Musings: The Core Problem of the FoE Redux Project · 2:40pm Apr 21st, 2018
As most people know by now, the FoE Redux project aims at remaking the Fall of Equestria universe, with a specific emphasis on the time from the Lindisbarne landing up to Equestria’s surrender, with the purpose of turning it into a consistent canon and then writing stories in this timeline, leading up to the Canterlot conquest and then to the conquest of the rest of Equestria. Of course, some heated debates have taken place in the course of this process on how exactly this can be done, and what the narrative aim should be. Recently, the questions regarding the aim have culminated in the debates pro and contra Bruised Apples.
These debates completely miss a core issue, even despite the fact that it was practically staring us in the face.
On the surface level, the issue is simple.
The Redux project is a project for the creation of a prequel. The debates were about the question: To which stories is the Redux supposed to be a prequel? Sapphire, myself and Cardinal to a degree, and some others want them to serve as a prequel to Bruised Apples (and in my case also to Freeville Chronicles). Derpsby and others want them to serve as a prequel to future stories that take place during a prolonged Dainn regime, or at least a prolonged period of caribou rule in Equestria. But we all implicitly agreed that they should be prequels - and that causes the usual issues prequels always face. However, in this case, there is another thing about them that makes this issue even worse. We will have to dig a little deeper to see the issue though.
On a deeper level, the concept of a story or set of stories leading up to the defeat of Equestria has another glaring problem that is connected to the prequel problem. Such a story has no narrative closure. The conquest of Equestria is not a story ending in the strict sense of the term. It’s far closer to the beginning of a story than to the end of one. Even prequel stories need to have narrative closure though - or in other words, they need to be actual stories instead of just beginnings of a later story. Now don’t get me wrong, the issue here is not that the bad guys win. Stories can have the bad guys win and still have narrative closure. Examples for this are novels like George Orwell’s 1984 or movies like Silence of the Lambs, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil or the Star Wars prequels. They have closed narratives and character arcs that stand on their own. This isn’t the case for the Redux project yet.
It also isn’t merely true for the overall story. It’s also true for the individual character arcs. For example, Dainn has to bring Cadence and Shining Armor to his side. Let’s say we find a logically consistent way this could be done. Even then, it would still be difficult to turn this way into a closed character arc. For example, I highly doubt that it could be mapped onto the Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Fall might work better, and I do think Cadence and Shining Armor could be tragic characters - but what exactly could possibly lead to this specific kind of tragic fall?
Of course, one can get around this easily by having the caribou somehow magically corrupt or mind-control them. A few suggestions have been made for that. However, aside from the world-building issue that this would cause the question of why the caribou don’t use this more often, it also leads to a narrative issue. If we did choose to go by such a solution, it would mean that Cadence and Shining Armor couldn’t be main characters / POV characters. They would have to be reduced to the status of side characters. Why? Because “they are magically corrupted” isn’t a satisfying conclusion to their individual character arcs. Of course, other characters like Celestia, Twilight, Discord, and so on have similar issues. So who could possibly serve as a main character of these stories, and what could their character arcs be?
The point of this essay can be summed up as follows: We need to think about what kinds of stories we even want to tell. Unfortunately, the series of events of the Fall that we have so far doesn’t even qualify as a story outline. A story is not just a series of events after all. This is not a world-building issue that can be fixed by debating about what kinds of fancy gadgets the caribou should have and how they should work and be used. This is a very deeply rooted narrative issue that we have to work out. On top of that, I also believe that as long as we don't work this out, we also won't find an agreement on the aims of the project, and on how it should relate to Bruised Apples or any other stories that take place later in the timeline.
Mirror threads in the forums:
Real Fall of Equestria Fangroup
Fall of Equestria: Redux
