Image imported from derpibooru 
Original Description:
 
“Oh, pretty Papa!”
 
“Yeah, he is! Go an’ get some more flowers an’ I can put them in your mane too if you want”
 

 
First - Here! - Part2
 

 
I haven’t forgotten The Student, I swear! I have the end, I just need to write the middle. ““Just”” I say, because I’m kinda stuck on the middle :V I think it’s a problem of the previous parts. I wrote the existing parts in a continuous sweep, because I needed a distraction from reality and writing the story I’d semi-thought out beforehand seemed to fit. Back then the last part I’ve posted as of me writing this, was kinda the end, with just an epilogue after. But after writing and getting feedback and thinking more, I have ideas/parts I want to include before this story’s over. But I didn’t set up the previous parts to fit with said future parts. So now I’m really stuck on how to write the next bits/not entirely happy with the previous bits. I’m considering changing/adding to the existing parts, but I’ve kinda made it a point so far with my art here to not change posted things. I used to have a huge problem with just re-making the same stuff over and over, so I’ve tried to force myself to not do that. The one exception so far is Kinyume’s redesign, and she’s a special case cause she’s my favourite child. Don’t tell the other ones.

So anyway. The Student, paused but not forgotten, torments me at 2 in the morning with what to do with it.

Until I figure that out… uh, have some happy moments from between Part 1 and Part 2 :) (You know; when the Student hadn’t started school yet and thus shouldn’t have that moniker.)

(Also, I know this is depicting midsummer… a few weeks after actual midummer. I was planning on having it done for the date! But then… I didn’t. I blame minecraft’s latest update lol)

Here she’s almost one year old, and her family has taken her to celebrate her first midsummer. Down by the lake, there’s two old buildings which used to be a house and a barn. But the family that lived there moved long ago, and now the town used them as a sort of inofficial meeting/celebration/communal space. It’s the perfect place to decorate a pole with flowers and then dance around it like they’ve all had too much to drink. Which, by the time they get to the actual dances, most of them have had.

The young filly does not know any of this of course. She’s mostly just confused why her parents put her in restrictive clothing and took her out to a grassy field intead of eating midday meal. Oh, well, at least the flowers are pretty.

The observant of you might notice a contradiction within this image (and also compared to actual the Student parts). The buildings her and in previous parts are modeled somewhat after old norse (viking-age-ish) buildings (…my longhouse is perfectly constructed). But, the maypole (in sweden that is. Since this is based on northern scandinavia I use sweden as a base a lot) is only traced back to the later middle ages. And even worse, the clothes I’ve drawn here are heavily inspired on various swedish folk costumes. And, uh, those are mostly from the 19th century. So why? Why would I subject you all to this time-line madness??

Uh, it’s mainly because it makes me feel so nostalgic you don’t even know T-T In sweden, at least the areas I’ve lived in, it’s very very common for people to dress up in their county’s folk costume for the midsummer celebrations. And then you raise the pole together and dance around it (The most popular dance has everyone pretendig to be frogs while singing about how weird they are! :D No, I am not making that up. “små grodorna midsommar dans” on youtube, look it up.) And sometimes people put on shows with more traditional dances –my favourite to watch is oxdansen– and there’s a lot of good food and ugh. Can you tell I haven’t been able to celebrate this for two years now??

Anyway. Fantasy setting with talking horses; I feel I can get away with mix-and-matching history just a little.

Plus, it’s not completely unrealistic. Like, the colorful clothes; in our world, dyes were a precious commodity up north. From my amateur knowledge on the subject, we had very few actually vibrant hues avaible to us up north, and most of them were expesive imports. The scarcity of dyes weren’t limited to here either; like, there’s a good reason very few flags include any purple on them. In ye olden times in the north, if you wanted to be bright blue, you’d better be able to shell out to have ground lapis lazuli somehow imported.

In mlp-verse olde times, you went to the next town over and bought the fur of the local blue-furred family. Still not cheap –a horse only grows so much fur– but a lot more manageable. So headanon, colorful clothes were more common all over Gaia a lot earlier than in our world. The houses are still a bit drab though, because coloful paint can’t be made with fur.

As for what folk-costumes exactly these are based on… they’re mostly not exact at all. I just grabbed a ton of references and picked parts from them to put together into clothes for these horses :) I did make some pretty significant adjustements though, in that I actually put some bits on backwards? Like, the apron-esque cloth on the skirts usually go on the front of the body on humans (no duh), but since that would be hidden under the horses’ barrels I put them on top instead. Same with the vests, in the case of one side being colorful it was usually the front; I put it on the back since the front is, again, below the horse and hidden.

One notable exception to this whole, grab-bag of bits to make more unique dresses, is the Student’s dress. I wanted to include blue and green in her clothes for *spoiler*-reasons, but as soon as I drew them I realised how similar it was to Sweden’s national dress. So I gave her some oxeye daisies, and made her dress very heavily inspired bu the national dress. I just think it looks cute and pretty :)

I also decided to give the father a skirt becasue… look, I can come up with a ton of in-universe explanations. He likes to wear skirts. He wore it so his daughter wasn’t as puset having to wear hers. His first fancy costume was technically a foal-suit, which then had a skirt (because, right, headcanon: foals usually wear skirts regardless of gender. It’s considered cute and mimics how babies and toddlers in real life often wore dresses and skirts regardless of gender. Here, the brother is around the age he can choose for himself if he wants to or not, and he chose not to) and he got used to it. But the truth is, I just liked to draw skirts and wanted to draw one more =P

Abd lastly, I case you’re curious, the mother is wearing a “Bindmössa” (wikipedia tells me it’s a “French hood”, but images of those look completely different to what I’m referring to), with a bunch of embroidery on (don’t ask me how with hooves), and the Student is wearing a small Bonnet. It was interesting and fun trying to figure out how hats go on horse-heads lol

So yeah, just a cute moment with a family dressed up in their finest, taking a moment to appreciate the sun and flowers :)

PS: Also, I want to say this because the thought occurred to me and I now feel weird posting this without mentioning it. How to put it… in my experience, some people who like to draw/talk about/outwardly show they like sweden’s past are, uh, …white supremacists. Not all of them, obv. there’s a bunch of nerds too (hi) and pefectly normal people who just think it’s cool. But I’ve met some who see a rune-necklace and just… assume you’re also one of them, so it all feels a bit… dog-whistley. And I do draw some old-sweden-esque stuff sometimes, as seen in this image. So, not sure if this is needed, but rather have it said than assumed about; I just wanted to clarify that white supremacists are human garbage. That’s all.

PSS: Also lastly, a lot less serious note to end on; leaving on a trip soon, will most likely not have coverage majority of the time. If you comment/send me a note/etc during the next three-ish weeks, don’t be sad if I don’t respond. I’ll be sad for both of us over not having internet.