Strucia
Strucia
Admiral Biscuit
Most of the ponies I’d seen took their coats seriously. I was sure that there was some kind of social rule about that, but thus far I hadn’t figured it out, and it felt gauche to ask.
Besides, even if I did, I might not understand the explanation. I still didn’t understand why men’s bikes needed a crossbar at the top when women’s bikes had a lower frame, and I’d lived on Earth all my life. The nuances of pony coat grooming would likely be completely lost on me.
Mostly, it appeared to be a spectrum from good to better. A lot of ponies, especially working ponies, had decently-groomed coats, while the white-collar—if that term could be said to apply to ponies—took more care. They often looked glossier.
Of course it was possible sweat and dust from work could dull their coats, and I had to admit that they wouldn’t be able to have much of a society if they groomed themselves at the exclusion of all other tasks. The coal-mining ponies had had slightly dirty coats, no doubt an occupational hazard.
Even when they were doing the same thing, though, there was clearly a personal aspect. Goldenrod and Lillium were very similar in appearance, although not at all in personal care.
I was waiting for an omnibus to take me back to my hotel, and the last thing I should have been thinking about was pony coats, but just across the street from me, in a little shelter that was a mirror to my own, sat a mare who was nearly shaved bald. It was hard to judge from my distance, but she looked balder on the chest and belly than on top.
The two initial thoughts I’d had was that she was rebelling against the coat brush industry, or else she was sick. And as much as I wanted to know, I wasn’t sure that it was the right thing to ask. Kids could get away with that; kids could go up to a person in a wheelchair and ask why their legs didn’t work and that was cute, and a learning opportunity. Adults couldn't, not on Earth anyway.
Granted, she’d probably never see me again, but it was still rude.
Just the same, I checked the traffic signal and it was in my favor, so I got up from the bench and walked across the street. I could get on whatever omnibus she was taking and maybe there’s be an opportunity to talk, an opportunity to sate my curiosity.
Maybe there wouldn’t, and that was okay, too.
I noticed that her eyes and ears followed me across the street. I hadn’t encountered all that many human tourists. If she was curious, I could answer her questions and she could answer mine. Ponies were generally more social, and would strike up conversations with strangers.
As I got closer, I noticed some white smudges on her short fur and in her mane, and I could see the tired droop of her eyelids. The latter didn’t rule out anything.
Her cutie mark was a loaf of bread, which suggested that there was a good chance that the white smudges were flour, although I didn’t want to jump to that conclusion right away.
“Tourist?” Her voice had a bit of roughness to it, which again could have been from anything.
“Yeah.” I sat down on the bench, which brought me closer to her height.
“Where you heading?”
“Well.” She’d surely seen me across the street, and if I told her, she’d inform me that I was getting on the wrong omnibus now. But I didn’t want to lie, either. “Nowhere in particular. Just looking around the city, you know?”
“It’s a big city, plenty to see.”
“Yeah. You from here?”
“Born and bred.”
Our conversation was interrupted as the omnibus arrived. I had a monthly pass which I showed to the cubrside pony towing the wagon. She was a familiar face, and they let her board unchallenged.
She was covering a yawn as I took the seat beside her, wondering if I was being rude. Maybe she liked to doze as she rode home.
Instead, she smiled. “I don’t usually get company on the ride home, not unless one of the girls is headed uptown.” She held out a hoof, and I bumped it. “I’m Strucia.”
“Joe.”
“Good to meet you.”
“Same.”
We fell silent for a moment. I really wanted to ask her about her coat, and she surely had a question or two for me, but we were both too polite to ask, until I decided I might as well be the dumb tourists. “So, forgive me for asking, but is that flour on your coat?”
She nodded. “I’m a baker.”
“So you’ve probably been up all day.”
“Yeah.” She grinned. “Ponies want fresh bread in the morning, which means I’ve got to get up before anypony else, and get to work. It’s nice, though; I get to see a side of the city that not many ponies do.”
I thought back to my chance meeting with Tam Tam. “I know what you mean; I’ve been wandering off the beaten path myself. It’s more interesting than the parts of the city that the tourists see, don’t you think?”
Strucia nodded. “Sometimes it’s kind of creepy, though. I don’t like the way that my hooffalls echo on empty streets. There’s a newspaper colt who’s usually at the corner by the time I get there, but sometimes he isn’t.”
“Do the omnibuses run that early?”
“No, but I don’t mind walking to work. It helps wake me up.”
“I suppose it would. Say, you don’t mind me asking—”
“Because it’s hot in the kitchen.”
“—why your . . . okay, yeah.” That made perfect sense. All the ovens. I’d worked in a restaurant back in high school, just a little hole-in-the-wall type of place, and the kitchen was hotter than the hubs of hell in the summertime. The owner was too cheap to install air conditioning, so we just suffered in the heat.
“Easier to keep clean, too.” She reached up and brushed at a spot of flour. “Well, mostly. I shoulda cleaned off before leaving, but I just didn’t feel like it.”
“I can understand; I used to work in a restaurant myself. Nothing special, just fast food.”
“Like the Thermopolium?”
“More like a Hayburger.”
She stuck her tongue out. “Their food isn’t all that good. Some ponies swear by it, though.”
“Ours wasn’t, either,” I admitted. “It was cheap, and it was fast, and that was the best that could be said for it.”
“Well, if you want some quality bread sometime, you should stop by my bakery. It’s called Strucia’s—creative, I know—and it’s not far from the omnibus stop. A couple of blocks west, that’s all. You can’t miss it.”
“I think I will,” I said.
IRL, working horses are often shaved so they don’t overheat. Assuming the same principles of thermodynamics apply to ponies, some working ponies might also choose to shave their coats, especially winter coats.
What Applejack is sporting is called the blanket clip, which is idea for horses doing medium work.
Strucia is a type of sweet bread, and I don’t know more than that about it.
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New chapter? Woo-hoo!
Pinkie...
Poor AJ!
I know this one! Or did... All I remember is it had something to do with not letting a woman raise her leg too far, might have been relating to dresses or just what was and wasn't proper.
Two thumbs up.
9792253
Long skirts.
I often wonder what a shaved pony would look like. Now I have an idea!
I recall that one of Georg's stories had shedded winter coat fur floating all over Canterlot during the warmer months. No doubt barbers would be very different for pastel pones than for us. Add fads and utility like you did to the regular grooming, and ponies become that much more complex! (Hey why isn't Pinkie shaved? She works in a bakery all day!)
Interesting that Strucia traveled so far to get to her business, because just like for most people, living in the big city where you work is too expensive.
I vote we shave Pinkie bald for laughing at Applejack like that. She would probably understand as somepony who grew up doing difficult labor. Now if it was Rainbow Dash laughing it would be appropriate.
New chapter! Oh my god yes!!
I’ve occasionally seen racehorses with patterns clipped into their coats.
They take it a lot further with camels...
encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT6hEN3lH_q0P1cpwKSQp-unh0stBxKRHce0-gOUmeplaF08cQ6UWqy1y-5
Mens bikes are classic bikes, two near perfect triangles for maximum strength and stiffness for minimum weight. This results in a top cross bar.
Womens bikes were made classically with a lower bar due to long skirt racism and the expectation they were lighter and couldnt break the much weaker design as easily.
Anytime you see a suspension bike with a low coil, thats an idiotic version due to various stresses because someone managed to patent the old panhard saddle link idea as far as I can work out.
Can magic using ponies or other species get a power boost by shaving runes into their fur? Especially given they can do multiple level trimming and so rune overlaps?
AJ looks so sad that Pinkie is laughing at her in that image
Still cute though.
Yeah, between rock farming and baking, you'd think Pinkie would be accustomed to compensating for heat-intensive working conditions. Of course, that assumes thermodynamics is more willing to deal with Pinkie than the rest of physics...
There's also the question of relative heat retention between the tribes. I'd actually expect earth ponies to be the least insulated. Pegasi have down and often live at cloud level, while unicorns gravitate towards mountains due to Rincewind Syndrome, or just so they can look down on other ponies. But earth ponies have both more heat-generating muscles and a lowland habitat. Winter coats would be thicker, sure, but the summer ones much less so.
Sorry, kind of went off on a tangent. Nice interview with a breadpony.
9792616
...you mean long skirt sexism, right?
9792616
9792764
If I remember correctly too, early men's bikes had the handle bars set lower and narrower together, versus a woman's that was higher so they sat up straight (possibly for corsets?) and handles spread out farther, so it wouldn't cause their bust to be more prominent.
Those are things I've only heard scuttlebutt about, but I do have a couple vintage 1940's bikes, and the woman's bike handles are a lot wider than my men's bike, so I've no reason to doubt it.
It's because Strucia is also a sweet pony, duh.
Yes! New chapter.
Always a good day when I see this updates!
Also Silly pony Applejack, you know that won't grow back, right!?
Skirts. It’s that simple.
From the wiki: Thermopolium
It's a stronger design. That doesn't matter so much now, but back in the day metallurgical quality control was kind of hit or miss, so they opted to go with the stronger frame to be on the safe side. Women weren't expected to exert themselves in any meaningful way, so the dipped frame to accommodate full skirts was deemed an acceptable weakness. Nowadays though, we mostly still do it out of habit.
Edit: I noticed that I'm a little late to the party on my way back up the comment section. So it goes.
9792243
It’s potentially one of the downsides of being a working pony (and one I’ve never seen in a fic, TBH).
9792253
Yeah, as far as I know that’s the story behind it. Likewise with the sidesaddle on horses thing.
9792254
Thanks!
9792324
Well, that’s just trimmed--you leave the coat short (and it’s most often done with winter coats).
Now all the way shaved . . . well, Imma post a picture below, and I’ll let you decide if you want to click on it or not. It’s kind of freaky (it’s MLP, not an acutal horse, which is also freaky).
derpicdn.net/img/view/2012/9/14/97628.png
9792330
The ponies probably have some way to manage shed winter coats, to avoid the problem of loose hair floating around town, but who knows? Shed feathers and down would be an issue anywhere there are lots of pegasi, too.
Yeah, there’d be totally different concepts in barbering when it comes to ponies. I assume that fashionable unicorns tend to thin their winter coats so they aren’t fluffy, while the other tribes wouldn’t unless they had to for work.
(Hey why isn't Pinkie shaved? She works in a bakery all day!)
Besides the lazy “Pinkie being Pinkie,” there might be a difference in working in a larger bakery in Manehattan vs. working in Sugarcube Corner, at least when it comes to the heat in the kitchen. It’s also possible that there are differences in coat thickness from one pony to the next, or it could be a vanity thing. In another on of my stories, Sea Swirl specifically mentions she doesn’t crop her tail like most divers do.
Oh, she lives in Manehattan, just takes the omnibus home rather than walk on her own. I figure that pony cities aren’t so expensive yet that average working ponies can’t afford to live in them.
9792397
Who knows; with Pinkie she might not have ever had to had her coat trimmed. Maybe rocks don’t grow in winter or something.
As far as I know, that’s the only image on all of Derpibooru of a pony with a working coat trim.
9792515
9792550
Huh, I’ve never seen pictures of that, but people do it with their hair, so why not?
Obviously, there are also various types of brands that horses often get, although being permanent, I’m not sure a pony would want that.
There are some non-pony fics I’ve read where convicts get branded--and that might have happened historically, too, I dunno--if pony justice demanded convicts be identifiable, but also that once they’d served their term and re-integrated into society, a non-magical way to do it could be to tattoo something on them in a specific location. It couldn’t be seen once the fur grew back, but could be checked for. Hmm.
That’s really cool!
9792616
Potentially, yes. In some headcanons, runes or other magical signals are consumed when the spell is cast, which I suppose might mean that a pony could be walking around with scorch marks in her fur.
9792707
I know, right? No respect for the working mare.
She is. And in all honesty, I think that there would be lots of ponies who have partially-shaved winter coats.
9792757
Honestly, when it comes to Pinkie, she’s a bad example. Reality applies to her less than any other pony.
Yeah, that’s an interesting point. I tend to think that earth ponies are built more like draft horses, all bulk and muscle, although I don’t know if IRL draft breeds have significantly thinner coats than other breeds, however, there are enough differences between ponies and IRL equines that it’s surely possible. For the unicorns, I think that they tend to thin whatever winter coats they might get, just because they’d prefer to look sleek and slender rather than be fluffy and warm (plus, it gives them a chance to show off all their winter accessories).
Pegasi’s a bit of a tough call for me. Sure, they probably have down around their wings, and I think feathers are pretty decent at insulating, too, but depending on how high the clouds they normally work on/live on are, it might not be that much colder than it is at ground level. Possibly wetter, but that’s a whole ‘nother subject. From what we see in the show, most of the clouds that they use for weather work are quite low.
It’s also possible that they tend towards high activity--flying is probably more taxing than walking--in which case, shedding heat easily might be important to them. I could see it going either way, honestly.
Batponies probably have thicker fur, since it’d normally be colder at night when they’re flying, and that would also make a cave to sleep in during the day more appealing.
Kirin . . . well, they’re all sorts of floofy. I assume they don’t tend to do much in the way of heavy physical work, or else it’s cold where they normally live.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2019/3/20/1990698.png
Thanks!
9792866
Hmm, that’s interesting. I didn’t know that (but it sounds plausible).
She is!
9792874
Yay!
9792994
It will so. Eventually.
9793744
Yes, indeed. That’s what they’re inspired by, and in an early chapter (the Sandwich Sorcerer), Joe mentions that they’re favored by the working ponies and I think he also mentioned that they were set up so ponies towing wagons didn’t have to unhook to eat.
9796035
Which is a dumb habit, if you ask me.
9797238
I generally agree. There are some sports that of course require the added strength, and if you're going to build a gas or a flat track bike you really need a reinforced diamond frame, but for the rest of us there's no reason not to use a modified step-through design like those used in Dutch bikes and gender-neutral city and touring bikes aside from the fear that someone will mistake us for little girls.
9792757
Rincewind Syndrome? Is that the tendency of great wizzards [sic] to gravitate to high places?
9798645
Precisely! Towers, mountain peaks, you name it. Mind you, rumors that Cloudsdale is actually built around the floating castle of the dread wizard Thousand-Year Storm have been dismissed by the Royal Archeology Society, no matter what happened in Daring Do and the Lightning King's Curse.
9796035
9797358
9797238
Not entirely accurate.
The main reason to favour “diamond” frame over step-through is weight; a very sloppy top tube is going to need a reinforced joint.
Step-through or sloppy frame are still produced not for women but for people who have difficulties getting on classic frame, old people mostly. In fact, in the recent years the industry generally moved away from genred bike, it is a recent development though.
We’ve also seen some modern designs in triathlon bike that have forgone the top tube entirely; but those usually favour aerodynamics over lightness. And are on the ridiculously expensive side of things.
9797358 9799830
I suspect that with modern material science, a bike could be built with a dropped frame that would stand up to most normal usage, and probably be significantly stronger than bikes of a few decades ago. Sure, there are going to be specialty applications where the additional stability of a traditional bike frame would be important, but I’d have to assume that for the average Joe, a dropped center frame would be perfectly adequate.
I’d have to believe in the US at least, there would be some pushback against riding a ‘woman’s bike’ by your average male consumer, which could be a reason why they don’t seem to be an option at least at big box stores. I honestly haven’t done any looking at real bike stores.
I did just do a quick search in Amazon (which, admittedly, could be biased, ‘cause I don’t know the right search terms), and found a couple that have a dropped top bar, although not as low as on a traditional girl’s bike.
“Dutch bike” got me better results, and I also noticed that some E-bikes appear to use a completely open shape in front of the seat; I’d guess they have some sort of cast frame.
9798664
The only way to be sure that you’re always looking down on other ponies is to be higher in elevation than those other ponies.
Sadly for the unicorns, they can’t fly, so the best they can do is live on top of mountains, look down on the mudponies below, and forever grate their teeth at the pegasi on clouds above, only taking solace in the thought that pegasi don’t build lasting monuments.
9797208
I feel like there's a case to be made for freeze branding and its ilk, since it can be used to permanently change the color of the hair where it's applied without causing hair loss – basically like a white tattoo that shows in the coat rather than merely on the skin hidden under it. Obviously that'd let it be used a lot like skin tattoos are for humans, and it'd also open up interesting possibilities for coat dyeing (since it can be used for fairly intricate patterns, appears to make a better base lack-of-color than hair-bleaching normally does, and doesn't need to be reapplied continually as the hair grows out), but perhaps the biggest market for it might be modifying coat markings. Not those ponies who'll gladly make extreme sacrifices to keep up with the latest fad, though doubtless they exist, but simply ones who want to even out unsightly irregularities or asymmetries or other perceived blemishes in the same general way humans might spring for dental braces. (To what extent ponies who just copy natural coat patterns they weren't born with because they look cool should be counted in that last category versus as a relatively tame subset of the tattoos category is presumably open for debate.)
Needless to say, the way such branding would interact with Marks both culturally and biologically makes for an incredibly intriguing question that unfortunately is going to vary wildly by setting, thus leaving it difficult to speculate on without further context. Whether any prospective resulting culture wars are likely to end up thornier than the kerfuffle doomed to arise when a dark-coated pony inevitably decides to rebrand themself as a zebra (thus proving once and for all that zebras are, in fact, black with white stripes) also remains an open question.