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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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10292822
Hey hey, thanks for the comments! I'll go through 'em all here ^^
So to preface the whole geography thing, I'm not from NOLA, I'm not even American lol, I'm a Canadian who's had the pleasure of visiting on just one short trip (three days in the city), so I don't know nearly as much as I'd like. Beyond that, like with most FOE stories, it's a lot of the city being inspired by the real one rather than a 1:1 recreation - that's something I'd only do for a city I'd lived in my whole life. In this case, I had been working on it as a "custom" map of Equestria, rather than one of America, and it was before I'd visited the city. I'd thought - and written the original plans to the city - that the city opened up onto the Gulf, and I was wrong! But if you can mentally imagine that east of Chalmette it opens up into a wide bay, that's what I basically had in mind for Crescent Bay. I know the geography doesn't match, but like I said, I'd started this whole affair long before I even visited - and a bit too late to redo the whole thing. So I kept it in as a kind of oddity, if that makes sense.
That goes for Satchmo Airport being where it is, too. In this case the airport is further north of the city, somewhere equivalent to the real-life Hammond, LA. And they are flying slowly, to boot, which kinda extends out the differences. A lot of the map takes some very Fallout-style liberties with geography and distance, lol. Additionally, pretty much every chapter up until about Chapter 27 was written while I worked in an area with limited internet access, so I had to go by feel and prior knowledge... which contributes to geographical weirdness. No map to compare it to, unfortunately! This also means things like the General Hospital and Cornucopia's Groceries are straight from the imagination. Charity Hospital wasn't ever on my mind but looking at it for the first time, it looks wonderfully post-apocalyptic, and absolutely would make a perfect model for it.
The Krewes were probably my longest standing idea for this story, pretty much from version 1 - and this story has taken some wild changes since that first draft. It's a great idea because the Krewes and Mardi Gras, while not being the only thing about the city, are probably some of the most visible elements of New Orleans. If nothing else, they had to get in there! They started out being a bit more detailed, and bit more openly in a civil war, but I like where they're at now. Enough questions to let people come to their own ideas~
Seatown and its location is another one of those geographical oddities from above. If we go off the idea that east of Chalmette is the sea (in this story), Seatown would be about where modern day Arabi is - if distances were super compacted anyway. If I could go back and remake the setting, I 100% would try to nail geography a little better. I did start to make some changes later on - there's still some weirdness, but some later scenes will have slightly more accurate geography to them, with at least one major scene using nearly their real life road names to place it. Unfortunately I'd gone a little too deep to remake it as an accurate depiction of New Orleans.
And lastly yeah! Creole. I'd been thinking on that one for a while because, as a white Canadian, it's a tough thing. Lean too hard on it, and it reads like a stereotype. Go too lightly, and it's missing completely. By the time Bezi shows up, I'd been binging the hell out of The Expanse, and after hearing so much of the Belter creole on the show I decided to give caution to the wind and try my hand at Creole. It's not 100% accurate, but I tried to get it close. My hesitation there comes from an early draft where Kaskazini was our main character, and I really dug deep into using creole and slang, but it just didn't feel authentic.
I'm glad that despite the weirdness it still gets a seal of approval from a local! I wanted to try my hardest to make a semi-realistic New Orleans that went beyond the "Voodoo Mardi Gras" stereotype that's always in the media, which is why several scenes take place outside the city, like at "Laura Plantation" (Whiskey Sour's plantation from Ch 10), or in some of the smaller villages along LA-18 (which are passed through several times).
Cheers!
10292957
Well, you were actually somewhat on the mark- there is actually an airport in Hammond because that's where I grew up, now it makes more sense for it to take that long to get there. It is about 45-55 minutes drive from there to the city itself, so I understand it taking so long flying now, especially since the area between Hammond and Kenner is basically just three-quarters of an hour of nothing but endless swamp.