When running a hotel gets to be too much for Snowcatcher, she retreats to a room in the Mareiott's attic that only she can get to. Away from the drudgery and turmoil, she creates a diorama in her little fortress of solitude to showcase her Matchbox car collection.
Written for Ponyville CiderFest's Scattered Pages: Tales from the Book of All Stories. More stories from PVCF's 2023 Interactive Storytelling Experience can be found here.
Thank you to the entire Ponyville CiderFest Interactive Storytelling team (Vivid Syntax, Nyronus, Sonicsuns, Note Worthy, SteelTheWarrior, Snowday, Aria E. Diamond, SoloBrony, Skywriter, Ellwyn, Ghost Note, Overlord Pony, RQK, Shade Hunter, Shottsy, Celestilune). You pulled it off, and it was amazing!
Special thanks to Admiral Biscuit for pre-reading and for being the liaison on this with the PVCF staff.
Incidentally, Bachman's (one n) is a popular florist shop chain around the Twin Cities, and they've had to release statements denying any relationship to a certain batshit insane former congresscritter. Whether the model train paraphernalia company (with two ns) has done the same, I don't know.
So I guess Dewey isn't around to give Snowy some non-overwhelming company?
She hasn't made any equally-introverted human friends that can sit in silence outside the hamster ball and only give feedback or a hug and ear scritch if asked?
https://www.dailyinfographic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/guide-to-understanding-the-introverted.png
"Sometimes it was all too much for the little blue unicorn, and she retreated to the attic."
This does appear to contradict this bit of the long description:
"When running a hotel gets to be too much for Snowcatcher, she retreats to a room in the Mareiott's basement that only she can get to."
I forgot this was a Scattered Pages story and spent way too much time trying to guess which of her friends was playing Mysterious Benefactor for the surely inevitable friendship lesson at the end.
Well, this was just lovely. It brought up such unexpected feelings of nostalgia, whether for seeing those cars in real life at the time, or for playing with cars as a kid, or even for modelling and diorama building. Thank you for writing this.
I would like to suggest, though, that Snowcatcher get herself a stylus for her phone. It sounds like she'd find it very useful.
Adorable~
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Thank you! Fixed!
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Not this time. Snowcatcher values her down time, and even Dewdrop likes some solo time periodically.
Dewey was currently visiting Crater Lake on the other side of the country – a vacation her friend had been wanting to take since arriving on Earth.
I'm sure you can guess how she got to & from Crater Lake though. It wasn't via plane, train, or automobile!
Unfortunately, no. Dewey normally fulfills that role (aside from the ear scritching anyway), but this time Snowcatcher wanted some alone time to set everything up.
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Sorry about that!
I actually love that idea though. It sounds like the kind of thing Starbeam would do if she wanted to pay Snowy back for a kindness shown to her. Starbeam has the magical ability, and doing anything nice or generous would go against her image... so going through an intermediary (such as a magical page) would certainly work. Maybe that's how Snowy got the page in the first place?
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Thank you!
A stylus would definitely come in handy for her. She'll have to get one!
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Thank you!
Orbitouch Keyboards have been cited in ponyfics before as a pony-friendly PC input method.
I'd be more concerned about how a pony might clean out and tinker with the insides of a PC.
The "case," or "chassis," or sometimes "tower" holds the different parts, but also serves as faraday shielding and to direct airflow for cooling. Plugging in motherboard connectors and adjusting jumpers and cable management is pretty delicate work; not quite on par with watchmaking or gem cutting, but close. While unicorns might have the magical dexterity to poke around and move the tiny motherboard jumpers to clear the CMOS chip settings, we don't know whether a telekinetic field might have an adverse effect on the circuitry. And while anti-static wristbands and Datavac anti-static dusting vacuums exist, could a pony manually grip and feel around without seeing what they're doing?
God knows, pet owners often don't clean out their PC cases as often as they should, and pony hair is probably just as bad. Though I digress, smokers are even worse.
As far as touchscreens go, they can't possibly be any more finicky and imprecise for ponies as they are for people. I hate those things. Have to do everything at least 3 times before it registers properly...
The Blackberry thumb-trackball was perfect, but Blackberry was ruined when they started trying to emulate Android.
Styluses (styli?) will never go out of style (heh...) While Nintendo DSs and Palm Pilots are gone, the styli I have lying around are quite useful for quite a few things. Like undoing the knots on balloons. I'm a non-popper and prefer to deflate and reuse balloons as much as possible.
I love the slice of life and look into pony psychology in this story!
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Technology is very much not one of my strong points. So all of the tech is stuff I have to research (I don't even have a cellphone). For example, I forgot styluses were even a thing until A.P.O.N.I. suggested it. With a magical field, unicorns would have no problems with a stylus, and I think even an earth pony would be able to work it with their mouths easier than a pencil.
As I type this, I realize that ponies would actually do better with existing Earth technology than me. In some ways, it would make their lives easier.
Would Lulu Luck build a computer from scratch? Absolutely! Would I? Nope, because I want it to actually work.
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Thank you!
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You're welcome!
Also, Snowcatcher must have quite a lot of credit card rewards points by now judging by her orders. There's also all the orders the hotel does. Story idea: a pony on Earth discovers credit card rewards and churning.
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I could see Diamond Rose doing exactly that. Let's hope Lily Blossom can keep her from Discovering credit cards.
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Solution: Get her a charge card or a credit card that is set to auto pay each month. Diamond Rose can probably get an Amex Platinum Card, or maybe even a Centurion Card....
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Diamond Rose isn't very good with managing her cash flow. This could only end poorly for her. I should totally have Diamond Rose make another mess for Lily Blossom to clean up.