I Think It's Called Ponytown... Story Notes | Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8: Extras Wanted: Apply Within
The title is a reference to what they'll have to do with all the extra ponies.

Most film scripts with this sort of dimensional rift issue focus on getting it closed, but no-one ever considers that perhaps it's not actually that straight-forward and you're going to see some actual serious consequences if you're not careful about it. I wanted to at least mention that in the story.

Celestia ought to feel cold about the Discordian-like statuary angle. There are way too many times in the show where blunt force magic is used to solve a problem without recourse to any possible side-effects.

'What is life?... an unknowable destiny.' is of course Gummy's monologue from the 100th Special Episode (season 5, episode 9 'Slice of Life').

I'm not sure if the Major Incident Fund is canon, but it turns up in enough fanfic that it warrants inclusion. It's probably an Estee creation.

The SAPPo is a real office, as are all those IP agreements. Ma Chonglin is a potentially realistic Chinese name, that just so happens to be very horse related, as I pointed out in the Author's Note.

'indiscombobulation' - credit is given (by Rainbow) in the text to AK Yearling. The word first appears in 1863 according to Merriam Webster, but I'm giving credit to an old windows tool called the DCOMbobulator from GRC.

The various early parts of Object Linking & Embedding (OLE), later became Component Object Module (COM) and even later turned into ActiveX where it got built into everything so that developers couldn't avoid using it. Somewhere in that pathway, Microsoft's competitors created a distributed object system called CORBA and so Microsoft decided that even though they didn't need one, they'd stick one in Windows from Win98 onwards. This was the Distributed Component Object Module, and is basically a check box for 'we have that too' that nevertheless left a gaping hole in your security. The DCOMbobulator basically kills the DCOM process as well as checking it has been effectively patched. The important thing though is that it cemented the word discombobulate into my vocabulary.

'Lucky Dragon Takeaway' - I mentioned earlier that dragons are lucky, and since they're a thing in Equestria, it's surely going to be a commonly used name for restaurants. The foods are real and sound delicious.

I always wondered how the 3D map table in Twilight's castle worked. So I figured that the magical projection system could be partially interrupted by items blocking its output. Which if you eat at a table is very likely.

'lossocked' - another local slang term. To lossock, lossocking, he lossocked. Needs more widespread use. It means to laze around. Also mango pudding gets another mention. Because.

'Cadence. Slight spelling differences aside' is a reference to the silly Hasbro Trademark misspelling curse, but also a hat tip to Skywriter's wonderful fic A Princess By Any Other Name.

I did mention earlier that I wanted to iron out some of the important potential consequences of sealing the rift, but it's a simple fact that important things aren't actually always at the top of the priority tree in real life. The hard work and effort was mostly going ahead to preserve the Crystal Empire's nascent bathing industry.

There was an excellent piece of fanart that depicted Cadance bathing in a pool that prompted the whole thing. It had Celestia, Luna and Twilight rubber duckies too. Yakovlev-Vad was the artist and the piece of work was 'Royal Fun'

PART 7: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/886923/i-think-its-called-ponytown-story-notes-chapter-7
PART 9: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/887494/i-think-its-called-ponytown-story-notes-chapter-9