Princess Cadance's first diplomatic post to the City-State of Cloudsdale is off to a rocky start, as she deals with a mysteriously intransigent sitting ambassador, the damnable ever-present pegarazzi, and an insatiable alicorn metabolism that just won't quit. But even the coldest of cities can hide places of warmth and friendship to help you get back on your hooves after a fall, and on one bitter night, Cadance finds hers in a little place called "Posey's."
Part of the "Cadance of Cloudsdale" cycle, now with both group and TVTropes page. Pre-reading assistance by SR Foxley, horizon, Murcushio, and Axis of Rotation. Cover art by Andy Price (lines) and NadnerbD (colors).
Chapters (4)
I look forward to witness the adventures of Mi Amore Cadenza in the upcoming weeks!
Andy Price for cover art? I am supremely jealous.
And I would be willing to bet there are more than a few Very Important Pegasi who would break a wing (not theirs, of course) to have the Princess over for dinner. Or lunch. Or brunch. Or a late-afternoon snack. Or a mid-late-afternoon cheese plate. Perhaps a midnight appetizer or twenty. The real danger here would be the physical fitness of Shining Armor, her dining companion. The enchanted gizmo that gives him pegasus hooves probably has a weight limit.
Your story exceeds my expectations for anything I've read on this site for about a year. I want to see more, and I want to know your writing process (lol mine doesn't work).
Oh man, this is great. I had forgotten how funny your stories can be. I'm loving this next installment of the Cadence in Cloudsdale cycle.
This is fascinating already. I find myself caught up in
CadenceCadance's paranoia. I am totally uncertain whether or not Celestia is playing at something here, what Sunny Smiles is up to, or even if H.E. Smiles is even presently alive. I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing where you go with this.Despite being on the pre-reader list, calling this here so I can be publicly very clever indeed or very wrong:
Sunny Smiles? Changeling. Hella Changeling.
I love the way you Cadance's narrative voice. She's regal, proper and articulate and yet still uses childish expressions without seeming to care at all ('aloney on my owny'). It gives this neat impression that even though she's nearly a thousand years old, she's still not all grown up yet.
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Don't be silly. It's clearly Celestia.
She just teleports back and forth between the city and Canterlot and handles everything by mail.
This was a joy and a pleasure to pre-read, and I am envious of all of you about to see it for the first time.
This is a side of Cadance (and a period in her life, for that matter) that I really wish we got to see more of in both the show and fanfiction. Good start so far, I look forward to seeing where it goes.
I'm curious whether Cadance and Shining Armor will be in Cloudsdale or not when a certain pegasus filly challenges a couple of bullies to a race…
Oh, this was just as fun as I could hope for. I think Cadence is probably being paranoid here, and too
stubbornproudly independent for her own good... but I can't quite be sure. It's going to be interesting, seeing what's up with Sunny Smiles and all of Cloudsdale!Rather tangentially, now I also know exactly what Flash Sentry's special talent is, and why he was one of the guardsponies Shining Armor and Cadence took from Canterlot to Crystal Empire. He's a close protection specialist, whose job is to thwart the ponyrazzi and block their attempts to photograph the pony he's protecting.
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That's... rather brilliant, actually. Fasttracked to the personal headcanon evaluation committee.
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"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT SHE'S CAPABLE OF!"
I've always had it in my head that Cloudsdale is an autonomous protectorate, with Celestia as the head of state. It fits in with their segregation from the rest of Equestria. Having a foreign power control the bulk of your weather is just bad politics.
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Yes, it is. And that's all I'm going to say about that, other than to note that this is twelve years "ago."
Oh Cadance... you are simply incapable of taking good advice.
Probably because you hardly ever get any. But still!
Well, this is a brilliant start, and as always my heart breaks at Cadance's troubles and her complete inability to cope with them.
Poor flamingo princess. She really needs to start taking advice from Shining (or at least someone with her best interests in mind, this Weather Eye might count).
She also really needs to stop being so paranoid about Celestia, it's come to the point where it's starting to be self-harmful.
I love seeing this story continued!
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It might be, but autarky is even worse politics.
I've talked about this before, but I've always figured that Equestria could get by without Cloudsdale if it wanted to. Equestria is an enormous Hegemony (hence the name) and Cloudsdale is a mere city-state. Equestria probably has a higher total pegasus population even if it isn't a center of traditional pegasus culture, and they could almost certainly build a rainbow-industrial complex from scratch if they needed to; the basic infrastructure is already there in the form of local weather teams, they'd just need to add the industrial base for manufacturing weather on a mass scale.
The problem with doing that is it would involve a mammoth economic dislocation and trade war. Equestria would probably take years to spin up to doing weather as well as Cloudsdale does, and in the interim there'd be massive hardship on both sides. And that's assuming that a hypothetical trade war didn't turn into an actual war, which Equestria would also likely win but which would also cause a hell of a lot of pain and suffering. Equestria would eventually triumph, but that's a lot of pain to go through just to bring the weather industry under your control.
And why bother? Cloudsdale is happy to sell you all the weather you want, and Equestria is a lot more capable of producing bits than it is of producing weather. They give Cloudsdale money, Cloudsdale gives them weather. Everyone wins.
Problems, however, begin to emerge if the Weather Corporation starts playing diplomatic hardball. Someone who is intelligent, studious, and less than ethical might come to the same conclusions I have, and carry it one step further: "Celestia is generally unwilling to inflict suffering on the populace without a very good reason. This gives us a powerful source of leverage; we can disrespect the Mountain and extort more bits from it than we otherwise would be able to, with the implicit threat of weather dislocations at our disposal. Celestia is likely to shrug and simply stuff our mouths with gold rather than allow a bunch of filthy mud ponies to go without their weather."
Portolan, who I'm looking forward to meeting (and her son is probably around somewhere; I'm assuming that the future Prince Blueblood is somehow to related to the current Duchess Blueblood, at any rater) is probably very, very smart indeed.
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I'm guessing, what, two years of Sunset Shimmer, then a decade of Twilight? That gives the Cadance of Cloudsdale cycle a lot of time to hang out here in the city in the sky before needing to deal with sonic rainbooms and little sisters getting cutie marks.
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A lot of that is Celestia's fault. She spent a great deal of time miseducating Cadance and it really fucked the filly up.
Case in point: Cadance is ashamed and embarrassed about needing to eat. Indeed, this entire chapter hangs on that as a critical plot element. Cadance is so ashamed about a basic biological function of her body, a function shared by literally every other pony, that she's willing to lie and steal to not have to tell anyone about it.
And that's messed up. She's not a glutton. She needs calories in order to live. And Celestia has taught her that this is shameful, and needs to be concealed. Indeed, it is my suspicion that the alicorn gorgings are, in fact, completely unnecessary; if Cadance were to simply eat until she was full at every meal, like a normal person, she wouldn't slowly build up a gnawing, burning sense of hunger as her body cried out for sustenance until she needed to eat an entire tables worth of food in one go.
Cadance is paranoid and resentful of Princess Aunt, but a lot of that can be laid at the hooves of said Princess Aunt.
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Oh, nice.
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Equestria wouldn't have to literally take over every aspect of Cloudsdale weather production. Under Equestrian rule, Cloudsdale has certain laws and guidlines it has to abide by, same as any corporation, and without an independent state to back it up, the corporate interests are less able to get away with doing outrageous things like you're positing. Except the prospect of diplomatic hardball is worse than even how you make it out to be.
Think of it like the oil crises in 1973 and 1979 caused by the Arab and Islamic OPEC members, where changes in government and policies of government drastically affected the countries reliant on their oil. Here it's a hundred times more precarious because one state - Cloudsdale - controls the freakin' weather of another state. Any kind of vindictiveness, greed, ambition or ideological goal on part of the Cloudsdale rulers could lead to an embargo (unlikely, since Equestria is the sole buyer of its weather, unless it wants to go through all the effort of moving elsewhere and drumming up new business and contracts) or, much more likely, an increase in price.
The problem arises from the sheer monopoly this foreign power has on an utterly vital part of another power. Equestria has no choice but to pay whatever Cloudsdale asks for its weather, since as far as I can tell it's the only industrial weather-production place in Equestria needed for management of weather on a national level. The only advantage Equestria has is its diplomatic push (though given their ambassadors, that is currently fairly weak unless Celestia gets personally involved), its military might and its monopsony on Cloudsdale's industry, though even then desperate municipalities might circumvent any restriction the Mountain might enact in a crisis in order to get the weather control they desperately need.
Honestly, Celestia should have tried weaning ponies off of controlled weather centuries ago. Its only use is in giving pegasi a field to be employed in and keep those unemployment figures down (oh and preventing droughts and floods, but in politics that's only a secondary concern).
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So that's why we never heard of Canance before her wedding! Every picture taken of her for the last decade or so came out as just a surly looking orange pegasus holding a hoof close to the camera.
Ponies have very short memories when it comes to remembering Princesses so they soon started doubting she existed at all.
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Well, yes, but in order to reach that happy state, Equestria would have to either conquer Cloudsdale or Cloudsdale itself would have to petition for membership in the Hegemony. The former seems not smart, because the pegasi seem like they'd fight a long and vicious resistance against Equestria and if worst comes to worst they can move the city away and live life as a rogue state, raiding settlements beyond the Equestrian border (we know they exist; Reduit was one until recently) or even the outlying parts of the Hegemony proper for food and supplies. It would be a brutal, ruinous existence but it could be done.
We know that the latter (peaceful amalgamation) is going to happen eventually, although we don't yet know how. My guess is that the CWC is up to something so horrible with their mysterious new labor-free weathermaking process, and the Senate is so deep in it with them, that the populace as a whole is going to reject them utterly. That's just a guess, tho.
It's not nearly as precarious as you make it out to be, because Cloudsdale isn't run by insane ponies and Equestria, as you point out, is the sole buyer of its weather.
The powers that be in Cloudsdale have every incentive to play hardball with the Mountain, but they have zero incentive to ever place Celestia in a position where she says "No, go fuck yourselves." Because if that ever happens? They're ruined. They have all this weather they can't sell! The very wealthiest amongst them might have sufficient personal worth to be insulated for a time, but that personal wealth might not do much when the unemployment rate in Cloudsdale hits 40% and there's no more money for the bread dole and your company has been shuttered.
Now, a lot of ponies in the Hegemony would be ruined as well, which gives Celestia, for moral rather than pragmatic reasons, incentive to never tell them to go fuck themselves. So you're in a situation in which neither side wants the comfortable financial arrangement they've reached to end, because the consequences are terrifying. That doesn't sound precarious. That sounds stable.
Equestria could presumable go through a very long and very painful where they built up their own weather infrastructure. It would suck but it could be done. That means there is a choice, it's just a really difficult one. They don't have to pay Cloudsdale, but why shouldn't they? They have the bits for it.
You're making a very big assumption about this setting in specific and the show in general, which is that it is actually possible for there to be uncontrolled weather.
Equestria is a world in which the sun and moon won't move without external intervention. Without someone reaching out and taking hold of them and forcing them into motion they'll just sit there, and disaster will, presumably, soon follow.
Why should we assume weather is any different? Uncontrolled weather happens in the Everfree but the Everfree is, I think, not representative of the environment as a whole. It seems very likely that without ponies making weather happen, weather actually doesn't happen. Stuff like Winter Wrap-Up and the Running of the Leaves aren't quaint customs, but things that actually need to happen or the seasons literally will not change. If Cloudsdale doesn't come by and bring winter, winter won't actually happen. If Winter Wrap-Up doesn't take place, spring won't come.
I mean, we don't have definitive word on that either way, but it doesn't seem like ponies control the weather just because it is convenient, although they certainly would do that anyway (a third of the populace has weather-control powers, after all); they do it for the same reason Celestia raises and lowers the sun, as a precondition of their world actually existing and being fit for life.
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I have nothing to add at the moment other than that I love my readers dearly.
Oh, dear...
I'm going to liken Cadance staring down the lack of bread in her room to the feeling of waiting for a resolution to her predicament in another chapter. So far away.
I'm glad I was sorta kinda part of this in a small way. I see you've opted against using the shiny little border thing.
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I like the shiny border in Andy Price's original in theory but in practice it distracts, especially for a cover.
Thank you for the coloring job. This was originally going to be for like story #10 and I'm like, man, what if I never get there? No one will see this picture! So I bumped it up.
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YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES BEST EARLY CHRISTMAS GIFT EVAR!!!!
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So, just to clarify, you approve. Right? I need to ask, because your comment can be interpreted a couple different ways and I just want to make sure.
My week is super busy and I need to find particularly fulfilling and relaxing things to read to during my limited free time to keep my stress levels down?
Que Skywriter delivering the next installment in one of my favorite series and gracing the internet once more with his beautiful words!
Hallelujah!
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Also what this guy said.
Yay!
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Dayum son am I the only one jealous of cloudsdale's personal shower systems?
Poor Cadance, stuck between satisfying the metabolism of a 300lb male body builder and satisfying social norms. Mare needs a saddle bag full of high calorie snacks so she won't act like Alexandrite at dinner.I'M HUNGRY!!
This is all well and good, but don't you think it's time you wrote another story about Twilight?
(innocent bystanders see this comment exchange for an explanation)
Oh Cadence, your sin is pride!
Huh, does something happen to the fortunes of this particular house in the next dozen years or is Lyra slumming it in Ponyville, is BonBon her 'bit of rough'
https://youtu.be/yuTMWgOduFM
I wanna live like common ponies?
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The latter, I think; her family is still pretty well-heeled (hocked?) Anyway, I forget what fic introduced Lyra as a Duchess--I can't find it now--but I really fell in love with the idea of Lyra as "eccentric middling royal daughter." This is all presuming one is sold on the 'ship, of course. I realize that canon keeps winking at it.
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Nope! More Cadance stories! My next one is entitled "Princess Cadance Narrates a Wholly Mundane Happening in Her Life For the Sole Purpose of Spiting Bad Horse," followed by its sequel, "Princess Cadance Smacks Bad Horse Around Until He Admits Her Canonicity." Spoiler alert: It ends with him admitting her canonicity, so it is a happy ending.
Like Cadance, I am left hungry for more.
Somewhat perversely, I am kind of glad that the secret test of character from previous chapters is not being portrayed in a positive light. That kind of "for your own good" deceit is in some ways worse than just trying to hide something from someone. Cadance reads Celestia's letter, and wonders "But what did she really mean?"
I anticipate the morning edition of the Acta will have the following headline: PRINCESS CADANCE STOLE 40 LOAVES.
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AND THAT'S TERRIBLE.
If said in the right context and with a dirty mind, this could be clop
"Lieutenant, is there anything in this city besides these damnable broadsheets?"
"The minister has a wireless set, ma'am."
"How modern! Switch it on."
=========
A charming city where the sky is blue... but not blue enough. We asked for Pantone #298, and this is, clearly, Pantone #291. Clean out your cloud! You're fired.
The Weather Corporation apologizes for this shocking oversight.
Welcome... to Cloudsdale.
Listeners, there have been a lot of wild and crazy stories floating around about alicorns lately, likely due to the arrival of the new Ambassador Plenipotentiary from the Hegemony, and we here at Cloudsdale Community Radio consider it our civic duty to set the record straight. So we're here today to separate myth from fact when it comes to our terrifyingly many-limbed brethren. Because it's about service.
Myth: "Alicorns don't exist! They're made up, like Santa Hooves, or the Easter Bunny, or caves. It's all just a unicorn conspiracy and you're a fool for believing in them, you foolish fool; they do it with prosthetic horns and trickery."
Fact: Ho ho! I've been hearing this one since I was a schoolcolt, dear listeners, and I can assure you it is vicious, racist slander from a more prejudiced time. Alicorns do exist. I myself have been to the Mountain and seen the Sun Princess with my own eyes. She is very real.
So is Santa Hooves.
So very, extremely real.
Myth: "Alicorns can steal your soul from you while you sleep."
Fact: Now, see, this is another hoary old racist saw. I'm shocked it keeps getting repeated, even just as hearsay, in the society pages; the gossipmongers should know better. And it isn't even original; it's a corruption of the story about cats stealing the souls of infants.
Alicorns, much like photographers, require you to be wide awake and aware of what's happening in order to steal your soul. Your fear forms a transmission medium through the luminiferous aether. That's just science, friends.
Myth: "Alicorns are omnivorous and consume flesh."
Fact: This one is actually true. So... watch out, I guess? Princess Celestia is pretty big, I bet she could eat a whole griffin.
Myth: Oh! This is a new one. And... very specific! "The coat of Princess Cadenza is the legendary and heretofore undiscovered Seventh Forbidden Color, hottest pink. The circle is closed! The last sign is come! Soon Shadow Cloudsdale will emerge from the terrible black hole sun to supplant us, and then we will be Shadow Cloudsdale and they will be Cloudsdale Prime."
Fact: Cloudsdale Community Radio would like to remind its listeners that the seven forbidden colors do not exist, and that their import, export, or manufacture is strictly prohibited by city ordinance. An official press release from the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation that has just been thrust into my hoof by a piezoelectric sky golem also urges me to remind our listeners that "attempts to discover hottest pink, which does not exist, only doom the poor souls involved to penury, public scorn, and inevitable ruin."
Then there's a long series of ellipses, and it continues on the other side of the paper, "... one way or another."
Well! Wasn't that helpful information from our good friends at the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation.
That's all for today, dear listeners. I hope we've been of some help to you in the futile struggle to discern some manner of objective truth about the world. Remember; your senses will lie to you, but we never will!
Coming up next, we rate the seven sexiest kinds of clouds. Watch out, stratocumulus! Stratocirrus is younger, thinner, and hungrier than you are this year.
=========
"... this is a very strange city, Lieutenant."
"You'll get no argument from me, ma'am."
-
This is part two of Welcome to Cloudsdale. The previous part may be found here.
The next part may be found here.
The Welcome to Cloudsdale masterpost may be found here.
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I think that might be a "Yes" in there somewhere, hidden under that pile of YES.
I think Cadance wants to speak like Celestia, but she just can't help being a bit whimsical.
I think Celestia wishes sometimes she could speak a bit more like Cadance.
Also, YEAH! Best Princess is back!
Wonderful, as always. My only question: Isn't skipping the calderium and tepidarium bad for you?
Obscure bathing references for the win!
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Does she look like she's doing things right?
Also, you have correctly predicted some of the words that wil appear in future chapter titles. But I suspect you knew that.
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I'm trying and failing to put together a coherent Glow Cloud reference heALL HAIL THE GLOW CLOUD
6690547 That's a Hegemony slur against our high-quality and completely safe products! All Cloudsdale Weather Corporation Clouds are thoroughly tested for luminosity before leaving the factory floor. We haven't had a glow cloud outbreak since 955, thank you very much, and we don't anticipate any in the future.
The Cloudsdale Weather Corporation. Because air is too important to leave to chance.
I can't believe a new Skywriter story has been out for twenty-four hours without me finding chnace to read it...!
Superlative, as usual.
Poor Caddy. She just can't catch a break, can she?
(On the other hand, Sunny Smile had BETTER have a reason more than pride and/or bigotry (ageism, tribalism, classism etc etc) for her behavior[1], or else she might be recieving a personal visitation to recieve an... education.. on why that is... inappropriate[2].)
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That... That is *brilliant.*
[1] Assuming she is, as CinnamonSwirltheBreaded has suggest, not Celestia (which would not, at this point, surprise me), because Celestia is alloweda free pass to be as much of a troll as she likes, given she otherwise always has to be the Mentor all the time...
[2]No, it doesnt matter, given that she's supposed to be getting on a bit, if she's popped her clogs in the twelve years since... Correct... education... has no statute of limitations. Or mortality...
This is actually a knock against Celestia, when you think about it. When you give your students secret, surprise tests, they either become unreasonably paranoid (Cadance, Sunset) or just power through it with blind hero worship (Twilight). Either way, not a good method of teaching.
Something that came to me while reading the TV Tropes page: Shining Armor compares his magic to a child using crayons. What would Cadance's magic be like? Watercolor? Acrilic? Oil? Statue carving?