Fallout 4 is nearly upon us! Rejoice fellow wastelanders!

6516785

Don't take him too seriously. He's a member of the Foalcon group. Can't be quite right in the head.

A couple of songs that I feel fit the overall theme of this chapter very well (though more from the spoken words than the tunes themselves):
Frame of Mind - Darkmateria
Do You Know That You're Insane - Sean "cheshyre" Hodges

We're almost to the halfway point.

I forgot how much I enjoyed this chapter in particular. <3
I dunno, but this particular AU, the ambiguity of which reality is reality, and Fish being put back into a fish-out-of-water assess-and-learn situation really does it for me. It's not a fun chapter, but an entertaining and memorable one.

6618920 Foreshadowing too.

6605065
You . . . wouldn't like me when I'm whiny.

6618985
And home to one of the top three Star Wars references in the story, for what it's worth.

6515795

most of it is pointless filler and none of the characters or anything that happens makes a single shit of difference in the end

You're kinda very wrong there. In fact I would say he did the exact opposite of pointless filler. I love this story to bits but almost everything that happens to Blackjack feels like it happens specifically to give her an ammo for a conflict later on. Almost too specifically.

A great example is when she helps Deus later on with his physiological problems. every problem he has she's experienced or can relate to. Later on it feels like every choice was too spot on and had the exact impact Blackjack needed it to have without her knowing it needed to. Like getting a perfect run in a time loop without going through it twice.

Like I said I love this story . And to be honest not really in spite of that, but partially because of it. Late in the story every choice she made picks up momentum and considering how long the story is it gets crazy very quickly, with everyone banding together in the end and even some random groups joining in because of her direct help in the past or indirect effects she caused.

Yes A LOT of chracters die and they die fast but that's what happens in an all out war, it may feel like X's story has less meaning cause they didn't survive, or why add character Y when they were barely there before they died. But realistically not every characters story ends peacefully or sometimes even fully.

That's just my observations though, you're entitled to your own opinion and while I don't think you should be quite so angry about it, you'd only be so disappointed if you cared about the outcome.

6516785 from a fan that loved the ending. Thank you for sticking with the story to the bitter end

6619119 thanks!

Uh Somber you may need to check out this chapter, there is a messup with the italicizing here! Also from the beginning to this chapter, I had this face trying to understanding what the heck is going on. Around the middle I believe, I managed to get a grasp of what was happening, albeit a tiny one, I still had to reread the whole thing just to get an understanding.

Still, am loving this again. You know, suddenly, I find the not saving ponies in this story to be a meme (Not so sure if I used that word right...) right now... Not in a mean way mind you, just kinda makes me laugh and groan at the same time. Well I'm done speaking for now, now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to listen to this music while waiting for the the next update

maybe I needed[.i] to rest according to Glory...

Taht needs to be fixed, everything past that is in italics Dx

Dude, awesome and well done chapter, man.
That's a little fear I have right there, the whole delusions thing Dx

oioioi.

Keep it up!

Great fic. Probably going to reread it once it's finished.

I finally nailed Midnight.

Plot twist! It was a nail gun.

Bits of curly pink mane were trapped in the sticky mess.

Pinkie?

“Blackjack... what do you remember happening at the construction site?”

Computer Glory lost the ability to sentence?

“You said the thing I did was at that construction site, right?”

Construction site with the Seekers ambushing and BJ trying to save the one?

I’d popped out and put two .45-70 rounds from Duty and Sacrifice

Those are lever-action rifle rounds.

He’d gone done in a heap, one slug of lead right in his brain.

"down"

There was a tiny strand of curly pink mane stuck to one.

Ok, I get it now.

Instead, I did something worse. Something infinitely worse.

The punishment for trying to kill a crazy mare I guess.

I combusted or... didn’t coal magically become something else? Rubies? Rubies came from coal, right?

Oh come on, come on. YES! Diam...
...nope
Still dumb.

Footnote: New Quest Perk: Rationality: You can now sleep successfully and will no longer suffer penalties for sleep deprivation.

Wait, no penalties... that means no sleep. She doesn't need sleep now but she can sleep. HA!

6619335

Okay, maybe I needed[.i] to rest according to Glory...

Yo, Somber; saw this damaged tag as well. Looks like it italicized the rest of the chapter. Might already be fixed with how often I take breaks while reading.

Soooo, with Fallout 4 out, how many more Fallout: Equestria spin-offs will we see popping up?

needed[.i] t

you should correct this, as the italics go on for quite sometime

6623293 Nope, those broken italics are still there on the 13th.

6629405 got it. Sorry.

6629405
Hmmmmm, maybe my comments are too large to be noticed.

6630036 nope. I am very forgetful.

Dont know why but when I heard this song I thought of this story ..... Just change he to she.

Same with this song

Hey, isn't that this controversial, super long FOE spin-off I have heard about...?

6636791 I suppose so. It's really bad. Long and boring... terrible...

6636883 yeah, that's what I've heard! Wait until this German dude finally gets of his lazy ass and makes his video review for it - probably ripping it a new one

You know, i was planning on just doing a quick run-through with this to see what a FOE story has (Wanna do FO: New Vegas one) and make my own, but when i first saw how many words per chapter... yeah no. this is going to take at least maybe, ... , 3 days at least 2 weeks tops.

Chapter 43 was certainly.. confusing. So Blackjack killed Boing? I just feel confused right now, and processing what I read. Hmm..

6649035 The rubicons are chapter 16, chapter 32, chapter 49, and 66. Good luck. Godspeed.

6650187

You know, you could use these ----->

6650187 Thank you very much for your review. I wish the story had been better.

6650187 One of the other points about P-21's death, which can easily slip under the radar (I know I didn't see it until a second read or specifically searching for it) is that it's the point where Blackjack begins, at least consistently, to see Scotch Tape as an adult. There's a certain tension that results, in that it probably freed up Blackjack a bit more to worry less about making it back to watch over her, but also meant that using her age as an excuse to exclude her from the tunnel run came at the cost of not only hurting her feelings, but doing so knowing she was lying about it. Rampage freed/unstuck the train they were on, letting the others get to the launch facility. I disagree a bit on the final handling of Glory's death, as I felt all the resolution needed was covered in the launch/bomb scene itself, with the rest piling on a bit.

6654946 The show quoting is something of a mixed bag for me. At times, they are incorporated pretty smoothly and fit both the character speaking and the situation well enough that using them as a means of drawing a connection strikes me as reasonable. Other times, less so. For me, for quite some time the pop cultural references, sometimes very pronounced, took me out more often and more strongly than they do in the last couple years. It could be I just got used to them, or after having played Fallout I've come to see that it's a feature of that franchise as well as MLP and, for that matter, FoE.

6655030 Pop culture references are DANGEROUS. Either never use them, or you have to use them all the time. I made a big mistake with references in the second half because once I started, I couldn't stop! They're insidious.

6654870 That's fine. You've read a lot of fics, so I value your feedback, and most people agree that chapter 6 is where it starts to find its legs.

6655057 I know. But sometimes, it just comes so naturally, and it's hard to stop thinking of them once you do. For instance, your response drew an immediate mental connection resulting in "POP CULTURE REFERENCES—NOT EVEN ONCE". They really are insidious.
13ashleyhammons.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/d.jpg

I'm not even halfway through, and I still don't know if you wrote a story or decided to construct a tear factory.

Certain parts were much more depressing than anything I read in the original FO:E, or most of the stories on this site, period. Fuck you, you monster, and good job.

6658089 Yeah... there's a saying: never write about what you don't know. I hadn't played FO and FoE hadn't revealed what the Enclave were so... yeah. It made things quite... interesting... later on.

Holy crap this was a feels destroyer. The hospital, the Seekers, then killing Boing... Oh man Blackjack is an emotional made. I wanna hug her, so bad!

Also... Wasn't Nails one of the ponies who raped her on the Seahorse?

6658583 yes

6658594
*Squee* I get warm fuzzies when ths author responds. Sorry.
And I that thought so. Perhaps not all of the Harbingers hate her. This could work!
(This is totally the first time I read this. Loving it so hardcore)

6658089 Trust someone who grew up in an authoritarian regime to recognize that sort of thing.
6658102 Well, it ended up giving a lot more flexibility than would otherwise have been the case, at least. And led to some nice internal diversity.
Also, I don't know if it's a rule, but I think a useful guideline is that unless you're going for comedy, you can have a person/group be high-grade evil or incompetent, less so both. They don't go that well together. In some respects, Cognitum was tending towards that area, but I think vanilla's Enclave went even further on the incapacity to do much right aspect. With Cogs, a lot of the problems were very specifically related to Blackjack in different ways. With them, they routinely punched below their weight class in areas ranging from personnel management to espionage to tactics to grand strategy. Storm Chaser, Crosswinds, and the rest were a nice contrast to that.

^.^ /) /)

6668043 It's possible you'll find that the story's dials don't go eleven, they start there.

Is there enough change here to be worth waiting for the uploads, or should I go find the completed version? The wait is killing me x.x

6673701 fluttermac?

Edit: oh, you only ship Fluttershy and Big Mac. Sorry.

6680803
You could be right, since this comment is in the same chapter as mine. I mean, it shouldn't matter, but it could explain things. I'll have to ask knighty sometime, it's making my audiobook listening irritating. :B

Now having reread this chapter again, I'm almost certain that's it's my favorite one in the story. Sure, it may not be as iconic as "Play" or "Black", but it's incredible in how surreal and evocative it feels. The chapter develops very smoothly and Blackjack's actions are given the care and explanation they deserve. Heart wrenching, yet with a lingering sense of hope; just how I like my Fallout Equestria stories.

6737965 I think it's in a lot of people's lists of favorite chapters. It's one of mine, especially post volume two. But I still remember stopping a few times while reading it when it first came out, to make sure that another chapter hadn't been published that I'd missed. It's potentially very disorienting, which in context I consider a good thing given that it engenders a parallel response to what Blackjack's going through.

You know I didn't make the connection the first time or even the second time I read this but now...

They looked dead to me… all forty-two of them.

Forty-two foals... Scoodle, the forty in Fluttershy Clinic... and Boing.
Wow...

‘Happyhorn Gardens: May all find peace and healing within’.
I touched it gently and moved away to the southeast. Maybe I had. A little. More than I deserved...

It still makes me cry a little seeing this. A place of healing that could never fulfill it's purpose was able, in the end, to save the one pony that perhaps matters most to this terrible wasteland.

I see the chapter count has increased dramatically. Keep this up, and I'll be waiting for VisualPony to catch up with book 4 instead of the other way around! :)

So, I liked chapter 42 because it was fun. I like this chapter because it's good. The mental hospital simulation is right up there with the spot in FoE where Littlepip erases two days of her memory of killing ghouls with Blackjack as part of her plan. I mean, that chapter of that story really fucked me up, because it was just such a novel use of the story setting, not to mention a narrative technique I'd never seen before.

Here, you've got something similar (though with the added bonus of actually telling us what the fuck happened) along with an unexpected exploration of the allure of the post-apocalypse genre and a full deconstruction of Blackjack's character. Like, this will probably be what I point people at when they're all "ew y u liek PH".

And I like the direction you took for what BJ did wrong. I was a little confused at first because I had no idea who she'd killed (I thought for a brief moment it was Charity, which would have sucked, because I know I saw a comment somewhere about her dying eventually :C), but then I realize the who isn't really what matters. She's gotten to a point where killing is reflexive, her first reaction to a hostile situation, and she murdered a filly (and her parents?) in a blind rage. That's not something you easily live down, not even after she's truly come to terms with what happened to 99. (Though not, I notice, with her rape. She's not as tough as she thinks she is.)

So let's see, the Dealer's identity remains tantalizingly out of reach. My money's on Garnet right now, which would be exciting, since he's always been described as a "he". Ah, and the question of what was fucking with her head at Hippocratic is interesting as well. Also, I find the time frame of this story hard to swallow. This has all been only a month? I mean, FoE took place over, what, two months? I can at least agree with Blackjack that it feels like it's been years.

Oh yes, and I have to commend you. I imagine the A/N's in these chapters are the ones that came originally from GDocs, yes? And one or two chapters ago, you were making noise about this story becoming too long and needing to be wrapped up. I can only imagine how readers must have felt when you published this and, in light of what you said then, they suddenly were faced with an "it was all a dream" scenario with a very believable "it was all in your head" tilt. That's devious. :3

7171493
Okay, Blackjack. The next question is multiple choice. Arbu happens. Do you:
A. Consider what this means and how it applies to your life in a measured, careful way.
B. Drama queen!
C. Undergo an existential crisis.
Blackjack: Ooh! Ooh! I think I know this one! Wait. Do I have to choose just one of B and C?

7168345

Phoof. o.o What a chapter this was. a ride from start to finish, probably the best one yet. Which means it's time for disembodied unicorn head rape!

Well, chapter 43 featured a kind of disembodied unicorn head rape. Hopefully it wasn't too disappointing in that regard. I know how much you liked that part in FoE. :V

7176912
>>Murdering a filly.
I think the closest parallel to this in FoE might have been when on Friendship Island one of the Enclave invaders vaporized a filly (one of the ones from Arbu, I think, who was distracted/afraid of Littlepip because obviously). It never affected me in the same way, in that I'm not sure there was much follow-up/change as a result of it, and because I just found the pathos of a couple coincidences happening resulting in one particular filly dying who might otherwise have lived (and might not, since it was a battle zone on an island and all) doesn't match up with consequences of decisions that Blackjack knew were bad/unhealthy at the time resulting in her accidentally attacking a kid herself.

>>Time span.
It's something that I can more or less buy, with the understanding that there's very, very little downtime after leaving 99 for the second time. It's something were, if you can let the general power level of the group slide, and thus say that they recover from things very rapidly or just keep moving and doing things even when they should be pretty tired or beat down. That said, some of the difference is reflective of the narrative styles, with FoE being an edited after the fact retelling, and PH as-it-happens (mostly). But yes, it does feel like forever, and even spotting it the claimed time frame, it's the kind of month/weeks that take off years.

>>What readers felt.
IIRC, I went through several phases, including at points wondering if I was reading the right story, if there'd been a chapter update I'd missed, and genuine trepidation that it was going that route. Because it could work cohere, and the first portion (quarter? third? I don't think all the way to half) was that disorienting, especially when you bear in mind how few breaks in continuity there are (dreams, orbs, etc. notwithstanding), and how generally not much has happened in the gaps.

Most of this chapter I found extremely trippy and confusing. Luna would be proud. Great work!

To those off us that have had to to deal with issues of our own, this chapter hits home. Even more so to those that got a second chance

Bloody hell.. this chapter sure gotten me a big headache but i could also see myself in the same kind of scenario BJ was in but this was a good chapter none the less! :)