Some interesting things about Fallout: Equestria (spoilers, kind of):
The reason for combining Fallout with My Little Pony was to show that it doesn’t take terrible people to do terrible things. The point was to take the sweetest, most innocent creatures, and show how they could be changed, and end up murdering and raping each other, without it being anyone’s fault.
One of the side-stories is that the main character gradually discovers the causes of the war. At various times, you place blame on Pinkie, on Fluttershy, on the zebras, and on others. Eventually you find out that it wasn’t anypony’s fault. Everybody acted as you would expect them to act, and it was mostly dumb bad luck that brought the apocalypse. There was no villain whose assassination would have prevented it; one character even attempts a royal assassination, which fails; and another character later points out that it wouldn’t have made any difference had it succeeded. There were just a number of minor stupidities that snowballed.
In other fiction, the protagonist is in a situation that grows more and more desperate until the climax and resolution, when everything is resolved. In FoE, after the initial disasters on leaving the Stable, the heroine’s status, love, power, friendships, and wealth gradually increase, making her more and more comfortable and providing more and more temptation to just stop and let somepony else worry about saving the world. At the story’s climax (which is executed poorly, but the concept is brilliant), the last temptation is that the heroine’s own goddess, whom she has looked to for the strength to continue on, confronts her and tells her to turn back because she has done enough and the ponies she is trying to save aren’t worthy of her sacrifice.
The capacity for violence is necessary, but also very dangerous, and things can spin rapidly out of control—and not in a ham-handed “he went over to the dark side” way.
Characters are not conveniently faced only with morally-clear situations. There are many situations where the characters argue with each other about what is the moral thing to do, and in many cases the question is never answered, such as when Calamity guns down a child who’s shooting at them.
There are, I think, six major factions throughout the story, most of which initially appear to be evil, all of which turn out to be internally divided or to have understandable goals.
One of the main villains, Red Eye, is a straw-vulcan consequentialist. But you can’t help but notice that he’s the only one with a workable plan to save Equestria, and the only one whose plans go anywhere. The heroine survives only through repeated dumb luck in her favor and Red Eye’s desire to turn his operation over to her; Red Eye’s plan advances despite his continuous disastrous luck.
The story sets you up for a heroic confrontation with Red Eye and a battle against Red Eye’s army. Instead, Red Eye wins and lets the heroine go because he recognizes they have the same objectives, and the heroine must ally herself with Red Eye to maintain the balance of power.
The story has a lot of faults, but coming from a geek culture that idolizes Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, it makes me look back at them and think, “Why did I ever waste my time with those puerile stories and the dangerous, destructive narratives they tell about conflict and its causes?”
Some interesting things about Fallout: Equestria (spoilers, kind of):
The reason for combining Fallout with My Little Pony was to show that it doesn’t take terrible people to do terrible things. The point was to take the sweetest, most innocent creatures, and show how they could be changed, and end up murdering and raping each other, without it being anyone’s fault.
One of the side-stories is that the main character gradually discovers the causes of the war. At various times, you place blame on Pinkie, on Fluttershy, on the zebras, and on others. Eventually you find out that it wasn’t anypony’s fault. Everybody acted as you would expect them to act, and it was mostly dumb bad luck that brought the apocalypse. There was no villain whose assassination would have prevented it; one character even attempts a royal assassination, which fails; and another character later points out that it wouldn’t have made any difference had it succeeded. There were just a number of minor stupidities that snowballed.
In other fiction, the protagonist is in a situation that grows more and more desperate until the climax and resolution, when everything is resolved. In FoE, after the initial disasters on leaving the Stable, the heroine’s status, love, power, friendships, and wealth gradually increase, making her more and more comfortable and providing more and more temptation to just stop and let somepony else worry about saving the world. At the story’s climax (which is executed poorly, but the concept is brilliant), the last temptation is that the heroine’s own goddess, whom she has looked to for the strength to continue on, confronts her and tells her to turn back because she has done enough and the ponies she is trying to save aren’t worthy of her sacrifice.
The capacity for violence is necessary, but also very dangerous, and things can spin rapidly out of control—and not in a ham-handed “he went over to the dark side” way.
Characters are not conveniently faced only with morally-clear situations. There are many situations where the characters argue with each other about what is the moral thing to do, and in many cases the question is never answered, such as when Calamity guns down a child who’s shooting at them.
There are, I think, six major factions throughout the story, most of which initially appear to be evil, all of which turn out to be internally divided or to have understandable goals.
One of the main villains, Red Eye, is a straw-vulcan consequentialist. But you can’t help but notice that he’s the only one with a workable plan to save Equestria, and the only one whose plans go anywhere. The heroine survives only through repeated dumb luck in her favor and Red Eye’s desire to turn his operation over to her; Red Eye’s plan advances despite his continuous disastrous luck.
The story sets you up for a heroic confrontation with Red Eye and a battle against Red Eye’s army. Instead, Red Eye wins and lets the heroine go because he recognizes they have the same objectives, and the heroine must ally herself with Red Eye to maintain the balance of power.
The story has a lot of faults, but coming from a geek culture that idolizes Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, it makes me look back at them and think, “Why did I ever waste my time with those puerile stories and the dangerous, destructive narratives they tell about conflict and its causes?”
This comment made me want to read it, but I can’t find a way to do so that doesn’t involve interacting with Google Docs, which I hate intensely. Rar.
PDF (6.5MB), ePub (1.7MB)
Thank you so much, you may not believe it but you have just made my day
Thanks!