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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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I've always been of the opinion that a chapter needs to be exactly as long as it has to be to encapsulate a single event or theme. This time... it took a lot to do that. In fact, this is the largest chapter I've written, and by a good margin. Yet when I read through it, I knew I had to keep it as a single entry. It's all one big event, and breaking it up seems like it diminishes that. There's a lot packed into this one place...
Also, I think this one might top Carrion for nastiness. Just... in somewhat different ways.
6962701 User "CoolBugz", last remote login: 73,750 days ago. for the decoding?
And huh, makes you wonder what a changeling would do, exposed to the IMP.
Wait, What?
A purple alicorn is trying to bring back the dead? Is this a Twilight clone trying to fix things?
Damn, I LOVE Sickle. She's reliable, she's fun, she actually looks like Neutral Good, even if her idea of good is kinda violent one. She's self-reliant, follows orders albeit reluctantly, very hard to killa and she even shares her booze! Damn, foul-mouthed warrior who shares her booze with party and loves good sex after the fight.
Daaamn I want her so much. Dusty, you dumb dumb stallion she's the catch, grab her and love her and don't let her go!
And boy, that moment where Whisper teaches her right from left is so cute and shows that she can actually be grateful to someone, she just doesn't get many chances.
Goddamn this story is amazing.
Long chapter is long, but expertly written and thoroughly enjoyable.
Really nice writing, lots of tense moments and great character moments.
I'm starting to really like Sickle. She might be sadistic and rude, but she's dependable and kills only raiders, actually helping her teammates.
Don't worry about the length. It was the right length. That's all that matters.
Like a baby :3
A really painful baby.
So, like a regular baby!
Whisper is really, really good at stumbling across these incredibly fucked-up moments that aren't themselves so horrible inasmuch as the sheer amount of prerequisite fucked-up that led to it.
Now the only question is whether the alicorn is the long-term villain or future party member. IIRC this takes place really late in FO:E, so the alicorn hivemind getting Littlepip'd and Velvet friendshipping the stragglers can't be that far off.
One part I really liked in this chapter was the scene where Starlight was shot and the characters had to, y'know, deal with it. As much as I loved FO:E, the... "videogame-iness" of how guns and bullet wounds were treated got old after a while.
Of course, then there's Sickle, who's living in the normal FO:E-verse where getting shot is no big deal, but eh. It works here.
As always, looking forward to the next chapter!
I have to say, I like this rendition of the FOE universe quite a bit...moreso than other fics. It's dark; because that's the world they live in, but there is the good; which sometimes gets too glossed over I think.
Well done.
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The benefits of excessive amounts of combat drugs and super restoration potions! And also being too stubborn and proud to let on that you're really hurt as you're coughing up blood...
But yeah, I really wanted to treat injuries realistically. Healing potions are still pretty amazing things, since if you can stop the bleeding, you're very likely to survive whatever injury you've suffered, but actually repairing all the damage done takes a lot more work. At the same time, bullet wounds can be... weird. I've known people who were shot and didn't realize how severe it actually was until some time later (Such as thinking they were just bumped by something).
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I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that! Especially with a chapter like this, I sometimes worry that it might seem like there's too much focus on the bad things, and too little on the good. I'm really glad to hear it's working well. Even in the Fallout: Equestria world, I think the good stuff is more important than the dark stuff.
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The universe makes even little good things stand out; like giving the two prisoners healing potions. I think you're doing a fantastic job!
Very curious about why the raiders didn't have any viable emotion to draw from.....well, that's assuming it's strictly love.
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i think that may BE twilight.,.. think about it, in FoE near the end, a alicorn of similar build pulled littlepip out of her safe room prison... another one (passably the same one) in the canterlot ruins, fighting the goddess for control... i think that IS her... it makes sense... would be a nice twist for sure! ( i know twilight was pulled into the culdren thing, but her body was never confirmed to have been dissolved)
btw phoenix, another great chapter done, another wait for the next! but it will be a wait worth it! cannot wait till then! keep it up!!
So the messages so far are
NOT WHAT THEY SEEM
LAST MESSAGE REPEATS
User "CoolBugz", last remote login: 73,750 days ago.
3 different encryptions though. rot13, substitution and a base 64 encode.
Fantastic chapter. Loved the plot, the characters, and most of all the length! I love a long chapter, keeps me deeply rooted to the story. Also, I really really hope we see more of that alicorn. Totally awesome.
Nice chapter!
One thing that surprised me comparing this is fic with other FoE fics is how parts are more realistic.
Like when she got a bullet and all the consequences. Instead of just drink healing potions and that is it.
I like it :)
This chapter was military as heck! The way Dusty had them move, hold corners, and stuff! Freaking smooth writing!
And speaking of Dusty, his sudden change of attitude dealing with the hostages:
Whatever happened to make him leave, he is clearly still a model of the gallant soldier, no matter how messed up he is inside.
Anyone ever played Starcraft? I hear the stimpack sound effect in my head whenever she does that, now.
I share this opinion. In my mind, though Sickle is a murdering psychopath, she's not an ex-Raider. To be a Raider is to be a feral ghoul without the extra radiation. Gone and irredeemable.
Dusty totally suspects Whisper of being far more dangerous than she claims.
Sickle reminded me of when I was playing as Brick in Borderlands. I was fully into the beserker mentality by this point in the game, so when I saw a turret my first thought was "I wanna punch it!" It went about as well as Sickle's attempt.
Wait, how did Sickle head-butt a ceiling turret?
I like how you go into so much detail with the gore. Not because I'm a sicko that's turned on by it (I might be but that's irrelevant) but because it shows how disturbed Whisper is by it. She can't help but pay attention to it, and it shows in the amount of detail she gives.
Well, Sickle likes to turn a raider's favorite method of killing and turning it around on them "all ironic like". You'd hate me for this if you weren't a fictional character but you might have some things in common.
HA, and right after I wrote that other comment.
So this story takes place after "The Day of Sunshine and Rainbows" right? I remember mention early on about rainbows. So we're after Littlepip explodified the Goddess, and the alicorn no longer has it's hive mind. Wonder what it's motives are?
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It's a small utility access hallway, so its ceiling is just high enough to let ponies pass by without banging their heads on things, but not as high as a regular hallway. Plus, Sickle is huge. Like, Troubleshoes huge. And then there's the horn-spear mounted atop her helmet. Normal buildings are a little small for her.
I kind of picture her going around with her head held low, more even with her body rather than held up like most ponies, just so she isn't smacking her head into doorjams, rafters, etc. Plus, it kind of contributes to a more bear-like appearance (Though if I had to compare her to a species other than ponies, it's probably be a hyena. A huge hyena).
Yep, and that's what worries her. Starlight was intentionally quoting Sickle with the "ironic like" line.
Yup! The next chapter, and the one after it, give a little more detail on that. At least, it will once it's done editing. Hopefully will be by the end of the weekend. Of course, that's what I said the weekend before. And the weekend before that...
I'm impressed with this story, it's on par with the really good FoE stories without completely copying a formula. The characters are well balanced and make sense. overpowered characters can make sense and can sit well in a story, but more often than not it seems ridiculous. Sickle is a character that I can see in my head perfectly, her every action is a dynamic and 3d facet of what I know of her personality. If there is one thing I'd say you did better than FoE and FoEPH; it's that not only are your characters realistic in their demeiner, but the setting is realistic as well. Every anomaly has an explanation. I'm sure there are plot holes somewhere, but so far I don't see any. What i'm trying to say is; it's good, i like it, 'sgood
Hah. Saw that coming.
Oh. That kind of hungry. It's far too easy to forget she's a changeling
Heh.
Damn, she's smooth.
Haahaha, nice.
Why, of course pipbucks have those mapped
I'm suddenly getting the uncomfortable feeling they might've been spotted, and the raiders are waiting to corner them
Well okay. That doesn't look like an ambush
But of course
Here's hoping the raiders haven't ripped it out and repurposed it...
Then again, this whole trip is hoping no passing raider pissed into these servers anyway
Sure, but that does mean you probably won't need any special types to connect to the terminals around this place, which is a good thing.
Couldn't she just use Starlight's pipbuck for that, though?
Oh. Shit
Unsurprising, given the fact they booted up its backup power source.
Oh yay. Security robots
Yeah... who did not see that coming?
Wait, that means it only just happened...
Right. They started up a bunch of dormant security systems and sicked them on the raiders, I guess.
Somepony get this mare some grenades, sheesh
She's not being very economic there...
Yeah, I guess she scavenges where no one else dares to scavenge.
Oh, and there's now a bullet healed in her rump. She probably considers it 'internal armor'
Haahaha. Brilliant. She could just cut off both ears, though
For a moment I thought she'd turn out to be ambidexterous, just to further confuse matters.
Say what you want about her, she certainly isn't stupid
She should've used clipboards instead of serving trays; those things are freaking indestructible
Welp, yikes. Guess that question's answered.
Uhm. As I pointed out before... that wound should be healed from the "extra-strength" healing potion she consumed earlier.
"Not now, Dusty. When we get back."
I'm shippan' dem and you can't stop meeeeeee!
I'm fairly sure Sickle respects Starlight. somehow. Possibly for standing up for those mares? For reining her in when she was about to do or say stuff ponies in that situation really didn't need to see or hear? Hmm.
Oh, well now. That's a pretty nice haul.
Main force was away raiding?
Ohhh. Heh. I wonder when they'll figure out those are mostly harmless
Poor alicorn is probably wondering why she can't find any friends.
Y'know, given the situation, I thought they'd be a hell of a lot more eager to get away from that place.
Well, it's your lucky day! She's not a pony!
I reeeeally want that alicorn to just look up, wave a hoof at them and say "Hi!".
Well, that's not good...
Oh-kay... what the fuck. This alicorn is seriously addled in the head
Right, That's Base64. Easy peasy.
Coolbugz, huh?
Remarks and corrections:
> those who lead their own bands, like Pike
led, not lead. The only "lead" pronounced as "led" is the metal. And given the story's tense (and Pike's current state), definitely past tense :p
> "Settle down!" Dusty said. "You know the deal: combat time means listen to me. Now settle down." Starlight breathed through gritted teeth.
> "We need to stop this bleeding," Dusty said.
That needs a paragraph split after Dusty's dialogue, and another when he starts speaking again. Basic rule: don't put actions of multiple characters in a single paragraph.
> slowly fading as whatever she hit burnt away.
"burned", not "burnt".
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Starlight's PipBuck would let her connect, but little more. She doesn't have the access tool Littlepip had to remove encryption and crack passwords.
The debug cables Whisper found allows whatever device she plugs in to have significant authority over a computer's spell matrix, to the point of being able to halt or alter whatever is running on it. The portable terminal isn't strictly necessary (She could use Starlight's PipBuck for that), although it does have some basic debugging tools that help out. Plus it means Whisper doesn't have to borrow Starlight's PipBuck any time she wants to do something. All together, it's not quite as handy as Littlepip's fancy access tool, since she has to dig around in active spell-processes and such, but it gets the job done, as well as having some more utility.
Given her skill with firearms, her options are basically to either miss slowly, or miss quickly, and missing quickly at least has the advantage of keeping ponies' heads down.
That and maaaybe hitting through sheer volume of fire.
She's even in an office! But I guess raiders aren't known for making the best life choices...
It stopped the bleeding and did a lot to close things up, but it wasn't enough to fully heal all her injuries. That's why the gash on her cheek only narrowed, rather than vanished.
I absolutely love the transition that occurred between these two comments.
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Psh. I still say she's just trying to find friends. But all she finds are broken ones, and she can't fix them!
As someone who came into this from your other stuff and hasn't read much FO:E stuff elsewhere, this chapter made me wonder something about FO:E canon.
If you look at the traditional description of a wendigo, FO:E raiders match up fairly closely to it, being ponies that have been so heavily corrupted by violence that they've effectively become monstrous. I have to wonder whether all of the conflict and hatred between the Three Tribes wasn't actually creating wendigos, and the depiction of "windigos" as frost monsters was a slow change by future generations in order to substitute the uncomfortable truth of what their own ancestors had done to themselves with a more comfortable threat from outsiders.
I never got very far in the original FO: E. It bored me, the time jumps way too far apart and random. Not to mention how inconsistent the pacing is. However, this story is great so far. Much better than the original. More going for it.
Boy, it's been a long time since I've been quite so sickened by such an innocuous line. That is proper fucked up, man.
7227587 We that explains so much while being so fucking horrible also explains why there are so many raiders if they can recruit through torture.
Because all mares clearly are lesbians, duh. Everypony knows that.
Okay. Now I know for a fact that alicorn knew they were there.
Now here is the real question; does it know one of them isn't a pony?
remember that they are practically psychic by nature, so it wouldn't surprise me if the thing just up and knew one of them was a changeling.
Trixie was from pre-apocalypse. She knew what changelings were. So I'm just throwing it into the dark that it may "know".
Those raiders got what they FUCKING deserved. Animals. Wait that would be insulting to animals, let's call them monsters and leave it at that.
Last bit with the alicorn was creepy as shit. I don't think that was the same alicorn cause the one starlight and whisper met seemed to act different compared to this one, could be wrong, only time will tell.
Am awesome chapter dude!
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Alicorns have different abilities based on coat colours: purple and violet Alicorns have greater teleportation, Blue ones cast illusions, and green ones are slightly psychic. These are the traits of the Four Unicorns that formed what would become The Goddess, with Trixie herself being the dominant and active persona of the four. Since the coat colours are Violet like the first one they met chances are that it can only teleport, however even then the story here takes place sometime after Littlepip indirectly killed The Goddess and destroyed the Maripony facility that housed the IMP material used to make Alicorns. Several weeks later at the Battle of Red Eyes' Cathedral, most of the surviving Alicorns have already begun to develop their abilities further, allowing other types to gain access to the same powers as shown when a group of Alicorns bearing the spectrum of coat colours all cast a teleport simultaneously. If anything, this individual Alicorn we see is trying to further experiment with her unlocked potential. But even then it will only be a matter of time until the NCR (New Canterlot Republic) begins study into the efforts that led to many Alicorns to joining with Red Eye after The Goddess died: research into the creation of Alicorn Stallions (because of either the fact that The Goddess was comprised solely of Unicorns or because they were all Mares: any Pony regardless of original gender or standing as a Unicorn or Earth Pony that gets turned into an Alicorn is defaulted as a female. Trixie theorized that The Black Book in the Canterlot Ruins would contain the secrets to making Alicorn Stallions, Red Eye sought to turn himself into the next alicorn God by throwing himself, Littlepip, and Colonel Autumn Leaf into a vat together so they would fuse to become a perfect Alicorn being due to each of their individual personalities, strengths and skills balancing each-other out: a status he would use to make Alicorn Stallions and to destroy the Enclaves Cloud Cover by force.)
Does the Author's notes mean something I'm not aware of?
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For several of the early chapters, I had a little cyphertext in the author's notes just for fun. It's not really important to the story, just little extras for anyone who could decode them. My end-of-story blog has the plaintext for all of them, too (Though it also has story spoilers).
I know it’s been a million years, but I just had to point out these tense changes and how much I love them, changing from a past-tense retelling of events to the present-tense narrator. *chef’s kiss*
So there are working light bulbs around, something there are known to be rather fragile and have a limited lifespan, and the super scavenger begins to pop and ruin them instead of plucking them with their telekenesis? Sure she does have a gun with unlimited ammo, so shooting them dosn't cost anything, and the bulbs would be hard to transport safely back to civilisation, but to not even try... Shame on you all, shame on wasting so many caps!
With almost 22K words is this the longest chapter in the story, and with only a single natural resting spot (never know what to call those ===***=== seperators) was this almost a tad too large for me to handle. I hate that when I began reading FoE did I read the whole original story over 2 weeks time or so, but after a few rounds of depression is it annoyingly hard to keep the consentration for such long amount of times, which is also why I had to break this chapter up and read it over 3 days instead of my normal single day. Now I do not say this as critique, as you said were there a very good reason for why you kept it as a singular chapter instead of splitting it up, its just important to know in the future that such large chapters can be a roadblock for some, be it because of consentration or simply lacking 2 hours of uninterrubted reading time. Lately have I seen multiple people cutting their chapters up into parts, the main reason properly being to post updates to their stories more often, which is a thing that maybe could be worth trying if/when you write your next story.
Also... almost 1/5 of the story in and we still know nothing about the hive, getting hints that there are something weird going on with an alicorn, and things will most likely go south really fast when they hand over the information, I do love myself a slow burning story like this, but boy am I happy that I pick it up as it is completed, because it would be hell yelling at the scream for new updates now that things are finally slowly taking form.
Nitpick:
"and I actually heard metal scrap faintly on metal as Starlight cringed." Should it not be scrape?
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Eh, I figure light bulbs are pretty low value. They're not important to survival, have easy low-tech substitutes, their function can be replicated by most unicorns, and places like gemstone might even be able to make magical lights of their own from magic crystals. I also figure the earth pony magic that makes everything else last forever probably applies to them, too, so they might not even have the replacement rate that the old incandescent bulbs did. They're a nice thing to have, but way down there on the value scale. Certainly less than the generators, the various machinery (HVAC, water pumps, etc), the collection of damaged robots, functioning computers, computer parts, guns, ammo and perhaps most significantly, food. It probably wouldn't even make it into the packs for a second or third trip. Plus, I figured they were probably a little more focused on the expediency of surviving the fight than on preserving a fairly low-value piece.
I was well aware of it, and that's part of why none of the other chapters are this long. But more importantly, like I said, it's all one big event, and breaking it just diminished it.
I don't know about "lately," but it's definitely a thing. It's also a thing I strongly disagree with. Chapter breaks should be where they need to be to serve the narrative structure of the story. They shouldn't be used just to make publishing schedules quicker (I think I had a pretty swift release rate, especially compared to many other Fallout: Equestria stories), or because some readers might not have time to read the whole chapter at once (There's a bookmark feature that handles this quite well). That just breaks up the flow of the narration for everyone for some very situational gains for some people. Not a good trade, in my opinion.
Though my next story is producing much shorter chapters anyway (Around 5-6k each), so that's all kind of academic.
Eeeeyup. *makes another note*
So what was the deal with those two? I don't remember anything pointing out to an answer.
"She was an adventurer like you. And she didn't stop adventuring because of a measly bullet in the leg!"
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They were the casualties of the gunfire that kicked off when Starlight turned on the power. It's not explicitly said, but the reason they came across a freshly smoldering and sparking robot was because the security systems came on, too. That's the gunfire and explosions that erupted right after the power came on. Those two got gunned down by a suddenly active and hostile robot or turret.