Octavia didn't want to be in Hilltop for Hearth's Warming Eve. The remote mountain town was just a stopover, a distraction from her true home back in Ponyville. She just needs to wait for the blizzard to die down and the next sled out of town to arrive.
Unfortunately for her, the townsfolk are looking for a good Hearth's Warming show. Even worse, there's another pony from out of town more than eager to satisfy their craving.
And she just so happens to need an assistant...
Takes place during Season 6, after "No Second Prances" and before "To Where and Back Again".
This was written for Short-Tale as a part of Jinglemas 2020! For more information about Jinglemas, checkout our group!
Featured on Seattle's Angels #184! Be sure to check their group out if you want to find other lesser known stories!
Octavia my be regretting it but I'm with Trixie. Let the show begin!
Very nice. The performance Trixie and Octavia did was familiar but creative. I liked how combining their talents produced a unique take on an old classic.
And of course a little friendshipping at the end was sweet.
Nice one!
Thanks so much! I loved that you kept them both very much in character. They both got to learn something as well. It was very naturally done. It also left the door open for further interaction.
Happy Hearth’s Warming!
This was a pretty great story
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Thanks! I was a little worried people would see the final performance as underwhelming and uncreative, but I'm glad you enjoyed it. And a little friendshipping never hurts.
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Really glad you enjoyed it! Yes, I wanted them to both learn a lesson, as I thought just making one of them the antagonizer would've just made the story flat. Trixie may be easy to write as selfish and arrogant, but I also thought Octavia would have some ego issues of her own like any performer (recall that in "Slice of Life", she was more concerned about the Bug-Bear interfering with her performance at the wedding rather than, you know, the rest of the town's safety).
Funny thing is that finding Trixie and Octavia's back-and-forth dialogue was relatively easy once I got into it, but deciding the chronology and location of the story was the hardest part. I knew it had to be after Trixie reformed, but before her friendship with Starlight let her step into a heroic role. I also knew it had to be before Season 9, since "A Matter of Principles" showed Octavia and Trixie together, and it would be weird building that dynamic with that history. I also decided to place them in a faraway town since putting them in Ponyville would've made their issues harder to write, given I'd have to make about a hundred excuses for why they were stuck together instead of them just sulking in their respective homes. So yeah, not as easy a story to write as I thought it would be, but overall a great experiment in creativity.
And now that you mention it, seeing them in another story together post-friendship might be neat. Definitely an idea to keep in the back pocket (that, and I may want to revisit Hilltop as a setting someday).
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Thank you so much!
That was a great story!
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Thank you so much! It's always my hope that my stories can entertain, so this means quite a lot to me.
Dang. She’s colder than the blizzard.