Present Perfect vs. Fallout Equestria: Pink Eyes · 2:04pm Jun 13th, 2018
As I've said countless times before, Fallout: Equestria is one of the fandom's Big Four fanfics, monoliths around which entire tribal societies have been built. In the same way, it, too, has its own Big Four of sidefics: Project Horizons, Heroes, Murky Number Seven, and today's entry, mimezinga's Pink Eyes.
A part of me thinks that I read FoE just so I could read Pink Eyes. <.< I mean, it's a story set in a gritty, grimdark, post-apocalyptic wasteland, staring an adorable little pink filly. That's gold.
So what's the deal with it? I'll tell you once I'm done talking about the reading.
See, VisualPony started a reading sometime last year, if I'm not mistaken, and I told him I'd wait until it was finished and give it a listen. Unfortunately, I got impatient — unusual for me — and decided to go with the audiobook that was already finished, despite having no doubts that VP would get to the end of his. Enter Superstrider86, who rather made me wish I'd waited. :/ He got me through the story all right, no questions there, but he was extremely loud (to the point of distortion), he paused so much between sentences I couldn't tell where the scene breaks were, and anything ending in an exclamation mark was sure to be overperformed every. Single. Time. It made Pink Eyes considerably more dramatic, and not in a good way. Suffice to say, I think this is the only audiobook of his I'll be listening to. (Here's another by Plagen Shiki.)
To the review!
The draw of Pink Eyes is of course that one-two punch of description and cover. If you know anything about Fallout: Equestria, you know that it's where friendship goes to die. The setting is grimdark as all fuck, the characters are usually troubled, gritty heroes; ain't nothing nice about it.
So what happens when you take a little filly and drop her into the middle of it?
If you're good at subtext, you'll be able to tell just from her name — Puppysmiles — the answer is "nothing good". :V
Puppysmiles is a six (?) year old pink filly with a blonde mane, who lives in Canterlot with her mom, Rainy Days, before the bombs fall. Being sixish years old, she has zero understanding of what's going on as she's hustled into an environmental survival suit. She just wants to watch the pretty fireworks!
This opening scene really sets the tone for everything to come and ensures that, no matter what happens, no matter how awful things get, Puppysmiles will pull through it with innocent oblivity, full of hope and smiles and love for everypony!
An aside for those of you not super-into FoE canon: the way we get from "bombs fall, everyone dies" to "Equestrian Wasteland" is two-fold. First, Puppy is turned into a Canterlot Ghoul, a special kind of undead pony bonded to an object, in this case her suit, though she's an even more special case, as we find out later. Second, she "goes to sleep" for two-hundred years, waking up in the rubble of her house to begin her adventure.
Said adventure is both patterned after and a parody of Fallout: Equestria itself. Having read a few sidefics by this point, I've become aware of the formula: protagonist from non-Wasteland setting enters Wasteland with some sort of Pipbuck, gathers a group of likeminded friends while putting to right the various wrongs around them, builds a legend spurred on by a radio DJ, and ends up saving at least a part of the Wasteland from some great peril. And I can't really blame anyone for following this template, because it's how the Fallout games work in the first place.
Where Pink Eyes shines is in turning that template on its head. Because--
Okay, let's be clear about this up front: I'm soft on comedies. I always have been. If I'm reading a story with flawed writing — and Pink Eyes definitely has this, I'll get to that later — that is making me laugh? I'll take that over anything well-written but dry, any day. I will give it better marks because it made me go ha-ha. This is something I value.
And Pink Eyes is a story based around a single joke — Puppysmiles doesn't fit into the Wasteland — but it is a really funny joke, so much so that I didn't mind seeing it flogged over and over. When you're dealing with rabid zombies, homicidal Raiders, crazed robots and rape-happy slavers, an innocent filly is the last thing anyone expects to see.
What makes this joke work for so long is that no one ever sees Puppy coming. She never acts like you'd expect someone who's lived their whole life in the Equestrian Wasteland would act. Threaten her, and she won't understand it. Swear at her, and she giggles about using "funny words". Ponies killing each other in droves? She laments that they should learn to be nicer and stop fighting.
Puppysmiles is an unstoppable force of positivity, hopes and dreams in a world where those things have been dead for two-hundred years, and I loved every second of it. :D
But how does an innocent and impressionable — okay, she's not very impressionable, she's kind of oblivious and dumb XD — little filly survive in the Equestrian Wasteland? Well, first, she's got that suit. Along with keeping her safe from environmental hazards and maybe radiation — here ignoring that she's dead and doesn't actually care about such things — it's equipped with an AI that does what a Pipbuck would do for any other FoE protagonist. Granted, the AI, "Mister Voice" as Puppy calls it, isn't terribly intelligent, being designed only for use in suits that are supposed to be worn temporarily, but it's able to keep her apprised of what's going on around her, provides some commentary on things she doesn't understand and, in a roundabout way, is probably the best thing this story has going for it.
Because if there's anything mimezinga did right with Pink Eyes, it's give Puppy a goal. This could easily have been a hundred thousand words of a little girl wandering around a Wasteland, being dragged into this or that conflict with basically no agency of her own. And it probably could have worked, but it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun.
Instead, when Puppysmiles wakes up, she says that she wants to "go find Mom". And Mister Voice, being rather stupid for an AI, takes this to mean she wants to find the M.O.M.: Ministry of Morale. Thus begins the wackiest quest ever, as she flits from place to place, guided by the pink arrow on her HUD, meeting disappointment again and again but never losing her drive to go find her mom once and for all. It's cute and clever, and giving her agency as the inadvertent hero of her own story means, as I said, a much stronger plot, for all that she doesn't have much of a plan, ever.
Mister Voice also provides an important role as Puppy's foil, somewhat. I mean, you're talking about a little girl who thinks she's wearing a nifty-keen space suit, and likes to pretend she's "Space Captain Andromeda". Her AI companion is entirely unaware of anything going through her head, of course, and a lot of their interaction involves him making some entirely robotic observation and her complaining that he complains too much. (Mister Voice gains the ability to sass through the duration of the story, which is hilarious.) Again, it's another aspect that would have made the story far less effective had it been absent.
On that note, the other really good narrative idea here is the side characters. Admittedly, not all of them are terribly memorable or well built — there's one or two tertiary stories about OC romances that I never really cared about, even when I liked the characters involved — but the main issue is the effect Puppy has on them. Again, if you're not familiar with Fallout: Equestria, you can only imagine just how grim and gritty your typical Wastelander is. We're talking about a land where hope isn't even a memory; there's no future for most of these ponies other than dying from any number of maladies, monsters or mutants.
And where, in other stories, a Littlepip or a Blackjack must exhort their opponents to do or be better than they are, Puppysmiles convinces those around her to be better ponies simply by existing. By being herself, she gives them a taste of the Equestria that's been dead for two hundred years. The characters themselves comment on this late in the story, realizing they've been brought together against a common threat because of Puppy's influence, but the way that dynamic evolves is very organic, something you'll only notice if you're paying attention. I really liked that.
Okay, let's talk about those other characters. The main secondary character is one Henrietta Firebright, daughter of a griffon mercenary. She isn't always present — one very odd thing about this story is how little other characters are willing to help Puppy in the long term; this is lampshaded via one pony saying she's not "family", but especially when she met Watcher, I was kind of incensed that anyone would let her toddle off into the Wasteland alone, to say nothing of how this breaks the whole "gather a party of like-minded people" formula — but she gets a pretty strong arc, eventually becoming Puppy's most loyal confidant. The way they meet up is original and unexpected, and I never anticipated seeing her again after that first encounter, so when she showed up again and again, it was always a treat.
I mentioned the OC romance before; one such pair is Trigger Happy and Jammed Gun, security detail of a Wasteland town built near a series of tunnels under a mountain. Happy I liked almost immediately, especially once she starts feeling motherly protection urges toward Puppy. She's a good pony. But I never really cared about "Jamie"s long-standing crush on her, detracting, as it does, from the main plot of "what's Puppy getting into now?" There was one romance I liked, though…
A lot of this story's elements are obviously answers to Fallout: Equestria. Lonesome Pony, for instance, is the DJ of the Big 52, rather than DJ P0n-3, and he surprisingly becomes a major player later on, which I never expected. But most of his role is in giving us summaries of what happened in the previous chapter, which isn't terribly useful when you're reading a story all in one go. These scenes are often interspersed with banter between him and another DJ, Good Stuff, and while it's all done in the name of comedy, it was mostly just exasperating. I don't think I ever quite accepted his role, and I think the story could have worked just as well without, for all that he does come up with the "Yellow Ghost" legend that eventually gets Puppy free reign with certain factions.
Another "answer to FoE" comes in the form of Solaris, Inc., Pink Eyes' version of Stable-Tec. The company is, first off, hilarious, because they really tried hard to compete but were pretty bad at it. Despite, y'know, making a few dozen weapons platforms and launching them into orbit. Puppy encounters them in a place called Sun City, which is itself pretty darned interesting, and by that point, the entire company is being run by a maniacal AI called SolOS.
SolOS is a really fun villain. He's maniacal to a fault, a very serious and dour "I will rebuild the world in my image!" sort of AI. Puppy calls him Mister Blue. :V And literally everything she does, from accidentally meddling in his plans to flat existing, he just cannot deal with. She's the wrench in his gears that he never saw coming. The way she finally deflates his plans in the end is nothing short of astounding, and every interaction they have is hilarious.
Well, minus the first, which is a little more harrowing. See, SolOS can't register her as a pony, her being dead and all, so he thinks she's the AI of the suit, and only ever addresses her as such. It's enough to send even unflappable Puppysmiles into fits of existential despair. For a little while, anyway. Point is, it was a really strong idea to chew on: Is Puppy just a robot? She's not, but for a while, it seemed plausible.
Since she's introduced at around the same time, I should mention the other villain, Creepy Voice. Creepy Voice lives in Puppysmiles's head. She can take over Puppy's body. She has phenomenal cosmic powers. And I have literally no idea what the hell she was. c.c It's hinted she's some kind of nightmare creature, I guess? She only shows up two or three times, but the finale features her prominently. Creepy Voice was a thread that maybe isn't explored as deeply as it needed to be, but again gave you alternate angles to consider about just what Puppysmiles actually was.
You remember when I said Puppy was an exception in some ways? We eventually discover that there was a whole passel of these children in yellow hazard suits, called the Lost Herd, who escaped from Canterlot two centuries ago. Every last one of them was feral and insane, and stories are told of how they would wander into a settlement, tear everything apart, kill everyone, and then just disappear.
This becomes relevant in explaining Pink Eyes own formula: Puppysmiles is led by Mister Voice to a new place — be it a barn housing a crazed robot that's kidnapping foals or a city full of ponies mindlessly serving an AI's whim — where she's confronted with a problem she doesn't understand, and dismantles it through her charm, flawed logic and, frequently, violence.
The first couple times this happened, my disbelief was stretched pretty hard. The Lost Herd "children in environmental hazard suits are emotionally unstable murder machines" lampshade helped a bit, but I think it might also have had to do with the fact that the first two encounters were just "meet problem, beat problem to death", whereas later setpieces involved more intricate solutions. Yes, there was frequently violence, most of it directed against "bully-bots", but it became easier to accept.
(One of the things the suit provides for her is an inventory system, basically magical saddlebags of holding, with a voice-activated retrieval subroutine for non-unicorn ponies. By the halfway point, her shouting "Rock!" always meant that shit was about to go down, and I loved it every time.)
Everything up to this point has been primarily praise, so let's get to talking about things that didn't work in this story. And boy, there are a lot.
First, the narrator. I could never quite figure out what was up with it. Often talking directly to the reader, frequently adding their own commentary to the proceedings, describing locations and situations in imagery far beyond Puppy's reading level (here ignoring that it was zero), and hopping heads often, it was a mess. This was confounded by two things.
Each scene opens with a readout telling us the day since Puppy woke up, the time, and the location, and the time is always approximate. D: What was reporting this? Why did it never know what time it was? This drove me up the wall on more than one occasion. If you're going to be estimating something, don't round it to the nearest quarter, come on. >.<
The other thing was that, after the story is over, we're given a "where they are now" scene narrated by Watcher… and it's kind of intimated that he was telling the whole story? Except, maybe not? I honestly don't know. But the way Pink Eyes is narrated — minus the deep internal dives, of course — I really got the feeling that it was someone telling the story well after the fact. I mean, Fallout: Equestria is supposed to be Littlepip's memoir, published while she's asleep in the Single Pegasus Project. I think even Project Horizons does something like this, so while I figured Puppy wasn't actually the narrator, it stood to reason that someone was. But I can't be sure, one way or another.
I just have to say, I really wanted this story to have an unreliable narrator from Puppy's POV specifically. :/ I guess I can see why that wasn't done, but I do think it would have made Pink Eyes amazing.
Okay, next, the writing. This story had a ton of editors — it's so old that one of them was Samurai Anon from Ponychan; anyone remember him? I miss him ;_; — but they weren't enough to iron out its issues. I'm not even sure I know where to begin; just know that there are tons of errors, or just about every kind, and they're worst when occurring in the dialogue.
There's also a lot of strange pet words and phrases. "Chatty" shows up way more than I have ever seen in any story ever. "Bully-bots" was another phrase that, it seemed, had no alternative. And the whole thing with ponies being described as "pretty ponies"... like, what's with that? It's just such an oddly specific notion for Puppy to have been given. I mean, it fits, I've just never heard anything similar said about people, and it never quite sat right with me.
Referents were another issue, and I mention this only because of one specifically. Puppy is often referred to as "the filly in yellow". I found this amusing, because it conjures a comparison to The King in Yellow, a classic entry to the Lovecraft mythos, thus lending an ominous alienness to her presence. Especially after we learn about the Lost Herd.
(Side note: Puppy does eventually meet up with the Lost Herd. And the way they react to her, I was expecting the Bad End would be her wandering the Wasteland forever, a broken shell of herself, still looking for her mom, with the Lost Herd following behind and destroying everything in their wake. Didn't happen, I just wanted to get my headcanon out there. :V)
Oh boy, here's a good one: memes. Puppy has a tendency to say "I can has" and "Yush!" and everytime it happened, I just died a little inside. >.< And it's a shame, because some of Pink Eyes's best scenes involve her just acting like a little girl. She has a tea party with live tank ammunition. She tries really hard to imitate her mom when chastising wayward ponies. She's constantly worried about getting in trouble. Puppysmiles is always a charmer, and being reminded that she's just a kid through good child writing was great. We didn't need the extra-cutesy comedy language, nor the references to other fanfics, and I'm not just talking about other FoE side stories.
On that note, I pointed out to myself that when Puppy gets a word wrong — like I said, she's maybe kindergarten age and she can't read, on top of not being very bright — she tends to get it wrong in the way one would when writing the word, not saying it. This likely won't bother anyone without a strong linguistic background, but guess who's writing this review? :|
Oh yes, let's not forget (kind of going through my notes here to make sure I've covered all the bases), any time Puppy goes through some kind of change, the narrative likes being cute about it. "CreepyPup" for when she's possessed by Creepy Voice, "Puppetsmiles" after she goes into shock and Henri is trying to convince everyone else that everything is normal, and so forth. Yet another cutesy thing we did not need!
Another big issue with dialogue is expositionese. It appears to be a lingua franca on the Big 52. :/ Not a few characters will stand around, expounding on how things were and how they got the way they are and what things are like now, and the problems facing everypony that are likely to be resolved by Puppysmiles and a rock by the end of the chapter. On and on and on it goes, and it's never not exasperating.
On that note, infodumping and flat exposition are a big issue in the narrative, too. Fallout: Equestria side stories are usually chock full of world-building, and Pink Eyes is no different, but it was never really a strength of the story. We enter a new location, we get a page-long dump about its appearance and history. And this is all just coming from the bodiless, presenceless narrator whose identity is never apparent. This was a very consistent letdown, and despite the fact that you get a sense of the Big 52 as this long, dysfunctional community, I always wanted the world-building to be deeper, if not better executed. :/
Somewhat along those lines, and less of a complaint: this has the whole "level up" dialogue at the end of each chapter, just like every fucking FoE story that forgets it's not a video game. D: I hate that! But Pink Eyes at least has the wherewithal to mess around with the format. I mean, the first couple chapters steadfastly refuse to have any sort of leveling mechanic. And once they relent, the "perks" and so forth end up being a lot of fun. She gets things like "Oh no, Puppy, what did you do?" and that kind of stuff. :) It's better than it could have been.
Oh yeah. And while I distinctly misinterpreted a lot of stuff in this story, likely due to the way I was listening to it, things were not helped by there being two factions with the word "Herd" in their name. >:| Just saying.
Pink Eyes is really flawed in the writing department, is what I'm getting at here. But at the same time, I hope I can convince you that it's entirely worth reading. Like, even if you haven't read Fallout: Equestria; it might just be self-contained enough that you won't have a hard time understanding things.
Like, at one point, Puppy is sent to clean out a nest of mutant parasprites (if you know what a Cazador is from the Fallout games, it's those), and in the ensuing chaos and terror, one of the young ones dies. Puppy finds it and decides to keep it as a pet. Cue Puppysmiles hauling around a rotting insect corpse and everyone going, "Oh, god, get rid of that thing!" It's Mister Voice who finally convinces her that "Fuzzyball"s current status is the fault of her carrying it around with her, which sets her up with a horrible choice: can she let her beloved pet go for its own sake? She learns early on that sacrifice is an important part of being a hero, and watching this little filly have an emotional breakdown over a dead bug is just one of the most gripping and heart-wrenching things I have ever read. ;_;
You remember when I said that having a Fallout crossover starring a little filly named Puppysmiles could lead to nothing good? What makes this story work is the sense of tragedy that overhangs everything. Forgive me if I'm repeating myself here, but you look at Puppy, from her name to her character to her situation, and you know there's two ways it can end: either she finds her mom and her mom's a ghoul, or she doesn't find her mom, because her mom's dead. There is no happy ending for Puppysmiles, and you know this the minute you sign up to read Pink Eyes.
And that's what makes it so great. Because, for every laugh you have, you know that it's just a matter of time before the hammer falls and everything is pain. And, yeah, I'll admit that Pink Eyes sometimes swings tone from deadly serious to comedic without much finesse, but when you know you've got a limited time to enjoy yourself before
she finally found her mom ;_; I'm not crying, you are
WAIT BUT I'M WRITING THIS ;_;
Every joke becomes a precious, cherished thing.
Hi.
She's Puppysmiles.
Have you see her mom?
This is the saddest comedy I've ever read. D:
3.5/5
The most fun you'll ever have in the Equestrian Wasteland.
Of course, I'm also miffed at this story, because it makes my own FoE parody well and truly redundant, but oh well I guess. D: I got another longfic review to write, and then it's on to new longfics! The ride never ends. :B
Uh... she's more of an Abomination like in Old World Blues. She's not a ghoul.
If ever there were a story worth toughing out the rough edges of the writing, it's this one.
I wouldn't consider these all that unbearable considering that those can actually be part of a child-like mode of speaking? So, memes aside, they're still fairly relevant memes, and I'm certain I've heard actual children say those things too. There's worse memes to have in your story.
...And this story seems cute as hell. I mean, what's cuter than a corpse? :D
please don't ask4882087
That's the sense I got at the start, I'm trying to explain things in relatively simple terms. >:B It becomes clear only toward the end that that's not what she is.
4882095
They didn't fit her typical speech patterns, though, 'can has' especially. It was just done for teh lulz. :B
What are the other 3 cornerstone fics?
4882105
Ah, I see. I was under the impression from how you described her she might've had a lisp/her age leading to phrasing like that.
4882108
Past Sins, My Little Dashie and Background Pony, though the last one is debatable. Also the only one I haven't read yet. :B
Well, thank you for the review, I've read it with pleasure and I appreciated the comments you made about what did work and especially about what didn't. I have to say that a couple of the things you pointed out were specific choicec from my side and I'm not sure I would change them, but for the most part they are useful observations that I will keep in mind whenever I'll write something again.
Also, I'm grateful that you read the story and liked the idea. Thank You.
4882111
I was going to ask exactly this. The "important fics" folder has number 4 next to it but actually opening it displays no stories for me.
4882111
Real talk, I would’ve put Cupcakes as #4. Not because it’s good (at all), but because like FO:E it was both famous and spawned a whole sub genre of fics (which were also not good [at all]).
Anyway, I love everything about the fic as a concept you described here and hate everything that followed about it having flaws in the writing, which I’m way too much of a stickler about. I’ll have to at least give it a shot at some point.
I love me some Puppysmiles, but the whole lolcats speech almost kills the fic for me. But it still deserves to be considered a classic, and the ending hits you like a punch in the gut.
Hopefully you will do Heroes when it finishes.
4882111
I would argue that Anthropology fits better as one of the big four, even if it came out a bit later than Background Pony (which starts off amazing, and quickly degrades into trash)
4882111
That explains a lot. I loathe FO:E, and two of your other three as well. Background Pony gets a pass for being merely forgettable.
I have never read any of the Fallout Equestria fics. And I'm a pretty big Fallout fan. I realize a lot of the hook for these stories is the juxtaposition of Fallout's crapsack setting and ponies, but none of them have ever seen legitimately interesting to me. Pink Eyes, when it came out, seemed particularly eh... to me.
4882157
You're not missing much. FO:E has a lot of elements thinly reskinned from a FO3 walkthrough, then later lifted wholesale from New Vegas'DLC along with a grinding grimark that entirely misses Fallout's sense of humor and satire of the Cold War US. As you'd expect from someone whose only exposure to the game is Bethesda's version.
Project Horizons decides that's not grim enough, so staggers from rape to mutilation and back to the ol' rape well whenever the drama starts to thin. It's one of the few stories I've seen try to execute all three major rape tropes in one character! Rape as redemption, rape as backstory, and rape as drama all in one narrative.
(Edit: I almost forgot the pink mist and bomb collars that are taken straight out of Dead Money, only with the most made even more grimdark)
4882198
ech...no thanks. Fallout Equestria continues to not be my jam.
Ah, I forgot about this one. Added to the ol' RiL.
4882111
Life an Times of a Winning Pony has created a ton of other fics too, though.
4882111
Past Sins and My Little Dashie, eh? Might have to break down and read those soon too. Actually, one of those is already on my RiL...
4882153
I'm not sure if you're making a joke or being serious on BP.
4882233
MLD was my first fic... The author hates it and it's bad... But I enjoyed it at the time. Past Sins was also huge in the fandom, both were around before I joined I think they were both S1 fics.
4882136
That folder is actually completely different! :B I think I just forgot to delete it after emptying it.
4882149
Cupcakes is pretty high up there, too. Like I said, Background Pony is debatable.
'Course, you can also do a Big Four of garbagey gorefics, with Cupcakes, Rocket to Insanity, Cheerilee's Garden and, I dunno, Silent Ponyville or something. :B
4882152
Finishes? I'm not sure that's possible. :V And yeah, Anthropology is another contender, see above comment.
4882231
Honestly? Not old enough. :B
4882336
According to the author, he just needs to finish writing the epilogue at this point, so, hopefully, Heroes will conclude this year. There is a pretty amazing almost-complete reading by Equestria Narrator as well.
4882336
Rainbow Factory. Rainbow Factory is #4.
Come on, man.
4882366
I knew I was forgetting something obvious. >.<
4882384
Rainbow Factory only exists because Cupcakes exists. Cupcakes is the ur-pony-horror fic.
Also, biased as fuck opinion incoming, but Background Pony is definitely a quintessential MLP fic.
4882111
But like, the first two suck major ass
Mimey is pretty cute, but not as much as Retl/RevelRomp.
Pink Eyes was good fun when I first read it back in the day, and JESUS CHRIST at the ending I had a lie down, try not to cry, cry a lot moment with the afterlife airship
4882611
Yeah, they suck ass, that's why they're classic. <.<
4882624
MLD is a shitpile dumpster fire.
Pen Stroke can't fucking write. They're "classic" because they're old / early fandom stuff and come with unearned reverence.
4882634
Yup.
The more popular something is, in general, the worse it is. :B
4882087 More like an Adorablomination. :)
I've shied away from reading any Fo:E stories until now. PP, you convinced me to read this one, and for that, I'm eternally grateful. Thanks.
And Yush!
4882838
Well, I hope I haven't steered you wrong. :B
4882839 Oh, no. Well worth it. I consider the writing style to be complimentary to the story, since it is a Fo:E story after all, and the clash between simplistic Puppysmiles and a more complicated, fluid writing style would keep yanking me out of that warm pink glow. (Although I admit to wanting to grab a red pencil more than once.)
4882635
Also- yes. Project Horizons is being told as a campfire tale some centuries after the Day of Sunshine And Rainbows.
Also I've always liked the Level Up things when they're cleverly used. Like when the perk acts as a Chekhov's Skill later on.
4882838
A fair number of them are very good.
4882087
Canterlot / Pink Cloud Ghouls are essentially Ghost People, yes.
4883153 Canterlot Ghouls, yes, but Puppy Smiles is more along the lines of:
i.redditmedia.com/jIl3rtig2KewVW_IwtUYwXNeCBa22_k9FSyDn1RGkcw.png?w=559&s=8dd7ee855934174a37b7d2d2bfdb19d4
4883151
I more approve when it's used to further the narrative, or just done away with completely. Project Horizons's "Game Over" update was a real kick in the gut.
Otherwise, it's leveling up in a story. Stories aren't video games. <.<
4883158
Oh, yeah it was.
Also- A lot of them are adapted from PnP games. I think the leveling is a good way to keep track of the abilities and skills that a character possesses, and a good place to point to and say "oi mate" when people bitch about talents a character has.
This was one that was a real mixed bag for me. The cutesiness and everything I think I liked at the start, but wore down over time; likewise the underlying dumb innocent little filly meets the Wasteland thing. There were good pieces throughout (the one I still best remember is "Why did it have to be a retarded filly?" :V), but I was really ready for it to be done by the end, and don't especially remember how I reacted to the ending. Also, it seemed to me that it was highly implied that Creepy Voice (or some other character that showed up?) was the Nightmare, as in what possessed Luna to make her Nightmare Moon. And though that was kind of something subsequently taken up in the comics (since retconned away? one can hope), it still struck me as one of the worst NMM takes I'd seen in fanfic, especially since the nature of Nightmare Moon is something of an important piece of the background/past story.
To be fair, though, it's entirely possible that it's just a genre disconnect for me: I seem to have trouble with FoE comedies/parodies after maybe 30-50k words. (See for instance Duck and Cover, which I really enjoyed for the first few chapters, but then just couldn't particularly care to continue with despite nothing about the quality changing as far as I could tell.)
Glad you enjoyed it though, and I may check it out again once VisualPony is done with his reading.
4883151
My impression is that that's not what it was. It doesn't seem like the kind of story that someone would tell around a campfire in the first person, it's literally too long unless you're imagining it as (say) each chapter being told a different night, probably by different narrators or at least to different audiences, and there are areas that don't really fit that way (like the out of body experience at the start of chapter 34). Basically, I think the story isn't the story told in the epilogue--if you look at the framing around Scotch's story in the epilogue ("What happened to Scotch Tape?" the pegasus foal asked. [story] “She went to the zebra lands,” the zebra stallion told the filly. Then he looked at the green stallion. “Accounts vary as to what actually happened there.”), you see that it's either an omniscient narrator interjecting or Blackjack's memory/interpretation of what she'd heard at some previous point, since she wasn't awake for it. Similar with at least some of the others. I think that PH is, basically and with a couple exceptions, just what BJ's experiencing as it happens.
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My understand/recollection is that CV was something like the Nightmare, but not quite. I believe she says something about Nightmare Moon having been too powerful or something, but don't quote me.
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I'm not sure if the author replying to comments on a review page is considered bad taste, and please note that i'm not trying to improve your opinion of the story, but it is stated in the story itself that nightmare noob wasn't nghmare moon: the little nightmare was a childish entity that didn't have the power OR the experience of NMM, she was some sort of dark entity spawned from the necromantic magic that bound puppy to the suit, a little like the entitiy that talks with lilpip hrom the zebra magic book. so, not nightmare moon, but it is stated in the book, really, at the beginning of chapter 20.
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No, that's actually good, getting your authorial expertise in here. :) I thought it went something like that!
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Agreed.
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If the story nowhere implies NMM was creepy voice or something like it, sorry for incorrectly reading that in. If I get around to listening to it later, a correct interpretation of that facet would likely cause me to reassess at least some of how I view the story. Thank you for the information.
I found Pink Eyes was an amazing story - from the aspect of it kept me riveted from start to finish (ignoring the fact that it did need some/lots red-pen lovin'.)
But when I finished chapter one, and we learn that she's a Canterlot Ghoul and is too young to understand what the hell is going on or what happened to the world, the story earned a "horror" tag from me. And I don't mean that in a negative connotation. I was genuinely horrified at the implications here: would she age (probably not), would she learn and gain understanding of the world (again, probably not), would she find her mother (my magic 8-ball was predicting "not bloody likely"). I was in shock when I got done with chapter 1. For me that, was the sign of a good story and I wasn't disappointed. By the end, I enjoyed the ride and had absolutely no idea how the hell I got there from the beginning. All, I know is that I had fun getting there.
And if "yush!" was/is a meme-thing, I had no idea, but it worked perfectly me for me as I could easily hear a 6-year old saying something like that. So, I liked it.
And, now, anytime I hear, "Rock!" I just know that shit is going to go down!
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"Yush" is just how people talk on the internet. <.<
I still like my idea for a really bad end: She finds out her mom is dead, comes to understand what that means, loses the last of her equinity and joins the Lost Herd, wandering the Wasteland aimlessly for eternity. I really thought that was a possibility after she met up with the Ensign, given how she reacted to Puppy. :V
I don't know why, but I thought this review made years ago. Anyways!
I actually cried at the end of Pink Eyes because it was just saddening. I think the only time I can remember something like this happening to me in real life is when my sister came crying into living screaming that my cousin, Angel, was dead in Florida. And had been dead for two weeks. Of course this was 3 years ago.
Enough of my personal life, but I feel connected to Puppy in that way, to find out a loved one was dead for so long and to find out is such a heart breaking experience. Although there was one thing I don't think I understood in to story: What EXACTLY is the pink mist? From what I saw it can do one of three things: It can make someone internally bleed to death, melt the skin off a poor soul, or it can make your brain pretty much expand to the point of bursting out or your eyes. (The third one is actually a hell of a way to go)
4912726
Yeah, there were definite waterworks in that final scene for me, too. :)
Pink Cloud is defined more in depth in FoE and Project Horizons.
Late response, but I wanted to thank you as a reader of PE some 4.5 years ago give or take (how time flies). I don't remember word for word Puppy's adventures, but I do remember the ending quite well and there's a video I found on YouTube that kinda sorta summarizes the story in a tribute to Puppy with appropriately tear-inducing music.
As to some of the opinions on the cornerstones of FiM Fic literature, I happened to enjoy some of those, maybe because I enjoy works that really expand on the groundwork of the show, or make me think/feel about something quite strongly. FoE was definitely dark, and not an easy read in the slightest because of it, but the ending with that bit of hope helped, LP's strong desire to fight the good fight (or maybe I'm misremembering). If she had simply gunned through all the problems like some of the old run & gun video games that literally had no point beyond a leaderboard based on how many kills you made it wouldn't have been nearly as satisfying. Plus it led to some great art and music and even a couple of video games of their own (sadly one is stuck in a long-duration development situation, and the other is dead because of the stupid Flash shut down).
I seem to recall getting into Past Sins because I was bored, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but then again I am a softie where kids are concerned like Nyx, and Twi is on my list of top 5/10 best pones so I'm a bit biased that way.
MLD is IIRC a simple story that just wants to be cute and warm-fuzzy with a dose of tragedy. If you're looking for a strong bond story, not it, but if you can accept the face value snuggly appeal, it does it's job, plus it was one of the few fanfics I shared with my stepdad who is chronically disinterested in pony that made him see the polychromatic light if only for a short bit.
Background Pony is not an easy read, and it may not be the next Shakespeare or Lauren Ingalls or Socrates in terms of great writing, but I read a blurb on EQD that said that one of the big Ivy League schools put it on their list of recommended summer readings a number of years ago, which has to say something. I was rather surprised that a school of that nature would even accept the idea of fanfiction existing in the first place and would insist that their premiere students only study from appropriately CLASSIC literature (if it's not 200+ years old it must be puerile garbage or seriously wanting from an overly enthusiastic amateur).