"We have no hope against the wall: it's too high, too dark, too cold."
Years of discontent boil over as Ponyville citizens stage an occupation of Market Square, demanding reforms that Canterlot will not consider. Caught in the middle, Princess Twilight is immediately thrown into the mess of histories, politics, and emotions that have led up to this unprecedented moment - and may also jeopardize her close relationship with Princess Celestia.
Can Twilight find a solution before her beloved hometown tears itself apart? Or will Ponyville's protestors learn what they have always known - that it is pointless to challenge the power of a god?
===
This story contains invented Ponyville slang and stretched interpretations of canon, so be warned.
Thanks to Politicalunrest2400 for a quick pre-read of the first two chapters.
Inspired by the Umbrella Revolution, the three-month long occupation of major roadways in Hong Kong from Sept-Dec 2014. (Declaration of interest: I was a participant in the Revolution.)
The opening sentence in the description is from Haruki Murakami's speech upon accepting the Jerusalem Prize in 2009. He was talking about Israel and Palestine then; the quote went viral in Hong Kong and was re-purposed for the purposes of the democratic movement there.
Artwork is obtained from MLP wiki images which are then processed through Paint.net. Obviously there are no images of ponies rioting in MLP, so don't look at the picture too closely.
Well... this is interesting. The Ponyville slang, the political tensions with (so far) ambiguous causes...
Yes. I shall be reading this.
And all the Princess' ponies and all the Royal Guard, couldn't put this egg back together again. Will be watching with interest.
Celestia can't be trusted
This is going to end up with hurt feelings and broken windows
Is Twilight an idiot? What part of make this railroad happen doesn't she understand?
6295384
Let's make an omelet.
Nice to see you're back! Intrigued to see how this turns out.
Ohhhh, so the mere fact that the largest and most important apple farm and orchard are in Ponyville, which supplies the majority of Equestria's apple crop, and Ponyville is the home of all of the Element Bearers (which includes your precious student), and that would be decimated by that high-speed rail line, has absolutely no importance whatsoever, eh, Princess Sun-Bitch?
See, now this is just exactly why I absolutely hate Celestia sometimes.
That, and she's making Twilight choose between her, and her friends.
Yep. I hate her in this story.
After reading the section of the tear gas and now this chapter, I think all it takes is 1 death and Twilight snaps.....any faith and trust in this 'princess' is gone. The government is digging a hole that it's increasingly going to get harder to get out of
6430853
She's just playing realpolitick. She has to choose between the few and the many. The occupiers are making the classic mistake of opposing her desires directly; that is a mistake because she can maneuver various other elements of society against them without seeming to do anything herself.
Like any public practitioner of realpolitick, her weakness is exposure. She has to fold at the first sign of blackmail lest she lose her aloof mask. Without that, every single plan she has is put at risk. The occupiers need to dig up some dirt on her, confront her with it, make clear that they have just the one limited objective, and she'll turn around and quietly arrange things in their favor. The high-speed rail will end up going through some other luckless town.
No, Twilight, don't stay. You're the local princess, you tell everyone to shut the hell up and explain since you're the least-likely to inflame tensions further, unlike Celestia showing up.
Why in the hell is she telling Twilight not to go down there?
RESOLVING CONFLICTS IS HER DOMAIN! Twilight should have been made aware of this stuff long before it got to the point of a giant crisis situation and HARMONY-BEARERS being on opposite sides of the issue. Given that the tree is making them the chief go-to ponies for fixing problems, putting the six in positions where they are opposite one another means that you have fucked the hell up, and you need to stop and seriously reconsider.
That said, the rail does need to go to Ponyvile (even if they don't like it), because Ponyvile has become the standard by which Equestria is supposed to be measured thanks to being the home of Twilight, it's newfound importance as a future government central location, and other issues. I fully expect to find out that the rail line is designed in a way to be maximally disruptive to Ponyvile, though, at this rate.
6430899 Hmmm, good point.
And I hope that you're right on that last one.
6430938
If this is the case, then why in the hell did Celestia say this:
if Ponyville is that un-important?!
Methinks that that's gonna come back to bite her ... and very possibly, Twilight herself ... later on somehow.
Badly.
And on this note:
My late dad used to work for the Frisco Railroad (Before Burlington Northern bought them out, that is), and from what I know about railroad companies, they're like any state government that uses "Imminent Domain" like a club when they want to put a new highway through somehere. (I saw this happen at a town here in Missouri called Willow Springs years. This one poor guy and his family had a big farm that produced pork for market. MoDot (the Missouri Department of Transportation) decided that they wanted the majority of their land to ram an interstate highway through between West Plains and Springfield, MO, so after a bunch of mess between the two parties, they eventually ended up just taking what they wanted by the aforementioned Imminent Domain. Consequently, all that's left of that farm sits between what was once the main highway from West Plains and I-60 North.) And that is that they don't give a damn about what landowners (and especially these!) or towns might want. If they want the land for a railroad, they're going to do whatever they can to just take it, and to hell with the subsequent consequences.
This will only end in bloodshed, broken friendships. Rainbow and Applejack in a fight and Twilight disillusioned.
I'm so, so very happy!
Oh hey, Celestia really doesn't want to hurt her own populace. She really has the greater good in mind.
I mean, it's not like the princess is directly asking Twilight, who's a paragon of Friendship, to take a side against her friends, and not permit her to even interact with them, right?
Oh wait.
... I am hoping for Twilight to take a third option. She's magical and friendshipical!
6430853
Did... Did she actually agree to the beating and gassing of mares and children, given the need?
6431591 I think so.
Yeah, stuff like that is just exactly why Celestia is probably my very least liked pony on the show.
6431591
At some point, to run a government, you have to beat people up. The alternative is to surrender to the first fellow who's got the gumption to belt you in the face. Enforcing the law is inevitably a messy business and that's true no matter when or where that government is, what it's politics are or who runs it.
Celestia is showing a fair bit of cowardice (or pragmatism) in dissociating herself from the nasty bits; Mayor Mare is clearly being set up as the fall pony for this operation. If she's smart, she's recording this conversation so that she has a counter when the Crown comes looking for a scapegoat in the wake of the violence, should things come to that.
what are you supposed to believe about Celestia? Well, gee you're only talking to someone who's known her most of her life and watched Equestrian government since she was a child. You've only seen her appoint two others to power equal to her own.
Twilight's caught between a rock and and a hard place.
Twilight is stuck. There is no clean way out.
Why does Twilight insist Celestia has no part in Police 's agressions toward ponyvillians? She was present when she gave the instructions to Major Mare.
upheld
Demons run when a good man goes to war.
Night will fall and drown the sun,
When a good man goes to war.
Friendship dies and true love lies,
Night will fall and the dark will rise,
When a good man goes to war.
Demons run, but count the cost.
The battle's won but the child is lost.
the act of resistance is to match the friction of the force you must face and that they apply to you, match it flows and if you must it's brutality you must never lose the peoples support. you must never abuse them and never underestimate them.
will there be a burned down CVS as well?
or a brawl between guardsmen and protesters
https://www.fimfiction.net/user/Seether00 as far as she believes is that she is to investigate and curtail negative action through words.
now it begins revolt
Ah, it looks like this one isn't going to be finished, sadly.
6295494
So true.