Before we move onto the next part of The Unexpected Love Life of Dusk Shine, there are a few things in Fallout Equestria that recently occurred to me that I found bothersome that I missed when I initially read them. It's kind of like those Coen Brothers movies, where when you look more closely you appreciate all the thought and effort that went into them, except the complete opposite. So a little breakdown by chapter.
Chapter 23: I just noticed that the pathetically-armed raiders that the heroes steamrolled never actually attacked them. Hell, the ones who were still able to do anything after Steely blew a hole in the ceiling shat themselves and ran away. I can get that they're raiders and that they're evil by default (except for Shattered Hoof for some reason), but it's kind of hard to root for Team Protagonist when they're wantonly steamrolling terrified baddies who have no way of defending themselves. At least give me a more immediate reason other than them being part of the Arbitrarily Evil Club. It just comes off to me like the protagonists broke into someone's house, looted and vandalized the place, used the bathroom, and murdered the inhabitants.
Chapter 5: We get a shtick in which Littlepip confronts her apparent sexism. This had never been brought up prior to the chapter. It is never brought up again after the chapter. I mentioned this a little earlier, but then throughout the story I notice that the old tendencies of how the innocents that need saving and protecting are almost all female and the baddies are almost all male. I could get it if it were just in the vein of the show and there were just more significant female characters all around, but there's an oddly disproportionate number of males assigned to villain and asshole roles while female characters are more largely sympathetic. You might be able to make the case that that's just how a lot of stories go, but with the inclusion of chapter 5 it just comes off as bizarre - you can't have the story act like it's being aware of shit and then the very next chapter have it go right back to falling into oblivious cliches.
Chapters 14, 18, 19: That whole thing in regards to the Ghouls at Tenpony. I've already commented on how I've added the aftermath of that incident to my list of reasons that Littlepip is a twat, but I'm going to move away from that to talk about the bigger overarching problem with this plot thread. As we're all aware, it's a reference to a sort of damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't quest in Fallout 3. Whatever option you pick, the quest ends badly, with either the inhabitants of Tenpenny dead or a bunch of massacred ghouls. I'm going to guess that the author of his story did not like this. However, I don’t think the fic handled it very well.
In the game, the player makes a decision, and whatever he does it doesn't pan out well. But in the story it's sort of shoved off as a minimal thing that's really nothing more than a minor plot thread in a few chapters. That isn't really a problem, but as it goes in the fic, the protagonist never gets involved and the "quest" is shoved off on a minor character. Conveniently, he picks the "kill all the ghouls" option, which kinda has the best long-term effect, as it prevents another massacre at Tenpony Tower. But then the story ham-fistedly goes "hate this guy" and then kills him off. Fuck, I don't think he even actually shows up until his face gets torn off. But this method - delegating the ugly task to another character and killing him off - just makes the whole thing come off as kinda cheap, really.
One person once commented that I tend to just arbitrarily say that X, Y, and Z in the fic is annoying without actually offering a suggestion of how it could be improved. Well, how about this? Rather than have a generic asshole cop to be the designated baddie, what if the character instead took the “let them in the tower” option? Then, later they go feral and the massacre starts, just as Littlepip & co. arrive just in time to keep everyone from getting killed. Then after that, Littlepip has to defend the guy who let them in so that he doesn’t get lynched by the angry surviving citizens, and do so without her usual method, i.e. the liberal application of bullets.
Chapter 16: Let's talk about that scene where Calamity shoots the raider foal! I can hear you right now: "Oh, you think Calamity shouldn't have shot the raider, there you go again with your I-hate-violence bullshit." Well, no, I wasn't going to say that at all. Clearly, a character, a good guy no less, shooting a kid is a pretty big deal. And the protagonist is horrified (Or at least she says she is. This story has a serious show-versus-tell problem, and Littlepip the Narrator doesn't help) and stuff. And in the ensuing argument we almost touch on something that could've led to some actual thinking - we could have gotten an actual meditation on the horrors of the Wasteland that could lead to a child being so corrupted that they turn to a monster and then meet a violent end. But we don't get this. We get an ugly scene that doesn't amount to anything except for an inane spat between Velvet and Calamity. Of course, the alternative would require affording some fucking humanity to the nameless wretches that the heroes slaughter en masse, and we can't have that, now, can we? Sorry, folks, the humanity budget got delegated to the narrator's angst.
Anyway, next update will be back to The Unexpected Love Life of Dusk Shine. It's the sleepover episode, and you can probably guess what that'll amount to in this fic.
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