Mailmare discussion [ALL THE SPOILERS] · 4:44am Jan 22nd, 2015
I think you all know our relationship here is special. Because I don't think of my followers as fans. I think of you as free labor. I post my ramblings about whatever's puzzling me, and you reply with long, detailed analysis and discussions that leave just enough unsettled that I can still take credit for the synthesis. About the only thing you don't do is write my stories for me.
It's time to do something about that.
My brain came up with an idea for the "More Most Dangerous Game" contest [1], and, as usual, held it back until the last possible moment before the deadline when I could possibly finish it in time if I spent all my free time typing and guzzling energy drinks.
So now I'm barging ahead, typing and posting chapters with nothing but an outline to say where it's going, like I was shortskirtsandexplosions. The further I get, the less I like it. I've got 3 days left, most of my time scheduled for other things, and only 2 out of 8 scenes written.
So I'm gonna give you all the outline here, then say what I think is wrong with it, and hope that by morning, some of you will have figured out how to fix it. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING THAT WILL PROBABLY HAPPEN, DON'T READ THIS.
[1] And by "came up with" I mean "stole from David Brin".
Scene 1. The Flower family, earth pony farmers: Wild (POV), May, Corn, Sun.
Not a conventional opening; the main character barely appears, and the Flower family won't reappear. Its only purpose is to set the post-apocalyptic scene, show how frightened people are, and show the effect that getting a letter, even one years old, can have on people who've been cut off from their friends and relatives for years. This chapter will be eliminated if I run over 15,000 words.
Scene 2. Derpy (POV), Dust Devil.
Dust Devil assaults Derpy in mid-air, intending to rape her. She shakes him off by threatening to dive into the ground and gets away, but loses her mailbag.
Scene 3. Derpy (POV), the raiders (Tale Spin, Dust Devil, Corkscrew, Updraft, Crop Duster, all pegasi).
Dust Devil we've met. Beta of the raiders. He's clever and cruel, and enjoys terrifying Derpy.
Tale Spin: Leader of the raiders. Tough and smart. Not sadistic like DD, but that just makes him a better class of rapist. If he's got a heart of gold, it's deeply buried. Frightens Derpy not out of cruelty, but because he has a sense of drama and of playing the part of a raider leader.
Corkscrew: The Derpy of the raiders. Maybe an okay guy if you got him on his own.
Derpy comes back for her mailbag, though why she does so won't be made clear until much later. It's a trap, and the raiders capture her. Tale Spin had heard the story of the Mailmare, and is bitter on finding out she's just a "crazy mare with a sack of old letters from dead ponies". He tells her being captured is her own fault for being so stupid as to come back for it.
Derpy has letters for two of them. She gives them the letters. Corkscrew asks if she can take a letter to Canterlot. The other raiders respond with their usual "Shut up, Corkscrew". Derpy says she can. Tale Spin thinks about this. He says they'll let her go unmolested if she promises to deliver letters for them. Derpy says she will. TS believes her, because he's a good judge of character and she is Derpy. TS tries to proposition her before she leaves, saying she still might as well have some fun while she's there. Derpy informs him that he isn't fun, and leaves.
Scene 4. Walled village of Glenmare (open to other names). Derpy (POV), earth pony townsfolk.
Mapwise, everything is roughly on a line from southwest to northeast: Baltimare, Glenmare, Ponyville, Canterlot, Fillydelphia. The raiders are somewhere between Baltimare and Ponyville. Canterlot is your basic post-apocalyptic smoking crater; Ponyville is deserted.
Derpy arrives at the town gates. The townsfolk tell her to go away. She calls out the names of people she has letters for near this address, and a few are present. They let her in. Then they give her more letters to deliver, mostly back towards Baltimore. She refuses, leaves the letters there, and tells them she's going home after this.
Scene 5. Outskirts of Canterlot.
Derpy (POV), Tale Spin's mom (TSM, no name yet).
Derpy locates TS's mom (TSM) and delivers the letter as she promised. TSM asks if Derpy's seen TS, and where he is & how he's doing. Derpy hedges. TSM begs her to take her to him. Derpy says she's going home and hanging up her mailbags. TSM says, give her the mailbag, she'll do it. Derpy PTSDs out and leaves.
Scene 6. The wasteland. Derpy, raiders, TSM. POV Tale Spin.
A cloudy day. Derpy arrives unexpectedly, wearing mailbags, but a different pair of mailbags than before. Tale Spin is agape. He asks her if she delivered the letters, & she says no. She approaches Tail Spin and takes off her mailbags, and the other raiders begin stomping cheering her on. She puts the mailbags and her hat on TS, and the raiders say, "Kinky!"
Derpy calls up to the sky, and TSM lands beside her. TS is doubly agape. TSM hugs him and says Derpy told her all about his job delivering the mail, and warns him that the Wastes are full of raiders. TS catches on and plays the part for his mom. Derpy explains to TS that the bags are full of letters for Baltimore, and canned food given as postage for the letters. She tells him his gang can handle the mail from Canterlot down to Baltimare. Dust Devil is outraged, but TS counts and realizes that's going to be a lot of cans. TS is impressed by Derpy and tries to convince her to stay with them, but she says she and Corkscrew will take the route from Canterlot to Fillydelphia.
Scene 7. Baltimare. Baltimare residents (POV), raiders, TSM.
The raiders arrive at the city, TS wearing the mailbags. (Point of suckage: Where does one "arrive" to deliver mail in Baltimare when no one is expecting them? It's a huge frickin' city, right? It's got no walls around it & hence no gates, so where do they land? Is there a no fly zone around it?) TS explains the deal: Postage is one can per letter per 50 miles, plus one more can on delivery. Ponies flock to send mail; raiders are loaded with more cans than they can carry and realize they'll have to come back for more. Some merchants give TS lists of things they have a surplus of and things they want, and offer him a percentage if he'll find people who want / have those things and will trade; they begin planning how to open a trade route from Baltimare to Fillydelphia. (PLOT HOLE: These are port cities; the logical answer would be to use ships, which they should ALREADY HAVE DONE thus making the entire story pointless.) A beautiful mare admires TS's uniform, and admires their courage for operating out in the wastes, where the dangerous ponies are. TS, already playing the role of gallant Pony Express courier (sorry), says, "Just part of the job, Ma'am."
THIS IS ONE OF THE PARTS THAT SUCKS. We've already established that TS is a nasty guy. How will people feel about him making good and being taken as an upstanding member of the community when he's still a cold-hearted potential killer inside? That's how I want to play it, but I don't know if I can successfully combine that cynical Kissingerian realpolitik with the sweet Derpy / dead Dinkie ending. I thought a lot about setting up Corkscrew as the postman, or merging the characters of TS and Corkscrew somehow, but I want TS to be the one Derpy puts her hat on, because he's the one who made a play for her (Corkscrew wouldn't be that brash), and because playing a role is part of his character.
Scene 8. Derpy's home. Derpy (POV).
Derpy arrives at her (treehouse?) home, hidden off on its own bcoz if she were part of some community YTF would she leave it to go deliver letters. (Minor point of suckage: Where should Derpy live? Clouds are safe from ground ponies but easy targets for pegasi.) It's empty but for the sacks of mail she rescued from the ruins of the Canterlot post office.
Derpy finds the mailbags she began the story with, searches them, and pulls out a letter addressed to her. Now we learn why she went back for the mailbag: It's a letter from Dinky, sent from Canterlot the day before it was reduced to a smoking crater. Dinky was starting school, and wrote to say she missed Derpy a lot but would try to be brave. Derpy reflects on this. This is what resolved her to keep the mail moving.
THIS IS A PART THAT SUCKS. WTF, HORSE? Don't give me that sentimental "she reads a letter she's read a hundred times before and suddenly takes new inspiration from it" crap! Letters are boring and writing a story where the "climax" is reading a letter is BORING. The most-exciting part of the story was in scene 2 and it's all been downhill from there. A story where the first complication is an action scene needs a climax that is a MORE EXCITING action scene. Not reading a @#$* letter. WHERE'S THE SECOND ACTION SEQUENCE? WHERE'S THE GRAND CLIMACTIC CONFRONTATION? I feel like this needs a pitched battle between large forces at the climax, but that would double or triple its cast of characters and its length.
And how exactly can I communicate in THIS scene that this was what motivated her between scenes 5 and 6, anyway?
The story closes with Derpy making grander plans for the mail, about how to introduce official "coupons" so that they don't have to carry heavy cans everywhere, with the intimation to the reader that Derpy doesn't realize she is creating Equestria's first post-apocalypse fiat currency.
GENERAL PLOT HOLES:
- Why aren't ships already running between Baltimare and Fillydelphia?
- How can 4 pegasi run an effective mail operation when large cities somehow haven't been able to accomplish that in 5 years? Possibly the real-life Pony Express has answers: Postage would be too expensive, or too slow and easily found by large warlord forces, if they sent large task forces?
- Why aren't there large organized warlords with armies claiming various territories? If there are, how do they fit into the Waste and into the plot?
Disclaimer: I haven't read what you have so far.
What if there are areas with warlords, but these don't happen to be them? And to that end, one might control the mouth of Horseshoe Bay, and/or there might be piracy to contend with, making shipping less reliable than Derpy.
2739247 There would be piracy to contend with, but historically, that's never stopped anybody. Ships are big expensive things to build. Until civilization advanced to the point of inventing laws forbidding cargo ships from carrying guns to defend themselves, it was difficult for pirates to build ships big enough and well-armed enough to be a threat to ocean-going merchant ships. Anybody with that much money would go into trade themselves. Many "pirates" were privateers, ships from some other country's navy.
Also, pirates can't exist except when they're greatly outnumbered by merchant ships, just as lions can't exist unless there are many more prey animals.
Here's a shot. Ships are expensive, complicated pieces of technology. They're valuable, giant piles of floating bits just waiting for raiders to capture them. You don't need other ships to capture them if you have pegasi. Zero Tech > Medium Tech
Regular mail runs are much the same: predictable. valuable and prone to being ambushed. Erratic solo travelers can go where larger more expensive transportation can't.
As to the letter. You can string it out as the header to each chapter, just a few lines like this
---
...friends went to see a movie last night about a giant monster that eats Manehattan. It was a little lame after living in Ponyville all these years, but I think you would have liked it. Snails bought popcorn for all of us....
---
...better be wrapping this up. Give Sparkler a kiss for us, and we hope you come up to see your grandfoal soon.
Love
Dinky Do
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Yes, well, the pirates might be essentially privateers for warlords, especially if one is claiming territory along the shipping route.
I was also thinking about your structure problem. Is there a way you can flash back instead of/in conjunction with Derpy reading the letter? The fall of civilization should make a pretty impactful climax.
Even if there are no external barricades, I figure there should be at least (and probably only) two maintained routes in and out of the city. Aside from preserving resources, it creates chokepoints to slow down invaders and quick entrance and exit for civilians and peaceful travelers.
In our world, that would be the logical answer. In a world where the concept of trees growing all of their own (as in, separate from the direct, concentrated influence of a large collective of ponies) is seen as terrifying and weird, it's less of a stretch to imagine that the seas are too wild and untamed for a post-apocalyptic society to manage. There's also the potential inaccuracy of old-world maps, unpredictable weather, and seafaring bandits to think about too, as well as the sheer insular nature of each city due to the total lack of communication.
Play it as confusing for him too. Derpy's pure enough of heart to see through his brutish exterior to the colt his mother remembers, and he's trained himself to ignore those instincts both for his own sake and in order to mesh with the cynical worldview adopted by the raiders of the world, as epitomized by Dust Devil. Played right, it's enough for the audience to chew on that he's told to have some kind of potential for redemption, even if it's not guaranteed to happen and won't be much more than hinted at on-screen.
Violence makes for a punchy ending in most stories because it runs contrary to the world's established norm. In a post-apocalyptic setting, the opposite can be true. A noted lack of confrontation provides hope, and this last scene provides context for that hope. I can imagine Derpy's "PTSD" with TSM has something to do with matching motherly instincts--maybe her even wondering what this world would have turned Dinky into had she lived to see it. If she can truly believe TS can be redeemed, then that's what reading Dinky's letter affirms for her: that for the sake of her daughter, she has to remember that everyone left in this world was someone else's Dinky or had a Dinky themselves, and that's why connecting them through their letters remains important.
You're close already. I'd add that a predictable trade route is the easiest for bandits to attack. If all the extant cities are relatively lined up with a lot of harsh ground to cover between them, that only exacerbates that problem. In order to avoid/fight off the raiders, postponies were needed who think like raiders. You could definitely factor that into Derpy's characterization as well if it's not too late to throw it in.
It seems to me that a central motif in this story is the importance of communication, and the notable lack thereof in this world. A huge, mobile group that runs a campaign of intimidation and extortion through the wastelands doesn't mesh with that motif; essentially, if a warlord conquers something in the wasteland, is anyone left to hear of it? Beyond that, there's always the classic rule "friendship is magic" deal to fall back on, which I do pretty much always. Either one works.
What do you think about drawing closer to the source material via symbolism?
There's a lot going on here and while it's obvious that you're doing a Fallout Equestria add-on I'm not sure as to what the general thrust is supposed to be. The whole rapist becoming the "good guy" thing really throws me off too. I'll admit part of the appeal of, say, Game of Thrones is that it has RealPolitik where in the most upstanding "good guys" die the fastest whereas more conniving characters live. Still people root for the lighter shades of grey as opposed to King Joffrey. While some didn't like it I feel there was a certain power to "The Postman" movie with Kevin Costner. Most people are amazed at how people live in the 3rd world, about all the things that we take for granted just don't work or exist. Something as simple as mail is quite powerful, especially when nothing better is available.
As for your warlord problem: armies take time to organize and supply. If this is shortly after the cataclysm, and it sounds like it is, then there really wouldn't be time for one single warlord to control a huge swath of territory. For example after Hurricane Katrina the parallel economy and "underground government" of gangs and the like were important in the area because they had resources but they still couldn't exterminate one another. To take another example look at the incredible messy situations when a country fails in Africa or the middle east. When the central power collapses people turn to local leadership groups for security and sustenance which only serves to reinforce ethnic "tribal" groupings.
Alternatively your raiders could be the largest and most important warlords of the area. Studies of "tribal" groups (I should note that I use this term not for nomadic aboriginals but as a catch-all term for any self-identified group of individuals that see their collective well being as of greater importance than other's) show that they usually top out at a couple hundred members. In most cities in a civil war situation various neighborhoods become "tribal grounds" to raid and defend against raids from other groups. The various wars in the Balkans has hundreds of case studies of such a thing. More recently in the Syrian city of Damascus "tribes" of extended kin groups fought street to street for individual buildings.
Moreover in the world of Fallout Equestria it is implied that there was a truly massive die-off. Something like 90% of the population as I recall so your largest cities would likely consist of up to a couple thousand individuals. Thus a band of a hundred men would be quite a formidable fighting force.
Even before the Pony express, in the Dark Ages (where one in three people died of the black death and up to three in four died in some of the cities) there was no public mail service at all as far as I know. You either found a trader who was heading that way or if you had a very important message you paid someone quite a bit of money to run cross the many war zones and bandit camps of Europe.
As for the ships, that depends on how many survived the last cataclysmic battle of the war. In WWII many civilian boats were simply requisitioned by Britain and France by the military including cruise liners. Of course since these boats weren't designed for such rigorous conditions they were also easy to sink. Also if you're going to ship a massive load of something you need a buyer with a massive demand for something. Also what's to say that some warlords didn't simply take the boats and use them as mobile fortresses for pirate raids? In both Fallout 2 and Fallout 3 people used massive pre-war ships as the bases of their operations. Even stationery they are made out of metal and anyone that wants to attack you will have to cross the water giving you various positions of strategic advantage.
I've got to say though that people will give quite alot of suspension of disbelief if they like the characters enough and while I actually like the idea of a raider leader "turning a new leaf" and taking over this operation I'm concerned that the characters won't be likable at all except for Derpy. Of course you've made criminal characters likable before but there's a certain line that most people are willing to accept when it comes to something like rape. Soldiers kill, it is an integral part of the job. People justify it with patriotism or self-defense but at the end of the day it's still killing. "Legitimate rape" though is a line most people see as pretty firm. Anyways those are my off the cuff thoughts.
Edit: forgot to mention my most important source: Bottom-Up Politics by Davineca
Thoughts: (w/out having read through all of what you've posted, so take with salt)
1. No ships because in whatever war turned half of EQ into a crater, the standing navies were destroyed, which included most civilian boats that had been pressed into service. Also, ports were sabotaged in a last-ditch 'scorched earth' tactic, though it ultimately proved to be futile for the losing side (whoever that was)
2. Lack of navigable roads and/or usable rail between cities will hamper mail, as will lack of civilization in the middle to facilitate rest/re-supply for mail carriers, merchants, and even a regular traveler. Raiders would be better equipped to handle this type of terrain than civvies, especially raiders with wings.
3. Though raider groups exist, organized warlords might just not be something that occurs in EQ world. Perhaps allude to a previous point where a warlord type tried to claim an area, only to be ousted when the survivors ganged up on him and threw him out. This may be a 'bare survival' wasteland, but some shred of EQ's values might still run through the survivors, ergo, they don't contend with warlords.
4. No fly zone makes perfect sense. Run with that.
5. TSM name ideas: Vapor Trail, Top Spin, Crossdraft
The More Most Dangerous Game Contest or How Bad Horse Crowdsourced His Way to Victory
2739294 What would be an example of that?
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Interesting point!
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You mean, make a flashback to the war the climax of the story? Something big has to be at stake at the climax. Since we already know how things turned out, it would have to be something else...
2739299 Welcome to the bad herd, & thanks for the extended comment! Likability of the secondary characters is a big problem, I know.
I did not know the book was made into a movie.
Too bad I don't have time to watch it before Saturday. Hopefully they cut out the second half of the book.
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The stake is what happened to Dinky, assuming you've laid the hints properly before, which I figure you will through the stuff with TSM. Basically, show the life altering event for Derpy. Intercut the letter with imagined scenes of Canterlot being destroyed, or of her seeing it destroyed in the distance or something.
I like the ending, because I can see Derpy's character as one that would go through horrendous atrocities and come out stronger at the end, the part with her reading Dinky's letter everyday would be an excellent reason as to why she hasn't given up her job, as a way to keep the memory of her daughter and better times alive...at least in her mind
Will we know what caused the war?
2739378 Derpy already knows what happened with Dinky, so that's not at stake for her. I'm thinking something more like Ordinary People, in which the main character kept having nightmares about a boating accident in which his brother died. Everyone knew how it ended, but the climax was him envisioning the accident in enough detail to realize that what he hated himself for was for (roughly) being stronger than his brother, and not dying. A new interpretation can be the climax, if things are already set up so that not having that interpretation creates a crisis.
So, something where Derpy keeps having nightmares about the past... Something along those lines could probably work...
2739391 Is it important to you? Once I start going in that direction, people start picking it apart and asking, "What happened to Twilight? What happened to the Princesses? Why didn't Discord do X?" So probably not...
Fallout Equestria had the great advantage of being written before Discord was canon. Discord's powers are so great that they make the plans and actions of mere mortals irrelevant, which would make the themes of Fallout Equestria irrelevant and impossible to convey.
Many moons ago I sent you an idea for a chapter of Bedtime Stories - I may write it up myself one day, when I get back into the writing frame of things.
The moment he realises that he can get more mutton as a shepherd can he could as a wolf...
Sea monsters. Serpents and sirens are canon, this is the post-apocalypse, and the gates of Tartarus have broken open.
I may have some more ideas later.
You could just choose a non-coastal city as one of the cities in question, and thus head off the problem.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH I cannot tell you how wrong you are!!!!!
So WRRROOOOOOOOONG
Ugh. I so don't have time for this; I gotta get up early tomorrow. I should already be in bed. But a fellow writer needs help! So I'll do this. For you Bad Horse!
Number one. Read This. It's your homework. Trust me. The ending will teach you. It's long yes, but it's an easy, fast read. Do it. I can't say why the ending will teach you anything regarding your story here without lessening it's impact, so you'll just have to trust me.
Number two. You're getting hung up on the mental and forgetting the emotional. Yes, scene two was exciting, but within the tiny folded edges of that letter resides a deeply powerful heart-tugging punch to the balls. It's key that the emotional crux and (essentially) homerun of your story is a letter; it's timeless, relatable, and is a key thematic thread that runs through the story; letters. It's a repeated element, it has meaning and weight, and can really unify your story.
If you want my opinion, knowing your writing pace here (this isn't unlike a writeoff), the letters (the grandmother's and Dinky's) are your hope for this story. Derpy doesn't need to have been reading Dinky's over and over again; that's cliche (but not reputable by any means). Instead, have her find it at the end of the story. After we know what happened to Dinky. Derpy doesn't need motivation to deliver the mail; she's Derpy. She just does it, it's who she is; she's hopeful and sees the good (and the need) in people like that. She would just figure that of course ponies would want their old mail and it would be her way of helping the world heal.dSo Don't worry with her motivation.
Derpy risks life and limb being a good pony and helping others, especially the raiders group. As a result of these events she comes across another bag of Canterlot letters. Sorting through it she finds one from Dinky (we already know what happened to her at this point); now, while your reader is amid their surprise at this turn of events, you sock them; she reads the letter, innocent, cute, full of love, and tragic. The world is lost and Derpy is a heroic figure, and now we realize what she has truly lost, what everyone in Equestria has lost, we feel the gravity of it all, and Derpy's heroism stands all the more powerful; and on that note the story ends, letting us reflect (this is where the grandmother's letter comes in too).
That's all I really have time for now, no idea how much this contradicts advice from literally everyone else here, but eh, listen to who you want (i.e. listen to me ^.^). I at least hope they've been saying to put more focus on Derpy herself; if you had more time to properly balance tone and theme and purpose, I would say to include all the material with the raiders, because it's interesting. But you don't have the time, and so I think it's far less risky to keep the focus on Derpy; it's what everyone is expecting anyway. You do need the raiders as a tool to characterize Derpy and illustrate her heroism and courage, but in scene 7 of the outline they took too much of a focus (even though I understand it's point, to show how Derpy changes the world. But you can get that across more simply, or at the very least with Derpy present and clearly the main character).
2739448 Interesting mental attitude. Derpy delivers the mail because she's a mailmare, and if she ever quit delivering mail, she would become something else, and as long as she can wear the uniform and find letters to deliver, she can cling to that one last thread of normality in a world gone completely insane.
2739444 Yes, I think I'm going to set it in the Appaloosa region instead, and use smaller cities, and a lot of my plot holes will go away.
2739448 The problem is really that the opening sets expectations of action, and it feels wrong to switch genres in the middle of the river. It would be as awkward as that silly story about the Horrible Doctor or whatever his name was.
I'm not a big fan of "Yours Truly", personally, but I'd be less of a fan if it had begun with a Daring Do sequence and then ended where it did. Wouldn't it have felt disjointed?
2739448
Ooh. This is a good idea. The problem is then, why did she go back for her bag in chapter 2?
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Perhaps a scant few letters remained that she hadn't yet found homes for? 'Leave no letter undelivered' and all that. If you're going dedication, she shouldn't be leaving letters behind, what with staring down a rifle in the first scene just delivering a letter.
That, or they were sentimental in value to her, perhaps given to her by a mentor or stitched with her name/cutie mark.
It's almost like a prized hat. If you were to lose your fine hat on the streets in a bout of fistihooves, wouldn't a horse of your class seek to return the garment to its deserving home? So too should Derpy go back for her mailbags.
I realize other smarter folks may have weighed in but you knew the risks asking for general opinions:P
I can think of varying reasons: Perhaps sea creatures have gotten too aggressive, the ships aren't viable anymore, perhaps the water has become too acidic?
Nobody tried/got lucky the way derpy and co did. I mean she kinda lucked out. Could also be the tribes have split again and pegasi don't tend to want to have much to do with the earth ponies. Only a few exceptions to that rule.
It's difficult to get and keep a large group. Having enough food to feel everyone sounds hard to come by. I would guess it's a numbers thing. If you have to rely on each other, it's easier to have a small interconnected group where everyone has close ties to everyone else as opposed to a large group made of smaller groups.
Also, does she have to quit? Why doesn't she just keep going? Or she could give her cap and bags to TS and just vanish into the sunset? Let he set things up and then leave.
Sorry to all, I don't have time to really spell check this as I'm between meetings at work (and probably shouldn't even be posting this at all right now) but I enjoy the discussions here and would really like to contribute instead of lurk for a change.
I think Aquaman ( 2739287 ) and the Ponytrician ( 2739427 ) have really struck on something here: we're thinking a bit too much about our world and not enough about THEIR world. The EverFree forest is so terrifying to the Ponies because NATURAL PHENOMENON (to us) happens on it's own there. These are effectively people living in a biodome, a world where everything from snow to sunrise to cloud cover to lighting to flora and fauna migrations is scheduled and maintained by dedicated institutions full of ponies whose full-time job is to monitor and "correct" these situations. Plus Tartarus is LITERALLY within a day's travel of Twilight Sparkle as a Unicorn, and is full of terrible monsters, but that angle leads to more problems with the whole "How the heck can four pegasi pull this off?" So while the Tarturus point is quite strong I'ld underplay that. The sea monsters though, and the rough seas on top of that, would likely be too much to handle for even experienced crews as they would be used to the "clockwork" nature of the old world. I think the angle of the breakdown of not only the political order, but the assumed NATURAL order, is incredibly powerful and not given enough screen time in the original work. That the weather and plants and animals "do what they will" would likely be just as terrifying as raiders in such a situation. When your entire system of farming and production is predicated on the assumption that you control the weather, and not the other way around, that's a hell of a change!
2739356 Thanks for the welcome Bad Horse! I thought that the references were perhaps more intentional than they were then. Alot had to be cut out of the book but it ended with the ancestor of the main character making a speech to the newly restored nation about the the final battle between the roguish hero and the conquering warlord. I think your story is still sufficiently different as to be rather impactful.
I actually like tales of redemption, and villains that have some kind of code as well. Through my service I've actually met Warlords, and if you ever want to see some pretty interesting interviews with such people go to VICE News. They make it a point to interview Warlords and you can really get a sense of what it's like to be there. Of course it's still some rather Gonzo journalism and some people don't like that but it's hard to stay perfectly neutral in a war zone you know? Having your villain actually prevent Derpy's rape by someone else also moves him to be a more sympathetic figure. He's an evil asshole but he isn't a total monster and that way you can establish that the Wasteland is a truly brutal place but still have his transition be more palatable.
For example in your "Bedtime Stories" we know that your character is a cur but he's not so much of a scumbag that he actually hurts any of the children, even in the episode where it's made out that he's foalnapped one for money. The character does things that we'ld never do but he still hasn't passed the Moral Event Horizon and he still comes across as retaining a certain level of humanity that makes him somewhat relatable and his turpitude during your chapter about the "shark amulet" or "beauty and the beast" even makes him a somewhat sympathetic figure in that we can see quite clearly how he turned from someone more like ourselves into a scumbag. Plus I always advise people to play to their stengths especially when time is short. Seeing the villian be inspired by Derpy, and his own mother, to go back from the edge of dark morality and help return to old world values would be quite powerful I feel and I can't think of anyone that I'ld trust to do that story more justice than you in all honesty.
GOOD LUCK BAD HORSE!
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This is a great point. I think I'm going to move the setting far inland, though, in a sparsely-settled area, and give it more of a Pony Express scenario.
... but then can I resist making a Pony Express pun near the end?
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Because she's Derpy. It's as simple as that. She cares enough about what she's doing and why she's doing it (ponies want their mail, ponies need their mail) to put herself in danger retrieving it. You can even give her doubts about returning for it, but her unwillingness to just quit overrides it. And besides, waiting as long as she did it's reasonable to assume the raider had left in search of other prey.
It does? If you were to ask me, especially right after finishing the first chapter, I would've said that the story sets up an expectation of feeling. After all, you said it yourself, the point of the opening was to show the impact a single letter from the past could have on a war-torn family. It's this idea we're left with at the end of the chapter, not one of action.
For me where Yours Truly holds the title of spectacular is entirely in the ending; you've spent 18000 words watching Twilight and Aj get older and change, their lives charting individual courses while they maintain a relationship which evolves over the course of the story and means so much to them; then Aj dies, and yeah it's sad, but then, at the end, she gets the old letter from years ago that she once thought lost, which was during the most pivotal and defining moment of her life (in this story); when her and Aj admitted their feelings for one another and began their life long journey. Suddenly reading a letter written in Aj's younger and still inexperienced voice, talking about the unknown future and what it means to her when we've already seen that future and Aj's end, it brings a powerful sense of perspective and strongly unifies the story into a single picture we can understand, bringing both their lives into a compact focus, letting us grasp at their meaning.
My old writing professor once told me that a moment isn't defined simply by what happens within it; it's defined by what comes before and after. The letter at the end of Yours Truly was an article of the past being read at the end of a life, and so it escapes the context it was originally written in and is seen in the perspective of an entire lifetime.
That's why I brought up the story, as an example of what you can do with a simple letter. When I initially commented over on the Derpy story, I deleted an entire passage I had written out concerning the letter at the end, because while reading I liked what you were doing but I knew it could be made so much more powerful, and that it was capable of conveying the reality of post-apocalyptic Equestria and its ponies far more than any amount of description could. And that's what you want in this type of story, isn't it? To feel the change, the loss, to really know, in your heart as well as your head, what it means to live in that world.
The grandmother's letter isn't simply a vehicle of warming Wild's heart, but through that emotion it also conveys how much has changed; we already know it mentally, but this allows us to realize it in an emotional manner. Doing the same for Derpy at the end, after everything she's done and been through for the good of other ponies will do it even more powerfully and place all of torn-up equestria into a graspable perspective. It'll redefine all the moments we've been witnessed to, compressing them all into one single moment that is Derpy's new life and Post-War Equestria.
Gotta go to work now, really wish I had more time to hash this out with you.
Do what you think is right for the story you desire to tell, Bad Horse, for the effect you wish to wrought on your reader. And keep it realistic; don't shoot for too grand a thing in terms of material or events, because you don't have a lot of time and many a writeoff i've shot myself in the foot; a lot can be conveyed in a short piece, oftentimes more so than a longer story.
I'll check back in late tonight. Good luck!
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Like in the book where the scientists maintained the fiction that their supercomputer was still working, because it was a symbol of normalcy. They did it to keep hope up. An example of this could be that Canterlot maintains that the princesses are still alive, or something of the sort. I am assuming the princesses are gone, at least, as they would establish order in a crisis, or at least I'd like to think so...
Perhaps I should have said more symbols, as the Postman of the Brin novel was a symbol in and of itself. But as for TS's conversion, remember in the book that Gordon wasn't necessarily a nice guy, either, just trying to survive.
Ditch scene 1. Have someone else read the letter. Kill Derpy. Where's my Newbery?
The theme through David Brin's "The Postman" is two-fold:
1) Small communities have begun to form, but they are still isolated. The arrival of the "Postman" ends that isolation.
2) Bands of militant "survivalists" don't help humanity survive, but are actually a threat to the survivors.
The book sorta stopped there, but as I see it the next logical step would have been a more-reasonable-than-most band of militant survivalists joining up with a village as technicians, laborers, teachers, and guards ...submitting to the authority of the village as a police force does to its city government. There you have it, a basic city-state. A solid place to start civilization going again.
I'd love seeing that written as a fanfic. I'd do that myself, but in my own opinion my writing is wooden, uninspiring, and pedantic.