Behind the Words: But why morale?

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It's not [two notes] cree-py

Out of all the ministries in Fallout Equestria, Morale was certainly the most interesting. I love subversions/peversions of such innocent concepts, so seeing Pinkie's adoration of making other ponies happy slowly corrupt with drug abuse, internal rot, and just caving to the pressure of the world they live in was really interesting. It was harrowing, horrifying, but so damn good. So when it came to designing the plotline for my new attempt, I wanted to do something with Morale.

If you've skimmed my last fic, you'll see that Morale featured heavily. I liked the idea of Pinkie being omnipresent, always watching everyone and constantly checking on them, and so having a character who was an unwilling agent was a nice twist (in theory). It didn't play out, unfortunately, but it did spark an idea when I came back.

I had two ideas nailed down - the one I didn't go for was the unwilling agent. It was orignally a rehash of my old fic, starting with Rivet working for Morale and his slow corruption as he delved into the world of drug and substance abuse. This quickly changed, as I didn't want a character who was headstrong from the start. I wanted to write someone vulnerable, weak, someone who will corrupt and have to face that internal battle.

Rivet started to slip away as I wrote someone far less competent, and the first iteration of Hard Copy was born. A snivelling coward who signed up to the fight in a drunken state because he was bullied into it. I loved him from the word go - wanting to build him up to something far greater and tear him straight back down. With a few design tweaks here and there (notice names of Hard's teammates for example) and I was raring to go!

And it didn't feel right.

I had a whole story planned out, but when I started writing it, it didn't feel like a FOE fic. It wasn't bad, but not what I wanted to write really. Hard didn't have much of a personality beyond "I'm terrified" and the other characters did little to lift him. Eventually, I started to doubt my ability to write an engaging character in that way, so I began to wonder what he could do if he was more competent, if he was a bit funnier, a bit cockier, and then put into hell.

So the story began with a bad coffee