As you've probably all been aware, I've grown increasingly displeased with the Fallout: Equestria side of things and decided to remove it from the story. I think Fo:E did a terrible job depicting Equestria in a wartime scenario. The story made Equestria devolve into this Orwellian nightmare which was completely unnecessary, and most of the wartime progression felt quite unnatural.

The direction I'm taking things is much more like what we would see if we take MLP's Equestria and apply the aggression of the zebra nation to it over time. All the human parallels vanish, and a war-capable Equestria looks extremely different than anything we've seen in real life. The creative freedom this provides is amazing.

I've got two documents for you to check out which I've been working on recently. The first one is a brief retelling of the great zebra war, how it started, and how it progressed. Emphasis is put on this being a natural progression from what MLP gave us rather than reinventing the very core theme of these people like Fo:E does.

The second document is a (hopefully) complete list of Fo:E elements which were incorporated into my story, and their replacements. These replacements are a serious improvement over the original. I think you'll be able to see, with this list, exactly why it was such a good decision to depart from the Fo:E narrative.

Both of these documents are likely to be improved further over time.

Zebra War Progression
Fallout: Equestria Replacements

Reading both Fallout Equestria and Project Horizons, I noticed that PH took a considerably darker view of the canon characters. I eventually concluded that the SWSVFO:E universe was the one in which Skloia (Corruption) rather than Skleros (Unyielding) let the attack. Unlike Skleros, Skloia was clever enough to turn their virtues against themselves.

If you look at what happened in the original story, each one of them was destroyed by the attempt to live up to her virtues under the pressure of a major war, and one in which half their leadership had abdicated and the other half was only marginally competent to lead at such a level. They all pretty much collapsed under the pressure, and Princess Luna was being manipulated by various factions. Just as in the Lunaverse, she showed that politics was not her forte.

In the SWSV, the "evil stars" are of course the Night Shadows themselves. And Skloia gave Zebrakind the Prophecy in the Black Book, because she correctly predicted that it would lead the Zebras to turn on any Avatars of the Cosmic Concepts (like Celestia, Luna and Discord) who showed up to oppose the Shadows.

The Wasteland was Skloia's plan. In fact she meant it to be worse.

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I'm so sorry, but I actually don't know what you're referring to with most of that.

From my perspective, Fo:E is a complete mess. It grossly mishandles the core themes of MLP and has also grown extremely dated, given the advances in the show itself. I've got zero motivation to add to its narrative, preferring instead to build my own. This new narrative is based much more closely on what could plausibly progress from what we see in MLP, putting great emphasis on the innate qualities of our ponies and their nature, with the magical side-effects of getting along and living in harmony having a tangible effect that can become a major plot line. If you check out my Fo:E replacements doc, hopefully, it will be apparent why these replacements are a better choice, especially for a fresh story.

In particular, this bit just makes me

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Have you ever considered making a CinemaSins parody video in which you make jokes about the various things you find wrong with Fallout: Equestria? Video example from CinemaSins: Everything Wrong With Pocahontas in 11 Minutes or Less
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I know, I know. My obscure reference is completely unknown, as usual.

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Wouldn't that be interesting! Though someone has definitely already done a pretty comprehensive critique of the story. DuvetofReason knows the link, but it escapes my mind at the moment.

The past couple days, three of us have been discussing the plausibility of the zebra war's opening hostilities, and I had to make some amendments to my progression document. Even the scenario I came up with was somewhat implausible, hence the changes to make the initial attack a much more organized effort with a very specific goal in mind. Wars don't just start for no reason and with no goal. One of Fo:E's greatest blunders is that Kkat never really put any thought into the why of the zebra war and the logistics of how it would have begun. It simply "was" and that was that. Now, we've got it broken down into a series of plausible steps:

1 - the zebras come to the decision that Luna/NMM must be eliminated at all costs. This decision is backed up with cultlike fanaticism
2 - Plan is to do a Blitzkrieg pushing into southern Equestria, using the rail line
3 - Zebras put together a train with perhaps a hundred blade soldiers and a few snipers for good measure.
4 - Soldiers pile onto the train along with one of the train cars being a massive explosive of some kind.
5 - After securing 3 or 4 towns along the rail line, they dig in at the final town and fend off any sort of resistance while waiting for the inevitable alicorn response
6 - They put up a fight when the sisters arrive in the hopes of luring them close to the bomb
7 - The sisters are better equipped to handle the incursion than the zebras expected, and the bomb ends up getting triggered without them close enough for a fatal blow.
8 - Luna ends up being injured and Celestia takes her to safety while the Wonderbolts (who are already on the scene) survey the situation and help the civilians take stock of what just happened.
9 - Celestia then returns to the town to take care of the people and also ensure there are no remaining zebras.
10 - Then, after the situation is stable, Celestia makes a trip to the zebra capital to give them a good talking to and find out WTF that was about. At this point, they declare war formally with the condition that NMM be turned over for execution as the only option out.

And thus, we have a war that actually makes sense. It takes a lot of thought, but the end result is that the story can be shaped around these things as if they are actual history, and that makes the story itself feel much more real and less contrived. This is especially true when we touch on things like Littlehorn. Sure, lots of people just give it a pass, but honestly, the sheer quantity of really huge idiot balls that it takes to make Littlehorn work are enough to jar people right out of the story. Coming up with a viable replacement tragedy was quite a challenge, especially giving it that desired outcome where both sides are actually justified in blaming each other to such a degree that it would escalate the war to genocidal levels.

Wars don't just start for no reason and with no goal.

Mm... I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with that. Some wars in history don't really have a rhyme or reason until people look back at the history and try to attach a reason to them. For example: The Cold War. That didn't really have much of an end goal and a lot of people underneath the larger countries had no idea what they were fighting for. Another example: The American Civil War. Most of that was just brother-versus-brother squabble until some historian decided that Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation gave the Union a reason to bring the Confederacy back into the United States as a whole.
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Perhaps I'm trying to oversimplify things in an attempt to cope with awful events that transpired. Why else would I be crazy enough to debate within my weakest school subject? *shrugs*
I'm off to bed. I'll most likely talk with you at a later date.

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The cold war wasn't really a war. And the civil war was certainly motivated by a number of tangible things. I would be very hesitant to believe that any war "just happened" for no specific reason. Now, that reason might evolve over the course of the war. That's fine. But it should have begun for an actual reason.

Feeling like your way of life is being threatened is one reason.
Desiring resources someone else has is another.
Religious conviction is another
Liberating someone from an oppressor is yet another.
But every time the hostilities begin, there is very likely a tangible goal in mind. You don't just start killing your neighbor because "we're at war now I guess"

Now, take the Fo:E war for example. All we know is that there was some kind of trade agreement with gems and coal, and a dispute broke out, causing tensions and conflict and hostilities. Then, the thing with the Wonderbolts apparently exacerbated things to actual war. Or something. The story is really unclear, and I believe it is unclear because Kkat never really thought it through. Having a tangible reason, such as "Nightmare Moon must be eliminated" is viable. It can be worked into a scenario that would precipitate into a full-scale war. Add a plausible tragedy where both sides can legitimately blame the other, and you've got a solid basis for total war further down the track.

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Duvet found it!

Everything wrong with Fo:E (essentially).

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/lb_i.php?lb_id=13398853770B89940100&i_id=13398853770I89941300&p=1