How Fallout: Equestria Has Effected Me.

It is often said that the best stories are the ones that resonate with us the most, and in this way Fallout: Equestria has not only resonated with myself but with many bronies becoming the most popular piece of fan-fiction in the brony fandom. For me this fan-fic is what brought me into the brony fandom, whereas before I was only a passing fan of MLP and never really considered myself a brony at all. Also I had never played any of the Fallout games prior to reading the story and only knew a few things about the series. Three things about Fallout: Equestria stood out for me as I read the story, these things were the scope of the world Kkat had created, just how destroyed the world was, and one characters utterance of a phrase that still manages to give me goosebumps even as I recall it now.

Prior to reading Fallout: Equestria I had never really considered myself a fan of any story considered post-apocalyptic. The genre never really appealed to me with the exception of a few films that I liked such as Mad Max or I Am Legend. I wasn't even aware that such a crossover existed between Fallout and MLP until reading the Wikipedia page on the Brony fandom. Given the brief mention of the story said it had become wildly popular I was intrigued to read it myself. After find a link to the story on Equestria Daily I was hooked and needless to say my parents saw little of me for three days as I read the story locked in my bedroom. The story was unlike anything I had read before and only a very small few of books I have read over the years have had this kind of profound effect on me. The world was charming if not slightly messed up, the characters were well developed and what they said actually mattered, the decisions they made carried weight in the fate of the Equestrian Wasteland. The only difficulty that I had in reading the story is when Kkat would reference something from Fallout like a Ghoul or a location like Tenpony Tower or Tenpenny Tower as it is known in Fallout 3. Good thing there is a Wiki for everything and I spent a lot of time on the Fallout Wiki boning up on my knowledge of the Fallout World to better understand what exactly I was reading. As I stated before there were three things that stood out for me when I was reading Fallout: Equestria.

The first was the seamless world Kkat created is a blend between locations in MLP and the Fallout video game series. Kkat uniquely drew from both worlds and created locations that you might actually seen in the show, I especially was looking for Tenpony Tower in the episode where Rarity goes to Manehattan but no luck there. The post-apocalyptic world of Equestria was vast and Littlepip and her friends seemed to have explored every inch of it, often exploring long abandoned ruins often which contained the remains of somepony that had suffered a rather horrific and sudden death. It was sad to see the various locations that I could recognize from the show such as Twilight's Ponyville Library or Fluttershy's Woodland Cottage reduced to a destroyed state and filled with vile things.

Which brings me to my second point, the utter and total destruction of Equestria stood out to me and Kkat had even nailed some of the smaller more nuanced things. The chapter where Littlepip visits the destroyed city of Manehattan was for me one moment that stood out where I could fully understand just how destroyed the world was. Like an image unfolding in my head I could see the burning barrels lining the various avenues of the city as swirls of debris and detritus blew among the various blasted out shells of buildings. As a person who loves history specifically military history I am familiar with looking at pictures of destroyed cities from either the Second World War or the haunting ruins of a Post-War Richmond after the Civil War. The ruins of Manehattan for me put into perspective just how annihilated the world of Equestria had become after the war that brought it to a tragic end. Occasionally would I see echoes of the beauty of the former world of Equestria when Littlepip would visit places like Tenpony Tower or finding Rarity's dress locked away. It made the destruction and the sadness of seeing the world in he state that it was so much more moving in my mind and I generally cried whenever Littlepip would find out the final fates of some of the Mane Six from MLP.

This brings me to my final point of what made Fallout: Equestria so powerful to me. The moment where Steelhooves revisits the site of where his life in the former world of Equestria came to an end and utters the words that still give me goosebumps even recalling it know, "I was here the day Equestria died." I don't know why exactly this statement struck me as being important but the emotional effect of reading those words was like someone punching me in the gut. It was from then on that the characters in the story seemed to take on a greater level of realism. When they actually confronted Death and died in the process, they really died and I as the passive observer in this narrative witnessed them die. Death is almost something universally feared by everyone and it seemed that the characters in Fallout: Equestria struggled with the concept as much as I do. Steelhooves visiting the site of his death and then describing with a visceral and frightening detail what it was like to endure the bombardment of Canterlot and ultimately witness the end of his world. Growing up in the 1990s I had never really grown with the threat of a nuclear annihilation being a reality as my parents had growing up during the Cold War but nevertheless the threat of such an event is still very much a reality today as it was during the Cold War and perhaps that fear of an utter finality is what made this moment so palpable to me. Knowing that I could do nothing and only listen as Steelhooves told Littlepip everything about why the world of Equestria had become the way it did and how helpless he felt at that moment.

After finishing the story it took me sometime to parse out exactly what I had just read and the journey I had undertaken with Littlepip and friends across the war torn Equestrian Wasteland. I felt emotionally drained yet satisfied in the end after reading the last sentence of Fallout: Equestria. It took me a few minutes but I came to the realization that I had just read one of the best stories I had ever had the pleasure of reading. Fallout: Equestria had taken me on an adventure across a world I could only visit whether watching the TV show or playing the Fallout video games which I quickly purchased a few days later. But the ultimate gift that Kkat and by extension her story had given me was it inspired a flame of creativity in me which is something special in and of itself. I had always considered myself an alright writer nothing particularly special. I had written fan-fiction before reading Fallout: Equestria but I had never had enjoyed the process as it was always difficult to ascertain the exact direction I wanted to go with my characters. That all changed after reading Fallout: Equestria. One thing that did bug me about Fallout: Equestria was in the process of reading the story we learned the fates of almost every single character of the Mane Six but Rainbow Dash who is my favorite character of MLP. We were allowed to decide whether or not if Rainbow Dash died or lived in the story but for me I wanted a definitive answer for this question. So I created my own little adventure in the massive sandbox Kkat had created where I could find out what happened to Rainbow Dash on the day Equestria came to an end. The clarity of what I wanted the adventure to be in my story and what the characters would endure is a direct result of reading Fallout: Equestria. Now I have written three Fallout: Equestria fan-fics and currently in the process of working on a fourth story to explore the world of Fallout: Equestria with my main character Airborne, the rogue Dashite Pegasi. In writing this story I have added a little bit to the already impressive amount of material that has been inspired by Kkat's amazing story which has become a phenomenon in its own right.

So thanks Kkat!!! For inspiring me to write a story I never thought possible and for make me a better writer. Thanks for creating Fallout: Equestria, it was a real joy to read and I hope that it continues to inspire other budding authors in the future.