Demotivational Tactics
She told Silver about the problem during the shared trot to school. Well -- she told her friend about part of the problem, the sections which concerned Diamond's in-no-way-her-own-fault inability to claim her proper desk again and the necessity of finding some way to educate the two stupidest colts in Ponyville, Equestria, and quite possibly beyond. Nothing about what had happened with her daddy was included because as far as Diamond was concerned, that would all solve itself as soon as she passed her finals and besides... Silver didn't need to know. Because it wasn't important. At all. No matter how many times the resulting dreams had jolted her out of the nightscape to find a reality no more welcoming than...
...Diamond didn't remember the dreams, really. And she was going to keep telling herself that until it became true.
Silver looked sympathetic, an expression which mandated another mandatory glasses adjustment. "So what can I do to help?"
"I don't know," Diamond reluctantly admitted. "I thought about it for a while." During the night, while both attempting to find and trying not to dread any more sleep. "I think I have to work on this like my daddy would. I've been thinking about some more of the things he says after coming home from work... about how you get ponies to do what you want. But you don't know any of them." Which was clearly somepony's fault for not having Silver at more dinners, and that somepony was not Diamond. "If I can think of something..." Or if Silver remembered something Diamond had been just about to say, which did happen now and again.
Her friend nodded. "Just let me know if you need anything, okay? Look -- I'll keep studying. Just in case you manage to get switched back. You're sure your dad won't go to the school board?"
This lie had been rehearsed. "Not when he's got the supply contract coming up for renewal and some other dumb company is trying to take it away from us... you know, all those other ponies who just think they can come in and take over... I guess he doesn't want to... risk making them upset. Even for little easy things. It's just business. But they aren't going to sign until vacation starts. Everything will be normal again after that. We'll be right back next to each other, he'll get the contract, I'll get a boost in my allowance and --" the part which was supposed to make Silver not think about it -- "we could go for ice cream!"
She was sure that had all been believable. Her lies always were.
Silver turned, gave Diamond a look through the stupid lenses, one which seemed to go on for far too long.
"Okay," Silver finally said. "So what would your dad do first?"
'Try to form some level of personal connection with your employees. Have a conversation with them. It doesn't have to be a deep one. Just show them you have some things in common.'
As if Diamond would ever have anything in common with the world's dumbest boys. But they were all she had...
She found them exactly where she'd expected to, camped in the shadows of the schoolhouse's left side, waiting for the starting bell to ring and dumb Cheerilee to let them in. And they were doing what they always did during such times when the weather was warm and the soil was loose: excavating. For bugs. The slimier the result, the more Snails loved it. Sometimes he would bring an especially promising specimen in for show and tell, although all it ever promised to do was gross out the entire class. Snails could spend a happy ten minutes talking about the wriggling worm just barely encased in his field and for all of that time, he would be completely oblivious to how everypony else was trying not to throw up.
Snips usually just watched the dig. Sometimes he would give out words of encouragement, or laugh at the appearance of a particularly disgusting specimen. Once per season or so, there would be an argument about the merits of eating one of the finds, something Snails refused to let Snips do -- which was why Snips kept bringing it up at least once per season, because Snails could be hysterical when he was trying to defend something slimy which he would finally field-flick to safety.
That was the quality level of her only possible saviors: mud-grubbing, bug-hunting idiots, one of whom kept insisting he could personally go insectivore if he wanted to, a word Diamond only knew the meaning of because Snails had shouted out the definition during his protests at least fifteen times since they'd all started school.
Snails' horn was in the dirt. He was using it as a digging tool, stirring up the soil. His head came up just enough to let Diamond see an actual grub fall from the horn's tip. Snips laughed, a half-grunting snort which put her in mind of the tenant pigs she'd trotted past during the stomach-turning visits when her father took her along to see the Apples. (The pigs didn't make her want to vomit. Apple Bloom did.)
If she'd had any idea how to accomplish the feat plus the slightest degree of faith in their memorization skills, she would have enrolled the worms.
Talking to colts. Stupid ones. There really wasn't anything she wouldn't do to make her daddy happy again.
"Hey."
It had felt like a good opener on the way in -- but now that she'd vocalized it, the greeting seemed to be lacking something. Maybe she needed to make it more personal.
"What are you doing?" she followed up, and considered it perfect.
The colts looked up at her. Both regarded Diamond as if the bug hunt had somehow managed to turn up the world's first underground bird: fascination, confusion, a little shock, and absolutely no idea of what was supposed to happen next.
"Bug hunting," Snails dully said.
"Like we always do," Snips added. "Well, Snails does. I just watch." Another one of those truly annoying grunt-laughs. "Because he won't let me cut them up."
"Bugs are friends, not -- di-sec-tions," Snails carefully intoned.
"Whatever," Snips laughed.
They both looked at her again, as if making sure she was really there. The stares went back and forth for a while.
Diamond was starting to realize she was going to be doing the majority of the work in this conversation, which was actually fine because it made her even more the leader than she was already and if she had to provide every last verbal cue, then she would eventually be running the thought ones and then everything would be okay again. "So --" this part had required an hour of Moon-lit rehearsal, mostly to stop gagging "-- I just wanted to thank you... for the gum..."
Snails smiled. It made him look even dumber. "Wasn't nothin'."
Snips nodded. "We said we'd take care of you while you were in the dumps."
Which, to Diamond's forward-rotating ears, sounded promising. If the stupid colts had any real intention of looking after her...
"You didn't chew it, though," Snails pointed out.
"I was saving it for later." This also seemed to need something extra. "Because it's... special gum."
Snails beamed, which didn't do his visible intellect any favors either. "I thought so! Snips, didn't I tell you that was what she was doing? Because I always stick my special gum under the desk until I need it, so she's gonna do the same thing! And that gum was so special, I've been keeping it there since... since... when was Nightmare Moon here again?"
Diamond, who had touched the stuff, just barely managed not to retch.
"Dunno," Snips replied, thankfully distracted by the attempt to retrieve a memory. "When we were younger, maybe?"
"I think I'll always be young," Snails gravely stated. "I know I always have been."
Well, thankfully she didn't have to count on them for history.
"You usually don't talk to us this much," Snips abruptly noted.
Which was a level of insight she hadn't expected, and the recognition of active thought was added to sudden concerns about the tiny chance of Equestria's stupidest colts being able to figure things out and clashed, with the conflict immediately dropping into her stomach so it could writhe within the available space. (Diamond had encountered certain difficulties with her breakfast. No servants had been fired, mostly because she hadn't had the time to search for a responsible party.) She thought fast. "We -- usually don't sit next to each other, and you're too far back for notes." Which was all true. Even if she had for some reason wanted to relay a chain of written insult to the boys while lost in some hopeful delusion of their being able to read it, she didn't have a pony chain capable of relaying the missive. Most of the other students refused to pass her notes any more.
Just about all, actually.
(Which also meant she had no ready way of communicating with Silver during class. Something else which was all Cheerilee's fault.)
And as for talking to them... well, while there was more than a mere sufficiency of material to work with, Diamond had found that there just wasn't much point in spending time insulting Snips and Snails. It was like hiking up to the dam during the late autumn and spending an hour berating the water for being cold and wet: fully accurate in every way, but the water wasn't going to get much out of it.
Snips shrugged. "Okay," he said. "Hey, Snails -- lookit that one! It's practically bulging out its own sides! I bet if you stomped your hoof on it, the stuff inside would squirt out for gallops...!"
Snails' field flickered into view, protectively surrounded the indicated miniature horror. "Snips! Bugs are for cherishing, not for --"
"-- I'm just teasing ya, Snails, just teasing..."
Diamond wrenched her eyes away from the thing one moment after her mind finished the impromptu portrait of pressure-propelled insect guts finding the single open window in the Solar Wing and -- well, history strongly suggested that wasn't an executable offense, but it was the Princess and Diamond was effectively the boss of these two for the horrid duration, which meant that if anypony found out what the launch site had been, they might realize she'd been there and...
...no. Getting them to study, that was her responsibility. Nothing else. No matter what some ponies might insist on seeing because they were either stupid or had enough power to get things all their own way. Diamond hated ponies like that, at least when they weren't her.
It still was best to get them on the proper topic well before anything like that happened, though, especially the bell was due to go off at any second. She'd lost too much time in steeling herself for the final no-way-back approach.
"So," she tried out, adding a casual tone which she was in no way feeling emotionally committed to. "Finals are coming up."
"Yeah," Snails readily agreed. His right forehoof dragged a little trench into the soil, and his field lowered the wriggling bomb back to safety.
Cautiously, "How do you think you'll do?"
The colts exchanged a glance. The next one went towards her. Back to a momentary regard of the other stupid face in the area.
The raucous laughter nearly drowned out the starting bell.
Diamond did her best not to drag her hooves as she slowly trotted behind them, heading towards the front entrance and the final days of what was now starting to feel like a strictly temporary prison term. The one some of the oldest sections of history implied you got during the trial, just before you were found guilty and transferred into the dungeon.
"Watch your step," Snails said.
"What?"
Reproachfully, "You nearly kicked the trench. What if he hadn't been out of the way yet?"
He. She couldn't stop the thought, and just barely managed to get most of the sarcasm out of her voice. "Does he have a name?"
"Naw."
Well, at least he hasn't gone that far with the gross --
"We hadn't known each other long enough yet."
'It takes more than money to motivate an employee. Salary can almost always help, but it's still not a guarantee. Most ponies want more than mere bits. Many want open recognition of their efforts. Somepony to acknowledge how hard that effort truly was. Praise. Or even just a simple, personally-delivered kind word of thanks.'
Except that the stupid colts hadn't done anything worth praising. They hadn't even managed to accomplish a single thing which could normally be left free of insult on those rare days when the sheer offense of having to be around their idiocy did put Diamond in the mood to spend a pointless hour creating wind-blown ripples on the surface of the lake, water which would promptly smooth out the instant she stopped, just placidly resting there as if she'd never done anything at all. Water had no memory, which gave it something else in common with Snips and Snails.
That trait was, like the hoof-mounted stabbing blades she'd seen when their dumb teacher had forced them into a trip to Canterlot's Museum Of Military History, double-edged. Under the one hoof, the colts seemed to have very little memory of anything she'd ever wasted her time in saying to them before this, which meant she hadn't had to pull out any of the tongue-knotting false apologies she'd worked on through her non-breakfast, one which her daddy hadn't attended because he was just so busy all the time and probably just had to get to work early, no matter how hard he usually tried to spend that time with her even in the middle of the most desperate business crisis. But under one of the other hooves, they had no desire to attempt recollection of -- anything. Like the stupid facts trotting in order across the blackboard.
Diamond risked a whisper: Cheerilee would still be on the alert for note-passing and for careful projection of near-hissed sound, the acoustics of the back corner actually seemed to be on Diamond's side. "Shouldn't you be taking notes?"
Snips glanced up from his paper, just enough to put his snout clear of the actual desk. He'd been staring at it intently for several minutes, and Diamond had seen tiny lines of glow traveling across the sheet. None of them had left ink marks behind, and the writing implements on the desk corner had remained untouched by mouth and field for the first full hour of school. "Huh?"
"Notes. You should be taking them."
"Why?"
"So you can study them later and pass finals?"
He stared at her.
"Hey, lookit this," Snips said. His field surrounded the paper in a series of stutter-steps, carefully raised it. Large sections fell away. What remained was a series of carefully-clipped miniature exacting outlines of a pony form, linked to each other at the nose, a chain of two-dimensional nuzzles.
Diamond wanted to look away. She couldn't seem to manage it. First she couldn't get Cheerilee to do what she wanted, then her daddy hadn't fought for her, and now her own neck had joined the conspiracy of revolution, recruiting her eyelids along the way.
"It was really hard to get your tiara right," Snips said, with the tiny breath-blown scraps of cutout which now littered the entire area giving evidence.
She forced a nod.
He'd paired her with herself, at least. She wasn't being forced to spend a paper eternity snout-to-snout with some dumb colt.
"It's a necklace," Snips whispered. His field exerted again, and the ends of the chain awkwardly reached towards each other -- then paused. "You can put it on during recess."
There was a snort on her left. It was sharp, surprisingly deep, and highly amused. Apparently Snails found the whole thing funny.
The chorus of echoes from the rest of the classroom seemed to indicate a lot of ponies agreed with him. And normally Diamond would have seen the occasion as one of those truly rare events where the entire group almost came close to approaching half her level and she could spent a moment laughing at idiocy with everypony else, but...
...he'd done something. A feat which had apparently required real effort on his part.
Her daddy's words gave her the response, something which had to fight its way out of her throat letter by letter.
"It's... very... nice."
He grinned.
The chorus seemed to be getting louder.
Her unwanted new bench had proven too durable to break with a deliberately-hard plop, even with earth pony strength driving the effort. As it turned out, the stupid thing was also too resistant to the heat of fuming for properly catching fire.
They were watching her.
All the stupid colts and fillies in the class. Even Silver, although that was just checking on her welfare, looking for the hints of body language and secret signals which would let her friend know that progress had been made. (Naturally, Diamond had let no such thing travel across the endless void: there had been no cause and, after a pair of hours sitting between the morons, no available strength.) But the others had a different reason for their distant survey. Sure, Diamond might approach Snips and Snails on rare occasion: after all, everypony got fed up with water sometimes. But for her to follow them out, doing something which other dumb ponies might see as keeping company... it was getting attention. Diamond certainly would have watched anypony who seemed to be hanging around with the pair on a regular basis, working on some choice commentary to be delivered when the audience was just right, and for anypony else to be doing the same with her was patently unfair in a way any lawyer would have gotten a jury to see within minutes, if only she still had access to them.
Fortunately, the boys liked to spend most of their recesses out of sight from the herd, all the better to fully surprise the class with whatever revolting piece of debris they'd found during the break. So the scrutiny only lasted until they all got around the corner, which gave Diamond the freedom to go directly for the point. She normally would have spent some time setting things up with a degree of subtlety, but she had no confidence that either of the colts spoke subtle. She was beginning to feel thankful that they even understood some small amount of Equestrian.
"So you think you're going to --"
The paper necklace was floated across the gap towards her. As Diamond froze in silent horror, Snips' field gently wrapped it around her neck.
She wasn't choking. She wasn't. The paper wasn't tight at all. The gagging pressure was purely internal, which made it all the more real.
He'd misaligned the ends, which were on the left instead of at the back: it allowed her to just barely see the sudden intensity increase in that portion of field glow while his horn's corona intensified and the colt's breathing sped up, light sweat beginning to manifest in the shoddy, poorly-groomed coat.
"Easy, Snips..." Snails dully cautioned.
"It's new, Snails, I don't quite have it down yet..."
It took nearly everything Diamond had left not to rear back and every scrap of remainder to prevent herself from fleeing. One of the world's two stupidest colts was practicing a working on something which was around her neck? Rushing out of the area at full gallop was the only sane reaction, followed by seeking out the police, doctors to see if any damage had been done, then those still-blocked lawyers if it had, with that last part being mandatory because in the world of jury compensation, stress and fear often counted double.
But they were her only hope.
And besides, if Snips did wind up getting the whole thing either horribly wrong or in a truly minor fashion which she could fake into something more, going to the hospital would just have her daddy at her bedside, weeping and nuzzling her and seeing how he should have been properly protecting her all along, because it was his neglect which had forced her into this. So there.
There was a slight heat against the side of her neck, just a degree or two, still enough that she had to keep fighting that urge to run --
-- and the ends of the paper necklace fused.
The glow slowly diminished around both horn and paper, vanished. All four of Snips' knees were shaking.
"I think..." Snips was breathing very hard. "...that did it. Touch it?"
Diamond, the normal frown held back by the tide of fear, brought a really-not-trembling hoof up and did so.
The ends came apart, and the necklace fell away -- but only a hoofwidth, and then it was snagged by Snails' field.
"Okay..." Snips forced out. "Now... touch it again?"
Well, if it hadn't exploded the first time, her odds of living through the next seemed to be a little stronger. She managed a second contact, Snails' field helpfully parting to allow her direct hoof access.
At her touch, the paper slowly raised itself out of that second field. And it was glowing, a faint vestige of Snips' own corona hue -- but the smaller colt's horn was unlit, and Diamond watched as the circlet moved towards her neck again...
It encircled her throat. The ends heated by that degree or two, fused again.
Snails grinned. It was still dopey. It would never be anything but stupid. It was also proud. "Nice one, Snips! Won't tear either, right?"
Snips shook his head. "Won't tear, won't burn..." That stupid laugh again, but this one was still a little unsteady. "I had a lot of fun trying to get some of the first ones to burn! But it'll come on and off on its own, whenever you touch it. It won't even get dirty. It's... forever."
Diamond couldn't stare at it: the necklace wasn't in a good position for it. She just looked at the colts instead.
Spells. Workings. Dumb tricks. Using paper for jewelry. How could there be anything stupider than that? Paper wasn't precious. It had no worth at all. Sure, maybe the history stuff said it had been really hard to make once and that had made a big personal library into an undisputed sign of wealth, but that had been before she was born and so she didn't really care about it. In the all-important now which she personally had to supervise and dictate, paper was everywhere and maybe gems were just a little harder to come by, but at least ponies with brains thought jewels were beautiful.
A paper necklace. It was just stupid. And it couldn't tear or burn, which meant she'd have to go through the trouble of losing it --
-- wait. Paper which won't tear or burn?
"Snips..." Was that the first time she'd ever said his name? He usually wasn't even worth the dignity of one, just like most of the other ponies around her and unless she could use one of their names to pull in attention before launching the crushing blow, all of the Blank Flank Maintainers. (It was so obvious to Diamond that the stupidity of that trio would keep them mark-free until the day they stopped being willful idiots. And so she happily let them keep right on doing it.)
He perked up.
"Does it work on all paper?" Because she could see it now, Twilight Sparkle, so-called Element-Bearer, a pony of just enough importance to be annoying and therefore somepony who surely had to have access to the bits of the palace, floating over saddlebag after saddlebag filled with money after learning that her precious (but no longer valuable) library would never have to worry about having a book being destroyed ever again...
"Not yet," Snips breathed -- but that was beginning to center on normalcy. "Works best if I cut some pieces out first..."
Which wasn't exactly going to make the librarian happy, but a notch or two out of a useless title page had to be a fair trade for protection, right? "How about books?"
"Remember when I said it was fun trying to get the stuff to burn?"
Being quizzed on memory by Snips was an act of both irony and insult, but Diamond managed to force another nod.
"Guess what was on fire?" He grinned. "The binding glue! You had to smell it... well, if the wind was right, maybe you did... all the neighbors in that direction sure got it, and you had to hear them with my mom, it was like they couldn't appreciate a really disgusting..." Which was the point at which speech broke up into a series of those grunting laughs, a whole fallow of pigs rooting for false humor.
Oh. Well, a lot of profitable enterprises had to go through warm-up stages, or in this case, burn-down. "Keep working on it." More grinning. She was already sick of it. Except that...
...in a way, he was her employee. Or was about to be. And they needed to reach that part, quickly: there was only so much recess to use and every minute she spent with the colts was one less she had to use for making everypony else pay for that reaction. So in the name of the all-important goal of getting her to pass so that her daddy would see how good she'd been all along...
"Thank you," Diamond said, and silently vowed to spend an hour cleaning her tongue.
Snails' grin was no less offensive. "Bet it makes your neck turn green."
Whatever color had been about to suffuse Snips' coat immediately flushed into rage. "Will not!"
"And her coat's gonna turn all curly..."
"It won't!"
"Then it'll smell as bad as Snips does."
"Take that back!"
"Will not."
"I'll make you!"
"Do that."
The smaller colt lunged at the taller. Legs blurred. Bodies tumbled. Horns remained dark. Dirt went flying everywhere, which made Snails yelp as the twisting mass came too close to an exposed bug, and the traveling riot helpfully twisted away just in time.
Eventually, Diamond got sick of it and reluctantly moved in to pry them apart, which took very little effort: she was considerably stronger than both combatants and besides, they were giggling too hard to resist.
Once they'd stopped panting and a tiny degree of order had been restored, she finally seized control of the discussion.
"Why did you laugh when I asked how you would do on finals?" She already had a strong suspicion of what the answer was going to be, but this was the lead-in and given how much time the fight had taken, she didn't have much recess left to work with.
"'cause we'll flunk," Snails said. He didn't seem to be particularly upset about it.
"We always flunk," Snips added with an equal lack of caring. "Every semester."
Which would have sent her into despair if it wasn't for her well-earned confidence in her ability to fix everything, added to a simple fact which had just occurred to her, one which made what the colts had said into a tease which they would have to pay for. After the end of the semester. "You can't fail every time."
"But we do," Snails dully pointed out.
"No you can't!" Diamond insisted with brilliant, perfect logic. "We all started school together! You've advanced every year I have! So that means you're passing!"
Snips shrugged. "We take summer school," he replied. "And extra classes during winter break, too. Every year. Different teacher. We pass those."
Diamond blinked.
She didn't pay much attention to the idiots unless she absolutely had to. Why would anypony? But now that she thought about it, they never seemed to be around much during vacation... and now that she was thinking about it even more, the dunces had just given her a gift magnitudes more precious than the dumb necklace, something she could use against Cheerilee. If the colts never passed her classes and always got through the ones which the other teacher conducted, then clearly the fault was with the mare. It was something her daddy could go to the school board with: a simple request to get rid of the inferior. And not only that, those words had proven that the colts could pass. She had something she could work with...
"Is the break teacher that much better?" Recess might be limited, but evidence was important.
"Not really," Snips shrugged again.
"He talks to us more," Snails added. "But he kind of has to. We're usually the only two ponies there."
"Miss Cheerilee's better," Snips decided, and somehow managed to look dopier than ever. "And a lot prettier. Mr. Guffey looks out the window a lot. We just have to pass his stuff. We don't have to pass with Miss Cheerilee."
"We can't," Snails definitively concluded. "Ever."
The colts smiled at each other, and for all the obscuring stupidity within the twinned expressions, it was a smile Diamond knew by heart, because it was one she so often wore: the look of somepony who had figured out something nopony else knew, the pride of being a hoofstep ahead of the herd...
But to have that expression coming from them... Diamond was confused. "Why... why can't you pass Cheerilee's classes?"
This look carried heavy notes of concern. An extended silent communication passed between the boys, and most of the words seemed to possess considerably more than one syllable.
Finally, they turned to her.
"Wanna know a secret?" Snails asked.
"Swear not to tell?" Snips followed.
"Because you have to swear," Snails insisted. "On Celestia, Luna, and Cadance. Manes, tails, and hooves all together. Or we won't tell you. And it'll be that much worse if you break your word."
"It's that important," Snips stated, and the words were an absolute.
She swore, mostly because she was starting to think she had to. Not that she cared about making vows, not even when all three Princesses were involved because it was so obvious that the rulers never heard the words, and they wouldn't appear to inflict punishments if the promise was broken. But making the vow was clearly the only way the colts were going to talk.
More unspoken debate followed her falsely-solemn promise -- but thanks to her acting skills, this argument was much shorter.
"Our parents don't like us hanging around each other," Snips abruptly said.
"His mom thinks I get him into trouble," Snails added.
"My dad thinks he's the problem," Snips sighed. "And it's always been like that. Since we first met. I can't go over his house most of the time and my folks don't want him in mine."
"Plus there was all the stuff with Miss Trixie," Snails recalled, and both faces briefly went aglow with the light of adoration.
"That didn't help," Snips decided. "Neither did the Ursa Minor..."
"The first year, we both passed," Snails said. "We had all sorts of stuff planned for break. Digs all over the place. But our parents kept us away from each other. Chores. Working in the store for me and the business for him."
"Bookbinding," Snips groaned. "My hooves stuck to each other for the whole summer."
"We mostly see each other at school," Snails went on, and the dullness Diamond normally found in those eyes didn't seem to be there. "Or going back and forth. Because our folks can't stop that. But once we're out, they've got control. We couldn't sneak away most of the time, not even under Moon. Our parents put alarm spells up, so something big had to be going on anyway, something which would have already set them off... We didn't get to have any real fun together until the next semester started. Because we had to go back to school."
Snips grinned, and there was a sharpness in it. "So we figured -- why not have school all the time?"
"So we flunk with Miss Cheerliee," Snails concluded. "And then with Mr. Guffey, we pass. That way, we see each other all year round. We could always fail with Mr. Guffey too, but getting held back stinks and at least if we pass eventually, our folks are sort of happy. We stay with the rest of the class, we'll graduate, and then nopony can keep us apart."
"Ever," Snips definitively stated.
And as Diamond stared at them in open, impossible-to-conceal shock, they beamed at each other with the pride of a job well-done, a state which maintained across the scant seconds until the school bell rang again.
Diamond was the last pony into the classroom. The weight of her thoughts had slowed her down.
They had no motivation to study. It was, in fact, exactly the opposite. Snips and Snails had what they saw as every reason in the world to fail and fail again: each other. To pass was to be separated: to flunk was to be granted time with a friend. What kind of bribes, payments, and threats did Diamond have to offer which could counter that?
She had less than a week to find out. Otherwise, it was going to be a trio present for break classes this time around, and she doubted her father would be as happy about the delayed chance of passing as the colts' parents seemed to be.
Diamond wondered what Mr. Guffey looked like. And, for the first time, questioned whether she would learn the answer through staring at him across a schoolroom space lit by summer Sun.
Well, at least I don't have to worry about getting to the dumb Elements any more.
Blasting their parents clearly wasn't going to do any good either.
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Ah, genius without root. I remember those days...
Next step: convince Snips' and Snails's parents that they're good for each other and can spend the summer together.
The parents tell Diamond that they can't, they need the colts to do lots of important chores if they aren't in school. Diamond Tiara tries to solve that problem, finds new ones cropping up along the way.
In the end, Diamond Tiara still fails, but Ponyville has somehow become a streamlined interconnected chores/studying/transport/communication/entomology/motivational-seminar/investment-banking social machine over the past week, and nobody knows how or why.
It amuses me how, in an extradiegetic sense, this is completely correct. Snails's Flash model will never age.
Also, wow. That is some very impressive obfuscating stupidity there. Tiara's got her work cut out for her. Eagerly looking forward to more.
4537705
It's actually a line from someone else's work, one I felt fit beautifully here. (My wording may not be exact, but it's close.) I'm curious to see who'll ID it.
Without benefit of search engine.
Whoa, is Diamond Tiara developing empathy?
I've been in customer service training at work all week long, and these employee management asides are practically giving me flashbacks.
You know, if Diamond could figure out how to phrase studying as a way to cut stuff she'd be like 50% of the way towards figuring out how to motivate these two.
Ooo, I have a feeling that the explanation for why they always fail contains the seeds of making sure they pass this time. It's just a question of finding the correct lever.
Another great addition. Lots of fun was had =P
Would have been a brilliant chapter, but I still have some problems with this; As great as your Diamond Tiara is, she does in my opinion have two flaws:
a) her relationship with Silver. I still don't agree with you on that one
b) She shows way too much self-insight for a kid of her nature(spoiled young brat).
Basically, problem a is more or less a subjective issue, and there isn't much to say about that one. Perhaps the story just isn't for me...
Problem b though I think is a narrative issue. You generally have huge problems with conciseness(in fact, I would almost call it your biggest flaw =P), in that there are many superfluous lines that could be cut to improve the narrative, most of which fall into the category of "over-explanation", which, due to the nature of the perspective, makes it feel like DT has too much self-insight.
I could point a bunch of these lines out, if you're interested
Either way, this is still an all around good story so far
4538273
Pass. If I had any idea what I was supposed to be doing, I'd never get anything done.
4538293
I guess there's truth to this.
Stuff such as revising and editing, as much as it improves the quality, also reduces the output rate.
Seems it's a value judgment one has to make
4538324
No -- I revise and edit. But what always results is my horrible, illegible, reader-repulsing feel-free-to-laugh-at-this-word style. And nightmarishly flawed as that is, it's the only system I can utilize for words to emerge at all. If I try to downshift or upshift into anything else, all I'm going to do is burn out the clutch while destroying the engine. I know I can make a car idle along if I'm using an automatic transmission. I cannot work stick and any attempt to do so on an uphill results in crash damage to whatever was stopped behind me. Eventually, when the insurance rates climb too high, you just stop driving entirely.
(And having driven that metaphor beyond its useful life...)
Bottom line: I'm aware I svck. It's just a level of svck I have to live with.
Maybe DT will give in now and study...
Bwhaha! No.
4538387
Fabricat Diem, Pvnk?
I actually rather like this interpretation of Snips and Snails. They're just kind of doing their own thing.
Interesting. DT is approaching this from a business perspective, hopefully the lessons she learns here will give her insights into Barnyard Bargains in the future. (I suspect that in Equestrian, Dale Carneighie Rich, author of "How To Win Friends and Influence Ponies," is an ancestor of Diamond Tiara. I'd love to hear Twilight's views on such a book.)
I really love your motivation for Snips and Snails flunking. It's plausible, gives us a deeper insight into their characters, and gives DT an interesting challenge to overcome. I can't wait for more!
Hmmm. Alright.
Let me propose a few thoughts here:
a) Diamond Tiara is an unreliable narrator
b) the ponies around her can read her easier than she thinks
c) for all their gross behaviour, Snips and Snails are actually pretty nice
d) at least one of them might genuinely like her (we'll see when the teasing comes, and from which direction)
e) for all their continuous failing in school, all three are probably fairly smart.
Diamond outsourced all her learning, and for a shockingly long time it worked. That takes serious planning. Snips and Snails prove that they can manage all this, they just don't want to. Not when that means their parents keep them apart. They deliberately sabotage themselves, but only in the right way. That's almost harder than just passing it on your first try.
How frustrating must that be for Cheerilee? To have three kids who appear to be quite intelligent but completely lacking in proper judgement? I mean, it has to sting that Snips and Snails pass this stuff whenever it's somepony else teaching them...
4538087
Well, that hypothesis is a bust.
4538090
Oh wow! I just thought of a potential solution, but I don't know if DT would be willing to pay the price, and it also relies on another factor.
The reason they intentionally fail is to be together in summer when their parents would otherwise separate them. Suppose their parents (unlike most of her parents' classmates) would consider DT a sufficiently good influence that the three of them could be together away from school? Of course, that would require her to actually spend extensive amounts of time with the three, and committing to do so with her summer. And she may not take such an obligation seriously, but I'm sure her father would do it for her.
Boys, that makes a surprising amount of sense. I wonder if they look up to Blueblood as their idol of obfuscating stupidity?
The plot thickens!
4537744
Gonna guess Lewis Carroll before googling.
(*heads off to search engine*)
… and I'm not finding the source, so I'm going to have to ask whether I'm right.
4539299
Given DT's established reputation among both young and adult ponies, that might be orders of magnitude harder than the study route.
I could see her plans falling apart, though, and as she gradually creeps over the line into madness and supervillainy, she does enough studying on her own to not only pass her test, but also to swap in fake tests for Snips and Snails which earn them unwanted passing grades. Then she can sit on the schoolyard steps cackling with maniacal vengeance, ruining their summers in retribution for them foiling her plan.
4541890 Well, although I agree that it seems a bit farfetched that any of her classmates' parents would consider her a good influence of any sort, in this case they need only be satisfied that her presence will stop them from getting into their accustomed sort of trouble, while not getting them into other trouble of comparable magnitude or worse, or otherwise corrupting them.
I have to say, though, your idea sounds a lot more fun/ny. If it's not the true ending it's at least an omake.
4541873 I hadn't seriously considered a guess, but with your example to follow I say A. A. Milne.
Uh-oh, Diamond Tiara better watch out for cooties! Or maybe not; they are worth a 1.5x multiplier on injury compensation payouts, after all...
4541890 In my best Abridged Goku voice...
"That's Disney evil!"
4541989
4541890
4539299
Maybe not so much stabilising influence, but something else: How will, say, Snips' parents react when their son says something to the effect of "there's this girl in school I like"? Since she never interacted much with the S&S duo, their parents might not be as influenced as others by her reputation. Especially if she behaves herself.
Who wouldn't want to have a friendly relationship with the richest family in town..?
Unfortunately, there's no romance tag. That's a bummer, since Diamond Tiara and Snips is one of my favourites.
Is it "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"
That is a rather bleak situation.
media.giphy.com/media/3lToitWc6wgg/giphy.gif
Bucking brilliant. this story is absolutely brilliant.
Bit of dialogue from ICR where
The flunky tells the prisoner that they are going to dissect him. The boss scolds him and concludes "We will do no such thing. When the subject is alive ( at least to start) it is referred to as " vivisection". It is important to be precise about these things."
That's my pony! I was always the bug hugger of the family. Even now, I'm always happy when a friendly spider takes up residence in a corner of my room. Same with my cousins: poor Aunt Sheila was always having to deal with "Hey mom, look at this cool bug/snake/thing I found!"
TL;DR, bugs are my friends, and Snails is a man after my own heart. /)(\
Edit: HOLY YAY THEY'RE SMART AND MY HEART HURTS
OK, if the subject is alive the correct word is "vivisection".
10641572
Replying to an old comment, but there were a bunch of night crawlers in the parking lot of my work the other day and I was so sad bc it was quitting time and I was so worried about them getting squished and everyone else just thought it was gross, but I loved them. I thought about trying to go around picking them up, but it was already past 9 and I have a long drive home, plus I didn't want to be the worm weirdo since I'm new at work. Also, I was worried I would hurt them more by trying to pinch them off the ground. I hope most of them made it out okay.
11844639
When I was little (or so the story says) I was absolutely enthralled by slugs and rolie-polies that lived near our front stoop. Then my aunt who is deathly terrified of anything smaller than a cat including most if not all species of insect went and salted the lot. (So the story goes)