Character Retrospective: Winter Breeze

Image Made by RainbowSurvivor.

When writing Survivor's Guilt, I was presented with an interesting challenge. With a hero like Scootaloo, you need a proper antagonist for them to play opposite to. Since the ultimate purpose is to achieve redemption, she'd need someone to face off against, and with Scootaloo's backstory, the logical choice was the Enclave.

But how do you write the Enclave? The simplest way is to just go with what you see in the games, so originally I just made a straight up John Henry Eden clone. Then, I started thinking about it more and more, and reached the conclusion that the best way to do it was in fact to go the opposite direction, to make her a true foil to Scootaloo in that she's a villain of the piece, trying to help Equestria, and so Winter Breeze as we know her was born.

But of course it wasn't as simple as her just being a villain of the piece, so I drew on my knowledge of pop culture and similar characters and I came out with an idea. That the reason that she's doing this, is because she's trying to give her daughter a better world to live in, that all foals have a better world to live in free of fear of war, famine, raiders, and slavers. Her ultimate motivation is altruistic, even if it became a bit of twisted altruism given what she used to build it.

In fact actually the idea of Rockhoof's Thunder, though not the details, came from a conversation I had early on with Somber. He suggested that the Enclave could be after a Megaspell that Scootaloo had locked away in one of the Stables. So the question of course became how it was locked away, but that was easy enough to deal with. I had already decided in an RP that laid some of the groundwork for the fic that she was Scootaloo's descendant, and then when I added the keys that secured everything and set up the proper foreshadowing for the big chapter 19 reveal.

And really, the plan was always her eventual heel-face-turn, though interestingly enough we actually added her being married to Spectra at kind of the last moment. Originally she was going to be a single mother, but I liked the idea of Spectra being Calypso's father, so we went with it.

But what about Winter herself? Where does a lot of the intricacies of her character come from? I'm here to tell you actually, and admittedly a lot of her details are borrowed from elements of characters from other media, but I did everything I could to make her original.

So lets list them off:

1. President John Henry Eden:

Video belongs to Bethesda.

Lets get the obvious one out of the way first. Yes, some elements were borrowed from John Henry Eden, in particular her radio addresses were modeled on his as opposed to anything else as well as the title. However this is actually only a little bit of the inspiration for Winter Breeze as that was all I really used for her.

So, if Eden wasn't the inspiration from Fallout, who was? Well that's actually quite simple.

2. Colonel Augustus Autumn:

Video belongs to The Enclave Guy.

Colonel Autumn in many ways is the opposite of Eden. While Autumn was most definitely Enclave and had an authoritarian style as a result, he actually didn't want to just kill everyone. Instead his plan was to provide clean water to the Wasteland in exchange for loyalty, no loyalty, no water it was that simple.

From this we got Winter's actual genuine desire to provide food, water, and medicine to Equestria. However like Autumn she knows that just giving it away won't do any good, so she uses it to stabilize the Wasteland, making it stronger as a result. She doesn't want to kill unless necessary, she just wants to provide a stable world for ponies to live in.

This also ties into her ultimate purpose for taking control of a Megaspell. She doesn't actually want to use it, she intends to use it as a last resort move only and wants her enemies to come to the negotiation table. Its a much more noble goal and more in line with Autumn's New Enclave thinking than the old.

I'm going to wrap up the Enclave section with this fascinating study of the Enclave in Fallout 3:

Video Belongs to ShoddyCast

And now we move on to characters that inspired her motivations outside of Fallout.

3. Lelouch vi Britannia and Jacen Solo/Darth Caedus:

Video belongs to the creators of Code Geass.

Video belongs to Maluhan.

Okay, so I kind of grouped these two together because they were the inspiration for very much the same reason.

As I said before, Winter's motivation was to give her daughter a better world to call home, even if she had to do unethical things to get to that point. Both Jacen and Lelouch were more than willing to do the same, becoming terrorists and even tyrants in the name of the greater good. It really all comes down to motivation.

Can evil be done in the name of the greater good? In fiction, and in reality depending on how you look at it, yes. But really, it was what drove her to it that they contributed. They are two of my favorite examples of this kind of character in fiction, and I was happy to draw inspiration from them in some small way.

Of course, Winter got a much happier ending than either of them did.

So lets move on to your basic aesthetic inspirations. Some of you already know about them, but I might as well include them.

4. Dr. Sofia Lamb.

Video belongs to 2K games.

If you ever want to know what Winter sounds like, you don't have to look much farther than the villain of the sadly underrated game BioShock 2.

Its actually not just her voice either, Winter got some of her mannerisms and the repeated phrase "Ask yourself..." More than that, Winter and Sofia share this idea of Altruism, and they both take it to some extreme. The difference being that Winter knew when to step back and realize that she's gone too far, and that her Altruism had become twisted.

Maybe I'm an optimist, but I didn't have to give Winter a happy ending, but still, she will have to live with her mistakes for the rest of her life.

5. President Laura Roslin.

Video belongs to Syfy, I think.

Laura Roslin is kind of an interesting inspiration for Winter in that specifically she inspired her backstory.

Both characters started out as schoolteachers who eventually went into politics for their own reasons. Winter was ultimately trying to change the school system of the Enclave, once again showing her sense of altruism. And eventually them being part of their respective governments, and the sole survivor in the line of succession, lead to them becoming President.

But more than that, both characters are forced to make tough choices over the course of their presidencies for the greater good of those under them. Its ultimately this that motivates them to do the right thing, even if they sometimes have to do the wrong thing for the right reasons, and I'm happy to include her among those that inspired Winter.

So, what does all of this mean? Winter was always meant to be a complicated character that had many layers to her, not just a straight up villain. I enjoyed writing her and drawing inspiration from some of my favorite characters and stories.

I hope you all enjoyed this little look into Winter Breeze, and I'll finish things up with a picture of her and her family.

Picture made by the always amazing ScarletsFeed.