[COMMENTARY] Now I need a shower... · 5:47pm Dec 1st, 2014
Blech!
Seriously, just "Ugh!" with a capital "Ick!"
So I made an idle comment in my most recent review about how one should not confuse Fallout: Equestria, a somewhat mediocre series of fan-created stories with lack of focus as it's only major downfall, with Fall of Equestria, an adolescent rape fantasy wherein every single trope about male misogyny is paraded about as though precious jewels of eternal wisdom.
When I had first heard about Fall of Equestria, it was on Tumblr, and loath as I am to admit that the SJWs were right about...well, anything, this simply proves that a stopped clock is right twice a day. Being one who never let's others set their opinion for them (so naturally, I write reviews to tell others what they should think about a fic before they've read it...I REGRET NOTHING!) I dug a little deeper, investigating FoE.
What I read about the series from wiki articles and commentary didn't tell me anything I hadn't read before. In fact, even if you DON'T count massive swaths of the alt.sex.stories newsgroup archives (Newsgroups were this thing before website forums were created. You used a separate client, like a web browser or email software but made just for newsgroups...nobody thought this was weird, by the way.) there was so much of this kind of drivel published in the late 1970's that you couldn't walk into a bookstore without tripping over one. (Bookstore, a storefront that you went to in order to buy pulped wood that had the printed word on it, like websites that never changed...oh, never mind!) This fiction had it's peak and jumped the shark in the Gor series.
Gor was a fictional planet that used the over-done (even for the time) trope that there was "ANOTHER EARTH" in our solar system, but we never would see it when we poked our telescopes around the solar system because it was always on the exact solar-syncronous opposite side of the sun in the exact same orbit as Earth. Of course, the absurdity of this is lampshaded early in the series by stating that Gor is a rogue satellite that was put in place and kept there by the Priest-Kings, an alien race that resembles giant insects that aren't like the Xenomorphs in Alien. For Reasons.
The exact nature of Gor and what it's purpose is in the larger scheme of things is never really adequately explored, even with a second alien race introduced into the series as the anti-Priest-Kings and a wonderful epic power struggle story arc started...and then abandoned.
There was a wonderful "Sufferage movement" story arc that was started...and then abandoned.
There was a magnificent "Muggles Do It Better" story arc...which was abandoned.
Are you sensing a theme here?
Of course, the big reason these were all abandoned were because none of them served the series' actual purpose: The glorification of the objectification of women. Oh, and lest you think this is some feminazi bullcrap? Yeah, pretty much everyone, even fans of the series, agree with that statement.
When I was young and stupid, I actually read about 20-25 of the books. By the time I got tired of grinding through the books, I came to the realization that it wasn't actually all that well written. It was the literary equivalent of grocery store donuts. They pretty much trick your brain into thinking you're really getting the good stuff because the smell and taste and texture trigger the dopamine in your system...but by the time you've had your fourth dozen, you feel rather ill and you can TASTE the corn syrup!
Because the writing keeps veering into the sexy, and because the author-voice speaks of the sex acts in such glowing terms, during the reading you're tricked into thinking the writing is GREAT...until the bad-fiction hangover hits, and you wonder what the hell you were thinking.
I will grant the author a little bit of props; at least every sex act written about in the books was at least possible, even if not terribly likely. One certainly can't make that claim about online porn. (Including clop)
Even if one allows for the fact that some women actually do have the fetish of being objectified and owned, the series falls down for one reason; it's so damn repetitive with the sex acts!
In a review (blog is NSFW) I did back in September, I pointed out that the sex scenes in that fic were over-represented, detracting from an otherwise fantastic story, and I made the comparison to eating ice cream. If the ice cream in the "Who Rules?" series was high quality Rocky Road, then the sex scenes in Gor is like eating a Dairy Queen dipped ice cream cone. It's "better" than the plain vanilla cones produced at McDonalds, and you know that for a fact because it's dipped in chocolate. And three times the price. And what is this, "Vanilla Bean" you refer to? And what's "homemade," doesn't ice cream come from a machine?
Being older and wiser, I would tell my younger self to skip the Gor series entirely, as it just isn't really very good. In fact, it's pretty bad...
...which brings us back to Fall of Equestria.
A commenter on my review made mention that Gor would have to be better than FoE based on what they had read of FoE and the Wikipedia entry for Gor, so to make sure I knew what I was talking about, I skimmed one of the "canon" FoE stories.
Let's skip the Idiot Ball plot holes for a moment. This series does EXACTLY the same things in nearly identical ways to Gor. As I skimmed the fic, I was able to pretty much construct every part of it in my head using the tropes and storylines that I remembered from the Gor series. FoE is so unoriginal that there's even some identical dialog and scene progression to Gor.
I suppose the point I'm trying to make is don't bother with Fall of Equestria if you encounter it. Treat it like you'd treat a particularly foul unidentified substance in a back alley sandwiched between the worst roadside diner you've ever heard of and a shady mad scientist's laboratory. Heck, that mystery substance would have MORE value, as it at least has a tiny chance of granting you superpowers. All Fall of Equestria will do is waste your time and leave you feeling dirty.
The scary thing? I have a feeling that the horny teenaged boys writing the FoE garbage have probably never even heard of the Gor series...which says something about the human race.
I'm not sure what, but it's disturbing nonetheless.
Never underestimate horny teenage boys and their need for smut.
Even if they had known of Gor, all they would do is copy the text into their stories, find and replace the names to be MLP:FiM specific, and call it original. Would be worth as much as it was then as it is now.
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Even if I had anything to say adversarial to your position, how could I possibly argue with Shampoo riding The Great and Powerful Trixie?
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Aiyah! Was there ever any doubt?