"Un bon mot ne prouve rien." (Voltaire)
I cut myself just by copy/pasting the link to this image...
"Fallout: Equestria - Deluxe 2edgy4me Edition" recently released its final chapter, and since it's now invading FimFic directly, I decided to weigh in.
Read my thoughts here, if you dare: (link)
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Yesterday, I tried to read it again. My first attempt (long before completion) ended after more or less 16 chapters. This time, I didn't even manage to get past 1/5 of the first chapter.
Reason? Dear God, Blackjack is so annoyingly dumb. I mean, I wrote similar characters before, hell, I still write Vinyl as sex-obsessed imbecile. However, since my Vinyl is a side character, I can make chapters less focused on her whenever she gets annoying. Meanwhile, due to 1st person perspective, we have to deal with Blackjack and her idiocy 24/7. Not to mention that, given her initial interactions with others in her stable, her idiocy seems to be rather a rule than an exception (it's kinda like "20 minutes with the jerks" – y'know, like a beginning of a horror movie when you have a doubtful pleasure to meet all those dumb teens who are gonna get slaughtered in later part of the movie).
Well, there's actually fridge brillance behind that: Blackjack's stable always consisted of 460 mares and 40 stallions... Add 200 years of inevitable incest and it's all clear...
And I'm not even touching the whole "let's dump all the plagues of this world on Blackjack's head to make it more tragic" approach, because that's pretty much everyone's opinion. Hell, even the author acknowledged that...
You forgot to mention Goldenblood in you're forum post. The character who basically made everyone's actions in pre-wasteland Equestria either meaningless, or secretly his own idea/actions.
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Huh... That's... and oddly interesting way to look at it. Then again, judging by the kind of logic these "pony Fallout" fanatics seem to be driven by, I doubt that was an intentional move on Somber's part.
I mean, let's face it: we're talking about Fallout: Equestria here. Ponies operate handguns with their mouths. What more do I need to say?
I actually didn't mind that so much. Not at first, that is. At least PH actually had psychological consequences for one's murdering sprees, unlike the original, where LittlePip just murdered her way through the Wasteland without skipping a beat, despite being from a stable that was supposedly without violence for 200 years. And even later on it was nice to have the story go between emotional "ups and downs."
But yeah, once it was nothing but a constant barrage of "CRAWLING IN MY SKIN", it turned into shit.
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I had a longer-than-life-itself argument about this on Kkat's blog, but this is the short version: I think the whole idea of the Mane Six supporting the war in any way is ludicrous, so having someone like Goldenblood come in and "steal their thunder" is actually a positive thing for me, no matter how cheap it is. It still makes more sense than "Fluttershy invented magical nukes"
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Eeyup, operating gun with your mouth is not the best idea. In fact, the best solution is not to write how they do it at all. Most of the readers don't give a single fuck about how something's technically done.
Well, I wouldn't call Littlepip's post-Arbu state of mind lack of consequences, but I guess one's mileage may vary. Also, that reminds me of something hardly ever discussed: I know those are video game crossovers and healing potions exist in-universe, but have someone ever counted how many times Littlepip and Blackjack were shot? Those ponies seem tough...
Speaking of incest: in the original it was actually mentioned that Littlepip's stable was at the verge of having a serious problem with it:
(chapter 28)
And that was a stable where there was a bigger choice of partners. 99, with its forty stallions at a time had a much smaller gene pool, not to mention that a constant recycling of organic matter without any new coming only worsens it (ironically, an addition of organic matter (raiders' dead bodies) was what killed 99). Even if Somber didn't do that intentionally, this theory explains everything.
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I very clearly recall a part where Velvet Remedy complains to LittlePip about how the latter seems totally unfazed by the idea that they're just going around, shooting anyone in the head if they get in the way. It almost felt like retroactive BS, as though Kkat realized along the way that they totally forgot about adding any sort of "psychological side-effects" after dozens of chapters of non-stop violence.
And the Arbu bit... I thought LP was just pissed off after that? Maybe Homage got a little uneasy over the radio?
You mean the hideously contrived "tearjerker/grimdark" sections that come at you non-stop in every chapter of PH?
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Well, they were cannibals, but that's a topic for a whole another discussion. I wonder though, if total desentitisation to death may be Littlepip's way of coping with stress. That, or we can interpret her as a psychopath who left the stable before she flipped and murdered every single pony there (and I guess that we reached an obvious conclusion that in any text, readers can find things author never dreamed about).
I meant it explains Blackjack's idiocy. Like, it's an actual scene from chapter 4:
derpicdn.net/img/2014/5/11/623677/large.png
And, in fact, idiocy of everyone in her stable. Making all the positions in stable inheritable, even when someone dies leaving a small kid (Duct Tape and her daughter Scotch Tape) or when everyone can see that the daughter of the security chief is a goddamn moron (Some list her intelligence as 3, but in Fallout world anyone with intelligence below 4 is literally special, so I guess it's a bit more), who can't even free herself from magical hoofcuffs? Fine. Putting bodies of diseased raiders in a food processor? Great idea!
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Who the hell designs a stable that has a "GAS ALL THE OCCUPANTS" failsafe... in Equestria?
#falluotequestriamakesnogoddamnsense
3375460 To an extent, I will agree them supporting the War makes zero sense. They are not violent or bloodthirsty by nature, and were specifically kept away from the worst of it by Sunbutt. Them supporting Princess Luna, that kinda does. Twilight and the rest take 'orders from the Princess' VERY seriously after all. The major direct inventions, Twilight's GoE & Pseudo-Alicorns, Applejack's Steel Rangers/Rarity's Pegusus Armor, Rainbow's SPP, and yes even Fluttershy's Mega Spell Matrix, actually fit perfectly IMO. The Six were called in not to WIN the War, but to END it.
AJ's Rangers were built to protect the ponies she cared for, to make the Earth Pony forces impossible to kill. Most people give up when they realize they have no hope of beating their foe. She was specifically PISSED when her own side built weapons designed to beat her Rangers
RD's SPP was designed to control the weather so the ultra elite pegusi, like herself, could focus on helping to end the war, not deal with weather needs in Equestrai.
Rarity's Enclave Armor was designed to give the rather fragile Pegusi like RD, one of her best friends, some MUCH needed protection, both in the form of physical armor, and heavier weapons. AJ's idea (though Rarity's project was first) done with Pegusi
Twilight's GoE was designed to clean up all the biprodcuts her Ministry created, like Taint, and Mega Spell Radiation. The Alicorn project was very similar to AJ's concept. Make Unicorns into Super Soldiers that could single hoofedly end battles with incredible ease. Give them as much crap as you want, the Unity's Alicorns are DAMN POWERFUL.
Finally is Fluttershy's Mega Spell Matrix. Her's, IMO, makes the most sense. Fluttershy HATED the war, and violence. It's why MoP helped EVERYONE, no matter the side. All she wanted was for the fighting, hurting, and most especially the dying, to stop. The first Mega Spells damn near raised the dead. Anything that was not 100% dead, and/or reduced to either ashes, goo, or chunks of meat, was alive and kicking at full health as if the battle never happened. It didn't care about sides, EVERYONE got the Megalixer. In theory this makes fighting impossible. NOBODY can win a battle if neither side can actually harm the other. It's a Reset Button that affects everyone. The problem is that Kindness EXPECTS others to be kind as well, and the reality of war is MUCH nastier than she ever understood. Her dream of ending the war became the Nightmare that finally did...
All of these major projects were game changers. Big Bad Endgame Superweapons. Fluttershy's was the most non-lethal, focused on making EVERYONE unable to fight. However the rest were also less about winning the War, and more about making it impossible for the otherside to actually wage one. Armored Pegusi who barely loose any speed and carry heavier weapons. Living Earth Pony Tanks carrying even more firepower and damn near unkillable. Super Unicorns with all the power of Alicorns and with the talents of trained battle mages. They were all designed to make Equestrian forces impossible to defeat, and thus making the war pointless for the Zebras. You don't fight foes who outclass you in every possible way. However what the ponies didn't realize, because they don't think like that, is that sometimes others will fight even hopeless battles, if only to spite their foe.
The Last Ministry Mare... I've seen drugs and madness do terrible things to someone. I can imagine what willingly, and knowingly, walking that hellish path would do to someone. When they felt their only choice was to damn themselves, because it was the only way to really help those you care about. As Scoots said, sometimes you must become the Villain, because its the only way to save everything and everyone else. Pinkie needed the extra boost from the drugs to supercharge her Pinkie Sense, but that didn't make them any less destructive on her, and at the very end she realized what horrors she had done, and what kind of thing she had become. And while it didn't break her, she tried to turn from the darkness at the end, she was slain before she could. Her magical insight not fast enough to stop the spite of their enemies. This makes her, IMO, the most tragic of the Six, with Fluttershy a very close 2nd. Pinkie wanted help, wanted to stop, but she was denied her chance, and she only walked the path because she felt it would save everyone in the first place...
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The problems with this is the "missing link", which I was trying to get across in that huge argument I had in the comments on Kkat's blog. Once they actually accept the fact that they're going to be doing things for the war effort (intentions don't matter, they are still actively participating in the war effort), we are no longer talking about the M6 from the show. We are talking about six ponies who have forgotten their original virtues, and are making the most of their other talents to solve the problem at hand.
That said, this "breaking point" is never addressed in Fo:E. It just assumes the M6 can just "naturally" be corrupted to the point that they'd be making superweapons and whatnot. It doesn't matter how good their intentions were, since the real M6 would have fought tooth and nail to stop the war. Not "find some good ending to it", but actually stop it. Fight with the rest of the Equestrian leadership, meet with representatives of the opposing force, etc.
Yes, it is at one point mentioned that Celestia sent them off on some diplomatic nonsense for a while... and then what? They just figured "welp, might as well fight the war"?
Hey, DA! Followed you here from you comment in Visidin's blog.
For me, the biggest point of contention in Fe:E was that all of the war and the apocalypse happened just 20 years after the first season. Twenty years. It's pretty clear from the way that Spike tells Little Pip stories about the show that it started from the show and not some alternate universe. Yeah, it has the AU tag, but it does little to tell us exactly how it differed before the Season One finale. So, that means that in the span of twenty years, Equestria went from sunshine, rainbows, and Breezie farts to total annihilation. Yeah, sure...
However, I have to admit that I really loved the story! It told an engaging story of a simple character rising to the challenge and saving the world. The problem is that, well... it's not MLP. Hell, Kkat even says it in the synopsis:
So, if you look at it through that lens—as a Fallout fan fiction, not a pony one—then for all its flaws, it's a great story.
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A great story... that completely defeats the purpose of being an MLP fanfic. If the only reason you have ponies in it is "just because", then you're not trying to use that universe for anything meaningful. You're just riding the coattails of a successful franchise.
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Well, remember who designed those stables...
derpicdn.net/img/2015/4/23/880840/large.png
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The Ghostbusters? I don't recall any proton packs...
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Nope, I mean the CMC. It's a miracle some stables survived for 200 years...
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Yeah, I know you meant the CMC. I don't even want to go into how stupid that is. As if making the M6 "ministry mares" wasn't contrived enough, the CMC is where Fo:E is officially just shoveling canon characters into whatever role it can invent for them, instead of, you know, coming up with any interesting characters of its own. Like I said, this is where PH has a slight advantage over the original due to Goldenblood.
:c