May 6
There was a big difference between waking up with Aric and waking up with Meghan. I wouldn't say one was better than the other, but it was different.
I snuggled up with my head on her breast until her telephone sounded its alarm and woke her up, and she reached out and made it stop for a little while so we could snuggle until it really was time to get up if we didn't want to be late for our classes.
I didn't want to push my luck by asking if we could shower together, and I guess maybe she wasn't in the mood 'cause she didn't offer so when she finally got out of bed I went back to Trowbridge and waited my turn for the shower there. I probably would have had enough time for at least a good trot around campus, 'cause Peggy hadn't even started hers yet, but I didn't feel like it.
While I waited I checked my computer mail and Doctor Thomas Thompson wanted to set up a meeting with me and so I sent him one back saying that I could do it on Sunday if that would work for him. And I said that maybe he could bring some of his instruments with him too and if the weather was right I could bring down another cloud for him to study, because I thought he would like that.
I had just finished up when Peggy got done and so I told her that Aric had said that he didn't want to go Go-Karting before noon and that Meghan wanted to come, too. Then I went into the bathroom and waited for my turn in the shower.
I got to math class early and showed Professor Sir Doctor Banerjee the calculations I'd done. He was surprised and said that he hadn't asked us to do that and I told him that I knew; I had just done it for fun. So he looked it over and said that I had gotten it right which made me really proud.
Then we started talking about bifurcations and topological equivalence. He told us that sometimes it was also called flip bifurcation and we might find it that way in some math books that we studied on our free time and a lot of people laughed when he said that but he was looking right at me when he did, and I just smiled.
We went back to the graphs we'd seen before and explained how the time between the bifurcation points could be expressed as a ratio and then he told us that result was a number which had been discovered by Michael Feigenbaum, and if we were interested we could look up the proof for that but it was beyond the scope of this class to do more than a brief overview.
I was interested in that, so I wrote myself a little note to look it up later. I think I could probably find it on the Google, or else at the library.
Then before we left he told us about an experiment a student named Donye Farmer did on a leaky faucet that determined the behavior of its dripping, which changed depending on how much the faucet was opened. I thought maybe next time I heard a drippy faucet I'd try and see if I could figure out the pattern.
They had leftover tacos at lunch and I wanted to have some but then thought better of it. My insides still weren't all the way settled after last night's dinner, so I just had a nice leafy salad instead.
We turned in our reports in Anthropology and then Amy asked us to think of coming-of-age rituals that were performed in our societies. Well, I knew about cutie marks and there was always a big party after a pony got one 'cause that meant she was mature (although I knew a few fillies that really weren't) and understood her place in the world. And some ponies took on new names then, like I had.
Professor Amy told us about all the different types of rituals that humans had, from circumcisions to Bar Mitzvahs to ordeals and just about everything in between. What they all had in common was that there was some way to mark the person as an adult; a way of saying that they had learned enough to be grown-up. Plus it also marked the social group that they were in.
I thought it was funny that for the boys most of the rituals took place at a particular age, while for the girls it didn't happen until they were sexually mature. To me that made more sense; if you were gonna have a foal you ought to be grown up first and know your place but I guess it was okay if boys didn't. Probably 'cause once they'd gotten you pregnant you didn't have to stick around with them if you didn't want to.
After dinner I thought about whether I should wear a fancy dress to Frelon or not: I'd never been to a dance before and I didn't know how formal it was going to be. But I decided not to because if it was okay to watch Shakespeare without, then it would be all right to watch a dance like that, too. At the same time, it was just gathering dust in my dresser and I ought to find something to wear it for.
Peggy and I left together and we met up with Sean and Christine and got there a bit early so that we could get good seats. I turned around and waved up to the light booth 'cause I knew Aric would be there with his little headset on waiting for his cue to go. And pretty soon the whole house was full and people were talking and then the house lights went down and the spotlight turned on, and a pretty woman came out and announced the show for us.
Then the lights went back out and the curtain opened and I saw six dancers standing in position and music started and then the lights came up and pretty soon I was totally lost in the show.
They did all sorts of different dances, from fast pieces to very slow ones, and sometimes they wore costumes and sometimes they didn't. I was just amazed by how much the human body could do. There was one dance where the men were lifting the women over their heads and then sliding them under their legs and they made it look so effortless. And there were some funny songs like It's Raining Men and then one that felt really sad to me called Saint Teresa.
I tried to pay attention to the lights, too, because I knew how much effort Aric had put into them. There were light-trees on the stage and more lights in the balconies and even more overhead and I wondered how he could keep track of them all, especially during some of the fast changes.
There was an intermission which gave everyone a chance to get up and stretch out and probably gave the poor dancers a chance to sit down and relax for a little bit, then they were back on stage and the second half was just as varied as the first had been.
At the very end there was a big finale and then everyone came out and bowed and my ears were ringing from the loud music and just like in Madison the auditorium thundered with applause.
When some of the noise died down I heard Peggy and Christine talking about if they were going to go to the Quad after and I asked if that was where the tradition that Aric had told me about happened and Peggy nodded and so I told her that I was going even if none of them did. Sean said that he wasn't sure and Christine told him to grow a pair.
I wanted to wait for Aric and Peggy said that was okay; it wouldn't start for a little bit, so we went upstairs to where the light booth doors were and waited. He finally came out and he was talking to Lisa who had been working the spotlight at the last show, too. Aric hugged me and Lisa did too, then Chad came out of the room and he just glared at me and went down the stairs. I didn’t think I liked Chad very much.
There were already a bunch of people clustered up by the chapel when we got there, and I could see still more trickling over, including some of the dancers. They formed their own group kind of in the center and people moved back to make room for them. From where we were I didn't think anybody who was with me could see them; I had to fly up a bit. But there were two arcs of people with the dancers in the middle.
And then on some signal people all started taking off their clothes and just leaving them on the ground and I landed in total confusion as I saw that Aric and Peggy were getting undressed, too. Then there was a shout from somewhere in the center of the group and that got carried on to everyone until a loud cheer went up and everyone ran down the hill. When they got to the sidewalk some people turned around and started going back, but most people including us went all the way down to the road between the quad and Hoben before turning around.
When we got back to the top of the hill people were getting dressed again and Aric asked me how it felt to have streaked the quad and Peggy said that I did it every day, so I stuck my tongue out at her.
After Aric had put his pants back on he leaned down and kissed me on the forehead and said that he had to go back to the theatre and button everything up because tomorrow night they were going to have to pull all the lights out of Dalton and move them to Balch for the mainstage show which was next weekend.
I asked him if that meant he would be home late every night next week, too, and he said he hoped not because once things were set up there was a different light board operator for that show so he wouldn't have to do that, just fix things that were broken and rig all the lights.
So we met up with Peggy and Sean and Christine and went back to our room and drank beer and played euchre until it was pretty late. Sean had had too much to drink and was almost asleep where he was sitting—which was why he'd done so badly in the last game—and so I offered my bed to them if Peggy didn't mind me sleeping with her, and she said she didn't. Then she said that they weren't allowed to have sex in my bed, and Christine said that she was no fun.
I guess that's one way to explain the uncanny congruence between pony names and their cutie marks.
Nobody likes Chad. He's an arse.
(Apologies to any nice people named Chad.)
Edit: I see Chad hasn't been mentioned before. Was Silver introduced to him off-panel at some point?
Nobody in their right mind turns down ponysnuggles.
For a second I thought it was Freon and I thought we were going to talk about refrigeration and I was excited for that.
Chad, don't be a dick. Nobody likes a dick named Chad.
7365526
They haven't used freon in refrigerators since the '80s. Evil CFCs and all that.
Now I'm wondering what Silver Glow was called earlier in life. Might be an interesting conversation, I could see her friends trying to figure out what to call themselves if they got to pick their own name.
7365526
I wonder how many pieces of human borderline-magical technology Silver just doesn't notice because they have something similar back in Equestria that's got the explanation "A unicorn did a spell on it."
7365583 Yeah, I had to do the R-12/R-134a transition in my old car.
7365600 Both are top quality potential plot points. The name thing I think is interesting, easily solving the "what if you cutie mark has nothing to do with your name" problem.
7365500
Haha what?
And the tradition turns out be exactly what I expected. Although I did think it would be a longer run.
Streaking started back in the 1970s. Check out the Ray Stevens song "The Streak" (I'd put in a link but IDK how) Also the song"Guitarzan" since there's a Tarzan movie.
Funny thing is, menstruation begins before the true sexual maturity. But since it is the only clear marker of change, it what we choose to use.
And most likely, if boy had a clear moment of maturation, they would've used that as a coming of age point.
Personally I use to put some masking tape on the controller to write down what did what.
And I had a cue sheet usually.
And a good memory.
I'm half expecting Silver to say «Why not? Go ahead!»
7365500 What is it not to like about Chad? He is a typical friendly slient giant!
7365842 Silver probably has no problem with it but given how often she's been bitten by not understanding weird human things about sex, she's probably not going to argue in the moment.
7366419 I used multiple genes to make it work, there's a gene for expressing pegasi traits and a separate one for unicorn traits with the traits being recessive. basically unicorn is not pegasus, pegasus is not unicorn and earth pony is not unicorn and not pegasus. Homozygous Unicorn: uuPP, homozygous pegasus: UUpp, homozygous earth pony: UUPP
It's clunky, but it works (mostly).
Don't worry, Silver, you didn't do anything wrong. Chad is just being an asshole. Also, Aric's got your six if you have any trouble.
only with Sliver Glow in the bed too xD
7366512
And what are heterozygotes?
7366786
Alicorns.
7366786 Unicorn: uuPp, Pegasus: Uupp, earth pony: UUPp or UuPP or UuPp.
7366828 Nope, heterozygous meanes different alleles. So it'd be UUPp for example. Alicorn would be uupp which is homozygous. The problem is that the combination that would be alicorn show up a lot. My hypothesis is that Alicorns take to more magical energy to develop than the mother can actually provide so the fetus typically dies in the womb. The exception is an Alicorn mother.
7366882 Alicorns don't make sense under any of the genetic hypotheses I've seen. I made the suggestion with a certain amount of snark.
7366938
Unfortunately I can see a few problems with it. She doesn't enjoy being flown around inside an aeroplane and she probably wouldn't be allowed to fly all that close to a plane from the outside.
Still it would be interesting to see what she tried to do to circumvent those problems.
7366921 It doesn't make sense on it's own, but it makes sense when combined with other theories such as the Fallen Alicorn race hypothesis.
In general, this theory states that at one point in the past, there was an Alicorn species. Now Alicorns are on a downward spiral to extinction (with only two full blooded Alicorns left) and on an evolutionary scale, ponies are their descendants.
Using this hypothesis Unicorns, Pegasi, and Earth Ponies are mutations of Alicorns so it makes sense that these mutations aren't passed on 100% of the time. Especially since they are so closely related that they could be considered the same species still.
Tense change.
7367074
Tense change? Make it stop!
Correction made; thank you.
7366921
I don't think there's anything really mysterious about alicorns, really. Assuming they're all ascended beings, than they're probably genetically different from their original bodies. IE Twilight-the-alicorn is genetically different from Twilight-the-unicorn. Perhaps only by a few sets of genes, but still.
7366866
So you have two genes with two alleles each: U, which is dominant, u which is recessive. Having two uu makes you a unicorn. Similarly, you have P and p, and two pp makes you a pegasus. Having at least one copy of each dominant allele makes you an earth pony.
I suppose this would work, although one has to wonder how such a system could maintain a stable polymorphism of the tribes. I think I prefer my headcanon thou :P
7367435 On a short term scale, kids tend to have the same phenotype as their parents. Two pegasi/unicorns will only have pegasi/unicorns and although earth ponies have the most diverse offspring, the trend is earth pony. On an evolutionary scale, I'm not sure it's stable. It's possible that one phenotype will become dominant.
7367576
Any sort of genetic system has to be thought of in terms of evolution, because that's where it would originate.
Also, I think the idea that Earth ponies having the most diverse offspring isn't supported by the show; Mr and Mrs Cake's reaction to their twins suggests it's a rare occurrence.
7367948 Here's what I meant by evolutionarily stable. A milion years ago, there were several early hominids co existing, but now there is only one. Homo Sapiens proved to be the most successful and currently is the only one still around. Equestria is kind of in the million years ago phrase. There are currently three subspecies of ponies currently living with the remains of the common ancestor. In a hundred thousand years, we may see that all three subspecies are still around, or one or more could have gone extinct.
After watching the scene where pumpkin and pound cake are introduced, i'm not sure I agree with you. There's surprise that there's twins and there's an infidelity joke. I didn't phrase my statement the best however. I should have said that they have the potential to have the highest diversity, they also have the potential to easily form large, earth pony only families since earth pony is dominant. Especially when you consider that earth ponies are the only tribe that can produce children of a different tribe (with both parents being the same tribe).
7365500
I don't remember if he was mentioned by name before, but he was mentioned back when Silver watched Aric run a show.
I'm sure she wouldn't have minded. She might even have gotten some tricks to try on Aric.
Hell if she hadn't found out about humans sex taboo's then she probably would have considered joining them... Well, there's a stallion there so maybe not.
What say you, author man?
Awwww... Silver totally should have worn the dress so she could properly take part in the tradition.
7368022
I don't think it makes sense to qualify them as subspecies, since it appears to be closer to polymorphism than it does speciation, and I'm skeptical that civilization could emerge in such a situation, since it would require a certain amount of isolation to keep the various tribes separate, have them develop (strong) civilization, then merge together.
The surprise isn't directed at the fact that they had twins, the surprise and the uncomfortable scramble on the part of Mr Cake is wholly about justifying their twin's tribes, which neither of the two ponies share.
The fact that he feels the need to justify it suggests that it's uncommon or rare for a pony couple to have a child who doesn't match one of the two pony's tribes. I think under your system it ought to be fairly common: for example, an earth pony (UUPp) and a unicorn (uuPp) have kids, most of them are earth ponies, some of them are pegasi and none are unicorns. Since unicorns and pegasi would only exist in very specific genotypes (uuPP or uuPp), I'd imagine that event would be common.
7365500
I feel it's reasonable. Maybe some places do and some places don't, but with their cutie mark being a permanent mark of destiny, it seems like some ponies would want their name to reflect that (especially if it didn't originally).
He was the one in the sound booth when Silver Glow was up there (during Bad Jews). Maybe I never gave his name.
Nope.
7365526
Do we want a chapter where Aric launches into a technical explanation of why the AC doesn't work on Winston? Do we want an even more technical explanation where I get out my AC classbook and give pressure and temperature readings for various failure states?
7365565
Every Chad I can think of that I've known was a dick.
7365583
Technically, Freon is a brand name and applies to several in-production and out-of-production refrigerants.
7365600
I've actually got several alternate names, if I got to pick my own (one of them--Thomas Davis--even has his own Facebook account).
A lot. Plus, she's not all that familiar with most of it, but she knows it exists, so there's a lot of stuff that she assumes operates close to how a spell-powered whatever does.
7365628
And here I am on car thirty-something (I lost count of how many cars I've owned a while back) and it's only the second with functioning A/C (or with AC at all).
It seems so obvious, especially since a lot of ponies don't seem to have the same name as their parents/relatives.
7365753
At K, it was pretty much always the quad, either to the sidewalk in the center or all the way to Hoben.
Streaking for Frelon wasn't a tradition yet when I was there, but streaking if you were skunked in euchre very much was.
7365758
I'd quote the lyrics, but that's against the rules. So here's the song instead:
7365842
Yeah, there really isn't anything for guys that's obvious for everyone, at least nothing I can think of. Maybe growing a proper beard (I may be biased)?
For me, it helped that in the shows were I was the board operator, I was typically also the lighting designer and master electrician,so I knew what went where. But a cue sheet helped (and in fact if I went digging through my old notebooks, I could probably find a Frelon show in there).
She probably wouldn't mind.
All the Chads I can remember weren't friendly or silent.
7366015
She'd probably have mixed feelings about other people having sex while she was watching; she would not, however, be disturbed by the thought that people were having sex in her bed (like a lot of people are).
7366587
Or if not Aric, Peggy. She's always ready to rip someone's dk off if there's a need.
7366727
She could even give helpful advice!
7366970
A small plane wouldn't be all that bad for her. Slower rate of climb and descent, fewer people crammed in there, a better view out the windows, and no pressurization. She can deal with that.
7368109
Yeah, that's the guy. I don't remember if I mentioned him by name before. I thought I had, but maybe I didn't.
7370500 What differenciate proper beard from improper beard? How long should it be to makes a true men?
The only Chad I can remember was a character from the Bleach manga.
7368521
She might have been able to learn a thing or two.
Although...I don't think that Silver Glow's sexual openness extends to group sex . . . she might be willing to try if the right people suggested it, but she's unlikely to be the one asking for it.
7368777
Everybody would have been undressed, down the hill, back up, and dressed again before she got her clothes off. Have you ever tried taking off a dress with hooves? Or for that matter, with hands? It's not easy. Trust me.
I don't think I like him, either.
At my college May Day used to be an all day nudist festival. People would go to class naked and the liquor store across the street used to give a free case of beer to the first student to walk through the door starkers. Then cell phone cameras became a thing. Now people only get naked at night, but we have a fun run and drum circle to compensate.
A story with restricted net access for ponies but twi later gets full access. Isn't that Sunflower? Or at least that's the OCs name
7370514
It's not about length; it's about thickness. A proper beard is dense, not thin and patchy.
7371992
That sounds like a great tradition.
Yeah, fk Chad!
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Tom+Lehrer+New+Math&&view=detail&mid=DCD6A7B96A4AB0F4232FDCD6A7B96A4AB0F4232F&&FORM=VRDGAR
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=tom+lehrer&&view=detail&mid=A2B5DAF4C7E98546FE50A2B5DAF4C7E98546FE50&&FORM=VRDGAR
8728964
Math is a lot more fun with Silver Glow does it instead of me.
Hmm the ordeal was not a coming of age ritual... It's a guilt test usually quite dangerous...
9311683
I’ve heard the term used in reference to a coming-of-age test, such as the BSA’s Order of the Arrow Ordeal.
I'm forced to assume that Chad was gay for Aric. The alternative is that he's a bigot and that's a bit too stereotypical for you.
10998344
I do occasionally get stereotypical; Chad is a bigot.
In our culture there really isn't one. Part of the appeal of drugs, sex, alcohol, and smoking are that they are perceived as adult things.
IDK about now, but back in the 1960s getting your driver's license was a big deal because it meant that you were allowed to drive a car -an undisputed & highly visible sign of adulthood.
Of course, in college I had a roommate from NYC & he told me nobody in NYC drove because parking was too big a hassle.
11274730
Yeah, i was thinking the same. It was still a big deal when I came of age, but I know a lot of younger people who live in cities and who don't have driver's licenses at all, at least into their 20s. I don't think that younger kids have the same desire to get them--that having been said, living in the country where there weren't any public transportation options (except riding with friends), it represented a lot more freedom than it might in a city.
Yeah, that's a big factor, too. One of my college friends who was a car guy got a job in Philly, and he didn't take a car with him. There wasn't any point; he'd have to pay a fortune to park it (not to mention insurance, fuel, maintenance, etc.), and was better off walking or taking public transportation anywhere local. He did subscribe to a car sharing program for when he needed to take a longer trip.