Fallout: Equestria

Post » Thu May 03, 2012 6:51 pm


Which one? Where?

Ah, oh that? Well, where do you think ponies come from? http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/592610/Gimli.jpg These are advlt ponies with advlt needs, you know? Anyway, they aren't making love in that picture, they're cuddling, and recovering from wasteland-induced trauma. The lovemaking must have happened before or after. I will also draw your attention to the fact that those two are both mares (female). Bucks have squarer jaws.


Yup, I got that. I understand completely why the two ponies are having six in the story. Looking at it purely in the context of the story it makes complete sense. What I don't understand is the genre. You have Fallout: targeted toward mostly mature audiences, and My Little Pony, which is targeted toward kids (6-11 year old girls, give or take?)

So are these Fallout fans, (that being advlt-ish people who play gory, violent video games) who have decided to make the story go all cutsy with the Pip-Bucks and Unicorns... or are these My Little Pony fans, who've decided that they want to see ponies get exploded, and thrown into these situations? Judging by the level of writing and artistic skill, I could guess that it's the former and I just want to know why. Why My Little Pony? Why Fallout? At this point it's just honest curiosity.

And on a side note, when the developers were origannly designing My Little Ponmy, yes. They were going to go with the idea that the ponies sprang out of the ground, or rainbows or storks or from magical cloud dust. I doubt any of the fan letters to My Little Pony asking where Clip Clop came from involved a line about the birds and the bees.
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Joey Avelar
 
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Post » Thu May 03, 2012 9:42 pm

Yup, I got that. I understand completely why the two ponies are having six in the story. Looking at it purely in the context of the story it makes complete sense. What I don't understand is the genre. You have Fallout: targeted toward mostly mature audiences, and My Little Pony, which is targeted toward kids (6-11 year old girls, give or take?)

So are these Fallout fans, (that being advlt-ish people who play gory, violent video games) who have decided to make the story go all cutsy with the Pip-Bucks and Unicorns... or are these My Little Pony fans, who've decided that they want to see ponies get exploded, and thrown into these situations? Judging by the level of writing and artistic skill, I could guess that it's the former and I just want to know why. Why My Little Pony? Why Fallout? At this point it's just honest curiosity.

And on a side note, when the developers were origannly designing My Little Ponmy, yes. They were going to go with the idea that the ponies sprang out of the ground, or rainbows or storks or from magical cloud dust. I doubt any of the fan letters to My Little Pony asking where Clip Clop came from involved a line about the birds and the bees.

First, I suggest a thrid option: the author, KKat, is a fan of both works, rather than a migrant from one to the other. As for why, my guess is that she aimed for a theme of "innocence and virtue try to endure the erosion of, first, a long war of attrition that turned into mutual extermination, and, later, an extremely hostile and lethal environment. Ponies fighting for their principles and survival in the Wasteland, and having to make hard choices, is as big a deal as them fighting for the same thing during the actual war, as their idyllic society, and its ponies, changed themselves for the sake of the fight. It's a huge morality play. The gore and violence are simply ways of making the difficulty of taking a stand all that more immediate and literal. Why make Equestria go through a nuclear grinder? Because we really love that little country, we care for it and its inhabitants, and seeing it hurt is compelling. That, and the exporation of just how such a horrible thing could have possibly happened, the history of the war, through logs and memory sphers and audio recordings, is a big part of the appeal and the suspense (and is crucial to the plot). Unlike the Fallout games, the black humour here is kept in-story, as a defense mechanism used by the characters to cope with their circumstancers. The story itself treats the setting with absolute, grim seriousness.

Am I making sense here? I should probably rewrite that.

Also, @Tycho: Very nice essay. I'll definitely give the game a shot.
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Alexandra walker
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 4:38 am

So, did this fic catch anyone's interest here?
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Amie Mccubbing
 
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Post » Thu May 03, 2012 4:41 pm

Ive been reading this story in my free time and I've been enjoying it alot.

The store is kinda, you know, like 2,000 pages though.

Also about writing stories with ponies as characters is fun, im currently working on an MLP fanfic semi-inspired by Metro 2033.
:shrug:

(Does this count as a necro?)
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Cameron Wood
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 5:03 am

Look the Fanfic is very good and deserves to be checked out, if for nothing else then for the ridiculousness nature of the crossover whether or not you are a MLP supporter, and if you don't that's fine to frankly I’m tired of this whole pointless argument over MLP!
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Penny Flame
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 1:22 am

The story is actual a very good read.

The fact that theyre pones isn't the reason I decided I'd read it.
I read it because I heard it was actualy good, it does have the genre tag of [Legendary] after all.

Using ponies as characters is an idea I like, both because I'm a fan of the show, and because it's simply different than humans.

About the "why would an author do these things to ponies?" issue, because its an interesting idea that something as innocent as a My Little Pony could still do things as horrible as enslaving his peers, murder, and even genocide, life isn't perfect, as long as there's 2 men on this earth there gonna fight about something eventually, even something as ideal as Equestria isn't going to last forever, as the story shows.
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Richard Dixon
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 6:44 am

[img]http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/20500000/Spike-my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic-20525120-210-208.jpg[/img]

=

[img]http://images.wikia.com/fallout/images/9/9c/Deathclaw.png[/img]
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elliot mudd
 
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Post » Thu May 03, 2012 8:04 pm

Interesting fact:
Fallout Equestria is, at over 630,000, one of, if not the, longest works of literature written in this millennium.
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Michael Korkia
 
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Post » Thu May 03, 2012 10:11 pm

Actually, the Fallout Equestria side-fic "Project Horizons" is even longer than "Fallout Equestria" itself, and isn't finished yet.
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Bad News Rogers
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 7:37 am

OH GOD my brony friend was right... THERE IS A PONY [censored] OF EVERYTHING (on the internet). EVEN MY BELOVED FALLOUT.

MLP is ok (i have watched one episode) but its not worth all THIS!!! I dont get it, how all you guys can be so obsessed with ponies..
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Emma Pennington
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 4:09 am

I don't get bronies, at all, they turn everything into MLP bs and its annoying, I love the movie Tremors but I don't turn everything into graboids.
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Franko AlVarado
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 8:14 am

I read the first paragraph of the prologue and was like http://files.sharenator.com/1_I_Dont_Want_to_Live_on_This_Planet_Anymore-s500x282-295658-580.jpg.
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remi lasisi
 
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Post » Thu May 03, 2012 7:24 pm

As a more reasonable brony (I still to this day find it odd that I need to label myself for liking a specific cartoon but whatever, it's endearing I suppose), this is the exact reason why pony related things need to stay in pony related boards. People who haven't given the show a chance or have tried it and simply don't like it (more power to you) cannot take ponies and the pony fandom seriously. So please for all intents and purposes, stop.

As for this fic, I found it great, not simply as a fan of the cartoon, but also a fan of literature in general. The characters and how they react to the stories various plots and subplots feels, ironically, very human and organic. The first couple of chapters need a bit of a rework as I can tell that Khat, the author, was simply writing "Fallout 3 with ponies" and can be a bit laborious to read. But after the heroine leaves the equivalent of Megaton is when it REALLY starts to become it's own thing and just keeps getting better from there. The background story of how the events transpired is highly detailed and well, makes a whole lot of sense, and REALLY makes me wish that Fallout's writing was a little more dense and offered clues as to how the events transpired that lead to the slippery slope of mass nuclear warfare through in-game terminals (most of the terminals in the game contain completely arbitrary information, something that was fixed a bit in New Vegas) instead of melodramatic intro FMV's that play when I pop in the game. The author has also given me inspiration to write my own Fallout fanfic (humans, not ponies) so I think that really says something.

Fallout Equestria just makes me wish that actual Fallout had some more meat to it aside from exploration, combat, tacked on side quests with no personal motivation for doing them, and a so-so main quest (Though I really did appreciate New Vegas and Fallout 2). Fallout Equestria explores the feelings, personal philosophies, and mysteries behind the cast of character whom accompany the protagonist, along with the protagonist as well. Something that I thought was completely missing in Fallout 1,2, 3, and Skyrim but came pretty close in New Vegas. But I understand that there are technical limitations to the engine/deadlines to meet that need to be accounted for.

In regards to the shipping and stuff that happens in the story, it's not a main focus. I usually skip this kind of stuff since it both A: Doesn't have much to do with the overall plot and you can simply say "Protag was feeling crappy, had six (which thankfully, is skipped over and is simply implied later), and now feels a lot more confident to tackle the next task" and B: I don't want to read about cute colorful equines making hanky-panky. Though there is a really great arch in regards to desire and jealously that actually has a really touching conclusion that, I'll admit, made me cry manly tears (which actually happens quite a few times throughout the story)

But really, Fallout Equestria was written for a niche audience, if you like to watch Ponies (4th gen, not the super girly 3rd gen and bellow that make me want to vomit blood) then by all means, check it out. If you don't like it or are completely unfamiliar with the premise, it's just not for you.

As for you folks talking up Fallout 1 and 2, the stories to those games were no where close to ground breaking. I do like Fallout 1's depressing ending but aside from that, it's a cut and paste 'heroes journey' minus the character development. But that's not really what hooks me to Fallout games anyway so I'm fine with that.
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Stephanie Kemp
 
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