Hello got-blooded action heroes one and all! Please come in, and make yourselves feel welcome, but leave your machetes at the door, and your pistols in your pockets because it's time for a good 'ole discussion topic.

Your Antagonist here with a group activity to get the action community a little bit more active, as it makes me sad that my group has been reduced to a place where folks drop their fics off willy-nilly, but no one really communicates. So to kick this off, I've come up with an exercise where we get to share our work and methodologies regarding how we prepare ourselves to write action.

For example, are you like me where you shadowbox against the mirror to get a feel for how things look and feel? Perhaps you play videogames or watch movies while you write so you have some kind of a reference. Share with us what methods you use regardless of how ridiculous they are.

What weapon types do you feel comfortable giving a pony, or do you prefer to have them go at it bare-hoofed?

How do you translate those elements to the Equestrian universe where the combatants are typically pony? Or do you even use ponies at all for that matter?

How serious a tone do you feel combat should have?

Share with us a piece of one of your highest action scenes so we can see the results of your methods, but please nothing exceeding a thousand word in length words in length, we don't need the whole scene, just whatever you consider to be the prime-rib of that fight sequence.

Looking forward to seeing the response, maybe we could learn something from one another in the long run!

Loathe,
Your Antagonist.

My Methods: Like I said I shadowbox, or grab a similar weapon that's relevant to what I'm writing and get feel for what I'm doing, however I do peruse comic books and novels that would have such epic combat scenes and either mimic the writer's style or try to translate the comic into words. I'd say at this point in my life a lot of my writing has been influenced by S.D Perry's novelization of the Resident Evil games.

I feel as though the ponies can utilize any manner of weaponry save for human firearms and bows, unless they're unicorns. If one were to ponify a pistol such as making it a bracelet like Ezio's in Assassin's creed, it could definitely be a plausible translation. That being said I feel compelled to write in medieval weaponry which I think can either be placed in the mouth, or in specially designed horseshoes, but when it comes to Pinkie Pie, I'm not above letting her cradle things in her fore-hooves. Also pegasi feather look as though they can conceal lots and lots of throwing blades, but that's just me. In terms of martial arts, they've got tails, bucking abilities and the ability to stand on their hindlegs on occasion, which makes it easy to incorporate some martial arts.

Like I said, I give the ponies tools specialized to them and going off their personalities, how they would fight. For example I'd have Pinkie Pie use equipment that fits her unpreidctable nature to a "T" i.e. smoke grenades or flash bangs, where as someone like Applejack who doesn't buck around and prides herself on her strength, I'd just have her go empty-hoofed. On occasion I do use some humans but they're typically from fighting games, however I am looking forward to utilizing a minotaur, and have used Spike with what 'd consider satisfactory results.

In y opinion, unless it's the final battle, combat should be fun, full of fast quips, and mind blowing ingenuity. It should keep the reader hanging on, and should do nothing but escalate, escalate escalate! And while a knockout is nice, they should come from the most unlikely places every time.

Excerpt From Redemption of The Fireheart

“Ha! I don’t need any fancy gadgets to beat some sense into you!” Applejack spat the severed rope from her mouth, and stood on her hindlegs, her armored forehooves in front of her face. “Let’s go, Pinkie!” Applejack stepped forward, whipping her hooves in rapidfire jabs that Pinkie blocked using the width of her sword.

Pinkie allowed her blade to take the abuse as she searched for an opening in Applejack’s defenses, and she found it. Applejack deviated from her attack pattern by unleashing a strong right cross that took her off balance. Pinkie Pie rose her confectionary claymore above her head, and slammed the hilt down hard into Applejack’s face. The orange knight reeled backwards from the blow, but shot back into the fray, delivering a flurry of short weak hooks and jabs as opposed to relying on powerful swings. When Applejack’s hooves made contact with the pink knight’s cheek, she could tell that her newly adopted tactic was taking its toll on Pinkie Pie, who couldn’t stop the swarm of punches, given the mass of her weapon’s current form. “What’s the matter, Pinkie? Can’t keep up with your heavy sword?” Applejack mocked as she weaved beneath a desperate swing from Pinkie Pie’s sword, retaliating with a series of quick hooks to Pinkie’s midsection. “Say good night, Pinkie!” Applejack wound her hoof back as far as she could before throwing it forward in a wild haymaker, catching Pinkie Pie in the snout, flooring the pink pony instantly.

“This isn’t over yet, AJ,” Pinkie Pie huffed as she sank her blade into the ground, using it for support as she stood up unsteadily. As she stood up, her mouth filled with blood, and she spat it on her blade.

“You still got some fight in you?”

“Nah,’ Pinkie Pie admitted. “Just a trick up my sleeve.”

“What’re you talkin’ about?” Applejack noticed that the ground just in front of her began to crack and fissure as if something were going to emerge from it, and it was too little too late when she’d finally made the connection between Pinkie Pie’s weapon being submerged in the dirt to the unstable ground before herself. “Oh horse feathers.” The head of a pink mace exploded from the ground with the force of catching Applejack square in the chin, propelling her into the tavern wall.

Well, for writing in general I like to watch a movie or play a video game about the feeling I'm trying to evoke. The next chapter in my first story is taking place in Appleloosa so I want the action sequence at the end to have a Magnificent Seven feel to it. The townsfolk fighting off the bad guys with the aid of a group of heroes. For reference, when watching Firefly to get in the mood, I realized just because the arc ended with a massive shoot out doesn't mean it has to start peaceful, so I decided to throw in a bar fight; a staple of the genre.

I also shadow box to get an idea of how a fight would play out. I particularly rehearse fights between humans and ponies.

As for the weapons, I'm sort of following Fallout: Equestria firearms are held in the mouth or with magic, but can also be mounted on battle saddles. Other weapons are chiefly held in the mouth, but can sometimes be brandished for complicated flurrys. Staves and spears work well with this idea. Lastly, an idea I came up with (mostly) on my own was pegasi wielding wing-swords. I figured if they were the most militant of the three original tribes, their officers would not carry something as pedestrian as a spear or diminutive as a knife. Pegasi in modern times already take advantage of their wings for many tasks, wouldn't their war-like ancestors do the same for combat?

The most intense action scene I've written thus far is a gunfight that leads to a high speed chase. Without spoiling too much, my protagonist is a Pegasus pony armed with a sub-machine gun mounted on a battle saddle against a group of humans mostly armed with AK-47s. Our hero flies from high cover to low cover, his speed making it near impossible to get a clear shot. He then flies low for some close kills before landing and galloping along the walls while returning fire. (Pound Cake was able to suspend himself on the ceiling in "Baby Cakes") During the subsequent car chase, Our hero runs out of ammo and the bad guys unload a mounted machine gun. So he flies ahead of them, grabs a cloud, then plants on their windshield. "Lights out!" He shouts as they blindly swerve and then crash.

When I write actions scenes, I usually envision what's going on in combat, and play classical music in the background. I don't plan out how the fights are going to go, just how they end, it feels much more...natural to me. Fighting isn't a giant planned thing, it's a lot of spur of the moment decisions. Sometimes I grab prop guns and play out the action, but that's only if the choreography is giving me a writer's block, and I just can't visualize anything. For battle scenes, I like to think that I'm mostly inspired by Starship Troopers by Heinlein, or Clancy. Very detached, not exactly describing every single motion, but letting the audience fill in the blanks, unless it's something really dramatic.

As for what weapons, I don't see the point of ponies using anything beyond spears, maybe firearms for Unicorns. A firearm is going to break teeth if a pony holds it inside their mouth, and a saddle mounted gun is going to have piss-poor accuracy. Medieval weapons I can see, just not firearms. I like to have a very serious feel to combat, as this is a life-or-death struggle between groups. Some people aren't coming out alive, and that should be treated delicately.

As for fight scenes I have written, I haven't posted one yet, but I'm working on the first real fight scene of the fic: a showdown between entrenched human infantry with heavy armored support, and a pony legion made up of mostly conscripts. Long story short, the ponies parade around for a few minutes before human commanders tell the troops to open fire on them from over a mile away with Heavy Machine Guns, Anti-Materiel Rifles, and Tank/Artillery shells. What follows is best describes as a curbstomp. Not a single human casualty.

I usually go for fast paced. There's almost no speech. I draw a lot of inspiration from the grittier realistic works. And of course, I have everyone fight dirty as possible.

The fights scenes I write tend to be short and sharp (Heh). Like a dance sequence in a movie, it's all about telling a story, not about who hits who. If anything I tend to focus on the emotions than the fight itself.

Twilight shut her eyes and pressed her hooves to her ears, wanting to block out the sounds of breaking limbs and crushed skulls. Soon the shooting and the shouting ceased. But Twilight didn’t move from where she was. Pinkie walked to her, and seeing her friend in distress she tried to place a comforting hoof on her shoulder. Twilight slunk away from Pinkie Pie, looking into her friend’s eyes with terror, “Your… Your hooves… They’re covered in… Blood.”

I guess my inspiration is an old Youtube series called "No More Respawns" It was a machinima (A movie made by recording a video-game [using a special director kit] and voicing over it to make a proper movie) so the animations available in combat were somewhat limited. But the shrill cry of terror as the young Joey found himself locked in deadly conflict with a huge monstrous creature will haunt me for the rest of my life.

I use my old set of wooden karate training weapons, wooden and dummy weapons I bought from the rennaisance fair, and a bunch of fake muskets, blunderbusses, flintlocks, etc I had since I was a kid and shadowbox whilst trying not to accidentally break a lamp in the process.

I tend to give ponies medieval era weaponry such as longswords and maces and give humans rennaisance era weaponry such as muskets or rapiers. Gryphons I imagine as barbarians, so I give them nordic weaponry you'd see a viking use. Zebras are an obvious one, african/zande weapons like spears and clubs. Buffalo are an even more obvious one so I wont bother describing that. Diamond Dogs I give stolen and beaten up weapons as if they've been raided from defeated foes. Cervidae I imagine as elvish so I give them curved swords made of gold and such. Camels I give arabic weaponry (cwurved shwords) and the like. Minotaurs have giant fucking hammers and axes, nuff said.

I give changelings bio-weaponry which is grown from their own bodies (see Tyranids). In the steampunk story I'm writing, the solar empire uses rayguns and energy weaponry (see Doctor Grordbort's) while everyone else uses muskets and rarely melee weapons. Rarely a non-imperial can be seen with a raygun that he/she stole or made him/herself.

I give them these based on their architecture and such, what I think would fit really well with the species.

I can't post an action-y scene from any of my fics because.. well.. I haven't written any yet. I haven't gotten that far in any of my fics, they're all far from being finished. Very far. Lightyears.

For me it really depends on what style of fighting I have planned for the upcoming scene, whether it be Final Fantasy style bullshit or more realistic fight for survival style combat I draw my inspiration from a multitude of sources. When I'm having two of my more powerful characters fight eachother such as Luna vs. Deadpool, the movements and attacks sometimes border on the ridiculous. this is due to me using to ridiculous character's. So for these scene's I like to look up the best anime martial arts scenes and use different moves that i like as well as throw in some of my own creative fluff to it. Although for a comic book character such as Deadpool most of his fighting inspiration comes straight from the comic books and i use the feats that I have seen him capable of.
However my favorite types of fights are the realistic ones. These I'll draw from real life events I've seen or been apart of. All the fight ing in these kinds of scenes are completely based on emotional content of the character's. Taking time to describe each punch and kick naming off the actual attack being used and using opponent reaction to indicate the force of the blow. Sometimes my fight scene can end up being completely one sided simply because the character was caught off guard on the first attack.

"Buck off asshole! Mind your own bucking business!" The stallion yelled in my face, bits of saliva spraying on me. I gave a deep sigh. The stallion raised his hoof again to hit the now slightly confused mare. I tapped the stallion on the shoulder. "I said; back the buck off! You stupi-" 'Smack!' The stallion wasn't able to finish before I reared my head back and headbutted him with all my neck strength right on the nose.

The stallion knocked back by the force of the blow and fell over backwards. As the stallion hit the floor I went down with him punching him hard in the face. Then with my left hoof I grabbed his mane and began to repeatedly bash him in the face. 'Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!' Ponies all around me stared down at the scene in horror as I mercilessly layed into the stallions face giving no sign of letting up anytime soon. 'Thwack! Thwack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Phlack!' I felt the bones begin to collapse under my hoof some and some of his face began to get mushy. I didn't stop. Some pony yelled out, "Grab him before he kills that pony!". A few stallions from the crowd started to grapple my legs and body. I resisted trying to get a few more hits in. Oh Celestia! It felt good to get this aggression out! More ponies from the crowd came to pry me off, even the mare that stallion was beating was trying to push me off.

When someones laying into you without mercy on a surprise attack sometimes you have to let the fight end before it begins. The character that i'm writing about is what i call a rage fighter, they use practically no skill but are a living nightmare for anybody that is unexperianced at fighting. They forgo all reason in exchange for power and lay into their opponent never giving them a chance to recover. However if i pitted this character up against someone who is a seasoned combatant, he wouldn't stand a chance, a rage fighter's attacks leave him wide open for counter's and ripostes from their opponent as long as they are able to dodge effectively