Journey to Dead End Part 1: Some Backstory · 5:48am Jan 15th, 2020
Hi, TheWanderingZebra here. I haven’t posted a blog in a long ass while. When I do, they’re just ‘I’m still alive’ updates that I admit I didn’t enjoy writing that much. So I’m going to do something different.
Since I’m in a self-reflective mood (and having seen another writer do so for her fic), I thought I’d begin writing up blog posts discussing the mentality into the creation of Dead End. It would get myself off my lazy ass, and have a sort of writing exercise to help me get through writing the next chapters of the fic. But before I get into that, I should start with the background for where the idea for this fic came from.
I was a sophomore by the time I came across FoE. By that time, I had been into shit like One Piece (which still holds up to me this day) and Naruto (I stopped reading after a certain villain’s death was retconned and suddenly became a good guy). I had only gotten into MLP for awhile, having missed a sort of Disney-esque cartoon story for awhile now.
By random happenstance (and from a friend’s recommendation) I came across FoE and thought “Wow, from the description, this sounds like a dark Disney/Don Blueth cartoon with adult themes.”
And I will admit: at that time I had never played a single Fallout game, nor even knew what the series was all about other than it was ‘post-apocalyptic’. When I read FoE for the first time, all the world building and themes were completely brand new to me to the point it felt original. I only got into the games (and got my first gaming PC because of them) a year after I had read FoE.
Alongside that, reading FoE as well as Project Horizons (a story I no longer find appealing for a variety of reasons) that made me want to be a writer of sorts. I began creating OCs, creating a ‘dream fic’ that my sixteen year old self thought was the coolest shit imaginable, and wanting to find a way to share that creativity.
I eventually discovered an FoE forum that hosted Pen and Paper RP groups. I joined some thinking it’d be a wonderful time, that I’d have a character I put my heart into making go on amazing adventures with a group they’d form a close bond with and go through the sorts of character arcs you’d expect in FoE.
That didn’t happen. At best, scheduling issues or something else would cause the group to disband. At worst; they could last for months with nothing but constant drama (both in and out of character) that wound up demoralizing me and honestly, gave me a big dislike for the FoE community. It was because of that and other events that I won’t go into that I wound up with depression and dropped out of Uni.
Eventually, after the collapse of one of these groups, I grew tired of trying to get the FoE adventure through RPing that I decided I was going to write my own sidefic, one featuring the character I was using for that specific game.
Phisa.
I’ll stop here for now and post more of these when I write them. The next blog post will explore my very, very early ideas for Dead End (then named at the time Ode to Greed), and explain why a lot of these ideas were later scrapped in the story we have today. Feel free to leave comments... I'd like to know that I'm not just typing to myself and have some form of validation.
I always find it interesting to see how people get introduced/drawn in to FoE, and whether they were into MLP or Fallout first.
5186710
The vast majority of FoE fans I've encountered over the years have almost always been a mix of them being familiar with both source materials when they read it.
5186832
Indeed. I was not into MLP before I read FoE, so I had sort of a similar but also opposite impression as you, hehe. I understood all the Fallout references but much of the pony material and nods flew over my head that first time.