My Little Fallout: Far Harbor, Week 1 · 12:57am Jul 1st, 2016
Can't stop the horsewords.
Well, at this point, I feel comfortable saying my dry spell is over. Actingverse will be wrapped up by next week, and after that, I've got three more short stories that are already well underway. Laurels and a Stand of Colors (Comedy, Shipping) for CIG, Valet (Drama, Adventure) for Horizon, and If I Wrote It, Here's How It Happened (Comedy, Random) for myself.
But those are all short stories, and I'm feeling a certain itch that short stories don't scratch. A certain Siren Song'y esq feeling. The urge, as it were, to write another epic crossover novel. And after a few weeks thinking it over, I've realized that there's only one crossover that will really do. So strap on your Pip Boys, slip into a vault suit, and take a hit of RadX, because we're going to Far Harbor!
I promise, I will get someone else to do the chapter art.
There's just one problem. Based on my experiences with Siren Song, it's probably going to take me close to six months of writing to finish this, and to keep it to Siren Song's level of quality, I don't want to publish the first chapters until the whole story is done. You see the problem, of course. How am I to avoid vanishing for six months without a word, leaving you all wondering if I've been hit by a car or lured away from MLP by those morally deviant Steven Universe fans?
So, to keep up the pace, I've decided I'm going to be posting weekly updates on here that go into a bit more depth on the writing process. Instead of the usual, "I wrote X words and edited Y words and my editors are all jerkfaces who don't appreciate my genius," I'll go into a lot more detail about how I outline, write, and edit, how characters change over the course of the writing, and all the research I do leading up to the story.
All updates will be kept spoiler free, though I can't promise they won't look at specific plot twists suggestively and wink. So with that in mind, let's push ahead to the first update!
Beep. Boop. Apples.
Week 1: Key Themes and World Design
This week was mostly early brainstorming, both for the outline of the story (what actually happens) and for the "world bible" that contains the complete breakdown of how everything in the setting actually works. This early in the writing process, I know that almost all the details of this are going to change significantly, but it's important to work out the key themes that are going to guide the later adaptations. For this mostly means asking what is the story really about (underlying themes), both in the characters actions, and in what the world evokes.
I started with the things I liked about Far Harbor, and what it is that made me think it was worth crossing over with in the first place: the struggle of the Synths. Whether they're fighting against the Institute and for their own sense of identity as a people, the Synths and the question of what's to become of them are clearly main characters in this performance.
But I'm not convinced they're actually the main characters, because Far Harbor exists within the greater world of Fallout, and that poses a much bigger question than the fate of one small group of exiles. Namely, "what will become of the world?" The Wasteland isn't interesting because of the wasteland; it's interesting because we want to know what's going to happen next. Will it rebuild into a more glorious tomorrow, or will it repeat the mistakes of the past? Can humanity change, or are we trapped in an endless cycle of bloodshed and stupidity?
That key theme of Fallout is why the Institute is such a compelling antagonist for me, because unlike raiders, the Brotherhood, or the Minutemen, they're not concerned with here-and-now survival, but with the deep questions that guide the setting. Love them or hate them, it's impossible not to have feelings on them, because they present an unambiguous vision of the future and the means to execute on it. If you fight to stop the institute, you aren't fighting to save Diamond City, you're fighting to save humanity. Because the Institute will continue to grow, and spread, until one day their evil covers the whole of the Earth. And then, a boot stamping on a human face forever. Or perhaps you join them, because you really do believe in their vision, and know that thanks to your actions, humanity has a better future underground.
That was enough to let me get down my first set of themes I want to include: Cultural Identity ('Who are we as a people?'), Personal Identity ('Who and what am I?'), Building the Future ('The decisions we make now will shape the world to come'), and Synth Slavery (Benefits and horrors).
Wait, is he a zebra because he's black? Is that racist? I'm not sure if that's racist.
World design worked much the same way, but was more about merging the two settings than just a list of aspects to preserve. I spent awhile trying to do something like Fallout: Equestria -- that is, Far Harbor only with ponies -- but I kept being really unsatisfied with it. Fallout and MLP are settings with very different themes, and I feel being faithful to both of them requires significant setting changes. So after a few more failed rounds of design, I decided that a direct crossover wasn't going to work. I had to make a hybrid world, just like Vision was a hybrid of Bioshock and MLP.
I didn't have a concrete process for this, but I tended to focus a lot on contradictions and how to resolve them. Fallout is a Pulp Sci-Fi setting, MLP is a High Fantasy setting. End result for the new setting: High Fantasy. While technology exists, magic is still the greater setting element, and technology is often perceived by in-setting characters in magical terms. Note that this is the reverse of Vision, which offered a choice between High Fantasy and Modern Industrial, chose the latter.
Another contradiction, in Fallout, the default state of the world without story intervention is "bad guys win," while in MLP good always prevails. Needless to say, for the hybrid setting, we're going with Fallout on this one: Bad Guys Usually Win. However, to preserve some key elements of MLP, I decided to take a slightly different approach on characterization. Fallout holds that people are basically untrustworthy unless you have some reason to think they're your friends, while MLP holds that a stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet. And for this hybrid, we're going with MLP: Most People Are Basically Good. Etc etc.
How do Earth Ponies fire guns? They must have very strong teeth.
After working through an extended list of things like that, as well as seeing how this would all mesh together, I was able to start putting some concrete details on the world. The primary setting is an alternate-universe Ponyville. The synth's journey to Far Harbor -- the sanctuary from the Institute -- gets a lot more story time than Far Harbor itself. While the war did cause widespread devastation, there are no nuclear weapons or megaspells. The Institute is the remains of Celestia's Institute for Gifted Unicorns in Canterlot. Celestia and Luna haven't been heard from since the war, but are not explicitly dead. And so it went.
Of course, there's a lot more I can't say because of spoilers, but there is one more detail I decided on. The narration style matters a ton to how a story flows, and I pretty quickly decided I wanted this story to be first person. That means the choice of protagonist matters a lot, since they'll be the lens through which the reader views the world. And I soon realized there was only one choice for the role. Only one pony we can trust to deliver some good, honest descriptions of what's going on around her.
And she looks good in power armor.
Well, if it turns out to be as high quality as Siren Song, I certainly won't have any complaints.
So in addition to the struggles of the Synths, are you going to touch on Far Harbor's other worthwhile theme? Homaging/Ripping off the Lovecraft Mythos?
Super exciting. I love Fallout 4. (Full disclosure, as Director of the Institute I felt compelled to collect those run-away synths in Arcadia, and introduce Division to the Children of Atom.). While I read MLP's famous FAllout crossover, it was way too dark for me to truly enjoy, so it's nice you'll be picking a point in between in your setting. I am really curious how you are going to write a Fallout story without either nukes or magical versions of nukes though, that seems like quite a challenge.
Oh, and I really love those awsome drawings in this post, do you have any links to the authors so we can look for more?
This was actually a useful look at what I need for my own story building process.
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Yes, though it will be more incidental. Lovecraftian creatures will be about, and are a part of why the world is the way it is, but aren't the focus of the story.
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Yeah! I enjoyed Fallout: Equestria as much as everyone else, but it was way too Fallout and not enough MLP for my tastes. I'm hoping to cut a better middle ground.
And sadly, I do not. I just GIS'ed it. I recommend doing a reverse image search.
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Hooray!
"The urge, as it were, to write another epic crossover novel."
You... You are serious? You speak not in jest? :D
Well, this is sounding quite interesting so far. :)
...Well, I have to admit, I might be much less confident in it from someone else; while I've not played either Bioshock or Fallout 4, I seen to lean towards dislike of the latter rather than my more neutral feelings on the former. Coming from you, though, I think I can be pretty confident that it will be a good read. I'm looking forward to future posts on the work going into it, too; I still think the thoughts you posted about the influence of fascist architecture in Vision were quite neat.
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Any thoughts on Horizons, if you don't mind me asking, or did you only read the original?
I will actually read this. Please write it.
...This is gonna ROCK!!
This will be beautiful.
That's all.
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I'm totally serious! And no, I did not read Horizons, just the original.
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Well, shit. Now I have to do an amazing job. You've set a high bar.
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I'm sorry GaP, we have set no bars.
You did that to yourself.
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"I'm totally serious!"
I picked that up, yes. :)
"And no, I did not read Horizons, just the original."
Ah, oh well; I'd have liked to hear your thoughts on it. Not going to ask you to read over 1.5 megawords just to get them, though. :)