Hearthswarming Shopping

A teacher helps her student shop for Hearthswarming. They begin talking, and find that one of them needed it for a long time.

This was written for Pascoite as a part of Jinglemas 2020! For more information about Jinglemas, checkout our group!

They asked for a story with Cheerilee and Silver Spoon. I... May not have interpreted this entirely as their initial expectations, but I hope this holds up, especially for such a draftless product. Thank you!

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SuperPinkBrony12

SuperPinkBrony12 #1 · Dec 22nd, 2020 · 1 · ·

Very interesting and thought provoking. Diamond was always good at projecting confidence, even if it was just to hide how vulnerable she really was.

Pascoite

Pascoite #2 · Dec 23rd, 2020 · 4 · ·

There are a lot of cool ideas here. The thematic repetition of school being out, the symbolism of her tiara's sharp edges, Silver Spoon being someone quite vulnerable and lonely, both of them independently approaching Cheerilee for help, and Silver doing so first, knowing Diamond would later. I don't mind at all Diamond playing a bigger part than Silver. Silver is still central to what's happening, and I didn't pick Cheerilee and Silver Spoon because they're my favorite characters or anything. I just thought it would be interesting to see them interact over Hearth's Warming, and you did just that. This was cool, and thanks for writing!

TCC56

TCC56 #3 · Dec 23rd, 2020 · 2 · ·

I love it. It's a very real and reasonable situation - Diamond certainly had a lot of work to repair things. And it makes sense that she'd approach it like this. Well done.

Ghost Mike

Ghost Mike #4 · Dec 23rd, 2020 · 1 · ·

Getting some Cheerilee is always a win, because lord knows the show all but abandoned that after having her as quite a prominent figure around Ponyville in Season 2 (she even appeared in two episodes that had nothing to do with either the schoolhouse or the CMCs!).

The thing this pic does the most impressively, or that which caught my attention, anyway, was how you handled Diamond Tiara's acknowledgement that, no, not only did she used to see other ponies as just tools to use, and couldn't manage to see them as full creatures with their own needs and wants just like her, but she still sees many of them that way, despite her efforts to the contrary. Or she feels that she does.

As "handling Diamond Tiara right after the election in Crusaders of the Lost Mark" stories go, this was a decent one. I think the whole is a tad weaker then the sum of its parts - you're juggling a lot of angles to implement here - but even the less sturdy ones have edge or bite to them that makes them still work. So, a good read. Keep it up!

Casketbase77

Casketbase77 #5 · Jan 27th, 2021 · 1 · ·

As someone who has always struggled with strong opening lines, I can’t tell if this fic’s first two sentences are brilliantly recursive or needlessly so. They’re definitely memorable at least, so they get the job done.

Cheerilee being introduced as a third party is a very good narrative choice, as is the decision to reveal the events to the reader in a nonlinear way. I’ll expand on the former in a later paragraph, but I’ll tackle the latter here. One of Kurt Vonnegut’s Rules For Writing is to “always start as close to the end of the story as possible,” and nonlinear storytelling allows the ongoing action to cleverly subvert this rule. The thematic flashbacks however, can be pulled from anywhere in the continuity the author wants. In this case, the moment Diamond Tiara entered Cheerilee’s office is the story starting “as close to the end as possible.” But really, so is the day Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon met. Via the flashback structure, this fic utilizes both.

“Please ma’am. I need you to do this with me.”

Certain stock phrases can be made incredibly weighty depending on the character who says it. If this was Twilight talking to Celestia, the reader would accept the above appeal at face value. This is not spoken by Twilight, though. The speaker is a filly accustomed to being in charge, and she is appealing to a grownup she has tertiary respected for at best, which makes it sticks out for the right reasons.

[L]ooking hot, buying things they cannot, killer clothes, and kicking nerds in the nose

I’m getting better at detecting pop culture references I don’t recognize. I’m familiar enough with your personal writing voice to know how flippant and free flowing it is. This line is metered and lyrical. Bugger if I know where it’s from, though.

“You haven’t spoken to anybody but the Crusaders since the election. You haven’t spoken to-“

And that is the proper way to announce the conflict in a character-driven story. Remember that old rule Supermarine mentioned: At all times, the reader should understand that if X happens, Y will follow. The reader knows the dynamic (pentnamic?) that exists between Diamond, Silver, and the CMC. Plugging and chugging those variables into the above quote yields only one result, but its still something the reader figured out rather than being outright told. As such, it’s highly effective.

So here we are with the conflict established: Di and Silver aren’t on speaking terms. Very clear and simple. The reader grasps it immediately. The next step is to expand and complicate this conflict, which comes in the italicized flashback revealing Cheerilee knows more than she is letting on, as well as the revelation that Silver is attempting to address the conflict independently of Diamond Tiara, but with the exact same method. This naturally builds on what we know to fully establish the Goals of all three of our characters.

For a proper conflict, the Goals, Stakes and Urgency are all necessary introduce and resolve by the narrative’s end. As stated, we have the Goal: gift swaps. We also have an implicit Urgency: the Hearthswarming deadline. All we’re missing is the reason and severity of the ongoing silent feud (the Stakes). At this point, the reader is thoroughly hooked and rooting for Cheerilee to help mend this friendship, so the Stakes revelation can be delayed as a payoff to be disclosed later.

In the interim, we get another flashback to when our two characters of interest were still on relatively good terms. Cracks are shown to be forming however, through careful language and imagery. Diamond’s titular Tiara is given strong focus, but the scene ends with no payoff for that extremely apparent setup. This is what an inituitive reader would call “foreshadowing.” Given the framing of the present exchange plot, the Gift Of The Magi sirens might be faintly ringing. Str8aura stories often veer into unintuitive territory though, so for now we’re still along for the ride.

”Don’t go into psychotherapy.”

Right on cue. Cheerilee acts as audience surrogate, making a confident assertion about the rapport between our leads, only to be rebuffed. The exchange is not a win for Diamond though, but an admission of defeat and genuine regret that things aren’t as straightforward as one might like. She also reveals herself to be a morally weak pony who yearns to be more upstanding, which invokes the same conflict present in a certain NEET I’ve praised in the past. The same praise applies here: Man vs Self remains a pillar of self-improvement stories like the ones told by FiM.

I forgive you.

Ah, the phrase whose strategic repetition caused so much headache when I was trying to transcribe this story’s segmented chunks into the Reddit thread. Per my notes above, regular phrases are made weightier when spoken by certain characters in certain contexts. More on this phrase later, in the analysis of the fic’s closing lines.

Real stress was seeing someone weaker than you.

Here we see Cheerilee pivoting from overseer to actual, invested participant. This duality is communicated by her insistence “I’m not saying this as your teacher. I’m saying this as your friend.” This also furthers the “School is out” phrase that comes up several times as a metaphor for being open and honest about one’s intentions.

It’s a metaphor that is unfortunately lost on Diamond Tiara, though. Because she’s a budding sociopath, she can only approach those concepts in material terms. That’s why the gift exchange is so important to her, and why the climax of the story occurs when she’s gifted Silver’s necklace. Her sociopathic side understands the gesture intellectually. But moreso, her human (equine?) side responds to the gesture emotionally. This is a big deal for her, since it’s confirmation she hasn’t yet had her sense of empathy completely quashed.

So at last we have our Stakes revealed: this wasn’t just a friendship that was at stake here: it was Diamond Tiara’s metaphorical soul.

And that’s where the plot leaves us: with Diamond Tiara at her critical tipping point. The way forward isn’t clear, which is an improvement over the initial certainty her Hearthswarming (and by extension her life) is going to end badly. This gives the narrative a hopeful conclusion rather than a strictly happy one. Which is once again a very effective rhetorical choice.

We end on a scene that takes place first, chronologically, but last thematically.

“How do you know [we’ll be friends, Diamond Tiara]?”
“Because I like you.”
Silver believed her.
School was finally out. The two left together.

Statements of intent, all around. This is a story of innocence regained, framed in a Gift of the Magi plot with Cheerilee as an all-important bridge between young characters dealing with mature conflict. It’s probably your best work by a purely literary standard, and definitely one for the portfolio.

Or, if my overintellectualizing of non canon tales regarding cartoon horses comes across as too gauche and pedantic, this story is at bare minimum a rock solid character study. And it doesn’t get any more rock solid than a Diamond.

That’s all I got for tonight. School’s out, and Casket is sleepy.

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