Of Glass (and the many deceptions within)
“Normalcy” is a foreign concept to the siblings of the Cutie Mark Crusaders.
They had normal periods, of course. Small chunks of time within the day in which they could sit back, sigh, and relax, content with the fact that nothing around them was presently imploding. But said moments were fleeting, blips on the radar, and often found themselves shattered in increasingly loud and creative ways. The walking cacophony that was the trio of fillies seemed determined to write a new set of workplace regulations through action, and none of them had ever been formally employed. To be related to the Crusaders was to find oneself bombproof without ever being exposed to explosive ordinance, and it seemed a bizarre twist of irony that said desensitization was provided to a group of mares who might actually have a use for it. Nopony ever said being a bearer was a peaceful career.
To exist within this constant onslaught of chaos was a feat even the bravest of Guards would struggle with. It also had side effects. For instance, nobody in Ponyville had a larger social circle than the older siblings of the crusaders. It was a rather simple and organic method of making friends; all you had to do was send a sibling out for the day and wait. Eventually, there’d be a knock on the door, with a disgruntled pony and freshly-ashamed sibling on the other side, and all they had to do to diffuse tension was look down and say “what did they do this time?” Small talk and promises of recouped damages would then turn the confrontation into an amicable one, and from there, friendships blossomed. The number of ponies in town who didn’t know Rarity by name was rapidly dwindling to a number that could be counted on hooves alone.
Normalcy didn’t exist within the Boutique. But rarely, the day’s disruptions would take on a gentler form, where the trio’s shenanigans would become, for lack of a better term, self contained. Activities that didn’t spread collateral outside of the Boutique were few and far between, but welcomed nonetheless. It provided a respite; both from having to talk down a furious business owner yet again and from another insurance rate hike.
The time was five in the afternoon. It was a Tuesday. The Boutique was preparing for dinner. Sweetie Belle had gone out earlier in the day, returned alone with a book, and immediately retired to her room without a word.
Suffice to say, Rarity was afraid.
She had almost finished cooking when the other shoe dropped. Because with the Crusaders, the other shoe was an eventuality, not an anxiety. You didn’t wait for it to drop, you spent time bracing. She had experience with this sort of thing, after all.
It started innocuously, as it always did. Rarity heard Sweetie Belle’s bedroom door creak open, and a pink-and-white head peeked around the top of the stairs. “Rarity?”
The eldest sibling sighed, letting her magic that was in the process of stirring a pot of noodles dissipate. “Yes, Sweetie?”
“You know the doorknobs in my bathroom?” And it was at that moment that Rarity turned around, met the filly’s gaze with her own, and noticed the blankness to it. The kind of stare that meant the pony weren’t really present in the conversation, that their mind was a thousand miles away and racing. One’s eyes lose a bit of their shine, the muscles in their face relax just enough to be uncanny, and their voice enters a committed relationship with the adjective tepid. The sheer shock of seeing Sweetie like that nearly made the bizarre nature of the question skim right over Rarity’s head.
“The ones that look like big diamonds?” When the question was met with a nod, she rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m quite familiar.”
“What are they made of?” And before Rarity could answer, she spoke again. “And where did we get them?”
Rarity turned back around, picking up the stirring spoon again. “I wouldn’t know. Dad did the decorations in that room.” A pause. “They probably came from Home Depone. I think I’ve seen them on the shelves.”
Sweetie Belle and Rarity didn’t share too many common interests, nor many common behaviors. It was always a delight when they managed to find common ground.
In a way, Rarity was almost proud of Sweetie for demonstrating a need to purchase a second fainting couch. She just wished she hadn’t done so at the top of the stairs.
“There is absolutely no way that they came from Home Depone,” said a recently-bruised filly, currently walking towards Ponyville’s Home Depone.
Rarity shrugged. “Sweetie, it’s not like we can afford someone to do the doorknobs custom.” Though most shops in town were entering their closing hours, the sun had yet to be lowered, so business raged on. The pair had found themselves passed by frantic shoppers racing to beat closing time, searching for ingredients they’d sworn they had in the pantry right up until the moment they were needed. They’d made a quick stop at an ice cream parlor, if only for Sweetie to immediately stick her cone on the biggest lump forming on her head like a second horn. Neither she nor the shopkeeper paid it much mind. You got used to oddities around the Crusaders.
“But they’re fancy,” Sweetie asserted firmly, trotting just a bit faster. “Like, really fancy. I didn’t know they were fancy.”
She couldn’t help herself. She snorted. “I assure you they’re not,” she said, doing her best to contain the laughter in her voice. “When mom and dad had you, they wanted to replace the countertop in that bathroom, and wanted knobs to match. They got acrylic ones because you liked how they sparkled. That’s all there is to it.”
“They’re not acrylic.”
A blink. “Oh?”
Sweetie sped up again, if only to round the street corner in front of her at an angle. “They’re crystal.” When that failed to elicit a response, she looked back. “Crystal, Rarity. Like the stuff on the top shelf of the china cabinet. The really fancy wine glasses.”
“Oh.” Rarity’s eyes focused on the street ahead of her. “Well, isn’t that a nice surprise.” And she kept walking.
Sweetie’s mouth hung agape. Her steps hitched, and she stumbled for a second. “That’s it?” She bumbled past another pony on the sidewalk, who took one look at the rapidly melting second horn on her head and trotted away, a baffled o hanging on his lips.
“Should there be more?” Rarity inquired. Ahead, the bright orange Home Depone sign came into view.
“Uh, yeah?” The filly’s words emerged with incredulity, like she couldn’t possibly believe what she was hearing. “Crystal is stupid fancy. Like, status symbol fancy. Diamond Tiara brought a crystal tea set to show and tell once just to gloat that her family has had it for like eighty years.” She looked up at her older sister. “And we’re using it for doorknobs.”
“Apparently.”
If a window sat in between Rarity and Sweetie’s stare, twin holes would have melted in it. “Do you have any idea how jealous I could’ve made Diamond and Silver Spoon if I’d known my bathroom had crystal doorknobs?”
Rarity, for what felt like the eightieth time, rolled her eyes. “Sweetie, darling, she would have laughed at you.” By this time, the Home Depone was close enough to adjust course for, so the two of them began to curve towards it. “Crystal used to be fancy and expensive. Nowadays, it’s just another kind of glass.”
The ensuing “WHAT?!” nearly made the doors to the hardware store irrelevant. More accurately, nonexistent. As the two of them walked in, the glass panes were still vibrating.
“Do you know what crystal is?” Rarity asked, giving a kind nod to the employee pushing trolleys by the door. She didn’t see when he went to the store PA system, but when the string of numbers and colors that meant a Crusader is here, try to keep them out of the lightbulb section and do NOT let them ANYWHERE near the large equipment rental was read out over the speakers, she mentally recited the code to herself. The trio hadn’t yet realized that the town had begun implementing Crusader Mitigation Measures (CMMs™), but their families had been explicitly told.
“Yeah! Carved natural crystal.” Sweetie answered confidently. “And you want me to believe that the Home Depone is selling it.”
“Wrong, actually,” she said, a smirk on her face. “Crystal is lead glass.”
A pause, but this time, of both the verbal and movement variety. “Huh?”
Raritiy slowed her own gait to let Sweetie catch up, looking up at the aisle numbers. “Yeah. Glasshouses take lead oxide and they mix it into the silica and potash. It makes the glass sparkle a bit more than normal.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Sweetie asked. “Why would-”
“It’s a little dangerous, yes.” She spotted the aisle number for Doorknobs and Cabinetry and began to trot there. “But only if you’re leaving everything you drink in it for several hours, to let the lead leach into the liquid. I’ve let you have juice out of our fine crystal before, darling, I wasn’t trying to poison you.”
“I know, but…” Her snout scrunched up. “What about crystal chandeliers? Every castle in the movies has big, gaudy crystal chandeliers. And royalty will only drink from it.” A pause. “How isn’t that fancy?”
“Well, for starters, those were props,” Rarity laughed. “When it comes to real crystal, though, most of the value came from the pony designing the crystal,” Rarity answered. “Their time and craftsmanship is what you were really paying for. Only a few ponies had the marks to become true crystal artisans, y’know.”
“Oh.”
“You can’t forget the marketing angle, either.” They turned into the aisle. “I can almost guarantee there’s some sort of sponsorship between the movie studio and a big glasshouse to make sure that their crystal was shown to be fancy on the big screen. Helps them justify the price to the buyer.”
As Sweetie began scanning the aisle, she looked back at Rarity. “So what changed?” A pause. “It used to be really fancy and valuable.”
Rarity shrugged again. “Glass evolved, I suppose.” A glint of refraction caught her eye, and she moved closer. “Molds, factories, and the division of what was once an artisan’s work into a million tiny steps that can fit on the assembly line. Suddenly, what once took a pony with a cutie mark for glassblowing hours to make can be manufactured by the thousands. The art of making crystal was reduced to chucking a bunch of powders into a furnace and pumping the slag into molds.”
Sweetie’s face scrunched up at that, like she’d just bitten into a lemon. “That’s depressing.”
“It’s marketing,” Rarity replied. “Jewelers did it too, for the longest time. Do you remember how you used to think gems were so valuable?”
“And then you took me gem hunting with you and started pulling rubies the size of my hoof out of the ground like it was nothing,” Sweetie finished, and her ears wilted back just a little bit. “Yeah, I remember.”
“But there’s a second part to that equation, darling.” Cerulean light sparked around her horn, and a glass knob floated down from a shelf. “I don’t tell the customers the jewels that I use in their dresses were yanked out of the dirt like a potato. I make sure the customer knows how many carats went into their dress, I make sure they know each and every type of stone I decided to set, and when they buy the dress from me, they make sure to tell their friends, too. Every good salespony knows that value doesn’t exist until someone shows up with bits, and sometimes, you have to create your own.”
“Isn’t that lying?”
She shrugged. “The alternative is going out of business.” The doorknob held in her field floated down to Sweetie’s eye level. “Is this the same as your doorknob?”
For a second, Sweetie didn’t say anything. Her horn lit with her own magic, and a small circle of pale blueish-white light shone on the doorknob. To Rarity’s surprise, it lit up a brilliant, near-royal blue. The color of the light then changed to purple, and the blue vanished. “I guess it is. Huh.”
“What did you just do?” Rarity asked slowly, an eyebrow creeping up her forehead.
“Simple light spell. Learned it from Twilight’s library.” She looked up at the price tag next to the display. “Only four bits?”
“Told you,” Rarity said with smug intent. “It really isn’t that special anymore.”
“Dang.”
As they walked out of the Home Depone, they were silent. Rarity quietly looked her sister over. Though her tumble down the stairs had dinged her up quite a bit, and the rapidly-melting second horn was very quickly turning into a mandatory bathtime, that wasn’t was drew her attention. It was the way that her spine seemed to slump in the middle, how every hoofstep forward seemed unsteady, and the uncertain look in her eyes that gave her pause. “Are you alright, Sweetie?”
Her answer was slow. “I thought they were acrylic, too.”
“Hm?”
“The knobs.” She hesitated. “For the longest time, I thought they were acrylic. Nothing special. And today I discover that they’re crystal, real actual crystal, only to find out that that’s just a fancy way to say lead glass and that the knobs cost four bits…”
“Oh, dearie, I’m sorry-”
“No, don’t be.” Another hesitation. “It just feels like I watched a little magic leave the world, you know? That this fancy thing I’ve been in awe of my whole life is just… lead. In glass.”
“I know the feeling.” Their hoofsteps filled the air for a moment. “If it makes you feel any better,” Rarity began, “crystal artisans still exist. It’s not all factory-made and mass produced.”
Sweetie blinked. “Really? … how do they make money?”
“They change the marketing,” her older sister replied. “When you used to buy crystal, the artisan nature of it was implied. The mere existence of a crystal glass on your shelf told anyone who looked at it that not only did hours and hours of personalized effort go into something, but you had the ability to pay them to do so. Artisans never needed to advertise themselves as artisans, because the entire category of products was, by definition, artisan.”
“Huh.”
Rarity smiled. “It’s no longer implied, so they move it front and center. These crystal glasses were hoof-blown, shaped by an artisan, completely hoofmade.” A pause. “If an artisan gets well known enough, all they need to do is stamp their maker’s mark on the glass and put their name on the box. It’s always been the point that crystal stuff was hoofmade. Nowadays, it’s just… more explicit with the fancier stuff.”
“That makes sense,” Sweetie replied, absentmindedly kicking a pebble down the road. “Do they charge more?”
“They charge absurd amounts of money,” Rarity scoffed. “The wine glasses on the top shelf of the china cabinet? Those took a whole year to save for.”
“Dang.” she whistled.
“I don’t intend on getting any more any time soon.”
They lapsed back into silence briefly. The sun began to dip towards the horizon, and various oranges and purples began to saturate the sky. Songbirds changed shifts, called in the cool evening air, and the lights in shop windows began to flick off. “It still doesn’t feel the same,” Sweetie eventually said.
“It won’t. Ever again. That’s just part of growing up, Sweetie.”
“Ew.” Rarity dignified that with a laugh, and Sweetie sighed. “It’s just… the real crystal stuff is too expensive for most ponies to buy, but the stuff we can is just… factory, mass produced glass with lead in it and a price hike?”
“Exactly, darling.”
“And we can’t even get mad, because it is technically crystal?”
“Mhm. I could get a nicely-patterned set of crystal wine glasses for twenty bits.”
“Decadence is dead.”
“On the contrary, it’s never been more alive. The decadent are few, and their imitators many, and that’s one tradition that will never die.”
When they got back to the Boutique, few words were exchanged. The leftovers were packaged, the lights downstairs turned off, and the shop doors were bolted and locked. Neither seemed to have the energy for conversation as they got ready for bed.
Eventually, though, Rarity knocked on Sweetie’s door. When a faint come in! was shouted back, she entered.
“How did you find out they were crystal, anyway?” she began, looking at the offending doorknobs.
“Light spell,” Sweetie replied. When all that did was cause her sister to raise an eyebrow, she laughed. “I’m serious! It was a normal light spell, just cast at a frequency where it’d put out ultraviolet light instead of visible.”
Rarity’s eyes shot open, and she smiled. “Oh! Are you and the girls gonna go searching for yooperlites?”
“We were thinking more Cutie Mark Crusaders Antique Glass Appraisers, actually,” she replied.
Rarity paused. Let that sentence bounce around between her ears. Tilted her head to the side, stuck her tongue in her cheek, and held the pose for a second. Eventually, her mouth cracked open. “That’s… fairly harmless,” she said carefully.
“Thanks!”
“What do you need the ultraviolet for?” she asked.
“Crystal,” she replied. “It fluoresces under certain ultraviolet wavelengths.”
“I didn’t know that,” Rarity replied.
“Also uranium.”
“What,” Rarity said. Not asked, said. But it wasn’t a surprised statement, nor an angry one. It was the kind of statement that felt braced, like the speaker had spent a good deal of time preparing to say it. Because the siblings of the Crusaders knew you didn’t wait for the other shoe to drop. It was already coming down. You just didn’t know when it would.
“Ponies used to put uranium in glass,” Sweetie said.
“Oh, did they now?” Rarity said faintly, her vision starting to swim. “Is it safe?”
“Kinda.”
“Noted,” she said tiredly. “Please never bring any into the house.” Because a kinda from the Crusaders could mean anything from a mild irritant to a hospital stay.
“Don’t need to. We have some in the china cabinet.”
“What.” This time, it was a shocked statement.
Sweetie giggled. “It was really common! And you organized the cabinet by value and color. You put all of grandma’s green glass on one shelf. Half of it’s uranium.”
“Oh, lovely,” Rarity replied. “Say, Sweetie, do you know where my visual periphery has gone?”
“No?”
“Fantastic. I’m going to go turn my normal bed into a fainting bed.” And she did.
“Rarity?”
The sound of eggs sizzling on the stovetop found itself briefly interrupted as she turned around. “Yes, Sweetie?”
She was at the top of the stairs again. This time, her stare was focused, present, and alert. Her gaze was tinged with worry and a fair amount of disgust.
“Can we try to get our marks in bathroom cleaning today?” the filly asked awkwardly.
“Sure, as long as you do it anywhere that isn't here. Why?” Behind Rarity, an egg popped, stinging her flank with hot oil.
And that was when her front legs crossed, and a sheepish grin appeared on her face. Rarity sighed, turned off the stove and turned to fully face her sibling. The expression was not unfamiliar - in fact, it was the most familiar one Sweetie’s face could hold. An expression of shame, of that-didn’t-go-how-I-planned, a face that silently pleaded with her older sibling not to be too mad.
“Well…” Sweetie began.
“Just give me the damage,” Rarity replied, headache building behind one of her eyes.
“I… went back to look at the crystal knobs.” A back hoof began nervously tapping. “Because it’s cool when they glow, even if it’s not particularly special…”
“Out with it, please,” Rarity said.
“That was it.”
A pause. “Oh?”
“Rarity, I took a blacklight into my bathroom. At night.”
And for a moment, no words could be said. Even if they were, they wouldn’t have traveled far. It’s very difficult to be intelligible over the sound of peals of laughter.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- 6-D Pegasus · 1000 words · 176 2 · 1.7k views
- marmalado · 1000 words · 54 3 · 919 views
- 6-D Pegasus · 1000 words · 152 1 · 1.5k views
- RunicTreetops · 2.7k words · 120 2 · 1.3k views
- Unimpressive Chaos Lord · 1000 words · 16 1 · 281 views
- JimmySlimmy · 3.4k words · 184 3 · 1.7k views
- Caligari87 · 5.8k words · 102 4 · 1k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.108 seconds
Total duration
668 users online
972,474 hits today, 1,887,535 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Why did you make this so small?
11658276
Tried to strike a balance of differentiating between description and context while keeping the context legible. I can make it bigger if need be.
Bonny work, from the doorknob investment to sisterly discourse to the loss of Rarity's visual periphery and a'. A very enjoyable read, with the like and favourite well-deserved.
okay, the ending was great.
What a terrifying thing to hear from one of the Crusaders
11658342
It is, but I think
is far more terrifying.
This was a very very great read, so many thoughts
11658345
Well, NileRed isn't dead yet, and he personally made his own Uranium Glass.
A well written, in-character, and genuinely funny fic!! Thank you for writing it, and I hope your Social isn't as compromised as it seems!!
11658345
It's relatively common in older ceramics of a certain age too, I believe, being that it apparently gave a very vivid colour.
Pretty much entirely harmless though, unless you start scraping ceramic off and eating the shavings anyways.
You write this banger and then wonder why it's featured???
This is phenomenal. It's intelligent, well written, amusing, and cute all at the same time! I saw one run on sentence filled with comma splices, but got too absorbed into the story to care. You did a good job with this! Thanks for posting it, and it definitely deserves to be featured.
I think my favorite image in this is Rarity engaged in the banal task of cooking meals. She's thinking about things which aren't crusaders or bearers or whatever. She even gets splotched by hot egg juice, which is the minor chord in the sequence--the hero's journey is not a tranquil one, etc.
But it's a good piece of characterization because it sets a tone for her being the older sibling, and the dance of their pace as she and Sweetie Belle go to Home Depone is a nice touch, too. I can tell that the author is in a philosophic mood, and slice-of-life can be a good vehicle for that.
I would've thought that with a title like that, this would've been more on the random side, not that I'm complaining that it served to be a good SoL with a touch of amusement involved.
There's something on the sweet side about having someone's curiosity indulged like that, even if a little bit of the magic of the world dies inside from being disillusioned, because it wasn't as special as you thought it was.
It's interesting (and neat for my taste) that the whole thing was kicked off by Sweetie using a magic light spell in a bit of an unconventional manner, in the sense of "this fluoresces this way under this frequency," especially because it was before she even got her cutie mark.
There was also the note of surprise going two ways, since Rarity did not know that she had uranium in her house.
...and finally, the blacklight ending.
Oh?
Oh.
OH
Oh Celestia no
Had a grandma recently pass and my dad got all her "carnival glass." Some of it is the uranium stuff. This story is 100% relatable.
11658785
wait what does it mean?
11658850
I'll give you a hint. Gordon Ramsey uses black lights a fair bunch on Hotel Hell.
11658932
who's Gordon Ramsey? what's Hotel Hell?
Uranium glass is awesome.
11658342
Reminds me of this Calvin & Hobbes comic:
cobalt glass is kind of the same way too, its beautiful, its a deep blue, and they used a metric ton of poisonous dust to get it that way, basically anything used for smelting and or glass making is pretty toxic to the people making it
oh also glassblowers used to be semi-exhiled from wherever they lived because the risk of fire was so great they got their own little enclave closeish to the town without being close enough to burn it to the ground
11658986
Sorry, you only get one hint.
11658305
Thank you! This story was partially based off an actual experience I recently had with discovering lead glass around my house, so I'm glad I was able to turn that into an actual coherent story.
11658342 11658345
I like to view the Crusaders as a loose cannon crossed with MacGyver. You don't know how they did it, they don't know how they did it, but everything that they get their hooves on has the potential to become a destructive device in ways that cannot be replicated by science. Rarity's used to it.
11658379
I'm glad you were able to pull some meaning away from this!
11658415
Me too! And thank you for reading; I'm surprised I was able to pull off the character voices well since I haven't seen episodes of the show recently.
11658634
Thank you so much! I'm still a tad confused as to how it ended up in the box, cause I didn't really think this was up to my usual standard of quality, but it's been anointed as a banger, and I've never been happier to be wrong. Glad you enjoyed the read!
11658681
Thank you!!!!! I didn't edit this one so there was bound to be at least a couple issues, but I'm glad it doesn't detract from the overall work much!
11658688
Life isn't about the big flashy moments. It's about the buildup. In my own life, I've never had a philosophical revelation when my life was exciting. When I'm doing slice of life stuff, I try to make that more apparent. Find the meaning and.message in the smaller parts of being alive, and hey - cooking's a wonderful vector for that.
It's so relieving to know that the pace of the grocery store sequence was done well. When I'm writing dialogue, I always have a ton of trouble differentiating between scenebuilding and just kinda chucking in random actions to break up the wall of speech. That's actually part of why I thought this fic wasn't going to do very well - it's mostly dialogue, and so most of the writing process was spent in that uncomfortable zone. SUPER happy to know it flows well, thank you.
Also - while I do greatly appreciate the "philosophical mood" comment, I do have to correct the record a little. I AM incredibly thankful you thought so - much appreciated - but it was more of a "I forgot to eat today, oops" mood. Thanks for taking the time to read and comment!
11658736
I love expanding on the mundanities of how magic would be used in a world where it's considered normal. The thought process behind that little decision was "We've seen the ponies use their horns as flashlights before - why shouldn't they be able to control the color? And since color is wavelength, can they go beyond the visible light spectrum with practice?" This eventually turned into (and I really should have done a better job making this clear in the text, whoops) that Sweetie had rented an old glass appraiser's handbook from the library, and the instructions on how to modify the light spell were in there. That was supposed to be the book Sweets retired upstairs with in the intro.
I'm glad you enjoyed the blacklight ending! It may or may not have been based on personal experience. Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
11658785
I TOTALLY didn't do this exact thing myself. Nuh uh. No way.
11658794
I'm so sorry for the loss of your grandmother, and I hope you're healing well. The fact she had some uranium glass, though, is quite neat. Full disclosure: I was NOT expecting to get a comment calling this little tale relatable, but I'm very glad it was!
If you're comfortable sharing photos, I'd love to see some of the glass. I just got into uranium glass collection and while my budget is quite limited, I LOVE seeing other people's pieces! Totally good if no - thanks for stopping by and reading either way!
11658986
I have absolutely NO idea how this story was your first exposure to Gordon Ramsey, but you are in for a WORLD of entertainment and funny clips. If you search "Kitchen Nightmares" on YouTube, it'll suddenly make a LOT more sense.
11659209
It is! And the best part is that a lot of people have some and don't even realize!
11659236
The Crusaders in a nutshell. LOVE Calvin and Hobbes.
11659266
I did NOT know that glassblowers used to have their own separate hovels. That's super super neat. I also haven't found any cobalt glass yet - do you know if it's UV reactive?
11659994
Thank you for the condolences. I might be wrong about the uranium content of the glass. I'll check the makers marks against the year and that should give me a pretty good idea if uranium was used. Like I said my dad has the glass so pictures might have to wait until I get some time to visit and ask him.
BTW, this was very well written. Keep up the fine horsewords.
11659994
Mhm. It checks out, seems legit, captain.
The uranium glass is a little detail I did not really expect to show up here. I knew about it already from a technology connections video, but assumed most people wouldn't be aware/interested.
I believe it was banned from production because of the radiation? But back in the day, no one knew or cared, and they'd put uranium in anything, even toothpaste.
11658785
I often consider how the valuable becomes commonplace as time progresses, and indeed how the difficult becomes easy. I think that AI generated art is the newest example of this. It might make handpainted watercolours and oils more valued, simply because they cannot be churned out as fast.
In the words of the Late Great Sir Terry Pratchett:
This is so... mundane... but that's what makes it so good.
It's not some grand goofy escapade, it's not the aftermath of a Crusader misadventure.
It's just... really really well written slice of life mundanity.
It's so mundane it wraps around and becomes really investing and interesting.
11660315
If you have access to a blacklight of any kind, it's fairly easy to check. Just shine it on the glass. If it glows green (and you'll know - it is NOT a subtle green), that's uranium. No worries on the pictures - it's neat that you might have some at all.
And thank you! I've already got my next fic in mind, and will start working on it within the next couple days. Thanks again for the read!
11660407
Didn't know about the toothpaste! And you're right about it being banned, just not the reason for it. Uranium being used for glass was banned for about 15 years because it was needed for WWII. We all know the outcome of that - but afterwards, the ban was lifted, and some manufacturers made it up through (to my knowledge) the 70s, if not farther.
Most people aren't aware! I've been aware of it for several years, though, and only recently started actually collecting it. I've got five "normal" pieces of glass and one VERY interesting vase (it's not any of the typical colors you'd expect from uranium glass, and I actually mistook it for ceramic when I first saw it because of how opaque it was). I actually hope it becomes more popular, because that means more people will get to learn about it. I just think it's neat.
11660479
Would you believe me if I only realized this story can be read as a commentary on AI after I posted it? Wasn't my goal when writing, but I'll take it!
I think the current AI art situation is a bit different than how the industrial revolution changed and cheapened fine art, but I won't get into that. Thank you for the read, and I hope you enjoyed the fic!
11660549
I touched briefly upon this in another comment, but I've never had a really meaningful moment when my life was exciting. This isn't to say that the exciting portions of my life haven't had their impact, I can point to a number of different things in my own time on this Earth that have left both an impression on me and my heart pounding, but when it comes down to the things that stick with me on a really fundamental level, the things that form the foundation of me... it's the small things. Cooking a meal and thinking while the steam wafts up and curls above the pan. A small talk with a friend, or even a stranger. Sitting by a fire and laughing with people.
i am so, SO glad that I seem to have captured that and put it on paper. I've struggled with low-energy scenes in writing for a while, and to finally have confirmation I seem to have got at least ONE good example down... thank you. So much.
11660478
"Illuminated sobbing"
My sides are gone
Fun story! What a neat little slice of life!
It has good family vibes, learning from the past and philosophy, Funny moments from a adventurous child, and a happy atmosphere over all~
Until next time!
The definition of slice of life, wonderfully done!
Yeah, all manner of... interesting materials have been used through th years, and still are in some cases! Uranium, cyanide, and arsenic are some of the simple ones - there was actually quite the fad during the Victorian age for this very specific, unique shade of green achieved with arsenic. It was much later that people realized the dye would leach into the wearer's skin over time.
And radium... well, the Radium Girls is a well known case, but did you know that they used it for, basically, energy drinks back in the day?!?
And, of course, David Hann's home-made high school nuclear reactor, built from smoke alarms, night vision scopes, and various other store-shelf items.
And to make Sweetie (and perhaps the author) feel better, black lights do not mean as much as people assume. In addition to blood and other... bodily fluids... there are a metric assload of things that show up the same way... including many, many chemical household cleaning agents. Like laundry detergent. So you may just need a better rinse cycle.
This was informative.
You wonder why this fic got featured? Possibly because a lot of people were like me, and, upon reading the summary and title, developed a sudden urge to read about doorknobs.
And you know what? I got to read about doorknobs! Thanks for the fic, it was funny and I learned a few things!
Haha, I loved that ending.
11661365
So glad you enjoyed the read!
11661394
Thank you. Saying this is “the definition of slice of life” is HIGH praise, and I really do appreciate it.
I did know about the energy drinks! Radium water was… definitely a choice. Definitely an interesting choice in humanity’s history.
And yeah, it will help Sweetie to know cleaning agents show up.
11661892
SO happy you were able to learn! A lot of this is new to me, too.
11661953
Glad you liked the ending!
well this is adorable 💜
I wish I could properly convey how impressed I am with the opening, but there is a limit to how many words I — seemingly unlike you — can make good use of when conveying the degree and nuances of a single point;
I look forward to seeing more by you.
Very enjoyable read and great ending. I hope i can remember the line about 'where my visual periphery has gone' next time i feel the need to faint.
How does Rarity rattle off the formulation for lead glass but not know about uranium glass?