Clothes
“So tell me, what is the human world like?”
Sunset sipped her cider thoughtfully while watching Luna sample her second drink. “Fast. As in, like Manehattan on caffeine. Their technology is way ahead of ours, and they use it mostly to speed up their way of life. And then they complain whenever they have to wait for anything.”
Luna licked the traces of ale from her lips, savoring the flavor. She smiled to herself in satisfaction before turning her attention back to Sunset. “What a colorful image that description brings to mind. I am surprised Twilight has not already managed to reproduce any of their inventions.”
Sunset shook her head. “It’s a lot harder than that. Human society is dependent on this black oil they dig out of the ground, which we don’t have much of. And physics doesn't work the same way in their dimension, either. It's like everything there is so much less… bouncy and stretchy.”
“A pity. It sounds as if that would make their world so much more dangerous.”
“It does. But gosh, the stuff humans make is just… crazy. When I first went through the mirror years ago, I was completely overwhelmed. Carriages that pull themselves. Big flat slabs of glass that work like movie-projector screens, getting those movies sent straight to their homes through metal cables. Little messenger boxes that can send a letter to anyone else who has one. It was like I suddenly jumped two hundred years ahead in the future.”
Luna chuckled. “I think I can understand how that feels.”
Sunset facehoofed. “Sorry. There I go, putting my hoof in my mouth again.”
“It is all right, Sunset. As I said, I sympathize. In truth, I too had a great deal of difficulty adjusting to a new world. Though the changes, I feel, have been largely for the better.”
“Really? What’s the best change?”
Without hesitation, Luna replied, “Flush privies.”
Sunset blinked. “A toilet flush?”
“Indeed.”
“Of all the incredible inventions of the past thousand years – including steam engines, movie projectors, and hot air balloons – you think the greatest is a commode that pours water on itself?”
Luna looked Sunset directly in the eye, suddenly very serious. “Sunset, I was and am a Princess of Equestria. I have magical power beyond that of normal unicorns and servants to cater to my every whim, should I so demand. And all that counted for naught against the embarrassment of having to hoof my chamber-pot to a maid every day.”
“I guess when you put it that way…” Sunset looked down at her cider. “Let’s change the subject. This is honestly the wrong topic while we’re having drinks. What about the biggest change you’ve experienced, then?”
Luna tapped her chin. “So many changes there have been. But perhaps… well, the first change that I truly noticed was possibly also the second-most shocking revelation I had in the modern day. And that… is the amazing lack of hindwear.”
“Hindwear? You mean, like, skirts?”
Luna nodded. “Historians might be intrigued to discover that at the moment Nightmare Moon appeared in Ponyville and declared her ascendency, the one thought going through her head was, ‘Why is nopony in this room wearing pants?’”
“Uh… but weren’t you naked, too? I mean there’s books depicting both Nightmare Moon and Celestia without clothes even a thousand years ago.”
“Ah. An explanation is in order, I believe. You see, Sunset, before my exile, nudity was largely an earth pony convenience, since getting dressed is difficult without magic or wings.” Luna absent-mindedly took another draught from her glass. “Though, the warriors under Commander Hurricane did occasionally go to war without hindwear as an intimidation tactic. I believe modern pegasi still retain some remnants of that in their culture.”
“So… unicorns were the only ones who constantly wore clothing?”
“Yes. It is not so surprising, is it? It was one of the ways by which the nobles of old could easily display their wealth, since clothing was expensive – sewing machines having not yet been invented. In fact, it may amuse you to know that at one time, Canterlot was the center of clothing fashion in Equestria, not Manehattan.”
Sunset snorted. “I guess nobles never change. Is that why you didn’t follow those fashions?”
“Very much so. As I mentioned, Equestrian culture very often followed the whims of its princesses. To show the nation that all ponies were important to us, we chose to dress as the earth ponies did – we still wear symbolic ceremonial collars even though we of course do not pull ploughs. All in an effort to persuade ponies towards egalitarian nudity. To our surprise however, we encountered stiff resistance.”
“I can imagine.”
“With respect, dear Sunset, I do not believe you do. You see, at the time, the seamstresses of Canterlot city fell beneath a monopoly of a particularly greedy noble named Bossy Pants. Since promoting public nudity would have severely undermined her wealth, she rallied lingering tribist sentiments in aid of persuading unicorns to reject nudity and embrace ever more garish and complicated attire. It was a protracted and hard-fought battle of public opinion lasting decades, one that had yet to be concluded even at the time of my exile.”
Sunset frowned incredulously. “Wait, so one of Equestria’s longest political conflicts was to free ponykind from the tyranny of pants?”
Silence.
“You say that as if it was not of immense importance.”
Sunset rolled her eyes. “You do realize that I have to wear clothes every day as a human.”
Luna raised an eyebrow. “I frankly do not. Of all the stories you and Twilight have brought of the human world, the fact that they wear clothes is not among them.”
“Right, sorry,” said Sunset. “Humans don’t grow coats, so they wear clothes at all times to keep warm – even in summer.”
“I see. I am surprised this was never mentioned, considering that amongst the first things one would notice about somepony is whether they are naked.”
“Like I said, once you see their technology, you tend to forget everything else. Anyway, back to the subject – I presume Bossy Pants eventually lost that battle.”
“Verily, it was Celestia who was at a disadvantage for the most part,” said Luna, with a smug grin. “Bossy Pants had vast wealth, the advantage of tradition, and far more to lose. But time, as always, was on my sister’s side. Eventually, a new generation of unicorns grew up to rebel against their parents, and it was they whom she won over in the end. I met Bossy’s descendant recently; I find Fancy Pants far more agreeable than his ancestor, even though the Pants family name seems so much less apt, in consideration of the fact that he apparently never wears any.”
“Huh.” Sunset took a swig of cider. “I guess if it went the other way, ponies today would be just like humans – wearing clothes all the time.”
“Fie on that! Nudity is a blessing that should not be so carelessly discarded!” Luna raised a hoof skyward, gesturing wildly. “Naked we were born into this world, and naked we should be as we live in it! Free, as we were meant to be, from the prisons of fabric! It is our privilege – nay, our right to remain unshackled by the bonds of cotton and wool! To feel the breeze caress our nethers as we proclaim our glory to all the world! Ponies everywhere should unite, I say, to reject the oppression of clothing and never don them again!”
***
Rarity dropped her needle, her work late into the night interrupted by momentary distraction. “What the– that’s odd. I feel a great disturbance… as if millions of potential fabulous outfits cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...”
***
“You just hate getting dressed up for formal occasions, don’t you,” said Sunset flatly.
“Well… yes,” said Luna. “I consented, just once, to make an exception during Twilight’s coronation. ‘Twas a most uncomfortable ordeal of an evening. I mean the clothing of course, not the coronation. But that is beside the point! There are such practical benefits to nudity as well. No fumbling with garments to use the washroom. No having to deal with the irritating brush of fabric against one’s coat. And it makes flirting so much more straightforward!”
“Sure, I guess if you’re not used to– wait, what was that last one again?”
“Flirting, Sunset. Is it not earth pony custom, to point one’s posterior in the direction of a prospective paramour and flick one’s tail far and quickly enough so that they might catch just the briefest glimpse of one's–”
“Woah woah woah. Okay, look,” said Sunset very quickly. “Maybe it was the case a thousand years ago, but it hasn’t been done for centuries. Earth Ponies these days flirt just like everypony else.”
Luna sat up quickly.
“Surely you jest.”
“I’m totally serious. Flashing your pretzels at other ponies on purpose is considered really rude. Possibly even sexual harassment.”
“Oh.” Luna blushed. “I suppose, then, that there is a guardspony to whom I owe a sincere apology.”
Their booth settled into an awkward quiet.
“Okay, time to change the subject again,” said Sunset. “What was the, um… the first?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said that that was the second most shocking revelation you had since returning from banishment. What was the first?”
“Ah, that,” said Luna.
The energy quickly drained from her face, and her shoulders slumped. She glanced out the window into the night sky, letting out a long sigh as she did so. “It was discovering that almost everypony I once cared about is long dead.”
“Oh.”
Luna raised her ale to her lips and finished the entire glass. “I am still visiting their graves one by one to apologize for my selfishness of a thousand years ago.”
Without another word, Sunset stood up, walked around the table, and pulled Luna into a hug.
They sat there in quiet until the bar closed.
"LOOK UPON MY VULVA, YE GREAT AND POWERFUL, AND DESPAIR!"
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Pffffffttttt, HAHAHAHAHAHAAA! I don't think I've ever heard it put like that before.
Good thing for Rarity that Luna doesn't outlaw clothes. I wonder if Applejack's hat counts as clothes or just being useful for a farmpony. And that sure took a turn for the somber at the end.
how you keep the balance of laugh out loud moments, the feels, and reverting back to normal convo is amazing.
ill never get thar AN pic out of my head till i die.
res.cloudinary.com/teepublic/image/private/s--y-B3_Oc1--/t_Preview/b_rgb:c8e0ec,c_limit,f_jpg,h_630,q_90,w_630/v1446237990/production/designs/267402_1
STAR WARS!!!!!
It was about here that the image of Princess Luna going to the human world to spread the freedom from pants to them flashed through my mind.
You went from hilarious to feels to hilarious again.
I think I actually got whiplash from that...
Damn, have you got a knack for dealing emotional whiplash.
Sunset is clearly failing in history. And physics. And chemistry. And economics, if they have any such class.
And geography.
8206727
Understandable, given that all she's seen of a humanoid world is a high school full of beings we'd regard as bizarre aliens from space.
"Historians might be intrigued to discover that at the moment Nightmare Moon appeared in Ponyville and declared her ascendency, the one thought going through her head was, ‘Why is nopony in this room wearing pants?”
That last part. Right in the feels.
Hard to gauge technological development but I would guess ponies are not 200 years behind on technology. Maybe about 100. They certainly understand electricity and can generate it and store it their rail system is not much less advanced than the majority of ours. Transportation for ponies would likely lag behind given how mobile pegasi are and how much of a load earth ponies can easily carry. They seem to understand how to make helicopters and hot air balloons. Technology usage is much lower but the actual tech they have is at an industrial age level.
Hard to gauge technological development but I would guess ponies are not 200 years behind on technology. Maybe about 100. They certainly understand electricity and can generate it and store it their rail system is not much less advanced than the majority of ours. Transportation for ponies would likely lag behind given how mobile pegasi are and how much of a load earth ponies can easily carry. They seem to understand how to make helicopters and hot air balloons. Technology usage is much lower but the actual tech they have is at an industrial age level. They can make simple cars as seen in with their Derby racers (which seem to be self propelled by some means indicating a simple motor of some sort). I would put their tech on the level of 1890s to 1910s.
8207500 The issue is that they are not uniformly behind in technology. Some areas are certainly more advanced then others, and that probably has a lot to do with the miracles of magic negating the need for a lot of technology. Their overall technological growth is probably much slower than Humanity's, as well.
8207481 Well, the 200 years is just Sunset's estimate. She doesn't know exactly how far ahead the human world is. And, if you don't consider the fact that technological progress accelerates, or at least underestimate it, her guess isn't too far off.
8207500 Likely an estimate given the extensive time between the early steam locomotives, and now. Since Equestrian trains are at that point, it's a relatively fair estimate. Though I suspect magic can make up the difference a lot quicker, than miniaturization did.
8205230
And Dune “No. I must not rage. Rage is the mind-killer. Rage is the little death that brings total obliteration…”
This chapter... laughing so hard right now, even despite the feelsbomb at the end...
vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/f/f9/Pinkie_Pie_resting_S3E3.png
"That looks like fun."
Why Fluttershy... you little minx...
this should be tribalist unless you want to use it like that as a neologism.
I love the star wars reference.
I really enjoyed the world building in this chapter. Definitely an interesting thought with changing nature of clothing amongst pony kind.
...
...
...
Wow! Okay, that was fantastic.
8206727
On your first quote, what the hell dude?!
What part of human society as it is now isn't dependant on oil, or some other fossil fuel?
8398791
You mean other than sizable chunks of Africa and Asia?
Sure, what we think of as modern civilization is dependent on petrochemicals. But the reasons for that are irrelevant to the conversation Sunset was having, and she should have known that.
First, Sunset's statement was in response to
It is our infrastructure that is dependent on oil, and our technologies are dependent on that infrastructure. Ponyville has a fairly impressive hydroelectric dam. Twilight isn't going to be making an internal combustion engine any time soon, but she has access to an electrical infrastructure already. That's the physics.
Second, Equestria has shown enough plastic objects that they have a supply of petrochemicals to work with, so Sunset's entire point is moot. That's the chemistry.
Third, oil is favored because of its economic status; it is cheap and abundant compared to the materials needed to make or fuel other forms of power generation. Even so, a large percentage of power generation comes from coal, natural gas, and other mined resources that are not petroleum. That's the history and economics.
8399146
And all of their civilization that Sunset has seen is dependent on that infrastructure. That is not an unreasonable assumption with what she has seen. Are you certain it is a hydroelectric dam? Or is it just a dam?
Regarding oil, Sunset specifically said
So she is not saying they don't have it. She is implying that they can't use it on the scale humans do.
I said oil, or some other fossil fuel.
And those chunks of Africa and Asia actually are dependent on oil. They produce things that big corporations then buy, and ship elsewhere. They would have a much harder time doing that if oil weren't around.
8399463
The Ponyville dam has a trio of sluicegates with massive Tesla coil like structures on it. If it's not supposed to be a generating station, the artists need to go back to highschool.
Y'know what, let's say that I accept this point.
As stated by my first point, our technology is not dependent on fossil fuels. Our technology is dependent on an abundance of electrical energy. Fossil fuels are merely our best means to that end, the means we have the infrastructure in place for.
In the absence of fossil fuels, but in the presence of a functional electrical grid, most machines will work perfectly fine.
Which is my original point from months ago.
The reason I didn't highlight Sunset's statement about the abundance of petrochemicals is that it is, ultimately, irrelevant. Equestria has electrical generation technology and some amount of infrastructure. That's enough.
8399520
8399463
Hi, if I might just interject to avoid an argument in my story comments -
I didn't say anything originally because Ryvaken was kinda right. The two statements - inventions, and then society (not technology) being dependent on oil (it is, for transportation and more importantly, shipping) don't precisely line up. When I first drafted this chapter, there were a few more paragraphs where Sunset talks about cars and then about inventing cellphones - two different topics and hence the incongruity in the statements above. I cut those because the joke I had prepared was frankly not funny and because it went on too long about something that human readers already know perfectly well. I re-ordered and edited what remained to give the conversation a more natural flow to what the chapter was actually about - Luna's amusement with flush privies and her dislike of fancy dresses.
Interestingly, I always thought of the dam as magic generator (hence the giant Tesla coils, which aren't in real electric dams), not electric, because Faust herself (who was still in control of the show when It's About Time, the episode where that dam makes an appearance, aired) stated her intent that ponies do not have electricity and everything that the show has that normally runs on electricity instead runs on magic. But my pre-reader pointed out that Ponyville General Hospital has electrical sockets, and that fanon had accepted electricity (wireless electricity, no less). So I changed it. As I've mentioned in several of my stories, I do not do headcanon - I use whatever is accepted or whatever works or is funny (like turning the entire estrus fanon on its head in a later chapter of this story).
Anyway I never understood the point of a dam when it seems like the best method of electrical generation would be to hire teams of pegasi to take turns bouncing on clouds in shifts - but then again, lightning apparently is explosive instead of electrical in Equestria (another thing that was originally going to be mentioned in this story - that electricity doesn't work the same way - until the electrical sockets were brought up). This is the problem with the inconsistent portrayal of pony technology as the seasons wear on - so my current policy is just to make flippant references and avoid discussing it too in-depth because it doesn't make any sense. I mean, why don't ponies just use electricity everywhere if they have it? If they have fluorescent lights for dance clubs and electricity for DJ turntables, why still use candles? Maybe those run on magic, hence a unicorn DJ?
8400324
The idea of using weather to generate electricity through lightning discharges is an old one seen in a lot of fantasy settings. The problem is that a real lightning strike takes too much time to build up to be a practical energy source. Pegasus weather manipulation has generated electrical discharges on command, but that opens up all the old worm cans. Where does the energy come from? How hard is it for the pegasus to do it? And some new cans of worms specific to Equestria, what clouds can make lightning? How hard is it for Cloudsdale or other weather facilities to make stormclouds? How energy efficient is the process?
The simplest answer is that water turbines in a gravity feed give a more reliable or usable output from a more convenient energy source.
I respect that position. Personally, I find far too much intellectual joy in working out all the patterns, figuring out what must be true for the canon to make sense, to be logically consistent. The result isn't always rational, but then real life isn't terribly rational either. And yeah, that's why I'm bothering with the topic at all. This is fun!
Ooo that's never fun. Even in books written by a single author, the author's intent can be very different from what actually ends up on the page. With the team of writers and editors and animators MLP has, I just stick to the actual episodes. Much less brainhurty.
8400848
The thing is that Derpy manages to annihilate a town hall by accident just by enthusiatically bouncing on a regular cloud. This is another issue: the show is vague. They don't explicitly ever mention electricity. We like to put our humanocentric spin on what we see, but Equestria is clearly not at all like earth. The good news is that we writers can say whatever we like about Equestria and it's still just as valid as the humanocentric headcanon: for all I know, Equestrian lightning is pure magic and has no electricity at all. My original take, before it was changed, was that all the appliances ran on magic, and frankly the show has never refuted this!
Yes. But absent a clear indication in the show (something we've never had as far as pony tech is concerned), asking the author's intent isn't unreasonable. I know full well about "death of the author", but in the contemporary perspective, that concept is countered by the everpresent fan concepts of canon and headcanon. People unreasonably want an official answer, mostly to settle silly arguments. So as a writer, I often indulge this and try to follow what the show creators say, or alternatively to follow what fanon likes.
But frankly, that's still futile, because people just want to be right, haha!
8400848
Ya know, I was going to read two of your stories, but I don't think I will now.
I don't want to to read something by someone as petty and arrogant as you, who will block someone just because they argued well, even if it is good.
Seriously dude, the downvoting on comments is not for when you disagree, it is for when a comment is not contributing.
To Sporktacles
Sorry I had to put this here, but Mr. Petty over there blocked me, so I can't do it in pm or on his user page.
i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/017/204/CaptainAmerica1_zps8c295f96.JPG
8402627
Gave you an upvote, and yeah that person is pretty petty. Don't let it get you too down. Some peeps just can't see past the curse that is headcanon, and their over inflated ego to be bothered with things like civility and logic.
Jesus Christ that picture has me fucking dying.
9334009
I did too.