Nerdiest Blog Post in the History of Nerdy Blog Posts · 11:10pm Mar 22nd, 2014
Alrighty, you asked for it, so beware of what you wish for because you're getting it!
First off, let me get the big, obvious allusions out of the way.
It should surprise exactly no one to learn that New Unicornia is a pastiche of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin. If this does surprise you and you are not still in grade school and therefore have not covered this material yet then you really, really need to do some reading in a hurry. May I suggest you make use of your local library. It should, as an extension, surprise no one then that I based Sombra as much as possible off those charming gentlemen (please note the sarcasm) Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.
Platinum City itself is a much more medieval version of Canterlot from the show. If you live in, or ever get to visit Europe, please note how narrow, dark, windy, and poorly drained the old parts of the cities are. Six hundred-odd years ago they were all those things, and they were smelly, with raw sewage and cottage industries dirtying them further and producing a smell that would probably make a modern person vomit. I tried to get that across, but I don't know how successful I was. Just bear in mind that I'm trying to take the worst of pre-industrial society and mesh it with the worst of post-industrial society. Don't you wanna live there now?
Like I noted in a comment response I based Rarity's arc in the story off of Abraham Lincoln. It should have been pretty obvious when I ripped directly from the Gettysburg Address. Her flirtation with martyrdom was also based off Mr. Lincoln. During the civil war he was weighted down heavily by the immense lists of casualties. To put it in perspective, if you calculated their losses to the population of the modern United States you would end up with over five million military casualties. You would also end up with at least that many civilian casualties. It wouldn't translate well to bring it up in the story too overtly, but I imagine their war was on track to rack up a death list like that had it not ended when it did.
Sunset Shimmer was, of course, inspired by John Wilkes Booth. Both were quite successful in their careers. Booth was one of the most famous actors in America in April, 1865. While Sunset Shimmer went to the most prestigious magical school in New Unicornia and did well. Both were also fanatical believers in racial superiority, and assassinated a leader who brought about equality for the race they believed to be inferior.
It probably goes without saying that the fate of the earth ponies was directly inspired by the Holocaust and the Gulag. Both events full of charming and happy places that everyone loved (please note the sarcasm once more). In fact, I accelerated the killing even more in story. I assume for the purposes of in-universe operation that unicorn magic, boosted with dark magic, could kill on scales that Heinrich Himmler could only dream of. Also, in case it didn't get across during the story, Sombra was killing large numbers of earth ponies in secret before the events of the story.
Commander Maremount was based off of a Napoleonic Marshal named Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont. Marmont was something of a French Benedict Arnold, but I wanted to one, get a source from outside of the United States and two, Marmont 'ponifies' better than Arnold.
Ponyville itself has some thought behind it. During the 19th century in the American West there was a fair tradition of cooperation and equality across socio-economic and racial lines that was unheard of back in the more 'civilized' east. It is quite true that there was also a great deal of discrimination, western representatives in congress pushed the Chinese-Exclusion Act in 1882. But in a lot of mining and ranching communities out on the frontier survival required that the inhabitants work together as equals. This is where most of my thinking for Ponyville came from. I did, admittedly, take a rosy view of things in creating it, but there is a kernel of truth behind it and I enjoyed writing something not so grimly depressing during this story.
One big influence behind the whole story, and behind the civil war in particular, was a Song of Ice and Fire. Shining Armor's speech to Rainbow Dash was inspired heavily by Jaimie Lannister musing on how it can be impossible at points to fulfill all of ones oaths without violating at least some. My world is obviously far more black and white, but I wanted to at least show how the villains might not see themselves as such. If you've not read the series, I strongly recommend picking it up. But beware, it makes this story look like a light-hearted comedy by comparison.
If you've struggled through all of this dense dissertation, then I salute you. I'd like to thank everyone for reading Hearth's Warming Evil one last time. I'd also like to thank everyone who created My Little Pony for allowing me to play with their world a little bit. I hope you enjoyed reading the story, and I hope this whole history dump has taught you at least something or at least interested you in learning about at least one of the may topics I brought up.
