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I've been trying to read Fallout: Equestria for a couple weeks now. I had to absolutely convice myself to give it a chance. There had to be a reason why everyone was reading this! Why there was such a huge TVTropes page, fanart, fanfiction.... THE INTERNET CAN NOT BE WRONG.
Why was it so hard? Lets take a metephor: Fallout: Equestria's writing style in the first chapter and prolouges is like the big rusting clunker you buy because its on sale for negitive two dollars. You're not trying to express your personality or find something that suits your needs. You need a car, any car that can get you where you're going. Hell if I was going anywhere near that beast. It was sending me into fits just looking at it.
But I pushed on anyway. And something amazing happened! When I reached the second chapter, the rusty clunker transformed into a BMW from 2005 that occasionally needs to be jumpstarted.
How the hell did the writing style change so much? Was the first chapter rushed? Why even bother with it, then? You know what? First chapter? Its not needed. Completely and utterly not needed. Skip it. It almost drove me away from what was actually a pretty solid piece of work.
It reads just like an expirence with Fallout 3 or New Vegas. With Fallout, Skyrim as well, half the fun is telling the crazy stories of the places you found, how you battled through them. Sometimes you are laughing about the actual setup designers intended, but a lot of the time the story is about how you were half dead from radiation with two bobby pins, but then you picked an expert safe in one go which had the rad-away you needed. Small, organically dramatic moments is what makes Fallout fun, and that's how this story reads. Except it gets to screw around with things you couldn't program in a game. Character moments, alternate strategies, actual weather.
Another thing that's great is that the author pays close attention to small world-building details. Post-apocalypse Equestria is detailed and interesting, and its fun to see how aspects of Fallout are translated into Equestrian equivalents. But for all the detail put into the world, the characters dont feel fleshed out at all. Part of the reason I forced myself to read was because the Calamity fanart made him look just so badass! But I get to the story, and honestly, I dont think I can describe his personality. He's a... um, well, hes a good guy, he fesses up to his mistakes. And uh, he uses heavy weapons?
Honestly, Calamity isnt my biggest problem. My biggest problem was the introduction of Velvet as a regular character. I thought that her pacifist ideals would provide more internal conflict to the story than they actually did. It's more like her ideals brought up in passing, covered in two scenes, and then told that they're not needed here. That they're stupid and infantile. Thats a big, big philosophical debate to just be dropping in and forgetting about. Even if they are stupid, couldnt you have a better explaination than "this world sucks and thier evil, so get over it."? I'm reading an actual book right now that's detailing rebellion and violence as a symptom of loss of hope, and reactionary violence as a tricky affair. I know its a bit much to hope for in a fanfic, but I found myself wondering about it anyway. I've only read the first ten chapters, so maybe he goes more into it later. But TVTropes says she looses it eventually, so... yeah, I dunno.
The second, smaller issue I began noticing was the reliance on combat. Combat alone can hold up movies. It can hold up video games. But action scenes themselves cannot hold up books. Books are great for ideas. Mindscapes and landscapes. In a book, the best part is not the actions that are happening, but the reactions and emotions behind a scene. Fallout: Equestria almost seems to be padded with fights, some of which add little or nothing to the arc of the story. I was enthralled by the emotional minefeild the first fight turned into. I was impressed by the organic nature of the Raider's hut. I was interested in the situations of the slaver camp. I was bored with the fight on the train, and wondering why the slavers were acting so damn stupid. I'm getting battle fatige. Wound fatigue too. The first time LilPip recieved a major wound, I really cringed. But its almost a regular thing now, and if thats going to be the case, it cant be played up every time as REALLY SERIOUS GUYS.
But dispite those complaints, I really enjoyed reading this story. It's not reaching me in a deeper place like Simply Rarity did, but its a fun little read, with surprisingly good writing. I reccomend it to all several of you who havnt already gotten into it.
Oh, one more thing.Best moment ever:
Anyone here watch Spolier Warning? The New Vegas Season? The second LilPip turned down the Flamer because it was heavy and she didnt know how to use it, I jumped for joy. Reginald Cuftbert, you have been outsmarted by a fanfiction pony. THE PONY... HAS THE LOGIC!!! Sorry, had to do that.
Score: Pretty Cool. Probably Going to Read the Rest.
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