April 7 [a history of war]
April 7
I spent a little longer in bed with Aric this morning because I knew he'd miss me when I was gone for the weekend. Besides, I was in a frisky mood anyway.
It was misty—not quite foggy and not quite rainy, but a sort of halfway point between the two. Good enough visibility, though, but you had to always be careful in weather like this because you could fly into thicker stuff without noticing, and then you could get disoriented. It was smart to always keep an eye on the ground.
Airplanes had all sorts of gauges in them to tell the pilots where they were going. The book I'd had to read before getting my license had mentioned them. They could tell you if you were right side up or upside down, what direction you were flying, and how high you were. Plus there were other special instruments, too, that mattered if you had an engine on your airplane, since it was important to know what it was doing. Cars had gauges like that, too.
I had my altimeter, but I didn't need to look at it all that much any more. I'd gotten enough practice flying on Earth that I could tell just by looking about how high I was.
Rather than fly around too far, I just got up to where there were some wispy clouds—which were totally invisible from the ground—and played with them for a while. I squished them into more concentrated bunches and then carried them up a little higher where the air was more to their liking.
A lot of ponies on the ground don't know that the sky isn't identical all over. It's like the ocean, with all sorts of complicated currents and temperature and humidity changes, and that's what makes the weather work. If it all somehow got to being the same, no matter how many pegasuses we had, we probably wouldn't be able to do anything with it.
As I was bunching up my last cloud of the day, I thought that maybe I ought to ask Gates if I could borrow his GoPro for cloud work. I bet that would be a fun thing for people to watch. Probably my weather professor and Dr. Thomas Thompson would like to see it, too.
After I'd dried off from my shower, I thought I'd check my computer mail and see if Gusty had written back. I didn't expect her to have, since it was late when I sent the letter, but she had.
My mailbox tells me what time computer letters arrived, and Gusty had written back only a few hours ago, which meant she must have been up most of the night. I hoped that it hadn't taken her that long to write a reply, because then I'd feel bad.
When I opened the letter, though, it wasn't all that long. She said that unicorns had kept their script because ours was too ambiguous. She didn't know a whole lot about how earth pony writing had evolved, but we only used a few more than a dozen different letters for writing, which she said meant that we had to guess a lot of words from their context.
Well, I knew that, and I knew that a lot of times ponies would add vowel points or other clues if there was the possibility of confusion; every foal knew that.
But then she said when it came to spellbooks, that wasn't good enough. Since Old Unicorn already had ample symbols to cover all the different sounds, they just started writing Equestrian words using the same letters they already had, all forty-four of them.
She had also included a picture of a page of words that were easily confused with each other, and written one side in simple Equestrian and then the words in Unicorn script, and on the Unicorn side of the page they were all longer, and none of them looked alike.
Well, I guess that all made sense. We used a lot of pictures in the weather offices to help cut down on confusion, and because there were still a bunch of mares who couldn't read. It wasn't all that helpful out in the sky, anyway, ‘cause it was more hooves-on up there.
Since I could read, I spent the rest of the morning with Judges, and finished it. The end wasn't much different than the beginning had been. One of the women was a concubine which is kind of like a prostitute and since women seemed to be more clever than the men (especially the prostitutes), I thought that she was going to do something clever, but instead she got raped and then cut up into pieces and sent to the twelve tribes, and suddenly I was wishing that I hadn’t decided to read the Bible before lunch.
Then in revenge Judah led the Israelites to fight the Benjamites, who had done it.
I didn't know all that much about war, because I'd only ever learned the basics of how to use my glaive and how to follow the instructions of my leader, but if I went to battle one day and we lost twenty-two thousand ponies, I wouldn't do the same thing the next day. But they did, and on the third day they had the smarter idea to draw the Benjamites out and then ambush them, and then they defeated them.
The next book was called Ruth and I thought that was really funny because I knew a Ruth that lived down the hall and maybe she was named after this Ruth. So I opened our door and looked down the hall and hers was open, too, so I took my Bible in my mouth and read Ruth while sitting on her bed. She didn't mind; she was doing stuff on her computer and moved her chair so that she could pet me, which made us both happy.
I liked Ruth a lot better, because even though it started out sad, in a famine, it got better because she found a man who loved her and then they got married and had a son together.
I asked Ruth if she had ever laid down at a boy's feet or harvested barley, and she said that she hadn't done either of those things. Then she got curious about the Book of Ruth, and looked for it on her computer, and pretty soon a whole page of information came up, with pictures even. So she started reading that and then laughed and I wanted to know what was so funny, so she pointed to where it said that 'feet' was a euphemism for 'genitals.' I can guess what woke Boaz up.
It was about lunchtime, so I put my Bible back in my room and got my saddlebags and went to lunch, where I sat with Trevor and Cedric and Leon. I said what I'd learned about football in anthropology class, and Cedric said that it was all true. He said that was why girls didn't play the sport.
Then Trevor asked if it was true what I'd asked in class, 'cause he'd heard it from someone else, and I admitted to what I'd said. Cedric said that was how they used to play it, but when they let black men on the teams it wasn't fair any more; all the white boys didn't stand a chance, and he held up his finger and thumb a couple of inches apart.
Leon started laughing so hard that he put his head down, and I stood up with my forehooves on the table and told Cedric that Aric was bigger than that and it got real quiet.
Just then I remembered what Peggy had said about how people might feel and that I ought not to tell anyone and I'd gone and opened my stupid mouth without thinking, and it hit me again just how big Cedric was. If he grabbed me, it was over.
I snapped my wings out real quick and pinned my ears and was about to launch myself off the table and get away before things got bad, but then I saw Cedric jerk back at my sudden movement; between his push and me on the table it tipped and sent everything sliding my way. I heard Leon say 'oh, shit,' and his hand flew out so fast and he grabbed at my cup before it went off the table, but he wasn't quick enough to get my plate and it shattered all over the floor, and every head in the room turned to look at us.
Well, all of a sudden I felt really foolish. They were my friends and they weren't going to do anything to me and I'd gone and broken a plate and wasted all my lunch, too, and now everybody would think that I was an idiot, and I was about to apologize for causing a scene, when Leon said really loud that his salad had had mache in it instead of arugula, and that didn't make any sense to me, but people started to turn back to their conversations.
I helped clean up the mess on the floor and apologized to Trevor for whacking him with my wing. Cedric said that I was scary, and coming from him that was really funny. Then he said that he thought I was going to come across the table and bite him, 'cause I guess I'd bared my teeth at him and hadn't even realized.
I said I was sorry about that, too, and he chuckled and said that if I ever played football all I would have to do was make that face and I could get right through anybody's defensive line. I stuck my tongue out at him.
Leon wanted to know why I had canine teeth. He said that every horse he'd ever seen had a big empty gap there, but when I'd clenched my jaw they looked a lot like fangs and all that he could think was how happy he was that my eyes were locked on Cedric and not him.
So I told him that the dandelions in Equestria were very tough, and everyone had a good laugh at that.
It was appropriate, I guess, that with my reading about war and almost having a scuffle in the dining room that we wound up reading some of Kipling's poems about war in class. I'd liked the ones about sailing and the ocean much better.
He finished with a poem called The American Rebellion, which was kind of sad. 'The snow lies thick on Valley Forge, the ice on the Delaware, but the poor dead soldiers of King George they neither know nor care.'
I guess it was kind of appropriate for the day, though. The mist still hadn't really cleared, and with the snow all gone, everything just looked stark and dead.
Liz and I talked about Judges and Ruth. There was some stuff that I'd missed completely, mostly about lineage because I guess the Israelites really cared about that, too, even though it seemed kind of silly to me. I didn't know all the rules in Equestria, 'cause most pegasuses didn't own any land, but I knew that farms were passed down from mother to daughter, and I was pretty sure that the unicorns did the same thing with their land and silly titles, but they really cared about who everypony's sire was and kept big books to keep track of it all.
So it turned out that she asked me more questions about Equestria than I asked her about the Bible, but I didn't mind. We had a nice conversation and she even had tea which was better than the tea they offered in the dining hall.
I met up with Meghan at dinner, and asked if I could come over after I finished writing my report for anthropology class, and she said that we could watch another Harry Potter movie.
By the time I'd finished, though, it was too late to watch the movie. It hadn't seemed like it was going to be all that much to write when I'd started, but it wound up taking a lot longer than I'd expected, and I was almost done when my telephone chirped at me like it does when I get a telegram.
It was Meghan and she wanted to know if I was still planning to come over, and I said that I was, but it was probably too late for the movie. I said that my essay had taken longer to write than I thought it would because the computer kept getting words wrong and Peggy had to help me put the picture from my computer mail into my essay. And I said that I was sorry it had taken me so long, and she said that was okay, and she would be waiting for me.
When I got there, Meghan was sitting in her desk chair looking at things on the computer, and Amy wasn't around. Meghan said that Amy was going to be gone all night, so it wouldn't be a problem if we were a bit noisy or stayed up a little late.
Since I had class in the morning, I didn't want to stay up too late and lose my opportunity for morning exercise and breakfast, and I could tell she was a bit disappointed, so I let her groom me, which was the perfect end for the day.
When she was done, I was almost asleep on her lap, and I hated to move at all, but of course she couldn't sleep with me lying on her like that, so I got up and let her go to the bathroom to put on her sleeping clothes, and while she was doing that I slid under the covers.
She crawled in beside me and took off her shirt and put it on the floor, then she lay on her side and let me snuggle up against her and it wasn't very long at all before I was sound asleep.
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Bet she'd like The Present Crises.
Famously quoted by MLK:
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/present-crisis
cache4.asset-cache.net/gc/479676349-burchells-zebra-yawning-rietvlei-nature-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=SDhT5%2BHGcHTJXKA%2Bv3VbkJHBHeQ7%2BK18ELwYHS%2BwMMByfyP%2BMSWcPiVOlCrwN6sD
Because someone's gonna ask.
Poor Meghan. Sometimes, you just need to be more direct with the pony.
7276440 no kidding. Poor girl wants the mare but that mare notices womens interest less than I do.
Didn't Silver also see that mock battle in that Renaissance festival?
So now she's going to think that football was once played the way the ancient Spartans fought wars.
7276439 wow, did not know that those were there.
still not really buying into the whole unicorns having a seperate language thing. The only way it really works is magic is based on incantations, which I don't think is the case, especially as we haven't really seen any evidence of that in the show.
Another cute chapter, and rather informative too(Never read the Bible myself despite my beliefs in such).
And I'm guessing the Onto the Pony Planet hit more delays? Not that surprising. Takes hard work to make a great fic, and that takes time, eh?^_^
I dunno about ponies passing things down from mother to daughter. From what we've seen of the Riches at least, they pass down names and property on the patriarchal line.
7276589 it doesn't have to be based on incantations to still benefit from exactness and precision
And, they don't have a different language, at least not anymore. Just a different character set.
Consider the Russian singer Витас. He is referred to as Vitas in english speaking areas (and indeed his website is vitas.com.ru). Both names are pronounced the same (vee-tus, more or less), but look completely different, because one is using the Cyrillic alphabet, and the other is using ours.
It would be possible to render many (though not all) english words using the cyrillic alphabet, and you could imagine a native russian doing so to help practice learning english. It wouldn't be a huge stretch to imagine him writing notes to classmates that are in english, but would be incomprehensible to a native english speaker unless read aloud. Though, he'd probably be shooting himself in the foot, considering that not all sounds map one to one. Modern russian uses the same symbol for both 'f' and 'th', for a simple example.
7276589 I can see the need for it. Think about sailing. They have four different words for rope and countless other names for what non sailors would group up into one word. The reason why the words came about is that the sailors lives are on the line and any confusion or delay from enacting the orders from the captain could mean death. For unicorn magic I can see the need to know exactly how to shape the magic into a spell or there might be unforseen and catastrophic consequences.
Take Shining Armor's and Cadence's shield spell that expelled the changelings, a minor change from just expelling the changelings to pushing on everything would have torn Canterlot apart with massive amounts of dead ponies. They got to be exact in their spellcasting.
7276439 Yeah, I've heard a lot of horses, if they grow them, get them pulled so a bit will fit.
7276439
The second I read that part, I knew she had a set of "wolf teeth".
(They're frequently pulled in Earth horses to allow a bit to seat easier.)
Think you're missing a how.
They say it's cold in space. But we don't have a space, so we'll never know.
7276570 Yeah, but battle ain't war. The Crystal Empire's got jousting as their national sport, low-risk conflict is practically a staple summer activity in Equestria, and they're all incredibly snippy and shallow, but every problem always clears itself up within a half-hour.
War is a very nebulous concept to most ponies, especially ponies who spent most of their lives on the sparsely populated coast.
7276599
Um, yeah. Her website is called humoncomics.
7276678 that's a possibility I hadn't thought of although i'm not sure how the specifics would work with that. It seems like we were approaching it from different directions. From what I understand, Admiral Biscuit appears to be using to make words that are similar appear less similar. I was basing my interpretation off of math where instead of explaining math concepts, it explains magical ones. I can take up three lines in english and hope I describe everything, or I can use half a line of specialized script (if that).
7276693 Jargon isn't a unique language. While it's specialized and not everyone would understand what they meant, it still belongs to a parent language. So while a sailor might have four words for different kinds of rope, they would all be in the same language. I'm an engineering student and we have a lot of jargon. But if I go to another country, the jargon won't transfer over because it would be in a different language instead of english. The math would be the same (although the variables might change) because math has a separate "language" that doesn't change as much as the language does.
7276651
Filthy might have only inherited because Stinking didn't have any daughters. As for names, well Silver did mention that equestrian names can be very complex when t comes to inheritance, given the small alphabet it might be that Rich and Diamond are actually spelt the same and what they mean is context based same with Shy and Zephyr given a Zephyr is a weak breeze.
On a separate note Silver still hasn't got a fully functioning to much information filter. I wonder if her reaction to Alric's manhood being questioned and her general aggression was at least partially down to her heat.
When are you not?
7276825 I've just been following her Deviantart. I didn't even know she had a website.
7276589 incantations don't necessarily have to be spoken. also it seems like all the tribes had their own languages, but the Earth Pony tongue was adopted as the Lingua Franca, and the Unicorn tongue was maintained for internal use, but the Pegasus tongue abandoned.
7276440 7276452 Maybe she found out that equestrians like to cuddle and stuff and that's all she just wants to?
7277006
i guess that's true. I'm not super familiar with fantasy stuff (i'm more of a sci fi fan) and the only incantation based magic I can think of is eragon (i'm generalizing) and that's almost entirely spoken.
As for the rest, we're getting into headcanon territory where there isn't necessarily a correct answer.
7277012 It IS possible. But I doubt it.
I don't know any girls that go topless to snuggle platonically.
Many animals have what is called a "fight or flight " response to danger. For Pegasai it probably includes spreading their wings
1 it makes them look bigger & thus more dangerous.
2 it gets them ready to fly
3 wing bashes can be a formidable attack.
As to alphabets, IMO the most efficient way is 1 grapheme (letter) = 1 phoneme (sound). In English it doesn't quite work like that. For iinstance Ç can sound like S or K but has no sound of its own. This is because it just grew instead of being designed like some were,
7276574 only if you're playing it right
The desolation of Benjamin and the Triumph of Ruth. We're almost to 150 PSALMS
Also if Silver thinks the Benjamite Genocide is bad I'm just glad she's never heard of the Somme
Silver defending her man!
7276599 Several actually. I only know of it because of 7259446
EDIT: Sorry, disregard the above, I failed to read the comments first. Redundant pony is redundant.
7277251
hehe yeah
poor Silver is overthinking things in the wrong moments
7277029
ask one next time
also pony fur may feels nicer than human skin
7276582
In IRL horses, not all of them have them (almost all stallions do, about 25% of mares), and most domestic horses have them filed down so that a bit fits better and to avoid gum and tongue problems.
7276734
I think the general practice is actually to file them down, rather than pull them: unlike human teeth, everything above the gumline in a horse is dead, so a file is a totally legit dentist's instrument.
7276755
Wolf teeth are different: they grow back closer to the molars. She's got legit canines (or tusks, as they're sometimes called). IRL horses have them too, although in domestic horses they're often filed down to prevent dental problems and to make a bit fit more easily.
7276782
Corrections made, thank you!
7276982 You're right, the Riches in general could be an exception. That's the tricky thing about figuring out something like sucession, it doesn't naturally come up during conversations on the show, and this is the only example of family sucession we really have, and you're right it could be down to the Riches having all sons before Diamond. I will point out that when we meet Igneous Rock Pie, one of the most traditional ponies ever, he introduces himself as son of his father, but that's not really a concrete example of anything.
7277627 She's a feminist who seems to have a grudge against male gamers and and males in "nerd curlture"...
Wait, what?
I'm hoping that Silver means "don't understand the jargon yet" instead of "can't read," period.
Wow! A lot of depressing things, good thing that cuddle was there to save the day!
7277648
This is interesting although as you said it's not concrete, maybe his father was famous is some way or it's just an oddity of Iggy. Of course the Pie's themselves seem to be a little divorced from regular Equestrian culture so might follow different rules.
Of course it normally makes sense to track your lineage through the material line as you can normally be fairly sure of your mother, the identity of your father can often be a little less sure.
From the title of this chapter, I kinda expected Silver to be finding out about WW1/WW2 or suchlike. Ah, well.
Okay, based on this chapter, I can make a few guesses about Equestrian language!
First, we can conclude that the alphabet, both plain Equestrian and Unicorn Script, are phonetic, and not meaning-based; there simply aren't enough letters to account for a runic form like Chinese or Cuneiform.
Next, if simple Equestrian is only around a dozen letters, chances are that it has the vowels and a relatively small number of consonants, similar to the Rotokas language in Papua. It likely has vowel combinations and a lot of simple consonant-vowel syllables, indicating it might be very syllabic, but it probably doesn't have have a lot of consonant strings. It probably would utilize those vowels and not sound quite as guttural as German, Russian, or perhaps English. That's just a guess, though.
However, based on the context, as Gusty's letter suggests, the same letter might be pronounced in several different ways. For instance, "t" can sound like "d" in American English at times (like how most Americans say "butter" like "budder"), or a hard t (like "tooth") or even take on a "ch" sound (like in "tree"). This may have led to the Unicorns utilizing and adapting their own script to properly account for things like that, or as diacritical markers to indicate long or short vowels, etc. For instance, in regular Equestrian, a word spelled "go" could be pronounced two or three different ways. A Unicorn would write it as "go," for a hard G, "jo" for a soft G/J sound, or "jou" for a soft G and elongated O or an "ooh" sound.
This doesn't say much about the grammar, but many languages that sound like this (assuming I'm right, that is) use subject-object-verb order. It is also the most common type of grammar (by language, not speakers) on Earth, so the odds are very good that it is, though Silver's apparent skill with English may mean that it's subject-verb-object, so it may be quite natural to her.
Anyway, that's enough wild guesses for now. See you next chapter!
She's going to be in for quite a shock when she learns about WWI
7277665 Given that Equestria looks something like preindustrial Europe or America, there might not have been as much need for reading or writing.
7277747
And yet it's almost never done in practice that way. Property rights succession is pretty mysterious, but what few examples of names we have being passed down does seem to track the patrilineal line, so presumably ponies track the identity of fathers as closely as humans do. In this story, there do seem to be a large group of ponies who don't really care about the identity of their fathers, but those also seem to be the ponies in society who don't have a lot of property or titles to pass on, because they are itinerant seasonal workers (like many Pegasi seem to be). Again, that's actually pretty similar to human society.
7276807 Yep! That's me! :)
7276937 The jargon was to illustrate the need that the unicorns would have of a more precise written language if regular written Equestrian would be too ambiguous to describe spells.
7278309 that's obvious. my point is that jargon exists within a language and wouldn't be classified as a separate language. I don't speak engineer. I know engineering jargon within the english langauge
When are you n-
7276989
Wait, is Equestrian an abjad? That is so cool.
(12 is very few letters even for consonants, though. Maybe their sounds are far more limited than human tongues, or they must use a lot of digraphs. Or their letters all have multiple meanings.)
Yeah, and that's even when they're not armed with axes.
7276432
I think she would. I'll have to look for other work by that poet--I'm not familiar with him.
7276440
Maybe "Nice hooves, wanna f
k?" 
7276452
Silver Glow's a bit oblivious to Meghan's advances.
7276570
She did, yes. And she has a concept of war, but killing everyone after you've won isn't something that Equestria does.
7276574
That would make the sport more interesting. . . .
7276589
It's not a whole separate language, just a different, more complete, alphabet. Basically, a phonetic alphabet. Even if they don't do incantations, they do read spells out of books, and you probably don't want to misinterpret what the spell says.
7276650
You're missing out--there's a lot of good stuff in there.
And a lot of awful stuff, too. Anyway, I'll have read through the whole thing by the time this story is over, I bet.
Yeah, now that the play's over, work has picked up a lot. Grr. Gonna blog about that soon.
7276651
We don't really have enough canon evidence to know for sure, IMHO. But I think with the likelihood that Equestria is a matriarchal society, it makes sense that you'd pass things on to your daughters. And family names, we have no idea. Is it Applejack Smith? Rarity Flanks? Twilight Sparkle Light? Or don't they usually bother with family names at all? Might the three tribes each do things their own way?
7276678
Exactly.
Although to be fair, that character set has nearly thirty more characters than the earth pony does. So a 'similar' swap isn't really possible like it is with some languages.
7276693
I don't totally agree with the statement about rope names (that's just precision/jargon/whatever), but . . .
. . . this is a very important point. One misunderstanding in a spell might have substantial unfortunate consequences.
7276788
And I think it's also likely a problem of the past to them. They've had their share of bloody conflicts (in my headcanon), but now they don't, because they've moved beyond that point in their society, to a long period of peace.
EDIT: Yes, I realize that they have their share of horrible monsters, but that isn't the same thing (in my opinion) as a war.