The Siren: Notes for Chapter 1

These are the notes for Chapter 1 of my fanfic The Siren. Don’t read until after you’ve read the chapter.

If you imagine that the character tags are being added organically as you read, we begin with only one tag: .

The Friendship Express, Southwest Line.

See this DeviantArt entry of mine. The Southwest Line is the one shown in “Over a Barrel” between Ponyville and Appleoosa. And therefore it must be the one between Canterlot and Ponyville as well, based on the relative locations of those three towns.

Year One of the Post-Reconciliation Era (PRE).

Here’s the dating system I’m using in this story: Luna re-joining Celestia as co-rulers of Equestria marks the start of the Post-Reconciliation Era (PRE). Before that was the 1,000 years of the Princess Era (PE). Before that was 203 years of Celestia and Luna ruling together, the Era of the Two Princesses (ETP). Before that was 513 years of the pony tribes living together from First Hearthswarming, the Classical Era (CE). Before that, there was no dating scheme that everypony at the time agreed to, so the years are counted backwards and it’s called the Pre-Classical Era (PCE).

In previous stories I’ve used season names and avoided days of the week. This time around I’m sticking with the same calendar that we use. The year that the series starts have the same days of the week as our year 2010.

Tuesday.

It’s a joke, more celebrated by fan-authors than episode authors, that everything that happened on the show happened on Tuesdays, so the inhabitants of Ponyville knew to stay indoors on that day.

Lemon Peel

This character is derived from Emma Peel, who was a main character in the British television series The Avengers from 1967–1968. She’s a Renaissance Woman who was recruited to be a spy by her co-star in the show, John Steed, after the disappearance of her husband. She was played by Diana Rigg.

Mrs. Peel (as she was always called) was interesting in 1960’s television because she was the complete equal of her male counterpart, and that’s how Steed treated her. In some episodes she’d be captured by the villain and have to be rescued by him, and in other episodes he’d be the one captured and she would be the one to rescue him. Of the many aliases she assumed to carry out her spy work, her most-common one was as a writer for a fashion magazine.

Speaking of fashion, the production of The Avengers was very tied into the swinging fashions of contemporary London, with major designers hired to create Peel’s outfits, which were mass-produced and sold to the general public the same year their episodes aired. So I felt compelled to spend time describing everything Lemon Peel wore, using this website devoted to those fashions. For example, her outfit here is a color variant of this one:

Peel’s cutie mark is the symbol used in the background of the Series 5 DVD set in America.

(By the way, if you’re interested in watching episodes of these two series (seasons) of The Avengers, it is available to stream on Amazon Prime, and to download on Amazon Video, Apple TV and Vudo, but can be found for free with commercial interruptions on Pluto.tv.)

Peel’s Fellow Passengers

Lipstick Vanity is from “Buckball Season”. Upper Crust, the prototypical Canterlot snob, appears in the episode “Sweet and Elite”, with non-speaking appearances in a variety of other episodes, often with her husband Jet Set. The explanation of that odd dollar sign cutie mark is original to me.