On Raiders · 4:35pm Jan 17th, 2014
A few weeks ago, a conversation with one of the Fallout: Equestria side story authors turned to the subject of raiders. Raiders have been utilized different in various Fallout: Equestria stories. Their depiction isn't consistent. And so the questions were asked:
What exactly are raiders? And, more importantly, are raiders irredeemable?
In order to explain what raiders are in terms of Fallout: Equestria, the first step is to understand what raiders are not. (Please bear in mind that I can only speak for what raiders are and how they were utilized in my original Fallout: Equestria. ) Raiders are not simply lawless thugs who prey on the weak. Nor are they groups criminals or hoodlums who band together for mutual protection and profit (per The Free Dictionary's definition of gangs). Such groups in Fallout: Equestria are referred to as bandits by the wasteland population. Bandits, gangs, slavers and tribes exist in the Equestrian Wasteland, and the Wasteland's inhabitants draw a clear distinction between those groups and raiders .
Velvet Remedy and Calamity, Fallout: Equestria
“Raiders?” Velvet gasped. “But… we haven’t seen those in years! Are you sure it wasn’t one of the gangs?”
“Gangs don’t do t’ ponies what these monsters did,” Calamity snorted...
Elder Cottage Cheese, Fallout: Equestria:
“Educate yourself,” he replied. “Look around you, if you have the eyes and the wits to comprehend your surroundings. These tribals
have no future. What you see as progress is just brief distraction along their march to destruction. More ponies choose to be raiders and bandits and slavers than seem to flock to the dying embers of civilization..."
Littlepip, Fallout: Equestria:
The rain-soaked ponies I saw moving between the rubble, setting an ambush for the caravan, didn’t look like raider ponies. They lacked the fucked-up, “scourges of ponykind” motif. No necklaces of pony bones or cutie marks of bloodied weapons. They just looked like bandits.
Red Eye, Fallout: Equestria:
“Yes… to those of you out there who are termites… to the raiders, the Steel Rangers and the cannibals, I have this to say:
“The Purge is coming!”
So what is a raider? And where do they come from?
The Fallout games have given the name of "raiders" to a variety of opponents. In the original two games, these were largely nameless groups of highwaymen -- what the Equestrian Wasteland would call bandits -- or organized gangs such as the Vipers and the Jackals. (These also included the Khans, who were the inspiration for Xenith's tribe, with the Angels becoming a homage to the Great Khans.)
Then came Fallout 3, with its completely different presentation of raiders as psychopathic, hyper-sadistic outcasts with a penchant of home decoration in the vein of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The raiders of the Capital Wasteland were depicted as one-dimensional, over-the-top, card-carrying-evil. But it is the Fallout 3 raider that I built on to create the raiders of Fallout: Equestria.
Fallout: New Vegas gave us a world with both. The game brought back the gangs like the Vipers, Scorpions and Jackals. But the game also saw the return of Capital Wasteland-style raiders (only more fleshed out) with the Fiends.
Fallout: New Vegas loading screen:
Made savage by excessive chem use, the Fiends of New Vegas are the most numerous and troublesome raiders of the Mojave Wasteland.
Actually, Velvet Remedy's assertion in that scene isn't quite true...
One of the primary themes in Fallout: Equestria is the theme of virtues. The story's core centers around virtues -- the importance of virtues, the need to find your own and to find friends whose virtues will help form a bulwark against the ravages of the Wasteland, the ability of virtues to become corrupted or twisted versions of themselves without the strength that comes with friends. And, with that, comes the need to show the result of the victory of the Wasteland over virtue. The raiders of Fallout 3 were a concept and visual familiar to Fallout gamers while existing as a conceptual blank slate that could be built upon and defined as the story needed. They served at the emblem of what a pony becomes when the Wasteland has eroded away at their souls until they have no virtues left.
Littlepip: Fallout: Equestria
Raiders are those who failed to weather the moral ravages of the Wasteland... The Wasteland is the cause to their effect.
A raider is a pony without virtue. Where do they come from? The Wasteland creates them. In Fallout: Equestria, raiders aren't a community. They are not a society. There is nothing sustainable about how raiders live. And the Wasteland doesn't get new raiders "when a mommy raider and a daddy raider love each other very much". (In fact, any pony still capable of love wouldn't truly be a raider.) Instead, the environment of the Wasteland transforms ponies into raiders. More almost every day.
The raiders of the Equestrian Wasteland are not Fallout 3 raiders any more than The Tragedy of Images by Rene Magritte is an actual pipe -- they are a more fleshed out and three-dimensional concept based on the game's raiders, tailored to the story. As such, it is only reasonable for raider in side stories with other themes to be tailored to those stories accordingly. Likewise, it is worth noting that, as cartoonish as the Fallout 3 raider seems, that doesn't make them necessarily unrealistic. Such people have existed in the real world, and do so today.
Jeffrey Gentleman, Foreign Policy, Africa's Forever Wars
I've witnessed up close -- often way too close -- how combat has morphed from soldier vs. soldier (now a rarity in Africa) to soldier vs. civilian. Most of today's African fighters are not rebels with a cause; they're predators. That's why we see stunning atrocities like eastern Congo's rape epidemic, where armed groups in recent years have sexually assaulted hundreds of thousands of women, often so sadistically that the victims are left incontinent for life. What is the military or political objective of ramming an assault rifle inside a woman and pulling the trigger? Terror has become an end, not just a means...
Even if you could coax these men out of their jungle lairs and get them to the negotiating table, there is very little to offer them. They don't want ministries or tracts of land to govern. Their armies are often traumatized children, with experience and skills (if you can call them that) totally unsuited for civilian life. All they want is cash, guns, and a license to rampage. And they've already got all three. How do you negotiate with that?
And that brings us to the question: can raiders be redeemed?
Redemption, as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is the act of making something better or more acceptable." There are generally only two ways that a person can be genuinely (and non posthumously) redeemed. Either the person seeks out redemption and manages to somehow obtain it or spends a lifetime trying to atone, or it is forced on that person against their will.
We have examples of both of these forms of redemption in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
In order for an individual to find redemption, or seek to atone, there must be a motivation to do so. The one that good people can relate to the most is horror or regret at one's own actions, and an inner desire to do better. To be better. Or, at least, to make up for the wrongs you have done.
Blackjack, Project Horizons:
But raiders are past guilt. They no longer have the virtuous nature necessary to feel remorse. For a true Fallout: Equestria raider, the path of redemption through regret is not open to them. Instead, there needs to be another motivation. And this brings us to Discord.
There may have been other flaws in the episode, and it would definitely have benefitted from being a two-part story, but when it comes to redemption, Keep Calm and Flutter On got it right. Discord is an unrepentant villain. He doesn't want to reform because he is sorry for anything he has ever done. In order to get someone like that to pursue reform, you need to offer them something that they want and cannot get without changing. Fluttershy find that something -- friendship. And once Discord realized friendship was something he wanted -- something he wanted enough that he was willing to make sacrifices, to change, in order to keep it -- redemption became possible. Not achieved, but instigated.
Discord, Keep Calm and Flutter On:
Well played, Fluttershy.
Well played indeed.
Unfortunately, finding something a person is willing to change for is even harder with your average raider than it is with Discord. To re-quote part of the Foreign Policy article above:
All they want is cash, guns, and a license to rampage. And they've already got all three. How do you negotiate with that?
Of course, there is the other method: forcing someone to become better against their will. We have an example of this in Friendship is Magic as well with Nightmare Moon.
Nightmare Moon isn't seeking redemption. She fights it kicking and screaming. But the power of Harmony transforms her, stripping away the part of her that made her a villain. The process in Equestria is magical. In the real world, it looks somewhat more like this:
To "redeem" someone in this fashion requires both the moral capacity and proficiency to do so, as well as the magic, drugs, technology or other paraphernalia needed. In wartime Equestria, such methods grew more acceptable and less uncommon. There were those within the Ministry of Morale employed memory magic to help "fix" ponies. (And in my headcanon, as revealed in Crystal Empire Blues, Princess Cadance used her love magic to "re-socialize" zebra prisoners of war.) However, in the Equestrian Wasteland, the capability to forcibly change ponies this way is exceedingly rare, even where the willingness to might not be. In fact, there was only one method used to "redeem" raiders on a regular basis...
So, are raiders irredeemable? They aren't going to want to change, and there is really nothing that can be offered to the average raider as an incentive. If moral objections or lack of capability prevent forcibly altering the pony, then chances are, the answer for any random raider is "yes." Is it impossible, however?
No, it is not impossible. A raider could discover something worth changing for. Something would have to radically change. A new factor would have to be introduced -- something powerful and personal. And such cases would be exceptionally rare. And rarer still would be the hero who is given the chance to introduce that factor to even one raider.
At this point, one more question must be asked: should heroes try to redeem a raider?
Is it worth the risk? Especially with so little chance of success, and with so much at stake? Kindness and mercy are virtues. So is justice. How do you balance showing mercy to someone who only might be helped with showing mercy to those that person will harm if you fail? What do you do when there is no reigning legal system, no option for incarceration, no asylums?
This moral dilemma is perhaps most strongly touched upon in Fallout: Equestria when Calamity shoots the raider child. The child was a raider -- there was no good in him, any virtue he once possessed was gone. But does that mean he already too far gone to change, even though he was still mentally and socially developing? If there is anyone who might have a chance to change through friendship, love and guidance, is it not a child, no matter how badly the child's spirit has been destroyed? Velvet Remedy would certainly have argued so.
But then, Calamity had a point too:
"Damn tragedy. But that don’t mean Ah’m gonna give ‘im a free pass t’ rape and murder till he gets his cutie mark. His would-be future victims don’t deserve that.”
Is there a right answer?
What if Calamity had shot to cripple rather than kill, and the group had taken a moment to discuss what options, if any, they had for trying to save the child? In truth, Velvet Remedy would have had the chance to offer up what was really the only other option open to them at that time: find a way to keep the raider child bound and subdued while they backtracked, attempting to deliver him to Shattered Hoof in the hopes that Gawd and her people could help him. And pray that he didn't find some way to escape and/or harm someone before that happened...
...but by then, the little raider would already have been dead. He would have been dead before any of them could reach him. Because crippling him would have left the raider helpless at the hooves of his victim, the blue mare, giving her the chance to turn that storm of hurt and rage that was eventually released on the ghoul doctor instead upon the last remaining of her tormentors.
I will add a quote from the television show Criminal Minds, attributed to the character David Rossi:
I know it makes little sense to try and deter violence with more violence, but deterrence is not why I believe in the death penalty. There are some people that are so violent, so evil, that society has no choice but to be done with them. Vengeance is something that society needs from time to time if for no other purpose then to keep the rest of us sane.
An interesting article, raising both sides of the issue on what they have the potential to be as a force. How you can view it is as your own perception is. Though, many are likely to view them as they enact and enable, what they are, is certainly a bit more open. Thank you for this topic.
It's too bad you can't upvote blog posts, because this deserves it.
That was very interesting.
A true insight on what raiders are, especially when my side-fic is focusing on the first raiders' life.
... Wow... I love your blogs, because they make you think. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go do something brainless while I try to understand everything I just read.
(EDIT: Fallout 1, 2, and Tactics are currently down in Steam because Bethesda needs to change the rights, etc of the game, so they should be back in a few weeks. (I hope. Really wanna try that LP mod, lol.))
Does that mean that some of the "riders" out there in the fan fan-fiction that are seeking/found redemption weren't raiders, but belonged to a gang almost like the raiders? A group less violent but still violent enough to be confused with riders.
Or maybe their claims of being ex raiders are just their self-hatred for their past crimes being voiced, They consider what they did to be as bad as what riders normally do.
Of the Fallout games, Fallout 3 was my least favorite for one reason above all others:
The Raiders.
It was over-the-top 'EVUL' nonsense that just took the place of the strangely rich Bandits of Oblivion. It took the gang-motif of Fallout 1 and 2 and over simplified it to the extreme. It's true that there are raiders as you describe them today but without a wealthy society to prey on, it wouldn't last - it wouldn't be able to last past a generation or two. As you said yourself, it isn't sustainable. They would rampage themselves out in a few generations. So why is it we see huge swathes of the Wasteland are overcome with raider encampments 200 years after civilization imploded?
Anyway, it's a good look into the ideas and while I agree with you on the definitions, I still maintain that it is unlikely in the extreme that raiders would last long enough to be seen when we've seen them in the most recent games. And especially in the numbers we've seen them at.
This is a great blog entry.
How do I favorite/like/whatever blog entries?
What do you mean, we can't do that?
*shakes fist* KNIGHTY!
This reminded me a lot of an episode of vsauce.
1727603
I can't give any logical reason for this in the Capital Wasteland.
In the Equestrian Wasteland... Well first, that wasn't the case. Their numbers are nowhere near so high, most encampments being isolated nests of a dozen or less. All of Ponyville housed less than twenty split between two smaller camps. Shattered Hoof -- by far the largest raider encampment -- was a mix of bandits and raiders (largely the former) held in line through fear, a license for cruelty, and the mechanization of a dragon.
Second, the Wasteland created more. Even if every last raider was exterminated, so long as the Wasteland remained the environment it was, there would always be more.
1727611 The raiders in the Hoof just seem to be Fallout 3 raiders with a fairly decent explanation for their existance (it's mad cow, effectivly).
1727651
I know why they chose it for the Capitol Wasteland - game play. In an effort to create a potentially exciting 'exploration' feel, rather than lean heavily on fauna (ew, another Yao Guai?!) and set pieces that might eventually run out or be repeated (didn't I already save this idiot merchant?), Bethesda chose the old 'Oblivion Bandit with guns' route. It made no sense logically and didn't really fit the game world but it was the easiest and simplest way to add tension and action to those long periods of time when you were traveling around.
I think it's pretty easy to see how the Equestrian Wasteland is different. Many small enclaves of more-or-less civilized areas with medium-large populations can 'support' a few dozen Raiders over the course of time. Too much civilization and the Raiders are wiped out, too little and they die off. I think the feel of your story finds that nice sweet spot between 'too little' and 'too much.'
This made me think - how did it start? How did ponies start losing their virtues? And I think this blog's changed my headcanon.
It occured to me - there's one major pony we never hear an ending for. She was the black ops pony among the Ministry Mares, often going in where even elite soldiers feared to tread. Soldiers got rotated home - or died. She kept going in, again and again. She had to kill to do her job - not when ponies were attacking her, and not soldiers against soldiers, but innocents. Guards, scientists, politicians, witnesses lost their lives under her hooves - if advanced the Equestrian cause, she did it. For Equestria.
And at the end, we know her virtue had broken - she left her friends on the ground, left her family in the clouds, and damned Celestia to death without repose in the SPP. She turned her back on everything good her virtue stood for in order to satisfy herself with vengeance - taken out on one pony, as if Princess Celestia should have been held personally responsible. A lifetime spent doing terrible things for 'good' reasons destroyed hersense of both virtue and goodness.
Rainbow Dash's end is unknown because she died anonymously - she was the first Raider.
1727611
What Somber has done with raiders in Project Horizons may have thematic or plot integrity to the story that I am unaware of. I have (and will) only read the first sixteen chapters of the story.
However, from that largely uninformed perspective, and addressing only the content of the first book of the story, it is my belief that Project Horizons does several things wrong but several more things very right in relation to Fallout: Equestria's themes and canon. Raiders are an example of this.
Project Horizons raiders are not Fallout: Equestria raiders. However, the whole first book can be described as the Equestrian Wasteland (Somber's version) doing all it can to turn one mare who is trying to be virtuous into a raider (my version). Blackjack tries to do good. Most often, she fails. Even when she succeeds, the Wasteland finds some way to gut-punch her. To sour the success or strip it of its meaning. The Wasteland always seems to stack the deck.
The Wasteland wins as soon as you can no longer see anything in yourself worth fighting for. When you not only lose your virtue, but you lose your faith and your hope in yourself. At that point, you either give up, or you give in. You kill yourself, or you become an extension of the Wasteland. Blackjack's virtue should be Perseverance, because despite everything -- when most would have already become raiders -- she hasn't stopped trying. At least by the end of chapter sixteen, she hasn't let the Wasteland win.
1727837
...What?
Did we read the same story, here?
1727557 i got FO2 from GoG when they were giving it away for free you want a copy?
Wow this was a very interesting read that's for sure.
On the topic of raiders being redeemable, I would say no at least not fully. Yes they could try as hard as they could to try and redeem themselves but for them their sins out way their good. A good example of this is Brimstone Blitz from Murky Number Seven (spoilers). He was a raider warlord, the worst of the worst, the one who destroyed Ponyville. When he finally realized what he has done and how fucked up he has become does he feel sad about it? No. Does he regret it? No. Does he at least know he's a monster? Yes. He already knew that he wasn't redeemable from the start he said it himself, that's why he helps Murk and Glimmer try to get out because he wants to do at least a little good before he faces his punishment. He say's he'll help them escape but when the time comes he'll stay in Filly because the wasteland doesn't need a monster like him to return, and that its what he deserves.
1727837 RD didnt disconnect the thing knowing celestia would try and use it, she did it because she didnt like the thought of a pony being stuck in the machine
Man I love these essay-blog-information thingies
The only question I have, one that I constantly ask myself is this
is a lack of direction/virtue, even if its a complete absense, really enough to cause the extremely violent tendancies of a raider?
or does this violence stem from the standard violence one must use to survive and is expanded on by this lack of virtue?
I think velvet remedy is a good example of this violence. Even someone who would be considered 'passive' in the wasteland still kills more than many people most likely ever will.
what are your thoughts on this? You never really detail where the violence comes from
1727599 There is a fic that goes on this kind of principle. Guise of Chaos does this, and has even managed to finish! Its, rough, but really good to what is likely the raider insight.
The bits about Raiders in FO:E had gotten fogy in my mind, but this cleared it up nicely.
I really like how you describe Raiders, and hearing them tied specifically to the virtue theme of the story, which should have been obvious to me off-the-bat, makes me appreciate it even more.
I could easilly see desperation, stress, or hopelessness driving a pony into becoming a raider.
Kill an innocent once for what they had on them or just blind rage, and the pony is on the Raider's path and in a freefall of increasing madness and hatred.
I'm still stuck somewhere in the early-middle of PH, but I like raiders as you depict them far more.
Somehow, them being the product of the cruel wasteland rather than disease is more personal and chilling.
_______________________________________________________________
Moral grey areas have always been a part of Fallout, and you portray them well.
Was anyone else hesitant at first to loot the dead bodies of enemies?
Fellow Criminal Minds fan?
Fascinating show
Raiders in my opinion would have to vary from the extreme blood thirsty, the true psychopaths, to the role-players, somehow ended up raiders via slavery or otherwise.
A raider with even a slight bit of conscience would likely have needed to have lived outside of raider society at some point, or had been swayed by pre-war literature drastically. Think bandits that fall into raider groups, they may not be blood thirsty per-say.
right in the feels................................
1727886 Really? That would be awesome!
hi hi
As a fiction, set in a world of magical horses, I can accept the existence of raiders as such. However, when it comes to real life examples, it does not hold up. The problem is strongly related to the Fundamental Attribution Error which commonly places a strong over-emphasis on innate personal qualities over external, situational factors.
I find the article "Forever Wars," in particular to be remarkably ignorant of the actual conditions and causes of violence in sub saharan Africa. Its a shame really, because the information is out there. (or equally possible, it was a propaganda move.)
Uganda, for example, has had remarkable success in reforming soldiers from the Lords Resistance Army. (The root causes of the atrocities stem from the same places that they always do when atrocities happen during war, and that is dehumanization.)
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Uganda won its independence from British rule in 1962, and what followed were years of instability and political corruption, with the national army being used to stomp out dissent around the country. Depending on the ruling party's ethnicity, opposing regions struggled due to lack of support and attacks by the national army, which ratcheted up ethnic tensions, and caused the formation of multiple independent armed groups seeking to protect themselves from such attacks.
Furthermore, during British rule, the British pitted the Northern and Souther regions of Uganda against each other in order to maintain control. They introduced wide scale production and cash cropping only to the Southern region and provided little economic help to the Northern region. (As a result, the Northern region provided cheap labor for the South.)
In 1965, President Milton Obote was forced to recognize the autonomy of traditional kingdoms including Buganda, near Kampala, due to lack of control over the regions. However, with a show of force, he reversed his decision, angering many of his former supporters. There were several attempts to overthrow Obote, and he ratcheted up his own protection and army. Through 1966 and 1967, Obote removed officers with origins in the South and replaced them with officers from the North under ethnic lines. In 1968, Obote placed the army in political power and sought to remove all other political parties. He was removed from power in 1971, but what followed was a disastrous leadership from Idi Amin, which lead to Obote's re-election in 1980, though many believed the elections to be rigged.
Yoweri Museveni formed the National Resistance Army in 1981, leading 26 men into the bush for a guerilla war against Obote. In retaliation, Obote's army responded with a massive counter-insurgency that lasted two years and left an estimated 200,000 dead, and forced approximately 150,000 into camps and another 150,000 displaced. This left many children orphaned and left to care for themselves. Initially, the National Resistance Army took in abandoned children and cared for them, which is what evolved into the strategy of conscripting child soldiers.
In July 1985, Obote's regime fell apart and fighting broke out between soldiers of the primarily Acholi and Langli ethnic groups. Tito Okello, a senior army officer of Acholi ethnicity, was named the new president after a bloody coup in Kampala. Okello invited all fighting groups to join forces, and while the National Resistance Army refused, they did negotiate The Nairobi Peace Agreement, but it didn't last long.
In January 1986, Yoweri Museveni and the National Resistance Army toppled Okello and his army, and Museveni claimed the presidency for himself. (A month later, he declared all child soldiers be removed from the frontlines.) Under Museveni's control, the Acholi ethnic group lacked any political or military power for the first time. Leading to a widespread fear of ethnic violence against Acholi people. Many Acholi people joined forces to form the Uganda People's Defense Army.
When the war in Uganda officially started, the National Resistance Army was attacked by the Uganda People's Defense Army. Many Acholis feared if they did not join the army, they would be targets of destruction and atrocities.
In 1986, Alice Lakwena gained a significant role in Uganda, and from August 1986 to November 1987, Lakwena and the army she formed, the Holy Spirit Movement, rebelled against Museveni. Her offers of spiritual redemption resonated with people who were feeling hopelessness, that the fighting would never cease. (A common Acholi belief was that evil spirits created every disaster and spirits were a part of every aspect of life.)
The moral code of the Holy Spirit Movement was strict and included three points: confirmation of Lakwena's leadership, solidarity of the group, and the inclusion of Biblical scripture.
November 1987 was the downfall of Lakwena's army, and she escaped to Kenya to live in a refugee camp. After some pleading, The Minister of State for Political Affairs, Amama Mbabazi agreed to allow her back into Uganda, on the condition that she stand trial for atrocities committed by her army. Lakwena threatened to resume war on the grounds that "tools of Satan can never destroy the kingdom of almighty father."
Also in 1987, the Nairobi Peace Agreement, which had been a complete failure, was officially abandoned, causing more people to flee the country in fear of ethnic reprisals. However, in 1988, the Gulu Peace Accord resulted from peace talks and the UPDA and NRA joined forces.
Joseph Kony, who had fought in the war, refused to recognize the Gulu Peace Accord and began his own army, called the Holy Spirit Movement 2, which was later renamed, The Salvation Army, The United Democratic Christian Force, and finally, the Lord's Resistance Army.
Kony has been characterized by many as a charismatic leader, with a rhetorical and dramatic gift for captivating people's attention. A strict doctrine, similar to the Holy Spirit Movement's, based heavily on the Ten Commandments, was enacted, and punishments for failure to adhere to the doctrine became increasingly brutal. (And through the late 1980s all the way into 2004, the LRA received support from the Sudanese government in exchange for fighting the Sudan People's Liberation Army.)
In 1992 and 1993, peace talks appeared to be working, and violence was significantly lessened. However, it is reported that within hours of the peace talks' completion, President Museveni issued a seven-day ultimatum for the rebels to surrender or else the Ugandan government would take action against them. Feeling betrayed, Kony denounced efforts towards peace, saying that the government had committed high treason and could not be trusted.
In 1995, the LRA launched attacks in Northern Uganda, targeting Museveni's power base. Confidence in Museveni's abilities to protect his people diminished as a result. In 1997, failed peace talks left the peace initiators claiming that the LRA's goals were incomprehensible.
In 1999, funding for the LRA from the Sudanese government was cut, however, their primary bases remained in Southern Sudan for years.
in 2000, the Amnesty Act offered amnesty to LRA fighters who surrendered and ended their violent acts. Since the Amnesty Act was enacted, more than 8,000 members of the LRA have agreed and turned themselves in to the Amnesty Commission. However, many of the surrendered soldiers found themselves placed in squalid camps that lacked basic resources. This perpetuated mistrust between the two sides.
By 2004, the conflicts in Uganda had left 1.7 million people (more than 80% of the region) displaced, lacking access to basic resources such as food and security. In may, the LRA and Museveni agreed to begin negotiations for peace, and by the end of 2004, had negotiated a ceasefire. The LRA moved to their designated areas, but quickly dispersed in fear that an attack by the UPDF would occur, and breaking the conditions of the ceasefire. Causing attacks to resume.
The break in the ceasefire didn't stop the peace process, and in 2005, more than 300,000 people left their camps to return home. There was wide mistrust among community members because they feared what atrocities the former soldiers were capable of committing. Returning home was not an option for many child soldiers because many could not face their families after the cruel acts they had taken against their loved ones. But the conditions in the refugee camps were so atrocious that some children voluntarily returned to the LRA.
in 2005, President Museveni offered to grant Amnesty to the top five LRA leaders, including Joseph Kony. Participating in peace talks and agreeing to a ceasefire, the LRA leadership moved from Southern Sudan to Garamba Park in DRC. By July 2006, the Juba peace talks officially began in Juba, Sudan, utilizing the Sudanese government as mediators. The peace talks progressed until 2007, when the LRA demanded a new mediator. The UN special envoy and former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano persuaded the LRA to return, and included Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo in the mediation process. The African Union coordinated eight new ceasefire monitors to ensure that the agreements would be upheld.
In 2008 and 2009, however, breaking the peace agreement, forces of Uganda, DRC and South Sudan launched aerial attacks and raids on the LRA camps in Garamba, which resulted in brutal revenge attacks by LRA remnants.
Between September 2008 and July 2011, the LRA was down to only a few hundred fighters, but continued to kill thousands of people and displace hundreds of thousands. And in March 2012, Uganda was leading an African Union military force to hunt down the remnants of the LRA.
Child Soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army: Factors in the Rehabilitation and Reintegration Process
The original aims of the group were closely aligned with its predecessor, the Holy Spirit movement. Protection of the Acholi population was of great concern because of the very real possibility of ethnic purges. However, as the conflict progressed, the Acholi people stopped offering support to the rebels, which created a self-reinforcing cycle of alienation between the two groups, until the Acholi were frequently considered the enemy.
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Dehumanization is the primary psychological process which contributes to people committing such atrocities. And I think it is important to point out that labeling people as such raiders is consistent with dehumanization tactics.
Protracted conflict strains relationships and makes it difficult for parties to recognize that they are part of a shared human community. Such conditions often lead to feelings of intense hatred and alienation among conflicting parties. The more severe the conflict, the more the psychological distance between groups will widen. Eventually, this can result in moral exclusion. Those excluded are typically viewed as inferior, evil, or criminal.
Any harm that befalls such individuals seems warranted, and perhaps even morally justified. Those excluded from the scope of morality are typically perceived as psychologically distant, expendable, and deserving of treatment that would not be acceptable for those included in one's moral community. Common criteria for exclusion include ideology, skin color, and cognitive capacity. We typically dehumanize those whom we perceive as a threat to our well-being or values.
Dehumanization is actually an extension of a less intense process of developing an "enemy image" of the opponent. During the course of protracted conflict, feelings of anger, fear, and distrust shape the way that the parties perceive each other. Adversarial attitudes and perceptions develop and parties begin to attribute negative traits to their opponent. They may come to view the opponent as an evil enemy, deficient in moral virtue, or as a dangerous, warlike monster. (emphasis mine)
Enemy images are accentuated, according to psychologists, by the process of "projection," in which people "project" their own faults onto their opponents. This means that people or groups who tend to be aggressive or selfish are likely to attribute those traits to their opponents, but not to themselves. This improves one's own self-image and increases group cohesion, but it also escalates the conflict and makes it easier to dehumanize the other side.
Dehumanization
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Committing atrocities starts with dehumanization but benefits from the perception of powerlessness by the perpetrators, usually within the context of their personal lives or their inability to find happiness. As Erich Fromm so famously stated, sadism in this context is, "the conversion of impotence into the experience of omnipotence." Creating an emotional high, by allowing the perpetrator to experience an illusory transcendence of their own limitations.
Dr. Raj Persaud: Do You Know Anyone Capable of War Crime?
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The purpose of committing atrocities is also one of ensuring loyalty. Once the abducted soldiers have been forced to commit atrocities, they begin to consider themselves outcast and unable to return home.
Hear first hand from some of the former child soldiers how they are turning around.
Reformed, unaccepted: Uganda's former child soldiers try to rebuild their lives
Will you ever cease to amaze me, Kkat?
1728309
Holy fuck, tl;dr. Warn me the next time you write/copy paste a term paper in the comment sections of a pony fanfiction website.
I got about a quarter of the way into it before I realized how much was there.
1728419
Its hardly a term paper, I only spend three hours composing it. You are, of course, free to skip it if you like, but I think it is an important topic. Especially since dehumanization continues to be an effective tactic.
If you want the short version though: The situation in Uganda was a response to a series of unstable totalitarian regimes, where what started as self defense escalated into atrocity as both sides dehumanized the other, at which point vengeance demanded that their opponents be slaughtered like animals. It reached a peak in the late 1980s and the damage is starting to be repaired, with thousands of former soldiers rebuilding their lives in peaceful society.
*offended response*
*long paragraph about own opinion*
*funny gif*
*VERY ANGRY ALL CAPS VENT*
In all honesty, I see a raider, I shoot it - just doing my good deed for the day.
1727887 I don't think it's ever specified, but I would say that having a violence-themed cutie mark would make it far more likely you'd lose your virtue and become a raider. It's hard to find upstanding work when your special talent is breaking kneecaps or skinning a pony alive.
1728270 sent ya a PM
Unfortunately, that doesn't clear up that weird issue of literally every raider in Fallout Equestria having a cutie mark related to their evil tendencies. I find it hard to believe that one-hundred per cent every raider in the story was a kid when he lost his humanity.
Whichever way, this certainly was an entertaining read in the very least.
1727837
I agree with 1728005 that Rainbow never intended to trick Celestia, and simply didn't like the idea of a pony en machina.
(Probably failed those last words.
)
Also, wasn't leaving the Pegasus and denouncing them a show of loyalty for those still on the ground, and outrage at the Pegasus for abandoning them?
I've always seen "raider" as a term that people would get mixed-up with even in-universe.
It is kind of a given that raiders between stories would be different. I've seen plenty of side-stories depict raiders as nothing like you've described here and still call them that, but for my mind a word like "bandit" is way too similar for everyone in the wasteland to all agree that they mean different things, and to all agree on a specific definition for them both.
"Raider" in the original Fallout: Equestria means a pony with no virtues left as opposed to just a bandit because Littlepip and certain other characters make that distinction and label them differently as such. But I could easily see other ponies seeing a bandit, calling them a raider, and not bothering with the distinction because at the end of the day, they're still trying to kill them and likely do several other bad things too.
So maybe it's not that raiders behave differently between stories depending on themes, but rather that the accepted terminology is what's different?
Proof http://www.funnyjunk.com/channel/ponytime/OP+Delivers+Raiders/XwsiGKj/
1728309
Lovely, positively lovely. Thank you for this comment.
I knew most of it, but certainly not all. Particularly not the history.
It's interesting how almost every single turn in that conflict involved one group not trusting the other and being absolutely right.
Still, I'm certain there were plenty of psychopaths in those conflicts that really enjoyed what they were doing. Just nowhere near close to all. Fear and shame can be quite the driving forces.
Interesting read. I'll add to the discussion by bringing up Harlan Ellison's The Whimper of Whipped Dogs for a very similar set of ideas of what makes a "raider", as applied to the real world instead of Fallout or ponies.
Fascinating. These blogs are always a joy to read. They're like the commentary on the Director's Cut of Fallout: Equestria.
Also, I couldn't help but imagine a numerical measure of virtue dropping and raider-izing a character once it hit zero, like some combination of Karma and radiation. I blame all those Exalted splatbooks I've been reading lately.
I've seen the prisoner dilemma (not the political debate-one) many times, and the scene with a Raider Kid is truly reminiscent of it. If we catch a group of orcs... Slaughter their warriors only to find out, that they also protected their women and children... What do we do about them? Were their children born evil? They are babies after all. And what about the women? In some settings, they would be equal to their men, in others, they would be housewives who only try to raise their kids. Do we kill the children and helpless women? Are they born evil?
Other case was already mentioned here in the comments, about the death penalty and it was mentioned also in the blog entry.
My country (Poland) has abolished death penalty when we changed our government to a democratic one. Yet, it's still remembered here, only 25 years after the great change. We have our share of convicted murderers, of psycho-killers and unredeemable monsters. All countries do. People fear the non-death-penalty policy, because they are murders, who served their sentences, but didn't show even a slight touch of resocialization. Recently we had a case of a pedophile sex-offender who served his sentence, and he proclaimed that when he's out, he will rape and murder children once more... This monster was so horrible, that people tried to kill him by reaching him in prison. They were so terrified, that he could legally get out of jail, and be free to commit more atrocities, that they were ready to condemn themselves if only to save innocents.
Now we have a Batman-Joker dilemma here. Is the person who does that, kills a criminal, when it's forbidden, to prevent him from killing innocents a hero? For the people: certainly. Not for the law enforcement.
Sometimes the line between a hero and a monster is really a thin one. We saw that in Littlepip when she slaughtered Arbu and it's inhabitants. Sometimes, the hero is the monster and sometimes the monster is the hero. It always depends on the point of view.
As for Raiders per-se... Fallout: New Vegas classified all of them, Fiends, Khans, and more, simply as "Raiders", but we still had the opportunity to get to know all of them, including the fiends.
When it comes to the redemption of a Raider, the here must ask himself simply: can I take the burden of his potential victims on my back?
If the only reasonable solution is the ending of the threat, should it really weigh on his conscience more, than anything else in that matter? Or is it just an obstacle to overcome?
I'm currently writing a story (unpublished for quite some time I'm afraid) where two of the main characters are going to have very different opinions on things like this:
- Updraft
- Bora
Yep that's right everyone, I'm attempting to write a pacifist into my story. Respect to you Kkat for writing Velvet similarly, it's turning out to be very taxing...
1728944
Psychopaths definitely exist, but they are generally born that way, rather than a product of their environment. (Primary psychopaths.) Which is linked to a physical inability to feel deep emotions, feel fear or disgust, and an inability to reflexively anticipate pain, even in controlled environments where the individual knows they will be subjected to an electric shock. They have a difficulty understanding metaphors and abstractions, among other things.
Sociopaths and secondary psychopaths (which are generally considered a product of their environment, especially during childhood, often act normally in public, and are generally more responsive to treatment) usually aren't able to cause widespread damage unless they are given authority or other forms of power. Which is part of why I really like the Ministry Mares' part of Fallout Equestria, as it was a chance to explore the responsibility of having power.
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Calamity's words echo the sentiments of a captain leading the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, who persuaded soldiers balking at the killing of children by declaring, "If we don't kill them now, they'll just grow up to be guerillas. We have to take care of the job now."
All of the above is why kkat is my favorite blogger and writer on this site.
1727757
lol funny enough this was done to the T with the White legs in Honest hearts. grab a people who don't know how to find for themselves and watch as everything upon the land the walk becoming a weapon to to ravish everything
1727892
Actually, the first 'book' ends at chapter 16. Though since the fic was never planned to be half as long (in wordcount) as it is, some of the 'books' are more arbitraryish divisions than they are separate sections that could be printed as actual individual books.
An excellent treatise.
1728672
I'll be honest: I hadn't entirely thought that part through when I first described raiders. However, where I failed, Hasbro has offered up an answer. I think the best way to explain Raider cutie marks would be to draw on newly established show canon: cutie marks can change. We've seen it several times now, most recently in Bats! A significantly transformative experience, one that leaves you no longer the pony you were, will alter what makes you special.
Becoming a raider -- the complete erosion of hope and virtue -- is undoubtedly one of the most primordial and destiny-altering transformations a pony can succumb to.
I really enjoyed reading this. I am at a loss for the words to properly thank you for writing this.
I'm not sure what is going on in my head, but reading this made me slow down, if only for a moment.
1729823 Well, fuck. I do like that explanation
Looks like I found a new source for my dose of thought provoking and insightful questions/answers. Thanks Kkat, keep being awesome!!
1728131
Tank you i will take a look.