Onto the Pony Planet--Chapter 10 Notes · 7:39pm Feb 23rd, 2014

A huge thanks to my pre-readers: Humanist, AnormalUnicornPony, metallusionsismagic, Woonsocket Wrench, and my parents.

“Horns of a conundrum or hooves of a dilemma”: obviously, Pinkie is misusing an idiom. And speaking of idioms, champing at the bit is correct (not chomping), and you keep your own counsel, unless you have a group of people that make decisions which you are keeping in your basement. In that case, you’d be keeping your own council.

Plaster does have to dry for days before it can be painted, but you can add thin coats of plaster to wet plaster. Dyed plaster is doable, but it’s apparently tricky to get an even color. I wouldn’t know; I can’t even drywall well, and that’s supposed to be easy.

Offhoof: Besides being a handy pony pun, turns out horses are right or left hoof dominant. If you want to know which one’s the dominant side, here’s how to tell. I haven’t analyzed the episodes for character preferences, but a quick scan of images suggests that RD and Twilight are right-hooved, and Pinkie is left (based on what hoof they’re using to hold things).

Pastis is a popular (in France) anise-flavored liquor. which also contains licorice root. Some horses really like black licorice (as do I). It’s about 40% alcohol, but is traditionally consumed watered down with five parts water. I’ve never had it.
EDIT: IRL, pastis didn't come into being until the 30s, as a replacement for absinthe, but there's no reason that it couldn't have been made much earlier. I suspect that it is similar to ouzo (also anise-flavored), and that dates to the fourteenth century. And, truth be told, we humans have been fermenting things for thousands of years and then getting wasted; is it unreasonable to believe that the ponies might do the same?

Officer Crane is a nod to Molly Crane from Robert B. Parker’s Paradise novels.

Agent Richter is a nod to Cam Richter from P.T. Deutermann’s novels. If you want to read a good story about the FBI, I suggest Train Man (which doesn’t have Richter in it). It’s well-written, and the plot is actually believable.

IAFIS is the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, and CODIS is the FBI’s COmbined DNA Identification System. It should be readily apparent what each one is for.

The Grey School of Wizardry really does exist, and it really is in California (although I should mention that it’s an online institution, so anyone anywhere can enroll).

Trixie’s seating position is authentic for real-life Equines.

She gulped—the locket was platinum with a rhomb-cut bloodstone, which the stylized alicorn head of the sword’s handle and quillons nested neatly into.

Locket—the metal top of a sword sheath.
Rhomb-cut—a diamond, tapered into a smaller diamond.
Quillions—called the ‘cross guard’ in the picture. Pronounced “KEY-onze.” Fun fact—in an episode of Bones Zack made a big deal about the correct pronunciation of ‘neanderthal,’ but then mis-pronounced ‘quillions.’

The Alicorn Amulet

Draconian laws refer to laws made by Draco of Athens, who codified the laws and published them were all citizens could see, which was a good thing. Before, the judges ruled as they saw fit; now everyone could read the laws of Athens. On the down side (and this is where draconian in the sense of harsh comes into play), death was a common punishment for many offenses, even those which we'd consider trivial. It works out well as a term here, because there are a lot of Greek myths used in the show, and there are dragons.

For what it's worth, I always knew that there would come a point that Luna and Trixie were talking, and the thought of an archaic English/third person conversation struck me as delightfully weird. They're probably both thinking why can't she speak normally?

The Spirit Duplicator, also called the Ditto Machine in the US, was a precursor to the photocopier. Those of my readers who are ‘of an age’ will no doubt remember the usually purple ink with the unmistakable smell. It’s a precursor to the photocopier, and is very simple. Basically, you make a reversed copy of the master, which transfers ink to a waxed paper. That’s attached to the drum, and each time it goes around, a wick puts some alcohol on it (that’s the spirit part), which dissolves some of the ink and transfers it to the copy. You can pretty much see the whole operation in the photo. The ink was not UV stable, and the copies were usually printed on paper that was lower-quality than prison toilet paper. Sometimes there was still bark in the paper.

It’s a little too modern for the ponies (invented in 1923), but the machine is so simple, it’s not beyond their reach. Also, it’s worth knowing that a Ditto machine and a mimeograph are not the same thing, although some people—including myself, until I did the research for this chapter—use the names interchangeably.

Twilight yanked the door open to see Lily standing on her doorstep, her coat glistening with sweat.
“There’s a monster in the hospital,” she exclaimed. “I saw it! It tried to . . . to eat me!”

The next sentence was very nearly an OOC Twilight saying “Goddamit, Lily.” A somewhat intensive search of mild swears the ponies have used—or are likely to use—came up with nothing suitable. Too bad.

Perhaps it’s a sign that I’ve matured, because my senior project in college was to write a novel. It was a high fantasy novel, yet I couldn’t resist this description in one of the battle scenes: “Kenneth went through the soldiers like a tornado through a trailer park.” Although my advisor suggested I change it, I refused because I liked that description too much. (I still got top marks, becuase she was expecting something 80-100 pages long, and the story was 210 pages—by way of comparison, at this point, OPP is one-third longer, CSI is more than twice as long, and I’m not even being graded on them.)

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