Jul
4th
2018
Let's talk about that one part of Fallout Equestria · 10:05pm Jul 4th, 2018
I have confusing and conflicting feelings about Fallout Equestria, and I can't yet decide how I really feel something that's part shakespearean comedy of errors and part Fallout 3 Let's Play, but my... favourite part? I mean, I don't like the part, personally speaking, but it's a part I feel is particularly notable. It's horrible and tragic and kinda funny in a messed-up sense. Anyway, the part in question is this particularly messed-up sequence of events:
- A couple of cowardly adult Zebras fleeing their homeland are shot by the guards outside of Luna's magical school for kids. Because they couldn't have picked a better country-fleeing route, they just, at some point, entered THE TERRITORY OF THE COUNTRY THEIR COUNTRY IS AT WAR WITH and got suspiciously close to a school for kids. What, did they think Ponykind's kindness would never run out? Were they draft-dodgers who wanted to get free benefits?
- In response, a soldier of the Zebra army sneaks into equestria and sandy hooks Littlehorn, a Unicorn-only school of magic, killing all the kids and teachers using a Pink Cloud bomb. Which is basically The Cloud from Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money but worse because this story's deep and grimdark. Remember, this also canonically makes The Pink Cloud a chemical weapon and zebra invention. Also, this wasn't magic college for battle mages aged 21-24, this wasn't battle school for future warriors raised 6-16 or 12-18, this was a unicorn-only school for kids aged 6-11. And there wasn't even a "Lol our intel was bad so we can't be blamed for choosing to kill kids, our bosses said shoot until we run out of ammo and then keep shooting anyway, so we did" reason to "Justify" this. This was just something a Zebra soldier just did, this was something the Zebra high command didn't disavow, and this was something the Zebra populace didn't riot/protest over. Oh, but his Zebra kids were shot when they fled their homeland, so you should pity this child-killing school-bomber.
- Celestia just ****ing gives up on Equestria and this planet, abdicating the throne to Luna while she cries in her bedroom for a bit. Ok, for the entirety of the war, which is why Luna, halfway through the war, decided to hire The Mane Six to run "Ministries", governmental bodies that follow their orders to the letter and handle each pony's area of expertise. Twilight does science, Rarity handles the country's PR, and Pinkie Pie has dissenters dragged away in the middle of the night and drugged into happiness, because that's totally what Pinkie does and that's totally what the others would allow her to do.
- The Zebras assume this must be the end times because their stupid tribal animal religion says stars=eldritch abominations coming to destroy the earth, Luna=Nightmare Moon, and Nightmare Moon=The one who will end the world, so this must be the end times. After all, stars=far-off demons. And that certainly isn't a dumb Porquoi story Mommy Dirtherder made up to tell little Darkstriper why she has to sleep inside the tribal tents instead of outside where it's cooler and where the animals can get her. Nope, tribal beliefs are something special and magical, and certianly not bullshit Porquoi stories gone wrong gone sexual gone horribly wrong at 3AM he answered.
- The Zebras use voodoo to look into the future, and they see a hellish world blasted by nuclear fire. So they put nuclear hell spells in the Mega Spell Nuke Devices Fluttershy gave them as a gift of peace because it never occured to her that you could take a megaspell you charged with a healing spell, take the healing spell out, and put a Felfire/Fiendfyre/Whatever-it-was-called spell in.
- Zebras fire nukes first and Ponies fire nukes back in response, Zebras create that world of hellish nuclear fire they saw in their visions.
- The writer seems to think she created a warning story about the dangers of racism or something tragically beautiful and shakespearean, by having the "The world never left the 60s so everything slowly but steadily went to shit" nature of Fallout get ripped off in a fic featuring Equestria, without realizing that she wrote "The world never gave up on friendship and embraced the magic of eugenics and magical lesser-race-sterilization so everything slowly but steadily went to shit" in a story about magical talking ponies getting attacked by zebra pirates and zebra soldiers and other zebras literally too dumb to live or be allowed to live.
- Oh and there were peace talks at some point, but because "Equestria sent the wrong Princess" and the Zebras decided they'd only stop attacking FUCKING EQUESTRIA, LAND OF THE HAPPY PRANCING PONIES if Princess Luna stepped down, zebras attacked. Big Mac died, when the Zebras attacked over Princess Luna showing up for peace talks. Yeah, nothing says "Wow this struggle over resources turned into a holy war" like the Zebras mentally breaking one ruler and deciding the other is Satan during a war they started by protecting "Zebra Pirates" who "Certainly operate in international waters, no Equestria you can not check for yourselves".
My version of this has one of the greater Night Shadows, the entities from the Evil Stars whom the Zebras fear, be the one who manipulated the Zebras into doing this in the first place. Thus, not only is the Balefire War the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy that was set up by the very beings against whom the prophecy warns.
4894935
Yes, blaming the actions of evil Zebras on a race of malevolent dieties and making their kooky voodoo religion right all along will make the Zebras less evil and stupid.
You could do the same thing to Voldemort and the Death Eaters, if you wanted. That's how fanfic works.
4894935
I sometimes consider writing an AU Fequestria story where Luna actually did step down, and she gave absolute unchecked power to her Ministry Mares, which meant Zebras stepped down and postponed warfare for a while.
Just long enough for Twilight's "Super Mutant Alicorn" project to bear fruit and create a race that can beat Zebrakind down and force them to pay reparations for all the lives they took. I think I'll write this when I'm done with Sunrise Stardust's tragic tale.
4894943
The Night Shadows are the BIg Bads of my Shadow Wars Story Verse, and the mythos of the Evil Stars in Project Horizons plugged readily into the concept. I know of exactly what Human evil the Evil Stars obsession of the Zebras was supposed to be a Equinification, but I already have The Thing In The Stone lurking in a forbidden ruined temple in Saddle Arabia, which probably also derives from the Night Shadows (if they didn't just ally with it).
4894947
The behavior of the Ministers wasn't entirely irrational. One must judge it against the background that Equestria really was locked in a death-struggle against alien fanatics, unwittingly serving genocidal beings from beyond our world.
Pinkie Pie gets the most undeservedly-bad reputation. She was set the task of trying to defend a mostly open and liberal society against infiltration by insane terrorists at the same time that it was riddled with very real traitors (remember how Pinkie dies?) She has two great talents -- cheering Ponies up, and precognition. Well, cheering Ponies up only works so far when things are sliding rapidly toward Doomsday; and she ran herself ragged using her precognition to parry who knows how many terrorist WMD strikes.
She realized that she could use the Ment-alls and Super Ment-alls to amplify her precognitive talent. She also probably realized that the price of doing so would be her own sanity. She chose to sacrifice her sanity to try to save as many Ponies as possible, and in the end it drove her mad, turned her into a degraded parody of her own better self, and killed her.
In my book, Pinkie was a true heroine, and it was because of what she did that she was able to reach into the far future and contact both Littlepip and Blackjack, thus nudging events to give the reborn Equestrian nation hope of survival and recovery.
You got that wrong, it was Celestia who went to Stalliongrad where she was almost assassinated by a zebra before Big Mac sacrificed himself.
4894947
If Trixie hadn't actually fallen into the vat, which was due to the Zebra attack, the result might have been sane Neo-Alicorns, instead of the insane Goddess. It didn't help that neither Trixie nor Twilight, who were (remember) 1/4 each of the original Goddess, were all that sane by that point in the storyline.
4894959
Good point. A lot of readers overlook that aspect, I just thought it was absurd that the writer chose Rainbow Dash's Ministry to solely hold "It appears harmless and lame but is actually great" status. Surely, Pinkie would want to set hers up to look like a confused mess, a mismanaged PSA-producing propaganda sign-making waste of tax resources, with all the Unpersoning going on underneath that smiley veil, as a secret only one in four or fewer know about and can agree on.
Kinda funny how all of Equestria's actions are at least partially justified by the war and the awful situations they were in at the time, even when it comes to needing resources and thinking buying gems peacefully from Zebrica could work. Meanwhile, Zebrakind created the deadly cloud from FNV because I guess the Think Tank and what they were a metaphor for just doesn't exist in this setting. (Or won't, until I include my take on it)
4895052
If you're right, then sorry, please explain how it went down and how this led to Big Mac's death.