Birthday Bios: Acorn Compound · 3:06pm Nov 7th, 2016
Doesn’t anybody else think that chemistry for an earth pony would be really awkward? I don’t think that putting your mouth on the vial is safe, and could hooves carry one safely (even the magical sticky hooves that we see sometimes)? Also, in Equestria, there possibly would be magical elements alongside mundane elements, which may or may not make it more dangerous.
Am I overthinking this? Well, since the current arc of BBT has Acorn here and his wife (also a chemist) as a player, I’ve got more than one reason to overthink it. But, yeah, probably.
Also, I was too lazy to draw more chemistry stuff than I’ve already got in the background. Megh, I hate backgrounds.
But, nevertheless, we’ll go on with our next pony.
Acorn Compound was born in Manehattan to Walnut Shell and Willow Oak, an inventor of many nut-based products and a gardener respectively. His father’s love of science influenced the naming of their first—and only—foal, and would influence the interests of the little colt for years to come.
Still, while he was interested in science, Acorn didn’t quite know which branch of it was for him.
He shifted interests time and time again as he grew older. As a baby, physics was what fascinated him most, and cause and effect was always fun to experiment with. He learned that most things fell down when he let go of them unless he specifically propelled them up, and that plenty of them broke when they hit the floor. And when things broke, Mom and Dad were upset.
When he was a toddler, he was fascinated with biology. He has picked apart his mother’s flowers in trying to find out what they’re made of—much to Willow’s dismay. He has also tortured countless bugs at the park to see what they’re made of, and it took him a while to realize that they could feel pain as he did. He wanted to know how trees grew so tall, or how a foal could grow into a full-grown pony. And he wondered how everything could be so different from each other.
When he was school-aged, he took up an interest in thaumaturgy. Along with his best friend Capricorn, a unicorn that was just as curious as he, they attempted to decipher the mysteries of magic and how it related to the world around them with their eight-year-old minds. As much as he was teased for being an earth pony studying magic, Acorn and Capricorn still investigated it. They tried to find out the why and how of cutie marks, only knowing that it was magic, and marked the differences between the magics of the three pony tribes.
Finally, in his pre-teen years, Acorn came across chemistry. Feeling a little jealous of Capricorn earning his cutie mark in magic, Acorn wanted to try making his own kind of magic. As an earth pony, he couldn’t cast spells, but perhaps chemistry and its magical cousin alchemy could give him an edge. Studying both the mundane and the magical elements, he performed experiments with the chemistry set he got from his father. Figuring out how to make crystal candy in his room and sharing it with his classmates was what landed him his cutie mark.
He managed to get his mark just in time to show Capricorn, who was getting ready to leave for Canterlot to attend Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Promising that they’d be buddies forever, they said their goodbyes. Over the years, they wrote each other about what they’ve learned in their respective fields.
Acorn undoubtedly wanted to develop his chemistry talent like his friend was developing his, so he worked at mixing more elements to create new things. Some things he succeeded in, some things blew up in his face (sometimes literally). Sometimes he simply tried to investigate the contents of whatever crap he found in a Manehattan street or the water from the harbor. But, in his talent, he came to appreciate how the world he lived in was a complex mixture of all sorts of sciences and magics. How it all came together to perfectly sustain life still amazes him.
When a young adult, his parents suggested attending the university—it never crossed his mind because he was too busy just investigating and inventing on his own terms. Still, seeing as he needed a degree to actually get a job in the field, he agreed to it.
When attending his science classes (along with classes of other subjects he didn’t personally care for but had to do anyway if he wanted to pass), he was partnered with a feisty mare named Cocoa Butter. Now, as friendly as he was, he did not like her abrasive personality. While she could control herself during experiments (because those required being delicate, and were sometimes dangerous), she had a tendency to kind of bully him in casual settings. Naturally, he tried to avoid her.
It came to a head when she teased him for being scatterbrained, and outright said that he was probably an idiot who was just lucky. Of course, that made him explode at her about how he had been invested in science for years, and he learned so much from his constant investigation from the time he was small. He made it a point to mention that her constant ribbing him was annoying him and wasn’t going to help him fix his scatterbrained nature, and that she was the idiot for thinking so.
Of course, he regretted his outburst when that insult came out and actually made Cocoa cry. His spirits low, he and Cocoa avoided each other for about a month before Acorn had enough and apologized for being so harsh. In turn, Cocoa apologized for being such a jerk to him and muttered about how her parents were right about her abrasive personality. With that, they partnered up in experiments again, this time on more friendly and gentler terms.
Their partnership became a close friendship, which became love before either knew it. Meeting each other’s families and friends went fairly smoothly, their dates consisted of them mocking pop culture and taking advantage of the views that Manehattan’s skyscrapers provided, and experiments just weren’t fun without their other half. Though, engineering homemade fireworks was something Acorn wanted to do solo—after all, he was going to propose to her with it!
And so they were wed. And with marriage, came another combination that they were going to try—that of making a baby. However, when it turned out that Acorn wasn’t all that fertile, he set off to fix that. Despite the doctor’s warnings, he attempted to make a fertility potion. His first few tries failed, with one just turning into fruit punch, another exploding, and another turning him into a mare for a few days (the less said about that, the better).
Finally, he successfully made one, and eleven months later, their son Peanut Butter Sandwich was born. The little colt turned out to be a mischievous thing that got into stuff (though thankfully it was mostly sweets he got into and not the chemicals in the lab). Acorn and Cocoa still loved their little scamp, and got a kick out of playing with him. As Peanut got older, it became evident that he was into sports.
Happy as he was as a father, Acorn did wonder if Peanut was lonely as an only foal. Acorn himself had been a bit lonely at home without a sibling at call to share his experiences with right then and there, instead of just relaying it to a friend afterwards. When sharing this with his wife, she was blunt in telling him, “It’s not all rainbows, honey—Hay Burger and I don’t really get along.” Still, she wasn’t going to stop him from whipping out that fertility formula and trying for a second foal.
Peanut was four when Acorn and Cocoa conceived again (just before that potion expired, too), though it was nearly a year before the foal was born. During that time, Cocoa’s brother Hay Burger became a father to Peanut’s cousin Cheese Sandwich, who was a bit of a testing ground for big brotherhood.
Then, at the end of December, their daughter Ice Cream Sandwich was born. And Acorn discovered that Peanut was more jealous of the new baby stealing his attention than relieved of “loneliness”. Not to mention two foals were more of a hoofful than one! Despite this turn of events, he didn’t regret going for a second foal.
The years rolled by, and Acorn’s life was that of hopping in between tasks related to the job he had then and spending time with his family. He liked to visit his brother-in-law, if only to watch his kids play with his nephews Cheese and Tomato. Peanut was a bit of a bully toward his sister and older cousin, but left Tommy alone until he was around four (and even then, picking on Tommy brought out Cheese’s bad side).
He comforted his wife when her parents died within a few weeks of each other, and later on when her relationship with her brother fell apart. He had been privy to the arguments between her, Hay, and Hay’s wife over how their power imbalance was hurting the family, and was always making sure the kids were out of the room when fights got too heated. One fight was so bad, that Cocoa up and took a job offer from Seaddle to get away from that family.
Now suddenly thrust into a job as a college professor on the other side of the country, Acorn made the best of it. He admits that he and his wife have a little too much fun scaring college students with some of the more explosive of the experiments. He still keeps in contact with his parents, as well as old friend Capricorn, who is a teacher himself at Canterlot’s acclaimed magic school.
He watched his son grow into a basketball star, and his daughter take in interest in dairy farming of all things. While Ice Cream had always been a little strange, the fact that she was always more interested in socializing with cows than ponies should have tipped him off to her talent. At the very least, he did get to impart some science-y wisdom to her in order to help her.
He got to meet nephew Cheese Sandwich when he was grown, and was surprised that the shy colt had become a party pony. Due to some tension between Cheese and his brother, Acorn was left wondering what Tomato’s talent was until meeting him one summer (Cheese brought him after said tension was over, of course).
However, as much as he enjoys his life, Acorn still likes a challenge, and will take one when the opportunity presents itself—even if his wife thinks he’s crazy.
Chemicals and a lack of thumbs do seem like a dangerous combination. That said, there's probably plenty of equipment designed with hooves in mind, much like the tongs in the image.
In any case, it's always nice to see a scientist, though I don't envy Acorn having to be a bystander in the Sandwich family drama. Still, he came out of it relatively unscathed, which is more than can be sad for most of the others involved.