Behind the Research of Blackjack VS Littlepip (SPOILER-FREE) · 1:28pm Jan 15th, 2015
With just seven days to go until its release, I decided this might be a good time to go over exactly how I did the research for Blackjack VS Littlepip; with characters and scenarios like these, it’s harder than just reading their stories once or twice. There’s lots of other things that must be taken into account, and not all of them can be fit into the hosts’ dialogue without stretching it out far longer than necessary. So, for those of you curious of the process, here’s a nice spoiler-free look at how I worked on the battle.
(As a note, “spoiler-free” refers to the battle, not the stories in which the characters are from. There will be spoilers for both those stories here, so be warned.)
Easily the most requested battle (sans Celestia VS Luna, which will not happen anytime soon), Blackjack VS Littlepip is kind of like the Equestrian version of Superman VS Goku. Both fighters are similar in story and capabilities, but their personalities are very different and they have a lot of unique advantages and flaws. Unlike Superman and Goku, however, just focusing on the characters themselves won’t really get us where we want to be.
Littlepip was the first character I researched due to having already read Fallout: Equestria. I jotted down what I knew of her already, then read through the story a second time, detailing the information properly with her feats and abilities. I ignored the stats and details of her weapons for the time being, but I made notes of what they meant for her as a pony; for example, her lack of melee weaponry made her a strictly ranged combatant, and her unique weapons of choice (a double-action revolver, a zebra assault carbine, and a sniper rifle) would make it more difficult for enemies to predict her than if she used, say, a 10mm pistol and a combat shotgun.
After my second reading, I skimmed the story a third time, this time focusing on her personality and characterization over time. I already had a basic idea of this from my first two readings, hence why I just skimmed it for particular events and her reactions, so this part didn’t take as long. Once that was done, I finally moved onto weapons; here was where I decided to just give the fighters their three most well-known weapons, with the following rules in place:
- If the weapon is in the possession of another character, it would not be used. Simply not being in the combatant’s possession, such as how Littlepip did not retrieve her zebra rifle and sniper rifle from the Enclave, would leave them still eligible; the weapon would have to have been directly given to someone or stolen, such as Blackjack’s Taurus rifle.
- If the weapon was confirmed to have been destroyed or lost where it could not be retrieved, such as Blackjack’s star metal sword, it would not be used. Weapons that were left behind but are retrievable, again such as Littlepip’s zebra and sniper rifle, would still be counted (we last heard of them being in Enclave storage).
- If the weapon would be entirely useless in this particular battle, it would not be used. No examples come to mind, but that rule was there.
- If the weapon made it impossible for the character to use their other two weapons, it would not be used. Again, no examples come to mind.
- Weapons that technically were not a physical weapon, such as Blackjack’s “magic bullets”, would not count towards the three-weapon rule. They would still be added to the character’s arsenal.
- The first weapon a character acquires would be added to their arsenal regardless of if it violated any of the previous rules, unless the weapon was only used very briefly (such as the combat shotgun Littlepip threatened Monterey Jack with).
After deducing Littlepip’s weaponry and polishing up anything I may have missed, I felt that I was about finished with her. As a last touch, however, I looked up this character sheet for any extra information. (The character sheet was made by Kkat herself, so don’t worry, I wasn’t grabbing at fanmade content.) Around this time, I had just finished writing Nyx VS Fluffle Puff.
Next up was Project Horizons, which I had never read. After a good couple months on break, I began reading it. As I went through, I jotted down absolutely everything about Blackjack from the get-go; her personality, her abilities, her weapons (those went through a lot of revisions), etc., because I didn’t want to have to read the story more than once. Seriously, that word count.
Thankfully, I had help here. A couple of my friends, who asked to remain unnamed, had read the story prior and gave me any information I would find useful later on. I also used the Fallout Equestria Wiki, and together this made up for me only reading anything past chapter 30 one time. I read chapters one through ten about three times to get a good grasp of how she was at the start, and eleven to twenty twice plus a skimming.
However, let it be known that due to the story still being updated, there is a chance some information will not be accounted for. Chapter 62 or 63 was the most recent one when I concluded my research on Blackjack, and I decided that to allow myself to actually finish the battle, I would not incorporate information from any later chapters. (My only other option was to just wait until Project Horizons was finished. Whenever that may be.)
So I put down all of Blackjack’s information as well in the same way as Littlepip’s. Since Blackjack lacks a character sheet, I had to make my own estimates, and in the end decided against trying to fill one out myself. Instead, I just left her stats as they are, rather than trying to convert them into Fallout terminology.
With the character research done, this was where I began figuring out the battle. I decided that outside of the combatants’ three signature weapons, any generic weaponry could be picked up around the field, and I would consider the battle as though they had as much random luck finding weapons that way as you would when actually playing Fallout 3 or New Vegas.
For this purpose, I looked carefully at the stories for examples of the characters’ luck in finding weapons, and charted out the likelihood of the weapons they’d find along with how useful they would be in the situation. I did the same thing with various aids, such as healing potions and drugs, and ran on the assumption that the fighters would enter the battle as prepared as they would be for just wandering around scavenging and eventually end up running into each other. So while they would not be fully prepared for one another, they also wouldn’t have nothing. Their preparations and arsenals in this case are as follows:
Blackjack
Weapons: Security baton; Vigilance; Duty and Sacrifice
Armour: None, due to almost completely robotic form
Aid: Whiskey
Littlepip
Weapons: Little Macintosh; zebra assault carbine; sniper rifle
Armour: Canterlot Police Barding
Aid: Bobby pins
If they seem low on aid, that’s because scavenging trips usually turn up aid, and neither of these mares seem to have realized that very bad things can happen even when they’re just looking for supplies. Usually because that doesn’t happen much.
All their perks were, obviously, also accounted for, as were my estimates of their stats (or in Littlepip’s case, just what the stats were on her character sheet). This was all done next to last, however, as these would likely not have a very big impact; most of their important skills and perks were essentially even. So they may not seem to make a big impact in the fight.
This is when, finally, I began comparing them in every form of combat. From unarmed to ranged, to seeing how they would win in simple matches with only one weapon each, to determining how they would go about outsmarting one another and which one would eventually emerge victorious in each department. Then, I combined all the information based on how they would properly fight with everything, and determined a winner.
Who might that winner be?
Find out in a week.
littlepip..littlepip...littlepip...
You and I already had a brief exchange of comments regarding what I think. (Rooting for LP, but expecting BJ)