I Think It's Called Ponytown... Story Notes | Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5: SupercalafragalisticexTialadoshus!

The title is a play on the Mary Poppins song title. The word is in fact horribly spelled, which wouldn't be surprising if you tried as a non-English speaker to look it up in a dictionary. As such it comes off as a rough idea of how it sounds to the untrained ear.

I've also changed one of the middle letters from 'p' to 'T' as a pun on the fact that Celestia, also known as 'Tia' likes to drink tea. The chapter starts with tea.

In fact the chapter starts with a tea ceremony, which although perhaps attributed more in the minds of westerners to Japan, is nonetheless a big thing in traditional Chinese culture.

I used Oolong because when I say Oo, you say Long; Ooh! Long! Ooh! Long! which is from the excellent Professor Elemental song 'A Cup of Brown Joy'. The rest of the description is indeed the pertinent parts of the Gongfu Tea Ceremony. The tea-pet is usually shaped like a young boy, so the obvious substitute is Spike.

Also, yes, the whole thing is an oblique reference to another fantastic fic by Ghost of Heraclitus: namely Twilight Sparkle Makes a Cup of Tea.

'Outside the building was a soft knock at the door. But no-one heard it.' Because Fluttershy.

'Point spilled hot tea across the tea-pet. It did its thing.' Only funny if you know what tea-pets do. I did put a link in the comments.

'Dubya C' - How many jokes could I fit in AJ's name? Well, it turns out quite a few. The Dubya is a joke about George W. Bush who never could get his words quite right, and has a southern accent.

WC is a well-known acronym for Water Closet, aka Toilet. This comes from the days where trains were trying to pack more passengers in, and so the washroom and the toilet were combined into one small room and WC used to indicate both.

Water Clover or 'Marsilea' is a type of plant that is grown in paddies, rather like rice would be in China, only it's known to be somewhat poisonous to horses. I push this joke again later. I put info in the comments for this too.

'Skitters' = 'Flutters'. Also I got to use the word gauche, which is a rarity. Unlike rarity right now.

'deigned to acquiesce to the request' - references the original Pirates of the Caribbean film where they were more disinclined (which means no).

'safer production methods' - a poisonous plant push. Of course Pinkie would pronk, and appear from within a building she wasn't inside to start with. Also cakes. Not quite cupcakes, but close enough.

'He had the majority of the main characters sorted, but the last on the list was smudged badly' - this joke doesn't work well, because obviously smudged characters aren't the same as smudged letters from a Roman alphabet. Ping on its own would very much more likely be translated as Apple since this is the standard meaning of that character. Water Clover can be written as big float apple or field character apple. Perhaps Mr Li grew up around a lot of water clover as a child.

'The rice was cooked' - a Chinese saying for a decision having been made and that's the end of it.

Celestia might have been changed by whatever is going on here, but who can resist being a God-Emperor? Also cake. Celestia still loves cake.

'Venerable Granny Metal-Worker' - the Chinese traditionally show respect towards their old members of society. Metal Worker as in Blacksmith. This English-Chinese Dictionary isn't working out so well.

'Huge Computer' - Big Apple Mac. Really not working out well.

'Still ah do worry that all the time she spends in the paddies might be goin' to her head, if you catch mah drift.' - Poison pay-off pun. Poor Granny, losing her marbles.

'agog' - because this word is just not used enough.

'jumble sales' - I think the closest Americanism would be a yard sale, but a jumble sale is indoors.

Socks are a big fanfic / fanart thing. They only became canon in the rubbish carts seen in the Season 2 episode 19 called 'Putting Your Hoof Down'.

The Author's Note is taking a dig at one of the potential designs for the new Gen 5 My Little Pony Applejack.

PART 4: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/886898/i-think-its-called-ponytown-story-notes-chapter-4
PART 6: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/886904/i-think-its-called-ponytown-story-notes-chapter-6