Happy Horsepionage Day! Featuring content that EqD rejected for being terrible! · 2:41am Aug 9th, 2017
It's the sixth anniversary of Pony Gear Solid, or as near to it as we'll get without the original Google documents. You know what that means...!
Contrary to how I hyped this up in my earlier blog, I don't have a lot to say right now, and what I do have to say probably won't be all that exciting. Or even fun. Though I shall do so, without apology, regardless, marking the sixth anniversary of my longest-running story feels disingenuous to me.
Oh, but before I start moping, you should probably know that 17 is coming along smoothly, though it got sidelined a bit as I started working on my entry for a certain contest.
ahem
Whereas a sixth anniversary might be, in other stories, a moment to reflect on the dedication and commitment that's necessary to carry a project forward for so long, for me, it's just another reminder at how badly I failed to maintain PGS after inception. This story's been on a constant cycle of stop-and-go since 2011, and not only have I yet to finish it, it's taken drastic turns and as my own tastes and creative vision for it have changed. But, with any luck, this'll be its final anniversary while it's unfinished, and a year from now, we can look back on a story that, for better or for worse, did at least eventually get done.
For the record... when all's said and done, I think PGS will be better for this roller-coaster-esque publishing schedule. Especially for the two years where I just put it down and walked away entirely. MGSV's completion and release has influenced this story more than you can probably know right now (though there are hints here and there), and the last few seasons of MLP, while admittedly uneven, have added elements to the lore of the universe that I think the story is richer for incorporating. I've gone back to previous chapters and done some work to tweak them, as I'll probably continue to do for a long time to come (just now, for instance, I made a subtle tweak to chapter eight during the Apple Bloom/Applejack scene), and I've done my best to give this story and others I've published over the last year a sense of scope that, hopefully, grows it beyond the constraints of "shlocky cartoon video game crossover."
In short, writing this beast in fits and starts has given me time to reflect on it, on the direction that I want to take it. I can't guarantee it'll be a particularly good story, when all's said and done... but it's better than it could have been.
Which I intend to make clear in the following excerpt. 
When I first conceived of PGS, I had no idea what to do or where to take it beyond the very most basic elements of the story: Snake goes to Equestria to fight a PMC called Pegasus Wings, and teams up with the ponies in the process. There was no Trenton. There was no Lord of the Flies subplot. No god-emperor. No Patriots social engineering. No "Twilight Sparkle faces moral dilemmas." No "Apple siblings feuding for improbable reasons." And not enough crying or hugging. I don't think I even had an outline to work with. Just a series of ideas, things I wanted to see happen in the story. No real plan to get from A to B to C, and to make it all hang together. Worst of all?
No Killjoy.
Obviously, things are different now. I mean, for one, I write these in Google docs, instead of WordPad.
So I put together a draft of a chapter that was essentially just Snake galumphing around Ponyville and talking to Otacon on the radio before stumbling off to go do... something. There was little context given for his actions, and I don't think I'd even come up with a plausible way of explaining how he got to Equestria; he just was in Ponyville, and that was enough. The narrative, and prose, were weak, there are plenty of lines that the modern fandom would consider clicheic (especially the opener, jfc, that was probably stale even back in 2011), and the characters and their voices were... unclear. Hell, even the version of the story that I eventually went with had weak, unclear character voices. Especially Applejack, the drunken violent psychopath.
I threw it all together in a night, and submitted it to EqD, who rejected it. The reasons why should be, uh, manifold. I'd pull up the rejection email, but I'll be honest, just thinking about this fills me with great and terrible shame, and I haven't even read the excerpt itself, beyond just skimming it real quick when I found the file. I can tell you what's in there, in broad strokes, but I can't give you much detail on the nitty-gritty.
You'll notice a few differences, I'm sure. The memoir conceit, as a framing device, wasn't a part of the story at this juncture (as I recall, I came up with it in a fit of writer's block, and used it to justify period perspective shifts from first to third person). Otacon's in Equestria, with Snake... and he brought a helicopter... somehow... uh...
...But there's stuff in here that ended up in the final version of the story. You'll know that when you see it, too, I'm sure.
This is the first time nobody besides but myself, and whoever was pre-reading for EqD that night, has seen. I don't think even Editor Man, or even Editor Man 1.0, has seen it before. You're getting a real treat, albeit one laced with highly carcinogenic chemicals that'll probably give you all eyeball cancer. So read on, my friends, and understand that, no matter how bad things are now, they could have been much, much worse. And mark this day on your calendars for next year, where you'll get the original version of chapter four, featuring a tasteless and ill-advised joke about a timberwolf raping Twilight Sparkle that offended everybody who read it* (obviously, I'd never stoop to that kind of comedy again), and Fluttershy acting like literally any character you can think of besides Fluttershy!
Beneath Luna's azure sky, as Equestria slept undisturbed, the soldier of legend, Solid Snake, stalked swiftly through Ponyville, unseen, unheard and completely unheeded by the slumbering town's citizens.
"This is Snake. Do you read me, Otacon?" Snake knelt within an alley, hidden from the open streets by a wooden crate, which he rested his back against.
"Coming in loud and clear," Otacon's voice replied from the other end of his Codec. "Which is remarkable, given the circumstances. What's the situation?"
"None so far. I'm at the sneaking point." Snake drew a pair of binoculars from a pouch on his belt. Turning and peering out from behind his cover, he raised them to eye level. "I can see the path that I'm going to be taking. Took me a while to find it though. This place is like a maze."
"Where are you right now?" Otacon inquired. "The downside to this mission is that there's literally no intel to speak of that I can provide you with. I'd scout the terrain from the air for you, but using the Kasatka would only draw undo attention onto us, and I've known you long enough to have figured out that you don't seek the spotlight. Seems you'll be filling me in as you go this time, instead of the other way around."
"Too true. But let's not mince words, Otacon," said Snake, eying the landscape before him. "This mission's pretty much all downside."
It was an old-style village that he found himself in--hay-roofed houses and cottages, their architecture evoking in Snake images of traditional German homes. "I'm in some sort of rustic town. No trappings of a modern civilization anywhere Not a car or neon light in sight; buildings don't look any higher than two or three stories..."
"You don't suppose the people living here are like the Amish, do you?” Otacon pondered. “Living separate from whatever society this place has, bereft of any technology?"
"I passed a farm on my way here. Call that evidence in favor." Snake's binoculars zeroed in on a particular stretch of road that led into a meadow, dotted here and there with trees. As keen as his vision was, the darkness still limited how far he could see, so he thumbed the switch on his scope for night vision. Sure enough, there was a faded and well-beaten path that led into a dense wall of foliage.
"That's definitely the forest," said Snake. "Getting from here to there should be easy. Finding where to go from there, well...that'll be the fun part."
"Hey, now don't get discouraged," said Otacon. "If we're right, and there's a PMC operating in this region, then they shouldn't be too hard to track down. Just follow the tank tracks and the trail of bodies."
"PMCs..." Snake muttered thoughtfully. "Kind of a troubling new fad, those mercenary armies."
"'Fad,' nothing. With so many combat hotspots in the world, a lot of states are finding that the cost of maintaining a government funded military body outstrips their own GDP. It's actually becoming a cheaper, more efficient alternative to hire a mercenary army to fight your war for you than to raise an army of citizens on your own. Sad as it is to say, it's looking more and more likely that most, if not all, future armed conflicts will be fought entirely by proxy armies."
"Sounds like the kind of situation Big Boss would have appreciated. Which one do you suppose is the one that's dilly-dallying here?"
"Hmm. If I had to guess, either Pieuvre Armament or the Concord Minutemen. Those are the only two PMCs I can think of with enough resources to mount a fully-funded expedition into international waters."
"And beyond," added Snake with a grumble. "Amazing that the U.N. hasn't stepped in to provide oversight where it's needed."
"The Manhattan Incident's had some pretty far-reaching aftershocks," Otacon pointed out. "Think of it as a domino effect on the rest of the world. There's been so much turmoil that's come about because of the incident that the U.N.'s had its hands full just trying to contain the situation. Means that there's nobody to keep an eye on a rogue private military company looking to stake a claim."
"The Pacific Fleet's barely left Pearl Harbor since the incident, except to provide coastal security for the west coast," growled Snake. "And the few ships still deployed nationally are acting strictly as protection for American interests. Still, what's to stop the Navy from sending a carrier group this way? They take Metal Gear threats seriously these days; don't tell me that they wouldn't spare a carrier and a RAY squad for something like this."
"I have it on good authority from a Lieutenant Commander Mei Ling that the Navy is largely unaware of any PMC activity this far south," said Otacon. "Apparently, she's using all the clout she has to keep this information suppressed. I suppose she'd rather see us take care of this than the U.S. military, knowing how thinly stretched their resources are at this point in time. Not to mention all the trouble they could cause. Could land her in hot water, though, if they ever found out she was funneling it to us instead of passing it to her superiors."
"Nuts to her. I've been warning Mei Ling for years that something like would happen sooner or later. You won't see me crying over her."
"Snake..." Otacon's voice was chiding. Snake relented with a sigh.
"Fine. I'll try not to say 'I told you so' if she gets caught." Snake eyed his path in silence for a few moments, musing upon what Otacon had told him. "'Lieutenant Commander,' huh?" At her age? How'd she climb the ranks so quickly?"
"I imagine that'd be the reason behind that clout," Otacon said dryly. "Don't you think we've been chit-chatting for a little too long now,Snake? All talk, no action?""Yeah, yeah," said Snake dismissively, stowing his binoculars away once again. "Down to business then. What do you think, twenty-four hours for this one? Forty-eight, max?"
"Very funny, Snake, but you know that I don't like wagering on missions after the Tanker Incident."
"That's just because you lost fifty bucks on that one," Snake said with a chuckle.
"I'm serious." Snake exhaled sharply and rolled his eyes; Otacon may have been eight years his junior, but he could be such a dad to Snake sometimes. "Look, you need to be extra careful this time around. You're unarmed besides your tranq gun, there's an unknown quantity of enemy soldiers lying in wait, and besides all that, you're in completely unfamiliar territory as it is. No need to get careless."
"And you have no need to worry, Otacon," Snake countered. "We've been through this routine so many times over the last four years that I've started keeping a running tally of the cliches we encounter." He snickered. "There's absolutely no chance of anything on this mission surprising me in the least."
"Hell-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO~ there!" a high-pitched, girlish voice sang from behind him.
Snake whirled one hundred and eighty degrees and launched a right hook. There was a loud cracking sound as his fist made contact with his assailant's jaw, and it crumpled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
Snake looked down at the assailant somewhat numbly, a little flabbergasted by what he saw. Four legs, pink fur, curly bubblegum-pink mane, not so much larger than a doberman. All strange attributes for any creature to have. Stranger still, it talked—no, sang—to him; this thing that looked like a—
"Snake? Snake?! Do you copy?!"
"Still here, Otacon," Snake mumbled, still staring vacantly .
"What happened?"
"I think I've encountered one of the locals."
"Is that right?" Otacon's voice turned smug all of a sudden. “So, no surprises, huh? I don't suppose that getting caught within the first five minutes of a mission is one of those cliches that you keep track of?”
“Cut the holier-than-thou,” Snake grumbled. “This is an exception, not the rule.” He stooped beside the prone, unconscious body, glancing over it closely. “I wish you could be here to see it. It's like nothing I've ever encountered before.”
“Sure it is,” Otacon teased. “It got the drop on you, right? Maybe it's Meryl.”
Snake pressed a hand to his forehead and squeezed his thumb and middle finger against his temples. “I mean that it's abnormal, Otacon. It's some sort of talking pony.”
Otacon's line was silent for a troublingly long time before he replied. “'Talking pony.' Snake, when was the last time you slept?”
“I'm serious,” said Snake. “It's smallish, horse-shaped, pink, has some kind of balloon tattoo on its butt. And it talked to me.”
“Are you sure you're not misinterpreting something, Snake? Maybe you should get more familiar with the locals before--”
“I'm looking right at it, Otacon, and I heard it talk with my own ears. It's a fucking talking pony.”
“Alright, alright,” said Otacon hurriedly. “No need to get hostile. So what happened? Did you evade it? Where is it now?”
“It's...” Snake prodded the pony gently with one finger. It emitted a sharp giggle that caused Snake to draw back and reach for his tranquilizer gun out of habit, before it settled back and smacked its lips serenely. “...starting to snore.”
“You tranq'd it?”
“Nope. Punched it in the face.”
“...But you said it was asleep.”
“I know.”
“But then you said that you punched it in the face.”
“I know.”
“Things don't snore when you punch them in the face, Snake.”
“Stop back-talking to me, dammit! I know what I said, and I know what I did. This thing's just a freak of nature. For all I know, I could make candy fall out of it by hitting it again.”
“Awfully foul mood you're in, Snake.”
“Yeah, small wonder,” muttered Snake. He glanced about himself quickly, looking for someplace to stash the pony. Across the road was a wheelbarrow containing a mountainous haystack. “That ought to do nicely.”Snake wrapped an arm around the pony's torso and heaved, throwing it over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. The pony moaned in its sleep, fidgeting. “f'r all the choc'lit, you say? ...sorry Cheerilee, but'cher number's come up...”
This makes Vamp look downright mundane by comparison, thought Snake as he tossed the pony into the wheelbarrow. He arranged the hay carefully over her body, leaving room for the pony to breathe while ensuring that she remained adequately covered. “Otacon, it's Snake. My little pony's been disposed of. I'm commencing the operation now.”
“Atta boy, Snake. And hey, at least now you know what to expect.”
“Gotta disagree, Otacon.” He peered into the night again, down the path that would lead him into that distant, overgrown forest. “I'm starting to think that I was wrong before. Maybe this one won't be so easy to predict.”
Applejack awoke to the sound of thunderous pounding against the front door. With a shudder, she reached for her pillow and tugged it hard over her head, covering her ears in a vain effort to block out the noise. “Applebloom!” she called groggily. “Get th'door!”
She received no response, nor heard the sound of dainty young hooves clopping against the floor as her sister trotted to answer the door. Applejack shut her eyes tighter as the knocking resumed. “Where in the hay—consarn filly couldn't sleep a wink last night; too excited to hang out with her friends. Don't that usually mean she's an early riser?”
The pounding on the door quickened. “Tarnation!” groaned Applejack as she hatlessly dragged herself onto all fours and shakily made her way towards the door. “Wouldja that racket?! Are y'all knockin' on that door, or stampedin'?!”
Early mornings were nothing new to Applejack—far from it; they were an Apple Family tradition, especially during applebucking season—but there was a specific time for a pony to rise bright and early, and that time was any day besides that pony's day off. Since Applebloom hadn't bothered to answer the door, thus forcing upon her sister a rude awakening, Applejack could only conclude that she'd snuck out at the crack of dawn, either not wanting to bother her kin by waking them to tell them where she was going, or not wanting to get caught up in morning chores when the rest of the family finally wrested themselves awake. Applejack's suspicions lay with the latter, and she promised herself that the filly would get an earful the second she came home.
A bleary eyed Big Mac poked his head into the room, as Applejack entered. He glanced warily at the door. “S'alright, brother; I got this'un,” Applejack assured him, nudging the door open with her muzzle. Her grateful brother withdrew from the room.
Applejack rubbed at her eyes and smiled tiredly at the sight of her visitors. “Well, now there's a sight f'r sore 'n sleepy eyes. Missin' one o'yer number though, ain'tcha?”
Standing on the stoop were Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle, eyes shining, nodding furiously. “We came to get Applebloom so that we could put our new plan to get our Cutie Marks into action!” Scootaloo babbled excitedly. She and Sweetie Belle pressed against each other, blank flank to blank flank, and cried aloud “Cutie Mark Crusader Paleontologists!”
Applejack tilted her head quizzically at the twosome. “Paleo...who now?”
“S'what you call somepony who hunts for old bones n'fossils!” explained Sweetie Belle. “We spent all morning working out the pronunciation!”
“We're gonna start by excavating the center of Ponyville! Sweetie Belle's done some reading, and she thinks there might be ruins of an ancient civilization buried underneath the town! Can't imagine where we'd be without her.” Sweetie Belle kicked a hoof against the stoop sheepishly, averting her eyes and giving a blushing smile, as Scootaloo carried on. “Just think how awesome it'd be if it were true! A lost city, right here in Ponyville! It'd be the biggest historical find since they uncovered Ponypeii below Mount Vehoofius!” Scootaloo leaned forward, grinning wickedly, and winked at Applejack. “Can ya dig it?!”
A bit taken aback by Scootaloo's fervor at so early an hour, Applejack could only scratch her mane with an idle hoof thoughtfully while reflecting on how grateful she was to have a Cutie Mark that didn't carry with it a bunch of big words and nonsense. “Well, buckin's more my thing, less so diggin'. More power to y'all if'n you pull it off...but shouldn't Applebloom be with y'allready? She was bouncin' off th'very walls last night, chatterin' about seein' you two in the morn, so I figgered she ducked out early n'went off to meet'cha.” Applejack scowled. “Silly filly knows she ain't s'posed t'do that.”
The wind robbed from her tiny, developing wings, Scootaloo edged back and exchanged a worrying look with Sweetie Belle. “We haven't seen her at all today,” said Sweetie Belle earnestly. “And we just now got together at the clubhouse before running over here, so she couldn't be there now.” A shadow fell over Sweetie Belle's face. “You haven't seen her...we haven't seen her...you don't think something's happened to her...do you?”
Scootaloo gasped and threw her hooves onto Sweetie Belle's shoulders, wrenching her body to look her in the eye. “It must have been the Cockatrice!”
Sweetie Belle cocked her head at Scootaloo. “The Cockatrice?” she asked skeptically. “I don't think it could ever be bold enough to come after one of us after the treatment it got from Fluttershy.”
Scootaloo snorted and rolled her eyes. “Duh! Obviously, it got cocky, stalked us, waited until Fluttershy was too busy to pull our flanks out of the fire and took Applebloom away as revenge! We need to get Fluttershy over here pronto!”
Sweetie Belle mimicked her friend's gasp, latching onto her paranoia. “Gosh, maybe you're right! But if it's as cocky as you think, then maybe Fluttershy won't be enough to beat it this time!” She clapped her hooves together. “I know! We'll need spears! And knives! And sunglasses! Stone-proof sunglasses!”
“Good thinking, Sweetie Belle!” Scootaloo thumped her hooves together resolutely. “With your brains and my muscle, we'll save Applebloom from that nasty old Cockatrice for sure!”
Pressing close together again, the two cried with renewed conviction “Cutie Mark Crusader Rescue Squad!”
Smiling despite herself at the runaway trains of thought before her, Applejack leaned forward and placed a hoof on their both of their shoulders to calm them. “Now, now, y'all reign yerselves in. Call it mare's intuition, but somethin' in me's sayin' that Applebloom weren't kidnapped by any chicken dragon. She prob'ly just went off somewhere without tellin' anypony.”
“You don't mean...” Scootaloo gulped loudly, tears welling in her eyes, and Sweetie Belle wore an expression of ghastly shock. “She ditched us?!”
“Hold on now,” Applejack said quickly. “I didn't say nothin' like that, did I? Ain't no way in hay that Applebloom'd ever let you two down. Y'all mean more than all the jewels in Cannerlot to 'er!”
“R...really?” Scootaloo replied timidly, sniffling.
“Now now, y'all should know that I'm an honest gal.” Applejack patted the fillies' shoulders gently, reassuringly. “Applebloom's prob'ly plannin' a surprise for the both of you. Maybe she roped Pinkie Pie into it too; who knows? Little filly knows she ain't s'posed to go off without tellin' nopony but, well, try'n stop her. Gimme a minute to make m'self decent, and I'll poke around Sugarcube Corner for her.”
The duo brightened immediately, their feelings of neglect forgotten. “You will? Really?!” Scootaloo beamed at Applejack. “You aren't even worried about the Cockatrice?”
“This pony?” Applejack shook her head. “Naw. Ain't never yet met a critter didn't back down before old Applejack. Not even no Cockatrice. Now y'all skedaddle, and I'll send Applebloom your way with my blessin' and a plate of fritters, courtesy of Sweet Apple Acres, after I give her a scoldin', that is. So don't fret none.”
Cheering and shouting their gratitude behind them, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle turned tail and ran, kicking up a sizable cloud of dust in their wake. With them out of sight, Applejack's smile finally failed, and she bit her lip with worry.
(There is no animated version of that screencap that hasn't been edited to make it look like porn. fuck.)
*This is, of course, completely different from 2017's MLP canon, where, depending on the age difference, it's Timber Spruce possibly committing statutory rape with SciTwilight Sparkle. My, how the times change.
You know, I’d buy a story where Snake just ends up in Ponyville.
That man goes wherever he goddamn pleases.
I have no less than full four sets of jumbled story ideas, so I can relate. It's really freaking hard to plan out a good story.
Especially when you have certain things that you really want to see the characters do, but when you get to writing that part you realize if that character was right in front of me now, they'd reach out and backhand/hoof me for writing them doing something so stupid.
*cringes*
4628648 Right?!
It's still better than the Dodge arc.
Oh, have you been writing to us from some alternate universe where MGSV was actually finished, and if so can I move there?
I have to say, the sample of the original draft you've given us wasn't terrible, but... yeah, the version we have now is definitely a huge improvement.
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Something that longtime readers might find amusing: there was always going to be a moment where Snake punches Pinkie Pie into unconsciousness. Like, from the very start, I needed to make that happen.
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I wish I could offer encouragement, but I've only ever planned out bad stories, not good ones.
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Then by what sorcery do you get them to turn out so good?