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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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Veritas vos liberabit - The truth shall set you free. The trouble at the moment is that our protagonist has, at best, half of the truth. He has work yet to do.
banishd - banished
8727790
Fixed, and added a few touches for better descriptiveness.
Good questions, all of them.
I like Shadymane, even knowing full well that she is cunning and manipulative. I find myself wanting to trust her, hoping that she's on Ian's side.
I like how having this fleshed out world turns a simple desire to fix one simple thing slowly develops into a veritable quest as the complexity of the situation becomes ever clearer.
Hmm question, how many of the many civil wars in human history DIDN'T end only when either one side was completely dead, when the instigators where defeated/deposed/killed or when people got tired of fighting? I know of none. As far as I know the only answer to civil war is bloodshed, the diference being in how much of it.
What Shadymane fails to understand despite her age is that loss of lives sometimes is unavoidable and necessary, some people are like cancer, the only way to stop them is to cut them down.
Some people are monsters incapable of reasoning, only knowing violence and death and others are just plain morons that won’t listen, like
Islamic extremist or flat earthers, for fucks sake we launched a car into space for shit and giggles and they are people who still believe earth is flat, unsurprisingly most of them are Americans.
Usually, over history, such events have only occured during a single super charismatic and engaging leaders lifetime. The instance the leader dies, all that effort collapses inwards in self destruction.
At least in human terms, no matter what, a lot of beings are going to die. One can only hope that without that stokcing fire, ponies return to more normal more quickly. Or this story is just going to be humans with coloured skins and muzzles.
Ooh, a clash of idealogies! Now our protagonist can break out the big gun: propoganda! If he helps them make a printing press, pegasi can airdrop propaganda pamphlets, deliver state approved newspapers, etc.
8727877
I love this comment, just saying.
8728125
why did you get two dislikes? everything you said makes sense
8729141
Thank you for saying.
The specific notion that occurred to me was that the plot was very much like a well-designed D&D campaign. It starts out as a low stakes task that the players chose for themselves out of every other problem they could try to solve, but then they discover that there are higher-level goings-on behind everything.
It only just occurred to me that, as the designer of Ponyfinder, you may have deliberately written it so.
Nicely done, that being the case.
8729443
Maybe for the last part about muricans being dumb, or there are flat earthers around these parts.
In general i like Shadymane but it's like she exist solely to be the Generals opposite, she wants to end the war without deaths the General wants to kill everyone.
Also her name is Shadymane, SHADYMANE, SHADY!! That should raise few flags for Ian given ponies names and cutie marks relating to thier characters.
8729516
hmm, maybe he already realizes this and his plan?
8729544
If he knows or doesn't knows he definitely doesn't show it, so we'll have to wait and see.
Then again doesn't seem be that smart, he thought that he could fix a nation with the knowledge of plumbing that he downloaded from wiki, same with warfare he thought he could help by showing the general a few designs of old weaponry.
For such thinking both the author and Ian were railed in the comment section in the beginning of this fic.
Even if there was no war, eve if Ian had all the money in the world his plan would fail.
Plumbing isn't just pipes, for modern plumbing you need pumps, enignes, filtering facilities that require advanced chemicals and then you need all the necessary tools and parts to make all of those, good luck making proper pipes in medivial forges.
Ian thinks he can make all that happen with a few wiki pages?
You see my point, Ian had some good ideas but he doesn't realize the key to a civilization progres is cumulative knowledge not just not just few inventions and discoveries.
Way to help the ponies would be to teach few good habits and work from there.
Gather trash and waste in separate containers barrels for instance, then hire ponies to collect those barrels on a daily basis from each household, one barrel to the dump and the other to be sold for farmers to fertilize the earth, also teach them about fertilization.
Bathe at least once a day, drinking water from rivers and streams is to be filters through a cloth to filter dirt and most small filth, then boiled to kill of all bacteria and micro organisms, afterwards store the water in safe containers so it won't be contaminated again.
Now this is far more doable and not that expensive, where trying to build plumbing in medivial Equestria would take insane resources and propably centuries to accomplish even with the proper knowledge even if he scaled down to Roman canals.
Same obviously goes for warfare, you can't just create a nuke by knowing how and having a few kilos of plutonium on hand.
So yeah Ian isn't the brightest cookie out there, i think Ian might be a murican.
And sorry for such long post.
8729622
no worries, it was an interesting read and an eye opener, with those thoughts in mind I am interested to see how he adapts and gets around those issues, or maybe they just ignore that and make it seem like everything works out with just the wiki knowledge
8729762
It will be probably ignored, it was stated in previous chapters that ponies have some forms of pipes for transferring water, how they do it without pumps is a mystery thou.
Easy father supposdly specializes in pipes.
So it will be most likely be done with magic to make it work as ponies don't have the tech to make it work otherwise.
My issue is with Ian thought process and the fact that such obvious problems elude him, thou he is smart enough to gather intel first.
8729760
Thank you kindly!
8729785
You seem to be ignoring that 'moving water from A to B' has existed long before anything that could be called a pump.
What did they use? Gravity. They'd build canals or other great pipes and let gravity handle the rest, and it worked. Could a pump make it even better? Of course, but you don't use what you don't have. They do have gravity. Being at the top of a mountain, this would make waste water very easy to get rid of, but bringing in new water may be more challenging.
It does mean wherever they do collect water would need to be the highest point in the city, so it can flow out, without a pump, to everyone else.
Stop focusing on pumps.
8729785
your an interesting person to talk with, shame we are unlikely to meet up in other story comment sections
8729835
Well according to flat earthers there is no such thing as gravity, so there.
As for using gravity for sewage pumping it wouldn't work, canals and such could work Roman's proved it, with different water level and such.
For pipes you need something to keep it going gravity will only go so far before it stops and clogs everything,and obviously this system wouldn't work at all on even ground.
Lastly I did point out other issues with Ian plan, like filtering, manufacturing and building, last time i checked ponies don't have heavy machinery to dig eveciently.
8729866
You can build a sewers entirely out of canals.
Not that any of this matters right now. Ian is not thinking about sewers.
8729871
That's kinda my problem with Ian, he doesn't think properly things thoroughly , as I mentioned previously even if Ian scaled his plan down, it would still take centuries to do, as the saying goes Rome wasn't built in a day.
What Ian is trying to accomplish can be easily replicated here on earth, just take your smartphone with internet access and go to any underdeveloped third world nation and try to help with the power of wiki knowledge and intelligence of a high-schooler
Same with the war effort, no matter what Ian will do people will die, we'll unless you Deus Ex Machina him some solutions.
Do please not take my comments negatively I'm just pointing flaws I see as they come, they maybe resolved in future chapters, we shall see.
8729848
Yes that is truly a shame
I think Ian needs to decide what he actually wants and then how ruthless he wants to be to accomplish those goals.
Super ruthless, he gives the ponies gas weapons and they completely crush the opposition. He then uses whatever credit he gets from that to push through his agenda
Less ruthless, he sets up a school and teaches small things, hygiene etc.. writes a "bible" of things to do and a path forward the local immortal can follow.
I find it rather fascinating and telling how he reacts to discovering that the 'war' is between two groups of ponies.
War between ponies and gryphons/dragons/diamond dogs/etc? Let me carcinogen a few text books! We'll have you guys making TNT and artillery shells in no time! How do you feel about nerve gas, BTW?
War between ponies though? Wow. That's going to be a major moral dilemma, isn't it?
So in short, despite knowing nothing about any other race or nation on the planet, he's clearly a pony supremacist. Ponies >> Other Species.
I'm not saying he's wrong per se. He'd have to pick a side one way or another, and he's clearly already chosen ponies over everyone else. It's just rather striking install.
I just want to say that my previous comments on armor were under researched and largely inaccurate, sorry to anyone I mislead. There's a lot of misconceptions about armor, and testing on improperly made replicas of historical gear was what I was basing my arguments on. The weapons stuff is pretty accurate, though I have realized that I was thinking about human combat, and not taking into account that we're dealing with ponies here.
@David Silver,
A few questions, if you don't mind. It's kind of hard for me to tell based off of what's written, but I've kind of been operating under the assumption that we are still in the age of iron ATM. Do the ponies have steel, and if so, have you thought about what process they're using? Do the ponies have access to flax/linseed, the plant used to make linen? What level is their glassworking at? What kind ores do they use for their iron, and doo they mine it themselves or import it? Do they have access to coal? Do they know about heat tempering? Do they know about quenching oil? What's the standard kit for a militiaman, mercenary soldier, and man-at-arms/knight? Can unicorns TK liquids? Can they lift thwm above a fire to boil them? Would the vapor released be gripped by TK or slip out? Sorry for all the questions, but I really like the idea of a uplift story with pones.
8740011
Those are many questions! Ian does not have most of those answers. Yet? Let's find out!
8740043
I mean, to be honest, answering all of that properly would be longer than any of your current chapters, or even the entire fic up to this point. Partially I'm asking because I've been laughing to myself all day at the image of a full pony gambeson. Basically the picture in my head almost looks like someone made a rough life sized plushy out quilts then shoved a real pony into it.
I just realized that, depending on how you do magic, ponies might be able to bypass the need for chemical testing techniques in the production of steel! For example, if you want a very specific alloy steel like, most relevantly, spring steel! Being super specific in carbon and manganese (or chromium) content is key to making high quality steels. Also, possibly, a spell could be used to check the temperature for tempering, meaning that the key technique for hardening steel of the two quenches at specific temperatures is possible to do to great accuracy! Theoretically, magic could shortcut the process to modern accuracy, if you want it that way.
I just realised how this overly nitpicky talk might be very annoying. Is my nerding out bugging anybody?
Well, Ian did talk earlier about how Equestria was a 'fairy tale' in his original universe. So he's clearly biased in favour of the ponies compared to any other race. So when it turns out to be a pony vs. pony conflict, suddenly his grandiose plans of arming them with some sort of superweapon or better military tactics have fallen apart.
If it weren't for the fact that there appears to be a tremendous loss of life that's grinding progress to a halt, and Ian didn't have a conscience, he could have gone for the cultural victory by making Canterlot a true shining beacon that would have taken the wind out of most of the other side. There's no point in living in unkempt conditions when the other side is ten times richer on average than you for a lot of people. But yeah, ponies are dying, so a solution needs found now. And Shadymane isn't going to let him wallow in his own moralistic bullshit.
I think the best way to completely stop the rebellion would be to show all those that are rebelling that they are the ones causing the suffering of the ones still loyal to Celestia, show them that they are the ones forcing all the money to flow into war rather than other needs though I guess it would change in difficulty to do depending on what you have on you
Hm, ye
stop raising the sun. let the enemies raise themselves
11320107
That is what they requested, yes.