March 30 [Zootopia]
March 30
I got done with my morning flight a bit early 'cause I'd started off earlier. Peggy was in the dorm room, getting dressed for class, and I asked her if there had been anybody waiting for the shower after her. She said that Kat was in there now, so I thought I'd better get into the bathroom and wait. I could put together at least three people in the morning order, anyway.
So I sat on the little bench and waited for Kat to finish, and when she came out of the shower she wasn't wearing her glasses and kind of squinted in my direction before she knew who I was, which I thought was kind of odd since I haven't seen any other people on campus who are blue or shaped like a pony.
Ruth was coming down the hall to the bathroom when I went back into our room, and nobody had knocked or was waiting outside, so now I knew the morning schedule for everyone. I think it would be better if there were two showers in the bathroom, or a group shower but I guess people wouldn't like that. But there's one by Sean's room that's like that, so maybe some people like group showers and some people don't.
I had a waffle with strawberries for breakfast because the waffle iron was fixed again. I also tried a small portion of hashed browns, which is a fancy name for shredded potatoes. I'd had them once before but they were really brown and crunchy and tasted burned; this time they were a lot whiter and I thought maybe they'd taste better.
They didn't, though. They were even blander than before. I know potatoes don't have a whole lot of flavor, but the kitchen staff had managed to cook all the flavor out of them. Sean said that he liked dumping the cheese sauce on them, but I didn't like it. Cheese was supposed to be in wheels and blocks; it wasn't supposed to be soup.
Sean and I walked together to Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos. Doctor Sir Banerjee was right at the door to greet us as we went into the classroom, and where he'd gotten off to a bit of a late start in his first class, he was ready to go at the very beginning of class time.
He spent most of the class giving us all a bit of a review on linear systems, since we'd be building off that. There were a couple of students who looked kind of bored by this review, but not me: even though I knew some of this stuff already, the human mathematical representations were all new to me, and while I'd picked up some of it helping Peggy with her calculus, I didn't know them all yet.
Sean asked me after class if I had a calculator, and I opened my saddlebag and showed him my weather wheel. He said that probably wasn't going to be good enough for class and that I ought to buy a graphing calculator, but I thought I'd try it my way and see. I didn't want to be all bogged down in symbols I didn't know trying to use a tool I'd never used before.
Amy discussed how one of the best ways to study cultural anthropology was with an open mind immersed in the culture that we're trying to study, and said that foreign exchange students were a good example. She asked me if I had learned anything from living among humans that I hadn't learned in a classroom before, and I said that there were all sorts of things, like how cars play music for you. Then she had everybody in class who'd studied abroad raise their hands (or hoof) and she went around asking each student to name one thing that they thought was strange about the place where they'd been. One of the men in class had spent time in Kenya and he said where he was the electricity wasn't very reliable and so people were used to doing things that required it when it was working, and getting along without it when it wasn't. Melissa said she was surprised to find out that that people could sunbathe naked in Eisbachwelle, which is in Germany. Steven said that in Russia, everybody drove like there weren't any traffic laws at all, and Chris told us that in Japan students had to clean the classrooms themselves because there weren't any janitors.
We'd read some of The Coming of Age in Samoa, and we discussed that until class was over: there was a lot of stuff that Margaret Mead had gotten wrong, Amy said, but that didn’t make the work any less important.
Not surprisingly, our homework was to read some more of the book.
As soon as class was over I went back to my dorm room and put away my saddlebag and told Peggy that I was going to the salon and a movie with Meghan. She told me to have fun and said that she was going to go over to her boyfriend's because he was back in town.
When I got to Meghan's room, she hugged me and then used her portable telephone to order an Uber-car.
She said that if it was all right with me we could go out to dinner before the movie, and I thought that sounded like it would be fun. She asked where I wanted to go, and I said that Taco Bell would be nice, and she frowned and said that Taco Bell wasn't that great a place to have dinner, and so I told her that she could choose because I didn't know all that many restaurants.
Maura was happy to see us, and she had me go into the back room first to get my coat clipped and brushed out, and Meghan sat there too and talked to me while Maura was working.
When I was on my back and she was working on my barrel and under my wings, she came up kind of close to the wing joint and pulled a feather loose and dropped her brush and just stepped back in shock and then started apologizing and I had to reassure her that I was starting to moult and it was normal for feathers to come out; it was just like my winter coat coming out.
After that, though, she was kinda cautious around my wings, and she didn't get quite all of the loose hair out from under the wing joints, and I had to ask her to go back and see if she could get a little bit closer. I felt bad having to ask, 'cause she was already doing me a big favor but she said that I didn't have to apologize, and to tell her if she was being too rough.
When she was done, there wasn't as much hair 'cause she'd gotten a lot of it out before and I'd shed some more on the trip out west. But I still felt a lot sleeker now, and I was happy that she used a curry brush when she was done to help spread the oils back over my coat.
I paid her and let her have the feather, too. I didn't really have any use for it, and it was too big to make a dreamcatcher—covert feathers would be better for that.
Meghan had another Uber-Car take us to Chipotle, which was like a fancy Taco Bell where you could have the cooks make whatever you wanted on your burrito. I liked it because the tortilla was stretchier than the ones at Taco Bell, and the whole burrito was bigger, too, which made it easier to hold. But it was still sort of messy; I got some rice stuck on my chin and Meghan reached across the table and wiped it off.
Once we were done eating we went up to the traffic light and walked across the street. There was a business with lots of doors called Firestone that had a truck like Winston in the parking lot, except it was on bigger tires and was a pretty blue color. Meghan said that Firestone was a place were cars were fixed when they were broken, and I said that I had helped to fix Winston. She laughed and said that I ought to try and get a job at Firestone.
After we got our tickets, Meghan asked if I wanted to get anything at the concession, and the popcorn did smell pretty appealing but we'd just eaten dinner, and I was full. So we only got the medium bucket.
There weren't all that many people in the theater, because it was a weeknight and the movie had been out for a while. Then finally the lights dimmed, but then there were a whole bunch of advertisements for other movies that we had to sit through before the main movie started.
Overall, I thought it was a really good movie. It was a lot happier than most of the other ones I'd seen so far, and I understood most of what was going on without having to ask questions, which was nice.
When it was over, Meghan asked if I wanted to go to Steak and Shake and get a milkshake—I've noticed a lot of times people like to have conversations over food. And while I could probably do without, since I'd had both a burrito and several handfuls of popcorn, I could tell she really wanted to, so we walked over there.
Meghan asked me what I'd thought about the movie, and how it compared to Equestria. I told her that there was a bunch of stuff in it that was really pretty similar. There were a couple of big towns where different species lived together, but usually in their own neighborhoods because nopony would want to live next to a dragon; no matter how well-behaved they are, they smell like sulfur all the time. Plus they like setting stuff on fire. I'd heard that a few years back there was a dragon setting stuff on fire in Fillydelphia and Princess Luna had to stop him. I think that's where it was, anyway.
And we've also got little friends to look after, like birds and butterflies and breezies. They're all our little cousins.
I told her that what was really scary about predators was when you were alone. If you were with friends they weren't usually that scary. Plus we all knew how to get out of a griffon's talons if we had to.
I didn't think the city would work like we saw it in the movie. Not in Equestria. Appleoosa had at best a vague truce with the buffalo, and they probably wouldn't have that if Sheriff Braeburn wasn't bound to the Buffalo chieftess.
She wanted to know if maybe I was being a bit discriminatory—she said that on Earth there were problems like that where people just made assumptions about other kinds of people, and I said that I wasn't sure if it was the same. We'd learned that people were all physically the same and only had a couple of different skin colors and no other real differences, whereas we had earth ponies and batponies and pegasuses and unicorns and crystal ponies and zebras and breezies who were sort of ponies and we weren't the same at all.
Maybe we didn't always get along with the unicorns, but when times got tough they were ponies first, and they'd stand up and fight with us, and we'd do the same for them. That was what made Equestria strong: we were all ponies first, from the solid strong dependable earth ponies to the impulsive flightly pegasus ponies and the slow and thoughtful unicorn ponies.
Meghan said that was a lot to think about. I told her that it went both ways; we'd learned some about humans but what we'd learned had only scratched the surface and the culture was a lot deeper and more varied than I'd thought it would be.
I said that the one thing I was curious about was the part where they had visited the nudists. Melissa had mentioned in class that people sunbathed nude in Germany, and I was curious if people did in America, too. Miss Parker and everyone else on the beach in Los Angeles had worn clothes, but the movie made me think that there were special places where people didn't.
Her face got kind of red and she said that she thought there were probably places like that, but she didn't think that there would be any in Michigan because it was too cold for that most of the time.
I thought it would be interesting to go to one. Maybe I could invite Gusty; that would be a surprise for her.
She sent for another Uber-car, and when we were riding back, she asked me who my favorite character in the movie was. I said that I liked Nick the most, because he tried to be tough and he really had a soft heart. Meghan said that she liked Judy more because Judy really wanted something and worked her tail off to get it, even though everyone thought she wouldn't.
When we got back to campus, it was pretty late, and I knew I ought to get to bed even though I didn't have any classes in the morning, but we were having fun talking about the other characters in the movie and I could probably afford to stay up late.
Meghan said that she was getting a bit chilly and that we could go into the lounge in DeWaters and talk there. I said it would be alright to talk in my room, too, since Peggy was gone. So we sat on my bed and talked for a while, then went to bed. Meghan set an alarm on her phone and then took off her pants and got into bed. She asked when Peggy was going to be back and I said that I didn’t know, but she was spending the night with her boyfriend, so she decided it would be okay to take off her shirt and bra, too, and then she snuggled up to me.
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Oh, it's a math class. Weather-related, so I wasn't too far off. But yeah, Silver's probably going to want to get a more sophisticated calculator... though she does raise good points about the logistical issues. Heck, she's going to need a stylus just to use the darn thing.
Interesting that Silver put breezies in the same category as butterflies. I can't imagine the breezies would be very happy about that. It's also interesting to see what's happened in the parts of Equestria we know (aside from the Fillydelphia dragons thing, which gets dumber every time I see it mentioned. Still, that's a personal bugaboo.)
And yeah, "ponies first" doesn't sound at all speciesist. Still, I understand the sentiment.
this story is still vary interesting I am really liking the slice of life.
but how is Silver going to handle her first heat in earth this may get rather embarrassing for her as her body will be doing things she can not control.
and if there are stallions on the area well she is going to be hard put to control her self.
I am so disappointed in these humans. They failed to tell Silver that hash browns are really just a delivery vehicle for maple syrup!
Meghan is so into Silver it's a lil embarassing at this point
Commit, girl! Crash and burn if you must but seriously.
This of course would be a tangled web
Doesn't everyone eat hash browns and eggs covered in ketchup? Ah what do I know. Every once in a while I'll have a bowl of grits.
Since she seems quite happy alone with loads of humans, I assume humans just don't set off her instincts about what a predator looks like? She knows people eat meat, but with no sharp claws or beaks, still doesn't really see them that way?
I wonder did any of the exchange students just have a complete breakdown once they were alone and surrounded by humans?
Meghan what where you thinking! If I remember correctly this happened around the same time as when Ecoli was making its rounds, although I think she should be safe. Hopefully Silver stays healthy!
7251490 Blech, that sounds disgusting. Hash browns are best greasy as hell and well salted.
Coming of Age in Samoa? Do they still teach that as anything but a cautionary tale about confirmation bias? At best, Mead let a bunch of mischievous subjects cold-read her into fabricating a salacious, hedonistic fantasy; at worst some critics still insist that it was deliberate fraud. Either way, her thesis was false stem to stern.
Interesting to see how things went for Braeburn and Little Strong Heart. I wonder how this story fits into the series continuity, did the events of the series happen? Luna is apparently present and has been for a few years, presumably the mane-6 are about somewhere but this could be 5, 10 or even 20 years after the current season.
7251478
That depends how heat works for Equestrian Ponies, they aren't actually the same as earth ponies (ponies from earth rather than the tribe) after all. Apart from general appearance they may be less close than humans and other apes. I doubt that Silver will be all that attracted to any earth horses even if there were any about. Aric might be in for a fun time although if some of the other side effects are the same as for equine heat then there might be some embarrassing issues for humans even if it's all perfectly normal to Silver.
7251575
I doubt that Silver will be all that attracted to any earth horses even if there were any about.
I was thinking more along the lines of how her pheromones will affect them or as you pointed out will they affect Aric?
7251581
I don't think pheromones would work all that well in either way, earth horses, humans and equestrian ponies are all different species after all, it's unlikely pheromones for one would have all that much effect on any of the others.
I wonder if Silver is going to get a talk about monogamy soon.
7251586 usually, pheromones not meant for you smells bad to get you out of the way.
It is the same my dear, you are still basically saying "your body is like this, then your mind must be like this"
Of course, different species will have different need and instinct and it will color their culture, but you are still making absolute out of perceived generalisation and basing your personal appreciation of individuals on these absolute.
A) this chick need a broccoli cheese soup bread bowl. It'll blow her goddamned mind.
B) Meghan, Chipotle is not much of a step up from Taco Bell.
7251734 except the context is different. You can make some assumptions about other humans. We all need the same shit to live, we all approach things in approximately the same way. We're all bipedal primates. Equestria literally has multiple different SPECIES that can interact on the same level. It's not the same.
7251476
Well, about the Breezies, they seem to only give out one brain per swarm of 'em, so it's possible they're only barely sapient. One in a few hundred being fully sapient, the rest being chimp to cockatiel sapient, resulting in the issues shown in the Breezies ' episode with the leader being notably more able to rationalize and think than the others.
7251476 well, ponies do have a seperate word for if a group only has ponies in it. They can be speciest.
Sweet, silver has a math class. What class does she have? And calculators in a math class? That's a big no no at school.
"Chipotle"
Take Silver Glow to Waffle House so she can learn all the ways to make hash browns.
Note: Best done after 3:00 AM and while drunk.
7251925 in an elementary school, maybe.
Calculators do nothing but save time. I could hand-calculate electron velocities and whatnot, but that'd be a fucking pain.
7252139 i'll clarify a bit. In the pure mathematics classes taught by the math department (which is what I assumed Silver was taking) the professors at my school didn't allow calculators in the classes I had and i' currently in junior level math classes. In the GE level physics and chem classes, I could use a scientific calculator. In my engineering coursework, i've never had any kind of unreasonable restriction on calculators. No one expects you to do advanced stuff like that without a calculator, but my math professors expect me to do vector calculus without one.
7251861
No, we don't. Even in our modern, globalized melting pot culture there are large differences in how people approach the world. And if you look back through history, you'll see a staggering variety in culture, beliefs, and societal norms. Plus, even if you were to assume that different tribes of ponies could have different brain chemistry, we've seen from the show that they have basically the same spread of behaviors across all populations - in essence, biology makes little to no difference.
Even if one does see a common group of values/traits in a certain species or group, its not because of biology. It's cultural - it's learned and taught because it's what that racial group thinks they should be, not because of any funny chemicals or anything.
7252514 "Approximately the same was" as in "like Primates."
If there were sapient tigers they would do things vastly differently from us. I'm not talking about cultural differences, son.
We don't have an example of a sapient species that isn't a primate. NONE.
7252516
Gah. Sorry if I misread you. I do that sometimes.
7252530 S'fine, just keep in mind: Star Trek and Star Wars are bullshit. Aliens almost certainly wouldn't act anything like us. I'm almost completely certain that behavioral scientists everywhere in this continuity are losing their minds over the fact that Equestrian Ponies share any context at all with us. That's utterly insane.
7251608 I suspect that talk is going to make Silver very unhappy. "What do you mean I have to pick one? Why??"
Or maybe Equestrian values will prevail and it will be Aric and Meghan adapting to fit. That would take some doing, though.
7252535 I have to wonder if some broad philosophical/existiential experiences would be the same, even if they manifested themselves very differently.
7252629 There is literally no way to know the answer to that question until we answer it empirically.
Ah ha! MLP comic book reference spotted, dead ahead, captain!
7251608
I honestly don't see Silver and Meg's relationship as being much more than friendly. Meg has a thing for Silver, clearly, but I don't think Silver has quite the same feelings for her as she does for Aric. But I guess time will tell, and, realistically, it's not like she's made a commitment just yet.
7251519
I used to put ketchup on scrambled eggs, but now I dislike it pretty intensely. Hash browns, I haven't tried that much, but since they're not so far off from French fries, well, why not? Grits, however, are f
king delicious.
7252963 I didn't think Silver was interested in that way either. But for other people looking at the relationship from the outside that close friendship might look a little on the romantic side.
Ah yeah seen a lot of those vids on Youtube.
Bigfoot?
7252270
Sure, those kind of classes you don't need a calculator. I recall one where the professor said to not even bother bringing one, as we'll never see a number.
BraeHeart? There's an old ship. I'm surprised she still sails. Good for him on the promotion from tourism head to sherrif.
Also, girl go for it. I'm sure Silver would be up for some heavy petting. Hell she'd probably be up for sharing her boyfriend. It's college, what better time is there to make horrible mistakes.
7253535 yep, those are the types of classes i was talking about. I haven't had anything purely symbolic though.
I only like hashbrowns when they're pressed/molded into greasy cakes like at McDonalds or used in an omelet.
Now corned beef hash with sriracha on the other hand is fit for a king. Screw the people who say it's basically dog food.
Fun fact: the state with the largest nudist colony is Alaska.
Discussions about mathematics, polygamy and hash browns side by side.
FimFic, I love you.
that sounds so much like me !
7253766
because they can hide behind canada if some is trying to come and get them hahahaha
That comic with the dragons came across as pretty disturbing to me, especially since it easily be interpreted that dragons has less rights than ponies in Equestria.
I'm looking forward to the April Fool's Day story. Hopefully silver glow will be careful with lightning.
Or....
One of the air controllers could invite her over to the Airfield because the junior controller has never seen a VTOL ultralight ornithopter before.
"One of the college girls flies most mornings. She sounds cute on the radio."
7254810
it's more my mom worries about that kind of thing, it's in kind of a run down area. I'd say it's safe, although there was that one time where there was four police officers in bullet proof vests (the kind of mag pouches) with AR-15s. California has a nice coast. I haven't seen the stretch that the coast starlight goes though.
7254930
Cal Poly is in San Luis Obispo and I think the Spring breaks line up as well. It was a perfect oportunity
7254883 Good point, we saw that stallion bartering with Pinkie in the heart of Manehatten as well.
7254978
or not.
that defiantly sounds like all kind of fun.
7254810
Do you think that the in group/out group mindset among ponies would lessen with more exposure to other races? Like, would the focus shift off of the differences within the pony tribes to the differences between species?
7254766
Didn't ponies control them before Equestria even existed? And presumably before Celestia, Luna, and Discord?
Hmm. I wonder if a "weather wheel" is like a slide rule. Slide rules can be used to do pretty much any math operation from addition and multiplication, to trig functions, to exponentation and logarithns... though, being analog, they are only accurate to about 3 significant figures.
Having a slide rule was pretty much the honor badge of nerds and eggheads back in the 50ies.
7255480
It is: it's a circular slide rule.