Thoughts on Fallout: Equestria · 2:03am Sep 26th, 2014
A few days ago, I finally finished reading Fallout: Equestria after almost a year of on-and-off reading. I was initially quite excited to read it; after all, it's widely considered to be one of the finest works ever produced by this fandom (which is really saying a lot). You see so many fans just praising Fallout: Equestria, you can't help but think that it's supposed to be one of the greatest creations since sliced bread (and yes, I do know there are also plenty of people that don't like it). Indeed, it is arguably amongst the most influential and well-known pony fanfictions ever; I would put it right up there with My Little Dashie and Cupcakes.
After reading it though, I was kind of... well, not quite disappointed, but I didn't like it nearly as much as I thought I would. That's not to say I didn't like it; for the most part I truly enjoyed reading it, but I do have some issues. I'll try and explain with as few spoilers as possible.
I'm honestly always wary of OC-centric stories, and Fallout: Equestria is almost entirely driven by OCs. The characters, in my opinion, are probably one of the biggest issues I had with this story. Making good OC characters is not easy to pull off, and authors seldom do it right. If you ask me, Fallout: Equestria is no exception. A lot of the time I felt that I really didn't connect with many of the characters. Most of the characters I did connect with were actually characters from canon, and there were maybe only two or three OCs that I really liked. For some of them, I even felt myself becoming increasingly, well, annoyed with how they were portrayed as the story progressed (Littlepip and Velvet Remedy come to mind almost immediately).
Fallout: Equestria is also incredibly dark and bleak. For a lot of people, this is a major turn-off (since, you know, it's apparently sacrilege to them to see ponies in this sort of setting). I wouldn't typically have this problem with this sort of thing (hell, I'm almost completely desensitized to most things dark or sad, at least in written fiction), but the way Fallout: Equestria does it makes it feel really... I don't know, bland or flat or something. Overdone, maybe. Something just seems missing to me, and I really just feel kind of "meh" with seeing a pony getting her head blown apart/having her guts ripped out/getting disintegrated/being set on fire for the thirtieth time. Maybe it is because I'm so desensitized. Or maybe that's what slogging through over six hundred thousand words of the stuff will do to a reader—it's all part of the scenery and you just don't think much about it anymore. I guess this also ties in to my lack of connection with the characters; dark and bleak is something Background Pony did extremely well (perhaps too well, actually). The difference here is that I actually did connect with Lyra in that story. I didn't really feel myself wanting to cheer for Littlepip or wishing that I could comfort her when times got dark (which it did way too often, if you ask me). If anything, I'm almost totally apathetic to everything that Littlepip went through. On that note, watching her get shot to hell got pretty old after the fourth time or so ("Just shake it off. You'll be fine, because plot armor.").
Then there's Kkat's writing style. The author is not a bad writer by any means; I'd like to reiterate that I do like Fallout: Equestria, even if I do sound overly petty and critical of the story. But I just think that Kkat's writing style... leaves something to be desired. It's coherent and it flows, but I do think that it skims a bit on description and imagery and the storytelling does seem a bit uneven with regards to the major arcs. But I guess that's to be expected with a work this scope and magnitude (and I may simply be too fond of overly poetic language). I do think, though, that Kkat did a good job writing passages that convey a deeper meaning, like the introductions to pretty much every single chapter.
This is not to say that I think Kkat utterly failed on any of the three points I listed above; I just think that they could have been done better, but what is already there is not enough to make me despise the story as a whole. If anything, I'm just being rather nitpicky. Now that I've covered what I didn't like about Fallout: Equestria, it's only fair that I also go over what I did like:
The world-building. My goodness, everything about the world-building. I simply love the world of Fallout: Equestria. It has got to be one of the most impressive worlds I've seen in any fanfiction I've read. From start to end, I was simply fascinated with both the Pre-War and Post-War settings of Equestria. Learning about the history of this world Kkat had given us was by far my favorite part of the story. I admit that it was incredibly depressing to watch the Old World go to hell... Watching the characters we had come to adore so much through their adventures in the show just lose sight of the harmony and friendship they embodied and seeing the world that we know and love just crumble around them were, in my opinion, the most powerful and tragic aspect of the entire story. And it's rather ironic, since I ultimately enjoyed reading about the Old World and its people far more than watching Littlepip and co. go about on their adventures through the Equestrian Wasteland. I don't quite know why; maybe it's because I'm already connected with Old World Equestria and its characters through the show and not so much with the Wasteland and its inhabitants. In any case, world-building really is, in my opinion, Fallout: Equestria's strongest point. I don't think that the entire Fallout: Equestria sub-genre would be nearly so popular or expansive if the world-building were not done as well as it was. In fact, the world-building alone was the story's saving grace for me; I enjoyed it so much based on that aspect alone that I give it the third spot (albeit tentative) in my personal trifecta of the greatest pony fanfictions.
As for any other stories in the Fallout: Equestria universe, I will probably never read them, mostly due to their lengths. Those stories can get absurdly long *coughProjectHorizonscough*, and I really don't want to spend another year or two to finish reading just one story. Furthermore, I would just get bored following the same universe for so long. Although, there is one that I would consider reading, if only because it's not ridiculously long and the premise seems different to all the other Fallout: Equestria stories: Fallout Equestria: Pink Eyes
All in all, I liked Fallout: Equestria. It's not my favorite story of all time, nor do I think that it's the greatest the fandom has to offer, but I can see why so many people enjoyed it so much. However, many people also didn't enjoy it, and I can see why that would be the case. Therefore, I'm curious: with such a diverse spectrum of opinions for this story, I'd like to ask anybody that managed to read this overly long and rambling blog post of mine exactly what they think of Fallout: Equestria. You don't even have to have already read it; many people already form opinions when they simply hear of a crossover between Fallout and ponies.
tl;dr Fallout: Equestria was an enjoyable story, but I don't think it's the absolute greatest thing ever. What are your thoughts?
A memory of a time long past...
