Webcomic / Spartans and Marshmallows

Hey, Sis, can I keep him?

One is a seamstress.

One is a squeaktoy.

One is a super-soldier.

Equestria's a hell of a place for a crash landing.

— The blog's tagline

Spartans and Marshmallows is a CGI webcomic/blog that answers the question: "What would happen if The Master Chief, after the events of Halo 3, crash-landed in Equestria and was adopted by the Element of Generosity and her little sister?"

The answer is hilarity.

While the concept is silly, and it does keep things light in tone, the story delves into other questions, such as "Why don't we see Rarity's parents in the show?" or "How does a Child Soldier like Chief deal with everyday life?" Overall, for such a crazy idea, it manages a nice combination of funny, tragic, and heartwarming.

Provides Examples Of:

• Abusive Parents: Rarity and Sweetie's parents. While not physically abusive, they essentially abandoned Rarity and Sweetie so they could go off on world-spanning tours at the expense of things like Sweetie's College Fund.
• The Alcoholic: Rarity is shown indulging in bottles of wine more than is strictly healthy. It's also shown why she's alcoholic- between the stresses of essentially raising a child alone, dealing with her Abusive Parents, being an Element of Harmony, and helping care for a badly shellshocked super soldier, there's a lot of stress on her plate.
• All There in the Manual: More art related to the main characters (plus added stories) can be found on the author's two deviantart pages, here and here.
• Alternate Universe: Instead of the portal dumping Chief out at Requiem, as it did in Halo 4, Chief winds up on Equus near the beginning of season two of My Little Pony.
• Art Shift: and a grammar shift (neither of which is for the better) when Sweetie Belle took over the blog for a day.
• Continuity Nod: When telling Sweetie a story about how it's better for her and her sister to get along, he tells her the story of how he did an obstacle course and, despite coming in first, still failed because his team came in last. These events were chronicled in Halo: The Fall of Reach.
  • The ones who kidnapped Sweetie were Suri, from Rarity's trip to Manehattan, and one of the Diamond Dogs who kidnapped her.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Chief. Hands down. Kidnapped as a child and forced to become one of the greatest soldiers humanity has ever or will ever produce, lost over half his squad to horrible surgical augmentations, no childhood, emotionally broken beyond belief, watched as ninety percent of humanity was burned away in plasma fire because of a lie... and now that he's finally in a place where there's no war, he has no idea what to do with himself.
  • Rarity and Sweetie, to a much lesser extent than Chief. Their parents were at best emotionally distant, when they weren't being emotionally abusive. Once Rarity got her own place, they proceeded to drop Sweetie at Rarity's for weeks or months at a time while they took lavish vacations using vast sums of money (including Rarity and Sweetie's college funds). It got so bad that Rarity decided that the only way for Sweetie to have a loving home was to adopt her own sister.
• Death by Adaptation: Cortana. In this universe, Chief was in cryosleep longer than in canon, and she went Rampant, and died.
• Dual Wielding: The famous "Hold Y to dual-wield," mechanic from Halo is parodied.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • An early comic showed Chief believing that the UNSC, despite it being years later, had given up looking for him and had turned his back on them as a result. Word of God states that this was because he (the author) forgot that space is really, really big and that this was an error.
  • Because of having multiple models of the characters, in some shots the ponies will have human feet and shoes, and in others they have pony hooves (with the exception of the Chief, of course). Later it was decided to give the characters human feet full-time.
• Excalibur in the Rust: Chief points out that, yes, the Elements have defended Equestria before. But they're currently embedded in the Tree of Harmony, and as such, useless, so it's in Rarity's best interests to learn to use a new weapon.
• Facial Horror: We see Chief without a helmet. Chief fought a twenty-seven year long war against an alien collective hell-bent on exterminating mankind. It shows.
• Fish out of Water: Taking a super-soldier who has known nothing but war, training, and death since he was nine and sticking him into a magical land of ponies... is not an instant cure-all. Even months later, Chief still has severe problems fitting into a civilian environment.
• Funny Background Event: the creator loves slipping in pictures or events into the background of scenes that are funno or make no sense, thus, funnier. For example, an older image of Pearl meeting Chief had Apple Bloom being kidnapped by Blood Ravens while being pursued by Applejack, while another had a picture of a human shaking hands with an Elite.
• Furry Confusion: The main cast are anthropomorphic versions of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic characters, but Sweetie owns a plush toy that resembles her canon design, there are statues of ponies appearing as they do in canon, and Rarity, despite being a unicorn herself, has stills from The Last Unicorn on her wall.
  • This picture◊ has anthropomorphic Rarity standing in the same room as a framed picture of her and Sweetie from the cartoon.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: the Royal Guard are the worst soldiers ever. Chief had to take a lot of time and effort to teach them that the appropriate way to hurt enemies with arrows is not to throw them. And their default response for if one of the Princesses goes missing is "Panic."
• Greater-Scope Villain: Discord posed as Rarity's mother in order to try to make the core three band together and form bonds. All it resulted in was him being dismembered by Rarity, though given Discord's nature, he essentially walks it off.
• Happily Adopted: After dealing with her parents' antics long enough, Rarity adopts her own sister in order to give her a stable, loving home.
• Harmless Villain: Suri and Rover manage to kidnap Sweetie. They then let her escape on accident, rekidnap her, realize they have no idea what they're supposed to do with a hostage, and make her cookies. Then Sweetie locks them out of their own apartment. It's implied that Luna, who was judging the case, is going to go lightly on them because in the long run, they were really terrible at being bad.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Averted, as in canon, with Chief. He rarely ever takes his off.
• Higher-Tech Species: Humans are this to the Equestrians. While the technology in the show is Schizo Tech at times, it's portrayed as somewhere in the neighborhood of twentieth century earth technology in this comic, and Chief and the UNSC gear he's brought along are from the year 2552.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl:
  • Sweetie views the Master Chief as a surrogate father figure. She's eight years old, and maybe tops three and a half feet. Chief is a whopping seven-to-eight feet tall and is built like a tank.
  • To a lesser extent, Rarity and Chief. It helps that she's a fairly slight young woman and he's, well, enormous.
• Lethal Chef: We know from the show that Sweetie's attempt at making toast resulted in a glass of greyish fluid. Here, she's shown attempting to cook with a charged plasma pistol.
• Mugging the Monster: This. Admittedly, they didn't know that's who Sweetie had with her, but still.
• Mundane Utility:
  • MJOLNIR armor gives the user super-strength, so that they can be an unstoppable juggernaut on the battlefield. It also works well for chores on the farm.◊
  • "Hold Y to Dual-Wield" can be used for than just guns.
• No Yay: In-Universe, Rarity's reaction to people asking about romances between the core three is a strong no.
  • Rarity and Chief? Rarity is firmly in a relationship with Applejack, and Chief, as part of the SPARTAN-II conversion process, had his sex drive turned way down.
  • Sweetie and Chief? For the Chief, same answer as before, not to mention the age difference (she's 8, and he's 46). Sweetie does love Chief, but as a surrogate father figure.
• Noodle Incident: Whatever led to this. And yes, that is the Master Chief out of armor and in a tutu.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • Celestia compares Chief to Luna- someone with an outward veneer of calm, but with a raging inferno inside.
  • She also compares him to soldiers of Sombra, who were so emotionally broken that they could only identify others by the categories "Ally," "Leader," and "Threat."
• Official Couple: Rarity and Applejack.
• Papa Wolf: Chief in this comic, specifically the final panel. There Is No Kill Like Overkill, indeed.
  • In a supplemental image and story, it's revealed that in the Battle of Canterlot against the Changelings, Chief proved to be a One-Man Army in his efforts to get the kidnapped crusaders back.
• Parental Substitute: Chief and Rarity form this for Sweetie, to one degree or another. In fact, when asked to draw her family, she drew This Pic. Somewhat telling that instead of her parents, she drew her big sister, her sister's girlfriend, and the warrior space alien who lives in her house.
• Required Secondary Powers: Celestia controls the sun, which gives her an excellent understanding of how it works. This comes in handy when the MJOLNIR Mk.VI armor's fusion reactor needs a tune-up.
• Shout-Out:
  • While not canon, more super soldiers from space show up from time to time in the blog:
    • The first is Diskjockius the Noise Marine who lives with Vinyl Scratch, Octavia, and Silver.
    • The second... are some of the Blues from Red vs. Blue. Caboose likes Derpy, and Rarity kicked Church and Tucker out of her store.
    • Apparently, in another universe, instead of Rarity, Sweetie, and Chief living together, it's Pipsqueak and Legion, Terminal Of The Geth.
  • One Nightmare Night had Chief going as a Big Daddy and Sweetie as a Little Sister.
  • During the "Sweetie Kidnapped," arc, Discord comments on humanity being savage and then follows it up by asking if Chief has seen Jean-Luc Picard. Doubles as an Actor Allusion, as John DeLancie, Discord's voice actor, also played Q on that show, with near-identical powers.
• Squick: In-universe. Rarity gets this hard when someone asks if Sweetie and John will get married. Considering she's eight, John is forty-six, and John is basically a father figure to Sweetie...
• The Stoic: Master Chief.
• Worthy Opponent: The Chief and Twilight consider each other this in terms of Chess.