The Wealth of the World
The Wealth of the World
by very trustworthy rodent
The following is a personal account of a journey undertaken by radical reformers who left Equestria to seek a better life. More particularly, it concerns the fate of 148 ponies who took off from Equestria aboard the Queen Sapphire on the 12th of April in the year 1858 of Her Majesty Princess Celestia’s reign. I will preface this account by confirming that these ponies all will have perished by the time that anypony finds this lonely book. For those ponies who are now thinking of glancing through my story simply so they might know the ailment that took us, I should endeavor to warn you against it before continuing, for it was a virus of the mind, and it takes scarcely more than a weak mind to succumb to its poison. If my plan for this account is successfully enacted, it will have been found sealed by magic in a waterproof box and tucked within a chest that I buried myself, off the coast of the island where the Queen Sapphire found her new home. It will have been discovered alongside a few daguerreotypes of my wife and me, a hoofful of our most beloved books, and three of my favourite little artefacts—my gilded snuff box inlaid with a turquoise stone, inherited from my great-grandfather, my brass pocket watch, and my wedding band. I would ask the ponies reading this not to cast away these baubles. We have cast away too much already. Now—allow me to start at the beginning.
The day when the Equestrian government announced its endorsement of the westward expansion was greeted with cheer by pious settlers, the national railroad company, and deep-pocketed businessponies alike, but for me it was little more than a bother, as I was made to suffer a tax rise. Being a stallion of letters and relatively few means, I joined a group of my neighbors in petitioning the great Princess Celestia to lower the burden on our wallets, only to be met with a chilly response from the Steward’s Office, from which I inferred that the government simply didn’t think we knew what was best for us. Mean and grasping as our class might be, our petty concerns were nonetheless part of a broad call for reform that was galvanizing a broad cross-section of the population, and I found myself swept up with those who sought an end to the injustices of the Equestrian system. Now, I had never been inclined to the radical reform movement before, but on this occasion, I was impelled to unite with the reformers in protest, if for no principled reason. Indeed, I admit that, at first, I was motivated only by my sad financial state—but one good filly, who led an organisation that was perhaps the most apocalyptically critical of our monarchy, took it upon herself to welcome me into her cause.
This mare’s name was Distant Shores—a pegasus with a pastel blue coat and strangely dark eyes like misted amethysts. Her cutie mark was a blindfold, that vital accessory of justice. I was at first wary of her, as I was of all reformers, but she had easy manners and a deeper interest in the great literature of dead ponies than I anticipated from one so eager to throw out anything old and dusty. Her organisation had one of the trendy names so common to these reform groups—the Transcendental Unitarians, the Communitarian Society, &c.—but at the conference and dinner party where our interests met, I found that we shared more common ground than would most perfect strangers. She held forth on everything from our own native writing, the luminous poetry of Dreamstar, that late epic Opulana by Inkwell Lane, the mammoth Gothic novels of Mundo Quill, to the ancient literary traditions of the East, the eternal Tale of Keiji, the stories of General Silverhawk, the voluptuous verses of The Tragedy of the Four Kings recited with illimitable reverence in that dining hall! So it was that tying together our causes against the government was surprisingly simple.
In total I cannot say how many ponies were united in this sudden bolt of anger besides those known to myself and Distant Shores, but it was soon beyond our control, and the riot and clamor in Canterlot demanded a response. At last, Princess Celestia emerged from the Palace and declared that she had an answer for us. She presented us with two options: to move to the West ourselves and stake out uncharted territory, or to depart Equestria entirely and found a new land. In her kindness, she would, at a cost to the government, provide a number of us with the means to freely leave Equestria—a ship from Equestria’s own naval fleet. This was greeted with boos and jeers from the mass of ponies who had no desire to leave their homes and families behind, but my private reaction was a great deal more agreeable. I must confess: I sensed a whimsical promise in the notion of leaving Equestria. To leave the old earth behind and make off for new land—it lit a coltish desire for exploration and discovery in my heart, as though I might be following in the hoofsteps of Hurricane Swift in Gales of the Appelantic. I could not but fancy myself as the noble seafarer, the itinerant pilgrim, that archetype of adventure! I turned to Distant Shores, and I knew at once that she shared my feelings! Our destinies, I fancied, were then united as one, the constellations enveloping us in heavenly purpose.
Distant Shores she was, and distant shores would receive us—how auspicious her name seemed at that moment! We clasped hooves and cheered like we had gone mad. The next day we were married, and I pray that the daguerreotypes we commissioned survive in this box as a record of our happiness.
The ship to take us away would be the Queen Sapphire. As I understand it, there was some competition among those who desired a place on the vessel; Shores and I were judged to be of particular distinction within the reform movement and as such we were guaranteed passage. It goes without saying that Shores was distressed at this preferential treatment, but it was explained to us that once we had founded a new land, we were free to pursue our own dogma and thus allow whomever we chose to make their own migrations from and to that land. For Celestia’s land, however, it would be Celestia’s dogma. For the pragmatic cause of the reform she sought, Distant Shores could not argue.
Shores and I were not the only ponies who earned special treatment. Besides the two of us, there was also a stallion by the name of Scarlet Flame, one of Shores’ co-conspirators, and the very sort of radical that I was disinclined to know. Like me, he was a unicorn, and our names shared a peculiar similarity; for these reasons among others, Shores sometimes accused me of jealousy in our worse moments, but the more basic truth is that I did not like the pony. Scarlet was cultureless, and seemed purely hateful of Equestrian civilisation. The matter of improvement was to him immaterial; what was most important was to stomp old trumpery beneath the hoof until it was dust. Stout, unthinking, and resentful, his character and his ideals were objects of elemental distase to me. His singular virtue, I believe, was that he acted to balance Distant Shores’ whimsy with the gravel-voiced rhetoric of destruction. At this early stage, I hoped that he would play only such a balancing role in our new world. As for the mark on his flank, it was a great bonfire; this image illustrated the nature of his heart better than any I could devise.
We sold our property and took only our most valued personal belongings onto the ship—for me and Shores, this meant far more books than was ever necessary. As noted, there were 148 passengers overall, crammed together into bunks in wooden compartments loaded with chests and baggage cases. We the privileged few slept together in a larger cell—Distant Shores, myself, and Scarlet Flame. Even our crew was composed of reformers. The ship’s captain was a wiry earth pony who called himself Almarine, a venerable stallion to our cause. We were to set off on the 12th of April and find ourselves a new home.
The day of departure was more tearful for Shores than for me. I was an only foal who knew little of my distant family, and my parents had passed several years ago—my mother of the flu and my father of consumption. This left me lacking in filial ties when contrasted with Shores, who had an unmarried younger sister in the textile trade, and whose mother was not yet sixty, by all accounts still red-cheeked and healthy. I let them have privacy to say their farewells, but later on, Shores confessed to me in plaintive voice that she was unable to explain or justify her mission to her mother. I could offer little but comfort.
The Queen Sapphire was docked in Manehattan. I still recall now my last view of civilisation as we raised anchor and set forth into the Appelantic Ocean. Amid the great sea, we reckoned ourselves pioneers, and looked back with presumptive superiority at the old world. Today I feel no pioneering spirit well up in me as I think on my final view of that formidable city—only an abiding sense of loss.
As to the details of the journey itself, I will not bore you with the many trials of seafaring. We were on board the Sapphire for two-and-a-half months before we made landing. Myself being prone to seasickness, I suffered for a good portion of this period; Shores fared better, generally speaking, although I did see her leaning over the decks more than once. We were quickly accustomed to the solid taste of oats, though at least where concerned drinks we were quite overburdened with all manner of spirits and wines. It was apparent that many of our fellow passengers had seen fit to take their vices with them, which Scarlet heartily disapproved of. As was the custom, we were all made to suck on limes from time to time as insurance against scurvy, an unpleasant practice.
Indeed, by the time we spied a green island of sufficient size to host our group, most of us were quite exhausted with life at sea. From our oceanic vantage, the island resembled first a darkened mountain, swarmed on all sides by moss and mist, but, as we drew closer, we saw that this mountain sheltered a vast forested flat-land that was surely suitable for the accommodation of everypony on board and tens more besides. We were all revelry as the ship approached—and yet our joy was not universal. I recall Scarlet Flame and his tense look, his small, squinted gaze never leaving the shore, and I wonder now if he had any inkling of what was to come.
It was a cool morning when our weary vessel beached on the shore. Hungrily we spilled out over the sand, eager explorers all of us. Shores and I stayed close to one another, talking idly about the life we might lead here. We ventured into the forests, where the birdsong was high and clear through the canopy, and came to a little cave sunk into the mountainside. We remained there for some time, to take in a little private happiness amid our new surroundings, and in doing so, discovered a tiny nook in the rocky wall, closely concealed. Together we resolved to store our most valuable belongings here, including the blank diary that I write in today. You may think my actions cynical or mean—to hide our private belongings from such a well-intentioned set of ponies—but I am thankful beyond measure to my former self for making this decision.
Once it was determined that the island was well-positioned as a home for us, our ragged band met together on the edge of the forest and we called the crowd to order. Shores and Scarlet Flame elevated themselves on a jutting rock formation and addressed the pioneers. We convened there to lay down the foundations of a new society, united as one voice.
Scarlet Flame did much of the public speaking; he was an exceptional rhetorician. The trite word to apply, I suppose, in fitting with his name, would be “fiery.” His deep voice blazed with feeling and his oratory cracked and popped at every hinge of its rhythm. When it reached the climaxes, that voice soared upwards and outwards without losing any of its startling power. It was a skill I envied.
Scarlet declared first that certain things would have to change. This new society was to be a society of equals, in which every action by every individual would be free and voluntary. There was to be no class or rank, no enforcement of coercive law or taxation, no false divinity as we saw in Princess Celestia.
“We will liberate ourselves!” cried he jubilantly. “We will liberate ourselves from the evils that burden ponykind and thus restore the goodness of the pony in his natural state! On this day we will cleanse those evils from this island!”
With that emancipatory exclamation came a discussion of what sins were the most immediately forthcoming among ponykind. The monarchy of Princess Celestia was the first and bitterest topic. Symbols of Equestrian domination were to be discarded—the ship was to be repainted to conceal its origins, its Equestrian flag burned, and all the Celestia-worshipping ornaments and heraldic symbols contained within its vast wooden case were to be thrown out to the sea. This was an easy decision.
But, in the end, we were no longer under the dominion of Princess Celestia, and so we looked to ourselves to distinguish divisions of class among our group. Indeed, there were a few younger nobles who had come along, and they had brought with them some articles of trumpery and finery—gilded trinkets, silken robes and hats, all manner of gleaming objects emblazoned with family heraldry. With some reluctance, they forfeited these to the mob.
“Meaningless symbols of wasteful cruelty!” roared Scarlet Flame, holding up a shining goblet in a shaking hoof. “Hollow instruments crafted only to celebrate and perpetuate the material wealth and power of an oppressor class so that they might play at being noble and moral, when we all know from their actions that they are, as a matter of fact, deeply ignoble and totally—totally—morally degenerate!”
The ponies cheered and smashed up the remaining trumpery of aristocracy on that beach, throwing the torn and ruined artifacts into the sea. One last holdout, a silver-coated unicorn mare, was clutching her belongings fearfully as she backed away. She was encircled by the others, and seeing no escape, began to protest the ritual.
“Please, please!” cried the aristocrat. “These are family heirlooms. How can I teach my foals of their heritage without them? These are not just symbols of power but marks of history—of culture—of civilisation itself. How can we build an new society without a knowledge of history and the roots of civilisation?”
“That history is one we must disinherit!” replied Scarlet Flame. “That history is but a gruesome tale of blood and domination! Discard those trinkets and liberate your foals from that heritage! No more shall we know of ponies who hold dominion over their fellow!”
One by one the reformers took everything the young mare clutched so tightly in her hooves— the fur-lined robes, the gilt ornaments, the dusty family chronicle—and brought them into the throng, where they were angrily destroyed, and thus was the last aristocrat denuded, standing as an indistinguishable equal among writers and labourers and scroungers.
The distinctions of class and rank now duly disposed of, the mob turned its collective mind to consider other instruments of inequity that might be dealt with in a similar fashion. A dark red earth colt spoke up, a colt I knew to be Bumper Crop, the leader of a group among us that was known for its steadfast opposition to the settlers’ movement in Equestria.
“I know that some of us have brought weapons to this island!” he exclaimed. “Now I am in no doubt about the essential goodness of all these ponies gathered here, but what is a weapon but the means of enforcing the power of one at the expense of many? What is a weapon but the means by which our government and others have waged their wars of conquest? Swords, guns, any and all munitions—they must go to the sea! Even today, the settlers moving westward brag of their guns and the ease with which they can pick off native buffalos. Weaponry is the greatest folly ponykind has ever burdened itself with!”
This plea drew applause from the crowd, and once more, the group rushed to gather an undignified assortment of swords, knives, and guns from their luggage. I saw Almarine retrieve a little blade from his saddlebag and toss it atop the pile, kissing it just before he did so. When no more weapons were forthcoming, the ponies, in a blissful fury, seized the cruel metal of war for the last time and hurled the arms into the sea. I privately prayed no murderers had stored away weapons, as I had my books and baubles.
Finally, when all the weaponry was cast off, the ponies regrouped again at the rock. It was clear that they were considering whether there might yet be more terrible evils lurking among their belongings, inherited from the old world.
“I have never seen anything like this before,” said I to Distant Shores. “I will be interested to see the impact of these reforms.”
“They’re not finished yet,” said Distant Shores. “Just watch.”
After some minutes of diffuse gossip and discussion, another pony took it upon herself to speak. She was an earth filly from the textile mills—a labourer—named Cotton Lilac. Her voice was high and sharp, and it brought us all to swift attention.
“Money!” she exclaimed. “If there’s one thing this place doesn’t need, it’s money! When I turned ten, my momma sent me to the mill and since then I learned to know my value by the bits in my purse. Today, I am nineteen years old, in the prime of my working life, and I cannot take it anymore. Why must we depend on money so? Paper and coin, that’s all it is. I will not be valued by those bits anymore!”
This set off a riotous succession of cheers and Scarlet Flame declared the abolition of money at once. Our wallets were hastily emptied of bits until there was a small fortune collected on that beach. Checkbooks and receipts and ledgers emerged as well, and all records of debt. Indeed, many of the ponies gathered on the beach were poor debtors, and they rejoiced to see their financial documents destroyed. It seemed to me that the abolition of money had pushed the mob into an incomparable state of frenzied joy, and I watched with interest as they tore up their debts and cast away the burdens of currency.
Scarlet Flame appeared satisfied with this passionate display, and he called for order. Now that we had decisively thrown off our shackles, it was time for us to devise a new base upon which a virtuous society could thrive. Firstly, it was decided that the island would henceforth be known only as The Island, for to name it after anything else could imply superiority. To name it for a pony implied the superiority of that pony; to name it for an object of artificial beauty implied the superiority of its creators; to name it for an object of natural beauty implied the inferiority of ponykind in the face of nature. Furthermore, noted Scarlet, The Island was for all intents and purposes the entire world of ponykind, insofar as ponykind was good and true and unimpeded by evil, in which case all the ponies beyond the shores of The Island were barbarians—no more true to the natural goodness of ponykind than the carnivorous giant cats of Zebrika. What else could this place be but the lone Island of freedom and reason amidst that barbarism?
Secondly, it was agreed that The Island would not be constituted as a nation in the manner of Equestria. “The nation is a fantasy!” cried Scarlet. “Let us abandon those capricious borders that herd in honest ponies and cast a veil of prejudice over their eyes!” So it was that The Island was founded as nationless by design.
Having established the most basic philosophical elements of our society, it was time to consider more physical matters. Our group was constituted mostly of labourers—over half of us, I would suppose. We were two-thirds earth pony, and there were only eight unicorns, myself and Scarlet Flame included. Our differences in skills and background would have to be accounted for. More pertinently, we would have to find a spot to make our first settlement. A expeditionary group of volunteers was quickly assembled to seek out good land and establish such a settlement. Scarlet Flame insisted upon leading this expedition, and having no desire to argue, I allowed him to take the reins.
From that day we began the hard work towards a new civilisation—felling trees, building, cooking, farming. We were peaceful and diligent in those first few months. I, alongside Distant Shores and others of the intellectual class, was put to work planning, allocating, and delegating, though we all indulged in physical labour. In those early days, I pleased myself with the thought that there was no society of ponies more honest, more thoughtful, or more assiduous than the one in which I lived.
By the third month, we had settled into a comfortable routine. From the lush forests, we had carved out a plain suitable for our habitation, and upon that built enough simple huts and houses to accommodate everypony here. Out of necessity, our early diet had been reliant on The Island’s abundance of grass and leaves, but as we arrived at our society’s 100-day anniversary, we had sustainable farms growing crops and vegetables. In a radical move that contravened the selfish pettiness of the old world, these farms were owned collectively and served our community first.
The first hiccough in our grand plan was a brawl that broke out on the 101st day since our arrival. It was the second day of revelry in a planned week of festivities, and some drunkards started a fight. The true reasons for this outbreak of violence are lost to history, but it left us with several injured ponies and a glummer atmosphere than was usual on The Island. Naturally, we were all quite put out, but Scarlet Flame in particular was incandescent with rage. He stood upon a stump so that his fearsome orange mane was lit by the moon, and from that perch he called the village to order.
“We are yet blighted by the sins of the old world!” cried he. “We are yet brought to blows by this poison!” He held in his hoof a bottle of whisky, which he then threw down in dramatic fashion, smashing it in the village square. “Can you imagine what great, great creatures of virtue we ponies could have been had the devils of Tartarus not brewed these spirituous concoctions to confound our good senses? Let us embody that virtue and cast them out! Let us smash and burn these devilish spirits!”
There was solemn agreement among those gathered, and we lit a fire, upon which was thrown all the spirits and wines that had been brought from Equestria. The fire blazed up in ruddy celebration, as though in a merry state of inebriation itself, and there was a great stomping of hooves. Being not a drunkard nor a teetotaler, I was broadly indifferent to the ritual, but I spied a few gloomy topers lurking by the fields, shamefacedly examining their hooves. Many of them I recognised as seastallions—the crew of the Queen Sapphire. Captain Almarine I spied, guzzling down the last cup of wine as his fellows demanded its relinquishment. All fluid consumed, he held out his empty cup to them with a look of defiance.
When I witnessed this burning of the spirits, I supposed it to be an isolated incident and unlikely to recur. Perhaps the corrupting influence of alcohol was a genuine phenomenon. In hindsight, this second purification only established a systematic means of continuous moral rebirth that would prove a necessity over the course of our Island’s short, dim history. As I have come to reflect on that history, I am forced to consider that our failures were not the product of ill tactics but evidence of a basal sickness within our notion of Reform itself—that the reformed society we sought was no more truly organic than the Tradition we had so arrogantly designated as the suppressive superstructure of false gods.
Yet it did appear for a time that we had found paradise—this I cannot deny. For the best part of a year we lived in harmony such that would make Princess Celestia envious, interrupted only by that regrettable drunken episode. Then, in the March of 1859, disaster struck.
By the time of Hearth’s Warming Eve, the drinking incident was forgotten by all those but the most determined drunkards. Distant Shores and I were considering the possibility of foals—if only! Scarlet Flame was heavy-hoofed as always in his capacity as our chief organiser, but the ponies of The Island responded to his booming rhetoric. Our store of oats would pull us through winter if nothing else, and when spring at last glistened on the horizon, we thought that the worst of our struggles was over. If only, if only. O what terrific folly, our self-willed exile!
So then—disaster. An earth filly named Sewphie was found dead—bludgeoned with a rock. She was a friend of Cotton Lilac, the mare who stood up and condemned money on the day of our arrival. Tragically, Lilac had stumbled upon the body herself, during a turn in the woods. Her pale form lay on its flank, in repose amid frosted flowers, natural and angelic.
In the following weeks, Lilac testified that the murderer was probably motivated by the banal intricacies of a predictable lovers’ dispute, but we shall never know exactly who committed this crime. We shall never know because the question on the lips of the Islanders was never “Who is the murderer?” Their question was merely, “How is there a murderer here?” It was their question because it was Scarlet Flame’s question, and any other path of inquiry was secondary.
“How could this happen?” he thundered to me and Shores during a private meeting. “What has gone wrong? What reason could there be to murder?” His influence among us was such that we became preoccupied with preventative measures—what could corrupt a pony so deeply that he would commit murder, and could it be cast out like the weaponry and the spirits?
It was at this juncture that first found myself in conflict with Scarlet Flame. Until this point, I had tolerated his radical tactics as a pragmatic necessity, but this murder drew a schism through the Island’s leadership. Shores and I were of the mind that this incident, though tragic, was a fundamentally inescapable consequence of pony society. The criminal should be punished, we argued, but not all our village. Scarlet, however, was resolute that we could source this evil act to the influence of some artificial structure of thought, a withering vestige of Equestrian beliefs. As such, the whole sick body of our society needed moral medicine.
“Who can say whether it is natural for the pony to murder?” he asked us, and truthfully, we had no scientific answer. “You will point to years of historical precedent, but that history was shaped by cruelty and segregation. Who can say whether murder is not merely a consequence of an ill-devised system of political economy that places higher existential value on some ponies to the detriment and deprivation of others?”
It is most regrettable that these arguments stymied the investigative process, such that our political troubles defined its winding, weary course. At the third hearing, held in my own home, it finally unravelled, the red string of our so-called destiny tangled into irreparable knots, the spool clattering sharply on hardwood floor. During a tense but fruitless interrogation of one of the seastallions by Distant Shores, Scarlet rumbled to life and stood to deliver one of his speeches. I have described this pony as destructive before—this speech, I think, served not just as a general evocation of destruction but as the enactment of our own destruction. Our society was forever severed from that day forth, and doomed to collapse. From Scarlet’s lips came poison more potent than any spirit, more piercing than any sword.
“Poor Sewphie!” he exclaimed. “Poor, poor Sewphie! To be coldly murdered and, from the view of heaven, see her earthly companions apologise for the sin committed against her!”
Thus he spoke first of the folly he was witnessing in this trial and its utter futility where concerned the cause of this crime. He spoke of history and of the many forces that had led us to this great Island, where at last we were free from oppression and domination. He said that for our tiny idyll to suffer even now at the whim of cruel murder suggested a deeper root to the evils of ponykind than wine or money or guns. He asked what was the first sin of the first pony civilisation.
“What is it?” he barked. “Can you even guess? The more I think of it, the more convinced I become. We have doomed ourselves to failure because of this one thing we cannot bear to cast off. Like the bird nursing the foreign chick of the cuckoo, we have been so close to this demon—since our very foalhoods, in fact—that we cannot imagine life without it.”
We all looked at one another in anticipation, but no voices offered themselves before Scarlet Flame spoke again.
“This! This is what I talk of.” In his hoof he held one of Shores’ book. “The curse of written language. It is strange to me that so many consider these scribblings to be pure representations of pony thought when they are so consumed with material evils. As spirits poison the body, so does the written word poison the mind.”
“Books?” said Distant Shores. “You can’t be serious. Books can certainly contain wicked things, but they can also inspire ponies to goodness.”
Scarlet shook his head. “Inspire them more than their fellow pony? Inspire them more than the beauty of natural world? A book can carry ponies into mysterious unrealities that confound natural sense and practical reason. The only book that could ever reflect true goodness is a book in which is written but a single command: look to the world.”
There was an outcry from the audience, and a ferocious debate swiftly consumed the theater of justice. Shores and I looked to each other in desperation. Neither one of us had any inkling of Scarlet Flame’s radical plans before that moment; indeed, both of us being bibliophiles ensured that we would never consent to such plans.
Alas, the most devout reformers were already fuming for a third purification! But where there were once a majority of ponies ready to join with Scarlet Flame in bringing down destruction, this matter proved to divide us in a manner that was unprecedented on The Island. We were no longer bound, but were instead ruptured by our ideals.
When all clamor died down it was clear that this matter would have to receive a fair hearing among the townsponies. I stubbornly resisted the notion of a popular vote, but my wife, for all her love of literature, believed that the virtues of fairness and consent superseded her own sentiments. Naturally, in the course of this argument, the murder had been totally forgotten—what fools Scarlet made of us all, and of himself!
The vote was held the next week in the village square, and to my relief, the result was a two-thirds majority in favour of keeping written language alive—but it was not the end of our trouble. Scarlet Flame’s cult, which held sway over Bumper Crop, the farmer who hated guns, and also many of the seastallions, who had deserted the Captain Almarine to his sadness, yet numbered 45 in total, and they were insistent that they could not live with us in moral squalor. With characteristic bombast, Scarlet insulted directly the ponies who had voted against the motion, including the tearful Cotton Lilac, whose friend had died for Scarlet’s thoughtless cause. He declared that he would leave our settlement and found a new one—any pony with moral courage could follow him. It would be a settlement without the degenerating influence of art, and thus without murder.
We almost believed he was bluffing; when evening came and his little cult actually left, it startled us all. We supposed that he would return in a few days begging us for access; when he did not, we began slowly to forget about him. Or at least, we began to try.
What followed was the second period of peace on The Island. Lasting from the March all the way through to Hearth’s Warming Eve of 1859, it was a chillier and more fragile peace than the first. For the most part, we were a divided race. Those of us in the first village, at least, did not talk of the second—did not know even where it was situated, and if somepony did, we were in no hurry to ask. It was a point of soreness to consider the bleak circumstances of our split. I suspect that our murderer slipped out with Scarlet’s group; we never found the culprit among our depleted numbers.
Yet there was peace. Rumours abounded of the second village, and I endeavoured on the whole to avoid hearsay, but with our territories in such close proximity, it became difficult. Every so often, a pony from our settlement would wander off into the woods to join Scarlet. In total, I believe we lost five ponies this way. On the other hand, no ponies came back from Scarlet’s village, and while my heart would have liked to believe that this was because we were mistaken, and my counterpart’s vision of a utopia had come true, my head convinced me of a darker notion: there was no escape from Scarlet’s village. Echoing calls and chants came through the trees, from which I could discern no words, and there would follow a great stomping sound. I thought it could have been an ongoing celebration at first, but it would be a most queer form of celebration were that the case—too rigid, too precise. Though many of us in the first village enjoyed a turn in the woods from time to time, we never once encountered our old neighbours amid the trees. Some of us supposed that they were too far away, but The Island is not that large, and we took many walks in the wood during the summer.
My fears were confirmed in early December, when a sea blue stallion tore up through the rotting, snow-crusted undergrowth and nearly frightened a poor filly called Cowry to death. He was a runaway—he had not gone with Scarlet Flame during the initial dispute, but disillusioned with slow-paced agrarian life, he had followed after in July. They brought him up to the office to stand before me and Distant Shores, and we heard his testimony.
As it transpired, he was a character with whom I was well-acquainted. His name was Lisianthus Logos, and he was one of our few unicorns. He was also among the ex-aristocrats, making him doubly endangered on The Island. Those nobles were a dour lot here, but naturally, they were the best conversationalists of our community, and he told his uncomfortable tale with such dignity that made me wish all the more that it were untrue.
The first of many unpleasant surprises was that Scarlet Flame had instituted a special organisation in his village that he termed “the Vanguard of Reform” to oversee matters that threatened the integrity of the community (such as attempts to write anything besides dated records). The brawny seastallions were employed to enforce these rules through patient intimidation. No violence, supposedly—no violence, at first. Yet the Vanguard were subjected to physical training at night, ensuring that everypony could hear their stomping hooves and morale-boosting chants. Scarlet reassured the villagers that once they had become “new ponies,” as he put it, this group would naturally fade away. As of December, it remained.
By the time Logos arrived, the farms and houses of Scarletville were already surrounded by a high wooden fence; apparently, it served to incubate them until they had attained the highest possible state of virtue. In Scarlet Flame’s mind, virtue seemed synonymous with isolation and silence. Unable to find a means to handle the insults and cruel banter that passed between ponies in public spaces, Scarlet and his Vanguard emphasised quiet diligence. Language was declared to be a distraction from inner goodness.
The Vanguard’s Relearning Program began two weeks after Logos came to their gates. These were a special means of educating those deemed to be corrupted. Among the planning class, when backtalk and thievery persisted, they were made to work as farm labourers for arranged periods. When that backtalk and thievery emerged in the farmers, Scarlet placed them in isolation, so they might know themselves more truly. Over a course of months, the enforcement of Relearning became ever more severe—until a natural spectre of ruin came to Scarletville that should have been long predicted.
In his frenzy for reform, Scarlet Flame had neglected the most elemental needs of his populace. Harvests were well below expected levels, and many ponies, especially those detained in the Relearning huts, were already malnourished. As winter’s slow crawl over The Island plunged Scarletville into eerie cold, the lamps went out across the village. In the past month, all seven ponies undergoing Relearning in isolation had died of disease or starvation. The farmers were faring poorly, barely surviving on shallow bowls of oats. At least two had died of pneumonia and two more were violently ill. Yet Scarlet would allow none to leave. They were falling apart, said Logos, falling to ashes, and all that Scarlet Flame thought of was more reform. Hypocritically, he ensured that his inner circle was well fed while others could barely stand on their own four hooves for hunger.
Thus did Logos make his escape by night. He rammed a hole through the fence, and was pursued by Scarlet’s stallions for perhaps two miles. In spite of their doggedness, fortune favoured Logos when he chanced upon an earthy hollow concealed by leaves and snow—perhaps the abandoned sanctuary of some animal. By morning, he had become quite feverish from the cold, and in his delirium, burst out as soon as he saw Cowry’s familiar form.
Our runaway’s story prompted a long deliberation over whether we in the first village could do anything to help. We certainly had the numbers to confront Scarlet, but Logos shook his head. The Vanguard of Reform now consisted of over half the population of the village, and furthermore, they had been effectively militarised. Most would not come peacefully. Those still held in unwilling bondage, he said, may already be too far gone to save now.
It would have been easy to dismiss Logos’ argument as aristocratic fatalism at the expense of those he deemed to be his social inferiors, but there was a point to be made for avoiding confrontation. Scarlet Flame’s private militia would surely attack us if we tried to overwhelm his village through numbers alone. Had we not sworn off war and violence as a means of resolving conflict? Shores and I decided to sit on the information until we could mediate a peaceful solution. I am still unsure that we made the correct judgement, but it did not matter; two weeks later, on Hearth’s Warming Eve, we were invaded.
Knowing they were outnumbered, Scarlet and his brutes came as we slept. My account of these events will be diffused and uneven, as I spent most of that evening being led from place to place in a state of exhaustion. I was woken by Distant Shores to find my house occupied by a small group of my neighbours, including Captain Almarine and Cotton Lilac. There was a commotion outside—shouting and crying. Scarlet’s warriors were herding our sleepy villagers out into the square to hear his declaration of conquest. Those who resisted were given a sharp beating. Apparently, the village had been designated a toxic influence on Scarletville. This diagnosis relied largely on the case of Lisianthus Logos, who they claimed to have been swayed by our reactionary habits.
“We must leave,” said Almarine. “We can’t fight them.”
“Can we?” I asked. “Leave?”
The fateful words were spoken by a plaintive Cotton Lilac: “Please. I want to go home.”
I wondered idly why they had not come for me first, but hurried by my wife and Captain Almarine, we snuck into the woods, intending to make for the Queen Sapphire. As it turned out, this was a dreadful mistake.
The Queen Sapphire was smashed up on the shore—not fully dismantled, but beyond our capacity to repair with any speed. Scarlet had correctly predicted our movements and sent no less than six members of his Vanguard there to greet us. For a moment, I stared at the ship blankly; before I could act, I felt the shattering pain of earth pony hooves connecting with my head. I cried out, and heard my compatriots as they too were ambushed. They kicked at our shivering bodies and laughed in the darkness as we pleaded with them, and then ordered us to stand and return to the village. There was no escape from The Island.
The books were already blazing away as we arrived. The bonfire churned and whistled in the winter night—and so the works of Dreamstar and Silverclaw and Inkwell Lane were lost. I could barely summon a response. The villagers stood solemnly before Scarlet Flame on his stump, hemmed in by his goons. He looked leaner, and more frantic in his bearing—his mane dishevelled, his hooves gesticulating in an uncanny, almost mechanical fashion. As we approached, he was jabbering away to the crowd with great fervour, but the sight of his mollified ex-comrades brought his frenzy to a halt.
“So you chose to leave,” he said. “So you are traitors to our mission in the end. Is this not the home we sought? Why did you run?”
I said that it was because I was tired.
Having conquered us, and apparently nonplussed by my answer, Scarlet reverted once more to his tiresome moralising. He announced that from this moment forwards, none of the citizenry were permitted to talk in public save for himself.
“Even now,” said he, voice shaking, “now, now, very now, I fear that even I could impede reform by speaking so freely. I implore you all to think now on your innocent foalhood. Foals are not born to speech—we are taught it! Taught to navigate the many sinful instruments of this world with our ceaselessly lapping tongues! To persuade, to debate, to lie. Hateful tongues!”
And so it went on, like a diabolical circus. I could feel only resignation; though my heart ought to have been hot with resentful anger, it was blackened and frozen in a way I did not recognise, its deepest recesses scorched by ice. I had not even the spiritual means to oppose him.
Suddenly—“Distant Shores! Stop, traitor!”
I looked up at my wife’s name. To my horror, she was galloping for the woods again with her saddlebag loaded with half-charred books. I called to her, and was struck by the soldier at my side. By the time I had scrambled to my hooves, my wife was being dragged away by the stout seastallions, kicking up snow and crying out. It was the last I would see of her. I too was grabbed and, in a dazed state, pulled in the opposite direction. What happened next I cannot precisely say, as I was continuously easing in and out of consciousness.
I know that I first felt a burst of heat from behind. My captors dropped me and there was a terrible scream—successive screams all around, and warmth tickling my prone form. I saw sparks. Were they real or products of my shattered mind? Sparks and flashes in the sky, snow on my tongue, and heat.
Focus hammered at the edge of my senses—the fire! The fire!
I stumbled to my hooves and looked toward the heat. The great bonfire had caught something, or somepony, and spread to engulf the village. It was a black animal that stung and clawed at the eyes, a soaring hellscape of light and choking ash, a howling blaze that captured the sky in a chorus of smoke and screams. My wife, my wife—she was gone, annihilated—Distant Shores receding away, catapulted through streaks of fire, plummeting into the fields where the maw of hell rested. Burning on all sides, burning hair and hoof and heart, burning as only we could, in a ritual of transcendence—where the whole body of this earth would be burnt! This was our last purification.
As I beheld that conflagration, I recalled words from the ancient Book of Oculus, the esoteric Romane scripture. Around two-thirds through the text, the desperate Princess Aurora of Orange is petitioning the demiurge, whose name is usually translated as Eye-Stone, to remake the world without evil, and receives a great monologue in response. After Eye-Stone has indulged in some exaltation at the many beautiful things of pony civilisation, the speech turns on a hinge:
The wealth of the world was born of ponies and will die of ponies
When they see themselves in gilded mirror and hate only the gold.
I still heard the voice of Scarlet Flame through the screaming horror—in madness, joy, or rage, I could not tell.
“Rejoice, rejoice! All suffering is ended! All suffering is ended!”
I ran.
At this moment, I sit in the cave where my wife and I first came upon arrival to The Island, remembering the sensation of her feathers against me as we dreamed of life together. This is a faithful account of our brief paradise and its luminous, self-immolating flight, from watchful peace among the constellations to earthly, frostbitten collapse. If any others remain, they will find me soon, living or dead. I pray now—how I pray now! O Princess Celestia, forgive me! Forgive us!
Scarlet Letter
New Year’s Day, 1860
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Excellent story
It reminds me of the lunacy of some of the first settlements in America
6400447
thanks! that's exactly what it's supposed to evoke.
Wow. I felt like I was reading something over a hundred years old. And it is chilling in its telling.
This was my favorite story on my ballot, and it's kind of a shame it didn't make the finals. It's all very chilling, and feels authentic to the type of atmosphere you're trying to invoke.
It's an excellent story, though it lacks a certain essential poniness. Yours isn't the only, or particularly the worst, offender, but I do get the distinct impression we're dealing with a human story layered over with a thin pony filter; details and trivia.
6401710
It's a good story. Very chilling. But this is very true. (I mean, it's not totally the author's fault, ponies will always be humans in another skin, the degree to which we can make them not human can be changed though).
Welp, I think Celestia probably dodged a bullet there...
Though she might have been better served simply incincerating Scarlet Flame before she started. (S'what I'd have done. 'Course, I'm a might more tyrannical - and Evil than she is, so...)
Sadly, this has the ring of far too much truth in it. I have read accounts of humans that have had results as terrible and worse than this; all it takes is one madcreature to gain power and lack of culpability by slipping away from his nation, and all manner of atrocities will result,
6401710
I tried to address this in the thread, but the long and short of it is that I did have some idea of what significance ponies would have in this, and that mostly relates to class. I'll just quote the most relevant part of the post:
Woah....holy shit
This was a really well written story that provided a thoughtful take on some bigger political issues. What I liked most about the piece was the voicing. The narrative voice you've given to Scarlet Letter (nice shout out to Hawthorne) really helps transport the reader back in time to the period of human history which the story aims to evoke. The beginning also serves as a really effective hook for the piece. Yes, it "spoils" the end, but by doing so, it allows the reader to focus on the details of how the reformers on the island meet their end.
That said, I do echo some of the concerns of the other commenters that setting the piece in Equestria does not add anything to the piece. The story covers some well trodden grounds in Western literature (e.g. Lord of the Flies), philosophy (Hobbes et al. and the discussion of the "state of nature"), and human history (all of it). The story plays all of these aspects straight, and while it may execute them well, it doesn't really add anything new to these tropes. By considering more deeply how these ideas would play out in a pony-specific society, and focusing on how things might differ between humans and ponies, would have been one way in which to make this story stand out a bit more. Of course, stories about ponies are stories about people, but there have already been many stories on this topic about people.
Nevertheless, good job, it was a beautifully written piece.
Man. I'm reminded of the Puritans, Hippie Communes, and the infamous Jonestown.
Excellent work. Though this doesn't exactly feel like a Ponyfic, more like a original story.
I suppose I should save said in the write off that I did enjoy this story, other misgivings aside. I have enjoyed other works like this. It gave me thoughts that Starlight Glimmer must have been a follower or descendent, or found the teachings of Scarlet Flame, and thought "She didn't go far enough."
6400488 Something tells me that Starlight Glimmer is a fan of Scarlett
Compared to the real world, Equestria seems like such a nice place. There's no murder, no lasting hatred, no famines or wars. Wouldn't it be nice to live there instead of here? That's the kind of thing Letter seemed to be thinking, only Equestria was his troubled real world and the Island was his utopian fantasy. Is the real world so deeply flawed that a fresh start could create something better, or is it better to stay and try to make the best of this flawed world? That's what I was thinking as I finished reading this story, and it's why I think this works as a fanfic.
Even so, I have some complaints. The story seems to shy away from some of its thematically-important details in favor of lesser ones. Scarlet Flame's race is only brought up twice, one of them in passing. Distant Shores' race is mentioned only once before the end. No mention is ever made of horns or wings, either. As such, the detail of the leaders' races was lost on me. Distant Shores' cutie mark was likewise overlooked. It's mentioned just once, and so early on that it doesn't stand out at all. Shores herself never seems to do anything after arriving on the island, despite being one of the supposed leaders, making her folly hard to keep in mind.
The inclusion of weapons among the discarded evils of society didn't bother me when I read it, but looking back it seems extraneous to the story. In that same sequence, they discard monarchy, aristocracy, history, and money, all of which play important parts in the show; weapons do not share that distinction. Letter's worry that weapons might have been hidden away foreshadows the later murder, but that could have been done elsewhere in the story. The irony of the use of an improvised weapon is, like the initial discarding of the weapons, weakened by the irrelevance of weapons in the source material. I understand the appeal of including one's headcanon in a fanfic, but in this case it weakens a sequence that's central to the plot.
6413754
Scarlet Letter is an unreliable narrator. He doesn't even question the fact that leaders have horns and wings except as a small practical detail. That's why it's ironic. It's a fact that I only wanted to surface on a close reading.
Almost all Equestrian history is ultimately headcanon though, especially where concerns culture and technology. I assumed the use of weaponry based on two assumptions extrapolated from Over a Barrel:
1) Ethnic cleansing has occurred/is occurring in Equestria.
2) The principal agents of this ethnic cleansing are earth ponies, whose only natural means of defence against larger buffalos are their kicks.
Equestria's only a nice place because it's the setting of a show aimed at children. You can either work within that framework (e.g. My Little Dashie) or outside it (e.g. any number of the many Equestrian war fics). You can even confront it as a metaproblem; a previous WriteOff winner, Trick Question's Price of a Smile, explains the implausibly childish portrayal of ethnic cleansing as a feature of a pony Matrix. I just chose to assume in this particular story that the MLP show itself is only half the truth since the implications of pony society and values extend further than those portrayed in the show. I would compare the show to a depiction of, say, Japan as an incredibly efficient and harmonious place with almost no crime. It's not wrong, but, assuming that ponies/Japanese people are in fact sentient creatures with independent wills, there must be more variety of experience simply by inference. You don't build a monarchy on good feelings. You don't steal land from buffalos without having the tools and skills to displace or kill them.
Re: Equestrian values, I could have done more to highlight the anti-harmony nature of Scarlet Flame, but it's difficult to say you hate harmony and friendship in a propaganda speech. At best you could posit a false consciousness narrative of some sort (this idea of harmony is a imposition from the elites to keep you in line), but it's much more trivial to lie. Even fascists claim to represent the will of the people, and fascism is aristocratic in nature. Still, it's something to revise if I can think of a way to slip it in.
6414518
You can extrapolate all you want, but in that episode the settlers defended their town with hot pies and rodeo tricks, not with kicking. The use of proper weapons by the settlers is entirely a fabrication of fanfic authors. Not necessarily a contradiction, but not supported by the source material either.
I don't know what history you're thinking of, but there's plenty of Equestrian history in the show and other official sources. The unicorn lady clinging to her ancestral wealth could have been mistaken for a callback to Princess Platinum, if that's not what you were thinking of when you wrote that part.
You seem to have this idea that the show is tacitly lying about its own subject matter, and thus you have to make up things that contradict the source material in order to tell a better story within that world. If that's the mindset you were in when writing this fanfic, then the parts that made sense to me must have been totally accidental. Writing a story about that kind of idea is one thing, but writing a story where that's treated as one of the basic assumptions about the setting in a tangentially-related plot is a disservice to your readers. If that's really so important to you that you can't excise it, the least you could do is add an Alternate Universe tag to let readers know you're giving your own dumb headcanon a priveleged place in the story's setting.
Writers like you really annoy me. You could have written a whole nother story instead of writing all these responses to critics. You could have written a better story with what you learned from the criticism. Instead you write thousands of words justifying your unwillingness to change.
6415524
If "plenty of history" means the Hearth's Warming Eve play, a few references to Discord's reign, &c., then I disagree. We don't have a real history of Equestria in the same way we do Middle Earth (or indeed our own world). We don't even know exactly how long Celestia and Luna have lived, or the particulars of how they came to power. Our only depiction of Princess Platinum et al was a fictionalised performance. You have to guess and extrapolate if you want to write Equestrian history unless it's an extremely limited scope you're working within.
There are many, many, many stories on here that assume ponies have far richer emotional lives and complexity in their relationships than is portrayed in the show. darf just returned here after two years (!) and uploaded a story in which a depressed Twilight smokes marijuana. This is technically AU since neither depression nor marijuana would exist in Equestria were it how the show depicts. I'm not suggesting that the show is a lie except possibly by omission, and it's not really what I'm getting at in the first place. The show is made to fulfil particular aims (faintly moralistic stories that interest and entertain an audience predominantly made up of young girls), and it goes quite a bit beyond those, as evidenced by our presence here. It's a good show. The broader point is that the notion that the show and its derivative works should bear a high degree of formal and functional closeness is rather arbitrary and depends not on an objective standard but on the aims of the writer. A story should be true to its aims, and if that involves treating ponies as emotionally rich or serious moral agents, it requires one to assume that the canon is an incomplete picture. You cannot treat ponies as serous moral agents and maintain that ethnic cleansing via pies and rodeo is possible. It just isn't. This is why My Little Dashie is the ultimate example of fidelity to the show—Equestria actually is an inviolably perfect place where the Arab-Israeli conflict would be solved with pie-throwing, and humans aren't good enough to live there because we're grey and miserable and do bad things; it resists Cold in Gardez's argument that "ponies are people." Equally, if my favourite writers on this site did not violate canon, they would not have produced the work that I like. Given that the canon itself is ultimately Lauren Faust's MLP fanfiction, it's a rather empty prescription.
I am telling you my thought process behind the writing of this story because I have come to my own conclusions about the matter you are addressing. It is not a justification but an explanation. It does not significantly impede my ability to write other stories, and I find your implication that I should've behaved in a particular way a little disingenuous. There is no correct way to behave in response to criticism. I could've ignored your comment entirely and taken nothing on board from anyone's suggestions, or I could've rudely rebuked you. I did not do these things because it would be impolite. No one is obliged to accept the ideas or opinions expressed in a civil discussion. You are free to think what you like about this story, and to express it here, but I have not been convinced by your argument, and if it bothers you to be contradicted on this, you are not approaching this conversation in good faith. I am willing to accept criticism, but not the moral imperative to accept criticism according to your whims and interests.
I am not surprised at all that, having gotten rid of their higher-tech weaponry, somepony should commit murder with a rock. Like us, the Ponies are sapient tool-users, hence the abolition of weapons is impossible. Ban guns and crossbows, and spears and knives will be used. Ban spears and knives, and clubs will be improvised. 'Tis the price of the ability to create technology: one can create destructive technologies, and from scratch if need be.
Now, in Equestria they're not often that violent, but these Ponies are in a hothouse situation beyond the rule of any laws save the rather impractical ones they're making by random public declaration. Unlike in a small Equestrian village, there's nowhere for the discontented to go. Nor is there any larger society to detect and punish malefactors. And they have the same passions as any other Ponies. It's a situation just primed for disaster ...
... and the disaster is taking a classic turn. Anarchy breeds warlordism, and Scarlet Flame has rediscovered the vanguard party system of dominating a larger group to become an effective warlord. Complete with "re-education." I can see you've studied the history of totalitarian dictatorships!
A very dark tale. Well done!
TYPO:
Should be "populace."
6402504
Celestia doesn't like to kill Ponies. That's pretty obvious from the show. She much prefers to banish her enemies. Here, she even provided them with their own ship and plenty of support; had their ideas been even remotely practical, they might well have succeeded in founding a flourishing independent settlement.
6472100
I'm not convinced that the attitude of "make this someone else's problem" is ever a responsible attitude to take, which is all banishment is.
Esepcially as it so frequently backfires. (Evidence: EVERY occasion where we've seen something banished: Nightmare Moon, the Sirens - Tirek, even (Sombra we'll give her a pass on, since he did it himself). All of those neccesicated somepony else having to step in and prevent disaster; fortunately, thanks to Twilight, no lives were lost.)
In this particular case, if Celestia had ponied up and did the necessary evil, she would have likely saved the lives about 147 ponies.
ANY attribute taken to extremes (including compassion: see It' Ain't Easy Being Breezie) is unhealthy and as a national leader sometimes Celestia ought to accept that she has to get HER hooves dirty and do things she'd really rather not, in sacrifice for other pony's lives. That's kind of the point of being the one in charge; the buck has to stop with you.
6473704
Did I ever claim that Celestia's leadership was perfect? What I said was that she really hates killing Ponies (or any beings, really) if she can avoid it. In the Shadow Wars Story Verse, this is one of the reasons she needs her Sister with her. Not that Luna really likes to kill Ponies, but she's more willing to do so if she considers it necessary.
6474006
I don't think we're particularly disagreeing, so much as crosstalking, then really...!
6472090
Whoops! I should probably go over the story entirely at some point; I haven't really edited it since the writeoff.
Thanks for the comment and the follow!
it's one of the best stories i have ever read and i loved it!
As a 'Dark' fic lover myself, I must say this has got to be one of the best pony fics I have ever read. I'm just in love with this style, and your ability to wield your words. Just beautiful, and with this fic, tragically so.
6888703
Thank you for the kind words, and for the follow!
By blind luck, I was skimming through the Seattle's Angels post and came upon this. I see that you were inspired by Hawthorne and see that you have a character named Scarlet Letter. I skim the narration and see, from first glances, a remarkable, original, and elegant narration style, better and beyond the incondite, "realistic" styles of typical fan-fiction (and modern novels in general).
The only one of Hawthorne's novels I've read is The Scarlet Letter, but I must certainly get around to reading Earth's Holocaust (and then I can perhaps getting around to reading yours). May I say, I find it quite a pleasure to see someone else on this site who appreciates and sees the value of romanticism! But I have yet to see if your plot and characterization come together in the romantic style as well (but from glances at some of the dialogue, I suspect that they do).
6899045
Thank you very much! I find Hawthorne (and that whole strand of American literary romanticism) compelling for that very reason—it's precisely the opposite of contemporary prose fiction conventions. Everything is so heavily symbolic; the prose is florid and packed with said bookisms; the dialogue communicates moral ideas rather than psychological features of character. There's a sort of Hemingway consensus where concerns quote unquote proper prose style (at least in the creative writing circles I've encountered), and it can be stultifying, so this was a deliberate reaction against that.
That said, I have a soft spot for realism. My story After the Races was meant to be in a more contemporary realist style, though I slip out of the idiom in a pretty unforgivable fashion as it draws on—it's way more prolix than Carver or Hemingway. If I had to choose, though, I'd take nineteenth century Middlemarch realism over the more contemporary Carveresque form. It bothers me that "iceberg" prose has been a dominant stylistic idiom for such a long time. It's the kind of convention you'd expect more major writers to break at this point.
Damn, what a great fic. Despite never having read Hawthorne, or much of the American literary canon for that matter, but I really like the style, as well as how well the emotions of the protagonist flow from the writing. You mention in one of the comments that he is an unreliable protagonist, and this really came through. In particular how he tries to absolve himself of guilty (after all, he is a leader, yet did very little to stop Scarlet Letter's cultural revolution), as well as how much of their supposed Utopia actually survived. Part of me would want to believe that, after the death of their leaders, something akin to a more stable government would have survived.
I did get bothered by what 6401710 mentioned, however, and it did take me out of the fic somewhat. Maybe using the more uniquely pony triad of races in a meaningful race would have fixed that, since from what we see here, there is a certain homogeneous hierarchy that isn't all that applicable to the show universe.
6909155
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for your comment.
Having read the story, herein I present my thoughts, analysis, and criticism.
Lest I be taken as part of the mindless hoi polloi of FimFiction, who would regard anything involving video games, sex, violence, and swearing as quality literature, I would like to briefly enumerate here my literary experience. Among divers other works, I’m familiar with, and would even say a fanatic for, the Romantic movement. With respect to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, I’m familiar with Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Washington Irving, whose magna opera I have all read (but, if I am to be honest, I have read their said opera and little else of their works). At the risk of offending the author of this pony novella’s good American sensibilities, I’m also quite familiar with the French romantics, specifically Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas (père), and— would I dare say—in terms of plot composition and drama, in the Romantic movement, the French have the Americans beat (I’m still trying to find a novel better and more intricately plotted than The Count of Monte Cristo).
Of Hawthorne, I’ve read only his marvelous The Scarlet Letter, and, on the recommendation of the author of this pony novella, the short story Earth’s Holocaust.
Let us start the criticism proper.
It’s often as meaningless as it is easy for a work of art to bill itself as “inspired by” the work of another. Inspiration merely describes what impels an artist to create his own work; but inspiration does not imply continuity, neither thematic nor stylistic, nor even in technical ability. One need only look at the atrocities of the modern art movement; no amount of justification by their “artists,” no amount of cited “inspiration” will make them anything other than incomprehensible blurs, smears, and quite literal trash.
In a perfect world, a work of art could bear the “inspired by” tag only if it took a theme, the style, or the technique of one work of art, and used it to create something greater, something that the original author did not conceive, or could not have conceived, of.
Yet if there is any story that is worthy of the tag “inspired by,” it is very trustworthy rodent’s The Wealth of the World.
In Earth’s Holocaust, Hawthorne had conceived of the titular holocaust as a mere psychological fantasy, to use his words: “a parable of my own brain.” In his novella, there was no plot; the characters themselves did not push the events of the story, but rather stood around the holocaust reacting to what happened before them. But The Wealth of the World takes the same premise—i.e., that of a mass discarding of all the world’s trumpery—and builds an actual plot, which is exceptionally integrated with the motivations behind said holocaust. Not only that, but Wealth takes it farther; whereas Hawthorne had only speculated, in a passing sentence, what would be the result of this purge, Wealth actually constructs a build-up of events which eventually results in an inevitable, spectacular climax and tragic denouement.
The choices of the characters, and not the whims or passing comments of the author, are what defines them, and are what defines the plot. This works, because the characters themselves are exceptionally well-drawn. The reader is always aware of what each man stands for, his vision of utopia, his idea of how to effect it, and what measures, lukewarm or fiery, he is willing to take in order to get it. In each character, these ideas differ, and through this conflict the plot naturally, seamlessly runs its course.
True to the romantic style, these men are not averages; they’re massive archetypes, and each one of their thoughts and choices feels as if they carry so much weight—the only story worth writing and reading. It was the style of narration, and the style of dialogue, that helped convey this feeling of grandeur, which was even more effective in conveying the sense of abject devastation that was the inevitable result of such a clash of titans.
The theme of this novella is “The lengths men will go to achieve utopia, and the costs they are willing to incur especially at the expense of others.” And the tragic irony is that the one who was more willing to pursue his ideals than all the rest, even more so that Distant Shores, who, by the narrator’s admission, was one of the more radical ones, was Scarlet Flame, the primary antagonist, and it was his will that resulted in the destruction of everything. The more consistently each character pursues his vision of utopia, the more disaster strikes.
The style, the dialogue, the characterization, all are incredibly Hawthornian (save for, thankfully, his peculiar use of the subjunctive and his often irritating of listing things). I’ve heard it said that when one writes in a style that’s not one’s own, it is incredibly apparent; but never did anything in this novel feel forced or “unnatural”; indeed, everything in this novel is depicted lucidly. I have to praise the author for his ability to render scenes and emotions like this, in such a beautiful, vivid way.
I see some people in the comments section saying that this work does not “feel” like a pony fan fiction in the slightest. I have to agree; rather, it feels as if it were a proper published work in a proper periodical. People in the comments are using that as a criticism; the unspoken assumption is that a fan fiction must contain elements of the show. I disagree: I don’t read pony fan fiction, usually, because it’s mostly just people trying to replicate the tone of the show. If I wanted more of the show, I would watch more of the show. A good story is a good story, regardless of how well it captures whatever it’s based off of or “inspired by.” And this short story is an excellent story, certainly better than 99.99% of the stuff on FimFic (I don’t say 100%, because I admit of the possibility that there’s a brilliant story out there somewhere that I haven’t read, and probably never will because of my prejudice).
Though their criticism does bring up a good point, which is why the author chose to make all the characters ponies, when the story certainly would’ve worked with humans and been published in a proper human novel. I cannot say, but I can only hope that this is a pony fan fiction because the writer is an aspiring writer, and wants to practice with fan fiction before writing for real—which is the only proper use of fan fiction.
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Thank you for your analysis and praise; I'm glad to have inspired such in-depth commentary. This story has clearly found its audience. I'm not sure I have much to add since your reading of the story hews pretty closely to my intentions in adopting the Romanticist idiom, but I'm appreciative.
This is pretty much my attitude to fanfiction—a chance to develop my style and try out different voices and genres without any real stakes. Since this story is a pastiche, it was an ideal fit.
Have you considered submitting this to Equestria Daily? I can't see any reason they wouldn't accept it, save for a misplaced word here and there. If they rejected it, it truly would be their loss.
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I haven't, actually. I may as well submit it; it's always worth a shot.
Will this have a Sequel?
Damn.
This was a powerful read, and genuinely impressive storytelling.
I'm gonna have to look up the inspiration to this I think; this has sufficiently piqued my interest.
bloody commies ruin everything.
Okay so quick edit:
After reading Earth's Holocaust (which was a brilliant little short story, ty for pointing it out to me indirectly), I can absolutely see the inspiration that you took from hawthorne's writing.
I'm also impressed by the expansion you did on his messages; horse word aside the idea of taking this idea of reformation to the most extreme conclusion that was alluded to by a character in hawthorne's story and setting it into motion in a work of fiction is a great way of expressing that extreme in a realistic and relatable sense.
I kinda throw out favourite stars a lot on this site since it makes a good library shelf, so let me clarify that this has landed in a top 10 spot on this site.
Well done.
I am surprised no-one has mentioned Chesterton's Fence yet. Looks like Distant Shores et al have galloped face-first into it.
(Oddly enough, most of the top website hits for the Fence never mention this second paragraph; they stop after the first "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away." paragraph...)
On a completely different (and dare I say crass?) note, Arrogant Worms came to mind:
♫ History is made by stupid people!
Clever people wouldn't even try.
If you want a place in the history books,
Then do something dumb before you die! ♪
I discovered this story via links from the author Cold in Gardez who has written and is still writing amazing stories. I really liked this story while I cannot give such detailed analysis as others have, I really enjoyed the impending sense of doom that pervaded this story even if it wasn't explicitly stated from the get go. The break off from Equestria was not a bad thing nor was it an entirely good thing, I would want to see more than just one or two ponies opinions on the subject before I could say with certainty. As to Scarlet Flame, he was the Malcom X of this story who quickly fell into self induced paranoia and madness, his original goals might have been good, his burning of literature or possibly dissenters showing how far he had fallen.
In regards to the literature that inspired you, frankly I found The Scarlet Letter to be a insufferably dry read, at least I did when we read it in high school around eleven years ago. Anyways, now that I'm older and cough, microscopically wiser, I might consider checking out some of Hawthorne's other stories along with Dumas and others.
I wish to disagree with you on one thing, that being that fanfiction's only purpose is to practice real writing. Fanfiction is a great starting point and a very useful tool for an author to have in their toolkit so to speak, but it is also a place for self discovery, or connecting with others, or just writing for fun/passion. I have probably laughed and cried more when reading some of the amazing stories on this website than I have when reading "real" books. You are of course free to disagree, you seem to have a much more in depth understanding for English literature whereas I am a simple fellow who is fairly easy going about what constitutes a good read, I do have some limits and I do wince at typos or grave errors in plot devices, but otherwise am relatively easy to please. I have heard it argued that all art is born upon what came before, some of Shakespeare's works could be considered fanfiction based upon the older Greek and Roman mythologies which they themselves were based upon stories still older yet.
In conclusion, I wish to reiterate that I did enjoy this story and hope that you continue to write on this website.
Whew, looks like Pony communism lasted slightly longer than CHAZ.
Very cool take on mob rule and what happens when people double down on their beliefs.