TSteelwing

• MLP: FiM
• Sci-Fi

I'm a coward wearing a hero's face...and it's my job to save us all.

• Violence
• OC
• Other

Flint-Lock · 4.2k words  ·  46  1 · 757 views

Summary: (Spoilers ahead!)

Steelwing, is about a pony of the same name, who fights in a war for the United Equestria Defense Force. He is the Lieutenant-Commander of the Fifth Squadron. He is the public face of the entire war effort.

However, his face, just like his life, is a lie.

He is a nameless soldier from the squad led by the real Steelwing, which met its unfortunate end in a battle some time ago.

The Equestrian high command not wanting to lose someone so close to the hearts of the population, decided to take a radical step. They used the genetic material of Steelwing to recreate his face and sew it on the only surviving soldier’s face. They’ve also put Steelwing’s fighting prowess onto a device which, when it’s implanted, helps the soldier mimic Steelwing’s legendary abilities.

Seemingly, the procedure was a complete success. The scientist created the perfect replacement for their hero, and noone got a sniff of the switcheroo.

There is but one problem remaining, science might be able to recreate Steelwing’s body but neither Gods or Ponies will ever bring back his indomitable spirit.

And what good even the best skills are, in the hooves of a coward?

I hate to burst the bubble I just blew up, but they’re basically just as good as before.

Disappointed? Better get used to it.

Action

Okay let’s start with what’s good. The action in this story is fairly solid. The rules are set up pretty well, and except for the most pivotal moments, they are adhered to, in a reasonable fashion. Seemingly the author did his homework on researching the flying lingo, because there were a lot of words I didn’t understand, but since I didn’t understand them, I couldn’t tell if they were actually correct. But if they were, they might really help other more educated readers’ immersion.

The enemy was sufficiently menacing to pose an actual threat to the fleet, yet he wasn’t so overpowered that the reader would be tuning out, because the only way the fleet could win is by some huge Deus Ex Machina.

Don’t get me wrong the good guys do win by a huge Deus Ex Machina, but it’s set up pretty well early on, and this final twist is done fairly well. It’s a properly executed Chekov’s gun situation, nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. Except it doesn’t make a lick of sense, but more on that later.

Now the general way the author expressed themselves was rather clunky, so it could have been streamlined somewhat, but that was far from my biggest problem.

Creativity

Though the story basically presents the entire arsenal of clichéd sci-fi arsenal, there are quite a few rather unique little twist on them. I really liked that the ships were powered by some sort of synthetic star, it felt really in tone with the whole Sci-fi MLP theme. I think the idea of being able to feel the “pain” of the fighters they are flying in is also swell, though it’s both under- and badly utilised.

It was interesting how the connection between Steelwing and the Main character was handled, how Sw was giving suggestions to him, although I think it was overly convoluted. It would have probably worked better if the Main Character wasn’t made to look like Steelwing, and instead just got the skills of the former space fighter ace, and was pushed by the propaganda as his worthy successor.

It would get rid of a couple of interesting subplots (Like the one where the MC wonders if he has to live with Steelwings Family after the war) but because this story is not really about those, they could have been cut without hurting the main point.

Another thing I liked that the super weapons of the three mega spaceships were just literal slabs of iron, that they would just shoot into the enemy at really, really high speeds. It was so refreshingly simple in the genre of lasery-lasers of doom, that I almost laughed out loud when I read it. As to why they didn’t use tungsten instead of iron, that beats me. Probably because of budget restraints. Not that it matters.

But by far my favourite thing was the main villain. It was well balanced, it was scary, it was disgusting, yet in a strange way understandable. Dude just wanted to eat. Just because it ate planets, it wasn’t really a bad guy. In fact, it was fighting for its survival just like the Ponies. That being said he was as one dimensional as they get. It was completely intentional, but I’m not sure that makes it, all that more entertaining.

Story

We’ve all seen stories which at one point randomly decided to walk off of a cliff. Like Game of Thrones.

This story is not like them!

This story is a black hole.

A black hole where every reader starts inside the event horizon, but because they are inside it’s not immediately obvious for them that they are screwed.

At no point had this story any chance of making the sense the author wanted it to make.

Let’s start with the fact that the whole setup makes absolutely zero sense. Steelwing is the “Last hope of the sapient kind” But he is a fighter pilot. It’s established pretty early on that the killing blow of the battle will be delivered by the three mega battle ships. How is a single fighter pilot is supposed to defend anything against a planet-sized planet eating pile of goo?

Yes exceptional soldiers are really valuable, and certainly history remembers the Simo Hayhas and the Erich Hartmanns of the world, but you know what it remembers a lot more? The Zhukovs, the Rommels and such. Guys who actually have a substantial effect on battles. (And let’s not even talk about the political leaders, who usually take like 90% of the glory.)

Of course, Steelwing didn’t have to be the hero the media painted him as, it was enough if the ponies believed he was, but even in that case he was a fairly odd choice. And definitely he couldn’t have been important enough to resurrect him in such a hilariously roundabout way, they did. Heroes can do half their job from the grave with good enough press coverage.

Also one hero goes the other one comes. Individual fighter pilots aren’t gonna change the tide of battle, and there are always gonna be individuals who are good at racking up kills. Just pick one, put them on the front page and repeat until the day after they die. It’s not rocket science.

Then there is the fact that literally the only characteristic we learn about the main character is that he is a coward. And yet in the entire fic he does nothing that is even remotely cowardly. Yes, he mentions he doesn’t like take offs, but yet he just bears up and does it anyway. That sure sound like the definition of courage to me.

And not only that, when they are out there, he manages to be the calm voice of reason everyone heeds immediately. (Because that’s what cowards do all the time!)

Then he fights really well, but at least we have an explanation for that, though I would I like to mention that a coward would probably make the wrong call and listen to his own cowardly instincts instead of whatever implants he has in his head.

That is, unless the implants have full control of his action, which is at point of the story would be a fairly reasonable assumption. (Whether he knows about it or not is a different question. But an open one according to the story.)

However, in fact that’s not true. He has control, and he proves it when he turns of his heat signal blocking mechanisms, and just runs into the enemy knowing they follow heat signatures, (I would dare to ask how are they not attracted to the “overtaxed magecannons that glow red-hot” when the bafflers are on the thrusters, but let’s not even get into that one.) and that will gain the fleet the precious few seconds to deal the final blow of the battle.

Which would be almost fine, if this didn’t go completely diametrically opposite to what the implants were suggesting. Because the implants (which up to that point perfectly guided him through the battle) wanted him to retreat. So, we can assume the original Steelwing would have done just that.

But not our main hero, he was willing to make the final call, he was willing to sacrifice his own life and bysodoing finally for a fleeting second of his life, “not only playing Steelwing, but becoming Steelwing.”

So a coward, who did nothing cowardly that we know of, finally overcame his cowardice, and prove worthy to the adoration he got as “Steelwing”, by doing something we know Steelwing wouldn’t have done.

I can almost hear Benicio del Toro shouting “Magnificent!” in the background.

And I didn’t even go into how the army was making the pilots feeling the pain of the damage their fighters were taking, just to have an excuse to fill them up with painkillers to their eyeballs.

Or how the whole battle was probably just one fairly meaningless encounter in war spanning over the galaxy.

Or how the villain was suddenly able to use magic for the first and only time when the story needed it not to die just before the final scene.

Or how the main character had the time to do two separate actions in the “Last milliseconds of his life”

Or how the main character’s plan imply that a society developed enough to colonise other planets didn’t think of using flares

And probably a million others.

But you know what the most infuriating?

This could have been a good story.

The idea is solid, there are a million interesting question that could have been asked (some of which were literally asked!) and answered in very creative ways, and yet the writer manages to produce: This.

I’m not even sure what advice can I give to a story so fundamentally flawed as this one. I’m gonna try though:

Matt Groenig and Trey Parker has a very simple rule about story telling. Write down the main story points you want to include and if between any two of them you have to include the words “and then” you’re probably on the wrong path. It’s always better to have either “therefore” or “but” between story points This story is full of “and thens”.

Just try to write up a short list of bullet points, and be absolutely how each of them is the consequence of the previous point. That way everything that happens remains coherent. And this force is strong that it can even keep such a complete unbridled chaos like South Park fairly easy to digest.

Conclusion.

At best this story is a frustrating collection of ideas, all of which would have been so much better than the author chose to tell. At worst, this is the single most illogically told story I have ever seen. The only way this could have been worse is, and yes, I have seen worse, if the narrative had been so weak it couldn’t hold together a single scene. This story clears that bar.

Too bad the bar was buried in the ground.

2/10

That score doesn’t seem averaged properly.

7300247

7300253
I agree on that

7300253
I use weighted averages.

7300256
Yeah but a bit too heavy on the story part, even if it is three times as valuable, it is a 3.2. For your score of a 2 it would be 9 times more valuable, the story part then action and creativity.

7300257
Allright boss I think it's up to your specifications now.