YOH 1497, three years Before Luna's Return: Cheerilee went off to get her higher education at Canterlot, certain that her fine mind and diligence would win her the world. But she found that her small-town naivete marked her out to certain Ponies as a victim, and she was too trusting. Now, she's woken under circumstances that make it obvious to her that she's sinking into the same alcoholism and debauchery that claimed her mother Strawberry and are claiming her sister Berryshine, and that unless she changes her life, she will not have a very happy one.
Chapters (5)
This first chapter seems a bit on the short side, but I do want to see where this is going. I also kind of wonder just how much Cheerilee drinks to get drunk; the ponies probably don't have the capacity of real-world horses, but she's an Earth pony. I have this idea of her loading up on beer and cider to the point where she's sloshing when she walks.
And poor little Cheery, learning the truth like that.
Your Dad's dead and your Mom's a whorse!
I don't know if I should laugh or be horrified at the "whorse" bit. It does make one wonder how the Mane Six and mares in general would react to, say, a human entering their world who innocently refers to them as a 'bunch of (w)horses'.
So far so good, and this has the potential to be an interesting character piece. Tracked.
I assume some of them will discover talents in stop-motion animation when that discipline makes its way to Applewood.
Levity aside, it will be interesting to see where you go from here. You have multiple potential portions of Cheerilee's life to explore. Whenever you focus on, it will interesting to see a further exploration of her saga. Especially how Celestia factors into it.
Poor Cheerilee. If her Mom is sleeping all day and going out to bars all night, where does Cheers think the money is coming from?
7554876
Well, there's a military death benefit pension being paid to Strawberry. But -- it's not actually enough to support Strawberry, her daughters, and Strawberry's addiction. So Strawberry ... you'll see in the next chapter, but it's pretty much what you might figure.
To be fair to Cheerilee, she's only 13 when she comes to the Awful Realization. And it's about her own mother. She's a very smart filly, but this is very much something she doesn't want to believe.
At least Cheerilee recognizes that she has a problem. That's the first step. The catch is that there are a lot more of them after that. We know that she'll complete the journey, but there's no guarantee that she won't stumble along the way.
7555597
It's probably not a spoiler if I tell you that the Cheerilee we meet in The Show isn't behaving like this, given that the Cheerilee in this story is horrified by her situation.
I wonder then if she saw her mother's downward spiral, how she ended up in this situation. I also wonder how many accidents might come from such a wild party. And if any of those foolish youngsters are part of the noble or upper class.
7556108
A different but related path. Both of them have the genetic weakness for alcoholism. Cheery is however both in a harsher and more decadent social setting than Strawberry was in Ponyville, and smarter and stronger-willed than her mother.
Poor Cheery! What a miserable life that little filly lead. I wonder if she did as good a job of hiding the awful truth as she thinks; stuff like that is never as well hidden as people like to think.
And this will be a very, very odd thing to comment on: So Cheerilee simply stepped over the sleeping stallion and sat on the toilet, relieving herself with a grateful sigh.
I always thought that Equestrian, ahem, 'sanitary facilities' were more of a 'squat' than 'sit' arrangement, simply due to the way pony bodies are put together.
7555006 Is this partly inspired by Cheerilee's picture of her as a teenager in club-wear?
7556753
Filly Cheerilee loves school more than any other place because school is sane and orderly and easy for her (she's both brilliant and charismatic, so does well with both teacher and classmates). Home, on the other hoof, is chaotic and difficult: her mother is likely to screw up dramatically at any moment forcing Cheery to labor to set things right. This is one big reason Cheerilee eventually becomes a teacher herself.
Yes, her classmates suspect more than she realize. They don't shove it in her face because she's very well-liked, nopony in that school save Raisin Cake is going to be mean to her.
You may be right about the toilet -- given Equestrian anatomy any reasonably healthy Equestrian can comfortably stand as long as needs be to do his or her business.
7557229
And in high school in Canterlot in "Neigh Anything" (IDW comics). But actually, Cheerilee was still fairly innocent back in secondary school, save for her knowledge of her mother's actions.
Sometimes you open the box only to find that the cat is dead, and no amount of wishing will bring it back. Cheerilee knows this, but knowledge and acceptance are two very different things. Recovery's going to take her quite some time.
On a lighter note, I do love the idea of Cheerilee slipping more advanced topics into her lessons. A great way to explain the chalkboard Easter eggs. The formal address was also nicely done, and the parallel structure in the modes of address highlights the quasimaternal aspect of Twilight and Celestia's relationship. Though they've certainly never had to have this particular conversation.
One more thing:
If that's true, those modern forms aren't ours, because to my eye, it should be "my sister and me," or possibly "my sister and myself." Normally I wouldn't make a big deal of this, but Cheerilee's self-image hinges on her getting it right.
Acually you left out the third reason the Many-Universe interpretation is known, that Starswirl has gone and made many trips to those many, and came back to talk about those wonders. Still too bad this isn't rock bottom for Cheery just the point where the last of her childhood died. This wasn't the most harmless seeing parents as people moment. It's never pretty when respect dies.
8198948
That's a good point. Though even if everything in the Reflections arc is SWSV canon (and I like that arc, so at least some of it is), you should remember that it was secret. Only a few Ponies knew about it.
Indeed. Nothing in the (YOH 1485) flashback is as bad as Cheerilee waking up to the realization of what she did herself, when she wakes up at the start of the contemporary (YOH 1497) story.
The question for Cheerilee is: can she overcome her family tendency toward alcoholism and build a decent and successful life for herself? Or is she going to decline into the same sort of wreck that her mother became?
But what happens at thirteen is the moment when she realizes that she can never regain the happiness of her former family situation again: her mother isn't going to get better and be an emotional support to her and her sister. Cheerilee really is stuck with the Promotion to Parent she got at age nine, whether she likes it or not.
(*nods*) Because this is no trivial matter -- Cheerilee's lost the last remnant of belief in her mother's superior moral authority.
Mind you, it was eroding even before this, because all the way back in Collateral Damage Strawberry was going out, getting drunk, and letting the three-year-old Berryshine wander randomly about on her own, which isn't an entirely safe thing for even for Ponies of that age, even in 15th-century Equestria. But now Cheerilee knows she can't trust her mother's judgment even when she's sober. Which makes everything so much worse.
I'm wondering if this story should get the "Dark" or "Tragedy" tags. It's Dark in some very fundamental ways, because it says that sometimes even familial love isn't enough even in a purely social situation: sometimes someone is determined on a course of self-destruction, and one doesn't have the power to save them from it; that the best one can do in such a situation is to use one's own intelligence and willpower to save oneself, and maybe some of the other people at risk. That's a way darker theme than The Show would handle, even ignoring the alcoholism and prostitution component of it.
As for Tragedy -- well, Cheery's going to come out of it mostly sane and reasonably happy, as we know from seeing her in The Show from YOH 1500 on, just three years after the main story here. But Berryshine becomes an alcoholic, in part due to sharing the genetic weakness, and in part due to growing up with Strawberry as a major female role model. And Strawberry -- she's not around at the time of The Show, and she would have been only 45 at the time of the Liberation of Luna. So ... yes.
8198675
The main theme of Collateral Damage is the manner in which the damage of war can spread beyond the immediate victims. The damage of Ceymi's killing of Falcon in YOH 1481 spreads to destroy Strawberry's life and blight Cheerilee's and Berryshine's.
Mind you, this was because of internal weaknesses. Strawberry suffers not only from the genetic predisposition toward alcoholism, but also a certain learned helplessness that means that when things get rough, she looks for other Ponies -- specifically, stallions -- to pick up the slack for her.
She also has a certain misplaced pride that keeps her from turning from the other Ponies who might actually help her out of love -- her own extended family -- and instead toward a series of increasingly-casual lovers, until she's engaging in flat-out prostitution. This part of it is Strawberry's fault.
Had Falcon Punch lived and succeeded in his courier business, Strawberry might still have slid into alcoholism, but she would have had better support mechanisms around her, and hence would probably have done better than in the main worldline. Strawberry, by her nature, needs a strong loving stallion in her life; deprived of this, she will seek substitutes.
Cheerilee has the same genetic predisposition to alcoholism as her mother, but is a smarter and emotionally-stronger Pony overall, so she can also notice what she's doing and correct her own course. She's used to taking charge, and hence is not as emotionally-needy; hence less likely to fall into the trap of seeking out stallions just to have somepony to rely upon. Though she does very much want to find a good stallion to emotionally replace her father: this is both a component of her attraction toward Big Mac, and unfortunately an explanation for why his being two years younger than her causes their childhood attraction to ultimately fail.
Berryshine, unfortunately, winds up being taken care of by her elder sister as the best possible one of several bad possibilities. Berryshine never learns self-reliance and her intellect is wasted instead figuring out how to engage in superficial sorts of adolescent rebellion as she gets older. That's why she winds up far less functional than Cheerilee as an adult. Without Cheerilee, though, she might not have survived to adulthood, or at least would have suffered even worse emotional damage than she did.
Cheerilee also suffers from the same superficial adolescent rebelliousness, but because she's both smarter and wiser than Berryshine, her behavior at each stage of her life is far less self-destructive. When the story opens, Cheerilee's just done something notably self-destructive, and is quite rationally worried about the implications of this behavior for her own future. Berryshine doesn't worry about things like that so much.
Both of them, though, have been badly damaged by the death of their father and the collapse of their mother.
Now I'm wondering whether Princess Cadance ever noticed Tower Climber's, ahem, love life. And if not, what would've happened if she had?
8211300
I imagine she would have greatly disapproved of it. And at the minimum considered giving Cheerilee some useful advice. Though, note, she's not the wandering vigilante of Love.
Cheerilee knew Tower Climber in college, not high school.
8211300
Though in a way, she is a sort of Wandering Vigilante of Love. She's the Princess of Love, and she's a very active idealist. So maybe she'd go all Sailor V on Tower Climber's ass ...
I know I swore "never again" several times during my college career. Here's hoping Cheerilee's vow works out better than a lot of mine did.
Of course, that comes with an implicit logical consequence: If she ever does behave like her mother, she'll be bad in Mac's eyes. Not necessarily accurate, but a reasonable deduction. And thus she finds herself where she is in the later stages of the story.
Of course, given the other character tag, I think it's safe to say that this will go as well for Cheerilee as it won't for Tower Climber.
8215130
I so would like to respond to this but I can’t without major spoilers.
*hugs Cherilee*
I think you mean into and three.
I think this is problems.
They is misspelled here.
The lack of a good mother figure in Strawberry is now coming to bite Cheery in the flank. Having a close adult to talk to at this time could mean all the world in seeing clearly between a good stallion and and one that is just a cad. Still it's kinda funny that Cheery helped Mayor Mare get some on her political contacts. I do wonder how Strawberry didn't end up with another foal. If she had a least that much sense to prevent getting with foal, maybe she won't have pulled her work home.
Still now here comes the fall...
I'm familiar with the most recent siege of Canterlot from the comics, but what were the Formless in the SWSV?
There's that setup again. When she can't, what does that make her?
Definitely seeing some parallels between these two and Rarity and Spike, though the different age differences and maturity levels do alter matters.
Heh. Academic intelligence doesn't always translate into other forms.
Poor Mac. Hopefully Cheerilee will clear up the misunderstanding one day, but that's still going to be years of him blaming himself.
Cool Lines? Talk about your Names to Pepper Spray Really Fast. This is not going to be fun for our heroine in the medium-term.
8239867
Cheerilee's mistake springs both from that and from her own success at Canterlot Secondary. She was originally-afraid that she might be rejected for her relative poverty and rustic origins, but instead her intelligence, charisma and determination carried her to social acceptance by richer and higher-class Ponies. Because she valued their acceptance, she became afraid of doing anything to lose it.
There is no particular legal reason why she can't love Big Mac. The Age of Consent in central Equestria is 14; technically she was over it and Big Mac under it for a couple of years, but Celestia was wise enough to put in a four-year exception (so it's legal for a 17 year old to have sex with a 13 year old, but not an 18 year old to do so, for example): and, in any case, 14-15 year old Cheerilee probably wouldn't have had sex with Mackie anyway, she probably would have just Sparked (kissed and made out) with him.
But the legality pales before her fear that her acquaintances at CSS, some of whom are in higher grades than her (Cheerilee is smart enough that she can handle the curriculum 1-2 years beyond her grade better than can the slower students in that grade), would laugh at her for falling in love with somepony two years younger than her. Age is status when one is a teenager, and the "ideal" coltfriend for her from a status point of view would be 1-2 years older (rather than younger) than her.
She's also well aware that Big Mac is not quite as smart as her (though he's a lot smarter than he appears to be on first meeting him), and that he's much less well-educated and far more rustic. The one good example Strawberry set for her daughter is how to be gracious and well-mannered; Strawberry was a local society filly before she married Falcon, and even in her decline into whoredom her classiness helps her, as it means she gets better treatment and more money from her clients than she would otherwise. Cheerilee rejects a lot of things about her mother, but she instinctively absorbed her mother's manners before everything went to crap, and they are part of why she fits in at CSS.
Cheerilee's mistake, of course, is that she is valuing the opinions of casual friends over her own opinion, and she doesn't fully grasp yet that she's making decisions which will affect what sort of stallion (if any) she will marry (hence strongly affect the rest of her life). One should almost never put someone else's opinions ahead of one's own, particularly in this sort of social situation where one has a lot of time to think about it and serious consequences for making the wrong decision.
But then in the flashback so far, she's just turned 16. She's still very young, and despite her undeniable intelligence and superficial sophistication, very naive regarding many aspects of adult life.
What 14-16 year old Cheerilee doesn't get is that Big Mac loved her, with the sort of love that could have become lifelong loyalty, and that she loved him in return, and they felt this not superficially but with a deep friendship and understanding of each other's characters. She kind of gets it, to the point that she knows that it would be a truly evil thing to use him for some fun and then leave him; but she does not realize just how rare a thing it is that she has found with him, because if she did, she would not be willing to throw it away to avoid criticism by mere acquaintances -- and criticism that would only last until they found something new to gossip about anyway.
Filly Cheerilee also may not realize just how attractive colt Big Mac is to other Ponies, or that his combination of size, strength, and calm, intelligent decency makes him present himself as a stallion of Cheerilee's age, maybe even a bit older. She is used to Mackie, and hence she takes many of his good qualities for granted.
One thing that filly Cheerilee almost certainly doesn't get (but mare Cheerilee does, and deeply rues) is the extent to which what she did actually was sexually playing with him and then rejecting him, and that it deeply hurt Mackie. Also, since Big Mac had always been her friend, she took for granted that he remained her friend afterward: filly Cheerilee doesn't realize the extent to which she was torturing him in that situation, being around him but having essentially told him to stop coming on to her. Filly Cheerilee doesn't even clearly get that this is what she told him. All she grasped was that walking with him was now less exciting.
One of the problems with being an adolescent is that you don't have a lot of experience of the world -- including making mistakes in it -- yet. Filly Cheerilee is congratulating herself for having navigated dangerous romantic waters without losing her reputation or virtue, and doesn't realize that she's lost something even more precious -- the best friend and most sincere lover that she has ever had. And she doesn't realize this, because from age 9 on, Big Mac has simply always been there for her, when she needed him.
Adult Cheerilee knows better, by bitter experience. But she's already set her past.
8240600
Very weak Nightponies. Essentially Least Shadows merged with a small army of ne'er-do-well and Pony Trash Secessionists (who among other things did not originally know that they couldn't just change back at will). Their Shadow Riders were barely sapient, but because their hatred of Equestria and their steeds' hatred of Equestria agreed, and those hosts weren't all that smart either, the fusions were more or less stable.
The thing is that they were able to sneak a signficant force of them up Mount Avalon while most of Celestia's army was campaigning in the South. There was only a small cadre of Guards, reinforced by brave citizen militia and heroes such as Inkwell, to fend off the Formless attack. And Celestia didn't dare unleash her full powers in the vicinity of inhabited friendly cities and towns.
Part of Cheerilee's pain at the mess she's gotten herself into is that she was -- and to a significant degree still is -- a moral and romantic idealist. She has high personal standards, and she hates herself when she fails to live up to them.
This is in part a reaction against Strawberry's decline. Seeing it, she became determined not to repeat it. This is part of her dismay the morning after that party -- she's very aware that she is starting to repeat it.
It's also, of course, why Cheerilee is determined to pull herself out of it.
Cheerilee and Rarity, as adults, understand one another quite well. Both came from somewhat lower backgrounds (in Cheerilee's case, one to which she fell to because of her mother's irresponsibility after her father's death) but were able to maintain and raise their social status by their own displays of intelligence and merit. Both of them indeed, are smarter and better-mannered than most Ponies around them, and have exceptional charisma (Cheerilee's less than Rarity's, but then Cheerilee's audience is classrooms of children, while Rarity's is High Society). Both are determined mares, who have solid moral integrity from which they derive strength. And both of them have made serious mistakes, from which they have recovered and risen stronger than they had been before.
Big Mac and Spike are also in some ways very similar. Both of them are intelligent, determined and decent males, of exceptional physical strength, which they have decided to employ primarily in protection of and service to their loved ones. Both of them have experienced loving an older female, who to some extent returned their affection but to some extent could not.
One difference is that Big Mac is only two years younger than Cheerilee, while Spike is eight years younger than Rarity, and of a different species. That means that the social barrier between Spike and Rarity is a lot higher than the one between Big Mac and Cheerilee. On the other hand, while Big Mac is (in the wider Equestrian world) of lower status than Cheerilee (in Ponyville they are rough equals), Spike is (in the wider world) of higher social status than Rarity (he's kin to royalty, and hence effectively nobility, while Rarity is just a successful fashion designer).
Canonically, Big Mac and Spike are fairly good friends: good enough that, when Spike isn't helping Twilight Sparkle or Rarity, there's a fair chance of finding him hanging out with Spike, playing or watching games or simply shooting the breeze. This is not entirely surprising, considering that Spike is also a good friend of Big Mac's sisters, Applejack and Apple Bloom.
It is improbable that Spike manages to conceal his attraction for Rarity from Big Mac, given that Big Mac is highly-perceptive and Spike frequently praises her to others. Big Mac probably hopes that Spike succeeds in his suit, while pessimistically-fearing that the age and other differences will prove too great.
But yes: the parallels struck me too, when I was writing this.
8240825
You know this could be the reason that Big Mac starts to value strength more the smarts, like in the When the apple lies. After all if one can't trust others words/mind maybe acts will be more clear. And after the whole love poison and a little bit of flirting with Marble got him back into the game.
I would enjoy learning more about Play Write.
8247531
She's been a minor character in two of my stories now, the other one being At the Gorge (which has just been AU'd by the most recent episode, but is still a good story). She was the teacher at the Ponyville General School before Cheerilee.
8247571 I'm just curious about their relationship. It sounds like she was more of a mother to Cheerilee than her real mother.
8247691
Play Write is very impressed by Cheerilee's brilliance and kindness, and wants to help her have the best future she can. Play Write is single, and thus childless; Cheerilee is very much the kind of daughter she'd always hoped to have. So yes, she loves Cheerilee in a sense, and is willing to act more or less in loco parentis in ways above and beyond the normal duty of a teacher.
Cheerilee absorbs this attitude from her, and it's one of the reasons why Cheerilee becomes a really amazing teacher, and is willing to risk her life if need be for her students.
8247875 Awesome, Thanks.
And then things went from bad to worse.
I heard that you wrote a story about Cheerilee based off the LunaVerse version. This Cheerilee seems to be in worse trouble than that 1.
8630606
This Cheerilee is better at recognizing that things are going very wrong for her than is the Lunaverse one.
8630725
Perhaps. I shall see. Unfortunately, I can only afford an hour a day to read and usually that gets preempted. Thus is life. Last year, Admiral Biscuit managed to publish a chapter a day. Somber managed to write a 1.8 million-word story. You wrote so many stories that I have not read even half of them. Honestly, I have no idea how you all do it.
8631342
My output is limited by my working full-time most of the time and a slight recent decline in my own health. I also want to get more into my own non-fanfic worlds, but I do keep coming back to Friendship Is Magic fanfiction, probably because I love the setting and characters so much. I certainly want to at least finish the stories I've started, and I keep getting new ideas, such as The Death of Tiamat.
SWSV Cheerilee benefits from the fact that she's living in an Equestria led and culturally-influenced by a strong, sane Princess Celestia. My big take-away from both Fallout: Equestra and the Lunaverse is that Princess Luna is a great general who means well -- she's a very good Pony -- but she is incompetent at political (as opposed to military) leadership. In both the Falloutverse and the Lunaverse, her Realm is plagued by vicious political conspiracies which nearly destroy Equestria in the Lunaverse and would have destroyed it in the Falloutverse -- if not for Pinkie Pie's precognition and Apple Bloom's engineering brilliance.
An aside on that. F:E Pinkie Pie doesn't get enough love because her personality decays so much under the stresses of running her Ministry. She becomes decadent, and her Ministry operates as a secret police force: she winds up inadvertently doing a lot of damage.
Yes ... but ...
Equestria in that world really IS locked in a mortal struggle against an implacable foreign foe, and one capable of infiltrating elite assassins and commandoes into Equestria's most secure places using invisibility cloaks. The Zebras in that world are misguided (by their delusion that Princess Luna is a force for cosmic evil) but, deluded or not, they are utterly ruthless -- they start the Balefire bombardment, and they make matters far worse with the Pink Cloud. Pinkie is not engaged in a pointless witch-hunt: the witches she is hunting are all too deadly, real and implacable (the more so because the Zebra Clan most behind the war is secretly serving the very same forces of cosmic evil they've convinced everyzebra else Luna serves).
Pinkie Pie drugs herself up and destroys her own mind in the process because it is the only way she sees to amplify her precognition to the degree needed to parry the Zebra attacks. In other words, she sacrifices herself to save Ponykind, which is exactly the conduct of a heroine, and wholly in character for the all-loving Pinkie Pie. If she winds up becoming morally-ugly in the process, well, that's just another sacrifice she had to make for others.
(that Pinkie Pie also gets precognitive visions of the Heroes of the Wasteland who will redeem Equestria centuries in her future is rather touching; aside from that, all she would have had was the despair of full-well knowing that in most timelines she failed and the Second Cataclysm came because she wasn't powerful and smart enough).
As for Apple Bloom?
She designed the Stables. And without the Stables, very few Equestrians would have survived the Balefire War. Specifically, without the Stables, there would have been no Little Pip, and no Blackjack, to heal and protect the land. So, while her main accomplishment was as an engineer, it was a very important accomplishment.
They both deserve better memory.
Cheerilee is wrong about this being grammatically correct:
“my sister and I” are the object of the preposition “for”. It should read thus:
8632321
¡Get well soon!
If you wish to make a living as an author and ditch that time-sucking job, you will have to write original fiction because Hasbro does not mind us playing in their sandbox as long as it gets all of the money. If you can write as well in an original universe with new characters as well as you can in the ShadowWarsVerse with MLP-Characters, you have a chance of succeeding.