Writing: The Mailmare, Fallout: Equestria, bad guys, and economics · 11:21pm Mar 2nd, 2015
(Skip to The Big Stuff if you're in a hurry.)
The Little Stuff
The Mailmare took 7th place in EQD’s More Most Dangerous Game contest. I didn't read most of the stories that beat it, so I don't have an opinion on that. I'm hyper-aware of what I think the problems are with the story:
- I don't feel like I captured Derpy's character. It's hard to do because Derpy's character is mostly fanon. But I think my Derpy is too smart and competent. Corkscrew is more Derpy than Derpy is.
- The raiders give Derpy their names. This seems stupid. In my head, I think that (A) cutie marks are more distinctive than names, so there's no point hiding your name without hiding your cutie mark, and (B) Tale Spin is the kinda guy who would tell everypony his name anyway. But I should've made that clear.
- Derpy's home should have something in it to remind her of Dinky.
- It still bugs me that Derpy lands first when she goes back to the raiders, and only then calls for Summer Rain. Is that sensible?
- It's too easy to forget during chapter 9 that it's all told from Tale Spin's POV.
- Tale Spin seems sharper in chapter 3 than in chapter 9. Maybe that's because he's a good actor, but it still bugs me.
- The "just a dead cow" line in chapter 3 has some fridge horror to it.
- The transition from chapter 8 to chapter 9: too sudden?
- Chapter 9 is surreal, with everypony acting too normal, Derpy seeming less afraid than you might expect, and the raiders being more comical than evil. But I think that's not unlikely. What Derpy does is not in the raiders' playbook.
The Big Stuff
But I think what bugs most readers about the story more is stuff I did deliberately.
There are only two kinds of stories about good and evil:
1. Stories in which virtue is rewarded and evil is punished
2. Stories in which virtue is not always rewarded and evil is not always punished, and a major theme of the story is angsting about this fact
There are only three kinds of stories with villains:
1. Stories in which the villain loses
2. Stories in which the villain is reformed
3. Tragic stories in which the villain wins
But Fallout: Equestria (F:E) is not any of those five kinds of stories. F:E is a story in which the hero and the reader gradually realize that the world didn't come with a guarantee saying virtue would be rewarded, and that when you're tossed into a world where ponies are being killed, the important thing is not to go around judging people and dispensing justice, but to stop the killing. Virtue is not rewarded and evil is not punished, and that's beside the point. The failure of the world to meet your childish expectations is no excuse for despair, nor a reason to angst instead of rejoice when you've stopped the killing.
Which brings us to Tale Spin. Tale Spin is the bad guy. Or is he?
Well, he is pretty bad. He wants to be bad; he's trying to play the part of a bad guy. But he's an actor first. He'd rather be the hero, but if he can't be the hero, then he wants to be the bad guy. What he really is, is a self-absorbed douchebag. Bad, but no worse than some people you encounter every day. I wanted to show that it doesn't take a black heart to do evil things. Just a warped sense of priorities, or stupidity, or apathy. The problem isn't in the pony as much as in the environment.
In the end, Tale Spin wins. He gets exactly what he wants: to play the hero and to be adored by pretty young mares. Derpy has used him and neutralized him, but not punished or reformed him.
I'm sure the story would be more popular if he were reformed, and I already compromised on that point by suggesting that he never actually raped or killed anypony, and by making him slightly comical toward the end. But I definitely wanted to end with Tale Spin no better than he was before, and for that lack of reform or punishment not to detract from the triumph felt at the ending. Derpy has gotten past her desire for revenge in order to do the important thing, which is to stop him and to use him to help other ponies.
(I'm not saying revenge or punishment are bad. Just that the real world, unlike the worlds we see in books and movies, doesn't make sure that you never have to choose between saving the world and punishing the villain.)
I don't know if most readers can respond emotionally to that story the way I want. But passing up vengeance and smug moral satisfaction in favor of actually getting the important stuff done is one of the most interesting things about F:E, and I wanted to stay true to that.
This story adds to that another unpopular theme: Moral progress is not made by teaching ponies the magic of friendship, but by delivering the mail. Now, that mail wouldn't be as important if ponies didn't care for each other. But while love and friendship might be the most important things, they aren't great points of leverage for social change. For thousands of years, people have tried to improve society by teaching people to be nicer to each other. This is a good thing, but not as effective in doing good as ignoble economic development.
Historically, humanity's moral progress over the past few thousand years, though it has ebbed and flowed, has not been due to people getting nicer, but to technology. The Dark Ages were not ended by Christianity; they were ended by the horse collar, the loom, irrigation, three-field crop rotation, wind mills, water wheels, paper, trade routes, the invention of corporations, insurance agencies, banks, and all the things that made it more profitable for people to make stuff than to fight over the stuff they already had.
In the end of this story, Tale Spin is just a harmless douchebag. He was never "reformed"; he was put into a different environment in which it doesn't pay to behave in his old ways. Millions of douchebags today might rape and kill to get what they wanted if they found themselves in a wasteland devoid of law and order. We don't kill them all, satisfying though that might feel; we build a society in which they can get what they want more easily by doing other things.
"Derpy's home should have something in it to remind her of Dinky." - No, I think you did that right. Sometimes having reminders of the pain around hurts too much.
"The raiders give Derpy their names. " - So? They plan on killing her or worse. They don't think she's going to run to the cops.
Sometimes the moral of the story is that there is no moral and no story, only people doing what they can to survive. (I better copy that down. It's good.)
I think I might print this out and frame it.
Story was great too, it deserved to place - and place higher, IMO.
That's certainly a very cynical point of view. Perhaps realistic. Perhaps. I guess I view it differently: that people are fundamentally decent, but adverse structural factors push them to do evil to others, and by fixing those things through law, scientific progress, etc, we eliminate the reasons people are forced into becoming villains. And tied to that, the further someone moves towards villainy, the more attractive and less problematic it becomes to them.
That's probably splitting hairs, but it's an important distinction to me. I think if society were to collapse tomorrow and people were forced into having to fight and kill each other for survival, they would do it, but (an overwhelming majority) wouldn't enjoy it.
It could be said that civilization is really a piece of technology. Just like a level or a pulley provides mechanical advantage, a civilization provides moral advantage.
Because that is what you are describing, isn't it? Civilization. And where civilization falters, the percentage of the douchebags is swiftly revealed. People always act as if wars and such summon them forth from some handy Hades, but of course, they were always there.
It's a depressing view of humanity, isn't it?
The flaws in this story are artifacts of compression: you had to tell a huge story in little space and so some things got dropped or distorted. I think a novel-length treatment would fix this.
But these flaws are flaws of kinetic narrative (plot). The emotional narrative (plot) is whole and sound, and excuses the piece's flaws. At least in my reading.
2844499 I think there's only a small difference between what you're saying and what Bad Horse is saying, but I think it's important, and I agree that people are at most selfish by default, but sadistic only rarely. Society is built and organized because we want to believe very badly that other people are on a fundamental level rational and decent people, and through the magic of hypocrisy (the ultimate glue holding society together), we each hold each other to standards higher than we would hold ourselves.
That said, I did love this story, and precisely for the reasons laid out in this blog. Because karma is hit or miss, and justice is a luxury that can only be afforded when holding society together is not at stake. Look at the show, the villains never go on trial, because most of the ones who would be classified as "criminals" are too powerful to be tried and sentenced in a conventional means, they are a threat to public order. You don't put a mad alicorn or a chaos god on trial and sentence them to appropriate restitution anymore than you imprison a hurricane, instead you throw everything you've got at the threat to stop it from bringing down society until the threat has been neutralized. Even Discord, in my opinion, gets forgiven at the end of the 4th season because there is no real effective way to punish him at this point, so forgiveness, to someone as pragmatic as Celestia, is the best way to maintain order and civilization.
Also good point in the blog about how economic progress drives civilization and behavior far more than anything else. I would quibble that things like religion and culture can create high trust environments that improve the business climate, but overall it's technology by a mile. I remember in 2000 the UN released these 2000 Millenium Development Goals of halving world hunger and poverty and some other things by 2015. At the time most people thought they were ridiculous, a stretch goal to maximize the amount of money the UN and non-profits could get from wealthy countries and individuals. But today most of those goals were actually met, not because we became better, more caring people in the 1st world, but because of big international corporations opening up factories in China and elsewhere, and building cellphones and selling them to Africa.
Actually, the argument I've heard for Christianity ending the Dark Ages had more to do with science than morality. It went something like this:
Because Christianity espouses the idea that God is fundamentally rational, has reasons for what he does and those reasons are understandable, (as opposed to the idea the supernatural is fundamentally unknowable and whimsical), it paved the way for rational investigation of the world around us. Since God can be known, we can know the world. That, in turn, gave rise to science and technology, starting in the monasteries and continuing into the university systems, which is where most real research came from, in one way or another. More the idea that the morals of Christianity are fundamentally friendly to good thought, which in turn gave rise to a culture where science flourished.
I don't really know enough of the history to discuss this, so I'll leave it at that; I can't explain or defend this argument, since it's not own.
I don't follow you, although I probably should, because although I enjoy your blogs and like your thoughts, I never really feel qualified or motivated to engage in the sort of discussions that show up here. Oh, and congratulations on placing!
Dammit, BH, I was all ready to ignore FO:E and you have to come along and make it sound like a perfect story for me. I still have to hold off until I can get my hands on an actual Fallout game, but every time you mention it I think about what I'm missing.
Oh well. I've got nearly 22 million words on my RiL shelf even before looking at groups and my followee's backlists; I'm sure I'll find something else good to read. "The Mailmare" should probably be high on the list.
I respectfully disagree. I am always in favor of a diverse array of Derpys in pony fiction, especially competent ones. An excellent example is the Ditzy Doo of Fallout: Equestria, so if anything, a competent bubble-butt only aids your efforts to work with the prompt.
2844740
I've only ever watched Fallout being played, and I still loved FO:E.
2844779 Thanks, but I think Ditzy Doo in F:E is more cheerful, & truer to canon and fanon that way, than in The Mailmare. I don't think she even smiles in my story. She really oughta smile somewhere.
BTW, I have stopped using FO:E or anything with an O to refer to Fallout: Equestria since some ponies thought I was praising Fall Of Equestria.
So, let's see here.
Well, to start off, as you know, I liked the story. Regarding the problems:
Honestly, meh. Derpy doesn't really have much of an established character, and five years on, her being like this is not unreasonable. She seems to be on the edge of desperation and has kind of thrown herself into things.
Honestly, this struck me as entirely in character, as the raiders were clearly, as you noted, playing the role of being raiders rather than being raiders organically. Also, they weren't the sharpest tools in the shed, and they were planning on keeping her around for a while.
Dust Devil seemed to be the evillest of the bunch, and I think he both sort of egged the others on as well as made them uncomfortable because they weren't so far gone as he was. Tale Spin's kind of pathetic attempts at "getting the mare" also reinforced the idea that he was playing a role because he didn't really know what to do with himself and it seemed like a good idea.
I mean, let's face it: their plan was to go out into the middle of nowhere, when no one really seems to engage in trade or commerce, and try and prey on... who? The people who aren't engaging in trade or commerce? It is obvious they either didn't really think things through or that they were sabotaging themselves so they could pretend to be awesome badasses without actually having to do anything.
Maybe; not sure. I think it works either way; it might help drive home that she still misses Dinky a bit better, but on the other hand, maybe it would be better if it was something she hid or something?
I don't think it was terribly sensible, but it seems like it might have been the sort of thing Derpy would do - she went back for the mail bag, after all. And I think she wanted to make sure that he was stuck for it, as he clearly is a momma's boy and wasn't going to contradict Derpy in front of his mom.
Also, honestly, I sort of felt like Derpy's real motivation there (maybe this is wrong) was Summer Rain not losing HER son as well; she could have found anyone to deliver the mail, but she chose the raiders because she saw what they were, and also saw that Summer Rain was hurting.
She was basically forcibly strongarming him into joining the postal service and doing the right thing and being a good pony, and what she did was a very straightforward way of doing it. Plus, given that he defended her from Dust Devil earlier in the story, it wasn't that risky.
Didn't really bother me that much, though it may be true that it is easy to forget. Felt organic to me, though; I never had a problem with it.
Seems a bit necessary for the tension you were going for; he's putting up the pretense of being a badass raider, and then we see over the course of it that he's really just a bored kid who thinks that this would be cool to do. Also, chapter 9 is from his point of view, while chapter 3 is from Derpy's; in chapter 3, he seems like he's some sort of dangerous raider because that's all Derpy really knows, whereas in chapter 9, we see a bunch of bored kids who are trying to be cool, and Tale Spin knows what they're doing to some extent.
Sure, but on the other hand, them finding a dead body and pretending to be badass seems reasonable. Plus, Corkscrew immediately ruining it for the rest of them is funny, because it gives away that they're not really what they seem to be.
Maybe? I don't know. My understanding was that Derpy ended up doing what she did with who she did because she was a mom and because she sympathized with Summer Rain and didn't want her to "lose" her kid, too, as well as because of the postal service thing.
What would you do to bridge that gap?
If there was a problem, honestly I think it was the very end of chapter 8 ending on a bit of a weak note, rather than chapter 9 revealing what Derpy was up to. The Unspoken Plan Guarantee seemed to be in full force there.
Well, the raiders came off to me as a bunch of dumb kids who thought it would be cool to go out and do bad things, but who end up spending a lot of time talking about doing bad things rather than actually doing them. And, well, I was thinking about this:
I don't think it really would have improved the story, and I felt like the tone it had worked well enough without making it darker.
I read an interesting theory a while back that the real reason people stopped fighting wars of conquest was because historically, land had been more valuable than people were, because of the extreme prevalence of agriculture; now, what is on the land is more valuable than the land itself, so unless you can capture what is actually valuable, you aren't really getting all that much and have to spend horrible amounts of money to take and hold it.
I don't know that I really believe it, though.
2844740 I think the only thing playing the game buys you is that you'll get a reference to cans of beans, and maybe something about bottlecaps. Stuff that shouldn't have been in the story anyway because it's just distracting. I guess that means playing Fallout makes F:E worse.
2844815
That's what I had in mind, or at least how I justified it to myself, but I didn't know if that got across.
I'm obligated to disagree here. When it comes to fannon, you are under no obligation to do what seems to be the most popular. There are stories where Lyra isn't obsessed with anything, where Octavia is boring, and where Time Turner isn't a time lord, and yet they're still well-written and sympathetic characters. Here's a classic: How often do you see Nightmare Moon's imprisonment in the moon depicted as her literally walking around on the moon and building moondust castles? There's metric butloads of comedic stories, art, and other fan creations that show this, but that doesn't ever mean that the occasional more serious story that talk about something different is doing it wrong.
*Pause in writing to reload page*
2844779
2844814
Gah! Darn gosh fudge. Now I'll never know where this post was going to go, but it would totally have eventually been somewhere convincing. (No it wouldn't.)
Bad Horse: Stop comparing your Derpy to Fallout:Equestria's Ditzy Doo. Could the Derpy you used in The Mailmare have been improved? Sure. Edit in some more smiles. Was the Derpy you created the right character for the story that The Mailmare became? Absolutely. She felt part of that story and that world. There's only so much you can improve on by comparison here because there is no Derpy that's been written in exactly the position you put her in.
As for show canon, consider that her characterization there came from the fandom. Contrast that with Luna in Nightmare Night. Derpy/Ditzy Doo is a background/fanon character through and through.
Would personally attribute rising morality to technology but trade and mercantile activity. It is these things that yield profit, not technology per se...it has been a long, long time since war has truly been motivated by poverty in a Malthusian sense. Notice that North Korea has access to the same technology the rest of the world does, but it lags significantly in morality and profit. Mercantile activity is also a softening thing, makes creatures moral, promotes friendship. This is not necessarily true of technology....
Goodness, you are mean to your ponies....
2844884
Of course, one interesting point of view is that mortality itself is a form of technology, and over time, the technology of morality has improved. We're better at convincing people that dying in war is bad, that war is bad for business, that whatever issues we may have are better solved via diplomacy than violence. We are better at getting people to empathize with others, getting people to put themselves in other people's shoes, to feel bad for people who are outside of their Monkeysphere. We're better at invoking feelings of noblesse obligee in the population in general, and better at getting people to care about whether or not some civilian we don't even know dies in an arid hellhole on the opposite side of the planet. We can convince wealthy people that it is in their own enlightened self interest to oppose war, or that spreading freedom is good for their bottom line.
P.S.--
Princess Livana Nikolayova Derpy.
Thank you and good night.
A better story? Maybe. It certainly would have had a much stronger emotional impact, both on the readers and on the characters involved. It would have also put a much darker tone on the story, to the point that an act of assault and Derpy's subsequent return might overshadow (pardon the pun) the rest of the narrative.
This echoes the sentiments of one of my literary heroes and avatar namesake: Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. To paraphrase; the best way to bring about order and social reform when everyone is more concerned about fighting over a bigger slice of the pie is to increase the size of the pie.
2845040
Yes, you're probably right. Anyway, I like the story better without it, so there's that, too.
*skims/skips comments*
I will read this later tonight. However I did want to say that I am intrigued.
From what you say in this post about the ending reminds me of the old horror films of the 50/60's.
Some of them ended rather ambiguously. Others the villain won, others no one did.
Those to me are some of the better ways to end, nowadays its all about the hero winning or redemption. And that has gotten to be a rather overused trope.
2844972
*mind blown*
2844730 I've heard that theory several times, but I think it's wishful thinking. Historically, religion was, I think, often used to discourage inquiry into the nature of the world, and seldom to encourage it. God was the answer to all tough questions; there was no point in asking where the colors of the rainbow come from, or where weather comes from, or why apples fall; the answer was always "because God wills it".
The notion that the world has rules to it that can be discovered comes from the ancient Greeks. Christians did nothing with it for 1200 years, until they got copies of ancient Greek writings from Muslims. Christians started to read Aristotle in the 12th century, eventually leading to the Renaissance and natural science, but the Catholic Church fought them all the way, from the Condemnations of 1210-1277 to the suppression of Copernicus and Galileo. Science couldn't get going until after the Anglicans and Protestants split off from the Catholics and people could talk and write a little more freely.
2844972 Some of these advances are due to technology, however. Nuclear weapons and the concept of mutually assured destruction has (for now) risen the cost of conflict such that no major powers engage in total war with each other anymore. Many have argued that television coverage of wars (beginning with Vietnam) -- and the ability to show the public the horrors of war -- contributed to changing the American public's views on war. One might also argue that the Internet and its ability to easily connect people from across the globe has helped us care more about people in far away lands (though others have pointed to the Internet and its fragmentation of the news media into many different echo chambers as contributing to increasing political polarization, so maybe the jury is still out on this issue). Perhaps there are some examples of advances that come purely from ideological change (e.g. democracy, abolitionism, civil rights), but technology in many cases plays a big role.
2844740
The game is not really required, and while there are a lot of references to all four games (with Fallout 1 and 2 being fundamentally different from 3 and New Vegas) it's nothing a brief skimming of Wikipedia or TvTropes can't solve.
2844884
2844972
Depending on the definition of technology, every tool, intellectual or physical, is it. I tend to use the larger definition myself, considering that, for example, algorithms are technological developments, even if they exist in their purest form only as abstractions.
Economical instruments and ideas are also technology, both abstract (economical theory, business management) and physical (the existing bank system, High Frequency Trading infrastructure). If a time traveler could bring a few modern textbooks from an MBA course to the middle of the 19th century, we could have an interesting "Taking over the world" scenario. Something the "The Merchant Princes" series by Stross did quite admirably.
2845518
While there were obviously cases of religion being used to discourage inquiry, it was hardly universal. Even discounting European and Christendom cases, as mentioned in your own response, other religions like Islam did not prevent advancement. And of course, it's not like the Greeks were universally superior in the sciences; multiple egregiously erroneous beliefs were started in ancient cultures and only corrected in the (religious) environments of later societies.
If you want a more in-depth look at the idea Not_A_Hat brought up, I'd suggest reading the essay 21st Century Magic. In fact, I'd highly recommend looking at all of the articles in the series - they're a good examination of religion, science, pseudoscience, and a bunch of related topics by an author who's fairly objective. There are a lot of very relevant things he discusses, but since I haven't indexed the pages' content I'd rather post this than delay further in order to look more up. However, a few that I did check while trying to locate those previous links:
Why Religious Believers Don't Take Intellectuals Seriously
Why Intellectuals Don't Take Religious Believers Seriously
Why Science Cannot Address the Existence of God
What Religion Can and Cannot Do
Why Science Can't Accept Miracles (Even if They Really Exist)
What Religion Can Learn From Science
I liked the story for it's unpopular things. I think the conclusions you pointed out do run counter to the show's general thrust, but plenty of excellent stories on this site do just that. I like it for being different, honestly. And Derpy going back to the raiders first made sense in my head, don't know about anyone else though. It didn't stick out as a leap in logic, let's say.
2845632
Yes, as I said, I couldn't have done it in 15k words. I don't think I could've done it at all, really, It was a bad idea, and wish I hadn't said it, which is why I deleted it from my post hours before your comment. I guess you replied hours after loading the page?
2845998
Something like that, sorry, let me edit it out.
2844814
I think, IIRC, that Derpy/Ditzy in F:E has adopted Dinky after the apocalypse. I don't know if she ever lost a daughter. Plus, you know, it's been how many decades since she got ghoulified? No matter what may had or hadn't happened to her, she's probably got the perspective and time to mellow out from it.
I am so coarse, the things bad horses see
Are obstinately invisible to me
Yes, she wasn't very ditzy, but I think the more important fact here is that you captured her innocence. That's what i think is her defining feature. It's why she can be such a clutz but everyone (especially the reader) loves her anyway; she's innocent and has an honest earnestness about her.
Besides, why try to write everyone else's Derpy? You're the author here, you can give your own spin on her.
I can't imagine why it wouldn't be. She's making sure it is Tale Spin and his crew (I'm sure it's not too difficult to misidentify ponies when high up in the clouds), and she also has to prepare his appearance in order for the deception to work. Besides, structurally the scene works well that way; Derpy shows up a new and empowered mare, unbeknownst to the raiders, and pulls out her ace in the hole, her secret weapon: Summer Rain. It's the classic 'bad guy doesn't think he'll ever see good guy again but then he does, causing the bad guy surprise, and to top it all off the good guy whallops him with something he wasn't expecting'. It's a great victory moment for Derpy, is what I'm saying, and having her descend with Summer Rain instead of building up to it would I think ruin the effect.
I don't recall it feeling too sudden during my first read through, but I can understand how you might worry about that. And while yes, chapter 9 is quite different in tone and characterization, I think it works because of the very important fact that this is all after Dinky's letter. Things are different now--primarily Derpy. And that's how it ought to be, really, because it shows the power of that letter (and any letter like it in this version of Equestria). The playing grounds have shifted.
And Woohoo congrats on seventh place dude!
2848928
That's why I did it-not because it seemed the most sensible thing, but because it was the most dramatically-appropriate thing. Which is why I'm suspicious of it.
2844477
You'd think so, and maybe it does, but parents who've lost a child usually keep lots of reminders around them.
2849241
Ah. Well, setting aside the fact I think it is sensible within the story, this raises an interesting question: in fiction writing, which is best--the most sensible thing in real life, or the most "dramatic"?
Hmm that's a bad question though. It makes it look like "both" isn't an option, when it is.
I had something to say but I forgot it.