Well, funnily enough I managed to read through chapter 18 of Fallout Equestria very fast. Partly because I think it was a bit shorter than the other chapters and partly because pretty much five things happened.
First off, I notice that it seems every chapter, after those quotes that I almost instantly forget, starts with a single-word sentence for its opening paragraph. "Breakfast." "Home." "Manehattan." "Hope."
In this case, "Hope" refers to Littlepip being assured that she will, in fact, get laid. You know, it's funny, I'm rather glad she doesn't hook up with Velvet, because given how she's treated her so far I'm pretty sure that Littlepip would qualify as abusive.
Anyway, chapter starts with Littlepip and Velvet doing something and listening to the radio, wherein Homage indicates that she wants to kiss the Stable Dweller. This makes Littlepip hit her head on the sink faucet.
Oh dear, this is where all that innuendo and stuff happens. I get the distinct impression it's only gonna get worse.
Anyway, Velvet has her audition for Homage, so she's allowed to know that she's DJ Pon-3. Homage is floored by her performance and stuff. I guess that since regularly giving a shred of dignity towards her moral standpoints is too much to ask from this story, it has instead opted to allow her to be a big ol' fantastic singer, which would be nice if we could actually hear it. Though given that one of the songs is "Get it Right," I guess we just need to look up anything sung by Lea Michelle and we get the basic idea. Fair enough.
During such proceedings, Velvet basically goes "hey you two should totally have sex," which Homage agrees with, and said dialogue is delivered in the most heavy-handed >implying I've seen since, well, my fic.
Apparently it does get worse. So then Littlepip and Homage go on what is basically a date.
Also, on another note, I notice that they seem to carry a lot of dresses, mainly for Velvet. Two questions:
1. How the hell do they carry all this stuff? Does SteelHooves play packing mule or something?
2. Dresses? Really? I get that it's My Little Pony and all, but it just doesn't... mesh.
But back to the date. They go out, eat, Homage talks more about her job, and she has a pretty clever trick of having stuff broadcast while she's out and about.
Then they run into Monterey Jack's kids. Oh boy, sad times. Gotta give credit though, here Littlepip is showing interest in saving someone that isn't a girl.
Anyway, distress signal from gryphons trapped on a roof, blah blah blah now we're going into "quest" mode, wherein I sort of tune out a bit. They come across a bunch of dead ghouls, and something something SteelHooves does his best "not a ghoul" impression, and they decide to burn the bodies with her zebra rifle.
You know, I mentioned something about Littlepip being a hypocrite. Here's an example: in chapter 16, she's all horrified at what that zebra rifle does. Well, if she finds it so horrifying, why does she carry it with her? She's got like five other guns, so it's not like she's lacking for things that shoot bullets at other things.
Anyway, blah blah, they go to the building where the gryphons are holed up, fight there way through a bunch of alicorns and radioactive water. And radiation makes the alicorns and ghouls regenerate. Because video game, I guess, even though I'm pretty sure that radiation is more akin to being shot with millions of subatomic bullets.
It is also somewhere during this big long action scene we get SteelHooves revealing to Velvet that he's a ghoul.
Anyway, they go to the roof and stuff battle fight fight with alicorns, who, it is now realized, are color-coded according to powers. Fuck if I can remember what the green ones do. Camouflage?
Littlepip is also briefly horrified by how casual she is about killing, wondering how callous she's becoming. Good, she's finally aware of what I've been saying for fifteen fucking chapters. Credit.
And the chapter ends with Pip leveling her telekineses to Twilight tier. And thus, we have passed the point where the main character
Y'know, the problem with having a character whose primary course of action is to have guns blazing is that it means I have to go through these long, boring action scenes. The only action scene I've actually thought was tense or anything is the one in chapter 12. A protagonist who gets by on diplomacy or hacking shit together would be a lot more interesting to read. And less morally repugnant.
Maybe if the story is aware of this and part of the point is that Littlepip is descending further and further into brutality... then I shouldn't really hold that as a point against the story. I dunno. I've liked stories that have unlikable main characters before, but... eh. I really don't know. I think that with a lot of these stories they have other factors. Like for example, with something like The Punisher I'm allowed to largely disengage and just watch the horror show. This doesn't really allow me to do that, because the terrible narration is clinging to me like a desperate girlfriend who's scared that me taking a walk from the sofa to get a soda from the fridge is a sign that our relationship is falling apart.
So maybe Littlepip being a vindictive self-appointed avenger and that being a bad thing is something of the point. So then can I really hold it as a point against the story? Well, maybe, because there's still one problem: no matter how hard the narrator angsts to me, there's still the fact that it's woefully inconsistent when it has her wondering if she's about to cross a line when she already crossed it and a few others several chapters ago. You can't portray it as being a gradual descent when she becomes like this almost immediately. There's also the fact that, in spite of of everything, the story is still bent on me cheering her on as the clear-cut hero, and she still saves the world in the end. So it potentially undermines its own message.
In the end, I could just complain about Littlepip being generally unpleasant and annoying, and that can just be a catch-all that overrides any and all thematic concerns.
Still, sometimes this theme is so fucking ham-fisted. Like after her note about "oh no how callous have I been?" she goes "gee, I wonder if this in some way pertains to what Monterey Jack told me in the last chapter." Subtlety is not one of this story's strong suits, is it?
I do have to admit, aside from Littlepip finding herself jealous at the prospect of Velvet and Homage together, which she herself admitted was stupid (why why why is all this shit in here?), the protagonist was phenomenally non-twattish. Whole chapter in general was actually not very annoying, given I just skimmed through the "quest" part of the thing.
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