@Cirrus Light
 
scrooge didn’t wake up from it.

@redweasel  
The latter, mostly.
 
But I really do wonder why Starlight Snowfall Frost didn’t just have this response, heh.
 
Which does beg the question of why Scrooge didn’t just brush it off as a dream if he woke up from it.
 
I’m tempted to headcanon that it was a dream from having an anneurysm in the night. That would also explain the sudden and radical change in his personality and make sense in the context of an elderly man, heh.
 
I guess there was the whole “do you doubt your senses!?” exchange with (was Marley the name?). But the Snowfall Frost version seemed to skip that or brush over it too quickly.
 
Or I guess maybe it was more believable to Snowfall because magic is established in the setting, so…
 
I dunno, I’m just throwin’ stuff around at this point, lol.
 
But I guess with all that it works out pretty well.
 
But definitely the second thing you said, either way.
 
Thou shalt not pull cheap and unforeshadowed “plot twists”.

how do you not do the “it was all a dream” ending if you’re recreating a charles dickens story where he did the “it was all a dream” ending?
 
or are you talking about unrelated fanfics, in which case I agree and would vote to put this into law.

@Background Pony #25AC  
Yeah. It’s such a pity they have such little time. They did great with what they had, but I absolutely love how Dickens showed just how stubborn people can be with Scrooge. He did not accept what was happening easily.

@Cirrus Light  
LOL. I kind of wish something like that happened in the episode itself.

@Background Pony #25AC  
Yep. Marley “proved” otherwise, basically, by screaming in Scrooge’s face with full ghost spook until Scrooge submitted.

Interestingly, didn’t Scrooge himself say that Jacob Marley’s appearance was the result of an “undigested bit of beef”?

A Hearth’s Warming Eve Tale: Bad Ending