Three decades after the fall of the Equestrian society, the land is a frozen wasteland ruled by unfeeling, soulless creatures. Only a resistance led by the bravest of ponies has the power to make a stand and change the fate of Equestria's future. Locked in a bitter struggle for their very existence, the resistance will find that it is not only the future they fight for...
Written for the Equestria Daily "The More Most Dangerous Game" writing contest.
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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A nice story, but it follows the plot of its source material a little too closely for my tastes.
5574745
I might have gotten a bit of tunnel vision with movie callbacks by the end, there. There were a few lines, such as that last bit of closing dialogue, that I'd wanted to add simply because I couldn't imagine a Terminator movie where someone didn't use that line in some way. It does toe the line of originality though, so I can see how that'd turn some folks away. I'd hoped to have a unique enough spin for that not to be an issue. My goal was to stay fairly close to the Terminator concept, but in an Equestria setting. Fallout: Equestria is my prompt and inspiration for this story/contest, with its ponified Wasteland, and I tried to follow the same path Kkat did. This story was limited by submission time and word count, but if this universe had a chance to extend into a sprawling epic I'd imagine there would be a clearer divergence between the story and source material.
5574848
For what it's worth, I found the writing in the beginning of the story to be very enjoyable. You set up the post-apocalyptic setting very well.
And as far as crossovers go, the sort you're attempting to do--taking the setting, themes and ideas of the original and incorporating it into Equestria--is by far more interesting than simply mashing together the characters. The only issue in this case is preventing the story from becoming too derivative. Imagine if Littlepip was following her father out of Stable Two instead of Velvet Remedy. It would set an entirely different tone for what we could expect from the rest of the story.
While you did a lot of interesting things to keep it uniquely Equestrian, if I could make at least one suggestion, it'd be to change the names of the characters. Don and Que Sera Cantare, for example, don't really feel like pony names. Even Reese's Pieces, while clever, feels out of place in the MLP universe. That'd be one step in the right direction to making the story feel more unique.
5576071
Much appreciated, it helps to know I've got at least a good landscape to build on.
Hmm, I see your point with the plot/character parallels. If I had a chance for a rewrite, I might try new reasons and targets for going back in time. Perhaps the main character goes back in time accidentally during a fight, realizes he could stop the war before it happens, and finds the bugs have sent an assassin back to stop him instead of the other way around. That would also solve the issue of the characters that are there simply for the sake of being there, pigeonholed by Terminator plot.
Names was an issue I definitely struggled with. John and Sarah Connor do not make the transition to pony names very easily. I felt like I had a suitable workaround with Don Cantare and Que Sera Cantare, as their names were inspired by Mi Amore Cadenza. Cantare is the Italian word for 'song', Don is an Italian title, and Que Sera is a saying springing from the song "Que Sera, Sera", meaning "Whatever will be, will be". I thought it had an ironic justice to it considering Sarah Connor's goal was to change fate. I can see how it's a stretch and taking another couple steps away from the source material would have kept me from being shackled.
As for the rest of the pony names, I tried to make a disconnect there with all younger ponies who had been born after the Fall only having very vaguely ponyish names. The older ponies still had names like Jiffy Pop or Marigold, while younger ponies had a new generation of names like Duskin or Lemma (Dusky Dawn or Lemonade if they'd been born in a happier time). I felt that pony names are part of the cheerful magical culture they've cultivated. When that comes crashing down, their names also lose a bit of that shine and take a step closer towards the mundane. Reese's Pieces was a one-line metahumor joke, a nickname the character earned for his habit of reducing the nearby landscape into so many splinters and piles of scrap, and had Reese been born before the war I'd think he would have had a proper pony name. Maybe something like Greaser, and his special talent would be fixing wagons or dancing like John Travolta.
5576426
I had a somewhat vague understanding of Don and Que Sera - at least, I understood the connection to the title and the phrase, though I don't think I took the comparison as far as you did. Now that it's directly pointed out to me, I can definitely appreciate it more, though I still believe that it may be more effective to stand apart from John and Sarah. My main issue was actually that I couldn't figure out what "Cantare" meant. I must have typed it wrong into Google Translate or something, because I didn't find a good definition. I can't find anything to complain about that now!
I recognized that Marigold and Tough Cookie were members of the "Old Guard," which probably meant that they came from before the fall, but I didn't find the connection between age and the names of the ponies. Very subtle, and it actually comes across pretty clear when you look for it, such as the difference between Macaroon and Kora. Maybe it would have benefited from showing that Duskin and Lemma were of the newer generation, or maybe I'm just bad at reading.
I really like your idea on how pony names work. In this context, Reese having the name that he does makes far more sense. I understood that the "Pieces" part was a nickname, and I'm sure that given more time and a larger word count that you'd be able to better show "his habit of reducing the nearby landscape into so many splinters and piles of scrap," but it is what it is I suppose. I think the key issue for his (nick)name is that the logo happens to be the cover art for the story, which automatically makes it feel out of place in an MLP fanfic.
You've evidently thought a lot about this story and what direction it is/was focused towards. If you do ever decide to rewrite the story, or even expand it into a full self-contained novel, I think that I'd like to read it.
I wish you'd written something original.