Apropos of Nothing In Particular... · 8:06am Oct 26th, 2016
What are folks' opinion on what the Equestrian equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency is named? I'm going to go ahead and say that SMILE is a more pugnacious variant of the FBI crossed with the Marshall's Service, if only because I loathe the name and the general attitude as described in canon. Not a great fan of what they did with "Agent Sweetie Drops". So, rival agency for foreign service and proper intelligence-work. Chengar Qordath calls them "EIS", or the "Equestrian Intelligence Service", but I don't want to lift that sort of thing wholesale from them. Also, I want to make it clear that In the Company of Night is definitively not in the Winning Pony continuity, if all this nonsense about the Chain of Creation didn't clue you in already on that front.
I could go British-bloodless and call them Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Section Nine. Ah! That's even an accidental Ghost In the Shell reference. Although I don't want to make that connection with SAS and Masamune Shirow's obsession with special forces bravado. Jame Bond nonsense aside, CIA NOCs are not swaggering dead-eyed killbots, but rather, are supposed to be modest mice too obscure and meek to be noticed by the feline agents of foreign counter-intelligence agencies.
Never heard of SMILE and I thought EIS was cannon
(I think I owe Chengar an apology ...)
Some suggestions:
Defense Intelligence Department (DID, this one may actually exist, though)
Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
Foreign Intelligence Department (FID)
Equestrian Bureau of Harmony (EBH)
Or you could go with something whose acronym is completely cutsie and/or ridiculous (would definitely fit the cannon Equestrian culture) ... heh, maybe something whose acronym is actually SPY or SPIES
4271773 Hrm. Special Projects Intelligence Evaluation Service. Sounds like an analytic shop, which would be good for misinformation campaigns from a counterintelligence point of view, but not so much in the field. And Equestrian Bureau of Harmony sounds like Celestia's Department of Defense. Wasn't there a series of Orwellian ministry names like that in Fallout: Equestria? I've only read some of Pink Eyes, I'm not generally familiar with that corner of fanon.
4271773 BTW: Lyra and Bon-Bon and the Mares From SMILE. I should actually read it, up to this point I haven't really warmed to any of the chapter books, but who knows?
4271787 Never read any Fallout: Equestria myself, but yeah I think I saw some mention of similarly themed ministries ...