Friday Update #12 2018-07-06 · 5:35pm Jul 6th, 2018
Welcome once again to your (still) weekly Black Feather news!
First up, we have a new comic page again. EQD has also featured it
I don't have a whole lot of "news" this week other than the fact that I have been hard at work trying to push out new chapters as fast as I can. This week, I have just released two new chapters for you to read!
Chapter 6 - Storm on the Horizon
Chapter 7 - Ruling by Moonlight
At the moment, I'm about 75% finished updating Chapter 8, which has had a lot of subtle changes to the text due to three other changes I've made in the story.
1: Nyx's nightmare in chapter 3 ends differently than it did in the old version of the story.
2: Luna is not the sole ruler of Equestria now, where in the old version she was.
3: The details of the massacre at Luna's school have been changed from the old version to be much more plausible.
Between all three of these changes, it has caused quite a bit of tweaking to be necessary for chapter 8. But it has gone very well! I'm quite pleased with it and should be posting it sometime early next week.
WOAH I am out of the fluffing loop arent I? THIS is a major change. I thought Celestia absconding her royal duties was quite out of character, but I never brought it up because I could see why the story might demand so i never brought it up. Kind of have to catch up to speed now don't I ?
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Yeah, so did we. And this goes to show just how deeply ingrained the Fallout: Equestria mentality was in the story's development history. Of course, initially, it had to be this way because that was simply Fo:E history. And even after we removed all Fo:E elements from Black Feather, it simply did not occur to me to abandon this idea of her putting Luna fully in charge.
We all agreed that Tia outright abdicating the throne was a horrendous idea. It was one of the worst things Kkat put into her story. It is so incredibly out of character that it boggles the mind. Especially when you consider the motives. In Kkat's story, Tia pulled a bit of a joke on Luna. Some years before the zebra war, Tia decided to have Luna's school for gifted unicorns built in Littlehorn Valley, which was shaped like a crescent moon. All this so she could make the ever-so-funny prank of saying to her, "Luna, I'm sending your students to the moon!" [groan]
(honestly, this was Kkat's full motive for this entire extremely convoluted drama)
Well, somehow this school actually got built, and somehow, it was built near the zebra border where years later, a decade into the war, a zebra caravan was trying to bring refugees into Equestria (because that's what you do when you're at war I guess -- bring your refugees into the country you are at war with. So of course there was a communications problem when the caravan happened upon this school in the middle of nowhere. And the school's automated defenses (because let's put automated defenses on our schools rather than, oh I don't know, pull the students out and put them someplace else) opened fire, slaughtering the innocent zebra families. Naturally, a lone zebra soldier was accompanying this caravan, and of course, he had a WMD on his person, which he then proceeded to use on Luna's school, wiping out every one of the students and thus sending Equestria and the zebra nation into an irrecoverable genocidal war where both sides blamed the other for the tragedy...
Add to this, the fact that Tia felt personally guilty for the tragedy because of the whole JOKE thing so long ago. Her response?? To abdicate the throne and give sole rulership to Luna, the one whose school was slaughtered. Luna, of course, immediately dissolved the old government and established the "Ministries", handing over extreme amounts of power to six inexperienced mares and then sitting on her ass doing nothing while the nation crumbled around her, ending in magical nuclear fire.
[deep breath]
Yeah, so that happened.
No. Just, no.
My solution was this:
i.imgur.com/HqDMzWj.png
But last week, I was busy reviewing my text and it occurred to me... Tia would not abdicate civil responsibilities. The nation still needs to be run. Why would she even take a "hiatus" from rulership of the nation itself??! If her objective was to give the war over to Luna and have her end it swiftly, the worst thing she could do would be to pile all the extra governing responsibilities onto Luna as well.
So here's the situation as it exists in Black Feather: There was the horrible portal accident in Brumby Ridge, which resulted in the loss of Luna's School of Applied Magic. The sisters were sick with grief. Tia still feels guilty, but for an entirely different reason. Her modus operandi has always been diplomacy when dealing with foreign relations. But she now feels that if she had yielded to Luna's more forceful solutions earlier, hundreds of students would still be alive.
Therefore, Tia has now entirely handed the war over to Luna, washing her hooves of it. She now avoids speaking to Luna about anything having to do with the subject of the war. Why? Because she does not want to interfere with Luna's focused resolve to militarily end the conflict. She wants Luna to do what she must and then, when it is over, things can go back to the way they were.
How this fits with the upcoming chapter 8 is that Luna has a deep heart-to-heart talk with Nyx about how this situation has burdened her emotionally. It is quite moving. We see a side of Luna that very few, if any, have ever depicted. The emotional flow of chapter 8 is astounding to me how well it turned out. I look forward to showing you!
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this whole thing reminds me that I need to reshoot that video that I made ( since I speak a lot in the original of Celestia abdicating) about the biggest tactical issue I have with the way the war is run.
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and Done : [url= https://www.fimfiction.net/group/207561/black-feather-project/thread/365787/the-war-in-black-feather-makes-no-sense-as-i-understand-it] Thread in the forum with my video in it entitles " The War in Black Feather" makes no sense as I understand it."