Reviews Fanfic / Fallout Equestria

You're right about criticism ranging from wildly subjective to unfair. Something fairly unique to FE is that a lot of people discuss it harshly, as though they parted with money to get it, like a regular book. Fics need to be judged differently.

Some criticisms are more subjective than others.

Example: "Homage is annoying and a terrible character" is subjective. "Homage is a static character (neither she or her relationship with Littlepip have any real development) and the Element of Honesty business is inconsistent," however, is less so.

Given that different people have different experiences, any praise or criticism is going to be inherently subjective. To dismiss someone else's subjective opinion because it doesn't jive with another's equally subjective opinion, would be the real unfair thing to do.

I think people end up judging the fic harshly because of praise it gets. When people are constantly talking it up and even going as far as to compare it to professional quality books (of course, what fits this category is also rather subjective, and going there would get off-topic), of course people are going to go into it expecting a paragon of writing. Thing is, because of those subjective experiences I mentioned above, everyone's idea of what defines a paragon is going to be different. Many will come away disappointed because they didn't find what they thought was advertised to them. And really, there's nothing unusual about that. The very nature of being a product that tries to appeal to subjective experiences means being on the same wavelength as everyone who reads it is impossible.

"But flaws have a habit of being negligible for some and deal-breakers for others. Characters can be grating from a certain perspective and endearing from the next." I wrote this sentence to imply that it indeed is a balancing act, and that the good and the bad are just as valid as one another. I've made the personal observation that quite a few points against Fallout Equestria HAVE been more or less influenced by Hype Backlash as you yourself concede, but I'm not being dismissive as I know that's terribly rude. However, fact is that Fallout Equestria has much more praise than hatred. But a glance through here really doesn't encapsulate that fact. So I made this scribble to even out an otherwise negative review section that might trip off someone from reading a story I really thought was great. I'm not trying to be unfair, but I am speaking things as I see them.

The question of its praise is tricky. If you're only judging by the opinion of the fandom, then yes, I guess it's fairly critically acclaimed - mostly, I would argue, because it predates every other decent-sized, adult-themed MLP fanfic by a massive margin.

It's all about the ratio rather than the actual amount of praise. If you ignore the actual numbers of people who've read it and look at it on a percentage scale, the same ratio of likes to hates applies to any other adult-themed, heftily-sized ponyfics out there. The End of Ponies and The Immortal Game, while less popular, are just as well-loved. So, though you're right to say that Fallout Equestria is more popular because it came first, that doesn't really say anything on its critical acclaim.

One factor (out of many) in regards to my annoyance was when I found that there were some things that fans (and the trope page) promised but the story ultimately did not deliver.

Well, it's a fact that people do like things more because they're famous. That's all I'm saying.

And frankly, good point Pannic.

Is that so, Pannic? Could I get a few examples? It's not that I don't believe you, but that sounds like something worthy of an edit.

Alright. Here are a few examples.

1. Velvet Remedy is listed as The Conscience, and fans often said that she served to reign in the other, more violent main characters, and called Littlepip out on some of her worse actions. This never actually happened to any degree that actually mattered. In particular, her party ragequit in chapter 39 was mentioned on the trope page as a "scathing" What the Hell, Hero? moment when it was, from my perspective, quite the opposite. At no point does she actually oppose Littlepip at a point you'd think she might. As someone who was hoping for a character to serve as some kind of counterpoint to the other characters' use of violence as the answer to everything, I found her distinctly lacking.

2. A few people told me that Littlepip became less of a dick as the story progressed. She didn't, really. One person told me she got a bit better after Arbu, but again... she didn't.

3. The page says (or said, haven't checked) that it serves as a "deconstruction of killing people, even in self-defense." I don't really see what on earth that means. I found it just amounted to "Littlepip kills people and then angsts about it." I remember Eldest doing something similar and being annoyed by it then, too. Suffice to say I don't buy it when people say that the story doesn't glorify violence.

4. Claims that the story deals in a lot of moral ambiguity. One particularly condescending essay cites the scene where Calamity guns down a raider foal as a great example of moral ambiguity, when it really wasn't morally ambiguous at all. Morally ambiguous means that the story doesn't give a clear answer, but it kinda did, and the answer was "shoot." There's some moral ambiguity in the story, but on the whole it really isn't.

5. A number of people praised Calamity's character arc as being a great example of character growth and development; e.g. he gives a calm dressing-down to his father, as opposed to bullets. I found that the context undermined this significantly, 'cause from how it looked to me, Calamity didn't actually get less murder-happy, he just didn't want to shoot at his old comrades and stuff. It actually made me think less of the character because he came off as a massive hypocrite.

I found it frustrating that this story was touted as having a very strong cast of sympathetic OCs and yet I found myself disliking almost all of them.

Yeah, man, you really fulfill my example of the "Grating from a different perspective" guy.

Anyway, I'm going to be rereading the story this Summer, so I'm keeping these things noted. I'm going to try to look at it from a MUCH more analytical standpoint. These kinds of observations will be a huge help.

I'll look forward to hearing what you have to say.