Stardrop's Lackluster Ending · 12:19am Apr 29th, 2022
Hello everyone. I know I've been away for a while, but that's due to me deciding to finish stories before I post them to revise, edit, and alter them to give you all better stories to read. I don't feel free to do so when I post stories live. This results in me getting frustrated with how a story is shaping up and then dropping it. That wasn't a problem when I was younger, but it's become one as I've aged. Fortunately, the solution is simple, as I mentioned earlier.
One of these stories was Stardrop. In its case, I forced myself to write an ending, any ending, due to how much time I'd invested in Stardrop. I didn't want to waste that time or upset people by leaving it unfinished. The thing about Stardrop is that I had a "true end" for it written down in note form, which I was working towards. The thing is, I didn't go with that ending because, at the time, I was depressed and in a downwards spiral, and I didn't want to put characters I loved through what I was feeling at the time.
I'm debating if I should edit Stardrop or not... See, if I ever write another FoE story, readers will almost certainly believe that Stardrop is canon to it. This means I'm locked into the ending I wrote, which contains something ultimately setting breaking. No, not the space station. Celestia Prime uses a satellite array to fire; Equestria had a space program. No, I mean how Gears says that Pip and Homage moved to Star Drop Station in the end.
That's impossible. I'd misinterpreted the ending of Fallout Equestria. However, I recently made a video summary of the story and, in so doing, realized that, well, Pip's entrance into the SPP is one way. That body in the chair is a vegetable. Pip's mind and soul are part of the machine now. Sure, she could be put back in her body if a broken part of the SPP Hub was fixed, but it's strongly implied that to fix it you'd have to shut it down, and Pip would be erased like RAM if you did that.
Fortunately, I have a solution! Not to how/if I should retcon Stardrop's end (I'm open to suggestions), but to how to handle the events in universe. Let me explain how it would have ended if I'd written things as planned.
Keep in mind that, like Pip before her, Gears is an unreliable narrator. Pip spends most of her story high, jonesing for drugs or traumatized. Given that the story is in first person from her pov, anything Pip didn't understand fully, misconceived of, or didn't know about is something we the readers don't know. It gets a step worse since we know via the Epilogue that the story we read isn't even Pip's unedited thoughts. The Twilight Society edited her story before it was broadcast and printed. This means some things in Fallout Equestria could have happened differently than presented, but the broad brush strokes are more than likely true.
Gears was always intended to be similar because Pip's unreliability gives other authors wiggle room to tell their own stories. That's why Gears is kind of an idiot and focused foremost on her friends and delivering the mail. This would no longer be true once Gears and Jasmine fully meld, as Gears is no longer working on the simplistic priorities of a spirit, but has the full breath of a person's interests, worries, etc.
My point is, I always intended for there to be some wiggle room in exactly how Stardrop went because that's how Fallout Equestria is. Unfortunately, this means since Gears didn't really pick up on who the main villain was, it might be hard for the reader to have seen any of the hints and foreshadowing. My bad. Here's how it would have gone.
Gears is knocked unconscious from her fight with Gale as per the final chapter. In the next chapter, the rest of the team proceeds with the plan, fighting through Enclave soldiers until they reach the control room. The person leading the Enclave forces is a brain-in-a-jar that happens to be Dr. Silver, Gear's mother's boss, who was selling her inventions for personal gain. After some villein mustache twirling and monologuing, there would have been a final battle, and he'd have been captured. Part of what the Doc spills was that he wasn't behind the Enclave organizing. He's been on Star Drop station the whole time and was merely placed in charge of the reforming Enclave due to being a high ranking MAS member who worked on Enclave Power armor and many of their gadgets, as well as a member of the Equestrian military, he technically held rank and also their respect.
Dr. Silver and Star Drop itself were given to the Enclave by a third party that discovered their existence when exploring what turned out to be an MoA safehouse. That third party was NCR President Regina Grimfeathers. See, Regina, unlike her mom, really hates people who can't fly. It's like racism, but flight-based. Regina was livid that so much infrastructure was being built for ground-dwelling people and saw that as an attempt to erase fliers from civilization by not catering to them... Rather than "Bitch, like 12% of people can fly..." She ran on a platform of fairness for griffons and Pegasi, and was elected by making unicorns and earth ponies feel bad about certain things like a lack of balcony entrences on buildings (so ytou can fly right to the floor of your choice) and so on. Pure populist and emotional manipulation combined with "Hey, my mom was a great leader! Apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and well, you can't elect her again because of term limits!"
Then she used her power as the NCR president to see about rebuilding the Enclave, getting their leaders to agree to serve as her personal army so she could seize power for life. Promising in exchange, she'd implement ENclave policies and appoint one of them as her heir. If you don't believe she was evil, well... I did put hints all over, but the scene where she Talks to Gears is the big one.
If you read that bit, you can see she's an autocrat which threatens the council to force her way.
President Grimfeathers grinned. “Good! Then, we have a deal. I will pull my weight and make the council do as they are told. For once.
She claims to care about Gears saving an NCR town,
“Irrelevant. You saved one of my towns,” she said with a respectful dip of her head. “Sire’s Hollow is a breadbasket which supplies nearly forty percent of my citizens with food.”
but when she gives Gears a reward, she says it's for "saving Talon lives" and isn't really about saving NCR citizens.
You went hoof to hoof with an extremely dangerous opponent who nearly destroyed the entire attacking force single hoofed. A battle in which you proved to be a deciding factor in my Talons’ survival and the reclamation of one of our settlements from the Tainted. ... I’ve also included a script for three thousand caps. It’s not from the NCR, it’s from the Talons. That makes the bond good as gold.
She also gives Gears a voucher only redeemable in Los Pegasus, which stears Gears that way sooner than she may have gone on her own, and Gears is ambushed by the Enclave on the way to Los Pegaus several times.
With the plot revealed, Star Drop Station in Rainbow's hooves, Gears returns to Lith and reports to Queen Catydid. The Queen is enraged that the NCR is the ultimant cause of the recent conflict she weathered, and cuts the NCR off as a potential trading partner, instead forging trade relationships with Los Pegasus (on the condition that Los Pegasus cannot resell to the NCR), and the remains of The Herd.
Gears wants to help and thinks that if she shares her story as Pip did, it would maybe get the NCR citizens to see her as a similar kind of hero and then take her word that their current President is in fact, evil. The story ends there, leaving the future ambiguous.
So, here's a way to reconcile that ending with the one I actually did. Gears sent her story to Junction Town to be printed by the same ponies who published the Book of Littlepip. Unfortunately, Gears didn't know those ponies were super loyal to the NCR and told Regina about the ending. Not wanting to make it look like they were censoring the story (which would just make ponies seek it out, and might make Rainbow decide that Regie wasn't quite done with her ambitions and tactical strike Junction Town), the final chapter was removed, some random pony wrote a fake ending, and that altered version was published, and that's the version you got to read.
Anywho... Not sure if you'd have liked that better or if I should go back and change the ending / add to the story. Open to suggestions on that. I just want to say this somewhere publicly in case I do more Fallout Equestria in that same universe.
Huh. Neat!
Dunno if I like it particularly better than the original or not. (and...uh. I might even have forgotten to read the ending?)
But that's some neat lore I didn't know/had forgotten about.
Any way you choose to go, just know you have my complete support. I like what you write.
Heck, you can put that in an 'epilog chapter', opening with the explanation of what happened, then say, 'this is what REALLY happened!' and basically rewrite it the way it SHOULD be, in your eyes. Just a suggestion, is all.
5654159 Hey, you know I could.
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Ah yes, the "Clue Movie" route. Effective strategy.
Might I recommend going all-in and writing an extra ending before posting the "what really happened" ending?
Of course, since I don't read FoE stories anyway, feel free to discard this post at your discretion.
5654166 Strictly speaking... I just use the setting. As it was POST-Pip. Why? Because now I have a cool setting with pones that is trying to build itself into a new nation(s) and I can tell stories of hope, heroes, and adventure, in a frontier setting, which has a cool backstory of "mage war". So it's not *really* a Fallout Equestria story. Just saying.
actualy the epiloge imples that pip is able to leave the chair now and then, so no pip isnt traped int he SPP, she just cant leave it for very long cause the system starts to go haywire without someone controling it, and doesnt trust anyone else to run it without being tempted to do bad things.
5654192 That's not how I read it at all. Not when "the Autumn Vestibule" appears to be a simulation / VR kinda thing. Of course, I could be wrong. However, the very thorough reading of the text I did for the creation of that summery video has me convinced that Homage jacks into the SPP using spare parts to visit Pip like, once a year or so. There is nothing in there that implies or states Pip can leave, to my knowledge. And there's a good deal that suggests the opposite.
I like it as is, but I'm fine with the presented version having been edited.
As your editor, I kinda have to be ok with that. ;)
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I like this 'epilog' idea.
Tell the story as it should have ended, showing who really was 'at fault'... and perhaps even have a scene with Vinyl and her 'goop gun' pointed at the head of the Printer to print replacement copies of the story. "I can stand here, without sleep, for weeks if I have to. Print 'em all or I'll cap you and get your replacement to do the job right." (Yeah, Vinyl would do this. Gears is her special somepony, and you don't mess with Wander's friend!
5654402 You know. I just might do it :3
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And I didn't even have to mention Mare Do Well, well... 'looming' in the shadows. :)
Sorry for the spam. Anyway, I like this ending. It covers a few things that didn't add up and makes things much better Also Kkats ending was shit, she's still a good writer just prone to giving us a Lauren Faust tier ham fisting
5654787 Fair enough. I suppose it would be easy enough to cover any differences in a sequel.
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Maybe her son learning the truth or something
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Honestly though, you probably wouldn't have to change much aside from them shacking up aboard the good ship Yeet'em. Everything else is spot on