February 18
There was a light snow falling when I got up, so I went outside and let the snow fall on me for a bit before I started my trot around the neighborhood. More of it stuck to me before I warmed up enough for it to melt right off.
I can tell spring is coming because the days are getting longer. Sunrise is earlier each morning: on Earth this is because the whole planet tips on its axis, wobbling like an unstable top. It's a kind of ridiculous system; it would make so much more sense if the Earth were nice and stable like Equestria and the sun just changed its path through the sky. Maybe when God created the Earth and humans to put on it, He thought they wouldn't follow instructions and so He had to come up with a different way of making seasons work.
(At least He kept weather the same. I would have been so confused if it had been different.)
It was going to be light snowfall most of the day, I thought. I'd have a better idea if I was up in the sky, but from down on the ground, it felt like the clouds were going to stick around.
When I’d gotten around the neighborhood and back to campus, I got permission for a short flight and zipped into the sky to dance with the snowflakes. I couldn't get up too high, because the clouds were low, but I skirted their bottoms while keeping my ears alert for approaching airplanes.
I went a bit west, not quite all the way to the Maple Hill Mall before I turned back around and made a long descending approach to campus. Some pegasuses are really good at gliding and can go a really long ways. In fact, there are gliding competitions which I've watched before. The trick is to be as aerodynamic as possible and make the fewest possible course corrections, because turning robs you of airspeed.
I probably wouldn't have impressed anyone with my glide back to campus. A foal could have done it; between the hill and my starting altitude relative to the distance I had to go, I was gliding down at a thirty degree angle or so. Not very skillful.
I made one loop around the bell tower and landed, then headed to the shower to wash off the sweat and all the snow that had stuck to my wings.
Since I was done with my morning routine a bit earlier than usual, I read through Aquamarine's letter. She said that it was still confusing to be on such a big campus where most everybody didn't know everybody else and that her dorm was noisy all the time with radios playing and people up and talking and sometimes partying late into the night. She said that that sometimes made it hard to sleep, but that it was nice in the mornings because everybody was quiet.
She had gotten several potted plants and kept them on the windowsill and they were doing alright. She was working in the greenhouses a lot, which she said was fun, and that I wouldn't believe how big they were. She said her family farm back in Ponyville would have fit inside the greenhouses, along with their house and if the greenhouses were taller, the barn would have fit, too.
She said that south of campus there were research farms with research animals and she'd had to go there when one of her shoes had worked loose because there was a farrier there and she got to look at some big Earth horses up close, and it was true what we had been taught that they weren't all that smart. Not even as smart as Equestrian sheep.
That struck me as kind of sad. What if we had wound up that way? How did it feel to be a dumb animal anyway? I couldn't imagine what it must be like.
I started to write her back about how I had gone on a road trip to Pennsylvania and that almost everyone I'd met so far was nice and friendly. I told her about my friends and about Aric and then before I could finish the letter, it was time to go to class.
I sat in my favorite chair and waited for Conrad to arrive. He was in a playful mood today; he said 'expect nothing' as he walked through the door. He stood behind his desk and said 'live frugally,' and then he unbuttoned his coat and added 'on surprise,' as he pulled off his coat and revealed that underneath he was wearing a t-shirt that said Mötley Crüe on it. A bunch of the kids in class began laughing when they saw it. I wasn't sure what was funny.
Then he sat down in his chair and finished reading the poem, which was called Expect Nothing.
That was a good motto for life.
Next, he had a student read A Picture Story For The Curious. I tried to imagine how I might look meditating on a chair or against a wall. I've heard that when zebras meditate they stand upside down on one hoof and if they're really wise they do it while balancing on a stick.
There was also a brief stanza about growing a garden in a pot, and I thought about Aquamarine fretting over her plants on the windowsill of her dorm room—I bet they were thriving.
And there was a part in the poem about snuggling all morning with her lover, and I sighed at that.
We talked about the poem a little bit, about how it's a poem about growing up and growing old. Conrad chuckled and said that he didn't know how to speak German and probably never would, and he asked us what things some of our grandparents didn't know how to do.
The first student who raised her hand said that her grandmother didn't know how to use a smartphone, and there were a few chuckles, and Conrad asked her if she thought that her grandmother had thought of using a smartphone when she was young. He said that he ought to have been more clear; the poem was about a skill or a dream which had never been fulfilled.
I raised my hoof.
It took a little bit before he got around to me, and I told the class that my granddam had never learned how to read; she'd only taken one year of school before her mother pulled her out of class saying that the teacher was filling her head with stupid ideas that no pegasus would ever need to know.
There were a couple of chuckles in class, and then Trevor raised his hand and said that his grandfather also had been illiterate. From the way he tensed his shoulders, it was obvious to me that Trevor was just waiting for somebody to chuckle, but nobody did.
Conrad finished off the class by reading Knowing You Might Someday Come, and that also made me think of Aric. Maybe I ought to make a list of all the things I liked about him. He was a good snuggler, and he smelled delicious; those were important qualities. Alice Walker was a very wise woman to think of all these things.
I passed the afternoon finishing up my letter to Aquamarine. I wanted to know if she had plans for spring break—ours was coming up soon, but Kalamazoo College had a different type of schedule than Michigan State did.
She'd told me that Michigan State had a very good basketball team and that they were probably going to go on to the finals. Last year, she'd told me, they were in the Final Four, but got defeated by Duke.
I didn't know if we had a basketball team. I supposed that they probably did but I'd have to ask Peggy to know for sure.
I sealed up the letter and mailed it on my way to dinner.
Almost as soon as I sat down, Christine asked Sean if he would get her another glass of pop, even though hers was half full. She said that it tasted funny and she wanted something else, so he got up and went across the room to the pop machine. As soon as he was gone, Christine leaned across the table and asked me how last night had gone.
Christine said that she thought Meghan was furry, and I said I was pretty sure only in one spot and then Christine started laughing and said I was so adorably clueless sometimes. She said Meghan had made a pretty clear invitation for sex, at least from how I was describing it. Then Sean arrived with her drink and she changed the subject, but it left me with something to think about.
Tomorrow was the opening night of the play, and Aric had invited me to watch it from the light control booth. He said that then I could come over to his house after the play was over, and since it would be a Friday night, we could stay up late.
She doesn't seem to realise that the earth revolves around the sun.
That sounds like a fun thing to read though.
7125014
In all fairness, there are still some humans that don't understand that.
Alright, I stand corrected about Meghan. Her being a furry is an important and frankly delicious detail.
And now I'm waiting for Silver to learn the science behind how the solar system formed (and the orbital mechanics of it all) and the resulting confusion the clash between that and the biblical tale of creation will cause.
Also: we need a description of the reaction of Aquamarine's roommate to her potted plant's behaviour. I guess that 'doing okay' by earth pony standards means 'only slowly turning into a forest' as opposed to 'exploding into a jungle'. If she decides to demonstrate her abilities like Silver did with the cloud though, entrance into the greenhouses will soon require a machete.
7125051 Personally, I think that Equestria used to be like Earth until Discord decided to do something like juggle the sun and moon and cut the lines of gravity. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna then had no choice but to take control of the sun and moon.
Here's hoping that Silver Glow finally gets the night she's wanted with Aric!
7125051
There's another story I've read where the pony has an absolute breakdown upon learning that our sun is basically a nuclear furnace, and expects that it'll explode and wipe out the planet at any moment. It takes some doing to convince her that ol' Sol has been churning along for millions of years and still has millions more left to go.
7125014 7125039 7125051
I may be misreading that part, but I think she understand well how our solar system work, she just said it was better the equestrian way, where the planet don't move and the sun revolve around it.
7125068 Try billion, in fact
7125063 Not according to the Hearth's Warming Eve episode, or the Journal of the Two Sisters, or even Princess Twilight Sparkle, since they had their cutie marks even before they defeated Discord.
7125090
Yes, but it's slowly pushing the habitable zone further out so Earth only has about 500 million left.
I've been wondering... her radio controller (the guy she asks permission to fly from), does he know he's talking to a pegasus or does he just assume it's some young woman who likes to take her private biplane out every morning?
Ahh, so Silver wasn't clued in on what Meghan was after.
And once again, improbably, I find myself routing for an interspecies relationship. Curse you fanfiction and what you have made me accept as normal!
7125105 ornithopter. She's classified as a ornithopter XD
7125103 Do you have a source for that number?
Because last time I looked, the estimations were that the sun still had about 5 billion of year before it start to run out of hydrogen.
One year when I was at college, I had an Iranian roommate (This was early 70s, when the Shah still ran the place). Lots of Iranians, all up on my floor of the dorm. They loved disco (then at its height) & recorded it, then sent the translated lyrics along w the recording. This meant playing the song over & over + getting their roommate to help w "what are they saying?"
At the end of the year, I was told I was unique among roommates in 2 ways . 1)I never threatened to kill my roommate if they didn't quit it 2)I never learned even 1 word of Persian (or whatever it is they speak) Said they were wrong -I'd learned the word for "check" playing chess.
But the point is the tradition "Bringing your foreign roommate home for the weekend" Can't wait to see her reaction to traditional American dishes like Sourkraut & Pork or Lutefisk. Also, this is Michigan, there ought to be some deer hunters around. Or, Silver might bring 1 or 2 friends to EQ with her. (Although, if she lives in a cloud city, there are certain practical problems with this)
From experience w school plays, she'd do better to go see the last night -it will be much better.
7125105
Her call sign is "Pegasus 1", so I'm pretty sure the tower knows who and what she is. (From the Jan 12 chapter, "Pilot's license".)
You know, a lot of this sort of thing could be prevented by just having some people have frank conversations with Silver Glow about sweaty interpersonal relations (and I'm kind of surprised it never came up in her orientation, since she's not the first exchange student to come to Earth), but then we wouldn't be treated to moments like this, so I'm kind of glad it keeps not happening.
7125105
Probably. You have to let ATC know at least the aircraft type, be cause of speed and wake avoidance requirements.
7125177
I'm not talking about hydrogen consumption. I'm talking about the graduating increasing size and temperature that comes with a star of our type. Both of which alter where the habitable zone is located. (we're already closer to the inner edge than we used to be.) The measured increase means that Earth will no longer be in the habitable zone in roughly 500 million years. Additionally, the Earth is slowly losing atmosphere to various factors in-spite of our magnetic field (the field just slows the loss to a trickle).
It's not that surprising, Earth's been slowly dying long before we got here. It's now believed that Earth's 'prime' (i.e. peak biodiversity) was all the way back in the Carboniferous period.
As for sources, unfortunately those were in physical magazines.
7125202 I thougth that the big change in size and temperature was the one to occur in 5 billion, until then, sure, it is slowly getting bigger, but that much?
Well, interesting, I will look more into that.
So is the universe as a whole.
Yes and no. It is the biggest peak we had, but it is hard to say if it is a real prime since life is still trying to recover from the mass extinction of the permian.
7125039 It wouldn't be so bad if they were not politicians too. Some of them still believe money grows on trees.
7125103 (suppresses particularly bad global warming joke)
7125244 Don't sweat it. In 500 million years, if humanity is still around, they'll either be able to turn down the thermostat on the sun or schooch the earth a little further out in orbit to keep it nice and comfy. I'm looking forward to it. By then, my 401k should be large enough for me to retire.
"...Maybe when God created the Earth and humans to put on it, He thought they wouldn't follow instructions and so He had to come up with a different way of making seasons work..."
I'll go with that. Humanity has a particularly bad record with following divine instructions.
"Ok, Pandora. Here's a box. Don't open it."
"Ok, you two. You can do whatever you want, just don't eat the fruit off that tree over there."
"Ok, Israel. I've given you ten nice simple rules to run your lives by. Try not to break more than nine of them by tomorrow."
If only we all had such fair standards for our romantic partners!
Hmmm....wonder if Silver's going to get an introduction to tornado season at some point. Given that twisters in Equestria seem to be much smaller and controlled, it's going to be interesting to see what her reaction's going to be to weather that's COMPLETELY wild....
7122114 After looking it up, yes I did. Though with her being heavily entrenched in what can best be described as a pseudo-scientific cult based on man hatred, making bold claims about Playboy abusing women in the 50's-60's, founding a women's magazine sprinkled with feminist ideas\propaganda, and preaching some Marxist style rhetoric, there's not much else to say except the bitch be madder than a hatter. And I'm just waiting for some student faking a hate crime at the university and bringing out a bunch of feminists and Black Lives Matter protestors to annoy the hell out of Silver.
7125114
Oh wait, you're serious? You've never watched Star Trek then, because it's rife with inter species relationships. There's also this awesome film called James Cameron's Avatar which has to be seen to be believed (though the plot is rather terrible). I can only assume that you're also missed out on Disney's The Little Mermaid, which is considered by many to be an old classic.
You seem to have many enjoyable cinema hours ahead of you.
7125360 Well, yeah. But are any of them not basically humanoid? We're talking furry quadruped here.
7125114
Technically I'd say that Silver was clued in on what Megan wanted that day - she just hadn't extrapolated into the future. Mostly because to Silver what Megan wanted (that day) was utterly normal.
It's also possible that ponies don't make big demarcations between friendships and relationships that we do. Ponies are much open about the subject, and it has been strongly implied that they're much more open about the practice. Silver may just operate under the assumption that any of her friends are potential sexual partners.
We have the standards we do because women can get pregnant all year round, and for most of history our technology wasn't up to producing effective contraception. But pony reproduction is not the necessarily same as human reproduction, just physically compatible with it. If all mares are infertile for half the year (as in real horses) then that's going to have a serious impact on how serious or casual sex is for them. (For part of the year at least.) Ditto if magic can produce relatively effective contraception.
It is also worth noting that WE don't know what Megan wanted. We've just heard third party speculation. I mean just because many of us would like to hold Silver close and make her whinny, doesn't mean there aren't other perfectly sensible reasons to want to be in a hot tub with her while naked and snuggling up together. <cough> You know. In theory.
It's true that Megan might want sex, or she might have been enamored with pony culture to the point of actually trying it, or she might like the idea and be cautiously experimenting, knowing the idea and reality aren't the same. Silver is very much a person, she still essentially has a horse's rear, and however much some people might like the idea of hugging/kissing the front, touching the rear will be a turn off for a lot of them. Remember, human sexuality is not just what we like but what we dislike, and it is largely hardwired into our heads. If someone has the wrong 'do not want' compulsion stuck in their amygdala then it's just not going to work for them.
"...I told the class that my granddam had never learned how to read;..."
Reminded me of a line in Lost Cities:
The largest library ever built by pegasi, containing over a thousand volumes, is said to have existed here.
As noted earlier, the pegasi were not known as bookkeepers.
7125244
There's a slow increase right now. It will jump up immensely when helium fusion begins. But the increase right now is enough to move the habitable zone.
That's actually still up for debate, from what I've seen.
I've never seen that perspective before.
7125267
That's wrong on so many levels. For starters, paper money is a cotton product nearly identical to denim....
7125448
Well, the most accepted hypothesis is that the universe will slowly recede at some point, but it is just an hypothesis.
What make a bigger consensus is the fact that the universe is slowly burning all the energy from the Big Bang, regardless of whether or not it is going to recede, the initial momentum is already lost.
Plus most country started to use synthetic paper money these past few years.
7125384
Well Ariel is a mermaid, which means at least some of the time she's either fish or dolphin from the waist down. But apart from that, so? Since you have seen it before and you presumably had no problem with it then, why would you react any differently just because this time it's far more obvious that the two are different races? Or rather why are you surprised that you're not? Think about it.
"And then go write me a friendship report."
PS: Welcome to the wonderful world of learning something new and having your horizons expanding. Ignore the sound of grinding gears in the background. That's just a common side effect.
I'm kind of frustrated that there's no clear indication as to what Silver Glow thinks of Meghan's advances, now that she knows them for what they are.
7125179
as someone from germany, that's damn funny to read.
it's good that ponies are not on the internet all the time while they are on earth i guess.
and it would be funny if silver glow goes and ask sean what a furry is because Christine said it
7125051
7125068
Yeah, I figured that an uninformed pony would be in for a horrifying shock when they finally figured out that the human world operates on presumably dangerous forces and with none of the "base checks and balances" that run the Equestrian world. At least Silver gets to benefit from the after-the-fact assurances from those first pony visitors.
A furry? not the word I was thinking.
7125113 Not that I believe in evolution, but I can understand the concept. However, given that Silver Glow has been called livestock by an angry man, I think that would sort of open up some uncomfortable dialogue between her and human beings.
7125607
My guess is she thinks she's got a backup if Aric doesn't start putting out soon.
I do look forward to Silver's first run-in with celestial mechanics. This is Roundworld, dear. We don't have alicorns or narrativium. We just have stuff that works.
Also, apparently human nonverbal cues are as opaque to ponies as the other way around. Makes sense. If they aren't understood one way, why would they the other?
7125179
Dear god, tell me it's not the kind made from cod, Silver Glow doesn't deserve that!
7125068
Would you have a link? I'd like to read that.
7125858
7125651
Wasn't it To Love a Pony?
I don't think it can be linked 'cause it's mature
and shachza is a naughty author who doesn't update frequently enougI thought it was interesting that Silver Glow's society and our society seem to have a parallel with regards to education back two generations. A lot of people probably didn't receive proper formal education. What we think of modern education (like universal education for children of a certain age) is something that didn't come around until relatively recently in earth's history, and it sounds like something that was relatively recent for Pegasus society too.
It's also kind of an interesting hint where Silver's tribism comes from.
7125986
I hope so, 'cos I'm reading it now.
7125781 Funnily enough, I'm reading that at the moment, and while I need no convincing regarding evolution, I have to say Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen's exposition is second to none.
7125360
Hey now, the plot of The Last Samurai Dances with Pocahontas in Sci-Fi FernGully is classic.
I saw it in 3D at a theater...great experience, but I don't think I'd bother to watch it at home unless I had a really nice home theater setup
7126086 Good news: you're reading the right things.
7125709
It seems that ponies are pretty well aware of the role animals play on Earth. I mean, just from the cafeteria, she'd be very well aware of humans' diets.
I assume they see horses, cows, etc. the way we see monkeys and apes. We might be distantly related, but it's not like we're horrified to see them in a zoo. Even though some apes can display intelligent traits, they're not us, just like a Clydesdale isn't a unicorn.
7125267 When you say 10 rules, do you mean the first set that was written in stone, or the second set? They didn't have the same text.
7127129
Does it really matter? We broke them all anyways! Heck, Moses literally broke the rules and had to go back up the mountain to get more. That must have been an awkward conversation with God. "Um... God. About those tablets..."
After spending a year flying on Earth where the magic is weaker and flying is more difficult, will Silver Glow, when she has returned to Equestria, find that she is a stronger flier than she had been?
7127393
Maybe yes.
Then i would expect an earth pony to re-contact Equestrian soil like a hit of LSD.
Unicorns would be hit and miss, any improvement with TK or spellcasting would require focused efforts to increase conscious efficiency in TK and spellcasting, otherwise the only change would be a habitual expectation of effort for a given result.
A unicorn doing such efficiency training while on Earth would quickly increase their effective power levels to several times their old standard.
She's not going to react to the sex invitation thing? Does she have any emotions at all other than cheerycheeritude of cheerfulness, the occasional bout of confusion, and romantic pining? Am I reading Puppysmiles Goes to College?
7125014
No, she does know that. What she's saying is that in Equestria, the planet sits upright and Celestia just changes the angle of the sun relative to the Equestrian equator; on Earth, it orbits on the same plane all the time, but the earth tips on its axis and that's why we have seasons.
7125039
Duh, the earth is flat and the sun is a hologram. There's a YouTube video all about it.
7125051
That's bound to be an interesting discussion.
As I recall, there were no college rules about how many plants you could keep in your dorm room, nor how big they could be. Aquamarine's roommate may draw the line when she starts to put down sod, though.
7125063
That's my headcanon, too. Although the unicorns were doing it before Celestia and Luna took over.
Another possibility which has been discussed is that Equestria was an engineered world, created before the ponies even came along for some purpose, and they don't know who created it, but know that they have to maintain it to keep it working right. As far as I know, no fic has been written along these lines, but it would explain so many oddities in their world, and could be a great hard sci-fi read.
7125068
Was it A Twilight Landing? I think I remember reading that before, too.
7125105
The tower controllers know that they're talking to a pegasus, since she has special flight rules, a special classification (ornithopter), and her callsign is Pegasus 1. If she flies out of Kalamazoo's control zone and into another, though, she's going to have to do some explaining to the tower.
7125114
Nope.
Wouldn't that be normal (eventually) if Earth made contact with aliens and were were at least reasonably biologically and physically compatible?
7125179
Yes, although there aren't likely to be that many at K College. In Kalamazoo, though, certainly.
That's a possibility over summer break, for sure.
Agreed. Not only do the actors all have their lines memorized by then (probably) but they also have some fun with the show on closing night. In Dracula, one of my lines was "I have special dispensation!" and I held up a holy relic. In the last performance, I held up Octavia (didn't warn the guy playing Dracula that I was going to do that, either). And in The Princess Bride, there's the scene where the six-fingered man knocks Westley out; we convinced a girl to kick Westley when he was down and say "Stop resisting!"
7125189
That's something they ought to have covered in orientation, for sure. But I can see the humans not really wanting to discuss it, and the ponies not seeing at as a big deal at all.
7125267
You'd think we would have learned by now, but not so much.
7125285
I know, right? Incidentally, those are both lines from the poem.
7125302
Yup, for sure she will. She'll probably not see any; Michigan usually doesn't get all that many compared to some other states, but they do happen. Downtown Kalamazoo got wiped out by a tornado in '81, IIRC. IT ran right by Kalamazoo College's campus, too.
7125448
So it would be more accurate to say that money grows on bushes.
7125461
Like Canada's maple syrup money. I've heard it melts in the sun, but that isn't a problem in Canada.
7125416
That's exactly it.
Yeah--I think pegasi in general aren't believers in monogamy. They strike me as more impulsive, for one, and also a lot of the reasons that we care so much about it is because of wealth or land or political power being passed down through the generations. Pegasi don't have land, and they probably don't amass much wealth (what good is it going to do them?) so in that sense, they have no reason to particularly care who sired a particular foal. Silver's already made fun of unicorns' focus on lineage, as well. For her, sex is another way of bonding that's fun for both partners; it does imply a commitment, but not the same kind of commitment it does on Earth.
Silver Glow has the same schedule as an IRL horse, so right now she's completely infertile (she's actually brought that up with Peggy already).
I would assume that it can. If they can move around the sun and put facial hair on ponies with magic, it's hard to imagine that they haven't figured out how to make sure the mare doesn't become pregnant when she doesn't want to. Especially in a mare-dominated society. Of course as with humans, just because it's available and effective doesn't mean that everyone always uses it when they should.
Very true. And as other readers have pointed out, coming at it from a non-American perspective, or even a nudist's perspective, and there isn't anything going on that's in any way weird or sexual.
That's an issue which isn't explored enough in fics, IMHO. We (the readers) are of course predisposed to think of the idea as fairly normal, but imagine how hard it would be for an average human to come to terms with the idea, and to be able to perform properly when it came down to it. Like, imagining it in your head is one thing, but to actually do it?