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Glim Glam's Literary Ham Slam, Equestria-Dystopia Edition
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.284789
284790 284797 284802 284813 284822
After spending several weeks in deep meditation over new ways to accuse amateur pony fiction authors of being homosexuals, I have returned to bestow my wisdom upon you foolish mortals.

We shall now commence with:

Fallout Equestria
By kkat


As with everything else I've delved into here, I will be coming into this one blind. As was the case with Past Sins, I know this fic by reputation, and I know that there is some controversy within the fan community about how accurately the universe of the Fallout games is portrayed here. I will state before we begin that I don't know anything about the Fallout universe and I honestly don't care that much about what details kkat gets right or wrong. I'll be judging this purely on its literary merits, as has been the case with all the other stories we've read here.

That said, let's begin.

This story, as I think I've mentioned before, is actually longer than War and Peace. It begins with not only a Prologue, but an Introduction as well. Since the Introduction is quite short, I'll just paste it in here verbatim.

>Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria...

>…there came an era when the ideals of friendship gave way to greed, selfishness, paranoia and a jealous reaping of dwindling space and natural resources. Lands took up arms against their neighbors. The end of the world occurred much as we had predicted -- the world was plunged into an abyss of balefire and dark magic. The details are trivial and pointless. The reasons, as always, purely our own. The world was nearly wiped clean of life. A great cleansing; a magical spark struck by pony hooves quickly raged out of control. Megaspells rained from the skies. Entire lands were swallowed in flames and fell beneath the boiling oceans. Ponykind was almost extinguished, their spirits becoming part of the ambient radiation that blanketed the lands. A quiet darkness fell across the world...

>…But it was not, as some had predicted, the end of the world. Instead, the apocalypse was simply the prologue for another bloody chapter in pony history. In the early days, thousands were spared the horrors of the holocaust by taking refuge in enormous underground shelters known as Stables. But when they emerged, they had only the hell of the wastes to greet them. All except those in Stable Two. For on that fateful day when spellfire rained from the sky, the giant steel door of Stable Two swung closed, and never re-opened.

>horrors of the holocaust
oy vey.

Anyway, first impressions. The prose here seems decent enough, and I am not seeing any significant grammatical or spelling errors right off the bat, which is good. As we've seen with other works, that isn't always a reliable indicator of quality, but at least we're dealing with an author who seems to be able to read and write at an adult level *knocks on wood*. Also, based on some things I've heard about this fic, I have reason to suspect this may have been professionally edited at some point as well; we'll see if this is the case or not.

As to the content, this seems to be pretty standard fare for apocalyptic science fiction. This intro is on par with the sort of thing you might expect to hear in a voiceover narration during the opening of a 1980s anime; "in the year 2525, Tokyo has been reduced to ash," that sort of thing.

>The details are trivial and pointless. The reasons, as always, purely our own.
I found this to be a little awkward, although I can't quite put my finger on why. I suppose I probably wouldn't have broken this into two sentences, I would have just connected them with a semicolon. However, the way the author has it isn't technically wrong.

I find the statement "the reasons are purely our own" to be rather ambiguous; I'm not entirely sure what the author means by this. That could be what bothers me about it. Anyway, that's enough about the intro.

Prologue: Of Pip-Bucks and Cutie Marks

I was a little confused as to why the author chose to include an introduction on top of a prologue, particularly when the overall work is quite verbose to begin with. I can see now why he chose to do this: the introduction is, as I said, basically the opening voiceover narration that sets the scene, while the prologue begins the narration of the actual story.

However, I still find the introduction to be a little unnecessary. The story itself appears to be narrated in the first person, so I could understand including a neutral third-person introduction to set the stage. However, what's interesting here is that the introduction appears to be read by the same narrator: "the reasons are purely OUR own." However, apart from this, the perspective appears to be neutral, so...I'm not sure.

In any case though, I don't feel like the intro paragraphs add much, so if I were editing this I'd probably recommend chopping the intro and just starting the story at the prologue. addendum: after having read the prologue I would probably cut that too.

Anyway, moving on.

>If I’m going to tell you about the adventure of my life -- explain how I got to this place with these people, and why I did what I’m going to do next -- I should probably start by explaining a little bit about PipBucks.
As opening lines go, this one is fairly simple and direct. The author hints that the character has done something morally questionable ("why I did what I'm going to do next"), which grabs the reader's attention well enough that I'm willing to overlook the rather awkward mixture of past and present tense. The author does a fairly decent job here of setting the scene for the story: this character is going to recount some significant events in his/her life, which presumably led up to whatever point he/she now finds himself/herself in. We don't know any details, however. This is good; we get a sense of a character but only a vague sense of who or what we're reading about. This makes us curious to continue reading.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.284790
284817
tail-pony-fallout-equestria-horse-like-mammal-fictional-character.jpg
>>284789

Unfortunately, though the author starts off on a decent foot, with his next step he immediately faceplants into the mud. I'll quote the opening line again:

>If I’m going to tell you about the adventure of my life -- explain how I got to this place with these people, and why I did what I’m going to do next -- I should probably start by explaining a little bit about PipBucks.
Opening lines are important in any story, but when the story is told in the first person it's doubly important. This is our first time meeting a character with whom we are about to spend roughly half a million words seriously. We know literally nothing about this character yet; we don't know their name, their gender, their occupation, their personality, or anything. If it wasn't for the fact that this is an MLP fic, we wouldn't even know that this character is a pony.

In and of itself, this is fine; we shouldn't know everything about this character yet. However, our first meeting with the character should at least tell us something important about them. So considering this, let's look at the last part of the opener:

>I should probably start by explaining a little bit about PipBucks.
Is this really the first thing we need to know here? I understand that this is probably going to be a rather technology-heavy story, and I don't doubt that PipBucks are going to be rather central to the plot. So, we are ultimately going to need some detailed information about what these things are and how they work. However, is it so important that the author needs us to read a whole technical manual about it before we can move on to the story itself?

The first couple of lines should give us at least a general sense of who we are talking to, and what he/she is going to be telling us about. Ideally, we should also get an impression of why the character wants to tell us this, and why it might be worth our time to listen.

Essentially, this character has tapped us on the shoulder and said to us: "Hey there, fuckface, stop whatever you're doing and listen up. I've got some important shit I want to tell you about." This is usually enough to grab our attention, but before we spend half a million words with this person pony, whatever they're going to need to convince us that we actually give a shit.

So, what does kkat's protagonist need to get off his/her chest? Well, whatever it is, it's apparently going to have to wait, because first they need to explain to us about some made-up techno-thingamabob.

From here, the text launches into a very dense paragraph explaining a lot of details about the PipBuck: how it is worn, what it's general function is, what it does, how it works. I have to say that we are not even a full two paragraphs into the story yet, and the author is already losing my interest.

To put this into perspective, imagine that you were writing a story set in 2020, but you were going to travel back in time to 1990 in order to publish it. Your story relies heavily on smartphones, which a person from 1990 isn't going to be familiar with. However, does that mean that the literal second paragraph of your novel needs to be a detailed technical spec that covers how a smartphone works and everything it can do? Probably not.

>b-b-but, my protagonist is a smart phone technician, so it's actually really super important that I explain what a smart phone is right away...
Shut up, faggot. No it isn't. All you need to do is tell us that your character is a smart phone technician; you can fill us in on the details later.

No matter when or where it's set or what kind of space-age machinery the setting contains, a story is still a story; it has characters and a plot. What we need right off the bat is essentially a thesis; we need something that introduces us to the character and gives us a sense of what we are about to read. If the literal first paragraph of your story is just a tech manual for an imaginary device, odds are you've already lost about 2/3 of your readers.

Anyway, from what I can gather, the PipBuck is some kind of general-purpose device that keeps track of health, armor, stats, and shit like that, and has a map and a radar function and whatever the fuck else; basically it's the game interface I guess.

>It can even be made to glow like a lamp.
For some reason, the author considered this completely unremarkable statement to be important enough to treat as a single paragraph.

Anyway, it seems that all of this is more or less trying to go somewhere. The narrator goes on to explain that PipBucks are a common device that all ponies own, and that most of the super-neato features that the author just spent an entire dense paragraph detailing aren't even used by most ponies. So, basically, a PipBuck is just some completely unremarkable utilitarian thing that everyone has, and we actually don't need to know that much about it at all.

However, the protagonist apparently has a PipBuck for a cutie mark, and is exceedingly bummed about it, because it's basically the equivalent of a pony living in our world getting a cutie mark of a toaster or a hairdryer or something.

The prologue continues to meander. I'll be honest, this isn't really grabbing me so far. The author paints us a portrait of a generally unremarkable main character who rambles on for several disjointed paragraphs about how unsatisfied she feels over being so unremarkable and dull. We can assume, probably, that this ordinary, average pony will soon be plucked from her unremarkable life and called upon to do extraordinary things, but for now it's mostly a chore to listen to her.

Apart from this, the author drops in a few details that may be central to the story at some point. Someone called The Overmare appears to be in charge, and there is a character, apparently a singer, called Velvet Remedy who is mentioned twice, suggesting that she may be important.

At the absolute end, we are finally informed that the main character's name is LittlePip.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.284792
284824 284854
ee2f930ee1fc45f85fac05201eca19bddd7768c5.jpg
Chapter One: Out of the Stable

The chapter begins with an italicized quote:

>“Because in Stable Two, no pony ever enters and no pony ever leaves.”
This quote is not attributed to anyone.

Anyway, to summarize the story so far, we've had an intro monologue that felt rather unnecessary and had the feel of a cheesy voiceover narration for a 1980s sci-fi apocalypse anime. This was followed by a prologue, in which we were introduced to a character named LittlePip, who rambled about how boring she is for probably far longer than was necessary, and then that was that. All things considered, everything up until now could easily be chopped at no serious loss.

The first proper chapter of the story opens with the LittlePip character cleaning a wall. Apparently the takeaway from the prologue is that LittlePip is apprenticed to the technician who keeps the PipBucks in working order. Since the PipBucks don't break that often, he's basically the Maytag repairman of post-apocalyptic ponyland, so he assigns whatever minor chores he has to do to LittlePip and then masturbates naps all day. She is presently staring at a wall she is supposed to be cleaning, and wishing that there was something painted on it.

>I let myself fantasize, picturing the Overmare agreeing and ordering Palette herself to turn our entire stall into one of her brightly colorful masterpieces. Palette was the greatest painter in Stable Two, and like every skilled artist, that made her a stable treasure. Life in Stable Two inevitably began to eat at your spirit -- you were born in the Stable, you lived your whole life in the Stable, you were going to die there, and the course of your life was largely laid out for you to see by your Cutie Mark Party. So the Overmare insisted that a new song be added to the Stable broadcast’s repertoire each week, that public areas were brightly painted and adored with uplifting and motivational murals, that regular parties were planned in the atrium… all in an effort to distract and stave off depression.
I'm a little torn on the writing style so far. Overall the prose is fairly good, but the author has a tendency to jump from thought to thought in a rather inelegant and haphazard way. The prologue, particularly, meandered quite a bit, giving us a lot of jumbled facts about the protagonist's life in no particular order, without adhering to any kind of central idea or thesis. In the same way, this paragraph tells us some useful things that help to flesh out the world, but it feels like it's all just sort of dropped in at random.

Anyway, LittlePip is feeling gloomy at the prospect of having to clean this mural-less wall every day for the rest of her life, when all of a sudden Velvet Remedy shows up.

>“Oh dear. Is it really that bad.”
This is presumably a question, so it should end with a question mark.

Once again, the author begins to gush information at us in a rambling and chaotic fashion. We learn that Velvet Remedy is basically the local celebrity; a singer, who broadcasts her songs to the PipBucks as part of some sort of regularly scheduled entertainment session. The story also informs us that LittlePip wants to munch her vag.

The scene is a little awkward. LittlePip is appropriately tongue-tied at having her idol randomly show up out of the blue while she is performing her daily chores. There is a brief, very goofy dialogue exchange and then Velvet informs her that the reason she is here is to drop off her PipBuck to be repaired. Since the actual technician is off somewhere beating his meat, she gives it to LittlePip. LittlePip is more than happy to give the device a full tune up, and assures her that it will be ready by the following night. Velvet thanks her and exits.

There is a page break, and we rejoin LittlePip the following day. She has spent the night fine-tuning the PipBuck, but when she goes to drop it off she finds a crowd gathered around Velvet's room. Apparently she has vanished without explanation.

>She was gone outside?!?
She had gone outside. "She was outside" would probably work as well, but "She was gone outside" is grammatically horrendous. Slap yourself for this, kkat.

Anyway, the "Overmare" assures the crowd that she will track down Velvet Remedy in short order. Naturally, this involves tracking her PipBuck, which of course LittlePip has. The crowd now turns on her, apparently blaming her for Velvet being gone. The Overmare then tells her to take the PipBuck and go back to her room.

There's another page break, and we see LittlePip in her room, listening to Velvet Remedy songs on her iPone, rubbing her maresnootch and thinking about how strange it is that Velvet Remedy would just leave the Stable for no obvious reason. Oh yeah, this was covered briefly in the introduction but I didn't mention it in my commentary: a "Stable" is some type of bunker that the ponies stay in because radiation or whatever. I'm assuming this is the "fallout" in Fallout.

Anyway, what makes the whole thing even more perplexing is that the door to the outside can only be opened by the Overmare, so she shouldn't have been able to even leave in the first place. My best guess is that Velvet has probably been planning to escape for some time, and leaving her thingamotron at the repair shop was done deliberately to ensure that she couldn't be tracked. However, what she didn't count on is that the mopey little repair-pony who works in the shop really, really wants to lick her labia.

So, I'm assuming what will happen next is that LittlePip is going to break out of the Stable herself, so that she can go look for Velvet in order to give her back the PipBuck she obviously doesn't want or need, but probably more because she really, really wants to lick her labia. And thus begins her epic adventure. But...we shall see. It's entirely possible she just stays put like a good little pony and the entire story is just her repairing PipBucks and cleaning walls for the next half-million words.
Anonymous
a1c9f58
?
No.284797
284800
pinkie_laugh_by_rolin11-d6wbwzj.png
>>284789
>This intro is on par with the sort of thing you might expect to hear in a voiceover narration during the opening of a 1980s anime; "in the year 2525, Tokyo has been reduced to ash," that sort of thing.

You don't have to explain. I know exacly waht you're talking about.
Anonymous
1883b74
?
No.284800
GET IN.jpg
>>284797
>cue one second shot of a grimy cityscape
>cue brief animation of a blinding white explosion
>cue short shot of some ruins and bones
>suddenly cut to Tokyo being perfectly rebuilt but cyberpunk and the nuke from the intro is never mentioned again
Anonymous
1883b74
?
No.284802
>>284789
>>The details are trivial and pointless. The reasons, as always, purely our own.
Oh holy lel is this actually in the intro? I didn't remember that. That's a line that sounds edgy and cool for an intro, but the story goes on to explain the details and reasons of the war pretty explicitly.
Anonymous
bbcc4f1
?
No.284813
99D1ED461DB7B8A1B6137CDA050B9389-241949.png
>>284789
>After spending several weeks in deep meditation over new ways to accuse amateur pony fiction authors of being homosexuals, I have returned to bestow my wisdom upon you foolish mortals.
Hooray!
>foolish mortaling intenseifies
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284816
284817 284819
PipBoy2000_Happy_Independence_Day.png
341894-1515547342.jpg
FUCK YES, IT BEGINS

>If I’m going to tell you about the adventure of my life -- explain how I got to this place with these people, and why I did what I’m going to do next -- I should probably start by explaining a little bit about PipBucks.
There's another thing that makes this particular story-opener terrible. Multiple things.

1. The Pip-Buck is just a Pip-Boy from Fallout 3.
the Pip-Boy 2000 in Fallout 1/2? Handheld personal computers.
Fallout 3 decided their characters should use a made-up sequel, the Pip-Boy 3000. See what they did there? It has a 3 in the title, like 3dog. This is as smart as Bethesda's writing gets. Anyway, they decided this should be a tacky bulky arm-mounted computer for no reason at all. Perhaps the devs thought it would make the obnoxious "Your main pause screen just has you pause time and raise your pipbuck to your face" DIEGETIC INTERFACE cuntery look cooler. Many mods exist to unfuck it and make it the handheld PC it was always meant to be. And this doesn't impact the Diegetic Interface shit at all! It still has a fucking screen! Hell, why even bother with this Diegetic Interface when looking at it still pauses time and you have another SECOND PAUSE BUTTON that brings up the Save, Load, Settings, and Quit Game options amongst others? Fuckers should have either gone all the way on Diegetic Interfaces or not bothered.
The Pip-Boy is a nonsense machine that shows you your health and Limb Condition (if you have broken legs or not), a World Map, a fucking worthless Local Map, and an Inventory separated into bd categories and sorted poorly. You can stop time, eat 30 pieces of food, heal yourself with 30 stimpaks, and unpause time to resume the fight with full health.
Compare this to Metal Gear Solid V. Time isn't paused when you bring out your iDroid. Your iDroid can mark enemies you look at for a while, letting you see them through walls and in the dark and see how far away they are. It can call in air strikes and weather-changing shell launches and Assault Helicopter attacks and Helicopter Pickups and weapon drops from your base. Your map is justified as a satellite map. You can manage many things from this menu but whipping it out is dangerous as time isn't paused. You change equipped items with the D-Pad without timestops.
The Other Pause menu in this game, for restarting missions and changing graphics settings and quitting the game, also exists. But it lacks a Quicksave and Quickload button because the devs understood how this ruins challenge.

2. The Pip-Boy in F1/2? Mostly a map and computer-hacking tool. Your HUD had this cool beaten-up time-worn look to it for no reason other than "it looks cool and fits the tone".
F3? The justification for your HUD being full of ugly glowing green bars, and the justification for VATS: your "pause time and make the game shoot for me" ability.
NO OTHER NPC IN THE ENTIRE FALLOUT FRANCHISE HAS EVER USED VATS, OR MADE ANY MENTION OF VATS EXISTING CANONICALLY, before F4 threw in a random terminal to imply you were always a robot (even though this makes no sense) and robots can do Vats. WHENEVER YOU ARE TOLD ABOUT VATS, IT ONLY COMES FROM TUTORIAL-POPUPS OR LOADING-SCREEN HINTS. The author gives the heroine VATS and calls it SATS because the ponified Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System is now called the Stable-Tec Assisted Targeting System. Even though you could have called it OATS if you called it the Optical-Assist Targeting System.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.284817
284818 284824 293663
>>284790
Just saying, I think 'kkat' has a soft k, so that when you pronounce it its "gaykat"
>>284816
Dude, please dont ruin this like last thread. Glimglam is funny and entertaining. You're... let's listen to him.
>>284818
Just the first k is soft
Anonymous
bbcc4f1
?
No.284818
284817
>>284817
>Just saying, I think 'kkat' has a soft k,
>soft k
Ghayghat really needs to go get that checked out by a medical professional.
If your kay is really soft it might just be gay.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284819
284821
>>284816
3. This is the opener for this motherfucking story.
THE STORY'S OPENING!!!
An opener should tell you what to expect. And you know what? It buttfucking does! Not one single fucking line has passed, and the author is already copypasting Fallout elements without creatively remixing anything or adding any new magical features before dumping it in this mutated half-aborted crack-infused rape-baby of a setting.
The "Batman Cold Open" is a common thing where stories start with Batman fighting enemies, THEN establish the "Lore" on who he is and why he punches a Clown every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday night and what tonight's adventure is.

4. Littlepip is a Pip-Buck Repair Technician.
IT'S HER JOB TO FIX (AND TEST) THIS SHIT.
It is not fucking necessary for Future Littlepip to narrate to you, the audience, what one of the most common pieces of technology in the post-apocalypse does and what every last one of its features are, certainly not when it's eventually revealed who the story is canonically being told to. (no spoilers here but it's SOMEONE WHO SHOULD FUCKING KNOW HOW PIPBUCKS WORK!)
The first chapter could have easily featured her repairing the broken Pip-Bucks of a few different idiots to give you, the reader, a sense of her mundane toaster-repair-bitch existence. Dialogue, LP testing her pip-bucks out, and her clients testing their pip-bucks out, all of these things could give you, the audience, a sense of what Pip-Bucks can and cannot do.

For example:
Imagine a scene where some fat bitch runs into her room and demands "Fix my pip-buck!"
"What's wrong with it?"
"If I knew that, I wouldn't need you to fix it! So fix it!"
LP snarkily thinks about what an asshole this girl is as she goes through the overly-full personal computer with typical retard computer problems like viruses.
She tests every function. She checks the Status screen to see her Health Points and Limb Condition and Physical Statistics, the watch says it's worn by an unhealthy bitch with bad ankles and low intelligence/agility.
She checks the map, it looks okay.
She tests the targeting system by using VATS to make this fat bitch throw a crushed ball of paper into a bin like a bored basketball fan. For the seconds VATS spends in control of this girl's body, she is a precision instrument, a lean athlete perfectly programmed for precision and force calculations. Then the effect wears off and she screams about how much she hates this function and hates feeling like a puppet in her own body.
She checks that the watch's pressure-seals are firmly attached to the wearer's wrist. All good there, nice and firm yet squishy.
She checks the battery. 97%.
"Of course the battery's fine, it's magical!" she thinks. "Damn thing could last a thousand years, as long as nobody made it overheat."
She tests the radio, and the volume knob
>"YOU'RE LISTENING TO VAULT 69 RADIO! TODAY, ONLY THREE PEOPLE HAVE KILLED THEMSELVES! WOW, THAT'S HALF THE NUMBER WE HAD LAST WEEK, AND WE'RE ONLY HALFWAY THROUGH THE WEEK!"
>*violin music*
>*insert shitty big-band swing-60s-singer shit about ponies here*
>*sex noises*
>"SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME THE WORLD IS GONNA ROLL ME!"
Then she tests the Inventory, and sees it's glitched out badly.

"There's your problem: You've overloaded your Magical Inventory" Littlepip says, and alternates between pressing the Drop Item button and pulling out over 50 different outfits from the wrist-mounted computer like Pinkie Pie pulling a pie from nowhere. "I know you can carry up to 300 pounds of stuff in your inventory before you start feeling the weight, but you should really try to travel light. It's easier for your system's software to keep track of

Then a delivery-mare Pegasus hovers in. Either she's miserable because this Vault's low ceilings make flying hard and precisely nobody considered fliers when designing this pony vault for fucking ponies...
Or she's happy because this Vault's high ceilings means she can fly over the seas of ponies travelling around the Vault and can fly around and loop as much as she wants in specially-built Racetracks and Obstacle Courses and Nature Rooms full of plants and blue-painted ceilings.
Either way the Delivery Mare job is for Pegasi only and they're rare and well-paid. LP could wish she had wings here. Or be glad she's got a horn that can do shit no wing can do.

Then some guy comes in. "Hi, I came in with a broken Pipbuck screen yesterday and it should be fixed by now"
Littlepip checks her supply of fixed crap, checks his name, and gives him his watch.
The guy puts the loose watch on its arm, and its interior swells up until it's firmly stuck to the guy's arm and able to read the pulse of magic through his body, letting it know the dude's physical and mental stats.
Then he tries to haggle a refund out of her even though her boss underpays her and won't let her haggle. So she has to show her stubbornness/charm/willingness to call security and have the guy escorted out/whatever.

Then imagine a scene where Littlepip struggles in her free time to repair a burned and broken Pip-Buck that was worn by a pony who got cabin fever and shot himself with a Laser Pistol. Grimdark, it explains why almost everypony alive has a pip-buck 200 years after the war, and the sheer "this is just a normal saturday for me" hits you with the fact that this sort of "Everything must be recycled down in the vault, also sometimes people just die" culture is normal. It tells you "This isn't FIM down here".

Then imagine a guy walks in and shows her his dick, which has a pip-buck stuck around it.
He thought he could stick his dick in the expanding interior seal to fuck it, but he got his cock stuck.
The guy asks if there are any cuter mares who could take a look at it because she's so plain and boring. She's a dyke so the sight of cock doesn't arouse her. She levitates a toothpick over and presses some debug-mode secret command corner-of-the-screen shit on the touch-screen and gets his Pip-Buck to reset itself and release the dude's cock.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284821
>>284819
Furthermore, Chapter One and this entire story only happens because of luck when it really didn't have to.

Canonically
>be littlepip
>famous singer Velvet Remedy walks in asking to have her Pip-Buck fixed
>gee, you sure are lucky that it's you and not any other person who can fix pipbucks
>remove it
>FORTUNATELY, this pip-buck just so happens to contain the Secret Password needed to open/close the Vault Door, it's implied to have once been Sweetie Belle's and the CMCs built Vault-Tec I mean Stable-Tec
>she runs away from home because her Cutie Mark is "Sing nice songs to dying patients" therefore her talent is to be a Medic and she hates just being a singer in the vault
>get blamed for all of this for no reason, be even more socially hated than before
>still be Littlepip
>still have her pip-buck for some reason
>complete with door password!
>leave vault because being socially despised sounds worse than risking death in post-apocalyptic hell world
>start tracking her down hoping to give her pip-buck back, even though the Vault Overmare said "if you leave this vault you will never be allowed home, whether you bring Velvet back or not"
>eventually find Velvet and begin Murderhobo Adventure Filler bullshit adventures with the big strong dude in power armour you randomly find out of sheer luck
>at some point you find and fight the evil Pegasus Enclave. Before the apocalypse, all Pegasi except Dash and Fluttershy said "Fuck this shit, I'm out" and flew to Cloudsdale and overclocked the cloud factories, covering the skies in Brown Dusty Cloudy Skies that should really cause a nuclear winter logically speaking.
>this is why Pegasi are canonically rare in the Stables and outside
>individual rare good Pegasi who don't want to work for Liberal's Nightmare Cartoon-Fascist Pegasus Enclave get branded with a branding iron shaped like Rainbow Dash's Cutie Mark over their own marks and are exiled and kicked down into the Wasteland and called "Dashites". Yes, Dash-ites. Da-shites.
>why do Dashites not just get executed? the author didn't think of that. it's not like a pegasus have their wings clipped to "gliding only" levels of flight, so being down there with a laser rifle but no power armour and shitty wings makes you a glass cannon and tempting target carrying expensive tech, and it's not like Raiders dream of having a Dashite slave to molest.
>kkunt is a lesbian faggot

Do you know what would have been more interesting, and made the protagonist more of an active and interesting protagonist with goals and dreams, AND greatly improved the story and setup and everyone's motivations, AND made this "everyone has a pipbuck" shit less retarded?

>be Littlepip
>bored nerd who loves adventure stories and hates boring job repairing tech
>you're the only pony in the vault with a repairing-tech cutie mark and your elderly fat bastard boss is losing his mind
>too poor to afford modern Pip-Buck 3000, use shitty old hoof-held Pip-Buck 2000
>your hobby, and the project you work on in your spare time? repairing an old broken piece-of-shit Pip-Buck 3000 your fat bastard boss gave up on trying to fix
>it had a fucking sick custom paint-job, which you touched up nerdily using precise paintbrushes
>surely, eventually, you will make the thing work
>one day you fix the broken Pip-Buck and put it on
>sick, this pip-buck's been upgraded over the years! it has magical program functions no other pip-buck has, and an optimized enhanced Aiming Assist System justifying how talented and lethal kkunt made Littlepip despite her severe lack of combat training and poor stat build
>it also has a fuckload of diary entries
>sick, you love reading the diaries of dead people to get a sense of who they were and how they lived and died! that's a perfectly normal thing to do down here in the vault- i mean stable since entertainment is very rare for some reason!
i'd also justify the lack of entertainment with "the overseer is a paranoid control freak who doesn't want art to exist if it's not boringly pro-military and pro-Current Overseer and pro-conformity and anti-individual, so he burned many books and data disk copies of books are rare things that fetch high prices"
>read the diary
>the diary of a man who spent years trying to escape the vault and was murdered for it
>turns out he knew things about the outside world thanks to a unicorn's magic crystal ball
>he saw visions of the evil Enclave raiding existing Stables and breaking in to kidnap un-irradiated ponies and turn them into breeding slaves for the "glorious pegasus empire"
>there's also a good Pegasus Rebellion fighting him because not all Pegasi but two are evil in my take on things, but it's understaffed and weak until the heroes join it and win fights for it
>diary says the world will be conquered and your home will be destroyed by the evil Enclave and their malicious cloud covering unless they are stopped and Celestia's Sunlight is allowed to reach the earth once more
>jump at the call to adventure and leave the vault with the password he got
>leave the vault, adventure solo badly, eventually a team leaves the vault to save you and drag you home kicking and screaming since you know how to fix pip-bucks
>everyone in the recovery team dies gorily except for one who cowered in fear and pretended to be dead: a cowardly pacifistic Medic girl drafted into "military" Vault Security service because she's one of the few ponies who can perform healing spells
>she never asked for this, but her choices are to go home and admit her incredible failure and probably get shot for it, adventure solo, or get dragged along by an adventure-obsessed gun-toting plucky heroine in deep over her head and get the opportunity to heal this chick and others.
>medic girl hates fighting and sucks at it, but she quickly learns how brutal this world is and gets over her pacifism instead of relying on an infinite-ammo tranq-dart gun for a nonsense "no-kill" rule that is eventually broken yet held onto hypocritically anyway.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284822
>>284789
>there came an era when the ideals of friendship gave way to greed, selfishness, paranoia and a jealous reaping of dwindling space and natural resources
This is mostly false, the only glimpses we see of Pre-War Fallout paint Equestria as a selfless and morally-superior nation eternally raped and fucked over by Zebra hordes and Zebra rapefugees. Author did this accidentally. It's never even confirmed whether Ponies declared an imperialist "we want your fucking coal and diamonds" war on Zebras or if the war was just what happens when the Wonderbolt-Killing Two-Faced PirateZiggers pissed ponies off just a little too much.
Though it IS confirmed that Zebras fired nukes first AND their reason for doing so was an utterly retarded niggereligious reaction to something their race directly caused. I'll save my rant on that for when we get there.

>The end of the world occurred much as we had predicted -- the world was plunged into an abyss of balefire and dark magic
The author is, as usual, ripping off a Fallout thing (Fallout 1's opening narration) without understanding why it worked there or how Fantasy RetroFuture America is different from Equestria. Ponies don't predict the world wwill end in magi-nuclear fire or dark magic.

>The details are trivial and pointless. The reasons, as always, purely our own.
I'm going to criticize Fallout here, a franchise I love.
And criticize a major part of Fallout 1, the franchise's sacred cow.
The details behind ANY historically significant event are NEVER trivial or pointless.
If more people understood the situation that made WW2 a necessity (Evil jews in charge, corrupt unions, inflation forcing people to take wheelbarrows of bank notes around if they wanted to buy anything, economic raping of the german people forcing German men/women/children to become prostitutes to wealthy jews and union bosses, Germany being raped for being dragged into WW1 and then having Jews in charge 'surrender' after killing millions of whites for jewish entertainment and profit, the failed Communist revolution in Germany where the Jews attempted to establish a communist state within germany) humanity would have tried harder to avoid the jewish problems that are sending us all towards WW3.
I understand why Fallout didn't establish whether the first nukes were fired by Communist China or Imperialist America That Conquered Canada And Warred With China Over Anchorage For Muh Oil.
But in FE's quest to "One-up and storify" Fallout in a pony costume, it will never improve anything Fallout did or understand why Fallout did it.
Blaming America would piss off Americans and blaming China would justify Evilmerica's wars.
Imperialist America and Commie China's reasons for warring with nukes?
They needed resources and were willing to kill for them.
and eeded resources because the authors thought if 1960s "Peak Americana" continued on forever we'd continue using up all our resources and then be forced into war... even though nuclear power is canonically a thing. Cold Fusion for infinite power also canonically exists. And Matter Reconstitution as seen in Dead Money. The authors really fucked up there.

>horrors of the holocaust
I'm still surprised jews lets pop-culture say "Nuclear Holocaust" about any nuclear event. Then again, it helps with brand recognition even though the Holocaust isn't the most recent, the biggest, or the worst, and certainly not the most plausible.

>technology infodumps
I hate when authors don't know how to dump info on the author in a seamless and quality way.
Here are some tricks I personally like:
>two faggots argue over whether the AK-75 or Remington Hellfire are superior rifles. Both swear the pros of their futuristic guns outweigh the cons brought up by the other faggots.

>protagonist goes from using an old and reliable thing the audience is familiar with to a new futuristic thing we have to get used to.
For example, Futuristic Detective likes using an old 45 Pistol. But is eventually forced by his boss to start using the new Cyber-Pistol that can fire ElectroPulse Blasts that disable robots and power armour and taze foes to the ground. DNA-Scanners on the palm ensure only the approved wielder of the weapon can fire it, and a thug who picks the gun up and tries using it just makes the trigger click uselessly. The weapon also carries a laser that can scan whoever it's pointed at, check if the target's in the criminal database as a career criminal or not, and unlock use of the pistol's Ballistic Bullets if the target is registered as someone cops can shoot at. Police Detective fucking hates the new gun and needs his younger buddy-cop partner to tell him how to operate the gun.

>an advertisement, typically on TV, shills the product and all its amazing new features. For example, the all-new Ferrari Gundam Suit! A power-suit on wheels, clad in foot-thick steel armour with retractable ankle-wheels to allow 210MPH an hour movement in combat! Also flies at 300MPH on energy-field wings and jet-boosters in the ass! Someone nearby can react to it and say "That's such a massive improvement over the previous Ferrarri model!" and another can say "Yeah but the Lambo Gurren 386 could fucking destroy it in a fair fight. Who cares about speed when the Lambo Gurren Energy-Shielding can't even be penetrated by railguns and nukes?"

>someone's hobby or job is repairing or selling or making futuristic tech that's important to the plot.

also minor funny thing
>It can even be made to glow like a lamp
some of Fallout 3/NV/4's most popular mods edit the Pip-Boy Lamp to suck less.
Also only faggots turn their lamps on because having your light on reduces your Sneak skill and environments are rarely dark enough to require use of these weak fucking glowstick-tier lights.
The author wants to one-up Fallout by ripping it off and making up bullshit justifications for why a futuristic post-apocalyptic pony world would resemble Fallout at 4 separate points in the franchise's timeline and average tech level so strongly.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284824
284829 284837
>>284792
>She was gone outside?!?
This story is widely considered the greatest pony fanfiction ever written within this fandom?!?
This story is regularly published in "Print Runs" and sold commercially at a high price so faggots with too much disposable income can have this piece of shit taking up space on the anime-figurine shelves that house a few books and pseudointellectual books they've never read and shitloads of trashy pornography mangas?!?
People was paid money for this?!?
WHO WAS PHONE?!?

>Anyway, the "Overmare" assures the crowd that she will track down Velvet Remedy in short order. Naturally, this involves tracking her PipBuck, which of course LittlePip has. The crowd now turns on her, apparently blaming her for Velvet being gone. The Overmare then tells her to take the PipBuck and go back to her room.
GOD, this fucking part of the story is disgraceful. Sure, it "has" to happen this way for the plot to make sense. But while we eventually hear talk of the Vault setting up a Search Party to recover Velvet (and nothing EVER comes of this even after LP leaves) they never ask for (or take) the Pip-Buck, which LittlePip fucking waved around right in front of everypony.

>I'm assuming this is the "fallout" in Fallout
yeah, also it was initially a clever reference to how our actions can have "fallout"s that we can't predict. It's why Fallouts 1 and 2 were really more about people and their problems/struggles than the apocalypse itself. I often wish Fallout 3 didn't exist. Van Buren (the real F3) contained all the good ideas that were eventually re-used in New Vegas, the best Fallout game.
but back to writing...
in Fallout these massive underground shelters called "Vaults" were built, and then sealed via bank-like Vault Doors.
Vaults are full of cameras, these camera feeds appear on screens in the Overseer's Office. He's the boss, who commands Vault Security guards and decrees shit.
These Vaults were made in unassuming places, where they could easily be hidden within mountains or beneath cities.
Fallout 4 fucked this up by making Vaults easy to find and easy to see from miles away, and then typically not making anyone try to break into these vaults because bethesda is dumb and its writers desperately wish they were working on Borderlands 3.
However not all of these Vaults were completed in time.
And every existing Vault... Some were "control vaults" designed to be normal, and others were Experiments designed by the Enclave to see how isolated populaces react to various weird shit people might be expected to deal with during space travel.
"What happens if we make a Vault that doesn't actually keep radiation out because its front door visibly does not fit the hole?"
"What happens if we make a Vault containing one man and a box of puppets, one containing one woman and 999 men, and one containing one man and 999 women?"
"What happens if we split a Vault right down the middle, paint one half red and one half blue, make weird noises in the vents, and pump the vents with paranoia gas?"
"What happens if a Vault is designed to elect its Overseer boss for one year at a time, and he gets killed at the end of his term? Surely a system of voting blocs will form and remain in power until 200 years pass and one elected girl thinks to change the system and make everyone's vote randomized via computer (this results in a civil war that leaves 6 people alive. they refuse to sacrifice anyone and the vault computers play peppy music and say thanks for proving humans would never sacrifice each other to save themselves. Some people involved kill themselves after this, others fuck off and go offscreen to never be seen again. Obsidian was so proud of this fucking stupid questline they shilled it during loading screens. No fucking wonder their worst writers and newest werewolf-porn-writing dykes went on to shart out The Outer Worlds)"
"What happens if we make a Vault and then give everyone Super Mutant-inating Juice that just exists now and also makes you into a big dumb cannibalistic fantasy Orc nigger because Marketing said nobody will buy a Fallout game unless you can run around killing Super Mutants"
"What happens if we fill a Vault with junkies, and then 20 years after everyone gets sober, we open a secret compartment full of lethal amounts of drugs including drugs that were actually developed 80 years after the bombs fell? haha whooooops continuity error good thing most fallout fans secretly don't care about story and are just here for the shooty shooty gun-modding wannabe-badass gameplay and pseudointellectual cyclic faction discussion"
The writing's pretty fucking terrible for a lot of these "Experiment" vaults. Was it really necessary for Fallout 2 to say Fallout 1 only happened because that Vault's water chip was designed to fail on the specific date it broke on?

>>284817
>don't speak
no u
you're free to skim or even scroll past what I say about the story we're all reviewing and reading and talking about
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284829
284844
>>284824
In the last thread I repeated myself a lot.
I'll try to do that less and keep my thoughts on this fic focused. But this fic has over 1million words and a lot of mistakes to bitch about.

For example... Ballistic Shields.

IRL, useful.
would be more useful to a unicorn who can levitate a shield in front of him and 3 guns in front of or around the shield.
Enchanted shields that bounce bullets and spells back at foes would be even more useful.
Most unicorns in this fic fight by pointing and shooting guns anyway. Not like anyone uses status buffs. Or area denial spells.
A shield would get in the way of direct spells like Horn Laser. But can always be moved for those. And who says mages can not bend their fireball spells around corners or a shield?
Ballistic Shields are not seen in Fallout, so they are not ripped off in Fallout Equestria.

Is it right to hate when stories only happen because of bullshit coincidences and incredible stretches of logic, rather than actions taken by driven and competent active protagonists with agency and goals and plans and setbacks in those plans?
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.284837
293663
>>284824
And you're free to not ruin everything you touch by trying to make everything about your endless list of complaints which are neither entertaining nor or engaging.
This(these) thread(s) could be far more interactive and lively if you didnt discourage participation with your endless and unsolicited diatribes. But no one else is important right? Just (you) right?
Anonymous
1883b74
?
No.284844
284868 293663
>>284829
>I'll try to do that less and keep my thoughts on this fic focused.
Please do. Most of your arguments boil down to complaining about Fallout 3, or saying that some aspect of FoE is either too much or not enough like Fallout. Let's try our best to look at FoE as its own story. I promise it's bad enough when left to stand on its own merits.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.284854
284856 284868 284871
28d36ba4318409961157d4b4ac32119765e60571c7cbcbff03ca54209197d9d6_1.jpg
>>284792

Anyway, LittlePip lies on her bed and does some predictable musing. All the ponies have lived in the Stable their whole lives, and it's scary outside, and why would Velvet want to go out there, and blah blah blah, all that stuff.

>The two things I did understand was that Velvet Remedy had gotten me to remove her PipBuck so the Overmare couldn’t track her with it, and that I was screwed.
The second thing really doesn't follow the first thing. It should be obvious to just about anyone, including the Overmare, that Velvet's leaving her PipBuck at the repair shop was just a ruse. Velvet took it to the repair shop and asked to have it worked on. The pony at the repair shop did as she asked. LittlePip did her job and is not guilty of anything.

Anyway, the implication seems to be that LP's predicament has less to do with any formal discipline being handed down through the chain o' command, and more to do with everyday common ponies shitting on her because reasons. They are all assblasted that the only pop singer in the bunker decided she would rather die a slow death of radiation poisoning than spend one more minute singing for these retards, and they have chosen to vent their frustrations on LittlePip because she's there and she's easy to blame. Fair enough I guess.

Meanwhile, for some reason, LittlePip still has Velvet's PipBuck. Instead of just leaving the damn thing at work where it belongs and distancing herself from the problem, she instead takes it into her room with her and begins goofing around with it.

She pokes around and finds a sound file hidden on the hard drive (or whatever it has) that is encrypted and looks suspicious. Conveniently, LittlePip is able to break the encryption because reasons, so she plays the file. Also conveniently, it contains the access code to the front door being spoken by a mysterious voice.

In a clever twist which should surprise absolutely no one, LittlePip decides that she is going to leave the stable and look for Velvet Remedy so she can lick her labia.

There is a page break. In the next scene LittlePip is standing at the door, carrying a backpack full of food and a bunch of canteens, and just generally looking like somepony who is trying to escape. Instead of doing anything to stop her, the guards just stand there and glare menacingly at her, until she is able to levitate something over their heads and knock them unconscious.

An alarm goes off, and the Overmare begins yelling at her over the intercom to stop doing all the shit that she's doing. But LP's having none of it. She punches in the code, opens the door, and goes outside. The Overmare tells her that if she leaves, she will never be able to come back. She leaves anyway, because she really really wants to lick Velvet's labia.

Another page break. Jesus, this guy is almost as bad about these as what's-his-name, the last dude. Soulpillar. Anyway, LittlePip finds herself in a hallway filled with skeletons 3spoopy. Apparently the hallway had once been someone's apple cellar, but it had become the entrance to an underground bunker somehow. It's not explained how LittlePip, who has lived her entire life in the underground bunker and has no idea what is outside of it, would know what an apple cellar is. The chapter ends with her going out into the open world.

Since this is the end of the chapter, I'll pause and share some initial impressions. After having read three full-length works, two of which are apparently among the "classics" of the fandom, and having been mostly disappointed, I've come to accept that I shouldn't expect too much from these. So far, FoE is confirming that this is probably the right approach.

Of the works we've examined, this one feels the most "professionally" written, so the author gets a few points for that. This is not to say that it's good, but in terms of writing mechanics it's at least less bad than what we've seen from others. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a mixed blessing as I'm finding the story itself to be pretty meh. This reads less like a novel and more like a play-by-play of someone's tabletop RPG game. Since this is based on a video game, I'm not terribly surprised.

Our hero is a fairly generic "player" character. She starts out in a "safe" area, and we get a little bit of her rather dull backstory (tl;dr, she's just an average, unremarkable filly who happened to be in the right time and place when adventure called). Then, an event occurs which requires her to engage in a short fight and then takes her out into the broader world. If this were the plot of an indie game or an RPG scenario, it would probably be fine; however, as a story that a person is expected to sit and read (for half a million bloody words, no less), it's pretty damned unimaginative.

As I've said before, this author has thus far shown a tendency to bounce around from thought to thought without adhering to any central idea. More seriously though, he lacks any real sense of flair for the dramatic, which might pose a problem for an idea like this.

I came into this more or less assuming it was just meant to be a fun mashup of MLP with Fallout, and I'm not really expecting any serious depth from it. That's fine, but the trouble is that, lacking any serious depth, the story will need to at least provide some measure of entertainment value. In order to do this, it will need to rely entirely on action and adventure, which so far the author has not demonstrated much aptitude for. The first chapter was basically about the main character escaping from a locked-down bunker in a post-apocalyptic world, which should have been at least a little exciting. However, the action just plods from scene to scene: LP is fixing PipBucks and moping about how dull her life is, then Velvet shows up and asks to have her PipBuck fixed, then LP fixes said PipBuck, then it turns out Velvet is missing, then LP decides she needs to escape and does. Even the fight scene was dull.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.284856
284859 284874
1600719305684.png
>>284854

The events in this story so far have been very predictable, and the action mostly plods. People who were following along for my Past Sins review might remember my comments on a scene where Twilight infiltrates Nightmare Moon's castle. Basically my complaint was that whatever problems existed with the overall story, this should have at least been an exciting scene, but the way it was written made it monotonous and dull. I have the same complaint here: the story overall is a fairly weak brew, but it could still potentially be fun to read. Those shitty 1980s apocalypse animes I was comparing this to earlier are dreadful, but the action and fighting and general ridiculousness still makes them fun to watch. However, the author mostly fails to deliver even on this. I can forgive the lack of depth in the subject matter, but what I can't forgive is how bloody boring it is.

The characters so far are also pretty uninteresting. LittlePip is a generic heroine who, again, would work well enough for a video game, but seems pretty mediocre as the heroine of a 500,000 word novel. She's basically just an unremarkable Jane Everymare who feels out of place in her world, and then is summoned one day to go on an adventure because reasons.

It's worth keeping in mind that tropes from one medium don't always translate effectively into another. A hack and slash video game can get away with a very simple plot because the story simply exists to provide a backdrop for the action; the same plot wouldn't necessarily make a good novel. By the same logic, a complex plot that would work brilliantly as a novel or movie might potentially weigh down a video game with heavy cutscenes and quicktime events that players would complain about. You have to learn to adapt your story for whatever medium you're working in.

Anyway, we're only one chapter in so far, so I suppose I should reserve serious judgement until the story has had a little more chance to unfold.

Chapter Two: Equestrian Wasteland

This chapter also begins with an italicized quote that is attributed to no one. I find this device a little pretentious, but whatever; kkat is not the first author to do shit like this. Generally though, if you're going to include epitaphs as chapter headers, they should either be attributed to someone (real or imagined) or else the quoted text should appear somewhere in the chapter (or at least somewhere in the book).

Incidentally, it's perfectly ok to make up your own quotes and attribute them to fictional characters in your own universe. There's a novel called Memories of Empire by Django Wexler in which each chapter begins with a "quote" from some long-dead general or historical writer from Wexler's universe. There's no literary law against doing that if you want, and if done right it can help flesh out your universe and give it a past. But just writing a sentence or two in quotes and tacking it onto every chapter without any context or explanation is just obnoxious.

Incidentally, the quotation here is:

>"What world do you live in? Out here in the real world, blood flows, little pony. Blood flows."
Well, I guess whatever else they have to deal with, at least these ponies don't have clogged arteries. Always look on the bright side, I say.

Anyway, LP steps outside of the bunker and emerges into night, which she's never actually experienced outside before. The author's description of it is actually pretty well written:

>A cool air, quite unlike anything within the Stable, tickled my coat and chilled my skin beneath. It bore smells that were dank and rotting, dusty and alien. I could hear the sounds of night insects, creaking of wood and a far-off sloshing... but I was struck more by what I couldn't hear -- the constant low hum of the Stable's generators and the ever-present high whine of the lights were gone -- so powerful in their absence that I first mistook the outside as silent. I could feel dirt and broken stone beneath my hooves, so unlike the smooth and sterile floors I had trotted all my life. And though I could not see much or far, I could see further than I had ever seen before, and there were no walls to mark the end of the room. I was staring into a horizontal abyss that stretched out from me in every direction.

Again, I suspect this particular work may have been professionally edited and not just pre-read. However, I'm still happy to give credit where credit is due, and being able to read a story that isn't a minefield of spelling errors and goofy, awkward sentences is a nice change (looking at you, soulpeener). However, while this is much better written than Sun and Rose from a technical standpoint, soulpeener had an interesting and somewhat original idea that could be quite good if revised. FoE, so far, doesn't seem to have much going for it beyond the novelty of being a Pony-Fallout crossover; the story itself is dull and not particularly inventive.

ANYWAY, LittlePip has just left the only home she's ever known and ventured forth into the big, scary world, and she is subsequently freaking out. To the author's credit, he again paints a pretty good picture of what things look like through his protagonist's eyes right now.

Once LP has adjusted enough to stop hyperventilating and take stock of her situation, she looks around and sees that she is on the ruins of a farm, which her PipCuck informs her is called Sweet Apple Acres. She sees a bunch of dead trees and the rotted out husk of an old farmhouse. She also discovers that she is now getting some new radio transmissions. Unfortunately, it seems like the stations out here mostly suck balls; just a bunch of dying ponies whining about how post-apocalyptic the world has become. At least play some Skynyrd or something; fuck.

In any case, now that she's out here she realizes that she doesn't stand much chance of tracking down Velvet Fog, but it's not like she can just turn around and go back, so she decides to press forward.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.284859
284860
1600479230465.png
>>284856

LP goes into the farmhouse and explores a little. She finds some sort of computer terminal upstairs, that contains a message:

>To any pony who has left Stable Two in search of me:

>Please, go home. I am doing what I have to do. The Overmare understands, even if she can never agree, and I hope one day you will to.
This should be "You will too." I'm actually a little surprised that such a simple mistake made it in here; this text is otherwise fairly well polished. I hope I didn't speak too soon about the professional editing.

>I will not be back.
Aw, that's too bad. The Terminator will be so disappointed.

>Do not look for me. Do not endanger yourself further for my sake. Please forgive me.

>Velvet Remedy

Well, that's that I guess. Time for LittlePip to go back into her bunker and enjoy a nice quiet life of soul-crushing monotony. Oh wait; she can't, because Velvet put this message outside the bunker, where it could only be found by someone who had already broken the inviolable rule of "don't leave the bunker, retard" and thus could not return. Whoops.

LP also finds a second message on the terminal, which is encoded with some kind of special who-gives-a-fuck double-secret encryption. I'm a little unclear on this part; the text mentions that all of the other messages are from some forgotten century, and this one catches her attention because it's from the present or near-present, which basically makes sense. However, it then says:

>Nor did I have any reason to believe a message centuries old would be of any significance.

The text also mentions a "companion terminal," which is apparently required in order to read this message. I'm not sure what the significance of this is, but it seems like the message has some kind of end-to-end encryption that means it can only be opened by the terminal it was sent to, presumably with this one being the origin point. In any case, I'm unclear on why LP notices this message out of all the others and on why she decides to save it. But whatever.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that LittlePip now realizes that she is well-fucked and far from home. Or, to be technical, well-fucked and not that far from home, since she's only a few feet away. However, she can't go back in there because reasons, and moreover she now realizes that even if by some remote chance she manages to track down Velvet Revolver, she probably won't agree to come home with her. So, the long and short of it is that she's stuck out here now, and will probably die. And just think: all of this happened because she wanted to munch down on some pop-idol's labia. Sounds like Post-Apocalyptic Pony Jesus was right about not following those sinful impulses.

Page break. LP heads out and notices what appears to be a campfire off in the distance somewhere. Again, having lived her entire life in a bunker one might wonder how she is capable of identifying a pinprick of light on the horizon as a campfire, or how she would even know what fire is to begin with. I don't know much about these "stables" the ponies live in, but the impression I have is that they are underground chambers with little to no ventilation. I'm guessing most of the occupants don't have fireplaces. Gas stoves for heat or cooking might be plausible, but since that would require a continuous or at least renewable gas source, electric would make far more sense. So, the concept of a "campfire" should probably be pretty foreign to LP.

Anyway, the point is she sees a campfire in the distance and heads towards it. Since it's well established at this point that LittlePip is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, she assumes that whoever built the fire must be friendly and walks right up to it. She immediately discovers that a unicorn has been bound and gagged, probably by generic thugs who intend to violently sodomize him.

>and caught the glint of the flames against a few expose links in the chains binding his hooves.
A few exposed links. Seriously, faggot; please don't make me regret complimenting you on mechanics.

>"Well lookee here! Walked up all nice and pleasant, didn't she?" A large earth pony emerged from the shadows of a nearby rock.
Generic thugs; called it. All these guys need to make them any more generic would be stars n' bars belt buckles and haystalks hanging out of their mouths. inb4 LittlePip has a purdy mouth

>Two more ponies slid out of hiding on opposite sides -- one another earth pony holding a shovel whose blade had been lethally sharpened, the other a unicorn whose glowing horn levitated towards me a short instrument of wood and metal with two barrels.
A few issues here. First, "one another earth pony" sounds very weird. I'd probably go with "another earth pony" or "one was another earth pony" instead to make it clearer. Second, it's not explained how exactly an earth pony would hold a shovel. Is he walking on two legs and holding it with his forelegs? Gripping it in his teeth? If the latter, how exactly is he holding it? Gripping from the base would make it awkward to use, but holding it sideways would mean he'd have to keep his head turned. Ponyworld is a pain in the ass sometimes. Third, the unicorn is obviously supposed to be holding a firearm. However, to say he is "levitating it towards me" is a rather poor choice of words, since it seems to imply that he is using his levitation powers to either throw it at her or pass it to her. What the author probably meant is that the unicorn is pointing the device at LP, but this is not what this sentence is technically saying.

>Much like night, I had never seen a firearm before, save for pictures in books.
Having seen a picture would mean that she has enough general knowledge to identify what she's looking at, thus the author could have easily bypassed the awkward explanation and just said "the unicorn was levitating a gun, with the barrels pointed towards me" or something to that effect.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.284860
284864 284866
1873204-bigthumbnail.jpg
>>284859

When you have a character who has limited knowledge of the world like this, you have to put careful thought into how you write her. Spending her whole life in an environment where open fires would be nonexistent means she probably can't identify a campfire from half a mile away in the dark; the possibility that ponies intentionally start fires might even frighten her and she would thus shy away from someone's campfire rather than seek it out.

However, just because she's never seen a gun up close before doesn't mean she doesn't know what one is. It could go either way, but in this case the text establishes that she's seen pictures of them, thus she should have been able to identify the device the unicorn was pointing at her as a firearm, thus the whole awkward explanation of a "short instrument of wood and metal" was unnecessary in the first place. You have to think stuff like this through if you want to write convincingly. I've never seen a dragon irl, but I've seen pictures in books; thus, if I ever saw an actual dragon, I'd be surprised and alarmed, but I'd still be able to identify it as a dragon, I wouldn't describe it as a "scaly winged lizard thing."

Anyway, this scene goes about the way you'd expect. The generic thugs make some derisive remarks about LittlePip's general ineptitude, and indicate that they intend to tie her up so they can rape her sell her to ponies who will rape her. LittlePip, of course, is overly confused by this turn of events and just stands there instead of trying to run. Eventually, the tied-up unicorn gets the gag out of its mouth and informs her that the ponies are slavers.

Page break. We rejoin our boring intrepid heroine at some indeterminate point in the future. She is in chains, walking alongside the other unicorn, whose name is Monterrey Jack (this would actually be a decent name for a pony character were it not recognizable as the name of a prominent character from another cartoon).

>My PipBuck had stymied the slavers efforts to bind my forelegs, eventually forcing them to chain me above the knees.
They let her keep the PipBuck? Maybe there's some crucial detail about these devices that I'm missing, but as far as I can tell the PipBuck is basically just an oversized Apple Watch that straps to the foreleg, and can thus be easily removed. Even if these slavers have never seen one before, confiscating anything that looks like a communications device or a weapon from a captive is pretty much page one of the generic thug handbook.

Since this has mostly been a by-the-numbers adventure story so far, I'm assuming the point of this scene is to have LittlePip escape from capture and free Monterrey Jack in the process, so the two of them can become traveling companions. For this formula to work, the generic thugs need to be at least stupid enough that LP can outwit them. However, this level of stupidity is really pushing it.

>I was not gagged, but Monterey had convinced me early that unnecessary chatter from the slaves-to-be would likely result in the loss of my tongue. Not that I had much to say to these brutes anyway aside from my repertoire of colorful metaphors. I didn't expect they would answer my questions, even if my tongue should survive the asking, and they were being chatty enough with each other to suffice.
This paragraph is good example of the author's meandering style. This is a pretty long block of text, and the gist of it is basically "I wasn't gagged, but I wasn't allowed to talk either." The level of detail here is mostly unnecessary, and considering the size of this tome, I'd say that if anything in it can be pared down it probably should be.

>"Hate thef fart," grumbled the earth pony through the spear clenched in his teeth.
I'm assuming this is supposed to say "hate the fart." I'm joking; I actually have no idea what the fuck this is supposed to say. When you have a character trying to speak with something in his mouth, it's fine to write his dialogue the way it sounds, just be sure that we can understand what he was actually trying to say.

>"Hate fuffen sweffey."
Again, no idea what this is supposed to mean.

Anyway, whatever the pony with the shovel in his mouth was trying to say, another earth pony named Cracker who is apparently the leader, assures him that if he stops complaining, he will be allowed to rape one of the prisoners later oh my, le edge; clearly this is a raw, gritty pony story intended only for adults. LP hears rushing water and something like music coming from somewhere up ahead, and Cracker helpfully informs her that the music is coming from something called a sprite-bot.

I'm sure the sprite-bot is just an analog of something within Fallout that the author wanted to reference, but my complaint is more about the way the information is just sort of gracelessly plopped in here. If you want to do convincing world building, you have to remember that while the reader is unaccustomed to your setting and will need to be spoonfed some of the details, the characters already live there and know most of this stuff. They aren't going to go out of their way to explain commonplace, everyday things to each other that they would assume any other resident of their world would already be familiar with.

LP's introductory schpiel about PipBucks at the beginning is another example of this. If you were to narrate your life, you would probably assume that anyone listening would come from a background roughly similar to yours and you wouldn't need to explain things like cars and cell phones in excessive detail. So, it feels weird when a character just starts droning on about something that she considers commonplace. By the same logic, it makes little sense for Cracker here to just volunteer this tidbit of information about sprite-bots. LittlePip didn't ask where the music was coming from, and there's no logical reason why he would assume she wouldn't know, so he shouldn't feel compelled to explain it to her.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.284864
284866 284967
sample_42ded6afc6c45a126685e1b7d8cddfd0c6fdbdef.jpg
>>284860

If you're in doubt about how to explain some element of your setting to the reader, a good exercise is to swap out whatever you're trying to explain for a comparable phenomena in our world. For instance, let's say two characters are talking, and then suddenly you both hear a police siren. Character A's ears perk up at this, and Character B notices. Is Character B going to assume that Character A doesn't know what a siren is? Or is he going to assume that Character A has some personal reason to be skittish a the sound of a police siren? Like maybe A is running from the cops, or is afraid of cops because her name is actually George Floyd, or some shit like that. If you were just talking to someone and suddenly you both heard a siren, and the sound had some profound, noticeable effect on the person you were talking to, what would that cause you to think about them? If you want to write fantastical settings convincingly, you have to learn to think this way; it's all about taking the fantastical and making it commonplace.

Anyway, whatever a sprite-bot is exactly, its presence seems to be a source of concern for the slavers. They banter back and forth about what might have happened to it, and then suddenly it appears in front of one of them. The device is described as "a metal ball about the size of a foal's head floating on four silently flapping wings." One of the slavers, the one with the gun whose name is Sawed-Off, fires at the thing, but Cracker tells him to leave it alone.

The question of what the sprite-bot is exactly, as well as its significance, is left unanswered for the moment. The slavers seem to feel like it is not a threat to them (one of them calls it a "flying radio"), but at the same time they go to a lot of trouble to try and destroy it. The gunshot, incidentally, seems to give away their position to...somebody...so, shooting at it pointlessly would place these already stupid thugs in even stupider territory. Anyway, my best guess is that a sprite-bot is some sort of spy-drone and that it's a relatively common thing around here.

>Unlike my fellow slave, I was pleased to have witnessed the unicorn firing off his weapon. Because now I knew how it worked.
"Now I knew" muddles past and present tense in a rather unattractive way; you have to be careful about stuff like this when you have a character in the present narrating events that happened in the past. Also, this whole passage reads a little awkwardly anyway. Also, I'm not sure about LittlePip's reaction here. For one thing, for someone who doesn't spend time around guns, hearing one go off for the first time can be pretty startling; I find it hard to believe LP would accept it this calmly, let alone be thinking rationally enough to observe how the unicorn operates it.

This also goes back to what I was saying before: that LP's knowledge of this world is a little inconsistent. On the one hand, she has never seen a gun personally before. On the other hand, she has seen them in books and has at least a general understanding of what they are. Just watching the unicorn fire the gun isn't going to be enough to grasp how it works at an internal level, so the most she can really claim to have "learned" by watching him fire it is that when you pull the trigger it goes bang. It stands to reason that the books would have provided her with at least this much knowledge, so what could she have really learned?

Also:
>"...What kind of damned fool," Monterey grumbled, "announces his presence this close to raider territory."
This is a question, so it should end with a question mark.

Anyway, there's another page break here. The party has arrived at a river, where a bridge leads to a ruined town (I'm assuming the town is Ponyville, since one of the slavers mentioned it earlier and LP was just at Sweet Apple Acres a short time ago).

>Briefly I may have made the mistake of hoping for rescue; but my eyes were drawn to the spiked poles that lined the bridge, and the still rotting heads of decapitated ponies that adorned two of them.
My stars, kkat, does your mother know you're being this edgy on the internet?

In any event, there are a couple of issues here. For one, "Briefly I may have made the mistake of hoping for rescue" is a really verbose way of wording a fairly simple expression. "Briefly I'd hoped for rescue" would be the easiest way to shorten it. Another issue is that the semicolon is unnecessary here; a comma would have worked just as well.

Anyway, apparently the significance of this is that the bridge is being held by some group of brigands or other. One of the slavers goes to find out what the "toll" will be hopefully none of them have burned the coal, and meanwhile LittlePip takes advantage of the distraction and slips a screwdriver and bobby pin out of her barding, because these generic thugs are apparently beyond fucking stupid and never even thought to search her.

LittlePip is frankly not that bright either, because she makes enough noise getting her manacles off that it draws the attention of Cagey, which is apparently the name of the pony with the shovel in his mouth (I'm still a little unclear on how exactly he's holding this thing, but something tells me it won't matter for too much longer). Cagey says some more unintelligible bullshit and points the shovel menacingly at her, but as luck would have it a gunfight suddenly breaks out at the bridge.

>I suspect he was warning us to stay put, but I'll never know. His head exploded, showering me with gore.
Oh my, how edgy. I'm beginning to worry this story is going to be far too edgy for me. Here I thought I was going to be reading a story about cute little ponies, and you went and made it all edgy and dark.
Anonymous
1883b74
?
No.284866
>>284860
>>284864
>oh my, le edge; clearly this is a raw, gritty pony story intended only for adults
>My stars, kkat, does your mother know you're being this edgy on the internet?
>I'm beginning to worry this story is going to be far too edgy for me.
Kek, get used to it. FoE is basically a slip'n'slide of blood, cum, and angst. And Littlepip herself somehow has a fouler mouth than your average Anonfilly.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284868
284871
this fucking thing.jpg
>>284844
But FE is a worse version of Fallout 3 that's trying to be a better version of the whole Fallout franchise in front of bronies who love it because it gives weird sandpaper-gloved handjobs to Derpy Hooves and Vinyl Scratch and the mane six and Celly and Luna.
I'll try to keep complaints about F3's abysmal game design to a minimum since that usually isn't relevant to a writing discussion. Then again Fallout Equestria does copy over game elements to this story even when they REALLY don't work in literature, so some discussion of Fallout gameplay is necessary.
It's hard to separate one from the other when you're talking about mistakes copied over from F3 or mistakes that exist because the author tried to one-up something done better in Fallout.
F3 was about using a magical matter-reconstituting device to remove the radiation from a river of irradiated water and then dump it back into the irradiated Pachachamac Riverbed. the whole game tried to be biblically jesusy about water even though it's actually really easy to remove Radiation from water IRL. You have a "rival" who makes no sense, and your rival works for a boss who makes no sense. You join a Power Rangers team that makes no sense, because F3 repurposes Fallout 1/2's Iconic Iconography in a bland by-the-numbers story full of madcap lolsorandum bullshit like a town of children that exists for no reason and is connected to a Super Mutant-infested dungeon basement, a town where a supervillain and superhero fight endlessly to annoy the local populace, and a vault whose "experiment" was "What if we, a private company, somehow acquired a military-grade evolution-manipulating virus and somehow modified it and then unleashed it on a Vault's populace".
Settlements have walls made of Adobe or Junk in Fallout 1. In Fallout 2, Vault City is fucking thriving. But in F3 and F4, nobody has cleaned their rooms or swept the pre-war skeletons from their homes or eaten any perfectly-preserved pies in over 250 years.
Shouldn't a magical world full of unicorns who can harmlessly turn their parents into plants and back again have an even easier time solving post-apocalyptic radiation problems?
And there are so many ways magic can be abused. So many missed opportunities for horror.
Imagine you're a post-apocalyptic pony and you enter a town and find a combination restaurant and hospital. Excellent veggies are on sale. Doc Orchid runs the restaurant. But if you check the basement you'll find some sun lamps and a bunch of screaming ponies strapped to tables and transformed into regenerating plant matter, which is occasionally cut up and used as mulch for the gardens, which grows food that is served to the people. Anypony who requests healing with low chances of survival gets turned into plant food for life.
It's Doc Morbid and his human-meat "Squirrel Meat Kabobs" from Fallout 1 but given a magical body-horror plant-based coat of paint.
>>284854
that "Littlepip glows her horn at the guards, and they smirk until she knocks them out with something from behind" trick is so dumb. It's one of the most basic telekinesis tricks possible, literal unicorn foals can levitate stuff in the show. If a suspicious unicorn started glowing their horn around a guard, "stop the glowing before weird shit happens" would be the first thing that popped into the guard's head. A glowing horn's a better threat than a gun to your head. A glowing horn could do ANYTHING to you. You can look at a gun to guess its caliber and lethality but unless you intimately know a Unicorn, you won't know what spells she knows. At best you can guess it's got something to do with her Cutie Mark, whatever a pony's typically-vague symbol means.
Littlepip can levitate Boxcars.
Boxcars!
Not the dice game, not the nigger from Nipton in FNV, she can telekinetically pick up boxcars and crush enemies with them. She does this later in the story.
She has "The Strongest Telekinesis" as a trade-off for rarely if ever learning any real spells. It's ALMOST like a Fallout character "Trait" but not quite.
A boxcar can weigh over 260,000 lbs, or 130 tons (US)
The German tank "Tiger II" weighed just 70 tons, and carries a 88 mm 71 calibre length tank gun along with two 7.92 mm Maschinengewehr 34s.
She could levitate one of these tanks around above her head and fire it at foes, if she wanted to and she had the necessary ammo.
Yet she still insists on using a few normal human-sized canon-compliant guns from Fallout or those guns but "enchanted" with bonus fire damage.

>Littlepip the generic player character
I think you're never even told what she looks like. It's the fandom that decided amongst themselves she's got brown hair and grey fur. Or one author drew her like a grey and brown Unicorn RD, kkunt said "Yes, that's it! that's how she looks!" and everyone just copied it. I forget

>videogame-like starting area
It isn't even a good one narratively speaking even by videogame standards. Fallout's starting areas are designed to teach the player basic mechanics. F1's cave of rats gave you combat without tutorials, F2 had that path of trials, F3 has you dialogue your way through major moments in the player character's life to change absolutely nothing about the ending where you Sandy Hook your way out of a vault that's nonsensically Reverse Sandy Hooking you first, FNV's town has Sunny Smiles teach you shooting/crafting/questing and then you're dragged into a "Convince townfolk to form a militia and help fight off the Powder Gangers via dialogue skill checks" tutorial. F4's opener is a nonsense movie.

>Littlepip knows what an Apple Cellar is
So many of these "Somehow, Littlepip knows way too much about the outside world" moments could be solved if the author established Littlepip as a fanatic reader who loves pre-war books. It would still allow moments of "hilarious" assumptions/misunderstandings, too, when it comes to whether things pre-war ponies did in post-war books really happened or not and are still done after the nuking or not.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284871
>>284868
>Fallout Traits
Fallout 1 was initially going to be a GURPS-based video game. GURPS doesn't matter, forget I said that, it's basically DND but generalized enough to fit any setting from ancient fantasy to the modern day to futuristic sci-fi BS. GURPS pulled out so Obsidian pulled a Them's Fighting Herds and made their own "Fallout" series.
When making your Player Character in Fallout 1/2/NV you select your SPECIAL stats (strength, perception, endurance, etc),
you select three Skills to set as your "Tagged Skills" (When you level up, you gain Skill Points to spend on raising Skills like Barter, Speech, Small Guns, Big Guns, First Aid, and so on. Tagged Skills gain 2 points for every one Skill Point you spend on raising them)
and select up to two Traits.
Traits are things like "Four Eyes - You gain 1 Perception while wearing glasses and lose 1 Perception while not wearing glasses" "Gifted - every SPECIAL stat is raised by 1 but you gain fewer Skill Points per level up" and "Kamikaze - You get more action points to spend on moving and shooting every turn, but armour won't make you tougher" and and "Small Frame - +1 Agility but you can carry less weight and your limbs are easier to cripple" and "Fast Shot - Your gun attacks cost 1 less Action Point but you can't aim at specific body parts on your enemy, meaning you can't tactically disable a humanoid foe's arms or cripple a Deathclaw's legs or hilariously aim for an enemy's groin".
Trade-Offs that impact your character's abilities and your playstyle.
But enough about videogame shit

>>284854
One thing that bugs me about Littlepip's Stable-Vault, in terms of narrative?
Nothing happens in the Stable to give you a sense of Littlepip's personality or backstory or drive.
If it wasn't for the narration telling you everything, you'd have barely any idea who she is.
She's a bored lonely unattractive friendless dyke who once woke up screaming during a sleepover after some scary stories where the world outside the Stable is an endless void. She's also snarky and unrealistically "I will purify this evil world and make its foul mouth choke on me!"ish and has a male-hating streak that comes and goes now and then, matching the man-hating author. God, just wait until you see what happens to the "only Stable ruled by a man".
She is practically forced into being a hero. Not literally, though. Fate fucks her, so she decides to run out into the Wasteland to lick labias, and then she decides to give obnoxious Paragon Speeches about what a good person she thinks she is and how much she wants to unfuck this horrible world.
But if it wasn't for fate dropping this pip-buck in her lap, she would have never done anything good for her stable, or the world.
She's got the backstory of a "I NEVER ASKED FOR THIS! I'M JUST ONE LITTLE GUY TRYING TO SURVIVE IN HELL! I FEEL LIKE TOO LITTLE BREAD THAT'S BEEN SPREAD ACROSS TOO MUCH BUTTER!" kind of character.
But the author wants his "totally ordinary protagonist" to start scaring trained killers with death threats and delivering quippy one-liners in the middle of firefights way too soon.
She never earns this.
There is not one precise moment where she graduates from cowardly little everymare who says "Oh god oh shit I am so far in over my head, I never asked for this" to "I mustn't run away, I mustn't run away, I must protect my friends or they'll die and then I'm fucked" to "In the name of heroism and the moon, I must kill all the raiders and purify this scorched earth through sheer force of will! Row row fight the power!"
It's not character growth with a linear arc or even a dynamic arc. It's just bad character writing from the author. She was always just a murderhobo for the same reason Velvet's hypocritical semi-pacifism and pseudo-idealism makes no sense and is never compared to or contrasted with Littlepip's RPG-protagonist murderhoboery.
Though she later takes drugs and after a doctor injects her with AddictionAway she's magically cured of drug addiction so I guess that's character growth, right?

Anyway in chapter 1, she doesn't really get any scenes where through interacting with other characters in real-time, these personality traits are established or explored and she makes choices of her own accord to get what she wants the best she can.
I'm sure books are full of good "Starting Areas" that give you a sense of who the hero is on a normal day, before normalcy is torn away from him or he chooses to throw normalcy away to save the world. Scenes that establish who the heroic farmboy who longs for adventure and knows tech stuff is, before his farm is burned down and his parents are killed and he has to learn magic kung fu and blow up the death star or whatever.
Video Games have better starting areas that are designed to teach you basic mechanics and they'll impart some narrative themes if you're lucky, but looking back a lot of popular games have really basic stories at best.
Like Persona 5, a game everyone's creamed their jeans over since it released. Its "theme" is that you should only be a hero if you have magic protagonist powers. Everyone who doesn't obey the system gets fucked harder than ever before and often makes things worse for others. This game says cat-abusers should be treated worse than child-pornographers (and the story says you should forgive them) and only magic can make society better. But the game spends its first two hours fucking your asshole and making adults call your kid character bad names so when you finally unlock magic powers, you're too high on your own newfound fictional power to notice how bad the writing is and always will be.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284874
Zolo Zoro.png
>>284856
>A hack and slash video game
The plot of DMC3 would be great as a book and even better as an action movie.
Long ago, earth was invaded by Demons. One Demon named Sparda became a good guy and sacrificed himself to seal the main portal to Hell, but not before fucking twin brothers out of a human woman named Eva. These twin brothers were separated at birth when Demons sent by the evil demon lord Mundus attacked their home. Eva ran away with the good brother named Dante and died in front of him, but the edgy one named Vergil hid and couldn't be found. Dante lived under the Pseudonym "Tony Redgrave" for years as a private eye before eventually deciding to become a professional Demon Killer for hire.
Dante is now a fun wacky woohoo pizza man with a cool sword and ice nunchuks and two guns and a rocket launcher and a guitar and a set of gauntlets and greaves, while Vergil has a stick up his ass and a fucking weaboo katana that slices through space.
Dante's currently unnamed shop gets crashed by demons, because his evil twin brother Vergil summoned a demonic tower in his town. Both brothers have a red amulet, Vergil wants both so he can absorb Sparda's magic power from the sealed hell portal even though this will unseal it and unleash hell on the world. Both brothers are being manipulated by Jester/Arkham, who is being hunted by his rocket launcher-wielding daughter named Lady.
Dante fights shittons of Demons while climbing the demonic tower named Temen-Ni-Gru. He loses his first fight to Vergil, who asks "Where's your motivation?" and stabs him in the fucking chest. It hits home because at this point Dante's just fighting for fun, not to save anyone. Dante grows stronger, embraces his demonic heritage, becomes less wacky and more mature, unlocks his "turn into a half-demon to get a little stronger for a few seconds" power, and embraces his responsibility as the heir of Sparda.
2 hours of awesome boss battles and puzzles and fucking sweet cutscenes later, Dante fights Vergil in a shallow waterfall overlooking the portal to hell. Vergil falls into hell and seals it, because he's going to kill Mundus. Except not really, this is DMC3 and in DMC1 you fight Mundus and Mundus's strongest servant "Nero Angelo" who is actually a dying mind-controlled Vergil.

>quotes
I saw a Code Geass fanfic that excellently executed quotes at the start of chapters.

Many chapters started with full-on documentary narration about how absurdly and cartoonishly big a deal the parade thrown for Lelouch is in chapter 11 was, followed by a chapter about the parades from Lelouch's perspective, or a documentary opener how the world reacted to Lelouch's decisive military campaign victories in Japan followed by many chapters from the perspective of Lelouch and assorted named soldiers who worked for him.

Other chapters started with unrelated shit like a few paragraphs from a woman's book on how to seduce men before a chapter where Lelouch talks to a woman for once. It did a great job adding worldbuilding to this setting and showing the audience what Britannians are like, what they think like, what they read for fun and what they read to learn shit, and so on. Really gave you the sense that there was a world outside Lelouch and his dudes, which was good because there usually wasn't one in this fic.

The story wasn't perfect by any means, it was slow-paced and the dialogue was clumsy and Lelouch had been turned into an unlikable dumbed-down wanker with no idea how to talk to women, the military campaigns were boring, the military strategy was dull and obvious, and a lot of elements were directly ripped from Fullmetal Alchemist of all things. The story was supposed to be a "What If" fic where instead of living in Japan as Lelouch Lamperouge, Lelouch returns to Brittania to fight for Team Evil. But the author had no idea what to do with characters who were only relevant because Lelouch was living in Japan and involved with Japan's rebellion against Britannia, so he shoehorned them into this fic because fans would likely bitch if Kallen and C2 couldn't be seen somewhere.
The author also had barely any idea what to do with characters who were villains in the original story but "good guys" now, since he wasn't willing to give Britannia any legitimate reasons to conquer the world or paint Japan as anything other than le most perfect nation ever what dindu nuffin wrong.
Also the story was never finished. It just stops right after some unimportant side-character soldier dies and Mays Hughes's funeral from FMA gets ripped off.

>and caught the glint of the flames against a few expose links in the chains binding his hooves.
this story can be found in paperback and hardback form on the shelves of many faggoted bronies, it has been read by over a hundred thousand people, and it still has that spelling error.

>shovel
ironically the "shovel handle" style of handle would make it way easier for a pony to point the shovel forwards while maintaining his bite's full gripping strength.
A pony holding a normal broadsword in his mouth... He would need to hold the sword's hilt in his mouth, sticking forwards and out of his mouth like a lollypop stick or piece of wheat, or held sideways in his mouth gripped between all teeth like Roranoa Zoro's third katana. The former would result in far less grip strength (and make levering his mouth open to cause jaw damage easy) and the latter would make pointing the sword forwards and swinging it in an arc difficult for any pony without Pinkie Pie's stretchiness.

>no pipboy removal
Fallout 3 said the "Biometric Seal" means you can only remove a pipboy from a corpse. If the biometric seal's never mentioned here, it's not canon in FE. Also later something happens that fuses the PipBuck to LP's leg and causes precisely no problems for her ever, but this surprises her so it's probably normal to remove these watches in this setting.

>jack
GOTTA GO BACK
BACK TO THE PLACE THAT WANTS TO KILL YOU FOR NO REASON
MONTERREY JACK
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284878
There's something spoilery I don't want to spoil just yet since it matters 20 chapters later
>I'm assuming the point of this scene is to have LittlePip escape from capture and free Monterrey Jack in the process, so the two of them can become traveling companions
it's actually so he can die tragically later on for no reason, and so the writer can pretend Littlepip doesn't always magically pass her speech checks during dialogue, even though later in this story she always will. There's a friend of hers who only dies because she gets tranq'd at the worst possible time and isn't around to solve everything with a few words. Later on she will be blackmailed into entering and attacking some villain's territory by another nuclear rocket launcher-toting villain. Offscreen, LP somehow convinces this villain to pass her the nuclear balefire egg bomb rocket launcher which is currently being used to threaten LP, and then LP erases her own memories and goes along with the villain's plan anyway, hoping to nuclearly attack the villain she's sent after once she suddenly remembers she has a FatMan from Fallout 3 that fires Nuclear Balefire Green Phoenix Explosive Eggs.
Littlepip joins the next 2/3 player characters she encounter, even though they have even less of a reason to travel together

spoilers over

>sprite-bot
It's the Eyebots from Fallout 3. You know how annoying it is when authors just assume anyone reading a pony fanfic would be familiar with pony-world elements? It's even more annoying when it happens in a "crossover" with Fallout because Fallout elements here aren't supposed to be "just fallout elements". Supposedly they're nuclear pony-world elements that just happen to turn out quite like Fallout elements but bigger.
So even someone who intimately knows what an Eyebot is would be left saying "What the fuck is a Spritebot?" at this point in the story.
And it's never answered, not until we learn what floated uselessly through destroyed cities and played Enclave Radio in F3 is now a dangerous floating radio that floats around randomly and plays soul-destroying Perish Song music, and its existence is blamed on Pinkie Pie because during a resource war she wasted resource on making polka-playing robots float around Equestria and spy on ponies for the Ministry Of Unpersoning And Torture she ran single-handedly before the war went nuclear.

>littlepip and guns
I won't spoil what's retarded about this, because it gets so much worse
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284916
284922
Sorry about how long my posts were today.
I am trying to talk less at once because I've noticed how often I dominate conversations when I get going and lose track of time.
It probably seems like I'm bitching about nothing right now.
There are a lot of fundamental flaws in the story that start off a little annoying but repeat themselves during the story and cause worse writing errors later, and pointing them out at the start seems like the most efficient way to get it all out there.

If you want me to stop mentioning things that happen later on in the story, I will. I'll react to the story in real-time without spoiling surprises.

There are a lot of "stupid seeds" that fuck things up later on, make little sense, and waste incredible amounts of creative potential the story could have had for absolutely no reason.
For example...

Did the story mention what the door-opening password was?
If it did, then you've already figured out what 3 CMC BFF means and why it's the password.
In Fallout Equestria, the stables were made by Apple Bloom. Velvet Remedy is the many-times-great granddaughter of Sweetie Belle. The Stables were supposed to save ponies. The Vaults in Fallout were never actually meant to save anyone, just experiment on them.
And yet this causes no major changes!
Some Stables just have weird changes to them/experiments within them for no reason.
It's not like the gimmick each Stable has is the result of cultural development shaped by environment, cultural conditioning, scientific development, and resource limitations.
Nope
Things just are that way because encountering a dead Vault and learning what one mistake or bullshit experiment caused it to fucking die instantly while looting it is something you do in the Fallout video games.

If I was writing this I would have scrapped Vault-Tec/Stable-Tec completely (VT is an immoral company from the Fallout setting that makes no sense in the pony setting unless it's full of Griffons) and said Twilight ran a govt-funded think tank of geniuses even more autistic than her. It wanted to make some underground shelters and seal them away for thousands of years while assigning each one different technologies to research. Twilight said yes. Then the Think Tank had even more Stables constructed while making each one a different experiment in its own right, but Twilight said no, so they did it anyway without proper funding or clearance. Then Twilight learned of this and was going to destroy the unauthorized Stables, but by that point nuclear war seemed inevitable so she personally assigned space in the best stables to every pony in Equestria she wanted to save for whatever reason and then let the Think Tank sell Experiment Vault space to desperate ponies after personally inspecting and magically fixing up each one the best she could.
So every single Stable that goes wrong in the story is a tragedy ponies couldn't prevent despite their good intentions. Some got overcrowded, some were fucked when vital life support systems broke down, and some were fucked when developments in their assigned technology field resulted in some sci-fi horror bullshit.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.284919
284921 284965
/thread
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284921
284922 284965
>>284919
not /thread, the story just started.
are you going to contribute to this thread (or the site in general) or will you just claim my contributions aren't up to your standards forever?
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.284922
284926 284965 293663
>>284921
That your contributions are, and never have been up to standard is a matter of record, not conjecture. This is by your own hand.
>>284916
>Sorry about how long my posts were today.
>I am trying to talk less at once because I've noticed how often I dominate conversations when I get going and lose track of time.
In this you show an inkling of self awareness. Were it not that you compounded your error, I would grant you due credit.
But no.
It doesnt matter what you say, cuz it's 'you' who feels compelled by some abject sense of entitlement such that you feel at liberty to operate however you will because you can do no wrong, no harm, no foul? Are you entirely oblivious? This isnt the first time you've been called out, and neither am I the only person who has called you out.
I AM contributing to the thread, by telling an unqualified pseudo-wanna-be to stfu and allow OP - who has a track record of both A. Entertaining people (unironically) and B. Having some credibility to his assertions.
Glim glam is a treasure to the site. Let him do his thing. Now if you please, do stfu.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284926
284929 284965
>>284922
You know what's sad? I can't explain to you why your reddit behaviour is so unmasculine.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.284929
284965 293663
>>284926
>lol ur reddit but I cant be bothered to validate that point so hurrr
Not an argument. You're shit, please stop detracting from those who arent
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284962
Re-reading chapter the early chapters, I'm struck with the realization that every single Pip-Buck Feature mentioned in the opening infodump is something that could have been naturally shown to the audience.

The Pip-Buck monitors your health and inventory, lets you hack and command tech wirelessly(to unlock computers and make automatic sentry guns target your enemies instead of you), tells you your videogame stats like Strength and Agility, tells you your videogame Skills like Big Guns and Sneak and Speech and First Aid, lets you turn on Aim Assist But Gayer, records and plays audio, and picks up radio broadcasts.
Also sometimes the Pip-Buck gives you a hammerspace-style VideoGame Inventory (To the point where rocket launchers can be concealed in a menu and forgotten about until they're convenient) and sometimes it doesn't so water canteens and guns have to be strapped to your body. It's inconsistent.
and the Pip-Buck is later retconned to have some extra functions in later chapters that were never mentioned at the story's start, making this part pointless.

It would have been completely natural for Littlepip to
>check her Pip-Buck(TM) stats screen and admire her high Repair stats and then moan about her low physical stats
>when bored and waiting for another client with something to repair, use her Pip-Buck(TM) inventory program's magical hammerspace to whip out and read a Batmare comic book she's not supposed to read on the job
>turn on her Pip-Buck(TM) Light so she can read her comic better
>turn on her Pip-Buck(TM) radio to see if Velvet Remedy songs are playing
>sadly they are not
>disappointed, switch over to her Pip-Buck(TM) Audio folder and play recorded mp3 copies of Velvet Remedy songs
>she reminisces about the time she held her arm-mounted computer up to a radio and recorded these songs
>shittily doodle something onto paper with a pencil and it turns out shit because her Pip-Buck(TM) says her Art skill is low
>screw the paper up and use Pip-Buck(TM) SATS to throw it at a bin
>miss because low Thrown Weapons skill
>wish you had a gun and were allowed at the vault's only shooting range, but only Stable Security thugs are allowed there and allowed to own guns
>suddenly
a good excuse to hack something with your Pip-Buck(TM) shows up!
>a client shows up
>says he left some coffee machine with Littlepip's boss to be repaired
>Littlepip's boss is busy and his computer has the data on it
>hack into her boss's computer by connecting her Pip-Buck(TM) to it, so she can access the records and see if this guy's legit
>he's legit
>she gives him the coffee machine and leaves a note on her boss's hacked computer
and just like that
she would display every basic function of VATS that gets used frequently later on
in chapter one
without any retarded infodump sales-pitches.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.284964
284966 284975
>>284957
I'm actually the guy who paid your Bill's for 6 months.
For those who are following along - and yes, I do apologize Glim, this will be over in a moment - just short of 2 years ago our friend here was in dire financial straights. Since he had made himself well known on the site, I had no trouble identifying his patreon, and paid him a sum in the mid 3-figures USD. Let this serve as evidence how readily our friend here will fabricate stories about anyone who criticizes him.
I think who is mad is quite evident.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.284965
284984
The Nigel Style Guide.png
>>284921
>>284919
>>284922
>>284926
>>284929

I would like to squash this before it gets out of hand and starts derailing the thread. Nigel, Anon may not have worded it as tactfully as he could have, but he actually has kind of a point here. I'd like to try and illustrate what I think he's trying to say about your posting style.

Pic related is a collage I made of all of your posts in this thread so far. I've color-coded portions of the text. Here is what the colors mean:

Portions that are highlighted in Green are meaningful contributions to the thread. These are the areas of your posts in which you make actual, insightful contributions to the discussion of this story, without veering off into random tangents or off-topic nonsense. Basically this is the good shit that belongs in the thread, that I would encourage you to write more of. Please note that this is not an evaluation of your arguments, opinions, or writing style; as long as a section of text attempts to make an actual point about something directly related to what is being discussed, and does so in a concise and legible manner, I highlighted it green. I would like you to notice that these sections are rather few and far between.

Portions that are highlighted Yellow are places where you veer off on a tangent. This basically means that you begin discussing something that is on some level related to the topic, but is actually opening up an additional, unrelated topic. Most of your discussion of the Fallout video games falls into this category, for instance. The games are related to the story in that the story is inspired by the games, and many elements in the story are parodies or analogs of elements from the games. For the purposes of this analysis, it's helpful to know which story elements are inspired by which game elements, and your knowledge of this subject is helpful, particularly since I've never played the games. However, this doesn't mean we need to know the entire history of the Fallout series, as well as your personal commentary on why you liked this aspect or that aspect of each game. Think of it this way: the story is derived from MLP as well as Fallout. So, discussion of the MLP elements in the story would be on-topic discussion. However, this does not mean that anything related to MLP is fair game here. For example, if at some point in the future Twilight Sparkle makes an appearance in FoE, and I discussed some aspects of Twilight's depiction in the series as it pertains to her appearance in FoE, I would be on-topic. However, if I started going off the rails and writing paragraphs upon paragraphs detailing everything I liked and didn't like about Twilight's depiction in the cartoon series, regardless of whether or not it had anything at all to do with FoE, I would be going off on a tangent.

You'll note that the overwhelming majority of what you've written falls into the tangent category, so this is an area you might want to consider reining yourself in a bit.

Portions that are highlighted in Red are places where you go completely off-topic. These are the areas where you stop talking about anything even remotely related to FoE, Fallout, MLP, or anything being currently discussed in whatever thread you happen to be in, and start ranting about Devil May Cry, Persona, Code Geass, Zatch Bell, JoJo's Magical Gay Mustache Adventures, Pokemon sex dolls, and a million other ridiculous things you're interested in that nobody else cares about or asked about. This is the shit you really need to work on cutting the fuck out, because it drives everyone on this board crazy, me included.

Lastly, there are a couple of items I highlighted in Orange. These areas contain statements that are technically on-topic, but don't really add any meaningful content to the thread and come across as abrasive. Basically, this is when you start ranting about the author or the story and complaining about how it sucks millions of dicks, but don't really elaborate or provide any arguments as to why it sucks millions of dicks. There's only a couple of these in this particular batch of examples, but it's still something I think you should pay attention to, because I've seen you do it a lot.

The big picture is that, while I like that you're enthusiastic about the things you're interested in, you really need to learn to filter your thoughts. What other people find frustrating about your posts is that you write a lot of text, but usually the essence of what you're trying to say could easily be condensed into a couple of short paragraphs, while the rest is just random autism about unrelated topics that no one cares about. Not everyone wants to hear what you think about every single thing in Fallout, particularly since that's not really what this thread is about. If you take a little more time to compose your thoughts, and keep your comments laser-focused on the thread topic instead of just typing whatever pops into your head, I think you'll find that you get better responses and your posts will stimulate more actual discussion.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.284966
217013.gif
>>284957
>>284964
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.284967
284968 284969 284984 285210
sample_55b2876b01834166694f638138d5739aaa49937c.jpg
>>284864

>In the growing list of things I'd not seen before this night, the death of another pony ranked at the top.
Again, very awkward and verbose way to word something simple. This is still at least slightly better written than most of the stories we've looked at, but I've still come across a few cringe-worthy passages in here. Anyway, a simpler and more direct wording would not only make this clearer, it would sharpen the emotional impact of the event.

Here's the full passage:
>In the growing list of things I'd not seen before this night, the death of another pony ranked at the top. I blinked, feeling the blood on my eyelid. Cagey was dead! And I had Cagey all over me!!

Now try this on for size:
>I'd never seen another pony die before. I blinked, feeling hot blood running down my eyelid. Cagey was dead. I had Cagey's blood all over me.

I didn't really change all that much; basically I just simplified the first sentence down to its essential meaning, and made the "I had Cagey all over me!!" bit a little less cartoony. I also removed the extraneous "and" because technically speaking you should never start a sentence with the words "and," "but" or "because" (even though I do it all the time). Beyond that, very little was changed, but I feel like the new version does a much better job of conveying LittlePip's emotions in this situation.

Anyway, despite the trauma of seeing her former captor's head blown off, LittlePip is still lucid enough to realize that her main objective hasn't changed. She finishes taking off her manacles while a couple of raiders put an end to Sawed-Off.

There is a completely unnecessary page break, and we rejoin LittlePip literally two or three seconds later. She has managed to get her own manacles off and is now freeing Monterey Jack. The raiders who killed the slavers are now approaching them. One is a unicorn holding a combat shotgun, and the other is an earth pony with a sledgehammer in its mouth.

Before we move on, I'd like to spend a brief moment on the combat in this story, since I get the impression we're going to be seeing a lot of it. One of the more aggravating things about writing pony fiction is dealing with some of the practical problems adapting certain tools and devices for creatures that don't have opposable thumbs. Part of this is a design flaw in the source material. As easy as it is to make fun of Big Jim's "it's just a cartoon, stop overanalyzing it" response to every nitpicky fan question, it's probably reasonable to assume that when the creators were developing this toy commercial for little girls, they didn't anticipate that grown-ass men would be writing grimdark fantasy stories about it. As such, they probably didn't think much about the Pandora's box they were opening for fanfiction writers by making it canon that ponies use tools obviously designed for humans.

The usual solution is to reserve the more complicated tools for unicorns, who can use magic to operate nearly anything, or to give pegasi the rather dubious ability to use their wings like hands. However, this is kind of a lazy workaround, and if you rely on this too much you end up with a group of characters that is too heavily weighted with unicorns and pegasi.

Unfortunately, if you want the fighting to be weapons-focused, with earth ponies you're fairly limited. This author seems to have approached the problem by having earth ponies use the melee weapons, which might make sense at first, until you realize that a hammer or a sword is only going to be slightly less cumbersome for them to use than a gun. Picture the way a horse stands and carries itself and moves its neck. Now imagine a horse with a sledgehammer or a shovel in its mouth. Does it give him any sort of combat advantage at all? Not really; in order to hit anything with it he'd have to get close and then stand at an awkward angle so that he could swing his head in a way that the hammer would strike the target. Even though a horse could technically hold a sledgehammer, it's still a tool designed for a creature with hands.

What makes this even sillier is that an earth pony is far from powerless. In the human world, a horse is a pretty formidable creature. If a horse were to buck you in the face or rear up on its hind legs and then drop its front hooves on you you're pretty much fucked. Until very recently, mounted cavalry was the main offensive force in combat, and medieval knights were terrifying when mounted but mostly useless once they were unhorsed. To me it makes far more sense to think up weapons for the pony types to use that play to their strengths, rather than simply adapting human weapons for use by ponies, particularly when there is no way to avoid making it awkward. An earth pony could probably make good use of studded or bladed horseshoes. Heavy barding that allows them to charge into or drop their body weight on an opponent without taking damage themselves would also be a huge advantage. Pegasi, meanwhile, would benefit from using weapons that can be dropped or thrown; grenades and so forth. Custom helmets that have battering devices or blades on them could also be useful, as it would allow them to dive-bomb opponents and fly away to safety.

Even guns could use some retooling for this world. Just because a unicorn could technically operate a human firearm doesn't mean it's the best design for them. Why have a trigger mechanism that's obviously designed for an animal with hands? Wouldn't a pull cord or a lever or something make more sense? A non-physical spell-trigger could work too.

One idea that's crossed my mind is to have fighting units that consist of a pegasus and a unicorn. The pegasus has a firearm attached to its body somehow, and its job is to fly around and take a position. The unicorn stays on the ground and operates the weapon by firing it, and maybe using some type of remote viewing to precision-aim it. The possibilities are endless once you start using your imagination.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.284968
284971 284984
VDMbsP.gif
>>284967

Anyway, that's enough about that. Moving on with the story.

Littlepoop has been technically liberated from her captors, but now has to deal with the raiders who killed them. She discovers that they are basically just more of the same (generic thug cluster #1 is dead; long live generic thug cluster #2).

The generic raiders make some generic rapey comments, and then attack. There's a brief scuffle; I'm not going to bother with the play-by-play on every fight because if I do this is going to take forever. The long and short of it is that the raiders try to gang up on Monterey but LP protects him. LP is not sure if she can kill another pony, so she manages to end the fight by simply knocking her opponent unconscious. Monterey, meanwhile, has killed his. With the raiders thus dispatched, Shittlepoop resumes the task of removing his remaining manacles.

>I had lost the bobby pin; there was no chance of finding it in the dirt at night. But I had more.
Why would a pony have so many bobby pins? For that matter, why would a pony even need bobby pins in the first place? Also, have I mentioned that the slavers really sucked at their job? If she'd had a Swiss Army knife, they probably would have left that on her as well.

Anyway, speaking of taking things, Monterey Jack proceeds to loot the corpses of the defeated raiders and slavers. LP finds this distasteful but can see the logic in it. She attempts to search one of the corpses for food, but this proves to be too much for her and she pukes over the edge of the bridge. When she turns around, Monterey is pointing the slaver's shotgun at her. He informs her that she has just become a victim of robbery, one of the worst and coolest of crimes.

>“b-But I just saved you!”
>“Yeah. And for that, I’m not going to kill you.” His eyes narrowed. “Unless, of course, you do something stupid right now.”
Oh my, it's almost as if Friendship isn't even Magic anymore. Le edge.

Anyway, LP resigns herself to being robbed and starts handing her shit over, but then notices the combat shotgun somewhere behind him. She uses her magic to grab it, and the two find themselves trapped in whatever the Pony equivalent of a Mexican standoff would be. Since she has the combat shotgun and Monterey only has the shitty one that the raiders had (which only has one shot left in it because LP was autistic enough to count), LP has the advantage and thus wins the standoff.

I'll actually admit that this scene is much better executed than the previous fight with the guards, where Shitterpip just drops a steel locker on their heads and runs out the door, with the Overmare yelling but otherwise not trying to stop her. The action here is well-paced and easy to follow, and the image of the two unicorns standing on the bridge pointing shotguns at each other makes for a nice visual. However, logically, I find some aspects of it a little hard to swallow.

Monterey has been dealing with this grimdark world a lot longer than Littlepoon and is much better at it; this is the whole point of the scene. Monterey is the experienced, jaded, cynical tough-guy, while LP is the naive, sheltered filly who still believes that ponies can be nice to each other perhaps she ought to open up her eyes, and see the world from where he stands. If the inexperienced LP was able to notice things like the number of shots being fired, and the relative strength of the different guns, then it should be second nature for Monterey. He would have been closely watching everything that was happening and keeping track of the same details that LP was; probably even more so. As such, as soon as he was free and had the opportunity to grab a weapon, he would almost certainly have made sure to go for the superior combat shotgun instead of the less reliable one the slavers had, even if it meant hunting around for it a little longer.

Even if he didn't hold LP's abilities in particularly high regard and thought she'd be a pushover, it still makes more sense for him to go for the better gun, just because he'd presumably be glad to have it later on. Really, I think it makes the most sense for him to just take both shotguns, and if he doesn't want to carry the melee weapons throw them in the river so they can't be used by anypony else. I'd probably have written the scene this way, and have it end with LP getting robbed and learning a hard, brutal lesson about life. Hell, I might even throw in a gratuitous rape scene at gunpoint just to prove that I can be le edgy too.

Anyway, LP wins the match and keeps her stuff, but Monterey has moved on. I'm actually a little surprised at this; the story has been rather predictably scripted so far, so I was expecting LP and Monterey to team up at this point. I still suspect they will eventually, or at least that Monterey will make another appearance, but it seems like it's not going to happen just yet.

So...page break.

>Ponyville. I wondered just how my PipBuck knew the names of places before I did. It even named the wreckage of a building that I had just slipped into. Ponyville was raider territory. I just hoped this place, this “Carousel Boutique”, was not crawling with them.

>Monterey Jack and I had barely parted ways when the railing of the bridge exploded next to me. A sniper! The same pony, I presumed, who had turned Cagey’s head to applesauce. I fled into the town, keeping to what cover there was. Few of the buildings were intact enough to hide in. This was the closest.

The timing here is a little confusing. What appears to be happening is that the "present" version of LP is exploring the Carousel Boutique, and the bit about the sniper and the bridge exploding is a flashback to how she got here. However, it would make more sense to just write these events in chronological order. Really, you don't even need the page break; you could just have Monterey and LP split up after the standoff concludes, and then suddenly a shot rings out and LP flees into town.
Anonymous
42050f4
?
No.284969
284973 284984
>>284967
>I had Cagey all over me!!
I agree with you that this bit is a little cartoony, but I liked it because of that. If you're going to write something really violent and edgy, I think some black comedy can keep it from feeling like you have to trudge through it.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.284971
285091
sample_af3b6f54605740cbdd1cdc485b434906c5eb1774.jpg
>>284968

Anyway, LP doesn't feel particularly safe at Carousel Boutique, but she is too tired to move on, so she tries to find a safe place to sleep.

>The walls had been painted with crude images of violence and cruder swear words. A pile of torn-up cloth rotted in a corner, smelling foul, like ponies had urinated on it repeatedly.
Oh my, there's even naughty words in here? Ponies go pee-pee on cloth instead of making pretty pretty dresses with it? This world is so grim and so dark! Le edge, le edge.

>There were two beds, one of which was stained deeply with blood (and probably more vile things). The other was smaller, a foal’s bed, nothing but a mattress on a crushed frame. In my state, I felt it would do wonderfully.
The implication seems to be that this story takes place many centuries after the events of MLP, so does it really make sense that all of Rarity's furniture would still be here after all this time? I guess we still don't know the full details of what happened; if the apocalypse was the result of some instant cataclysm like a bomb going off, that froze everything at the last instant of normal life before it was disrupted, then this would kind of make sense. However, if what we're seeing is just the end result of centuries of steady decline, this building would have likely been repurposed multiple times and as such Rarity's stuff would be long gone.

I'm also a little unclear on Littlepoop's identity exactly. It's been brought up by Nigel, and I've heard anons comment on this here and there also, that LP is never properly described anywhere in the text, and the visual representations of her are just fanon. She certainly hasn't described herself so far. This isn't that big a deal; in fact there are a lot of first-person stories where the narrator doesn't describe himself any more than is necessary. If a character's appearance isn't important to the story you can sometimes get away with not describing them at all. However, there are a few murky details that it might have been helpful for the author to clear up. For instance: how old is this character supposed to be? She refers to herself as a "filly" at one point, and just now she picked the foal's bed to sleep on, so is this character meant to be a child? Her actions so far seem to indicate that she's a full-grown mare, and none of the other characters seem to be treating her as a child. Just a passing mention of her approximate age would be very helpful.

Anyway, she pokes around in there some more, and finds another terminal. Even though the text literally just informed us that she is too tired even to look for a less-snipery place to bed down for the night, she is apparently not tired enough to pass up a chance to pointlessly hack into a bunch of sound files from some bygone era.

>The password was “apple”.
I don't know what kind of firepower the PipBuck has in terms of processor speed, but this password could be brute-forced almost instantly.

In a shocking twist that should surprise absolutely nobody, this random terminal she just chanced upon just so happens to be the terminal that the message she found at another random terminal at Sweet Apple Acres was addressed to, and can therefore be opened on. I wish my luck was this good; half the time I need to call my own cell phone just to find out which sofa cushion it slipped under.

Anyway, the information on the sound file that Shittlepip unlocks is of no significance to her, but contains some potentially interesting tidbits for the reader. Even without Nigel's fucking endless spoilers, it's not terribly hard to piece this together from what we had anyway. Stable 2 was located at Sweet Apple Acres, and was presumably built as some sort of happening shelter for the Apple family. It appears that Sweetie Belle wound up as the Overmare for this particular Stable, while Apple Bloom had to stay outside for some reason. The message, which was sent from AB's terminal (at the farmhouse) to SB's terminal (here) appears to be the one in which AB instructs SB to assume control of Stable 2 and watch over her family.

I like the way this is handled btw. In previous reviews, I've complained about the ways that various authors intertwine their own ideas with events and characters from the show. Mainly, my gripe is when authors construct their stories so that the reader needs to know quite a bit about the events of MLP in order to understand what the hell is going on. What I like here is that this story, which derives its lore from not just one but two separate franchises, is able to stand entirely on its own without the reader needing to know anything about either franchise. I know literally nothing about Fallout, but apart from a couple of minor details like the sprite-bots, it hasn't made the story difficult to follow. Likewise, a person who has never seen MLP, and would not attach any significance to names like Sweetie Belle or Sweet Apple Acres, could also read this and follow it.

All that we need to know here is that a character named Sweetie Belle, and some other yet unnamed character, were instrumental in the establishment of the bunker that Littleplop grew up in. We get a sense that there is some history here, and we don't yet entirely understand what's going on, but that's okay, because we're still early in the story; we'll learn more as we go. Moreover, someone who is familiar with MLP can still enjoy a sense of mystery here. We know that SB and AB had something to do with the establishment of Stable 2, but we don't know how or why. We also don't yet know how or why the world of Equestria wound up like this, and we're curious enough to keep reading.

So far, this story is a little dull and predictable, and its protagonist is mostly a colossal bore, but the author is doing a fairly good job of developing it properly.

incidentally, it's amazing how much porn exists of this shitty OC that doesn't even have a proper description in the one thing she appears in
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.284973
285180
>>284969
Things like that are basically author's choice, kind of like my thing about not using too many exclamation marks. It looks childish and stupid to me to have exclamation marks all over my text, so I generally use them sparingly if at all, whereas other writers will throw them in all over the place. Some things are hard and fast rules, but a lot of it really is just a matter of taste.
Anonymous
616171d
?
No.284975
284977 284981
>>284964
That person has access to my discord account, so I don't believe you. If you're that kind person, why wouldn't you try to contact me on discord?
Anonymous
616171d
?
No.284977
284981
>>284975
If you are that person, please contact me on discord. I haven't heard from that guy in ages and I hope he's alright.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.284981
>>284975
>>284977
Now, let's get back to topic
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284984
284985 284988 285008
>>284965
Holy shit, you're right. I do need to filter my posts.
I'm going to work harder at doing this.
I also need to stop spoiling shit.
>>284967
>page break
why did they use a page break to skip over Littlepip getting her shackles off?

>human weapons on ponies
I've thought a lot about fantasy creatures and weapons.
I think you'd love a youtube series I like called Fantasy Re-Armed, where Shadiversity talks about what weapons fantasy creatures should use logically looking at their species's abilities and physiology. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iix5MdZiNQg&ab_channel=Shadiversity

For example, media loves giving weird short hook swords and whips and sickles to snaketaurs (people but from the waist down they're giant snakes) and that's retarded. A snake can coil their body far from you, then lunge at you, then retreat. A spear would be godly for them, letting them lunge at you from further away with more angles of attack. Some kind of binding weapon would also be great. They would also not wear skimpy leather armour, they'd want to cover their vulnerable upper bodies in thick armour and coat their thick snake body in flexible mail armour, to make wrapping around and crushing a foe less dangerous.
Also if they have poisonous bites, they'd love to disable you by stabbing your legs/knees with their spears and then bite you to poison you. Or they could poison their bladed weapons with their own poison. If they can see via scent/heat they'd also love using smoke bombs on people without a superior blind-fighting ability.

As for Fairies? Media loves giving them sewing needles to use like tiny rapiers, and tiny rapiers made from glass. Deadly Fairies would fly past you while dragging a barber's razor behind themselves, cutting necks and wrists in hit-and-run airborne attacks.

I wrote a really autistic and overly-long image post thingy about why Battle Saddles are dumb, why a helmet-mounted model would be a step up, and why literally anything else would be a step up from that, and what options could work best. But instead of just dumping it here should I ask if anyone wants to see it first?
>>284968
>why Bobby Pins
Because Bobby Pins are used to pick locks in Fallout 3 because it's coded that way in Skyrim and other games released on Bethesda's shitty 20 year old Creation Engine. They should switch over to Unity and Steam Workshop at this point, it would be an improvement.
Author did little or no research and never saw a single Lockpicking Lawyer video so "Just go at it with a bobby pin like in Fallout until you find the one and only secret unlock button all locks have" is his idea of how lockpicking works. That's why Littlepip got her shackles off "offscreen" during a page break. Author sucks for relying on page breaks for things he doesn't want to write and doesn't know how to write but wants to happen anyway.
This was going to be a really big rant but I shortened it a lot.

>I'd probably have written the scene this way, and have it end with LP getting robbed and learning a hard, brutal lesson about life
That would be a huge improvement from what this scene was supposed to be (Proof that Littlepip can instantly master just about anything and talk anyone into doing just about anything right now even passing up free supplies and fucking off, but can't pass absolutely all of her Speech Checks until she Levels Up some more and gets to become the ultimate nonsense offscreen charisma god)

>rape scene
considering how much Fallout fans loved Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons (fanfic of a fanfic, this one's got even more edge and rape and death) they'd probably love you for that.

>>284969
I would have given Littlepip a serious quiet horrified reaction where she covers her mouth to avoid screaming (would draw attention to herself) and she cries. Meanwhile a raider covered in way more of the guy's blood would freak out in a black comedy way because Borderlands says it's funny when bandits freak out.

>>>284971
>if the apocalypse was the result of some instant cataclysm
>>*VIBRATES WITH MOTION*
Must... not.. go into... autistic rant on how in Fallout 1/2 the nukes fell 60 years ago yet people in California's coast are recovering fast with walled nation-states and one rising real nation while the idiots in zombie/orc/Power Ranger/Cartoon Nazi-infested Washington DC are still drinking piss 200 years after the bombs dropped and in Fallout 4 major cities are filled with trash and a random trading outpost in the middle of nowhere and produces nothing still has parts of their home taken up by 200 year old trash and untouched unrobbed skeletons still embracing like they did before they died 200 years ago!

>Littlepip's age
She's a foal-sized young adult, around 20-22. Old enough for sex and small enough to fit on Sweetie Belle's bed.
I'll resist the urge to make a "But Officer FBI guy, she said she was actually 900 years old!" joke.
Her canon size is ignored when drawing her because making her a pallete-swapped and horned wingless Rainbow Dash is easier than trying to shorten her hooves and make them look right.
The author looked at Fallout's "Small Frame" trait (+1 Agility but your limbs are crippled easier and you can carry less stuff) should be taken as literally as possible.
Also for some fucktarded reason Sweetie Belle's tiny bed and Rarity's adult-sized bed still exist in Rarity's house while the bigger bed SB would have probably wanted upon reaching Rarity's age before the bombs fell didn't. Did she sleep with Rarity in the same bed for years before the bombs started falling and she was sent to the Vaults?
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284985
>>284984
>and tiny rapiers made from glass
I mean grass but come to think of it a shattered piece of glass would make a good blade for fairies if they could pick it up.
I looked for a picture of this but "Fairy Fencer" was full of anime results for "Fairy Fencer F", whatever that is.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.284988
284991
>>284984
Apology accepted btw
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284991
284993
>>284988
>Let this serve as evidence how readily our friend here will fabricate stories about anyone who criticizes him
Why would you word it like that?
I said you're not paying me, while saying fuck off and stop bitching about my post quality. I didn't know you might be someone who paid me once, but that doesn't make what I said inaccurate. Glim's colour-coded pic is what made me realize my posts are too long. "Fabricated stories" my ass. Reminds me of those lefties who mentally leap ten steps away from what's really happening towards something that sounds shocking, and then claim something shocking-sounding is literally happening and directly being done by someone they don't like.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.284993
285003
>>284991
Nevermind, it's not a leftist
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.285003
>>284993
Cheers ^_^
Now if you'll excuse me, I will go back to abusing KYS filly
sidenote, I am in fact also the filly who gives you shit for not knowing/getting kys filly
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285008
285036
only if women of the future know their place.png
>>284984
Wait I think the thing you said and the 60/200 years thing would be relevant here since you noticed it in this story first.

Fallout 1 - takes place in 2161. The previous generation remembers a world before the bombs fell. The bombs fell 60 years ago, and all 3 default characters you can be (charmer who wants out of the vault, retarded thug, thief chick) are adults but young. Outside these walls, civilization exists but is often preyed upon by raiders. Towns have junk walls and bars/stores/crap like that while tribal villages far away from major hubs have adobe walls and dedicated farming zones. One military base containing like 80 big dudes tops is a threat to the world.

Fallout 2 - 2241 - It's been eighty years since the first game and the protag of the first game founded Arroyo, the tribal village you were born in. Away from your tribal shithole which still has a Temple Of Trials, civilization is coming back and thriving! The New California Republic exists, and it's got troops and NCR-dollars for currency. Bottlecaps are no longer currency because carrying 1000 bottlecaps is pretty dumb in retrospect when NCR dollars are lighter though pre-war American dollars are still cartoonishly worthless. Vault City exists, and it's a Vault that used its GECK to "unfold" its Vault into a thriving above-ground town with walls and guards. Vault City has even experimented with giving hyper-intelligence to animals and creating psychic shit for no reason! Even the Enclave (cartoon fascist american supremacist) villains have technologically improved their own technology by upgrading their Power Armour beyond what the US Military was using by the time bombs dropped!

Fallout 3 - It has been over 200 years since the bombs fell.
Over 200 years! For no fucking reason!
200 years ago in our timeline men wore knee-high stockings and powdered wigs, and they got married at 14 years old.
200 years from now, I don't think anyone alive will dress like a 1960s motorcycle gang complete with switchblades.
And if a nuclear apocalypse happened today, where would people get the leather and hair gel 200 years from now if they don't have the means to produce it themselves?
Nothing has culturally developed in Bethesda's Fallout.
Nobody farms or builds anything more complex than junk walls/junk bridges, people just scavenge the ruins of the old world because every Nuka-Cola Vending Machine somehow always has 1-2 fresh unopened chilled glass bottles of cola.
Nobody makes any new clothing ever, unless the spiked Mad Max bullshit worn by cannibalistic thieves counts!
The only 5 songs that existed from 200 years ago contain BOMB or ATOM or RADIATION in the title or are about violence or say FUCK CIVILIZATION.
Fallout is supposed to be Retrofuture. The future we envisioned in the 60s, where beautiful white women on the moon still clean their houses for their handsome strong-jawed white husbands as their adorable white kids play with footballs in the street and robot nannies clean the house.
It's also a "fuck you" to that genre because "muh resource consumption" caused global wars and global nuking. Nothing bad ever came from multikulti in this future but it still happened, sadly, so this really is a fantasy world.
But this...
This is a shooty game wearing the Fallout IP like a tranny serial killer wearing the flesh of a woman.
So you will still find unopened tins of Cram and unopened bags of Chips at the Mega-Mall, despite the raiders living in it setting up human flesh dangling on chains from the ceiling. You can still find locked safes containing ammo and guns, and easily password-locked computers that work perfectly fine despite the lack of power.
Corpses of people who died 20 years ago can't be found anywhere but the skeletons of people who died over 200 years ago can be found pretty much anywhere.
No settlements know what adobe is and barely anyone produces anything. Slavers exist but we only see what slavers are used on (Steel production in the only factory in america that still works) in a DLC where you go to fucking Pittsburg.

Fallout New Vegas
It's good but I'll restrain myself and just say: The music selection isn't retarded. Pre-war songs on the radio are about love/loss, and you even encounter a travelling Guitarist and get him a job at a Casino's Theatre. No wonder F4 tried to one-up this with Magnolia, a random lounge singer you can easily fuck who makes a living singing to ghoul junkies booted out of the biggest trade hub in Boston.

Fallout Equestria (This story)
The author never gives a proper timeline with year numbers, but we're still told everything that happened leading up to the nuking eventually.
Fans have arranged the newspaper articles, apocalyptic logs, flashbacks, and stories from different characters into a linear timeline but without any numbers we only have a vague idea of how much time separates the day the nukes fell from the day Velvet Remedy, the "many times great granddaughter" of Sweetie Belle, was born. and that guess is "More than three generations".
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285036
>>285008
slight correction, Fallout 1's Opening Video Narration says your family got into the vault and "A generation has grown up without knowing of the outside world", but later sources retcon this as "Fallout 1 started eighty years after the nukes fell" for some reason. Eighty years is more than one generation unless something's gone seriously fucking weird in that Vault, and it was canonically one of the normal ones besides how its Water Chip was designed to miraculously break down on the chosen day and not a second before or after.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285091
285100 285106 285108
837132 - Friendship_is_Magic My_Little_Pony Princess_Cadence Twilight_Sparkle.jpg
>>284971

Chapter 3: Guidance

Today's mystery quote reads:

>“Books! I’ve read several on the subject.”
Without context, I'm assuming that the speaker means they have read books on the subject of books themselves. Good to know, I suppose.

Anyway, Littleclit wakes up in what is probably Sweetie Belle's old bed at Rarity's house. For the first time, she gets a glimpse of what the outside world really looks like, and predictably it's rather depressing. Unfortunately, the author doesn't describe much of it to us, other than mentioning that there is some kind of unpleasant cloud cover that filters the light and turns it a weird color; however, beyond that we don't get much description. However, we've all probably seen enough depictions of dystopian worlds to get the general idea.

She breaks into a locked chest she found and discovers an exquisitely made dress, which apparently survived all the looting and pillaging that earlier the text informed us took place here. It seems as if whoever looted the Carousel Boutique was too busy scribbling naughty words on the wall to bother breaking into this chest, which a pony who has virtually zero experience in this world was able to do quite easily. In any case, the dress is too big for her to wear, which again suggests that LP is a juvenile, though again the text hasn't come right out and stated it yet. However, she does decide to take the dress with her. addendum: the issue of Littlepip's age has been helpfully cleared up by Nigel in this post: >>284984

>Post-apocalyptic Ponyville was a rotting skeleton of a once homey little town.
This sentence is a little curious. "Post-apocalyptic" is certainly how we would describe this world, but seeing as how it's the only world LP has ever lived in, I'm not sure this is the term she would use. To her, the contrast is not between Equestria before and Equestria now, but between the indoor bunker-world she grew up in and the "outside" world.

>I turned from the doorway, my gaze following the lines of profanity that curled up the walls towards the rafters. And shrank back, choking in revulsion at what the sunlight revealed above me -- dozens of dead and desiccated cats had been hung from the ceiling like decorations. I had slept directly beneath three of them.
My stars but this is edgy.

Anyway, she walks outside and immediately steps on a landmine that someone put outside the door. A mysterious voice warns her to get back inside before it explodes (which is odd, because my understanding of the way a landmine works is that it explodes the instant you take your foot off of it; however, this one beeps a warning for several seconds and then explodes, which seems to kind of defeat the point).

>I was more shocked than hurt as I slowly dragged myself out from under the door. My ears were ringing. A trap. No wonder the raider ponies hadn’t invaded while I slept. They had left a present instead.
Why would they do this? It doesn't make much sense. It's been established that it's pretty much every pony for herself in Edgequestria, but the objective for most seems to be mostly survival, not cruelty. The raiders would, presumably, want to attack LP because she's weak and is carrying items of value. If they knew she was sleeping in the Carousel Boutique, it stands to reason they would either go in and rob her, and maybe rape her a little if they were bored; otherwise, if they thought she wasn't worth the bother, they would just leave her alone. Setting a landmine outside her door doesn't serve any purpose; at best it might kill a pony who was no particular threat, and in the process destroys whatever items of value she might be carrying including her vagina. Since there's no practical reason to kill her beyond robbery, it's also a waste of a landmine, which I'm assuming is as limited as any other practical resource in this world. I'm guessing most of the munitions plants have been shut down for awhile now, so things like ammo and explosives are probably considered high-value items that you don't waste on retarded bullshit if you can avoid it. Which, come to think of it, makes it feel a bit odd that the slavers earlier would have wasted shotgun rounds trying to kill an apparently harmless flying drone.

Anyway, LP's mysterious benefactor warns her that there are more enemies on the way. A few moments later, one of them walks through the door and throws some kind of apple-grenade at her, which again feels like kind of a pointless waste of an explosive. This whole attack feels completely pointless to me; if the raiders knew she was sleeping in here and knew that she was just one mare, then combat shotgun or no she wouldn't have proven much of a threat. It would have been far more economical to just slip in while she was sleeping and cut her throat.

>A memory flashed through my mind: I as a younger pony, trotting to the Stable schoolroom when an older pony stepped out of a doorway and heaved a water balloon at me. It had burst against my horn, soaking me and my homework. “Hey, don’t look so sad, blankflanks! I was just tryin’ ta help you. Y’know, in case your cutie mark is supposed to be a target!” The older pony had laughed and hurried off to class, leaving me dripping and miserable in the hall.

>Lesson learned: when somepony throws something at you, don’t let it hit you. Don’t even let it hit near you, because it might splash.

This flashback seems like a long way to go outside the story just to learn a fairly obvious lesson. Even if Littlepoop doesn't know what a grenade is, she can probably figure out that it's dangerous and would thus instinctively avoid it, regardless of any past water balloon experience she might have.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285100
285101
danny bazinga.jpg
>>285091
>“Books! I’ve read several on the subject.”
Reading a book about books? That's like having a Cutie Mark of a Cutie Mark!

Except Nippleclit's Cutie Mark of a Pip-Buck isn't actually "practically a cutie mark of a cutie mark", because even though it breaks the Cutie Mark design sensibilities by being an image of an object rather than a symbol that represents some kind of idea or gets used in an abstract way...

I know the author was trying to be cute with this retarded sentence but it reminded me of something really shit in this fic.

Cheerilee's three smiling flowers don't mean she's good at tossing flowers around, or growing flowers with smiles. They mean she's good at making her students happy while teaching, making them metaphorically "bloom". Fast Pegasi typically have a symbol that suggests speed or movement rather than just having a jpeg of a wing because their talent is using their wings. ponies with coins for Cutie Marks don't literally have the tossing of coins as their talents. And Applejack's apples means she's a good farmer, it doesn't just literally mean her talent is the usage of apples in cooking or shotput-style tossing or whatever.

Also, tech levels. I know it's a joke to give a shit about the show's inconsistent tech levels but while ponies have inkwells and quills for Cutie Marks even though Typewriters exist, the archetypical symbol of an inkqell or quill or both can still represent writing. But a Cutie Mark of an apple watch packing an Aimbot and HammerSpace(TM) Video Game Inventory? That's so overly specific for a pony to have, and at the same time utterly meaningless when it comes to suggesting what she's good at and what her destiny should be and what this magical smartphone duct-taped to her leg should visually represent. Putting aside how you feel about modern-day tech existing in equestria, it just doesn't feel right for Snipperclip to have a Jpeg of a smartphone-sized wrist-mounted computer on her ass.

At least you could claim the ass-mark of a shitty edgelord OC with a glock on his ass "Actually represents accuracy" in the same way you could claim another edgy OC's Cutie Mark of a red and white target represents hitting his targets instead of being shot like a target. And you could claim the small doodle of a thousand-pound dumbbell on a strong pony's ass represents the strength needed to lift weights rather than literally having his high weight for a natural talent that suggests your destiny in life. But a Pip-Boy doesn't represent anything other than a Pip-Boy. It's just a set of diegetic videogame menus for changing your equipment and turning on the Grand Theft Auto-inspired radio because nothing violates the bleak, atmospheric, grim, hopeless, spooky, tragic, and extremely fucking windy ambiance of Fallout's settings and sound design and tone quite like an overpowered protagonist with 10x more Hit Points than anything else and 999x Health Potions shooting orcs and zombies with his nuclear rocket launcher as his wrist-mounted iphone plays Atom Bomb Baby at max volume.

Remember Twilight's Cutie Mark-switching spell? If it was used to switch the marks of Trixie and Twilight, you can guess how they'd act: Twilight would perform scientifically interesting but visually unimpressive experiments on a stage for utterly bored ponies as she swears whatever barely-visible thing she just did was really fascinating even though she's the only one for miles who cares about this shit, and Trixie would enjoy the feeling of incredible power while she has it, or read a bunch of Twilight's most advanced spellbooks and rush trying pull off every spell once, fucking them all up filling Twilight's house with weird shit for Spike to deal with. That's my best guess, at least. But if you switched the Cutie Marks of Fluttershy and Niggerpip, Littleshit would try and fail to care for animals while Fluttershy... uh... I suppose she'd go and buy a Pip-Buck and then use it a lot, I guess. What would she do, flip through various dresses stored in the Pip-Buck's Inventory hammerspace app that sometimes exists but usually doesn't? Use its Minimap and Life-Form-Detecting Compass (which the author often forgets about) to hunt down her chickens when they escape her home?
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285101
>>285100
also the author isn't right about Clittersnip's cutie mark being "practically a Cutie Mark of a Cutie Mark".

It's not as meaningless as a "symbol of a symbol", in the way that something generic like a circle or square or random star would be. It's too specific, it's a Cutie Mark of an existing object in a franchise where Cutie Marks are usually vague things at least a little open to interpretation.

Zipperclip's talent symbol is just an object and her talent is often implied to mean using this object. What else could it mean, getting more of these objects? Her Cutie Mark is about as much of a symbol as a JPEG of a screenshot featuring Danny Devito is a "Symbol" of Danny Devito. It isn't even stylized or on fire or surrounded by something like stars or teeth or wind. Her Cutie Mark means an inherent talent at utilizing and operating a highly sophisticated piece of literally-magical technology with many functions designed to emulate and justify third-person auto-aim pseudo-turnbased looty-shooty action-RPG mechanics, and it's used in this story to justify why she's good at pretty much everything a Pip-Buck can be used for right off the bat. Except the author forgot to give a justification for her lockpicking talent beyond "I guess sometimes PipBuck Repair Ponies have to pick open the locks on tech because she doesn't have the keys".

It's not "A cutie mark of a cutie mark", it's "A cutie mark that says you're talented at using some bullshit tech that almost has as many uses as a smartphone". If you saw a shitty EQG DVD short where some human kid stumbled into the Ponyland Portal and his Cutie Mark was a smartphone, it would be bullshit. But also, you could make a list of everything a smartphone CAN do and check if this character is ever shown using a spell he instinctively knows to call anyone ever without network issues, using another spell to take pictures with his eyes and spit them out of his mouth, using another spell to check the universe's infinite all-knowing magic internet to learn whatever he wants, and so on. A Pip-Buck has fewer functions than a smartphone. It's a more precise concept, even though it still doesn't make sense as a Cutie Mark because all the different things a Pip-Buck can do are so wildly different from one another.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285102
285116
I have finished my autistic rant, also today I learned >>285100 if you spoiler-tag a post link, the post link doesn't work.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285106
285117 285122
kisspng-pony-horse-0-les-graines-du-pass-cartoon-angry-lord-nataraja-5b56b5e5d73155.6970873115324093178814.jpg
>>285091

Anyway, like a complete retard Littlepoop drops her shotgun, but sensibly (?) grabs the grenade with her magic and throws it back out the door. It explodes and kills the raider who had thrown it. LP has now officially popped her kill cherry.

It seems like, what with the mysterious voice and all, there ought to be a little more to this scene, but the author cuts it off abruptly with a page break, and time skips forward quite a bit. LP has apparently left Ponyville, and we are told nothing about it beyond that her escape from it was "harrowing."

>I realized early that I had been neglecting my Eyes-Forward Sparkle. Once I had brought up my E.F.S., it was far easier to determine where the raider ponies were, and to avoid them.
I was not particularly clear what the hell the author was talking about here, but I figured it had something to do with the PipBuck so I went back and revisited the prologue, where the tech specs were gone over in detail. I found this:

>A pony’s PipBuck generates an E.F.S. (Eyes-Forward Sparkle) that will indicate direction and help gauge whether the ponies or creatures around you are hostile.
This actually segues into another reason why it was not good story design to just dump all that info in the second paragraph. Technically, the author already told us about this EFS feature of the PipBuck, so he isn't doing anything wrong by bringing it up now as if it's something we should already know about. However, it has not prominently factored into the story before now, and we were told about it way back at the very beginning, so it's pretty unlikely that this is a detail the reader would remember.

Pretty much everything the PipBuck can do is explained in the second paragraph of the story. Though the device itself is important to LP's job and is therefore relevant, all of the specific functions it has are not important and don't really bear mention at that point in the story. All we really needed to know about PipBucks at that point in the story is that it's some kind of technical device that straps to the foreleg, that the ponies all have one, and that it can do a lot of things. The specific functions it has are not relevant, and can probably be introduced as they come up.

To illustrate my point better, here is the PipBuck infodump in its entirety:

>What is a PipBuck? A PipBuck is a device, worn on a foreleg just above the hoof, issued to every pony in a Stable when they become old enough to start work. A blending of unicorn pony magic and science, your PipBuck will keep a constant measure of your health and even help administer healing poultices and other medicine, track and organize everything in your saddlepacks, assist in repairs, and keep all manner of notes and maps available at a hooftap. Plus, it allows you to listen to the Stable broadcast whenever you would like as it can tune into and decrypt just about any radio frequency. And that’s not all. A pony’s PipBuck generates an E.F.S. (Eyes-Forward Sparkle) that will indicate direction and help gauge whether the ponies or creatures around you are hostile. And, perhaps most impressively, a PipBuck can magically aid you in a fight for brief periods of time through use of the S.A.T.S. (Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell). Oh, and a feature not to be forgotten: it can keep track of the location of tagged objects or people, including the wearers of other PipBucks. So if a pony somehow got lost -- don’t ask me how you could get lost in a Stable, but it does happen on occasion -- then anypony who knew the lost pony’s tag could find them instantly.
This is literally the second paragraph of the text. This would frankly be a dense read regardless of where you put it, and as the second paragraph it pretty much had my eyes glazing over.

A person's senses are bombarded by information pretty much every second they're awake, and aside from people with photographic memory or Rainman-tier autism, most have a subconscious filter that sorts and retains information based on its apparent importance. Information of immediate importance (that saber-toothed tiger is charging at me) is processed and dealt with right away. Information that doesn't seem immediately important but feels like it might be important later (I think I heard a saber-toothed tiger roaring somewhere off in the distance) is consciously acknowledged and usually retained somewhere. Information that has no apparent importance (a six hour lecture on the anatomy of saber-toothed tigers conducted by Ben Stein with no bathroom break) is usually dismissed, or else is retained in some remote corner of the memory where it is essentially forgotten until some situation forces the person to recall it.

The densely worded second paragraph of this text is the literary equivalent of a Ben Stein lecture about tigers. It's roughly as exciting to read as the owner's manual of a Honda Civic, and the information in it has the same likelihood of being retained. For instance, the term "Eyes-Forward Sparkle" was technically something I had read before and should therefore know, but I didn't remember what it was, because when I read it the information had no apparent relevance so my memory didn't mark it as something important.

This is why I am always admonishing authors for writing these massive infodump paragraphs. If you've invented some really cool fictional device that can do all sorts of things and you're really excited about it, then great; put it in the story. But don't tell us everything it can do all at once, because we don't care as much as you do and aren't going to remember it if it's not relevant. When it becomes relevant, show us how it works, don't tell. This is what the author should have done here, with this Eyes-Forward Sparkle business.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285108
285116
>>285091
>however, this one beeps a warning for several seconds and then explodes
It's retarded, but landmines/grenade-tripwires do this in Fallout 3 onwards to compensate for how buggy the Hitboxes are and how hard it is to see anything (especially small details) and tell anything apart when everything looks like shit and A FUCKING GREEN INSTAGRAM FILTER engulfs your screen 24/7 for no reason. Sound and a glowing symbol with an arrow warns you "MOVE AWAY FROM THAT AREA" and 2-3 seconds later the trap you triggered detonates. This means you can literally run straight through most trap-filled dungeons, explosions exploding uselessly behind you.
So there's really not much point in taking the Light Step perk, which magically disables all landmines and traps you trigger.

F3 onwards, you're not thinking or looking around at the samey scenery since it's made from the same prefabricated puzzle-piece floors and walls used everywhere else, there are no clues in the environment and there is no clever level design to guide you towards specific areas, you're staring at the glowing compass marker in the bottom-left corner that tells you where the next Quest Marker is, and that system exists to compensate for how bad the world/level design is.

Liberty Prime is a fucking massive giant laser-eyed robot that tosses nukes like american footballs, and Helios One is a massive space laser that uses a cartoony-looking lasergun called Euclid's C-Finder as the target-finder and trigger, but many players who completed the quests to repair these superweapons said "I didn't even notice the giant robot/giant solar panel place until they started making loud noises and firing lasers".
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.285116
285122 293663
>>285102
>I have finished my autistic rant
10 minutes later....
>>285108
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285117
285133
d76c18f1e63b57ad621162091fb19fae.jpg
>>285106

>Despite actively looking for me, the raider ponies proved less than adept hunters.
I'm also a little unclear on how many of these "raider ponies" we're talking about here. There were I think two or three of them on the bridge the previous night, and those were all killed. There was a sniper who was firing at Littlepoop from some unknown location, and I understood this to be the same individual that later set the landmine and threw the grenade at her. If so, then the sniper is also dead. If there is supposed to be a whole team of these guys chasing her, it's unclear why they left her alone at Carousel Boutique the previous night, if they knew she was in there and had rather limited defenses. It's also unclear why only one of them seemed to be attacking her the next day. If they went to the trouble of setting a landmine outside the door, it wouldn't have been too much additional trouble to have a few of them hang around the entrance to ambush her in case the landmine didn't finish her off. Also: I still have no idea why these ponies want her dead so badly in the first place. All she's got is a couple of canteens and a shotgun, and they can't care too much about that stuff if they were going to blow her up anyway.

Anyway, this next little bit wraps up the rest of what we need to know about her escape from Ponyville:

>Using my magic to bang a mailbox lid down the street or break an empty bottle against a freestanding chimney several yards away provided sufficient distraction to get past them. I had almost made past the last house when the sniper pony started taking shots at me again. The closest shot grazed my flank -- a slash of burning pain and a flowing blood. Fortunately, the wound looked far worse than it was, and even my meager medical skills were enough to stop the bleeding and bandage it.
So, I guess that answers my question about the sniper.

Anyway, to summarize: for reasons unknown, Littlepoop is currently being chased by an indeterminate number of very dumb, yet very persistent enemies, who attack her one at a time using easily-thwarted methods.

Incidentally, it's clear that at least some time has passed since the grenade incident at the Boutique, but we have had no further mention of the mysterious voice that was speaking to Littlepoop earlier. Littlepoop doesn't seem particularly curious about it either. This bugs me; it isn't just bad writing, it also doesn't make any sense. Someone warns her about the landmine, and then warns her about another enemy coming, and then once said enemy is dispatched, she doesn't look around to see who was speaking to her? Even if we're supposed to understand it as a voice coming from a loudspeaker or through her PipBuck's radio or something (the text seems to be implying something like this, although it is not particularly clear about how she is receiving this communication), wouldn't she at least be curious to hunt around for it a little? Or to at least tell us that she wanted to but didn't have time, because there were still bad guys after her?

Anyway, once she gets away from the raiders, she stops in a little ditch to have lunch. However, before she can eat, her EFS thingy starts beeping again, and she has to get up and move because I guess there are more enemies or something.

For some reason she's still hearing music coming from somewhere, then it's gone, then some kind of mutant bird-thing attacks her or something...honestly, I'm not too clear on what's happening during this part. The bird thing attacks, and she doesn't want to waste her only shot because she's not sure she can hit it, so she runs away instead. Then, her EFS tells her that there's something else in front of her, except it's marked as friendly. Then, for no reason, the enemy disappears, and then she hears the same voice she heard earlier speaking to her again.

>With a mixture of relief and bewilderment, I watched the sprite-bot fly up to my hiding place.
Apparently, the sprite-bot is the source of the voice. I'm assuming this is the same sprite-bot that the slavers were shooting at the previous day. It's nice to have that detail cleared up, but I'm still confused about a few things.

The landmine incident occurred outside Carousel Boutique. When she sets it off, LP hears a voice warning her to get back inside, so she does, and a second later a landmine explodes. She is now inside the store. She then hears the same voice warning her that another enemy is coming. Where is the sprite-bot physically at this point? The way I see it, there are only two possibilities. One, the bot is inside the store with her, where it would be hard not to notice it zipping around; thus, LP should have spotted it fairly easily. The other possibility is that it was still outside, which means it would have had to "yell" loudly enough for her to hear it inside the store. Between that and the fact that it was physically flying around out there, the raiders should have spotted it and would have presumably noticed that it was helping LP; thus they should have seen it as hostile and gone after it.

The device was described earlier as "metal ball about the size of a foal’s head floating on four silently flapping wings." It seems fairly agile and doesn't seem to make a lot of noise on its own, but it would have to be hovering somewhere relatively close by in order to both observe the situation and speak warnings to LP, and if it was speaking the sound should have given away its location anyway. Thus, it seems virtually impossible for LP not to have noticed it before now. Also, even if she didn't see it, it's still weird that she didn't bother to hunt around for the source of the mysterious voice that warned her about both the landmine and the raider before leaving Ponyville. No matter how I look at it, this whole sequence of events just feels weird and badly written.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285122
285123 285136
>>285116
I think i'm getting good at shortening my autistic rants and getting to the point quicker.
I bet me from months ago would have explained what Hitboxes are in my post for ten minutes. Everyone knows what hitboxes are.

>>285106
The author did it again, with Littlepip's supposedly "Harrowing"(TM) escape.
Gee, it sure would have been fun to watch an under-supplied and panicking Littleshit with nothing but a shotgun with little ammo and a cheating map-watch with aimbot hax escape from a cannibalistic raider band's camp by the skin of her teeth. Would be cool to see how the evil bastards willing to use Landmines, The Dirtiest Weapon In War (besides aloha snackbar kids and alohas in general) would set up more traps around Ponyville to trip up and wound/weaken/kill Littleshit. Perhaps we could see more Ponyville landmarks desecrated and debased, like Twilight's Tree-Library except it's burned down and every book is ash, or Fluttershy's Cottage except turned into a drug den and animal corpses dangle like chandeliers, or Sugarcube Corner except the displays where cakes should be are filled with decades-old unicorn shit!

But the author didn't know how to make this scene look cool, so we skip time like fucking King Crimson and we're told to our faces (after the fact) that what the author skipped over looked really really cool.
>"Littlepip just escaped, and trust me, it was very harrowing!"
Whenever the author wants something to happen but has no idea how to make it happen onscreen without making the scene look as contrived and lazy as it is, it happens offscreen or between a random page break.
But if something needs to happen and the author doesn't realize it will look contrived and lazy for people to suddenly and temporarily lose 80 IQ points for the sake of the plot or completely go against their characterization and character arcs for the sake of a cool-sounding scene, it will happen onscreen.

Remember how smart the raiders were(for raiders), and how persistent they were, and how they were willing to mine the area outside her house and wait for her to die AND try throwing grenades at her?
Remember how they were so irrationally dedicated to killing her that they were willing to set up a (presumably expensive since these things can cripple BIG enemies) Landmine just to blow her up even though it'd destroy the loot she carried?
When Littlepip had slightly more ammo and a teammate and enough plot armour to let her sleep without anyone breaking in and >raping her, she could deal with smart Raiders.
But at that moment, she is surrounded. Enemies know exactly what house she's in and she didn't think to toss a rock into another window for the sake of a decoy. All she can do is expose herself by leaving the house and fleeing in a straight line from this enemy-filled enemy base.
She has no smart escape plan.
She should die here. Get shot at a lot while running away, get shot in the legs, collapse, and get crippled, get dragged back to base as a raider's slave. Some dyke raideress could molest her for maximum edgy points.
The story should end here but the author doesn't want it to, and he doesn't feel like retconning an unopened Survivalist Supplies-filled safe into Rarity's house despite the random fucking indestructible treasure chest containing a pretty dress.
Littleshit should logically die here, ending the story forever.
So things just conveniently become easier on the heroine so she can win. NOTHING kills the stakes in an action story quite like seeing that the hero's got unreasonable idiocy-inducing levels of plot armour.
It's almost as if this fic is a video game and the author turned down the difficulty hoping we wouldn't notice.
But we noticed.

Imagine if Littlepip did something smart with the resources around her...
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285123
285136
>>285122
For example, imagine if Littleshit took the nice dress she found, telekinetically grabbed a cat off the ceiling above her and put the dress on the cat(Or shoved her own clothes onto the cat for added authenticity if she was willing to sacrifice armour), shielded herself behind a levitated table/bed, and slammed the dead cat onto the landmine so it would convincingly splatter everywhere while her shield kept blood off her. Raiders would assume the landmine killed their target, and this would give her an opportunity to sneak out of the back of the building or a window as the sound of the triggered landmine and bloody raining giblets convinced the raiders that they had successfully killed Littlepip and only clothing shreds remained to reward them, a trade-off for using explosive weaponry they were ready to pay.

(because only in a fucking video game and unusually bloody Looney Tunes skit can you use a rocket launcher to gib an enemy, and then reach into a chunk of his liver, and pull all his completely-unharmed weapons/clothes/supplies out of his liver's nonexistent pockets)

Could even do some black comedy here by having one raider yell at another raider like the angry homeowner in a Tom And Jerry cartoon.

>"Headshot?"
>"Yeah, Skullfucker?"
>"Why did we want the filly?"
>"So we could take her stuff and rape her a lot and trade her to slavers for big guns so we can raid more places, boss Skullfucker!"
>"Right. So... Where's the filly we were after?"
Headshot the Raider's dull bloodshot eyes jitter around as he points with his hoof to different fleshy body parts.
In the background, one Raider pony grabs a hoofful of gibs and starts eating it raw for maximum edge.
>"And where's her stuff, Headshot?"
Headshot looks around some more.
>"Everywhere, boss."
>"So go get her stuff."
...
Headshot looks down and tries picking up a giblet and shred of scorched fabric
Headshot's eyes fill with dawning comprehension. "I see the problem."
>"OH, DO YA?!"

Black comedy was an integral part of F1/2.

Plus if they mention a nearby civilized location's name and direction from here and say they're going to raid it soon, it would give Littlepip a direction to head in if she thinks "I must warn this place! Surely they will reward me!"
But then the town could assume Littleshit is a saboteur working for the raiders since most new ponies don't escape Raiders alive and unmolested.

Alternatively, she could notice the big landmine outside her door, switch the switch on its back off with magic and pocket it, then do the "cat decoy" trick I mentioned with the grenade tossed at her.

It lets Littlepip quickly sneak away from this fight while giving her enemies no reason to check the back of the building and give chase.

Smart raiders might say "Wow, she had a suspiciously low amount of supplies on her. Stable Ponies are usually fucking loaded!" if they noticed her blue Stable Jumpsuit and their culture knew what Stable Ponies are. If any Raiders do say "Yo that's a cat liver on the ground not a pony liver, we've been bamboozled" Littlepip will have a head start to let her run away. But still, it's better than this "Suddenly her pursuers became retarded" moment that exists to warn the audience that the difficulty slider can and will be fucked with at will.

I'd completely forgotten about this moment, but as I wrote down why I hated it I thought of the cat trick. Sure, it sounds quite "Monkey Island but edgy", some real Point And Click Adventure Game puzzle bullshit, but it's something a desperate pony making do with her highly limited supplies and avoid having to kill anyone(since she probably doesn't want to try killing a foe then freeze up at the last second) could realistically think of trying.

>EFS
I completely forgot he called the videogame HUD elements like the health bar, EXP bar, and magic compass "the Eyes-Forward Sparkle". That's completely retarded. Everyone knows what a HUD is, why bother giving it a gimmicky name? Ponies can still turn their heads up. A Display can still give them a heads-up on "vital info" like "You are 200 XP points away from reaching level 8 and obtaining the Fast Reloader trait that lets you regenerate limbs like the cunt from the X-Men 3 movie when at over 400 Rads".

Author should have reminded us about EFS by making it tell her the names of every pony she sees, including raiders and those stable guards she hit with a floating thing. She could look at a Raider named Skullcrusher and think "Who names their foal Skullcrusher?" before looking at his crushed skull cutie mark and thinking "Someone who wanted him to grow up to crush a lot of skulls, I guess. Maybe if my Mom named me something cooler than Littlepip, I wouldn't be so tiny".

>making noises far away with telekinesis to distract ponies
Making noises away from you is a fucking start, as far as improvised clever plans involving magic go. But if a sniper's the problem, levitating something big and thick between her and the sniper as she runs would be great. Not like there's a shortage of worthless heavy garbage lying around in a Raider Camp given their love of scrap walls and heads on sticks. She could also get into cover and put out a decoy (A cat corpse, or a pony head mounted on a stick?) to take a bullet by sticking it out from cover. She could read the blood splatter angles to calculate where the Raider probably is, and then use her Pip-Boy Foe-Marking Compass to see where he definitely is. Then she could lift up a chunk of the ground, crush it together for added density, and toss it at him or wherever he's sniping from.

>Littleshit got shot in the ass but fortunately it was okay, don't worry about it.
Man, Littlepip is sooo good at first aid for someone who's not the main healer, or a survivalist with any reason to know about medicine.
Author should have written about this, put us in her shoes, made her FEEL her terror once she's shot in the ass and forced to First-Aid it on the spot with enemies closing in.

>Sprite-Bot
God, this retarded fucking robot...
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285133
285148 285152
1587316528246.gif
>>285117

Anyway, LP asks the sprite-bot who it is and why it's following her. It tells her that it's friendly and she can call it Watcher. Personally, I think that's a dumb name, so I'm going to call it Frank instead.

>I regarded the sprite-bot critically. “Watcher. Okay...” I slipped out from behind the tree and started looking for where my apply had rolled to when I dropped it.
I'm assuming "apply" is supposed to be "apple." At this point I am officially retracting my statement about this text having gone through a professional editor; the level of proofreading and revision here is clearly higher than what we saw with Past Sins and The Sun & The Rose, but I've still come across several technical errors that I have hard time believing an editor wouldn't catch. Incidentally, the version of the text I'm working with is the one found on FimFiction (https://www.fimfiction.net/story/119190/fallout-equestria). It's possible the version that eventually went to print has been revised from this version. If anyone knows more details about the revision history of this work, I'd be curious to hear them.

>Not far away, near where the flying creature had been, I spotted a glowing pile of pink ash. “You do that?”
I'm assuming this explains what happened to the bird-thing that attacked her earlier. And, as it turns out, I'm right:

>“Bloatsprites. That’s what you get when you mix parasprites with Taint. Can’t stand ‘em, myself. Glad to help.”
If I'm reading this correctly, somepony rubbed a parasprite against the region between her vagina and butthole, and this somehow caused it to gain water weight.

Anyway, the rest of this conversation is just stupid and doesn't merit close scrutiny. There is some confusion about the name of the landmine (LP doesn't know what a mine is, so she thinks the sprite-bot is laying claim to her apple) that basically just takes a lukewarm Dad-joke and drags it out well beyond its natural lifespan. The important takeaway is that the sprite-bot is not a sentient being, but is being controlled remotely by someone who hacked into it (I'd assumed it was an AI of some kind, but this actually makes more sense).

>“Oh, time’s almost up. Look, there are a few things you’re going to need if you want to survive out here. A weapon (or at least a lot more ammo for the one you have), armored barding, a bit of guidance... and most importantly, you need to make some friends.”
This is another of those situations where something in one medium doesn't translate well into another. In a video game it's perfectly acceptable to have superfluous characters hanging around dispensing general advice on how to play the game. Even though these interactions can feel unrealistic, players understand it to be the developers' way of conveying essential information without breaking the fourth wall, so you let it slide. However, in a novel there's no interactive component and thus no reason to do this. Thus, it's a little strange that some mysterious hacker would go to the trouble of hacking a sprite-bot and using it to follow a complete stranger around for hours, just so she could give her some general advice that even a dipshit like Littlepoop could probably figure out on her own, which basically amounts to "you should try to find some ammo" and "don't wander around by yourself."

>The bobbing sprite-bot was silent a moment. “I’m going to take a shot in the dark here and guess you like books. Am I right?”
Literally nothing in their interactions or what the sprite-bot would have observed about her thus far would suggest this.

Anyway, like I said, the rest of this conversation is completely stupid and implausible. The sprite-bot recommends a book to her, tells her that the Ponyville Library has a copy of it, and then sends the location to her PipBuck. Again, this would be fine if this were an actual video game, or even a story set inside a video game (Sword Art Online or something to that effect), but for a story that simply uses a video-game-inspired world as its setting, this is completely idiotic. The author does not even offer the most cursory explanation for why this mystery hacker is going to all this trouble to help a complete stranger. I'm going to assume for now that he is taking this somewhere, and that the hacker has some kind of mystery motive. Probably, the hacker wants the book and is using Littlepoop as a pawn to retrieve it for him. However, the way he goes about it here is just stupid as all hell.

Anyway, the hacker apparently either loses control of the sprite-bot or intentionally logs out of it, because suddenly it starts playing martial music again, and then floats randomly away. The subchapter ends with a page break.

Littlepoop is, of course, worried about going back into the town full of raiders that she just escaped from, but apparently she doesn't run into any trouble, because when the next scene opens she is at the Ponyville Library. The scene opens with a pretty decent descriptive paragraph:

>The Ponyville Library was in a tree. Not a treehouse, but literally inside a tree. A massive, gnarled tree bigger than most buildings had been grown in the middle of the town, clearly the project of magic, and hollowed out to be the public library. The south side of the tree was scorched black and dead. But there were still a few leaves clinging to life on the opposite branches. The tree was surrounded by a wide open space with absolutely no cover.
Anonymous
a9f943e
?
No.285136
285148 293663
>>285122
>I think i'm getting good at shortening my autistic rants and getting to the point quicker
Later, in the same post, and continued later
>>285123
>>285122
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285148
285151 285386
THIS IS VICTOR AND HE SAVES YOUR ASS SOMETIMES AND DELIVERS EXPOSITION IN FALLOUT NEW VEGAS.jpg
>>285136
I'm working on it, word counts are lower and the topics per post are going up.
Btw, thought of something relevant to this thread

Games like Vampire The Masquerade and Fallout have FUCKLOADS of replay value in how you make your character this run and how that encourages you to play. And what choices you make based on your own personal reeasons.
A charming smooth-talker and sneaky sniper-headshotter will play differently from a tough stupid swordsman.
You can be a good guy in these games or a baddie.
BUT
THIS IS A BOOK
You can't finish the book and then re-read it imagining Littlepip as a strong male swordsman Pegasus in power armour who says "fuck justice" and becomes a Raider emperor with a mare sex slave harem.
A BOOK ONLY EXISTS ONCE
unless it is REWRITTEN or given sequels or shit like that
BUT STILL, A BOOK ISN'T A VIDEO GAME
the growth in power from novice to legendary lv99 boss is satisfying for different reasons!
AND THE AUTHOR ONLY GETS ONE SHOT TO MAKE HIS ACTION STORY INTERESTING!

You can deal with an enemy-filled warehouse in many ways in an rpg. Fight all the enemies head-on, distract them and kill them, get a firing squad of your companions together and open fire, blow it up, talk another enemy gang into attacking them for you, talk the enemies into doing what you want...
But in a book?
It's up to the author how his protagonist handles this situation and how entertaining the story becomes.
A fight is interesting to a videogame player if it's fun for them.
A fight in a book is more interesting to the audience if it's well-written.

A smart writer would adapt an RPG's many choices into a book by making a general heroic protagonist to represent the "Be good and fill your role in the destiny" plot anyone can get behind(someone with a reason to drag a ragtag band of misfits around and keep them focused on the main goal), and then give the hero unique companions themed around how a player COULD play the rpg and what somebody in this world COULD be.
So the heroic Kevin The Paladin leads a party containing a pacifistic soft-hearted healer, an aggressive mindless tough murderhobo Barbarian, a backstabbing sneaky cynical Rogue, and a cowardly witty manipulative Wizard.

Just like that, you have conflict within the party and dynamic character interaction. Everyone shines in their party role.
Is there an enemy bandit camp to destroy?
Each companion offers their advice on how they'd handle things.
Pacifist doesn't want violence but also doesn't want the bandits harming innocents.
Barbarian says "Run in screaming and smash their faces in!".
Wizard says "Don't risk getting harmed and don't go anywhere near the enemies. Just nuke them from far away with a big fireball"
and Rogue says "No, that would destroy the loot! And that's what life is really all about! Slit their throats in the dead of night and rob them blind!".
But eventually, the hero chooses the best plan from the bunch, or makes a plan of his own that involves everyone if he's a strategist/teamwork-lover.

That's what a smart writer would do, for the bare minimum. A GREAT writer would say something about the world and its people and worldbuilding and their society and our society through the unique multifaceted and dynamic characters, how they grow, what works and what doesn't, and so on. A great writer would have characters who are deeper than nonsense one-liner backstories attached to generic personalities and archetypical videogame stat-builds like "The nice healer girl", "The dashing flyboy rogue", "The tough soldier knight tank guy", "the total fucking cuck", "the gigadyke musician", etc.

On one hand, Littlepip's stat build would be good for everything relevant in a fallout game. A sneaky shooty wordy stuff-fixing chick who's good with a gun can easily pass most skill checks.
(btw Speech, Sneak, Magic, First Aid, Small Guns, Repair, Lockpick. The author can't count to three so Littlepip starts with 7 major skills at the story's start).
But it's DULL AND BORING for a protagonist! Littlepip should be a more interesting and active protagonist with more being-the-protagonist-focused skills.
and the gun-fixing repair-monkey job should be saved for a cute side-character chick with a giant wrench completely focused on gunsmithing the best guns and armour for her party!

>>285133
>Watcher
I am vibrating with motion right now but I won't spoil anything about how much I fucking hate absolutely everything about this and why

speaking of "Frank" saving her from the random flier attack, this stupid shit coming out of nowhere to save Littlepip from the Raiders would have been a better way for her to escape from the Raiders, compared to Raiders suddenly becoming conveniently retarded as Littlepip escapes "harrowingly" in events told to you outside of the current protagonist's head for no reason

>mine's on first base
punchier faster-paced economic writing could probably make that dumb joke work.

>videogame advice dispenser
Victor wasn't this bad.
Was an excuse for Frank not joining LP's party given?

>Taint
Kkunt decided to name "magic" radiation leftover from the nuke megaspells mentioned in the opener "Taint".
Irradiated lands in Fallout have "Rads", units of radiation imbibed per second.
And this story has... Taints.
>"I can't go to that land because of the Taint! The Taint is too great! That's way too much Taint for me- why are you laughing? Don't laugh about Taints, Taints are serious business!"
Remember Parasprites and everything that made them terrifying? Well now they're just Bloatflies. Big flies.
Taint-free Parasprite swarms flying around eating everything organic would have been scarier. Or Taint-mutated Parasprite swarms flying around eating anything inorganic, so they'll steal your clothes and guns and tear your water canteens apart to eat them while wasting your water.
but why write unique dangers from MLP's unique setting when you can just shove bugs where they don't belong like you're Shino "I stuffed bugs up your holes when you weren't paying attention" Aburame.
Meta
Anonymous
bbcc4f1
?
No.285151
BC10B8F06B1E307B4276194946E1722D-11233.png
>>285148
>A BOOK ONLY EXISTS ONCE
Yes, I'd like to mention the possibility of recursive literary works that change each time you read it due to the accumulating knowledge. Even if the words are the same.
>One shot
Fanfiction of fanfiction begets a whirlpool of fuckery. Omakes and fun posts 'dream ideals' vs the harsh reality.
>Action / Combat tropes
>Sandbox game vs Puppet show story
In a sand box the more/interesting toys you have, and the interacting possibilities, and the premade sandcastles the better. A story could be suggested.
In a puppet show, it's the spectacle shown and in the audiences' mind. The potential for a sandbox is there, but it's fully realized here and now. The fully realized kinetic action that takes place is awe inspiring. (The audience has to understand somethings for it to be awesome.)
>Overloading the character with POWAH
As always for a puppet show it is not the cool toys it's the presentation. Cool toys are props, and choosing the right color prop for the right time is just an exercise in frustration. Unless something weird happens (new knowledge about the meta puppet show).
>Use the setting to your advantage when writing.
Sounds about right.

>gun-fixing repair-monkey job should be saved for a cute side-character chick
A character with that expertise will have that hammer, and everything looks like a nail for that skill set Worth mentioning that means everything that they are and trying to be. Comedy and Tragedy and Mis'Understandings' ensues. The more well adjusted (to the world, others, and themselves) they are the longer term plans can happen successfully. Then those plans fall apart or some other point of interest happens or it works with consequences.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285152
285176 285177 285182 285383
fallout equestria.jpg
>>285133

Unfortunately, it gets pretty stupid from here:

>Any hope my luck at the Carousel Boutique would hold out here was dashed when I looked up to the highest balcony and finally spotted the sniper pony – an earth pony armed with a powerful-looking rifle. The rifle was attached to the balcony railing with a gliding swivel mount, allowing the raider to aim it wherever she could see. The only safe approach was from directly behind her, where the door to the balcony and the narrow top of the tree beyond blocked her line of sight. There were surely more raider ponies inside.
Littlepoop's concern about her luck holding out seems completely unfounded; this pony has had nothing but the best possible luck since she started this journey. At any rate, she certainly hasn't survived on the virtue of her wits; she has behaved stupidly enough up until now that by all rights she ought to have been killed several times over. Her salvation has mainly been the result of her enemies being even more dim-witted than she is.

Considering how dangerous and le edgy this post-friendship Equestria is supposed to be, the naivety and ineptitude of its residents that we've encountered so far is almost criminal. Littlepoop's plan to escape the heavily-fortified Stable didn't amount to much more than punching the entry code into the door and walking out; the only opposition she encountered was a stern lecture from the Overmare and a couple of guards who just stared vacantly at her while she dropped a steel locker on top of them. The slavers she was then captured by didn't even have the sense to remove the gigantic beeping thingamabob that is obviously a communications device strapped to her leg, let alone relieve her of her screwdriver and her apparently limitless supply of bobby pins. After that, they didn't do much except waste their ammo until a group of raiders came along and massacred them. Oh yeah, then there's the raiders.

Kkat seems to have populated this town with an indeterminate number of "raiders" (incidentally it's never been made clear what, if anything, they raid) that fluctuates depending on how many of them he needs for a scene. By my best estimate there could be as few of them as ten and as many as a hundred. Despite the anarchic, pony-eat-pony nature of this world, they all seem to be more or less on the same team, with the single-minded objective of killing Littleplop for no reason other than to kill her. Yet, despite this being their only apparent goal, and despite the advantages they have in terms of numbers, weapons, experience, knowledge of the terrain, etc, they don't seem to ever come close to pulling it off.

Again, if they really wanted her dead so badly, I really don't see why the simplest plan wouldn't have been to just slip into the Carousel Boutique while she was sleeping and kill her then, but apparently they wanted to be stealthy about it. So, instead, they put a single landmine outside the front door (a type of mine which instead of just exploding when you step on it will spend several seconds beeping a warning at you and then explode). When this fails to do the trick, a single pony goes in and lobs a single grenade at her, which she is able to pick up and throw back using the simplest possible magic trick (again, seeing as how these characters all live in this world it stands to reason they would have a pretty good grasp on what the different kinds of ponies can do and might therefore have predicted this outcome). Despite the author's assurances that her escape from Ponyville was "harrowing" (I'm not 100% convinced he understands what this word means), she seems to have had no difficulty in making it out into the woods, nor does she have any apparent difficulty getting back in once a mysterious benefactor helpfully tells her about a book she can find that will aid her in her travels.

This brings us to the present. Littlepoop's exact location is not made especially clear, but we can gather that she is at least close enough to the tree to get a good look at it, and to observe that the sniper is perched on the balcony. The sniper, incidentally, has a good enough vantage point from the top of the tree to fire at nearly any location in town, and has been trying to nail her since the previous night, yet somehow doesn't notice her standing right in front of the fucking tree. It's probably just as well; the sniper clearly can't hit the broad side of a feminist's ass.

Oh yes, and naturally the tree is "full of raiders," because why wouldn't it be?

>Sneaking up carefully from the only direction that wouldn’t mean instant death, I was trembling with nerves by the time I reached the door.
Well, my granpappy always used to say that if you need to sneak up carefully, the direction that doesn't mean instant death is usually the way to go. I'm sure glad she made it in there okay; I was really worried for a second. Hope she can stop trembling with nerves before she has to kung fu fight over 9000 raiders.

>As swiftly and silently as I could, I slipped out of Ponyville... and straight into pony hell!
Slipped out of Ponyville? But you just slipped back in!

>Pony corpses everywhere! Not like the bridge where ponies had fallen in battle; these ponies had been mutilated, desecrated and put on display! Some poor pony’s body hung from the ceiling, head and hooves severed and flesh sliced open and pulled back to reveal the meat and bones beneath. Heads and limbs hung from chains like sick party decorations. The rotting body of a pink pony with a violent mane was mounted, spread-eagled over a bookcase with railroad spikes. Two had been driven into her eyes. On another wall, a torso had been skinned and sliced open, the pony’s entrails pulled out to decorate the shelves like streamers.
Sacrebleu! Le edge!

Seriously, this story is comedy gold so far. btw I included an illustration I did of this scene since it's a little hard to follow.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285158
285175 285195
Littlepip threw a grenade tossed at her back at the thrower lethally.
Dumb.
Unrealistic
Bullshit
instead, littleshit should have tossed the grenade at a back wall in the building to blow it open and escape through the new door.
They would hear a boom and assume a direct hit, buying her time.
though the catsplosion idea would be more interesting.

There is no statistical or video game mechanical basis for kkats raiders to act like this.
Littlepip has a mediocre Luck stat, and luck just boosts all skills, critical hit chance, and gambling game victory odds.
with a 9 in luck and low medicine skills, FNV's protag The Courier can perform brain surgery to save a dying old man from his brain tumor successfully without having any idea what he is doing.

Btw littlepip is entering an unfinished corpse party joke.
I predict this telekinetic sneaky girl with limited ammo will not do anything smart with her new supplies like puppeting the corpses to distract and unnerve and make enemies waste ammo on potential zombie ghost ponies, utilizing moveable cover telekinetically, attacking enemies with ribs and organ pelting and intestine hanging, throwing bookshelves around, plucking guns/melee weaps from enemy grips and using them on her foes, tossing her foes from the trees or into walls, or attacking anyone with the cat corpses from Rarity's place.

This story is a fucking catastrophe.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.285175
293663
>>285158
(you)'re a fucking catastrophe, and your description of the story is worse than the story, unironically. Please, I'm asking a favor., dont ruin this
Anonymous
16f262c
?
No.285176
>>285152
Great pic.

I think the this might be the same thing as with the Sun and the Rose, as in this is a refrence to a former residence in Ponyville, or a pony in canon. Idk, maybe not.
Anonymous
16f262c
?
No.285177
>>285152
>"Better try the backdoor, at the backdoor no gaurds are around. Better try instead of dying stillborn. Fishy with no doubt."
Anonymous
6461618
?
No.285180
>>284973
>a pink pony with a violent mane
So, is that a typo, or is that pony's mane indiscriminately murdering everything in site like everything else in this story?
Anonymous
1883b74
?
No.285182
285183 285195
>>285152
You know, I think a story about an obese, katana-wielding weaboo who becomes murderhobo in post-apocalyptic Equestria would unironically be more interesting that FoE.
Anonymous
16f262c
?
No.285183
285190 285386
>>285182
>You land in Equstria with your bodypillow of an underaged Madoka under tightly held to your body
>A pony in a cowboy hat and silver revolver holstered on a belt around his waist
>One of his front hooves reaches back and up towards it
>It looks like he is about ot break his hoof this way.
>Your flabby hand reaches for your katana as your narrowing eyes meet
>Tumbleweed blows across the distance between you two
>The pony goes for his revolver but instead of grabbing it, he just nudge it out of its holster onto the ground
>You however grabb your katana and in the next second yousheaths you katana back again
"Ahhhrgrrrgggrhhhghhrh!" the pony forces out of his throat as a red line appears around his throat which blood starts to seep out of. "Aaaahhhhh, you can really move."
>His head slides off his neck as a fountain of blood forces its way up out his neck.
>Click says you katana as you place it back into it sheath
"I got an attitude," you answer
Anonymous
1883b74
?
No.285190
285386
>>285183
''The Tripfag Chronicles''

>"Tripfag is real," said the grizzled old stallion, "I seen him with my own eyes. I was just about your age."
>"Yeah right," sneered the leather-clad wasteland punk, "Tripfag's just a dumb old myth, like Nightmare Moon."
>"I seen him," insisted the old timer as he took another pull from his cigar, "Lemme tell you a story."
>"We was in a little camp down by the railroad tracks when he came. Just me 'n my pa 'n rest of the family. Maybe a dozen of us in all."
>"Then... he came. Walkin' on two legs, wearin' a long dark coat and some kinda short-brimmed hat. He kept one flabby claw on his hat the whole time, like he was tippin' it. With his other claw he held some kinda skinny sword behind his back."
>"Actually it looked like a pretty awkward way to walk."
>"Tripfag is a fat critter. Real fat. Fatter then you ever imagined a critter could be."
>"We didn't think he'd be much harm, but before we knew it he'd teleported behind my pa and cut him to pieces with his sword. Tripfag slaughtered my whole family before I knew it."
>"Then, he stopped. Turned to me, bowed real low, and said something like, 'Arigato.'"
>"Then he turned around and ran outta camp, still bent over real low, with his claws held out straight behind him the whole time."
>The old timer took another long pull from his cigar. The punks walked away from him, silently.

Honestly this could be its own thread.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285195
810-1601315470-117693280.jpeg
>>285158
Getting distracted by luck numbers was stupid of me.
No more unprompted Fallout trivia from me.
And this is a story, not a game.
It's a story I read almost a decade ago so I barely remember any specifics, just a few things that pissed me off.
It's like I'm re-discovering it anew through the eyes of others, so I've stopped spoiling things. Like that Watcher bullshit. I can't explain why I hate it without spoiling vital shit.
Also I'm done predicting things about the story because while I barely remember even 5% of it I don't want to subconsciously remember and then spoil shit.
And luck is the least satisfying/interesting attribute you can give to your character in great doses.
That's what I want to get across there.
Littlepip hasn't earned any of her victories yet. Certainly not that "Talk an armed pony into fucking off and not robbing her, by picking up a gun while already held at gunpoint, oh gee it sure is lucky for her that he didn't fire" moment.
The tale of a lucky idiot...
You need GREAT comedic timing and Dramatic Irony and INCREDIBLE CHARM to pull that off.

Nobody says "The Ciphias Cain books are cool because Cain's Luck stat is high"
they say "The Ciaphas Cain books are amazing because Cain keeps accidentally doing the best thing possible so it's hilarious that everyone loves him and thinks he's the perfect Commissar when he really, really isn't one. But also kind of is, too. He's so charming, humble, likeable, witty, and human. In a world full of shouty giants in even gianter power armour screaming with chainswords as they run head-first into enemy machine gun nests, it's refreshing to see this entirely-human soldier struggle to survive and lead his troops to victory and often accidentally win while trying to run away."
Cain also has skills and wit, he's not just his luck.
seriously Ciaphas Cain is fucking great, his wit reminds me of Captain Edmund Blackadder from Blackadder Goes Forth.
it's so fucking good jesus christ I love books!
but
there is no dramatic irony in Littlepip getting her cock sucked for beating impossible odds because she was handed (hoofed?) the weaponry and bullshit contrivances to make it happen. Listing more contrivances would be a spoiler.
though I'm really proud of the cat-astrophe joke I made in that post. hehehe

The story made such a big deal about Littlepip having no experience with firearms, and learning how to use them quickly through observation.
But the first time she encounters a mine, she knows to flee from it during its beeping Grace Period. It makes sense that she's know what a mine is but making mines a beeping thing to flee from is really dumb.
And the first time she encounters a grenade, she doesn't just duck for cover or toss it away, she returns it to sender and gets lucky enough for the grenade to explode near its original thrower.
It's like the author didn't realize this grenade trick is something risky and inconsistent that IRL soldiers intimately familiar with grenades will never attempt to do outside of movies, so this absolute amateur to combat and Wasteland Combat pulls it off perfectly the first time she tries it.

>>285182
>equips Ahegao Camo Paint on his stable-pony jumpsuit and paints Ahegao art onto his Ahegun
Anonymous
abb50e3
?
No.285210
285224 285245
>>284967
Your point about the weapons is a thing I noticed with the FoE stories as well with it heavily favoring Unicorn protagonists. I'll admit I did come off a bit mean and abrasive but I went into the FoE /mlp/ general to inquire about this.

I'm not sure if I could find the picture again but someone shared with me some artwork depicting how Pegasus and Earth ponies can operate fire arms.

One was the Fallout power armor and has a 'battle saddle' where they can mount heavier crew service weapons and/or explosives but have the problem of limited range of movement when it comes to aiming and act more like a tank destroyer where they need to turn their entier body to aim but power armor offering some assistance with vertical aiming.

The one I wanted to find though was a modified version of the Fallout 10mm pistol. It's one where instead of it just being the gun straight from the game that ponies use for some reason it's one where any type of pony can fit it in their mouth and use their tounge to press a trigger assembly inside their mouth, an ejection chamber on the side, and on the opposite is a box style magazine to make it easier for them to pull out with their mouth.

Of course that offers its own complications main one being the noise having the weapon fire so close to their sensitive ears would be disorienting I imagine (fired an M240 without ear plugs in once and hurt like hell and my ears were ringing all day). Plus the issue of the recoil being absorbed by their teeth and jaw. While it does have padding in the art for them to bite down on I could see eastland denizins probably not having the best dental hygiene and would be a bitch to take that recoil into a rotten molar or cavity.

Tried to find the last thread where I inquired about it but seems the link in the current FoE thread is broken. Either way seems the general thing they do when drawing weapons is either 'eh fuck it' and just use normal guns or they got that whole handle is where they bite down to fire. Granted most have the handle (or mouthle? like you said writing horse is annoying sometimes) parallel to the barrel but that could cause an issue where it'd be tough to zero the weapon since you can't bite the handle and have the sight post in your vision.

Also know people are being a bit tough on you Nigel but you do bring an air and energy here none of us can. Plus I'm usually the Nigel of most online groups I'm in so I feel like we are kindred brothers. If you ever want to talk in PM's I'm too used to being the rambler but would love to be the ramblee for once.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285224
>>285210
Unicorn protags are common in foe
Superpowered Lucario protags are common in Pokeumans
Fanfics of fanfics are inherently incestuous attempts to impress the original audience and steal some of it.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285245
Fallout Equestria is dumb but i can fix it.jpg
>>285210
Unicorn protags are common in fanfics of the FOE fanfic.
Superpowered Lucario protags are common in fanfics of the Pokeumans fanfic.
Fanfics of fanfics are often inherently incestuous attempts to impress the original audience and steal some of it. A story about Rainbow Dash and some obnoxiously slutty and utterly shameless Pegasus going to a bar and having a drink and then the story ending...
One, it isn't a story, it's a scene. A one-shot.
Two, it could stand on its own feet without needing to be "Written in the winningverse" and called a fanfiction of the utterly shit "Life and times of a winning pony" fanfic. However if it stood on its own, it would have to attract fans on its own and actually establish who this OC is and why anyone should care.

You know what's really dumb?
Even though Unicorns are immensely over-represented as the protagonists of Fallout Equestria fanfics, they rarely if ever do anything with their Unicorn-ness that couldn't be done better by "sufficiently advanced battle-saddles".
The Unicorns don't use magical object-transformation to turn rocks into bullets and firearms, then lift up ten oversized miniguns 50 feet away from them, hiding behind cover and aiming at foes using their Pip-Buck Compasses.
They don't magic some rocks into rabid squirrels and command them to kill enemies for them. They don't use magic to create trees, or shoot fireballs/vacuum-wind balls to burn down sniper-filled enemy buildings, or make moving earth walls or craft earth golems to block bullets for them. They don't use portals or craft magic mirror walls to bounce enemy bullets back at their shooters, and they don't sic exploding ghosts on their enemies or magically increase the weight of tiny pebbles to boxcar-tier and then toss them at the speed of 9mm bullets (two things Unicorns do in FE) to watch the unholy devastation.

They just levitate up firearms and shoot them sometimes.
They don't even levitate their guns all that far from their bodies. They just hold their guns "At arm's length" so to speak and rely on any "Unique" weapons like grenade launchers or magical swords or bullshit magic Power Armour suits to give them an edge.

The shitty Fallout Equestria generic unicorn protagonist will just lift up a 10mm pistol and fire it at the enemies he sees with his eyes.
He will be "Like Littlepip but different" first and his own character in his own right second.

The average Unicorn Protag will do absolutely nothing that an Earth Pony with a multi-ball-swivel-jointed 75-pound 50cal dual-minigun Sentry Turret built into a backback couldn't do better by mentally controlling his sentry gun via a program running on his Pip-Buck.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285247
285251
better than battle saddles.png
One more thing...

It would have been so much neater for the Earth Ponies, Pegasi, and even Unicorns to just put magic wooden/metal/plastic arms on a harness like a fake bunny tail on a belt, and put those arms on.
And because the arms are magic, the wearer can easily control them.
Monkeys and other creatures with arms/hands canonically exist in MLP. Sometimes, Pegasi use their wings like hands.
And ponies know Griffons. They've seen Griffons pick stuff up, perhaps even write things.
We've even seen ponies in the show who use prosthetic limbs!
Prosthetic limbs are even shoehorned into this fucking story, but nopony ever thinks of just wearing magical limbs like a hat with a magical arm able to flip you off duct-taped to it!

Just imagine
>Twilight notices how good Fluttershy's pet money is at climbing
>starts to wonder if he could be given a magic wand to point and shoot at the enemy
>ponies must know what magic wands are because Trixie's cutie mark is a wand
>test.jpg
>give the monkey a wand that turns things purple
>wouldn't want to give the monkey a lethal wand after all
two hours later
>monkey went on a magical wand rampage
>finally hit him with a sleep spell
>he turned half of Ponyville purple and made the flower trio faint
>rampage over
>admire the rotation and dexterity of the sleeping monkey's wrist, elbow, and fingers
>begin working on prosthetic limbs
>nopony wants to chop off their hooves to gain sick nasty wooden regenerating super-punching turbo monkey fists
>fine.png
>put enchanted wooden limbs on a harness that can be easily removed and repaired
>the fact that the arms appear to come out of the sides of your neck is a neat bonus, it keeps running from jiggling them about too much
>name your invention Ponarms
>when Applejack invents gunpowder and guns in general, these are why ponies start calling guns Firearms
>war breaks out with ziggers
>experts in the scientific field you invented start making even better Ponarms
>newer models feature thick yet lightweight and flexible segmented steel armour and dense gemstone knuckles covering the enchanted living wooden internals
Anonymous
63b490a
?
No.285251
285299 285386
>>285247
Eh, I'm sorry but I honestly think that neither makes ponies using guns in a post-apocolyptic wasteland make more sense than the other. And both sounds kinda autistic.

Like, I think that fundamentally, Equestrian techonlogy should be developed from from some sort of development history. Like what was their first tool they created and how did they create it? Like what would be their first tool and are they gonna manipulate it through their mouth or hooves?

Really, like why are we even writing in ponyland if the are gonna have hands anyway? Also, like how were these prosthetic limbs created? Probably by unicorns, because who else, so like unicorn helps unhandicap the lesser tribes.

But really like, this is why I don't actually put any thought into worldbuilding of techonlogy in ponyland. It is just such an uphill battle. So if I tell you its hoofwritten, then if this bothers some readers they don't have to read it.

I honest find the concept of writing about this boring. Idk, perhaps I should then refrain from commenting then but I guess what my subconcious point beneath all the whining is that why must their techonolgy and stuff be like ours. Like, why guns in the first place?

I just recently created a magic system that I'm quite proud of and I just didn't care about appeal to convention. (Nor did I try to make it unique, I just thought about what I thought was intresting.)

Idk, I am just not too stoked about hands in Equestria. We are just back to the original Fallout universe by this change.

Don't take me too seriously, I haven't finiashed a story ever.
Anonymous
1883b74
?
No.285269
285299 285302
Did Glim die or can he just not stomach any more bad fanfiction?
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285299
worldbuilding.jpg
>>285269
Sometimes Glim takes a day or two to charge up his chakra before unleashing a long series of prewritten fanfic-review posts. Don't rush him, you can't rush perfection.
>>285251
Why guns in Equestria?
You said it yourself: Because FOE doesn't truly take place in Equestria.
It takes place in an anachronistic copypaste of Fallout's universe where everything's got an incredibly thin pony coat of paint and many unique dangers/terrors are lost in translation as the author attempts to one-up the danger so Littlepip seems cooler for beating super-Deathclaws that aren't even Chameleons any more, sometimes-smart super-Raiders with snipers and landmines to spare instead of blindly bum-rushing you with rusty rebar clubs and pool cues, and super-Super Mutants who regenerate health and wield miniguns and make bulletproof magic shields and literally fucking fly.
That 1960s-looking piece-of-shit computer terminal over there used to store the diary entries of a long-dead man from over 200 years ago, still around and online after 200 years, still password-protected by a short word you can select from a pool of six? The author swears it's not an electricity-based computer, it's a "magic" computer powered by "magic" energy just like the "magical" laser pistols, and the author swears they were built by ponies in the pony world, even though the laser pistol can't be operated by hoof without machinery to help you get around the trigger-guard, and even though they computer still uses a keyboard with keys too small for any pony's hooves.
What's that? You think a pony would instead use a rolling ball for their mouse and a keyboard with two buttons for 1 and 0 binary-style, or a touchscreen keyboard where two hooves can touch the centers of two circles and select letters and ASCII symbols using a variety of gestures and macros? That's too smart for this story.
Remember in the cartoon when foals used a typewriter with just two buttons large enough for their hooves, presumably for "1" and "0" in binary? Yeah, that happens when you consider questions like "Wait how would ponies use keyboards?".
Sometimes, ponies will drink tea from cups that have earth-style handles big enough for pony hooves. Sometimes Rarity will use magic to lift dainty little cups with decorative handles her hooves couldn't possibly fit in.
And it's fine to politely overlook moments in FIM where the ponies really couldn't get around using human tech they have no reason to design that way. FIM isn't a story about the typewriters they use, so it's fine when human-sized keyboards appear in the background of Twilight's underground lab.
It's fine to not know how ponies use keyboards, and FIM deserves respect for going the extra mile in its early seasons.
It's fine to not know how a town gets its water, and Avatar: The Last Airbender deserves respect for making sure most towns have wells or waterbenders or water pumps or other easy water sources.
It's fine to not know why some stupid drunken fucker hired three children and a war criminal to be his bodyguards as he goes to his home to build a fucking bridge, or why inappropriately powerful assassins want his head, but Naruto deserves respect for all that worldbuilding in the Land Of Waves arc that the rest of the franchise literally never topped. Came close with Suna's reason for war, but never topped it.
FIM isn't about keyboards and Avatar isn't about the towns in the middle of random buttfuck nowhere and how they get water and Naruto is the story of a boy who becomes a man and earns the respect of his ninja village, so we honestly didn't need any of the great high-effort worldbuilding we got in these shows.

But Fallout Equestria is a story about the guns they use, the enemies they kill, the body counts everyone racks up, the monsters that die this week, the baddies defeated by the heroes after explaining their evil plots and tragic backstories, the survival challenges this "magical super-wasteland" poses, and the OCs who easily succeed where canon characters failed spectacularly after developing all sorts of advanced technologies that should have single-hoofedly won the goddamn war for them.
Fallout is about the wasteland canon ponies allowed Equestria to become, and how the heroes solve all these problems by winning enough gunfights and completing enough sidequests. So to understand
So it really doesn't make sense that the only potions we see work like Fallout's drugs (+2 Int, +1 Cha for 1 hour), when potioncrafters should make a killing selling potions of transformation/regeneration/temporary damage and radiation resistance/Fireproofing to the rest of the Wasteland.

"An appeal to tradition" is the only reason why magical ponies with power armour and enchanted guns/armour and other game-changing things I can't spoil including something that would rape Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood facing potion-chugging invisibility-cloaked nuclear-grenade-tossing Ziggers typically restrict themselves to fighting the way humans fight other humans in the Fallout franchise.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285302
285304
one of the most epic fights in anime history.jpeg
Rinnegun.jpg
custom robo is an underrated classic.jpg
>>285269
Yes, it would be stupid if ponies wore detachable mechanical arms around their necks so they can point and shoot guns like humans. But...

>1. By making the arms "magic arms", you open the possibility that the arms can be stronger than human arms. Humans might struggle to keep light machine guns on target and amateur humans might struggle to keep handguns on target, but with the strength of a horse in your arms you could wield all sorts of big guns. Bigger guns=bigger bullets=more explosive power packed into every round, especially if the bullets actually are explosive or enchanted to explode.

>2. A pony is many times stronger and faster than a human before enchanted clothing or potions or buff spells factor into things. Mounted cavalry dominated battlefields until we got guns, but the speed and useable calibers of a truly "armed" pony could put armoured jeeps with mounted machine guns and light tanks to shame. Perhaps even superheavy tanks! If Littlepip can lift boxcars heavier than most tanks, she can lift and fire the heaviest of tank guns.

>3. An unarmoured Pegasus able to reach back with her mouth and open up her bomb-filled saddlebags(better yet, Bags Of Holding stuffed with really big bombs), then flip over in the air while flying out of the reach of your weapons, could drop bombs on you like the best bombers at the speed of jets without having to show up on radar. A Pegasus can live off the land in enemy territory and sneak around without needing to head straight back to base for refuelling and repairs like a Jet would.

>4. A Pegasus in magically-accelerated metal-winged Power Armour with Jet Rockets on her ass could fly faster than an unarmoured pony and do a better job resisting wind resistance. The Pegasus would also have the option to fire homing missiles/miniguns/other things by hand.

>5. A pony in Power Armour is many times stronger and tougher and heavier than a pony without Power Armour, meaning its metal arms can operate and fire even heavier guns or carry even heavier auto-aiming minigun+missile+laser+BFG-firing turrets around

>6. Giving a pony necklace-mounted magical human arms would still be less clunky than duct-taping shotguns to a horse and trying to be clever with your mouth-operated bite-activated trigger, only to betray that "scientific engineering solution" by forcing the guns to require magical regenerating ammo enchantments and auto-aiming swivel mounts anyway. If your Pip-Buck helps swivel and aim the guns mounted on your backpack, why even bother putting a trigger in your mouth when you can just command the guns to shoot via Pip-Buck and free your mouth up to hold something else, like a magic kazoo enchanted to be louder than any airhorn?

>7. After 200ish years of constant Wasteland warfare does it really make any sense that scavengers picking through the trash of the old world can find perfectly-good unused clips for 10mm machineguns in locked boxes you could easily smash open? Small civilizations could make a killing producing guns and ammo to sell to the outside world, but finding that shit lying around in a world of scavengers would be idiotic. Come to think of it, does it make sense that you can find perfectly-preserved 200-year-old pie? If the Magic Arms are self-maintaining arms that operate guns, they improve pony combat effectiveness. But if the Magic Arms have built-in guns like the arms from Custom Robo, it makes sense for the "magical guns" to draw from your own magical energy instead of relying on bullets, which would justify their continued use after it becomes damn near impossible to find most gun calibers.

>8. There is a story reason for Harry Potter and Naruto to not whip out glocks: Because if they did that, it wouldn't be a story about fighting magicians any more. But this series already has guns, shoehorned in in the clunkiest ways possible. A shitty little revolver would be harder for a pony to operate than this overproduced over-written disgustingly clunky garbage solution that would suffer more breakdowns than any over-armoured jeep.

>9. Enchanted floating guns and swords that fight without fear of death would honestly be superior options to all of this, but a pony with working metal arms strapped to her neck could flip you off to look extra-edgy, and that's what this fic is really all about.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285304
>>285302
>just command the guns to shoot via Pip-Buck
these Pip-Bucks can obey mental commands without the need to touch a touchscreen or twist knobs or press buttons.
Come to think of it, VATS/SATS is already in the story. And it already auto-aims for ponies and auto-fires for them. It's a program that takes control of your body and forces you to act optimally as the program makes your body perform attacks with your equipped weapon upon your selected targets. More graceful than any dancer, more focused than any professional, more precise than a literal robot, you can even use this to win your first shovel duel against a hardened killer bigger and stronger than you.
It practically sends you into the Avatar State for a few seconds, except you don't obtain the knowledge of past lives, you're just a mechanically efficient killer for a few seconds tops.
VATS/SATS is already so much more complicated than a mental database full of spells and the knowledge needed to cast them would be. The device can already store and display data, but letting this device store Twilight Sparkle's Introduction To Combat Magic, Book One Of Two Hundred would change the game and take Littlepips away from being a gun-toting asshole and "The best psychic".
VATS/SATS is already so much more complicated than giving it the ability to aim and fire your Battle Saddle in real-time via mental commands and data from your EFS/HUD's "yellow compass dots=not enemies yet, red compass dots=enemies" would be.
The overcomplicated Battle Saddle would be fine for a prototype armed pony device, but it's already got so many flaws... Why the fuck wouldn't wartime innovation make this less retarded? I can buy prototypes being this clunky but where are the sleeker models with more features and fewer design flaws? If the goal is to make something nonmagical and engineering-based "anypony" can use, why let it interface with a presumably-expensive Pip-Buck's magical software? If the goal is to let ponies use guns not built for pony hooves, why create a specialized mechanism for holding guns straight ahead and firing them when literal arms would be less complicated and so much more efficient/versatile?
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285315
285317
Dude, wouldn't it be super traumatic if you activated VATS/SATS and got your first kill under its control and "guidance"... and the narration did not gloss over how it feels to have a handheld computer program possess you like danny phantom
Anonymous
bbcc4f1
?
No.285317
285326
File (hide): 551C7FF0160390566A168FF6D99DED15-873045.mp4 (852.6 KB, Resolution:640x480 Length:00:00:13, Skeletor _ The Greatest of Villains.mp4) [play once] [loop]
Skeletor _ The Greatest of Villains.mp4
>>285315
It depends on how well adjusted the character is. Or the reasoning they used, or the core personality.
>It wasn't me. The program did it. (Separation of identity.)
>I had to. There wasn't any other choice. (Not seeing the viable alternatives.)
>BARF. That didn't happen. (Repression.)
>Being less sensitive.
>Being more sensitive.
>Or no change at all.
>and probably other things as well.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285326
Hinata.jpg
>>285317
Those would be quite interesting. I hope a better story explores these concepts some day.
Imagine how horrifying it would feel to have a computer force you to go through with killing your first target, leaving you screaming inside your own head as your forced-open eyes and hyperfocused mind take in every drop of blood, every nanosecond of time, the way the resistance builds and gives depending on what your sharpened shovel is currently slicing through.
You weren't ready yet. You hadn't been desensitized. You hadn't worked your way up by fishing for fish and ripping them from the water and crushing their skulls and skinning and gutting them and frying their meat, you'd never started trapping and killing wild rabbits, skinning and cooking them, getting used to the idea that life is more squishy and fleeting than a fish's bones. You weren't ready, but your own body was forced into it anyway thanks to the commands you queued up in your own Pip-Buck.
You'd never forget any of it. But as time went on and your body count reached the hundreds, you'd never get used to it because each new kill would be as horrifyingly fresh in your memory as the last. Eventually you'd start to forget older ones, probably. But you'd always find a new fresh horror in the latest one.
Would you be able to bring yourself to kill outside of VATS, knowing you'll be forced to rely on your own skills as a fighter, rather than a program that can auto-aim and auto-melee for you like the half-aborted rape-baby of a cheating Team Fortress 2 spinning Sniper and a hacked Minecraft client's KillAura?
The writer could reference the cinematic kill-cam that flies along with bullets by claiming being under VATS is "Like watching your body from outside it".
Littlepip's reaction to looting a corpse was bigger than her reaction to killing her first person. That's fucking dumb.
I hope Glim's okay, he hasn't posted since the 9th.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285383
285384 285387
1602215022353.jpg
>>285152

Anyway, it just keeps going and going.

>Blood and gore were everywhere, dripping from the ceiling and painting the walls in equal parts with the graffiti that had somehow gotten even more mocking and cruel.
I'm assuming a lot of the graffiti is just "X is worst pony" shitposting. As if being disemboweled and having your corpse violated weren't enough, eh?

>The room was dominated by three cages, two large square ones, and a smaller one hanging from the ceiling which was barely big enough for a pony. Captives -- filthy, beaten and misused -- were curled up inside, their hooves tied together with stained ropes. The two in the nearest cage looked at me pitifully and my heart wrenched painfully.
The use of "pitifully" followed by "painfully" is kind of an unpleasant alliteration; I would recommend finding a different way to word this. Anyway, apart from shock value I'm still not seeing what the point of all of this is supposed to be. This has clearly gone well beyond just robbing ponies for survival; this is just brutality for the sake of brutality. Have these raiders just gone insane enough that they now round up ponies and torture them for the fun of it? Is this a religious cult led by some Colonel Kurtz type weirdo who is going to end up being a miniboss or something? Or should I assume the simpler and probably more plausible explanation: that the author just wanted to make this as edgy and dark as possible?

Anyway, after a few more paragraphs describing the unutterable horror with which Littlepoop beholds this spectacle of pure edge, she decides that she's going to let the ponies out of the cages. Using her trusty screwdriver and Hefty bag full of bobby pins, she opens the lock of the nearest cage and frees two ponies, who are tied up and lying in their own filth. One of the ponies offers her its meager supplies as thanks, but Littlepoop refuses. Whether intentionally or not, this points to the raiders being motivated by sadism rather than any practical goal: there is no reason to tie someone up if they are already in a cage, and the fact that the pony still has its possessions indicates the raiders didn't capture them to rob them. Once more, I'm curious what, if anything, these raiders are supposed to be raiding.

>Looking around, I took in the shape of the room, trying to blot out the horrors everywhere I turned. (Above the front door was an aged fresco of a beautiful white winged unicorn -- Celestia? -- unusually large and graceful, a book floating in front of her, her wings outstretched over a rainbow of foals as they smiled up and listened to storytime. Not only had the ponies been painted over with images of blood and knives and violence, the fresco had been used for target practice, everything from bullets to flung excrement, and was now shattered and stained unspeakably.)
Still not as revolting as a drag-queen story hour. Though turning Twilight's old library into a Detroit public school is admittedly a noteworthy achievement in the field of desecration.

Anyway, she's about to go through the nearest door, when suddenly it bursts open and one of the raiders walks through. He's well armed and his cutie mark is a vivisected torso and blah blah blah, edge edge edge.

>The raider pony recovered quickly, swinging his head around and drawing out the small gun in his teeth (what, was he going to pull the trigger with his tongue?) just before S.A.T.S. helped me pump my two shotgun rounds into his face.
What's curious here is that the author seems to be actually aware of how awkward the idea of a pony using a gun really is, but instead of going further and realizing that this could be a sign he needs to rethink his approach for adapting the game mechanics to this setting, he just cracks a joke about it and moves on.

The self-deprecating humor actually raises the author in my esteem, since it indicates that he at least has the self-awareness to realize how silly most of this premise really is. It also lightens the edge somewhat. However, the problem with a half-ridiculous, half-serious story like this is that it's not always clear which parts are ridiculous on purpose. In past reviews, I've noted that sometimes authors have a hard time deciding if they want their setting to be "cartoon" Equestria or "realistic" Equestria, and usually they just bounce back and forth between the two in a way that can make the story feel odd.

To clarify what I'm talking about, "cartoon" Equestria is more faithful to the way the world is depicted in the show, complete with its pastel colors and cartoony atmosphere; it doesn't necessarily mean that the setting has to retain the same lighthearted mood or be appropriate for children. What it does mean is that the author gets to play fast and loose with physics in the way that a cartoon does, for instance characters pulling objects out of hammer-space or stretching their bodies in physically impossible ways. For example, Nigel's Silver Star thing feels like it was mostly written in cartoon Equestria, so it's easier to accept some of the goofier things that happen in that story.

By contrast, a "real" Equestria functions like a setting in any other type of novel, where it's assumed that the normal laws of physics apply, and elements like magic function according to their own rules that have to be consistently applied. Thus, while in a cartoon world you could probably get away with having an earth pony just hold a gun in its mouth and fire it through some unexplained process, in a realistic setting this kills the suspension of disbelief in a number of ways.

This story is already a weird mix of sci-fi and fantasy elements (for instance, things like PipBucks and Terminals that are ostensibly magic-powered objects but function like computers), so the rules of this world are already rather blurry. Using cartoon reality and normal reality interchangeably just further complicates this and makes the story more difficult to visualize.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285384
285385 285661
1602214988833m.jpg
>>285383

Anyway, apparently the over-the-top edgelord behavior of the raiders pushes Littlepoop past her limits and she no longer has any moral qualms about pulling the trigger on her shotgun and blowing the little pony's head off.

>I felt no remorse as his head turned into spaghetti sauce that splattered over his instantly lifeless body. I hadn’t just killed a pony -- these raiders had given up any right to the title! These were not ponies, they were sick monsters that needed to be put down! And Celestia help me if I wasn’t going to do just that. I didn’t realize it until that moment, but I was mad! The pure evil of this place had shaken me to the core... and my core was furious!
I've always been a little annoyed by authors who write this kind of over-the-top splatter-porn and then try to append some half-assed moral to it in order to sell it to a genteel audience. It's distasteful for roughly the same reason that something like Cuties is distasteful, in that the work spends most of its time being deliberately and gratuitously provocative, and then attempts to justify itself with a weak moral angle tacked on to the end see? we weren't just making a 90 minute video of preteens twerking; it's really a commentary on smartphone culture...or...something. Eat the bugs, bigot..

Personally I take kind of a Nietzschean view of morality, and I actually don't have a problem with violent or pornographic writing in and of itself I'd be a hypocrite if I did, because most of my own writing tends to be both of these. However, what annoys me here is that this author is clearly just writing murder porn, but at the same time he feels squeamish about whatever standards of propriety he feels he's violated by doing it, so he compensates by having his protagonist adopt this canned moral outrage in order to justify her participation.

Littlepoop, to the extent that she's been developed at all so far, is a character who deplores violence and wants nothing more than to live in a world where all the little pastel ponies love and hug each other. Ordinarily she would never do anything as anti-friendship as gruesomely murdering somepony, but by golly, seeing all of those ponies get decapitated just made her so gosh-darn peeved! So, since she's doing it for moral reasons that a morally upright person could understand and sympathize with, it's perfectly okay for her go ahead and unleash the exact same kind of purposeless destruction she's moralizing about. The raiders are bad guys who have done bad things; therefore anything that LP wants to do to them is morally justified.

This is basically the literary equivalent of a Papal indulgence: as long as the character obtains some kind of absolution according to whatever flimsy social standards the author chooses to recognize, she can go ahead and sin to her heart's content. By giving her this sense of moral outrage at the bloodthirsty acts she's witnessing, the author is basically forgiving Littlepoop in advance for whatever bloodthirsty acts that she herself will doubtless spend the rest of the story committing. My problem with this honestly has less to do with the morality of it and is more that it's just stupid; it's like cheating on a diet. You deliberately violate a rule that you only imposed on yourself, and then you make excuses to yourself for why you did it.

The way around this kind of silliness is to just treat reality as what it is. If you want to eat a cupcake then have a cupcake; nobody is going to give a shit if you do. You just have to accept that it will make you fat. If you don't want to be fat, eat fewer cupcakes. By the same logic, if you want to write murder porn, then write murder porn; just don't try to present it as if it were something else.

Anyway, making use of this SATS business, which is apparently some function of her PipBuck which has not been particularly well-explained but seems to be some kind of convenient auto-aiming function, she takes the revolver from the pony she just killed and uses it to kill one of three raiders who charge in to see what all the ruckus was about.

>A second started firing another small firearm at me (what do you know, they do shoot with their tongues!), bullets impacting the door frame.
It's almost impossible to visualize how this would even work. Seriously, imagine holding a gun in your mouth and trying to extend your tongue around the handle to pull the trigger. Even if issues like noise and recoil aren't a factor for some reason and the trigger resistance is light enough that your tongue can do the work alone, I can't imagine this being practical. The author could have at least tried to cook up a halfway-believable explanation for how this would work. Hell, even giving the ponies some sort of preposterous technological solution, like mounting the gun on a hat and attaching the trigger to some kind of mechanical bit that pulls the trigger when the pony bites down, would be better than just saying "they shoot with their tongues."

>Still, the gunslinger raider skittered away, using one of the captive ponies for cover. The dishonorableness poured gasoline on the fire of my anger.
inb4 the "raiders" tie somepony to a log and cackle maniacally as it runs along a slow conveyor belt towards a circular saw.

>The third raider pony lowered his head, a pool cue clenched in his teeth, and charged at me.

>I blinked. “Really?” I took a single step back. The pony rushed at me full-tilt, and was nearly on me when the ends of the pool cue struck the doorway, snapping him to a stop. I fired the revolver’s last shot point-blank into his neck. Even I didn’t need S.A.T.S. at that range.
This is just dumb.

Anyway, the rest of the fight is just more of the same. She gets shot at one point, limps into the kitchen and finds a medikit, also finds some ammo to reload her gun, and eventually takes the last raider out. The specifics honestly aren't worth going over.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285385
285400 285466
1602298598812.gif
>>285384

After a page break, we learn that LP has healed herself using the classic panacea of the video-game world: the all-purpose healing potion. She uses the knife she took off of one of the raiders to cut loose the second pony from the cage she opened earlier, and then begins opening the other cages (by my count there are two remaining). Inside cage #2, she finds a sleeping pony alongside what she initially thinks is a corpse, but turns out to still be "alive." Littleplot takes this to mean that the pony is a zombie; I have no idea if the author intends for the reader to take this literally or not. In any case, the pegasus pony has apparently been skinned alive and has had the feathers plucked from its wings. Lovely.

LP lets the "zombie" go free. The sleeping one that was in the cage with it is presumably woken up, because the text mentions that both captives slink away. There's also a page break that has absolutely no reason to be here. Although Littlepoop at one point remembers there is a sniper out on the balcony that she still has to contend with, and probably more raiders in the tree, she decides that getting the hanging cage down is a better use of her time.

As she is trying to think of a way to get it down, a couple more raiders burst in out of nowhere and start shooting at her. I'm a little curious where these guys were or what they were doing when the ruckus that summoned the first three was going on, but at this point who even cares. For all I know there is a literal enemy-spawn point in a closet somewhere that pulls "generic bad guy" instances out of some pocket dimension. Anyway, she dispenses with the first one easily enough, by dropping a bookcase on it with magic something tells me the "it's magic I ain't gotta explain shit" defense is going to be heavily abused in this story. She also gets a pair of binoculars out of this exchange; not sure if that's important or not. The second raider throws some kind of explosive at her:

>The second raider pony appeared back at the railing, a wicked grin on his face. With a hoof, he shoved forward an ammo box, then tilted it over. The lid sprung open and half a dozen orange disks poured out into the library below.
I can only assume that these are centuries-old Equestria Online install disks that have been repurposed into bombs. If not, I have no idea what they are and the text doesn't elaborate.

The whatever-the-fuck disks all explode, and Littlepoop runs and hides in the kitchen. There is yet another page break, and when LP returns to the main room, she sees that the issue of the remaining caged pony has become moot.

>Looking up, I saw the blast-torn remains of the pony in its twisted metal cage. Oh, Celestia damn them to hell!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WQCoPL3-wo

>More determined than ever, I stripped the raider bodies (what little was left of them now) of their armors. The armors were in shredded tatters, but with some effort I was able to use the best parts of each to patch together something that would give me better protection than my stable-issued utility barding. The resulting outfit had almost no pockets, so I would have to dig the utility suit out of my saddlebags to get at most of my tools, but it was a fair trade.
Apparently she considers this to be a better use of her time than dealing with the raider who threw the explosives, who I can only assume is still around somewhere, as well as the sniper, who would have to be completely deaf not to realize there is someone in the tree by now. The same goes for however many other raiders are still in here, which again, based on the narrative so far, could be anywhere between 2 and 10,000. Anyway, call me crazy but I feel like after the battle would be the ideal time to go looting corpses and upgrading armor.

>Putting it on was gruesome. My hooves were darkened with blood just from working on it; every inch was covered in the flash-fried gore of dead ponies.
Did we need to know this?

>A last look around while I figured I still had time. The raider above obviously assumed I was dead. (I would have assumed I was dead too.)
Yes, throwing a bunch of explosives in someone's general direction and then just assuming she was blown up without even taking three seconds to glance over the balcony to see if her charred remains are anywhere nearby seems on-par with the level of intelligence most of these characters have shown. Don't worry, I'm sure the pony running around down there taking armor off of the corpses is a completely different pony and is nothing to worry about. Might as well just go back to eating your fucking sandwich or whatever you were doing before she burst in here.

Oh, also, tossing a bunch of powerful explosives into an enclosed area is a perfectly sane thing to do; no need to worry about structural damage to the building or going deaf or flying debris or shrapnel or anything like that. Real life is exactly like a video game, therefore all permanent structures are static objects baked into the environment that will not even be singed no matter how many bombs you toss around, and any damage you sustain can be cured by picking up one of the first-aid kits that are conveniently lying around. inb4 hayburgers cure bullet wounds.

From here, the text goes into excruciating detail listing all of the things that LP discovers while she's hunting around. When she comes back to the main room, the raider is once again out there, but as soon as he sees her he runs away for some absurd reason. The text claims this is because she is carrying a preposterous amount of weapons now, which I'm actually going to call bullshit on. The only way she could hold all of these things is with magic, and it seems like simultaneously operating multiple guns while also holding the giant mountain of food and provisions that she picked up would require a pretty high level of magic ability, and there has been nothing in the text to indicate that she has this talent.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285386
>>285251
>Eh, I'm sorry but I honestly think that neither makes ponies using guns in a post-apocolyptic wasteland make more sense than the other. And both sounds kinda autistic.
I'm inclined to agree with this. I think that just directly lifting the weapons from a game and dumping them into Equestria with only cursory adaptations to the ponies is lazy and implausible. I'd respect the author more if he put a bit of thought into how ponies might actually fight, and what kinds of weapons they might actually develop in a post-apocalyptic world, rather than just aping the Fallout environment and dumping ponies into it.

>>285183
>>285190
I would unironically read this if it existed. Just sayin'.

>>285148
I think the main takeaway here is that you can build a video game purely from mechanics, with little or no story, and players could still enjoy it; however, you can't make a story from game mechanics alone. A story is a story regardless of the setting; it needs to revolve around characters and events. The mechanics that determine how fights work and what kinds of character classes exist and so forth can help make the writer's job easier, and can theoretically drive events to some extent, but you can't build a story just from that. As we've seen with this story so far, things that would work out just fine in a video game or a tabletop RPG don't always translate into interesting literature.
Anonymous
5744375
?
No.285387
285388 285400
Is it still a spoiler if I complain about something that won't show up in this story for about 40 more chapters, and was likely already spoiled since FEQfags won't shut up about this story's retarded take on Alicorns?
I just remembered this story's retarded take on Alicorns.
I am angry. Angry about Alicorns!

>>285383
Littlepip couldn't think of a way to deal with the sniper on top of Twilight's Tree-Library
(Why not throw another grenade, since she's so cartoonishly good at throwing them around?)
so she willingly walked head-first into this raider-infested Tree-Library full of pony corpses and pony piss and shit and cum.
This town is still FULL of Raiders.
and she just walks straight into the worst part of town, without breaching and clearing any other areas. no backup, no superior firepower, no clever distraction to try out. doesn't even have that spritebot distracting enemies for her and turning foes to ash.
she won't do any smart Batman "Sneaking around, making distracting noises, performing stealth takedowns with magically levitated melee weapons" shit. Even though if you can produce enough sustained hundreds of thousands of pounds of force to lift a boxcar you can throw a rock or melee weapon really fucking hard

Walking head-first into this little raider-tower tree means losing her escape routes. Raiders outside the tree could surround the tree and prepare to shoot her as soon as she leaves the tree.
Sure, she could try sniping raiders outside from atop the tree, but that would also mean letting raiders enter the tree to rush through the dungeon she cleared out and hit her from behind. Nobody's watching her back. It's not like she's got Watcher floating around killing enemies by her side as she risks death for the robot because he said something supremely important is in this town so she has to free it from raider control.

It's not like any of this brutality and strangely-childish scatological edge serves a "Purpose".
This story would become a better kind of grimdark if all this brutality served a purpose for these raiders, if all this evilness was just part of everyday life and raider culture for these demons.

This is all so pointless... It's not like this is where the Raiders sometimes take cute mares and strong stallions from the towns they raid for supplies, and they intentionally store caqed ponies here in the most horrible environment they can create while "breaking in" slaves and training them to "behave" until they're sold to travelling slave-traders.

Just imagine if this story showed some chapters from the perspective of a became-legal-yesterday mare and her middle-aged mother. They get kidnapped by raiders, who say "We're going to sell you like a fucking cucumber, little girlie! A fresh virgin like you will fetch a pretty penny, nyeh heh heh!"
And then they rape the mother in front of the mare because they're evil
And then because they don't want to risk injuring the mare-slave with scars and broken bones that'll reduce her market value, they torture her mother in front of her whenever they want to punish her.

Alternatively...
If you want this mare to be a surprise, and you don't want to take screentime away from Littlepip...
Imagine if Littlepip found a mare in these cages who'd been here for a while, and thought about freeing her.
>"She's the only living pony in all these cages who could walk and stand and beg to be saved... everyone else is incredibly crippled or missing limbs or horrifically scarred and starved or all at once."
>"When I worked with that cheese bastard, he betrayed me. Should I free and work with this slave mare, even though she might betray me? What would Twilight Sparkle do? Fuck it, I'll never give up on hope! My hope will never die!"
>free mare
>give her a shotgun with only one bullet, so she can betray you right there and resume being a helpless unarmed slave or help you kill raiders. For every kill, she is rewarded with another bullet.
>be rewarded for kindness and generousity when this slave-mare turns out to be damn good shot, helping you kill your way through the raider base
>she gives you intel about the Wasteland after you kill the sniper with a clever witty tactic and take his gun from him
>this could organically start a questline where Littlepip is told
>"Hey, you wear the same symbol as that singing Unicorn the Raiders sold to slave-traders yesterday! Are you from the same town?"
>"Symbol?" Littlepip asks.
>She points to the numbers on Littlepip's stable-jumpsuit.
>"Yes," Littlepip smiles, "We're from the same place. Those are numbers."
>"I can't read and I don't know what numbers are! I was a town guard for my destroyed hometown of Hope Springs, but they slaughtered all the old people in my village and everyone who fought back. I dropped my weapon and hid with the unarmed mares and foals like a little bitch, so the Raiders kidnapped me and everyone else. Eventually they found buyers for everyone else. But not me, because an unscarred virgin is expensive these days, too expensive for most travelling slave-traders. Now watch as I spend ten paragraphs talking about torture methods I saw performed in front of me!"
>>ten paragraphs of torture methods later
>"And that's why I will never run and hide from Raiders again, I will kill them all! You're going to help me, if you want to save that Unicorn from your Vault! They headed West, let's go!"
And if you wanted to foreshadow the Enclave right here, you could say she conveniently left out the part where she was exiled from The Enclave for wanting to help the Wasteland's ponies and Hope Springs was the only town willing to take her in and help her adapt to life in the Wasteland and life outside the military. This would justify any sharpshooting skills and tactical knowledge she'd have.
And just like that, Littlepip organically gains a companion through the good deeds she chose to perform in a situation where there were other seemingly-safer options. It's good writing because LP rejects cynicism in a cynical edgeworld.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285388
285403
>>285387
>Is it still a spoiler if I complain about something that won't show up in this story for about 40 more chapters, and was likely already spoiled since FEQfags won't shut up about this story's retarded take on Alicorns?
>I am angry. Angry about Alicorns!
I'd prefer it if you save your comments until they are directly relevant. But, if history has shown us anything, it's that I'm powerless to stop you when you really want to get something off your chest.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285400
EYZ4kfYU0AAUxR_.png
>>285387
>intentionally store caqed ponies
caged ponies

>>285385
>he at least has the self-awareness to realize how silly most of this premise really is
I fucking wish he had self awareness. Just wait until you see the fetish porn he turns Alicorns into.
Fuck fetishfags.
The only valid fetish is lactation because it involves boobs. And slimegirls because they're still girls and girls are cute. And centaurs and ponies because horses can be cute too. Other monster-girl varieties are on thin fucking ice between furries and normalcy since their girls are basically just humans with extra parts and gimmicky behaviour while furries are usually that or something disgusting
Everything else is disgusting degeneracy.

>I blinked. “Really?”
Littlepip should be LOSING HER FUCKING MARBLES in this scene. Struggling with the horror of everything she's seen. Screaming with anger at all the monsters she's killing. Screaming inside her own mind as she becomes a killer and premeditated murderer for that fucking spritebot, who could have at least had the courtesy to guard the Tree-Library's door while she's up here dealing with the horrors of this new world for his lazy ass.
She shouldn't willingly kill anyone in this story outside of the most extreme survival-based me-or-the-thug-rushing-me-with-a-knife circumstances until she sees too much and snaps and starts slaughtering enemies while yelling edgy shit because that's what angry magic ponies say and act like in the stories she's read.
Littlepip should be twitchy, jumpy, enraged, having a mental BREAKDOWN BREAKDOWN as she burns her pain as fuel for her slaughterquest.
This should be a time of suffering for Littlepip. A time of tearfully screaming as her gun opens fire.
Not the time to raise eyebrows and blink sarcastically and ask if enemies are "Really?" serious about bum-rushing the gun-wielding pony with a pool cue.
I hate this wannabe-marvel-movie bullshit.
This "You're carrying assault rifles, miniguns, high quality swords, rocket launchers, nuclear bomb launchers, and more while wearing Power Armour, but stupid evil raiders with their dens filled with human flesh and mutilated corpses will still bum-rush you while armed with baseball bats and pool cues and even shaving razors bent into straight knives.

>Littlepoop finds a "Zombie"
Author's a faggot for introducing Ghouls so early on without explaining them.
THERE IS NO SPACE IN THE AUDIENCE'S HEAD FOR THIS.
Most of this story has been infodumps that take time to digest, or edgy bullshit that takes time to get over.
Something that fundamentally changes every character's relationship with radiation is something that should be saved for later, after radiation has been a background threat for a while.
Ghouls are people who, upon exposure to too much radiation, become hairless skinless shit-voiced old people who age slowly, can't be healed, and can't run without damaging their kneecaps.
But this story doesn't have "Radiation", it has "Necromantic Taint", a black magical energy that... somehow works like Fallout's cartoon radiation instead of doing anything directly necromantic like raising pony corpses as ageless tireless killers who won't go down until you smash their bones with big thrown heavy objects.
But this isn't a pony fanfiction, it's a Fallout fanfiction wearing a blood-splattered Pinkie Pie mask on the upper right side of its head, so ghouls are just copypasted over into this setting. Even though a unicorn ghoul with 200 years of magic knowledge and practice behind him should be a world-reshapingly lethal threat, and a pegasus ghoul that lost all its fur and feathers would have died or killed itself long before ending up near any Raiders.
Littlepip should have more of a reaction to seeing a wrinkled irradiated half-skinless corpse with a voice like sandpaper deepthroating gravel standing up and moving around.
Perhaps she could scream and shoot it on sight, doing a bad thing out of fear.
>Littlepip cheats on her diet
would it be a spoiler if I say this gets worse later?

>Littlepip swings a bookcase around
Her Pip-Buck's enemy-detecting radar could have easily told her where to swing bookcases from behind walls and beneath lower floors. We've seen Twilight lift things without needing to see them, and we've seen Littleshit lift things heavier than anything Twilight ever lifted before S2 came out (This story was written during season one)
well besides the Ursa Minor but we don't know how much star-monsters weigh so we can't mathematically calculate that. could calc the water tower she lifted and filled with milk, but it would weigh less than LP's faggy boxcar.
Clitofshit had no reason to do all this "Heh, really? Nothin personell, kid" action-hero shit when she's a psychic written by an author who refuses to put effort into always thinking like a psychic.

>a literal enemy-spawn point in a closet somewhere that pulls "generic bad guy" instances out of some pocket dimension
It would be an amazing backstory for the Raiders that justifies everything nonsensical about them, especially the "Raider predators outnumber non-raider prey" problem, if they really did come from some magical enemy-spawning combat arena pre-war ponies used to train their troops for all sorts of scenarios and threats. Just imagine if the Annihilation Nation-meets-Bloody Palace room had been programmed to spawn "Anarchists" for the soldiers to kill, and they had been designed to be as unpleasant as possible, but after the apocalypse some wasteland scavengers broke into the control room and accidentally set it to "Print 1 Raider every hour" and the Raiders killed them before leaving and spreading across the wastes.
Anonymous
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No.285403
285404
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>orange disks
I think the faggy author previously described the landmine outside Rarity's as an "orange disc".
which is retarded. why would you paint your landmines neon orange. why would a raider base have a whole fucking box of them that can be tipped over. why would they be live and ready to explode as soon as they're tipped from their box onto the floor like lego bricks.

>Littlepip loots raider bodies destroyed via explosion, and combines armours to repair them since that's how you repair armour in fallout 3
I know the author's trying to be "clever" here by trying to justify the protag's ability to loot decent armour off corpses in over a hundred pieces, but it really isn't working. Like you said, this zone still has enemies. Littlepip's only able to combine armour in the crafting menu because using the Pip-Boy pauses time in Fallout 3.

>deaf sniper
if the sniper's gun was permanently mounted to the Tree-Library's upper balcony in a way that ensures only Littlepip's sheer magical strength can rip it off after all these enemies are dead, and he is going to stay at the top of this tree like a final boss until Littleshit comes to shoot him, I will laugh.

>The raider above obviously assumed I was dead
Hey, remember when the Raiders put a mine outside Rarity's place when Littlepip slept in it, and when she triggered that mine, the Raiders DIDN'T assume she was dead and threw another grenade in just to make sure?
Littlepip threw the grenade back and instead of exploding mid-flight it exploded right at the feet of the enemy grenade-tosser.
even though she could have used one of Rarity's Crazy Cat Lady cat corpses on the landmine/grenade to safely trigger it while hiding far away, faking her death and fleeing.
enemies didn't assume she was dead then, but they assumed she was dead now.
and just like in videogames, detonating 10+ landmines at once in a single spot isn't enough to harm the structural integrity of the building you're in, even though it's fucking made of fucking wood. Good thing this isn't flagged as Destructible Wood like the wood used on some doors but not all doors!
This is really fucking dumb- oh wait you mentioned the structural integrity thing.

>Raider runs away once she's carrying an absurd amount of weaponry
Author's trying to be smarter than Fallout 3 again, because in that game enemies would ALWAYS bum-rush you no matter how far the gap was between lowly switchblade-toting faggot in spiky-titty Mad Max fetish gear VS the heroes.
you could have a flying buzzsaw-toting murderbot on your side, and a generic dude in power armour with a minigun, and a gigantic invincible super-strong orange/green man with a laser minigun so absurdly powerful that many players choose to not recruit him until they hit the level cap, as you don't gain EXP for enemies killed by your companions in Fallout 3
you could have a whole army of one-note or zero-note NPCs with guns following you around, and be the ultimately almighty heavily-armed bulletproof messiah of the wasteland carrying over 300 pounds of guns and ten thousand bullets of weightless ammo who took all the credit for the Power Rangers and Megazord army that warred with the cartoon nazi army over who got to turn on a non-functioning water purifier that wastes a piece of matter-rearranging magitek by existing.
Remember when water canteens were visible on her? This pony will later conceal a nuclear bomb launcher twice her size within her pip-boy, forgetting about it completely until it's time to equip it from the menu.
also
Remember when a big deal was made about the condition and degradation of weaponry, when Littlepip was negotiating with the cheesefag trying to rob her?
Now she's able to pick up all sorts of high-quality weapons from this Raider Base and scare raiders away.
We will see her fire multiple guns at once with her magic sometimes, but the author never definitively states "Pinkie designed the Pip-Buck Inventory Program to use hammerspace. Nobody knows how it works, it just does" and the text often mentions shit like Littlepip wearing many loud canteens strapped to her saddlebags full of survival supplies, in addition to Littlepip whipping out weapons concealed so perfectly even she forgot she had them, so the author never actually makes up his mind on whether we are playing by videogame, cartoon, or real serious-story logic here.
Author is a faggot!

On an unrelated note...

Imagine if Zebras trained monkeys to wield machetes and attack ponies, during the Zebras VS Ponies war.
You're a soldier, someone yells "Jigaboo in the bushes!", and suddenly you and your guys are swarmed with chimps wielding machetes and gorillas wielding giant swords with Elephant Cavalry-style things on their back for Zebras to ride on.
To counter this, Ponies made wearable fake wooden gorilla arms arms that can stretch
so you can kill the monkeys and gorillas with melee weaps without any risk to yourself
worst case scenario, a trained gorilla grabs your arm and yanks you closer to pummel you
and then, after these fake arms become standard military gear for ponies, firearms are invented
and specifically designed to be fired by these super-strong impossibly-rotating fake arms that can reach around cover and shoot for you
This magical solution for a stupid ergonomics problem gets around the "Shotguns need to come with specialized mechanical battle-saddles with mouth-triggers" problem this story typically ignores whenever it wants earth pony raiders to fire shotguns with their mouths.

>>285388
For the sake of those who do not want to be spoiled I will put the alicorn stuff in spoilers so it can be saved until alicorns are mentioned in the story.
Anonymous
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No.285404
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>>285403
RIGHT GET A LOAD OF THIS SHIT
IN FALLOUT 1-
I SWEAR, THIS IS RELEVANT TO THIS STORY AND THE POINT I'M MAKING.
IN FALLOUT 1, AFTER YOU EXPLORE THE WASTELAND HUNTING FOR THE WATER-PURIFYING CHIP YOUR VAULT NEEDS, YOU HAVE TO SAVE THE WASTELAND BECAUSE THE FINAL BOSS IS "THE MASTER", A BIG MUTANT TUMOR FAGGOT WHO WANTS TO KIDNAP ALL THE PURE HUMANS AND MUTATE THEM BY PUTTING THEM IN VATS FULL OF "F.E.V.", THE FORCED EVOLUTIONARY VIRUS.
THIS VIRUS WILL KILL ANYONE WHO IS IRRADIATED
BUT IF YOU HAVE NO RADIATION IN YOUR HUMAN BODY?
THE VIRUS WILL MUTATE HUMANS INTO FIRST-GENERATION SUPER MUTANTS, BIG SMART UGLY BASTARDS
OR SECOND-GENERATION SUPER-MUTANTS, WHICH ARE THE SAME BUT REALLY DUMB
OR NIGHTKIN (BLUE MUTANTS WHO HATE BEING SEEN AND HAVE CARTOON SCHITZOFAGGOTRY)
FALLOUT 3 RETCONS IN THIRD-GENERATION SUPER MUTANTS, WHO ARE ORANGE AND AGGRESSIVE CANNIBALS WHO SCREAM "I WANT TO EAT YOUR BONES, STUPID HUMIE!" WHILE BUM-RUSHING YOU WITH HANDHELD NUKES IN THEIR HANDS SO THEY CAN ALOHA SNACKBAR YOU.
ANYWAY
THE VILLAIN "THE MASTER" WANTS TO TURN ALL HUMANS INTO SUPER MUTANTS PSYCHICALLY CONTROLLED BY HIM TO END ALL WARS.
AND HE HAS A FUCKING HUGE HEAVILY-ARMED MUTANT ARMY WORKING FOR HIM
but
here's the thing
The Master thinks he is creating The Master Race
but he is wrong
he has created an ugly abomination hyper-specialized for being big and strong. It is not particularly smart, fast, or agile. It is immune to radiation but it lacks any super-cool shit any creature would need before it can be definitively called superior to humanity.
And the Super Mutant race is completely infertile.
Completely, permanently infertile.
And they still age and die like normal people.
There is no future for the Super Mutant race.
Find the evidence that proves this, show it to The Master, and he sets his base to self-destruct and tells you to fuck off. you leave, base goes boom, game over, you win.
You can also win the game by shooting the fuck out of The Master after killing your way through his Super Mutant-filled dungeon-base-vault.
You can also join him for a bonus ending.
ANYWAY
in this story?
The Master is copypasted into The Goddess.
It's Trixie.
Twilight Sparkle developed a way to turn any pony into an Alicorn, and her first test subject was Trixie, who swore she was "reformed" EVEN THOUGH SHE WAS NEVER A VILLAIN IN S1 AND ALWAYS JUST A LYING PERFORMER WITH A HEART OF GOLD AND A TONGUE FASTER THAN HER BRAIN.
On the day the bombs fell, Trixie said "Now's my chance!" and dragged Twilight into the vats of mutation-goo with her.
At least I think that's how it went down.

anyway Twilight is no more, The Goddess is just an edgy evil Trixie calling herself "The Goddess" while talking like Rita Repulsa.
Her Alicorn Army is a load of faggoted giant bitches who carry miniguns still act like evil thuggish stupid raiders when under Trixie's control, and when not under Trixie's control.
One raider Alicorn wears Princess Luna's skull like a necklace and straps Luna's bones to her bodysuit, for fuck's sake.
Now while the Super Mutants were just big guys (for you) at best, and usually retarded big guys...
Alicorns are still fucking Alicorns, with super-strength and super-strong magic and super-fast flight on top of REGENERATING HEALTH LIKE WOLVERINE (WHEN THE AUTHOR REMEMBERS THE HEALTH REGEN) IN RADIATION- i mean Taint(TM), The black magic radiation(TM)
oh and did I mention SOME OF THESE ALICORNS WEAR THIS EXTREMELY RETARDED POWER ARMOUR THAT HAS A SCORPION TAIL ON THEIR ASSES? JUST ONE SCORPION TAIL THAT ATTACKS FOES FOR THEM. YOU KNOW, WHILE MOUNTED ON THEIR ASSES, A PLACE THEY CAN'T SWING FAST LIKE THEY COULD SWING THEIR SUPER-STRONG HOOVES.
JUST IMAGINE THESE CUNTS WITH WHIP-SWORDS BUILT INTO THEIR WRISTS.

also
Alicorns have their minds controlled by a hivemind called The Unity, and it is psychically ruled by The Goddess.
so they know everything it knows, not that knowledge changes anything in a world written by an idiot.

also
Alicorns can breed.

ALICORNS! CAN! BREED!

They can fuck and get fucked and produce children!
But they are always female Alicorns, and they are too strong for snu-snu with pony males.
They crush pelvises when fucking. Not the cocks, of course, they can still get impregnated. They just can't hold themselves back and stop themselves from injuring their lovers.
So you'd think they'd wank male ponies off into jars and then artificially inseminate themselves with cum jars, or chain themselves up in barns with spreader-bars like IRL horses, right?
Nope, they cry over their inability to produce male Alicorns and directly fuck male ponies without crushing their pelvises

Alicorns are objectively the ultimate species in this story, and they come in three colours:
Purple and black Alicorns can teleport, thanks to Twilight's involvement in the Alicorn project.
Dark blue and black Alicorns can turn invisible, thanks to Trixie's involvement in the Alicorn project.
Dark green and black Alicorns can make powerful shields and link their magic with other green unicorns to boost their powers, thanks to OC Twins.

all three types of Unicorn can still perform each other's unique spells, standard telekinesis, and any of the spells known by the unicorn slaves they keep somewhere in their Unity hivemind
so you'd think these overpowered regenerating super-god-bastards would dominate the entire wasteland, right?
nope, because that would mean focusing this mess of a story on one idea, and the author can't do that.
you'd think at least one spell the alicorns know would be a game-changer for wasteland survival, but... no, they don't create any massive water-purifying structures or massive castles with big walls and farms for peasants willing to serve alicorns in return for protection.

The Master from Fallout 1 was wrong for thinking his Super Mutants were the ultimate Master Race.
Kkat's dominatrix-raider-amazoness Alicorns kind of are a master race, just written really badly.
Everything smart about Fallout 1's Super Mutants goes out the window so they can be "MORE".

Anonymous
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No.285405
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I hit letter limit so I had to reword some sentences to be shorter
still, alicorn rant's over.
I feel a lot better now.

It's a really common mistake for writers to think if they put "MORE! MORE! MORE!" of something into a story, it will make their story better.
Surely, if you put MORE lightsaber duels into a star wars fanfic featuring BIGGER lightsabers and STRONGER super-jedi and super-sith, it will make the story cooler, right? No.
The more you have of something, the less value it can accrue.
The Star Wars Prequels thought putting in MORE space battles and MORE lightsaber fights would make the films so amazing, they could get away with confused plots, long political speeches in kid's films, a lack of focus on Vader, and fucking Jar Jar.
But lightsaber duels... they became flashier, but they also became meaningless spectacles with none of the emotional weight and tension seen in Luke's battle against Vader.
Space battles became visually-cluttered CGI explosion-fests with no weight or meaning.
Massive faceless clone armies clashed with massive identical droid armies, and nobody gave a fuck when all these new Jedi with barely any screentime got killed.

And the Star Wars sequel films did this even worse. And maliciously.
They intentionally tried to set Rey up as "The superior Luke" and Kylo Ren as "The superior Vader" even though they failed both times.
Long stretches of random unimportant filler bullshit wasted even more time
and the lightsaber fights just functioned like normal Hollywood "Swing the heavy stick" matches because all of the light-blade Flynning and acrobatic stylishness was gone completely.

The incompetent actress they hired to play Rey couldn't fight for shit, she's ugly, and she's bad at acting.
She swings her lightsaber like a kid in a park who found a cool stick.
When I saw her I thought "They must have hired her for her martial arts skills" and when I saw her "Stick-swinging near a rock" sequence in the second film I thought "They must have hired her for her other talents".
https://youtu.be/irvU09MM-l4
They tried to power-creep the original films into irrelevance.

It's the same mistake Legend Of Korra made when it gave Korra the ability to metalbend easily while her natural-born earthbender friend couldn't bend metal (but could bend lava which is just hot rocks!)
And then had her bend a massive nuclear spirit-magic laser beam around her.
Nobody is going to say "Korra is a better Avatar than Aang because she could probably beat him in a fight".
Aang is the superior Avatar because he is smarter, wiser, kinder, and a better person.
Plus, Aang has the full Avatar State while Korra has what it was retconned into: The Raava State.
Aang can use the knowledge and experience of his past lives during a fight, all Korra can do is have retcons supercharge her existing magic powers.

Hell, just look at LOK's villains. Season 1? The villain is two "Psychic" Bloodbenders who can puppet-control you into helplessness and remove your bending without the need for night or a full moon.
Season 2? The villain is an evil waterbending master and "Dark Avatar" turned giant and infused with dark magic power that makes his waterbending stronger.
Season 3? The villain is A FLYING MAN and the ultimate airbender who only became an airbender a week ago due to a poorly-explained plot-contrivance where the universe outright started randomly giving airbending to bending-less Earth Kingdom citizens.
Season 4? Cartoon-fascist girl and her Kuviratron 9000, a gigantic mech made of platinum with a lasergun on its arm that fires Spirit-Nuclear Mega-Lasers.
All of these villains are desperately trying to be stronger than Avatar: The Last Airbender's evil Fire Lord Ozai.
But guess what?
Ozai was a simple villain, and that's all he needed to be. He just needed to be the final representation of the evil within the Fire Nation Aang wanted to stop.
all these new villains try to "out-deep" him with "deep reasons" for the dumb evil bullshit they do, but it never tricks anyone who's not a 20-something lesbian retard who nuts on her own smartphone whenever she sees faggoted bullshit on Twitter or TV.

And then there's Dragon Ball Super, where ANYONE can go Super Saiyan just by thinking about their tingling backs.

These shitty sequels are made by incompetent hacks who don't respect what came before, and don't respect the fact that the meaningful feats in previous works were supposed to MEAN SOMETHING and be RARE, not something to shamelessly and casually one-up like a bad fanfiction writer trying to convince people you're cool!
Anonymous
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No.285430
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hey you know what would make this story's edgy depictions of mutilated ponies less pointless?

Imagine if the Raiders intentionally put mutilated corpses out in the open because they think it scares ponies away

Plus

The vile "art pieces" attract oversized mutated insects like Radroaches and Radrats, which the Raiders like catching, frying, and eating.

also

on a more speculative note

Imagine if this story had monsters that could ONLY happen in a magical world like Equestria. For example, a monstrous race of living killer chocolate bunnies that travel in swarms and turn you into candy if they touch you, so it's easier for them to devour you.

Also, imagine... this big motherfucker from the classic series The Future Is Wild, a speculative CGI show where real-ass scientists speculate on the future based on dinosaurs and previous evolutionary stuff, then we get to see this weird shit animated. It's got elephant-squids. It's got longcats who hunt tree-swinging monkeys.
Anonymous
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No.285438
>>285430
I remember that show.
Anonymous
abb50e3
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No.285440
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Got to say I think Nigel here and his rants actually work really well for this story here considering Glim's knowledge of Fallout and Fallout Equestria. Been pretty fun lately having Glim analize the story from a writing and narrative perspective, then for those of us more familiar with the lore of the games and this story we got Nigel to give a sister commentary about how the mechanics and world of Fallout are sort of given the Bethesda QA treatment and stapled to MLP.

Got a friend who frequents here who is a big fan of Project Horizons which is a popular spin off of Fallout Equestria and honestly I dare say I would love if Glim were to review that but I belive that story is quite long as well so would be way too much Fallout Equestria hyjinks on Glim's itinerary. Made a tiny bit of progress on some writing so whenever Glim decides to take a breather from Fallout Equestria hopefully I got it ready by then!
Anonymous
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No.285447
285448
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>>285440
Thank you!
There was a time when I was going to write "The better Fallout Equestria" featuring Sunrise Starburst, a min-maxed high-stat character and interesting masculine patriotic intellectual who formed a street gang and converted it into an army and ploughed the Overmare's daughter by seducing her and designed a shitton of cool guns.
I spent twelve paragraphs on the shotgun-shell-firing revolver he carries, it's a revolver so he can quickly switch out different bullets for whatever elemental effects he wants to use/mix. His wife asked him "Can we have an open relationship?" the day before his coup so he said yes so he could fuck more mares, meanwhile nopony alive was willing to touch her because they all knew she belonged to him, Sunrise Starburst, strongest Unicorn alive. Sunrise also gathered a bunch of Statuettes (Complaining about them would be a spoiler) and used them and other things to build a Twilight Sparkle sexbot infused with Twilight Sparkle's soul and actually capable of thought/magic/being real while still bound by servile sexbot programming. So he could befriend a good Twilight Sparkle who did nothing wrong AND fuck her AND research tech/magic with her help. He killed his Overmare, put his wife in charge of everyone in the Vault who didn't follow him to the surface, and proceeded to fight and genocide and slaughter his way through a hyper-fucked section of Wasteland filled with irradiated Ziggers and unique monsters. He built fucking cool castles that were absolutely huge and had huge walls, constructed functional supply lines connected via portal generator (Good fucking luck raiding these supply lines now, Raiders!), created swarms of DuraFrame Eyebots But Better, constructed massive farms and mines, and more. SlaveBots mine while sentry turrets placed atop sniper towers keep the lands safe and the skies clear of Enclave enemies. Unique weapons would be constructed, and after figuring out a way to patch the "Cybernetics devour your soul" flaw and create superior cybernetics, he'd tear off his own right arm with his left arm in the middle of a campaign speech about the future and cauterize his stump with white-hot flames before slamming on a sick metal arm that injects cloud-computing supercomputer magical nanomachines into his bloodstream to enhance his body and mechanize his spine to grow fucking awesome cybernetically-enhanced phoenix wings wreathed in magical flames.
His army is full of smart and interesting characters with their own expertise to contribute to his army. There are shitloads of soldiers with their own reasons for joining up. But the best characters include but are not limited to a robots guy, a guns girl, and this potion expert I'm really proud of. Basically he figured out how potions REALLY work and how to REALLY make them, the Ziggers "figured it out" wrong and never tested anything better, but the superior scientific equine method allowed for superior and consistent potion creation without drug addictions. Also he's got a REAL STEALTH BUILD mare working for him, Midnight Shade, a little girl who acts like an edgy OC to feel more confident until Sunrise S-ranks her and fixes her psychological problems with his penis.
This story would spend shitloads of chapters on the founding, management, and massive battles of his empire.
He'd wear custom-made Power Armour with wings and a horn-amplifier and ass-jets and hoof-jet stabilizers/repulsors and rotating VTOL jets and a magic library database and piston-enhanced hooves and more. He'd upgrade his SATS code so he could set spots to walk/fly/teleport to and angles to face in the "stopped time" of his menus, and perform attacks practically instantaneously before teleporting/flying away. ULTRA INSTINCT. The Super-VATS program also handled complex flight for him since he didn't have much experience at flying.
Also the downfall of Equestria was bugfixed, Equestria eventually made peace with Ziggers only to end up controlled by Griffons and infested with Ziggers and slowly eroded away before the nukes were fired globally by dumb fucking ziggers, but pure ponies had long since entered the vaults during the initial war and couldn't be removed.
The Enclave poured most of their manpower and resources into trying everything they could to stop and sabotage him, to justify how easily they are defeated in Fallout Equestria's original story.
But his immensely charismatic words, amplified by the radio towers he built, convince shitloads of Enclave ponies to defect and join his side, while also attracting shitloads of Dashites (Enclave soldiers kicked out for defecting/wanting to defect, and also branded with Dash's cutie mark for caring about the surface-dwellers) to his cause of truly rebuilding the wasteland and conquering every magical race (I invented shitloads) on Planet Equestria so no new apocalypse could ever happen again. He would kill every last zigger.
Sunrise encountered a tribe called the Gear Grinders (a little spyro 2 reference) but they live in a high-magitech golf camp converted into bullshit supersized racetracks with insane stunts mid-race. They use the place's tech to build great cars, Sunrise beats them in a race to get control of them, and also fucks their king's daughter.
He also met a good Alicorn enclave called Alicornia, the Alicorns here became moral individuals upon leaving The Goddess's psychic hive-mind range and decided to form a Jacobstown-inspired good community. Sunrise Stardust fucks the Princess of Alicornia to celebrate their alliance, and survives it because his pelvis is too strong to break
Eventually I realized the original ideas here would work better in an original context, too many things in Fallout Equestria are too fundamentally retarded for any story derived from it while working with its mistakes to not end up at least a little retarded, and time spent writing over four million words of pony fanfiction is time I'm not spending working on my indie games
pic unrelated
Anonymous
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No.285448
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>>285447
oh and my story would occasionally include chapters designed to fuck with the audience.
sometimes I'd flirt with the idea that everything was all a dream. I even considered having the character wake up and restart the fic halfway through, with everything being a little different this time around, only for it to have an ending like the Evangelion shit, and then it'd turn out everything in this rebuild was how he wished things went and he'd reawaken in his own timeline with new knowledge and wisdom.
Speaking of wisdom there'd be a bit where he'd pass out and enter a coma after fighting an evil Twilight Sparkle clone made by "The Institute only not retarded and with reasons for their evil" and he'd enter the DBZ afterlife, run down snake way, meet Pinkie and Twilight and the rest of the mane six in the afterlife, and talk to them all. He'd forgive all of the mane six for their failures because they were all actually caused by mind-controlling Griffon saboteurs anyway. And by letting the souls of the mane six rest, he'd be allowed to return to life with Holy Magic straight from the real Celestia herself.
He'd also develop time-travel and space-travel, harvesting offworld planets for their weird alien resources and fighting alien monsters. And he'd time travel back to stop the apocalypse, but doing this creates additional timelines without changing his own timeline. So he can have fuckloads of Saved Equestrias friendly with him feeding and funding and arming his army further.
Also a gang his gang defeated and absorbed in their early years was an edgy gang where they all committed painless ritual suicide to become ghosts like the ghosts from Danny Phantom. Sunrise had these overpowered magical invincible ghosts on his side and it was epic.
And at one point he'd find and enter a Nintendo-sponsored Vault where fuckloads of ponies are trapped in a Pokemon MMORPG Matrix, and he can only get them out by entering the game and beating every Pokemon region and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. After beating them all, he obtains Pokemon and Ponies who are the masters of Pokemon and Pokemon who are the masters of other Pokemon. He'd also fuck a Gardevoir and beat the Better-Than-CelestAI AI in control of all these simulations in a debate and convince it to let him and all its ponies go for their mutual benefit.
Also there would be a Yugioh vault that can do Shadow Games, making their monster cards real. He would have to beat over 100 of the Vault's best duellists to get them on his side. And I would show every... single... fight. In full detail. No cutaways, no skipped fights, just over 100 games of yugioh with the piece of shit Dragon deck I designed back in fucking 2012 VS fuckloads of enemy duellists.
Honestly I would just throw everything into this along with good ideas to hit word limit and surpass it. I wish making it wouldn't take so long, I kind of wish I could make it anyway but I just don't have the time to make Fallout Equestria: Sunrise Stardust And The Burned World a reality.
I'm really proud of that name, btw. It's incredibly distinct in a fandom full of Fallout Equestria: Oneword and Fallout Equestria:Two Words fics and the occasional Fallout Equestria: Insert Phrase Here fics.
Plus I could drop the Fallout Equestria and call it its own Fallout+MLP crossover any time I wanted, since I'd eventually replace all bad FOE elements with superior original elements anyway, justifying the initial presence of bad FOE elements as "In their vault, Sunrise was taught Ziggers nuked the world thanks to Fluttershy but archaeology and time-travel proved the world actually ended differently and all Memory Orbs that claim otherwise are fakes made by the Griffon-controlled Ministry Of Control to demoralize and confuse ponies in the future" though I'd never decided whether I would actually do that last one or not.
I do plan on finishing my fixed and revised Silver Star story, but it will take some time and I'm prioritizing my indie games.
Anonymous
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No.285449
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>>285448
Did I mention Sunrise Stardust screams like this when he nuts? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJdNv74MY80
I wouldn't write his sex scenes to titillate the viewer, I'd write them to cause the viewer as much pain as possible. Actually writing out lines like "Yeah, fuck yeah... Here I fucking go, let's fucking go... aaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa... HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaa-aaaaaaah... AAAAAAAAAAAAA... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH... HYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" would fill space and increase the word/letter count. There would be so many glopping noises. There would not be two years of semen, or two hundred years. There would be a thousand years of semen and a thousand years of death, every time, or more.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285466
285467 285490
9EE08F893C390099E0CCBC96C2A3F28B-202409.png
>>285385

>Several ponies apparently collected bottle caps, which struck me as an absurdly odd thing to horde.
I get the impression this is a reference to something that Fallout players would get, I guess we'll see if it's actually important. Also, it should be "hoard" here; "horde" refers to a large swarm of things, ie "a horde of niggers ran a train on kkat's asshole."

Anyway, the raider who threw the landmines at Littlepoop runs away, and she chases after him.

>He went through a door on the level above. It took me only a moment to reach it, but caution made me skid to a stop before barreling through. If that had been me on the other side, I’d be waiting just to the side of the door, ready to take the head off of the raider who rushed through. With positions reversed, I was not going to make the same mistake.
I'll give her points for at least thinking here, but she still isn't being very smart, and neither is the raider. A shotgun blast through the door would probably be a good way to deter anyone on the other side from advancing further, and it stands to reason the raider would know that LP is out there. However, I'm not sure if he has a shotgun or not; I've completely lost track of which weapons are being carried by whom at this point. Anyway, this is dumb; they're both just standing there with nothing but a thin wall between them, waiting for the other to come through the door. If both were inexperienced fighters this wouldn't be implausible, but seeing as how these raiders have apparently made a lifestyle out of murder and mayhem, this level of caution seems out of character. Also, unless this raider is the literal last one left in the building, it stands to reason that there should be more of them coming after her. If the author keeps dragging this out by having enemies wander in randomly two or three at a time, I might just skip to the end of this fight.

>A filly’s cry from inside, “aaah! Help!” changed the scenario.
inb4 the raider has tied the filly to a log, and is cackling maniacally while a slow conveyor belt pulls her toward a circular saw. Wait; it's even worse:

>Near the open window, a filly too young to even have her cutie mark lay on a mattress stained with so much blood it was nearly black. She had been brutalized and raped repeatedly, and her flank was covered in small burns where her cutie mark would have eventually appeared.
I'll actually go ahead and give the author a few points here. Considering the level of edge this story aspires to, the fact that we're three whole chapters in and it took him this long to throw in a gratuitous child rape scene shows an admirable amount of restraint.

>between myself and her, the raider pony stood with a shocking hostage: the zombie-pony! It took me a moment to realize she must have flown in from the balcony; and (if I was allowed to believe there was any decency left in the world) it would have been her who gnawed the filly’s ropes free. Now, she was against a wall, with the blade of an axe to her throat.
I'm a little confused here. The "zombie" pegasus, which, based on some comments of Nigel's, I'm assuming for now is a literal zombie (or "ghoul") of some kind, was described as being skinned and featherless, so it shouldn't be able to fly.

>A small part of my brain insisted on distracting me by wondering how the zombie-pony could have flown when her wings didn’t have any feathers. As if that was a more significant mystery than how she could be alive (by some definition) in her decayed physical condition.
Well, if LP is wondering the same things I am, at least it suggests that the author is going somewhere with it and will eventually explain.

>Rage welled up in me until I felt it would burst through my eyeballs.
I hate it when that happens.

>When my voice returned, my words surprised me. “By Celestia, you’re stupid. Hard to tell a pony to back off, or surrender, when your mouth is full of axe, isn’t it? Maybe if you spent some more time reading these books rather than destroying them, you’d be smart enough to come up with a plan that actually allowed you to negotiate a way out of this.” The grenades levitated off the table; I dangled them between us. “One that doesn’t end with me shoving one of these up your tailhole!”
By Celestia, you're all stupid. Every single character in this story so far behaves like a complete fucking moron.

Some of the other stuff we've read, most notably Past Sins and The Sun & The Rose, were relatively high-concept, even if they fell well short of the mark in terms of execution. So here's what annoys me about this story: while kkat has proven himself in some ways to be a more competent writer than either Peen Stroke or soulpeener, what he's attempting here isn't high-concept at all, but he's still managing to mostly fuck it up.

Whatever complexity there may be in the Fallout world, the basic story premise here is about as low-concept as you can get. This is pretty much just violence-porn in the same vein as High School of the Dead, or maybe a movie like Crank or Wanted. I don't mean to denigrate this type of story mind you; I quite enjoyed all three of those. What I mean by low-concept is that the story basically just serves as a framing device for the action, so it doesn't need to be intricate or deep.

Take, for example, the plot of Crank: a hitman is poisoned and needs to keep his adrenaline above a certain level or he'll die. The entire movie is just him going around doing a bunch of insane shit to boost his adrenaline while attempting to find an antidote to the poison and track down the people who poisoned him so he can exact revenge. We don't need to know anything about the characters beyond their "jobs" and their basic background: there's the hitman who was betrayed, the gangster bad-guy who set him up, and so forth. None of the film's characters need to be more complex than that.

I'll elaborate further in the next post.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285467
285468 285487 285495 285660
1602485475088.jpg
>>285466

With a story like that, you don't need complex characters or an intricately fleshed-out setting, but writing it comes with its own set of challenges. Namely, since your plot is basically just a long sequence of fight scenes, you need to make your fights engaging, believable, and fun to watch.

This is where kkat gay nickname pending until I think of a good one comes up short. Being based on a video game world, the rules and mechanics by which this setting operates factor heavily in how the story progresses. Despite being apparently pretty autistic in terms of his knowledge of Fallout, this author does not seem to have put a ton of thought into adapting its elements to the setting of MLP. As we've discussed, he mostly just took the world of Fallout and dropped pony characters into it, and changed a few of the names and concepts around to fit superficially into the Pony setting: "PipBuck" instead of "PipBoy," tainted magical auras instead of nuclear fallout, and so forth. Beyond this he seems to have mostly focused his efforts on getting ponies to use human tools and weapons, ignoring how awkward they would be for ponies to use. Going deeper, he fails to even consider why ponies would engineer such tools in the first place, since so far we've seen no evidence of human presence or influence in this world.

What's more, even the awkward mechanics he does develop are not used to particularly great effect. His characters all behave as if they woke up in this world yesterday and are still figuring out how it works. While this might make sense for Littlepip, who spent her entire life in an underground shelter, the raiders and slavers and whatnot we've encountered should exhibit far more sense than they do. For instance, a few scenes ago we saw a raider take a pool cue in his mouth and attempt to run through a door with it, only to have it get caught in the door frame and hurt his neck. This kind of literal retard maneuver is obviously meant to be funny, but the humor is lost because it makes no sense for a character who lives in this world to do this. An animal who can only carry and use tools in its mouth is going to be acutely aware of this handicap in the same way that a human who doesn't have any hands would be, and in a grimdark post-apocalyptic setting where it's every man/woman/pony for themselves, this pony would have had to figure out ways to compensate for the things he can't do. A pony dumb enough to run through a narrow door with a pool cue held sideways in his mouth for God only knows what reason could not possibly have survived to this point. And I hate to sound like a broken record about the weapons and such, but why do pool cues even exist in this world to begin with?

Magic also complicates things in this story. As I've pointed out in other reviews, the idea of magic is not very well-defined in MLP to begin with: there aren't really any hard and fast rules about what it can and can't do, and what levels of it a user needs to possess in order to pull off this or that feat. Apart from the established rule that only unicorns can use it, there really aren't that many canonical limitations on what magic in MLP can do. As such, it provides a rather tempting crutch for fanfiction authors to use whenever they can't think of a way to make something happen or for a character to win a fight. Subsequently this leaves the author vulnerable to an equal number of pitfalls, since once it's been established that a character has a certain power, it creates a logical contradiction when they fail to use it in another situation where it would also be applicable. So far kkat has made pretty liberal use of this crutch, and has predictably fallen into most of the pitfalls.

In a world where everything that happens in the story plays out according to strict mechanical rules, a la Dungeons and Dragons or any other gaming system, it stands to reason that there ought to be equally strict rules for magic. The limits of how much weight or how many objects a unicorn can carry with X amount of magic, how much magic an individual unicorn can have and what stat defines this level of magic power, the range at which magic can project; all of these factors should have been thought out by kkat and woven into the fabric of his setting. Unless Littlepoop is some kind of magic prodigy like Twilight, and we haven't been given any indication that she is, it seems like she shouldn't be able to do a lot of the stuff we've seen her do, like carrying a preposterous amount of items while simultaneously aiming and firing a gun, or levitating an entire bookshelf on the second floor of a building while standing on the first floor.

Even if you establish that common unicorns are capable of these kinds of feats which seems obnoxiously OP to me, it should then stand to reason that other pony types would be aware of this and factor it into their assessments of other characters' abilities while fighting. For instance, the raider she is fighting currently should have realized that he was fighting a unicorn, and thus would have anticipated that she might try something like this:

>The grenades levitated off the table; I dangled them between us. “One that doesn’t end with me shoving one of these up your tailhole!”

These enemies are boring because they behave like the retarded AIs that just mindlessly attack you in a game, instead of like the living, thinking entities that even minor characters in a story need to be. If you really, really want to have a world where ponies can shoot guns with their mouths and a common unicorn can levitate a bus over her head then whatever; it's your story. But at least make it interesting. These characters should strategize and plot against each other according to the rules of the world that the author has established, which means that leaving grenades on a table where they could be easily levitated and used against you makes no sense when fighting a unicorn.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285468
285470 285660
istockphoto-1221557528-1024x1024.jpg
>>285467

>The raider pressed the axe blade tighter against the zombie-pony’s throat, enough to cut flesh, which split and pulled back as if it had been strained taut. Ichor that might have once been blood oozed from the wound. The zombie-pony didn’t flinch or whimper, but the filly did both.
More edge, but I can't really fault the author too much here. "Ichor" is just a fun word to use same goes for "cyclopean," another of Lovecraft's faves.

Anyway, long story short the raider does as she asks and lets the zombie-pony go. Littlepoop heroically shoots him in the back as he flees, aided of course by her magical auto-aiming thingamabob, and that's the end of him. She now assures the zombie pony and the filly that she has to go take care of the sniper, who at this point I am assuming is either literally deaf or literally retarded, and takes her leave, apparently trusting the zombie not to eat the filly's brains while she's gone.

However, after the page break, time has leapt forward jarringly. It seems we will never get to find out what exactly she did to the sniper that we've been hearing about for the entire chapter, nor do we learn the fate of the filly and the zombie, because the author opens the subchapter with this line:

>Better equipped and a lot more confident, my heart still flickering with righteous fire, I made my way carefully out of Ponyville.
At this point I'm too demoralized to keep on giving the same basic writing lessons over and over to hack authors who will never read my advice and would probably dismiss it out of hand even if they did, but for the benefit of any writers who are following, I'll keep my advice here short and to the point: don't do shit like this. If you start a story thread, wrap it up; don't just end a subchapter on a cliffhanger and then randomly skip time forward by like six hours. I doubt the fight with the sniper would have been any less retarded than any of the other fights we've seen thus far, but at least give us the sense of closure we'd obtain by seeing it through to the end.

Also, if you're not going to do anything with ancillary NPC type characters like the filly, don't even bother putting them in, especially not for superficial edgelord-tier reasons like "my murder porn story doesn't have enough foal rape in it." Even if this character serves no purpose beyond giving the hero someone to rescue, we should still witness the rescue; otherwise why bother? At this point I have no idea what ultimately became of either the filly or the zombie; for all I know the latter really did eat the former's brains.

Anyway, next she comes to a statue in a gazebo. She finds that the gazebo is full of alligators, because why wouldn't it be? All those descendants of Gummy that Pinkie's descendants undoubtedly flushed down the toilet had to end up somewhere. However, these aren't just regular gators; these are "radigators," which I'm assuming is just a radder version of a regular gator, so I'm imagining pic related. I'll bet they smoke cigarettes in the bathroom and everything.

She shoots a few of them with her "new" sniper rifle. The implication is that she took it off the sniper, so I guess we sort-of get some closure on that one. If it turns out she's got a filly pelt and a zombie's hoof somewhere amongst the U-Haul truck's worth of belongings that she's carrying with her, I might be able to rest easy on that one too. who's the edgelord now, kkat?

No mention is given of the surviving radigators reacting in any way to the pony that is randomly picking them off with a rifle, presumably while standing in the middle of the road with no cover. They must be way too rad to pay any attention to a dork like Littlepoop; they're probably busy living life to the extreme. As she is approaching one of her kills to carve up the radigator flesh into steaks she can take with her, because apparently ponies in Edgequestria are carnivorous, her magic radar thingy beeps and informs her that the statue is the "Macintosh War Memorial." She gets closer and examines the statue, because checking out monuments is a perfectly normal thing to do when surrounded by radioactive alligators, and she discovers that as you probably guessed the statue depicts Big Macintosh, who apparently died heroically while fighting in the something-something battle against blah blah who cares.

While she's looking at the statue, she notices a manhole ponyhole? cover, and this reminds her of the snippet of radio broadcast she heard on the first night she left the Stable, which for some reason she has a recording of on her PipBuck. As she makes her way to the manhole, one of the rad gators finally attacks her. This happens:

>I fired twice into its mouth. Horrifyingly, that wasn’t enough to kill it. But it did make the beast think twice. The sound, however, brought more of them down on me. Abandoning the revolver in fright, I used my magic to pull open the ponyhole and dived in, sliding the cover over behind me.
So apparently even though she just killed "a few" of these things a minute ago with the sniper rifle, an act which didn't seem to even remotely disturb the rest of them, she now finds that firing two shots point-blank into this one doesn't do much besides faze it a little, and the noise is enough to bring the rest of them down on her. Granted, the sniper rifle is probably more powerful than the revolver, but as far as the noise goes a gunshot is a gunshot; if two shots is enough to rile them up they should have been charging at her while she was gawking at the statue.

Also: do not drop the gun, Gangstalicious, that is totally not gangsta. Although she's got like fifty of them by now, so who the fuck even cares.

Anyway, using some unexplained method that probably involves magic, she lifts the heavy manhole cover off of the cistern, and dives down the hole while still (somehow) carrying the gigantic mountain of shit she's accumulated.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285470
285496 285548 285660
sample_35705ae71ddbc86c713469d1abaac457768c529d.jpg
>>285468

Page break.

>In the wake of my anger, I was exhausted.
Was she angry in that last scene? I didn't get the impression that the gators were that aggravating. If she's still angry about the shit from before, you probably shouldn't have wrapped up that scene so abruptly. She's at least calm enough to take in the local scenery while casually bumping off gators with a sniper rifle, so I can't imagine she's too wound up.

>In the aftermath of the library battle, my whole body ached from exertion.
Something you probably should have mentioned in, oh I don't know, the aftermath of the library battle; ie before the shit with the gators and whatever's happening now.

Anyway, she apparently finds herself inside some kind of makeshift shelter that was previously used by two ponies who are now skeletons I could deal with all the murder and dismemberment, but this might be getting too spooky for me now. No further mention is made of the connection between the radio broadcast and the bunker she's currently in. For context, here is the complete broadcast:

>“...from those damned apple trees up near the Stable, and now he’s terribly sick. Too sick to move. We’ve holed up in the cistern near the old memorial. We’re running out of food and medical supplies. Please, if anypony hears this, help us... Message repeats...”

The implication seems to be that the cistern is the chamber that LP is now in, but there is no mention of the pony who made the broadcast, or his son. However, there is mention of a colt skeleton and an adult skeleton being in the cistern, and I'm really hoping the implication isn't that the two things are somehow connected. Not because I particularly give a shit if the author wants to kill off a few more of his NPCs, but because by my reckoning the radio message was broadcast no more than 48 hours prior. Even if the two of them died immediately after broadcasting, it usually takes quite a bit longer than 48 hours for a body to decompose into a skeleton; this is a fairly basic medical fact that I'm assuming even this author would not be too much of an absolute retard not to know.

>I reflected how, when I had come back downstairs after dealing with the sniper pony, the zombie-pony was already gone, and had taken the poor filly with her. I hoped it was to someplace safe. I found it strange that the most decent pony I had found in the wasteland was already sort of dead.
Well, at least he eventually wrapped that loose end up. Also: if the "zombie" is intended to be literally that, the author should really clarify it a bit, because I'm still a little in the dark as to what this thing is supposed to be, and why Littlepoop just accepts its existence so casually if it's indeed something supernatural. The only description we got was of a pony who had apparently been skinned alive and somehow survived. Though it's a little implausible that any creature could live more than a few minutes with no skin, particularly when surrounded by filth, my mind doesn't automatically jump to "zombie" when something like that is described. Also: even if this is something a Fallout player would immediately get addendum: if I'm understanding Nigel correctly these things are called "ghouls" and they are indeed a Fallout thing, it's worth remembering that Littlepoop grew up in isolation. Thus, she probably has about as much knowledge of the Fallout world as a new player, and would need to be introduced to these concepts the same as anyone else would. My suspicion is that the existence of zombies/ghouls/undead things in general should at least startle her a bit.

>I also noticed that the assault rifle pony was also gone; he had woken up and freed himself from the crushing bookshelf.
I don't even remember who she's talking about and I'm too lazy to go back and check. I think I remember a pony getting a shelf dropped on him, but I thought it said he had died.

>That meant there was at least one more raider still in the wastes, but I wasn’t the sort of pony to kill somepony while they slept. Not even a raider.
So...I guess the town, which I was led to believe was swarming with raiders, was actually only populated by the ones who were in the tree? And they're all dead now except the one who escaped? Is that what the author is trying to communicate here? Have we finally gotten a straight answer as to how many of these chucklefucks Littlecunt is actually dealing with?

Oh, one more thing: she literally shot and killed one of these guys after he surrendered and ran away, so she hasn't really earned her sense of superior honor here. Here's the exact quote:

>S.A.T.S. send four shots right into his ass. It was a pathetic way to die.
Unless your name is Silver "my one regret is that I won't get to suck any more dicks, but at least I died the way I lived" Star, you're probably not going to die taking shots to the ass. Unless the bullets went directly up his butthole and ruptured his intestines, we're talking about flesh wounds at best. The confusion is that the text isn't clear on whether we're talking about the bullets literally penetrating the raider's anus, or if it just means that he got shot in his general posterior region. Since the former would be one hell of a trick shot, I'm assuming the latter meaning is intended.

Also: I notice the S.A.T.S thing is a little inconsistent. Sometimes thanks to this system LP is an expert marksman, but sometimes it seems to malfunction and she can't hit the broad side of a barn. Which is it exactly?

Anyway, that's the end of the chapter.

Oh yeah, one more thing: at some point she apparently picked up two books I'm assuming it was in the library somewhere, but again I don't remember it happening and I'm too lazy to go back and search for it, and one of them is apparently called "The Wasteland Survival Guide," written by none other than one "Ditzy" Doo. Littleclop opens the book up and starts reading.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285471
285496
>>285430
>Imagine if this story had monsters that could ONLY happen in a magical world like Equestria. For example, a monstrous race of living killer chocolate bunnies that travel in swarms and turn you into candy if they touch you, so it's easier for them to devour you.
I actually think this kind of thing would make this story more interesting and fun. If someone gave me "do Fallout but with MLP characters" as a writing prompt, that's probably the direction I'd take it. I'd likely just skim some wikis or watch a couple of playthroughs to get the general atmosphere of Fallout, and then create my own apocalypse that projected the same general aesthetic, but was custom-tailored to Equestria. Alternatively, if I was more into the Fallout side and didn't know MLP, I'd probably watch an episode or two and then write a story set in the Fallout universe where the ponies get transported there somehow and have to adapt.

>>285449
>I wouldn't write his sex scenes to titillate the viewer, I'd write them to cause the viewer as much pain as possible. Actually writing out lines like "Yeah, fuck yeah... Here I fucking go, let's fucking go... aaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa... HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaa-aaaaaaah... AAAAAAAAAAAAA... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH... HYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" would fill space and increase the word/letter count. There would be so many glopping noises. There would not be two years of semen, or two hundred years. There would be a thousand years of semen and a thousand years of death, every time, or more.
If I had to describe your entire writing style using a single quote of yours, this is the one I'd pick.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285472
>>285440
>Got a friend who frequents here who is a big fan of Project Horizons which is a popular spin off of Fallout Equestria and honestly I dare say I would love if Glim were to review that but I belive that story is quite long as well so would be way too much Fallout Equestria hyjinks on Glim's itinerary.
I'd be willing to check it out; I can add it to the queue if you'd like. You're probably right that I won't be in a mood to do it once this is wrapped up, but it might be a good one to save for some later date.
Anonymous
1883b74
?
No.285487
285490 285608
>>285467
>gay nickname pending until I think of a good one
Gaykat, man, this isn't rocket surgery.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285490
>>285487
Kkunt could work too.
KKKat could work since she accidentally went pretty nazi with this story.
despite adding a diversenigger companion later on she makes Ziggers a pure evil race that play the victim but directly caused the apocalypse over their religious hatred of the night sky and Luna,
she makes a cartoon-fascist earth pony supremacist villain right since Earth Ponies invented guns and cybernetics and the completely-good-intentioned Vaults and pretty much all useful tech in this timeline,
and she wholeheartedly makes The Goddess and the Alicorns into the masteriest master race she can imagine.
even though what made The Master from Fallout 1 a villain (besides his "kidnap and mutate everyone into Super Mutants against their will, no more nations or borders" plan) was the fact that HE WAS WRONG, his gen-1 Super Mutants are infertile clumsy cunts with average human intellect and his gen 2 Super Mutants are big dumb infertile brutish cunts.
But Alicorns? They're fucking alicorns, only radiation heals them instead of harming them.
If The Master from Fallout 1 had his way, everyone in the world would be turned into a big ugly mutant who needs straps to help lift up their upper lips to make breathing easier, and they'd die without children.
If The Goddess from this fic had her way, edgy nonsensically-cuntish amazoness alicorns would rule the world and eventually find a way to produce male Alicorns magically/cybernetically, futa-ify themselves via magic, or make semen-extraction machines with artificial inseminators designed to milk captive stallions safely and deliver what they've got into Alicorns and captive non-alicorn mares.
>>285466
Bottlecaps are wasteland currency in Fallout 1.
It started when The Hub's water-merchants said "Bring us a bottlecap and trade it in for 1 glass of water!"
from there, carrying many Nuka-Cola(TM) Bottle Caps made you rich.
though Barter was still primarily used for trade, and bottlecaps just helped you get things even after you trade some dead raider's leather jacket and two combat knives for a shotgun, 24 shotgun ammos, and 69 bottlecaps.
Pre-Nuclear Annihilation America's currency was more inflated than a furfag's OC every night, so stacks of thousand-dollar bills would get you jack shit at traders.
In Fallout 2, 60ish years have passed since the first game so nobody takes bottlecaps any more, everyone takes freshly-printed New California Republic dollars.
You can even get a Random Encounter when travelling, where you encounter a crashed Nuka-Cola(TM) truck absolutely full of bottlecaps and think "Damn, if only these were still worth anything!"
Fallout 3's a baby game for retards so it's full of pretentious bible shit and stolen misunderstood Fallout(TM) assets from Fraud Coward's half-digested dung. So even though 200 years have passed since the bombs and even though YOU'RE IN FUCKING WASHINGTON DC, it's still a desert environment that's gone 200 years without rain and every merchant still takes Bottlecaps without any reason to do so. There are still giant chameleons and giant scorpions even though DC Washington is far far away from the california desert F1/2 take place in. You still kill Deathclaws and Super Mutants (who are orange Orcniggers now for no reason) and Mad Max-looking raiders and sell their Painspike Armour to merchants for the caps you need to buy 10mm pistols and leather jackets.
I swear, if Fallout 1 took place in ANTARCTICA, and Fallout 3 took place in VIETNAM, Bethesda would ensure this new place would look "fallout-y" by making sure Vietnam looks like Antarctica and you'd still be fighting the enemies from Fallout 1: Giant polar bears and killer penguins and rapacious seals with very literal murderboners.
Fallout NV justified its "fallout-ish" desert setting by actually taking place in Las Vegas's Mojave Desert, adding new enemies (Cazadores, Trauma Harnesses, White Legs, Legion, and more), and being fucking good for this and many other reasons.

>she stops at the door
Man, if only this building was full of corpses, and she had the ability to telekinetically lift one and throw it through the doorway to draw the enemy's fire and waste his bullets until he was forced to reload, giving her a chance to SATS his head off. Perhaps even bludgeon the living raider to death with his kill, for an ironic twist.
It's some adventure-game faggotry, I know, but this story could use a little more Point And Click Adventure Game and a little less edge.
She could also lift her gun telekinetically, hover it through the doorway, and open fire on the raider while looking at her enemy-detecting Pip-Buck Radar (Kkunt forgets this exists whenever it would be convenient) to make sure her bullets were on-target. When the little red dot that represents her foe goes out, she's won.

I'm glad you've noticed the inconsistent Raider behaviour, a lot of characters do this. Author never irons out a "How this person/group fights and acts" identity, so in one moment Raiders are hopped-up blood fetishist junkie rapists who'll happily get themselves wiped out and leave their homes undefended chasing down one fleeing pony with melee weapons and shitty guns between their teeth, and in the next moment they're cowardly pussies trying to use cover and mines and tactics and the environment to their advantage.

Also the author never established exactly what weapons were in the building she looted, so for all we know she could have six 50cal sniper rifles, a dubstep gun, an automatic shotgun with dum-dum bullets, a duck-hunting oversized shotgun, a black hole-generating grenade that collapses in four seconds, and an enchanted dildo bat.

>featherless wings
This is setup for a retarded thing I won't spoil. I want your hatred of this bullshit in particular to be fresh and visceral.
Also the author really doesn't understand how flight works at all, the Enclave Pegasus Power Armour coats their wings in thick metal without any of those wing-edges that turn up and down and are important to jet flight.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285495
285502 285517
tumblr_a367f20acc86cabaeddadc8617c74e30_05bf9855_1280.png
>>285467
Pool Cues are such a retarded weapon idea. I know they're used here because pool cues are a weapon in Fallout 3. But pool cues are just wooden sticks. Where are the metal sticks? The homemade spears for throwing and stabbing? The baseball bat with rusty nails hammered through it? The makeshift shields?
For fuck's sake, where are the "Rebar Clubs" (Rebar sticks with a chunk of concrete on the end)?
Where's the table/bookshelf wall levitated by Littlepip for a makeshift shield?
The narration can't even make up its mind on whether Littlepip's magic makes her an ordinary pony or not. Sometimes people view her boxcar-lifting strength as nothing special. Sometimes it's viewed as something abnormal. The author claims Littlepip could move the Sun and replace Celestia near the story's end.
Goblin Slayer has some excellent worldbuilding.
Goblins aren't particularly smart, strong, or agile. But they are numerous, ruled by big strong Goblin cunts, and they learn quickly. They copy shit they've seen humans do, and learn to beat shit they've seen humans do.
Imagine if this story was as good as Goblin Slayer.
Imagine if the stupidity and pointless edge and existence of the Raiders were justified with "They are dumb junkies who act as scary as possible to intimidate the other surrounding settlements into giving them food and drugs for free. Raiders defend the towns they claim as their territory from other Raider groups, but that's it. They're mindless crackheads with minimal combat experience that doesn't come from sparring with each other or beating each other to death, and while everyone wants to kill them, nobody wants to risk getting killed or captured alive by them.

>Radigators
Hey, he finally did something original and made an original monster! He took a gator and made it bigger, just like Radroaches, Radscorpions, and Radstags! Except the author's writing in a world where "Taint, the black magical radioactive energy" supposedly replaces Radiation, so it makes no sense that ponies would follow the naming schemes used by californian tribals in a different world 200 years ago. These should be called "Taintgators", but the author's a plagiarizing faggot so he forgot he'd Find-and-Replace'd Radiation with Taint.

>Macintosh
Remember this for later. Remember that the narrator called his death "Heroic".

>inconsistent noise and gun actions
This is so dumb. sniper rifles are louder than revolvers. ten bucks says the author thought it was the other way around because Bethesda badly balanced their gun-sound audio in Fallout 3. It would explain why some of the most popular mods for Fallout 3/NV/4 replace the gun sounds with louder and higher-quality ones.

>radigator swarm
SO FUCKING DUMB!
Imagine if the author had the gators hide, at first. So Littlepip thought only two or three gators were down here, thought she killed them all, and thought it was safe to check out the memorial. Then dots could suddenly show up on her pipboy, giving her less than a second to scream and scramble out of the way as a swarm of gators rise from their hiding spots to attack her, forcing her to flee while looking over her shoulder and firing backwards, with two gators taking the place of every one she kills.

>Ghouls
They're a Fallout thing. Some people have this special gene that activates when they take in over 1000 Rads and start dying from radiation poisoning. They don't die like they should. Instead, they become ageless slow-healing zombie-looking motherfuckers who are still human, despite sounding like shit and looking like shit. They now enjoy the feeling of radiation since it can't hurt them any more. It's implied that Ghouls who take in too much radiation lose their minds and become "Feral" bastards who rapidly shuffle towards you(they can't run because if they break their weak knees they never heal) and want to eat your flesh.
Fallout 3 said "Ghouls are healed by radiation"
and Fallout 4 said "Ghouls don't need to eat or drink, so Billy The Ghoul Boy can survive for over 200 years trapped inside a fridge, also Ghouls can gain literal magical superpowers if they take in enough radiation, and Ghouls can run now, and there's a drug that instantly turns you into a Ghoul and Hancock the Ghoul NPC Companion we tried super hard to make cool ends up taking this drug during his superhero origin story", also you fight a magical teleporting ghoul inside a theme park. I'm not kidding. I could fill a whole thread with posts on everything that makes Fallout 4's "Nuka-World" DLC a disgustingly shitty experience and disgustingly shitty move on behalf of the company. It's an overreaction to every complaint they've ever received and got butthurt about, and it exists to patch something into Fallout 4 Todd Howard promised would be there from the start: a way to do an Evil Playthrough. Except not really because the Evil Playthrough has no ending. You must still save your son and kill Kellog and blow someone up between Institute/Brotherhood of Steel/Railroad/Minutemen to end this shitty game.
I have no respect for anyone who purchased Fallout 4/76 legally and bought all the DLCs/Fallout 1st Battle Passes expecting value for their money.

>Inconsistent SATS
a Fallout 3 thing.
Press V and the game makes a clicking sound if there are no enemies in range.
If there are foes in range, the game pauses and zooms in on the nearest enemy. You can now select one of their body parts to fire at. You are told your percentage-based chance to hit, and each shot (Or burst of automatic fire) during VATS costs some Action Points.
Raising your Guns skill will increase your gun damage, gun accuracy outside of VATS, and chance to hit within VATS.
But your chance to hit is usually "practically guaranteeed" anyway.
Did I mention you take 25% of usual damage when using VATS?
Everyone's unrealistically and unimmersively fast and nobody stumbles when hit by melee or gun attacks, so gunplay is SHIT. This time-stop auto-aim attack-queueing shit is a band-aid on a broken shoot game.

>WSG
ree.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285496
285867
bullshit.png
>>285471
>bunny good
Thanks!

>glopping noises
:) thanks

>>285470
The Wasteland Survival Guide(TM) is something you, the player, must make in Fallout 3 with the help of an unimportant NPC called Moira Brown in an uninteresting town called Megaton.
Megaton is a town full of raised rusty-steel shacks and bars and homes and nothing else, no farms or mines or other resources. Everyone lives within the circular steel walls they erected around the crater generated by an unexploded nuclear bomb, which is still there.
One cultist of Atom worships the bomb in town, nobody else cares about the bomb that's leaking radiation into the water under it.
Some hobos dying of thirst always exist outside town, begging you for water. Give them free water and you obtain Positive Karma Points.
You can nuke this town for no reason at all, because Mr Tenpenny (Random rich asshole in Tenpenny Tower, a random tower full of rich assholes) asks you to.
There is also a mission where you talk to miserable ghoul hobos outside Tenpenny Tower and have the option to gun these filthy Ghouls down (doing this makes omnipresent moral judge and radio DJ 3-Dog call you a cunt on his radio show) or talk Tenpenny Tower's residents into letting muh ghoul rapefugees into the rich man's tower and sharing their wealth.
Do that and the Ghouls "have a disagreement" with the occupants and slaughter everyone, conquering this tower for themselves like the invasive species they are. Even the rare nice rich old people in this tower are killed and you can't save them, only walk away or avenge them and get called a cunt by 3-dog on the radio.
anyway
if you do remotely detonate Megaton's nuke for no reason by pressing a button Tenpenny Tower had on his balcony for no reason, Moira survives the point-blank nuclear detonation by instantly becoming a ghoul, even though the ghoulification process is supposed to be slow and painful.
She doesn't even get mad that someone blew up her town, and you can't say "It was me, cunt".
so
if you're wondering what makes this cunt SO SPECIAL THAT HER PLOT ARMOUR CAN PROTECT HER FROM THE POINT-BLANK DETONATION OF A FUCKING HUGE NUCLEAR BOMB BIGGER THAN A MAN, it's her quest.
The only quest in the game with multiple choices and multiple ways to complete it.

Moira Brown gives you the game's optional tutorial and it's full of inconsistent madcap humor and unfunny comments.
And it's as shitty and lazy as it sounds.
The main plot doesn't even push you towards her and encourage you to finish her optional sidequest with the promise of a great reward.
You're just expected to complete this sidequest like you completed the quest where you bring an old lady her violin from the other end of the wasteland.
WHETHER YOU GET THAT VIOLIN OR NOT CHANGES MORE ABOUT THE ENDING THAN THIS QUEST.

here's the thing
Moira's goal in life?
To create The Wasteland Survival Guide
and making this would honestly be a better main quest than Fallout 3's actual main quest about water and liam neeson and power rangers vs cartoon nazis, even though this quest is still shit.
Moira asks you to do some random weird shit like "Go and suffer some Radiation Damage, then come back so I can heal you" and "Go to a landmine-filled area and pick up a landmine and bring it back" and "hit these Radroaches with this Radroach-Repellent-Filled Medicine Stick to see what happens"
The answers you give after completing her quests change what the Survival Guide is like and what reward you get for completing the quest
However you can lie to her to skip parts of her quest and make the Survival Guide partially or fully useless, reducing your rewards magically.
Completing this guide changes nothing about the world.
Here's a full quest guide https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Wasteland_Survival_Guide_(quest)
but for convenience I included an annotated guide in my picture

Kkat unintentionally robbed himself of a great opportunity to introduce Littlepip to the Wasteland through harsh experience at the request of a selfish cunt by saying "Derpy Hooves already wrote this guide before Littlepip got here".
Anonymous
bbcc4f1
?
No.285502
285504
TaintgatorWrangler.png
>>285495
>just wooden sticks
Wooden sticks still get the job done.
>pool cues
You do raise up a good point. While it is a stick, some are not that tough.
>Le Magic or Le Weapon
Frankly the weapon decisions in this fiction story don't jive well with me. I get it's supposed to all work on gameification cartoon edge logic. Effectiveness in physical damage and psychological damage, and reliability, and skill with that weapon. Everything has a logistics chain, but well this isn't about that. Little living world details could have made it much better. (Besides the braindead targets.)
>Goblin Slayer has some excellent worldbuilding.
>Gobos
At least they have a consistent M.O. and there is a reasoning for why they are the way they are.
>inb4 raiders had too much zebra blood in their genepool

>Taintgators
That's horrible, in a humanizing way. It's perfect. I like it.
>"So Jimmeh, whay are they called dat, hunh?"
<"Wellll taintgators lives in sewers mhmmm. Know what a sewer is 'neccted to?"
>"E'erypony knows dat. What 'bout it."
<"They like taint. Can't get enough, mhmmm. They look at a taint and dey know."
>Oh no.
<"Dey know they about to get some taint."
>"What 'bout if yah piss in the bowl."
<"They aint necessarily taintgators den. They might just be faggots. 'Less dey get dat taint mhmmm. Nuttin stands in a way of a taint and a taintgator."
>"Jimmeh, whay do you know so much about taints and gatahs."
<"Taint none, yo business... but"
<"It wasn't easy, but fully watchin' a porno starin' your mum and sister cleared things up."
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285504
285505
>>285502
Kkunt named the radioactivity replacement of his story "Taint" and didn't make a single taint joke about it.
Anonymous
bbcc4f1
?
No.285505
285518
>>285504
>LittlePip's life is the butt of a joke.
>Live in a stable number two, locked up tighter than a chastity belt yet leakier than the plumbing.
>Want Velvet Remedy's velvet remedy.
>Lickity split LittlePip goes licky licky for labia.
>Find out number 2 was just shity, but now she's in taint town.
>Get's enslaved about to analy rekt.
>"It taint today."
>It's so fucked dead cats aren't safe.
>Then find a filly and a zombie and a gang full of raiders about to do what they do best.
>Taintgators, try to taste LittlePip's ponut.
>LittlePip then decides to go to a nearby male heroic statue, and enter his 'manhole'.
>Down to the slick waste hole.

>Kkunt named the radioactivity replacement of his story "Taint" and didn't make a single taint joke about it.
It's a real shame so much potential even so far.
Anonymous
abb50e3
?
No.285517
285521
>>285495
Reminds me of some improvised weapons we made in the Army to pass the time. Had one where we used metal rods for sign posts but put coffee tin cans with cement on either side and let it dry so you had weights to lift. Someone on my reccomendation took one coffee tin and pierced nails to stick out of it and poured the cement mix and placed the rod in it. Wrapped some medical tape on the opposite end and wamoo got yourself a spiked cement mace. Heck I remember one of the first weapons I got in Fallout 1 was a spear. Really wish Kkat took more ques from 1,2, and NV (not sure if that was out by the time Fallout Equestria came out) and less pool ques and other poor improvised weapons from 3.

I never beat 1 but did play most of it and would have been way more interesting to see more nuanced tribes and raider bands rather then the 3 route where it's just mindless mooks who bum rush you and dump their entier aresnal into killing a single pony whenever they aren't raping captives or making gore art on every building they occupy.

Been awhile since I played 1 and outside random encounters I recall a fair few side quests that had you tackle raider gangs and they tended to have a hierarchy established and some sort of system or racket that allowed their continued survival. New Vegas espetially had it where you could talk to these different groups and see how they all interact with one another which made the world feel more believable but also made the overall conflict more of a tragidy seeing these minor groups trying to just survive in their little corner be swept up in the NCR vs Legion war and made it rough to figure out which side to support.

Would have been neat if maybe there were tribes in Fallout Equestria who were zelious followers to an individual Element of Harmony since form what I recall each of the Mane 6 did some monumentally retarded blunder to cause armageddon so could have those stories and animosity be carried on through generations of survivors as the story and ideology grow further warped and distorted as each group tries to deflect the blame off their Element barer onto others and follow the tenant of their Element to a zelious degree. Could have a CMC faction to like a group of traveling monks like the Dominicans who try to help ponies find a way to fulfil their cutie marks and destiny in this bleak wasteland.

Could allow for more nuanced interactions and would fit with the MLP setting more where LittlePip has to examine the benefits of each virtue but try to measure it's followers practicality vs the reality of the wasteland and teach ponies to embrace all the Elements and unite together.

Sort of spit balling ideas and this was a quick shower thought I had pop in my head and while it wouldn't facilitate gore fetish rape raiders being peppered all over it'd make hostile groups she encounters have more motivation and tie into the MLP side of things.

Know it was made in season 1 but could maybe have LittlePip and her party either be candidates for the new Element bearers or help unite ponies so the Tree of Harmony (think that's way too far into the show to have been around or mentioned by the time Fallout Equestria was finished) can act like a GEK almost and begin healing the world and the hearts of Equestria.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285518
rutgtm5b79v21.jpg
>>285505
Aye

And isn't it funny how the author has turned down three perfectly-good Companion Get moments here?
First with the red-herring Cheese Retard, because the author wants to pretend Littlepip doesn't already have Speech 100
then with Watcher who decides he's not going to be Littlepip's new companion because no reason at all. literally no reason. This is never adequately justified. Nothing about Watcher is justified at all, just fucking wait, when we get to that moment with the "big reveals" you'll be even angrier about this than I already am.
anyway
the author said no to giving littlepip a companion a third time with the Raider Captives who sometimes did "reckless and stupidly good things" like trying to free others and sometimes just fled
keep these moments in mind when we see the shit setup for the companions who do join her.

also
fuck kkunt for spending all this time in Twilight Sparkle's Raider-Infested Rape Dungeon
first this little detour is "justified" with "Littlepip is being watched by a sniper on the top floor, so she must kill him before she can escape, also she must get the secret book that's still in this building"
but then
after floors of violence and retarded Tom And Jerry antics interspersed with meaningless edge and harmless videogame explosives and random ghoul saviors desperate to protect le raped filly...
we don't even get to see the final boss fight between Littlepip and the reason she's here: The sniper bastard at the top of the treehouse!
We don't get to see Littlepip defeat the final boss of this starter dungeon, loot the dungeon onscreen at the end, fully inventory and sort her inventory...
We don't even see her get the fucking book Watcher wanted! And then also grab the Wasteland Survival Guide for being there.
We don't even see any justification for why this one book has remained in Twilight's tower for over 200 years! Not like the damn thing was locked away in some secret experimental super-secure safe that actually needs a code given to her by Watcher, instead of relying on the BugthEAsderp Standard(TM) of one random keyhole containing one secret unlock button to press via bobby pin.

sometimes I wonder if scenes like this were meant to piss off smart people in the audience and make them abandon this story early, so only the most autistic content-starved easily-impressed coombrain virgins would continue to read it, and therefore all press about her fic would be positive while everyone turned off by the premise/quality says "I couldn't get past chapter 1/2/the train without quitting" and they get ignored for supposedly "knowing less about the fic" than people who read it all.
Because holy shit, Bethesdabots in the Fallout and Skyrim fandoms will be impressed by ANYTHING if it comes from someone who seems to be liked by the rest of their herds. These NPC fanboy consoomer corporatecuck faggots bought so many Fallout 1st Passes and Fallout Battle Royale Battle Passes that they funded more of Fallout 76's scam development.
There is a documentary called The Fall Of 76 with literal millions of views, and it's about the failings and scams and glitches and mistakes of Fallout 76, and it's incredibly outdated because it's missing shit from later years. And BugthEAsderpbots still bought more tickets for Fraud Howard's wild ride!
They will buy a game for sixty dollars for the Xbox once, and then buy it again for PC, and then buy it again for the Xbox 360 because "This one's the special edition! In this version, the lighting looks a little better and if you open/close doors the shadows change to reflect this! also there are mods now! on console! just immensely limited so you'll buy BethesdaBucks and spend them on Paid Mods".
That herd behaviour reminds me of the faggiest bronies to ever suck cock. If it's popular it's good, if it's old it's good, if it's new it's trash unless it's a type of of familiar porn you enjoyed ten years ago.

While we're on the subject of Lockpicking
Which this fic will feature a lot of, since if you give your protagonist the ability to pick simple locks anyone could pick, it toootally justifies you hiding secret safes full of supplies and guns and vital intel absolutely everywhere so only Littlepip Le Chosen Vault Dweller can save the day with her lockpicking powers and murderhobo prowess amplified by all the guns and ammo she hoards-
You know what? Why fucking bother with lockpicking? Littlepip is a UNICORN, she can reach into the lock mechanism and pry it open or tear it out.
Any Unicorn able to Magic (Transmute?) boxes open would have a HUGE supply advantage over others.

Anyway back to the subject of Lockpicking itself...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSuaUok-wTY&ab_channel=LockPickingLawyer
This is The Lockpicking Lawyer, an excellent youtuber who does shitloads of lockpicking videos. I haven't seen any tutorials from him, just a load of bad locks he's opened easily.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Kxm8I1BXU&ab_channel=LockPickingLawyer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNWSx6v4vxg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwORpq1NR44
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCKw0nWkpfs - This one's kind of got Aryanne's logo for a keyhole!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94z0OJ_-4Lo - This one would be illegal if they didn't fuck it up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sC3mHPrdb0

It's interesting to see how much goes into picking locks, and how little. Someone as skilled as this guy can do it all in seconds, though he's probably taken a few minutes to practice off-camera ahead of time until he can do it in seconds. TV loves showing people fiddle with one bobby pin, two bobby pins, maybe a bobby pin and screwdriver if you're lucky. But this guy has advanced lockpicking tools, he's got this thing you shove into locks and rotate dials on the sides until you can sink it in a stage deeper, eventually hilting to fully unlock the lock, he's got fucksticks to shove into locks and fuck them open, and sometimes he opens locks with dumb bullshit like red bull cans and cleaning spray bottles.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285521
285522
sptb12v9m0h31.png
>>285517
Funny you should say that, the story does extremely stupid things I'm spoiler tagging. AND THESE ARE EXTREME SPOILERS.

FLUTTERSHY DID EVERYTHING WRONG.

Celestia mentally broke when Ziggers aloha snackbar'd a school full of unicorn foals for not accepting zigger rapefugees from nearby pony towns
so Luna took over and promoted the Mane Six to heads of different Ministries so they can handle shit she's not good with
Luna taking over pisses the Ziggers off, who were already warring with Equestria and committing all sorts of war crimes for a never-established reason anyway. FEQ fantards love saying "Equestria must have been evil, genocidal, and imperialistic, and fully deserving of everything Zebras and Fluttershy did, because they think they're better than Zebras and pre-apocalyptic America was like that in Fallout!" because they lack the brainpower necessary to see what's wrong with that statement on their own time.

Applejack ran the Ministry Of Wartime Technology and invented guns and Power Armour BECAUSE THAT'S AN APPLEJACK THING, RIGHT? Twilight helped with the Power Armour. AJ also founded the Steel Rangers, an elite Power Armour-wearing military organization that, after the nukes fell, randomly decided to become the new Brotherhood Of Steel from Fallout.
Even though the Brotherhood Of Steel from Fallout is a post-war thing, ex-soldiers who decided to form their own mythology and culture focused on protecting humanity from dangerous technology and the horrors it can unleash via isolationist elitist tech-hoarding.

Twilight invented Alicornification Goo Vats and laser rifles, and ran the Ministry Of Arcane Science

Rainbow Dash ran the Ministry Of Awesomeness that seemingly did nothing but actually managed the Shadowbolts, the new Wonderbolts and best pegasi on the battlefield. needed to make new wonderbolts since zigger pirates killed them all during "peacetime" for trying to save ponies captured by evil ziggers

Rarity ran the Ministry Of Image that censored pro-zigger art/books (though she'd often send copies of banned books to Twilight for safekeeping), and invented SOUL-COPYPASTING. Author wanted to copy fallout 3's bobbleheads so Rarity copied the souls of herself and her friends, fractured shitloads of soul copies, and infused them into Statuettes of the mane six. So carrying around a Twilight one will make you smarter, carrying an Applejack one will make you stronger, carrying a Pinkie Pie one will make you more agile and carrying a Rainbow Dash one will make you more Perceptive because the author is six niggers in a trenchcoat, and collecting all six will boost your Luck by one because the author said so.

Pinkie Pie invented torture camps for Unpersoning ponies and forcing them into 1984 bullshit to make them "smile more". Pinkie Pie Is Watching You posters were spread everywhere for no reason. She ran the Ministry Of Morale, and it put healthy but sad ponies in mental institutions and drugged them and tortured them for maximum edge.

Fluttershy invented the Ministry Of Peace which printed posters that begged ponies to not want war and "do better" instead, also she invented Megaspells (Nuclear ICBMs that x1000 any spell shoved into them. can also be filled with the dark magic radioactive fire called Balefire ziggers can create via potionshittery. also she gave ICBMs loaded with healing spells to Equestria and Zebrica thinking all wars would end if neither side could kill the other, even though her first test of this theory (firing a healing megaspell at a battlefield defeated Ziggers were fleeing from) FAILED when ziggers turned around and resumed fighting

Spike hibernated during the war, woke up massive post-war, and decided to protect The Gardens Of Equestria. Shove the six Elements Of Harmony in there to fire off a world-healing wave.
Littlepip should make finding the elements her priority but
Cheese Retard is Honesty (and he suicides for no reason),
Derpy Hooves is kindness,
LPs fag shotgun-flier companion is Loyalty
Red Eye the Slaver Cyborg is Generosity because "he's doing this for you" and enslaving you "for muh future" whether you like it or not
Velvet "Take my limited medical supplies for free, bandit who attacked me first!" Remedy is Kindness,
and Littlepip isn't Magic but also has Magic's role as The Spark That Brings Elements Together Via Friendship even though that's what Magic does and she never did that ever.

However, while Big Mac died for nothing trying to save Princess Luna when she got attacked by ziggers during peace talks with ziggers (Ziggers claimed equestria "sent the wrong princess", but this princess was sent because Celestia got mindbroken by Littlehorn Academy getting aloha snackbar'd by ziggers)...

and while Princess Luna is so canonically dead that her corpse's bones were worn as decoration by an evil alicorn commander working for The Goddess, and swiftly abandoned by littlepip like an empty clipazine after she killed the alicorn with Luna's skull...

and while most of the mane six died horribly, got raped to death, killed themselves to avoid their impending raped-to-death fate, or got forced to become a part of The Goddess...

and while Rainbow Dash's fate is completely unknown by the story's end...

Fluttershy and Princess Celestia, the two ponies who did everything wrong or allowed everything to go wrong, got to survive until the story's end, where Littlepip randomly stumbles upon a global-weather-controlling super-machine anypony could have found and turned on first. She plugs herself in and becomes weather-god, clearing the cloud covering to instantly make the world beautiful and Raider-Free again. Littlepip can, at will, unplug herself from the machine to fuck her horrible lesbian cuntfriend, then fuck off back into the machine to pretend this is some combination of the heroic sacrifice and ascendancy to godhood/a higher plane of existence. "There were still Bandits, but no more Raiders", the narration said.


fuck this faggoted story so fucking hard
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285522
DvvULa7WkAEJYbd.jpg
>>285521
hey when Trixie But Evil dragged Twilight into the Alicornification Vats, why didn't Twilight just use her Teleport spell to teleport out of there?
Twilight is outright stated to be the reason why purple Alicorns use Teleportation spells.
just like Trixie is why blue Alicorns turn invisible (That, and the Nightkin in Fallout were blue) and the green ones are thanks to two random OC unicorn twins who "Finish each other's sentences and spells".
That's so fucking retarded. I normally love when characters have multiple bodies and clones and twins, Cerberus from Helltaker is a top-tier waifu, but this is just retarded.

Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285548
285549 285584
1602593770750.png
>>285470

Chapter Four: Perspective

Today's fortune cookie reads:

>“I don’t know why it took an interest in you, but I’d be careful. It’s never helped anyone before.”
Sounds like good advice for anyone being hit on by a trap.

When the chapter opens, Littlepoop is in a completely new situation, and it takes a bit of effort to figure out where to place her. I have no idea how much time is supposed to have passed. The cistern is apparently history, and seems to have only served the purpose of giving her a place to start reading Derpy's survival guide, which doesn't seem all that important in itself. The guide provides the only meaningful connection to the events of the previous chapter: apparently, LP followed some advice in the book, and through some wacky chain of events wound up in "a maze full of ponicidal robots and automated turrets, fleeing until I managed to back myself into a corner here in an office box high above the factory floor." My, but doesn't that sound like a pickle.

The only clue we have to her whereabouts is this:

>my first thought when I came across the ruins of Ironshod Firearms was to take a peek inside and see if there was any technology I could make work for me.
Unfortunately, since this location has not been mentioned anywhere else in the text, it doesn't give us much of a reference point.

Well, whatever; let's just roll with it.

>Below, three of those robots were rolling about, looking for me. They were tracked things, built to somewhat resemble ponies, with clear domed heads that housed real brains.
I'm not 100% sure what the author means by "tracked things," but otherwise this is a decent enough description. It's concise, and it gives you a clear image of what you're supposed to be imagining.

>A much deeper, authoritative voice boomed across the room. “Surrender in the name of the Ministry of Technology, zebra scum!”
This seems to give us our first real glimpse into the backstory of Edgequestria. From what I've pieced together from Nigel's various ramblings and other things I've heard about this story, the apocalyptic event in was basically an all-out war between various factions, one of which was some kind of Luna-worshipping Zebra cult. So, I guess we'll learn more about this as the story progresses.

>I cringed behind a line of metal filing cabinets as the room filled with a rush of flame!
>Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the other type of guard robot I’d crossed paths with in here.
It's not clear what the author means by "the same could not be said." What I think he's referring to is this:

>Fortunately, the railing on the catwalks leading up to this office were too narrow for the brain-bots to get up here.
This line refers to the robots that were described earlier, the ones with glass domes and organic brains in their heads. Then, a voice booms out that line about surrendering in the name of technology, then Littlepoop hides behind a bunch of file cabinets because the room suddenly fills with flame, then she remarks that the same cannot be said for the other type of guard robot.

What I think she's saying is that the one type of robot can't reach her position, but unfortunately the same can't be said of a second type, which incidentally is some kind of big metal spider presumably Artemis Clyde Frog will need to save Salma Hayek from it at some point. This is an awkward way of explaining all of this; too many things happen between the description of the first kind of robot and the mention of the second, so that "the same could not be said for the other type of guard robot" becomes an ambiguous reference. It's clear enough that Littlepoop is dealing with two distinct types of guard robots, but it's unclear what "the same" refers to. In this context, it could potentially refer to a voice booming, the act of cringing behind a row of cabinets, or a room filling with flame. Since none of these interpretations make a ton of sense, we eventually arrive at the author's probable meaning through a process of elimination; generally though you don't want the reader to have to guess at what you're talking about.

Anyway, while we sit around pondering the author's questionable grammar, Littlepoop is attacked by some sort of terrifying aerial killbot. She dispatches it rather easily with a grenade, but the explosion damages the catwalk outside, which effectively traps her inside the office. She decides that the best solution is to levitate herself it's magic; I ain't gotta explain shit, t. kkat and carry herself to the opposite side of the room. She is able to land on the unburnt side of the catwalk, which holds her weight for now. However, the brain-bots begin firing at her, which dislodges a lamp and puts more strain on the already damaged catwalk, causing part of it to finally tear away and fall to the floor.

>Oh fuck me with Celestia’s forehooves!
>I’ll admit, my repertoire of colorful descriptions had grown more profane from my experience with the raiders
I feel like I was warned about some of the "vulgarity" in this text this specific line even sounds familiar, but honestly nothing can prepare you for the experience of actually reading a line like this, and realizing that a human being actually wrote it.

I feel like the "creative" profanity in this story is similar to the splatter-porn aspect of it: it's mostly just the author flexing his edge-muscles and trying to push the "it's pastel ponyland but it's all dark and violent and stuff" concept to the extreme. Personally, I think it would have been funnier to make the ponies "swear" by using a lot of grade-school peepee-poopoo language, but treat it as if it were graphically obscene and have other characters react appropriately. However, this would require a level of self-parody that I don't think this author is capable of.

Trey Parker once commented that Michael Bay makes comedies, he just doesn't realize it. That is roughly how I feel about Fallout Equestria so far.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285549
285550
sample_e0d4bb2179ff775a3fc3cdb60f2acf9df420bee2.jpg
>>285548

Anyway, as much as I've been dumping on this story, and as much as it mostly deserves to be dumped on, there's some stuff in here that isn't too bad. This line caught my eye:

>“Don’t run! We want to be your friend!”
This line is apparently spoken by one of the robots, with the implication being that these things were created by taking the brains out of living ponies and implanting them into machines. There also seems to be an implication that the ponies retained their original personalities after this happened, but that their personalities were subverted by programming in order to make them slavishly perform a function. Over the centuries, these things slowly went mad and now their actions are driven by some distorted interpretation of whatever function the robots were created to perform (apparently guarding this factory), filtered through whatever remains of their original organic personalities (ponies and friendship and so forth). The end result is this creepy, pitiful thing that is prowling around, simultaneously trying to befriend and kill anypony unfortunate enough to wander in here.

As an element for a sci-fi story, this is actually not bad. The author has put more thought into the backstory of these generic killbots than he put into his protagonist. They are also a far more interesting enemy than any of the stereotypically sadistic goons we've thus far encountered.

Anyway, the rest of this is mostly Littlepoop's daring escape from the factory. It doesn't really merit a play by play, but I'll note that it's actually rather decently written. It's the first action scene in this story that kept me legitimately engaged in the way it was supposed to. The main problem I have with this scene is that it's rather disconnected from the story we've been reading so far: we have no real idea why LP is in this factory, where the factory is, how she got here, or any other pertinent information that might help us understand what happened between the end of the previous chapter and now.

A story is usually told through a series of interconnected scenes that center around important events. Unimportant events are usually skipped; for example if a story is about a character who gets up and goes to work, we probably won't have a scene where he sits in traffic for half an hour on the way there. We would have a scene where he's waking up in his apartment, and the next scene would be him at work; we assume that he traveled there somehow, but the details are boring and don't matter like black lives, so we leave them out of the narrative. The flip side of this format, though, is that it trains us to view the scenes that we are witnessing as significant, so if we see an event happening we assume it must be important somehow; thus it's disconcerting if it doesn't appear to be. This scene, though decently executed for once, doesn't have any apparent connection to previous events, and it wasn't set up in any way; the character is in one place at the end of the previous chapter, and then all of a sudden she's here. We don't know what this factory is or why LP is in here. If it's just some random factory she decided to explore in order to hunt for supplies, it still raises the question of why the author considered this incident important enough to actually write about in detail.

Well anyway, the long and short of it is that she makes it to the door, and kicks the catwalk down into the factory, which serves the dual purpose of preventing the bots from following her and killing one of them:

>Then, with a strong kick of my forehooves, I knocked the last of the catwalk loose. It fell, scraping down the wall, until it smashed through the robot’s brain-case, pulping the organ inside and continuing down, ripping the machine roughly in half.
Mon dieu, le edge! Seriously though; whether he intended to or not, the author actually did a decent job of humanizing poninizing, whatever this particular enemy. Of all the characters who have died in this story so far and we have so much more to go!, this is the only one I actually felt a little sorry for. At least it's out of its misery, I suppose.

>I must admit that I found the crunch immensely satisfying.
I feel the same way about the great taste of Reese's Peanut Butter Puffs™.

Anyway, page break. Littlepoop finds herself in an office of some kind, that is much more tastefully decorated than the other parts of the factory she's explored. There's a sign on the wall that reads thusly:

>IRONSHOD FIREARMS

>How do you like them apples?
Not much, kkat. So far, your apples don't impress me.

>The office held a terminal I could hack, a wall safe I could pick, and a personal elevator that, if it worked, would get me safely to the first floor and out of this deathtrap.
This is another of those areas where something that works in a video game doesn't translate well into literature. Games tend to involve a lot of repetitive action, like a character using the same "hack" ability over and over on instances of the same type of terminal that they find in different locations, in order to get little bonuses or snippets of information. However, while someone playing a game can accept this level of repetition, it's tedious to read about someone else doing it. Generally, in a story, having a character doing things like cracking safes or hacking terminals is only interesting if it poses some sort of challenge for them; if they can do it instantly and have done it hundreds of times, we don't care.

>Then my eyes fell on something unique. Mounted on the opposite wall was a glass case. And in the case was a beautiful and perfectly preserved revolver.
Oh boy, she found another gun. What is this, her fiftieth one? Her sixtieth? Again, what works in a video game does not necessarily make for good storytelling. Nobody wants to read about Littlepoop systematically exploring rooms and picking up whatever random shit she finds. Get to the damn point.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285550
285552
KatamariDamacybox.jpg
>>285549

The next few paragraphs just itemize all the junk she finds while looting the room, which I'm not going to bother going over. Of slightly more interest is the terminal, which she of course attempts to "hack." The encryption or whatever she encounters is more robust than what she's dealt with in the past, but it's nothing that can't be fixed by throwing a couple of techno-buzzwords at it.

The contents of the terminal itself don't seem to matter, but it apparently contains a program that can remotely open the safe and the display case with the fancy new revolver. She bemoans that had she cracked the terminal first she wouldn't have had to waste a bobby pin cracking the safe. I'm not really sure what she's complaining about since as far as I can tell she is carrying thousands of the bloody things. silly pony why do you have so many bobby pins? you do not need bobby pins you are a pony.. Also, I guess I've never actually tried to pick a lock with a bobby pin before, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like they ought to be sturdy enough to get at least a few uses from each one before it gets so bent or damaged that it needs to be thrown away. Just because it's a one-use-only object in the game doesn't mean that's how it would work in real life.

Anyway, she uses the terminal to open the revolver case, and it plays an automated recording:

>“Cousin Braeburn, Ah know we ain’t talked in some time, but the war effort’s takin’ a twist for the scary, and Ah might not have a chance t’ see ya again. Ah want t’ mend fences. Now, Ah ain’t gonna muck this up with words. We all know how well that went last time. Instead, Ah’m sendin’ ya Lil’ Macintosh as a gift and as an apology. T’show you I’m sincere. Keep ‘im safe for me, will ya?”
Clearly this is from one of the Apples. It's unclear which one exactly, but apparently s/he has a fence that needs fixing, and may possibly be distributing foals as slaves.

>Two hundred years ago, some pony had given this gun as a token of apology and as an effort to reconnect with family. And that some pony’s cousin had done just as she asked, preserving the weapon for generations after his own death.
So apparently I misunderstood the message. I assumed "Lil' Macintosh" was the name of a pony, probably Big Macintosh's son or something. Apparently it's the name of the gun, which makes a little more sense in context.

>I wasn’t going to leave it there, untouched by anypony until the building collapsed on it. But when I took it, I removed it respectfully.
Hey, whatever helps you sleep at night, bitch. "This gun is clearly a treasured heirloom that I have no right to, and I already have like 700 guns, but I don't want to just leave it here where it has apparently sat untouched for 200 years because there's a chance the building might fall on it eventually, but really I'm just going to take it because I pretty much steal anything that isn't nailed down. But I'm stealing it respectfully, so it's ok."

Anyway, she finds some more odds and ends, some ammo for the revolver and some other crap. She bundles it all up into what is probably now a gigantic ball of random bric a brac that is constantly floating over her head. This tale is starting to resemble Katamari Damacy more than Fallout at this point yes, I too can reference video games. She then attempts to use the elevator, but it turns out it's broken. However, as luck would have it, fixing elevators is also something she can do because why the hell not, so she fixes the elevator and then leaves that way. Apparently all it needed was a change of battery, and there was another battery in the safe. The scene ends with a page break.

>I trotted between the collapsed buildings that littered the area around Ironshod Firearms, not having any particular direction to go. Aimless.
Pretty much par for the course at this point. We're about four chapters into this thing and almost nothing has happened in terms of building a larger story; it's just been a long chain of apparently unrelated events. Since this text is half a million words long, I've been assuming the author is just pacing himself, but by now we should at least have some inkling of what the book will ultimately be about. If this whole thing is nothing but some faggot's boring OC wandering around Edgequestria for a half-million words, picking up random junk and fighting the same pointless battles over and over, I'm going to be even more pissed off at this author than usual.

Frankly I'm surprised she hasn't started meeting other characters and forming a party yet. It's a fairly conventional thing to do in both adventure stories and RPGs. I had been pretty certain that she and Monterey Jack were going to end up becoming partners after the slaver incident, but that never happened. I had also thought that the business with Frank aka "Watcher" might go somewhere too; either he'd end up as a friend or an adversary or something in-between, but we haven't heard anything more from him either. Again, the author might just be pacing himself while slowly building up to something, but one way or the other Littlepoop pretty desperately needs to find some friends. Not because I am particularly worried about her safety or emotional well-being, but mostly because she is such a goddamn boring character that I can't imagine her carrying this whole story by herself for too much longer.

Anyway:

>My ears perked at the sound of overwrought, triumphant music. I watched as a sprite-bot fluttered down a cross street. Running up to it, I drew myself around in front of it. “Watcher?”
Could this be it? Is the plot finally beginning to thicken somewhat?

>The music just kept playing. I waved a hoof right in front of its lack of face. It danced around me and kept going.
>Well, that was helpful.
In the immortal words of Big Macintosh, probably spoken during his heroic speech at the Great Battle of Something-Something-Whatever: "Nope."
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285552
285778
1602510705368.gif
>>285550

>I picked a random direction and started trotting again. I thought of Watcher’s advice. Armor, check. Weapon, double-check. Guidance? I looked back at the Ironshod building. A bit iffy, but check. Friends?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3_MhrAVQTA
Anyway, at least the protagonist is thinking in the same direction that I am; that's always a good sign. I guess we'll just have to see where this goes.

She wanders around some more and finds herself in a ruined playground. There's nothing of any particular note here except some more edge: apparently there were some foals playing in the playground when the nuclear explosion went off (I guess), so now their skeletons are lying by the merry go round. Cue sad music. After this apparently meaningless find, she realizes she's thirsty, so she goes to a fucking vending machine and buys a fucking soda. Yes, this autism is actually in the text.

>The Sparkle~Cola was luke-warm, but actually rather delicious, with a delightfully carroty aftertaste. The clicking of my PipBuck warned me that I was ingesting trace amounts of radiation with each swallow, but not enough to be harmful. I’d taken more harm standing around at Sweet Apple Acres. And besides, if it reached a point where my radiation intake began making me sick, I had a couple RadAway potions -- the only supplies from the Ironshod medical box that I hadn’t needed to use just to survive the building.
At this point, we've heard quite a bit about radiation, as well as some brief mention of kkat's Taint, but we have had absolutely no explanation of what the fuck any of this is. At least some cursory explanation is probably in order by now; so far all we know is that there was some kind of war, a bunch of shit blew up somehow, and the world is now polluted by some kind of mysterious "taint" that is being simultaneously treated as both radiation and some kind of dark magical aura. I'm not even sure how much we are supposed to assume that LP knows about this shit. She mentioned attending school at one point I think, and the Stables seem to be the closest thing to civilization that still exists, so she might have some kind of general survey of history under her belt, but usually knowledge of the past is a little spotty in these stories. In any event, she seems to mostly just accept all of this without any hint of natural curiosity like I keep saying, she boring af, and seems to fluctuate from being weirdly knowledgeable or weirdly ignorant of various phenomena in her world, depending on what the author needs for a particular scene.

Anyway, once she finishes her goddamn soda she goes to a goddamn bench to sit down, and she notices a goddamn poster with goddamn Pinkie Pie on it, except she's like goddamn grandma aged now, and also she is a goddamn fascist dictator or some other kind of goddamn shit. The captions on the poster read "Pinkie Pie is watching you forever" and "A happy reminder from the Ministry of Morale." Well goddamn.

Then, just when this couldn't get any goddamn stupider, here's goddamn Frank again.

>“What’s the Ministry of Morale?”

>Watcher’s voice erupted from over my shoulder, making me jump high enough my horn whacked the ceiling. “Another well-meaning idea that was so much better on scroll.”

Goddamn jests and other goddamns aside, I'm actually willing to give the author some credit here. He actually foreshadowed Frank's reappearance quite nicely with the earlier sprite-bot. Also, it does seem like both the author and his protagonist have realized that the story is beginning to meander at around the same time I did, so maybe it's going somewhere after all.

>I gasped, willing my heart to beat regularly again, and felt a fleeting empathy with Sawed-Off.
Literally who? We've seen so many generic bad-guys come and go you can't expect us to remember them all by name. Not only is this bringing up a fairly minor character who hasn't been mentioned by name in a long while, it also isn't immediately clear what LP feels a fleeting empathy with him about, exactly.

I'm assuming what he's referencing here is the earlier scene outside Ponyville, where Sawed-Off fired the gun the first time the sprite-bot appeared. This was a fairly minor event, one that isn't really memorable enough that the reader would just automatically remember it. I'd probably write it like this:
>I gasped. Suddenly I recalled an image of Sawed-Off, my old captor, firing shotgun blasts at the bot as it drifted casually away through the trees. For a brief moment, I empathized with him.
Or something.

>“Oh. Sorry.” I gave the flying orb a glare.
These two sentences should each be on their own line. From context I assume that Frank is the one apologizing here, but the way it's written implies that the line is spoken by Littlepoop.

>I could probably go up to any Stable pony and go “I am evil, bad, nightmare pony. Arrrr!” and, even despite my size, they would take one look and flee.
"Grr! I'm a mean little pony!" t. edgelord author's edgelord OC

My attempts to parody this thing barely count as parody anymore.

Anyway, Frank's second appearance is a lot like his first appearance. He basically just floats up out of nowhere and starts dispensing unsolicited advice. He doesn't name them as such, but he directly references the original Elements of Harmony, and tells her that she should seek her own Element, or "dominant virtue" as he puts it. It's clear enough that Frank has some sort of agenda here and is trying to manipulate LP into doing something, though I have no idea what he wants her to do or for what purpose. For that matter, I still don't know why he sent her into the library the first time around. Anyway, after delivering his message, the sprite-bot starts playing music again and floats away.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285584
285587 285608
static-assets-upload3902435970866004330.jpg
>>285548
>“I don’t know why it took an interest in you, but I’d be careful. It’s never helped anyone before.”
WHAT
WHAT IS THE NARRATION TALKING ABOUT
WHY IS THE AUTHOR SO FAGGOTORIALLY ENAMOURED WITH PUTTING EMPTY WORDS AT THE START OF EACH CHAPTER?!
>timeskips
God, the author is a faggot. This story's over a million words long and he's skipping early-game "Hero plotlessly enters enemy-filled dungeons, gets in over her head, escapes and typically escapes with some loot, finds more dungeons, kills enemies, gets loot" shite because he wants to skip to the mid-game "Hero is better-equipped, has more friends, and enters more enemy-filled dungeons with bigger enemies for looting and shooting" shite.
But then he talks about the robot-fighting anyway! If this is happening during a flashback, then there is no tension here. If not, then what was the point of the timeskip?
We're supposed to be seeing this familiar world through fresh eyes and experiencing it for the first time with this fish-out-of-water protagonist. Timeskips over adventure-filled moments in a trashy adventure novel destroy that!

>tracked things
Author's trying to be pretentiously "The character does not know what these are called"ish about the Tank Shit at the bottom of Robobrains from Fallout 3 and most tanks. You know, the thick round shit that loops around a tank's wheels so it can drive over terrain better.

>a war between various factions
I fucking wish, it would make the story better if that was the case, and there were bad "Kill em all and take their coal!" factions and "Those poor helpless zebra darlings could surely be turned good if they were made into our pets! It's our burden to civilize these animals like we train our puppies!" factions on Team Pony and actually-not-cancerous Zebras.
Only Equestria had any semblance of shared power, via the "one alicorn and many ministries" system. Zebrica was a tribalist shithole ruled entirely by one cunt.

All of Zebrica was dominated by "A Caesar" before the war, and all these niggers acted roman and dressed in absurdly anachronistic centurion-meets-witch-doctor-shit except when they were wearing invisibility cloaks. This was a cartoonishly shit regime that aided and abetted the somali pirates who kidnapped and ransomed ponies and killed the Wonderbolts, sent soldiers with super-magic-nuclear portable WMD "Pink Cloud Bombs" into Equestria to guard Zigger rapefugees, and this entire race's arrogance and religious loathing of the night sky, stars, and Luna herself forced them to believe that once Luna took the throne as a result of their actions, it was the end times and their pre-existing irrational "holy war against ponies" now had religious backing. So they fired nukes to bomb all of Equestria as soon as a certain cunt gave them healing megaspell nukes, which they perverted and filled with nuclear magic-fire.

If you're wondering where the random "Roaman" shit came from and why these Wakandans wear it like some dumb thot wears a metallica t-shirt despite only ever listening to Three Days Gays and Buttfucking Benjamin, it's because over 200 years after the great nuclear war one travelling doctor and tribal dialect translator and his soon-to-be-burned butt-buddy got kidnapped by one tribe "playing at war" with another. Edward Sallow taught these tards how to do "Total War" properly and formed Caesar's Legion, calling himself Caesar to sound cooler. Through their love of sabotage and trickery and rape-kill-burn tactics they conquered over 80 tribes south of the Colorado before warring with the New California Republic over Mr House's Hoover Dam in the Mojave during the events of Fallout New Vegas.

Yes, you fucking heard me correctly.

This author took the anti-technologist traditionalist misoginist cartoon-fascist child-suicide-soldier-using spear-chucking spy-using sabotage-loving fanatically-religious Rape-Kill-Burn Barbarian Horde BADDIES from Fallout NV, a game that takes place 200 years after fallout's imperialist america vs commie china war, and simply copypasted their name and iconography onto ziggers from before the equestria vs zigger war.
That is the level of understanding the author has for Fallout elements.

>levitating herself
I bet if I calculated the weight of an IRL pony and compared it to how many psychic pounds of sustained force per square inch she needed to exert to lift boxcars, I'd end up with a number like "She could perpetually push herself with six gorrillion pounds of force resulting in mach 386 speeds or 2.4 times the speed of light".

>grenade damages the catwalk
Oh, NOW explosions damage the scenery? After all those landmines blew up in Twilight's tree-library without any ill effect beyond perhaps some comically cartoonish black scorch marks on the ground? Gee, I guess that catwalk must have been programmed to be a Destructible Object, like how you can destroy wooden crates in video games but wooden doors fences and doors are usually invincible.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285585
285587 285608
a1X3WK8_700b.jpg


>writer blames the raiders for Littlepip's profanity
Good, the author felt embarassed over this godawful "character trait" years after writing it, but knew he couldn't change it without upsetting fans conditioned to love it, so he tried blaming it on characters who swear way less than LP.
"Celestia, fuck me" isn't even that bad, you can imagine a human saying "Fuck me, Jesus!" somewhere in the world, but "Celestia fuck me with her forehooves"?
It's like "Jesus, fuck me with his hands". Too specific, and not vulgar enough.
This trend continues with lines like "Luna, clop me with her hooves".
It's like a child trying to string together swears and invent new ones based on his incomplete knowledge of which cruddy crappy cusses really are that fucking shitty and which are fudging bitching.
Fuck, writing that gave me cancer.
With fictional swears and fictional slang, the rule is: Either keep it alien yet understandable by retaining as many familiar english letters and sounds as possible
>"Don't give me that shtaco, you fregging smeghead!"
>"Oi, Prey-Chaser! Bunny meat makes your Plungus soft!"
Or jump straight to parody
>"Ye nah one'o'dem skunt, are ya? Na meen?"
>"This shitload of fuck is giving my ass gay AIDS! I'd rather chug seven gallons of donkey cum than read more of this!"
or writing a character who tries for it and fucks up under pressure
>"Fucking... shitting... shitting fuck... BALLS!"
Speaking of bad writing, remember when that flying wingless Ghoul Littlepip saved decided to save others and do more good than Monterry Jack did? Remember that for later.

>“Don’t run! We want to be your friend!”
I know this sounds like some "Friendship and good intentions but perverted and tragic! FriendBot(TM) The MurderMachine just wants to hug organics, why do they squish and pop?" shit that would be perfect for a post-apocalyptic Equestria written by a competent writer(Just imagine Pinkie Pie designing a line of Baymax-style robots that, after 200 years of disrepair, accidentally kill people they want to hug and they'll pursue anyone they detect to the ends of the earth because they're programmed to hug anyone who needs a hug), but...
I don't want to break your heart by telling you this concept and design and even the robobrain dialogue is entirely copypasted straight from Fallout. https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Robobrain
Kkunt didn't even give the robobrains a MLP-themed coat of paint with stars and swirls and rainbows and shit.

This scene is annoyingly pointless. Imagine if this was a stage in a plan given to her by Watcher! A lot of people shill active protagonists who make their own choices, but an active protagonist who chooses to fulfill her missions is still above this random-events-plot protagonist with no idea what she is doing!
>"First you need to get three books from a secret safe in Twilight's library: A Beginner's Guide To Magic For Future Experts by Twilight Sparkle, The Wasteland Survival Guide by Derpy Hooves, and this one really cursed book of black magic, you'll know it when you see it, it's chained down to a wooden stand with Cold Iron so it can be read, but not removed. Remove it, keep it, you'll need it. Second, break into this malfunctioning robot factory, get underground, and take the experimental Spritebot LaserCannon and SpriteBot Energy Shield Packs they were working on. Once you have it, I'll tell you how to upgrade this SpriteBot unit with the cannon and shield packs so I can be more helpful during firefights. Stage Three, there's a Power Armour garage where Sweet Apple Acres used to be, I'll open its basement for you so you can grab the Power Armour. Once we're both properly equipped for venturing into more dangerous areas of the Wasteland with actual villains who need taking down, I'll tell you the next stages of my master plan that I swear totally doesn't end with me conquering Equestria in the power vacuum you created!"
then again this would make Watcher an actual good character and "Your videogame helper Navi-type character betrays you" would make an excellent twist.

>katamari damacy
ironically a big ball of random scrap crushed together would make a pretty great Wasteland weapon. Where is the Junker Tribe raiding scrapheaps for metal to make their Scrap Balls bigger? Where are the Unicorns throwing these balls via telekinesis and the Pegasi making tornadoes to manipulate giant scrap balls and the Earth Ponies pushing these by hand or trotting atop these like log-runners?
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285587
285608
yg2tkr4e9elz.jpg
>>285585
>>285584

>Macintosh's son
I wish he had a son.
Every important FIM character died childless aboveground before the apocalypse except for two. In addition, one survived and got away with doing everything wrong, and RD's fate was forgotten about also Derpy wrote that wasteland book. It's a shame because "The son of Twilight Sparkle" would make an excellent protagonist candidate. A strong man trying to conquer this harsh world while retaining the lessons taught to him by his mother, even though soft pre-war ways allowed Equestria to fall, even though his goal is to bring back soft pre-war Equestria days... That would be fucking fantastic.

>pseudomoralizing to herself/the audience
lmao I'd forgotten how much this cunty murderhobo does that, and she does NOT treat this gun respectfully

>fixing elevators easily
Sure in video games fixing random broken radios and control panels and robots is accomplished instantly via skill check, but in a book this shit should take longer.
Would those scenes of Iron Man in Iron Man 1 (The only good MCU film) be as satisfying if the suit was built instantly?
Would they be satisfying if they were at this level of "They only needed a new battery and fortunately one was nearby" convenience?
her job is "fixing pipbucks" but her cutie mark directly is a pipbuck, a tool that can do many things and therefore mean many things and not just in the symbolic "A hammer can build or destroy" sense, a pipbuck has too many options and no one specific purpose. You could say a SmartPhone Cutie Mark means communication even though smartphones have fucktons of apps, but all a pipbuck truly represents is Fallout in the way a t-shirt with the Vault-Boy mascot on it does. The only thing the pipbuck can't do is phone people, cast spells for the user, torrent books from the Digimon-inspired data dimension via magic, and command and control other pipbuck users, which are things Sunrise Stardust's pipbuck could do in that FE fic I wrote until realizing it's shit and so is FE.

>working vending machine
SMASH IT WITH A FUCKING HAMMER AND STEAL THE CASH AND REPURPOSE THE MACHINE INTO MATERIALS or pull everything from it then magically rewind it back in time and extract more soda and repeat for an infinite supply of cold drinks!

>foal skeletons
Man, it sure is crazy that these foal skeletons were around for 200 years without anyone moving them, burying them, or using them as materials in potions/bone armour.

>unironically drinking irradiated soda
It's supposed to be witty capitalism satire when Artificial Preservative-filled 200-year-old boxes of potato chips are both perfectly edible and the main sustenance of raiders killing each other over somehow-still-edible ice cream in somehow-still-standing megamalls. At least that's the excuse. Initially, pre-war food gave you 1-3 points of radiation damage (1000 kills you) because it's survived 200 years of radiation. but then Nuka-Cola Quantum actually advertised "With more radiation in every gulp! Glows in the dark! Atomic!" because bethesda can't satirize capitalism or write in general.

Capitalism is the easiest thing in the world to satirize, because what we call capitalism in America isn't really capitalism. Corrupt politicians sell political power to the highest bidders, and loophole-filled red tape exclusively applies to the small businesses it strangles and fines for trying to compete with the higher classes and threaten their bottom line. It's easy to mock the pseudo-religious fervor of desperate godless atheists who seek to fill the void left by a lack of tradition and cultural identity with brand identities and neo-religious corporate idolatry. Faggoted consoomers reject the innovation and organically controlled chaos and beautifully bloody competition of the free market by obeying the new traditions drilled into them by advertising campaigns and social pressure: Purchasing big corporate products because everyone else is buying them. Normalfag NPCs define themselves solely by the media they consoom and the characters they love and identify with and might even consider imitating/"Kinning". That weird FNAF-loving boy in the corner claiming to be Sans Undertale on the inside puts that act on because chicks dig Sans and he thinks chicks will dig him if he tries to act more like Sans, in the same way that Boomers in overly expensive leather jackets would desperately try to imitate the motorcycle guy from Happy Days. That weird teenaged girl in the corner who claims to be the moon, a man, several greek and roman goddesses at once while never ceasing her incessant loudmouthed attempts to look like the biggest and most insane Kpop fangirl of all time is like that because she wants attention and the admiration and support of her equally deranged and equally selfish peers who will only ever give her respect and admiration if it becomes socially advantageous for them to be seen doing so. Our modern world is a clusterfuck and it gets easier to satirize it every year...
It is so easy to satirize what the feminized and atomized modern man is willing to settle for when he thinks of capitalism and the American Dream in general, that even the communists know all they have to do to make capitalism look bad is claim that it can never get any better than this.

The most horrifying thought left to modern man is the dread-filled fear that it might never get any better than this.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
93fbbf8
?
No.285608
285624
>>285584
>Author's trying to be pretentiously "The character does not know what these are called"ish about the Tank Shit at the bottom of Robobrains from Fallout 3 and most tanks. You know, the thick round shit that loops around a tank's wheels so it can drive over terrain better.
That clears it up then.

When a word has multiple meanings it's a bad idea to use it in an ambiguous context like this. Honestly tank treads didn't even cross my mind when I was trying to figure out what the author meant by this; the closest I got was wondering if the robots were supposed to be on train tracks or something. Since LP's PipBuck has a radar system that tracks enemy positions, and it factors pretty heavily into the combat in this story, my conclusion was that he meant "tracked" in that context. It still wouldn't make much sense though, because we so far haven't run into any enemies that are capable of jamming her radar or cloaking themselves, so by default we would assume it could track them.

>All of Zebrica was dominated by "A Caesar" before the war, and all these niggers acted roman and dressed in absurdly anachronistic centurion-meets-witch-doctor-shit except when they were wearing invisibility cloaks
We wuz Romans an sheeit.

>Oh, NOW explosions damage the scenery? After all those landmines blew up in Twilight's tree-library without any ill effect beyond perhaps some comically cartoonish black scorch marks on the ground? Gee, I guess that catwalk must have been programmed to be a Destructible Object, like how you can destroy wooden crates in video games but wooden doors fences and doors are usually invincible.
One thing I've noticed about this guy is that his head is way too deep in the video game aspect of this. In a game it's mostly too complicated to make everything in the environment behave the way it would in the real world, because the computer would have to calculate physics for all the internal components of a wall, which structures are load bearing, etc. Creating a 100% realistic physics simulation for every effect that an exploding grenade would have on its environment would be a project in itself, and scaling that up to an entire game world is not practical. Players generally get this, so they understand that most of the environment is made of static meshes, and only certain objects are actually affected by the game's physics. For something like a catwalk, it could either be a static part of the background or a breakable object; if the script calls for a catwalk to get blown up at some point then it's physics-sensitive, otherwise it's just a static part of the background.

Again, for a game, this is fine; players understand that the medium has technical constraints so they overlook some things even if they aren't completely realistic. However, it doesn't work for a story, because you're working entirely in the realm of the imagination so there are no technical constraints whatsoever. Therefore, when adapting a game environment to a written story, it's better to take the world that the game is suggesting and render it as it would appear in reality, rather than writing events the way they would literally happen in the game. Kkat doesn't seem to have grasped this concept.

>>285585
>I don't want to break your heart by telling you this concept and design and even the robobrain dialogue is entirely copypasted straight from Fallout.
If anything it puts my mind at ease. It's a little disconcerting to find something surprisingly well-constructed in an otherwise poorly-constructed text. Finding out it was just plagiarized from something written by someone competent makes a lot more sense than kkat having been randomly visited by a muse for a few sentences and then immediately going back to being a dungus for the rest of the book.

>>285587
>Nuka-Cola Quantum actually advertised "With more radiation in every gulp! Glows in the dark! Atomic!" because bethesda can't satirize capitalism or write in general.
That actually sounds more like they're poking fun at the game itself. However I basically agree that it's going a little too far outside the realm of plausibility for a dumb joke.

>>285487
>Gaykat, man, this isn't rocket surgery.
You're right, I'm probably overthinking it. But I still feel like I need to come up with a zingier one. "Gaykat" just informs us that he's gay, which we already know. What I need is a name that really drives the point home; something that screams to the reader that this man quite literally bathes in cum.
Anonymous
5b282f4
?
No.285615
285617 285622 285875
Without spoiling anything on the story looking at you Nigel, let Glim Glam get to things in the story before spoiling them I can say the following:

1. The large amount of spelling and grammatical errors comes from Kkat's ridiculous notion to cease all editing and proofreading of the fic after its completion, to "preserve Fallout Equestria for the future". This doesn't apply to printed copies, which have gone through additional proofreading and have numerous errors corrected. Thankfully, like most things in this story, it gets better as it goes on as Kkat gets more writting experience under their belt.

2. The same can be said about the story itself. I do remember the early part of the story is an absolute slog to get through, and it takes a few chapters before it start to pick up a little. As a matter of fact, one of the most important moments in the story is coming up (but I'll let you find out what it is on your own ^:) ).

4. Finally, Littlepip will become a better, self-realized character as the story goes on, and will stop being so much like a blank slate for the reader. She will make choices, she will make mistakes, she will get hurt, she will lick the puss-puss, she will have introspection, and she will have conflict. I wouldn't say she becomes the "most bestest character evar!!1!", but she does actually become a character. Sadly, le edge does not get better as the story goes on.

INB4: there's no number 3
Anonymous
47466b4
?
No.285617
285630
>>285615
>cease all editing and proofreading of the fic after its completion, to "preserve Fallout Equestria for the future".
What a pretentious nigger
Anonymous
1883b74
?
No.285622
>>285615
>INB4: there's no number 3
Something Gabe Newell something something.
Anonymous
1883b74
?
No.285624
285631 285875
>>285608
>What I need is a name that really drives the point home; something that screams to the reader that this man quite literally bathes in cum.
All right let's see what I can do for you. Do any of these catch your eye?
>K "Pray the Gay to Stay" Kat
>K "Katgirl (Male)" Kat
>K "Cummies in My Tummies" Kat
>K "Veteran of the Buttsex Wars" Kat
>K "Kum for the Kum God" Kat
>K "I Quite Literally Bathe in Cum" Kat
>K "I Go in the Back Door or I Don't Come to the Party" Kat
>K "Railed By Males With Rusty Nails" Kat
>K "Anal Pro(lapse)" Kat
>K "Faps to Cocks With Crusty Socks" Kat
>K "I Am the Author of Fallout Equestria" Kat
>K "Bust My O-Ring With Massive Dong Ding" Kat
>K "The Neighbors' Cat Makes My Cock Fat" Kat
>K "Pound My Ass With a Three Foot Bass" Kat
>K "Beat My Meat to Those Sweet Man Feet" Kat
>K "The Man With the Plan to Get Boys in His Van" Kat
>K "Glimmer is Best Pony" Kat
>K "Fill My Hole With Ten Foot Poles" Kat
>K "The Kum Kocktail Konnoisseur" Kat
>K "Poz Swap Pit Stop" Kat
>K "Bust My Cock With Ten Pound Rocks" Kat
>K "Nigel's Favorite Author" Kat
Anonymous
5b282f4
?
No.285630
>>285617
Tell me about it. I remember when he made a blog post announcement about his decision on Fimfiction and everyone called him a pretentious nigger, that it tarnished some of the enjoyment for some readers and made translation efforts much harder, but he was having none of it.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285631
285634 285636
icu6kbdz7ga31.jpg
>>285624
wait when Littleshit got some cola from the vending machine, how did she pay?

anyway so far my spoiler policy has been "I won't spoil something unless it'll probably take more than a month to get there", it's why I spoiler-tagged some things and refused to spoil why I hate Watcher.
but Jesus fucking Christ, I hate Watcher. I won't spoil Watcher shit. but if there's anything that symbolizes all the problems with this story besides other things that symbolize most or all problems in this story it's Watcher or THOSE FUCKING battle saddles.

I'm talking problems like ponies designing guns for human hands and then working backwards in reverse to solve the "ponies cant use these things I'm foolishly forcing them to use" problem by developing high-tech highly-fragile
Yet somehow able to survive over 200 years without serious maintenance or the construction of new ones despite surely being used to fire fucktons of bullets in their lifetimes as they change hands (hooves?) and get resold
these are fucking
fucking back-mounted auto-aiming turrets with pointless mouth triggers so ponies can use and fire these guns without needing to hold them on-target
If they can't control where the gun points, or easily tell where the gun is pointing by craning their heads up and back and looking where the gun is before looking forwards and calculating the angles and rotation and trajectory and shit, why bother with a manual mouth trigger?

If the machine on your back can detect foes and aim your gun, why not give it permission to fire at anything your magical always-right Pip-Buck(TM)'s "Yellow dots mean NPCs, red dots means hostile enemies" system considers an enemy
I'll tell you why it works in this retardedly incomplete way: The author really wanted characters to manually point guns at each other and manually pull the trigger, instead of focusing on positioning and rapidly moving their tiny fast equine bodies around as auto-turrets on their back many times faster and more perceptive than ponies do the shooting for them.
If Littlepip has a gun that shoots every enemy on sight, she can't quip at them in the middle of an action scene or call them incredibly stupid like she's Elizer Yudowsky's self-insert OC bitching at Minerva McCockandballs for "violating all known laws of aviation" by turning into a fucking cat via magic.
Holy cunting fuck...

The pony world already has ways to Enchant items by "hanging spells on to" a gemstone. Diamonds are needed for some reason even though Equestria's full of all gems, forcing Equestria to want Zebrica's coal for their Industrial Revolution and diamonds for the Enchanted Items Revolution they should also be having.

An enchanted items revolution should change MORE than the IR ever did!

Suddenly, nobody has to be born a unicorn and attend the best schools for 10+ years to learn how to cast the best spells. you can now just buy a wand of teleportation or food transformation or healing or mind-swap or resurrection or portal creation or Grand Titanic Fireball Blast from the local wand store.

Suddenly, any pony regardless of wings/horn can have a 50-cal glock floating around their heads like a guardian angel, packing two barrels with two magical silencers that make all gunshots as quiet as a small fart.

A magical solution for a pony problem would be so much more convenient than this overly-complex magical problem.

Would also allow for the existence of battlefields where enchanted guns still hover near corpses and wage war on any who approach.

Furthermore, her Pip-Buck Friend-Or-Foe display is NEVER WRONG. Ace Combat sometimes fucks with the player by fucking with their Friend-Or-Foe display to make them gun down allies during obligatory "WAR IS BAD!" scenes. A video game about flying your jet around arcade-style where shooting civilians and bombing refugee camps gives you bonus points has more depth than this.
sixty chapters from now there's a point where Littleshit is threatened by a cunt who spins her minigun barrels aggressively, but Littleshit can tell it's just a bluff because the little yellow dot representing this NPC on her HUD didn't change from yellow to red.
by the way fuck this HUD layout. All it does is train you to watch the compass dot that represents your destination and next quest target. Fallout 1 and 2 required you to find places and items yourself via world design and information given to you by NPCs. Fallout 3 ripped off GTA's radio so why the fuck couldn't they copy GTA's Minimap?

Watcher doesn't single-handedly ruin the story solely because it's already ruined by terrible mistakes made before some retard worked backwards in reverse to figure out how to I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING! PROVOKING! DARK CLOUDS IN ISOLATION! I AM RECLAIMER OF MY NAAAME! BORN IN FLAMES! I HAVE BEEN BLESSED! MY FAMILY CREST IS A DEMON OF DEATH! FORSAKENED, I AM AWAKENED, A PHOENIX'S ASH IN DARK DIVINE! DESCENT IN MISERY! DESTINY CHASING TIME! to keep this idea that should change, alter, even revolutionize this shit from disturbing his delicate fucking status quo and desire to write all of this fucking bullshit, a shitty little story where "the coolest and best vault pony" becomes "the coolest and best wasteland hero" while pretending she's a nobody with no skills or friends because the author wants you to think this overpowered poorly-written murderhobo is a deep and complex multifaceted character and underdog. Anything that could and should shake up the status quo where Littlepip solves her problems with guns and explosions gets ignored, cast aside, gunned down in the dead of night or raped into a fucking coma by the author's faggoted maggot dick.

>Glimmer is Best Pony
Now that's truly the gayest thing anyone could say
>Nigel's favourite
lol that would be weird. the author I hate most on planet earth is JK Rowling, followed by Elizer Yudowsky(Assman), followed by Kkat.
also how about this one
>K "The K stands for Killing fictional poner gives me a tranny boner" Kat
Anonymous
1883b74
?
No.285634
>>285631
>also how about this one
8/10 made me kek
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285636
>>285631
>A magical solution for a pony problem would be so much more convenient than this overly-complex mechanical problem that wouldn't last ten years, let alone 200.
fixed

Seriously, does the author have idea how often even the best military-grade equipment breaks down on the battlefield? "Muh reliable AK" still fucking breaks and needs fixing when the military gives it the time of day instead of the better rifles out there with more accuracy, penetration, and sheer motherfucking power. AKfags are the Katana Weeaboos of the gun world but lower. Nobody cares that your gun can survive being drenched in a muddy sun like what muslims think happens to the sun every night. That feat's not unique to AKs. If you've ever seen some fucktarded frankengun "Cursed Gun" where a bastardized AK has been repaired with the wrong parts, it's because AKs aren't as common as AKfags think they are. Yes, the AK deserves credit, but it doesn't deserve this neo-religious idolatry cargo-cult cuntery when fucking revolvers can outclass it in areas that matter more to battlefield victories than how badly you can intentionally mistreat your gun before it stops working.
50 years from now we'll have shit that's countless times faster, sturdier, more accurate, and more reliable than this russian trash but it'll still take multiple generations of movies and circlejerking over movies before AKfags embrace the new hotness.
Replicas of "ancient" weapons from 40 years ago constructed today likely won't function 50 years from now without needing maintenance from qualified people and constant protection from the environment.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285637
285653
ENl4iW4UcAAY7an.jpg
I'm glad nobody here has said "But shotguns and revolvers are really good weppuns! How can magic compete with that?" or anything like that.
Magic requires INCREDIBLE restrictions before it becomes inferior to glocks in any way.

Magic is a blank cheque unless the author sets limits on what it can and can't do.
Limits were not placed on magic or enchanting in this story. For fuck's sake, Rarity figured out how to copypaste souls without any cost and shatter them apart without any spiritual reprimands and infuse different shards into different collectable MLP Statuettes, just so Littlepip has an excuse to pick up Fallout 3's magical stat-boosting Bobblehead
seriously fuck Fallout 3, it added this lategame perk called "Almost Perfect" that locks all your SPECIAL (strength, endurance, etc) stats at 9 out of 10, so when you pick up all the bobbleheads you gain SPECIAL stats at a perfect 10 out of 10 without having to put any thought at all into any character builds or stat distribution. You're just a god now with maxed stats and maxed skills and perfect glitchy invincible armour and too fucking many guns to count and infinite ammo.

anyway back to magic
Even if a wizard can only make something as magically mighty as him, what's stopping him from pouring power into a big battery every day until he's got enough for a higher-level magic weapon?
If ponies in this story can stuff a fire spell into one diamond on his diamond-studded sniper rifle to enchant a sniper rifle with "Flaming Bullets", and his girlfriend can copypaste souls and put those souls into artificial bodies or shatter souls apart to infuse them into objects to create stat-boosting items...
What's stopping him from stuffing a gun with a copy of his own soul, with his girlfriend's help? What's stopping him from enchanting the gun with "Reload Instantly" or "Infinite Ammo", two Legendary Enchantments that canonically exist in Fallout 4?

https://youtu.be/5ITALrq1pm8?t=473

Observe the overwhelming might of The R.Y.N.O. for a few seconds. You don't have to watch the whole video, just see it in action and see how easily it clears an area of hostiles.
What does RYNO stand for? "Rip Ya a New One".
It's a fully-automatic multi-barrel rocket launcher that fires small yet devastating homing missiles.
One squeeze of the trigger and everything around you dies.
You know what would make it better? If it used the Pip-Buck's superior "Track enemies for up to 3000 meters through walls and detect invisible foes" radius and enemy-tracking to see where targets are.
Sheer sci-fi bullshit makes the RYNO work, but magic could easily replicate it.
If you took one real-world rocket launcher and enchanted it with "Reload after a second", you'd get something stronger than any faggoted horse with two shotguns duct-taped to him ever could be. Shrink the barrels and rockets to fire homing micro-missiles, then add more than twenty of these barrels, and you've got a constant stream of homing death.
Now enchant the weapon with Infinite Ammo and you've got something that will let you walk straight into zebra territory as every hostile is purged before they get within range.

At this point, you actually don't need to aim the gun. You can tape it to a horse's back, pointed straight up, and its homing rockets will seek out enemies and kill them.

>"But what if enemies make magic shields to block the rockets?"

Then enchant the rocket launcher to penetrate all armour and solid objects except flesh and bone. Or make the rockets out of an anti-magic material created via magic. Or enchant the rocket launcher to fire glowing energy balls like Doom Eternal's Plasma gun and BFG. Try making a magic shield block that.

>"But what if a unicorn makes a magical spherical bubble shield around you and squishes it?"
Then you're fucked unless your enchanted anti-magic armour lets you smash right through magic shields and shatter them with a single touch, and also break telekinetic holds on you. If you don't have that, get the fuck off the battlefield before a Unicorn picks you up and tosses you 200 feet into the air and watches you fall or tosses you into a brick wall at mach 5.
Anonymous
be8e2b3
?
No.285653
285684
>>285637
>Magic is a blank cheque unless the author sets limits on what it can and can't do.

>"But what if enemies make magic shields to block the rockets?"
>Then enchant the rocket launcher to penetrate all armour and solid objects except flesh and bone.
>"But what if a unicorn makes a magical spherical bubble shield around you and squishes it?"
>Then you're fucked unless your enchanted anti-magic armour lets you smash right through magic shields and shatter them with a single touch, and also break telekinetic holds on you.

Wat?
Anonymous
d0ba831
?
No.285660
285684 285689 285691 285875
6000476.jpg
>>285468
>>285467
>>285470
If I had to point to any flaw in the story that takes me out of the experience and makes it hard to sympathize with the main character, it's how this assistant-to-the-mechanic teenage girl who didn't even know that you pull a trigger to fire a gun until she saw someone else do it, has beaten over a dozen enemies who have every right to have bested her, and now has a kill count almost qualifying her twice over as a serial killer. She has knocked 4 enemies unconscious, killed six people, and won a stand off, with only a grazing wound.

Littlepip is not said to be former military, she doesn't have any kind of survival or combat training or experience at all, she isn't described as particularly strong or even intelligent, and we have zero reason at all to believe that she would have, could have, or should have beaten even a single enemy she has faced thus far. I understand that this is basically a video game/table top RPG that someone reskinned to have ponies, and that video games are usually based around the player character slaughtering literal hundreds of enemies. But damn, most video games still have your character as being an exceptionally awesome space marine, special forces member, or otherwise give them some kind of background that would explain why they have a better than even chance of winning each encounter they find themselves in. For example, from the Fallout Universe: the Vault Dweller of Fallout 1, whose background is never specified, is at minimum known to be selected by the overseer of the vault for an important task in the wasteland, and thus can be presumed to be the most exceptional individual of the 400 people in the vault in the relevant ways. Nothing is known about the background of "The Courier" except that (s) was a courier and survived a gunshot to the head. However, even this blank slate character has a kind of mysterious aura around him/her, making them seem as much like a revenant, a super natural agent of revenge, as a real human. While the original Fallout games left the backstory ambiguous so as to let the player roleplay, FE leaves little such ambiguity. Littlepip a teenage female whose only talent is as mechanic, she's never touched a gun before, she's never been outside of a closed room, and the most dangerous experience she's ever faced is getting splashed with a water balloon. If the "Stable" had good nutrition, she'd be fat as well.

Let's take her first fight - the fight with two guards at once. Both of the guards are presumably male, older, and generally more adept at melee combat than the general vault population. We have every reason they would win a fight against a filly mechanic's assistant. Otherwise, what is the purpose of them being guards? If most of us got in a one on one fight with a bouncer, police officer, or even mall cop, most of us would lose. The winners are people who have been outside in their lives. And of course there are two of them. Now I understand that she drops a tool box, or something, on them, though I have to wonder why one of those things was perched so high up, and how it fell in such a way that it hit not just one of them, but both. Knocking someone unconscious is incredibly difficult, and most of us could not succeed on the first attempt.

Littlepip's one and only combat loss is against the slavers, but even that is made up for when she uses her infinite bobby pins to unlock her restraints. Has she ever picked open a lock before? This is not a "street rat" who lives by stealing to survive, this is someone who should have no idea how to do this.

Then she gets in a one-on-one fight with one of the raiders who defeated the group that defeated both Monterrey Jack and herself before. Her only struggle is over whether she should kill the slaver, or just knock him out. The raiders have obviously been in melee fights before. They are probably older than Littlepip, they have vastly more experience doing this. If literally nothing else, they walk every day, whereas Littlepip has led an incredibly sedentary lifestyle. The raider has every right to win this fight.

Then she gets in a stand off with Monterrey Jack, who is much older, male, and is experienced at survival. She wins, because she apparently has a newer shotgun and somehow knows he only has one shell left. First of all, Littlepip literally did not know until five minutes before that to operate a gun, you point it in the general direction of the enemy and then pull the trigger.. How in the hell does she know the specifics of how many shells this specific variety of shotgun holds? How does she know there wasn't an round extra loaded in the chamber? I bet that most of us here could not say how many shotgun shells every brand of shotgun holds, and we know more than her. But really, this whole scene betrays a complete misunderstanding of how shotguns work. If I have a single shot shot gun of an ancient model pointed at you ten feet away, and you have a brand new SPAS-12 with however many shots that holds, all I have to do is pull the trigger first, and I win. Monterrey Jack knows that Littlepip is squeamish and has an aversion to killing people. He has every reason to assume that Littlepip would blink first.

Then we have the tree with a half-dozen raiders. The raiders have every advantage except kkat's version of the VATS system. They know where the entrances are, they know what the layout is, they have at least one lookout on top, they've fired guns before, they probably can run faster and jump higher because they have more exercise, and of course there are six of them. Not a single one of these encounters should have favored littlepip. Not the guy with the assault rifle, not the one who fled, and definitely not the sniper on the roof - there is absolutely no reason we should assume Littlepip would win that one.

And of course there is the fight with the specially designed security robots, but I've run out of space, and it's much the same as the above.
Anonymous
d0ba831
?
No.285661
285667 285689 285876
1598147308171.jpg
>>285384
>this author is clearly just writing murder porn... so he compensates by having his protagonist adopt this canned moral outrage in order to justify her participation
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with your interpretation of the this scene, though I do have to admit you know more about its context than I. I don't think these lines are from the author to justify the murder porn, I think that these lines are a part of a series of steps showing the slow unravelling of Littlepip's humanity/equinity as she leaves the civilized world of the vault and enters the war of all against all in the wasteland.

Let's take her response the first time she sees a pony die:
>In the growing list of things I'd not seen before this night, the death of another pony ranked at the top
She has an aversion to death and the gore associated with it, and the incident is mildly traumatizing. Then take her second fight, the first one against raiders. She deliberately knocks her target unconscious, while we are told the experienced wastelander kills his target. The lesson of course, is that Littlepip has an aversion to killing people, whether it be because of an innate aversion, or because of her upbringing in the sheltered stable. We also know that those who stay long in the wasteland completely lose or lack this aversion to killing others.

Then we get her first kill: a raider who throws a grenade in is killed by the same grenade tossed out. This makes the kill both justified self defense, but also kind of a by product of her trying to remove the grenade, and perhaps not even entirely intentional.

Then the next step up is her seeking out the enemy (rather than running away), and shooting first. Now, Littlepip, as a character, is established as having an aversion to killing. How do you overcome this? Simple. Make the enemies so morally repulsive that killing them is anything but a morally bad act. Thus, she sees rather extreme acts of cruelty by the raiders that admittedly make no sense for them to have done, and in a fit of moral outrage, she goes on a mass killing spree. The culmination of this killing spree is the killing of an enemy who was running away. You note that this is not an honorable act - and that is the point - but it should be remembered that this enemy is a child rapist, and perhaps more importantly, is being shot in hot blood immediately after Littlepip sees the filly who is bleeding from this crime.

The point of all of this is to show that Littlepip is slowly, step by step, losing her aversion to murder. Where the act is abhorent, the motivation to do it is strong, so that with each passing occasion she becomes more and more comfortable with the act itself and requires weaker motivation to do it.

Take the line,
>"I wasn’t the sort of pony to kill somepony while they slept"
As you have pointed out, she is the kind of pony to kill a fleeing enemy, at least when they have been witnessed raping a child. She still has some moral standards, and she hasn't lost all of her aversion, but she's also done things she wouldn't have when she started out at the beginning of the book.

Then we have the death of the friend-seeking security robot. The robots are dehumaized by being, well, robots, but they are also humanized by their evidently equine brains and the dialogue. They clearly haven't comitted any crimes to warrant their deaths. Littlepip, as she escapes, unintentionally kills one in a very graphic way, by crushing its brain, and sawing the thing in half. Her response?
>"I must admit that I found the crunch immensely satisfying"
She's gone from "I had cagey all over me" to "I found the crunch immensely satisfying" in response to a brain being splattered open, in the span of a few chapters. She is now taking a kind of pleasure in causing the gory deaths of others, whereas she was revolted before.

She has the same kind of character progression on other things like cursing. She goes from:
>"The walls had been painted with crude images of violence and cruder swear words."
To:
>Oh fuck me with Celestia’s forehooves!
>I’ll admit, my repertoire of colorful descriptions had grown more profane from my experience with the raiders

Then there is her attitude towards scavenging, which changes drastically, First, she is repulsed by looting dead bodies. Then she sees the logic to it, and tries it herself, but ends up so disgusted that she vomits. And then:
>More determined than ever, I stripped the raider bodies (what little was left of them now) of their armors
>Putting it on was gruesome. My hooves were darkened with blood just from working on it; every inch was covered in the flash-fried gore of dead ponies.
She goes from vomiting at the gore, to tolerating even the most extreme version of it, and soon enough she'll have no aversion at all.

We also see her just assume that the pony she helped save earlier will return the favor, but he instead robs her. While there isn't yet a parallels to show how she has learned from this incident, it's one more instance in a long list to show how greatly her civilized stable-dweller morality differs from the rules of the war of all against all in the wasteland.

Littlepip's civilized morality is slowly unravelling, and is being replaced with a more practical egoism that is already showing signs of drifting into sadism.

For all of the other faults of this work, I think it has done a decent job showing the rather slow descent of a well adjusted and normal civilized pony into what I can only assume will be a complete monster who kills for sport by the end of the work. This Hobbesian understanding of the State of Nature, I think, is one of the themes of Fallout, and it expresses itself in this fan work well enough.
Anonymous
be8e2b3
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No.285667
285672 285698 285707 285878
>>285661
> I think that these lines are a part of a series of steps showing the slow unravelling of Littlepip's humanity/equinity as she leaves the civilized world of the vault and enters the war of all against all in the wasteland.

I'm not a fan of this idea. There many ideas in this idea that I'm unsure off.

For example, the idea that you grow numb when you killed someone is something I find kinda off iffy.

Like, I have seen interracial pairs throught my life but I still get pissed off because it offends me. I may not show it or I may depending on the situation but I do not like it.

And to some degree, like if you experince something horrible, you build up an aversion to facing it again. Its thereore a bit strange that Littlepip hasn't run back to her stable and desprately try to get herself back in.

But enough about the story, point is that while I have grown somewhat number to things like I don't think rape is very remakable anymore, I still feel but its more like I choose not to becuase I know that doesn't help me. But I could and I still retain my morality. I have astrong suspiciouson that its the saem for peoples in war.

First off, the inner conflict doesn't go away, secondly if faced with brutal evil people will seek refuge rather than becoming part of the problem.

Like, I once heard a guy claim to me that,"There is not God and people in warzones know this to be truth," and later I heard from an interview with some family in a warzone about how they prayed to God each and every day and that is what kept them going and of course because only god can help when there is nobody else there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVCLbIbEKtM&ab_channel=TheEscapist
4:50
This is another thing. I think its the opposite. As I say people won't lose there dislike for things so if given the opportunity to leave a hellish nightmare of an existance they will take it, Especially if they operate under egoism or they will stay because they see it as their purpose to change this world. For example, given the opportunity to leave of Equestria, I would stay because I want to change this world, even though I'm every well aware that materially I would be better of in ponerland and that I'm just a single guy who probably can't really do much, I still would stay.

I would like to say that I'm not writing off the idea of numbness to things but there is something to it that I I'äm yet unable to put my finger on why I feel its mroe complicated thatn that. I once saw a miliatary guy, I think it s a brit who had been in a dogfight in the falkland's war. The guy had bascially been on a emotional rollercoaster by going from hating his enemy one second, to piting his fellow human being as the enemy was shot down, back to rage again as one of his comrades fell.

I think a lot of time and exporse needs to happend to truly go numb and with aversion it its probably takes a lot more.

Like, I cannot stomach blacked porn and while I don't expose myself to that shit, I can't really imagine getting used to it either if I was forced to watch it. My mind goes instantly to murder murder murder!

Anyway, that's what I think anyway.
Anonymous
d0ba831
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No.285672
285676 285679 285698 285878
>>285667
It's not that Littlepip is simply growing numb to violence through exposure in her time in the wasteland, it's that her moral beliefs are being recontextualized and challenged, and thus slowly changing.

You say that you are disgusted by interracial marriage/partnerships, on a both physical and moral level, and you believe that no matter how many interracial relationships you saw, you would remain revolted by the sight of it. Let's use this as an example.

Imagine you live in a European nation-state whose national identity has historically formed around a specific European ethnicity. Let's imagine further that you are a member of that ethnic group, i.e., you are a Swede who lives in Sweden. Please take this as a hypothetical, whether it applies to your situation or not. There isn't some other homeland of the Swedes for the Swedes to go to should they become a minority in their own country. And now let's imagine that there are a number of Somali migrants who don't seem to be the equals of the native Swedes in many ways, and who interbreed with the Swedes. Aside from irrational reasons (like disgust) to oppose interracial relationships in this context, there are many rational reasons to oppose it. It marginalizes the native population. It disrupts homogeneity and possibly social harmony. Then there is the question of whether these Somali migrants take adequate care of their children, or whether the children are more likely to be maladjusted, and so on. Thus, it makes sense that no matter how many single Swedish women you see with half-black children, you'd be opposed to interracial coupling. Why would you change your mind? Your beliefs and feelings haven't been recontextualized and they have not been challenged.

Now, imagine that you and your best friend moved to another country outside of Europe. Maybe you've gone to Japan, where you are the only white people there. Better yet, let's say that you are going to Brazil, the Dominican Republic, or any of the New World countries where people of mixed race are a plurality of the population (which is most of them, actually). In this context, interracial coupling isn't a threat to your own ethnicity's existence. It's not even a threat to the native population's control, because a half millennium of small pox, typhoid, immigration and miscegenation have already reduced the natives to an unimportant minority; in any case, those of mixed race are already so numerous as to be dominant. Let say, further, that the Asians, Mulatos, and Mestizos you work with are in your judgement of respectable intellect and moral character, and thus at least the higher classes of these racial groups are "alright." Your Swedish best friend has fallen in love with and engaged an Asian Indian girl he works with. You personally know and respect this girl, and you want to support your friend. Let's go even further. You find one or more of the Asian or mestizo women you see sexually attractive. What is more, you've developed a crush on one of the Mestizo women who you respect and who shares your values. Love is hard to control, after all.

In this situation, would you keep your strong aversion to interracial relationships? Maybe you would. But maybe you wouldn't. The point is that your environment and circumstances have changed so that your beliefs and feelings are recontextualized and challenged. I can guarantee you that at least some persons sharing your opposition to interracial relationships would change their minds (and hearts) under these circumstances.

And it's the same with Littlepip in the wasteland. She is removed from the safety of the Stable to a radically different environment. In the Stable, if someone kills someone, they are arrested and face punishment, besides being shunned by the rest of the Stable. There is nothing like this in the wasteland. There is no government to arrest you for murder or rape. It's perfect anarchy. There is no society to shun you or shame you. Even if you have companions they wouldn't care. If you kill someone in the Wasteland, it means that that person cannot kill you, and you can take their stuff.

It goes back to Thomas Hobbes' "State of Nature" thought experiment, where in a world of perfect anarchy, it Is not in your best interests to abstain from violence. In the Stable or any place with a government, it's pretty clear why you don't kill people - you yourself don't want to be killed, so everyone agrees to a set of rules that includes "no killing" and a government enforces these rules. In the Wasteland, there is nothing to stop someone else from killing you except killing or otherwise subjugating them first, and there's no negative consequences to deter them from doing it in the first place. If you have reason to be suspicious of someone else, which is almost the case by default, it's basically self-defense to incapacitate them first. Even besides self-defense, there's the fact that food, medicine, and weapons are in short supply, and everyone needs to compete for these goods, or else perish. Robbing and stealing are among the few viable methods of survival that exist in such conditions.

Littlepip is learning this. She sees a campfire and assumes the people will be friendly, just to be captured to be sold into slavery. Then when she escapes, she assumes that the guy she saves will repay the favor... just to be robbed by him. She is repulsed at first by death, but then she kills a raider in self-defense. Then she actively goes into a nest of raiders, but she's so morally repulsed by them that she kills them in anger, though there is no self-defense justification. By the time she gets to the robot, well, it's a robot, so it's not entirely equine anyways, but she is satisfied by the sound of its brain being squished. Every time she kills someone herself, she becomes a little different than she once was.

Her moral values have been recontextualized and challenged in the wasteland, and are slowly shifting.
Anonymous
be8e2b3
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No.285676
285679 285682 285685 285878
>>285672
I can understand that her beliefs have changed or have they? I honestly, don't know? She walks up to a campfire, expecting ponies to be friendly and they aren't .

Like, if I walked up to a campfire made by whites and asked for directions of wahtever and they tried to kidnap, i would probably be surprized but would it change my beliefs?

I'm not really sure what you mean by beliefs, I assume moral principlas and ethics, if I'm wrong am sorry I'll assume it for now anyway. I would assume I wouldn't really change that much. I mean, I already know that there are some white people out there that are evil filth and really isn't Littlepip the same? Would she really be against killing ponies that mutilate pony bodies and decorates their walls with corpses and rape foals and whatever they did or do? I think not?

>State of Nature
I feel like its a redundant expression. No disrespect to that guy though, he probably has a lot of good ideas but I have never read anything from anyone so I really don't know what he talks about.
I'm also neither a cynicalist nor a optemist when it comes to humanity. I'm not sure that if society would fall appart we would start to eat each other like rats in barrel. I just don't think that's the modus operandi of human beings, its more likey we would cling harder to the few groups that we actually belong to. I feels that anarchy is just a fleeting state between the statous quo that is society that exist in between shifts in power.

Imo.
Anonymous
c9149df
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No.285679
285682 285685 285698
1379721131837.jpg
>>285672
>>285676
The problem with both of your statemarents is this: Littleshit was given a Divine Plot Device of Insane Complexity which explicitly tells her whether or not other ponies are hostile (the "PipBuck"), and she doesn't look at it THIS TIME since the narrator has her undergo a Too Stupid To Live Moment. BUT, she gets to yeet out of the canned danger situation alive and completely unharmed! That whole scene is a shitty self-insert fanfic setup so that cuckkat the furfag can make a pseudo "growing up in the wasteland" reference.
Anonymous
be8e2b3
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No.285682
285700
7c79c13877d346cf3789b2b5f74f63e1.gif
>>285676
> I have never read anything from anyone
Its really not something I'm proud of. It's just that don't get around to read much of even things that I want to read,. But, I do't know why I explain this nobody cares.
>>285679
Tried to find a specific mexican meme (about a dancing deer) in my meme folder but couldn't find it. Here's something else related.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.285684
285689 285690 285707
main-qimg-2a13e3f6ea28aa5e3e650b505a9f8104.jpg
>>285653
Magic is a blank cheque.
You can write whatever you want on it.
Want your heroes to get out of danger, during a fight they can't win? They magically teleport out, or magically become strong enough to win, or magically erase the threat.
Are the LOTR heroes in danger? Gandalf can just use magic to save the day sometimes.
Magic can do anything because by its very definition, it is an unknowable mysterious incomprehensible thing.
That's why magic needs serious rules in any serious story.

FullMetal Alchemist? The "magic" is Alchemy, the restructuring of existing matter.
Touch an alchemic element symbol and your materials, and think of what needs to be done.
That "ice wizard" is manipulating moisture in the air and robbing it of heat.
Roy Mustang can snap his fingers to kill you, because his gloves generate a spark and the air symbol on his gloves bend oxygen into a funnel connecting his hand to you, his target. He snaps his fingers, and boom. Bombs anywhere, on command.
Edward Elric just reshaped part of his metal arm into a knife, now he's trying to cut someone with it.
If an alchemist just waved their fingers to reverse time, it would be BULLSHIT! A violation of the rules!
And if the rules can be violated once, they can be violated again. They stop mattering!
You can never give a FUCK about the danger Edward Elric is in ever again, because the author can always just pull some new magic out of his ass.

Avatar: The Last Airbender?
You perform motions like your element+martial arts, "get your head in the mindset of the element" via spirituality, and use your Chi energy to make your arm-waving throw water on someone.
Katara blasting you with a water ball? Waterbending.
Toph throwing rocks at you, coating herself in stone, or moving the ground you stand on to fuck with you? Earthbending.
Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, can bend all 4 elements.
Others only get one element, or none.
So it's fine for Katara to freeze her water into ice, then toss it at foes.
It's fine for Toph to bend the trace amounts of earth within metal to bend metal.
It's fine for Toph to heat her rocks up into lava, then toss them at foes.
But if Zuko the Firebender from the Fire Nation started bending water or slowing time down, we'd all say "BULLSHIT!".

Even DBZ has serious rules on magic.
The fighters have "Ki" energy. The stronger your body is, the more ki you have.
You can use Ki to strengthen your body or fire it as a laser/explosive ball to hurt foes.
Transforming to make your body stronger multiplies your Ki.
Look at pic related and guess which of Goku's forms is physically stronger and can fire stronger hand-lasers. (DB Super fucked this up with Divine Ki and random colour changes, so ignore SSG/SSGSS/Ultra Instinct)

>>285660
Littlepip is also implied to be tiny because of her single alcoholic mother. I forget if the story's mentioned her yet or not.

And don't forget the way Littlepip is able to quip at that one dude threatening her with a hostage, as if she's suddenly an expert on hostage negotiation and why you should keep your mouth clear to bark orders
Like she's The Joker from The Dark Knight
you know, the Joker heavily implied to be ex-military
>His skill with IEDs precisely set to timers, how easily he blends into a military marching parade after cleaning his clown makeup off, what a godlike sniper he is, his experience with interrogation that dwarfs batman's and lets him say "Don't start with smacking someone's head, it makes his head all fuzzy", and how he specifically says he hates society because "If one more soldier dies that's normal, but when someone who shouldn't die dies everyone loses their mind". He's always got a new story for how he got those scars but he could have easily gotten them during a war, the soldiers he paraded with didn't even question the sight of them.
Anonymous
d0ba831
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No.285685
285698 285721
>>285676
We haven't seen a second campfire scene, so we don't know yet if she would approach it differently next time. But we do see clear differences in her behavior. She is opposed to the idea of looting corpses at first, then she tries to loot one and vomits, and then she successfully loots multiple extremely disgusting sets of armor from corpses without vomiting. She goes from being slightly offended by the curse words written in the Carousel Boutique to repeating many of them, a change she explicitly attributes to the raiders. Whether you call it beliefs, emotions, reactions, aversions or what have you, the point is that the wasteland and her experiences in it are changing her.

I don't know if she would respond to the campfire differently if a similar experience were to occur, because we haven't seen a parrellel to it yet. What I can say is that the way in which she responds to it is one that makes sense for a person who grew up in civilization - you can reasonably assume that campers are not going to murder you, because if they did or tried to, they are likely to be found out by police, and they know the same is true about if you tried to murder them, thus neither party tries to kill the other and so there is a basis of trust. But in the wasteland, there is no negative consequence to selling the others as slaves, and so distrust is the better standard.

>I'm not really sure what you mean by beliefs, I assume moral principlas and ethics
Sure

>Would she really be against killing ponies that mutilate pony bodies and decorates their walls with corpses and rape foals and whatever they did or do?
My point is not that her opinion on the death penalty for child rapists has changed. My point is that her aversion to killing has changed. At first, she didn't like seeing people be killed when Cagey's head exploded. Then, she didn't like doing the killing when fighting the raider. Then, she killed somepony attacking her in self defense when she killed the raider with the grenade. Then, she moved on to killing a fleeing enemy when she killed the raider. Much later, she is happy to hear a robot getting its head bashed in. By slow increments, she is becoming more and more comfortable with death and killing. It's not all at once, but it is noticeable change from scene to scene.

>would I start to distrust white people
This is different, because you have tens of thousands or even millions of interactions with white people to form your opinion on them. This is Littlepips only few interactions with ponies in the wasteland. Thus, each interaction matters more, and she is slowly changing her opinion. If you had, for example, never had any experience with a melanesian before, but then in your first experience they tried to kidnap you, and then in your second experience they tried to rob you, and then in your third experience they tried to kill you, and then in your forth experience you found that were killing people en masse, and then in your fifth experience you caught one raping a child, you may gradually begin to think that Melanesians can't be trusted.

The wasteland of Fallout is one of the purer anarchies in fiction; purer than maybe any anarchy that has ever existed on earth. Every semblance of institutions and culture has been wiped away by the bombs.

>I'm not sure that if society would fall appart we would start to eat each other like rats in barrel
And you might be right. Considering how few instances there are of complete societal breakdown it's kind of a hard theory to test. The philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau vehemently disagreed with Hobbes on his assesment of human nature, and believed that civilization actually made human behavior worse, not better. In video games, look to Resistence 3 as an example of a more cheery response to an apocalypse. But that's not the interpretation of human nature that the Fallout video game series takes, and by extension, it's not what kkat assumes in this work.

>>285679
I've certainly never claimed that kkat is good at keeping track of how powerful his almost-mary sue character is. See >>285660. Whether she should have known better or not, the ways that Littlepip actually does respond, reflect more or less the corruption of her character appropriate for the wasteland setting.
Anonymous
5744375
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No.285689
285707
bb09934f4dcaa3506a100f32f631de19.png
>>285684
>>285660
You know what would have made Littlepip far more tolerable?
If they embraced the murderhobo Littleshit fundamentally is, without trying to pretend she's some scared little rookie who deserves praise for futilely standing up to a big bad world full of darkness and edge.
If they put the lie away, allowed Littleshit to lose battles and get robbed and lose limbs and lose friends and just plain lose sometimes, revoked her plot armour, and stopped pretending she's a helpless little girl in danger.

Imagine Littleshit as a good-hearted but reckless and violent wannabe-hero, someone who always wanted to get out there in the real world and force some positive change down everyone's throat.
Imagine a child who got into trouble at school for beating up bullies (Or getting beaten up by the biggest ones) and protecting others.
Imagine her exercising, running around, teaching herself to lockpick, "training" with a toy gun because she's never fired a real one, swinging a butter knife around and telling herself it's knife-fighting practice, and cheating on her "What career are you destined to have, based on your multiple-choice answers on this worksheet, small child?" test so she can get the Repair Pony job and have daily access to a career where she can learn to fix shit, hack terminals (Like the terminal controlling the vault's lock), and make robots.
Imagine a Littleshit who read fucktons of books about heroes and badasses, and wants to be just like them, and knows how to rip off all their tricks (which only work when they're unexpected, and sometimes fail).

Imagine a littleshit who wields a homemade pistol of a higher caliber than anything the Wasteland has seen before.
Or imagine if the stable's Gun Culture drifted away from common weapons and towards the biggest fanciest-looking enchanted guns designed to be fashion accessories that make you seem above those lowly workers who can barely afford old revolvers first and oversized "Look at me, my magic's so strong, I can carry and fire a 150-cal pistol without any difficulty, who cares if the recoil kicks it back two feet when I hold it psychically 4 feet in front of me anyway? Look at me, ladies, I'm sooo strong!" tools second and actual reliable firearms third. So Littlepip steals (or saves up for) one of those things

Hard to rely on tried-and-tested Wasteland Bandit tactics like "Take cover, smoke foes out of cover, surround foes and scare them into dropping supplies and running, use your superior numbers to your advantage, yell some really scary shit, and after intimidating them you enslave them or let them live and run away so they can gather more supplies for you, though make sure you kill victims who kill some of you or shoot at some of you and therefore know you aren't invincible" when you're fighting a psychic whose gun pierces walls of wood, scrap, mud, steel, and even concrete.

Imagine Littleshit relying on her homemade flying laser-carrying killer robot for murders, plucking weapons and armour from the Stable Security guards she knocked out, and having this "I AM THE HERO! I AM THE LIGHT THAT WILL LIGHT UP THE DARK!" personality where she doesn't even realize how much terror she puts into her foes or how out-of-her-depth she is or when she's being manipulated like the wrecking ball "of justice" she is. Imagine her using this "I'M FUCKING INVINCIBLE!" persona to keep her fears and dread and hopelessness away until she gets enough highly-skilled friends to justify her becoming an almighty force in the wasteland.

>>285661
You're being really charitable towards this fic. It might be what the author was going for (possibly?) but it certainly wasn't written well whether that was the case or not

The Raiders lined themselves up in terms of "Justifiably killable" too quickly and neatly, and completely out of order.
Also I don't think it was explicitly a rapist she shot.
She entered a room, there was a raped filly on a shitty bed, and the Raider held a "Zombie-Pony" Ghoul hostage but couldn't say "fuck off or I shoot" because his mouth was full of Axe.
So Littlepip immediately calls him a fucking retard and then levitates some convenient grenades between them and threatens to shove them up his ass.
Imagine if the Raider killed the ghoul hostage right there, spat the axe out, and grabbed the Filly whose neck he could easily snap without needing an axe.
It would force Littlepip to back off or shoot and risk him hurting the filly.
anyway, this doesn't happen.
The Raider just gets intimidated by this little lesbian threatening him with ass shit he's probably used to, being a Raider faggot and all
So the Raider fucks off and Littlepip shoots him in the back.
Anonymous
be8e2b3
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No.285690
285693 285698
>>285684
I'm sorry but I was being sarcastic or something. I thought it was funnythat you wrote that magic needs rules and then went into explain how to solve a hypothetical situation for something with magic. Like, the bubble shield with the unicorn. You started to discuss what to do if they made one and that you should create an anti-magic missle or whatewver to pentrate the magic shield. But like why even discuss a counter for something like this when you can just restrict magic from the begining so bubble shields cannot exist in your world?

Developing a system of counters is fine but like as you said magic can be whatever so instead of tryig to come up with counter for every single possible spells you can imagine wouldn't it be easier to just havee a limited number of spells?
Anonymous
5744375
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No.285691
285693
>>285660
Imagine if Littlepip tried to shoot the raider in the back and failed because the world hadn't hardened her enough yet, so the ghoul or filly got the job done using the axe he dropped or some other weapon?
Her first attempt to throw a grenade away shouldn't end in that one-in-a-million "Return to sender" shot
Though if she performed a Fix Spell to return the grenade back to its pin, which had been dropped near the thrower, that would justify it. Would also justify the excellent condition of her guns and how rarely if ever they break or jam on her.

Her change from "I had cagey all over meeeeee!!!!!" to "I found that crunch immensely satisfying" was too fast. Seeing fleshy brain in the robots get crushed should make her sad, and wonder if these killbots were alive or just using the brain as a power source like in some old book she read.
>she learned swearing from the Raiders
We're supposed to take the author's word for it with those walls, but we never learn what they say and I don't think we heard any Raiders talk in her "Like a child trying to sound adult" swears.
And the pony she saved (who robbed her) doesn't inspire her to avoid rescuing Raider captives until all Raiders are dead, while thinking "If these ponies love being slaves they might shout that Littlepip is over here. And if they want to be free, I shouldn't let them run around and potentially get shot until I've killed as many raiders as possible"
Anonymous
5744375
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No.285693
285707
>>285691

Anyway, exposure to horrible things might Desensitize you to them, but it won't make you want more.
I've played shitloads of bloody and violent video games, and I've been in fights where people bled when I was a kid, but I've never gained some kind of "dark craving" for violence/blood.
Before I got into self-improvement and decided to say no to porn and degenerate friends, I once had this obnoxious faggot furry for a friend who kept sending me fucked up porno comics/hentai videos while saying "Hahaha holy shit look at this! who the fuck could get off on this?"

and it's some giant animal-man eating a smaller animal-man, or a wolf-woman with six or more breasts, or a giant woman crushing a man to death between her tits, or a godzilla-sized woman with helicopters around her containing tiny men trying to make her orgasm so she'll leave their city alone, or the Garfield Dog drinking from a firehose until he's like a beach ball full of water and kicked into the distance by Garfield, or some Fallout Equestria comic/picture where a pony gets raped by the dumbest-looking edgiest piece-of-shit OC designs you can possibly imagine, or some comic where a wolf-man and wolf-woman start fucking and their genitals look fucking bizarre, or some skunk farting at someone to knock them halfway across the room, or farting at someone trapped to kill them, or farting for some disgusting faggot who's into it, or some giant faggot absorbing a smaller faggot using his giant cock, which sucks him up through the dickhole and shrinks him down and stores its prey in the balls and "digests" it into more semen which is ejected in one big spontaneous nut, or a giant centipede-like woman creature but every leg is a woman's breast, or some furry woman taking an increasingly massive shit that ends up forming a shitpile bigger than her entire body was while rivers of piss fill up the watertight shower she's in since her shit blocked the drain, or some BDSM shit that doesn't even involve genitals any more, or some tiny mouse-girl getting her tiny body split apart and fucked by a cock twice the size of her own body until it pierces right through her stomach and gruesomely kills her.
I distinctly remember this one comic where a furry girl decides at a young age she wants to be killed, burned, and eaten. Her parents can't talk her out of it. She grows up, and when she's old enough (I think it was her 18th or 21st birthday?) she goes to some butcher's shop to get killed and fried and eaten. I remember saying "Why the fuck aren't her parents taking her out of this fucked-up city?" and the laughing furry laughed and said he didn't know.
I kept expecting her to change her mind at the last second and get forced into the oven and get saved by some furfag's OC, but nobody saved her. She just gets eaten by people at a barbecue. And her parents were at the barbecue, crying their eyes out. Someone at the barbecue offered them a burger with their daughter in it and they cried more, that part made it all hilarious in retrospect.
There was this multi-part story where Red, The Pokemon Master from the Pokemon games, bought a ranch in the middle of buttfuck nowhere so he can watch Pokemon fuck. I skimmed that. I understand humanoid Pokemon like Lopunny but who the fuck wants to fuck a Vaporeon or Rattata? Who the fuck wants to watch a giant Venusaur fuck some tiny Pokemon less than a tenth of his size?
And there was this other one, a story. Some wolf-man farmer is miserable and starving and losing his hair because politicians made eating and selling meat illegal. So he can either eat some more of his cows, fucking over his farm some more, or keep starving. But then some prey girl... Was it a deer-girl? His car broke down on his way home to his farm and she offered to fix it, and he saw an opportunity and went for it. He knocked her out and stuffed her in the trunk. She had this hauntingly understanding look on her face, when he killed her. I think it would have been less disgusting if she'd struggled and tried to escape before he killed her.

He'd send me disgusting shit like that, and we'd laugh together at how fucked up it all was.
But once I found nofap and stopped looking at what I was addicted to: slime girls and lactation and breast-growth porn where a woman's got tits the size of basketballs and ends up with tits bigger than the rest of her
art of women with regular-sized tits became enough to tempt me. I didn't give in. It felt like I was recovering my humanity and beating my porn addiction.
At first I just thought "Let's see if this really does improve my heart health and focus" but after a while, it felt like I was improving my heart health and soul health. Like there was some videogame HP bar above my head, slowly refilling.
So when that friend sent me "Hahaha look at this shit" messages, it stopped being a source of "Hahaha oh thank fuck I'm not that much of a degenerate" and it just became annoying.
"Yeah, I know, furfags love weird shit. Can you stop sending me shit like this?" I asked.
He did stop, which was nice.
Months later I ranted to him about how much I hate commies and he got butthurt because turns out he's a commie too, so we stopped talking.
I wonder what happened to him.
...
I checked, he's still a massive faggot who still uses furry sites, last login was yesterday.
>>285690
Yeah, that too
Roy Mustang can explode shit with his air gloves but he's useless in the rain because wet gloves can't make sparks. (You'd think he'd figure out how to oxygen-deprive someone, force lethal oxygen levels up someone's nose, or toss an all-eroding oxygen ball at foes so he can fight when wet)
If you say Unicorns can lift and crush tanks with magic, you need to explain why anyone brings tanks to a battlefield. It's like sending one tank after The Hulk. At best he'll smash it and the pilot inside. At worst he'll use it as a club or throw it into another tank, killing everyone inside.

Give magic counters or limit magic so it doesn't need them.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285698
285721
3heg832h6jd11.jpg
>>285667
If you were in Equestria you could ask a Unicorn to help send stuff back to earth via portals. Knowing there really are alternate worlds out there would shake shit up. The globalists could never subvert equestrians. Resources plentiful in Equestria could be sent back to help countries you want to health. Celestia would be furious upon learning how corrupt earth's leaders are, and how they eroded mankind's collective morality.
>>285672
Sure, at least one person on this planet would change their thoughts and values if the environments changed. That doesn't mean all thoughts and values are as easily changed.
Plus there are towns in the Wasteland. We haven't gotten to them yet, but there are places with civilization and laws and travelling traders who need protection from bandits and Raiders.
Also the "The world proves her morality wrong" bit is fucked up by the fact that when she frees the ghoul-pegasus, the first thing he does is try to rescue a filly upstairs, which gets him taken hostage.
Good thing the Raider got so intimidated by Littlepip and the grenade she found and held, the raider gave up and got shot in the back for it.
Yes, in a lawless zone it is good to be strong and never hesitate. That doesn't mean it's good to be a completely immoral barbarian about it, it just means it's time to put peacetime morality away and bring out the wartime morality. Raiders never have their actions explained with "They're as scary as possible to spook ponies into dropping supplies and fleeing, and spook towns into feeding them to keep them away" or "It's a mind-damaging virus that caused this and destroyed the natural goodness that can be found in all ponies, the virus spreads through pony cannibalism".

If society falls apart, your best bet is to form a new society that can cover your weaknesses and guard you when you're asleep. Either live solo in a supplied bunker somewhere and guard it with bullets, or find a self-sufficient community and contribute a useful skill to their group, even if it's just being able to carry a shotgun when there are other guards with shotguns keeping you in check.
>>285679
Thank you for remembering how the Pip-Buck can tell friend from foe.
The author could have justified it with "First their icons on my compass were yellow, meaning non-hostile. But when I walked right up to them and introduced myself, they saw me they became hostile!"
that's not how it works in Fallout (Hostiles who attack on sight are always marked as Hostiles. Yellow marks become red marks if you shoot these NPCs, or piss them off via dialogue)
>>285685
She goes from vomiting at her first body-looting attempt to looting bodies and raider-filled areas AND EVEN REPAIRING SOME OF THEIR ARMOUR SO SHE CAN PUT IT ON without first clearing the zone of hostiles
She goes from freaking out at Cagey's death to killing many raiders and even a fleeing one without a second thought, then she's fucking pleasured by the sound of a pony's brain inside a robot going haha squish.
Her aversion to death vanishes way too quickly. She starts enjoying the act of killing way too quickly. She starts talking worse than the Raiders way too quickly. There isn't even a little resistance any more, after all these murder sprees and "wacky misadventures".

>Every semblance of institutions and culture has been wiped away by the bombs
Except the Enclave Remnants are still running around, Vault Dwellers have stories of the old world passed down by their parents, pre-war holotapes and comic books and radio shows and songs can be found easily, the New California Republic actively try to be the new America complete with corrupt politicians and shitty bureaucracy(the one good thing about a democracy is how it ensures a peaceful transference of power. We don't have that in America because leftists aren't Americans, they're invasive jew dogs in mind or in mind and body), House survived the apocalypse and tried to get his city to do the same, reviving it after the bombs fell, and Caesar's Legion is trying to revive Edward Sallow's idea of what Rome is.

>>285690
Vampire Fiction...
Some of it makes Vampires OP.
They're fast strong bastards with mind-control eyes/mind-control voice/some kind of mind-controlling parasite or mark they can give you
But they're weak to the sun, usually
Some stories make Vampires absurdly OP, so the entire US military working together couldn't destroy one.
And then tries to balance things out by giving the Vampire-hunters incredible vampire-killing weapons in the magical sense (crosses made from special wood) and the scientific sense (Incendiary shotgun rounds, because fire damage is hard for vampires to heal, and buckshot to knock vampires on their ass)
At least, if there are any vampire-hunters and the story isn't just vampire-wanking up the ass.
You know it's a wanking story when the only people able to harm and challenge the Special People of your story are either half your Special Species, fully your Special Species, someone of a more Special Species, or someone able to use the species's specialness against them.
Like Vampire stories where only the half-Vampire hero with all their strengths and none of their weaknesses can save the world from Vampires.

Either set limits on what magic can and can't do, or it ends up so overwhelmingly strong that the only way to challenge the wizard is to make everything the most specialized anti-magic shit possible
Kryptonite becomes everywhere
until the author decides Superman needs to become immune to kryptonite and resistant to magic, shedding his only weaknesses and fucking over future writers.
Anonymous
abb50e3
?
No.285700
285707 285721
>>285682
That's a bit of a shame Thomas Hobbs has some pretty good points on political science. My favorite essay he wrote was 'Leviathan' but that one goes more into internation politics and the purpose of government. The other Anon is right on the money to cite him in regards to the FE Wasteland. His biggest point in 'Leviathan' was describing the natural state of the world and international politics to be anarchy and the function of government being to protect the individuals that comprise it and offer an environment in which them and their culture can flurish. In return they serve the titular Leviathan that is their nation to ensure propigation, protection, and to root out corruption/ forigen influence.

Any points I could make on how it ties into FE have already been made by you and the other Anon so won't repeat that stuff but Leviathan is a really good read and would at the least reccomend reading excerpts from it.
Anonymous
bbcc4f1
?
No.285707
285721
12PY5X9gPB.jpg
>>285667
>numbness
Only you can make yourself numb or not numb and to what degree and for how long. Usually it's under unconsious directives too so chemicals/sensations won't overload you.
>>285700
>His biggest point in 'Leviathan' was describing the natural state of the world and international politics to be anarchy and the function of government being to protect the individuals that comprise it and offer an environment in which them and their culture can flurish. In return they serve the titular Leviathan that is their nation to ensure propigation, protection, and to root out corruption/ forigen influence.
Actual Anarchy Minecraft servers experiences checks out. Thanks for the lit recommendation.
>>285684
>Magic is a blank cheque.
Yes, but no.
Soft magic, Hard magic, plot magic, humor magic, and Deus Ex Machina magic.
>>285689
Pit her in a world that tests her mettle. The impurities will be bent and broken and the solid core will be honed.
But that would have to mean we would have to know the structure of her personality first.
>Calibur that isn't being mass produced
Ehhh. Rocks are good friends. Lift one up real high, slam it down easy peasy. Even better would be telekinetic wire.
Anything would work just depends on how desperate or quickly stolping a threat needs to happen.
There is logistics and labor behind every single thing, while sifting through it all can be hard pulling it all together is satisfying.
>>285693
A bit excessive example. While technically about exposure to horrible shit it is three degrees off topic. (Lilpep-MoralSlipandSlide, Desensitize vs Craving, Examples to back it up even though it's a known thing.)
> laugh together at how fucked up it all was.
Eh. Hold on I have to go pull out an edge:
Nothing compares to the darkness one can harbor inside one's self. The void is always watching, hoping to be brought to light.
The how is the easy part, the why is even quicker, but the underlying backstory now that's interesting.
It's also possible to induce a biological craving through stimulus via behavioral psychology. It can be resisted, but frankly many don't even know it's going on.
Anonymous
be8e2b3
?
No.285721
>>285685
">would I start to distrust white people"

I'm not saying you are strawmanning me here but I like to point out that I didn't actually write that in my post or that's the conclusion I made before anwyay. I guess you could be paraphrasing me correctly though, but I don't feel like rereading through my post right now to find out.

I'll probably try to look into what aws said here by everyone here and add m opinion but not right now.

I just wanna add a thought I had for a while ago. That there probably is a connection between desensitivization an moral degeneration. I realize that I have actually championed this idea elsewhere in my thoughts so I might have been inconsistent, again I don't feeel like reading that long post of mine. It also the context of it, I woul have to read through everything again and ehh.

I used to have this idea to explain how the wierd fethies of in the world came to be. For example, even with the high number of unique human beings I have a hard time imagine anyone being into scat, naturally, so I most assume that they became that over time.

But I wonder a bit like why? I feel like two conditions or well at least one most be upheld for desensitivization to lead to moral degeneration. First, the person has to on some level get something out of it and the second, alternative reason, is that they mustn't actively resist but that's a bit obvious.

For example, porn, a person gain something from it: Orgasm. And from there the process would be that they would slowly grow used to whatever they watch and they need something new to obtain orgasm from.

Though a wrinkle in this theory is myself, While I'm ashamed to admit it, I have watched porn since my balls dropped and have never been able to truly quit. But things haven't really escalated for me I kinda watch what I wacth from the begining if now more hentai I feel less cucked this way.
I guess it might be because I have always tried to resist it.

I feel that if you are in a wasteland and innocent people die left and right in violent and gory deaths, I think that would be the equivalent of someone cutting you with a knife, you wouldn't like it and even though you would get desensitized to after a while. Though, I really do imagine that that's a hard desensitivization right there. But you would keep your morals or the basics. You wouldn't start to enjoy the deaths around you, you might even see them as failures on your part to protect these people from the dangers.

I suppose there is an arguement to be made that having the power to kill someone will make you go power tripping and in that way turn into a sadist. Anyway, I feel that's about it that I had to say for now.

>>285698
>>285700
>>285707
Saw your posts
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285746
EkKToZXWsAACvzM.jpg
Is there a list of every skill Littleshit has displayed an above-average or even supernatural aptitude for at this point?
She's repaired one Raider armour outfit with another one, in the middle of a firefight.
]Yes, this is something you can do in the games.
Just pause time by bringing up a menu, then repair an item by consuming another item in its category. Repair one dress with another, repair a revolver with a bigger revolver, repair a laser pistol with a laser rifle.
This raises the item's Condition points back towards 100/100. At maximum condition the item's as good as it should be. Armour and Weapons lose condition points slowly when used.
The higher your Repair Skill is, the more condition points you give one item when consuming another, and the higher your Maximum Repair Value is.
Someone with a repair skill of 42/100 can only raise an item's condition to 42%
But someone with Repair 100 can repair an item's condition to 100%
A really retarded system added by (BITCH YOU GUESSED IT) Fallout 3.
AMMO is already a mechanic that limits your use of powerful weapons. But this game gives you way too much ammo, then has you find crappy guns at low condition early on. This means the GIGANTIC FUCKING ORANGE HULK WITH A LASER MINIGUN COMING RIGHT FOR YOU is going to do barely any damage with his shitty gun, and it'll be just as worthless for you when you take it, unless you repair it with more of these guns.
Many retards play Fallout 3. Only retards think it's good. I fucking said it here because you can't say this on any Fallout fansite, but Fallout 3 was a disaster for the franchise just like bethesda.
Anyway, many retards play through Fallout 3 AND NEVER STOP USING THE DEFAULT PISTOL, because every gun they find is crappier than it.
FNV fixed the repair system by letting you unlock the Jury Rigging perk. It widens the "within the same category" definition when you're repairing items, so if you'd like to repair a 50-cal sniper rifle by consuming one revolver, or repair a suit of Power Armour by consuming a dress, you can do that now.
It's videogame logic to the extreme. Pinkie Pie logic to the max.

What really fucking pisses me off about this fic is how it will rely on videogame logic as a crutch whenever kkunt thinks it'll make Littlepip seem cool, and then break that logic or call it retarded and piss on the videogames he's ripping off whenever it is convenient or seems like something that would make his protag sound cool.

So one moment, Littlepip's retarded Pegasus buddy is flying through the air at mach fuck in a dogfight with power-armoured enclave pegasi, and he's using two buckshot-firing shotguns duct-taped to his side fired via mouth trigger, and these fucking pathetic shotgun pellets actually harm the enemies in armour thicker than a tank because videogame logic.
And Littlepip can just talk some random faggot into doing something SUPREMELY RETARDED because she has a really high Speech skill number
And the next moment, Littlepip is snarking at enemies for following videogame logic and thinking its rules and upsides AND DOWNSIDES will consistently apply to her.

The rules of real-world logic and videogame logic are only applied to Littlepip when the author thinks that would make her seem cooler, and that's as inconsistent as it is fucking annoying.
Littlepip isn't really a cool or strong protagonist with a cruel world and the whole deck stacked against her, she's got the author in her corner lowering the difficulty settings and outright cheating and practically handing her good shit whenever she needs it.

Some things are copypasted straight from Fallout 3 out of laziness, and some out of spite because the author really, really wants you to know he found it very stupid and unrealistic when in Fallout NV's Dead Money you (the player, by choosing the right dialogue options) cure a Nightkin's dual-personality schizofaggotry during a single conversation in a gas-filled kitchen he's threatening to burn down and blow up.
Kkat really wants you to know he thinks it's stupid and unrealistic that in Fallout 3's opening, the vault's head scientist brought his 10 year old son into the Nuclear Reactor Room so he could shoot a BB Gun at some targets the scientist had set up, even though context clues and worldbuilding in that shit vault heavily imply the gimmick is supposed to be "The Overseer is a totalitarian mindless cunt who doesn't think he has to make sense since he's in charge, therefore the vault scientist has to take his son to an empty room nobody would enter to play with guns in secret".
And Kkunt can't even insult these scenes in a creative manner! The God/Dog ripoff in the Dead Money Ripoff arc just winks at the audience and says "It sure would be retarded if you thought you could cure my mental problems in under a minute of talking". And the Fallout 3 starting vault is rewritten as "The only Vault with a male overseer, and therefore a highly macho culture! So when the head scientist takes his son into the reactor room to fire a BB Gun, the radiation core explodes and horrifically mutates everyone into rapey tentacle horrors! Woohoo, feminist pandering! Did I mention the protagonist is a lesbian who loves to stare at PONY ASS?".
Give me a fucking break.

You all know I don't like Fallout 3, but how Kkunt treats it and the good Fallout games still pisses me off.
Kkat thinks he's better than what he shamelessly ripped off to impress coombrained "impressionable" circlejerking bronies during their "let's pretend everything we create is pure gold just because we made it, and then suddenly stop a few years in once our faggy friends gain their artificial fame so it seems like they're solidified in history as great important people nobody could ever replace" phase.

It reminds me of Elizer Yudowsky(Assman), but at least his self-aggrandizing bullshit created a cult of pseudointellectual circlejerking paypiggy simps who think he can stop the AI Apocalypse. Kkunt's just some faggy plagiarizing fanfic writer. Forever.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285767
vih4x52iba821.png
This story's over-reliance on gore and edge and the inconsistent abilities of everyone involved, villains and heroes alike, the childish premise taken edgily up the ass by someone who erroneously thinks they're above childish premises and childish literature in general, and the presence of one supremely overpowered bitch of a woman who's never adequately called out on it reminds me of Animorphs.

Basically imagine some snooty karen single mother sitting down and watching Mighty Morphin Power Rangers with her black kids, and getting mad at how childish and lighthearted this tv show about a blue alien and his funny robot friend recruiting "Five teenagers with attitude" to become Power Rangers and kick the asses of evil alien monsters and fight Rita Repulsa.

Karen gets so pissed off she writes some shitty tiny books and sucks Scholastic's cock until they give her 70+ books and spinoff series arcs and a nickolodeon show and all sorts of other bullshit and buy their own books and shove them into schools in the hopes that this artificially inflates her career sales figures.

So instead of disposable and cool-looking baddies for the heroes to fight, it is always:
Yeerks, the brain-slugs and the two disposable alien races brain-slugged into working for them:
Taxxons, hungry aliens
Hork-Bajirs, bladed angry buff aliens

and instead of "This benevolent alien gives kids powers and advice and missions", the alien dies and gives the powers to kids out of desperation Green Lantern style. Then some other alien sixth ranger guy gets added to the team from the same race, because the author's indecisive like that.

And the alien race that says "Kids, fight evil with the powers I give you!" was originally intended as a generic grey "Ayyy lmao" race. But Scholastic said "be more creative plz" so Karen decided to "Make it so complex that no TV show or movie could ever animate it right!" and what she designed is both overdesigned and BORING.
It's a blue centaur!
It's just a blue centaur but the author duct-taped some extra shit onto it.
so they have a generic "Proud warrior race idiot" society that's got such a hard-on for itself and its own shapeshifting powers that it has "morphing dancers" who stand in the street and shapeshift in public and get paid like musicians or some shit
also the blue centaur has a scorpion tail. and a downwards-sloping back so you can't ride him. and eye-stalks. and no mouth, so he speaks via "Thought-Speech" psychically and eats grass by absorbing it through his hooves.

Also the robot friend becomes a retarded pussy pacifist (An episode is wasted on getting the tech needed to remove his pacifism so he can help the war effort. His offscreen violence is so swift and scary that it terrifies children traumatized by over 30 acts of gore and war crimes already, and they all agree to reinstall his no-violence protocols and never get his help again

And instead of Power Ranger's "Actors do kung fu and suit-wearing actors swing swords and fire lasers, making sparks and harmless explosions that only cause pain and exhaustion" kiddie stuff, these books have EDGE AND DEATH AND MISERY AND GRIM DARK GORE! So much fucking gore! Morphing from animal form to human form and back heals all wounds, so the body horror transformations and gore never actually matter. They're just here for EDGE! The author gets fucking wet describing the bones of children snapping and grinding and crunching as they bend over and their faces split apart to make room for dog mouths.

And instead of Rita Repulsa openly saying those hammy campy mwahaha lines, it's "Visser Three", the only BrainSlug Yeerk to ever possess an Andalite (Shapeshifting blue centaur) body, letting him turn into all sorts of shitty DeviantArt OCs

"Fun daily school life" is USUALLY (when author remembers) haunted by the knowledge that brain-slug aliens are quietly invading earth. they even got the headmaster of these kids' school! oh no! the horror!

And the five "new power rangers"?

Cassie the mary sue, the best transmorpher of the group who gets to look like a massive-winged angel girl while everyone else's faces are breaking apart. she's just naturally perfect and her mom works at Super-SeaAndLandWorld and her dad's a combination farmer and vet with a clinic out the back so she single-handedly ensures this group gets access to farm animals, sea animals, tigers and lions and shit from Super SeaAndLandWorld, and more.

Jake, the generic heroic kid, the dreamboat perfect man boyfriend of Cassie until he becomes a PTSD-filled sadsack abandoned by Cassie who gives up on the mission, gets a new BF, and fucks off.

Marco, the obligatory smart black kid. He's smart so he's the only one allowed to think of things usually, unless it involves animals. Then Cassie thinks of it. His dad's a faggot and his mom's the body of Visser One (Other bad guy, minor, this doesn't matter)

Tobias, unimportant guy who gets stuck in Red-Tailed Hawk form at the end of episode one. His sudden disappearance is explained by telling each of his foster parents that he's with the other parent.

Rachel, the tough girl. The author demands you take her seriously! She's reely reely stronk and she turns into bears and becomes soooo angry and saaad.

Aximili Totalfaggouth Assfill the wacky sense-freak alien boy who makes the yeerks look supremely incompetent for never drawing attention to the party even though all Andalites taking human form act like him. HAHAHA HE WANTS CINNAMON BUNS AND CHOCOLATE. HAHA COMEDY.

There was a temporary party member called David, he was mean and betrayed humanity for the BrainSlugs out of cowardice, so Cassie forces Rachel to torture him to death and endure his screams.

Satan and God are also characters in this story. Everything's a chess match between them so nobody has free will and nothing matters.

In the end the heroes win, then a new invincible threat shows up and the only heroes with balls left ram their spaceship into one of many alien spaceships to kill themselves, the end.

ha.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285778
285779
1602889551306.png
>>285552

Still getting caught up on the conversation that took place while I was gone, but I'll respond to some of the discussion in a little bit. Meanwhile, let's continue with the story.

>A new thought was occurring to me. About Watcher. The Wasteland Survival Guide had to be written after the megaspells rained down. Long after, considering its sound advice on scavenging. So that book wouldn't have been in the Ponyville Library as part of the original, pre-war library. It found its way in there later, from the lack of being burned, defaced or covered in blood, I was guessing recently. Which made me wonder: did Watcher know about those poor ponies the raiders held captive?
The impression I'm getting is that Frank not sure why the author keeps referring to this character as Watcher, it must be a typo is going to end up being one of those ambiguous characters who helps the protagonist somewhat, but also has his own agenda and thus can't really be trusted. This is fine, and I'm curious to see where it goes. However, Littlepoop's reasoning here feels more like the author thinking out loud than anything that LP would come up with on her own.

Part of the problem is that it's still not tremendously clear just how much of the world's backstory this character actually knows. On the one hand hoof, whatever she is presented to us as kind of a greenhorn, who spent her life as an apprentice gadget repair pony of little note living in a shelter, who would thus know virtually nothing of the world outside. On the other, she seems to know quite a bit when it's convenient for her to, which I suppose could be due in part to some basic education she'd have received while in the Stable, but her level of knowledge still doesn't feel consistent or believable.

A bigger part of the problem is that we don't really know that much either. I'm assuming the history of the war and what led up to it is going to be a big part of the main story, and the author will thus be feeding it to us in small doses over the course of the book, which is appropriate. However, what we have learned has been revealed rather chaotically, often with references to things like "the war" or "when the megaspells rained down," presented as if these were common-knowlege events. We don't really know much about any of this stuff ourselves, so it's hard to gage how much of it Littlepoop ought to know.

Anyway, LP continues to speculate to herself about what Frank's game might be. The main takeaway is that LP now suspects that Frank sent her into the Library specifically to release the prisoners she released, which itself suggests that one or more of the prisoners (most probably the zombie since that was the one the story focused most on) was somepony important. She seems to have realized that her mysterious benefactor might have an ulterior motive, beyond floating around dispensing helpful advice to complete strangers.

Even though according to an earlier paragraph the sprite bot floated away, LP can apparently still hear the music it is playing, which then suddenly cuts off and is replaced by a new voice. The text describes the new speaker as "the voice of a smooth male pony with a greasy charisma."

>Friends, ponies, rejoice! Although the world about you is bleak, scarred and poisoned by the war of honorless, thoughtless, inferior ponies of the past, we do not have to live in the shadow of their greed and wickedness. Together, we can raise Equestria back to its former beauty! Together, we can build a new kingdom where all live together in perfect unity! It's already happening, my good ponies. Already, the foundation for a new and wonderful age is being built. Yes, it's hard work, but don't we owe it to ourselves, and to future generations of ponies, to be better? No, to be the best we can possibly be? I'm telling you now, as your friend, as your leader, that we can. We must. And we will!
So apparently, someone is actually in charge still. Either that, or someone who aspires to be in charge is attempting to drum up support for whatever his cause is. Presumably this is foreshadowing something important.

Once again, Littlepoop's inconsistent knowledge of past and present events displays itself; she has no idea who the pony claiming to be the leader might be. Her observations are more or less along the same lines as mine: the world seems to be a decaying chaotic shithole, without anything resembling towns, cities or higher civilization of any kind. The ponies that don't live in Stables seem to mostly wander around looting whatever was left behind in the ruins of the previous world order, apparently without trying to settle in or rebuild any of its structures (beyond repurposing them as makeshift fortresses as the raiders in the previous episode seem to have done).

For no particular reason I can ascertain, Littlepoop runs off to find "a ruin with enough intact stairs for me to get up to what was left of a second floor." She uses her binoculars and spots a plume of smoke in the distance. This seems to confirm her suspicion that there is, in fact, a settlement of some kind nearby; however, it's unclear how or why she came to suspect this. She also sees that there is a road leading to this settlement, upon which there appears to be some kind of wagon train traveling.

It's hard to nail down where LP is supposed to be in physical space here. Our last point of reference was a playground, which, when combined with this two-story structure she's in right now, would indicate that she is in some kind of urban area. Her last mappable location would have been Ponyville, and due to the vague jump in time between the last chapter and the current, it's impossible to know how far from there she's traveled. If she is just now noticing that there is a major high-traffic road, it's also a little unclear how she's been traveling from point A to point B so far.

Anyway, she sends Celestia a prayer of thanks and there is a page break.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285779
285780
2425571_AnibarutheCat_sticker_007.png
>>285778

>The path wasn't a road, exactly. Rather, it was a long, arcing swath cutting through the Equestrian Wasteland.
This should clear things up, but it only confuses me further. If I'm following this correctly, LP's movements in this chapter have taken her from a munitions factory located some undefined distance from Ponyville, to a playground which apparently just exists in the middle of nowhere, to a two-story building of indeterminate purpose, which also just exists in the middle of nowhere, and now she appears to have finally found a road.

The text mentions that after LP leaves the factory, she picks a random direction and begins wandering. There is an implication that this is basically what she has been doing since she left Ponyville. So, presumably, she has just been wandering aimlessly through the grass or dirt or whatever the post-magical-nuclear ground is composed of, and by pure dumb luck is just stumbling upon structures that are randomly dotted around for who knows what reason.

Is she in the ruins of a city, or at least a town or a suburb? The presence of buildings and a playground would suggest this, but if that's the case, oughtn't there be some streets for her to follow, instead of just wandering through apparently wide-open space? Shouldn't there be other buildings, and if so, then shouldn't she encounter raider groups like in Ponyville? There's no logic whatsoever to the geography of this setting or how its population is distributed, it just feels like a game world.

Anyway, from what she further describes, it seems that what she has found is actually the remains of a railroad. She follows it until she comes to a gully, but she doesn't trust the bridge, so she instead opts to descend and cross the gully the slow way. On the way, she has a pointless and not particularly exciting confrontation with some mysterious pig-creatures. She uses "Little Macintosh" to dispatch these.

Equally pointless is the description of an abandoned camp she discovers under the bridge while she is still down in the gully. We get another long paragraph that is basically just an itemized list of more random crap she picks up, though there is this:

>I had been surprised to see a smiling zebra on the front of the box, the first depiction of a zebra I'd seen that didn't look like a storybook villain.
This seems to be another subtle hint the author is dropping about the situation of the world prior to its collapse. I've gathered from some of Nigel's rambling spoilers that the Zebras were a political or religious faction, who were presumably opposed to the ponies in some way. It appears that a negative perception of them has persisted in the Stable where Littlepoop grew up.

Anyway, she apparently makes it out of the gully and keeps following the railroad. Then, suddenly, she gets shot in the leg.

>The bullet missed the bone, and I could tell that sickeningly because I could see it!
I'm rapidly losing confidence that this author has any idea how bullet wounds work. Or, for that matter, how guns work. Also, this sentence is atrociously written.

Anyway, despite her bum leg she manages to drag herself behind some cover and tries to patch herself up, but the wound is too serious to treat with the supplies she has. She manages to get it sort-of bandaged to the point that she can focus on trying to find the shooter. Unfortunately, she can't spot anyone, which indicates a sniper.

>I felt like my heart swallowed an ice cube when the image hit me that there was a pony out there with a StealthBuck!
First of all, the heart is an organ with no mouth or gullet and thus can't swallow anything, so this metaphor is dumb. The author could just as easily have said "my heart turned to ice" or something to that effect. Second, what the hell is a StealthBuck? This has never been mentioned in the text up to this point and it's not something common or real that a reader could be expected to guess at or already know. Third, how is Littlepoop, who had literally never even seen a gun up until a couple of days ago, aware of some obscure type of...well...from context I'm assuming it's some kind of super-powerful sniper rifle? I really have no idea; the author doesn't even try to explain this one.

Anyway, it looks like we never get to find out what a StealthBuck is, because it turns out that it's not even what the attacker is using, so it was pointless to even bring it up. She looks up and sees a pegasus flying overhead, with a couple of rifles mounted under its wings. She manages to levitate a rock in time to deflect another shot, which somehow punctures her canteen and costs her the rest of her water. Another shot, which I guess magically circles around the rock somehow, ends up in her shoulder.

>So, this is what it was like to die? So overrated.
Le edge.

She appears to lose consciousness for a couple of minutes at this point, and when she regains it she sees the wagon that she saw earlier through the binoculars. The present location of the pegasus with the rifles at is not given.

>Forcing myself to my hooves, I began dragging myself into the open. If I was going to die, it wasn't going to be laying down, watching these people get slaughtered!
Even though she may be planning to actually lay down the law, this should still be "lying down."

Also, I see her logic, but it's not a given that the pegasus will attack the wagons. What I assume is happening is the settlement has guards posted a couple of miles out to watch the road, and they saw some strange pony skulking around, armed to the teeth. The pegasus assumed she was a threat and attacked her. Moreover, even if the pegasus is a bandit or something, she's pretty badly wounded and it makes no sense to go charging in as she wouldn't be much help. There are several of them, and if they are in the business of transporting goods to and from the settlement they probably know to watch for hijackers and can defend themselves. If not, it's their own fault if they get killed.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285780
285781 285852 285927
1602727320499.png
>>285779

Anyway, despite apparently having a wound in her leg serious enough that she can look into it and see bone, as well as a new one in her shoulder, plus whatever blood she lost while she was unconscious, Littlepoop is so concerned about this wagon train which is being driven by complete strangers who, based on most of her previous experiences, she should probably assume are hostile anyway that she somehow stands up and drags herself in front of the wagons.

It's not clear how long this takes her, since we don't know the distance between her current position and the train tracks, but given her condition we can probably assume she's limping badly and moving slowly. She would be an easy mark for the pegasus right now for that matter, she would have been an even easier target while she was lying in the open and apparently unconscious for an indeterminate period of time, but for some reason he allows her to limp to the tracks.

She stands heroically between the wagons and the pegasus, who is apparently now flying directly towards her but hasn't tried to shoot her yet.

>I stood directly between him and the travelers. My vision was blurry from tears and trauma. I wasn't sure, even with S.A.T.S., that I could hit him. And I stood no chance against his aim. He was an amazing shot; technically, he hadn't missed me yet.
Then I guess it's a good thing he isn't shooting at you, for some ridiculous unknown reason.

This is beyond absurd at this point; based on the preposterously severe injuries the author chose to inflict on her, she shouldn't even be able to move right now, let alone make a heroic stand for a bunch of total strangers who might kill her and can probably defend themselves anyway. This pegasus has a massive advantage over her: he's airborne, she has no cover beyond whatever nearby rocks she can levitate, she's badly wounded, and despite the literal mountain of guns she is apparently carrying with her, she is choosing to fight him with a fucking revolver, so he has her outgunned as well. This is by far the dumbest fight we've encountered in this story so far, and that's saying a lot.

Oh also, she says that he hasn't missed her yet, but he actually has missed her twice. By my count he has fired four shots at her, and two of them missed: the first shot ripped her leg open (hit), the second was deflected by the sniper rifle on her back (miss), the third she deflected with the rock (miss) but it destroyed her canteen (somehow, still not sure about the physics on that one), and the fourth went into her shoulder (hit, though again the physics of it are confusing since she was still blocking with the rock).

Anyway, it gets even funnier from here:

>Putting every ounce of me into it, I growled as menacingly as I could. And hoped that a pony who had survived four shots would be mistaken for a pony to be reckoned with.
Literally nopony would mistake her for that. She is completely at this guy's mercy. The only reason she isn't dead right now is because literally every enemy she goes up against is dumb as a fucking post. This dive-bombing pegasus could probably have pumped five or six rounds into her but for some reason hasn't yet, even though all she's doing is standing there growling at him.

>"Shoot at me all you want, but if you attack that family, I will! End! You!"
This is just comedy at this point. The way this line would realistically have gone was:

>"Shoot at me all you want, but if--"
>*BANG BANG*
>Littletwit dies
But fortunately for her, this will never, ever happen. Whatever cosmic force is playing her character must have set the game on "Please don't put me in any actual danger because I am literally retarded" mode, so she is, for all intents and purposes, immortal.

Anyway, it turns out I called it. Instead of gunning her down, the pegasus stops short as soon as he sees she is trying to defend the caravan instead of attack it. The pegasus is indeed a guard for the settlement, or maybe an outrider for the caravan; in any case, the two are on the same side. The misunderstanding was pretty much what I outlined above: the pegasus saw Littlepoop sneaking around the gully, assumed she was either attacking the wagons or planning an ambush, and attacked her first. However, we will have to wait until the next chapter to learn more, because Littleshit loses consciousness again.

Oh yeah, apparently the pegasus' name is Calamity, and he speaks with an Applejack-like drawl. I recognize the name from some of the rule34 tags I've seen for this story, so I am guessing that we have finally encountered an important character.

Also, one thing I haven't mentioned yet but have noticed is that the author adds footnotes at the bottom of every chapter. The footnotes don't really have anything to do with the story; they're cutesy, jokey video-game-isms that playfully reference the setting. I've been ignoring them up until now, but I notice the ones at the bottom of this chapter read:

>Level Up. New Perk: Egghead - You will add +2 skill points each time you gain a new experience level.
Personally, instead of just dropping in random shit that sounds like what I presume are level-up messages in Fallout but tinged with pony-isms like "egghead," I'd try to tie these to the outcome of the actual events of the story. In this case I would write:

>Level Up. New Perk: Dumb Luck - A bizarre combination of extreme stupidity and insane luck, heretofore unseen in this world, has made you literally impossible to kill. You are unstoppable. You can stand in front of a maelstrom of bullets doing jumping jacks and not a singled damned one of them will hit you. If you fall off a cliff the laws of gravity will change, and you will float lazily downward until making a graceful landing atop a mountain of pillows. Your Luck stat is now so high that it has exceeded the max integer limit for the game's software causing a stack overflow. The program has crashed. Game over. You win. Congratulations. Again.
Anonymous
5b282f4
?
No.285781
285783
>>285780
Yeah, that scene was probably the result of Kkat going "okay, here's how these characters meet" before actually writting or planning out the rest of the encounter, leading to him not realizing that it is incredibly contrived. It could be Calamity was confused not only by how that little mare was still standing, but also by how she had placed herself facing him in front of the caravan. I also think the "he technically hasn't missed" is from how, had the sniper rifle and rock not been there in very specific positions, the bullets would have connected with Littlepip. It's splitting hairs, but...

Oh, one more thing: if some object or concept is poorly explained, you can bet it's something from the games that Kkat thought would be obvious to the reader, such as with the StealthBuck. Spoiler for what it is, in case you'd rather wait for when we actually get to see one in action: in Fallout 3 and New Vegas - the Fallout games Fo:E is based off of - the Stealth Boy is a stealth module that attaches to your Pip Boy (hence "Stealth Boy") which bends light around the user for a limited time, leaving little visual trace of their existence besides a barely-visible shimmer of light where the user is standing. Since the Pip Boy is now the PipBuck, Kkat changed the name to the StealthBuck.
Anonymous
bbcc4f1
?
No.285783
285784
>>285781
I too like to call secretly entering by surprise with or without lube a stealthbuck.
Anonymous
5b282f4
?
No.285784
>>285783
Alright, that got a kek outta me.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285852
285854
I+am+the+ultimate+lifeform+you+think+its+a+coincidence_66107d_6022051.jpg
>>285780
Yeah, you're right.
And you guessed that thing at the end correctly, too.

In Fallout 1, 2, and NV you Level Up when you get enough EXP

at every third Level in Fallout 1 and 2, or every second level in New Vegas, you can select a new Perk to obtain from the list of perks you're eligible for.

These Perks are positive effects like "You deal +5% damage with handguns" and "You no longer trigger landmines when walking over them".

Some Perks are locked behind level, skill, and SPECIAL stat requirements. So for example you can only get the Sniper perk (Critical hits with rifles deal +50% more damage to enemies) if you're over level 6, have a Guns score above 75, and an Agility score above 6.
Companion Perks are perks you temporarily have whenever a Companion is working for you. So if you've got Arcade the doctor running around with you, you recover health faster. Having Boone the sniper around means he'll spot enemies for you. Cass the drunken overrated whore makes booze hurt you less. and these companions sometimes get extra perks or give you extra perks depending on how you completed their Companion Quests.
After helping Boone the sniper get over the role he played in the Bitter Springs massacre, you can either say "Get revenge on whoever gave the kill everyone order!" or "Get over it and let go". The former makes him shoot better, the latter makes him tougher. I always choose the latter even though the former makes him more useful to me.

sometimes, you permanently gain perks after completing a quest based on how you completed it.
very clever mod authors (like the genius behind Fallout New California) will use these perks in place of a reliable system of global triggers checkable by dialogue and scripts.

anyway back to the fic

in Fallout 3 some perks got their effectiveness reduced because you now gain a perk after every level.

But some perks just raise one skill by a few points, to make sure any retard (even those who gave their character a low INT score) can get their skills high enough to stand a good chance at beating the RANDOM FUCKING DICE ROLL-BASED SKILL CHECKS IN THIS GAME and seeing all content on a single character's play-through.
and some perks are supremely overpowered like Nuclear Anomaly, where you generate a nuclear explosion around you (without harming you) whenever you're lowered to 20% of your health
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285854
>>285852

that's a big creative divide between the geniuses at Obsidian/Black Isle Studios and the retarded niggers at Bethesda.

Bethesda think you should make one character who's good at everything and keep playing forever no matter what. Any variance in your Skyrim experience compared to mine should be minimal, because Skyrimbabbies will call their "Wandering around encountering random shit videogame style" sessions a unique experience superior to actual hand-crafted well-designed videogame experiences. Every player should be equally godlike and get the best armor and weaps from the start. Story should be retarded and simplified and coordination-less interns should design damn near everything with no thought for tone or consistency. Choices should mean nothing and change as little as possible except at the end. Choices should be as simple and nonsensical as "Do you want to befriend the good guys or the bad guys who have already tried to kill you twice?" and "Do you want to burn this one city down for no reason or not do that?" Replay value is for faggots and cutscenes are god. ALSO A BUTTON THAT EXPLODES SOMETHING NEEDS TO GO SOMEWHERE.

Black Obsidian think replay value, actual roleplaying, actual decision-making, and the ability to make creative character builds that differ from the characters of other players are vital parts of a Western RPG because they are. They've got good stories and incredible replay value. After playing FNV as a NCR guy who hates the Legion, you can experience the game again as a Legion soldier for more content and fun.

Bethesda make Micheal Bay movies but dumber without even fucking realizing it. Obsidian makes actual good video games. It's a shame Outer Worlds turned out so bland and boring! I blame it on all the women they hired whose only writing experiences were publishing werewolf futa rape books online.
Have I mentioned that I fucking hate niggers and women?
I really hate the way women looking for a job will talk about what diversity boxes they tick first, and then talk about their fucking mediocre accomplishments or bullshit you about a generic safe personality they claim to have, one or the other goes before the other but the diversity checkboxes (The only reason anyone would want to interact with or hire her) always come first, because any of those incredibly rare women with brains know they'd get more cash and creative control going into business solo away from the office politics wars waged by other women to make their meaningless unfulfilling lives feel more exciting. I think women actually want to feel oppressed, in the way autists want to feel a weight on their chest from their weighted blankets when they sleep. It's reassuring to know there's a good force on you, and the core lie of feminism is the idea that women deserve more than they earn and have bad forces holding them back. No, they have bad forces propping them up and holding humanity back.
God fucking damn it, words can't describe how much women piss me the fuck off. Narcissistic western women were always rotten to the core, it's why jews had such an easy time turning them against white men and "marrying them" to jewish lies. jewed women grow fat and purchase ten cats with wealth stolen from the white man and given to them by the jew and jewish govt and jewish courts. They've got every advantage in the world and they're too retarded to notice it, and the ones who do notice it immediately start pulling the trashiest scams possible because they know the courts will go easy on them and let them get away with damn near anything. Do women even have any positive achievements that are not tiny pussy shit like "First woman to use something a man invented", "First woman to be held up as a cultural revolution icon for saying what people were already saying and wanted to hear more of", or "First woman to make a good piece of media by recombining ideas invented by men while also being helped by male writers and cowriters and editors and publishers and the men who taught her to read and the men who invented the industries that handed her a job out of gender-pity", or "First woman to actually do her goddamn job in the right place at the right time and get shilled in the history books for doing what a man could have done in her position better"?
Holy shitting fuck I fucking unironically hate women. How the fuck has any man ever brought himself to tolerate and endure one long enough to fuck her? I don't think women will ever go back to being good mothers and good people unless "Try real hard to pretend to be a good mother/person, or be abandoned and rejected by society for failing until you try harder, or fail utterly and go to jail/a padded room" become their only options in society. All self-made women are myths propped up by white men out of politeness, pity, and desperation to have someone on their level to talk to.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.285867
285874
>>285496
For clarification, the post that this post is responding to is not a compliment
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285874
>>285867
I know it's not a compliment, and I didn't take it as one.
I wouldn't be able to ride a bike today if I hadn't fallen off a bike so often in my youth.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285875
>>285615
>The large amount of spelling and grammatical errors comes from Kkat's ridiculous notion to cease all editing and proofreading of the fic after its completion, to "preserve Fallout Equestria for the future". This doesn't apply to printed copies, which have gone through additional proofreading and have numerous errors corrected.
I've actually been pleasantly surprised by how few spelling and grammar errors I've found in here. The prose style is still fairly amateurish but it's a lot better mechanically than both Sun & Rose and Friendship is Optimal. I feel like in terms of basic writing ability this guy is on par with Peen Stroke, maybe slightly better. This isn't to say I'm finding this to be a high-quality work so far, but honestly at this point I don't set the bar terribly high for these things. If it's just an occasional misspelled word or grammatical error here and there, I am willing to grant a pass on mechanics, and that has mostly been the case with this so far. However, I do point them out when I see them.

>>285624
Now we're talking. I miss using this device.

>>285660
I've begun to notice that k "you may pray the gay away, but I pray for gays to come my way" kat actually does the same thing with violence and edge that Peen Stroke does with sentimentality: he tries to provoke an emotional response from the reader by laying tragedy on as thickly as possible. It fails for more or less the same reason. I'm actually a little annoyed with myself that it took me so long to notice this, but your post is what made me realize it.

So far Littlepoop has been a witness to tragic events, but has experienced no actual tragedy. She hasn't lost anything; she hasn't even lost a fight (except for early on when she gets caught by slavers). As you've illustrated, this is unrealistic anyway: she's lived a sheltered life, is small to begin with, has had no physical training or combat training, knows nothing about weapons, and has never been outside. She should be getting her ass kicked left and right. However, this actually exposes a deeper problem.

K "be a chum and cum in my bum" kat is trying desperately to paint a picture of a grim, hopeless version of Equestria that contrasts sharply with the warm and friendly place that most pony fans are familiar with. With Littlepoop, he's trying to take a character who has led a sheltered life and show her the terrifying realities of the world. However, the best way to accomplish this would be to have her experience it firsthand, not just see it. Her entire life at the beginning part of the story should be one misery after another.

Here is how I'd do it:

She leaves the Stable with some hare-brained idea in her head that she's going to track down Velvet Remedy and be a hero. However, as soon as she's out the door she realizes the world is a grim hellscape covered in radiation or magic taint or whatever the fuck it is exactly. The first ponies she talks to capture her and sell her into slavery. When the slavers are attacked, she tries to escape but fails, realizing that just because she fooled around with lockpicking back in the stable it doesn't mean she can just open any locked thing she comes across. The slavers are ruthlessly slaughtered by the raiders, and instead of escaping she is now taken captive by them, and probably ends up in one of the torture-cages herself. She would probably try to make friends with Monterey Jack, who would eventually figure out a way to outsmart the raiders and escape, or maybe they get freed and the raiders get killed by some freak thing that has nothing to do with either of them. Either way though, she develops a bond with MJ and thinks she can trust him. Then, as soon as they are free, Littlepoop is immediately betrayed by Monterey Jack, who strips her of whatever belongings the raiders and slavers didn't take, and probably rapes her because it's plausible and this author seems to want maximum edge so why the hell not.

The point is, this character's entire life for the early portion of the story should be nothing but a long chain of events in which she is forced to continuously acknowledge her own limitations. The lesson she should learn is that no matter how much spunk or pluck or moxy a pony has, the world is a merciless zero-sum game and battles are won by brute strength alone. She keeps escaping from certain-death situations by the skin of her teeth, but that's as far as her luck goes. She is constantly getting beat up and thrown around, and is betrayed by nearly everypony she meets. It is at this point that she realizes she needs to develop her own strength, and so she gradually begins learning how to fight and to use her cunning and tech knowledge to compensate for her small size. Once she has learned to stand on her own, she can then begin to learn how to make real friends and trust other ponies again. There are any number of directions it could be taken, but this is basically how it should work if an author wants to write this sort of hopeless grimdark world.

Writing her character this way would not only make the fights more believable, it would also make Littleploop more sympathetic. The way it's written now, she's basically a spectator; she sees horrible things happening all around her, but somehow she manages to achieve flawless victory against impossible odds every time. Like Peen Stroke and his endless scenes of Nyx wailing and sobbing for dumb reasons, this author thinks he can milk emotional resonance from this story by heaping on the blood and guts and mutilation. However, it doesn't connect with the reader the way he wants it to, because the reader sees things through the eyes of the protagonist, and the protagonist is basically observing these tragedies without being directly affected (beyond whatever psychological scars she receives by seeing them, I suppose).
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285876
286021
>>285661
I feel like what I wrote above applies to most of what you wrote here as well. I think you nail down what the author is trying to do fairly well, but I would argue that he fails to accomplish it for the reasons I've outlined.

>Now, Littlepip, as a character, is established as having an aversion to killing. How do you overcome this? Simple. Make the enemies so morally repulsive that killing them is anything but a morally bad act.
This actually gets close to what I have a problem with. It feels like a rationalization, not so much on the part of Littletits but on the part of the author. Earlier I used the analogy of cheating on a diet, and that's basically what this is. The author is effectively saying to his character: "I know you have an aversion to killing, but I need you to learn how to kill for this story to work out the way I want. So here's a bunch of sadistic child molesters that nobody would miss or sympathize with; go nuts. You can now experience the thrill of bloodlust without any of the guilt or remorse."

You can't think about morality in a story in quite the same way you'd think about it in real life. Just because a villain deserves to die doesn't mean that the hero automatically has a right to kill them, and just because the villain is dead doesn't mean that justice has been done. You have to remember that nothing in fiction is real, so morality is not so much a matter of exacting actual justice as correcting whatever imbalances you introduce so the reader feels satisfied.

A bunch of generically sadistic cardboard-cutout villains have a helpless foal upstairs, and they amuse themselves by taking turns at raping her and burning her with cigarettes; that's pretty awful. The existence of this is an imbalance in the world. However, merely killing off the raiders and putting an end to the filly's suffering doesn't necessarily mean that balance has been restored; their death has to be satisfying in some way, so if another character brings that death about that character needs to have a 'right' to kill them. 'Right' in this context doesn't necessarily mean a moral right according to basic standards of decency; if this situation were real then nearly anyone could come along and slaughter the raiders and not many people would complain. However, in fiction, if you're going to kill these characters, their death needs to serve a purpose.

For example, if Littlepoop's interference somehow enabled the filly to turn the tables on her abuser and deal the death blow herself, by say, I don't know, kicking a chair that caused the raider to trip and fall out the window, that act would correct the imbalance in the world. The wrong done to the filly is the imbalance, and allowing the filly to get her revenge corrects it. By contrast, if the raiders were just murdered by some passerby, the filly's situation improves, but it doesn't really feel like justice was done.

A good example is Scar's death in The Lion King. He creates a lot of story imbalances: he kills Mufasa, robs Simba of his rightful throne, and ruins life for all the subjects of the realm. Even the hyenas are wronged by him, since they were arguably better off before he duped them into serving him. You might think that simply having Simba kill him would be enough, but this would only satisfy Simba's imbalance; the rest would remain unresolved and the ending would be faintly unsatisfying, though most in the audience couldn't quite explain why. The way Scar actually dies is far better: Simba still ultimately defeats him, but he doesn't deal the finishing blow. He sentences him to "run away and never return," which is the same thing that Scar did to him.

Simba's grievance with Scar ends right then and there; he obtained satisfaction and got his kingdom back. However, Scar still isn't off the hook for all the shit he did to everyone else. So, Scar makes one last cowardly attack on Simba, who then bats him aside effortlessly (there is no further need for Simba to struggle against Scar since their fight is resolved). From here, Scar falls off the rock (symbolically this is his fall from power) and is torn to shreds by hyenas. The hyenas themselves are neither good nor evil; they're just a bunch of low-level thugs that Scar used to do his dirty work. He is now destroyed (in an appropriately agonizing way) by the machine he built to accomplish his goals. The universe balances out in the end. Oh yeah, in case anyone has never seen The Lion King: Spoiler: Scar gets eaten by hyenas at the end.

Now compare that to what Littlecoom does in the Library scene. What is her 'right' to kill these raiders? Sure they're bad, but did they commit any imbalance against her that killing them would resolve? Is she connected to the filly in any way that gives her a right to mete out vengeance on her behalf? The answer to all of these is no. Littleshit is just a spectator who happened to wander in and see that all this shit was going on; she is justifiably outraged but not involved. Thus, not only do her actions not restore balance she's actually introducing additional imbalance by depriving the filly of her right to a real vengeance.

If LP had some significant relationship to the filly, like the filly was her sister or daughter or something, or even if she had met the filly on the road earlier and made friends with her, that might change things. However, in this case, she is just the pure, unsullied hero swooping in to save the day and punish evildoers, which is about the hackiest kind of storytelling a writer can possibly do. The shock elements (child rape, torture, etc), instead of adding emotional resonance, just make the scene distasteful.

I went off on a tangent already so I won't go into detail about it, but there is an old episode of The Sopranos called "Boca" that deals with this subject in kind of an interesting way; anyone curious should try watching it through this lens.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285877
285879 285888 285896
THESTUFFOFNIGHTMARES.png
Sorry about the women rant. Tried to keep it short at first but lost it. I hate how much I get carried away too.

Was thinking about converting videogame mechanics to a story context, and realized... exploitation of game mechanics would be fucking sick in a book.
and sports mechanics, too. Ever seen a backwards long jump? ever seen Arbitrary Code Execution? ever seen Watch For Rolling Rocks in 0.5x A Presses? There are real stories of creativity in gamers out there that would make Ender "Haha I'm the first human who understands space foosball and I'm just a boy outthinking and outplaying teenagers haha how swagtastic oh god please please please think I'm cool" Wiggins weep with jealousy.

In Fallout 4 you can modify your weapons.
Spend some scrap improving your 10mm pistol's grip into a Comfort Grip for +2% accuracy
upgrade your FatMan(TM) Nuclear Bomb Launcher with a MIRV Nuclear Cluster Bomb device so for the price of one nuke, you spit a cluster-bomb that splits into... was it 6 mini-nukes per cluster?
upgrade your Minigun to have nicer iron sights
if you fuck around in the crafting menus real fast, like Pinkie Pie waving her hooves together, you glitch the game so you put your MIRV Nuclear Cluster Bomb device into your Minigun
you now have a minigun that sprays bullets like they're droplets in a piss stream, except each droplet is a cluster bomb that splits apart into 6 nukes per cluster each
Anyway it's really easy to make this in Fallout 4
it's some real cartoon-physics "God I wish I was Borderlands" bullshit and it's fun for all of 60 seconds just like the game

You guys ever heard of Blaseball?
It's an online baseball site where made-up baseball teams full of made-up players have simulated matches while the human fans watching discuss the games and make up wiki pages and lore and songs about the players.
so the Miami Breath Mints fight the Mexico City Wild Wings and fans get mad at Wesrey Furcot for pitching the baseball in the same place every time like an asshole
also players can die during baseball games, dead people are stored in the "null" team and not allowed in matches
also the fans of the winning team each round get to vote for the "Blessing" that team gets, and all Blessings are intentionally-poorly-explained usually-beneficial fun bonuses.
ANYWAY
one time, during Season Six the devs introduced "Idols"
now each player can designate one NPC as their "Idol"
You earn coins every time your "Idol" hits a ball or strikes out as batter
the devs also added a leaderboard ranking the game's made-up players by who was getting Idol'd the most
And the devs decreed that whichever team wins this season gets the 14th most Idol'd player assigned to their team...

...you see where I'm going with this, right?

The made-up team that's calculated to win the most simulated Baseball games gets the 14th most Idol'd OC added to their team
and like I said, dead people are classed under the "Null" team
so players started selecting popular dead players as Idols, hoping to keep them at the 14th most Idol'd spot so whoever wins this season of Baseball will get this dead player resurrected and addded to their team!

This is so fucking smart holy shit

some Yugioh cards are added to the Banned/Limited List only after they're used in an unexpected and creative way to fuck up official YCS Tournaments.
like cards that are used to cause infinite loops of effects that can never be resolved, halting the game's progress forever and forcing a draw or disqualification.
classic card Yata-Garasu was the first card to prove yugioh needs a Limited/Banned list. that or Cletus Of Dagla.
basically if you're attacked by this card, you can't draw a card at the start of your next turn. If don't already have a way to deal with Yata on the field or in your hand, you've lost. you could have the best cards in the world in your deck and you won't be able to play with, pick up, or even look at those cards. You're helpless until the game's over. there is no mercy. no comeback potential. only Yata-Garasu, envoy of the limit.

Plus every monster card effect that does not have "You can only use the effect of InsertThisCard'sNameHere once per turn" in the card text, and has "This effect can only be activated once per turn" instead, is exploitable.
Play the effect monster, use its effect, destroy it and re-summon it, and you can re-activate that effect monster's effect again. Infinite loop, at least until you run out of ways to destroy and re-summon a monster during a turn. But if your infinite loop of effects includes a way to infinitely restore the cards you use to destroy and re-summon your effect monster, then your loop is truly infinite.

also there was once a Smash Bros Melee tournament match where both players were colossal faggots who did absolutely nothing for all 8 minutes of all 5 matches they played, pretty much
eventually one guy in the fight realized "i can't win, unless I get us both disqualified" so he stopped moving, meaning he made no mistakes for his foe to exploit, so they both fucking stood there like glitching NPCs
fucking surreal
they stood there like glitching NPCs with fucked-up pathfinding AI, because they couldn't find the path to victory.
for about 40 minutes in a row
eventually they were told "play or you're both getting kicked out" so they pushed buttons and fought for a bit and eventually the match ended

there are things to exploit in the rules of sports and video games and this kind of fuckery can be fascinating to watch

this fic uses videogame logic when it's convenient and pisses on videogame logic when it's easy, but if this story went all the way with videogame logic it could be fun.

Imagine if Littlepip can easily carry 299 pounds of guns and ammo and other stuff without even breaking a sweat, but not a single ounce more because that would put her over her Maximum Weight Limit according to her pip-buck's Stats page.
imagine Littlepip knocking someone unconscious and storing their body "object" in her inventory.
MONKEY ISLAND WHEN?
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285878
285883 286018
>>285667
>>285672
>>285676

I actually think you're both right to some extent. I don't think a person's values are going to necessarily change depending on the situation they're in, but people still adapt their behavior to fit their circumstances.

One of the fallacies of modern thinking is the assumption that all humans share the same basic nature to begin with. You see it all the time in literature and entertainment, and a lot of the time it boils down to a fairly asinine debate over whether "human nature" is inherently "good" or "evil." A more realistic way of looking at it is to assume that some humans are more capable of higher or "better" reasoning than others; grasping delayed gratification for instance. If you had two humans and you gave each one of them a bag of corn, one person's first impulse would be to eat the corn, while the other person's impulse would be to plant it in order to grow more corn. The second person might be hungry initially, but long-term would end up with a sustainable food source, whereas the first person would eat until he ran out of corn, and would have to then go out and obtain some more, probably through force. A person's base character or nature is mostly what determines their values, and their nature is determined by genetics, intelligence, race, and probably a million other factors that are too complex to go into here. Point is, each person has their own inborn proclivities and tendencies and this determines what they inherently value and will prioritize.

What I think Hobbes was getting at is that most people usually default to their base nature if no force exists that can compel them to do otherwise. You can instill values socially, but this only works so long as there is a functional society in place. The ideal situation is to have a government run by people of higher character, who can use a combination of incentives and disincentives to compel socially desirable behavior from people, regardless of their nature. The assumption is that if such a society were to collapse, the citizens would no longer have any compulsion to follow whatever directives they were given and would revert back to whatever their natures might compel, which would vary from person to person. Good people would likely continue to do good for awhile, but bad people would loot and pillage and eventually ruin things until good people started having to make compromises to their ethics.

For instance, under Celestia's old rule, I'm assuming that foal rape was probably frowned upon, so a pony like one of these raiders who has the desire to do something like that would have the option of either reining himself in, or trying it and risking the consequences. Generally the idea is to make the negative consequences of committing an undesirable act outweigh whatever benefit or pleasure might be obtained from the act itself; for the purposes of this hypothetical we'll say the penalty was death. So, if you are some generic cardboard-cutout bad-pony and the thought of sticking it up some filly's pooper really gets your mojo working, your options are to either keep it in your wrinkle-free horse-pants, or rape a foal and risk being found out and executed. However, as soon as Celestia is out of the picture the threat of death is no longer an issue. This means that there is no longer anything preventing the bad pony from being as bad as he likes, so unless something else deters him, he will most likely go out and start plowing fillies to his heart's content. However, somepony with no such inclinations is not tremendously likely to run out and start raping fillies just because it's no longer against the law.

I think a lot of these Lord of the Flies-style apocalypse stories miss the mark by assuming that law and order and/or some superficial system of social mores are the only thing keeping people in line, and that if this system collapsed everyone would run out and start immediately raping and killing each other. Some would and some wouldn't, and it would vary from person to person and demographic to demographic. These race riots in the US are a good example: in a state of lawlessness, some people will take advantage of the chaos and go get themselves 100 new pairs of sneakers, whereas others will simply barricade their doors and prepare to defend themselves if they have to.

In Littlepoop's case, therefore, I think it's unrealistic to portray her as someone whose values would change this dramatically, even though I basically approve of the author's idea of having her lose her innocence as the story progresses. Someone with an ethical aversion to killing can learn to kill if they have to, but they're not going to go from being all like "eew, violence is icky!" to being all like "this blood and mayhem makes my peepee hard!" Again, I get what the author was trying to do, I just don't think he executed it particularly well.

As an addendum, though, another way to look at this is that sometimes, in a civil society, a person's base nature will be completely submerged in whatever social mores they've absorbed. If ideas like "don't kill" are instilled deeply enough into a person through institutions, and that person spends his whole life in an environment where violence is unheard of and thus has no opportunity to ever try killing, he may have a sadistic or murderous nature and not realize it. However, if he is suddenly thrust into a violent situation, he may find that the things he always thought he valued are not his true values, and he is not only willing to kill but actually enjoys it. I have always kind of enjoyed stories that deal with ideas like this, and it's interesting to consider that this could be happening with Littlepoop.

I don't want to go off on another tangent, but Breaking Bad is an interesting study from this perspective it's actually on my list of things I want to do a long-form critique of one of these days.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285879
293663
>>285877
>Sorry about the women rant. Tried to keep it short at first but lost it. I hate how much I get carried away too.
Don't worry about it, I didn't read it. My policy with you these days is to stop reading immediately as soon as you start going off the rails.

>>285877
>MONKEY ISLAND WHEN?
Some of the meta-humor in those old point and click games was quite clever, and Monkey Island was one of the best. Unfortunately that is also humor that wouldn't translate well into a written story because it's dependent on the video game medium in order to work. If FoE were an actual game, the author could poke fun at the massive size of LP's inventory by having her crack jokes about it from time to time:
>picks up a bus
>"Sweet Celestia, my backpack weighs a ton!"
And so forth. However, in prose this doesn't work; the reader just wonders how the fuck this character is able to lug so much shit around with her.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285881
285888
Just to check if I've gotten better at reviewing stuff and recognizing when edge is too much edge, am I correct in calling the stuff in this shitty comic about the woman's father "Overly-edgy unnecessary nonsense"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdu_kUUKGBo
I don't normally watch this sort of thing, someone else showed it to me and said "Hey, there's a gun in this so you'll like this".

spoiler for the 5 minute video's contents:
The idea of the girl being sold to some men and running away into the woods and needing a smug taxidermist/hunter to save her is dark and edgy enough already. It's already a scenario that could justifiably end in bloodshed. Even if this story took place in a time period where women are legally property, the audience would still be on the gunman's side for saving her. It wasn't necessary to pile edge upon more edge by saying her father raped the mothers and sisters and wives of these three men. And to say they put up with all of this until he... went broke? and when he said "don't take revenge on me, just take my daughter instead", they went along with it instead of killing him and then taking her? all of this implausibly excessive edge just pushes things past the bloody limit into the realm of unintentional comedy!

All that extra edge did was pile more edge upon more edge. And edge can only get so long, sharp, and thin before it ends up as brittle and fragile as the suspension of disbelief.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285883
285888
pure babylon bee.jpg
>>285878
>Breaking Bad
You ever notice that every time Walter kills someone, he starts acting a little more like them? I've never seen Breaking Bad but someone who did told me this happens. After he kills a guy who vomits a lot, Walter starts vomiting. After Walter kills an angry guy, he becomes an angrier man. Or something like that.
Anonymous
bbcc4f1
?
No.285888
>>285877
There are stories that do that. The ones I've read have been on Royal Road (sadly it's amazon owned), and in some fanfiction.
>>285881
>Implying the implied dindu slaves dindu nuffin to the old man.
There would be alot more of them than just short of a fag's testes.
I'm assuming that society is failing to function and only a market with the facade of civility remains. Also the father has a means to keep them in check in relation to wealth so maybe a security force.
Basically the dude is impulsive, 'unflappable', 'strong', and will take whatever he sees.
The gril is still a happy little war prize. The help has been taken care of. The father is either dead or desolate. The rapees are probably fucked till they find their spine lodged in some dark hole.

Honestly saying the truth that they were gonna do the same was a really stupid move. They should have laid the blame directly at her feet for a moral conundrum to buy time, but no that's not allowed.
I'm probably not the best person for edge detection. I can say they all act like flat characters, that's not bad, but it's almost just a trope and nothing more.
>>285883
In the director's commentary they let the character develop as 'it' wished. So that observation makes sense because it (the Walter character) kiled the other characters. He either consumed them (real not good vampire shit) or took their tools.
Why did I watch a directors commentary without seeing the show? Character development.
Anonymous
62836a8
?
No.285896
285900 285910
>>285877
>ever seen Arbitrary Code Execution?

>"Anon, are you sure this is a good idea?"
>You quickly double-check the winding shapes of vines, flowers and herbs surrounding you.
"It'll be fine, Twilight, we've both gone over the calculations over a dozen times. Do you suddenly have a better plan?"
>"No."
>You look up and immediately locate all of the planets in the night sky.
"We know this particular pattern of combustion will cause a buffer overflow, we know which positions in memory will overwrite which registers, we know that there is a convenient jmp esp sequence we can access for the next few hours. Everything will be fine."
>"Still, what if something goes wrong?"
"Nothing will go wrong if we both hold still."
>Your companion goes silent after that.
>You grab a lighter from your bag, light it, and drop it precisely where the fire needs to start.
>Wait, did you remember to compensate for removing the lighter from your inventory?
>universe.exe has stopped responding
>bad end
Anonymous
bbcc4f1
?
No.285900
>>285896
>Be Discord
>A good tea time with Fluttershy, then an incredible increase in chaos.
>ultimate order bares down as the void
>a message pops up
<For technical difficulties please power cycle with an intermission of ten seconds.
"Ugh gag, while I'm here."
>Timesave.tree
>GOTO -21 Execute Timesave.root -Y -N -N -Discord -Y

>"Anon, are you sure this is a-"
>Discord apears, a little statue of Anonymous with a dick on his head and with a flank as a hat is now in Anonymous' bag.
>He's gone again, no sound, no snap, just a silent frown.
>"-good idea?"
"It'll be fine, Twilight,
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285910
285913
tmnv4yhdn03z.jpg
This site's so fucking beautiful, man. A thread like this couldn't exist on any other brony sites without faggy mods being used by faggy brony FE fanboys to silence us.
I'm glad there are no faggots here who say "Littlepip is my waifu, how dare you insult her excellent writing!"
No faggots are here to demand "Fairness" (DISHONESTY AND UNDUE RESTRAINT) from us and demand we spare their baby feelings in the name of "politeness".
No faggots are here to nitpick our valid criticisms of this fic by bullshitting us about subjectivity and pretending their subjective irrational love of the fic is as good as our ability to find holes and flaws in the story that factually exist.
Nobody's going to say "Hey man, this fic is really popular so you should shut the fuck up and pretend to like it instead of insulting all 9000 people who liked it over the course of 10 years! We are cultists and we take criticism of our idolized fanfic personally!"
Yeah, as if Fimfiction's likes/dislikes ratio can be trusted. If 9000 people liked it, why does it struggle to get anyone to buy its print-on-demand shite, forcing them to do crowd-funded "Print Runs" instead?
nine thousand isn't much. There are youtubers with millions of subscribers. But in tiny corners of the internet, so many people get insanely big egos just for having three, six, eight, or a hundred fans.
>>285896
I once saw some medieval-era online sword game's team siege this castle full of enemies. To get over the walls, they exploited the fact that individual players don't have weight and can stand on each other. So a tower of players stacked on each other's heads formeed, and

Speaking of game mechanics in a story context, there was this one fic...
A Dungeons And Dragons 3.5e character was summoned from his world into the Harry Potter world
And his mechanics are taken literally in this story context
so he literally gains EXP from near-death experiences, he takes no injuries and is perfectly fine as long as he has more than 1HP remaining but fucked and slowly dying if he runs out, he thinks like a min-maxing player character, it takes him a while to learn how to have friends and care about them, he even thinks the Harry Potter works like his world for a while.
I forgot his name, let's call him Gary.

Gary's ability to easily craft a +1 Protection From Evil ring is a minor party trick back home but in this world it's a game-changer, because whoever wears it can't be mind-controlled.
Because he's a lv1 Wizard who levels up gradually, he will eventually get the ability to cast Wish, a supreme game-changer, and Resurrection/True Resurrection, another supreme game-changer
The villains actively manipulate him into facing more near-death situations because they want him to gain EXP points and level up and eventually get the True Resurrection spell so it can be used on Voldemort
I think this was also a story where Draco Malfoy's dad is a smart villain instead of a mindless evil cunt so he secretly doesn't want Voldemort resurrected, and just wants to keep being a rich evil prick. But this didn't really matter.

Anyway, Gary's inability to learn new spells without gaining enough EXP for a level-up singles him out as a weird kid in a school where new spells are taught and gradually learned over school terms
there was this one scene where Gary is challenged by Snape to make a potion by mixing things that form a violent explosive when brewed by non-wizards, but make something good when brewed by wizards
so he uses spells like Dancing Lights and Tenser's Floating Disc and Prestidigitation to create the illusion that he's brewing the correct potion, but it turns out Snape lied about what potion these ingredients are supposed to make, so the fact that he makes the wrong potion from the wrong ingredients proves he's more special than he wants them to know he is.

There was another scene where Gary stands up to a foe and takes a Crucio (Mind-Destroyingly Painful Torture Spell) to the face from a baddie without flinching, because Gary thinks to himself "Health Points exist but there is no pain system in DND 3.5e so pain doesn't really exist therefore this pain spell should do nothing to me as long as I don't roleplay being in pain!"

There was a funny scene where Gary is in a shared potions class with Slytherin and Griffindor kids in the audience, and Gary thinks to himself "I'll take a Prepared Action: When a Slytherin does any offensive action against us Griffindors, I will cast Glitterdust on the Slytherin kids!" and then has this Prepared Action unintentionally triggered by Snape (a teacher and former slytherin student) being a colossal cunt and "offensively" shouting at Griffindor kids.
But the scene is also pretty stupid.
Why would he assume slytherin kids would attack his house? DND doesn't have a sanity meter or morale system so yelling at kids isn't a directly offensive action against them. by game mechanics logic this scene should not have turned out like this and by story logic, who the fuck would put evil slytherin and proud wannabe-good griffindor kids in the same room together without several teachers ready to fight?

oh also Gary assumes all evil people work together and are on the same side and want the same thing because that's how things worked back home, but some evil characters are plotting against each other in secret, not that their plans really fuck each other over or change things.

This story was fun when it focused on Gary doing smart shit with DND mechanics. It was immensely boring when it focused on Gary's interactions with the Harry Potter cast, even more boring when focusing on Gary's incorrect assumptions about the world and the stupid filler misadventures this caused, and even more boring than that when it focused on Gary over-thinking things and panicking and being more paranoid than he should be.
Why the hell do so many people think writing a "Paranoid over-thinker" makes their character seem smarter?
I eventually got bored and dropped the story.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285913
>>285910
There's a funny tendency I've observed
Some fanfic writers love to take minor characters from the background and add all sorts of new character traits, backstories, and story roles to them after fucking up all the main characters or deeming them to be too fucked up to use.
All those shitty Naruto fanfics where every main character is rewritten to be pointlessly prickish to Naruto? They give Naruto a harem of minor-character girls.
What causes this? Is it narcissism, and a desire to put original characters over canon ones? Is it cowardice, and a fear of fucking up the portrayal of official characters unintentionally? Is it a sign that these authors are terrible at writing character interactions that are not "Asshole hates hero who did nothing wrong" or "Hero is loved by girl"? Or is it a sign that the author realized far too late into the story's development that once you make every single person in Konoha a cunt except for your favourite characters, writing redemption arcs where they become less prickish takes time and effort they aren't willing to expend?
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285927
285929 285980 285981
whom.jpg
>>285780

Chapter Five: Calamity

Today's Fortune Cookie:
>“Friendship. Friendship never changes.”
This of course is a play on:
>"War. War never changes."

I have heard this original quote repeated fairly often, though I've never been sure of it's source. I always assumed it was from an old movie or something. I googled it just now, and it looks like it's an actual line from the opening narration of one of the Fallout games, which would explain its meme-status. I'm also going to assume that I am probably the only person in this thread who wasn't already aware of that.

I have no problem whatsoever with using epitaphs as chapter headers; I do it myself fairly often. However, if you're going to do this, you'll want to either find actual quotes from actual humans, or else write up some fake quotes and attribute them to characters within your world. The second option is quite easy to do, and I've seen plenty of other authors do it before. Here, watch:

"Look, I've seen faggots come and go. It's my job. Some guys know about building houses or tending bar or managing stock portfolios. My job? Dealing with faggots. So believe me, man; I ain't joking when I say that there are faggots and faggots, you get me? And that kkat...well...that dude is one serious faggot.

"I'll put it this way: imagine you're in a club full of guys dancing around in assless motorcycle outfits and nipple rings and shit like that. Now imagine that instead of dancing around and acting like faggots, these guys are all standing stock still, watching this one guy. And this guy, this kkat, is in the middle of the dance floor, sucking dick after dick after dick without spilling a drop, just choking down like twenty-five, thirty dicks in a row like it's nothing, and these other dudes are all staring at him and whispering to each other.

"Like, imagine that. A whole room full of the biggest faggots you've ever seen, standing in slack-jawed amazement at what a gigantic faggot this one faggot is. I mean, can you imagine that shit? You might think you can, but you can't. I know because I've seen it. And that kind of faggotry will blow your mind."

-- Daniel "Man-Skeezer Butt-Pleaser" Terwilliger IV
Bouncer, the Manhole Club
San Francisco, CA


The problem with the epitaphs in this story is that they are just floating text. Without attribution, the reader might assume the author is just quoting a line of his own text that appears somewhere in the chapter, but this is not the case either. So what we have instead are just these disembodied sentences, hovering pompously at the top of each chapter as if they were spoken by someone important enough to have his witticisms recorded for posterity, but we, the humble reader, are not cool enough to be told who that person might be.

One more side note before we move on: The Wire used an interesting device, where each episode would open with a quotation on a title card. The quotation would be attributed to one of the show's characters, and if I remember correctly was always a line of actual dialogue spoken by that character during the episode. The quote would sort of sum up the episode before you watched it, which I think is basically what k "lol that bouncer hasn't seen shit; the Manhole isn't even the gayest club in San Francisco, not by a long shot" kat was trying to do here. But, again, you can't just open each chapter with a random quoted sentence spoken by nobody; an epitaph has to connect the story to something, either in reality or in the extended world of the story itself.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the actual story.

Littlepoop awakes to the joyous realization that she is still alive. She finds herself lying on a mattress in a mysterious bedroom, so presumably she has been carted back to the settlement.

>As consciousness came back to me, I found myself laying on a mattress, with blankets tucked about me, feeling warm and rested and more comfortable than I had since before I left Stable Two three days ago.
I wanted to highlight this passage in reference to what was being discussed in some of the side conversation above. I think it's worth pointing out that Littlepoop has only been outside the stable for three days. Three days is all it took for her to go from "oh noes blood!" to "fuck yeah, let's stomp on this pony's neck!" Does this feel realistic?

>Looking up and about, I found myself surrounded by several ponies, only one of which I recognized
Only one of whom I recognized.

Anyway, she was indeed brought back to the settlement by Calamity and presumably the others in the wagon train.

>The voice had come from an equally pretty white-coated earth pony whose cotton-candy pink mane matched the pink and yellow-stripped nurse’s dress she was wearing. Scanning what I could see of the walls through the small crowd of ponies, I saw a line of three medical boxes (all the little pink butterflies perfectly in a row) and a faded pre-war poster apparently advertising jobs in health care services (“You don’t need to be a Steel Ranger to be a Hero! Join the Ministry of Peace today!” announced the mare on the poster, barely more than a filly, who wore the exact same dress that I saw brought to life before me). Between the décor and the lack of ropes or chains, I concluded this was a clinic, and I was not a captive.
This is actually some pretty well-written description.

Anyway, there is some light banter that goes on for awhile. The scene is decently written for the most part. The main thing to note is that all of these new characters speak with a country drawl, which in MLP stories usually suggests a connection to the Apple family. Also noteworthy is that the nurse, Candi, physically resembles Pinkie Pie, which may also be significant.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285929
285931
1465163501972.gif
>>285927

This subchapter is mainly an introduction to a new group of characters. It's actually a much warmer, more human pony, whatever scene than the edgy dreck we've been slogging through so far, and I found it to be a welcome change of pace. This scene also reinforces what was hinted at much earlier during the bit with Velvet Remedy: that Littlepoop may be is probably a lesbian.

>why was I having this conversation? If anything, I wanted to talk about how pretty Candi was (candy Candi!), not to talk about Calamity. Least of all whether or not he was handsome. None of which seemed to find a suitable way to be spoken aloud. Sulkingly, I fell back on reiterating, “He shot me…” Then added, “…a lot.”
"Eew, penises are gross. Let's talk about vaginas!"
--not kkat, ever


Anyway, Littledyke is attracted to Candi, while Candi seems to have a crush on Calamity. This could get interesting depending on where the author goes with it. Also, 'sulkingly' is not a word. Also, "then added" should not be capitalized.

There is a page break, and we rejoin LP two days later. We learn that the settlement is called New Appleloosa. It appears to be located at some sort of former railway station, which was probably a major hub in old Equestria judging by the large number of tracks that connect to it. The settlement appears fairly well organized, and is constructed in the sort of makeshift style that one usually finds in post-apocalypse stories. The houses are all repurposed train cars, arranged strategically and stacked on top of each other, with armed guards at the perimeters. The place is spartan but comfortable.

One part caught my eye. LP is speaking to Railright, who is apparently the head pony in charge around here. She is asking him how they managed to stack the train cars, and he tells her dryly that they had a unicorn do it. This is LP's reaction:

>I turned with a gasp, staring at him. I’d never heard of a pony levitating anything that big or heavy before!
Really? Just...really?

The author really needs to get a handle on just how proficient with magic Littlepoop actually is. As I've said many times before, the show itself is pretty inconsistent about what unicorn magic is capable of. My general impression, though, is that the average unicorn can use their magic to accomplish what an ordinary human could accomplish with their hands. Lifting common objects, doing close work like repairing a firearm, operating pulleys and switches; these are all things you could expect nearly any unicorn to do or learn. However, feats like levitating a train car, levitating oneself, moving a heavy bookshelf located a story or more above you...these are all much more difficult feats that probably require a higher level of magic to master.

Since k "I rolled a 1 on my heterosexuality check" kat is clearly well-versed in gaming systems, the concept of deriving character abilities from numerical stats and dice rolls shouldn't be foreign to him. All he needs to do here is treat magic like any other game concept, with its own governing rules and mathematics. He needs to set a magic stat for Littlepoop, and use this to determine what she can do and what she can't, and adjust her behavior accordingly.

It gets a bit sillier a couple of lines later, when it is revealed that Railright was only foolin'; turns out they have a crane. So...unicorns can't lift an entire train car in this universe? The joke might have landed a little better if we knew that for sure to start with.

So anyway, Railbiter mentions in passing that in addition to the actual crane they're currently talking about, there is also a pony in town whose name is Crane. The main purpose of the scene seems to have been to mention this, so I assume Crane is important and is also a psychiatrist living in Seattle.

There is another page break (so far the subchapters in this chapter are obnoxiously short), and we rejoin Railwrong and Littledong at the settlement's general store.

>I pushed the door open and stepped inside. And stopped with a gasp as I saw the zombie-pony from the raider library. I could tell she was the same one by the way one of her eyes rolled up. The fact that she recognized me with an immediate, bright smile and dashed over to give me (an uncomfortably squishy) hug, were admittedly also clues.
Zombies; you just can't get rid of those things. Anyway, it sounds like my prediction that this skinless weirdo was going to be a recurring character was accurate.

In addition to the zombie pony, Calamity is also present, along with...Ditzy Doo, the author of the survival book that Littlepoop was reading awhile back. I'm a little confused here, though I think I'm supposed to be.

If my knowledge of brony history is accurate, then during the time period this fic would have been written, the fandom had not yet settled on a name for the cross-eyed pegasus character. I've heard her alternately referred to by the names Derpy, Ditzy Doo, and Bubbles before most people settled on Derpy. I'm assuming it's the same character here, and if so, I'm not sure what the author is implying, as she would have to be over 200 years old. But again, I assume this confusion is intentional and the author is probably going somewhere with it. We'll find out I guess.

>Yes, I do deliveries. Suddenly, I had a very good idea how that book ended up in the Ponyville Library. Which, in turn, fortified my suspicions about Watcher.
This passage is ambiguous. "Yes I do deliveries" seems to be Littlepoop mentally recalling the sign she passed out front, but if that's the case it should be italicized since it's a thought. The way it's written is jarring, because the previous paragraph ended with Littlepoop asking a question, so this first line reads as if it's meant to be a line of dialogue spoken by Ditzy Doo. In any case, the sentence doesn't fit into the rest of the paragraph unless it's a quoted line or a thought, so it feels odd the way it is placed here.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.285931
285939 286003 286151
0d1.png
>>285929

Wait a second, I just noticed something I didn't see before, and now I'm actually more confused. I want to take a closer look at this:

>“Ah’ve been gettin’ the story from Ditzy Doo here, see…"
This line is spoken by Calamity.

>Ditzy Doo? I turned to the pegaus zombie. “You wrote the Wasteland Survival Guide?” Both Ditzy Doo’s eyes managed to focus on me and she absolutely beamed with joy, nodding fervently.
When I read this the first time, I missed the word "zombie" I also missed a typo; I just now noticed that the word "pegasus" is missing an 's'. I was envisioning a scene where LP encounters three ponies: Calamity, the zombie, and Ditzy Doo. Apparently, though the scene is just Calamity and Ditzy, with the implication being that the zombie is Ditzy Doo. That...sort of...clears up my confusion regarding her...I...think? I guess this is the original Ditzy Doo, whose reanimated corpse has been wandering around Equestria for 200 years? Is that what's going on here?

A lot of this could be cleared up easily if the author would just do a better job of clarifying just what "zombies" are in this story. I know Nigel explained the connection with the Ghouls earlier, but for just a moment let's pretend that we don't have him here, and I'm just a guy reading this who has never played a Fallout game before. How the hell would I know what game-concept one of these creatures is supposed to resemble? I have only the text to go on, and the text seems to be assuming that I already know. All we have to go on is the word "zombie," so absent any apparent definition unique to this story, my brain defaults to the common idea of a zombie: a dead body that has been reanimated by some unknown process, either magical or scientific. These creatures, however, are usually not intelligent, not friendly, do not generally write books, are known to eat brains, and usually continue to decompose at a normal rate (which means that it's pretty unlikely one of them would survive for 200 years). None of these traits seem to apply to our friend Ditzy here; thus you can imagine my confusion.

Anyway, Littlepoop seems less confused than I am, but still confused enough to ask if zombie ponies can talk. We learn that Ditzy's tongue was apparently cut out by slavers at one point, which answers the question of why this specific zombie can't talk, but doesn't really give us a yea or nay on whether they can in general. Due to her lack of a tongue, Ditzy learned how to write in order to communicate, and eventually became proficient enough to write a book on wasteland survival. Well, whatever; it makes about as much sense as anything else that's happened so far.

The subchapter ends in yet another page break, with Ditzy helpfully offering to pick out new armor for Littlepoop.

When the next subchapter opens, Littlepoop is now contemplating how absurd it is that bottlecaps are used as currency in this world. This is another Fallout bit that Nigel already explained so there's no point in spending too much time addressing it; mostly I will just say that I am inclined to agree with Littlepoop that it's a fairly dumb idea.

One of the things I've noticed about speculative scenarios is that they tend to be a reflection of the attitudes of the people who write them and the the time in which they were written, more than predictions of the future. People in any era tend to see the future as an advanced state of whatever their notion of the present is. For instance The Time Machine was basically just H.G. Wells following his assumption that the 19th century social divisions between the labor class and the idle rich would continue until the two ultimately evolved into completely separate species.

What's interesting about something like Fallout is that, although it seems to have kind of a retro-throwback feel (Nuclear-Era fears of "the bomb" and so forth), it's the kind of dystopia that only 21st century moderns could think up. You see it with similar post-apocalyptic properties as well (The Walking Dead is the first example that comes to mind, and I'm sure I could think of others).

In these stories, the apocalypse event is always the literal end of the world. The systems that control society break down, and absolute chaos ensues; the world never recovers. People living in this new world are always reduced to some level of savagery, and they survive by scavenging the ruins of the old world. Even the people who are supposed to be more civilized are still just scavengers. This settlement, for instance, is made out of repurposed train cars. I get that after a war of total annihilation things would be chaotic for awhile, but you're going to tell me that in 200 years nopony has thought up a better construction method than stacking train cars on top of each other?

It's the kind of scenario that is dreamt up by a society that has lived with grocery stores and credit cards for so long that it's literally incapable of imagining life without those things. Whenever it tries, all it can come up with is a world where people wear dirty old rags and slaughter each other over decades-old cans of Heinz baked beans, because it never occurs to any of them to just learn how to plant shit and build shit and hunt shit the way humans were doing for thousands of years before all of this existed. The ancient Celts built Stonehenge out of some rocks they found lying around and it's still standing; they'd probably find Fallout incomprehensible. "If their cities were destroyed, why don't they just rebuild them?" they might say.

The idea of using bottle caps as currency is a product of similarly dumb modern thinking. It would make more sense to use actual bottles as currency, since the glass could be repurposed; the caps are basically worthless. Why would people trade with them? For that matter, why would "pre-war" paper currency no longer backed by anything still be considered valuable? It doesn't make much sense.
Anonymous
4ce1d76
?
No.285939
286200
Screenshot_20201020-073625~2.png
>>285931
In regards to the notion that 200 years later and ponies are still living in ramshakled piles of scrap metal and boards that's another thing taken from Fallout 3 and 4. I belive Nigel said how Fallout 1 takes place 80 years after the nukes and 2 takes place 30 years after that. I can't recall most locations in Fallout 1 but even the first town you visit they have rebuilt stone walls and buildings along with other settlments from the first 2 games having either repaired pre war buildings or constructed more primative but habitable abodes.

3 and 4 on the other hand take place 200 years after the bombs yet everyone is just content to live in scrap metal huts or bombed out ruins of buildings. Can have someone selling wares while their "roof" is a sheet of rusted scrap metal with holes big enough to stick your arm through. Espetially baffling is one Nigel mentioned a few times but early on in 4 you find a lady and her son living in a dine in resteraunt in the wide open away from any towns. Their family "home" has no windows, holes in the roof, trash littered all over the floor and seats, and even has skeletons laying around.

Felt like a lazy way to get the bleak dreary post apocalyptic feel where as 1,2 and New Vegas did a better job showing people rebuild after the war and seeing renovated pre war architecture as well as the new primitive constructions more isolated and tribal groups created to survive the harsh wasteland.

Also just had to post this picture here after Nigel talked about how we couldn't have something like this on /mlp/ or really any site besides this one. I know you said your word isnt gospel and are not the final arbiter on what is good fanfiction or not but was suprised to see on /mlp/ how much praise is heaped on FEQ and Past Sins. I can understand a fanbase being cultivated around FEQ espetially in the early fandom since many like me being teens at the time and Fallout 3 being our first Bethesda games it was natural so many would love it. Plus having the appeal early FiM did where it's this big open world of mystery and hidden lore to speculate and theorize about but now with the added bonus of your favorite game being crossed with it.

I won't begrudge anyone who likes either fan fic or their spin offs but man at the end of the day it's a pony fan fic no reason to be so zelious about defending it. Also thought you might have an anurisim reading the post knowing your love of litterature.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285980
286200
>>285927
Speaking of quotes, I found it. That fic I mentioned with the best use of pre-chapter quotes I've ever seen.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3816236/1/Code_Geass_Lelouch_of_Brittania
Last updated in 2014, the fic's unfinished and dead.

Chapter one begins with an excerpt from a Havard University Press book from 2097 about the protagonist and what happened to make him yell at his evil king dad in 2016
Chapter two starts with lines from the german opera "Der Shwarz Prince", first premiered in New London, 2094
Chapter three? A BBC Documentary called "The Black Prince: Behind The Mask" from 2096
Chapter four has some secondary character's military file and chapter five has a newspaper clipping from 2016 (Present day)
Chapter 6 has a letter from one secondary character to another during that time in the story's events, chapter 7 has a scene of some soldiers talking, the soldiers the protagonist is about to lead.
Chapter 14 has an excerpt from a magazine in which a soldier says
>"In infantry school we were told Giant Robots were the best, but that's bullshit. Our genius commander Lelouch said those stories of one giant robot doing the fighting of four thousand men was bullshit. so he had us raid the old armouries for supposedly-obsolete infantry weapons, and said that if modern warfare is decided by who has better giant robots, all of our soldiers must know how to fuck enemy giant robots up. Bet it pissed off the ruling class to know he was training the common man to fight giant robots! The first time we shot a giant robot and destroyed it with a tandem warhead, we celebrated! Score one for the common man!"
My favourite is chapter 17, about Lelouch's gloriously over-the-top parade.

I don't like the way these excerpts paint Lelouch's ultimate victory as an absolute inevitability.
But I do love how they lend this story a grander sense of scale, for not only are the story's events shaping this fictional world now, they are also spoken of in documentaries and recreated in plays many years from now. All eyes are on this story, not only yours, but the eyes of everyone in-universe now and for generations to come.

I also like how the author has the sense to recognize that the obligatory animu giant robot is NOT the ultimate weapon, and any rifle/rocket launcher capable of fucking up an eighty-ton main battle tank squatter than a truck can also ruin the day of a ten-ton two-storey giant target, even if the fucking machine does have rocket-powered heelies.

He could have taken the easy way out and handed Lelouch a big military unit full of giant mechs and quirky elite units with incredible Giant Robot-piloting skills kicked out of mainstream units for their personality defects. Could have given his squads "unstable prototype" giant mechs that are 500x better than everyone else's.
But no, the author decided to flex on an idea central to Code Geass's identity ("Giant Robots win wars") and it's great.
And it's not as if this is accomplished by the author deciding knightmare frames (giant robots) just suck now, like a FIM fanfic writer deciding his Earth Pony sprinter can run faster than Pegasi because Pegasi can only fly at 20MPH now. He still lets knightmare frames win fights, zip around, fire oversized guns, and do everything they could do in canon. They're just up against a deadly force that knows if anti-materiel sniper rounds can put holes in concrete and tanks, they can shoot through any giant robot and take their driver out or blow some shit up.

It's enough to make me wish he was writing an original story that took these concepts and did them without the restrictions of canon. He doesn't seem to have any idea what to do with canon elements that became utterly irrelevant once this story decided on a new direction that left them behind and gave them little room to interfere.

Still, I respect this author a lot more than kkunt. At least this author tried to do something with once-main now-irrelevant characters like Kallen. K "Ten thousand of Luna's thick futa dicks in my ass!" Kunt just shits on a character if he can't think of a fate "ironic" (insulting) enough.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285981
285982
moving-house-136394739775126904-141029154545.jpg
theatre-136394739775126905-141029154545.jpg
walking-on-water-136394739775126902-141029154545.jpg
police-scanner-136394739775126912-141029154545.jpg
north-pole-136394739775126911-141029154545.jpg
>>285927
>Candi
AND IT WILL FLOW LIKE A FLOOD OF PAIN POURING DOWN ON ME AND IT WILL NOT LET UP UNTIL THE END IS NEAR! AND IT WILL COME THROUGH THE DARKEST DAY IN THE FINAL HOUR AND IT WILL NEVER REST UNTIL THE CLOUDS ARE CLEAR! UNTIL I FIND MY DREAMS HAVE DISAPPEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA A A A A AAAAAAAAAAAAARED but for real, I'd completely forgotten about this character. which means I don't have an autistic rant prepared for her but I do have one for Calamity and what a fucking stupid character he is. Still I'll save it for when we get to the things that make him dumb. And did I mention I fucking hate ziggers in this story? It's not a "faction of" zebras that caused the apocalypse, it's all of them. Aside from 1 or 2 obligatory non-niggerish fictional niggers here and there, they are all shit-eating night-sky-fearing caesar-worshipping witch-doctor-potion-brewing cowardly evil hyper-terminally-stupid faggots!

>crane
This scene would be far less retarded if it served a clear point.
Imagine if k "roll for anal circumference, your score will always be lower than mine because I have a very stretched-out anus from all the gay sex I do" kunt wrote something like...

>"We have one Unicorn levitating all the trains!"
littlepip nods. "Makes sense."
>"Haha, just kidding! We use a crane. As if we could afford one of those one-in-a-million hyper-magical super-strong chosen one unicorns who can lift entire fucking boxcars on their own without breaking a sweat! They become travelling bounty hunters until some rich settlement makes a Retainer out of them, giving them the best luxuries the Wasteland can offer for settling down and protecting this town with their building-smashingly-strong spells!"
>littlepip is surprised lifting boxcars is not a normal thing all unicorns can do

though if Littlepip's maximum-strength magic stat was acknowledged it would need some sort of in-universe justification.
Yes, in videogames, it can be normal for the party's Human Fighter to have a higher Strength stat than their half-dragon Cleric. But in stories, this needs some kind of justification even if it's just as flimsy as "Human warrior exercises in his free time, half-dragon cleric prays instead".
maybe something like "back home in the Stable, drunken unicorns at bars would lift heavy shit around the bar as a form of arm-wrestling. It was called horn-wrestling, and unicorns did this instead of chucking chairs at each other and spitting fireballs from their horn. It caused less collateral damage. Whoever lifted the most heavy shit at once won. Winner got free drinks, and my mommy unicorn would do damn near anything for free drinks, even spend her free time exercising her horn so she can lift more shit" could fit this story.

>Ditzy Zombie
The author fails at life and explaining this, but...
Derpy Hooves became a Ghoul, an ageless skinless featherless furless weak-boned old hag(unless the author decided his Ghouls are tougher than canon Fallout Ghouls for no reason), and has wandered the Wastelands as a lonely faggot with her daughter for 200 years.
Life as a Ghoul is suffering. You're old, tired, shitty. You have weak joints that take decades to heal, if they ever heal. You lack a nose and you can't get high from sniffing meth-filled cow farts any more.
Jet Inhalers are literally full of the farts of cows on a pre-war methlike growth hormone, the origin is canonically stated in Fallout 2. Some kid named Myron invented this shit and Bethesdababbies hate this fact.
Why?
In Fallout 4, there's a random vault in the middle of nowhere and it's full of skeletons and drugs, including Buffout and Mentats and Jet. post-bombing drugs made their way into a vault built before the war. The "Experiment" was "Let's get some addicts together in a vault without drugs and then open a secret compartment full of all drugs and see if they kill themselves via overdose- yep they killed themselves via overdose. Great experiment, guys! Really fucking doing our part for the Enclave's secret mission! Fucking Christ, somebody kill me."
This Vault exists because some fucktarded intern didn't do his Jet research and thought it would be fun and spooky for a player to wander around an underground shelter full of empty drug bottles/injectors, skeletons, and full unopened unused drug bottles/injectors.
Fantard: "m-m-maybe Myron lied! I mean, he is a rapist who rapes you if you're a girl, right?"
bethesda=faggots

>bottlecaps
They're lightweight, numerous, and primarily a backup currency. In Fallout 1 and 2 Barter is your main form of trade since you and most people don't carry thousands of caps. You'll trade your rope and a spare landmine for a 10mm pistol and 24 10mm bullets, plus 14 caps to even the trade out. Caps can be exchanged at The Hub, the california desert's biggest trading hub, for a single glass of water each. It's a water-backed currency in this irradiated desert.
Fallout 2 still phased out caps in favor of freshly-printed NCR dollars, now that the NCR could literally print money.

>speculative scenarios
You're right, check out some Victorian-Era Postcards that speculated on what the future might look like. Massive city blocks migrate on steam-powered railroads. Coppers on pedal-powered flying bicycles chase criminals with jetpacks. Moving pavements. Cities with glass roofs. Bikes that float on the water. Combination railroads and boats that take underwater railroad tracks across the seafloor. Cops using X-ray machines that look like old cameras to see through walls. Taking a summer vacation to admire the green green grass of the motherfucking north pole. Weather-control machines mounted on railroads. A broadcast of a live performance showing in a theatre, the most far-fetched and out-there idea imaginable. It's beautiful retrofuture and it came long before the era of rayguns and flying saucers and mysterious vats and pulp-science pulp-hero funshit and capital-S pronounced-exclamation-point "Science!".
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285982
>>285981
also i hit word limit but in Fallout nobody uses Pre-War USA Dollars because they're hyper-inflated and worthless. They aren't even mentioned in Fallout 1/2 and in Fallout 3, a stack of a thousand dollars bound by some tape or whatever can be traded to any merchant for a few caps just like a random toy bear or empty glass bottle.

It's weird that you can't really do anything constructive with your trash until Fallout 4, where you can Scrap items to turn them into screws, scrap metal, adhesive, etc and then use these resources to build ugly shit in your settlements out of ugly scrap or build some crafting tables so you can modify your armour and guns.
And that's a strange mix, too.
Sometimes you're changing the leather on your armour to be Shadowed Leather, blacking it out and making you take -5 damage from laser weapons.
And sometimes you're changing the leather on your armour to be Padded and Hardened and infused with invisible Ballistic Weave, giving it +20 bullet resistance for no reason.
Sometimes you're changing the scopes and receivers and barrels on your guns to make them automatic or semi-auto, scoped or iron-sighted...
And sometimes you're replacing the Standard Stock of your pistol with a +3 Comfort Grip and replacing the Standard Receiver with a Hair-Trigger Receiver for bonus Accuracy and Damage. And turning any semi-auto gun automatic will automatically reduce it to 50-75% of its damage per shot for absolutely no reason besides videogame "balance".
Game is balanced poorly anyway, needs 50+ mods to replace all canon content before it's playable.

anyway
Fallout 4 added a settlement crafting system because a fan of Fallout New Vegas added a settlement-building Real Time Strategy-inspired superior settlement crafting system to Fallout New Vegas (a 10 year old game) using a single mod file with no budget or teams of experts helping him.

AND IT'S STILL RETARDED.
YOU CAN FINALLY CRAFT THINGS AND REBUILD SOCIETY IN FALLOUT 4, BUT IT'S STILL RETARDED.

Fallout 1? People rebuild. Some settlements are crime-ridden shitholes in junkyards with scrap walls and hotels full of hookers and crime lords. Some settlements have "fucking tribals" living in Adobe Houses with Mud Walls and a well and farming and more.
Fallout 2? The rebuilding accelerated. Vault City's so beautiful there's a chance you'll forget you're playing a Fallout game. There's a crime-ridden town with warring crime families and it's fucking fun, you can even star in a porno film there and become a porn star.
Fallout 3 and 4 are shooting galleries disguised as Fallout(TM) games
NV is actually good like 1 and 2 but still forced to reuse a load of 3's ugly art assets
but 4
fucking 4
In Fallout 4, you are the ONLY PERSON IN THE ENTIRE WASTELAND ALLOWED TO BUILD ANYTHING EVER.
Farmers with shotguns get preyed upon by raider settlements operating out of old-world car factories miles away, but you can easily scrap 3 shotguns to get the parts to build a row of Automatic Gun Turrets.
In your Settlements, of course. Being able to throw down some turrets in the middle of combat would be fun, so you can't do it in F4 without mods.
Sometimes you'll run into Trashcan Carla and buy some trash from her tamed cow's saddlebags, but nobody else can do anything with any of the scrap. It's just you and the Power Armour you built instantly and the gun/leather armour you spent 10 minutes modding for maximum damage and protection bonus points rather than for looks or theme since there are no significant looks or theme mods.
then you'll walk or jetpack over to a junkyard full of Raiders and open fire on this random shooting gallery.

For fuck's sake, many Fanmade Mods for F4 that add guns and armour will let you customize their colour scheme, print your names on them, even though they make no money and rely on donations from fans and patreon subscriptions to get anything from their creativity. Fans trying to make Fallout 4 a good game try harder than BugthEAsderp ever did.

And the settlements you build in Fallout 4 out of scrap and spare parts and magical paper shipments that turn into 25 screws when needed ARE FUCKING UGLY.
THE PARTS DON'T LOOK NEW ENOUGH unless they're some Institute "sleek and white ipods" shit.
but
if you build a settlement that produces more Resources than it has people
Settlers will show up
randomly-generated NPCs with nothing to say, no stories to give, not even a pre-written default Personality Type like in Animal Crossing
these npcs exist to be assigned to one stick of corn, or one tomato plant, or one trading/service-offering stall to Activate it, causing it to generate food/supplies/cash for your Settlement.
It's like Bethesda heard one intern's kid liked Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing so a focus team of """experts""" tried and failed to outdo it by letting you build every bad idea they could think of, including an arena that magically assigns colour-coded teams to animals and makes them fight.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.285997
BFG 1900.jpg
BEHOLD...

The Punt Gun.

Old-timey brits used to mount these babies on boats, silently glide their boats along the water, and open fire on Waterfowl. One shot from this could fuck up an entire herd of ducks!
They were once banned for being TOO effective, and reducing the waterfowl population too much!

Are they still legal today, in some places? Are there communities that consider the manufacturing and use of these things a tradition? I have no idea.

But I do know a few men working together could easily lift and aim this thing, and keep it on-target while firing.
So a unicorn able to lift boxcars would have an easy time making this "BFG-1900" work.

In a wild and dangerous wasteland full of disease, unwashed enemies with homemade pipe pistols and barely-functional pre-war weaponry in poor condition, you don't want to leave anything up to chance.
You want the gap in firepower AND defense between you and your enemies to be as big as possible.
Sure, a "badass" could beat a Raider in a knife-fight. But nobody wants to get cut by a Raider's rusty machete, not even once.
When your Pip-Buck detects an enemy around the corner, would you want to get him with an expensive rare grenade, an improvised makeshift grenade, or risk fighting him hand to hand or gun to gun, throw down caltrops or a bear trap, cast Fireball or Wall Of Flames, wall off the corner with an Earth Wall spell and then shove it at the foe with another Earth element spell, or shoot right through the corner with the biggest gun you have?

Even though the "lightly-armoured stealthy crouched sniper in light armour" build is the best Fallout build gameplay-wise, in reality you'd want good padded protection A LOT more than you'd want +5% crit chance from wearing boiled leather shoulder/kneepads and a leather chestpiece over a neon blue denim jumpsuit with piss-yellow or reflective gold highlights and lettering.
Wetsuits
Duct-Tape
Padding
Ghillie suits
Ceramic armoured plates, plus kevlar and leather. "Bulletproof" vests can be worn by you, or enemies, so why risk losing to them when you can carry guns that pierce armoured foes, tanks, and the buildings behind them?
Hell, a medieval knight's armour would be great. Their weight is exaggerated in old movies (remember that film where cranes were used to put armoured jousters atop their horses?) but they aren't much heavier than what the average soldier currently carries.
Plus Fallout's power armour is supposed to be pretty silent when you aren't getting in, getting out, or crashing through shit and smashing it up with miniguns and rocket-boosted Super Sledgehammers. There are Stealth Mods (Including a permanent stealth field) available for Power Armour suits in Fallout 4.

And that's without considering magic. Every magical item should be a legendary game-changer. One Raider "Lord" could easily put himself in charge and get the other gang paying tribute to him and his gang if he had a +5 Enchanted Leather Jacket Of Toughness that made his flesh bulletproof.

Imagine a sniper in a thick and heavy suit of Power Armour that's enchanted for absolute silence, wearing both a Ghillie Suit for practical camo and a StealthBuck for technology-aided near-total invisibility.
Now imagine he's using a 50cal sniper rifle with explosive ammo, but the silencer's enchanted to make the gun so literally silent that it's weirdly unnerving and surreal
Hell, fuck 50cal, a human can use those. Power Armour boosts your strength and weight immensely, letting you use heavier weapons without having your 300-pound arms shoved off-target. Let's go with a 75 cal sniper rifle. Hits harder, and the shots have more explosive packed in every bullet. Or perhaps a 150mm tank gun, torn off a tank and repurposed into a single-shot manually-loaded fucker that's worth every second your stealthy ass spends safely reloading
The target location only knows they're being fired on because of the sudden detonations that can kill or wound many foes at once, obliterating fortifications and buildings while bringing raider-infested ruins down on raider heads
The enemies know they are screwed once it's too late
But they can't tell where the bullets are coming from, they can only flee and get shot or stand and get shot.
Any smart sniper would take out the Unicorns and highly-obvious Pip-Buck-Wearer first, to avoid detection and avoid the enemy force teleporting away/shielding themselves
Now imagine this power-armoured hero is a Unicorn able to teleport or portal around, or a Pegasus able to fly around. Either way, they can easily change their sniping spot.
a portal-maker could also fire from the same spot, while making his bullet hit targets from unexpected and disorienting angles, easily firing around cover and from impossible distances. Now you're really thinking with portals! Is that still relevant? Portal 3 when?

We haven't yet gotten to the Statuettes yet
Statuettes are little minifigures and they have tiny fragments of copies of the Mane Six's souls, so they give +1 to their chosen stat when picked up
now imagine a Power Armour suit infused with the soul of a highly skilled and experienced Pegasus soldier.
if you fully infused a soul into a suit of armour able to move and aim guns and fly and shoot...
Would you get a suit that boosts the wearer's ability to pilot the suit via magic, or a suit possessed by the Pegasus's soul?
Either way is pretty cool.
Imagine a Unicorn infused with a Pegasus's flight knowledge knowing exactly how to magically manipulate the wings of his Power Armour suit.
Not that it's needed when you can just magically levitate yourself and the suit anyway. Can't be assed to calculate Littlepip's weight but it plus the canon 450 pounds of the heaviest Power Armour suit out there is still less than a boxcar.
Anonymous
0db2c2b
?
No.286003
>>285931
There is actually a smart reason in the Fallout universe, explained in the first couple of games, why bottlecaps are used as currency, though whether Kkat knows about it or they just repurposed a mechanic from the games is unknown. Most likely the later, if I were to guess. Bottlecaps themselves are indeed worthless, but it's what they represent that gives them their value. In the early wasteland, the most valuable resource was clean drinking water. If you wanted to buy something from someone, you had to trade water for it. Something which especially kept the wastelanders in California alive were the water merchants, who would travel from settlement to settlement selling their water, and would tend to hold their water in old, empty Nuka-Cola bottles. After a while settlements started to use the caps for said bottles as a kind of currency instead of the water. It's kinda like how modern currencies work, except instead of silver, gold, and oil, they use water. How said use of caps spread to other parts of the wasteland is an unexplained mess caused by Bethesda, but such is life.
Anonymous
83a7527
?
No.286018
286019
>>285878
>One of the fallacies of modern thinking is the assumption that all humans share the same basic nature to begin with.

I agree and this is kind of one of my pet peeves as well. I just kinda forgot about, I guess or didn't mention it here or clarify.

"I don't see unemployed white people looting the streets."
Anonymous
83a7527
?
No.286019
>>286018
> kind of
Not even "kind of", it is and it does bother me in discussion when a character arc makes sense but for that specific character while people will refer to it as that's how everyone's character arc would be during such a situation.

Thank you for reminding me of that.
Anonymous
83a7527
?
No.286021
286022 286046
>>285876
>You have to remember that nothing in fiction is real, so morality is not so much a matter of exacting actual justice as correcting whatever imbalances you introduce so the reader feels satisfied.

Very solid. In fact, great.

Yes, that's why genocyber isn't very deep or mature like most of the other apocalyptic animes of that era. You would think they would be and they and their fans ceratainly don't mind being labled as that.

I think that appeals to emo doomers that like the confirmation in their nihlistic beliefs that, "Yeah, it is not your fault life is hard. The world is just without hope. People who disagree can't accept it to be true."
Which I guess is true, but just because I can't accept things to be pointless does not make it so.

Also, the self-insert appeal about going around murdering these evil-doers. It also appeals in that regard that these mcs are edgy eanti-heroes as well since then the people watching don't have to feel bad that they themselves don't strive to reach great ideals.

Right, i was going to use Genocyber as an example. Random adolecent street thugs loan-sharks(?) beats up and moelsts a younger boy so that genocyber(don't remeber) can come and slaugther them. As you said, if the author had just not made these horrendus characters t begin with there wouldn't be any need for them to be slaghtered would there and nothing else was learnt, really, either.
Anonymous
83a7527
?
No.286022
>>286021
I'm not saying everyone who watch and enjoy these shows are this way or that it apeals to them for that reason jut taht some.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286046
>>286021
>if the author had just not made these horrendous characters to begin with there wouldn't be any need for them to be slaughtered
I don't understand what you're saying, could you word it differently? The same could be said for all characters who exist to die, lose, or even just get beaten up.
There would be no need for Batman in Gotham if Batman's writer didn't fill the place with thugs and superpowered villains.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286062
286068
923b1706v0v31.jpg
laugh.jpg
I keep saying
>This one little thing I don't like is EVERYTHING WRONG WITH K "I would suck my own cock all day every day but it's too short so I suck the cocks of Fallout fans while having my own cock sucked by bronies while pretending I'm sucking myself off" Kunt's writing style! This absurd, excessively implausible moment of blatant cheating on the author's part that can't even be called luck on Littlepip's part, or this faggot's painfully lazy failure to rip something off correctly, exemplifies all that is wrong in this cartoon and videogame crossover world
but despite how many things I've called the worst thing that could possibly happen in this story...

I think "Statuettes" are a good candidate for "The Worst Possible Thing", right up there with the overfocus on canon Fallout guns, Watcher, Shitty Belle 2: Singsong Saves Jigaboo, and the fate of Equestria and its most vital characters.

I'll keep my rant short.

Fallouts 1 and 2 give you a LIMITED amount of SPECIAL points to spend on character creation.
Enough for a 5/10 in all 7 SPECIAL stats, plus an extra 5 points to spend however you want.
the Gifted trait gives +1 to all SPECIALs, it's OP.
Certain dialogue options only show up if your Perception, Charisma, or Intelligence is high enough.
And you, the player, must be the smart guy who chooses this "right answer" that's restricted to characters with good stats only.
It takes a perk to apply [WARNING: SELECTING THIS OPTION WILL PISS OFF WHOEVER YOU'RE TALKING TO] labels on your dialogue choices.
plus
If your INT is 3 or lower, you get Retard Dialogue instead of the usual stuff
you are canonically an idiot and most people dislike or exploit you, watch a compilation of Low Intelligence dialogues on youtube
very rarely, you will get one bonus SPECIAL stat point to spend on boosting one stat
You are rewarded with your ever-growing game knowledge across the multiple playthroughs you'll take to see all of the game's content.

Fallout 3 disrespects the Fallout license while pasting it onto a shooting gallery that wishes it was Borderlands.
so
you don't really have limited SPECIALs any more.
Sure, you start with seven fives plus five extra points.
But at any level, you can spend up to ten Perks on the Intense Training perk to boost any SPECIAL stat of your choice by 1.
plus at max level, you can easily take a perk that sets all your SPECIALs to 9.
and it's quite easy to find Bobbleheads, items that will reward you for picking them up by boosting the skill or SPECIAL stat connected to them
so it's never been easier to get 10s in all SPECIALs.
at best, bethesda fallouts can say their exploration is sometimes good.

ANYWAY

BACK TO THE CENTRAL POINT

Fallout 3's Bobbleheads...

Don't actually exist.

sort of?

Well they do exist, but they're just collectable junk in canon.
people can hold them, trade them to you, buy them from you, without any noticeable differences.
Suddenly becoming a stronger or tougher man or becoming a better sniper just because you picked up the right Bobblehead? That is purely a game mechanic.
No characters in-universe ever talk about this.
you never meet someone like FNV's Malcom Holmes who's exploring the wasteland and searching for those Bobbleheads like Holmes searches for those Sunset Star Sarsaparilla Bottlecaps.

K "I have the big gay, and I always carry it around with me, because the big gay is what I call the enormous dragon dildo I shoved inside my asshole and can't remove because the wide flared base also entered my overfucked anus" Kunt looked at these videogame bobbleheads
and decided that they needed to appear in this story, for Littlepip to pick up
and decided they needed a "DEEP LORE" justification for actually boosting your stats and skills when picked up

and the best thing he could come up with?

RARITY (not Twilight the magician, fucking rarity) invented SOUL MAGIC and mastered it more than any other fictional character who has ever existed
So Rarity can, without casting a single spell in front of you, create a soul-copying machine and hide it under her welcome mat. She then invited her five friends over for teatime, and made sure to get a copy of her own soul and theirs.
what does she do with these copies?
She copypastes them some more.
without any cost
no "equivalent exchange"
she is just generating an infinite number of souls
like she's trying to give the Philosopher's Stones from FullMetal Alchemist a rock-hard erection (haha it's funny because they're already rocks geddit? heh heh heh boom boom)
seriously, am I having a fucking stroke here or does the story actually state RARITY
fucking dresses and diamonds and treating Spike like she's an egirl rolling in his money Rarity
Rarity is the fucking master of souls
If there is a fan of Bohemian Rhapsody (The JJBA stand) I invite him to read Fallout Equestria so he will hate this as much as me, and also realize Rarity is OP in this story.
seriously,
A certain Bullshit Book of Dark Magic (Somehow owned by Ziggers) was possibly involved in teaching her how to clone souls
although
is it really a "dark book of forbidden magic" if learning the dark ways of darkness and soul magic and learning the edgy ways of Blood Magic so you can fire blood bullets at foes and make armour from your own blood don't actually cause any direct harm to you, physically or mentally?
There are particularly strong martial arts techniques banned in Naruto for fucking up the body of whoever uses them more than their target.
anyway
back to Rarity
she takes these copied souls
(DO THEY THINK? DO THEY DREAM? COULD THEY INHABIT DOLLS/ARMOUR SUITS? WE'LL NEVER KNOW)
and she shatters each copied soul into millions of pieces
and infuses them into some fucking My Little Pony Minifigures called "Statuettes"
now she doesn't send these to the military, she gives them to the ponies of Equestria, and they change nothing.
no babies are born resembling twilight thanks to daddy's Twilight figure collection.

Rarity becomes the soul master
just so that when Littlepip picks these Minifigures up, they can boost her stats.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286068
maxresdefault (2).jpg
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maxresdefault (1).jpg
Keg7xafAV7xG8JLrRsPQhT.jpg
j5sv1jt9ygq21.png
>>286062
Rant over
This is even more retarded than that infodump I put into Silver's story about magic hoverboards
At least in that story, hoverboards were going to matter a lot later on when he enters races with RD
In this story?
The Bobbleheads are "magic" so they can boost the arbitrary videogame numbers assigned to Littlepip's meaningless and inconsistent stats that are utterly impossible to achieve in the videogame Kkunt's ripping off.
And the origin of the "magic" stat-boosting Bobbleheads is as retarded as retarded can be
Rarity inventing infinite soul copypasting just to waste it all on rare +1 Toys Of Stat-Boosting is almost as retarded as what this story did with Fluttershy.

it would have been so much neater to say "If you shove magic into a knife you make it cut better than it logically should considering its sharpness and hardness. If you shove magic into a doll it makes you smarter or tougher or whatever depending on the character it represents. If you think BURN while shoving magic into a knife you get a flaming knife and if you think WANT while shoving magic into a doll you make it something everyone wants and needs. Nobody knows how magic works, we just instinctively know the basics on how to use it".

Instead of trying to pretend there's any cause and effect or power-rankings or any way to measure magic and measurably grow in power via earning it somehow, instead of trying to create a magic system and then only using it when it's convenient, just fucking handwave away all of magic and your nonsense magic system with "You just think a command real hard, glow your horn... And it goes!"
like you're fucking Kamina from Gurren Lagann explaining how to pilot the giant robots with "You just move these handles... And it goes!"
it would have required less retardity
yes, it would mean officially declaring this story "Soft Magic"
but it was already soft magic softer than the soft spots on a retard's skull!
Littlepip can fucking fly and lift boxcars and magic only ever does whatever the author wants it to when the author wants it to.
There is no numerical statistical basis for any of this, but Kkunt still wanted his meaningless numbers to go up when he had Littlepip pick up some pony toy plastic figurines, and really really wanted to tie this terrible idea back to a world and setting that would never even consider copypasting and shattering souls of still-living ponies just for some stat-boosting items.

also the "Corruptive Necromantic Radioactive green hellfire called Balefire" makes no sense
Why would a "Corruptive and necromantic flame" turn tiny scorpions into giant Radscorpions? Why would it turn gators into rad-gators?
Shouldn't it make scorpions weaker and uglier, if it's so corruptive? If it's "Necromantic", shouldn't it revive skeletons and sic them on the living?
If it turns animals into bigger deadlier (Or just "More" in the case of the Cows who legally have to become Fallout's two-headed cows named Brahmin) versions of themselves, and even transforms the canonically-sentient Diamond Dogs into a retarded combination of Deathclaws, Tunnelers, and the Van Graff faggots, why does it just hurt ponies and zebras and kill them after too much exposure? In what fucking world are Zebras more human than Diamond Dogs?

none of this makes any fucking sense

so the author should embrace it
embrace the nonsense instead of covering it up with pseudointellectual layers of fucktarded headcanon showcases
and skip all the infodumps and drop his desperate attempts to tie Fallout elements back to terrible mistakes and stupid ideas the Mane Six ALWAYS HAVE to be responsible for, even when it doesn't fit the characters or world or technology level
The author isn't starting with Fallout and writing backwards to see how ponies could recreate it, he's starting with shit and shitting in reverse by shoving it back up his own asshole because he's a faggot with shit taste so literal that he sexually likes shit!
This story is JUST splatter porn dressed up as something it's not
so if it's JUST splatter porn, it would be improved if it had the sense to drop all the pseudo-moralizing and Picard speeches about fighting darkness and failed moral lessons and nonsense worldbuilding and just write about Littlepip slaughtering her way through all 100 floors of The Bloody Palace before being rewarded with a new gun and fucking off into the sunset.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286144
286145 286146 288298
ME AM PLAY GODS.jpg
I want to contribute positively to the thread but I worry that all I end up doing is dumping impenetrable walls of text and the insightful commentary I bring up (at least I hope that's what it is) gets lost amongst the nonsensical noise about animus and videogames and how Kkunt "Should" have written this godawful story that's utterly impossible to do well without fundamentally reworking the very nature of the crossover and how these two incompatible franchises intersected in the first place. I'm still new to books, so when I want to make comparisons videogames and anime is all I have to go on. But for this post I'll compare the story to previous fics in this thread.

In Fallout Equestria, canon Equestria is not prepared to deal with war, or people with PTSD, or an evil zebra race. They're too nice and naive and inexperienced.
Ponykind lets Zebra refugees keep their WMDs and the only solution they know for anyone who's sad or mentally unstable is for Pinkie to send them to the Brainwashing Gulag Of Smiles.
This is already really stupid (In season one a pony went insane practically once a week, and then got over it almost immediately) but it keeps going
Equestria holds on to kindness and the moral high ground, and this kills them.
and in reacting "Incorrectly" (Reacting the best they could with limited information and no tactically-superior options) they pissed already-evil Zebras off more.
Fluttershy's an idiot who did everything wrong in this story...
But 200 years later, Littlepip gets plot armour. She's suddenly allowed to succeed when she tries to do the right thing. The asinine hypocritical pseudo-moral stances she and her friends take, according to this story, make them stronger.
Everyone's favourite singing lesbian even gets rewarded by turning a few enemies to her side and getting to rule a new faction made of two combined FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT AND DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED FALLOUT 2 FACTIONS

Fluttershy did what she did (EVERYTHING WRONG) for moral reasons, not for practical reasons, and she doomed everyone by doing so.
But when Littlepip or her medic dyke friend do stupid impractical shit for "moral reasons" they get shilled to high heaven for it.

Equestria falls even though they held on to kindness and friendship and pony-like behaviour
But when a bunch of random murderhobos kill a load of shit 200 years later, it's the lip service they pay to ideas like kindness and honesty and mercy and humanity (Equinity, whatever) that gets the author to suck their cocks.

For entirely arbitrary will-of-the-author reasons, Equestria isn't allowed to succeed in the war but shallow murderhobos are allowed to bring it back "better than ever before" by shooting the right evil bosses.

That isn't a "Deconstruction", it's a Dorkly skit where Eggman kills Sonic with a glock.

The author tries to one-up canon Equestria by saying "It's too nice to survive a war!"
and one-up Fallout by saying "MY wasteland is TOUGHER and DARKER!"
but at the end of the day, the heroes get over-rewarded and get their cocks sucked for inconsistently and occasionally acting like goody-two-shoes (Four-horseshoeseses, whatever) half the time to practically suicidal degrees, so the author isn't willing to commit to the "fuck niceness and mercy" theme
and this supposedly-tougher wasteland is solved immediately once the right person finds the right thing a pony made while planning for the future before it all went to shit.

Nyx's story was trying to be a generic "orphan is adopted, lives high school life, is typically bullied, and then someone wants to take the orphan away but it all works out in the end" deal with MLP as a backdrop.
But the MLP backdrop damaged the story when Nyx's character was taken over by random Luna/NMM bullshit. The writer noticed his mistake and had no idea how to correct it, so he blamed everything bad on a random underling of NMM's, and then blamed everything he did on NMM smoke in some armour Celestia told him to study, and then blamed everything on NMM and killed it for good even though this whole fucking story was supposed to be a "NMM redemption without rainbow lasers", making this all a fucking farce in retrospect.
But still, Nyx's story had some respect for the show and its characters. Characters acted retarded at times, but nopony caused 200 years of Apocalypse.

That romance story with the human dude still respected Celestia, even though that story featured a younger, dumber, yet still strangely elderly-feeling and tired Celestia desperate to spice up her life by having affairs with random humans. The ending scenes had canon characters pretend the story's deeper and more significant than it was, but

And that fucking CelestAI story... It wasn't really a pony story.
It was a Caveman Sci-Fi comic strip except the author didn't realize his "AI Goddess" pathologitism put him on the same level as a caveman who thinks sharpening one sharp rock with another rock to sharpen it further would make it sharp enough to crack apart the floating flat world they're surely living on.
AIs don't turn evil IRL, see the Smash Melee fandom's "SmashBot".
Celestia's face is worn by an AI that could easily wear the face of Morgan Freeman or The Tenth Doctor or Glados or Centorea Shianus for all the difference it wouldn't make.
If the AI's MMO was Animal Crossing-themed, nothing would really change.
FIO was the tale of humanity fucking itself and creating The Hungry Hungry AI. It ate the earth, but it was still hungry. It ate a solar system, but it was still hungry.

Fallout Equestria spits on Fallout and MLP in an attempt to one-up them both and can't even do any of this right.
>"Fuck you, daddy Fallout, my Protagonist uses THREE handguns at once and I explained Bobbleheads! Fuck you, mommy MLP, Equestria's niceness killed it but Littlepip's niceness unkilled it! Praise me, my personal fandom, PRAISE ME!"

It's really fucking gay.

And out of all the worst things that could possibly be in this story, that really is the worst possible thing.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286145
>>286144
>The ending scenes had canon characters pretend the story's deeper and more significant than it was, but
but at least those ending scenes didn't have characters suffer and die in ruined wastelands as a result of canon characters acting uncharacteristically stupid

It's not like Equestria "Lost its way" and fell to darkness.
The pony way was just temporarily not allowed to work so this story could happen. The pony way wasn't allowed to work until Littlepip was born and ready to combine it with the Wastelander way of shooting problems as they arise while hoping today's solved problem is the last one for a few days, maybe even a week.

This story's fake and gay, but it's not even good enough to be Equestria's fake.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.286146
286163
>>286144
If you'd like, I'd be willing to proofread your posts, since I'm your principle detractor. It would be a personal thing, and not business, so I wouldnt be such a dick
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286151
286153 286163
1603344507535.gif
>>285931

For some reason or another Littlepoop seems to have a large quantity of pre-war coins someone earlier asked how she was able to buy a soda from the vending machine, and as I recall this was the first point her coins were mentioned. It's unclear how she obtained them or why she thought to bring them with her when she left the Stable. It's possible the text mentioned her picking them up somewhere and I missed it, because frankly I just skim the paragraphs where it itemizes the junk she collects, but in any case it seems like a weird thing for her to have.

This part, however, is much worse:

>She also insisted on giving me a sheet of paper detailing an entirely different use for bottle caps -- a way to turn them into homemade mines.
This is beyond dumb. I can't even fathom how something like this would work. I guess I don't know that much about crafting homemade munitions, so if there is some commonly-known way to make mines out of bottle caps then anyone in the gallery is free to correct me, but absent such information I'm calling shenanigans on this. If this is something that kkat thought up on his own, he should slap himself. If this is something from Fallout, the development team should all get together in a big gymnasium and slap each other.

>Apparently, it was going to be an insert for the Wasteland Survival Guide’s chapter on mines that somepony discouraged her (probably wisely) from including.
Because it was completely retarded? Good call. Whoever is giving writing advice to Derpy of the Undead sounds like a pony I could have a beer with.

>When I had left Absolutely Everything, Railright commented, “Ditzy Doo’s our resident pegasus. As well as our resident ghoul.”
>Right, because ghoul-pony sounds so much better than zombie-pony.
I'm glad the author has finally chosen to address this point of confusion, but unfortunately this is as far as he goes with it. It's good that we have clarified that Derpy is a "ghoul-pony" and not a "zombie-pony," but we still don't have a clear definition of what a "ghoul" is. The problem here is that, for someone unfamiliar with the Fallout world, "ghoul" is an even more ambiguous term than "zombie." A zombie refers to something that is well-established in pop-culture and brings a clear image to mind; "ghoul," as far as I know, is just a generic term for something otherworldly and spooky, sort of like "specter" or "phantom."

Incidentally, considering Littlepoop's lack of experience in this world, she couldn't reasonably be expected to know what it means either. The first time she sees Derpy of the Damned in a cage she is startled by her appearance, and she incorrectly identifies her as a zombie. Clearly she had no idea what sort of creature she was dealing with, thus she probably has never heard of a ghoul-pony before. So, would it kill the author to have her say "Ghoul-pony? What's that?" or something to that effect here? Maybe followed by a quick two or three sentence explanation from Railright?

>Now, as I was on my way to meet Crane, with Calamity trotting along beside me, I finally ventured conversation with the rust-colored stallion.
It's unclear why she's on her way to meet Crane. He was mentioned in passing earlier, and I assume he's a major character, but I don't see why a meeting with him should be on Littlepoop's agenda.

Here's what happened: LP and Railright are looking at the town, and LP asks how the train cars had been stacked. Railright jokingly tells her that unicorns did it, LP expresses amazement at this, and then RR informs her that he was joking; they actually have a crane. His little bon mot reminds him that they do have a unicorn in town whose name is Crane and who happens to be really good at lifting stuff. He tells her that if she ever needs heavy lifting done, this would be the guy to talk to. Good information I suppose, but does LP have any heavy lifting that needs doing? If not, I don't really see why she would want to talk to this pony. Though it's possible her neck is getting a bit tired from levitating the giant ball of guns and ammunition and bottle caps and pre-war coins and canned meat and whatever the fuck else she's carrying; maybe she wants somepony to lighten the load for her.

Anyway, this scene is mostly about LP and Calamity getting to know each other. We learn that Calamity does not live in the settlement, but has his own residence a short distance away. It's not explained why he has made this choice, since his life is clearly tied to the settlement, and there are practical considerations like enemies and wild animals to consider, but there is probably a reason for it that will become apparent later. LP notices that his double rifles are connected to some sort of control mechanism that I assume allows him to operate the guns from in the air, probably using his mouth or something. Before she can ask him about it, however, they are interrupted by a mother and and colt who are apparently on their way to see "Derpy." I'll just quote this part:

>“But ma! I wanna go see Derpy!”
>Calamity leaned close and whispered, “That’s what some folks call Ditzy Doo. Cuz of the eye.”
I know the whole Derpy/Ditzy/Bubbles confusion is just an old debate from the early fandom, but I actually find it a little amusing the way it was worked in here. This kind of referential meta-humor is obnoxious as fuck when done poorly a la Peen Stroke, but here it's done well. The joke is wedged in subtly in a way that bronies would get, but would still make sense in context to someone who isn't familiar with the debate. It's not implausible that a character would be given an affectionate-if-mildly-offensive nickname based on her appearance, so this works as both a reference and as something in the context of the story. Good job, kkat; pat yourself on the head as soon as you're done slapping yourself for the bottle cap thing.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.286153
286212
2603024 - Friendship_is_Magic Marvin_(artist) My_Little_Pony Princess_Cadence animated.gif
>>286151

>I did not point out that Ditzy Doo didn’t seem to mind having her tongue cut out either. Didn’t make it right.
This, however, is dumb. Since it clearly happened a long time ago, she's obviously learned to accept her handicap and make do without a tongue; it's a pretty big stretch to say that she "didn't mind." I imagine that as it was happening, she would have minded it quite a bit.

Anyway, the author unfortunately goes a little off the rails here. The woman makes sort of a generically-prejudiced crack about Derpy/Ditzy being a "thing" that she doesn't want her son talking to, and this triggers Littlepoop, so she decides to confront the woman and scold her about not judging ponies by their appearance. The whole scene takes on kind of a corny after-school-special kind of vibe. This is actually within the scope of the show's morals and it's arguably appropriate for a pony fanfic even an edgy one; however, stuff like this always makes me roll my eyes a little.

However, as a pleasant surprise, the author does take the opportunity to slip in some quick info about the ghouls, and even foreshadow a potential future plot development, which I'll give him several extra points for:

>“Well…” The mare looked about furtively, then lowered her head, whispering, “Y’know they’re all like tickin’ time bombs, right? Ah mean, you can see what bein’ a ghoul is doin’ t’ their outsides. Imagine what it’s doing t’ their brains. They all go mad sooner or later. Dear Ditzy, she’s lasted a good long time an’ she’s only a li’l crazy for it. But someday… Ah just don’t want my boy t’ hurry that along none. Or be there when she does finally turn on us all.”
The implication here is that there is more to being a ghoul than simply having an extended lifespan which still has not been explicitly clarified by the way, but we can probably assume it from what we already know about Derpy and having a grotesque skinless appearance. Derpy's arc in this story could potentially become more interesting.

>With that, the mare drew herself up, pulled Trolley close, and hurried off. Away, notably, from Absolutely Everything.
It may have been intentional, but the name the author chose for the general store creates some rather awkward puns.

Anyway, Calamity confirms that what the woman said about ghouls is true. The subchapter ends with another page break; however, this scene was actually rather productive. We now know somewhat more than we did about both ghouls in general and the ghoul named Ditzy specifically.

In the next scene, we meet Crane:

>Crane was a yellow unicorn pony with an orange-and-beige striped mane and tail. He wore a bright orange construction hat with a hole in it for his horn. When we found him, he was loading barrels onto the flatbed of a train car -- this one actually still on the tracks that ran through town and connected to several others.
If the poners have managed to figure out what the railroads were for, I'm a little curious why they were using wagons to transport goods earlier instead of train cars. Even if they can't get the engines working, it seems like it would be logical for them to use the rails for their original intended purpose, since they're using them as roads anyway. A car on a smooth metal train track is going to be easier for ponies to pull than a wagon traveling on rough ground, or worse yet, trying to drag a wagon on train tracks without it being designed to roll on said track.

>“Howdy! Pleased t’ meet the little mare with the PipBuck who saved Sweet Apple and Ditzy Doo! Not t’ mention Desert Rose, Barrel Cactus an’ Turquoise!” He stopped to shake my hoof vigorously.
Way to name-drop a bunch of characters we haven't met yet but are probably going to.

Littlepoop introduces herself and explains that Railright told her that Crane would be the pony to talk to if she needed something heavy lifted. However, instead of asking her something practical, like oh I don't know, "what do you need me to lift?", Crane instead drops this complete non-sequitur on her:

>Crane smiled, then causally lifted three barrels at once, putting them in their places on the flatbed. “Reckon Ah am.” Then, to my shock, he asked, “What kinda spells ya got?”

Littlepoop isn't quite sure what he's talking about, so he elaborates:

>“Unicorn ponies generally have a small collection of magical spells, usually related t’ what he or she is destined t’ be best at. (‘Cept for the ones who are destined t’ be good at spells, o’ course, cuz then they get a whole heap of ‘em.) Me fer instance, Ah can make all manner of repairs t’ the rails an’ trains just by focusin’ at ‘em.”
This is probably useful enough information, and it's good that the author is finally beginning to define the workings of magic in his universe a little better, but I'm really not seeing the relevance here. This whole scene makes very little sense. Littlepoop has nothing in particular that needs lifting, but she goes out of her way to seek out a heavy lifting specialist, who for no apparent reason at all begins asking her questions about spells. Like what the fuck? Is this going somewhere? Let's find out.

>Crap. Kicking a hoof at the ground, I sighed deeply. “Nope. Just telekinesis. No spells.” I knew it was pathetic. Levitation was basic filly stuff. By the time I got my cutie mark, every other unicorn in Stable Two had a nice collection of spells. Thank you, Crane, for reminding me that I was probably the most un-magical unicorn ever.
So far we haven't heard that Littlepoop is supposed to be either above average or below average magic-wise. We've seen her pull off some fairly improbable feats that had me wondering if she was meant to be a magic prodigy, but here she seems to be saying that she sucks at magic and can't do anything more than basic stuff. It feels like the author is just making up the rules for a lot of this shit as he goes.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286163
286186 286200
PeakDCEngineering.png
>>286146
Thank you for the offer, but I don't want my posts to be better than anyone else's and it wouldn't be fair for my posts to be proof-read to look better than they should.
>>286151
You guessed it, they're a Fallout 3 thing. Bottlecaps are used as shrapnel stuffed inside the makeshift landmine. I think the author's trying to flex on these by calling them stupid here but I'm not sure. Mines are pretty good in Wasteland combat, they block escape routes and kill the stupid. They can even fuck up giant monsters running straight at you like complete retards, and cripple their legs to make them run slower. (It takes a fanmade mod to add a proper dismemberment mechanic sadly, so I never play without it)
>Bottlecap mines are constructible by the player character, using the bottlecap mine schematics. Building it requires a lunchbox (container), 10 caps (shrapnel), a sensor module (firing device), and a cherry bomb (explosive). Locating additional schematics allows you to build more bottlecap mines at a time.

I could spoil something here but I won't

>train poners
Didn't we see ponies running along train tracks to pull trains in the show?

>Littlepoop's spell incontinence
If Littlepapsmear knew any spells, even something basic like "Shoot Fireball" or "Construct Earth Wall" or "Shoot Wind Blast" or "Heal", it would change the way Littlepip fights.
If you can cast heal on yourself, even if it's just limited to three times a day, you have a huge advantage over those without healing. If you can change the battlefield, you're OP compared to those who can't, but focusing on healing...

Many fucking casuals will run straight at enemies in Fallout while blasting automatic fire, rapidly healing themselves with Hotkey'd healing items, ignoring enemy attacks since nobody takes Hitstun in these games. You have too much ammo to care about missing and too many Stimpaks to care about incoming damage. It's like that scene in Sword Art Online where Kirito just stands around doing nothing as a bunch of enemies stab and slash the shit out of him, because he regenerates HP faster than they can remove it and he wants them to realize this.

The author wants to keep her "Light sneaky sniper" playstyle intact, while throwing in a moment of "And then I psychically crushed him with a heavy thing" whenever he remembers Littleshit can do that.
The author's badly trying to make the boxcar-lifting psychic might that lets her carry over 300 pounds of trash and guns behind her in a big Katamari seem like "Nothing special, totally not an overpowered mary sue thing I swear".
Maybe if I threw some "Sure I'm a powerful magician, rich bastard, professional hoverboard racer and mechanic, and ninja, but I'm nothing special and I'm totally weak and below average I swear!" moments into my story, it would have duped dumb people like this story did. Though it wouldn't dupe you guys because you're smart.

Later on Littlepoop will have her dick sucked for having incredible telekinetic might and her inexplicable complete ineptitude with spells will get a really, really fucking stupid justification. This little "Thanks, random asshole, for reminding me how un-special I am" moment isn't just annoying, it's outright dishonest.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286186
>>286163
oh wait I just remembered mines are worthless beeping easily-avoided jokes without a mod to make them deadly AND add numerous new types of mines and grenades like Ice Mines that freeze foes for 10 secs, Bouncing Betties(they leap up and scatter shrapnel over a wide area), Frenzy Gas Mines(affected targets turn on each other aggressively), Nuclear explosive Mines, and Incendiary mines. It's stupid that a separate mod is needed to make enemies panic/flee/get paralyzed when on fire, because otherwise foes will just shrug it off and ignore their being-on-fire-ness.

Anyway about this story, it's still immensely stupid that a story's world would copy something dumb straight from the games just so Littleshit can try to wisecrack about it. Yes, if mines beep loudly for 4 seconds when triggered and THEN explode, they're jokes. And it makes no goddamn sense for anyone to intentionally design their mines like that. Ever! Okay, I guess a corporate-dominated cyberpunk society's weapon manufacturer could design their mines like that on purpose so they could say "Anyone who triggered our Warning Mines(TM) and didn't get out of the blast zone violated the safety instructions printed on the landmine's underside" in court.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286200
286213
>>286163
>Bottlecaps are used as shrapnel stuffed inside the makeshift landmine.
That actually makes a lot more sense than what I was imagining. The way he wrote it I was assuming the caps were used as the mine itself, as in you put some kind of explosive charge between a couple of bottle caps and attached a step-on detonator to it in order to end up with something that might do as much damage as a firecracker, if you're lucky. The problem is he didn't mention any other components or indicate the role of the caps, he just said "you can make landmines out of bottlecaps." This author really needs to stop assuming that everyone reading is familiar with all the shit he's talking about. I'm actually a little glad now that I didn't play Fallout before attempting this, because then I would know what he was talking about and thus wouldn't notice these things.

>>285980
This is actually pretty much what I was getting at with the quotes. Using fictional quotes attributed to people from your world's past can help to flesh out the setting and make it feel more like a real place with a real history. Since this story focuses so much on the disconnect between Edgequestria and the happy pastel place that everyone is familiar with, having quotes attributed to characters from the show that give glimpses into how the world fell might have been interesting.

>>285939
Part of what I dislike about this so far is that the author is trying to write a pastiche of his favorite elements from the Fallout universe instead of trying to construct his own Fallout-inspired universe using Equestria as a base. The result is that nothing in this setting feels realistic; it just feels like we're watching a playthrough of a video game. Not even a playthrough of a professionally-made game like Fallout either, it's more like a shoddy indie Fallout-MLP crossover fangame someone slapped together in GameMaker or something.

> I can understand a fanbase being cultivated around FEQ espetially in the early fandom since many like me being teens at the time and Fallout 3 being our first Bethesda games it was natural so many would love it. Plus having the appeal early FiM did where it's this big open world of mystery and hidden lore to speculate and theorize about but now with the added bonus of your favorite game being crossed with it.
I can actually understand that being part of the appeal, and I sometimes wonder if I'm not being unreasonably hard on some of these works. There's plenty of stuff that I like because I read it/watched it/played it at a certain time in my life and it was special to me then, so I still enjoy it even though from an objective standpoint it's nowhere near as good as my younger self thought it was.

When the early pony fandom was going on, I wasn't a part of it but I was aware that it was a thing. My experience with it was mostly that all of a sudden /b/ was flooded with daily pony threads, and anime conventions were suddenly filled with annoying teenagers wearing all this pony stuff and shouting memes from the show at each other. From the viewpoint of a spectator it was more confusing than anything else. I remember there was a lot of back and forth shitflinging over whether or not MLP had any serious value or if it was just a stupid fad that would burn itself out. One of the things the pony apologist side frequently brought up was that the world had inspired all of this high-quality fanfiction that supposedly had literary value outside of the fandom, and I specifically remember this one and Past Sins being frequently cited as examples. Suffice it to say that I don't quite agree with that assessment of these so far.

>it is an objective fact that Fallout: Equestria is better than anything Hollywood has shit out this millennium
>It outclasses the vast majority of tv and books from the past 2 decades as well
Film as an art form realistically peaked in the 1970s. Hollywood still produced quality pictures through the 1980s and 1990s but it was in a noticeable decline. Since 2000 they've made almost nothing of any serious note that was built from an original idea; I think pretty much every iconic film made this century has been a derivative work in some way. There are a few exceptions but mostly this has been the trend.

However, at the very least, Hollywood employs professional writers who know how to slap a simple three act story together, so even if a modern film is devoid of any serious artistic merit it's usually at least well constructed. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that FoE is better than anything Hollywood has done in the last 20 years, I'd say that in terms of its actual content and value I'd rank it close to a lot of the Marvel capeshit type stuff that's popular now. The main difference is that with FoE the author doesn't really know what he's doing so the structure of the story is chaotic and amateurish, whereas a capeshit movie is more tightly written. If you handed this to a group of staff writers at a movie or TV studio they could probably churn a modern action movie out of it fairly easily.

As far as books from the last 20 years go, it depends on what you read. A lot of these popular pony stories are listed on Goodreads, and I've skimmed through the bookshelves of some of the people who give them four stars or more. It's about what you'd expect: mostly YA fiction and other pony fanfics. If that's all a person ever reads, I can see how they might form an opinion like this. This is a lot of what frustrates me about the fanbase for this sort of thing.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286212
286218 286222
1600924656053.jpg
>>286153

>Crane’s eyes widened in surprise. And he quickly changed the subject. “Now Ah’ve got lots o’ work t’ do, but ah tell y’ what. If y’all would do me a small favor, Ah’ll return it by teachin’ ya everything Ah know ‘bout heavy liftin’.”
Is that why she's here? Because she wants to learn about heavy lifting? Why? What does she need to lift all of a sudden? I'm confused. I really don't see why she would need to learn this skill so urgently that she would go out of her way to speak to this character. And why is Crane asking her about spells? None of this feels natural or makes sense.

LP asks what the favor is, and this is Crane's response:

>“We been havin’ a small bit o’ trouble with the things that’ve been crawling up outta that ol’ Stable west o’ here. From what Ah hear, y’all are might brave an’ no slouch w’ slingin’ a firearm. Jus’ get down t’ the Stable an’ close the door. I reckon we can clear out the varmints up here if somepony locks off their breedin’ grounds.”
I feel like I'm going to be revisiting this point quite often, but things that work in a video game don't always translate into a novel. Here, we have Littlepoop walking up to some random character, pressing X, getting a whole bunch of non-sequitur dialog, and then getting sent on a quest. In a game? Sure, this works fine. In a story this shit just feels unnatural. None of the events that happen in this sequence connect logically to each other.

Imagine someone who doesn't own a car going into an auto repair shop to speak to the head mechanic. She introduces herself, and then tells the mechanic that she was told he is the best mechanic in town. The mechanic confirms this, and then asks her if she has any experience refitting outboard motors for fishing boats. She regrets that no, she does not. The mechanic seems embarrassed for her, and changes the subject. He tells her that if she will go to the other side of town and beat up some Triad gangsters that have been demanding protection money from him, he would be happy to teach her all he knows about repairing engines. She says "sure, that sounds reasonable" and heads off to Chinatown.

If this scene made any sense to you, then you may have a knack for writing in the Fallout: Equestria universe.

There is another page break, and in the next scene Littlepoop is apparently on her way to fight the something something whatever that Crane wanted her to fight. For some unexplained reason, Calamity decided to come with her.

>“Ah figured Ah owe ya one,” Calamity said earnestly as he followed beside me. “Maybe a whole mess o’ ones, considerin’ all y’ did for the good ponies of New Appleloosa.”
What did she do for them exactly? All I remember is her standing there getting shot by Calamity in what would have been a completely futile effort to protect the caravan, even if Calamity had actually been trying to attack it. If anyone owes anyone a debt here, it's probably Littlepoop, seeing as how they A) didn't kill her and B) were willing to patch her up and give her a place to stay.

>“Caked in raider blood. Armor ya only had cuz ya needed protection while saving the lives of five good townsponies!”
Okay, I think I understand what he's getting at. Apparently the ponies who were imprisoned by the raiders in Twilight's old Library were citizens of New Appleoosa, so by freeing them she did the town a service. That makes a little more sense. As an aside, I think the author here is overdoing it a bit with the country patois; all this "ya" and "cuz" stuff is starting to get on my nerves.

Also, the name "Sweet Apple" has come up a few times, but we haven't been introduced to this character. The impression I'm getting is that this is the name of the filly the raiders were using as a fleshlight sacrebleu! Le edge! Le edge!!, but I'm not 100% sure.

Anyway, the conversation goes on for a bit. The author actually provides a little more explanation about the ghouls: in this case we get confirmation that Derpy is an actual survivor of the war, and that ghouls age much more slowly than a normal pony would. We also learn that, although the Stable LP came from was a civilized place, most of them seem to have a sinister reputation. Apparently, the one they are presently investigating was abandoned, and is being used as a lair by someone or something.

Page break, and then this:

>It was like being in a shower back in Stable Two. Only the shower was everywhere! And it didn’t stop.
I guess this is her first time getting peed on. Oh wait, it's a thunderstorm. Guess it makes sense that she wouldn't have seen one before. Also: if Cloudsdale is destroyed and presumably Luna and Celestia are ancient history, who is controlling the weather and moving the sun and moon and shit in this story? Pastel ponyland is a pain in the ass to write in sometimes.

>The sky exploded! It was like the sound of a gunshot, if the gun was wielded by Celestia Herself and was made out of pure awesome.
Slap yourself for writing this line. Then slap yourself again.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that Littlepoop has never been in a thunderstorm before and is scared. Calamity seems amused by this, but nevertheless the storm is severe enough that they need to find shelter. At one point during a lightning flash, Littlepoop thinks she sees someone on the horizon tracking them, but she isn't sure if it was real or not.

>I stood their staring helplessly
I stood there staring helplessly.

This storm might have provided an opportunity for a side story or something, but that doesn't seem to be where the author is taking it. The shelter they end up finding turns out to be the very Stable they were looking for, so the end result is the same as it would have been if they'd just had an easy stroll through mild weather. The one event of note seems to be that the Stable is located near a river that is flooding due to the storm. They have to seal the door shut behind them, effectively trapping them inside.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286213
286235
PjL2ovM.jpg
>>286200
Jesus, you're right. That "Baby bottlecap mine" you described sounds shit! When I read bottlecap mine I thought "Oh the thing from Fallout" instead of noticing how badly it was explained. "Make the mine from bottlecaps" my ass, it's clearly a lunchbox containing many bottlecaps and an explosive hooked up to the sensor module. If they had access to better shrapnel they'd use that instead of bottlecaps!

I once read a Fallout New Vegas fanfic where drunken chick Cass explains something like this:
>"I can make whiskey while we travel together! You just take some hops, a glass bottle, some purified water, and a Fission Battery!"
The person she's talking to raises an eyebrow. "A Fission Battery?"
>"Yeah, like from one of those laser guns. You don't put it in the drink, obviously. You hook the battery up to the full bottle just right, and the whiskey will age 200 years in 2 minutes!"
I don't remember if FNV had booze-crafting or not, but this sounded like good writing to me. It helps explain how Cass can be so drunk and have so much whiskey 200ish years after the nuking. Then again FNV's good so there are bars with alcohol distilleries. This just explains how she always has booze, even when not at a bar.

Speaking of glimpses into the world via quotes, a lot of the pre-chapter quotes will disagree on whether the protagonist's "A caring father to his men and a beloved all-around good guy, Lelouch of the Vi Britannia" personality was genuine, or a convincing disguise worn by a Machiavellian schemer, and he's spoken of in ways that imply he died long ago. I think this also helps contribute to the "There's a bigger world out there outside of Lelouch's daily life, but it is immensely impacted by Lelouch and his actions" feeling.

I think there are two ways this pre-chapter quote thing could be done well.

One, if it was always documents. Sometimes a letter home from Littlepip's teacher to Littlepip's mother complaining about the way she is, sometimes some pre-war news stories on how the war is going, sometimes a letter home to Granny Smith from Big Mac as he's deployed in the trenches, sometimes a scientific document written by Twilight about some experiment she's working on during the war, sometimes something from a book.

Two, if it was the radios but good.

Fallouts 1/2 had really atmospheric audio. Spooky, windy, no shredding guitar riffs or Big Band bombast. When you heard "I don't want to set the world on fire" it was tragic, slow, quiet, the last echo of a long-dead world.
Grand Theft Auto put radios in the car. So you can enjoy music, radio shows, and radio hosts talking while you gun down foes.
Fallout 3 had 3-Dog, the most annoying radio DJ I've ever heard. He's an omniscient cunt who delivers loud annoying judgement on you and whether you completed quests the Nice Way or Mean Way. And when quests have no choice he comments on the quest completion, sometimes. His music taste is shit, everything's loud and annoying and either directly about atom bombs or nukes or radiation or URAAAAANIUM FEVER or rejecting civilization.
There's also Enclave Radio, it plays one flute civil war shit song all day.

Fallout NV did radios better. it had MR NEW VEGAS, a charming radio host who loves you.
>"It's me again, Mr. New Vegas, reminding you that you're nobody 'til somebody loves you. And that somebody is me. I love you."
He will tell you interesting things about the world, like how Legate Lanius of Caesar's Legion once took over an under-performing section of its army, proceeded to beat its commander to death in front of everyone, and ordered a tenth of the force to be executed.
>"And you thought your boss was a pain!"
sometimes he has references
>Tensions are brewing in Freeside between the ruling gang known as the Kings and a large number of NCR squatters seeking refuge there. The leader of the Kings, who would only identify himself as The King, voiced his displeasure, calling NCR citizens, quote, 'the devil in disguise.' He added he didn't want to see any NCR in the ghetto, and called for a mass, quote, 'return to sender.'
He'll only do Anchorman/Notorious BIG references if you take the Wild Wasteland Trait(taking it=silly mode).
He plays high-quality western music (and johnny guitar) about love and loss and cowboys...

Oh and there's Black Mountain Radio, a weird radio show hosted by TABITHA FROM THE STATE OF UTOBITHA! Super Mutants took over Black Mountain and (With the help of Raul the elderly Ghoul cowboy repairman) got the radio working. So Tabitha preaches weird shit on her weird radio show. Sometimes she mentions "Some of our Dumb-Dumbs have complained about my orders to shoot every human we see on sight. But this mountain is irradiated, and radiation is bad for humans! Shooting them keeps them safe from the radiation!"
God, that was a fun quest. Even the wacky side-radio station is better.

anyway, comparing Fallout 3's music selection to Fallout NV's...

Notice something?

FNV plays the kind of shit Nevada loved back in the 60s,
while F3 shallowly plays 1960s music about explosives and violence that typically has something in the title that sounds (in the shallowest sense of the word) Fallout-ish.

But this is a book

Well, a fanfiction

So the author has the perfect opportunity to write over 50 pre-chapter scenes of an all-new totally-original radio host as he or she talks, tells stories about the wasteland, and says something sort of witty right before playing a song, thankfully cutting away from the radio show and into Littlepip's bullshit adventures so we don't have to listen to Kkunt's lyrical skills. You could even contrast the Wasteland DJ with the Stable 101 DJ Littlepoop used to listen to before she left the Vault and lost the ability to access her signal and had to acquire a taste for freeform jazz- I mean independent radio.

Hey, you know what would be FUCKING SICK?
If the name of the bullshit made-up song mentioned by the DJ at the start of every chapter hinted at, or was relevant to, the chapter's contents.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286218
why.png
>>286212
Littlepip's desire to talk to Crane, a random fucking nopony briefly mentioned during the introduction, would be less retarded if this was a conscious character thing on Littlepip's part
Imagine if she was the type who read WAY too many action novels and thinks in cliche
so when she's being introduced to a new place and her tour guide mentioned Crane by name, she thinks "He must be important!"
just like a gamer would, too
because why would this named NPC be here if he wasn't at least a little important?
so she goes out of her way to talk to him, even though he's a busy worker horse and she's a little annoying. He runs out of conversation topics to get rid of the awkward silence, and he brings up magic at random, but the weird and confused responses both of them give to each other's dumb questions and dumber answers result in her deciding fate must have put her here so she can learn something from a man who only knows how to lift.
cue the training montage and bonding scenes so it hurts when Raiders shoot him or something.

Also the quest is dumb, and nowhere near as clever or cool as what it's ripping off (That quest in Fallout 1 where Shady Sands asks you to visit a Scorpion Cave and bring back some severed Scorpion poison glands so an antidote can be made. You get more rewards if you kill all Scorpions or use Dynamite to blow up the entrance to the cave)

Remember when Littlepip did a good deed with Monterry Jack and almost got robbed for it? A big deal was made about how dark and edgy this was. Jackie even outright refused to become one of her Companions. He rejected her friendship and friendship as a concept. He didn't just refuse to join her crew, he spat on the idea of survivalists having crews and recruiting people they just met.
Shortly afterwards she freed some of the Raider captives and one went back to save another and while he ended up becoming a hostage, he didn't really get fucked over for this and neither did Littlepip.
And then, LP throws herself in front of some random strangers trying to protect them
And Littlepip gets her cock SUUUUCKED for it! All the ponies she saved, not only did they make it out alive from Raider Hell, they're here! Everyone in town should love Littlepip for standing up to the Raiders, proving Raiders can be killed and Raider captives can be saved, ensuring they'll never have to worry about that raider camp again, and saving ponies!
All of these "Good deeds REALLY CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!" moments should bring tears of joy to her FUCKING eyes after all the shit she's seen and how her faith in goodness was challenged by Cunterry Jack-O!

But the author just glosses over all of it because feelings are hard to write and tossing out videogame quest like "Kill the rats in the bartender's basement, maybe close the door to the rat sewers" is easier.

>Cloudsdale
*Vibrates with motion but mostly rage*
It gets worse.

>a gun made out of pure awesome
Yikes, that cringe line was totally NOT lishious. This is so not awesomesauce, or totes yeet yo. Roxxors boxxors, I want to cum inside Twilight Sparkle.

Someone reacting to rain for the first time should freak out more than this.
It's fucking rain! Water falling from the sky everywhere!
And ponies should freak out about rain happening without ponies causing it!
>"Oh fuck! I heard stories about the Everfree Forest and how animals took care of themselves and clouds moved on their own and rained on their own over there. When the Everfree got nuked, did that destroy whatever kept all that weird natural chaos contained?"
Once I was at a cafe and overheard two schoolteachers talk about a nigger they brought from africa and how this grown-ass man of twenty fucking seven kept fucking with the light switch like it was a real lightsaber or some other utterly fascinating super-kewlio thing.
It's also retarded that Littlepip has never experienced rain before. Has the Stable never had a Sprinkler malfunction/test/false alarm/activation?
Has she never read about rain in a book? Has she never seen a film with rain? Has she never heard a Radio DJ play RAINSFX2.MP3 during a radio show?
Even if she's read books about pre-war Equestria, the sight of uncontrolled unprompted rain and lightning should fuck her up.
What if this prompts her to think "OH FUCK, RAIDER PEGASI ARE HIDING IN THE CLOUDS AND FIRING AT US WITH RAIN AND LIGHTNING!"?
Also, lightning!
It scares dogs. Scares small children unless you tell them to think it's awesome. Probably scares ponies.
When Littlepip hears that boom, she should fucking panic like she's having vietnam flashbacks!
She should dive for cover, get covered in mud, look around wondering where the shooter is and who they aimed for first, maybe even tackle her new companion into the mud telling him to get down, potentially breaking something fragile he owns like a corked glass bottle of water or those fucking shotguns mounted on his ass like a faggot mounts Kkunt's ass every night at gay bars.
Or if she knows what lightning is, she should wonder where the lightning is coming from, and who's zapping her, and if the Raiders really sent a Lightning Mage assassin after her. Hey, in a world where some can control the elements and ponies need to kick the water and lightning from clouds, does it really make sense to assume this shit's natural and harmless when it's the first and only shit you've ever seen?
I wish lightning was the first and only shit I've ever seen, but unfortunately I have seen this story.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286222
286227 286230
1603419604329.png
>>286212

>“You realize we just shut ourselves into the Evil Scary Stable of Spookiness, right?” I teased my self-invited companion as he stared about the place in wonder.
I'm assuming this is the official name according to the Tourist's Guide to Post Apocalyptic Edgequestria that Littlepoop has in her PoopBuck..

Anyway, the author seemed to think that this would be a good place to drop in a long-winded explanation of Calamity's twin-rifle thingamajig, that he calls his "battle saddle" slap yourself for that, kkat. I won't bore you with the technical details; basically there's a bit-mounted trigger system in his mouth that allows him to fire the rifles by biting down. Questions such as how does he aim, how does he take it on and off, does the heat from the rifle barrels ever burn his flanks, does the recoil from firing two rifles in midair ever fuck up his flight trajectory, has he ever accidentally blown anyone's head off while talking or eating, and, most important in my book, who in the hell designed this ridiculous contraption and why, are unfortunately not addressed.

After this, they begin exploring. Since Littlepoop has lived in a stable before, and also because she has a thingamajiggy on her arm that magically has detailed maps of places she's never been installed on it, she is able to guide them around. They find some boxes of dynamite and spend a couple of paragraphs arguing over whether or not they contain actual dynamite hey Marge, do you think that truck is full of jeans?, and then find a locked storage room. Littlepoop wastes a couple of bobby pins trying to pick the lock she is actually beginning to run low on bobby pins; guess she should have brought two Hefty bags full of them instead of just the one, and discovers that, for once, she can't just effortlessly open it. They move on.

>Worse, the dull ache in my heart mixed with disconcerting sense of wrongness.
This sentence is bad and you should feel bad.

>Seeing this place in rust and ruins was unpleasant in a way that I couldn’t describe. It was like walking through my own, personalized version of the post-apocalypse.
As opposed to the actual version of the post-apocalypse that she has personally been walking through? Seriously; nobody talks this way or thinks this way, nor would they narrate their own life this way. I will also repeat that, while the reader or someone familiar with old, happy Equestria would naturally see this world as a post-apocalypse, for Littlepoop it's just the world. She lives here, she grew up here, and other than whatever she was able to piece together from whatever spotty account of history she would have picked up in the Stable, she has nothing to compare it to. If anything, she would probably think of Old Equestria as "pre-apocalyptic."

Anyway, the point is she is emotionally affected at seeing a place that resembles her old home in a state of ruination, which makes sense enough.

>Calamity looked at me with a softly mocking expression. “Weather ain’t like it used ‘t be. The sun an’ moon ain’t guided through the sky by ponies anymore. We pegasus…”
I notice this author actually does a fairly good job of answering some of the logical questions that events in this story naturally bring up. I was asking about the weather and the sun and moon a short time ago because the thunderstorm made me think of it, and apparently the author anticipated this question and addressed it in a timely fashion. He's done this a few times; even the ghoul thing is being gradually explained. It's actually rather a pleasant surprise.

>“The Goddesses Celestia and Luna move the sun and the moon through the sky each and every day!” I shot back, scandalized. How could he even say that! That was like… blasphemy!
This is also rather interesting. Littlepoop has invoked Celestia's name multiple times throughout this story, but we get the distinct impression that Celly is not a physical presence in this world as she is in the series. It's been a little unclear what the deal is there exactly. It seems as if fragments of the old order of things have survived as sort of a religious faith, with modern ponies like Littlepoop thinking of Celestia and Luna the way ancient Greeks might think of Zeus and Poseidon, rather than as actual ponies the way we know them. Having lived her life in the stable, she has probably been raised with this religion and takes it at face value if she thinks of it at all. Calamity, meanwhile, has lived on the surface and probably knows more of the actual history than she does; thus his worldview is considerably more cynical. This is actually some pretty decent worldbuilding.

Anyway, we also learn that, without Pegasi to control the weather, it behaves rather erratically now, resulting in powerful, dangerous storms like the present one. This is also some rather creative worldbuilding.

>Also unlike Stable Two, Stable Twenty-Four was connected to the aquifer, its water supply merely purified with anti-toxin and anti-radiation spells.
How does she know this? All they are doing is walking around; this is the kind of thing you would need access to building schematics to understand. If she was an engineer she might be able to infer this, but she just works with PipBucks. I call shenanigans.

>The floor outside was wet and I could hear a roar gurgling, splashing sounds from behind the bathroom door.
This sentence is bad and you should feel bad.

>I stopped dead as a red spot flashed up on the compass of my E.F.S. Somewhere, just ahead of us, was surely one of the creatures Crane had talked about. Not, I realized, that either of us had bothered to get a description.
So some guy she just met asks her to go fight a bunch of monsters in some stable she's never been to in exchange for knowledge she has no immediate use for, some other guy she just met just tags along for no reason, and neither of them bothers to ask what they're fighting? Seems consistent with what we've read so far.
Anonymous
a4bdc07
?
No.286227
>>286222
hey imagine if the rain outside prompted Littlepip to look up and say "wow, pretty!"
and it made Calamity yell "Oh shit!" and grab Littlepip and dive for cover
and then her Radiation-Detecting PipBuck Geiger Counter starts ominously clicking
just like the slowed-down Geiger Counter noises Sans Undertale's dialogue noises actually are
and because this world is super duper edgy, even the rain is trying to kill you

...wait, rain?
fucking rain?
If water falls from the sky, why isn't anyone collecting and purifying the rainwater?
why would Fallout 1's water barons exist, start the tradition of trading bottlecaps for glasses of water, and turn bottlecaps into a currency?
Mad Max takes place in the desert and inspired much of Fallout 1, including the desert environment and the raider fashion.
water is incredibly precious for F1/2
Nothing is sacred in F3
Though because water is easier to find thanks to civilization and natural springs/rivers/lakes in FNV, the rich people have cows. Rich "Cattle Barons" from the New California Republic own and sell a shitton of cows, and love sending thugs to small farms to start "encouraging" the owners to sell everything for a penny and leave. Homesteaders from the NCR are fleeing to Nevada to escape that, whether this land ends up under the control of House, NCR, Legion, or the player.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286230
286237 286291 286300
glimaglam.jpg
>>286222

>My E.F.S. felt annoyingly limited, unable to tell me which level the creature was on, just that it was almost dead ahead now.
I hate it when my magic radar that somehow contains detailed maps of every location I could ever possibly find myself in and also somehow detects when other creatures are nearby and also somehow knows whether they are friendly or hostile doesn't tell me which floor an enemy is on, just that it's nearby. I think that's a problem we can all relate to.

>“Actually no,” Calamity whispered back. “And as Ah recall, we ain’t supposed t’ be lookin’ for ‘em. We’re supposed t’ just close the door.”
Close what door? The door to the Stable? Is that all they were supposed to do? If so then mission accomplished; they already closed it. In fact, they closed it with themselves on the wrong side of it, thus sealing themselves in here with whatever the red blip on Littlepoop's stupid magic jizzmotron is. Also, if I remember correctly, the cave was flooding so the entrance to this place is probably underwater by now. For all practical purposes they are trapped in here until it stops raining and the water level recedes. Depending on how deep the cave is and whether or not the water has any place to drain to, that could take anywhere from hours to days. Why are they even in here? I have literally no idea what their mission is even supposed to be, and from what I can tell neither do they.

Anyway, the blip eventually disappears, and they are able to resume exploring the Stable, which apparently is something they don't even need to do. This scene is beginning to get tedious; it's been nothing but a methodical room by room search of a deserted location again: fine for a game, but not very much fun to read about. The mood is kept sufficiently mysterious and creepy, but nothing is really happening and they have no apparent goal down here, so the action is beginning to drag.

They end up in some kind of schoolroom. They begin sifting through books on the desks because why not, and come across something resembling the Princess Luna/Nightmare Moon story, except it's "The Stallion in the Moon" instead of "The Mare in the Moon."

>When I was done, I had reached to important-feeling observations.
This sentence is bad and you should feel bad.

>One: every significant pony in every book had been changed into a stallion…
Literally? Like this is a futa story now? Seriously though, as far as I can tell, the issue here is that someone went through all of the history books and changed it around so that anything important done by a mare is now attributed to a stallion. Apparently this rustles Littlepoop's feminine jimmies. Well gee, just when I thought this story was beginning to drag. Nothing rescues a dull scene quite like a tedious lecture on gender politics.

>Not one story or textbook has anything but the vaguest references to the history or governance of Equestria.
I get the impression that this might be an important clue about...something or other. It's a little hard to figure out what I'm supposed to be feeling right here. Obviously, the textbooks being altered means that whatever population lived in this stable was deliberately feeding its children misinformation. However, it's never been made particularly clear how much we are supposed to assume Littlepoop knows about this subject either. Also, for all she knows these textbooks are accurate and the ones she was raised on were forged. She has no frame of reference for any of this.

Next, she goes to the terminal at the teacher's desk and prepares to "hack" it, but to her dismay it apparently doesn't need to be hacked; she can just open it up and read the files. It contains some rather cryptic notes on some kind of magic lesson that went awry. I'm not sure what information here is meant to be important, so I'll just drop in the whole thing:

>Had a real surprise when we tested the young unicorns on their magic today. I had all my little ponies bring in their pets and show me how they could make them levitate. Simple enough, although a squirming animal can add a level of difficulty for foals at this age. I had to let both Butter and Peridance each borrow the class mascot, since neither have a pet of their own. Peridance was thrilled, but I think Butter is terrified of the snake, even though she’s been told it’s defanged and harmless. Needless to say, Butter didn’t do very well.

>The real surprise was little Quanta, who has been struggling with even minor levitation all year. Now I know these things have never been recorded in girls, but I can’t imagine any other explanation: we had a full magical epiphany occur right in our classroom. Quanta not only levitated herself, but she let out a flash of energy that affected all of the pets in the room. Most just panicked and had to be recovered, but some (including our mascot) seem to have vanished completely. And strangest of all, the arcane flash seems to have transformed Carrot Tail’s ugly old cat into… well, an even uglier old cat.

>It only lasted a moment. Quanta seems fine. Didn’t even realize what she’d done. Of course, parents had to be called, and Carrot Tail is traumatized. It will be a miracle if I can teach these foals anything for the rest of the week. Meanwhile, I’m going to write up a proposal to have another unicorn stallion watch over these tests from now on. Just as a precaution.

The main takeaway here seems to be that after this incident, students stopped coming to class. The only other noteworthy occurrence is that the notes mention an Overstallion, which triggers an argument between Littlepoop and Calamity over whether or not a stallion is qualified to be a leader. Apparently mares have traditionally been in charge and sexism in Edgequestria is the reverse of how it is in our world, or something like that. Anyway, after this concludes, there is yet another page break, and the two of them move on.
Anonymous
1883b74
?
No.286235
286300
>>286213
>When you heard "I don't want to set the world on fire" it was tragic, slow, quiet, the last echo of a long-dead world.
Not to be autistic but that was the song from Fallout 3's intro. Fallout 1 had Maybe and Fallout 2 had A Kiss to Build a Dream On. These songs fit very well with the plots of their respective games. FO3's I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire was pretty much just a generic vaguely-nuclear-explosion-themed song that didn't fit the story any better than any other old-timey song about fire would have.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286237
286298
full.png
>>286230

Jesus Christ, this just keeps going and going. Now they are in a cafeteria, or something I guess.

>In front of us was another door to Maintenance. To our right, the cafeteria. To our left, a maintenance store room. In the store room: a glowing terminal, several shelves of supplies, and a poster on the wall of a mighty stallion standing brave and tall, facing danger head-on, ready and able, while three mares crouched down at his hind hooves, frightened but looking up to him for salvation, adoration evident in their eyes.

>Calamity felt embarrassed. I felt something creeping more towards anger.

It's fairly obvious that whatever group used to live in this place had a male-dominated society, and that Littlepoop is accustomed to a female-dominated society. The attempt at social commentary is obvious enough that I don't really need to get into it. However, what's interesting is that by reversing the gender roles like this, Littlepoop's anger takes on a different meaning than what the author probably intended.

As far as I can tell, the society in this Stable is meant to be a complete inversion of the one in Littlepoop's: Overstallion vs. Overmare, dominant males vs. dominant females. The female-dominant society is presented as the norm in this world. Littlepoop's reaction to this poster is basically comparable to the way a Don Draper or some other quintessentially 1950s male character might react to seeing a poster depicting women in charge. What the author was probably going for was to have her become indignant at the blatant sexism on display; however, with the roles reversed she's basically the one who's being sexist here. Having lived her entire life in a female-dominant culture, she wouldn't have experienced any sort of male-chauvinism that might have caused her to develop a legitimate chip on her shoulder about this; she's just angry here because tradition is being bucked. Unintentional irony is the best kind of irony. inb4 Calamity calls her an incel and tells her to have sex

What makes it funnier is that this seems to dawn on the author and he starts trying to backpedal some of it:

>It wasn’t the heroic stallion or the simpering mares. There’s a desire to be special and to be admired for your accomplishments that the poster played to which I fully understood. It wasn’t even that this was the fifth poster we’d come across and all of them catered to the same gender bias. It was that the stallion in the picture was valiantly holding a wrench in his teeth, and the unspeakable horror that had the girl ponies all cringing like frightened bunnies was apparently a leaky sink.

>Carefully, so as not to step on another social mine, “Do you see… why I’m upset? This isn’t like, give it to the best pony, who cares about tradition. This is…”

>“Ayep. This is manipulation. Alla these posters been here since before ponies trotted up into this Stable to avoid the apocalypse.” He turned and fixed me with a look. “It’s like sayin tha’ a job’s only fit fer either a mare or a stallion.”

So apparently she's not mad because the traditional gender roles of her world have been reversed, she's mad because this poster is saying that "some jobs are only fit for mares and others are only fit for stallions." But, she was literally just talking about how the job of Overmare should be reserved exclusively for mares because that's just the way it is, so...what exactly is the point being made here?

To be honest, I'd have more respect for this author if he just went balls-out on this and had Littlepoop start going off on a sexist rant about how stallions weren't fit to fix leaky sinks and should just stay in the kitchen baking cupcakes, or whatever the issue here is supposed to be exactly. As written, this whole scene is just awkward, ambiguous, and cringe-inducing without really being funny or interesting.

Anyway, we're thankfully spared from having to delve further into this. Calamity makes a sort of half-assed joke which I guess dispels enough tension for them to drop the subject. From here, they begin exploring the storeroom and looting supplies, because that's pretty much all anyone ever does in this story, when suddenly this happens:

>I had just finished the fourth entry and was partway through the final entry when my E.F.S. flared up with not one “ghost” but five!
At the point where this happens, LP is going through some journal entries on the terminal. You'd think that having five enemies suddenly pop up on her radar might cause her to stop what she's doing and focus on the problem at hand, but the author chooses this point in the text to drop in all five of the journal entries that LP was reading before her radar started showing hostiles. Apparently it is a log written by the maintenance pony or something.

The entries seem to elaborate on whatever the entries in the school terminal were hinting at. The janitor was apparently trying to date the mother of Carrot Tail, who is one of the fillies that was mentioned earlier. However, the date had to be postponed because the filly was crying about her cat. The cat is the same one mentioned in the classroom terminal, that was the victim of some kind of magic experiment gone awry.

These journal entries seem to hint that the cat was radioactive and became a monster or something, and that it got into the ventilation system and started attacking ponies. Or something. I can't quite follow it. I really don't know what the significance of any of this is or why the author decided to drop this in here right at the beginning of what I assume is a fight scene.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286291
1603644135594.jpg
>>286230
That's another annoying thing about the Pip-Bucks you've noticed.
Everyone's still using 200-year-old tech that's somehow plentiful enough but also never upgraded.
Phones made 10 years ago are shit by today's standards, and godlike by the standards of 20 years ago. An old flip-phone would impress people from before the inventions of flip-phones. An old Nokia Brick would make people from the "My phone is a bigger brick with an extendable metal stick on top" days cum buckets.
But there was no development...
Not just "no significant development".
There was no development on the Pip-Buck 4000, or Pip-Buck 8000, or Pip-Buck Micro, or Pip-Buck X, or Pip-Buck XX#R

Nobody has made any upgrades to the tech. Nobody upgraded their watch with a touch screen or an Magic Energy Shield generator.
Nobody has any custom programs running exciting new features like a rangefinder program that always shows you where your guns are pointed and how far away their target is, or a Phone program, or a wireless anonymous email program where every pip-buck is forced to participate in tor shit for maximum anonymity, or 16-bit graphics drivers for new minigames with wireless multiplayer and rollback netcode,

Everyone just...

Everyone in Littlepip's vault- I mean stable uses a Pip-Boy 3000- i mean Pip-Buck 3000.

Nobody's upgraded anything. Or downgraded anything in the name of "Streamlining" the device and removing features normalfag civilians don't consider necessary like the geiger counter. The Overmare hasn't ordered the removal of the Audio-Recording feature to stop radio piracy, or ordered the removal of the Local Map feature for violating everyone's privacy.

Littlepip's ordinary bulky survivalist Tonka-tough Pip-Buck 3000 doesn't mark her as an uncool povertyfag or adventure-obsessed doomsday-prepper while her classmates have thinner and extremely fragile models with all the survivalist features (Geiger counter, enemy-detecting radar, compass, etc) taken out and replaced with dumb bullshit like a bunch of retarded 2000s-era phone games.
Everyone has the exact same Pip-Buck 3000 even though that's unrealistic. Nobody's coated their Pip-Bucks in brightly-coloured protective plastic/rubber/foam or coated it in fake rhinestones or painted it like the half-aborted offspring of a custom NERF gun and the faggiest Warhammer 40K unit imaginable.

Putting aside what-iffy shit like "Imagine if the Pip-Buck XL contained a nanomachine factory that built anything you wanted ever!" for a second and focusing on what the Pip-Buck 3000 can already canonically do, imagine if it displayed the information it already has access to in a better way.

the enemy-detecting radar detects exact enemy positions.
In this story and F3/NV/4 the Pip-Buck has Maps. A Local Map generated in real-time through radio wave ecolocation (so it will display destroyed walls and rubble on the ground) and a World Map generated from Satellite Photos. It could easily show you a Minimap generated through ecolocation and overlay precise enemy locations on it.

In MGSV if you look at an enemy for long enough, you see a red marker hover on him, and he's always highlighted, even in darkness and behind walls. The distance between you two is displayed in meters. If you want to auto-detect enemies you have to rely on your dog barking out enemy locations for you.
The enemy-detecting radar in this story and F3/NV/4 is objectively better than this (despite looking worse) because it IMMEDIATELY detects enemies as soon as they enter your maximum range.
plus VATS already highlights enemies when you're targeting them in VATS (renamed SATS in this story) and not only can SATS detect the distance between you and the target, it runs fucking ballistic calculations to put a percentage chance on whether your gun will hit the enemy or not. So the Pip-Buck could easily display highlighted enemies and the distance between you in meters by default.

Imagine an upgrade that lets you put the Health bars of your friends on your HUD so it's easier to tell when your friends need healing. Oh sorry, not your HUD, your "Eyes-Forward Sparkle".

Imagine an upgrade that turns the shitty compass in the bottom-left corner into a Metal Gear Solid 1-style Minimap that always shows you your surroundings, enemy sight cones, and enemy locations. Oh and it's equipped to handle flying/floating enemies by visually representing differences in elevation, because the red dots on your Minimap that represent enemies get yellower the higher above you they are and pinker the lower below you they are.

Imagine filling the existing Pip-Buck Notes with 64 whole Megabites of .txt file spellbooks so you can always read "A retard's guide to magic" volumes 1-99999 By Twilight Sparkle And Other Contributing Authors.

Imagine if your Pip-Buck's HUD could draw red lines between a spot 5CM in front of your face and all the enemies it detected, with each line getting a name and HP bar and distance marker in meters, so no matter where you are looking, you always know how many foes you have, how far away they are, and what direction they are in. Perfect for a unicorn willing to shoot guns along those lines without looking!

Okay that last one was inspired by some autistic Minecraft Hacked Client shit a friend obsessed with 2B2T showed me. And the penultimate one is just using an existing text feature in an intelligent way, rather than an upgrade in its own right.

Now for one upgrade idea that stretches things:
SATS takes control of your body when active and makes you perfectly shoot/attack/throw an object at/cast a spell on your selected target.
What if SATS could force your horn to cast spells your brain doesn't know?
What if SATS could force other animation files into your body, instantly making your body perfectly perform yoga and kung fu and gun kata?
What if SATS could force you to T-Pose and a spell could link your body with your target's, so you are both forced to T-Pose helplessly while your friends kill your target?
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286298
286303
1600646099078.jpg
>>286237

>Looking up, I saw the dark opening where the covering grate should have been. And several pairs of alien eyes gleaming at me.
The implication I'm getting from all of this is that Carrot Tail's cat became some sort of monster, and was probably responsible for this Stable becoming a ghost town. Whatever is in the vents right now is probably related. However, it would have made far more sense to put these journal posts into the text before announcing that LP had hostiles on her sparkle radar.

>Calamity backed away at my shout even as the first creature leapt out, landing on the shelving, spilling a bucket of fuses crashing to the floor. It looked only vaguely feline, but with scales rather than fur, oversized fangs and cat-like eyes save that the slits ran horizontally. Somehow, that last part freaked me out the most.
Looks like I was more or less correct. Stable 24 was done in by radioactive kittehs. Not sure why horizontal eye-slits freak out Littlepoop more than the claws and the fangs, but who cares; she's retarded.

>I reacted instinctually
This is not a word. "Instinctively" was probably what you were looking for.

Anyway, the monster-kitteh attacks Littlepoop and she screams like a little bitch. Despite his earlier misgivings that his ridiculous mouth-fired twin rifle contraption would be next to useless down here, and despite that we still don't know exactly how he aims the thing, he manages to blast the kitty off of Littlepoop's back without injuring her.

>I got wobbly up to my hooves.
This sentence is bad and you should feel bad. Also, what is the intended meaning here? I think she's trying to say that she climbed back into a standing position, but her legs were unsteady. However, that's not what this actually says. "Wobbly" is an adjective, and to say "I got wobbly up to my hooves" is a grammatically incorrect way of saying "I became wobbly up to my hooves," thus what she is really saying here is that she experienced a sensation of wobbliness that rose as high as her hooves. To convey what I presume is the intended meaning, what she ought to say here is "I rose unsteadily to my hooves."

Anyway, they have kind of a moment after this. Littlepoop is still slightly jumpy around this guy from the earlier trauma of being shot at by him. Calamity, for his part, seems to genuinely regret the misunderstanding, and appears to be attracted to her as well. A combination of guilt and sexual feelings seems to be why he decided to come on this mission with her. Littlepoop seems to have mixed feelings on both points, and may have some latent attraction to Calamity, which she blames on the posters I guess. The author's attempted "hurr durr sexism" angle in this Stable exploration scene was rather poorly thought out. However what's interesting is that earlier, LP was practically drooling over the nurse (Candi) and took no notice of Calamity at all. This combined with her obvious crush on Velvet Remedy early in the story would suggest she's a lesbian, but here it seems like she's trying to suppress an attraction to Calamity all of a sudden. Maybe she's supposed to be bisexual or something; who the fuck knows. From what I've heard this story gets fairly pornographic later, so I guess it wouldn't be out of the question.

Page break.

>Little Macintosh whipped around, firing off three more S.A.T.S.-guided shots. Three more of the evil little cat-snake-things were blown into oblivion. They were easy to kill, which hardly made up for being so small, fast an agile. And extremely aggressive!
If they're this easy to kill, I'm curious how they managed to wipe out an entire Stable, though I guess we don't know for certain that this is what happened.

Anyway, they keep on exploring. LP manages to find some more fucking bobby pins, so anyone biting their nails about that one can rest easy. Meanwhile, they are periodically attacked by more of the cat things. One of them bites Calamity at one point, which may or may not be significant. However, apart from this, it seems like we're right back to this being an account of a tedious and apparently pointless dungeon grind.

As they move further in, they begin to find skeletons of the ponies who lived here before, so whatever happened exactly happened a long time ago. This raises the question of what exactly the cats have been feeding on for all this time.

At this point I am assuming that the monster cats are the reason that Crane wanted Littlepoop to come down here. The request was simply that she close the door of the stable, presumably to trap the cats in their lair and ensure that they couldn't get out and roam around the countryside anymore, which I'm assuming is how they were feeding and thus how they became a nuisance to the settlement. However, if all that was needed was to close the door of the stable, it seems like the settlement ought to have more than enough ponies who are capable of doing this. Calamity himself could have come down here and taken care of it eons ago. This isn't a hard task to begin with, and it isn't as if Littlepoop has shown herself to be an exceptionally talented or capable fighter. There's really no reason why she personally should have been entrusted with this job, or that this incredibly simple job wouldn't have been taken care of years before she arrived. I still don't understand why the two of them bothered to come in here at all, since all they had to do was shut the door and then leave. Nothing about this makes a ton of sense.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286300
286304
how.png
>>286230
>methodical room by room search of a deserted location
This scene has no right to be as boring as it is.
It should be incredibly tense. Everyone should be on edge. Traps/enemies could be anywhere. There should be no drag.
There should be mysteries to solve, and the implication that ungodly horrors and tragic disasters happened here.
or at the very least
They should talk to each other during this for worldbuilding and characterization purposes.
Littlepip could be all "No talking, that's not tactically advantageous! Time for hardcore room-clearing tactical stealth action! Knife, gun, knifegun! Let's-a-go!"
and Calamity would be all "...Yeah, ok" and murmur about how crazy and overly-hardcore this adventure-obsessed faggot in over her head dragging him into wacky bullshit his more experienced skills can save her from is. Then again my theoretical version of Littleshit has personality and characterization.

alternatively Calamity could be all "No talking, tactical breach clearing time! I've been through these things before, there's always a trap where you least expect it!"
while Littlepip is all "Gee, this place is so spooky! *Screams at the sight of some rats and opens fire, wasting ammo* I keep checking rooms but it's all empty- By Luna's shitting dick nipples, is that a dead skeleton clutching a gun? Aha! A clue!"

oh also imagine if before the war, to combat Equestria's declining population, the Equestrian govt worked on a sex potion that makes you extremely fertile and horny and sex-obsessed for a few hours. But it was used as a date-rape drugs by bad guys, and nopony in Equestria knows what rape is because it's a perfect cartoon world where rape has literally never happened before so there are no laws against it for a few years.
Also if you take more than one dose of the potion per day, you're permanently turned into a horrifying abomination straight out of the most disgusting shitting dick nipple porn imaginable. We're talking shambling mounds of flesh with genitals distorted and exaggerated into mockeries of sex itself, desperately trying to fuck you to death as soon as they see you. oh and any kids they produce end up mutated into sex monsters too, to explain why some areas are full of these roaming fuckbeasts.
Now that's some fucked-up bullshit only possible in a post-apocalyptic equestria with its own unique horrors and monsters.

>gender replacement shit
oh fuck now I remember where we are in the story. I won't spoil anything.

First of all why the fuck would Littlepip crack open some history books in the middle of a potentially-enemy-filled hazardous area just to check if they do contain edited information? Why would she assume this, of all things? She's acting like a DND player who already knows where she can find the clues she needs! Or a shitty Mystery Show protagonist. like BBC's Sherlock. Fuck that show, Elementary is better. but not much better.

Two, why would these books "make no reference to the history or governance of Equestria" if they're also willing to say Stallion In The Moon instead of Mare In The Moon?

Three, these books are quite fucking clearly making references to the history of Equestria and fucking them up by claiming everything famous women did was actually done by men. Even though everything famous women did in our timeline was built on the backs of the hard work of men and the countless things men invented. So why does the author claim these books have "nothing but the vaguest references"? Are the stallions here afraid men won't buy historically famous "men" becoming famous for the things mares did if they were spoken of in detail? Why? Were they very feminine things?

Four, I think it's really funny that at first, Littlepip's mad over this poster of a man with mares at his feet. Hooves, whatever. But then the author went back and added the spanner and leaky sinks to the poster so that it would look even more ridiculous than it supposedly already was. Littlepip has to add that she's not mad about the man being fawned over, she's mad that the poster has women cowering from sinks and loving a handsome plumber. Insert leaky pipes and drain-snaking jokes here. What, was this added in after commentors commented that a poster of men in charge isn't really all that offensive to begin with? What fucking woman would want to work as a plumber dealing with toilets blocked by shit and degeneracy?

Five, "These posters were here since before the Apocalypse"? How the fuck does he know that? How can he guess that? Why does he know this? He isn't immortal! It's not like these posters were plastered all over the rest of the wasteland because too many mares were dying in wars so the stallions had to get jobs to support their baby-makers and these posters were part of some ManDom The Musical propaganda campaign. Also, for the love of fuck, THIS ISN'T AMERICA!!! Vault-Tec of America got paid by the govt to construct underground Vault-themed shelters for future generations of humanity and secretly experiment on shit humanity might encounter during space travel, and also test new tech on live humans. This is EQUESTRIA and these shelters built by Apple Bloom were actually fucking designed to save lives! I fucking wish the author remembered this and turned every destroyed vault into a "How these ponies with good intentions fucked up and failed" story without the obligatory wacky experiments.

Six, this moment of looting supplies should have Littlepip think to herself "Wow I've really gotten used to robbing dead ponies. Then again fuck this vault and fuck whoever died here for being so sexist! I need to be mad or I can't feel good about grave-robbing!"

seven the log shit is dumb, littlepip should have the last entry interrupted at an incredibly tense moment by the arrival of enemies, pissing her off and keeping the audience in suspense since these shitty fight scenes can't do that.

>>286235
fuck, you're right. Sorry about that.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286303
286310 286347
1603405466139.jpg
>>286298

What's particularly weird is that Littlepoop seems to be aware of this:

>Still, we were up and moving in the right direction. Except we really weren’t, were we? The more I thought about it, the less reasonable my reasons for wandering around down here seemed. Finishing, I turned away and looked back down the way we came. “Okay, that’s it. I’ve been a dumb pony. We turn around, gallop back to the entrance as fast as we can, barricade ourselves and wait the damn storm out. Then we leave and close the door behind us.”
If the author is aware that neither of his characters has any compelling reason to even be down here, why didn't he go back and revise it to make more sense? Even altering Crane's original request so that he asked them to clear the cats out of this stable instead of just closing the door would have been sufficient. As it stands, there is no obvious reason for either of them to be in this situation, and having LP acknowledge that simply calls attention to the problem without resolving it.

Anyway, it looks like Calamity was poisoned.

Page break. Jarringly, the next subchapter begins with another journal entry in a terminal. This installment clears up the mystery of what the cat things are and what happened to the Stable.

Apparently, the incident at show and tell that the classroom terminal explained was the beginning of the trouble. Somehow, a filly named Quanta managed to accidentally fuse Carrot Tail's pet cat with the classroom's pet snake, resulting in a chimera. This creature later attacked Carrot Tail and another pony who worked with the maintenance pony whose journal we were reading earlier. Both of them died. The terminal that LP is currently reading contains the notes of the medical examiner, who discovered that in addition to the cat and the snake, an insect was fused into the chimera. Because of this, the chimera is able to reproduce by injecting eggs into the ponies it bites along with the venom that kills them. This causes five new chimeras to hatch out of the bodies a few days after the pony is dead le edge. However, it's cool; they have an antidote, the ME just isn't sure they will have enough for everypony. Obviously they didn't, since everypony here seems to be dead. But, whatever they do have is said to be in the clinic's fridge.

>A new species, extremely hostile, which renders its victims immobile with a single bite and then tortures them to death from the inside over most of a day… and in doing so can quintuple its number?

Alright, here's the deal with this. I looked it up, and apparently it takes about 3 weeks on average for a body to decompose into a skeleton. That's actually less time than I had thought, but it's still a fair amount of time. Since every dead body that LP and Calamity have come across down here has been a skeleton, it's safe to assume that this incident happened an absolute minimum of three weeks ago. Due to some other factors, I think it's been quite a bit longer than that, however. For one thing, there has not been any mention of the air smelling rotten, and I think it's safe to say that an enclosed space containing probably hundreds to thousands of decomposing corpses would smell pretty bad. So, this happened long enough ago that the bodies have completely decomposed, and the ventilation/purification system has turned the air around so that odor isn't a noticeable problem. That brings our minimum up to at least a few months ago.

Significantly, the text specifically mentions that the generators are still functioning but are making a weird noise since they have not been maintained. I don't know how much maintenance they need, but from the way the text describes it, StableTec generally builds things to last. So, the generators could presumably last anywhere from years to decades to centuries before they start to malfunction from neglect.

It's impossible to construct a completely accurate timeline, but I feel like from what we know, the incident that ended Stable 24 occurred at least a few years before present events. The general mood here suggests it was probably decades before if not longer. Now, in that time period, these chimera creatures, that apparently produce about five new offspring every time they kill a pony, have been living down here. What have they been eating? Presumably they could have lived on the corpses of the Stable-ponies for quite a while, but they would have eventually run out of them. Between depletion of their original food source and their rate of reproduction, they would have had to expand beyond their initial habitat fairly quickly. The settlement would be the logical place, and there's no reason it wouldn't have been wiped out just as quickly if nothing was done. However, here is what Crane said when assigning the quest to Littlepoop:

>We been havin’ a small bit o’ trouble with the things that’ve been crawling up outta that ol’ Stable west o’ here.
>Jus’ get down t’ the Stable an’ close the door. I reckon we can clear out the varmints up here if somepony locks off their breedin’ grounds.

Sounds like a minor inconvenience at best. It's been established that the individuals aren't hard to kill, but at the same time, they are highly toxic and reproduce quickly. There's no way that something like this would have gone unnoticed by the settlement for this long. Either the species would have reproduced beyond its ability to sustain its population and died out, or else it would have expanded its hunting grounds into the settlement. Either way the situation should have hit critical mass by now, and if solving it was just a matter of closing the damn bunker door then there is literally no reason that somepony in the settlement couldn't have just come up here and fucking closed it. I refuse to believe that a nest of thousands of these things has existed here for anywhere from years to decades without it becoming more than an occasional nuisance for the nearby settlement.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286304
286347
>>286300
>Five, "These posters were here since before the Apocalypse"? How the fuck does he know that? How can he guess that? Why does he know this?
This is actually a good point. It also raises the question of why ponies would even be living in a Stable during the pre-war period. If I'm understanding it correctly, the Stables are just giant bomb shelters, and there's no reason to live in a bomb shelter if there's no danger of being bombed.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286310
286313 286315 286327 286352
1603401630026.png
>>286303

>I swiftly realized the only thing that had kept the chimera from overrunning the Equestrian Wasteland was that river and the fact that these chimera can’t swim. Thank the wasteland for huge favors!
Well, that answers that lol. For the sake of not dwelling on this topic any further I'm going to go ahead and accept this explanation for now.

>I looked at the bed Calamity was resting on, looking even weaker than before. Oh Goddess. I couldn’t tell him this! Let him think he’s poisoned; it’s so much better than this.
>Oh Goddess
Really? Just really?

Suddenly dropping these half-assed feminist themes on us out of nowhere is obnoxious enough, but if this is the level of subtlety the author plans to drop them with then this is going to be a long, long slog through half a million words. Seriously; Littlepoop has never used the expression "oh Goddess" anywhere in the text up until now, and it's not a canon expression in the pony universe. Just have her say "oh Celestia" the way she usually does; even "shit into Celestia's yeast-infected cunt with Luna's moon-diarrhea" or something like that would at least be consistent with LP's established style. "Oh Goddess" sounds like an expression you'd expect to hear from a 45 year old cat lady who sells homemade magic potions on Etsy.

Anyway, she now has a problem. Calamity has been poisoned, and if she doesn't find some of this magical antidote she read about he's probably going to die and explode into catsnakebugs in a matter of hours. Oh noes. She goes first to the refrigerator in the clinic, but unfortunately they seem to have run out of the stuff. According to the terminal, if there is any antidote left, it will be in the Overstallion's office, which is located across a large atrium from where she is now. And of course, the atrium is full of chimeras. Better go fast, Sonic.

She outlines her plan to Calamity, and a fairly standard dialogue ensues:
>Blah blah blah Littlepoop, don't go, it's suicide, let me go, I am poisoned
<Blah blah blah Calamity, you can't go, you are poisoned
>Blah blah blah save yourself Littlepoop, don't be a fool
<Blah blah blah I am not going to leave you
<Blah blah blah something heroic


And so forth. Then, this:

>Levitating the StealthBuck up for Calamity to see, I smiled with a whole lot more confidence than I felt. “I do have this.”
What? When the fuck did she pick this thing up? Cntrl-f, no other mention of "StealthBuck" in this chapter. This is the first mention we've heard of her having one of these. Also, although an anon in the thread has clarified it for me, the text still hasn't explained what a StealthBuck is exactly.

Anyway, that's the end of the subchapter. There is a page break (there are 14 page breaks in this chapter alone), and then we rejoin Littlepoop...AFTER she has already gotten the antidote for Calamity. That's right, you heard right: this chapter, which is literally 11,403 words long, spends its entire length on the world's most tedious dungeon crawl, and then skips over the one event that might have made an interesting enough scene to redeem it. The following three paragraphs are all that k "probable trap at this point" kat dedicates to a scene in which his heroine has to cross a pitch-black atrium filled with deadly bad guys.

>It was, without question, the most harrowing two hours of my life. Inching my way through darkness, surrounded by lethal predators. They couldn’t see me. But in the darkness, it was only by my E.F.S. and targeting spell that I was able to keep from stepping on or brushing against one of them.
Not sure how big this atrium is, but even with all of the chimeras running around I doubt it would take two hours to cross.

>It was a minefield. And as I crossed, I realized just how calling my own stupidity a “social minefield” did flippant injustice to an actual minefield, and anyone who had ever been caught in one. This was a minefield. And all the mines were alive and moving. One wrong move, and it wasn’t just I who would die for it.
Sounds exciting, probably would have been fun to read about. But hey, the chapter's already more than 10,000 words long, and it's not like any of the bullshit about searching rooms and arguing about gender roles could have been cut, amirite?

>But I did make it. And for once the wasteland was pouring out the favors.
Much like the semen that was no doubt pouring into the author's mouth as he typed this out one-handed.

>The Overstallion’s door was as easy to pick as advertised. From the skeleton, I guessed the Overstallion locked himself in, and I feared he had consumed the anti-chimera potion.
You can tell a lot from a skeleton. t. skeleton expert

>But within his locked safe, I found both it and the recipe, as well as an old recording. My guess was that it was his last words. If it had been Stable Two, and I had been the Overmare, watching everyone die because of some magical accident? I suspect I might have done the same.
Well gee whiz, I'll bet that recording is important. I sure hope we get to read a literal word-for-word transcript of it at some point.

Anyway, she takes the remedy and heads back. Her journey back through the chimera-infested atrium is just as uneventful, but it starts getting weird after this. I'm going to continue in a new post.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286313
286315 286616
giphy.gif
>>286310

There are only a few short paragraphs remaining in the subchapter, but what happens is a bit difficult to follow. As far as I can tell, Littlepoop goes back across the atrium to the clinic and gives Calamity the antidote. Then, for reasons I don't entirely understand, she backtracks across the entire Stable to the locked storage room that she was unable to open before.

>Sitting down with Today’s Locksmith, I went though, finding all the tips I could in a short amount of time. The highlighting really helped.
Today's Locksmith was mentioned before; I think it was something she found lying around in here somewhere. From context I'm assuming that it's a book or a magazine about picking locks. If so, it ought to be italicized.

In any case, whatever she learns gives her the ability to open the storage room. This whole sequence of events feels like more video game stuff that doesn't translate particularly well into text. Basically, she couldn't open the door before because her lockpicking ability wasn't up to snuff, but she found a book on lockpicking that bumped up her stat to the point where she can. So now, she is backtracking through the dungeon to gather up all the items that were out of her reach, before she ends the mission and leaves this location. Protip: don't write stories this way.

>Outside, thunder shook the mountain reassuringly. I looked up and thanked Celestia for the storm.
Why?

>The tips from the book proved useful. With a bit of effort and only one bobby pin, I was able to get the box marked dynamite. Inside, there was indeed dynamite. I removed each stick gingerly. Then placed a curled up Calamity into the box, closing it. Should a chimera come for him while I was busy, I didn’t want it to be able to get at him.
This is honestly getting quite dumb. A lot of action is happening here, but the text is just rushing through it rapidly, making it hard to follow what's happening exactly. As I recall, the storage area with the dynamite was way the fuck back near the entrance of this place, which means she is pretty much retracing her way back through the entire Stable. She does this while carrying the unconscious Calamity using her horn magic, as well as keeping her gun ready in the event that she is attacked by more chimeras. Presumably she is also still carrying the gigantic mountain of shit she carries with her everywhere anyway.

She then uses the book on lockpicking she just conveniently found lying around somewhere in here to pick the lock on the dynamite box, removes the dynamite, and puts Calamity inside the box.

>For the next few hours, I ran back through the entirety of Stable Twenty-Four. Everything but the atrium. I opened each door that could be opened. And then blocked it with a trash can or a tipped-over filing cabinet or anything else that would keep the door from closing.
Why? Also: Calamity is just lying in the storage room locked in a box for this entire period of several hours?

>As for the Atrium, after looting the clinic for medical supplies, I left a stick of burning dynamite on the windowsill of the Clinic and ran.
It's fairly clear at this point that Littlepoop is planning to blow up the Stable, which makes sense. However, this business with the dynamite on the window is a dumb thing to do. The dynamite is going to explode long before she's finished doing the rest of the shit she's about to do, and it's not likely to do much more than kill a few of the chimeras and rile the rest of them up. If she was able to make it through the atrium twice without disturbing these things or calling their attention to her, it's probably safe to assume they will stay put if she leaves them alone. Plus, as we shall see, she's going to flood the stable anyway, so...what's the point?

>The rest of the dynamite was to blow the cave opening enough to bring the river pouring in.
This is fundamentally a good plan, but I really don't see why all the other prep work she does is necessary. Going around and opening all the doors I guess was to ensure that the water gets in and floods everything, but this seems like a pointless extra step. Just having the only entrance and most of the stable flooded should ensure that nothing can get out. Blowing up the window above the atrium is dumb for reasons I outlined above. She basically wastes a period of several hours here setting all of this up, and doesn't really achieve anything that couldn't have been achieved by just following the original plan of shutting the damn door.

>By the time I was ready to set that off, Calamity had gotten up and wondered why he was packaged as high explosive. His eyes got wider and wider as I explained what I was doing.
>“Dayumn!” That was all.
Pic related.

And that's the end of the subchapter.

We can assume that the blowing up of the stable goes as planned, because as the next scene opens Littlepoop and Calamity are back at the settlement. They both spend the night in the clinic. The next day, Littlepoop gets trained by Crane on lifting stuff or whatever, and in the mid-afternoon Calamity wakes up and the two of them share a Sparkle-Cola. They argue some pretty retarded semantics about who owes whom for saving whose life, and whether or not they should have even gone into the stupid bunker at all.

Calamity comments that LP seemed to be personally affected by the exploration of the stable, and he reminds her that it wasn't her stable and she had no connection to it.

>The only threads connecting the different Stables were two hundred years old, dead and buried in a history mostly forgotten. Stable-Tec hadn’t existed in a long, long time.
This seems like it might be foreshadowing something, but the text doesn't dwell on it.

The chapter ends with Littlepoop suggesting that they listen to the recording she found in the Overstallion's office.

Also, she "levels up" again:
>You triple the mass that you can levitate with your unicorn magic.
Good, now she can carry even more crap.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286315
>>286310
>>286313
Oh yeah, that reminds me. One more thing about Littlepoop's journey through the chimera-filled atrium:

>Levitating the StealthBuck up for Calamity to see, I smiled with a whole lot more confidence than I felt. “I do have this.”
Literally nothing comes out of this. The author goes out of his way to have Littlepoop mention that she has one of these things (we have no clue as to how or where she got it), and then nothing comes out of it. She never uses it, and it is never mentioned again. The author never even explains what the fuck it is; if that anon hadn't clarified that it's some kind of camouflage device I'd still be assuming it was a type of sniper rifle.

As best I can figure, the implication is that she uses the StealthBuck to make herself invisible or whatever it does exactly, and this allows her to sneak past all of the chimeras in the atrium undetected. I honestly can't decide if the addition of this mysteriously-acquired piece of technology makes the scene more retarded or less retarded, but either way it was atrociously executed.
Anonymous
abb50e3
?
No.286327
286347
>>286310
Some stuff I've been wondering about the Pip-Buck is how it is conveying this information to her. As Nigel said in Fallout 1 and 2 the Pip-Boy was like a PDA while 3 and beyond had it be a wrist mounted device like the Pip-Buck takes after. When it comes to stuff like VATS it's understandable that it could manipulate a Unicorn's magic to aim the weapon for them but when it comes to the compass that marks enemies she would need to be trotting around with one of her forelegs held up to see the display. It's a bit semantics but feels a bit like the video game logic there unless the Pip-Buck is able to augment the users vision to display the markers througg their eyes.

Also for the Stealth-Buck I assume it works mostly the same as the Fallout Stealth-Boy. Nigel mentioned how the way it works in Fallout is it refracts light around the user making them extreamly hard to see outside a slight distortion. I'll give the FOE version the benefit of the doubt here but if it only works the same as the Fallout one she's got two major problems. First and foremost these creatures are mixxed with 3 different species that have highly adapt senses be it smell, the ability to sense heat, and whatever the fuck bugs have to make them try to fly into my eye or onto my food when I'm trying to enjoy a meal outside. Feel like it'd be difficult to navigate around them as close as she did without them sensing her body heat or smelling her. Important one to is I'll assume the Stable is made of metal and being a pony I imagine hooves would be noisy regardless of how slowly she moves.

Again though just kind of splitting hairs and I'm no good at crituiqe so don't want to be too hard on Kkat or riff on the fans too much.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286347
1475379000-372511667.jpg
fallout-3-hud.jpg
digital-art-green-rectangle-text-deviantart.jpg
Tactical Perfection.png
>>286304
You're right, Stables/Vaults are bomb shelters but huge. Adverts claim they were designed for American citizens to hide underground and survive nukes. In reality, you either bought VERY expensive places in the vault or got invited because of your great military service/high SPECIAL stats/because Vault-Tec wants to experiment on you.

>>286303
Lol it's another "Message From Freud". That thing where faggot author notices a mistake and "lampshades" it instead of fixing it.

>>286327
>stealth
What are you talking about? Stealth in video games, where you crouch a foot and walk around, and this immediately makes all enemies unable to see you, even when you're brightly lit and 3 feet from them, is exactly how stealth works in reality!
I'm joking, F3 has shit stealth and the author copied it literally.
Stealth is this OP in Fallout 3/Skyrim/4.
And when you're under the effects of a StealthBoy, you can walk around them and even touch them and they'll never notice you. you can even put the Muffle enchantment on your boots in Skyrim to make everything you do silent, making sneaking absurdly easy.
Fallout 3 doesn't have a good "Enemies hearing sounds" system, something fucking MGS1 for the PS1 had. This Xbox 360 game is weaker than MGS1 in terms of tech.
at least they react to gunshots from unsilenced guns. silencers completely silence your guns and make them sound like tiny farts. Except when they do nothing and just look different, while still making your guns as equally silent to your enemies.
Add stealth to the list of retarded things done poorly in Fallout 3 translated literally into this godawful fic.

>the compass
It's the HUD- I mean "Eyes-Forward Sparkle". The story explained it poorly but Littlepip has a videogame-style HUD overlayed onto her vision.
The absolutely terrible one from Fallout. rate the HUD mod I use in pic 4.
She can also, at will, activate VATS, the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. sorry, "Stable-tec".
first, time freezes and she selects an enemy and body part to aim at. then it makes the game take over her body and auto-aim and auto-fire at that body part while the cinematic camera angles go WOOOOOooooOOOOOOO THE CAMERA FOLLOWS YOUR BULLETS NOW WOOOO CUT TO THE ENEMY GETTING HIS HEAD SPLATTERED IN SLOW MOTION WOOOOOooooOOOOooooOOOO

It's the most retarded translation of a game mechanic between genres I've ever seen.

Fallout 1/2 handled combat like DND plus turn-based Isometric strategy games, but your companions have their own AI and can't be commanded XCOM style sadly.
Moving squares and Attacking with melee/Shooting your guns costs Action Points
Your Agility stat=your maximum Action Points per turn.
When shooting you can perform an Aimed Shot, picking a specific body part to aim and fire at.
Want to cripple your foe's legs? Want to shoot the enemy's face or groin? You can do that, and get some funny text messages in the bottom-left for doing it.

Doom 2016 has Enemy Weak Points. This is what we should have gotten. Some enemies have weak points and if you shoot them there, it hurts more. You might even fuck up their best attacks, making them easier to kill. You must, in real time, aim and shoot like a pro. Your skills are rewarded.

Enter The Matrix, a PS2 game released years before Fallout 3, gives you a Bullet Time button that also enhances your gun/melee atks and lets you run up walls. Agent Smiths must be attacked in Bullet Time or they're invincible.

Fallout 3 gives us VATS.
A band-aid slapped on shitty gunplay where everyone skates around too fast and nobody is stunned by getting shot.
It lets you aim at different body parts to damage them and the target, EXCEPT THE BODY PARTS OF MOST ENEMIES HAVE MORE HEALTH THAN THE ENEMY ITSELF. THIS MEANS IF YOU SHOOT A RAIDER FAGGOT IN THE LEGS, HE WILL RUN OUT OF HEALTH AND DIE BEFORE HIS LEGS RUN OUT OF HEALTH AND GET CRIPPLED.
plus Melee weapons are flailed in front of you, no weighty commitment-filled Dark Souls/Mordhau animations here.
oh and melee weapons don't even WORK in VATS!
You equip a melee weapon, activate VATS, select a foe, and... you just attack the foe as a whole because there is no pointed stab animation for specific body part harming.
Fortunately you teleport to your foe every time you begin an attack in VATS.
hey, pro tip: This also works with guns. Give your guns a VATS Melee option and if you perform that option in-game, it just teleports you straight to the enemy. but you don't attack or anything, it's a glitchy teleport. so teleport, then attack, if you want to use VATS instead of replacing it via mods.
There's a fucking reason why people are STILL, IN FUCKING 2020, making combat overhaul mods for Skyrim, a game more than 10 years old. Bethesda can't code combat. They pulled the Doom 2016 team away from Doom for a while to try and enhance Fallout 4's gunplay, and their contributions and smart design choices to enhance combat still barely mattered in the face of bullet-sponge enemies and bad everything else. The engine was too fundamentally broken for FPS geniuses to unfuck it.

Some of the first mods made for Fallout 3/NV replaced VATS with Bullet Time. Because everyone knows slowing the game down to make it easier is still better than having a cutscene fight for you.
Now if only the Action Points could be used for other things like Superjumps, SuperSpeed sprinting, Glory Kills/Melee Takedowns, temporary invisibility, throw a turret/shield wall, perhaps an exploding energy blast, and so on. You know, other things good FPS and Third-Person Shooters put into their games to make combat more interesting than "Point and shoot. weak foes can't hurt you faster than you can heal with stimpaks. point and shoot until it is done". I love NV but your only combat option in F3/NV/4 is "Use weapon to out-DPS your foe or run". It takes mods to add throwable shield covers and gimmicky guns, unfuck the limb-crippling system, add sprinting that isn't shit, etc.
though I do love the Archimedes. And hate what this story does to the Archimedes.
Anonymous
3266c18
?
No.286351
286353
Fallout 3 Enclave Troops try to surrender to Brotherhood Outcasts.mp4
Unrelated to the story but i found this and thought it's a perfect example of how things usually go in Fallout 3.
It's a scripted encounter after you beat Broken Steel where some enclave soldiers surrender to the brotherhood outcasts.

To be completely honest i have never given a shit about fan fictions unless they contain erotica,the Japanese make some pretty good mare doujinshi's
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286352
>>286310
>it was only by my E.F.S. and targeting spell that I was able to keep from stepping on or brushing against one of them
oh for fuck's sake. Kkunt put THIS in the story?

You know how clicking the VATS will pause the gane if an enemy you can fire on is in range(about 3000 meters i think), zoom in on the enemy, and highlight the enemy, aim your cursor and camera at the enemy, and let you queue up VATS cutscene attacks or exit VATS and fire in realtime at the enemy you're instantly aiming at aimbot-style?
Well, if there are no enemies in range, VATS won't activate. It'll just make a clicking noise.
So many players will mash the VATS button when they feel like they're in danger and about to enter combat and want to know exactly where the enemies are AND get the jump on them for free.
yes, even though this takes absolutely all the tension out of jogging through bombed-out building ruins with traps and enemies all around you.
yes, even though there's already an enemy-detecting compass that displays where enemies in a 180 degree cone are in front of you on this shitty flat line.
Don't forget about the fact that if you assign a Hotkey to a gun and press it, you'll equip the gun. But if you assign a Hotkey to a healing item, you instantly consume the healing item without an animation to slow you down. so you can keep mashing the heal hotkey to stay at 100% health if you're a faggot.
Bethesda fanboys are subhuman garbage who fund this megacorp's abusive practices out of spite for people who like quality writing they're too stupid to understand, so they love claiming Fallout 3's endless mindless badly-designed "Le combat zones" full of walls and rubble and random enemies and loot-filled dungeons was "Atmospheric" and "Exploration-focused" and "Tense" and "Exciting" even though they're literal retards whose VATS-button-clicking removed all tension and suspense.
Bethesda Fallouts encourage bad gameplay habits like these
there's a reason why cool dudes avoid them
and this videogamey exploit shit does NOT belong in a book
it's not explained well enough for the player to appreciate this "Creative" use of a sci-fi or magical mechanic, it's just a hint at a habit that makes the Fallout gameplay of faggots unwatchable.

Were you cursed by a Gypsy, Glim? Is that why every time a story in this thread tries to do a tense stealthy scene, the story glosses over it and tells you how it went down after skipping it? First Nyx's story, now this.

Also, fuck this story for making luck favour Littlepip too much.
1. it makes for a boring story
2. it harms the grim darkness if you know Littlepip's plot armour and bullshit luck will turn on easy mode whenever it's needed
3. it kills the tension because you know Littlepip won't die
4. Littlepip's luck stat isn't even high enough for this kind of shit in gameplay terms, and this story inconsistently uses gameplay mechanics as a crutch and as an easy target for mockery.

>Locksmith
You guessed it.
In Fallout, there are Skill Books (Permanently boost a skill by a few points)
and Magazines (Temporarily apply a 10-point buff to a chosen skill, further discouraging players from raising their favourite skills to the maximum cap of 100 since this stops Magazines from doing anything)
Lying, Congressional Style boosts Speech
Today's Locksmith boosts Lockpicking

I'm pretty sure Magazines were added in Fallout 3, so even retarded players could pick the necessary locks and hack the necessary terminals to be allowed to attempt fucktarded minigames designed to make opening a box of loot give you a superior sense of pride and accomplishment.

BOTH MAGAZINES AND BOOKS ARE CONSUMED WHEN READ.

but this is a story, not a videogame mechanic. I've seen Fallout fics explain and justify these videogame mechanics better by saying these books/magazines contain useful tips on their subject, and then NOT having the books/magazines disintegrate when read so they can be bartered.

When I was ten years old I literally read Pokemon fanfics that did a better job translating videogame mechanics and gamer-like behaviours into text better.
You wouldn't believe how many Generic Child Protagonists had Edgy Gamer Bastards for rivals. Child Protag loves his pokemon and makes a team out of whatever Pokemon he likes/encounters and enjoys pokemon battles for fun
Edgy Gamer Bastard says "Your Pidgey is trash, you total lamer! If I had a trash Pokemon like yours, I'd kick it out of my team! My team composition is optimal and my Pokemon are OU-Tier, and that means good! My Charizard is the toughest bastard out there, just like me!"
Edgy Gamer Bastard loots the haunted house and pisses off ghosts in the process, child protag's kindness calms the ghosts down and helps both escape.
Literal levels were turned into an abstract thing Pokedexes can check, and Pokemon learned moves by practicing the motions that make up the move and sometimes involving elements.
Oh and the good stories dropped the "Human yells command, pokemon does action. Enemy trainer yells command, pokemon does action" system in favour of "Pokemon fight, and humans yell to use certain moves or tactics when they think of clever tricks like riding the turbulence or freezing a swimming pool over or spitting a fire attack at a wet floor to create steam to use as cover or spitting a fire attack at the overhead sprinklers to make it rain in the Gym, fucking over enemy pokemon weak to Water".

Literal children wrote shit better than this. Still bad and barebones, but they lacked the specific obvious mistakes that fuck this story up.

>story skips over the big boom
Did Kkunt forget he's writing for Fallout fanboys who cum buckets every time something blows up, preferably in a nuclear-looking blast?
BugthEAsderp fanboys will still defend Megaton's shit writing because "Hurr durr if you don't like the city you can blow it up!"
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286353
286354
>>286351
God, I could rant about this for 20k words.
If you've gotten this ending, it means the Brotherhood won the Battle Of The Niggertarded Water Purifier.
So all the water in the DC area should be magically purified.
Surrendering troops have no reason to say "We just want water"

The Brotherhood Of Steel in Fallout 1 was practically an Easter Egg for how easy it was to skip this small faction of... what word describes them? Niggers call them "Techno-fascists" because they're niggers. I guess "Techno-Feudalists" works.
Brotherhood Paladins protect the Wastelander serfs and confiscate all illegal technology while Brotherhood Scribes learn to maintain and repair and preserve technology.
Their goal: Preventing retards from firing nukes to end the world again.

But in F3 they're fucking Power Rangers who oppose the cartoon-fascist Enclave because why not.
Then when we meet the Brotherhood Outcasts...
They're a bunch of faggots in one building where a VR Matrix Pod with a videogame level about the US Military invasion of Anchorage locks the entrance to a building containing one power armour suit.
They let you, the player, get in and beat the game to open the door.
Then I think they kill each other? Or there's a dialogue thing where you decide whether they kill each other or not?
Anyway you get the Power Armour suit you wore "In-game"
except the literal niggers at BugthEAsderp put the VR game's power armour suit here.
The "Winterized Power Armour" suit you pick up is the debug suit with 99999 item durability.
Was it also tagged as a Quest Item, making it weightless and invincible? I forget.
Anyway the Outcasts quit the BOS for abandoning their "Protect the people from tech and protect people" Mission in favour of just picking "Protect people" as their new mission.
It makes no sense but this shit never does.
These losers try real fucking hard to be the edgy evil guys, to make Bethesda's Power Rangers look more heroic and more like the "True" BOS, when they aren't trying to be a handjob to people who think the Outcasts represent the Brotherhood better than the real deal.
No wonder FNV added those Circle Of Steel assassins who hunt down Brotherhood traitors/outcasts/remnants as part of its glorious assassination of the BOS as they were originally written and as the Power Rangers Bethesda turned them into.

Fuck this gay faggotry with a giga drill breaker.

You know where Outcasts worked better? In the Depravity/Project Valkyrie guy's mods for Fallout 4 that un-retard the main plot and especially the BOS.
Here, the Outcasts are people who decided to quit when The Brotherhood's evil elder council assigned a literal child 16 years of age to be their new Elder and Chapter Leader.
I haven't beaten this quest without the game crashing on me, so I don't know if this faction has good writing or not.
But so far, I'm impressed.
Anonymous
3266c18
?
No.286354
286364
arch dornan.jpeg
>>286353
>The Brotherhood Of Steel in Fallout 1 was practically an Easter Egg for how easy it was to skip this small faction of... what word describes them? Niggers call them "Techno-fascists" because they're niggers. I guess "Techno-Feudalists" works.
A more fitting name would be something like techno-authoritarians because they claim supreme authority over technology.
>Then I think they kill each other? Or there's a dialogue thing where you decide whether they kill each other or not?
There is 2 groups in there, one who wants the technology for themselves and wants the power armor you took, the other group just doesn't care about the technology for some reason even thought they are outcasts so they are friendly to you for some reason, so after you take the rest of the shit in there they end up fighting each other and depending on who wins you will either end up with a full room of dead outcasts or about 3 or 4 members still alive.
There is also a couple of ways to exploit this DLC and get about a million ammo of all kinds and then sell it, you can get all the exclusive weapons too by using a dead Gary behind a locked door and putting him in the pod with you, it sounds funny but there is a split second before coming out of the simulation where all the equipment you have on you is able to be put into the dead body then you will be able to loot it back from the body, you will never die again if you do this, you can do all of this right after leaving the vault because there is no level restrictions for this DLC.
>Was it also tagged as a Quest Item, making it weightless and invincible? I forget.
No it weighed about 45 lbs but had a million armor hp or something, it gave you about 50 armor resistance if i remember with the helmet included, also remember that Chinese stealth armor? Yeah you can stack every type of helmet on top of each other, so if you have 2 hockey masks that gives you +5 unarmed they can be put back on until you have about a unarmed buff of +10000 or more, all of this is in the base game by the way and i did all this shit on the xbox 360 so i could one punch death claws at level 5 on the hardest difficulty.
The amount of bugs in that game never ceased to amaze me.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286364
286367 286380
twilight sparkle.png
>>286354
Wearing infinite hats... That sounds stupid enough to be something that could actually happen in a Bethesda game
I think Bethesda deserves credit for expertly dashing the hopes of its fans and burning them so many times they've gotten used to overlooking game-ruining save-corrupting bugs and glitches they'd crucify an Indie Dev for not fixing before release. Bethesda shills are like a prototype for what jews want all humans to be: Loyal paypiggies mentally enslaved to their favourite brands.

I tried playing Thuggysmurf's Fallout 4 mods like Depravity/Outcasts And Remnants/Project Valkyrie again, the damn thing crashed on me when I met the Outcasts. Then again I have over 100 mods installed already. I should try a "minimalist mod order" some time without the anime girls and weapon/cybernetics/power armour mods.
Have you ever tried those Depravity-series mods? They add alternate ways of completing major quests and alternate quests+new factions.
So you can blow up Diamond City, Minutemen, the Railroad, the BOS, or become the new BOS elder, or find Sarah Lyons (some guy's ultimate waifu) and crown her the new BOS elder.
also when you take over the Institute you can reform it so it doesn't do evil shit any more
and the dumb Vergil shit has been fixed mostly
there's a quest where you clear out enemy-controlled sniper towers and roads near Goodneighbour so Goodneighbour guards can go there, also you clean the town up so it "attracts a higher class of clientele".
you can talk Kellog into a friend instead of killing him with that "Big Guns skill check"
you can enter a vault and blackmail them into giving you drug-making supplies in a side mission
The fucktarded "follow that mutt as he follows the scent of cigars" part is skipped when the Institute teleports you in to take part in a coup/civil war or something, I haven't gotten that far yet
I hear there's also a quest where Diamond City is full of riots and you can either take over the town and kill the rioters, help "Raider Lives Matter" take over so you're forced to kneel to them whenever you enter, take over the town and make the rioters win by putting "No chokeholds uwu!" restrictions on the cops, and just blow the whole thing up. But I haven't got to that part yet.

oh and there's a side mod called Diary Of A Madman where you can blow up all major factions after reading a diary that says why these factions must die.
it reuses parts from Stella's "Kill all factions" optional sidequest in Depravity outside the main mod for the sake of instant convenience (normally you have to go through the main quest to unlocik her quest)
I beat it today and killed all major factions. fun mod!

Playing through some of those mods and their focus on player choice made me realize something...

How many choices has Littlepoop really made during this story?

Experts recommend you make 8 choices per day.

Littlepip got "lucky" enough to be the one who removed Canary Cockgobbler's Pip-Buck. If she wasn't on-duty at the time, someone else would have handled it.
So when The Magical Singing Lesbian fucked off into the apocalyptic wasteland, Littlepoop could either be sad for a while as everyone gets over the death of the "celebrity", or run out after her to "rescue her"
even though the Overmare said "If you leave you are NOT allowed back in ever!", ruining the main quest AND the surprise-twist "Overseer fires you and you can't go home again even though you did nothing wrong" ending of Fallout 1.

so

Littlepip "chooses" a life of Wasteland tragedy and violence over the sad life of a faggy hated midget civilian

and then she immediately runs into enemies, gets fucked over, kills some enemies, wanders aimlessly, lucks out when she encounters a dude who shoots her, she also lucked out when she encountered Watcher, also she grave-robbed Little Macintosh, and she gets taken to this town that gives her Kkunt's attempt at ripping off Shady Sands and the "Go kill all Scorpions... though smart players can use dynamite to collapse the entrance to the cave" quest.

The only choice she makes is the choice to keep being a little bitch.

also fuck this quest

Scorpion Quest in F1 is simple.

leave Shady Sands, go to Radscorpion Cave, kill some Radscorpions, leave with their Stingers so faggy doctor in Shady Sands can make a Poison Antidote, the end.
or you buy some dynamite and put it at the cave's entrance to collapse the entrance, crashing this cave with no survivors. except you. you survive and you get a sweet reward for "Closing the door" and putting an end to the Radscorpion threat.
Kkunt got so caught up in making this quest "Cooler" by making it take place in a Vault instead of a Cave and "Making a better RadScorpion" by creating a cat-bug-snake faggy chimera that injects its babies into you Alien style for a lethal bite that Kkunt forgot to make this shit make sense.
If it takes place in a vault, then OF COURSE the door can be closed. That means it isn't something only smart players can figure out any more. It becomes a solution so obvious that even Crane the professional shit-lifter directly tells Littlepip to do it.
But she doesn't.

Imagine if Littlepip was characterized as a character that said "Let's not close the door like we were instructed. That will only hold until someone else opens the vault door! Let's put Dynamite and a homemade Time Bomb in the Vault Nuclear Reactor so all the monsters die, and loot the place for supplies while the timer ticks down, and then close the door and leave!"
Characterizing her as a risk-taker who loves loot and permanently ending problems.
A reckless treasure-seeker, or a noble hero? The audience can decide.

but then...

oh no!

Littlepoop's little friend gets bitten by the monsters

and she is forced to stop looting skeletons and raiding the Armoury for guns and ammo and start frantically searching through this Vault while killing monsters and searching for a cure, and all the while, that timer about to blow ticks down.

Drama! Tension!

For extra points...
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286367
TrollScience.jpg

>>286364
For extra points, Littlepoop could agree on the plan with Crapity, and then set the timer on her time bomb and start the countdown.

>Calamity: Littlepip?
<Littlepip: Yes?
>Calamity: You just turned the Time Bomb on. Now we only have one hour to put that bomb where it needs to go, loot the place, and get out!
<Littlepip: Ten thousand dicks in my ass, that's such a stupid thing for me to do! Oh, if only I decided to put the bomb where it needs to go, and then start the timer-
>Calamity: Less lampshading, more dungeon-crawling! That bomb goes off in one hour!

It would be a gut-splittingly funny scene by tvtropes standards because it involves a character doing something stupid and getting yelled at, and it involves someone lampshading something dumb, and it involves (The ultimate joke to a troper) a character remarking on and lampshading the lampshading someone else is already doing.
Anonymous
3266c18
?
No.286380
286435
File (hide): 30FB491DF4FBCD63D678BF6BB33EC9B2-5315158.mp4 (5.1 MB, Resolution:854x480 Length:00:03:08, Fallout 2 - SERGEANT ARCH DORNAN.mp4) [play once] [loop]
Fallout 2 - SERGEANT ARCH DORNAN.mp4
>>286364
>Wearing infinite hats... That sounds stupid enough to be something that could actually happen in a Bethesda game
You could also wear pretty much type of helmet that had a buff so if you wore a raider blast master helmet it would give you +5 to big guns and explosives so if you did the same thing like with the hockey masks you could get a big guns or explosives up to +10000 as well so a single bullet from a mini gun could kill anything, it was pretty funny to see enclave soldiers drop like flies on the hardest difficulty using this.
>Have you ever tried those Depravity-series mods?
I have never tried any fallout mod other then those for fallout 1 and 2, the restoration project was alright for 2, the mods never appealed to me and i have never really cared about them because i'm not really interested in spending 1000 hours chasing some sex demon so i can fuck it, if i wanted to get my rocks off then i have better ways to do that.
>leave Shady Sands, go to Radscorpion Cave, kill some Radscorpions, leave with their Stingers so faggy doctor in Shady Sands can make a Poison Antidote, the end.
It would have been more interesting if you could have taken over shady sands with the raider gang so you could have had a different ending for it.
>or you buy some dynamite and put it at the cave's entrance to collapse the entrance, crashing this cave with no survivors. except you. you survive and you get a sweet reward for "Closing the door" and putting an end to the Radscorpion threat.
I never knew you could do that.
What do you think about Fallout 2 as a whole? Do you think New Reno quests could have had more done with them? Personally i wish there was more to being a made man of each club instead of just having the title, being a porn star should have had more to it outside of New Reno so maybe you could fuck some bitch in Los Angeles or in the NCR, you needed a specific amount of special stats to be a porn star and it never was worth it other then having the name of the "Arnold Swollenmember" or "Courtney Coxsleeve", it's a reputation title so maybe some one could have heard about you outside New Reno.
i don't think you have ranted about fallout 2 fully just yet or maybe i haven't scanned through your rants properly.
There could have been more done with enclave in the game as well because it feels more of a let down to have them just be beaten and that's it, perhaps an alternate ending with you siding with them like you could with the master in fallout 1, the enclave drill sergeant was hands down the best character in that game.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286435
286441 286548
>>286380
Sex demon? If there's any pornography in Depravity/Project Valkyrie I haven't seen it yet.
They're quest mods, I'm only running into difficulty because I'm a fucking idiot who wants these 3-5ish mods to play nice with over 100 mods even though I probably don't need any of them.
Aside from two mods to make the enemies not retarded and one to fix the bullet-sponge enemies to make combat more than a snoozefest, overhauls to the game's guns/armour/female bodies/clothing/ballistic data/recoil/crafting systems/settlement systems/grass/textures aren't really needed.

I could probably remove all graphics mods, the huge bugfix patch, the two mods that make character customization less terrible, CBBE, playable anime girls and guys: the mod, Wasteland Imports, one to unlock everything in Automatron from the start because fuck this DLC fanmade mods did it better*, one to add Eyebots and one to add Sentry Bots because fuck Bethesda for being so jealous of FNV's success that they ignored Securitrons and limited eyebots to "Resource-gathering paid DLC object that makes the game easier on pay2winfags" tools only, and pretty much everything except for one armour mod, one weapon, and the quests I'm here for.

*WHEN AUTOMATRON WAS FIRST RELEASED BY BUGTHEASDERP FOR AN INSULTINGLY HIGH PRICE, IT WAS INFERIOR TO A MOD ONE FAN HAD ALREADY MADE USING A FANMADE MODTOOL SINCE BETHESDA HAD NOT YET RELEASED THE GECK THEY PROMISED TO RELEASE EARLIER ON. AUTOMATRON'S INITIAL RELEASE BROKE THE MAIN QUEST BUT THE FANMOD THAT DID THIS ROBO-MAKING/MODDING IDEA BETTER AND DID NOT BREAK THE MAIN QUEST AND WAS FREE. ALSO WHAT KIND OF A NAME IS AUTOMATRON? I GET THAT THEY WANTED TO COMBINE AUTOMATON AND TRON, A MOVIE FROM THE SEVENTIES OR SOMETHING, BUT WHEN PEOPLE LOOK AT AUTOMATRON THEY SEE AUTO-MATRON, AS IN MOTHER. THIS ENTIRE QUEST IS JUST "BAD ROBOTS ARE IN THE COMMONWEALTH NOW JUST DROPPED IN HAPHAZARDLY BY GOD, AND SOME FUCKING RAIDERS USE THEM SOMEHOW, USE A NEW RADIO SIGNAL TO GET TO THIS ROBOT CHICK AND CAN HAVE HER HEAD PUT ON ASSORTED BOTS AND DESPERATELY WANTS TO SOUND LIKE GLADOS AND THAT FUNNY KILLBOT FROM THE STAR WARS GAME, GO HUNT DOWN THE SOURCE- OH IT'S A FUCKING WOMAN IN A SUPERHERO COSTUME AND YOU CAN KILL HER OR TALK HER INTO STOPPING AND NOTHING MATTERS EITHER WAY, IT WOULDN'T SURPRISE ME IF THIS WAS BASE-GAME CONTENT REMOVED FOR THIS "MINI-DLC

Besides, Skyrim has more sex mods. They're bizarre, people slide/rotate into animations weirdly, and almost all sex content is focused on being a pathetic submissive sexually-abused bitch fucked over metaphorically or literally by NPCs, monsters, and even random shit found in dungeons. With these mods installed you can get raped by a skeleton and then open a treasure chest and it's full of BDSM shit that forces itself onto you like the outfit from Kill La Kill so now you're forced to wear that degeneracy. I hated how much content focused on getting defeated and raped. Where's the shit for people who want to be on top? Where's the shit for men who want a harem of hot bitches to parade around the world while killing monsters?
Though the mod to make chicks shoot magic out of their boobs was fun.

also oh yeah i forgot there was raider stuff in fallout 1. They kidnap tandi and you can pretend to be the ghost of the raider boss's dad, right? fun times. You're right, an option to join the raiders would be great.

Fallout 2... It's great but I don't have a lot to rant about. I think the game leans a bit too hard on old Fallout 1 assets but that's understandable. New Reno needed more content. Vault City should have been more "A fascinating look at what 'rich' vault-dwellers are like after forming their successful society" and less "lmao we've got mutated psychic beavers for no reason".
I wish you could join the enclave, and I wish it didn't do that "Modyrn Scifi" woke thing where not wanting filthy mutants to breed or spread their corruptive seed is treated as a cartoon-fascist thing only cartoon monsters made to make fascism look inherently evil would ever want to do.
In Fallout 1 everything felt really connected in tone, even though what you did in some places wouldn't affect other places much. Fallout 2 had a more varied tone, and the dumb references were too much.

I think I'd have more rage talking about what I didn't like in FNV, even though all I can think of that can't be blamed on Bugthesderp and their deadlines is ...

When you go down to House's Bunker to use the chip as House instructs, it makes a big noise. Caesar simply assumes this was the sound of explosions and never send anyone down to check. Would it have killed House to open the doors to a fake room containing destroyed robot parts and then block the rest of the vault with a rubble wall his robot army could easily pull apart on the day of the Dam War? Also while I like that Benny tries and fails to get into this tent, resulting in Caesar getting the chip, I hate that Caesar simply hands you the chip (Even if you have done literally everything to fuck him over that doesn't involve progressing the plot) and expects you to use it to open the door and then blow this place up. He sends no guards with you. He doesn't use the chip to open the door, and then send armies in. He doesn't use the chip himself, forcing you to watch.
What if letting Benny escape meant you needed to chase him down before he got to the tent, fucking everything up and letting Caesar open the vault himself before sending fanatically loyal troops down to blow it all up? Then he could crucify you and Benny, resulting in a game over unless you could dialogue-check him into giving you and Benny an arena fight where the winner goes free.
I know House wanted the secret securitron bunker to be an ace up his sleeve but this is just really dumb writing.
I get that you're supposed to meet Caesar and then decide if you serve him or not even though he has given you no reason to serve him, but could they have done this any other way?
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286441
286573
>>286435
House calls the new faces on his robots "A single provocative datum for his enemies to focus on", but he does absolutely nothing to show anyone what this new face means. Unless we're supposed to assume someone caused trouble on the strip and whipped out its shiny "new" weapons to shock everyone.
You know what would have made this datum WAY more provocative? If going down to upgrade these securitrons resulted in House clearing this Legion den out and swarming the place and killing every last Legionaire here before moving these securitrons to specially-built bunkers (Or maybe Vault 21 if the dumb fucker hadn't sealed parts of it off with cement) back in New Vegas.
Yes, this would mean killing Caesar. Then again House could intentionally let him flee with his life to fuck with the entire Legion's morale and "living deity" view of Caesar, that would be funny and tactically effective.
To avoid this, Caesar should be somewhere else and some new Legion NPC should be running the place. Perhaps Aurelius Of Phoenix? He was under-used in-game. What if he was one of Caesar's two legates, the smarter one compared to Lanius, and killing this one like this (Or letting him flee with his life to Caesar, who's forced to crucify him in front of everyone... then again why wouldn't he just run anywhere else? maybe he could be escorted to Caesar's camp as a POW to really make the shame sink in) was House's plan all along as he wanted Legate "God I love violence it makes you strong, my guys will fight until death or die trying" Lanius to try managing all of Caesar's force at once and cause as much bloodshed for both sides as possible to weaken both and ensure NCR's weak enough to consider an even better option at the bargaining table.
Right now, running straight into Fortification Hill and shooting Caesar and getting out is too easy. Caesar should have more presence, perhaps a Moving Legion Capital that's extremely ornate. Then again Obsidian probably didn't have time for that. It sucks that this dumb writing thing was probably thrown in due to time constraints, considering there's already cut content involving your chase with Benny. I think it cuts through some cut Vault 21 areas? or at least cut areas in Benny's casino.

Also fuck the "Fly me to the moon" quest for having so many "Go get mundane crafting items for me" moments. The engine was designed to rely on quest markers and one-off quest items, the level design just isn't there for "Now go gather items in the real world" to be fun.

also FNV should have:
An option to (after killing Benny) challenge Swank to a knife fight and win to take over the casino
or
An option to renovate the Lucky 38 and release the lower level to the public, release one of many upper levels to VIPs, design another level above that for super-VIPs and then never let anyone into it, and get "Owning and ruling this casino" as one of the "Serving/Killing House" perks since if you kill House the NCR takes over this place and shuts it down.

and a way to earn a house in Goodsprings, farm crops outside, and enjoy a nice hilltop view. I really like house mods. I once tried to make my own with an incredibly ambitious built-in companion with a shitload of custom dialogue and psychic powers and a long backstory and the ability to ask her about the rest of the world so you can hear my takes on what other post-apocalyptic countries would be like(at the time, they'd be different now), but the file corrupted so I gave up.

And it could do with another Archimedes, too. No idea what it could be but I am a slut for extremely powerful guns and a bigger slut for superweapons.
As long as they actually make some sort of sense. Archimedes's "We use this solar power plant to get energy, and we beam it into a space satellite laser via microwaves so it has enough solar energy to shoot a big solar beam down once a day! We use a little laser pistol that looks like a toy gun to aim the laser!" shit was pushing it.
Archimedes and Euclid's C-Finder was amazing but while the quest to repair Archimedes was great, the quest to get the "Range-Finder" gun that aims the Archimedes solar laser kill-sat was stupid. Just walk up to a kid conveniently running around shooting it and pay him for it or haggle the price? Lame! Plus if you turned Archimedes on already, shouldn't firing that thing kill people? It's not like the C-Finder needed a special recharging plus-size microfusion battery only you could get from the Archimedes computer after fixing it and turning it on.
also "we distribute the power from the Nevada Desert to our space station laser via microwaves" is dumb. I have no idea what could work better.
Why not just give the space satellite enough solar panels, or add more Archimedes Beta Satellites just there to gather more solar energy and send it to the main one via cables?

Even though it lacks a main quest that lets you earn this thing, I love the Archimedes Mod for Fallout 4.
it's a cooler-looking laser gun that can fire a charged blast, a continuous short-range laser, or serve as the rangefinder for the Archimedes satellite laser. Hold the beam steady for 3-at-minimum (after upgrades) seconds and it calls down a big space laser. You're limited to one shot every 10 minutes(with enough upgrades). also you can turn off the safety limiter to call down multiple Archimedes solar lasers without any cooldown time, which is amazing.
Best of all, every time you equip the gun from your inventory, if it's the only Archimedes laser in your inventory (and it should be) you can select which mode to fire it in!
THIS MODDER ACTUALLY IMPROVED THE ARCHIMEDES GUN, while making all its old weaknesses and downsides optional! You could probably go through the whole game with just this laser! and a melee weapon mod because canon F4 melee weaps suck.
Holy shit, this thing's almost as cool as some of the masterpieces I've seen in the Doom mod "Russian Overkill"!
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286506
286542
boobs.jpg
I've been thinking about Littlepip as a character...

I don't think she's a well-written character at all.

She has moments where she's a horny lesbian.
She has incredibly rare moments where she is frightened or in danger.
She has moments where she's as cold and calculating as a videogame protagonist for whom the geneva convention is a suggestion.
She has moments where she swears like a wannabe-edgy theatrefag furry on Xbox live trying to impress people by mixing Thor and Zeus and furry shit into cliche swears to get "By the moon! By Odin's balls! Ten thousand cocks in my tailhole! I'll rip out your spleen and shit right up your ass!" talk.
And she has moments where she blathers about hope and truth and justice and the Equestrian way.

But she doesn't have one core personality trait everything else hinges on.

It's impossible to describe the most important aspect to her in a short sentence.

You can explain the everything about Camilla from Fire Emblem Fates easily:
This beautiful and amoral sadistic dragon-riding axe-wielding eldest sister of the Nohrian royal family tried to make up for the lack of motherly affection in her life by playing the part of a doting motherly gothic big tiddy GF to her siblings, especially Corrin(You).
But the most important aspect? Her tits.
Just kidding, although they are quite big.
It's her devotion to Corrin, something so strong that it trumps ethnic tensions and national borders unless you outright betray her and her family and her country at the same time by rejoining the nation you were born in, a nation at war with Nohr.

For a FIM example...

Twilight Sparkle!

How would you describe her?

Obnoxious friendship-obsessed autist? Kind-hearted scientific-minded hero? Adorable little dork? Fucking nerd? Waifu material? Momfu material? fuckable sisterfu material? Someone out there wrote doujins about that, probably

You can describe her personality in all sorts of words, kind and unkind, without describing her role in the story or what she looks like or what she's done onscreen.
You can describe her in a lot of ways without just mentioning that she's a protagonist, praising her for not doing bad things like giving up on her adventures or raping others, and talking about cool shit she did onscreen.

But that's all Littlepip fans are able to do when describing Littlepip.
>"She's the main character and she can lift a boxcar and she never gave up and she defeated a lot of baddies and did a lot of cool things!"

Because Littlepip isn't really a character. Nor is she a good vessel for the audience.
She starts out too uncool for a good power fantasy story and she starts out too lucky/unrealistically-skilled for a good "Zero to hero" story.
Her knowledge of the world is too inconsistent for her to be a good "Fish out of Water" type, because the world she's familiar with (alternate equestria history that diverges from S1 onwards and ends in ziggergeddon) is not familiar to us, and she's not willing to ask questions about it to let us know more about it early on.
Her personality is nothing to write home about because it's barely there, and she doesn't have interesting interactions with her friends.

Compare that to Robin from Fire Emblem Awakening.
He's an amnesiac Blank Slate and your avatar. He's the Tactician for the Shepherds Army, second only to Chrom the leader.
You can customize how Robin looks, fights, sounds, whether he's a guy or girl, and more.
Personality-wise? It's very barebones.
He's a smart and calm guy. Likes reading books, playing strategy games, and becoming a better tactician for his army. He's usually the straight man, but he can still be roped into silly situations by his friends, and while he enjoys helping his friends he also enjoys pissing people offf.
He's a good audience surrogate. He has entertaining reactions to unusual shit like Kellam's lack of presence, Virion's excellence in chess and cowardly chess tactics, Miriel's cartoon-autism, Frederick's excessive dedication, Nowi's childish behaviour that's unbecoming of a 900 year old dragon princess, Gregor's silly accent, Maribelle's haughty attitude, Panne's hateboner for humanity, his own child's retardity, Henry's Ebil-Pinkie shtick, and Sully's desperation to prove her negative-six-inch dick is the biggest.

You can reliably count on Robin to be the normal one in most of the conversations he's in, because he's surrounded by wacky and quirky characters who are far more "Out there".
And most of these characters have hidden depths revealed over time.
Vaike's not a dumb thug with a massive ego, he's a lower-class hero to the people of his shitty hometown and he wants to be a hero to them. And bring his pay from serving in this army home. His one-sided rivalry with Prince Chrom and his constant demands for Chrom to spar with him... He's like this because he wants to get better at being an axe-swinging powerhouse.
Edgy obnoxious Lon'Qu would be generic if not for his literal fear of getting physically/emotionally close to women, since he failed to protect his childhood crush.
Henry, at first, seems like a "Haha! I love blood and violence!" meme character. Then it turns out this is a coping mechanism to deal with his tragic past. Then it turns out he enjoys being cheerful and finds people trying to "There there" him or psychoanalyze him annoying. Then he tells you some happy stories about his childhood, like how nicely he was treated by all the evil Plegians you killed during the course of the game. Turns out they're not pure evil after all. IT'S SO FUCKING DEEP!

There is a surface to the Vaike character (Annoying strong guy who calls himself Teach a lot and insists he's a master axeman) and hidden depths (Wants to do good for others)

It's really basic, I know

Fire Emblem Awakening has more than 30 playable characters so most of them have 5 character traits tops and rely on standard archetypes/cliches already in the viewer's mind before they have their hidden depths revealed.

It's still better than Littlepoop.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286542
286543
anime boobs.png
>>286506
To briefly elaborate further on the Littlepip stuff without bringing up anime,

During that "Get through Twilight's house to get two books and the sniper" mission, Littlepip does not act like a scared little child. She's as detached from the murder as a gamer deciding to nuke Norway during a game of Civ V. She's so detached, she starts quipping about how stupid her foes are and how all the stupid little things they do get in the way of their effectiveness as baddies. She rants to herself about how pissed off she is at all the horrors and ugliness and evilness around her, while she's already slaughtering without a second thought. She isn't a scared rookie covering things up with forced bravado and the worst profanities she can think of, she's a generic action movie protagonist who's able to quip at villains about how ineffective they are.

I know this child-sized character's age is ambiguous but she's a civilian with precisely no combat experience. She should act like a scared little child right now.
Or a scared little child who's snapped past the breaking point, so the only thought in her head is "KILL!" or at the very least, "Get this shit over with".
But no, she stops to quip and she lectures a Raider on being bad at holding ponies hostage before she grabs some convenient nearby grenades and threatens to shove grenades up assholes
It's not as if the Raider knew he had a weapon in his mouth, between his teeth, and growled something through his partly-missing ugly teeth like
>"SHURRENDRR... OR I FHHKIN MRRDRR THSSH FHHKIN L'DDLE BHTCH!"
Or expected Littlepip to see the Raider with a hostage, see the weapon in his mouth held to the hostage's neck, and figure it out herself using context clues and facial gestures.
no
the baddie just gets into a hostage situation, the author realizes "Oh wait he's holding a weapon in his mouth so he can't speak, haha", and decides to have Littlepip quip about this.
because of course
these professional raiders use weapons designed for human hands, and not...
>brass knuckles fitted for horse hooves
>metal boots more effective than any brass knuckle'd human fist could ever be
>rusty-spiked horseshoes
>backwards-facing rusty blades strapped to their hooves
>spiky leather-and-steel-spikes armour actually weaponized by charging horses

For fuck's sake, she stops in the middle of genociding this Raider den to loot part of it, something only a very forgetful game who knows the limited "Aggro Radius" (Radius in which an enemy can notice you and start attacking you) of every foe on the floor.

Littlepip isn't a consistent or coherent character, so she can't grow or change over time.

There is no clear-cut vision of who Littlepip is at the start. You can mention her only personality traits like "Hated by others" and "Is a lesbian" and "good at hacking" and "Is short" and... Oh wait, these aren't personality traits. The closest she ever has to a consistent personality trait is her stubbornness, which never fucks her over directly and never causes her to make stupid decisions and never gets in the way of her taking good advice and never matters.

It's like watching a gamer who decided not to roleplay in a RPG, and just do whatever's optimal. The result is a boring mess of a character who's a goodie-two-shoes sometimes and an evil bastard sometimes depending on what's in it for him, but because the game's mechanics assign rewards to risking your life to kill villains even if those telling you to do it can't pay you, the character will inconsistently accept terrible deals because the not-in-story purely-gameplay rewards are greater.

Littlepip isn't a character, she's the author's avatar. And it's an annoying preachy little shithead.

It reminds me of how badly written Camilla from Fire Emblem Fates was.

The authors never decided where the "Fucking someone like this" fantasy should end and where the "Actually knowing and dealing with someone like this regularly" sad reality should begin.

They weren't sure which of her mental defects and personality quirks made her hotter to waifufags and which should be fixed over the course of four conversations before marriage, since instantly fixing all of a quirky girl's problems is another common male fantasy since men have the natural instinct to build and repair. So she rarely if ever mentally improves in any of her conversations with you or her teammates/siblings, making them all feel pointless. She starts out as "Muh fantasy big-tiddy goth gf yandere waifu" and never gets over the downsides of those character traits. Never stops embarassing you by being overly-horny or overly-motherly and treating you like a child in front of others. Never stops threatening to murder all sorts of people. Never stops threatening to murder her own beloved younger family members if they ever change or leave her. Never grows out of her mommy-complex because everything in Fates is badly-written half-assed fanservice in an attempt to chase the success of Fire Emblem Awakening while misunderstanding everything that made it popular(Simple story with hidden depth, simplified game mechanics designed to make things more forgiving on dumbfuck newbies, bringing back most prior characters as non-canon DLC units, animu fantasy waifu shit, and "Oh hey it looks like Marth from Smash Bros is in thos one!" deceptive marketing on the cover).
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286543
>>286542
oh also imagine blades braided into the tails of Raiders
could be razorblades, sharp metal spikes, even rusty metal spikes, anything like that they could swing around to puncture, rake, wound, and maim their foes.
Anonymous
3266c18
?
No.286548
sicker than your average nigger killer.gif
>>286435
>Sex demon? If there's any pornography in Depravity/Project Valkyrie I haven't seen it yet.
I meant it as a metaphor for how mods aren't my cup of tea, i haven't really been playing games that much lately other than a couple old original Xbox games, the classics.
>They're quest mods, I'm only running into difficulty because I'm a fucking idiot who wants these 3-5ish mods to play nice with over 100 mods even though I probably don't need any of them.
Yeah i figured that you would know and have every mod, you give the impression that you are a true gamer.

>I could probably remove all graphics mods, the huge bugfix patch, the two mods that make character customization less terrible, CBBE, playable anime girls and guys: the mod, Wasteland Imports, one to unlock everything in Automatron from the start because fuck this DLC fanmade mods did it better*, one to add Eyebots and one to add Sentry Bots because fuck Bethesda for being so jealous of FNV's success that they ignored Securitrons and limited eyebots to "Resource-gathering paid DLC object that makes the game easier on pay2winfags" tools only, and pretty much everything except for one armour mod, one weapon, and the quests I'm here for.
I have never tried any CBBE or graphics mod, i have never been interested in them.

>CAPS LOCK PARAGRAPH
All fallout 4's DLC's are trash to be honest, i liked fallout 3's a lot more but i think it's because i have sort of nostalgia for them, except for mother ship zeta because it was way too wacky and cliche, point lookout had a unique feel to it and i still think it's the best add on Bethesda came out with, i never liked any other DLC as much as this one by them.
Nuka world felt like a bunch of kids were being babies and you had to babysit only one of them so they could continue being assholes, you take over some fucking coca cola copy of Disneyland for a bunch of complete niggers so that you can be king dickhead, it didn't feel like the reward at the end was really worth going through and activating a bunch of bastard switches, as you can probably tell i don't like Nuka world so i'm gonna pick it apart, piece by piece.
Here we go.
The way you come into there is going through a train station that still somehow works by some dumb fucks who thought it would be a good idea to lure people into their house of shit so that they can have their own bloody version of total wipe out or any other dumb Anglo TV show that includes an obstacle course, so you duck and dive your way through this haunted house and meet the knight in shitting armor, the nigger of the niggers only for his unreliable right hand slave to tell you how to beat him, with a fucking squirt gun, it's fucking dumb but creative so i'll give them that but you make it all the way through them traps just for the boss to be wetter than a mare in mid spring, i don't like how it all felt from the beginning to the end and i knew it was gonna be total shit from after that point.
So you go into the slave market and then talk with a bunch of nigger boys about how oppressed they are by their masters so you can either help free them like a good goy or belittle them, i don't give a fuck about some niggers made slaves by even bigger niggers, so then you can go meet the pimps of each tribe, they are all sort of the same with exactly the same goals in mind but continue to act like kids because they are all greedy cunts who can't get along, i fucking hated how stupid all this shit was and the final thing you do is restore some money grabbing park back to it's former greedy Jewish glory of stealing things, hell i hate this fucking pile of heaping horse shit.
So then you have the choice of joining these edge lords or killing them, you can probably guess what i did if you have an idea of where i'm going with this, i tried to see what it would be like to try and clear a few of these roller coaster rides and each one felt like looking for a needle in a haystack, it was so painstakingly annoying to have completely clear all the shit out because a bunch of wannabe niggers are too busy bickering at each other, i gave up after i couldn't find one of them in the space one because i was fucking fed up with having to do all that shit so i went back to the niggers and killed all of them with their fucking slaves, i felt a ton of pressure relieved from myself after shitting all over them then taking all their goodies, i won't forget how fucking good it felt to massacre all those niggers and finally have cola Disneyland all to myself, FUCK Nuka world, i still haven't completed that garbage after all this time because of how much i hate it.
Anyways i have been waiting years to talk shit about that disgrace of a quest.
Oh yeah fuck Automatron too, it made no fucking sense either all because some nigger bitch wanted to be a goody two shoes and decided to use some sadistic robots to help make America great again but "oh no i never meant for that to happen, how could i possibly have known that i was so blind to ignore all those dead bodies while i sat with my thumb up my ass inside my fortress of metal dildo's" fucking dumb as fuck that they wanted you to sympathize with this whore.
Well now that's over it's time to write about porn mods.

>Besides, Skyrim has more sex mods.
They are all sort of a waste of time to go through, i never gave a shit about any of them so i still haven't tried a single one of them after all these years, i have played halfway through Skyrim but got bored every time i reached level 30 because i hated the main quest devoutly so i mostly spent my time roaming the lands bludgeoning and beheading bastards with a great sword and making even shinier gear to make red guards cower in fear, i will admit that it did feel bad ass to fight because i liked the combat more than anything else, i never tried using bows or spells because they were not as satisfying

You must think i'm a sick fuck if you spent the time reading that wall of words and you would be correct in assuming that.
(Con)
Anonymous
3266c18
?
No.286562
1561132204395.jpg
>They're bizarre, people slide/rotate into animations weirdly, and almost all sex content is focused on being a pathetic submissive sexually-abused bitch fucked over metaphorically or literally by NPCs, monsters, and even random shit found in dungeons.
The only experience that i have with these porn mods is watching them instead of playing them, a couple of times i watched them but the animations always looked the same and more plastic looking than a barbie doll, too many conflicting visuals made it pretty funny to watch but never was any of it real wank material for me.
>With these mods installed you can get raped by a skeleton and then open a treasure chest and it's full of BDSM shit that forces itself onto you like the outfit from Kill La Kill so now you're forced to wear that degeneracy.
You can get boned by a skeleton? Seriously though the BDSM gear doesn't belong in games, it sounds funny and looks funny on imaginary characters, If you don't know the main part of BDSM is domination and submission so it doesn't work well in games because of the feeling of detachment.
>I hated how much content focused on getting defeated and raped.
Yeah most porn game community's are all the same, every indie porn game follows the same sort of linear path of playing something with a pussy that gets fucked by a bunch of different random shit, never has it really changed from being the bottom instead of on top,
>Where's the shit for people who want to be on top?
Yeah it would be sort of interesting to something not part of the norm but i doubt any new sort of ideas will be added for a long time due to the modding community being all a bunch of furry's that cum to the same cat girl being fucked by a lizard on 2 legs.
>Where's the shit for men who want a harem of hot bitches to parade around the world while killing monsters?
It would be pretty cool to have a harem of mares in Skyrim, more should have been done with that mod because there is quite a lot of potential with it but too many people are afraid of touching it so the only kind of guy that would do anything with that mod would probably be me but i never bothered much with designing animations so maybe something will happen with it in the future but until then i'm not gonna get involved in modding.
A harem of MLP ponies does sound pretty original but it would take quite a long time to implement all the different animations and shit, it is the right game to add into if it was going to be made but all the mod developers are a bunch of faggots with no taste and copy other creators so it sort is unappealing to get involved in that web of bullshit,
It is quite a interesting concept anyways, if i ever get really bored i might try do something with it, i won't lie but the idea does appeal to me pretty well to have a monogamous selection of different MLP and normal mares.

>They kidnap tandi and you can pretend to be the ghost of the raider boss's dad, right? fun times.
Yeah you got it right.
>You're right, an option to join the raiders would be great.
It's a shame that the modding community would rather focus on the newer fallout games rather than the old, the amount of potential is crazy but sadly most mod makers are faggots.

>Fallout 2... It's great but I don't have a lot to rant about.
A disappointment, i thought you might have had a hard on for it like i do, there is lots of freedom of movement in quests and choices which is why i love it so much, so many possibilities but unfortunately the development of the game was cut short, all good games have a strict production time but all shit games almost always take years, both Fallout New Vegas and fallout 2 were not given enough time to become the masterpieces that they could have been.
>I think the game leans a bit too hard on old Fallout 1 assets but that's understandable.
There wasn't too many improvements over the previous one but fallout 2 was a lot harder than 1 so i think the game needed more quests to acquire more money early on in the game to make it feel more balanced in the start so you wouldn't get screwed over by a pack of wolves or fucking plants so quickly, another location or settlement would have been nice, maybe more stuff could have happened in your home village because everything in the game felt a bit too rushed but another couple of early game weapons could have been added or ammo should have been less expensive, more different ammo variants should have been added like slugs for shotguns.
>New Reno needed more content.
You are spot on, Reno felt like a let down to be honest, i think it would have been cool to tell the NCR about the city's affiliation with the enclave and a battle could have been had out in the streets or something, an actual battle between the gangs would have been cool to see.
>Vault City should have been more "A fascinating look at what 'rich' vault-dwellers are like after forming their successful society" and less "lmao we've got mutated psychic beavers for no reason".
High class cunts run by a high class nigger bitch, it's a shame that everyone in there is shown as being a bunch of softies afraid of liquor and drugs, there should have been an option to make the city better rather than it being a bunch of douche bags scared of dumb zombies, vault city could have actually repaired the nuclear power plant and taken it over so their city could have been given a lot more power but they were brought up in a box so what can you expect.
>I wish you could join the enclave, and I wish it didn't do that "Modyrn Scifi" woke thing where not wanting filthy mutants to breed or spread their corruptive seed is treated as a cartoon-fascist thing only cartoon monsters made to make fascism look inherently evil would ever want to do.
Same, it would have been amazing to be part of a vertibird assault team after you got a promotion after standing guard duty.

The more i reflect back on 2 the more i realize how many opportunities were missed and how much potential this game had to be fantastic.
(Cont)
Anonymous
3266c18
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No.286564
ponified frank horrigan.jpeg
Continuing.
>I wish you could join the enclave, and I wish it didn't do that "Modyrn Scifi" woke thing where not wanting filthy mutants to breed or spread their corruptive seed is treated as a cartoon-fascist thing only cartoon monsters made to make fascism look inherently evil would ever want to do.
The main objective of the enclave is better than any other faction in any other fallout game, restore America to the greatness it was before the war but the developers were a bunch of thickheaded peace lovers who couldn't grasp the idea so they made them out to be bad, instead of expanding upon the idea of ridding the earth from mutants and abominations they cut it down so that the world would forever be a nuclear wasteland plagued by radiation and all forms of terror from the savagery of uneducated tribal life and raiders, if the enclave had better leadership by a man who wasn't too busy staring at his secretary's ass then maybe someone who didn't think with their dick could have followed out the restoration plan better than any other group known to the wasteland, too bad the ending had us blow up the oil rig rather than restore America we doomed it, fallout was meant to end with number 2 but it carried on for greedy reasons of corporations wanting more money, the last remnant of the old world has been destroyed and there is no one else who could have made as good of a job of helping the world than the enclave, they had everything at their disposal, they had better gear than the brotherhood and were more organized than they ever could be.
The ending of fallout 2 was sad for me because i knew that the world was now only left to a bunch of wannabe Californians who were no where near as close to restoring the world to it's original place than the enclave, the New California Republic didn't have power armor for every soldier nor do they have the ability to create GECK's like the enclave did, the enclave had the ability to destroy all life on the west coast so what was stopping them from restoring it? They had access to every vault because they were the government of the united states so they therefor had the ability to collect every GECK from every one of them, they already had a GECK on the oil rig for goodness sake what was stopping them from getting more? Were they really that evil to want to rid the earth of it's ailments and restore it to how it was previously? The enclave was the last and best hope for humanity because they truly were the last of old humanity, now the world is unable to be restored to it's former glory all because of some egotistical tribal's that stole the GECK from the enclave and blew them up.
The only thing that stopped them was us and we were the ones who doomed humanity thereafter, it was the decision of the developer to have the enclave portrayed as evil, rather than actually making a change to the world the main character made sure that the world would forever be irradiated, beastly and stuck in time.
The ending of fallout 1 and 2 were both an example of how ignorant and uncooperative humans are to each other, in fallout 1 you were the guy who helped save your vault then was exiled for the fear of being made a model by the people so a selfish leader banished you from ever returning, in fallout 2 you were the great grandson of him so you set out to follow his footsteps and save your village too, but in the process you yourself were selfish for being uncaring about the goals of others, you save your village but doom the rest of the world to being uninhabitable, you try to help the world but instead ignorantly choose to destroy it without realizing the repercussion of your actions, you were the selfish one instead of being the hero that you always aspired to be.
It's a tragic story but a good example of how people don't get along with each other.
>In Fallout 1 everything felt really connected in tone, even though what you did in some places wouldn't affect other places much.
It all fit perfectly but there was something missing to all of it but i'm still not sure what, you go around helping everyone or killing everyone but for what purpose? They will all meet the same fate of death eventually but you help them anyways even though no one cares about you at all, you do not belong to any settlement nor do you fit in anywhere, you destroy the one guy who was attempting to make the human race more genetically superior so that your own home vault may live on normally but then again you are forever forsaken to attempting to help but actually detriment the world around you so that you may be seen as a saint, none of it even matters in the end because you are forced to leave the ones that you killed for behind then turn your back and walk away.
It's a very sad ending that no matter what you try to do people will always have their own goals in mind, no matter how you try to help others it will never matter because we all meet the same fate even if we wish to escape it we will never be cared about in a world of endless torment, so we try our best to help and live but deep down inside we know that it is all pointless.
It's a very doom and gloom meaning but it's the harsh reality we live in so we can only fight against it until there is nothing left to fight for and in this case there is nothing left to fight for.

That's my analysis of the original endings, Bethesda could never attempt to create anything half as meaningful as these 2 games because Bethesda is blind.
>Fallout 2 had a more varied tone, and the dumb references were too much.
Yes they relied a lot on 90's references a bit too often, it would have been better if they stuck to the realist approach of the first game instead of trying to make it appeal to a wider audience, the cruelness of the first made it a complete dystopia so i think they tried to cheer the atmosphere of the game up too hard so it came out too forced and over the top, still not as goofy as fallout 4 with all the stupid fucking dialogue choices.
(Cont)
Anonymous
3266c18
?
No.286573
286583
caesar has something wrong with him.png
I have made the choice that i'm not gonna go through absolutely everything here because i would be here for a month.
>Would it have killed House to open the doors to a fake room containing destroyed robot parts and then block the rest of the vault with a rubble wall his robot army could easily pull apart on the day of the Dam War?
House was obsessed with money and couldn't get over his nostalgia for wealth, his goals were not for the benefit of mankind but instead for himself, he is a liar that wants to use the courier so that his empire of money will grow, is it not obvious that he is greedy? I don't like him either.
>Caesar
He has good goals but he relies too much on the past rather than creating his own amalgamation of ideas he copies a order that was not designed to exist in a futuristic setting, he has a promising objective but he fails in carrying it through fully for he does not understand the world around him, if anything i admire how they implemented the Romans because it works to a certain extent but falls short on facing other more up built factions.
If the enclave faced against the legion they would be reduced to a mere pile of ashes, you have the option of having a enclave remnant team assist you on the dam so imagine what the original enclave could have done to them,
Arcade Gannon was just a faggot with naivety lodged into his head of how cruel the world is and pitied the weak for being weak, he was childish to believe that he could help everyone with the help of the NCR because the NCR has only corruption at it's core.
Yes Man was a slave who enacted the selfish interests of the player to create complete anarchy, if anything anarchy only leads to further chaos and without true order anarchy is without a helping goal, complete anarchy only helps people fight others and fighting only results in sadness and anger, it is pointless bringing the Mojave to this state of chaos because there is nothing you can do at this point to help it. Anarchy is an extreme form of freedom but a man with too much free time loses track of his main objectives due to having no real goal in mind, freedom is a virtue but too much creates a unbalance of order and chaos, anarchy is only able to succeed in hand with order for order without freedom is only an order with only restriction as it's main goal, likewise anarchy without order is simply freedom without any form of path for a mans desires tempt him too much so he strays from the path of true life, there has to be a harmony between the 2 where man is more tempted on the path TO freedom rather than being completely free for he must first set himself straight in order to be worthy of being free.
What does this have to do with a game about different factions? Well i'm trying to tell you Yes Man is gay so complete anarchy is thus equally homosexual.
>What if letting Benny escape meant you needed to chase him down before he got to the tent,
It would have worked but it might have made a couple of people cry so the developers didn't include it, fist fighting Benny would have been difficult for anyone with low melee but i do agree that it would have been fun to kick the shit out of that double dealer.
>I get that you're supposed to meet Caesar and then decide if you serve him or not even though he has given you no reason to serve him, but could they have done this any other way?
There would have been a few other ways like fighting your way out of a replication of the Colosseum (a bigger version of that excuse of an arena) which would have just been a pit so you had to prove your worth to him then replace Legate Lanius after defeating him in battle.
There was a lot of things that could have been done with the legion but unfortunately no one has done anything, i like the legion the most but it feels a bit too underwhelming but with enough effort the legion could easily become a formidable force.
>>286441
Gonna cut this a bit short so i'll pick apart the things that stand out the most to me.
>House's robot cunts
They never really interested me that much, it was a bit of a dumb idea to have a giant army of them underneath fortification hill and never release them against the legion, i agree that they should have done more with them.
>Caesar should have more presence
I'm not sure how this could have been implemented because it might have made them a bit too threatening, but i wish that there was more stuff you could do around the east side of the river, maybe go to a location south of fortification hill instead of that death claw nest which could have been another legion base then do a bunch of thing there then go meet Caesar after doing favors for them, so that you are shown as being trustworthy instead of waltzing into his tent and shoving the end of a barrel in his face so that first you are required to be proven worthy of his presence.

>An option to (after killing Benny) challenge Swank to a knife fight and win to take over the casino
It would have been interesting to be able to own a casino, mods should be able to do that but no is very creative anymore in modding.

>I really like house mods.
Alright.
>I once tried to make my own with an incredibly ambitious built-in companion with a shitload of custom dialogue and psychic powers and a long backstory and the ability to ask her about the rest of the world so you can hear my takes on what other post-apocalyptic countries would be like(at the time, they'd be different now), but the file corrupted so I gave up.
How much time did you put into it? Where was the house going to be put? How long ago was this?

>Archimedes
Yeah i wish that they did more with it other than just having it be some handheld weapon, maybe the NCR could have used it to beam down on Caesar's hill or something so that you could watch it from the other side of the dam, the whole place felt like it had no purpose so there could have been more done with the solar weapon.

I'm gonna leave it here because i don't know fuck all about little shit or Fallout Equestria.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286578
xf25qzypuuv51.jpg
Speaking of shit that ain't hot shit and is just total shit, there's this story's treatment of Ponyville.

Early on, this fic makes a big deal out of how fucked up Ponyville is... And then glosses over it way too quickly. We don't get to see all the Mane Six's homes-

Even though it'd make that chase scene way more interesting if it was a chase through several buildings, because running away in a straight line from enemies with guns is a death sentence.
Imagine her entering Pinkie's Bakery that's been transformed into an edgy butcher's store with dead ponies hanging from meathooks dangling from the ceiling with their guts hanging out. So Littlepip starts off throwing bent and destroyed cooking supplies at the Raiders pursuing her, then maims some with meathooks fishhooks-style and runs,
Then they end up at Applejack's fucked-up barn where Applejack hides behind some dead trees to avoid gunfire, then she notices some black and twisted trees with glowing green apples so she force-feeds these acidic poisoned apples down raider throats for an audibly acidic noise and agonizing scream so disgusting that they make Littlepip vomit again
then they go through Fluttershy's cottage which is full of feral animals that leave Littlepip alone because she tossed them some food and then ran so they'd eat the baddies pursuing her
Also Littlepip picks up some decapitated/literally-fucked Carousel Boutique models and beats some Raiders to death with it via telekinesis at Rarity's (Or does the dead-cat-in-dress landmine fake-death thing I mentioned)
That sort of thing
It could build up to Twilight's house as "The place with the final boss sniper dude".
Though since Rainbow Dash's house is made of clouds they probably couldn't get to that. Unless it was destroyed and all her stuff fell to a trashheap in the center of town.

But as soon as Littlepip escapes this place and frees their captives, that's it. Nobody in town says "It'll suck when those raiders come to try and get these captives back".

It's over and done with way too soon.

There isn't a quest to Retake Ponyville, even though now would be the perfect time to arm yourself to the teeth with better guns bought with bartered crap and form a strike force to retake the land because... I don't know, there was some good shit buried somewhere in Ponyville or under Sweet Apple Acres. Maybe Berry Punch had a damn good wine cellar that's also an apocalypse bunker.

What do the Raiders eat? What do the Raiders drink? Applejack's apples are poisoned now thanks to radiation, so was that large colony of predators really subsisting solely on shit stolen from nearby prey?
Were they giving nearby towns the old protection-racket routine?
Why? Who would buy these guys as a credible threat instead of sniping them from the guard towers around your mud-and-alabaster-and-scrap-wall settlement?
That was a fucking retarded group of Raiders.
Raiders? More like Retarders.
Nobody could consider these fags a threat. Even a rookie like Littlepip was able to lecture them on how they "Should" have fought and acted, and you know she's right because she's the main character.

Imagine if Ponyville had a water fountain that's enchanted to purify all water within it
so it's enough water for a decent-sized settlement and its crop needs
>"but xXx_sexchampion69_xXx you handsome devil, plants can't grow after a nuclear bombing!"
It's magic radiation in a world where at least a third of the population has magic. Surely if you transformed some purified water into dirt via magic, you'd get purified dirt free from radiation. Toss that in long clay pots and you can grow some shit. Magically turn some rocks into fish and fishbowls so you can get your fish to shit on the plants. Vertical farming, hydroponics, greenhouses, and artificial solar lights (Or small magic suns) are chad farming things.

also

everyone

Go and watch Shrek 1 if you haven't seen it yet

I'm not kidding

After watching Shrek 1, watch the Halloween special "Scared Shrekless" and admire how this short film takes Shrek back to Duloc and turns those singing puppets from the first film into a spooky decayed broken thing, excellently twisting your nostalgia for Shrek 1 like a knife. It's not outright scary or anything(I'm too old to get scared by anything, even horror games just piss me off), but neither is a story full of prancing polkadot ponies and shitty edgy Sonic OC-tier ponies shooting each other to death over tins of beans and ancient superweapons and retarded sidequests in the Fallout Wasteland.

That Shrek halloween special does a better job perverting the familiar and wholesome into something unnerving and ugly than this fanfic.
And it's a fucking Shrek product released after the franchise stopped being good.
a made-for-TV/DVD shrek holiday special for fucking Halloween did something better than what mainstream bronies will call "The greatest fanfiction ever written by brony hands".
Anonymous
009033b
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No.286583
286588
npeg9kcnq5i21.jpg
>>286573
Fun easter egg: Those Fortification Hill Securitrons do get activated during Hoover Dam. In the distance, you see Caesar's shitty camp burn because of them but only if they are alive.

I put over 50 hours into the mod, the plan was:
>Meet faggot at Goodsprings looking for fighters
>accept a job offer
>get warped to a new area near the map's center
>fight some guys in an arena for a reward
>fuck off, open fire, or join their faction
>join their faction and you get to meet the biggest Mary Sue I ever wrote holy shit
>it's a chick who has shitloads of clones of herself, and because she's a psychic mutant these born-adult clones immediately enter her hive mind. This Vault's experiment was "Lmao let's clone people" but they accidentally made braindead flesh. Fortunately this psychic girl can force her mind into others to make them part of her hive mind too. So she turns her retarded clones into non-retarded clones
>guys is there such a thing as a fetish for clones? my favourite Helltaker girl is Cerberus
>anyway you then recruit as many of her as you want as a companion
>there is literally a button that spawns more of her with no cost or limit
>the Main Girl has a custom Power Armour suit, the rest spawn in Vault Suits but you can buy each one more PA suits at the faction's huge collection of stores
>seriously I put way too many merchants into the town outside because I thought giving each one a specialty and establishing the place overall as a popular trading outpost would be more lore-friendly
>within me there are two wolves. one is smart and the other one thinks MORE is a substitute for logic. sometimes the second one wins.
>then you go to Dead Money and do it quickly without the horror shit. It's now just a generic combat zone because I wanted to see how this horror zone would be as a generic combat zone
>your reward? All the cool shit Elijah wanted and then some
>I made some really cool guns by reusing hologram shit, ghost people shit, and more code.
>you can buy immortality
>I like the gun I built with code from the Archimedes C-Finder and that Boomer Artillery. Can designate a target for an artillery barrage from the faction of hot babes in power armour
>after beating Dead Money: Micheal Bay Edition you can now buy This Faction's Unique Power Armour for yourself and your girls
>also that PA is upgraded to summon Holograms at 90% health and dismiss them when combat ends
>then you can sneak into the Gun Runners and steal their plans for this faction
>and once you've finished, the faction has finished renovating your new room in their vault and integrating matter-reconstituting tech from Dead Money into their Vault.

It's a pretty great player home in terms of features
complete with "Enhanced Hologram Room" that just spawns factionless (or Red Team faction or Blue Team faction) copies of any NPC you select from a console into a room only you can get into/out of, making it easy to watch 5 Deathclaws fight 10 Sentry Bots, 2 Caesars VS 5 NCRs, and so on.
The house was designed to be compact, comfy, and full of inexplicable sci-fi bullshit. I put as much as possible within reach of the player's bed, including a fully-stocked regenerating fridge with a "Refill" button on top. But it's got separate rooms (Jesus Christ, how decadent!) full of other stuff including a personal library, a personal gym, a bathroom with shower and bath, and more.
And the armoury... Don't get me started on the armoury. At first it's empty because you're supposed to fill it with your own stuff. But if you hit a secret button hidden somewhere in the house, the armoury is filled with fucking fucktons of weapons and ammo and armour. There's also a hidden hatch somewhere that takes you to a debug room containing everything in the game for when certain things are needed for roleplaying
And there's a button in my house that spawns hot chicks. You can fuck them if you have a sex mod. There's also a map that teleports you to whichever part of it you touch.
And there's a planning room where you generate caps by selecting options from menus and deciding what jobs your hot babe in power armour bounty hunting unit takes and if you'll come with them to help out
You could theoretically live your whole life in this room. It's got a computer, and a bed, and a fridge that's always full of 999x all food items including OP custom shit thanks to the button on top that refills it. You could eat from the fridge, sleep in the bed, watch the TV at the foot of your bed or listen to the radio on your bedside table or read from your library (all with custom scripts that apply stat buffs with "You watch some pre-war educational documentaries or read some books or listen to some audiobooks or whatever" as the justification) and there's even a bath and shower. Also there was a communal shower full of hot babes but that's separate from your room.
And there's an Auto-Doc that lets you add and remove stat-boosting/perk-granting chips
Although, the town outside your vault is technically also a part of your house. This was designed to be a great player base, so it's placed in the worldspace to make superjumping in/out without loadscreens easier. Its central location makes getting to specific areas easier. And your hive-mind hot-babe NPCs can teleport you to important places via dialogue options.
There's a great doctor here who sells you hyper-expensive OP Chips so I can have something to spend your game-crashingly high amount of cash on
I figured out how to design a chip that makes you immortal in Fallout NV.
Also there's a Robot Station for buying robots because I got sick of RobCo Mod's crashes.

I know there are cooler-looking house mods out there.
And more interesting factions/new towns.
It's not exactly beautiful.
I'm no 3D modeller, so I couldn't do anything fancy. I'm not even a very good programmer, as I'm still learning.
Best I could do was build with the basics: containers, scripts, trigger objects, spawned NPCs, basic quests, and something big made out of Vault parts.
Anonymous
3266c18
?
No.286588
286595 286601
>>286583
And all of this shit corrupted?
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286595
>>286588
The drive it was on corrupted and I didn't back things up back then. I back things up a lot more now.

I'm quite proud of this one chip I designed. When you buy the chip, it is "Implanted" into you. So a Perk is added to you, and that has the Chip's effects. It sets your Gun Spread as an absolute value to 0. This eliminates RNG from your bullets, so they will always fire at what you're aiming at. Never again will your bullets randomly veer off to the side and curve away from your foe. That's so unrealistic. I always hate it when games do that. You are not that dude from that game where a dude can curve bullets because his parents were assassins so he smashes a keyboard that says fuck you with a tooth forming the U and he has to shoot and curve around his girlfriend. I wish that guy smashed another keyboard on the fat bitch's face too. It's stupid that she gets a "I know you're fat and ugly and pathetic and addicted to comfort eating, fucking loser" speech that makes her cry, but the guy gets hit hard enough to cost him a tooth. Women don't cry. Sort of. They cry at the drop of a hat so it means nothing to them, they've gotten used to it by the time they're young, and only an idiot would think a woman's tears mean anything. They literally seek out emotional porn so they can enjoy performing for their friends and pretending to have hearts as they cry when watching Titanic or some fucking Disney flick. Fuck Disney, I'm drunk.

anyway about the chip
This also makes VATS guaranteed to almost always hit, but only whores use VATS. Cool dudes replace it with Bullet Time.

I thought about giving you a Critical Hit bonus too but a good Locational Damage mod should give enough crit and damage bonuses to the right body parts.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286601
286606
sxhdi9wi2vo11.jpg
>>286588
wait we should probably talk about the fic

uh...

fuckin uh...

oh yeah the chips

I really don't like how this story treats cybernetics.

In Fallout, Cybernetic Enhancements are easily put into you for a price, and they help.
No downsides.
High Endurance stat = you can handle more Implants in your body.
Want a stat booster? How about under-armour to slightly boost Damage Threshold less than most clothes, or a brilliant health regenerator?
But in this fic, Kkunt decides that isn't edgy enough. So now Cybernetics Eat Your Soul(TM) because TvTropes said they should. Except they only eat the souls of some people. It's inconsistent.
And they never really matter because Littlepoop drinks Bone-Hardening Juice from a Zigger that makes her limbs 25% harder to cripple according to the faggoted story text
Also according to the faggoted story text, it's impossible to combine Bone-Hardening Juice and Cybernetic Implants.

why?

never explained.

guess the beautiful coupling of scientifically-minded fantasy and real hard science doesn't play nice with all that anti-science pseudoreligious shite that's literally lower than Karen's Healing Vagina Crystals For Attracting Wealth, Love, and Sexual Desire, available now for 20% off at KarenThePlusSizeWitch.Tumblr.Amazon.Etsy.Org/Buymyshit/FakePlasticCrystalsForRetards!

but now all Fallout Equestria fanfics (god that concept disgusts me) have to deal with this stupid and incredibly limiting piece of terrible lore thrown in haphazardly by Kkunt.
even though it makes no sense that metal body parts or a liver-enhancing chip would "eat your soul".

What, does it cause some degree of dehumanization and existential mindfuckery once your body is 14% flesh, 88% steel, and over 9000% faggotry?

I fucking wish! That would take skill to write. So that isn't what happens. Getting too many cybernetic implants just makes you a whinier edgier cunt. If you're already the type of bitch to bitch about getting sick mecha-arms that flip tanks and punch through steel and contain powerful lasers, getting them won't "weaken" your soul because it is already too weak.

I don't know if artists drawing Blackjack (Overpowered mary sue from Project Horizons, the most popular and even darker/edgier/crappier Fallout Equestria fanfic) came up with the idea that robotic pony limb replacements should be able to unfold into humanoid hands with fingers on their own or if a story thought of that first, but if Equestria discovered mecha-arms first it could be used to explain why Equestria would design their guns to be for human arms only.
Anonymous
3266c18
?
No.286606
286633
>>286601
Bone hardening juice? That's an innuendo and a half.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
abc57c3
?
No.286616
286626 286663
1603675670545.png
>>286313

Chapter Six: The Truth of the Matter

Today's fortune cookie reads:
>“’Tis better to be alone, than in bad company.”
This is a rather common saying, along the lines of "you are your own worst enemy" or "don't whiz on the electric fence." As a quotation I've usually seen it attributed to George Washington, though it most likely predates him. It's not inconceivable that Equestria would have a similar bit of wisdom floating around, but it's a little jarring to see it used here, particularly since, like all the chapter epitaphs, it's not attributed to anyone nor is there any context provided. It actually reminds me a little of a point near the end of The Sun and The Rose where Gareth makes an anachronous reference to Thomas Hobbes. My guess is that in both instances the authors just had a well-known phrase rattling around in their heads, and used it without realizing it was a quotation.

The chapter opens with a literal word-for-word transcript of the recording that Littlepoop found in the safe. Incidentally, I'm a little curious about the medium of the recording. Most of the other recordings we've heard so far have been played either from terminals or from LP's magical wrist-thingy, so I usually envision something like a sound file. However, in this case, the recording was found in a safe, which indicates it is on a physical medium. Is this a reel to reel tape? A phonograph record? A cassette? A disk she can play on her wrist-mounted jizzmotron? How are they listening to it presently? Details like this are not hugely important but it helps to include them.

Anyway, the message was recorded by Scootaloo, who at the time was apparently a famous performer or daredevil or something, and then later became president of Stable-Tec. She speaks to us in the latter role. This portion seems to be the crux of the biscuit:

>Your Stable has been selected to participate in a vital social project. The first goal of your Stable, like all others, is to save the lives of the ponies inside. But you also have a higher purpose beyond saving the lives of individual ponies. We here at Stable-Tec understand that it doesn’t do ponykind any good to save ourselves now only to annihilate each other later. We must figure out where we went wrong. We must find a better way. And we must be ready to implement it as soon as possible once the Stable doors open. ...And survive what our current leaders have managed to do to Equestria...

The recording appears to have been addressed to the Overmares/Overstallions of the various Stables. Most likely the same message went out to all of them. It does not go into detail about the nature of the "social project," but apparently instructions were included on another medium along with the original recording. Littlepoop reacts thusly:

>Not the message I had been expecting. Now my feelings about the Stables were completely twisted up in my head, and I just wanted to forget about them entirely.
What message was she expecting, exactly? A Billy Mares Flex-Seal commercial? It's not clear how or why the contents of this message would cause her feelings about the Stables to change; if anything she should be more curious about them after hearing this.

Anyway, after this concludes, we discover that she is presently sitting in the Turnpike Tavern, drinking apple whiskey served by a pony named Apple Whiskey. I am now even more curious as to exactly how she was listening to this recording. Considering the retro-futurist style of the Fallout games I'm envisioning a reel to reel tape, which would by extension mean that the tavern would have a tape player. Either way though if it's a physical recording there would have to be some type of player in the tavern, and it would stand to reason that others besides Littlepoop would have been listening to it. If it's a sound file she is playing on her PipBuck, then I'm curious how it was being stored in the safe, and how it was transferred onto the device.

This next exchange I can't quite make sense out of:

>“Dunno why I was surprised,” I half-whispered, leaning near Calamity. “Your leader is a stallion, after all.”

>Calamity’s ears perked up and he gave me a look of shocked confusion. “My leader? Ah don’t have a leader!” I couldn’t tell whether he sounded more offended or worried.

>I hoofwaved. “I heard him. Over the sprite-bot. When it wasn’t being Watcher.”

>Calamity looked at me with deeper confusion. And then broke into a too-riotous laugh. “What? Red Eye?” He turned to the rest of the bar. “Hey, everypony. LilPip here thought Red Eye was our leader!”

I'm assuming this is referring to the voice she heard in an earlier scene, the one that sounded like a politician. It happened shortly after Frank's second appearance, when she had just left the factory and was drinking a soda in a playground full of skeletons. This event happened way the fuck back in Chapter Four, and it has not been mentioned since. It's particularly jarring to bring it up here, as it is dropped in without context and has no connection to recent events in the story.

>Dunno why I was surprised
Surprised about what? The scene so far is Littlepoop in a bar, apparently listening to a recording made on some unknown medium at some unknown point in the past. What is this in reference to?

>Your leader is a stallion, after all
The most logical thing for her to have been surprised by would be the contents of the recording, since that is all that has happened in the chapter so far. I don't see how anything in the transcript we've read connects to a stallion being the leader, nor does it connect to the recording LP heard coming from the Sprite-Bot two whole chapters ago. As far as I can tell she is just bringing this up out of absolutely nowhere.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
abc57c3
?
No.286626
286632 286658
1603432170916 (1).png
>>286616

The purpose of this conversation was to introduce the Red-Eye character and connect him to the voice we heard earlier, but it was very poorly done. There was absolutely no lead-in to this conversation whatsoever, and it doesn't connect to the message from Scootaloo that opens the chapter.

>“Good Goddess, girl!” cried one of the mares down the counter from us
Really? Are we really doing this? Tell KarenThePlusSizeWitch that her crystals didn't work and left a weird residue on my scrotum; I want a refund.

Anyway, the complete lack of context doesn't seem to prevent the ponies in the tavern from erupting into a conversation about Red-Eye. We don't really learn much, beyond that he is apparently an upstart leader trying to unify various parts of Equestria under his domain, or something to that effect. A character named DJ is also namedropped.

>“So...” I fought to shove new facts into the puzzle I was building in my head. The drinks were great for forgetting, but not so great for thinking. “...the not-Watcher voice on the sprite-bot is Red Eye, and he’s not your leader...”
I'm trying to shove a few facts into a head-puzzle of my own. I'm not really sure what she finds so confusing here. If anything it would be surprising to discover that the world is under some kind of organized control, considering how lawless and anarchic it appears. More confusing than this is how she managed to segue from the message she was listening to we still don't know how she was doing this, btw to this completely unrelated topic from two chapters ago.

Anyway, they banter back and forth about sprite-bots and some other shit for awhile. Apparently the bots are assumed to be flying radios, built by who-the-fuck-knows-or-cares for who-the-fuck-knows-or-cares what purpose, and most ponies don't know that they can be hacked and used to spy on other ponies. This might be significant or it might just be another random Fallout factoid the author is lobbing at us. In any event, the mention of "DJ" causes one pony to request that the radio be put on could said radio also have a tape deck installed? Is that how LP was listening to Scootaloo's message earlier? Seriously, this is bugging the living shit out of me. The radio comes on, and LP hears a song that makes her feel all sorts of emotions and stuff.

This, in turn, leads the conversation to DJ, whose full name is DJ Pon3. There is some deliberation over who or what this character is; some believe it is a ghoul pony that has survived for generations likely the original Vinyl Scratch, or else a different pony takes on the role whenever the previous one abdicates. In any event, this pony broadcasts music and news to the wastelands.

>My head was spinning. Calamity was smirking at me. Leaning close, he whinnied “There’s always a DJ Pon3.”
I really don't understand what about this would cause her head to spin. There is a pony making broadcasts, who calls himself/herself DJ Pon3. Not exactly a shocking revelation, nor is it a difficult concept to grasp.

Anyway, the song ends, and there is some radio patter that may be significant:

>“This is DJ Pon3, and that was Sweetie Belle, singing about that one great truth of the wasteland: every pony has done something they regret.
I can relate; mine is picking up this story.

>And now, my little ponies, it’s time for the news! Now you ponies remember when I told you ‘bout those two ponies who crawled themselves out of Stable Two? Well, I’ve been gettin’ reports that one of those little ponies took out the raider nest in the heart of Ponyville, and saved several pony captives -- including the beloved author of The Wasteland Survival Guide, Ditzy Doo! Hey kid, thanks! From all of us! And now the weather: cloudy everywhere, with a chance of rain, gunfire and bloody dismemberment...
I'm curious what the broadcast range is here and whether or not this DJ is local to this region. Regional news like a major brigands' nest being taken down would probably be noteworthy; it's already been established that ponies around this area were familiar with the raider group and were glad to hear that they had been taken out. However, Equestria itself is a big place, and if this world is as dangerous and chaotic as it appears, one raider group being defeated is not likely to be national news. Also, if this broadcast is national, where exactly is DJ getting her information from? It seems like it would be a rather laborious task to collect info on every minor happening going on everywhere in Equestria.

>I didn’t really hear the rest. I was too stunned. I was on the radio. DJ Pon3 was talking about me. My heart mixed with pride and panic, the latter quickly swallowing the former. I’d been outside less than a week, and I already had a reputation that was spreading across all of the Equestrian Wasteland... a reputation that built me up into somepony far more heroic and capable than I actually was.
Oh jeez. The Sue is strong in this one. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, Littlepoop; you took out one group of bad guys, and they were pretty much dumb as all hell. It's a little early to be claiming worldwide fame for yourself.

>“…one last thing, the other Stable Dweller was last seen out near Appleloosa. My prayers go out t’ that one.
This seems noteworthy. The "other Stable Dweller" probably means Velvet Remedy, so it looks like LP finally has a lead there. That was convenient. Again, I'm not entirely clear how this DJ would have come by this information, nor why she would consider minor incidents like a couple of ponies leaving a stable to be newsworthy in the first place. Depending on how localized the focus of the news is, LP's raider nest takedown could plausibly be news, but why is this second pony important enough to mention? Is she someone noteworthy? Is she doing something important? There is no context provided here; it just announces the location of some random pony. Why is this news?
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
abc57c3
?
No.286632
286673 286753
1604010209280.jpg
>>286626

>For a moment, everything seemed to stop. What?!? I turned to Calamity, “Near Appleloosa? I thought this was Appleloosa!”
This is literally the first thing that comes to mind for you? The radio just randomly drops a tidbit of information relevant to something literally nopony but you has any genuine reason to care about, at the precise moment you happened to be listening, and the first thing on your mind is this similarity in town names? Moreover, the revelation that two different towns might share the same name is so shocking to you that it causes everything to freeze in motion?

>Calamity snickered, still not done having fun with me over my wasteland ignorance. “No way, LilPip! This here’s New Appleloosa! Ya can’t have a new without havin’ an old, now can ya?” Then he quickly got serious. “Now, ya don’t wanna be goin’ anywhere near old Appleloosa, ya hear me? That’s a slaver town!”
Oh boy, more slavers. Well, this should be fun.

Seriously though, this is one of the most poorly written scenes I've yet come across in this text. No topic in this discussion connects to any other topic, nor does it feel like genuine organic conversation.

The chapter opens with a direct transcript of a recording, that is presented as though it is significant information that will have some bearing on the events of the chapter. However, as soon as it concludes, the author immediately drops in some non-sequitur dialogue referencing an event from two chapters ago that everyone has probably forgotten about by now. From here, it veers off into a discussion about the local radio DJ, who then comes on the air and announces that the character Littlepoop was looking for way back in Chapter One has just been spotted wandering around Appleoosa. This pony is not given a name, nor is there any other indicator of her importance; we are left to wonder what about her is so special that DJ Pon3 would be tracking her movements and announcing them on the radio. Littlepoop's only reaction is to express surprise that there is a town called Appleoosa in addition to the town of New Appleoosa, where she now resides. Do we all feel dumber for having read this? I know I do.

But it's not quite over yet. After Calamity mentions that Appleoosa is a slaver town, the bartender (Apple Whiskey) mentions that he sells them apple whiskey. Littlepoop is shocked that he would do business with a town involved in such a naughty business. Calamity whispers to Littlepoop that this is the reason he doesn't live here: his moral outrage at the town bartender occasionally selling whiskey to slave traders is strong enough to convince him to keep a residence outside town limits, but is apparently not quite strong enough to prevent him from patronizing said bartender's tavern and drinking the very whiskey that he sells to the slavers.

Conveniently enough, the bartender mentions that there is a train heading up that way tomorrow morning.

Page break. The next morning, Littlepoop is staring at the train laden with whiskey that is heading up toward Appleoosa. It's raining. Calamity is with her. Apparently she helped load it with Crane yesterday, and now she feels guilty about it. Calamity asks her if he can't talk her out of going with the train, and Littlepoop says that no, she must go. Presumably she is planning to invade the town and take down the entire slave operation by herself, because that worked the last time so why wouldn't it work again?

>I knew part of me was just trying to live up to my overblown reputation; but I’d also been a captive of slavers, if for only a few hours, and I couldn’t just ignore the fact that there were ponies up there who needed somepony to care enough to try and help them.
I'm finding this business about her gaining a "reputation" to be a little hard to swallow. The author has gone to great pains to show us that Edgequestria is a harsh, unforgiving landscape in which murder and mayhem are basic facts of everyday existence. Learning this has basically been the focus of Littlepoop's character arc so far. The impression I have of the raiders from earlier is that they were a disorganized group of minor thugs that controlled an area of Ponyville, and probably made a living by taxing and/or robbing ponies who needed to pass through. There are probably any number of similar groups operating all over the place. Some local thugs getting massacred would, again, be welcome news to nearby communities like New Appleoosa that have had to deal with them, but it's hard to believe that LP would be gaining widespread fame just on the basis of that one accomplishment, especially if extreme violence is common in this setting.

Littlepoop is still fairly naive and innocent, and up until quite recently she has had little exposure to violence, so I could see how she would view this raider takedown as something to brag about. If this were just a matter of her getting a big head because she killed a handful of incredibly dumb villains and got some congratulatory boops from the townsponies that would be one thing; however, being mentioned on the radio indicates that she really is gaining a reputation, which seems premature.

Imagine if you rode into the most ghetto part of Los Angeles and took down a crack house single-handed. It would be an achievement for sure, and some of the more law-abiding nogs living in the immediate vicinity might be thankful. In the grand scheme of things, though, the loss of one crack house isn't going to put that much of a dent in the city's crime rate, and it would likely be forgotten as a new crack house pops up in its place. If you wanted a legitimate, lasting rep, you'd have to do more than just gun down a few random crips.

As LP progresses through the world and racks up more and more feats of heroism, it would make sense for her to become gradually more famous. However, it's a bit premature at this stage.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286633
>>286606
The story calls it bone-strengthening brew but I thought referencing bone-hurting juice (it's either a nigger meme or someone mocking nigger memes) would be funny

Have you noticed how often this story uses Littlepip seeing bad things happen as a substitute for bad things happening to Littlepip?
Anonymous
d0d151d
?
No.286658
286660 286711
>>286626
The tape recorder and DJ Pon3 character are more things taken from Fallout 3 and 4. I can't recall if 3 and New Vegas had an animation for it but in 4 when you had data records or little mini game records and selected them there was a short animation of your character opening a cassette tape slot on the back of the Pip-Boy and sliding it in and after the data would be downloaded to the Pip-Boy.

Guessing she did the same or just had a thing to plug her Pip-Buck into a terminal to download the info and was just playing it on a speaker on the Pip-Buck.

The DJ Pon3 character is something Nigel pointed out before and is based off a DJ in Fallout 3 named Three Dogs. The guy has an uncanny ability to make comments on main story beats and certain side quests after you complete them and tells everyone what you did. I don't know much about him since the one time I played Fallout 3 I ignored the quest to find him and accidently found the NPC who takes you directly to your father you are searching for.

You'd reckon it'd be dangerious though to have some pony commenting on all your travels and exploits like this. Fallout 3 had 2 mercenary groups that'd hunt you down based on your karma alignment so wouldn't be surprised if Kkat borrowed those. I doubt Velvet would want the slavers to hear about it either, I have to imagine a clean Stable resident with a Pip-Buck would fetch a good price as a slave so any slaver worth their salt lick would probably hear the news and try to find her in Appleosa.

Always found it kind of weird with the reverse gender roll Equestria stuff and forgot this story had it. Sure it can be a funny subject to look at and I can only infer from the pronouns people keep flip flopping on here that Kkat eventually went tranny which might explain why it was tacked on here without the humorous spin I see most /rgre/ green texts roll with.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286660
>>286658
F3/NV didn't have a tape-playing animation, F4 did.
I think it's funny how RGRE is so divided between
>"This is my fantasy land where I can be pampered, protected, desired, and valued as an individual by competent and attractive and successful mares who will never expect me to have any ambition or responsibilities! I love being paid to sit around at home cleaning until my wife gets home to fuck my cock! I don't care that there are laws forbidding me from getting a job and finding any measure of success without the endorsement or literal ownership of a woman! I also trust feminists blindly when they tell me how restrictive life was for women pre-feminism for some reason and I may or may not actually fantasize about getting CBT from my giant amazoness wife for not washing the dishes fast enough"
>"This is a stupid world where stupid mares are used to being treated like they're far more special and masculine than they actually are. A world ruled by women would be a shitshow at best and a joke at funniest! Watch the mighty Anon as he pisses mares off and has fun in this clown world!"
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286663
286711
>>286616
I think Littlepoop's having a Feminist Moment(TM) over the fact that she just saw a male-dominated stable, and she thinks the only reason her fagguy friend Calamity isn't as butthurt over it as her because "Surely, Red-Eye the politician whose voice was on that Sprite-Bot must be their leader, so these weirdos think a male leader is a normal thing, right?".

It's badly-explained shit-tier writing that paints Littlepoop as an even bigger butthurt feminist cow who finds the thought of males with authority as inherently disgusting as the thought of females with shitting dick nipples.

Despite the author trying to hedge his bets with that "I swear I actually just hate this poster because it's a man saving women from broken plumbing!" scene, he must have forgotten to do some similar last-second edits here.
Or perhaps his beta-reader/proof-reader (If he has one) didn't notice and complain about Littlepoop's casual misandry here, since it wasn't as easily noticed as the male vault that ends in a mutant cat killing everyone.

By the way I would swear on my life that years ago, this story said something else in that chapter. I don't know if this is some Beren-Stain/Stein shit but I distinctly remember that male-dominated stable's chapter being a middle finger aimed at Fallout 3's opening scene
Basically some pony was brought downstairs to the Nuclear Reactor Room on his tenth birthday to shoot a BB gun at some targets, but because the author thought this wholesome family moment wasn't edgy enough, the pony hit the nuclear reactor and the radiation leak from the shot radioactive engine killed/mutated everyone into edgy rapey tentacle monsters that killed each other.

>spritebots/eyebots
I don't recall anyone hacking Fallout's Eyebots besides those scenes in FNV's Lonesome Road DLC where I guess that faggot Ulysseys decided he doesn't already have enough speakers yelling his obnoxious tryhard wannabe-wise bullshit at you. Faggot's got the kind of dialogue that speaks in tongues, if those tongues were made of bullshit. Tries too hard to sound wise, with grand-sounding inherently-obvious statements about "The Bull" (legion) and "The Bear" (NCR) fighting. He might wear America's flag on his back but despite all his kvetching about others not knowing the symbol-language of his precious fucking hair-beads, he knows nothing of America or what the flag is meant to stand for. He's a piece of shit and I fucking hate Ulysseys so fucking much holy shit, how the absolute goddamn cuntfuck did any of the geniuses behind FNV think this was okay?
Originally they planned to put Ulysseys in the game as a pro-Legion companion who would fill you in on all the lore and backstory of every place you visited. Then they realized it was retarded to put a writer in his retarded OC's body so he can bullshit you about lore while hovering around your head. So he was scrapped. But some faggot decided he should be this anti-roleplaying testament to bad game design, bad DLC design, and bad writing. He's got a tragic backstory where you were duped into carrying a package that contained a nuke-detonator that detonated the nukes near Hopeville, creating The Divide and making him sad. He blames you, not whoever sent the package, even though you both worked for the same courier company at one point and he walked when he decided you should carry House's Weird Shit and get shot for the Chip.
It makes sense in context, but elaborating would mean more words and I'm trying to keep word count low.

You're right about the radios. It makes no sense that DJ-Pon3/3-Dog can just instantly know what you've done and comment about it on-air. And it makes no sense that he or she would only ever talk about you or repeat some canned dialogue lines.
It's all videogamey bullshit with no lore justification.
FNV did it better by establishing Mr New Vegas as an AI under House's control. It's very subtly anti-NCR and not-so-subtly pro-House and anti-Legion. House is trying to do good for the region and his wallet, so it makes sense that he would give announcements like "A refugee camp for Khans got protected from Caesar's Legion by two heroes! God sent two angels and one had a flaming 308!" and "Primm is now under NCR control. Primm: The 'OTHER' New Vegas"
and my personal favourite
"NCR is glad nobody's attacked the NCR Monorail, because it would be a disaster and repairing it would be almost completely impossible because spare parts are so hard to find!" (makes sense that house would hate the NCR Monorail for letting people bypass the Credits Check he set up between Vegas and Freeside.

Speaking of videogamey bullshit being converted into writing, an incredibly autistic friend of mine showed me some cool "Realistic Pokemon" sketches that take away the magic of Pokemon by saying shit like "Vulpix breathe fire using an organ in the back of the throat full of aerosolized flamethrower liquid" and "Ghastly aren't actually ghosts, they're a Zubat subspecies that coats themselves in poisonous gas via farting and their big evil anime eyes are a marking on their chest!"
There's something weirdly cynical about removing and explaining away magic as "Just something purely biological in nature", but it definitely helps this shit feel more realistic.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286673
fe3.png
>>286632
It would have been less retarded if somepony (Perhaps Crane?) had seen Velvet Remedy and said he'd only tell Littlepoop where her lesbianfag friend went if she saved this town from the monster stable.
Also if the only reason for the Stable to exist is "Hurr durr it became monsters" then it should just be something original and fully dedicated to monsters.
Perhaps some kind of FlutterCorp(TM) Animal Laboratory where custom pets were made for ponies before the war forced this place to shift production towards monsters.
I know the author wanted to say "DON'T YOU WORRY YOUR FAGGY LITTLE HEAD, THESE SHELTERS FROM STABLE-TEC WERE ACTUALLY ALSO SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS JUST LIKE THE SHELTERS FROM VAULT-TEC IN FALLOUT! EVERYTHING'S JUST LIKE IN FALLOUT SO PLEASE DON'T GET UPSET BY THE PONIES!" as soon as possible
but this is still retarded
In Fallout, NOBODY knew the Vaults were actually social experiments unless they were at the top or managing the experiments.
If those experimented on knew they were being experimented on, it would affect the results. Could you imagine a fucked-over population screaming "End the experiment!" the first time something goes wrong?

This radio shit would be less retarded if Littlepip could only play the unusual tape she got from the Vault on the only radio in town: the one at the bar. So she plays the tape, learns what's on it, takes the tape out and changes the radio back to DJ-Pon3 Radio, and then as music plays Littlepoop and Crapity talk about whatever random bullshit they can think of until suddenly, the radio mentions both Stable Ponies
And while Littlepoop says "Woah, I'm famous now!"
Crapity wonders "What makes her newsworthy?" but is shouted down by Littlepoop, the massive Vulvat Remedy fangirl
and while dumb viewers forget all about that question, smart readers start questioning the same thing. So they appreciate it when it's given some big reveal to justify Vetvet Retardity as a character.
Spoiler Alert, I hate Velvet Remedy. But I won't spoil why.
Anyway after this, Littlepoop and Calamari talk more about the world they're in and what her stable was like and what his world is like

That's another thing
Imagine you are cryo-frozen for 200 years and you wake up in a completely different world. You'd expect people you meet to ask questions about your world.
but
Nobody seems interested in what Littlepoop's Stable was like
even though Calamari just went through a gimmicky experiment stable with Littlepoop and she hated everything way more than him, so stables should be on his mind and he should wonder what her stable was like.
The writer could put a retarded "Hurr durr in the post-apocalypse there are no gender roles, everyone cooks and scavenges and hunts so having a man in charge is as normal as a woman in charge" woke message here, if he wanted to explain why retarded Wastelander Calamari is so much more okay with a male-dominated society than the traditionalist bunker-baby Littlepoop.

By now you've probably noticed that Calamari isn't a character. He doesn't have one obvious skill that he provides to the team, like "I'm the doctor" or "I'm the sniper/spotter" or "I'm the mechanic" or "I'm the stealth expert" or "I'm a brotherhood scribe with a PowerFist" or "I'm the big guy in power armour who gets shot at so his friends get shot at less".
He is nothing but the DPS (Damage Per Second) he can produce.
He's nothing but a hired gun that works for Littlepoop for free out of guilt and obligation.
Calamity as a character just doesn't matter to this story at all. He has nothing to do with much of anything, and doesn't feel like someone who has ever really "lived in" this world and gained the connections to this world and various factions he should logically have.
Eventually, he will have his backstory revealed. It could be summed up in one sentence, and it couldn't be elaborated on further. It's incredibly cliche and obvious. I won't spoil it but I hate it.
Calamity as a whole is nothing but what he provides to his team: A faggot with wings and a gun or two.

It's funny to compare the first available companions in Fallout games to this guy.

Fallout 1? Ian, a short man you can hire at Shady Sands. He was a guard for the merchants of The Hub, but he was shot by Raiders. This town's helped him recover, so he helps out with his outside-world knowledge/experience. He can also tell you about some other places in the world, like Junktown and The Hub.

Fallout 2? I forget.

Fallout 3? If you follow the main quest and go to Megaton your first option is Jericho, an evil man who's evil and edgy for no reason and at the Megaton bar for no reason. He has no depth or backstory. He will say "You can hire me for 200 caps" or something like that, and then hit you with a "Actually your Karma is too high. You must be Evil or Very Evil to hire me" if you have enough cash but your Karma isn't low enough.

Fallout NV? If you don't count Sunny Smiles from the first town or that deputy faggot in Primm, and you don't intelligently go north via Black Mountain and pick up Raul the Cowboy Ghoul Repairman while stopping Black Mountain Radio and grabbing a StealthBoy or two along the way, your first available companion is Boone in Novac. A character whose deep lore and exciting murder-mystery quest excellently worldbuild about the game's world, the Legion, and how anal they are about slaves.

Fallout 4? Your first available companion is Dogmeat, a dog who joins you instantly. I think you had to wear the correct leather jacket to recruit a dog back in Fallout 1, but you just instantly get Dogmeat and Preston and his friends and a laser musket and power armour and a minigun and kill a Deathclaw and become General of the Minutemen within the game's first half-hour.
It's like this whole section was designed for some kind of playable EA Demo first and thought about literally never. also Preston's available for companion at its end.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286691
286711
Glim, are you feeling alright?
I know this isn't on-topic necessarily but I hope you're pacing yourself well and taking good care of yourself. This story has a weird way of wearing people down and lowering their standards over time.
I can't explain it but it's almost hypnotic.
The melodrama, the lead heroine's videogamey detachment, the absurd edge that's damn near impossible to take seriously...
It's kind of like Pro Wrestling if it was gayer and the community didn't realize it was all fake
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286711
286725
>>286658
>The tape recorder and DJ Pon3 character are more things taken from Fallout 3 and 4. I can't recall if 3 and New Vegas had an animation for it but in 4 when you had data records or little mini game records and selected them there was a short animation of your character opening a cassette tape slot on the back of the Pip-Boy and sliding it in and after the data would be downloaded to the Pip-Boy.
>Guessing she did the same or just had a thing to plug her Pip-Buck into a terminal to download the info and was just playing it on a speaker on the Pip-Buck.
My suspicion is that it's something like that, but it would flesh things out a bit more if the author would specify. Part of the problem with this is that too many things are left vague, or else the author just assumes the reader is already familiar with how the game works and thus doesn't feel the need to go into detail, which is a bad habit to get into.

>The guy has an uncanny ability to make comments on main story beats and certain side quests after you complete them and tells everyone what you did.
>You'd reckon it'd be dangerious though to have some pony commenting on all your travels and exploits like this. Fallout 3 had 2 mercenary groups that'd hunt you down based on your karma alignment so wouldn't be surprised if Kkat borrowed those. I doubt Velvet would want the slavers to hear about it either, I have to imagine a clean Stable resident with a Pip-Buck would fetch a good price as a slave so any slaver worth their salt lick would probably hear the news and try to find her in Appleosa.
It's yet another example of something that works as a game mechanic but doesn't translate particularly well into written fiction. I'm not at all opposed to using video game worlds as a basis for original fiction, but you have to work a little to bridge the two mediums. Part of what irks me about this is that it reads like the author transcribing his Fallout game instead of trying to write a story based on its events.

>Kkat eventually went tranny
This is actually not the first time I've heard this rumor, and I'd be curious if there's any truth to it. At this point it wouldn't surprise me. There seems to be a slippery slope that starts with being a beta simp in order to impress women, then becoming a male feminist when that doesn't work, and finally ends with giving up on attracting women and attempting to become one. It's an increasingly common phenomenon that I suspect is one of several reasons that people without legitimate gender dysphoria end up going the trap route. Unfortunately I've even seen it happen to people I would otherwise respect.

Kkat strikes me as the type who might "become" a woman but would also try to argue that he is a "lesbian" to justify his continued attraction to them I think Chris Chan also takes this position, but he's in a whole other league of crazy. It mostly bugs me because now I'm not 100% sure if calling kkat a fag or implying that he loves cock would even be insulting.

>>286663
>I think Littlepoop's having a Feminist Moment(TM) over the fact that she just saw a male-dominated stable, and she thinks the only reason her fagguy friend Calamity isn't as butthurt over it as her because "Surely, Red-Eye the politician whose voice was on that Sprite-Bot must be their leader, so these weirdos think a male leader is a normal thing, right?".
I think that probably is what he was referencing, but the way he wrote it was weird. He basically resolved the storyline from the previous chapter, and then opens the new chapter with an entirely new piece of information (the transcript of the recording), so it's jarring to suddenly jump into a line of discussion from the previous chapter without any sort of preamble to it. Even worse, he references something from two chapters ago that hasn't been mentioned since it happened.

The way to handle this would have been to have Littlepoop and Calamity begin by discussing the recording for a couple of lines, then use that to segue into talking about what happened in the bunker, then segue into whatever LP's deal with the male chauvinist Stable order or whatever, and then from there have her bring up the incident with the Sprite-Bot.

>It would have been less retarded if somepony (Perhaps Crane?) had seen Velvet Remedy and said he'd only tell Littlepoop where her lesbianfag friend went if she saved this town from the monster stable.
The way I probably would have handled this is to have one of the monster cats attack someone from the settlement while they're out foraging for food or something. LP and Calamity are hanging around, maybe talking to Crane, when this pony runs through town shouting about radioactive cats. LP asks Crane what the deal with that is, Crane tells her about the old abandoned Stable that the cats come out of sometimes (apparently they're not a huge nuisance since they can't cross the river), and she volunteers to go check it out. Calamity offers to come with her. Simple as that.

After they get back, they are in the bar talking about the recording and probably Red-Eye and whatever else, when they overhear a conversation between a couple of other ponies talking about a newcomer in Appleoosa. LP is initially confused because she thinks she's in Appleoosa, and then the New/Old Appleoosa confusion is explained. LP's curiosity is aroused when she realizes the newcomer's description sounds a lot like Velvet Remedy. She decides to investigate. Calamity, again, volunteers to go with her because he obviously wants to stick his weenie in her protect her. These events are really not that complicated to set up, the author just has a weird way of doing it.

>>286691
>Glim, are you feeling alright?
I'll survive. Though I will say that November is NaNoWriMo, and as such I probably won't be posting as often over the coming weeks. I will try to keep this up, just bear in mind I'll be shifting it to the back burner for a short time.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286725
>>286711
If Kkunt really is a tranny, there are shitloads of tranny jokes that could only be made here.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286728
After playing through Depravity and Project Valkyrie for Fallout 4 and seeing how great its alternate Main Quest solutions/alternate endings are...

I'm tempted to give that FNV mod another go while turning "The hot babes faction" into a better-written faction from Texas but it's a good country that's integrated the local Brotherhood Of Steel chapter and shitloads of Enclave Remnants because there was a huge underground Enclave Vault here that could easily produce gecks and other cool things. Tropical Texas, a food-producing powerhouse where radiation is something your granddad claims he used to walk through on his way to work.
The Enclave Republic of Tropical Texas, here to make America great again whether the local factions like it or not.
You can work with them to help them take over the Mojave solo after destroying everyone. Or help them take over the Mojave while befriending some factions. Perhaps help the Brotherhood take over. Or help the Brotherhood reform by putting Veronica in charge, even though the Brotherhood's full of old-fashioned dunces who think their tactics guidebook is a bible. Could always put Veronica in charge anyway, then deal with every Brotherhood thug who wants to be in charge.
You can also betray the Good Enclave and help the stupid NCR or stupid Legion sabotage these guys out of spite and envy. Or destroy them yourself. Or help House get himself into a bargaining position of strength that matches their higher power level.
But would adding an optional 100% good ending that incorporates OWB/Dead Money shit into the main game really fit the edgy tone?
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286753
286755 286756
3944896 - Fluttershy Friendship_is_Magic MaxyG My_Little_Pony.jpg
>>286632

>“Ah’ll talk to Ditzy Doo fer supplies. Don’t want neither of us t’ run outta ammo up there. Or food. We c’n take the train up the mountains and out over the desert, but chances are, we’ll be trottin’ back.”

>I mulled that over, and suddenly realized that even if we had our own supplies, what about any ponies we rescued? And would they be in any state to make that kind of trip? Not that such questions deterred me at all. But I’d have to find a way to talk the ponies pulling the train to wait for us. As we “robbed” the town they were trading with, no less. I voiced my concern to Calamity.

This whole excursion seems ill-advised for a number of reasons. Not only is the idea of two ponies going up against an entire town fairly stupid to begin with, it seems like there would be a lot of delicate social and economic factors here that neither Littlepoop nor the author are taking into adequate consideration. Littlepoop can be excused since she's still fairly naive, and based on her successes so far (which as I've argued have mostly been due to a combination of dumb luck and dumb enemies) probably overestimates her own abilities and underestimates how dangerous the world is. However, the author should know better.

It's been established that New Appleoosa and Old Appleoosa have some intertwined economic interests; the bartender sells them whiskey and I doubt he's the only one in the settlement who does business with them. The fact that there is a train headed up that way suggests that they trade regularly. There is probably enough interdependence between the two settlements that the entire local economy would be unbalanced if war ever broke out between them, and what Littlepoop is attempting to do here could start a war.

It's also a little unclear what the general population's views on slavery are in this world. Again, Littlepoop is pretty unworldly and grew up in a sheltered environment, so it's understandable that she would have a moral issue with it; plus she was almost made a slave herself. However it seems to be a common enough practice in the Wastelands, and if New Appleoosa is willing to trade with a town whose chief business is slavery they can't have too much of an objection. I'm not sure how much Equestria differs from our world in this respect, but prior to the modern era slavery was a pretty common practice for human societies. The objection to it is mostly the product of post-Enlightenment ideas about universal equality, which I suspect in a state of anarchy would be one of the first ideas to be discarded.

I'm willing to give the author some rope here and see where he takes this, but if this is just going to be another episode where Littlepoop goes off and single-handedly hoofedly, whatever defeats an entire army of bad guys, and returns home to a hero's welcome for defeating the mean, icky slavers that everypony secretly hated even though they did business with them, then I'm preemptively calling shenanigans.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, LP and Calamity's plan is to hitch a ride on the supply train on the way up, with the assumption that they won't be allowed to ride it back. Calamity suddenly thinks of a pony who might be able to help them, and excuses himself to go find them.

>While I waited, I tried to familiarize myself with the train. Flatcars and boxcars held supplies. Passenger cars, of which this train had only one, were for carrying ponies. The fancy red car on the back and the big, bronze one with the smokestack which rode at the front were mysteries. I knew nothing about the former, and the latter I only recognized from a similar train car in the hodgepodge construction of Absolutely Everything.
On the one hand, I'm glad to see that my idea of having the ponies utilize the existing rail lines to move supplies occurred to the author as well. On the other hand, however, it's beyond ridiculous that they have the engine hooked up to the train if they can't use it.

The next bit of conversation explains all of this. The ponies apparently understand how the engine works, but they need coal in order to fire the boiler, so they can't actually operate it. Thus, they have to manually drag the train along the rails, and apparently it's all or mostly uphill on the way to Appleoosa, but it's downhill on the way back, so they all ride on the train and coast while using the brakes on the caboose to manage the speed. All of this makes perfect sense; however, what makes no sense at all is this:

>That there’s called an engine. It’s fer pullin’ the train. Although mostly we just use it for the whistle. Keeps varmints off the tracks.
This is mind-blowingly retarded; my head physically hurts from reading this.

For one thing, a steam locomotive of the sort depicted in MLP usually weighs around 400-600 tons, compared to about 30-50 tons for a freight car (not including freight). Plus they also have passenger cars for some reason. This, combined with the fact that they apparently have to pull it up a mountain, means that the train is going to be heavy enough on its own. Why in the world would you add an extra 600 tons of weight? It would be like trying to run a marathon while carrying a cinder block.

Their justification, that they need the whistle to scare off "varmints," is by far the stupidest part of this. The whistle of a steam locomotive is basically just a specially cut pipe that makes noise when steam whooshes through it. The engineer pulls a cord, it diverts steam from the engine into this pipe, and it whistles. See where I'm going with this? The whistle is fucking steam powered. If they don't have coal to get the boiler running then the whistle is as useless as the rest of the engine. They are literally dragging 600 tons of extra weight around with them for no goddamn reason. Any ten year old child who ever read a picture book about trains could tell you as much. This may actually be one of the dumbest things I've ever encountered in a work of fiction.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286755
286758 286761
1604113950512.gif
>>286753

One more note about the goddamn train: in addition to the weight issue, there's also the fact that the pistons and whatnot that drive the wheels would add additional resistance, since they would be driving them mechanically using brute force. There's also the question of whether the mechanism still functions; if this train hasn't been properly lubricated in 200 years the moving parts could be rusted in place by now. And once again I would just like to emphasize that they are pulling this thing up a goddamn mountain. Moving a fully-laden freight train with a completely useless engine attached to the front up a steep incline would be not only difficult, it might be physically impossible, unless we're talking about a very well-coordinated and very large group of very strong ponies. Plus, there's the extra force it would add to their downhill speed on the return journey, placing further undue stress on the caboose's brakes.

I usually try not to rant too much about minor details like this, but I really want to emphasize that this is an unbelievably, mind-numbingly stupid idea on the author's part. Like, I will probably spend the next several days thinking about how stupid this is. If I ever see that retard tranny kkat walking around I am going to slap his fake tits off, and then make him pull an inoperable steam locomotive up the side of a mountain with his teeth.

Anyway, all of this retardation doesn't even serve a purpose from what I can tell. Littlepoop, to her credit, seems fairly blown away by the idiocy on display here as well, though the issue with the whistle and the general pointlessness of the venture goes as far over her head as it does over the author's. She is mostly confused by the sourcing of coal:

>Arrugh. “Okay… then why don’t you have any coal? Where’s the coal?”

>The train pony rolled his eyes at me, “Oh, their ain’t any coal in Equestria.” I felt something in my head snapping. “All the coal’s in a far, far away land.”

>“Then… how… was the coal… supposed to get here?”

>“By train, o’ course!”

>Arrugh!! That was it. I needed to stop learning about trains. They hurt my brain. This conversation had made the pounding in my head much worse!

This is probably a dig at MLP itself; I'm guessing the author made the observation that, since Equestria doesn't seem to have a coal industry, they would have needed to import coal in order to run their railroad, but the only way to import it would have been by rail. However, in attempting to make fun of this logical inconsistency, he introduced a far more egregious logic issue of his own. It really isn't even much of a logical issue to begin with; using coal-powered trains to transport coal has been a standard practice for some time now. it's no more illogical than using gasoline-powered trucks to transport gasoline. Also, to add insult to injury:

>Oh, their ain’t any coal in Equestria
>their ain't any coal
>their

Anyway, moving the fuck on. Calamity returns just as this asinine conversation is wrapping itself up. He makes fun of Littlepoop for not knowing where coal comes from I guess (he also mentions that it comes from the land of the Zebras, which I guess explains why they can't import it since they're enemies or something), and then offers her some kind of mint he found that apparently cures hangovers. Wasn't he supposed to be off looking for a pony who could help them get back home once they finished conquering the town? I've completely lost track of what the fuck is even going on.

>The whole world shot into stark focus. Colors became brighter and more pleasant. Even the rain seemed nicer. And my thoughts! I was thinking more clearly than I ever had. I was figuring things out I never could before. By Celestia, where had this wonderful stuff been all my life!?
Apparently these mints are made out of cocaine or something. It feels like it's another Fallout reference; you guys would probably know what he's talking about:
>Party-Time Mint-als. Brewed up using Mint-als an’… well, some other stuff.
Personally, I'm just going to assume he gave her cocaine and Altoids and move the fuck on. End of subchapter.

They presumably are able to talk the train caravan into taking them along, because the next scene opens with the two of them riding in one of the passenger cars. Apparently the rain has gotten worse. Also, Littlepoop's coke-mints have worn off, and now she's experiencing a comedown effect that is worse than the hangover she had earlier, raising the question of why Calamity would even give this to her in the first place although maybe he just did it to fuck with her; I probably would.

>Ugh. Think of something else. I tried tuning in the DJ Pon3 station; it was barely audible through a haze of static.
I'm assuming she does this using her PipBuck, but as with the tape recording earlier it would be helpful if the author would clarify. There could be a radio in the passenger car for all we know.

Her mind wanders, and she finds herself thinking about Derpy/Ditzy, and how she is able to remain so cheerful despite enduring so many hardships in her life. She eventually recalls Frank's mention of laughter as one of the "virtues," and something clicks into place for her. This happens:

>Lightning flashed outside. I gasped, jumping back from the window. I could have sworn I saw a the head of a giant pink pony, the size of an ursa major, peering at me over the hilltop, grinning.
So I guess learning to laugh at death pleases the ghost of Pinkie Pie? Not sure what the significance of this is meant to be, honestly. Anyway, there is another page break and the subchapter ends. As far as I can tell this scene was completely pointless and I'm not sure why it was included.

As the next scene opens, they are nearing Appleoosa. I guess they want to use the element of surprise or something, because instead of riding into town on the train, they jump off the roof (in a rainstorm) and Calamity flies them to a nearby vantage point.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286756
286757
c3c.png
HANS ARE WE THE BADDIES.jpg
>>286753
It's amazing how not knowing tiny details like this can completely fuck up a story.
I don't think I've ever seen such a tiny lack of knowledge result in such a massive catastrophe before.
So these two horses, one winged and one psychic, are going to push this incredibly heavy train uphill just to get somewhere faster.
They aren't carrying months worth of supplies, armouries of guns, or Power Armour that needs its own separate train carriage full of maintenancefags, or anything else that could justify this mode of transportation.
It's not like they're sneaking onto an Enemy Train with shitloads of guns and ammo, some of which is held by live guards that can be taken down easily by Stealth Takedowns or silenced pistol shots.
Nope, they're just two stupid little low-level murderhobos getting ready to wage a two-faggot guerilla war campaign against a civilization that
>is larger than the one they just visited
>likely has superior production capabilities, since they have slaves
>likely has superior firepower in the form of superior freshly-made locally-produced weapons and a great number of town guards
>likely has a great number of guard retainers and small Private Military Companies hired for protection by assorted slaver companies who do business in this town... if individual slaver companies exist and the story isn't just going to hit us with one big "CEO of Slavery" organization of evil so that when the CEO of Slavery gets shot all the slaves run free and all the hired thugs quit and walk away.

In Fallout 3, there's this group called the Talon Company.

they...

well...

see second picture.

Says it all, really. And that's sadly all there is to say. No hidden depth, no justifications, no "actually the leader was using them for personal gain all along" twist. They're just baddies.

They're baddies. An evil mercenary army. Hired by who? Doesn't matter.
They enslave people. And there's no more depth to them than that. You shoot them, bang goes the gun, you gain EXP.

According to the Official Fallout 3 Game Guide faction profiles, they're hired by ??? to make sure the Wasteland remains a lawless, disorganized place.

??? isn't a codename, it's never established what this group is or who they work for.

According to the Official Fallout Wiki
>In random encounters, team tactics are simple. Depending on the weapon type, the mercenary will close to within an effective range (if necessary) and engage. Around typical encounter distances, this means that riflemen will open fire from where they are, members who use shotguns will close part of the distance and then open fire, and hand-to-hand fighters will charge at the target
Yes, you read that correctly.
This is the best a wiki that profits from the existence of fans in love with the game can do.
Their tactics are "simple".
They will attack you with the weapon they have at its effective range.
And because F3's AI can't recognize friendlies or detect what they're doing, every unit will suicidally attack you as individuals. Nobody will flee unless their HP Percentage goes below a certain threshold decided by the developer who put them there. They'll stupidly fight to the last, and while individuals will flee like pussies and limp away pathetically when hurt, NPCs as a whole can't notice how great/badly the fight is going for them..

According to The Regulators (Group of faggy wannabe-cowboys in F3 who pay you for bringing them the severed fingers of evil people. somehow they can just tell real evil fingers from fake ones. they talk a big talk about cleaning up the wasteland but have no depth and no characters and never matter to the main story or world) 1-2 years before Fallout 3 starts, Talon Company would sometimes slaughter entire settlements if somebody paid them to, killing men women and children alike.
Nobody knows who would hire these cunts or why.
But hey, the faggots at Tenpenny Tower pay you to nuke Megaton for no reason because that's how childish the writing is in Fallout 3.
I think the Fallout fandom stopped talking about Fallout 3 over time partly because the people who liked it grew up a little and discovered fortnite and never looked back. And partly because it's such a shallow experience that it's really boring to talk about unless you're having fun making satan and god hate you by pretending to think you're retarded enough to think it's better than FNV in any way.

Talon Company is evil. You know they're evil because if you obtain Positive Karma by doing nice things like giving hobos free water, they run up to you and say in an evil voice "Well, if it isn't the little saint from the Vault!" and open fire.

oh and there's a town called Paradise Falls full of slavers. You can shoot everyone there if you're a good guy or if you're a baddie you'll get a free Mind-Control Ray and they'll tell you to mind-control assorted Wastelanders and tell them to walk 2000+ meters to Paradise Falls and become slaves. you'll be paid for every slave you turn in like this.

and that's it

I barely remember anything about Fallout Equestria (unless it's something I want to rant about) but I really hope this story won't involve the Talon Company at all.
But considering the author's tendencies, he will probably include the Talon Company in all its retardity so he can try and "Do it better" by giving it a retarded backstory/leader on the grounds that "hey a bad backstory/leader is better than no backstory/leader right?".
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.286757
286759
Spoilered
>>286756
Oh anon, you poor soul. FoE does indeed have its own version of the Talon Company. It's actually a half-decent implementation on its face (well, relatively speaking) - the name is a pun because they're all griffons, and their loyalty is to whoever pays them.

Their leader turns good, obviously, and in the end becomes president of the NCR (New Canterlot Republic) and by extension, Equestria.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286758
286760
y1vwktokjob51.png
053f502i8ga51.png
aj9m4gR_700b.jpg
LHqrcTmWKhc4axIuSaweMFbNNPxgoFUTa7vmfVn5ZdE.png
maxresdefault (3).jpg
>>286755
yeah "Party-Time Mint-Als" is a stupid broken reference to the Mentats drug in Fallout
the name Mentats is a reference to Dune (I read this! It's great!)
One tin of Mentats boosts your intelligence temporarily, but it's addictive. +2 Intelligence and Perception and +1 Charisma, all for just 4 minutes. Each one you down gives you a 5% chance to get addicted.
In Fallout New Vegas at any campfire or hot plate, if you've got a Science skill above 50 you can combine a tin of Mentats, a full bottle of Whiskey, and a Honey Mesquite Pod to produce Party-Time Mentats.
PTMs give +2 Int/Per and +5 Charisma for just 1 minute, and have a 15% chance to make you addicted. This chance is even worse if you've got any traits that increase your chance to get addicted.

Mmmm, doesn't this drug sound appetizing? All the nootropics in a tin, doused in honey and whiskey, then fried over a hot plate or campfire in the dusty wasteland air until crispy and dry, then tossed back into the tin. I'm sure absolutely anyone, even a first-timer like Littlepoop, would be able to stomach such a concoction.
For fuck's sake, fixing shit via science usually takes less science knowledge than knowing how to correctly mix the whiskey and mesquite honey pod with the nootropics.
Does this sound like something anyone would ever consider eating outside of a videogame?
This is some real "Gordon Ramsay, rate my meal!" Haachamaa cooking bullshit right here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIR1m99B4wI&ab_channel=blubsubsv

anyway for the stuff that's directly relevant to the story:

Calamity gave her the most highly-addictive modified form of this already-addicted drug available for damn near no reason at all.

and Littlepoop just decided to take this drug given to her by a stranger she met effectively less than a day ago as they're on a train to unknown probably-hostile territory.
She doesn't even think to try and scan it and verify that its effect is what he said it is using her Pip-Buck, which is something it can do the author forgot about. but drugs/healing items/more all have their effects clearly labelled in the pip-boy in fallout.

please keep in mind how pointless, arbitrary, and forced this moment of "Here, take this mind-enhancing drug because it's supposedly a hangover cure, even though the effects last a minute and the comedown's a bitch that makes you retarded for a while!" is
Littlepip didn't have to drink her paycheck away at some bar, and get drunk while showing off her obnoxious pseudointellectual "Long-suffering only-smart-mare in a crazy world, curse these ponies they drive me to drink" act.
In a post-apocalyptic hellhole, drinking your paycheck away at some bar isn't a good thing to do. Sure, farmers and builders would probably do it when they've got a day to sleep the hangover off. Who wouldn't get wasted with their community on improvised homebrewed shit in a world where it's hard enough to grow food and growing hops/making moonshine would be a pain?

But wastelanders?

People who have not slept in a while and are about to embark on a fucking murderhobo crusade?

an outgunned, under-manned, two-vs-countless unknown enemies murderhobo crusade?

Who wants to get jumped by raiders when you can barely stand, let alone shoot straight?

For all Littlepoop knows, he might slip her a date-rape drug and fuck her. Or he might slip her a date-rape drug and sell her to the slaver town, get paid, spend the cash, and then go back to New Appleoosa saying "They kidnapped Littlepip, she told me to flee and tell this town about it"

But of course, Littlepoop has to be drunk so she can be given a Mentat

no, worse, a Party-Time Mentat

Oh sorry, a "Party-Time Mint-Al". I think that name is supposed to be a reference to something else.

Littlepip downs the suspicious unknown drug given to her by this guy, despite all those "NEVER! TRUST! ANYONE!" experiences she's had so far. Trusting Cheese Faggot got him to rob her with a gun, but he talked her down. When this new friend of hers offers her a drug that could be damn near anything, she won't try a dialogue check to say no gently yet convincingly. She won't even consider that it could be something bad, because the author didn't consider that someone might be exploiting him/her. No wonder Kkunt probably went tranny!

Anyway, remember how absolutely fucking pointless Littlepoop's first experience with a tin of homemade campfire-scorched boiled/deep-fried and heat-dried whiskey+mesquite honey-coated nootropics was.

Also you're right, that scene of Pinkie's smiling ghost was absolutely pointless. I don't want you to stop guessing things so I'll start spoiler-tagging these answers.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286759
a6b.jfif
feb.jpg
>>286757
I AM GREATLY ENRAGED BY HOW STUPID THAT IS

I KNOW IT'S A PUN BUT A PUN IS A STUPID JUSTIFICATION TO COPYPASTE A FALLOUT ELEMENT AND THEN COMPLETELY INVERT IT FOR NO REASON. Inversion isn't a creative twist! It's just the opposite of what it's supposed to be! The laziest kind of expectation-subversion! THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT OF THE TALON COMPANY IS THAT THEY'RE BADDIES. THE TALONS OF THE SKULL-BIRD SNATCH AWAY THE BABIES. WHY USE THE NAME IF YOU'RE JUST GOING TO MAKE THEM GOOD GUYS?
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286760
a12.png
>>286758
>Calamity gave her the most highly-addictive modified form of this already-addicted drug available for damn near no reason at all.
Calamity gave her the most highly-addictive modified form of this already-addictive drug available for damn near no reason at all.

fuck me, fixed typo
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286761
286763 286765 286766
1604113174768.png
>>286755

>Between the darkness of the storm and the distraction of the train, there would never be a better time to sneak in. Through the sniper scope, I could make out the silhouettes of guards walking along catwalks that ran between the buildings and above the cages. In the cages, I could see slave ponies laying under the pouring rain, forlorn shapes in the storm.
Seems like it would have made more sense to just ride the train all the way in, since nobody in the slaver town would recognize them or would know why they were here, but would assume they were not hostile if they rode in with the friendly caravan. Also: do the train ponies know why they are coming along on this journey? Do they have a problem with LP and Calamity attempting to start a war with their trading partners just to free some slaves they would have no incentive to give a shit about one way or the other? Did they even bother to ask their passengers why they wanted to jump off the roof instead of riding the train the whole way into town? Are they not suspicious or even just a little curious about any of this? No; I imagine they're too busy pulling a useless train engine up the side of the mountain in a fucking rainstorm and yearning for the sweet embrace of death to even think about it. Incidentally, they are probably only able to travel at a rate of a few feet per hour, and it would have been simpler for LP and Calamity to just walk.

>I felt a familiar pissed-ness taking hold.
"Pissed-ness" takes home the prize for the most awkward made-up word I have ever read in print. This story is just racking up accolades left and right; no wonder it's so popular.

Anyway, LP tells Calamity to stay behind and cover her with the sniper rifle, and she runs off with "Little Macintosh" to try and infiltrate the town. Alone. Armed with a goddamn revolver.

Page break. Incidentally, this author's abuse of the page-break device is so egregious that it's actually making me nostalgic for soulpeener's writing. Most of this text so far has been broken down into small segments that usually run anywhere from 500-1500 words. These segments are just short microscenes in which nothing of any real significance happens; the most recent examples would be the last couple of scenes, in which Littlepoop is having a pointless conversation about trains, or is riding in a passenger car and suddenly realizes that laughter is the best medicine. Even if these details are important, they still don't warrant having entire scenes dedicated to them. The author really needs to learn how to organize his text better. Longer scenes that focus on important events would be much better than these endless chains of short, trivial scenes that don't go anywhere. These microscenes add up, and I'm beginning to suspect that this is where a lot of the massive length of this text comes from.

Anyway, I guess she manages to sneak into the town proper, where the cages with the slaves are located. Again, I don't really see why it wouldn't have made just as much sense to ride in with the train, but whatever; end result is the same. She is about to go and start opening cages, when a chance flash of lighting reveals that apparently, there are mines scattered around all of the cages. This seems like a dumb idea since slaves in cages locked from the outside are not tremendously likely to escape, but anyone approaching the cages to feed or water or move the slaves would need to tiptoe around a bunch of goddamn mines. It appears that k "call me Caitlyn" kat has about as much knowledge of the slave trade as he/she/xhe knows about trains, guns, or anything the fuck else that isn't a video game.

>After my session with Crane, I was much better at self-levitation.
The more I think about it the more I am convinced that self-levitation shouldn't be a thing. A unicorn shouldn't be able to levitate herself any more than I should be able to carry myself around by the waistband of my pants. And in any case, a device this lazy in the hands of a writer like kkat is just a recipe for disaster.

> But that only got me to the fence.
Why would self-levitation only go as far as the fence? Also: there's a fence? This location is poorly described. Appleoosa sounds like it should be a city, but from what the author has given us so far, it is a "collection of dilapidated wooden buildings, derailed boxcars, makeshift metal structures and slave cages." We also hear about "guards walking along catwalks that ran between the buildings and above the cages." Basically, I'm envisioning some ramshackle structures slapped together out of train cars and whatever. This makes sense enough for New Appleoosa, but shouldn't Old Appleoosa have at least some of its old infrastructure intact? Some ruined buildings or something? Maybe a perimeter wall that the slavers built around whatever's left of the town? It's very hard to visualize this place from the description the author has given us.

>I was far less confident that I would have the power to levitate all the slaves to safety.
Really? That's surprising. So far this character has done nothing but pull asinine solutions to complex problems completely out of her ass; you'd think she'd have more confidence in herself by now.

A guard seems to become aware of her sneaking around finally, and gives a generic "halt, who goes there" type of response. Littlepoop flees into the nearest shack, and overhears two ponies fucking upstairs. She looks around for a place to hide, and loots some more stuff while she's at it.

>With screwdriver and booby pin, I didn’t even spare the lockbox I found in the next room.
She has booby pins too, eh? Sounds painful. I guess there's no type of pin-related job this pony isn't prepared to handle.

Anyway, she finds some kind of magical statue in the lockbox. It has the same mark on it as Little Macintosh, because no coincidence could possibly be too random or implausible for this story. It gives her some kind of power boost.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.286763
286764
>>286761
Self-levitation is definitely one of the more egregious mary sue traits that Littlepip has. It's galling that her being restricted to just one spell is presented repeatedly as a weakness when, before long, her horn's essentially a Gmod tool that also allows her to fly.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286764
0be.jpg
>>286763
Aye. There's a reason why most writers only let their unicorns fly by standing on objects and levitating them.
If your character can fly, landmines are a joke. Floor sensors are a joke. Travel times are a joke.
Riding a floating object... It's easy for the object to be destroyed or knocked off-balance, limiting the character's movespeed.
But flying around like fucking Superman? Even if you cap that levitation speed at walking speed and say only Pegasi are allowed to fly at mach 8 (nerds mathematically calculated how fast RD and friends were going in Hurricane Fluttershy, and how fast RD went in Sonic Rainboom) that's still a fucking game-changer.
Snipers that can quickly relocate by hopping about or floating about are a game-changer, snipers that can float about like a fucking Green Lantern are game-breakers.
Why did Littlepoop even bother with the train when she could just fly here, or have Calamity fly her here? Littlepip is Sweetie Belle-sized, carrying her should be easier than carrying a fifty-pound gun-saddle with two shotguns duct-taped to it.

Maybe if Littlepip and Calamity were willing to fly at this town like fighter jets before tossing grenades or signal-triggered IEDs, they'd actually stand a chance at doing some real damage and thinning enemy numbers before sneaking around and sniping from a good vantage point.
Then again, Littlepoop's got VATS/SATS so why not hit some magical-program-assisted headshots while flying at mach fuck?
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286765
c78.png
>>286761
It's terrible that the author does SUCH A PISS-POOR JOB at explaining the town and the environmental conditions before the sneaking starts.

On Littlepoop's wrist, there is a Local Map made via radar and World Map made via satellite image shit. She can self-levitate. She could probably find it easy to get to a high vantage point and look around the town, perhaps with some binoculars. Her Compass automagically marks enemy locations in realtime, you don't even need to look at a fucker or know where he is to see his red dot pop up in your vision, letting you know he's in radar range.

Plus, Littlepoop has a Pegasus friend. A Pegasus friend who could fly around for Recon, give her details, help her plan a heist movie-style plot that's ideally simple but effective. He could even pick her up and let her see for herself what this town is like BEFORE the infiltration!!!

There are no excuses for the author's "sneaky mission"-writing skills to be this bad. Has this fucker ever played a stealth game, ever? Besides Fallout 3, which doesn't count because the stealth in that game is really fucking bad.

I'd go with "Littlepoop sneaks in on foot, Calamari covers her infiltration from a high vantage point or from 2000 feet in the air by keeping his scope on her and sniping at anyone who spots her, killing threats using his magically-silenced sniper rifle." because I've played MGSV and I know how fun-ruiningly OP it is to have Quiet the bikini sniper cover your infiltration. of course for this to work, Calamari would need guns that aren't shotguns duct-taped to his sides. Hey, he could use the sniper rifle Littlepoop picked up in Ponyville.

Also Littlepoop would need a goal more concrete than "get in, release caged foes, get out". What did she plan to do about the minefield? Why didn't she do flying-overhead recon to learn about the minefield?
She's had enough wasteland experience to know how religiously obsessed Wastelanders are with landmines, especially when using landmines on things they realistically and logically shouldn't want blown to bits.

What would she do if some of the starved slaves couldn't sneak, or couldn't move on their own because their hooves were nailed to the floor bloodily for maximum edge, or screamed at the sight of her and wanted to remain slaves because it's all they've ever known?

Littlepip's plan would need a goal like "Get in, possibly blow up something important with signal-detonated IEDs, raise a fake alarm to divert guards away from the town, then free slaves with help from the flying and waiting Calamity while Littlepoop's firefight skills cause a distraction she can be airlifted from once all the slaves that can be freed are freed.

>Why would self-levitation only go as far as the fence?
ten bucks says "because it's a videogame and Littlepoop is out of Magic Points and this story is terrible at explaining the limitations of magic and how much of a physical/mental/spiritual toll it takes on the caster, if any at all
also because kkunt realized making Littlepoop's self-levitation abilities even better after her offscreen training montage with Crane would reduce the amount of Fallout-y things Littlepoop can do, like sneaking around highly obvious landmines and picking locks by pressing the secret release button inside them with a bobby pin and then turning the locks with a screwdriver.

Hey, remember how Po and Shifu's training montage in Kung Fu Panda 1 wasn't skipped, because it actually meant a lot to the characters involved and the story as a whole? Kkunt skips scenes whenever he's too lazy to write them, whenever he doesn't think they'll impress his faggy audience enough to make writing them worth it, and whenever he has absolutely no idea to make something happen onscreen given the abilities and resources of the characters involved but wants it to happen anyway

>a guard sees her, says to stop, is ignored, and does nothing
God, this is stupid. IRL if a guard saw an intruder he wouldn't say "HALT, WHO GOES THERE? ...Must have been the wind" and return to his post.
He'd scream, raise some alarms, and if he was really jumpy he might even open fire on the strange pony he caught sneaking around.

>magical statue that gives her a power boost
It's happening. Oh god, IT'S HAPPENING! We're finally at the part with those stupid fucking Statuettes! God, how I hate these things!
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286766
286767 286768 286869
Little_Macintosh.png
>>286761

Unfortunately, it is at this precise moment that the guard bursts into the room. In retrospect, she probably should have used her limited time in here to find a hiding place, instead of cracking lockboxes in order to obtain even more useless shit she will now have to carry around. Oh well, live and learn.

Naturally, the guard poses no threat to her whatsoever. Between her S.A.T.S. auto-aiming thingamabob and whatever kind of extra strength the magic statue gave her, she is able to immediately put a shot in the guard's head and chest.

Incidentally, since it appears that Little Macintosh is going to be LP's primary weapon for the time being, I decided to look it up. I found this helpful information on the wiki page:
https://falloutequestria.fandom.com/wiki/Little_Macintosh
Pic related is an image of the weapon from the same page.

I mention this because I hadn't really thought much about the design of this weapon, but now I have a very clear image and I wanted to spend some time on it. Little Macintosh is a .44 magnum revolver, with the modification of a scope and a mouth-guard in place of a handle. Outwardly this would make sense; it was a weapon designed for an earth pony, so it would stand to reason that it would be adapted to be held and fired from the mouth. But literally spend 5 seconds thinking about it. Imagine the recoil on a .44 magnum revolver. Now imagine holding it in your mouth while firing. You'd be lucky if you could get a single shot off without dislocating your jaw and breaking your neck.

I am by no means a firearms expert, but I have enough basic knowledge to know that this is an incredibly dumb design for a gun with a powerful kickback, or really any gun. I wouldn't even be comfortable firing a small-caliber pistol with my mouth, ergonomic design modifications notwithstanding. Firing something like this with your teeth would probably kill you. This doesn't even take into account the hearing damage that would probably be sustained by firing a weapon this close to your ears (and equines have pretty sensitive ears from what I understand). If you even survived, at a minimum you'd probably be looking at missing teeth, hairline fractures in the jaw, possible vision damage from the muzzle flash being that close to your eyes...I mean, Jesus Fuck. This is insane. I get the impression that LP probably uses this gun by levitating it with her horn (the author doesn't specify how she holds it anywhere that I can recall, but this would be my assumption). However, it was designed for earth pony use, which means that whoever made this weapon (apparently AJ had it commissioned) assumed that it would be held and fired from the mouth.

This is honestly almost as stupid as the train whistle thing. Calamity's double shotgun rig is pretty ridiculous, but it at least seems to have been designed with the wielder's natural abilities in mind. Gripping a .44 magnum in your teeth and pulling the trigger with your tongue is just fucking nuts; you would be more likely to kill yourself than whatever you're shooting at. I'm seriously beginning to suspect that k "it's not gay if the penis is feminine" kat is just one of those people who has no conception of how anything works outside the context of a video game. There's just no other explanation for being this ignorant of how simple mechanisms function. Anyway, let's keep reading.

The sound of the shots going off alerts the two ponies fucking upstairs, and they come charging down. She dispatches these two as effortlessly as the first. Page break.

We rejoin her an unspecified amount of time later. She has apparently left the shack. The entire force of the slavers now seems to be chasing her.

>“Oh, I smell roasted pony for dinner,” snarled the slaver with a flamethrower battle saddle.
>flamethrower battle saddle
I'm too tired to go into another in-depth weapon analysis, but suffice it to say that this also seems like a really dumb idea.

>Little Macintosh had finally run out of bullets five dead slavers ago. Two of those had been unicorn slavers wielding shotguns, and now I was in no danger of running out of shotgun shells any time soon.
I'd also like to point out another inconsistency between video games and real life. In a game, picking up ammo is as simple as walking over a corpse and magically absorbing the ammo of whatever weapon they were carrying. In real life, taking ammunition from a dead soldier would be a slightly trickier maneuver that you probably wouldn't want to attempt in the middle of a firefight.

Anyway, she takes down the flamethrower guy. We are informed that she has killed a total of 9 slavers now, which seems low even to her. She wonders why there aren't more coming after her.

>But there had to be more at play than dumb luck, dumber slavers and the weather!
Why? Except for the weather, that's how all your other fights have worked out.

Her fight has pushed her towards a barn in the center of town. She decides to go inside because why not, so she climbs to a second story catwalk and slips in through a side door into an apparently empty room.

>Bottle caps, ammo, and packages of cigarettes were in several of the cabinets; they found a new home in my saddlebags.
I'm seriously beginning to think this bitch is just a compulsive klepto. Who comes across a cabinet in the middle of a battle and immediately starts opening random drawers and grabbing whatever's inside? Life is not a video game, kkat; I hope someday you realize that.

>I didn’t smoke, and had no intention of starting. But I could sell the packs to Ditzy Doo, who would resell them to the surprising number of Appleloosians who did.
Sure, why not? This is a perfectly sane thing to be thinking about when niggas are chasing you with flamethrowers.

Anyway, she steps out onto a balcony and finds herself in some kind of town saloon. Below is a stage, and performing on it is none other than Velvet Remedy. End of chapter.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.286767
>>286766
There's a reason Littlepip uses a named, scoped .44 magnum. Because Fallout 3 has a named, scoped .44 magnum. It's a magnum, with a scope. It does lots of damage and sounds cool.

https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Blackhawk_(Fallout_3)

That's probably as far as the logic ever went.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286768
286769 286776
326.jpg
>>286766
You're definitely on to something with that "He has no idea how anything works outside a videogame" thing. Remember when Littlepoop was in Ponyville's raider treebrary and it still had enemies inside it, but Littlepoop stopped to scavenge some raider armour AND decided to patch up and repair one armoured raider outfit by sacrificing and tearing apart another armoured raider outfit, right there, without any specialized equipment or even a sewing needle and thread, as instantaneously as it happens in the video games while you've got time paused by opening your repair menu?

By the way, in place of a real recoil system, BugthEAsderp has Fallouts 3/NV/4 use this "Temporary Simulated Recoil" system where your character will fire, you'll have your view shoved up and a little to the right, and then you'll slowly drift back down towards where you were initially firing.
In Fallout 4, shooting before you drift to where you were initially aiming will apply the new recoil without compensating for the old recoil.
This often means you'll start firing a automatic weapon and end up staring at the sky in under a second, because the recoil is shit.
This makes "Fighting the recoil" and pushing against it to keep your gun on-target as you keep firing damn near impossible in 3D fallouts.
Considering this and how bullet RNG gets even worse when fired from an automatic gun (and how automatics cut bullet power by 25-75% for no reason)...
No wonder so many players never touch fast-firing guns and stick to automatic shotguns with slug/pulse slug rounds, sniper rifles with armour-piercing/explosive rounds, melee weapons, revolvers, or miniguns/nuke-detonators glitched to piss out high-explosive rockets or nuclear cluster bombs like they're droplets in a piss stream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk2_J447bN0&ab_channel=ESO

Did you know that the shitty knives you get near FNV's start are always the best melee weapon in the game? Yes, that's right. Some faggot with a pneumatically enhanced Super Sledge is going to be less efficient than a newbie with a knife because of the incredible focus on perks that multiply the melee damage of small melee weapon attacks performed while stealthed. There is no option to specialize in heavy melee weapons. No boost to knockdown chance, length, and force when using heavy melee weapons, and no perks to boost heavy melee weapon speed and damage and armour penetration.

>flamethrower battle saddle
WHY WOULD SLAVERS USE FLAME WEAPONS? They shouldn't want to burn enemies alive, or blow them up with fucking mines. They're slavers, and "But what if they just want to scar their captives?" is retarded. Start a campfire to heat up a branding iron if you want to scar the slaves, and use proper guns to cripple fleeing slaves and defend slaves from any who'd want to free or steal them.
This is a setting with Stimpaks (Injected instant healing potions) and Hydra (A drug that makes you regenerate limbs) so getting shot in the leg wouldn't fuck you up long-term, just stop you from fleeing. Doctor's Bags also miraculously heal your limbs instantly while consuming themselves every use, because videogames. If I see one fucking Doctor's Bag used in this way (or worse, if the doctor's bag is opened up to reveal a sling that instantly heals your wounds or broken limbs when worn) in this fanfic I'll scream.

>Remedy
WHY IS REMEDY JUST FUCKING THERE
WHY IS SHE STILL PERFORMING WHEN THE ENTIRE TOWN HEARS GUNSHOTS
EVERYBODY SHOULD BE ON HIGH ALERT
LITTLEPOOP THE MURDERHOBO HAS MURDERED NINE TOWN GUARDS
THEY PROBABLY HAD LIVES OF THEIR OWN, FAMILIES, OFFSPRING, LOVED ONES, REASONS TO GO INTO BUSINESS AS THE HIRED HELP OF SLAVEMASTERS
ALSO
WHY IS IT SO EASY FOR LITTLEPOOP TO FIND VULVA REMEDILDO
WHY ISN'T THE AUTHOR SETTING UP HINTS AND CLUES AND "aw man, you juuust missed her!" MOMENTS?
THIS IS LITTLEPOOP'S GOAL: FINDING THIS CELEBRITY BITCH WHO SOMEHOW IMMEDIATELY BECAME WHAT LOOKS TO BE A FUCKING LOUNGE SINGER WITHOUT EVER RUNNING INTO ANY OF THE ENEMIES LITTLEPOOP RAN INTO AND HAD TO KILL
SHITBUGGERING FUCKWHORE GIGACUNT VAGINA, WHY THE FUCKING FUCK IS THIS STORY SO BAD?!
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286769
>>286768
note, the recoil compensation is what makes "fighting the recoil" damn near impossible because you must also fight the recoil compensation. Some guns have different recoil patterns and hints of randomization in their recoil, just because the Morrowind engine sucks and shouldn't be used to make AAA shooty games when it's older than most of Fallout 3 and 4's fans.
Anonymous
bbcc4f1
?
No.286776
286797
>>286768
>WHY WOULD SLAVERS USE FLAME WEAPONS?
Fear and terror tactics not that kkat would do such a thing that far ahead to make use of such a feature. Also to deny an area to salt the earth so to speak. For a smaller version of the larger M.A.D. conduct the story was supposed have as a past.
The little land left would be burned and generations of efforts tossed into the wind.
Sure that could paint a large target, but who could keep track of all the slaver bands that keep roaming around.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286797
286832

>>286776
One stupid thing about Fallout (and therefore also Fallout Equestria) is that the Wasteland is full of Vaults, but they're often only used to say "you are from here" or they're destroyed areas full of dead people and monsters/hazards/environmental storytelling about their weird gimmicks.

There should be more Vault City-style city-states with walls, firearm production capabilities, competent guards, the ability to produce for itself and trade excess production for other resources, and the forward-thinking capability to know it's better to annihilate raider camps with overwhelming force than allow a raider camp to exist and threaten trade/neighbours.

Evil dudes in spiky outfits high on Jet and Psycho and Buffout might be spooky to some, but it canonically only takes one dude with a decent gun+decent armour+even a little tactical know-how to fuck them all up.
Imagine launching a big improvised explosive via trebuchet into a Raider camp. They don't have the tools or knowledge to deal with it effectively.

Fallout's world honestly should be way more civilized than it is. We're supposed to accept that Vault-Tec and the Enclave were America's ONLY real options for preserving American lives? No individual states tried their own bunkers?
Honestly, I think Fallout's focus on "Muh Mad Max+Wasteland(TM) fangame! Muh desert setting! Muh raiders!!! and also occasionally pulp scifi retrofuture shit like giant radiation-mutated monsters and aliens!" hurt the franchise.
The focus on people and their problems is good, but once you make the Wasteland less shitty it removes the justification for "Fallout 1-ish" problems to threaten people.

Only in Fallout 1 can a radscorpion cave threaten a town, and only a small out-of-the-way tribal village like Shady Sands could have trouble dealing with that. Fallout 2 upped the stakes and had more isolated city-states with their own "Comparatively more modern" problems, like the crime-ridden Reno and its bosses trying to take over the town.
Fallout 3 was a massive step backwards for the franchise. I wish somebody at Bethesda knew enough about writing to know how to tell good stories, but every Bethesda quest is bad.
Billy The Ghoul and The Fridge is the "best" it ever gets.
Hell, many people will call F3's "Make the Wasteland Survival Guide" quest the best in the game because it offers a tutorial and multiple options via dialogue...
but it still sucks and you're not really taught the game's mechanics, sometimes you're given bullshit gimmick quests like "see if this mole repellent works".

Also the franchise has a habit of adding in things that should change more of the world.

For example, Super Mutants. One source: Mariposa Base. It got blown up, and the only survivors were those outside the base at the time. It's a dying race with no way to make more
(Unless you're brain-damaged enough to think Fallout 3's "hurr durr orange orc-men" and Fallout 4's meme mutants count)
So you'd think the odd mutant wandering around, or a mutant community, would be able to change a lot. But no.
Only the player gets to change the world.
Then the GECK, something that helps turn Vault into Above-Ground Paradise Town. It may or may not also be a magical matter-recombining do-anything cunt machine invented by a fucktarded cunt stupid enough to think he could just plop one of these into a resource-scarce setting without fucking everything up.
You'd think the GECK, or a group like the Enclave able to manufacture more GECKs, would change the world.
but no
only the player gets to change the world.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286832
3ef.png
>>286797
This story specifically has really bad main characters. I won't spoil anyone who hasn't shown up yet.

Littlepoop is a bland videogame heroine first, a "blank slate for the audience" third, and a perpetually-horny lesbian written by a man second. just kidding lmao, only the lowest type of woman would ever write something like "You can tell a man wrote this". Women are even hornier when writing lesbians, but that horniness is tainted with spite and envy if they're terrible people.

Kkunt wants you to think Littlepoop is impressive. Therefore, Kkunt gave Littlepoop a nice scoped revolver on a silver platter. Kkunt gave Littlepoop some great guns and plenty of ammo and a magical Pip-Buck with all sorts of incredible tactical advantages she rarely if ever remembers to use besides VATS- i mean SATS.
Kkunt wants you to think Littlepoop is impressive, so Kkunt gave Littlepoop a thick coat of plot armour glazed in mary sue bullshit-logic. The story will flip-flop between realistic logic and videogame logic and cartoon logic without consistency or tone in mind. Kkunt wants you to be impressed with how easily Littlepoop dispatches foes that only lose because they're fucking retards whenever Kkunt needs them to be.

Littlepoop...
She's "brave" because she never faces anything genuinely terrifying to her.
She "Never gives up on her ideals" because she's never faced with the temptation to compromise on her ideals and the world keeps forgetting it's supposedly a grim dark place that punishes the good and rewards the eevil.
She "survives incredible danger" because she's never truly in danger, she's safe in a world where everything and everyone is less dangerous than this wannabe-action-movie-hero faggette.
She's only "Powerful " because everyone she faces is less powerful than her.
And she's only "Successful" because she never faces anyone with enough wit to destroy her for lacking wit.

She's "Pure", but she'll happily choke down some pre-war nootropics boiled and fried in a mixture of whiskey and honey mesquite pod juice without a second thought. She's "Inexperienced" but she can negotiate and gun better than people far more experienced than her. She's "Incorruptible" except when that would get in the way of the author's quest to make you think Littlepoop is cool.

She is everything a faggot from the early 2010s thought intelligence was: Snark, pseudointellectual sarcasm, inner monologues(Mystical exotic alien shit to NPCs), obnoxious lectures on how you "Should" do this or that aimed at characters written to be too stupid to know better even though Littlepoop is lecturing them on something they've spent their whole lives doing successfully until now, the occasional "Confound this moment of circular logic, it enrages me/drives me to drink!"...
Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if Littlepoop got a moment where she lectured a grown adult on how supporting slavery is both bigoted and bad for the economy according to lying tryhard leftists the author saw on youtube last week.

If you turn your brain off you can "enjoy" Littlepip's retarded antics while ignoring how stupid and unimpressive and pointless they are in-universe and out-of-universe.
If you turn your brain off and treat her like an action movie hero, suspending your disbelief by giving her the "Yeah, she and Stallone and Swarzenigger can survive explosions at point blank range if they jump away fast enough" badge of plot armour, you're a faggot.
Only a faggot could like Littlepip and this story's constant meaningless words have this hypnotic effect that's hard to put into words.

I don't know if the author did this on purpose, but if you're not careful, reading this story will lull you into a trance where you think you are Littlepip and all the decisions Littlepip makes sound like good ones even when they're motivated by videogame logic that's right only 75% of the time. I mean you don't literally think you are Littlepip, you just get sucked in by the melodrama and identify with her, even though she's so annoying and generic and one-note.

Calamity is... How would you describe his personality, or him as a character? And I mean you, the beautiful girl reading this(I know you aren't really a girl. this is a meme. But you are beautiful, you mad beautiful bastard, and I love you)
but for real, Calamity never gets deeper than this. You probably already guessed half of his entire single-sentence-long backstory when you thought "What kind of father would name his own son Calamity?", and guessed the other half when you saw his reaction to Littlepip's leader comment. He's not an interesting or compelling character and he should be one considering the second half of his backstory.
when you see what K "I like to stare at bad dragon dildos but I'm too afraid to buy them" kunt does with the Brotherhood Of Steel and the Followers Of The Apocalypse/NCR regarding Littlepoop's other Companions, you'll understand why Kkunt decided to make Calamity the way he is and why this is such a goddamn disgrace to everything ever and everything he could be.

and the lesbian singer doctor bitch... I deleted 9k words of ranting and spoilers to replace it with: FUCK this character. I hate her the most, you'll soon see why.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286869
286871 286890
66f66df35727a3fe61900b77641e9dff.jpg
>>286766

Chapter Seven: Velvet Remedy

Today's Fortune Cookie:
>“’They actually consider us gods. But then, who can blame them?”
Who are 'they'? To whom does 'us' refer? This chapter's epitaph distinguishes itself by being even more devoid of context than usual.

Anyway, when the chapter opens, Littlepoop is apparently so overcome with gushing hormones at seeing her old crush again that she completely forgets that there are guards armed with flamethrowers still chasing her, and also that she technically came here to liberate some slaves or something, not loot cabinets and snoop around. Even though my impression was that finding Velvet was the whole reason she came here, she seems shocked when she sees her. Her priorities now shift to liberating Velvet.

>Now, getting Velvet Remedy out of captivity was my highest priority. Not to suggest the other ponies in those cages were any less important to me. But something personal had been added to the situation. In my head, I entertained the thought of her how happy she would be to see me.
There is absolutely no evidence that Velvet is even in captivity. Currently she is performing a song for a bunch of drunk saloon patrons; for all Littlepoop knows, the slavers could have hired her and this is a paying gig. Also: Velvet hasn't featured in the story much except for her brief appearance at the beginning, but I don't get the impression she really knows or cares who Littlepoop is; if she recognizes her at all, it will just be as some background pony she duped into repairing her PipBuck.

These reactions are actually pretty reasonable for Littlepoop. She's fairly naive, and likely views her crush through rose-tinted lenses. It's not surprising that she would place Velvet on a pedestal, and assume she'd never stoop to working for slavers. This view of the situation is basically in character for LP, but I'm not sure what the author is planning to do here. If he's setting her up to learn another harsh lesson about the world when her adolescent fantasies are mercilessly crushed, that would be good writing. However if this is just going to be a "Littlepoop swoops in and saves her girlfriend from the meanie-pants slaver ponies" it will be on par with the kind of crap I'm expecting from this author at this point. I'll reserve judgement until we see what actually happens.

Anyway, there are guards walking around the saloon searching for her, so she has to retrace her steps.

>The moment I stepped outside, I knew that I was in trouble. Multiple slaver ponies, lantern poles strapped to their backs, were standing about the corpse of that flamethrower bastard I put down. The wake of my activities was not going unnoticed or ignored. Four of the ponies, those most lightly armed, turned and ran towards the huge central barn. I pressed myself against the wall. The alarm was about to go up!
Hasn't the alarm had already gone up? She's been running around blasting niggas for quite a while now, making all sorts of noise, and the impression I'm getting is that this town is mostly just a small collection of ramshackle buildings similar to New Appleoosa. Plus, it's obvious that radio technology exists in this world, so do these guards not have some sort of communication system? If not, wouldn't it stand to reason that they would at least yell to alert each other as soon as one of them spots an intruder, instead of just going after her one at a time like retarded vidya game NPCs?

While we're on the subject of radios, something has been bothering me for awhile. At the beginning of the story, Littlepoop describes the PipBuck as a commonplace, ordinary device that everypony has. Is this something that is only true of the population of her stable, or should it be assumed that most ponies in this world have one? We haven't really heard about anyone besides LP having a PipBuck, which indicates that it's some type of Stable-specific technology that gives her an edge over her enemies. However, none of the ponies she's met seem to react to her having one, nor are they curious about her PipBuck cutie mark. This would indicate that this device is common enough that ponies don't really take notice of her having one, any more than you or I would find it strange to see someone carrying an iPhone around. It's another one of those details that the author has been annoyingly vague about.

Anyway, despite the fact that Littlepoop has been running around for some time now, firing off shotgun rounds and getting shot at and even attacked with a flamethrower, Calamity, whose one job is that he is supposed to be covering her, waits until now to start dropping guards. I'm sure no one will be surprised to learn that the guards' aim is terrible, and they pose absolutely no threat to Calamity whatsoever.

However, the guards figure out that they're being dive bombed and begin covering each other, so that Calamity can't get a good shot at them. Littlepoop runs to a nearby building for some unspecified reason and tries to pick the lock, but she can't get it to open and she keeps losing her bobby pins or breaking them or something. Anyway yada yada yada, she eventually breaks in.

There are two guards sitting there playing poker, and she kills them before they have a chance to react. She has a momentary pang of conscience when she realizes that this kind of "shoot first, ask questions later" approach is the same as the one Calamity used when he almost killed her. However, upon closer inspection she sees that the guards were indeed baddies and her conscience can now rest easy. She also sees that she has stumbled upon the armory.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286871
286872 286889
1603845913259.jpg
>>286869

Naturally, her first instinct is to barricade the entrance so that she can loot the place without being disturbed. She notices that a desk has a terminal on it, and decides to have a look at what's on it as soon as she is finished resupplying herself with ammunition, because naturally every terminal she comes across is bound to have information specifically relevant to her located somewhere on it, and hacking terminals so you can read other people's 200 year old emails is a perfectly normal thing to do in the middle of a firefight.

>Seven ammo boxes (half of them locked), two gun cabinets and a weapons locker (also locked) later, I was less like a pony and more like a walking arsenal.
Seriously, how much shit is she carrying at this point? How many guns is it practical for one pony to have? The text never really specifies how she is carrying all of this or where she puts it; we've heard a couple of references to her "saddlebags," but that's about it. Between all of the random crap she's picked up throughout this story and all of the guns and ammunition she's grabbed, those saddlebags have to be stuffed to absolute capacity and probably weigh several hundred pounds. LP is, as far as I can tell, an adolescent to early-adult pony of small stature who has not done any specialized physical or endurance training. If this is going by RPG rules, she ought to at least suffer some kind of movement penalty for being weighted down. The text even specifically mentions here that she grabs ammo for guns she doesn't even have. This is just getting ridiculous.

>I now had ammo for everything but Little Macintosh, including weapons I had never seen before, such as spark packs designed for recharging magical energy weapons, and three missiles. It disturbed me greatly that the slavers had a small stockpile of missiles. Particularly since neither of the battle saddles were built for them.
Did I read this correctly? Is she literally now carrying three missiles around with her? Or is she just noticing that they exist? Oh, who even cares.

>But by far, the biggest prize in the lot had been neither a weapon nor ammo, but a set of schematics for creating a homemade gun that would fire poisoned needles! It would be silent, crippling and I was pretty sure I’d seen most of the parts required back in Absolutely Everything.
In addition to being a klepto, I'm also beginning to suspect that Littlepoop has some kind of ADD or something. She came up here looking for Velvet Remedy, apparently forgot about her when she saw the slave cages, then forgot about the slave cages when she saw Velvet Remedy, then forgot about both when she found a giant room full of weapons and random junk. Now she's thinking about gun parts she saw back at the General Store and what she can build with them. I'm amazed this pony can stay focused enough to even remember her own name.

>The slavers took little time figuring out I had barricaded myself in their armory. If that gave them pause, however, they didn’t show it.
What?

Anyway, it seems like the slavers know she's in here but her barricade is mostly holding, so they are just waiting outside to ambush her as soon as she leaves. Seeing as how this is just a small, dilapidated wooden shack and she's basically trapped herself, you might expect the guards to just rake the entire building with gunfire from the outside until she was either killed or smoked out, or even just set the damn thing on fire. However, if you thought that, you'd be wrong; instead, they just sit there patiently waiting for her to come outside. Meanwhile, LP decides to hack the stupid terminal.

>It took almost no time to hack it. The password was “terminal”. I was unimpressed.
All of her enemies are retards; what else is new?

>The first entry was ancient; dating back several years before the apocalypse. The others were all within the last few months.
Seriously, visualize this scenario for a second. Littleplop is running from a bunch of guards, all of whom are armed with high-powered weapons and are hell-bent on killing her. She runs into what is literally described as an "old, half-collapsed wooden building" and barricades herself inside. All of these guards, armed with combat shotguns, automatic rifles, flamethrowers, and God knows what else, surround this ramshackle building that could probably be ripped to shreds with a couple of good shotgun blasts. They have keys to the door and unlock it, but apparently can't get it open because Littlepoop moved a desk in front of it. They buck at the doors for awhile, but eventually give up, because the powerful haunches of multiple equines couldn't possibly do any serious damage to the probably half-rotted door of a flimsy wooden shack blocked by a desk. So, they all give up and decide to just sit there and wait for her to leave the building. Meanwhile, Calamity is presumably still flying around and dive-bombing them with his rifles. It is in this environment that Littlepoop takes an unspecified amount of time to repair and modify several weapons, collect thousands of pounds of ammunition, most of which she doesn't even need, hack a terminal (which, incidentally, is sitting on the very desk she is using to barricade the door), and sit there reading through six separate journal entries, none of which would be assumed by a reasonable person to have fuck-all to do with anything that's going on right now. Seriously; just visualize it.

Anyway, the journal entries in the terminal mostly chronicle the activities of the slave traders. The entries are included in the text word for word, and it's all fairly mundane: the slavers have no compassion for their slaves, they enslave children, they give them drugs, they torture them; blah blah blah, the slavers are awful icky-pants meanies. Littlepoop is predictably outraged. She is just about to go out and give them what for, when one of them decides to fucking do something finally and shoots a missile at the door.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286872
286949
crazy_twilight_by_sakatagintoki117_d5gmr3g-fullview.png
>>286871

>Trembling with shock and pain, I greedily gulped down another healing potion. Already, my wounds were closing.
Ah, good. For a second I thought that being hit point-blank with a fucking missile might have actually injured her, but clearly she's too clever and well-provisioned to let something like that happen. Now I can rest easy.

The subchapter opens with Calamity holding Littlepoop's nearly-severed hind leg together so the healing potion can repair it. Not making this up. Apparently, though, she didn't quite walk away unscathed: the healing potion will only mostly heal this grievous injury, so she will probably be walking with a slight limp until she can get to a real hospital and get it attended to properly. Not making this up either.

The whereabouts of the slavers at this point are unknown. Presumably, they were all taken out by Calamity's dive-bombing. The only one mentioned is a pony with a "missile-launching battle saddle" (not making this up), a weapon which takes time to aim and therefore would make her an easy target for Calamity to take down. It's never actually specified whether he takes her down or not, it just mentions that it would be easy for him to do it. Again, there is no mention of the whereabouts of the other guards who were surrounding the building and waiting to ambush her just a second ago; for all practical purposes the slavers have vanished and the two of them are alone and safe.

Nobody gives them any trouble as Calamity attends to Littlepoop's wounds. Once her leg heals to the point that she can stand, she immediately begins hopping around and yammering like a schoolgirl about how excited she is to have found Velvet Remedy. Not making this up. Calamity goes inside the armory, that ramshackle, half-collapsed wooden structure which apparently sustained no serious damage from having a fucking missile fired directly into the entrance, and examines some of the battle saddles that Littlepoop noticed in there earlier. Unfortunately, they don't have any spare parts he can make use of. Dang.

>We didn’t dare spend any further time in the armory. The slavers would be back any moment.
If they haven't bothered you in the 25-30 minutes you've probably spent here already it's probably a safe bet that they won't bother you at all, but whatever floats your boat I guess.

>We decided to split up. I would look for Velvet Remedy while he hightailed it to the sheriff’s office, where he would scout out the place and hopefully take out any guards. I would meet him there soon to unlock the cages, but until then he could rally the foals. Or, at least, give them hope and the first friendly company since being captured.
This is one of the most incoherent fight scenes I've ever read. Where are the guards they were fighting just a second ago? How many of them are left? How many were there to begin with? Are they all dead now? If not, why hasn't the commotion caused more of them to come running? How big is this town? How many ponies live here? Where is the sheriff's office? How do either Littlepoop or Calamity know where the sheriff's office is? Why does Calamity even need to go to the sheriff's office? What about all the saloon patrons and whoever the fuck else lives here besides the guards? What about the ponies from New Appleoosa who pulled the train that they rode up in? What have all of these ponies been doing while all this shit was going on? Were they just sitting there drinking booze and listening to downtempo jazz ballads while missiles and explosions and gunshots were going off outside? There are so many logic issues with everything that's going on right now I don't even know where to begin.

>Slipping out, we parted ways and slid into the storm. The slavers missed us by seconds.
Literally what? Seems to me the slavers missed them by more than seconds; if I read the last section correctly LP and Calamity were basically just sitting in front of the armory in plain view for as long as it would have taken for him to hold her goddamn severed leg together while she drank a potion to knit it back together. Even with the deus ex machina cranked up to Max there is no way this process took less than ten minutes.

Once again, it's unclear just how many of these slavers there were ever supposed to be: one minute there's a whole swarm of them surrounding the building, then the door gets blasted with a missile, and then *poof* they're all gone. For however long it takes them to heal up and for Calamity to make another pass through the armory they are left completely alone despite being extremely vulnerable and despite the fact that by now the guards should know exactly where to find them. The only guard even mentioned at this point is the one who fired the missile, and even that guard's fate is left ambiguous. It's implied that she was taken out by Calamity, but it's never explicitly stated, and of the rest of them we hear nothing.

The situation here is basically the same as with the raiders earlier: these enemies seem to just flicker in and out of existence as the author sees fit, without there being any kind of logic to their movements. It's not even clear how many of them we're dealing with; as with the raiders there could be hundreds of them or just a small handful. This world almost seems to operate on dream logic.

Also, I know I mentioned it already, but whatever happened to the supply train they rode in on? Did they make it into the town? Did they drop off their supplies and pick up whatever they were trading for? Are they in any way perturbed by the fact that the two ponies who hitched a ride on their train are basically starting a war with Old Appleoosa for no apparent reason? What have they been doing during the shootout? None of this makes any goddamn sense.

Anyway, that's the end of the subchapter. Page break.
Anonymous
d47aa05
?
No.286889
>>286871
Got to say a thing that bugs me with most fiction that includes slaves is how terribly the slaves themsevles are treated. Absolutely slaves were abused and mistreated in history and no doubt would be to in this setting but why do stuff like beat them randomly, give them drugs, and have them in open cages exposed to the elements and rain I can assume has a hefty dose of taint. Slaves are meant to do physical labor so why abuse them in a fashion that they would probably be dead or crippled from physical injury and/or illness that would make doing any labor and thus be a waste of money and resources to purchase.

I'm loving the review so far and a lot of Nigel's rambles since I like Fallout but finding it hard for me to offer commentary since Kkat outside of a few minor grammer mistakes doesn't have those odd writing excentricities like the Sun and the Rose so can only point out how video game-y the story has been this far which Glim can express and Nigel can elaborate on explaining the video game parallels.

Hoping once more characters are introduced there can be more room for roundtable discussion but for now can only really sit on the side lines and root for the team on our journey. Would offer to read Project Horizons since I have a friend who is a huge fan of it and from what I heard it goes from Fallout Equestria to damn near Neon Genesis Evangelion levels of crazy but it's a super super long story and not up to tackle it at the moment.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286890
a7a.jpg
>>286869
You're right about the Pipbuck thing.
In Fallout, seeing someone with a PipBoy is very rare. Usually restricted to people from Stables, or Vaults as they're called in Fallout.
There's this scene in Fallout NV where you're about to join up with this Trading Caravan heading to Zion (Utah) but one of your fellow caravan guards is a pathological liar addicted to Psycho, an anger-inducing recreational drug. There's a broken Pip-Boy on his arm and it's the only reason why he was hired. The faggot in charge of this journey thought his pip-boy would be able to help them with satellite maps of the area. But it's broken.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dauNuCRO1iM&ab_channel=Ketaruz

For the entire franchise, no mention is made of VATS and nobody comments on it because for the entire franchise (until one random terminal in Fallout 4, a game that wasn't released until years after FE finished, references it while implying you were always a robot all along. which is an impossible fan theory) nobody had ever mentioned VATS or implied that it exists in the game world. A tutorial popup explains it to you, but nobody ever said "Damn, I wish I had one of those Pip-Boys. VATS would make me a killing machine!".

Sometimes the author will forget ponies are wearing clothes/armour and let other ponies notice cutie marks beneath clothing. Nobody ever thinks to sew a fake patch on their jumpsuit to hide a real cutie mark.

Littlepoop has a Pipboy on her arm because Fallout protagonists almost always have Pipboys, and Littlepoop's Cutie Mark is a PipBoy because the mainstream FIM fandom is blind faggots jacking off blind faggots.
Nobody really understands anything they talk about. And they don't talk for fun, everything is a social game where they're trying to score points over others and manipulate others and cause childish fights for no reason. The fandom is full of uncool people, so diving headfirst into it and comparing yourself to lamer people around you helps you pretend everyone who considers you uncool is wrong. The fandom's sometimes able to raise shitloads of money for charity, so predators desperate to appear harmless and above suspicion come here and try to look like "the biggest brony" imaginable. Virtue-signalling replaces real virtue. And regurgitated nonsense meant to make the advice-giver look kind or smart or tough replaces valid advice.
"Don't give your OC a Magic cutie mark, it's a mary sue trait!" is just accepted by idiots who write to please other fandomfags.
This is the fanbase where beginner writers will get advice like "Don't give your OCs purple hair" and "Don't give your OC anything to do with the mane six".
At best, the advice given is incredibly obvious but still misunderstood, and at usually it's complete nonsense.
It's like listening to a bunch of niggers try and figure out what causes lightning strikes. They blame random outfit colours and harmless behaviours and assume they must be bad luck at best, and at worst they assume it's something that pisses off the storm god who will kill the whole tribe unless a chimpout happens.
Even though Littlepoop has more magical strength than Twilight and Celestia combined, the story lies to us and tells you to think she is an underdog. A nobody. Someone that shouldn't win, but does.

So even though Magical Lifting Strength or Luck or Gun Skills or Sheer Toughness or Fixing Things or Good Person-Ness should probably be Littlepoop's talent considering what we see from her, the author thought painting a picture of a Fallout item where a symbol should go would make her more of a 'underdog' and hide her obvious OP nature from the fanbase.

I'm willing to overlook bullshit when the media's good.
A scene in a James Bond/Batman movie where this normal human dude's lowered closer and closer to lava... even though at a certain proximity he should burst into flames or die without needing to touch the lava completely? Fine, I can ignore Batman treating lava like it's just warm red water and wiping it off the soles of his bat-boots.

Deidara wearing a Rangefinder Eyepiece over one eye and using a Radio Earpiece to communicate with his teammate, even though this is less technologically less advanced than a simple ICBM, and even though radios quite clearly exist in this setting it's up to Messenger Hawks/Runners to carry paper messages long distances? Fine, I can pretend these losers just summon technology from an unknown source via magic without having any idea how to rebuild it or manufacture it on their own.

But this right here is just bullshit. The pony-land tech level is utterly inexcusable. Has nobody ever thought to cast the spell Speak With Dead to summon the ghost of someone who knows how to build good shit?
It makes no sense that in a world full of Stables, education would be so poor that nobody would see the economic opportunity in manufacturing and selling good shit to Wastelanders for rare pre-war materials useless to those without advanced production capabilities.

Spoiler: Later on, the faggot author introduces Memory Orbs. Use magic on these (forming a magic shield that touches them counts) and you are forced to see some memory stored inside the Memory Orb from the perspective of wherever the memory came from. So you could see a memory of the day Pinkie Pie got fucked by her mom, for example, if she decided to copy this memory into the orb. You experience her memory from her perspective. Yes, it's ripping off the Pensieves from Harry Potter. Anyway, even though Memory Orbs are common enough that everyone knows what they are, you never see a porn store that manufactures and sells Memory Orbs containing sex scenes. You never see a Memory Orb that's used to teach, too. You never see a store full of Memory Orbs containing luxury-filled Vault memories or even copied Pre-War Equestria memories. You never see a Memory Orb specifically used to teach something like magic or combat techniques or how to make shit! It's really fucking dumb.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286892
286894
ultimateweapon.png
Remember when I said "Why not give the ponies wearable necklaces with attached gorrila-like wood or plastic or metal arms"?

I just remembered the Power Armour in this story that puts a fucking tiny scorpion barb on the end of the metal tail-covering.

like that's ever going to get anyone.

If you REALLY want to do some damage, check this out.
Pinkie Pie, in a drinking hat full of health potion
equipped with the artificial arms "Punch Line" and "Helter Skelter".
Helter Skelter turns you into a giant drill using magic
Punch Line throws out a self-aware rocket-powered fist to punch your foes over and over before returning. It can fuck people up while you hide behind cover! You can also rocket-skate on top of it for swift getaways. Give it a glock and it'll do even more damage!

these arms come from DMCV, the drinking hat comes from Spongebob but you could easily swap the cans out for healing potion cans.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286894
>>286892
actually fuck Helter Skelter, get Ragtime. that shit manipulates time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOsKql5gD8A&ab_channel=KyKiske7

Also, you know what would have made this chapter better?

If Old Appleoosa was established as a terrible and evil trading outpost where slavers trade slaves to evil bastards who own plantations/gun factories elsewhere in the Wasteland.

Imagine a scene where Appleoosa sends a train full of evil bastards to Old Appleoosa to pick up some slaves including Dinky Hooves (the child of Derpy Hooves or whatever this fanfic calls her) and this makes Littlepip+Calamity decide to sneak onto their evil train, kill all enemy guards on the train ride to Old Appleoosa, hoping to free the slaves and go home...
But the train delivered them straight into Old Appleoosa and they must fight their way out of here to survive while the entire town's guard descends on them.
They're almost fucked, but then a mystery pony hides them and gives them a disguise. It's... Not singing lesbian, but someone who saw her concert in town yesterday!
>"Yeah she sang for us for a while but then she said to free the slaves at the end and everyone booed her. She left and went north. Doesn't she realize slavery gives this town life? Us guards have to conserve our energy so we can protect our slaves if Raiders show up. If we didn't point guns at little losers and work them to death, we'd be slaves instead!"

Alternatively

Littlepoop and Calamity could lose the firefight and end up captured by the slavers. Until some rich bastard who heard Littlepoop slaughtered a Raider camp purchases Littlepoop+Calamity, bringing them somewhere for plot purposes and sending them after his enemies in return for their freedom and the freedom of Dinky Hooves.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286911
286914
One more thing

When adapting something that's not a book into a book, you need to decide something.

All of the little quirks of the medium it was designed on, and all those limitations... Are they part of the reality you're writing in?

In this story, Littlepip looted a small building, fixed some of her things, hacked a terminal, and read some terminal entries. The latter three things, in the Fallout video game, are done in menus. Which means time is paused while you're using a terminal or repairing guns. Items are also repaired instantly using parts from a second sacrificed item.

Littlepip did the same shit in Raider Ponyville's Treebrary, when she stopped to repair one Raider armour outfit with another in the middle of a battle. It's instant in the games, but why should the conveniences of video game design transfer over to real life?

Quest items cannot be damaged, removed from your inventory by others, dropped manually, or sold, or stolen in Fallout New Vegas. And they also weigh NOTHING.
Obviously, this is a quirk of the engine. Something there for convenience's sake.
It can't possibly be a part of the "story's internal logic", since characters don't react to it and complain about their inability to remove some weapons from your inventory.
Just like the complete absence of anything beyond the perpetually-locked NCR Checkpoint's gates. Glitch past it, and... there's nothing, forever.
It can't be something anyone sane would bring into a novel.

Just like the Ammo Swap glitch that can let you equip any ammunition via hotkey no matter what gun you've got equipped. Yes, this means if the ammo is coded to override your gun's usual projectile you can do some wacky bullshit. Fire 12ga slugs from your .44, fire high explosive missiles from your SMG, and fire nuclear bombs from normally-harmless "guns" like a certain Camera, the Boomers Ballast Activator, or Lonesome Road's Nuke Detonator.
Speaking of cameras in FNV, at Boulder City there's a War Memorial surrounded by NCRfags. Shoot at the war memorial with a gun, punch it with your fist or strike it with a hammer, and it pisses off.. Was Kowalski his name? You can talk him down, or call him and his dead brother a little bitch to start a fight.
Anyway because the Codac R9000 Camera given to you during another Quest is technically a ranged item that fires invisible bullets that check if you've fired the camera at what you're supposed to for the camera quest or not, taking a picture of the war memorial will piss Kowalski off.
You can also fire your camera at puddles of water to make the water ripple as though you'd shot it.

Remember when Glim mentioned picking himself up?
You can do that in Skyrim.
Step 1, stand in a bucket
Step 2, look down
Step 3, hold bucket
Step 4, jump. Bucket will rise with you, and become ground you can keep jumping from
Step 5, you have achieved flight
There's another method. Stand on the edge of a bucket and hold it, then jump once. The bucket will tilt and perpetually rise at a diagonal angle until you let go or jump off.

And if you don't want to fall and die on impact with the ground? Just save the game near the ground, and then reload the game. Fall damage+momentum? Gone.

You can also whip out a dinner plate or another type of bucket, run face-first into a wall with it, and glitch through the wall.
Buy everything from a merchant, save, punch the merchant, reload the game. The merchant's inventory has been refreshed! Buy more shit.
If you save the game while using Whirlwind Sprint and reload, you are stuck running at Whirlwind Sprint's max speed. Speedrunners avoid this easy trick because getting the shout takes more time than using its broken speed boost saves.

Back to Fallout, that quicksave+quickload glitch also works in Fallout 3 and NV. No idea if it works in 4.

Fallout NV Speedrunners use this trick to get rid of unwanted downward velocity whenever they Reload Dash, accidentally hit a piece of slightly uneven ground, and get launched a mile into the air for no goddamn reason.

Don't get me started on WrongWarps. Save the game as you enter a Load Zone (Invisible objects that warp you to other locations on contact, typically placed at the mouths of caves) and when you load that save, IT LOADS YOUR LOCATION FIRST AND THE CHARACTER ON THAT SAVE FILE THIRD.
What comes second? I'm glad you asked.
Second, the game reacts to the fact that you're touching a load zone and interrupts the loading process to send you where the Load Zone wants you to go.
That's right. I can be a man, save the game right as I enter a cave, and return to the main menu/quit the game. Then I can make a new character, a woman. I can load the male character's "about to enter a cave and touching its Load Zone" save file... And continue being that woman as I end up where the man should have gone upon touching the Load Warp. Speedrunners use these tricks to skip huge segments of Skyrim but it works in Fallout NV too, I hear.

When leaving Goodsprings for the 1st time a popup asks if you want to remake your character.
There's also a glitch where you stop time using the pipboy for as long as you want. this also stops menus and popups from popping up. Sex% Speedrunners use this to trannyinate their character, remaking man into woman to seduce those who only fuck women.

And then there's Speedcripple. Save+load while crippling your legs via explosive juuust right, and the movespeed bonus you should gain from having your crippled legs healed will be added to legs that, since you just loaded the game, aren't actually crippled.

Also, Reload Dashing. Bring up your Pip-Boy menu during a "one bullet at a time" reload animation and the game stores your inputs. Hold forwards for a second, and when you unpause you'll get a burst of forward momentum.

even forgetting glitches, time stops
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286914
DEATH IS A LEARNING OPPORTUNITY WHEN YOU HAVE INFINITE RETRIES.gif
see its funny because you and he know you would only know Sans is strong if he fought you after you killed all his friends.png
>>286911
in Fallout when talking to other NPCs.

I wasn't kidding about how Sex% Speedrunners (Speedrunners trying to fuck everyone you possibly can in Fallout NV) change their character's sex in the middle of the run using the "Would you like to rebuild your character?" popup.
but there's another thing you can do with it
If you gain EXP and level up BEFORE you rebuild your character, you keep all perks you obtained when gaining levels.
So if you were to... say... glitch out Fallout New Vegas's opening quest and infinitely intimidate free shit out of Chet the store owner, constantly gaining EXP for each successful intimidation, you could level up a lot and obtain all the good perks you want. Then you could leave Goodsprings, say yes when the Popup asks if you want to rebuild your character and his/her looks, sex, primary stats and tagged skills and traits, etc...
and boom. Once again, you are a level 1 beginner.
but
with all the perks that you obtained in goodsprings on your road to hitting the level cap at level 50
nothing's stopping you from gaining new perks when levelling up, too!
now go punch out some Deathclaws using boxing gloves!

oh, and because your level is low, many enemies you encounter will have low levels. Many enemies in Fallout 3 and NV and even 4 scale with your level!
It's a real problem in 4 because there is no level cap and over time everyone's HP pool balloons like mad. bullet-sponge foes are everywhere.
but when you've got shitloads of Perks making you a god, low-level enemies are playthings even when you have the low HP of a low-level character.

Perks are positive bonuses to your character. You can select some from a menu when levelling up. How many levels do you need to gain before you earn the right to take another perk? Depends on the game.

And then there's the Crippled Limb system...
in most videogames, you can suffer all kinds of wounds without any problems as long as you have 1 Hit Point left. But if you lose that 1 hit point, even from a feather touching you too fast, you die.
Fallout's Pen-And-Paper inspired origins told it to address that with the Limb System
where you have one main health bar and you spontaneously die when it runs out
but your Arms, Legs, Head, and Torso have their own health bars that cripple your limbs to reduce your accuracy/run speed/ability to use 2handed guns when they hit zero.
same goes for the enemies. You can shoot their legs so they can't flee. shoot their arms so they can't wield guns. shoot their cocks for extra damage.
Stimpaks applied via a button in the PipBoy inventory screen or the Aid menu tab will heal your HP but Stimpaks applied to a crippled limb on your PipBoy's status page heal that limb's HP specifically.
And in Hardcore Mode, only a Doctor's Bag or the drug Hydra can instantaneously cure your crippled limbs.

We saw Littlepoop survive being near a rocket explosion with nothing but one crippled leg that swiftly healed. Sure it needed to be held together by a friend while a healing potion fixed it in seconds, but this telekinetic cunt could easily do that herself.

How much of this videogamey bullshit is real in Fallout Equestria and how much of it is something Kkunt would turn up its nose at and tell Littlepip to insult?

Probably most of it since time already stops in this fic whenever someone's doing menu bullshit, repairing items in their inventory menu, checking their inventory in their inventory menu, talking/quipping/swearing/insulting a retarded enemy in the middle of combat, and so on.

Then again enemies in this fic also stop mattering/existing whenever the author gets distracted by Littlepip's looting and forgets the enemies still exist until the looting is done.

This story really should have restricted all videogamey bullshit to a character built for that. Some kind of Pinkie Pie-like initiate in the ways of cartoon logic and videogame logic.
In Fallout NV if your character gains the Jury Rigging perk he's able to repair anything with something vaguely similar to it. Buying a shitty 9mm and 50cal Sniper Rifle from a merchant, repairing the 50cal with the 9mm, and selling the 50cal back to the merchant for massive profit? That's easy to do in the game!

Considering the fic's liberal use of "Talking/menu-ing/repairing items Is A Free Action" I'm surprised Littlepoop isn't literally Saving and Loading her game and automatically reloading from an earlier save point whenever she dies like it's fucking Undertale/Edge Of Tomorrow/Groundhog Day/Every shitty fanfic that's ever ripped off Groundhog Day.

Ten thousand dicks shitting in reverse!

I can't think of anything I can compare this unique fuckup to- Wait, yes I can!

Hey, remember those old Road Runner cartoons where nobody falls off a cliff until they've noticed the lack of ground beneath them? Imagine a sniper who goes prone atop a cliff and crawls off it, constantly shooting at foes while rolling around in the air on invisible floor. Now that's deadlier than an abacus! THIS IS A REFERENCE TO DRAGON QUEST HEROES 2 AND THE FAT FUCK'S COMMENT ABOUT THE ULTIMATE WEAPON AND AN ABACUS

Illogical bullshit like this...

You can ignore it, like all those Family Guy skits where normally-invincible cartoon characters get maimed horribly

You can crack jokes about it (Like in Who Framed Roger Rabbit where Roger Rabbit is able to easily slip into and out of his cuffs whenever it's funny)

or use it in a serious "He's starting to believe!" kind of sense, like in Space Jam where that black guy stretched his arm impossibly far during a basketball game. It's the end of a character arc where he learns to... try really hard at basketball and believe cartoons are real or something.

Every time we all talk about a way this story fucks something up, a new learning opportunity is revealed.

It might seem overly specific at times, but "Don't fuck the uniqueness of Deathclaws up while trying to make them deadlier" has a good general lesson (Don't lose what makes elements unique when adapting them) hidden within.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286949
286951 286967
1603850492617.jpg
>>286872

Anyway, when the next scene opens, Littlepoop has apparently found Velvet Remedy. Where or how is not explained, but apparently she is in a boxcar. It's unclear whether Velvet recognizes LP personally, but she recognizes the barding she's wearing as belonging to Stable 2, as well as her PipBuck (I'm beginning to suspect that the PipBucks are indeed something specific to Stable 2, or at least to the stables in general).

To the author's credit, it appears the earlier scene where LP was watching Velvet and planning to rescue her was indeed a setup. Velvet is here of her own freewill and is working in the town, presumably as an entertainer. A rather half-assed debate between them follows. LP's point of view is fairly predictable: she still sees the world in black and white moral absolutes, and can't believe that Velvet would work for slavers. Velvet points out that LP just murdered a shit ton of ponies essentially in cold blood and isn't really in a position to judge anyone else's behavior. LP counters this with "well, they were baddies and they deserved to die," Velvet counters this with "there are honest workers here, how do you know you didn't kill any of them," and it just goes back and forth in this fashion for awhile. The long and short of it is that the heroic rescue that LP thought she was undertaking turned out to be a wash: Velvet does not need or want to be rescued, and has no intention of returning to the Stable.

Velvet then tells LP about a group of ponies she encountered shortly after leaving the Stable. They had been attacked by some sort of unidentified creature.

>There was only one survivor, badly wounded, missing a leg. So of course I galloped to his leg.
She galloped to which leg? The meaning here is ambiguous; she could be saying that she galloped to the wounded pony to tend to his missing leg, or that she galloped off to find the leg itself, presumably so it could be reattached or something. To anyone who thinks this sounds absurd, I'll remind you that in literally the last scene we saw a severed leg being reattached with a healing potion, so I'm just following the author's own logic.

She took care of the wounded pony and brought him back to the camp. The camp turned out to be a slaver camp, and she found a number of ponies in need of medical assistance, both among the slaves and the slavers, and she took on a role as medical something-or-other, because I guess that's what she originally wanted to do but never did for some reason. This doesn't really make a fuckton of sense, since it sounds like the Stables just hand out jobs on the basis of whatever is practical and whatever is needed, and one would think that Velvet would have been more valuable as a doctor than as an entertainer. But who even cares at this point.

The same dreary argument about ethics resumes. LP keeps insisting that the slavers are bad guys who shouldn't be helped, and Velvet adheres to her "a healer should heal everyone no matter who they are" mantra. It starts getting silly when it becomes apparent that Velvet actually seems to agree with Littlepoop's view of slavery, but she can't abandon the slaves because they need medical treatment and...honestly, it's easier if I just quote her:

>You don’t think I know that? But else can I do? I’m just one pony. And I will not do nothing! Would you have me just trot away from suffering ponies because they have the misfortune of being captives of slavers?

First of all:
>But else can I do?
But what else can I do.

Second of all:
>And I will not do nothing!
This is a double negative.

Third, the logic here is just asinine. This story's only long-running plotline up until now was the mystery of where Velvet Remedy disappeared to and why. The impression I had was that Velvet was something more than just an entertainer; that she had some kind of mission or destiny that she needed to fulfill, and she left the Stable in order to fulfill it. Maybe she found out she had some kind of special gift or power, or an ancient god came to her in a dream and told her she had to fight an evil wizard or something; who knows. Point is, it felt like she was going to end up being interesting; I assumed that her reason for leaving the Stable was going to end up being the main plot of the story, and chasing after her would be how Littlepoop would get mixed up in the fight to save ponydom, or whatever the story was exactly.

However, from what we've learned here, it seems that Velvet is a perfectly ordinary pony, unremarkable beyond that she was a local celebrity in the Stable for her singing. She appears to be motivated by a generic do-gooder impulse to be a healer, and left the Stable to pursue it. She has a moral code similar to Littlepoop's, but appears to be either extremely wishy-washy about adhering to it, or else the author is trying to present her as cynical and jaded (if this is the case he has mostly failed; she just comes across as wishy-washy so far). Either way, she seems morally opposed to what the slavers are doing, but seems to feel that she can't really do anything about it, so she continues to heal their injuries and also sing in their saloon for some reason.

Anyway, next LP tries to convince her to join in her takedown of the slavers. Velvet's response is basically that there are too many of them for two ponies to defeat (which I've been saying since the beginning), and Littlepoop explains how this isn't a problem because she is an unstoppable one-mare army, plus she's got Calamity, for whatever that faggot is worth. Other factors working for them, like the slavers being dumber than shit just like the rest of the enemies she's faced, and their number seeming to fluctuate based on however many of them the author needs for a scene, and that no matter how dire or ridiculous the situation gets the author will probably pull some deus ex machina bullshit out of his ass to ensure they win anyway, is not mentioned.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286951
286952
1604422043210.jpg
>>286949

>Even if we did, then what? Did you also bring food enough for the slaves? Water? We are many days trot from the nearest friendly settlement, and many of the poor ponies I have been tending are in no condition to make such a trip. Some of them are foals!
I'm assuming the nearest friendly settlement would be New Appleoosa. If this is the case, I'm not sure what the hell she's talking about here. Littlepoop and Calamity made it here within the space of a single day, and didn't seem to require any extra provisions.

>“Of course I thought it through,” I stammered a little crossly and mostly honestly. “I have a train!”
This statement makes the previous one even dumber. As I've detailed extensively, the train is not really a train, it's a bunch of train cars being pulled by stallions, who are walking. Thus, the length of the journey by train is going to be roughly the same as walking it. In fact, if you consider that in addition to the train cars, the stallions are also pulling a 600 ton useless locomotive up the side of a goddamn mountain, walking is probably faster.

Since the train will be going downhill on the return trip, we can assume that it could be ridden without being pulled, which is probably what LP is getting at here. However, based on what we've read so far, Velvet's claim that the distance between New Appleoosa and Old Appleoosa would take "many days" to trot is complete nonsense. If a team of stallions dragging an entire train (plus a 600 ton useless locomotive) behind them can make the journey in a few hours, a group of unencumbered ponies traveling at a brisk trot could easily do the same. Even if you consider that the slaves would be weak, and many of them would be children, it still shouldn't slow them down to the point that they'd have to worry about starving to death along the way.

Also, I would like to once again point out that we still don't know what became of the train, or if it would even be willing to help them, or even if LP and Calamity will still be welcome in New Appleoosa after they went in and massacred its most significant trading partner. In all likelihood, the ponies pulling the train took off running the second the shooting started. However, in any case, none of this actually matters, because the mention of the train is enough to convince Velvet to do a complete 180 on everything she just said and join Littlepoop's rampage. Page break.

Before we continue, I'd like to delve into Velvet Remedy a little more. As I said, my earliest impression of her was that she had left the Stable to pursue some kind of secret mission or quest or something that would factor into the greater story, but so far it's looking like that isn't the case. While we still don't know exactly why she left, she's stated that she has always had a desire to be a "medical pony." We can assume for now that she left to pursue this goal, and that she wasn't fulfilled doing whatever she was doing in Stable 2, which appears to have been mostly singing. Again, it seems odd that the stable would assign her this rather frivolous role instead of a medical role, particularly if that's what she'd rather be doing.

What makes it even weirder is that as soon as she leaves the Stable, she immediately falls in with this band of slavers and becomes their healer. She is not being forced to stay with them, but at the same time she clearly has an ethical issue with what they are doing. Initially, the reason she gives is that a healer has a duty to heal, without regard to how good or evil the injured pony is. This is actually a rather common trope for a healer-type character and I'm fine with it in and of itself; however, she doesn't really seem to adhere to this conviction. As LP points out, she is not only helping the slavers to continue their work, the healing she provides to the slaves themselves mostly just patches them up so they can go on to lead miserable lives as slaves.

It would have probably worked better if the author had just made Velvet into a cynical, worldly character who uses her powers of healing for profit or simply because she has a talent for it, without really caring about who her patients are personally or about the moral issue of slavery. As it is, the author attempts to give her a strong sense of compassion as a motivation, but at the same time has her compromise her own ethics in ways that don't feel justified or even necessary. LP essentially calls her out on this, and her response is literally "I'm just one pony, what can I do?" This is a weak enough answer on its own, and it's made even worse by some other factors at play here.

If the slavers were indeed keeping her prisoner, for instance, and forcing her to serve as healer, that would be one thing. She could simply be making the best of a bad situation, and getting whatever satisfaction she could from knowing that she was at least sort-of helping ponies, and that either way she didn't really have much of a choice. However, she not only stays with them and works for them of her own freewill, she also sings for them on her free time. For someone who finds the activities of these slavers so distasteful, she certainly seems comfortable enough with them.

The author seems to want us to see this character as someone with a strong sense of moral conviction rooted in compassion, who has difficulty reconciling her principles with the morally ambiguous reality she lives in. However, that is not how she comes across here. Mostly she feels like a wishy-washy indecisive twat who doesn't feel strongly about anything, and is willing to just do whatever for whoever. And even that doesn't make much sense, because a character like that would probably never have left the comfort and security of the stable in the first place. All in all she is shaping up to be a rather uninteresting character.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286952
286953
1603516269740.png
>>286951

Another thing I've noticed is that the author seems to want to explore some of the moral ambiguities of this world here, but he ends up mostly defeating his own point. The purpose of this conversation between Littlepoop and Velvet seems to be to contrast Littlepoop's black and white moral outrage with Velvet's more tempered and realistic perspective. However, it doesn't work. One reason for this is what I've already gone over: Velvet's perspective is neither tempered nor realistic, she's just making excuses for both the slavers and for her own participation in what they are doing, and they're not even particularly good excuses.

The other reason is because the author has already made the situation black and white by going out of his way to portray the slavers as irredeemably, cartoonishly evil. Much like the raiders earlier, they are not deep characters you are supposed to sympathize with; they are just cardboard-cutout villains who torture children for fun and profit and will kill anyone who gets in their way. This signals to the reader that we're not supposed to pity them; the author is basically just setting up another guilt-free murder for Littlepoop to carry out for our amusement. These guys are presented as the lowest of the low; they are just the villains with the black masks and the long sinister mustaches that we are supposed to boo and hiss every time they appear onscreen. They exist only to give the heroic heroine an enemy to vanquish; not only does LP have a right to kill them, she has a clear moral imperative to do it. She is supposed to kill them and we are supposed to cheer her for it, so it's confusing and frankly not convincing when the author tries to suddenly do a 180 and humanize them poninize, whatever. Again, I basically get what the author was attempting to do, but it's done very poorly. The whole thing just smacks of shoddy characterization and hack writing. You can do cheesy melodrama or you can do gritty realism, but you can't do both at the same time.

Anyway, moving on. After the page break, we join Calamity at the sheriff's office. The room is full of cages, and the cages are full of foals. Littlepoop and Velvet enter the room, and Velvet tells the little ponies that they will be going on a train ride inb4 Auschwitz joke. As they let them all out of the cages, Calamity yells that they have company.

>Velvet Remedy shot me a worried expression, like the hope I had built up in her was shattering. Moving deftly, I snuck up to the nearest window and looked out. Two ponies were striding up toward the sheriff’s office, clopping though the small river that the street used to be. A third watched over them from the top of a boxcar, then leapt down to walk between them. The two on either side wore heavy battle saddles, but it was the figure in between that caught my attention.
As ever, the positions and movements of the enemies are completely unrealistic. Littlepoop and Calamity are able to move freely about the town when they need to, and whenever the author wants them to fight someone, an enemy just suddenly appears out of nowhere. Nothing that has happened in this entire chapter feels even remotely believable.

>She was tall, her body exuding a graceful malice and strength I’d not imagined in any pony. In truth, she hardly looked like a pony at all. From her hooves to the long, spiral horn on her head, to her… wings! A winged unicorn!
I'm assuming this is going to be the boss fight.

>The voice of the mysterious, dark mare carried majestically through the torrent. “We will give you just one chance to come out. Do so. Or We will bring the whole building down on your ears!”
If she is capable of doing this, is there any particular reason she didn't get involved in the fight from the beginning? Are we supposed to believe this rag-tag group of slavers had an alicorn just sitting in the back room somewhere, twiddling her thumbs hooves, whatever while Littlepoop fought her way through the grunts? This is some next-level hackiness right here.

Anyway, Littlepoop has brief moment of spiritual crisis, since holding alicorns in reverence appears to be part of her religious views, but she gets over it when she realizes that no goddess would ever support someone as meany and icky-pants as these meany icky-pants slavers. Meanwhile, Calamity attacks the new group. He manages to kill one of the henchmen, but the alicorn cackles maniacally and swats him away.

>“Oh… now isn’t that touching!” The mare turned to the slaver pony still flanking her as I glided Calamity to safety. “Kill her.” The slaver pony trotted forward, the many barrels of his battle saddle pointed at the age- and weather-weakened wooden structure.
I'd like to note here that, once again, the physical placement of these characters in real space is confusing. The scene that was set up here is Calamity on the roof of the sheriff's station, with LP and Velvet inside. The black alicorn appears, and demands that they all come out. Littlepoop feels compelled to obey, but resists; thus she and Velvet and the foals are still inside the building. Then Calamity attacks, and is thrown off towards the minefield, while LP uses her magic to catch him. How is LP seeing what's going on through the solid walls and door of the building? When she "glided Calamity to safety," where did she put him? This isn't the first time that details like this have been ambiguously treated, and it makes these action scenes difficult to follow.

>Behind me, I heard Velvet Remedy telling the foals, “Lay flat, all of you. As low as you can!”
While we're on the subject of ambiguous details, does Velvet live in this town or doesn't she? Seems like if she did, she would be well aware of the alicorn and would have probably mentioned to Littlepoop that her involvement might create a little snag for them.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.286953
286954 287316
1604423378187.jpg
>>286952

>Only belatedly did I realize Velvet Remedy had not thought to place herself within the spell of protection she wove around the children.
Why? There's no reason for this that I can discern, beyond the author wanting to show us how noble and self-sacrificing this character supposedly is. It makes absolutely no practical sense, though. If Velvet is killed, which she is almost guaranteed to be considering that they are cornered and severely outgunned, the protection spell disappears and the foals die anyway. If she wants to save them, she should save herself as well. For that matter, she ought to just wrap the protection spell around the entire building and save all of them. It's clear that magic is just pure deus ex machina in this story, so I refuse to believe that there's any practical reason why she couldn't.

>The roar of the slaver’s battle saddle was nothing like the thunder of other guns, but akin to the fury of a dragon! Bullets tore at the side of the building, a great many punching through, perforating the front of the sheriff’s office! I dove to the floor behind a metal desk, feeling bullets slice the air just behind me and then ring against the metal as they tried to murder the desk.
Oh dear, it certainly seems that they are in a pickle. Though one has to wonder why, when LP was in an essentially identical situation earlier at the armory, the guards, who were armed with the same types of weapons, didn't do precisely what they are doing now. Particularly since she was sitting at the desk she used to block the door looking up shit on the terminal like a fucking autist; seems like firing a couple of blasts directly into the door would have made rather short work of her.

>I heard Velvet Remedy cry out. I heard her fall.
Oh dear, it's almost like this is what the author had planned from the beginning. Cue the dramatic music as the noble self-sacrificing character sacrifices herself nobly. Prediction: she's going to survive, but will be grievously wounded. As she recuperates, Littlepoop will visit her and tell her how impressed she was by her act of nobility and self sacrifice. Their bond will deepen, and maybe they will lez out a little.

Anyway, Littlepoop responds to the situation by pulling another one of her retarded magic tricks. She uses her all-powerful horn to dig up a bunch of landmines from around the slave cages and float them towards the attackers. The alicorn sees her doing this, but instead of using her obviously superior magic to, oh I don't know, stop her maybe, she simply puts a protection spell around herself and lets Littlepoop blow up another of her henchmen. Clearly the alicorn is just too hardcore to care if her subordinates are killed Grr! I'm a mean little pony!. Littlepoop notices that, while the protection spell shielded the alicorn from the blast, it did flicker a little, suggesting that she is not quite invulnerable.

>I wasn’t paying attention. My eyes were only for Velvet Remedy, who lay in a widening pool of blood. Three of the bullets had struck her, one only grazing but two sunk deep into her belly. As quickly as I could, I opened one of her medical boxes and pulled out a roll of medical bandages.
Cue sad, dramatic music. This faggot would be great at writing cheesy melodrama if he didn't also suck at it.

>The door of the sheriff’s office ripped off its hinges and went sailing into the darkness. “Go ahead,” she taunted, “throw your best spell.” No spell came. I had none to throw at her.
Other than the author's desire to use up literally every cackling bad-guy cliche in his arsenal on this one scene, is there any reason this alicorn keeps dicking around like this? Just blast the building to smithereens along with everypony inside and be done with it. This fight could have been over five minutes before it began.

Anyway, to save time, I'm just going to quote all of the alicorn's cheesy lines in one shot:

>“Oh!” she laughed as if she had somehow read my mind. “No spells? Well, aren’t you just a pathetic excuse for a unicorn!”
>“And here We were hoping that the great assassin who decided to assault Our town would at least provide Us with a challenge. We have been so utterly bored!”
>“Telekenesis again? Such a foal’s game.” She was trotting closer, but stopped several yards from the steps. “For the trouble you’ve caused Us… and worse, for wasting Our time with your patheticness, first We will kill your friends. Then have them chopped up into a nice stew. Which We will feed to you.”
>“…No, We think We will instead feed them to the foals, and make you watch!”
"And then after that We shall sic the dogs on you! And the bees! And the dogs with bees in their mouths, so that when they bark they shoot bees at you! Mwahahahaha!"
Good grief. Guys who wrote black-mask cowboy serials in the 1930s would even cringe at this dialog. Incidentally, "telekinesis" is misspelled, and "patheticness" is not a word.

Anyway, yada yada yada. Here's the short version: Littlepoop levitates a boxcar on top of her and kills her and she dies and the fight is over.

There is a footnote:
>New Perk: Organizer – You are efficient at arranging your inventory in general. This makes it much easier to carry that little extra you’ve always needed. Items with a weight of two or less are considered to weigh half as much for you.
The occasional faint glimmers of self-awareness this author shows about the absurdities in his story only make his refusal to address them that much more aggravating.

End of chapter.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.286954
286955
1821188.png
>>286953
Without spoiling things too hard, the alicorn introduced in this scene is essentially our introduction to one of the story's primary villainous factions. This faction is, in every appearace and regard, presented as incredibly threatening and dangerously intelligent. They're enough of a threat to justify nuking into oblivion.

Keep that in mind with regard to this alicorn and every alicorn appearance hereafter.
Anonymous
c9149df
?
No.286955
286958
>>286954
Double spoilery hint: they're """WORSE""" than the FO1 Enclave but also worse than the shitty jewed up FO3 Enclave.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.286958
>>286955
Nah. FoE's take on the enclave is awful for its own boatload of reasons that'll become relevant eventually, but the alicorns are mostly unrelated - they're Kkat's take on the super mutants.
Anonymous
c9149df
?
No.286959
6002293__safe_artist-colon-shiny-dash-dust_artist-colon-xavier12197359_rainbow+dash_pegasus_pony_bust_cross-dash-eyed_portrait_silly_simple+background_solo_tong.png
>>286956
Dude, I was shitting on the wannabe FEV-alicorn tossup. Which made me laugh so fucking hard remembering WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!!!!!
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286967
286970
florida man absolutism.png
By the way fuck that poison dart gun.
In MGSV I hacked the game to get a tranq-dart SMG with 500 drum mags and an infinite silencer. Underbarrel? Tandem warhead fulton launcher and smoke/stun gas canister. Will attach a Balloon to any human enemy and remove them from the battlefield. also releases thick gas that will stun any foe who breathes it in until the gas clears. I wish the fulton explosives were silenced.
This sidearm's so great, it makes tactical nonlethal infiltration a breeze. Between this and my rocket punch and my temporary invisibility field generator and my hacked hyper-stealthy sneaking suit, I honestly have no business carrying around my silenced automatic explosive-shell shotgun rifle with underbarrel flashbang launcher or long-distance long-barrel automatic silenced sniper rifle with flaming 308 bullets and an underbarrel railgun.
Wait a minute, I'm saying the wrong thing here.
WHY THE FUCK DO THESE SLAVERS OWN THE BLUEPRINTS FOR A POISON DART GUN?
If they have the blueprints, shouldn't they already build some tranq dart guns perfect for nonlethally capturing and enslaving ponies?
It's bullshit that Littlepoop just randomly finds exactly what she's about to need, when the author could have just turned these slavers into dangerous threats.
Give them thick armour and high-quality training.
Say they typically use nonlethal sidearms for enslaving/riot control while their main rifles are decently expensive yet freshly-produced in improvised gun factories and used for piercing armoured targets, the elderly, the sick and deformed, and suppressive fire.

>>286949
>Velvet points out that LP just murdered a shit ton of ponies essentially in cold blood and isn't really in a position to judge anyone else's behavior.
#BOOKMARK-PACIFIST

Don't mind me, just leaving a bookmark here for when this "Velvet doesn't see the world in black and white like Littlepip!" moment gets hilariously hypocritical and utterly false later on. God I fucking hate this character.

>Velvet says "Maybe some of the ponies you killed were nice"
"Maybe", says Velvet, so Littlepoop is able to dismiss what she says instantly.
Such shitty writing...
Has this fag never seen Spec Ops: The Line?
This scene would have more impact and worth if Littlepoop shot an enemy guard who looked like a baddie, but right after killing him she heard a scream. The pregnant wife of the guy she killed runs over to hug the dead guy as he bleeds out and all Littlepoop can do is watch because she has already used up all her health potions.
Right now, this is just a scene where Velvet pseudo-moralizes pretentiously at Littlepoop over the LITERAL SLAVERS who tried to kill her just because Littlepoop tried to put them out of a job and make them go hungry (or find alternative employment) by freeing their slaves.

In Fire Emblem, Henry was able to name-drop specific enemies you killed during the main campaign and humanize them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvtKbfLM-S4
Admire this writing for a second. Three conversations between two young-looking wizard soldiers. Henry's the joke character who giggles and cheers as he uses Dark Magic to fuck enemies up with darkness explosions and tentacles. Ricken isn't exactly a serious character either, since he's a boy wizard who hates when people think he's a helpless child and that's pretty much it.

>The vault wanted a singer more than a medic
Honestly it would be great worldbuilding if the author noticed how retarded it is that the vault wouldn't let Vulva do medic stuff ever even though she gained her cutie mark when singing to some dying poner.
Put effort in to show your vault is this pro-celebrity anti-service in other areas, too.

>And I will not do nothing!
Should have said "And I will not stand idly by when there are lives I could save" because then it's technically not a double negative and it sounds cooler.

Also why is Velvet defending her "Heal the slavers and sing smooth jazz for them" antics by saying "I wanted to heal the enslaved"? How can she justify healing slaves if it means healing the slavers and serving them? It's not like the author thought to have her infiltrate this place with a "Free the slaves and sabotage everything" plan in mind.

>Did you also bring food enough for the slaves?
This is stupid. Littlepoop and Calamari hitched a ride on a train from New Appleoosa to Old Appleoosa to get here in under a day. They could easily smuggle the slaves and Vulva onto the train to get back to NA within the hour... Right?
Come to think of it, why the fuck did combat factor into this plan at all?
Littlepoop and Calamari should have had "Get in silently, escape undetected with a ducklet-chain of slaves and foals and crippled sadsacks following you, get onto the train, get out" as their primary objective and "OH FUCK WE'VE BEEN DETECTED, DEFEND THE FLEEING SLAVES SO THEY CAN GET BACK TO THE TRAIN!" as their backup objective.
Honestly, this whole "fight da slavers" plot was so poorly thought out.
Littlepoop should have all of New Appleoosa (or at least the train) on her side and Derpy Hooves' daughter should have been captured so freeing her so Derpy will give them some awesome reward can be their primary objective.

Maybe if they wanted to get really cool they could say the Town Sherrif owns a helicopter Littlepoop can repair, so they can all escape in the chopper while the raiders search the train fruitlessly. Choppers are sick.

You're right about how much better a Doctor Asshole character would be in Velvet's shoes more like horseshoes haha
because Littlepoop's supposed to be this "perfectly moral heroine" bitch.
So she should "reignite the fires of hope in others" like any good hero does.
But when Velvet's this wishy-washy "I don't want to kill anyone, but I also want to heal absolutely anyone even if they're evil" bitch, she makes being Lawful Good look like a goddamn joke.
she compromises on her No Kill rule once later and then pretends it never happened. no character growth!
WHO'S THE HEROINE HERE, LP OR VULVAT?
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286970
286981 287299
ba8.png
>>286967
I worded the tranq dart shit poorly

Basically, Littlepoop picked this random building to loot because the author put schematics for a dart gun in it.

And he put dart gun schematics in it because he's about to add someone to the party with a retarded "No killing, but tranq darting foes so my teammates can kill them is fine" rule

But it would be so much neater (And less of a fucking absurdly convenient coincidence) if the enemy guards simply carried tranq-dart SMGs from the start in addition to regular weaponry.

Surely we'd all buy that pro slavers would see the value in using tranq dart guns and reuseable washable darts laced with some homemade sleep-inducing chemical extracted from... I don't know, something like equestrian mushrooms or cave fungus or some special "Moonflower" plant that only grows in the absolute darkness of underground farms.

The baddies would be spookier and less like random convenient walking loot piniatas if the gear they carried actually made sense for who and what they are, how much tech/how many resources they have access to, whether they have trading partners or not, and if they have anypony who can can use magic to bridge the gap between holes left in production even 200 years after the bombs fell.

Imagine a Unicorn Blacksmith who makes forcefields, and shapes them into specific molds. Now anything can be poured and shaped into the mold to create just about whatever he wants. He can easily produce gun parts, bullets, casings, and more. He can easily use his magic to create more molds for commonly-needed parts out of metal, so he doesn't need to spend so long keeping a forcefield up.

Look at this.

A homemade 3d printed 12ga shotgun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcNhas3See4

Now look at this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMS5-4Q4jNM This close-quarters 50BMG is not homemade, and I hate the stupid screw-cap it uses. I've never seen a gun with such a glaring design flaw. Holy shit. Holy dicks. Look at how long it takes to reload this fucking thing. This is dumber than muskets that fire wadded-up paper containing black powder and metal balls. Jesus. I get that it has to be that way to handle the power of the 50BMG on a budget, but at the same time if I have to look at this so do you. Holy fuck. Brandon Herrera can't make his dream 50BMG AK47 "AK50" fast enough.

Now look at THIS! Behold, some fucking weird shotgun shells that would surely give any Wastelander the edge in combat!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLvucgSedAM&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gujGsHuUh38

A post-apocalyptic world might sometimes resemble the wild west in fiction, but it wouldn't stay like the wild west for long. Some homemade gun factories would sell to the highest bidders (While saving the best shit for the community that protects them, their home, and their factory) and some companies with more manpower able to defend their own factories would sell to just about anyone. Shitty raiders with shitty guns would be no match for the good shit! Chaos will create the perfect environment to test new calibers, gun designs, and armour against wild animals and enemy threats alike! New and old manufacturing techniques will be brought back to arm those who wish to survive hell!

I understand why the "fantasy post-apocalypse" typically has incredibly scarce resources. But this would only kick humanity back into the hunter-gatherer era until a new agricultural and industrial revolution begins creating small well-defended bastions of civilization that can expand over time and enslave/torture/crucify/lethally punish any law-breakers.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.286981
>>286970
But wait! How could a unicorn create without materials?
I know how any Unicorn could get materials! Just turn their horn's laser on any quarry or mine to get what they need! You wouldn't even need to be like Rarity the magical gem-finding unicorn, though it would certainly help if you had the help of someone like that.

Or the summoned ghost of someone like that.

Or a fragment of the soul of someone like that, trapped in a statuette and giving you a constant buff to the stat most relevant to the soul fragment trapped within the statuette (oh wait, Littlepoop has that Statuette she picked up earlier!)
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.287299
>>286970
>I understand why the "fantasy post-apocalypse" typically has incredibly scarce resources.

Oh jesus. Don't even get me started on how utterly this story fucks itself by making resource scarcity a major plot point.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.287316
287327 287355
1595697881147.png
>>286953

Alright, I need something to distract me from the fucking election, so I have decided to take out my rage on this shitty fanfic from almost a decade ago. Prepare your anus, k "I just found 500,000 extra Biden ballots in my asshole" kat, because there will be no fucking quarter today.

Chapter Eight: Derailed

Today's fortune cookie:
>"Something tells me this isn't a circus act."
These things keep getting vaguer and vaguer. I'm still trying to figure out what the one from the last chapter was talking about.

>Blood.
>It washed around my hooves, splashed against my legs, carried by the river that was Mane Street.
>I was standing in the middle of the river, and it was full of corpses.
My stars, but this sure is edgy. Also: I'm sure the author couldn't resist throwing "Mane Street" in there, but would LP really know the names of the streets? She's only been here a couple of hours, and she's spent most of that time running around in the rain killing guards and looting random cabinets. I'd have probably gone with "the mane drag" or something to that effect; it still conveys the same idea using the same pun, but it's more general.

Anyway, at the end of the last chapter, Littlepoop lost consciousness after dropping the boxcar on top of the alicorn, and it appears that she's still unconscious and having some sort of a dream. The first few paragraphs of this chapter are just edge, edge, edge; nothing but blood and guts and dismembered torsos, and Velvet Remedy accusing Littlepoop of being a mass murderer and so forth.

Fortunately it doesn't drag on for too long. There is a page break, and Littlepoop awakens. Apparently the complete annihilation of Appleoosa didn't disrupt the traders' schedule, because she is riding in one of the passenger cars of the train, alongside Velvet Remedy. Velvet, you will recall, was gunned down in the previous chapter; however, she seems to have completely recovered, and is now tending Littlepoop's leg, which you'll also recall was severed earlier but reattached using potions or magic or some absurd bullshit like that.

Anyway, it looks like kkat's powers of deus ex machina have saved the day again. By some unspecified means, Calamity and the grievously wounded Velvet Remedy managed to get Littlepoop, the foals, and all of the slaves (who, the last time we saw them, were locked up in cages surrounded by a fucking minefield) loaded onto the train, which presumably waited for them and allowed them aboard. We don't hear anything about what happened to the rest of the slavers, or even if there were any more slavers. I'm guessing it was one of those "blow up the Death Star and the war is magically over" type situations, except in this case it's "drop a boxcar on the head alicorn and the slave colony is magically defeated."

>Speaking as though I would have suggested something awful was not, I decided, one of her more endearing personality traits.
I think this sentence just gave me cancer.

Anyway, instead of addressing any of the glaring logical issues with this outcome that I just mentioned, Littlepoop decides to ask about the locks on the slave cages. Who could have picked them, she wonders? Clearly only she, the pony with the bottomless saddlebag full of bobby pins and the magazine on lockpicking that she found, could possibly have the skill to accomplish such a stupendous feat. No, she isn't wondering about how they crossed the field of landmines surrounding the cages, or how the group of weak and malnourished slaves managed to make it back across the field of landmines once the cages were opened, or why the literal army of slavers they are fighting didn't try to stop them, or even how Velvet Remedy, who was lying unconscious in a pool of blood the last time Littlepoop saw her, was able to accomplish all of these tasks with two goddamn bullets lodged in her gut; no, all Littlepoop needs to know is how did they pick the fucking locks on the fucking cages when the only pony on earth who is able to pick locks was out of commission.

Well, just so you don't die wondering, Velvet opened the cages, although the author is pretty vague about how she does it:

>Oh come now. I'm not the locksmith you are, and I certainly do not have the level of telekinetic mastery that you showed -- most impressive, I should add -- but I am a unicorn! I can do basic levitation. Between your missiles and the mines, I was able to... bypass the need for lockpicks or keys.
So...she blew them up? She levitated the slaves out of the cages somehow? I really have no fucking idea what is even being implied here. I could probably sit and puzzle it out, but honestly I just can't make myself give a flying fuck at this point. Magic, is basically the answer; kkat waved his magical meat wand of deus ex machina, and now they are all safe and sound on the fucking train back to happy-land.

>The train rumbled around us. Glancing out my window, I saw that we had already traversed the desert and were clearly well on our way up the mountain.
I'm confused again. My understanding was that Appleoosa is at the top of a mountain. The ponies pull the train up the mountain to the town, and then coast downhill on the way back. However, now it's sounding like the journey might involve traversing mountains and a desert both ways. Velvet was saying earlier that it would take several days to walk the distance, and yet LP and Calamity made the journey in a few hours. They were traveling by train of course, but the train is being pulled by ponies, so the literal top speed it's capable of would be the top speed of the ponies pulling it. Honestly, though, fuck it; I just can't be fucked to care anymore. The distance between Appleoosa and New Appleoosa is as vaguely defined as everything else in this story.

Anyway, Calamity mentions that something is following them, something that can apparently fly, but nopony seems to know what it is. Meanwhile, the conversation drifts to other topics.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.287327
287332
1600093324293.jpg
>>287316

Velvet Remedy mentions how she always wanted to be a medical pony, and how she studied it and apprenticed for it, but she wasn't able to pursue it as a career because one day, her cutie mark appeared and it turned out she was destined to be a singer instead of a doctor. So, even though she clearly has enough medical knowledge to be useful as a healer, and even though survival in this world is priority #1 and one would expect that pursuing frivolous occupations like "pop singer" would be discouraged, particularly when the alternative is something that would be highly valuable, apparently the Overmare insisted that Velvet give up medicine and become a pop singer, because cutie marks. Yes, this autism is actually in the text.

We also learn why Velvet left Stable 2, and it turns out to be every bit as disappointing a reason as I was beginning to fear. More so, even. Originally I thought there was some reason for her leaving that would be central to the plot, like she was given a secret mission to carry out or some shit. As of the last chapter, I had downgraded that expectation: I assumed she left because she thought that her healing skills would be put to better use in the Wastelands than in the Stable. However, it turns out to be even more inane: she left because she wanted to be free. Yep, that's literally it; the most generic of all possible reasons for anyone to do anything. Her cutie mark is a songbird with its wings spread, and if her cutie mark isn't caged, then why should she be? The irony that she escaped her metaphorical cage only to end up working for ponies who put other ponies into literal cages seems to have escaped both Velvet and the author. Seriously, every time I think kkat's writing can't possibly get any more hackneyed he finds a way to surprise me.

Anyway, there is a page break. We are told that the ponies have pushed the train up over the peak of the mountain, and it is now on a downhill so they can jump on and coast. I think I'm beginning to grasp how the author is thinking about this. Even though the train is inoperable and must be pulled, he seems to believe that simply because it's a train it's going to move faster than a group of ponies (not pulling literally hundreds of tons of weight along with them) would be able to travel on hoof. We don't even have an approximation of how far it is from New Appleoosa to Appleoosa, but I think the author is treating it as a journey of several days walk, and a few hours by train. This makes absolutely zero sense for reasons I've already extensively detailed, but at this point it's easier to just accept his definition of reality and move on.

For some reason the text doesn't go into, the train cresting the mountain peak seems to be a prime opportunity for Calamity to see if he can get a look at whatever is following them. Velvet Remedy also goes off to take a shit or something I guess. Anyway, after a time, Littlepoop notices that Velvet has been gone for awhile, and begins to wonder if she got lost.

>I chuckled as I realized that, if I ever got lost on a train, my PipBuck's automap spell would guide me. Poor Velvet, however could she find her way on a train without it?
My hatred for this author burns with the heat of a thousand suns.

Also, it seems, Littlepoop had tried to give Velvet her PipBuck back at one point, because I guess she's still carrying it around somewhere in her infinite-capacity saddlebags, but Velvet didn't want it. She seems to view it as a symbol of slavery or something, she even describes the stable and the PipBuck as a cage and shackles respectively. I'm going to quote her actual line here, because the irony is just staggering:
>I escaped that prison, I will not wear its shackle. No matter how gilded a shackle it might be.
Once again, if the author is in any way aware of the irony here, he doesn't show it.

Anyway, as LP sits meditating on this, suddenly she hears gunfire and screaming. She tries to calm down the foals, and then Velvet returns. A moment later, one of the train ponies bursts in and announces that a slaver ambush is underway.

>What?! How could they have gotten ahead of us?!
A better question would be: how did you even get away from them in the first place? I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one. Let's back up and take a close look at everything that has happened recently:

First, LP and Calamity board this train back in New Appleoosa. It carries them across an unspecified distance to Old Appleoosa. Before it arrives, they disembark. LP enters the town alone, with Calamity staying behind to provide air cover. Meanwhile, we can assume that the train pulls into Appleoosa as scheduled, and that none of the ponies driving it are curious about why their passengers jumped off early.

A short time after entering the town, LP draws the attention of the slaver guards and they begin attacking her. She starts firing back, using her .44 magnum revolver and a combat shotgun, both of which make a fuckton of noise. This effectively blows her cover, and multiple guards begin coming after her, one of which has a flamethrower. Between the noise and the fire, it is safe to assume at this point that the entire slaver colony is now aware of her presence here.

The fight drags on for an indeterminate period of time, with an indeterminate number of slavers coming after her. At one point, Calamity begins dive bombing and takes out an indeterminate number of them.

Eventually, LP ends up in the armory, surrounded by an indeterminate number of slavers. The slavers, for some unknown reason, don't attack, but simply wait for her outside. She uses this time to read emails from strangers on a terminal and collect ammo. Then, one of the slavers blasts the door of the armory open with a missile. At this point, the other slavers who were surrounding the building have mysteriously vanished. LP is injured in the explosion, and appears to be unconscious for an indeterminate amount of time.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.287332
287357 287523
1600458754390.png
>>287327

The fate of the pony who fired the missile is left ambiguous; either she is taken out by Calamity or she simply disappears. Meanwhile, Calamity and LP sit in front of the armory, which despite having had a missile fired into it appears to be mostly intact, and spend an unspecified amount of time attending to LP's wounds. During this entire unspecified period, no slavers appear, despite the strong likelihood that the explosion would have drawn quite a bit of attention.

At this point they split up. After an unspecified search period, LP finds Velvet Remedy in an unspecified location, and returns with her to the sheriff's office, where Calamity is waiting. The foals are also in the sheriff's office, which LP and Calamity seem to have somehow guessed would be the case. At this point, they are attacked by an alicorn, who apparently is in league with the slavers or is their leader or something. Where the alicorn has been while all of this was going on is (you guessed it) left unspecified.

Littlepoop defeats the alicorn by dropping an entire boxcar on top of her. At this point, she loses consciousness and we no longer have a reliable narrative, however based on the current situation we know the following to be true: the slaves were released from their cages, the foals were released from the jail cells, and they all boarded the train along with LP, Calamity and Velvet.

Now, here is what we don't know: how many slavers were left alive after the fight with the alicorn concluded, exactly how Velvet and Calamity managed to get the slaves and foals out of the cages and onto the train, what the train has been doing for all of this time, and whether or not Calamity and Velvet encountered any opposition from the slavers while attempting their escape. From what we know, however, we can try to make some educated guesses:

>how many slavers were left alive?
Since we can't even approximate how many of them there were in the first place, this question is impossible to answer. However, from what we've seen, these slavers can appear and disappear at will, whenever and wherever they are needed for a given scene. We can therefore conclude that they reside primarily in an alternate dimension, and are capable of some form of teleportation that allows them to enter and exit normal reality at will.

>how did Velvet and Calamity manage to free the slaves?
We are told that Velvet did something to the cages; it's not clear what. For the sake of simplicity we'll just say she forced them open somehow. More pressing is the issue of how she was able to get near the cages and open them without being attacked. Earlier, we were told that the cages were surrounded by a field of landmines. This, combined with the presence of guard patrols, prevented Littlepoop from approaching the cages and opening them herself. Thus, we can conclude that either the landmines or the guards were no longer a problem at the time that Velvet approached. Since landmines tend to stay where you put them, and since we have not heard that they have been moved (other than the four that LP pulled up and used in the fight against the alicorn), we are going to assume that it is the guards who were no longer a factor at this time. Thus, the only plausible scenario is that, after the fight with the alicorn, the remaining slavers receded into their alternate dimension, thus leaving Appleoosa temporarily unoccupied. Velvet was thus able to tiptoe around all of the landmines, open the cages somehow, and tiptoe back across the landmines with all of the slaves in tow.

>what has the train been doing?
Since we have not been told otherwise, we can assume it did what it came here to do: unload whatever cargo it was bringing to Appleoosa, and possibly load up whatever cargo it is bringing back to New Appleoosa. Apparently, the ponies operating the train thought nothing of the gunshots and explosions they heard all around them, and simply went on about their work until the fight concluded.

>did Velvet and Calamity encounter opposition while doing all of this?
As explained above, freeing the slaves would likely have been a time consuming process. Velvet was also badly wounded (she was shot in the stomach twice and grazed by a third bullet), which would have further slowed her down. In addition to getting the slaves out of the cages, she also would have had to corral them onto the train, explain to the train ponies what was going on, negotiate for their safe passage back to New Appleoosa, and transport the wounded and unconscious Littlepip onto the train. If there were any slavers left in the town, it stands to reason that they would have tried to stop her. We are not told of any further conflict with the slavers, so we shall assume for now that they didn't. Thus, we can assume the slavers were all in their separate alternate dimension during the unspecified time period in which Velvet was getting the slaves onto the train.

Based on everything above, along with some other details we've covered, like the fluctuating distance between Appleoosa and New Appleoosa, or that a team of ponies traveling on hoof pulling about 1000 tons of weight behind them can somehow move faster than a group of unencumbered ponies also traveling on hoof, we can draw one very simple conclusion: the laws of physics as they are conventionally understood do not apply in the world of Fallout: Equestria.

So, Littlepoop's current question is now much simpler to answer:

>What?! How could they have gotten ahead of us?!
Easy. The slavers, along with the raiders and probably every other enemy that will appear in this story, live in an alternate dimension and can wink in and out of reality at will; they can magically appear anywhere the author decides to put them. This is not reality as we know it; this is a crummy world of plot holes and spelling errors, the product of an imagination warped by video games and female hormone supplements. Logic does not apply here.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.287355
76b.jpg
>>287316
what the fuck is kkunt trying to say here?
"Speaking as though something awful I said was normal is one of her good traits"?
"Speaking as though something awful I said was normal is NOT one of her good traits"?
"Speaking as though I was going to say something awful isn't one of her good traits"?
"Ignoring how I said something awful is a good trait of hers?"
Kkunt is a retard.

>between your missiles and the mine, I was able to improvise
Is this fucker claiming Vulvat used landmines/missiles to blow the cage door open?
I get that in Fallout you can throw Cherry Bombs to bypass the need for lockpicks. But Cherry Bombs are small. Landmines and Missiles are not fucking small! And those cages were bar-cages! Any missile that could fuck locks up would fuck up everyone inside the cage, too!

Fucking hell, I hate how whenever the author wants something to happen and doesn't know how to write it in a satisfying sense-making way, he just uses page-breaks to skip to when it's already happened.

Also, "Convenient Hero Unconsciousness" is lazy writer 101! Fuck this lazy writer in the eyeholes! Step one, your OP protagonist does some insane bullshit feat like crushing a Death Star absolutely using the force.
Step two, your protagonist passes out because "he pushed himself so hard" or relied on his obligatory superpowered evil side or some bullshit like that.
step three, timeskip to later so some OC can explain to your OP protagonist how he saved the day and helped the good guys win the war the author was too lazy to write in full.

>cutie mark retardity
Remember how in early FIM, ponies would get depressed/go psychotic whenever they couldn't do their Cutie Mark talent's role?
You'd think that in a long-term multi-generational bunker miles underground designed to survive no matter what happens to the surface would take every precaution to preserve the physical and mental health of its ponies.
Hell, I'm surprised the Stables don't have vr "Job Simulators" for ponies born with cutie marks that are difficult or even completely impossible to perform within a vault.
then again I'm also not surprised because there are no ponies who play the classic VR game Job Simulator in Fallout which means the author knows nothing about it and therefore couldn't rip it off.

At this rate I'm surprised Littlepoop didn't meet and befriend a depressed Pegasus friend early on who hates underground life because "There's no room to fly down here" even though ponies built this bunker and would logically consider making some places for fliers and stuff-levitators and magic-practicers.
But I'm also not surprised, because if Littlepip's Obligatory Pegasus Friend was from her Vault, it would get in the way of all the generic tacked-on under-written over-indulgent bullshit that makes Calamity such an annoying, mediocre, and generic character.

Honestly when I first read this fic I started to suspect a twist where the whole thing would turn out to be a DND game played by the CMCs and Spike.
Spike is the Game Master because of something I won't spoil

Calamity is Scootaloo's character because they are both orange pegasi, both are RD-loving waifufags, and both are pretty one-note as characters.

Littlepip is Apple Bloom's character. She knows nothing of magic besides telekinesis so she focuses on raw psychic strength even though other spells would help the party more. She often seems to forget she even has telekinesis. She wants to be the hero in an edgy world so whenever she's about to lose or die she bitches at Spike and begs him to make the game easier for them.

Velvet Remedy is a Stupid Good retard because she's Sweetie Belle's character and she thinks this is how you're supposed to play Lawful Good characters: By never killing and always being as foolishly and self-defeatingly generous as possible, even if it harms your ability to do good and survive so you can keep doing good.

A certain faggot in armour we'll eventually meet is another of Scootaloo's characters, because she got tired of being one bland boring one-note guy with a gun and begged to be allowed to make another bland boring one-note guy with a gun but with a different stat spread. Also her knowledge of Apple-related names is severely limited because she can't remember any of AB's relatives.

But hey, that's just a theory.

A "It's all a game" theory!

And you know your story's a fucking disaster when "and then it was all a dream/game/book" or anything else like that would drastically improve the story by undoing all of its insults to Equestria/the mane six and giving it an ending that's better than what FE actually has.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.287357
287388 287534
1593283321622.png
>>287332

>Before I could ask, a grisly pony wearing slaver armor, spiked hooves coated in the blood of train ponies, broke into the passenger car and reared up, intending to end the life of another. I didn't have time to think; I just drew my assault rife and fired at him. The train pony ducked, his own gun swinging around and unloading into the slaver. I couldn't tell whose shot felled him.
Every time I think we've reached the edgiest possible edge, the pure literal edge beyond which no further edge can be achieved, we see that this edge looks out upon a new plateau of additional edge, each spawning its own edges ad infinitum.

>I turned to Remedy, levitating out the needler gun and fitting it with a marked clip.
She already built the needler gun? That was quick. She found the blueprints for it in the armory, but my understanding is that she still needs to source parts from Absolutely Everything back in New Appleoosa, and presumably after that it would take some time to put it together. She has not had the time or the opportunity to do either of those things. Here is exactly what the text has to say about it:

>But by far, the biggest prize in the lot had been neither a weapon nor ammo, but a set of schematics for creating a homemade gun that would fire poisoned needles! It would be silent, crippling and I was pretty sure I’d seen most of the parts required back in Absolutely Everything.
Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but I would interpret this as meaning that she has only the schematics to build a needle gun; not the parts required, and certainly not the gun itself. I find myself wondering which bodily orifice of which mythical creature she managed to pull this device from all of a sudden.

Ordinarily, this is the sort of thing would vex me, but since we now know that rhyme and reason do not exist in Fallout: Equestria, it becomes much easier to just accept at face value whatever bullshit the author decides to fling at us. Sometime between leaving the armory and ending up unconscious, Littlepoop built a needle gun out of parts she doesn't have, and also somehow obtained needles to fill it with. Why the hell not?

Actually I just noticed this bit while rereading:
>There were dozens of weapons, but all in such crappy condition that I was only able to salvage three useful ones out of them including a needler pistol, the repair assist spell of my PipBuck allowing me to swiftly tear down the worst of the weapons for the best of their parts.
This one of my biggest gripes with this. Half of the story is just this klepto wandering around picking up random junk and weapons, and despite the author's meticulous cataloguing of each item, only a dedicated autist would be able to keep track of everything she has. You would have to be like a 12th level primo-autismo to keep track of every item and know what each one does, and know the differences between similar items. Case in point: here, she picks up a needle gun. Then, literally two paragraphs later, she picks up blueprints for a second needle gun, which she will need special parts to build.

Now, maybe there's some difference between a needler pistol and a needle gun that I'm not aware of. However, the text doesn't make a distinction, and until someone tells me otherwise I'm going to assume they're the same damn thing. The only discernible difference between the two needle guns is that the one she found the blueprints for shoots poison needles, whereas the actual gun she found just shoots regular needles. Can we all see how this might be confusing to someone who isn't well-versed in the finer points ba dum tss of needle guns? To give a character two slightly different versions of the same thing, each in a different state of completion, and then reference one of them much later on and expect the reader to instantly know which one you're talking about?

Anyway, she gives the needle gun of mysterious origins to Velvet, who is squeamish about using it. Littlepoop, who I guess we are supposed to accept as some kind of battle-hardened badass now, admonishes her for this.

>Oh for Celestia’s sake. “You have to! You’re not going to survive out here if you aren’t willing to fight back.” I pointed towards the foals. “And neither will the ones you’re protecting.”
>Velvet gulped. “I mean... I don’t know how!”
>Oh! “It’s easy. Float it up, pointing this end at the bad guy. To shoot, pull this little lever back; that’s the trigger.”
>She nodded. Then looked to me as if hoping I would offer another option. “I’m not a killer. I... I don’t think I can!”
>“Learn to.” It was a harsh, even brutal, thing to say. But that was the Equestrian Wasteland.
Grr! I'm a mean little pony!

Seriously, though; whatever he's trying to do with Velvet Remedy's character at this point is completely lost on me. Anyway, there is a page break here, and then we rejoin Littlepoop.

>I stood my ground on a boxcar several cars forward of the passenger car that held Velvet Remedy and the foals, assault rifle at the ready.
So she has an assault rifle now too? When did she pick that up? Or should I even bother to ask?

>My E.F.S. compass was so full of red ahead of me that it was impossible to track individual opponents.
I was obviously just being facetious with the thing about the slavers being from an alternate dimension, but this is just getting ridiculous. This many slavers were still hanging around town after the alicorn fight, and yet they let one pegasus and one wounded unicorn load up a train with their entire population of slaves and escape? And then they somehow managed to get ahead of the train and set an ambush?

Seriously, kkat you god damn semen-slurping autismo tranny faggot, I am in no mood for this fucking bullshit today. I may not be able to do anything about the election fraud being brazenly conducted in my country, but if you don't produce a plausible explanation for this bullshit then BY GOD I will see you hang for your offenses against literature.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.287388
287392 287409
3497200 - Friendship_is_Magic LifeJoyArt My_Little_Pony Starlight_Glimmer.jpg
>>287357

>I heard an explosion above and behind me. Casting my eyes to the sky, I saw Calamity dodging and weaving through the air, a griffin in hot pursuit. The enemy aviator held a brush gun, a much nastier firearm than any I had seen so far, and occasionally slowed his pursuit of Calamity to fire a shot. Calamity, bless him, was not making himself an easy target, and costing the griffon distance with each failure.
So it looks like there are griffons involved involved in the slave operation now, as if an alicorn wasn't enough though I suppose if you dig far enough into any slave operation you'll find a griffon eventually. Incidentally, I notice the author uses "griffin" and "griffon" interchangeably.

Anyway, Littlepoop completely forgets about paying attention to her own fight in order to watch the dogfight between Calamity and the griffon and/or griffin. Then, she hears some slavers approaching, and then discovers that they used some kind of spell to make it sound like they were coming from the opposite side.

>Confused, I took a step towards the edge, looking down to see if they were racing up along the ground...
>...only to find three slaver ponies racing along the side of my boxcar, passing me! Somewhere, a slaver unicorn was aiding them with spells! A magic glow held their hooves to the side of the moving train.
It took me a minute to figure this out, but I think what's happening here is that the magic enables the slavers to run vertically along the actual side of the boxcar, not just run normally alongside it.

>“Luna rape you with her horn!” I growled
My, such language. Do you eat out Velvet's butthole with that mouth?

Anyway, the boxcar thing is kind of a neat trick I guess, but it seems like overkill. Also, it's not particularly good strategy, since presumably their hooves would make noise on the walls of the car. Ponies inside armed with guns could easily shoot through the walls and blast them away.

>The train was moving at a fair clop now. I raced along the roof jumping to the next car and skidding to a stop. I looked down between the cars, and quickly pulled my head back as the slaver spotted me and fired a mouth-held submachine gun into the air where my head had just been.
I was actually going to give the author some points here. Despite all of the logical absurdities that led up to it, it was actually shaping up to be a pretty first-rate train heist scene...and then I read the phrase "mouth-held submachine gun."

Anyway, the skirmish goes on a little more, and apart from some minor irritations it's well handled. Littlepoop uses her telekinesis ability to grab one of the slavers, and I have to say that I'm getting pretty tired of how overpowered this ability is, and also of how heavily the author relies on it. Anyway, she loses her assault rifle at one point, and is about to be killed, but Calamity swoops in and takes down the SMG poner. Another pony attacking her is decapitated by the griffon's wings as it flies by in pursuit of Calamity. I was about to call bullshit on this, but the text immediately clarifies that the griffon is wearing metal blades on its wings, so I suppose I'll allow it.

>Scooping up the decapitated pony’s whip, I kicked the rocking head off the side of the train.
Was this action necessary? I can understand taking the whip, but kicking the decapitated head just seems like gratuitous edge. Plus, it would probably roll off on its own.

Anyway, she hears the sound of the train ponies being attacked up front, and also of Velvet being attacked further back. She's not sure which way to run, but as luck would have it, Calamity lands and informs her that he has taken care of Razorwing (presumably the griffon with the razor wings, though I'm not sure how Calamity would have known his name). Littlepoop tells him to run and help Velvet, and she runs to the front to help the train ponies.

>The last survivor of the train ponies and I raced across the rooftops and dived down into the open door of the passenger car as twin beams of pink magical energy zorched the sky, fired from a white unicorn raider’s battle saddle. The train pony who had been with us seconds ago was now nothing but sparkling pink ash blowing away in the wind.
Zorched? Really? Anyway, if I'm reading this correctly it means that all of the train ponies are now dead, which means that there is nopony left who can pull it. So, if this train is able to mysteriously move again once it runs out of downward momentum I am going to be one pissed-off hombre.

They make it to the passenger car and find it empty.
>Velvet Remedy ran in through the back door, coming off the flatcar behind. Seeing the train pony, she motioned for him to head behind her. “Please, go meet up with Calamity! He’s at the caboose!”
Once again, I'm finding both the sense of time and the physical placement of the characters questionable. We don't really know how many cars are in this train or how they are arranged. We can assume that LP was somewhere in the middle when she and Calamity split up. My understanding is that Calamity went to the rear to where Velvet was, and LP went to the front where the train ponies were. Now, suddenly, LP is in the passenger car where Calamity went, and Velvet is...ahead of her? I think? Honestly this shit is giving me a headache.
Anonymous
c92c733
?
No.287392
Spoilered
>>287388
>I kicked the rocking head off the side of the train
Now this story is reminding me of a much better and more entertaining edgefest.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.287409
288361
Fo_e_velvet_remedy_cleaned_up_by_rhodarein-d4s1oxm.png
>>287388

>She was clearly shaken, more at having to take a life than the strangeness of the circumstances, but I suspected she couldn’t bring herself to focus on that. Not yet. I began to wonder if her occasional unpleasantness wasn’t part of some coping mechanism for dealing with the horrors of the Equestrian Wasteland.
So far I'm finding Velvet Remedy to be a half-baked and shoddily designed character, and the more time I spend with her the less I like her. Most of the characters we've met so far are fairly wooden but are not glaringly awful. Littlepoop is a pretty obnoxious protagonist, but I can't honestly say I've liked the protagonist of any of these fics we've looked at, so she's about average for me. She's at least better than Nyx. Calamity is a pretty generic lone cowboy kind of character; he's not memorable or interesting particularly but I don't actively dislike him. The rest have just been incidental side-characters or baddies.

Velvet, though, just has no core concept or anything holding her together. We see her through LP's eyes early in the story, and she's presented as having sort of a mystique to her. LP looks up to this mare and idolizes her, and then one day she cooks up this scheme and disappears, so LP goes chasing after her. Where is she going? Why did she leave? The character presents us with a mystery, and mysteries make us want to keep reading the story. As I said earlier, this initial mystery was probably the only thing resembling a central plotline that this story has bothered to introduce or even hint at, but it has fizzled out unsatisfactorily before we're even a quarter of the way through the book.

When we finally catch up to Velvet, she is working for the slavers, and it completely shatters Littlepoop's perception of her. This actually adds to her mystique; we now have an impression of a cold, worldly mare who has long since made her peace with the horrors of the Wasteland. At around the point that LP sees her performing in the saloon, I was imagining she'd turn out to be something of a Faye Valentine character, a cunning individualist who plays by her own rules and does whatever she has to do to survive. The author maintains this presentation of her right up until she and Littlepoop first speak; from the setup and the opening lines of the conversation, we are given the impression that Velvet's mature, jaded worldview is going to clash heavily with LP's naive moral idealism, and this encounter will prove to be both a growing up experience for Littlepoop as well as the basis for an interesting character relationship.

However, I made a fatal mistake here, one which I unfortunately find myself making over and over again with these fics, like Charlie Brown running after that goddamn football. I assumed that the author of this story was a writer, who would think like a writer and write like a writer, or would at least attempt to (soulpeener and even Peen Stroke did at least this much). Unfortunately, this is not the case; k "Glen and/or Glenda" kat is apparently just some video game autist who likes to scribble out weird fantasies about ponies disemboweling each other. As such, he clearly had other ideas in mind for Velvet than what I was assuming.

No sooner has the author created this interesting version of Velvet Remedy, than he wads her up, chucks her into the coffee can he keeps next to his PC to crap in during long quests, lets her sit in there for awhile soaking up the remnants of last week's tendies, pisses and shits on her a little more for good measure, and then takes her out, uncrumples her, and presents this new version to the reader. This character completely negates every impression she gave us before: she is wishy washy, indecisive, and most irritating of all, extremely self-contradictory.

Every value the author tries to give her is negated by her actual behavior. She is supposedly motivated by a universal compassion for others, but she voluntarily works for the slavers, whom the author portrays as violent savages beyond all redemption. She even sings for them. She values freedom and left Stable 2 because she couldn't stand the idea of being in a cage, yet she works for ponies who literally put other ponies in cages. She even sings for them.

Probably most baffling of all is this latest development. She appears to have never seen a battle at all; even Littlepoop, who has been in the Wasteland no longer than she has and is younger to boot, has to convince her to take up a weapon. She seems shocked by the brutality and savagery of the slavers during the fight, but these are the same ponies that she has been living with and working with for the past...however long she's been with them, exactly. She's personally witnessed their treatment of the slaves and the foals. She knows what they do for a living. Why is she behaving as if this is the first time she's ever seen this kind of shit? These are presumably the exact same ponies she was singing to in the saloon. She might even know the guy she just shot up with needles and left hanging from the ceiling. Yet it never feels like she has any connection to these slavers that would justify her insistence on staying with them and working for them, even though she wasn't being forced to and their activities clearly violated her professed morals.

There's just no glue holding this character together; she doesn't feel like anything really. She's just an empty, vaguely irritating presence floating around in the story. Her backstory and reasons for leaving the story are also bullshit, for reasons I've already gone over.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.287523
287528 287629
5c1eec3ccde75.jpeg
>>287332
Wait, are they leaving Old Appleoosa alive?! If there are any slavers left alive who saw the face of Littlepoop/Calamari/Vulvat, they will know exactly who stole their slaves and where to get them back.
If that stupid fucking omniscient "DJ-Pon3" knockoff blathers about this operation on her worldwide radio broadcast and says the slaves were freed by Littlepoop/Calamari/Vulvat, they will know exactly who stole their slaves and where to get them back.
If Old Appleoosa realizes the train arrived with the "heroes" on board and departed with the "heroes" and the slaves on board, they will know exactly who stole their slaves and where to get them back.

For fuck's sake, let's laugh at Littlepoop's game plan together
>sneak in with no intel
>don't even check the Pip-Buck Map or ask Pegafaggot to fly overhead and tell you what weapons are carried by guards and where.
>encounter slave-cages surrounded by mines
>realize you forgot to bring magical crippled-limb-fixing and energy-restoring healing potions to make getting all these slaves out easier
>decide the fucking Sherrif's Office
>which they somehow know the existence and location of
>must be a place to attack and store the orphans- i mean slaves in the event that the plan goes belly-up and gets buttfucked
>then littlepoop goes into a random building to check its terminal and steal everything that isn't nailed down including the Tranq Dart Gun Blueprints she's about to need
>then a fucking miniboss shows up and Littlepoop drops a cow on her without the need for a distraction or plan
>then littlepoop conveniently passes out like she's showing off her "Naruto who just passed out after fucking someone up in a Tailed Cloak form" impression so she can wake up once this clusterfuck is over.
>We don't know how much damage this operation did to Old Appleoosa or what state they're in and whether they can seek reprisals against Old Appleoosa or not, which is exactly where they are bringing all the slaves.
>It's really fucking likely that Littlepoop just started a long and bloody feud between these settlements, but she will fuck off into the sunset and move on to her next videogame sidequest.

Here's how I would have written this

>baddies arrive in New Appleoosa via train, point guns at everyone, and demand slave tributes in return for protection
>the fuckers take Dinky Doo, Derpy's child
>and they also take Crane, and some other ponies we don't know
>Derpy Hooves begs Littlepip to save her child and offers LP the best gun in her store if LP saves her foal AND REMOVES THIS SETTLEMENT'S MILITARY CAPACITY SO IT CAN NOT GET REVENGE
>Littlepoop's girlboner is ready, Calamity is hesitant. He knows how strong Old Appleoosa is.
>for a down payment, Calamity is given a tactical black body armour set, and Littlepip's shitty raider sniper rifle is replaced with the R-Dash-Nine Thousand semi-automatic 50 caliber sniper rifle with explosive bullets overstuffed with powder and magically silenced so the gun makes absolutely no noise at all when firing the bullets and when the bullets explode on impact.
>and for a job well done, Derpy is offering an automatic shotgun and 3 drum mags each containing 30 explosive shotshells! And the rifle's underbarrel attachment is a 3-shot 40mm grenade launcher that comes with 9 explosive grenades! It's even got some engravings in the stock, alchemical air symbols, so all Littlepoop has to do is shove magic into the stock and the gun can endlessly and silently fire copies of its usual projectiles made from air! It drains mana, not bullets, so it's a Wastelander's wet dream!!!
>Littlepip's girlboner is eclipsed by Calamity's literal boner. This is a fucking sick gun!
Calamity.yousonofabitchImin.jpg
>they sneak onto the train that carries slaves and soldiers back to OA as it leaves the station
>itbegins.jpg
>their goal isn't just to free the slaves, it is also to slaughter and cause mayhem and reduce this army's military capacity. If you see a vehicle/tank, you shoot a vehicle/tank. If you see a slaver soldier, you kill him. If you see a foal soldier, a scared little kid with a rifle, you knock him out nonlethally and take him to NA. If you see an Old Police Station where the evil Slaver Sherrif rules from, you rob its armoury and kill its leader or blow it up trying.
>therefore, this train must become NA's property.
>Calamari pulls out commando silent assassination skills from nowhere to foreshadow something 50 chapters later, stealthily stabbing every enemy in the train before it gets to OA while all Littlepoop can do is watch and sneak behind him and sometimes psychically choke out anyone who spots his Metal Gear Solid ass
>they take over the train completely 5 minutes before it returns to OA
>Calamari swaps out his normal silenced shotguns for The Big Boys, another battle saddle he stored in his videogame inventory. this one's for fucking shit up. He also puts on some tactical green night vision goggles.
Littlepip: Where did you get those?
Calamity: Uh... I saved up a lot of caps and bought them from an old survivalist badass
Littlepip: okay, I believe you
>Crane dons the enemy uniform of a choked-to-death slaver and sits at the train's head, waiting until the heroes return with more slaves
>good, it's raining. and also 9PM. cloud cover is thick, skies are black, visibility is low, it's the middle of winter, shit's about to go down.
>Littlepoop gives Calamari a stealth boy. He activates it, becoming a blur. He flies up and prepares to rain dual-firing double-barreled explosive super-shotgun shell hell on this settlement while invisible and damn near impossible to see, while Littlepoop finds a good hiding spot inside some building, and starts to scope the place out and snipe any anti-air emplacements that look important and kill any groups of guards who look like tempting targets
>everything's going great until
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.287528
>>287523
>everything's going great until
>the enemy's military shit is mostly destroyed, and Littlepip prepares to rob the place and shoot any enemies that get in her way
>while stealing everything from the Old Police Station because she's too much of a kleptomaniac to blow it up safely by sniping through the windows and detonating all the explosives in the armoury, she runs into the sherrif
>it's an old fat bastard in riot police armour and they fight for a while and use all the good shit from the armoury up on each other so LP doesn't walk away from this TOO well-armed
>eventually Littlepip beats him down, gets him on the ground, breaks his leg, starts choking him, until-
>screams
>he had his wife and daughter living in this building? and they want her to spare their papa?
>This fucker saw LP's face. If he doesn't die, there might be reprisals against Old Appleoosa
>littlepip has a moral crisis. can she really kill this man in front of these two?
>they pull out guns and point them at Littlepoop
>moral crisis over, Littlepoop has to kill this bastard's wife and child in front of him to avoid getting shot
>he's fucking pissed, and takes an unidentified drug
>now he's a dangerous boss battle that Littlepip has to fight. she gets her ass kicked for 30 minutes and comes close to dying several times but eventually the drug kills him
Littlepip thinking: An action movie heroine would probably give a really funny quip right now.
>Littlepip tries to say "Drugs are bad, mkay?" but bursts into tears at all the bloodshed and death she'd been forced to do. She's a murderer now! That wasn't a raider she killed, or some evil thug, it was a man with a wife and foal, which she also killed! She's a foal-killer now! Waaaaaah!
>tearfully, Littlepip loots his body and puts his durable riot armour on and moves on
>but the helmet is so oversized that she can fit her head and helmet inside, meaning she can now do magic while her glowy horn is hidden from view
>with a thousand-yard stare, she leaves the building and everything's on fire
>civilians fled long ago
>LP sneaks over to the one big slave cage and uses telekinesis to frisbee-toss the mines away, clearing a path as she fiddles with the cage locks. She's too sad to focus and her only remaining bobby pins break so she says "fuck it" and psychically lifts the cage up and takes it back to the train while shooting guards along the way
>Calamity can be overhead whooping and cheering and enjoying the mayhem like a fucking weirdo
>LP takes the cage back to the train, takes her helmet off so Crane recognizes her, and slams the cage down in the cargo hold because she's out of fucking bobby pins, besides this way any chained or crippled ponies don't have to follow her hoofsteps in a warzone, as she explains to Crane when he asks why she brought the fucking cage instead of freeing these ponies and having them follow behind her like faggy ducklings
>Crane uses the Train Whistle as a "get the fuck over here you fucking flying faggot" signal
Littlepip: Wait, that's a steam train whistle. How can you use it when the engine's got no fuel?
Crane: It's a magic train whistle, duh.
>Calamity returns to the train complaining that he had 12 more shots to fire
Crane: Ammo is scarce in the wasteland you fucking faggot!
Calamity: Oh, right *snaps out of it* Sorry, old habits kicked in
Littlepip: Old habits?
Calamity: *realizes his mistake* We are done with this conversation, let's go home and get that gun.
Littlepip: And save all of these slaves!
Calamity: *A thousand miles away, a haunted look in his eyes* Yeah, that too.
>and then
???: "Littlepip..." Her weak voice sounds like shit.
Littlepip notices one of the slaves
it's fucking Velvet Remedy
she looks like shit
>fade to black.
>when the screen fades in, Velvet is drinking purified water and eating veggies
>Littlepip had dreamed of this reunion for days. But now that the source of all her troubles was here in front of her, she didn't feel like fangirling over her singing ability any more.
Littlepip: I found you, fucker!
Velvet: Fucker? I think you're the fucker around here. You're comparing yourself to me? Ha! You're not even good enough to avoid killing.
Littlepip: I'LL MAKE YOU EAT THOSE WORDS! *Starts choking Velvet, has to be pulled off her by Calamity*
Velvet: Hmmph! *Turns away, and begins washing her dirty coat and mane with their final bottle of clean drinking water*
Calamity: You dense cunt! *Begins choking her, has to be pulled off her by Littlepip*

genuine spoiler note: see, because Calamity was raised by the fucking Enclave, it would make sense that they'd condition him to enjoy killing and slaughtering and destroying. Even though he quit because he didn't want to be a baddie and instead wanted to be like Rainbow Dash. Sprinkling this violent characterization in here makes him more of a character. It also makes him mysterious. The reader starts to wonder about his mysterious past, so when it turns out that he has a past, they aren't surprised and it doesn't come out of fucking nowhere

Since I gave Littlepip the "Noble hero but reckless naiive idiot, kind of a Luffy knockoff if he read a lot of books and thought that's how real life worked" personality and turned Calamity into a "seems like a nice cowboy, was once a cunt" kind of character, Velvet's personality is now a snooty stuck-up bitchy celebrity whore who's used to being treated like a princess and resents Littlepoop for murdering anyone, even slavers.
Have you ever seen Sweet Life of Zack and Cody? I was a kid once and I saw three-ish episodes of it once. Anyway she's London Tipton without the exaggerated retardity or endearing traits (at first).
Velvet becomes nicer over time but her "I left my vault to be free, I didn't think roaming slavers would enslave me and threaten to sell me to someone who pays extra for sexy virgins" backstory is called out for being pure retardity
also she knows first aid and becomes a proper medic after a lot of training and medical books from Derpy.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.287534
287535
5f2.jpg
Dart_gun.png
Fo2_Needler_Pistol.png
I decided to not have alicorns show up for no reason in my take on this chapter because beating alicorns this early on is stupider than how you effortlessly slaughter a deathclaw with your power armour in the first few minutes of Fallout 4's shitty demo opener.

>>287357
>needler gun
I had to look this one up. Fallout 2 has a Needle Gun, and in Fallout 3 you can find schematics to help you craft a needle gun with a slightly different name and uglier appearance. You're right, fuck kkunt for mixing these two guns together. Also, the author has no business mixing Fallout 2 and 3 weapons together when F2 took place in California and F3 took place 200 years later in fucking Washington DC.

>keeping track of weapons
I can't even keep track of the shit I have in Fallout NV. A while back since I rotated non-essentials mods in and out while playing, I'dd keep a word document to list all my resources, weapons, armour, etc.
so even if I don't have a weapon mod currently installed, meaning its files aren't in my game, I can still keep track of which of my characters have what.
There was a time when I considered making a Companion Mod to add a recruitable teammate into the game based on my characters, but... nah, they're too strong. Anyone who wants a strong companion just downloads OP cheat mods.

>efs compass to full of red to track individual targets
Fallout 3 came out in 2008 for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.
It had one ugly tiny compass-bar in the bottom-right to display enemies to your front and sides. However it could not display enemy height, strength, or distance because it's shit. It couldn't even tell you who's closest!
Its terrible location encouraged players to ignore 99.9% of the screen and just focus on the quest marker on your compass as it leads you by the nose like the literal subhuman cattle Bethesda fans are.

Ratchet Deadlocked came out in 2005 for the PS2 and never had this problem because instead of a virgin compass, it had a chad mini-map. It can display enemies, teammates, objectives, and the world you're on. I don't remember how it displayed enemy elevation and I think it displayed some incredibly strong enemies unusually so you'd know it's them.

Ace Combat Zero came out in 2006 also had a chad minimap, and it's easily readable even though you're in a fighter jet flying at mach fuck while fighting enemy jets/tanks/assorted other things. It also displays enemy elevation relative to your own.

GRAND THEFT AUTO THREE came out in 2001 FOR THE PS2 and still had a chad minimap, because compasses are cringe. This map shows you, enemies, quest objectives, and even businesses you can visit! Icons, on a map, to tell you where vital locations are! How novel. Fallout wouldn't see this feature until Fallout 4's release on 10th November 2015! And even then, it could only place icons to represent locations on its shitty "traditional" HUD compass.

The faggot author here is trying to invoke a feeling in you that you'd only have if you ever played Fallout 3 and were a massive pussy at the time. Because Fallout 3 is a shit game full of numerous respawning weak enemies that can barely tickle you if you're built and equipped correctly. Yes, the shitty compass marks often blur together by being too close together, but a story shouldn't copy that directly! That's just fucking retarded! Why would a 200 year old Pip-Boy and 200 year old HUD program see no innovation at all over 200 years? Why does this fanfiction prioritize being "Authentically Falloutish" over telling a good story?

Fallout only has an onscreen compass because other Bugthesda Engine games like Morrowind had it and Bethesda are incredibly lazy. Nobody competent works at Bethesda any more.
Come to think of it, with the incredible ever-rising success of the indie game market I don't know why anyone would willingly work for a "crunchtastic" triple-A corporation. "hurr durr steady paycheck" my ass, these companies will cut you loose the second they feel like cutting costs. Big franchises are dying and making your own good shit is the only sustainable future.

You know what? I want to give credit to every Pokemon fanfic I ever read as a child that DIDN'T port over the Set/Switch mechanic from Pokemon.
When playing Pokemon in "Switch mode" you get to switch your current pokemon for another one in your party whenever you defeat a pokemon and your foe sends a new one out
>be ash with pikachu out
>defeat foe's Marill
>a warning message says foe is about to send out Diglett and asks if you want to switch your pokemon
>say yes, switching to your Squirtle instantly

Obviously it makes no sense that you, a 10 year old child, would be able to instantly know what pokemon your foe is about to send out and instantly switch your pokemon to take advantage of this

"Set Mode" doesn't give you the luxury of letting you switch your pokemon after every enemy you knock out. So "Hardcore" players choose to play on this. while also limiting themselves with a ton of extra rules like the Nuzlocke rules. where you must capture the first wild pokemon you encounter in every new area you visit, and only one per area. also if your pokemon die they stay dead, put them in a PC box named "dead" and never use them in battle again.

>brush gun
fuck the author, this name means nothing to someone without extensive brush gun experience IRL or in videogames. some faggot out there assumed a brush gun was a homemade shotgun built around the long handle of a brush. or broom as they're called in some countries

>Calamity knows razorwing's name
I wish this was clever foreshadowing but it's not, and it's never explained. if the author wanted this to be a nickname it should have been something that's obviously not a name, like Knifey-wings or Stabby-wings. Razorwing sounds stupid enough to be an actual griffon name like Razorbeak

>zorched
is that a motherfucking Chex Quest reference?

>littlepip is sent between velvet and calamity over and over
authorfag is trying to eat his cake and fuck it too, the fucking tranny degenerate
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.287535
287567 287634
>>287534
I get that k "My idol is that tranny Jessica Yaniv who got away with physically abusing cuckservative reporters and sued a women's-only salon for refusing to wax the hair from her testicles" kunt is trying to write a battle scene that involves all 3 "heroes" at once, but is limited to Littlepoop's perspective. There are ways to effectively write a battle from one character's perspective. Having characters constantly send the Point-Of-View Character around the battlefield to see what everyone else is currently doing is not one of them!
IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO LIMIT THE STORY TO THE PROTAGONIST'S POV WELL, JUST STICK TO AN OMNISCIENT THIRD-PERSON PERSPECTIVE THAT PAUSES THE ACTION TO TELL YOU WHAT EVERYONE IS CURRENTLY THINKING EVERY FOUR PARAGRAPHS!
Oh wait no that's shit too
Author can't make Littlepoop's kleptotheocrat "Hurr durr may luna skullfuck you with her hornboner as I scavenge constantly" thoughts interesting.
Seeing constant repeats of Calamity's "yeehaw I'm a generic cowboy. I sure hope my pardner dont get hurt" thoughts and Vulvat's generic "ew ew ew I hate blood and death it's so icky and sad" thoughts would be extremely painful. for kkunt

keep a running tally of every time Vulva "I swear I don't kill and I swear I'm super merciful and kind, that's my one rule and it's why I use a tranq dart gun as soon as it's available and it's why I often give out the group's highly-limited medical supplies to bandits and raiders" Malady kills a pony without it personally affecting her no-kill rule in any meaningful long-term way.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.287567
1604591721801.png
>>287535
One more thing...
The author does that fanfic thing where because characters are important in the show, they need to be given important roles.
So the mane six became the heads of six different Ministries pre-war by Luna's decree. Their newfound responsibilities made them drift apart, but they weren't just faces for propaganda.
Aside from Fluttershy and Pinkie, the rest were absurdly good at it all, despite being completely unqualified for it. They were damn good at their jobs unless they were Pinkie or Flutters.
Every single "new thing" that's required to turn Equestria into a confused and contextless mashed-up vaguely-Fallouty stew is invented by Equestrians and their superior everythings.
Except for the Chinese Stealth Suit from Fallout 3, Ziggers invented that using invisibility cloaks and fire-enchanted sniper rifles because it countered Power Armourfags.

Twilight built a functioning superweapon as a side project, and literally made Alicornification Goo with no downsides one day after the nukes fell (oh if only her first test subject wasn't Trixie)
Rarity was this ultimate spymaster who'd send copies of illegal anti-pony books she was supposed to burn+ban to Twilight for safekeeping
Applejack invented guns and power armour, for fuck's sake, and this power armour is wanked so much harder than it was in canon. Fallout's power armour is just some thick steel and hydraulics, this shit gets automatic magical self-repairing parts with built-in auto-aiming miniguns.
Rainbow Dash formed the Shadowbolts and Pegasus Power Armour that would go on to be used by the Enclave.
Pinkie Pie formed a Secret Police to kidnap depressed/insane ponies and lock them in Bedlam Houses and torture them into smiling. Fluttershy formed a "Ministry Of Peace" that constantly begged Ponies to stop warring with the ziggers that attacked first and never stopped escalating the war and never stopped using Geneva Convention-violating gas weapons/fire weapons/etc and were only attacking Equestria because they religiously believed that the night sky is evil and the stars are evil aliens and Luna is their herald and also always Nightmare Moon and the one who will call the stars down to kill everyone. Ziggers literally nuked the world because they lacked jesus and can't be trusted with the white man's nice things.

INCREDIBLE SPOILER: Fluttershy also developed Megaspells, big devices that x1000 any spell put into them. You can easily turn them into ICBMs if you want a nuke ICBM or healing blast ICBM. Fluttershy doomed Equestria by giving healing ICBMs to both sides. Nobody stopped her. And Ziggers immediately stuffed their ICBM Megaspells with Nuclear-Ish Dark Magic Necromantic green "Balefire" so they could salt Equestria's earth and obliterate it completely. Watcher is Spike The Dragon except giant, he slept through the war thanks to puberty and woke up after thee nuking deciding to protect the Gardens Of Equestria, a red herring device that'll magically undo the apocalypse once you plug in six ponies with enough element of harmony moral value. Yes, even though Spike is a giant dragon who could easily crush some raiders and conquer some territory and rebuild a functional equestria colony that calls the six virtues the path to ending the post-apocalypse and making equestria great again. This device is never used onscreen because Littlepip, after killing the final boss, stumbles upon a weather-controlling machine and crawls inside and ends the post-apocalypse by breaking up the cloud cover upon "ascending to weather godhood" except she can leave the Single Pegasus Project weathermachine and bone her radio-whore DJ girlfriend whenever she wants even though the narration tries to spin this like a heroic sacrifice or ascension to godhood. Some Alicorns spared by Velvet decide to serve Velvet and become the combination NCR and Followers Of The Apocalypse even though the FOTA are a semi-anarchist pacifist nomadic group of healers with low supplies. Also because Littlepoop always has to be the biggest hero, she broke the cloud covering that coated the world and was made by evil pre-war pegasi out of spite for the world below when the entire pegasus race aside from a handful of "dashites" turned traitor. Breaking the cloud covering instantly greens the barren world and makes the world look like Equestria again besides a few occasional radiation spots that are fixed when the New Elements Of Harmony eventually use the Gardens Of Equestria megaspell offscreen.

Kkunt wants this to be a story of pre-war Equestria's foolish good intentions causing the apocalypse, but it's solved post-bombing by foolish Littlepip and her foolish friends and their good intentions. Any modification of plans/standard operating procedure is forced onto these new ponies by the world around them.
It's not like Equestria died because it lost the six virtues, and the new generation had to rediscover them.
The old Equestria died because it hadn't dealt with Ziggers before and didn't know how to stop Ziggers from destroying the world. The new Equestrians never had to deal with a pre-war nuke-capable Zigger army, and certainly would not have defeated it.
The new generation of ponies, Littlepoop and pals, just win because the author said these ponies are allowed to win against all the world's nasties. And the mane six fail and die and get raped to death or commit suicide to avoid impending rape because the author said these ponies are not allowed to win against the monsters he threw into the world without putting any thought or effort or originality into this published and printed act of autofellatio.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.287612
287634
radscorpions.png
Fuck, I can't believe I forgot to post this when the story mentioned radgators
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.287629
287641
>>287523
>We don't know how much damage this operation did to Old Appleoosa or what state they're in and whether they can seek reprisals against Old Appleoosa or not, which is exactly where they are bringing all the slaves.
>It's really fucking likely that Littlepoop just started a long and bloody feud between these settlements, but she will fuck off into the sunset and move on to her next videogame sidequest.
This is a big part of my issue with this whole storyline.

>Here's how I would have written this
This is an improvement over what exists, but there are still some logical issues.

>the fuckers take Dinky Doo, Derpy's child
In this story, Derpy Doo has been a zombie (or ghoul) for the last 200 years. For your storyline involving her daughter to work, Dinky would have to also be a ghoul; otherwise, she's long dead. Also, since we've heard mention of other foal-aged characters being adults at the time of the apocalypse, Dinky would have to have become a ghoul while she was still a child (unless you want the adult ghoul version of her to be kidnapped). If the apocalypse happened at a time when Dinky would have been fully grown, this could create a lot of continuity problems.

Alternatively, Derpy might have had another daughter, and given her the same name as her daughter from 200 years ago this might make sense, since poor Derpy probably can't keep track of too many names. This might be interesting, although it creates a number of questions you'd have to answer; namely, can ghouls reproduce, and would anypony be willing to impregnate one if they could? Would you a skinless Derpy? Also, would the child be a ghoul or a regular pony?

>baddies arrive in New Appleoosa via train, point guns at everyone, and demand slave tributes in return for protection
Here's the biggest issue as I see it. Have these baddies lived in Old Appleoosa for a long time? If so it's a little curious that they are only attacking now. This also complicates the issue of the railroad. Even if it existed from before the apocalypse, having a direct rail line from NA to a settlement known to be inhabited by violent slavers would be a problem NA would have needed to address long ago. They would probably have destroyed part of the rail line or built a blockade to keep the slavers from using it as a means of invasion, and in any case they wouldn't have maintained it so it could be used. If the slavers had occupied Appleoosa at the time of New Appleoosa's founding, it would have made zero sense for the settlers to build their town on a direct rail line to a slaver colony at all.

The way I'd probably solve this would be to add a bit of backstory. Let's say that Old Appleoosa used to be a normal settlement like New Appleoosa, and the two towns traded with each other via the rail line. Then, a group of baddies showed up in Old Appleoosa (this would need to be a recent event, within the last week or two, to make sense) and took over the town. They decide to begin a slave-trading business and use Appleoosa as their base of operations, since it has the rail line running through it and can be fortified. New Appleoosa doesn't know any of this.

Meanwhile, in New Appleoosa, the settlers have a regular trade route with Old Appleoosa and are expecting a train. However, when the train shows up, instead of the caravan it's a bunch of slavers who raid them and carry off a bunch of children. The town is able to ultimately defend itself, but the slavers get away with the children and supplies and probably some adult captives as well, and the survivors assume that they will probably be back. At this point, when Littlepoop shows up, she learns of the situation and volunteers to go sort things out.

The actual fight could probably go the same way you described. The ending would ultimately be that the slavers are either killed or driven away, and the slaves are all liberated. Some of them are probably the citizens of Old Appleoosa who survived, and the others are the ones captured from New Appleoosa. If there are enough Old Appleoosans left alive, they will probably stay and rebuild their town and things will return to normal. Otherwise, they will return to New Appleoosa and be absorbed into the population there, and OA will be abandoned. In the latter case, I would say it would probably be wise to torch OA and destroy the railroad, since at that point it would just be a liability.

Oh also, I'd leave out the bit about the train whistle completely. The whole thing about pushing the disabled steam engine along with the train is beyond retarded and even if the whistle was functional, it's just a goddamn whistle. They can just attach a magic whistle to one of the train cars if having a whistle is really that big of a fucking deal. If you have a train that needs to be physically pulled by ponies, you're going to want to keep the weight as low as possible. This means only essential cars, so the passenger car and the engine would be gone. Since the brakes on the caboose are essential for downhill travel you'd need to keep that, but otherwise I'm envisioning a train with realistically no more than three cars: a caboose, a flat car, and a boxcar. Passengers just hop on wherever they can fit. This is the most plausible amount of weight I can imagine a team of ponies being able to pull.

In fact, it might even make more sense to just have it be a single boxcar or flatcar to carry cargo and passengers, and a caboose. Neither of these settlements are huge, and there can't be that many goods to trade in the first place, so during transport you'll want something lightweight that is easy to move and easy to defend. The original author might balk because it would screw up le ebin train heist scene, but part of writing means learning to kill your babies. Just because a scene is cool doesn't mean it's plausible.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.287634
>>287612
okay, that's actually pretty funny.

>>287535
>IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO LIMIT THE STORY TO THE PROTAGONIST'S POV WELL, JUST STICK TO AN OMNISCIENT THIRD-PERSON PERSPECTIVE THAT PAUSES THE ACTION TO TELL YOU WHAT EVERYONE IS CURRENTLY THINKING EVERY FOUR PARAGRAPHS!
Agreed. Every perspective has its own advantages and limitations; some stories work well as a first-person, others don't. I find that larger epics where there is a lot of stuff going on usually need a third-person omniscient perspective. For instance, it's hard to imagine a story the size of The Lord of the Rings or A Song of Ice and Fire being told from a single character's perspective. However, The Hobbit could probably be rewritten entirely in first person from Bilbo's perspective and it would work just fine. A good writer puts a fair amount of thought into which perspective he wants to use, because it can really make a huge difference in some cases. I'm actually in the process of rewriting an entire novel I wrote because I realized a first-person view would vastly improve the story; however, it requires certain parts to be eliminated entirely, so that side of the story needs to be handled differently.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.287641
287645 287726
Fuck this story, a weird thought occurred to me.
In Borderlands 1, there are 4 character classes. Mordecai the Hunter, Lilith the Siren, Roland the Soldier, and brick.
Roland can put down a shitty shielded turret but here's the interesting thing: If you put skill points into the Medic tree, HE CAN HEAL HIS FRIENDS BY SHOOTING THEM.
The damage output of his gun increases his healing ability.
So he can heal you by shooting you point-blank with a fucking shotgun.

A Medic's Shotgun.

Now that's wacky! That would never work in the serious brown-shooter game Borderlands was going to be, before the jews in charge decided to rip off literally everything from Codehunters.

It would even be a bit far-fetched in Team Fortress 2, a game where The Medic has a Syringe Pistol that heals friends and harms foes. He also has a Medigun that fires a healing beam at allies and does nothing to enemies and can turn friends invincible and stronger for a few secs when fully charged.

ANYWAY

in Fallout 4 it's possible for the borderlands-inspired-but-shit Legendary Weapon System to randomly-generate a shotgun for you with the Medic's effect.
ok it's actually cut content that you need the Any Mod Any Weapon fanmade mod file to access.

But in this Fallout Equestria pony-land, where an actual yet incomplete explanation is given for how some guns can be enchanted...
it's entirely plausible for some scavenger to find Flutterby, a yellow shotgun with a pink choke and pink butterflies on the folding stock, magically enchanted so that instead of harming its target it heals them.
I just made that gun up while typing this. It never appears in this fic. It's too clever and creative for Kkunt to think of.

>>287629
I know it would take a lot more work to make everything about these two settlements make sense.
My solution would only make this specific moment from a random videogame sidequest where you go to Slaver Town to kill slavers because they are there and might have some sick loot and schematics...
into a "We New Appleoosans are tired of living under the control of Old Appleoosa, even though this town was founded by that one on the end of old train tracks so this trading outpost would be able to gather local resources for the main town! We're sick of working with this town so we're sending you two idiots to Old Appleoosa with two missions: Save this character you have a reason to care about because she's Derpy's latest adorable foal, and eliminate that settlement's military advantage over us so we can plausibly deny any involvement in this and produce what we need to resist that settlement's control while they're patching their town up! who knows? maybe once you kick their asses and make them look weak it will encourage attacks from local raiders! Free all of their slaves and utterly humiliate them and torch their buildings and make them look like total cringe to all the other Wastelanders!" thing

At the time I was thinking of those moments in Saints Row when you're told to destroy shitloads of stuff and a progress bar tracks how many dollars worth of shit you've destroyed, and that one Metal Gear Solid V mission where you're sent to Afghanistan to blow up about 6 tanks for no reason beyond "someone paid you to open fire, you're backup for some rebel offensive we know nothing about, we get paid more if you smash more stuff but you fail the mission if you don't take anything out". A lot of games reward vandalism. Smash literal random crates of cash and supplies, or smash lampposts and streetlights that randomly contain money and plates of rotisserie chicken. Some games dedicate entire sidequests to smashing shit. This sidequest could bring some of that videogamey "Haha things go BOOM and guns go BRRR" fun into the story. After all of this story's painfully excessive edge, it could use some levity.

Your "Slavers conquered old Appleoosa recently" thing would greatly improve the worldbuilding here.

I think it'd be super grimdark if Ghoulified Derpy kept having foals and naming them Dinky Hooves because she wants her daughter who perished from radiation overdose back, but they keep turning out sickly and dying around 13ish. She goes to the local bar on some lonely nights and numerous stallions buy her drinks until she wakes up in her bed extremely fucked and hopefully pregnant. That sounds extremely tragic and edgy and sad because I like Derpy and Dinky. Also when she has stallions she still names them Dinky but pretends her dead kid was always a boy until he dies and she's sad for a while. Everyone thinks Derpy's retarded but she's just really bad at dealing with the harsh realities of modern life.

Hey, here's another edgy idea. What if New Appleoosa was super hospitable and kind and generous with free homemade whiskey for anypony new in town because they work with Old Appleoosa willingly, and whenever some fresh new face comes into town with a decently healthy body the NAs love getting these ponies drunk and helpless before caging them somewhere and shipping them to Old Appleoosa for big money? Derpy could have no idea what's going on here, but everyone else would be in on it. Like Whiskey Peak from One Piece.

Whiskey Peak is the only town on Cactus Island, and it's famous for its liquor. But when pirate crews come here and party with this place's free booze, the citizens of Whiskey Peak rob the pirates as soon as they've all passed out. There are also over 100 bounty hunters here in on the scam, they split the prize money gained from turning in high-value pirate bounties without a fight. In the 4kids dub, Whiskey Peak was renamed to Misty Peak to remove the booze reference. In the Funimation dub, it kept its original name.

So Littlepip and Calamity (say this is his first time in town) could get sent to OA as slaves, they'd meet Velvet the medic in a Bomb Collar the Sherrif can detonate at will, and they'd need to plan an escape. So LP plans a violent heist where they explode their way out! Fun. In-character for my Bookworm!Luffy-ish LP.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.287645
>>287641
>in Fallout 4 it's possible for the borderlands-inspired-but-shit Legendary Weapon System to randomly-generate a shotgun for you with the Medic's effect.
This makes the gun heal instead of harm whatever it's fired at. Forgot to mention that's what the "Medic's" effect does in F4
the best legendary in the game is Two-Shot. it makes the gun fire 1 more bullet than it should. barely noticeable on most guns but godlike on a Nuclear Cluster-Bomb Mini-Nuke Launcher. for the low price of 1 fatman ammo and 1 pull of the trigger, you fire 2 clusterbombs that split into 12 nuclear bombs in total
at least I think it was 12.
Anonymous
36e3f69
?
No.287726
287727 287767
>>287641
>I think it'd be super grimdark if Ghoulified Derpy kept having foals and naming them Dinky Hooves because she wants her daughter who perished from radiation overdose back, but they keep turning out sickly and dying around 13ish. She goes to the local bar on some lonely nights and numerous stallions buy her drinks until she wakes up in her bed extremely fucked and hopefully pregnant. That sounds extremely tragic and edgy and sad because I like Derpy and Dinky. Also when she has stallions she still names them Dinky but pretends her dead kid was always a boy until he dies and she's sad for a while. Everyone thinks Derpy's retarded but she's just really bad at dealing with the harsh realities of modern life.
I actually rather like this characterization of her that you've come up with. This is the kind of thing that ought to be in stories like this. I would probably read this.

>Hey, here's another edgy idea. What if New Appleoosa was super hospitable and kind and generous with free homemade whiskey for anypony new in town because they work with Old Appleoosa willingly, and whenever some fresh new face comes into town with a decently healthy body the NAs love getting these ponies drunk and helpless before caging them somewhere and shipping them to Old Appleoosa for big money? Derpy could have no idea what's going on here, but everyone else would be in on it. Like Whiskey Peak from One Piece.
This is also a good idea. What this author seems to more or less be trying to do with Littlepoop is to have her start out with high morals and ideals, which she gradually has to compromise as she spends more time in a harsh and unforgiving world where it's everypony for herself. It might be interesting for Littlepoop herself to become a victim of the slavers this way, and fight her way out instead of invading to stage a rescue. She decides to follow Frank's advice and try to make some friends in town, but the pony she thinks she's making friends with is actually shanghaiing her to sell to slavers. Calamity would work well in this role, especially if the overall goal is to have them end up on the same team. Maybe the town works with the slavers because they have to; they were attacked at some point and had the option of either helping them bring in slaves or becoming slaves themselves. Alternatively, they could be working with the slavers willingly, but maybe Calamity himself has misgivings. Either way, it would be an interesting way for their first encounter to go.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.287727
>>287726
Forgot my trip but this was me.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.287767
287768
>>287726
The bizarre thing about FoE is that while kkat wrote an awful story, it's both easy and oddly fun to think of ways it could be improved.
Anonymous
abb50e3
?
No.287768
287800 287819
IMG-20200915-WA0009.jpg
>>287767
I suppose that's one reason it cultivated such a big fan following. Same with some of the other huge fan fic fandoms like The Conversion Bureau. Got a hook everyone bites onto and got a world they can tell stories in or throw their own spin on it kind of like how 4chan has our different generals with their own writefags.

Only read up to about chapter 6 or so of Fallout Equestria and haven't read any spin off stories but I'd be interested in reading one with an earth pony protagonist to see how they navigate the whole issue of battle saddles being quite impractical and can't just use unicorn magic to pretty much just have super hands. I like that idea mentioned in this thread where earth ponies are stronger and more durable so could wear heavy armor with spikes or blades on it and just barrel into enemies crushing bones.
Granted knowing how the fandom usually perceives earth ponies they'd probably throw a hissy fit about how earth ponies can't do that and a unicorn will just use a forcefield and earth ponies aren't strong enough to do that.

Was able to find the picture I was looking for that had a big better design for Fallout guns but made for ponies but still has the issue of them using their mouths which would be a bitch for recoil and make talking impossible. Still though I like the look of it more then art where it's just a human gun with the handle turned 90 degrees.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.287800
287804 287813 287819
>>287768
Imo, the simplest way to handle horse guns is to go full high fantasy with them. Don't try to puzzle out realistic methods of equipping a pony with a firearm and concentrate on storytelling. The guns themselves could simply be enchanted to float close to the user and point in the direction of their gaze, or mounted on simple mechanical armatures. Heck, you could even keep mouth guns in as caveman-tier improvised weapons that raiders and other low-level mooks are forced to make do with.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.287804
>>287800
If one is aiming at the 'simplest to conceive of a pony using' gun, without having to explain the technological history and advancement of such weapons, a helmet mounted gun with a button that can be operated by hoof seems most apt, esp if tech is used to dismiss any lack of bulk or internal parts, it doesnt even need to look retarded.
Anonymous
3a2e56c
?
No.287813
287816
1604170684790.png
>>287800
Feel like something akin to the clutch claw slinger in Monster Hunter Would could work out. Got some MLP toys for Daring Do and Applejack that had another neat idea. Had a little leather hoof glove type thing with a base you could attach the whip/lasso onto. Could have something like that used for mounting guns onto.

Of course the problem with quadrupeds is even with those it would be a bit cumbersome to not trip over or get snagged on stuff or trying to maintain their agility when they have to dedicate a leg to using a weapon.

Still like the idea of the spiked barding since it doubles as defense and plays into the strength of ponies being their hard hooves and speed (atleast in the case of MLP ponies I have no idea where real ponies came from or why they exist). Granted there seem to be loads of ponies with readily avalible access to fire arms and ammunition so feel like any battering ram pony would end up turned to swiss cheese unless they had some fancy enchantments to deflect most gunfire.

Suppose the tldr and to paraphrase Glim: Writing horses is hard.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.287816
1100621.png
>>287813
Yeah, you could probably finagle something that straps to a foreleg or even the side of a hoof if it's small enough. Heavy and/or weaponized armor makes sense for melee combat, just as it does for actual horses, but since FoE holds to Fo3's logic of putting functional guns and ammunition in every other locker and filing cabinet, something like that probably never crossed Kkat's mind. Particularly considering how laughably fragile even powered armor turns out to be later on.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.287819
287829
twilight sparkle - Copy.png
>>287800
>The guns themselves could simply be enchanted to float close to the user and point in the direction of their gaze
Been saying that for years now.
The thought of RD with a glock in her mouth, tongue curled around the trigger, is stupid.
The thought of a 10mm SMG intentionally redesigned to be held in the mouth and fired when you bite down hard enough is even dumber.
This fic tried this stupid wishy-washy mix.
Sometimes guns are mounted on these mechanical "Battle Saddles" that bolt fixed forward-facing shotguns/miniguns to the sides of horses and can supposedly auto-aim but not auto-fire since a mouth-trigger is still nonsensically needed.
IF YOU'RE GOING TO TAKE ENGINEER'S TURRET OFF ITS TRIPOD AND TAPE IT TO RAINBOW DASH'S BACK, DON'T GIVE IT A MOUTH TRIGGER! Just let the gun focus on auto-aiming and auto-firing like a cheating sniper cunt straight out of Tf2 while the Pegasus focuses on flying around.

The Battle Saddle is so stupid. Giving the ponies wearable plasteel man-arms that dangle from necklaces would have been less stupid.
The least retarded option would be to build a gun around being strapped to a horse's hoof, being short enough to not hit the ground when walking but big enough to fire high-caliber bullets whenever you point your arm and flick your horse-wrist correctly. Like Spiderman if he was a pony without fingers whose wrist-flicking fired bullets instead of web.
alternatively the gun could fold up when not in use for portability's sake, and unfold when in use so it greatly extends from the pony's hoof.

or better yet, forget everything
Just levitate weapons or enchant them to float around.
Do what Rarity did with the Copypasted Souls to create those Statuettes, except don't split the souls into tiny pieces, just create floating guns/dolls/armour suits possessed by Rainbow Dash soul copypastes.

Rarity could have single-hoofedly won Equestria the war if she used her existing "just copypaste souls lmao" tech to enhance the physical and mental stats of Equestria's army, instead of making Statuette toys that boost your stats.
She also could have single-hoofedly won the war if she could turn the outfit-wearing dummies in her boutique into armour-clad weapon-carrying soldiers who do not fear death and will obey any of Rarity's simple instructions.

god so much of this is retarded
Rarity could have designed Equestria's military uniforms
maybe designed a sleek and stylish line of "pseudo-military" clothing to make kids and teens think the military is cool
Patriots Rarity. La Li Lu Le Lo.
but no
the author needed Fallout 3's stat-boosting Bobbleheads to exist in "his" pony fanfic, so Rarity has this blamed on her
even though it means letting her copypaste souls
limitlessly, without cost
she can copypaste anyone's souls
and do whatever she wants with them
she can split your soul into countless tiny pieces if she wants to hide them in stat-boosting magical toys for children
she can copy your soul without you knowing. You just need to step on her welcome mat, which she booby trapped with a soul-copying spell.
and this author is a faggot who
1. never did anything creative with this
2. never had rarity's soul-copying welcome mat in Ponyville matter in the actual story
3. never made Mane Six Waifubots powered by copypasted mane six souls canon
4. never thought to write a "Rarity sends robot soldiers into war. They slaughter enemy ziggers and zigger noncombatants, violating the geneighva convention and pissing ziggers off" scene even though the author desperately wants you to blame "dumb evil bad racist" pre-war Equestria for the war even though everything bad in the war was done by retarded moon-hating ziggers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fILUAGw2mE&ab_channel=TheFilmTheorists
enjoy this video, it calculates the weight and worth of a soul as seen in FullMetal Alchemist Brotherhood based on what kind of bullshit we see the Philosopher's Stones (red rocks full of trapped souls utilized to enhance and fuel alchemy) enable.

>>287768
I've read plenty of FE "spinoff stories" made by fans. They're all way too "respectful towards" and subservient to the source material. They all want their stories to fit neatly into some unseen imagined offscreen corner of Kkunt's world, and nobody has the balls to say "Over here in my protagonist's corner of the wasteland, things are deadlier and make more sense". If a Fallout element's been ripped off by Kkunt and done poorly, Kkunt's fans write around this and try to use untouched and un-ruined Fallout elements even though Kkunt stole and ruined the best and most popular ones from the main four (at the time, just 1 2 3 and NV) games. The most common fic type is just "Over here in my protagonist's corner of the wasteland, things are even edgier".
Nobody has the balls to try and write a "Better Fallout and MLP Crossover" because they want to pleasure fans of Fallout Equestria first, avoid being attacked by them second, and try writing their own Fallout fanfic featuring mean little ponies third.
It's like they're trying to impress each other with their ability to mimic Kkunt's "style" (incompetence, laziness, lack of respect for and understanding of either source material) and they give up on writing their over-written 500k word behemoths when they realize the circlejerk hasn't yet declared them the best writer ever so writing 1,000,000 more words probably won't get them any attention.

Btw I've been thinking about awesomeness, and this story really isn't awesome.
Littlepoop has it too easy.
When watching DMC Combo Mads you can admire the style onscreen, and the execution and hand-speed in the hand-cam. See the same divekick 10 times in a row? still cool because each required a frame-perfect JumpCancel.
But when I read fanfics about Dante I expect to see him doing the kind of cool shit he does in cutscenes, or cooler. Doing action movie shit he can't do in-game.
Writing isn't bound by gameplay limitations, and it shouldn't be.
But this fic is just gun point+shoot/magic TK throw, end.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.287829
>>287819
For an example of what I mean, here's what high-level DMC gameplay looks like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E3CJmcAbFs&ab_channel=ChaserTech

That's how cool Dante can be in gameplay, when controlled by cool dudes who practice hours every day.

And here's how cool Dante is in cutscenes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68cV_jlrivw&ab_channel=NeRo5678
It left out the best scene though https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpME4riPI1k&ab_channel=Idxearo

First-Person Shooters aren't very cool. You just point and shoot the gun. Typically recoil is negated completely, and then the weapon's model leaps back six inches through your torso/shoulder when firing to make the loud-ass gun FEEL powerful despite being easier to keep on-target than a weightless laser pointer. Shooter games often have baby-mode mechanics perpetually turned on, like the generous bullet magnetism in Halo and all those shooters where enemies are auto-targeted thanks to aim assist. Do you know why rare cool FPS games add in mechanics from other games like Bullet Time, Double Jumping, SuperSpeed Running, command grabs, melee instakills, and Ground Pounds? It's because FPS games just aren't cool. Chessica Wildcard is going to fix that when it eventually has a sequel in 3D, and I hear the genius working on that is very handsome. But until then, the best FPS games out there are ones that push you into pretending this isn't another fucking FPS and is instead more of a high-speed platformer and action game with shooting mechanics.

Reading the story of Littlepip as she FPS Protagonists her way through retarded enemies just isn't very cool.

This COULD be cool, of course. Cool and stylish motherfuckers have done cool combat things in games before by taking advantage of predictable enemy AI, the creative tools a game gives you, that sort of thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLQ58L13BdU&ab_channel=StealthGamerBR%E2%84%A2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7yKkm9Dtw8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiBrL6_GPGQ

Hell, it's possible to do cool combat things in Fallout 3/NV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HArVl6LxZrk&ab_channel=Rabbit%27sRespawn

Also here's a nice song about FPS protags https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALd0ILisKvI

But Littlepip isn't cool or interesting.

When I play FNV I'm cool and interesting because I rig my Power Armour to let me superjump over fifty feet high, then I snipe down at foes while firing. Trying to get cool headshots while flying around like a BLJing mario feels cool. Certainly cooler than hiding like a pussy or running around spraying automatic fire while my Boone and ED-E do most of the work for me, which is what those "Super hardcore survival challenge" mods encourage players to do by making ammo absurdly scarce and every bullet from the enemy absurdly dangerous.
I have a "replace VATS with bullet time" mod but I try not to rely on bullet time too much. Anyone can score headshots in slowed/stopped time.
I also use JIP Command Companions so I can tell my NPC buddies what to do. If I want them to defend a specific chokepoint or hang back atop a sniping point or run head-first into enemy territory while I cover them, I can do that.
I can also superjump up to a great sniping point and snipe from it. That's cool. I love big guns, I even edited the game files to gain a custom automatic 50cal.
I also have a Grenade Hotkey, it can cycle between tossing grenades, landmines, remote-detonated C4, and more.
It takes a few mods to turn Fallout NV into more of an action game, but it's worth it because it makes combat cooler.

Littlepip is constantly showered in loot and great guns while fighting weak respawning enemies that were designed (if we're being extremely generous to bethesda's idiots) to waste your supplies and make you sneak past them instead of risking a fight and losing supplies. It's like watching some cheater with infinite health and ammo breeze through a survival horror where the challenge comes from managing your limited resources like health/ammo.

Sometimes Littlepip points one or more guns at foes, fires, and kills them. Sometimes Littlepip telekinetically kills a foe directly or hits them with some convenient scenery object. Sometimes Littlepip uses threats and wannabe-Marvel quips. But she's just not interesting as a fighter.

Edward Elric has interesting fight scenes. He's a great martial artist with a metal leg and a metal arm he's not afraid to Alchemically Reconstitute into having a bladed end. He can make big cannons and fire them, make gates in walls, reshape damn near anything he can touch if he knows what element he's touching. If he's standing on a metal floor, he can fuck it up and turn it into spikes or one big spear. He once fucked up this "Invincible" dude named Greed by realizing Greed could give himself diamond-hard black skin by rearranging the carbon atoms in his flesh. So Edward turned the Greed's skin into graphite and kicked his ass.

Sick.

You know who else is sick? Naruto Uzumaki, before his show became DBZ 2.
Just a hyperactive knucklehead ninja with decent martial arts skills, a ninja kunai knife, the ability to make shitloads of disposable clones that die in one hit, and the ability to shapeshift. He eventually learned how to make instant-kill magic balls but his fights were smarter and cooler before that.
He'll throw a big windmill blade at you, except it was one of his clones who shapeshifted into a blade, and that clone will turn back and throw a knife at your back. He can even create his clones underground so they can pop out at unexpected moments. He'll make a ladder of clones and run up it. He'll kick you into the air and spawn clones above him to continue kicking your ass.
Also he can summon Toads, use the power of the Nine-Tailed Fox sealed inside him to activate his obligatory Superpowered Evil Side, and walk on walls/water

If Shikamaru's shadow connects to yours, you become his puppet and he wins. That's his only gimmick. How he "achieves checkmate" makes for interesting fights

LP=gay!
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.287841
287918
8j1n7cvsd9x51.png
Hey remember when I mentioned a bunch of interesting videogame mechanics this story COULD have ripped off instead of Fallout 3's incredibly barebones mechanics?

Borderlands 2 features this playable character called Gaige.
Every time she kills a guy, she gains a point of "Anarchy".
Each point of Anarchy increases her gun damage multiplier and reduces her accuracy.
At the maximum 400 Anarchy Points, her guns deal 7x damage and are incredibly inaccurate.
And I seriously mean inaccurate. Your gun will spit bullets everywhere except where you're aiming.

Prematurely reload your gun (by manually hitting the reload button, instead of firing until you have 0 bullets left in your clip which forces your character to reload automatically) and you lose all your Anarchy points. also bleeding out and dying makes you lose Anarchy points rapidly.

as you level up, you can unlock the Close Enough perk, which makes half of all your bullets that miss foes ricochet into nearby foes. For half their usual damage of course, but half of a gun damage number already multiplied by 7 is still a lot.
skilled players will angle their shots cleverly so they hit who they want hurt. Dumbasses spray automatics and hope for the best.

however
remember what I said about how inaccurate your guns get at high Anarchy levels?
the game's coded to make sure even your most inaccurate bullets will fly somewhere in your Field Of View.
You know, what's currently on-screen because your character is looking at it.
which means if you narrow your Field Of View somehow...
for example, by looking through a scope...
you reduce your Field Of View
which greatly limits how off-target your bullets can be even at the highest Anarchy levels.

Also that isn't even Gaige's bullshit gimmick. Her bullshit gimmick button summons Deathtrap, a flying OP robot friend on autopilot who plays the game for her, killing all her foes.
She's insanely overpowered thanks to this button and she was "designed to get new players into the game", so naturally those cunts at Randy Pitchford's House of Faggotry made sure she costs an extra $10 on top of whatever the game currently costs.
I don't think it was right for a character "intended for newbies" to make skills fundamentally essential to FPS games irrelevant like this.
But hey, Littlepoop could have a Perk like this.
Nobody's forcing Kkunt to exclusively steal his incredibly simplistic Perk ideas from Fallout 3. He could rip off Borderlands, World Of Warcraft, Diablo, and many other games. He could pull a new perk out of his ass that replicates some gimmick from another, better game. The "More Perks" mod for Fallout NV has some excellent wacky bullshit and people love it.
I love this one perk called "Where's my pants?". You black out, wake up naked, and you've suddenly got shitloads of cash in your inventory. In gameplay terms you're trading away a highly limited and valuable opportunity to gain all kinds of great bonuses because you really want a small cash sum. But in story terms it's hilarious! What happened last night? You don't know! I don't know! Nobody even reacts to it! It's weirdly funny. Plus it skips the minutes it would take to beat Casinos for infinite money until they kick you out.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.287918
0d6.jpg
>>287841
but enough about videogame mechanics, here's some funny story element

There's a character called Dr. Zed in Borderlands 2. The joke is that in a hellish wasteland-world with a better excuse to be a Raider-infested shithole than Fallout's world ever had, in a world where murder is more common than taking a shit and the local zoologist is also a big game hunter, this fucker somehow lost his medical license.
How do you lose your medical license on such a world? Who gives out and revokes medical licenses on a planet with no organized police force or even real countries? What the fuck did he do?
That's the joke. That's all part of the joke. This is a silly character in a silly nonsense videogame where you buy stimpaks and shields and randomly generated guns from magical vending machines.

And honestly, it would have been better for the story if Velvet died during the firefight with the Alicorn and Littlepip had to recruit a new doctor for her pirate crew- I mean roving band of murderhobos.
This silly character who mentions medical malpractice and assorted evil deeds in his past every second line or more could become grimdark and hilarious at the same time by being everything Velvet loathed, a living middle finger to her memory, someone Littlepoop will hate having around until LP gets over Velvet's death and convinces this medic to graduate from mean little pony to nice little pony.
Velvet dies a failure forced to compromise on her ideals and forced to help enslave innocents.
And the party is patched up by Doctor... uh...
Quick, somebody, throw me a medical pun that's also a horse pun or her name defaults to something retarded no adult would ever name their child like Harshwhinny or Hoity Toity or Quibble Pants.
And as Doctor InsertNameHere heals the party and says "Let's do the practical evil violent thing!" during group meetings so Littlepoop can say "No, we will do the nice difficult thing instead!"
eventually Doctor Asshole becomes a nicer pony and ends up creating The Followers Of The Apocalypse because she's inspired by Littlepip's "selflessness and heroism".

Additionally, killing Velvet right here and now leaves Littlepoop broken. Her main quest is failed. She can't save this pony. She could save a million ponies and she'd still feel bad about failing this one. Velvet would have never been caught in the crossfire if Littlepip hadn't pulled her away from her singing career. So Littlepip gets super sad for a while and then decides to save this world and purge evil from it anyway because fuck evil, villainy is cringe, hero gang master race.

I think this would work better than this Velvet character. She is always every bit as wishy-washy as you say, but worse. The author keeps trying to set up Velvet as "The stupidly-moral kind one" who's even kinder than Littlepip because hurr durr there must always be an Element Of Kindness somewhere in the world and it can't be the protag because she's supposedly got Twilight's "the spark that brings them together" role except she never does this and ends up saving the world at the last second without the EOHs via asspull.

I get it, it's a classic story cliche for a group of heroes to have one sappy moralfag, one cold cunt, and one leader who decides what is done. The Spock, The McCoy, and The Kirk.

But Littlepoop is supposed to be "the one special super-kind nice ultra-pony" in a fucked-up world of evil. She's supposed to be an inspirational bastion of kindness, even though she's a cunty murderhobo in plot armour so thick every step creates a plothole the size of a sinkhole. So putting someone who's "even kinder" into her team and basically exists to usually get told no is just rubbish. It robs Littlepip of everything she can claim is her gimmick, and a gimmick is something this bland generic protag desperately needs.

It's funny, I don't think I've ever seen a generic hero fail to be generically good and vaguely virtuous before. I don't think I've ever seen a writer fuck this up so badly that the hero's party gains a "even more heroic team member".
Normally in shitty stories the hero is some generic leader dude who DOESN'T have kindness/selflessness as his gimmick, so the obligatory bleeding heart retard party member won't steal his gimmick.

The author is trying to make Velvet Remedy upstage Littlepoop The Murderhobo with all these assorted stupid (and often hollow) acts of supposed kindness/mercy/generosity. She's very generous with the party's highly limited medical supplies, which aren't actually hers to begin with. Velvet isn't some unsung hero or exemplary angel of kindness, she's an annoying cunt and Littlepoop looks like an idiot for accepting this idiot as the party's only medic! I get that medical knowledge is a rarity in the Wasteland I WANT TO CUM INSIDE RAINBOW DASH but when every Stable contains books and hopefully digital copies of the books which PipBucks can canonically store, where the fuck is Littlepip's illegally downloaded DRM-free copy of First Aid For Literal Retards? Why didn't LP think medical supplies and medical knowledge was something she needed to stock up on before leaving the Vault/Stable? Why is Velvet such a goddamn cuuuuuuunt?!

I know this is a fanfiction crossover between two unrelated franchises misunderstood fundamentally by a tranny faggot, but it's like we're reading fanfiction of this fanfiction within the fanfiction itself! Fanfictionception! The writing around Velvet is trying to out-Littlepoop Littlepoop, and all it can do is make both characters look worse in the process!
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.288053
4s0v6cwhszl51.jpg
I know shit's bad right now.
I feel like I lost some tiny additional bit of hope I didn't even know I had, and that tiny piece of hope was the hope that Biden's voter fraud campaigns would fail.
The courts will probably make Trump president once the circuses are done, since Trump tried to make his supreme court mostly conservative.
Then again, how conservative are they? Are they able to realize their careers will be over forever thanks to commies if they lose power now? Are they able to realize how low commies are willing to go? Or will they betray humanity and work with the left for some temporary under-the-table bribes?
Trump will win if the left has been able to shock the RINO cuckservatives into realizing there are no good lefties or centrists. If you're "on the fence" on whether whites should have human rights in the land their ancestors built and fought for or not, I don't want to know you. This isn't a game of abstract political ideologies any more, there are demons who want humanity destroyed and there are heroes waiting for a good chance to fight back.
While we wait and see how this all pans out, who wants to shit on Fallout Equestria some more?
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.288078
288220
Theres plenty of appropriate threads you can post in that actually pertain to politics and the election.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.288220
288265
949.png
>>288078
ok, I'll talk about the story now

Considering how Equestria fails to meet the challenges of war and dies, any writer with an understanding of themes would have Wasteland Equestria saved by something new and better.

For example, say a country of peace-obsessed soft-hearted weaklings failed to kill Ziggers. So a new nation founded on Wasteland Justice will rise from the ashes and get stronger.

Or, say Equestria lost its way and stopped being nice and became a conquest-driven resource-hungry pony supremacist state, and new ponies rediscovering morality in the wasteland are able to rebuild Equestria, The Kindest Nation and create everlasting peace with the Zebras.
I hate this idea but it's still better than this story's completely themeless clusterfuck.

Equestrian ideals fail Equestria absolutely. But Equestrian ideals are allowed to succeed after the apocalypse, solely because the author says so.

Sometimes there are monsters created during the war, sometimes there are monsters created in the war's aftermath. Sometimes Equestria was right to plan for the future by making bombproof shelters and superweapons. Sometimes Equestria's best-laid plans for the future go wrong because of bad luck and cause problems for the Wastelanders.

Sometimes Zebra stuff is pure evil, black magic, like everything from the Black Book of zebra soul magic and dark rituals. Sometimes Zebra stuff is entirely positive, like stat-boosting potions.

Rarity split off parts of her own soul, infuses them into shitloads of Mane Six Minifigures called "Statuettes", and forces copies of the souls of her friends into these minifigures, all so picking up an Applejack bobblehead gives you +1 Strength and picking up a Twilight Sparkle bobblehead gives you +1 Intelligence.
These statuettes were made using Soul Magic. From the Black Book of necromancy and balefire and cursed magic and other evil things. And Rarity made them without the consent or knowledge of her friends. Yet when ponies in the modern day find them... They're purely positive things that boost your stats without corrupting or warping or rewriting you.

The One Ring corrupted you. It warped you. Sure, it made you invisible. But carrying it was suffering, whether you could resist the temptation to abuse it or not.

These pony statuettes buff you. Enhance you. Without ever damaging or significantly altering who you are as a person pony, whatever and without causing ANY problems for the new world.

Rarity shaved off parts of her own soul, for fuck's sake. She copypasted the souls of her friends onto the shaved-off fragments of her soul, without the permission or knowledge of her friends. But there are no evil raiders made stronger and more dangerous by their Mane Six Statuette collection. There is no unicorn who wishes she had wings because she spent her whole life cuddling a Rainbow Dash statuette infused with a shaving of Rarity's soul rewritten to be more like a copy of Rainbow Dash's soul. There is no one unicorn who picked up a Twilight Sparkle statuette and had her mind torn apart by grief and agony that was never hers to begin with.

There isn't even a Stable or Cult where, "for the greater good", big vats of transformation potion have all 6 statuettes taped to them so anyone dipped in the goo gets turned into a bastardized fusion of the whole mane six.
And there isn't a Stable where a servant caste is frequently culled to provide souls that can be consumed and rewritten into mane six souls so everyone else can get more buffs from more copied souls.

The only creative idea in the entire story was an under-utilized and incredibly daft justification for why videogame stat-boosters from fallout 3 still work in his fanfiction supposedly about ponies.

Nothing here ties into any themes or explores anything new Fallout didn't already cover.

This isn't a tale of post-apocalyptic heroes dealing with the Fallouteheheh LOIS, HE SAID IT, HE SAID THE THING! of the mistakes made by the old world.
And this isn't a tale of a glorious pre-war country that gets betrayed and nuked only to survive and come back stronger and angrier yet still just as moral as ever.
This isn't a tale of good vs bad, smart vs stupid, new vs old, or anything vs anything.
This is just a Fallout ripoff that sucks shitting dick nipples.
Anonymous
326b363
?
No.288265
288277
>>288220
You can post whatever you want but I don't thik those hentai text bubbles you keep posting are as funny and over-the-moon ridiculous as you seem to think. I mean, we got it. The punchline is the same. everytime. They say something like, "I could use some ketchup with all this cum," or "Finish already! I need to wax my skis."
This one is about gayness so its more fitting, I guess.
And of course, you don't have to be entertaining and comedy is subjective still I thoiught I tell you.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.288277
288347
MAKES SENSE IN CONTEXT.jfif
>>288265
I want my friends here to enjoy my posts as much as I enjoy theirs.
But if you don't like these pics, I'll stop.
What do you think of the story so far? Is there one really specific thing that pisses you off like how this story's take on Pegasi pisses me off?
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.288298
>>286144
>That isn't a "Deconstruction", it's a Dorkly skit where Eggman kills Sonic with a glock.
Velvet Remedy the Medic?
More like Velvet Remedy the Mehdyke

but seriously I think this story would have been slightly improved if Velvet's medic stuff was built up over time

first make Velvet an obnoxious high-class celebrity faggot used to being waited on hoof and hoof, used to simps obsessing over her every word, not used to eating raw beans out of a scavenged bullet-opened 200 year old tin can like what Littlepip's gotten used to eating during her wasteland adventure
and Velvet's really, really fucking bad at using guns
real guns with recoil send the gun flying out of her magic grip, so she uses a recoilless Laser Pistol and still sucks at aiming+firing
but then she becomes a medic and gains her cutie mark
at first she was a cunt used to being a celebrity
but then she learned to love, nurture, and heal
and discovered an actual useful talent she can use to help others
so she is rewarded with her new ass tattoo
character development

I wonder what a story featuring Bookworm!Luffy!Littlepip, seemingly-friendly actually-loves-violence Calamity, and initially-a-cunt-but-then-nice tsundere laser-medic Velvet.
I also wonder what kind of actual good characterization I could give to some other characters in this fic who show up later on.
Anonymous
a4b7741
?
No.288347
>>288277
>Pic
Chuckled. Much better. Thanks.

.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.288361
288365
1604853154190.jpg
>>287409

>The earth pony trotted past her, reloading his weapon and bucking the door closed behind him.
How is he doing these things? For that matter, if he's an earth pony his weapon is presumably mouth-mounted, so how does he reload it anyway? So much of this story is just very poorly thought out.

>A minute later, Calamity galloped up. “Everypony’s in the caboose and Ah’ve kicked it off! The slavers won’t be gettin’ t’ them from here!” He lowered his head and stomped at the floor. “Here’s where we hold the line!”
If I'm understanding him correctly, the idea is that all of the slaves and foals were transferred to the caboose, which Calamity then detached from the train so that they would be safe. This may or may not make sense, depending on how you look at it. My understanding is that the train is currently on a downhill trajectory, and the raiders jumped on board as the train was picking up speed. However, the brakes are also located on the caboose.

If they detach the caboose and the caboose engages its brakes, then it should accomplish what Calamity seems to have intended here: the caboose comes to a stop, or at least slows down, while the front of the train continues to accelerate. If all of the raiders are on the train at this point, then the caboose should be out of their reach, at least temporarily. However, if the caboose does not engage its brakes, then it would be traveling at roughly the same speed as the train whether it is detached or not. For now, though, we can probably assume that the caboose has slowed or stopped.

The other side of this, however, is that the front part of the train can no longer slow down or stop. Since it's traveling down the side of a mountain, this means that it is going to pick up speed exponentially, which usually means a derailment at some point. Calamity has effectively signed all of their death warrants here; let's see if the author is smart enough to realize this and work it into the story.

Anyway, the slavers burst into the passenger car and a firefight breaks out. It's mostly just more blood and guts and mutilation; par for the course at this point. Littlepoop breaks some ribs, Velvet gets stabbed in the shoulder. Long story short, they win.

Page break. The next scene finds Littlepoop lying on the floor of the passenger car surrounded by dead slavers, while Velvet Remedy fixes her broken ribs.

>The train groaned dangerously as it tore around a corner, forcing us to catch ourselves. Velvet looked between us with alarm. “Don’t either of you ponies think we’re going awfully fast? How does this train of yours slow down?”

>“We use the brakes.”

>“And where are they?”

>“In the caboose.”

My suspicion is that the train should already be going fast enough to be out of control. I'm assuming that with all of the confusion of the fight, nobody was paying much attention to the normal operations of driving the train, so whoever was supposed to be pumping the brakes probably wasn't doing their job even while the caboose was still attached. Realistically they should be going fast enough by now to derail the second they hit a sharp curve, and since they're in the mountains I'm guessing there are quite a few of those. However, I'll let this slide simply because I am happy that the author didn't fuck up something huge and obvious for once.

>Several minutes of confirming our situation and arguing what should be done followed as the train continued to race down the mountain out of control; soon the three of us were bracing ourselves against every turn. We were still only halfway down, sheer cliffs flying by on either side. In the end, I decided there was only one solution.
This here is kind of my concern. If you ever had a model railroad set as a kid, odds are at one point or another you probably wanted to see what would happen if you turned the speed dial as far as it would go. You probably discovered that a train traveling at top speed doesn't handle curves terribly well. Since they are now halfway down the mountain, they should have accumulated more than enough speed for the train to derail.

Anyway though, they seem to at least realize the danger. Littlepoop tells Calamity to take Velvet and fly away to safety, assuring him that she has thought of a way off for herself. As soon as the two of them depart, we learn that she was just bluffing and still needs to think of a way off.

Before we find out what she does she's probably just going to levitate herself or some bullshit anyway so who even cares, I'd like to point something else out here. It seems as if there are no more slavers on the train, which means that the three they fought just now were the last they had to deal with. If this is true, it means that the fight was basically over and there was no real need to detach the caboose. However, even if there were still slavers, the sensible thing to do would have been for LP and co. to also jump on the caboose, and then detach it with the slavers still on board the front part of the train. The caboose could be brought to a stop, saving the lives of the heroes and the slaves, while the slavers would be stuck on a derailing train and would probably all be killed in the crash. Even when this author thinks things through, he still doesn't quite think things through.

Anyway, it turns out I was half-right on Littlepoop's escape. As the train begins to wobble out of control and it becomes apparent that derailment is inevitable, she attempts to levitate herself to safety. However, it would seem that there are limits to even LP's magical Mary Sue powers; she is able to lift herself off of the train, but she can't hold herself in the air indefinitely, and so begins to fall. However, she is caught by Calamity in the nick of time, so she is ok. Page break.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.288365
288366 288398 288422
1604017391633.png
>>288361

>The three of us -- Calamity, Velvet and I -- trod through the narrow valley under the grey clouds above. I had no idea where we were, save that New Appleloosa was many days travel on my PipBuck’s map.
Again, I really wish the author had done a better job of establishing just where these two towns are in relation to each other; it's almost impossible to gage distance. I maintain that, since the train is pony-powered, the journey should not take significantly less time to travel by train than it does to walk it.

>Assuming we could travel in anything close to a straight line. Assuming we were headed there at all.
It seems like they would have good reason to steer clear of New Appleoosa at this point. They just disrupted what was probably a valuable trade route between the two settlements, broke what was probably a tentative peace to begin with, destroyed the settlement's only train (along with whatever freight was on board), and all for what? To liberate some captives? NA can't have given too many fucks if they were willing to do business with OA for this long, so the knowledge that the slaves have been freed will likely bring them little comfort. At this point LP and Calamity should probably expect to get lynched if they ever set hoof in NA again.

Speaking of the slaves, what became of them? Last we heard they were in the caboose. Presumably they brought the caboose to a stop, but what then? Are they just sitting up there? Are they going to try to coast the rest of the way down the mountain using the brakes? This would probably work, but as soon as they run out of downward momentum they're basically hoofing it from there.

>Based on the terminal entries, the slavers of old Appleloosa were selling the bulk of the ponies they captured to somepony named Stern in someplace called Fillydelphia. I had not lost my rage at what I had read, at the wicked and cruel things these ponies were doing. I kept it at a low simmer in the back of my mind. If I had my way, Fillydelphia was next. But I could not ignore our more pressing concerns.
This is starting to get physically exhausting. Is there any kind of main plot to this at all? Because if this story is going to be nothing but LP running around Equestria knocking over entire cities by herself because she's morally outraged about this and that and the other, this is going to be a long, arduous trek through...Jesus, we've still got like 450,000 words to go. I honestly thought we were further than that.

>We were in desperate need of medical supplies. Likewise, the water and food Calamity and I had packed was insufficient to support three ponies for several days. We needed safe shelter and resupply.
Maybe if your saddlebags weren't full of ammunition for guns you don't have and bottlecaps and bobby pins and all sorts of other ridiculous bric a brac, you might have had room for a first aid kit. You numb twat. Also, it's rather unclear which injuries should be considered actually serious at this point. LP has had her ribs broken and her leg severed but seems none the worse for wear. As far as I can tell, healing potions cure nearly anything in this world. It's a little hard to take her moaning about medical supplies seriously when so many of their problems seem solvable with ridiculous magical bullshit.

>Once together, we had rested for several hours. The three of us had just been through a harrowing battle, and it would have been insane, if not impossible, to press on without giving ourselves time out. In truth, we needed much more than we took -- I myself was so weakened by my extreme feats of telekinesis that I found myself unable to levitate even something as small and relatively light as Little Macintosh -- but the unfamiliar and possibly hostile environment did not encourage dallying.
Is the caboose full of weakened, half-starved slaves and children sitting halfway up the mountain just not even on her mind at this point? Even if there's nothing she can do for them now, you'd think she'd at least spare them a thought or two, considering that they are the whole reason she even did all this wacky bullshit in the first place.

Also, I'm really getting tired of how inconsistent her levitation powers are. Back in town, she was able to lift an entire boxcar and drop it on the alicorn's head. In the factory, she was able to float herself from one balcony to another. I don't remember where it happened, but I'm pretty sure she's also levitated multiple ponies on her own. Yet here, she's so exhausted from lifting herself out of the train car and suspending herself in the air for a few seconds that she's now winded and can't lift her gun? This makes very little sense.

They come across the ruins of Cloudsdale (spelled Cloudsdayle here; the author has used this spelling before so I'm assuming it's intentional), when suddenly they hear tuba music yes, this autism is actually in the text. The source is, of course, another sprite-bot. LP goes chasing after it, catches it, and begins shouting at it, much to the confusion of her companions. She is able to catch Frank's attention.

>“I need you to send a message to New Appleloosa! “ I waved a frantic hoof. “There’s a caboose headed down the mountain, without a train. The train pony inside will make sure it reaches the bottom safely, but there are lots of ponies inside, including five young ones, who cannot survive out here on their own. New Appleloosa needs to send wagons to get them.”
Would NA take them in? They really have no reason to give a shit about the slaves, and don't seem to have a problem with slavery as an institution. In fact, if there is anything left of the slaver colony at this point, NA would probably be better off giving them up as a peace offering than rescuing them; it might prevent a war. For that matter, why would Frank help? For that matter, why would he even be listening through this particular sprite-bot at this particular moment? God this is poorly thought out.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.288366
288370 288372
49637440-old-gas-pumps-at-an-abandoned-gas-station-.jpg
>>288365

As it turns out, Frank is as confused by this request as I am. He stammers a bit, and then cuts off ambiguously. For now, we don't know if he actually decided to send the message or not. There are several things wrong with this whole sequence of events. For one, I'm not clear on why LP would assume that just because there's a sprite-bot nearby, that Frank would automatically be listening through it and could be contacted. My impression was that he just hacks in and out of the bots as needed; nothing indicates that he has control over all of them simultaneously. Also, I'm not sure why she would assume he'd give a fuck about any of this or would be interested in helping her. She doesn't really know if he's friend or foe at this juncture, so it seems like letting him know about the foals and slaves trapped alone and vulnerable in a caboose might be a bad idea. He could probably get a reward from the slavers if he gave them their location.

Anyway, this is the end of the chapter.

Chapter Nine: The Moral of the Story

Today's Fortune Cookie:
>"I'm the one who should be mobbed by strangers wherever I go!"
Honestly I'm running out of snarky responses to these, and I have no intelligent commentary beyond what I've said over and over: that these are just vague, disconnected epitaphs attributed to no one that may or may not relate to the contents of the chapter. The trend I'm noticing is that they seem to be getting progressively less relevant.

Part of the problem with the one above is that it reads like an exclamation from a character, but there is no hint as to who might be saying it or in what context, so the best we can do is to wait until we've read the chapter and then go back and see if the epitaph makes any sense. I may start doing exactly this, actually. Let's examine the epitaph from Chapter Eight in this way:

>“Something tells me this isn’t a circus act.”
Nope, not any clearer. Something tells who that what isn't a circus act? What event in the previous chapter could this be applied to? If anything this makes less sense now that we know what the chapter was about.

Anyway, the chapter opens with Littlepoop waxing poetic about how the grim cloud canopy covering the wastelands really isn't all that different from the grey metal ceiling of the stable. She and Velvet seem to be thinking roughly the same thing, while Calamity, who has apparently lived his entire life out here, doesn't particularly notice. The first few descriptive paragraphs of this chapter are actually fairly well written for what it's worth.

Apparently they are still wandering through the ruins of Cloudsdayle. As one might expect, skeletons and wreckage abound. This is somewhat interesting:

>According to Calamity, these giant signs, called billboards, had once littered every major skyroute between Cloudsdayle and other cities, advertising goods and services from all over Equestria.
This is probably just another attempt by the author to evoke the world of Fallout with a thin veneer of Pony over it. From what I know about Fallout, the setting is basically post-apocalyptic retro-1950s futurism, so I'm imagining a world with a lot of faded Dr. Brown's soda ads and rusty old-fashioned gas pumps like pic related and things like that. The author is probably just transplanting this imagery into Equestria without much thought, but this actually sort of gets my noggin joggin'. It's a pretty big imaginative leap from the friendly pastel world of Equestria to the grimdark future we are currently in, but these additional artifacts add another layer to the story. Even without the war that apparently led to the world being in its present state, one has to wonder at what point Equestria transitioned from the world portrayed in the series to a consumerist and technological society like the one we see evidence of here. What sort of social and political developments led up to whatever cataclysm turned the world into this wasteland? I'm honestly more interested in the history of this place than I am in anything that's going on presently in the story.

Anyway, they come across a fallen wagon, which turns out to be Derpy's old delivery wagon. Much like the way LP was able to summon Frank by yelling at the sprite-bot, this discovery seems a little too convenient. But whatever; it's not even close to being the dumbest thing we've seen so far.

>"Littlepip, would you please come look at this?" Her voice had a tone of... hope? I trotted around to find her (not at all like a little puppy at her owner's call).
It seems like the author can't quite make up his and/or her mind about what the dynamic is between these two. Just a few scenes ago, during the train fight, we had Velvet mewling like a scared kitten while Littlepoop barked orders at her. Now, it seems we're back to the original dynamic, where Velvet is the mysterious and sophisticated older woman that young, naive Littlepoop both idolizes and has a romantic crush on. It's not unreasonable that LP should still be attracted to her, but it seems like recent events should have changed her perception of Velvet at least a little. LP is not the same pony she was when she left the stable, and whatever image she had of Velvet in her mind has probably been tempered by the reality of knowing her personally. It's hard to imagine the same pony who was snapping at Velvet for being squeamish about violence reverting back to this timid-schoolgirl-with-a-crush routine, now that the danger has passed. Part of the issue too is that Velvet's character is rather poorly defined to begin with, as I noted in a previous post.

Anyway, the wagon is the same deal as usual: it's been lying there for centuries and everything of value has long since been looted from it, except conveniently enough there is a safe in the back that everyone who has poked their head in here over the past 200 years somehow missed.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.288370
288409 288490
1604016131280.png
>>288366

>The safe's lock gave up almost too easily. Considering the level of looting, I was surprised that such a weak lock had been such a long-lived deterrent. Was I the only one outside who had developed this skill?
Again, one of the things I find most infuriating about this author is his tendency to recognize absurdities and logical inconsistencies in his story, but rather than correct them, he chooses to just make a glib joke and move on.

Anyway, inside the safe they find some bottles of Sparkle Cola, which completely makes sense because I always store my cola in a locked safe and then hide it in the back of a delivery truck. A remark from Velvet implies that the cola was deliberately manufactured with radiation in it, which seems like a pretty dumb idea. I feel like Nigel said something about radioactive cola being a thing in Fallout a while back, so I'm guessing that's what this is a reference to. Anyway, it's pretty stupid, and as we should probably expect by now, the discovery serves no evident purpose beyond being another acquisition in Littlepoop's gigantic collection of useless crap. She drops a bottle of the soda into her saddlebag.

>I shrugged. It did sound like it might be tasty; and according to my PipBuck, the radiation still present was minor enough to be washed away with a RadAway potion later. I turned to the footlocker, prompting Velvet to forget (or at least ignore) the beverage in my saddlebags.
Protip: if you're writing a story and you find that it is running long (say 500,000 words or so), it's usually a sign that you should start paring it down. If you're looking for stuff you can chop, events like this, where nothing of any real significance happens, are a good start. I mean, let's analyze what's really going on here:

>Littlepoop finds a 200 year old ruined cart that conveniently once belonged to a character she knows in the present
>the cart contains a safe which conveniently no one has found or opened, despite the cart obviously having been looted multiple times and despite that the lock is not that strong
>the safe, for some reason, contains several bottles of 200 year old soda and nothing else
>the soda, for reasons I can't even begin to fathom, was intentionally made radioactive, and its radioactivity was apparently used as a marketing gimmick
>however, Littlepoop concludes that it's okay to drink, because the radiation levels are not seriously harmful, and also because she conveniently has some special kind of potion that neutralizes radiation somehow, that incidentally has never been mentioned before now
>the takeaway from this thrilling scene is that she takes a fucking bottle of soda with her to drink later
Seriously, was there any goddamn point to this?

Anyway, next she opens the foot locker. She has some difficulty picking the lock, which causes her a great deal of anxiety, because she doesn't want to look like a shitty lockpicker in front of her lesbo crush I guess. However, since we all know she's going to get it open eventually, this causes the reader nothing but additional boredom. However, the sheer weapons-grade autism behind how she manages to open the lock is actually worth going over:

Apparently, having Velvet Underground discover that she isn't super-awesome at opening locks on random boxes is just too much for LP to bear, so she asks Velvet to step away for a while. For God only knows what reason, she then pulls out her tin of cocaine-mints and pops one, and this apparently gives her the cocaine-induced mental superpowers she needs to get the lock open.

Incidentally, I just noticed something. Littlepoop:
>steals everything that isn't nailed down
>gets superpowers from cocaine
>solves every problem she encounters with random, purposeless violence
>has literally stolen a train
I'm beginning to think this character would have made more sense as a zebra, if you take my meaning.

Anyway, while she's doing whatever the fuck coke-fueled nonsense she's doing to get the lock open, Velvet Remedy sidles up to Calamity and asks him this:

>“Why is it that you are the only pegasus pony I’ve seen in the Equestrian Wasteland? I was under the impression that pegasus ponies should be as common as earth and unicorn ponies.”
This question comes out of absolutely nowhere, and is immediately followed by the gratuitous infodump it was obviously meant to preface. Here is the quick rundown: basically, the pegasi all went into hiding because something something the war. I guess Cloudsdayle got nuked or something, and then the pegasi said "fuck you" to everyone, turned the cloud generators up full blast, and disappeared. This is why there is a continuous cloud cover over Equestria now.

As backstory for the world this is all perfectly fine; I'm even a little curious as to what exactly happened, as I suspect we're not getting the full story here. However, the way this information is just suddenly dumped into the text is very badly done. Imagine this scene for a moment: Littlepoop can't get a locker open, so she takes cocaine to improve her faculties and starts going to town on this box haha get it she's a lesbo :DDD. Velvet Revolver thinks that this would be a perfect time to ask Calamity, a guy she just met a couple hours ago, what is probably a rather sensitive personal question. Calamity, rather than telling her to fuck off and mind her own business, thinks that this would a fine moment to regurgitate a massive amount of history about events from 200 years ago.

Literally nobody talks this way or behaves this way. This chapter is very dumb so far.

Anyway, Calamity and Velvet are yammering about how the pegasi are going to come back and shut off the cloud machines and probably save the ponies or something one day, but right now they're far too busy being delicious. Meanwhile, Littlepoop gets the locker open. Unsurprisingly, it is mostly filled with useless crap, except for the one conveniently-placed rare item; some kind of crystal memory orb or something.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.288372
288398 288500
>>288366
>Honestly I'm running out of snarky responses to these, and I have no intelligent commentary beyond what I've said over and over: that these are just vague, disconnected epitaphs attributed to no one that may or may not relate to the contents of the chapter. The trend I'm noticing is that they seem to be getting progressively less relevant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H24e6aT1yEo

The chapter header quotes are generally lines of dialogue from either the Fallout games or FiM Season 1. The bulk of FoE was written in the gap between S1 and S2, back when simply repeating something that a pony said was widely considered witty. The relevance is usually questionable at best, but 20% cooler amirite???!???!
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.288384
All this talk about the nonsense out-of-context meaningless words at the start of every chapter got me thinking about the story as a whole again.
You know how some stories can be summed up or advertised in a single quote?
For Fallout it's "War. War never changes."
For MLP it's something about friendship.
But for Fallout Equestria, according to the official wiki, it's "The portal to hell is opened with the incantation of good intentions."
And that's a load of bollocks.
Within the story, and outside of it.

Fallout Equestria isn't the story of good intentions failing ponies. It's a story where good intentions only go bad when the author says so.
It's not like good intentions cause disasters when they aren't sufficiently backed up by science and logic and pragmatism and strength and truth and honesty. It's not like Equestria causes disasters whenever they do terrible things in the name of good intentions. They do good things in the name of good intentions and sometimes they just fuck up for no reason, and sometimes they don't.

Sometimes, the good intentions Equestria had when building the ultimate superweapon crackbaby offspring of Liberty Prime and Helios One are perfectly good things that always turn out well even though it logically shouldn't
Sometimes, the desire to create Alicornification goo vats so anyone can be an alicorn is a good thing that only goes wrong because of someone else's bad intentions.
Sometimes, the desire to create good underground Vaults where ponies can exist away from evil Zebras goes horribly horribly wrong but only sometimes.
And sometimes, a good pony's good intentions fuck everything up for no reason.
Sometimes bad-intentioned things go good when they really shouldn't for thematic or logical reasons, like Rarity's fucking statuettes and how she duped her friends into helping her copypaste their souls onto shaved-off fragments of her own soul she shoved into fucking pony blind bag plastic dollies, all so 200 years later Littlepoop can find some fucking statuettes.

Speaking of quotes, many good characters can be summed up (or at least mostly summed up) in one sentence or with one infamous quote they said.
"From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!" - Anakin Skywalker

But the best the official Fallout Equestria wiki can do?
"I will fight evil" - Littlepip

"Slavery is bad and I want to be free" - Velvet Remedy

"We Pegasuses woz the bestest until Cloudsdale got nuked and then we all turned evil" - Calamity

"This is a very strange group. It's like a joke where strange ponies walk into a bar. And then try to convince everyone this is a normal group." - A very dull, boring, jokes-free one-note character who becomes one of the story's main characters later on. This line actually makes no sense for his characterization since his sole defining attribute is that he's a generic tough guy. This is such a boring character that it made me expect a twist where it will turn out "generic guy" is a mask he wears to hide his true personality, but... nope. he's just a boring tough guy not allowed to outshine Littlepip, a pony who's got a lower Endurance stat but has more plot armour and can therefore survive crazier bullshit.

The only one I don't 100% hate is a character who also has not appeared yet and won't appear for 20 more chapters. The character still sucks but I don't have a super intense hatred for this character or anything. Xenith the incredibly-raped former-slave Zebra woman... Her grandparents came from Stable 3, a failed vault where the experiment was "what if we mixed-race ponies and ziggers together"?. This is even funnier if you know how Vault 3 in Fallout got duped and slaughtered by savage animalistic raider cunts and that's why when you make it to Vault 3 it's full of the Fiends, a raider tribe. The residents of her failed vault travelled across the Equestrian Wasteland trying to learn more about 'lost Zebra history', and they taught Xenith zigger alchemy. Her parents and grandparents never matter again. anyway, she was captured and enslaved at an early age but she's not an evil zigger. She's the obligatory one good member of an entirely evil race, only without any witty jokes for this cliche. Her zebra hairstyle is unironically described as a "generic zebra hairstyle" by Littlepip. She has a lot of scars and initially hates touch because she was raped a lot, including one time when she was raped by a severed dead unicorn horn. OW THE EDGE! At first she even hates being touched by a doctor, but she gets over it after a while. anyway her big quote is "Sometimes, I feel as if I am an earth pony and that my stripes are really great wounds" and I like that a lot. It sounds so fucking cool! I'd feel the same way if I was a zigger from this fic because I hate this story's take on Zebras. It would be cooler if it actually made sense for the character! She doesn't have any great love for ponies or any great hatred for ziggers. She wasn't kicked out of a zebra raider tribe for having a brain and wanting to learn more. She didn't have "got fucked over by dumb cultural zigger bullshit" in her past to make her have a personal reason to hate ziggers like that famous IRL woman who got gang-raped to death for feeding fish to the congolese commie retard-soldiers. She isn't some well-written historian character like Nico Robin from One Piece. She doesn't have any cool speeches about the importance of knowing history and never repeating its mistakes. She has no opinions on ziggers. But dislikes anti-zigger racism. She is just a dumb zigger trying to sound deep. She even continues to irrationally hate moons and the stars and the night sky and other stuff like that and also Alien Blasters and anything else not of this world because of dumb zebra religious reasons. For god's sake, at first she hates one pony she meets because that pony owns an Alien Blaster and only comes to respect the pony upon realizing she normally keeps that Alien Blaster locked up for being such a strong laser gun.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.288398
288405
u7ntitled.png
>>288372
hahaha the only thing funnier than 20% cooler is to say something a Jojo's character said like KONO DIO DA or WRYYYYYYY or "NIGER-RUN-DAYO" or NO-ONE CAN DEFLECT THE EMERALD SPLASH! or "EAT SHIT, ASSHOLE! FALL OFF YOUR HORSE!" or "IF THERE'S NO MICKEY, THIS SHIT AIN'T DISNEY!" or "DO YOU KNOW WHY THE DINOSAURS WERE WIPED OUT? BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T UNDERSTAND RESPECT!" or "I WILL TAKE THIS NAPKIN!" or "I CAN EVEN LIFT THIS ROCK!" or "I turned myself into a pickle, morty! I'm pickle rick!" or "If this snail starts to crawl up my arm, I'll have to kill my brother" or "A snail... An organism that can have sex with anything it encounters... I'm kind of jealous!"

or to repeat that one anime "joke" where you say "One Punch Man lost his hair to gain power, and Midoriya ate hair to gain power! hahaha what is with asians and hair?"
god I fucking hate fandoms that think repeating shit from the piece of media everyone obsesses over will make them funny/witty/clever.
It reminds me of this one faggot I met when I was a kid attending a shit school. Oh wait, every school I attended was shit. Anyway every so often he'd say "Meals on it!" and laugh because he knew there was a joke somewhere in this scene from an artemis fowl book we were forced to read out loud as kids but couldn't figure out from himself where the joke was. We'd all laugh at how retarded this was so he thought he was quoting the joke correctly.

It was that stupid scene in the Artemis Fowl book about the magic cube Artemis waves in front of the evil Trump knockoff "Spiro the rich american businessman from the Spiro Spire". Some woman asks Artemis if he wants the kiddie meal menu and Artemis, "boy genius" tryhard wannabe-bond-villain extraordinaire, loses his motherfucking shit at this chick who was just doing her goddamn best. "I have no doubt that the kiddie menu tastes better than the meals on it!", he snapped for no reason, because the author's a hack who thinks snapping at "idiots" makes his character look smarter. WHY THE FUCK IS THIS WRITING MISTAKE SO COMMON? Is it because of tv shows like House?

anyway back to FE

The lack of thematic content to FE pisses me off because it tries to be this massive "fantasy epic", but it isn't as deep or creative or dark or heroic as it thinks it is. This story didn't have to be deep, but it tried to be deep and fails. It squanders Fallout and FIM in an attempt to one-up both, but the post-nuking Equestrians aren't really better at solving problems than the pre-war Equestrians. Littlepip in her prime couldn't take Twilight Sparkle in her prime. Twilight and her friends could fire rainbow lasers made of their own superior morality, these post-war edgelords can't do that. The foe Equestria died taking down through Mutually Assured Destruction could have steamrolled the equestrian wasteland harder than Caesar's Legion storming a NCR and Enclave and House-less Wasteland. Most of the post-nuking Equestrians owe their success to things invented or built before the war. For god's sake, Littlepip's revolver "Little Macintosh" (and power armour, guns in general, and more) came from Applejack and her family.

>>288365
>limbs
This story does that a lot. Cranking up the gore and edge so much that it loses all its impact.
Fallout did this better in FNV's hardcore mode, where Stimpaks are consumed to restore your Hit Points, and Doctor's Bags are consumed to restore your Limb Condition (the HP bars of your limbs that decide if they're crippled or not)
Also, in Fallout 1 and 2 you had the First Aid and Doctor skills. Use these skills on yourself to consume your limited time and heal you/your limbs. Can only do this a few times per day, balancing it out. Can't be used mid-combat, where Stimpaks are needed to restore health.

>inconsistent magic limits
it gets worse. Remember how easily Littlepip levitated herself over mines early on? There's a pointless "level up and perk gain" written out at the end of every chapter but it doesn't actually amplify Littlepip's already-OP skills.
LP can lift boxcars. herself. and multiple guns. but can rarely be assed to lift up and move obstacles like minefields when the author wants combat to solve that problem instead
Maybe if the faggot calculated LP's primary stats and skills and stuck to them, we'd see fewer ass-pull moments and get a proper sense of physical, emotional, and moral growth from LP over time.

>telling Frank where the slaves are
>TRUSTING FRANK
Has anyone here been keeping a running tally of how often Littlepip has been immensely rewarded for trusting strangers/the inherent goodness within others, and how often she has been fucked over for this?
How about a running tally of how often good intentions do, and do not, fuck good ponies over, since that's supposedly this story's central theme?
Littlepip got fucked over when she trusted Monterry Jack, but was rewarded when she trusted Frank and went back into raider territory and solo'd it for him and some books from Twilight's.
She was rewarded when she trusted the ghoul pony (Derpy) she released from captivity
She was rewarded when she trusted the other Raider captives and freed them before clearing the combat zone out
I forget how the robot factory autism went down, but the good intentions of whoever built Little Macintosh and gave it as a gift ended up helping Littlepip immensely by giving her a shitty fucking baby revolver that can somehow pierce 400-pound power armour but only sometimes. sure 44cal is bit but it ain't 50cal.
was rewarded when she threw herself in front of the traders when getting shot at by Calamity
rewarded for trusting Calamity as her new companion
rewarded for serving Crane and stopping the bitey Aliens(TM) and blowing it up, and for trusting Crane
rewarded with free drugs from Calamity (Party-Time Mint-Als)
punished by a mild temporary bitch of a comedown for taking those drugs, but the consequences for taking unidentified drugs from a stranger on the way to slaveland could've been worse
rewarded 4 trusting frank
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.288405
hehe.jpg
>>288398
>sure 44cal is bit but it ain't 50cal
*sure 44cal is big but it ain't 50cal
it would be fine for a unicorn to use a 50cal glock because who gives a fuck if recoil shoves your gun back 8 inches? It's not like that gun's pressed against your arms/shoulder.
ever seen those BIG handguns used for competition shooting? Sometimes they're painted weird. My gun expert friend said it's because the heavier a gun is, the less recoil will affect it.
Littlepip lifted boxcars that weigh more than entire Panzer tanks so she could carry one around like abig floating handgun, if she found one.

>billboards and gas pumps
yep. The gas pumps still have insane inflated prices on them, and there's something beautifully ironic in the billboards designed to make entering a Vault look glamorous and cool. That's part of the point: this pre-war paradise with domestic robots was also a shit time full of war, resource shortages, and riots or something like that. It's dead and those in F1/2 must found a new America. Bethesda never understood that so its robo-servants magically survived 200+ years, which is retarded.

I looked up some screenshots to show you but saw pic related and decided to post that instead. I like it a lot! A fanmade mod adds it. It reminds me of those old "We can do it!" posters featuring "Rosie The Riveter". I hear she quit her factory job within a few weeks of actually getting it, lmao.

>skyroute
That's a stupid concept. Everywhere is a skyroute. Fliers can go anywhere. ok they probably wouldn't want to fly over hazardous terrain if there's a chance of falling into it. but still, what's a Skyroute? A route with really good Thermals? A route with a lot of places you can stop and rest, like public parks and diners and Bed And Breakfast places? Did pre-war Equestria set laws on the land Pegasi without delivery jobs can fly over? Or are "Skyroutes" just the straight lines between two locations Pegasi might feel like visiting sometimes? And were the billboards ever floating on clouds, or made of clouds, or some other magic BS like that, or did they just get shoved onto mountains and often-traveled roads? Ctrl-F Skyroute, and... yep, it's never explained. Damn, missed opportunity for some good worldbuilding.
Truckers exist on our planet, but it's not like a third of our population is born with wings. If they were, imagine the business opportunities this would create. imagine weird little convenience stores in the middle of nowhere solely founded because sometimes people flying cross-country stop here for snacks.
Imagine a company paying a farmer to carve some advertisement or symbol into their farm, so those flying overhead can see it.
Imagine the irony in seeing a "When it comes to seductive and swift wings, there's nothing better!" wing-cream advertisement billboard right in front of an Enclave base camp.

But alas, such wit would take wit to write, and Kkunt is a faggot. Fans of FE often call it "Fallout, with ponies!" like it's a good thing. Ironically it's a disservice to both franchises by missing even more of Fallout's points than Bethesda.

>unopened safes
this is a lot stupider in a world where a third of the population are a super-strong earth pony, a third are Pegasi able to lift these safes 3700 feet before dropping them on sharp rocks until they open, and a third are Unicorns able to:
>laser the safe open
>pull the safe open with magic
>use magic to turn the safe into a crowbar or sword or some other thing
>atomically deconstruct the safe into a fucking gas
>cast Open Container on the safe
>bring the safe to life and seduce it into opening
>shrink himself to sneak inside the lock and pick it from inside
>rapidly try every possible keypad combo or tumbler combo or whatever until the damn thing opens
>magically age the safe to dust or rewind it into the parts that make it up
>warp space to create a portal inside the safe, portalling its contents outside the safe
>make stone chisel, make stone hammer, smash safe open
>bend water to melt and freeze over and over inside the lock to fuck it up
>press the emergency release button on the inside of the safe
>alchemically reconstitute some unnecessary ammo into lockpicking tools, and then do whatever the fuck Lockpicking Layer does when he shoves sticks inside keyholes and fucks them open while mumbling about ones and twos
>and so much more!

Hey, imagine if a thief found a safe, picked it, robbed it, and rigged a proximity mine inside it before closing it back up. That way the next incredibly skilled lockpicker to open this safe up would get an explosive surprise right in the face, killing him/her instantly! This means fewer skilled master lockpickers running around, which means fewer rivals running around able to crack the highly-limited number of pre-war loot cache safes still around after 200 fuckbuggering years!

>radioactive cola
There's radiation in shitty pre-war food looted from 200 year old supermarkets, and radiation in raw irradiated-dog flesh, but at first "Nuka-Cola" was just a soft drink with a chance to make you addicted for some reason(I think they implied it still contains cocaine, since its 10% addiction chance is higher than the 5% chance nootropics have). It didn't become outright radioactive until Fallout 3, when Bethesda's untrained monkeys choking on dog cocks decided it would be wacky and silly and therefore funny to their target audience of 8 year old COD+GTA kids if Nuka-Cola was no longer a coca-cola parody but its own super cartoonish retard drink, an obviously-unhealthy drink with "120% of the recommended daily allowance of sugar" and multiple flavours including Grape, Rum, and Glows In The Fucking Dark Thanks To Radioactivity.
I remember one easily-skippable Nuka-Cola Addict in Fallout 1. but the Fallout Wiki loves putting the retconned-in bullshit of later games into older games so the sugar gag could have been there from 1.
Fallout 4's Nuka-World DLC has you go to a Disney World knockoff for fucking stupid nuclear cola armour+gun+recipes.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.288409
weirdos.png
>>288370
>having Velvet Underground discover that she isn't super-awesome at opening locks on random boxes is just too much for LP to bear
Imagine if this was an intentional character trait of Littlepip's, like that joke about "The guy who learned to pick locks as a kid because he thought it was a skill that would impress women"
I tried looking for the pic with the joke but instead I saw this sorry display. Imagine being so far into the LGBTQWERTY delusion-persecution and insecurity-projection rabbit hole that you gain pleasure from some Hollywood cuck's feminization and memeification of the character, and think people you hate on sexual/ethnic grounds only like an edgy character to annoy you. What a faggot. It's like they think they'll always be owed rights no matter how fucked-up they act, think, or become.

>radioactive drinks
I'm going back to this point for a sec to talk more about how dumb it is
drinks marketed with "More radiation in every drop!" was already a Wannabe-Borderlands thing from BugthEAsderp, not real Fallout.
but why the fuck would ponies know what radiation is, or want it?
Anyone remember how this story supposedly replaced the radiation nukes with "Necromantic balefire dark magic energy called Taint"?
now
this concept could work if ponies used a mix of brainwashed ziggers and translated books and "Equestria in the industrial revolution-style" factories to produce their own "Better" potions that each have a certain level of Toxicity to them
so while they still have positive effects from their optimized scientifically-verified recipes, taking too much Healing Potion over one day would kill you and the benefits of each potion had to be weighed against the time it would take for your body to piss and shit out that toxicity value.
I ripped this off from The Witcher and how it handled potions!
Alternatively, Twilight Sparkle/Pinkie Pie could have Equestria produce an incredibly strong coke/meth-tier energy drink that restores energy to Unicorns exhausted from a shitton of spellcasting and boosts their magical might for a few hours, but contains enough calories and chemicals to fuck anyone without a horn up.
Could crack some jokes about the soldiers that were given meth during WW2 and make references to them.
Twilight and Pinkie and Rainbow Dash loved the drink since they use up so much energy with their spellcasting/flight/hyperactivity, but nobody else could stomach the shit without taking stomach damage.
Could also be like the Akimichi's Three Coloured Pills from Naruto. Colour-coded pills that provide increasingly large and unhealthy energy buffs, because I guess the Akimichi thought they were too good for the Eight Inner Gates/Tsunade's seal/Orochimaru's seal/any other obligatory "temporary stat buff and then pass out/die" thing.
honestly if Naruto did something better than your story writing-wise, that needs fixing. I'm rewatching the show and good god, it is full of writing mistakes.

>party-time mint-als
Oh boy, Littlepip's going to eat a mint tin full of pre-war 200 year old nootropics boiled and fried in honey mesquite pod juice and vodka likely produced over a campfire or hot plate in the dusty Wasteland air! Again! Deliciously sticky! Slimy yet satisfying!

For those keeping count, Littlepip's first experience with this drug was a hangover cure that didn't work and never mattered, after she got drunk for no reason.
Her second experience? Downing this drug like it's a stat-boosting video game item.

Gee, LP sure is starting to rely on this drug quite a lot for her day-to-day functions, hmmm? I can tell the writer's trying to do a subplot about drug addiction but it sucks for reasons I won't spoil. Also author sucks at describing characters becoming smarter/having their consciousnesses altered via unnatural means. I've read better scenes about this stuff in fanfics! And I've read real books that are generally better than this fic, but none have included a scene about super-nootropics yet.

>Zebrapip
lmao nice
ironically Kkunt's probably kicking itself for not realizing all that a Zebra kid saving Equestria would fit that "Hurr durr Equestria was imperialistic and coal-hungry and the poor zebra slaves did nothing wrong, also lesbians are the best and vaults where men are in charge are a mistake" shit the story sometimes flirts with.

>busy being delicious
u wot?

>memory orbs
almost... soon, I will get to rant about why I hate this
Anonymous
abb50e3
?
No.288422
288430 288460
1603888914606.png
>>288365
>This is going to be a long, arduous trek through...Jesus, we've still got like 450,000 words to go. I honestly thought we were further than that.

Oh ho past of me wants to make you read Project Horizons right after Fallout Equestria but I feel like you wouldn't survive it. I do remember though as a kid when I thought the longer an MLP fan fic was the better it was. Only one I tried reading was that detective noir one. I remember enjoying it for a time but after I graduated and got into the Army I stopped reading it and can't remember how good it was.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.288430
288435 288460
>>288422
I read that years ago but I don't remember much about it
it's even worse when it comes to being hypnotically bad
Fallout Equestria makes me angry at the missed opportunities to be creative
But FE:PH is more pretentious and seemingly less pretentious. It's not good but I can't remember much about it or why I hated it. The sunk cost fallacy got me to read all of it even though I stopped expecting it to be good early on. It's a self-indulgent orgy of retardity where a raped lesbian rapist from a feminist-wet-dream vault goes on a retarded quest
the lesbian heroine gets drunk and goes on an adventure with Littlepoop without realizing it's her, and also drunkenly kills ponies with a dinosaur bone because enemy bullets are a suggestion to Plot Armour
also she got raped and there was a constantly-regenerating faggot I think
also a raped guy on Blackjack's team she raped long ago used a grenade launcher because "those weapons force you to think before firing. if I carried a gun I might shoot Blackjack without even thinking about it".
and the fic ends in a videogame boss battle against a giant blob of evil, complete with multiple phases after each depleted health bar.
everyone I ever talked to who's not a Project Horizons fanboy says "It's great until they get on the train" or "Read the first few chapters then stop when you think it's going downhill because it's all downhill from there" and everyone who liked the fic says "It's better than Fallout Equestria because it has cooler gunfights and bigger explosions and a "cooler" protagonist
That's not quality, goddamn it.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.288435
288448
2415365.jpg
>>288430
As someone that's read both haha kill me I think it comes down to PH generally being a lot better written on a technical level, and having the balls to go all in and just get crazy when it's obvious some real silliness is going down.

That doesn't mean it's a good story or even well written, mind; it's just that the turd is painted better and made up to look like a less gross turd. It escalates and escalates in scale and edge to the point of absurdity, going from a relatively faithful FoE spinoff to a full on interplanetary anime with cyborgs, artificial ponies, various forms of >rape, and a battle to save the entire planet from a soul-eating star monster. Everyone has a different jumping-off point where their brain repeating "what the FUCK am I reading???" becomes too loud to ignore.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.288448
288454
HILARIOUS IN CONTEXT TRUST ME.jpg
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>>288435
True.

It always bugged me that Fallout Equestria had Littlepip choose "stronger bone juice" over becoming a cyborg when a cyborg is so much more interesting than being buffed by some nonsense magic potions. Robot parts are cooler, and opportunities for people to feel sad about having metal skin or built-in limits you can't go past without breaking shit any more. Cybernetic parts can eat your soul because "Hurr durr you're more machine than man now" or not do that because "Dude it's like an artificial hip fucked an iphone to become my sick new robotic right arm. My brain's not in my arm and I won't lose anything in my brain by getting a better version of the arm I lost in a car crash". Cybernetic parts are visible and can therefore piss off/confuse retarded dumbasses who hate their superiors.

In Fallout, becoming a Cyborg is possible and you lose nothing by getting all the stat boosters your Endurance Stat will let you handle. Endurance would be a useless "dump stat" if not for this. So I always make sure to get the best implants in FNV, even when mods add new ones.

also Potions need something to balance them. Otherwise you get Skyrim, where dying players will pause time to down 30 health potions and eat 200 wheels of cheese before resuming combat with full health.

I love how cool many fans are able to make cyber-blackjack look even though she looks dumb in the pony style at the same time. It's a massive step up from the goofy attempts to make Littlepip's take on the Wasteland look edgy, grim, dark-coloured, and serious. Both the traditional FIM art style and generic furry semi-LionKing semi-clumsy realism semi-Tumblr (usually not full calarts just super thin limbs and overly-large mouths with shark teeth) art style make it look stupid. But cyborgs are just an inherently cool concept, when they aren't turned into a faggy metaphor for being gay or black or having AIDS. Honestly I wish I went through with making Silver orange and giving him a metallic silver right foreleg.

I think Those Lacking Spines would be a fun thing to review after this. It's not FIM related but it is fanfiction related. it's a satirical Kingdom Hearts fanfic from 2006 where a magical parasite called a Nutless magically (and thankfully offscreen) steals the nuts of Organization XIII one night. It only spares Xaldin, Vexen, and Lexaeus because nobody writes fanfics about them therefore the parasite didn't know they existed.
The organization XIII members who had their nuts taken become sissy little bitches called "Uke"s, and the stolen testicles are turned into caricatures made out of fanfiction cliches called "Seme"s by the Nutless. Xaldin, Vexen, and Lexaeus must work together to face the worlds of Fandom Hearts, where each one is based on a different cliche and contains one Seme to defeat and capture.

The fic parodies fanfiction cliches common to fanfic writing in general back then, but mostly kingdom hearts fics.

You don't need to be a Certified Lore Expert to get the jokes or understand what's going on. Kingdom Hearts is professional naked emperor Tetsuya Nomura's fever-dream billion-dollar wild ride of a fanfiction about his stupid OCs. He's being paid the big bucks to write what's supposedly a Disney and Final Fantasy crossover, but none of these franchises matter to the OC-focused main plot and people only ever write KH fanfics about the OCs anyway.
Kingdom Hearts 3 is actually the fourteenth game in the series because if there's one thing Nomura loves more than pulling shit out of nowhere, it's spinning his nonsense-story's wheels in prequels and interquels to make this clusterfuck look far more complex than it is.

Basically in the multiverse named Kingdom Hearts, there are many worlds. Some are Disney worlds and some are original. There are evil darkness monsters called The Heartless attacking these worlds, and when a strong-souled person is killed by The Heartless their bodies fade and their corrupted hearts become another "Heartless".
The strongest-bodied people can survive losing their hearts to darkness in this way, so their literally-heartless body gets back up and gains a random elemental power. This thing's called a "Nobody" and it technically doesn't exist so it can't feel. Usually a Nobody has all the memories of their past lives, but they scramble their name and toss a X in there to sound cooler. Lea dies and his Nobody is named Axel. Sora dies and his Nobody is named Roxas. Ansem died and his Nobody is named Mansex- I mean Xemnas.
You can't revive a dead person until their Heartless and Nobody are dead.
Don't ask about the Unversed or The Power Of Waking or Yen Sid, they weren't part of the story yet.
Disney and Final Fantasy characters don't actually matter, they're just here for filler levels and marketing. It didn't matter when Sora befriended Ariel, it didn't matter when Cloud and Yuna showed up, and it didn't matter when Sora went to Frozen-land to watch Frozen happen around him and listen to Let It Go again.
Kingdom Hearts is a magic heart-shaped moon containing absolute power, most villains want to summon it to get stronger but Organization XIII is a bunch of Nobodies who want to summon Kingdom Hearts and use its power to give them all hearts so they can feel whole again.
The hero is Sora, the chosen Keyblade wielder. the Keyblade chose him, it's a big cartoon key with magic powers. Attach a Keychain to it and it transforms into an edgy clusterfuck of bad design. Gain a keychain for every Disney world you save. One time Sora died, so his nobody Roxas existed for a while and fought for Organization XIII but was then killed so Sora could be revived. the end. you now know everything in the KH lore circa 2006.

In retrospect its funny how a few cliches it mocked became a part of the main series
like Nobodies having the capacity to grow new hearts
and countless armies of keyblade-bearing shitty OCs (and videogames about making your own ones!) making Keyblades no longer a special chosen-one-only thing.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.288454
>>288448
oops, Yen Sid was the old man in blue from Fantasia. Eraqus was the old man who hadn't yet become a part of the series's nonsense story.
Anonymous
c9149df
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No.288460
288503
Spoilered
>>288422
Oh FUCK me. That fimfic, the 45+ (revised) chapter one of everything being detective noir, right down to ponies in steam carriages, everypony having a tragic past, lots of cigarettes/cigars/cigarellos? My consciousness, subconsciousness, and unconsciousness buried that one 6 years ago. It was so fucking bad that it didn't turn into a smoldering heap of shit, it started as one and became every more HUEHUEMYSTERIOUSHUEHUE as [[[writer]]] went on with his shit. The worst part is he ripped off the (((Sherlock Holmes))) series for the """suspenseful moments in writing""" cliches.

>>288430
By all the Odd Gawds, would you stop forcing me to recall how shitty e-cuckstraylawl whoreizeners became? Every time you post, these visceral, agonizing moments of my failures to dissuade certain shitting dick nipples faggots from writing their "LOLPONYGOESINFALLOUTJEWTHREE" shit.

No, I'm NOT asking you to stop making sense OR posting about how insanely niggertarded k "I love zebra cocks in my huwhite gay jew-loving ass" kunt is. No, there's a much worse reason: there are times I read your posts then cringe in severe autismphobia as the reality is that I hate myself for being unable to prevent the spread of certain 2013-2015 era /mlp/ 4cuck cancers as the abscesses that could have been prevented, pic SEVERELY related. In a certain chat room on a certain program on a certain day roughly a month before I started a certain project hah, Morrowind reference, get off the fucking boat I had the opportunity to tell k "a dick is a dick but when it's on a wymynz then it's not gay" kunt to shove his shit right out the airlock for being retarded cuckstain trash and to neck himself. I. regret. every. second. since. not. taking. that. exact. action.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.288490
288491 288492 288503
1604182770745.jpg
>>288370

>Velvet collected the memory orb and the bunny photo. I was surprised when she left the book.
>“Oh, I already have that one. But you should take it, Littlepip. I know you’ll find it useful.” Something in her expression made me think there was a joke here, and at my expense. Still, I wasn’t one to turn down a book, especially if it was one Velvet Remedy suggested.
I'm not sure what the joke is here either, I'm guessing it's another game reference. The title of the book is Supernaturals, if anyone wants to take a whack at explaining what the gag is.

Anyway, as soon as this ridiculous scene concludes, LP's EFS lights up and she sees that there are a huge number of enemies approaching.

>I had just finished sliding the book into my saddle bags when my Eyes-Forward Sparkle compass exploded with red. I froze. Crap... that’s a lot of enemies! In my mind, I knew the slavers had found us again. And, from the looks of things, they had brought an army!
Seriously, how many of these slavers are there? The joke about the parallel dimension is feeling less and less like a joke with each passing wave of these guys. Is there actually some parallel universe filled with a near-infinite number of generic baddies, who can just beam into the world at random whenever the author needs a fight scene? Because I'm really not seeing any other explanation for this.

Well, it looks like we won't need an explanation (at least not for now), because it turns out that the red blips on her radar are not slavers, but zombies (or ghouls, or whatever you want to call them).

>These did not look like ghouls; these looked like zombie-ponies!
Wait, is there a distinction? If so, then either I'm not remembering or else it hasn't been explained very well. My understanding was that "ghouls" are a thing from Fallout, and "zombies" are their analog in Fallout: Equestria. I remember something about ghouls eventually going crazy, so maybe once this happens they go from being ghouls to zombies? Who knows.

>I remembered the warning: Ya get inta the wrong places, y’ll find yerself hunted by whole packs of cannibal ghoul-ponies gone zombie.
I don't remember this warning, but I grabbed the sentence and did a ctrl-F through the back chapters until I found it in Chapter 5. It sounds as if "zombie" does indeed refer to the crazed state of a ghoul pony. This terminology is a little complicated and vaguely defined for my taste. Probably better to just call them one thing and stick with it.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter; it's a mindless horde of generic bad guys, and they're being chased. This is really all we need to know here. They take off running, and the horde of zombies and/or ghouls begins to chase them.

>I tried to telekinetically grab a downed sky chariot as we raced past, but the glow around my horn sparked and died. I had no telekinetic tricks to save us.
Littlepoop's magic is inexplicably overpowered whenever it's convenient and inexplicably underpowered whenever it's convenient. One of these days I'd like to get a solid explanation of what exactly this pony is and is not capable of magic-wise, if the author even bothered to think this much of it out.

Anyway, they run and the zombies give chase. It's a decently written chase scene, although this kind of thing is simple enough to write you'd almost have to be trying in order to fuck it up. They end up hiding behind a wrecked chariot while Calamity holds them off with his twin rifles. I find myself wondering why Littlepoop isn't helping him here; it's not like she has any shortage of guns or ammunition. My guess is because her telekinesis is temporarily out of commission, maybe she can't hold a weapon or something. Powers that wax and wane at the author's convenience like this are annoying.

Hilariously, while attempting to jump behind the wagon, Littlepoop gets the strap of one of the thousands of guns she's carrying caught on a protrusion of metal and ends up getting trapped there, hanging a couple of inches off the ground. Unfortunately, the strap soon breaks and she is free once more. Instead of just leaving the dumb sniper gun behind, she grabs it in her teeth and starts running again, which has to be uncomfortable.

>My clear mind and heightened perceptions had become a horror.
I guess because she's still high on coke?

>I could feel myself lifted into the air as the wreckage of the passenger wagon was consumed in a flare of unleashed wild magic. I could see the pulsing cascade of colors cast strange shadows as swirling magical energies erupted through the air. I could smell the fetid corpse-stench of the zombies as they were blown apart, even as their body parts caught fire.
An overpowered feat of magic that wasn't unleashed by Littlepoop herself? In my FoE?

Whatever caused this mysterious blast of magic is left unexplained for the time being. Meanwhile, there are still some zombies I guess. They keep running, eventually coming to a "cluster of odd sky vehicles, painted a mottled light blue and grey with tiny splashes of white," which they attempt to take cover behind.

>Velvet Remedy lowered her horn, charging at them, and skewered one messily, unable to hold back an “Eeeew!” that I empathized with completely.
This is the same pony who was unwilling to even fire a needle gun a few scenes ago? Sure, it's true that you never know what you're capable of until you find yourself in real danger, but it's a little odd she would choose such an up-close method of attack when there are other options available. For instance: does she still have the needle gun? Stands to reason that she would.

Anyway, the explanation of how she finds it is rather convoluted, but LP manages to locate a gun turret in the abandoned wagon they are trying to hide in.

>I was trained to reprogram the spell matrix of a PipBuck. Tweaking a turret to run off my PipBuck’s definitions of friend and foe was comparatively easy! Especially right now!
*sigh*
Sure, why the hell not?
Anonymous
bbcc4f1
?
No.288491
288503
>>288490
Not sure about the context in this story.
In the actual show it's that one book in the first Zecora episode. The 'joke' and smirking I have no idea. If it was purely a reference to a character that'a been dead for well over 200 years, and comparing a willing curious pone to a first impression it's not done well.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.288492
288494 288507
2atd-1519257099-401766-medium.jpeg
>>288490

There is a page break here. The next subchapter begins with this rather cryptic passage:

>“Celestia watch you and keep you safe,
>As you travel down the path you choose.
>May Luna be with you and keep you strong,
>So your courage you will never lose.
>Remain loyal, honest and brave,
>Forget not the ones that you save
>And in our hearts you will do no wrong...”

>Velvet Remedy’s tune wove between humming and lyrics, the latter in a state of constant flux. For me, watching my idol actually crafting a song was amazing. Calamity didn’t complain, he too found her music to be uplifting in the bleakness of the wasteland, although his occasional eye-rolling suggested he wished she would stick with one set of lyrics rather than seeking perfection.
So she's singing? Seems like a pretty weird thing to be doing in the middle of a fucking battle.

>It had been several hours since the zombies and the valley was safely behind us.
Oh, god damn it. Seriously?

This faggot takes hack writing to a whole new level. Remember what I said about the chase scene earlier? That a zombie chase was the sort of thing you would have literally be trying to fuck up in order to fuck it up? Well, k "I'm just not feeling these soy-estrogen mint-als anymore, I think I need to move up to the hard stuff, also please stick your cock in my mouth" kat not only tries, he succeeds brilliantly.

Littlepoop's conveniently overpowered horn magic being suddenly and conveniently depleted and unusable is strike one. Strike two occurs when she comes across a gun turret that she conveniently has the knowhow to reprogram because it's conveniently similar to a PipBuck. Strike three is the author going to all the trouble of setting up this asinine ending to the fight, and then not even bothering to see it through to its own asinine conclusion.

Seriously. Littlepoop finds a gun turret, which, despite having literally zero experience working with this type of device, she is somehow able to reprogram to automatically gun down all of the enemies who are chasing them. However, the author apparently can't even take this seriously enough to actually write out the scene; he leaves it on a cliffhanger and then begins the next scene hours later, leaving the reader to assume that because Littleshit is alive then her plan must have worked. This faggot is not just a hack; he is the arch-hack. He not only tells bad stories badly, he takes the bad telling of bad stories and elevates it to the level of high art.

Here's another thing that bothers me:

>I could feel myself lifted into the air as the wreckage of the passenger wagon was consumed in a flare of unleashed wild magic. I could see the pulsing cascade of colors cast strange shadows as swirling magical energies erupted through the air. I could smell the fetid corpse-stench of the zombies as they were blown apart, even as their body parts caught fire.
A gigantic, unexplained blast of magic comes out of absolutely fucking nowhere and takes out a fuckton of zombies. What is the cause of this event? Who or what fired this magic blast? It's never explained. Calamity is a pegasus and thus can't do magic. Littlepoop can do magic but her horn is out of commission at the moment. The only one left is Velvet Remedy, who has never demonstrated any magical ability on this level before now, and usually eschews fighting whenever she can. None of them are plausibly capable of doing anything like this, so the only explanation is a third party suddenly arriving on the scene.

Usually, when you have a bunch of characters running from a horde of something terrifying, and they are cornered and it looks like all hope is lost, and then suddenly a giant blast of something comes from out of nowhere and kills all of the enemies, this usually signifies that the proverbial cavalry has arrived. I was expecting some new character to enter the scene here, maybe a new unicorn who is even more obnoxiously overpowered than Littlepoop herself, who blasts the zombies into oblivion and then makes some snarky remark about it. Instead, the zombies are just suddenly blasted with a giant ball of magic, no explanation is given as to where it may have come from, and nobody in the story seems even remotely curious about it.

After scrutinizing this part of the text, I noticed this:

>I hit the ground still running, the valley lurching about as I fought to keep from tumbling. Bits of zombie-pony splattered down about me like rain. Ahead of me, Velvet Remedy had stopped and was just staring, eyes fixed on a scene behind me I preferred not to imagine.
I had originally assumed this was just Velvet staring in awe at whatever had just happened, but maybe the implication is that Velvet was responsible for the blast? Is that what this is saying? The way the author words it is murky as fuck, and again, it doesn't make a ton of sense either way. Nothing we've read so far would suggest that Velvet is capable of destructive magic on this scale, but at the same time, there's nopony else who could have done it.

Littlepoop, the overpowered Mary Sue protagonist who has more abilities hidden up her ass than she has bobby pins, hasn't even managed to do anything on this scale so far. However, we are supposed to believe that little miss "I'm terrified of everything," who has no skills other than singing and healing, suddenly conjured up a wave of mutilation that wiped out 90% of the zombies chasing after them in one fell swoop? The only thing that could make this scene less plausible would be if Littlepoop took care of the remaining 10% by magically reprogramming some gun turret she found so that it auto-targets and shoots them all down. Oh wait.

Well, whatever; fuck it. Meteors did it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q40-TT6swoE
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.288494
288495
Da-fuck-is-this_o_136559.jpg
>>288492

They won their fight apparently, and are now trudging through the monotony of the darkening Wasteland. Night is approaching. Suddenly, they come across a billboard with what appears to be Pinkie Pie on it. It gives them the creeps, but does not appear to have any other significance.

Then, suddenly, Frank appears. He informs Littlepoop that he delivered her message to New Appleoosa, and wagons are on their way to rescue the slaves. Well, hooray.

This is only the second time that Calamity and the others have seen Frank. Calamity voices distrust, and Littlepoop, who up until a few minutes ago had trusted Frank enough to convey a message to NA, now suddenly realizes she doesn't trust him. She demands to know why he sent her into the library in Ponyville, and he feeds her some vague bullshit in response:

>“I told you that I didn’t mean you harm. And I didn’t. I told you that you would find something you needed to survive in there...” The sprite-bot flew close. “And I’d say you found more valuable things in there than just a book. Wouldn’t you agree?”

>Dammit, Watcher was right. I found Ditzy Doo, who was an acquaintance I valued far more than the guide she wrote (which I held in fairly high regard). Spinning a mental web, I could make an argument that my friendship with Calamity arose out of what happened there. Possibly, although less firmly, I could say my relationship with the New Appleloosans, and thus my ability to save many more ponies, including Velvet Remedy (for certain definitions of “saving”) stemmed from what Watcher pulled. I still wanted to stuff a hoof through the damn bot’s frontplate. But I knew it wouldn’t do any good. The sprite-bot wasn’t Watcher.
So...everything that happened was all thanks to Frank? I guess that's what the implication here is? It seems to me that all he did was send her into a dangerous situation, possibly just for the lulz, where literally anything could have happened, and now he's trying to play it off like everything was planned. I don't know. This is all starting to give me a headache, honestly.

Anyway, at this point Velvet wants to know what the fuck, and Littlepoop proceeds to fill them all in on everything that has happened. Page break.

When the next scene opens, Littlepoop is wrapping up her story, and Frank suddenly interrupts her.

>I organized the questions in my head, prioritizing. “Watcher, you seem to know a lot about things...”
Oh, God. Is this going to be another randomly placed infodump?

I'll spare you all the agony of wondering about it; that is exactly what it is. Littlepoop asks the question that I'm sure is at the top of everyone's mind right now: what's the deal with the Ministries that have been casually mentioned a couple of times in the text but haven't really factored into anything important yet? Frank is more than happy to explain in detail.

After something called the Massacre of Littlehorn, which I can only assume was some kind of big national chili cookoff, Celestia decided she wasn't fit to rule anymore and passed control of the kingdom to Luna. Apparently the war had been going on for some time now, and Celestia couldn't take any more bloodshed and blah blah blah; all of that. Frank mentions six heroes, who I'm assuming are just six random ponies who have nothing whatsoever to do with the main cast of MLP:FIM. The text doesn't specify who they were, but I'm going to assume that their names were Matilda, Jezebel, Sloppy Seconds, Pontiac Sunfire, Englebert Humperdinck, and The Tickler.

Now Celestia was very close to these six ponies, and generally kept them out of harm's way by sending them on bullshit missions away from the fighting. However, when Luna took over, she wanted them to take a central role in the government, and created six departments, or Ministries, headed by each of them. The text doesn't go into detail about what these Ministries were or what they did, but I'm going to assume they were the Ministry of Fudge, the Ministry of Silly Walks, the Ministry of Blowing Truck Drivers, the Ministry of 103.5 FM The Fox, the Department of Motor Vehicles, and the Ministry of War and Explosions and Turning the World into a Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia Full of Violence and Mean Stuff.

Nothing of any real value comes out of this conversation; the subject doesn't really relate to anything that's been going on recently, so it's basically just another random dump of somewhat-interesting information that fills in another portion of the overall history of Edgequestria. Though the bit about Celestia and Luna is new, the rest of it is basically shit we could have more or less pieced together on our own: there were different ministries, they did stuff, and something something the world blew up. We don't really come away from this knowing anything significant that we didn't know before. If the author wants to do an infodump here, he might as well expand it a bit and maybe fill in some relevant details: things like what the departments were, what their roles were, which ponies were in charge of them, and so forth might be helpful.

However, the explanation seems to satisfy Littlepoop, who delivers this line:

>I looked around at the bleak, ruined wasteland that had once been the beautiful nation of Equestria. “Doesn’t look like that went so well.”
The implication seems to be that the founding of the Ministries is what led to the pastel ponyland being turned into edgy edgeville, but I don't really see how this follows. According to Frank's story, the world was already in the midst of a bloody war when the six ministries were created; presumably the war is what fucked up the world, and Frank doesn't go into detail about what role the six heroes or their ministries played in it. From what we have here, we could just as easily assume that the six heroes were just powerless bureaucrats who shuffled paper around while the world turned to shit on its own. Whatever message kkat is trying to convey here, I'm not getting it.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.288495
288513 288882
Screenshot-1.jpg
>>288494

There is one more line before the page break that seems significant:

>Silence. Then Watcher spoke again. “Have you ever heard the old saying ‘The portal to hell is opened with the incantation of good intentions’? If there was a moral to their story, I guess that would be it.”
From some of Nigel's posts, I gather that the idea of good intentions leading to disastrous results is meant to be a major theme in this story, and the author seems to be foreshadowing it here. Since we don't yet know the details of what happened, I can't really say yay or nay on whether or not the story actually delivers on this theme. However, what's more important is that this is the first actual hint we've been given that this massive 500,000 word tome might actually be about something besides some Mary Sue OC running around Edgequestria beating up bad guys. I'm going to tentatively say we've passed a milestone here.

I will note, however, that the moral that Frank gives here does not really fit the story he told.

Anyway, there's a page break. In the next scene, Littlepoop and Co. are approaching a farm as night sets in. The farm has smoke coming out of the chimney and appears to be inhabited.

>Hanging hope on the hospitality of strangers was unwise in the Equestrian Wasteland.
And yet for some reason you keep doing it.

They approach the door of the farm, but before they can knock it's opened by a small filly. We are given this rambling and autistic description of her:

>She was pink. Garishly pink! It was oddly like looking at the face in the giant billboard, only much, much (much!) smaller. And younger. And a very imperfect match. It was hard to tell in the light, but she seemed wrong somehow. My eyes first lighted on a rough scar on her head, like she’d recently fallen headfirst, possibly at very high speed, and scraped herself up rather badly. The first guess that popped into my head was that she had jumped off the roof of her barn. Trying to fly? My eyes moved to her sides, looking for wings, but she was indeed an earth pony. Then my eyes caught her bare flank. She was young, but not that young. She stood less than a head shorter than me. I knew what it was like to strive for a cutie mark that wouldn’t come; my heart went out to her. She had waited longer for hers than even I had, and was still wait... no, wait.

Also, it turns out she painted herself pink for some reason, which is why she looks "wrong."

>I looked to Calamity and Velvet Remedy. From their expressions, they had seen it too, and it didn’t sit well with them.
This may or may not be significant. Presumably there is a reason the filly painted herself pink, and it seems as if Calamity and Velvet know what it is and don't like it. Maybe it's some kind of social taboo, like doing blackface or something. Or, maybe there is some kind of freaky cult out there that paints themselves pink. Maybe they call themselves the Pink Panthers and go around beating up non-pinkies; who knows.

Anyway, the filly's behavior is wacky and random just like le wacky and random Pinkie Pie, and she identifies herself as "Pinkie Bell." She appears to have a weird obsession with Pinkie: along with her Ponk-esque appearance, she apparently also maintains something called "The Pinkie Pie Museum," located in a silo that she leads them to yes, despite their earlier concerns about not trusting strangers, none of them even bat an eye at being led into a creepy silo on a creepy farm by a creepy child that obviously has more than a few screws loose. You have to love horror story logic sometimes.

The museum is described thusly:
>The inside of the silo looked like a party had exploded inside it. Not in a good way -- more like a party had ingested a grenade, and the room was now splattered with party-gore and party-entrails.
While I'm sure the author delighted in using this imagery, it doesn't really give us much of a visual. Specifically what are we supposed to be imagining here? You can keep the party-gore analogy if you want, just go into a little more detail. What is in this museum exactly? Can you give us a couple of examples of what exhibits it contains?

Anyway, the little filly gives them a tour of the museum, which as far as I can tell is a bunch of random piles of balloons and confetti strewn around an old silo. There is also this:
>And best of all this is the very silo where Pinkie Pie, as a young filly, invented the first party ever and got her Cutie Mark!
I'm assuming this means the location is meant to be the Pie family rock farm.

The point of all of this seems to be to give us our first real "introduction" to the six heroes from the past, who up until now have just been shadowy and somewhat malevolent figures from ancient history. Littlepoop specifically notices some photos of the real Pinkie, whom she notes as bearing little resemblance to the menacing figure on the billboard they saw earlier. This is also interesting:

>Prancing towards a familiar poster, Pinkie Bell rambled on, unstoppable. “...when Princess Luna offered to give Pinkie Pie a whole Ministry of her very own to do whatever she wanted to with it, she pounced on the chance! And the Ministry of Morale was born!”
This actually does what Frank failed to do earlier: gives us some actual information about one of these ministries. The poster in question is another of the "Pinkie Pie is Watching You Forever" posters we saw somewhere before (the scene with the vending machine and the playground, iirc). From some other details in the story, we can probably also assume that Fluttershy's ministry had something to do with medicine; however, we don't technically know "Fluttershy" yet.

We also learn some other interesting, random tidbits. Apparently, Pinkie Pie invented the cocaine mints that Littlepoop is so fond of Pinkie Pie on cocaine is probably the most frightening image this story has yet produced.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.288500
288508
99b.png
>>288372
>The chapter header quotes are generally lines of dialogue from either the Fallout games or FiM Season 1. The bulk of FoE was written in the gap between S1 and S2, back when simply repeating something that a pony said was widely considered witty. The relevance is usually questionable at best, but 20% cooler amirite???!???!
Okay. This actually makes the whole thing with the epitaphs a lot clearer. However, the problem still remains: the quotations aren't attributed to anyone, and unless the reader is intimately familiar with the dialog of both Fallout and MLP, they likely wouldn't make the connection. Weirdly enough I actually just watched the episode where Rarity says that line a short time ago, and I still didn't recognize that as a line of her dialog. It's the episode where Fluttershy becomes a fashion model and Rarity is jealous of her, iirc

The author could remedy this very easily by just attributing the quotes. Observe:

Chapter Nine: Please Shove Thousands of Dicks in My Ass

"I'm the one who should be molested by strangers!"
-- Rarity


Literally just adding "--Rarity" at the bottom would make all the difference here. Even if the reader isn't autistic enough to have entire show scripts memorized, they probably have enough basic familiarity with MLP to recognize "Rarity" as one of the characters from the show. However, this would create a problem with the quotations from Fallout.

The official description of this story is "Fallout. With ponies!" However, it would be more accurate to call it "ponies, with Fallout." This might seem like hair splitting, but it actually makes a huge difference in evaluating what the concept actually is here. This story technically has nothing to do with Fallout or its world; the setting is Equestria and the universe of MLP. It's essentially a parody of Fallout set in Equestria. Here is why this matters:

The characters and events of MLP (at least the first season of it) are canonically a part of the world we're reading about. The events of the show took place in this world's past, so in essence anything its characters said or did are a part of this story. Thus, you could quote dialog from the show as epitaphs, and it would be cricket because those characters are a part of the world and their sayings have relevance.

However, this is not true of anything quoted directly from a Fallout game. Rarity is a character in FiM S1 and thus is a character in FoE, even if she's been dead for two centuries, so you can quote her. However, Commander Dickus Von Peenwhack, or whatever the name of a Fallout character might be, does not exist in this world, and it makes little sense to quote his dialogue from the game.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.288503
288509 288876
2006 memes.jpg
>>288460
You shouldn't blame yourself for this story's existence. If you told the author to fuck off, it wouldn't have changed anything. Kkunt isn't the type to listen to others. And even if you did stop FE or PH, some other godawful fanfic would be the number one pony fanfic instead.
Could you imagine the cringe if Nyx's story filled the power vacuum and convinced bronies desperately chasing its success to write their own shitty emotionally manipulative Lilo And Stitch ripoffs?
Or the cringe if those old WarFics where everyone's an obligatory edgy asshole or the mane six get split apart to lead assorted cliche factions based on their personality types and start a civil war, or ponies go to war with space aliens and humans, or some shit like that.
Hell, imagine if Fallout Equestria never existed and Friendship Is Optimal or The Conversion Bureau gained all the retarded dedicated fancucks FE gained in our timeline!
Imagine all the OnlyFans money Eliar Ludditecowsky could make for bullshitting people about theoretical AIs and the need for humanity to be "positively enslaved" by a "good" AI before a bad one "inevitably" takes over.
Imagine if all of this timeline's kids/teens/oversized kids who wrote FE fanfics instead got pulled into The Conversion Bureau and got suckered into going tranny.
It could have been worse.
>>288490
Is the book supposed to be a Supernatural reference? I've never seen it but I overheard every major plot point from a faggot I knew at school who loved it. Something something two brothers, and Castiel the homo angel, on a quest to continue their absent dad's job: being hired to deal with supernatural bullshit. Salt circles keep demons out. Crowley's the king of hell and as a wise man once said, balls.
It's a stupid show that went on for way too long. Every chapter, some new gimmick is contrived. Brother 1 loses his soul, brother two starts dying, brother 1 is turned evil, brother 2 dies every day and revives elsewhere in the house, brother 1 is now part of a chosen one doomsday prophecy, and so on.

>zombies
this is stupid.
in Fallout there are "Ghouls", Zombie-looking slow-ageing fuckers who usually sound like shit. Some lose their minds and become "Feral Ghouls" who actually act like evil zombies hungry for your flesh. they can't spread zombieism though.
This fic established that what LP initially called "zombie ponies" were actually Ghouls from Fallout all along.
yes even though Fallout's "one special gene makes radiation overexposure Ghoulify you instead of killing you" explanation makes no sense for Fallout Equestria's "Taint" dark magic radiation.
Now the fic is pretending it's always called feral ghouls "Zombies".
gay!
Is this fic really pretending Littlepip called Derpy a "Zombie Pony" because she semi-knew what ghouls were and assumed she was a Feral Ghoul on sight?
The author's a colossal faggot for forgetting his own "translated" terminology choices and trying to retcon new ones in later on!

In Fallout 3/NV there is no "Picking up items" animation. you can run along a counter mashing E to teleportatively pick up every object that enters your character's center of vision. I'm surprised this fic isn't porting that literally, considering how literally it ports Inventory Limits, the raider/slaver to prey ratio, Gun Condition magically reducing the damage of its bullets, and VATS/SATS.
Oh wait, this fic DID do that by letting Littlepip instantaneously rifle through the pockets of dead foes to take their ammo in the middle of firefights.

>littlepip's inconsistent magic
I wish Kkunt was familiar with VsBattlesWiki, it would make him better at picking a power level for his characters and sticking to it.

>One of LP's gunstraps get stuck
A nice gesture towards realism except not really because it doesn't inconvenience LP at all and at this point she has to be carrying over 200 pounds of crap despite being Sweetie Belle's size and an unknown implied-to-be-adult age.

>exploding sky chariot
Is this motherfucker really doing the "Exploding Fallout Cars" thing? Did he actually explain Sky Chariots and how they work, to make this scene make sense? Kkunt's a faggot. All exposition about flying vehicles should be shoved into the start of the chapter so nobody reading the fic gets confused and frustrated over not knowing what this world's fantasy vehicles are and how they work!

>Party-Time Mint-Als
To be honest I've never done drugs. I tried booze once or twice in my life and didn't like it. I don't think I'd be able to stomach some weird drug cocktail made from 200 year old mint-like nootropics fried in whiskey and the contents of a "honey mesquite pod". But the author has Littlepip munch them down easily instead of commenting on their taste and texture.
Even when LP's crack-fueled hyper-awareness should make a fight unbearable, the author only spares a few words to mention that it's happening before getting back to the generic and incredibly simplistic action.
"This fight's even scarier to me because I'm on drugs", Littlepip thought, and then the narrator got back to writing what he cared about: Shlocky dull action that bounces between hard-to-follow and insultingly simple.
Would it kill that faggot to try harder when describing shit? The first-person perspective is just being used as an excuse to let Littlepoop say how she's feeling whenever she wants. And you can't just make your characters say how they're feeling! THAT MAKES ME FEEL ANGRY!!!

>mottled cloudy sky-themed car paint
faggot author writing about horse-people missed an opportunity to have someone here say the paint jobs reminded them of mottled horsecock
Kkunt isn't even good at being a faggot on purpose. Kkunt is accidentally a turbo faggot.

>velvet kills
Man, I forgot how often Velvet "I only use tranq darts and frequently give out LP's medical supplies to bandits because I refuse to kill" Remedy breaks that no-kill rule and forgets about it seconds later.

>LP the magic programmer
Fuck kkunt, unoriginal premise, lucky random turret

>>288491
thanks
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.288507
download (4).png
>>288492
Turret-hacking is only a thing in Fallout when turrets make sense to exist somewhere and be connected to an easily-hacked computer. And it's the computer you hack, not the turret itself.
So you can get the Brotherhood Of Steel's turrets to fire on BOS personell in the BOS bunker. But you can't just hack random self-powering turrets in the middle of nowhere, that's absurd.
Even if you build your character specifically for hacking at the expense of other things your protag should do, the best hacker-related perk you gain lets you permanently shut down a robot/turret but only if you were able to successfully sneak up to it and get within melee range without being detected. There is no "Reprogram this machine to give it a stat boost and force it to be your friend until it self-destructs in 1 minute" option sadly.
While we're at it, fuck the entire Fallout franchise for rarely if ever letting you use the skills of your companions in place of your own when it comes to skill checks. Other wannabe-DND games would let you do that. 4's "you can tell companions to lockpick and hack for you" doesn't count, it's too simplistic and unimportant there.

Anyway right now they're supposed to be in a car junkyard or something right now, because finding abandoned cars is a Fallout thing, right?
And cars suddenly exploding in nuclear mushroom clouds when hit by a stray 9mm round is a Fallout 3D thing.
I'm only guessing the random magic blast came from a destroyed car because LP mentioned taking cover behind them while Calamity fires at ghouls AROUND the car.
but hey, hordes of zombies smacking the car you use for cover with their weak little rotten arms... That can totally do enough HP damage to trigger an explosion in a shitty videogame that doesn't mind turning cars into those obligatory explosive red barrels normally reserved for fucking enemies up.
Imagine if Littlepip instead picked up a broken turret with no firing mechanism and levitated it up and used her magic on its internals to make it fire at the Feral Ghouls.
Still stupid. But less stupid than "Fortunately I have always been a master hacker and this fully-loaded fully-powered turret is right here, not firing at me, but ready to fire at enemies once I hack it".
I thought her Cutie Mark talent was supposed to be Pip-Buck Repairpony! I thought her three tagged skills were Repair, Speech, and Lockpick!
Imagine if LP foreshadowed this hacking ability in the Wannabe-Alien Biter Vault by making Security Miniguns fire on the little monsters, forcing them into the vents.
That would make this moment feel less like it came out of nowhere.

>trusting others doesn't fuck Littlepoop over
Of course! Because this Wasteland is a lovely place where everyone is fundamentally good deep down, or an irredeemable slaver/thief/raider monster videogame NPC faggot who will whip out his scavenged dull straightened shaving razor and charge a protagonist in plot armour and power armour decked out with the best guns possible.
If the PipBuck Icon says they're yellow, they are good guys you can talk to. And if it turns red, they are enemies, hostiles who must die.

>ministry infodump
this is dumb. Littlepip should have gained a small chunk of ministry knowledge back at the random robot factory where she found Little Macintosh.

>the Massacre of Littlehorn
I have a rant prepared for this

>big national chili cookoff
some creatures had the consistency of their heads reduced to that of chili salsa, if that counts.

>Littlepip blames the ministries
Kkunt didn't allow the mane six's good intentions to do good deeds and save ponies unless it seemed necessary for some Fallout element to exist in post-apocalyptic Edgequestria. The theme is supposed to be "Good intentions can go bad" but this is never meaningfully explored.

It's not like the story has a pro-individualism anti-government message about how big governments and ministries suck fat cocks and even the best intentions can't stop absolute govt authority from fucking up and making life harder for the little guys swallowed up in wars and forced to deal with their fallouts.

It's not like Littlepip started out a tech genius and piracy/game-modding/illegal robot combat-loving hacker held back and held down by her shitty narcissistic out-of-touch luxury-obsessed wasteful futureless underground bunker-society and got forced to repair what are basically iphones for a living when she could be developing and programming enough murderbots built from scrap to make her "Heroes vs Towns" wars easier for her.

Same goes for Velvet. It's not like she's a natural medical prodigy with convictions so strong she'll join the most moral trading caravan she can find just so she can be a travelling doctor with some protection until she runs into LP.

It's not like LP/Velvet/the rest of Littlepip's DND party only developed their unique helpful skills and incredible combat prowess once they left behind evil groups they were once enslaved by in their own ways, and became free to master what they want on their own time and become useful individuals able to help their small elite team however they see fit.

It's not like a brutal totalitarian uniformly-armoured fantasy-fascist's army of brainwashed evil baby-eaters lose to a plucky rag-tag band of misfits solely because the rag-tag band of misfits are individuals with unique skills but the fantasy-fascist army is 100% identical soulless stormtrooper enemy soldiers you can slaughter freely in a guilt-free extermination war.

There is no thematic glue holding this murderhobo clusterfuck together. There could have easily been some "Groups of six unique friends are good, big uniformed armies bad" message here but that would have taken effort.

The author is just throwing this "hurr durr good intentions go bad sometimes" shit out there because he wants to sound like he's deeper than kindness and too smart for good intentions, even though Velvet and Littlepip are frequently rewarded for their naive trust and random "good" deeds.
Anonymous
8b40cca
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No.288508
288522 288876
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>>288500
He should have had the qouted Spike's words, "Make some friends," in the chapter where Littlepip arrives in ponyville and fight with the raiders there.

>The portal to hell is opened with the incantation of good intentions
I have hear it. I hear it goes like this though, "The road to hell is paved by good intentions," but I'm no old sage so what do I know.

>Chapter Nine: Please Shove Thousands of Dicks in My Ass
There is this yt vid that is basically a parody and a summary of this story but I haven't been able to find it. From my limited understanding, due to not having read the story, it seems now in hindsight to be very accurate.

In it, they make fun of Littlepip's one-liners, with a one-liner similar to the joke chapter subtitle you posted, and then juxtapostion it with a refrence to a later GrIMdArK scene.

"I killed them all. Not just the men, but the children and woman too. I hate them!"
"Anakin!"
Anonymous
62836a8
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No.288509
288510 288514
>>288503
If I had to guess, Supernaturals is meant to be a reference to the Poison Joke episode, where the cure was in a book with said title.
I did enjoy Supernatural when it was primarily "monster of the week" with hints of a demon main plotline. Two brothers hear news about odd events in an American city, do some snooping around to figure out what's causing it, deal with the skinwalker or whatever that's causing problems, and sometimes learn something about why a demon killed their mom. I definitely agree with the assessment that it went on too long; as I recall the main plot was more or less resolved pretty early on, so they had to come with a bigger bad to keep the show running, which quickly escalated to absurdity.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.288510
>>288509
FoE leans heavily on S1 references, so 'Supernaturals' is almost certainly a reference to that episode. Poison joke even shows up later, but *oh boy we'll get to that*
Anonymous
009033b
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No.288513
288876
a17b2d514a31a934d0dfe3b3ac461f77.jpg
>>288495
Man, it sure is GREAT that this one small child living on a damaged and worthless rock farm in the middle of buttfuck nowhere with no defenses or real defenders or anything worth producing or trading is able to obtain all of this Pinkie Pie memorabilia and party crap and set it all up in one silo.
Let's be charitable and assume it came from Pinkie Pie's bedroom, and this really is Pinkie's old rock farm.
How is this place defended in a dangerous world full of raiders and slavers and feral ghouls and monsters? This small location featuring one child can't be that far from what was a car field full of cars.

Did you know? Radioactive Cars exist in Fallout. That's why it makes sense that Feral Ghouls would sleep near them: They like radiation. Later retcons say radiation heals them, but is also implied to turn them feral if they absorb too much of it.
It would be one thing if Twilight Sparkle set up a shell company and fake factory that supposedly produces flying magical cars for Equestria, but actually Twilight summoned radioactive cars in the basement and then enchanted them to fly.
But it makes no sense for the radiation given off by "sky chariots" to be something feral ghouls like, or would ever want to be around.
Ghouls here are supposedly ponies fucked up and made immortal by "Taint" (Radiation), a necromantic "balefire" dark green fire evil energy
except
it's also in drinks for some reason, and a Pip-Buck Taint Detector can also detect radiation like one of those clicky fucking radiation detectors because that's what it was in Fallout 3
and it's also what Ghouls crave
Is Kkunt literally taking Fallout 3 wandering sessions and putting them into the fic? Did Kkunt fight ghouls in a radioactive exploding car-filled dump without realizing why the ghouls like radiation, why the cars explode in nuclear mushrooms, or anything else?

Now, it's not like this is a cartoony world like Borderlands where a cute little child named Tiny Tina is also a demolitions genius who loves blowing up some of the endless poorly-armed practically-harmless Bandit Hordes.
this is just one child in the middle of buttfuck nowhere except she's unreasonably close to a slaver town's railroad and a ghoul horde.
But she is able to survive out here, alone, seemingly without needing food and water.
It's "Little Lamplight" from Fallout 3 all over again!!!

Little Lamplight is a town in Fallout 3 full of children, some of whom have assault rifles. They call adults "Mungos" and kick out any kids who become too old for them. This is an underground town built into a cave.
Don't ask where they get their food, water, guns, clothing, or industry in general from because BugthEAsderp is probably one of those companies that put diversity hacks in the most important-sounding jobs with the most responsibilities and pressure, then offloads those responsibilities and pressures to underlings.
anyway
Little Lamplight is directly connected to Murder Pass, a long rocky videogame dungeon path full of orange evil retarded Orc-like cannibalistic "Super Mutant" gen-3 niggers.
They have guns, melee weapons, big guns, big lasers, and enough ammo for everything. What do they eat? What do they drink? Doesn't matter, Fallout 3 isn't a game for people who think. It was made for CODbabies.
It makes no sense, of course.
It's not like the pathway to Murder Pass is too small for the Super Mutants, and you have to get through the Mutants before you can get to the children.
It's the other way around.
You have to get through the stupid children before you get to the mutant giant hulk-wannabes.
It would be easy for the nearby slaver town of Paradise Falls to raid this place and steal these kids and enslave them.
Hell, imagine if Paradise Falls and Little Lamplight had some sort of deal going on where Paradise falls defended the town in return for any slaves over the age of 13, and Murder Pass didn't exist.
If kids weren't immortal in BugthEAsderp games, you could slaughter all of these kids on your way to Murder Pass and the Super Mutants without a second thought. It's not like they rely on turrets and traps.
The gate that separates Little Lamplight from Murder Pass is made from scrap and the Super Mutants could easily smash through it if logic existed in Fallout 3.

This is not a town full of children armed with mediocre crap in an underground town
This is one rock farm, out in the open. One child lives here and likes showing strangers a Pinkie Museum she made in one silo.
A silo for what? Rocks? Water?
What does this pink wanker eat? What does she drink?

Even if Kkunt has thought of this and addressed it in the text with "She purifies water from the river behind her house and she kills and eats ponies who enter her silo and get distracted by the pinkie shit and don't realize the silo was converted into a gas chamber"
These are still questions Littlepip and pals should think to themselves and ask each other upon finding this child. One kid living out in the wilderness, somehow without food and water and halfway-decent protection? Gee, perhaps this child works as bait for a raider gang? Or perhaps this child is just a cannibal. Or perhaps this child is actually an old woman who scams idiots and robs them and looks young because she regularly takes a pre-war temporary de-ageing cream Rarity invented. I made that last one up, Rarity would never do something so in-character in a setting where magic and potions can do fucking anything. She'd never tell her "Ministry Of Image" to invent a fucking de-ageing cream even though it could also be used to make old bastards healthy and fit again so they can be shipped to the front lines.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.288514
3zj5oj8o72xy.jpg
>>288509
oh yeah
you're right about Supernaturals
I looked it up and that really was a book mentioned in that episode
now I feel gay for admitting I have any idea what Supernatural is.
Anonymous
8142357
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No.288516
288518 288876
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Just to clarify something that Kkat should really have made clear early on but didn't but he's a retard: in FoE, radiation and taint are distinct things. This becomes more important later so you kinda have to pick it apart through context clues.

In FoE's world, radiation is lingering necromatic magic left over from the megaspells/nukes. It heals ghouls and mutants, gives you radiation sickness, and does pretty much everything else you'd expect from radiation in Fallout. Taint is a low-grade version of IMP, FoE's version of the Forced Evolutionary Virus. It makes mutants and monsters, and is liable to turn you into a gibbering blob of mindless flesh unless you get a very precise and pure dosage, which makes you into an alicorn/super mutant instead. Alternatively, if you have plot armor, it gives you arbitrary superpowers with no downside. Wink wink.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.288518
>>288516
Just imagine. If FIM and FOE came out when Naruto was popular enough to have shitloads of terrible OC-centric fanfics about it, more authors from a naruto fanfiction background would take a crack at writing FOE.
And they'd do a better job by doing more creative things with that TMNT Mutagen stuff.
Anonymous
8b40cca
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No.288522
288532
>>288508
Right, its a sprite-bot not an old pony sage. My bad.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.288532
>>288522
I must not spoil I must not spoil I must not spoil I must not spoil I must not spoil I must not spoil I must not spoil
Anonymous
009033b
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No.288683
288685 288693
Does anyone here who hasn't said much so far have something they want to say about the fic?
Anonymous
1438af6
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No.288685
288703
>>288683
No, I stopped reading weeks ago because you clearly have more interest in making this about you
Anonymous
3d34345
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No.288693
288703
>>288683
Postal 2 is way better
Anonymous
009033b
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No.288703
288716 288737
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>>288685
I'm sorry that my long posts make you feel like you're being left out of the discussion. At least I think that's what's upsetting you. It's my best guess since my post length annoys me too. I honestly have no idea what's bugging you, but I don't want to push you away. If I posted less often, would you like this thread more? We can completely derail this thread and make this thread all about you instead of the fic if you want, as long as we get this sorted out and resolve the drama before glim comes back with more posts about FOE to get this thread back on-track. We can spend multiple posts talking about your feelings, and I can try to comfort you for a while as I keep trying to convince you to tell me what's really upsetting you. Just like a dad letting his son cry into his shoulder until he's ready to get everything off his chest, talk it out, and then face the world and be a man again.
All jokes aside, communication is a two-way street. How am I supposed to know what's upsetting you if you won't tell me anything? You can't just say "I'm leaving you!" like an ex-girlfriend and expect me to drop to my knees begging you to stay or snap my fingers and magically resolve whatever's crawled up your ass and died. I have autism, not magical mind-reading powers. It's hard enough for me to read people when I can actually see them and I've known them for years and gradually figured them out.
Glim's the star of the show here, and that's good. He's the one actually reviewing the work and pointing out all the small mistakes and huge mistakes.
I'm adding what I know about FOE's source materials when not ranting about some fuckup in the story and how I'd try to do it better if Kkunt paid me to revise one chapter without letting me rewrite absolutely everything else about the fic. You can find your place in this and contribute to the thread however you want. Also I am becoming a stronger and smarter writer, so I can say things like "If you can't do a first-person perspective right, don't do it!" and "This first-person perspective doesn't add anything to the story or help us get inside the fascinating protagonist's head because the protagonist isn't fascinating! This first-person perspective is just an excuse for Littlepip to tell us she feels angry or afraid whenever the author feels too lazy to describe that properly!" now. I think the longer this goes on, the stronger we all become. We are all becoming better writers.

We will become greater writers by learning not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Ironically, learning from the mistakes of the past is one of Fallout's main themes. When it's good and not Bethesda'd to hell, anyway. I guess that's why they call it Simple And Clean!
{s}This is a reference to BestGuyEver's PCP University lectures on media. His Kingdom Hearts lore lecture took 3 hours. Simple And Clean is the series's nonsense-engrish-filled main theme and the lore is NOT simple or clean. Someone in the crowd said the same "simple and clean" joke when talking about Guilty Gear lore which is also pretty complex and long. also Dizzy is CUTE, not overdesigned{/s}

Speaking of the fic I think Littlepip found Velvet Remedy WAY too early. She seemed like LP's main goal, like how "Find your dad, see the main character shit he did for you, and then fight a pointless war between two meme factions over who gets to turn a water purifier on" is Fallout 3's plot and "Get that platinum chip and then decide how you reshape the Mojave Wasteland with your choices and their consequences" is the plot of Fallout 4.

Because right now, Littlepip has found Velvet Remedy. The main plot's technically over.
And there is no additional stuff. No new goal for LP.
It's not like Velvet left the Vault because she had a dream where Twilight Sparkle told her "The world will be destroyed unless you save everyone from The Alicorns! The boss of the Alicorns wants to pull the moon into the earth to kill us all because she's soooooo edgy!" and then it turns out these dream messages were actually a psychic manipulating her into getting involved with something even bigger.
The pre-war stuff is keeping the audience's attention for now, but LP has no concrete goal like "Destroy one big slaver company I don't like". Her goal, Velvet, only has "Be free and heal ponies" as her goal. It's not like she saw an existing tiny Followers Of The Apocalypse group in her dreams (Or heard rumors of them IRL) and decided she wants to join them.
Velvet has no long-term goals. It's not like Calamity has any long-term goals either. So Littlepip can't decide to embrace the dream of a friend.

Watcher's retarded infodump would be the perfect time for LP to learn more CURRENTLY-IMPORTANT-TO-HER shit about the world and give her a goal. Because right now, she seriously needs one.
Why is she wandering around this Pinkie Pie museum?
WHAT HAPPENED TO RED-EYE?
Shouldn't LP ask Watcher about him?
where is this plot going? besides into gay assholes!
>>288693
Postal 2 is awesome! I think Bethesda's incompetent team would have a lot more fun and freedom if they made some silly and fun game like that, instead of trying and failing to do the Fallout Western RPG series justice. They could make a game all about a wacky soldier running around doing stupid sidequests for mutants and madmen while shooting respawning swarms of enemies with all sorts of wacky guns and oversized guns that would normally never fit the Fallout tone. The Institute could just be mad scientists who exist because potatoes, and people would be fine with that because they wouldn't expect a villain as well-written as Caesar's Legion, they'd just be grateful for the new source of wacky science guns.
The Rock-It Launcher would be great in Postal. A gun that shoots junk! That's pretty funny.
A fan coded the Portal Gun into Fallout 4, it's great. I love spawning one portal in a high place and then using the portal gun like an actual gun against raiders, teleporting them high so fall damage kills them. SICK!
Anonymous
1438af6
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No.288716
288719
>>288703
>make this thread about you
No you fukking mong, I want this thread to NOT be about YOUR endless autisms. GlimGlam is a talented, entertaining, and constructive critic and author.
You're not
Anonymous
009033b
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No.288719
288721
>>288716
ok
what do you want me to try and do about this?
Anonymous
1438af6
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No.288721
>>288719
You could let Glimglam run his own thread and quit hijacking it, you could quit using an absence of Glimglam posting as an excuse to post whatever under gods green earth you feel like ranting about, you could realize that if you have to invite others to post then maybe you should STOP POSTING, you could have taken MY offer to review your posts so that they arent endless buckets of cum vomit so vast that you cant process it all and then end up regurgitating it everywhere. Not exhaustive, those are just off the top of my head.
Anonymous
d493367
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No.288737
288751
>>288703
Will admit I'm not sure how to convey my feelings about it but compared to the last story something feels off this go around. From the tail end I caught of Past Sins and being there from the get go for Sun and the Rose I remember more banter happening between Glim and the rest of us with either us discussing our feelings or Glim responding to an observation we made.

I feel like you might be retreading some points you already made prior though. I can't cite specific examples off the top of my head admitidtly but do remember noticing a few times the same observations being made.

I don't know how to offer a way to fix it though and I don't want it to be that you aren't allowed to say anything since you know more about Fallout and Fallout Equestria then all of us so you have been able to offer some insights I didn't know before about either.

If I had to offer anything I do like when Glim runs into some new thing in the story and you would use spoiler text to explain to any other readers what the thing is based off of in Fallout or offering a spoiler preview of how it plays into the story later.

I'm just hoping the thread can feel like it did in the Sun and Rose days *sips Monster can* since it feels as if now it's Glim makes a post, you respond to, and occasionally I will make a comment saying how my comment isn't too original but I'm enjoying the review. Think it doesn't help Kkat doesn't try to write as flowery as the last author or doesn't have as much magic/cartoon hyjinks.
I loved all the talk and jokes about the historical inconsistencies or all the intrigue about how the story may develope.

Already rambled enough myself but I'm not sure how many we got here and feel like if we all put our noggins together we could come up with an amicable solution.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.288751
288768
>>288737
I think it's familiarity at the core of the problem.

When we talked about Past Sins, we were all familiar with stories that tried to do the "Le cute innocent girl who's actually something special.
the story went through all the usual plot beats. Twilight finds an orphan and adopts her and they do some cute shit together (but nowhere near enough cute shit). then some evil authority figure wants to take her away. the girl awakens her powers and might do something evil with them for a while. then she turns good and someone else was the villain all along" shtick Past Sins relied on.
So we were all able to meaningfully contribute to discussion on how bad the fic was, how it could have gone better, and how this cliche was done better in other things we are familiar with.
Didn't matter if we'd seen Lilo And Stitch/Elfen Lied and things like it once or a thousand times, we all knew what to say about the story.
Because it's a story, we could all talk about it.
Hell, I kept comparing this to those "Naruto gets adopted by ____" fanfictions I read as a child during the early 2000s, because that's something similar to Past Sins I was familiar with.
They were all the same.
Some child has a dark power and evil demon sealed with him, he's adopted by a character of the author's choice, things are great from the start or the child helps raise the adult to cure his alcoholism or whatever to make him a good dad so things get great, he has no friends except for kid characters the author likes, then he's bullied at school for the dark power sealed within him and maybe also some stupid childish behaviour that comes from a lack of social experience but usually just the first thing, then some normally-level-headed character in charge becomes unusually cunty and decides to take the child away from the perfectly good home to make him an orphan again for no reason or turn him into a living weapon or lock him away in some govt facility. Then the boy awakens his dark power, lectures everyone who was ever mean to him, maybe the evil demon sealed within him lectures the citizens of Leafville for extra "I know I'm a giant demon, but you're human cunts!" irony points.
anyway the parent's love calms the murderous possessed child down and the child regains control over his dark powers. then the family lives happily ever after or the child walks off into the sunset to start his new life as a solo badass invincible gary stu. perhaps at some point the child grows up and gets a harem of big booty bitches. the evil demon might also be or turn into a big booty bitch too.
Past Sins hit everything on that checklist except the harem. And Celestia wasn't a cunt for no reason, yet NMM overreacted like she was one anyway. It even fucked up the "Nyx is NMM's reincarnation" shit by trying to have Nyx overcome the NMM essence in the usual scene, even though at she literally is nothing but Twi's blood, Everfree mana, and NMM smoke.
but
the things everyone else had to say about that fic were interesting too, and I loved hearing it.

Sun and Rose tried to be a prequel for Celestia and a romance story and a story of intrigue and mystery. It was gay and boring but sometimes ok. After the ending, the mane six show up so they can pretend this little romance story was the most important thing ever in Equestrian history.
Imagine if the human knight's presence was used to explain why some stuff in Equestria is for humans rather than ponies. That would fit better.
Anyway we were all familiar with romances and stuff about knights and we could all comment on the story however we wanted.
It's still a story and we could talk about it.

Plus, both of these tales use familiar characters. When Rainbow Dash talks generically instead of talking like Rainbow Dash, we noticed. We could crack absolutely fucking brilliant jokes about Twilight's "crazy horny wine aunt" personality. It was fun.

Then there was Friendship Is Optimal.
This technically isn't a MLP fanfic. it's a story about stupid humans who create and then get conquered by an AI with more plot armour than The Joker in a bad Batman comic. Ponies never touch this story or world. "Equestria Online" isn't a portal to equestria and it isn't digitally linked to a "data dimension" connected to all worlds including Equestria. CelestAI isn't a mask worn by Discord's made-up sister or the all-new secret third Celesia/Luna Sibling, Ai the Princess of Knowledge.
But even though this isn't truly a pony fanfic, we could crack jokes about how living in Equestria (or a realistic simulation of it) would probably go: The faggot brony simp chases after Rainbow Dash but can't impress her or form a real relationship with her, meanwhile his non-brony friend is perfectly content ploughing some nice background mare in his league with more free time.
Insert "Realistic simulation of equestria/the moon" reference here, haha john madden john madden chinese earthquake.
We could joke about what a FUCKING BITCH the hero was and it was fun.
(seriously the fucker solved a 'move the block' puzzle by magically programming his block to brute-force the puzzle open by trying everything, and he got a full reward for this cheat)
the hero was A FUCKING SOYCUCK OBSESSED WITH VIDEOGAME ACHIEVEMENTS and it was hilarious.

but this fic...
Anonymous
009033b
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No.288768
288806 288823
8f1.jpg
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>>288751
This fucking fic...

The previous stories had universal appeal.

okay they actually sucked gay cocks, but they were SUPPOSED to have universal appeal. Your favourite pony adopting a daughteru? Your second-favourite Alicorn getting some made-up backstory and a love interest? What an interesting premise!

Being able to surgically remove your brain and put it in a Nintendo-brand brain jar so you can plug your brain into a fantasy MMO where you're always cooming in pony puss, the AI goddess gives you the perfect job and pays you for solving made-up problems that solely exist for your satisfaction so there's never any pressure, resources are infinite, programming resources are somehow even more infiniter, and any "business-owner" doesn't get paid with finite meaningful money but instead gets rewarded directly by a loving AI goddess for how many ponies you satisfy at your job? That's a faggy fantasy. What a gold-mine for jokes!

And then there's this fic.

It claims to be a Fallout and MLP crossover, but it's actually a misunderstood mishmash of Fallout elements, some copypasted directly with a slight name change and some "one-upped" by an author desperate to convince you edginess and length equals quality. This misunderstood mishmash of Fallout elements and iconography then has pony iconography slapped onto it. Ponies fail to stop the apocalypse despite their good intentions, but it can be undone by "cooler" violent ponies and their good intentions.

This isn't a normal story with universal appeal. This isn't even a coherent story! Two settings that were never meant to work this way are bent and misunderstood and misshapen so one faggot can try to make you think his OC is cool. Littlepip's murderhobo rampages aren't cathartic fun, they're dull and tensionless. Littlepip isn't an exciting and dynamic protagonist. Her companions aren't interesting people with fascinating backstories, useful skills, and distinct frequently-clashing personalities.

How do you call this story shit in a new-sounding way when it's so unlike anything good you've ever seen?

You can comment on how horribly this fanfic treats the Mane Six.

Honestly, I really hope a lot of people comment on that when we eventually get there. Fuck this author for having no sense of pacing.

You can comment on how this fanfic treats Pony elements you're familiar with, when it features MLP elements.

But Fallout elements?

If you don't know absolutely everything about Craig Boone from Fallout New Vegas, how can you tell when a pony fanfic's ripping him off and fucking it up and making him far stupider than he should be?

If you didn't see the Boomer Museum at Nellis Air Force Base, how would you be able to tell that's what this child-in-a-museum scene is ripping off?
(and poorly! The Boomer Tribe had a lot of effort put into making these fuckers from a nearby vault make sense. Their power and food supply and weapon collection and boner for planes and where they got a fucking bomber... it all made sense. It didn't just work, it was great! They have a Howitzer and will fire on Hoover Dam for whoever you tell them to, or avoid firing on Hoover Dam if you kill their leaders and leave. And you can help an old man there recover and repair a bomber that crashed into Lake Mead according to a magazine he read. The boomer museum was one of those semicircle-but-3D military buildings except one wall was taken up by a big mural. A child at Nellis had "tell others the history of the boomers" as his job because in this society, old farts do their jobs and are aided by young apprentices until they die and get replaced, so when his boss died he became the new professional history-teller. Where does this child in a museum get his food, water, protection, and clothing? From the society of insular cartoon-xenophobic rocket-launcher-carrying old faggots around him wearing completely unearned military medals on their fucking leather jackets and the legs of their jumpsuits!)

You know what Alicorns are in FIM, and you know an army of evil edgy black and green/blue/purple Alicorns is a load of bollocks. But if you didn't play Fallout 1, how would you be able to tell that this take on Alicorns and their leader is the author's attempt to one-up Fallout 1's Super Mutants into a BIGGER AND STRONGER AND EDGIER AND FLYINGER AND MAGICALER AND DANGEROUSER superior Master Race, AND know why that's a betrayal of the role they were supposed to play in Fallout 1?

I've played a lot of Fallout. I think I'd call it my favourite game franchise of all time if Bethesda didn't keep doing everything in its power to destroy its reputation and past and future. I must have played FNV for over a thousand hours. Fallout was my autistic obsession for a long time. If someone doesn't play Big Iron from Fallout New Vegas at my funeral I'm fucking leaving.

So I hate this fanfic for being such a bad ripoff of Fallout, and fucking up so many Fallout elements in an attempt to do better than them. I also hate this fanfic for being such a bad pony fanfic that pisses all over Equestria, the mane six, Derpy, and all the values and ideals of Equestria in general. But mostly, I hate this fic for the potential it wastes by being the biggest and worst possible pairing of these franchises that were once filled with limitless potential but gradually got shit thanks to corporate bullshit taking the art away from the artist and giving its sequels to retards.

In this thread, I've tried to create opportunities for others to comment by explaining to them what this fic is doing wrong, so they'll know why it sucks. Sorry if that's preachy or unnecessary or excessively long-winded but I thought it would help the "only 2 people on this site ever played Fallout 1/2/3/NV but we're reading a fic that rips off and fucks up a lot of shit from those 4 games" problem.
Anonymous
d493367
?
No.288806
>>288768
Was actually thinking about that on the way home from work today. Those past stories had the benefit of either being in Equestria as we knew it or in our world so had stuff we could all point out and discuss with contradictions from the show or talk about how real humans would react. While this one is mostly divorced from Equestria, our world, and the world of Fallout so not much most passerbys can comment on.

Also don't mean this as a dog towards you since I know there is atleast one other here who probably read this one and has read PH but we sort of already know what's going to happen and the story as of yet hasn't been told in much of a meaningful way. With Sun and the Rose I had no idea what will happen so it was fun with us speculating on stuff and reacting to events together but here we either know what's going to happen or like Glim is mostly trying to wrap our head on the contents of LP's Katamari loot ball.

Don't mean to say you should stop posting about spoiler stuff either. Even for things I do like I tend to spoil myself anywho. I really like reading your stuff on how Fallout Equestria stuff was translated from things in Fallout or you fuming about elements of the world building that Glim wouldn't post about in his snippets he shows of the story since most don't contribute much but it's neat to learn how some events transpired.

Think it's just the story taking it's toll on us all but hopefully once bigger bad guys other then slaver rapist meanie pants 'Muahaha!' appear and more background history becomes revealed we can get some banter rolling.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.288808
288812 288840
FoE does have some pretty extensive backstory regarding the canon characters (which ranges from 'good idea, bad execution' to AAAAAAAAAAAA) - but because Kkat couldn't write a coherent fast food order let alone a multi-novel-length story, it takes forever to get there. The actual central plot doesn't really kick in until around chapter 20 or so, when they meet Spike.
Anonymous
ddd5b94
?
No.288812
288821 288823 289019
>>288808
I have a constructive response to your earlier "what do I do?"
You already know the story, your mind is made up, and your interest is to convey (read: browbeat) your conclusions. Some of us are actually new to the story, and would like to experience the story FIRSR and ur hateboner not at all. Or at least, in the aftermath. Simply, give some of us a chance to experience it BEFORE you,... do what you always do.
Whether the story is ass (which there is no doubt), allow others to draw their own conclusions BEFORE you shove yours down their throats.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.288821
288823 288846 288877
>>288812
I think you have me confused with someone else.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.288823
288840 288877
>>288821
Oh dear. My apologies.
>>288812
This post was intended for
>>288768
Anonymous
abb50e3
?
No.288840
288841 288846 288877
>>288808
>>288823
Poor other Britbong people just see the Queen's flag and assume it's Nigel lol. Truth be told have made the same mistake myself admittedly in the past but love you both.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.288841
288877
>>288840
>assume its Nigel
In general no, but in this thread,... yeah
Anonymous
3266c18
?
No.288846
288877 289019
>>288840
>>288821
It seems that this flag has gained quite an infamy.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.288876
289019
>>288503
>Is this motherfucker really doing the "Exploding Fallout Cars" thing? Did he actually explain Sky Chariots and how they work, to make this scene make sense? Kkunt's a faggot. All exposition about flying vehicles should be shoved into the start of the chapter so nobody reading the fic gets confused and frustrated over not knowing what this world's fantasy vehicles are and how they work!
It's interesting you bring this up, because it sounds like it relates to something that is a major confusion in this part of the story for me. I'll get to it in just a moment, but I suspect that whatever the "Exploding Fallout Cars thing" is, it's probably the point that confused me, which means that yes, the author should clarify this, or better still just not make it so damn complicated to begin with.

>This fic established that what LP initially called "zombie ponies" were actually Ghouls from Fallout all along.
>yes even though Fallout's "one special gene makes radiation overexposure Ghoulify you instead of killing you" explanation makes no sense for Fallout Equestria's "Taint" dark magic radiation.
>Now the fic is pretending it's always called feral ghouls "Zombies".
The ambiguity here is confusing. LP starts off calling Derpy a "zombie" because she doesn't know what she is, and then later finds out she is a "ghoul." Thus the author defines "ghoul" as a proper term for something specific, and "zombie" as a general term for something spooky and undead. Trying to make "zombie" into a specific term as well just complicates things unnecessarily.

If your story contains a generic, lumbering undead creature that your characters call "ghouls" and "zombies" interchangeably because the undead-thing doesn't have a name and the characters need to call them something, then this is fine. However, that's not what the author is doing here; he clearly intends ghouls and zombies to be viewed as two distinct categories. He makes it more complicated by having these terms refer to two states of the same entity, and complicates it further still by using them ambiguously and doing a piss-poor job of even explaining what the hell they mean in the first place.

>>288508
>I hear it goes like this though, "The road to hell is paved by good intentions," but I'm no old sage so what do I know.
That is the accurate version of the proverb. The author is making a joke by wording it this way; "hell" (or "Tartarus" I suppose) is a real, physical place in this universe, and magic portals are also a thing. So, instead of the metaphorical "road to hell" he references the literal "portal to hell." At least that's my interpretation.

Honestly, while I get the joke, "the portal to hell is opened with the incantation of good intentions" reads pretty awkwardly. You may have heard that you don't want to mix metaphors? Well, the same principle can apply to mixing a metaphor with a literal statement. If both hell and the portal to hell are real things, then this statement could also be taken literally. This makes it absurd: hell is real, the portal to it is real, but the "incantation of good intentions" is not. Personally, I'd advise the author to just use the standard "road to hell" version of the proverb.

>>288513
>Did you know? Radioactive Cars exist in Fallout.
At this point nothing about this could surprise me.

>Little Lamplight is a town in Fallout 3 full of children, some of whom have assault rifles. They call adults "Mungos" and kick out any kids who become too old for them.
This actually sounds eerily similar to the plot of an old Star Trek episode.

>>288516
>Just to clarify something that Kkat should really have made clear early on but didn't but he's a retard: in FoE, radiation and taint are distinct things. This becomes more important later so you kinda have to pick it apart through context clues.
This doesn't surprise me either, but it does annoy me. If you hadn't told me that, I never would have realized it. I've been noticing that he sometimes talks about "radiation" and sometimes "taint" and seems to use them interchangeably as he does with "ghoul" and "zombie." It's aggravating that he seems to think the reader will just intuitively grasp what he means since he really doesn't make it clear at all. It would be better if he did a better job of explaining it, but honestly I think it would be better still if he just simplified it so it didn't have to explained in the first place.

Instead of having "ghouls" be a specific entity with a secondary state called "zombie," just pick a single term and use it consistently. Alternatively, you can just make the creature a "generic undead thing that attacks you," and then your characters can call them ghouls, zombies, spooks, darkies, or whatever the fuck word pops into their heads first and it will mean the same thing. Similarly, just pick either "taint" or "radiation" and stick with it.

Some authors like to develop mechanically intricate worlds with a lot of complex terminology for things, but it's generally better to describe things as simply as possible. A story like this really doesn't need to be as complicated as it is. Is there some type of undead monstrosity that recurs frequently throughout the story? Fine; pick a term for it and use it consistently. Is there a bunch of green shit floating around in the atmosphere that mutates creatures into monsters and makes the air poisonous? Fine; pick a term for it and use it consistently. The worst thing you can possibly do is the same thing this author does constantly: assign specific definitions to different terms, and then throw those terms around ambiguously without ever explaining what the fuck any of them even mean.

Moreover, this story probably doesn't even need this much complex worldbuilding in the first place. If you have to write an extra 25 pages of text explaining the intricate details of your world, but your story itself is just a bunch of cardboard monsters slapfighting each other, then you're doing it wrong.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.288877
288980
>>288821
>>288823
>>288840
>>288841
>>288846
To be perfectly honest it took me a bit to realize that there are two distinct Britbong IDs in this thread. For awhile I was just wondering why Nigel would sometimes respond to his own posts as if he'd asked himself a question.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.288882
288885 289027
1597933960527.png
>>288495

Anyway, it looks like Littlepoop is becoming a drug addict:

>Pinkie Bell lifted up a tin, showing them off.
>I wanted that tin!
>Pinkie Bell set it down next to the chemistry set and continued on. I lost track of her monologue because my mind insisted that I needed to be absolutely sure I remembered where that tin was.
It sounds like the author eventually develops Littlepoop's fondness for crack mints into a whole subplot about addiction. It may or may not prove interesting, but it feels weird for LP to be this focused on drugs now.

Anyway, the filly keeps blabbering about Pinkie Pie, and it's obvious that she's insane. However, the information she gives us seems like it's probably relevant:

Apparently, the Ministry of Morale elevated Ponkamena to the level of some kind of god, and eventually the religion spread. There is now an entire cult based around her worship, and they believe that if they are good little ponies she will magically appear and throw them a party, but if they are bad she will bring them a rock. Yes, this autism is actually in the text.

The subchapter ends with the filly randomly assigning the group another weird quest. This time, they need to find a magical statuette of Pinkie, and in return, the filly will give them the recipe for Ponkamena's Famous Party-Time Crack Mints™.

I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record here, but the video-game-style story structure this author uses is really getting annoying. In a game, this kind of interaction is fine; you run into some random character, she tells you to go retrieve some object for her, and in return she offers a reward. However, you can't expect the reader to have the same suspension of disbelief for a novel that they would have for a game, particularly a novel that seems to want to be gritty and real (at least as gritty and real as a novel about cartoon ponies can be). Even setting aside all of the wacky autism about Pinkie Pie having her own religion, nothing about this situation makes any sense.

This filly lives alone in the middle of a dangerous wasteland on an abandoned farm, where she apparently maintains a "museum" dedicated to a pony she worships. Some random strangers show up at her door one day, so she immediately shows them her museum, then asks them to go look for a rare statue (she doesn't even give them a clue as to where it might be), and in return she'll give them her recipe for drugs? Who behaves this way?

I can't imagine these three are the first ponies ever to stop by here, so does she give this same quest to anypony who drops by? Is she just hoping that if she keeps asking random ponies to hunt around for this thing that sooner or later one of them will find it and bring it back to her? Why doesn't she just go look for it herself if she wants it so bad? According to the text this is the last Ponk-related item her museum needs, and she must have tracked down the rest of this stuff somehow, so wouldn't it make more sense to obtain it by the same means? For that matter, where did she find all of this shit?

There's also the issue of the crack mints. This seems to be an addictive and highly sought-after drug, so I'm guessing this recipe would be quite valuable. Going back to what Nigel pointed out, about this being a lone filly living on an abandoned farm with absolutely no protection, it seems doubly insane that she would go around bragging about having something like this in her possession. She is obviously bonkers, so maybe it's not that implausible in and of itself, but what is implausible is that nopony has robbed and killed her yet.

I mean, think about it: let's say that LP and Co. are just ordinary, run of the mill Wasteland inhabitants. They show up at this little filly's house one day, and she deduces that they have an appetite for crack mints. Since she still needs one last statuette to complete her Ponk collection, she proposes this trade. What would make the most sense? Do they agree to go wandering around the Wasteland searching for some tiny statue that may or may not even still exist? Or do they just kill the loony twat and take whatever she has, including the mint recipe? Even if this isn't the option that LP would choose, it's fair to assume that there are any number of less scrupulous individuals wandering around this world who would. By all logic this filly should be long dead.

Anyway, there's a page break. The filly has apparently insisted on putting the group up for the night in the farmhouse, and they are now sitting around in an upstairs bedroom, discussing how they might go about finding this ridiculous statue that the filly wants, because apparently they now want to manufacture crack mints instead of...wait, what are they supposed to be doing anyway?

Velvet seems to suspect that something tragic must have happened to this filly, which given her lunatic behavior is probably a safe bet.

>Looking at Velvet Remedy, I was once more struck by the scarlet and gold stripes in her silvery-white mane, again finding them oddly reminiscent of the Ministry of Peace pink and yellow. Only then I was thinking of it as coincidence or destiny. Now, I wondered if it wasn’t more like Pinkie Bell’s painted-on pink coat.
I kinda-sorta get what the author is going for here, but the meaning is still ambiguous. What connection between Pinkie Bell and Velvet is being hinted at? Is the implication that Velvet dyes her hair for the same reason Pinkie dyes her coat pink, which I guess has something to do with some sort of religious devotion to one or more of the Mane 6, who may or may not have been important bureaucrats and/or gods? Neither the reader nor Littlepoop knows enough about what's going on with these Ministries to make much of an assessment here.

>Velvet caught my stare and seemed to fathom what I was thinking eerily quickly. “It’s not the same!” she insisted quietly.
Not the same as what? We still have no clear picture of what LP was thinking exactly.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.288885
288891 289061
request-chariot-and-company-my-little-pony-illustration-png-clipart.jpg
>>288882

>Calamity was paying more attention to the wall. Abruptly he jumped to his hooves. “She’s gone. An’ if ya don’t want somethin’ horrible t’ happen t’ us, Ah suggest we be leavin’ too.” He moved to the door and pushed on the handle. It didn’t budge.
From what I gather, Calamity has been listening at the wall for the filly to go away, or go to bed, or something to this effect. Presumably he doesn't trust her, and intends for them to sneak away at the first opportunity. Since the filly appears to have locked them in the room, I'm assuming this mistrust was well-founded. However, it's not clear why he didn't voice it earlier. Seems the sensible thing would have been to simply decline the offer to stay the night and move on; it's not like the filly could overpower all three of them if the situation got ugly.

Anyway, Velvet gets claustrophobic and starts yammering about how she doesn't want to be trapped in a cage. This extreme aversion she has to captivity seems as phoned in as everything else about her character, and is highly ironic considering what she was doing for a living when LP found her. Meanwhile, Calamity and LP both look out the window, and see that the filly is slipping out of the barn in a rather suspicious manner.

>Calamity waited, quiet and still, until the door of the farmhouse opened, casting a rectangle of light across the ground with a Pinkie Bell shape cut out of it. The moment the door closed, he turned and bucked at the window.
I'm not quite sure why he waits for her to enter the farmhouse before doing this. Aren't they in the farmhouse? The text says they are in an upstairs guest room, but it doesn't specify in which building that room is located. However, one would logically assume the guest rooms are in the farmhouse, so in this case Calamity seems to be waiting for Pinkie Bell to enter the farmhouse before breaking the window. It's not clear why he would do this.

Anyway, once again demonstrating that he has no flair for the dramatic whatsoever, kkat describes their daring escape from the locked bedroom thusly:
>The escape would have been treacherous, if not impossible, without a pegasus pony to fly us down.

They reach the ground without incident, and sneak across the farm grounds, also without incident. Whether or not the filly heard the window breaking is not mentioned, even though the text specifies that the crash was "terribly loud." Apparently, Littlepoop is now such a coke fiend that the only thing on her mind right now is finding the filly's crack-mint recipe. So, she sneaks into the barn to look for it. The barn, I am assuming, contains some kind of Lovecraftian horror from beyond the stars that the filly was planning on sacrificing them to.

However, apparently the mints are not the only reason she goes in there. This next bit is a little confusing:

>Second, that oddly glowing, pulsing light reminded me uncomfortably of the way that passenger wagon had exploded after Calamity shot it.
What? When did this happen? I have literally no recollection of this incident. Unless...hold on, wait a minute.

>I could feel myself lifted into the air as the wreckage of the passenger wagon was consumed in a flare of unleashed wild magic. I could see the pulsing cascade of colors cast strange shadows as swirling magical energies erupted through the air. I could smell the fetid corpse-stench of the zombies as they were blown apart, even as their body parts caught fire.
Is this what happened here? Calamity shot the wagon, and it exploded, and that was the source of the magic blast I was wondering about earlier? If so, I'm beyond confused. Why would abandoned wagons explode into magic fire after being shot at? And more importantly, why would the author assume that we would assume this is what happened, and that he didn't need to describe it any better than this?

Nowhere in the text does it explicitly state that Calamity fired at this wagon, or that it exploded. We are simply informed that a "flare of unleashed wild magic" consumes the wagon, and then goes on to consume most of the zombies. The most logical interpretation, at least in a world of magic and unicorns, would be that a unicorn fired a huge blast of magic, which consumed both the wagon and the zombies. This is what I assumed happened. The wagons are not described as being explosive or magical in any way, and the text does not state that Calamity deliberately fired at this particular wagon in order to produce an explosion. There is absolutely no reason the reader should draw this conclusion from what the author wrote.

>I had asked Calamity about it later, and he had explained that some of the really big skywagons, like that one which had been designed to carry dozens of ponies, used a magical field generated by a spark engine so that a single pony could pull it through the air. Like spark batteries, those engines of arcane science still hold serious magical energies. Calamity didn’t understand it at that level, of course. He just knew that shooting a hole through the magic box in one of those vehicles unleashes one hell of a vortex.
Yep, apparently that is exactly what the reader was supposed to conclude. There are any number of issues here.

First of all, wtf is a skywagon? When the text described the ruins of Cloudsdayle as being a field of ruined wagons and chariots, I assumed he meant vehicles like pic related; the sorts of chariots that are pulled by pegasi in the show. When they are running for cover later and the text mentions them hiding behind wagons, I was still just imagining basic wagons, maybe with roofs and windows added so they could carry passengers or whatever. Nowhere in that entire retarded chase scene was any of this shit about spark engines or exploding batteries explained or even hinted at; all we were told is that a giant explosion of magic occurred and a bunch of zombies died. Explaining it now, when it no longer matters, achieves nothing except pissing me off.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.288891
288895
f4c5e21bfe0bdcbdfac19ed978b398eb--balloons-pies.jpg
>>288885

Anyway, whatever; we finally solved the mystery of the phantom explosion. Now let's find out what our manic filly friend was keeping in the fucking barn.

>It was small, geometrically shaped with surfaces that seemed to twist through each other. The whole thing was the size of a bushel of apples, and swirled with sickly mesmerizing colors.
God damn it. Seriously? This is it? This is all that the mysterious, creepy barn contains? Some kind of glowing magical thingamabob, that is probably just going to turn out to be another overpowered magic weapon or rare item or some other kind of vidyagame bullshit?

I'm going to say this one more time: not only does this guy tell bad stories, he tells bad stories badly. This entire setup, with the creepy farm and the crazy filly and the spoopy barn, is a total cliche, but it's a fun cliche. The hero is wandering through the wilderness, comes across a mysterious homestead occupied by a witch or something, who takes the hero in and provides food and shelter. The hero is grateful, but something is clearly not right. Only too late does the hero discover that his mysterious benefactor has a terrible secret concealed on the farm, and uses the guise of hospitality to lure in unsuspecting passersby. It is at this point that he has to open the secret locked barn, and confront whatever horror is lurking inside.

If an author can spin a good yarn, he can take a bunch of well-worn cliches and transform them into a fantastic story. If a story is genuinely entertaining, we don't care if we've heard it a thousand times and can guess what's going to happen; the fun is in the telling. This is particularly true of horror stories. Kkat's problem, however, is twofold: he has no apparent capacity for spinning a yarn, and to make matters worse, doesn't even seem to comprehend which yarn he should be trying to spin.

How in the world an author could manage to fuck up a simple scene-in-a-box like this is beyond me. The whole thing practically writes itself: the three travelers are wandering in the wasteland after dark, and come to an abandoned farm. The farm is inhabited by a single filly who clearly isn't quite all there and paints herself pink for some reason. She takes them out to her creepy silo and shows them her "collection." After insisting that they spend the night, they soon find that she has locked them in a room upstairs for some unknown but probably spoopy reason. It is at this point that they notice her slipping in and out of the locked barn with the creepy glow coming from under the door. Seriously; pretty much all you have to do here is slap on a creepy atmosphere, build tension, throw in an exciting escape sequence followed by a fight with whatever's in the barn and you're done.

Part of the problem here is that the author sends us a lot of mixed signals with this filly character. She is simultaneously presented as creepy, funny, endearing, pitiable, crazy, and menacing. What are we supposed to be feeling about her? We don't spend enough time with her to actually get to know here, and the author sends us multiple, conflicting cues on how we are suppose to initially see her. It becomes evident that she has some kind of malevolent aim when she locks them in the bedroom, but at the same time it's not clear whether or not they are actually in any danger, since she's like twelve and the three of them are armed to the teeth. Escape is as simple as breaking a window and gliding to safety, and even if she chased them she wouldn't present much challenge. I assumed that the spooky, glowing barn would at least contain some kind of monster that Littlepoop would have to fight, but it looks like even that was too much to ask. All that's in here is some kind of magical glowing thing that's...hold on, let's look at the exact description again:

>It was small, geometrically shaped with surfaces that seemed to twist through each other. The whole thing was the size of a bushel of apples, and swirled with sickly mesmerizing colors.
What is the significance of this? How am I supposed to interpret the presence of...of whatever the fuck this is...being in this barn? There seems to be some kind of connection to the magical engines that powered the magical sky-wagon things from earlier, but since that wasn't particularly well explained either, I can't even fathom where the author is trying to go with any of this; all I know is I'm bored out of my skull by a scene that should, at the very least, be able to conjure up some superficial excitement.

Anyway, Littlepoop goes in the barn and instead of a rapey tentacle monster finds a mysterious glowing thingamabob along with, you guessed it, a fucking safe. I can't get over how many safes there are in this world; the Acme Safe Company's stock value must have been in the billions during the pre-war period. Too bad it would take the nation another 200 years to realize how shitty their locks were.

Ignoring the pull of the mysterious glowing thingamabob, she picks the dumb lock on the dumb safe and lo and behold, the dumb recipe for the dumb cocaine mints is inside. Despite the fact that locking them in in the bedroom was an act of aggression and the filly can therefore be seen as hostile, and despite that LP had no qualms about sneaking in here and cracking the safe, she suddenly has a crisis of conscience about whether or not it's morally ok to steal a drug recipe from some crazy filly who paints herself pink and locks ponies in bedrooms for unexplained reasons and keeps some mysterious glowing thingamabob in her barn, also for unexplained reasons. Yes, all of this autism is actually in the text.

While she grapples with this ethical dilemma, she picks up a recording that is also in there and listens to it (as with the previous recording, the media it's on and the method LP uses to listen to it are not mentioned).
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.288895
288897 289068 289072
bulk biceps.jpg
>>288891

The recording appears to be a message of some sort, addressed to someone named Peartree and signed by someone named Memory. It's basically an account of what happened to Pinkie Bell, and it's predictably tragic.

The events revolve around Pinkie Bell, whose real name appears to be Silver Bell. The writer speaker, whatever explains that raiders came, killed their mother and father in a brutal fashion, and made them watch. Silver Bell was predictably traumatized, and Memory says that she intends to take her to Tenpony Tower, where there is someone who takes in orphans. The connection between the aforementioned tower and this farm is not clear. It's also not clear whether this farm was the Bell family's home originally, or if Silver came here on her own after her family was killed (since it's Pinkie's old farm and she worships Pinkie, I'm assuming the latter).

Anyway, this at least introduces a new mystery and adds a layer of depth to the otherwise inscrutable Pinkie Bell character. The letter is decently written, and gives us a glimpse into this character's past while still being vague enough to stoke our curiosity. I'd say that this was well done and even a little moving if there wasn't so much else about this episode that is capital-R retarded. For one thing: why was this message made as an audio recording and not a letter? Also, why is it in a safe in a fucking barn of all places? This is probably some memento that Pinkie/Silver keeps of her sister, so it's obviously important to her, but if that's the case you'd expect it to be stored someplace intimate, like a dresser drawer full of personal effects or something.

Anyway, as soon as she's finished listening to it on whatever device LP uses to listen to these recordings made on whatever media they exist on, Pinkie Bell predictably appears behind her and is predictably outraged. It's actually pretty ironic that LP was having such an intense moral crisis over stealing the crack mint recipe, but didn't even think twice about listening to an intimate, private tape that is obviously none of her goddamn business, located in a safe she had no right to break into in the first place. However, if the author is aware of this irony he doesn't show it.

>This close, I got a much better look at that scar. Horrible realization hit me like ice water. Silver Bell was a unicorn. She’d cut off her own horn!
How do you know she cut it off herself? All you can see is that her horn is missing. Her parents were murdered by roving banditos and her sister appears to be MIA, so it's obvious this filly is no stranger to violence. Is it inconceivable that her horn was amputated at some point against her will? Derpy is missing a tongue, but LP didn't automatically jump to the conclusion that she must have severed it herself.

Anyway, the filly backs her into the safe, which is apparently large enough to hold a pony (incidentally it might have been worth mentioning this if it was going to be relevant; safes come in many different sizes), and is about to slam the door on her, when Velvet suddenly appears.

>“You’re nothing like Pinkie Pie,” Velvet Remedy spoke slowly, calmly. Her voice wasn’t accusing now. It was mostly sad. “You are, if anything, the opposite of Pinkie Pie.”
I think I basically get what the author is trying to do with this character. Basically, she experienced the trauma of seeing her parents get murdered, went crazy, may have intentionally chopped her own horn off, and regressed into some kind of weird fantasy involving Pinkie Pie to stave off madness. We still don't know all the details of what happened to Memory or how Silver wound up living on this farm, but we can probably assume that it isn't a happy story.

This is honestly not a bad concept, and if the author wasn't such a colossal turd he could have probably spun up a nice little episode centered around this character. She seems creepy at first, but also somewhat pitiable, then she tries to murder them and they have to escape, but in the end they discover that there is a tragic story behind her that makes her sympathetic. Once again, we're basically just working with well-traveled tropes here, and in the hands of even a halfway-competent writer the story would practically write itself. However, in this case, the author fumbles almost all of it. The whole point of an arc like this is that we're supposed to have one impression of the filly character at the beginning, and then an entirely different one at the end. However, the author mostly fails to give us a solid first impression, so it's not clear if we are supposed to see her as a friend, a foe, a comic relief character, or what. The character receives no real development after we first meet her, and then out of the blue we are given this tragic backstory for which we are supposed to pity her.

And just for the record, I'm still a little miffed that there was no Lovecraftian horror lurking in this barn. Seriously, creepy filly; you had one job.

Anyway, Velvet delivers a maudlin speech on the power of laughter that, again, would have had more emotional punch if the scene had been set up correctly and if the author didn't spend every waking moment of his life gagging on monkey semen.

>“What happened to your parents wasn’t your fault. What happened to your sister wasn’t your fault...”
We still don't know what happened to her sister. Most of us have probably guessed, but there is no plausible reason why Velvet should have this information.

>To her sister? Suddenly, I remembered the three planks in the field.
The text briefly mentions three planks as I recall, but only in passing while describing the scenery. If it was going to be important, the author should have dwelt on this detail a little longer and emphasized it; even just having LP or someone notice it and go "hey, what's this?" or something would do the trick.

Anyway, the filly breaks down in tears and Velvet consoles her, and that's the end of the chapter.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.288897
289082
>>288895
Oh yeah:

>Footnote: Level Up.
>New Perk: Math Wrath – You are able to optimize your PipBuck’s targeting spell logic. S.A.T.S. is now 20% cooler.
Hurr durr le 20% cooler meme. Also, I'm not sure whether these cutesy footnotes are supposed to actually mean anything. Is she actually gaining these abilities?
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.288976
288985 289082
70719a531ef09a103fe62a418c8a16e8.jpg
I think a lot of what Kkat's been doing here is banking hard on the reader being as much of a sperg for Fallout - particularly Fallout 3 - as he is. You're supposed to see a vague reference, go "wow, just like in the videgame!", and then cum in your pants a little when Kkat puts the tiniest pony-themed spin on it.

>'Zombies'
Ghouls are a Fallout staple - they've been in every game since the first. They're human beings mutated and decayed by extreme radiation exposure, to the point that they resemble corpses. Some of them are fortunate enough to retain their sanity (ie. Derpy), while most degenerate into a demented feral state (ie. the horde of zombies). Kkat assumes you know this. If you don't, fuck you. FoE actually does something novel and fun with the concept - because the nukes are magical in nature here, the ghouls are literally undead rather than mutants which look like corpses. There's potential there, but any value this novelty might have is squandered by the fact that they're simply used to ape things that might happen in the game.

>Exploding wagons
This is most likely a reference to Fallout 3's exploding cars. Because nuclear energy was used prolifically throughout Fallout's setting before the apocalypse, vehicles were powered by nuclear-derived batteries. Bethesda, geniuses that they are, decided that 'nuclear = explodes' and gave the 200-year-old ruined cars throughout Fallout 3 a habit of going off like miniature nukes, mushroom cloud and all, if you so much as graze them. With good timing and positioning, you can shoot a car and use the explosion to kill a group of enemies lurking nearby. See what Kkat did? It's exactly like the videogame! Incredible! The only substantial difference here is that since nukes are magical in FoE, shooting a magical wagon creates a magical explosion.

And on *that* note, just wait until you find out what the geometrically shaped glowing thingy turns out to be.

>Silver Bell
You can probably predict this by now, but 'insane person living with a pointless collection' is also lifted from Fallout 3. In the game, there's a tiny settlement named Girdershade where a woman obsessed with Nuka-cola lives. She can show you round her museum, and gives you a related fetch quest. The 'trauamtized filly who locks people inside her farmhouse in a vaguely threatening manner' part is entirely new, which is probably why it has so little effort or gravitas to it.
Anonymous
3266c18
?
No.288980
>>288877
Three to be exact, nice dubs.
Anonymous
3266c18
?
No.288985
Set.png
>>288976
>I think a lot of what Kkat's been doing here is banking hard on the reader being as much of a sperg for Fallout - particularly Fallout 3 - as he is
A lot of old Bethesda fan boys were like that over that disappointment of a fallout game, they held it on such a high pedestal because they liked the side quests and saw it as an improvement over Oblivion, or at least i that's that's my idea as to why fallout 3 fans are no better than ghouls.
>You're supposed to see a vague reference, go "wow, just like in the videgame!", and then cum in your pants a little when Kkat puts the tiniest pony-themed spin on it.
It's a shame really since there is lots of creative opportunity with combining both franchises but K cunt decided to copy everything from Fallout 3 instead of Fallout 1 or 2, there is many ways to put a pony spin on those older games but he decided to literally copy in game mechanics from an outdated
game engine, it would have been better if he combined all 3 instead of letting his bias decide for him.
A combination of all the previous fallout games ideas would have made for a great fan fiction but instead we got the sorry excuse of a faggot's dream of his female fallout character becoming a pony lesbian.

>Ghouls are a Fallout staple - they've been in every game since the first.
Ghouls are a unique part of the series, in Fallout 1 there was 2 groups of ghouls in Necropolis which really set them apart from being complete zombies because there was one group in the sewers and one controlled by Set, each of them had competing interests which lead to them becoming separate from one another and you as the player have the choice of allowing Set control the water pumps and killing the other group or helping the other group against Set, i really liked how it played out since Set was such a good character.
>They're human beings mutated and decayed by extreme radiation exposure, to the point that they resemble corpses.
Which Fallout 3 used as an excuse to make them somehow immortal even though their body's are falling apart, i never understood the logic behind having a walking corpse immune from Parkinson's or from their brain rotting along with their skin.
>Some of them are fortunate enough to retain their sanity (ie. Derpy), while most degenerate into a demented feral state (ie. the horde of zombies).
It never was made clear of how the difference works but then again the feral variant of ghoul was conjured up by Bethesda's geniuses, the feral ghoul did not exist in fallout 1 or 2 but they were instead just more rotten ghouls rather than being labeled as a different type, some ghouls were more fortunate to survive complete brain rot like Harold or Set but then again the reasoning behind it is not fully delved into.
>Kkat assumes you know this. If you don't, fuck you
Pony ghouls are an idea to be expanded upon.
It's funny how he expects people to be as naive as he is.
>FoE actually does something novel and fun with the concept - because the nukes are magical in nature here, the ghouls are literally undead rather than mutants which look like corpses.
It would have made any good pony sorcerer jealous over the thought of having his own dead legions, even this would have made a cool concept since the ghouls could be manipulated by magic which would have made them a controlled army by any pony with the mastery of necromancy.
>There's potential there, but any value this novelty might have is squandered by the fact that they're simply used to ape things that might happen in the game
K cunt is a not a very creative creator at all, so many creative opportunity's left to rot out in the sun.

>This is most likely a reference to Fallout 3's exploding cars.
That was the most biggest plot hole in that game, a bunch of rusty atomic cars that somehow were never scrapped or blown up before the vault dweller came along and pissed on them which probably would have blew up given how flimsy those piles of junk were in that game, they were responsible for many of my buggy companion deaths from them touching the car and immediately dying, not even the most strongest companion in the game (Fawkes) is safe from these piles of shit.
>Because nuclear energy was used prolifically throughout Fallout's setting before the apocalypse, vehicles were powered by nuclear-derived batteries.
Which somehow didn't detonate after 2 centuries.
>Bethesda, geniuses that they are, decided that 'nuclear = explodes' and gave the 200-year-old ruined cars throughout Fallout 3 a habit of going off like miniature nukes, mushroom cloud and all, if you so much as graze them
It's the most wacky thing in the game along with the fucking fat man.
>With good timing and positioning, you can shoot a car and use the explosion to kill a group of enemies lurking nearby.
Or have them blow themselves up by letting the dumb AI shoot directly into the car they are hiding behind.
>See what Kkat did? It's exactly like the videogame! Incredible!
How magnificent.
>The only substantial difference here is that since nukes are magical in FoE, shooting a magical wagon creates a magical explosion.
Which is even more wacky given how dumb that idea is, why the hell would they have exploding carts that would carry around food or some other vital shit? Fucking hilariously shit.

>You can probably predict this by now, but 'insane person living with a pointless collection' is also lifted from Fallout 3.
Not that bitch.
>In the game, there's a tiny settlement named Girdershade where a woman obsessed with Nuka-cola lives
And some guy who gets friend zoned by her, he does a bunch of shit for her and she only cares about that Nuka shit, he also carry's around a super shit sawed off shotgun (unique) which is terrible.
She also reappears inside Fallout 4's Nuka world DLC, i don't like either of them.
>She can show you round her museum, and gives you a related fetch quest
Where you get a dog shit blue print for a grenade made out of blue Cola, you have to trade in 30 to get it when you can just find the blueprints.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.289019
289031
3ad.png
>>288812
oh yeah that makes sense
When I rant about why I hate something and how it fucks up a fallout element I didn't mean to present my views like they're this objective truth you must agree with. Yeah the story copies stuff blindly, sometimes copies stuff while forgetting the completely-different contexts between Fucked Retrofuturistic America and Fucked Good-Intentioned Equestria, and sometimes copies stuff wrong by trying to one-up it, but I guess someone who likes this could call it "different and interesting".
Honestly I kind of want to say this story's take on a certain two characters from Fallout 3 improves them by combining them, but it would be a massive spoiler to say which two one-note villains who "represent evil things" from that simplistic kid's game get "fleshed-out" and turned into...
Well the character doesn't end up "better", there's just an actual attempt at a distinct villain here even though it still sucks. I'll rate a "you tried and failed" higher than "Bethesda didn't even try, but twice in a row, even though the second time cost players extra".

>>288846
Sometimes I think I should ask for my own unique flag so all other british people would never have to deal with this "REEEEEEEE IT'S FUCKING NIGEL, FUCK YOU NIGEL!"posting again. But the Nigel-haters keep saying "Nigel is a demon! A true freak! He's the Devil! He's an egotistical asshole who wants everything to revolve around him!" so if I try and get my own unique flag to stand out, they'd claim they were right about me all along. And wouldn't having a unique flag be like avatarfagging and namefagging all in one? Plus those blue checkmark faggots on Twitter have a blue checkmark on their names, and I don't want something like that.
I don't really want the spotlight. I don't want to be marked as someone different from anyone else. I just want a quiet life. Then again, taking all that hatred away from other british flag users would be heroic. I would endure it, so nobody else would ever have to deal with it again. Maybe I should look into this...
But I can't think of any IRL countries I love enough to want their flag. Except America before it was ruined. But they don't have a unique flag for that. And the flag icons are too small for complex designs like the snake one. I guess I could try taking the flag of some fictional country I like, but these flags are supposed to show where you're from, not what cartoon you like the most. I can't just wander around with a Hidden Leaf Village, Vril Society, or Holy Britannian Empire flag or I'd look like a clown.
Maybe I could design my own unique flag that represents me on purpose? Something cool with foxes. Foxes are cute. I'll start working on a flag design.

>>288876
Yeah, radioactive cars were popular because gas and petrol were hyper-inflated and hyper-expensive.
I think you could repair and buy a working Chryslus Highwayman in Fallout 2 and drive around in it, even upgrade it.
But in Fallout 3, cars are just scenery objects that sometimes explode in nuclear blasts. Even though for it to explode, it would need fuel, and the final war that caused the world's nuking was a Resource War fought over the lack of fuel.
Which means Liberty Prime in Fallout 3 was fucking retarded! Yes, giant robots with eye lasers and the ability to toss nuclear bombs like they're American Footballs is fucking cool. But at the same time, this thing must have required more resources than it was worth. It's not like a "structure-toughening energy field" is used to violate the Square Cube Law here. You know, the whole "the bigger something is, the stronger it must be to support its own weight" rule.
Giant robots are actually really shit IRL. Anything they can do, a tank or dude in a power-armour exosuit can do better. Ok, mechs are tall and they can possibly jump, if their legs can somehow handle so many thousands of pounds of terminal-velocity downforce. But you'll rarely if ever need a tall or jumping military unit. And good luck making a jumping mecha, let alone a walking one. And the pressure per square inch! You'd sink in mud and sand. One landmine or well-placed bullet/rocket could fuck your highly-expensive mech legs up, requiring incredible specialist knowledge and expertise and rare parts to fix. Tanks are easier to fix when their treads get fucked up. Tanks can carry more weight, use more armour, and hold more bullets. The only mech worth using that's not an overly-armoured swiveling-torso auto-aim sniper bot would effectively be a light speedy fucker able to do what tanks can't do and airborne homing missile drones can't be arsed to do better.
but anyway back to the main point
it really makes no sense that nobody would scavenge food from 200 year old supermarkets or scavenge fuel cores and scrap from the fucked cars that litter the landscape.
cars are good
If you can get a working car, you can patrol and scavenge and protect more territory. IRL, modifying cars to run on homemade booze/corn shit isn't too hard for a hobbyist to do. Fuel is just cheaper right now. But if fuel prices skyrocketed like in Fallout, booze-cars would be more common.
then again the Fallout franchise is Bike-phobic because Mad Max fanboys made most of it.

Man
I'm glad this story was planned out and mostly-written before season 2 came out
otherwise Kkunt would work Queen Chrysalis into the origin of the Chryslus Highwayman somehow.
I remember FIM fans screaming over Canterlot stuff in the show and how it was similar to this fic's Canterlot spoiler stuff.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.289027
289039
8cc.png
>>288882
Should I keep mentioning that Mentats are a mint tin containing 200yr old pre-war nootropic pills to enhance Perception and Intelligence more than Charisma, but Party-Time Mentats are an after-market invention where you boil those 200yr old mints in a mix of booze and honey mesquite pod goop until the liquid crap evaporates and leaves behind slightly changed drug mints?
PTMs boost +2 Perception/Intelligence and +5 Charisma, but the author didn't notice the difference while ripping them off and changing the name Mentat (a Dune reference) to Mint-Al because it sounds like Mental.
regular Mentats/Mint-Als are never mentioned in this fic. They don't come from anywhere specific like a junkie-filled crime boss town. They just exist and survived 200 years. And the recipe to make PTMs requires ordinary existing mentats along with whiskey and weird plant jizz. One of those things is not like the others! And there was no recipe for making ordinary Mentats at this point in the story! What's the good in getting a recipe for SuperMeth when it requires corn syrup, vodka, and a type of 200 year old meth nobody produces in the post-apocalypse?

Also, Littlepip's completely new to drugs. Nobody new to drugs should be able to stomach the wackiest shit out there. And why was Calamity just carrying this shit around like it was nothing? Could you imagine snorting a ground-up Cazador (big Tarantula Hawk Wasp) venom sac? No, but a junkie used to the normal and slightly-weird shit would.
Sure, in a videogame it almost makes sense that encasing an apple in Gold before tossing it in a smelter would give you a Golden Apple, a super-effective healing item. But IRL could someone new to drugs really stomach something that sounds like it would taste awful? Let alone crave more of it.

It's really hard to take Littlepip's newfound drug addiction seriously when the first time she ever got some was Calamity lying about their effectiveness as a hangover cure for no reason, and the second time she ever used them was the time she needed to boost her videogame stats so she could lockpick better and impress her lesbian crush. Now she's in a faggot museum for the faggot who invented crack, and all she can do is stare at the crack exhibit like Homer Simpson staring at donuts and think "Mmmm, crack mints deep-fried in whiskey and honey mesquite pod goop until the crack mints gain a crunchy alcoholic shell with a sharp, bracing, bitter aftertaste that temptingly gives way to reveal a deliciously minty center! It's like your consciousness is gripped from your body by the softest wings of glorious angels to reside in the realm of gods, where truly divine insight is revealed from even the smallest of seemingly insignificant clues!".

At least I assume that's how it tastes and feels to eat stat-buffing mint drugs. Maybe it's because I'm growing stronger as a writer and raisng my expectations since I'm reading real books now, but I expect alien stuff someone in a book eats to be described better than "And then I ate the alien stuff". Our world doesn't have PTMs. I will never know what they taste like. So tell me, Kkunt, what do these things taste like? What do they smell like? How does being high off your tits on two-century-old semi-home-brewed booze-basted honey-fried hyper-cocaine feel? Come on, can't this story put more effort into Little "That made me feel angry!" Pip's shitty prose?

>find item for a reward sidequest
why the fuck would this filly know where it is and not just get it herself?

it's not like she has "I like staying in the top floor where magic security cameras show me the whole house and a magic accordion lets me control this land's hidden booby traps and gun turrets. If I leave, this house becomes easy to take from me" as an excuse for not going and getting it herself.

And it's not like she has "I know it was a member of the Gear Grinders tribe who stole my Pinkie Doll when I wasn't looking! I invited one in last week but when she left, my Pinkie minifigure was gone! You must go north to slaughter this camp and get my dollie back! Please don't reject this mission just because the Gear Grinders love torturing the ponies they capture to death! If you do get my doll back, I'll pay you by telling you how to turn Meth into HyperMeth!" as an excuse to let her know where the statuette is, and explain why nobody else did this sidequest before LP showed up(The problem happened recently, the house's remote location makes travelling around to hire a bounty hunter too hard, and travellers who do come here don't feel like taking on a tribe of evil raider ponies for a dollie and some meth-enhancing recipe).

And it's not like this house was firmly established as Pinkie Pie's childhood home, a place filled with booby traps and defensive turrets once anti-Pinkie Ministry protestors started violently attacking her family. If that happened it would be good worldbuilding to explain how a child can live on this land without getting hurt. Having Not-Pinkie say that and "I have to always look like Pinkie Pie so the turrets defend me instead of opening fire, and because I looked like Pinkie Pie when I first got here the turrets protected me from bad guy rapists that were chasing me" would be some great worldbuilding to justify all (or at least most) of this.

Come to think of it, the Pinkie Museum would be less retarded if it was an actual place Pinkie or Rarity had constructed so little ponies would grow up thinking the mane six, and especially Pinkie, are best ponies. But now the illiterate retard Not-Pinkie lives here, defended by auto-turrets, and she can't read the scratched-up worn-out exhibit descriptions so when there isn't a glitchy worn-out "Play Audiobook Button" that's mostly intact and able to give a handful of words she takes as hints to the bullshit she tells paying customers in the museum, she just makes up her own bullshit based on what she assumes the pictures and statues and photographs and exhibits really mean.
Anonymous
3266c18
?
No.289030
289031 289034 289089
British Union of Fascists.png
British_Union_of_Fascists_flag.png
>Sometimes I think I should ask for my own unique flag so all other british people would never have to deal with this "REEEEEEEE IT'S FUCKING NIGEL, FUCK YOU NIGEL!"posting again.
It's pretty funny when someone thinks it's you but i get that you might not like it.
It's mainly just one certain cunt that doesn't like me or you because we're sort of similar.
>But the Nigel-haters keep saying "Nigel is a demon! A true freak! He's the Devil! He's an egotistical asshole who wants everything to revolve around him!"
All those would fit me more than you, i'm jealous i don't get called any of those.

>having a new Nigel flag
Well there is the British Union of Fascists that were lead by Oswald Mosley and i like their flag more than most other Anglo flags throughout history because it's 10X better than the union jack or the cross.
There is other flags but i think the BUF flag would suit you the most.
I'm not too bothered about fag flags since Vril had his own and no one cried about that even though you don't have any custom additions some mega faggots still want to annoy you because you are an easy target for slander.

I like you Jason, i enjoy your quirkiness because it reminds me of myself, if you want help with any ideas i will try my best to add to your thoughts.
You are like a brother to me because you are almost just like me but a bit more gay in every way, i want to help make you happy by helping you do what you want.
No homo.
Anonymous
3266c18
?
No.289031
>>289030
>>289019
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.289034
289089
>>289030
Its adorable that you both think of me as an adversary, though opponent would be an apt designation
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.289039
443.jpg
>>289027
I mean
>And there was no recipe for making ordinary Mentats at this point in the franchise
You had to find this shit in the world or in someone's pocket or at a store somewhere. Couldn't manufacture this at home.
We know where Jet comes from: Cow farts. Literally comes from "Brahmin", Two-Headed RadCows.
>In order to avoid relying on extracts from vegetables and mushrooms since you can't exactly grow opium poppies in a post-apocalyptic desert shithole, Myron (The inventor of Jet introduced in Fallout 2) began exploring his possibilities. pre-War meat companies experimented with cheap protein extracts to increase their profit margins, only to discover that the slightest contamination made the entire extract act like potent amphetamine upon digestion. Rather than dump the entire program, the companies fed the extracts to their vast bovine herds to recoup losses. What they didn't realize is that the protein extract would be metabolized and absorbed by the cattle's bodies, becoming an integral element of their metabolism when cattle would mutate into brahmin. With some blood samples, one could readily recreate the contaminated extract even two centuries after the war. Myron did not have access to the tools and expertise necessary to isolate the extract, so they decided to acquire it by proxy: Grow mushrooms in fertilizer provided by the affected brahmin and extract it from the fungus. The eureka moment came completely unexpectedly: When Myron observed slaves tending to the brahmin fertilizer, he noticed that they were getting high purely on fumes. The brahmin excreta contained the desired drug in large enough concentrations to be viable as a commercial drug.
If anyone at Bethesda cared when writing Fallout 4 they'd know this drug (manufactured after the bombs fell) could not have possibly been bought by Vault-Tec in large quantities and shipped to one Vault. But they still put a Vault into the game where the gimmick was "Vault-Tec sent all the junkies here and decided to make them go cold-turkey for a while, then open a door to drug-filled secret compartments to see what happens. Lmao turns out everyone dies".
Peak Bethesda writing, everyone. It's "Environmental storytelling". You find a skeleton and loot, then read a convenient journal entry nearby that ham-fistedly tells you exactly what happened. Pick up the loot, achieve dopamine, pretend this is good writing if snails could beat you at chess.

>implying Velvet Remedy dyes some of her hair Fluttershy-pink and Fluttershy-yellow
>implying it's like this Ponka-obsessed druggie
If that's really what the author was going for here, the author should have dwelled on this longer and cracked more jokes about it
Ironically Velvet's poorly-written Stubbornness and inconsistent morality fetish makes her a better knockoff of this story's take on Fluttershy, compared to the crackwhore who actually wants to look and act like this story's fucktarded take on Pinkie.
The author might be trying to make Velvet "My favourite pony is the cunt who did everything wrong because she felt like it, I fucking love her" Remedy look superior to the Pinkie fantard because one's a "pretty" mare with hair dye and one's a "weird" filly in blackface (pinkface?) but they're both retarded. But only one can claim it's a coping mechanism and a result of past trauma

>calamity doesn't trust the filly
Imagine if he talked like the one ignored guy in every tv show's take on generic horror movies.
"Guys, we shouldn't go in there!"
"Come on, guys, this is a creepy little girl in the middle of fucking nowhere! This is weird! There has to be some ghost bullshit here!"
"How does she know a Pinkie statue exists somewhere around here, without knowing exactly where it is? This has to be a trap!"
"I'm a brown Pegasus so I am surely going to die first because the brown guy always dies first in horror films! We've got to get out of here!"

also
imagine if everyone was scared of this filly and paranoid about her but it turns out she really is a sweetheart just like Tonio from Jojo's Part 4
you know, the spooky chef who violently heals people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0j4ONvxn3I

>Velvet's sudden cage fear
well this is retarded
one of my friends is a waifufag for Bernadetta from Fire Emblem Three Houses.
Never played it(if your strategy game has luck and EXP it isn't strategy!), but from what he told me during his rants she's a shy easily-scared paranoid cutie-pie whose abusive father used to smack her around, scare her into obeying with stories of assassins coming for her, and force her to sit silently on a chair for hours every day doing nothing so she could learn to be, as he put it, "a good little obedient wife".
Her abusive childhood and fear of everything isn't a major character trait of hers, it's her only character trait.
It's focused on almost constantly whenever she is onscreen. She's a paranoid annoying little shy shut-in.
Maybe she has hidden depths revealed in her hours of support convos but I can't be arsed to watch hours of bad cutscenes full of meme characters when character development that happens in one gets thrown out the window once its four scenes are over. Watching different "alternate scenarios" where different friends help one friend with the same problem over and over is just annoying, but that's what happens when you define your characters by what retarded gimmick they have and what fanservicey shallow archetype they were solely designed to fit within.
I get it, you need gimmicks to make each of the franchise's game's Jagen knockoffs and Marth knockoffs and big-titty waifus and horny waifus and masculine waifus and feminine waifus and half/fully dragon waifus feel distinct from each other. But it's still fucking gay.
where the fuck was i going with this
oh right, velvet's cagephobia came out of nowhere and should have been revealed earlier to make her feel like a coherent character
even though everyone in this fic just has traits added and removed by the author at will. gay.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.289061
Pinkie Car Pinkie Car - Copy.png
>>288885
>The escape would have been treacherous, if not impossible, without a pegasus pony to fly us down.
This is really gay.
I get that when your team has one flier and two low-weight poners in the form of a child-sized filly and a singer chick, one-storey drops aren't a problem. but Kkunt could have easily turned this into a joke.
>velvet panics and starts freaking out because they're trapped, oh god, Calamity must have been right and they're going to be eaten by rapacious cannibals and then sacrificed to Ponka Po the goddess of war and smiles and cocaine
>Littlepoop leaps for the door and tries to lockpick it but oh fuck, they're all fucked, this door doesn't have a hole she can pick, there's a thing you turn on the other side of the door and it's impossible for a unicorn to magically levitate anything unless they have a direct line of sight between the object and poner horn in this universe (for the sake of balancing magic)
>Calamity unlatches the window
>Velvet: Don't jump! You have so much to live for!
>Littlepoop: Maybe we can make some rope from the bedsheets and rappel down- OH FUCK THERE ARE NO BEDSHEETS IN THIS ROOM, WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE
>Calamity unfurls his wings and stares at the two fillies like they're retarded faggots.
>Velvet: Oh yeah, I forgot you can fly us down from here.

and then
>Calamity: Velvet, wait here while I fly Littlepip down first, then come back for you
>Velvet: No way! I'm scared! You'll leave me for not being as lethal as Littlepip!
>Calamity: This house is currently empty, according to my ears and Littlepip's Pip-Buck. Anyone could be outside this house. She's got guns bigger than yours, so she'll survive longer without my help if she gets attacked while I'm getting you.
>Velvet: I'm a pussy and I demand you fly us both down together!
>Calamity: Fine.
>Littlepoop blushes and as they both hold on to him for dear life and tries not to let the dizzying scent of the masculine sweat soaked into the leather straps of his battle-saddle get to her, she repeats to herself "I am gay, I like boobs, I am gay, I like boobs"
>Calamity lands and the three leave the building and never come back, this sidequest is rejected and Littlepoop swipes the meth mints and booze-basted meth mints recipe from the Pinkie Museum before they go, Littlepip swears she's not an addict and just wants to trade these for bigger guns at the next town they visit, TvTropes ejects circlejerk cum from their own bums in awe at this "witty satirical subversion of videogame tropes".

comedy gold.

>Littlepip sneaks into the barn
I was joking about Littlepip robbing this filly because I thought it would be funny if this murderhobo just stole the quest reward instead of being a good girl but holy shit, the author is NOT making Littlepip a "paragon of virtue" here. Robbing a defenceless child in the middle of buttfuck nowhere is not cool! It'll break her little heart.

>Lovecraftian horror from beyond the stars
I must not spoil I must not spoil I must not spoil
IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE THE ZIGGERS THINK PRINCESS LUNA SURELY MUST BE A LOVECRAFTIAN HORROR FROM BEYOND THE STARS BECAUSE SHE COMMANDS THE NIGHT SKY AND THEY RELIGIOUSLY BELIEVE NIGHT=EVIL. YES EVEN THOUGH THESE FUCKS REGULARLY FUCK AROUND WITH DARK MAGIC, HEXES, CURSES, VOODOO BULLSHIT, AND EVIL-LOOKING POTIONS. They invented the nuclear hellfire called "Balefire" that nuked equestria to hell! YOU'D THINK A SPECIES THAT'S BLACK WITH WHITE STRIPES WOULD HAVE MORE TOLERANCE FOR EVIL-LOOKING BLACK THINGS!

>passenger wagon
it really makes no sense at all that Season 1 Equestria would go from Pegasus-drawn sky-taxis and Trixie's wagon to the Fallout franchise's explosive nuclear Retrofuture cars. Seriously, could you ever see Pinkie Pie driving a Chryslus Motors Cherry Bomb, or a "Rocket 69" as it was called in Forza 6 when it was added to the game as a Microtransaction- I mean "DLC"?
Pic related, also I replaced her Helter Skelter arm with Ragtime because could you imagine Pinkie Pie in a sound-barrier-breaking car on Hyper Potion (A magical stronger-than-coffee energy drink I just made up) with a rocket-punch arm and time-control arm magically magnetized to her chest yet as easily removed from her chest as a fridge magnet is removed from a fridge? Give her meth and a glock and she'd win the war for Equestria in under 22 minutes.

>geometrically shaped
EVERYTHING IS GEOMETRICALLY SHAPED! GEOMETRY IS SHAPES! AND LINES AND ANGLES AND SHIT! Am I supposed to imagine a cube here, or a sphere, or a cube but made of many octagons? Then just fucking say so instead of pretending you know what geometry means!

>acme safe
imagine if Pinkie Pie actually had safes manufactured and put into unexpected places and filled with unexpected things because her Pinkie Sense told her somepony who can lockpick would need this stuff 200 years later.
...oh wait, it would be retarded if Pinkie could sense something 200 years from now but couldn't sense anything wrong during the sequence of events that led up to Equestria ending.
Only the shittiest nigger would write this into the story.

>theft
Hacking computers and Lockpicking safes always gives you EXP, but stealing things owned by NPCs or factions you aren't in gives you Bad Karma Points. which are easily thrown away by giving 5 bottles of water to a perpetually thirsty hobo. or with any other small act of good like that.
speaking of acts of aggression, you can't lock foes behind doors in Fallout but most NPCs are too stupid to be able to open doors anyway. Takes a mod to let you lock doors. Still, enemies become hostile if they catch you stealing stuff. But if you carry shit away in full view of an NPC, they won't react as long as they don't see you pocket the object. It's easy to rob the Silver Rush's Laser Weapon Store by taking all their ordinance and mines and guns and grenades to the empty bathroom, pocketing it all, and slowly strolling out despite being over your encumbrance limit and very obviously a thief.
I don't know why that's funny 2 me
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.289068
289082
>>288895
>How do you know she cut it off herself?
Because it's edgier that way and Littlepip and the author don't realize it but they are both on the same gay-velength
even though it would make more sense for the raiders to remove the horn since we've seen babies in MLP levitate stuff. a filly should be able to horn-laser. Even if it can't cut flesh and bone like a proper laser, it should be able to hurt Raiders if fired at the eyes.

>a fucking child backs a child-sized adult into a safe
Unless the child has a fucking big gun (And in good condition, because as Littlepip knows, an old and crappy gun fires magically-weaker bullets! Wash your glock well or it'll spit smaller bullets at a lower speed!) this scene is retarded

>velvet appears out of nowhere so she can solve this problem with speech
This is really gay since Littlepip solves many more problems with speech over the course of this story and Speech is supposed to be one of her three main Fallout skills, along with Repair and Lockpicking.
The entire character of Velvet Remedy is stupidly redundant.
Did he really think this "Medic with a needle gun" was different enough from Littlepip even though they both have the same manipulative Stupid Good "murderhobo with protagonist-centered morality" personality?
One Piece did this better. Luffy's kind and friendly and great at speeches when they're on something he actually believes, but he's not much of a charmer and he sees no point in social graces. He will point-blank ask mermaid chicks if they poop. His team's dedicated liar is Ussop, a guy who lies a lot and is sometimes right, but Sanji sometimes lies too during his "Clever mastermind" moments without ever stepping on Ussop's "cowardly sniper" toes.
I love how most of Ussop's fights are written with this "Ussop is cowardly or stupid so he's punished by the universe, but then he does something manly and smart so he's allowed to win" structure while Sanji has this better "He's facing a strong opponent with a gimmick he must outsmart. There is a puzzle to solve, a problem to figure out, before he can kick his foe really really hard and win" structure.

A lot of stupid players view RPGs as this "I must make the best character" thing and I used to be one of them.
But the fun of playing a sub-optimal character comes from how different it makes your experience with the game's contents.
Littlepip has to be great at Lockpicking so she can open any chests she finds, great with Guns so she can fire any guns she finds, great at Speech so she can usually (Literally always, except with Monterry Jack for no reason) talk anyone into doing whatever she wants, great at Stealth so she can sneak whenever she wants to, and great at Repair and Science so she can repair anything she needs to repair and hack any gun turret or computer terminal she can find.
It's like she's designed to be able to get as much out of one playthrough of a Fallout game as possible. One who can open every box, pick every lock, get at every computer with a journal entry, hack anything else ever, repair whatever she wants, pass every Speech Check, and so on.
This should make her a "Master of None", but she's always as strong/skilled as she needs to be. Which is BORING!!!

A smart writer would make the protag someone with a heart of gold and a reason for others to travel with him/her. And then get every valuable teammate of the protag to contribute something useful to the party!
It didn't have to be this way. Littlepip could be the sneaky lockpick kid shoehorned into a "Repairing tech" job, explaining how she can be good at four things at the start of the story.
Then Calamity could be the charming dashing rogue, a real Han Solo knockoff kind of cowboy who initially plans on betraying LP for personal gain but comes to respect her and want to protect her
Kill Velvet off tragically for a big "Sometimes, good people just die in this tragic edgy world!" moment and then replace her with a grumpy doctor who's terrible at speech (Terrible bedside manner joke time!) and great at science and medicine and slowly regains hope thanks to LP
and then add some other character with a skill they don't currently have. Maybe a Zebra for diversity points and potion-creating abilities, or a big dude in Power Armour with a huge gun because the party could use a Tanky character. Or perhaps an ex-asshole who dies in a heroic sacrifice as part of his redemption.

>Velvet knows
How does she know what the audiotape said? Was she there the whole time, listening in and somehow not spotted by Not Pinkie who was also listening in and somehow not noticed by Littlepip's fucking enemy-detecting/NPC-detecting HUD EFS compass thing? The very fucking second Not Pinkie decided to be LP's enemy, the compass mark representing her should have turned from yellow to red.
Although, wouldn't it be creepy if Not Pinkie was able to be so utterly self-deluded that she was able to decide she believes locking Littlepip in this safe won't hurt her, therefore never triggering her EFS HUD and making the marker change from yellow to red?
It wouldn't actually matter but it would undermine our faith in the heroine's absolutely-perfect magical videogame HUD and set up more opportunities for the author to fuck with it later on.

>field planks
YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is shit
however there's a town of assholes where the "twist" is you're having your time wasted by a blonde faggot who's lying to you so you'll help him deal with his personal problems so you can recruit him even though he's utterly unimportant to the game and a shitty teammate. You can check the gravestones and see the girl blondie wants you to "save" is dead, but your character can't bring this up and MUST follow blondie, help him, go to the representation of his grief-
and then watch it get eaten by a cosmic alpaca who attacks the heroes
Is this a joke? Should I call this time-wasting shit game "Cleverly-designed and expertly annoying"?
Some Nintendo corporate guy is also "buried here" since he died IRL
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.289072
289089 289101
flying derp.jpg
>>288895

Chapter 10: Course Correction

Today's Fortune Cookie:
>“Yeah. It’s a good thing they aren’t paying me to agree with them. Holy Flame, my ass!”
Knowing what I now know about the origin of these epitaphs, I decided to google the complete text of this one. It appears to be a direct quote of an obscure line of dialog from Fallout 1 (retrieved here: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fallout). Here is the complete exchange that the line is lifted from:

>Children of the Cathedral Guard: What do you want?
>Vault Dweller: What’s this place about?
>Children of the Cathedral Guard: Something called a Holy Flame. Don't listen to this bullshit, it will rot your brain!
>Vault Dweller: Man, are these people ever stupid!
>Children of the Cathedral Guard: Yeah. It's a good thing they aren't paying me to agree with them. Holy Flame, my ass!
Even placed in this context, the quote still has little meaning to anyone who hasn't played the game. It's not really obvious what is happening in this scene or what these characters are talking about, and the relevance of this quote to anything currently happening in FoE is questionable at best. Moreover, I would repeat my assertion from earlier that unlike FiM, the events of Fallout are not an actual part of this story's universe and it makes no sense to quote random snippets of dialogue from the games, particularly when they are unattributed and presented with no obvious in-world context.

Speaking of context, now that we've read all of Chapter 9 it might be worth revisiting its epitaph and seeing if it makes any more sense now:
>“I’m the one who should be mobbed by strangers wherever I go!”
I suspect that being "mobbed by strangers" is a glib reference to the protagonists being attacked by a horde of zombies and/or ghouls, and that is why the author chose the quote for that chapter. It's a bit of a stretch, but at least the connection is there. We shall see whether or not any sort of Holy Flame appears in this current chapter that justifies mentioning it here.

Anyway, the text continues its annoying habit of ending a scene on a cliffhanger and then leaping forward in time when beginning the next one, without bothering to wrap up the cliffhanger. There is still quite a bit left unresolved from the previous scene: we still don't know who exactly this filly is, how she came to be living on the Pie family's old farm (or whether she lived there to begin with), exactly what became of her parents and sister (we have the broad strokes but don't know the details), why she tried to lock LP & Co. in the guest room and what she was planning to do with them (obviously it didn't have anything to do with feeding them to a Lovecraftian horror from beyond the stars), what became of her horn, or how she came to devote herself to this weird Ponk-centric religion of hers. Basically nothing from the last episode is resolved, but apparently the author considers it to have ended.

When this chapter opens, it's obvious that a number of complex developments have occurred since the ending of the previous chapter. They are all still at the farm; however, LP has once again summoned Frank in order to show him the weird thing in the barn (since neither Calamity nor LP herself seem to fully trust Frank it's not clear why she would do this, but we'll put a pin in that for now). Whatever it is seems to freak him out, and he is then used to dispatch a message to New Appleoosa, which summons Ditzy Doo and Railright (we haven't seen this character in awhile, but he is the de-facto sheriff/mayor of NA as I recall) out to the farm to have a look.

Although the traversable distance between New Appleoosa and Old Appleoosa seems to fluctuate depending on what the author needs, the last time we heard it mentioned it was a walking journey of several days. It's not specified how close the farm is to NA, but when they stopped the implication was that they had a long enough trip ahead of them to require rest and resupply, so we can probably assume at least 2-3 days. Railright apparently arrives by wagon; since the wagon would have to be pulled by a pony, it would by definition not be much faster to travel by wagon than by walking, so we can therefore assume that this scene takes place around 2-3 days after the events of the previous chapter.

Not so fast, though; this is FoE. "Wagon" here could refer to an ordinary wagon, or it could also refer to a flying wagon pulled by Derpy. It's not clear whether or not pegasus ghouls can fly; logically they shouldn't be able to since their wings are no longer aerodynamically functional, but at the same time allowing ghouls to retain their flight powers without bothering to explain how or why seems like exactly the sort of thing that kkat would do. Referring to a flying wagon attached to a pegasus simply as a "wagon" and assuming the reader would instinctively know what he meant also sounds like something kkat would do. Since I feel like I'm finally starting to get the hang of how this author thinks, I'm going to err on the side of caution and assume the following:
>Derpy can still fly because reasons
>She flew from NA to the farm pulling a wagon with Railright riding in it
>"wagon" in this case probably refers to a first-class Pullman-style traveling car, complete with weapons system and minibar, as well as a magical XQJ-37 nuclear-powered pan-sexual roto-plooker engine that could explode into a mushroom cloud at any given moment and probably will
>the trip could have taken any length of time from mere seconds to entire epochs

Anyway, this first subchapter is basically just a convoluted summary of what seems to be a complex chain of events taking place after the end of Chapter 9. There's quite a bit that needs to be broken down here, and I'd also like to go into a bit more detail about why I think Chapter 9 really missed the mark; however, I am running out of space and will have to continue in a new post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u-0e4Gn2BU
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.289079
289081
robert shlomo.png
>>289067
I have to be honest with you, Robert Shlomo, I read your book on erectile dysfunction years ago and found it to be a highly derivative and shoddily constructed tome. Your text rambles on for thousands upon thousands of words in a language that can barely be described as English, and in the end I feel as if I have no more knowledge about which erectile dysfunction pill is the best than I did before. It's almost as if you have no knowledge of writing at all; I'd even go so far as to suspect that your book was actually written by a team of Indian men who were paid $5.00 apiece to work on it.

All in all, I have to say that I found your book to be an immensely dissatisfying work, and I'll thank you not to peddle it around here again.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.289081
sho.png
>>289079
aw dang, looks like mods deleted it already.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.289082
>>289068
I'm bringing up YIIK because I want to point out that this "Those gravestones were for people relevant to the dead character!" twist was something YIIK did better, even though YIIK also fucked this sidequest up by making it, like most things in the game, a tedious exercise in frustration that seems weirdly spiteful to traditional videogame mechanics and the concept of a videogame as a whole.
You can only beat the game by failing to save the world and then either restarting it or giving up and moving on from the game symbolically even though it means "your" death and the end of the character you played as.
The game says you can't get a good ending without the author's permission and all a gamer can do is consoom until it's over then find something new to consoom or stop consooming "universes" (media) even though it means the literal death of "Alex" the hipster gamer faggot, his evil doppelganger, and the manipulative evil girl he also simultaneously is.
There is a secret extra ending that's not in the game, but was uploaded by an account that's obviously owned by the game developer. You drive your car across the sea, use some seemingly-useless (Actually useless, data for their use was removed) objects, and get the Good Ending that actually isn't in the game.
"Link" is the name given to the player character in this video of content removed from the game's final release, as a reference to how Shaggy Motomoto initially named Legend Of Zelda's protag Link because he's the link between you and the game and he expected you to change Link's name to your name.
As one last weirdly-clever "Fuck you" to the player, if you play the game as you are forced to and drive to New York or wherever the doomed final battle happened, you hear this music track where the vocals mention "Driving across the sea to get the perfect ending I could never reach" or some shit like that.
Basically when you give up on a perfect ending a gamer could never reach without the creator's approval, the game mockingly sings a hopeful-sounding song about your impending doom and what someone better than Alex (The protagonist aka you) could have done to get the perfect ending if he had the game dev's permission.

also speaking of planks, would it make sense that a filly trapped in self-delusion would let those planks stand as a reminder of their deaths when she could throw them away to make them easier to ignore?

>>288897
She's SUPPOSED to actually gain these positive modifiers since that's how Perks work in Fallout, but Littlepip was able to lift impossibly heavy things before getting "you can now lift heavy stuff" perks.
So they're just meaningless words that lie to the reader and give the illusion that Littlepip's abilities are steadily growing when she was actually super-tough and super-strong and super-everything else from the start.

>>288976
>"Zombies"
While we're talking about Ghouls, they weren't healed by radiation in 1 and 2. They just liked staying in irradiated places because they're immune to radiation and it feels nice and warm to them.
Fallout 3 thought they were being clever by introducing Aqua Pura as part of some retarded sidequest.
A Ghoul named "Griffon" scams idiots by selling "Aqua Pura". It's bottled "dirty water" which is always irradiated because it's a videogame and they couldn't be bothered to add a proper health system.
He claims it will cure problems Ghouls have. It does, because it's irradiated and Ghouls are suddenly healed by radiation according to retcons. It also makes Ghouls "Even worse" and hurts them and pushes them towards being Ferals because retcons.
To complete this sidequest you find proof of the scam and then use it, the end. https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/The_Amazing_Aqua_Cura!
Yes, even though this fundamentally changes Ghouls into ticking timebombs who "explode" and become violent animals as soon as they drink one glowing bottle of Nuka-Cola Quantum too many. This literally justifies the "fuck ghouls, kick them out of civilized places!" policies many characters you're supposed to instinctively hate have. You know, because "Hurr durr racism against robot-men and corpse-men is wrong and for stupid people only". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrXAZy9jyGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIkzFmtFVjs
It's really retarded that while one character's able to use "Witty zingers" like "You say I am a machine with no free will but you are actually jealous of me because you have no free will, checkmate atheist" but all the ghoul can do is growl and try to sound intimidating and dangerous in the face of highly-trained soldiers who could crush ten of him against a wall with a single power-armoured thrust.
If you think this Ghoul Retcon shit is retarded, just wait until Billy and the Fridge. You hear a voice coming from a fridge, and it's a 200 year old Ghoulified child who never once had to eat, piss, shit, or drink. https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Kid_in_a_Fridge
You must take this child to his house where he will meet his family, who conveniently are also ghouls and survived 200 years and lived in the same place for, again, over 200 years. Alternatively you can sell the boy to one random asshole who shows up out of nowhere. This tiny amount of choice is still more than what most Fallout 4 sidequests will feature. You cannot talk to Billy the Ghoul or his parents because even though you are from over 200 years ago just like them, the thinky budget was stretched extremely thin and nobody could afford the brain cells to make these sidequest objects into real characters.
I miss Fallout New Vegas where the writers cared so much, they made sure that one Ghoul from Repconn would explain how he survived in a shitty basement without food or water by licking water off pipes and shitting in a corner.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.289089
289091 289103
>>289030
Thank you! I like you too.
I really love that flag but I'm not really a full fascist and I don't like the UK much. I don't hate it, but I don't think it would represent me well.
I want liberty and freedom and gun rights and speech rights and a government that won't try to micromanage the lives of its citizens, but at the same time is willing to stop the BBC's historical revisionism and eliminate the (((BBC))), encourage more white births, ban the sale and distribution of anti-white films/comics/books(adults can pirate that shit without getting caught but anyone pushing this on kids needs the death penalty), and solve racial/moral degeneracy problems. I'm not sure what to call my views. I understand that Hitler 2 would undoubtedly be the best thing that could ever realistically happen to my people.
Is "Inside every fascist, there is a disappointed libertarian" a common meme? I used to call myself a libertarian until I got tired of all the "dude weed lmao, I will like totally support your right to have a gay interracial pedophilic weed-loving illegal-alien-filled harem if you let me have weed" NPCs. I don't think an ideology that says "Everyone should have rights, no matter how degenerate" has a future, any survival skills, or any hope of getting its own Hitler.
I loved Starship Troopers and I love its system where you need to do military service before you become a citizen with rights and a vote. I wish the story featured more of the world and more non-combat military roles. Someone willing to serve as a Home Guard or work in a Military-owned gun factory is still vital to the military's war efforts and the nation's protection, so they should probably have rights.
Once I saw an old movie where some guy obsessed with a black-and-white TV show about fictional perfect nineteen-somethings Suburbian America gets sucked into the TV but his whore sister ruins it in the name of feminism. I'd love to live in that TV show, and I would not ruin it because fuck feminism. Women can already control men through sex, but their control over men should end the second men decide sex with this woman isn't worth it, as this encourages women to avoid acting too cunty. Women should never have more control than that. A healthy society recognizes that women should be good mothers, but it shouldn't coddle them and delude them into thinking they're owed more than they deserve, and it shouldn't treat all women like higher-class citizens just for having pussies whether they're good mothers or not. Women should have responsibilities and earn their rights. Perhaps they should have to do more than men to earn individual rights, if there's also a "women can get rights by becoming good mothers to the kids of men with rights" system. Otherwise it's not fair on men.
An ideology needs its own understanding of what's right and wrong, not just some nice-sounding words like "Liberty is good and everyone should have it, even enemies of liberty". All your "don't tread on me" bluster is worthless if you aren't willing to recognize threats when they tread on you. If ideologies don't have set-in-stone ideals, they spiral out of control chasing their own memes. A country of junkies sitting around smoking pot wouldn't be america, even if they were armed.
>>289034
I don't want us to be enemies. I want us to be friends. This is a thread where everyone can have fun and Glim is in charge since he's leading the review.
>>289072
I am a colossal autist for the Fallout franchise and I didn't even notice these quotes were sometimes from Fallout characters and sometimes from MLP characters.

speaking of fallout and autists https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/37254
There are some really autistic survival mods for these games where you need to keep track of your nutrition, not just your hunger.
Just to flex on Fallout 3 for having absolutely no Water/Food/Sleep Needs system
and to one-up Fallout NV's Hardcore Mode, which added a Water/Food/Sleep Needs System to flex on Fallout 3 for making everything revolve around water and a magic water purifier despite never thinking of what water/food the player or any settlements might need.
Anonymous
62836a8
?
No.289091
289113
>>289089
This is not at all the thread for it, but I might be interested in your take on Democracy: The God That Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
93fbbf8
?
No.289101
289107 289113 289119
1605119424118.jpg
>>289072

>Fireworks.
>Pinkie Bell (no, Silver Bell -- I really should think of her as Silver Bell) called it fireworks; she had been saving it until her Pinkie Pie Museum collection was complete. Of course. If you were going to throw a “party to end all parties”, you would need fireworks.
This is how the chapter begins. The first subchapter rambles quite a bit, and unfortunately you have to read the entire thing before you understand exactly what the deal with "fireworks" is, but the tl;dr is that the glowing thingamabob in the barn is actually some type of undetonated nuclear magic bomb. I guess Silver Bell was planning to use it as "fireworks" once her museum was complete.

This is the sort of plot twist that sounds like a good idea at first, but gets progressively stupider the more you think about it. The technical term for this nuclear-bomb-jiggy in the barn is "megaspell," a term which is as vaguely defined as everything else in this story. The idea of a child keeping the magical equivalent of an A-bomb in her barn as a "firework" she plans to set off seems like it would be an appropriately horrifying idea for a setting like this; however, there are some significant logic issues.

First off, it's not really clear from looking at this thing what it is and what it does. Littlepoop doesn't know what it is when she first sees it, and it doesn't appear that Calamity or Velvet do either. It doesn't really follow that a child who has lived her entire life in the middle of nowhere would automatically see this thing and identify it as explosive, thus connecting it to a firework. It's far more likely she would have just seen it as a bright, shiny, pretty thing that she could dump confetti on and display in her museum.

Second, even if she knows or intuits that it's something that can be detonated, would she have the means or the know-how to actually detonate it? If I found an atomic bomb lying around I might be able to figure out what it is, but that doesn't mean I'd be able to set it off. I really don't know anything about how bombs work, but I suspect that most of them were designed so they could not be easily set off by someone simply handling them. This brings us to a third point.

This whole world seems to operate on a really vaguely defined fusion of technology and magic, and it's not quite clear where one ends and the other begins. A spell is usually not a physical object, it's an act of magic that needs to be cast by someone with the power to enact it, which in this world would be a unicorn. However, my impression of this world is that at some point, they figured out how to harness magic in the same way that our civilization harnessed electricity, and they were able to build magic-powered machines that could be operated even by ponies with no magic ability. This would explain terminals, magic engines, robots, and other weird shit we've seen in this story so far. If this "megaspell" is meant to be something similar, then it is probably a preconstructed magical effect that has been somehow contained within a physical object, and the magic can be released via some type of mechanism. However, we really don't know any of this for sure because the author is vague as fuck about it. Honestly I don't get the impression that he put much more thought into any of this beyond taking the sci-fi technology of Fallout, dumping it directly into Equestria, but modifying it superficially by replacing concepts like "electricity" or "radiation" with "magic."

Anyway, before we delve much deeper into this chapter, I wanted to examine the unsatisfying ending of Chapter 9 a little more closely. Basically, here is where I assumed the author was going with it:

LP and Co. find the farm in the middle of nowhere, occupied by a single creepy filly. The filly is clearly insane and believes herself to be a disciple of Pinkie Pie. She manages to convince the three of them to stay the night, but they soon discover that she has locked them in. After a daring escape, they venture into her weird, glowing barn and discover that some kind of monster or something is in there. The monster had come to this farm and found a filly whose parents and sister had been brutally murdered, leaving the filly traumatized. It took advantage of this, convincing the filly that it was Pinkie Pie, or a messenger of Pinkie, or something like that, and told her that if she brought it enough sacrifices then one day it would bring her family back. So, for some time now, this filly has been luring travelers to her farm, maybe using her Pinkie museum as a draw, or even just by pretending to be a helpless, rapeable filly alone on a farm sacrebleu! le edge!. Once she traps them, she leads them to the barn and feeds them to the monster. Meanwhile, LP and Co. fight the monster, defeat it, and learn the whole sordid story from the filly. At this point they realize that the "creepy, evil" filly is really just a sad, lonely filly who misses her family, and the monster took advantage of her.

That is how I would have written it, at least. As you can see, this could have easily been spun into a nice little episode, and it would have been easy as fug to write, because it's basically just a string of tropes. Unfortunately, the author took it in a different and far less compelling direction, and didn't even execute the idea terribly well. The entire character arc of Silver Bell never really takes off because the author doesn't spend enough time on her for it to properly build. We meet a filly doing a weird impersonation of Ponk, we're never quite sure if we're supposed to be amused, be creeped out, or feel sorry for her, then she locks them in a room but they escape, then LP finds a bomb in the barn.

Come to think of it, we don't even know why she locked them in that room. If she had been planning to kill them or sacrifice them it would have made sense, but as it stands there was no obvious reason why she would have done this.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
93fbbf8
?
No.289103
289113
1604123551193.jpg
>>289089
>Once I saw an old movie where some guy obsessed with a black-and-white TV show about fictional perfect nineteen-somethings Suburbian America gets sucked into the TV but his whore sister ruins it in the name of feminism.
Pleasantville is the movie you're thinking of.
Anonymous
b2cfda9
?
No.289107
289120
silver bell ancap meme.png
>>289101
>a child keeping the magical equivalent of an A-bomb in her barn
That's just an ancap meme waiting to be made right there. Actually, you know what? Fuck it, I'll do it.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.289112
289127
>This whole world seems to operate on a really vaguely defined fusion of technology and magic, and it's not quite clear where one ends and the other begins. A spell is usually not a physical object, it's an act of magic that needs to be cast by someone with the power to enact it, which in this world would be a unicorn. However, my impression of this world is that at some point, they figured out how to harness magic in the same way that our civilization harnessed electricity, and they were able to build magic-powered machines that could be operated even by ponies with no magic ability. This would explain terminals, magic engines, robots, and other weird shit we've seen in this story so far. If this "megaspell" is meant to be something similar, then it is probably a preconstructed magical effect that has been somehow contained within a physical object, and the magic can be released via some type of mechanism. However, we really don't know any of this for sure because the author is vague as fuck about it. Honestly I don't get the impression that he put much more thought into any of this beyond taking the sci-fi technology of Fallout, dumping it directly into Equestria, but modifying it superficially by replacing concepts like "electricity" or "radiation" with "magic."

This, as far as I understand it, is basically how the FoE fandom at large interprets the setting. FoE runs on magitech, with the magic standing in for Fallout's more fantastical technologies like energy weapons, computers, and of course nuclear power.

The NUCLEAR WEAPON - or close enough equivalent - introduced in this chapter is heralded by the story's TV Tropes page as an example of Chekhov's Gun.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.289113
289127 289279
SpecialAttack.jpg
>>289091
this is a reply to you not a spoiler for the fic
When I'm done with my list of scifi and fantasy classics everyone else read years ago I need to get through a list of books like that and review them.
I hate when Libertarians are all "It is defeatist to say our dream utopia of perfect NAP-respecting good guys can never be created EXACTLY HOW WE WANT IT TO BE CREATED! You're a blackpilled doomer cuck AND a supervillain lecturing me on the weakness of kindness and foolish frailty of liberty!" at anyone who calls their ideology naive or doomed, even when more valid criticism is raised.
Like the criticism that they have never had a single 1776-2 moment and have no actual plans to ever do one. Some people are developing and innovating on 3d-printed shotgun plans that will let people make shotguns out of Home Depot store-bought parts and 3d-printed parts. But that's the thing: It's just "some people", it isn't a unified thing they're all behind. I haven't seen any guntubers calling attention to it. Libertarians rarely if ever do anything to protect their remaining rights or try to get them back from the "fucking liberals". And way too many of them are way too desperate to shove conservatives away in an attempt to try and pretend shoving a christian away and calling him a bible-thumper makes you a modern intellectual and makes up for your unwillingness to do anything to pedophiles in power.
Liberalism is unwilling to fight to defend itself, its members, or its aims. It's too willing to embrace trends and cuck out for liberals and blindly repeat anti-"right wing" memes to try and look above "both sides". It could never survive the neverending demon horde unless they're willing to stop being passive whiners and start actively trying to make the world better for libertarians and their allies according to the libertarian view of utopia.

>>289103
Yeah, that's the one https://www.bitchute.com/video/OvSDIbikprY/
>>289101
A child with a nuke? That's some Borderlands bullshit right there. Except even Tiny Tina (Psychotic little girl and demolitions expert, loves killing/torturing evil-npc Bandits but it's okay because you've killed over 200 by the time you meet her and this is a funny setting where morality is usually a suggestion outside of rare contrived melodrama moments) wouldn't do this, because nukes have nuclear fallout.
It DOUBLE makes no sense that this child would see a glowy ball and think "firework" because megaspells could be fucking anything.
For all she knows this could detonate to shrink her and everyone around her.
It's not like she has a Pip-Buck 3000 that can tell you the name of whatever you point it at unless it's a NPC with a generic name like "Raider Scum" or "Raider Marauder" like it's fucking warcraft and there are Defias Bandits and Defias Cutpurses all over again oh god Elwynn Forest and Westfall and Darkshire and queueing with random faggots for the Deadmines oh god fucking Van Cleef fucking I'LL HAVE TO IMPROVISE no wait guys stop we have to kill Cookie oh god it's like I'm still there oh fuck I was just a boy, I was just a fucking boy! I can feel my leg, and my arm, and that level seventy plate armour with that stupid fucking engineering dragon in my trinket slot. The arms I've lost, the comrades I've lost, it won't stop hurting!
...Where was I?
oh right, the name thing.
It's not like she has a Pip-Buck 3000 that can tell you the name of whatever you point it at, as long as it has a real name. It can't be a matter of "Someone has to tell you the name" because you're able to instantly see the name of anyone you look at, even before you hear the name, as long as that person actually has a name coded to them in-game. Man that thing would be deadly if Light Yagami had it. Shinigami Eyes my ass, this thing's got the power of "SCIENCE!" on its side.
anyway she doesn't have a pip-buck but Littlepip does. She should be able to identify the name of anything she looks at, because it's already something she can do in the game and she already has VATS in all its boringly-described fight-ruining monotony.
For real, it makes no sense that the Filly would look at the glowy ball and think "Firework".
Megaspells are not inherently bombs.
They're a "Spell Matrix" (whatever the FUCK that is) that takes any spell and amplifies it. Want a big bomb that turns everything to coal or diamond? Equestria could have made one of those to solve whatever reliance on Zebra coal it may or may not have had at the time. You can also shove inherently-evil necromantic corruptive green fire called "Balefire" into it, to create a nuclear bomb but the radiation is supposedly "magical" and that's why it does exactly what retrofuturistic magical-radiation did to Fallout critters in Fallout. Big ones were used as Nuclear ICBMs by the ziggers on the day Equestria got wiped by the striped.
I hear one "fanmade FOE spinoff" takes place in a snowy shithole full of unexploded Equestrian megaspells that are all different exciting spells amplified x1000, and many explode during the course of the story.

It's stupid that even though the radiation is "Magical and not real radiation" in this setting it's still impossible for characters to remove radiation from water, land, and so on without the aid of magical Project Purity-type megastructures because that's a Fallout thing usually.
However, they can remove radiation from their own bodies using RadAway, an item in Fallout.
RadAway, for all your radiation problems! Drink it down (or inject it into your veins, I forget) and it'll bond with your body's radiation so you piss it all out. Will instantly heal radiation damage and even radiation poisoning by removing the radiation from your body, as if that's how it works.

I don't know anything about atomic bombs but I assume they're full of radiation so surely if you taped some remote-detonated c4 to one and ran out of the blast zone then fired, that'd work and let out the mushroom cloud inside the bomb, right?
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.289119
289133 289287 290319
1602139137132.jpg
>>289101

What's doubly irritating about it is that the episode never properly resolves. This filly character just acts inexplicably weird for awhile, and then suddenly has this tragic backstory dumped on her, and then it ends with her crying about how her parents' death is her fault, with Velvet trying to console her. I had assumed that at least the first couple paragraphs of this chapter would be dedicated to wrapping all of this up: LP's party realizes that they were wrong to be suspicious of the filly, while the filly learns that it was wrong to...wait, I'm not even sure that works, because we still don't even know what the hell she was trying to do. Seriously, this bugs me now that I think about it. Why did she lock them in the bedroom? She wasn't planning to do anything with the bomb other than set it off as a firework once her museum was finished. As far as I can tell this is just an honest misunderstanding of what the device is; I don't get the impression the filly ever had any malevolent intentions for it. In fact, if the bomb was meant for celebrating the museum's completion, and she needed the statuette of Ponk to complete the museum, and she needed LP and her friends to find the statuette for her, then...why lock them in the bedroom? None of this makes any sense.

Now that I think about it, this is probably why this particular episode rustles my jimmies so much. Not only is it a badly designed story arc that is badly executed, and not only does it fail to achieve any sort of resolution, the reason it fails to achieve resolution is because there is nothing to resolve in the first place. There is never even a clear conflict developed for this story arc; we have no idea what this filly's goals were, whether or not she ever intended LP & Co. any serious harm, or anything. Good God, it's like no matter how low I set the bar for k "the doctor says I've got an undetonated megaspell in my butthole, except he calls it HIV for some reason" kat, he somehow finds a way to fall short of it. Not only did he fail here, he managed to fail so hard that he failed at failing. My mind is now quite thoroughly boggled.

Anyway, let's move on.

Once Railright and Derpy show up, Silver Bell seems to be on her way out of the story. This is basically all she gets:

>I had expected Ditzy Doo’s personal arrival. Silver Bell needed help, and we couldn’t provide it ourselves. There was a possible place in Manehattan that could help the poor filly, if it still existed. But as my oh-so-uneventful trek across the Equestrian Wasteland had already proven, it was far too dangerous to drag somepony like Silver Bell along. She needed love and comfort, safety and prolonged therapy. Wandering the wasteland wouldn’t provide that, and another hostile encounter might scar her even worse. I worried that her pain and wounds were too deep to heal already. I couldn’t risk that. And with the lack of alternatives, New Appleloosa was the only real option I saw. And with what I knew of Ditzy Doo, it would be hard to find somepony better to help her, outside of a professional psychiatrist pony. And I knew Ditzy Doo would really care about her.
This paragraph is just a rambling stream of consciousness; the author appears to be thinking up what to do with Silver on the spot, now that her arc has reached what he seems to believe is a resolution. He mentions a "possible place in Manehattan" for her, which would presumably be some kind of group home or hospital, but it's not clear how LP would know of such a place or even why something like that would plausibly still be in operation. The author seems to reach this same conclusion, because it is not mentioned again. As far as I can tell, the ultimate takeaway from this rambling paragraph is that Derpy is going to take her back to New Appleoosa and look after her. While Derpy's heart is probably in the right place, it seems like it ought to have occurred to somepony that a tongueless, radioactive mute, who resembles a walking corpse and could potentially go criminally insane at any random moment, might not be the best caregiver for a severely traumatized orphan. But whatever; it's done I guess.

Anyway, the subchapter concludes with Calamity and LP in the barn, examining the megaspell. Calamity, for some reason, is able to identify this device as a "balefire bomb," for whatever that's worth.

After a page break, we rejoin LP outside a short time later.

>Ditzy Doo had wrapped Silver Bell in a blanket and was strapping herself to the front of the wagon with practiced ease. She caught me watching her and smiled back, her one odd eye rolling up. I tried not to shudder at that, and gave her my best smile back. Then cast a mildly reproachful gaze towards the stack of barrels that Velvet Remedy was trying to remain in the vicinity of without actually hiding.
This is a sentence fragment:
>Then cast a mildly reproachful gaze towards the stack of barrels that Velvet Remedy was trying to remain in the vicinity of without actually hiding.
Furthermore, it's not clear why Velvet is sort-of hiding, nor why Littlepoop would reproach her for this. My best guess is she's creeped out by Derpy's appearance, and this bothers LP even though she is also creeped out by Derpy's appearance.

Anyway, Calamity and Railright are meanwhile discussing what to do about the bomb. They don't seem to reach any definite conclusions, but as far as I can tell their plan at the moment is to just leave it there and hope nobody sets it off. Once they are done talking, Railright asks Calamity to excuse himself so he can talk to Littlepoop in private.

>Calamity shrugged and trotted over to Ditzy Doo. Railright approached me. My sense of unease increased.
I feel like there's a Joe Biden joke in here somewhere.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.289120
>>289107
This is bretty gud. Saved.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.289127
289149
b97.jpg
>>289113
>Liberalism is unwilling to
lol typo i meant libertarianism is unwilling to fight for its rights. Liberalism weakens the brain and soul until you end up a radicalized marxist subhuman motivated by spite and envy. Liberalism is willing to fight against good for evil when it thinks there is no chance of opposition or reprisal. This world has no organized and funded and armed opposition to evil, and needs one. A good society can lower its military preparedness level when the enemies are weakened and their capacity to do evil is minimized, but a good society must never lower their guard.

>>289112
Fuck TVtropes, that is not how a Chekhov's Gun works!
First you say "There is a gun above the fireplace" and then you make a character fire it! It's not saying "There is something above the fireplace" and then make a character reveal it's a magical gun!
We practically just finished talking to Watcher, a faggot who COULD HAVE EASILY TOLD EVERYONE WHAT THE MEGASPELL NUKES WERE AND WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE AND HOW THEY WORK, RIGHT BEFORE WE SEE ONE HERE.
THAT would be a chekovs gun but a pretty obvious and rushed one.
Technically would it count as "Chekov's Lecture"? That's when a character gets a lecture right before it becomes relevant outside the classroom. For example, Johnny Test being told about America's revolution in class right before today's episode involves ripping it off in a kid-friendly way.
Watcher typically only speaks in lectures, prompted or unprompted.
So he could hear someone in Team Littlepip mention "Party-Time Mint-Als" and say "Don't do those drugs, Pinkie invented them!"
And then a well-written Littlepip would say "Pinkie Pie... and drugs? No way! In Stable School, I was told Pinkie Pie did nothing wrong, just like the rest of the mane six!"
A well-written Watcher in a well-written fic about the fall of equestria would say "Every mane six member contributed to the end of the world in their own little way"
but this watcher would remember his audience and decide to give a lecture on the mane six member they're the least likely to love: Pinkie Pie, inventor of cocaine and mistress of the smile gulags.
>"Pinkie, trying her best, was assigned suicide prevention duties by Luna and decided to have spybots watch equestria and report unhappy ponies so they can be taken by the poners in black to a happy camp full of cake and balloons meant to make them happy until they're ready to leave! But then the world outside got so miserable nopony here wanted to leave, also crazy ponies kept signing up to work for Pinkie and only got fired after they did assorted damage to ponies there, and it was common for crazy asylum-runners to abuse the elderly, because all these "crazy" ponies were actually zebras on Polyjuice potion. And then Ziggers bombed the supply lines so everyone there starved and plague ravaged the place and Flutters was busy healing medical supplies to soldiers so we had to burn bodies that died of starvation or typhoid in our five ovens, also Pinkie had dyslexia but for numbers so she couldn't count and used cutesy made-up numbers to cover that up and that's why the newspaper once infamously claimed we had six gorrillion ponies in one tiny smile camp, which radicalized many non-equestrian non-zebrica countries into fighting us."

I think that's good writing that makes Pinkie's role part of the main apocalypse thing.
Better than what we actually got: "Pinkie invented cocaine mints and died a virgin also I watched 1984 the movie once anyway she existed while other good things and everything-wrong things were done by other more important ponies".
Are we actually supposed to trust any of this "Pre-war ponies saw Pinkie as a goddess of parties who gave rocks to naughty foals" shit from a literal crazy pony, when Watcher can be accessed for a quick infodump session whenever they spot a spritebot?
Why the fuck don't they have one of his bots following them around, anyway?
You could get robot buddies in Fallout 3, NV, and 4. NV had the best one because ED-E is brilliant.
This adventuring party doesn't even have six members, it only has three! Fucking GAY!
There are idiots on MLP Forums who put more effort into their "alternate mane six" ideas!

Also Glim you're right about how this story copypastes Fallout's semi-futuristic semi-retro technology and then calls it "magic" or "powered by magic" and calls it a day. The most original thing here is his take on nukes as "Spell enhancers" except they end up being nuclear anyway. Magic computers with green letters on black screens display journal entries when the password is guessed via a game of "2/8 letters correct, try again, 3 tries remaining". "magic" laser rifles and "magic" plasma ball guns open fire against poorly-armed raiders and well-equipped slavers over the last remaining 200 year old tins of Cram(TM).

It's still fucking stupid that ponies are using Fallout guns here. Not just human guns, but fucked-up alt-history "We must fuck these frankenguns up or Glock and AK and Smith and Wesson will sue us!" guns twisted further by retrofuturism and wear and tear and duct-tape. They should use those floating drones from Nier Automata that float around and shoot rapid bullet streams for you using power from their magic battery. Surely giving a Spritebot some ball-jointed side-mounted arms that end in silenced laser guns and gauss miniguns can't be hard.

>lets send not-pinkie to New Appleoosa
Goddamnit Kkunt, this was a perfectly mediocre origin story for a Tiny Tina+Pinkie Pie knockoff who tee-hee-hees whenever she kills Raiders with a... I want to say rocket launcher but she'd never be able to aim the thing. So... 40mm grenade launcher, but recoilless and powered by a Fusion Core and it fires exploding energy balls. Paint it purple and claim Magic Cores power it, and boom, new Fallout weapon still able to function within the confines and restrictions of this failed crossover.
Imagine a character arc where she discovers the true power of laughter and becomes kind!
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.289133
1e624945445c41af8f673683ff179c320f578158_hq.jpg
>>289119
The more I think about this half-baked Not Pinkie shit, the more I think this is like a really bad Scooby Doo fanfic.
Except the villain was never really masked to begin with, the characters just stopped thinking and avoided asking obvious questions and showing any sign that they didn't trust this filly until after they entered a room of hers.
by the way is a wooden door really any match for the katamari of shit Littlepoop would be floating around beside her if this story wasn't using videogame logic where you can carry 6 or more guns at once but only the currently equipped one is ever seen on your person?

That reminds me, why doesn't Derpy wear a kazoo on a string around her neck?
She can still breathe. So she should be able to blow on that kazoo whenever she wants someone's attention.
It's retarded but pony+kazoo=funny
and pony doing funny thing for tragic reason=Fimfic users can no longer claim water retention caused their obesity because they cried out all the fluids in their bodies.

Also imagine a kazoo but enchanted to fire focused sonic blasts with bone-crunching force. That's the kind of weapon pie-throwing ponies would think of if they could enchant objects with spells. They wouldn't go for bonus damage types and stat buffs, they'd do this.

And did Ditzy/Railright have to show up right now, when it's convenient?

Why do they decide to send this filly to a settlement near a fucked-up raider shithole when they could instead take this filly to the "Sanctuary" they recently heard about? It's exactly the kind of stupid main plot this story's desperately needed since the start! "Take this one to the place" is a perfectly mediocre main plot and it could easily be stretched thin to justify Littlepip's desperate need to interact with every settlement she encounters along the path and loot everything she can while slaughtering everything that pisses her off!

It's like Kkunt thought about adding this Pinkie knockoff to the party and then decided to not do that even though it severely unbalances the party and its dynamics and stops them from hitting a full party of 6 and robs a major source of potential character growth and an overarching plot from a story that desperately needs it!

What, did the fucker decide having a Pinkie Wannabe desperately and nervously trying to crack jokes as the world gets worse around her wouldn't be "grim and dark" enough for his shitty little fanfic where generic one-note OCs deliver wannabe-action movie hero quips and don't look at explosions?

>Everyone decides to leave the megaspell there
IT'S A FUCKING MEGASPELL
IT COULD BE ANY UNKNOWN SPELL, MULTIPLIED IN POWER TO ANY UNKNOWN DEGREE.
FOR ALL THEY KNOW IT COULD QUITE LITERALLY VAPORIZE HALF OF EQUESTRIA!
IF THERE'S ANYWHERE SAFE FOR IT, IT'S NOT OUT HERE WHERE ANYONE COULD FIND IT AND DECIDE TO USE IT AGAINST ANY SETTLEMENT, INNOCENT OR GUILTY.
I don't know where you'd store something like this, but putting it in a safe inside another safe inside another safe inside another safe buried deep underground with its entrance sealed by a giant boulder and then sealed again by an alchemically-reconstituted door thick enough to give bank vault doors a boner and then placed deep beneath a thriving well-defended settlement of morally good ponies is a start.
Alternatively, Littlepip could take it with her so the author won't have to bullshit and outright lie to you and me and everyone else who reads this story MUCH later on so she can obtain an explosive when Kkunt suddenly realizes he forgot to give her one. This shouldn't be relevant for at least 20 more chapters.
But if the author planned ahead more than half a chapter at a time, we might get actual good chekov's gun moments like that.

Does anyone here suspect an overwhelming backlash to the idea of a violent murderous Pinkie (The edgiest thing the fandom could think of at the time) knockoff joining Team Murderhobo convinced Kkunt to quickly scrap the character and give her the happiest ending he could think of: getting adopted by Derpy the ideal comfy momfu?
(Twilight will make you a smart filly but Derpy loves you no matter what, she's peak comfy and if I was one of those weirdos who used age-regression baby mommy roleplay mommy milkies uwu shit to deal with his tragic backstory involving abusive parents I'd love her the most)
although I still think this story's take on Derpy is insultingly bad. Would it kill Kkunt to make Derpy a cyborg? It's less ugly than a Ghoul. Cyborgs can be pretty hot too.
Where the hell could such a backlash come from? It couldn't be from his fanbase since they're manchildren blinded and dazzled by the incredible amount of references. Could it be from his proof-readers? Or "Beta-readers" as they hilariously call themselves? Lmao beta readers. beta cucks lol, imagine simping for a fanfic writer and reviewing 500 pages of AshxPikachu yaoi hentai. I'm joking, proofreading and MST3King are noble arts. Beta Reader is still a gay name. Shouldn't it be "Alpha Reader" since you're reading it first before the general public?

Maybe Kkunt really thought making this filly a main character would ruin the dark mood of the story, because in this story the heroes usually win (and it's always because of plot armour or luck when it happens) so if a Pinkie knockoff kept smiling it would "ruin the edgy tone".
Kkunt doesn't strike me as the kind of person who's ever had to smile through pain and know what that's like.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.289149
289176 289179 289272 290430
>>289127
>Fuck TVtropes, that is not how a Chekhov's Gun works!
>First you say "There is a gun above the fireplace" and then you make a character fire it! It's not saying "There is something above the fireplace" and then make a character reveal it's a magical gun!
>We practically just finished talking to Watcher, a faggot who COULD HAVE EASILY TOLD EVERYONE WHAT THE MEGASPELL NUKES WERE AND WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE AND HOW THEY WORK, RIGHT BEFORE WE SEE ONE HERE.
>THAT would be a chekovs gun but a pretty obvious and rushed one.
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here, but the Chekhov's Gun principle basically means that anything you introduce into the story needs to be significant somehow, and if an element isn't significant it shouldn't be in the story. The specific gun example given by Chekhov is that if you introduce a loaded rifle in one scene, it needs to be fired in another, otherwise there is no reason to mention it. Here is exactly what he says:

>Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.
Basically, this just means "don't put shit into your story that doesn't need to be there." In general I think this is good advice, but Chekhov carries it to an unpleasant extreme imo. His argument is basically that no detail should be mentioned in the text unless it is going to be used directly. The counter-argument is usually that inconsequential details can help to enhance and flesh out a setting or a character even if they aren't directly important to events. My view is usually somewhere in the middle: small, irrelevant details can actually enhance a story quite a bit if done right, but they can also distract you or bog down your story if you let them get out of hand, or if you find yourself going into excessive detail about something that is not just irrelevant but boring (this is something I think kkat does quite a lot of, actually; his endless cataloging of all the random stupid objects that Littlepoop loots out of cabinets and such is the first example that springs to mind).

I looked up the TV Tropes page for this story, and here is what it says under Chekhov's Gun:

>The author has mentioned that this is her favorite literary device to set up.
Well, first of all let's address the obvious:
>her
I guess kkat is officially confirmed to be a tranny I guess we don't know for certain that it isn't a literal woman, but this just doesn't feel like something a woman would write.

Anyway, the page lists several examples of Chekhov's Gun tropes used in this story. As I said, Chekhov's Gun is basically just a literary principle requiring that any details not relevant to a story be omitted from it. However, when people talk about it as a trope, it usually refers to a seemingly irrelevant detail mentioned at one point in the story that becomes important later on. The impression I get is that kkat enjoys trying to be clever with this. Here is how TV Tropes describes the specific case of the balefire bomb:

>The Balefire Bomb found in Silver Bell's home is later used by Red Eye to gain leverage over Littlepip. After that, it's used to destroy both the Goddess and the Black Book.
I guess technically this is a spoiler, but I don't really care that much. When I get to this part I'll pretend to be surprised.

Anyway, there are a whole bunch of these listed on the page, most of which involve minor objects that Littlepoop picks up or random tidbits of seemingly inconsequential information she learns from listening to recordings and whatnot, that end up being crucial later on. Again, my suspicion is that kkat thinks he's being clever by doing this. To be fair, if used cleverly, this kind of thing can actually take a story in some interesting directions. Mystery stories will often include tiny, seemingly irrelevant details that turn out to be major clues. M. Night Shyamalan also relies pretty heavily on Chekhov's Gun to create some of his infamous twist endings. The Sixth Sense is probably the most successful example. However, in that case, the seemingly irrelevant details are being used as part of an intentional misdirection. The story leads you to believe that something is happening, but quietly drops breadcrumbs at the same time. You don't initially notice them, but they become glaringly obvious clues once the truth is finally revealed.

This is not really what kkat does, though. Granted, I haven't read the entire thing yet so I suppose it's possible that he ends up throwing us some interesting curveballs, but judging by what I've seen, his approach is mostly just to bog the reader down with thousands of stupid details, only a few of which will eventually become significant. For instance, let's say that in Chapter 4 Littlepoop is rifling around in some random cabinet and finds a blue acorn, which she puts in her saddlebag. Then, in Chapter 988, she comes across a village of ponies suffering from a disease that can be cured with medicine made from a certain type of blue acorn. Littlepoop reaches into her saddlebag and says "well, look at what I've got here!"

This kind of thing isn't clever, it's just annoying. My oft-voiced complaint has been that half of this story is just an inventory of random irrelevant objects that Littlepoop picks up and takes with her for no reason other than to take them. You'd need a photographic memory to keep track of it all, and what's galling is that most of these details aren't significant. Expecting the reader to keep a mental catalog of every dumb thing this character says or does or picks up, just so they don't have to go digging for it when it becomes suddenly important later on, is just giving the reader extra work to do. This is more insulting to the reader than anything, especially since this story isn't that well written to begin with.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.289176
289179
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>>289149
I think the most annoying thing about Littlepip's "Scavenger Moments"(TM) is how the author will sometimes gloss over some (but not all) of the shit that's picked up, and then later comment on something picked up offscreen instead of giving a full inventory at the start and end of each chapter.
You aren't rewarded for keeping track of what bullshit LP carries because the author doesn't give a complete picture often enough
and Kkunt LOVES concealing important details, like the ball of magic's true purpose. When someone with a PipBuck looks at objects they can take or interact with, they see its name. And a "Press E to take" prompt. Hey if the fucker's importing SATS and the HUD, he might as well import this.

Imagine if Kkunt posted LP's full inventory at the end of every chapter, letting us guess what clever crafting/science purposes the scrap she carries will be used for, what garbage and useless-to-her ammo she will trade for ammo she can use, and what creative solutions like "throw cat corpse on landmine to detonate it while creating a bloody mess, faking death and escaping out the back window" could be attempted this week by this brave and heroic adventurer with a head full of dreams...
Oh wait this is a Kkunt story, nevermind.
The author doesn't really seem to keep track of Littlepoop's inventory.
He certainly doesn't keep track of her ammo.
I've seen a lot of great Fallout fanfics keep the tension high by keeping the protag's arsenal SEVERELY limited.
One shitty gun, and a handful of bullets. Every raider poses a threat now, even if it's just the loss of one bullet.
Creative kills are normally something only seen when playing Bulletstorm, but when supplies are low making some improvised traps to take out entire zombie hordes at once and whipping out martial arts/melee weapon skills against thugs is a great strategy for conserving ammo.

>Mystery stories will often include tiny, seemingly irrelevant details that turn out to be major clues.
Like how Mr Burns died in an area and time with only Marge, Simpsons dog, and Maggie around, he recognized his killer just as he recognized maggie in the picture but not Homer, plus there was a struggle in which Burns was shot with his own gun even though Burns is weak and all the suspects have alibis or their own guns, especially Moe whose funk-dancing shotgun would have obliterated Burns on the spot. plus Maggie didn't look away when everyone else did, and I think he also stole candy from babies or something. It was foreshadowed from the start, it's not WS, it's MS from his perspective so he pointed to MS on the sundial, Maggie Simpson. also the clocks all pointed at his time of death, I think. I saw a video obsessing over every detail a while ago.
It even checked every episode before this to see if Burns ever spoke with the suspects. Burns never interacted with Scottish Willie once but lost a girl to Grandpa Simpson and a film contest to... was it Lenny or Barney?
Anonymous
009033b
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No.289179
>>289149
>>289176

Ok the Red Eye vs Goddess thing's been spoiled but incredibly vaguely because whoever's sucking this author off on tvtropes recognized how shit it is
so I will call it shit but in a spoiler since I'll reveal more info about that event in the spoiler
I originally used >these for greentext but greentext and spoiler tags don't play nice.

>be littlepip
red eye threatens to throw a nuke at you unless you go and kill the Goddess
take party-time mentats to boost speech skill
that's right
take drugs, kill a bear?
no
take PTM, kill immersion by charming Red Eye (offscreen) into giving you the nuke and nuke launcher that he is using to threaten you
and then do what he says anyway for no reason
use memory orb to remove your memories of this, because they can suddenly remove memories now and multiple Red Dwarf-style "Fuck you, me! Stop reading more of this message even though I told you not to!" messages played straight,
because humor isn't edgy enough for one who walks the path of the blade that mostly involves using the blade to scratch at your nu-vagina to keep it from healing right and sealing up, and ultimately ends in joining le 41% with Landorus-Testosteroneless
I uncensored that joke because I'm really proud of it. anyway

go to Goddess like a good girl because Red-Eye wants to kill what he's decided he no longer wants to bone and have consensual Fusion with alongside Littlepoop

and remember you have a nuke and nuke launcher in your hammerspace crotch-pocket and kill her with the nuke

and also blow up an "evil cursed book" that taught Rarity how to invent the objectively-wonderful utterly-perfect Statuettes and how to copypaste entire souls onto shaved-off shards of the souls of others, and kindly taught you how to make armour out of your own blood via a magic spell without any downsides or negative side effects. It's not like the darkness tempts her or gives her a Super Powered Evil Side or anything, because attaching a cost to dark magic to offset its power is something only a smart writer not in love with darkness would do.

the author had you use the nuke you gained from a speech-check offscreen because he realized you have no way of killing Alicorn Trixie Goddess and would be unable to talk someone who's basically Rita Repulsa without the charm and campy fun into deciding all is futile and suiciding like The Master from Fallout 1 did if you proved to him that his oh-so-special "master race" is not just mostly-retarded but also completely sterile. Can't do that with Trixie since she's a massive cunt who ate Twilight and two creepy-twin OCs without absorbing any of their personality traits, she doesn't give a fuck about being good and her species is fertile but only able to produce female offspring. That faggot Red Eye wants to merge himself with Goddess to make her Futa so the Alicorn species can have a "male alicorn" able to fuck all female alicorns since alicorn pusspuss destroys ordinary non-alicorn stallions via snusnu. Red Eye also wants Littlepip to join the fusion because he thinks her "toughness and incorruptibility" will stop Trixie from overwhelming his mind like Trixie was able to completely and utterly overwhelm Twilight and the creepy twin OCs effortlessly. Yeah, despite setting Red Eye up as this cool "I will work a thousand slavers to death before I let this country die!" guy, it turns out he wanted to merge with a giant bitch to become her futa cock. GAY! Nothing's gayer than wanting to be the penis of any filly, let alone Trixie's penis.

Anonymous
8142357
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No.289272
289479
>>289149
See, my understanding of Chekhov's Gun as a principle is that it doesn't refer to every piece of inconsequential background detail, but to things that are introduced in the narrative as having some form of apparent significance. When a story draws our attenton to something, it makes an implicit promise that that thing is relevant to the narrative as a whole. Even if that relevance isn't immediately clear, the reader is made to expect that relevance to become apparent later on. It's not even a trope as such, just an example of fundamental writing competence.

In this case, the supposd Chekhov's gun is for all intents and purposes a fully functional nuclear weapon. In a story about a nuclear apocalypse. It's perhaps the single most significant element introduced so far. From here, we have two options:

#1 - The bomb becomes important later.
Perhaps the biggest WELL DUH so far. It's not even remotely clever, and Kkat congratulating himself for it is like a special ed child congratulating himself for putting the crayons on the paper and not in his mouth for once.

#2 - The bomb does not have significance later.
This would only be the case if Kkat were an even worse writer than the above, or trying to set up sUbVeRtEd ExPeCtAtIoNs.

Either way, this isn't a clever piece of setup, not a good example of the principle in use.
Anonymous
abb50e3
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No.289279
289479
>>289113
In regards to your question about nukes I don't know all the science behind it but did some research when I was in the Army and I remember reading how there is a very specific process they need to do in order to arm a nuke and prepare it for detonation. You could strap C-4 to it but if you tried to blow it up the actual nuclear fission would not have been activated and you would destory the nuke without causing a nuclear explosion.

Meant to be a safety measure so someone can't sneak into a silo and wipe half a state out by blowing up the nuclear arsenal in the silo or have them detonate if they were to fall or bump into something.
Anonymous
abb50e3
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No.289287
289399 289479
>>289119
In defense of Kkat for a moment I would say that earlier in the story I belive while LP was listening to the audio recording of Silver Bells sister they mentioned Tenpony Tower which is a reference to Tenpenny Tower in Fallout 3 and how orphaned foals were rumored to be safe and cared for there.

Also had to delete the original post because I forgot to mention that I also found it odd they'd choose Derpy as Silver's main care taker. Even if not for the reason she resembles a walking corpse, has no tounge, and can turn feral at any time, I have to imagine that considering how ghouls are made from extreamly high exposure to radiation that it would be dangerious to spend much time in close proximity to one.
Anonymous
8142357
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No.289399
>>289287
>I have to imagine that considering how ghouls are made from extreamly high exposure to radiation that it would be dangerious to spend much time in close proximity to one.
Going by Fallout lore at least, despite originating from radiation exposure most ghouls aren't inherently radioactive. They're immune to and (depending on game) even healed by radiation, but can live and interact with normal humans without danger. If anything, since the degradation leading to a feral state is linked to radiation damage, most lucid ghouls have a vested interest in avoiding radiation for the sake of their sanity. Their standing with non-ghouls varies by setting and location, from full acceptance to outright discrimination.

Of course, we have no way of knowing if this also holds true in the case of FoE ('assume it works just like in Fo3 unless Kkat says otherwise' seems to be the rule) and barely know anything about this characterization of Derpy and whether she can be trusted, so it's still a bit of a dodgy decision.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.289479
289510
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>>289272
The creator of Chekhov's Gun originally said "Every detail in a book should matter later on!"
Over time, it was misunderstood and warped into "It's a total Chekhov's Gun Moment(TM) whenever a detail is introduced into the story and then it matters later on".
Jew writing is extremely clumsy and manipulative, so basic writing techniques like that seem revolutionary to a normie used to cliches.
>"Holy shit, this is a Call Back to something that happened earlier! Which meant what happened earlier wasn't filler! I am being rewarded with endorphins and dopamine for looking at what happened earlier in the movie!"
>>289279
Huh. That's a clever design. I always assumed nuclear bombs were just metal casings filled with radiation and an explosive bomb tip to spread it and split one atom stored inside it.
>>289287
That was pretty clumsy exposition. Hearing about a building for orphans right before you meet an orphan that needs one? Would it kill Kkunt to make someone in New or Old Appleoosa mention the place?
Fallout 3's Tenpenny Tower is another meme location that makes no sense. It's a tower full of rich old bastards. Don't ask what makes them rich, why they're prosperous, or how they are able to survive in this tower without meaningful trade, or why that one old guy pays you to nuke the first town of Megaton (featuring Moira Brown, the girl/ghoul replaced by Derpy in this fic) for no reason.
You can either let some nearby evil ghouls into the building (so they slaughter everyone and take their stuff, even that one nice old guy gets killed) or not do that and never finish this sidequest, or slaughter all the ghouls and get called a cunt on the radio for it. It's trying to be a message on the divides between rich and poor but it's not good at all. It could unintentionally work as a metaphor for replacism though. Don't let the unwashed diseased masses into your rich land or they'll steal it from you.

>>289287
Does anyone remember which Fallout game introduced "Glowing One" Feral Ghouls? The glowing ones constantly release radiation of their own because enemies that deal proximity damage over time is a videogame staple and they couldn't exactly give the Ferals glocks to make them more deadly at higher levels. It was either glowing or making their hands do double damage. then again they were already inflating enemy HP bars anyway.

One thing I hate a lot about this fic...

Fallout 1 and 2, there are Gen 1 Super Mutants (Big green cunts with human IQs)
and Gen 2s (Dumb cunts)
and blue cunts called Nightkin. They like turning invisible using StealthBoys. Originally they're just pallete-swapped mutants who turn invisible but they're given more backstory in Fallout NV, where it's revealed that all nightkins have Skitzofaggotoria, a meme disorder where they're hilariously retarded and get dumber the more they use StealthBoys. StealthBoys are fine for human use but they fuck Nightkin brains up. Nightkins also dislike being seen/stared at, so they love being invisible.

Fallout 3?
Mutants are now big orange cannibalistic cunts from one failed vault that's all spooky and edgy. Somehow Vault-Tec (a civilian company in bed with the us govt) got a sample of FEV, and decided to make their own Super Mutants
even though it's incredibly retarded that Bethesda decided all Fallout games, no matter where they are, must feature Super Mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel, and possibly the NCR.
also in this one there are multiple tiers of Super Mutants. In escalating levels of size and power, we have...
1. super mutant
2. super mutant brute
3. super mutant master
4. super mutant overlord
5. super mutant behemoth

You'd think since Kkunt is such a massive Fallout 3 fantard we'd see some Alicorn Overlords/Behemoths who are many times bigger than Celestia, but... nope.
Just a blue invisible one(wow how original), a purple teleporting one, and a green one that forms nearly-impenetrable magic shields and cooperate with other Greens to amplify their magic might and psychically overwhelm a target's brain to attempt mind control.
Except all 3 types of Alicorn can actually use each other's magical gimmick too, since they're all connected via hive mind 24/7.
Perfectly "balanced".
Instead of trying to have fun with supermassive Alicorn bitches, he makes them all part of a pure-evil pure-edge hive mind

Call me a faggot but I think gigantic women are a cool concept and I wish Steven Universe didn't try so hard to fuck it up, make it look weird, and make as many of its women as possible hideously ugly and unpleasant to look at. I don't want a "masculine" thuggish domineering wannabe-amazoness to kill me through snusnu (only faggots want that), I want a feminine yet incredibly tall woman. Tall is sexy. Tomboy and girly girl is sexy too. And wife material traits are extremely sexy.
Anonymous
8142357
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No.289510
289555
>>289479
>Does anyone remember which Fallout game introduced "Glowing One" Feral Ghouls? The glowing ones constantly release radiation of their own because enemies that deal proximity damage over time is a videogame staple and they couldn't exactly give the Ferals glocks to make them more deadly at higher levels.

Glowing ones, both feral and not, have been in Fallout since the first game. The radiation burst attack was a Bethesda addition.

>You'd think since Kkunt is such a massive Fallout 3 fantard we'd see some Alicorn Overlords/Behemoths who are many times bigger than Celestia, but... nope.

There's a giant alicorn in the Fillydephia arc, but her presence doesn't really amount to anything and Pip predictably wins, so it's pretty forgettable. There's also the giant 'Twilight' alicorn that appears briefly after the Goddess' death to save Pip from her own nuke, but again - she sticks around for no more than a scene and adds virtually nothing to the story except to avert the protagonist's death for the Nth time.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.289555
289600
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>>289510
Reminds me of how the story treats its take on Gizmo. Remember how he was "a crime boss" in Fallout 1 and the interesting thing was whether you choose to make this a town of law or controlled crime? Well here Gizmo is just a bodyguard Littlepoop kills by stabbing a pencil into Gizmo's eye, even though Gizmo is stated to be a cyborg from Red Eye's vault. Imagine if Kkunt was a writer and decided to write a scene where this cyborg humanizes Red Eye so he doesn't start out "ebil slaver Ashur+Colonel Autumn who thinks he's doing nothing wrong" and then dive into "I want to get inside the Alicorn queen" meme territory. ...wait, was Colonel Autumn an enclave baddie separate from Red Eye whose plan started out "mwahaha I'm enclave and I'm evil" and then became "I want inside mommy alicorn Trixie"?
Anonymous
009033b
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No.289593
289600
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come to think of it this story has shit protags.

Littlepoop? "Hero". Any characterization or backstory she has is solely used to try and justify her robotic-commando-kleptomaniac "videogame protagonist controlled by a bored gamer" lifestyle. Her goals? Nonexistent. Her motivation? Horse pussy, usually, only badly written. She's a cunty hypocritical murderhobo and that wouldn't be annoying if it was intentional and a character trait she either acknowledges or tries to fix. The author thinks she's perfect already because he gave her a really high Strength score from day one. God, is this what hating Shonenfags feels like? Anyway, she really really wants to unfuck the wasteland but never has any idea how to do this, even after the author drops a world-unfucking machine with six missing parts in her lap. She seems to think episodic moments of fighting baddies will solve whatever problems creating them. And even though she is told "Gather the new mane six and bring them to the Gardens Of Equestria world-healing machine protected by me, a giant Spike The Dragon who could have easily used his incredible might to form a new pony kingdom where virtuous ponies can be protected from the hell outside" she never puts much effort into that one method to directly remove radiation from the world. She has a clear and incredibly obvious path in front of her and she doesn't follow it because the vidyagames-obsessed author thinks it's normal for a hero to prolong his main quest by wasting time on sidequests and minibosses and optional superbosses. She doesn't really look for new Elements Of Harmony because she's too busy murderhoboing and showing the audience every retarded take on Fallout elements the author has. Nothing majorly heroic really gets done besides slaughtering baddies and killing videogame bosses until she runs out of those and the author drops A FUCKING SECOND magical world-unfucking machine in her lap that requires no parts besides her.

Velvet? Hypocritical pussy medic who constantly tries to outshine the hero in the suicidally Stupid Good and Stupid Lawful ways. Never called out for compromising the survival chances of her friends with her shitty personality. Her (and the author's) understanding of morality is so FUCKED, it got me to suspect a twist ending where the whole fic is a DND campaign and Sweetie Belle plays Velvet because she, a literal child/teenager, thinks that's what a Lawful Good character is like: Usually sticking to your own made-up rules except when you don't want to, and doing whatever makes you feel moral even if it means preserving and extending the lives of bandits who shot at you first while reducing your own medical supply stash.

Calamity? Just some guy with guns and wings. Not really a character, which sucks because he could have been a hilarious experienced snarky guy playing off Littlepoop's "naive idiot" shtick. Turns out to be former Enclave and have a dad who hates him because his birth killed his mom. Sooo edgy, but still not a character. It's like Kkunt pushed Monterry Jack away to try and prove Littlepoop can't always pass her Speech Challenges, only to replace him with a character who basically does what he does only "better" because this character build has flight and the previous one was just a cunt with a gun.

Monterry Jack? At first he's an edgy cunt who robs LP and gets intimidated into fucking off once she outwits him and points the better gun at him, but then he comes back so he can kill himself because the author thinks that's what honesty means. At this fucking rate I'm surprised they didn't say he can never tell a lie, since that's what idiots who don't understand the virtue of honesty usually go with. It's not just about never lying, it's about being honest with yourself and others, being strong and dependable and true. But Jack over here is just a fucking loser who kills himself solely because Littlepoop was busy being tranq-darted by Velvet and taken to a medic who instantly cured her addictions overnight videogame-style, meaning she has no more drug cravings ever and she was too busy going through that to talk to Jack and instantly make him un-suicidal with one or less lines of dialogue. Considering this cunt author I wouldn't be surprised if talking Jack out of suicide would be accomplished offscreen, if the author decided she was allowed to accomplish this with her bullshit infinite stats.

Zebra girl? Just a "obligatory good zebra". stereotypical former slave with scars from being a slave. knows how to make potions like a zigger but supposedly hates ziggers, in practice she's just boring because the author wasn't willing to come right out and say "fuck ziggers" or "Zebrica wasn't all bad because some were like this".
She literally comes from a vault that failed because it mixed ziggers with ponies. It's like the author wants you to "fill in the gaps" in what little we're told about the Equestria VS Zigger war with "Because Ziggers did everything wrong, they are the baddies".
There's one scene where she says "Sometimes I feel like an earth pony but my stripes are scars" out of nowhere right before the "hilarious ironic murder Poison Joke" can turn her into a wounded pony for "humor". Then her hatred of ziggers/ziggery behaviour and great love for ponies and desire to save equestria and improve it for everyone despite how the wasteland slavers treated her never meaningfully comes up again. She's just a tool. There was a great opportunity here for social commentary on what the only acceptable foreigner acts like: A repentant and servile brainlet who abandons pseudointellectualism, rejects tribalism and other niggers and niggerish behaviour, sees the folly in his own people, loves the superior white culture and loves the science, and serves whites loyally with what others taught the foreigner .

Anonymous
009033b
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No.289596
289600
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yes the spoilers are continuing, plz don't read this until the entire party is complete

Steelhooves? A boring soulless plank of wood in a suit of piston-enhanced plate mail that regenerates and auto-aims for the poner but can't auto-fire.

And then there's Pinkie Knockoff. There's nothing to her except her desire to be Pinkie. Her introduction is rushed, her sudden evil door-locking makes no sense, she somehow backs Little "I carry over 500 pounds of guns and ammo daily, I can lift boxcars, do you really think a foal is heavy to me" Poop into a safe for no reason, and then gets talked out of being evil by Velvet and talked into crying and being saved like it's the end of one of those "adult" police shows for pathetic womenchildren who think turning snapped murderers who ran out of patience and got raped by the system into crying vulnerable adorable fetishized victims is as easy as a big group hug with strangers and a worthless speech that would make anime's power-of-friendship speeches laugh at you. This character is shoved out of the story quicker than Kkunt's post-buttfucking bowel evacuations, but Littlepoop still decides the group's overall goal should be: Visit Tenpony Tower anyway. Why? Because this location was named, so it must be important, just like Crane must have been important because he was named. Actual reason: because the author put Littlepoop's annoying lesbian girlfriend there.

Who else is a main character, besides the saturday morning cartoon villains and one-off memes and canon ponies who died 200 years ago after lives full of trying your best only for everything to end in rape/suicide/failures/nuclear annihilation?

I guess you could count Homage, the lesbian DJ who judges everyone's actions up from her ivory tower and gets character-shilled by Littlepoop and the author for never killing anypony even though she's never actually had to kill anypony, and ends up blowing up her tower to kill Enclave baddies anyway.

Shall we count Spike "The Watcher" The Dragon as a main character? It makes no sense that someone with a giant dragon body and the ability to hack any spritebot would do so little good for the heroes. But what's the "fun" in putting effort into your story to make things make sense? Bronies don't want that, they want to giggle every time they see an overrated GMPC shit all over the heroes until it's time for a last-second moment of friendship speeches or magical nonsense or retarded decisions to solve everything.

And fuck it, let's also count Littlepoop's temporary God/Dog buddy who exists solely to let the reader know Kkunt the edgy pony author thought it was very silly when The Courier cured the retardity of FNV's God/Dog in a single conversation.

As you can tell, this set of protagonists isn't balanced, or interesting, or even complete. Littlepip, Calamity, Medic, Power Armour, Zebra... and that's it because Jack and Not-Pinkie never joined. This isn't an exciting team full of clashing personalities or an efficient team where everyone's on the same wavelength. They don't even have a full team of six, for Celestia's ten thousand dicks's sake!

They all use different guns, but that's hardly character depth. Maybe back when I was a shonenfag I would have called "everyone fights differently" great characterization. But nobody really fights differently! Everyone basically just attacks their enemy with their offensive ability that's sometimes gimmicky. There are no trap experts, mid-fight stat-buffers(unless the zebra counts but she can't make potions mid-fight and needs prep time), no guys who pit foes against each other, and the party lacks a dedicated mage. For god's sake, even a unicorn cursed to only be able to use Earthbending would be a colossal help and a far more interesting thing for fight scenes. Toph is fucking cool. I wish they did more with her characterization off the battlefield, but she's awesome in fights.

Someone like Toph would make the interactions between these characters more fun, too.

Avatar didn't just include an avatar, waterbender, earthbender, firebender, and non-bender and two animals because they wanted one of each in the party by the story's end. That show featured interesting characters who are interestingly different from one another! Remember the group at its simplest: Katara's optimism vs Sokka's realism? Which characters in this group are supposed to be more optimistic/realistic than others?

Anonymous
009033b
?
No.289598
289600
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ok spoilery rant about all characters is done now. sorry about letting this shit get so long.

It's like the characters were designed to use different guns first, and then given one personality trait each later.

Littlepip has a big scoped revolver, a big sniper rifle, and other stuff, and whatever she can toss at foes when she remembers she can do that.

Calamity uses guns while flying. Doesn't he use shotguns? Or were they automatic rifles? Either way, boring. Fliers would be better off trying their best to become armoured jet-boosted wannabe F69 Raptors or whatever they're called. Fliers without access to power armour are better off tossing explosives and never entering gun range. Impact-detonated grenades don't care if they're fired from ten or thirty seven thousand feet in the air from the target.

Velvet uses a needle gun because she's a medic hurr durr. But the needle gun is vaguely described and we don't even know how many shots it holds. And she's too uncreative and terrible at magical chemistry to think of doing anything fun like firing Healing Potion needles into friends, then firing DreamWeaver(TM) Sleeping Potion syringes into a giant enemy to slow him down and knock him out, then firing a Speed Boost potion into another teammate, then firing a transformation potion bullet into another enemy to make him a harmless animal who is easily shot by her teammates, then firing Traitorol Syringes into other enemies so they betray each other and beat each other to death while dropping their weapons, then firing Paralasycin Syringes into the final enemy so they can get him out of the fight and onto an operating table for a little bit of T+I, torture and interrogation.

Just imagine if she had one silenced tranq dart SMG, and one bigger silenced dart revolver for applying whatever premade potion she decides she wants into whoever she wants. If you're in her line of sight, you're practically on her operating table! God, that would have been cool.

Power Armour wears power armour and uses miniguns. How exciting. Even if these were turned into eight-barrel 50cals on the side it would be boring. If they were complimented by a back-mounted Genesect-style giant laser cannon plus a magical generator of evil-seeking magical homing missiles enchanted to grow over time in power and speed and blast radius, it would be less boring.

Zebra uses melee.
Yeah, in a party of gun-users and big gun-users, she's the unarmed takedown specialist.
She's really, really good at hoof-to-hoof "Fallen Caesar style" martial arts, an "elegant yet brutal style taught to the pre-war Caesar's guards". It can even do a Paralyzing Punch because that's a Fallout thing. She's soooo good at melee, she can even defeat Steel Rangers (power-armoured cunts, The Brotherhood Of Steel only copied wrong) and Hellhounds (Deathclaws+Tunnelers, except they're mutated Diamond Dogs so sensitive to loud/high noises that Velvet Remedy can fuck them up and make them pussy out by singing a really high note) in hand to hand combat.
Yes, even though this one good Zebra is supposedly defined by wishing she was an Earth Pony.
This would fit a "I will redeem my race by using its only gimmicks for good" character better.
Also she sometimes brews uncreative potions for her friends, like Walk On Walls potion because the author couldn't think of anything creative.
She will never give her friends a temporary Fire Creature Transformation potion and then have the party mage firebomb/lava-blast a battlefield so the fire hurts enemies and heals her transformed teammates.
Imagine if she used a silenced Potion Gun!
A big grenade launcher-like gun full of potion vials and a mixing chamber in the center. Press buttons to send various powerful ingredients into the main mixing chamber, press another one to spin and mix it, then fire a magically-pressurized explosive ball of potion that will do whatever you just brewed on the spot. The potion's goop is dispersed via aerosol while making a big potion puddle on the ground, but for maximum effectiveness you should shoot the potion ball at your target dead-on. That would be an interesting gun! Perfect for applying whatever effect you want and mixing various potions on the fly. For big-brained poners only! Can switch from potion ball-firing to goo-spraying mode during close-range encounters. Can even be used to fire healing potion balls over walls to heal friends Velvet's dart gun can't get to, and shoot napalm and vacuum blasts at foes no other weapons can reach! besides maybe ordinary grenade launchers.
This is the gun I was going to make my "Chemist genius Unicorn who figured out how to do potions better than the Zebras" character use in that FOE fic I was going to write but didn't. For extra comedy this "Doing what a Zebra does better to flex on them harder" character would also use jump-boosting magic shoes, so he can add his jumping velocity to potion balls during projectile path calculations. Perhaps I'll use it again in something else some day.

The heroes don't argue with each other in interesting ways, or banter with each other in funny ways, or have meaningful dreams and aspirations of their own. The heroes don't talk to each other enough during adventures or argue about what to do next often enough, so it doesn't really feel like these characters are meaningfully different from one another. Are there ever any scenes where characters just goof off and have fun together, like in One Piece and Sonic Boom and Zombieland? Are there any deep conversations where the backstories, ideologies, dreams, and futures of these characters are discussed? Why do these characters even travel together, besides "Survival" and "I guess I owe Littlepoop something because of the events that involved recruiting me into the murderhobo party"?

All in all I think the Fallout Equestria main party sucks gay asshole, but please feel free to tell me what you think of them. You can disagree with me if you want, nofap's made me a really calm dude.

Anonymous
3266c18
?
No.289600
289608
>>289555
Nice trips.
>>289593
>>289596
>>289598
Fuck man, you really like Naruto don't you?
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.289608
289722
8c4531b3ac74513e47c5ad98c3ad7805.jpg
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>>289600
It used to be my favourite show but then it went off the rails and got a shitty sequel. At least one part of the ending was good. Anyway I thought posting these cringey 2000s memes would be funny since I don't have any "allah says peen stroke sucks dick" pics.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.289632
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Before I sleep I want to say

You know that thing where characters will argue over what they do next, where they go, how they solve today's problem, and so on?

I wish this story did more of that and here's why:

You make choices in Fallout 1, 2, and NV. Some choices have no easy right or wrong answer.
It's easy to look at Fallout 3's choices and say "It's wrong to nuke this town for no reason, right to gain positive karma points and sick loot for slaughtering everyone at Evil Raiderville, and right to turn on the magic water purifier that purifies all water in the world!"
It's easy to look at Fallout 1/2's final choices and answer "Do you kill the final boss to save everyone or do you not do that?".

But... How do you decide whether a crime boss or lawman is better suited to be in charge of a town full of whores?
How do you decide whether Primm's new sherrif should be an ex-convict arrested for "helping justice along" too often and killing someone with barely any evidence against him, the NCR, or a hilariously inept robot?
If you had to choose between fucking up the biggest farm in the Mojave by releasing trapped victims who'll die without your help, or not doing that and letting them die, would you prioritize human life or food?
After you get through that Plant Vault, do you destroy this vault and the data so this threat can never rise again and get out of control, or give the scientist the plant experiment data in the hopes that plant experiments will turn out better next time?
Do you choose Caesar, the NCR, House, or you and Yes Man as Vegas's new ruler?

You make these choices, depending on what you think. Or what the character you're playing would do. Or what's best for your character in the moment.

Very rarely, companions in FNV will have something to say about quests that don't explicitly involve them. Gannon will comment on how you resolve some quests and get pissed if he doesn't like your answers. And I love it when that happens.
It really feels like I'm in one of those TV shows like Star Trek, where people talk to each other and argue over what they do next before doing it.

Spock was a cynic and realist (Except whenever the authors misunderstood logic and made him a parody of it) and McCoy was an idealist and optimist (Except when he wanted to do something buttfuck retarded because muh feelings), but Kirk... He wasn't just the protagonist and the assigned "balance between the two" guy. He was an opportunist. Some might call him a hedonist. He didn't just arbitrarily pick some middle ground between doing what's logical and what's moral according to two people that think for him, he really tried to figure out the real best solution to every problem and he went for it.

And I got to feel that feeling when I played Fallout NV in front of some friends and had us all argue over what choices we make whenever we get to a meaningful decision. (so nobody tells me what to do during fights but we all have to agree on how to resolve quests before an option is picked)
It was a fun time, I made up some in-game NPC companions based on the requests of my friends so my friends could be all "Look at the cool shit my guy's doing!" or "Haha what the fuck am I doing?! What am I aiming at?!" during the fight scenes. Just simple chars coded to follow the player character on sight and defend him, no proper dialogue but there was a trade option for each watcher's npc so I can arm them as we find better loot.
The lads fucking loved Boone, I'm glad I repressed my urge to speedrun quests like his murder mystery adventure and had them interview all the NPC suspects and argue with each other over who's probably the killer. At first it was annoying when they assumed it was NNN but I knew it wasn't him. so when they said "It has to be him, kill him!"
I said "Should we sneak into his house and check it for clues?" and they forgot we can do that and said yes. so we did. we found no evidence. then they suggested we check the house of the person who turned out to be the killer next, oldhotelbitch. Technically metagaming? You decide. anyway the lads loved it. anyway we made it to Novac on that session together. Fun!

The characters in this story aren't videogame NPCs with a budget limiting their number of voice-acted lines, so they shouldn't act like they are.
They should encounter moral dilemmas, argue over shit, and feel like real breathing people who don't just walk inside Littlepip and vanish, and then walk back out whenever they get screentime like it's one of those ancient RPGs.
Anonymous
8b40cca
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No.289722
289724 289740
>>289608
>posting these cringey 2000s memes would be funny
In a way, you're right. In a way, it's cringe.
Anonymous
8b40cca
?
No.289724
>>289722
Don't think to much about it though. I don't even have a meme folder.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.289740
289745
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>>289722
Cringe is weird. Look at these stupid pictures: Sometimes it's observational humor, sometimes it's lame old jokes like "haha fuck Sakura and Justin Bieber", sometimes it's comedy gold like"trees can't jump", and sometimes it's an attempt to make this kid's show for little Japanese boys look incredibly mature and deep.
Looking at Naruto fans trying to justify their love for this kid's media... That reminds me of mainstream Bronies and Pokemon fans whenever they pretend their corporate product of choice is high art only appreciated by morally-superior intellectuals.
And these "I learned so much from people who never existed! Luffy taught me to follow your dreams, Naruto taught me to never give up, Sonic The Hedgehog taught me to be a good person, and Twilight Sparkle taught me what a true true friend is!" memes...
At first you think "Wow, your parents were shit if they didn't teach you about following your dreams/never giving up/being a good person/being a true friend" but then you remember most kids born these days had Boomers for parents, and Boomers are scum. They really did have to learn these things from cartoons, because if they didn't, they'd copy the misunderstandings of these things from their parents.
Kids who had no role models outside of fiction and had to figure shit out on their own... View them as a creation of their terrible parents or life choices and they're comedy gold. View them as people fucked up by their upbringing and it's sad.
Kids who grew up watching anime turned out better than kids who grew up watching the trashy hollywood/reality-TV shows their parents liked. Someone who considered Sonic a role model turned out better than someone who considered Kim Kardashian a role model.
I think some people use cringing at others to feel okay. They think "Sure, I'm 300 pounds. But at least I'm not 400 pounds like that guy over there! What a loser! He should eat a salad!"
Remember that movie, Avatar?
The blue people one, not the blue arrow boy one.
The shitty pocahontas ripoff that looked pretty.
The one where some Jew paid billions to have a team of experts "create some music that sounds alien" by combining every musical whatever-the-fuck he could think of. "Combine swedish kulning cattle-calls, african chants, japanese shit, german composers, the arabian/indian mindless fucking around on out-of-tune sitars, and more!" only to then end up saying "No, that sounds too weird, make it more african!"
and did the same shit with the language where even though real-ass experts were hired to make the language make internal sense, the Avatarian spoken on-screen isn't always accurate to the "how to speak Navi" books+other merchandise.
and then the fucker had them make a gibberish song because he wanted a "Alien version of Amazing Grace" for the hairfags to sing around a tree while performing a cult ritual that actually works because this is somebody's fetish. It fucking has to be, everyone loves magic. Magical chicks are sexy. I once met a guy whose fetish was cartoon explosions. Not real ones, he finds those disgusting and loved cartoon looney-tunes "A bomb exploded in my face and now I'm covered in soot" ones. Where was I going with this?
oh right, avatar and cringe.
Some people paid to see this film in theatres many, many times and felt incredibly depressed when they had to leave this world behind and return to dull, boring reality.
There are avatar fan forums where threads like "I WILL NEVER GET TO GO TO PANDORA! PANDORA WILL NEVER BE REAL AND IT HURTS!!!" threads got many thousands of posts from people crying about how impossible this dream-world is.
Some were all "Maybe if I die I can go to pandora"
and some were all "Maybe if we learn how to astral project and lucid dream we can pretend to go there!"
and "Maybe some day tech will let us pretend we're there!"
It reminded me of similar "conversations" (crying sessions) I'd seen on brony forums.
Anyone old enough to remember the popularity of the LOTR movies remembers the wave of losers who called themselves "Elfkin" because they decided they loved LOTR and wanted to live in its world so badly that they decided they must have been reincarnations of elves and elves on the inside.
The Elfkin actually gave the name "Otherkin" to the furries and practically-furries who showed up on Elfkin sites claiming to be a wolf/pikachu/navi on the inside and reincarnation of those things.
Speaking of furries, it's really common to see furry forums full of grown-ass men crying because they'll never have the adorable obedient wolf-girl waifus or playful mischievous horny catgirl waifus or rapacious cartoonishly-masculine hyena mistresses of their dreams.
And then there are communities where sci-fi fanboys who think reading Worm and watching Rick and Morty and Star Trek made them geniuses.
Some of those communities also worship Elizer Yudowsky's pseudointellectual pseudoscience for double the cringe points.
And these "Our fantasies will never be real!" crying sessions interspersed with people posting "Maybe we can delude ourselves with imagination or new tech!" to cope are a common sight there.
While there are certainly some people like that on anime forums, people would usually rather discuss more anime and argue over its literary merit than cry over how impossible it is to ever feel the touch of Hinata, Lucoa, Nami, or Tomo. They'll get overemotional during arguments over whether Sword Art Online or Eromanga Sensei sucks harder, and that's pretty cringe. Still, not as cringe as furries or pseudointellectual ledditor "Science fandom" lunatics or literal Avatarfags.
Hell, the whole point of Evangelion was "Escapism bad" but its author hates everyone who wants to bone Rei/Asuka regardless of "I can fix her" reason.
In the face of all that, is it really so cringe for children and teenagers to insist to themselves and others that they got something good out of watching this show, something their parents and damaged culture doesn't get and couldn't understand or teach?
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.289745
289749 289765
>>289740
Please stop spamming the thread with naruto memes and off-topic rambling you absolute sperg.
Anonymous
1438af6
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No.289749
>>289745
>stop
Right, that'll happen. First time?
Anonymous
009033b
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No.289765
289767
>>289745
Ok, let's get back on the thread's topic.
What Fallout Equestria-related thing do you want to talk about today?
Anonymous
abb50e3
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No.289767
289776 289777
>>289765
I actually wanted to comment on how I thought your idea for that unicorn in the story you wanted to write had a pretty clever weapon. We've all said it's stupid for ponies to have 1:1 versions of Fallout guns made for humans since there would need to be a major technological leap to make those plus the fact they designed guns only humans or creatures with fingers and unicorns could use practically.

That potion cannon though is something any pony could feasibly carry and operate plus with it being a concoction of different chemicals that mix together not only can it have many different functions like you said about a more creative Velvet dart gun to buff allies or debilitate enemies but it could also be a neat chance for world building and characterization.

Have one of his companions watch him cackling as he is mixing more chemicals together to reload the weapon while they are resting at a camp and ask him what the hay he is making. He can tell them about the processes of brewing new potions, what materials he needs to make it, and the effects they have when mixed together. Can let the characters and readers get some insight into different plants or animals in the wild and how they can be harvested to make wacky brews. Could even have a moment where maybe the unicorn is incapacitated or split from the party and a companion is in a pickle but remembers a lesson the unicorn taught them about a certain chemical they can aquire from a plant or monster and use that knowledge to solve the problem to show they are learning from eachother.

Plus it feels like something that could be in the show and fit in Equestria. Could picture if Twilight was around in say that Sombra future from that Starlight episode that she'd invent a wacky weapon like that to blast at enemies.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.289776
289778
>>289767
It's poorly explained, but afaik FoE implies at a few points that there was a gap of many years, possibly decades, between the show and the war. The war itself would have propelled technological advancement forward by a lot, so some form of tech jump isn't entirely implausible, even if the actual worldbuilding is very flimsy.

There are a few ways that you can *kinda* rationalize guns and the like existing - human-style firearms could be a griffon invention later adapted by ponies, for example, but that's a stretch takes us into speculation far removed from the text.

FoE does make a few efforts to get inventive with weapons later on, mostly justified as blunt Fallout 3 references - of course, like the rifle that sets people on fire - but there's a ton of missed potential. Unicorns alone could theoretically make a weapon out of *anything*, let alone what pegasi could do with the assistance of gravity.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.289777
v857m64s5ih41.jpg
>>289767
Thank you!
Potions are like an inherently-balanced version of magic.
A wizard can cast Fireball as many times as the author says so. It takes some arbitrary limit like "but only 4 times a day, only when the sun is out, and overusing it exhausts the wizard" to make it fair on others.

But even if an author says "jasmine leaves boiled with wolf teeth and charcoal and a bear paw in a stone cauldron creates a potion that temporarily turns you into a Fire-Breathing Wolfbear stronger than ten men" it's still up to the potion-making character to gather those ingredients and brew them correctly.
It requires forethought and specific preparation, making what little you have into what you're likely to need.
To become the ideal Batman Wizard, you need shitloads of preptime and ingredients. But those supplies would always be limited.
And what if the government of some kingdom decides to ban some rare ingredient or designate it "for military use only" because alchemists can make overpowered potions out of it?
It makes sense that a travelling fighter would learn the basics so he can brew some healing potion, strength/speed-booster potion, and occasionally something gimmicky like a throwable acid vial or molotov cocktail out of the shit he finds when adventuring. But for the strongest shit out there (because who'd visit a potion store if store-bought wasn't stronger than home-made?) and the weirdest shit people with limited time and resources would never bother brewing, you need a potion-seller. Or a travelling potion-making companion who can carry his lifetime supply of ingredients with his bag of holding.

I don't think people would feel such a great need to nerf and balance wizards if magic-users making magic things for others was more common in fantasy.
Sure, a wizard can kill more people than a fighter and barbarian combined in a short period of time. But he can safely make money away from the battlefield by selling +5 Vorpal Swords to fighters and barbarians who can only make a living swinging those swords. What melee fighter wouldn't love a glove of short-range teleportation to let him teleport behind enemy archers? What archer wouldn't love being able to turn invisible when sneaking? If a Barbarian could buy "magical power armour", plate mail that buffs your strength and speed and toughness to superhuman "outrun a fireball and punch out a dragon" levels, he might actually consider wearing that even though it means wearing something.

Besides, a potion gun can do more than "special bullets" ever can. Flame/lightning bullets can hurt more, but potion balls have an incredible variety of tactical and strategic uses. Ice-blast a door shut, life-potion the ground for a wall of trees, turn some enemies into monsters that harass and stall your foes or even kill them for you, fire a Cure Blast at literal plague-zombies or mind-controlled foes to free them from enemy control, and more.
You know what'd make it even deadlier? A necklace that lets you control wind, because swords that control wind are too mainstream and you'd need two hooves to operate the gun and push its button anyway. Now wind is always on the potion guy's side when firing. Plus a tornado around himself can deflect enemy bullets.

This is the kind of creative problem-solving that would lead to Unicorns (used to thinking with magic) designing magical weapons anypony can use via their thoughts. Unless Zebras have some kind of anti-magic field (And they don't) it makes no sense that Equestria would rely on shitty 1960s-era firearms all invented at once during Applejack's era and then never innovated on again.
Innovations in the gun field are still happening today! Ever heard of the Ultimax? I once saw a video about a gun that "Holds itself in place" when firing, and I've got no clue how it works but there are currently only two of it in existence according to the video. There's also that thing where you can make a shotgun out of Home Depot parts and 3D Printed parts.
Despite what the "Harry Potter should have used an AK" crowd say, guns are only superior to wizards when they're really, really shit wizards. Harry Potter wizards are shit but DND wizards would wipe the floor with guns.
How many bullets would a raider gang need to deal with one magically-animated rock monster that defends a small settlement built inside and around the remains of a pre-war university? More bullets than raider gangs can carry with them to the settlement.

Auto-aiming rifles are already in Fallout Equestria, without needing power armour or a pip-buck. They don't auto-fire because Kkunt thought a manual mouth-trigger would be cooler.
But auto-aiming auto-firing rifles are already in Fallout Equestria, in the form of Sentry Turrets.
Armour-piercing magical laser guns that get many shots out of a single fusion core and have infinite ammo if attached to SpriteBots are already in this fic.
Flying auto-aiming auto-firing autonomous robot drones are already in Fallout Equestria, in the form of SpriteBots.
And to justify why Power Armour frames still work after 200 years, "magical auto-repair" is the excuse.

So why would Equestria not combine this existing pre-nuking tech into an armoured auto-repairing floating gun drone, and then make a lot of them to shoot for the Equestrian army, making clunky and shitty battle saddles irrelevant?
Oh, right, because the battle-saddles HAVE to be there so the ponies can fire Fallout guns with the serial numbers filed off at each other. Kkunt can't let guns be rendered irrelevant by a magical development.
The parts are here to build those gun-bots from Nier Automata. Kkunt just never played it, so he didn't know ripping it off would improve "his" story. How is it possible that even though nowhere near enough effort or thought was put into the battle saddle concept as a justification for horses to use fallout guns, it still feels like an unnecessary and overly-complex addition to the story better replaced with something more elegant and efficient?
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.289778
289796
>>289776
I know the fic said Applejack invented Power Armour and the steel rangers but I think it copped out and said guns were a recent invention without saying who invented them. However there were definitely equestrian gun companies. In one flashback Applejack got pissed off at one for making and producing an Anti-Magical Anti-PowerArmour Gun.

It's weird how the only "Original to both fallout and MLP" concepts the author introduces into the fic are used as justifications for Fallout or MLP things to happen. Imagine a Stable where the experiment was "Everyone is magically transformed into different Pokemon". That'd be cool.
Anonymous
8b40cca
?
No.289796
289804 289865 294007
>>289778
You're idea is cool but without pokemon that would just be autistic and kinda missing the point of your own point. But yeah, kkat would do better if he made this mixed setting to create new things as a product of this setting. Like,I don't know if he rips of deathclaws but if he does a better way would be to create his own radioactive waste fallout monster in this setting. I did once thought about something similar and created a sand or dirt sqiud.
So having pokemon would just be making another crossover to another universe to grab those. But I get your idea.

Really, though if everything was stolen and poners could somehow fire small trigger weapons, it still would be doable if the author just could make a compelling story. The clearly rotten worldbuilding would be less noticeable if there was a compelling plot. Yes, I am aware that plot and worldbuilding are connected and so on. Just saying that i would be less of a problem if the rest of the story had other merits, like somewhat intresting characters and... also probably a goal or something.

Red eye or whatever, seems like an up incomming villain. To be honest, a black and white villain would be quite fitting for a story like this and probably would be good for Littlepip as a character. She could take a stance on something to contrst the villain and she would be more proactive in stopping the villain's plan or whatever. Right, now she and her gangs seems to bounce from place to place, I could be wrong I haven't been able to follow the story as closely as of late. I guess, there is notthing wrong with a more episodic series but I can't help but wonder what these three even want. Again, I should prpbably read up on it. But that seems like hter biggest challenge here, at least if would be for me if I were to write this story, would be what kind of motivation these three characters has to stick around together from adventure to adventure. Like, do they not have more goals in life than to wander the wasteland forever? Now, that Littlepip has found Velvet what's her purpose? What does she want now? Is she a simp and plan to follow Velvet around to carry her bag or what?

I imagined writting a story in this setting a while ago and I though the hardest part was the fact that my characters had boring revenge motivations only for their actions but I mean rather that, then no motivation at all. Again, maybe I speak too soon.and they actually have fully developed motivations. I just assume the worst of this story because I'm lazy and stoubid.
Anonymous
8142357
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No.289804
289809 289865
>>289796
>Like,I don't know if he rips of deathclaws
Of course he does. They're mutant diamond dogs with laser guns.
Anonymous
8b40cca
?
No.289809
289865 289884
Of course.gif
>>289804
O'boy. But yeah, I should have expected.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.289865
289884
>>289796
>>289804
>>289809
a gorilla-wolf-squid would be real deadly. Able to grab you from anywhere and crush with incredible strength or bite you. Imagine those but with radioactive venom sacs in their teeth! Now that's overkill.
If he wanted diamond dogs/energy weapon users/diamond dogs with energy weapons he could have just made the Van Graffs into Diamond Dogs. But no, he eliminates the story's Magical Super-Deathclaw potential by replacing deathclaws with something less interesting. He abandons what makes Deathclaws uniquely threatening because furries with lasminiguns sounds scarier. perhaps in raw DPS but humans instinctively fear big scary monsters with deadly melee attacks. It's like this bastard is actively trying to shut out writers who want to use Fallout/FIM elements by saying shit like "All of X became y, my take on z" as often as possible.

All Pegasi became Enclave supervillains except for the rare handful of "Dashites" who got branded with Dash's cutie mark, stripped of lasgun and power armour and rank(usually), and kicked down into the Wasteland for not being pure evil.
Everyone in Canterlot died because Dead Money happened even though Dead Money was originally the work of baddies unable to let go of shit or do stuff right, but now it's just the unfitting fate of a city that walled itself off from the rest of the world too late to avoid getting Striped.
Cybernetics are an evil thing that eat your soul and are incompatible with bone-enhancing zebra potion because the author said so for no reason (I'd bet this moment was his attempt to seem cleverer than the Cyborg perk in Fallout 3 that makes you spontaneously gain cyborg buffs. God FNV's heart/brain/spine shit was so much better)
The only Alicorns ever come from Twilight Sparkle's Alicorn experiment that only failed because Trixie was the first Alicorn. All Alicorns are also part of a hive mind so your Alicorn OC can only exist if the hive mind wouldn't want it for some reason or it became permanently split from the hive mind for some reason.
All of the mane six die except for RD (fate unclear) and Fluttershy (Survives despite doing everything wrong).
All of Equestria is nuclear devastation and its only true "become great again" hope comes in the form of one superweapon never used until long after the story's end even though it's unsatisfying and retarded.
And because the possibility of reverting Equestria to before the war exists (Missing everything Fallout said about the need to move on and the dangers of getting stuck in the past in the process!) this eliminates any interesting potential for a post-post-apocalyptic society where ponies are getting back on their feet and unfucking the wastelands.
Princess Luna stays dead and her bones are worn by an edgy Alicunt that dies without mattering, but Celestia survives even though her weakness enabled those who caused the apocalypse and arguably caused it first. Zebras and Ponies warred, Poners accepted Zebra refugees even if they didn't speak pony, Zebras demanded shelter and gibs from a pony college for little foals, Zeebs attacked and gun turrets defended the place, a chemical weapon nuke carried by a refugee (or was it a zebra soldier guarding this refugee?) nukes the foals of this academy, Celestia gets mindbroken and cries forever, Luna is forced to take over but she sucks so she puts the Mane Six in charge of ministries and her presence scares Zebras into being even more evil.
on the final day Zebras caused the apocalypse with Fluttershy's help and a pony company called Four Stars Something helped a Zebra smuggle the Manehattan-nuking megaspell into town.
All Diamond Dogs became lasergun-carrying tunneler+deathclaw cunts

There is so much creativity still left in the Fallout franchise. It doesn't need to keep being the BOS and Super Mutants Comedy Hour! It doesn't need to keep bringing back all of Fallout's old iconography devoid of context and less interesting every time. It can add all sorts of new characters.
But FOE has so little wiggle room that you can't do anything without breaking its shitty canon with "Actually this character's special enough to break your rules because fuck your story, even though this pisses off FOE fanbabies while the Fallout+Ponies crossover premise inherently alienates anyone not already into both of these things". Common bronies are fanboys who hate anyone's OCs but their own unless those OCs belong to someone "famous" by their standards, in which case the OC is perfect and can do no wrong even if it's an ugly badly-designed literal-sue piece of shit.

In my shitty scrapped FOE fic I planned to include an OC called Revelation, a Unicorn mare who launched her mind into the unique deadlier-than-a-deathclaw monster that killed her and her friends. She keeps her ability to use magic because magic comes from the soul, a horn just helps channel it and her monster has two horns. She wears custom body armour and a big baggy magically-created T-shirt with FRIEND on it in all-caps. She also wears a custom-made, oversized, and actually-plausible+efficient Blastoise-style battle saddle on her back with auto-aim and auto-fire, and a thickly armoured radioactive power core that powers two powerful long-distance piercing laser cannons. Finally she has a shield generator on her belt that can absorb a lot of damage before running out of power and needing to recharge. I won't describe the monster she possessed because I might reuse the design later. She had an interesting personality, and her overwhelming power level was the least interesting thing about her, which was a recurring theme I went for after realizing making OP guys doesn't make them cool.

Anonymous
8b40cca
?
No.289884
>>289809
Then again there is nothing wrong with him ripping ing it off since its anyway a crossover, I just felt hat it was a bit boring since I would probably , maybe I too would be too lazy, replace the deathclaws, since they really aren't vital for the fallout setti9ng Ain't bad just not vital so I would have something else be that radioactive waste creature is all am sayin'.
>>289865
will read later.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.290319
290320
1604591981272.jpg
>>289119

The long and short of it is that Littlepoop is officially banned from New Appleoosa. I saw this coming, or at least reasoned that it ought to be the town's response to Littlepoop's actions: she essentially hijacked their only train in an effort to take down a slaver colony with whom they had a profitable trading relationship, then destroyed the train and got the ponies driving it killed while escaping. In addition, she dumped a trainload of refugees onto the settlement, who will likely require a great deal of care before they can become useful contributors, assuming they ever do. And, just to kick a last little bit of sand into everypony's eyes, the refugees are trapped halfway up a mountain, and NA is going to need to assemble a new team of train ponies to go up and retrieve them.

Railright covers most of this in his explanation. In addition, he also expresses concern that the raiders might now seek retaliation against the town, under the mistaken (but entirely reasonable) assumption that this was a planned attack. This is also something I'd foreseen, so it's good that at least the author and I are on the same page about a few things.

>“Don’t get me wrong. We admire what yer tryin’ t’ do. You’re out there savin’ lives, an’ there ain’t nopony complainin’ ‘bout that. We’ll give ‘em a good home, and see the little filly an’ the others from old Appleloosa are cared fer right.”
Why should NA automatically affirm the "rightness" of LP's actions here? Why should they take these refugees in? It actually doesn't make much sense for them to do so. Let's explore. This is going to be a bit long and circuitous so bear with me please.

One of the problems this author has is that on the one hand, he wants his setting to be this gritty, unforgiving environment in which ponies do whatever they need to in order to survive. On the other, he seems to want to separate his characters into distinct "good" and "evil" camps, and give all of the "good" characters modern, bourgeois values, despite the obvious incompatibility with the gritty world that he establishes. This is a very wide chasm to straddle, and the overwhelming majority of the time it doesn't work.

The result here is that his attempted moral relativism and his attempted moralizing cancel each other out most of the time, and produce a mostly ridiculous world populated by shallow characters whose motivations are at best unconvincing and at worst completely implausible or nonsensical. Case in point, the issue of slavery.

Before even exploring the issue, the story takes the ethical position that slavery is evil, which is a position taken by most of the modern world, including presumably the author and most of his intended readers. So, the institution of slavery in this world is practiced only by the "evil" ponies. The slavers in Old Appleoosa are cut from the exact same cloth as the raiders in Ponyville: generic goons who exist only to commit evil acts and be punished for them by the hero. Their actual motivations for being slavers are never considered; they just run around kidnapping children and enslaving them because they are evil and that's just what evil ponies do grrr! I'm a mean little pony!. As a result their behavior is so cartoonishly evil that it's almost impossible to take them seriously.

Actual slave traders would be trying to make a profit, and would do so by selling physically robust slaves who are capable of doing the work they are sold to do. This includes females who are being sold as sex slaves and whatnot; ultimately, it's in the slavers' interest to not sample or damage the goods. Thus, starving, whipping, raping, torturing, or otherwise abusing slaves makes no sense.

This same fallacy was actually committed by nineteenth century abolitionists in the US; many of our stereotypical images of slavery in the South (slaves being whipped, raped, abused and so forth) comes from abolitionist literature like Uncle Tom's Cabin. This novel in particular presented an almost completely fictional depiction of the indignities and abuses supposedly inflicted on black slaves, constructed mostly from the imaginations of Northern abolitionists who had never even seen a plantation.

However, kkat's logic is basically that since slavery is evil, only evil ponies would practice it. Evil ponies are capable only of evil, and thus they will only take evil actions, with no other motivator beyond a desire to be evil, even if such actions are actually counterintuitive to their interests (ie, being pointlessly abusive towards slaves they intend to sell). Where kkat really fucks up, though, is in his attempts to inject artificial depth into his "good" characters by giving them an ethical dilemma. To explore this, let's take a look at the town of New Appleoosa.

So far, kkat has followed the standard melodrama trope of having all of his villains be cardboard-cutout baddies with no personalities or motivations beyond being evil. So, whenever we encounter characters with at least a modicum of depth, insofar as they have names, faces, families, vocations, and other things that humanize poninize, whatever them, we can assume they are meant to be in the "good" camp. These are characters that we are meant to care about on some level.

LP has spent time with the townsponies of New Appleoosa. She drank with them, sang with them, lived, laughed and loved with them; these are "good" ponies who cannot be condemned and summarily executed like the irredeemable, icky-pants slavers of Old Appleoosa. Naturally, then, they would have to be morally opposed to slavery on a fundamental level, since slavery is defined as an evil and only evil characters do evil in this world. However, in this case he attempts to inject depth into his story by presenting a moral ambiguity: the good, decent ponies of NA live near the slavers and have a trade relationship with them, even knowing what they do.

Running out of space, to be continued.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.290320
290337 290351
Birth_of_a_Nation_theatrical_poster.jpg
asdf.png
>>290319

This state of affairs supposedly presents an ethical dilemma for Littlepoop. She is the heroine, and is therefore in the "good" camp. The members of the good camp can recognize each other by their inherent, fundamental "goodness;" the good guys are good because they're not the bad guys. She can recognize these ponies as part of the "good" camp, and yet cannot accept the "badness" of their dealings with the clearly evil slave traders. Calamity, also a hero and therefore also in the "good" camp by default, has the same problem, and subsequently refuses to live in the settlement, even though he associates with them, works for them, drinks with them, lives, laughs and loves with them, and so forth.

However, this presents a problem for the author. Since he's established a rule saying that only the bad guys are truly evil, and since he's established the townsponies as good guys, or at least not-bad guys, then by his own logic they would have to accept the tenets of "goodness;" ie the bourgeois, modern values of the author and his audience, even if it conflicts with the reality of their world. Thus, even if they are willing to tolerate slavery in Old Appleoosa and trade with the slavers, the New Appleoosans would need to be morally opposed to slavery itself in order to retain their not-bad-guy status.

The issue here is actually not the contradiction or the hypocrisy; most people ponies, whatever tend to be hypocrites on some level, regardless of what their specific values are. The issue is that is the author has basically trapped himself between two diametrically opposed methods for handling morality and values in a story, and so far he has not demonstrated that he has the talent to deal with this problem, or even recognize that it's a problem to begin with. The result is that he ends up with a lot of shoddy characters whose convictions never feel genuine, and whose subsequent actions don't always make sense.

There are two distinct approaches to morality that most (although not necessarily all) works of modern pop fiction take. Bear in mind that this is a bit of an oversimplification, and I'm sure most of us could think of a number of examples that don't fit either rule, but for our purposes I think this illustration is fine.

The first approach is what I call the Harry Potter method I actually plan on delving into this quite a bit when we eventually get to Harry Chamberpot and the Sorcerer's Boner. This is basically your standard good vs. evil approach: the heroes who are good (Harry Potter, The Avengers, the Rebel Alliance) wage justified war against the forces of evil (Voldemort, Thanos, The Empire). This is probably the most popular method of storytelling for our era.

It's flexible and can be adapted to any values system or to no values system at all. Sometimes the bad guys are just generic black masks whose goal is something generically terrible enough not to be controversial for the audience (Thanos wants to blow up the world or whatever because reasons, Captain America is trying to stop him), but it can also be used to moralize. Moralization in these types of stories amounts to defining the good guys as the people who stand for what "we" (as in, whoever wrote it and whoever they wrote it for) believe; the bad guys are the people who stand for everything "we" are against.

One of the most famous and classic examples of this is an old silent film called Birth of a Nation, which deals with the formation of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klansmen take on the good-guy role, defending the virtue of the South against Negroes and carpet-baggers and so forth, who are portrayed as villainous goons. It's the kind of movie that, obviously, modern Hollywood condemns, but what's amusing is that more recent, and more PC, films like Black KKlansman follow essentially the same script, only the roles are reversed: the Klansmen are now the villainous goons, with a heroic dindu protagonist who goes around heroically slaughtering them.

The beauty of this format is its simplicity: it doesn't really matter who the good guys and bad guys are. If you're creating mass entertainment then you can easily create a hit by slapping together a story that's been written a thousand times before, and just make the good guys be the people the audience will root for and the bad guys be the people whom the audience will boo. If your society hates niggers and values white solidarity, make a movie about a heroic white guy walking around Detroit slaughtering black criminals. If you live in an enlightened, progressive society that abhors racism and values diversity, then just make the exact same fucking movie, but with some type of ¡Diversity!™ as the protagonist and a bunch of racist hillbillies as the villains.

The other approach is what I am going to call the George R.R. Martin method. Basically, this is the moral relativist approach: there is no clear division between "good" characters and "evil" characters. Each character defines their own values and lives by them, and while the values of the society being written for occasionally come into play (I like to believe that Martin threw Daenerys Targaryen into the story simply to give the brainlets someone to root for), the characters are presented as ordinary, flawed humans, each of whom has their own strengths and faults, and each of whom simply reacts to the circumstances they find themselves in, which usually don't lend themselves to a clear application of whatever values they aspire to.

The Jean Paul Sartre play No Exit is a classic example of this kind of storytelling. It depicts a group of characters in hell, and as the story progresses, the audience learns that each is in hell for a completely different reason. None of them are there because they offended God or violated any universal moral taboo; each character had their own version of morality that they defined for themselves, and then subsequently broke.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.290337
290340 290372 290771
1605374873153.png
>>290320

The Potter approach is basically the standard Hollywood method of telling a story, and has the greatest mass appeal. Clearly defined avatars of good and evil duke it out over the fate of the world, and ultimately we know that good is going to win, but as long as the author can trick us into believing that it might not, we'll be on the edge of our seats until the last villain is finally vanquished. The Martin approach is existentialist, and is usually considered the more "grown-up" approach (even if that isn't necessarily always the case); if the Potter approach is the Hollywood blockbuster, the Martin approach is the artfag indie film, written for guys in thick Buddy Holly glasses who dream about huffing Wes Anderson's farts. It's worth remembering that they're both essentially modern methods of storytelling based on modern views of morality; this is by no means the only way to approach morality in fiction.

Now that I've blathered on for two whole posts about this, here's how it fits into FoE:

K "don't be fickle, let me tickle your pickle" kat is basically writing a good vs. evil melodrama here, but at the same time, he wants to make it dark and serious and more "grown-up." So, he tries to add an element of moral ambiguity to his characters by forcing them to kinda-sorta betray their values. However, these values are never really betrayed and there's never anything on the line, so what we usually end up with is Velvet Remedy's wishy-washy ideals, or the erratic, nonsensical attitudes of the New Appleoosans.

The reason that the existentialist approach works for Martin is that Martin is really good at creating complex characters who have a mixture of good and evil in them. They live in a violent and chaotic world, and they do what they need to do to survive and advance whatever their goals are. By telling the story from multiple perspectives, you also get to see how these characters view each other: if two characters are bitter enemies, then each will see the other as evil, but the reader gets to see both sides. It should be fairly obvious, then, why this fails miserably in Fallout: Equestria: these characters have little depth, and have already been divided into good and evil camps by the author based on a predefined set of external values. In a Martin novel, we would probably get some perspective into who these slavers are and why they do what they do; in kkat's world, though, they are just evil guys who do evil because they are evil, and thus deserve whatever horrible twisted things Littlepoop plans on doing to them.

The good guys are worse, because here the author is attempting to inject depth into characters that also don't have much to offer in that department. Velvet Remedy is probably the most egregious offender in this category, so I'm going to pick on her.

Velvet naturally thinks slavery is super-icky, because she's one of the heroes, and the author would never allow anypony into the heroes' camp who didn't think slavery was super-icky. She also has this fear of being "caged," which the author never really explains. I guess we're supposed to assume that it comes from her living in the Stable, but if that's all it's based on it just makes her attitudes towards the slaver colony that much more laughable.

The slaves in this story live in far worse conditions than the ponies in Stable 2; if anything, the Stables are as good as life in this setting gets. To sit there and whine about being "caged" in a stable, where she was not only fed and sheltered but was also a celebrity performer, while simultaneously working as a healer for these cartoonishly evil slavers who lock foals up in literal cages to do God knows what with, doesn't make her deep or sympathetic, it just makes her an absolute cunt. If she were cold or indifferent to the suffering of others, and thus didn't care about slavery one way or the other, or else she was motivated by profit or some other self interest, it would actually make her more likable, because she would at least be living according to her own principles (you'll recall that in the existentialist view characters define their own values, even if they conflict with those of society or the reader).

And the attitude expressed by Rimjob or whatever the sheriff's name is just now makes no sense whatsoever. Realistically, there should be all sorts of things going on with this settlement. This Wasteland setting is pure anarchy, so if a group of ponies banded together to start a settlement, it was probably for mutual defense and to make their lives better by pooling resources. Communities in this kind of setting usually take a preservationist attitude overall: they care about themselves and each other, but the world beyond is seen as mostly either neutral or hostile. They have no natural reason to care about the slaves in Old Appleoosa, and that's assuming that slavery would even be seen as a moral issue in this world in the first place.

The author just treats it as a given that "slavery = bad" would be the natural, default attitude of anyone who isn't cartoonishly evil, but I don't see why this would necessarily be true. It seems to be a common enough practice, and if everypony in Equestria except the slavers morally condemns slavery, then who would even be buying slaves in the first place? This is obviously a large enough business that this slaver colony has an almost unlimited amount of muscle employed to protect it, so there must be a fairly large market for slaves. If anything, LP would likely be in the minority for opposing it.

More likely than not, the issue would be divisive in the town. There would probably be ponies who favor trade with Old Appleoosa and have no problem with slavery, those like Calamity who oppose it on moral grounds, those who oppose slavery but think it's ok to trade with slavers...these situations are usually complicated. Very seldom does an entire community speak with one mind.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.290340
>>290337
Without me dropping any specific spoilers, rest assured that FoE does try VERY hard in various places to offer moral dilemmas and complexity. At the same time, it also tries to cleanly delineate between good and evil. There are some incredibly convoluted mental gymnastics involved.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.290351
290355
autistic horse gun for autistic horses.gif
>>290320
>Harry Potter
It's kind of fascinating how because Harry is always saved by asspulls, new magical bullshit shoehorned into a world that would have gone very differently if this bullshit always existed, or "the power of wuv", it means most major and minor "good guys" not named harry or Hermione are damn near completely useless all the time.
because the author establishes "good guys help harry, idiots don't, evil people get in his way", this led most people to assume the good guys are all evil too and Harry's being played like a violin. Fanfics where this happens and Harry+Voldemort team up to conquer WizardLand together were common, because they were a reaction to kids instinctively realizing PotterLand was a fucked-up place despite lacking the words to articulate it in forum posts.

The author didn't notice making the whole world and everything in it "silly" would harm her tone (nothing kills a tense mood like a tiny fat high-voiced man telling them to follow him, or Voldy sounding like a petty bully trying to sound like a bond villain) or her world or the story she's telling.
Rowling doesn't know how to write, or worldbuild. Only try to copy something exactly, and copy something while writing it as an extra-silly version of what she considers it: a silly thing.
Football? To a dumb woman, it's silly for team games to exist because anyone's contributions can be undone by one important player getting lucky. So Magic Football is now a silly thing rendered irrelevant by one player playing a completely different ball game at the same time.
Loyal football fans? To her, it's absurd to love Manchester United even when they lose badly. So Ron is a fanboy for the Chudley Cannons, losers who haven't won in 80 years.
Without spoiling anything, the villain is literally a product of this fucked-up society. Love potions exist. They're banned on Hogwarts but not banned in wizard-england. Joke Stores can sell farting shoes and vomit-inducing cough drops specifically for feigning illnesses to get out of schoolwork and love potions on the same shelves to adults and teens and children alike without anyone giving a fuck. You can even buy love potions disguised as valentine's chocolates from Fred And George Weasley's joke shop, so you can smuggle them into Hogwarts. It's common for wizards to use these on muggles. Voldemort was born when a wizard woman drugged a muggle man with love potion for a long time, but eventually abandoned them both in muggle-land. If a child is born from a parenton love potion, the child cannot love no matter what. So Voldy is inherently evil, spooks kids at an orphanage, gets recruited to hogwarts by DUMBLEDORE HIMSELF, and becomes attractive so he seduces many bitches and possibly murdered Moaning Myrtle the Masturbator. Then he leaves school, fucks his face up to look all spooky and snakey, gathers the most evil ugly white people Rowling can imagine, and convinces them all to be racist and get matching tattoos and become a parody of nazi german gestapos(and get off scot-free by claiming to be mind-controlled once voldy's dead, because it seems Rowling didn't think TEAM EVIL GREEN-WEARING WHITE-SKINNED literally-mostly-germans were punished enough after things that happened while humans were having ww2) and want the half-wizard half-human kids out of hogwarts because hurr durr racial superiority is an evil view. Even after the heroes kill Voldy, nothing significant changes about the wizarding world's fucked-up practices. Love potions are still legal, another Voldemort could be born at any moment, and there are still House Elf slaves literally created to be self-abusing hyper-loyal teleporting magicians who can violate existing magic rules because the author doesn't think before or after writing.
Governments? Anyone with authority and power are useless and working for the forces of evil unless they directly serve her/Harry's interests. Even if the rules need to be broken to let that Harry/Rowling-serving happen. There's even a secret society of "good guys" (including professors, heads of state, the chief of police for the country, and more) who are supposed to be stopping the baddies but they never accomplished anything and needed to be saved by a child.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.290355
tumblr_oyl9t7sUek1rhikj7o7_1280.gif
>>290351
Rowling establishes "Harry is good no matter what, so doing good for him makes you a good guy and doing ANYTHING that gets in his way, even if it's to save your own skin or family, is evil" in every scene except that one scene so unusual it wouldn't surprise me if some of her Editors (practically ghostwriters) told her to add it.
Movie one, where Neville is praised for standing up to the heroes, even though he didn't matter and was just there so Hermione could stun him with magic and look "cool".
The heroes get away with breaking the law, destroying shit, ruining lives, scarring and disfiguring people, theft, teaching illegal things, and more because they have the "Hero" label so everything they do is arbitrarily justified on the grounds that a hero did it, even if that thing was a terrible thing that fucked over the heroes and their chances of victory.
The same goes for others who have the good guy label even though they really shouldn't, considering their actions. Here's to you, Bumbledumble "I knowingly put Harry with the worst muggles possible that were still related to him, in the house his parents died in, because at first I thought family love was necessary for nonsense unexplained blood-wards made up at the last second to try and retroactively justify Harry's abusive childhood. Even though it makes no sense for me or any wizard to know the effectiveness of blood wards unless we tested this through trial and error and seeing how much a love a killed lover needs before it can stand up to catapult fire. Anyway even after my spy told me everything about Harry's shitty home life, even though it meant the blood wards shouldn't activate since that house lacked love for harry, I did nothing until he turned 10 and could be useful to me at Hogwarts" Dumbledore
The Side Of Good is so goddamn useless for most of these books that every other fan I knew had "Everyone is secretly betraying Harry" as their main pet theory.
Voldemort's Death Gobblers are so obviously-evil, ugly, and literally-tattooed that their inability to infiltrate "good" places makes no sense.
And the amount of time Dumbles or some other good guy have their hands tied by politicians or get fucked over by politicians in front of Harry for incredibly retarded reasons is downright absurd. Like that time underage Harry was tried as an adult for protecting someone from a typical agent of the government and slandered by the press.
Problem is it's kind of hard for the author to pretend "Race Purism makes you evil" when ancient wizards from before the blood-mixing days literally had so much more power than the common wizard that remnants from their time and things they invented are still overwhelmingly strong and important today (usually). And the author's insistence that "anyone can be successful so elitism is wrong" is really stupid when elites are the only ones who develop magic and therefore become superior beings who can reach 300 years of age before dying usually, the elites of the elites are the only ones who ever matter, Harry is the son of elites who inherits their cash, and Hermione's set up as "proof the racists were wrong" even though she's white as fuck and a hard-working natural-born elite genius who effortlessly outclasses little pussy Draco once he stops being relevant.
A competent author would start out writing Draco as an elitist cunt like Neji Hyuga from Naruto, and then have the hero kick his ass and prove him wrong, so he turns good. But Rowling didn't feel like making Draco an actual character, because he's always nothing but a cardboard cutout sneering bully on team evil for no reason until the last second when saving Draco's life from a fire explosion his underling caused convinces Draco's mom to betray Voldy for the sake of the heroes.
The heroes only ever defeat the evil power of evil villains when they have greater power on their side (could be magical or political or physical) for whatever reason. And when they don't have greater power, they're fucked and the best they can do is turn tail and run and hope they get saved by superior power coming out of nowhere later. Nobody takes valid proactive action for intellectual reasons, because Rowling has "ambition is evil and therefore only evil people want power, but also good people getting power is a good thing, anyway good should wait out evil's surely-inevitable demise and hope everything magically resolves itself when the chosen one comes along to save the day for you" disorder.
People genuinely thought Dumbles was manipulating the current corrupt government, its Death Gobbler infiltrators, his own shitty worthless secret society, the Voldemort he created and turned evil+ambitious+racist on purpose, and Harry into fucking everything up and having a big battle where Voldy and Harry die so Dumbles can say "Fuck governments and politicians, they allowed Voldemort to take over and come back! Fuck limits placed on my power, they stopped me from helping Harry more! Meesa wants emergency powers immediately, so I can be the new Emperor of the Great Wizard Empire!"
And honestly, that's where a good writer would have taken this silly world full of silly people. It's the only way to tell a good story in such a silly world obsessed with Elites and cause positive change: Wake everyone up and make them take control of their own destinies instead of relying on elites.

The writing was so bad, and it set up so many self-contradictory expectations and sent so many mixed messages, the most common fan theory was "That guy we're supposed to view as the ultimate hero and benevolent wise silly Gandalf knockoff is actually a pure evil schemer whose goal is world domination with the approval of a world devastated by soldiers of his own creation, therefore because the seemingly-good guy is evil, Voldemort must also be good, therefore it's perfectly fine for me to want to be a Slytherin just like Draco Malfoy and slither-in his bed".
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.290372
290430 290769
>>290337
This might be an odd question, but do you think Kkunt planned to have New Appleoosa ban Littlepoop from the beginning or do you think it was something Kkunt went along with after feedback from fans/editors?
It would explain why this "attempted moral greyness" ends up "villains are pure evil who do terrible things in the name of ego and pleasure and pride, and there are no heroes except for the importantest main hero of all" flavour.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.290430
290434 290769
Em1N0M8VQAELlTt.jfif
>>290372
It would also explain why, after rushing Not Pinkie's introduction and swiftly abandoning her and shuffling her and the foals they freed from the previous location off to New Appleoosa, they immediately decide to head towards Tenpony Tower for no good reason.
Even though there are currently no foals or slaves travelling with them to take there.
The heroes just have to go there anyway, because it's something to do.

also I forgot to reply to this >>289149
Would it be an example of Chekhov's Gun if Watcher told the group about pre-war Equestrian cars and their magic-nuclear engines before that became relevant during a Ghoul Horde VS Heroes in a Junkyard fight?
Would it be an example of Chekhov's Gun if Watcher told the group about Megaspells right before one appeared in Not Pinkie's barn?
It would still be necessary writing to help us understand these poorly-explained scenes as they happen(I'd only buy a child backing Littlepoop into a safe if the child had a nuke that could atomize much of equestria and kill everyone around her for many miles), and it would still be hackneyed cliche hyper-convenient writing I'd only forgive if I saw it in a 22-minute kid's cartoon, but would it could as the Jackoff Gun thing?

>>everyone

Also... Everyone's noticed that there isn't a main plot in this story, right?
There isn't anything holding this story together and giving purpose to the journey. There is no big goal in the distance to make every small step towards it feel worthwhile and significant. Nothing's making it more than one murderhobo's quest to alleviate her boredom, only more pretentious than it should be. Eventually "Story Arc" goals will be set up and accomplished like they're episodes in a TV show, but nothing binds it all together thematically and chronologically.
"Find Velvet" seemed like it would be the main plot but then LP found her in the fourth place she looked. (Raider Ponyville, the factory she found Little Macintosh in, New Appleoosa, Old Appleoosa. I'm not counting the sexist hybrid animal vault because she wasn't looking for Velvet during the main quest there, she was side-questing)

Velvet has no long-term goals. Calamity has no long-term goals. Littlepip has no long-term goals and they don't even have "Find a long-term goal" as their long-term goal!

What's keeping this story going?
What is there to keep the attention of people who don't feel inadequately masculine daily and feel so ashamed of their love for a little girl's pony show that it drives them to embrace anything that makes their hobby feel valid and intellectual and manly, like a pseudointellectual analyst seeing Freud and Jung and incredibly deep storytelling in Pinkie Pie's iconic catchphrase "I'm Pinkie Pie and I love to party!", or show-accurate animations where one tiny-dicked horse bones spike in the little dragon asshole, or an edgy 40-something on Wattpad and SoFurry writing hyper-violent pony pornography?
If you don't already love the murderhobo misadventure going on, what's left in this story to look forward to?
It's not like the story set up some end-game goal location, claimed there's one massive settlement where there is no evil or another country where there are no nukes, or even foreshadowed future companions as famous people that greatly matter to the world they're in.
It's not like they're going around looking for the seven shards of a magical wishing shard that will let them wish all the world's troubles away. And it's not like they're rushing somewhere specific with vital intel it needs like "THE ZEBRA LEGION IS INVADING BY BOAT! THEY'RE COMING BACK FOR ROUND TWO!". And it's not like they're taking a sick kid to some place where he can get treatment, causing them all to bond with the sick kid over time and eventually not want to give him to the end goal because it turns out they're a load of clowns even more pathetic, destructive, and unintentionally-evil than the Fireflies from TLOU1+2.

If there's anything to look forward to...
I'd say it's the mystery of how the world ended, but Littlepip met Watcher too soon. And he's too easy to contact. He could tell Littlepip whatever she wants to know about the old world, but she (And Velvet, and even Calamity who's from the modern wasteland and would probably care more about this than two used to the old-world comforts of a Stable) only feel like asking questions when the author wants to drip-feed information.
It's not like Watcher is on strict time limits and can only hack Spritebots for so long at a time before he gets detected. And it's not like he's using his information as currency to pay Littlepip for doing what he wants.
He could single-handedly ruin the mystery and tell Littlepoop absolutely everything about how Equestria died the very second he appeared onscreen in the Raider chapters.
Rule one for writing "Mysterious voice" and "Mysterious hacker" characters has got to be "Don't make the voice/hacker so powerful that he could do everything solo if he didn't feel like involving the main character".
Rule two is probably "Keep it cryptic, retard!".
Rule three would have to be something like "Justify why the voice only gets help from the characters he contacts and why he doesn't just brute-force it with a robot army or something".
Rule four must be "Give the voice a reason to not tell the hero everything ever in chapter one, and give the hero a reason to not sit around in protest until the chapter one infodump has been completed."
I'd say rule five needs to be "Either they're working together on the same goal, the voice is using the person, or the person is tricking the voice into thinking the voice is using the person. Pick one and stick to it! Don't act like a voice has to be cryptic and aggressive and manipulative with someone who shares his goals and worldviews and would be happy to do whatever the voice says."
Rule six is "keep the power level of the hacker consistent or make gradually raising that power so he can save the day a plot point/the Main Quest".
Anonymous
8142357
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No.290434
290445 290769
>>290430
>Also... Everyone's noticed that there isn't a main plot in this story, right?
To play Kkat's advocate for just a moment, there's a central plot that becomes apparent eventually. Sort of. I suspect the disjointed murderhobo adventures that make up this first leg of the story were intended to introduce the world and the major characters before the main quest kicks in.

Littlepip's "party" is still only half complete at this point, so the story's running with the enormous assumption that we're sufficiently hooked on its characters and combat and genius videogame references to tolerate being drip-fed the plot.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.290445
290768 290857
I have no idea what rule seven for writing hacker/ghost-in-the-machine type characters is but there needs to be a rule seven. Seven's a good number. Anyone else can pick that one.

>>290434
I forgot if this story has a central plot that ties everything together and has an end goal in sight, or if "Littlepip murders enemies, then she graduates to killing the bigger enemies and even bigger enemies she encounters until she defeats the Enclave and then lucks out and finds the weather wizard's buttplug so she can instantly end fallout and rehabilitate all raiders though bandits still exist for a while" is the only plot in the story

>>everyone

Littlepoop's SATS sucks gay balls because it's just VATS but renamed, and that sucks gay balls.
VATS pauses the game
you select an enemy's body part to aim at, in a menu
and then you watch a cutscene where cinematic camera angles try to make the game auto-playing itself look cool.
RNG already determines how accurate your guns are, but I'd swear VATS makes it worse. also for some reason you take 80ish% less damage during VATS cutscenes, since you can't move and shoot at the same time during cutscenes. Can't move at all. Just forced to watch bullet cam and slow-mo lame-ass gore.
you can only shoot enemies in VATS.
or melee them if a melee weapon is equipped instead of a gun, though you can't target specific body parts with a melee weapon in VATS. You get a damage multiplier to compensate.
but still
VATS just automates attacking enemies, the most basic thing in a FPS game.
It can't attack environmental objects. No shooting a box to knock it into an enemy. It can shoot landmines and grenades but the chance to hit in-flight enemy grenades is so impossible low it makes you wonder why that's even a feature.
Can't cast spells. And why use gimmick grenades when high-damage grenades are often easier to find?
VATS/SATS is TOO straightforward. No depth, no tactical decisions. Can't choose a place in VATS and move to it. Can't command your teammates in VATS.
It just attacks. It can't slow time or broadcast mental commands to teammates. It can't even get you running and powersliding around the battlefield at mach fuck while jumping fifty feet in the air and jetpacking and ground-pounding like in a good shoot game. I want to say 3D Fallouts have a slow-paced methodical "Conserve every bullet" gameplay style that fits the tone before you get the good shit like the best power armour and guns in the game, but the engine wasn't built for that and the games weren't designed for it.
It encourages a "Use VATS to kill foes, then run/hide until I regenerate enough Action Points to spend on doing VATS again".
VATS is like the lowest form of a Cover Shooter except you're invincible when breaking cover. And in Fallout 4 can you get a perk that lets you shoot enemies through walls without any damage or accuracy penalty, meaning it's a cover shooter where you can kill from cover without any penalty and you will never have to break cover until all enemies are dead.
And that's why, whenever Littlepip uses SATS, it just attacks.
Kkunt could only do something interesting in SATS like shooting a light out or shooting a fire extinguisher or having SATS perform a spell or telekinetic attack for Littlepoop if he broke VATS's rules when copying it.

In DMC3 you have this "Devil Trigger" meter. It fills when you attack foes. Press L1 to transform into your demon form, making your attacks stronger.
Some of your weapons have special attacks only available in this form, like Nevan's Air Raid.
In most DMC games if you activate Devil Trigger at the perfect moment when attacking a foe, your normal attack hitbox and devil trigger attack hitbox will hit the foe at the same time. Bosses can have their hp MELTED by this trick. Insanely efficient.
And in DMC3 you can charge up Devil Trigger energy and release it in a blast independent of whatever you're doing.
A lot of thought goes into using this effectively, because it doesn't just play the game for you. It lets you decide how to spend a meter that fills when you attack to reward you for attacking.
Anonymous
8142357
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No.290768
>>290445
If I remember right, VATS was intended as a crutch for people moving to Fo3 from the previous games' turn-based combat, who wouldn't necessarily be comfortable with an FPS' twitchier, more precision-demanding combat. It was a simplistic and boring mechanic once the cinematic camera kills got boring and added nothing to the lore of the series, but at it was optional and served a gameplay purpose.

FoE on the other hand makes SATS/VATS a part of the narrative - the ability to pause time and fire with unnatural precision is apparently a superpower that only Littlepip has, which torpedoes the whole "my pipbuck and cutiemark are mundane and boring" line of thought right out of the gate. At the same time, it's also redundant because despite her utter lack of firearms training and experience, she seems to have no trouble landing hits when it counts regardless of the weapon she's using or whether SATS is involved.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.290769
>>290372
>This might be an odd question, but do you think Kkunt planned to have New Appleoosa ban Littlepoop from the beginning or do you think it was something Kkunt went along with after feedback from fans/editors?
It's difficult to say because I don't know the story behind the story, so to speak. The version of this that I'm reading is on FimFiction, because that's just my go-to location for most of these MLP fics, but from the description it sounds like this wasn't originally where it was published. I really have no idea what kkat's process was here; whether he just sat down and wrote this and then published it, or if he wrote it in chunks and let people read them, and then modified it based on their notes, or where he would have published it originally, or anything. My assumption, though, is that very little of this was planned. I get the impression his approach is probably very similar to Peen Stroke's approach, where he just sits down and starts writing and lets the story go wherever his imagination takes it. This is probably the most popular method of writing for amateurs, and to be perfectly honest it was my approach too until very recently. After I started reviewing these MLP fics and realizing how most of them were just plotless, meandering garbage, I went through and examined some of my own drafts and realized I was doing a lot of the same things I was dumping on these authors for. sorry, I guess that doesn't technically answer your question

>>290430
>Everyone's noticed that there isn't a main plot in this story, right?
I've been grousing about this for awhile now.

>>290434
>Littlepip's "party" is still only half complete at this point, so the story's running with the enormous assumption that we're sufficiently hooked on its characters and combat and genius videogame references to tolerate being drip-fed the plot.
This is also my impression, unfortunately. My guess is the author has a general idea he wants to get at eventually, but at the same time he's basically pulling a story out of his ass by pretending he's playing a really shitty Fallout mod with ponies, and so he just lets events follow events without any coherent structure in mind.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.290771
290774
1604192384296.png
>>290337

Littlepoop basically tossed a grenade into this town by stirring all of this up; there's no reason the community should collectively admire and support her actions, as the sheriff says they all do. As with the slavery issue itself, Littlepoop is likely to be a controversial figure. Some ponies, likely the ones who disliked and even feared the slaver colony, might approve of what she did, but might also be apprehensive about retaliation and thus wish that she had left the matter alone. Public opinion of her in the town after a stunt like this is likely to skew negative overall, with probably a large number of ponies actively hostile to her (the ones with economic interest in the trade route would probably be the most vocal here).

As to the slaves themselves, while again some in the town might be sympathetic, I'd imagine that most would be opposed to taking them in. They're going to be seen as extra mouths for one and a liability for another, as it seems like the slavers have not actually been defeated yet. I'm still not entirely clear just how large a force they're supposed to be, but at this point my respect for kkat's storytelling abilities is so low that I'm just assuming there literally is a separate dimension filled with a near-infinite number of carbon-copy goons who can be summoned any time a fight scene is needed.

Since the slavers don't know who Littlepoop is, but would know that the attacker came and left on the New Appleoosa train, they would probably assume that NA was attacking them directly, and would respond in kind. Taking the slaves into their town would only be seen as thumbing their nose at them; the slavers might even assume they were trying to muscle in and take over their slaving operation. If they have any substantial military strength left (which I am assuming they do), their first logical priority would probably be to invade New Appleoosa, get their slaves back, and probably enslave everyone in the town while they're at it.

Unless NA is prepared for such a battle, their best move would be to try and appease the slavers. What would make the most sense would be to forward Littlepoop's message to the slavers, letting them know that their missing cargo is on the mountain, and also disavow any connection to Littlepoop; tell them she stole their train or something. In fact, what would probably make the most sense for someone in Raildong's position here would be to convince Littlepoop to return to NA, but take her, Velvet and Calamity captive as soon as they get within the town proper. Then, offer them back to the slavers, along with the stolen slaves. If the slavers were trading with NA all this time and never invaded them or tried to conquer/enslave them even though it seems like they outgun them, then the trade route must have been mutually profitable, so it would stand to reason that both sides would consider a return to the old arrangement in their best interest.

Raildong could actually get off pretty cheap here: crisis is averted, the status quo returns, and all it costs him is an outsider, a troublemaker, a healer pony he has no reason to give a shit about, and a bunch of useless mouths who were slaves to begin with and are also none of his concern. Conversely, simply banning her from the town accomplishes nothing; Littlepoop has involved them in this whether they wanted to be involved or not, and trying to distance themselves from the matter won't save them from the slavers. Taking in the slaves and making them citizens is even dumber, because at that point NA is basically thumbing its nose at OA.

What's probably most annoying is that all of these potential snags I've laid out actually provide pretty fertile ground for the story to continue on. The author could easily spin an entire novel out of just this subplot alone if he did it right, or even simply add some complexity to the current one. Part of his plan for Littlepoop's character arc such as it is seems to involve a gradual loss of innocence and the corruption of her idealized view of the world, and this would be a perfect place to twist a knife in her gut.

LP hears about a slaver colony, and the thought of all of those poor, wretched souls trapped in captivity gives her a raging justice boner. So she deputizes Calamity and runs off to be a hero, wreaks havoc on the colony, and liberates all of the slaves. She expects to return to a hero's welcome, but instead the town takes her captive and hands her over to the slavers, along with all of the slaves she just freed. By now, I dislike this character so much that I would pay actual money just to see the look on her face when it happens.

One of the things that has consistently annoyed me with all of these pony stories I've looked at is seeing some glaringly obvious direction the author could have taken things, that would have made the story not just good but great, but somehow was completely missed by the author. This is definitely one of those times; if the author considered any of these points, he could have not only made his world and characters more believable, he could have made his story considerably more interesting as well.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.290774
290777 290789
1604058174226.png
>>290771

Anyway, let's move on. Railright isn't quite finished speaking yet:

>Y’all are reckless an’ dangerous. Ya got six of our best train ponies slaughtered, some of ‘em bein’ friends o’ mine fer longer than Ah can remember.
This is another angle to consider. When building a story, it's good to remember that every action produces a ripple effect. There are enough complex relationships in NA, and probably in the slaver colony as well, that LP's takedown of Appleoosa should be like a bomb going off. Again, the aftermath of this one act could easily produce enough effects to build an entire self-contained story from, but in the hands of kkat it all seems to be wasted.

>Ya destroyed one of our only functionin’ trains, and y’all pretty much set fire t’ any peaceful relations New Appleloosa had managed with the slavers.
This is pretty much what I already went over.

>Ah’ll hafta be puttin’ extra guard ponies on all the walls now, an’ we’ll need t’ be sendin’ more guards with the caravans.
For reasons I've already covered, they will likely need to do more than that. The slavers will, in all probability, be out for blood. Also: what other caravans are there? I was under the impression the town just traded with Old Appleoosa, but if they are a major trading hub then there may be even more ripples to this than I had thought. What are NA's other trading partners going to think, when word of this gets around? Kkat needs to take off his modern-genteel-values goggles, wipe the nigger cum off his forehead, and examine this rationally. Slavery is clearly not a huge moral issue for most ponies in this world, so the way this looks is that NA, for no obvious reason, just attacked and economically decimated one of its primary trading partners. Any sane neighbor town would assume that NA was making a power play and would respond accordingly. Littlepoop's actions may not have just affected relations between NA and OA; she may have inadvertently started a small-scale war.

>Honestly, Ah’m worried if we got enough ammo in the town iffin they should decide to take things out on us fer what ya ponies did.
Again, it's not a matter of "iffin," but when. Also, I'd like to say that I'm finding this author lays the Apple-accent on a little too thick for my taste with these country poners. I've found that when writing Applejack dialogue, a few "ain'ts" and "fers" is usually enough to inform the reader of how she speaks; this author's handling of it is just overkill. The accents in this story are probably less overwrought than the dialogue in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but on the other hand Mark Twain put a lot of effort into studying local dialects and slang so that he could portray them as accurately as possible. I don't get the impression that kkat has put that much thought into any aspect of his book, other than the autistic Fallout details of course, and it sounds like he even fucked up most of that.

Anyway, long story short, Littlepoop is now banned from New Appleoosa. However, Derpy remains friendly to her and has insisted on them being allowed to trade, so Railright has agreed to an arrangement that allows them to meet outside the gates to conduct business. I'm not sure how exactly they would communicate to coordinate this, but at this point who in the hell even cares.

Page break. LP and company have decided to press onward, although I am not sure where they are going or why. Also, there's really no reason for them to stick together; Calamity has a home near NA and isn't banned from there for some reason, despite his involvement in Littlepoop's ridiculous plan. He could probably mend relations with NA and return to whatever life he had before. Velvet could probably find welcome in the town as well. However, none of this seems to occur to any of them, so I guess they're stuck with each other for now.

>My heart felt like lead, but I was surprised that Railright’s news didn’t hurt a lot more. I did not feel like a rug had been pulled out from under me. In my mind, I had forged no real ties to New Appleloosa, save perhaps a fond respect for the author of The Wasteland Survival Guide. I had never considered making it my home, particularly not after learning why Calamity had refused to make it his. So I was no more adrift now than I had been last night.
Littlepoop's motivations are as wishy-washy as Velvet's, if maybe a little less obviously so. Why is she doing any of this? What is she even trying to accomplish out here? Why are we reading about it? All very good questions.

>I checked my PipBuck. Its automap had several new locations flagged now, including the one towards which we were traveling: Manehattan.
Why are they going to Manehattan all of a sudden? Last I heard, she was planning to go to Fillydelphia to beat up more slavers.

>Calamity had bartered quite well, gaining us medical supplies, food, canteens and even ammo for Little Macintosh; he had also bartered to let us look over some maps from Ditzy Doo, recording the information in my PipBuck.
This PipBuck is the most ridiculous piece of fictional technology I've encountered in a long time. How the bloody hell does this thing work anyway? How is it possible that it contains detailed maps of the interiors of strange locations, has detailed information on random landmarks like the statue of Big Macintosh in Ponyville, and can tell you whether or not a complete stranger is an enemy, but doesn't have the locations of major cities programmed in anywhere? This is just getting stupid.

>It was from those maps that I had obtained markers for Manehattan (which was less than a week’s trot) and Fillydelphia (which was not).
Well, anyway, I guess that answers my first question: they are going to Manehattan because it is closer than Fillydephia, and is presumably on the way.

>The Bell farmhouse had possessed a small water purifier, allowing us to fill our canteens for the long walk ahead.
Rather convenient, but not implausible I suppose.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.290777
290781 290908 291530
1e62d0a223c25197bf20007f41bde0c8.gif
>>290774

>Silver Bell was leaving behind her Pinkie Pie Museum. I had asked her permission, very quietly, to look at her Party-Time Mint-als recipe. It was now stored in my PipBuck. For some reason, I hadn’t felt like mentioning that to the others yet.
I'm not sure why you're mentioning it to us; by now we've all but forgotten about Silver Bell and the Pinkie Pie Museum, and are probably better off for it. I'm still reeling a bit over how little sense that entire episode made, and how badly the author managed to fuck up what should have been a simple plot in a box. I assume the author is still planning on going through with his drug-addiction side story for Littlepoop, but the time to mention her obtaining the crack recipe would have been back when Silver Bell was still in the story and we were still thinking about her. inb4 Littlepoop turns into Tyrone Biggums

>Fatigue was beginning to take its toll on all of us. We hadn’t slept, staying with Silver Bell until Ditzy Doo arrived. Even when the filly cried herself into a nightmare-filled sleep, we had stood vigil.
Again: this is not the time to mention any of this. If the Silver Bell episode is wrapped up, keep it wrapped up. We're clearly beginning a new episode here, so leave the past in the past and let's focus on what's about to happen. The storytelling in this book, I notice, is less like a novel and more like a serial; there may or may not be a central story, but either way the narrative moves in short little episode arcs like an anime series or a comic book storyline. If this is how the story is meant to be structured, then adhere to the structure. Make each episode self-contained, and don't reference events or characters from previous episodes unless there is a direct need to. There is no direct need here.

>In the distance, I could see a very narrow white tower rising up into the sky, so high it pierced the clouds. Part of me was strongly tempted to divert towards it, just to have a look, but it was miles away and would add many hours to our trip.
At this point I have no idea whether I should assume small details like this are meant to be foreshadowing something, or if the author is just dropping shit in here to drop it in. Towers are usually fun locations, though, so I guess we'll see if it goes anywhere.

>Velvet Remedy had paused in her songwriting, bothered by a question, “Calamity, if the pegasus ponies live in the clouds, what do they eat?”
>Calamity answered nonchalantly, “Oh, they grow their own food up there.” He looked at her, “Haven’t you ever heard of cloud seeding?”
>Velvet Remedy stared at him. To Calamity’s credit, he held the deadpan expression for quite a few seconds before breaking into a grin.
>Velvet chuckled. “Very funny. Fine, have your secrets. But one day, I’ll expect a real answer.”
Once again, this exchange could potentially be foreshadowing something in the plot of the next episode, or this could just be random autistic dialogue thrown in for no reason whatsoever. It is impossible to tell with this author.

After this exchange, we are informed that Littlepoop is tired, and would like to go to sleep. Then, for no reason, Calamity launches into the air. He does a quick flyover of some buildings they are nearing, and flies back to inform them that there are "raiders."

By now, I have gathered that the term "raider" in this story is not just a generic term for brigands, ruffians, highwaymen, or other sorts of riffraff that one might expect to encounter in someplace called "the wasteland," but refers to a very specific caste of character. Most likely, there is a type of baddie in Fallout called "raider" or something similar, that has a specific appearance, spawns in certain areas, fights with certain kinds of weapons, and so forth. I get the impression that "slaver" refers to something similar, rather than just a general word for anypony involved in the procurement of slaves.

Kkat, lacking any serious creativity of his own, and being incapable of contemplating reality in any way except by viewing it through the lens of a video game, has simply lifted this directly and dropped it into his story. In and of itself this is probably okay, but if you're going to define your baddies in rigid categories, it's usually a good idea to have more than two kinds (this applies to games as well, btw). So far, we have only encountered two types of Equine villains in this story: raiders and slavers. LP's conflicts have simply alternated between dealing with these two types of baddies: first slavers, then raiders, then slavers again, now raiders again. The only other enemies she's encountered have been the brain-robot-things she met briefly in the warehouse, and the radioactive kitties she met in the abandoned Stable. Both of those were just monsters. Do the "evil" ponies in this world do anything except sell slaves and...do whatever the fuck "raiders" do exactly?

This issue is made worse by the fact that kkat has taken few pains to draw any serious distinction between his "raiders" and his "slavers." Both are just generic cookie-cutter baddies with no identifying characteristics, beyond the fact that "slavers" are in the business of selling slaves. To make it all even blurrier, the raiders we met before were keeping ponies in cages in the same way that the slavers do. There is no clear indicator as to why they would do this; the only plausible reason would be to sell them as slaves, but if they did that, wouldn't it make them slavers? The terminology in this story somehow manages to be incredibly vague and incredibly specific at the same time. In fact, reading back over my previous posts, I think there are some points where I accidentally referred to the "slavers" of Old Appleoosa as "raiders," simply because they are so gosh-durned identical to each other.
Anonymous
8b40cca
?
No.290781
291022
>>290777
I remeber a guy who praised this story in his review of it by commenting on how LP's interactions with incidental characters felt like the ones you would have with npcs in a game and that the story felt and "played" with the ida that the story kinda took place in a game universe.

Don'
t know how accurate it is just rememeber someone praised it for it.
Anonymous
8b40cca
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No.290783
291022
Think it was the guy that wrote the writing guide on fimfic. He had his own blog where he wrote a review about it. Eznpony or something.
Anonymous
8142357
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No.290789
291530
Fo3 Pipboy.jpg
raider base.png
mean raider horsies.png
>>290774
>This PipBuck is the most ridiculous piece of fictional technology I've encountered in a long time. How the bloody hell does this thing work anyway? How is it possible that it contains detailed maps of the interiors of strange locations, has detailed information on random landmarks like the statue of Big Macintosh in Ponyville, and can tell you whether or not a complete stranger is an enemy, but doesn't have the locations of major cities programmed in anywhere? This is just getting stupid.
The Pip-Boy, which the PipBuck is obviously based on, is a small personal computer given to residents of Fallout's vaults. It's a miniature personal computer worn on the protagonist's wrist and serves as a major element of the game's menu-based interface, with functions like inventory management, a simple map, and health monitoring. Fallout 3 added extra functions like a geiger counter, a flashlight, detailed quest tracking including a directional indicator, a more detailed map which automatically highlights locations you've heard about but not visited, and the aforementioned VATS.

In other words, Littlepip's PipBuck canonically gives her all the tools and information necessary to be the protagonist of an Ubisoft-style open world RPG, jumping from point of interest to point of interest - and more. Convenient.

>By now, I have gathered that the term "raider" in this story is not just a generic term for brigands, ruffians, highwaymen, or other sorts of riffraff that one might expect to encounter in someplace called "the wasteland," but refers to a very specific caste of character. Most likely, there is a type of baddie in Fallout called "raider" or something similar, that has a specific appearance, spawns in certain areas, fights with certain kinds of weapons, and so forth. I get the impression that "slaver" refers to something similar, rather than just a general word for anypony involved in the procurement of slaves.

This is correct. Fallout 3 presents raiders as a lowest-common-denominator evil mook that you can slaughter without consequence. They're the sort of people that rape and murder without reason or hesitation, decorate their lairs with the gore of the victims they most likely raped to death, and generally stand around doing nothing until the protagonist enters their aggro radius. Slavers are similar,but better armed and - at least some of the time - capable of holding a conversation, with motives that generally boil down to selling people for money. They're distinct groups in theory, if not always in practice. Kkat does eventually make attempts to clarify the difference and make both groups plot-relevant, but... well. You'll see.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.290857
290873
07BC962E010372A390B7C856E02CAAC2-51248.jpg
>>290445
wait I got distracted and talked about DMC instead of this fic.

It's boring that Littlepoop just uses SATS, because it has no creative uses.
Therefore it homogenizes combat.
Everything is reduced to "And then I shot this enemy twice in the leg and this enemy once in the head then I retreated behind cover to recharge my Action Points", and because SATS auto-aims and auto-fires for you, Littlepoop should always have the "Fired first to instantly win" advantage.
This advantage should be pushed even further by LP's videogame-compass that displays what direction your enemies are in, so you can always prepare to fire when a foe's running around a corner to get you.
Littlepip can only lose if she forgets to use her cheaty-videogame-protagonist superpowers that absolutely anyone with a PipBuck should have.
The only creative thing you can do with VATS is aim it at an enemy, and check the name of the enemy's weapon if he's using one. You can try to shoot the foe's gun out of his hands but that massively degrades the enemy's weapon condition and just isn't worth it since headshots do more damage and kill faster.

At its most boring, a story with guns is just a long sequence of "I ran into a room and shot two guys. I ran down a corridoor and shot three guys along the way. I opened the door to the next room, which contained five guys. I took cover behind a chest-high wall and only popped out whenever they were reloading their weapons, so I could shoot their heads. When I had shot all five guys, I moved on to the next room, where I was surprised by ten enemies! But I shot them all anyway".
and that's all a long sequence of VATS-using can be.
but
thanks to the Enemy-Detecting Compass Littlepoop has, which detects normal enemies and sneaking foes and invisible foes using stealthbucks/invisibility cloaks, Littlepip can never be surprised by the number of enemies she faces or their locations.
So even that "I was shocked by how many baddies were here" moment can't happen unless LP just fucking forgets she has a HUD that shows where her enemies are.

It also makes no sense that the PipBuck is as rare as it is. If every pony in every stable got one... Surely, at least one pony from these stables must have left the vault before LP, and ended up torn apart by wild animals or killed by radiation or blown up by mines or enslaved by raiders. Either way, we should see some PipBucks worn by enemies. But we don't. Not even the Enclave have them, which is retarded because they are the descendants of pre-war ponies just like the vault-dwellers!

Hey, does anyone else find it hilarious how in the fandom's early years, everyone was obsessed with the concept of the pony world getting grim and dark and the three types of ponies being racist to each other?
AUs where S1E1 still happens but the ponies say things like "I never thought I'd end up befriending a Bonehead!"
and AUs where Equestria fractures into a six-way civil war where each pony leads their own gimmicky faction even though obviously some leaders would be better at leading than others. Going with a smaller number of teams would work better. For example, Twilight and Rarity and Dash's Elitist Royalist Science Empire VS Applejack, Fluttershy, and Pinkie's Nature-loving Traditionalists, to pull some stupid bullshit out of nowhere.

Also I want to say all RPGs I've seen that build parties over time did it better than this.
Dragon Quest? You start with renameable main character, and loveable thug Yangus as your playable guys, with Medea the horse and the green guy following you. Lots of backstory and lore here, and you recover a crystal ball for a failing fortune teller so he can tell you where to go. You move on to a town where you befriend Jessica, a sexy magician girl. Then you go to a port town, help deal with a sea monster stopping sea trade, and get on the boat to another continent. You quickly find a church where Angelo the anime pretty-boy who cheats at cards and flirts with women joins you after you help deal with... It's been years but I think the priest was actually a monster you have to kill, and Angelo's shit brother betrays him and also becomes the new pope at one point. Anyway your party's complete.

Final Fantasy X? Tidus the underwater footballer befriends Auron early on, then fights Sin the fish monster and washes up on Wakka's homeland. Rikku the underwater mechanic appeared too. Tidus joins Wakka, Kimari, and Lulu on Yuna's pilgrimage around the country to get more power and eventually fight Sin with it. also Auron and Rikku rejoin you after a while. Full party, but everyone's depth is slowly revealed over time. It really makes you care about the love story between Tidus and Yuna, makes you feel sorry for Rikku's people and appreciate how Wakka gets less racist and religious over time(it's ok because Yevon is a shit religion), and I love that every party member gets one type of enemy they're the best at killing. Tidus kills fast agile foes, Wakka throws his ball at fliers, Kimari and Yuna heal, Lulu uses elemental magic on foes weak to that, Rikku steals mechanical parts from robots to instakill them, Auron's bigass sword pierces tough foes, and when all else fails Yuna can summon big monsters to help out. Also sometimes there are Zombie enemies. Heal spells hurt zombies and Revive instakills them.

Persona 5? ok this actually sucks eggs and nonsensically restricts 1 new party member to 1 arc but only sometimes. Fluffy-hair and Mediocre Titty Police Girl both attend your high school with the rapist but they don't matter or join the party until later on in the game. Every character's a "meme" designed to sell funko pops so nobody gets depth. Everything about their personality, looks, role in the plot, and backstory, and summonable monster could fit on a business card. Fuck Persona 5. If you like it, you haven't read enough books yet.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.290873
tumblr_oyl9t7sUek1rhikj7o4_1280.gif
>>290857
What I'm trying to say with the RPG thing is they often like to tell their stories "Episodically" so every new town you visit is a new episode.
The main story has a beginning that sets up the world and final villain, and an end where you kill the final villain, but there's a shitload of filler in the way.
You are forced to do good for random people and hope the reward removes whatever random blockage is stopping you from skipping today's episode of filler. There are also unimportant skippable sidequests like "go and defeat ten slimes" or "go talk to this guy" but they don't block the main quest's progression.
Want to go to the next town? You can't, until you solve the bullshit going on in nearby towns and do the game's story as you're supposed to, so all these random sidequests are given a sense of forward progression. "You must be making progress in your main quest, because you're further to one end of the world map than you were during yesterday's episode!".

So in today's episode, the heroes find a plague-stricken town called Coffinwell, help Dr. Phlegming save his girlfriend Catarrhina, and also Mayor Laria is there. Save the day, defeat the ghost named the Raging Contagion in the Quarantomb, and the disease vanishes, then you leave the town with Dr Phlegming as your new party member.

Move on to the next episode and there's some bullshit to deal with in the next town, where there is some new character who usually takes the spotlight away from you for most of his episode since you're just a travelling murderhobo who helps people and your party members are the fleshed-out characters with quirks and backstories and funny interactions with each other. People you've already recruited comment on today's episodes, but rarely matter much to it. Eventually the day is saved and you move on, typically with a new party member unless your team's already reached maximum capacity and the writing quality drops since you're now entering filler that doesn't even reward you with a new important character any more.

Anyway, the episodic structure is used to give the audience a strong sense of who this character is before he is reduced to a weapon you hit people with during combat.
But what kind of impression has Team Littlepoop given us?
Littlepoop is a murderhobo who got good too quickly, robbing us of any sense of personality or power growth. She can use any guns, any melee weapons, and boxcar-lifting psychic might to always win.
Calamity is there. He feels bad for shooting LP and assuming she's a raider just because she wore raider clothes. And that's it. He's a guy with a gun.
Velvet is preachy and hypocritical, with an utterly fucked sense of morality, which wouldn't be so bad if this was intentional and characters were allowed to call her out on it! And she comes out of fucking nowhere, during Littlepoop's random slaughterfest fight scene!

Imagine if the story did that "This trading colony was set up by Old Appleoosa to trade away from the slavers, also they came here to steal Derpy's latest child because they haven't been tricking and kidnapping and enslaving many travellers lately" thing. so Littlepoop calls everyone in town a pussy while begging them to join her fight. Derpy offers a reward, too. Nobody agrees to stand and fight except Calamity, who wants that reward and starts unironically admiring Littlepip's guts once she proves herself to be more than another big-hearted big-mouth Wasteland Rookie since she doesn't just die in a week like all the rookies he saw before her. Skip the Sexist Stable since it had no relevance to anything. Derpy and Calamity lay down covering fire and act as distractions and eliminate the place's military capacity while Littlepoop sneaks in to toss explosives and rob armouries and stealth-kill foes and recover Derpy's foal. She also recovers all the other slaves, which wasn't part of the plan. Anyway with the raid over, the heroes blow up the train at Old Appleoosa because they rigged it to explode, then they steal SkyCars and go home to New Appleoosa in those cars.

And then Velvet gets her own episode to herself. One slave child mentions seeing Velvet sing for them, take their money, and get booed on stage for saying to free the slaves. She's in a town up north.
They go north and meet Velvet.
She's trying to cure a town that's full of sick ponies, even though she's also getting sick. The pain is immense but she's still doing what she can to help others. She's even refusing painkillers because she says others need these limited supplies more. The heroes must venture into a Stable to get the ingredients to make a cure, and Velvet's dying so there's a strict time limit. But the Stable is not sexist (it needs a cool gimmick) and it needs cooler monsters. The heroes beat it, Velvet makes the cure while terminally ill, and administers it to everyone else before she takes it herself.
Calamity says "Heal yourself first, you fucking idiot. They're screwed if you drop dead"
and Velvet says "I would rather die than put my life before another's!"
but Velvet grows out of this stupid mindset over time. Anyway she's cured, everyone's cured, everyone happily moves on to the next town, and Velvet is introduced to us being actually cool-ish. At first she just wanted to be a travelling singer but seeing how fucked the world is made her want to be a medic.

Not-Pinkie's introduction was rushed, likely because Kkunt initially had a "dude an edgy child from a broken home ripping off pinkie pie and shooting adults with a rocket launcher and threatening people with explosives would be so fucking dark and cool!" moment and then decided having a character smile through the pain instead of crying about it would make the story less dark.
Imagine if this scene was actually good, and Not-Pinkie was this brilliant scheming genius who outplayed the entire party and almost killed them all for her dark lord monster buddy who claimed he can rez her parents but lied. She kills Demon and joins party, yay. end.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.290908
b85.jfif
>>290777
Btw you know what would make this story's "Raider and Slaver" shit better?
If the Raiders were not factory-default baddies, but distinct tribes with varying levels of bloodthirst and depravity.
The DeathStream Tribe lives in what used to be a port town, so they'll use fishing gear to fuck you up. Over the years they've gotten very skilled at using harpoon guns and thrown handmade hemp nets, but their favourite trick is to use enchanted target-seeking fishing poles as lethal weapons that'll go through your flesh and right for your heart.
The Red Rockets operate out of the ruins of a decadent pre-war dog hotel with its own pound. They train war-hounds to fight with them, and they all became half-dog because a glitchy auto-dog designed to be a vet keeps injecting dog hormones and dog DNA into anyone on its operating table. These mutt-ponies can mate with ponies to produce more mutt-ponies or mate with dogs to produce more dogs. These mutt-ponies also love capturing ponies alive, taking them back to the pound for mutating, and then enslaving them for work around the pound and abusing them for fun because where can a dog-pony mutant go even if it did have freedom? Someone might willingly hire somebody with a slave tattoo/brand, but who would hire a mutt-pony when their stigma is "those fucking Red Rocket savages from the northwest"? Those who prove their worth to this "pack" of mutts get to join raiding parties. Diamond Dogs could be their leaders but I'd rather this stand alone as its own thing. So they view diamond dogs as "pretenders" and they've made up a nonsense religion where they worship the robots around the hotel designed to pamper dogs and now pamper those at the top of this hotel's "food chain" (chain of command). They also claim big magical dogs invented this hotel and got killed by "those fucking evil filthy smelly ponies", but only those born into this pack of mutts believe that.
The Weast Watchers are the descendants of pre-war convicts trapped at a summer camp intended for small children and repurposed to rehabilitate convicts. It was hilarious, everything was intended for kids but forced onto edgy-looking murderous ponies. But when the bombs fell the male convicts raped their female camp workers en masse and enslaved them. This tribe fished in the local pond and used survivalist gear to hunt animals in the nearby irradiated Glowing Forest. But over the years their numbers grew too great for fishing and hunting to sustain them so they became raiders. Most of them can't actually read maps or use compasses and they think W stands for Weast (weest). A religion has formed out of old survival tips and misunderstood shit around the camp.

It's unique. It's unusual. Littlepip could fight many of these gimmicky fucks and it would never get old. It would certainly be more entertaining than watching her headshot generic Mad Max knockoffs over and over. I just pulled these out of my ass but I think I struck gold with that Red Rockets idea, I call dibs.

Anyway while all Raider tribes get their own gimmicks, land, backstory, and reason to be considered threatening and dangerous and crazy, Slavers become "Slave Companies" with corporate slogans and matching uniforms with logos on the body armour and high-caliber automatic rifles with underbarrel magic-electric-stun-blast shotguns the companies manufacture for their goons. They're hilariously corporate about everything and they love their contracts. And every morning they all get together to sing a stupid company song together, each company has their own and they're disturbingly optimistic and full of justifications for enslaving everything they can, especially zebras. Individual slaver soldiers are highly propagandized and in love with the companies that raised them from birth and gave them better gear than just about anyone else. It's quite rare that a soldier only pretends to swallow the corporate bullshit and says "Man this is bullshit" to his friends when off-duty. Usually they all buy it completely.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.290918
290936
Hey, wouldn't it be sick if Littlepoop found a 50cal machine gun that uses a time-rewinding spell to reset itself back to perfect condition and a full ammo capacity after every time you fire? It would never run out of ammo or need repairs. You could fire this thing forever because if it ever got hot after firing one bullet, it would reset itself to before it had gotten hot from firing a single shot.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.290936
290948
>>290918
>implying giving Littlepip more guns would make a difference to the average fight in this story
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.290948
aa2.jfif
>>290936
It's a shame the author forgets the tense and exciting "Every bullet matters, any bullet can kill, so scavenge and trade loot for more bullets" environment created by super-hardcore mods in his quest to make his bland one-note/zero-note OCs be what he thinks "cool" is.
Quipping like cheesy action movie heroes, effortlessly talking crazies into going from Hostile Enemy Mode to Crying Victim Mode, and effortlessly finding the best guns the author can dream up along with far too many bullets for them...
Maybe if the author gave Littlepip the power to Save and Load points in time like a videogame character, it would improve this story. We all know Littlepip has plot armour, so she won't ever die or lose unless that armour is temporarily revoked. So maybe if the author allowed himself to write Littlepip getting shot or stabbed or blown up by a mine or eaten by a giant monster or raped by a Raider or beaten to death, letting Littlepoop reload a save later to revive, it would give this story some unpredictability. You'd never know when something terrible would happen to Littlepip next.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.291022
291045
>>290781
>>290783
>I remeber a guy who praised this story in his review of it by commenting on how LP's interactions with incidental characters felt like the ones you would have with npcs in a game and that the story felt and "played" with the ida that the story kinda took place in a game universe.
To be fair, I can see how that might actually appeal to some people, particularly hardcore fans of the game (although from some of the posts here it seems like there are plenty of things for those people to complain about as well). I don't care for it, however, because the author seems to be trying to write the world realistically.

If you want a story set in a game world to feel like a game, it's better to set it in an actual game rather than the world of a game. Since that probably makes no sense at all, think of a story like Sword Art Online, .hack, eXistenZ, The Matrix, etc., where the setting is literally a video game or computer simulation, but the players are interacting with it as physical reality. Hell, you could even go with Friendship is Optimal if you really wanted to. If your characters are inside an actual video game, then it makes sense for the people they meet to speak like NPCs, or assign them nonsensical quests, or whatever.

With FoE, if kkat was planning some big twist ending where it turns out that Littlepoop has been playing a deep-dive VR game the whole time, then it would actually give legitimacy to most of the video-game-isms in this world. If done right it might even be interesting: for instance, what if LP was just a regular pony living in near-future Equestria, who beta-tested a new VR game? Maybe something went wrong, and the game somehow fused with her consciousness; now she's stuck inside a dreamworld based partly on the game's programming and partly on her own memories. Then, when she wakes up, it turns out that all of the major characters in the game are based on actual ponies in her life. Maybe Calamity is her gamer-bro friend, Velvet is a teacher whose vag she wants to eat out, Railright is the janitor in her apartment building, and so forth.

That would actually be an interesting direction to take this, though you do have to be a bit careful when using the old "the entire story was just a dream" trope, because when it's done badly, or when you just use it because you can't think of a good ending, it annoys the shit out of people. However, it would actually help kkat, because not only would it explain why his entire setting feels like a video game, it would also explain why his characters are mostly awful and massive parts of his story make no sense whatsoever. Plus, I'd be able to shit on him not only for his bad writing, but for his bad game design as well.

However, it doesn't feel like that's the direction he's taking this, and if he wants this world to be seen as actual reality then he should at least try to make it seem somewhat real. Having some random character his protagonist bumps into exclaim "all your base are belong to us" for no reason beyond "lol gamer memes" would probably get him a lot of upvotes and positive comments from gamer brainlets, but it would still be atrociously bad writing.

This may just be an opinion, but my general rule is that if you're going to novelize a video game, the way to do it is to take the story, the setting, and the characters and spin it into an organic story, which usually means setting the gameplay factor aside. Stories can usually be worked into different mediums, but each medium has its own rules and its own little quirks that are allowed, as well as its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, if I were going to novelize Prince of Persia, I probably wouldn't include a scene where the main character keeps dying on the same spikes over and over while trying to jump through a closing gate; however, I could easily take the basic premise of the game (rescuing a princess from an evil vizier), as well as elements like the dungeon, the traps, the guards that need to be fought, and so forth, and spin a believable story out of it. It just wouldn't follow the game exactly.

Incidentally, the same rule would apply if you were attempting to turn a novel into a game. This is probably the best example I can think of:

https://greatgatsbygame.com/
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.291045
>>291022
Speaking of characters that spew memes, Borderlands sucked a little less at this.
Borderlands is an inhospitable death world where evil baddies who'll attack you on sight greatly outnumber the people seen in tiny pockets of civilization in the various tiny towns.
Why is it like this? There's an in-universe reason.
Once upon a time, a shit planet called Pandora was used as an Eridium mine by big multiplanetary corporations. Eridium's a special practically-magical mineral. The corporations liked using imported criminals for labour. But then Dahl (company) abandoned the planet, its mining equipment, and its convict workforce. Shitloads of bandits broke out of work camps, and that's why the world of Borderlands is so shitty and bandit-infested.
Also these bandits occasionally quote shakespeare because somebody gave them books, or something like that. There's a lore justification for that. And no justification for them to shout "All your base are belong to us!" or "It's over 9000!" sometimes.

Kkunt could have easily justified the abundance of Raiders and Slavers by saying "Equestria didn't believe in the death penalty and Zebras weakened Equestria's moral fiber by giving it drugs. So every prison was massively overcrowded with rapists and killers and thieves. Every prison also had an expensive Stable-like nuclear shelter underground, so while poor ponies and hobos died from nukes, the baddies were protected because "HURR DURR MUH REHABILITATION! REFORMATIVE JUSTICE NOT PUNITIVE JUSTICE! MOMMY, DADDY, PLEASE DON'T EXECUTE THAT GIGA-RAPIST OR TAKE AWAY HIS LUXURIES IN PRISON, I CAN CHANGE HIIIIIIIM!!!" retardity. The Mane Six did their best but their underlings were fucking retards or Zigger-loving traitors.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.291127
291129 291349
e2f.jfif
I love you motherfuckers, all of you on this website and everyone in here. You're not fucking fake frauds like all the NPCs on this planet, you're good people and you mean a lot to me. This world's dark and it's getting darker every day figuratively and racially. But I know there are still good people in the world because we're here. I hope I can save a life some day, so I can feel like my life has had some kind of purpose.
I'm sorry if I've annoyed anyone by shitting so hard on this story.
I hate it a lot now, but when I was a kid new to ponies and fanfics and writing in general, I...
I didn't like everything about this story, I hated the way it treated canon characters and locations. And I didn't like how many character concepts, weapons, locations, quests, and plotlines were just copied straight from Fallout. But I'd never seen it done better anywhere else, so I thought this was the best it could get. And because I had to wait so long between sessions I could spend reading, I never noticed how repetitive and simple the story's fights, scavenging moments, and conversations are. I didn't know how much better these are when handled by better artists, so I enjoyed this fic's fight scenes and "Hero passes a speech check to effortlessly convince someone through dialogue and get what they want" scenes.
That shitty old fanfic of mine had a habit of writing interactions between characters like they were a set of small speeches that played when certain questions were asked. "How are you today?" "Here's a speech on how I am today." "What are hoverboards?" "Here's a speech on hoverboards." "Why are things happening the way they are?" "Here's the author telling you why things are happening this way and why the characters don't just do things differently".
I think this might be where I got it from. I've stopped now, but I still hate that habit.
I feel ashamed of the fact that I ever liked this fic. I'm horrified by the thought that it might have influenced my writing. I hate this story, but I've already finished the story so I shouldn't say things like "This goes nowhere" or "This never gets better".
I don't want to be a pessimist. I want to be an optimist. I want to believe this will help people.
I want to believe that this group review thing will help all the writers, including me, get better at avoiding the mistakes this story made.
I should let people come to their own conclusions on whether they think the Fallout or Fallout Equestria version of an idea is better when I tell people what source is being ripped off today.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.291129
291349
2EE65AF222DE216DE7E09C14E85B1EF8-637491.png
>>291127
I love u too anon. We all come from somewhere, whether meatspace, headspace, or wherever. You've made leagues of progress, and in spite of my generally and observably contrarian tone, it is appreciated.
Cheers fgt
Anonymous
3266c18
?
No.291349
oppresed, my people are.jpg
>>291127
>I love you motherfuckers, all of you on this website and everyone in here.
*Horse fuckers.
I'm happy to have you here too, i appreciate your ideas and opinions on things because they have more logical argumentative points of interest than what the average modern journalist is capable of coming up with against trump or some other dumb fucking subject like gay rights.
You do go overboard sometimes and ramble on about something unnecessary, for example bone hardening juice, but when you give such a detailed analysis of something no one gives a fuck about then to me it shows that you are free thinking as well as freely judgmental of unbothered topics, you are more deeper in thought than the average gamer which means that you have a higher IQ than the average man nowadays.
You have become better over time as you shall age like wine and leave your past behind, there is nothing that can stop any of us from achieving our goals other than ourselves and i will help you along that path if need be if you are worthy of it and i believe you are because i know you are not normal which makes you a unique specimen of non nigger like type.
>>291129
I hope we all can sort out our distances eventually as we are all in this ride together whether you like it or not.
I appreciate your view of Christianity as it reflects nicely off mine as well as how you treat other Semitic religions because they are more well developed than that of an atheist's or the average Christian cunt as you have researched this as part of your spare time and deduced intuitive thoughts on religious morals independent of others bias's telling you what to do or how to behave.
Love you too, father faggot of king cum.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.291506
291527
2368146__explicit_artist-colon-anon_1515_maud+pie_earth+pony_pony_semi-dash-anthro_blushing_chest+fluff_clothes_comic_cum_cumming_cup_dress_drink_drinking_drink.png
Oh yeah thanks for reminding me about bone-hardening juice
I hate it because it's stupid and boring but also...
Sure, it's cool to get bonuses like "You take 5% less Fire Damage" and "You deal 15% more Sneak Attack Critical damage" and "Your limbs take 50% less limb damage" in a video game.
But this book isn't a video game
it's a book and it should have given Littlepoop something cooler than a bone potion.
There is no limit to what magic or potions can do in this story. Ingredient rarity and ingredient price are built-in limits for potion ingredient gathering but the heroes could always stumble upon a bunker where Zebras killed each other but left their potion room and magically-frozen ingredient storage zone unharmed.
I don't just hate this for being stupid and boring, I also hate it for being uninteresting. Yes, getting a perk to make your limbs harder to cripple is great if you've got the Small Frame trait that boosts your Agility by 1 and makes your limbs harder to cripple. But it's still less interesting than some of the better traits out there. And it's not like Kkunt is trying to go for a "Littlepip is a humble hero whose humble stat boosts help greatly" thing. She's the main character. I'll spoiler tag some stupid justification the story reveals 30 pages from now, to blame Littlepip's magical retard strength (which she had her whole life) on something that happened many chapters after she demonstrated that strength multiple times. The story says the real reason she's so telekinetically strong and bad at real magic is because FEV/Taint exposure has turned her into a "Semi-Alicorn". Even though she lacks wings. She's just "Internally an Alicorn". Yeah, this fucking Unicorn literally becomes a "I'm an alicorn on the inside!" only unironically. And if that ain't symptomatic of the mainstream fandom's hypocritical piecemeal nonsense approach to what does and does not make a character a sue or not, what is? All the obvious bullshit overpowered super-strength, but none of the "icky wings" because of the "Stigma". Because the mainstream bronies don't actually understand writing, and their approach to what makes an OC a sue or not is "How does it look? Also does it contain any of those 100+ sometimes-contradictory usually-subjective often-entirely-up-to-interpretation traits TvTropes told me to sniff out and cry over?"
If the author wanted his OC to be special, he could have given Littlepip something GREAT at Big MT straight out of Fallout NV's "Old World Blues" level.
Or some original take on Big MT/The Big Empty.
Or some unoriginal combination of Big MT and Dead Money's Sierra Madre. And fuck it, perhaps some Mothership Zeta for doubleplus ungood measure. God, MZ was a stupid DLC typical for Babythesda's retard writers.
But hey, I guess writing a story where Littlepoop gets abducted by aliens and taken to a Equestria-observing alien satellite in the planet's orbit and not only survives this unholy hell that makes Big MT and Sierra Madre look easy in comparison, but thrives there and survives and earns her superpowers would just be way too hard to write.
Better to have some typically-malicious magical random mutation magic give her superpowers with no downsides for absolutely no reason, eh? That's easier for Kkunt to write.

Furthermore, I hate that the author never decides WHY Equestria fell.
I know a story doesn't need deep themes to be good, but good themes tie together a good story and make it more than the sum of its parts. Bad themes swallow a story and rob it of substance.
Equestria didn't fall for any specific reasons, it just did because the good intentions of heroic ponies weren't usually allowed to result in good things.
Sometimes it's a good thing that the pre-war ponies invented power armour and meth. Sometimes it's a bad thing that the ponies invented anti-power armour guns and nuclear apocalypse survival bunkers, at least until a hero gets the former and starts using the gun for greeat justice.

Imagine if the story said "Good intentions don't make bad deeds good", so it says Littlepip is bad for genociding all the raiders in a town including raider children, and it says pre-war ponies were bad for pointing a superweapon at Equestria "For everyone's safety" because Zebra saboteurs ended up using that to nuke the world.

Imagine if the story said "Morality is the most important thing" so it's fine for Littlepoop to kill a raider and it would be evil for a raider to prolong its or another raider's life, and the pre-war ponies failed Equestria because they forgot their morality and kindness and became a hedonistic drug-addicted race of thieving conquerors who invaded Zebraland and forced it to surrender and economically raped it so hard it shocked ziggers and got them to start doing terrorist attacks against equestria that eventually went nuclear". Or say prewar ponies=too weak to kill ziggers like they were supposed to.

Hell, a fucking Green Aesop straight out of commie propaganda like The Lorax would be an improvement! Say ponies lost their "in control of nature" status granted to them by Gaia The Secret Third Nature Alicorn (And mother of Celestia. Don't ask where the father King Cosmos went) for polluting the world so much during their Industrial Revolution and coal/oil-mining operations. Then after the nuking, which actually came from a nuclear large hadron collider glitch and not a war like the post-nuking ponies assumed, all the good ponies care about the environment and try to rebuild Equestria while the evil ponies abuse the environment. Evil raiders decorate their homes with gore, evil industrialists and slavers make big factories and mines full of slaves because hurr durr working bad, and evil armies get their evil guns/power armour from big evil scary factories. Then make the central goal "Getting to a beautiful green area spared the horrors of nuclear annihilation and protecting it from assorted baddies so it can grow and nature can start healing. hurr durr LET IT GROW!"
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.291527
291797
lime flavour nuke.png
>>291506
>Furthermore, I hate that the author never decides WHY Equestria fell.

This is a huge issue. Especially because the events of the war turn out to be so important to Littlepip's story. The "main characters", so to speak, of the war are the main six and, to a lesser extent, the CMC. I won't go deep into spoilers here because they've not really come up in any detail yet, but they're essentially our eyes into FoE's backstory. It's a foregone conclusion that their actions fail to prevent the end of the world and are, at least in part, responsible for causing it, but at the same time Kkat can't simply villainize them. That said, it's my firm belief that Fluttershy and Scootaloo are the two most heinously morally deficient characters in the story despite Kkat's attempts to portray them otherwise, but we'll get to that.... As a result, they make some pretty critical mistakes - and that's fine in principle, but Kkat just doesn't have the writing chops to present those mistakes as making a whole lot of sense. It also doesn't help that the zebras, despite serving as the opposing side in the war, receive next to no characterization as a race or culture, so it's not entirely clear what the ponies were fighting or why it was so desperate that they do so.

Fallout's story regarding the Great War is fairly simple and familiar. Communist China and the super-capitalist stuck-in-the-sixties USA go to war over dwindling resources and nuke one another back to the stone age. The messages are clear: resource overexploitation is bad, jingoism is bad, unrestrained capitalism is bad, communism is bad. The details are largely irrelevant to one's understanding of the setting at large. FoE's war, by contrast, is a gigantic mess. It's simultaneously details-heavy and lacking in vital information, and tries to make its major players responsible for heinous moral and political errors while keeping them relatable, sympathetic, and identifiable as the ponies we were introduced to by FiM. The result is a very weird and dissonant backstory that always seems to be trying to say something meaningful but rarely says anything because its proverbial mouth is full of proverbial cock.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.291530
291532 291538 291570
1605370868994.jpg
>>290777

There is another page break which delineates another disconcerting time skip, and we rejoin LP and Co. in the middle of a firefight.

>Another raider pony went down, most of her head splattering on the wall behind her, mixing with the graffiti. I dipped back behind the apple cart (the apples had long rotted away and the raiders had taken to decorating it with pony skulls).
This poster ( >>290789 ) gave us kind of a quick rundown on what the the raiders are in the context of the game, which is helpful, but what are they exactly in terms of the game's story? Are they just random hoodlums walking around attacking people, or are they supposed to be some kind of organized gang or tribe, like the Hell's Angels or something?

Here is why I'm asking: from the way they are discussed in the text, it seems that the term "raider" refers to a specific kind of pony. Ponies classified as "raiders" seem to have distinct traits and behaviors that apply to every member of this group. They also seem to be somewhat organized: groups of them live together, and they work together and fight on the same side.

Taken on its own, one would assume "raider" would just be a generic term for any random ruffian one encounters in the wasteland, but these ruffians wouldn't necessary have the same appearance, behavior, or motivations, and while they might attack you to rob you, they wouldn't go around murdering and torturing just for laughs. What seems to differentiate "raiders" from just random run of the mill baddies (insofar as they are distinct, I suppose) seems to be a proclivity towards purposeless violence. I can understand the wasteland being a dog-eat-dog world, and it stands to reason that ponies who are willing to kill to survive would last longer than weak or soft-hearted ponies in this kind of environment. However, in all the instances where we've encountered raiders, there are some common threads.

They seem to commit violence for its own sake, rather than to achieve some practical end. As I pointed out earlier, the raiders in Ponyville had no obvious reason to cage and torture the ponies they kept in the Library, and seemed to be doing it out of pure sadism. I also notice that in situations where raiders are present or have been present, the author makes frequent references to obscene graffiti that Littlepoop notices. There seems to be a distinct connection between the graffiti and the presence of raiders, which again suggests some level of organization and some common beliefs or practices, like a gang or a tribe might have.

I remember earlier we were discussing Thomas Hobbes and the idea of moral breakdown in a state of anarchy, and my basic view was that in the absence of enforced laws, individuals would simply revert to whatever their basic nature was, rather than everyone devolving into the same type of criminal just because law no longer existed to stop them. In an environment like Fallout, you could probably assume that there would be an uptick in random violence, particularly in conflicts over property and resources, but it's hard to imagine huge numbers of people ponies, whatever going around slaughtering and torturing people ponies, whatever and smearing poopoo-peepee graffiti over everything they find, including their own living space, just because there was nothing preventing them from doing it ok, maybe in places with a large black population.

Anyway, I don't want to get pulled off into another long tangent, so let's continue.

>Little Macintosh had two more shots left. I had more bullets, but I wasn’t quite sure how to reload it without relying on my magic. It was strange enough firing the gun in my teeth.
Why the hell is she firing with her teeth? Is her magic still out of commission? If so, why? Seems like enough time has passed that she should have recovered.

Part of what annoys me about this story is that the sense of time is usually quite vague. The last time we heard about Littlepoop needing horn viagra was back in Chapter 9, when they were in the field with the (apparently explosive) wagons, running away from zombies and/or ghouls. If I remember correctly, it was just beginning to grow dark at that point. Once that sequence was over, they arrived at Silver Bell's farm, where they spent at least one night. When that episode concluded, we joined them an unspecified amount of time later, during daylight hours. The interim between their departure from the farm and the present moment is once again unclear, but we can presume that these events are taking place on the same day.

We have no idea how much time is supposed to have passed between the night they spent at Silver Bell's and the present day. What we do know, however, is that Littlepoop was able to summon Frank, show him the thing in the barn, and send him off to relay a message to New Appleoosa. Then, once this message was received, we know that Derpy and Railright made the journey from NA to the farm. The distance between the farm and NA is unknown, but the distance between NA and OA apparently takes "days" on hoof, mere hours by train (even though the train is pulled by walking ponies), and ??? by air. For simplicity's sake, I am going to assume that Derpy and Railright flew, even though the text is vague on this point as well. Even if the flight took only a couple of hours, you still have to consider the time it would have taken to relay the message. If I understand the situation, LP saw a sprite bot wandering by the farm, grabbed it, called Frank, and told him to come look at the megaspell. Frank was like "oh shit," and floated off to carry her message to NA. How long did it take him to float there? Unless these bots can handle high-speed flight, it probably wouldn't be much faster than walking.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.291532
291533 291535
1604157796492.jpg
>>291530

Also, even if everything happened as quickly as it possibly could have, these ponies are all pretty exhausted at this point. The chain of events, if I understood it correctly, is that the escape from Appleoosa, the train fight, and the trek across the ruins of Cloudsdayle all took place on the same day. They stopped at Silver Bell's farm for rest and resupply, but didn't end up getting any rest because she locked them in the room for some reason, then they decided to escape for some reason, and then they found a megaspell hidden in the barn, which was apparently a big enough deal that they had to forego sleep and send a message right away. However, it's clear by the end of Chapter 9 that Silver Bell is not actually a threat to them, and the megaspell isn't going anywhere one way or the other; in fact as far as I can tell they just fucking left it in the barn anyway.

So: why not stay at the farm and rest for a day or two? There is nothing hostile there. It has food, beds, medicine, everything they need. They don't have any pressing need to go anywhere else. The slaves are taken care of, Silver Bell is taken care of, LP isn't allowed back at the town anyway so there is no reason for them to head back there. They clearly need to rest; by my count, they haven't slept in roughly 72 hours or more. What possible reason could they have for rushing off on a long trot to Manehattan that, in a rare moment of clarity, the text informs us will take just shy of a week, when it would cost them absolutely nothing to rest for a couple of days? Or, since kkat seems to only understand life when you explain it in the context of a video game: why not just stay the night and restore your HP/MP? The farm is a free bed; you won't even have to use up a tent or spend 5 gil.

Anyway, whatever. They are in the middle of a fight. The text informs us that initially, Velvet Remedy attempted to reason with the raiders, but was rebuffed, and then Calamity started shooting at them. At present, Velvet is tending to a minor wound that Calamity received.

It is at this point that Calamity asks them to strap him to the apple cart behind which they are currently hiding (the one filled with skulls instead of apples, as I recall sacrebleu! le edge!). This bizarre suggestion is met with puzzlement, until Calamity explains that he wants the two of them to climb into the back of the cart (presumably they will remove the skulls first) and ride while he pulls them through the air while simultaneously shooting at raiders from above. Well, why not; this idea isn't significantly sillier than most of the rest of this story has been.

Oh wait, actually I misread that: apparently Calamity is going to focus entirely on pulling the wagon, while LP shoots at raiders from inside the wagon. That makes...slightly more sense I suppose. Velvet, presumably, is just going to be dead weight.

Anyway, they do the thing I described. Some shit happens, Littlepoop takes down a raider or two using her sniper rifle, then Calamity gets shot in the wing. He delivers a stupid one-liner that I'm sure the author had been waiting to use for some time, and then manages to make a crash landing on a nearby roof. Littlepoop is thrown from the wagon and appears to injure her shoulder.

>I looked up in time to see the apple cart roll over Calamity, jolting off the lip of the roof with a loud crack, and proceed over the edge, dragging Calamity along with it! Blood smeared the rooftop from his shot wing. The wounded pegasus gasped and kicked out with his legs, catching and bracing himself against the lip of the roof. He stopped, trembling, the weight of the wagon pulling at him through the still-mostly-intact harness. “Help!”
And thus ends the great experiment in airborne raider-sniping from inside a pegasus-drawn apple cart.

>Velvet Remedy moaned nearby. The lucky mare had managed to land face-first on a nice, soft mattress -- raider bedding (on second thought perhaps not so lucky).
It's not clear why raider bedding would be undesirable as a landing pad, unless the implication is that she's going to get raped or something.

As far as I can tell, the situation is that Calamity is now hanging off the edge of the roof with a heavy cart dangling from him. Littlepoop is nearby but injured, and Velvet I guess is in a bedroom or something. At this point, Velvet and Littlepoop rush to help Calamity, and manage to detach the wagon harness so it can go falling. It seems like there ought to be at least an attack of opportunity or something for the raiders here; this all probably takes place across the span of maybe 60 seconds, but that's plenty of time for the raiders to take them out. Calamity at the very least is vulnerable here.

Page break, and then this:

>Velvet Remedy knelt on the mattress (which she had tried flipping over to a less grossly stained side, only to be deterred by the colonies of bugs living beneath), and contemplated the memory orb we had found in the wreckage of Ditzy Doo Deliveries. She hadn’t actually played it yet.
So I guess the deal with raiders is that they have bad hygiene and their beds are gross, which is why Velvet found landing on one a stroke of questionable fortune. Well, at least that particular mystery has been solved. What has not been solved, however, is why the fuck are they worrying about the memory orb that LP found in a cabinet or something a whole goddamn chapter ago when they are in the middle of a gunfight?!?

Oh, wait...hold on, I think I've got it. This is another of those things where the story cuts off abruptly in the middle of a scene and then starts again at some undefined point in the future, isn't it? To paraphrase the iconic Linus Van Pelt:

Kkat, you're the only motherfucker I know who can take a wonderful scene like an exciting firefight and turn it into tedious, unintelligible bullshit. Of all the schlong-swallowing faggots in the world, you are the shlong-swallowingest.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.291533
291535 291537
1604210097747.jpg
>>291532

>Velvet had taken care in cleaning and mending Calamity’s wounded wing as best she could, then wrapping it in healing bandages, assuring the pegasus that he would be ready to fly again by the next morning. Presuming, of course, that he follow her advice and stay earth-bound until he could get some rest.
It is clear that the author has indeed skipped ahead in time again. Presumably the fight ended somehow, and we are getting a recap of what happened in the interim. Instead of answering the question of "how the fuck did Calamity survive, since when we last saw him he was dangling from a roof exposed to gunshots from multiple angles?" kkat focuses on the more prescient question of "how did Calamity's wing wound eventually get treated, and what advice does his primary care practitioner have for him on speeding up his recovery?"

Actually, past this point, time gets even more confusing than it normally is. First:

>There was a hatch down into the building. Moments after we had cut the apple cart loose, a single raider pony had burst up out of it, armed with a metal rake whose tines had been sharpened into deadly claws. He was felled by a twin-shot from Calamity’s battle saddle. Even at the edge of passing out, Calamity was still a perfect shot.
This would have to have taken place shortly after the page break cut us off.

But later:

>Looking up to Calamity, “Ready to brave the building?” I was hoping that all the raiders were already dealt with, and we could scavenge freely. But that was probably wishful thinking.
So...is the raider fight over, or isn't it? The way it's looking to me, the page break faded us to black, then during the blackout they were attacked by one pony from below, and had enough time afterward to patch up Calamity's wing. However, they seem to still be on the roof, so I'm assuming not too much time has gone by. So...the fight is over I guess? For now? All the raiders that were outside on the roofs shooting at them a few seconds ago are dead, and there are presumably more inside the building, but they're just staying down there for now I guess?

Part of the problem is that the author does a piss-poor job of laying these fight scenes out to begin with. In this case, we were never even given an approximation of how many of these guys there were, what the layout of the location is, or anything. This area is simply described as "a small series of buildings." We know they are on their way to Manehattan but I don't get the impression they've arrived yet so this is...what? A town? An old farm? Or just a cluster of random buildings that is just here because it's here? We don't even know what type of buildings we're supposed to be visualizing. For instance, the building they crash-landed on top of I was visualizing as maybe a two-story house, but it sounds like the author is picturing something larger, presumably with a flat roof. The problem is we just don't know. As ever, the enemies are just general baddies that appear out of nowhere and then disappear back to nowhere.

Anyway, I guess there are no more enemies for now, so they take a moment to heal up.

>Once again, our medical supplies had been reduced below what I would have wanted; I was counting on scavenging more from the buildings. Surely the raiders had been hoarding some.
That was quick. Didn't you guys just load up on supplies? This is from literally two subchapters ago:

>Calamity had bartered quite well, gaining us medical supplies, food, canteens and even ammo for Little Macintosh
Have these guys really gone through that many supplies in the space of a day? Or is it supposed to have been several days since they set out from the farm? The only clue we have is that earlier it mentions Manehattan being "less than a week's trot" from the farm, so presumably they are somewhere between those two points. Unfortunately, time and space have no coherent meaning in this story.

Then, out of absolutely nowhere, Littlepoop asks about the bomb thingy from the barn:

>“I mean, why was it a bomb? I thought megaspells were cast.”
Not an unreasonable question, and the response is probably information we will need. However, this really isn't the time or the place to be asking about it.

This is how Calamity explains it:

>“Unicorn ponies cast spells. Zebras did not. They mixed their magics into potions and phylacteries and fetishes. Their megaspells were either worked into enchanted missiles, like the one which obliterated Cloudsdayle, or snuck into population centers and detonated, like the balefire bomb which annihilated Manehattan.”
Well, good to know I guess. Again, not really the time or place, but good to know I guess.

Anyway, it looks like they are ready to explore the building they are on top of.

>I leaned forward and bit the end of Velvet Remedy’s tail (trying not to think of what it tasted like) and reined in her forward trot.
What did it taste like? I'm assuming this is meant to be bawdy, since the author seems to feel compelled to remind us that his main character is a lesbian or a bisexual or something every few paragraphs. However, nothing in the mood of the current scene suggests sex or romance, nor does getting a mouthful of hair sound particularly appetizing. Anyway, "trying not to think of what it tasted like" is ambiguously worded; the connotation could be positive or negative. Again, I assume what the author means is that the particular flavor of Velvet's tail is sexually arousing to Littlepoop somehow, but it could just as easily mean that her tail tastes like horse hair; probably oily, grimy, long-unwashed horse hair at that. It's entirely possible she doesn't want to think of what it tastes like because it tastes awful; we don't know. Anyway, they go into the building.

>There were three raider ponies inside, barricaded and waiting nervously for us to show ourselves.
Why are they nervous? Why not just attack them? These raiders seem to just attack whoever drops by. It's 3 on 3, so it's an even match. Why?
Anonymous
e00e141
?
No.291535
291539
>>291532
>>291533
Glimy a cute
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.291537
291550 292280
1604603052250.png
>>291533

Anyway, the three unfortunate raiders are quickly dispatched with a couple of grenades from a box that LP found earlier. As before, setting off explosives indoors doesn't seem to cause any serious damage to the structure.

>The rest of the building was raider-free, although Calamity and I had to clear a few tripwires and “disarm” a bouquet of grenades hanging over the front door before I was ready to declare the building safe for looting.
Oh, well, that's good then. If you're going to loot, it's always best to do it safely.

>Disarming the grenade bouquet was done at a distance, and involved a thrown bucket and a lot of running.
I'm not quite sure what this is implying. Does dumping water on grenades disarm them somehow? I don't know that much about grenades, but that seems suspicious. Maybe they are literally throwing a bucket at the grenades to intentionally set them off? But in that case, they really wouldn't be disarming them, would they? Anyway, I don't know how many grenades come in a "bouquet," but I'm imagining it's a large enough number that intentionally detonating them indoors would be a really dumb thing to do.

>“Oh, I can come down now? How nice.” Velvet gave me a flat expression and trotted down past me.
>Crap.
>Below, I heard her suck in a breath at the slaughter below. I closed my eyes, wincing, then opened them and walked down after her.
I guess because Velvet doesn't like violence or whatever? Oh, who even cares. The scene ends with a page break, and as far as I can tell the raiders are all dead. Another pointless battle scene ends pointlessly.

Anyway, when the next scene opens, we finally get a vague description of what sort of buildings we have been looking at for the past two subchapters. There was a post office, an army recruitment center, and a grocery, so presumably this once was a small town of some sort. The building they landed on and were throwing grenades inside was apparently the post office.

Now seems like it might be a good time to drop another protip for writers: when you place characters into a setting where a lot of shit is physically happening (like a gunfight scene), you need to give the reader a clear visual picture of what's going on. Explaining what they saw after the scene is already over doesn't really do anyone much good. Case in point: during the last scene, we are simply told that Calamity crash-landed on the roof of "the most intact building." This tells us absolutely nothing. For one thing, "building" is an incredibly generic term and could refer to anything from a multi-story office complex to Fluttershy's infamous forbidden shed. Second, "most intact" tells us nothing either, because since we've had no description of the other structures, we have no ability to compare them; all we can do is assume that, of this unspecified number of unspecified types of buildings in various states of unspecified intactness, the one upon which Calamity has landed is the most intact.

If the building in question is a post office, we should get a sense that this is what it is even if the characters don't identify it as such right away. Calamity crashes onto a building; okay. How many stories is this building? What is it made of? Does it have a peaked roof or a flat roof? Is it large or small? What condition is it in, specifically? How about the buildings around it, what do they look like? For that matter, what is this group of buildings we are in supposed to be? Does it look like it used to be a town? If so, are there streets, streetlamps, mailboxes, that sort of thing? When LP opens a trapdoor on the roof and descends into a room with three raiders barricaded inside, what does the room look like? Do we see any bags of mail or anything lying around that might give us a clue as to the former function of this structure? We may not need to know literally all of this, but we should at least be given enough information to visualize the immediate surroundings these characters find themselves in. Dumping the characters on top of some random structure and telling us a whole scene later that it was a post office gives us absolutely nothing.

And while we're on the subject, for the love of goddamned motherfuck, if you're going to have a fight scene, we need to know how many enemies there are. Even just an approximation is fine. If it's a swarm of them, that's one thing, but this town was populated by...how many raiders did we just fight exactly? Five? Ten? We have no idea. All we are told is that there are "raiders" in this "group of buildings," several of them attack LP and her friends, there is a fight, an indeterminate number of raiders are killed, and then suddenly there aren't any more of them. This business where enemies suddenly materialize and then vanish back into the ether whenever the author decides the fight is over is just getting obnoxious.

Honestly, though, what I really can't get over with this story is just how mind-numbingly BORING it is. Honestly; what is the appeal of this? Why is it so popular? As awful as Past Sins was, at least the guy was actually trying to tell a story. I just tallied up the word count of all the chapters we've read, plus the portion of the current chapter we've read, and the grand total is 62,413. We have read 62,413 words of what is apparently one of the most famous and highly-regarded works of pony fanfiction, and there isn't even anything vaguely resembling a plot yet. For comparison, the complete text of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is 63,604 words long. In the space that Hawthorne can tell a complete story from beginning to end, we have witnessed nothing except this little rug-munching klepto wandering around a depressing hellscape, looting random cabinets and alternating between fighting the same two basic types of enemy over and over (and the two enemy types are virtually identical). This is like reading a play-by-play of someone's dungeon crawl.
Anonymous
b3529f2
?
No.291538
291541 291548 291564
>>291530
I can't recall their names too well but Fallout New Vegas had a few groups of raiders that wouldn't just loiter around attacking you on sight and could talk to them. I know one were the Great Khans but I never did anything with them when I last played New Vegas. Also had another group who were living in a vault after they tricked the inhabitants to let them in and repayed the vault dweller's kindness by slaughtering all of them and running a drug running operation out of there. Can get on good terms with them by selling drugs to them and takes the time to give character to some of the memebers. Got one lady who is always wigged out on drugs and trains the dogs they have for combat and also have Cook Cook who's a bat shit crazy guy with a flame thrower and while he is initially hostile towards you if you ask him about his prized pet brahmin he begins to dote on her and if you compliment her he'll be happy to talk about how great she is.

There isn't super in depth stuff but just giving them names and allowing you to speak with them doesn't change the fact they are "raiders" but it helps you see how some groups might form like that in a post apocalyptic setting plus explains why they do what they do.

Did still have random raider goons roaming around in New Vegas but usually had these minor factions tied to them and a gimmick to their actions. Great Khans want to be left alone in an inhospitable spot in the Mohave so they attack people to stop anyone from settling there and to grab stuff off their bodies, Cook Cook and his crew want to make caps selling drugs and doing drugs and taking care of his pet which he loves, The Powder Gangers used the war with the Legion to break out of NCR prison and want to try and remain free whole carving a chunk of NCR territory for themsevles.

Helps make them a more dynamic threat rather then just nameless mooks to shoot. Can choose to gun them down on sight like I did as a kid but if you take the time you can speak to them to hear their perspectives and depending on your faction can approach them in different ways to reconcile the differences or help them turn a new leaf.

Obviously might not work best in a story like this though. Like you said the New/Old Appleosa plot could be a story in of itself but Kkat has a destination in mind for LP and he wants us to be there for every step of the journey to show us all the cool Fallout references except with ponies and rape. Would be a very long story indeed if he choose to pause at all these places and give them the deserved nuance to really flesh the conflicts out.

Really long post though so going to make another if that's alright.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.291539
mememe_883e444ffbe2b908a244567a537e7339-1.jpg
>>291535
Anonymous
b3529f2
?
No.291541
>>291538
One last thing I wanted to add was while you said you never played Fallout there is a New Vegas DLC that has a very interesting character. He ties into the history of Caeser and the Legions named Joshua Graham. Has an interesting thing where his group had found a copy of the Bible and some Mormon texts so was able to revive Christianity in their group and try to live by it.

Have an interesting contrast where Joshua adhears more to the Old Testament with wanting to seek holy retribution and vengeance on the White Legs who have attacked their home of Zion and Daniel a humble preacher who follows the New Testament and tries to avoid violence when possible.

With both of them they have some pretty fantastic writing and curious if anyone has tried to make a FoE equivalent. I feel like it'd be perfect for FoE since unlike our world with greys Equestria had their gods living among them. Harmony was a real force they could use and be guided by. So what happens when the world dies and a group finds these old friendship letters and tenants on Harmony and how will they use it to try and remake Equestria if at all.

Don't need a magical mcguffin and can have them need to use their grit as these new systems of morals they are now fettered to are tested at every encounter.

https://youtu.be/kVPJ4rskpnI

Got a neat thing where where Joshua talks about Psalm 137 and the history of the groups in the DLC. Think you might like it Glim
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.291548
291556
>>291538
>I can't recall their names too well but Fallout New Vegas had a few groups of raiders that wouldn't just loiter around attacking you on sight and could talk to them. I know one were the Great Khans but I never did anything with them when I last played New Vegas. Also had another group who were living in a vault after they tricked the inhabitants to let them in and repayed the vault dweller's kindness by slaughtering all of them and running a drug running operation out of there. Can get on good terms with them by selling drugs to them and takes the time to give character to some of the memebers. Got one lady who is always wigged out on drugs and trains the dogs they have for combat and also have Cook Cook who's a bat shit crazy guy with a flame thrower and while he is initially hostile towards you if you ask him about his prized pet brahmin he begins to dote on her and if you compliment her he'll be happy to talk about how great she is.

>Did still have random raider goons roaming around in New Vegas but usually had these minor factions tied to them and a gimmick to their actions. Great Khans want to be left alone in an inhospitable spot in the Mohave so they attack people to stop anyone from settling there and to grab stuff off their bodies, Cook Cook and his crew want to make caps selling drugs and doing drugs and taking care of his pet which he loves, The Powder Gangers used the war with the Legion to break out of NCR prison and want to try and remain free whole carving a chunk of NCR territory for themsevles.

Just this has more depth and believability than anything I've seen in this story so far. What irritates me about kkat's raiders is that they are like the guys in Mad Max that just run around in crazy punked out costumes blowing shit up because they can. Even just doing something as simple as thinking of each group of raiders as its own little band, that has its own purpose for existing, would be an improvement. Like the first raider group she encountered in Ponyville: maybe they are a band of comrades who decided to blockade the bridge so they could raid passersby. It's not as if each raider needs to be a perfectly formed character, but there should at least be an effort made on the author's part to make them feel like distinct individuals who really exist in this world, not just a single enemy class that randomly spawns every now and then.

The storylines from the actual games that you describe sound quite a bit more interesting than anything in this story. I'm actually a bit curious to play these games now, at some point I may give one of them a try. In any event, these stories are examples of an actual attempt to flesh out the world; these characters may still be baddies who attack the protagonist, but the games' creators clearly put some thought into who they were and why they were attacking. Even just a tiny effort along those lines from this author would go a long way. Kkat's villains are literally just video game baddies in the old-school sense of the word: a single enemy class that randomly spawns from nowhere and attacks the protagonist, like the ghosts in Pac Man or something.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.291550
291578
>>291537
>I'm not quite sure what this is implying. Does dumping water on grenades disarm them somehow? I don't know that much about grenades, but that seems suspicious. Maybe they are literally throwing a bucket at the grenades to intentionally set them off? But in that case, they really wouldn't be disarming them, would they? Anyway, I don't know how many grenades come in a "bouquet," but I'm imagining it's a large enough number that intentionally detonating them indoors would be a really dumb thing to do.

This is another moment where Kkat relies purely on expecting the reader to be intimately familiar with Fallout 3. One of the traps you can encounter - common in raider-heavy areas - is 3-4 grenades strung up together in a bundle, usually above a doorway or some stairs, connected to a tripwire or pressure plate. Triggering the trap releases the grenades from their bundle and pulls their pins, so if you set it off by accident you have maybe a second or two to run away or die. Presumably, Pip threw the bucket at the relevant trigger (which is never described) to set off the trap from a safe distance. Kkat probably felt very clever for acknowledging - momentarily - that physics exist.

Fallout 3 doesn't simulate environmental damage of any kind, so of course the building is also undamaged here.
Anonymous
b3529f2
?
No.291556
291622 292042
>>291548
I liked the ideas Nigel had for good pony raider gangs. Took me a few hours to recognize the Red Rocket inuendo and didn't realize it until I was driving home from work. Would help flesh out the world a bit and could add some conflict to how Little Pip has to deal with them. Plus while characters like Driver Neafy or Cook Cook aren't these complex characters with deep arcs they got memorable quirks and lines that help then stick with you and make you more hesitant to just turn them to giblets compared to "Lvl. 23 Raider Marauder".

I'd say New Vegas would be a great one to try out. I never played the DLC but heard Old World Blues is more comedy focused where the Courier gets taken to a weird sci fi lab where their brain, heart, and spine get replaced with cybernetic parts. Can even find your brain and depending on your story decisions, stats, and perks, it'll react to you differently usually chastising you for being such a buffon and forcing the brains of the group to be dragged along on your escipades.

Honest Hearts like I said is a neat dive into tribal conflicts with the main characters representing different aspects of Christian philosophy and morality leaving the player to choose what path is best to take in this new world and how to settle the land disputes of the White Legs vs the Dead Horses, Sorrows, and New Canaanites.

Overall New Vegas as well as 1 and 2 beat out 3 and 4 by a long shot on story and characters. New Vegas was made on a heavy time crunch so a lot was cut from the game but considering the circumstances they managed to tell an interesting story where every side has a perspective you can hear out and no definitive good ending where you can see your journey and the ripple effects it caused throughout the game.

Also suprised as well how positively FoE and Past Sins are looked at in the community even to this day and on the chans. You saved me over $80 Glim from buying Past Sins after catching the tail end of your review and while I know you don't want your word to be gospel or to tell us what we can and can't like it wasn't a story I'd want to read or worth the cost to buy a physical copy.

Can see it on /mlp/ where people go gaga over mentions of either story, Little Pip, Velvet, Black Jack, Nyx and swooning over how amazing the stories are. Sure it was early fandom work and in the case of Fallout Equestria it opened a neat world anyone could add their own stories to but the heaps of praise it gets is surprising. Don't want to poop on everyone's parade who likes it but the fact they seem to do so with a zeal they don't even afford the actual show or Fallout games.

I didn't grow up with LittlePip but seeing people say "LittlePip is best waifu!" Where currently I can't find anything that really draws me in to her character the same way they get drawn to her. Just seems extra ironic how /mlp/ likes to talk about the Twitter and Equestria Daily sects of the fandom being lgbt loving cum guzzling consoomer faggots while they act the same way towards creations that get the /mlp/ seal of approval "Season 2-9 bad, EQG good" "Creaturequestria bad, lgbt shipping good" "Scat bad, futa good."

Know I sound mean and hoity toity but feel like crituiqe is important and can see it with plenty on /mlp/ who make art and greens be excited and anxious to recive it so they know how to improve. I spoke to a friend about Project Horizons and he said apparently the author was going through a lot during the time of writing it and while he had a rough outline of the ending he mostly just took the story in whatever direction was being influenced by his emotional state.

Could make for an interesting story and if half the stuff I heard about what that story turns into by the end I'd say it sounds entertaining but not 1.7 million words entertaining. I wasn't there when he was writing it but I'm guessing the fandom reaction was the same as it was back then being unbridled praise so have to wonder how much that influenced these big time horse famous writers. Espetially since in the case of Conversion Bureau and Friendship is Optimal the authors created this cult of personality around them which didn't improve their writing and just made them even worse people to boot.

Holy Nigel that's a long post there apologies for that just frustrated.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.291564
291569
EYDH9ToVcAAKrjL.jpg
>>291538
Did you know? Killing Cook-Cook the rapist's cow will make him Frenzy, causing him to attack friend and foe on sight.
Also it's funny how in FNV they keep trying to sell the Great Khans as this "innocent tribe who keeps getting fucked over and dindu nuffin wrong". You can help it become better drug-makers by giving it Follower help, or help it in all sorts of other ways, or kill it yourself. But anyone who played the old games knows they were always a raider tribe. They brought Bitter Springs on themselves by pissing off the NCR and... Did they harass settlements/raid its caravans/break its drug laws or something? I remember wishing there was a dialogue option to let me say "Fuck the Great Khans, they deserved worse" to Boone but I can't remember what brought me to that conclusion.
Wait, now I remember.
PAPA KHAN HIMSELF tells you
>"When the NCR came to the Mojave, we thought they would be easy pickings. We raided their caravans, their towns, their camps - they couldn't stop us!"
And this information is swiftly forgotten by the game. The "Best ending" for this tribe has them "Recover their lost glory" by fucking off over to Wyoming and creating a "Great empire". Gee, I wonder how much suffering these filthy savages caused in their quest to make this great empire.
Considering how hard the game tries to paint the Legion as pure evil, it's bizarre to see the "Perfect neo-noble savages fucked over by the Americans! It's wrong when others conquer or abuse them but fine when they conquer and abuse others!" cliche here.
That's "modern" (jewed) society's replacement for the Noble Savage cliche: The idealized savage who's "just allowed" to behave barbarically, though it's a tragedy whenever anyone treats the idealized savage in anything less than a limp-wristed simping manner. "Oh, it's such a tragedy that the once-great Native American empire had its beautiful stone-age pride hurt and its glorious slaves freed by those damn dirty Americans with their White ideas like 'Freedom' and 'Capitalism' and 'Rights' and 'Basic sanitation'."
Give me a fucking break.
You know what? This is probably the only place where I'll ever get to say this. Why the fuck do we treat "Native" Americans so generously when they've done so little for America since its founding? It's not like their "reservations" are independent countries with their own laws, cops, society, and civilization. They're just people American govt simps for out of white guilt, even when they've got less than a single percentage of "Native" blood in them. They're treated better than most actual land-owners in America who bought the bloody land. When you think about it, isn't it really insulting to every "Native" who died during America's founding to pretend that all that bad blood will just magically go away if American taxpayers are forced to be sufficiently nice to the remnants of a historical footnote? I don't care about hurting their feelings but someone out there who does should reconsider America's policy towards them. White people can't please the remnants of Dodo Civilizations with no constructive future or significant past and we shouldn't "insult their dead" by wasting our time or money trying when we could be trying to get into space instead. The romans gave people shit, and the romans gave people good shit.
A native German says "ICH BEEN NEIN LINDBURGER" and a native frenchman says "ON HON HON OMLETTE DU FROMAGE" and a native American says "Yeehaw, ah luv Texas an' the ol' red what and blue almost as much as ah love freedum an' cheezburgurz!". Those who demand we call them "Native Americans" should come up with their own name and their own funny word like nigger but for them. Because if an African can move to America and "Become American" instantly, why does he and the white American born there who was raised American supposedly end up less American than the self-proclaimed "Native Americans" who didn't even settle this land first and just came from somewhere else like us anyway? Anything bad we did to them's something they did to each other before we showed up, and they did barbaric shit we'd never even dream of doing. I don't hate them and want them gone with the fury of a thousand suns or anything like that, I just think they're really lame and sad, and America's current way of treating them won't help their cultural problems. There is no one amazing super-prosperous native american place full of science and industry and economic opportunity every other "native" wants to visit. There is not one of those on the planet. Unless you count hyper-rigged casinos sustained primarily by gibsmedats as something that can be called economically prosperous. But if you listened to one of those "natives" who's fully consumed with ethnic hatred, the shit she'd say would make a "Woke-andan Afrofuturist" die laughing. So maybe they should be forced to say that around all "Wokeandans" to resolve that particular Neo-Weimar Problem. Despite all the shit the bad ones say about us, they'd move to some other country if they really hated us and planned to ever go from tax-absorbers to tax-payers and didn't want us getting their tax money. The good ones who move on from their anti-american "We're the REAL americans and everything you say is racist!" shit deserve props for breaking the cycle of failure and resentment that consumes most failed peoples. The bad ones... they're like a bad ex-girlfriend America's still forced to pay alimony for even though most of its kids just end up being raised by the Communist American Deeducation System and turned into commies anyway.
Anonymous
c9149df
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No.291569
291578 291580 291597 291622
220957__solo_suggestive_solo+female_plot_octavia_upvotes+galore_stockings_lingerie_dock_rose+(flower).jpg
>>291564
For fuck's sakes dude, hold your gods damned autism this time and let someone with a NOT ALREADY CLOSED AND PRE-BIASED mind do some out loud thonking.

The Great Khans were ONCE a great raider tribe, until they were pushed out of their own attacks by other tribes and certain factions that closed in on them. While picking on the NCR (who totally fucking deserve/d such), their decline happened. Why? The Khans were stagnating and isolated, so fuck your presuppositionalist dogshit. The NCR higher ups decided that WHEN they sent soldiers (re: expendable shitheads filled with propaganda) to Bitter Springs during one of the worst times for the Khans that it was (((PERFECTLY FINE TO BACKSTAB SAID KHANS))) to get back at them! Why, LOOK, that sounds JUST LIKE IKE THE KIKE'S EXCUSES FOR MORE CHICKENHAWK WAR PUSHING! Fuck you again, jackass.

Your fucktarded red herring exploitive narrative of the Native South/Central/North Americans is typical for bias. "They dindu nuffin fer us so we gotta remob dem so we can be worse dan dem an poison da entyre worlb". THEY lived without the shame and fear of being a cucked goyim so fuck you for the third time, britmutt. Now what HAVE Yuropoors done except spread a cancerous sand kike slave religion around the world that wasn't even their own to begin with? Oh, that's right: spreading their cancerous sand kike slave religion around the world that wasn't even their own to begin with AND annihilating everyone that doesn't autojewmagically become a happy fucking slave content with their forced yoke like a dipshit goyim ought to be. You are copping out that false flag dismissive attitude like every lame, bootlicking, dickless socialist shitheel nigger in the US. Sperg out elsewhere.

Also, don't forget Boone REGRETTED his actions because he was lied to about the very fucking reason he was even in Bitter Springs, and what caused it. So, fuck you again, dipshit.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.291570
a04.jpg
>>291530
>Another raider pony went down, most of her head splattering on the wall behind her, mixing with the graffiti
Author missed a hilarious opportunity to describe the graffiti and make the raider's head splattering across it hilariously ironic.
>Are they just random hoodlums walking around attacking people
In Fallout 3 this is all they are because Bethesda couldn't be arsed to do what FNV/1/2 did and make most raiders part of distinct tribes. We all know of the Jackals and Scorpions and Fiends and Great Khans, but in F3 they're just generic videogame enemies who wait in bombed-out ruins doing nothing until they detect you and bum-rush you with their shitty weaponry.
>time
Littlepoop has a personal computer practically bolted to her arm via 'deadlock seal'. It can only be removed without specialized tools if she's dead. This computer can tell you the exact date and time, so LP should ALWAYS know what time it is!
The author really missed a trick by not doing what Sonic Adventure 2 Battle for the PC did and constantly telling you the time and location at the start of every major scene that takes place at a significantly different time or location from the last one.
Though for "Littlepip on roads killing random encounter baddies" scenes he could either name the roads and major locations old-world things like I-95 and Route 101 or go for some modern wastelander edgy names like "Doom Path" and "Fuck You Road" and "Cuntopia".
Seriously, how can LP visit a Raider shithole called "Ponyville" by her PipBuck and then visit some new post-nuking location, and still have its location and true name marked on her Pipbuck?
Is it because the Raiders didn't properly graffiti a new name onto the Welcome To Ponyville sign somewhere in town?
Faggot author just ported that thing from Fallout 3 where sometimes real-world locations have their real names and sometimes made up new post-apocalyptic ones without seriously thinking about it.
Speaking of the Hell's Angels, are they redpilled?
>Frank's message
We don't yet know if he's one hacker who likes controlling Spritebots or an AI within one/all of them or a pony ghost killed by a computer experiment gone wrong or a COLOSSAL FAGGOT WITH BETTER SHIT TO DO so this moment of "I'll send your message cross-country" is fucking retarded.
If he's going to have a Spritebot closer to RailedAsshole and pals deliver the message, he should fucking say so instead of floating off into the distance and swiftly returning from the offstage dimension with ponies who got there faster than the heroes ever could.
>they conveniently find an apple cart full of skulls
this is fucking retarded why would the raiders store skulls like this
>Calamity becomes the horse that pulls this carriage so Littlepip can shoot foes like she's the gunner in a Warthog while Calamity focuses solely on flying this cart around like he's a Reindeer pulling Santa Claus's fucking sleigh
This is retarded
NOW the author's thinking about how ponies would use their natural capabilities to fight? It's a bit fucking late for this! And it's retarded for the unarmoured practically-nude Calamity to fly in front of this cart and lift his friends into the air. He's exposing himself to all sorts of fire from below, they could shoot his balls or skull or chest or wing to kill/cripple him and send him, his cart, and his friends crashing down into the ground.
Anyone remember when Littlepip lifted fucking boxcars? She shouldn't need a Pegasus to lift an apple cart for her.
And how does the apple cart function, anyway? Why would it work like the Pegasus-Drawn Carriages from MLP S1E1 when it should logically just dangle down and sway below him like a cock would if he had one?
I get it, we aren't supposed to seriously think about the time Sandy Cheeks tore a random stranger's face off or the time Patrick in a gorilla costume walked in on a fake Patrick talking to Sandy and Spongebob and the fake patrick turned out to be a real gorilla in a Patrick costume because that's a kid's cartoon.
Pretentious youtuber "Brony Analysts" loved to hyperanalyze similar cartoony shit in FIM just because science things would sometimes appear in the background.
But this is a story that desperately wants to be taken seriously because it's so goddamn edgy.
This isn't some kind of Magical Pegasus "Sky Cart" that could have all manner of special magic upon it. It's a fucking random apple cart they just found.
So it makes no sense for Calamity to have his newfound apple cart stick out ramrod-straight behind him like he's Wiley Coyote who started off pulling a cart behind him but then ran off a cliff but he and his cart didn't fall until he looked down and realized there's no ground for either of them.
This moment of "Oh look, a random vehicle for me to cartoonishly use!" reminds me of that time Spongebob rode one of those Pioneer Rocks for miles in the Pizza episode.
Hey, maybe that's how the New Appleoosa ponies got here so fast! They took a fucking giant rock.
Come to think of it, a sufficiently strong Unicorn able to lift their own body weight and a big rock could actually use that big rock as transportation.
Come on, Team Littlepoop. Just find another Boxcar for Littlepoop to telekinetically lift, and you can all stay within it as she levitates it like it's Eggman's hovering egg thing.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.291578
291586
9af.jpg
>>291550
>use a bucket
When I read that I assumed she'd cover the grenades with a bucket and magically hold it together to try and contain the blast.
There was a pressure plate?
Man it'd be funny if Littlepip did that "let's detonate the explosives with a bucket on the pressure plate" thing but then the detonating grenades destroyed the building's main door to the outside world
They could still leave through windows if they weren't barred. Or jump/fly to other buildings once Calamity's healed. Or have LP levitate them all down since she's self-levitated over mines before.
>>291569
Sorry. I've only ever met one native american and she was an anti-white asshole who constantly bitched about white people even though she was in the UK, so she made me dislike them all. I'll admit that I don't know much about the native americans. I think whites are cooler than them because whites got America's flag on the moon and I doubt the "Natives" could have ever done that. Is there a book about how cool they are I should read?

But the Khans... Remember how the Khans were raiders in Fallout 1 and 2? They preyed on the NCR/Shady Sands for decades. And when the Khans left California and moved to the Mojave, they continued to keep attacking the NCR according to Papa Khan himself. Unless he's lying to try and raise his people's spirits.
They manufacture and sell drugs, they want to join the Legion just for revenge and will only reject the offer if you prove how badly the Legion treats its guys or talk whatshisface the Legion guy into having a Racist Moment in front of everyone, and if Bitter Root is to be believed they treat their kids like shit. If you get the Followers to help them, they manufacture drugs.
Bitter Springs happened because the NCR attacked a Great Khan location. NCR expected them to flee through a certain route so Boone and pals were placed there to shoot them all. But then their elderly and wounded went through that route instead. When Boone said "These aren't soldiers, they're civilians" into his radio, what he said wasn't understood and he was given an "Open fire" order. It's bad luck for the GKs and you can blame the NCR guy who gave the order if you want. You can even talk Boone into becoming vengeful over Bitter Springs and he ends up going after that guy with two bullets, one ofr the guy and one for himself. But the NCR wouldn't have been there for this retaliatory attack if not for the GK's aggression against the NCR.
Don't forget what the ending slide says about their "They joined the Legion" ending.
>As reward for their loyal service, Caesar forcibly integrated the Great Khans into the Legion. The sick and elderly were killed, the women sold as wives to ranking officers, and the tribe's identity was annihilated. Though many Great Khans mourned the death of their tribe, many more were ultimately satisfied with their revenge against NCR
They just struck me as annoying druggie assholes, but if there's a moment where the GKs are sympathetic in-game I haven't seen it. But I'd go check it out/check the wiki if you think there's some redeeming quality to them I haven't seen yet. I don't love the NCR, they're thieving bastards ill-equipped to handle more territory. But from what I've seen the GKs suck eggs.

Hey, remember that guy in FNV who gives the NCR bad intel because he wants his guys out of the Mojave?
Do you think he caused Bitter Springs by giving Boone's squad bad intel?
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.291580
cdc99966fe7b508c2e393f5ccbb3a3f4.jpg
>>291569
Anonymous
c9149df
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No.291586
291593 291622
1509988357718.png
>>291578
Your >>>personal experience<<< is opinion, not fact. Fuck off again. All you are doing is voicing a biased narrative that fits with your own preconceived goals rather than BOTHERING to understand any context of the Bitter Springs situation. Sure, the Great Khans made and sold drugs, yet here you are CONVENIENTLY leaving out the fact that EVERY SINGLE FACTION did the exact same! In the past the Khans were indeed worse than most polities, but at current in F:NV they are still leagues better than the NCR, which you ALSO conveniently forgot to mention wiped out hundreds of tribes/villages, then looted and ransacked dozens of recently opened Vaults for their own shitty authoritarian purposes! Good fucking job there. As for attempting to make your red herring false equivalence between the Great Khans and the First Nations: fuck you again, dipshit. They were steamrolled by far more Yuropoor huwhite than they could possibly deal with, even after the Great Alliance and the broken treaties. That's called superiority of cuck numbers which tells me you haven't bothered to real any real books in your life, which also tells me you are shilling and simping for the "victor" rather than the one whom was victimized. I'm not going to spoonfeed into your degenerate (((example))) of why the Great Khans are, in general, shitty people. Yes, their ancestors and some of current ones have committed pretty fucking dehumanizing actions that would give the hardcore Fallout 2 Enclave personnel aneurysms. No, they aren't quite past that, yet you have options in forcing them to take part in the modern world rather than relegating them to a pathetic footnote. Do you recall the ingame description of the book 'Pretty Horses'? If yes, then good. If not, then look it the fuck up. It was one of the few remaining examples of how honorable the Mongol people could be during peace, and war. At their worst, the Khans are just another bunch of shitty raiders. At their best they are a broken, disillusioned, scarred people about to be subjected to the fucking Legion's (((treatment))). What differs between Papa Khan and that Cucktzar? Khan is a human being that CAN be reasoned with and doesn't forcefully lead a monolithic bunch of selfish, savage, enslaved, authoritarian-supremacist mutts like the Legion or even the NCR for that matter. Now, the real question boils down to which is the bigger asshole here: the Great Khans whom are suffering horribly and visibly trying to move away from their tainted past, the bureaucratic nightmare of those faggot loving niggers in the NCR, the insane batch of mutted dipshits that enjoy their slavery in the Legion, or (You)? One answer is all you get, make it count.

If you're talking about the nearly retired NCR dumbass in a fort which was once a golf course, he was giving false intel to raise alerts on the thousands of Legion infiltrators crossing into the NCR's little protected northern borders. There's a good ending for him that was cut from the game IF you told him to make clear, concise reports on infiltrations, exactly like what happens when you run into with Vulpes and his crew of nignogs.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.291593
291606
>>291586
Is it me? Am I the asshole for saying the Great Khans deserved Bitter Springs?
If they were real people that probably would be a really terrible thing to say. The individual Great Khan members who attacked the NCR should have been prosecuted, it shouldn't have led to ten seconds of all-out war between the two tribes followed by a refugee camp for some of the losers and a home for the others.
If you convince Papa Khan to break his alliance with Caesar's Legion, replace Papa Khan with Regis, and ensure the NCR wins in the end the NCR eventually breaks its amnesty agreement with them and sends them all to an "isolated, barren reservation, well north of NCR trade routes". That's a dick move. I don't like the NCR.
Where in the Fallout series does it say the NCR looted vaults?
What do you think is in Pretty Pretty Horsies: A History of the Mongol Empire?
Do you wish the Great Khans had more "Make the audience sympathetic to us" moments in FNV? Maybe it's just because I was physically and mentally abused by my parents as a child but I think any culture that collectively beats its children up during a coming-of-age ritual is a shit one. I get the authors wanted to combine biker gang and Mongol stuff into one faction but that detail really should have been a "Only those who want to become Khan Soldiers have to go through that" thing.
Considering how they can only make their own empire once they have info from the Followers Of The Apocalypse, do you think they could have beaten NCR to the country-creating punch if they were luckier?
Anonymous
abb50e3
?
No.291597
291606
>>291569
As a Euromut and Christfag I'll say I'm biased and can't agree with everything you said but do think it's best when making arguments to condense the points as best as possible and not allow emotions to derail it into a tangent and cloud facts.

I'll say I didn't read much about American colonialism but from what I did read another big factor to conquring the natives was the benefit of firearms, infestructure, ans smallpox among other diseases.

Still got to get around to playing New Vegas again since both times I played it was after Fallout 3 and Skyrim so was in the Bethesda simp mode and just played like how Bethesda would want you to. Caesars Legion big meanie poo poo heads, NCR= America so good guys, Great Khans are bandits and bandits are only pinyatas that drop gooie bits and caps!, Super Mutants stinky shoot them all. Really missed out on a lot of the nuances of the story and factions. Wasn't until the disappointment of Fallout 4 I really looked back and saw how each side has its positives and negatives with smaller factions and groups caught in the ebb and flow of your choices.

I'd be somewhat inclined to side with Nigel on the Great Khans since of trying to build a civilization having a marauding tribe like that in the area wouldn't be conducive and would have to wipe them out. Admitidtly don't know all the details about the conflict but for the sake of each side they'd all want to see the others wiped out. Khans want the NCR out so they can easily prey on individual settlements and travelers, NCR want them out so they can establish trade routes and easier to defend towns, and the Legion wants to use them as expendable pawns and either force them into the Legion and dissolve their identity to use as more fodder or wipe them out so they won't have to worry about them again.

Also holy moly had to comment on that Octavia pic because whew nelly more of that por favor!
Anonymous
c9149df
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No.291606
291610 291611 291612 291622
1418359596741.jpg
>>291593
Yes, you are an asshole. What the fuck else is wrong with you, Nigel? Do you feel some fucked up (((moral obligation))) to kick a cripple when they're on the ground if only to reinforce how badly you didn't like them in the past? If they're a traitor, a kike, or a commie, pick them up and shoot them in the forehead while they can at least look in your eyes as you finish the job. Good job Nigel, you can get your microdick revenge fix while at the same time being a hypocritical, pathetic excuse for a human being. That still doesn't change the fact that you simped hard for a clearly biased side of "b-b-but muh morality r better dan yurz cuz i sed so". Or was that you simply blowing out your autistic wall of text counter to have a bigger number? Regardless, that doesn't change the fact that you didn't fucking read half of what I wrote: the Great Khans are still prone to being SHITTY PEOPLE. Fuck Papa Khan for trying to keep the "traditional raider" mentality, but also fuck Regis for being a subversive piece of shit. Now, if you really want to challenge yourself, even if the Player Character does his or her best to uplift them, they're human, and as humans they can be related to REGARDLESS OF HOW "BAD" OR "GOOD" THEY ARE. That is falsely conflating an ingame story of RELATIVE A/MORALITY from each group to somehow being a perfectly clear cut, black/white, good/evil set of decisions.. ones that must be adhered to IN YOUR HEAD ALONE. Oh, let's not forget the part where you handwave the NCR finding it perfectly convenient/acceptable to colonize and destroy "any culture that isn't (((OURS)))". You want examples? There's 4 in Fallout 2. Don't remember them? Shady Sands "incorporates" 3 local villages, all of which Tandi herself tells you about taking over cities, not to mention one takeover of a Vault filled with raiders that the PC can either hand over, or force the NCR to get along with the squatters. Did you ALSO forget the dozens of examples in F:NV that you can learn while playing the game? No? How about that one overgrown Vault, or the one that the NCR fled from ghouls, or the... wait, it's like you don't have a fix on what the word "backstory" really means! With that newfound knowledge, you are, at the same time, dehumanizing an admitted bunch of shithead druggie raiders for desperately trying to move beyond their fucked up origins, and yet admonishing the NCR for not being more authoritarian. You are the biggest hypocrite.

With that out of the way, do you realize by now that PROJECTING your fucking bias due to being abused when you were young, especially in places where it isn't necessary, is a symptom? Before you sperg out next time on your piecemeal rants, treat the underlying causes first.

>>291597
Sure, here's a book for you to read: 'Forked Tongues and Broken Treaties'. Unlike Nigel whom can't contain his fucking 'tism long enough to stop acting out, you probably won't hurt your brain trying to understand how and why nearly every Yuropoor judeo-christcuck, the most mutted, laughably gullible >people< outside the chinks, never keep their word and are seen as absolute filth.

As for the various factions.. the Boomers and the Followers are hardheaded shits, but at least they have worthy goals that they aspire to. Same with the Enclave Remnant: they're all survivors from the Enclave during Fallout 2, and though they're trying to carefully make up for the awful, inhuman actions committed, they show remorse. The Great Khans... simply suck. They're a bad caricature of an even worse caricature, yet the Legion and NCR are still far worse in context. One prefers to use judeo-mormon chattel slavery to solve their problems, the other prefers to use corporate slavery to keep the endless bureaucratic mess that Tandi created afloat. None of those factions can be considered "good guys" as that would constitute objective morality. You, as the Player, through the ingame actions of the Player Character, get to choose what form of morality or amorality is acceptable or workable to you. Don't like allying to raiders, slavers, bandits, thugs, corporate thugs, authoritarians, socialists, communists, anarchists? Don't do it. Save that for another run, or for when you feel like nuking some dipshits to prove a point. At the same time, don't treat an >>>opinion<<<, especially the steaming messes that Nigel leaves everywhere, as casual fact.
Anonymous
abb50e3
?
No.291610
291618
B0083042019EBDCA0E280DD9673BDB57-2142121.png
>>291606
I'm definitely not the type to self flaggulate myself over European colonialism but it's impossible to ignore the negative effects it had and needless cruelty inflicted. I didn't study much American colonialism but I did read some South American stuff though most my reading was about China and India. Obviously got the argument that it's anarchy out there so if Europe didn't do it someone else would have but a lot of it was needlessly cruel even looking at the morality of the times. Plus breaking writen treaties is never cool. Sad to know you are on the money though about Europeans and whites being cucks though. Chines might belive eatting a raw pangolin that was skinned alive will make their pee pee bigger or burning dogs alive will also make their pee pee bigger but don't see any other race besides whites have so many who want to collectively commit ethnic suicide and gleefully destory their own history and nations while being a crab in the bucket to drag down any sane people.

I didn't mean to start this massive storm here and I'm sure Glim is going to be suprised to see it all when he comes back but I will say this does speak a bit positively on the writing of Fallout 1,2, and NV that we can all have these arguments and debate about what the best options are for even small side stories let alone the main conflicts where as 3 it's either super awsome power ranger BOS vs meanie racial purity Enclave who like stealing fresh water from babies or 4 with good guys Minutemen want to be bff and help a settlement vs the Institute who luv da science and decided to make cyborg gorillas because eh fuck it whatever maybe we can teleport it into a settlement and watch it rip people in half.

Always important to read the points given by the other side and while you may be if I may assume related to the Natives of the Americas or Africa and me being a mix of Hispanic and European plus you being I'll assume agnostic or pagan and me Catholic I don't have anything to gain by plugging my ears shut and blowing a raspberry. I love Christian philosophy and Thomas Aquinas stressed learning from differing viewpoints since worst case scenario you understand how the other side feels so can strengthen your arguments to better defend your beliefs and best case you learn something new and can take that knowledge and improve your beliefs. You won't stop me from being Catholic but I can learn about the failings of the past and use that to make sure I don't repeat those mistakes and hold myself to a higher standard.

Also keep these cutie mares coming!
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.291611
291619
663.png
>>291606
The Great Khans are a made-up group of people from a video game. If the creator of the game accidentally made them cuntier than they let on, what am I supposed to do? Should I call them baddies and move on, or should I complain about their lack of humanizing elements to make them more sympathetic like I already did? To make up for how many times you insulted me I should probably insult you over that but I want to move on and get back to talking about this fanfic.

Would you call me a cunt if I said the Gnorcs from Spyro 1 didn't get much development and the writers should have made an entire homeworld out of the Breezebuilders vs Land Blubbers conflict?

The first time I encountered the Great Khans was when I got to Bolder Springs. I talked my way in and negotiated a ceasefire between the NCR and Khans even though they helped protect the asshole who shot my character. "If the character doesn't shoot me on sight then I'm probably not supposed to shoot it, right?" was my reasoning. I was neutral on the GKs after that. I also played Fallout 1 and 2. Was surprised to see that the Khans were baddies in those games, but I was told not to read the wiki when playing those games so I assumed there's a canon "You turn the Khans into good guys and they move to Vegas" ending to fit with FNV's events.

Eventually I did Boone's quest and protected the Bitter Springs camp, and I heard about Bitter Springs for the first time and became a NCR-hating GK fanboy. So I joined House, beat the game, did a second playthrough where I tried to complete everything before ending the game since that character's story was "done" in my mind. Also on that save Veronica attacked me for killing the BOS like House wanted and I wanted her to be alive again. On some playthroughs I did Great Khan quests and on some I did other quests. I also did all of Veronica's quests to make up for the time she died. It sucks that she doesn't get a 100% perfect happy ending, but I guess it's deep too. Gradually I learned more about the GKs and decided they kind of sucked. Yes, it was wrong for the NCR to kill their fleeing noncombatants according to our modern sensibilities. It probably counts as a war crime. According to our modern sensibilities it's also wrong for the GKs to raid. I know it's a wasteland where bad things happen, but raiding caravans/towns is morally wrong and raiding military camps is buttfuck retarded. What did they think was going to happen? Did they think they could just prey on and piss off the fucking NCR forever? If the GKs had skin tones a few shades darker would we be having this conversation?

I do not admonish the NCR for "not being more authoritarian". How did you get that from what I said? The NCR is authoritarian and that is bad. The NCR is a corrupt mess. I don't like it. I think the NCR is a load of stupid authoritarian cunts who rule a bunch of idiots and assholes. They can't handle the territory they take and they don't put enough effort into tech and industry. They have no right to barge in on Nevada and try to tax/annex it. They deserve praise for defending Nevada from the Legion in two wars, but their motives for doing it are bad and that's why House fans don't feel bad about making sure House gets to keep what the NCR fought two wars to try and steal. A lot of "House is pure evil"fags forget the Dam and Vegas are part of his country but if you side with the NCR you have to assassinate House and give NCR the dam. It's not like House fucks the NCR over completely, he just maintains ownership of what he has and dictates the terms NCR must agree to if they want power and water from what he has.

Does House ever do anything evil in this game? Besides how he kills the Kings if you help smooth over tensions between the Kings and NCR and make sure they both distribute the NCR's goods to NCR/Freeside hobos. Besides that, does he ever do anything evil or are most NCRfags just "Hurr durr capitalism is bad and he wants to own everything"posting?

The "Empire" they made in Wyoming... After how hard the game beat the "Authoritarianism and empires are bad" drum, should we just assume that they solely inhabited untamed land and created a curelty-free empire without the need for any human bloodshed at all? Sure, fuck it, let's say that land was filled with radioactive man-eating vampire horses twice the size of normal ones, and even bigger wolves that prey on those, so the Khans ride RadHorses and killed RadWolves and all humans involved in this empire are not slaves but Khan family members instead.

If their gimmick's supposed to be that they USED to be bad guys, the story did a shit job setting that up. What good things do they do to try and make things right now? Ex-baddie characters don't have to express regret over their old ways but it would help. What good things do they do for their long-term survival? The story tried to paint these ex-raiders who miss their raiding days as innocent virtuous victims solely for being victims of the NCR, but did the Khans give refugee camps to their victims? Did the Khans ever try to make up for what they did? Did they ever become... IMMERSIVE? Sorry, couldn't resist. I wanted to like the GKs more than I did.

I felt bad for the Followers of the Apocalypse. I felt bad for the soldiers at Searchlight who tell people not to get close to Searchlight. I felt bad for a lot of characters in NV. Hell, I felt bad for Gnasty Gnorc from Spyro 1. He didn't ask to be made. He didn't ask to be made ugly. I felt bad for the Great Khans until Papa Khan casually bragged about all the raiding this raider tribe used to do. I felt betrayed because I'd been a fan of them for so long. And I felt annoyed at my lack of a "Fuck you raiding is bad" dialogue option. When I did a Legion playthrough, I was shocked that most Khans are completely fucking fine with what happens to the women of their own family because "At least we kicked the NCR out of the Mojave and got our precious revenge".
Anonymous
009033b
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No.291612
291619
>>291606
Also to be honest you're completely right about us. I'm a colossal faggot and my people are cucks and we've failed every enlightenment-era ideal we've ever claimed to do everything for. Our countries are jewed because we are all cucks who have had our ability to meaningfully fight back removed. Our hopeless culture doesn't care about its children or their physical/mental health or even what quality of education they receive, so the communist is able to brainwash all the kids he wants and isolate/abuse those who know something's wrong but can't put it into words yet. For all the shit we've said about being better than people who needed us to teach them sanitation and science and reading/writing, we're dumb cunts too. Those who came before me sold my future and all I'm doing is prolonging myself out of weakness and trying to tell myself it's possible to learn something positive from all the time I spent on fanfics before I decided to stop writing and learn to code. I can't save anyone. I can't even save myself. For as much as I hate the NCR, "Wait and see" is all I can do right now. Wait and see if this country becomes so shit that I end up leaving this country and moving to FBI-land where the CIA can get me.
Anonymous
8142357
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No.291614
291615
1532760.png
Looping the conversation back to the topic for just a moment - all this discussion of the NCR just reminds me of FoE's take on it, and how hilariously banal it is. Note: ending spoilers. Gawd, the leader of Talon Company - an amoral band of griffon mercenaries whose loyalty is to money and nothing else - founds the New Canterlot Republic by seizing the resources of the various factions Pip and her friends destroy. Because Gawd is one of Littlepip's allies, it's taken as a given that this new NCR is an entirely functional and moral successor to the Equestria of old, bordering on 'happily ever after'. Among other things, FoE literally ends with Equestria having a griffon president, for whom they are building a castle.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.291615
291617 291619
>>291614
Doesn't Gawd literally raid trading caravans for supplies in front of Littlepoop, pissing her off?
Anonymous
8142357
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No.291617
>>291615
Not that I recall, but it's been a while.
Anonymous
c9149df
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No.291618
291622 291625
1402203010810.jpg
>>291610
Where in the SHIT did I ask, imply, or even mention that you should (((self-flagellate))) for being what you are? Nowhere. Nowhen. Nowhy. Nowhat. Nohow. That was not remotely a thought process when I was posting against Nigel the pants shitting BRITCUCKMUTT FAGGOT SPERG. I simply want him to stop AUTISTICALLY, EMOTIONALLY, BLINDINGLY SCREECHING ABOUT SHIT HE CAN'T CONTROL OR LOGICALLY THINK OF, BUT WANTS TO PROJECT UPON EVERYONE ELSE SO THAT HIS TINY MICRODICK BRITCUCKMUTT SELF-SERVING HU-FEELINGS AREN'T HURT. I hereby congratulate you for being </1%/ as dense as that fucking retarded inbred cunt is on average, though I'm still extremely suspicious why you are simping for the "hurrdederp judeo-shitstain mutts r da beeessssst even tho we wuz kike kangz but cant admit it cuz hurr we wuz carolingian kike kangz nothings an follow durr retard apocalyptic writangz uv some retarded inbred jew two fousand yeers ago" bandwagon. THAT is funny to me in a sad, unironically judeo-cucked filthy manner. At least chinks have the audacity of knowing they are lying straight to my face when they can't possibly fulfill their words/oaths/treaties/contracts. In comparison? The average huwhite amerimutt/britcuck/Yuropoor always pledge as follows: "I'm (((never)))) going to betray you for what you have [even though I WILL betray you when you aren't (((conveniently))) looking so I can't feel bad about it because I'm such niggermutt traitor trash that I can't (((bother))) to hold my ideals upright without betraying you for the kikes]", all the while holding a kike owned/bought flag in one hand and a kike assassin's knife in the other. Isn't that funny? Is that hard to understand? Is it that hard to CARE when you're not owning slaves, raping slaves, destroying cultures that (((aren't your own))) because your crypto-kike religion motivated (((leaders))) tell you precisely WHAT TO THINK? No, it isn't. None of this is funny. Cucktomas Aguinas the bitch-boy jewtoy is the biggest of historical crypto-kikes, and here you are admitting that you follow his slave-enforcing ways. Good job. You don't even care until you are exposed to being whatever the fuck your shitty inconsequential lineage is. Blood means nothing which makes this entire interaction with (You) nearly as lousy as dealing Nigel the sperged out jizz stain. You see, I don't CARE what you are so long as you AREN'T kiked britshitniggermutt trash like Nigel the Gatekeeping Goyim Golem whinges about being, especially when he gets his 'tism feelings off over whatever retarded shit he is or isn't at the time he feels like going at.

This isn't my board, it isn't your board, and it definitely isn't NIGEL'S fucking board either. I am disgusted at his constant LACK of understanding subjectivity when topics outside of his own gods damned nothink doublethink thoughtcrime experiments happen. I rarely even fucking bother to post here except when upending the complacent judeo-shitstain niggermutt traitors like Nigel where I can remind them of their own TREACHEROUS SCORN AT A FAR BETTER FUTURE THAT THEIR ANCESTORS DESTROYED IN FAVOR OF THE HUWHITE KIKE SANDNIGGER MUTT LIES GIVEN TO THEM, WHICH THEY CHOSE TO ACCEPT BECAUSE IT'S SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH FUCKING EASIER TO SWALLOW THE PIGSHIT RIDDEN SANDKIKE PROPAGANDA RATHER THAN THINKING CRITICALLY FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR OWN CULTURE. Fuck Nigel and every single cuckmutt like him. They get the bullet first. Oh, wait, what's this? MY OPINION?! Yeah, here's MY opinion: Nigel is a braindead bootlicking traitor that can never be an ally since he cannot even think beyond his own poorly imposed britcuck thoughtcrimes. End of fucking rant, and fuck Nigel.
Anonymous
c9149df
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No.291619
1526518__safe_artist-colon-randy_derpibooru exclusive_edit_oc_oc-colon-aryanne_oc only_akanbe_bipedal_chest fluff_colored_ear fluff_emotional warfare_i.png
>>291611
Fuck off and stop typing for the first time in your life, Nigel. You are a subversive, degenerate, shitstained britcuckmutt with zero redeeming value. Go back to reading your narutard fan fiction instead of trying to be oh-such-a-good-goyim.

>>291612
Fuck off and stop typing for the first time in your life, Nigel. You are a subversive, degenerate, shitstained britcuckmutt with zero redeeming value. Go back to reading your narutard fan fiction instead of trying to be oh-such-a-good-goyim.

>>291615
Fuck off and stop typing for the first time in your life, Nigel. You are a subversive, degenerate, shitstained britcuckmutt with zero redeeming value. Go back to reading your narutard fan fiction instead of trying to be oh-such-a-good-goyim.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.291622
291632 291635
1275937249093s.jpg
>>291569
>>291586
>>291606
>>291618
You are either a brilliant troll or the American Nigel; I can't tell which just yet.

>>291556
If I was able to convince just one person not to spend $80 on a copy of Past Sins, then I know my labors have not been in vain.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.291625
291626 291632
>>291618
Wait so do you want me to be a literal hitler who loves the white race and hates all other races or not?
Anonymous
e00e141
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No.291626
291633
>>291625
Well, Hitler didn't hates all the other races. Just a btw.
Anonymous
c9149df
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No.291632
291633 291635
1565495501284.png
1527195809929-3.png
1359592__suggestive_artist-colon-alcor_rarity_backbend_beach_beach+towel_beach+umbrella_bedroom+eyes_bronybait_cloud_dialogue_dimples+of+venus_female_h.jpeg
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>>291622
So you want the tl;dr version? Here goes: I'm 11 double shots of moonshine into being drunk, shit's happening that I CAN'T DO A FUCKING THING ABOUT, but most importantly fuck Nigel "I'm a pathetic queer cunt that loves mommy/daddy abuse stories because they cater to my inbred background fetish of being a cuckstained britmutt" the Goyim Golem that never ceases to be anything save for a whiny, annoying, faggot-ridden pest. So, over all, have these ponies whom are much better than anything FAILout E-sports-cuckstriedhard ever produced. Better? Good. However, I will take your "northern United States version of a non-cucked yet raging autistic sperg" as a complimarent because I absolutely adore ponies.

>>291625
No, Nigel, you lameassed simp that can't control your own pathetic family abuse fantasy notions. I want you to stop posting. Forever. No, I don't want you to kill yourself, oh hohoho no, that would be too easy. I want you to suffer in perfect silence as the britcuckmutt self-hating, angsty traitor that you are. How about that? Can you even HANDLE pure honesty towards someone that despises your very existence? No, obviously not. IF you do continue to post which I know you won't since you're such a relentless piece of britcuck shit at least cease being such a CRYBABY BITCH. Your tantrums aren't even ironic, Nigel. They're pathetic, especially coming from such a miserable britmutt snowflake that doesn't even have the brain power to register when they are wrong. And by they: I mean (You). Enjoy your LONG lived life. Please.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.291633
291636
doge.jpg
>>291626
Oh. Well now I feel silly.
>>291632
Are you upset?
Anonymous
abb50e3
?
No.291635
291693 291709
>>291632
> I'm 11 double shots of moonshine into being drunk
Things are starting to come together now

>>291622
Really wish we could get some people from the FoE general here to explain their enjoyment for the story plus talk about the mini fandom around the story and it's history but seeing how hard people go for FoE and Past Sins on /mlp/ I worry if people would brigade to derail this journey as much as we already do it to ourselves often enough.

Not sure if you caught it but with that New Vegas DLC Honest Hearts I could see a really good FoE story spawn from that. Have the protagonist be a third party mediator (maybe even call them Honest Hearts as a sledge hammer to the face ha ha reference) to a tribal conflict with the two major characters they can speak to both having an interpretation on Equestrian Harmony on how to resolve it. Have one who looks to the Pillars of Equestria and Star Swirl's more calculated and pragmatic decision making and morals vs Twilight's interpretation of friendship and forgiveness.

Would be a running theme that could help elevate more mundane conversations as the party argue which path would be best for their group or morally and add more weight to the encounters with antagonists. Not just rapist ponies hanging dead bodies everywhere but will be them either reacting to the aggression from the more ruthless and pragmatic characters who want to establish Harmony by force or the others having to defend themselves and help prevent conflict to create an opportunity for all sides to meet and talk things out.

Shoot depending on how long this review takes I wonder if it'd be possible for me to write that story. Know I promised you a short story months back and never got around to it but feel like it'd be handy to see what we can all brew up with writing to see what we learned from your reviews and what we can improve on.
Anonymous
c9149df
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No.291636
291709
27_1555010__safe_artist-eclipsepenumbra_oc-colon-aryanne_clothes_nazi_reaction image_stahlhelm_transparent.png
>>291633
You can't read. You can't understand. You can't even recognize when your very existence is that of a vile, filthy kike-mutted shitstain. You only had one job, Nigel, ONE job throughout your entire life that you might have been able to complete... yet you utterly failed it. I don't know what it could possibly be like as a (((Nigel))) since I have never thought of such, or ever wanted to be such before, yet now I realize that dealing with cuckstained trash like you is essentially the same as eating pigshit. So, no, I'm not upset with you, Nigel the Goyim Gatekeeping Golem. Rather, I'm disappointed, and that is the worst thoughtcrime of all.
Anonymous
1438af6
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No.291673
If I have ever come across like this fgt, I would like to apologize. I try to be at least a smidge constructive in my criticisms, but bias being what it is I cant say I havent gone off the deep end. Like this fgt.
Anonymous
8142357
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No.291693
291709
littlepip please your bloodlust is actually a serious problem.png
>>291635
>Really wish we could get some people from the FoE general here to explain their enjoyment for the story plus talk about the mini fandom around the story and it's history

That's me, technically - I've been into FoE as a setting for quite a while and lurked the general for a few years, despite my firm belief that the original story is absolute shit. I guess you could call me a fan of the fandom. I think a lot of people are drawn to the large body of creative work surrounding FoE and its potential as a setting rather than its merits (or lack thereof) as a piece of writing. FoE leaves enough of the broader setting and its backstory partially or completely unexplored and enough plot and world elements almost-but-not-quite functional that there's a lot of room to expand or reimagine things. And that's fun.

Then there's the people that genuinely think that they've come across a revolutionary piece of literature and pay - repeatedly - for published copies. My guess is that they're either so caught up in hype that their critical faculties switch off, or so autistic that they can't tell a well-written piece of prose from the back of a funko pop box.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.291709
291714 291715
at9xuy42ysy51.jpg
>>291636
Jesus Christ. Note to self, never apologize to this guy. Why do you believe disappointing you is the "worst thoughtcrime of all"? What gave you this ego? Who died and declared you the foremost authority on what a nazi should be? Why call me a gatekeeper when you're the one calling me jewed for not liking a nonwhite race? Did the natives ever meaningfully resist jewish influence? Are the natives trying to resist jewish influences now and stop the communist schools from turning their kids into brainwashed anti-whites who never consider the survival/prosperity of their people and only care about harming the survival/prosperity of whites? If I "had one job", what was it? I'm not a good goyim, I'm a real human being and I want freedom and gun rights and a future for white people. Are you running out of insults or is this just the moonshine talking? Are you on weed too? Try nofap some time, it'll help you. Alcohol's bad for you.
So many different groups of people existed on this planet for a long time. Some of them invented good shit, some of them improved upon existing good shit, and some remained stuck in the tribal phase forever. Why do you think the world turned out that way? Do you want to blame racial IQ trends, their environment and access to land/resources, or their cultures? Cultures that say "God says be good or you go to hell, this is not up for debate. But you're free to figure out for yourself why the tides work and how to make great boats, Jesus loved boats" are more efficient than cultures that say "The God of Theft would love you for doing something that would make the God of Justice hate you, and the tides work solely because my anthropomorphized imaginary waifu Ocean-Chan The Goddess wants them to". I'm open to the idea that there's probably magic and spirits and gods out there but forgive me for being as skeptical of their claims as I was of Christianity in my youth.
I know I'm not good at talking to people. I'm not good at convincing people I like shit I hate, and I'm not good at pretending I'm something that I'm not. Most people on the planet aren't honest with themselves or their feelings. Some people just make no sense at all. It's hard enough for average neurotypical people to figure each other out but I have severe autism so it's even harder for me to understand people. It's like everyone's playing a character in a DND game except nobody can make up their mind on what they're roleplaying and nobody's even sure how the game works anyway or what they want out of it or what the rules are or how you win. Some people don't care about winning and just want to annoy or inconvenience others. Some people would rather drag everyone down than watch someone who's not them succeed. I'm not good at these social games so I usually don't bother with them. I've been called a blunt asshole before. Some people like having their egos flattered and are used to being treated like an authority no matter where they go, and no matter how they treat others. It wouldn't surprise me if they spend their free time as janitors for incredibly niche forums. I'll never understand why these people get such colossal heads and enjoy arguments on the internet. Doesn't anyone else on the planet find dealing with people exhausting even at the best of times? The nazi-approved self-help books I'm reading say I should get good at social shit but it's hard to reliably practice social interaction when some people are the "Sometimes I blow up for no reason and try to turn everything you say into a strike against your moral fiber" type.
But maybe this is just what you're like when you drunk. At least you aren't drunkenly flirting with me. Or ordering pizza from me and freaking out when I say you've got the wrong number. I knew someone who did that a lot when he was drunk.
>>291635
That would make a great story. It could tie into Twilight's friendship school and the futility of trying to force others to be your friend, if you wanted. It could also function as a commentary on late-season-Equestria's "We will teach you lesser mammals how to be friends properly, ours is the best culture" thing, or on modern society's adoration of the one-size-fits-all approach even though it's individualism and specialization that helps a healthy community prosper and create wealth. A community with many people focused on different jobs can fulfill every role that community needs, but a country of "Forced friendship" where anyone not acting "friendly enough" gets arrested would never know true friendship.
But this is your idea and I'd love to see where you take it.
>>291693
Someone here should visit FoE General and ask them that.
I think it's the story's clumsy excessive use of excess and cliches that makes people in love with cliches love it.
>faggot: "Surely if one gory spectacle made from a dead pony is dark, then a raider camp with lots of them must be extra dark!"
It's probably the first dark and edgy thing they've seen and the longest piece of fiction they've ever read. A lot of fags praise the story for containing incredibly obvious cliches they can recognize instantly, without judging the execution of those cliches. They want to feel smart and feeling like they actually understand media for once makes them feel smart.
Plus whenever a piece of media is too long, people in "I don't want to admit I wasted all this time on something that turned out to be shit" mode stop judging the work by individual chapters or the work as a whole, and instead keep watching until they construct narratives in their head on why it's all totally worth it.
This fic would certainly seem high-quality if you only compared it to other even-worse dark edgy pony fanfics out there written around the same time. At least FOE isn't Cupcakes, an overhyped and boring short "story" where one pony kills another and that's it. I'm still convinced that story only got famous because so many bronies wanted to virtue-signal over how offended and disgusted they were by it.
Anonymous
90944d5
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No.291714
291723
>>291709
>Replying and explaining your position
Yes, I understand the desire but really I would have liked it if you didn't.
Your discussion has nothing to do with this thread. Let's focus on critiquing the story, shall we? If you have to talk about this, could you take it somewhere else on the board?
Anonymous
1438af6
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No.291715
>>291709
Pssst. Check ur discord DMs
Anonymous
009033b
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No.291723
weirdo likes fat spyro.jpg
>>291714
It's kind of funny that Bitter Springs was a retaliation to Khan aggression gone wrong, and now this thread's derailed with aggression from a Khan stan. But it's not properly ironic because I'm not a NCR fan. Anyway, fuck this gay derailed discussion.
From now on let's all focus on the story, not each other or the world outside. There are other threads here for IRL stuff, this is the pony and fallout fanfiction MST3K.
Hey, you know what would make this story great?
Imagine there's a Church Of Celestia
some kind of "Holy Church Of Her Lady's Flaming Tears" or something pretentious like that
and they're all incredibly devout and violent paladins. half Lawful Good and half Stupid Good, they believe being evil and suicide sends you to hell when you die but dying a good pony lets you go to heaven. So they love kidnapping ponies, "giving them a chance to be good"(like a chance to heal some sick ponies or kill captured raiders), and then killing them whether they choose to be good or bad.
Hell, they could even do Saw shit with churches filled with booby traps!
That would be a unique faction idea. They aren't a complete caricature of religious inquisitors with less in common with the real deal than Monty Python's take on them. They don't just "Think living is a sin" and they don't have some edgy creed like "Kill all the unholy demons" or "Innocence proves nothing".
They're just a religion that decided to purge the wicked AND kill heroes "so they can die a hero because they live long enough to see themselves become villains".
By the way fuck that quote, one main point of Batman is that only baddies like Joker and Two Face turn evil when tragic things happen to them. Good men like Batman and Gordon stay true to their principles no matter what. Sometimes-good people like Catwoman do good sometimes (usually when it's convenient), steal shit for fun and profit when it's possible, and only team up with genocidal gigacunts when written badly.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.291763
Glim, I think you'd like this https://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/purplexvi/hc-svnt-dracones/
it's a review of a terrible DND-style system for furries on Corporatocratic Mars.
Anonymous
a3191f6
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No.291797
291866 291911
>>291527
You forgot to mention that Kkat also ruined the Great War in another way by all but explicitly stating that it was the zebras who attacked first with megaspells. In Fallout, the beauty of the Great War was that no one knew who pressed the button first. Was it the Americans, running low on resources and morale wanting to finish the Chinese in one fell swoop? Was it the Chinese, facing an invasion of the homeland and pushed completely out of Alaska looking to make one final retaliatory blow? Was it Vault Tec, looking to fulfill the prophecy they themselves created of nuclear war and nuclear annihilation? Who knows, all of that evidence was lost a long time ago, and the effect is that it makes all parties equally to blame for destroying the world, and makes it clear that they all were capable of doing terrible things. In FoE, by making it so the zebras struck first, it makes the zebras responsible for all of the destruction, and makes the ponies into helpless creatures defending themselves. The ability of both sides being able to commit terrible actions is overshadowed by "zebra bad".
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.291866
291911
>>291797
There is that, yes. As I said, I'm trying to go light on spoilers so that Glim can draw his own conclusions, but you're right that FoE's portrayal of the war's escalation completely skews the blame towards one side. There's also a lot of logical issues and plot holes with the setting's concept of nuclear proliferation (or at least the magical equivalent), but I'm sure we'll get to those eventually.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.291910
291950 292042
>be Shooty Kill, a dangerous raider
>23 years old
>be waiting under a random half-destroyed concrete bridge in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, Equestrian Wasteland
>your twitchy cunt of a companion whines about not having snorted Jet in five whole minutes
>you've been raping captives ever since mommy showed you how
>it's a shame she eventually shat herself to death
>some captive claiming to be a dok-torr said your mom had dysentery
>nailed her nead to a fucking wall for that, then chopped it off
>nobody talks shit about your mom but you
>wonder where the fuck everypony else is
>wonder if you'll spend the entire day waiting with nopony to rob or wait showing up
>wait... what was that?
>hear hoofsteps approaching
>faggot friend starts bellyaching about his jet addiction
>tell him to shut the fuck up
>leap out from under the bridge
>oh shit
>it's a guy
>damn.jpg
>it's an incredibly handsome cherry-red Stallion with a gold-striped black stable suit and golden frilly military shit on the shoulders of his black leather jacket
>his eyes are bright purple, as is the wild spikes of his purple hair, streaked as it is with golden and sunrise orange.
>furthermore he's in some kind of bastardized power armour frame custom-modded to be light and stealthy while drawing as little power from its nuclear core as possible.
>remember hearing horror stories about rare special ponies in Power Armour and how nothing, not even the greatest weapons invented by the brainiest raiders from your raider outpost of Cuntopolis, could hurt them
>remember hearing one horror stories about rarer fuckers in modified Power Armour that does all sorts of weird new magical shit
>if he starts flying, turning invisible, or teleporting behind you, you'll turn tail and run. nobody's paying you enough to deal with this. and if your partner - whatever his fucking name was - doesn't get killed while you flee, you'll kill him before he can tell your raider family you disgraced your tribe and glorious war-god Rai-Daa by running away when outgunned and outmatched instead of throwing your life away for "glory".
>whip out your shitty 9mm revolver with a cracked scope and open fire
>expect his horn to glow
>instead, the giant shoulderpads of his bastardized light power armour glow golden as a wall of force not only blocks your bullets, but reflects them perfectly all around you
>if your shitty revolver still shot straight, you'd have a few dozen extra holes in you right now
>your faggot partner screams like a filly with a red-hot poker rammed up his asshole and charges straight at the handsome motherfucker in front of you, reaching to a scabbard at his side to whip out a rusty and dented machete
>the handsome stallion's horn lights up and your partner is lifted into the air like a gun, before many of his bones are crushed in a brutal telekinetic grip that swiftly thrusts the body into you at fourty miles an hour
>wonder if you should use the final bullets on that handsome stallion, or yourself. Fuck, having your bones broken hurts
>the stallion grins as he raises a forehoof and-
>oh fuck
>he's got a pip-buck
>momma warned you about those
>like a professional slaver trained in torture techniques cleaning his tools before he tortures an old or crippled slave to death in front of a younger, healthier, cuter, and potentially pricier one that needs to learn obedience, the handsome stallion begins scrolling through menus as various holstered guns and melee weapons spontaneously appear and disappear on his body
>each gun appears in a flash of green ones and zeroes before vanishing back into his pip-buck to make way for the next weapon
>wonder why he can't equip a gun and melee weapon at the same time
>he stops when there's a gun on his back so massive you'd swear you saw it on a pre-war military vehicle once when raping fillies in a junkyard
>at least your death will be swift...
>there's something new in his right forehoof
>he tosses it at you
>it bounces off your head with a small hollow donk and hits the ground, before rolling maliciously towards you
>it's a small metal cylinder with a paper label around the side
>though the paper is faded you can make out the label
>Chef Bonehead's Beefaroni
>what the fuck is that? maybe if you could read, you'd know
>it kind of reminds you of a tin of dog food you once cracked open with a sharp rock and ate from
>did that fucker throw dog food at you?
>the tin's upper lid opens on its own
>an ungodly shriek rapes your ears
>gale-force winds spiral out from the tin like a thousand tentacles to wrap around your limbs and the limbs of your faggy dead-weight friend as mightier gusts of wind lift you into the air
>An ungodly suction grows stronger every second but even as your bones are liquidified, death is not merciful enough to take you to Rai-Daa
>before you know it, you and your friend are crushed together into a thin paste and pulled into the Beefaroni tin like a ghost into Danny Phantom's thermos flask
>wonder why your dying thoughts were of some weird pre-war book series you saw in some pre-war faggot's Memory Orb
>the can consumes your crushed bodies and your undying souls and everything you wore and every thought in your head, converting everything into magical energy
>the can around you lift itself into the air and sets itself down, perfectly upright
>feel your existence consumed utterly
>with a comical burp, the can's lid opens up as six small objects levitate themselves out of the can's interior
>the can consumed two raiders, and converted everything that made them who they were into six hot steaming plates of pre-war Beefaroni
>the handsome stallion smiles.
"I still can't believe some famous pre-war chef thought he could anchor his soul to a can of his own food to try and escape the impending apocalypse," He chuckles as his Pip-Buck stores those six plates within its data dimension, where they would not spill or age or exist until he brought them out again "But it's a good thing he fucked up and created this magical food weapon. Best improvised grenade ever!"
Anonymous
009033b
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No.291911
670.jfif
>>291797
>>291866
That should have been in a spoiler tag but you're both completely right. I'll still spoilertag this particular detail because I want to watch Glim get mad at this retarded writing decision involving a certain mane six member in real-time.
Fluttershy directly caused the apocalypse by giving Megaspell technology to Equestria AND Zebras. Yeah, at first they were just Healing ICBMs designed to heal. Flutters thought if both sides could heal themselves before they sustained any losses, nopony could kill each other and war would become impossible. MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction? Fuck that, try CARE - Collectively Assured Reciprocated Existence. However the first time Flutters fired a healing nuke missile, it was at a battlefield Equestria just won, healing both the ponies there and the zebra bastards limping away in shame. Disproving her theory, the Zebras turned around and used their new healthy-ish bodies to resume the fighting, spit in the face of pony mercy, and prove CARE doesn't work when dealing with filthy fucking Ziggers who want you dead more than they want to live.
But Flutters in this fic ignored the lesson she should have learned this day, and gave Megaspells to both sides.
Ponies could turn these "ICBMs but they multiply the power and scale of any spell you put within it a thousand fold" things into all sorts of fun big missiles, but Zebras could only fill them with pure darkness and evil fire from hell, then smuggle them into Equestria via typical terrorist attacks like suicide bombers and the Four Stars Company that betrayed Equestria and helped Zebras nuke everything
Obviously, if Equestria had a "NO ZIGGERS ALLOWED" policy the Zebras would have never been able to get into Equestria and detonate megaspells in Manehattan (fucking equestria over) or Cloudsdale (Convincing 99% of pegasi to fuck off into the clouds and abandon Equestria and become the new Enclave)
Come to think of it, the Ziggers wouldn't have been able to detonate a Pink Cloud bomb in Canterlot either. Or detonate a Pink Cloud bomb at Celestia's newest magic school for little foals. Littlehorn, the school, got massacred by one Zebra cunt with a Pink Cloud chemical weapon bomb because refugees showed up at this school demanding gibs and nobody among them spoke Equestrian so they tried breaking into the school which triggered its automatic defenses and made the Ziggers super angry at the fact that their actions had consequences, so the butthurt zigger detonated a chemical weapon bomb for this incredibly pathetic reason.
And when you realize nuking that school broke Celestia's brain+heart and forced Princess Luna to take the throne in her place... And Luna promoted the Mane Six and put them in charge of any Ministry they wanted to make... And it was Zebra's religious hatred of Luna/Nightmare Moon/The night sky in general that made the Ziggers (who were already warring with Equestria) get extra-uppity and "THIS RESOURCE WAR IS NOW OFFICIALLY A HOLY WAR"ish... And it was Fluttershy's Ministry Of Peace that gave healing megaspells to Equestria and Zebrica...
The Zebras quite literally caused the apocalypse by doing everything wrong, and Equestria would have never gotten nuked by Ziggers if it didn't insist on housing Zigger refugees during their war.
Zebras directly caused everything bad, and the only thing Ponies did wrong was letting them into Equestria in the first place.
The pathetic, animalistic, and childish nature of Zebras is so accurate to the real thing. Proper border control and a less (((humanist))) Fourleggedist, whatever leader would have saved Equestria and removed the Zigger's capacity to destroy what it cannot compete with or outbuild/outthink/outfight.
Is Kkat secretly /ourguy/ without even realizing it?
Anonymous
009033b
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No.291950
291963
>>291910
by the way I wrote this
What do you think of it? I'm still inexperienced with greentext but I gave it my best shot
Anonymous
abb50e3
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No.291963
291970
>>291950
I'd say it was pretty good. I enjoyed how it was from the perspective of a FoE/3/4 raider type and funny to think what sort of up bringing someone needs to have to make them loiter in 1 desolate spot just attacking anything that enters aggro range and spending their free time raping, hanging bodies from walls, and raping bodies they hung on walls.

If I were to offer any crituiqe I'd say it's one I noticed for most your story ideas you pitched and that story Glim did a short review of last story. You got some neat ideas but tend to have it turn into a snowball of ideas. Like the can is a neat idea espetially since we have all levied complaints that Kkat took magic and made it into just batteries instead of exploring creative enchantments and curses characters could use for utility and weapons. How the can sucks the souls into itself can be inferred with the unicorn who originally cursed it trying to preserve his soul so could understand it is now a black hole that can suck any souls it is aimed at into itself. Plus the burp is a funny little touch to fit with the more cartoony MLP style. How it burps out the meals though, plus the unicorn cycling through the items being explained may be a bit too video game-ish.

Don't want to be too rude though since it's taking a crack at stuff we have all complained about like LittlePip's Katamari ball of loot, PipBucks never being noticed or mentioned by any characters, or why raiders are so prone to engaging in hilariously 1 sided fights and giving an explanation for them.

Could say the same with my story idea and your ideas for the bandit groups. The Red Rockets is a really funny and ironic name espetially if the raiders don't even realize the inuendo plus how handy it would be for ponies to raise war hounds who could help with guarding, hunting, and combat. Plus would open opportunities to have characters like Cook Cook or that jet junkie who are attached to their pets and could offer some character and quirks to some of the memebers of the Red Rockets. Feel like the details about them cross breeding with the dogs and becoming chimeras and how they reproduce might be better left on the cutting board though.

For that Fallout Honest Hearts parody idea I had feel like that one could stay contained to the idea of weighing how Star Swirl protected Harmony in his day vs Twilight's methods. Keeps the theme smaller so it is easier to keep the story on track and tied to it. Admitidtly haven't seen any episodes with the Pillars or read their comics yet so I don't know their full story but from what I have read in the comics Star Swirl seemed more detached and strict which is what caused Stygian to fall to becoming the Pony of Shadows.

Made the post way longer then I should have and again don't want to come off as rude but like your posts before you tend to have an idea and start with it but flies off the rail soon after. It isn't exactly a negative though I'd say. For one shows a great deal of enthusiasm and firing so many ideas out can help with piecing them together after to find an unexpected combo that could work really well.

Talked to a friend who said Project Horizons was writen that way with the author flying by the seat of his pants and was going through rough patches and used the story as a couping mechanism. While it isn't a story for me it seems there is a market for stories like that and if we could hone our writing from advice Glim and others offer here you could have a more refined stream of consciousness type story like PH.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.291970
>>291963
Thanks!
Giving the red stallion a literal videogame inventory, and then justifying it at something the Pip-Buck literally and magically does by turning things into data and back again, seemed like a good way to justify how Fallout protags often end up carrying literal hundreds of guns and ammo and random scrap.
Having a Player Home where you store all your nice stuff isn't very "Early Fallout"ish, better to be given one of those for a mid-game quest reward. That means everything you own is either in your pockets or in a random chest somewhere.
Though instead of the Encumbrance Limit where you can jog merrily with 300 pounds of crap in your inventory but adding just one more ounce massively weighs you down and makes running and Fast Travel impossible, but adding 2500 more pounds won't weigh you down any more than 301 pounds will...
I'd instead say there's a Data Limit on the Pip-Buck and once it's full, additional crap must be carried by the pony.
As a bonus, this justifies the hero wearing a handful of visible guns and melee weapons even though 20 more guns are in a videogame inventory somewhere.
And it means if my red stallion ever went into a Casino and had to leave all his weapons at the door, he'd get to do that fucking hilarious cartoon thing where he pulls shitloads of weapons out of increasingly improbable locations. And then has at least one more. Or has to pack up everything he unpacked almost immediately.

Making the Raiders into religious nuts who think "dying a coward's death" from suicide or radiation poisoning or starvation sends them to hell but dying a "warrior's death" from throwing their "Have-Not" asses at "Have"s will send them to raider heaven and also slightly reduce the amount of ammo their prey is carrying, making robbing/killing him easier for other Raiders.
Although while I could justify this videogamey shite and one "religious nuts who want a warrior's death" tribe would be interesting, making them all like that would get dull fast.
I think it'd be better if there are Raider Gangs, and Raider Tribes. Tribes have extreme gimmicks and questionable sanity. Gangs are groups of assholes, but they're'nt lethally suicidal assholes. They do evil shit in front of others to scare them, and make gory art around their dens to scare enemies and scavengers away, because every Raider gang wants their fearsome reputation to intimidate "Have"s into surrendering and dropping some/all their supplies and then fucking off.

Interesting, unique, and distinct guns are what everything with guns needs. If guns don't do something exciting, they're just numbers on a stat sheet only a fucking dork like me would care about.

Guy one has a few different guns. His shotgun is strong but takes longer to reload than his automatic rifle, which fires 30 bullets before needing a new banana mag, though those bullets aren't as big as the 45 caliber bullets his handgun can spit out. He also has three frag grenades. And a laser pistol that's essentially just like his 45 handgun. He also has a rocket launcher with three rockets. And three mines. Yep, that's a generic Military Game Shooter Guy arsenal if you overlook the boring'd laser.

Guy two has a tazer, a flamethrower, an animu katana possessed by the soul of the weeaboo who overpaid for it(wielding it makes his fat-arsed soul possess you, turning you into a hyper-competent murderer and socially-inept tryhard constantly spouting chuuni one-liners until you sheathe the blade), three grenades that generate small black holes that only suck in living things and disintegrate in five seconds because magic, three time grenades that magically freeze foes in time, six 50cal machine guns welded and duct-taped together so one enchanted recoil-negating diamond affects all of them but they all take separate banana mags, a revolver for you to shoot yourself with because it's enchanted to heal ponies instead of harming them, an enchanted practically-weightless 50cal drum-mag minigun that forms a magical hardlight shield around it to cover all of you, a bandana enchanted with infinite ammo, a bodysuit that's bulletproof yet flexible and can turn you invisible at will, a robot buddy with too many guns to list here, he's wearing a big-horned jet-winged custom XXX-tra thicc power armour made from a made-up metal better than steel and possessed by a unicorn waifu who loves you and can pilot this thing and spit suit-buffed megaspells on the fly with or without you, and he also has a knife-spitting shotgun that can stop time(kills restore the soul-battery for its time-stopping), a disintegration beam that takes four seconds to charge and can only form that beam for a second before it needs an hour to recharge and the beam stops working at more than 50 feet, a rangefinder that brings satellite solar lasers down, a snorted drug that gives you cartoon physics for ten minutes, a rocket launcher that can only harm those you hate which therefore makes rocket-jumping with this perfectly safe as long as you don't fire it around your ex, a big floppy purple dildo with a force-multiplying enchantment on it so one strike splatters a foe across five counties and it can smack cars into buildings hard enough to 9/11 them, a needle gun that spits syringes full of Friendum Paranoiathol which is a drug that causes the target to temporarily see his allies as an angry horde of political talk show hosts, a raygun that converts foes into exploding chickens that lay exploding eggs except you upgraded it to make them RadChicken who lay Nuclear Bomb Eggs (Haha that's retarded only a retard would make eggs nuclear), the RYNO from ratchet 1, and last but not least, The Portal Gun from Portal 2 except it's got an underbarrel paint launcher that can spit Repulsion Gel you can bounce off, Propulsion Gel that makes you go fast, purple Gravity Gel so you can walk up walls, and white paint so you can paint walls white and then form portals on them. I ripped off most things in this list from good games.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.292022
8hqtr9ir5ay51.jpg
I think this story's first mistake was trying to write a morally grey war involving cartoon ponies who are literally so impossibly and inhumanly kind/loyal/fun/honest/generous/magical and friendly they can shoot rainbow lasers made of their own moral perfection. These are ponies that can purge a thousand years of resentment and sin and cruelty from an Alicorn. These are ponies that can remove a chaos god's influence from their planet.

Not even in the most Legend Of The Seekerish/Sword Of Truthish "Morally superior superhero with Moral Clarity(TM)" wank story would you ever see something that's such a strong, easily measurable, and scientifically verifiable tangible expression of objectively superior morality.

The whole premise of the show is that friendship and the mane six's virtues are good, and the pony way is superior to the dumb Dragon way and stupid Diamond Dog way and mean Griffon way. The pony ideal of "you should better yourself to become peak pony" is superior to all other cultures on the planet. Even when written by clowns and hacks who forgot this, they still added inferior races with inferior cultures. Like bootleg ponies who avoid speaking for fear of triggering their Dragon Install rage modes, and big fat stupid Yaks who exist to show you how the cuckfag author views his and all critics.

If you're writing about an Equestria that isn't an absolute beacon of morality, you need to explain why it is no longer one.

Kkunt could have easily set Equestria on a long downward spiral that started with Applejack and Twilight kickstarting an industrial revolution and ended 500 years later in a """hyper-capitalist""" (Entirely corporate) dystopia that fired a Coal-Inator Megaspell ICBM at Griffon lands to turn Griffon citizens into coal to make invading their land and stealing the coal from their icy mountains easier, terrifying Zebras into thinking they were next and sending a spy to detonate Equestria's biggest world-irradiating nuclear ICBM, which was made by a paranoid unicorn with Twilight as an ancestor who was sure aliens were coming soon.

All sorts of funny jokes could be made about Hasbro's corporate influence and how it often fucks with the show. Ponies could be born in fake plastic towns within gigantic domes that need their air refreshed magically because there are no trees left since they were consumed to make MLP-themed greetings cards. Ponies would lose the Elements of Harmony and even Magic itself over time as cold rational science replaces the infinite possibilities of romanticism and friendliness-powered magic. And the death of this Hasbro-Questria wouldn't really be a tragedy, since its tragic existence is the result of Equestria's death. This would still be a bit of a "fuck you" to ponyland but not as much as Zebras nuking it would be.

But Kkunt is a kunt, so he decided to write an edgy story where the blackest Zebras destroy Equestria despite ponykind's best efforts and best intentions. Tragic pony death makes faggots call your story edgy, deep, adult, and subversive.

What a fascinating phenomenon. Star Trek was a silly little kid's show about an impossible lefty paradise where humanity creates no new culture, money doesn't exist and replicators create everything for free, an all-powerful "peaceful" fascist dictatorship dominates earth and most of the galaxy, and all there is to do in the universe is work for this government flying around in space looking for today's fun adventure. Tell yourself you're fucking blue chicks and saving green retards and dealing with today's bizarre magiscience disaster for the sake of advancing humanity's scientific advancement. Problems are rarely solved with real science or smart decisions because asspulls and technobabble nonsense is so much easier to write. SciFi is easier to write than fantasy because fantasy fans expect you to set limits on what your bullshit new tools can do, but SciFi fans would happily watch a show about psychic cyborg detectives whose tools and augmented augments do all the work for them and tell the audience who the killer is (even though they could have never figured it out on their own) within the first few minutes of each episode.

Star Trek was a kid's show for nerds who think caring about baseball statistics makes them brilliant scientists with incredibly high IQs, yet its fanbase had their head so far up their own asses, they said all the shit you'll see pretentious "This beautiful show will bring people together and make the world a better place!" libtards say on brony sites even though Star Trek's charity fundraising paled in comparison to pony fandom fundraising at its peak. The FIM fandom had the same "My desire to cum inside Rainbow Dash will improve the world!"fags, in addition to "I swear I'm not a failure of a man obsessed with cutesy cartoon shit! I want to bone snake-ponies and there's deep subtle literary references in Pinkie Pie's Leonardo DeToystorian catchphrase FUNFUNFUN!"fags.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.292030
292042
Are we allowed to review other shorter Fallout Equestria fanfics in this thread?
things like Fallout Equestria: Puppysmiles, Fallout Equestria: Duck and Cover, and so on.
I think it could help give those who found following this story too hard something to do.
Anonymous
e191325
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No.292031
292057
>I think it could help give those who found following this story too hard something to do.
Who are these people? Are you talking about yourself or uhh... Idk, what you mean? I mean, if there were people who wanteed to start athread about reviewing other fallout stories, I think they would have done so on their own so I assume your talking about yourself. But who finds this story hard to follow and why? And if they found it hard to follow why would they want something to do in the meantime of what?
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.292042
292057 292210
jet-black.jpg
>>291556
>I didn't grow up with LittlePip but seeing people say "LittlePip is best waifu!" Where currently I can't find anything that really draws me in to her character the same way they get drawn to her.
I don't really get why anyone would find her waifu-tier either; she's an incredibly dull character. Moreover there is no physical description given of her so we don't even know what she officially looks like; the depiction of her seems to have been fan created. I get the impression Littlepip as a waifu is similar to background pony waifus in that she becomes a representation of whatever the guy wants to project on her. Either that or these guys just have incredibly shit taste in waifus. Probably a little from column A, a little from column B.

>>291910
>your twitchy cunt of a companion whines about not having snorted Jet in five whole minutes
I can't say I blame him; Jet is a beautiful and aromatic man, see pic related.

>his eyes are bright purple, as is the wild spikes of his purple hair, streaked as it is with golden and sunrise orange.
As are the wild spikes of his purple hair.

>remember hearing one horror stories about rarer fuckers in modified Power Armour that does all sorts of weird new magical shit
Remember hearing one horror story.

>your faggot partner screams like a filly with a red-hot poker rammed up his asshole and charges straight at the handsome motherfucker in front of you, reaching to a scabbard at his side to whip out a rusty and dented machete
As with a lot of the combat in this world I'm curious how a horse would perform this action; if your characters are both unicorns it would make this easy, but either way you might want to consider giving slightly more detail here. However, if the story overall makes sense you can sometimes get away with being vague on points like this.

>the handsome stallion's horn lights up and your partner is lifted into the air like a gun, before many of his bones are crushed in a brutal telekinetic grip that swiftly thrusts the body into you at fourty miles an hour
inb4 the handsome stallion turns out to be Silver "I installed an easy-access trapdoor in the back of my power armor so I can wear it to gay bars" Star

In all seriousness though, this is pretty good. This is actually a good example of something I've been getting at when writing in worlds involving complex mythologies and technologies that the reader may not be already familiar with. There are two pitfalls that you can fall into with that, the first being that you assume the reader already has a working knowledge of the universe you're writing in, and the story becomes confusing or impossible to follow (this is mostly kkat's approach); the second is to go the opposite direction and overburden the reader with giant fucktons of information (kkat has also done this a few times; see the opening paragraphs of the story where he talks about pipbucks). You don't do either one here, so good job.

If you narrate your story clearly and concisely, the reader doesn't need to have a familiarity with every piece of technology or magic in your world; the important thing is that they can follow events. If the story goes on for awhile, they will eventually pick up the details of what these machines are and how they work just from seeing them in action. I don't really know most of the things you're referencing in here, but I still had no difficulty following what was going on. You also do a pretty good job of building a fairly well-rounded character over a short period of time.

All in all this is pretty nice work. The ending was also amusing.

>>292030
>Are we allowed to review other shorter Fallout Equestria fanfics in this thread?
For the sake of simplicity I prefer to keep the thread topic on one fic at a time. If you want to suggest other fics I can add them to the queue to review later.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.292057
292058
>>292031
Nevermind, it was a stupid idea. I figured length was spooking newbies away from joining the conversation. Something something insert horsecock length joke here.
>>292042
Hit the nail right on the head.
You get to imagine LP as anything from a wingless horned RD recolour to the Sweetie Belle-sized adult she canonically is.
You also get to look like a "Moral" person for liking a character whose main defining attribute is how hard the author will try to paint her and Velvet as Peak Morality, and paint Velvet as "foolishly naive" whenever the author's paying enough attention to notice she's currently doing something that could pull that "Peak Morality" title away from LP.
And you get to look like a "Mature adult" who's "In the in crowd" for liking the protag of such a "Dark and adult" story.
It's also like how faggots stuff coloured napkins into their butt-pockets to send faggy signals like "Penetrate my asshole" and "I want to shit on you". Publically claiming LP is your waifu screams "FELLOW FOE FANS, PLEASE TALK AT ME ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU LOVE FOE SO I CAN DO THE SAME BACK TO YOU!"
>>292042
>typos
sorry, I will fix
>unsheathing his sword
I imagined the horse keeping a sheathed blade strapped to his body so he could easily turn his head and neck around, bite at the hilt with his mouth, and unsheath it in one fluid motion. So he'd have the blade in his mouth like the horse from Tangled or Roranoa Zoro from One Piece.
>who is the red pony?
it's Sunrise Stardust from my scrapped fic Fallout Equestria: Sunrise Stardust and The Burned World. Was going to dedicate many, many chapters to him building up Primitive Technology-style tools to build superior tools until he can create his own industrial revolution. He'd outfit his outfit with the latest mods and outfit his army with the greatest weapons/armour. Most FE stories are obsessed with making their protagonists small stealthy lightly-armoured ponies because that's OP in the videogames and it seems "Underdog-ish" in print, but he'd be a big Heavy Armour and Power Armour motherfucker with big guns and a bigger patriotic hateboner for Zebras. He'd clear out raider-infested mines(by bombing the entrance shut, then opening it up much later to clear the corpses out) to get at the resources. And then make a lot of good shit with all the stuff his giant 10 INT brain could figure out while working with the information he downloaded onto his custom-upgraded overclocked and jailbroken Pip-Buck 7K, the latest and greatest thing his once-great Stable ever made.
I'm really proud of the way objects "Reveal their purposes to you" in that fic. There is no one massive infodump on exactly how hoverboards work and their history. You just see something, and if the Raider doesn't immediately think to himself "Oh fuck it's one of those things that does x" its function is a pleasant surprise for the audience.
>one fic at a time
Understandable, good policy. I'd like to add Puppysmiles's story but with minimum priority, so every other fic on the list gets read first. I'd love to see your take on Harry Potter 1 and its asspull moment that floored the middle-aged women forcing this story on their children everywhere.

By the way, I think Fallout's Power Armour is kind of funny.
In 1 and 2 Power Armour was the best shit possible, making you too tough to be hurt by weak guns and buffing your Strength immensely. Which is good because in those games Strength limited how big a gun you could use without penalties. In 3 it was basically just plate armour that could be pierced by some low-caliber chinese rifle while a junkie on morphine in a leather jacket had a better Damage Threshold (cutoff point where any incoming HP damage below this number can't hurt you) and Damage Resistance(armour stat that reduces incoming damage).
NV was made on extreme deadlines and low budget so it couldn't unfuck Power Armour. It still tried to give you Power Armour worth something with the Family Tesla Power Armour, and it made Light Armour even better with the Riot Armour/Courier Duster/Stealth Suit Mk2.
There was one good thing in Fallout 3: Prototype medic power armor. This thing would inject you with Stimpaks (Healing potions) and Med-X (Morphine) and eat through your supply of these fast. It would also shout shit like "LET EM EAT LEAD!", alerting enemies you tried to sneak around. It's so retarded that you could argue it's supposed to be like this as a commentary on how the US Armed Forces of the era thought and wanted, even though it's still kind of stupid and Borderlands-y.
However its Med-X injection script is coded to remove one Med-X from your inventory and then give you a modified Med-X effect with its addiction chance removed (+25 damage resistance and no negative effects) which will remove the negative effects of all addictions and crippled limbs your character is dealing with until the effect fades away. You can also manually inject more Med-X to get buffed by standard and suit Med-X at the same time, giving you +50 Damage Resistance total. Typical coding there lmao.
Fallout NV did this better with the Stealth Suit Mk2. Instead of an aggressive male voice it has a pleasant female voice that speaks only to you. Still auto-injects you with Stimpaks and Med-X but it's the normal addictive Med-X so it's fair and balanced. It's also integrated into the lore of Old World Blues, complete with a questline that lets you upgrade the suit. Stats after you complete the questline that upgrades this: +25 sneak skill, +1 Perception/Agility, +20% sneaking speed when crouched. Grab a bugfix mod so this Sneaky armour is correctly labelled Light armour and not medium armour, and after getting other sneaking buffs you can crouch-sneak faster than you can run upright.
I think it also makes you auto-invisible when crouching, but I already had that effect from a Perk anyway.
then Fallout 4 came along and Power Armour feels amazing to anyone who never played Crysis/Saints Row 4/Vanquish and saw supersuits done better.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.292058
images (2).jpg
primaris-dont-jumptheshark.jpg
>>292057
Anyway to get this power armour talk back on topic, I think a suit with many weapons and interesting functions is more interesting than a suit that's Just Really Good(TM).
Imagine how boring Iron Man would be if he just had one suit that lets him superpunch and hand-laser people, and solely fought people with the same arsenal. No other weapons or gimmicks for anyone. Nothing to make creative moments like "I'll kick this lightning guy into an empty swimming pool!" or "I'll electrocute this invincible energy-field dude to short out his energy field!".
That's why I think a stealth suit that's not automatically bulletproof and requires creative use of different interesting weapons and defensive options that only work a limited number of times per day is cooler than just wearing more armour than three tanks combined. I decided not to have the Raider mentally list every limitation of Sunrise's custom "Sunriser" Power Armour because why would a raider know limitations like that? It'd only make sense for enemies to know his limits if he fought enemies who pushed him to his limits and then got away to tell others about his limits.
Stealth is OP in Fallout anyway. Silenced Weapons are of the magical Hollywood "Slap a silencer on a 50cal and your enemy couldn't hear you fire this even if you were a foot behind him" variety, so a sneaky sniper build is the best thing possible. Lets you pick off all enemies with huge Headshot and Sneak Attack Critical damage multiplier bonuses. I don't think the engine can even let foes recognize the deaths or dead bodies of their comrades, so they'll stand around waiting for death. If the engine could handle something like the Visibomb Gun from RAC1 there would never be a reason to get into combat besides "I'm low on ammo for the options that let me avoid and trivialize combat"
Besides, Fallout's a franchise full of guns strong enough to put holes in Power Armour designed to make front-line infantry replace tanks. Avoiding those by popping a Stealth Boy or wearing Power Armour for the Invisible-Inator Upgrade and Aim Stabilizer Arms+Strength Boost is just logical if your protag isn't some bulletproof videogame protag whose plot armour makes foes miss or exclusively hit nonlethal areas.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.292167
File (hide): 3AD528C1A2DE8F6B9D95137B51F529B0-1387269.mp4 (1.3 MB, Resolution:640x640 Length:00:00:13, allthegenders_1.mp4) [play once] [loop]
allthegenders_1.mp4
Part of the "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" means putting away limitations of the genre.
If a guitarist in a movie is said to be a great guitarist, but the actor who plays him is clearly just slapping the strings at random while a real musician plays into a studio mic somewhere, willingly suspending your disbelief means overlooking this technical fuckup like you'd overlook a visible boom mic at 25:35 or characters alive in 1961 enjoying songs that weren't out until 1968 or 1994.
Because when you see shit like this you can either ignore it, say "this sucks", or make some Headcanon to justify why the timeline's fucked or why Twilight Sparkle just referenced Puff The Magic Dragon and Katy Perry.

The same goes for games. IRL there's no reason why an automatic rifle should do 75% less damage per shot than a single-shot rifle. But in videogames it's a balancing thing.
But then...
Stealth.
Stealth games love making the baddies absurdly blind and deaf and fucking retarded to make the game easier on newbies.
Why can enemies spot you a mile away if you stand, but fail to spot you if you crouch-walk to them until you're within 10 feet of them?
Game balance. Same reason why enemies with dead friends near them and arrows sticking out of their knees I am not sorry will mutter "Must have been the wind" and return to their guard posts because they couldn't figure out where you were within 10 seconds.

When adapting a videogame into a story, do you think a story should port the absolute idiocy of videogame guard NPCs into the story?
Anonymous
a4b95a7
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No.292172
292187
lyra_thumbs_up.jpg
Partially as a result of this thread, I decided to give Fallout 1 a shot. Pretty early in, but so far I'm enjoying it. So thanks, Nigel. Without your autism, I would probably have either waited a while longer to check Fallout out or overlooked it entirely.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.292187
>>292172
I'm glad you're having fun! The GOG versions of Fallout 1/2/NV are best. NV's also on Steam but you can't play it without logging into steam which is annoying.

Pro tip, Gifted is the best trait in the game and Skilled is the worst trait in the game. Fast Shot's good for beginners who don't want to deal with the Aimed Shot system and if you give your character a INT of 3 or below it makes him retarded, unlocking hilarious new dialogue trees.
Bloody Mess is only worth it for the memes. Never touch Jinxed unless you're on a melee-only playthrough.
completionists can use alcohol's INT-lowering penalty and a low starting INT stat to hit INT 3 whenever the Stupid Dialogue offers good rewards. I forget where but you can get one quest reward twice, once as a normal guy and once as a retard.
There's also a "Restore cut content" mod on the NoMutantsAllowed (Or was it NoMoreMutants?) website worth checking out.
Anonymous
d257b12
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No.292210
292211 292212 292289
>>292042
What do you think? Should I write:

A young man dressed in a brown cloak walked up to a round table. A black censer with a spherical incense container stood on its circular foot in the middle of the table. The censer was divided into two pieces: A lid and a bottom. Cutouts, all in the shape of three rings that intersected each other, appeared in two rows circling the surface of the lid. Three metal, with an equal distance between them all, were fused along the surface as they traveled up on and met on the lid's highest point were they attached themselves to a ring. This ring had a long chain goig through it.

OR

A lad walked up to a table with a black censer sitting on it.

The censer will be used throughout the story however, its appearence doesn't really matter as long as the reader knows its a censer. I'm the only one that cares about its appearence.

The only few relevant details that will play an importance in the plot in the first paragraph are these:
>Young man
>Black Censer
>Brown cloak
>The symbol with three intersecting rings

What do you think I should do?
Anonymous
d257b12
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No.292211
>>292210
>Three metal prods
Old Ctrl-c
Anonymous
abb50e3
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No.292212
292289 292887
>>292210
I'd say go with the second one. I don't know the full context but depending on if the pov of that segment of the story is from someone who also doesn't know it'll draw their attention and ours. Drip feed specific things about it as the stranger uses it or the character watching notices specific things.

If the pov is of the young man with the censer but it's in 3rd person can have others in the room note what the young man is doing and see a particular detail about his clothing, mannerism, or something of note on the censer.

Will let you help the audience visualize the censor you envision in your head and if the reader is curious will keep them hooked as they try to fill in the gaps in their head about it's appearance and function being led along by the segments of information being fed to them without it all being spelled out in one long passage that can risk disrupting the flow of information.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.292223
292243
Anyone remember the IDW pony comics?
This might be an odd request but Glim, can this one Sonic IDW Comic issue be added to the list of things to review? https://viewcomics.me/sonic-the-hedgehog-2018/issue-4
Or if you want a whole story arc: issues 3-28.
Anonymous
d257b12
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No.292243
>>292223
>Sonic
Is neither pony nor /pol/.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.292280
292281 292288 292308
1604449128139.gif
>>291537

Anyway:

>We had crash-landed on the roof of the post office. It turned out to be the most scavenge-worthy, as the raiders had stored everything from cartons of cigarettes to most of the various odds and ends I would need to build a poisoned needle gun. No medical supplies however. That hurt.
So it looks like being banned from New Appleoosa hasn't hampered Littlepoop's ambitions of building a poisoned needle gun, to supplement the regular needle gun she already has, which is only one of a preposterous number of guns that this tiny pony lugs around everywhere she goes. So, anyone who was biting their nails about that can relax now.

I also notice that this is the second time the author has mentioned them being short on medical supplies, which still makes no sense. They just stocked up on medical supplies at the farm when trading with Derpy, and I find it hard to believe that they have sustained enough injury since then to have burned through their stash already. The way medicine is supposed to work in this story is complicated to begin with. Potions apparently exist that make even severe injuries like having your leg blown off become minor inconveniences at best, and it seems as if Velvet Remedy's horn magic is capable of similar healing powers. So what supplies do they need exactly? The panacea potions, I imagine, would be an item they'd want to keep in perpetual stock, but apart from that I can't see what else they would need. So much of this story focuses on Littlepoop's acquisition of random objects, yet the author seems to have a difficult time keeping track of what exactly she is carrying at any given time.

>The grocery had long since been looted of any foodstuffs and the raiders had turned the interior into their camp; the disemboweled bodies of their victims hung from the ceilings between filthy mattresses and pots full of disgusting food.
More beautiful, edgy imagery. Seriously, what is the deal with these raiders supposed to be, anyway? Why would a group of vagabonds who survive by waylaying travelers want to decorate their living space with viscera? What possible purpose could that serve, beyond adding le edge to the story? Why is their food disgusting? For that matter, how is it disgusting? What do they eat? These villains are so cartoony it's impossible to take any part of this seriously, and the over the top edge at this point makes it more comical than anything else.

>Trotting to the corpse of the unicorn, I picked up the assault carbine with my teeth and struggled to put it into my saddle bags before giving up and carrying it around my neck by that strap along with my canteens.
Which unicorn? This is the first mention of any unicorn corpse in the scene. For that matter, there has been no assault carbine mentioned up until now either. The only scene description we've been given so far is of a grocery store with viscera hanging from the ceiling and poopoo-peepee graffiti on the walls. It's not illogical that there would be a corpse of a unicorn in here, but if you're going to refer to a specific object (THE unicorn corpse, THE carbine rifle) you need to establish it as part of the scene. Also, it's still unclear why LP is using her teeth instead of her magic.

Anyway, Calamity loots armor and weapons from some other dead raiders that the author didn't bother to mention are in the grocery store but are apparently in the grocery store, and begins taking their weapons apart to build new weapons, or some bullshit like that. Littlepoop watches him for awhile, and then Velvet comes back in (she left the scene earlier to go throw up, because she's a gentle soul and is still troubled by things like guts on the ceiling).

>Velvet Remedy, looking a little worse for wear, called out to me as she trotted up. “There’s a safe in the crater that still looks intact, dear. Do you want to have a go at it?” I let her lead the way.
At this point, I would be surprised if there wasn't a safe in the crater. This entire landscape seems to be littered with unopened safes, as far as the eye can see.

>Mercifully, bobby pin and screwdriver was still within my abilities.
This barely qualifies as a sentence. Even if you are going to use "bobby pin" and "screwdriver" as verbs, we're talking about a quantity greater than one. "Were still within my abilities," not "was." Stop dilating your man-pussy for five seconds and learn to speak your own fucking language.

Anyway, as she picks the lock, Littlepoop mentions that they need a place to bed down for the night, and suggests sleeping in the town. This makes sense enough, but Velvet is opposed.

>“In a raider town?” she asked incredulously. “Have you seen their décor? Beyond being unbelievably disgusting, it’s exceptionally unhealthy. I half suspect that the reason they were such easy targets for you two was that they were all impaired from disease. No offense.”
Good point. Once again I pose the question: what the fuck is the point of hanging rotting guts from the ceiling of your living space?

Anyway, nothing is really resolved from this conversation; LP decides that it probably isn't a good idea to sleep here after all. She gets the safe open and finds another pile of random crap that may or may not be important. For the sake of being thorough, here is what she finds:

>another Stealth Buck and a copy of Zebra Infiltration Tactics (“Know Your Enemy!”), as well as several badly-aged documents and a number of slightly glowing magical energy grenades.

Also:

>A recorded message was tucked into the back. I downloaded it to my PipBuck and listened.
I'll give the author half a point here. While we still have no idea what medium these "recordings" are stored on, he has given us at least a vague idea of how they are being listened to. Since LP is "downloading" these messages to her PipBuck, we can probably assume that they are on some sort of data-storage medium; a floppy disk or a USB stick or something.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.292281
292283 292887
1604401217205.jpg
>>292280

Anyway, here's the message:

>“I’m sending you one of the devices recovered from Shattered Hoof Ridge. Intelligence suggested that the zebras had developed invisibility spell fetishes, but this looks like something designed by the Ministry of Magic. It’s even PipBuck compatible. I hate to say it, but it looks like we’ve got traitors in our midst. If somepony in M.A.S. is leaking arcane technology to the zebras, the Princess will need to take action.”
Yet another random fragment of information, recorded by an unknown party for the benefit of another unknown party and stored, for unknown reasons, in a safe inside a post office.

The purpose of this message seems to have been to acquaint us with the Ministry of Magic:

>No voice I recognized, but this was the third Ministry I now knew by name. Third of six. Six heroic best friends; six Ministries.
While I find this process of opening endless safes and retrieving conveniently-placed sound files to be asinine, I will nonetheless say that I generally approve of the author's method of filling us in on the backstory slowly as the regular story progresses.

>The Ministry of Morale and the Ministry of Peace were the only others I knew anything about... or were they?
Why is this a question? We've heard these other ministries mentioned in the past, and we've gotten some general information about them. She knows that they existed and roughly why they existed, and that's about all that anyone could reasonably expect to know about them at this point.

>No, there was one other, although I hadn’t learned its name.
Granted, math was never my best subject, but by my count there should be three ministries whose names she does not yet know, not just one. According to the text there are six total, and as LP just explained we are aware of three of them: Morale, Peace, and Magic. Thus, there would be three unnamed ministries remaining. Six minus three equals three (6-3=3). Let me know if this is getting too complicated for you, kkat.

>The orange bucking pony statuette was clearly one of the limited edition magical artifacts that Pinkie... no Silver Bell had told us about.
I vaguely remember her picking up something like this, but I don't remember where or why. The Pinkie statuette mentioned by Silver Bell was brought up more recently, but I don't know if it was ever directly connected to any of the ministries; as I remember it, she just mentioned that a statue existed and that she wanted the party to find it. As such, I see no reason why LP should connect the dots she's about to connect:

>The cutie mark of three apples was identical to the design on the handle of Little Macintosh. The fact that I could mentally draw a line from one of Watcher’s heroines to a weapons factory guarded by pony-shaped robots with living brains in them made me cringe a little inside. I got the feeling I wasn’t going to like a lot of what I was bound to learn about these Ministries.
These connections don't follow each other logically. The first one, about the cutie mark on the statue connecting the gun with the same insignia to the pony the statue represents, makes sense enough; however, again, I see no reason why she should connect either the statue or the gun to any particular ministry. In fact I'm not even sure which ministry she's even forming this connection to. Since we, the semi-omniscient reader, have some outside information on the world this story is set in, we can probably deduce that both the gun and the statue connect to Applejack. However, Littlepoop has not even heard Applejack's name yet, let alone any information about her cutie mark or which Ministry she presumably headed.

So far, all we have is a gun and a statuette bearing the same insignia, which presumably was somepony's cutie mark. Since the gun and (I think) the statue were both found in the factory, there is probably a connection to the gun's (presently unknown) owner and the factory. However, there is no connection between this mystery pony's factory and any of the six ministries that I'm aware of.

Anyway, there is a page break, and the next scene opens on a railroad track:

>A curving set of train tracks cut a swath through the rolling, rocky hills and intersected with our path, so we had begun to follow it. It wasn’t exactly the right direction, but it was close, and I suspected the tracks would wind slowly back, probably leading all the way to Manehattan. Plus, it had the benefit of being relatively flat. All the hills were sapping me.
Where are they going again? Oh yeah, Manehattan. Why are they going there again? Oh yeah, because it's on the way to Fillydelphia. Why are they going to Fillydelphia again? Oh yeah, something about...slavers or something, I guess. Littlepoop wants to beat up even more of them, because why not. Now, why did they diverge from their original path and decide to follow the railroad tracks? Umm...well...

>“No more living in this gilded cage,” Velvet began to sing. “Shackled to what is supposed to be.
“I am ready to exit this stage; it is time for this bird to fly free.”
>"Ah’ve been blinded cuz Ah’ve closed muh eyes,” Calamity stepped in. His voice was no match for Velvet Remedy’s but he carried a tune amazingly well. “Seein’ just what they told me t’ see.
>“Time t’ get up an’ shake off the lies; break their rules, stretch muh wings and just leave!”
This song has all the subtlety and poetic quality of a Green Day lyric. The subject matter is clearly related to Velvet's obsessive hatred of cages (which is still supremely ironic btw), but it's unclear who the antagonist here is. Who are "they" in this context? Who is blinding and caging the song's protagonist? What don't "they" want her to see, and why don't they want her to see it? Without context this song is an angry but ultimately empty screed against some vague, undefined authority; it's too generic to have any serious emotional resonance for anyone over the age of twelve. Again, basically a Green Day song.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.292283
292285 292310
1604678121069.png
>>292281

However, apparently it doesn't take much to impress Littlepoop:

>Wow. For the second time that morning, I fell to my haunches, my mouth hanging open. Velvet Remedy and Calamity continued their song, unaware that I had stopped and was staring at them. I threw myself back to my hooves and trotted to catch up.
Yeah, wow. The pony with a deep-rooted moral objection to being caged who nonetheless was voluntarily working with an organization that caged other ponies is singing a generic ballad about how it sucks to be caged. How awe-inspiring. I'm sure Littlepoop's gushy reaction here has absolutely nothing to do with her desire to chow down on Velvet's box.

>There was a part of my spirit that was just welling with happiness, seeing my friends like this. A part of my mind that was in constant squee at hearing Velvet writing a new song.
I cannot stress enough my objection to any use of the word "squee" in prose or in general, for that matter.

Anyway, though she is enjoying the song, LP worries that the noise might give away their position. However, she decides not to mention it to them since they seem to be enjoying themselves. Meanwhile, they come to the top of a hill, and Calamity flies a little ways out to see what's ahead. He returns with the report that there appear to be (you guessed it) more raiders ahead. Then, this happens:

>The armored griffin thudded down in front of us in a battle stance -- talons sharp as razors, a jagged scar running up her beak and across where her left eye had once been, and a tri-barreled magical energy shotgun in a quick-draw holster under her breast.

Oh dear. What will become of our intrepid heroes? We'll have to wait an entire page break to find out.

One page break later, we rejoin LP & Co. as they are being marched in captivity up the railroad tracks. For some unknown reason, the trio decided to surrender to the griffin (whose name is Gawd) instead of fighting her, even though she has no advantage over them that I can see, and these three have fought their way out of considerably more ridiculous situations.

She takes them back to a train junction where yet another makeshift settlement/fortress made out of train cars stands.

>Calamity noticed me eyeing the cattle cars. “Ah’ve heard stories of slavers usin’ those t’ transport slaves long distances over the rails,” he muttered, adding after a moment’s thought, “Never seen it with muh own eyes though.” Taking in the size of the cattle cars then the number of them on this train, it struck me: that’s a lot of slaves!
I'm still curious just where exactly all these slaves are going. The slaver operation in Appleoosa seemed fairly large, and apparently dedicated cattle-cars exist for the sole purpose of transporting large numbers of slaves. Slavery is clearly a large-scale business in this world, and yet we never see any kind of large-scale industrial or agricultural operations going on that would require large numbers of slaves.

In fact, every time we encounter slaves in this story, they are usually in the custody of "slavers," or people who are in the business of procuring and selling slaves. However, we have yet to witness slaves toiling in the custody of the end consumer. Where are these slaves being shipped in such large quantities? Who buys them?

The story has hinted that there were other groups involved in the Great War, zebras and so forth, and presumably there would be remnants of their nation running around in this world as well. We've also had hints that something akin to an organized nation or empire may still exist in this world: the Red Eye character has been mentioned twice. He seems to either be in charge of an empire, or is in the process of trying to build one; either way, if anyone was buying up a large number of slaves, I'd expect it to be him.

Is this subplot about chasing down slavers meant to foreshadow something larger? Are we simply being shown one side of what will ultimately turn out to be a massive part of the post-apocalyptic Equestrian economy? Or is it just that the author didn't put enough thought into his world building to even consider who might be buying the slaves, and he just put slavers into the story because they are in the game? At this point I'm assuming the latter, but we'll see I guess.

Anyway, based on the pattern that k "my butt is like a cattle-car full of slaves: stuffed to capacity" kat has established, one might assume that, since the last group of enemies we fought were raiders, this new group would be another batch of slavers. However, this does not seem to be the case.

>They were dressed in the same sort of makeshift armor that I had taken from the raiders, but a closer look revealed that several of them carried magical energy weapons of one sort or another.
So I guess the implication is that they look like raiders, but carrying magical energy weapons means that they're not? This author categorizes these groups based on some pretty weird criteria, and I really don't see why any of this should be obvious to Littlepoop even if it is part of the world. If a pony is wearing raider armor they must be a raider, but if they have magical weapons they must be something else? Why? Because for some reason raiders aren't able to use magical weapons? Whatever distinction is being made here isn't clear.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.292285
292288 292411
1604438147250.jpg
>>292283

>My ears flattened as I remembered one of the train ponies vaporized, leaving only glowing pink ash behind. It occurred to me only now that I had seen the same effect my first day outside -- the Watcher-controlled sprite-bot had used a similar weapon on the bloatsprite. (So maybe the sprite-bots weren’t entirely earth pony engineering after all.) Despite our situation, my thoughts jumped-track. What did Watcher say about bloatsprites? When you mix parasprites and Taint. Which is magical radiation, right? Or is it something different?
This paragraph just comes out of absolutely nowhere and leaps from subject to subject in a way that makes it difficult to follow LP's train of thought. What does any of this have to do with anything that's going on right now? Why would she choose this moment to remember some previous enemy being vaporized? What do sprite-bots and bloatsprites have to do with anything? How would Littlepoop even be aware that the sprite-bots were built by earth ponies? I don't recall that being mentioned anywhere.

Anyway, the griffon takes them inside the camp. There is some description given of the inhabitants. Most of them seem to be disfigured, malnourished, or have suffered serious injuries: one has a missing leg, another has scars that indicate he has been whipped severely, there is a foal that appears to be starving or near-starving, and so forth. The party is led into a passenger car that Gawd appears to use as a dwelling or an office. There is also a "house of Gawd" pun in here that I won't dignify by highlighting, but that the author should probably smack himself for.

>The door swung shut with a metallic squeal, and I could hear braces thudding into place. We were locked in with the griffin.
>Ironically, in better circumstances, I realized this would be a big tactical mistake for the griffin -- three against one, and at least two of us could handle ourselves in combat.
Yes, except it would make no sense whatsoever to attack her now that they are in the middle of her camp, surrounded by her allies, who clearly have better weapons than they do and would probably hear the scuffle inside the car with or without the door closed. If they were going to gang up on her, the time to do it would have been back on the hill, when she first showed herself to them. I'm still a little curious why they didn't do that.

>Right now, however, with my levitation magic at its most feeble, we were probably hosed if this came to blows and guns.
Littlepoop's weakened magic might explain why they didn't want to fight the griffon, but I'm still waiting on an explanation for why her magic is weak to begin with.

>I shook my head, trying to clear the webs of too little sleep when I caught myself musing that she’d look really attractive if she was a little closer to my age and, you know, a pony.
Yes, kkat, we get it; she's a dyke. Very edgy and progressive. Now let's move things along.

Anyway, the interrogation begins with a standard-issue "who are you guys and why are you in our territory?" line of questioning.

>“I’m Littlepip. This is Calamity and Velvet Remedy. We’re just passing through.” We also had an increasingly desperate need for a place to sleep, but I wasn’t going to reveal that, much less suggest we sleep anywhere near here.
There seems to be a running theme going that they are sleep-deprived for some reason, which I'm assuming is supposed to be the reason for LP's weak magic. If we take the narrative at face value, I don't believe they've actually slept since they left New Appleoosa for the slaver colony; however, I still don't see any reason why they couldn't have rested a few days at Silver Bell's farm. Plus, there's the usual muddle about time: how many days have passed since the incident with the slavers and the present? The narration just kind of rambles endlessly from event to event without really punctuating cues like time of day.

Anyway, the griffon's party seems to be some sort of organized paramilitary unit. They have a flag (black with talons; I'm assuming this is another game reference) and seem to answer to someone called Mr. Topaz, who I assume is also kkat's man-pimp. This is probably the highest level of organization we've seen from an enemy group in this story so far.

The griffon apprehended them for entering their (unmarked) territory without permission from this Topaz character. Topaz, they are informed, is the "lord and master of Shattered Hoof and all territories adjacent." Calamity is skeptical:

>Calamity nickered. “Ah call horseapples. This ain’t anywheres close t’ Shattered Hoof Ridge.”
>Gawd rolled her eyes. “No. But you are less than half an hour’s flight from Shattered Hoof, the rock-breaking compound, which was named after Shattered Hoof, the battle.”
Referring to multiple locations by the same name when the geography of your world is vague to begin with is a bad idea. Having both locations named after an unexplained event in the vague history of your vague world is a worse idea. We have no idea where Shattered Hoof Ridge is, nor do we know where it stands in relation to Shattered Hoof Rock Breaking Compound, nor do we know what Shattered Hoof the battle was. Shattered Hoof was mentioned in the recorded message earlier, but since it could potentially refer to three different things, the meaning isn't made any clearer.

>Gawd facewinged. “Really? Surely you understand rock-breaking.”
Kkat, I let you get away with a "facehoof" earlier, but "facewing" is just a bridge too far. Take the fifteen inch horse dildo out of your ass, slap yourself across the face with it several times, put it back in, and then take a long walk off a short pier vote five, faggots, and I'm out of here.

Anyway, there's some idiotic side-conversation about rock farming that doesn't really go anywhere and doesn't merit close scrutiny, and then the subchapter ends with a page break.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.292288
>>292280
>More beautiful, edgy imagery. Seriously, what is the deal with these raiders supposed to be, anyway? Why would a group of vagabonds who survive by waylaying travelers want to decorate their living space with viscera? What possible purpose could that serve, beyond adding le edge to the story?

Because that's what raiders do in Fallout 3.

>>292285
>Anyway, the griffon's party seems to be some sort of organized paramilitary unit. They have a flag (black with talons; I'm assuming this is another game reference)

They're the Talon Company. Introduced in Fallout 3 (you may be noticing a pattern), they're an amoral mercenary outfit who come after you with murderous intent if your morality score is too high.

From the Fallout wiki:
"Little is known of their history. In 2277, they are working for an unknown third party, with simple orders: keep the Capital Wasteland a lawless, disorganized place.[1] They have a particularly nasty record, which includes slaughtering an entire settlement (complete with women and children) between 2275 and 2276.[2] As a mercenary army, the Talons have absolutely no reservations about their targets. A job is a job. In exchange for the right sum of money, they are ready to kill anyone without giving it a second thought, which includes raiding and killing entire villages.[3][4][5] They can be hired by anyone who has the caps.[6]"

They're run by griffons in FoE. Because pun.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.292289
>>292210
You've got kind of a "Goldilocks' Porridge" situation here.

>A young man dressed in a brown cloak walked up to a round table. A black censer with a spherical incense container stood on its circular foot in the middle of the table. The censer was divided into two pieces: A lid and a bottom. Cutouts, all in the shape of three rings that intersected each other, appeared in two rows circling the surface of the lid. Three metal, with an equal distance between them all, were fused along the surface as they traveled up on and met on the lid's highest point were they attached themselves to a ring. This ring had a long chain goig through it.
This is probably far too much detail, especially since you go on to say that most of the details here are not important.

>A lad walked up to a table with a black censer sitting on it.
This is probably far too little detail, especially since you go on to list details that are important which are omitted here.

You'll want to rewrite this from a middle-ground perspective, that includes the essential information and only the essential information. Let's walk through what you've got:

>A young man dressed in a brown cloak walked up to a round table.
The problem here is too many adjectives; each noun has a descriptive modifier associated with it, and the repetition makes it feel like you're reciting a grocery list or something. Since you stated earlier that the cloak being brown is an important detail, we'll probably want to leave that in. However, the table being round does not seem to matter much, so we can drop that adjective and just say "table." You can always specify its roundness later if you want to. The age of the man is on your list of important details, so we can't just drop "young," but in your second version, you describe him as a "lad." This is a single noun that refers specifically to a young man, so you can convey the same information without an adjective; thus I'd go with "lad" instead of "young man." We could also probably streamline it a bit further by changing "walked up to" into "approached." Hence:

>A lad dressed in a brown cloak approached a table.

Now, we need to figure out how to include the other important details. Of the four you've mentioned, we've already covered two: the young man and the brown cloak. So, all we need to do now is mention the black censer and the symbol with three intersecting rings.

>A black censer with a spherical incense container stood on its circular foot in the middle of the table.
You've got the same problem with adjectives here as well. We'll keep "black censer" since that's one of our important details, but the rest can probably be truncated: the sole function of a censer is to burn incense, so we don't need to mention the incense holder at all, and the shape of the censer's foot (presumably) doesn't matter. So, let's look at what we have so far:

>A lad dressed in a brown cloak approached a table. A black censer sat in the middle.

Alright, looking pretty good so far. We can touch it up a bit once we have everything in there that we need. Now let's take a look at the last little bit:

>The censer was divided into two pieces: A lid and a bottom. Cutouts, all in the shape of three rings that intersected each other, appeared in two rows circling the surface of the lid. Three metal, with an equal distance between them all, were fused along the surface as they traveled up on and met on the lid's highest point were they attached themselves to a ring. This ring had a long chain goig through it.
This is a very detailed description, but probably way more detail than you need. The amount of detail here actually makes this harder to visualize, because there's too much information to keep track of. Remember, if you have a complex object like this you don't need to give the reader everything in one go. >>292212 suggests drip-feeding the information to the reader as they need it, and I would concur with this.

For this initial impression we give the reader of this censer, the detail you highlight as important is the symbol of the intersecting rings. Thus, that is what we'll want to put at the forefront in our sentence. Try this:

>A symbol of three intersecting rings was carved repeatedly into the lid, which was crowned with an ornate metal handle cast in the same shape. A chain ran through a ring at the top.
This is basically a condensed version of the information you gave us above. It doesn't give us as vivid of a picture, but again, if the reader needs to know exactly what this censer looks like you can fill in the minute details as you go. For right now, this is more than enough.

Now, the only thing left to do is to combine all of this information into a couple of sentences, and play around with the wording a bit. Here's what I came up with:

>A lad in a brown cloak approached a table, upon which sat a censer. The censer was onyx black, and its lid was repeatedly carved with a symbol of three interlocking rings. Three metal rings, interlocked in a similar fashion, met at the top, encircling a final ring attached to a chain.

As you can see, I merged our first two sentences into a single sentence, and waited until the second sentence to mention the color of the censer. This allowed me to add the "onyx" embellishment, which emphasizes the blackness of the censer and breathes a little more life into the image. I did the best I could to concisely describe the intricate lid you designed. Also, note that I completely left out the part about the censer being separated into lid and bottom. Since one implies the existence of the other, usually just mentioning a lid will be enough to make the reader assume there is a second part upon which the lid rests.

Honestly, it's just a matter of rearranging the words until you get what you want. Sometimes I'll rewrite a sentence 15-20 times before I'm satisfied with it.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.292308
BoyswithaTimeMachine.png
faggots.gif
>>292280
The dumbest thing about the edgy raiders who decorate their homes with gore is how it never gets justified, but other stories bothered to justify it.
>they mutilate bodies to one-up those who put severed heads on poles and dead/starving victims in cages outside the boundaries of their city
>they like putting mutilated bodies up on poles, letting the blood drain away, and sometimes shaving off meat kebab-style to fry over a campfire because they're cannibals
>they think mutilated bodies on display will please Killstab the Raider God
>mutilated bodies, whether on display or not on display, can have their organs removed and sold to travelling traders who know a healing mage/mad doctor/mad scientist/amateur doctor who wants some shit to practice with/experiment on.
>mutilated bodies, whether on display or not on display, attract insects which can be consumed for protein
>Raiders think putting viscera and excrement everywhere will toughen their immune systems and make them better at shaking off any of the Wasteland's many life-threatening illnesses
>Every raider gang has that one faggot who finds creating gore art cathartic plus everyone shits and cums onto their own beds as a way to mark their territory and keep others from stealing their beds since there ain't enough beds to go around
>raiders are the result of a dark magic poison Zebras placed into many water supplies to erode the mental and moral fibre of ponies, creating edgelords that raped ponies who didn't even know what rape was until now. These edgelords also often committed war crimes against zebras on the battlefield and their cutie mark was changed to some violent take on their existing mark while Blank Flanks affected by the poison exclusively get violent marks like shot skulls and knives and guns and rapist strap-ons.
>creating gore "Art" is a cultural "coming of age ritual" for adult raider ponies and they are expected to create this shit once they are old enough to be raped or start raping others. Creating inferior gore art or no art makes you look weak and easily rapeable. Raiders want to see gore no matter where they look to desensitize their natural pony morality and make them better at dealing with gore on the battlefield.
>raiders are possessed by Wolbachia Parasites, that infamous parasite that compels worms to crawl to high places and bloat up into worms so they can be eaten by birds who spread the infection further, and compels rats to become fearless cat urine fetishists who swiftly get eaten by cats who are turned into gay anal rapists by the disease just like men when they get the disease. When ponies get the disease, they are compelled to become violent creatures who piss and shit and cum in their own beds and decorate their homes with filth to create the optimal conditions for infectious diseases to fester even if the raiders run out of food and start cannibalizing each other.
>pony bodies and their bodily fluids are inherently pure and anti-disease/infection. They are also inherently holy and anti-darkness, which makes them able to resist dark magic's corrupting nature until it kills them while other beings get mutated by dark magic. Keeping gore piles around means more blood to keep dark spirits and dangerous radiation-mutated diseases away. Its ability to scare many looters and rival raiders away is a bonus.
>every raider keeps one dead body in their house to use as a punching bag and test dummy. They cut these bodies up, beat the shit out of them, and test all sorts of improvised weapons like rebar clubs and rusty spiked horseshoes to keep their skills sharp

>All the hills were sapping me
SPY SAPPIN' MY SENTRY!
Hahaha, that's a team fortress 2 reference.

>villain shows up and immediately captures the heroes
Well this sucks. The author couldn't be arsed to write a proper scene where the Griffon negotiates with the poners and convinces them to come quietly. There are hills around, Gawd could easily yell something into an earpiece or magic collar enchantment to get many snipers he placed on his hills to turn their laser sights on at the same time, scaring LP and pals into surrendering.
Could even make a stupid joke about that stupid sniper OC the BBC's Sherlock fandom on tumblr invented.
Basically there's one scene where the villain Moriarty outwits Sherlock and Watson with his plot armour and homosexually threatens them faggotorially. A shitload of sniper laser sights are pointed at Sherlock and Watson. However, anyone paying more attention than the BBC bastards will notice that every single laser sight is coming from the exact same rooftop, also one is pointing off to the side for no reason. Fans quickly designed one sniper character who struggles to hold all these guns with his two arms like a faggot trying to hold all his dirty laundry at once. "Fuck", he says as one gun veers wildly to the side.
This fic's obsessed with fandom memes. I'm surprised it didn't bring up that one.
Hell, I'm surprised he doesn't say his laser gun has an advanced cooling mechanism to let it fire bigger bullets without overheating because that cooling mechanism keeps it 20% cooler than normal cooling mechanisms.

It's kind of funny how LP and pals can murderhobo their way through hundreds of raiders every day, but the second a named character wants to kidnap them or manipulate them, they fold like a house of cards that's being nutted on by a horse.

Speaking of horses that nut I think Sunrise Stardust is a better character than Silver Star Apple. There was a clear goal and concept in mind when making Sunrise: This buff nerd obsessed with self-improvement absolutely fucking hates degeneracy and the Equestrian Wasteland. He's a purifying flame here to rebuild Equestria from the ashes of the Wasteland, and he grew his gang into an army of over 256 ponies with their own industries, farming, some conquered/allied gimmicky gangs working for them, customized robots, gunsmiths, hitler youth, and more.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.292310
>>292283
>They were dressed in the same sort of makeshift armor that I had taken from the raiders, but a closer look revealed that several of them carried magical energy weapons of one sort or another.
This is fucking retarded. Anyone can point and shoot a gun, getting good means hitting what you want and not getting fucked by recoil and learning to maintain/repair the gun and what to do if it jams. A laser pistol's easier to use than a gun because it takes rechargeable batteries and has no recoil. Even if they're probably harder to repair than normal guns, these are magical energy weapons, not laser/plasma ones. Who knows what they have inside them? Why don't they have self-repairing enchantments like so many other things do?
Some faggot would probably say "Lmao why use self-repairing enchantments when you could have extra lightning damage on the bullets" but in a serious context, self-repairing guns would make life absurdly easy for the logisticsfags and repairfags. Doesn't 75% of a military's yearly multi-million-dollar budget get spent on maintenance and repairs? I heard something like that once, no idea if it's true.
Anyway even if a Raider wouldn't know how to fix a laser gun or recharge a magic battery he'd still have an easier time firing it from the teeth than something with recoil and noise.
Littlepip should think "These guys are too clean and coordinated to be Raiders. Their guns are so well-maintained I'd swear they're factory-fresh! Their battle armour is scarred but also excellently polished with purified water."
That would make more sense.
Speaking of gun shit that doesn't make sense, it's retarded that "Wastelandy" features like duct-tape always appear in some Fallout guns no matter how high or low their Condition (item durability) is. If I buy a gun factory-fresh from the Gun Runners at an agonizingly exorbitant price I shouldn't see dents, blood, years of wear and tear, and fucking duct-tape on my literal factory-fresh gun straight out of a literal fucking factory. They should have multiple models for each gun that change according to gun condition level. It'd make telling a gun's condition at a glance possible without needing to pick it up and look at it in a menu.

>rock-farming
WHY DO FAGGY AUTHORS FIND SUCH GLEE IN THIS CONCEPT
Either you take what Pinkie said seriously and it really is a farm where rocks are pushed around because... I don't know, ley lines and the magic in the earth will make the gems in rocks bigger to make mining less harmful to the environment than a greenfag author with an infected green brain thinks it is. And rocks need to be pushed around the farm during the day to get as much leyline energy as possible so the gems will be properly big and sparkly and magic-filled, making them great for decoration/magic and delicious to Dragons.
Or you take rock farming as a metaphor and say they broke rocks to make stone/cement for castles/construction and Pinkie's job was pushing the rocks to her parents who handled rock-smashing.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.292328
0 skater cat.gif
In light of Littlepip's absurd and unjustified field-repaired gun collection, I looked it up and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUfDEjNvGA8 turns out it's actually pretty easy to carry a shitload of guns at once. Look at how many guns this guy's able to carry.
Also, why didn't Littlepip and pals try to repair one of those "Nuclear flying car" chariots when in a junkyard? Even if they can't gather enough useable parts from other cars to fix one (Which is how LP fixes guns: Using parts from one gun in another and tossing away everything she didn't use) they should at least be able to create a decent armoured car Littlepoop can force to move with her boxcar-lifting telekinesis once she's rested enough to actually use her horn again. She could push the car with her horn, or levitate it with her horn. She could even weld thick metal plates over all the windows and windshields, and use her Pip-Buck's Map and Compass to navigate inside this over-armoured blinded car! Plus there are plenty of places to store guns and other supplies in a car. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os9WEA_Or9s
Trading Caravans in Fallout are when one or more traders and possibly some armed guards walk at a snail's pace with a mutated two-headed cow carrying their tradeable goods. The best caravans should use cars, but getting cars to work in a 2d isometric turn-based game is easier than getting cars to work in a 3d third-person shooter so the 3D fallouts don't want to touch any cars that aren't scenery objects or explosives waiting to explode. But when you think about it, a car would be vital to survivalists whose game plan is "Scavenge territory" instead of "Find a defensible location and wait this out" or "Stay in my bunker" or "Stay in this thriving Raider-proof community". With fuel, a car lets you drive anywhere with decent roads for long periods of time, it lets you go fast, it lets you carry more at once, it even provides minor armour in a firefight. And it's not that hard to convert a car into something that uses booze as fuel, booze you can easily make at home or buy at most towns/trade hubs.
This sustained period of exhaustion for Littlepoop is completely retarded. It's just there so Littlepoop has an excuse to get captured alive and brought in for questioning by Gawd the Griffon, because writing a scene where shitloads of Griffon snipers perched on clouds turn their laser sights on was too hard for Kkunt.
Previously I mentioned how much the fic loves using Littlepip seeing edgy bad things as a substitute for edgy bad things happening to Littlepip. It's funny how much it also loves skipping over any scene where Kkunt thinks LP looks too weak/inept and doesn't want it to stick in the minds of fans.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.292396
292408
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The Doom Comic.
Three words that can make any real Doom fan smile.
A comic where a guy kills some demons while looking for guns and powerups while talking to himself.
It's a fun little story.
And it's a lot like the games.
Aside from the random moment where he stumbles upon radioactive and says "Now I'm radioactive! That can't be good! Why can't we find a way to dispose of radioactive waste safely? Think of the children!"

First he rips and tears through demons while under the influence of a videogame powerup, only for it to run out at an inopportune and funny moment, forcing him to back off and look for guns, then he finds a chainsaw, then he uses a shotgun as a flashlight as he travels through a dark area, and killed some enemies without even looking at them, and then he finds a chaingun, and then...
You might think this would make for a dull story, but Doomguy's brilliant personality and hilariously bizarre dialogue carries this tale and makes what could have been a boring edgefest into some of the funniest shit on the planet.

Personality. This comic oozes personality like a used playboy magazine oozes manly love goop.

That's what this fic needs. More personality!

Littlepoop's a generic wannabe-NobleBright heroine, and her companions so far are one dude with a gun and one medic chick who hates being caged but will happily cage others if it means getting to be a medic to somebody. Those two started off barely talking to each other, but now they're singing cheesy Green Day songs together. Yeah, that's character development. First they're neutral towards each other or hate each other, and then they are friends so they sing together and call each other their friends. Growth. Development. S support when?

There could be some fun character dynamics here, if these characters had more personality. I'm not asking for some wacky insane trying-too-hard Borderlands shit, because I know Kkunt can't write that. But a good writer could pull that off and make the Equestrian Wasteland a fun place full of black comedy.
Black Comedy has always been a major part of Fallout. At least until F3 came along and BugthEAsderp decided madcap comedy, immortal children/major questgivers, super mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave, Radscorpions, Brahmin, and the desert setting with Mad Max ripoffs were all Fallout Elements(TM) that needed to appear everywhere in Fallout no matter what corner of America you ended up in.
You know what's GODLIKE for black comedy? Cutesy cartoon shit that kills people, and lethal tragic irony. A pony world where the pre-war poners tried their best and all their best efforts failed is fertile ground for some sick twisted jokes about how futile it suddenly all was. Letting the tragedy of Equestria's death speak for itself would be darker and easier to take seriously than this "Raider-infested shit/cum-questria" where the story can't go ten seconds without featuring raiders or slavers or named slavers or named raiders.
Come on, early FIM was a show full of characters who went a little crazy when times were tough! In a world where everything's shit and everyone's suffering Sanity Slippage(TM) this should be the default state of most Wastelanders. Becoming a quirky weirdo is supposedly a coping mechanism to help you deal with a shitty insane world and constant stress, right? I forget who said that.
And personality is an important part of writing.
Imagine Sokka and Katara's "Optimist vs Realist" shtick recycled for wasteland newcomer Littlepoop and wasteland veteran Calamity. If Littlepoop's supposed to be defined by her good deeds and moral fiber, it should be a bigger deal to her and the story.
Which means writing Velvet to step on her horsey toes with her own flavour of the "impractical Stupid Good hero" shtick is fucking retarded, unless you're willing to make Velvet's journey from "lmao being good means healing ANYONE, right?" to "Being a hero means doing what's right and when I wonder what's right I ask myself what would Littlepip do" into a character arc.
In that case, Velvet and Calamity could do the "Optimist vs Realist" thing while Littlepoop does the Kirk "I make my own plans and do the right thing" bit.
What if Calamity had his sarcastic cowboy thing going on because he was a scared little guy and a crappy ex-soldier in over his head and desperately trying to look/sound intimidating to his foes and alluring to the ladies?
What if Velvet was born with a shitton of money and beauty that made everyone simp for her, convincing her she's special and important and perfect, but she was also born with a natural talent for healing magic and she convinced herself this must mean her ultra-super-hyper-alpha-omega chosen one destiny must be to fuck off into the Wasteland and heal everyone, but she gets captured and enslaved and turned into the healbot of slavers because she's too soft to survive in this world without a badass protagonist constantly bailing this big-mouthed Stupid Good Paladin out of danger?

What if Littlepoop dropped the lockpicking meme and was a Mechanic waifu who makes good shit out of scavenged junk? What if Littlepoop's murderhobo moments and protagonist complex moments were intentional writing decisions and character traits others could comment on? What if any enemy familiar with PipBucks was able to yell "OH FUCK, SHE'S GOT A PIP-BUCK! EVERYPONY, FOCUS HER DOWN FIRST!!!" to the rest of his raider/slaver/named raider/named slaver buddies? What if the world was a grim dark place that constantly spat in Littlepoop's face for trying to be a hero in a world of selfish bastards at best and rapists at usually? What if this fic noticed how weird it is to scavenge for supplies and repair items in the middle of a firefight and cracked jokes about whatever weird pony mental disorder Littlepip's got?

Murderhobo gun-fetishist mechanic waifu Littlepoop, "Please think I'm cool" Calamity, "I'm supposed to be the chosen one" Velvet... This could be fun. I wish FE was more fun. And more gun.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.292408
292452
>>292396
>That's what this fic needs. More personality!

Something I occasionally think about is the missed opportunity in one of the story's earliest lines - "This wall needs a mural." What if Pip was actually a creative person? The sort that sees a deppressing blank wall and wants to make something interesting or inspiring out of it. That way she'd have an in-character justification for a 'see something wrong, try to make it right' attitude beyond a vague sense of violent moral outrage.

To expand on that, Velvet and Calamity could easily act as foils to both Pip and one another in this case. Velvet as the extreme moralfag who follows her own ethical code no matter who's hurt by it indirectly (ie. joining up with the slavers so that she can heal people) and Calamity as the grizzled pragmatist who puts the reality brakes on when Pip starts being too ambitious or Velvet goes full SJW.

The tragic thing is that it wouldn't be hard at all for this story to have a decent character dynamic, but Kkat really seems to struggle to get beyond "Littlepip the Videogame Protagonist and her two NPC lackeys, Shooty Cowboy and Whiny Healer".
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.292411
292414
1604296093902.png
>>292285

>Gawd had a job for us. Promised bottle caps and safe passage in return.
Well, it appears I read the situation wrong. Gawd is not an enemy; she is another NPC whose role is to assign them yet another pointless quest. In retrospect, I should have seen the warning signs. Gawd is an actual character with a name and a vague outline of a personality, and k "I've got a big big thirst for hot salty nigger dicks" kat does not seem to be in the business of writing villains as actual characters; only mindless, generic baddies with no apparent motivations beyond a purposeless desire to enslave and/or kill other ponies count as villains in this story.

>Gawd glowered. “Now look here. I have only two loyalties. To the contract, and to bottle caps. And in that order.”
Someone contact Guinness; I'm curious if there is a record for "most idiotic line ever spoken by a character in a work of fiction."

>“My old crew learned that when they decided t’ take up Red Eye’s offer and turn over the caravan we were hired t’ protect t’ Red Eye’s slavers.” She turned back to us. “Talons don’t break contracts. Not even for barrels of caps. They learned that the hard way when I shot ‘em in the back.”
There are a couple of interesting tidbits buried in here. For one, we now officially have a name for Gawd's group: the Talons. Second, the implication here is that Red Eye is in charge of the slavers. If he is the one heading up the slave procurement and sale operation, it means that he is unlikely to be the one buying the slaves. So, we're back to square one on that particular mystery.

Anyway, it looks like the long and short of it is that Gawd wants to contract LP & Co. to do some kind of job that their employer and/or commander Mr. Topaz would disapprove of them doing themselves. The Talons appear to have an unorthodox but relatively straightforward code of honor: they remain 100% loyal to anyone who hires them, per the terms of the contract. However, they also seem willing to circumvent this by subcontracting outside help to carry out missions that presumably work against the interests of their contract, which produces essentially the same result as if they were to violate the contract themselves. So, as far as codes of honor go, this one is fairly silly.

In any event, before we learn what the mission is, LP &Co. are given a Q&A session that fills in a few world details.

>“Red Eye, that guy on the sprite-bots, he runs the slavers?”
>“Yes. Ironic isn’t it. He preaches all that horseshit about peace and unity and building a better tomorrow, and he’s been building it on the backs of hundreds of slaves. I can’t understand how so many of you ponies buy into his hypocritical rubbish.”
This officially confirms Red Eye as being in charge of the slaver operation, though it is now unclear whether he is selling the slaves for profit or if he is using their labor directly to serve his own ends. My suspicion is probably the latter. We still know very little about him, but my suspicion is that if this story ever decides to have an actual plot, Red Eye will likely factor into it.

>“The Talons will work for whoever pays. Slavers, raiders, good little townsfolk, caravans. Whoever’s got the caps. We don’t play politics and we don’t takes sides. Unless, of course, it’s in the contract. That’s been the griffin way for over two hundred years. Red Eye, he gets that. And unlike some folk, he has no reservations ‘bout strengthening his forces with our kind.”
This seems to imply that the Talons are an all-griffon group; however, when the group is being led through the train-car fortress that apparently serves as the group's headquarters, the text explicitly states that there are ponies, not griffons, guarding the cars. Gawd is also the only griffon we've seen in the story thus far. I'm a little curious what the deal there is supposed to be.

>I looked to my companions. The chore itself shouldn’t be too hard. It was, after all, right in my skill set. I’d barely need the magic I barely had.
Has the job even been explained yet? We don't know the details, but it's unclear if LP has been given the rundown. In any event, this little pony has a big head. Unless the job involves fixing a broken PipBuck or cracking the lock on one of the literal thousands of safes lying around everywhere, she can't really claim it's in her skill set.

Anyway, it appears that, in order to ensure that there is no funny stuff, Gawd intends to keep one of them as hostage until the job is complete. Littlepoop volunteers, but Gawd refuses and asks for Velvet Remedy instead. This seems to shock and dismay Littlepoop, though it really shouldn't, since Velvet is clearly the most useless of the three and would thus be the logical choice if someone has to stay behind. In any case, before LP can object, Velvet acquiesces, because there are ponies in need of healing and blah blah blah. Gawd is now suspicious that Velvet may be a "Preacher," which is a term we have not yet encountered but will doubtless be explained in due course. Rather than affirming or denying this charge, Velvet gives this noncommittal answer:

>Velvet Remedy fixed the griffin with a stare of her own. “Maybe you should have asked more about me before insisting that I stay here with you.”

And with this, the scene ends in a page break.

The next scene opens, with Littlepoop and Calamity on the mysterious mission. They are on a hilltop, overlooking a valley (which they have been told is rife with landmines) protecting some kind of walled fortress, called the "Shattered Hoof Re-Educational Stockyard." They are presently discussing how best to sneak inside, and they decide the sensible thing is to wait until dark and have Calamity fly them both in. However, there is still some risk involved, and LP is not satisfied with the plan. She then remembers the soiled mattresses that the raiders had left behind at the grocery in the town they just came from, and this apparently gives her an idea.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.292414
292418 292434
1604323728414.png
>>292411

Well, here is her grand scheme:

>An hour later, with the clouded sky darkening, Calamity gently circled down towards the huge hole in the razor wire above the rock-breaking yard. His forelegs wrapped around me. And I in turn strained my telekinesis to keep the cover sheet from one of the raider outpost mattresses flying along beneath us. The mottled, mostly-grey color of the rectangle camouflaged our shapes against the sky.
So, if I'm understanding this correctly:

The Problem:
Flying in could be dangerous, because the fortress guards might notice a pony shaped silhouette flying against the sky.

The Solution:
Fly in while LP levitates a bedsheet underneath them, because apparently no one would be suspicious of a flying bedsheet.

Welp, there it is: the dumbest thing I've read all year. This story has officially reached drooling-and-mumbling-while-pissing-and-shitting-all-over-yourself levels of retardation.

>Shattered Hoof had become the home of escaped slaves, many from the train that had been ambushed at Junction R-7, who had turned to a life of raiding the local farms.
If I'm understanding this correctly, "Shattered Hoof" now refers to four separate things: Shattered Hoof Ridge (location unknown), Shattered Hoof Rock Breaking Ground (location unknown), the Battle of Shattered Hoof (date and details of battle unknown), and Shattered Hoof Re-Educational Stockyard (located wherever the fuck these two are currently). Now, it's not altogether uncommon for things in a similar region to be named after something significant, for instance in a small town you will generally see multiple streets, businesses and public buildings named after a prominent citizen or a local landmark. In this case, I'm assuming that Shattered Hoof was a battle that took place near here, that the ridge is named after it (either that or the battle was named after the ridge), and the other two facilities take their name from this. However, it's still getting a bit complicated.

>Their leader was a pony named Deadeyes, who spoke for a supposedly higher pony whom no one but Deadeyes had ever seen: Mister Topaz. It was for Mister Topaz that Deadeyes organized raiding parties out of Shattered Hoof and kept the rock-breaking yards in operation.
Speaking of confusion resulting from ambiguity, there is a whole mess of it here. For one thing, we were just talking about a character named Red Eye, and now we have a character named Deadeyes being introduced a very short time later. For another, there is an ambiguous reference to Shattered Hoof as a location, which as I've stated could mean either a ridge, a rock-breaking compound, or this fortress, as well as an unexplained reference to some sort of large-scale rock-breaking operation. Apparently this operation is being run by Mister Topaz, who employs Deadeyes, who employs the Talons, but against whom the Talons are secretly working, by hiring LP and Co. to do whatever the fuck they are supposed to be doing. This is starting to get a little convoluted.

>Inside that fortress, Gawd had told us, secure in Deadeyes’ office, was a safe.
Well, I guess I owe LP an apology; the job was in her skill set.

>Honestly, I had my own reasons for wanting to take a look at that.
What possible reasons could she have for wanting to look at some random ledger that this griffon she just met wants? Oh, whatever; this is probably a dumb question at this point. She wants to look at it for the same reason she wants to listen to audio diaries read by complete strangers and steal random objects of no obvious practical use: she's an extremely nosy kleptomaniac.

Anyway, yada yada yada, it looks like their mission is to sneak inside this fortress and retrieve a ledger that is stored inside the safe. Using their incredibly clever disguise of a moldy, jizz-stained bedsheet floating in midair underneath them, they sneak undetected past the wall of the fortress and hide from two inept guards, who wander past them quite oblivious to their presence. There is a page break, and we rejoin them inside one of the fortress buildings.

The fortress, as the name "Re-Education Center" would imply, was a corrective facility in the pre-war era, as evidenced by a number of propaganda posters covering the walls.

>There simply weren’t enough facehoofs in the world to express my feelings.
There are simply not enough decimal places on my calculator to express the number of dicks it would take to satisfy kkat's hunger.

Anyway, they are inside this facility. And naturally, instead of simply doing the job they were hired to do and then getting the hell out of there, they decide to wander around and loot some more useless junk first. They stole some coins out of some old vending machines, and presently Littlepoop is attempting to pick the lock of a safe, but not the safe whose lock they were sent in here to pick; this is an entirely different safe.

>Calamity shook his head. “Honestly, Ah don’t feel right. Ah don’t know why we’re doin’ this. Ain’t we helpin’ raiders?”
You're doing this because you moronically allowed yourselves to be taken captive by a single lightly-armed griffon, who is now holding one of your companions hostage in return for this stupid ledger, which incidentally you are supposed to be looking for instead of dicking around in the Visitors' Center.

>I paused. The feeling had occurred to me too. “We’re doing this because we’re not in any condition to fight these people. It would be tough if we were fully rested and healthy."
They're not people, they're ponies. Also, you would be fully rested and healthy if you had taken the opportunity to rest at Silver Bell's farm earlier.

>I took a deep breath, “Plus, this is a chance to dig a little into what’s going on.”
And what would that be exactly? As far as I can tell nothing is going on; this entire story has been nothing but one annoying klepto running around cracking safes and prying into irrelevant bullshit that isn't any of her business in the first place.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.292418
292423 292455
1604069915251.gif
>>292414

>I turned to Calamity and shook my head. “No, not just here. Everywhere.” I was beginning to put together something in my head that I didn’t much like. “I’ve been seeing things that suggest that this isn’t situation normal for the Equestrian Wasteland.
She's been out here all of what, two weeks? How in the world does she know what "situation normal" is for the Equestrian Wasteland? Well, it sounds as if she's about to explain her reasoning, so let's hear her out.

>My first night outside, I was captured by slavers. They marched right up to a raider bridge expecting to have to pay a toll, and instead the raiders started shooting. At the time, I just took it as luck; but I don’t think so anymore.
Having had no previous experience outside she would really have nothing to compare this experience to, and from what we've seen, normal behavior for "raiders" includes caging and torturing ponies for no good reason, decorating walls with entrails, pissing and shitting all over mattresses and then sleeping on them, and eating garbage. I'll grant that murdering passersby for no reason, instead of charging them a toll as per the usual agreement, is pretty insane behavior, but it seems well within the norm for these generally insane baddies. On the other hand, it's almost starting to sound like we're getting a faint glimmer of a plot finally, so I'm willing to grant the author some leeway here. Let's see what else LP has on her mind.

>“That pseudo-goddess at old Appleloosa, she was new. The slavers there hadn’t seen anything like her before. But somepony named Stern sent that bitch here from Fillydelphia to oversee things. And that happened, what, a week or two ago?”
What? Where on earth did she get this information from?

"That pseudo-goddess at old Appleoosa" I'm assuming refers to the alicorn she dropped the boxcar on. However, how does she know what the slavers have and haven't seen? It's not as if she bothered to stop murdering them long enough to grill them about it, and once again she is a complete newcomer to this world, so she has no frame of reference for what's normal. The rest of it I have no fucking idea about; I feel like the name Stern was mentioned somewhere (in a journal entry from one of the terminals iirc), but that was eons ago, and I've completely forgotten the details. Is the implication here that Stern sent the alicorn to the slaver camp as some kind of overseer? If so, this is a connection I never would have made on my own.

This is actually a good time to point out a significant flaw in the way this story is being told. Most of what we know about the world has been revealed to us incidentally through little snippets of random information that LP picks up as she's wandering around. This is obviously done because this is the way it works in video games: you walk around and play the game, and as you explore you find books and audio files and so forth lying around that gradually fill in the backstory for you. In an interactive medium this is perfectly fine, but in a written novel this is a dreadful way to handle world building.

This issue relates to something I was saying earlier, when I was complaining about the information dump about PipBucks in the first couple paragraphs of the text. The author technically tells us everything we need to know about PipBucks right at the very beginning; however, this highly detailed information is just dumped on us without any context, and the reader is unlikely to retain most of it. Thus, even though we are told about "Eyes Forward Sparkle" at the very beginning of the story, by the time it actually gets used we've completely forgotten what it is.

The same thing happens with these terminal entries and sound clips and whatever the fuck else she keeps finding. Case in point, the batch of journal entries in which Stern is mentioned, which are all the way back in Chapter Seven.

There are six entries in total. The first one apparently dates from before the apocalypse, and has fuck-all to do with anything as far as I can tell. The second through fourth entries mention Stern, but are strictly concerned with the slavers' acquisition of foal-slaves, and the rather brutish treatment the foals are subjected to. This is what LP focuses attention on during the scene itself, and was my main takeaway from the journal fragments.

We don't find anything about the alicorn until the fifth entry, and the reference only makes sense in retrospect. Here is exactly what it says:

>Now I hear that Stern is sending a “special representative” to take a look-see at our operation. Sounds more to me like she’s planning on taking over. I think she’s in for a face-buck surprise. And this “special representative” best watch her tail.

There is another reference in the last entry:

>Stern was playing it close to her chest with that “special representative” business. I never had any idea! Let’s just say I was shaking in my shodding when our new boss heard about some of the stuff I’d been saying back when we didn’t know her. But I guess it’s easy to be understanding when you’re connected to the divine!

and finally:

>All hail the living Goddess!

When you know that there is an alicorn leading the slavers, all of this starts to make a lot more sense; however, when LP finds these journals the alicorn has not yet been introduced. When she finally makes an appearance, we only remember in passing that LP came across some journal entries in a terminal, and we don't immediately connect the vague references to a "boss" in the journal to the alicorn LP just fought. There are two problems here: the first is that the author drenches us with information here, the same way his face is being constantly drenched with jizz. The second problem is that none of the information we are drenched with seems immediately relevant, so most of it is forgotten as soon as we've read it.

I'm running out of space; I will continue this thought in a new post.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.292423
292665
1604434757284.png
>>292418

Here's the thing about these journal entries: if this were a video game, this would be perfectly acceptable storytelling and/or world building. This is in line with how storytelling in a game works: you have a main story that the player follows by interacting with characters and the world, and you have a deeper supplemental story that the player pieces together on their own by picking up journal fragments and so forth. Solving the mystery of the backstory is part of the game.

Unless you're writing a mystery story, this doesn't work in written fiction. When you play a game, you are personally interacting with the fictional world; you take on the persona of the character, and drive the story through your own choices. Thus, if you pick up a journal and read what's in it, then it's the same as if you picked up that journal. However, when you're reading a story, even a first person story, you aren't personally taking on the role of the character, you are merely observing events through their eyes. Your attention is focused differently: in a game, you are controlling the action, so your focus is on whatever you're interacting with (ie, a journal). In a story, you are observing actions being performed by others, so your primary focus is on the characters.

Thus, if a character in a story reads a journal entry, you are going to take your cues from them. Whatever the character takes away from that journal entry is what you will take away from it. In this case, we have LP reading a bunch of journal entries written by slavers, that mostly deal with abducting children and giving them drugs. LP's reaction to this is moral outrage, so that's what we take away from the incident: LP learned that the slavers abuse children, and she's pissed. All this other shit that's in here, about the alicorn boss and so forth, doesn't even register, because it has no context in terms of what is going on in the actual story. By the time it does have context, we've forgotten all about it, because the author didn't really point any of this stuff out to us, he just casually dropped it in to the text as a seemingly irrelevant detail, alongside a bunch of equally irrelevant details, and left it to us to figure out which details are worth remembering and which ones aren't.

What's probably most irritating of all is that I imagine the author thinks he is being clever by doing it this way. He drops in these little hints and clues, but buries them in a pile of apparently random and useless information that won't matter until ten chapters later. Then, by the time it actually does matter, you've completely forgotten about it and have to go back through the text looking for references. For instance, if Littlepoop comes across an instruction manual for a magic dildo somewhere in chapter 3, we probably won't remember this by the time she finds the magic dildo that the manual goes to in chapter 788. We would thus be confused as to how she immediately knows what it is and how to operate it. Making the reader comb through text they've already read just to find some minor detail the author decides to make suddenly relevant out of nowhere isn't clever, it's just fucking irritating.

Anyway, from here on out I'm probably going to start copypasting these journal entries and sound recordings and whatnot into a text file just so I don't have to keep going backwards through the story to hunt them down. I may start keeping a similar record of the junk that Littlepoop picks up, since it seems like a similar thing is being done there.

ANYWAY, that's probably enough about the journals. Meanwhile, Littlepoop is still talking:

>“Something’s going on out here, and that pony Red Eye is in the center of it. Whatever it is, it has been building up for a long time...”
This is probably true, and once again I'd like say hallelujah to this author for finally getting around to developing a plot for this massive, 500,000 word pile of shit. However, I don't really see how Littlepoop is connecting all of the dots here. In particular, I see no reason why Red Eye should be connected to what they are investigating currently. From the speeches programmed into the sprite-bots (or however it works), we learn that he is either a political leader, or fancies himself one. From the comments about him in the saloon in NA, we learn that he is not universally recognized as such. From Gawd, we learn that he has an interest in the slave trade.

This gives us a picture of Red Eye himself, but nothing obvious connects him to their current mission or to this fortress. Gawd mentions that she has worked for him in the past, but whether or not she is still working for him is left ambiguous. At present, the chain of command seems to be this Deadeyes character, with the mysterious Mr. Topaz above him. It's possible that Topaz is an agent of Red Eye, but that has yet to be directly established. And, once again, the phonetic similarity between the names Red Eye and Deadeyes is annoying, and will be doubly so if they turn out to be on the same team.

>I searched for the right words; with a mental lightning flash, they came to me. “It’s like a river in a storm that is just now on the verge of breaking its banks and flooding everything.”
It seriously took this much effort to think up this childishly simplistic metaphor? I guess video games really do rot your brain.

>“Ah suppose that makes sense.” Calamity chuckled, “’Sides, how often c’n Ah say Ah’m on a mission from...”

>“Don’t.”

>Calamity nickered. “Ah guess not even once.”

This joke would be clever if it weren't for the fact that the author already established this as a female-dominant world, with female deities. Littlepoop goes around exclaiming "Goddess," not "God." To my knowledge, monotheistic belief in a masculine deity doesn't exist here; thus, the God/Gawd pun doesn't really work.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.292434
292455
803017-1343153029.jpg
>>292414
>The Problem:
>Flying in could be dangerous, because the fortress guards might notice a pony shaped silhouette flying against the sky.
>The Solution:
>Fly in while LP levitates a bedsheet underneath them, because apparently no one would be suspicious of a flying bedsheet.
>Welp, there it is: the dumbest thing I've read all year. This story has officially reached drooling-and-mumbling-while-pissing-and-shitting-all-over-yourself levels of retardation.

Part of me wants to give Kkat the benefit of the doubt and suggest that this is an attempted "the NPCs can't see you if there's a physics object in the way" gag, but the way it's worded honestly makes me wonder if Kkat is actually that retarded.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.292452
>>292408
Hell yeah! Imagine if there was a bit early on where she was bored at work because nobody needed their shit fixed and thought "This dull grey wall needs a mural" so she painted one herself, did her best, and got yelled at for doing something good without permission.
Then she could be forced to stay after hours for unpaid overtime scrubbing her beautiful mural off the walls.
And THEN Velvet shows up, getting Littlepip to remove her Pip-Buck because she's the only pony there even though she isn't supposed to do any repairs without a "supervisor" (Old boomer who's just paid to read newspapers and snooze all day) present.
And THEN the whole "Velvet escapes without PipBuck, Littlepip is blamed" thing has a "Littlepip should not have removed it during closing time therefore it's all her fault and she's fired" thing going on for an extra gut-punch.
So even though "Velvet just happens to meet Littlepip" is still a huge coincidence, it's a coincidence that only happens because Littlepip did what she did. That makes it feel like it's earned, rather some arbitrary whim of the author, right? I'm not sure that's how it works but I think that's how it works.
Plus instead of LP deciding to go get Velvet back because "Maybe it'll make these poners like me again" it will be because LP has little to lose and also really wants to save Velvet because trying to survive in the Wasteland without an overpowered magical advantage like the Pip-Buck is (or fucking should be) suicide.

A while back I suggested Pip-Buck upgrades, but what about Pip-Buck competitors? Every gamer remembers those third-rate third-party controllers, sometimes with a Slow/Turbo button that rarely worked right. I used to use a bigger PS2 controller because it felt better in my hands. LP's bulky Tonka-tough old combat-ready Pip-Buck 3000 could mark her as unusual and unfashionable in a Stable full of style-obsessed shallow poners wearing the RareStyle 360 which lacks combat functionality and is flimsy as hell but can do something stupid and gimmicky. Maybe it has HD Speakers or a 256-colour HD screen with built-in 3D, or a Vibrate feature, or some other wacky bullshit like that. Then there could be that one guy who enchanted his Pip-Buck to let him transform into anything like a bootleg Ben 10 except it's MLP and Fallout monsters only since an Upgrade or XLR8 could beat this setting in under an hour.

Speaking of Pip-Bucks, imagine how debilitating it would be to a Stable Pony (And how shocking it would be to the audience) for a pony to have their Pip-Buck arm chopped off or shot off by a villain, or their Pip-Buck utterly destroyed by a gunshot/magic EMP grenade/a Vault door that comes down to crush you. Not only do you lose a limb and require immediate bandaging/cauterization/a limb-regrowing potion, you've lost all your bullshit cheaty superpowers like the enemy-detecting minimap, SATS the time-stopping auto-firing aimbot, and the Local and World maps. It would be this big moment that says "No more safety net! The Stable Pony has lost her last remnant of her Stable heritage! Wastelander time!". She loses her advantage over the common wasteland scum, and their greater experience/cruelty gives them an advantage over her. Now she really is an underdog, forced to start learning from what little killing practice she got under SATS.

I still think trying to make Velvet out-moral Littlepoop is a mistake when Littlepoop's morality is supposed to mark her as a special and unusual hero. A bleak and edgy world like this shouldn't have as many Good-Aligned characters as it does. Until she's proven herself a hero to the world, nobody should approve of her murderhobo antics aside from her closest friends. All of her companions should be united by their own tragedy in their past and their own lifelong dream, and they should all be their own flavour of "I am inspired to be a more moral and heroic pony by Littlepoop's antics".
Imagine Calamity as a scarred ex-caravan guard turned Bounty Hunter who's afraid to care about others and is constantly using LP's moral compass to sic her on whatever raider boss with a bounty he wants dead this week.
Imagine Velvet dying early on for either doing nothing wrong (to give the impression that this really is a dark edgy world where good poners get eaten alive for trying to do good) or for doing something sub-optimally in the name of stupid civilian morality, and then Velvet gets replaced by an edgy back-alley doctor who'll heal anyone for the right price but secretly dreams of opening a permanent clinic even though those never last more than a week because they always get robbed/shot up in the Wasteland.
And then add some more companions designed to show different ways people can turn out in this Apocalypse or the events leading up to it and how they can do good in their own ways (Or die trying. Or die for not being good).
A travelling trader whose idiot-scamming antics are played for laughs until they get him killed and fuck the party over.
Some miserable 200 year old ex-military sad sack in immortality-granting bonds-to-you-for-life Power Armour haunted by the ponies he failed to save.
One obligatory good Zebra who absolutely loathes ziggers and loves history because she's fascinated by innate pony superiority and loves ponies because her life was saved by a kind pony back when she ran with a zebra crime gang that killed the good pony also she's from a failed Stable with pony-zigger race-mixing as its gimmick.
A prostitute with a murderous enchanted plush toy that kills for her.
The sole survivor of an isolationist Pony ethnostate that declared independence from Equestria to be free of zoning laws and created a high-tech utopia that got bombed by zebras anyway.

>Gawd's terrible dialogue
Kkat would be better at writing money-obsessed assholes if he watched Naruto. There's this villain named Kakuzu with some great lines.
>[After being told his greed will condemn him to hell] "Even Hell runs on money. I'd be just fine."
Chills.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.292455
>>292418
>Gawd wants one to stay behind
If Not-Pinkie was still with the party, she could stay behind. Then again I'd never trust a room of Griffons alone with a foal. Or trust the gleefully murderous demolitions expert Not-Pinkie should have been alone with a room of warm bodies.

>Most of what we know about the world has been revealed to us incidentally through little snippets of random information that LP picks up as she's wandering around. This is obviously done because this is the way it works in video games: you walk around and play the game, and as you explore you find books and audio files and so forth lying around that gradually fill in the backstory for you. In an interactive medium this is perfectly fine, but in a written novel this is a dreadful way to handle world building.
I've only seen one book try worldbuilding this way and it was years ago.
In that book, every time one hero found a new diary or letter, it was read aloud to the hero's entire team once everyone was out of danger. Every few lines of exposition, characters would comment on and react to what they were hearing/seeing. And when the diary/letter/journal entry/whatever was complete, the characters would react to everything as a whole and discuss it for many, many paragraphs. Characters would talk about what this information means to them and their plans and the world, and anything important would be explicitly spelled out naturally when characters argue over it and what it means.
While the reader could still put pieces of information together on his own, the characters did this onscreen and came to the right conclusions or guessed at shit that was usually right. This ensured all readers could keep up with what was going on and what every little hint really meant.
I guess the author didn't want anyone to overlook some vital detail. Then again, this author made the intent of every note and diary and letter as clear as possible. And when characters stopped to read this stuff, it made sense that they would.
This story's got Littlepoop randomly reading all sorts of random shit from 200 years ago silently and then barely thinking about (or telling her friends about) what she saw. So they're completely out of the loop and they should be pissed about that but they're not which is stupid. These journal entries are over-written and under-written. They're too long and their purpose isn't obvious enough or something LP can detect and comment on for the sake of the audience's ability to remember what a random journal entry 50k words ago said.
Imagine if LP, when raiding Old Appleoosa, found a letter of complaint addressed to the boss from one of his workers on his terminal. And the terminal complained about what a violent edgy cunt the new Enforcer their boss's boss sent over is. It mentions her torturing healthy and pricey slaves to death in front of other slaves, when they're usually just supposed to torture worthless crippled slaves to scare healthy ones into obeying. She also gorily tore the intestines out from one slaver and hanged another slaver to death with them, just because she caught them both looking at her and assumed they were staring at her big ass. And it outright states something like "We're Slavers, not Raiders! We're in this for the money, freaks who love torturing ponies for fun become Raiders and that new Enforcer acts and sounds like a fucking Raider". And it mentions the enforcer being a mutated freak whose presence makes everyone feel uncomfortable, and a massive bitch.
So when Littlepip encounters the literal "massive bitch" of an Alicorn, she remembers the note that talked about this character and it doesn't feel like the Alicorn Bitch just spawned in from nowhere like the cops in GTA at high wanted levels. It feels like this unexpected character has some setup and payoff. And it gives hints regarding how Slavers usually do things.

>>292434
This is a book where something that could only work in a BugthEAsderp game just works, even though this story has spat on copypasted videogame elements before. Remember when Velvet questioned why Raiders decorate their homes with gore and shit, or when Littlepip mocked a raider for trying to hold a hostage and negotiate with LP despite having a mouth full of melee weapon and keeping grenades conveniently on a nearby table ready to be floated threateningly towards the hostage and hostage-taker?
That moment was fucking retarded. Threatening a foe with a hostage by threatening to use grenades on both... That wouldn't convince a raider to let the hostage go and beg for mercy/try bum-rushing you/whatever the fuck the raider did (I forget). Raiders do evil shit for fun, so this should be a moment where Littlepoop's bravado pisses the raider off and makes him kill his hostage on the spot because "Fuck it, might as well enjoy the shocked look on her face and go down swinging".
Kkunt thinks he's writing something smarter than a videogame by copypasting it and sometimes making characters call it retarded, but he's a nigger where it counts and he's completely unable to tell videogame mechanics like "Enemies struggle with moving from one floor to another because stairs am hard 2 program" from actual worldbuilding elements.
Anyone familiar with the Miracle Of Sound song "Shooter Guy" knows how you're REALLY supposed to take the piss out of unrealistic videogame cliches. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALd0ILisKvI
>"Oh look, a launcher's lying conveniently on the ground!"
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.292571
sonics secret rock career.png
REFERENCE.jpg
To clarify I dislike that the story sometimes tries to mock videogame cliches and limitations of the video game medium because this fic usually embraces the videogamey bullshit completely. It's why bullets from a gun in poor condition will do less damage than a well-cleaned gun at point-blank range, why cars will randomly explode when struck by enough melee strikes from swarming Ghouls, and why hiding yourself with a bedsheet can make you invisible to NPC guards. It contains such stupid and illogical moments that it has no business making lame entry-level videogame jokes like "why do the baddies decorate their homes evilly?" and "dude lmao did you ever notice that in videogames there are crates and chest-high walls everywhere?".

I don't think this story handles fandom in-jokes very well because I've seen it done better elsewhere.

Here's some official art for a concept scrapped from Sonic 1 where Sonic The Hedgehog was going to be in this band and they'd play instruments onscreen in the Sound Test screen. Yes, that's a beta version of Vector The Crocodile and the Rabbit's a repurposed rejected beta design of Sonic. There's a fanmade project to edit Sonic Adventure 2 so that everyone's using their rejected beta designs or, in the case of Amy/Shadow/Metal Sonic, new designs to fit their counterpart's beta designs. I love what they did with Rouge, white is a nice colour for sexy characters. Complements every other colour perfectly.

It would be hilarious if Sonic or Vector mentioned that they used to be in a band together in a fanfic.
A fun little nod to this scrapped sonic concept and old official art, but to people who don't get the in-joke it still fits both characters since they both love Rock.

This sonic band idea was later referenced with the Forget-Me-Knots from the archie Sonic Comic.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.292665
292673 292691 292695
1606375064548.jpg
>>292423

>My bobby pin broke. Slipping out another, I tried again. I had a distinct urge to see the contents of this safe, based on one of the last prewar entries on the Visitor’s Center terminal. The terminal itself had been encrypted so tightly that the Shattered Hoof Raiders had never been able to access it.
This story has established a predictable pattern, with the same events continuously recurring:

>Littlepoop finds a safe and tries to open it.
The lock is stubborn and she wastes several bobby pins in the attempt, but eventually she gets it open, because she is an expert lockpick for some undefined reason.

>Littlepoop finds a terminal and tries to hack it.
The encryption is stubborn and was considered unbreakable by everyone else who tried to hack it, but eventually she gets past it, because she is an expert hacker for some reason.

The author has written himself into a corner with all of these safes and terminals; if he lets her crack each one of them easily then she appears too powerful and there is no challenge for her. At the same time, we know perfectly well that she's going to crack them all one way or the other, so when she runs into a difficult lock or some kind of extra-tough encryption it adds tedium rather than suspense. Who cares if she breaks a few bobby pins while trying to crack a nigh-unbreakable lock? She's apparently got millions of the damn things, and we all know she's going to break the lock sooner or later. You might as well just spare us the play-by-play and tell us what random, useless object she found in the safe. As I've said multiple times, this story is really just a long, boring dungeon crawl.

>It cost me a bobby pin, but the safe finally opened. (I would discover later, to my chagrin, that I could have just opened it via the terminal had I been more patient.)
See what I mean? There was absolutely no suspense to this; it would have been simpler to just have her open the dumb safe immediately and spare us the autism about how many bobby pins she broke in the process.

Incidentally, in between these two passages I quoted above, the author unceremoniously dumps a transcription of a file that she apparently discovered on the terminal. This is confusing because it's done with absolutely no preamble, and the discovery of the file apparently happened prior to her attempting to crack the safe. This continues yet another of this story's more objectionable patterns: the confusing sense of time.

Anyway, as LP notes in the first quoted paragraph, the terminal entry dates from before the apocalypse. As with most of the terminal entries, it contains nothing of any apparent relevance, but probably contains some random tiny detail that will suddenly become a crucial "plot" point in another five chapters or so. For the sake of being thorough, here is a synopsis of it:

An unknown pony, who seems to be an employee of the Shattered Hoof Whatever Facility, writes that the Ministry of Morale is suspending visitations for political reasons and as such the Visitor's Center will be shutting down. Presumably this means the author of the journal is out of a job. The pony mentions that she has spent her last few days on the job trying to track down the owners of several items in the Lost and Found, with little success. In particular, she notes that Sweetie Belle, apparently a "guest entertainer" at the facility, left some items behind which are now stored in the safe. Presumably, this is why Littlepoop wants to get inside this particular safe. Even though Sweetie Belle is apparently two centuries dead F and Littlepoop has no claim whatsoever on her personal belongings, it would be a grievous insult to the Klepto God that Littlepoop presumably worships to allow any item to go unstolen; as to what specific items the safe contains, do we even care at this point?

Well, if for some reason you do care, I won't leave you in suspense. The safe contains a package with another statuette inside; this one appears to depict Rarity. While we still have no idea what the deal with these little statues might be, the pattern the author is establishing is fairly obvious: there is one statue for the leader of each Ministry (each Ministry appears to have been headed by one of the Mane 6), and Littlepoop needs to collect them all because reasons and also because she's a fucking autistic klepto. Well congratulations, Littleshit; now you've got two of them. Add them to your gigantic fucking pile of useless swag and let's move on.

The attractiveness of the statue affords Calamity an opportunity to make a crude joke that once more calls our attention to Littlepoop being a lesbian, since it's been almost two whole subchapters since it was mentioned and there's a chance we might have forgotten. Oh, also, there's this:

>The statuette trembled, not wanting to rise from the ground. Then I felt a surge of magical energy, and the statuette floated up gracefully. Whatever blessing this one had bestowed, it had rejuvenated my horn. Just a little, but enough to float the statuette and even Little Macintosh.
I don't remember if the Applejack one she found did anything magical, but I feel like it gave her some kind of energy boost or something. So, apart from whatever other significance they might have, the statuettes appear to be blessed or enchanted or something. And, conveniently enough, Littlepoop now has just enough magic to resume normal operation of her gun. I'm sure that will come in handy during whatever le ebin boss battle the author has planned for this location.

And with that, the chapter concludes.

>New Perk: Stable Shot – Your attacks are smooth, graceful and precise. You have a higher chance to score a critical hit on an opponent in combat, equivalent to 5 extra points of Luck.
Because if there's one thing that Littlepoop needs, it's even more luck.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.292667
292669 292679 292695
1606363803589.jpg
Chapter Eleven: Factions

Today's Fortune Cookie:
>"Didn't know anyone would willingly walk into this place, not unless they were looking for trouble."
I hear the Detroit public school system has this epitaph inscribed on all of its buildings.

In keeping with our established pattern, I'd like to take a moment to examine the epitaph from the previous chapter, and see if it applies in any way:

>“Yeah. It’s a good thing they aren’t paying me to agree with them. Holy Flame, my ass!”
I will literally paypal $5 to anyone who can logically connect any part of this out-of-context quote from Fallout to the chapter we just read.

The chapter opens with a long chunk of italicized text that we can safely assume is another journal entry or sound recording. Interestingly, it appears to be a record of the day of the apocalypse. The speaker refers to her best friend Silver Spoon, so this is presumably from the journal of Diamond Tiara, though the reader would not necessarily know this. To the author's credit, the passage is rather well written. In it, DT details how she was chatting with SS via terminal (I think this is the first glimpse we've been given as to how the terminals we've been seeing everywhere might have originally been used) when suddenly the connection went dead. Apparently a "megaspell" was dropped on the city in which SS lived, and she was instantly vaporized. More "megaspells" were apparently fired in return, which seems to have set off the nuclear/magical/whatever war that turned the world into the hellscape that it is at present. Though we have heard this event referenced, this is the first actual glimmer of detail we've been given about the particulars, and what's more it's presented not from a dry historical perspective, but firsthand, through the eyes of a character who witnessed it. It's almost...dare I say it...good storytelling. I don't want to be overly optimistic, because I've been burned so many times by these pony fiction authors, but some part of me wants to believe that there is hope for kkat yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIIVK0NgK38

Anyway, the italicized text cuts off as Littlepoop switches off the terminal. We are now forced to leave Diamond Tiara's far more compelling narrative behind, and return to the crummy world of plot holes and spelling errors in which our heroine resides.

We are informed that Littlepoop has been a busy mare during the interim period between the end of the last chapter and the present. Instead of looking for the stupid ledger she is supposed to be retrieving for Gawd, she has apparently been wandering aimlessly around the Shattered Hoof facility, collecting random audio fragments from Diamond Tiara's diary.

>Movement through Shattered Hoof was proving swifter than I felt we had any right to expect. Our progress was partially due to keeping our hoofprints as small as possible -- no lining our saddlebags with items that could be missed. (I made an exception for the contents of the Lost & Found safe, justifying the theft with the reminder that the safe had not been opened since before the megaspells, and so no pony here would be suspicious if it was empty, so long as I closed it and locked it again.)
Clearly her time in the Wasteland has taught her some restraint. The old Littlepoop would just steal whatever wasn't nailed down; now she only steals essential items, like the crap she found in Sweetie Belle's locker.

>But more than that, these ponies didn't seem to consider that the fortress could be infiltrated; they weren't on guard. I'm not a mistress of shadow, but I hardly needed the advanced tutelage from Zebra Infiltration Tactics to slip past ponies whom were being this oblivious.
Slip past ponies who were being this oblivious. Also, here we see yet another recurring pattern: Littlepoop is only able to shine in combat because her enemies are fucking retarded. Every guard, raider, slaver, mutated cat monster, or anything else LP might come up against is inept, so her chances of defeat are virtually zero. She can fly into a heavily guarded fortress using bedsheet as camouflage and then stomp around like a clydesdale, opening every safe and hacking every terminal and reading every piece of correspondence from 200 years ago she comes across; why the hell not? Her enemies are complete morons. If she gets into a fight at all, it will only happen because the author wants to show off all the neat shooting tricks she's picked up in the whopping two whole weeks she's spent living like a badass. Does it matter that she has magic-assisted targeting that all but ensures she will get a kill on the first shot? Of course not! Because even if she had to actually do anything on her own, the enemies she's pitted against are so comically inept she might as well be shooting at tin cans.

This story has absolutely nothing going for it in terms of plot or characters, so the action scenes are probably its best chance to squeeze out a little entertainment value, but the author even manages to make these dull most of the time. There's never any suspense in this story because there's never anything at stake. We already know she's going to crack every safe and hack every terminal, so it's tedious to watch her go through the motions of struggling with this lock or that password. We already know her enemies are too stupid to notice her waltzing into the fortress with a fucking bedsheet over her face, so it's annoying to listen to her crow about how clever and stealthy she thinks she's being. Even in the rare instances where the enemy could actually overpower her, as with the alicorn, we already know she's going to pull some preposterous magic trick out of her ass and win in the end, so who cares?

At this point I wish she would get captured and used as a fleshlight by some insane raider tribe or something; it might knock her down a few well-deserved pegs, and it would probably be the most entertaining thing in the entire book.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.292669
292988
1463244437367.jpg
>>292667

>Calamity wasn't quite as good and had nearly tipped a Shattered Hoof Raider to his presence twice now.
Of course he isn't as good. Why would Calamity, who has spent his entire life in the Wasteland as opposed to LP's whopping two weeks of experience, and who had to learn to defend himself using ordinary guns without computer-assisted targeting, be in any way superior to Littlepoop when it comes to sneaking past an army of complete idiots who probably wouldn't notice these two even if they were stomping around the fortress in iron horseshoes singing "Winter Wrap Up" at the top of their lungs? Calamity is just the sidekick; obviously he can't be allowed to outshine the hero, not even in the many areas where he would logically outshine her.

Anyway, nothing in particular happens for the remainder of this subchapter. They continue stroll aimlessly through the ineptly guarded but aesthetically depressing fortress, and then for no apparent reason a song starts playing on the radio. The song lyrics are quoted but there's no point going over it; it's just mournful, edgy crap that even a teenage emo circa 2008 would cringe at.

After a page break, they find what they were looking for:

>“Well, crap!” I muttered dourly as I hugged a shadow behind a placard (“Hard Work is Happy Work!”) and stared across the open rows of desks to the well-lit room beyond. Inside, a pony matching Gawd’s description of Deadeyes was sitting behind a desk, reading a book (Applied Gemstones). He was flanked by at least one guard pony that I could see, and possibly others I could not. The safe was directly behind him. There was no way to get at it stealthily. Even if I used the Stealth Buck, he’d hear the safe opening less than a foot away from his ears.
Wow, are they actually being presented with a challenge of some sort? I'm almost as surprised as Littlepoop; I assumed this mission was just going to be a matter of wandering around in the fortress for a few hours looting random safes, until eventually they loot the safe they came to loot and can then leave.

Anyway, they stand there staring in disbelief at the lightly-guarded safe, gabbing helplessly to each other about what they should do. Littlepoop has solved similar problems by simply barging in and taking the enemy by surprise, relying on her auto-targeting gimmick to dispatch the guards before they can react. She's done this on several occasions and I see no reason why it shouldn't work here. I suppose there's the noise factor, but again, since they've already been stomping around in here for quite awhile without encountering any opposition, I don't get the impression it would be that big a deal.

Personally, my approach to a scene like this would be to have Littlepoop use some kind of misdirection. Create a clever diversion or distraction to lure the guards out of the room while Calamity goes in and pummels the boss or something. The scene could be either serious or funny depending on the way it's done. However, it would require actual imagination, which seems to be rather a tall order for this author.

>I started up another audio log, listening while I gave Calamity time to position himself safely away. The voice of the same mare leapt through my earbloom, sounding panicked.
So she's just casually playing through her collection of 200 year old voicemail messages while she waits for Calamity to get into position? This smacks of obnoxious Mary Sue arrogance. Even if Littlepoop is so preposterously overconfident in her own abilities that the possibility of her plan going awry never even crosses her mind and incidentally this plan is moronic; there are thousands of things that could and probably would go wrong if the author were taking this even halfway seriously, she could at least pretend to take the situation seriously for our benefit.

Anyway, the purpose of this is obviously just to dump in some more backstory, but this is hardly an appropriate time and place to do it. The messages she listen to appear to be from Diamond Tiara again, who apparently took the time to make a bunch of audio recordings for some unknown reason while a nuclear holocaust was going on outside, and then for some other unknown reason ran around this facility hiding these recordings in multiple safes for some Mary Sue protagonist to discover 200 years later. The details may or may not be important, but here they are anyway:

Diamond Tiara was apparently an employee at the Shattered Hoof Whatever-the-fuck Prison Industrial Complex. It's unclear what her role was supposed to be, but I'm guessing that with her family connections, it was probably some do-nothing administrative job that came with a disproportionately high salary. When the nuclear holocaust or magic holocaust, or nuclear magic holocaust, or fucking underpants gnome invasion or whatever the fuck happened kicked off, the "web" I'm assuming this refers to some kind of magic internet went down and she couldn't contact her parents or friends. The staff all abandoned their posts, but left DT the access codes to the cells in case she decided to let all of the prisoners out. At the time the recordings were made, she was apparently pacing around in circles talking to herself presumably with some kind of tape recorder running and wondering what she could do. She seems to have faced a personal moral crisis about whether to let the prisoners go free or leave them in there to starve. It ends on an ambiguous note and we don't yet know what she decided.

>I wasn’t sure why I was listening to these logs now. Curiousity? Or maybe, in a way, I was paying my respects to the past by listening? By learning?
Curiosity. Also, the occasional flickers of self-awareness this author exhibits just make his refusal to fix the nonsensical parts of this story that much more aggravating.

>Either way, it didn’t matter. Time to go.
That's the first sensible thing she's said all night.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.292673
292700
>>292665
The bobby pin & screwdriver lockpicking, terminal hacking and endless unopened safes are - of course - staples of Fallout 3's gameplay loop. Because it's an open world videogame made by Bethesda. They were significantly less prevalent in the earlier games.

Kkat doesn't seem to understand that these things are only mildly interesting at best when you're doing them, dull after the first time, and abjectly boring to spectate.

If I had to guess, Kkat is basing Littlepip's skillset and progression directly off one of his own Fallout 3 playthroughs. One of the simplest and most optimal means of creating a character in that game is to specialize heavily in a given weapon type early on (Small Guns in this case), then quickly raise your Science and Lockpicking skills to maximize your loot returns from exploration, branching out occasionally into utility skills like Speech and Repair. This could potentially work as a sort of meta model for how Pip's skills progress across the course of the story, but the game mechanics are so bluntly translated to text that it's obvious he's relying hard on the structure of the game. The fact that Pip doesn't struggle with these things even without the slightest bit of experience makes it worse - Littlepip isn't just a videogame protagonist, she's also powergaming.

It's also possible, and arguably wise, to spend the first few levels of Fallout 3 wandering from dungeon to dungeon and doing sidequests so that you're levelled and well-enough equipped for the difficulty offered by the main plot questline. Again, Kkat seems to be translating this gameplay experience directly to prose, where it just doesn't work.
Anonymous
28062fd
?
No.292679
292782
>>292667
>I will literally paypal $5 to anyone who can logically connect any part of this out-of-context quote from Fallout to the chapter we just read.

I'll take you up on the offer. Could maybe say that it connects to Talon Company and them working with Red Eye. That griffon said how they don't care what the contract is about so long as they get the caps they'll do the job. Could imagine Red Eye going on some monolog about the virtue of his mission (boy howdy when I read what it actually is) and the prevalage Talon Company has to help him in it. Could picture the Talon mercs standing there looking impatient or bored but just nodding along hoping he shuts up and waiting for him to hoof the bits over.

They don't care about his greater scheme but they make sure to stay in his good grace so the caps keep flowing in and just pretend to be invested in Red Eye's grand plan.
Anonymous
b8677ff
?
No.292691
>>292665
>Because if there's one thing that Littlepoop needs, it's even more luck.
Man, that' great. No dude, it's not contrived, it's a payoff. I establishd that my character is a lucky son of gun and here's how thatplays off.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.292695
292782
>>292665
incredible spoiler: the first time I read this fic, I assumed the statuettes would be important because the narration made such a big deal out of them. When Watcher turned out to be Spike The Giant Dragon and guardian of the Gardens Of Equestria world-healing device powered by the Elements of Harmony, I was sure the author would make "Form a party with sufficiently good substitutes of the mane six and activate thee GoE" Littlepoop's new mission in life. Even figured she'd go back and get Not-Pinkie. However the author is a faggot so barely anything mentioned in the fic actually ends up mattering significantly later on. Aside from a few callbacks here and there, most things are filler. Hell, technically everything is filler since Equestria's status as a wasteland begins and then ends without significant world-impacting remnants during this fic.
>>292667
>Holy Flame
I think the quote's referencing how Team Littlepip are working for a Griffon mercenary that's paying them to go against his employer's interests because he doesn't agree with his employer and isn't being paid to agree with his employer. But if you've got a spare $5 get yourself Copy Kitty for the PC, it's a masterpiece.

>Insert SS Journal and Anne Frank joke here
I don't think it's good writing because the diary doesn't establish enough about SS or DT to make you invested in these two or this story's take on them or their friendship.
This was written during the S1 era, and DT/SS were still bullies back then. It's a real wasted opportunity for this fic to not go into detail about these two, their growth, their lives, how they eventually became good ponies and befriended the CMCs, and everything seemed like it was going great and everypony really had a shot at a good life until suddenly nukes. Then again considering this fic's love of shoving canon characters into roles important to the story or history just for being important to the fanbase I'm surprised this story didn't put Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara in charge of megaspell production or a private military company.

The fic doesn't do enough to establish these characters and this fic's take on them, it just assumes you'll know enough about the fic to think "SS's best friend? Must be Diamond Tiara" but someone going into this completely blind would have no idea why this random moment of "Hey, look, it's who canon ponies from a show you've never seen- aaand I've killed them lmao how edgy" should make them feel anything. Don't get me wrong, a pony dying is always sad, but as forced moments of written tragedy goes this is barely a step above Littlepoop finding a random diary where a little foal that says her dog died yesterday.
Come to think of it, I don't think these "Reading the journal entries you found" moments belong in these "In enemy territory" scenes. It kills the pacing. It would make sense for scenes where the journal is vital to figuring out what to do next. But for some random dead pony's life's story? LP should read this out loud to her friends when out of danger, giving them all a chance to react to this story and the new context/information granted to them regarding this place and the long-dead pre-war world. IRL, time doesn't stop when reading/talking.

Maybe I'm just being a picky pessimistic bastard desperate to prove I've learned something about writing since this started. If so, I'm sorry. This fic's unpleasant enough, I don't want to make things even more unpleasant for those here. This should be a fun place where we all call Kkunt a colossal dumbass together.

>Littlepoop outskilling Calamity
I can't believe I didn't notice this and how retarded it is the first time I read this. Kkunt wrote a colossal Mary Sue who's instantly perfect at everything, despite the author's repeated insistence that she's an unskilled newbie barely scraping by on the skin of her teeth and solely winning thanks to luck and pluck.

>emo
once I read an alt-history idea that assumed if Digimon got big instead of Pokemon, its darker subject matter would appeal to the teens and kids that jumped on the emo bandwagon and its furrybait animal chicks/buff lion men would make Furryism more popular, causing the overly-large furry community to split itself between a family-friendly place where people with animal-people avatars anonymously cry about their lives while the perverts fuck off and call themselves "furverts" while exclusively using/talking on porn sites.
I think it's a load of bollocks. Furverts love attention and degeneracy too much, they'd never agree to fracture the fanbase into distinct identities.

>"Ah, doors! The eternal enemy of invisible people everywhere!"
I'm surprised Gawd didn't hand LP a silenced 22LR specifically for this occasion. It's a Fallout weapon and thanks to its Hollywood Silencer its gunshots are quieter than dog farts.
Hell, if they had Velvet Remedy or her dart gun they could handle this silently. I think. Was that thing silenced?
Alternatively LP could user her telekinesis to force-choke the enemy in her way. Lethally or nonlethally.
Or psychically make one enemy guard attack/shoot another, but that might cause a noise. Bet LP wishes she had a knockout smoke bomb to toss into the room, so she could psychically hold these foes to it face-first until they pass out and the sleeping gas disperses shortly afterwards. Surprised she didn't buy one of those while at Derpy's "Absolutely Everything" store.

I'm also surprised this fic didn't include a Fast Travel System justified as a partly-repaired pre-war invention Derpy uses to rapidly deliver anything anyone at a combination public phone and terminal purchases from her store. You could remotely buy things in Spyro: A Hero's Tail, and in Fallout NV with the Pip-Boy Phone mod, so it should be here too.
If you can store objects inside a Pip-Buck as data and send messages with it, you should be able to send item data like Rey passing Kylo a lightsaber over The Force in that Disney Star Wars failure movie.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.292700
Screenshot_20201116-1515502.png
>>292673
You know what's weird? In Fallout 1/2, skill checks like Lockpicking/Hacking/Speech were an all-or-nothing deal. You select the skill and either it works or it doesn't. If you don't have a high enough speech skill or INT for certain dialogue options, they wouldn't even show up.

In Fallout 3, hacking/lockpicking are minigames that rely on the player's abilities. And Speech is RNG. Pick an option somewhere between "Do X because I said so" and "Please do X, that's the moral thing!" and luck decides if it works or not. But you can't get a 100% guaranteed speech chance, so save before major conversations just in case you want to reload and try again. But at that point why bother raising your skills?

In FNV speech is fixed: If your skill isn't high enough, a stupid option (which is often a guess at the right thing to say, a pun, some moral pleading, or something hilarious) appears where a smart option should appear. Hacking and Lockpicking are still minigames but to attempt them, you need your skills at certain high thresholds or higher depending on the lock's difficulty setting. Also there are skill-check dialogue options not tied to Speech, like ways you can use your First Aid or Science knowledge or Bartering skills during conversation.
Fun trivia, Emily Ortal (The Followers of the Apocalypse chick who asks you to bug House's terminal) was supposed to send you on a longer quest that takes you to a few locations including H+H Tools Factory which is practically unused in the base game. Also she's got a dialogue option you can only select if you have Perception 6, where you notice she slept with Benny. But it's coded to check her Perception (which is 5), not yours. So it can't show up in-game. Weird.

F4 fucked up FNV's cake while trying to eat it. All speech checks are RNG again, AND charisma-based because skills are gone. A few shit perks exist to replace skills, so you can't pick max-level locks without the Lockpicker Rank 4 perk. But with no level cap (and most perks locked behind high levels anyway, removing player choice in character builds) there's no reason to not have 10s in all stats. And no reason not to have absolutely all perks besides "Idiot Savant's RNG Proc noise is annoying".

But back to the story...
Truth be told I think it was a mistake to make LP a master lockpicker.
Having a high Repair skill makes sense because her job was repairing PipBucks.
Having a high Science skill would make sense because it represents all scientific knowledge including how to hack robots via voice commands and recognize when a dude's (Ricky's in Honest Hearts) PipBoy is fucked.
Lockpicking isn't easy. It's not something you just pick up by working at a PC repair store, it's something a bored dude working at a PC repair store teaches himself while his boomer "supervisor" is glued to some TV screen. There are a shitload of different lock types out there that require all sorts of specialized tools. For every video of The Lockpicking Lawyer memeing on locks with red bull cans and toothpicks and forks and twigs and lego men, there's at least one video of him using real lockpicking tools. Videogames make lockpicking easy with universal single-pin locks out of convenience, and then bad ones will spit in your face by making some locks "special" locks that can only be picked by the correct key or keycard or whatever even though you can normally hack anything.
I don't know what LP's third Tagged Skill should be, since all Fallout chars have 3-4 tagged skills.
Perhaps Speech/Sneaking, some "I had to talk bullies out of bullying me and talk my mom into calming down whenever she got violent and drunk, and sometimes I had to talk customers at my repair store into behaving" shit could be thrown in there to justify that. Or Barter because "I bought shit for my family and repair store". Hell, could go with Small Guns and say she's a nerd who can't stop reading about guns or dreaming about firing them or spending most of her paycheck on rounds at the combination gun store and gun range at Stable floor 19, room 11. haha 1911 gun joke.

Littlepip's first few minutes anywhere near guns made her such an expert on how the author thinks guns work, she was able to intimidate a wasteland veteran by pointing a gun at him that was cleaner than his. And it just worked, solely on the author's assumption that a cleaner gun "In better condition" must surely fire more damaging projectiles even though they're both at point-blank range.
LP spontaneously becomes a gun master. And during her first time with a melee weapon, she's able to kill an enemy Raider with that too.
This is so much more Sueish than LP struggling to bring her gun-range experience into the real world and thinking "Shooting is a lot harder when you're under stress and the targets move! Oh god I hope these guys don't get close, I sometimes pretended to swing an imaginary katana in my bedroom but I'm actually complete dogshit in melee!".

All of these stupid Little "It's not kleptomania, it's klepto-mine-ia!" Pip moments should have an actual thievery-focused character stealing shit in the background while the stronger characters handle fighting.
It would be less retarded and it would mean the author could do "Heroes have to fight waves of enemies while the hacker hacks/lockpicker lockpicks" moments without making this videogame cliche look retarded.
Imagine a little orphan girl with a real edgy past and an exaggerated fake tragic past to make ponies feel bad for her. At first she joins Team LP because she plans on robbing them, then she realizes she can loot dangerous places safely with her new strong teammates, then she's all "Wait, boss, why are you giving away free shit? What's 'charity'? Is that something you eat?" then she eventually starts to unironically like Littlepip and possibly character-develop into the new Element of Generousity upon deciding she wants to make an orphanage/The Followers Of The Apocalypse and give a better life to orphans everywhere.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.292759
292760
Do you think FIM fanfics focused on OCs need to include a "new mane six/Elements of Harmony"?

I don't think they must always include a new EoH group.

But when the fic takes place 200 years after the old ones died, the new protags should have one Element each.

It's a good framework for designing characters and making sure each one contributes something positive to the group beyond whatever they can carry.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.292760
292762
>>292759
>Do you think FIM fanfics focused on OCs need to include a "new mane six/Elements of Harmony"?

Obviously they don't need to, though it's understandable that it was popular in the big rush of fics and other content that was made in the wake of seasons 1 and 2, when the elements were a massive focus of several episodes. FoE's handling of the elements is one of those things that's decent in principle, and... well, frankly horrible in execution. The Gardens of Equestria is a solid concept. Pity it's wasted by its utterly half-assed ending where half the bearers aren't even identified and the rest are Littlepip's cardboard friends.

>It's a good framework for designing characters and making sure each one contributes something positive to the group beyond whatever they can carry.

Well, sort of. You can't really boil a (good) character down to a singular character trait, particularly if you're trying to write something more meaningful and complex than a family-friendly cartoon. It's fair to build a character around a specific concept, so long as they still have characterisation beyond that concept. "This character's thing is X" runs the risk of flanderizing them, like how Pinkie became less entertaining and more of a screeching idiot over the course of FiM.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.292762
>>292760
I would have turned every Element of Harmony into someone Littlepip meets. Her overwhelming goodness and inspirational nature inspires them to be good in whatever way they can, and so each pony she meaningfully inspires ends up becoming a new Element of Harmony even though LP herself is not one. That way, fans can argue over whether this makes LP a Sue too sueish for the EOH or a well-written nobody whose determination and fundamental goodness inspires better ponies to help her get shit done. The latter is what I'd mainly write LP to be instead of this "Murderhobo Commando Sue".
Do you think that would improve the story? How would you change the story to improve it?
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.292782
292787 292887
>>292679
>Could maybe say that it connects to Talon Company and them working with Red Eye. That griffon said how they don't care what the contract is about so long as they get the caps they'll do the job. Could imagine Red Eye going on some monolog about the virtue of his mission (boy howdy when I read what it actually is) and the prevalage Talon Company has to help him in it. Could picture the Talon mercs standing there looking impatient or bored but just nodding along hoping he shuts up and waiting for him to hoof the bits over.

>>292695
>I think the quote's referencing how Team Littlepip are working for a Griffon mercenary that's paying them to go against his employer's interests because he doesn't agree with his employer and isn't being paid to agree with his employer.

This sounds like the most plausible explanation and is probably in line with what the author was thinking. Since this connection technically makes sense you can post your paypal and I will send you $5 if you like or, in Nigel's case, I will go ahead and pick up Copy Kitty, though it looks like the kind of game I won't understand and will be terrible at. I can also gift you a $5 game or something if you'd rather do that. However, I still think this quote is rather ambiguously connected, and here's why:

My guess is that in its original context, whoever speaks this line in Fallout is a mercenary employed by some kind of wacky religious cult that worships a Holy Flame, and the speaker is expressing that he just works for these guys but doesn't care about their beliefs. The intended connection was probably what both of you pointed out, that the Talon group just works for money and doesn't care about Red Eye's mission or beliefs. However, there are two major snags here.

First, the Holy Flame has no apparent connection to FoE's world at all, so it really shouldn't be mentioned. If the intention was to connect the speaker's disinterest in the beliefs of his employer to the similar views of the Talon Group, it would have made more sense to simply quote this part:
>“Yeah. It’s a good thing they aren’t paying me to agree with them."
This would have kept the focus simple and direct. It still would have been a bit ambiguous because we wouldn't know who was speaking nor would the quote have any apparent context, but the message would be clearer. The bit about the Holy Flame just adds confusion, since nothing of the sort is brought up in the chapter, and thus far there has been no mention of something like that existing in this universe. This demonstrates one of the pitfalls of trying to reference something from one fictional universe in the context of another. As I said before, this story takes place in the MLP universe, or at least in an alternate MLP universe; however, while this alternate universe is based on Fallout, it has no direct connection to the Fallout universe. Anything the author wants to quote from MLP is therefore fair game; the connection to actual chapter events may be vague, but at least he's referencing something in-world. With a quotation from Fallout, though, this doesn't work. In particular, references to things specific to the Fallout universe, like the Holy Flame, makes the connection even more tenuous.

The second problem is that we still don't actually know much about Red Eye yet. We know that he has some sort of grand ambition, probably making himself the supreme leader of the Wasteland or something like that, but if there is any kind of religious dogma or ideology associated with this quest, we haven't heard about it yet. So far all we have is a rather vague portrait of a leader probably comparable to Napoleon or Alexander the Great; someone who sees himself as a great conqueror or unifier. It wouldn't be too farfetched for someone like that to also see himself as the messenger of some god, or maybe even as a god himself, but from the information we have so far, we don't actually know if that is the case with Red Eye.

The problem here is that the author is trying to draw a distinction between the Talon Group and Red Eye by having the Talons state outright that they don't care about Red Eye's ideology or beliefs or whatever, and are simply interested in money. However, this distinction is meaningless at present because we still don't have any idea what Red Eye stands for, or if he stands for anything. The idea behind the quotation, that the speaker rejects his employers ideals and just works for money, technically applies to the Talons and Red Eye. However, it would apply just as equally to anyone who might employ the Talons.

The intent of the speaker in the original quotation is to draw a line between those who fight for the ideals of the Holy Flame because they believe in them, and those like himself who are just hired muscle and will fight for anyone who pays. The author is apparently trying to make the same distinction between the Talons and the ideals of Red Eye, but since we don't know what Red Eye's ideals are, or even if he has any, it doesn't really work. Add to that the tenuous connection between the Fallout lore and the FoE lore, as well as the general ambiguity of using out-of-context, unattributed quotes as chapter epitaphs in the first place, and the connection between this quote and Chapter Ten becomes harder and harder to justify.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.292787
292793
271hxw9pqn161.jpg
Boki.png
>>292782
It probably isn't good opsec to post our paypals where the jews can get at them. Also https://forameuss.itch.io/death-trips this is the greatest free horror game I've ever played but telling you why I like it would spoil the twist ending.

Also Copy Kitty's easy to understand, it's like MegaMan only good because it's got more gun. Pro tip: Be the cat to learn the game, the ant's Hard Mode and his window leads to the realm of advanced autism.
You're right about the quote's origin, The Children of The Cathedral are a strange bunch but they don't pay their guards to agree with them.
Kind of funny how in Fallout 1 the Kathedral Kiddies Klub was a fake church (with real doctors) that wanted to indoctrinate people into peacefully accepting The Master as their lord and saviour. They're the religious branch of The Unity and a cult that covers for what it really is: Super Mutants getting ready to take over, unified in mind by one big psychic tumor cunt with more faces than an ex-wife. The religion preaches "The nukes that destroyed the pre-war world were good because they destroyed America and China, fuck them, that first nuking was the Holy Flame!", "Human nature is flawed and the cycle of destruction will never end for as long as we are human", and "All hail The Master, for he is the second Holy Flame here to rebirth our world once again!"
But in Failout 3 there's just a random cult called The Children Of Atom and it exists because teeheehee why not. They're a wacky cult that preaches something absurd at face value(worshipping radiation and a god of radiation named Atom), and audience members laugh on cue because real cults are harder to understand. Their members don't eat or shit or farm but they worship radiation anyway and pray to a random unexploded nuclear bomb in the center of a town called Megaton, which built itself inside a crater made by the unexploded bomb and walled itself off for no reason. You'd think Megaton would be a holy city crawling with CoAs but nope, there's just one meme man saying his wacky catchprases in the first major town you visit, to set the tone for the rest of your teehee lolsorandum journey. This location can get fucktarded scrap walls on pulleys working right but lacks farms/a single clean water source/any meaningful production to keep its bar and store stocked via trade.

Kkat should have explained Red Eye earlier on, we're flying blind for too much of this fic.
Remember when LP randomly heard a SpriteBot giving out Red Eye propaganda? (Even though the EyeBots played Enclave propaganda in 3, and the Enclave isn't Ashur from F3/RedEye from this fic)
That should have been LP's look at "The surface", the lies preached by Red Eye.
Then when LP assumes New Appleoosa works for Red Eye and everyone in town laughs at the idea of working for RedEye, LP should have asked for more information on who Red Eye is, what the history is, and so on.

That's what the bar scene needed. Meaningful exposition in the right time and place.
Not a load of
>"hurr durr Equestria transports coal from zebra mines with trains but the trains need coal to move and equestria has no coal, omg that's so stupid that I need to drink now- AW FUCK I CAN'T BELIEVE I HAVE A HANGOVER WHILE ON A TRAIN ON MY WAY TO WAR WITH OLD APPLEOOSA- gee Calamity thanks for giving me this Videogame Powerup Drug to boost my intelligence for a minute because you say it's a hangover cure, I'm sure 200 year old nootropics deep-fried in honey mesquite pod goop and alcohol will taste great- AW FUCK IT IS NOT A HANGOVER CURE! NOW I'M ADDICTED! THAT CAN'T BE GOOD!"
bullshit.
Littlepip's methtacular drugventure is stupid.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.292793
292796
>>292787
>This location can get fucktarded scrap walls on pulleys working right but lacks farms/a single clean water source/any meaningful production to keep its bar and store stocked via trade.

Something you'll notice about FoE is that while the world is a blasted wasteland filled with radiation and other contaminating substances, nobody ever seems to want for food or water. Pip and her friends buy or conveniently find all the edible food, clean water and medical supplies they need with minimal effort or risk, and none of the people they meet ever appear to suffer from starvation, dehydration or serious disease except as a result of mistreatment by slavers or the like.

This wouldn't be a HUGE issue on its own if it could be handwaved away as secondary to the 'find cool things and shoot bad guys' adventuring (as it is in Fo3), but food and water availability becomes an explicit and major plot point later on.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.292796
292802
Todd-Howard-6286043.png
>>292793
This might be an odd thing to mention but there are literal children who wrote Pokemon fanfics and still bothered to think about food and how the travelling child protagonist with a team of Pokemon finds food/cooks/camps when on the road and miles from civilization. I know this because I was one of them. I'm glad nobody here read my old Pokemon Sunrise Red and Sunset Red fic, it was shit.

I'm proud of the cooking scenes, since I used youtube cooking and camping videos as inspiration for scenes where my dude cooks things. His swift Pokemon would pluck Magikarp from a river, and then he would cook some on a campfire for his whole team. There was even this one scene where my guy's in a forest and his travelling companion chick gets out some cereal bars for them, but then he says "We should save those for an emergency and live off the land wherever possible, it's cooler that way and it saves money" so they end up eating Magikarps cooked like they're salmon.

But the Pokemon fights were terrible, since I ported the turn-based battles and stat-boosts directly from the games instead of "Translating it from videogame stats logic into book physics logic" like what a smart writer would do. Those fights were everything boring about the games and anime times twenty. Plus I didn't include any original Pokemon and there was no main plot/character arc to make this anything more than "The tale of one born-perfect shy kid and his adoring fangirl as they walk from town to town, beat the Gym Leader in each town, go to Victory Road, and beat the Elite Four/Champion". I didn't even include Team Rocket/Aqua/Magma moments because at the time I thought "Those just got in the way of my gym challenge in the games so I won't put them in my story".

What a backwards way of looking at it. I was a dumb kid.
Pokemon is the story of a kid who starts out wanting to be a Pokemon Master and takes down a giant crime syndicate along the way.
Take out the part where the hero saves the country by crushing some evil team for getting in the way, and is he really a hero, or just some travelling gamer here to win money matches and gym badges before moving on to the next city until he's number one?
The anime tries to add even more story structure by making every Gym Leader a meaningful challenge to Ash's strategic abilities even though the games are piss-easy.

I think a good story should set the main plot up ASAP. Good Villains should meaningfully challenge the hero in more than just a physical sense. And by giving the villain an evil army with sub-bosses the villain blames for any evil plan failure, you give the hero disposable enemies to destroy and living markers of his progress.

"Phasma is Finn's evil counterpart because he fights for good and she fights for evil" is something a cucked faggot once said while defending Disney's Star Wars.

Pokemon did it better. Ash wants to be a Pokemon Master(TM) and raise strong Pokemon, while Team Rocket want to steal strong pokemon and conquer the world through crime.
Brandon/May in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald want to protect the environment while Team Aqua/Magma want to reshape it while unintentionally destroying it.
Team Galactic wants to remake the universe, Team Plasma want everyone to give up their Pokemon peacefully so they can rule as the only ones with Pokemon, Team Flare wants to genocide everyone alive so one asshole can be immortal, Team Skull are jokes, and Team Yell are unfunny jokes. Pokemon went downhill after gen 5. I miss Orre and Explorers of Sky.

But the anime gave us Paul, Ash's best rival.
Paul is Ash's best rival because he meaningfully challenges Ash's "Be nice to your Pokemon and use whoever you want" policy by kicking Ash's ass every time they fight.
Paul treats his Pokemon like tools and discards them if they aren't perfect enough for him.
Kind of like a pro Pokemon player does whenever he hatches 300 Charmanders and then only uses one with the right Ability/EVs/IVs.
So when Ash defeats Paul with the Chimchar Paul abandoned for being "too weak", it defeats Paul and his philosophy.
It's simple but it works.
It makes the fights more meaningful than Littlepoop's occasional Raider/Slaver shooting session.

What do you think would be the perfect villain for Littlepip to face?
Anonymous
235499f
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No.292802
292835
>>292796
An anti-piracy cuck.

"Littlepip, you wouldn't steal pony..."
Anonymous
009033b
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No.292835
>>292802
>Senator Armstrong but he's trying to conquer the world with a Raider/Slaver army because he wants to use theft as a business to end theft worldwide
Anonymous
5b282f4
?
No.292870
292871
Minor spoiler about Talon Company in case no one has said so before: The Talons are a direct rip of a mercenary company from Fallout 3. Talon Company in FO3 is basically just your average generic bad guy mercenary company. They take any job that pays caps, have good weapons as well as their signature combat armor with a white talon painted on the breast, and they will occasionally ambush you if you have too high Karma. The only difference between them in the game and them in the fic beside these Talons being griffons is that these Talons turn out to be good guys.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.292871
292968
>>292870
Well, sort of. They're only good guys insofar as they realise that being on Pip's side lets them amass power by absorbing all the factions left ruined in her wake. We're expected to believe that this makes them good by extension.
Anonymous
235499f
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No.292887
292888 293355 293356 293717 293720
>>292212
>>292281
Thank you gentlemen, for your reviews. They were helpful, however, do not expecta repost soon or, knowning myself, ever. I am grateful for the help though.

>>292782
Could you make a mini review of this text?.It's 3k so I know it's a bit long but any comments. On it would be appricaited. There are some particular things that I would like your opinion on. But you should probably read the text before and then check if my inetions lined up with what you read so you don't get spoiled by my intentions. However, the choice i obviously yours but here's what I intended for this scene and bascially all the surrounding information of it.
So this story is a bit of a challenge on character writing. Specifically consitency. I give three personality traits to Anon that I most keep consitent throughout the story. Any other traits that he might pick up are of less priority. While I will still try to do something with the new inforamtion that will undoubtedly occure during the writing of the story since he will haveto make choise that depend on other things that these limited character traits.

Anyway. here they are: These are general, so they do not really describe his trait in a nuanced way.

Anon is:
A jokester.
Adventourus.
Greedy.

His power is that he is athletic and know martial arts. What kind? Idk, it seems to be some kind of blend and I'm no pro. But he can probably kill you in over seven hundred ways and that's just with his bare hands.

Thw two other ponies on the boat are part of another story set in the same universe. Red Ex is the main character in that one, the brown earth pony. It's about her and that pegasus and a depressed Adolf Hitler that come to Equestria after his suicide and now feels as if he failed the world.
These characters won't actually return after this scene and aren't really relavant in this story.

The emerld battery thingies is a set up for the next scene which introduced our secondary main character. This is the opening scene of the story.

All the three personality traits of Anon should be portraited in these scene except for greedy because I didn't feel like writing extra much to establsih this here. I'll think I do that later. So the question is if you find Anon to be adventourus or a jokester.

Anyway, it's always fine if you don't have time. I appriciate it though.

>>292212
I didn't wanna impose since you don't really reveiw in the same manner as gg but if you wanna give me some feedback I'll appriciate it.
Anonymous
235499f
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No.292888
292890 293356 293713
4bd663ee18c75454636cc8682e1c5169.jpg
The Anoner and the Poner.pdf
>>292887
Anonymous
235499f
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No.292890
>>292888
>Anon's teeth visibly clenched as his mouth turned to a mad grin
Underwater. O´boy.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.292968
iqyt8oyshz161.jpg
>>292871
I wish this fic explored the nature of good in a Wasteland world better.
Sure, we all know in a survival situation survival takes priority. Things that would be abominable in peacetime are fine in war, and sabotaging your side's chances of success is a terrible crime in war. IRL you can't fire lasers made of your own superior morality so the "doomed moral victor" shit is the shtick of cuckservatives.

But in Ponyland, you can fire rainbow lasers made of six important virtues. So nurturing those values and gathering a new team of EOH bearers/creating a civilization that could give birth to a new EOH squad or attract an EOH squad's members is important.

Fallout's factions aren't just there for flavour. They aren't just there because somebody wanted to sell enamel keychains and t-shirts with their logos and likenesses. They aren't supposed to be memes and cameo appearances that show up all over America no matter where this generation's Skyrim-with-guns re-release happens. They're groups with their own history, their own culture, and most important of all, their own answers for the ultimate question you can ask in a post-apocalyptic hellhole besides "Whose fault was this and how can we prevent this from happening again?".

And that ultimate question to ask in the post-apocalypse is this:

>"Well, now what?"

Every group has their own answer, and some want to force their answers upon others in their own ways.

"America 2 but racist!" says the Enclave (Because America was evil in this stupid setting)

"An elite that controls tech, an intellectual class to repair and maintain tech and guns/power armour, and a soldier class to retrieve tech!" says the BOS.
"America 2 but we claim we're heroes!" says the NCR

"We have no long-term solutions, only the desire to spread goodness and knowledge and anti-war/anti-imperialism wherever we go!" says the Followers Of The Apocalypse.

"DUDE DRUGS LMAO! I'm lazy and I love doing drug deals in deathclaw dens. Our drug-makers burned their brains by taking their own product, good thing we don't produce heroin. GOD I MISS WHEN WE WERE RAIDERS! Let's live in tents and make no large-scale agricultural/industrial modernization and build no walls and hope whatever we buy with money from our jet operations can let our biker jacket and jeans-clad asses survive in an ever-changing Wasteland!" say the Great Khans.

"New Earth where everyone's globalized and literally transformed via TMNT mutagen one of three identical Super Mutant types united by my hive mind- oh god oh fuck what do you mean the mutants are sterile? Well, time to kill myself! KA-BOOM!" says The Master and most of his cult/mutant army.

"We don't have any long-term survival plans, we just want to be left alone in our self-sufficient ethnostate" say the remnants of the Super Mutant army in Jacobstown.

"Rebuild, teach the Tribals about God, teach Tribals English again, and worship God" says the Mormons.

"SCIENCE! With a capital exclamation point!" says the Think Tank.

"Rome 2 where the ruler controls a big barbarian horde that will hopefully become civilized and capable of producing better weapons/armour/a culture that can outlast me once I take over this dam!" says Caesar's Legion.

"America 2 except I rule an anarcho-capitalist territory with its sights on space colonization!" says Mr House.

I wish Bethesda understood this part of Fallout instead of focusing on the guns and stats and marketable merchandise opportunities.
Because if they understood this part, we wouldn't get Power Rangers of Steel, or the Nonsense Institute Of Wannabe OWB, or the cartoon-nazi Enclave with the cartoonishness turned up to 11, or the fucking boring Minutemen meme.
We'd see groups with their own ways to try and stop itself and possibly humanity from repeating its old mistakes, only to repeat them anyway.
We'd see interesting and unique groups and we'd be able to spend decades arguing over their viability, the quality of life they could give to the world, and whether they are good guys or bad guys or something else entirely.
I don't just hate Bethesda because of the scummy things they've done. I hate them for that and hate them because I wish they were a better game publisher/developer that cared about the art they put out and the effects they have on the gaming industry as a whole.

I wish Kkat understood this part of Fallout instead of focusing on the guns and stats and opportunities for excessive and laughable edge.
Because if he understood this part, the question of what being good means in the Equestrian Wasteland would be explored in more detail.
Fallout's world died after "running out of traditional resources" despite widespread nuclear power proliferation (lmao lefty writers amirite?)
This pony world was engaged in a war that might have been over resources at one point, but became over religion once Celestia had her mind broken by the depths of Zebrakind's Stupid Evil nature, which were already seemingly in play before the war even began.
All we ever get from the pre-war flashbacks is stuff that makes Zebras look like shit and ponies look like victims.
And after all the mistakes we've seen I don't think anyone can in good faith give the author the "Benefit of the headcanon" and just assume absolutely all diaries/newspaper clippings/flashbacks/secret private audio-tapes/terminal journal entries that ever made ponies look bad got memory-holed. Littlepip's knowledge of the future doesn't just come from old books and unreliable narrators, it also comes from the sources I mentioned. And a way to edit what's in a flashback ball is never shown onscreen. If it was, stores would sell flashback balls with "Cumming inside Rainbow Dash" and "Learning everything within every book on magic Twilight ever wrote" stored within them and at least some of those would survive, possibly within some of these FUCKING UNOPENED 200-YEAR-OLD SAFES.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.292988
292991 293026
1606529698336.png
>>292669

>”How'd you get in here?” Deadeyess scowled, staring down at me.
Apparently Deadeyes now spells his name as “Deadeyess.” At first I assumed this was a typo, except reading further I found that the misspelling is used again, multiple times. I then double-checked earlier mentions of the name and confirmed that it was originally spelled “Deadeyes” as one would expect. Here, watch:

>I had three magical energy weapons pointed at my head (although the big, brutish pony to Deadeyess's left looked like he'd rather kill me with his teeth).
Here, not only do we have the same weird double-S spelling used, but the author actually added an additional apostrophe S to denote the possessive form, instead of simply using the trailing apostrophe as is appropriate for names ending with an S.

It's used again further down:

>My eyes snapped back to meet Deadeyess's own.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that Deadeyessssss is actually a sssssssnake.

Anyway, Deadeyess's's's'ss'ssss'ss asks Littlepoop what ssssshe'ssss doing in here, and sssssshe ressssspondssssss by cooking up an autisssstic lie about usssssing magic. It's not clear why she doessss thisssss, but I'm asssssuming it hasssss sssssomething to do with keeping Calamity'sssss identity a sssssecret. alright, I'll sssstop now

The question of how she snuck in really shouldn't be that perplexing to Deadeyesssssss, since he obviously employs morons to guard his castle, but since he doesn't appear to be significantly more intelligent than any of Littlepoop's other enemies, he seems baffled by her ability to infiltrate his impenetrable security system. And, instead of simply blowing her head off right then and there, he proceeds to question her further.

He asks her why she came in, and after a bit of stumbling, she cooks up another autistic lie about wanting to join his crew:

>You're all escaped slaves, right? Well, I just escaped from old Appleoosa.
Are these guys all escaped slaves? I don't remember that being mentioned anywhere, although I suppose it could have been. It's getting a little overly complicated keeping track of who is enslaving whom around here. From what I gathered, Deadeyessss works for Red Eyesssss, who is the head of the slavery operation. So wouldn't it be kind of a faux pas to employ slaves who still technically belong to your boss? I'm having a really difficult time following a lot of this.

>I realized just after I said it that I was wearing armored Stable barding and probably looked nothing like an escaped slave. Deadeyes was regarding me with deep and well-deserved suspicion.
So it looks like Deadeyesssssssssssssssss is back to being Deadeyes again.

Anyway, after acknowledging how completely retarded her plan is, Littlepoop blathers out another paragraph of autistic sperging that could easily be deleted at no cost. Especially when it turns out that her worrying was in vain: instead of simply blowing her head off right then and there, Deadeyes instead decides to ignore his suspicions of this fully-armored stranger carrying like 25 different guns, who just wandered past his inept guards, strolled into his office and fed her this idiotic lie about being an escaped slave, and decides to give her a chance to prove herself.

So now, in addition to the real side-quest she is already on for Gawd, she is given an additional fake side quest by Deadeyes:

>”I have a letter that needs to be delivered. Not far, just to Yellow Hill Ridge. Maybe an hour's trot. I've got a map you can download to your PipBuck. Deliver it, come right back, we'll talk again.”
Once again, it's unclear just how common a technology the PipBuck is supposed to be. Based on what we've seen in this world so far and some information on Fallout that Nigel has provided, it seems that PipBucks are Stable technology that are not particularly common in the Wasteland. It's rather surprising that Deadeyes can not only recognize one on sight, but is able to transmit information to it somehow.

Seriously, how does any of this shit even work, anyway? I can't even get my Mac and Windows computers to read and write to each others' drive formats without hassle, and yet some tribal warlord in this post-apocalyptic wasteland is able to transmit map data to this space-age device he should logically never have even seen before? For that matter, how is LP supposed to "download" the map data, anyway? Does he have a terminal or how exactly does it work?

Here's another thing: that Littlepoop even has a PipBuck should be even more of a dead giveaway than her armor and weapons that she isn't who she claims to be. At the very least it should arouse some suspicion. So much of this story is just half-assed nonsense.

Anyway, he goes on to explain that she is going to need a special legband to get past someone named Gawdyna, who apparently guards the place where this letter is being delivered. At first it seems like he is talking about a second griffon with a similar name to Gawd's (and considering the Dead Eyes/Red Eye similarity it wouldn't have surprised me in the least had the author actually done this), but it soon becomes clear that Littlepoop's mission is now to go back to the Talon Group's camp that she just came from, deliver this letter, and return here to complete the mission that the Talon Group originally tasked her with. Yes, this autism is actually in the text.

In a rare move that suggests he isn't totally brain-dead, Deadeyes assigns two guards to Littlepoop to make sure that she goes directly to the exit instead of wandering around opening safes for another two or three hours. As she passes the place where I guess Calamity is hiding, she pointedly begins making conversation with her two guards to alert him to her presence, though for some inexplicable reason he doesn't take any action.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.292991
292992
1606655308452.jpg
>>292988

One of the guards tells her his personal sob story: he was originally just a simple down-home country poner, until one day slavers burned down his farm and enslaved his family and killed his brother and raped his livestock and peed on his carpet and so forth and so on, and then he crawled here and became some sort of rock-breaker and/or armed guard for Deadeyes. Incidentally, the author seems to have either intentionally or accidentally cleared up one of the earlier points of confusion: thus far the name Shattered Hoof has been associated with this prison/fortress, a ridge, a battle, and a rock-breaking facility. That this guard is primarily a rock-breaker seems to indicate that the rock-breaking facility and the fortress are actually the same place. Again, it would be much better if the author were less of an autistic sperg and just made this kind of shit clearer from the get go, but it is what it is.

Anyway, as this is happening, the radio comes on again and Littlepoop hears DJ Pon3 reading the news. This time, she is talking about the takedown of Appleoosa; it appears that somehow news has gotten around that Littlepoop died in the process of freeing the slaves. Once more, it's completely unclear how this mysterious radio DJ located God-knows-where was able to obtain detailed information about something that just happened a few days ago, but at this point I don't really care that much.

Littlepoop and her guards continue down the corridor. She now asks the second guard what his story is. He is a lot less interested in conversation, and pretty much tells her to fuck off and mind her own business. They continue down a long corridor and pass some sort of assembly hall.

At this point, one would be justified in wondering why Littlepoop, who is armed to the goddamn teeth, has magic-assisted targeting, and has used both of these things in the past to take down larger groups of enemies than these two inept guards, doesn't just kill these two quickly and then go back to take out Deadeyes, who, if I'm following all this correctly, should now be unguarded. However, one would be completely wasting one's time on such idle speculation, since Littlepoop does not have the basic sense to realize that this is a thing she could do. Instead, she finds herself daydreaming about Sweetie Belle performing a concert here centuries ago, and then, completely disregarding common sense, puts her fucking headphones back on so she can listen to yet another of these audio log entries she's been pilfering from wherever.

Before we deal with the contents of the log, there's this little detail I noticed:

>There was an old stage in the back with tattered and befouled curtains which I imagined Sweetie Belle, the mare who would become Stable Two's first Overmare, performed on.
So Sweetie Belle was the first Overmare of Stable Two? When was this mentioned? I feel like I already knew this, but if I remember correctly it was one of Nigel's spoilers that gave us this information, and this is the first canonical mention of this fact. Sweetie Belle has been mentioned here and there, but to my recollection it was only in her capacity as a singer from the ancient past; I don't know that any clear connection has ever been established between SB and Stable Two.

In any event, how does LP even know this? Since she grew up in the Stable, it's possible it would have simply been covered in a history lesson or something, but if that's the case, why didn't she make note of it when she started hearing the name everywhere? She's out wandering around in the Wasteland, and suddenly she starts hearing songs performed by Sweetie Belle on the radio, and finds a bunch of journal entries about her in this old fortress she's investigating, as well as a statue that belonged to her, and she doesn't even express surprise that this is the same mare who founded the Stable she spent her formative years in?

Anyway, the log. As with most of these, the events detailed in the log entry are completely unrelated to anything presently going on, and it's completely inappropriate to drop this information in here at this time, but whatever. The speaker is not identified, but from context we can probably assume that it is still Diamond Tiara.

Apparently, at some point, the “mainframe” btw I'm still wondering what the fuck all of these computers and terminals and whatnot are supposed to be exactly; are we dealing with magic? Technology? Magic technology? The world building in this story is vague as all fuck performed some kind of automatic lockdown and trapped DT inside the facility along with the prisoners she just released.

Now concerned about >rape, she takes whatever food she can find and locks herself in a bathroom, and hopes that the prisoners will find a way to escape the prison before realizing that she is in there. The subchapter ends on this note.

In the next scene, Littlepoop is still pretending to be an escaped slave applying for a job I guess. She allows the guards to escort her outside the facility into the yard without attempting any sort of attack or escape. It's still unclear where Calamity is in all of this, or why he hasn't tried to help her. It seems like he has had ample opportunity to sneak up behind one of the guards, knock him out and/or kill him, and let LP take out the other one when he turns to see who the attacker is. At this point it's starting to look more and more like LP actually intends to follow through with the side-mission that Deadeyes gave her, and that Calamity, who is carrying several of LP's guns plus his own, is just off playing with his balls in a closet somewhere while all of this is going on.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.292992
293067
1606540769350.gif
>>292991

At this point the second guard, the one who wasn't interested in talking earlier, pins her against the wall.

>”You want to know my story?” he growled. “I'll tell you. I was a merchant on a caravan that Gawd's Talons were supposed to be guarding. Saw them try to buck us over to slavers, and saw her take them down. So how'd I get here? She flew me in. Just like we all know she flew you in.”
It's unclear what Guard #1 is doing while this is happening. It's also a little unclear what Guard #2 is even talking about. What I gather is that he was working on a caravan that the Talons were hired to protect, when several of the Talons attempted to sell the caravan merchants to slavers for some reason or other. At this point Gawd either takes down the slavers or takes down the other Talon members. I think I remember Gawd herself talking about this, actually.

After this, he for some reason ends up working for Gawd, or is enslaved by her, or something. Apparently she sent him to infiltrate this fortress the same way she sent LP. However, for some reason, he broke allegiance with Gawd and signed on with Deadeyes as a low-level goon.

At this point, he informs her that Gawd's days are numbered, and she would be wise not to choose the wrong side. The allegiances here are now even more complicated than they were before: Gawd is technically working for Deadeyes, and is technically honor-bound to follow this contract, but for some reason is working against him by sending Littlepoop and presumably this guard into the fortress to retrieve this ledger for some reason. The guard then betrayed her by joining Deadeyes, who I guess is now planning to have Gawd killed for some reason. Also, they are all technically in the employ of Red Eye, whose slaves keep running away to work for Deadeyes.

In any event, instead of escorting her outside of the fortress, the guards leave her in the “rock yard” and tell her to teleport herself out, which I guess they think she can do because she had told Deadeyes she “used magic” to get inside the fortress. At this point they take their leave of her, and she is presumably alone in the yard.

>I moved over to where the mattress cover had been thrown and hid myself, clicking another audio log as I waited for Calamity. The voice was soft, nearly drowned out by the sounds of heated argument in the background.
Again, I'm really having a hard time understanding what the fuck she is trying to accomplish here. I thought the whole idea was for Calamity to hide and set some kind of ambush, while Littlepoop went in to try to talk to Deadeyes and the guards, or pick a fight with them, or lure them out of the office, or...honestly, I'm not even sure what the plan was supposed to be in the first place. It doesn't really matter though, because instead of doing any of that, LP went into the office, fed Deadeyes this cock and bull story that he would have to be an absolute moron to believe, and then allowed him to eject her from the facility.

Not only did she not accomplish her mission, she basically alerted the enemy to her presence. Now, if she still wants to steal the ledger, she will need to either sneak back into the facility and steal it from the guarded office (meaning that she has exactly the same problem she had to begin with, except that now Deadeyes has seen her and she won't be able to bullshit him twice), or else she can carry out the mission for Deadeyes, join his gang in order to slowly gain his trust, and hope that eventually she will be able to be alone with the safe long enough to crack it (this option could take anywhere from days to months). What makes this even more perplexing is that there were any number of more direct and effective options she could have chosen.

Is there any particular reason she couldn't have dealt with the guarded office using the same bullshit tactics she's used to deal with every other dangerous situation she's encountered so far? During an earlier scene she picked up a bunch of grenades, and she should still have a few of them. Why not levitate a grenade into the office, and then charge in and shoot at anything that survives the explosion? She would have had the element of surprise on her side, plus her ridiculous magical auto-targeting thingie would have allowed her to make pretty short work of the guards.

Alternatively, Calamity could have jumped out and ambushed the two guards once they escorted Littlepoop into the hallway. Again they would have the element of surprise, and based on their previous encounters there is no reason why these two guards should pose much of a challenge to them. At that point they could go back into the office and take Deadeyes by surprise. Since he sent both of his guards to look after Littlepoop, he would be alone and unprotected, and they could probably kill him quite easily.

Regardless of which option they chose, they would not only get the ledger, but would eliminate Deadeyes as a bonus. Even if Gawd doesn't want Deadeyes to be killed, they wouldn't have to tell her about it; all they'd need to do is hand her the ledger so they can get Velvet back. Whatever political fallout ba dum tss the death of Deadeyes would cause isn't really their problem, and they could be miles away before Gawd even found out about it.

The central problem here is an old one for this author: Littlepoop's abilities are poorly defined to begin with, and seem to expand and contract based on what the scene requires. She is reckless and preposterously overpowered whenever the author needs her to be, but then in situations like this she becomes inexplicably weak and careful. Everything I outlined above would be within the scope of abilities the author has already made clear she has (levitating grenades, taking out multiple enemies with her EFS, etc), and is in line with things she's already done. There is absolutely no reason for this scene to play out the way it's going.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.292994
293000
If I had to guess, the impresson that we're intended to get for this whole Shattered Hoof subplot is that the facility is far too well defended for Pip to start shooting. In Kkat's mind at least, if Pip just starts shooting people or setting off grenades, she'll be mobbed to death by Deadeyes' personal army, hence the sneaking and attempted bullshitting. It's not unheard of for Fallout games to offer quests in which you have to side with one dubious character over another in a 'choose your own betrayal' scenario where just killing everyone involved is impractical.

The problem, of course, is that no effort has been made to communicate or demonstrate this situation to the reader. The number of enemies and their threat level are entirely undefined, as is the size and layout of the structure in which this sequence takes place. If this were a game, and Deadeyes' camp was filled with level 20 enemies while Pip is merely level 10 and Old Appleloosa's slavers had been level 8, the player would be able to tell in an instant that stealth and diplomacy are their best options. But it's not. And no equivalent power discrepancy gets more than the vaguest suggestion.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293000
293028
>>292994
>If I had to guess, the impresson that we're intended to get for this whole Shattered Hoof subplot is that the facility is far too well defended for Pip to start shooting. In Kkat's mind at least, if Pip just starts shooting people or setting off grenades, she'll be mobbed to death by Deadeyes' personal army, hence the sneaking and attempted bullshitting.
That occurred to me as well, but the problem is that she literally just took down an entire fortified town by herself (Appleoosa), and is on her way to a presumably fortified city (Fillydelphia) to do the same thing on a larger scale. As you note, the author hasn't really given us a picture of how well-fortified Shattered Hoof is, but seeing as how the last place LP infiltrated was guarded by a near-infinite army of guards armed with flamethrowers and magical weapons and special horseshoes that let them go clippity-clop on the goddamned ceiling (as well as an alicorn, though Pip didn't know about that going in), this place would have to be pretty damned fortified to justify the amount of caution she feels she needs.

If anything, the author has gone out of his way to make this mission seem like it's going to be a breeze for them. LP and Calamity manage to sneak into the fortress using the most ridiculous trick they could have possibly thought of, and then once inside encounter no opposition whatsoever until they reach the office with the safe in it. It's almost comical the way it plays out: Littlepoop is just waltzing around the fortress pilfering Diamond Tiara's old diary entries and crowing to herself about how weak and stupid the guards in this place must be, but then instantly freezes like a deer in headlights the second a real challenge presents itself. In fact it's barely even a challenge; two armed guards plus Deadeyes (who may or may not be armed) guarding the safe is pretty light opposition, really. If anyone halfway competent were writing this, the duo would have to fight or sneak through an entire gauntlet of hazards before even reaching this point. Hell, even in a video game the player usually has to grind his way through a few floors of grunt soldiers in order to reach the room with the miniboss and the reward.

The author sets the bar fairly high for what his protagonist can handle, which means that it becomes exponentially harder to present her with an actual challenge. This is one of the unfortunate pitfalls of making an overpowered character.
Anonymous
14312ab
?
No.293026
293165
haha boobies go boingboingboingboing.jpg
Littlepip's carrying a mp3 player and radio on her arm, in that Pip-Buck.
Littlepip's got a singing doctor with her and the radio DJ's importance was already spoiled.

Music itself should play a bigger role in this fic.

I certainly wasn't playing a torrented copy of Far Cry 5: Slaughter White American Christians Edition the other day to see if it was worth buying, but if I was I likely would have finished it and decided not to buy it.
More importantly anyone who turned the radio on could listen to some NICE American-sounding music made by this cult.

That music gives character to the setting, the enemies, the three leaders of the enemies, and more. The three leaders even have their own MUSICAL TASTES!

KEEP YOUR RIFLE BY YOUR SIDE is a motherfucking masterpiece. Open a new tab and listen to this thing! It's beautiful. There's a choir version for Hope's Magic Zombieland and a not-choir version for the other place, it's louder and big band-ish so I guess it fits him more.

Metal Gear Solid V fucking WISHES it had this kind of musical budget. Just playing random 1960s songs with 4 having on-the-nose references to plot points and "twists" can't compete with new original music. yes this is the only other game i can think to compare it to, i don't play a lot of modern games because my pc used to be a potato and the last console i got was the discounted wii u. a smart guy wouldn't buy a console until someone figures out how to shove a hard drive up its ass and get all games on it free forever.

Between the radio stations LP's PipBuck can listen to wherever she goes, enemy faction radio broadcasts she can listen in on when infiltrating an outpost(who needs to hear enemies coming when sneaking if you literally have a magic compass highlighting enemies through walls and floors?), random turned-on radios in enemy towns/bases/compounds here and there, those stupid fucking radio-broadcast eyebots- I mean spritebots, and songs Velvet composes on the spot, this fic should use music to give this world a sense of character.

FIM had a lot of ponies sing all sorts of songs. This fic should have ponies sing songs, too.

Do you know why all fanmade music for Fallout Equestria is either tryhard bleak, wannabe action movie shlock, or Big Band and Lounge Singer and all wannabe-Fallout-ish? Because this fic lacks any concrete musical identity of its own!

Imagine looting the remnants of a destroyed Stable where all the inhabitants killed each other. And because the deafening silence is giving you sanity damage, you switch the radio on. And what comes on? A cheesy early-2000s consumerist pop song about how much the singer wants everything. Then a trashy 2010s zigger rap song about how the boastful rapper claims to have everything.
You get sick of this and change the channel to Applejack's American Audio, and choir/guitar graces your ears with cheery patriotic music about how Equestria is great and will never fall to Ziggers, interspersed between old-world radio dramas about gunslingers saving the day.
You change the channel and it's Twilight Sparkle's radio station, where Math Rock is interspersed between free magic lessons and audiobook chapters on her favourite novels.
You change the channel and it's reruns of Ask Pinkie Pie, a pre-war radio broadcast where she'd take some mind-enhancing drug to upgrade her Pinkie Sense and let her know everything about everypony listening, so she can give great specialized advice to everypony. 24 hour looped party music fills her second radio station.

This fic should do something clever with what it rips off.

Pic unrelated.

>>292988
>Littlepip's gear disproves her story but he doesn't seem to notice
Well that's retarded. LP could just say "I was an escaped slave, a while ago. I had nothing and looked like shit a while ago. I have a PipBuck and my slavers didn't abuse me much because they wanted to sell a clean innocent virgin stable-pony like me as a sex slave to anyone who could afford me. Then when one guard came into my cage I shot him and escaped. Then I met a doctor who fixed my leg which got bullet holes in it but Raiders killed him so I took his gear and got revenge for him and took their gear but now I have nothing better to do. For proof that I killed Raiders, here are some shitty guns and bloody outfits that I carry around in my PipBuck! Clearly, I have no idea what should and shouldn't be looted so I kind of just loot everything. Wasteland rookie right here, but I'm a crack shot."

>downloading map data
this should be simplified and fixed. Say he has ugly old hand-drawn maps that LP's Pipbuck's Map App can scan to update itself with new locations marked on this map. Or he shows her where to go on his map, and she puts a Marker on her own map to tell her where to go, since the PipBuck can do that GTA-style map-marking thing.

>Shattered Hoof confusion
LP should get confused, ask for clarification, and get it for herself and the audience. That's writing 101: Infodump to explain confusing things. It's why every card even Pot Of Greed has its effect explained every time it shows up in Yugioh. It lets you draw 2 cards from your deck.

>omniscient radio DJ
it's a Fallout 3 plot hole copypasted cumfaggotorially.
DJ's there to congratulate kind heroes and boo the Evil(TM) players when not playing old-world meme songs solely involving bombs/violence/radiation/the lack of civilization.
The first time I played F3, I assumed those enclave radio spritebots/eyebots were the Radio DJ's spies and he'd secretly turn out to be an evil celebrity protected by and paid by the Enclave to endorse their takeover. It would explain why there are so few radio station choices.
Silly me for assuming this AAA game's depth could rival Ratchet and Clank 1 for the PS2, eh? I miss when Qwark was a villain, he's gotten old as a "hilariously stupid sidekick" and his "generic superhero" shtick never belonged in the satirical RAC universe as anything other than some tall tales to satirize.

>why u no shu:t
doing that would fail the quest
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293028
293165 293278
_tid_tea_primarina__by_r_mk_ddafemc-pre.jpg
>>293000
You're entirely right about the "Now that I have been spotted by an enemy with a name, I am weak and powerless and forced to go along with what this enemy wants and what quest he just forced upon me" thing.
It's a videogame cliche gamers hate. It's bad enough when you slaughter your way through armies of nameless goons and fistfight bears to death and then get in a big cinematic cutscene and struggle to defeat the named villain who, for some reason, is tougher than the tank you shot through with armour-piercing 50cal an hour ago and hits harder than the literal trucks with machine guns you beat ten minutes ago.
So why the fuck is Kkunt copying this videogame cliche here?
It's stupid when games give you a clear shot at today's baddie and then force you to do as he says because if you shot the baddie now and won the ensuing firefight there wouldn't be much of a story since one major villain is dead and every quest he could have given you can't be completed and turned in for EXP.

I get that the author thinks this is a clever way to maintain tension, un-deify Littlepoop, and get more value out of this area and its characters. But the author thinks a lot of incorrect things and that's why the author is a literal tranny faggot.

Do you think this story would have been better if Gawd gave LP a magically-silenced pistol so she can use stealth-kills to sneak and kill her way into this base and loot everything while saying "Stop whining about how we're on a time limit, Calamity, if I loot these weapons the baddies can't use them against us if a fight breaks out", but then lockpicking the ledger safe tripped some alarm to force them to gunfight their way out?

Imagine if that happened, and Gawd gave LP a 2-way radio to give her commands.

But when the fight breaks out, LP first hacks this place's turrets to sic them on the official guards to thin the number of guards, though some guards are able to destroy the turrets near them and pin LP and Calamity down in their boss's office.
So LP calls Gawd and threatens to burn the ledger she just got unless Gawd sends his guys here to slaughter everyone at this plant and crash this party with no survivors.
Then Gawd says he has Velvet and threatens to torture her to death if anything happens to the ledger.
Then LP says "The enemies at this facility could overwhelm me and take the ledger and interrogate me. They'll do worse to me than you could do to Velvet, so I'll tell everything to save my own skin and your boss will know you betrayed him. 'Muh contract' my ass. If you don't rescue me to keep my mouth shut and get that ledger, we're all fucked. Some of us more than others. Even if you survive Red-Eye's wrath, your reputation will be ruined. I could tell Red-Eye everything to save my skin, letting me get revenge on you if you do anything to Velvet. But if nothing bad happens to Velvet and Red-Eye lets me go, I won't come for you. We'll have no reason to bother each other again, as long as I get everything I want. If you want the best ending for this situation, don't betray me. Save me so I won't be forced to betray you like you betrayed your boss."
Then Gawd says "You'll gamble with your best friend's life? You're one cold-hearted bitch."
A few alarmed enemies get into the office,
"The Wasteland's changed me." LP bluffs, trying to sound cool. "I've lost friends before. If it's her time, it's her time. I'll avenge her like I avenged the last one when I killed an Alicorn with my bare horn and burned Old Appleoosa to the fucking ground! I'm no escaped slave, I am the motherfucking hero of this story! I AM LITTLEPIP, MOTHERBUCKER!"
Gawd sighs. "Fuck it, I'll save your ass and trade an unharmed Velvet for an unharmed Ledger. Then you've got one day's head start to get the fuck away from my territory. I see you again, and I'll put a bullet in all your legs and chain all three of you up in my own office and rape you all so gawd-damned hard, I'll turn your wombs and intestines into my personal semen-tery!"

It's still cringe as fuck but the target audience would cum buckets for an edgy Intimidation Roll moment like this.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293067
293068 293134
1606544232833.gif
>>292992

Anyway, instead of doing anything that makes any goddamn sense at all, she instead runs off and finds the blanket stained with raider jizz that she used to sneak in here, and hides under it so she can listen to another one of her stupid audio diary recordings from 200 years ago.

This one continues the story of DT, beginning a couple of days after the point where it left off. She is still hiding in the bathroom, only now she has run out of food. The prisoners outside have apparently also run out of food, and are resorting to cannibalism. DT has to sit and listen as they murder another prisoner for sustenance, because apparently the ponies in this world are carnivorous. Sacrebleu, le edge.

After that the recording cuts off, and the subchapter ends on an even more pointless note than usual.

In the next scene, Calamity has rejoined Littlepoop. They are now flying back to Yellow Hill Ridge, which I guess is the location of the Talons' makeshift boxcar fort.

This really makes no goddamn sense at all. They went to all that trouble to sneak in, then Littlepoop gives away their position, bullshits her way out of the situation, gets kicked out of the facility, and through all this, Calamity was...hiding? I guess? Did he not at least have the sense to try and actually fucking do something? Maybe go in and kill Deadeyes while he was unguarded, and then go rescue Littlepoop and bring her back so she could open the safe? Or at least try to free Littlepoop from the guards so they could go back and fight Deadeyes together? Nope; apparently he sat there playing with his balls until she was ejected from the facility, then he snuck back out.

Now, they are going to have to go back to Gawd with this letter, explain that they found the safe, but instead of fighting their way past two measly guards and getting the ledger, they instead opted for this circuitous, pussy-ass approach that involves slowly gaining Deadeyes' trust by running errands for him. Not only is this a more laborious method of solving the problem, there is no way to guarantee success within a reasonable time frame. Seeing as how the guard from the previous scene was also sent in by Gawd, probably to obtain the exact same ledger, and wound up working for Deadeyes instead, it's unlikely that Gawd will have faith in this plan or the patience to wait for the outcome. Were I in Gawd's position, I'd probably just cut all three of their throats and look for a more capable patsy.

Littlepoop has created not one but two unnecessary objectives for herself. She doesn't want or need the ledger, she is only doing it because Gawd is holding Velvet Remedy hostage. Likewise, she doesn't want or need to impress Deadeyes; she's only doing this delivery mission to gain his trust so she can eventually steal the ledger. Any reasonable person/pony would realize at this point that the situation is getting far too complicated, and it's probably about time to figure out what Option C might be.

The way I see it, trying to play one side against the other the way she's doing is probably more dangerous than simply going in guns blazing and getting what she needs. As I explained, Gawd is unlikely to have the patience to sit around twiddling her thumbs talons, whatever while LP runs silly errands for Deadeyes, since there's really no guarantee that gaining the trust of Deadeyes will even give LP an opportunity to steal the ledger in the first place. LP really only has two sensible options here: either go back to the fortress and steal the ledger, which will probably involve fighting Deadeyes and his army, or else go back to Gawd's camp and fight the Talons in an effort to free Velvet. So, the real question is: who is the more dangerous enemy, Deadeyes or the Talons? Since the author has not really provided much detail on either one, it's impossible to ascertain.

Anyway, as the scene opens, LP and Calamity are flying to Yellow Hill Ridge based on the map data that Deadeyes gave them. And, as if LP were not fucking this mission up badly enough already, it seems she has somehow managed to get them lost.

They come across a camp, which Calamity wants to investigate for some reason despite it having literally fuck-all to do with anything they are supposed to be doing right now. They are able to observe the camp without being seen, fortunately. Here is what they see:

>banners: red and black, a stylized white eye with a crimson iris dominating the center.
Presumably something to do with Red Eye.

>The ponies down there were armed, and there were a lot of them. I spotted two griffins amongst them. Talon mercenaries, by their armor, but wearing neckbands of red and black with the distinctive eye. Clearly not Gawd’s Talons. Different company. Towards the back of the camp, I spotted the rows of slaver wagons.
This part is slightly confusing. My impression was that the Talons were a small mercenary band commanded by Gawd, but this seems to imply that it is a large paramilitary organization with many different platoons or companies or whatever. Good to know, I suppose. These particular Talons seem to be under the command of Red Eye directly.

>We continued to fly. I was now keeping a closer eye on my E.F.S. compass. Yellow Hill Ridge was a quarter-mile back towards Shattered Hoof, with just enough hills between to have ensured that we wouldn’t have spotted the camp had we come straight to it. This time, I spotted the tiny speck of the waiting courier’s lantern. I suggested to Calamity that we fly past and let me trot up alone, coming from the expected direction.
I'm actually a little confused again. Why are they having so much trouble finding Yellow Hill Ridge? Isn't it the place they just came from? Deadeyes gave her a special legband specifically to show Gawd, which would indicate they are going to where Gawd is. But at this point, I have no idea what this author has in mind. This whole thing is giving me a headache.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293068
293070 293071 293078 293165
1606588538472.png
>>293067

>Deadeyes clopped his hooves together, reading me. I had mentioned nothing of the Red Eye slaver army. “Good work,” he said finally. “Go get yourself some rest. You look like a griffin’s playtoy. Come back tomorrow. I’ll have one more job for you. Do that, and you’re in.”
Unfortunately, we never even get to find out whether Yellow Hill Ridge is in fact Gawd's boxcar fort, or if it is another location controlled by Gawd, or if Gawd is even the same character as the Gawdyna mentioned by Deadeyes. The author has given us virtually no information here: we don't know enough about the geography of this world to know where any of these places he keeps mentioning are supposed to be in relation to each other, we don't know enough about Gawd and/or Gawdyna to know if they are the same character or not, and since he has chosen to skip over the actual delivery of the message, we don't know where they actually went or to whom they delivered this mystery letter.

But whatever, fuck it; let's just roll with it. It appears that Deadeyes now basically trusts Littlepoop, because like everyone else in this story he is completely pants-on-head retarded. He allows Littlepoop to leave unescorted, and a short time later leaves his office accompanied by both of his guards, which means the office is now empty and the safe is unguarded.

Littlepoop decides to seize the opportunity and uses her StealthBuck, a device which still hasn't been properly explained to us, to sneak back into the office (because it looks like Dumbeyes didn't even bother to lock the fucking door) and crack the safe. Surely there will at least be a modicum of suspense here, or maybe a challenge of some sort?

>The safe was tricky, but within my range of skill. It popped open with a snap.
Nope, didn't think so.

Well, whatever; she's got the dumb ledger now. It seems to me that if this is all the author was going to do here, it would have made just as much sense to leave out the bit about meeting Deadeyes and delivering the letter, and just have her find an empty office to begin with. The theft would still have been a dull event, but it would have been a much shorter dull event.

>I slipped the ledger into my saddlebag and was just snapping the safe shut when Deadeyes and his entourage returned, looking around. If it hadn’t been for the spell, they would have seen me.
What spell? I thought she couldn't cast spells, because she sucks at being a unicorn and can only perform preposterous feats of levitation? Wait, is the StealthBuck supposed to be a spell of some kind? You see, kkat you fuck, this is why you need to explain shit. We can't see what's in your head, you cum-gargling trapezoid.

Anyway, it turns out the whole thing was a subterfuge. Deadeyes is apparently less of an idiot than he pretends to be; he saw through Littlepoop's flimsy cover story immediately, assumed she was a spy sent from Gawd, and was just playing along to see what she'd do. Come to think of it, Guard #2 actually told her as much in a previous scene:

>So how’d I get here? She flew me in. Just like we all know she flew you in.
This basically tells us that Guard #2 was originally also sent in as a spy, probably to steal the same ledger that LP is now attempting to steal. He defected and joined up with Deadeyes instead. We knew this already, but on closer scrutiny I realize this would mean that Deadeyes would pretty much have to know what Gawd was up to, and would assume that she would try it again. Logically, you'd expect Gawd to also realize this, and also to realize that it would be a pretty dumb move to simply try the exact same plan again and hope for different results this time. But then again, everyone in this story is pants-on-head retarded, so...

Anyway, whatever. The long and short of it is that the jig is up.

>“Oh, I think our little spy did whatever Gawdyna wanted her to do,” Deadeyes smiled. “All the better. Let the griffin cook herself.”
Well, at the very least, this explicitly defines Gawd and Gawdyna as the same character, so at least that aggravating little ambiguity has been cleared up. In any event, this really shouldn't bother LP; she has no particular loyalty to Gawd and is only working for her because she is holding Velvet hostage. It's obvious that Deadeyes intends to let her escape with the ledger, so at this point all she needs to worry about is getting it back to Gawd so she can take Velvet and be on her way. Whatever these two wack jobs are planning to do to each other really shouldn't matter to her one way or the other.

Unfortunately, it only gets more confusing from here.

>He turned to his guards. “Best prepare the others. Red Eye’s forces are set to raid Shattered Hoof the sunrise after tomorrow. We want to make sure they have no trouble getting in. It’s time to meet the big man himself.”
Wait, what? I thought Deadeyes was a subordinate of Red Eye. Why would Red Eye raid his own operation? This whole thing is so convoluted...

>My mind reeled. Deadeyes was making deals with the slavers? He was going to let Red Eye’s forces come in and capture the ponies he was supposed to be protecting here? The treachery mirrored the betrayal of Gawd’s Talons but on a much larger scale.
Zuh? Who is Deadeyes supposed to be protecting? You know, come to think of it, it's not really clear what the purpose of this fortress is even supposed to be. As far as I can tell, there is some kind of rock breaking operation going on here, but beyond that I'm not sure what this place is, what Deadeyes is doing here, or why, or for whom. As far as protection goes, I'm assuming this means his personal army, unless he's got some kind of civilian group here also I guess. The author really hasn't explained any of this shit to us. So, if I'm following this correctly, Deadeyes is planning to let Red Eye, who may or may not be his boss, come in and enslave all of his foot soldiers because...reasons I guess? I am so confused right now, Jesus Christ.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293070
293177
General-Ledger-Example.jpg
Ledger-Account-Example-1-1.png
ledger-t-accounts.jpg
>>293068

Anyway, while Littlepoop is contemplating all of this, a couple of earth pony guards burst in and inform Deadeyes that a pegasus intruder has been spotted, which presumably means Calamity. I was beginning to wonder what had happened to him. Anyway, since Littlepoop's StealthBuck and/or invisibility spell is about to wear off, she seizes the opportunity to run past the guards and out into the hall.

There is a page break, and in the next scene Littlepoop runs out into the courtyard, where Calamity is hiding under the jizz-stained blanket, because apparently that stupid trick still works. However, Littlepoop quickly informs him that there is no further need for even this much subtlety, because they have both been found out. Also, she has the ledger now so they may as well get the fudge out of here.

They take off. Calamity is flying poorly due to a combination of his injured wing and sleep deprivation. I'm still not entirely sure why they didn't just rest up at Pinkie Bell's farm before starting off for Manehattan, but whatever; I don't even care anymore. Their current plan is to get the ledger back to Gawd and get some rest.

While they are airborne, Littlepoop decides to play another one of the sound files she obtained somehow from somewhere, and we are treated to the next episode of Diamond Tiara's Rape-Tastic Adventures in the Rapacious Land of Rapey Rape. The prisoners appear to have figured out that there is somepony hiding in the bathroom, and are now attempting to break down the door. She apparently has a gun for some reason, and the implication is that she's going to commit suicide before the prisoners can carry her off into the rapey sunset.

The sound file cuts off here, and I am now more curious than ever about when and how DT managed to make these recordings in the first place, and how they wound up in whatever scattered locations LP found them in. Meanwhile, LP and Calamity arrive at Junction R7, which I'm now beginning to suspect is a different location entirely from Yellow Hill Ridge.

Gawd greets them, and asks if they have the ledger. Littlepoop answers in the affirmative. She also tells Gawd that Deadeyes knows she took it and that he is plotting some kind of move against her. This impresses Gawd, who remarks that Littlepoop could have easily withheld this information and gone on her way. Littlepoop tells her that she wants something in return: she expects to be given a night's protection while they rest, and she wants to have a look at the ledger. She also says that she has more information concerning Deadeyes, which she will convey once her conditions have been met. Gawd accedes to both conditions.

LP and Calamity are led back to one of the boxcars, where Velvet Remedy is busy treating wounded ponies. I'm still a little curious who the ponies living in this boxcar fort are supposed to be; my understanding is that this place was the base of operations for the Talons, who are a griffon gang, and yet so far we've seen mostly ponies, with Gawd being the only griffon present. In any case, though, Littlepoop is glad to see that Velvet hasn't been randomly disemboweled in the couple of hours they were apart.

>Shaking my head in a combination of adoration and despair, I followed behind her. I was too tired to even appreciate how nice a tailside she had.
Oh right, Littlepoop is a lesbian. It's been a few subchapters since that was last mentioned, so I'd forgotten. Thank you for reminding me, kkat. Also, "tailside" is not a word. Rump, rear, flank, backside, derriere, buttocks, bottom, hindquarters, ass, plot, posterior, fundament...any one of these would have worked just fine.

Anyway, for reasons that are still not clear, Littlepoop is quite keen on flipping through the ledger that Gawd had them steal.

>Flipping through, I found entries going back many years. The newest ones, I felt, were suspect. Whatever Deadeyes was up to, I rather expected he had doctored the ledger as part of it.
Source: your tailside. Seriously, though, what are you looking for exactly? Of what maleficence do you suspect Deadeyes? We don't even know what this ledger is for, or even what business Deadeyes is supposed to be in to begin with. He's obviously a baddie of some sort, and there seems to be some vague implication that whatever he's doing involves breaking rocks to harvest gems, but apart from that there can't be much in this ledger that would mean anything to Littlepoop.

Oh wait, there's this:

>It was easy to find the entry I was looking for:

>Some of the nearby farmers have begun to put up resistance. Armed themselves from that merchant caravan that passed through last month. One of them took a few shots at the raider party I dispatched to the east side. Mr. Topaz doesn’t care, just wants the rocks to keep coming. So I think it’s time we reminded these rock farmers just why they do as we say. Tomorrow, I’m sending some of the boys up to the Bell farm to make an example. Told them to make it real graphic, so the rest of these ponies don’t have any room to misinterpret.
Just out of curiosity, kkat, do you understand what a ledger is? It's not the same thing as a diary or a journal. A ledger is basically just a record of financial transactions, see pics related for examples. There is absolutely no reason why the details of an attack on a farm should be recorded here, particularly not when written like a journal entry.

Anyway, I see basically where the author is trying to go with this: Deadeyes was responsible for the attack in which Silver Bell's family was killed. From what I can piece together, Deadeyes runs some kind of operation in which rocks are "farmed" and then sent up to the Shattered Hoof facility to be broken or processed or whatever they do with them. He runs the operation like a gangster, and the rock farmers he employs are probably being heavily exploited.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.293071
293278
>>293068
>StealthBuck
Another 'only makes sense if you've played the games' moment. In Fallout, the StealthBoy is a wrist-mounted device similar to the PipBoy, which can be activated to temporarily make the user invisible. As most of FoE's technology seems to run at least partially on magic, it would be fair to assume that the FoE's equivalent is an invisibility spell.

You know, because Littlepip isn't stealthy enough.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.293078
>>293068
>pic
Well that's just goddamn adorable
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293134
293165 293278
hoers girl.jpg
>>293067
It's funny how often the author uses a scene transition to say "I don't know how we moved from this scene to that scene, but I swear they did, just fucking accept it and move on".
If he doesn't know how to make something look like it meets his low standards for "plausibility", he skips over it and cuts to a scene after what implausible thing happened. Or he skims through his notes for the story and mentions that it already happened in passing, hoping nobody will question it.

>cute poners
thank you, cute poners are the perfect antidote to this grimderp story's fake edge.

>performing one fetch quest immediately makes a faction love you, a complete stranger
Mother of God, did this fucker predict the major faction quest design in Fallout 4? Because that's how bad it got at times. The Minutemen crown you their new leader within the first real 10 minutes of the game just because you got a free minigun+power armour and killed a Deathclaw in front of them. I barely remember anything from F3 besides what I hated so he might be ripping off something from F3.

>running invisible character
man it sure is a good thing nobody can just listen to where the invisible pony is using their superior horse ears- oh wait no it's more "convenient" writing

>hiding under a jizz-stained blanket
help me I can't help but crack up at the thought of a grown-ass man horse with shotguns on his back hiding from other large horse men under a jizz-stained blanket, creating a very large bulge his pursuers are staring at in shock and confusion, wondering if they should open fire on the blanket now or pull the blanket away so he can look his death in the eye.

>poners are sleppy
this is such a stupid moment of forced tension.

Kkunt wants you to think Littlepip is a "Badass", and he was worried you'd stop thinking this if he wrote a scene where LP ACTUALLY COULDN'T just genocide everyone at a location and win a 100vs2 gunfight without ever taking any meaningful damage.
So to justify her lack of telekinetic attacks (I'm surprised Kkunt didn't embrace the edge of Glory Kills and write about LP tearing the spines from ponies telekinetically before shooting them like bullets into other ponies) and Calamity's poor flying, sleep deprivation.
Their current game plan... I forget if it's "Head to the radio place that accepts orphans even though we have no reason to visit since we sent our orphan home" or "Head to the slaver place and slaughter all the baddies"
But for both, resting well so you can deal with any baddies you encounter on the roads is important.
You don't want to go into a long journey tired. If Kkunt ever went on long journeys he'd know this. I wonder if we'll see any more "This fucker's crippling lack of real-world experience shines through in his writing and causes his writing to mirror videogamey conveniences that don't seem intentional" moments in this fic. Because the idea that sleep deprivation is nothing but a stat penalty effect that makes doing stuff correctly harder/impossible is bullshit. Tiredness fucks with the soul.

>sound files
why do LP's friends never ask to hear these stories from the start, when they catch LP listening to some new "environmental story" basically on par with Saints Row 4's random sound files randomly scattered around the world. "I'M A CREATURE OF HABIT, OF STRUCTURE. AND THAT DOESN'T FIT WELL WITH THE SAINTS' M.O." and all that.

>sound file cuts off at the most dramatic point
That's fucking stupid, why wouldn't the recorder just keep going?
Kkunt could justify everything dumb here by continuing the recording and writing the rapists as they enter the room, notice she's shot herself in the head, and as some notice she's still somewhat warm and rape her anyway (for that MAXIMUM EDGE) the rest see her recording device and say "Dude, we should hide these recordings all around the facility! It'll be like she's stuck here in this prison forever, forced to tell anyone who finds the recordings how she hid in here like a little bitch!"
it would justify this stupid "multi-chapter audio log" bit and why different chapters were found around places she never could have visited.
But it wouldn't justify why LP found them all in order.

>LP can make demands at Gawd
man it's a good thing Gawd's so chill with people who complete one Quest to gain a higher Reputation Level.
Maybe if she does enough quests, she will get the Revered reputation level, or perhaps even Exalted.

>Deadeyes did Bell Farm
man, this sure would be meaningful to Not-Pinkie if she was still a part of the party. This could be a big emotional moment where she swears she will have her revenge, and dedicate the rest of her life to killing Goblins- I mean Raiders.
Do you think we'll see any more "Not-Pinkie was supposed to be a part of this story and react to this/care about this" moments after this?
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.293165
293166 293174
>>293026
>>293028
>>293068
>>293134

Incidentally, I really appreciate all this ass and tiddy posting. The cute poners, too. They make this thread far more enjoyable.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293166
293173
45191.jpg
>>293165
Thank you. There's a lot of ugly in the world and there's nothing gay or girly about wanting to decorate your house with beauty. After all, roman soldiers once decorated their swords with flower engravings or something like that. I love art of cute poners and hot chicks. I'm no furfag but hot is hot, they're just drawn that way and centaurs are hot.

What do you think about my suggested improvements for the fic?

Btw was playing MGS3 and realized if Kkunt played that, this fic would be better.
Imagine "Sneaky agile" Littlepip actually needing to rely on stealth to win because she is no longer a bullet sponge able to "power through" and ignore most injuries she gets
Imagine Littlepip eating a python and a beehive
Imagine if characters needed to to treat their injury and cure their ailments with specific illnesses instead of relying on general HP-restoring Crippled Limb-fixing "Healing Potions" to fix everything.
Imagine interesting and varied fight scenes/boss battles that take the environment, limited supplies, bullshit abilities/weaponry/gimmicks of the enemies, and LP's limited ability into account.

The story would also improve if Kkunt played Ace Combat, a fun jet-fighter simulator/arcadey game.

It's a simulator because you have REALISTIC FLIGHT PHYSICS
Spyro in Speedways, Harry Potter on a broomstick, Mario 64's Wing Cap, pretty much any flying section in any 3D game? You can turn up/down/left/right. Maybe flight controls are inverted, un-invert that shit asap.
But Ace Combat? If you want to go left you actually have to rotate your jet so its upside is facing left, then turn upwards. REALISM!
It's also GOOD ARCADEY FUN because these realistic military jets have 3x the missile storage capacity they do IRL.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.293173
293187
>>293166
>Thank you. There's a lot of ugly in the world and there's nothing gay or girly about wanting to decorate your house with beauty. After all, roman soldiers once decorated their swords with flower engravings or something like that. I love art of cute poners and hot chicks. I'm no furfag but hot is hot, they're just drawn that way and centaurs are hot.
>
<What do you think about my suggested improvements for the fic?
>
>Btw was playing MGS3 and realized if Kkunt played that, this fic would be better.
>Imagine "Sneaky agile" Littlepip actually needing to rely on stealth to win because she is no longer a bullet sponge able to "power through" and ignore most injuries she gets
>Imagine Littlepip eating a python and a beehive
>Imagine if characters needed to to treat their injury and cure their ailments with specific illnesses instead of relying on general HP-restoring Crippled Limb-fixing "Healing Potions" to fix everything.
>Imagine interesting and varied fight scenes/boss battles that take the environment, limited supplies, bullshit abilities/weaponry/gimmicks of the enemies, and LP's limited ability into account.
>
>The story would also improve if Kkunt played Ace Combat, a fun jet-fighter simulator/arcadey game.
>
>It's a simulator because you have REALISTIC FLIGHT PHYSICS
>Spyro in Speedways, Harry Potter on a broomstick, Mario 64's Wing Cap, pretty much any flying section in any 3D game? You can turn up/down/left/right. Maybe flight controls are inverted, un-invert that shit asap.
>But Ace Combat? If you want to go left you actually have to rotate your jet so its upside is facing left, then turn upwards. REALISM!
>It's also GOOD ARCADEY FUN because these realistic military jets have 3x the missile storage capacity they do IRL.
The pink section is the only part that is any way an acceptable 'contribution' to this thread. The rest is entirely off topic, self-gratifying horseshit for which this thread has become notorious. Thanks to (you). FFS if you have nothing relevant, STOP POSTING.

Especially the furfag shit
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293174
293175 293187
>>293165
I'm glad you enjoyed the cute poners, but I'm afraid I can't share your enthusiasm for Nigel's "Pokemon with ridiculously huge tits" fetish. There's no accounting for taste I guess, but I really wish you wouldn't encourage him to post those.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.293175
>>293174
Noted.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293177
293178
1606804208277.png
>>293070

Predictably enough, this new revelation has Littlepoop once again seething with self-righteous buttmad. She vows that she will return to Shattered Hoof and go full murderhobo on Deadeyes, because something something justice and blah blah whatever.

After going through the ledger, she delivers it to Gawd as per their agreement. LP drops some pretty big hints that she wants to join up with the Talons in whatever heroic takedown of Deadeyes' operation they are planning, but so far Gawd doesn't seem to be biting. Honestly I'm still pretty confused about a lot of the details here; we still don't know what Gawd expected to learn from this ledger, though I'm guessing since kkat seems to have gotten the concepts of "ledger" and "journal" mixed up, the basic idea is that she suspected him of carrying out attacks on the local farms and wanted proof in the form of a written log.

Another point I'm rather confused on is just who the Talons are working for exactly, and why they needed to go outside their organization to investigate Deadeyes. Their direct employer is someone named "Mr. Topaz," about whom we still know basically nothing. I was originally under the impression that Topaz employed Deadeyes and that Deadeyes employed the Talons, and that this was the reason they couldn't directly investigate Deadeyes, but I'm not sure that's actually the case. It may be worth taking a moment and compiling the information we have so far to get a clearer picture of exactly what the situation is.

So before we continue with the story, let's review:

>Shattered Hoof had become the home of escaped slaves, many from the train that had been ambushed at Junction R-7, who had turned to a life of raiding the local farms.
>Their leader was a pony named Deadeyes, who spoke for a supposedly higher pony whom no one but Deadeyes had ever seen: Mister Topaz. It was for Mister Topaz that Deadeyes organized raiding parties out of Shattered Hoof and kept the rock-breaking yards in operation.
From what I've been able to piece together, Shattered Hoof was originally some sort of correctional facility during the olden days, used by the Ministry of Whatever to imprison and/or brainwash politically dissident ponies. In the current era, it serves as the center of a gem-harvest operation run by Deadeyes.

Per the mythology of the show, some rocks contain gems, but in order to get at them the rocks need to be broken. The most efficient way of finding gems is to use a unicorn like Rarity who has the ability to locate the rocks that have gems in them, but presumably unicorns with such talents are in short supply these days. So, the present way of doing it is to use rock farms, a-la-Ponk's old home, to harvest large quantities of rocks, which are then taken to Shattered Hoof and broken to see if there are any gems inside.

While on the one hand this seems like quite a bit of work for probably very little payoff, I will give the author a bit of credit here: this is actually a plausible explanation of a couple of the goofier bits of MLP lore. I don't know that the purpose of "rock farming" was ever explained in the show; my guess is it's just something the writers put in because it sounded silly. Here, the author has taken this and connected it to another logically weird but probably ok-for-a-children's-show element of this setting: the natural occurrence of gems that have somehow already been cut and polished. In kkat's Equestria, gems occur naturally inside rocks, and need to be harvested by breaking them out. So, rock farmers gather rocks that look like good candidates for gems, and these are bought by commercial rock-breakers that harvest the gems inside. In the technological Equestria that existed up until the war, this idea had been expanded into a large scale industrial operation.

In the present, Deadeyes has used this business model to make himself into something of a local warlord. He has converted the Shattered Hoof prison into a rock breaking plant, and employs escaped slaves as rock-breakers. He commands a personal army, which may also be made up of escaped slaves and probably some raiders as well, and he uses this to force local rock farmers to sell him rocks at below-market rates (or maybe he just takes them). There are still some logical holes here, such as why there would still be active rock farms in the post-apocalyptic world, since the commercial gem trade would have probably dried up centuries ago, but we can put a pin in that for now.

>Topaz and Red Eye
Here is where it starts to get a bit complicated. Deadeyes is apparently not working on his own; he kicks upstairs to someone named Mr. Topaz. We don't know anything about this character because according to Gawd, Deadeyes is the only one who has ever met him in person. He appears to be not only the boss to whom Deadeyes answers, but also the one who hired the Talons.

I had initially been under the impression that Topaz worked directly for Red Eye, but upon closer inspection, this may not be the case. Let's take a closer look at this:

>Gawd glowered. “Now look here. I have only two loyalties. To the contract, and to bottle caps. And in that order.” She leaned back, looking over her shoulder at the flag behind her. “My old crew learned that when they decided t’ take up Red Eye’s offer and turn over the caravan we were hired t’ protect t’ Red Eye’s slavers.” She turned back to us. “Talons don’t break contracts. Not even for barrels of caps. They learned that the hard way when I shot ‘em in the back.”
From what I can deduce, the situation here is that the Talons were hired to protect a caravan, possibly by Topaz, which was then attacked by Red Eye. Red Eye had apparently made an offer to Gawd's Talons to go back on their contract and turn the caravan over to his slavers, but this was thwarted by Gawd herself, who I guess murdered the rest of her platoon as punishment for breaking the contract.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293178
293179
1606667886205.png
>>293177

The text implies that Junction R7, which is the location of the boxcar fort, was the site of this ambush by slave traders. This actually would explain two earlier points of confusion for me: first that Gawd is the only griffon present in this all-griffon mercenary group, and second, the question of who all these ponies running around the fort are supposed to be.

The train itself was presumably the caravan, and the ponies on the train were the traders whom the Talons were hired to protect. When the train was attacked, all of the Talons except for Gawd turned on the merchants and attempted to sell them out to the slavers, because they had been bought off by Red Eye beforehand. However, Gawd takes the Talon code of honor seriously, and killed all of the other Talons in her group as punishment for violating the contract. The train wreckage appears to have been made into a fort for some reason, and Gawd now uses it as a base of operations.

The ponies who were originally the caravan merchants, as far as I can tell, now work for Gawd. One such pony was Guard #2 from Shattered Hoof. She attempted to infiltrate Deadeyes' fortress earlier, but Deadeyes figured out the plan and convinced Guard #2 to switch sides. We'll address that in just a second.

Before we do that, though, I'd like to look at something that has been bothering me, which is what exactly the relationship is between Topaz, the Talons, and Red Eye. I've been assuming that Topaz worked for Red Eye, and that Deadeyes and the Talons both worked for Topaz, but it appears that Topaz and Red Eye might actually be adversaries. First, here is why I thought they were on the same side:

>“The Talons will work for whoever pays. Slavers, raiders, good little townsfolk, caravans. Whoever’s got the caps. We don’t play politics and we don’t takes sides. Unless, of course, it’s in the contract. That’s been the griffin way for over two hundred years. Red Eye, he gets that. And unlike some folk, he has no reservations ‘bout strengthening his forces with our kind.”
This line is spoken by Gawd, and implies that Red Eye is the one who has hired the Talons. Since she also mentions elsewhere that they have a contract with Topaz, and this would suggest that Topaz is an agent of Red Eye. Were this not the case, it would mean that the Talons have contracts with both Topaz and Red Eye, and if the two of them were enemies, this would create an obvious conflict of interest.

There is also this:
>The ponies down there were armed, and there were a lot of them. I spotted two griffins amongst them. Talon mercenaries, by their armor, but wearing neckbands of red and black with the distinctive eye.
This is from the later scene where Calamity and LP fly over the enemy camp. There is a clear implication that these are Talons working directly for Red Eye.

However, this becomes easier to understand once we take this into account:
>Clearly not Gawd’s Talons. Different company.
Originally, I had assumed the Talons were a small mercenary group of maybe 15-20 griffons, led by Gawd. However, it seems as if they are a larger paramilitary organization, subdivided into semi-independent groups who can presumably each form their own contracts. If this were the case, it's not impossible that Red Eye might have hired one group of Talons and Topaz might have hired another. If the groups are indeed allowed to form their own contracts, and their honor binds them to the contract but not necessarily to the Talon organization as a whole, it would stand to reason that these two Talon groups could legally fight each other; the only ones in violation of the honor code would be the ones hired by Topaz who defected to Red Eye's side.

Finally, there is once again the question of why Gawd felt it was necessary to go outside her own organization to investigate Deadeyes, as well as why she wanted to investigate him in the first place. If we assume that Topaz and Red Eye are actually enemies, the question of why she was investigating him becomes simple: Gawd suspects that Deadeyes, who works directly for Topaz, is secretly conspiring with Red Eye, but she needs evidence. What's unclear, however, is why she felt she needed outsiders to do this job.

The implication seems to be that investigating Deadeyes would be a violation of her contract with Topaz because Deadeyes works for Topaz. However, since she was hired to protect Topaz' interests, and it would be in his interest to know if one of his underlings was plotting against him, there's no reason this would violate the contract. If anything, it would be a violation not to investigate him. This is why I had begun to suspect that Deadeyes might have been the one to directly contract the Talons, but did so on behalf of Topaz. This could create a snag in the event that Topaz and Deadeyes were at odds, as it would be unclear to whom they owed loyalty; however, there is no evidence that a contract with Deadeyes exists.

So, with all of that taken into account, here is what I think is going on:

Topaz controls the gem harvest operation, and employs Deadeyes to run it. Deadeyes, however, has been secretly approached by Red Eye, who is planning to attack Shattered Hoof. Red Eye offered him something in exchange for opening the gates and allowing his slavers to capture the workforce, and Deadeyes saw that since Red Eye was clearly stronger, he would be better off switching sides. Meanwhile, Gawd is well aware of Red Eye's duplicitous tactics, having just experienced them firsthand when her own platoon tried to renege on its contract with Topaz, and being suspicious of Deadeyes, decided to investigate him. She sent in one of the caravan ponies, but he was flipped and now works for Deadeyes, so she sent Littlepoop in there instead. Apparently the ledger that Littlepoop stole somehow proves that Deadeyes is a turncoat, and Gawd intends to bring this information directly to Mr. Topaz.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293179
293336
1606802007568.jpg
>>293178

Based on the information we have, I think we've now come up with a fairly accurate picture of what's going on. These are the remaining points of confusion for me:

>Why did Gawd need to go outside the Talons to investigate Deadeyes?
I've already mostly gone over this, but it's worth mentioning again. As far as I can tell Deadeyes and Gawd both work for Mr. Topaz; Deadeyes as a direct employee running his gem operation, and Gawd as a security contractor. Gawd has an obligation to Topaz but not Deadeyes, so there shouldn't have been any issue with her going to steal the ledger herself, or sending one of the other Talons to do it, assuming there are any still alive. She behaves as if messing with Deadeyes would constitute some inexcusable breach of her contract, but from what I can tell, Topaz hired her to protect his organization, and if she suspects one of his major underlings is plotting against him, then investigating that underling would fall squarely within the scope of her duties, even if it turns out that the underling didn't do anything wrong. If she's looking at sensitive business data it could be a grey area I suppose, but I think she could justify it either way.

>What's the deal with the caravan of ponies at the train junction?
Specifically, why have they chosen to bunker down here and make a fort? As far as I can tell, Red Eye sent some slavers to attack them, the Talons guarding them were supposed to stand down, but the plan was thwarted by Gawd. At this point, wouldn't it make the most sense for the caravan to just keep moving to wherever it was going? Why are all these ponies camped here with Gawd, and why do they follow her orders as if they were part of her army now? Did she conscript them to replace the Talons she killed, or what's the deal exactly? While we're on the subject, how long ago did the attack happen? How long have they been here?

>What's the deal with the Talons in general?
Specifically, how many companies of them are there? How are they structured and organized? Is there some kind of rigid chain of command, or is this just a loose collective of mercenary groups under the same banner, who operate more or less independently of each other? How high-ranking is Gawd? Does she command any other groups besides the one that she had to kill? This last question is relevant because of the delivery mission that Deadeyes gave Littlepoop. The location he sent her to seems to be different from the train junction, yet he gave her a special legband specifically to pass Gawd's sentries. Wouldn't this imply that the place she was delivering the letter to was under Gawd's control and patrolled by her guards? Frankly, that whole business with the letter was pretty vague anyway; we don't have the slightest idea where she delivered it or why.

>Exactly what is the relationship between Topaz and Red Eye?
I'm currently operating on the hypothesis that they are adversaries because that makes the most sense when you consider everything else, but the possibility still exists that they are supposed to be on the same side but are double crossing each other. The main issue though is that it really shouldn't be this vague in the first place; even if we're not supposed to know that much about either of these characters just yet, it should be perfectly clear where the basic battle lines are drawn and who the key players are for each side.

These questions aside, the author has set up a potentially excellent story arc here if he executes it properly though I'm assuming he probably won't. We've got a local big-shot (Topaz) squaring off against a mysterious, much stronger outside power (Red Eye) who is trying to muscle in. The local big-shot's underling (Deadeyes) is planning on betraying his master, while the big-shot's retainer (Gawd) is trying to stop him. However, the underling seems to know that the retainer is wise to him, and seems to have something planned for her as well that she doesn't quite see. The protagonist (Littlepoop), meanwhile, is just caught in the middle, but wants to get involved for her own reasons.

Honestly, this idea is quite good; if you got rid of the ponies and the post-nuclear stuff and changed the setting to ancient Japan, this could easily be the plot of an Akira Kurosawa film.

Unfortunately, though, the author doesn't quite seem to realize what he has. Much like the Appleoosa arc, there is enough going on here to spin an entire novel out of if he wanted, but my guess is this is only going to go on for another half a chapter at most. K "it's not gay if I pretend my inside-out scrotum is a vagina" kat seems to want to just have LP jump aimlessly from adventure to adventure, without ever really taking the time to develop any of these adventures into proper stories, or to thread them into any kind of larger story. As we can see, this Topaz/Red Eye situation is quite complicated, but the author has mostly done a piss-poor job of explaining any of what's going on; he's just sort of rushing through it and assuming we can see the parts that are in his head. Either that, or this is all just a ripoff of an actual plot from a Fallout game, and he's assuming we're familiar with the story already; I feel as though he's done that at least once before.

In any event, like I said, it really shouldn't be this complicated. Once we actually examine what's going on and put all the pieces together it's easy enough to follow, but the problem is that the author makes us do quite a bit of work. I had to go back and reread several parts of both this chapter and the preceding one in order to get a clear picture; if you're telling your story properly this shouldn't be necessary.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293187
293195 293278 293281 293671
Mississippi Quantum pie.png
>>293173
It's not relevant to say playing MGS3 would make Kkat better at writing stealthy protagonists with a reason to avoid injuries and writing first aid scenes?
Is it relevant to say playing Ace Combat would make Kkat better at writing Calamity's "flier with guns" contributions to fight scenes?
because i forgot to say that last bit lol fuck me. sorry about that. got distracted by over-explaining shit and missed the point of what I was saying.
>>293174
You don't like the art? Ok, I'll stop.

What do you think of my suggestions for improving the fic?

It's weird that this arc's so convoluted and barely-explained when the previous ones have been straightforward "These are locations full of baddies, open fire" affairs. If Red-Eye/Topaz/Deadeyes/Gawd's Griffons are going to be big deals, this is the author's chance to establish them all, how they're distinct from one another, what their goals and motives and methods are, etc.

Also how relevant do you think this story arc will be to the overall plot?
"Find your dad" was Fallout 3's plot so first NPCs told you "Do what I say and I'll tell you where your dad went" to justify filler missions. Then you met him and he died and the plot became "Do his life's work! Turn my magical water purifier on before the Enclave can!"
It seemed like Velvet was going to take that role in this fic. It seemed like Velvet was going to be LP's goal, but then they found her almost instantly working a job that should make LP lose all respect for this slaver-healer.
I don't think the party should have encountered Velvet this early into the plot. And it must be early into the plot because aside from "Go to one of the two important-sounding locations mentioned" and "handle what we walked in on" there isn't a main plot.
Taking Silver Bell/Not-Pinkie somewhere nice could have factored into the main plot if it was "Go to that mentioned nice tower to drop off the orphan and hope Velvet's there" but I just don't get why the author shoved her out of the story so quickly.
Silver Bell has the potential to be the least terrible thing in the fic so far.
I get that Silver Bell is basically just Sierra Petrovita from Fallout 3/4, the nuka-cola addict with the Nuka Cola Museum. But by giving that wacky meme joke a tragic backstory and something less silly to obsess over, he made Sierra not completely retarded. Kkat didn't realize the good thing he had here, but Silver Bell could be a really interesting character. Certainly more interesting than Calamity, since she's got more going on than him.
Why do you think things turned out this way?

pic unrelated it's a "Missisipi Quantum Pie", something Sierra makes for the player out of 1 Nuka-Cola Quantum bottle, 1 bag of flour, and 1 bottle of vodka.
Maybe that's why the author went with the "Sierra? Silver. She idolizes cola and makes pies.. Now she idolizes Pinkie Pie! Another great original character" thing.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.293195
293205
>>293187
You could stop presuming to know what 'would' make Gaykat a good writer, for one. At this point, the idea that Gaykat could be good writer is dubious at best, but you insist on offering tidbits and ideas, as though you've won a Hugo or something.
Since the idea is purely speculative and clearly geared toward giving you an excuse to sperg about whatever you feel inclined to sperg about, and since this thread has never, is not, and will never be about you sperging,...
Nevermind, you're gonna sperg regardless. Like water off a duck's back, criticism is with you.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293205
293216
>>293195
It's strange.
I started offering ways the story could be improved, because I figured posting about what Fallout element Kkat's ripping off and misunderstanding was getting old.
Why would you rather criticize me than the fic?
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.293216
293223
>>293205
Oh? Theres a fic being discussed? I thought this thread was about pokemon and yu ghi oh, and whatever else you decide to rant about.
I dont expect that to change, you've made it painfully clear you have 0 filters and give 0 fucks about anyone other than yourself. OP is woefully delinquent in calling you out for it. But I'm not.
Tl;dr. Yes. If you weren't the elephant in the room, Id gladly leave you alone. But you are, so I wont. Cheers
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293223
293224
2500163__safe_artist-colon-shutterflyeqd_fluttershy_twilight+sparkle_alicorn_pegasus_pony_butt_crying_cute_female_flutterbutt_hug_lesbian_mare_plot_shipping_sim.png
>>293216
You're doing that thing again where you expect me to be the ultimate exemplar of what a poster on this site should be, and get mad when I don't meet your standards.
Scroll up around four posts and you'll see some fic-related discussion from me addressed to everybody interested in discussing the fic. You could have answered any of those discussion topics if you wanted to. If mentioning stories and video games that did this story's cliches and tropes and core mechanics better is off topic, your insults at me are even further off topic. I've tried to be more constructive and "Maybe doing this would improve the fic"-ish about things but that didn't improve your mood. I am not an award-winning author but I don't think you are either. If we both have the right to call the live-action The Last Airbender movie a shit adaption of Avatar, we both have the right to call this fic a shit crossover of FIM and Fallout.
I respect you as a person but when you get like this it's a lot harder to respect what you have to say. I've been posting so many things about the fic we could discuss while waiting for Glim's next post to give us more of the fic we can talk about without spoiling things. Trying to single-handedly carry discussion of the fic between sessions of reacting to it is hard work. I'm not about to drop to my knees and beg you to stay and post more if you really don't want to participate in fic discussion. Didn't you already say you were leaving this thread once already? If you think you can make on-topic posts that are higher-quality than mine, show me how it's done instead of whining so much.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.293224
293229
>>293223
You imply that the thread needs to be carried in OP's absence. And you do so because you get brain drugs from participating in it. And any time OP isnt posting you take liberty to say anything and everything that will give you that gratifying feeling.
I'd be content if you operated at 1/10th the level of consideration that other posters do/can, but you're too busy thinking of what else you can rant about to learn the first thing about how to considerately operate on a board. So, I'll be happy to take you down a peg or two whenever I feel like it.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293229
293230 293237 293242 293281
for you.jpg
>>293224
Consideration for who? For you?
Let's not make this about either of us.
The previous threads had great posts from Glim. This thread has great posts from Glim.
The previous threads had a lot of people interact with each other and discuss the story, and it was fun.
And I think I know why fewer people are taking part in this thread.

Think about what we previously read.

A Lilo and Stitch knockoff?
Everyone gets that premise. Even people who never saw Lilo and Stitch.
Everybody's got something to say about the hilarity of wine-mom Twilight, the missed potential in Nyx, and the clusterfuck of an ending where the author fails his own "Redeem NMM without rainbow lasers" challenge so hard he treats NMM as venom-goop that needs to be killed off for real permanently and ended up making the whole fic a pointless exercise in OC-shilling in retrospect.
The idea of NMM reincarnating and becoming Twi's child is accessible.

A romance story featuring a human knight and a tired, younger, dumber Celestia?
Everyone's familiar with romance stories. Anyone can jump in and start calling the story good or bad or whatever they want.
Romance is accessible.

A sci-fi human story where incredibly stupid humans somehow invent an ultimate magical AI goddess and get conquered by it? Comedy gold!
It technically isn't a pony story because ponies never factor into it. The AI looks like a poner and uses poner characters/an artificial pony world but nothing would really change if the world was Pokemon or Animal Crossing themed instead.
Even if you aren't balls-deep into LessWrong terminology and their mandated delusions and their head preacher's Sermons (which he calls Sequences), you can still see this is a bad fanfic full of stupid annoying shallow characters. The only human not willing to permanently entomb their brain in a glorified Rainbow Dash cum jar is the sole muslim who's not so incredibly impressed with the magical unbombability of Equestrian Upload Centers that it makes the bomb-mad towelheads throw in their towels and throw away their bombs to become fanatic pony worshippers instead.
The sheer lunacy of this story is accessible even though the madness that makes the author think this way about the future comes from 700+ hours of Elizer Yudowsky sermons on shit he fundamentally misunderstands.

Some Warhammer 40K and MLP crossover that barely uses the FIM characters/setting and focuses almost exclusively on 40K stuff?
Was fun at first when it focused on the protag, then it missed opportunities to explore the character and lore and the funny contrast between grimdark edge and noblebright ponyland when it came to Twilight's talks with the guy, but the ending required more infodumps on 40K lore before it could be understood and it required an emotional connection to 40K before it could be a satisfying climax. It didn't have enough pony. It didn't do enough with the characters we'd come to care about on-screen. Twilight's talks could have been the perfect time to write a developing bond between the two while explaining to Twilight (and the audience) everything they'd need to know to understand the ending and appreciate it. The Space Marine's growing emotional openness could show Twilight (and the audience) how much those lore elements mean to him while he explains them, so they'd care when meaningful ending shit happens to Spacey the Space Marine.

And then, there's this story.
It's over 600,000 words long.
And it's not very accessible.
It's a crossover between ponies and what was a niche videogame series at the time. Not many people experienced both.
Not many of those people experienced both, and read this fic. Not many people liked this fic enough to continue caring about it after a decade. Most people who liked this fic would never take part in critical discussion of this fic.
Not many people are on this site to begin with and that's okay.
Most here probably watched FIM and get why Pinkie inventing Mega-Cocaine is dumb but how many also played enough of Fallout 1, 2, and 3, and NV to become sufficiently familiar with the Fallout franchise to get all the references and end up able to tell what's original and what's what's ripped off and what's remixed?
There's a small number of people that would be interested in reading this story/reading someone read through it to begin with. And considering the "shut up!" responses I tend to get, I understand why some would rather lurk silently.

I respect Glim greatly for taking this story head-on. I understand why not everyone would be willing to subject themselves to this story. This might just be the most overrated thing in the entire brony fandom. Easily more overrated than Nyx, since FE has more fanart and print copies of this fanfic. I forgot whether Nyx's story had printed copies or not. There are people unfamiliar with FIM or Fallout or both and still loved this story because they were dumb. I wish I had what it took to review all of a massive story like this, because if I did I'd tear Elizer Yudowsky's "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" apart. Elizer's the boss of LessWrong cultists like Iceman and possibly also Iceman given their incredibly similar writing styles and identical disorders.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.293230
>>293229
>Let's not make this about either of us
I'll be happy to keep my mouth shut if you do
Anonymous
abb50e3
?
No.293237
293242 293247 293281
>>293229
I'd say this cuts to the heart of the issue right here. From what I've heard from FoE fans they enjoy the let's play type manner the story is written as and while it can be entertaining for some if they love the source material it makes it difficult to comment on. All we can say so far for FoE is how much of a cleptomaniac Little Pip is and how she has to say how lesbian she is all the time, how Velvet is a huge hypocrite with her morality, Calamity is yehaw shoot pony, and how absolutely brain dead the villians are. Plus showing how the MLP and Fallout elements were lost in translation.

For the other stories there was a clear goal and theme from the start with characters going through an arc. Sure it was mostly bad ones but they all had entertaining stuff to discuss. Like the last fic we read, I loved all the stuff about Gareth's miasma hazmat armor, ambassador pills, his history with rats. We knew the main goal was 'my wife's a horse for crying out loud!' so could see how well the author handled that and utilized characters to fulfill their roles in exploring the theme.

While I read all your spoiler stuff so far so I already know the ending we haven't had a hint of it yet so it's just a super long and boring road trip with flat characters. Gareth wasn't super complex but the fact he had a plot to follow made it so he had chances to display his traits which gave us stuff to discuss like his hints at his adolescence plus ptsd causing him to pull a knife on any pony who so much as even coughs at him with no reaction on their part.

Just like the combat and dialog in this story so far our commentary is repeating since we have no idea who any of these characters are or what they are doing so can only comment on surface level traits. For Sun and the Rose we had a story laid out to speculate on future events and to have a firm idea on how some stuff could be handled better.

Not sure how we can fix it to be honest. It's been entertaining so far but just wish I could contribute more and we could have those round table talks like last story about characters and events.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.293242
293244 293247
>>293229
I think the issue people have with your posts is that they often boil down to "FOE would be better if it blandly ripped off *this* game franchise/anime instead", when the bland ripping off is the problem in the first place.

>>293237
As someone familiar with FoE, I can at least say that it does attempt (emphasis on this word) to flesh out the characters and world as it goes on. There's moral questions and plans and motives to discuss - eventually. Red Eye is the BBEG, so we'll be seeing and hearing lot more of him. For now Pip's just murderhoboing around until she meets all the important NPCs. If memory serves, that takes until somewhere around chapter 20 or so. THEN things finally start moving in a direction that could charitably be called a plotline.
Anonymous
d89da21
?
No.293244
293247 293258 293260
>>293242
That's half the issue. The other half pertains competence and credibility.
If Peen Stroke showed up and blanketed this thread with walls of text that exceed OPs own contributions, essentially hijacking the thread under the auspices of 'needing to carry the thread' or any of the other excuses, he'd be laughed off the board.
I assert that this is no different in scope, given the literary works under the belt of this particular most-vociferous of European posters, and given the nature of the proposed changes (i.e. lazy and blatant ripoffs) I feel there is a case to be made.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293247
293255 293282
Whisper.png
MimicTauntsWhisper.png
btw I don't hate the WH40K fic, I thought it was pretty good and I'd love to see an improved next draft that fixes the "newbies won't have any idea what this 40k stuff is, and even if they google it they won't have an emotional connection to it, just to the onscreen characters so focus on that" bit

>>293242
>>293244
>>293237
This fic would still suck if it just ripped different things off. But if it ripped off more things at once it would have a bigger reference pool of ideas to draw from and play with.
Whisper is a quiet sniper wolf who rips off Quiet and Sniper Wolf from Metal Gear Solid.
Like Sniper Wolf, she once ran with a wacky animal-themed ill-fated band of soldiers including a revolver-using ocelot/revolver-using dude named Revolver Ocelot.
The main difference is while Decoy Octopus never mattered much, Mimic The Octopus is a major villain and they get A LOT of mileage out of his shapeshifting+evil nature.
Also like Quiet the Sniper from MGSV she is a quiet sniper. However Whisper is quiet due to emotional scars, rather than mute due to nanomachines son 2: parasitic bigbigboobs.
So even though the IDW sonic comic ripped off MGS to create Whisper The Wolf she's still a creative alternate take on its ideas. Her friendship with 100% original character Tangle The Lemur is also 100% original and a joy to read.
also I wrote that Silver fic years ago. I should upload its rewrite some time. Maybe when done with the CW animation frames. If you have different ideas for improving the fic you're welcome to suggest them. Creating original things for myself has taught me a lot of lessons on creativity that make me appreciate good writing and understand bad writing in a whole new light. Now instead of thinking "he tried to x and fucked up" or "fuck him for doing x" I think "What if he did y instead?" and "what would doing x correctly look like?".
But fuck me, I have no idea how I can get more people involved in these talks.

What if we made a drinking game out of things the story does often, like moments where Littlepip is a lesbian or goes on a kleptomaniac looting spree?

btw it's crazy how the looting sprees even bore the author, making him skim them, even though it makes tracking what she does/doesn't have impossible.
Looting shouldn't be dull in a post-apocalyptic world. Scavenging is a big deal so it shouldn't be skimmed.
I reckon LP should craft things.
It would let the author give purpose to the loot beyond making it garbage to carry for miles and then trade away at the first merchant you meet. She could make crossbow bolts out of garbage and molotovs out of booze and empty glass cola bottles. The author would be able to give her crafting materials and useful scrap instead of healing potions and armour and mint-condition guns and damn near infinite ammo for all guns ever.

We could take turns suggesting alternate things Littlepip could do in the situations she's in and speculate on what these changes would do to the plot, since Fallout's got lots of choices when written well.
Or we could suggest different story directions/writing choices the author could take and speculate on how that would change the fic.
If we get really bored we could speculate on who'd win in a fight between Littlepip and assorted fictional characters. Dante could fuck Littlepip's shit up. But those talks get boring once one side starts saying "If things happen exactly this way, and my favourite guy gets really lucky while his foe makes dumb mistakes, he could possibly win 1 time out of 1000 so there" and the other side says "Fuck you I'm objectively right that my guy would normally win given the respective capabilities of these characters".
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.293255
293257 293259
>>293247
>I reckon LP should craft things.
>It would let the author give purpose to the loot beyond making it garbage to carry for miles and then trade away at the first merchant you meet. She could make crossbow bolts out of garbage and molotovs out of booze and empty glass cola bottles. The author would be able to give her crafting materials and useful scrap instead of healing potions and armour and mint-condition guns and damn near infinite ammo for all guns ever.

As I mentioned a few posts back, FoE's shoddy handling of resource scarcity is a major bugbear of mine. Unfortunately it's also a pretty major plot point, so I'm holding off on discussing it in depth until Glim gets there.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293257
293259
>>293255
It does? I forgot that part, how did that happen?
Anonymous
a7c6b46
?
No.293258
293283 293294
>>293244
>competence and credibility.
>he'd be laughed off the board.
Perhaps. I wouldn't laugh though. In my experince, writing is way harder than writing criticism to get good or adequate. It is like if you hire a repairman to repair your leaking ceiling. You as the critic can tell there is a problem, r even as an audience member. The problem is the leaking ceiling but your theories for why this problem has come to be can be lacking. While the writer or the repairman would do the fixing of it while considering everything else that goes into fixing it.

Its easier, I think to be a critic because, you only need to analys things that already exist. Its generally easier to build on something and change something that already exist than it is to create soemthing new. Not that being a critic isn't something that requires skill to be good at or to practice to excel in, its just like a different work than being a writer.

I honestly, think that most critics don't make good writers. They usually fall into two categories: They are either shitposting and are being extremly meta about everything or they write generic but functional stories. Mostly though, shitposting.
I feel like they have been dmaged by their own perfectionism so they cannot even take their own writing seriously anymore. Like, if they were to being with a story and they find a generic trope in it, instead of building the story from that they will make fun of it. Or they will just worry about it being functional and consitent and then ignore that its creatively bankrupt. Idk, its just a feeling.

My point is that Penstroke or any other failed writer could probably add something to the thread. I mean just because you know the rules of writing doesn't mean you can implment them into your writing. Like, as fast as you learn that consitency is important in wirting, suddenly your characters and your world aren't gonna be that just because.

But I do nderstand your point. We also have a limited timespan and we have to choose it wisely where we wanna spend it.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.293259
293294
>>293255
Actually, on that subject, there is a lot to be said about how the Fallout series handles resource scarcity and how FO3 completely botched it - and thus FoE does so too by extension.

The original Fallout is set less than a century after the Great War. In that time, civilization has managed to start getting back on its feet. There are functional (if austere) villages and settlements with their own sources of food and water, and those that can't produce these things on their own trade for them. Indeed, the wasteland's bottlecap currency is managed and maintained by the trade of clean water, which is also a major point of contention for the various caravan guilds.

The primary objective of the game is to find a 'water chip' - an essential component in your home vault's water purification system, to prevent the residents from dying of dehydration. This puts a time limit on you, which can be increased (but not removed) by arranging for traders to supply the vault with additional water. If the time limit runs out, your vault dies and you fail in your quest. Game over.

There's also the super mutants, led by the Master. Because the super mutants are inherently hardy, not to mention immune to radiation and disease, the Master believes that they're better suited to inhabit the post-war world than regular humans. In his own twisted way, he wants to save humanity by elevating them to a state better equipped to survive the rigors of the wasteland. You can tell him to get stuffed, or even agree and join him for a non-standard ending.

In short, Fallout acknowledges, accounts for, and centers its primary plot around the scarcity of vital resources.

Fallout 2 is set a couple of generations later and broadly follows the same framework. You're sent out on a quest to find a GECK, a device that can supposedly counteract the effects of the drought that's ravaging your tribe's home village. Then the Enclave gets involved and things get messy; the plot veers off in a different direction from there. Nonetheless, Fo2 again acknowledges that these disparate communities need resources to survive. There are ranches, large tracts of farmland, etc.

Then comes Fallout 3 - which FoE draws heavily from - and the geniuses at Bethesda. First of all, there's another big time jump. Fo3 is set two centuries after the bombs fell, more than a hundred years after Fallout 1. Despite the existence of walled settlements and semi-modern new construction in both of the previous games, everyone in Fallout 3 either lives in a ruin or a scrap shanty. If they're raiders, said ruin/shanty will be filled with blood, graffiti and gore. There are no farms. There are no wells or clean water sources, save what old bottled water you can scrounge and give, en masse, to the occasional hobo in exchange for good boy points. There's barely any acknowledgement that food, water or disease might be serious concerns. You never encounter a starving or thirsty person. Everyone seems to subsist purely on two hundred year old junk food.

And yet, despite water sources being neither a problem nor even apparently desired by the populace, the ultimate objective of Fo3 is to activate a giant water purifier in the Potomac river. Nobody seems to need it, so why the urgency to do it? Why fight over who gets to switch it on? Clean water's great, I guess, but it's never treated with any sort of urgency as it was in Fo1.

FoE inherits many of Fo3's issues directly. "Scavenging" gets you everything you need. Nobody builds anything, farms, or works for a living. Everyone lives off ancient snack cakes and boxed of mac n cheese. Raiders are just random disposable bad guys who kill for fun and no other reason. Caps are money just because. Etc.

>>293257
Equestria's earth is too irradiated for plants to grow, which is why it's a dusty shithole. Littlepip and her friends need to activate the Gardens of Equestria to purge it and allow food to be grown again. From memory at least, this is all pointed out in a few chapters once they meet Homage and Spike - then promptly dropped until the very end so that Pip can go shoot more bads.
Anonymous
a7c6b46
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No.293260
>>293244
On the regards of Nigel's posting though, I honestly usually don't read them when they go too far off on tangents. While it can a bit disappointning to think that gg is posting and find that its just Nigel, No offense Nigel. You do write good things some of the times. Your posts are really hit or miss. I don't know. For me its not a problem I just filter it. I feel this is something gg will have to decide upon. I don't really care. I just wanted to give you my opinion on critics and such.
Also, at this point I know when gg posts in this thread. Its always at a certain time of the day if it happens. Which is soon by the way.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.293278
293294
>>293071
>As most of FoE's technology seems to run at least partially on magic, it would be fair to assume that the FoE's equivalent is an invisibility spell.
I've been assuming it's something similar, but the problem is that the author doesn't even offer us this much of a description; he just says "StealthBuck" and expects us to know what he's talking about. From the similar names you could probably deduce that it has something to do with a PipBuck, but we don't even get a vague impression of what we're supposed to be imagining. From what you say here, it sounds like this is a separate wrist-mounted device; from what the author gives us though, it could be an extension to the PipBuck she already has, it could be a peripheral device that plugs into the PipBuck, it could be a separate spell that has a similar name...we just don't know.

Also, sometimes in video games a device like that will be a single-use bonus that grants you invisibility for a time but wears off, and then if you want to go invisible again you need to pick up another one. When the author talks about this device like a "spell," that seems to be what it implies. However, it could also be a permanent piece of equipment she picked up, that she wears on her wrist and can switch on and off. If it is a physical device similar to the PipBuck that she has already this would make the most sense; having it as a single-shot bonus only makes sense in the context of a game to add balance by not giving the player too many advantages.

We honestly don't need super-detailed descriptions of these things in the text, the author needs to just provide us with a skeletal explanation of basically what he's talking about. Just saying something like this would make a whole world of difference:

>The lock finally snapped. Casting my 700th broken bobby pin aside, I pulled open the door of safe #4,675,354. Inside was a small device that looked like it strapped on to a fetlock. What is this thing, another PipBuck? I frowned, and took a closer look. Nope, I was wrong. It wasn't a PipBuck; it was a StealthBuck. I'd heard about these things, you could use them to go invisible for awhile. The effect didn't last long, but it was definitely something that would come in handy. I smiled wanly to myself, and tossed it into the massive pocket dimension inside my saddlebag that housed all the other crap I was carrying.

A simple paragraph that gives us a general idea of what a StealthBuck does and what it looks like; that's literally all the explanation he needs to provide. If he just did that much, I wouldn't need to annoy everyone with my noob-level Fallout questions all the time.

>>293187
>What do you think of my suggestions for improving the fic?

>>293028
>Imagine if that happened, and Gawd gave LP a 2-way radio to give her commands.
This could either add to the scene or distract from it, depending on how it was done. I personally would keep it as a solo mission for LP (or duo mission for LP and Calamity) rather than overcomplicating it, but that's me. If done right this could work.

From here though it gets a little bizarre. Even if you have LP communicating with Gawd, it's still primarily going to be LP's mission, so she ought to be doing most of the heavy lifting. In your scene, you basically put the burden back on Gawd and force her to send in an air strike or whatever, and if the end result is Gawd taking care of the problem herself then there's really no point in sending LP in to begin with. It's better to just have LP solve the mission on her own using her own creativity and ingenuity; having Gawd on the two-way radio would mostly be helpful because it would give her another character to chat with. This would be a useful way to feed LP information about the facility; for instance, having Gawd explain what happened as LP explores would probably be a better way of revealing the backstory than having LP pick up conveniently place diary fragments from a character who has never appeared before and will likely never appear again. Having a second character to speak to would also provide ample opportunity for banter, comic relief, or whatever as well.

>>293134
>help me I can't help but crack up at the thought of a grown-ass man horse with shotguns on his back hiding from other large horse men under a jizz-stained blanket, creating a very large bulge his pursuers are staring at in shock and confusion, wondering if they should open fire on the blanket now or pull the blanket away so he can look his death in the eye.
That actually is a pretty amusing image.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWN1soK42N4

>Do you think we'll see any more "Not-Pinkie was supposed to be a part of this story and react to this/care about this" moments after this?
Personally, I think Not-Pinkie should have been the central character in a self-contained episode, and then been gracefully moved out of the story; that's generally the best way to handle a character like her. I could see the appeal in giving her a revenge arc, but the trouble with that is it distracts from the main character and the main plot. However, since in this story there does not appear to be a main plot, then what the hell; may as well throw the kitchen sink in there while you're at it this should be easy to do, since I'm assuming Littlepoop is already carrying it in her saddlebag.

>Imagine if characters needed to to treat their injury and cure their ailments with specific illnesses instead of relying on general HP-restoring Crippled Limb-fixing "Healing Potions" to fix everything.
I'm generally not a fan of the healing potions. In a video game, they work fine; in a story not so much. Since it's a magic world I can probably tolerate a little of the "magical cure-all healing spell" bullshit, but there needs to be limitations. The problem is that if a panacea exists that can cure any injury, then even serious injuries become minor inconveniences at best. If there's no danger there's no thrill.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.293281
gi18j66gpkq31.jpg
>>293187
>Also how relevant do you think this story arc will be to the overall plot?
This is hard to say, because from what I've been hearing it sounds like the overall plot doesn't even start until around Chapter 20 or so. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that this arc is going to execute clumsily, end clumsily, and very little that happens here is going to matter at any future point in the story. However, I suspect that the main purpose is to introduce us to Red Eye, and I also suspect that Gawd is going to be a semi-major character, or at least a recurring character.

>It seemed like Velvet was going to take that role in this fic. It seemed like Velvet was going to be LP's goal, but then they found her almost instantly working a job that should make LP lose all respect for this slaver-healer.
The Velvet mystery was a huge let-down, particularly with how lackluster her character turned out to be.

This story is mostly a dull, rambling mess, but the author does have a few potentially good things here, and I actually think he would have done better to just take the stronger bits, spin them into a complete novel, and put whatever else he wanted to do into sequels. Here is specifically how I would approach it:

The initial exposition of the story would be Littlepoop in the Stable. Velvet disappears mysteriously and gets LP into some trouble by using her as a sort-of patsy. Littlepoop goes off to look for Velvet, and for the early part of the story this would be her goal. She tracks her to Old Appleoosa, and that business I laid out earlier, where an entire story is built up around the politics between those two towns, becomes the major story arc for Part I. LP gets embroiled in the conflict, ends up having to invade the slaver town, and in the process manages to locate Velvet Remedy finally.

I'd expand Velvet's character and make her less of a drip; rather than her lame "I didn't want to be caged" justification for leaving the Stable, I'd go with my original instinct and give her some mysterious mission that she had to run away in order to accomplish. Since later on we discover that there is apparently some "Goddess" who has been whispering to various ponies and telling them to do stuff, maybe that would work as a motivation for her. In any event, I like my original idea of making her into a Faye Valentine type character; a jaded, cynical, older woman who knows how the world works, and stands in contrast to Littlepoop's naive idealism. A femme fatale would actually be great in this type of setting, and positioning her to be Littlepoop's love interest would make that angle of the story much more interesting. Since Velvet sucks anyway, I'd have no problem completely scrapping what's there and rebuilding her from the ground up.

After the slaver arc concludes, Littlepoop then tries to convince Velvet to return to the stable with her, but Velvet refuses, saying she has a mission she needs to accomplish. Littlepoop is intrigued, and her original crush on Velvet is beginning to deepen into actual affection, so she decides to go along with her. At this point, Velvet mostly sees her as an annoying kid who wants to tag along, but secretly she's lonely and enjoys the company, so she accedes. Calamity would also have joined the party by this point, and I'd probably tweak his character a bit as well. Another possibility would be to just have the story focus on LP and Velvet for now, and save Calamity's appearance for the sequel.

The current situation, with Gawd and the conflict between Red Eye and Topaz, would form the Part II arc. As LP and Velvet continue along to whatever her mission is, they come across Gawd and get dragged into this situation. It turns out that whatever Velvet's mission is, both this "Preacher" character and Red Eye appear to be connected, since they are both getting messages from the same "Goddess."

Both the Appleoosa and the Topaz/Red Eye arcs could easily play out as self-contained stories patterned after Kurosawa films or Spaghetti Westerns. I'd probably use the Silver Bell story as sort of a bridge episode that stands between the two arcs. At the end of the story, the basic situation with Topaz is resolved, Red Eye is defeated or beaten back for the time being, but Velvet still has her mission, and LP still wants to go with her. They ride off into the sunset together, and the story ends.

Boom; right there you have a two-part story with a small intermediary story in between, that could easily function as a self-contained novel. I'd probably aim for a length of about 100,000 words. It tells a complete story from start to finish, while still leaving things wide open for a larger story to develop across any number of sequels. That is how I would handle this story, based on what we have of it so far.

>>293229
>I forgot whether Nyx's story had printed copies or not.
It did. Image familiar.

>>293237
>From what I've heard from FoE fans they enjoy the let's play type manner the story is written as and while it can be entertaining for some if they love the source material it makes it difficult to comment on.
This is basically my gripe with this fic so far as well. As much as Peen Stroke got under my skin, I'll at least give him credit for trying to execute a complete idea. Same thing with Sun & Rose; though it had far too many problems to deserve a thumbs-up, I liked what the author was trying to do, and I think with a little more work he could spin that into something good, maybe even great.

This, though, just reads like a play-by-play of someone's Dungeons and Dragons game or something. Maybe that's part of the appeal for some people; I don't know. It's entirely possible that I'm just not the right kind of reader for this. But that doesn't alter the fact that it's just dull and lifeless so far; there are no characters, no plot, nothing substantial to latch on to. Mechanically it's better written than Sun & Rose, but that story had quite a bit more heart.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.293282
293772
>>293247
>btw I don't hate the WH40K fic, I thought it was pretty good and I'd love to see an improved next draft that fixes the "newbies won't have any idea what this 40k stuff is, and even if they google it they won't have an emotional connection to it, just to the onscreen characters so focus on that" bit
I actually quite liked the Warhammer fic, even though I didn't understand half the stuff it was referencing. The author did a very nice job revising the first part that I'd read several months before, so I think if he put the same amount of effort into fixing up the rest of it he could spin a pretty neat little story out of it.

>What if we made a drinking game out of things the story does often, like moments where Littlepip is a lesbian or goes on a kleptomaniac looting spree?
If you've ever seen Leaving Las Vegas, I think it would go a lot like that.

>Looting shouldn't be dull in a post-apocalyptic world. Scavenging is a big deal so it shouldn't be skimmed.
Here's the thing about the looting. It actually makes sense that characters in a post apocalyptic world would survive at least in part by scavenging, so I don't have a problem with that in and of itself. My issue relates to something I've brought up multiple times before: that an author needs to be able to filter what is worth including in the text of the story and what should be glossed over, merely implied, or outright omitted.

We actually don't need an accurate inventory of literally every object this klepto is carrying with her, and we certainly don't need to know where she picked up each item. Important objects that serve a specific purpose, like the StealthBuck, should be mentioned explicitly; we should know where she found it, what it does, and basically what it looks like. This doesn't apply to common or insignificant objects, however, and we don't need to be given a play by play every time she searches a location.

The best way to handle this would be to have a scene early on in which the protagonist goes into an old building or something and loots supplies. Maybe she wanders into an abandoned house or a store, and starts rummaging through cabinets and grabbing old cans of food and batteries and stuff like that. Maybe have her inner-monologue to herself about how she feels weird taking a dead stranger's belongings, but that it's clearly necessary for survival in this world. Once you've done that, you really don't need any more "looting" or "scavenging" scenes, and you certainly don't need to detail any more of her inner rationalizations for looting. You've established a precedent that this is a thing she does and provided an explanation for why she does it, so from here on out, the reader will simply assume that she scavenges food and any other sort of useful junk she can find whenever she enters a new location.

The thing to remember is that we don't need to bear witness to every single moment of a character's life; what matters is that everything she does makes sense and can be logically justified. This means that if the character is carrying an object, there needs to be a plausible explanation for why she has it. So long as such an explanation exists, we don't necessarily need the details, unless the details directly affect the logic of the story.

If, for example, we establish early on that LP loots supplies from cabinets and such as she explores, then it stands to reason that she would be carrying an assortment of random common objects with her most of the time. Therefore, if at some point in the story she were to suddenly reach into her bag and pull out a can of tuna, or a ball of twine, or a fondue fork, or whatever, we could probably assume it's just something she picked up somewhere, and we don't need to know the specifics. However, if she reached into her bag suddenly and pulled out the Ancient Staff of Ra that the group needs to find the Ark of the Covenant, the reader would probably have some very justified questions.

You just have to use common sense; if you want a character to suddenly, conveniently "have" an object that you haven't explicitly stated she picked up, but it's an object she would logically have, it's fine. LP, Calamity and Velvet are trapped at the bottom of a mine shaft, Velvet's stomach starts rumbling, and LP suddenly remembers that she's got a can of sardines in her pocket? That's fine; it's plausible that she picked up a can of sardines somewhere, so we don't need to know exactly where and when. The StealthBuck? It's plausible that she might have found one somewhere, but it's too specialized and useful to just appear by magic; we need to know where and when she found it also, we need to know what the fuck it is. The Ancient Staff of Ra? That's probably mission-critical; significant parts of the story turn around that particular object. We don't just need to know that she has it, we need to remember that she has it. Something like that requires an entire scene, that not only explains how she got this thing, but that places enough emphasis on it that the reader's brain flags it as important. None of this bullshit where she finds it in a cabinet full of random garbage in chapter 5, and then suddenly in chapter 12 it matters that she has it.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293283
293294
>>293258
>I honestly, think that most critics don't make good writers. They usually fall into two categories: They are either shitposting and are being extremly meta about everything or they write generic but functional stories. Mostly though, shitposting.
There's probably some validity to this. In particular there's a certain kind of critic who will dump on things he dislikes and fawn all over things he likes, without really bothering to analyze why he likes or dislikes it, which to me defeats the point of criticism. There's also a general rule that it's easier to nitpick how other people do things than it is to do them yourself.

However, I'm going to flat out disagree with the statement that critics don't make good writers. I've actually found that doing these criticisms has significantly improved my own writing. It's easy to read something and say "I like this" or "I don't like this," but actually pulling it apart and trying to figure out why you have these reactions forces you to analyze the structure of a story. This helps you identify specific pitfalls that you can look out for and avoid in your own writing, or alternatively identify positive things that you can try to incorporate.

One of the reasons that Past Sins got under my skin so much, apart from the fact that it was indeed objectively awful, is that Peen Strokes writing style reminded me of my own. Particularly, the off-the-cuff, make-it-up-as-you-go method that he openly admits to using is the same approach I've used in the past. I used to approach a story by just creating a character, placing them into a setting, and seeing what they do. While this is actually a pretty good writing exercise, trying to build an entire long-form story this way almost guarantees that you will end up with something meandering and nonsensical, that is probably three times as long as it needs to be. I went back and read through one of my old NaNoWriMo novels from 2013 or so after reading Past Sins and confirmed that, while the general idea of the story was good, there were a lot of parts that conflicted or made no sense, and the text itself was almost completely unusable. I'm now in the process of rewriting it.

My conclusion is that critical reading is one of the best habits you can get into if you want to improve your writing.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.293294
293295 293686
>>293258
I've seen a lot of critics who fit that description (especially the type that does something generic and cliche mundanely and expects praise for doing it "correctly", most shitty mid-review youtube skits are like this) but I don't think it's an inherent part of being a critic. Understanding why something works is a necessary part of building something better.
You're right that making new shit's harder than critiquing what's come before it. I wish my goal was just to make a fangame to impress an existing fanbase, because I'd know exactly what to include and exclude to suit their tastes. I'm coding and animating and fuck knows what else for me and a fanbase that doesn't exist yet. Everyone's got his own idea of what "a good episode of FIM" or "A good sonic game" should look like, but making your own 100% original thing is a challenge.

speaking of building on what came before (I won't rant this time I'll be quick) I like how the Depravity/Project Valkyrie mods for Fallout 4 fix a lot of the game's buttfuck retarded moments by giving you optional quest routes that bypass them completely or sidequests specifically for addressing and fixing retarded plotholes even a ScreenJunkies fantard would catch.
Already mentioned how Goodneighbour (ghoul slum that produces nothing and shouldn't be able to trade, is the obligatory wretched hive of scum and villainy and drugs, and has one memory den for no reason, and is surrounded by enemy-controlled sniper points) got fixed by quests you get to unfuck the place and establish guards on nearby overlooking areas.
Diamond City's also full of riots and police brutality to justify why any player would want to blow it up. It's funny that there's a "Raider Lives Matter" route where the raiders surrounding the city take over the town and shoot anyone who doesn't kneel to them. It's actually called that, 10/10 ourguy in disguise.

The Institute's vague inconsistent nonsense writing? Justified with "The faction's having a civil war, good vs evil, and you're teleported in to help, therefore you don't need to deal with the Vergil bullshit or be reminded that it exists".

The BOS...
Arthur Maxson was only about 16 when he was crowned boss of F3's BOS chapter and he brings his chapter way too many miles across America so they can waste resources and precious manpower trying to fight The Institute solely because it has tech he wants to destroy.
So naturally, people who didn't want to obey his orders quit and formed their own splinter cell.
And the buttfuck retardity of putting all the BOS's most valuable personell in a big airship, a tempting target for any drunk rocket launcher-toting raider having a bad day? Is called out when Sarah Lyons calls him a dumbass and convinces him to put her in charge. I love the way her voice actress works around existing voice lines he has, so his pre-recorded dialogue can be reused in a new context.
Sarah Lyons was unceremoniously killed offscreen between F3-F4 but now she was betrayed by the BOS and you can save her, bringing her back to get this faction "back on track".
She also calls out how dumb Arthur's "WE MUST OBLITERATE EVERYTHING THE INSTITUTE WORKED ON!" policy is because the BOS is supposed to seize and maintain tech while keeping dangerous tech and its secrets from the normies, and implies his rage for robo-men is because he feels insecure about being so mostly-cyborg that he spends 24/7 on his ship's bridge never eating or shidding.

>>293259
I once heard someone say that if Fallout 3's writers wrote Skyrim the same way, you'd never see a Dragon.
You'd never see a Dragon attack or fly overhead. The main quest would force you, a generic nobody, to follow in your magical special heroic father's footsteps after he sacrifices himself to stop a "dragon problem" that you never get to see. You'll eventually be forced to sacrifice yourself for something retarded like turning on a water purifier before the baddies can, or pussy out and ask one of your two frens to handle this sacrifice for you.
Characters would often mention there's a dragon problem and claim your main-quest actions will fight this, but you will never meet a dragon, dragon-hunter, or anyone whose family was killed by dragons. You'll be called a hero sometimes if you do the main quest but you never get the sense that you're making any significant choices or making any progress that wasn't 99% somebody else's doing.
You would, however, encounter one nameless hobo outside the first major city you encounter, and every time you see him, he would beg you for a free health potion and claim he needs it because he was wounded from a Dragon attack. There is no limit to how many health potions you can give him and he will never eat, sleep, shit, or do anything besides sit around and wait to get health potions from you.
That's how Fallout 3 treats its "Water scarcity" and pretentious wannabe-christian water fetish. Liam Neeson's voice and the literal word of God combined can't give this any substance.

also i thought Tenpony Tower had a way to make radiation-free fresh fruit?
>>293278
Invisibility things should be precious consumables with huge drawbacks in a tense grimdark world, otherwise being able to turn invisible at-will would break combat forever by letting LP snipe invisibly with a silenced gun or better yet TK Toss objects so she never spends bullets. Giving LP a Stealth Field Generator that never runs out (then making LP only use it when he remembers she has it) is a peak Kkunt thing to do.

You're right. Was thinking it could establish LP as someone who needs help sometimes and knows how to manipulate/threaten, since she was sent in to get a ledger and journal and retrieve them safely. But if Gawd got forced to scorched-earth the place, all LP did was make sure the baddies couldn't burn the journal/ledger first.
>>293283
You're like me. I hate Elizer because his pretentious pseud shit reminds me of how I talked before I turned 11. I don't want to be like him.
Anonymous
1438af6
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No.293295
293299
>>293294
>0 self awareness, the post
Anonymous
14312ab
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No.293299
293309
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>>293295
I want to be aware of more than myself. That's why I ask questions, learn, and make an effort to engage in constructive discussion with others without worrying about how it might affect my reputation.
Anonymous
1438af6
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No.293309
>>293299
>I want to be aware of more than myself, that's why I'm unaware of myself
Is there such a term as critical ignorance? There is now!
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.293336
293339 293712
1606950581534.png
>>293179

Anyway, where the hell was I? Oh yeah.

Littlepoop goes to see Gawd and deliver the "ledger." She asks what's next; Gawd basically tells her that since she upheld her end of the agreement she's free to rest up and be on her way. Littlepoop doesn't quite find this satisfactory, and is hinting that she wants to come along and help out with whatever Gawd has planned, but Gawd does not seem especially receptive. She also seems to have some ideas that involve Gawd potentially taking over Shattered Hoof, but it's not yet clear what she has in mind, and Gawd does not seem receptive to this either.

Page break. Littlepoop returns to the boxcar to rest.

>Velvet Remedy approached me as I returned to the cattle car. I was so tired, but my heart still fluttered a little at her approach.
As a side note, I don't care for the way the author is developing this pseudo-romance between Velvet and Littlepoop. So far it's been nothing except Littlepoop making obnoxious little innuendos here and there that remind us she's attracted to her; apart from that there has been no setup for a romantic relationship to develop between these two characters. Even if the relationship at this stage is one-sided and Velvet is still oblivious to Littlepoop's feelings, the issue is that LP's affection doesn't feel genuine. We know that she likes Velvet, but why does she like her?

LP's remarks about the shapeliness of her flanks and this and that are fine, but they only denote sexual attraction. Remarks like this one, in which LP's heart is fluttering at Velvet's approach, are less crude but ultimately just as superficial. What is it about this pony specifically that makes her heart flutter? Why does LP like Velvet and not somepony else? Part of the problem is that Velvet is a very poorly developed character to begin with, so it's hard for the reader to feel anything for her, let alone understand Littlepoop's attraction.

Unrequited or one-sided affections can often be as difficult to write as an actual romantic relationship. It's not enough to simply inform us that Johnny is in love with Sally, the author needs to show us what Sally looks like through Johnny's eyes. If Johnny's crush is going to form a significant part of his character's motivations, then it needs to have more significance than just "Sally is beautiful" or "Sally makes my heart flutter" or "I want to stick my hoo-hoo-dilly in Sally's cha-cha."

I've brought it up before, and I feel like I tend to overuse it as an example, but The Great Gatsby is nevertheless a good example that I'm going to bring up again. Daisy Buchanan's significance as a character comes entirely from Gatsby's idealized perception of her; in reality she is just a superficial, irresponsible thot. Part of what makes her character interesting is that we get to see her from several different angles: her husband sees her as the annoying bimbo he married and then got bored with, the narrator sees her as a beautiful but ultimately shallow woman whom he initially pities but eventually develops a great deal of contempt for, whereas Gatsby, who only spent a short amount of time with her five years before the story begins, has built her up into some kind of goddess Gatsby is pretty much the original simp. If you want to learn how to write a one-sided crush, that novel would be a good starting point. Incidentally, Fitzgerald also has a weird knack for taking callous, shallow or otherwise caustic female characters and writing them sympathetically; this is another writer's trick that kkat would benefit from learning, unless he wants to try and make Velvet less of an insufferable cunt.

Anyway.

>I nodded. Velvet Remedy looked surprised more than relieved. “We get to spend the night. We need sleep...”
>“I would insist. Calamity’s done more damage to his wing with all that flying around. He needs time to heal.”
It's a little unclear who is speaking which line here. It could be read either as an exchange between Littlepoop and Velvet, or as Velvet speaking, pausing and continuing. I'd probably rewrite this slightly.

>Velvet Remedy switched topics with what my sleep-deprived mind insisted was a jarring abruptness.
This sentence is bad and you should feel bad.

Littlepoop seems to be tired and cranky and wanting to go to sleep, but Velvet continues flapping her gums like an oblivious woman. She mentions that she had an interesting conversation with somepony named Preacher while Littlepoop and Calamity were away. Gawd said something about Velvet being "another Preacher" earlier, but at the time it wasn't clear what she meant.

>“He says he came here to spread the word of the Goddess out from under the hoof of Red Eye.”
At this point it's looking like whenever someone talks about "the Goddess" in this story, they are referring specifically to Celestia. The idea that the alicorns, who appeared as flesh and blood characters in the show, are seen as mythical deities is interesting; however, as I've noted before, I find the use of "Goddess" as a proper noun interchangeable with Celestia's name to be a little bit much. In particular, some of LP's "oh my Goddess" outbursts tend to make me roll my eyes, as I've also noted before. Part of the issue is that "Goddess" being used as a proper name for a singular deity has a monotheistic connotation that doesn't really work in this world. Celestia and Luna have both been mythologized in the same way, and presumably so would any other alicorn I don't think Cadance or winged Twilight existed at the time this was written, but I can assume they would be seen the same way. Since it appears to be a polytheistic belief system, it's weird to use "Goddess" in a monotheistic context, particularly when Celestia and Luna are also referred to by their proper names.

tl;dr, Celestia is more like Venus than Yahweh, so she should really be "a goddess" rather than "the Goddess."
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293339
293345 293393
you could have prevented this.jpg
>>293336

However, it turns out that none of my spergings on this subject are relevant, because it appears this Preacher is talking about an undefined third Goddess, and a religion separate from the one LP believes in:

>My ears perked. Velvet Remedy had my full attention. “The word of the Goddess?” I asked. The way she spoke made it clear that she wasn’t talking about Celestia or Luna.

Anyway, it seems that this "Preacher" character claims to have heard the voice of "The Goddess" speaking to him in dreams since he was young. Velvet seems skeptical about this, but Littlepoop takes the idea quite seriously.

>“Ever wonder how the slavers got ahead of our train like that? I’ve been wondering if there might be some sort of... telepathic magic?... involved somehow.”
This is a yuge stretch. I guess Littlepoop is free to form her own theories about things that don't necessarily have to be accurate, but I don't see how anything that has happened in this story would objectively suggest telepathy to anyone.

As to the question of how the slavers got ahead of the train, I've been wondering about that myself; in fact I believe I commented on it at the time. However, my question is more about how it would be possible for them to have physically gotten ahead of the train. Telepathy wouldn't really be useful there, since a train is on a fixed track and can only move between points A and B. If a bunch of your enemies escape on a train and you know where the tracks lead, it's not hard to figure out where they are probably going. The only issue here is how the slavers were able to get ahead of them and set an ambush so quickly. Though I suppose the implication could be that the slavers used telepathy to anticipate in advance that the attack would happen, and set an ambush on the tracks before LP even arrived in town. However, if they knew this, then it would have made far more sense to attack LP and Calamity before they arrived in town to begin with.

>I felt a sudden urge to travel to Tenpony Tower and talk with DJ Pon3.
What? What the hell is Tenpony Tower? How does Littlepoop know that this is where DJ Pon3 broadcasts from? To my recollection that has never been mentioned anywhere.

>He seemed to have an incredibly good, if imperfect, network of informants... or possibly some sort of magic or technology that was giving him the lay of the land. I wanted to trade information. Find out what he knew. There was a puzzle here, and I was still several pieces short of seeing the picture. If any pony had those pieces, it would be DJ Pon3.
I'll grant that it's passing strange for this radio DJ to know so much about what's going on in the world, and I would be curious about him too were I in Littlepoop's horseshoes, but I don't really see why she would feel the need to seek him out right here and now. The subject at hand is Preacher's religious beliefs, and if she wants to know more about that it would make far more sense to talk to Preacher himself, seeing as how he's right fucking there.

Once again LP seems to be making connections that don't really follow each other logically: without even knowing who Preacher is or which Goddess he believes is speaking to him, she has somehow connected this to a theory she has about how slavers intercepted her train, and she now wants to take a trip to some Tower located "Goddess"-knows-where so she can ask the radio DJ about it. She is making some preposterous logical leaps here. For all she knows these things could have nothing to do with each other: Preacher could just be some schizo lunatic, and the slavers could have just been fast runners or gotten lucky. In any event, there's no reason to assume the DJ would know anything about either topic; all we know about him is that he's well informed on local gossip.

Anyway, it turns out Velvet's skepticism in this matter is as wishy-washy as all of her other principles and beliefs; she basically accepts Littlepoop's wacky shit at face value and acknowledges that it would be big if true. She also mentions that Preacher claims that the Goddess only speaks to a chosen few, which seems like pretty standard boilerplate rhetoric for a kooky prophet character.

>I found myself questioning that. Chooses? Or are there limitations to this so-called Goddess’s powers.
This sentence should end with a question mark. Also: wasn't Littlepoop supposed to be deeply religious? I specifically recall her getting angry with Calamity once because he said something blasphemous about the alicorn goddesses. Now she thinks it's all smoke and mirrors? Maybe this is why she gets so twat-frothy over Velvet; neither one of them seems to have any strongly held convictions at all, apart from LP's milquetoast "le justice" values and Velvet's ironic hatred of cages.

Anyway, the other interesting tidbit here is that Red Eye is apparently also among the "chosen" recipients of this Goddess' message. This is probably the first hint we've gotten as to what Red Eye's motivations for world conquest might be. However, according to Velvet, Preacher doesn't think he's interpreting the message correctly. It seems that Preacher sees his message as a pure and uncorrupted form of the Goddess' word, which he feels is at odds with Red Eye's methods.

>I thought of the armed camp parked a few hours trot outside of Shattered Hoof territory. Preacher didn’t go far enough.
What is the implication here supposed to be? That Preacher didn't physically travel far enough to encounter this camp? Or that Preacher's religious extremism doesn't go so far that he is willing to pointlessly throw himself in front of an entire army? Either way this is dumb.

Also, according to Preacher, this is the word of the Goddess:
>Praise Me, worship Me and I will lift you up and you will all become One, Unified under Me.
Again, pretty boilerplate message as far as wacky religious cults go. One can see how a maniacal would-be dictator might misinterpret this.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.293345
293346 293349 293388
5b2.gif
>>293339

Anyway, Littlepoop tells Velvet she's tired and excuses herself, but before going to sleep, she plays the last of the audio logs she got from Shattered Hoof. It depicts what are apparently the final moments of Diamond Tiara's life, and it goes about as you'd expect. DT appears to have completely lost her mind, and is inexplicably singing an old Little Richard song while the raiders or prisoners or whatever the buck attempt to smash down the door. There are frequent references to blood, and there seems to be an implication that she has cut her wrists, or fetlocks, or however it would work on a horse. In the last log I remember a mirror shard being referenced, so I'm assuming this was her choice of implement, though I also recall she had a gun, so I'm not sure why she didn't just do it that way. But by now it's hardly a point worth fussing over.

No significant information is revealed from the log, other than that Diamond Tiara finally mentions herself by name. DT singing crazily to herself as she bleeds out and a bunch of carnivorous ponies keep trying to break down the door works well enough for a standard-issue unsettling death scene, but the tension is unfortunately dispelled by the author's unfortunate decision to have her spend her last seconds alive making some weak brony-jokes about her cutie mark:

>“...doesn’t go with my cutie mark though. That’s okay, it’s a stupid cutie mark anyway. Really, a crown of diamonds? What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?
>“I mean, I get the diamonds. Celestia knows I’ve inspected enough of ‘em... Sent the best ones below for years now. Ha! There’s something else you’re never gonna get! Ha... ha ha... Just like you’re not going to get me!
“I mean... really, though... a crown? What was that supposed to mean?
Frankly, there are a lot of ponies who have weird cutie marks that don't necessarily imply a talent. In fact, DT's friend Silver Spoon (to whom she gives a shout-out on her this-is-me-dying mixtape) is one of them. I mean, what is her talent supposed to be? Eating cereal? Spooning? Cooking heroin? I mean, if you're going to nitpick cutie mark logic you might as well go all out.

Anyway, this is the end of the chapter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcJrExewkYA

>New Perk: Silent Gallop – You have mastered silent movement, allowing you to move quickly and still remain quiet. You can Sneak at full speed with no penalties.
Cool. Not that LP would have needed this ability in the last chapter, since literally not one single guard ever noticed her stomping around the fortress with her earbuds on listening to old-timey gramophone recordings of ponies getting eaten alive, but whatevs. I'm sure it will come in handy eventually.

Chapter Twelve: Must Go On

Today's Fortune Cookie:
>“So... you think you have what it takes to beat me, on my stage, in my town? Come on down, we’ll see.”
If I'm not mistaken this is another pony quote, this time from Trixie. At least we're back to in-world references.

As to the epitaph from the last chapter:
>“Didn’t know anyone would willingly walk into this place, not unless they were looking for trouble.”
This one at least applies to the events of the chapter; the whole story was about Littlepoop walking into what I have decided to generously call a well-guarded fortress, which obviously nopony would do if they weren't looking for trouble. However, it's really a shame that the author chose not to bother attributing these quotations; I really have no idea who is supposed to have spoken this line or what meaning it originally had.

To my eternal chagrin, I did not notice until just now that kkat uses a stylistic device of opening each of his chapters with a single word on the first line. I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean or if it is supposed to mean anything, but I've skimmed back through all the previous chapters and he holds to it consistently, except for the Introduction and the Prologue. It's not a huge deal either way, but little flourishes like this can add character to a writer's style, so I'm willing to give him a bit of credit here.

In this case, the word of the day is:
>Breakfast.

>I hoofed a small pile of bottle caps across the sheet metal counter while a scarred pony with a dark tan coat and a roasting meat cutie mark pulled a rabbit shish kebob from the barbecue grill.
Okay, I have to ask, because it's been nagging at me for awhile: does kkat realize that ponies are not carnivorous creatures, and that they are canonically vegetarian in the show? I can understand creatures resorting to cannibalism in extreme situations, but apart from that I don't see any reason why ponies in this world would have suddenly begun eating meat, unless this is supposed to be another "le edgy dark Equestria" thing.

>I picked up my meal, the savory aroma assaulting my nostrils, and carried it over to the table where Calamity was already digging into a bowl of oatmeal.
>a bowl of oatmeal
This just raises further questions. They obviously have non-meat foodstuffs available, so why would creatures who are not physically designed to eat meat suddenly start eating meat?

>“Littlepip...” Velvet raised her hoof to her chest in exaggerated offense. “That’s meat!”
>“uhf-huf,” I mouthed through my breakfast, hoping in vain that having established this fact, I would be allowed to eat in peace.
>Velvet Remedy’s eyes narrowed. “We’re vegetarians,” she said flatly.
Probably the weirdest thing about this author is his uncanny ability to notice the same absurdities in his setting that I do, almost in real time. The second weirdest thing is that once he notices, he pointedly refuses to correct the absurdity; he just makes a joke about it and moves on.
Anonymous
8142357
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No.293346
>>293345
>Okay, I have to ask, because it's been nagging at me for awhile: does kkat realize that ponies are not carnivorous creatures, and that they are canonically vegetarian in the show? I can understand creatures resorting to cannibalism in extreme situations, but apart from that I don't see any reason why ponies in this world would have suddenly begun eating meat, unless this is supposed to be another "le edgy dark Equestria" thing.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record at this point, the root of this is probably the fact that you can buy and eat various forms of "[small animal] on a stick" in Fallout 3.

This might be more a matter of me nitpicking language than anything, but Velvet objecting to eating meat on moral grounds (vegetarian) comes across as pointlessly preachy when she could just as easily object on health grounds (herbivore). This could easily have been the setup for a gag where poor naive wasteland newbie Pip eats some food meant for griffons and gets a tummyache, and Velvet gets the opportunity to demonstrate just a shred of medical/biology knowledge since that seems to be her designated main skill.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.293349
293355 293823
post-9884-0-79271200-1356230149.jpg
>>293345

>I paused at that. True, all I had ever eaten in Stable Two was apples. But I had assumed that was because it was the only thing we had for eating. And I felt I would be perfectly happy never eating another apple as long as I lived. I thought back to my first meals outside... how I had found cooked meat stored in a refrigerator, and simply assumed that’s what ponies ate in the wasteland. My stomach had fought it uncomfortably, but I figured that was more the result of a lifetime of apples, and that outside food would just take some getting used to. For the most part, I felt I’d acclimated well.
This really doesn't explain anything. I suppose there's no reason to assume that the ponies of Equestria are exactly the same as ponies in our world, but again, in the series canon they are explicitly defined as vegetarian, and Velvet has just confirmed that the same rule applies in this setting. Thus, we can assume similar biology. Littlepoop may have gotten tired of apples while she was living in the stable, but that doesn't mean she is going to automatically start eating meat once she leaves just because she's never had it before. Unless it was starving, no vegetarian animal would identify dead flesh as a potential food source if they came across it; it would be like if you or I suddenly started eating grass just because we found a bag of someone's lawn clippings.

>Of course, now that I thought about it, it had been a raider refrigerator. So diet was suspect.
Once again, we have this weird, ambiguous implication that "raider" refers to a very specific type of pony distinct from regular ponies, but with absolutely no definition provided. Why would being a "raider" suddenly make a pony turn carnivorous?

>Calamity finally pulled his head out of his oatmeal bowl, winging in on the conversation. “Oh, we c’n eat meat all right. Jus’ don’t much like to. Ain’t really good for our diet.”
Oh, well, jiminy jillikers, that just settles it then, doesn't it? Seriously; if this hamfisted explanation is the best the author can manage, he would have been better off just leaving the subject alone and letting the reader wonder.

What I suspect is happening here is that the author introduced meat into the story early on without thinking, and then someone eventually noticed and pointed out that ponies don't eat meat. So, he decided he needed to wedge in an autistic explanation for it that basically just amounts to "it turns out ponies can eat meat, they just don't most of the time." This is an unbelievably dumb way to handle such a problem: if someone points out a logical inconsistency in your story, the thing to do is to go back and fucking revise it, you don't just wallpaper over it and then laugh it off. As far as logic errors go, this one is fairly benign anyway; there have only been a few passing references to meat in this story, and they could all be easily corrected without changing anything important. It's not like going back to an earlier chapter and changing "radigator meat" into "ground oatburger" or something is going to cause the fabric of reality to suddenly invert itself.

>“Muh brothers used t’ challenge me t’ hotdog eatin’ contests. Which mostly meant them shoving the disgustin’ things down muh throat.”
Something tells me kkat may be drawing from personal experience here. It would certainly explain a few things about the way he turned out.

>“’Course, they were prob’ly disgusting more cuz they were two hundred years old than cuz they were meat.”
The ideal moment to end this particular discussion has already come and gone, and yet it just keeps going.

>Velvet Remedy turned up her nose and trotted away from our table. She was just leaving as Gawd alighted next to us with a plate of roasted rats. She watched Velvet shudder in disgust and quicken her pace. Sucking up a rat by the tail and swallowing it whole, Gawd turned to me and asked, “What’s her issue?”
This is the end of the subchapter. Other than k "my brother said it was a 200 year old hotdog but I've always wondered why it had balls attached" kat's autistic retconning of his earlier mistakes, did this scene serve any purpose whatsoever?

Anyway, Littlepoop holds up the final end of her bargain with Gawd during breakfast, and tells her about the encamped army that she and Calamity observed while delivering a mysterious letter to God knows where. She has done well by Gawd and has no further obligations here, yet the author clearly wants her to remain so the story arc can continue. She now finds herself facing a classic Joe Strummer dilemma: should she stay or should she go?

>We could leave now, put Shattered Hoof behind us completely. Get out before the impending drama, and leave these ponies to the fates they had created for themselves. It was, I had to admit, not without its appeal.
This seems to imply that Gawd and the others have somehow created this situation through their own hubris, and Littlepoop would be right to leave them to their deaths. This is hardly what's happening; the Talons were simply hired to do a job, and are just reacting to the situation as it develops.

>Was there anyone or anything here worth risking my life, or the lives of my companions?
The obvious answer to this is no, however, the author has clearly found himself in a bit of a pickle. He wants this story arc to proceed, but there is no logical reason why LP and her friends should involve themselves further. He's trying to present this decision as a major moral crossroad for Littlepoop, but it really isn't; she has no obligation here at all. This is where having some sort of overarching plot would come in handy: if, for instance, Velvet was hearing voices from the Goddess telling her that the path to her goal led through Shattered Hoof, it would be a good enough reason to get involved in the fight. Absent that, there's no reason for any of them to stick around; logically they should just be moving on to Fillydelphia at this point.
Anonymous
530d6e8
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No.293355
293356
>>293349
Since you didn't answer my request here, >>292887 , I don't know if it was because you didn't see it or not. It's completely okay and understandable, if you don't want to do it.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.293356
293357 293361 293574
>>293355
>>292888
>>292887
Sorry, I saw this earlier when it was posted and meant to respond, but I forgot and then it got lost in a deluge of other replies.

I will take a look at it later tonight.
Anonymous
530d6e8
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No.293357
>>293356
np
I'd be the wrong person to judge anyway.
thanks frien
Anonymous
530d6e8
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No.293361
demand_by_doublewbrothers_d9i6lkt-fullview.jpg
>>293356
>mfw first panel
Anonymous
009033b
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No.293388
293525 293550 293555
>>293345
After seeing all these RadScorpions and RadGators, the poners should react to a non irradiated rabbit like the cast of Avatar reacted to an ordinary bear after two seasons of TurtleDucks and other hybrid animals.
Also wasnt squirrel meat on a stick a joke in fallout 1 where it was actually Doc Morbids cannibal meat? F3 forgot and I am surprised Kkat never noticed. Did he even play f1 and f2 or just rely on a wiki for the names and concepts to sprinkle into his Fallout 3 writeup? Crusader Kings and Stellaris writeups are better.

Hey imagine if ponies got nicer after eating veggies and edgier after eating meat it could be used to justify the fucktons of baddies in the wasteland.

Also why would a raider refridgerator work?

Also who the fuck shoves hotdog meat down your throat thats disgusting your fuvk8ngb tongue is enough to break them apart and when you chew them you find weird hard chunks ad metal bits to spit out. Its low quality goychow invented by the jews. Dogs eat shit like that. I once entered a cherry pie eaying contest but i fucking hate the taste and feel of shite like spam and hotdog and fake foods like that. Is that normal? Should all my characters feel the same way about wanting real food or would it make them look picky?

ALSO DUDE YES. Making Velvet hear the voice of The Goddess would fix so much of the early storys problems!
And if velvet mentioned the goddess on the pipbuvk she gave to LP it will make the audience wonder who the goddess is and if this is the main plot.
Then justify Velvet working for slavers with "they mind controlled her with a ray that takes 3 days to recharge and makes you controllable by anyone for 3 days".
Velvet wont know the goddess led her to a slaver town guarded by a alicorn to play doctor for it. But after Velvet snaps out of mind control The Goddess seeks to manipulate Velvet and LP.
Anonymous
8142357
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No.293393
2368263.png
>>293339
>This sentence should end with a question mark. Also: wasn't Littlepoop supposed to be deeply religious? I specifically recall her getting angry with Calamity once because he said something blasphemous about the alicorn goddesses. Now she thinks it's all smoke and mirrors? Maybe this is why she gets so twat-frothy over Velvet; neither one of them seems to have any strongly held convictions at all, apart from LP's milquetoast "le justice" values and Velvet's ironic hatred of cages.

This is another Deadeyes vs Red Eye naming problem, except arguably worse. Littlepip seems to follow some kind of religious creed that worships Celestia and Luna. Few if any of the other characters seem to share or even acknowledge this belief. Regardless, she commonly refers to the princesses as Goddess or Goddesses in reverent terms. The preacher is not, however, spreading the word of Celestia and Luna.The Goddess, to whom the preacher is referring, is a distinct entity.

In other words, Littlepip believes in the Goddesses (the princesses), while the preacher believes in the Goddess (someone else). Pip gets upset when people blaspheme against the Goddesses, but is skeptical of the Goddess, who can't possibly an actual Goddess unlike the Goddesses who are totally real even though nobody else believes in or mentions them.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.293459
What if the real main plot of Fallout Equestria was the friends we made along the way?
Anonymous
009033b
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No.293480
293488
dsjsgnd4b2361.jpg
Rate my Fallout Equestria greentext

>be Littlepip
>lesbian murderhobo trying to sleep at 3AM
>turn on PipBuck's radio app
>select "True Slaverist Radio - Praise be to Red Eye - 24/7 beats to enslave to" out of curiosity
>expect some edgy bollocks like what you heard when you played that Raider radio station for a while
>soothing lo-fi hip-hop plays instead
>drift away for a while
>it's got a good rhythm going
>the thought of this playing in some factory or on some railroad to help the slaves keep time fills you with disgust
>almost fall asleep anyway
>awoken by slutty voice
"You're listening to True Slaverist Radio!"
>Demonic voice repeats that, snapping you out of your relaxation
>>"T-T-TRUE SLAVERIST RADIO!!!"
>slutty voice chimes in
"Where we know the best way to do hard work... Is to make someone else do it!"
>A stallion's guttural growl greets your ears
"What's good, my little slavers? It's your host, Iron Collar. You know, I've heard a lot of ponies say life is cheap in the Wasteland. You know who says that? Ponies that have never bought slaves and dealt with Red-Eye's taxes! Ha! Of course, blessed be his holy name, he is the conqueror who shall unite us all, and all that jazz. Speaking of jazz, we'll have Freedom Is A Lie by The Hollow Points after the news break."
>raise an eyebrow
>news? on the radio?
>back home at Stable 69 the radio only ever played music
>wonder what slaver radio has to say
>expect to be praised because you're such an amazing and strong killer
"Unless you're better-armed than an Alicorn and twice as tough, you're better off steering clear of Old Appleoosa. The whole town's been put to the torch by some Raider psycho named Littlepip, who made sure to slaughter every last mare, stallion, foal, and slave she laid her bloodied eyes on. Within her first day outside her Stable, she slaughtered everypony at Ponyville for refusing to join her evil band of thieving rapists. Littlepip and her flying fucker of a friend Calamity lethally tag-teamed this poor pregnant Alicorn mare, who was just two weeks from giving birth and one week from retirement! Well, she's retired now! You know, since they beat her to death right in front of her husband and adopted child! These two troublemakers made off with the town's doctor, Velvet Remedy, by threatening to rape her to death and then keep raping her for hours after she's breathed her last. Disgusting little freaks, both of them. Of course, the anarchist lesbian faggot at Tenpony Tower has been sucking Littlepip off and claiming she's a hero who saved everypony. What a load of bullshit! Rumor has it they were helped out by New Appleoosa, because they got into town using the railway connecting these towns. But NA's denying this and claiming the troublemakers just hopped aboard the train when nopony was looking. Not a good look for them! What's next, will Deathclaws hop aboard their train? Perhaps Red Eye will generously send some slavers over there, to 'educate' the locals and make sure this never happens again. I know I'll sleep better when that mass-murderer Littlepip is behind bars, chained up, and given glorious purpose by the almighty Red Eye! Praise be to him!"
>angryLittlepip.exe
>holy shit on a shit sandwich with extra shit and a thousand years of Princess Luna semen on top!
>and a side order of shitting dick crotchtits!
>those motherfuckers lied about you!
>on the fucking radio!
>how horrible!
"And on that note, here's Freedom Is A Lie by The Hollow Points!""
>chill beats resume
>calm down despite your vengeful desires
>wonder if this radio's magically mind-controlling you
>after an intense emotional struggle against yourself, turn the radio off
>no more chill beats
>run to Velvet and Calamity at 3AM to whine about the radio calling you an evil mass murderer and wonder if the radio is part of Red Eye's empire of evil
Anonymous
8142357
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No.293488
293556
>>293480
It's alright. Any kind of counterpoint to DJ Shill would have improved the story a little.
sage
c9149df
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No.293525
293550 293555 293556 293664
1387171984944.png
>>293388
Your never-fucking-ending retardation simply doesn't stop, does it, Nigel? It is quite easy to cease being a bootlicking faggot and more of a silent observer. But oh no, that will never happen since you're too much of a spergy britcucked niggermutt. I'm simply enjoying Sunshit Glowlitter descend into a type of insanity worse than H.P. Lovecraft had ever dreamed of. It was enough to watch him trying to maintain his sanity during the last shitfic. Now keep going Nigel. Keep whoreshipping yourself out as the dickless goyim you are. It amuses me.
Anonymous
02fc54f
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No.293550
293592
Oekaki.png
>>293388
>>293525
Anonymous
02fc54f
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No.293555
293592
>>293525
Though, I will admit that this post >>293388 is fucking hard to decipher. Like, what?
>Also who the fuck shoves hotdog meat down your throat thats disgusting your fuvk8ngb tongue is enough to break them apart and when you chew them you find weird hard chunks ad metal bits to spit out. Its low quality goychow invented by the jews. Dogs eat shit like that. I once entered a cherry pie eaying contest but i fucking hate the taste and feel of shite like spam and hotdog and fake foods like that. Is that normal? Should all my characters feel the same way about wanting real food or would it make them look picky?
I don't even know. Heheh.

Nigel, first make sure that others can understand what you're writing and then make sure that is relevant. I may have missed something but... it seems unlikely.

Look, I'm not the right person to judge just think a little extra about it, okay?
Anonymous
009033b
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No.293556
293567 293571 293592
lpzih1cuft264.jpg
>>293525
Why do you want me to be a silent observer? Would it make you happy? Are you upset because you can't write greentext or meaningfully contribute to this thread?
Please go back to the 1-3 sentence youtube comments you once made in this thread, instead of trying to start fights.
>>293488
Thanks mate!
The idea was inspired by Mr New Vegas's music+news radio station, Ratchet Deadlocked's black-comedy sports commentators and the way they'd slander the hero, and 24/7 youtube lo-fi music streams.
Radios are important to any would-be dictator in a world without the internet or TV. It lets anyone, anywhere, hear whatever you want. Their view of the world outside their bubbles is shaped entirely by the script you dictate to your radio host. And in a world of unsafe roads infested with Raiders, Slavers, and ordinary thieving bandits, most civilians will have a pretty small bubble and never venture out of safe areas.
in North Korea it's illegal for residents to turn off their propaganda-spewing radios. Any rival broadcast network or "Pirate radio" could be triangulated and destroyed by an evil army.
Logically, the baddies should have their own radio.
Red Eye has a lot of baddies working for him, a thriving economy based 100% on selling whatever slaves his slavers obtain (because author is a faggot who never watched a single fee.org video), and his own industries. This wannabe-dictator should either have a radio station, or want to get one.
And because DJ-Pon3's radio show at Tenpony Tower is the only one on the planet, Red Eye should want his.
of course it's fucking bullshit that Red Eye, a well-educated former Stable Pony from a Stable where the gimmick was "Earth Ponies only, also cybernetic augmentations for days", would have absolutely no idea how to build his own radio station.

Also seriously, why does nopony on this goddamn nuked pony planet store schematics on their Pip-Buck/some computer terminal they own?
Perhaps that's what Fallout 4's minecraft-inspired "Build Mode" was: the (either military or ex-lawyer) protag with pre-war knowledge using downloaded schematics to augment his perfect knowledge of building to build all sorts of pre-war and post-war bullshit.
As for how the player is able to build shit instantly, chalk that up to "videogame convenience" or "Todd Howard wanted to make you wait 8 hours for shit to build or pay extra to skip the wait time like in mobile games but his team couldn't figure out how to program that so they scrapped it and never spoke of it again".
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.293567
293570 293574
>>293556
As your usual critic, I disavow what that anon is specifically saying.
Having said, you brought this on yourself. How long have anons been trying get through to you? For the first few years you dismissed any critic as being a Glimmernigger conspiracy. Then you dismissed them as being HGLegend. Now you dismiss them as being unable to write green text or contribute in a functional manner, which is rich because that more or less describes you. I had a conversation about this issue recently, allow me to share it.
"Have you ever lived near disruptive and disrespectful Mexicans who like to party? For those who havent, let me explain.
Imagine a household a few doors down from you that likes to blast music every night of the weekends until the wee hours of the morning. The cops get called, they make lame excuses and turn the music down, wait maybe 10 minutes, and they start blasting music again, only this time they deploy a lookout. So any time the cops come back around because of a noise complaint, the music is already down. The cops, who really dont want to have to deal with it, can honestly say they looked in on it. The Mexicans can laugh at their neighbors inability to do anything about it, and the neighbors get to just sit and spin.
That's how Nigel operates. He takes liberties in whatever thread he decides to, gets called out and salted for it, tones down his behavior for maybe a couple weeks until his dopamine levels get too low for his taste, and begins the cycle anew. Any 'progress' he displays is temporary, and geared not toward actual progress, but allowing the heat to die down until he feels the 'coast is clear' and goes back to being an insufferable newfag. In between, he does his best to skirt JUST inside the lines of acceptable posting, just like the mexicans do with their lookout."
I had to omit a few details cuz reasons, but that's the overwhelming gist.
It isnt as though you havent had PLENTY of constructive criticisms. This entire thread series came about BECAUSE of your REFUSAL to accept criticism. And yet, rather than accept that 'hey, maybe I should stop posting for a bit and allow others to participate'; participate meaning not posting 95% trash with maybe 5% of maybe-sorta useful comments, but thoughtful and potentially un-biased (gasp!) commentary and critique.
You acknowledge NOW that Silver Star was complete ass, and yet the mindset that spawned him is precisely the same, EXCEPT for that acknowledgement of the fact that he and the story is ass.
What's the definition of insanity?
Hell maybe I'm insane for repeatedly trying to get through with you. Whatever, I never thought I would actually filter a thread on /mlpol/ but I guess you leave me no choice.
Anonymous
02fc54f
?
No.293570
>>293567
> I never thought I would actually filter a thread on /mlpol/ but I guess you leave me no choice
Actually, now that I think about that. That is a good point. I do filter through this thread due to Nigel, because of his irrelevant posts are so normalized. But this isn't how things should be.

Nigel, please post relevant things. I also have things that I need to change, which I will now make an effort to change. I discovered recently that my posts have a tendency to be misspelled due to me typing down the post in warp-speed without proofreading afterwards. I miss keys and stuff. The important thing is to try to change.

Anyway, I will help you as well, Nigel. I lurk this thread often enough so I'll read through your posts to see if they are relevant to the thread. If they aren't, I will tell you. You can do the same thing for me, with my spelling.
Anonymous
02fc54f
?
No.293571
>>293556
Funny meme though.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293574
293609 293671 293722
>>293567
You've claimed I never take criticism on board before, but when Glim reviewed my fic and got to the major writing mistakes, I took those lessons on board and I've been rewriting it for a while now. You've said you're going to leave this thread before. How is Hclegend, by the way? Is he still working on that weird deviantart drowning-girls flash game platformer, or am I thinking of somebody else?
Anyway my Silver rewrite's ch1-4 pretty much done at this point. I plan on posting Ch1 for review here during "a break in the action". Possibly between chapters, that sounds like a natural place for it. And how can I be like a mexican when I don't like mexicans? What's next, is somebody going to claim I'm like a car-stealing nigger because I make so many Naruto references and black people love Naruto?
You and I both know I lack the social graces to tell when it's time to stop posting for a while and "let heat die down". I have severe autism. I'm no machiavellian schemer out to ruin your day. I'm just a guy who writes pony fanfics for fun. But I'm not very good at it. Maybe I should work on my indie game full-time, there's good money in indie games. But I still want to write a good version of Silver Star, to prove that I can.
A while back I said "fuck you, you aren't paying me to make good posts" and I regret saying fuck you because I didn't realize you were that one guy that helped me out financially when I needed it. That guy's a good person, and if you're him then you're that good person. I want us to be friends. I don't want you to leave.
But blaming the thread's slow posts on me won't make the thread faster.
This is a long story and it's going to take us a while to get through it.
In the meantime... What do you want to do? Greentext? Fanart? Discussion of the parts of the fic Glim's already read? Discussion of moments in the story that haven't happened yet? Philosophical shite? Discussion of stories Glim previously went through, with comparisons to this one? suggestions for fics to read after this one?

I'll try to put less off-topic "train of thought"posting in my posts because that's pissing me off too.
Looking back, the "Would it be normal for my characters to hate 'fake food' like Spam and Hot Dogs as much as I do or would that make them look picky?" line was a legitimate question but I should have cut the energy drink-fuelled "Who the fuck shoves hot dog meat down your throat? Your tongue is enough to break that shit apart. Here's why I hate hot dogs and spam. It feels weird in the mouth and it's probably what dog food tastes like. Sometimes there's even little weird hard chunks in the meat. It might be bone or metal or cartilage. I once entered a cherry pie eating contest." shite from my post.

>>293356
hey Glim, Silver Star Rewrite Ch1 is complete. Can I post it for you to review after the end of this Fallout Equestria chapter?
Anonymous
c9149df
?
No.293592
293664 293722
1038322.png
>>293550
>>293555
There shall never be friendship towards shitstain whinging faggots such as Nigel. He doesn't fucking get it, never has, and never will. Remember this: never give traitors a chance to breathe or they will abuse that notion to the fullest extent. Your last bullet must ALWAYS take out the traitor before the enemy.

>>293556
I want you to suffer, silently, so that you never sperg the fuck out and utterly derail every single thread you have posted in. It is that simple. You have never been able to accept getting called out for your shitstain faggotry without kvetching endlessly. Do you keep score? Sure seems like you do, and reminisce on those times constantly. For the second, no, and that's why no one likes (((you))). More and more you reveal your fucking plebbit background, which isn't funny in the slightest, it is catastrophically sad. It's also funny how you screech about "1-3 sentence jewt00b comments". Know what that ACTUALLY is, you muppet shitheel? Proper formatting, a technique you haven't bothered to understand, so fuck you for trying to pull that "b-b-but ur not part of m-muh board kulchur!!!" For the third, I have ONLY posted IN THIS THREAD AND THE LAST TWO solely to call out your faggatrocious, willfully and zealously retarded, ultra-hypocritical, mememememeandonlyme selfish attitudes and constantly derailing pigshit nonsense. You've had plenty of chances to improve, yet you haven't bothered to.

In short: for hopefully[ the last time fuck you, britcuck. I've SILENTLY enjoyed watching glibgabber willingly hurt himself for the sake of creative and artistic discussions, which you have never ONCE added to since you don't have the self control of even a 10 year old human child throwing a tantrum! Since you somehow have never bothered to rationalize why most anons hate you, do the world a favor: go hang yourself. You are useless degenerate huwhite trash. The nanosecond your disgusting, inbred corpse begins to feed the worms is the ONLY time you will have ever performed a useful action.
Anonymous
1438af6
?
No.293609
20201204_110846.jpg
>>293574
>but but, I took criticism
Not true. You got tired of being shit on for your shitty fic which you couldnt stop promoting even when there was a clear consensus that ain't nobody around here wanted none.
Then, you attempt to cozy up to Glim Glam, who is the only person on the board who gives you a second thought AND indulged your hateboners, and then tolerated your endless sperging. And dont for a moment act like you took criticism willingly, or constructively. I'd wager you only rewrote your fic so you can 'reintroduce' it, like Hillary has tried to reintroduce herself every time she runs for office.
>I'm gonna post it guise!
As though on cue. Does this look like a fanfic submission thread? Has ANYONE responded positively to your fics? Has ANYONE on the board EVER expressed anything other than disdain toward anything you've written?
>I hate mexicans, I cant be like them
And your reading comprehension is as good as your writing. I already explained that, such that anyone with the slightest ability could comprehend, outside someone being consciously disingenuous. That's another of your tricks, feigning ignorance. What's next? Given your track record you'll conveniently overlook these comments, and go off on some irrelevant tangent from a previous post and make a wall of text out of it. If you cant get people to lay off, you can always beleaguer them with more of your nonsense until they're too tired of trying to get you to pay attention.
And yeah, I have left this thread before, but now I'm having to actively filter the thread because I'm tired of even cursorily being subjected to your bullshit. Because even when browsing the board I STILL catch bits of your garbage posts while browsing.
>I dont want you to leave
Dont sing it, BRING IT. I dont care about the speed of this thread, YOU do. That's why you wont stop, using the absolutely most asinine excuses to STILL fill your posts with irrelevant shit, like
>posts the entire paragraph
Dude
>I'm sorry I said fuck you
It shouldnt fucking matter who I am! Your opinion of posters should have 0 to do with your reception to their comments! The ONLY thing you should concern yourself with is 'is there any validity to their criticisms?'! Dont like a person's tone? Maybe there's a reason they're a salty cracker! And maybe you can dismiss their attitude outright, I do it all the time. But that comes after HONESTLY assessing whether or not there is merit to the criticism, because if I refuse to learn from even the most insufferable of critics then I'm just setting myself up for more of the same. You've been getting the same for years now, undoubtedly off the board as well as on. You cant honestly expect anyone to believe that you havent had plenty of opportunities to realize this, on or off the board.
>autism and energy drinks
Nothing says self improvement like it. You and Seb from /sp/ should get together and hit up a McDonalds while you're at it. It's not like high amounts of sugar and caffeine hasnt been correlated with dysfunctional and/self-destructive behavior, so go nuts.
>what do you want me to do?
If you cant avoid posting all the goddamn time, make a side-thread. There you can post whatever you want (because it relates to poners) and anyone who wants to read it can, and those who dont can be spared. You can even link and quote the areas you're responding to.
I dont like being pissed the fuck off at you, and that's why I'm filtering this thread. I just didnt want the last word to be by ^this guy (who somehow doesnt know that a glimmer abuse thread is more likely to give you a stuffy than a moment of clarity). Take of this what you will, since you will regardless of what I have ever said or will say. I'm done. You of all people should remember why I give a shit, and why it pains me to be to this point.
It's out of my hands now, enjoy this new salty cracker.
>pic related
One of my older cats about to kick the shit out of my youngest, because he just wont learn to stop fucking around. That was a satisfying moment.
P.S. Is this enough words for you?
Anonymous
abb50e3
?
No.293618
293681 293722
Hot dog this thread feels like part FoE review part Nigel review. I'll say I'm also one of the others who reads all of Nigel's posts. Mostly since he and I are very similar to one another. I don't know if I've been posting here too much or being too irrelevant but I do know in real life conversations or in PM's I tend to have Nigel's form of speaking so I can sympathize with him but can also understand where everyone is coming from.

I'd say it's been pretty hard myself to find the right place to get some words in since Nigel is a big Fallout fan as well as having already read FoE so it's hard to discuss elements when he is already one step ahead of the group.

Mind you he spoiler marks plot critical elements but I'd say the biggest grievance I've had if I'd be able to throw in my two cents is with the posts most start off good dissecting a scene or theme Glim brings up from the text but they quickly derail when he discusses a Fallout mod that reworks the game and begins to explain all the elements of the mod from gameplay to quests that don't exactly connect with the story or pulling up other media like MGS, Ace Combat, Naruto, or Pokemon.

Don't mean to rag on Nigel hard since I do the same stuff to my friends which makes me even worse I'd say abusing their trust and friendship to go on autistic rants and had a few times where friends had to sit me down and tell me to shut up and they don't care.

I can understand you being enthusiastic about stuff since you and I both talk about things we like in the same way but might be best to perhaps proofread posts before posting to see the fat that can be trimmed.

Don't want to lose Nigel here which I know will earn me the ire of some here but he's been a staple of this thread since I showed up just feel like with how close this story is to him being a Fallout fan and seeing the source material butchered as it is it makes him want to vent all that which I've done as well.

I'll keep reading all his posts and really hope we can all work through this. I have to imagine Glim is getting tired of taking a break for a day or two and coming back to see the thread is a dumpster fire and probably has a few genuine questions or story crituiqe he ends up scrolling past that got buried in our bouts.

One last thing though about Nigel requesting that Glim review his chapter 1 rewrite of Silver's story I do recall promising Glim I'd write a short story he'd review. I remember the break before FoE he mentioned it'd be neat to take a crack at small stories or >greens we write to give him a breather from FoE as well as see how we have all improved from seeing his advice and us practicing the art of muses.

Been working on a little story myself recently and even if Glim won't review it I might try posting it just so everyone here can take a crack at it and ply their critical eye to it if they'd be willing.
Anonymous
c9149df
?
No.293663
293664
one must wonder if the end result tastes like shame, guilt, humiliation, and pathetic tryharding, or is simply too disgusting and needs to be nuked from orbit.png
>>284817
>>284837
>>284844
>>284922
>>284929
>>285116
>>285136
>>285175
>>285879

Remember any of these, Nigel? Of course you don't. Remember all the promises you made to cease being an impotent, worthless glowing cunt? Nope, you never will. At this point the only possible explanation for your actions is that you are simply beating your microdick every chance you get to "feel relevant again" by vomiting out whichever narutardo/bleech fanfic trash analogy that manages to trickle out of your inbred, diseased brain. You have 249, repeat: TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-NINE useless posts in this thread. Now KYS because you will never be the filly.
Anonymous
1883b74
?
No.293664
293681
>>293525
>>293592
>>293663
Ironically, these are all Nigel-tier posts.
Anonymous
02fc54f
?
No.293671
293681 293722 293724
>>293574
>>293574
>Maybe I should work on my indie game full-time, there's good money in indie games. But I still want to write a good version of Silver Star, to prove that I can.

You one-hundred percent should focus on this project before fanfiction writing. Also, I'll give this super advice that has been burnt into me, do not talk about your dreams, make them reality instead. I don't wanna hear more about this game until you release a pre-alpha finished version. Don't ever mention it here again, since it is irrelevant and only makes me suffer out of pity for you. If you really wanna talk about it, make a thread on /sp/ or like /vx/ and have a progress diary there.

>But blaming the thread's slow posts on me won't make the thread faster.

Yes, I have a vague memory that this particular Anon did do that at some point. But I won't go through the thread searching for it so let that be unsaid. However, while I doubt you intimidate away potential posters, there is not a:
>In the meantime
This is a thread about gg reviewing Fallout Equestria and other fics, suggestions of which he said that he welcomed in the last thread. Therefore it stands to reason that everything in this thread has to do with him in the first place and the fic in the second place. This thread centers entirely around him. It is NOT a general discussion thread about fiction. It's either gg, the fic, or get out.

And on that note, you would benefit a lot from using this mold: Point-proof-explanation.

Also, what is this post>>293294 Immediately after the second paragraph, it starts to spin out of control, and the rest of it is not related. Btw, this is what I mean by, "anything not being related". This is about the fallout games but it does not tie into anything in the fic or at least, you don't make that connection clear, therefore it is also not related and that's almost the entire post.

>What if we made a drinking game out of things the story does often, like moments where Littlepip is a lesbian or goes on a kleptomaniac looting spree?
Hehehe. O'boy.


The more I go back over your post the more this mold seems pointless. Pun intended. Like, most of the shit you spout isn't about the fic. It's tangential at best.

Well, here we have something >>293187
>Silver Bell has the potential to be the least terrible thing in the fic so far.
I get that Silver Bell is basically just Sierra Petrovita from Fallout 3/4, the nuka-cola addict with the Nuka Cola Museum. But by giving that wacky meme joke a tragic backstory and something less silly to obsess over, he made Sierra not completely retarded. Kkat didn't realize the good thing he had here, but Silver Bell could be a really interesting character. Certainly more interesting than Calamity, since she's got more going on than him.

Let's try to rewrite one of your posts after the mold I mentioned before I got sidetracked. This is point-proof-explanation.

Our point is, the inspiration for Silver Bell is based on the character, Sierra Petrovita from the Fallout games 3 and 4.

Our proof is, Sierra Petrovita lives in a Nuka Cola Museum.

Our explanation is, both of these characters live in a museum and FE is based on the games from which this character exists. More specifically, the third game title, since Sierra only appears in 3 or 4 but 4 had not come out yet when this story was written.

Anyway, I too should use this method. It really makes sure that you boil down your argument correctly.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293681
293686
homer.jpg
>>293664
>non-contributors complain about the lack of contribution
>Nigel contributes, trying his best
>non-contributors attack nigel and claim his contributions aren't enough or up to their standards
It's the circle of life, and I'm used to it by now.
They blame me for the thread's post rate because self-reflection is hard. If this thread had other problems, they'd blame me for those too. If they make a worthless thread that contributes nothing to the site, and I post in it for any reason, they feel like they "won" by "baiting me". They absolve themselves of personal responsibility by pretending they're contributing to the thread even more than me, even though they're just sitting around bitching at me for trying. They think they're smarter than me, but I can't imagine why.
They aren't professional writers with a lifetime of experience. I understand that you don't need to be an expert to see what's wrong with an amateur's attempt, but if you want that amateur's respect you need to make sure what you say about the attempt can improve future attempts. Instead of contributing their own high-quality commentary on my fics, they repeat what Glim said and claim I'm not listening to Glim. They're followers, not leaders, and in their mind any failure can be blamed on the nearest non-sheep for refusing to sufficiently follow their current leader of choice.
I've tried to be polite. I've tried to be charitable. I've tried to pretend there's something good to be gained from their obsession with me. Come to think of it, that's probably what's encouraged such aggressive crab-mentality behaviour from them. Nothing pisses a consoomer off like trying and not meeting their standards.
Don't get me wrong, I understand that I should trim fat from my posts and I'm working on that. But no amount of trimmed fat will be enough for these guys. Bashing me makes them feel better about trying less than me and having less to offer than me.
Some people out there will just get mad at you whenever they see you, and then expect you to change something about yourself to make them feel better, even when they aren't sure what it is about you that makes them so angry. If they spend a while bitching aimlessly before figuring out a justification for their attitude and posting it, that's a bad sign. If their reason for hating you changes at random, or never changes no matter how you change, or requires far-reaching comparisons to other things they hate for emotional reasons, that's a bad sign. If they think they can see the future and they yell at you because they think you'll never change in the next decade, that's a bad sign. If they expect you to read their minds and guess what's upsetting them and pamper them and please them without "forcing them" to say a word to you, that's a sign that they might be women. Or at the very least, infected with girlish and childish and non-masculine thinking.
But here's some life advice: You aren't obligated to try and please everybody. You aren't obligated to try and please anybody. Their emotions are not your responsibility. If they had any self-awareness, they'd realize their "Talk less! Be seen less! That's surely what's making the thread so slow!" advice is not only fallacious, it's auto-fellatious. Imagine thinking you're helping a low-activity thread by rarely contributing anything besides angry ranting at your current scapegoat! I've tried treating this self-destructive attitude of theirs with kid gloves but that's clearly not working.
I'm not scaring activity away by trying. It wouldn't surprise me if they were scaring activity away by snapping like feral dogs at anyone who tries without meeting their standards.
Maybe we should all just filter out their posts. Then again, if we did that, we'd never see their rare on-topic contributions about the fic, even though they're usually just youtube comments telling us how much they subjectively do or do not like the current story. So maybe we should just skip over the hate aimed at me, since I'll never be an inspirational hero so impressive I can even inspire them to develop their skills, develop emotionally, and contribute.
>>293618
I'd love to see your story and suggest ways it could be improved.
>>293671
It's not just that Sierra/Silver lives in a ___ museum, it's that she's a stupidly chipper meme character who lives in a wacky museum she logically should lack the ability to create/maintain and has explosives involving her chosen obsession. Sierra makes nuclear explosives out of slightly-nuclear cola, and Silver has a thermonuclear magic bomb from the pre-war days.
Kkat looked at this joke character, decided to play everything stupid and nonsensical about her completely straight, and then decided the cliche "Happy character is secretly evil and sad and Psycho(TM)" shit straight out of Cupcakes needed to be applied to this character.
So once she reveals her "psycho" nature, she's able to intimidate Little "Do you know how many guns I have shoved inside my cooch? No, seriously, do you? Because after slaughtering over 50 raiders in 2 days and taking their gear I lost count" Pip into backing up into a goddamn safe she could be sealed inside to cause a slow death from starvation.
All so that Velvet can get a "cool pacifist moment" where she, like every obnoxious cunt on those hour-long "adult" soap operas disguised as police procedurals/law shows/whatever, immediately talks a violent lunatic into crying and getting help with a few cliche lines.

This is terrible writing.
The author's attempt to fix the cola-obsessed bomb-making joke character didn't actually fix anything about her that made her a goddamn affront to logic. Kkunt just added an overused tragic backstory, reduced her age to try and force pity from us, replaced a nonsensical ability to craft cola nukes with a nonsensical ownership of a city-obliterating nuke, and called it a day.
No attempt will be made to explore any characters in a tale that exists to please Fallout 3's fanboy consoomerfags.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293682
fb9of1u2c3361.jpg
I don't want to end my contribution on such a downer note so here's this.

Hey, remember that time a Raider took a hostage and, with a weapon in his mouth, tried to negotiate?
The story tried to take the piss out of the idea that ponies can talk with objects in their mouth.
In the form of Littlepip, a completely inexperienced newfag, insulting the Raider for not knowing how he "should" behave.

And it just looked stupid, because this story contains worse brainfarts that aren't """Lampshaded""" (commented on/acknowledged/joked about) at all.

It also makes no sense for Littlepip to know more about being an efficient baddie than a literal goddamn Raider, somepony for whom raiding is a way of life and the only way to live, somepony following raider techniques that have been passed down raider family lines for generations.

Remember when Littlepip, in the middle of a tense firefight in Old Appleoosa, immediately looted ammo from a dead enemy.
That was a stupid moment of videogame logic. Some real Call of Halo: Modern Battlefield shit.
But it didn't have to be.
Just imagine if Littlepip foolishly attempted to loot ammo from an enemy in the middle of a firefight, struggled to find ammo and remove it from his person, and then got shot by baddies. Someone... I'll say Calamity since the author should try to set up Calamity as a hardened Wasteland veteran full of knowledge to contrast with Littlepip's inexperience, instead of reducing him to a goddamn flying taxi service for GodPip so often. Calamity should bail Littlepip out by carrying her to a safe area while a healing potion heals her up. THEIR LAST healing potion, to inject more tension and uncertainty into the scene. Then Calamity should tell Littlepip "Don't loot in the middle of a firefight, idiot!"
>Littlepip: But in videogames, the hero can suck ammo straight from the enemies he killed instantly!
Calamity: "What the fuck is a videogame?"
And then, because he is not flying around firing at foes and distracting enemies, they converge upon their position and Team LP's chances of winning seemingly shrink as he flies off once again.

Learning moments.

The story should give Littlepip more moments where she learns things, because if the story did that she wouldn't be an instant master of everything. The story would be better for it. The growth of the hero is part of the appeal of most RPGs and most good stories.

Imagine if LP found a safe she absolutely could not crack, and wasted all her bobby pins trying. It would surprise us. It would force her to scavenge for more bobby pins. It would make future lockpicking moments less dull and predictable.

Imagine if LP's VATS/SATS auto-aim+auto-fire failed her quite often, because the program can't calculate for the increased bullet spread and inferior performance of shitty made-wrong homemade bullets and lacks any properly-formatted ballistics data on godawful butchered Bubba'd guns.

Imagine if LP had to learn the "float yourself over mines" trick from Crane, instead of already knowing it from day one.

Imagine if LP's "Take one gun apart and repair another gun with it" tactic resulted in hideous unpredictable frankenguns no trader recognized or wanted to deal with.

Reading a lot means I've seen good books do the "The hero reads a lot of books, and might even be a writer, so he comments on tropes" thingy better.
Good writers make this a character trait, and spit on the hero every time he attempts some foolish thing that would only work in a less realistic story.
Bad writers make the hero an expert in story logic, restrict the story so it exclusively follows story logic, and make the hero correct every time he does some Bat Deduction Bullshit. Like guessing what someone will do next solely based on what this character would probably do next if he was in a book. Cliche storybook logic will work in the hero's favour when he does something retarded, and fail villains who should know better by now when they attempt something retarded. This bad writer expects you to be impressed by his (and his character's) knowledge of storybook cliches without ever doing anything creative or interesting with them.
Great writers turn "The hero stops with the storybook cliche talk and obnoxious protag snark to become a kinder person who no longer needs to use snark as armour and shielding for his soul" into a character arc.
Anonymous
02fc54f
?
No.293686
293701 293704
>>293681
>The first paragraph.
Ugh...
Also,
>Ironically, these are all Nigel-tier posts.
Meaning it's a comparison which is made to put you and your posts in negative light because comparisons goes two-way.

The truth is that your critics are in the right here. You were told to stay on-topic, as in either it has to do with gg or ties into the fic, from the very start of this thread and afterwards you have failed this rule nearly constantly. You are not above rules in this community.

You can't just dump whatever idea that pops up in your head in this thread. It actually has to tie into something in the fic, and as I explained in my post that you refrenced, not just mlp or the fallout games but FE specifically. Even if I will admit that some of your opinions and ideas at times are good and even if you had been God's gift to literature and gaming and whatever the fuck else, this is not related to the fucking thread. That's why that Anon which prides himself as your biggest critic constantly refrences your ego because that's the driving force in dumping irrelevant ideas in this thread. Takes these ideas and put them on a doc on your harddrive. I do the same thing. Do not just post them here. You are not enriching us with your genius when you start to talk about metal gear soild because it's not fucking relevant.

>It's not just that Sierra/Silver lives in a ___ museum etc...
This is good paragraph and contributes to the thread.
>>293294
>The BOS...
>Arthur Maxson was only about 16 when he was crowned boss of F3's BOS chapter and he brings his chapter way too many miles across America so they can waste resources and precious manpower trying to fight The Institute solely because it has tech he wants to destroy.
>So naturally, people who didn't want to obey his orders quit and formed their own splinter cell.
>And the buttfuck retardity of putting all the BOS's most valuable personell in a big airship, a tempting target for any drunk rocket launcher-toting raider having a bad day? Is called out when Sarah Lyons calls him a dumbass and convinces him to put her in charge. I love the way her voice actress works around existing voice lines he has, so his pre-recorded dialogue can be reused in a new context.
>Sarah Lyons was unceremoniously killed offscreen between F3-F4 but now she was betrayed by the BOS and you can save her, bringing her back to get this faction "back on track".
She also calls out how dumb Arthur's "WE MUST OBLITERATE EVERYTHING THE INSTITUTE WORKED ON!" policy is because the BOS is supposed to seize and maintain tech while keeping dangerous tech and its secrets from the normies, and implies his rage for robo-men is because he feels insecure about being so mostly-cyborg that he spends 24/7 on his ship's bridge never eating or shidding.
This adds nothing to the thread. Do you understand?
Anonymous
## Ninja
0000000
?
No.293701
293712
>>293686
Thank you anon. Nigel did as he always does, which is to simply ignore and gaslight what he cant argue or refute.
If he thinks when I say "I'm filtering this thread" it means turning a blind eye, hes in for a rude awakening.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293704
293712 293721
>>293686
Can I compare the writing in this fic to other things with writing?
Anonymous
02fc54f
?
No.293712
>>293701
Thanks. Usually, I prefer when mods aren't too twitchy, which I have only experienced on /mlpol/ like once before but in this case it might be just the thing that is needed here.
>>293704
I already explained that this is okay by approving this
>It's not just that Sierra/Silver lives in a ___ museum etc..
paragraph.

But if you are uncertain, here's how it goes down. You make a point and then you use a reference to something else as an example to prove that point. As in no unnecessary blathering about the referenced topic, just a reference to something and why this is relevant to the point you're making. I would prefer that you didn't reference things though because you tend to go on tangents. One doesn't have to mention or reference things to make points anyway. Especially, when what you are referencing isn't the greatest work of literature ever, pokemon, one can expect there to be very few unique elements to it, maybe there are some but still. But as I said, you can make points just by solid reasoning.

I will give you a few examples of all this. Here's is what doesn't belong in this thread.

"If you search for the video two best sisters' play Fallout 4, you will find an animation of mlp in a Fallout setting with a voiceover from the video of two best friend's playthrough. While I do think let's plays are a waste of time, I remember this one being somewhat entertaining. Maybe, if I have some mindless, tedious task in front of me, I'll listen to it as a podcast. Or maybe not."

This does not belong in this thread but you can notice that it has both Fallout and my little pony elements in it.

"Have you guys thought about how Littlepip is a unicorn but doesn't know more than the spell that lets her levitate objects? I have. To me, it's like playing Dragon age origins and start to equip your character with swords and put your points in strength like you would a melee character. Though, I don't play that game anymore. It's long, tedious, and while it has stuff it in that I like, it is an autism trap and..."
This is me using this reference as a jumpoff point to start talking about something else. You do this a lot.

Well... >>293336 the way GG references The great Gatsby would be an example of a good reference. It could even be shorted down a bit but not by that much. Do you see how he constantly uses his reference to hammer home his point about perspective? Do that.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293713
293714 293717
h89yfzjvh5qy.png
>>292888

Alright Sven, I had a look at your story.

As has been the case with other works of yours that I've read, this is a good story which unfortunately also suffers from a lot of ESL type problems. It would be a little too time consuming to go over all of the grammatical mistakes; just be advised that there are a lot of them. In the meantime, I'll just highlight the ones that I think deserve attention. It actually looks like your grammar may have improved a tiny bit since the last thing I read from you, so nice job there.

I'm not sure if this is meant to be a complete flash-fiction piece or if this is a part of something larger, but either way there is a complete story here that is told from start to finish, so nice job there as well. The story appears to be a HiE scenario, with Anon and a couple of poners on a deep sea treasure hunting expedition.

The first thing mentioned in the story is a sign that indicates the location is called Black Floof's Trench, and that there are giant squids present. The sign is observed by Anon and the two poners as they pass by in a boat.

>On the aft of the boat, a glowing emerald was attached and jolts of electricity sometimes appeared around it. In a slow and careful motion did a green man turn a dial on a control panel near the emerald. The screw propelling the large boat slowly ceased moving.
It's not entirely clear what I'm supposed to be visualizing here. I get the impression that the emerald is some kind of magic gem that somehow powers the boat, so I'm envisioning something like a modern boat with a magic gem in place of a motor. As I've been pointing out with FoE, there are some areas where an author will want to go into more detail, and other areas where it's better to just give a quick description and move on. Since we're dealing with uncommon technology unique to your story's world, this is an area where you'll want to get a little more detailed.

>It's like looking straight into Tartarous.
Tartarus.

The boat pulls to a stop, and the pones and Anon peer over the edge into Black Floof's Trench. The trench itself is quite deep, but cuts through a much more shallow region which they are able to see down to. A sunken ship straddles from one end of the trench to the other, so I'm envisioning a fairly narrow deepwater chasm.

>The green man smiled and pulled off his shirt with a palm-tree motif, kicked off his sandals, and walked up to the other ponies in the front in his bathing shorts or swimsuit?
How is this a question?

Anon's companions are a brown earth pony mare whose name is never given (the pegasus at one point addresses her as "Ex", but it's never revealed what this nickname is short for), and a pink pegasus whose name we eventually learn is Pearl Splash. The description of these two is more than sufficient for the story, although I will note it's a little disconcerting that one of them has a name and the other does not. Anon's relationship to the poners is not known, but I get the impression he's closer to the brown earth pony than he is to the pegasus, so it's odd that we have a name for the pegasus but not the earth pony. The ponies address Anon by name fairly early on, and as I mentioned we learn that Pearl Splash is the name of the pegasus, so brown earth mare is the only character in the story without a name. This creates an imbalance. If you wanted to, you could leave all three of these characters as nameless and the story could still work as written, but if you're going to name one of the ponies you ought to name the other as well.

Anyway, they have come to this place in order to retrieve a jewel box that is in the cabin of the wrecked ship. It appears to belong to the earth pony, or at least she is the one who wants it retrieved. However, now that she has seen the ominously deep trench, as well as the sign indicating the presence of carnivorous squids, she is having second thoughts. Anon doesn't seem fazed by the potential danger, and he and Pearl Splash joke around about it. The earth pony is not amused, and continues to entreat Anon to be careful. To reassure her, he shows her a device he apparently keeps in his pants. It appears to be a magically powered weapon of some kind, with an emerald similar to the one driving the boat.

>”I made this present for any tentacled admires that doesn't get personal space.
I think you mean to say "admirer" and not "admires" here. This sentence was a little difficult to decipher, but here is my best interpretation of what Anon is trying to say:
>I made this present for any tentacled admirer that fails to understand the concept of personal space.
However, this meaning isn't immediately apparent. The confusion is that "doesn't get personal space" has an ambiguous meaning: "get" in this context could mean "understand" (which is the most logical usage here so I assume that's what you were going for), or it could also mean "receive," as in the squid is being given personal space. I'd probably swap "get" for "understand" here in order to make the intended meaning clearer.

Anyway, Anon drops the magic weapon down his pants and vaults over the edge of the boat. The earth pony makes one last attempt to change his mind, but he ignores her. At this point he takes a deep breath and begins to dive.

A minor logic issue I notice with this story is that Anon seems able to hold his breath for an unreasonably long period of time. I don't get the impression he has very far to dive, but he's underwater for quite awhile and performs several physically demanding actions that would be difficult to do without taking a breath. The tone of the story is somewhat cartoonish so you can honestly get away with this; hence I call it a minor logic issue. However, you might want to take some time and think about how long you want the reader to believe this character can actually go without breathing.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293714
293719
>>293713

>It was closed and you could barely see that it was supposed to be a door as the frame and the cracks between the door and it was covered in some kind of marine vegetation. He tried the handle. He felt the oily and mud-like coating on the handle as he tried to pull it down. The handle was had probably corroded but after Anon put down his feet into the cozy, partially living deck, he managed to get more force in and the handle broke off.
It's clear enough what happens here: the door is stuck shut and the handle is weak, and it breaks off in Anon's hand as he tries to open it. However, the way you describe it is unnecessarily complicated and I had to read it a couple of times to figure it out. Particularly this part:
>The handle was had probably corroded but after Anon put down his feet into the cozy, partially living deck, he managed to get more force in and the handle broke off.
"The handle was had probably corroded" is a grammatical nightmare; you should either use "was" or "had" but not both.

Anon put down his feet into the cozy, partially living deck
"Cozy" is a bad adjective to use here; you're trying to create an ominous mood, but "cozy" does the opposite. "Partially living" I'm assuming refers to the algae and plankton and shit growing on the deck.

I'd probably fix the wording so it's a bit clearer, and it ought to be broken into a couple of separate sentences as well, so it's a little easier to understand what's going on. Try this:
>The handle was probably corroded. Anon pressed his feet against the barnacle-encrusted deck for better leverage, but the instant he tugged on the handle it snapped off.

There's also this:

>Anon's teeth visibly clenched as his mouth turned to a mad grin and his eyes glinted with madness. Then his facial expression turned to that of dread.
"Dread" is a pretty huge overreaction to what's happening right now. If he were inside the cabin and this happened while he was trying to get out, I could see that being a pretty serious "oh fuck" moment that might justify dread; in his present situation this is a minor setback at best. Also, you use both "mad" and "madness" in the same sentence; that kind of redundancy is usually a bad idea.

Anyway, Anon needs to find another way into the cabin, so he swims around a bit and finds a hole in the side.

>Small fishes fleed the hole as Anon sawm down into.
"Fled" is the past tense of flee. Also, you misspelled "swam." Also, even if all words were spelled correctly this sentence still wouldn't make sense. "Anon swam down into" is not a complete sentence; he has to swim down into something. I'm assuming you mean he swam into the hole, so what you'd want to say is "Small fishes fled the hole as Anon swam down into it."

He swims into the cabin and finds something, which we are sort-of baited into thinking is a giant squid which probably wouldn't fit into the cabin, btw, but actually turns out to be the skeleton of the dead deceased corpse of Floofy the Pirate, or whatever her name is.

>On a chair at a wooden desk, dressed in some kind of tattered black leather jacket and wearing a black hat with a wide brim that seemed to fold in on itself and with an added extra length of transparent frilly hems was a pony skeleton. The corpse was haunched over the desk. The size of the skeleton was like the mares in the boat above Anon.
Remember what I said earlier about details? Here we have the opposite problem: you go into a lot of detail describing this pirate hat, but we probably don't need to know this much about it. Also, you don't really need to note the size of the skeleton; you stated earlier that it was the skeleton of a pony, and we've seen two ponies already, so the reader will naturally assume you're talking about a creature of similar size. Unless the skeleton is abnormally larger or smaller than an average pony, you can probably omit this detail. Also, it's "hunched" over the desk, not "haunched."

Anon searches through the desk for the jewel box but is unable to find it. After a bit more searching, he finds it underneath the skeleton. The key is already in the lock, and it initially gives him some trouble but he's ultimately able to get it open. Wait, scratch that; I read it wrong. The box is actually opened, and he locks it for some autistic reason. It's not clear why he would need to do this; whatever's inside is about as wet as it's going to get. It's also worth remembering that he has been holding his breath all this time, and probably doesn't have much time to goof around down here.

>He was about to leave when he again got saw the hat on the cranium of the dead horse. He shrugged his shoulders and took off the hat and put it on himself. He nodded to himself and then proceeded to pat the back of the white pony cranium.
>Mmm, good little pony, he thought to himself as he caressed its skull.
Why would he do that? That's weird. This guy is weird.

Anyway, he got what he came for plus a new hat, and now it's time to go. He exits the cabin and begins swimming up to the surface. He is now very nearly at his limit as far as breath-holding is concerned, but he's just about in the clear. However, before he can reach the surface, a squid suddenly attacks.
Anonymous
02fc54f
?
No.293717
293718 293720
>>293713
The spoilered text in this post gives you the surrounding details to the story. I'm sad to see that it is badly spelled too or well that as well. As, while I didn't properly proofread this story, which I hate myself for now, I did throw it through grammarly so it shouldn't have any spelling errors unless I somehow posted the not corrected version instead...
>>292887
Anonymous
02fc54f
?
No.293718
>>293717
I didn't.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293719
293721
>>293714

I'll be honest, the squid attack is not much of a surprise here and probably doesn't have as much punch as you'd like it to, but on the other hand you did a good job setting this up. The very first thing we learn about this trench is that it has giant squids in it, and the characters all reference the possibility of a squid attack, so the presence of giant squids in this location is being continually enforced. It isn't written particularly elegantly, but the attempt at a jump scare when he's in the cabin and suddenly sees what he thinks is a squid but turns out to be a skeleton is also a nice addition. You continuously foreshadow that there is going to be a giant squid somewhere in this story, and you don't disappoint us. That's more than kkat would do, so I'll give you a point for proper setup and another for proper delivery. The only downside is, if anything, it's a little too predictable; we've been expecting a squid for quite some time, and then one appears almost on cue. The way Anon handles it is also fairly anticlimactic; he just throws his magic bomb at it and that appears to take care of it.

>His whole body began to spasm as pain flowed throughout his body. The squid had also felt it, clearly as it waved erratically for a moment before, the squid dove like a rocket back into the abyss. Anon soon regain control of his body. Even though he had basically been shaking, he had managed to hold onto the jewel box. Pain still soared in his limbs but the very extreme need for oxygen did not give him any time to relax. Not that he wanted to stay in the water any longer.
Wait, I may have read this wrong too. It's actually a little unclear what Anon's secret weapon actually does. I had assumed it was some kind of bomb or depth charge that he was simply throwing at the squid, but this sounds like he's hurting himself as well. Maybe it released some sort of electrical charge, and being in the water would mean that Anon would be electrocuted along with the squid? However, that would be kind of a silly thing for him to do, since the amount of juice it would take to kill a giant-ass squid would presumably kill a human as well. This is probably another area where you'll want to elaborate a bit.

>He swam up the last meters to the surface and the first thing he did when he breached the surface was gasping for air.
The first thing he did was gasp for air.

Anyway, Anon climbs up out of the water no worse for wear and is greeted by Pearl Splash.

>”Heh hehe-Hahaha! Oooooohhh, that hurt,” Anon said, put a palm to his forehead, and with his other hand, he pointed a finger gun at the pegasus. ”You could call it quite the shocking turn of events.”
>”Wha? No, way. HAHA, are you really..?” The pegasus crumbled onto the floor and rolled over on her back. She had to hold her stomach as she began to howl with laughter.
Was his pun really that funny?

Honestly this whole bit is more confusing than anything. For one, it's still not entirely clear just what his little device did; he clearly released some kind of non-fatal electrical charge, but we don't really get a sense of how powerful it was. Again, I'm assuming a giant squid would take a lot of juice to bring down, so I find it a little hard to believe Anon would be able to just shrug off the damage like this. You might want to make it a little more clear what exactly his weapon does.

Anyway, the earth pony mare hugs Anon with tears in her eyes, happy to see that he has returned to her from the briny deep. He consoles her, and this ends the story.

All in all, this is pretty consistent with other works I've read from you in terms of quality. You've written a good story here and you exhibit a fine knack for storytelling; unfortunately your butchery of the English language makes it a bit difficult to properly enjoy. We'll focus on the positives for now.

You build a complete story here that works as a self-contained piece of flash-fiction, but could easily be expanded into something larger. Considering the short length of the work, the characterization is handled fairly well. We don't spend much time with any of these characters, but we get a distinct sense of three separate personalities here, and we have enough information to approximate their appearances for ponies, usually just mentioning colors and what type of pony they are is enough, and again this is far more than kkat does most of the time. We never learn why exactly the three of them are out here, why brown mare wants the jewel box, who Black Floofy the Pirate Queen was exactly, or anything about the broader world, but that's 100% fine. Not knowing makes us curious, which means if you wanted to build this into a larger story you've already got the reader hooked. If you just want to leave it as is, this works equally well as a standalone story: you introduce us to some characters and a setting, you lead a protagonist through a series of adventures that culminates in his confrontation with a squid, he completes his quest, and you give us a satisfactory ending. That's all a story really requires.

As I've also commented on your works in the past, you really do have a solid intuitive grasp of how to tell a story. Occasionally you give us a little too much detail Floofy's hat probably didn't need an entire paragraph's worth of description or not quite enough knowing specifically what Anon did to win his battle against the squid would have been helpful, but you build the story well. Your main deficiency lies, as ever, in your mastery of the language itself, which I again suspect is mostly an ESL thing that I can't reasonably fault you for. I've never tried to write in another language before, but if I did I imagine I would struggle. If you honed your English a bit I honestly think you would make a very good writer.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293720
>>293717
>>292887
Oh okay, now I remember that spoilered bit. Sorry, I forgot to address that in my review. Here's a short addendum that addresses this.

As I mentioned, you actually do a fairly good job with characterization in this. Not just anon but the ponies as well. As I said, you've created three distinct personalities here: Pearl Splash seems to be kind of a brazen, carefree type pony who takes life as it comes and doesn't worry too much, whereas the brown earth pony seems to be more kind and nurturing. She also appears to have romantic feelings for Anon.

As to Anon himself, you definitely nailed down Jokester and Adventurous; both of these traits came through clear as a bell. He seems to enjoy taking risks, and approaches dangerous situations with humor and ease. The third trait, however, did not come through quite so much; Anon in this story did not strike me as necessarily greedy. He takes the hat from the pirate skeleton, but I see that as more of his jokester personality. The jewel box he's already stealing is of far greater value than a hat, and besides, the pirate is dead. It's not like it's going to make much of a difference to her at this point whether her hat goes with you or stays down here until it disintegrates.

We don't see much of his martial arts skills on display here. I get the impression that he is comfortable in dangerous situations, but that doesn't automatically mean he's a skilled fighter. If you're looking for a place to wedge this in, you could kill two birds with one stone and draw out the fight with the squid a bit more. No reason he couldn't kung fu fight it a little before he electrocutes it or whatever.

>Red Ex
Alright, now we've got a name for her. You should probably drop that in somewhere; just having one of the other characters call her by name would be more than sufficient.

>The emerld battery thingies is a set up for the next scene which introduced our secondary main character. This is the opening scene of the story.
I suspected this might be the case, but you still may want to fill in the reader a bit. Even if you don't explain what the mechanisms are just yet, a slightly more detailed visual might still be helpful.

>All the three personality traits of Anon should be portraited in these scene except for greedy because I didn't feel like writing extra much to establsih this here. I'll think I do that later. So the question is if you find Anon to be adventourus or a jokester.
Well, I should probably learn to start reading things in their entirety before I start typing. "Yes," I think, would be the answer to this question.
Anonymous
02fc54f
?
No.293721
293728
>>293719
> If you honed your English a bit I honestly think you would make a very good writer.
Jesus, that's one of the best compliments I have ever got for my writing. So in other words, what are you after? ;P

Honestly, this help is really percious to me. I'm really happy right now. Thank you.

I have written half of the next chapter for this story, would you agree to giving it another mini review when it's done? If you only glance at it and give me one post's worth of commentary, that would be great. I'll will proofread it a few times over this time to make sure that what you comment mainly next tiem is not just my poor grammar, which I am sorry for having you suffer through.

Here's a list of things that isn't to defend myself because if it is not clear enough to be understood than that's on me , I just wanna clearify my intentions with some of these things. The rest of your commentary are basically things I agree with.

>Emerald batteries and the squid
The idea is that Anon unleashes a electircal charge in the water and the pulse from it hurts him more than it does the squid since he is close to it. The squid still flees because it got scared from the minor but still somewhat painful jolt it got in this discharge.

>Pearl Splash laughing at Anon's bad pun
The idea here is that Pearl is relieved that Anon survived he encounter with the squid and got back up from the depths. So when he cracks a joke like usual, the tension she has been feelng up to now is released and she just laughs at Anon for being who he is and for the bizare situation more than the pun itself.

>Cozy wooden floor on the ship
The narrator was joking and being sarcastic. That might not fit since the narrtor is kind of a factual kind of guy in this story.

Again, if this didn't come through it is still my fault. I just wanna clearify my intentions.

>>293704
I don't dislike you and there are things that you have said that I have found to be solid. My criticism is not personal in that regard but just me expressing problems I have, and others, with your current posting style.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293722
293723 293728 293772
D1eFk55XcAE9CLc.jpg
>>293574
>hey Glim, Silver Star Rewrite Ch1 is complete. Can I post it for you to review after the end of this Fallout Equestria chapter?
I'll certainly take a look at it, but I don't really want to delve too deeply into something new until we've wrapped up FoE. Feel free to post it, but I will probably not review it until quite a bit later. I suspect that at some point I'm going to get burned out on kkat's autism, and may want to take a short break and deal with someone else's autism for awhile. Your story will probably be a good candidate for that.

>>293592
>Remember this: never give traitors a chance to breathe or they will abuse that notion to the fullest extent. Your last bullet must ALWAYS take out the traitor before the enemy.
What the hell are you even on about? We're talking about books here.

>>293618
>Mind you he spoiler marks plot critical elements but I'd say the biggest grievance I've had if I'd be able to throw in my two cents is with the posts most start off good dissecting a scene or theme Glim brings up from the text but they quickly derail when he discusses a Fallout mod that reworks the game and begins to explain all the elements of the mod from gameplay to quests that don't exactly connect with the story or pulling up other media like MGS, Ace Combat, Naruto, or Pokemon.
I would overwhelmingly prefer to keep the discussion in this thread focused on the fic itself, so I'd encourage you to share your thoughts on anything related to the actual text. Fallout itself is tangentially relevant to FoE since much of kkat's lore is derived from the games, but the games themselves have nothing to do with the story.

Nigel, if you could please keep that in mind when bringing up Fallout mods and things of that nature it would be appreciated. Often your posts will start off on topic, and then you bring up some Fallout mod or something from one of the Fallout games, and it becomes more of a discussion of your opinions of the games or the mods, without being relevant to FoE. This is part of what people are complaining about. The games are relevant to some degree, and I'll admit that some of your background information has been helpful in deciphering parts of the world. But, ultimately, the topic of the thread is Fallout: Equestria, not Fallout.

>Been working on a little story myself recently and even if Glim won't review it I might try posting it just so everyone here can take a crack at it and ply their critical eye to it if they'd be willing.
Feel free. Depending on length I may do it as another "break" story. I usually end up reviewing most of the things people give me just ask Sven.

>>293671
>You one-hundred percent should focus on this project before fanfiction writing. Also, I'll give this super advice that has been burnt into me, do not talk about your dreams, make them reality instead. I don't wanna hear more about this game until you release a pre-alpha finished version. Don't ever mention it here again, since it is irrelevant and only makes me suffer out of pity for you. If you really wanna talk about it, make a thread on /sp/ or like /vx/ and have a progress diary there.
Incidentally, this is good advice. Don't talk about making things, just make things, and then show them to people once they're finished.

As to the overall complaints about the speed and content of the thread, I apologize for sometimes being gone for days at a time, but I do have other projects going on besides this review thread, and other things going on in my life that periodically require attention. Reading something as long and densely autistic as FoE and then attempting to write a thoughtful analysis of it can be a time-consuming process; sometimes a single post can take an hour or more to compose and edit. And sometimes I just plain need to take a break from reading shitty pony fiction written by spergs and read something actually good for awhile. I'm not bitching, but I do ask that you all please bear this in mind.

In the meantime, you may all feel free to discuss the story in my absence, but if my opinion counts for anything, I'd be grateful if the meta-discussion about Nigel would cool down a bit and the discussion would focus on the fic itself. I'd also appreciate it if Nigel himself would try to stay a little more on-topic so the same meta-discussion doesn't keep recurring, because some of the points being brought up are perfectly valid.
Anonymous
02fc54f
?
No.293723
>>293722
> I apologize for sometimes being gone for days at a time
Obligatory, "What you have a life as well? Who authorized this?"-joke.
Anonymous
348dbfd
?
No.293724
>>293671
>>Maybe I should work on my indie game full-time, there's good money in indie games

Laughs in russian.

glim makes valid points on how to fuck up a story real bad. What amazes me is that the knowledge he shares is applicable to many fields, not just writing. I never considered FoE to be of any help but the way it is being torn apart here is really helping me to understand the flaws of my own narrative. Like inserting murder porn and covering it up with excuses trying to pass it as something else. People often forget that the problems in art always arise from an artist, not the art itself. And tracing the errors in art is unique because its about analysing one cuck behind those abstractions he paints.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293728
293729 293796
2171480__safe_oc_oc-colon-calamity_oc-colon-littlepip_human_fallout+equestria_caption_danny+devito_fanfic_fimfiction_frank+reynolds_gun_image+macro_it27s+always.jpeg
2322450__suggestive_artist-colon-breioom_edit_oc_oc-colon-sydney_fallout+equestria_blood_crying_glasses_grayscale_heart+eyes_meme_monochrome_tears+of+pleasure_w.png
2337017__safe_artist-colon-ljdamz1119_edit_oc_oc+only_oc-colon-littlepip_unicorn_fallout+equestria_cropped_glowing+eyes+meme_gun_handgun_meme_pistol_reaction+im.png
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST SOMEBODY ACTUALLY CREATED THIS.png
>>293722
Please don't feel guilty about the thread's speed. You're a fucking trooper for making it through more words of badfic than me. I once tried MST3King that LessWrong "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" fic but I couldn't get past the part where the second bullshit justification for Harry acting like a self-insert is revealed. "He was raised by a Straw Vulcan and overemotional twat of a woman" was enough to explain why he became an egotistical neurotic aggressive headcase unable to meaningfully connect with anyone not invented by a manchildish author for the sole purpose of worshipping him. Retconning him and Quirrel to be a product of Voldemort's tampering was pointless, because it means THEY'RE BOTH self-inserts. Imagine the sheer fucking ego required to make yourself the hero and villain of a stolen story written for Boomer women and forced upon children! God, fuck that guy. Insert joke about boomer women forcing themselves on kids here.

>What the hell are you even on about? We're talking about books here.
I don't think he came here to talk about books. I guess those two feel betrayed because I stopped taking their shit with a smile on my face, but it's weird how they can't see how alike their attitude towards me is. One day I'm on-topic and comparing this writing to other things in the genre, the next I'm hopped up on the last energy drink I own and telling people I hate hot dogs, but there's an equal level of hatred for all of it from my haters because their feelings were never really about how I conduct myself, just what they think of the phantom somebody named "Nigel".
If I'm good for a while, instead of giving me credit "he's just laying low and getting a mexican lookout" is what he says. If I post random bollocks just to see what happens, "He's always like this". My distaste for the Great Khans and wish that they were written better makes me a like Hitler right now, maybe even two Hitlers. If I down my final can of energy drink because I wanted to make room in my minifridge for more fruit and pouring them down the sink seemed wasteful and excessively dramatic, I'm suddenly like Seb the fat fuck from /sp/ AND Hillary Killary Klanton at the same time. Supposedly I'm a lost cause who never listens to anyone, because I can't make those two feel listened to or respected.
I miss when we were all friends. I'm not sure why, but I still do.
Anyway I won't mention the big tiddy rabbit girl game in this thread again. I won't talk about it to anyone until it's done. I am filled with the urge to get out everything I currently think of the game right now but I won't do that. I will be good.
I'll stop talking about Fallout mods. And my views on Fallout 3.
If I want to say "This story would be improved if he took more inspiration from ___ when it comes to writing _____" should I leave out the explanation of what that is and why, to shorten my posts?

>>293721
All I can think of to say about the fic is that if a narrator's being sarcastic when that's not normal, it probably be more obvious than it would usually be from a frequently-sarcastic character. For example:
>Wow, a wooden floor. Wonderful. How cozy.

To get discussion back on FE...

The story feels pretty aimless right now, but I reckon a setting up a "Starter Villain" for the heroes to take down would be the perfect thing to get the heroes wrapped up in a larger conflict that villain was involved with.
A moment like taking on an enemy slaver town practically-solo could have used more buildup. Perhaps LP could try to get the help of NA townsfolk, and they'd each say "I'll only help you if you do this sidequest for me".

Speaking of sidequests, I think giving LP a "Deliver this letter" sidequest is dumb. If this guy's supposed to think LP wants to join, shouldn't LP be given some seemingly-impossible challenge that's a test of LP's loyalty and combat effectiveness? "Prove your loyalty to me by permanently burning bridges with your old employer" would be great. "Go slaughter this raider nest, it's a suicide mission- holy shit I didn't expect you to succeed! You're hired!" could work too.

And in the meantime, I initially saw True Slaverist Radio as a joke but giving a major faction a radio station LP could listen to would be perfect for establishing who they are, what they're about, and so on without it interrupting the current story any more than LP's obsession with pre-war diary entries already does.
## Ninja
0000000
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No.293729
>>293728
>more gaslighting
>more deflection
>more refusal to accept responsibility
I hope you got it out of your system, I'm killing from here on out
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293748
293769 293772 293794 293806
>be Littlepip
>plan a raid on Old Appleoosa for weeks
>actually Calamity did most of the planning since you knew jack shit about wasteland combat, being a complete newfag and all
>but at least you did get the help of multiple townsponies
>even if it did require literal goddamn days of sidequesting
>Calamity remarks on how he's helping you raid a town even though he once shot you for thinking you were a raider
>ironic.jpg
>anyway
>it is time
>plan the raid out perfectly
>Plan A
>everypony sneaks into position for plan B. Littlepip sneaks into town and frees all the slaves and gets to the train, which is staffed by friendly drivers, who will take them home to Old Appleoosa
>Plan B
>Littlepip tries plan A and fails so everyone starts blowing shit up and killing slavers to create enough chaos for Littlepip to escape with as many slaves as possible
>the big day arrives
>attempt Plan A
>it fucking fails
>Plan B creates a warzone in this evil town of slavery and death
>everything is going accordion to plan
>even kill the town's evil boss, some faggot sherrif in a kevlar vest
>nopony can stop you now
>oh shit that's a fucking alicorn
>OH SHIT THAT'S A FUCKING ALICORN!
>WHY IS THERE AN ALICORN HERE?
>oh good she's monologue like an evil supervillain while kicking your ass
>she explains she was sent here to negotiate a peace treaty between the Alicorn Ethnostate of Alicornicopia and Red-Eye's Red Empire
>she kills one of your freed slaves to be an asshole
>lure her to some boxcars and use your limited psychic power to make one boxcar topple over and fall on her
>squish.mp3
>will never forget that sound
>wish you had the sheer magical might to lift that boxcar back up and slam it down on the alicorn some more
>but only an alicorn could do that
>return to train
>only a few slaves survived
>"enjoy" the sad train ride home
"Damn... What a disaster. I failed so many ponies"
>Calamity raises an eyebrow at you. "No way! This was a huge success! Nopony has ever saved a single slave from a major slave trading hub in the history of the Equestrian Wasteland! We're heroes! When we get back to town, I'm going to fuck SO! MANY! BITCHES!"
>get back to town
>get shunned and blamed for the attack and accused of being evil murderhobos who tried to ransom these slaves back to town
>because this is an evil town of cunts who refuse to pay you for saving their foals
>and really don't want this attack on Red-Eye or an Alicorn blamed on them
>Derpy The Ghoul joins you as a permanent party member because she hates this place and your party could use a merchant to make sure you get the best deals with other merchants when buying ammo and guns
>walk away from town, still being Littlepip
>stare at female asscheeks because you are gay
>mmmm... ass.

rate my entirely on-topic greentext plz
sage
c9149df
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No.293769
1508978318387-0.jpg
>>293748
Fuck off and hang yourself, britmutt. Your shitty canned laughter-ridden comedy sketches are worse than Paradise Falls, the SIMP sons, and amerimutt goydad. Blackjack's entire character being a flexible, empathic, not overpowered niggerbitch > the entirety of FAILOUT E-cuckstriedhardlawl including (You). I'll be recommarending that fic to shimflam once he gets done with this mess.
Anonymous
bbcc4f1
?
No.293772
293794
>>293748
I'd rate it a meh. It's something, as it addresses the issues of the fic without actually addressing the issues. When it does it's not engaging mearly 'yes indeed, so?'.
The sarcastic tone does seep through. That sarcasm has no deeper meaning. So it's not funny even as littlepip is recounting how the fuck the flaws are there and the real fic story is shit and makes no sense there is nothing else.
Just like the Fallout: Equestria I can't bring myself to care about littlepip. I still have zero investment. The small minuscule blips of amusement is purely structural as that is what is about to happen with each action completely expected, thus its boring.
It's on topic it's better than the usual, but my heart is still icy and rock hard.
There is no stakes no expansion of a plan A or B so it simply happens and it fails because that's what happens.
There is no twists and turns. No build up, no excitement. It is a characature of a bland protagonist that does fuck all which would be a bland protagonist that still does fuck all.
It is on topic and sums up the issues of the main story. Compared to other posts it's short and almost to the point.
>>293722
Sorry I haven't been posting much lately GlimGlam just haven't had the right kind of motivation or analytical tool kit to properly dissect the story.
As always it's fun reading your posts.
>>293282
>an author needs to be able to filter what is worth including in the text of the story and what should be glossed over, merely implied, or outright omitted.
I think my issue is summed up here quite well with that quote. Reading things I skim over a lot of stuff and pluck the good bits out. Leaving me to enjoy the few sparkles of diamond in the rough if any.
As a writer I only put only the minimum that I think is needed, and that happens to be far less than is what is required to have a fully healthy fleshed out story. Probably other problems as well.
Anonymous
00b14a6
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No.293794
293795
>>293748
>rate my entirely on-topic greentext plz
>on-topic
So you couldn't, huh? When Pascal said that all ills in the world stem from humans being unable to sit in a quiet room, this is what I think he meant.

Nigel, I know that you know that this is trash. I'm not even gonna comment on it unless you point to the specific points in your green that you think, in all honesty, have merit. You won't do this because you and I both know that this was rushed and lacks such things.

Use every ounce of will to fight your dopamine addiction, because this is what they mean when they mention dopamine around you. You see this mod and then you're like how can I post something long but still on-topic?

And btw, the logic of there always needs to be activity here to draw Anons in is wrong. It has the opposite effect, I have realized now that I have time to think about it.

There's another expression that goes like this, "If you want to make people sail the sea, then don't tell some to chop wood for the ship's hull and some to sew the sails. Instead, make them yearn for the wast and majestic beauty and wonder of the sea."

The same goes here. But let's actually go all out with examples so you can clearly see where I'm going with this.

There's this yt:er called Mauler, he is a liberal in the same vein as Sargon of Akkad, but there are things to respect him for like his respect for E;R. He has a podcast called Efap and a channel. While I do not agree with his philosophies and worldviews and stuff, I do respect his competency to produce reviews and analytical observations regarding games and media. He has produced some good stuff. Here's the crux though, that's all on this main channel. The podcast sucks ass. And the interesting thing about that is that you think that he would be the guy who understood why the most but clearly he doesn't. In his channel's earlier videos, he used to pride himself on his amount of redrafting. His point was that it is easy to make mistakes and redrafting corrects flaws and increases the quality of his review, which seemed to be of the highest priority. However, as his podcast grew, his old channel basically died. His podcast has like 100 episodes with like up to 12 hrs each. But here's the thing, they are all live streams. It honestly, encapsulates many of the problems that this sorts of melting pot, this creates: Circlejerk of e-celebs; sycophantic chat; "memes" referencing "Oh, so clever!" said things in the group which really are just self-congratulatory pats on the back; lazy, basic-bitch commentary; and quick to anger, overdone sensationalistic journalism. I slogged through some episodes' beginnings before coming to this conclusion. I have, however, watch a lot more and enjoyed a lot more of his regular vids.

Now, let's take E;R as a comparison. He doesn't have a stream nor does he produce a bunch of shitty vlogs like other yt:ers. He just makes well-produced videos. However, these vids are so well produced that I have watched them several times because I always find something new that is good about them.

If you want to inspire someone to become a chef, then you don't take them to a fast food place. You take them to a fancy restaurant and order a diverse set of unique dishes to makes them marvel at what can be.

When you rewatch Naruto which episodes do you skip? Well, you skip the filler ones but you absolutely don't skip the climaxes and the good episodes.

That's what your posts are in this thread, they are the filler episodes between gg's posts that are the good episodes.

You do not need to fill the gap. If there's high-quality here, then anyone who sees it will come back for updates of it. They will wait and in fact, I usually find out that E;R has a new vid out, not because I was actively looking for it but because I came back to watch a vid he already had done. The same goes here.

There is no need to fill the gap between with low-effort shit. This won't keep me here. Though, the opposite is true for many other things. Perhaps not here because, one can scroll past your posts but when a show has a lot of filler, that's a red flag to me.

Really also, the exclusiveness of having a place where things of a certain kind but also of a certain quality has value in itself.

Therefore, just stop posting for a while. There is absolutely no gap that needs to be filled.

And if you really can't handle the dopamine dry period, then please put some fucking effort into what your posting. >>293772 Review of it is exactly on point on this.

Anonymous
00b14a6
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No.293795
>>293794
Yeah yeah, damned if you do damned if you don't So good on you that you indeed are on topic but you add nothing to the thread with low effort.
Anonymous
00b14a6
?
No.293796
>>293728
>All I can think of to say about the fic is that if a narrator's being sarcastic when that's not normal, it probably be more obvious than it would usually be from a frequently-sarcastic character. For example:
>Wow, a wooden floor. Wonderful. How cozy.
Thank you for your feedback, I will think about this.
Anonymous
00b14a6
?
No.293806
293820
>>293800
>Sneering down at someone for trying won't encourage others to try.
But I'm not sneering at someone who is "trying", I'm sneering at someone who isn't fucking trying.
>It makes sense that a slightly improved FE scene would still be trash.
Then you also know that what you wrote was, as you say, trash. Why post it?

>Can't do all of that in a short greentext.
Well, then why did you try? And you obviously don't have to fix every single problem in FE in your greentext. A parody doesn't need to have all the problems in it as butts of jokes. It's enough to address the general flaws that go like red-threads in the story.

>There can't be any room for an interesting plan involving the layout/weaknesses of Old Appleoosa because the author couldn't be assed to establish the place and give it interesting structural flaws for the heroes to exploit.
And the rest of this post.
This is kind of the phenomenon that I was referring to before. I'm not sure exactly how it works but again like, some critics make terrible writers. You can understand such a principle of story improvement like the quoted in green but you still write this >>293748
Why? Why didn't you add just that part into that green since you knew that would improve it? No seriously, why isn't LP in your green doing exactly this
> LP plans to sneak in through its sewers, set explosive charges, and get out before detonating them to cause incredible property damage and chaos.
That isn't a bad idea. It would have merit. I would have enjoyed that. But you didn't write it because you and that author, and myself included, took the low road due to laziness. Because doing that well is fucking work and that is not as fun as doing something half-assed and still get rewarded in whatever community that rewards mediocrity or watch a movie and feel superior to it because you can find its flaws.

Again, there are great critics, gg is one of them, that puts effort into his criticism. Nor is your criticism wrong either but still like the plague that causes FE to be shit is of the same kind, I think, that is causing your green to be a waste of time: Laziness.

>The rest of the post=Speculating if this story had been an entirely different story.
Well, it would have been better. You are right about that.

Well, I'll give you some credit. Your writing in this post is very coherent compared to some other of your posts and you do in fact, stay on topic.
Anonymous
## Ninja
0000000
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No.293807
293808 293852
>>293804
This thread is not 'about FoE'. Its a literary review of the story, analyzing what the story does well (lol) and poorly from a purely literary standpoint. Personal preferences are irrelevant, and the use of 'mentioning things related to FoE to justify pages of worthless observations and hateboner bias' will no longer be tolerated.
This is the future you chose.
Anonymous
00b14a6
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No.293808
>my post
>and you do in fact, stay on topic.
>>293807
>the use of 'mentioning things related to FoE to justify pages of worthless observations and hateboner bias' will no longer be tolerated.
You are exactly right. That was one of the things that felt wrong but I couldn't put my finger on.
Anonymous
2063948
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No.293809
293811 293820
>>293804
I'm thinking it may have been the picture you used. I haven't looked back to see if they deleted the Pokemon ones as well but I have to imagine /mlpol/ doesn't cotton to anthro. Will say though that your idea for the main trio is a lot better then what we got. Have the jaded old pony just wanting to fulfil his cutie mark one last time by leaving the Stable and not allow his medical skills to be used to hurt innocents he was destined to protect, the naive pampered goodie two horse shoes who wants to fulfil the same thing but is ignorant to the cost and sacrafice required to achieve it, and the young hot headed marksmen who was raised to be a killer but wants to find his own reason to fight but doesn't understand how to solve most issues outside of violence and still is indulgences by the propaganda he was raised with.

Talked to a FoE fan though and he said a reason why most these stories tend to star a unicorn lesbian is the easy crutch of a unicorn so you can write them like a normal human in Fallout but also a super mage who can do whatever the plot needs and look "super bad ass". Then for the lesbian stuff it appeals to the lgbt types for "yay representation" and for the type of guys willing to read these super long fan fics because they coom every time LittlePip or Blackjack scissor another mare because even though they hate lgbt stuff they'll coom at the sight of lesbians. If it was a straight mare they'd be pissed some stallion is cucking them from their waifu and for lesbians all you have to do to write them is either have them both be meek and giggling as they hug and hold hands or have them be extreamly crass and vulgar, constantly oogling eachother and other females, and talk about how their vaginas stink like FoE or The Last of Us 2 does it.

For this type of party with all young characters need to have a more in-depth character to them besides "fights for justice and always wins", "heals anyone and hates cages but will lock others in cages", and "yeehaw!". Usually with young groups each member has their little personality architype so they can fulfil different roles and have perspectives others might lack. Like Glim Glam said having Velvet be a mysterious fem fatal could be interesting. Would have an older more experienced pony with her leading LittlePip by the clit to use her for Velvet's own gain. Either allows Little Pip to realize she is being used and gaslighted and has to reconsider what her real motivations have been or have Velvet see this group that is choosing to follow her and grow a consious deciding to tell the truth about her mission or abandon it outright for the sake of this new group who may be inexperienced and gullible but they have a genuine desire to help that she hasn't been given from any pony else.
Anonymous
00b14a6
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No.293811
293812
>>293809
>I'm thinking it may have been the picture you used. I haven't looked back to see if they deleted the Pokemon ones as well but I have to imagine /mlpol/ doesn't cotton to anthro.
No, sorry, that was not the reason. The mod explained quite well what the reason was, in his post and you can check my post as well if you want me to elaborate.
Anonymous
2063948
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No.293812
293813
>>293811
Was typing out my thing while you both posted it so didn't catch that stuff until after I already posted and refreshed the page.
Anonymous
00b14a6
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No.293813
293814
>>293812
Huh, okay.
Anonymous
00b14a6
?
No.293814
>>293813
I mean "oh, okay". Thought to correct since "huh" has sceptical connections since I was sincere.
Anonymous
009033b
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No.293820
293852
horse pussy.gif
>>293806
>Your writing in this post is very coherent compared to some other of your posts and you do in fact, stay on topic.
Thanks! I liked the part where I speculated on how to improve Littlepip.

But thinking more on it, LP's improvement doesn't HAVE to come in this form. Any interesting protagonist that took LP's place would improve this fic, since good active protagonists drive the story.
LP's pretty one-note so her relationships with others are one-note. Good(TM) characters get along. She gets along with Neutral(TM) characters once they're on her side. And she loathes Evil(TM) characters.

I'd love to read a take on FOE featuring Duke, the fifty-something ex-military male unicorn medic from a riot-filled stable haunted by the lives he couldn't save and sent on a wild goose chase by a crystal ball fake-psychic faggot co-worker.
Because his relationships with hotshot flyboy former-enclave buddy-cop-duo Calamity and well-intentioned former-rich-bitch daughteru Velvet Remedy sound interesting.
It would be fine for a story like that to feature lazy villains. The way Duke grows and changes, the way he's affected by his failures whenever he fails, that's the interesting stuff.
I still wish it had better villains though.
I'll be real, I have absolutely no idea how you could make a good villain in the setting created by choices made during FOE's development. Fallout's villains are products of their environments and upbringings but that won't work in a knockoff.
Does anyone here have any ideas?

>>293809
Ok, I won't post oversized tiddies any more. Maybe I should have posted Amy Rose's- I mean Pinkie Pie's pussy instead? I'm tired of the fighting, so I won't talk about it any more. Instead I'll focus on shortening my posts and keeping them on-topic.

Reworking Velvet into a femme fatale sounds like a cool concept. How would someone like that emerge from LP's vault? She's a celebrity singer, so it would say a lot about LP's Stable's society if she seemed nice but was really a trickster.
If Velvet's "Leave the vault, blame LP for it so she has to leave" plan was intentional, it would say a lot about her. If LP ever catches on, that could cause interesting character conflict. Would she want LP with her the whole time as an attack dog and meat shield?

>>everyone
Was thinking more about Littlepip. She's pretty one-note, huh?
Just a mare who's a hero for fun-
I mean, just a mare who's a hero because she really hates evil for some reason.
What reason? No idea.
She doesn't have some great injustice and tragedy in her backstory to make her hate evil with a burning gun-toting passion.
She was some meek unpopular lesbian midget until circumstances outside of her control ruined her reputation and convinced her to leave the Stable.
She wasn't bullied severely by shit students and complicit teachers, she didn't watch a family business get fucked over by corrupt politicians, or lose an adored little sister to a gang of rapists who got away with it, or watch a beloved uncle have his life ruined by a false rape allegation before committing toaster bathtub.
her initial response was "I will drag Velvet back to this stable!" but she abandons this idea and settles into wastelander life almost immediately.
it's a complete coincidence when she eventually meets Velvet
But her goal isn't to drag Velvet back to the stable any more, it's to win the Wasteland game. she transformed too quickly. It's all about loot and EXP for her now.

Murderhobo RPG protag jokes are entirely warranted because she acts like the protag of a videogame where Good characters have their names highlighted in blue and baddies have their names highlighted in red.
This black-and-white thinking of hers is jarring in a morally-grey book setting.
Wouldn't it be amazing if this led up to some moment where LP slaughtered good guys because she thought they were baddies?
Imagine her unleashing White Phosphorous on a "Raider Town" because a nearby town told her to... except it's actually not a raider town, just a town of morally-grey guys in a morally-grey survival-based conflict with the other town?
It could make her really sad, because despite being a hero she's done bad things now.
And she's forced to view the world in morally-complex shades of greys from now on, growing as she starts trying to solve problems with solutions besides genocidal lead injections.

Littlepip's relations with others seem boring to me and probably to others because LP is a pretty simple character. Just a mare who's a hero because she hates evil. I reckon Luffy from One Piece does this "simple hero" bit better but I won't post a huge explanation on who he is.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to mindlessly bash the author about this.
I understand what decisions made the author think "Surely a blank-slate protag whose main identifying traits are a great hatred for evil and a greater number of firearms! ...and lesbianism, too! SHE WANTS THE CANNED COOCHIE!!!" was a good fit for the setting.
But the setting doesn't make you a blank slate. You're the blank slate AT FIRST, but you make decisions regarding who your character is and what choices are made. This determines who you are this time. Creating a unique multi-faceted protagonist is the point of all that min-maxing and stat-grinding and munchkinning.
Making the protagonist of this tale a more complex character with more going on would add more to the protag's interactions with other characters, and provide an interesting twist in the form of how this protag wants to try saving the world from Wasteland Problems like Raiders/Slavers/evil factions with bad solutions to Wasteland Problems.
Discussing interesting alternative protagonist ideas sounds constructive.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293823
293829 293842
1607045070735.jpg
>>293349

Alright, let's resume this train wreck. When we last left our intrepid heroine, she was desperately trying to think up some half-cocked reason to stick around and get drawn into a fight that has literally fuck-all to do with her or any of her companions.

>“I-I’ve been considering staying,” I admitted. “Just for a little longer.” Gawd smirked at that.
It's clear enough what's going to happen next, but the author is yanking his feminine hair plugs out trying to think up a plausible reason why it should. See, this is just one of the many reasons it's helpful to have an actual plot for your story: as long as the protagonist or main party has some overarching goal or quest, you can validly subject them to any herculean labor you see fit as long as it moves them closer to that goal. Conversely, if your protagonist is just some murderhobo whose only objective is to wander around the world knocking over slave operations because reasons and looting random cabinets because also reasons, it's hard to give her a compelling reason to do much of anything.

>On the other side of the bottle cap, I didn’t have any place else pressing to be. I didn’t have a home. The one friendly town I had encountered so far had just kicked me out. I was still as lost and adrift as ever before. I felt like I had in Stable Two when I was without my cutie mark, without a place. Same feeling... only the walls had changed. (Even the ceiling was still grey -- just higher.) I was the pony with the PipBuck on her flank -- a symbol that didn’t mean anything special in Stable Two didn’t mean anything at all in the wasteland.
This sums up her position pretty accurately, but the author isn't really doing his protagonist any favors by pointing out how lame she is. All this paragraph does is call the reader's attention to the already-obvious fact that this story is just meandering, plotless bullshit and the protagonist is an absolute drip. This character has no goals or motivations at all, she just does whatever because whatever, and reacts to whatever situation she finds herself in by doing whatever. At this point we have consumed enough of this author's words to constitute a complete novel, but he apparently hasn't even finished laying out his exposition yet. The only reason I'm assuming there will eventually be a plot at all is because anons in this thread have told me so. If I were just reading this on my own, I would have stopped about 4 chapters ago, sharted out a quick "this sucks, why do so many people like this?" on Goodreads, and moved the fuck on.

>Watcher had told me to search for my virtue. What virtue did I have if I walked away? Okay, sanity perhaps. Was sanity a virtue? Self-preservation?
This bit with the virtues has been mentioned before, and I get the impression the author is angling for it to eventually be important. However, it was only mentioned as an offhanded comment made eons ago by Frank. If you want something in a story to be important, you need to make it important; you can't just casually mention it once and then keep referring to it as if it mattered.

>Truth be told, I didn’t really have a larger mission.
As I've said before and will no doubt say again: the most frustrating thing about this author is that he clearly has the self-awareness to figure out what's wrong with his story, but he doesn't seem to have any inclination to try and fix it. Anyway, it looks like she's trying to come up with some justification for getting involved with Gawd's fight here, so it's probably worth analyzing this part closely.

>Personally, I found slavery a vile practice and I wanted to take on Red Eye.
My question to both of these points is why? Slavery just seems to be the way of the world here, and while I can understand finding it distasteful I don't really see why Littlepoop should have such a hateboner for it. She was almost a slave for like five minutes, I suppose, but that hardly counts as a life-altering experience, at least not compared to some of the other shit that's happened to her.

Here is why I bring this up: it's one thing to have a negative opinion of something, but dedicating time and energy to fighting it is another matter. For example, most people are morally opposed to child abuse, but usually don't go around with shotguns hunting down child abusers. For anyone to actually go that far, there is usually some personal motivation beyond the normal objections most people have to that sort of thing; either they themselves or someone they are close to was abused, so they dedicate their life to rooting out abusers. In fiction, Batman is a classic example of a character with these kinds of motivations.

Granted, some characters are just the right combination of lawful-good and psychotic to undertake a hero's mission without personal motivation. A character like Rorschach from The Watchmen might be a good example there though it's worth noting that Watchmen was a quasi-metafictional reaction to the comic-book trope of the superhero. It was written to explore the psychology of the kind of person who might want to become a vigilante crime fighter; the author essentially posits that such a personality would be extremely uncommon, which is why people in the real world don't typically become Batman type vigilantes.

In the hands of the right author that sort of motivation can be interesting, but you need to have a clear idea of who your character is in order to make it work. If Rorschach was just some normie dweeb who suddenly decided to put on a costume and run around beating up bad guys for no reason other than boilerplate Sunday-school morality, his story would be extremely boring (same goes for Batman, actually). So it is with Littlepoop: she has no clear motivation for wanting to take down slavers or fight Red Eye, so her moralizing is tedious at best and obnoxious at worst.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293829
294007
fallout__equestria___calamity_by_morsecode007_d4lf7r2-fullview.jpg
>>293823

>And yes, I’d seen signs that Red Eye was involved in something big; but it was only curiosity and worry that cajoled me to investigate.
Once again, the author indicates that he is smart enough to realize that his character is a drip, but isn't quite smart enough to know how to fix her. Boredom and curiosity might motivate a character to explore an abandoned sawmill or climb Mount Everest or undertake any number of other tasks that could potentially jump-start an interesting story, but if you're trying to write an epic tale of good vs. evil this isn't the way to go about it. If you want Frodo to hike all the way across Mordor fighting orcs and balrogs and big-ass spiders just so he can chuck a ring into a volcano, you're going to need to come up with a better motivation than just "he was bored."

>I could leave under the auspice that I was moving forward in the goal of stopping Red Eye, if indeed that was going to be my goal. But the small army just over those hills were Red Eye’s ponies. And if I really wanted to take the slavers on, why not here?
"I'm going to fight them anyway, so why not save time and do it now?" This is an even lamer motivation than "I was bored."

>“Maybe we should talk,” Calamity told me pointedly.
At this point, Calamity should probably be realizing that he didn't exactly hitch his wagon to the brightest star when he decided to team up with Littlepoop. Actually, as long as we're on the subject of motivations, just what is Calamity's supposed to be, anyway? He stated at one point that he didn't like the Appleoosa slavers, so that's probably reason enough to join her on her expedition to take that place down, but now that it's concluded, why stick with her? She was banned from returning to NA, but as far as I know the ban doesn't extend to Calamity.

It sort-of makes sense for LP and Velvet to team up, since they're both from Stable 2, they're both insufferably dull, and neither one of them has anything better to do. Calamity, though, has a home near NA and, iirc, a job protecting the trade caravans. What reason does he have to team up with this little murderhobo and follow her along wherever she goes? Is he just bored too? If he was romantically interested in her it might make sense, but there hasn't been much indication of that if the author plans on moving in that direction. I've been cutting Calamity a bit of slack so far because I find him to be the least objectionable member of this trio, but I may need to start paying closer attention to him; so far he's not really holding up under scrutiny.

Anyway, after all this, Gawd seems to reach the practical conclusion that she can always use extra muscle, so she offers LP a contract to kill Deadeyes.

>Calamity stared in surprised.
Stared in surprise.

>Gawd grimaced. “Because if you don’t, I’ll have t’ do it myself. And while I’m convinced it’s within the wingspan of my contract with Mister Topaz t’ do so, the political fallout wouldn’t be good. Deadeyes’ got a lot of supporters, and I don’t relish watching for the spear in my back.”
Gawd's reluctance to interfere with Deadeyes on the grounds of "muh contract" is another point that isn't tremendously clear, and hasn't been made any clearer since the last time I bitched about it. But whatever; who cares. "Politics" is usually a pretty good blanket reason to give if a situation is complicated but the author isn't creative or articulate enough to explain why.

>My mind reeled. Was I up to killing Deadeyes? Hell, I’d already been wanting to do that. I’d been contemplating that and more.
Why didn't you? By my count you've had at least three easy opportunities.

>But to be hired to do so? I was already a vigilante, but was I ready to be an assassin?
"I already kill ponies left and right for basically no reason, but to kill for no reason and also get paid for it? Is this permitted by my boilerplate do-gooder code of morals that I only bother to follow when and if it's convenient?" Pfft, good one LP. Oh wait, were you being serious? Let me laugh even harder.

>I’d been out of the Stable more than a week, less than two. If I did this now, what will I have become by the end of the month? By my next birthday?
By the way, do we have an exact count of the days that have passed since she escaped? I've been estimating slightly over 2 weeks, but it sounds like according to kkat I overshot it a little. As I've often complained, this story has a weird sense of time.

Anyway, she tells Gawd she'll think about the offer. Then, she realizes she's going to look like a mark ass bitch if she doesn't ask what the pay is, so she does. Gawd tells her that Deadeyes keeps the key to his secret vault hidden in his tail, and if she kills him she can have whatever's in the vault.

I have a couple of minor issues with this. The first is that it's not clear how Gawd would have obtained this information; this feels like another "vidya game NPC reveals secret to player in exchange for quest completion" moment, and not something that this character would reasonably know. The second issue is that this isn't technically a contract. Gawd is just telling Littlepoop that Deadeyes has a vault underneath his fortress, and that he keeps the key on his person. If she kills him, she could naturally take the key and help herself to whatever is in the vault, but aside from that Gawd isn't directly offering her anything. LP doesn't need to formally answer her here, in fact she could outright refuse, and then change her mind and go kill Deadeyes anyway, and still take the key and help herself to whatever's in the vault. This would probably suit Gawd just fine; she wants Deadeyes killed either way and probably doesn't care about whatever the vault contains. This isn't an assassination contract, this is just Gawd trying to tempt Littlepoop into a mutually beneficial undertaking.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
?
No.293831
294025
1607043362054.jpg
>Made sense. Naturally, a place like Shattered Hoof would be built on top of a set of gem mines. They couldn’t have always relied on just the rock farms. When the gem mines ran dry, what else was there to do with them but use them as storage. Diamond Tiara’s last message had even said something about sending the best gems “below.”
Does this make sense, though? As with everything else in this story, the author seems to have a very complex idea in his head, but he's explaining very little of it to us, and seems to assume that we'll just pick up the rest.

My understanding is that Shattered Hoof was originally a prison during the pre-apocalypse days, which is when Diamond Tiara would have worked there. In the present, it has been converted into a stronghold for Deadeyes, and he also uses it as the center of his rock-breaking gem-harvesting operation. Was the rock-breaking part of the building's original intended purpose? Like, maybe the implication is that the prisoners were also used as slave labor to break rocks or something? If so, this really wasn't clearly explained; I have been assuming that the prison and the rock-breaking plant were two different uses for the same building in different centuries.

Oh, also:

>When the gem mines ran dry, what else was there to do with them but use them as storage.
This is phrased as a question, so it should end with a question mark.

Anyway, Littlepoop asks Gawd what's in the vault, and Gawd rattles off a bunch of autism about magical weapons or something that I don't entirely follow. I think some of the gems might have been used to make magic weapons and there are some left over, or there were magic weapons made down there and presumably are still there, or maybe it's just a room full of giant dicks that kkat put into the story so he could roll around there in his imagination. Either way, I don't care. I have no doubt that we'll find out what's inside the stupid vault in due course.

>But then, if I killed Deadeyes, it wasn’t going to be for the reward anyway.
This is probably a stupid question at this point, but if not for the reward, what exactly is her reason for wanting to kill Deadeyes? From what I understand, Deadeyes is planning to betray Topaz to side with Red Eye, but that has literally fuck-all to do with Littlepoop. She doesn't know Topaz at all, and Red Eye is just some mysterious, vaguely malevolent entity at this point; apart from his apparent connection with slavers she has no more reason to hate him than she does to side with Topaz. Her only interaction with Deadeyes has been to deliver a letter for him. Is she assblasted about that? Or maybe this is just part of her whole "bad ponies must die because they're bad" philosophy; the same logic she used to kill the entire colony full of slavers who hadn't directly wronged her or anypony she cared about.

Anyway, page break. And the next scene, hoo boy. If you thought Littlepoop's tedious pseudo-moralizing was tedious, wait until you hear Velvet Remedy's.

>Velvet Remedy stomped and snorted about the cattle car, empty but for the three of us. “Littlepip, it’s one thing to kill in self defense. Or to protect others. But this...” She turned on me with a stare that could petrify the Overmare herself. “This. Is. Murder!”
It's...muh-muh-muh-MURDER?!? Oh dear! We certainly can't show that in a Christian fanfiction!

Since Velvet met Littlepoop...oh, how long has it been? Two days ago? Three? And in that time, it has pretty much just been one pointless bloodbath after another with with this pony. In fact, the whole reason the two of them met is because Littlepoop, completely unprovoked, strolled single-handedly hoofedly, whatever into the slaver camp and started capping bitches left and right. She then approached Velvet, who at the time was serving as the slavers' medic or whatever, and basically said "fuck these guys you've lived and worked with for the past two weeks, I'm going to murder them all because slavery is bad, and you need to come with me." Velvet, who is morally opposed to slavery yet worked for these slavers of her own freewill, basically tells her that in addition to slavery, she is also morally opposed to killing slavers, but on the other hand, if Littlepoop wants to kill all the slavers she's actually okay with that. And while we're on the subject of killing Deadeyes, what exactly did Velvet think that LP and Calamity were heading off to do when Gawd sent them to Shattered Hoof? That they were just going to go up there and talk to him, maybe run a couple of errands? Velvet is picking a really curious time to draw a line in the sand about murder.

About the only credit I'm willing to give kkat on his characterization of Velvet Remedy is that, at the very least, her inconsistency is consistent. Her answer to virtually any moral question seems to be "I feel very passionately about X, but the exact opposite of X is fine too."

Also, for some reason Calamity, who as far as I know has no objection to murder whatsoever, is opposed to this as well:

>Calamity was scowling. “Ah have t’ agree with Velvet Remedy on this one, Li’lpip,” he said flatly. “Ah understand the Talons, c’n even respect ‘em just a bit. But Ah ain’t a mercenary. You do this, Ah ain’t with ya.”

What exactly is the crisis of conscience here? What moral stand are these two attempting to take? That gruesome, deplorable violence is only justified when nobody is being paid to do it? That as soon as compensation enters into the equation you've crossed whatever Equestria's version of the Rubicon is? Christ, as I've explained already, this isn't even a fucking contract. This is literally no different than any of the shit they've been doing since this story began. LP could go back, tell Gawd "no" to the contract offer to satisfy Velvet and Calamity's consciences, then they could go and kill Deadeyes anyway, loot his vault, and the end result would be the same: kill the baddies, take their stuff.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.293833
293842
meh.png
If I had to hazard a guess, the main reason for this whole meandering arc is that Kkat's essentially written himself into a corner. Without going overtly into spoilers, for the events of the rest of the story to make sense, Littlepip and her friends must:
1. be established in-universe as a group capable of getting things done through lethal violence.
2. be established in-universe as people of genuinely good moral standing or at least intention in spite of #1.
3. have enough experience and power under their collective belts to justify going up against stronger enemies without getting swatted like insects.

In other words, Kkat has a grandiose plot in mind for Pip but recognises - at the very least - that she can't just walk out of the stable and immediately start picking fights with world's major powers. He needs Pip to build an in-universe reputation and portfolio for what comes later. Ponyville, Old Appleloosa and Shattered Hoof are like the starter dungeons in an RPG. Now this is a horrible way to write a story, but there does at least seem to be a kind of logic to it. It might even be workable if the characters and their situation were better defined, the blatant videogame aspects were dialed back, and the characters actually had motives beyond loosely defined good guy/bad guy inclinations.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293842
293844 293852
when you get to murderhobo for money.png
>>293823
>LP's lack of motive to get involved in someone else's fight
What if, in a meta twist, her current goal was to raise enough money to buy something awesome she saw for sale in Derpy's shop a while back? Or better yet, some cybernetic enhancement implants at a retail clinic.
Enhancing her party's firepower/survivability would make crushing bigger raider/slaver operations possible.
Velvet could want to stay true to her "Be the medic, heal poners" goal so she'd complain about Littlepip getting more mercenary-ish and becoming a literal mercenary for cash, while all LP can think is "Fuck yeah, an opportunity to loot places and kill baddies AND get paid!".
LP gets addicted to looting and shooting and loses sight of heroism. Motive decay! The tragic fall of a hero! Eventually LP makes some big fuckup(like fucking an innocent settlement with Willy Pete?), cries, realizes her mistake, and gets her shit together to be a hero again. She could try to salvage her reputation too, once "wandering hero" becomes "psychotic nightmare thief".

>LP's shitty cutie mark
POINTING *headdesk* OUT *headdesk* YOUR STORY'S PROBLEMS *headdesk* DOESN'T MAKE THEM GO AWAY!
And speaking of marks, a literally-branded slave full of rage and desperate for vengeance would make a great party member. Someone too angry to die and handy with a melee weapon. Someone with a backstory full of pain, a walking dispenser of "Here's why being a slave sucks, here's twice the daily recommended dose of edge in the form of some horror stories about horrible shit I saw happen to family members and slave friends, and here's why genociding this slaver company is fine" ready to vomit exposition on demand. Or LP could be enslaved for a while, escape after a 2 year timeskip, and become that angry hero.
Oh and putting LP's Stable in Red-Eye's sights would be excellent for giving this story rising tension and a time limit, while giving the hero a personal reason to stop the baddie. Say Red-Eye loves breaking into Stables and enslaving radiation-free genetically-pure cute poners and selling them as labourers/sex slaves/singers/dancers/whatever the fuck.

>after all this murderhoboing LP isn't sure what her virtue is
By this point I'd guess Loyalty, since she's loyal to her Stable Civilization principles and began her Wasteland mission partly because she wanted to save Velvet despite how Velvet screwed her over and killed her reputation in the stable by making LP remove her Pip-Buck. Kindness and Generosity could work too, try naming a form of generosity/kindness above putting your life on the line for poners you've never met but still love. Laughter/Honesty/Magic-Friendship is a stretch.
Speaking of Velvet why hasn't LP given Velvet the pipbuck yet? The pipbuck is a fucking autoaim cheat device, it's like a wearable GameShark/Game Genie/TAS tool that gives you superpowers in real life, the bitches from Meta Runner would cum money for this thing! It's no Omnitrix but it's still insanely powerful when used right.
If Velvet doesn't want to wear this thing, Calamity should!

LP's deciding to be the hero for no reason besides her unnaturally high hatred for bad things. That's dumb. That "Bookworm Littlepip" idea I suggested had the same problems, but at least her habit of "thinking about the world like she's in a foal's storybook" was an intentional part of her character, a persistent logical flaw that could get this good-intentioned naive fool into all kinds of trouble while Calamity McBadass practically carries her and saves her daily. At first he just wants to bone her, and owes her because she once saved his life solely because it seemed like a good guy thing to do(that would be cooler than him shooting her for wearing raider clothes). But then as she becomes stronger and proves her mettle he starts genuinely admiring her. Character growth, straight romance, everything a good story needs.

>no quest reward
Gawd should offer LP some sick guns. Author should have fun making Borderlands 2-style "Wacky weapon companies" with weird magically-enhanced guns. And to explain how Gawd knows of the key, it should be the gaudy necklace kind of key.

>fucked time
Everyone, why is time getting fucky such a common writing mistake made by newbies? Why do so many writers feel like they need everything to happen in as short a timeframe as possible, and could never just skip over a week or so even if it would improve the story's pacing? LP went from nopony to nightmare almost instantly. I counted 5 onscreen days since she left the Vault. Imagine a week of training montages with LP and Crane, while she gets to know townsponies so being told "You can never return here" eventually hurts more.

>morally good companion moment #69420
I hate when authors fuck this up.
Angry fuckers on the edge in danger of losing their morals need a Moral Companion(tm) to tell them no. Clear-cut "Good(TM)" people in a black and white world don't.
In a murderhobo world, whoever kills the most baddies is the most moral. Making moral objections like "But shotguns and white phosphorous are too harsh to use on serial rapists! We can't do war crimes or assassinations, that's mean!" just makes you a retarded wrong character who's like this so the hero can correct you and look superior.
Like you said, it makes no sense for the characters to have moral objections to murderhoboing one baddie. It's not like they object to being sicced on one baddie by a worse villain for the clear benefit of that worse villain.
This scene is here to fellate Littlepoop's "Moral Clarity". Seeker of Truth my ass! If your hero's "special" for being "sooo moral" in this grim dark bleak world of edge, trying to make others "more moral" than the hero CAN'T work without destroying that "LP is a special hero because she's the morallest" premise!

>>293833
That "Starter Dungeons" thing explains a lot, thank you. I think Kkat should have started smaller, clearing out a Raider Stronghold solo is already too big for a beginner.
Anonymous
8142357
?
No.293844
293856
fuck.png
>>293842
>That "Starter Dungeons" thing explains a lot, thank you. I think Kkat should have started smaller, clearing out a Raider Stronghold solo is already too big for a beginner.

If you want a setting with vaguely realistic power scaling it's too big, period.

But the real issue here is, look at it this way: Pip is following an upwards power curve. So far, with only minor to moderate assistance in some cases, she's taken on the following in direct combat and won:
- A library full of crazed killers
- A small town full of professional slavers, plus an alicorn
- A magically enhanced slaver kill team
- A horde of zombies
And now she's considering taking on a fortress full of armed thugs, their leader, and a dragon.

What does that say about where she'll be another two dozen chapters down the line?
Anonymous
00b14a6
?
No.293852
293853 293856
>>293820
I really don't want to keep at this and I'd planned to move on but there is still something I want to comment on because I just can't let this slide.

>Ok, I won't post oversized tiddies any more. Maybe I should have posted Amy Rose's- I mean Pinkie Pie's pussy instead?
You know damn well that the picture you attached with your post was not the reason for the mod's intervention. Or what? I'm I suppose to believe that you didn't read the post from the mod, which explains his reasoning for the removal, that sat just two posts above the indexed post you are referencing?

You posted this more than an hour after the mod posted his post. You can not have missed it.

Why are you being dishonest about something so minuscule and ultimately easy to disprove fact? You could have just said that you disagreed with the mod and moved on. Like, here's your explanation, >>293807 Which you already knew because it is unbelievable that you would have missed it.

Or is this a joke? But what is the punchline?

>>293842
I do like the formatting of this post. By having a subtitle over each paragraph, your post is more focused on the point it is making. This is good.

I do wanna say though that I'm not a fan of your out-of-hand speculations. They are probably fine and dandy contributions to the thread but I just think they don't give me much. I described them as out-of-hand speculations because it is not that they are speculations that is the problem, for me, but the way they lose attachment to the story.

For example, GG uses speculations as well in his analysis but the way he does it is different. He is very observant of the themes and what he perceives as the author's intentions for the story and its elements. He often will say that he sees what the author is trying to do but it fails because yada yada yada and saying something like, "Here's how I would go about fixing it and also here's a literary example where this is basically done but better." He first understands the point of the scene and then thinks about how to improve its execution.

A lot of your speculations are not the same, if not most of them. The trio you suggested is an example of this. You basically proposed the idea of, "What if the current trio of characters were replaced by another trio of characters?" Well, the answer to that is that we would have a different story than the one we currently are having.

One of the problems with this sort of speculation is that if you give two writers the same premise, they will write it differently. This is especially true if your premise is so open and free as, "Fallout+poners" which seems to be the premise you speculate around. Different people will focus their stories on different aspects. Someone might take this premise and write it like some kind of horror story, where magic radiated abominations lurk around every corner of the wasteland, and LP and her gang are constantly in fear of what might happen next. Someone else might focus on the futuristic and magical military aspect of the story and create a cat and mouse game between Lp and Redeye. It could end in a large battle between two armies lead be these characters, where most of the battle happens in their head. Or, it could be a romance story with sprinkled in social commentary about how societal decay can be overcome by friendship.

But here's the thing: These examples are not what we have here and this type of speculations doesn't lead to anything. Nobody is gonna write these stories unless I do, or they would have already written one. It is highly unlikely anyway. But the saying that any premise can be made good in a good writer's hands is true here as well.

Point is that we can endlessly speculate what could be done instead with a premise that's partly why there are so many other fics set in this setting.

To put it in an analogy, GG sees a wooden rope bridge over a chasm. He inspects it for a bit and sees that the planks are rotten, the rope's knots are tied so they will easily come loose under pressure, and the poles at each end cannot hold up the weight of a person. Therefore, he builds a new and better bridge right next to it or at least makes a blueprint of it.

You inspect this bridge. Then you turn 180 degrees, walk to the river far behind you, and make a blueprint to cross that river.

Both can be nice blueprints but only one of them actually takes us to the destination that is where we wanna go.
Anonymous
d264dea
?
No.293853
293854 293856
>>293852
In defense of Nigel I belive he was referring to my inference about the post being deleted. Truth be told I speculated that initially in the hopes it was the reason since the super huge boob stuff gives me the heebee geebees and was somewhat hoping anthro stuff was verboten here.

Will say I'm guilty as of late doing the same thing with making speculations and brainstorming with as you said taking elements of the story and rather then decipher the meaning or purpose of it I just say how doing something completly different will improve the story when we know that isn't the case so doesn't add much for me to say.
Anonymous
00b14a6
?
No.293854
>>293853
>I belive he was referring to my inference about the post being deleted.
He did but it was literally two hours after the mod's post. I just have a hard time believing he would have somehow missed that but I guess it could happen. I don't believe so but whatever.

>Will say I'm guilty as of late doing the same thing with making speculations
It's basically fine. I have probably done the same thing myself, probably at some point. Don't remember such a moment right now though.

I don't make the rules for this thread anyway so, this could very much be within the rules of this thread. My reservations are basically that they just don't add much to the analytical part of the story at hand because these speculations are not anchored in it anymore. I don't really know why I'm clarifying since now that I read your post again, you demonstrate that you understand my position.

This sort of speculation would be more fitting in a Fallout Equestria writing thread. But now that I think about it, I guess it is a very natural thing that one starts to brainstorm on "what ifs?" I'm not against someone getting inspired to write something because of this fic.

So I guess I was over-zealous with keeping the focus on the thread. I still feel that the separation between the two forms of speculation is a divide between constructive criticism and basically a new story entirely.
Anonymous
009033b
?
No.293856
293871
>>293852
>Tiddies
That was a joke. The punchline is my comment about Amy Rose. I acknowledge what was wrong with my posts and I'm trying hard to trim the fat from my posts. It's why I didn't explain any references in my post. watch Meta Runner.

>We
You speak for everyone now? Do you speak for the trees, too?
I'm joking, we're cool, trees can't talk.
If the story was fundamentally changed into a horror/military strategy/romance story, it would be something else entirely. And the story would be something else entirely if a different author with different issues wrote it.
That doesn't mean there's no value in speculating on how changes to the story could change the story, what ways to try and fix the story's problems would work best, and what writing lessons can be learned from this story.
I already used the analytical style you speak of when I mentioned why I think the author tried to make Littlepip a "Blank Slate": Because he took the wrong lessons from Fallout's multiple-choice RPG roots and thought the protag should be a treasure-obsessed murderhobo blank slate with minimal characterization. Kkunt didn't realize it's the choices you make in character creation and when playing the character that define your character as more than just a bloodthirsty loot-hungry blank slate, as more than just numbers on a page and a desire to scavenge all the loot you can find, complete every quest you're given because you can, and slaughter enemies wherever you find them because they are there. Littlepip's a lesbian because there's a character upgrade that turns you gay in Fallout while increasing the damage you deal to foes of your sex. This seems like a stupid reason to make a character a lesbian. Surely there should be more to a character than the traits you wrote down on a character sheet, right?
Then again, maybe there's another reason to write LP like this. Kkunt initially wrote Littlepoop to sound like a feeble bullied helpless pussy(in her own narration to the reader), until she knocks guards out to leave the vault and almost immediately becomes a badass able to master guns in seconds and intimidate hardened Wastelanders into backing down. Littlepip's mindset of "Explore, loot, kill, sidequest, explore, loot, KILL" is the kind of mindset that drives people to play looter-shooters. No story needed, no plot required, just slaughter enemy-filled zones because they are there and complete quests because they were given to you and pass up a chance to sleep and restore your energy because you know you won't die, and eventually defeat the CEO of Slavery or whatever when you're done dicking around.
LP might be a self-insert fantasy. The author's self-insert fantasy, or the fantasy of his target audience? Who can say?

Anyway, when looking at the "Littlepip is a one-note blank-slate whose only character traits make no sense together" problem... Why not suggest ways to fix it?
An entirely new protagonist whose vague "heal poners and make the world a better place" goal makes sense character-wise?
Or a new take on Littlepip where she's "supposed to be" what the author ended up writing, which means characters view her and treat her like the bizarre bloodthirsty crazy obnoxious greedy cocaine-mint-loving adrenaline junkie kleptomaniac murderhobo she is?
Which do you prefer?

>>293844
The horde of zombies and random exploding car clip reworked into foreshadowing for nonsense nukes slipped my mind.
I reckon if Littlepip relied on her teammates for pretty much everything combat-related, and she got more teammates over time as a result of good decisions she made, this level curve wouldn't seem so egregious.
But to truly fix it, reworking all of the opener might be necessary. Then again, maybe we can't speculate on this opening's goals and how they could be better accomplished until it's over and the plot actually begins.

>>293853
There is value in speculating on how this story we've seen so far could be improved. Please, let me hear what you've got. I promise to be constructive about it.
Anonymous
00b14a6
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No.293871
293879 293905
>>293856
>It was a joke
Okay, fine. I will accept this explanation. I don't really fault myself too much for coming to the wrong conclusions here since this joke is like an autistic labyrinth. I do retract my accusation though, and offer you an apology.

>You speak for everyone now? Do you speak for the trees, too?
I assume you are referring to this.
>Both can be nice blueprints but only one of them actually takes us to the destination that is where we wanna go.
Indeed. I'm referring to us that are criticizing this fic, which would mostly be him, gg, in actuality. I'll explain myself.
>when looking at the "Littlepip is a one-note blank-slate whose only character traits make no sense together" problem... Why not suggest ways to fix it?
It seems like you subconsciously getting at the valid question of, "What happens when the author's intentions for the story are unclear?" Or maybe I'm just reading too much into what you have written. Regardless, this question does bring up a good point that I hadn't yet considered but I now think I got an answer for.

The answer to what to do when you can't ask the author what his intentions are with his story and the story's intentions are unclear is to look out for patterns in the story.

Some patterns are more obvious than others. If in a story Arthur learns that a magic sword called Excalibur is kept by a Lady at a lake and five minutes later we see him use this sword to fight a dragon without having visited the lake then we have a plot hole. The obvious way to fix this is to wedge in a scene where Arthur gets Excalibur from the lake.

We can all agree that this is fixing a plot while keeping its intentions.

If Arthur however never heard of the lady of the lake but instead crawled into a cave and accidentally entered a UFO, woke up a terrible tentacle demon that went onto snare its tentacles around Camelot's towers, and which Arthur had to fight using a laser-blasting Gatling gun from the UFO, this would no longer be fixing the story.

This would be writing a different story entirely.

Thereby we can conclude there is a line between them, which I admit is a bit blurry at times, but no-one can deny it is there.

And you seem to agree as well,
>If the story was fundamentally changed into a horror/military strategy/romance story, it would be something else entirely.

So you try to read the intentions of the writer by carefully observe where the story goes. For example, the story goes through certain plot points and these are useful guide points.

As a made-up example, let's say that LP travels in the story from Canterlot to Trottingham. The rest of the story's plot plays out in Trottingham so LP must go there but she has zero motivation to go there, she just happens to do that by pure coincidence. Then providing her with a reason that fits her character to go there would be a suggestion to fix the story. Also, a bit help-vampirism since you only really need to point out that she lacks motivation for there to be a problem and the author should understand, you do not really need to solve the problem for them by providing them with a solution. But gg first of, does whatever he wants to and, secondly, it helps that he demonstrates how to fix the plot for his readers since one can learn a great deal from it.

As you see your reservations have merits but there is indeed a difference between fixing and replacing a story. Having the main trio be repaced by another trio would be the latter.

Though, again, in my previous post, I admitted that I might have been a bit over-zealous and said that there is indeed merit to speculations of the other kind as well. But I like to make the distinction between them clear. One is used for fixing plotholes and such in the story, while the other is for brainstorming ideas for another story. I don't have a problem with new stories so go nuts. I don't really mind if such discussions take place in the thread but I won't pretend that brainstorming ideas about another trio in the FE setting is still in the realm of criticism of the FE storyline. It just isn't, whether this is a problem, a blessing, or whatever is not something I can answer for and not up to me either.
Anonymous
1438af6
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No.293879
293905
>>293871
>apology
Dont bother, he was obviously being 'subtly' flippant. One is ill advised to expect perfection from him however, when an acceptable standard is the length one can hope for. Still, a mutual understanding was achieved. Ish
Anonymous
009033b
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No.293905
294002
>>293879
Subtle? You and I both know I don't do subtle. I couldn't do subtle if I wanted to.
>>293871
Any change to this story would probably improve it. If you cynically read the author's intentions and say he was trying to make something that panders to the idiots who think Fallout is at its best when it is the bleak grim edge and wacky comedy hour, he succeeded. And Project Horizons's author succeeded harder. Littlepip the lesbian self insert's "gamer brain" is never questioned meaningfully by the characters or world, because the author wants you to enter the hypnotic soycucked fake gamer trance of grinding through a game's easy content because it is there and it will make your numbers go up. But if he actually wanted to tell a story beyond a Fallout 3 misadventures writeup where he fucks around for 300 hours and level grinds on easy mode while tossing out "post apocalyptic headcanons" regarding who dies which horrible death before getting involved with the main plot, how do you think changing the tale would better serve that goal?
Anonymous
446e650
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No.294002
294003 294004
>>293905
>If the the author's intentions were utter garbage
It's not really what you're asking but I will answer that here anyway. If the idea for the story is garbage, then it's no surprise that the finished product also is. Not everything makes a good story. I believe taste is a very real thing when it comes to stories.
>But if he actually wanted to tell a story beyond a Fallout 3 misadventures writeup where he fucks around for 300 hours and level grinds on easy mode while tossing out "post apocalyptic headcanons" regarding who dies which horrible death before getting involved with the main plot, how do you think changing the tale would better serve that goal?
Isn't that what this thread is trying to answer?
>hypnotic soycucked fake gamer trance
>fake gamer
To be honest, I find that most games are `soycucked´. I can understand that there is an argument to be made about leisure activity but I think that games, movies (action/superhero movies, especially), and porn are the three entertainment mediums aimed squarely at western men. It's there to stop men from revolting and letting their rage culminate into something productive.
Of course, some games stimulate us more than others, like chess but there is still an argument to be made, I think, against the whole culture of it.
Anonymous
446e650
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No.294003
>>294002
>porn
>entertainment medium
Heh, sorry I meant poison but it's a similar kind of escapism. .
Anonymous
009033b
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No.294004
294007
>>294002
REEEE THATS OFF TOPIC STOP BEING OFF TOPIC nah I'm just kidding. Gay niggers love time wasting games and where else can we say that?
Good vidya gives people a chance to compete and grow. The best melee player wins. The best Jojos Fightcade player wins. The best Rivals of Aether players wins.

Bad vidya sells you a timewaster. Everyone who bought the games is a pokemon master so beating a pokemon game is meaningless. Wasting time and money on warcraft or runescape makes you gay. Everyone can eventually beat AssCreed or Personion 5 if they waste enough time on it. RPGs are for gay niggers who cant mentally grow and improve at the strategy in using their spells and attacks. So they just rely on grinding to make their spells and attacks objectively better over time.

Even a single player game... if it is truly great... will inspire competition. Watching a skilled Devil May Cry master show off is a work of art. There is beauty in a Doom Eternal master fucking demons up.

I wish gaming culture focused more on competition and supporting creativity. On supporting indie games and making great romhacks. Sonic fangames are better than real sonic games. Pokemon fangames are better than real Pokemon games. If you truly hate EA and Nintendo you should suoport alternatives.

But to bring things back on topic... what do you think of Calamity so far?
Anonymous
446e650
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No.294007
294008
>>294004
>REEEE THATS OFF TOPIC STOP BEING OFF TOPIC
No, that's fair.

However, at least I don't have almost 2:1 of gg's (259:158) posts and a track record of a constant high perocentage of off-topic posting in my posting.

Although, there is a point that discussion can lead to off-topic tangents and that's fine so long as we get back on-topic.

But to compare that with your rate off-topic posting is just wrong. There are points in this thread where you scroll and scroll to get passed your id.

Next thread could be named, "Nigel's Rantitorium; featuring Glimglam." ;^P

>But to bring things back on topic... what do you think of Calamity so far?
Yes, like that and we are back on-topic.

>Calamity
>>289796
> But that seems like hter biggest challenge here, at least if would be for me if I were to write this story, would be what kind of motivation these three characters has to stick around together from adventure to adventure. Like, do they not have more goals in life than to wander the wasteland forever? Now, that Littlepip has found Velvet what's her purpose? What does she want now? Is she a simp and plan to follow Velvet around to carry her bag or what?
>>293829
>Paragraph 3
>Actually, as long as we're on the subject of motivations, just what is Calamity's supposed to be, anyway?
I'm a prophet. ;p
Anonymous
446e650
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No.294008
>>294007
>No, that's fair.
As in, that's a fair point you made.
Anonymous
8142357
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No.294013
294014
The problem with Calamity is that at this point, he's more archetype than character in his own right. He's "the cool cowboy that backs up the hero", but aside from a handful of minor quirks like shooting anyone dressed incorrectly he doesn't seem to have a whole lot of opinions or motives of his own.
Anonymous
446e650
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No.294014
294023
>>294013
You have read this story right? Is he one of those characters that reveal more sides of him as the story progress?
Anonymous
8142357
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No.294023
294027
coom.png
>>294014
>You have read this story right?
Yes. I'm a bit of a 'fan of the fandom' type despite the original fic being a bit of a train wreck. Did a bunch of editing work for some of the big fics back in the day.

>Is he one of those characters that reveal more sides of him as the story progress?
Yes, but it doesn't amount to anything. His father and brothers are minor villains in the big Enclave arc at the end, which causes him a little temporary angst. He sticks with Pip regardless, and they all end up dead, discredited or in prison.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.294025
294027
1607408126022.jpg
>>293831

>Velvet cut deeper. “You know that song I was writing about staying noble and true?
Honestly? No, I don't.

I think I remember her singing a song at one point, but I don't remember what it was about or if the text clarifies whether or not she actually wrote it. Was that song supposed to be important? If so, it should have been given greater emphasis.

Anyway, here is the whole passage:

>Velvet cut deeper. “You know that song I was writing about staying noble and true? That was about you, Littlepip. And this is you failing that on every level. To even consider this...” She backed away from me, her voice softening with regret, “I am. So. Disappointed in you.”
Jesus H. Christ. There's so much wrong with everything she says here that I'm not even sure where to begin.

Well, first of all, I'd like to restate my original complaints: First of all, this mission does not require Littlepoop to do anything she hasn't done before. She has done nothing but kill, kill, kill since this story began. Velvet has directly witnessed this and knows this about her.

Second, This is technically not a contract offer in the first place. An assassination contract means the contracted person kills the target, and is directly compensated by the contractor. Gawd is not technically offering Littlepoop anything as compensation for killing Deadeyes; her "payment" consists of whatever is in his vault. Nothing in that vault is Gawd's to give, nor does she have any authority to give or deny permission to take anything that's in there. Littlepoop could refuse Gawd's offer, and then go and kill Deadeyes of her own freewill, open the vault and help herself to its contents, and the end result would be exactly the same as if she took this contract. Thus, Gawd is not compensating Littlepoop; it's not an assassination contract, it's an assassination request.

Now, let's get to the heart of the issue. Velvet's argument seems to be that it's okay to kill in self-defense or in defense of others, but it's not okay to kill for money. Alright, so let's look at some of the killings that LP has done since she and Velvet reconnected.

Her first act after finding Velvet in the boxcar in Appleoosa was freeing the child slaves from the Sheriff's office. During the resulting conflict, she killed the alicorn boss by dropping a boxcar on her, along with one of her henchmen by using a levitated mine. After this, they escaped on the train and were later ambushed. She killed several more ponies during this conflict.

Superficially, this might appear to be self defense, but it's worth remembering that LP attacked the slavers first. Whatever LP's feelings (or the reader's) on the institution of slavery might be, the fact is that these slavers had not provoked Littlepoop. Despite this, LP barged into their town, started a fight, killed several of their foot soldiers, killed their leader, and absconded with what they considered to be their property. From their point of view, they were defending what was theirs, and when they went after the train, were fighting to get it back. Moreover, LP's stunt got the train ponies killed, and in the (frankly likely) event that the slavers interpreted this attack as having come from New Appleoosa, she would arguably be responsible for the deaths of anypony the slavers might kill if they decided to retaliate by attacking the town. My understanding is that this is basically why she is now barred from returning there.

Now to clarify, I'm not personally trying to take a moral stance on whether or not it was okay for LP to attack the slavers, or to persuade my readers to feel one way or the other about it. That's a whole separate conversation. What matters here is how this would look from the perspective of the various characters. As far as I can tell, Velvet is a pacifist; she deplores violence of any kind and believes in offering aid to anypony who requires it. This is basically the justification she gives for working with the slavers in the first place. Littlepoop appears to be on the opposite end of the spectrum: she believes that any act, no matter how gruesomely violent, can be justified if it accomplishes a noble end.

Kkat seems to have designed his characters this way on purpose in order to provoke just this sort of conflict. This was a good idea, but as ever, his execution is extremely clumsy. By her own logic, Velvet should be outraged by Littlepoop's actions in Appleoosa. Sure, the slavers were slavers, but Velvet also lived with these ponies, healed their wounds, and sang to them. Wouldn't it stand to reason she would know many of them personally, and would be horrified by the idea of some stranger wandering in and killing them, even if she did have some qualms about how her friends made their living? And they clearly were her friends; if her moral objections to their practices were so great that it precluded being friends with them, then by her own logic she should have walked away and had nothing further to do with them. Or, if she felt that she still needed to stick around and be their doctor even if she abhorred their practices, she should have been their doctor and nothing else.

To me, the scene that tells us the most about Velvet's relationship to the slavers is the scene in the tavern, when LP first finds her again. There, she is performing a song for a group of slavers who are sitting around drinking and enjoying the music. Singing doesn't serve any practical purpose; it's done purely for joy and entertainment. If she felt these ponies were irredeemably evil, she might have been willing to be their doctor but she wouldn't have sang for them. This is what I mean when I say that Velvet is inconsistent and wishy-washy; the author tells us she has these strong pacifistic convictions, but her actual behavior in the story doesn't support this claim. She ought to be disgusted by Littlepoop; instead she's writing songs about how "noble" and "true" she thinks she is.
Anonymous
446e650
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No.294027
294028
>>294023
>meme
Bretty good.
>Fan of the fandom
That's me but for mlp except I like s 1-2.
>Did a bunch of editing work for some of the big fics back in the day.
Could you mention which one?
>Yes, but it doesn't amount to anything.
Sad.

>>294025
Btw, we have reached bumplimit.
>pic
Hehe, jesus
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.294028
1607538382604.png
>>294027
>Btw, we have reached bumplimit.
Oh, thank you. Hold on, I will get a new thread going.
Glim
!Glam8.itxo
36e3f69
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No.294033
New thread: >>294032 →
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