Ramblelime
patreon
Fallout Equestria Update: Chapters 5-15
🕑 Added 2023-03-20 20:52:04 +0000 UTCHey Everyone!
Been a minute. Originally I had intended to do these updates every week, but what i've found is that chapter-to-chapter there actually isn't that much to talk about. Filler chapters in fanfiction. No way. That's why these have been so spaced out and why hopefully they'll be a little more interesting.
What I Read
I've read up to chapter 20, but for this update i'll be tackling chapters 5-15.
What I Thought
As the fanfiction has moved on I am happy to say I am starting to see the appeal a little bit. The writing still isn't phenomenal (it's fanfiction, after all) but it's starting to pick up a little bit in areas of lore and character nuance.
For starters, the fic has started integrating the primary protagonists of the show in flashback sequences. Their portrayals are interesting and seeing how these characters have evolved in a world where a war with zebras (effectively China in fallout) is a reality. The best example is probably pinkie pie, the pink party pony in the show, has in this fic become a maniacal and highly unstable drug addict. In the universe of the fiction each of the major charactewrs from the show had been assigned to a different ministry of the pony government, and pinkie pie was the director of the ministry of morale, which effectively became the centre of propaganda 1984 style. Writing this is surreal when talking about a fanfiction about ponies but it's effective and clever storytelling.
Further, the main character has evolved in an interesting way too. Like pinkie pie, the protagonist littlepip is seemingly grappling with a party time mint-als (mentats) addiction in the fiction, and the way they write about this addiction is... surprisingly coherent and accurate. It's actually bizarre that i'm starting to enjoy this.
Okay. bits I don't enjoy. The three main characters of the fiction are embroiled in a love triangle, which is to me kind of unwelcome given the fact that they're..... horses. It's written like fanfiction, nothing especially bad or good. it's a fanfiction romance side plot. it's not good.
Another thing I don't particularly like is that we're about 15 chapters in now and the story has yet to evolve into some kind of narrative with a motivation and a drive and an antagonist and all of these parts that stories have. So far it's almost written like a lets-play, where the protagonist narrates themselves going to x location or y location to do z or q task. Then they move on to the next task. Too many side quests. No coherent storyline yet beyond the evolution of the main protagonist as they get devolved by the world around them far cry 3 style. I don't know. I just wish I had a reason to keep reading beyond wanting to know what this horse is going to do next.
Will keep updating as this keeps going. I wanted this video out by the beginning of April, but that's frankly just not happening. Want the frontier video out this week and then we'll see how fast I can wrap this up. Cross your fingers for me gamers. hope you're all doing well.
Comments
Ramblelime
I've read a lot of fanfiction in my time but I haven't really found anything that gripped me. That being said, nearly all of what i've read I read when i was 12-15 so it has been a long time and i'm sure i wasn't reading award-winning fanfiction back then, moreso just whatever first popped up around my interests. probably just got unlucky. I respect fanfiction a lot as a medium, it just hasn't been for me in my experiences with it so far. Open to new experiences tho
Spritz!
Fallout Equestria is honestly a very bad representation of mlp fanfiction, it holds all the worst attributes of the medium from ten years ago and because of it's popularity it reinforces this false perception that all fanfiction is bad while the standards of quality have raised dramatically over the years. I feel Fallout Equestria is far too derivative of both it's source materials, which is to be expected, but my biggest problem with it is that it doesn't do enough to make Fallout fit into MLP in any interesting ways and instead just awkwardly forces them together. I feel it'd be more interesting to adjust the lore of Fallout and really change how it works. If you wanted to keep guns in the setting then I think a fun to keep them would have been to make pip-boys a much more common tool (like omni tools from Mass Effect) and turn them into a device that simulates a unicorn's horn magic. I know you probably won't look into fanfiction content beyond this because you have a lot of other projects, but I really would recommend looking into the medium. You have a lot of respect for quality of mods, so I'm surprised you look at fanfiction so dismissively. Fallout Equestria is not a high standard for the medium at all, I'm very curious about your thoughts towards it though as a Fallout fan. I'd be more than willing to share content with you if you're ever interested though, I mostly just wanted to share my thoughts that I don't personally feel this fic represents the medium well.
