Author's Note

Hey everyone, Schorl here. I’m sure you are all at least a bit curious as to what the heck is going on by now. Wondering why my “canon” Fall Of Equestria story had it’s sudden shift in tone, and why NCN is probably in the forums renouncing any claim to canon status it once had. Well I’m here to talk about that for a bit, or maybe for hours on end knowing how long winded I can be.

By now I’m sure you all have figured out that NCN didn’t exactly approve the ending that I posted, seeing that it ended with his kinda, sorta, not really, but totally is, self insert OC doing a rather impressive impression of Owlowiscious, and his undefeatable army getting… well… defeated. Even if you are a newcomer to FoE, you probably know the golden rule that “the caribou do not lose”. So yeah, my ending didn’t exactly get the go ahead from the guy in charge, at least not in a direct manner. In my opinion though, I feel that he did give me permission to do this by means of just being so oblivious to how I was writing my story, how I was acting in public forums, the fact that I was playing him like a fiddle by doing everything but telling him “Hey, turn around, cause I want to stab you in the back” to show him that there was more to me than an obedient word slave, ect, ect. For almost the entirety of the two years I’ve been writing this story, this ending has been the intended one, and I added a number of both subtle and unsubtle things in it to allude to that and set up the downfall of the main villains. Not my fault if he was too distracted by the tits and asses to see the not so hidden meaning.

Before I go on, I want to get a few things out of the way though, before we get to the point of all this. First, I would like to say that this explanation of my actions was written out in advance, so I really have no idea as of the making of it what the reaction to my story ending will be. I’m not expecting it to be considered some literary masterpiece that should be heralded from on high for its masterful use of... whatever anyone could say it was good at doing when it comes to storytelling, but I also don’t think that everyone is going to condemn it for being some peice of shit that “betrays the integrity” of the setting. I’m pretty much assuming at this point that I’m getting a mixed bag of replies, with the usual people giving the usual responses because after two years of writing for FoE, I think I can predict who out of our regulars are going to say what, while understanding that anyone that doesn’t follow set patterns will still fall in certain categories ranging from full support of what I’ve done to outright objection.

Secondly, this entire thing is pretty much being written out as I think it, with little to no editing involved, so it is probably going to be less elegant than my stories are (which arguably aren’t that elegant either). All I’m saying is that if you see something that sounds crazy or stupid, it’s probably because I’m crazy and stupid. If you see me drift off from one thing to another on a whim, it’s probably because that’s just the way I think and I didn’t go back to adjust it properly, and if you see me repeat words or phrases over and over, then that’s probably just an idiom of my own methods of communication. What I’m getting at is that this whole thing might read like crap, since it’s just me rambling about stuff I think only a few people will actually care about (though in this case I hope to be proven wrong).

Third, I’m going to assume that most people who are reading this have read Bruised Apples in its entirety, and are at least have general knowledge of the FoE setting (otherwise, why are you here?), so I’ll be using generic terms for the setting, talking about people involved with its production freely, and will bring up things presented in my story whenever I see fit. If you don’t know what the feck I’m talking about at some point, not my fault, not my problem. If you care enough then stop, go educate yourself on the intricate details of a silly smut setting, and then come back when you are ready to join the rest of the class. I’m sure the one other person I haven’t run off with my confrontational style of humor could use the company.

Lastly, while I’m going to try my best to make this as brief as possible, I do have a tendency to type for hours on end when motivated (a problem I wish my fellow FoE contributors had, but I will touch on that in a second). Being the case, I expect this to be longer than the time between a FoE story update (see, told ya), and will probably eat up a good portion of your day unless you read at a cheetah's pace. Heck, you’re looking at the full version. You can grab your scroll bar and zoom down to see what you’re in for, and I wouldn’t be offended if you said “fuck this” and refused to read what I have to say. That being said, please... please, please, please don’t comment on things on this page if you don’t.

I don’t care if you want to announce to the world that this was the worst work of fiction that you have ever read in your life and that I’m an idiot, you have every right to do so if that is how you feel, but I just don’t want people to make themselves look like jackasses by skimming through this wall of text, finding one thing that makes them feel like they have something that gives them some intellectual or moral opinion about me, only to find that if they misinterpreted what I meant because they didn’t read a piece of supplementary information that came a paragraph or two after. I want my detractors to be fully informed about the reasons they should hate me, and that goes for anyone who might support too, because I hate people who spout off nonsense without having all the details. And if you really don’t have the time or energy to read what I have to say, let me summarize it for you right here.

“Pissed off bitch rants about stupid shit that no one should really care about.”

That description might be doing myself a disservice, but I’m sure to some people it will be fairly accurate. That being said, I do understand that despite my assumptions that I really am the center of all realities that have ever been, will be, or that are currently being…. people do have lives outside of me. So for your reading convenience I am going to put a table of contents here:

[I.] ????
[II.] Reasons
[III.] Why the Caribou Should Lose
[IV.] Red Collars are Stupid
[V.] Caribou are fucking stupid
[VI.] Closing Statements

There, now you can just go to the parts that you feel concern you, and keep a few more moments of your time so you can go watch a movie, listen to music, or go on a romantic dinner with the girl or guy of your dreams. Now why don’t we get this thing started properly, shall we? So go grab a snack, stretch your legs, and get a set of playing cards for a nice game of solitaire, cause I feel that this is going to take a while.

[I.] Apologies.

Yes, I know. This seems like an odd start for something like this, but despite my apprehensive approach to all this I feel that there are a few people who do deserve some sort of apology, first and foremost being any and all fans of my work that ended up disappointed by my ending. You all came here to enjoy an FoE story, and while I feel I have delivered one of the “better” (and I’m using that specific word liberally in this case) FoE related fictions currently produced, I can fully agree that the ending might have not been satisfactory. For that, I’m sorry that I couldn’t live up to your expectations, because honestly I’d be pissed too. As much as it might seem otherwise, I like this kind of stuff. Themes of rape, submission, torture, violence, slavery, and above all else, villainy are my major turn ons, and I could see myself getting frustrated if someone started something, and chose not to finish it like they expressed they would, especially after so much time had been invested in a project.

That leads me to the next person I think deserves a bit of an apology, which is NCN himself. I know, sounds a bit silly seeing that I went well out of my way to give him what might be the biggest middle finger he will get in his life, but I am being sincere here. NCN approached me over two years ago and asked me if I would like to write for him, and I agreed to do so without stipulation or compensation, only to back out of it in the worst way imaginable short of meeting up with him in person so I could kick him in the crotch. I didn’t even do it for personal gain, because it’s not like I’m going to make money or something else of substance from screwing with some silly pony setting. So for breaking my promise to him, I’m truly sorry, even if I consider him to be one of the major causes for me wanting to take this overly dramatic route.

The last group of people who people who deserve an apology are the FoE contributors, or at least most of them. While I kinda think that most of them really won’t give two craps about this, and really they shouldn’t, I’m sure there will be one or two individuals who I might hurt as a by product of my rebellious attitude. Now I do want to specify on this, (since I feel this really, REALLY need to stress this so there is no confusion or delusions of grandeur) but this does not extend to all of the contributors. There are a few who should feel insulted by this, because they were, to some small degree, part of the reasons I decided to go with the ending I did to begin with, and thus they need to feel insulted by this and deserve none of my sympathy. While I’m not naming names at this time, one of these people should know darn well who they are, and the rest will just have to decide for themselves if they believe my apology was meant for them, if they even want to accept it in the first place.

You see, I do want to make it clear that I know what I have done is wrong. Hell, if I had a problem with FoE, the person in charge, and my fellow contributors, I could have just left and washed my hands of this a long time ago, but I didn’t. Instead I invented some scheme to tell NCN he can go fuck himself by ruining an ending to one of his, at the time, canon stories. I don’t feel that I have some sort of “moral superiority” because the setting was a rape setting, or that the caribou deserve to lose (which they certainly do, trust me, but not for the silly reason of being misogynistic, rapist pricks). I know that in all of this, I am the bad guy. I’m the one who went out of my way to try and make another person’ life ever so slightly worse, and only for my own personal satisfaction. If you are some FoE hating jackass that sees what I’ve done as some “great victory for the forces of good”, then shut up and shove off, because you’re just as full of shit as a guy who declares that all women should be treated like fuck toys in the real world, and I’ll tolerate you just as much.

So yes, I want no ambiguity as to who is in the wrong here. It’s me. NCN might have set himself up for this, but I am the one who took advantage of him. I used his trusting and naive nature against him just because I could. He is the victim in all of this, and I am the villain….. Buuuuttttttt…. I say with an ever growing smile on my face, this is Fall of Equestria we are talking about right?

I mean… this is a setting where the villains are supposed to win, am I right? Where the victims are supposed to feel shame, despair, humiliation, even if there was no way they could have prevented the antagonists from taking advantage of them. By NCN’s own rules, he not only has earned this, but should be treated like shit because he had the audacity to lose to something he could have never anticipated, even though in this case he could have. So if we are to honor his viewpoint, then the most vile and ruthless person in this should be celebrated and rewarded for their actions, and is perfectly in the right for simply utilizing their “superiority” over an “inferior” opponent. I’m, of course, being facetious as fuck, but for any long time fan of FoE, I would hope my reasoning for this is clear. Which leads us to our next topic.

[II.] Reasons

If you’ve made it this far, I suppose you are all wondering what exactly made me do this. What set me off to the point that I would spend two years on a scheme that, as I expressed already, is about as effective as telling a guy he can take a flying leap using a stadium loud speaker. I sure by now you might have come to the conclusion that this was always the plan, that when I joined him it was my intent to be a bitch and try to fuck things up. Well… sorry, no. That is not the case. When NCN first came to me about writing for him, I had been a fan of FoE already. I had learned about it through an image site, and found the art to be interesting, catching the post of the very first FoE image one day during my daily searches through BDSM picture, and found it amusing. At first I thought it was just a one time thing, something someone made and wouldn’t expand on, but then I saw more and more images pop up. I found them intriguing, how the pictures painted this dark world that adhered so much to so many of my favorite themes, using some of my favorite characters, and started following what else I could find for it. In fact, I learned of FIMficton through the now deleted FoE tumblr page, which is what lead me to writing my own little bondage/rape series, and eventually to NCN contacting me with his offer to write for him. Ah, how things come full circle.

I gave him my pitch for a story, which was a little one shot that involved Rarity and Applejack that I had been thinking about before he contacting me, and that eventually became the second chapter of Bruised Apples when my excitement of being appreciated for my talents made me go into creativity overdrive and come up with the overall synopsis for Bruised Apples, minus a few chapters I added in later because of a need for more information.

From there I wrote out my first three chapters in about 2 months’ time, and then… waited. And waited… and waited… You see, this was a time when NCN wanted covers for all of his canon stories, and thus I had to wait until he had one made. Even tried to make one myself, with poor results, but I scrapped it because I thought it was subpar. However, even I have a limit to my patience, and after three months I told NCN that either we do this, or I would post up the story as a non canon. I got my image the next day.

Everything seemed to go smoothly after that. Me and NCN edited the chapters I had and shortly after the story was posted, and I even had a short time on the front page. I was very excited, but then I hit my first real snag. You see, I was always in the idea that FoE wasn’t really supposed to be taken too seriously. That despite it’s dark tones and themes, it’s main purpose was just to have a sex based alternate universe that focused on an absurd concept, and thus treated it as such when I replied to commenters. This was my first mistake.

Not an hour after I replied to a person who didn’t really like FoE, agreeing with him on many points because, hey, he was right, NCN contacted me and told me that I shouldn’t be doing that. I was a bit confused, to be honest, but NCN was the guy in charge, so I promised not to do it again, now in the knowledge that we were taking the setting seriously. That was fine though. My other story was a somewhat serious take on MLP in a sexual setting involving rape, so I could do this. So I adjusted my thoughts and started focusing on what was logical, and how the world would be in a serious light. That was my second mistake.

You see, when you look at something in a serious light, and you focus on that thing like an obsession, you start picking out all the flaws and start seeing the problems. What was acceptable as a joke no longer works when you try to make sense of it, and things that attracted you to the setting in the first place suddenly became things that trouble you to the core. Eventually this lead to a bit of a discussion with NCN about something in the setting I was concerned about. We got into a debate, with me writing out an essay on the matter because I was so adamant that the subject of our discussion did not work.

What he told me in return was so offensive to me that I really didn’t believe that I could write for FoE anymore, since it went against my own moral code (yes I have one, just one that is a lot lower than most other people’s). From there I had expected him to give his condolences, tell me that if that is how I felt he was sorry, and then allow me to leave if I really had issues with the premise. What I got was a condescending half assed rebuttal that pretty much acted as an insult to my intelligence. Like I didn’t understand what I was saying, and that if I looked at things from his point of view, it would all make sense.

I was livid, and being the obsessive little thought engine I was at the time, my mind set fire. On the spot my goals changed, and I started developing my plan to give NCN the kind of ending I felt his opinion deserved, telling him I would be glad to continue my work on FoE, while listing off some changes I felt would be needed for the upcoming chapters in order to “expand” on the original premise. NCN bit so hard he could have chewed through steel.

Now this original scheme, it wasn’t truly a malicious one, not completely. I just wanted NCN to back up his words. Test him a bit, see if he could prove his claim by noticing that he had a spy in his ranks. All he had to do was identify a major problem forming right under his nose, and I would have been satisfied. As you can see from reading this, he never did, and that probably irks me more than anything. Be that as it may, NCN’s obliviousness and unintended insults were not my only reasons to do what I did at this point. They provided kindling for the fire, but the real issues are much deeper.

Believe it or not, I really do have a bit of an interest in FoE. I think that the images, for the most part, are very well drawn, with NCN having gotten several amazing artists interested in the setting. Regardless of what some people who hate FoE might say, many of the pictures the setting gives us could be seen as works of art within the BDSM genre, at least in my opinion, and I feel they are wonderful things that have been given to those who are both fans of bondage and MLP. However, I can hardly say the same when it comes to the stories we have been given. Let’s be frank, canon FoE stories are nothing to write home about. In a setting that could either make for delightfully sexual silliness, or a serious grimdark world, FoE decides to be a generic and overdone hentai plot of “Some assholes take over a kingdom and turn the women into slaves”.

This alone wouldn’t be a terrible thing, if the writers actually did something with it, but the problem is that they don’t. All of the stories tend to run the same issues of “good guys lose, bad guys win” and never go anywhere from there. I’m not saying that you have to have the caribou lose, but why is it that they seem to win so fucking hard that people are literally throwing themselves into the proverbial meat grinder? In a good story, or even just an “okay” story, the villains would have had at least some complications, some problems, something that could make the plotline more, something people could care about. However, it has been shown in every canon story ever made that it is not the villain’s cunning or ingenuity that lets them win, but the fact that everyone else is written to be idiots by default. Even Bruised Apples falls into this problem, because it takes Gunne, a caribou, to solve the problems Mac and AJ are facing, and likewise he is the one who puts them in a position to kill Dainn, with them only being able to do so because they chose to do the dumbest thing they could in the situation, which just so happens to works because they are arguably the most physically powerful things around. Kinda sounds familiar in a way, don’t you agree?

And you know what, I know what part of the problem is. It’s the same thing that started this mess (interpret that how you wish); NCN. I can attest to the fact that on more than one occasion I’ve tried to let Applejack get the upper hand in a situation, even if only momentarily, or have the caribou shown to be directly stupid, or even in an outright bad light, and he refused it and made me edit it to be more to his liking. There are plenty of taboos when it comes to being a canon writer, and unless you are slick about how you turn a phrase or try to point out the problems of the setting, there is never a point where the caribou are addressed as the idiots they are constantly shown to be. Instead, their stupidity is shown as some sort of example of how they are somehow, in some backwards logic, smarter, faster, stronger, and more capable than everything in existence, especially the characters that we know are better then these gary stu pieces of shit.

Now NCN is part of the problem, but that doesn’t excuse the writers themselves. They are just as responsible, if not more so, for shoveling garbage down the throats of people who might actually be interested in FoE, for whatever reasons they may have. You can only blame NCN so much until you realize that the writers agreed with what they wrote, and gave their consent on having it posted up for everyone to see. If not, then they wouldn’t have written it. I stand behind everything I have written for FoE, even if some of it had to be altered to fulfill a criteria set for me, and I think that should be obvious, since I used it to fuck NCN over in the end. Likewise, if a story itself has a poor premise, or is just shit, then it is because the writer didn’t bother taking the time to make something better.

This doesn’t apply to all canon stories, mind you, some aren’t “that bad”, but even the best FoE stories are filled with plotholes, leaps of logic, and points where they have to rush to get everything that could cause a problem, cause conflict, out of the way so they can get to the good stuff ASAP. Some might say that isn’t a bad thing, but then I would say why bother with the “story” part at all? Just focus on making sex scenes with no plot involved, or better yet, leave the stories to fans who have the potential to do a better job and have canon FoE focus on the art alone. It is the best part of the setting, and then people can use it to devise their own plots outside of NCN’s little box.

I don’t know, I guess when I joined in on this project, I expected more than what I got. I expected a group who would take the time to work together to make something awesome, even if lots of people didn’t agree with the content. I expected NCN to be a better leader and editor, instead of a person who focuses on the things he enjoys without considering all the other important stuff needed to make a proper story. Hell, I at least expected people to not take months to years to jot down an update to stories that probably should have been finished by now. I work two jobs and have a twice a week card game tournament, and I still make time to get my daily allotment of writing done. (and BTW, I wouldn’t really hold your breath on ever seeing updates for some of the older unfinished stories, FYI.)

So yeah, that’s my reasoning I suppose. As cliche and silly as it sound, I just care too much. So if people aren’t going to be arsed to do things right, or ever, then why not make a proper ending.

[III.] Why the Caribou Should Lose

Okay…. Time to get into the silly bits where I talk about the faults of the story concerning the villains and their methods. This is something I really wanted to address for a long time. If it is not clear by now that, allow me to explain (though if you are a person who really doesn’t care about the stories and the inherent flaws in them, I won’t be offended if you skip this part. It will probably get really boring and confusing)

I’m not the type who thinks good should always triumph, that at the end of the day people should have karma knocking on their door, because in all honesty the more realistic scenario is that bad people do get away with doing bad things. People get away with murder, rape, theft, abuse, manipulation, and other things that can be considered general mistreatments of one’s fellow man. Some might say that systems are in place to aid this process. “Zero Tolerance” policies in schools make it so the victims of bullying get punished for retaliating against jerks who harass them behind the backs of teachers. Freedom of speech in the constitution allows for legal congregations of groups who only want to persecute other people because they are different. VIP prisons have been built to provide comfortable stays for criminals with enough money and influence to be allowed to spend their sentences in them, treating their intended punishment as a vacation. It’s a shame, it really is, but it is the truth of reality that assholes very often get away with their crimes. So when looking at the caribou, we really can’t treat them any differently, that is if you want to make a good story.

So by that notion alone, I don’t really have the right to say that the caribou have to lose, and neither does anyone else, no matter how much this setting offends them. However, that doesn’t mean that the caribou should have the universe align with their every action. If a person pours gasoline on their house and then sparks a match, this shouldn’t somehow turn their house into into a fully furnished three story mansion, complete with loyal and lusty servants that dote on them like they are god’s gift to creation (at least not before having to trick the insurance company their scamming out for the money to buy said mansion and hire said servants). What I’m getting at is that it can be proven that your villains have earned their comeuppance, then by all means they should get it.

So we have to look at how people do get punished for their actions in real life, which is simple enough. When something bad happens to you, or anyone, I feel it is because of a few specific factors. The first factor is perhaps the most common, some external influence caused something bad to happen to you. These are usually people, everyday jerks who go out of their way to make you miserable, or to simply prevent you from having what you want in life. God knows we each have our own set of these, be they people who assume they know better than you (which they might, but you certainly don’t feel that way), or establishments that exist to corral your thoughts and prevent your desires (Because I sure would love to have people serve me hand and foot for no other reason than because I legally own them), or just the random jerk on the street who would like to make you angry because they think it’s funny (and it probably is, you loser).

Point is, people are going to cause people problems, good intentions or no, and these interferences are what turn life into “not what you desire”. As far as the caribou go, there is no shortage of people who would love to wreck their day. There are resistances, there are people who have no intention of playing their game, and there are certainly people who would rather the caribou just crawled in a hole somewhere and died. The problem is thought that the caribou are a dominating force in this setting, in that they are too numerous, too powerful, and have too many allies to cause any long lasting problems for them. A mare could piss in their coffee, but she can’t do anything to make a real difference, at least in how the setting presents itself.

This alone is fine, really. I have no issue with the idea that there is this overwhelming force that comes in, wrecks house, and then asserts itself cuase no one can adequately stand up to them. Heck, it’s a real world issue that many countries face. So we could say that even if the resistance was the most effective group of insurgents that ever existed, the problem is too much for them to handle because it’s just too big, and all they can do is minor things that only hinder the caribou in minor ways. No assassinations on the king, no blowing up Canterlot, no liberation of important figures that could turn the tide (Twilight, Celestia, ect).

Ignoring the resistances, or the parts of the population who would probably stick a knife into a caribou’s jugular the first time their hands were unbound, we could look at another external force, which is just random circumstance. Sometimes bad things just happen. One day you leave your house, go to work, fuck your secretary who you blackmailed into becoming your personal cock cleaner, and you leave the office to find that a meteor has fallen on your luxury sedan, localizing all damage it caused to only your car, on the day that your insurance ran out. Thems the breaks, and now you’re out that 200 grand you blew from your inheritance from your rich uncle who felt they owed you something after that unfortunate drunken night on your 18th birthday. Shit happens, and leads to increasing amounts of “having a bad time”.

But let’s ignore that for a moment (because the setting sure has). What if we can say that external forces are irrelevant, then what else is there? What else makes our lives terrible? Well if we can’t blame external factors, and trust me those are always the first things people blame, then we must blame internal factors. Fact of the matter is, we are usually the cause of our own problems. We tend to put ourselves in situations where we are bound to get shafted, or have personal problems that we chose to ignore because we don’t see them as problems, or we even just do stupid things because we want to do stupid things. This here is perhaps the real reason why the caribou should be defeated, because they are their own worst enemies.

When I started this project of mine, I had based my plan on this: That anything and everything that the caribou did was either dangerous, stupid, dangerously stupid, or stupidly dangerous. They pretty much started off as a group of wayward refugees looking for a new place to call home after a great disaster, settled with the first place they encountered, and then in a situation where they should have been under-equipped after a long voyage at sea with what should have been little supplies (because again, there was a disaster), they decided to attack the residents of this new land simply because the women were wearing clothes and acting like intelligent individuals.

This alone should have had the malnourished, scurvy ridden bastards curb stomped into the dirt, but I am willing to accept that somehow, despite any and all evidence and logic that states otherwise, the caribou took over Equestria because their dicks are just that fucking powerful. However, with the rewards of conquest came the burden of leadership, and now what should be a relatively small group of people, who have already shown that the extent of their cunning is “smash and grab”, have to actually manage a nation. It shouldn’t have been too hard, in fact this could have been easy. Just have everything continue as it was, since Equestria was already a thriving nation, and don’t do anything to the general populous to fuck things up, or do something stupid like intentionally crippling the very people who keep things running smoothly. You know, the everyday workers who run shops, make goods, and CONTROL THE FLIPPING WEATHER.

Mismanagement aside, there are plenty of other issues that are a problem here, and I had intended on going into things like “while a sex-based society is not a bad idea, one that practically mind controls you into blowing your life savings on lube and sex toys probably isn’t good for the common man”, or how “an army that only knows victory is the one most vulnerable to defeat”, but let's be straight here for a moment (I’ll try if you try). You’re an intelligent person, you know that the caribou are so stupid they make Fred Fredburger look like a college graduate with a masters in quantum physics. You don’t need me to sit here and list off every single problem that has ever come up in FoE that is now ingrained into the setting because “it’s sexy”. I read the forums, I look at the comments, I know most of you are reasonable individuals who can see why this shit doesn’t work. There are though two important things I think should be brought up though, because it merges the caribou’s internal problems with their external problems.

[IV.] Red Collars are Stupid

Oh I can hear it now. Don’t deny it, we know what some of you are thinking. The title of this section alone probably filled some of the more zealous FoE fans with rage. I know how protective people can get over their little red collars, how they like to defend the idea of women subjecting themselves to servitude, that being a slut doesn’t make you an idiot. I’m sure you’re already typing out your rebuttal, giving your piece on the matter, perhaps even going so far as to point out evidence in canon stories or canon images that show that red collars are smart, or maybe just slapping Twilight down as your prime example and calling it a day.

Well to that, let me just say that I don’t see the point of arguing this, for two reasons. First, it is an argument that is inherently and fundamentally flawed. If you want to say that a red collar is sexy, that’s fine, because the idea of a big breasted, submissive meat puppet is sexy, but by the definition of the setting alone, a red collared mare, or at least one who truly believes herself to be one, is a fucking idiot. Their masters think they are idiots, they treat their master’s word as truth so they think they are idiots, and they are written like ditzes or people who don’t seem to understand that raping and torturing people for sex is a bad thing that shouldn’t be supported, no matter how cock-hungry you are. The other reason I don’t see the point of arguing this is because it’s not just the mares in the collars I think are stupid, but the collars themselves.

God, if there ever was a problem in FoE, it was the collar system. I really don’t get it either. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the “concept”. It would be a great thing if I could just look at a person and automatically tell if they were an asshole or not. Heck, it would be great if there were people in the world that were marked with something that gave me permission to grab them by the hair, drag them to my home, and proceed to stick needles into their skin for the next several hours just because they don’t like what I like. The problem is… that this is a system built against itself.

The collar system, in its simplist of interpretations, is a system that lets everyone know what side a slave is on, whether the caribou deem them “good” (with a red collar), or “bad” (with a black collar). Before you nitpick that the collar system isn’t so “black and white”, let me say that yes, there are other collar colors, but they really don’t mean much when it comes down to it, and have zero implications on this argument. What matters is that caribou use this system to make an on the spot prejudgemental assumption about a person without knowing anything about them.

Now… as far as the “black collars being bad” part of this system goes, I would almost say that they no reason to not go by their assumptions, not being hurt by the fact that the collars are painful, and thus motivate a mare to continue hating the people responsible for putting it on them in the first place. That part of the system could even be considered perfect, and if it wasn’t, who cares? It just means that some mare that is a willing slut is being unjustly punished, and a caribou would really have no concern about that. Red collars though…. They don’t really have the liberty to have this inherent flaw. When it comes to a red collar, EVERY judgement call has to be perfect. When they put that little red piece of leather around a mare’s neck, they better be certain. “Why?” you might ask, since the answer might not be obvious enough, but here is my reasoning.

Red collars, no matter how you look at it, are privileged. They are treated differently, rewarded, given leniency, they are trusted. You could try to say that a red collar and a black collar are both treated exactly the same, but that would not only make the collar system pointless, but it has already been proven wrong in canon multiple times. The amount of sex a mare has is something that doesn’t change when a mare swaps collars, since they are still expected to fuck like crazy, but even AJ was granted the privilege of responsibility.

Perhaps you’re saying to yourself “so what”. A privileged mare can’t do anything a non-privileged mare couldn’t, and that is where I chuckle. Privileged mares are allowed to have positions of management. They are trusted to spread information the caribou want given to the public. They are trusted to inspect other mares to see if they are worthy of becoming red collars themselves. All that would be needed to break the entire system down is one mare to slip in undetected, and start causing trouble. It could take years to do successfully, but one mare and enough determination could crush Dainn and his regime like a grape if they had the right motivation.

Now let’s get to the other thing you might be thinking, that “that would never happen”, that “a woman could never get a red collar under false circumstances”. To that I have to ask… have you even read my story? Even before this little stunt of mine, the story has always been about AJ and her successful attempt to get a red collar, even though she didn’t even really want one. All she had to do was smile, fuck, and call herself a cunt every once a while, and even the caribou King was convinced enough that he personally approved her collar.

But I suppose that could have been a fluke. There is no way that could happen more than once.... I’m sure all of you see where this is going, so I’ll just say that Cheerilee, Little Strong Heart, and Ms. Cake are all other examples of red collars slipping under the radar. If I want to be technical, I could add in Pinkie, Rarity and Lightning Dust into the mix too, thus giving six examples of fake red collars in FoE canon before I did this, six false red collars that NCN approved. One could try to say that some of them don’t count, that that was not what NCN intended out of any of them, that I only slipped that into my ending and thus it doesn’t count, and to that I will say… go back and read the chapters again. They were displaying unwilling behaviors before this point, and I didn’t included anything that wasn’t already part of FoE canon when it came to personality traits or motivations. The only exception to this is Lightning Dust, but don’t worry about that too much. After all, I did ask NCN about her beforehand, and he did agree with what I did with her in what was given as a purely hypothetical scenario. Of course, if I want to nix those three from the equation (because I can just hear the complains already) How about we just replace them with the entirety of red collared Apple mares on Braeburn’s farm. That should be more than enough to prove that the caribou have no way of telling a willing mare from one who just puts on a show and would be happy to stick a knife in a caribou’s neck at the first convenient oppertunity.

To be direct, while the idea of the collars might be sexy and might sound like a smart idea on paper, it is pretty frickin’ stupid when implicated because it leaves you vulnerable to internal attacks, because you are giving those who would want to destroy you a free pass to fuck with you. Compound this with the fact that caribou think that it is a smart idea that they make their slaves dumber, reducing them to sex slaves, it leads to situations where the only smart women left are the ones that resist you, and thus your “loyal” slaves are all ditzes and bimbos who wouldn’t be able to identify if another red collar amongst them was trying to plot against them, even if they were being directly combative against them. All they would see is another woman being a complete bitch, which in FoE is a desirable trait so long as that bitchiness is directed solely to other women.

A particularly clever and cruel woman could very easily use her position to simultaneously rise in the ranks while sabotaging other red collars she finds problematic. All she would have to do is use her position of relative freedom to point out some of the inferiorities of this “lesser woman”, either by setting up their own falsified evidence against the girl, or simply allowing her to fuck up on her own (because no one is perfect). From there all it takes is a few off handed, snide remarks about the real red’s performance, perhaps some more direct confrontations about their behavior, followed up with some positive reinforcement from this deceptive mare in the form of sex and submissive acts. It wouldn’t hurt if the one you wanted to sabotage already displayed negative traits either; like being boastful, unreliable, lazy, untalented, or shallow, to list a few things that would put our poor little red collar slut in a position where she’d be soon swapping out her red collar for a purple one.

The utilization of red collars is like putting a sign on a dog that says “I don’t bite” and then letting it roam the streets without worry about what will happen. Sure, it is possible that the dog will never sink its teeth in the flesh of a human being, but odds are something is going to set it off and you’re stuck dealing with the consequences. So this is a point where the caribou are allowing external forces to mess up their plans because of their own internal flaws. There is absolutely no reason why people wouldn’t abuse this idiotic system, and I would go as far to say that the amount of “real” red collars pale in comparison to those who fake it for whatever reason. That doesn’t mean that everyone is some assassin ready to strike, but it does mean that the collars would be better off used as blindfolds for the men of this setting, since they are already providing that function for them.

[V.] Caribou are fucking stupid

Gosh… gosh… gosh, gosh, gossshhhhh, where to begin on this one. Or more so, where to begin that wouldn’t be retreading ground that other people have already figured out already. It really isn’t hard to see that the “canon” caribou, no matter how they are presented, are probably the most unintentionally stupid race to ever be invented by anyone. The number of things one could point out that show their overall incompetence is astounding, ranging from nitpicks to legit issues that the people who create content for the setting not only chose to ignore, but seem to be completely oblivious to. During my time as a contributor, there have been quite a few times where I’ve talked to other writers, pointed out some flaw, and then got a long line of dialog trying to explain their way out of this problem, which usually just made the problem worse since I could then see the problems with their excuses. Not to sound like a bitch, but if you can’t produce an excuse that doesn’t just produce more questions, then perhaps you shouldn’t bother making them to begin with.

Poor excuses aside, caribou, to put it simply, don’t appear to be able to act intelligently. Perhaps that isn’t the right way to phrase it though. They can act intelligent; they can pretend to have some level of manner sophistication, they can say their pleases and thank yous, they can request a cup of tea, but what they can’t do is backing up the act. Their casual behavior betray their incompetence, and I mean that in more than just their disregard to women. It might be hard to see for those who don’t look for it, but there are plenty of times when caribou do things “just because”, and ignore the implications of their actions.

I would think the most subtle of these slights would have to be how they treat their supposed allies. Let’s just get something out of the way right now, in case my story didn’t adequately express this. Any allies the caribou have are either mind controlled into thinking like the caribou, strong armed into acting the way the caribou want them to act, or are assholes who saw them as a convenient way to get the things they want out of life (since, like it or not, in this setting the caribou are suppose to be really powerful, especially against living things). Combine that with the the fact that they are intentionally trying to regress mares to simpletons, and that the ones that are most subjectable to this are the willing red collars, it leaves these dumbasses with no real allies, or at least not any they could depend on. Those they mind control could just as easily have the control removed with the destruction of the crystal heart, the people they coerced would turn on them in an instance if they believed the caribou lost power, as would those only using them as means to their own ends, and red collar mares are definitively useless to the caribou themselves (even the ones that would be incredibly beneficial to the caribou if they’d let them be). With things like this, their control on the world is tenuous at best, leaning more to unsustainable if we want to be serious.

Ignoring a lack of reliable allies, the caribou really don’t seem to understand exactly what they have tossed themselves into, or how their actions have consequences. If a person wanted to be completely unfair, utilizing every possible thing they could in both canon MLP and the setting, then the caribou would be in over their head in shit. Equestria, by week one, would be suffering from not only the Tantabus, creep vines, a magic stealing centaur who give no shits about taking over their kingdom, unending snowstorms caused by not only Windigos and removing the heart from the Crystal Empire, the inability to get rid of it all with the weather team workers cut in half, a food shortage, mass suicides, mass homicides (from resistance members who wouldn’t give two care about killing traitors to Equestria), a food shortage, probably a plethora of STDs that would turn the populous into a mass of rotting horse meat quicker than a red collar drops her non-existent panties, and the sun and the moon being completely uncontrollable, possibly never to rise ever again (and these are just the things I can come up with off hand. I’m certain that there are plenty more things people could, and have, come up with).

If the caribou were supposed to be an allegory for now badly an incompetent government could severely fuck over a nation’s natural resources and the people they govern over, I would be incredibly impressed at how good a job NCN had done conveying it in a clever and somewhat subtle manner, but unfortunately that is not the case. As I said before, these problems are not just ignored by the caribou, but by the setting and writers. However, let’s take a step back for a moment, if I may. I would like to be fair about this, at least a little bit just to make my later point that much stronger when I get to it.

FoE, for those who don’t know, was created a little before the end of season 2, and as such NCN has only really made the events up to Magical Mystery Cure official parts of the setting (Anthro ponies notwithstanding). Anything past that point can be considered non-applicable to the setting, since they couldn’t predict that stuff, and so I will not hold it against the writers or NCN for ignoring those bits if they want to. So the Tanabus and Tirek are out, the Crystal Heart can be removed from the Crystal Empire or even destroyed without consuming the city in ice, and I’ll even let slide the problems that cause mass deaths like the STDs for the sake of the setting (since the caribou should probably be wiped out long before ever stepping foot in Equestria if this wasn’t the case). I’m even willing to let go of what is probably the most severe issue, the sun and the moon’s lack of guidance in a world reliant for it, because honestly it’s not that big a deal and some concessions can be allowed. It’s fine, it’s ok, it’s not a big deal, and really I have several solutions that would kinda work in a way if one wanted to implement them (though NCN would never want to do what I would have in mind).

The problem is… that even ignoring all of those very, very, likely consequences of the rape of a kingdom and its resources, the caribou, or at the very least their king, still invite what is perhaps the most devastating natural disaster to plague their people to take up residence amongst them. I am of course referring to my favorite ticking time bomb, Gunne. To be honest, I couldn’t believe how easy it was to slip in the concept that he was “cursed”, to make it so everyone hated the man, save for the fucking king. Seriously though, you are the leader of what is left of your entire race, everyone you know tells you this guy in bad news, and you decide to not only ignore the warning, but give this walking cultural stigma a ranking position in your military, and then give him complete control over the city were four out of six of your biggest potential threats live. What are you, retarded? HE’S THE GODDAMNED CURSED ONE!

I suppose that this is perhaps a poor point of view though. If anything, Dainn was not “specifically” incorrect with how he treated Gunne, since as long as Dainn was around to treat him like an actual person, Gunne was fine, and would have continued to be fine. If anything, it was the fault of every other stag for making it obvious that if Dainn was ever removed from the picture, he would be given zero credit for an accomplishment he had performed. They were the ones who created this self-fulfilling prophecy, and if they hadn’t treated Gunne like an abomination of nature for having the gaw to be born at the same time as his sister, then perhaps this would have never happened. So I guess Dainn’s blame in such a scenario is completely exonerated. I mean there is no way that he could have foreseen this, right?

So… who here remembers what the plot of the first two episodes of MLP was based around? I bet everyone reading this is already catching on, but in case it is necessary, I’ll explain. You see, Dainn’s whole reason for trusting Gunne where every other caribou doesn’t is because he is supposed to be smart. He is supposed to not believe in things like superstitions because they are, as said a few times in Bruised Apples, a sign of ignorance. In the real world, if I were to claim that I could somehow tell something was going to fall from sky through my ass spasming, people would look at me like an idiot.

This isn’t the real world though…. This is the world of MLP. This is a world where things like Pinkie Sense exists. Where people can have foreboding dreams and know that they are something more than your mind creating images. It’s a world in which if you find a passage in a book saying that some ancient evil is coming to devour the souls of every mortal creature on the planet unless you play a specific tune on a silver fiddle at just the perfect time of celestial alignment, you had better be on spot ready to do your best rendition of “Devil Went Down to Georgia”. So I have to ask Dainn in this instance…. Why are you trusting the cursed guy…. In a world where prophecy is fact?

Dainn, for supposedly being so smart, is surprisingly ignorant of how the world he exists in works. The idea that anyone would go against such ominous foretellings is ridiculous. If Dainn was truly “smart”, he wouldn’t have touched Gunne with a mile long pole. That’s okay though, since when it comes down to it, the whole fucking race is stupid for not just strangling Gunne and Ginna in their crib. I can see where they would be against that though, with that “not killing people who could potentially destroy you if given the opportunity” thing they have going on. No, we’ll just keep around a woman who kicks harder than a caribou could ever hope to hit anything, unblanked, unrestrained, and give her one of those “there is no reason you shouldn’t be pissed off at us” collars to boot. Then again, why shouldn’t they? It’s not like something terrible has happened to the caribou because they were were too fucking arrogant to assume that bad things would ever happen to them, that is except for… well perhaps that is for another time. Spoilers and all.

The point is that caribou have a major problem with cultural stupidity, from the trusting nature of Gunne with a guy whose temper is on a hair trigger and who can toss aside the things you use as a tank, to Dainn believing the Hope Diamond’s mortal avatar would make a good soldier and drinking buddy, to their “best” tactician deciding that his day could be better spent sipping tea in some earth pony’s house when the caribou army is off in zebra country trying to make another race bend to their whims. I won’t go into every little thing that the caribou have done that make themselves look like idiots (not here at least, lest we risk turning this into it’s own story of how they can hardly open their mouths without choking on their own tongues), but I feel that I’ve given enough examples of things from the canon parts of my story to secure a Darwin Award for Dainn and his ilk.

[VI.] Closing Statements

After saying all that, taking the time explain myself, and my motivations for making my ending the end of the caribou’s reign over Equestria, I’m sure that you all have now developed your own opinions about me. As with my ending, I don’t expect everyone to suddenly see me as the patron saint of pony porn, nor do I think everyone will condemn me. In a sense, I only assume that this will strengthen their already established point of view, with my taken advantage of a situation being considered both a good and bad thing depending on what team you happen to be playing for, with very few of you swapping sides with this new found information of my creative process.

However, I do want to say that it doesn’t matter to me whether or not you, as the reader, hate me, love me, or anything in between. I never started writing to be part of a popularity contest, and if that was my intentions I probably shouldn’t have written for a setting based on some of the most reprehensible topics the human race has conceived. Rape, while sexually stimulating, is a horrific and disgusting thing that people hate hearing about. Misogyny, while an amusing and interesting character trait in the hands of the right people, is considered to be a backwards and moronic viewpoint by all but the people who practice it. Torture, while adding to the kink of BDSM, is a cruel and malicious use of force that only people that could be considered sadists enjoy reading about, with others finding the act cringe-worthy in most situations. Slavery, no matter how you look at it, is always going to be a touchy subject that most people don’t want to hear about and even fewer people want to be on the receiving end of. These are all things that I knew going into this we're going to touch a cluster of nerves, and yet I did it anyways.

I hold no high opinion on these topics, even though they are the things that I have based my writing around, but I still wrote about them because I feel that no topic is completely unapproachable, and in the end I am in the business of writing dark, but interesting stories. It is always a goal of mine to make something that can be considered “good” on a writing aspect, even if the subject is the most reprehensible thing imaginable, and while I’m hardly Hemingway, I don’t believe that the way I have written this story was “bad”, regardless of whether or not you got the ending you might have wanted.

So call me what you want. If you are mad, you have the right to be. If you are happy, you have that right too. Feel free to point out my supposed flaws, like how hypocritical it is that I told people to read everything in the introduction to this, and then told them they could “skip the boring story explanation” if they wanted to (since I’m curious as to how many people caught that, but also how many people did skip it when presented with the option). It makes no difference to me. I’m still going to keep writing, and what I write about is probably still going to equally despised and appreciated by those who chose to read what I put out.

And yes, I intend to write more stories based in this setting. In fact, I have the general plot synopsis already mapped out for at least a dozen more stories that take place both in the “canon” world of FoE (Using everything that was canon at the time of me leaving, since I have no doubt that NCN is going to retcon the shit out of things in the aftermath of this) and in the world that comes of the choices made in my ending. I’ve even asked NCN ahead of time to for his “permission”, and got his approval, to make FoE stories using the characters I intend to use in these stories, characters like Sunset Shimmer, Starlight Glimmer, Trixie, Gilda, Princess Ember, Queen Chrysalis, Maud Pie, and Braeburn, so if you happen to see a ton of images in the near future involving them as a part of his emergency measures to remove me from the setting entirely, feel free to send me a thank you message for getting you more porn via kicking his rear into gear. -_^

So yeah, you can expect more from me in the near future, and with more than just the characters listed above, which is more than I you can expect from any of the other long standing writers who have all but abandoned the series. So even if you hate me, you might want to stick around, because something is better than nothing right? Or if you want I could give you some links to some other stories with similar themes that might pad out your wait for new canon content from this setting, because I guarantee you’re not getting anything anytime soon (unless my actions give the other writers the motivation to get off their asses and do something for once). Either way, I think I’ll be shooting for bi-weekly posting, which I think I can pull off since the word count for my FoE contributions alone trump any of the others who have written for canon FoE…. put together. So I can’t promise you all the sexy images, which are probably the things that got you interested and are what keep you interested in the setting if you are a die-hard FoE fan, but I can at least promise you won’t have a lack of something to read.

Suppose that is about it, but before I go, I just want to set one last thing straight. While this can perhaps be seen as an attack against the setting, I don’t want anyone to think that I want to see FoE “end”. On the contrary, I want to see more artwork, I want to see more good stories. I find it a shame that people bring me up as the best writer (NCN included) because everyone else doesn’t give a crap about what they put out their or how frequently they do so. I see it as a terrible thing that there are more stories about the setting from people who hate everything about it than there are from people who actually enjoy it, and while I think that both sides of the FoE fandom are perfectly fine in their own way, I also see lots of problems that need to be dealt with. Hell, I’d even continue to work with NCN if he wanted me to, so long as he adjusted his way of thinking to something more productive to the setting and backed away from the whole “Caribou are the most fucking unstoppable things ever invented” thing, but I really don’t think that he will want me after this, and I’d call him an idiot if he did since I’m just as likely to do this again should he keep making the same mistakes.

And let me say this, just as one final topic to address. Just because FoE has an “ending”, doesn’t mean it has to “end”. As far as my timeline for my story goes, I gave them a year from the point they took over, and a lot can happen in a year’s time. You have enough characters and enough situations that you could write whatever story you wanted, and it would never have to leave that period of time. Even the canon stories are more focused on what happens around the time of the invasion or what happened beforehand, which are arguably the most interesting periods of time for the setting because stuff is actually happening, things are changing, and it hasn’t become some stagnant scenario where the people who can only be considered the heroes of the setting constantly get their faces shoved in the dirt.

So go on, make your own story about how the fall happens from your point of view. Draw art if you want, and even if your goal is to make a story where the caribou lose, at least put in the effort to make it interesting. Have both sides take a few punches, have the resistance do something clever only to have the caribou do something that damages their future plans. Have people be defeated, raped and tortured, only to have them be rescued or even have them find their own way out of the situation, and most of all do not let “Canon” dictate what can and cannot happen. A setting should never be one-sided, and that goes doubly so since we are working with fan fiction, where anything and everything can happen. Just do what feels right and go with it, and please for the love of whatever deity, deities, or lack thereof don’t bother with going to the contributors for advice, because they don’t have any clue what is going on.

I’ve been part of the group for two years now and we still haven’t planned out anything solid for some of the most important things people could ask about, or have a solid idea for any kind of direction for the setting aside “here’s some MLP character being raped and otherwise sexed up, enjoy”. The best that you could possibly get is an “answer” that will be made up on the spot, and is subject change at a moment’s notice if a “better” comes along, or someone raises a stink about something. It’s happened several times already, and I guarantee it will happen again.

But if you still think that that it would be a good idea to listen to anyone involved in what will be the canon, I have one small bit of advice. Don’t try to argue any detail with them, no matter how stupid it is. All you’ll get are more excuses and nonsense reasonings about how their way is right, and you’re an idiot for even trying to apply logic to their perfect ideas. Trust me, you will never win and they will just keep prattling on as they’ve always done. And NCN, I’d stay away from him at all costs. Of everyone, he is the absolute worst, and even if you expressively tell him you are working on something that probably goes against his wants for the setting, he will first try to get you to change your mind and write what he wants, and then dismiss you if you refuse to comply. Don’t let NCN, or any of the contributors for that matter, take your ideas and put them in a box just so they can benefit from their interference. Write what you want, create a story the way you like, but above anything else…. Make what you write worth reading.

Anyways, I guess that is everything for now. Thumbs down me if you want, or unsubscribe if you feel it necessary. I’ll understand, and support your decision, but I’ll also still be writing more things for FoE for those who are still interested. Expect an epilogue soon, to show how things end up in this version of FoE I’ve created. Hope to see you all soon, and I hope you all have a pleasant day.

Explanation