Rage Review: Resist and Bite (Chapter 7) · 6:14am Mar 23rd, 2020
Chapter 7: Against the police
YEAH!!! Woo-hoo!!! Down with the police! Anarchy! An-ar-CHEE!!!! 
Oh no, wait, Charlie and LD are going to fight the Chinese military police. Well, that's even cooler!
And I'm not really an anti-police anarchist, so it makes logical sense.
Charlie was defending the petrified Luster Dawn from the four police units by stepping in front of her. And one of the police shook his head from his move.
"You think that can help?" The police officer asked in English.
CHARLIE: You'll have to go through ME to get to her!
POLICE (draw pistols)
CHARLIE: ... Iiifff I didn't step out of your way, like I'm doing right now!
But no. Charlie is at least no coward.
The leader of the MP patrol asks Charlie why he's defending the Pony.
"I don't think you understand what she and her fragile and vile kind has done to us in our country." Lau Chan Weng told him, and Charlie was perplexed.
"What do you mean officer? And what do you mean when you called her and her kind vile?" Charlie asked.
"Well you see one month ago, we were-" Lau decided not to share the classified information to him.
"Oh right, why would I even want to share this information to you?" Lau asked himself "I'm so dumb." He said.
The cops outnumber him four to one, and this is occurring under conditions of martial law. Why are they having this conversation with him? What they would be saying would be something like "Come along quietly," or even just "Stop or we'll shoot!"
The irony here is that based on the Story information so far, Luster Dawn is exactly the Pony who has provoked the Chinese in the first place -- but it's unlikely that Lau knows this!
"Besides, your not even from China, your from Australia Charlie Lam." He told him.
Charlie's eyes immediately widened in surprise and feart when he heard that. How did this police officer knew where he resides in? And how does he know his name? Did the Chinese also invented some sort of scanning technology almost similar to his?
What, magical omniscience? Which, oddly-enough, the only actual demi-goddess encountered so far in this story doesn't seem to possess ...
"Anyways, you and Luster Dawn are hereby under arrest and will be coming back to Canterlot to be interrogated either by the Lieutenant General or the colonel." Lau said.
Why is Lau telling Charlie who his interrogator will be? The phrase "for interrogation" would be more natural here, if Lau felt like explaining anything to the suspect he's arresting.
I'm serious about this. American municipal cops in peacetime conditions wouldn't be this friendly to a suspect who hadn't yet surrendered. These are Red Chinese military cops in a war zone. Charlie's lucky they didn't just shoot him!
(They didn't because General Jin specifically ordered him captured alive for questioning. But Charlie doesn't know this).
However, this does beg a bigger question.
How do the Chinese know that this is CHARLIE?
Remember, he's an Alicorn now. Even if they have really-good face-recognition technology linked to an awesome database, he doesn't even look HUMAN any more!
... suddenly, Charlie revolted and punched the police officer in the snout.
Doubly impossible. Charlie has no fists, and the police officer has no snout.
Lau then stood back up on his feet and starred at Charlie with a smile on his face which got him into a fighting stance.
"Heh, not bad kid."
No, it's truly amazing! Namely, that Charlie has so quickly adapted to his new form that he can do martial arts as a Pony!
Compare with Princess Twilight Sparkle's stumbling and bumbling around in her first day as a Humanoid in Equestria Girls.
"Thanks, just some martial arts backstory and a veiled warning to you if you attempt to arrest or attack me."
No one who was ever born talks like this. Also, there are four of them.
Charlie makes an attempt at a Badass Boast.
"And if you even try to get you and your colleagues filthy hands me or Luster Dawn, I will give you a daunting and excruciating constitution on your faces."
I seriously advise my readers not to say this to a real cop. Though, admittedly, one might just make him laugh at the phrasing.
Captain Lau replies:
"Heh, such strong words from a young teenager.
An 18-year-old is not a young teenager. Just saying.
Then, in an almost equally pathetic attempt at a Badass Boast:
"Heh, such strong words from a young teenager. And here's the thing pal, back in my primary school life in Guangzhou, a school bully named Wan hai Zhou punched me in the face in the school cafeteria making me fall on the floor and drop food on my uniform which humiliated me in front of everyone. And do you know what I did in return?" He asked.
"Uh... I assume that you reported this incident to the principle's office because that behaviour is impermissible."
"No, you got it wrong." Lau told him "You see I used the study of Bruce Lee's martial arts movies and books to resolve this inefficiency, and at the end, the bully got into the hospital because of his selfish and reckless act and that is an indisputable fact. And it's also a good thing that no teachers or students saw me do that after school." He finished with a smile.
First of all, boasting about elementary school fights in a real combat situation is ... weak. Really weak.
(thanks to the highly-perceptive Sketcha-holic for pointing this out; I had (falsely) identified it as a high school fight).
Secondly -- and I know this is a bit hard to believe -- the Chinese did not learn about martial arts primarily from Bruce Lee movies. Nor is watching those movies a reliable way to learn to fight.
Though he was a really cool dude!
Charlie and Luster Dawn gasped in horror when they heard that.
"Why would you do that?" He asked "You cannot used savage brutality against a person even if they have bullied you, that's just a lethal act!" He said.
"Yeah." Luster Dawn agreed with a nod.
Charlie, you're horrified at the wrong aspect of the situation. Also, Lau said that he hurt the bully enough to put him in the hospital, not that he killed him.
LD, you've seen the Invaders do far worse than beat up school bullies. And even Equestrian culture canonically has schoolyard bullies.
Though this whole exchange was funny, and I think was meant to be so, so points for that.
Lau Chan Weng chuckled at their reply.
"Anyways, where was I?" He asked himself "Oh yes, guys eliminate them." Lau ordered.
Um, Lau ... your orders were to capture them. Remember?
"Suíyì shèjí! (Fire at will!)" Lau yelled. Them the three officers squeezed the triggers and shots were fired.
*BANG! BANG! BANG!*
When Charlie and Luster Dawn heard the banging noises. They immediately shielded themselves with their hooves and prepared to meet their fate. But unexpectedly, the bullets didn't even made contact with them.
"Huh?" Charlie said with a disorientate expression, he opened his eyes and saw something very unique, a large white circular barrier was protecting them. Charlie looked down and saw that the three bullets the police officers shot were on the ground squashed. He then looked in front of him and saw that the four officers were traumatized.
I call "foul."
Twilight Sparkle is canonically very good at Shield spells, having been trained in part by one of the masters of such spells, her brother Shining Armor. Yet Twilight failed to produce even one shield at any point in this story.
Charlie knows no magic, yet he's instinctively generating a Shield.
Story better have a reason for this later on.
Luster is suitably impressed.
"Magic?" Charlie asked with a disorientate expression "Are you saying that this magic thing is like a weapon?" He asked.
Oh, come on, Charlie!
You've seen that Unicorns can use magic. There's little or no real magic in the world you come from, but you have the concept of combat magic, in books and movies and video games.
You're going to tell me that you've never run into the idea before?
Anyway, the bullets can't penetrate Charley's shields, and he beats up the cops by repeatedly kicking them. Which actually makes sense, because he has an equine anatomy, and horses can do significant damage that way.
"There, now get your colleagues back to your Lieutenant General or your police commissioner and tell them that none of you found me either because that I was off radar, or your tracker malfunctioned." Charlie told him. Then he threw the four officers back in the police car and one of them drove back to Canterlot.
Um ...
Charlie, do you really expect them not to report what happened? Remember, you're not going to be standing over them threatening to kick them if they tell the truth!
Don't you think their superiors will notice that someone beat the crap out of them?
Finally ... "Canterlot?" I thought the Invaders were headquartered in Ponyville. These are two separate places, you know!
Luster Dawn walked up to Charlie and looked at him with an anger and bewildered mixed expression.
"Why did you let them leave?"
"You'll see very soon Luster Dawn. The four police officers will not see me and you as savages." He told her.
Luster Dawn is absolutely right here, Charley. Though out of character, as she is the one who comes from the culture built around friendship and mercy to the vanquished. Logically, the cops will report to headquarters exactly what happened, and then the Invaders will know that you are mastering Alicorn Magic, and hence not underestimate you, which is bad, as this means they are more likely to kill you.
"Whoa look Charlie! It's the Kirin village!"
"What?" Charlie asked as he turned around, then he caught sight of a village in front of him. "Oh, is this the Kirin Village the red gem was guiding us to?" He asked.
"Yep." Luster Dawn replied with a nod.
Amazing how it remained "hidden" so long, if it's this freaking close to Ponyville and Canterlot ...
So they approach the Kirin Villiage.
Hang on, is Charlie still an alicorn at this point, or did he change back?
At this point, I'm convinced the author forgot about the transformation. Or forgot to mention Charlie changing back.
... Oh. Or the scanners really are detecting his status as the protagonist. That or the MPs just assumed that anyone seen with Luster is Charlie, regardless of species. Which raises the question of what would've happened if they had any other
party membersallies with them. "Multiple Charlies! Capture all of them!"Based on what I've seen, the author really doesn't.
"Peaks of Peril" is just marketing. They're more the Peaks of Proximity.
I actually forgot Charlie had even turned into a pony.
Also, his backstory wasn't about beating up a high school bully; it was about beating up a primary (aka elementary) school bully (that we need to know the name of for some reason; odd, I never brought up my bullies' names when bringing up my tales of woe). He's bragging about putting a classmate in the hospital when he was like, eight, or something, thanks to lessons from Bruce Lee media. And that just makes it extra stupid, because who refers to a fight in elementary school to brag about current battle prowess? You'd think they'd brag about a more recent victory as adults on duty. Granted, it'd still be unprofessional and unnecessary, so whatever.
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Oh my! You're right!
Retelling a fight from elementary school is even sillier!
That's a recurring problem with the entire story. Who talks like that? And why is the author obsessed with using the word "traumatize(d)?"
Making the Ponies bowl over with laughter so they can't do anything should be the actual martial art that the PLA Villain Stus use in this story, instead. It would probably be more plausible overall.
It's like saying you're gonna learn how to shoot guns perfectly by watching a few John Wick movies, reading some books on how the guns mechanically operate, or watching a competition shooter shoot: it doesn't work that way. While you might glean some information on how to correctly operate guns by watching them do it, it does not mean that you'll develop the muscle memory in regards to stance, trigger control, recoil control, sight alignment, and so on. If anything, it's worse than that example because martial arts are mostly muscle memory, as opposed to (probably, ideally) needing knowledge of how a device mechanically operates, at least in a basic sense of "do this to load, then deal with X safety features, if applicable."
Or it's like saying you're an archery expert with skill unrivaled just because you watched Legolas from the LOTR movies shoot a bunch of orcs, or because you read the LOTR books.
And it goes without saying... why isn't LD doing a shield spell? Is she not allowed to possess magical prowess?
"Well, y'see kids, Charlie just instinctively cast a spell on them that binds them to silence or lying in regards to the topic, or invented and casted a spell on the fly to make them forget the last 5 minutes."
/s
(to my knowledge, I made that up.)
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I'm guessing that Author's primary language is either Mandarin or Cantonese, and English is a secondary language. He knows the denotation a lot of words without knowing their connotations; hence he uses "traumatized" for "extremely upset" without understanding that it implies "in the past, yet so severe that it affects him/her today."
Better words in various places would have been "scared," "shocked," "horrified," "disgusted," "demoralized" or "dismayed."
On learning martial arts.
I know a little martial arts, mostly a few self-defense moves, and not very reliably. I learned from books and studied their principles, practiced a little on my own -- and that's it.
I'm no martial artist, and I do not pretend that I would stand much of a chance against a real student of the martial arts, let alone against four fit men armed with truncheons! Nor do I think that my limited muscle memory would carry over if I suddenly found myself in the body of a horse!
This is pure wish-fulfillment fantasy on Author's part. Charlie is a Gary Stu Author Avatar, and one symptom of this is that he is absurdly competent at everything he has ever studied, even a little bit.
Is he an undergrad engineering student? Well, then as a school project he built a nigh-omnisicent set of "Safety Goggles." Is he a casual athlete? Well, then, he's a hardened distance hiker over rough terrain and a master of the martial arts!
Part of this, which I find even more annoying that watching Charlie's instant mastery of everything, is that all the canon heroes have to be Nerfed to make Charlie look more impressive. So Twilight Sparkle, heroine of at least a dozen dangerous adventures, is reduced to crying and dithering and hoof-wringing so that she's a properly Distressed Damsel. The Mane Six and her other friends are all similarly helpless.
And this really annoys me because these are admirable, heroic characters. If I didn't think they were, why would I write critques and esssays about them, or stories featuring them? Why would I even bother to watch the Show?
I don't like seeing one of my favorite worlds reduced to a bunch of Poor Helpless Little Ponies just to make Charlie Lam look good.
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If I'm remembering correctly, there was some group forum post (I think it's either gone now, or I was looking in the wrong place; it kinda counted as "self-promotion," so the mods might've gotten it) the author wrote where the Japanese were going to be the villains with this exact same premise. Granted, it's marginally better to have the Chinese be the villains overall, probably, but they had the big problems associated with having Japan be the baddies (least of which because according to Japan's postwar constitution, they don't have a standing army [which is something I also learned in that thread])
But the "second language hypothesis" is plausible by all means, maybe even those exact languages. English is my first and only language, and I can't claim to be fluent in other languages, really.
I'll fully admit I'm not a skilled fighter, either (I wouldn't be surprised if you could kick my ass, young as I may be). My "technical knowledge" boils down to, say "hey, you understand how to perform a rear-naked choke," and "if you kick them in the back of the knees, their legs only bend one way," and that there's some weak points in the body.
And if Reality Ensues was a thing in the slightest... no, it probably wouldn't. Even if the magical component somehow compensated muscle memory for walking and such automatically, you'd still probably need to relearn stuff... and deal with different body mechanics, therefore meaning the martial arts are useless.
And against four attackers in general, this short video on how to win a knife fight is your proper guide. :) (but really, run-fu is often a viable option)
And in the context of the story, he doesn't even have to work at any of it, from a narrative standpoint, you're just told "oh he can definitely do that," and go along with it.
Yeah, that's exactly why it's frustrating. It would be one thing if he wasn't stealing the rightful heroes' thunder at the expense of all their competence, it'd be another to have him do... well, this.
Yes, the show did Worf characters in the show at least twice, offscreen (To Where and Back Again, School Raze), but at least in those cases, it's generally reasonable as to why they lost (Changelings are undoubtedly good for ambushes, however the specifics of that went, Cozy Glow only had to pique Starlight's interest in the magic circle, lure her close, and then push the unicorn that cannot cast magic in, or something), and so on. In this fic? Well, the Worfing is as illogical as almost every other aspect, onscreen or not.
It's times like this that make you really understand part of the drive behind Not The Hero, the frustration with this sort of thing (aside from the whole "I'm the hero so enjoying the villain's pain is A-okay!" frustration).
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It would make sense to have the 1930's-1940's Japanese be the villains. In fact, if done well, it could recapitulate the Japanese war against China, as Equestria is in many ways an idealized and enlightened version of an Oriental Monarchy. (This gives me gruesome images of a Rape of Nanking style atrocity against an Equestrian city. BRRR!)
)
The modern Japanese, less so. Not so much because of their constiution -- constitutions can change or be reinterpreted or even ignored -- but because the modern Japanese simply aren't that evil. It's hard to imagine them gleefully massacring Ponies by the hundreds of thousands.
Yeah.
I mean, compare with Doc Savage. Doc Savage is about as competent a Badass Normal and Omnidisciplinary Scientist as any you'll encounter in the pages of fiction, but he has a backstory that makes this at least semi-plausible -- he was raised by a millionaire father who trained him from childhood to be an intellectual and physical paragon. And he has the flaws one might expect of such a background -- he's shy and awkward, for all his superiorities, in some intimate social situations, because he did not have a normal childhood.
Oh, and he's around thirty-something when we first meet him (1). Clark Savage Jr. has had time to study all these fields of knowledge and develop all these varied athletic skills. Not enough realistically, for a truly normal man, but arguably enough given his very high native intelligence and determination.
Actually, I've often thought that Doc Savage and Twilight Sparkle have rather similar backstories and personalities in many respects, and would probably understand and like each other a lot, if they ever met.
(*nods*) If one writes a self-insert or OC, write him to whatever level of competence you wish and can realistically portray, then let him find his own level in the storyverse. There's nothing wrong with Joe Ordinary traveling to Equestria and finding some place in Equestrian society, even if his Ordinary nature means that he's going to be outshone by a supergenius Alicorn like Twilight Sparkle, or even her friends. There is something very wrong with Joe Ordinary being made to outshine them by arbitrarily rewriting the Show heroes as weak, cowardly fools.
(1) The first Doc Savage story was written in 1932 and published 1933. Assuming it's contemporary (the Empire State Building opened in 1931 and so the story can't be set any earlier), Doc has to be in his thirties. The reason why is that Doc fought in World War One (it's where he met at least some of his Crew), and if he was 17 in 1917 when America entered the war, he must be in his early thirties by the time of The Man of Bronze (1933), the first such tale. Doc is not an old man during his adventures, but by the last regular story (Up From Earth's Center (1949)) he's pushing fifty. In short, he's not a "kid," by any means.