Fanfic / Mass Effect The Equestrian Equation

Ah yes, "Reapers." We have dismissed such claims, Madam President Sparkle.

Shortly before his assault on the Collector Base, Commander Shepard is tasked by The Illusive Man to investigate the disappearance of a Cerberus science team who had gone to investigate the origin point of an extremely powerful weapon which had been used against the Reapers 36 million years in the past. Upon following their lead to a system outside of Citadel Space, the Normandy is attacked by automated defenses that separate Shepard and his away team from the Normandy.

After making planetfall and taking cover in an underground facility, Shepard is attacked by robotic tendrils which pull him away from his companions. When he awakens, Shepard finds that he has been transported to the colorful and magical realm of Equestria, and in the process has been transformed into a pony.

After getting to know a bit about this strange land and some of its more illustrious inhabitants, however, Shepard soon finds that he is far from the only thing that isn't what he seems to be. The entire world of Equestria is a virtual reality simulation that has been running for millions of years, and the Equestrians he meets are the descendants of the ancient race of equines who built the facility. As Shepard tries to return to reality, his choices and actions will determine the fate of an entire species who have never known anything about the world outside their simulation.

This is the beginning of Mass Effect 2 DLC: The Equestrian Equation by Loyal2Luna (author of Doctor Whooves – The Series). The Equestrian Equation is notable for not only bringing the residents of Ponyville into the Mass Effect universe in a manner that operates within the logic of the video games, but also allowed readers to cast their votes on Shepard's actions at the end of each chapter, with the story adjusting to fit the results.

Has a sequel called Shades of Twilight focusing on the trials of the Equestrian Herd after they are introduced to the larger galaxy. After being removed from the Equestria simulation, the Equestrians are refugees. With only a few hundred of their species left in the universe, it falls upon Madam President Twilight Sparkle to determine how they will create a place for themselves in the galactic community.

Like The Equestrian Equation, readers were able to vote on the decisions that Twilight must make to build her society up from nearly nothing, as well as protecting them from unsavory elements who might try to harm the Herd. All the while, the imminent threat of Reaper invasion hangs over their heads.

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"42, please access the Codex for examples pertaining to this series."

General

• Aliens Speaking English: Justified because the ponies, in preparation for their eventual discovery, were conditioned in the system to speak at least one of the languages prevalent in the galaxy at any one time. Earth English was chosen specifically because Princess Luna became infatuated with human culture and the works of writers like Mark Twain, Isaac Asimov, and William Shakespeare.
• All There in the Manual: Like the Mass Effect series, Loyal2Luna updates a blog that serves as the Codex for the Equestrians as new information is revealed in-story.
• Arc Words: "Harmony for All," the philosophy of the ancient equines.
• Beware the Nice Ones: The ancient equines were friendly, cooperative, and believers in the Last-Second Chance. That said, they would deal swiftly with those who refused to take their one chance using overwhelming force. The Codex goes into more detail, describing the aftermath of the first recorded attack on an equine colony by a rogue faction of the Griffar Imperium. The equines militarily, economically, and politically annihilated all traces of this faction, then afterwards devoted resources to helping the newly-created Griffar Republic rebuild. This is also the only existing record of a direct attack on an equine colony before the arrival of the Reapers. To say nothing about that they were seemingly winning against the Reapers until they employed indoctrinated agents. As those who have made the mistake of trying to mess with Twilight discovered, this trope is very much still in effect.
• Brain/Computer Interface: The Equestria System uses one à la The Matrix. Pinkie Pie latter develops the omni-hoof, a version of the omni-tool that uses this to work around their lack of fingers. It's noted to be the first successful omni-tool to use such, but is currently only viable for Equestrians since their physiology has had millennia of alteration for ease of such.
• Cuteness Proximity: Many species find the Equestrians to be absolutely adorable. Even Jack does; though being Jack, she expresses it through suspicion and hostility. Ditzy Doo and many of the foals of the Herd suggested deliberately invoking this to encourage charitable donations that would fund New Ponyville's initial development, but the idea was turned down.
• Deconstruction Crossover: This fics deconstructs many of the Fridge Logic elements of MLP:FIM by explaining them as products of Equestria being a computer simulation. In turn, it shows how hard and conflicted its morality and ideals would be in the more realistic, morally grey Mass Effect 'verse. The Equestrians idealism doomed their ancestors' war against the Reapers and leaves then at odds with the rest of galactic civilization. They begin to manage well enough off in time.
• Last-Second Chance: A defining feature of the equines' approach to diplomacy. Hostiles will be offered one chance to cease hostilities. Those who complied were offered friendship and the opportunity for mutual benefit. Those who didn't...probably ended up wishing they had.
• MegaCorp: Epona Systems Corporation was a rare benevolent version, also serving as the de facto governmental body of the equine race. Though they acquired enough power and influence to become the dominant superpower of their cycle, their preferred method of doing so was through mediation with other species and technological innovation, rather than oppressive force.
• Outside-Context Problem: The ancient equines; their developing technology and infrastructure independent of the mass relays and the Citadel made them the biggest threat the Reapers faced until Commander Shepard. The Reapers took steps to ensure such an anomaly did not happen again. The ancient equines descendants, the equestrians, are now faced with living up to that.
• Robot Buddy: 42 of 50, a changeling drone who ends up becoming Twilight's personal assistant at the end of The Equestrian Equation. He is a fully sentient AI with the personality of Twilight's "Number One Assistant", Spike.

Mass Effect 2 - DLC: The Equestrian Equation

• Ambiguously Related: Rarity brings up the question of, since hers, Twilight's, and many others parents were only programs, who their actual parents and relations are and what her actual relation with her "sister" Sweetie Belle may be. Complicating this is that the equestrians small population mean all of them are to some degree related. The results of her genetic test are kept confidential even from readers, but Rarity doesn't let them change her relationship with Sweetie Belle.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Averted by Luna and 42, borderline with Celestia, and fully embraced by Discord.
• Awful Truth: Twilight was so smart and resourceful, that she was able to discover the truth about the Equestrian simulation (multiple times in fact). She was so shaken by it, that she decided to willingly allow Celestia to erase her memories of the event, leaving behind a message to herself if/when she eventually rediscovered the truth again.
• Bedlam House: The appropriately-named Bedlam, a facility in Canterlot which is where problem cases or aliens brought into the Equestria simulation are sent to be brainwashed into being harmonious members of Equestrian society.
• Bittersweet Ending: Shepard saves the ponies with the help of the Mane Six, but Equestria and the sheltered, idyllic existence that everypony knew there are all gone forever. And now the ponies must try and survive in the much harsher world of the Mass Effect galaxy with only enough general knowledge to get by and the imminent return of the Reapers hanging over their heads like a shadow.
• Big Damn Heroes: Twilight pulls this off when Dr. Milligan has an unarmed Shepard pinned down in the Harmony Core chamber.
• Call-Forward:
  Garrus: (to Shepard) "What's your next trick? Going to bring a prothean back from the dead?"
• Cassandra Truth: Pinkie Pie. The only one immune to the Equestria System's use of Laser-Guided Amnesia to preserve The Masquerade, any attempts by Pinkie to explain things to other ponies just gets wiped from their memories immediately afterward. Eventually she just gave up on trying, and decided to simply have fun with it instead.
  Pinkie: (to Twilight) "I mean, do you have any idea what it's like to have something so important to tell everypony, something that their lives absolutely depend on… and have them just ignore you?"
  Shepard: "Yes… I do."
  • Shepard trying to explain to Twilight that he's not a pony. She thinks he's insane...and then more and more evidence starts cropping up seemingly verifying his story.
• Chekhov's Gun: Pony Shepard's Cutie Mark. Or to be more accurate, the fact that he doesn't have one, and neither does Dr. Hern before Celestia Mind Rapes her, but Milligan does. It turns out that Cutie Marks are actually tracking tags placed on ponies registered within the Equestria System, to allow the three AI overseers to keep tabs on them. The fact that Milligan had one was proof that he, in fact, was not able to resist the mental conditiong at Bedlam. Discord had merely modified that conditioning to suit his own ends.
• The Computer Is Your Friend: Celestia's mission for the past thirty-six million years has been to protect the last descendants of the equine civilization, no matter what.
• Doing In the Wizard: All the fantastical things about Equestria are revealed to be due to its being a simulation, with everything from MLP:FIM that proves real given an explanation constant with the science of Mass Effect.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: This is what happens to the planet housing the Equestria Facility, after its power system goes critical.
• Everybody Lives: Downplayed. All the surviving ponies from the Equestria System manage to escape aboard the Normandy. Except for Granny Smith, who dies in the med-bay from unavoidable complications due to extreme old age.
• End of an Age: At the end of Equestrian Equation, the ponies are all awakened from the Equestria Simulation and must face the real world for the first time in millenia.
• Fatal Flaw: For the equines, their trusting and cooperative natures made Reaper Indoctrination especially devastating to their war effort.
• Fluffy the Terrible: The Harmony Cannon. The beam it fires looks like a rainbow. During the Star Daemon War, it was used to kill Reapers.
• Going Critical: The Harmony Core, after its control systems are damaged by gunfire.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Implied that this happened to Twilight once, years ago. She left behind a recording for her future self, and then erased her own memory.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Doctor Hour Glass, in order to trick the Reapers into believing that everything of value in the star system had been destroyed. Luna refers to him as "the last being I would ever call a hero."
• In Medias Res: It begins with Shepard waking up in Equestria as a pony and then goes back to the crew of the Normandy receiving the mission to find Milligan's team from TIM.
• Inside a Computer System: The ponies turn out to have been living in a simulation.
• Irony: Mordin Solus' description of Pinkie Pie.
  "Rather chatty Couldn't get a word in."
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Used to keep the Equestrians from realizing that they are living in a VR simulation. Pinkie Pie happens to be immune, but was unable to share this knowledge for years since anypony she told would simply forget immediately afterward.
• Living Battery: Celestia's plan upon realizing that the Harmony Core was eventually going to fail. By altering the equine species into the modern Equestrian species to maximize biotic potential, she intended to make the Equestria system self-sustaining by drawing upon the biotic power of its inhabitants.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: Discussed. Even if Milligan had been able to download the contents of Equestria's servers to TIM, Cerberus would still not have access to the Harmony Core, the key to nearly all advanced Equine technology, because the plans to build one were not on the server.
• Mecha-Mooks:
  • The changeling drones.
  • The Canterlot Royal Guard in a way, as they are actually security programs with no individual personality of their own.
• Medium Awareness: In-Universe, Pinkie Pie is aware that her world is a digital simulation, which is what allows her to do crazy, physically impossible things.
• Mind Rape: This sort of mental programing is routine for ponies who don't fit Celestia's ideal "harmonious" psychological profile.
  • This was attempted on Dr. Milligan, as he was labeled insane for thinking himself a human.
  • Fluttershy is revealed to have gone to an institute for being aggressive in her youth and was subjected to some kind of mental torture that turned her into an Extreme Doormat and caused her to repress her memories of the experience.
  • In order to preserve the Equestrian simulation, Celestia attempts to alter Patricia's mind to make her believe she's a pony. The process nearly lobotomizes her.
• Mook Horror Show: The Canterlot Royal Guard verses angry Fluttershy AND Commander Shepard, ends really bad for the Guard, and prompts dropping the Masquerade to stop them.
• Noodle Implements: Pinkie Pie's plan to infiltrate the Canterlot Library involves the use of balloons, a wooden staff, a big straw hat, a record player, a dozen chocolate cupcakes, and a live squid.
• Revealing Cover-Up: System AR-43281, where the Equestria facility is located, is at first glance home to nothing but some uninhabitable planets with absolutely nothing of interest or value. This trips EDI's logic filters because the odds of there being a star system that bland, with absolutely nothing of value, is so mathematically infinitesimal that either they have found the most impossibly generic chunks of rock in the galaxy, or their scanners are being fed false data.
• Spanner in the Works: Shepard, per canon. Having the contents of the Prothean Cipher in his head made his brainwaves disruptive to the simulation.
• Sudden Video-Game Moment: In order to help the others infiltrate the Canterlot Library, Pinkie uses her hacking prowess to convince the guard programs that they are fighting a turn-based RPG battle, complete with accompanying background music. One character even lampshades the Fridge Brilliance of this.
• Two Scenes, One Dialogue: Happens when Princess Luna is explaining to Shepard various facts and details relevant to Equestria and the history of the Equines. At the same time, the members of his crew inside the Lunar Base in orbit are receiving similar information from a recording made by the long-dead Doctor Hour Glass. Twilight is also getting the same information via direct neural download straight from the Archive.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Pretty much the entire Equestria Facility is one big one to The Matrix, complete with Mecha-Mooks out in the physical world and a single member inside who managed to make herself immune to the laws of physics. Granny Smith mentions she never really thought her life in Equestria was real, further making reference to the Matrix's flaw of being unable to seamlessly convince 100% of its population.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: The end has the Council claim the Equestrian Herd consists of "three hundred and forty-two individuals, assistant mechs included". There are 297 equestrians and 48 mechs, which add up to 345. That, or the Council couldn't be bothered to make a precise count.

Mass Effect: Shades of Twilight

• Aborted Arc: Twilight meets with a representative from the Armali Council lobbying for their biotic amps, with Twilight/voters deciding against it. Nothing from this ever comes up before the stories premature end.
• Bait-and-Switch: The story opens with an Equestrian of unknown identity hospitalized in critical condition. Arc 2 Part 3 has Rainbow Dash shot and sent to the hospital next chapter. Arc 2 Conclusion then reveals it to be Twilight Sparkle, who's suffered from overextending her biotics and stress repeatedly foreshadowed as unhealthy.
• The Chains of Commanding: Twilight's plight in throughout the story.
• Could Say It, But...: In Arc 2 Part 4 Pyres does this regarding information about where the captor of the kidnapped ponies is.
• Culture Clash: The main reason why District 1286, a.k.a. "New Ponyville", was granted to the Equestrian Herd was to mitigate this effect, both for the Equestrians who would otherwise be suddenly thrust into a completely alien community and for the settled aliens who would otherwise have to deal with the sudden influx of a refugee species. The media backlash that would have resulted from tossing the Equestrians into an occupied District probably wouldn't have helped, either.
• Dead Fic: After over two years without updates and the author being out of touch for over a year, their editor 2dextreem declared the series dead, adding their own chapter to wrap up the current story arc. Then, four years later, they returned and revived the series.
• Endangered Species: With a population less then 300, the Equestrians manage to get themselves legally declared as such, granting them extra legal protections. This proves a surprise inconvenience at first, since many were unwilling to employ them due to the extra liabilities associated.
• I Call It "Vera": Lt. Pyres calls his Viper sniper rifle "Freya".
• If I Wanted You Dead...: In Arc 2 Part 4, the pony-kidnapper tells Twilight that her orders were to limit Equestrian casualties, or else Rainbow would be dead.
• In Medias Res: The second arc begins this way, with Forty-Two waiting outside Huerta Memorial's ICU and ruminating over the events which led to him being there. The rest of the chapter takes place in Flashback, beginning five days prior.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: The pony-kidnapper not only disarms herself but also removes her biotic amp once Twilight corners her. She also establishes she has NO intention of messing with them again.
• Malicious Slander: The Herd find themselves the target of a "documentary" called The Cost of Grazing which paints them as genetically-engineered puppets of the Alliance, designed to somehow infiltrate and take over the Citadel for their human masters. And this isn't the first time that company has done this; they actually got off lightly compared to the quarians.
• Mecha-Mooks: The pony-kidnapper has a whole bunch of FENRIS and LOKI mechs, as well as two YMIRs.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In Arc 2 Part 4, how dangerous YMIR mechs are is reflected by Pinkie's "tone completely lacking any of [her usual] childlike enthusiasm".
• Only in It for the Money: The pony-kidnapper turns out to have only this as her motivation, which further lowers Twilight's already poor opinion of her.
• Sadistic Choice: Twilight faces two in quick succession after the attack on New Ponyville. First, what to do with the injured Rainbow - leave her unattended to go after the perpetrator or stay with her and risk losing the trail? Secondly, let the pony-kidnapper go free, let C-SEC take her in where she'd be free to blackmail the ponies, or just kill her?
• Shout-Out:
  • Of the four krogan delinquents loitering around New Ponyville, two are named Biggs and Wedge.
  • "I'm afraid I can't do that, Twilight."
  • Galaxy of Fantasy is mentioned to be created by "Ionic Storm", a Captain Ersatz of the now-defunct Ion Storm of Deus Ex fame.
  • A LOKI mech is given the model number HK-0470 the serial number M347846, which translates to "Meatbag".
• So Much for Stealth: Said word-for-word by Twilight in Arc 2 Part 4 after the alarm is raised during their attempt to locate the kidnapper of ponies.
• Take a Third Option:
  • The voters (and by extension, Twilight) did so in deciding how to deal with the slanderous documentary, The Cost of Grazing. When offered the choices of either ignoring it, creating a public awareness vid of their own, or suing the production company, a reader going by "Silent-Judge" suggested contacting Emily Wong and opening New Ponyville up to full media access, which proved popular enough to win with nearly two-thirds of the total vote.
  • Twilight mentions a third option when deciding what to do with the pony-kidnapper. The person had offered two choices - let her walk away in the hope that her employer will decide to back off on the ponies, or have C-SEC take her in, but with the possibility that she will blackmail the ponies. Twilight's third option is to just kill her, though the other seems smugly certain that Twilight wouldn't dare do it.
  • Subverted when the reader "aduck" that the Equestrians put the the pony-kidnapper on trial themselves. Loyal2Luna replied explaining why this wouldn't work: they have no independent legal system, their living arrangement on the Citadel means they are under its jurisdiction, and any such process would be overly biased.
    While such obvious one-sided and impossible judicial practices might pass for 'justice' in some parts of the galaxy (See 'Tuchanka') they would not be taken seriously in any truly civilized space, surely not on the citadel itself, the center of galactic civilization.
• Tempting Fate: While talking about his role in New Ponyville, Lt. Pyres tells Twilight to just consider him window dressing unless something serious happens. A few minutes later, the two of them are told that a group of krogan are loitering in New Ponyville and refuse to leave.
• Wham Episode: Arc 2 Part 3. What starts as a routine filming of a documentary by Emily Wong escalates when New Ponyville is bombed as a distraction to kidnap some ponies, with Rainbow Dash badly injured while trying to stop the kidnappers.
• Wham Line: In Shades Arc 2 Part 4.
  "They say… Th-they say she's an agent for... the Shadow Broker."
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Twilight gives one to Applejack who kidnapped Dr. Hern from Huerta Memorial due to a confrontation with Hern's family at the hospital.
  • Captain Inastri chews out Twilight for going behind C-Sec's back on a rescue mission, leaving a legal mess for them to clean up, endangering everyone present, and allowing the pony-kidnapper to just walk away.

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