Fallout: Equestria / YMMV

Alas, Poor Scrappy: Diamond Tiara probably never got the Character Development her canon counterpart did, and she probably never made the Heel–Face Turn her canon counterpart did either, but it's still a little hard to believe she did anything to get the death she got.^note
Alternate Character Interpretation:
- Littlepip as a Villain Protagonist. Several of her actions can be seen as morally questionable as she can be pretty ruthless towards her enemies. The story itself even acknowledges this viewpoint, with Red Eye explaining how they are similar. Fans with the most extreme versions of this interpretation may view the character as a Designated Hero.
- Good intentions or not, Velvet Remedy can be seen as a self-righteous egotistical bitch, who mocks and insults Littlepip and her other companions for their actions no matter how justified they may be. Even after her Character Development, she is shown to still have traces of this.
- In addition, Steelhooves can be seen as a Good Is Not Nice Absolute Xenophobe Knight Templar. You think Littlepip can be bad? (see above) He takes the cake!
- Calamity is intended to be a Boisterous Bruiser that gets a little overexcited in a fight, but his frequent borderline Squee reactions to finding increasingly dangerous weapons can come off as disturbing.
Anti-Climax Boss: Nightseer gets quite a bit of buildup. Littlepip kills her within the span of a single paragraph.
Awesome Music: A fan performed this piece in honor of Littlepip, the first in what will be a line of several FO:E inspired songs. The instrumentals and vocals are excellent, and the lyrics fit Littlepip's struggles throughout the story perfectly.
I'm sick and tired, of all this fighting. Not sure if this blood is mine...
- A good number of brony musical artists have composed songs inspired by Fallout: Equestria, including dozens of songs available on YouTube and even music featured on the "Balloon Party" album series.
Base-Breaking Character: Granted, all of the characters can be this to a degree due to their questionable moral acts and at-times unsavory behavior. The wasteland will do that to you, after all. But if one certainly takes the cake, that is Velvet Remedy. While one half of the fanbase loves her for her gentle, caring motherly personality traits and serves as a good foil to Littlepip's brash violent tendencies, the other half utterly despise her for frequent insulting and disparagement of her companions and their actions (justifiable or not), and as such, perceives her as a whiny, condescending narcissist with delusions of grandeur and zero self-preservation instincts.
Fanfic Fuel: There's a reason why this story has spawned so many Recursive Fanfics! Many involve characters usually inspired by Pip to do their own part to make the Wasteland a better place. Locations get fleshed out much more with casts that live there rather than on the move like Pip and her friends, and deconstruct aspects of the story that were felt to have been glossed over. They usually involve new characters and locations introduced to the show, what happened to characters the original story didn't mention, and describe stables not covered by the story itself.
Fountain of Expies: As the first and often considered the best FO:E protagonist, Littlepip has been the mold for nearly every one after. Because of her influence, protagonists of Fallout: Equestria side-stories are almost Always Female, homosexual/bisexual, have a Red Baron nickname they get after stories of their exploits spread around, will often deal with addiction at some point, and start off as weakling nobodies before becoming legendary. Blackjack is likely the Trope Codifier, being her most famous expy with all of those traits.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- So you'd like to be a tree, eh, Fluttershy?
- Friendship is Magic's second season finale includes several elements that are eerily similar to FO:E, such as Canterlot enclosed in a magical shield and a legion of corrupted Winged Unicorn Slave Mooks led by an obnoxious Large Ham Hive Queen, who was voiced by the same actress as Trixie with an ainsed reverb effect.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Watcher is a mysterious gravelly-voiced nigh-omniscient observer who communicates by hijacking floating robots - just like Ulysses in Lonesome Road, which was released several months after Fallout: Equestria started. Also from Lonesome Road, the SMMG and Red Glare look like battle saddles retrofitted for human use.
- This fic had many ideas that the canon series would later use.
  - Littlepip thinks the name "Pipsqueak" would be ridiculous. Then an actual character named Pipsqueak appeared in the show. And what nickname did Zecora give him? Little Pip!
  - All of the magic spells that Kkat came up with before season 2 even started, including memory transfers, bypass spells, and self levitation. As well as a massive bubble like shield surrounding Canterlot.
  - Now add in the harnesses used to hold the lances for Crystal Ponies while jousting, which resemble very early battle saddles.
  - Corrupted by an enhanced source of magic, Trixie sets herself up as a tyrant. Sound familiar?
  - And now Twilight gets involuntarily transformed into an alicorn.
  - Zecora crafts a potion that gives zebras bat-like wings. Two months later, the episode "Luna Eclipsed" introduces bat-winged ponies.
  - Why did the Everfree Forest mutate into a much more horrible and deadly place when it was never hit by a megaspell? Because the Elements of Harmony were removed, and their presence in the Forest had been holding the horrors back... much like the revelation in the Season 4 premiere.
  - Inspiration Manifestation confirms dragon tactic of "eat it" for disposing of hazardous magical items.
  - Twilight's Kingdom shows extremely destructive spells similar to balefire bombs, complete with mushroom clouds.
  - In the chapter The Moral of the Story, Pinkie Bell makes the remark that "Pinkie Pie’s only regret was that she couldn’t be everywhere helping all the troops all the time!" Too Many Pinkie Pies takes on an almost eerily similar premise.
  - Learning in Season 5 how dilapidated and fallen to poverty Griffonstone became and how griffons are Only in It for the Money, it's no surprise they were depicted as Equestrian mercenaries.
  - Also from Season 5, it is revealed that Pinkie Pie actually has a massive underground vault full of detailed files on everypony in town. Cataloging everything they like, dislike, preferred types of parties, etc... Pinkie Pie has indeed been watching you, FOREVER!
  - Then comes the Season 5 finale. First we see an alternate timeline where war has altered Equestria. The entire population putting all their effort into supporting the war effort, even a Future Badass Rainbow Dash with a cybernetic looking wing. Then the finale alternate timeline was Equestria turned into a vast, empty, barren wasteland not unlike those in Fallout.
  - Fluttershy gets turned into a tree in this story because she came into contact with a magical flower. In A Health of Information this not only nearly happens to her, but it's revealed that there's a disease that causes ponies to turn into trees!
  - There's also the series finale, where in order to escape a great threat to Equestria, the pegasi close up the sky and try to sit the crisis out where it can't reach them, much like the story's pegasi did when the megaspells went off.
- More to-the-point, we have a story set "X" amount of years after Equestria collapsed, following a main protagonist who is a social outcast from her community who winds up going off on an adventure due to the actions of a Unicorn. Along their journey, they invariably cause a ruckus with the Pegasi that draws attention to our main character as she is pursued by them, and eventually she gets into conflict with a Red Earth Pony that leads a Cult of Personality subscribing to either the genocide or subjugation of all other Ponies outside of his community who is defeated near the end and afterwards our main character manages to restore the world to normal once again using a crystal MacGuffin. Doesn't this sound like a cliff notes version of the plot to My Little Pony: A New Generation?
Iron Woobie: Ditzy Doo. When the megaspells dropped, she was caught at the edge of one, which turned her into a Ghoul. She's spent the next 200 years doing whatever she can to survive, with the always present possibility that her mind will degrade to the point where she becomes little more than a mindless beast. This also has the effect of making surviving ponies reluctant to go near her, since nopony wants to be around when a zombie flips out. But even with all this, she is still friendly and helpful, to the point where Littlepip calls her the nicest pony she's met in the wasteland, and later becomes the new Element of Laughter.
It Was His Sled: Who doesn't know that Steelhooves dies and Littlepip ends her journey forever in the SPP pod?
Just Here for Godzilla: Some fans only read the story for the large amount of Worldbuilding and backstory, finding the main narrative less compelling than the events that shaped the present. This may account for the spinoff fanfiction, where writers are free to make their own cast of characters that are doing their own thing.
Moral Event Horizon: A number of ponies in the story cross this. Among them:
- The Steel Rangers invading Stable Two and attempting to slaughter everypony in it just to get at the pre-war technology it holds.
- The Enclave attempting to destroy Friendship City just to kill one Dashite (prior to the attack commencing one of them even shoots a terrified filly who was trying to get away from Littlepip, then attempts to justify it by saying that they couldn't take any chances.)
Once Original, Now Common: It was the first epic-scale, actionized, Door Stopper fanfic to gain real popularity in the fandom and easily one of the most famous Friendship is Magic fanfics out there. It has fan art, fan music, there are fan games being made for it including Fallout 3 mods, and it has inspired dozens of spin-off fics. Had it been written after the first few seasons, it would have simply been one among many other similar stories. According to an Equestria Daily mod, Fallout Equestria simply came out at the right time, when there weren't very many quality control restrictions on fics, to the point where if it never would have passed moderation if submitted later.
Strawman Has a Point: Red Eye's propaganda states that all races of pony are equally important. He seems to consider the opposition that earth ponies are the best, which seems laughable. His opposition's points seem to be better than his, and then you realize that the pro-earth pony Stable he's from invented cybernetic implants and cured old age with only the tiny population of one Stable.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Wait, so a hellhound got turned into a pony? I bet you can't wait to see what its life will be like now! ...Oh wait, chances are its dead now.
Ugly Cute: Ditzy as a ghoul, who despite looking and smelling like a body that's been in the sun for a few days, is one of the most friendly and genuinely helpful ponies in the story.

YMMV / Fallout: Equestria

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