On War · 5:04am May 5th, 2012
AestheticB recently resumed writing his epic Ponies Make War, now renamed The Immortal Game. It's an excellent tale and I cannot recommend it highly enough. His choice of language, ability to create dynamic scenes, and masterful integration of dialogue and narrative easily make it one of the best stories in the fandom.
That said, it is one of the most troubling for me to read as well.
As you might assume from the name, Ponies Make War is about war. In it, ponies don't just die by the handful, they die by the thousands. Dozens die in a single sentence, nameless, faceless, unknown to the reader except as another corpse, a thing that once moved but now lies in bleeding pieces on the ground.
This is a truthful depiction of war. It is accurate. If anything, it understates the scale of death that mankind perfected during the 20th century. As violent and bloody as PMW is, it still doesn't hold a candle to single day-long battles in World War I, much less the strategic bombing of cities in World War II.
“Senseless” is the best way to describe the death in PMW. It is senseless in the traditional meaning: “without reason.” We see ponies die simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. A pony foot soldier happens to encounter a god in battle, and they are obliterated as easily as you or I might step on an ant.
And as senselessly as we might step on that ant. Literally, we kill and sense nothing in doing so; we have become, as cultural warriors have warned for so long, desensitized to death. We kill ants and sense nothing because to us, ants are nothing.
That is war in Aesthetic's tale. It is filled with death that is senseless and senseless. Death that is both without reason and which provokes no sensation from the killer or the killed. War on a scale so grand that individuals are too small to be seen. Their deaths mean as little to us as their lives did before.
I obviously didn't experience WWI or WWII first-hand. Thank god. My experience with war has been the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, where people die one or two at a time. Death is infrequent enough that I can remember and recite from memory the names, dates and circumstances of every encounter with it I have had over the past six years, enemy or friendly. Balad, Gardez, Gardez, Tera Mangal, Ahmadabad, Gardez again, Zormat. The list goes on. The dead are individuals with lives and families and hopes and dreams and friends.
Each of those individuals left a mark. Their deaths were shaping events in my life. And any given paragraph in PMW might feature as much death as I have ever seen.
That is the incongruity. That is the dissonance. That is why reading PMW troubles me so much. It is the knowledge that all I have seen and experienced is nothing more than the contents of a single line. And it is a long story. It has many, many lines, all underlined with blood.
That said, it is still a tale I recommend to everyone. If it convinces even one person that war is a horrible endeavor, then Aesthetic has accomplished more with it than I have through all of my stories put together.
***
My next story should be out in about two weeks. It's a comedy, and hopefully will be more entertaining than this blog post.
...Realistic depiction of war + technicoloured horses? I think I'll pass, but good insight into war. Almost makes me feel like a dick, staying at home and doing science instead of fighting. If you need me, I'll be calling my dad to see how he's holding up. In regards to the ant thing, it was a bit of a false analogy, for we are okay with accidentally killing ants because we know that they can't truly accomplish anything meaningful to our lives. It's horrible, but thinking about everything that we've accidentally killed would slow the human race down too much.
Life is both created and ended with far too little consideration.
It is filled with death that is senseless and senseless
Perhaps you mean 'mindless and senseless'?
Your post mayn't have been entertaining, but it certainly impressed me.
Wow, what a post! I agree that PMW is an amazing story in so many levels. It's indeed a scary thing the scale of how things happen in it and how we sometimes gloss over the text itself, acknowledging that one or thousands die in the way that we acknowledge that we are still breathing. It is the duty of the author to convey that these faceless ponies/people had something to lose, that they were fighting overwhelming odds and yet were making a dent, on some level even as our eyes turn towards the main characters, who hold in their hoofs the fate of so many.
Aesthetic's story is truly terrifying in that sense and I as well can, and will, always recommend it.
99879 I think though, that the ant analogy is perfect in that sense.
How does a god or goddess feel by a random pony? Why would a single, insignificant foot soldier be remotely meaningful in some way to them?
Maybe I am biased, but let me quote you G'kar (I always quote G'kar):
Catherine Sakai: Ambassador! While I was out there, I saw something. What was it?
G'Kar: [points to a flower with a bug crawling on it] What is this?
Catherine Sakai: An ant.
G'Kar: Ant.
Catherine Sakai: So much gets shipped up from Earth on commercial transports it's hard to keep them out.
G'Kar: Yeah, I have just picked it up on the tip of my glove. If I put it down again, and it asks another ant, "what was that?", how would it explain? There are things in the universe billions of years older than either of our races. They're vast, timeless, and if they're aware of us at all, it is as little more than ants, and we have as much chance of communicating with them as an ant has with us. We know, we've tried, and we've learned that we can either stay out from underfoot or be stepped on.
I use PMW as the warfic bible for me when I write my warfics...PMW is not a story to be forgotten to be sure...I love how deep it is but then I also hate how good it is because I'll just be that much more upset when it's over.
PMW is one of the few stories that actually take you on a journey. Not just any journey, but one that is SO in-depth, well-thought out, contains emotional roller-coasters...this story is the closest thing I've ever seen to a flawless story. Against PMW...I don't think the rest of the fandom's fic community can stack up against it.
There is a well-thought out, legit back story for just about EVERY character and in those back stories and also in the plot, just about any hole you can try to find in the story has been plugged.
There is much more I can say, but I must focus on my own story now. It'll never be a PMW, but hopefully my fic can be respectable.
This story blew me away...that's it...I can't explain this shit man!
I know that when it ends, I'll feel satisfied yet I'll also feel like a part of me died inside because it'll be over.
PMW is a work of art...
Silver out!
99879
The ant analogy works and makes sense. We just don't like, as humans, thinking that we could be the ants to something else out there in the universe.
I've not read Ponies Make War, and don't have much of an interest. I did read Equestria: Total War. They sound much the same in regards to death and warfare and how many ponies die. After Total War put my emotions through the ringer I decided to avoid the war based fics out there. Just not my cup of tea.
The thought of war is diferent from the point of view, but a real fact is that from every single conflict there will be blood, usless bloodhshed in the floor, in the dirt or even worst in our own faces.
And about the comparation of ants, here in Mexico, people are killed like ants, someones would never picture the idea but belive me as easy as you can kill a dozen of ants showering them with poison we, mankind, can kill a dozen of prisoners showering them with bullets, and thats the least gory example.
I´m actually disturbed by the fact that someone can actually picture the idea of sensless dead when even for me, a gore fan, it´s considerated the most disturbing idea to have a conversation.
Heaven protect me if, someting like that happens to me or to any one of us.
Sir Gardez you have my respect, because you did what I didn´t have the courage to do.
A few things on war have been tumbling in my mind lately, so thought I'd lay it in a relevant place where it might get read.
tl;dr version: If you want to construct an anti-war narrative to a broad audience (civilians), having military characters and showing battles, especially in a visual medium, actively subverts your message in favor of glorifying war.
One of the biggest issues with war narratives is that no matter how much an author wishes to express the senselessness of war, he ends up glorifying war in one way or another. This is especially true when a visual medium is applied to the narrative. In trying to honestly convey how horrifying battle is, a reader who is sufficiently detached is also exposed to a sort of warped beauty or sense of rightness (whether to justify character actions in the narrative or the history of the battle itself).
If it is the author's wish to express the senselessness of war, or to outright make an anti-war statement, how can they do that while being honest about the goings-on of war? In this lens, very few war-related narratives that I've seen are successful at making anti-war statements. This isn't a bad thing. I still love Band of Brothers, Platoon, and Apocalypse Now. As successful as they were in displaying the horrors of war, they also glorified it for the sake of the narrative, intentionally or not. This dampens an anti-war statement considerably, IMO.
If I were to list some works that do better to escape the paradigm, I'd say Letters from Iwo Jima, Catch-22, and Grave of the Fireflies. Catch-22 (the book, not the movie that I haven't seen) cheats by virtue of not having a visual medium, but makes its statements in satirizing military structure.
Letters from Iwo Jima doesn't quite succeed as an anti-war narrative only because it depicts battle. Just about everything else about the movie, from the flashbacks of Imperial Japan to slow, horrifying and utterly boring daily lives of soldiers forced to live in the tunnels strikes a supreme anti-war message.
The best anti-war narrative IMO is Grave of the Fireflies. By framing the narrative entirely from a civilian perspective, an audience experiences the atrocities of war in a setting that is horrifyingly applicable to them. By not focusing on soldiers, the narrative doesn't have to focus on military characters being likable (and, by extention, their motives and actions). Trouble is, is that fair? I don't have any perspective on military life, so I'm not entirely comfortable saying that an anti-war narrative can't involve likable military characters. GotF does a pretty good job of justifying why the military is out of scope though, so I suppose your mileage may vary.
That said, is The Immortal Game a war narrative in the same way? The ethics of pony v pony and pony v deity are completely different. Perhaps this diatribe is more applicable to Equestria: Total War.
Sobering. You are very right, though; Ponies Make War is exceptional.
Stay safe, Gardez. I'm thinking of you, mate.
I'm not sure how this comment will come off. Upon a reread, it's a little fragmented and I worry that it offend you or project the wrong message, but it's honest.
Both of my grandfathers died before I was born. I learned recently that both of them were angry alcoholics. When I was very, very young, before my grandmother died, she'd show me her dead husband's medals. I had no idea what any of them meant; I still don't. All I know is that he flew planes in the second world war. My father tells me an interesting story about how the man on the gun would sit on his flak jacket rather than wear it because if they got hit, it would be from below.
The same grandmother also worked with radio transmissions during the war, I believe. I know my other grandfather also participated, but I'm not sure what he did. I remember that when I was very young, I couldn't believe how long the wars lasted when they told me. I thought a war and a battle were one and the same thing; I thought that everyone just fought for an afternoon and the winner took all. Why would you need to fight multiple times, and in different places?
I played with army men. I still have them all now; some of them are missing arms and legs. The greens were always the good guys. The tans were always bad.
I have many, many tans missing arms and legs.
In grade six it was the year 2002, and I stopped taking school seriously except for the academic competitions, reading through every class and occasionally stopping to correct my poor teacher or crack a joke like the smart ass I was. One day, I come in from recess very, very late. My teacher doesn't chastise me. Instead she just tells me to sit: we have a guest.
It's her brother, who has recently come back to Canada. He's already spoken to the class for quite some time, and now it's question period. I imagine there are differences between the RCAF and USAF, but you'd probably know better than I would about what he actually does. It involves jumping out of airplanes with a parachute and then crawling across kilometres while remaining unseen.
These are the questions he's answering as I sit down. Questions like "if you can't be seen, how do you go to the bathroom?" He answers that he just goes with his clothes on. We all stop and stare a little at this. A grown man, a soldier, our Canadian hero, shitting his pants. It's a hard thing for a twelve year old to wrap their mind around.
Eventually I build up enough courage and raise my hand. He takes my question, and I ask—well, I was a twelve year old boy—what do you think I asked?
"Have you ever killed anyone?"
He doesn't answer. My teacher sighs and buries her face in a hand.
"Everyone already asked that question, Aesthetic. He's not allowed to tell you."
Afterwards, they showed us some pictures of a funeral held for one of his friends. They told us that a military funeral is one of the most beautiful things you can ever see.
I wasn't special. I didn't play army men alone, and I'm certainly not the only person with a grandfather who fought in WW2. My parents made me fill five nights a week with extracurricular activities when I hit grade eight. Air cadets only went once a week, so the other four were filled with martial arts.
You say that we are desensitized to death. I think that that can be taken a step further: death is glamorized. It's glamorized in the action movie I saw three hours ago, in the video games I grew up on, and you can bet that violence as a form of catharsis is a major part of my own story. The stories I read, the movies I watch, the things I write, I have no idea how close to reality they are. I just don't know: the last time someone close to me died I was six years old. The last time I feared for my life, I made a joke of it on this very website.
Another man once told me that his father fought in WW2. One day he asked his father the question that every boy will: did you ever kill anyone? His father answered that yes, he had: he'd shot a man. Apparently—and this I never knew—you have to collect the papers off of the dead, both enemy and ally. And when this man's father went searching through his enemy's coat, he found a picture of the enemy's wife and children. The enemy had been a husband and father, just like him.
I quit the cadets after less than a year, and all martial arts soon afterwards. I can—and have—very calmly explained to people who have threatened me that yes, I am a pacifist, and yes, that means that I will do nothing even as you hit me.
But I still love action movies—the gorier the better. I still love the occasional shooter game. And I still write a story that's supposedly about war, despite the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing.
You remind me of Vonnegut.
You make it sound like we should protest against the war like we did in Vietnam.
I have no experience in war, no real context for this, but I have seen death. I used to work at a nursing home, watching as old folks (whose families rarely if ever visited them) wasted away, existing rather than living. For a high school student (as I was at the time), seeing those people putter around, sleeping until 10 and falling asleep at 6, sometimes not even knowing where they were or what they were doing, it came as quite a shock when suddenly, one would die.
I'd reflect upon the senseless waste, on how their families probably wished they'd visited more, and somewhere along the way, I got desensitized to death. It's nothing compared to a soldier, of course, but part of me just decided to stop caring in order to deal with it. If you've ever read End of Ponies (the other story I'm written into, heh), the character Vimbert working in a hospital was me for quite a few years; I had tried and tried to care, to be as much of a Pinkie Pie as I could, bringing a little light and joy to those people, but their deaths just seemed senseless every time. Many of those people had lived very full lives, but it still seemed unfair for their lives to end in such a way.
This got me thinking about when young people die.
In high school, we were all encouraged to take the ASVAB (for non-American readers, it's an aptitude test the military uses), and I scored a 97 (again for reference for those unfamiliar, it's scored on percentiles, so 99 is the best one could do). Recruiters talked to me in person and over the phone, asking again and again if I was quite sure I didn't want to be a soldier. A few even more or less guaranteed me an officer position straight out of training, but I refused, because I knew I'd compartmentalized death and I could probably do it again. I wanted nothing to do with war, and I hate the thought that we have to fight at all.
I haven't had much sleep, so I'm not sure what message I'm getting across here, but this was a very insightful post, and although I haven't been on the battlefield, I can understand well enough what you're saying.
On a lighter note, I look forward to your next story, Gardez.
100001
@Cold in Gardez
I would say that these days war has been desensitized and is in many cases senseless.
In the days of old, war was made mainly for one of two purposes, to expand or to defend. The people in these wars who defended and had very strong convictions were able to achieve superhuman feats of strength and triumph. For example: the last stand of the Greek spartans. You are probably familiar with the movie 300 which was an unrealistic portrayal of an actual event which took place at around 480 BC. A greek force of about 7000 led by King Leonidas of Sparta moved to block the only route the massive Persian army, said to have numbered in the millions, could take. Realistically, the Persian force was estimated to be between 100-300k by modern scholars. Nevertheless, the greek army was able to hold off the persian army for almost seven days before King Leonidas dismissed most of the 7000 to be left alone with 1500 in one of the most famous last stands in history. Before the small Greek army was finished, they inflicted massive casualties numbering more than 20,000. The Greek armies eventually drove the Persians out of Greece. Throughout history, people have used this battle as an example of the power of a patriotic army defending native soil. Another example in which the defenders had very strong convictions was the American Revolutionary War. Despite facing the world's most organized and modernized military, the Americans were able to defeat Britain and its king's tyranny. The people who defended in these wars used warfare as a last resort. They knew they needed to fight for their liberty, families, and way of life. These people know what they were fighting for and were willing to participate in the bloddy horrors of war because they knew what they were doing was righteous. The sacrifices of these patriots opened opportunities for their progeny and for millions of others.
In WWI and WWII it seems that all morals have been thrown out the window. Sure, expanding armies of old arguably had no right to pillage and concur lesser nations, but in the World Wars the senseless death, destruction, and genocide were like holding a candle up to the sun. No part of the world came out of this conflict unaffected, and generations of people were scarred for life. Never before had anything like the world wars been imagined. These generations of people who remembered the World Wars wanted to avoid war if at all possible which lead to the Cold War in which there was much tension and little fighting.
It seems today that for the past sixty years the world has not seen wars on the scale of the World Wars and many people have forgotten the horrors or war and violence. In many ways a large part of world culture has become a culture of sex and violence. Video games and the media have made us desensitized to war and violence and what it means to fight a war in the first place. In many of today's wars people on both sides lack the conviction of the people long ago who were fighting for liberty against tyranny. Many people believe that today's wars have been engineered by the military-industrial complex, including "the war on terror". Retaliation is a very natural response to the 9/11 attacks. However, an extermination of all terrorists is very impractical in my opinion. It would seem that the media has convinced us that this is the correct plan of action and the US has spent trillions on this impractical scheme thus feeding the war machine a.k.a. the military-industrial complex. I believe that we should use Israel's strategy when confronting terrorists and the taliban and pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Huh. the only experience of war I have is the brother of an acquantice. I'll take a moment to consider that and be thankful. I hadn't considered these perspectives when I first started reading this - it was just a grimdark (something I typically avoid) I was giving a chance and kept with. I don't have much to say - I'm too uninformed and ignorant of the subject and intelligent thoughts regarding all this.
Is there any difference between the ant underfoot - the war of its nest and the next one over, and those of people? War does seem like an insane compulsion, a control switch for populations to self terminate.
100143
Whether people protest or support the war is up to them. I only ask that they make an effort to understand it first.
101495
Well, as a soldier fighting in the war, do you believe in it?
You know, it's kind of strange, but I never thought of PMW/TIG as a war story. Maybe that's because I read Equestria:Total War first, and that became my idea of what war fiction is in this fandom. I'm not sure. But I still can't look at PMW and see a war story--that's one of the reasons I'm very happy with the title change, even if it remains 'Ponies Make War' in my head. Instead, it's a story about politics, and magic, and epic battles between small, groups of powerful individuals. Rationally, I know that there are two sides who are pitted against each other, but... that's more of a backdrop for the real story, in my mind.
Is that really just me?
100001
'The Way of the Leaf deserves at least a chance...' - Perrin Aybara; Wheel of Time, Bk 4
I'd like to say that I also had the little plastic army men, and it seems that green is the predefined 'good guy' color. Just thank whatever deity you worship - assuming you do - that you no longer have to look the man in the eyes before you kill him; that it can be done efficiently, and from far away.
103339
I didn't think of The Immortal Game as a war story either, especially after having read Total War first. Immortals, especially concept-based beings (Order, chaos, Hope, etc), are just on a totally different scale. It's no more a war story than fumigating a house for insects is a war story.
That's part of what continues to make the story interesting. There are advantages to a society guided by a deity, but it takes away some measure of free will, no matter how benevolent (and, unlike a system made only by mortals, there just aren't ethical consequences for gods unless they choose such).
Astor fought to end immortals meddling in pony lives. Will Twilight do the same? Will she purify them with Harmony for a clean, happy ending? Are there consequences to killing a god? Can they be killed?
Edit: This blog wasn't about rationalizing the behavior of beings beyond comprehension. Two posts and I just don't want to discuss how easy it is to rationalize slaughter when it is completely outside of my experience.
I know I'm late responding to this, but whatever.
I recently saw someone die, a bicyclist who fell beneath a cement truck. It really shook me; I couldn't get it off my mind for weeks. What my mind kept coming back to was the driver of the truck. I'll never forget his face, seeing what was left of the guy. It wasn't his fault at all, the cyclist had clipped a parked truck, but he was just sitting there in tears.
I don't think people become desensitized to death, except through seeing people die. A lot of people. The idea of death is different; movies, books, and video games make us feel more comfortable discussing and thinking about death. But they don't make it easier to experience the reality.