noise."Story Notes: Hannah Hawes, Shop Assistant · 1:18am Apr 30th, 2018
This was written for the Rare Story Prompts Challenge #1: First or Second person HiE, with a FEMALE point of view character..
Interestingly, even when the contest was limited to second person, I'd written a fic that almost qualified. The only part it was missing was the 'in Equestria.' Also, it was mature, and that's not allowed in the contest, either.
When the rules were expanded to also allow first person, I could have taken the easier way out . . . but gosh darn it, I'm going to go down a path maybe nobody has trod just yet: a second-person HiE from a female point of view that's not mature.
Jim Jam, the minotaur store owner, is named after a real bull who competes in the bull riding arena. Or competed; I'm not sure if he's still active, to be honest. For the sake of completeness, here's a link to a YouTube video of him in action.
Hannah Hawes, our protagonist, was named in two parts. The first name came at the suggestion of my co-worker. Since I'm tired of just calling him 'my co-worker,' I asked him what name he wanted to be known by online, and he said Rodolfo. So, henceforth, he's Rodolfo. Anyway, the point is that I needed a good name for my protagonist and he suggested that, because he likes the name.
Her last name, Hawes, came from Harriet Boyde Hawes, who was an archeologist and nurse. She cared for injured soldiers during the Greco-Turkish war, the Spanish-American War, and World War I. She also discovered a Minoan settlement and palace on Greece and taught at Wellesly College.
Anadolu is taken from a pony breed; Anadolu ponies are Turkish.
Galician is taken from a pony breed; also called the Galician Mountain Horse, they're from Spain.
Manipuri is taken from a pony breed; it's a breed developed in India.
Pure Clear is an extremely sideways ponification of Kate Warne, who was a female detective in the 19th century (in fact, she was the first female Pinkerton detective). She helped uncover a plot to assassinate president Abraham Lincoln, and did intelligence work for the Union during and after the Civil War.
Antikythera Orrery: the Antikythera Mechanism is a computer discovered in a Greek shipwreck. It's believed to be over 2,000 years old (somewhere between 100-205 BC) and would have likely be used to calculate eclipses and astronomical positions. In the West, nothing like it was developed until the fourteenth century.
In case y'all were confused, an Orrery is any mechanical model of the solar system, and IIRC, we've seen them in canon. Although I can't find an image of one, but this is the general idea. . . .
Eleia is named after the Andravida horse, which is a light draft horse from Greece.
The New Lunar Republic for those of you who are new is, according to know your meme, "a popular Brony fanfiction concept that takes place in the world of MLP:FiM. The New Lunar Republic is led by Princess Luna, and plots to overthrow Princess Celestia's Solar Empire." More importantly, it spawned some really cool anthems and are. I don't know if that meme is dead now but I can't recall seeing any NLR or Solar Empire stuff on Fimfiction in quite a while.
Interestingly, I'm about 90% certain my Faceboook backdrop art thing is still a NLR banner. For what that's worth.
Somnamubla is a G1 human witch character who steals the youth of the ponies. It also turns out that she's a pony and not a villian in the current generation which I didn't realize until I was just now working on the blog post. I did think that the name seemed awfully familiar, though. 
Thus, I changed it to Grogar. He's also a G1 villain, and won't be confused with somepony in G4.
Source
Dr. Caballeron, as even I know, is one of Daring Do's rivals.
Kêr-Is, more commonly known as Ys, is a mythical city on the coast of Brittany that was swallowed by the ocean, which basically makes it French Atlantis.
Lajos' knife is named after Lajos Kossuth's pocketknife, which is named after the Ship of Theseus, which, since this is probably not making any sense to 99% of the room is a rather roundabout way of saying object perminance.
See, with things when is the same thing not the same thing any more? If you have a ship, let's say, and over the course of its life, you replace every single timber, rope, piece of ironwork, and so forth, is it still the same ship, or is it a new ship? The same question applies to Lajos' knife, which has had the blade and handle replaced.
Right (hand) rule is the rule that when you're going through a maze, always keep your hand on the right wall, and when you get to an intersection, turn in the way that allows you to keep your right hand on the wall. In general, that allows you to either find the other exit (if there is one) or to find your way back out again. It's not necessarily the fastest way to solve the maze, though, and depending on the design of the maze, Wikipedia tells me it's possible to become trapped.
Caerbannog bunnies, also known as the Legendary Black Beast of Arrrghhh, is the rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It looks cute and fluffy, but it'll tear your head off.
Swamp Rabbits are the not-so-fictional rabbits that live in swamps (obviously) in the southern United States and have so little respect for authority that one of them once attacked President Jimmy Carter. While he was fishing. In a boat. Because that's what swamp rabbits do.
Jackelopes are just listed here for the sake of completeness. There aren't any of them in the story
Pony skeletons are adorable.
"Open the door and the thing will be there" is the ending line of a riddle, which I remember being frustrated by when I was in college. The internet was new back then, and when you did find things on it besides dancing hamsters, they'd often be incomplete, and such was the case with these riddles. It was a long list of supposedly historic riddles. There were no solutions to any of these riddles, so you couldn't cheat. And some of them were cut off; this was one. If I remember correctly, there was one complete stanza, ending with the line "Open the door and the thing will be there, so speak soft and"
It's google-translated (probably badly) into Scots Galic.
There are, from what I was able to determine wiht some googling, two kinds of tactical bra. One is designed for restraint purposes, sort of like a sports bra on steroids. Or else the tactical part is that it's camo. Not entirely sure about that (I honestly didn't go too deep into product descriptions). The other kind, the one that Hannah has, features small hidden compartments to keep things in.
They also apparently make ones with built-in holsters which seems like it would be uncomfortable, but what do I know?
It wouldn't be a proper Indiana Jones style adventure without an airship, IMHO. They are canon, and they're the perfect way to be rescued from the top of a temple. Plus, pegasi can probably instinctively operate them, at least to an extent. From what I know, early airships had the engines controlled independantly, rather than by a direct command from the helm.
I was trying to think of a name for it and mentioned this at work to Rodolfo; he suggested I could be traditional and go with Hindenberg. I could have ponified that to Horsenberg or something like that, but then I decided that it didn't really need a name since they crash it anyways.
Most designs have the gas kept in several bladders—basically giant balloons—since you don't really want to design an airship so if it gets one leak, the whole thing crashes. Also, it's probably way more practical to seal smaller, individual balloons rather than the whole airship.
I was originally intending for this to be more SoL and less adventurery, and puzzled over it for a while. I even considered using various plot generators and whatnot to come up with some kind of a hook for it . . . luckily, Rodolfo came through and suggested the Indiana Jones idea, and from that point on it was off to the races.
Anyhow, before that had been decided on I used one story generator which was basically an online Mad-Lib, and I thought I should share the results with y'all, becuase they're quite humerous. Admittedly, I wasn't all that careful putting in names and nouns and whatnot . . . but I'm fairly sure the AI came up with things that I never suggested to it.
Hair Girl Person
A Short Story
by Admiral Biscuit and a (questionable) AI
Girl Person had always loved crowded A Store with its sad, silent stuff. It was a place where she felt happy.
She was a hair, eyes, oat smoothie drinker with skinny breasts and dark hair all the rest. Her friends saw her as a flaky, fine female. Once, she had even brought an inexpensive vase back from the brink of death. That's the sort of woman he was.
Girl walked over to the window and reflected on her full surroundings. The hazy teased like work chipmunk.
Then she saw something in the distance, or rather someone. It was the figure of Horse Friend. Horse was a tail pony with nose breasts and scars all the rest.
Girl gulped. She was not prepared for Horse.
As Girl stepped outside and Horse came closer, she could see the squashed glint in her eye.
Horse gazed with the affection of 3907 ears bumpy birdhorse. She said, in hushed tones, "I love you and I want a hug."
Girl looked back, even more musty and still fingering the dickish tree. "Horse, five," she replied.
They looked at each other with annoyed feelings, like two bumpy, brainy bird play at a very muzzle work, which had jazz music playing in the background and two hoofs uncles murder to the beat.
Girl regarded Horse's nose breasts and scars all the rest. "I feel the same way!" revealed Girl with a delighted grin.
Horse looked tired, her emotions blushing like a big, bloody book.
Then Horse came inside for a nice drink of oat smoothie.
Fun fact about Galician and Manipuri, as far as I can remember, they are also the name of actual human language, well more local dialect, but still.
4850312
I wouldn't be surprised if they are. I picked off a list of pony breeds things that sounded like they could be languages, since I'm not overly creative when it comes to inventing that kind of thing.
Okay, but how the heck do you justify the "self-insert" tag? Second person HiE does not equal "self insert", Biscuit... not unless that character is actually you
4850529
I was gonna check that and then forgot. I'll fix it, thanks!
4850529
Sometime SI is used to describe a genre of fan fiction story with a "fish out of water" kind of plot, where the main character is an OC that find him/herself into fantasy world X, even though the main character is not even remotely based on the author.
But yes, this story did not seem to qualify.
Meanwhile, for my entry I wrote a trollfic instead of sleeping.
I did consider just writing another couple of chapters of The Roommate that I've been thinking about doing for years, but this was less effort.
Anyway, congratulations on winning the contest.
Grogar has been mentioned in G4, though in a villainous context. And possibly a fictional one, which would make him a perfect Daring Do adversary.
4850295
I feel cheated knowing that this glorious bit of prose never made it into the story. Also, I now want to see Hannah resuscitate a cheap vase.
led, dammit!
As I remarked in the story already, though, it's a dumb concept; a republic is led by elected officials, not by a princess
4850546
I wasn't sure if that was also needed, since 'you' are supposed to be the main character, and therefore 'you' are inserting 'yourself' into the main character or something. But thinking about it, self-insert would be me being the main character . . . Admiral Biscuit goes to Equestria. . . .
4850599
It's not like I've never written trollfics when I should have been sleeping.
Aw, man, I kinda wish you had to give me some more material to
stealbe inspired by.4850715
I did see that in the wiki. And then I got a bit confused, 'cause when I was looking for a picture someone had done a IDW comic-style with Grogar in it, and I had to figure out if he'd ever appeared in them . . . which appears to be no.
Isn't it amazing? I'm not sure how she'd resuscitate a cheap vase, but I bet she could do it.
4850766
Heh, oops.
Well, who's to say that they don't have some provision to elect a new princess? Maybe they have 'democratic' elections where you can choose to vote for Luna or the rest of your life in the salt mines.
4850853
Ah yes. The Russian communist version of a "republic".
4850845
Well, Wanderer D did it once, it was weird.
4850766
Well, Star War had elected Queen at some point
And more seriously, there is something as an elective monarchy, although it is still called a monarchy usually.
It could also be a constitutional Monarchy.
4850853 An important choice.
4850875
See, it's traditional. And there's a real-world counterpart, so it's legit.
4850889
That's a great story. If I ever do a proper self-insert, I hope it's that good.
We (the US) had a self-proclaimed emperor once. Best emperor ever.
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I think that Equestria is sort of an elective monarchy . . . kind of like England. The princesses have a lot of power, but there are elected lawmakers as well.
4851256
I've always wanted to work in a salt mine, tho. Although not for the rest of my life.
And let's be honest, who among us wouldn't vote for Princess Luna if she were on the ballot?
4852417 That's a constitutional Monarchy, like in Canada.
Elective Monarchy would be like the Emirates in the arabian peninsula, were noble families vote for the king, or the Vatican's state, with the Pope being an elected dictator.
Best exemple of it remain the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's elective monarchy.
4852434
Ah, got it.
I think what we really need is a new Emperor Norton.
I suppose that Vermin Supreme would be a good second choice.
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