Onto the Pony Planet--Chapter 24 notes · 2:00am May 3rd, 2015
OPP 24 Blog Post
A huge thanks to my pre-readers and creative consultants: Humanist, AnormalUnicornPony, metallusionsismagic, AShadowOfCygnus, bitbrony, MSPiper, MrZJunior, Forderz, Woonsocket Wrench, and my parents.
Bumblesweet is from the IDW comics
Tealove is from the IDW comics
Sugargrape is from the IDW comics, and there was also a blind bag toy of her, which I have on my toolbox at work.
all three are from the comic pony wiki
Sometimes I wonder if some of the IDW artists are poking fun at Hasbro by using ponies for which there are toys, but no canon appearances.
Heather Rose is an OC, who was inspired by ShadowOfCygnus' reading of Heidenroslein.
Hazel Broach is an OC. She was the thatcher in Silver Spanner, Journeymare.
Even though he'd known them only for a couple of weeks, it felt longer
As hard as it is to believe, it's been just over a year in real time since Dale met Starlight and Diamond Mint. It's been so long, in fact, that Starlight is now officially named Lucky Star.
Dr. Dillamond is from Wicked. I saw the play once, I think, but it was so long ago I don't remember it at all. I was researching secondary character names like I always do: skim through Wikipedia articles and see if something fits right. I noticed in his description that Dr. Dillamond is a goat . . . that's kind of close to a pony, so I thought it was appropriate.
Cottage Inn is a pizza chain in Michigan, now with a few locations in Ohio, too. If you live anywhere else, you've probably never heard of it. They're more upscale that the other two Michigan-based pizza chains: Little Ceaser's and Domino's.
Matt is a friend from college; his wife Jen is a published writer. I'm not including their last names in case they happen to read this, but—in case they happen to read this—in college, Matt was also known to some as Matt-in-the-hat.
The Voynich manuscript is a baffling manuscript from the fifteenth-century (the age was proved with carbon dating) that is written in a language nobody has ever encountered before.
source
to the Wikipedia article
I haven't read up all that much on it, so I suggest that if you have an interest in this type of thing that you read the Wikipedia article and follow the links wherever they lead. Like the Equine books that the professors have, the Voynich manuscript is too elaborate to be a hoax (probably), yet it cannot be translated into any known language or language system.
I should also point out that people have been attempting to translate the Voynich manuscript for centuries; the professors have only had the Equine books for a couple of weeks.
Dr. Cunningham was one of my English professors, and had the dubious priveledge of being my first editor. Our college required that we do a senior project, so I wrote a novel, and she edited it. I could probably find some way to put up a link to the novel, since I have a .pdf copy of it.
Tendons in fingers are complicated. Best I could tell from looking at a few anatomical sketches is that each fingerbone has a tendon to make it go one way or the other, and those attach to muscles in the forearm. The tendons have to be split in order to get around the joints . . . in short, there are a lot of things going on inside your fingers. Maybe that's why the surgeon had to do so much work to put my finger back together.
Raze and raise, I was told in middle school, are the only two words in the English language which are both homonyms and antonyms. Whether or not that's true, the two words are pronounced the same, and they do have opposite meanings. Razing a building is a totally different process from raising a building, and if somebody tells you to do that, you'd better clarify whether they want a building or a pile of rubble at the end of the day.
I always felt the music in the spa was sort of new-age, although I probably am misusing the term, and an actual music major is free to set me straight. But here, listen for yourself to the background music: it's one of my favorite bits of BG music in the show.
A special bit of thanks here to D G D Davidson, who answered some questions about sapient aquatic pony species in the MLP universe. I knew that seaponies were a thing, and have read the comic with the merponies and the kelpie, although I wasn't sure of all the lore which surrounded them in earlier generations. He gave me a helpful primer (and reminded me of the kelpie).
While I'm not sure it's official canon, it makes sense for the Sirens to be like the sirens of myth: using their songs to lure sailors to their deaths. And I think we all know why they haven't been seen in a thousand years. . . .
Nations and Countries are not actually the same thing. They are, however, often used interchangeably.
By the strictest definition, a nation is a group of people who share the same culture but who do not have sovereignty (it could be religion, language, ethnicity, or whatever); a country is a territory with its own government.
Canadien (or Canadian, depending on where you're from) coins are common in Michigan (and probably all of the border states).
source
The abbreviated text is Dei Gratia Regina
The banner which Berry Punch mentions is out at Golden Harvest’s farm is, of course, the “Welcome Princess Celest” banner. MSPiper drew this comic to my attention:
source
Admiral, I expect 4,000 words on my desk regarding this by the end of the month. (Not really)
Also the comprehension feels like it took a big jump in the last chapter. You've done so well and you're skirting the line, be careful my friend.
AND last but not least. Remember how I was telling you not to rush? Well I finished re-reading OPP on the bus headed to the movies. When I got home there was a chapter.
Stalker.
Ehh, the one here I don't really care for. Its alright... I guess, but is a crappy pizza as left over the next day.
I prefer Little Ceasar's over it, but not Domino's (even though we don't have one of those in town anymore).
The only thing I can think of is that the ones writing the banner use software that mistakenly assumes a carriage-return, line-feed at the end of the line, but since there aren't two lines, when it goes to erase the you-printing characters it mistakenly removes the last two legitimate letters instead.
I'll open a JIRA ticket for this issue right away!
I had such hope for you! It seemed as if at last the curse had been broken. But then I returned from my evening toil, and found that once more you had succumbed to temptation and chose to "tweak" stuff right before publishing! I know not how much longer my soul shall hold out if we must be forced to further endure such travesty.
In completely related news, some lines got left out of the published version of this chapter. I suspect there may be some confusion over dialogue that ended up rather more implicit than originally intended.
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Such is the power of timeskips! However, bear in mind that the dialogue we see is "tidied up" from the way the characters are actually talking. We get to see the actual intent behind their words, whereas the characters themselves are stuck guessing their way through and mangling the grammar something fierce. In particular, note that when Rarity's talking, the narration specifically points out that a large portion of her speech goes over Dale's head, but it's rendered in proper English for the readers' benefit.
The Voynich Ms. was pretty much debunked as a hoax (if an old one), likely used to bilk a noble or merchant for the status of having a rare manuscript.
Yeah..we see a lot of canadian coinage at my workplace, its a unwritten rule that we take canadian currency at face value, but anything else has to be changed out if found in the drawer
Tealove and Bumblesweet have blind-bag toys as well, actually. Bumblesweet was in the original set (now known as "wave 1", and Tealove was in the "wave 2" set which, so far, has only been released in Europe. (I got one from a seller in the UK, and she's "supervising" the mug warmer on my desk right now.
) Tealove's mini figure was also included as an "exclusive" with the Mini Pony Collector's Guide book.
"New Age" is one of those nebulous categories that's hard to pin down anyway; it's more of a marketing catch-all for instrumentals that don't fit any other more rigidly-defined genre such as classical symphones or "easy listening." Mike Oldfield, Mannheim Steamroller, and Jean-Michel Jarre are all considered "new age", even though it's highly unlikely that any spa would be playing Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" or "Amarok" as background music...
Buffalo, NY here. I can confirm the regular presence of Canadian currency in the area, most often pennies. They don't suspect a thing.
I am the wind.
ΔΓ
AJ.... I hate to break it to you...
But your therapist is a racist!
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There's still a lot that's getting missed by both sides, but a week's worth of intensive language lessons are beginning to show some payoff for Dale and Lyra.
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Cottage Inn has some pretty good pizzas, IMHO, but they're expensive, and they aren't very good the next day. Domino's is better than it used to be, that's for sure. I remember when you used to get two pizzas when you ordered Little Ceaser's, and I used to be a delivery driver for them, when I lived in Kalamazoo.
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Nah, Berry Punch and Golden Harvest just aren't very good spellers.
3041586 maybe spatial dynamics? After all, the excuse was that they couldn't fit it all in...
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I did try to give you (and other pre-readers) a chance to read the finished product before I published. Besides the notes on the gDoc, I was going through my own paper copy, and it's a long process.
I couldn't hold out any longer. ObeyBunny threatened me once with large-breasted fangirls armed with crowbars, and I live in fear that one day they'll show up if I don't publish soon enough.
I'm not sure how that happens. It isn't the first time I've noticed that. I made that one correction, and I'll go through and take care of the rest a little bit later.
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I'm not sure if the debunking is official, since (from what little reading I've done about it) there are things in the text which appear to be far to sophisticated for a hoax. I'm not saying it isn't--I don't know one way or the other. Certainly, though, an academic who studies books would be aware of its existence.
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When I was a kid, most Canadians would let you buy stuff with American currency (and it was a good deal for them, since American currency was worth 40% more than Canadian). During the recession, there was a point when the Canadian dollar was worth more than the American; I don't know if that's true any more. I never worry about it too much when it shows up in the till.
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I've always made it a point to use more obscure ponies in most of my stories (Ambrosia has more screen-time in OPP than Twilight, for example), and I seriously can't help but wonder if some of the comic artists are kinda mocking Hasbro for making toys of ponies who don't exist yet.
Actually, it's kind of funny that in some cases, I've used a BG pony and only then discovered that there was a vinyl figure of her.
I'm with you on that. One of those musical catch-all categories, I guess. I've got an iTunes playlist I titled "New Age Stuff," and it's got Dead Can Dance, Eluvite, Enya, and Loreena McKennit in it (among others), since I couldn't think of any other way to classify them.
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I gotta figure the penny supply is slowly drying up, since there aren't any new Canadian pennies, I've been told. They've done what we should have did and gotten rid of them. I seem to recall seeing a fair number of quarters and nickles out here. Dimes felt like the rarest--but maybe that was because I liked them so much, since they have a sailboat on them.
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I was looking for a G4 seapony who wasn't Lyra . . . but I saw that cartoon, and couldn't help myself.
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According to current figures, 1 USD is worth roughly $1.21 CAD
Actually, I would've thought the Rohonc Codex to be closer to pony script than the Voynich. Granted, while the Voynich is closer in tone to what ponies would probably write (at least to me), I would say that the Rohonc is probably a closer candidate to the actual writing system,
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Good to know--I'll be sure to get my American dollars changed for Canadian dollars, then.
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I was just using as an example of a book which hundreds of years of study haven't been able to translate or discredit, rather than an example of the pony writing system. I'd always imagined that pony letters (at least for Earth Pony and Pegasus script) would be simple letters with mostly straight lines. Unicorns would use more letters in their alphabet, and they'd want them to be as curved and flowing as possible, just so that the other two tribes couldn't properly duplicate their script.
3041903 I really love that comic too! It's a classic!
Shoo bee doo!!!
I must say, I would never associate pizza with either cottages or inns.
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Not unless you want to take a loss. If US$1.00 = CAN$1.21, that means the Canadian dollar is worth less than the US dollar, not more -- it takes one dollar and twenty-one cents of Canadian money to buy one dollar of US money. (Or, conversely, one dollar of US money buys $1.21 of Canadian money.)
XKCD Voynich manuscript
I think that's the best interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript I've ever seen.
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Yeah, I guess that is kind of a silly name for a pizza chain. Not that Little Ceaser's brings to mind pizza, either . . . or Domino's. I guess Michiganders are really bad at naming chain restaurants.
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Important detail that wasn't in the blog post: I'm going to Canada for a week, which is when I'd want to change my currency.
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...Seems legit. Funny story, I just got back from playing Pathfinder (which, in case you didn't know, is what 4th edition D&D should have been). I'm playing a gnomish bard/cleric.
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There used to be a pizza place in Salt Lake City called "Der Rathskeller." Now that is a name that doesn't seem as if it would be even remotely associated with pizza...
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There was a restaurant in the town where I went to high school called the Rathskeller. My one and only visit there was with Jon Faddis, who'd guest-performed with our high school jazz band (our band director knew him). He bet me dinner that I couldn't throw popcorn down the front of Sarah's shirt. I didn't win the bet, although I gave it my all.
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At least Ceaser was Italian in a broad sense.
3045818 Nice. I normally play a drunken arse of a wizard... then again everyone I play with groans whenever he comes to the table because that character tends to be the direct cause of tpk's.
I should probably stick to fighters.
hehehe... I get to say I've seen cottage in pizza places and can visit a few (or have eaten there before, pizza place names get mixed up). And I was unaware that Little Caesars and Domino's were Michigan-based. I live in a great place to love pizza
although I'm from Ohio, not Michigan. close enough.
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I will grant you that, although I don't think the Roman Empire was known for its pizza. However, I could be wrong.
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I had a friend in college like that--she normally played a kender really well. As the DM, I loved her. The rest of the party? Not so much.
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Domino's is based in Ypsilanti (or near it, anyway), and they've got a big complex called 'Domino's Farms" right off the interstate (intersection of M-14 and I-275, IIRC). Could probably look that up on Google Maps, but I'm just feeling lazy. Anyway, used to pass it every time we went to my grandma's house.
Mike Ilitch owns Little Ceaser's, as well as the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Tigers.
No offense to your great state, but from my perspective, it's something that's between where I am and where I want to be
That having been said, my consulting vet (who's my former girlfriend) is an Ohioan. And your roads are a lot nicer than ours.
I read somewhere that the Voynich manuscript may not be based off an Indo-European or Uralic (i.e. Hungarian) language. Rather, it may be a Sino-Tibetan (i.e. Chinese, Thai) or Austroasiatic (i.e. Vietnamese) language, written in the plain using a nearly a priori script.
The number of letters in the words (2-10 letters per word, often reduplicated) can match up with the rich vowel and tonal systems of those languages. Here's a PDF of the entire manuscript, from beginning to end. If you really want to read the actual thing, it's at Yale University.
If you find that interesting, try its modern-day equivalent: The Codex Seraphinianus. It's arguably more surreal than Equestria itself. The PDF of that can be found here.
I need a new hobby.
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I heard (from the Wiki, so draw your own conclusions) that attempts to use the normal translation/decoding methods (frequency analysis and so forth) didn't match it with any known Asian language, nor does it appear to be an attempt to write an Asian language using made-up characters (because of course the book would have been written before there were conventions for 'Latinizing' a language like Chinese). These attempts apparently also included Chinese researchers, who I would presume know what they're doing.
I was actually originally thinking of the Codex Seraphinianus, since I had somewhat recently come across an article about it. Unfortunately, I had forgotten what it was called, and came across the Voynich manuscript when I was trying to find out if you could carbon-date books. (I assumed you could if they were really, really old, but I wasn't sure how recent they could be and still get a usable result.)
Princess Twilig is best princess.
All hail Twilig!
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I usually play a tiefling monk. He's the most paladin-esque character I've ever played.