Hello everyone!

I've been gone for a long time, and a new journal is long overdue.

I stopped watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic in the middle of the seventh season. But a few months ago, my interest was rekindled. The last two seasons were fantastic. The high point, for me, was the new characters -- the Student Six -- who breathed fresh life into the show.

So I've come back to give my readers a new story. I hope you will enjoy it!

Prey

Hello! It's been ages since I have written a blog here. For those who don't know, I've been running a fairly regular blog on FIMfiction for the last couple years. But since my first blog on FurAffinity was a sneak peek at Fallout: New Vegas, thought it fitting that I would round out my blogs here by offering my look at the new Fallout 4 trailer.

Last week, Bethesda gifted us with the trailer for Fallout 4. And with it comes a wealth of hints and outright confirmations regarding the content of the game. There's so much awesome here, including the amazing reveal about the protagonist: for the first time ever, in a Fallout game or possibly any game within the post-apocalyptic or FPS genres, we get to play as a dog!

Click here for image.

Just kidding.

Actually, there is quite a lot of speculation about the protagonist thanks to a combination of information from the trailer and the previous leak to Kotaku whose content has been effectively confirmed. Theories range from the idea that the protagonist is a pre-war soldier (featured in the trailer), or the child of that soldier, to an android implanted with the memories of that individual. Certainly, there are enough clues to make an argument for any of those, but not enough for more than speculation.

Since the release of the trailer, fans everywhere have been breaking it down and analyzing it, to the point that doing my own analysis would be largely redundant. Instead of re-hashing what you have probably already read or heard dozens of times, I'm going to offer up a couple of videos from the most interesting and entertaining fan reviewers that I've found, and then add my own additional commentary afterwords.

Let's start with the breakdown by one of the kings of Fallout Let's Plays, YOGSCAST Will:

Here.

So yes, those of us who have believed for years that the game will be set in Boston have had their faith rewarded. I'm not as sure about William's assertion regarding a metro system. His suggested "Massachusetts Bay Transit Center" ignores that the final letter in the obscured third word looks (at least to me) like an "L". There hasn't been any evidence that we will be treated to more sprawling, maze-like metro tunnels again... although I would be a little surprised if Bethesda didn't take advantage of the potential in underground map additions.

The idea of a voiced protagonist is shocking to many fans of Fallout, but it isn't that strange nor does it have to be as character-limiting or immersion-breaking as some people have been suggesting. The protagonist has never been a mute or exceptionally laconic character; we have always had conversations with dialogue boxes where we can choose our response. Personally, I am hoping Bethesda chose to take a page from BioWare's playbook and give us customizable avatars with a choice of voices just like we got from the amazing game Dragon Age: Inquisition.


The scene with the Paul Revere statue is notably not the only point in the trailer where we see weather effects. This is something that has me really excited, as I always love when the next iteration of Fallout incorporates elements that I added to the previous game(s) through mods. And dynamic weather is one of those environmental elements that greatly enhances immersion.

Click here for image.

While it is nearly impossible to spot it in a still frame, the brief scene above features more than just what I'm going to call the world's weirdest fire hydrant -- it features rain. The rain is most easy to spot on the left side of the screen. Also featured on that side is the curiosity-stimulating sign for the "Memory Den". Remember that theory about playing an android with memories from pre-war? (I won't comment on the central figure beyond noting the rampant fan speculation that this is the Mysterious Stranger and/or an android.)

While most analyses of the Fallout 4 trailer didn't pick up on the "Memory Den", it was noticed by good ol' Jolly Jack:

Here.

One thing that Jolly Jack also points out is all the color!

Since the release of the trailer, Bethesda has been taking hits from fans decrying the game as "ugly". The reason for this is that the game appears to use the same Gamebryo engine as used in their previous games, and is definitely not up to the same level of superb quality that we are coming to expect from the top-rated games in regards to textures, meshes and animations. I don't mind that at all. The quality of graphics and animations did not hinder me from enjoying Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas, or prevent them from being my favorite computer games, with over 2000 hours invested between the two. (Nor did I have issues with Skyrim in the same areas.) The aspects of the Fallout games that appeal so deeply to me transcend how many layers of textures are used to simulate fur on Dogmeat.

That said, I do very much appreciate a non-restricted palette in games. I won't play Fallout 3 without the Fellout mod that removes the green haze over everything and allows me to enjoy the richer colors the game is hiding. So unlike others, I'm going to herald the game as beautiful! I think that the richness of palette that we see in the Fallout 4 trailer is a major upgrade in the environmental design. And it is clear that they took care to enhance the visual appeal, even adding in colorful elements in parts of the game world that have been traditionally (an exceptionally dull) grey.

Click here for image.

(Side note: the use of Gamebryo would mean that we will sadly not be getting vehicles in Fallout 4. No raiders running around in dune buggies constructed from scrap, or people crossing rivers on salvaged and armored boats with bodged-together engines. It feels ironic that on the very same day that The Secret World -- the only MMO I play -- gave me a motorcycle, Bethesda dashed my hopes for vehicles in Fallout 4.)

The pre-war scenes we see simply lavish us with color, but even the wasteland is beautiful, with a variety of landscapes and scenery that at least rivals Fallout 3 but with lighting and color the earlier game didn't dream of. Check out the screen shots below:


Click here for image.
Click here for image.

The settlement design choices are particularly appealing in this game. We have a return of an Arefu-like "settlement on high ruins" (pictured below), but this time on what appears to be a grounded ship that is missing huge portions of its hull. I'm going to be pleased if that settlement is multi-level, taking advantage of the interior space. And I like the idea of Diamond City (above), a community built inside a baseball stadium. I'm also intrigued by some of the business establishments we see pictured in that shot, particularly the barely-visible place in the lower left where the only readable words on the sign are "Trust" and "Caps". (It makes me wonder if the game is going to have a quest that touches on the nature of Fallout's unique currency, much like Fallout: New Vegas did. But that's just wild speculation.)

Click here for image.

I'm also intrigued by the new monster designs. One shot clearly shows a deathclaw with a rather fearsome enhanced look. Likewise, the above screenshot reveals what could be a new monster, but what is most likely a new take on our old friend, the mirelurk. It appears even the ghouls have had a makeover. I'm excited to see what brand new creatures the game adds to the Fallout bestiary.

One of the aspects of the trailer that I have been paying special attention to is the various signs and posters we see everywhere. The one below and to the left doesn't confirm anything, but is of particular interest to those of us hoping the rumor is true that Three Dog will be returning in Fallout 4.

Click here for image.

I do have to disagree with Jolly Jack regarding a lack of interesting things to be gleaned from the ending shots.

I've spoken of mods that I felt compelled to use in previous games, and one of the most desperately needed for Fallout: New Vegas was a early-game player house mod. Especially with the open game world that allowed you to end up, as I did, in The Strip over ten levels before seeing Novak, many of us were hurting for a place to store the crap we accumulated with Calamity-like fervor. Fallout 3 gave us a player home very early into the game, and I am really hoping that Fallout 4 does so as well. From the looks of it, we will be getting a player home, and it will be here:

Click here for image.

Bethesda has released an amazing 4K screenshot of this garage that offers a much larger and more detailed look at it. The bed on the right suggests that this is, in fact, a player home. The workbench on the right makes this a place to build schematics and/or modify weapons. There is storage, including ammo boxes. We even have the requisite radio.

There is plethoria of interesting elements visible inside this garage which seems a likely base. The main focus is of the shot is, of course, the power armor. And this armor is unique in that it seems to be in the midst of being repaired or modified. One of the cool additions to the Fallout world featured in Fallout: New Vegas was weapon mods. This image leads me to question if Fallout 4 is also adding armor mods? Alternately, you may have the ability to build your own power armor. This might be something as simple as acquiring various tiers of power armor schematics. But the prominence here suggests rather that this is part of a major story quest.

4K screenshot

I'm personally more interested in the things we see around the rest of the garage. For example, there is a Vault-Tec case on the right which may be a container for collectables. (In fact, the compartments in the case look suspiciously like they are holding little statues or pictures of the perk icons.) The hanging board on the left holds one recognizable energy weapon, and a variety of tools and unrecognizable parts. Are those parts weapon mods? And is the content of that hanging board fixed, or will it function like a trophy wall where we can display unique weapons and other items we acquire throughout the game? On the workbench is a PipBoy. Are they going to be customizable too? Or is that just wishful thinking? In the very least, this suggests that PipBoys can be removed in this game, making them lootable.

Looking at the comic/magazine stand, my first thought was that I liked the variety in magazine textures -- the entire game seems to have a much better variation in objects and textures than we are used to. But I couldn't help but notice that Grognak is one of the few titles we can read, and that lends support to William's idea that this rack may be a display case for the various skill books that we pick up. This would mean that not only are the skill books back, but that they don't mysteriously disappear after we read them. (And, of course, I have to mention the return of the Vault-Tec bobblehead. However, the one we see here seems much larger than the ones in Fallout 3, and the fact that there is only one leads me to believe that the bobblehead isn't a stat-boosting collectable.)

Click here for image.

The outfit above is reminiscent of Moira's armored upgrade to the Vault suit in Fallout 3. The weapon looks either heavily modified or custom built. I am hoping the latter, as this weapon suggests to me that we will see the return of schematics and custom-build equipment.

Of course, we will hopefully be getting a ton of new, juicy information from E3. There are several panels scheduled during E3 focused on Fallout 4, and I am sure that the contents of these panels will be disseminated throughout the internet soon after. So there will be much more to talk about in the near future.

My FIMfiction Blog Index

Since a lot of people have wondered how I would have incorporated The Crystal Empire into the world of Fallout: Equestria, and what my headcanon for it is in the setting, I decided to share some of what I have been doing with the setting in my online roleplaying campaign "Fallout: Beyond Equestria". I worked up a two-part look at my headcanon for the Crystal Empire (as presented through an ongoing roleplaying game, playtesting the Fallout: Equestria pen-and-paper RPG) and posted it on my FIMfiction blog.

Please bear in mind that this is a fragment of a roleplaying game, written by multiple people. No one involved, including myself, were writing with the goals of creating anything other than a fun session of play. As a result, this does not have the level of effort or quality that any of us would put into actual fanfiction and doesn't tell a complete story. Still, I hope it makes for a fun bit of reading, being approximately the size of two story chapters, and gives a lot of insight into how I personally envision the Crystal Empire in the Fallout: Equestria world.

Part 1 and Part 2

(Also, please bear in mind that this is only headcanon and should not impact or invalidate the viability of any other author’s stories.)

The blog also hosts several similar bits of headcanon, mostly created as part of this or similar roleplaying games, including new memory orbs and other goodies.

Enjoy!

I was recently interviewed by a Christian-written tech blog called The Geek Church. The interview just posted and may be found here. (Admittedly, most of the questions were ones I had been asked before, so many of the answers are probably very familiar by now.)

In tangentially-related news: for the last few weeks, I've been posting Fallout: Equestria on FIMfiction. This was prompted by a wealth of people requesting the story be made available on the site, and some recent issues with Google.docs which prevented some people from accessing some of the chapters.

I've just watched the My Little Pony spin-off movie Equestria Girls. As a brony, I had significant reservations about this movie -- enough so that I had no intention of paying Hasbro for it. But when someone offered me a screener, I decided to give it a try. After all, you can't really have a valid opinion about something if you have failed or refused to experience it. I was ready for the movie to either be provoke righteous anger or to dispel all my preconceptions and be amazing.

I wasn't prepared to be mostly underwhelmed. Frustrations I had gained from knowledge about the movie withered away as I watched. The movie wasn't good, but it was too banal to be upset about. Yes, there were things that, on a conceptual level, I object to -- the movie made several highly questionable decisions. (For example, the original's positive message of individuality, breaking gender stereotypes, is lost when all the girls are skinny and wear skirts that end halfway up their thighs. Oh, and unless the goal is to illuminate Spike's infatuation with Rarity as ooky, don't show that continuing when she's a human and he's a dog. In fact, even if it is, don't.) But, after seeing the movie itself, the only aggravation I feel is because one of the songs is catchy enough that it will get stuck in my head.

Instead, there is something else that I feel should be taken from this movie: Spike is cool.

The one thing this movie really succeeds at is (perhaps unintentionally) showcasing Spike. To wit:

Spike is the new Rainbow Dash: When Celestia orders Twilight Sparkle on a solo mission to another world, our loyal Rainbow Dash is fast to insist that all her friends accompany her. That is, until Celestia shoots that down with some "balance of the worlds" contrivance. When seeing Twilight leave, only loyal Spike decides "screw that noise" and chases after her.

Spike can adapt: Twilight Sparkle spends her first minutes in the human world having a (quite understandable) freakout about her transformed body. She's a human. Spike doesn't freak out to find that he's a dog. Spike went from a dragon to a dog -- to a creature he pet-sat -- which is one hell of a downgrade. An insulting one, even -- sidekick to pet. But Spike not only doesn't freak out or panic, he doesn't complain either. He rolls with it. And he swiftly proves he has a better grasp of the situation and how to behave than Twilight, barking rather than talking in the presence of the natives. In fact, he not only grasps his role quickly, but has to constantly snap Twilight out of behaving like a pony.

Spike is practical: When the end of her first day in the new world arrives, the Twilight realizes she hasn't considered such basic things as where she is going to sleep. But Spike has not only considered this, but come up with a solution and implemented it. Sure, his solution is a bit silly, befitting his status as a baby dragon. But the fact that is he stopped to consider basic necessities, then took the time and effort to plan for and provide them. And that is probably the most "grown up" thing I saw a character do in this movie.

Spike is reasonable: Spike plays the voice of reason when Twilight decides that the best way to protect the safety of two worlds is to participate in a popularity contest in a foreign place where she doesn't know the customs... or for that matter, how to use hands. And while Spike acquiesces to Twilight's line of dubious logic, at least he challenged it.

Spike saves the day: No, not in the finale. Spike rescues everything much earlier when he uses the fact that he can talk to convince Twilight's new friends of the truth. Without Spike, they should never have been able to believe Twilight; she would have looked insane, and suddenly spouting crazy is not a good way to keep friends you have just barely made. Now, granted, it was Spike's idea that she should tell the truth, but that just make's his follow-through here look even smarter.

Spike has been treated unevenly at best in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. But it is times like these -- when he is written well -- that it is clear that Spike far better character than he is usually given credit for, and a character deserving of far better-written and better-characterized focus episodes.

So... if popularity does not equal quality, can popularity be used as a yardstick to measure whether something is good?

The answer isn't "no". The answer isn't that appeals to popularity should be dismissed. There is a very strong relationship between whether something is popular and whether it is good. But it needs to be recognized that this correlation is not the same as a precise measurement, and even can be completely wrong. (Although it must be remembered that this is the exception rather than the rule.)

If you want to understand how popularity and quality relate, you need look no further than the Tomatometer.

For those unfamiliar with what I am referring to: there is a website called Rotten Tomatoes. This website is a central hub for finding critical reviews of movies. Rotten Tomatoes gathers together the reviews by movie critics, lists them with links for people to find, offering quotes and summing up the reviews as either a "fresh" (for good) or "rotten" (for bad) review. The Tomatometer then tallies the percentage of "fresh" and "rotten" reviews, and labels the movie as "fresh" or "rotten" based on those values.

Now keep in mind: these are reviews by movie critics. These are professionals who have education and careers in the field of determining the quality of a movie.

How often do you think that every single one of them agree?

If you've frequented Rotten Tomatoes, you know that it's almost impossible to get a few dozen professional critics to all agree if a movie is a quality movie or not. (This, by the way, illustrates my final point in the previous essay: quality is objective; that doesn't mean any one person's judgement of it is accurate. If even the people who have professional discernment cannot universally agree on quality, then what should be expected of a bunch of amateurs on the internet with inflated opinions of our own judgement?)

So the Tomatometer effectively rates the popularity of a movie amongst professional critics. Are people unwise to use this as an indication of whether or not a movie will be worth watching? Absolutely not. It is, in fact, a great indicator.

It is not perfect.

Look at any movie on Rotten Tomatoes and you will see that there is not only a Tomatometer rating, but also a rating from average viewers who submit them. And I for one have never seen those two ratings match.

Quality does not equal good. Even if all the professionals managed to agree that a movie is a masterpiece of film-making, that doesn't mean you are going to enjoy it, or that it will be worth lightening your wallet the high cost of tickets and popcorn.

On the same level, even if the vast majority of average viewers leaving ratings on Rotten Tomatoes claim that the movie is better than sex, that doesn't mean you're going to like it either. Popularity indicates a likelihood that something is good. But it doesn't guarantee it.

It's been way too long since I wrote anything here, so I figured I would weigh in on an argument I've seen a lot of, both over the writing and art of others as well as in regards to my own story. The argument generally goes like this:

Person who likes the piece: "It's very good. Just look at how popular it is!"
Person who hates the piece: "Popularity does not equal quality."

In most arguments of this nature that I have seen, the second is usually followed by references to the Twilight Saga or pet rocks, and often falls into the fallacy that because A != B, then A = !B. The first usually begins to argue that quality is subjective.

I assert the following statements are true:

Popularity does not equal quality.
Quality does not equal good.
Quality is objective.

Popularity does not equal quality. The argument is often made that "If something is popular, the creator has to be doing something right." First, while this is almost always true, the "something" being done right isn't necessarily an element of the piece itself. It could be expert timing or marketing, for example.

Likewise, we probably all know of things that are popular for something (or many somethings) that are being done very wrong -- cases where the reason people like it is because of just how bad it is. (Birdemic, I'm looking at you.) For something to fall into this category, the fan base for the piece has to be both well aware of the bad qualities and intentionally enjoying its badness.

And yes, I know someone is going to make the mistake of claiming something they don't like is enjoyed because people like bad things and are too stupid to recognize how bad they are. To that person, I say: NO. If a large number of people legitimately believe something is awesome that you dislike, it isn't because you are superior. You aren't. Get over yourself.

Conversely, consider the statement "If something is unpopular, the creator has to be doing something wrong." There is considerable merit to this, understanding the difference between "not being popular" and being "unpopular". The latter indicates an active dislike. However, again, the "something" is not necessarily an element of the piece... and in this case isn't even necessarily wrong. Doing something right can make a piece unpopular. As can the very state of being popular, as human beings are very prone to hipster mentality and hype-aversion.


Quality does not equal good. What makes something good? Something is good if it accomplishes its goal. If a support column holds up the section of ceiling it is designed to hold up, the quality of building materials or the professionalism of the paint job do not matter, the column is a good column. If an employee arrives on time, does the work they are supposed to do with an acceptable speed and number of errors, is dependable and honest, and doesn't cause other issues, then that employee is a good worker... even if there are other workers who are even better.

However, if an artisan is ordered to craft a piece of furniture within given specifications, and crafts a stunning masterpiece of form and functionality, made from only the best materials... but that is ten times over his allotted budget, then that artisan has failed in his task. If an employee with several relevant PHDs and a deftness for the job that is well beyond the expected is also a thief or has a personality that causes massive disruption in the workplace, that is not a good employee no matter how "high quality".

Using an example closer to home: what makes a story good? A story is good if it accomplishes its goal. The goal of a piece of fiction is, of course, to tell the story in a way that the reader can comprehend. Ostensibly, a story's goal is to entertain. And, in addition, to convey any philosophies, morals or viewpoints the author is trying to convey.

If the story does these things, then the story is good, regardless of quality or popularity. Neither is required (although both are preferred, particularly the former).

And in some cases, either quality or popularity can actually be detrimental to a piece achieving its goal.


Quality is objective. A piece of rotting driftwood that your son carves into a more mangled piece of rotting driftwood may look pretty or have sentimental value, but it is not a quality sculpture. Quality is possessing an attribute of excellence in material and/or craftsmanship that is not dependent on era or the recognition of that excellence. The paintings of Van Gogh have quality, even though nobody saw it in his lifetime.

Which brings up an important distinction: quality is objective, but our judgement of it is not. People are virtually incapable of objectively judging quality. Our perceptions of quality are tainted and twisted by education (or lack thereof), personal beliefs and experiences, and the body of works which we reference for comparison. Is Andres Serrano's Piss Christ a quality art piece? There is an answer to that question, and it is and objective truth. However, your answer to that question, no matter what your answer is, is an opinion.

"I may not be able to recognize art, but I know crap when I see it." This is a common sentiment, but ultimately faulty. If someone does not have the capacity to recognize quality, then how can they determine at what point something would cease to have it? Most often, such sentiments boil down to a personal definition of what must qualify as crap, and that definition is all to often some variation of "things I don't like". Occasionally, a yardstick is used, such as the rules of grammar or the ever-popular "it looks like something a small child with a crayon would doodle". Such yardsticks will give you a far more defensible assessment, but even they are not absolute assessments of quality. Nor are they immune to the distortions of personal perception and baggage.

I love roleplaying games. Roleplaying has long be a favorite hobby of mine.

Just as there are hundreds of authors writing Fallout: Equestria stories, Fallout: Equestria has created a setting that an amazing number of people want to roleplay in. There are at least a dozen separate efforts being made to create a Fallout: Equestria roleplaying game. One of the most significant is the effort of the Fallout: Equestria Resource community. Over there, they have at least three different Fallout: Equestria roleplaying systems being playtested by the wonderful bronies of that community -- one based mechanically on White Wolf's storyteller system, one based on Warhammer 40K's Dark Heresy system, and one on the mechanics of Fallout: New Vegas.

The last of those systems has been in playtesting for about half a year now, with quite a few groups of players. The system has undergone significant re-writes and revisions. I've had the opportunity to roleplay with a few of the playtesting groups for that system (currently there are somewhere around a dozen).

At the behest of a few local bronies, I've recently recompiled and fleshed out much of that system, creating a document that (I hope) will allow people familiar with the Fallout: Equestria setting to craft and enjoy theri own roleplaying campaigns.

As one of the playtesters, I have had some input in a few parts of the mechanics, but I cannot in any way take credit for this creation -- this system is an ongoing group effort by scores of people. The system is by no means finished or fully fleshed out; this is just what I feel is the best of what the F:NV-mechanics-system team has created so far.

I feel it is enough for me to attempt to run an FOE roleplaying game for the above-mentioned local bronies. We have our second session tomorrow. Wish me luck!

For those interested, here is a link.



In other news, I had an interview with the rbdash47, the admin over at Pony Fiction Vault. The interview is almost entirely a rehash of things from other interviews, but there was something new in this interview which you might find interesting:

Is there anything about Fallout: Equestria you'd like to change?

There are many things I would fix or change if I went back – not plot points, but egregious typos and wrong or missing words; I would replace a lot of uses of "buck", I would reaffirm Littlepip's gender in the first chapter, I would change Deadeyes' name, and I would seriously cut down on exclamation points in the first third of the story.

However, three things prevent me from doing any of this. First, any artist could spend a lifetime continuously trying to perfect a particular piece. I know that a certain self-discipline is required to avoid endless revisions, to call a work "finished" despite its remaining flaws and move on. Second, the story is available in multiple formats from multiple sources, and there is no way I could "fix" them all. I want all new readers to experience the same work and not have to hunt down the "corrected" version. Finally, and most importantly, Fallout: Equestria is being translated into several other languages. The Russian translation is already complete and the six other language translations are many chapters in. I think it would do a disservice to the people working on those translations to go in and change things now.

If you would like to read the entire interview, it is here.

This morning was a morning I have been waiting for with considerable anxiety for nearly a month, for this is the morning when Fallout: Equestria received its review from Chris of One Man's Pony Ramblings -- one of the most acclaimed and professional critics in the Friendship is Magic fan community. This was a review that I have known I would need to take to heart, for better or worse. Chris is not a fan nor a hater. He is a skilled, objective critic. One of the truly good ones. So you can imagine that I started reading with my heart in my throat. I am well aware of Fallout: Equestria's flaws, as well as the problems some readers have had with the story, so I was not surprised that his reactions were mixed. I only hoped the good would outshine the bad.

One Man's Pony Ramblings has posted the following review of Fallout: Equestria:

Impressions before reading: First off, a confession: normally, I write this part before I read the story (duh). But I completely forgot to do that before I left on vacation, so I'm cheating a bit here and doing my initial impressions from memory.

Much like the previously-reviewed Past Sins, Fallout: Equestria is an incredibly popular fanfic, with a very devoted base of followers. Compared to the former, Fo:E doesn't seem to have spawned nearly as much hatred and/or hype backlash, which I'm guessing is a good sign quality-wise. Also, Fo:E has spawned a truly massive number of spinoffs, continuations, and fanfic-fanfics (including one that's part of the main post, but since it's by a different author I'm leaving it aside), more than one of them 6-star stories themselves. There's clearly something about this work that resonates with a lot of people.

I've not read any of the story myself, and my familiarity with the Fallout games is extremely limited. I played the first game briefly before becoming frustrated with the impossible level of difficulty, probably due mostly the fact that I didn't realize going in that the game expects you to take at least one weapon ability as a favored skill, and I don't really know anything about the later installments in the franchise. However, I understand that this story is quite popular even among readers who aren't gamers, so I suspect (or at least, I hope) that that's not going to be an impediment to my reading.

Zero-ish spoiler summary: Two centuries after Equestria's version of a global thermonuclear war annihilates pony civilization, a young unicorn named Littlepip ventures out from her "Stable," a large-scale fallout shelter, and discovers a world at once totally unlike that seen in FiM, and at the same time disturbingly familiar. As she explores the land, she uncovers not only the crises of the present, but those which drove the ponies 200 years ago to turn the world into what it has since become.

Thoughts after reading: This is the first true grimdark story that I've hit (has it really taken eighty review posts to find a 6-star grimdark? My goodness), so I'd like to talk about the genre as a whole for a minute. Speaking in generalities, I like grimdark stories about as much as I like shipping stories; that is to say, while I have no particular antipathy towards the genre in principal, I find that the subject matter is generally a poor fit for the MLP universe and the writing quality to generally be pretty low.

The latter point is a broad generalization (though one that I think a quick glance through fimfiction will show is all too accurate), and doesn't really impact the way I view individual stories--I mention it only by way of explanation for my reticence to read grimdark without a specific recommendation. The former point deserves a bit of expansion, however. I think it goes without saying that murder, rape, cannibalism, and heck, even foul language, are not things which could ever be depicted on the show itself. More than that, they aren't things that could even be hinted at in canon. This makes it hard to write fanfiction incorporating these elements without divorcing one's work from the show it purports to take its setting from.

Note that I say hard, not impossible. There are a small number of stories which show that writing an absurdly dark and at times viscerally disgusting story which retains the core spirit of MLP is indeed possible. And Fallout: Equestria definitely belongs on that list.


An examination of why is in order here. As with any major alteration to the show's aesthetic, whether it be making the main characters lesbians, turning Celestia into a ruthless tyrant, or introducing guns, bombs, and nuclear missiles megaspells in place of apple pies, the most important thing an author must do is justify the apparent discrepancy between the show and the fanfic. Kkat does a relatively good job of this, showing in bits and pieces as the story progresses how peaceful, idyllic Equestria slowly turned into the unrelentingly horrific land it is in the story's present. After the first few chapters, I never seriously questioned the central premise vis-a-vis its connection to FiM.

But keeping the story tied to its kids-show roots takes more than just a halfway-decent explanation. Fo:E succeeds on this front not only by justifying its differences in tone, but by maintaining the show aesthetic wherever possible. From the punny names of towns and characters to the expert voicing and characterization of the main six (even those elements that seem out of place initially, such as the sinisterness of Pinkie Pie's role in prewar Equestria, are eventually tied back to the characters in believable ways), the story takes pains to show that it isn't just a war story with pony names swapped in; its a story about how ponies could find themselves fighting a war, and how they could find themselves sinking to horrifying depths in the wake thereof.

Following on that last thought, I was very impressed with the development of Littlepip as concerned her reactions to the world outside her stable. From the little things (she's lived her whole life in a small, enclosed space--of course the first thing she'd do upon seeing the outside world is suffer an attack of agoraphobia!) to the broader shifts in her understanding of morality (wrestling with fundamental questions like "when is it right to take another's life?" and "can preemptive violence ever be justified?"), the way she views the world gives the reader an easy introduction into the blasted hellscape which is the Equestrian Wastes, and one that's through the eyes not of a grizzled warrior or a jaded survivor, but a pony. Littlepip could be anypony from the show; lost, confused, and just trying to muddle through and do the right thing. The only difference is, she doesn't have the advantage of living in a world where nothing bad ever happens that can't be fixed within half an hour (less commercial breaks).

Oh, I should probably mention in here that no prior familiarity with the Fallout milieu is required in order to enjoy this story. A few references may be missed, but these are generally sufficiently integrated into the story to prevent confusion, and no prior knowledge of the setting is required to understand the plot or characters.

Another thing I want to talk about as it relates to this story is length. Too many fanfic authors seem to think that writing an epic-length story gives them carte blanche to fill their work with deathly dull monologues, pages and pages of backstory with no obvious relevance, and other assorted filler. I cannot count the number of times I've seen the author of a many-chaptered monstrosity claim that "It starts slow, but it gets really good around chapter X." Based on previous experience, this appears to be code for "Everything before chapter X is crap." Whether a story is two thousand words long or two million, it should still strive to be interesting at all times.

Despite producing 45 chapters the combined length of which exceeds that of War and Peace by a significant margin, Fo:E is rarely dull. Featuring numerous factions with conflicting goals and ideologies, dozens of antagonists of various stripes, and closely intertwined quests to discover both the events of the distant past and the purpose of Littlepip's life, there is hardly a paragraph which doesn't either advance the plot, develop one of the myriad characters who drift in and out of the story, or delve into fundamental questions about the world and how we interact with it. I found some of the fights overlong, and found they did become repetitive eventually, but even this was relatively minor (and I admit, I've never taken the same visceral joy from reading about fights that many readers seem to).

I've briefly touched on Littlepip already, but one thing that consistently surprised me was the depth of Kkat's characterizations. At first glance, or first introduction, many of the ponies (and other creatures) which Littlepip meets fall into readily recognizable roles: the shoot-first-ask-questions-later cowboy, the mild-mannered yet ruthless villain boss, etc. Yet few and far between are the significant players who aren't given expanded and nuanced characterizations as the story progresses. Both Littlepip's allies and foes are thoroughly humanized, to the point where its hard not to have some empathy with nearly every character in the story. This is not a story about "right" or "wrong;" it's a tale of good intentions gone horribly awry, and even the nominal villains often prove to share goals with the protagonists; what separates Littlepip from her foes isn't that she wants to make Equestria a better place and they don't, but that their vision of a better Equestria requires sacrifices she isn't willing to accept, or contains elements she can't condone. And the respect with which even the most monstrous attitudes are treated humanizes the entire conflict; this is one of the most intellectually honest ponyfics I've ever read in terms of how it deals with character motivation.

Although the tone of the piece is overwhelmingly dark, this story is full of levity. For the most part, I thought Kkat did a great job of allowing a few laughs in without jumping tone too drastically. Besides the name puns, the author takes a number of shots at both the show and game from which her story derives (mostly in the form of innocently asked rhetorical questions, as when Pip is exploring a long-deserted room and, finding a few bits of coinage, wonders, "What kind of pony went around putting money in random spots?"), takes a few jabs at both modern and cold-war policy makers, and includes a staggering number of lines from the show. The reason these turns so often work is because they're integrated into the story itself; when Pip asks who puts a few coins in a locked chest, it's a joke about Fallout's penchant for doing the same, but it's also a legitimate question. The relevance of the line isn't dependent on meta-knowledge, as too many shout-outs and fan-references are.

Of course, some do fall flat. Every chapter ends with "level up" note, saying what new perks Littlepip is gaining as she adventures. Perhaps Fallout fans will find them more humorous than I did, but the extended meta-joke didn't work for me at all. In a work with a relatively serious tone and a complex and complete narrative, using a video game framing device felt cheap by comparison (and worse, completely unnecessary. It isn't like the level-up notes contained any plot-relevant information that couldn't be gleaned from the story itself without difficulty). And as long as the subject is on meta-whatever, I wasn't particularly happy with the way Pinkie's prescience was handled. Without getting into spoilers (too much), I think that there was the potential for a decent explanation for her virtual omniscience, but that it was never fully developed. As a result, some of her leaps of intuition stuck out in a bad way.

As long as I'm talking about problems, there's a staggering overuse of exclamation marks at times ("I turned to the second, but not quickly enough to stop him from swinging his magically enhanced sledgehammer right into my ribcage! The pain was blinding! I could hear the ribs snapping under my armour!"), and there are also some editing difficulties, especially in the first third. Nothing overwhelming, but in several of the early-middle chapters there are fairly regular missing words and other simple errors, and the problem never entirely disappears (Also, the occasional use of "buck" as a synonym for colt is confusing, at least to me). Apparently, Kkat is aware of these errors, but doesn't want to go back and correct them, saying she's finished with Fo:E. I don't have any real comment on that position, other than to say that it makes an interesting contrast with the seemingly continuous revisions to Past Sins.

But despite some technical flaws, the story construction is generally excellent. It's told entirely from the viewpoint of Littlepip, but the author finds a number of ways to bend the viewpoint in unusual and interesting ways. Concussions offer a chance to misremember or blur events, memory orbs (magical devices which store a memory from another pony, and can be "viewed" by unicorns) provide a chance to see things both from the distant past and the near-present from a variety of perspectives, and both memory loss and inter-temporal communication are used to good effect. The story also does a good job of showing Pip's perspective subtly enough that it isn't immediately obvious, but becomes readily apparent through repetition and/or in hindsight. Her use of mind-enhancing drugs, and their effect on her, is only one of the most obvious examples.

I've said a few times now that this story is extremely grimdark. Plenty of stories are, but there are relatively few that manage to be both extremely (read: frequently) violent and still wring some shock from the horrors which they tell. The problem is repetition: reading about someone getting their head cut off (assuming the author both has a modicum of skill and isn't playing it for laughs or something) is arresting, but reading about the eighth person getting their head cut off isn't. There's no shock value; it's old hat. Kkat both uses and averts this by showing how Pip grows inured to violence even as the reader grows jaded by the constant bloodshed, demonstrating how quickly innocence can be lost. Yet at the same time, those scenes which are supposed to be shocking never fail to be so; each time reader apathy begins to set in, the author finds a way to up the bar enough to provoke a reaction.

The ending... ah, I'm going to have to break out the spoiler tag again. If you haven't read the story, know that I thought some elements of the story's ending were anticlimactic in a bad way. Not awful, but not good. For more details, see below:

The spoiler section has been edited from this review. If you have already read Fallout: Equestria and wish to read the spoilers, you can find them by visiting the review.

Finally, let's talk content warning: in case the number of times I've typed grim and/or dark in this review isn't hint enough, there's a whole lot of violence and bloodshed, some of it quite graphic, in this story. Not to mention there's a fair amount of body horror and fate-worse-than-death stuff. Also, some parts of the story are pretty sexual in nature (and the side-story in the main post, if you decide to read it, is basically porn). Long story short? This one isn't for the kiddies.

Star rating: ★★★★★

I waffled on this one a bit; on the one hand, I'm not really enamored with some aspects of the ending, and not all of the comedy really fit (though it's true that a surprising amount did, all things considered). But when I think about how astonishing it is to write a story so long which is never dull, explores each of its characters so fully, and manages to ask more than a few fundamental questions about life along the way, it seems to me that we're talking about one of the best fanfics ever written. It may not be perfect, but Kkat has accomplished something really special with Fo:E, and that deserves to be recognized.

Recommendation: Obviously this story isn't for anyone who's going to be put off by length; even for fast readers, this is a story that requires several dozen hours to consume. But I'd recommend it to almost anyone undeterred by the length. Even people who don't normally read grimdark, even people who don't like shipping (yes, there's some of that in here), even people who don't normally read OC stories, even those who don't normally read crossovers, all ought to give this a try. Those who absolutely can't stomach swearing and bloodshed will have to give it a pass of course, but other readers will likely find that Fo:E is one of the most complete fanfics, from both a structural and thematic perspective, ever to be written.

"In certain contexts, hating something communally can be just as much fun as enjoying something communally. Sometimes, even more so." -- Chris

Equestria Daily has recently changed both its rating and commenting formats.

With stories, there is no longer a "star rating" system. Stories that existed before this change still have the tags that list them as having the star-rating they achieved previously, but new stories will not get star-ratings and old stories are immune from rating-changes, for better or worse. This change comes after months of Equestria Daily struggling with mobs of star-bombers who would give stories one-star votes without reading them if the stories contained "shipping" (or, at least, "shipping" that wasn't their favorite character pairing.)

Similarly, the thumbs up/thumbs down rating system for comments has been shifted to a thumbs up only system to counter similar hateful behavior.

I, for one, support both of these changes. I think the Brony community needs to hold to the "love and tolerance" philosophy that has become the foundation for the majority of the fandom, and not let ourselves fall into the sort of bullying and hate that, along with ignorance, is the hallmark of "hatedoms" (and, truly, most prejudice-driven groups).

With auspicious timing, the latest guest-blog on One Man's Pony Ramblings tackles this very subject: hatedoms. The article Things We Love to Hate offered me a bit of insight onto just what drives these groups and how they function. More so, for me, the essay did to things: it reaffirmed how wise it is to utterly ignore such groups and the hate-opinions of people within them, and it made me re-examine my own behavior in regards to the things I personally do not like.

"And deep down inside, most of us have done it at one stage or another. Whether or not we are vocal about it, or even if we have legitimate complaints about a piece’s construction, technical or otherwise, it’s largely irrelevant. We judge. And some people hate." --Mystic

I've managed to avoid becoming part of the vocal "hatedom" phenomenon, but that doesn't mean my own internal attitudes cannot bear improvement. It takes only a little scrutiny to uncover prejudices of my own, particularly in the areas of politics and age. And, having revealed those in myself, it behooves me to attempt to correct, or a least mitigate, my emotional and pseudo-intellectual responses. For example: just because someone likes something with a message I disagree with, such as a political candidate or a popular story, doesn't mean they have "drunk the kool-aid". I do myself a disservice when I write them off with snort of superiority.

"And it’s that thought process which leads to the mountains of hate, to this rush of people trying to differentiate themselves from the glazed-eyed fanboyism that is so inherent with these types of stories. Like My Little Dashie? Please. I have taste, and an IQ above fifty. And not only that, I have to let other people know just how much I disagree with them. After all, I am enjoying the incredible views from the intellectual high ground; it is my God-given duty to expostulate my beliefs!" --Mystic

We can do better than this. Maybe many of us don't want to. Hating is fun and it's a cheap way to give ourselves and illusion of superiority. But it is just that: an illusion. When we become part of a "hatedom", we are not the iconoclast, separating ourselves from the mindless sheep of a fandom. We are the sheep; we are the kool-aid drinkers, and we are drinking deep.

It’s a crowded place, this bandwagon. One person voicing a dissenting opinion instantly creates fifty more who, guess what, have the exact same opinion! Does this make them wrong?" --Mystic

One of the best teachers I've had was a Christian Seminary teacher who drove us to question our faith. To ask whether there was really any reason we were Christians, if we stripped away the indoctrination, the pressures from family and the desire for parental approval, and the notion that what we believed was right just because we had lived in a culture that told us so. Where most teachers told me what to think, he pushed me to think for myself. And he encouraged me to not judge things (other religions, in that case, but the lesson applies more broadly) that I had little to no actual experience or understanding of. I owe him a lot.

Read the article. It's worth your time.

I recently had the privilege of doing an interview for FiMFiction's Author Support group. (You can check it out here.) The interview has also been shared by The Writer's Group. Much of the interview is a retread of things I've said in interviews before, with a few expansions and some (hopefully) helpful advice on dealing with failure/success and other topics.

Bronymaster has also released an essay on How do you make a good story?. I recommend it to anyone who writes or wants to. The essay is full of great advice. (In addition, he includes some of my comments about dealing with bad critics towards the end of the essay.)

On the topic of critics, let me direct you to a very good one: Chris at One Man's Pony Ramblings. Chris is reading through each of the stories that have achieved 6-Star ratings on Equestria Daily. He works diligently to review each story a mature, intelligent and objective manner. His insights are solid and his advice is almost always very good.

Chris is currently on a two-week vacation where he will be reading Fallout: Equestria, so we can expect his review of the story around the 4th of July. (I mention this with considerable trepidation because if One Man's Pony Ramblings rates Fallout: Equestria poorly, I know it will be for solid reasons.)

In the meantime, Chris has lined up a number of esteemed members of the writing community to make guest posts on the One Man's Pony Ramblings blog until he returns. The first of these is Stories About Ponies are Stories About People by Cold in Gardez, and it is an excellent essay on writing stories that transcend mere entertainment and make the reader ask about what it means to be human. (I'm also quite honored that Fallout: Equestria gets a mention in the essay.) Again, I strongly recommend the essay to all aspiring authors.

Whether an author, an artist or any other sort of creator, you need to welcome and listen to helpful feedback. Quality feedback and criticism are invaluable tools for helping you improve.

But not all feedback and criticism are quality. Feedback which is just praise may make you feel good, but "I love all of it" is possibly the most useless feedback you can receive. Part of my essay on "why Rarity is the best pony" included the following:

In Suited for Success, we found ourselves able to identify with Rarity, suddenly and deeply. We understood her desire to create something beautiful for her friends. We recognized the work that went into a labor of love.

And how many of us also know the hurt of pouring ourselves into a project only to receive a lukewarm reaction? How many of us know frustration of trying to get proper feedback? Virtually every artist understands the need and emotion behind “Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!”

(I, for one, feel Rarity’s moan every time I prompt readers to give me detailed feedback, pushing for a Fluttershy response, only to get “Well, I liked everything” -- which is totally a Rainbow Dash response, the compliment version of the supremely unhelpful “It needs to be about 20% cooler.”)

Likewise, not all criticism is equal. And it behooves an artist to separate the good from the chaff. On the internet, everyone has their opinions and they are entitled to them... but they are not entitled to have you pay them any attention. You do not owe anyone an ear, and you are not beholden to consider every critic's opinions as if they might hold weight. You do, however, have a responsibility -- to yourself, your art and your fans -- both to try to improve and to make an effort to avoid listening to bad advice that will do your work harm.

And that brings me to an absolutely marvelous essay on "Fourteen Ways to Spot a Bad Critic", which I will quote liberally from below. I feel some of the writer's points are redundant; but nevertheless, these are excellent guidelines on which critics you not only can ignore, but should ignore.


1. Anyone who says “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life“.

Sometimes, people who are unable to properly and succinctly make a point, reach for ridiculous extremes. Odds are, your work is not so terrible, that it’s genuinely the worst thing your critic has ever seen in his entire life. If it is, then your critic has led far too sheltered a life to be criticizing others’ work. Someone throwing a phrase like this around, should probably be ignored.

2. Anyone who criticizes your work without seeing the whole thing.

It really doesn’t matter how adamantly a critic defends the swiftness at which he’s come to judgement on your work. If he didn’t encounter your entire project, then he’s unqualified to critique it... There’s no excuse for this. If they didn’t completely see, hear, taste or otherwise experience the work in question, they’re bad critics who should be ignored.

3. Anyone who uses the word “history” in a comparably definitive way.

This is similar to point one, but in an even more arrogant manner. “This is the worst thing of its kind in history“. “Throughout history, no one has made anything this terrible“. “In the history of art, no has ever…” Alright, stop right there. The person critiquing your work is unlikely to be aware of history’s entire archive of the genre or medium being discussed. If he’s wielding the kind of delusions needed to confidently say something this encompassing, he’s a bad critic.

4. Anyone who writes “period” as a way of re-enforcing a previous point.

“This is terrible. Period.” This is a great way for a critic to demonstrate an inability to accentuate. Using the word “period” like this, would suggest that there’s no room for debate. That what’s being said is final and absolute. That there’s nothing left to say on the matter. This contradicts so much of what being a good critic is all about. If you have nothing much to say, then you’re not much of a critic, are you? To quote what I used to say to my kids when they were toddlers who were having trouble getting a point across… Use your words.

5. Anyone who jumps to conclusions about behind-the-scenes reasoning.

“The creator of this work is just trying to get more money because she’s panicking because the last thing she created sucked because she’s probably pissed off because Madmen might not be renewed for another season which I assume is her favourite show.” This is far more common than it should be. I’ve seen people come to crazy assumptions about my personal life and then use those assumptions as spring boards for why my work is the way it is. An actual critic will understand that he doesn’t know you personally and doesn’t have any inside information about what’s going on behind the work being critiqued. A real critic will simply review the creation on its own.

6. Anyone using multiple exclamation marks or caps lock.

Have you ever seen anyone discard an intelligent point because there was only one exclamation mark at the end of the sentence? Have you ever seen anyone have trouble understanding an insightful statement purely because it wasn’t in ‘all caps’? Whether the review is positive or negative, a good critic has intelligent things to say and a vast army of well placed words to say them with. A BAD CRITIC HAS NONE OF THESE THINGS AND SO INSTEAD TRIES TO RAISE THE VOLUME OF HIS POINTS LIKE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a diseased mind.” ~Terry Pratchett

7. Anyone who uses the phrase “One word comes to mind…”.

“One word comes to mind when I see this work. Terrible.” The “one word” can be anything, but if that’s all that comes to your mind while reviewing someone’s work, you’re not a very good critic. On the other hand, if plenty of words come to your mind and you incorrectly use this overused statement in an attempt to sound witty, you’re not a very good critic.

8. Anyone who uses the phrase “I want my X minutes back“.

If you have ever used this phrase in a critique, I’d like you to stand up, go find a mirror, look at yourself and realize that other people are creating original art while you can’t even muster up the creativity to insult that art without vomiting a pathetically overused phrase like this.

9. Anyone who tells you to stop creating.

An actual critic will never tell you to stop creating. A good critic would genuinely like to see you improve and make something better next time.

10. Anyone who says “This sucks“.

That’s not a criticism, that’s an insult. If you can’t tell the difference between those two things, you’re a bad critic.

11. Anyone with terrible spelling/grammar.

Let’s be clear here. A good critic doesn’t need perfect spelling and grammar. Every painter drops his brush from time to time and there’s no shame in that. But if you’re dropping your brush evry singal tim u tuch teh canvus… well, you might not be very good at what you do. And if you’re purposely mistyping in an attempt to save time or look cool, then you’re definitely a bad critic.

12. Anyone who brags about themselves during the review.

“This work sucks. And I know it sucks because I once fought a bear! Who was driving a tank! Plus I’m very handsome! Wait… what was I reviewing? Anyways, the point is that I fought a bear!” Sometimes I’ll be reading a review of something and I start to get the impression that the critic is just looking for ways to point out how many awards he’s won or how often he’s been published... Good critics don’t use their review of your work as a way to brag about themselves.

13. Anyone who tries too hard to be funny or focuses too much on creative ways to insult your work.

A good critic is entertaining as well as informative. This means that sometimes they’ll find funny ways to point at a flaw in your work. Don’t be upset by this, the critic is just doing his job. However, if the review briefly states “This is awful” and then follows with an entire paragraph colorfully explaining how he had to "pour gasoline on his eyes and light a match while having a team of tap dancing priests cast Satan out of your work before throwing it into the fires of Mordor", he might be working harder at trying to be funny than at trying to fairly review your work.

14. Anyone who says “You can’t take constructive criticism".

This is possibly the most cowardly thing that a bad critic can say. Sure, it’s possible that a good critic can review someone’s work and that a creator can over react, causing the critic to fairly exclaim “Wow, that person can’t take constructive criticism", but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the cowards who use that phrase as a shield to defend themselves against creators justly reacting to hateful insults. There’s nothing constructive about telling someone that they suck and there’s nothing truthful about claiming that the creator can’t take constructive criticism at that moment. Most creators thrive on constructive criticism and welcome it. Very few of us thrive on being told that we should “get a life".

Some critics will claim that even if they are bad critics, their advice might still be useful or their opinion valid. Even if this is true, it does not matter.

A critic is a solicitor. The critic is trying to get you to buy something: their critique. Like any solicitor, it is the job of the critic to sell their product. If they want you to give their voice attention and their opinion weight, then it is on them to convince you that what they have to offer has value. Being a bad critic is a failure to do so, and you have every reason to reject what they are trying to sell as bad goods.

--Kkat (with thanks to Thunt)

PS: I am aware I use too many exclamation points. Although, to my credit, not all at once.

As of a few days ago, it is the one-year anniversary of the beginning of Fallout: Equestria. The story and the community that has sprung up around it, including hundreds of authors, artists and composers inspired by and working within the universe of Fallout: Equestria is being celebrated on Equestria Daily at the link below.

http://www.equestriadaily.com/2012/.....niversary.html

Come on over and join us. Or just check out Moth's wonderful one-year-later tribute artwork.

--Kkat

The following is a message I wrote to an individual who jumped into an argument to defend a couple of trolls. These trolls had jumped onto a new story minutes after it was posted, giving it a bad rating and leaving nasty comments... but not for the content of the story, which they didn't even read. No, they attacked because the author chose to write his story within a popular sub-genre of the fanfiction community.

Hello.

Thank you for your kind words and the general level of respect you attempted to show in the argument. I did not reply farther in the story's comment section because I believe it would have been rude to derail the story's comments for an argument about the merits of writing fanfiction.

That said, I have read your statements and I must politely disagree with your stance. Your core argument seems to stem from a self-indulgent bias that claims that a fanfiction of a fanfiction is somehow more ridiculous and derision-worthy than a fanfiction of a children's cartoon.

I'm not going to attempt to dissuade you from such a mentality. I understand the appeal of believing others are "sheep" and you are "not" through some arbitrary division that you claim makes sense.

I will, however, state that I disagree, and that I find your arguments wholly without merit.

That aside, I believe that anyone is allowed to dislike a genre. You should be free to complain on your blog about how a particular setting is overused. You should be welcome to open forum topics where you can gripe.

However, unlike you, people who jump onto new stories and downvote them just because they don't like the setting, and/or who leave derogatory comments because of the setting the author chose and not the content or quality of their work, are no different than the people who jump onto PMVs just to comment "bronies are all faggots". Their messages are meant to hurt, to upset, and to try to discourage writers from writing. To crush them while their ego is fragile. They are trolls, pure and simple.

They are, frankly, the opposite of what a brony should be. A brony should love and tolerate -- even to writers who write things in a setting they don't like. A brony should be friendly and supportive. The brony community should attempt to build each other up, not tear each other down.

Jumping to the defense of bullies does not make you look good or aid your cause in any way. If your goal it to promote quality fanfiction, then promote quality fanfiction. Don't trash fanfiction you don't like, and don't support people who do.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Over the last eight months, in amongst the tremendous outpouring of love from the brony community, I have gotten three or four messages like the one below.

I honestly don't know how to respond to messages like this. Or if I even should. And usually, the message is a single email or note, shot from the dark. Unless I should chose to pursue it, the person will have had their say and crawled away. My one attempt to actually respond to this sort of outpouring was rather disasterous -- the man was so hate-filled and miserable that he now trolls the works of others, taking opportunities to pour out his vitriol. (And thus, he earns the name mention in the journal title... unlike the others, he has made a public display of his sink into envy and bitterness.)


Alright. Dignity gone, nothing to lose. I'm going to regret this - not something I doubt for a bloody moment - but at least I'll have accomplished what I set out to do.

This needs a preface. My last wish - genuine, and honest - is that this be a great guilt-trip. You've done nothing wrong. God forbid. Moreover, this is something for me; hopefully a detox of poison for myself. But despite what I'm about to say, I think you deserve every bit of whatever good that's come your way.

I'm [name withheld], brony, former fanfic writer. I wrote [fanfic name withheld], and afterwards, its sequel, [also withheld]. Story involved a - God help me - human in Equestria. It also came out prior to the giant boom in pony popularity (the number of pageviews on EQD quite literally tripled (!) at the end of Season 1), and the sequel, well. Prior to its release I had so many dreams. First came Fallout: Equestria. Then came Past Sins. Next, third on that list of FiM-fiction stars would be [fanfic name withheld]. I imagined the names - LittlePip, Nyx, [character name withheld]. Tragically, the sequel was forced to be released in its track draft format; the story wasn't even done when I submitted it. It received a bump on its EQD page, small coverage on /fic/ and a one-shot update on my DeviantArt account after months of work (which is, by all means, mea culpa - I spun my wheels to a ridiculous degree on the story's timeline and synopsis). I had to drop out of bronydom thereafter for reasons I wish I could go into, but can't.

And so my 150,000 word story came to fall onto the wayside, left to dream of breaking four digits worth of views. And in the meantime, other stories piled on comments, ratings, fan-to-author contacts - the works. I couldn't goddamn help myself. My envy - it's like an injection of poison, a toxic substance, an actually physical feeling. Game mods, fanart - even a song dedicated to LittlePip. A song. TVTropes pages. Limit-breaking comment sections. Side-stories in the dozens. I can't help it - this envy is corroding me. I wouldn't have it any other way than what's popular be popular - I wouldn't choose any other person than the one who deserves it to have it - but God help me, my envy doesn't answer to my logic. I can't sodding help it. A titan in all other areas of my life, and a crumbling wreck in this one.

I'm the first to point out that popularity and fame doesn't equate to how skilled a writer is with their prose. But even with this in tow, even knowing this, somewhere along the line I accepted I was out for fame, out for popularity - a far cry from the centered individual I envisioned myself as. For good or for ill, it's what I sought. It's not what I want to want to seek, but it's what I seek; maybe I can learn to do without the crowds of adoration, and subsist on the honest words of the small few who choose to speak, but right now that's just not the case.

Why do I think telling you this would help? I have no idea. It feels as if it would help even if this note doesn't go anywhere. I refused to read FO:E because it was an insult to read someone's work when you weren't remotely capable of appreciating it for its full value. It would have been an insult from me to you to do that. I couldn't bring myself to do such a thing. Maybe I've suffered in silence for long enough that it's a relief to have a voice, for however long, to whomever. I don't expect a result of this note other than an extremely irritated putdown. Lord knows if you've received something like this from any number of someone-elses. But even if it does, I can feel already a bettering. Hell, I even made sure that if anyone ever looked on my work in the same way - if anyone felt the same way about my work, as I feel about yours - that I had laid enough comments, recorded voice diary entries, that they would see that I was just the same as them, if I ever rose to such heights as I wished to achieve. I never, ever wanted to be the cause of this to anyone else. Nobody should feel so...so mediocre.

But that's just the thing. If one person has to be exceptional, another must be mediocre by comparison. I wish that it was someone else who didn't care quite so massively about it, though.

Amadeus - the movie - tells a story about a composer who is constantly upstaged by Mozart, the musical progidy; how his work paled in comparison to Mozart, and how it haunted him, every second. That movie was painful to watch; my Salieri to your Mozart. Unfortunately, as a small tangent, as you might imagine - and I say this with a bit of a smile, actually - Fallout games are a no-go anymore, which is a shame, because I played Fallout 3 to death - all the skill books, all the bobbleheads, every skill to 100 (or nearly. My PC died shortly before I reached it), but with this crippling envy of mine, well. By no means is that something I hold against you personally - really, it's something to make me laugh at myself.

Proofreading this note is not a pleasant experience. But it is a purifying one. I'm clueless as to why this is helping, but the fact remains that it does, and so I guess I will actually send this afterall. I'm currently working on a new novel that I intend to publish - maybe I'll strike gold there?

This note needs work. But I think the general message is across. So, as you can imagine being the nervous wreck that I so clearly am, I imagine your receiving this message will inspire a great deal of ire or irritation; either way, I won't contact you again unless replied to. I expect nothing...the point was writing down the above text and sending it to you. In that regard, maybe I can start on the road to finding inner peace, if you don't mind my using dramatic terminology. I'm at a loss for how to phrase that with more taste and class at the moment.


I only hope that, in writing out his feelings, this individual and those like him can start to find healing. Or at least move on.

As for myself, I will not feel guilty for having created something that means so much to so many, and that has inspired so many to create works of their own.

I can offer my pity to those like the individual above who allow themselves to become mired in such negativity, but the fault is not mine nor that of the fans. These few, rare people have done this to themselves, and have no one else to blame.

I've been honored by three interviews since completing Fallout: Equestria. While some questions are identical, I have taken pains to make sure I give out some new information and commentary with each interview so that all three are hopefully rewarding for any interested fans.


Shortly after Fallout: Equestria was completed, I had an interview on Equestria Daily. The link to the interview can be found here:

http://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/.....undup-198.html


Now, I have two more interviews upcoming. One is for the upcoming "Fallout: Equestria Week" at the Supremest Fan Fiction Reviews site run by the awesome Darcy Supremest.

http://supremestfanfictionreviews.blogspot.com/


The third interview will be on the Diamond Dogs Podcast. Doctor Brony is interviewing both myself and Scorch Mechanic (the voice of the Fallout: Equestria audiobook). This is going to be an interesting interview, as I do not have a microphone or recording equipment; so I have written out all my responses, and Scorch Mechanic will be reading them for the interview.

http://ponycast.com/

[Edit] The Diamond Dogs interview is now available to listen to here:

http://soundcloud.com/the-diamond-d.....dogs-interview


Hope you enjoy!

"I hate chocolate. I've never eaten it, and I don't plan to. I hate it because it's so popular. Everyone's always talking about how much they like chocolate, how awesome chocolate is. Makes me sick. You can't even find a damn restaurant anymore without seeing chocolate somewhere on the dessert menu. Chocolate is so over-hyped! If I ever did eat it, I know it couldn't possibly live up to all the praise it gets."

Sounds really stupid, doesn't it?

And yet, that's the argument I hear from a lot of people about pretty much anything popular. The truth is, things tend to get popular for good reason: either they are high quality, or they have mass appeal, or both.

However, it is just as true that people have a saturation point after which hearing good things about something makes them less interested. Past this point, they feel bullied to try something or like something just because it is popular. Not liking what everyone else likes becomes a blow to their self-esteem. They try to compensate by striving to be "cool" through hating it... and by surrounding themselves with others who are also attempting to desperately salvage their self-image through similar hatred and association. The greater irony is that most of these people would actually like what they are hating if they weren't so invested in hating it.

And, of course, there are those who are just jealous of the success of someone else, who need to tear down what they know they could never create themselves. It is a defense mechanism, a way to prevent themselves from becoming despondent over their own lack of achievement, and their ability to harm others becomes their measure of self-worth.

Most people who descend into such hate-groups use the word "hype" to justify their hatred of the whatever they are railing against. Or, more appropriately, misuse.

If a movie, television show, story, candy or whatever is being promoted by the creators, producers, distributors or merchants: that's hype. That is an attempt to boost the appeal and popularity of something to increase their own sales or other returns.

If the same thing is being praised by the audience, critics, fans or community: that's acclaim. Acclaim happens because something is good.

People who are hating use "hype" because either they don't understand the difference, or because they do but even they realize that railing against acclaim just makes them look like losers.

Additionally, people want to feel elite. Particularly amongst the younger members of society, there is a drive to believe that they are better than their peers, much less the general population. They allow their likes and dislikes to be driven by "hipster mentality" (as described in the quote below):

Have you ever heard a band or worn a certain clothing line that was just phenomenal, but then you get this sense of pride somehow by knowing something great that very few others do? Then suddenly, when it becomes popular, somehow now it's not as good.

To clarify, when others discover said band/clothing/item etc. and it becomes 'mainstream' (achieved success), suddenly it's not as good anymore to the person who discovered it early on.

There is a war against good things.

This week, a dear friend of mine (and one of the proofreaders for Fallout: Equestria) came to visit. I had known him for years; but seeing as he lives in Australia, we had never met in person. (BTW: He's even cooler in person than he is online!)

I showed off my little apartment which is made even tinier by all the tchotchkes I have collected over the years. That's something I do: I collect and decorate. And his visit got me to thinking what little knickknacks I was most pleased with... and from there, which purchases I've made that I'm most happy with.

The answers, I realized, weren't any of the things I had littering my walls and counter tops. I'm going to share with you, in no particular order, the eight expenditures that came to mind which I was most happy with. And I'd be interested in hearing your own list.

A) A giant stuffed teddy bear that I got my niece for her first Christmas. It was a bear (ha!) to get mailed off to her -- the thing was gloriously huge, several times her size. I'm told she loved it.

B) Fallout 3. The first Fallout game that I ever played... and I played it obsessively. Over a 1000 hours of playtime. And, of course, that opened the way to other Fallout games and eventually to Fallout: Equestria. Still my favorite computer game ever.

C) A rear fender for my bicycle. I do not own a car, so I ride my bicycle to work in all weather. This was easily the best fifteen bucks I ever spent.

D) A donation to the brony-run Christmas charity for children with cancer.

E) A copy of the roleplaying game Mage: the Ascension (2nd edition). This is easily one of the most imaginative and thought-provoking roleplaying games I've had the chance to play and run, and it has brought my friends and I countless hours of enjoyment.

F) Rent. Specifically, that one month (during the summer of the year that the Sacagawea dollar came out) when I paid my entire rent in gold coins. It was just a moment of whimsey, and I still think of it fondly (even if the person I was giving the coins to had no desire to play pirate or Scrooge McDuck -- his loss).

G) My (first and still current) laptop. The ability to write (with a word processor) and chat with friends online while away from my PC is awesome!

and finally

H) A pepperoni pizza with extra pepperoni and extra-extra pepperoni that I bought and had delivered to my roommate's workplace as a surprise. No reason beyond wanting to surprise my pepperoni-loving friend.

I was discussing tumblr recommendations with a number of wonderful bronies today. As you may know, there are a great number of wonderful pony-themed tumblrs available today, including several great Fallout: Equestria related tumblrs (like my personal favorite: http://asklittlepip.tumblr.com/ .)

Discussing the merits and flaws of tumblr recommendations brought on this revelation:

I don't care for "grimdark."

A bizarre statement, perhaps, for someone who obviously writes grimdark-- Fallout: Equestria is a 600K word grimdark magnum opus. But Fallout: Equestria isn't a story about grimdark -- it's not about blood and mutilation, sadism and death. Instead, Fallout: Equestria is a story about standing up against evil no matter the cost. It is a story about lighting candles in the darkness. About the value and vulnerability of virtue, and the necessity and strength of friendship.

None of which really works as powerfully or successfully without grimdark. You cannot stir a reader's soul with a tale of lighting candles against the slight dimness. Pinkie Pie will be the first to point out that the call to stand against evil isn't very compelling when the villain is The Dreaded Bringer of Cotton Candy and Chocolate Milk.

So let me rephrase that: I don't care for "grimdark for the sake of grimdark."

Grimdark, when utilized to a more poignant and noble end can be a beautiful thing. I offer up Silent Ponyville as an excellent example of grimdark done right. But grimdark for the sake of shock, and character assassination, and just turning something beautiful into something ugly? That I tolerate because I am a brony and I take our message of "love and tolerance" to heart... but I don't like it. Not one bit. And I think we all know an infamous story that can be used as an example.

As such, I have found the small but seemingly growing number of grimdark-for-the-sake-of-grimdark tumblrs (particularly those which are... let's not even say "character interpretation" and jump right to "character obliteration") disturbing. I will admit it: I have a low tolerance for bullies. Hurting hurts.* Pointless and excessive cruelty is neither fun nor funny. As such, I don't want to spend time with a tumblr, much less a story, whose only purpose is to make me feel disgusted, despondent and upset.

I won't name any, but I will name a number of tumblrs that I find exemplary -- tumblrs which I regularly leave feeling better than I did when I started looking, whether it is because of the quality of art and story, the lovely characters, and/or the sheer adorableness. I am not on tumblr myself, so I offer them here:

http://askfluttershyandpinkiepie.tumblr.com/
http://askvelvet.tumblr.com/ (NSFW)
http://ask-thecrusaders.tumblr.com/
http://askthepiesisters.tumblr.com/
http://askoctavia.tumblr.com/

Check them out. In my humble opinion, they are a credit to the My Little Pony fandom and deserve the readership. Likewise, please join in and suggest a few gems you have found and would love to share.


And, for fun, here are just a few more of the wonderful Fallout: Equestria and associated Side Stories related tumblrs:

http://askredeye.tumblr.com/
http://askpuppysmiles.tumblr.com/
http://asksecurity.tumblr.com/
http://ask-dotrook.tumblr.com/
http://demi-one-wing.tumblr.com/
http://mech-station.tumblr.com/

--Kkat


(*Granted, I make exception for sexualized BDSM fantasies, but that's another matter entirely.)

Two days ago, the final part of my magnum opus, Fallout: Equestria, was posted on Equestria Daily. Yesterday, I had an interview that posted to Equestria Daily today.

My story is finished.

At least, my writing of it is. But Fallout: Equestria as long ago taken on a life of its own. There are so many artists, writer, composers and more who are continuing to add fresh, wonderful work to the expanding world of this story. It's no longer my own. It hasn't been for a long time. And really, that's a beautiful and amazing thing.

From the feedback, the story has impacted many people. Yes, there are a few souls that have become bitter, jealous or despondent upon seeing the success of my story. But for every one of those, I have heard from dozens whose lives have been touched for the better. It's humbling and overwhelming.

There is, right now, a sense of loss. Today, I woke up on my day off and didn't have ten hours of writing to dive into. I won't have the next chapter to occupy my mind as I perform the rote tasks of my job. But then, I look at all the above, and the sense of loss is fleeting. I have merely transitioned from writer to audience.

I feel like I have been given back so much more than I have given.

And the most precious gift of all has been the friends I have made through this incredible journey.

Eventually, I will write again. Something different. (Although very likely something pony.) But for now, I will be taking a break, and spending time with those friends.

Okay, I loved Pipsqueak the Pirate.

To those who have asked: I severely doubt any of the writers read fan-fics. (It's the same reason I don't read FOE side stories and won't until FOE itself is completed.) OTOH, the idea that the writers who are clearly paying attention to the brony community have never heard of Littlepip seems just as unlikely. So while the "Come, Little Pip" was clearly a Charles Dickens' reference, I wouldn't be surprised if it was also a subtle shout-out to Fallout: Equestria. In fact, a double-reference (and the deniability it would allow) would probably be the only way they could get away with a wink to FOE, especially considering the multiple IP nature of Fallout: Equestria.

That aside, it thrills me to no end that Fallout: Equestria continues to be canon-compliant. This new episode had the capacity to "invalidate" so many fanfics, and yet it makes a lot of things in FOE (like zebra magical alchemy, high-seas piracy and voice-amplifying magic) more appropriate rather than less.

Mostly, though, I just got a kick out of the new colt. I hope we see him again. And I love what they've done with naturally-gothic Luna.

I cheer for the brony week. Nice to see FA acting as a warm and welcoming place for all manner of furries. (And yes, there are a small number of ragers, but there always will be.)

Fallout: Equestria ha been given the honor of a Star-6 rating. Even more humbling, the story has generated a number of very talented fanart pieces, including many from furrys (and bronies) here on FurAffinity!

Here are links to a few of the awesome fanart pieces I have found here on FA:

Slushy:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5733239
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5754658

Lulubell:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5765811
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5775983

Catsbymoo:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5792678


Thank you. I am deeply honored.

--Kkat

PS: Someone spent $90 to have the following piece commissioned for them:
http://johnjoseco.deviantart.com/#/d3gsvqo

People have really been enjoying my Fallout: Equestria fanfic. So much so that it was recently awarded the "Five Star" catagory of stories at Equestria Daily!

If you haven't read it, and are at all interested, please check it out!
http://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/.....equestria.html

Happiness!

Well here I go...

I like the new My Little Pony.

There, I said it. And I said that in order to say this: I'm writing a My Little Pony fanfic. (Yep. I'm Twilight Sparkle level of liking the show.) And what I'm writing is "Fallout: Equestria", a crossover (or perhaps more precisely, a blending) of My Little Pony and Fallout. Yeah.

I've gotten a few pages written so far. A first chapter. And I'm looking for the right place to post it. Any suggestions?


Now I know that admitting I like My Little Pony opens me up to some ridicule (by people who haven't watched the show, no doubt), so I'm going to paraphrase something another viewer wrote, making the quote my own:


Now, I'm not going to say the new My Little Pony is THE BEST SHIZ EVER OMAHGAWD. But it's... pretty damn acceptable. I'd even say it's a good show. And I enjoy watching it. It's fucked up that I do, because, honestly. My Little Pony? Like god damn.

I started with the same reaction most people who haven't seen the show tend to have. And that reaction hasn't totally left me -- I will concede that I generally skip the theme song because it makes me have aneurysms, and it took watching several episodes before I was able to admit it had merit. (And I only watched those at first because I promised a friend that I'd give it a fair shot before looking down on grown adults who like it.) But I legitimately enjoy it! Anyway, it's the kind of quality show you'd expect from the developer, but not from the franchise, which is why you're seeing such a crazy adoption of it. Seriously, this show is on fire! My Little Pony has become the new mash-up meme for everything from 300 to Mass Effect 2.

So yeah. I like My Little Pony.


For those somehow not familiar with this new show, I'm going to quote again from elsewhere:

The ponies are coming, the ponies are coming!

Lauren Faust, associated with the Powerpuff Girls, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Cat's Don't Dance, has revived the old 80s franchise, and is doing a spectacular job at it.

No, seriously. This is NOT the sugary sweet tripe about teen girl issues that you may remember. Lauren Faust set out to change this.

I was extremely skeptical at first about taking the job. Shows based on girls' toys always left a bad taste in my mouth, even when I was a child. They did not reflect the way I played with my toys. I assigned my ponies and my Strawberry Shortcake dolls distinctive personalities and sent them on epic adventures to save the world. On TV, though, I couldn't tell one girl character from another and they just had endless tea parties, giggled over nothing and defeated villains by either sharing with them or crying–which miraculously inspired the villain to turn nice. Even to my 7-year-old self, these shows made no sense and couldn't keep my interest. No wonder the boys at school laughed at my Rainbow Unicorn Trapper Keeper.

From what I've seen since I've grown up, little has changed. To look at the quality of most girls' cartoons, it would seem that not one artist really cared about them. Not one designer, not one background painter, not one animator. Some of the more well-meaning, more expensive animated productions for girl audiences may look better, but the female characters have been so homogenized with old-fashioned "niceness" that they have no flaws and are unrelatable. They are so pretty, polite and perfect; there is no legitimate conflict and nothing exciting ever happens. In short, animated shows for little girls come across as boring. Stupid. Lame.

This perception, more than anything, is what I am trying to change with My Little Pony.

The characters are well defined, the humor is hilarious and somewhat self-aware, there is actual conflict, the songs are well written and get stuck in your head for days, and it's just plain GOOD WRITING. The pony craze is quickly taking over the internet, and for good reason.

The show's on at 1:30pm (or 10:30am) on Fridays on the HUB channel
Episodes are also on the HUB website here: http://www.hubworld.com/my-little-p.....-magic/videos/
and also on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/pensivepony
and here in HD: http://www.youtube.com/user/MyLittlePony1080p



Fallout: Equestria : http://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/.....equestria.html