yes, loving all your subjects so much and empathizing to the point of feeling there pain and sorrow with them...SOOOO incompetent and weak.

Yes that can be a weakness in time of war, and it was, which they were in, but other then that, how is that "weak" Oh no the fic dared to assume she had the same emotions as other ponies, and was just as fallible. pretty much every single issue i've seen with people saying Pony X was stupid is saying that while knowing stuff that pony never could, not could be expected to. Every single action pretty much is perfectly understandable if you just put yourself in that ponies hooves, limited to only what they knew at the time, and having gone through decades of strife and war the likes of which your society hasn't seen in millennia.

also, sorry for wording it like that Pannic, i apologize.

edited 31st May '12 2:19:21 PM by Seraphem

I agree with Seraph. I believed that I would have made pretty much every decision made in the backstory. Apart from Blueblood's cause I'm not like him and Rarity's because I'm not that selfless.

@Seraph My problem was that the fic feels CONTRIVED in JUST how much Celestia's actions screwed stuff up.

I think she does ONE thing (ONE FUCKING THING) right... and that was by accident

Even Luna's ministries ACCOMPLISHED things. Even though they failed in the end, it wasn't instantaneously catastrophic ALL the time like ALL of Tia's actions were -_-

It may not have been her fault, but the story felt like it was going out of it's way to put her in situations where she would inadvetantly scewup without ANY KIND of relent

All I wanted to Celestia to still be cool character. But no, it had to be "realistic"

edited 31st May '12 2:23:48 PM by DeathCloud

as as for OOC....it's really really hard to understand just how deeply the war affected ponies. We are at war almost constantly with something, we learned to deal with it, to ignore it as long as we're not on the front lines.

No living pony save perhaps Celestia and Luna had ever been in the situation, had ever even thought that that kind of unending strife and violence could exist. ponies are just physiologicly incabalbe of dealing with that type of stress. So yes they changed, and yes the story makes sure you know it was a bad thing that they did, that the simple fact of the war was slowly twisting Equestria even as the tied turned and they were winning, ponies were stil slowly losing themselves out of fear, confusion, stress, and none of them knew how to deal with it, or how to help others through it cuase it's something NONE of them had even thought possible.

I'm back and there's more than one page.

And now I'm going again...

Characters who never make mistakes aren't cool. They're boring.

I still am entirely unable to rationalize 90% of the decisions made in FE's backstory. What's worse is that when I say that it's OOC for somepony to make that decision, you say that decades of war has changed them. Then they turn around and make decisions as if they were still naive to the nature of war and leadership in general (I'm looking at you, Fluttershy, Applejack). You can't have it both ways. It's not consistent.

Damn it, I went on a characterization rant anyway.

@Sereg How many times must we say this?

Characters never making mistakes? Boring and frustrating

Characters making NOTHING but mistakes? JUST as boring or frustrating (to me at least)

And no not every action she makes ended badly, we do not hear every single thing she did. All we know is what centuries of time has left intact.

@Sareg Have mistakes, not suck akll time.

@ Lurker, "changed by war" does not mean they understood war. how could they? you're looking at it with the racial experience of a species that has been at war pretty much since the moment two tribes found each other. how are they to know anything about it? no pony has ever fought it before.

Ponies know of war certainly. Maybe we didn't know they knew when Fallout Equestria was written but they do know of war. The ancient Pegasi were one big army, Twilight knows of epic pony wars and there is a sizeable guard.

It's made perfectly clear that Celestia was the reason that the first part of the war wasn't completely awful.

@Perpetual Lurker:I don't even need to experience long term war to make those decisions. (You can all be glad that I have no political ambitions.)

EDIT:True. This is one of the things that season two did to significantly lower the fic's plausability.

edited 31st May '12 2:38:50 PM by Sereg

You're thinking way too deep into it. They know violence. Heck, The very first episode of the series had them resort to fighting the Manticore right off the bat.

War is hell, yes, but I'm talking common sense here. Both sides had none.

yes we know NOW, but as you said, at the time it was written we didn't.

Also, knowing it exists intellectually is a far cry from actually KNOWING what it's like. That was thousands of years ago, before even Celestia and Luna became an active part of ponies lives.

because a quick several minute scuffle is the same as decade after decade, year after year, day after day of unending war, strife, turmoil.

edited 31st May '12 2:39:37 PM by Seraphem

I'd argue that fighting a wild animal is not synonymous with fighting against a large group of sapient creatures.

You said "no pony has ever fought it before." Evidently they have.

Plus the sizeable guard forces are modern day Equestria.

edited 31st May '12 2:39:39 PM by Badwolfwho

Ok, should have prefaced it with "no living pony" my bad.

how sizable? and it isn't the idea of violence, or fighting, it was how LONG it went on that sapped them. And the lack of expiernce led to newbie mistakes because...well..they were newbies.

edited 31st May '12 2:42:26 PM by Seraphem

I'd like to add that ponies have gotten into brawls before (Apploosa incident) and Everfree makes it clear the Equestria has some pretty dangerous monsters roaming around (and no, not just in Everfree: just look at Dragonshy and Swarm of the Century).

Common sense has to be the biggest misnomer ever. Sense isn't common.

But, the zebras were absolutely right to do what they did with the information they had available. It would have been irresponsible for them not to!

And the ponies ere just doing the best they could.

Hey Ginger (or anypony else) instead continuing pointless discussion about what fanfic doing with Celestia is wrong/OK we could focus on ideas how use Celestia in fics and those problems?

@Death Well, I've already mentioned how I'd handle her in my fic

Again, it wasn't violence or fighting itself that got to them, they may not like it, but they are not strangeers to it, it was how LONG it went on. And it was a cascade effect, everytime one pony snapped, it just made those around him/her realize how much they were losing, pushing them further to the DEH,

Of course, but we're making the assumptions that ponies are frail minded creatures that collectively either turn into ineffective wrecks or corrupt monsters in a war.

I have never experienced war. Sure, it's happening, but it's extremely far removed. The mere fact of it happening does not affect me in such a way. Why are ponies different? They have wars in their history. It's not like the concept itself is completely foreign to them. They aren't pacifists.

In any case, it bothers me greatly, and it destroys my willing suspension of disbelief. There's nothing wrong with you being able to ignore it or rationalize it. I just can't.

edited 31st May '12 2:46:37 PM by PerpetualLurker

I read that, and it sound even good. But can try to come up with more ideas.

edited 31st May '12 2:46:08 PM by DeathCloud