CG: WHAT'S ALL THIS ABOUT GOING AFTER THE QUEEN'S RING.
Rumbled.
Terezi has been planning OP3R4T1ON: SM4CK J4CK right under Karkat’s nose. How much does he know, and how much is she going to spill?
GC: TH3 WHOL3 PO1NT 1S TO D3STROY TH3 R1NG SO J4CK DO3SNT G3T 1T
CG: WHY WOULD WE WANT TO DO THAT, JACK'S AN ALLY.
GC: 4LSO
GC: TH3 M1SS1ON SORT OF 1NVOLV3S 3X1L1NG J4CK TOO
Karkat’s busy with Regisurp, and can’t keep tabs on everyone. Terezi could probably exile Jack without his approval - but she’s choosing to be honest about her intentions.
I think she respects his leadership more than she’s letting on.
CG: THIS IS BULLSHIT.
CG: WE'RE NOT EXILING JACK, HE'S COOL.
GC: K4RK4T, H3 1S NOT TH4T COOL!
CG: YES HE IS, HE'S A TOTAL BADASS WITH A FUCK TON OF BLADES AND SHIT, AND HE'S HELPING US OUT.
Karkat can’t help but trust his blood brother - and while he probably should be more skeptical, I can’t fault him for idolizing the first person who didn’t take issue with his mutation.
Sure, he’s a little stab-happy, but he relented after only a light wounding. And his intel has been INCREDIBLY USEFUL, TEREZI. REALLY, I THINK YOU’RE JUST JEALOUS OF OUR HEMOFRATERNAL BOND.
GC: OK, 1 TH1NK 1TS PR3TTY CUT3 TH4T YOU SORT OF LOOK UP TO H1M L1K3 TH4T
GC: BUT S3R1OUSLY, 1 DO NOT G3T 4 GOOD F33L1NG FROM H1M!
GC: H3 K1ND OF
CG: STINKS?
CG: LET ME ACTED SHOCKED LIKE I DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING.
CG: O:
CG: FUCK I FORGOT MY HORNS, I ALWAYS FORGET THEM
CG: O:B
We, of course, know how dangerous Jack is. The kids’ session - not to mention the Intermission - have taught us that the Double Archagent is not to be fucked with, in any of his incarnations..
Karkat might want to listen to the Seer of Mind on this one.
GC: H3 H4S ST4BB3D YOU ON MOR3 TH4N ON3 OCC4S1ON! [...]
CG: OK, WELL I KNOW FOR A FACT THE THIRD TIME WAS ACCIDENTAL.
CG: ANYWAY YOU'VE BEATEN THE SHIT OUT OF ME A FEW TIMES YOURSELF.
GC: BUT 1 D1DN'T DR4W BLOOD!
Sorry, but what the actual fuck is going on between these two.
There's something meditative about the act of tidying up.
There's something satisfying about putting things where they should be,
Clearing out space and finding new homes
And reducing the mental load of ignoring and navigating the mess.
It is asserting agency and control,
Proof that you can change things,
That you can push back against entropy and all the things in the world
For just a moment.
But a moment is enough.
There is always something else to tidy.
Summary: Somebody’s riding assessment for the lesson program at Galwaugh Farms
Today is my assessment at Galwaugh Farms. The place I used to ride, Tansley Woods Equestrian, kicked me out for weighing well over 135 pounds.
Truthfully, it has nothing to do with my body. Last year, a private equity firm based in Mexico bought out Tansley Woods. On paper, Tansley Woods continues to be a hunter/jumper barn, but in practice, it's a jockey training program.
Think about it. They insist on riding in skull caps and vests, just like jockeys wear. They insist on riding with short stirrups, just like jockeys do. They have a lot of retired racehorses in their school program, and some of the over-16s work with new racehorses. They have a very low weight limit of 121 pounds for the show team and 135 for the lesson programs in general. I don’t know how people haven’t put the pieces together yet.
I walk into the barn. The main office looked like the inside of a log cabin.
“Hi, are you Judy?” the receptionist asked.
“Hello,” I nodded, “ I am here to do my assessment lesson.”
The receptionist checked her smartphone. “OK, I see that you’ve sent in the payment and signed the waiver, you’re good to go,” she said. She looked at me. “You’ll be riding Pebbles, she’s in the last stall on the right and her tack is in locker number 11 in the tack room,” she pointed to the corridor leading to the stalls.
“OK, thanks”
I headed over to the stalls. The place looks nice. It’s a bigger piece of property than I expected. The exterior of the building looks like something out of a movie. Inside, however, leaves much to be desired. The tack room was way smaller than it looked in the pictures. Contrary to what the pictures of their social media feed would have you believe, they don’t have grooming stations, just hallway cross-ties. More disturbingly, the bathroom doesn’t have a door. It appears the last person who used the bathroom had to use a horse blanket as a privacy curtain.
I now understand why the few photos of the interior they had on their website or their socials were so staged. It looks way more impressive in the pictures than in real life.
I found the last stall on the right-hand side and saw a chunky Appaloosa-quarter horse cross mare snacking on her hay. “Hello, Pebbles,” I said as I set my tool bag full of brushes down. Pebbles looked at me and then resumed eating.
I got Pebbles groomed, tacked up, and ready to go. Before we got into the arena, she thought it would be funny to hang her tongue out. I looked at her and smiled. “Oh, goofy horse with your tongue stuck out,” I chuckled.
I got to the arena and discovered my assessment would take place in a group, not privately. I shared the arena with three other people: a fourth grader on a little dun pony, another kid about my age on a big, tall chestnut thoroughbred, and a college student on a fluffy, gray cob. The horses looked like they were in good shape.
I brought the horse to the arena. The coach walked up to me. She had wavy blonde hair, an apple-shaped torso, and half-open eyes. “Hi there,” she said softly.
“Hi,” I said right back, “I’m Judy”
“I’m Jacqui Dyer, nice to meet you,” she said. We shook hands and she led me to the middle of the arena to check my girth.
I passed the tack check. I went over to the mounting block and got on Pebbles. Nothing about Jacqui struck me as being hard to get along with.
After warming up at the walk, Jacqui said, “All right, everybody bring your ponies to a trot.”
The other kids pony-kicked their horses into a trot, and I squeezed Pebbles and clicked my tongue.
Jacqui disapproved. “Judy, stop what you’re doing immediately,” she said
I had no idea where the hell that came from. “what did I do wrong?” I asked.
Jacqui waved me to come into the center of the ring. She then said, “Judy, horses spook easily, so we need to keep our voices down when we’re around them, and that includes clucking or kissing when we’re riding”. I couldn't tell whether she was trying to help or talk down.
Initially, I shrugged it off. She wasn't wrong, and it appeared to make sense, nothing about it screamed “bullshit” to me. A few minutes later, I realized that I had a problem. I tend to yelp when startled. I've been told this is a safety issue numerous times, but I don't know how to fix it.
We finished trotting and brought our horses down to a walk. Jacqui then announced it was time to start cantering. “Judy, would you like to start us off at the canter?” she asked.
I nodded. I pulled out of the center, rode Pebbles to the rail, and moved her up to a fast walk. As we entered the corner, I moved my outside leg back, my reins up, and kissed.
Jacqui told me off again. “What did I just say about the vocal cues?”
“Fine,” I rolled my eyes, “I’ll bring her back down to walk and then pick up the canter quietly.”
Jacqui shook her head. “No, bring her into the canter from a trot,” she insisted, “We don’t canter horses from the walk, it teaches them they can bolt.” I had to fight not to laugh at how stupid this was.
I asked Pebbles to trot, and I thought I clucked quietly enough that Jacqui couldn’t hear me.
“I heard that,” Jacqui said, “Consider this your last chance. If I hear one more peep out of you, you’re out of here, understood?”
I nodded. I quietly kissed at Pebbles to get her to canter. We made it halfway around the arena before somebody’s dumb dog entered the ring and gave her a startle. Pebbles sped up, dropped low, and spun around. Something about the dog must’ve triggered an embedded memory of cutting cows.
I sank my weight into my heels, grabbed her mane, and chuckled at the situation. Together, we ran the dog out of the ring.
Jacqui shook her head, scoffed, and pointed at the ground. “That's it Judy, get off!” she barked.
As far as I was concerned, her reaction came out of nowhere. “Why are you mad at me?” I asked, “Staying on a cutter in an English saddle is a feat in its own right.” I’m not kidding, even Western riders have to hold onto the horn when the horse goes into cutting mode. If anything, Jacqui should be impressed.
“Judy, Pebbles bolted because you made too much noise” she reprimanded, “You need to get off, now.”
“She didn’t bolt, I told her to get those dogs out of the arena,” I said. It’ll probably be the last time the dog makes that mistake.
"This was your last chance, you blew it"
"Wait, you weren’t kidding?” I asked, utterly surprised, “How was I supposed to know you meant it?"
Jacqui grabbed Pebbles and led me away from everyone so I could get off.
Pebbles didn’t care about the noise. Nobody else did, either. The only one who made such a big fuss was Jacqui. That was enough to make me suspect it may not be as big a problem as I think.
People can get weird about certain unpleasant but ultimately harmless stimuli, like second-hand fish funk, and have an outsized reaction. The horse doesn't know the difference between the rider making a mountain out of an ant hill and the rider sensing a genuine threat, so he spooks. The horse spooks at the rider having an outsized reaction to the noise, not the noise itself.
I brought Pebbles back to her stall to untack. Her neighbour is a dark Palomino gelding named Tricky. The guy with the ponytail and scraggly beard in Tricky’s stall looked at me and said, “You’re back early”
“Yeah,” I nodded, “I don’t think they’re letting me in.”
Tricky’s rider raised an eyebrow and tipped his head to one side. “Oh, you had an assessment today?”
“I don’t understand why we can’t use vocal cues?”
Tricky’s rider damn near dropped the brush in his hand. “I've been at Galwaugh since 2004, and we were allowed to use vocal cues back then.”
“So, it's new?” I asked.
Tricky’s rider shook his head. “It’s not,” he replied, “it’s a holdover from 2008”
I figured this would be related to the financial crisis. “2008? So it's due to the financial crisis, then,” I said inquisitively.
Tricky’s rider nodded. “They didn't take into account that the financial crisis artificially lowered their no-show rate, so they sold way more seats for the lesson program than were available,” he said matter-of-factly.
I knew immediately he was talking about overbooking. “Like the airplane?”
“Exactly, but worse. They have to give you your money back if they turn you away because they don’t have enough space, but they didn’t want to do that. Instead, they came up with stupid rules that they only enforced on people who were overweight. That way, they can continue to post revenues from selling seats that didn’t exist.”
Hearing him say that vindicated me. “I knew that rule didn’t make any sense!” I trumpeted triumphantly.
If you make noise because you got startled by the horse spooking at something, whatever noise you made didn't spook it, it's too late at that point. If any other horses spooked after yours, it spooked because the first one spooked, not because of you.
A few weeks after my assessment, I found out that Galwaugh Farms would no longer take new students. Roughly a year later, they shut down the lesson program altogether to focus on breeding.
ALDERPAW GRR BEING A MEDICINE CAT IS NOT BEING USELESS, IF ANYTHING, YOU ARE BEING REWARDED, NOT PUNISHED FOR STRUGGLING IN TRAINING BY BECOMING A MED CAT. THAT'S A PRESITIGIOUS ROLE, DON'T YOU SEE THAT
CG: ARE YOU LICKING YOUR GLASSES AGAIN?
CG: I HATE IT WHEN YOU DO THAT, IT'S FUCKING DISGUSTING.
GC: NOMP, WH4TH WOULB EBER G1TH YOU TH4TH 1BE4???
GC: H3H3H3H3H3H3H3
If her messages are responding to her pronunciation, then Terezi must be using voice-to-text. But her messages also use her quirk - which means she’s got some sort of script running, to translate her spoken messages into leetspeak.
Do you see where I’m going with this? There’s a 99% chance that she got Sollux to do this.
GC: TH4T 1S B3TT3R
GC: 1TS MUCH 34S13R TO R34D YOUR COLOR TH1S W4Y
GC: YOUR DR4B D1RTY P4V3M3NT GR4Y
GC: ON TOP OF BR1GHT C4NDY R3D, L1K3 4 SH1NY LOLL1POP
Son of a fuck, she actually cracked it!
How, though? She can’t have seen his altercation with Jack - the viewport feature didn’t get set up until the Veil.
GC: 1T W4S WH3N 1 GOT CLOS3 3NOUGH
GC: TO SM3LL 1T UND3R YOUR SK1N
GC: PL34S3 K4RK4T, DO NOT PR3T3ND TH4T YOU FORGOT 4BOUT OUR L1TTL3 MOM3NT
CG: WHOA
CG: YOU MEAN
CG: DURING
CG: FUCK.
And I thought they were just flirting?
Au contraire, Sally!
GC: >;]
GC: > ;]
GC: >;]
GC: > ;]
GC: K4RK4T H3LP, TH3Y 4R3 OUT OF CONTROL!!!
CG: THOSE ARE EYEBROWS?
CG: I THOUGHT THEY WERE HORNS.
GC: TH3Y 4R3 HORNS TOO
GC: TH3Y 4R3 4R3 WH4T3V3R 1 W4NT TH3M TO B3
CG: ?:B
GC: DONT CH4NG3 TH3 SUBJ3CT BY B31NG CUT3!
CG: WELL APPARENTLY I JUST CAN'T FUCKING HELP MYSELF CAN I.
I don’t think you’re supposed to think your kismesis is cute - but I don’t think you’re supposed to beat up your matesprit, either.
Ah, I give up. I think their real quadrant is just ‘awkward teenagers’.
CG: BUT WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR CRAZY SENSES YOU'RE SO VAGUE, IT'S LIKE TRYING TO DECIPHER THE DAILY HOROSCOPE RIDDLE.
CG: OR THE RIDDLES FOR ALL 48 SIGNS COMBINED.
Well, what do you know - the Extended Zodiac, out in the wild!
Looks like our trolls represent one quarter of all Alternia’s Zodiac signs. I wonder if we’ll ever see them in canon, or if this is something that only gets built on outside the comic.
GC: F1N3, 1TS OK 1F YOU DONT W4NT TO T4LK 4BOUT 1T
GC: GOD YOU 4R3 SOOOOO SHY FOR 4N 4NGRY GUY WHO W4NTS TO B3 4 B1GSHOT L34D3R, 1TS R1D1CULOUS
Hey, the guy’s an expert in romantic theory. He never claimed to have mastered the practice.
GC: BY TH3 W4Y TH4T W1LL B3 TH3 N4M3 OF TH3 BO4RD 1N C4S3 1T W4SNT CL34R
CG: YEAH I GOT THAT.
CG: THIS IS AN EMPTY THREAT, BECAUSE IF YOU MADE A BOARD AT ANY POINT ON THE TIMELINE I WOULD BE ABLE TO SEE IT RIGHT HERE AND READ THE WHOLE THING ALREADY.
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