Onto the Pony Planet--Chapter 25 Notes · 5:53pm Aug 15th, 2015
EDIT: This is the entry for the chapter that was published last Thursday.
First off, a huge thanks to my pre-readers and creative consultants: Humanist, AnormalUnicornPony, metallusionsismagic, AShadowOfCygnus, bitbrony, MSPiper, MrZJunior, Forderz, Woonsocket Wrench, and my parents.
That's right. Much like the crazy old janitor at Hogwarts (whose name escapes me at the moment) EDIT: Filch, Luna pines for the good old days when punishment meant something.
Celestia dismissing her charioteers is a reference to Waiting for Celestia by Bronetheus.
There are consequences if she forgets to do so.
A longeing cavesson (lungeing in the UK) is a piece of tack used when longeing a horse—training it at the end of a lead.
“Such a language is often passed along without a true understanding of the fundamentals . . .
Y'all know I pick on myself occasionally in the story. Or maybe you don't know that . . . anyway, the truth is I really don't actually know many of the fundamentals of English, since I learned it the way most people do: by listening to other people speak, and by reading a lot. I got a good sense of what's right and what isn't, but I don't know all the rules behind that.
I'm picking them up, slowly. Even so, when my pre-readers are making corrections, they'll often use some technical term to describe what I should have done, and I realize I don't actually know what they're talking about. Like, what is declaritive voice? Is that the literary equivalent of ALL CAPS?
Kate's leftovers for breakfast was a potato, turnip, and spinach baeckeoffe, and if you want to try it for yourself, you can find the recipie HERE.
Woman's clothing is complicated. For example, a bikini is pretty much the same as a bra and panties, yet most women wouldn't use them interchangeably. Hard to imagine that a pony would know the difference, though.
The visual dictionary isn't much help. It has seven pages of men's clothing, and nineteen pages of women's clothing, several of which are of just certain parts. For example, there are two pages of collars, and an additional page of necklines. One page of socks and stockings, and two additional pages of underwear. Jackets, pants, skirts, dresses, blouses, etc. What's a fashionista to make of all of it, especially without having the book in front of her as she's designing? How can she decide what should be seen and what should not?
You've already seen Lyra's dress in the short blog post, but here it is again for posterity.
Source
Sharing breath and resting their heads on each other's shoulders are both real equine behaviors, something a pair of horses who are close would do.
Source
Next step in the relationship is mutual grooming.
from wikipedia
As one of my pre-readers pointed out, the details of the surrender were worked out well before that iconic photo was taken. As with most things, the process took a while to work out; the process started on Aug 9. On Aug 15, he officially announced the surrender, and on Aug 28, the occupation of Japan began. It was not until Sept 2 that the official surrender ceremony was held aboard the USS Missouri, which is when the iconic photos were taken.
Yippee! New chapter!
...
Wait, InB4 published....
Snuggling detected.
I am at the beach in trunks, a-okay. I am at home in my boxers, put on some pants!
Filch. The crazy janitor is Filch.
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Nope, in way after published. I know, I had my hopes up as well.
On an unrelated note, supreme props to the good Admiral for doing his research. I salute you.
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Sorry, this one's for the chapter that came out last week, like 3321760 said.
But I'm working on Chapter 26, yay!
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Pants are overrated.
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Thanks!
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Seven pages of mens clothing? what is this, every variation for all classes through all school in a plaace where smart casual isnt permitted?
It was bad enough when one spinning wheel per person transitioned to one person handling 4 machines each with 250 spinarets at ten times the speed, how are they going to complain when the latest 3D printing woven materials gets as cheap as photocopying and even the slave filled sweat shops cant compete on price?
3321769 Yay!
See, this is why my memory is so bad, Future Me's memories conflict with Past Me's memories, in that sometimes we just don't know the proper order of events....
I think it's kind of an arbitrary point to draw the "that makes no sense" line, personally. A species of furry nudists also doesn't have a lot of reason to invent dresses and a kind of loose shirt meant more or less specifically for covering the upper body while being as close to not wearing anything on days when you still have to be not naked despite having no actual need for addtional thermal isolation or other protective covering. So what do you use? A thin, airy imitation of what real clothing looks like while being as as close to not wearing anything as you can be when having anything heavier would retain body heat and stop your sweat from into the open air and do its job of cooling you down. Basically speaking it's social camouflage when accomodating the majority group's culturally instilled body shame is enforced under threat of violence, if necessary.
For a quadruped that doesn't have any immediatly visible breasts on their exposed front, no need for artificial layers of isolation from the cold or rain, no upright posture to keep it in the intended shape and not even being forced to imitate someone else's culturally transmitted body shame, it's pretty much exactly as pointless as inventing something meant to cover up your genitals while being as close to swimming naked as you can be without actually being naked when nudity is actually the norm at all other times.
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The reason I made that choice is because both of those outfits are drawn exactly the same in the visual dictionary, they're just different colors, whereas the different types of skirt do have different appearances.
That's very true, and that's part of Rarity's problem. Clothing in MLP can generally be grouped either as protective (like the radiation suits, or winter accessories) or 'formal'. They don't have everyday wear--why would they?
Rarity has already come to the conclusion that they normally wear clothes all the time--it wouldn't take her very long to figure that out. A few pointed questions to ponies who know Dale or Kate will confirm that neither have been seen wandering around naked. But you don't know why. Are they cold all the time, becuase they lack significant body hair? Is it modesty? If it is, what are they trying to cover up, and what can they leave uncovered, and does it vary by situation? What social signals do each level of clothing cover?
The function of some of the clothing is fairly obvious, of course. The bra supports the breasts, the shoes protect the feet--which she'd know are much softer than a pony's hooves. It's reasonable to assume that she knows about undergarments, to some degree--after all, it's logical to want to protect an expensive dress from sweat, an a layer of absorbent material will do that.
If she'd had the time and the linguistic skills to question Dale, she could have answered some of those questions, but she did not, so all she's got to go off of are her memories of the visual dictionary, and her experience with the clothing she repaired.
That's the practical solution, but formal clothes are often anything but practical. I wore a tux to my friend's wedding--which was outdoors. Shoes with no tread in the sole, and on my torso I had an undershirt, a dress shirt,a vest, and then a jacket. Practical outdoor wear it ain't. But that's formal for a Western wedding. Now, in Scotland, I wore a kilt the proper way (and let me tell you, the updraft was nice) . . . yet even there, I was wearing woolen socks.
Obviously, I don't wear that normally. I've got a fairly practical work uniform, and at home I just wear pants and shirt or less.
Often pointless social camouflage, if you ask me.
Never mind their teats, the rest of their junk is immediately visible, and they don't spend any effort covering it. Not in canon, and not in this story, much to Dale's embarrassment.
Which is why the concept of a swimsuit would go right over their heads, especially since group bathing is canon. Granted, this isn't the fic where I deal with that much. FWIW, I don't actually own a swimsuit.
Are you part Scottish or did you just go for authenticity while wearing it?
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Just went for the authenticity.
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Personally, I think having a body shape with half its surface area permanently aimed at the ground would make a culture have a rather different concept of what clothes are for than a with a body shape that is both much more visible at a distance, easier to spot and with basically a ready-made canvas in the form of their own broad and permanently visible upper body as a display for images and a sort cultural, historical and political statement. Where you're from, what you do, what you believe in, all sorts of complex cues involving everything from material over color to how you wear it. Wearing a particular kind of flight jacket together with black work boots is a clear self-identification here that you consider yourself aligned with the "Neo-Nazi" mindset of far-right nationalism, racism and general hate for everyone who isn't a "proper German" in your mind, which usually means everyone who is not also a Neo-Nazi. Typically, the idea of a violent takeover of the government and instating a military dictatorship instead of a representative democracy is a kind of wishful fantasy as well.
A species of nudists who only wear clothing as a sort of textile-based accessory that is more like jewelry than something that actually needs to look a particular way just has no real historical or cultural reason for differentiating between dresses and pants, for example, or shirts that are designed with a completely different body shape in mind that they just had no business even inventing.
Something more designed in the style of maybe Maya historical clothing makes a lot more sense, both because they're effectively developed by cultural isolates and lack any real reason to develop more complex styles that reference, imitate, denounce or honor historical cultures, organizations, individuals and schools of thought that cross-pollinated in ways that hardly anyone knows the reason for anymore, but that still exist in some form even today - cravats are a actually derived from a sort of necktie a Croatian cavalry regiment presented to the kind of France as a gift when holding a parade that included wearing one themselves as part of their regimental dress uniform. That kind convoluted mixing and matching styles just doesn't work when you don't actually have different styles for sheer lack of the universal, constant use that every human culture of the last 10000 years or so evinces.
, etc
You don't need to tell me, I grew up in East Germany before the whole reunification happened and unclothed aerobics and swimming, either at one of the numerous nude beaches or just local lakes, rivers and public pools, was practically the national sport, purposefully inviting people of any age, sex or personal shape to try it. That they "officially" weren't actually meant for unclothed use didn't really matter, because people just decided they didn't actually care and did it anyway. The one time SED functionaries actually tried to ban it, there were literal riots. That kind of public attitude makes it kind of hard to grow up with any kind of illusions about how the average human body actually looks or how it works. "Family oriented" is not just a buzzword there, the idea that having to look at old people is literally a public nuisance and that letting a child see adults of the opposite sex or even its own sex naked is all but literally sexual abuse and more traumatic than actual bloody violence is not something I had any idea a lot of people actually believe. That's something you can't really comprehend when it's pretty much just what a casual outfit for going swimming with your friends looks like to you. About as nonsensical as the idea that knowing what some dude's butt looks like is equivalent to watching him take a dump.
It still haven't completely gotten used to the idea that even just not being fully clothed around other people is apparently mortifyingly embarrassing, when you consider that the whole "childhood" thing involves your eye level being at pretty much exactly crotch height for anyone over 14 and lasts rather a while. You kind of don't have any fucks to give by the time you are old enough talking to people's faces, instead of in the general direction of their genitals. Leaves you with an amazingly healthy body image and no confusion whatsoeve about what is actually normal for your age or and what that whole puberty thing involves, what with watching a bunch of older kids going through it practically right in front of me. All those body-image related self-esteem issues about my own looks that were apparently supposed to just sort of naturally develop once you reach puberty? Just kind of failed to materialize.
It's amazing what not having to base your idea of what you ought to measure up to on pornography and those fashion magazines that have so much "retouching" done to photos before they publish them, they really ought to call them artistic impressions instead.
I dunno. I mean, it's just speculation, really (at least on my end). My own theory (and I have no idea if the historical record bears this out) is that clothing was first invented to let our ancestors get by in places they otherwise could not have, and the whole "covering the junk" and other tribal markings, etc., came along later, although it certainly could have been that pelts were worn as a mark of ability, and later on it was discovered that they also kept one warm . . . or it could have been a combination of factors, and different tribes of pre-humans might have made the discovery independently and for different reasons. Camouflage is also a good theory (especially since a rotting pelt might help mask the human scent). I've never done enough research into clothing through the ages to know for sure.
I do agree that any kind of quadruped that advanced to where it could make and wear clothing would probably see it differently than a human would--and I think our ponies kind of demonstrate this.
I could see, in a world like Equestria, that there may be a desire to imitate a different culture (especially one with different biological features), and that that could have had an influence on modern fashions. Maybe unicorns invented hats in order to disguise their horns. Maybe pegasi originally wore clothes that made them look more like griffons . . . again, it's hard to say. They could have initially invented some clothing to protect them--say light-colored earth ponies wore cloaks to protect them from sunburns--and that could have been mimicked or changed over the years. Maybe their current favor towards nudity is influenced by Princess Celestia.
I do think that whatever they wear, they generally don't like to cover their cutie marks or tails, except for certain social situations. There also seem to be different social pressures depending on which town you're in--the fashions in Canterlot are very different than the ones in Ponyville, and I think we can use Rarity as a barometer for what's appropriate locally.
If you ask me, that's one of the dumbest things in American culture (and there are a lot of dumb things to pick from). A video game with graphic violence is just fine for anyone, but if you so much as show a breast . . . you've gone too far.
I personally think that's far healthier than our Puritanical viewpoint, and it's something I've been trying to get across in my Sam and Rose stories (which deal with nudity and the nudity taboo in a way this fic never will). I mean, taking what we see on the screen as their reality, everypony in Ponyville knows what everypony else's junk looks like.
Why would they? You've seen the reality of it.
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Well, it kind of proves itself true by looking at the fact that even today, a lot of native cultures and isolated groups from hot climates simply never developed and still don't commonly wear much in the way much in the way of complex clothing at all. "Undiscovered" Amazon or Pacific islander tribes that bother with much more than a "penis sheath" (exactly what it sounds like and literally covering nothing else) are rare, which may be elaborate and richly decorated, but a lot better at protecting sensitive bits from dirt and infection than at covering up much of anything.
Necessity is what causes common usage, which eventually forms habit and then social convention. Jewelry was invented at around the same time or even earlier, but with no pressing need to wear it constantly, it never became a part of "being dressed." As such, even though there is a large number of designs and varieties, most of them don't communicate a fraction as much (or as visibly) about group membership, personal pride and ethnic background as wearing a kilt would. The existence of pants makes no sense if you have no need to develop leg coverage that doesn't make riding horses impractical - which is, historically, what the earliest examples are supposedly a kind of specialist equipment for. A history of a male-only noble class of mounted warrior-elites is probably the main reason why men in the Western world don't wear skirts. The Romans certainly didn't care that a tunic looks rather a lot like a short summer dress.
Yeah, it really is ridiculous. You have no idea how much I laughed at that whole "Nipplegate" thing, for example. A whole nation flipping out over half a second of one exposed breast, when anything short of full frontal nudity is not even enough to get a PG rating here (and even that is only for stuff meant as erotica - naked people in general are acceptable even for daytime TV.) These days, most popular newspapers have a full-color glamour shot of a naked woman across literally half the front page. A toddler could buy one of those from a vending machine on the street corner more easily than an adult can buy a bottle of beer in some situations - In a few states, supermarkets are actually not allowed to sell you alcohol after 10 PM. No age restrictions on tabloids, though.
Well, as much as is visible without crouching or such, anyway. There's surprisingly little that you can see at the typical horse's eye level. Incidentally, it's pretty funny how... explicit animals can get about their mating rituals when all they've got to visibly show their interest with is a tail, rather than at least a nice singing voice or colorful plumage to display. Even spiders get a few species-specific patterns to drum on the ground or pluck on the strings of a prospective mate's web. Horses, though? "*flip* Hey handsome, come and get yourself a piece of that."
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Any why should they have? Honestly, if it weren't for cultural norms, most of us have homes which are comfortable year-round without having to wear clothing, and (as you mentioned earlier), what is the point of spending money on a bathing suit?
Luckily, the ponies have their own built-in sheaths, so they never had to develop decorative ones
I could totally see that being a minotaur thing, though. I might have to work that into a story.
It's kind of funny that you mention that, because the one thing I always wear is my rune of Thor necklace.
Kilts are actually quite comfortable, especially when worn properly. I also wore a dress once (on a dare), and have worn long tunics/robes for various role-playing or theatre things, and all I can say is that pants are overrated.
Things like that have got to be why the rest of the world so often makes fun of us.
Some of this is going to depend on how realistically one wishes to portray the show, of course. Stallions sometimes just let it hang out when they're relaxed, and we've seen enough times that a stallion rolls on his back or stands on his hind legs that you're gonna see something, and I'm pretty sure the balls would always be fairly visible from behind. An adult mare might not see as much as often as a filly, of course. As for the mares . . . IRL, it doesn't take that long to see from behind, and if they actually hold their tails as high as they're depicted in canon. . . .
Peeing a little bit helps, too. Just to make sure he gets the scent. Then when he looks over, wink at him.
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Yeah, that was kind of my point, there - they have no more reason than the ponies would to have developed or to recognize a three-piece suit, an evening dress, or why one would be for men and the other for women. Thus, they didn't. It's just one of those parts of the setting that are simply a real-world reference to keep things recognizable, not because they make any actual sense.
Also, I actually don't even know anymore where I was even going with this. I just meant to say that it was kind of funny to me that you chose single that out specifically, but are fine glossing over all the other parts of the setting that don't really make any sense. It's rather something you have to do, unless you want to rewrite the whole setting, but it's something I find always a little amusing about that whole "suspension of disbelief" thing. People pick the weirdest things to get selectively sceptical about, given all the other obvious shout-outs to real-world culture.
Funnily, that's one of the few that definitely would have cultural significance here, despite not having any actual historical background to it. It's another common Neo-Nazi symbol, along with sig runes and such. It's unfair to neopaganism in general, but those two movements really do often have a lot of overlap here. I recommend not wearing over your clothes it if you ever visit Europe.
It's a primate thing more than a biped thing, if I remember correctly, but it would be pretty funny to see the characters' reaction to seeing a giant bull-man walk up to them wearing that and nothing else. Incidentally, some cultures make them ridiculously oversized - like, half a meter long or so. No real reason, except for tradition and group identity. The next tribe over may build them at barely a quarter that size.
I've reread the latest chapter and I can't find the part of the story that's supposed to reference. Unless you refer to the part which states that Lyra likes lead him around.
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It's the name of the unicorn fortress.
3334743 That name didn't even meet my brain, before leaving the premises.
Simple reason. One is to be seen by all, the other is not.
Also, lots of bra's and especially panties are partially see-through, or made of sheer/lace/mesh type materials.
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Yes, that's true, and of course it's not the only one.
Well . . . one of the things about writing in this genre is that there are things I can work with and things I can't. I try to get the best balance I can with what's canon, and what works for the story setting, but we both know that there are so many anachronisms in the show that it's impossible to be fully accurate. One of the things that makes clothes easy to work with is because it's very well-established in the show that ponies don't normally wear them.
If I were writing this story from the ground up, there would be a lot of things that I would do differently. I'm not, so I have to deal with some of them, and I can happily ignore others. That's also one of the reasons I set out a very specific episode where the story starts (it was either Apple Family Reunion or Spike at Your Service). If I had to deal with changes in canon since then . . . well. As it is, two of the background ponies I name have been re-named, Magnum has been confirmed a unicorn, and there have also been many other changes.
Heh, I'll keep that in mind.
I think I could fit it into a post-Iron Will setting. Maybe an impressionable stallion or two might go to Rarity to have one made, or the CMC could lament that they can't wear one (or they could try and get their cutie marks manufacturing such an article of clothing and convincing some colt to wear it [and that would bring on a boatload of downvotes]).
Hey, if you're gonna wear one, might as well go big. I'd figure down to the knees at the very least.
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Ah, but try to explain that to a pony. Especially when you've got something that's all complicated lacework, which you keep hidden at all times.
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Easy. Kate, when able to speak, can just say, "Because I like it, Rarity, so make it!"
Plus, I think Kate would easily be able to explain it to Rarity.
I recommend it. Most people, if they even notice, will probably stick with throwing you a mean look or two. Others will go straight to the beer bottles. Or bricks. Depends on where you're going, of course, but in a neighbourhood with a large enough percentage of immigrants, you probably wouldn't want to let anyone see you with that.
...they go up. That's all I'll say on that. I'll let you look up the rest yourself, because it's both hilarious to look at and gives you this vague sense of inadequacy.