Dilemmas and Decisions

Equestria is a land at peace. Its neighbor, Zebricy, not so much. The land of the zebras is a is exploding into violence once again as a new civil war breaks out, this one threatening to boil over into Equestrian interests. Participate. Abstain. It will all end in death. A little fic I cooked up at midnight on Saturday on a hotel room floor during Bronycon.

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Comments ( 8 )

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WickedlyTragic

WickedlyTragic #1 · Aug 4th, 2014 · · ·

Awww, Very sad.

Midnight Rambler

Midnight Rambler #2 · Aug 4th, 2014 · · 2 ·

I can't say I really enjoyed this story; there's too much tell and too little show, Celestia is wildly OOC at some points, and you dump so much information on us so quickly that it's kinda hard to keep track of everything. Still, I thought it was interesting because it tackles a subject I'm seeing far too little in pony fanfiction: international politics.

I love politics and history, and as such I'd love to see more and longer fics with this kind of theme. Since the show gives us very little to work with, I've been headcanoning off about the nations Equestria shares the world with, drawing parallels to various real-world countries (e.g. ponies as Britain, minotaurs as Germany, gryphons as France, changelings as Russia, Diamond Dogs as Poland...) Of course they're not direct copies, that would be boring, but they do have some historical and cultural similarities. I've also come up with a few plot bunnies of my own, such as this one:

Sreponica [Adventure][Dark]
It is eight hundred years after Luna's banishment, and the Equestrian Enlightenment is in full bloom. Among other things, the movement holds that it is Equestria's duty to spread the values of harmony and tolerance far beyond the borders of the kingdom.
Across the sea, to the west, the divided gryphon tribes are fighting a messy, bloody war amongst themselves. A war that has gotten progressively more bloody since the Empire of Minos stepped in, seeking to take advantage of the conflict to increase its own power. No one is quite sure who's fighting whom anymore, and even in areas where there is no open warfare, it's far from safe. The gryphon tribes hate each other even more than they hate the minotaurs, and rag-tag militias are springing up everywhere, showing a concerning lack of combat ethics.
Inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment, Celestia decides to send a Royal Guard regiment to a faraway corner of the gryphon lands as a peacekeeping force. Their mission is to protect civilians, and to keep the warring factions away from each other as much as possible.
It doesn't go very well.

I don't think I'm ever going to write this one, since it's so complex and broad in scope that I'd need to make it hundreds of thousands of words long to get it right. I've been tossing around a similar idea called The Celestial's Prayer, about an elite Royal Guard unit created by Celestia and sent abroad to protect Equestrian interests (obviously inspired by Sabaton.)

Anyway, there's one important thing we should all keep in mind when writing about this topic.

Samey90

Samey90 #3 · Aug 5th, 2014 · · ·

4800855

Diamond Dogs as Poland...

Dzięki, stary...

kalash93

kalash93 #4 · Aug 9th, 2014 · · ·

4803534

That could be fun...

NobleValor

NobleValor #5 · Aug 11th, 2014 · 2 · ·

Very poignant work. I think this quote sums up the results of war (all of them) quite nicely : "I've never seen so many men wasted so badly." Fine work.

kalash93