Live Blogs Pannic Reads Stuff He Hates

Pannic2012-06-30 18:18:12

In the event that you just clicked this more or less at random and have pretty much no idea what this is, allow me to explain:

Fallout: Equestria is a fanfiction, a crossover between the Fallout series of video games and the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It may be the single most popular fanfiction in the entire fandom of the latter. The story is 45 chapters long plus an epilogue and an afterwards, clocks in at a word count higher than War and Peace (unless I'm mistaken one tragically misguided fan put the story on Wikipedia's "list of the longest books ever" page. Obviously it was removed), and has a large fanbase of its own, spawning fan art, fan adaptations, music, and even fanfiction of its own.

Fans have praised it for worldbuilding: the story actually does not go for the usual "character from video game meets ponies" premise a lot of lazy crossovers opt for, and instead works it into the backstory how we get from the universe in the show to the post-apocalyptic radioactive wasteland that we recognize from the Fallout games. Or I would recognize it if I'd played the games. As it is, I am waiting for a sale on Steam or GOG. The main characters of the story are all original characters, and they have been praised as "OC ponies done right" and "the best OC ponies in the fandom." In any case, the protagonist Littlepip is fairly instantly recognizable to many in the fandom, whether or not they've read the story. The story's length also qualifies it as something of an "epic." In any case, it has had praise heaped on it and is considered by many to be the best fanfic in the FiM fandom.

At this point, I have cleared chapter 13. I do not think the story deserves the praise it receives. I view it as horrendously overrated. As I go through the story, I will detail my problems with the story, along with general mockery.

The general Fallout: Equestria thread did not approve of my incessant riffing on the story and suggested I take it to a liveblog. Well, that's what I'll do.

A note that for the parts I have already read (the first thirteen chapters), I will be largely dealing from memory. As such, they will most likely not be as detailed as when I return to the stuff I haven't read. In any case, let's get started. Hopefully this isn't redundant as Perpetual Lurker is also doing a liveblog.

EDIT: It seems my complaining cannot be confined to a single fanfic. As such, I have decided to turn this into a multi-story liveblog!

Comments

ILSS Since: Dec, 1969

Oct 28th 2012 at 9:12:27 PM

That whole thing in regards to the Ghouls at Tenpony.

Basically everything about that is just an awful mess.

In Fallout 3 Tenpenny Tower is run by Allistair Tenpenny, a vilely bigoted ex-slave owner who shoots ghouls for sport, explaining the "no ghouls allowed" policy. In Fallout: Equestria Tenpony tower is run by the Twilight Society, whose members' attitudes don't mirror Tenpenny's, so the official hostility towards ghouls is nonsensical.

I don't think he even actually shows up until his face gets torn off.

He doesn't. In Fallout 3 the security chief is openly enthusiastic about killing ghouls. In FO:E, the only line we even get from Grim Star is that he did what he had to do to protect Tenpony's inhabitants. Most of our impression of him comes from Homage, and she's calling for his death.

But then the story ham-fistedly goes "hate this guy" and then kills him off.

The thing that gets me is that the mercenaries reveal Rottingtail's plan and everyone still acts as though the security chief was completely in the wrong. They just keep going on about how much support there was for letting the ghouls in despite having found out it would have been a fatal mistake. Nobody cares in the slightest about the ghouls' planned treachery; Blackwing outright states that she intended to keep it a secret so as not to justify his beliefs. Grim Star didn't know about it, so it was horrid of him to hire mercenaries to kill them, but this entire thing has the pro-ghoul equality camp agreeing to cover up the truth of the incident because it would make their side look bad. It keeps going many chapters later when Littlepip tells Homage what really happened, and she simply weasels her way around it in a later broadcast.