"Status Report, Number One!" · 2:02pm Nov 26th, 2021
I jest.
To all those reading in a timely manner, a very happy start to the holiday season! I hope all had a lovely Thanksgiving, and I hope that we all have a very pleasant rest of the year, especially if I can be a very small part of it.
Anyway! Sorry about the marathon chapter, but I had a lot of things I wanted to get out of the way. I had been putting several disparate chapter fragments off for a while, and eventually decided to just go ahead and put them together. This lets me start to post some pre-written stuff a little more regularly now that the upload path is wide open and some plotlines are addressed. Hopefully I'll get this finished while there's still a readerbase to read it, eh?
More stories are coming as usual, as an aside. I'm very pleased with the response to my latest crap story, so there's an entire sequel/sequel chapter written for that already. I just have to find a way to make all the tragic deaths of the girls funny. There's other stuff in the works too, of course - but what? Foalhood melodrama fest? Guerilla warfare? M-rated explicit cringe comedy? Only time will tell.
Now, to address my usual list of quick tidbits that I always put in the author's note …
-I've always thought that a fistfight between ponies would be just absolutely freakin' brutal, man. Fistfights between people are bad enough, and we just have these squishy little meat things at the end of our arms. Imagine if we all had knives on our foreheads and maces for hands. We'd just annihilate each other.
-"Eastern Jewel" sounds like just the most stereotypical name, but she was actually a real (and fascinating) person. It's just a happy coincidence that her name sounds like a horse name.
-Fermented tea is real, and really weird if you've never had any. Definitely an acquired taste.
-"Get Tough" is a real book, and the payoff to a joke I made a story ago. Go read it if you want to learn how to bust in teeth.
-Don't slow down in East Clovenhoof or you'll die.
-The Crystal Empire joke will return.
All of the above, probably but not necessarily in separate fics?
You have a point about the fighting thing. I hadn't really thought about it before.
Two random thoughts. Fermented tea is indeed outstanding and everyone should try a 20 year aged pu-erh black once in their life. It tastes like smoke and dirt in the way fine bourbon tastes like wood and fire. Also humans don't have "squishy little meat things". We have precisely evolved hands equally capable of grappling and striking.
Nothing will wake you up quite like a punch in the jaw, except perhaps a glass of femented tea.
I love the stories. The girls may not be precisely "in character" with all the murder and pillage but they all still feel like themselves. Just in a much darker comedy.
I'm also a sucker for feudal Luna who hasn't quite grocked these modern concepts like "human(pony) rights" or that you can't duel someone in the street.