Story Notes: Hearth's Warming Trepidations · 1:10am Dec 24th, 2020
A Jinglemas story for Emotion Nexus.
In case y’all don’t know who Lily Longsocks is, she’s relentlessly adorable.
She’s also extremely strong,
I assume all y’all know the rest of the ponies except maybe Snapshot, but he broke up with Sparkler, so we really don’t care about him, do we?
As for Santa Hooves, well, maybe he’s real and maybe he isn’t. I’m not telling.
I don’t think that we’ve ever seen unicorns in canon using items specifically designed to help improve their field strength or dexterity; they mostly seem to practice with found objects.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. Even here on Earth, you can build muscle strength with found objects, say by throwing haybales in a hayloft or chucking a couple hundred tires a week upstairs at Firestone. But just as there are gyms for people who want to exercise without unloading hay wagons or getting a job at Firestone, it stands to reason that there would be exercises and exercise equipment for ponies to practice their telekinesis, likely made of materials that interact well with a pony’s field (or not, depending on the skills desired).
So why not copper birds? And why not shape them like actual birds, so a pony can fly them around?
A sidebacker is a type of harness.
Source It’s easier to buckle than some other types, and is good at backing/stopping or in hilly terrain.
Before automobiles, snow wasn’t plowed, it was rolled. Thin wheels on wagons (or runners) and horse hooves could easily navigate compacted snow, and it was okay for people, too.
Ponyville probably doesn’t have a full-time public works department, so they would likely hire extra ponies on an as-needed basis to roll the snow (and since they control the weather, they’d know when they were going to need ponies).
You won’t be surprised to know that you can make elderflower wine (you can also make elderberry wine). Some people pick extra blossoms off their fruit trees, to make more room for the growing fruit; instead of wasting those flowers, why not turn them into wine?
I won’t get into horseshoes here, just know that there are a lot of different types made out of different materials for different purposes, and that’s not even bringing up the spin that magic might put on it. Nopony would want shoes that interfered with their field, after all.
Springerles are German biscuits with a pattern in them, and they are traditionally anise-flavored.
Aniseed has traditionally been used for digestive problems in equines, so that would make them proper digestive biscuits.
[Equines can also eat cinnamon, and it’s not only a antioxidant but also an anti-diabetic, which is probably important for ponies living in the same town as Pinkie Pie.]
Source
You know who they got that recipe from
Quadrille is a card game, a variant on Ombre, and it’s apparently stupidly complex. You can read more about it here.
Tablut, or hnefatafl, or The Viking Game, is a game where one side has sixteen attackers, and the other side has eight defenders and a king. The object is for the king to reach a safe space, while the attackers try to stop him or capture him. Pieces move as rooks in chess, and they capture by surrounding an enemy piece (i.e., one on either side in a straight line). It’s way easier to win as the defenders. You can read more about it here.
Battlecloud is the game Rainbow was playing when she was in the hospital. Rules are unknown; the pieces include a cumulus, seagull, weatherpony, bumblebee, thunderbolt, and at least one cloud, and it appears to be played somewhat like Battleship.
I would be remiss to not mention that AlwaysDressesInStyle pre-read on rather short order due to a few IRL complications on my end. 
Bonus!
derpicdn.net/img/2016/10/8/1267965/large.png
Source
Not only is Lilly one of my fave foals. (I use her in almost every single story I do). She is the ONLY draft mare shown as a foal.
Did you know she is based on a very old character called "pippy Longstockings" who was super strong, and had a hedgehog for a pet (hence the cutie mark)
5421054
She related to Pippy Longstockings?
After playing Cookie Clicker I know about more varieties of cookies than is probably healthy.
5421130
Yea I messed up it should have said Pippy
I like her name being Prickleberry more than "Lily Longsocks"/
I was really intrigued by the ship, and then I saw you wrote it, which was convenient. :)
I imagine the public works department is more dedicated to post-disaster reconstruction.
As for Quadrille... Yeah, I'll stick to my usual card game, thank you.
5421201
I've always preferred Dilemma.
"Before automobiles"
And streetcars (including the ones pulled by horses)! (Though of course only in places they were running.)
The wheels have to reach the rails, after all.
And it was a nice story; thanks for writing. :)
Haha, I taught my nephew how to play Battleship over Thanksgiving.
5421054
My own headcanon is that a lot of the earth ponies are built more like draft horses, but they don’t really differentiate that in the show. Like, mostly on the lighter draft side (Irish Cob, etc.) but in general bulkier than the unicorns and pegasi.
I did know her name at least came from Pippy Longstockings; I did not know that Pippy had a hedgehog for a pet.
5421134
And thanks, you got me to try another game of that.
5421201
Was that one of the other fan-suggested names for her? I don’t think that Lily Longsocks is official.
5421325
I was, too, and I was surprised when I went looking for coverart that there’s a fair bit of Lily+Dinky art (like, dozens). That’s one I hadn’t come across before, either.
5421600
That probably is a large amount of their work, yes.
I have a feeling if you played the game a couple times with someone experienced, it would make more sense, but I don’t know. Reading the rules (well, skimming them) didn’t enlighten me, that’s for sure.
5421763
I’d forgotten about that! Now that you’ve jogged my memory, I think I remember reading somewhere that people objected to streets being plowed instead of rolled.
You’re welcome!
5421996
Nice! I haven’t played it in years.
5423617
I've seen it elsewhere, yeah.
5423621
I think I remember giving you a reference saying that, so it might actually be said reference you're thinking of. :)
(But yeah, it makes sense -- especially when one considers that with rolling, the question of where the snow goes is much less problematic. You can have a nice uniform compacted snow surface however high off the ground the fallen snow and rolling have produced, on which in fact sleds might give you the smoothest rides that street gets all year, or you can make the effort to gather and pile that snow somewhere which is almost certain to be either inconveniently in the way or inconveniently far away.
(I don't have historical data to back up that reasoning, just came up with it just now, but it seems to make sense to me.))
:)
5423738
Yeah, you might have been . . . our research and knowledge kinda goes down many of the same paths
I have to imagine that packing it down in the space between the rails and the pavement, and the light railcars of the day would have a problem with it. Admittedly, modern trains sometimes have trouble with that, too, but I have to figure that a 200 ton locomotive is gonna be less fazed with packed snow than a few thousand pound (at best) horse-drawn wagon . . . but of course, now that we’ve got cars, too, packing down the snow is less useful as a way of dealing with it. And given that a lot of wagons/carriages had their wheels switched out for runners, I do think that the smoothness and practicality was a big factor.
Also, as an aside, thanks for the link to the Trains article about the T1’s speedrun . . . I read that in the magazine years ago, and was thinking about it when I read the story, but in terms of actually finding it online or otherwise? I was having less luck with that.
5424160
It does seem to sometimes, aye. :D
Or at the very least our interests. :)
Right, good point about snow being packed in there even when the level above the street might not otherwise be too high for the tram to plow through (though I doubt it being compacted would help with that, either); I hadn't thought of that, as I recall (though just at this moment I'm pretty tired (as in, my eyes have kept closing as I've been writing this, and after posting this I'll be heading into bed)).
Ah, yes, I do believe I recall linking that in the comments of that story with Celestia and the GG1, I think it was? Or possibly, if not that, the blog post? Oh well. Somewhere recently. :)
Anyway, you're quite welcome! I'm glad that apparently a turn of phrase in it that'd happened to stick in my memory also happened to be distinct enough to be useful as a search term. :)
5424224
I seem to recall they’ve got to blast out the flangeways on Donner Pass sometimes, when the snow gets too compacted, so it’s plausible at least.
(Since we’re also referencing a GG1 fic, you could stop GG1s with really powdery snow; as I recall they all failed one time when there was a snowfall of just the right consistency in PA—they’d suck it in their intakes and short out their motors.)
A quick google search didn’t find me any cases of trains climbing off the tracks due to snow in the flangeways, but I am about 95% certain I’ve read that that can happen with modern, heavy equipment.
Yeah, it was one or the other, I don’t remember.
The parts I remembered about it weren’t useful enough to narrow down the search, unfortunately. I do have in my possession the magazine that article’s in, but without knowing which one, I’d have to search through hundreds to find it. The original article had a painting of the engine, as well.
5424491
Ah, neat. I wonder what they use for that?
(I hadn't heard that either; thanks.)
I don't think I've read of it happening, but it does make sense it would happen with a sufficient amount of sufficiently compacted snow.
re the article:
I think I searched for "PRR T1 "pilot's license""; that worked when I tried it just now, at least. Good thing I happened to remember that part of that particular turn of phrase, it sounds like!
Rather neat that you have that magazine archive, even if it's hard to search.
re the painting:
Ah, nice. :)