Why Fallout: Equestria? · 8:43pm Nov 6th, 2015
In general, when I look to fan-fiction, I like stories that have the same style as the show: Equestria is an optimistic setting, where friendship holds literal power.
My favorite MLP fan-fiction is Fallout: Equestria.
Those two statements seem incredibly contradictory. In fact, that contradiction (On top of just not reading fan-fiction anyway) is what held me off from reading it for the longest time. I thought it was a completely absurd mish-mash, one that tried to meld two things that were so ridiculously different that I couldn't see how it could possibly be good, even if so many others liked it. It wasn't until I realized that was very close to my initial reaction to hearing about MLP:FiM ("There's no way it could actually be good, that's ridiculous") that I considered giving it a try.
When you get down past the occasionally gruesome surface, the heart of Fallout: Equestria is still MLP. Despite all the fighting, the struggle for life, the raiders, and the paranoia and xenophobia brought on from a decades-long war, the greatest power in the Equestrian Wasteland is friendship. At its heart, the story is about building friendships, bringing ponies together to work toward a brighter future.
Sometimes, that's the friendship of having allies to help protect yourself against the dangers of the world, but that's not exactly new. In MLP, the mane six have fought many times to protect themselves or Equestria. They've risked death on several occasions. Equestria may be an optimistic setting, but it's not a naive one. Sometimes you can not deal with an opponent by making them your friend; sometimes, you have to deal with an opponent with the help of your friends.
So why did I choose to write a story in the Fallout: Equestria setting?
The main reason, I suppose, is that I find the setting rather fascinating. Kkat made a plausible (If not terribly likely) scenario for the downfall of Equestria. It's a new land, with new dangers, but still with the same values at its heart. It allows for new conflicts and challenges. Some of those challenges are particularly noteworthy, given my choice of protagonist. The Equestrian Wasteland strikes me as a particularly inhospitable place for a changeling.
It's also an established setting. This was actually a deterrent to me, at first. It seemed... weak to be basing my story off someone else's work. It took quite some time for me to start regarding it as silly. That was, after all, the same reasoning that had discouraged me from fan-fiction for so long, and I've obviously gotten over that. After all, it's fan-fiction; we're all playing in someone else's world.
But as an advantage, an established setting gives me the benefit of not needing to go into thousands (If not tens of thousands) of words of backstory to create a similar sort of setting with the same degree of plausibility. It lets me focus on this story, the story of a lone changeling surviving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, without either constantly diverging to establish the setting, or simply leaving it hanging in air, never explained, and hoping the reader simply accepts it as-is. I could establish such a setting (And Fallout: Equestria made that establishment a key part of the story rather than tacked-on exposition), but this lets me be more concise.
Really, though, the reason I decided to write in the Fallout: Equestria setting was the same reason I started writing in the MLP setting: because it captured my imagination. I started to imagine stories set within the setting. I'd hardly finished reading the story when I started pondering things about it. Naturally, with my obsession with interest in changelings, I began contemplating how changelings would fit into the setting. How would they survive? I tossed around a lot of ideas in my head, mentally playing through bits of life in the Equestrian Wasteland. The one big thing that remained fairly constant was one that formed a large part of the basis for Without a Hive: that of an outsider discovering a new world. The protagonist I imagined had lived before the war, and had been preserved, waking up to a devastated and barren world.
I kept tossing the idea around, slowly refining it.
Five months ago, Fallout 4 was announced. I was rather pleasantly surprised that (by complete coincidence) it too featured a pre-war character waking up in the wasteland. That led to some discussions, including me noting the previous story idea I had. After a few comments and some more thinking, things started to snowball. Within days, the scattered ideas had coalesced into the basic ideas of a story, and more kept pouring in. It became not just an idea for a story, it became a full-fledged story, one that had taken hold of my mind and lodged itself firmly in place. It was the same kind of insistent "You must write me!" that had made me start on Fragments.
When it really comes down to it, that's really all there is to the decision. It had taken hold of my interests. More than that, it made me really want to write again. To be clear, I'd never gotten tired of it, but I had perhaps allowed myself to become distracted. My rate of writing had fallen. Where before I might have written a chapter every other week, it had dropped to every other month, sometimes longer. The new story idea rekindled my interest in writing, not just that new story, but my existing one, as well.
I know that the Fallout: Equestria setting isn't going to be to everyone's interests. I don't blame those who will pass it by because of that. I understand. Tastes differ, and even if I think they're very similar at their heart, I recognize that the tone and events in Fallout: Equestria and MLP are very different. So if you're not interested in it, or if you're disappointed that I'm choosing to write in that universe instead of a different one, I understand, and I'm sorry. But at the same time, it's a universe that's captured my attention. I am having so much fun writing this story, and I'm eager to see this story through. There is so much planned that I'm looking forward to writing. 
I tried mixing the optimistic flare or theme of the show with a Fallout Equestria like story. I like it, but I don't think it appeared to anyone...
And I can't start reading it because how bethesada made crap out of fallout world, maybe I'm afraid of next disappointment
I've got the same sort of split of opinion as you do about FoE: Equestria is a good and hopeful place, and I like that and don't want it to change, but FoE is about how that place falls and is despoiled. That's sort of what makes it so compelling to me IMO. It's not a good story if you're not concerned for the protagonist. Equestria itself is the protagonist of FoE.
When I started reading "Without a Hive", I reflected at various points about how terrible a person Nictis was. He was trained from birth to see ponies as things to be taken advantage of and he did a good job of that. But he grew over the course of the story, and that was what was so awesome about it - he became a good person by the end, and we saw how he had earned that. I'm the same way with FoE. It's okay that the setting starts out in a terrible, "fallen" state. What I want to read is how it picks itself back up and recovers, proving that in the end the good is better than the bad.
Haven't had the opportunity to tuck in to this story yet but given the similarities in these themes I'm really looking forward to this.
3525735
That's a really good way of putting it. Equestria really is, in many ways, as much of a character as any of the actual cast. Thank you, I hadn't really thought of it that way before, but I really like it.
3525683
I'm kind of scared to ask, but... what?
3525784
I mean I can't find motivation to read fallout equestria. I'm big fan of fallout but with what bethesada done with it, its just painfull.
Looking forward to it!
...as soon as I get around to reading FoE...
...and watching playthroughs of Fallout...
3525795
I'm not really sure what one has to do with the other. Fallout: Equestria is heavily inspired by the setting of the Fallout games, but it doesn't really draw much story or world-building from them. It draws as much inspiration from the Fallout 1 and 2 as it does 3 and New Vegas. It's very much Equestria with a Fallout theme rather than an equal blending of the worlds. Or do you mean you avoid anything Fallout related because of Fallout 3?
3525832
More like few fragments what I saw was inspiried by fallout 3 rather than Black Isle one's. I'm afraid that its inspired on those most absurd thing what was popular and ironically very weak or completly nonsense.
Sorry just my rage rant :D You can ignore it.
Truth to be said it's in my long list 'read later' and because of how long it is its not gonna be fast taken (I have that bad tendency if story is good I'm gonna read it from start to end if I can in one shot)
3525797
Honestly, I read FO:E without knowing anything about the Fallout setting. It doesn't detract from the experience. There are places, factions and situations that are references to the games, but one of the big strengths of the story is that they work just as well without knowing a thing about what they reference.
3525855
...and for the above reasons, there's really no point in shunning FO:E for FO3. You're disappointed by what Bethesda did with it? Well, fine. Now let's go and see what Kkat did with it, instead
Heh. For me, that wasn't actually the case at all. I'd never even heard of the Fallout games, and that's what put me off for so long. The intriguing premise was exactly what won me over in the end.
Thank you! I've been trying to get that through people's thick skulls for ages
My two bottlecaps on the matter:
Fallout: Equestria, at first glance, might seem like it's a Dark story/setting. And it is. Very much so. In many ways, it's much darker than Fallout itself, even. The Fallout series has always had a bit of a cheeky undertone to it. Fallout: Equestria however, has a certain "Paradise Lost" theme to it, rendering it all the more bleak. Because we know very well what Equestria is/was like, the contrast can be quite frankly startling.
But the thing (that some people don't realize (until after they've read it)) is, it's not focused on the dark parts, it's about how there's hope despite them. How even after the apocalypse, in a poisoned wasteland full of horrors and monsters, there's still hope. There's still Friendship. Which is Magic, as we all know.
This was why I avoided reading FoE initially. I finally decided to ask the author what they viewed as good or not in this, and got an answer that was reason to try from kkat. The inspirations and the approach helped me enjoy it, and catch the rest of the series.
As long as we're talking about how awesome FO:E is, I'm going to link to the comment I posted after Kkat finished republishing the story here.
I can't tell you how happy I am to see a new attempt at a changeling-focused side story after Fallout: Equestria - Change died its slow, unfortunate death. I'm really excited!
I'll be sure to read this as soon as I can!
3526403 The two currently active changeling ones are glacial in updates sadly. Hivemind is one I enjoy more than the other. Just because hero has this odd manner of looking at things very differently, and it works.
From what I hear, FO:E can generally have too many themes that are in a high mood-contrast with the ones that are in the show for my liking. The theme of death in particular can easily be to prevalent and is not really something you see or is even hinted at in cannon MLP very much. And from what I've seen in the pictures of FO:E, there's a lot of technology that looks like it's out of place because it looks like a complete visual copy from cannon Fallout. So if I'm going to read any FO:E fic, I prefer it to have cannon plausibility and themes that at least have a chance in hell of being in a PG rated show, though I sometimes make an exception if it's done superbly and not too often for my tastes. So I might give your new fic a chance
If the main cast of Fallout: Equestria - The Chrysalis was voiced, what would they sound like?
3557697 Does that mean that you like Fallout: Equestria: Starlight?
3614316
It's funny, I have a great idea of how they speak, but in most cases I haven't really put a lot of thought into how to word how they sound.
Whisper... I generally imagine something well-spoken without being extravagant, showy, or loud. A fairly "normal" voice, though with an attention to accuracy in speech. So, an avoidance of slang and slurred/shortened words, unless she's intentionally doing so for effect. Actually, I could see her voice being something like AJ without the accent. Or maybe the female protagonist in Fallout 4.
Starlight I imagine as being fairly young-sounding (Though definitely not childlike), and usually enthusiastic. She's active, athletic, and outgoing, and I picture her sounding like it. A less high-pitched (and mile-a-minute) Pinkie, maybe? Or a mix of Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash.
Dusty has been around for a little bit. I picture him being fairly average, maybe just a touch on the deep side. It probably sounds bad, but I could picture his voice being a stereotypical male action/adventure protagonist.
The huge, heavily armored mare (Whose name isn't currently known) is deep, gravely, and powerful. I'm coming up blank on people or characters to compare her to. She sounds huge. And probably very unfriendly, too.
Other, less-seen characters I have much less idea for. About the only one I've got a really good, clear image of is Emerald. I picture her as being very warm and gentle. Very friendly sounding, but usually on the casual side. Almost like Celestia, but more informal.
Though there are still quite a few important characters that haven't been introduced yet.
3615073 Does she sound like Jasper from Steven Universe? She definitely reminds me of her!
3654658
Do you mean the armored mare, who was finally named last chapter, Sickle? Because yeah, that voice seems pretty good for her. I'm not sure if it's entirely right, since it kinda sounds like someone trying to sound gruff, rather than just naturally sounding that way. But still, that seems pretty close. Probably good enough.
The perfect voice for her would probably be pretty hard to find a voice actor for, I imagine. I'm not sure how you'd end up with such a naturally deep female voice. If Sickle were a human, she'd be on-par with some of the biggest strongmen (Not women) in the world, and she sounds it. Heck, she might need a male voice actor, and even then she'd be pretty far on the deep end.
Well... thank you for writing this anyway, I've wanted a changling centered fallout story for a while now. Plus (and this is a big plus) It's well written.