Earlier tonight, someone directed me towards an essay regarding Fallout: Equestria and Murky Number Seven. The writer was attempting to analyze the stories in regards to romantic vs naturalist premises in novels and the catastrophic damage done to a story by writing that is inconsistent with the theme. The analysis, at least regarding my story, focused on a particular line in the first chapter. One that I have never seen addressed before, but perhaps does deserve a second look. And, in doing so, it becomes a vehicle to expound upon something that a number of fans have wondered about: what pushed Littlepip to leave Stable Two, instigating the story.

As a side note, it is always rather rewarding to see someone put real thought into a story and its themes, and attempt to analyze them. Unfortunately, this was not a good analysis. I cannot speak towards Murky Number Seven, as I have not read that story. (It does sound amazing though, and I do intend to eventually give it a try.) However, the writer's analysis of Fallout: Equestria is seriously hampered by his having stopped reading the story after ten chapters (roughly, by page count, just under one tenth of the story) and by his attempt to forcibly interpret the story in accordance to his personal preferences rather than the actual themes and characterization in the story itself. (If you start an analysis on false assumptions, draw erroneous speculation which you then treat as fact upon which you speculate furtther, it should not be surprising if your ending conclusions are a bit of a train wreck.) Still, a serious "A for effort".

Respectfully, I am not going to link the analysis in question, and ask that no one familiar with it do so in the comments. I am not looking for a mob of followers descending on the person to tell him he is wrong.

The passage in question is this:

I’ll admit it now, I’d had a crush on Velvet Remedy for years. Me and at least three hundred other ponies.

First, allow me to briefly touch on the themes of Fallout: Equestria. The writer of the analysis held up a highly romanticized "nobility of heroism" as what he believes is the story's theme. And it is true insomuch as heroism is portrayed as noble, and the need for heroes is a major theme of the story. But Fallout: Equestria portrays heroism as something to be striven for, and Littlepip is a pony striving towards that ideal, not an embodiment of it. Of course, this is but one of the major themes in play. Another, perhaps more vital than heroism, is the nature of virtues. The story explores how important virtues are, how frail and easily warped they can be, and how friendship can act as a guide and bulwark against the forces that would corrupt them. A third theme is the classic danger that good intentions can lead to the most harmful of results.

Like many who "fall in love" with their idols, Littlepip didn't truly know Velvet Remedy. She had built a mental construct of her idol. She wasn't in love with the actual person. Instead, she had romantic daydreams about the pony she imagined Velvet Remedy to be. Littlepip, as of the telling of this story, has done a lot of growing up. She knows that her feelings were a juvenile fantasy, neither actual love nor directed towards an actual person. She admits -- to others but most importantly to herself -- that her feelings were nothing more than a crush.

During the course of the second arc of the story, Littlepip grows to know Velvet Remedy -- the real one -- and become friends with her. The romantic illusions are shattered and replaced with a true friendship. By the twenty-fifth chapter, Littlepip has come to terms with this, and has finally reached the point where she can not only admit her earlier foalishness, but take comfort in what has replaced it.

Littlepip's crush was not the motivating factor for her leaving the Stable. It was not (as the writer had suggested) her "highest value", nor was it a virtue of her character. It was, in fact, quite the opposite. Littlepip's crush was the character flaw that blinded her, allowing her to be manipulated in the first place. Even Littlepip did not believe she was leaving the Stable because she was in love. Her conscious motivation was to fix a problem -- she would rather act, sacrificing her own safety and security, than do nothing and face a life of having been the cause but not part of the solution.

Subconsciously, she was motivated by a combination of her Special Talent (which I will not reveal here) and one of her most driving personality traits: curiosity. Littlepip is not a character driven by romance; she is a character driven by the need to make things right and by the need to explore and discover... something that was utterly stifled in the world she lived in. (Consider that she didn't understand how anyone could get lost in a Stable, despite the fact that it occasionally happened. What does this say about the level to which she explored the place? Consider that the direction she naturally went in exploring new talents: lockpicking.)

It is the subconscious motivators that overwhelmed the relatively weak bonds holding Littlepip to the Stable. These were more than sufficient to push her to abandon a home where she felt unwanted, unproductive and ultimately hopeless. To abandon her family, which consisted only of a mother whom she feels disconnected from already, and her friends, of whom she had none. Combined with her virtue (also not revealed here), these motivators made her leaving of safety and her first step into the unknown almost a foregone conclusion. Her crush was something that she could, in the beginning, mentally point a hoof at in an attempt to justify what she was doing. But nothing more.

The writer of the analysis desperately wanted Fallout: Equestria to be a romantic epic about a heroine empowered by True Love, and for that emotion to be the plot-driving element of her indomitable character. But rather than fuel Littlepip's heroism, in the story I wrote, Littlepip's initial feelings towards Velvet Remedy only served to make her weak and desperate in other parts of her life -- to act as a barrier to friendship and a chance at love. A barrier that she would have to overcome, and as that line foreshadows, eventually did.

There is, I believe, a friendship lesson in that.