(In one of my stories, a filly asked a girl if she had mastitis, and the girl had to explain how breasts were normal on human women.)
Woah. (I also found this reading.)
One journal ends, and another begins. We're been through several months of this journal, and a lot more to go. It'll be sad once this series ends...
7269928
Evidently, you are not familiar with utilitarianism:
If Al Gore can keep Bangladesh from going under water, he will save more children than Irena Sendler. Singer pointed out that it is better twork your arse off and give the movie to charity, which hire multiple aid-works than to quit one's job and be 1 aid-worker.
7445624
7269928
President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, being nominated only two weeks after taking office. Even he said that he didn't deserve it.
7445797
A bugkeeps notifications from showing when one replies to the story generally, which I accidentally did. I paste my reply to the chapter so that the notification system works. sorry:
7445797
Whole nations cannot win the Nobel-Prize, so By awarding President Obama the Nobel Prize, the Nobel-Committee rewarded the United States of America a Nobel Prize for getting rid of President Bush, who was a menace to World-Peace (rather than staying focused on Afghanistan and Al Qaeda, he decided to Invade Iraq on false pretenses, which gave rise to Dæsh).
7283350
That book he's got is well-loved.
7299610
The good news is that we're not even at the halfway point yet.
7445797
I feel that part of the reason for it was a feeling of what he might do, but I think that Peace Prizes ought to be awarded after you've done something, not before. I bet he felt the same way.
7446642
While that might be true, if so it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the American political process works. Maybe if Obama had lead a coup (military or political) that forced Bush out of office, there would have been something to that, but he got elected in the usual way, and I would hope that the Nobel committee knows the difference.
A little bit like the CMC, perhaps? ♫♪
Not even done with the chapter and I have to stop and squee for Silver reading Kipling. Not much into poetry by itself, but I've heard a fair number of his poems sung by Leslie Fish.
7725774 YES! Just like us!
8100315
Love the silly bridy-pone feeling she might be getting to shut in, so goes to read in a tree. Just, so adorable.
I've said it before, but Liz is awesome. Still think she's not taking QUITE the right track with the pony, just due to not getting how little of the very concept of religion she does not understand. But she means well, and is doing it right beyond that. What Silver really needed was someone to sit her down and explain that it is not literal, and that she shuoldn't be equating 'God' with 'Princess Celestia'. Also that no one seems to quite get that Silver has a rather large blind spot when it comes to seeing authority figures as right, simply because they are authority figures. Which, does seem more a 'her' trait then a 'pony' trait. While I do see a larger amount of that and less innate distrust of authority then IRL, she seems to take it to extremes.
But at the same time, I always love this quote, because of the Dresden Files. Some of the most power weapons on the side of Good in the setting are the three Swords of the Cross and the Knights who wield them. Fidelachious, Esperachious, Amorachious (might have mangled the spelling) The swords of Faith, Hope, and Love. (Aka, Kusinagi, Durandal, and Excalibur). And as a sign of just how bat shit awesomely insane the Dresden Files is, even beyond Zombie T-Rex!, At one point one of the swords gets it's blade shattered, but it's reformed when taken up by a new wielder, taking the form of a weapon they identify as a symbol of goodness and justice. So the good guys now have on their side a Holy Lightsaber.
Also, turns out she's a bit sexist too Blaming Harry being a bit not the most thoughtful just on him being a boy. Also, Hermione only saved them as much as she did because she was the movie creators pet that they wanted to prop up as much as possible, and even stole moments from other characters to give to her, especially Ron. Still, odd she didn't connect the differing shopping habits as being a male/female thing. Becuase yeah.... that one isn't wholly inaccurate.
Ah April Fool's day. And no Peggy, it's not just a vague 'the French did it. Don't think 'France' even existed at the time. It was (iirc) meant as a day to mock the pegan's that saw that day as the start of the new year because they actually based things on practical, empirical things, like the turning of the seasons rather then make up random dates to call important. Did love the pranks. Just sad no-one actually pulled her tail.
Oh Silver, being all practical about non-quill pens. Lost track of how many Ponies encounter Earth fics where Twilight goes totally nuts over the very idea of ball point pens.
Some needs to teach her the best way to explain estrus to people in a way that will make them immediately stop wanting to ask questions (Especially guys) is just call it her 'Pony Period'.
Do like the "Just a bit moody and hormonal, not an uncontrolled sex fiend take on estrus, makes much more sense. Plus, be hard for things to really function if over half the population becomes mindless nympho's every few months. This really does make more sense. Besides, Cayenne is proof that ponies don't need to be in heat to be willing to fuck nearly anyone willing to put their dick in you.
Silly dedicated Weather Pony wanting to go yell at those bad clouds. So adorable.
Also,Silver, just ignore the people looking at you and Aric at the diner. They are just jealous.
Pony streaking meaning putting on clothes. I can buy that. Hell I've seen plenty of people with the idea that a pony strip club actually has the pony put on clothes during their act.
Also love her whole take on the Anthropology essay. Her ideas are all perfectly valid, but things the teacher has likely never had to even think about a student coming up with. Not many humans can just sniff out different food, or hide on a cloud. Still, her plan is really smart! Go smart pone!
LOVE the teacher here,the whole "Nothing can be judge wrong just because it's different." approach.
Also, I really want to here the response of whoever had to answer the question directed at the pony.
Buffalo... Wing.... Soup..... da fuq?
Silver's entire bit of drifting off in memory to the poem just... just.. so amazingly done! It was so, clear, so evocative, so powerful in how much feeling and emotion and meaning you could tell it had for her,and was just beautiful. Just, amazingly well done piece that I truly LOVED! If I had to give one specific thing about this story that it does amazing, outside of things related to being pony, it would be the way it uses Silver to explore poetry. I am very much not a poetry type person. I prefer solid narrative over evocative wording. Yet seeing Silver thinking about it, her outlook, the way you can tell how it touches her, it makes it all so.. so.. just so relatable and engaging and wonderful
8856890
I think that some of that would be based on a pony's proximity to Princess Celestia. We only really see the show from the perspective of the ponies who are close to the princess, who have rather good access to her, and who have seen some of her failures up close. A more distant village is going to get much less of the day to day news, and not see her in the same way, but as more of a mystical figure. Especially without the access to the media that we have these days. I think in general the ponies would have good feelings towards her, and to them she's probably very god-like (heck, to humans, too: vast amounts of magic, and lived thousands of years).
Liz knows even less about Princess Celestia, and can't rule out the possibility that Princess Celestia isn't some sort of god. Not God, of course, but a lesser sort of entity, I suppose most like the Greek gods although of course actually being able to physically appear to citizens. I think it's fair to assume that theology classes/divinity school and such like don't cover dealing with an alien species, and in fact thinking back on it I wonder if it might have been smart to not let people try to indoctrinate the ponies with religion of any sort. Although that would likely result in all sorts of pushback, so it's hard to say for sure.
Given that Equestria seems to be mare-heavy, and that most of the high-ranking officials are female, I think that that type of sexism would probably be ingrained in their culture--the idea that women make better rulers because they make better decisions, or something like that. And once again, it might vary significantly depending on where the pony's raised. I think that it's likely that all the ponies in Appleoosa trust Sheriff Silverstar, for example and aren't interested in replacing him with a mare.
And from what I remember of the books (and it's been a while since I read them), Harry was kind of an idiot about wizardly things, especially in the beginning. Not his fault of course; he got rather unexpectedly taken to a world that he didn't even know existed, so of course he'd be out of his depth at first.
As I recall, it's a 'fact' that all college students know that it was the French that were mocked and that was the origin of April Fool's Day. At least, that was the 'everybody knows' version back when I was in college. I do think that you're right that it was actually picking on the pagans, and that does raise a further question: there are still a number of different calendars in use, both religious and secular; I wonder when the Julian calendar became the default one? I'd have to think with the spread of Christianity across Europe and later with the colonial spread around the world, but I don't know that for a fact.
They have their advantages and disadvantages. If line weights are important to pony writing, then ballpoint pens would actually be kind of inconvenient (although a wider felt-tip pen would be useful). Plus, it does seem to me that recycling shed pegasus feathers to make into pens is a practical thing to do.
That would work, although of course it's not exactly the same as human periods. Probably close enough, though.
That was one trope I never understood. Nearly any advanced animal that I'm aware of, and probably some pretty simple ones, too, have at least some sort of discrimination when it comes to having sex. Survival of the fittest and all that. And I've also learned that even mares in heat aren't always interested in the stallion in their herd (nor is he always interested in them). IRL horses are also known to have sex for fun (well, presumably it's fun; hard to know with absolute certainty what they're thinking) . . . I probably can't get into too much detail here, but it's fairly well documented. Probably--although I don't know off the top of my head any particular studies--some horses are more interested in sex than others, much like humans.
I don't think that they really would, although maybe. Could be that certain clothes are 'extra sexy' (and I wrote that into a fic once). I'm not really sure, to be honest. I do like the idea that they're more attuned to scents, and so maybe certain perfumes or whatnot 'set the mood' more than clothes would.
That's the thing about different cultures or sometimes just people with different experiences. They might come up with solutions that surprise you, or have a way of solving a problem that you never though of. Or I guess sometimes a way of solving a problem that you can't do yourself (like hiding in a cloud). Interestingly, if the professor had had a pony in her class last year, the 'hiding in a cloud' approach probably wouldn't have come up. That also makes me think that there's a good chance that pegasi and possibly other flying Equestrian species (dragons or griffons, for example) are at least somewhat able to pick out which clouds have ponies in them and which ones don't.
Interestingly, that's one of the things that people most often misunderstand about cultural anthropology. The keyword is just--nobody is saying that no behaviors are wrong or misguided or whatever term you want to use, but just because it's different doesn't mean it's wrong. Or as I often say when debating something at work (usually political, usually involving some article on Facebook), 'what's the context?' Just the clickbait headline by itself proves or disproves nothing.
The dining hall at K sometimes made rather unfortunate choices when it came to food. Whether that was cheapness, incompetence, or a combination of the two is hard to say. While they never had Buffalo Wing Soup while I was there (to my knowledge), it's absolutely the kind of thing they would have done.
I'll be honest, I'd long since abandoned poetry when I started this story, and that was unfortunate. There's a lot that a poem can do that a longer story can't--I think that they're often much better at eliciting emotions. They're also more ethereal, and don't always mean the same thing to two different people, which is fine. Silver Glow almost certainly doesn't 'get' all the poems the same way that the rest of the students in Conrad's class do, but I think that that's really better for everyone.
And stepping outside of the box, writing poems from Silver Glow was difficult, but totally worth it, because they go deep down into her personality, almost moreso than anything else.
Also also, did you happen to read Antean by Cynewulf? It's amazing, and inspired in part by Silver Glow meeting the draft horses.
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Correction made; thank you!