An Interview with Kkat... · 3:02am Apr 13th, 2016
... from 2013.
I didn't see it until now. Her answer to question 8 gives a good analogy for one good way to write a large story:
8) Tell us how you planned out this story.
Fallout: Equestria was envisioned as two stories in one. First, you have the standard hero’s journey of the protagonist. But this was combined with a sort of “in medias res” story about Equestria itself, from the start of the war to the path it was set to follow after the protagonist’s journey is over.
The very first element of the story that I worked on was creating a timeline which transformed the Equestria of the cartoons into an Equestria Wasteland in the style of the Fallout games. I didn’t want to just transport ponies into a post-apocalyptic setting. I wanted the world of the story to be grounded in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and to evolve out of it in a way that would come across as a possible (if extremely unlikely) future rather than an alternate universe.
After that, I laid out the bare-bones of the story, plotting out the major arcs and subplots. I think of my writing method as a “connect the dots” approach. I created a skeleton for the story, listing major plot elements, vital scenes, thematic points, Chekhov’s Guns and so forth. Those would be my “dots”. When I sat down to start writing, I knew all the most important “dots” for the overall story, which one to start with and which one to end with, and what the overall picture was going to be. I’d start writing at the first “dot” and proceed towards the next.
This way, I didn’t know everything that was going to happen. I had room for inspiration to take control. This kept the story fresh for me. I believe that if I had already known everything that was going to happen, writing the story would have become tedious.
I did not only for the story as a whole, but for each chapter as the story progressed. After each chapter was posted, I would read all the comments that came in and take a couple days to digest them. I would then spend the slow hours at work brainstorming and creating a list that included scenes I wanted, conversations that needed to take place, and critical plot points that needed to be touched on – creating the “dots” for the next chapter.
Kkat is a smart lady.
3866778
Past Sins by Pen Stroke?
I am unironically the biggest fan of Fallout: Equestria, and I think it gets a lot more shit than it deserves.
It was, and still is, epic. Truly, awe inspiringly epic. It was dark without sacrificing humour, funny without sacrificing drama, dramatic without sacrificing pathos and emotional without sacrificing rationality or believability, something that is almost incomprehensible across... what, a million words?
It's definitely the story that has been the biggest single inspiration on me for who I want to be as a writer, and probably defined the approach I took to Mare who once Lived on the Moon, the story I'm most proud of, and my attempts at writing original settings.
I wrote Monster somewhat like this, but it was the most frustrating and nerve-wracking time of my short writing career. I had the rough idea of the whole chain of events in my head, but I used the comments every week to 'tweak' my approach to that week's writing. By the end, I was about ready to give up writing. The stress about killed me, and I shoved out some chapters far before they were ready. Since then, I've gone more to the 'Get the whole thing done and polished before releasing' school of thought, and it's given me a much more stress-free experience, particularly since I have two wonderful and quite persistent editors (Tek and Peter) to provide feedback during the process and I'm not stressed to maintain a release schedule.
I've tried:
Four times to read Fallout: Equestria, and I've never managed to get past the 14th or 15th chapter. I've read a lot of people talking about what they like about it, but I just don't see the appeal of it at all.
Mike
3867006
Have you ever read Lord of the Rings?
3867006
You're doing better than I ever did. It's obviously a labor of love and I am pleased and exhilarated at the amount of inspiration it has generated globally—would that something I wrote in pony have inspired such a breadth of other creations!—but the act of reading it for me is so viscerally unpleasant that I just can't do it. Equestria is my happy place, so I am overly-critical of plot machinations that artificially made it a gory wasteland (I simply do not buy that Celestia would up and abdicate in a time of tragedy) and when I do believe them, it just makes me sad to think about. It's self-evidently a monumental work in this fandom, but it's not for me.
For what it's worth, that's exactly how I work.
I'm very unlikely to change the 'dots' in major ways, but this:
Every week I'm always doing this. The chapter for the week always starts with an overview of everything to come, tinkering with the upcoming 'dots' and adjusting to work with the chapters that have been written (especially the most recently written chapter).
I'd point out that this is the same whether or not there's comments. I've written way ahead of my audience because I write in multiple books, not one giant tome, and my books have distinct endings allowing people to STOP reading and not resume, and be satisfied with that. So I'm in a position to know that, even if you aren't getting reader feedback, it still works.
When you do, of course, it's even clearer. I killed off a character Monday, and from the reactions I know that I've got to play upon that 'reality' more, contextualise it and allow for closure. I'd killed another one earlier and the lack of response told me that the audience didn't care that time. Immediate reader response is extremely valuable for this, though bear in mind that if you are directing their experience through a place where they'll be shocked and amazed by a surprise, they CAN'T respond to your setup with useful advice because they're not privy to the surprise that changes everything. You have to go off the strength of their reaction and get a sense of how badly they need the outcome you're not going to give them: sometimes, make some gestures toward respecting their need for their outcome rather than just ignoring it because it's not where your story goes.
3867006
Man, you gave up right before it gets good!
Of course, it only really stays good for about ten chapters after that, but hey!
3867151
That's a really good analogy:
I read the trilogy once when I was 8 years old and didn't get grabbed by it--I didn't dislike it, but I didn't much like it, either. I then reread it with a bunch of friends when I was 40 or so--we had a schedule of chapters to read each week and would meet every Sunday nght to discuss it--and I still didn't get grabbed by it. Like Fallout: Equestria, I can watch as people become swept away by it, but I just can't conjure up that feeling myself. It's like shrimp or alcohol: a lot of people I know really enjoy experiencing those two items now and again, but I've never liked the taste of either. So I don't eat shrimp or drink alcohol...
3867167
When the first sentence of the Prologue pretty much shattered my suspension of disbelief, I knew I was going to have a hard time. And when I started having problems with the narrator and the setting and the structure, I quickly realized that this story was Not For Me.
3867254
The farthest I've ever gotten--and I'm relying on my admittedly spotty memory--was a scene where Our Heroes come across a farmhouse that turns out to be a museum dedicated to Pinkie Pie, and a quick Google search tells me that that happens in chapter 9. Both my Inner Editor and my Inner Milquetoast decided I was done after that.
Mike
What's weird is, the way kkat planned out her story sounds exactly like how the makers of the Fallout video games plan out their games. Heroe's journey interspersed with stories about how the world became so terrible, and key plot points spread out, with lots of dynamic and kind of random filler in between.
3867006 Perhaps... you are not as evil as you pretend to be, "Baal Bunny".
You probably mean the ultra-violent scenes in Ponyville. I could say that nearly all of the rest of the book is less gory than that, but I doubt this story and you are a good match.
I did enjoy the first story about Equestria's descent into madness quite a bit more than the second one about our heroes journey through its ruins. While individual pieces of the latter were sometimes quite nice it was clear that the middle part of the story was just ticking checkboxes until we got to where the author wanted to go. I still think there's a solid story buried underneath all of that but an editor would be a godsend.
3868250
There's only one major flaw with Fallout: Equestria, IMO, and it's a pretty big one: Littlepip is the chosen one. Having your main character go the length and breadth of your setting, confront every problem and eventually save the world, (something they've always been destined to do, as acknowledged by basically every character); that works well enough for a video game. It doesn't work as well for a piece of written fiction, especially one that often went beyond the games themselves in believably, (no, really,) examination of darkness, intensity of situations and combat, etc. Fallout: Equestria does a fantastic job of worldbuilding, but then it turns around and makes the world into a series of checkboxes to be ticked until we get to the Sunshine and Rainbows that's been all but guaranteed to happen.
There's another problem I like to complain about, but it's a bit meta. (And spoiler-y, and a bit of a ramble, and not a response to you, but w/e.) Basically, I don't think Kkat should have shown who became the Element Bearers. AT ALL. The big reason is that there's been basically no side stories that even attempt at doing anything with finding who the missing Element Bearers would be. Kkat deliberately left it unwritten in the hopes that it would be good ground for fanfics, but the problem with that is having to incorporate four characters from the main story and somehow connect them to two new characters. The other reason is that the four characters Kkat chose to be element bearers are given pretty flimsy reasons for being so. Kkat deliberately avoided having a magic friendship beam save the day, instead having Littlepip do the whole 'chosen one's sacrifice' thing. (Thanks, Fallout 3! Not.) I might disagree with the whole chosen one thing, sure, but I can respect going in that direction. And it makes sense not to show the Gardens of Equestria activating since that wasn't the focus of the story. But you can't eat a cake unless you have a cake in the first place, and that's exactly what saying someone become an element bearer without showing them do so is.
3867167
3867006
Baal, you've gotten further than I ever have. Like Skywriter, I think the contrivances to get to the 'future' are far too contrived. I mean, this is a land of magic where friendship is literally the strongest force on the planet, and...everything goes into the shitter over COAL?
Furthermore, I mean, Fluttershy giving nukes to the enemy, and - well, a billion other things. The 'past' is a clear case of 'I want a Wasteland, even if it makes no goddamned sense to get there'.
3868415
I'd argue the biggest sin of the story is that it doesn't actually do anything creative with the mashup. The story is 'A pony quests for a GECK equivalent while dealing with McGuffins from Fallout 1/3'.
Like, if I set out to write Fallout : Equestria for the first time, and Kkat's version did not exist? Yes, sure, I'd use elements like Ghouls or something akin to the Brotherhood of Steel. The BoS is a great example here : In Equestria, it would make far more sense for it to be an order of Magi dedicated to preserving MAGIC at all costs. They'd be scrounging for spellbooks, not circuitry. Instead of being covered in power armor, they'd all be wearing robes with glowing runes and shit.
In other words, the flaw here is that it's taking Fallout and just pasting ponies into it, while relying on the Fallout property for all the ideas. Compare to say, Arad's Stardust : While it follows the plot of 2012 X-Com by and large, it grounds itself in showing how Twilight Sparkle's presence twists the story we're familiar with. Twilight warps both settings in a way that feels true to both while at the same time creating something new, whereas Fallout Equestria is a lot of 'Cut, copy, paste' going on.
Here's how one should have done Fallout in Equestria : Some rogue wizard, whatever, delving into forbidden magics, accidentally unleashes a magical catastrophe which devastates the world, unleashing raging storms of rogue magic that plague the planet over the next century. The Vaults? Ancient safeguards Celestia & Luna created a thousand years ago in case of Discord rampaging again, shielded against magic in the strongest terms, and when it becomes clear the Storms cannot be stopped, their existence revealed to shelter as many ponies as possible across the nation. Fast forward 100 years later and you have the Wasteland where things have gotten super fucked up, where the Arcane Sisterhood seeks what manuscripts remain, where the New Canterlot Republic in their mountain fortress begins their first tentative expansion, where rumor has it that in the ruins of the Crystal Empire, an ancient artifact that can tame the raging weather lies dormant - THAT is how you would blend Fallout and MLP in a way that remains true to both.
Kkat is good at a long of things, from what I've seen. World building was not one of them - the above took me maybe 10 minutes to think of and I would steadfastly argue it holds true to both universes far more readily than FO:E does.
3869349
And if it had been the story I would be here ranting in your place about everything other people like being intrinsically wrong somehow.
Season one Equestria is a place of 1000 year old grudges, undisguised xenophobia and one rustic village where people act unaccountably sociable (bordered by a forest full of giant monsters). Pointing that out is hardly unfair.
3869469
Interesting theory, are you saying that FO:E was generally more credible to a S1 audience? I know I bailed on it early on and I joined in the S1-S2 interval, but I'm admittedly more sensitive than some.
3869349
I can see how much of it can seem contrived. I'd even agree with you in some cases. (The biggest example would be the Enclave, but they only really show up late in the story.) But, (and I'm guessing this is mostly down to not knowing much Fallout lore,) your ideas up above seriously don't work. Fallout has two main things going for it: One is a retro-futurism sci-fi theme that's totally rad. And the other is the idea that, even after the end of the world, people will still do terrible things to each other. (Basically the idea behind the quote "War, war never changes.") Fallout is post-post apocalyptic. It's meant to be about societies rebuilding themselves after society destroyed the world, and because they don't have Alicorn Princesses to guide them, these new societies tend to mess up big time. And all that just doesn't make sense unless you actually have a world-ending war in the first place. 'Rogue unicorn accidentally destroys world' just doesn't work for it. And don't think I'm nitpicking you here, it's seriously that important.
Could there have been more creative changes made? Sure. But does Fallout: Equestria successfully mash up FiM and Fallout? To be perfectly honest, I've seen plenty of flaws and minor nitpicks with the story after being in the Fo:E fandom for so long. But the most important part of the mashup is somehow bringing Equestria into a war that escalates/spirals far out of proportion. Kkat did that, and even today I'm not sure anyone else could go from season 1 Equestria to total
nuclearbalefire devastation. (A shortage of a major resource is exactly how wars get started in the real world. Especially during an industrial revolution when it would wreck your economy for decades.) I don't think it was done perfectly, in fact I've been in conversations about exactly that topic, but the fact it was done at all and successfully at that is still something I admire.That's all about the pre-war stuff, basically. Talking about what I think went right with the post-war stuff is another discussion-and-a-half, especially since it's where most of the story is set, where most of Kkat's creative riffs happened, where the Fallout Equestria fandom was inspired, and all that suff.
3869601
I mean, I'm a fan of Fallout - that's where I say contrived, because Lore-wise, the Enclave is yet again another 'straight out of Fallout's plot' elements. One thing I have found talking to people over the years is a lot who praise FO:E's story haven't played Fallout. To me, something that constantly grates - that the story is just lifting Fallout's story wholesale and giving it a coat of flaking spraypaint - isn't a problem for them, because having not played FO 1/2/3/4, they don't recognize 'Oh, this is literally the exact same thing, but with a cosmetic swap'.
I'd take issue too with 'Fallout is about people doing terrible, terrible things to each other'; part of the enduring charm of the series is that it takes something that should be endlessly grim and thanks to grounding the Fallout world in 1950s Leave it to Beaver Americana, it becomes constant black comedy. Yes, in Fallout people are constantly dying of radiation poisoning, slavery is rampant, and so forth - but then you get your constant silliness like Johnny Five Aces showing up. It's one thing I do believe that the series is slowly losing, though; it's trended towards more serious in recent installments.
And I'd agree on the Retro-Futurism, but that's part of the point; the Retro-Futurism works for Fallout because it's grounded in Earth. Equestria doesn't have a 1950s Cold War aesthetic at any point in its history, so it going from S1 to Retro-Future is at odds with the setting. That's where I was bringing up the Retro-Magitech side of things, because its thematically similar while rooting itself firmly in the new property. 'Rogue Unicorn' was a weaker variant there. You could escalate it to 'Celestia and Luna go all out against Empowered Sombra, and annihilate each other and blow up the world' if you wanted it far higher stakes.
But Equestria isn't like real-world Earth. Yes, resources are totally a reason we've gone to war in the past, like WW2 Japan. But there are loads of others - WW2 USA entered for entirely different reasons, and WW1 had much more to do with political alliances going bad, while WW2 truly started not about resources but about Making Germany Great Again; pre-Poland, Germany had already rebuilt and had resources churning in. And all of those above are overly simplistic, but the point being that its not always just 'Go to war for resources'.
I'd wager plenty of other people could easily, easily go from S1 Equestria to total nuclear devastation. If I could I'd make it a Writeoff topic because it would be hilarious (And yes, I'm awake Tirek/Sombra don't exist at this point, but then again people were using G1 Tirek as a villain for a while. Hell, use the Smooze!). Some dissident attempting assassination on Celestia and chucking her into a coma/death for instance could destabilize things plenty. I don't know - I'm not going to write said story. But the Fo:E one has always had serious issues with its past that people, at least in my judgement, are much too forgiving on. I don't really expect to convince you or anyone else of that at this point; you're not going to change your mind over a 5 minute internet debate, and that's fine.
But done at all/successful? Someone else would have done it, had FO:E never existed. Perhaps it would have been grounded in Star Wars, or the Matrix, or whatever, but somebody would have taken a property, blended the two, and produced the first massively popular work there. That's one very, very important thing Fallout E has going for it : It was first. If you go into the Writeoffs, one of the most common things used to take down perfectly good stories is 'I've read this before'; we value originality, or at least perceived originality, as one of the top artistic factors.
Anyways, last, on the post-war stuff : If you aren't that into Fallout Lore, I would urge you to play FO 1/3 in particular, and then go back to the story and look at it through the lens of knowing how much is straight from it. I've always wanted to see how someone's opinion might change to go from story -> play games -> see story again where the cribbing is much more blatant.
3869349
I disagree that having some wizard accidentally destroying the world with Celestia, Luna and the Mane 6 unable to do anything would feel less contrived than things gradually escalating from a small dispute because of misunderstandings, mistakes and xenophobia. I would also argue that it holds less true to Fallout that way.
Replacing some plot points you find contrived with some kind of deus ex machina solution is certainly possible in 10 minutes but I can't see how it's an improvement, and the way you said it sounded quite arrogant.
I ascribed some of the other criticised points to Kkat deliberately writing it with a game-like feel, but I don't know if that's true and can see that not everyone may like that.
3869512
It's a "god of the gaps" sort of thing. The fewer assumptions you walk into it with the more "huh that could work" you'll get out of it. The show draws sharp distinction between Ponyville and everywhere else in Equestria. Go to Appleoosa and you get race war or go to Manehattan or Canterlot and you get elitism (how far into the series until someone from a big city turns out not to be an irredeemable ass?). Even Ponyville struggle with these and needs friendship superpowered individuals to overcome them. The trick FoE uses to convince you wartorn Equestria isn't such a stretch is to assume the show is as much an accurate documentary of ponyland as "Anne of green gables" is of ours.
It reminds me of the difference between "The Wizard of Oz" and "Wicked." If you read the former novel you'd be unconvinced the latter was feasible. If you've only seen the movie then there are enough details missing to justify it.
3869796
A lot of your problems with the plot are ones I agree with. I think it all ties back to trying to make Littlepip the equivalent of the player character, like I say up here. 3868415 I think it constantly pulled the story in a more unbelievable direction and made Littlepip less sympathetic and relatable than she could have been. But I don't think it was that bad. Sure, it wasn't too creative, but it was done in tribute to the Fallout games, and plenty of people who were fans of Fallout enjoyed the story in spite of it copying the games. Heck, lots of fans hadn't hear anything about Friendship is Magic before they read the story.
Fallout isn't about the black comedy. If you want to get in a real internet fight, I could disagree with you all day over that. But basically, I think the comedic and ridiculous elements are meant to be a relief from all the grim darkness. They're both stretching stuff to the extreme, but the plot elements that you're supposed to care about are the ones that are serious.
That's not true, and that's never been true. I've seen that argument come up time and again, and it always misses the fact that no one else was there at the same time doing the same thing. It's possible that some other big fics the came later could have become more popular, maybe. But Fo:E wasn't just in the right place at the right time. It walked the walk. Fo:E is a huge piece of fic, made at a relatively quick pace and seriously overshadowing almost everything else at the time. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of writers were inspired by just how much it accomplished in size and scope. Many authors have said that Fo:E inspired them to write fanfic, not just sidestories to Fo:E but ideas of their own too. If Fo:E hadn't happened, ponyfic in general would be worse off for its absence even today.
Actually, I have changed people's minds over 5 minute internet debates. I've seen others do so, too. It's less to do with anyone's persuasion skills than what the topic of conversation is, though. Speaking of, my 25 minutes are already up, so I'm gonna leave this here.
3869349
I think there was no one cause of the war, or of the horrors that developed later. It was good intentions gone bad, quick fixes piled on top of each other, mistrust, opportunism, overconfidence, and bad luck. I think the point was that peace and civilizations blow apart naturally without constant effort to maintain them, and sometimes even then.
Having a single wizard destroy the pony civilization would defeat the point of crossing MLP with Fallout, which I think was to show that the happy civilization of Equestria didn't come about because of destiny or native virtue, but because people built and maintained that civilization intelligently.
Consider how different, and sophisticated, the story's perspective on morality is. Just as one example, I think it's the only major piece of fiction ever published, in any language, that gives consequentialist morality a serious consideration. Possibly more importantly, it doesn't come out in favor of any one approach to morality--but it doesn't conclude that we should throw up our hands in despair. Its message is closer to, "Stop arguing about whose fault it is, or metaphysical crap no one understands, and fix the things that are obviously bad." This seems like an obvious thing, but I can't think of any other fiction with that point of view.
3870117
On the 'Someone else would have' : Yes, it inspired others - but you won't hear from the people going 'I had a similar idea, BUT...' kind of thing. We've seen Sci-Fi magnum Opii around here before. It may well have come much later, but it would have been done at some point, or something in the same ballpark. It probably already has been done, but isn't nearly as well known because it lacks that 'nothing else like it' momentum of way back when.
On the black comedy, no, not entirely, not by a long shot, but it's an important part of the series that gets forgotten about much of the time. And in Fallout 3/beyond, much of that is gone. I do give props to New Vegas's Wild Wasteland mode for doing a good job of having it in there.
3870278
I think you'd find any Less Wrong-er style story is usually pretty consequentialist focused. I mean, The Baby Eating Aliens deals with it fairly significantly, later on. I'd say you could argue others do; Dune, for example, seems to have a lot of that grounded in there. And, well, Realpolitik in a lot of ways is all about consequentialism.
Anyways, on the former point, I'm not saying Equestria can't go from idyllic to dystopian world war. I think that's entirely plausible; I mean, the S5 finale shows us several alternate futures where it is well on the way there. My issue is with this particular implementation where I do think it suffers dramatically from 'It has an end it wants to get to, and characters/cultures are forced to serve that end even if it isn't true to them'. Skywriter's aforementioned 'Celestia abdicates' being a perfectly good example of such.
3869830
'A wizard did it' is somewhat contrived, and a product of being very sleepy at the time. At the same time, in the Fallout-Verse, what sets off the Earth nuclear-apocalypse has far more to do with dystopian leadership than anything else. It's where I mention the 1950s-esque Leave it to Beaver society - the other half there is the rampant McCarthyism going on, along with the military-industrial alliance that sees people as disposable widgets to acquire more power with. All these elements are missing from Equestria; Flim & Flam don't rule the world, and thusfar them and those like them have yet to ever rise beyond the level of 2-bit huckster.
3871139
Oh, right. Methods of Rationality. Not in an even-handed way, though--in a partisan way, like literature usually is, presenting only the "pro" side.
"Celestia abdicated" is a story that gets told once or twice, but I don't recall if it's proven true. I'd say it's proven false, or at least meaningless, by where Littlepip eventually finds Celestia. Another pony told a story saying she died defending Canterlot, I think, which was almost certainly not true.
3871303
I've read it in timelines that abdication happened; I mean, it's the closest thing there it to 'accurate' given by the story. 'This might not be how it happened' may work well in real life, but in fiction everything's a deliberate choice.
Methods of Rationality to some degree, but I'm also thinking of the speck of dust 3^^^3 scenario. Yudkowsky is a clear consequentialist, for certain.
3871362 I'm pretty sure "Celestia abdicated" is a story told within F:E that is false within F:E.
3871686
Well, their wikis on the timeline are sure as heck wrong then since that's the timeline I get everytime I look it all up
3871686
I hate to be the bearer of disappointing facts, but your interpretation would be much better than what's actually in the story. It's not exactly made clear, but it's about as explicitly stated as any of the historical events that Kkat was vague about. Basically, Celestia abdicated the throne and gave it to Luna during wartime because reasons. Reasons that aren't really given. (Why reading Fo:E sidefics is goodfuntimes #whatever: Some of them have areas where they surpass the original. By a hundred miles.)
3871139
I'd argue that, if Kkat hadn't made her story, that momentum wouldn't have even shown up for those other stories. But I don't think any confluence of timing and position can account for the majority of Fallout: Equestria's popularity. I get it, you don't personally find much in the story that you enjoy or think is exceptional. But I and most other fans would disagree with you completely. It's a setting completely outside of what you'd expect from a FiM fic but also one that shares much of the show's values. Like 3870278 said, it took an unusual look at morality. It also has some sweet action, engaging characters, a setting that's become super popular, etc. I mean, think about the themeing: Apocalyptia and magic pastel ponies. When something that crazy works, it's called genius. Those are just a few things I'd praise about the story. Anyways, point is, sometimes the early bird gets the worm because it's beating the other birds in a race. But other times the early bird is the only bird that could have even gone for that worm, and it totally got it.
It's always baffling to me to see how much Bethesda almost gets Fallout. Comparing Fallout 3 to Fallout 4, for example, is crazy: Half of the design elements had massive improvements but half of them were super neglected or basically only paid lip service.
3871878 In F:E, only historical events that you either see recordings of, or find archaelogical evidence for, should be taken as true. Oral traditions hundreds of years old aren't reliable. Celestia's bones were in the control room in RBD's tower, which was built after or at the end of the war, which shows she was probably still in charge after the destruction of Canterlot. In any case she died in the saddle.
3871878
I don't really quite think appeal to popularity is the way to go here, though, since my knee-jerk response to it is to want to invoke Twilight / 50 Shades of Grey as 'popular, but that doesn't make them good'. I like the Harry Potters, but one element that has irked me since forever is that a lot of her bestiary is ripped right out of the monster manual. It's still novel/engaging/etc, but dang did that drive me nuts for a while.
I suspect part of the reason it was/is so popular is 'Ponies, but darker/grittier/edgier' : It turns the Pony setting into something much closer to the rest of entertainment out there, which makes it in many ways more familiar, not less, than vanilla pony. At the same time I really don't care for it in that regard because to me, the world is different from ours, significantly, and those differences are gone.
But, yea - The early bird factor is huge here. Remove it from the ecosystem, publish it again today, and while I would say it would get big, it wouldn't be nearly what it is now. I'd be super curious, for example, to see what would happen if Through the Well of Pirene had been what came out instead at that time, because it turns the 'potential apocalypse' theme up to 11, even if it sidesteps it in the end; Pirene may swap better with Dangerous Business in that regard, but Dangerous Business seems far more recognized as one of those 'Didn't age that well' stories.