Story Notes: Discord and the Tree of Chaos · 4:20am Jan 11th, 2019
To Fan of Most Everything!
For Jinglemas 2018
Source
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*In case y’all are wondering what Jinglemas is, it’s an annual Secret-Santa tradition started by Obs.
Theoretically, I ought to have published this around Christmas time, but y’all know how I roll, and now that we’re all coming down off our Christmas cookie induced sugar highs, this is exactly the serious, thoughtful work we all need to gird our loins and drive us into February.
By which I mean it’s got Discord in it and a random tag on it, and possibly also a moral. And some true facts, too, so let’s get going with those, shall we? That’s what y’all are here for, right?
This is kinda going to be the speed round edition, because if I ramble on like I usually do, this thing won’t get published until Valentine’s Day.
Minty was an earlier gen pony, most noted for her appearance in A Very Minty Christmas, where she fell to her death better than Rarity ever did. She’s semi-officially in G4, as well: there are toys of her, she’s in the comics, and she also sort of made an appearance in an episode.
From an episode
A Charlie Brown Christmas Christmas Tree Christmas Tree ornament:
Find out how to make your own here!
Mallow is related to cotton, hibiscus, and okra. Now you know.
Eierpunsch is a German drink that’s basically egg nog.
Since this was for FoME, it wouldn’t have been right to not include a M:tG reference in it; thus, the Fruitcake Elemental. It’s indestructible.
3n + 1 is the Collatz Conjecture. It’s a conjecture “that concerns a sequence defined as follows: start with any positive integer n. Then each term is obtained from the previous term as follows: if the previous term is even, the next term is one half the previous term. If the previous term is odd, the next term is 3 times the previous term plus 1. The conjecture is that no matter what value of n, the sequence will always reach 1.” (Wikiepedia, ‘cause I’d make a hash of actually describing it.)
I do know that it’s solved (or not) by making ‘trees.’ If you’d like to know more, here’s Professor David Eisenbud explaining it far better than I ever could.
F
ing magnets bits, how do they work?
From the Hearth’s Warming Shorts
I have been informed that there is, in fact, a way to wrap a Christmas Tree so it looks like something else.
From Facebook
Ipso facto, barba non facit philosophum”
By that very fact, a beard does not constitute a philosopher.
And now we come to the most important fact of all. Many fruit trees are grafted--a shoot from one fruit tree is stuck onto the trunk of another. It’s a bit more complicated in practice, but not much more complicated. Certainly something that any competent Earth pony would be able to do. Especially an apple farmer, since apple trees are often grafted.
Now, you’d think that you could only stick apple trees to apple trees and pear trees to pear trees and so forth, but a tree don’t think like that. You can stick lots of different kinds of fruit limbs to a tree trunk, it turns out. You can, in fact, make yourself a tree that produces more than one kind of fruit. [Before you all start rubbing your hands together and cackling like madmen, if it does produce offpsring, they’ll be one kind of fruit tree, not another multifruit tree.]
In case you were thinking that you don’t have time for that, or you’re just not a green thumb, darn it, fear not! Somebody has already done that for you!
Now, in real life the fruits have to be kinda related (all citrus, all apples, etc.), but when pony magic’s involved, the sky really is the limit.
In hindsight, I should have guessed you were behind that one. Only you could come up with multi-fruit trees using basic botany.
i.imgur.com/H4wVg5k.png
"Well yes, I can see THAT."
I thought Id seen a 5 fruit tree somewhere that was apples and oranges? I thought theyd done like the multicoloured carnation? As long as the branches were on totally isolated xylem streams to teh roots, the primary trunk didnt count them as interacting? Might have been 5 citrus though, but having tomatos and walnuts would be nice. Or chestnuts and grapes.
Ever since I learned about how apple trees need to be grafted to ensure cultivars carry over rather than high genetic variance rolling the dice and potentially landing on inedible wasp bait, I've wanted to do a Discord/AJ fic where he meditates on the chaotic nature of apples. (And that's without taking old Auntie Eris's Kallisti trick into account.)
That you managed to work that in from the other direction was an extra layer in the wonderfulness of my Jinglemas present. Thank you again.
Minty is an earth pony, not a unicorn.
I gotta try that xmas tree thing next year!
4995012
Often if you read a story and learn something new, I probably was involved in the story somehow. Or Pineta, if it’s more sciency.
Also, the “X was there, too,” is something I’ve used multiple times, because it’s funny every time.
4995039
Looks like basic economics to me.
4995204
I’m not 100% sure, but all the ones I’ve seen for sale have had all similar type fruits on them. I don’t know if the tree cares, but it’s possible if you grafted oranges onto an apple tree, you’d wind up with inedible oranges, or oranges that flowered at the wrong time or never ripened or who knows what. Maybe they’d explode.
I’m not sure that you could graft a non-tree onto a tree (like a tomato plant, for example), but maybe you can. For the grapes and chestnuts, at least, grapevines will surely climb a chestnut tree, and that’s kinda the same thing.
4995269
There are of course some downsides to cloning cultivars; you can wind up with too little genetic variety and then something comes along and wipes out the bananas and you’ve got to try again with a different cultivar. But I suppose as a tree farmer especially, you really want to know what you’re going to get, since the waiting time tends to be rather long for fruit trees, compared to other types of plants.
And I could see a pony mythology where Discord was the one who cursed apple trees to be unpredictable or something like that. Or just appreciates them for their built-in chaos.
You’re welcome!
4995706
That’s why I said that she ‘sort of’ made an appearance.
The G4 blind bag Minty, the G4 brushable Minty, and the comic book Mintys are all earth ponies.
4996429
If you do, let me know how it goes.