Well, here we are at chapter 37, aka the really fucking long one. I’m gonna have to split this one up into multiple parts. I got something like twelve pages into it so far, so I’ll just comment on that.
First I think I should admit that I was wrong about the use of parenthetical clauses. Apparently putting them after the period is totally legit. So I guess that cuts down on the number of typographical errors. “A” instead of “I” and “geometrically shaped,” however, are still fair game for me to mock.
Before I move onto chapter 37 proper, I’d like to comment on something from chapter 36. While Littlepip and Protagonist are flying out the zebra foals, one of them gets killed when one of the alicorns fires a lightning bolt. And that’s it. A kid dies, nothing happens. No pause for reflection or consideration, no nothin’. Amounted to fuck all, just there to show how bad the setting is.
That’s the thing - the story frequently insists on being ugly for its own sake by having violence shoved in there for... it’s own sake. Yeah, I’m getting kind of repetitive. It’s kinda like that thing back in chapter 16 when Calamity shoots that raider kid and it doesn’t really amount to anything but some point about how Littlepip can’t bring herself to shoot at foals. Oh yeah, and that fucking spat between Velvet and Calamity. I think I should mention at this point that I find those two even more annoying that Littlepip.
You know, I finished playing The Walking Dead a couple days ago, a game which wantonly kills off almost the entirety of its cast and has an ending that can only qualify as happy if you were desperate for any glimmer of hope at all. How is it that a game in which a dude gets his head smashed in by a salt block comes off to me as less ugly and mean-spirited than this thing which, I am repeatedly told, is really about hope?
Actually, I think I have an idea. Let’s do a more direct comparison: the first time a kid is killed in each respective story. In The Walking Dead, one of the kids in the group gets bitten by a zombie, and he has to be put down before he turns. It’s the big emotional gut-punch of the episode. It has a profound impact on the character’s father, which affects him for the rest of the game. In Fallout: Equestria, the first time a kid gets killed is a raider who’s about to kill his victim, and Calamity shoots him. It’s just plain ugly, and the only thing that comes out of it an inane spat between two annoying dipshits. But apparently I’m the only one who has a problem with these characters and for everyone else this was a big character moment and actually had an emotional impact. No accounting for taste or something.
And while I’m on The Walking Dead, one time I was in the thread and I was unfavorably comparing this fic to that game, particularly on the point of how Littlepip is not very well characterized compared to Lee Everett, the protagonist of that game. I made a point about how one of the big deals in the first episode is how Lee has to put down his zombified brother, and one person chewed me out on my hypocrisy for praising The Walking Dead as an example of great buildup when I haven’t finished reading this story, and because I am completely spineless, I caved. Though now that I think about it, I’m not caving that, because I wasn’t praising it on account of “proper buildup” so much as on account of “establishing your characters as actual people who might conceivably exist,” more on that later.
Anyway, chapter 37 kinda threw me for a loop at the start, because I’m treated to a confusing note from Littlepip asking me for some extra patience while she tells this part of the story and some stuff. I honestly don’t even know how to respond to this thing or what the point is. I guess it’s like some heads-up about how we’re gonna be diving into a lot of memory orbs and how this chapter is the super-duper important one, and something about “discovering my destiny.”
I gathered this chapter is extremely heavy on backstory stuff, and I think I should mention something I find rather peculiar - most of the other people who read the story but don’t like it name the backstory as the primary offender, yet find the central cast of OC ponies pretty okay. I’m pretty much the opposite – I don’t really have a problem with the backstory. Well, there’s the thing about how it ends with the characters I like dying horribly. But I don’t quite get the whole “massively OOC” thing that I see others complain about. Admittedly the whole thing about Pinkie Pie doing the whole Big Brother Is Watching thing gave me some pause, but it’s not that bad. I mean, I can sort of see that having a rough basis in canon characterization. I dunno. Worst I can say about the backstory is that I simply don’t care and that the frequent trips down memory orb lane disrupt the flow of the story.
Anyway, they head to Canterlot and Littlepip makes the plan for them to stop at the two places to get the stuff they need, and then get out. Judging by the page count, that clearly isn’t what happens. Also, Xenith isn’t with the group, having opted to stay Glyphtown.
On another note, I’ve re-ranked Team Protagonist on twattiness levels. In ascending order from “not particularly annoying” to “this character is terrible and I hate it” it goes Xenith, SteelHooves, Littlepip, Calamity, and Velvet Remedy.
More details are given on the Pink Cloud (we’re thirty-seven chapters into the story and still doing exposition, I mean seriously) and they set down. Littlepip notes that in here, her combat skills are gonna be virtually useless, not like that’s gonna make her change her usual approach to every problem she faces, i.e. bullets.
And I guess that point at geometry forces me to admit that the character doesn’t qualify as a sadist. I beat on Littlepip a lot for being a hypocritically violent twat, but I think that’s because it’s the only trait about her that stands out. Everything else about her is just dull, dull, dull. She just isn’t very interesting, and I think that’s a justifiable judgment to make seeing as the reader knows literally everything about her, unless we opt for “the narrator isn’t being honest.”
She isn’t exactly established very well – her life in the stable is just completely disregarded as not very important, save for a few scant mentions about how she had no friends and her mother was kinda shitty. She doesn’t exactly have a lot of interests or hobbies that make her interesting, and she just sort of... she just does stuff without feeling like a believable person. I mean, what are her interests and hobbies? There's lockpicking, I guess. There's some stuff about reading books, but that never really comes into play anywhere... drugs? Fuck, I can't think of much of anything. We only get incredibly tiny snatches of her childhood, generally just to reiterate that, well... she had no friends and her mother was kind of shitty. It's like she's trying to strike that delicate balance between being vague enough to be an audience surrogate (hence the lack of backstory or physical descriptions) but distinct enough to be her own character (sexuality, drug addiction, morals, albeit fairly shitty morals), but she doesn't really do either of them particularly well. I guess you could make that argument about a lot of characters, like Harry Potter or Lee Everett, but at least they didn't narrate like this. As an audience surrogate I have much the same problem I had with Jake Sully in Avatar - Sully was even worse than Littlepip. I didn't want to imprint on him because he was a fucking idiot with no redeeming qualities. At least Littlepip has a few basic hero traits, but it's not enough to make me root for her as opposed to begrudgingly admit that she's the good guy.
What I'm saying is that it might've been nice to show that she has some interests outside of Wasteland questing, shooting everyone she doesn't like, and having sex. Well, I guess there was that bit where she was writing song lyrics for Homage. Man. Those lyrics were so terrible it made me want to chuck my macbook through a window and bury myself with Look, I Made a Hat.
Moving back to the events of the chapter. They see a congregation of alicorns, and I found myself wondering why the Goddess didn’t, like... send an envoy or a note with Littlepip to go “Yo, don’t shoot this pony.” But I’m told apparently there’s some other alicorn baddie that’s controlling these ones, so that idea isn’t as funny as it might’ve been. Ah well.
Following this blog, you might’ve noticed how I’ve commented a bit on the gender ratios in this story, particularly concerning the baddies mostly being male and the victims who are played for sympathy mostly being female. Not really a complaint so much as an entry for the drinking game, though the presence of Stern, Blueberry Sabre (prior to being suddenly killed off) and the Goddess starts to even things out a bit. Kkat said fairly bluntly that point of mine was utterly ridiculous, particularly once you count the alicorns. Well, I guess I count these alicorns. The general ones that Team Protagonist has been facing thus far, however, do not count. Earlier I stated that they were pretty much one individual copypasted a bunch of times, but I think they’re actually better described as one individual doing a hell of a lot of multiboxing.
Anyway, getting away from the self-serving “okay, I’m wrong on that point but” bullshit, Littlepip finally grabs the Fluttershy memory orb away from Velvet, because she was growing overly dependent on it and it was starting to become her only defining characteristic. Seriously, girl, you have hobbies. I recall one person on /mlp/ commented about how the whole Fluttershy fangirling cheapened her character, making it seem like her idealism was less because of, well, ideals, and more because she really liked Fluttershy, likening it to someone who takes music lessons because they love music versus someone who takes music lessons because they really like Lady Gaga. I don’t know if I agree with that, but there will be more time to talk about how much I hate Prissy Whine later when she does something more annoying.
Calamity and Velvet stop Littlepip and suggest that they explore the Ministries of Magic and Kindness, respectively, the former for magical weapons to use against ghouls and the latter for medical supplies and masturbating to Fluttershy some more. Littlepip reminds them that they don’t want to spend any more time in Canterlot than they have to, to which they respond “all the more reason to go in here and get supplies!”
Ugh. I guess I should be more grateful to the protagonist for being relatively intelligent compared to the idiots that make up the rest of her party.
Anyway, they make their way over to Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, making their way past a bunch of adolescent dragons. Velvet is useful for maybe the fourth time in the story as she chucks a gem-lined dress (they’ve been carrying that) for the ghoul dragons to munch on while the go in.
There’s a scuffle with one of those Broadcasters, though the shooting sets off the security and they have to scramble through the building.
There’s a bit where they come across a classroom where there are instructions to use a personal shield in the event of a megaspell attack. It’s kind of clever, because it mirrors the 1950s myth that ducking and covering would protect against a nuke. It then proceeds to not be clever because Velvet Remedy proceeds to explain it in detail. Could’ve been a bit of black comedy, but nope.
They go on a bit, and they come across a room full of zombified foals. Oh boy. Anyway, Littlepip and Velvet freeze while Calamity starts shooting away. Anyway, yeah, fight scene, then escape.
Velvet suggests to Littlepip that they check up on SteelHooves, which she does, and sure enough, he’s in pretty shitty condition, what with the armor practically being a cast for a very broken leg, and now that the suit’s run out of healing potions he’s subsisting solely on painkillers. So that’s added to the to-do list, along with musing from Littlepip about how the murderous asshole might be punishing himself.
And there’s some banter back and forth about how clipboards are indestructible and a made-up “stubbornite.” I can’t comment on this, as I’m not sure exactly what the joke is, apart from “yeah, Applejack was stubborn.” Is that the joke? It’s not all that funny.
Anyway... I think I got events mixed up. But back in a building, they come across a really, truly horrifying sight - a ghoul filly with a pink cloud cutie mark, which Littlepip takes to mean that she got her special talent after she died, how the pink cloud robbed her of her special talent, and now she’s shooting pink cloud of her horn, and there are dragons attacking from behind, but Velvet throws up a shield spell, and Calamity is shooting and shouting at Littlepip that they aren’t real children, and the shield falls and Littlepip and Velvet get swarmed by the dragons and Velvet is completely helpless and...
Huh. Looking at that, I should probably be a lot more excited by this than I actually am.
But, enough of that, back to playing Thief.
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