The hiatus is over! I am now reading the story again! Gone is the slump, back is my sojourn into the delightful world of boring violence, unlikable characters, and shitty morals!
So Littlepip muses on the Black Book a bit and really hopes the megaspell destroyed it.
A page in and it’s a fucking recap monologue. Look, I get that fanfiction is more of an episodic medium than actual books tend to be, but for fuck’s sake, the story is long enough as is, you don’t need to pad it out with this stuff that does nothing to advance the fucking plot.
Two fucking pages before anything actually happens apart from Littlepip going on about how she’s sacrificed her morality (what morality?) to save the Wasteland and how she’s Red Eye now. Oh yeah, him. He was kinda cool, despite being cribbed from other sources. Actually, scratch that, whatever coolness he had was probably because he was cribbed from other sources. She also surmizes that the alicorns could not have possibly defused the bomb because it was set off so far beneath the thing.
So she wakes up in pitch blackness. She shut herself in a saferoom to survive the blast, and now she realizes she’s a bit fucked, realizing that this is where Twilight hid, there’s the dead and taint-altered body of that other unicorn, and the water talisman is all icky.
So throughout the chapter we’ll get snatches of her having a conversation with Ambrosia, who was stuck in the tainted safe for two hundred years, and talks about what balefire is and yadda yadda.
Also, Littlepip’s legs came off and she grew new ones. Taint stuff.
So Derpy comes to save her, and due to all the radiation she’s glowing and super-strong. They meet up with Calamity, Xenith, and Velvet. SteelHooves shows up, says hi, and then gets decapitated by a hellhound.
Well, that was abrupt. I’m aware that a lot of people were pretty ticked off by this. The story was going for a sudden death where you don’t always get a monologue before you go. I think the main problem is that while unceremonious deaths have happened plenty in the story, they were usually for side-characters, as opposed to a legit Anyone Can Die approach like in The Walking Dead or the later Harry Potter books. As it is it was so abrupt I actually found it kind of funny. And really, of the main cast, if anyone was gonna die it was him. After all, he occasionally threatened to be interesting.
So they head off to be with the rest of the non-asshole Rangers so that they can have the funeral. On the way, they hear Enclave propaganda, which Littlepip isn’t impressed by, thinking that Red Eye did it better. Which is actually a pretty clever in-joke, because Red Eye’s propaganda is Enclave propaganda (as in, he took speeches from the games).
While Crossroads delivers a eulogy, Littlepip remembers the times he heaped praise on her. So she gives a eulogy, Velvet sings a song, and the group officially takes on the monicker of Applejack’s Rangers. During the funeral, they see the Enclave destroying Canterlot off in the distance. Littlepip is horrified, as she’s worried they’ll beat her record at mass murder.
And the next scene is Velvet ragequitting the party.
You know, there’s one thing I complain about that isn’t necessarily the story’s fault, but it should be addressed - false advertising. I mentioned it several updates ago when I talked about how I rubbed the “What the Hell, Hero?” thing out of the article. Because the thing is, this really isn’t it.
What it is is Velvet moaning about how she can’t fucking cope. And of course, she heaps loads of praise on the protagonist about how she’s so fucking noble and shit. She almost comes close to calling Littlepip out by saying that SteelHooves died because Pip went all mass-murder on the Hellhounds, but when she tacks on “and the worst part is it was the right thing to do,” well, that kind of disqualifies it from being a “What the Hell, Hero?” Moment.
The scene actually isn’t that bad. Just, like I said, false advertising on the page. Oh, and that bit where she’s all “the worst thing I ever did was that time I was inconsiderate of the protagonist’s feelings so I could get back at my dipshit boyfriend.”
Fuck you, Fallout: Equestria.
So hurray, this terrible character is out of the story for the time being. And so while Velvet ragequits, Calamity comforts her and reassures her that no, setting the nuke off was totally fine. He decides to just let Velvet stew for a while with the statuettes and goes with Littlepip and Derpy off to Tenpony Tower.
You know, I have a new theory for why Calamity hooked up with Velvet. Calamity really has the hots for Littlepip, but since she’s a lesbian, that wasn’t an option. Velvet, being from the same stable as her and, as it turns out, her distant cousin, was close enough.
So they head to Tenpony Tower and Life Bloom informs them that Homage has run off, as the Enclave has control of the towers and she means to override them.
You know, I notice that she never did come clean about the whole murder of Sheriff Grimstar thing. Element of Honesty, my ass.
So they head off to Friendship City. Along the way, they come across a couple of Enclave soldiers who, upon seeing the glowing ghoul, panic and start shooting. Calamity, however, can’t bring himself to kill them and just clips their wings.
Oh, that’s rich. I guess gun-happy murder’s all fine and dandy until it’s one of yours. Man, Calamity is full of shit. I hope he chokes on Velvet’s horn the next time they have sex.
So they arrive at Friendship City, which judging from the description is basically Megaton form Fallout 3. There, they meet up with Radar, an old Dashite who tells them more about the SPP, how the Enclave can’t get into the main part of it because Rainbow Dash put a big fucking shield around it.
We also see the guards that shot at Littlepip in chapter 35. One of them apologizes, the other doesn’t and tells her to go fuck herself. I like this guard. I bet she’ll get killed off.
Also, unless I’m mistaken, this is the closest she’s come to being held accountable for her actions since the sheriff of New Appleloosa barred her from his town.
So there’s a mayor/store owner and a fat corrupt pony that are based on Killian and Gizmo from Fallout 1. If you’ve played the games, you know how it goes. An assassin comes in to kill the mayor, and in a surprising twist, Littlepip actually just chokes him until he passes out, rather than kill him. Though that probably has more to do with the fact that she doesn’t have any guns with her at the moment.
So then the mayor tells her about how she needs to take not-Gizmo down, but can’t because she needs actual evidence and wait, wait, I thought the idea was that the wasteland was all wild and lawless, and now you’re telling me that this town here which just showed up has due process and shit? I guess living on an island is the best choice for the apocalypse.
They go over the thing. Littlepip notices the assassin had a cane that turned into a gun, which reminds her of Grandpa Rattle, though she says she can’t imagine him working with murderous ponies.
Yes, she says that she can’t imagine that Grandpa Rattle, a pony who was affiliated with the Steel Rangers, a group of murderous assholes, and who came to her defense when she massacred the town of Arbu, would work with murderous ponies.
So the mayor gives her a bug that she can plant on Not-Gizmo, and
Wait, wait, wait.
You have the assassin. You have him tied up. Couldn’t you just, I dunno... interrogate him? His testimony could... oh, forget it.
So Littlepip goes to plant the bug on Not-Gizmo, but the Stealth Buck conveniently fails as she tries to leave. She tries to talk her into “hiring” her as an assassin, but she insults her and has to fight off the bodyguard.
Raspberry Tart is kind of weird. When we first see her talking over the intercom with Black Seas, she’s got this whole facade of being nice going, kinda like Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter. Then in this scene she’s all gruff and stuff. Now I can get that she’s putting on an act and stuff, but it’s somewhat telling that the Dolores Umbridge parts were, to the best of my knowledge, original writing, whereas the other lines were copied verbatim from Gizmo (which is the name of her bodyguard, who is himself a stand-in for Izo, who was Gizmo’s bodyguard).
Though in retrospect, the quasi-Umbridge thing was just how it sounded in my head, so maybe that wasn't what was intended. Maybe I should've been cued in by the "I could've easily poisoned you" bit. I guess it's a matter of whether the nice-act is sarcasm or a facade. Hm.
Also, Littlepip is not good at stealth. She seems to consistently fail at it. I get that failing at sneaking and stuff can provide good tension and the like, but almost every time it’s been important, stealth has failed, thus necessitating a boring action scene. Now, this wouldn’t be as much of a problem if the story and Fallout: Equestria wiki (that’s a thing, apparently) didn’t try to sell me that she’s good at stealth.
Anyway, she heads back to the mayor dude, and we find out that Not-Gizmo was in cahoots with the Enclave, and since the assassination failed, they’re gonna send dudes over to attack, which they do. They’re after someone, and everyone contemplates their options. One pony suggests trying to negotiate, which is quickly shot down for being a fucking stupid idea. And we didn’t even need Velvet for this scene!
So the Enclave starts invading and bombarding the town, apparently because they’re looking for Radar. More on that later.
Littlepip tries to help a filly, but she turns out to be one of the Arbu orphans, she screams, runs away, and gets turned into dust by a skittish Enclave soldier. Thus suffering the consequences of not accepting the Stable Dweller as one’s lord and savior.
Also, the Enclave ships get briefly distracted because one of them decides to stop shooting, so they shoot that one down. Then they go back to destroying the town, killing most of the population. Goodbye, guard that held Littlepip accountable for mass murder. I’ll miss you.
So they escape they town before getting captured by one of Calamity’s brothers, and we get some backstory with Calamity’s daddy issues and they all talk about how they got their cutie mark.
And so it turns out they killed Radar because... he knew stuff about their operations and the SPP and might’ve told others, so they had to kill everyone in Friendship City because of that. Even Radar is a Dashite and had been in exile for what must have been decades, this potential information leak was in no way a concern until just now. If such a leak was so dangerous, why was this not a problem until now? Because of Red Eye? If you’re willing to kill everyone in the same town as the dude to protect the information, it’s a little fucking late for that.
What I’m saying is that the Enclave are fucking retarded.
So Calamity’s brother lets them out, and then stuff happens culminating in Derpy doing a sonic radboom. And then she explodes.
Good to be back, everybody!
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