First story is out: questions and answers! · 4:03am January 21st
Yes, my first story on this site is now out, and all put together (all three parts posted). I wanted to make a blog post to commemorate this, and also, because I have a few things I want to say about it that I felt it wouldn't be appropriate for the "author's notes". The site wachamacallit said something about blogs being better for the purpose anyway, so yeah, uh,
Where does this story come from?
So, for starters, this has been an idea that's been knocking around in my head for a long time. I was thinking about how tanks are actually used, by which I mean, how does it look on the inside, from the perspective of the crew, when it's being used - which is not something most media featuring tanks focuses on or bothers with at all. No one ever looks at a tank and goes, "Gee, I wonder how you're supposed to see out of that thing!", they always go, "Wow, what an awesome gun! Such great armor!", and it felt like an itch no one was scratching for me, you know?
So, I was thinking about ponies, imagining the mane six in situations, as you do, and I was thinking, "what if each of these were assigned to place on a tank crew?" and, really, that's where this project begins. Except for Twilight, whom I imagined her more as like a "commanding officer" character.
I tracked Rarity to the commander ("Ladies! Stay focused!"), I can easily see her bossing the others around,
Applejack to the loader, since she is the strongest, and would be best for the role,
Pinkie Pie as the gunner, since she literally has a cannon in the show,
Rainbow Dash as the driver, because she loves speed and maneuverability anyway, she seems like she'd have a lot of fun as the driver,
And Fluttershy as the radio operator, because I thought it would be funny to imagine her soft-spoken self talking on the radio.
Therefore the crew of Summer Meadows' tank, the Sterling Ranger, all started life as analogues to the mane six, and as things went on, most of them morphed into their own thing. Except Cashmere, she's still very flutter-like. But pink. And an earth pony. With a country accent.
Armed with these characters and ideas, and inspired by such masterpieces as "T-34" (a very goofy movie, but a lot of fun), and "Fury" (also a very goofy movie, but the one all the boomers like, even though the film seems to hate american servicemen), I set out to scratch that itch and write a story where the characters go around vroom broom in the tank and go pow bang shoot the enemies, you know? That kind of childlike glee of banging little model tanks together.
But I also like my characters and interactions and always think in terms of "where can this character go?" so at the same time, it is a great opportunity to play with group dynamics, a classic five-man band of people all here for the same purpose (running the tank) and who can't very well split up if they don't like each other, the way they could if this was, say, a standard slice of life.
So this story turned into a chance to practice my writing and take a crack at actually finishing a long story. Fanfiction is a great chance to practice and refine the craft, while exploring series and characters you feel you can do something interesting with.
Why is this a pony fic? Couldn't it have been an original story?
Probably not. I wanted to write a story about PONIES in tanks, and not just legally distinct ones, either, but the real deal, honest-to-celestia, cutiemark-having ponies. They're cute and it's fun to imagine how they could adapt a tank to quadrupedal anatomy. Turns out, there's very little that needs changed, from the standpoint of the level of physical interaction ponies are shown to be capable of in the show. These second world war tanks are pretty simple.
It's not just about how ponies would interact with it, it's about how this specific kind of cartoon ponies would interact with it.
Do you have some kind of guiding philosophy to do with all this?
Yes, in fact. Ideally, I want it to feel like it fits in with the show, movement wise, but not strictly mood wise. Realistically, weapons and warfare is so incongruous with FiM that it's probably impossible to fit in with the mood, but I can still do the interactions. Writing ponies is fun.
For instance, how does a pony roll a cigarette? Splice a wire? Well, how do ponies pick up teacups despite having hooves? Basically, it's about not asking certain questions, and accepting that they just do. It's about not looking too deep into the specifics and staying to what's important for the story I want to tell.
Also, I avoid profanity, graphic depictions of warfare (nobody's hung from a tree with the guts around their ankles), or direct mention of sex, and I try to keep character names, designs, and cutie marks in line with the show as best I can. Everyone had a life before the war, so there shouldn't be any cutie marks of, like, crossed grenades, or, skulls, or something.
Implying sex is unfortunately unavoidable, given the nature of certain spicy character drama down the line, but I will never say what's going on outright. Also, no sexual violence, even implied, ever.
And profanity is just, well, how the characters talk in the show is probably just how people in that world talk, you know? It's not their fault they don't use our "bad curse words", even when you would think that they would.
Is this it, or will there be more to this story?
The three chapters, or parts, of Summer's story were meant to stand on their own as a self-contained story. I originally wanted to go, "Alright, I've wrote the pony tank story, but because it has so much potential for future stories, I'll only write more if the nice people on fimfiction think it's cool."
That was rather naive of me, but anyway, over the course of polishing it up, the potential of the story was just too great, so now I'm working on a second part, following Minty's perspective. So far, it's a lot of fun, and I'm able to leverage relationships that don't exist for Summer, and have conversations Summer would never have.
Summer is great, and I love her, but I feel her main usefulness is in having the best perspective of the crew for tank combat - you know, being the one who can see what's going on, and therefore the reader can see what's going on, and the one who issues the orders. When it comes to non-combat, though, she has a lot of problems. There are a million things you simply don't say in front of the commander, and while I realize that in real life tank crews the situation is much different, Summer is an exception. She CAN'T be a "part of the gang" because she purposefully holds herself above them, thinks herself above them, and doesn't care about most of their interpersonal drama. Well, maybe she would care about Supercharger's secret coltfriend...
So, following parts will be from different ponies' perspectives and not Summer's? Why?
Switching perspectives allows me to explore each pony more fully in a way I can be happy with. I'm not too happy that the plot I eventually settled on for Summer's arc didn't give me much chances to fully leverage the unique traits of each pony, but I did what I could, and maybe you could argue the story is too short to really go ham on that? There was an attempt.
I want to really go into each member of my crew, not just Summer, get into their headspace, get into their struggles and relationships.
///-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-|||-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-///
From here on out is not very important, but I wanted to talk about it as well, so here it is.
///-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-|||-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-///
What resources did you use for writing this story?
But I've been digressing. Back to the story at hand:
I've been helped out greatly by various articles and manuals online, regarding matters of history and mechanical capability, as well as features;
War Thunder, for helping me envision how these machines would move (it's a terrible game, don't play it, please);
and Tank Mechanic Simulator, for providing a space where I can personally see how the machine is put together, and where everything is inside the physical space.
What tank is the one in the story based off of?
The Sterling Ranger is a panzer IV ausf. F2... or rather, it's supposed to be. Due to a few critical mechanical errors, borne of my mixing up multiple tank models on my head, it's really not, but luckily, as this is Equestria, and everything in the machine would still work, mechanically, we can say that's just how they ended up developing their tank.
Those errors, that I know of, are:
1. The position of the engine deck vents - the river crossing scene would not work with a real panzer IV, since the vents are actually on the bottom of the upper sides and actually lower than the hull vision ports. I was mentally picturing a panzer III when I wrote that, which does have the vents on top of the engine deck, and so the scene would work as intended. As it is, I would have had to redo the entire scenario if I took out the river crossing, so on this tank the vents are on the engine deck beside the access hatches.
2. The position of the turret motor - I had it confused in my head. I knew early model panzer IV's had it under the floor; I knew the F2 and G model had an electric turret drive (I was referencing a manual); so I thought the turret motor was under the floor, and was electric. I was wrong; the turret motor is actually a large unit sitting in front of the gunner, hanging from the inside of the turret ring, and the backup crank is in front of the loader, and the old under-the-floor motor was directly connected to the transmission. My bad, you guys. But since the turret motor needs to be marinated in river water for it to short at the critical moment later, in this tank it is under the floor. Also, the backup crank is on Minty's side of the gun, so she can access it easily.
3. The position of the coaxial machinegun - this one I really can't excuse, but since it results in something interesting later on, in the second part I'm working on, I am not changing it. I guess I was picturing in my head the physical space the stock of the gun takes up in the loader's position, but forgot to go and check where it stuck out on the outside. In reality, it sticks through the gun mantlet, but in the story, it is mounted just under the right turret face vision port (a vision port which was removed in the very next model of the panzer IV, for some trivia).
why use a panzer IV for your story? Are you some kind of wheraboo?
Good question, and no, not really. Personally, I feel like a sherman is more comfortable, and it's definitely the second world war tank that I would choose to be in, if I had to pick, since it has so many great little features and creature comforts, and a lot of headroom. But it has a problem.
That problem is that the "radio operator" is not a radio operator, but a bow gunner/assistant driver. "Fury" makes use if this position's fifth wheel status to follow a new guy, how he struggles to fit in with the crew, witnesses horrors, and so on so forth. But then imagine, if the story was told from wardaddy's perspective instead, what would Norman do? Probably nothing of note, he would fade into the background, maybe coming back once or twice to the spotlight when Wardaddy feels like bullying him or praising him for the germans he did or didn't shoot.
My point is, that particular crew position has no future in the story I'm trying to tell, where each member has something important to do and some essential role in the machine's function to uphold. Cashmere is the radio operator, and the radio set sits on a shelf just to the right of that seat in the panzer. She has an essential function in the crew to fill.
Also, I think panzers are extremely ergonomic machines, very ahead of their time when they were designed, and they just look good.
I went with an F2 because I wanted them to have a big gun, even though I was originally going to go for a short-barrel thing (for cool trickshots and things), but I still wanted as many ways to see out of the vehicle, and therefore the crew have situational awareness, as possible. The G model eliminates some of those ways, and the previous models aren't mounted with the big gun, so it's a happy middle ground.
It was going to be a panzer III, which is pretty cozy and compact inside, but I wanted more separation between the front and back crew, and if I had, Turnip would have to be walking around with the turret traverse all the time, and that's no fun for her. I felt I would spare her little midget legs.
Why is the Crystal Empire the enemy?
The Crystal Empire is fighting them because I needed a neighbor to fight, and they were handy. Is this in character for the show's Crystal Empire? No. Is this in character for my Crystal Empire? Looks that way.
Incidentally, they use british equipment, and british uniforms; the tanks so described are intended to be Cromwell V's. I felt that as the Crystal people, they should have angular designs, and so it was either russian (russian hardware versus german hardware? cliche.) or british, so I chose british.
Does this story have any relation to the hit Hearts of Iron mod, "Equestria at War"?
None whatsoever. But, you know, if I played HOI4, and I knew about that mod and all its lore beforehoof, I might have based the story in that. In fact, I probably should have. But I didn't, and so I'm here with my own original universe, and all the things I didn't think of that someone might someday want an answer for. As long as I stick to what I need for the story, I'll be alright.
So that is all the background bits I wanted to talk about, and just sort of "have out there". Stay tuned for a continuation in about a month? About half a month? It's an ongoing process, but in general, I try very hard to make sure everything is as good as possible before I post it. I'm very much not a fan of going back and fixing things that end up being stupid after everyone's already seen the stupid thing. First impressions, you know?
I only hope I made a good one. Thanks for sticking around, and goodbye until next time.
Do you know of Girls und Panzer? If you are interested in tanks, I HIGHLY recommend at the very least, checking it out.
5770036
I actually watched it a bit after I wrote this. I liked it a lot, even though it does get silly at times, and there's a lot that's just INSANE. The BT-42 scene, the maus takedown, M24 Chafees riding the rails? nahhh bro that was CRAZY. (in a good way)
It's also often frustrating how no one can hit shots you know they should be able too - but once you take the anime on its own terms and just be like "shots won't hit until it's time for a turning point in the battle", it's a lot of fun. I also really liked the themes of growth and self-improvement, and how that shows itself throughout the show.
And also, I was painfully reminded of the many, many errors I made in my depiction of the ponies' Pz.IV, in terms of how the interior looks and functions. Oops.
5770047
lol, it's fiiine, it's fiction. people will forgive you!
GuP Das Finale Part 4 is releasing next month and it's the most hype thing ever! It's the Finnish vs Oarai! I can't wait. I haven't been in so much agony before waiting for something