Alright, chapter 40. For the record, this liveblog update is going to have spoilers for something that isn’t related to Fallout: Equestria, specifically the video game “Spec Ops: The Line,” so reader beware when I start making unfavorable comparisons between the two.
First word of the chapter is “Loss.” Oh boy, now for a page of angst. Ugh. This story has it. Murky Number Seven has it. Does every fucking Fallout: Equestria fic start every chapter with the protagonist monologuing at the reader?
So after two pages of monologue, we get back to where we left off. Derpy exploded. Sonic rainboom, clouds cleared, Enclave ships spiraling out of control and crashing to the ground. Yes, that really makes the Enclave look threatening when they can be thrown for a loop by a giant fucking rainbow.
The Enclave are extremely lame. If they aren’t being cartoonish dicks they’re being utterly incompetent. Actually, scratch that, they tend to be both at the same time. Yes, these will surely fill the gap left by the Goddess, who might’ve been annoying but was at least an imposing presence (to an extent, at least). Then again, I’ve long since given up on the idea of Littlepip having adversaries who aren’t cartoon bad guys.
So Littlepip watches the rainboom and realizes her “purpose.” But first she’s panicking because she’s afraid Derpy might die. After all, Derpy is as close as the story comes to actually having a likable character at this point, so she’s at a high risk.
And then they see a bunch of pegasi civilians, and she remembers what Calamity said about them not being bad ponies.
But no, Derpy isn’t dead. Huzzah.
Oh, and Xenith’s back. I barely noticed she was gone. There’s a bit about Silver Bell painting a mural. That’s nice, I guess. Everyone comes out to admire the sun and stuff.
And then a battle breaks out.
Fuck, how long is this scene going to last? And how am I supposed to take a line like “The grim reaper ponies were having a feast” seriously?
Battle ends after a lot of boredom and angst, with the Enclave retreating and closing up the sky again.
And then we go back to Littlepip being battered and angsting again. I swear, she’s angsting more than fucking Murky. And Murky angsts a fucking lot, opening every chapter with two pages of moping, followed by a shitty day in his shitty life. And Littlepip is angsting more than him right now.
So she sits in a hospital cot, gets a visit from an ex-raider from Shattered Hoof named Stiletto. She seems boring. And Littlepip gets into an argument with Railright about the bomb. Ha ha, little jab at the stupidity of Megaton in Fallout 3.
Though seriously, that bit in Fallout 3 was incredibly stupid and made no sense. I mean, you come to this town that’s built itself up around an undetonated nuclear bomb, and it’s become something of the fixture of the town. Then when you walk into the town the sheriff asks if you can disarm it. And I’m all “what? You mean you’ve had this thing in your town for two fucking centuries and you never even bothered to disarm it? I’m a nineteen year-old kid with no knowledge of explosives and I can turn the damn thing off after taking a dose of Mentats. The fuck is your excuse?” On the bright side, I managed to talk up the reward from three hundred caps to five hundred.
Bethesda didn’t really think that all the way through. Same with another few things. Sure, Moira, I’d be happy to help you with your book, but asking me to sit in radioactive waste is kind of a dick move unless you’re paying me in RadAway. And other things.
But anyway, Railright decides that Team Protagonist is welcome in town again because apparently Red Eye considers her an asset or something.
Oh, and then some of the kids from chapter 38 gush at her some more.
So they meet up with a pegasus couple and there’s a fairly cute scene there, though they’re in for a rude awakening about how the Enclave aren’t all that great. Calamity does most of the talking in this scene.
So the pegasi are gonna be interrogated by Railright and Littlepip has Calamity explain how pegasus politics work. Basically the Enclave is the military, but they’re also the governing officials because you need to be in the Enclave in order to run for office.
And she ends the scene crying. Again.
You know, there’s a bit of a writing tip I recall: If you show the character’s crying, the audience won’t cry for them. It’s not to say they can’t cry, because few rules are absolute, but... it’s a bit much, y’know? She's doing it too much. That snazzy title you see up at the top there? I ran a search for the words "cried," "tear," and "weep," and I found four different instances of her breaking into tears.
So she decides to take the day off to rest, angsting about how many ponies are gonna die while she doesn’t kill herself. And this means more monologue.
So she realizes that if she can get into the Single Pegasus Project, she can single-handedly ruin the Enclave. They need the towers for seeding the clouds, as agriculture is the way they maintain control over the populace. So she decides she’s going to peel back the cloud cover, thus decimating the agriculture, forcing the pegasi onto the surface...
...
You know, the Single Pegasus Project is supposed to be a sort of stand-in for Project Purity from Fallout 3, which the protagonist of that game uses to provide pure, drinkable water to the inhabitants of the Capital Wasteland for free. That’s a bit of a twist, going from that to sabotaging the only functioning agricultural system in the setting.
You know, a few months ago I played a video game called Spec Ops: The Line. In it, the protagonist does a number of heinous actions in pursuit of what he hopes is a noble goal. Parallels and spoilers are as follows.
Littlepip massacres a town after she finds out that the inhabitants are cannibals. Walker (if the player so chooses) guns down a bunch of civilians after they lynch one of his squadmates.
Littlepip sets off a nuke to kill a specific target, leading to the deaths of tons of bystanders who weren’t a threat to her. Walker uses white phosphorous to clear out a bunch of enemy soldiers and horribly kills a bunch of civilians.
Littlepip plans to decimate the pegasus agriculture to take control away from the Enclave. Walker destroys the city’s water supply to take control away from the soldiers already stationed there.
Now, there’s a key difference. Littlepip is, in the end, more or less vindicated as her actions ultimately lead the world into a better and brighter future. Walker, on the other hand, gets no such redemption and has to face the reality that he’s accomplished naught but ruin, all because he wanted to be a hero.
You could make an argument that there's a difference. Throughout Spec Ops: The Line, Walker tries to rationalize everything he does ("You brought this on yourself") and blames it on the enemy, deluding himself. Littlepip, however, shows a bit more awareness and angsts frequently (probably too frequently) about what she does and admits that it's (mostly) wrong. But in the end, I think that’s a fairly superficial distinction, because I’m ultimately supposed to root for Littlepip. I’m supposed to be on her side while she does all this, and cheer when she accomplishes something.
Comparisons are fun. The only way this comparison could possibly get better would be if Red Eye turned out to be dead and what she thinks is Red Eye now is really just manifestation of her own guilt!
So, on the radio we got Homage delivering a broadcast and fuck it’s long. It’s a eulogy for SteelHooves. Oh, nice weaseling around with the bit about Sheriff Grimstar, Element of Honesty. But then I guess coming clean about it would just get in the way – after all, if she did that, ponies wouldn’t see the murderous asshole as a fucking hero. Homage was always an annoying, shallow character, but here I have to say that she's really a twat. And here I was, thinking that Velvet’s absence would make things less annoying!
Actually, until now, the chapter hasn’t really been annoying. Just boring. But that’s to be expected when a fair chunk of it is a big battle scene and the other chunks consist of the narrator monologuing and angsting about how she feels guilty for resting. Maybe the angst would be more bearable if I actually felt empathy for this character. But then I don’t, so I’m kinda fucked there. Quite a dilemma. I mean, I’m able to put up with Murky’s narrative moping because he inspires more empathy than a moldy stick wrapped in barbed wire.
So she sleeps, and when she wakes up, Gawd appears in the story again. Hi. We’re introduced to her kids. One of them, Kage, notices Littlepip ogling his mother.
Groooooooooan.
So anyway, she goes outside to talk to Watcher via Spritebot. He’s there to warn her that the Enclave saw her at the Ministry of Awesome and they’re sending the Wonderbolts after her. Apparently they got to him and interrogated him and he talks about how he’s not good at interrogations and... huh. That’s oddly in-character for him, moreso than that time he casually murdered that Enclave mare.
So we learn about the Wonderbolts (there are only five more chapters left in the story and we still get exposition), and Littlepip feels that the prospect of ponies who track down and murder other ponies for a living having fans is fucked up. And it's not hypocritical at all, because she doesn't track down the ponies she murders, nor does she take money for it.
They wonder what to do. They consider trying to remove Littlepip's PipBuck (which is fused to her leg), but Calamity comes up with a plan.
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