December 5
Even though it was a Monday, nobody had to go to school or work so it felt like it was a weekend. And I slept in until the sun was in the sky and I might have slept even longer except that Meghan had to get out of bed and I was laying on her breast.
I really didn't want to move.
She grabbed the top blanket off the bed and wrapped it around herself and then went out the door, and I stretched my wing over Aric so he wouldn't get cold without it, and then I nuzzled his chin and that woke him up, so he kissed my nose and brushed back my forelock.
Meghan got back in bed still wrapped up in her blanket and I stuck my head under it and pushed it enough out of the way that I could put my head back down on her breast and Aric said that he could tell where my loyalty was, and so I hit him with my tail and said that he'd had them to himself all week and now it was my turn. And then Meghan unwrapped the blanket a little bit further and put it over me, too, and kind of pulled me in a little bit more and wrapped me up with her and Aric didn't think that was fair at all but then he got his hand on my rump and he stopped complaining.
But then Meghan got a little bit mad, until I started teasing her, and pretty soon we'd mostly kicked the covers off the bed 'cause they were in the way, and since nobody had to be anywhere this morning we took our time and then pulled the covers back up and relaxed a little bit and then had sex again.
I really wanted to go on a long flight today, so we ate breakfast at home instead of going to Nina's. Meghan cooked some eggs and Aric made toast and coffee and I didn't have to do anything, even though I wanted to. So I just stayed out of the way and watched the birds on the feeder. There was a blue jay that kept swooping in and scaring all the little birds off until he'd gotten some sunflower seeds, then he'd fly away and they'd all come back until he decided that he wanted some more. If he'd been nicer, he would have just stayed long enough to eat a good meal and then left, but I think that he liked being the boss of the feeder.
After he'd scared off the little birds for the fourth time, I decided that I was going to show him who the boss of the birdfeeder really was, and so I went out the side door and chased him off, and at first he just went up on the garage roof 'cause I guess he didn't know I could follow him. But I did, and I chased him a little ways down the block and when I got back I was going to reward myself with some sunflower seeds, but then I saw all the sparrows lined up and I didn't want to scare them off one more time. Sooner or later the blue jay was going to realize that I wasn't guarding the feeder anymore and he'd be back.
So I went back inside and Aric and Meghan had breakfast ready. Meghan said she wished she'd known that I was going to get into a birdfight, 'cause she would have made a movie of it, and I stuck my tongue out at her.
After we'd eaten, Aric offered to give me a ride to my new apartment so that I could get my flight gear, but it was a nice day and so I thought that I'd fly over there to warm up. And I said that I'd send them a telegram when I got back and we could find something to do, and tonight we could stay over at my apartment 'cause they both wanted to see it.
I kissed them goodbye and went out on the front porch and after I made sure that there weren't any cars coming, I took off and flew right over the street then started to climb.
As soon as I got above the trees, I could sort of see where I needed to go, and it was closer than I'd thought it was, at least if I didn't follow roads. There was a brick building that sort of stood by itself that was really distinctive and I needed to go just a little bit west of it to go straight to my apartment, 'cause from there I could see the signs for Zeigler Lincoln and Zeigler Honda which were right in front of the apartments.
From the backside, though, it didn't look all that distinctive at all, but I could use different landmarks to line up to Aric's house. As long as I could see the bell tower at Stetson Chapel, I could aim a bit west of that and I'd be really close.
I'd forgotten to tell him that he should put Christmas lights on his house, and I thought that I should remember to tell him tonight. Maybe we could get some if he didn't have any; I was probably going to want to go shopping once I thought of things that I'd need for my apartment.
I had to fly along the backside of the apartment complex kinda low until I found my balcony. There were a lot of apartment buildings that all looked the same and I hadn't been smart enough to count them last night to figure out which was mine, just that the backside faced south.
And there was a row of seven apartment buildings that did, so I just got between the trees and the buildings and flew along until I found my snowboard, which I didn't see as quickly as I should have, so I overshot and had to turn around and go back.
The sliding door was even more stuck than it had been last night, and it took me a couple of minutes to get it far enough open that I could jam a hoof in and work it along its tracks. There was a bunch of ice down there, 'cause I guess since it hadn't been closed quite all the way last night the snow had melted and then it had re-frozen when it got colder. Even though it didn't have as big a window, the door in my apartment on Grove Street had been more reliable.
I'd never had to open it when there was snow on the balcony, though, so maybe it didn't work in the wintertime.
I left the door open so that I wouldn't have to fight it and then I went into my bedroom and got unpacked. I was gonna move the futon to the living room later, 'cause there wasn't any point in it being in its own room. Aric and Meghan could help move it tonight—it didn't slide too easily on the carpet.
I filled up my camelback and then got dressed in my flight gear, and then I went back out on the balcony and pushed the sliding door back shut most of the way. It didn't look like it was gonna snow, so I didn't need to worry about any getting inside while I was gone, and it would help cool down the apartment some.
Then I called the airplane directors, and Dori answered. She said that she'd missed me and I told her that I'd been out in Colorado snowboarding and flying around in the mountains, even though I wasn't supposed to talk that much about things that weren't flying. And I told her where my new apartment was so that she'd know where I was flying from, and I said that I was gonna fly south along the 131 Highway maybe all the way to Indiana and then turn around and come back, and she told me that I could.
Because of the way that the 131 Highway curved, I realized that I could go almost due south and I'd cross over it pretty quick, before I could get up to a thousand feet anyways unless I really worked at it, so I didn't have to worry too much about climbing too high.
It was nice, too, that once I got through the trees I was over a little lake and that gave me plenty of room to climb before I got to the trees on the other side, and when I came back I could practically glide to my balcony.
I was just over five hundred feet up when I crossed over the 131 Highway and had just crossed a thousand when I went over the 94 Highway. And then started to follow 12th Street, 'cause instead of curving back and forth like the 131 Highway did, it went straight south.
That road ended just outside of Schoolcraft, so I kept the 131 Highway on my left and kept on going.
All the fresh snow from yesterday made everything look kinda the same when you looked right down on it from above, 'cause most houses had their roofs covered and the only places that were clear were the roads and ponds. I couldn't tell any more what kind of crops fields might have had in them.
When I was getting close enough to Three Rivers that I could see the 131 Highway curving, I angled a bit off to the west, even though I could have crossed back over it if I'd wanted to—I was far enough away from the airport now that it didn't matter.
I'd meant to go further south, but as I got close to town I heard an airplane say that it was taking off from the Three Rivers Airport and was going to be flying to South Bend and that was sort of along the same route I was taking, and I didn't want to get in his way. So I called him and told him where I was and how high I was flying so that he'd know to stay away, and then I kept a good watch over to the airport.
It wasn't too long before I saw him roll out onto the runway and his little airplane sped down the concrete and when he was about halfway down I saw the wings wobble a little bit, 'cause he had started to fly. And he steadied it out and then the airplane started to climb.
I was a ways north of him and a lot higher, but I still kept my eye on him until he'd crossed my flight path and continued southwest, and I decided that I'd follow him for a little bit, just for fun. So I turned west, too, and I stayed behind him for a few miles until I couldn't really see him anymore.
He had a bright blinking light like I did, although his was red, and I did see that one more time and he was further along than I thought he'd be, and I never saw him again after that. Finding a white airplane against a snow-covered Michigan was really hard.
Down below me was I think the 60 Road, so I went that way for a while and it was mostly farmland but then I saw a strange parking lot for houses, and I flew down a little bit lower so that I could get a closer look at it. They were all jammed together and some of them looked like they were in really bad shape, although it was hard to tell with all the snow on everything, and I thought that maybe it was a place that they fixed broken houses. I'd seen some houses being towed behind trucks, so maybe if your house got damaged you could have it towed away and a new one brought to you. That would be pretty convenient.
Right ahead of me was another important-looking road—I'd learned to recognize the signs that identified them, even when I was too far away to read them—and I thought it was probably the 40 Road, 'cause that went back north and crossed the 43 Road, so I could have followed it, but I was starting to get a little bit tired, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to fly that far, especially since I knew that if I flew straight back from where I was it was going to be close to 30 miles, and it would be more if I went north and then east.
So I used my watch to point me in the right direction to get back to the Kalamazoo airport, and then I started looking for landmarks, but with all the snow there wasn't anything too distinctive, so I had to look at my watch a lot, just to make sure that I wasn't wandering off-course too far.
The sky was kinda hazy, but my watch was smart and didn't let me down. And when I was getting close, I found the 131 Highway and that let me adjust my heading a little bit, since my watch only knew how to point to airports. And then I started descending, making sure that I was under a thousand feet when I crossed over the 131 Highway.
I glided across the little lake and slowed down when I got to the trees, and after I'd gotten through them I looked for my balcony and didn't find it and then I realized that I'd miscounted and was off by one apartment house.
I called the airplane directors to tell them that I'd landed, and then slid the door open so that I could get back in, and I took off my flight gear and just left it all piled on the futon, then I went into the kitchen to get a little snack before I washed off, and I didn't have too much food that was good for a quick snack but I did find a can of anchovies so I ate that and had a glass of water, too.
And then I thought that I ought to tell Aric and Meghan that I was home, too, so that they could come and see my new apartment. So I sent each of them a telegram and then I was about to go in the shower when I remembered that I should tell Meghan to bring her computer so that she could put all the movies on it, so I sent her another telegram and then I went into the bathroom.
I didn't start to wash right away; I just stood in the hot water and let it relax my muscles. So I was still washing off when they came over, and I had to get out of the shower to let them in, then I went back in 'cause I wasn't done washing my mane yet. I was going to show Meghan where the little memory stick that Peggy had given me was, but she said that we'd do that later, and I should finish up in the shower so she could dry me off and brush me and preen me.
Then both of them came into the bathroom so I wouldn't be lonely, and then Meghan said that she thought she ought to join me to make sure that I got clean as long as I had enough towels for her to dry off with, too.
I didn't, but I told her that she could use mine 'cause even with the sliding door open a little bit it was still pretty warm in my apartment. And then Aric said that if she was getting in he ought to as well so that he could supervise, and so the two of them got undressed and joined me in the shower.
We took our time, 'cause there was lots of hot water and it never started to run out. And then everyone shared the towels that I had and they put their clothes back on and we went and sat on my bed and while Meghan was grooming me I told them all about everything that I'd done in Colorado.
I thought that we ought to go shopping together, 'cause I needed a little bit more food and I was hungry, too. Aric said that he was too hungry to go out anywhere, unless it was to pick up a pizza, and Meghan asked him if that meant that he wanted to order a pizza and he said that he did.
She said that we ought to get it delivered, and we could eat it and then go shopping because if we went shopping when we were hungry we'd get more food than we could eat.
So we got a pizza and cheese bread, which was like pizza but it only had cheese on it, and came with a little bowl of pizza sauce to dip the bread in, and it was more food than we wanted 'cause me and Meghan didn't eat all that much of it.
We went down to Winston and I gave my key to Aric because it was easier to let him carry it, even though I was wearing my saddlebags. I didn't really need it anyway, 'cause I could always get in through my balcony.
While we were on our way to Meijer, I told him that I thought he should get some Christmas lights for his house and I also wanted some for my balcony so it would be easier for me to find at night. And something that I could see more easily in the day, too.
I also decided that I wanted another box of hay to snack on. There wasn't any sense in ordering a whole bale, 'cause I wasn't going to be on Earth long enough to eat it all and it was something that you weren't supposed to take back to Equestria.
So we went to Pet Supplies Plus first, and we got a box of timothy hay and they also had bags of it pressed into little cubes which I thought might be convenient to take with me when I was flying, so I got two bags of those, too. And then we went to Meijer, and they had a whole big aisle that was full of different kinds of Christmas lights. I didn't know that there were so many types! They came in nets and strings and dangling strings and some of them had shapes like icicles and snowmen, and there were ones that you could push different buttons to make them do different things. Some of them had really small LED bulbs and others were bigger and there were even giant bulbs that were as tall as I was but you couldn't get them in strings.
Aric bought a bunch of them for his house, and I got two for my balcony which was probably more than I needed but they were cheaper than the hay. And I also found some big red bows that I could put on the balcony so that I could find it easier during the day, too.
They had antlers for a car, so that it would look kind of like a reindeer, and also a headband that had antlers on it, and I got one for me, and then Meghan decided that she'd get one, too.
There was a little fake tree that already had lights on it and we got that, too, for my apartment, 'cause they didn't have any real trees. Aric said that they sold real trees at special lots, or there were farms where you could cut down your own, but that seemed like a lot of work.
There were lots of ornaments that you could hang on it and I looked at them but I didn't buy any. And I did get some fluffy shiny rope that was called tinsel 'cause I could put that on my balcony, too. And then I was eager to put it all up in my apartment and so I almost forgot that we were going to get some food, too.
We had to walk all the way across the store to get the food, and then after we'd loaded all of that in the cart we had to go back because I'd forgotten that I was almost out of shampoo and conditioner. And then Meghan said that she could use a new towel anyways so she was going to get one that she could leave over at my apartment and so we took a little detour and she found some that were on clearance because they were ugly. And Aric saw that it was a good deal, so he got one, too.
Then she said that she was going to get some bubblebath for my apartment, too, and got a couple of bottles that were called Mister Bubble and had a funny-looking creature on top who I guess was Mister Bubble.
It was probably more than we should have gotten, but it was going to make my apartment look really festive, and we weren't going to run out of food.
We had to do some sorting when we got to the sales counter, 'cause all three of us had things in the cart, but the woman there was really nice and patient as we arranged everything on the treadmill.
When we got back to my apartment, Aric took his lights out of the back of Winston and put them in the cab, just so they'd be safe, and he said that tomorrow we were probably going to have to stop at the hardware store and get some kind of hooks to hold them up, but there was one that was between my apartment and his house. And then we went out on the balcony and put up the ribbons and the lights and the tinsel and it looked really nice, and I flew out over the lake and I could see them through the trees.
Aric wasn't happy with the first arrangement and he said that if we had some zip ties he could make it better and he should have thought of that before, so he left to get them and me and Meghan put up the Christmas tree and moved the futon into the living room while he was gone.
When he got back, he used the zip ties to make the Christmas lights into a big white 'P' for pegasus, and he put the blue ones around it in a circle, and he said that that made it an official landing spot, and any pegasus who wanted to could land there. I didn't think that anyone besides me was going to, but if I met a new friend 'cause she landed on my balcony I wouldn't mind at all.
We ate the rest of the pizza and cheese bread for a late dinner, and we'd bought some beer, too, so we drank that. And Meghan took my desk and set up her computer on it and copied all of my movies from Colorado onto it, and she said that she'd get them put up on YouTube in the next couple of days.
Then we turned out all the lights in the apartment except for the Christmas lights and it was really pretty. Meghan said that all we were missing was a fire, and Aric said that he could find one on the computer, and so he used mine and pretty soon it was showing a movie of a fire. It wasn't as good as a real one, but if you just saw it out of the corner of your eye it looked pretty real.
The three of us sat together on the futon until it was time for bed, and then we folded it down and it was a little bit short for Aric to fit on it. His feet hit the bottom of it, and it got kind of crowded when we had to crouch, so then he decided that we could take the pad off of it and put it on the floor and sleep on that.
So he moved the futon frame out of the way and then put the mattress on the floor and that was nice, too, 'cause whoever was on the outside didn't have to worry about falling off and it was a little bit easier for me to get into as well, since I could just walk right on.
Meghan wanted to close the curtains over the sliding door and window by the balcony, but Aric convinced her that no one would be looking through it because we were on the third floor and anyways there was nothing out there and Meghan decided that she wanted to look outside just to make sure.
Aric said that we needed to christen the new apartment, and she agreed with him. I wasn't sure what that was, so he told me how when a new ship was launched you gave it a name and then broke a bottle of champagne on the bow for luck, which was how the tradition had gotten started and for apartments you christened them by having sex in them. I thought that you should be able to do the same thing with a ship instead of breaking a bottle of champagne on them, and Meghan said that ships were usually launched by some official person and it was a big ceremony, so they wouldn't want to do that and nobody would want to see it, either. And then Aric said that he thought that there used to be some ceremony in England where the king had sex with a white mare, and I thought that Cayenne would like the idea of that.
The two of them got undressed and then we all got into bed together and I asked Aric if he thought that the apartment was officially christened when we started having sex or when we finished and he said that he didn't know for sure but it was probably when we started and he and Meghan both decided that since it was my apartment I ought to be the one in the middle.
Silver Glow needs to go for a pony ride at Meijer.
A lot of people would wish that was true. At least without paying for a new house.
Haze ain't got nothin' on GPS, mang.
And dat christening.
I'm a bit confused here. Why is Silver getting an apartment when she's only got less than a month left to go and she's going to be spending a lot of it traveling?
An aside note: I have to confess, after 350 chapters, I'm a bit tired of reading about Silver flying about. Sometimes it's kind of interesting, but most of the time it feels like narrative filler.
7928878 the short term lease might be cheaper than an extended stay hotel.
And, well, as for the flying... this is presented in a journal format. We're reading about what Silver cares about. It's not "narrative" per se. It's her personal inner monologue.
I seem to recall reading that was in Ireland? Of course, could've happened in England too.
And how long until somepony suggests that the white mare was Celestia, and this confirms Great Britain and Ireland are legally vassals of Equestria?
Silver glow, bringing law and order to the bird feeder since 2016!
She'd probably prefer if we skipped Charles then, and went straight to William or Harry.
There wasn't any sense in ordering a whole bale, 'cause I wasn't going to be on Earth long enough to eat it all and it was something that you weren't supposed to take back to Equestria.
does this mean we are coming to the end of this story??
Just when you thought flying around youd seen everything, yo change your start and end oints and all the routes become totally different. Street signs that were on the left are on teh righ etc and your memories are messing up saying everythings new.
I like the P Lights, Mr Salavatore can use the paperwork processing for punishment duty for Pegasus mishandling in the future. The many happy arguments at airports.
Most importantly for freinds. Silvers new place has a parking space available. but, for how long.
Should Silver be writing down the number of days left? Wasnt the 31st she arrived?
7928984
Does this qualify?
Kinda figured what was going to be in the chapter after reading the title.
7928940
Agreed. This is the daily musings of a magical, talking, FLYING pony. I still enjoy reading about it. I wish I could fly under my own power and Silver's journal entries let me experience it vicariously. I know there's a few of us here that follow her via Google Earth.
7929405 supposedly. Silver's visa expires at the end of December.
7928878 I was going to post exactly this, myself.
7928940
7930514
Like, I get the 'It's a journal' argument cited by these two, and were this a real journal? Sure, that makes sense.
But it's not, it's a literary piece; and it's one that has, bit by bit by bit, steadily grown from 500-1k chapters to 4k ones, and a lot of that is Silver's increasingly verbose descriptions of her exercise paths. And it's cool when it's something new, like when she did her Chicago flight, but most of the time it's just Google Mapsing over Kalamazoo, and from a general 'Read for pleasure' PoV, it arguably weakens the work as a whole. Definitely, if this were being edited for a book, flying segments would be the first thing I'd recommend excising large chunks of to reduce the size of the narrative; next would probably be, back when school was in session, what each class went over, for similar reasons. Let the ones that really have something to say be the ones to focus on, rather than describing each one in moderate-high detail.
Still, I can't fault you for the dedication to trying to make it as 'authentic' as possible, but I know that chapters where she doesn't fly/have school tend to be the ones I enjoy the most because that means I won't spend 1/3 - 1/2 the chapter reading things I've read something very similar to a dozen times before. As an easy comparison - on January 28th, which is one of the longest early chapters, her flight takes 340 words. In this one, it's over 1000. Triple the length, and tons of it is just geography descriptions.
Alllmooost caught up. Hopefully within the next week.
7971825
From the perspective of someone writing everyday, it makes sense because it's an easy filler that can fill out shorter chapters. However, I think for a while this fic has been, if not exactly going down hill, because its still very enjoyable, isn't as interesting as the front half. You bring up the classes, and I can only sort of agree, because I really thought the anthropology class, and the weather class, offered excellent worldbuilding for Silver and the ponies, as did the Equestrian class. The second half of the story's classes, imo, are less fulfilling; they don't actually worldbuild in anyway.
I feel like its a bit of a shame that the fic spent so much time focusing on the bible, and ignoring Silver's book about world war 2, for example, or that she never took a course on computer sciences or history. The bible isn't unimportant, but it felt like a lot of it avoiding the elephants in the room, like 'is God real' or 'there's more than one religion', type aspects, and the History book was largely ignored on whole.
7973057 All of that is a good point, yea. Math/Heat Convection never really offered much at all from a narrative perspective. Definitely nowhere near what Poetry did. And the Bible had its interesting bits - but Silver definitely got repetitive in her innocent pony earnestness of 'Why don't people listen to God'.
Ah well. It's an experimental fic, in the end.
7973084
I mean it was cute, but I can't help but feel like someone, at some point, should have said "Oh, I'm a jew!" or "Oh, I'm a buddhist!" or "Oh, I'm an atheist" and had Silver have to deal with that. The big problem, in so far as one can describe it as such with regards to the Bible reading, is that Silver has this mindset that God is as real as Celestia, yet she never questions why she can't visit God the way she could visit Celestia. The Bible is not so interesting, imo, that it can stand alone; it should have (at least in my mind) cumulated in something about faith. Maybe Admiral meant to get their earlier, and didn't, and ran out of time.
I do appreciate it for what it is, I suppose I just feel like lately its been getting a bit less fun than it used to be.
7928699
Done!
7928792
That's what some people in town did when their house burned down. I assume that the insurance paid for it.
Very true. Silver isn't used to relying on GPS. She normally uses Pegasus-vision (TM).
Best way to warm a new house.
7928878
She's got to live somewhere when she isn't travelling, and a short lease on an apartment is probably still cheaper than a hotel.
But how could Silver Glow not write about flying? That's her whole life. It would be like reading Applejack's Journal and not see her mention apples.
7928940
It probably is. For anything decent, you're probably looking at about $75/night, whereas the apartment's probably $700 for the whole month.
Exactly!
7928984
Could have been any of those countries, really.
And then Celestia rolls her eyes and says, "I don't own them anymore; I lost them in a game of poker with the griffons."
7929096
That's very important. Otherwise it's quite chaotic.
Every night now, grackles come and raid my suet feeder and they're very obnoxious and fight with each other. They need a pegasus to straighten them out.
Yeah, that would probably be for the best.
7929405
Unfortunately, it was only for a year.
7929419
Although Silver's somewhat used to that, since her Mom's cloudhouse drifts on the wind a bit, and isn't always where it was left in the morning.
In ten years or so, all establishments that welcome pegasi will have them, so they know where the approved pegasus-landing area is.
It's always depressing to count down when you're not really looking forward to the ending.
7930514
I'm so proud of everyone who does follow via Google Earth, 'cause it's like a tour of Kalamazoo and the surrounding areas. And it makes me know that all the research I'm doing to be sure I get all the details right isn't a waste of time.
7971825
7973057
Overall, I'd say that your criticisms are quite valid, and there's a lot of stuff here that I could never get away with in a published fic--any competent editor could easily probably cut a couple hundred thousand words and it wouldn't have that much effect on the story. And there are definitely some things that I would have liked to spend some more time on that I didn't really get a chance to, and some other stuff that I certainly could have dropped in favor of it.
The whole story was meant to be an experiment for me, as well as a way to get back in the habit of writing regularly because I'd really started to slack off due to work. And I was hoping that it would inspire other fics, or elements of other fics, which it has, to an extent. There are two that I know of that are written sort of in response to this, and possibly more that I'm unaware of; also, Asylum was inspired by comments on this story, and that may very well be getting a sequel soonish--I'm working with another author on that.
A lot of it was basically taken as it came, and while I think that really helped give it a realistic feel, at the same time it didn't make it as 'literary' as it could have been, and some things didn't happen that I wanted to because I forgot until it was too late, or there was just no way to justify them in the story.
All the same, I personally think that things worked out fairly well in the end. I can expand on some of the themes in side stories/other related stories in the 'verse; I think that there's a fair bit of worldbuilding here that other authors can use; and I got back my passion for writing. So yes, the story does have some issues, but I think that it accomplished what I wanted it to in the end.
8022664
Ah. I live in a ferro-concrete apartment. Can't do that if it burns down.
8022725
I don't think you necessarily have anything to be, you know, ashamed of or whatever. You've done what most people would find impossible, and did it well.
8022756
Although the odds are in your favor of the structure surviving, which can't be said for wooden homes.
And you could build a portable house out of cement if you wanted to; some boats used to be made out of ferrocement. I don't know if they still do that.
8023840
Oh, I'm not ashamed by any means. But I am aware of some of the flaws of it, many of which were due to the daily publishing schedule and lack of proofreading/editing. Some of them I did my best to address during the course of the story, like trying to vary her flight experiences enough that it wasn't the exact same thing every time, and others of them I couldn't really do much about. I think in some ways, that added to the believability, since sometimes events happened that ruined their plans (and in some cases, I didn't plan for those events at all but found them when I was doing research), but it also doesn't make it as 'tidy' a story as fiction usually is.
8025540
True.
This chapter was just chock full of amazing things.
First there's the house repair yard - which is just the most adorable perception of what I assume to be a mobile home park, so Silver is somehow not entirely wrong!
Then there's the image of her with and antler headband... I can't believe I'm going to claim diabetes, but congratulations Biscuit, you finally found a written something that made me think "daaaaaaamn, that's adorable!" I think it's a combo of how she's written and what she's doing.
Then there's the "official" pegasus landing pad in Christmas Lights. Well, I know what I'm trying this next winter. Hopefully I too will make a friend when some random pegasus stops in for a breather.
8255857
Actually, best I can figure is that it's a mobile home junkyard. I couldn't find anything on the internet about it, short of the picture from above.
Here's the link.
Ponies look adorable with antlers, and that's a fact.
Hey, it can't go wrong. And I'm thinking of doing the same thing next year, on the off chance that a pegasus happens to be going by and wanting someplace to land for a little bit.
Any references, more info or anything?
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Supposedly it was Ireland:
I don't know how much actual historical evidence there is to either practice (having sex with the white mare, or cooking her and bathing in her broth [or both, in some references]); it's one of those things that you occasionally find on internet lists which might not be all that well researched.
It'll be official as soon as Aric finishes.
Wait wat
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Fuck 'literary'. I have yet to see that term used sincerely by anyone who wasn't using it to mean something up its own ass with pretentious bullshit. Now, since we are getting close to the end, and these came up, few thoughts on the stuff that was brought up. Yeah, I'll admit, a lot of times the flight stuff was just, 'eh she did it', and you see how little I really commented on it unless she saw something new or interesting on the way. Same for the later half classes. But, they still work, they matter, they are important for the story. Becuase this is the ultimate slice of life story, and these are parts of her life she feels are the most important.
It all works and helps really nail home the feeling of this being Silver's journal, and it works miraculously well. It expands as she gets more used to writing in English and starts to open up and do more, to engage with things more and just have more to write about. It's showing her journey through the year, just in the changes to how she talks about stuff. For this story, it works and it works so damn well.
If I did have one overall "Wish it did this differently" that I do think really could have made the story work better, it's the classes she took in the later half of the year. Those..... yeah they were just boring. Her writing about them works but, it was nothing but dry technical stuff that... is interesting in the abstract, or if you are REALLY into math but otherwise..... meh. The earlier ones had more engagement, had he thinking more, worked to expand her as a character and a pony, had world building, showing the difference in how ponies and humans thought of things. Math and Thermodynamics, and Vector Calculus, it's just her memorizing basic facts.
But still, there is so much more to the story to love above that one dry part.
By all accounts, so would the Queen.
Pony no want give up boob pillow. Female Slave needs to learn to hold her bladder longer.
Momma Silver keeping her weak, furless little ones all nice and warm.
And they are making up for lost time... seriously, what is it with these three that being together makes them such horn dogs.
Silver Glow, bird psychologist, analyzing bird behavior via feeder antics.
Also, She is the bird feeder boss!
Silly pony, warn the human before doing something adorably silly, the internet must have more viral pegasus videos!
Pony has declared this house shall have colorful lights, so it looks pretty and she has the fun of putting them up!
It's getting bad, I'm starting to think just like Silver, when she started mentioning how much better her old door was that didn't get stuck, my note was "Well, didn't have to deal with snow and ice with that one" just for her to make that same realization.
Of course the ATC misses best pegasus. Also likely just the most reliable and often heard voice on the aviation frequencies around there.
And she's being a good pegathopter, letting silly, not easy to get out of her way planes know ahead of time to avoid her.
And just becuase you CAN follow him like that, becuase ponies can fly rings around silly little human planes.
House repair yard...... I.... Silver..... how...... why..... TOO MUCH ADORABLENESS! She's not WHOLLY wrong about the 'take your house away" bit, but, at that point, it's more "Demolish the old one, take away the junk, then plop down a new one." But still just, the image of it is so CUTE!
Yay best pony watch! Still being awesome.
Not having to scramble for a towel and try to cover yourself when you get interrupted in the shower. #ponyperks.
Meghan is just so eager to groom Mistress. Hopefully she doesn't just leap onto the new pone next month and start trying to groom them the moment she sees them.
Helpless pony needs her human servant to tend to her and clean her and take care of her every need.
Wise pony is wise. Eat, then shop.
Not needing to worry about front doors when you have balconies, #pegaperks
The oddities of dating a pony, a food shopping trip involves a stop at the pet store.
Pony going into choice overload.. so.. many.. pretties!
Antler..... pegasus... so.... cute....
Ummmm... okay, maybe this is a regional thing. But what Silver is calling 'tinsel' I've only ever seen called garland, when it's in the long ropes. 'Tinsel' is the loose threads you just kind of toss over things.
Yes, pony bubble bath! Also, you know ponies will love brands that have cutsey, fun looking mascots.
Always have zip ties, there is never a time they are not useful. The only thing higher on the "Have at all times" list is duct tape.
Yes, ALL THE YES! Make this official declaration of the pony overlords! There must be designated Pegasus Landing Zones everywhere! All with a big P!
Also, d'awwww just.. so..so adorable and sweet and cute and pony.Hoping random pegasus might just fly down to say hi. See Humans, this is why we need Ponies in charge, teach us to be more happy and eager to meet strangers that might become new friends.
Yule Log Stream.... yeah it has to be a thing.
Also, thought, something that might be great for pegasi...air mattress!
See, what they forget is, you have to make sure to christen every room individually.
Celtic/Irish but yeah heard that too. More proof humans were meant to be with Ponies. Also, how fast would Cayenne die her coat white to get in on that?
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I’m sure that there’s a special place in the hearts of English teachers everywhere for literary, but does that get the job done? I think it’s like any kind of craftsmanship--for the most part, people don’t care how it was crafted, people care what it does. If you enjoy a story, who cares how ‘literary’ the story is? If it does something for you, does it matter whether the author was drunk and just vomited words on the page, or spent hours agonizing over every single sentence? I feel like I’ve gotten more out of potboilers than actual ‘literary’ works, honestly.
Especially with the flight sections, I couldn’t gloss over them, even though I was fully aware that they were often repetitive. That’s who she is, and if I didn’t put that in, I might as well just stop writing the story. It never would work in a published novel, but as a daily, read in that manner, I think it generally worked out. And I also enjoyed people commenting that they were following her journeys on Google Maps.
This meshed really well with my own writing style. I don’t tend to plan out stuff too much in advance; I get a sense of the character(s) and then just experiment to see what they do. So the overall effect with the chapters slowly getting longer and more complex was not only a way of showing that she was becoming more accustomed to English and to Earth (and to the idea of writing a journal), but it was also a reflection of me getting into Silver Glow’s head and really almost becoming her by the end.
I don’t disagree, and I think that it would have been a better balance for her to have had a lighter class like another poetry class to balance out a couple of more technical classes. In hindsight, I would have had her either do Vector Calculus or Thermodynamics, but not both. There were various reasons why I made the choice I did, though, even if it’s a choice I might not have made if I had to do it all over again.
I can only assume that’s one reason she’s staying alive. Her plan is to outlast the bad ones, and then give the throne over to one of the good ones.
Of course she doesn’t want to give up boob pillow. She’s smart about that.
One of the big advantages to the wings. Also, her higher than a human body temperature (and furry/downy self).
They’re college-age kids; what else are they going to spend their energy on?
You can learn a lot about birds that way. And think about it, how many other types of attraction gather so many different species in a common location?
The ultimate bluejay.
Given the track record of cat videos, there’s no question that the internet is big enough for all the pegasus videos and no matter how many there are there will always need to be more.
And you don’t reject Silver Glow’s decrees.
Snow and ice are the bane of sliding glass doors. Especially ice. Of course, most people don’t expect them to be used in the wintertime; I suspect if they did, the design would be better.
I would imagine that there might be a few other regular pilots that they know decently well (UPS or FedEx, maybe, if either typically fly to K’zoo), but she’s surely the one that most of them treasure hearing on the radio. Even the grumpy man, who will never admit it.
As the saying goes, there are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots. Being overly cautious in the air is the way you stay alive, and while the hazards in Silver Glow’s life are different than those for most airplane pilots, she knows full well the consequences of being dumb in the air, especially over the ocean.
He’s got an advantage in top speed, but other than that she’s got maneuverability that even a helicopter can’t manage. And of course she can fly in weather that would turn a Cessna into a smoking crater.
The interesting thing is if you look on Google Maps, you can actually find the house repair yard. I was never able to determine exactly what it was, other than a collection of beat-up looking mobile homes.
Her watch knows the way.
There are so many awkward situations that aren’t awkward at all for a habitual nudist.
Meghan is probably a lot less reserved now than she was at the beginning of the year. While she might have enough sense to not just jump on the new pony and start brushing her right away, you can bet it’s not going to be very long before the new pony knows that Meghan knows all things Equestrian.
She doesn’t need them to do it, but it makes her happy and it makes them happy, and it’s just good bonding for all involved.
Yes, indeed. If you do it wrong, you wind up with all sorts of weird food and not what you really should have bought.
It’s a great advantage for her. Worked out in the dorms, too; with Pebble Beach she rarely had to use her keycard to get into the dorm.
Clearly, that’s Meijer’s fault for not stocking hay and other tasty pasture grasses.
One thing that I’ve heard is a dilemma for anybody who’s used to a more scarce society. Silver Glow presumably imagined that the only kind of Christmas lights there were were the kind that John had, and that if there was any variety it was color or no colors; she never could have imagined that there are literally hundreds of different options.
I think it is. I distinguish garland as only the ones that look like actual plant material, versus tinsel for the brightly colored unnatural ones. Looking it up on Wikipedia, I think I’m the one who’s using the terms correctly.
Of course they prefer cutsey, fun looking mascots. Odds are that anything marketed to kids will also appeal to ponies.
Give me zip ties, duct tape, and maybe some self-tappers, and I can fix practically anything.
That’s something that in this universe could conceivably happen in the future. Ponies would quickly realize the advantages of a lighted landing zone, and from there it’s a natural progression.
Yeah, totally a different viewpoint from the average human’s--visitors are potential new friends, not Jehovah’s Witnesses or salesmen.
“it’s like you’re sleeping on a cloud!”
(Although any pegasus would quickly shoot that claim down as false marketing.)
They’re working on it. I think by the end, they do wind up covering all of them.
Yeah, I think that’s proof (although as I recall, in the original celebration, the mare was killed and eaten later, and I don’t think that ponies would like that).
The good news for Cayenne is that her coat’s already white enough to count, so she’s good to go.
Aaaawwwww. Best marefriend.
She's on the federal government's tab, right?
Lmao. What!?
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She really is. Meghan and Silver Glow are a great pair.
Probably the school’s, actually. With a reasonable amount of extra spending money . . . it could be pooled across several universities, since some ponies are going to spend more than others. Mr. Salvatore probably can get some things done at discounted rates, too. I never really explored the financials in the story, but certainly with some stuff, a lot of companies might donate them to student ponies in the hopes that other ponies would want to buy them (like her flight watch, for example). Things like her flight radio, Mr. Salvatore could just call NOAA or the FAA and tell them how she’s going to be using it, and they’ll buy one for research.
It’s probably not true (but could be), since the historian who recorded it was kinda anti-Irish. Anyway, the basic gist of it was that the king-to-be would have sex with the white mare in front of his subjects, and then the mare was killed and eaten.
What coulda been.
When I was a kid, my family had a set of five wireframe reindeer we put out for Christmas. They had white bulbs, and I distinctly remember one of them had a motor that would bring its head up and down, as if grazing. I wonder whatever happened to those things.