March 24-25 [Kansas to Chicago]
March 24
It would have been nice if the train had windows that could be opened. I could have leaned out of a window and waved at Peggy for longer.
The train ran alongside a highway for a while, then the highway turned off and we went by a big lake and crossed over an arm of it on a causeway, and it looked really pretty in the last light of the day.
Mister Barrow said that we were almost out of Colorado, then we'd be in Kansas and that we'd go through Kansas at night, because nobody wanted to see it. He said that its only feature was wheat, and in the first part of spring there wasn't even that to enjoy. Miss Parker said that was unfair, that Kansas had a lot going for it, and he asked if she could name one thing. She said that they made airplanes in Kansas and Amelia Earhart had come from Kansas, and that was two things.
I didn't know who Amelia Earhart was. Miss Parker told me that she was the first woman ever to get a pilot's license, and that she was also the first woman to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean, and she tried to fly all the way around the world but she disappeared and nobody knew where she went.
I thought that made Kansas pretty special, and I wanted to see an airplane being made.
Miss Parker said she thought that would be fun for me, and that over summer break, I could take the train to visit Peggy in Colorado and stop in Kansas and see the Cessna factory. She said that she'd tell Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn and that they could arrange it.
So I hugged her, and then we went down to our room.
It was going to be our last night on the train together, which was kind of sad. So Cayenne got another bottle out of her trunk and we just sat on our beds and talked about how much fun we'd had and talked about what we might do over summer break. Cayenne said that she was probably going to go out to a research lab somewhere and do physics work. She said that there was a lot of research into horn magic, and so far the humans hadn't made a lot of progress, because they'd had to spend all sorts of time just figuring out how to measure it and then design experiments from that.
I said that they were novices at stuff like that; there was a lot they knew about weather but a lot they didn't, too, because we'd been working with it for thousands of years and they had hardly scratched the surface there.
But we both agreed that they had a lot of better measuring tools than ponies did.
Aquamarine was going to stay at Michigan State. A couple of her professors had already set up experiments with her, and the only way to make sure that things worked right was to spend an entire growing season working with those plants.
Gusty was going to try and get a part in a movie. She said that she didn't care if it was a bad part in a bad movie, it would still be better than nothing. Her human helpers were already working on arrangements for her. She was also going to take some time and visit New York City, because that's where all the important theatre happened.
Well, that made me feel like maybe I wasn't taking things too seriously, because I didn't have any great plans like that. I didn't really have any plans.
Gusty said that was okay; everypony knew that pegasuses just flew around and didn't take stuff too seriously and it was just in our nature. I couldn't tell if that was supposed to be an insult or if she was really bad at cheering ponies up.
And it is kinda true, I guess.
Aquamarine flattened her ears and said that just because pegasus ponies didn't keep a lot of stuff and were always moving to where the weather was needed didn't mean that we didn't take things seriously. She reminded them that if all of us built houses and none of us were migratory, then there wouldn't be enough ponies to bring winter or wrap it up.
Cayenne reminded her that unicorns could do it just fine in Canterlot, and Aquamarine said that was just one city, and didn't really count. Nopony grew any food in Canterlot besides some public flower gardens and a few kailyards and that was it.
Gusty said she hadn't meant it like that. She got up and sat between me and Cayenne and nuzzled me on the cheek and that kinda broke the tension between all of us.
I asked Gusty where she'd gotten all her clothes, and she said that one of her friends in theatre had introduced her to a friend that was a seamstress and clothing designer for the theatre, and who made costumes for a bunch of the theatre groups in Madison, like the Madison Shakespeare Company and the Madison Theatre Guild.
She said that we ought to try some of them on; they were really quite comfortable when we got used to them, and her seamstress would love to make more clothes for ponies, because she enjoyed the challenge.
They weren't really cut right for a pegasus, but I tried them on anyway.
I didn't really like the underwear; it made me too hot and the little loop for my tail felt just a bit too tight. I didn't think it was; it wasn't chafing or anything, but just knowing it was there was uncomfortable.
And of course her tops didn't have wing slits, so that made it overly confining. At least it was loose on me; I was skinnier than Gusty.
Just the same, it was pretty nice. The material felt good and hung well on me, unlike my flight vest that wasn't cut for a pony at all. It was something that I could wear to a gala and feel alright in, although I'd go without the underwear.
I think that underwear was better suited to unicorns anyway. Their auras made getting dressed and undressed a lot easier for them, and I told Gusty that. I said that I wouldn't want to have to wear something all the time that I couldn't put on and take off by myself. It's okay for special occasions, but not for everyday.
Gusty said that I ought to try being undressed by a lover and see what I thought about it then. And Cayenne added that you could do a lot of fun stuff through clothes, which made Gusty's face get really red.
Aquamarine and I helped each other get undressed again and then Gusty folded up all her clothes and put them back in her bag. She gave each of us a telephone number for her friend, and said that if we wanted any clothes made than she was the perfect person for the job.
When we finally went to bed for the night, it took me a little while to fall asleep. I was still thinking about what they'd said about me not having any summer plans, and I thought maybe I was being a bad pony for not doing something scholarly over the summer. But there was so much to do, how could I just settle on doing one thing all summer long? I might not have had any for sure plans like going to California and being in a movie or doing botany experiments, but I was going to be doing stuff with my friends.
I snuggled up to Aquamarine—she was already asleep—and decided that Gusty was probably right; it wasn't in our nature. And I guess I couldn't help who I was.
March 25
We were still in Kansas when I woke up, but we didn't stay there for too long.
Aquamarine and I had just gotten out of the shower when the train slowed down for Kansas City, which isn't actually in Kansas. The train was going to be there for almost twenty minutes, which gave us plenty of time to walk the platform before breakfast.
Cayenne brushed her mane into shape real quick and Gusty didn't want to go at all because she was still in her nightclothes, but we insisted that she should, so she put on underwear and then got off the train with the rest of us, and I could tell that she was a little bit uncomfortable being out without proper clothes on, which made me a little bit sad.
But she loosened up after we'd been out there for a few minutes. A family that was on the platform saw us and their kids came running over to see us and they were really excited to find out that we were going to be on the same train together until Chicago.
The little girl thought that Gusty's gauzy shift was a princess robe, and that made Gusty blush. It was really cute.
We got back on the train and after the unicorns took a shower and Gusty got dressed, went to breakfast. The family we'd met wasn't eating in the dining car; I guess maybe they had gotten food before they got on the train.
I was feeling pretty spoiled with breakfasts—I'd had an omelet every day on the train, just because I could. But there weren't really a lot of other options.
The terrain was mostly the same as it had been in Kansas, but we were out of Missouri a lot quicker. Then we went to Iowa, but just for a little bit, and then we crossed the Mississippi River, which is the second-longest river in America. We'd crossed it in Minnesota before, but it wasn't as big there. Mister Barrow told us we'd also crossed the Missouri River, which was the longest river. It ran through Kansas City, and it wasn't as wide as the Mississippi.
After we'd eaten lunch, instead of sitting in the lounge car we decided to walk up and down the train together. We found the family we'd met on the platform in one of the coach cars—those were the train cars that didn't have beds for people—and they were really happy to see us again.
The little girl that thought Gusty was a princess hugged her, and Gusty got kinda embarrassed again.
We talked for a little while; they were from Blue Island which was a town that was just south of Chicago. Cayenne said that it was part of the Chicago metropolitan area, and then explained that some big cities kept going into other cities, and they kind of counted as the same place for people who didn't actually live there. She said that Northwestern University wasn't in Chicago; it was in Evanston, although there was a branch of it that was actually in Chicago, but that wasn't where she attended class.
That was kind of confusing to me, but I guess that sometimes as cities grew they wound up running into other smaller towns that were close. Manehattan probably would if it kept getting bigger, and I suppose they'd keep calling it Manehattan.
We passed through a little town called Sandwich, and then we got to Aurora, and from that point on it became more and more city, until it was all city for the last part of our trip. We went past street after street of houses and buildings and it was just kind of overwhelming.
We excused ourselves when the train left Naperville, because we had to pack up our things. Well, I didn't really, but it wouldn't be nice to leave everypony else to do it while I stayed upstairs.
It was kind of a relief and kind of a disappointment to finally get off the train in Chicago.
We had a whole day to go sightseeing: Gusty's train would leave at two pm tomorrow, and Aquamarine and I were on a train that left at four. Gusty was kind of mad that we hadn't spent another day in California, but Mister Barrow told her that was because we couldn't rely on Amtrak to get us where we were supposed to be without any delays.
Since it was a nice day out, Cayenne said that our first stop ought to be the Willis Tower, which everyone called the Sears Tower. Gusty wanted to know if it was like the Space Needle, and Cayenne assured her that it was a nice big solid building.
When we got there, there was a really long line waiting to get to the skydeck, but Mister Barrow showed his wallet to a man who was keeping things orderly and pretty soon a blonde woman in a nice suit came down and shook his hand and leaned over and shook our hooves and then we got to go in front of the whole line and up into the tower.
On three sides, the city stretched out as far as the eye could see, and on the other side was the big blue expanse of Lake Michigan. I could faintly see the shore on the other side, which was Michigan. Chicago was a lot bigger than Seattle had been; it was amazing to think how many humans it must have taken to build it all, and how long they must have worked.
They had little glass boxes that hung off the side of the building; Gusty wouldn't even entertain the idea of going in them. She also didn't like getting too close to the windows, either, so she missed out on some of the view.
Cayenne sat down in the box and said that she hoped that there were people on the ground looking up at her. I stepped into the box next to her and told her that it was hard to tell because they were so far down, but there were probably some of them who were looking up through the glass floor.
When we'd had our fill of the view we went back down to the ground, and walked to Navy Pier. I saw that they had a sailing ship that you could ride on and begged and pleaded for a chance to sail on it, so we got tickets for that and while we waited for the sailing time had dinner and looked at some of the stained glass they had on display there. I thought the museum in Seattle had better pieces, but this was really pretty as well.
When it was time, we got on the sailing ship and headed out into the harbor. That was a lot of fun, although they weren't really using the sails properly. There wasn't enough wind for them, so they used a motor to propel the boat instead.
I flew up into the rigging and watched from the crow's nest, which was a great view but against the rules as I found out when I landed again. They made me promise not to fly up there a second time, and I said that I wouldn't.
Mister Barrow and Miss Parker called a taxi-van, which looked a lot like the van I'd ridden in in East Lansing, except that it was yellow. That took us to our hotel, where our luggage was already waiting for us in our room. I wasn't sure how they'd arranged that; they'd been with us all along.
Cayenne wanted to go out to a nightclub again, but we were all tired from the long train trip and there was a hot tub in our hotel room, so she ordered a couple of bottles of wine from the room service and we soaked in the tub and drank wine. It was the first time I'd seen Gusty without clothes—I was expecting her to have some sort of swimming clothes like all the people did.
When we were finally done, we had to telephone room service and get more towels, too. Even though humans are bigger than ponies, they don't need as many towels to dry off, I guess.
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Magical talking ponies? I would say we aren't in Kansas anymore, but that joke isn't funny anymore.
And here for a moment I read "space noodle"...
Right, I think it is time for me to go to bed, shitty joke and incorrect reading.
Looks like Silver's not the only pony who's a bit tribalist here.
Hey! Kansas has more than just wheat. We also have... um... Milo?
Something tells me it was a good thing they didn't go to the Chicago Field Museum for the Tsavo lions, the Ghost and the Darkness. I bet that one of them ponies can't sleep that night. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, here's some information courtesy of History Buffs.
Something in his wallet? Are their escorts Treasury Department? State Department?
I would have argued the Kansas also gave us Superman, but he is fictional.
7236171 Forgive me!
Incorrect*
7236289 You're thinking of Krypton.
Earth ponies build with wood, unicorns build with stone, and pegasi build with clouds.
7236299
But raised in Kansas. Plus he claims he learned right from wrong there also. So I view him as a native of that state more then where ever the heck Metropolis is.
Another cute chapter.^^ And how goes proofreading Onto The Pony Planet?
I like this mare, she's exciting.
I feel really bad for Gusty, she's basically abandoned her own culture due to living among humans.
7236280
I've been wondering if their hosts are government minders ever since that time Mr. Salvatore immediately responded to Silver's e-mail about the guy in Walgreens. They seem pretty hands-off, though.
7236222 It blew my mind that they grow cotton in Kansas, I would have thought it was too far up the temperature incline, in terms of latitude and elevation.
7236324 Delaware according to the official DC maps, although the TV series Smallville seems to have put it in Kansas proper with its very own imaginary Great Lake.
How much of Silver's relative inactivity is because she isn't enrolled at a big research university? She seems to be defaulting into liberal arts mode.
Cessnas? How about the Boeing factory in St. Louis if you want to give Silver a little different experience.
IIRC, the trains going southwest out of Chicago pass by the old Joliet Prison.
7236280
7236631
On a different chapter, I commented "How do I know they're feds? They say 'ISIL.'"
Amelia Earhart? May I introduce you to Nancy-Bird Walton.
7236280
They're probably DS or some other State Department office.
Yeah I'm with Gusty on this one. I would most likely steer clear of the glass boxes, but I would be near the windows. I've been in the Sears Tower once. I don't think they had the glass overhangs yet when I went.
Oh yeah, it seems Gusty was excited to be in California for the Hollywood part of it. Now that I think about it, not much surprise there.
You gave her an interesting sense of humor, Admiral Biscuit.
7236503
Don't feel too bad. Different people (and ponies too, I s'pose) acclimate to new cultures differently. Living in a different place for a significant amount of time can affect you in strange ways. Some folks just retreat into themselves because they can't handle the unfamiliarity. Others tend to be more obstinately their own culture, without much assimilation at all. And others swiftly adopt the language and customs of their new culture.
Gusty seems to be the latter, and I know how she feels. Living in Japan for a few years, I did my best to integrate, learn the subtleties, etc. But you never really lose who you are and your own identity... you just become a bit of a hybrid, and even when you go back home, a bit of it stays with you forever.
7236503 One might say she's a bit spicy?
7236809 I present to you, the Baroness Raymonde de Laroche of France.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymonde_de_Laroche
7236971 she sounds like an interesting woman.
I thought Silver Glow was pursuing a career in meteorology. Teams of Pegasai could write their own ticket in Tornado Alley assuming they could deactivate them or at least steer them away from inhabited areas. It would be the trolley car dilemma if they had to steer one over a lightly inhabited area to get it away from a city. "The needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few." (Which is what Spock and Hitler said.)
This to me seems to be a good indicator of a difference between your interpretation of ponies and humans. Humans are seldom content with what we are, and try to go for what we view as perfection, or at least as close as we can get.
Did you mean Naperville?
I'm certain at this point that unintentional casual racism is just an ingrained pony thing.
7236503 ... So? There's nothing special about the culture you were born in. If you like something else better, you should do that. Doing the same stuff forever just because it's what's always been done is silly.
]Possibly her guards are Secret Service. In the USA they guard VIPs.
For tornados , they would have to be close. Hurricanes can take weeks, but tornadoes can blow up with only hours notice.
7236297 Fully awake me forgive you and will correct the incorrect spelling.
its
too
And thus, Silver's casual tribalism comes back to casually bite her in the flank.
Goddamn, Cayenne is such a massive pervert!
I love her!
7237391
I did, thank you!
7237846
Gah, those are grade-school mistakes. I blame the play for that.
at least they dont try to show her how an F35 is build. hahahaha
yeah it works both ways Silver ...
don't tell her about it Silver !!
Well, actually...
AH Chicago my favorite of the two big cities I have been to (LA being the other) where you can do, see, and eat so much ( I MISS YOU CHICAGO DOGS
) (Ya DMAN RIGHT its the Sears tower)
And this leg of Silver and Co's journey across the state continues. Lots of interesting buildings and landmarks they visited.
Wow. I thought Cayenne loved partying, but I didn't think she was that into sexual matters.
The Aurora station is the one I use to get into Chicago. :D It's nice but pretty empty. Gusty might have like seeing the Superman props in the Plano station.
7236171
And I actually almost put that into a chapter.
7236217
All three tribes are tribalist.
7236222
In the wintertime, you've got neither. Just empty fields, and a tree every few miles to break up the monotony.
7236265
They'll probably get to see them on a future trip. There are a lot of good museums for the ponies to explore in Chicago.
7236280
They're Feds, probably attached to the State Department.
7236323
My headcanon is that earth ponies are the builders and unicorns are the thinkers and planners. So the vast majority of builders are earth ponies, and they can work with any material. Pegasi do a lot of the thatching work, though, since it's really easy for them.
7236503
She hasn't totally abandoned it, she just has chosen to wear clothes all the time.
7236631
Yes, they are.
7236730
Coats Grove, MI grows pecans, which is not something I thought would grow in Michigan. We've also got a ton of wineries on the west side of the state.
She's taking a more liberal-arts education (Gusty is, too). It's just different than a hard science education. Instead of spending my summer in a research lab, for example, I spent it writing a novel for my senior project. And since it was before gDocs, I had to mail completed sections to my advisor, and she'd edit them and mail them back.
7236790
If she's going to tour a Boeing plant, I think the one in Washington would be more fun for her, just because there's lots of other fun stuff to do out there.
7236809
Not a Kansas native . . . but she sounds like a total badass.
7236912
Those got added in a somewhat recent renovation.
Cayenne thinks if you've got it, you might as well show it off.
7236953
That's an important reason for travel, I think. You learn about other cultures in a way you never would just reading about them, and you also sort of get to look at some of your own cultural expectations from a different perspective.
I've never spent a significant amount of time abroad (usually no more than a couple of weeks), but I did pick up a taste for hard cider in Scotland, and it's something that I probably never would have tried in the US.
7236971
Also sounds like a completely badass women.
7237325
I thought Silver Glow was pursuing a career in meteorology. Teams of Pegasai could write their own ticket in Tornado Alley assuming they could deactivate them or at least steer them away from inhabited areas.
She is, but not Earth meteorology (at least, that's not her plan as of now). She wants to be a weather supervisor, ideally on the coast, because she likes the challenge of feral weather.
Yeah, getting good weather teams out in tornado alley just to see what they could do would be a worthy endeavour. The hard part is predicting where they're going to be needed.
7237369
Ponies are bit more pragmatic than most humans, at least about some stuff.
7237413
It is.
7237449
Yeah, they'd have to be close to the right place, probably with a team of stormchasers loaded with all the equipment to get the most current radar pictures.
7238031
Silver's not familiar with the proverb 'you reap what you sow.'
That's how she picks up all the boys.
7240706
"First, you get a trillion dollars, then you ask for another five hundred billion . . . "
Gusty would be adorable in a swimsuit.
7240847
Alright, that's fair, but the Kansas City that Amtrak stops in is the one that's in Missouri.
7243000
It really is a great city, and not too far from me. I ought to go there more often.
7243019
Even after claiming the most relationships on Earth, saying that she projected porn with her horn, and saying how much fun you could have through clothes?
7252795
That's the curse of some of the Amtrak stations. There's nothing in them. Although Lansing airport was like that when I flew out of it: when I got there, there weren't any travellers there at all.
7257598
Except she's also adopted, to a large degree, the nudity taboo on whole. One has to wonder if she isn't a bit uncomfortable sitting around on a train with a bunch of other nudists--she certainly seems to have adopted that to a degree, as you've shown with her and some of the other stuff, such as being embarrassed with her relationships and such. I mean, you depict her wearing underwear and night clothing, and the former appears to be a largely foreign idea to ponies in general and with the latter not even all humans wear that sort of thing.
Obviously this is from Silver's pov so you don't really dive into Gusty's internal thoughts, but I can't help but wonder if she wasn't cringing every time one of her friends turned around and she got an eyeful or whatever--because they're nude. When she goes back to Equestria, is she going to be mortified by the fact that no one wears clothing? (I mean, even ponies that do, like Fancy Pants, appear to have a vastly different understanding of what being clothed is.)
7257727
Okay, that's a good observation. Gusty's not hamstrung by it like some humans are (well, YMMV on that); she's not going to freak out if she suddenly finds herself naked, but you're right that she's more sensitive to it than any of the other ponies. And yes, she is reserved about saying too much about her relationship although of course that could be just the way she is. What taboos about relationships do you think ponies might have? Could there be some tribes or cities where they are more concerned about same-sex relationships, or about interspecies relationships? Might different towns have different ideas about body modesty? IIRC nearly everyone in Appleoosa wore some kind of a head covering; could they have been slightly bothered by the fact that most of the Mane 6 didn't?
I think she would feel slightly conflicted, for sure. It's surely something she's used to seeing, so I don't think it would bother her like it might bother a person who suddenly found themselves in the midst of a nudist colony, but at the same time it might have taken her a little bit to get reaccustomed to. Given that even in Canterlot, ponies don't seem to generally cover their lower halves, I'd think that no matter where she was raised she wouldn't be a stranger to seeing other ponies' junk. I see her more as wearing clothes as her way of fitting into the human world, and now it's sort of like a security blanket for her, or maybe more like a role she's playing (Gusty the Exchange Student, as opposed to Gusty the Equestrian).
I did know a guy in college that was sort of like that--he became more and more stereotypically gay as time went on, and he sort of wore that as his identity. He was the only gay man I knew that went out of his way to show just how gay he was.
7260988
Well, I realize it's your story and your characters but she seems to come off more as someone who would actually be quite upset about suddenly being nude. The fact that she goes around in underwear (something that no on can see but many people would feel uncomfortable not wearing) and night clothing suggests she's adopted this particular taboo, and the particular human/western form of it.
I don't know, are you asking or just speculating?
I kind of doubt different towns would have different views on body modesty to be honest; hats presumably have some sort of practical function for the ponies. I think nudism is surely the norm on large for ponies with little if anything in regional differences; I mean, Twilight is a Canterlot native born and raised and yet she appears to be largely a nudist, where as Applejack and Rarity are both Ponyville natives and wear more clothing in general--despite ponyville and Canterlot arguably being on opposing sides of the 'clothing' question.
I agree that ponies general leave their lower halves open--which makes Gusty's adoption of the nudity taboo so much more prevalent and, in my mind, troubling. It's obvious, to me, although perhaps you may not of intended to write her this way, that she's ashamed of her body. This isn't simply a case of trying to 'fit in'--she could have gotten away with just wearing a dress without panties and sleeping nude and do that, for example.
A lot of people experience their first real taste of freedom when they're at university, which leads to stuff like this.
If she ever makes it back to Seattle, she should take the tour of the Boeing plant in Everett. They build 747, 777 and 787s there, and it's worth the visit.
Also, come summer they should arrange a trip down to the Cape, maybe to watch a Space X launch and to see the Saturn V they have on display. That really blows our sense of scale out of the water with just how biggly big it is.
7237449
(Ten Years Later)
"Silver Glow! We've got a live one forming at coordinates -73, 14! You've got fifteen minutes to get your team out there!"
"I'm on it! Quick, everypony in the Tornado Van, and turn on the sirens!"
7261913
The main reason for underwear is that the little skirts that a lot of ponies wear are awfully open in the back:
vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/2/26/Amethyst_Star_dressed_up_crop_S1E22.png
A little of both.
That's my opinion, too . . . but I contend that it is plausible that a town might have different ideas about what's appropriate to wear or not, and hats/head covering could very much be on that list. The architectural style of Appleoosa and Dodge Junction is also very different from other places, so the ponies there might have different tastes than the Canterlot ponies or the Manehattan ponies, or whatever.
I can see where you're coming from. Speaking as the author, I go with my gut feel on characters a lot, so I can't always say why they're the way they are. Sometimes I wind up exploring it further, and sometimes I don't. But Gusty wearing clothes almost obsessively, and her fear of heights, and her love of California*, all felt like her.
To delve a little bit deeper, I see a few interpretations for her desire to wear clothes. One is that it's like a security blanket for her, that it makes her feel like she's fitting in (everyone around her wears clothes and she doesn't want to stand out). The other possibility is that her 'angry man' encounter was with someone who berated her for her nudity/called her a whore/whatever, and she responded by putting on clothes and now she's scared to go without.
I know that doesn't sound like that much of an answer, because I used to think that authors who claimed that their characters did things on their own was so much BS, but then it started happening to me. I'm sure somewhere in my subconscious there's an explanation, but I find that often in SoL pieces the characters just take the reins and I follow along with wherever they lead me.
_____________________________________________________
* You'll probably notice that Gusty doesn't say anything about California until they're almost there; that's because I didn't know that she loved California until that particular chapter, and then all the pieces fell into place nice and neat.
7264617
There is a pretty good chance that's going to happen.
Yeah, that thing's a monster. I can't imagine what it would be like to be launched by it.
About Kansas, you seem not know that most crops grown in the U.S. are grown here. Also, the easternmost 1/4th of the state is an industrial focal point, and Kansas City is in fact half in and half out of Kansas (KCK and KCMO).
7275038
Is... that a skirt? It looks more like ruffly decoration for the saddle tbh (it's weird ponies wear saddles, you should bring it up in a chapter).
I kind of imagine that skirts or dresses she'd be wearing are probably longer and generally drape over the tail and whole butt: I'm not really sure if ponies would actually hold their tails like they do in the show but I suppose you're going for an almost exact replicate of the show visuals--but with ponies having the proper bits and stuff. I think it's worth noting that even if she was wearing underwear, a skirt isn't going to cut it for decency's sake if they're exposed, so they almost have to be longer.
Related: in one of the episodes, Spike is going through Twilight's drawers and his reaction to a frilly saddle she had was... interesting.
I think the biggest difficulty with imagining a factionalization of taboos in Equestria in general is Celestia. She's every bit as much of a god as anyone, save for the fact that she's A) real and physical and b) you can visit her (such as waiting in line for court). To me, this suggests that culture and similar such things are likely relatively slow to change: after all, it's hard to argue that exposing one's cutie mark (for example) is 'rude' or 'crude' or whatever when Celestia is prancing around showing off hers in all it's glory all day, everyday. This isn't to say I'd expect ponies to be 'exactly like' Celestia, certainly not, and certainly not when she probably has put significant effort into making sure ponies don't see her as a deity, but she is a sort of long lasting national figurehead with, presumably, real political power.
Obviously it's taking cues from the american frontier's popular depictions, but I'm not familiar enough with that part of history to say how accurate those buildings would be in terms of what was actually built at the time: if they really did build their buildings like that; why did they do so in that fashion? were they easier to put up? maintain?
I suppose it might be the case that we just have different ways of approaching writing; when I write, I generally try to think of characters as having full lives/etc outside of what I'm depicting in the fic, and a lot of times their motivation/characterization comes from these background attributes, even if I never actually make it clear in the story what exactly is driving those characters. Of course, I'm not unfamiliar with characters writing themselves either.
TBH, I kind of think I'm possibly the only person here reading into Gusty's clothing thing as anything other than a normal character trait that would require explanation, too.