/mlpol/ - My Little Politics

>>302169
Good point. I know I wrote some shit as a kid. And as a teenager. I'm glad I never wrote anything as gay as Fallout Equestria.
Some day, I should rework that godawful "Babby's First Original Anime" idea from my youth into something better. Or keep it in its current trashy state and crack jokes about all the dumb animu bullshit.

Speaking of which, Have you ever noticed how today's neo-puritan pseudointellectuals rage and foam at the sight of obvious forms of japanese fanservice, such as scenes where the generic self-insert hero boy trips and falls face-first into some hot babe's massive titties? They'll scream at these scenes and scenes where all the girls (including the youngish-looking ones) are in bikinis on the beach and scenes because they want to look above sex and sexuality when it comes from something foreign to their sensibilities like anime. They'll cry about the sister-kissing scenes in I Can't Fucking Believe My Little Sister Is This Horny For A Fucking Loser Like Me even though it's rated 18 so kids can't see it. Then they'll turn around and suck the dick of western cartoons that are supposedly for kids whenever they include perverted western fanservice moments like foot fetish shots, kids getting into inappropriately sexual situations, twerking ass in the faces of kids, lesbian pandering, race-mixing, mixed-race twerking lesbian pandering, blatantly homosexual shit like underage boys dressing in drag on-stage and getting cheered for it by a crowd of freaks, and so on.

They'll try and pretend they're above the handful of sexual moments in the "all-ages" yet hyper-violent show Adventure Of Some Asshole With A Sword, while ignoring any harmful degenerate sexual messages in western media targeting kids and celebrating whenever homoshit is forced down their throats while they're still impressionable. And they're so desperate for chances to virtue-signal, they'll try to make mountains out of molehills when they're bored. Like when they got butthurt at that Uzaki-Chan show for featuring a short big-tittied cute chick. What, were they mad at her for being cute? Most SJWs are hideous and obese barren perverts that lust after children, so maybe that's it. They want shows to hypnotize kids into degeneracy and normalize this shit for the next generation, they don't want these shows competing with japanese entertainment because they know they cannot compete. Did you know thee Demon Slayer/Kimetsu No Yaiba movie made more cash than ALL of Marvel/DC comics recently? Hiring diversity hires is a mistake.

Lazy anime fanservice is at best something that enhances the work and at worst a fleeting moment of easily-ignored trash there out of obligation, but western animus written to please the freaks on tumblr are purely trash. Removing the perversion from Steven Universe would be like removing the Omnitrix from Ben 10: You'd be left with nothing but the extra crap sprinkled on top of what the show was written to really be about.
Yesterday I saw a vid where some guy "Reworks the anime he designed as a kid" by making the art less childish but more tumblry, downgrading the Nami-knockoff girl into a tubby polyqueer genderfluid chick, and randomly blackwashing one of the characters. It's bizarre, it's like he went to art school to get good at art and they injected him with tumblr chemicals while he was there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0xVlKpubC0

Puritans got real mad about ALL the sex in Fallout The Frontier once they were told a pedophile worked on it (drawing the menu icons for a team that undoubtedly knew he drew AppleBloom clop from day one). They hated all of the sexual content, from spotting one used condom on the floor to one raped sad chick to being able to flirt with/fuck assorted adult women to actual degenerate shit like being able to fuck a Deathclaw and the lizard-people who reproduce by fucking humans and the porn-drawing possibly-underaged chick who "was meant to parody tumblr users". They got mad at how you could call a depressed emo chick "my little slave girl" but they'd fucking explode if they played Fallout 3/4 and realized you can enslave almost ANYONE in that game. The herd decided the mod was bad so everything had to be viewed through the "this is proof this mod and its creators are horrible" lens.
Sure, the mod was dogshit with shit combat and bad quests/storytelling.
But Fallout Equestria is undoubtedly worse.
How the fuck can people like this piece of shit?!
The Frontier is unjustifiably long and lasted many hours, but this story is longer and lasts even more hours!
TF rips off movies and COD/Wolfenstein/Batman Arkham fights with Scarecrow, but this rips off even more shit!
Hell, while The Frontier stole a lot of its moments from other sources it still had original ideas. Many of its original ideas were fucking terrible but it still had original ideas, like the concept of some NCR lads defecting and fucking off north only to run into Legion and Mormon BOS without the Codex Of Steel.
But Fallout Equestria is just Fallout but bad and with poners. Ponies don't throw exploding pies at each other or shoot each other with Morph-O-Rays to turn each other into ducks, they shoot each other with Fallout pistols and Fallout shotguns and robo-saddles that auto-aim rifles for hornless poners. For everything that wasn't seen in Fallout 3 like robotic owls, there are ten things that were seen in Fallout 3 and have no logical reason to show up here on a completely different planet with a completely different history, culture, and tech level!
This story is full of repackaged Fallout locations and sidequests and optional side-areas semi-remixed into a stream of shit for LP to swim through.
Someone more autistic than any of us could go through this story with a list of Fallout 1-3's locations in a new tab, figuring out which locations were ripped off from what and what tiny percentage of this story could be called "original".
Kid-me read RWBY fics better than this.
The worst is yet to come.

>>302173
I'm glad that you stay on topic these days;^P

I can relate to some of your points in this but again how does any of this relate to the fic at hand?

>>302184
>Any
Well, most of it I mean.

>>302173
>I never wrote anything as gay as Fallout Equestria
That's a matter of opinion
>>302184
>>302192
If you hadnt replied, I'd have deleted the post outright. There is no excuse, and this is what Nigel's critics are on about

>>298205
>>298514
You owe me nothing GG. If you don't wanna for whatever reasons I'll understand. Just wanted to remind you.
Always appriciate rejews.

>>302126

Anyway, when the narrative resumes, LP and Velvet have made it to the floor above the one they need to be on in order to use the scooter as a bridge. I'm actually a little surprised that they have simply been walking all this time; I was expecting a lot of looting and safecracking and reading diary entries from 200 years ago. Velvet has apparently been yammering about Calamity the entire time, so maybe that combined with the comedown from the crack mints has LP a little distracted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZG1kiLrg_I

This next scene, unfortunately, makes no sense and is executed terribly. I'm going to dump the entire section here verbatim before I go over it in detail. I went ahead and preserved the author's italics as well. You really need to read this in the original Greek to get a sense of just how awful it is:

>“It’s just that he makes me so… so… mad,” Velvet Remedy burst out with a stomp. So much for the power of prayer. “You know, I really think I should reconsider my options. There’s plenty of other stallions in the Equestrian Wasteland…”

>I felt a pang of jealousy. Started digging a hole to bury it in.

>“…Or,” Velvet Remedy said with a sudden sweetness. I froze. I could feel her breath on my left ear. When had she gotten so close? With a sultry voice as smooth as melted chocolate, she suggested, “Or maybe a mare?”

>I felt my knees go weak. My heart skipped a beat. My insides became flushed with heat and my stomach filled with butterflies.

>Then cold hard reality crashed over me, dousing the heat and killing the butterflies with frost. I turned on her, instantly and coldly furious.

>“NO.”

>Velvet Remedy took a surprised step back.

>“No. You are too perceptive to not know I have a crush on you.” I stepped forward, my voice cold and sharp. “You do not get to play with my heart, offer me what I’ve yearned for, just to try to get back at Calamity.”

>Velvet Remedy backed up, ears back, stammering.

>“For the Goddesses’ sake, Remedy!” I barked. “You are a follower of Fluttershy. You don’t get to be that evil.”

This is completely out of left field. Having Velvet suddenly make a pass at Littlepoop like this with no setup or preamble makes absolutely no sense at all. Littlepoop's indignant reaction is inappropriate as well, but I'll get to that in just a minute.

It's clear enough what the author is trying to do here, and on paper it's a decent enough direction for the romantic side-story to take. Here is the basic outline:

Character X has an unrequited love interest in Character Y, who has a reciprocated love interest in Character Z. Y is aware that X has a thing for her, but places X squarely in the friendzone, and pursues a relationship with Z. However, at some point, Z and Y have a fight. Y, knowing that X has a crush on her, goes to X and tries to use her as a revenge fuck, but X decides to stand up for herself and retain her dignity, even though it means turning down the character she's been fantasizing about since before the story began.

Again, it's a perfectly fine romance plot; if you got rid of the lesbian angle and replaced the ponies with human high school kids it could be a John Hughes script from the 80s. However, the author's execution is absolutely horrendous, and this latest scene is the rancid cherry that tops off the entire shit sundae. Let's walk through it step by step.

>“It’s just that he makes me so… so… mad,”
Her anger here feels completely artificial, for reasons I've already gone over.

>“You know, I really think I should reconsider my options. There’s plenty of other stallions in the Equestrian Wasteland…”
It really hasn't even been firmly established that Velvet and Calamity are actually a couple. They've expressed interest in each other, but even with the author's clumsy handling I had assumed they were still in the flirty early stages of romance. They certainly don't behave like a couple, from what little of their behavior we actually get to observe. Kkat basically just said "these two are dating now" and I guess we're supposed to just roll with it.

I've been complaining for some time now that the Velvet/Calamity relationship has been poorly developed. For the early portion of the story, they expressed no interest in each other one way or the other. Then, out of absolutely nowhere, they start getting flirty. Then, out of absolutely nowhere, they're fighting. What I think the author wanted was for them to be a couple for awhile, but then grow distant as a result of Calamity killing the colt, ultimately leading to Velvet's trying to throw herself at Littlepoop. The idea is actually quite good, but again, the execution is awful.

Problems in a story tend to cascade and create other problems, as we've observed with other stories we've looked at. This scene doesn't work because Velvet X Calamity doesn't work, and Velvet X Calamity doesn't work because Velvet and Calamity are not particularly well-developed characters in the first place. These characters are not well-developed because the author never really decided what he even wanted to write about in the first place, so the narrative just bounces schizophrenically from one subject to the next without ever really developing much of anything.

There's no plot, no characters worth mentioning; even the setting and its history, which kkat seems to have put more effort into than any other part of this story, is pretty threadbare. If he wanted this love triangle between Velvet, Calamity and Littlepoop to have the emotional punch he obviously thinks it has, he would have been better served by just treating the setting as a backdrop, leaving most of the world history and Fallout trivia for future stories, and creating a story that revolves mainly around these characters. As I've said before, these three are basically just patrons in a museum, and throwing some half-assed hormonal drama between them to spice things up isn't going to make that role any more exciting.

>>302203

>“…Or,” Velvet Remedy said with a sudden sweetness. I froze. I could feel her breath on my left ear. When had she gotten so close? With a sultry voice as smooth as melted chocolate, she suggested, “Or maybe a mare?”
This is the really galling part. To the author's credit, I didn't think he could do anything to make me hate Velvet Remedy's guts any more than I did to begin with, but much like the hermaphroditic dinosaurs of Isla Nublar, he found a way.

What's most galling about it is that I'm not even pissed off for the reason that the author wants me to be. If I were angry at Velvet for being callous or insensitive to Littlepoop, then the author would be doing his job; we're supposed to be angry at Velvet here. However, I'm angry because this is basically just bad porn writing: the pizza guy knocks on the door, a woman answers, and then for no reason she seduces him and they have sex. Prior to this moment, we've had no indication that Velvet is even remotely attracted to Littlepoop, or even that she might be interested in mares at all. In fact, there hasn't been any indication that Velvet is even aware of LP's crush on her. She completely breaks character here (at least to the extent that she has any character to break), and just flings herself at the protagonist in the most low-brow possible way, and the result is distasteful even by my standards.

There is also the matter of Littlepoop's reaction:

>“No. You are too perceptive to not know I have a crush on you.” I stepped forward, my voice cold and sharp. “You do not get to play with my heart, offer me what I’ve yearned for, just to try to get back at Calamity.”
There was no proper setup for this, either. Despite what the author may have intended, he has given us no actual indication that Velvet is aware of Littlepoop's feelings. If anything, Littlepoop seems to go out of her way to keep her crush on Velvet a secret. In fact, I think I've even commented on this once or twice; she grouses about Velvet and Calamity getting together, but she has not made even the slightest effort to try and win Velvet's affections herself. She seems to have just given up on her without even trying. Furthermore, based on what she's actually said and done in the story, there is no reason that either of her friends would even be aware that she's a dyke, let alone that she's been carrying a torch for Velvet all this time. I had more or less assumed that Littlepoop assumes that Velvet is straight, that she has no serious chance with her, and that she has simply resigned herself to loving her silently from afar.

As to Velvet's being perceptive enough to realize LP has a crush, there's no reason to believe this from anything in the text either. The author has a very bad habit of transferring his own omniscience to his characters: for instance Littlepoop being mysteriously aware of things that there is no plausible reason she should know, like this building having belonged to the Ministry of Morale. Likewise, Velvet is expected to have just somehow been aware that Littlepoop wants to eat her out, despite Littlepoop's not having dropped even the slightest hint to her.

Anyway, this whole scene feels completely contrived. Velvet and Calamity's "fight," Velvet's reasons for wanting to "get back" at Calamity, her sudden inexplicable attraction to Littlepoop, the sudden pass she makes; all of it. However, I want to emphasize that the author's idea here was actually good. The blueprint I outlined above would make a perfectly good storyline for this, but again, the execution sucks, and execution is everything.

The tension between Velvet and Calamity should have started when they first met, long before they became interested in each other. When they first meet, they should instantly dislike each other and fight constantly. As time goes on, they should become attracted to each other even though they still fight, until eventually they become a couple. LP should be watching this from the sidelines, and we should physically feel her heart breaking as she watches the two of them grow closer.

As soon as it seems like Valamity is all but a certainty, then the wedge event descends; Calamity has to kill a kid or do some other kind of shit that shocks Velvet to her core, and reminds her of why she initially disliked him. Now she is in a vulnerable, volatile state, which causes her to impulsively make a pass at Littlepoop. Bear in mind, though, that for this to work, she has to at least on some level be aware that LP has a thing for her, which means LP needs to make her feelings a little more obvious to the others. Also bear in mind that in order for the wedge event to have the desired effect, these characters need to be better developed from the get-go. We need to actually believe that Velvet gives a shit about her alleged pacifism; she can't just pay mild lip service to it every now and then while simultaneously turning a blind eye to her friends' murderhobo behavior.

Above all, the author needs to learn to focus, and decide what the hell this story is actually about. The schizophrenic, disorganized way this text is composed has a negative effect on nearly everything in it. If the author kept the story heavily focused on the interactions between these three characters, for instance, this love story would have a lot more punch to it. As it stands, it's hard to take much of it seriously. Calamity and Velvet are two barely-developed characters who barely speak to each other for most of the story, then suddenly they're a couple because the author says so. Meanwhile, Littlepoop assures us that this is devastating for her, but it's a little hard to take her declaration seriously when a paragraph later she's yammering excitedly about some random statuette she found in a safe, and a paragraph after that she's talking about downing crack mints.

>>302207

To be perfectly honest, this story is beginning to give me flashbacks to when I was reviewing Nigel's Silver Star thing. Trying to give constructive criticism on any part of it is difficult, because as soon as you start to tug on one thread you realize it's attached to a much deeper root system of problems that undermine the entire project. Also, much like Nigel's thing, FoE suffers heavily from the author's simply having too many ideas at once, and trying to cram all of them into the same project.

Anyway, I'm starting to get sidetracked. There are a couple more things about the Velvet/Littlepoop exchange that I'd like to go over, and then we can move on.

>“For the Goddesses’ sake, Remedy!” I barked. “You are a follower of Fluttershy. You don’t get to be that evil.”
As I've noted, Littlepoop's rebuke here is almost as out of left field as the pass that Velvet makes at her. As we witnessed with Peen Stroke, you can't just have your characters overact as a substitute for genuine emotion and expect the reader to fall for it.

This passage also calls attention to another ambiguity within this story. What exactly does LP mean by Velvet's being a "follower" of Fluttershy? It's been made fairly clear that she admires her, but it's unclear what that admiration entails exactly. How does she know Fluttershy? Obviously they can't have actually met, but there must be some kind of connection between them that would have inspired Velvet's admiration of her. It's still not clear just how much of this world's history is common knowledge. Is Flutters just a pony from history whom she admires, or does being her "follower" have some deeper meaning? Is she supposed to be patterning her life after Fluttershy and imitating her, the way Silver Bell did with Pinkie Pie? Or is this just autistic fangirl devotion that doesn't have any serious depth?

Another problem is that we really don't know anything about Fluttershy herself. The author has fallen into the common fanfiction trap of relying on the reader's presumed knowledge of the source material to fill in the weak points of his narrative. Even though most of us are probably familiar enough with the character of Fluttershy in MLP, as an FoE character we barely know her at all. I remember in that memory orb that LP found, the one that Velvet is constantly viewing, Fluttershy is seen giving a speech or something, but the incident doesn't really give us enough to form a solid impression of her character. Beyond that, she's barely been mentioned in the story; we don't know who she was, what she was like, or what she believed in or stood for. Moreover, her role as a historical figure is also murky, so not only do we not know anything about her personally, we don't really know how the other characters see her either. So Velvet's whole "follower of Fluttershy" thing doesn't really mean a whole hell of a lot.

Anyway, Littlepoop yells at Velvet and then stomps away. Presumably we are supposed to feel bad for her here, since rejecting Velvet's advances was clearly the right move, but turning her down would have been difficult and painful. And, had this scene, and the entire story before it, been properly developed, we probably would feel for her; as it stands, it's just one more meaningless event in a story that has just been one long string of meaningless events.

At any rate, the pseudo-feels are suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a sprite-bot:

>“You’re not supposed to be here,” called out a voice that sounded disturbingly like a mechanical Pinkie Pie. “You’ve been a bad pony!”
How the hell would Littlepoop know what Pinkie Pie's voice sounded like? She died 200 years ago.

Page break. In the next scene, Velvet and LP are under attack by a swarm of sprite-bots. They hunker down behind a makeshift barricade while the bots rain lasers down on them. I'll actually note that the author makes a good pacing choice here; had it been properly executed, the last scene would have been pretty emotionally heavy, and breaking that tension with an action scene is a good way to give the reader some respite.

Unfortunately, kkat immediately ruins this new scene with more of his trademark autism:

>“Where are they all coming from?” cried out Velvet Remedy as five more sprite-bots rounded the doorway and started vaporizing our barricade of tables and refrigerators.
>I knew the answer, but I didn’t have time to explain it aloud. It was obvious, really. Before there was Watcher watching everyone, there was Pinkie Pie. Of course the sprite-bots were hers.
I am really, really, reeeeeeeeeally getting tired of saying this all the time, but HOW THE HELL DOES SHE KNOW THIS?!? This is pure speculation on her part; it isn't obvious at all. The purpose of the sprite-bots has never really been explained; they just sort of float around playing music. While it actually makes sense that they might have been spy drones used by the Ministry of Morale, thus explaining the Ministry's slogan "Pinkie Pie is Watching You Forever," nothing that Littlepoop has observed so far would lead to this conclusion. It would be better if she simply discovered this fact somehow instead of obnoxiously "deducing" it.

This is actually a good example of what I was complaining about earlier: the author has a bad habit of transferring his omniscience to his characters. As the storyteller, he knows everything about this world already; however, the characters do not. It feels weird to have LP just suddenly blurt out some random piece of trivia that she just somehow knows "aha! this burned-out, unmarked skyscraper MUST be the headquarters of the Ministry of Morale! I know this because reasons!". If the author wants us to know that the sprite-bots were surveillance drones that Ponk used to watch ponies in the shower or whatever the fuck she did with them, then LP should find this out naturally through investigation.

>>302024
>Insectoid is a word
Huh, I'll be damned. Looks like you're right.

>>302058
>Btw is it bad writing that Calamity can effortlessly fly while carrying his friends?
It is, for the same reason that Littlepoop being able to carry an entire moving van's worth of crap inside her saddlebags is bad writing. What actions a character should reasonably be able to perform, and how certain encumbrances like carrying another character on their back or having a wagon hitched to them would impede their ability to perform normal actions, are fairly basic things to take into account when telling a story.

>>302167
>Do you think this story should do a recap episode?
I think this story is long enough without adding extra text, especially when it does nothing except reiterate things we already know.

You make some good points here. This story is galling not just because it's basically just a log of someone's RPG session, but also because it doesn't even seem like it was a particularly good RPG session. Giving each character their own particular set of skills, and then having each character take on different tasks depending on those skills, is a pretty basic aspect of playing an RPG. This is basically one overpowered character doing everything, while accompanied by her two friends who have no role beyond tagging along and occasionally telling her how great she is.

>>302173
>I'm glad I never wrote anything as gay as Fallout Equestria.
Pic.

>>302200
I know, I remember. I'm going to take a look at it. I want to make it to something resembling a stopping point with FoE before I delve into anything else, even if it's something really short. I worry that if I lose momentum with this I'm not going to have the energy to pick it back up again.

>>302210
>I worry that if I lose momentum with this I'm not going to have the energy to pick it back up again.
Heh. It's that bad, huh?

>>302211
In all honesty it's not much worse than Past Sins in terms of overall quality; it's mostly just the size of it that depresses me. The discussion of this story already spans two threads and we're not even halfway through it yet. Occasionally I find myself looking at how many chapters we have yet to read, and I realize that if I stopped now I probably wouldn't be able to make myself start again.

>>302212
Well the good news is that once it's done you can look back and say, holy shit I reviewed this slog of a story despite the soul numbing effect it's having from exposure.
Everything else will be cake walk.
Good luck friend, and thank you.

Diverging a bit here, my skills in dissecting media is lackluster. Once this thing has been combed through I'd like to give a post reading review analysis a shot.
Mostly giving the advice in How To Read A Book, in how to read fictional material it recommends to read it all in a timeframe that you remeber the whole story, preferably in one sitting. Giving the best possible benefit of the doubt, while reading at the appropriate speed. Usually shittier works deserve less time.
Then blast it apart with analysis.

>>302207
>There was no proper setup for this, either. Despite what the author may have intended, he has given us no actual indication that Velvet is aware of Littlepoop's feelings. If anything, Littlepoop seems to go out of her way to keep her crush on Velvet a secret.
This isn't strictly true. Velvet's been manipulating Littlepip's feelings for her since her very first appearance, where she took advantage of Pip's fangirl crush so that Pip wouldn't think twice about why she wanted to be rid of her Pipbuck.

As with so many things in this story, Kkat manages to miss the target at point blank. Littlepip should really be having an epiphany here - Velvet's most consistent character trait is exploiting other people to get what she wants. She did it with Pip to get out of the stable in the beginning. She did it with the slavers and the slaves at Old Appleloosa to live out her fantasy of being a healer. She smooth-talked the merchant on the way to Manehattan and bullshitted the guards to get into Tenpony. By rights, Littlepip should be castigating her for being a sneaky, emotionally manipulative shit in general, not just with Calamity.

Velvet, at least on paper, is the group's talkomancer - when Littlepip isn't on her "do everything even better" drugs. There's potential for a character arc here, of someone recognising a character flaw and working to resolve or leverage it, but that potential's squandered on low-effort relationship drama.

>>302214
Me in the past. That was a fucking awful idea. It works, but the small embers of disgusted rage have been stoked.
Since reading more I now understand this 'story' is more like a soap opera.

>>302218
>Littlepip should be castigating her for being a sneaky, emotionally manipulative shit
That's fucking genius!
The speech options having a high Speech skill in Fallout unlocks are often manipulative and underhanded.
And being a skilled liar/manipulator in Fallout and most other RPGs is your best way to avoid some combat encounters, haggle better rewards for completing sidequests, and the best RPGs will even give you the option to talk the final boss to death instead of having to fight him.
Painting it as a bad thing to be a two-faced smooth-talker would be like painting it as a bad thing to suck at everything except violence and have no interests in anything beyond your desires for sick loot and murderhoboery.
You know how many RPG players try to complete games with a "no kill run/pacifist route" right? Even if it means sparing serial rapists and crime bosses while sneaking past raider bases so others have to deal with them and nonlethally knocking out/tranq darting foes that try to kill you? And using the whiny butthurt "peace is better than killing, you fucking cunt" dialogue option whenever another character kills and you don't get an option to stop them?
Because between the manipulative shit from this manipulative shit and Velvet's inconsistent pacifism that only matters when it fucks her or her friends over or makes her irrationally butthurt over Calamity stopping rape from happening...
A smart writer could have written Velvet as a direct attack on RPGs, the High Charisma Speech Expert character build, and the Pacifist Route as a concept. A genius parody satire thingy. Plenty of stories have said violence is wrong even when the heroes do it. But how many stories have said the same about gamers who focus on social skills and their manipulative characters?

I wonder if Velvet would be as mad at Calamity over the kid killing if he handed her his gun to prove a point and told her she needs to shoot that super-rapist colt or let him rape the fleeing mare, to prove a point over the hypocritical self-righteousness of devoting yourself to pacifism without understanding what sometimes needs to be done to attain and secure lasting peace.

>>302226
I really wish kkat had better writing, because at least then complex social dynamics, and moral grandstanding. because then there would be a story, not the clusterfuck this is. It's like calling a cardboard box filled with mirrors, glass, and a ripped own soda can, a house of mirrors. Sure if you've never seen mirrors, or glass, or ripped up metal it's interesting for maybe ten minutes, ten it's more like watching paint dry.
The audience who enjoyed this work have an invested interest before it begins, for if that work breaks their heart the spin-off's and other fan works would cease. They hold their good memories for both Fallout, and Friendship is Magic like a bandana facing the firing wall. Else they would see their blood and energy leaking from the bullet wounds of ineptitude, the burn in their ear as the ringing of disappointment would convince them to remove the blind fold. They mistake their vital fluids leaving as a sign of warm fuzzy feelings from the story rather than the existing holes in themselves.
>You know how many RPG players try to complete games with a "no kill run/pacifist route" right?
>Even if it means sparing serial rapists and crime bosses while sneaking past raider bases so others have to deal with them and nonlethally knocking out/tranq darting foes that try to kill you? And using the whiny butthurt "peace is better than killing, you fucking cunt" dialogue option whenever another character kills and you don't get an option to stop them?
You know who would make a great pacifist (to write), a sadistic torture hungery manipulator. While that is how 'public faces' deal with such things through proxy being behind the shoes would be interesting for a little while.

>>302212
I don't wanna demoralize you or anything but I would quit about now, if I were you. You already proven that so far this story is, whatever you have provenI assume it's shit.. You don't actually have to do more.
I'm not trying to be a temptress here or anything but like I'm just giving you my view on it but then again, I'm not you. I would probably not review stories in this great capacity as you do in the first place so you clearly have other motives and things that drive you forward than what I have. I think you should do what you want in the end.
But like,
>>302214
no offence to this (you) but this
>Well the good news is that once it's done you can look back and say, holy shit I reviewed this slog of a story despite the soul numbing effect it's having from exposure.
sounds more like a thing you would say in regret than anything else. "Holy shit I wasted my life," kinda deal. At least I would have seen it like that.

Again, I'm not trying to be a siren here. I do think, though, that if you're going to do this despite feeling that the length of the work is painful to go through. One of my friends from high-school read this four times or something like that. O'boy.
Then maybe you should slice it into sections. Like, you review to this point than you take a break and then you read to the next point and take a break.
I guess, I should admit to a bias that I really don't give a fuck about this story at this point. So yeah, I'll admit to be a little bit selfish in wanting your reviewing skills all to myself but I know there are other people in the world except me, I think.
Though, one of your latest posts was nice. I like the one about how silly it is that characters who follow retarded and extremely simplified versions of ethical principles are mind-blown when they don't mesh together. As in "You should not kill children" + "Rapists are evil and must be killed" and conflict with these ideas create conflict and "grey" morality.
It reminds me of how some people will criticise christianity.

>>302227
Also you ever notice how tons of RPG sidequests are "this desperate town or family or person desperately needs someone to solve this problem and you're their best or only choice"?
In that context, haggling for a better reward when you know the questgiver can barely put food on the table let alone pay you the wages rich bastards or royalty or the military easily could seems like a real dick move.
It would be one thing for Geralt to extort cash out of farmers he saves after taking care of their monster problem.
But a post apocalyptic scenario where farming is damn near impossible for all but the richest and your choices for food are either 200 year old tins of beans, expensive fresh fruit grown in hydroponics labs, and campfire fried radroach meat? A gamer wouldn't think twice about clicking the Give Me More Money dialogue option if he wants a reward for giving his character a high Charisma score instead of a higher Strength score and isn't thinking about the story his roleplaying actions tell. But in a story where the writer is willing to explore and deconstruct all aspects of the efficient selfish gamer brain murderhobo mindset, Velvet would be the perfect way to say "fuck High Charisma players, you're damn near useless in a firefight and your holier than thou pacifist attitude is annoying. Just because you've never been forced to compromise on your wimpy peacetime morality it doesn't make you better than someone who has".

Although if the author had the sense to go for this and intentionally say something smart about RPG gaming and being a murderhobo with nothing better to do, Calamity would need to be a consistent character and represent some other aspect of the typical tabletop player mentality.
Perhaps he could love upgrading his guns and making geneva convention violating ammo designed to torture whoever he shoots and love torturing baddies for intel? Since he shot Littlepip once, it would force the audience to think "maybe this is a bad thing" at least once before he proceeds to use this ammo for the rest of the story on raiders and his enclave ex-comrades alike. There could also be a scene where he tortures a baddie for intel but it turns out that guy was innocent and wasting time pulling his teeth out instead of searching for the bomb allowed it to blow up something important to the heroes.
Nothing really lies at the core of Calamity's character. He just has traits that don't influence one another. Cowboy accent. Shotguns. Pegasus. Ex Enclave Dashite. It's not like the author is using him as a clever statement to say "former members of a villainous organization don't just magically become nice people by joining the good guys and exclusively using the evil torture methods on Bad Guys".

>>302229
If Glim gave up at 100k words he never would have gotten to the "shallow moral principles" part. And if he gives up at 200k he'll never get to something absolutely infuriating I really don't want to spoil. There's so much wrong with this story we haven't seen yet. This isn't just a reaction to the story, or a MST3K of it, it's a review and analysis of it that tears this beloved shitheap apart and exposes it for what it really is while revealing new writing tips that help others avoid writing like this. There's still so much left to learn from this awful story. There are things about my story that I've changed and improved because I caught myself making mild missteps that reminded me of Kkunt's colossal cockups and lessons learned from this fucking fanfic's amazing autopsy.
Taking short breaks to review short things and cleanse the pallete of FE would be fine but if you took a long break to review something long like Harry Potter And The Sauceror's Scones and then returned to this fic, would you remember all the "chekovs guns" in this story and all the easily overlooked things Kkat loves to make important and call back to much later on?
An absolute abomination of turbo retardity is coming soon in this story and I don't want to spoil it.
Besides, imagine if fanboys of Fallout Equestria discovered these threads. If the review gave up halfway through the story they could dismiss everything Glim said about the fic with "Well he didn't finish it and see how all the information payed off in the end so his opinion is irrelevant".
If there has ever been a story that deserves to be torn apart and analyzed besides The Conversion Bureau and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, and an author that deserved it besides Chatoyance and Eliezer Yudowsky, it's Fallout Equestria by K "TEN THOUSAND OF LUNA'S DICKS IN MY ASS" kunt.

speaking of which I forgot, is anything by Chatoyance on the review list?

>>302233
I don't really wanna dismiss your opinion. Afterall it is not up to me so I should try to make decisions for anyone. But I'm just not really convinced by your arguments.

>If Glim gave up at 100k words he never would have gotten to the "shallow moral principles" part.
First off, this is not something I have never thought of before. It was more a compliment on something we both agree on.
But even if it was,
>There are things about my story that I've changed and improved because I caught myself making mild missteps
Is it really worth it? I feel like you have to write to learn how to write and that analys is just one part of getting better.
Besides is everything we discuss here new? One of the typical problems in stories is that it ain't consistent with itself. Many of these problems that will be find, no matter what story you review, will be iterations on the same problem. That the writer broke the rule of consistency with his universe, characters, and etc.
There is also the fact that if you are going to write a romance story and you spend your time reviewing a adventure novel, you might not always be able to use the lessons you learn from one genre to another. I mean all nuggets of wisedom are intresting but often one wants them to serve one's progress towards a goal.

>Besides, imagine if fanboys of Fallout Equestria discovered these threads.
>"Well he didn't finish it and see how all the information payed off in the end so his opinion is irrelevant"
I believe few of them will actually read it anyway. Of course, if they notice it is unfinish they might ratioalize that the second part of the story is better than the first part. But first off, what kind of argument is that? "Don't read the first half of the half-million words story, it is shit but you need it to get the glorious payoffs later?"
But regardless, if they fear the review might actually make a good point, they won't even begin. It seems to me that that's more or less human nature.
Also, I doubt fanboys will just suddenly find this review series. I mean why later instead of now when it is actually on the board rather than in the archives?
In fact, we could use this thread as a form of fishing on /mlp/ right now if we wanted to. It might be successful.

These are just my thoughts. Again, you can do anything you like. The fact taht you enjoy it and feel as though you're learning (amoung others) is something that might appeal to GG.

>>302229
That sums it up quite well. Yes it is a waste of time, but to know for a fact exactly why some subset of the population likes it is useful. Because to create something successful doesn't always mean you have to make something good. In that aspect Kkat managed an initial pass.
Like everything in his story, it's by halves, never truly whole.
On the bright side, a useful lesson can be learned... somewhere.
Four fucking times? I- well the age group makes sense, and the motivations make sense, and the 'intent' of the image of the characters could be relatable...
The most useful thing learned from this story is using the audience's imagination to supplement the story. In kkat's Fallout Equestria it's mostly cheap smoke and mirrors, hidden behind expectations, word count (becaue longer fics means better quality right?), and faking it till the end.
I'm really am glad that there is an end. Credit where credit is due, it is a massive wall of text. It's technically not filled to the brim with illegible writings. The paper thin veneer is enough for some people, and I get that. I just wasn't impressed by the paper, nor the slapdash wire mesh.
Had it been a group project some failings might have been overted, and depth could have been there. In the end leaving the audience hungry for more stories in what should have been.

>>302230
Production costs and time limits.
The message of peace is gud is usually over simplified for purposes of mass marketing (an error, for many types of things) and meddling higher ups (and 'moral' pricks).
The problem is how far out the cascade goes amd the chaos theory that exponentially increases in size with every option and how far foward it counts.
Writing a real character would have been nice, but oh well.
Writing a proper high charisma character would have been fun. So would the anti-charismatic character. They could be dumb as a bag of bricks, but there would have to be a group dynamic of real characters.
Sometimes knowing the only thing between certain death (or for main characters the setback of something bad happening) is a few words could be neat. Empty promises are a web that drags them down, and pulling it off would require some bullshit of the highest order.
Ideally every character would get the group or themselves into trouble. Technically that is done in kkat's littlepip murderhobo time*.

>>302234
>>302236
Nobody writes Cupcakes fan-stories any more. Nobody writes Sweet Apple Massacre fan-stories, or Fall Of Equestria fan-stories. But people are still writing Fallout Equestria fan-stories. It's become its own genre and it has its own fansites. Not just a subreddit or two and some discords but real sites that cost money to maintain.
Fallout Equestria isn't truly a "Shared Universe" because new things created in one setting can't be used in someone else's story without someone screaming "Thief!". Most writers using this setting are scavengers who "take inspiration" from the Fallout elements Kkat didn't already touch and ruin, when they aren't trying to shoehorn in elements from FIM's later seasons like Discord and the Crystal Empire and Changelings and Kirins and Yaks. Fallout and MLP crossover fics only get views if they submit themselves to the insane whims of Kkat and try to make their stories "canon-compliant" with his. They need to fit neatly into the nonsense world he set up and rest comfortably inside the original's shadow without upstaging the original or diverging too much from the original.
People still write Transformation fetish/fantasy fics and isekai stories and call them The Conversion Bureau or Friendship Is Optimal fics for the free views and attention, and some people write these things without attaching them to popular works. But when they write Fallout fics they're forced to pretend this story is good, and change as little about it as possible as they translate its terrible writing decisions into a slightly less terrible setting for a better story that will often end up abandoned if this unhappy compromise between the author's vision and Kkat fails to get enough early attention.
There have been stories in other fandoms that were so influential, elements that made it unique and popular became cliches as they were ripped off almost constantly. For example, putting Draco Malfoy into leather pants and turning him into some teenage girl's dream troubled boyfriend and romanticizing everything about this wimpy spiteful cowardly bully with no significant relevance to the main plot, or demonizing Sasuke Uchiha from day one and pretending this self-sacrificing tryhard was always destined to be derailed into the absolute turbocunt he became during the Shippuden seasons.
Nobody can claim ownership over these cliches, but popular stories can say they were the first to use them. And yet, to this day, FIM users won't give Fallout+MLP crossovers a second glance unless they're written to look like and seem like a "loving tribute" to Kkat's Fallout Equestria. It's swallowed the attention of damn near every brony who likes Fallout, and anyone who refuses to treat it like a sacred cow is treated like a pariah.
Even the term Mary Sue, which was invented by a Star Trek fanzine author whose scream of "STOP WRITING STORIES LIKE THIS, MY FELLOW BOOMERS!" got Chinese-Whispered into "Never create characters with any of the traits found in any character the person giving you this advice doesn't like, young millennials/zoomers!", still can't be definitively called anyone's property. The inventor of the original mary sue story can't claim credit for the many differing and contradictory interpretations of what a bad character is and what amateur unpaid authors should avoid writing.
Chatoyance doesn't own The Conversion Bureau or its fans or its haters or their steady stream of "Anti-Conversion Bureau" fanfics.
The Conversion Bureau is a story where Equestria appears on earth and a magical field steadily grows around it, killing all humans on contact for "lacking souls" and transforming all evidence of human existence (towns, skyscrapers, monuments, etc) into ponyish stuff. Nopony and nobody can stop the field's growth so Conversion Bureaus are set up to transform humans into poners and ship them to Equestria while "evil" terrorist organizations who refuse to stop being human kill and blow up at random for fun. Ponies hate all humans who refuse to take the potion that turns them into "Newfoals", empty-headed dozy cows with their aggression and minds removed, though their kids end up becoming normal ponies. "It was never your fault, earth's just too small and humans are just lesser than ponies!" says the fic.
There's an entire anti-fandom of people who reject this story and its anti-human stance.
There are fics where the entire TCB universe is obliterated by a more canon-faithful take on Equestria or humans with Star Trek tech or Santa Claus or the protagonists of Grand Theft Auto V or the cast of Naruto or DBZ.
There are fics where the mean TCB-verse ponies turn out to be just brainwashed by "The evil Queen Celestia" who gets beaten up by Batman or Goku or something wacky like a dead president.
There are fics where that anti-magic guy from Magical Index punches the anti-human field into nonexistence and fics where the bond between pokemon and humans lets them instantly erase the ever-growing anti-humanity field, foiling Queen Celly's plans.
And there are stories where TCB happens but realism kicks in and makes everything a disaster as Equestria crumbles under the weight of all those hungry refugee ponies and the fully-self-aware free-thinking pony-bodied children of humanity grow up desperate for revenge.
The Conversion Bureau does not belong to Chatoyance. Anti-TCB fics are fresh and creative and do not belong to Chatoyance.
But Kkat is still, and might always be, the sole proprietor of the Fallout Equestria fandom in all of its incestuous delusional "glory", and all future Fallout+MLP crossovers, unless someone takes his story down a peg.
This story has had more impact on the fandom than any other fanfic in existence. Chatoyance might have gained more fame for being a bizarre misanthropic transgender lolcow but that's the individual's infamy, nobody holds TCB in high regard.
But this fic?
What fanfic on the planet deserves to be analyzed so much that it can't wait for its turn after this one?

>>302252
Okay, here's the main point. Many fuckos who like Fallout: Equestria also like the duplicates, because it's the same. They crave the failings.
Normal crossovers with Fallout and Equestria are delegated elsewhere, and the fucks who read Fallout: Equestria (my imaginary perfect story) compare crossovers to this imagined thing.
>But Kkat is still, and might always be, the sole proprietor of the Fallout Equestria fandom in all of its incestuous delusional "glory", and all future Fallout+MLP crossovers, unless someone takes his story down a peg.
The reason is the same reason commies hold the communist manifesto in high regard. Everywhere they go they whisper 'oh, but it would totally be so much better if it was more like communism'.
The amount of dedicated fans to that singular story with the unintended message is that 'the ends justify the means as long as you have a whiney diatribe'. They'll make a token effort, and cause everything to be worse, and 'cry in shame' before yelling that they were the one's to do so much good.
With that in mind. They want to spread the story in hopes others agree that they are just like them, [this may be a bit mean but displaying NPC behaviors anyone who doesn't agree is obviously wrong.
For one reason Fallout, and My Little Pony Equestria Daily attract a certain kind of person. The comment section in the fic is filled with spoilers, but also shallow statements about how much the story made them feel, and how relatable the dumb littlepoop (who is a liar, a murderer, a thief, and the only one who gets the information and makes the plans and who has all the control while none of it every really being her fault. That is apealing to them to proclaim themselves to be good without actually being good) is. The fact is they spread the shit around to anything and everything knowingly or not.
So why isn't other fictional works recieving the same treatment? The niche it appeals to. Who Kkat apeals to has every motivation to convince others of their belief. It's a wide net, that is just asinine enough to to be a deterrent for negative reviews. Not only that the bandwagon effect is there.
The lack of reviews in their minds means 'it's a good story totally has flaws or whatever but it's special' when in reality the few warnings that do get out and the fuckery going on in the story turns those not wanting to wade through the 620k words of bullshit. And when someone wants an synopsis: oh it's an adventure in Fallout Equestria, or you have to read it to understand.
There is many points that would have been good, except it just never fails to be disappointing in my eyes.
>What fanfic on the planet deserves to be analyzed so much that it can't wait for its turn after this one?
Anything else, but that's not the point. The point is after I read Fallout: Equestria life seems a whole lot better because even if I'm being stabbed or put into reeducation camps or anything else at least I can now gage with precision how fast my soul is leaking out.
For a review? As long as Glimglam is having fun by any means it's fun. With that said Glimglam, take good care of yourself the story's taint about taint can taint other's taint to be tainted which would not be good so do whatever you need to do.
Also as an achievement.

>>302252
I guess I will continue to argue for the sake of arguing;)
No, but I don't have any stake in this. The things I write are usually not long enough to warrant a whole thread about them, or several. So it's not like if he quits Fe he will read my million-words-long magnum ops. It doesn't exist afterall.
To me, it really doesn't matter what gg reviews to me. I'm just thinking about how to solve his problems with this thing.
Maybe, he should start to review in less detail. Like, a summary of thoughts for each chapter or something or maybe not, either. Holds up hands in the air. I'm just sayin'.
>What fanfic on the planet deserves to be analyzed so much that it can't wait for its turn after this one?
I can buy that argument but I think there is a bit of counter to it as well.
Again, the story's begining has already been proven to be rubbish so nobody can make the claim that this thing is good anymore without and asterisk. I like FE*, *except for...
There is also the point that trying to convince these people that literally thinks you are stealing from other fanfics to make your own fanfic better feels kinda mute.
Also, not that I care but was it really necessary to write all these examples for this point. The point being that Fallout Equestria is influential in the brony fandom and Kkat appearently controls the subfandom with an ironfist. I would have totally bought both of these things if you just told me but I guess I can't fault you for providing examples for your points.
If you ever pass by /a/ here you might wanna drop some Naruto knowledge. It doesn't belong here but I can't help myself but to be a bit curious into a particular facet of that story.
>demonizing Sasuke Uchiha from day one and pretending this self-sacrificing tryhard was always destined to be derailed into the absolute turbocunt he became during the Shippuden seasons.
Stuff like this actually kinda intresting to me. I know you commented how Naruto's past was retconned further into the series. His background changed from insignificant orphan to the child of the previous Hokage.
Again though, if you do post it somewhere else cause we don't wanna derail this thread.

>>302260
But if Glim read entire chapters and then wrote a summary of his thoughts at the end it would still take around the same time. He'd still have to go through every chapter, but we'd miss out on all those moments where he highlights some awful text and explains what's wrong with it or talks about what chapter 16 does 2000 words in and where he thinks it might go without knowing what happens 4000 words later on in the chapter. With his current method it's like we're experiencing the story alongside him. Like a MST3K but without the skits.

I'll have to make the naruto thread on /a/ tomorrow because I'm fully booked for tonight

>>302269
>it would still take around the same time.
No, I don't think so. Writing just one of these posts must take a few minutes at least. So in the long run that will matter.
He already skips things he has already commented on in the story. He also doesn't go through the story line by line. All I'm saying is that he could increase the pace he went through this.

Though, your perspective is probably appriciated. I would be glad to know that people like my in-depths analysis of things.

>Spoiler
You don't have to do anything if you don't want to either. I just thought it would be a good outlet for these bursts of ninjas flying out your mouth at times. I do also stand by that I care somewhat about this myself. I particularly intrested in what was retconned.
But you really don't have to make a thread just for me either.

>>302264
>See what happens!
>Tell it to my face, not online. See what happens!

>Not directed at u sven
I got that.

>>302214
>>302218
I'll address these posts together since they sort of connect.

>Mostly giving the advice in How To Read A Book, in how to read fictional material it recommends to read it all in a timeframe that you remeber the whole story, preferably in one sitting. Giving the best possible benefit of the doubt, while reading at the appropriate speed. Usually shittier works deserve less time.
>Then blast it apart with analysis.
I can see how this approach would be useful. I basically do the opposite; I write my analysis of these stories in real time as I read, which means I tend to comb through the text pretty slowly. My approach has the advantage of being detailed; I notice things going over the text with a fine-toothed comb that I wouldn't notice if I were just reading at my normal speed, and I would say this method of analysis has helped improve both my writing and my critical reading skills.

The downside, however, is that the story ends up taking a long time to read, which means that sometimes I lose track of details that happened earlier in the story. Nigel II has found a pretty good example of this:

>Velvet's been manipulating Littlepip's feelings for her since her very first appearance, where she took advantage of Pip's fangirl crush so that Pip wouldn't think twice about why she wanted to be rid of her Pipbuck.
This happened so long ago I had completely forgotten about it. I started this book back in October, and this was right at the beginning. However, you're quite correct, and this revelation has actually caused me to view Velvet's character in an entirely new light. This is why it's helpful to discuss books in a group setting; other people will notice things that you would probably never catch on your own.

>As with so many things in this story, Kkat manages to miss the target at point blank. Littlepip should really be having an epiphany here - Velvet's most consistent character trait is exploiting other people to get what she wants. She did it with Pip to get out of the stable in the beginning. She did it with the slavers and the slaves at Old Appleloosa to live out her fantasy of being a healer. She smooth-talked the merchant on the way to Manehattan and bullshitted the guards to get into Tenpony. By rights, Littlepip should be castigating her for being a sneaky, emotionally manipulative shit in general, not just with Calamity.

>Velvet, at least on paper, is the group's talkomancer - when Littlepip isn't on her "do everything even better" drugs. There's potential for a character arc here, of someone recognising a character flaw and working to resolve or leverage it, but that potential's squandered on low-effort relationship drama.

I have no comments here, these are just excellent points and I wanted to highlight them.

>>302229
>I don't wanna demoralize you or anything but I would quit about now, if I were you. You already proven that so far this story is, whatever you have provenI assume it's shit.. You don't actually have to do more.

>>302233
>There's so much wrong with this story we haven't seen yet. This isn't just a reaction to the story, or a MST3K of it, it's a review and analysis of it that tears this beloved shitheap apart and exposes it for what it really is while revealing new writing tips that help others avoid writing like this.

I think I'm going to have to side with Nigel on this one. Here's the thing: writing these long, ridiculous analyses of these ridiculous, terrible My Little Pony stories is time-consuming and frankly nuts, but I do actually consider this a worthwhile activity. Moreover, even though composing these posts takes awhile, these reviews actually don't cut into my free time all that much. The way my job is structured I work long shifts, and subsequently get long-ish breaks, so I usually bring my laptop with me and use the time to go through a couple pages of whatever pony story I'm on and type out my thoughts on whatever I've read. Since I'm stuck at work either way, I'd basically be spending these break periods doing some time-wasting activity anyway; playing games or browsing the internet or something like that. So, this is as good a use of that time as any. When I get home, I usually spend about an hour cleaning up what I wrote and getting it coherent and presentable, and then post it before going to bed. I will occasionally get in the mood to do some reviewing on one of my days off, but most of the time I use my downtime at work for this project and keep my actual time off reserved for my more meaningful projects and leisure activities, so although I may sometimes grumble about it, I actually don't consider this project to be that much of a time sink.

As to continuing with this story, even though it is almost mind-numbingly awful at times, I feel like it's a good idea to stay the course and finish what I started. Part of it comes from a weird personal vanity that I have: if I go through an entire shitty fanfiction and explain, from start to finish, exactly why it sucks, then I win. If I give up halfway through, the author wins. It's a frankly moronic way of viewing the situation, of course; kkat doesn't even know I exist and probably wouldn't bother to read even half of what I wrote here, particularly since I've spent half the thread calling him a tranny at this point I've completely forgotten how I even arrived at this conclusion about him or whether or not I actually think it's true. Ironically, it's pretty much the same impulse that makes a person dump 900+ hours of their life into a video game, even though they don't have anything to show for it at the end besides a bunch of virtual badges that won't even matter to the player as soon as he shuts the game off. It's dumb, but humans are irrational creatures.

Also, I'm not just doing this to shit on bad pony stories because I like doing it. I mean, that is basically an accurate description of what I'm doing, and I do enjoy it, but there is a bit more to it than that. It's not even just about giving writing advice, although I like for it to be that as well.

Like most Western art forms, literature is slowly but steadily rotting from the inside out. What's considered high-brow literature these days is mostly pozzed garbage in fact I'd actually like to branch out from pony stories at some point and tackle a couple of nu-lit novels. The classics are not widely read anymore, and due to multi-kulti nonsense they are being phased out of college curricula as well. I know I sound like kind of a pompous faggot about books sometimes, but the truth is that for a fair chunk of my adult life I barely read anything at all, and when I did read it was mostly manga and pop literature (Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, that kind of thing). I get the impression this is a fairly common experience. I decided to start reading seriously due to self-improvement threads on /pol/ and /mlpol/. Without knowing that much I started picking up classic books, philosophy, history, stuff like that, mostly relying on infographics and /lit/ for suggestions. Almost all of the literary knowledge I've shared here I've acquired since 2017, and it's amazing how much my perspective on just about everything has broadened since then.

The problem with something like FoE is not just that it's a bad story or that it's told badly (though it is certainly both of these things). The problem is that shit like this is a real-time example of Western literature rotting from the inside out. I read an interview that kkat did for EqD, and his influences are basically the same kind of thing I mentioned that I used to read: manga, Stephen King, that kind of stuff. Incidentally, even though I didn't read much, I've been writing creatively for most of my life, and when I've gone back and read some of my stories from 5-10 years ago I've noted that they're not much better than FoE. The old programmer's maxim, "garbage in, garbage out," applies to writing as well; even if you're a reasonably talented writer, if you don't know what a good book looks like the odds are you won't produce one.

FoE is held up by the MLP fandom as a serious work of literature; there is an entire generation out there that grew up reading this, along with Harry Potter and whatever else. It's not enough for me to just say that a book like this is bad, I need to be able to explain why it's bad. Modern white men need to start reading again for the same reason we need to start lifting weights and eating better. We need to start writing again too, but unless you know what a good book looks like you'll never be able to write one, and if FoE is the kind of thing that's considered a good book, then Western literature is basically fucked.

>>302281

With all of this said, I actually feel like I'm starting to repeat myself a little in this particular review. I also have a tendency to get a little mired in my own negativity, and this story gives me quite a bit to be negative about. If I'm not doing anything except grumbling the same complaints about shitty character building and lack of plot and so forth, the review is no fun to write and (I imagine) no fun to read. I was so busy grousing that I completely missed the Velvet-as-master-manipulator angle that Nigel II just pointed out. So, I'm going to make an effort to be a little more objective and have a little more fun from here on out, and hopefully try to move a little quicker as well. I probably don't need to go over every single scene line by line, for instance.

>>302233
>imagine if fanboys of Fallout Equestria discovered these threads.
I'd honestly be a little curious to hear what this story's actual fans might have to say in its defense. It's an objectively bad work of fiction, but so are a lot of things, even some things that I like (despite everything I wrote above I still enjoy manga and Stephen King, for example). I think just about everyone has their guilty pleasures when it comes to books, movies, music, what have you.

I'm coming into this story completely fresh, without any experience playing Fallout or being a part of the early MLP fandom. My reaction to it is that I hate it because it's objectively awful, and I have no prior affection for it to dampen this reaction, but I can understand someone liking it for nostalgic reasons or because they're a Fallout fanboy or something like that. That doesn't excuse it or make it any less deserving of whatever shit I might still end up flinging at it, but I'm more than willing to hear the other side out.

I won't lie, I occasionally wish that one of these authors would somehow stumble into one of my threads and respond to some of what I've written about them. In any case, if people want to link this thread to people outside of /mlpol/ I don't particularly mind. I casually mentioned it on /mlp/ once or twice, but in general I don't like shilling my own threads on other boards; however, you people are free to shill on my behalf as much as you like.

>speaking of which I forgot, is anything by Chatoyance on the review list?
I've never heard the name before, so no. Is this the Chatoyance you're referring to?
https://www.fimfiction.net/user/1291/Chatoyance

If so, this person seems like the absolute worst kind of fart-huffing pseud, and I would be more than happy to tackle something he and/or she has written. The avatar and this bio alone is already making me want to punch this faggot in the face:
>I am a human-shaped unicorn, and I write stories and draw pictures. My only religion is Friendship, and my only politics is Kindness. I write stories to try to comprehend the native simians that live on the planet I'm kind of stuck on. I know I'll never figure them out, but it's fun to try.
Ugh. Seriously, go squat on an elephant dong, you man-skeezer. I'm already thinking up gay insults for you.

Anyway, I don't know when I'll get to it, but I might actually go ahead and add one of these stories to the queue. This one in particular catches my eye:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/85294/id-that-indestructible-something

It's featured on the bio page I linked. The description is as follows:
>Inspired by the works of Franz Kafka - specifically 'The Metamorphosis' - this philosophical adventure tale examines the nature of identity and self while taking the reader on a fantastic journey filled with emotion and excitement. A young woman wakes to find herself transformed into a cartoon pony, yet no other person can see her change. She must struggle not only to survive such a tremendous alteration of her body, but also to find either some means to reverse it... or to come to peace with what has happened to her. Not in any way your common tale of transformation, this tale is utterly unique!
I'm actually familiar with Kafka's Metamorphosis and I'll admit to being morbidly curious about how this weirdo's treatment of it will pan out. Also, it's only (only!) about 100,000 words long, which at this point I consider a quick read.

Also, as ever, if anyone has anything they'd like to see me take a look at, feel free to let me know and I'll put it in the queue.

>>302281
/)
Then to the depths we go. To this root that plagues this story and generation, making a higher aspiration in the Plato's cave.

Earlier I was too 'passionate', but now in hind sight (and an enlightened moment of inspiration), this story still carries truths (if unknowingly and unwittingly) that are a reflection of our world. Infact it's possibly an unknowing 'honest' attempt that shows light on some elements of our society that is known to be disruptive.
Kkat probably didn't mean to bash the core of SJW's and soy culture at large by being appealing, but the truth tears all the lies all down.

>>302208

Anyway, Velvet and LP are under attack by some sprite-bots, which LP has somehow intuited were originally designed for use as spy-bots by Pinkie Pie. LP's latest crack mint has worn off, and she is now jonzing for another one. It's probably not worth the effort, but I'd be a little curious to go back through the story and pick out all the parts where she takes a mint-al. The duration of the mint-high seems a little inconsistent between scenes, but that could just be my imagination. Add it to the long, long list of things kkat would need to address in order to make this story passable, I suppose.

>Four more swooped in through the shattered window. I threw a refrigerator at them. Three were crushed by it.
It really speaks volumes about this story that Littlepoop can say "I threw a refrigerator at them" as casually as if she were saying "I threw a volleyball." Seriously, the level of autism a person would have to possess in order to pen something like this is almost staggering.

Anyway, the fight scene goes on for awhile. It's actually a little refreshing to see some action in this for a change, but unfortunately the author doesn't really bother to finish it. LP and Velvet just continue firing needles and throwing refrigerators at an unending stream of these sprite bots, and then suddenly the scene cuts off in a page break. When the narrative resumes, time has skipped forward by some random increment again, and they are exploring an office somewhere else in the building. Presumably they won their fight somehow, but the author apparently didn't consider the victory important enough to tell us how it happened.

The office they are in has pretty much everything you would expect a room in this story to have: several safes, a terminal, and a charred skeleton in the corner. Littlepoop is about to begin her usual business of hacking the terminal and opening the safes, when she notices something catching the light in the corner where the skeleton is. She investigates, and discovers another small statuette for her collection; this one appears to depict Twilight Sparkle. Now she's got 3/6, good for her. Much like the other statuettes, this one appears to have some kind of enchantment or spell or something on it that affects the pony who picks it up. Littlepoop feels a small burst of mental clarity as soon as she touches it. I'm assuming this is probably another Fallout thing; whatever game element these statues are an analog of probably provides some small boost or benefit or something when the player picks them up.

Anyway, now that she has found the legendary collectible statue that a dead pony was storing in its ribcage for some reason, she can turn her attention to the terminal.

>This one was beyond my skill. Not even with the new tricks of the trade that I had learned from comparative reading was I able to crack it.
Wow, there's a first. This is probably the most shocking turn this story has yet taken.

As she is attempting to crack the terminal, Velvet approaches her and tries awkwardly to apologize for her inappropriate behavior earlier. However, it seems that Littlepoop is not quite done being fanny flustered yet, so she tells her to fuck off and leave her alone. Velvet decides to oblige her and steps outside for a moment, and as soon as she's gone Littlepoop downs another crack mint. She uses her burst of mental superpowers to open the safes, and to her delight finds more drugs inside. There's some other crap in there too, some stealth bucks and a dildo and a 1981 Buick Regal and some other wacky shit; the usual assortment of junk, basically.

Thankfully, the author doesn't leave us biting our nails in suspense over the contents of the mysterious terminal. Despite it having been too difficult for her l33t h4x0r sk1LLz before, her drug-addled brain is now able to crack the code easily. However, before she can explore the files, Velvet Remedy enters the room again and tries once more to make amends. This time, LP is a little more receptive:

>“Okay, look. I know you’re sorry. And that you didn’t mean it. But it doesn’t change the fact that you tried to do it. And that’s not going to stop hurting anytime soon.”
I feel like I could go over everything that's wrong with this, but I'd just be reiterating points that I've already made. I'll note that >>302218 's take on this was rather incisive and made me consider the Velvet-Littlepoop situation in a new light. I'd completely forgotten about the part at the beginning, where Velvet manipulates Littlepoop into taking her PipBuck so she can escape, and the idea of making Velvet some kind of master manipulator would actually have been an interesting direction to take her character. What's more it actually would have worked quite well with what the author already has; her moral hypocrisy and complete lack of sincerity would become a feature instead of a bug. This was a good observation, and it's one that I completely missed and probably wouldn't have thought of. This is why it's good to discuss books in a group setting.

>I closed my eyes and sighed again. I was seeing the situation more clearly now. Even though I didn’t want to. Party-Time Mint-als were an equal-opportunity revealer.
Remember what I said earlier, about how any points scored with your love interest under the influence of performance-enhancing drugs shouldn't count? The same rule applies to insights and acquired knowledge. I'm liking this "Party Time Mint-als" device less and less the more apparent the author's intentions for it become. The last thing this character needs is another way to cheat at life.

>>302291

>“And for what it’s worth, I get it. I know what it’s like to put your faith in what you believe something to be rather than what something actually is.”
If kkat were going to take Velvet's character in the "master manipulator" direction, this could actually be a clever way of cutting Velvet down; LP would basically be saying that as much as she idolized and/or lusted after her, getting to know her in reality had ultimately been a letdown. However, this kind of insight would require these characters to have more than one dimension apiece, and would also require the author to be aware of it. I'm not certain either of these things are true. Anyway, depending on what the author intended it to mean, this is either one of the most incisive lines of dialog that LP has ever uttered, or just another one of her schmaltzy one-liners that feels deep but isn't.

>I looked for an example that didn’t reveal that I had gained effectively no insight from DJ Pon3. I didn’t want to admit that yet. And fortunately, it didn’t take much for me to find an even better example.
There's no reason to mention DJ Pon3 here. The scene is about Velvet and Littlepoop; leave the other characters out of it for now.

>“When I stepped into the outside, I was completely lost. I didn’t understand any of it. The only thing I understood was Stables. Or, at least, that’s what I assumed. In reality, the only thing I understood was Stable Two. And when the other Stables didn’t live up to my expectations, I… couldn’t handle it well." I kicked at the floor, stirring up ash. “Hell, it didn’t even take all the bizarre and fucked-up social experiments… I get upset when the architecture isn’t ri… isn’t the same. Isn’t what I think is right.”
This reveals a pretty significant gulf between what the author has apparently been trying to say and what he actually said. I remember commenting earlier that I didn't quite understand what LP's deal with exploring stables was, and I honestly still don't.

Here's how I've been thinking about it: LP spent her entire life prior to three weeks ago living inside Stable 2. The stables were all more or less built from the same blueprint and are basically identical to each other. So, when she began exploring the other two stables she visited, she was basically exploring a place that was identical to her home, except it was ruined and filled with skeletons. That would probably weird just about anyone out.

Also, the subtle differences in the architecture from stable to stable might create kind of an uncanny valley effect. This may sound silly, but a couple of years ago I went back to the city I grew up in and visited a mall I used to hang out at all the time as a teenager. The mall had been on the verge of shutting down when I left, but someone had bought it and extensively renovated it, to the point that it looked like a completely different place. When I went in there I found myself getting weirded out, because it was a familiar location to me but everything was very radically different, almost like visiting an alternate universe version of a place I knew well. Again, it sounds a little silly, but it was a very disconcerting feeling and I didn't like being in there; I can imagine that visiting some of the other stables might be a similar experience for Littlepoop.

However, the author seems to be saying that there's more to it than this, and that's the part where he starts to lose me.

>In reality, the only thing I understood was Stable Two. And when the other Stables didn’t live up to my expectations, I… couldn’t handle it well.
What exactly were her expectations? Aside from the one she grew up in, she's only been inside two other stables. The first one she knew was abandoned going in as I recall. The second one I believe they were expecting to find inhabited, only to discover that tragedy had struck and everyone was dead. When she says that the other stables didn't live up to her expectations, what does she mean exactly? That she thought the other stables would be just like the one she grew up in, with ponies living comfortably inside them?

I can see her being traumatized by the condition of the other stables; she could easily look at what happened and think "there but for the grace of Godess go I" or something. However, it feels like the author is getting at something else with this comment, like he's implying that the fates of the other two stables were part of some insidious revelation for her. Earlier, when they were exploring the last stable, Calamity said something about her not dealing with "feelings of betrayal" very well. Is that what this relates to? Does LP feel somehow betrayed? If so, who betrayed her, and how? The author clearly has something in mind for all of this, but he has not communicated it well at all.

What's interesting about all of this is that while the text seems to be implying that all of the stables except Littlepoop's succumbed to some horrible fate, there's really no reason to draw this conclusion from what we've seen. The two abandoned stables both ended in tragedy because of accidents that couldn't really have been foreseen or helped: the first one ended because of a freak magic accident, and the second one because some idiot was letting his kid shoot off his BB gun near the water talisman. In fact, I didn't notice it before, but it's a little interesting that in both cases the tragedy was brought about by the actions of a child (in the first stable, the magic experiment that unleashed the radioactive cats was done by a filly for show and tell or something). These two events were basically unconnected accidents, that had nothing to do with the stables themselves. Well, I suppose leaving the water talisman unprotected enough that a child could accidentally cause irreparable damage to it is arguably a pretty serious design flaw on StableTec's part; aside from that though, the stables themselves aren't really to blame for what happened.

>>302292

>Hell, it didn’t even take all the bizarre and fucked-up social experiments…
This part is also pretty murky. The author has been hinting that there were social experiments going on in the stables, but it really hasn't been explained very well. It's actually not clear what the purpose of the experiments was even supposed to have been, or why this company was bothering to conduct sociological research in the middle of a nuclear war, but we can put a pin in that for now. The experiments themselves were indeed bizarre, but they weren't necessarily fucked-up.

The first stable seemed to have been conducting some kind of experiment in reversed gender roles; strange, but ultimately more or less benign. There's no evidence that anypony was being tortured or killed or anything like that; the tragedy that occurred there was unrelated to the experiment as far as I can tell. The second experiment involved having an AI in charge instead of a live pony. This one didn't end particularly well, but as I've pointed out before, the broken water talisman basically meant game over for that stable one way or the other. Moreover, the situation could have been averted entirely if the ponies living there had done a better job of protecting their talisman in the first place. The AI is not directly responsible for the tragedy.

I'm actually a little curious now if the implication is that all of the stables were conducting experiments, or just a select few. If so, I wonder if we're going to discover that Littlepoop's stable was also conducting an experiment of some sort, and we simply haven't found out what it is yet. Maybe they were trying to genetically engineer a master race of obnoxious know-it-all midget ponies who are also master locksmiths, or something like that. It could be a rather fun twist, depending on how creative the author wants to get with it.

In any event, the author seems to be implying that the exploration of the abandoned stables was some kind of turning point for LP, for reasons that go beyond just being traumatized by seeing so much death and desolation in such a familiar-looking place. However, he doesn't make it particularly clear what those deeper issues are. This last bit is just murky as all hell:

>I get upset when the architecture isn’t ri… isn’t the same. Isn’t what I think is right.
What is she on about here? Is she literally talking about the architecture, like what I was talking about with the shopping mall? Is she bothered by the familiar-but-slightly-different layout of the buildings? That seems like a fairly minor thing to get this upset over. However, if she's alluding to something deeper, it's not clear what it is.

Oh yeah, one last thing:
>The only thing I understood was Stables.
This is grammatically bad writing; it should either say "the only thing I understood was the Stables," or "the only things I understood were Stables." Of the two, the former is the only one that makes sense in context, and it's actually still a little grammatically questionable. To fix it and dress it up a little prettier, I'd probably say something like "the only world I'd ever known was the world of the Stables."

Anyway, after going off on this weird tangent, Littlepoop connects it awkwardly to their current conversation topic:

>When something, or somepony, doesn’t live up to your assumptions of who he is, then you either have to accept that you didn’t know him as well as you thought you did, and strive to get to know the real him better… or you start, well…
I guess this is supposed to be LP acknowledging that she understands what Velvet is upset about. This is more or less okay, although I will point out that it doesn't entirely fit the situation with Calamity. Velvet knew well enough that Calamity was willing to kill other ponies when they first met, and she's seen him kill before. Granted, if the issue is specifically him killing the colt, she may not have realized he'd be willing to go quite that far; still, though, it doesn't quite feel like the shoe fits.

Anyway, they basically make up after this, and the scene ends with a page break.

Next, Littlepoop goes back and cracks the uncrackable terminal (while high on crack). She discovers a message to Twilight from Pinkie Pie.

>The voice was anxious, sad and cracked. I knew Pinkie Pie’s voice; I’d heard it in Vinyl Scratch’s memory. This was almost the same, but much more fragile. Possibly even broken.
This appears to clear up an earlier objection of mine: that Littlepoop could not reasonably know what Pinkie's voice sounded like 200 years ago. I had forgotten that she had technically heard her speak in one of the memory orbs. It would have been better if the author had included this reminder when LP heard the sprite-bots speaking and the comparison was first made; aside from that, though, this checks out.

Anyway, the message is basically just Pinkie apologizing to Twilight for being a coked-out loser who chugged a twelve pack of Natural Ice and blasted diarrhea all over her library, or whatever the hell she did to piss Twilight off enough to make her not want to speak to her anymore. She appears legitimately remorseful, and there seems to be an implication that this was recorded near the end of the war, when everything was pretty much hopeless anyway. It's actually not bad and conveys the intended emotional effect rather well; unfortunately the author ruins it with a fairly dumb jokey moment. A soldier apparently enters the room while she is recording, and tells her that some group of something-or-others is in position to take out some other group of something-or-others, and they are just waiting for her to give the order. Ponk responds in her typical autismo patois, and suggests that the raid be conducted in a giant balloon shaped like her head. Oh, that le wacky and le random Pinkie Pie, amirite guise?

>>302293

The message isn't quite over yet; however, the rest of it mostly sounds like an anti-drug PSA circa 1985. Ponk denounces the party-time mintals she invented as the devil's nectar, acknowledges that they have destroyed her friendships and ruined her life, and laments ever having developed the habit. She explains that the mind-enhancing effects of the drug somehow boost her Pinkie-sense, which has proven essential in their fight against...whatever they're fighting against. Zebras or something I think. She ends by telling Twilight that she has made an appointment to check into rehab, and asks if she would be willing to go with her. At this point the message cuts out.

The significance of all of this is about as subtle as being whacked upside the head with a summer sausage. Ponk's struggles with crack mints obviously mirror Littlepoop's own, and this glimpse of what her own future might look like, should she continue down the path she's on, gives her pause. She reflects on the positives and negatives of continuing to abuse Party-Time mint-als:

Pros:
+ fresh, minty breath
+ super-powered autism
+ you can literally vibrate through walls

Cons:
- all of your friends abandon you
- you become even more insufferable than you were to begin with
- you end up doing really weird "favors" for ponies you'd just as soon not be in debt to

The author also makes a cheesy attempt to artificially add weight to this question by tying it to the broader struggles of the world at large:

>Pinkie Pie had wanted to be rid of them. But she couldn’t. Not just because she was addicted, but because she had become reliant on the boost in order to do her job. To try to save the lives of millions of ponies. How could that not be more important than one friendship?

>The Equestrian Wasteland requires sacrifices.
It doesn't, actually; nearly all of this was probably avoidable. Ponk was a hopeless coke fiend who used altruism as an excuse to justify recreational drug use, and as far as I can tell, Littlepoop intends to do the same. Also, it's worth noting that ultimately she didn't save the lives of millions of ponies. Assuming I've followed this backstory correctly so far, the way it ends is that the balefire bombs go off and all the cute little pastel ponies get burnt to a crisp. Either that or all the skeletons we've been seeing are just leftover Nightmare Night decorations. Also also, I feel like I should point out that the Equestrian Wasteland didn't ackshually exist when this recording was made; it was just called Equestria back then. The Equestrian Wasteland is what exists now, because of actions taken by these ponies 200 years ago, including this coke-sniffing lunatic who used hot air ballooons shaped like her own head to commit war crimes.

Oh, one more thing. As if all the sadness-porn the author just dumped on us weren't enough, he slathers on an extra layer by letting us know that there was some kind of technical glitch in the system, and this heartfelt message of Ponk's never actually reached Twilight. Thus, they probably both died before they were able to properly make amends and become friends again. Cue the sad violin music.

>I have you with me now…
>My eyes fell on the pony skeleton from which I had retrieved the Twilight Sparkle statuette. A sadness welled up in me. I felt tears falling down my cheeks.
[sad violin music intensifies]

>“Celestia and Luna be with you, Pinkie Pie,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
[sad violin music reaches levels that should not even be possible]

Anyway, enough of this maudlin crap. Want to cry for real, and maybe rage a little while you're at it? Here's something to consider:

LP now knows that the Twilight Sparkle statuette she found was actually a treasured personal possession of Pinkie Pie. Pinkie literally spent her last moments alive clutching this statue of her dead friend, while lamenting all of the time they lost because of her drug addiction. To Ponk's sad and lonely ghost, which is probably wandering the empty halls of this forgotten skyscraper as we speak, this little statue of Twilight is worth more than all the treasures of Celestia's tomb. To Littlepoop, however, it's completely meaningless; it's just some cute little collectible tchotchke that she wants for no reason other than to have it. Littlepoop literally pulled this thing out of Pinkie's ribcage and stuck it in her saddlebag next to all the other autismo junk she carts around, where it will remain until she either trades it away for ammunition, or puts it on a shelf next to her Funko Pop collection, where it will do nothing but collect dust until the next apocalypse. For all the crocodile tears she sheds here, not once does it ever occur to this klepto that this statue might be something she doesn't have a right to take.

Page break. Velvet and Littlepoop have met up with the others, and they all made it to the floor they need to be on in order to access the fallen scooter sign. Once again, Littlepoop cucks herself by suggesting that Velvet and Calamity walk across together, so they can "talk." Because as long as you're 500 feet in the air, tiptoeing across a rickety, 200 year old makeshift bridge that is swaying precariously in the wind, you might as well take the opportunity to have a long, boring talk about your relationship.

>The sky above was growing perceptibly darker. We needed to hurry. I stepped up to the ledge and made the mistake of looking down. Massive, paralyzing vertigo hit me. We were fourteen stories above the alley. The tiny red dots of manticores spotted the ground far, far below. Another flew through the alley about halfway between me and them. I felt cold sweat break out across my forehead.
This seems like a good moment to remind everyone that literally the only reason she is doing this is to track down a couple of rare jukebox 45s for some sperg DJ. She is also risking the lives of her three alleged friends for basically no reason at all.

>>302260
Here's the Naruto thread https://mlpol.net/a/1334
>>302286
That's the one! Chatoyance is a fucking weirdo.
I hear some author once wrote The Conversion Bureau and accidentally made it anti-human and gave up on it, so Chatoyance took over and made it even more anti-human. Chatty unironically says shit like "Ponies are a superior species compared to humans" and "Something that would be immoral for a human to do would be fine for a pony to do, for that is their right as a superior species".
Chatoyance also wrote "Alternate Universe TCB fics" that have the TCB label but barely have anything to do with ponies or TCB and are about humanity getting a virus that wipes out their masculinity to create world peace, or some shit like that. That's what I heard, anyway.
It's funny how "Futurists" and scifi/fantasy fantards obsessed with escapism and their own misanthropy love thinking "Maybe if aliens forced world peace onto us", "Maybe if we were on a bigger planet with infinite resources", "Maybe if we were a less inherently aggressive people", and so on. That's the extent of their thoughts on why world peace hasn't happened yet: The conditions to make it easy and instant haven't happened yet. It's a coping mechanism to help with their unwillingness to ask themselves serious questions about who's killing this earth and why, what could save it, who's killing the earth's saviors, what could save them, and so on.
Trade between nations and business connections make countries dependent on each other in a way that discourages war, while globalists sacrifice humans en masse for the benefit of the elites. The real scientific method as invented and perfected by whites promotes factuality and understanding, understanding reality promotes understanding each other while leftist low-IQ tribalism promotes warring constantly over everything, even the smallest shit. Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than monarchists and commies and govt-funded money-laundering charity fanboys could count. Christian nations and christian minecraft servers have better morals than Islamic nations and and communist minecraft servers. The "Muh secular science utopia" as atheist faggots imagine it requires everyone to agree to Christian principles before it can function without abandoning all its morals in the name of "logic" and descending into the hyper-rational cheapening cheapening of human life. Lefties are creatures of ignorance and envy and spite and subversion desperate to parasitically feed upon and eliminate whites, the only people who could make world peace a reality by eliminating leftist lies and letting everyone prosper without them.
>>302288
I love the bits where Kkat accidentally makes it look bad to be a loser murderhobo with nothing better to do than seek out desperate survivalists your pre-war peacetime morality considers "baddies" and slaughter them. And the bits where Kkat makes it look bad to think like and act like the efficiency-obsessed manipulative type who picks all the manipulative dialogue options to get what he wants no matter what that means morally and how you play with the feelings of others.
I wish LP's other companions shined their own "Fuck DND characters like this, fuck fictional heroes who act like this, and fuck people like this!" lights on what they represent.
Would be easy to turn Calamity into a critique of the idea that once someone from a Villain organization joins your side he's suddenly a Hero which makes his town-destroying slaughter sprees "Heroic" while at the same time it's still supposedly okay to slaughter his formerly-fellow Villains(TM) en masse without ever wondering if they, after being shown kindness/mercy/rehabilitation, could end up turning good like Calamity. It reminds me of when Disney's Star Wars fanfics introduced one obligatory black guy who's also the obligatory good stormtrooper, and then never questioned whether you should woohoo and cheer while slaughtering stormtroopers, and never introduced another good stormtrooper again except for one other black one who's already out of her evil armour. Gee, maybe if Phasma was less of a stupid toy idea and more of an actual character that could be her character arc: going from angry ex-soldier to hero. Fuck the disney starwars films.
It would also be easy to sprinkle some magic on that power armour to complete the picture and turn the steel-armoured guy Steeltoes into a critique of the "Holy Paladin" DND archetype, the guy who's only brave when wearing invincible armour and possibly also empowered by holiness/his chosen deity. Easy to be brave when you've got literal fucking deities in your corner making it even easier to slaughter fragile goblins and stupid orcs. Easy to be brave when you've got a +50 holy warhammer of Bandit-Killing, or in this case something deadlier than 50 caliber machine guns, strapped at your side. Easy to be self-righteous about your "glorious paladin principles" when you've never been forced to make the moral compromises your party's thief, who grew up in the slums, had to make if he wanted to survive.
If Velvet's a "fuck you" for the high-charisma pacifist Bards/Clerics, and LP is a Thief with nothing better to do than loot and shoot, that leaves space for...
A smug wizard straight out of his ivory tower? A Hexblade/Warlock dark mage? One obligatory good member of an evil race? Perhaps a tree-hugging bear-fucking druidfag, or the obligatory kid-appeal character who dies horribly in the name of realism and edge.
>>302291
Mint-al duration is incredibly inconsistent. They last as long as Kkat wants them to except when they'd wear off at a "dramatic moment", or moment that justifies more loot-n-shoot time (Like when LP spontaneously lost her ability to repair Steelhooves's suit, forcing her to get the thing from the vault where DJ-Pon3 and others were killed by the Crusaders Maneframe and they got medical supplies and LP fainted and wanked and Steelhooves got better on his own)

Oh also fuck Kkat for making LP a godlike mage and godlike thief. Thieves lockpick and sneak and assassinate, they don't need the ability to throw fridges around. If you give them the ability to throw fridges, they will throw fridges instead of doing sneaky smart thief shit. Thieves have to be clever to beat overwhelming odds, and so do cleverly-written magic-users. But OP magic users just defeat overwhelming odds with even overwhelmingier magic might and that's dull and predictable.
If Kkat's dead-set on giving LP OP telekinesis he should have watched Jojo's Bizarre Adventure so he can see what kind of interesting fights can happen to the overwhelmingly strong Star Platinum. ANY of those one-off monster-of-the-week villains could kill the whole Team LP at once by being smarter than them and more creative.

>>302291
>Presumably they won their fight somehow, but the author apparently didn't consider the victory important enough to tell us how it happened.
Kkat's habit of "resolving" scenes this way whenever he has no idea how to resolve these scenes, even when the answer is something obvious like "The infinite supply of baddies teleported in from another dimension eventually runs out", would be less galling if dialogue was used to make it funny.
>"There's too many of them!" Velvet screamed in fear, firing wildly into the oncoming swarm of steel, desperately wishing her shitty needles had as much robot-smashing stopping power as her leader's throwing refrigerator. "We're not gonna make it!"
>"We made it!" Littlepip gloated over the stunned Velvet, smugly and sensually reclining atop a mile-high pile of smashed-up robot corpses.

>"Littlepip, I don't know how you're going to convince this guy to do the thing!" Velvet whimpered.
>"Holy shit, he did the thing!" Velvet was still stunned, as they walked away from the guy they convinced to do the thing. "You really have a way with words when you're tripping balls."

Speaking of tripping balls, it would make the target audience of this story nut uncontrollably for 4-5 hours if Littlepip took the Fallout drug "Psycho" during one firefight and started talking like Doomguy from The Doom Comic does whenever he's under the influence of that berserker powerup. You know, all "Rip and tear! You are huge! That means you have huge guts!"

>>302291
>this is probably another Fallout thing
Yep, Fallout 3 added collectible magical Bobbleheads to the game for players to discover scattered around the world. Some boost a SPECIAL stat (Strength, Perception, Endurance, etc) by 1 point and some boost a Skill (Sneak, Speech, Small Guns, etc) by a few points.
This makes it absurdly easy to make your character godlike at everything, which kills the replay value inherent in trying the game again as a differently-built character. F3 also has stupid clothing that will magically give you +5 Sneak skill or +5 barter for wearing them which makes no sense.
F3 fantards say "Teh bobbleheads means Bethesda games has better rewards for exploration than Fallout 1-2" because they effortlessly found bobbleheads in 3 and never touched Fallout 1-2 and never discovered the hidden moments where you improve your SPECIAL stats as an earned reward. Or the conversations with some characters that boost your Skills, like the Survival-boosting guy who's a walking reference to the classic RPG Wasteland. That makes more sense for a realistic setting than picking up some magical vidyagaem powerup that never wears off. Collecting dumb pre-war trinkets that have somehow never suffered any damage in 200 years is a retarded thing for any survivalist focused on saving the world to do. But I guess it makes sense for a faggy human goomer obsessed with wandering around "making his own fun" as random endlessly-respawning enemies atk him sometimes.
Fallout 4 threw Skills away to """SIMPLIFY""" (casualize) things while making everything depend on SPECIAL stats that have never been easier to improve until you've got maxed 10s in everything, yet it still included SPECIAL stat-boosting bobbleheads that take you past 10 and new Skill Books that give you Perks when picked up. Nothing says immersive like picking up a comic book and dealing +5% more damage with laser pistols.
Kkat loves to try and justify nonsense that happened in Fallout 3 using magic or other Fallout elements so they can happen again in his fic, so the Bobbleheads get a really fucking dumb backstory I won't spoil.

>LP finds the brain-boosting statuette, then fails to open a lock, then needs drugs to open it
that's dumb, it cheapens the brain boost if it immediately fails to help her do something she's done before.
Ain't like this is some special safe that requires specialty tools to open. (like a twig/rotating fuckstick with spinning handguard/red bull can/lego man)
She should try to open the safe, fail, consider drugs, then say no, then find the bobblehead, becoming smart enough to unlock the safe. That way LP's rewarded by the universe for not doing drugs.
Or Velvet could find the statuette, becoming smart enough to realize being a manipulative cunt is mean on her own.
Then again it would infuriate the target audience if one of LP's underlings found sick loot that's sicker than Littlepip's sick loot.

>>302292
It's dumb that even LP thinks "Going to meet that DJ was a waste of time that revealed no insight".
Sure, meeting the DJ in F3 was pretty pointless.
But meeting this all-seeing DJ should be a big deal like meeting House in FNV. The official end of act 1 as a drifter out for revenge, and the start of Act 2 as House's best operative/worst nightmare, which leads up to the big war in Act 3.

>the stables themselves aren't really to blame for what happened
This completely fucks up what Fallout went for with the "Most vaults are experiments" reveal.
F1, 2, and NV used social experiment vaults/stables in interesting ways, 3/4 used them as excuses for dumb shit. Kkat loved 3 too much and learned all the wrong lessons from Bethesda's inability to write coherently.

>>302294
I forgot all about how Littlepip got the Twilight Statuette, but now I remember how much I hated LP during this scene.
And how much I hated Kkat for making so much of Equestria, even the mane six, fall to pieces just so the mane six could be blamed for the horrors ripped off from Fallout mindlessly and injected into ponyland.
Running the Ministry Of Unpersoning doesn't suit Pinkie Pie. Organizing a raid on a company suspected of working for Zebrica shouldn't be Pinkie Pie's job. If it should be any mane six member's job, shouldn't AJ or RD handle this with their fully-military ministries? Running Stable-Tec doesn't suit Scootaloo. Inventing crackmints and getting addicted to them doesn't suit Pinkie Pie, who's already a looney-tunes character without them, shouldn't need crack to boost her brainpower, and didn't act like a pony whose brain was boosted by crack.
Remember everything about this scene for later including the safe full of crap and where LP got the statuette, because it gets worse. Everything about this scene gets even more infuriating later.

>poners tiptoe across a bridge
CALAMITY HAS WINGS AND CAN EFFORTLESSLY CARRY LP, WHO HAS EFFORTLESSLY LIFTED BOXCARS AND VELVET AND STEELHOOVES BEFORE. None of the four should use that bridge and risk breaking it. A big fucker in fucking big power armour like Steelhooves could probably break it just by looking at it. But of course, LP's brain is in gaymer mode and nothing ever breaks in a gayme unless it's scripted to do so, which means you can throw grenades inside a raider-infested tree library without burning it down and walk across a shitty bridge with 350 pounds of guns/armour/ammo/assorted junk in your inventory without breaking the bridge unless the bridge is destined to be destroyed like the cup from the Jojo's Bites The Dust episodes.

<pic unrelated just something I found
>>302286
I guess there is no point in making a review thread around a classical work since you can find that on the web.

If you love classical litterature so much why don't you marry it... with Fallout Equestria in such a way that you make commercials for this classical stories?
What I mean is that sometimes you have compared the stories you review to classical litterature, what if you aimed at making that a more frequent thing. Like, "Here's how Kkat did this but let's see if Shakespear did it better." This way you can introduce classical books to Anons that haven't heard of them and entice them to read them as well.

> It's dumb, but humans are irrational creatures.
>I know that I don't make sense but that's my speciality.
What?

Nah, I'm just kidding. I have no problems with anything you have said here. You do what you want with your leisure time and I also think classical western litterture is worth reading.

Although, I think I could have a problem with what could be considered under the label "classical litterature"It's hard to ecplain what I mean with this sentence. Basically, today we have writers that are trash but still have world bestsellers. *Cough.* J.K. Rowling *Cough.* I guess we can still say that her travesty was influencial and so was the works back in the days. But I guess I'm too cynical and can't help but to think that was populare back is something that is both hard to find out, being quite a while ago, and something that probably had to be encourage by some establishment at the time. As in it might not been the best book at the time but the real best was overshaddowed. There is also the problem that we have today that local stories gets overshaddowed by international ones. As in, if you make an animation in Italy and have it in italian, the anime fans won't see it. Similar how how I can't help but ot feel that englis books dominated the market due to their influence rather than their quality all the time. I don't actually know if this is true just that writing a book in english has advantages over writing it in an other langauge. I don't write stories in swedish because of this. But very much could be true. Honestly, the only good classical swedish writer was August Stringberg, and the rest can suck a dick, probably. I think it was Vilhelm Moberg that wrote a story about an old man learning that his wife had an affair with a young man so instead getting furious, he decided upon greeting the guy and wanting to get to know him better. . Another thing is that you seem to confound "good stories" with classical ones, when that doesn't necessary need to be the case.

Honestly, maybe this thoughts aren't so well thought out. I been tempted a few times to erease this whole post a few times and just leave my first sugguestion about making this review into comparison-review at times.
What I'm saying is that I'm not hundred-procent sure aboutmy perspective but that there is something to it and therefore I will post it.

>>302332
Obviously not all classical litwrature is good and not all good books are classical literature but Shakespeare is a timeless genius when he isn't defending jews.
Harry Potter's popularity undoubtedly came from astroturfing and boomer parents forcing it on their kids because "news shows" and "schools" and propaganda talk shows insisted "making your kids read this will make them love reading... and that's a good thing".
Hilarious in retrospect since most Harry Potter fanboys and fangirls never read another book in their lives and still define themselves as Slytherins and Hufflepuffs and Griffindors and Ravenclaws in their twenties and thirties.
One time when I was a kid the news... was it BBC or ITV? This was during a time when in the UK most houses only got a few TV channels because we didn't have Sky boxes or Netflix yet. The news show sucked Rowling's dick live on air with an interview meant to advertise the book and then showed this massive fucking stadium where shittons of kids and adults silently listened in awe at Rowling as she read one chapter of her book. I think she was three or four books into the series. I remember giggling when she said silly words and getting shouted at by my parents who were completely fucking hypnotized by Rowling's hypnotic "parent reading a storybook to his child" tone and disarmingly silly words.

>>302332
>their quality all the time
At times*
I don't know how this became this way.

>>302337
Yeah, there is something strange with woman and children's books. There is this author Astrid Lindgren in Sweden that is immensly populare here. She kind wrote similar stories, at least in tone, to Rowling. She is really populare and people have put her on a ridiculous pedastal.

>>302342
Or was, she is dead now.

>>302281
I belive thinking he was a tranny was something I said very early on. How I came to the conclusion I can not remember exactly. I belive it was a group of friends I was chatting with about your review and how all these early mediocre to terrible big fanfics are usually writen by lolcows and one of them illuded to Kkat being a tranny.

After seeing how well it took off here I didn't bother to get clarification and has been a fun little thing with the review to see. I have far less to say about this story then the last so in a way I feel like it was my little contribution to the thread and always get a little giddy when I see it referenced.

>>302353
I know that people in the fandom have refered to him as a she so do we believe it is literally a she or do we think that it's a guy that wants extra credits by pretending to be a woman? Woman get credits by virtue of existng afterall.

I honestly, don't know if it kkat is actually a woman or not. I think not because we would see less lesbian stuff then and more gay stuff in that case.

>>302294
>Anyway, enough of this maudlin crap. Want to cry for real, and maybe rage a little while you're at it? Here's something to consider:

>LP now knows that the Twilight Sparkle statuette she found was actually a treasured personal possession of Pinkie Pie. Pinkie literally spent her last moments alive clutching this statue of her dead friend, while lamenting all of the time they lost because of her drug addiction. To Ponk's sad and lonely ghost, which is probably wandering the empty halls of this forgotten skyscraper as we speak, this little statue of Twilight is worth more than all the treasures of Celestia's tomb. To Littlepoop, however, it's completely meaningless; it's just some cute little collectible tchotchke that she wants for no reason other than to have it. Littlepoop literally pulled this thing out of Pinkie's ribcage and stuck it in her saddlebag next to all the other autismo junk she carts around, where it will remain until she either trades it away for ammunition, or puts it on a shelf next to her Funko Pop collection, where it will do nothing but collect dust until the next apocalypse. For all the crocodile tears she sheds here, not once does it ever occur to this klepto that this statue might be something she doesn't have a right to take.
Urgh. I never even thought of this scene that way. Come to think of it, Littlepip really doesn't seem to have much respect for the dead. I'm reminded of a certain scene much later involving a cola bottle, but ho boy we'll get to that...

As >>302325 points out, Fallout 3 introduced the bobbleheads as optional collectibles. They're scattered all over the world, tucked away in remote places or deep in dungeons, presumably to give the player an additional incentive to explore. There's no story or explanation behind them - they're just shiny things that you can pick up to boost your character a bit. FoE's statuettes do wind up having an explanation and story relevance eventually, which I suppose is marginally better than just existing "because videogame".

I get what Kkat's trying to do with these dungeon crawl sections: environmental storytelling. Part of the appeal of an open-world game like Fallout 3 is exploring the world and piecing together what happened in the past from what's left over from previous events. It's entirely doable in writing too - storytelling by implication rather than overtly expositing on every little thing. The problem, at least as far as I can tell, is that Kkat doesn't seem to have much faith in the reader's ability to figure things out (or his own ability to lay a coherent and appealing breadcrumb trail). Vague, implicatory things happen or are mentioned, then Littlepip explains what they mean, then she opines on them, often at length. The same's true with the memory orb sequences - they might be a little more compelling if they were allowed to stand on their own as microstories, rather than constantly being embellished and analyzed and fussed over by Littlepip's narration.

This 'slowly work through every little detail that Littlepip finds important' approach could be a big contributing factor to why this story is so long and progresses so slowly.

>>302394
That "Spell everything about the environmental storytelling out for you" approach... Isn't that how Bethesda always writes their environmental storytelling whenever there's more to it than 1-2 skeletons here or there in a wacky or "tragic" pose?
Bethesda's environmental storytelling is so bad, you'll find charred "REMEMBER, PEOPLE DIED LONG AGO" skeletons from 200 years ago in the seats of a diner a woman and her son live in, a diner in the middle of buttfuck nowhere that produces nothing yet the two run a trading stop and are doing great just like all other merchants in the game. Nobody sweeps away the trash in the "slum" of Goodneighbour or the capital city and "Great green jewel of the commonwealth" Diamond City.
And what do these shitty mysteries mean for the player, or Littlepip in this case? Fundamentally fucking nothing. Learning why the bodies are there is a reward for the player who gives a shit but there is no reward for anyone who guessed correctly on their own without needing diaries and letters and terminals and holotapes to spoil the surprise.
It's worse in FE because Littlepip doesn't get a reward for learning who ran this prison camp or what killed that Stable. No lessons to learn and no rewards to discover for putting in the effort to investigate these overly easy "mysteries". She won't ever learn someone from her own vault did horrible things, shattering her faith in her own homeland's goodness or whatever. Strangers from this alien world named Wasteland or strangers from the Before-Time are always responsible for all the world's woes that can't be blamed on luck or robots gone wild.
And Littlepip only gets to pretend there's a mystery to these "Find a weird place, read diary entries and terminals and listen to holotapes until you find the final puzzle piece that spells absolutely everything out for you" scenes because she never finds the final puzzle piece first.
A good puzzle leaves you with many pieces and lets you figure shit out on your own or watch characters figure it out together. Sherlock Holmes might instantly figure out what would take normal people a few seconds and always have a good idea of where to check for the evidence but he's no all-seeing all-knowing god like he is in BBC's Shlock. The final puzzle piece should help the detective piece everything together, not spell it all out for the detective and audience. Where's the mystery in that? Where's the payoff? We're presented with a bizarre situation (Like at Shattered Hoof) and the "payoff" turns out to be learning that Diamond Tiara was once hired to run a prison camp/mining facility/rock-breaking place or something. What's next, will we be presented with a raider-infested gas station with one safe full of junk and a terminal LP can hack to learn Cranky Doodle Donkey once ran this place before he died saving his donkey wife from raiders?
For fuck's sake, Velvet's a doctor like Watson. And if anyone should know a fuckton when it comes to Wasteland shit it's Calamity. It would also make sense for him to know a ton about pre-war Equestria though if his knowledge of pre-war Equestria was worthless revised Enclave propaganda that would give LP a role in this mystery-solving adventure: Saying something she remembers from History Class at her Stable School.
These two idiots should be able to help Littlepip piece the mystery together and suggest theories of their own! But of course, they just follow LP around like mindless automatons when they aren't saying their pre-written dialogue lines full of maudlin bullshit.

>>302353
>>302354

Kkat is a guy who used to ERP as a girl character before they got into MLP. I think they had a black cat sona he called Friday? They also used to draw furry torture porn under the tag "Kkatman" on e621. People have called them a girl for ages for no reason.

>>302428
Imagine being so cucked and repressed your "passionate side" can only come out when pretending to be a fucking catgirl on the internet because you've been raised on "emotional men is scary and wrong but emotional women is fine" juice.
The only valid reason for a female protagonist is the size of the tits you can give her and the amount of screentime you can give those big bouncy tits.

>>302428
So I did a little digging out of curiosity, and tried to find the source of this image. It's from a largely uninteresting thesis that was published back in 2003: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6321&context=theses

Assuming that this is the same Kkat, and assuming that his age was reported accurately in the thesis, he was born in or close to 1976. In other words, if all the above holds true he would have been well into his mid-30s by the time he wrote FoE and is now pushing 45.

So that's a thing.

>>302452
Holy shit. I always assumed he was in his late teens when he started writing this and maybe in his twenties by the time this all ended. He's... he's so fucking old! Way too old to write something this awful. Hasn't he ever read anything better than FE? Hasn't he ever played any role playing game or survival game or shooter better than Fallout 3? Has he just been spinning his wheels in an isolated bubble all this time without ever seeing anything good that could have improved his work? Is this all there is to Kkat and his life? I read FE as a teenager and I assumed he wrote it as one because it's full of childish writing. The author has an incredibly limited pallete of ideas to pull from. He never watched Star Trek so he can't rip off an episode for a dungeon idea and he never played World of Warcraft so he can't rip off Gilneas's backstory for a shitty settlement. He's fucking ancient and it's all downhill from here for that guy physically and mentally. He has never broadened his horizons and yet this sad old man has a permanent exhibit in the FIM fandom's hall of fame for half-assing his looty shooty fantasy vehicle. m in my early twenties now but learning that he's over fucking fourty right now... I don't know what to say. Is there still time for him to turn his life around before he ends up in a retirement home with all the other old people?

What is fantasy submersion and what is a Muck/Furry Muck? He said he's into those so are they something degenerate that wastes time without improving any skills or broadening your horizons? Is furry muck code for furry scat porn?

Is it weird that in his "about me" section he says he uses "fantasy submersion" to "reduce stress"? That seems really odd to me but I'm autistic so I want to know if others find it odd too. It just seems weird to tell people what helps you deal with life around the same time you're telling people what your name is and what your hobbies are.

>>302454
Glass houses Nigel, glass houses

>>302455
>(?) posts in this thread by this ID
How do you do that?
>>302458
You're right, I was a shit writer once too. And despite all the books I've read, all the movies I've seen, all the people I've met and talked to, the political knowledge I've uncovered, the lives I've changed, the perspectives I've understood, all the documentaries and animes and other shows I've watched, I know there's still so much out there left to know. Improvement is a gradual process, and what matters is that you never stop improving. On one hand I like that Kkat won't ever update or spellcheck Fallout Equestria because it means we can easily read and critique what idiots fanboyed over almost a whole decade ago, but on the other hand it's sad that he'll never release a rewritten, refocused, and greatly shortened "Director's Cut" version of the story that fixes the problems pointed out in this thread. There will never be a good Fallout Equestria, because to make a Fallout Equestria fic good you would first need to fix the connection between pre-war Equestria and the Wasteland, which means diverging from one of the many things that makes FE terrible.

Btw I looked up what a Furry Muck is, turns out it's not scat porn like I initially assumed it was. FurryMuck is a MUD, a Multi-User Dungeon. Which is a MMORPG but text-based. FurryMuck is a furry ERP site. He's openly saying he does ERP on a furry site.
Wait a fucking second... What kind of person openly says "I love to roleplay on FurrySexDungeonRoleplaying.com" in his bio?
The same kind of guy who says "I am normally be an easygoing individual" and feels the need to specify what he means by "My passionate side" by explaining what "Passionate" means to him, I suppose.
>>302428
Where did you find this?

>>302477
>I was a shit writer once
>once
If you intend to try to suggest that you're NOT a shit writer, you will have to provide evidence for that claim else it's (self-gratifying) projection.
Spoiler alert: you dont get to decide whether you are a shit writer or not, past or present. I'm not refuting the possibility, but I AM asserting that your claims are unsubstantiated and spurious

>>302332
Look I have been thinking about this recently. I don't wanna come off wrong. I feel as I might have in the last post.
Fanfiction can't even compare to actually published authors because there's at least some requirements on quality there. And classical books have a much higher chance of being better than the ones now. So I'm not defending the fanfics over the books of today or the books of today. So I generally agree with you. Fanfics are shit and a waste of time, most of the time and so is honestly today's published books.
I just think people underestimate of how long the jews have been in control of our countries and how they have influenced who is put in the spotlight.

I guess I also disagree with the idea that you must read good stuff to produce good stuff. Seems like a fallacy to me.

>>302545
Because writing makes good writing, not reading. Reading keeps you in place. I what I think.

>>302546
I believe you wanted to say something like: "Writing requires a lot more than reading. Or, reading can't make you grow like writing"

>>302545
>>302546
Writing is both an art and a skill, so getting good is a combination of study, practice, and learning by example what to do and what not to do. Reading others' work (good or bad) and having others read yours is absolutely necessary if you want to improve. Just writing and writing without a frame of reference gets you stuck in a dunning-kruger loop.

>>302428
>I am normally be an easygoing individual
ENGLISH MOTHERFUCKER DO YOU SPEAK IT GOD DAMN IT EVERY TIME I SEE THIS IT GETS WORSE
>>302545
Experiencing good media seems to have helped me a lot. I've widened my artistic pallete of ideas to draw from, and analyzing good media to figure out why it made the choices that it made improves your understanding of media. A lot of amateur writers who've only ever seen a handful of things start writing fanfics thinking "I'll improve this work by changing what I personally hated about it and adding in whatever I think is cool" without getting what made him hate those things. Like a Na-
*clears throat*
Like making a MLPFIM fic where, because you find Fluttershy annoying, you make her get over her shyness instantly even though this makes her less distinct from her friends who you liked way more, and even though it means you can't write stories where Fluttershy's shyness causes problems for herself and others any more. Also he randomly throws in cars because he thinks cars are awesome. A lot of bad authors think changing something they subjectively didn't like to something they subjectively do like or forcing in an answer to a question nobody asked (or a question that was only raised because the author left things half-finished) will objectively improve the fic. I'll admit, I'm guilty of that.

Hell, Kkat did it with the horse DJ.
That would sound really weird out of context.

DJ 3-Dog from Fallout 3 has no backstory, no deep lore or characterization, no significant role in the world, andd no justification to exist. He hangs out in one room all day doing fuck all, and his radio broadcasts must be pre-recorded because you can hear him say the same 17 things on the radio over and over even if you're staring right at him in his room and watching him do nothing. He has a radio station but how he got it and the radio's songs is never explained. He'll omnisciently observe you, the player, and comment on your actions over the radio. How he watches you and always knows what you did is never explained. Also he's ugly.
Tenpenny Tower is a fancy hotel tower near Megaton full of rich cunts. The boss wants Megaton blown up for no reason. It produces nothing when it comes to resources and really shouldn't be the dream home for rich people that it is. Bethesda almost always forgets the most basic worldbuilding question, "What do they eat?".
Kkat's attempt to improve these separate near-universally-hated Fallout 3 elements turned Tenpenny Tower into a former Ministry Of Twilight's Science emergency broadcast tower that's also an omniscient surveillance tower. It's also got a self-sustaining settlement for the rich with harsh laws and a spa, and it presumably sustains itself through trade (even though Kkat forgets about the raiders infesting the city outside and how they'd prey upon travellers and especially travelling traders with trading caravans full of good shit)
The tower's DJ is Homage, a DJ-Pon3 imitator whose family has imitated that pony for generations even though she canonically died underground in the Crusaders Maneframe AI Gone Wild stable. The family's only spell is the voice gender changing spell, specifically for imitating DJ Pon3.
Where did the DJ get music from? The DJ pays ponies for records, and sometimes sends friends on life-threatening missions to get them.
What does the DJ do in her spare time? 3-Dog did nothing, but DJ Pon3 loves reading some of the banned anti-Equestrian books that were burned/censored by Rarity yet still had copies of them sent to Twilight for safekeeping. (I'm surprised this isn't the origin of the radio's music collection. then again this would fill the airwaves with songs Rarity and her Ministry Of Image wanted to censor/burn)
The DJ's all-knowing nature is "explained" by the tech she uses, but how she/her family got this tech is never explained. What being raised to be a literal fucking "Homage" to a 200 year old pony who was gunned down in her prime psychologically did to this radio whore is never explained.
"What do these rich people eat?" is answered with "These rich idiots make seemingly-fancy food out of 200 year old pre-war canned shite", but there is no deep character exploration there. The laws are very harsh and inconsistently applied and Monty Jack is forced by the hand of the author to sign his own death warrant just so Kkat can display this.
Desperately trying to act rich and civilized even if they have no true idea what that is, eating 200 year old canned dog food and pretending it's flay minion, and religiously following laws even if they make no sense to the point where a citizen here feels the urge to confess to a crime out of pride and guilt but mostly his own pride over "never lying no matter what"... This would make a great gimmick or "Hat" for a settlement of idiots and frauds in the middle of a post-apocalyptic wasteland if Kkat realized the story potential and comedic potential of this idea. Bethesda tended to write things as weird/dumb/quirky/gimmicky for the sake of being weird/dumb/quirky/gimmicky, so Kkat likely saw nothing wrong with this style of writing and this settlement's gimmick since Bethesda's gimmick-focused writing style wasn't complained about as loudly as Tenpenny Tower and the Ghouls who want to invade it, how often the writers forgot to say what characters ate, and the FUCKING IDIOTIC main questline.

Well, then, I finally caught up to this thread. I was left behind late in the Sun and Rose review and I've essentially spent the past week getting through this monument to autism. I wouldn't say it was a slog, what with the clever jokes, and it was definitely worth it because I've picked up quite a few tips for a derivative fiction I plan to write. It's a video game crossover so your advice regarding this has been especially illuminating. It would be interesting to compare the length of these review threads to the actual work itself; I'd bet it's close to a 1:1 ratio. Fortunately these reviews make it largely unnecessary to read the source work itself.

Although it's far too late in the fandom's life to "take FOE down a peg" it would be very satisfying to see someone write a MLP/Fallout crossover that casts shade on this mutant abomination of a fanfic. Heck, in the improbable event this review becomes well-known you could probably put it into a written book as an act of spite to kkat.

I was the faggot who originally suggested The Sun and the Rose because I remembered it as a "really good story," and your review made much more aware of all the problems it has. I hope I'm not making the same mistake, but I hope that to take a break from the garbage pile you might review "Stardust." It's a MLP/XCOM crossover and is more geared around character interaction with some action. Maybe this one is actually good.

>>302281
Thank you for this post, it manages to encapsulate a very serious problem. I really do hope you finish FOE, as painful as it is. It's like conducting an autopsy of an elephant; it's much harder than being a coroner for a human but you can't exactly stop halfway. Others suggested fanfics of this fanfic though and I hope you give a pass on those or we'll be reviewing those until the actual apocalypse.

>>302428
>>302452
At first I was laughing but this is just pathetic. He's only a couple steps above Chris-Chan.
Anyway, time to sleep. It feels like I went through several years' worth of content.

>>302452
I've found his profile on the nexus forum.
>female

I would very much like it if Glim could do "shorts" for some smaller works where he just lists the issues in one or two posts rather than a play-by-play. For example, I read "Hard Reset" (just 37.5k words) in the space of an evening and it was very solid for the most part in my opinion. Where it went wrong is the stupid plot of Twilight being a carpet-muncher and the long and boring "Closure" chapter which did a half-baked attempt at moralizing while introducing a new conflict after the story climax. However the alternate ending was very satisfactory and I wish it was the canon ending.

>>302642
over 30k words in one day? Nice bro

>everyone
it just dawned on me that DJ Cuntmachine is the only child of a family that has autistically impersonated a long dead DJ for over 200 years during the apocalypse while somehow inheriting the Future-Fantasy/Dystopia surveillance and Emergency Radio Broadcast shit in a tower she doesn't own or control. Her family has a secret ancient technique passed down the family line for generations and it's a spell that changes the gender of your voice. If you listen closely you can hear the bugs-up-the-ass weirdos of the Aburame Clan laugh at this family and their obsession with a DJ who for all we know could be one of a million DJs. Sure she was special enough to play at Cadence's party... at least I think she was? Anyway she's a DJ not a fucking rockstar. It's not like she invented a musical genre or made it mainstream and was more popular than Micheal Jackson and Freddy Mercury and BTS and The Beatles combined. The bizarre life of an extreme celebrity impersonator was forced upon her at birth and she was groomed for this like insert muslim child grooming and child trafficking and child rape gang joke here. This DJ has no living family and no parents watching her every move or forcing her to continue their legacy. She doesn't seem psychologically affected by the circumstances of her life because she is not a character with characterization and a backstory, she is a plot device with flimsy justifications for existing in her current state. The ravages of time and nukes fucked assorted cities and turned them into dumps but these radio towers survived nuking. Zebras never tried to sabotage these.

The first time Homage the DJ Pon3 Impersonator meets Littleshit, you'd think she would have some Wizard Of Oz "pony behind the curtain" shit going on. Like with House and the secret in his basement. But... nope. DJ Grooves over here happily shows the murderhobo everything she could very easily steal right from the unarmed and helpless record-switching glorified twitch streamer. The DJ doesn't have armed guards or robots or gun turrets. LP doesn't have to complete a small and umimportant and inconsequential mission to gain the DJ's trust before the DJ trusts her with private intel and incredibly important time-sensitive missions that could end in disaster if fucked up. The DJ simply gives LP a small and unimportant and inconsequential mission and LP says "lmao sure why not I'm bored anyway and I have nothing better to do". It's not like LP protests and says she wants to kill raiders/slavers now because killing them now means saving people they would rob or rape if left unmolested. It's not like the DJ tries to defend her music-focused priorities by saying "every time we get new music we get new listeners and that means more poners listening to my moral judgement of the world and my survival tips and my requests for help. I can guide the Wasteland into a brighter future if more poners follow me. So go get me some big fucking records and then I'll tell you where the biggest raider camps are or what the fastest route to Fillydelphia is or whatever else you want". And while the DJ on the radio had complaints about LP saving Shattered Hoof Prison And Rock Breakery And Mine a while back, she won't bring it up now or ask LP why she worked for the place and saved it from a raider attack back then. Kkat knows the answer is uninteresting and the reward is inconsequential so DJ Knockoff The 69th doesn't even bother asking this question.

Finally, the DJ has a radio tower system that functions perfectly and sees everything. You'd think the Enclave would kill to get those towers and get their own radio message broadcast over the airwaves but they'd rather do barely anything for 200 years and wait around until the little girl hero of this generic young adult novel is able to stop them. You'd think the Enclave would have taken over such an incredibly useful all-seeing radio system by now to watch everyone, keep an eye on rebels and Dashites, and spread their propaganda in the form of a Pegasus radio station called True Flapitalist Radio. But sadly Kkat didn't think of that.

Kkat's world building is highly convenient, absurdly unrealistic, quite illogical, and so shallow that it's less than skin deep. Would it be correct to call the complaints I mentioned bad writing?

>>301194
>>302651
Now do Project horizons

>>302660
That's a long fic and there's a lot about it I don't remember. I'm mostly sure I read it once.
From what I remember Project Horizons' biggest flaw is its fixation on being a bigger and "better" and darker and edgier and grimmer and bleaker and "sexier" and explodier and body horrorier take on this godawful fanfic's setting. Not just a different take on the concept that made it but a continuation and fan tribute to this setting forced to abide by its canon.
In Fallout Equestria's attempt to one-up canon Fallout locations and monsters it often lost what made them unique. Look at how the story turns Enclave Propaganda Eyebots into pre-war Pinkie Pie's polka-playing spy drones or what the story does to Deathclaws for examples of what I mean. What would an attempt to one-up that look like?
Overall, PH is undoubtedly a better story and setting than Fallout Equestria even though it's full of teenage edge. However it would have been improved vastly if its author had the courage to stand on his own and write his own take on the "one became the other" style of Fallout and FIM crossover instead of trying to compromise his vision with Kkat's. Moments where LP and Blackjack team up aren't worth whatever improvements could have been there if its author wasn't bound by Kkat's terrible decisions.

>>302688
This. I can't speak for GlimGlam and he can decide what he wants to review, but Fallout Equestria is tiring him out and the mistakes it has are probably the same mistakes contained in derivative works. He could go over how to or how not to write something based on a fan-made universe, but there are a lot of other fanfictions-or, "works of derivative fiction"-out there to analyze. Variety is the spice of life, after all.

>>302691
I'm conflicted on it as well but seems he wants to finish off this beast. Makes me really hope he doesn't try Project Horizons though or else we'll be here for a few years stuck on the same damn story. Not sure where to send them but got 2 stories I'd be curious to see him review.

>>302694
I respect that he wants to finish this story off.

>>302294

There is a bit of a kerfuffle as they try to decide how to get across the bridge; this is mostly related to Littlepoop's fear of heights, which seems to be the latest trait the author has decided to graft onto her character. They ultimately settle on a plan where Velvet is to go first in order to test the sturdiness of the bridge, with Calamity waiting to catch her in case she falls. After this, SteelHooves will walk across assisted by LP's levitation, followed by Calamity flying Littlepoop across. Velvet is able to cross without incident, and then this happens:

>I spotted the broken scaffolding that had once held the giant Red Racer scooter several floors above. Nesting within it were the dark, leathery shapes of bloodwings. The sun had sunk fully beneath the horizon, the light was vanishing from the sky, and they were beginning to move.
"Bloodwings" have been mentioned in passing before: the DJ spoke about Chief something-or-other being attacked by a group of them in one of her reports. However, this is the first time they've actually factored into the story to a degree that we would need to actually know what they are. As ever, kkat provides no description of these creatures; we are simply told that bloodwings appear and attack the party. As ever, it's also unclear how or why Littlepoop, who spent her entire life living in an underground stable, would be any more familiar with such creatures than we are.

Anyway, the "bloodwings" attack as SteelHooves crosses the bridge. LP actually attempts to snipe them from a distance before they can attack, but SteelHooves starts crossing before she is able to. He only gets a couple of steps onto the bridge before they start swarming, so one would reasonably expect him to just step back and wait to cross until the fight is over, but instead he keeps on walking. This means that LP now has to split her attention between shooting at a bunch of flying whatever-the-fucks, while simultaneously semi-levitating him to keep him from putting too much weight on the bridge. Since he can't be much heavier than a train car, I don't see why she can't just levitate him all the way across and forget about the dumb bridge; for that matter she could just levitate herself over as well, since she's canonically done that already. However, that would fuck up the dramatic scene the author has in mind, so we have no choice but to accept that she suddenly can't do either of these things because reasons.

At one point, she actually loses hold of SteelHooves, and he has to cross the rest of the way on his own. However, the bridge holds and he makes it across. Then, for reasons we will never know, LP decides to cross on her own while being divebombed by bloodwings, instead of just waiting until the fight is over and letting Calamity carry her as they had planned. She makes it partway across, and then naturally a bloodwing slams into her and dislodges the whole bridge. Incidentally, as far as I can tell these things are something like giant bats. Whether or not they have any relation to the giant bats we saw earlier, the ones that were hiding under the track at the monorail junction a little while ago (you may not remember them since they were mentioned but never actually did anything), is not explained.

The bridge falls away with her still crossing it. Through some ghastly rape of the laws of physics, she is able to levitate herself partially and somehow make it to a window a story or two below where the others are at. She crashes through the glass and loses consciousness.

When she comes to, she finds herself in some sort of conference room. A manticore who just happens to be in there sees her, picks her up, and carries her off. She is able to retrieve her sniper rifle from somewhere nearby, but instead of just shooting the manticore, she decides to see where it is taking her, for reasons we will never truly comprehend. This is the justification she offers for her decision:

>I needed to go someplace myself, and with any luck it would be the same someplace. Either way, as much as being carried by my mane hurt, I didn’t want to walk anywhere either.
Well then, that answers that. I prefer to travel in the jaws of a carnivorous mythical beast whenever possible myself.

For some reason, the manticore takes her to the factory part of the building (you'll recall she's in the scooter factory now), which for some reason contains a bunch of cages, which for some reason all have pony corpses in them. Since they are corpses and not skeletons, I'm assuming that whatever is going on here is some sort of current fuckery, rather than some ancient fuckery from the past. We are told there are manticores patrolling between the cages like guard dogs.

>My captor leaned over the edge of the balcony and opened its mouth, dropping me through the open ceiling of one of the cages. I landed in a thin layer of hay with a heavy, painful thump.
Yes, it was clearly a sensible move to just let the manticore carry her off in its jaws. She could not possibly have predicted that anything bad might happen as a result.

Anyway, she chugs a healing potion because she has one because why not, and lies there in a cage resting and waiting for her wounds to heal. She looks at the cage across from her and, in a preposterous coincidence worthy of Dickens if he had written shitty pony fiction, she sees that the occupant of the cage is the same mare that they saved earlier, the one who was about to get raped by a single colt barely half her size. Littlepoop is now filled with sorrow because she didn't walk the mare all the way home like a gentlepony. The mare informs Littlepoop that apparently a mad scientist has trained a bunch of manticores to round up ponies and put them into cages, so that they can be tortured to death because reasons. Yes, believe it or not, all of this autism is actually in the text.

>>302781

>I stood up, looking down the rows of cages. Dozens of pony faces stared back at me, most with expressions of horror and despair. Some looked to me hopefully. Other ponies looked at me with pity and a heartbreaking acceptance that soon they would die, desecrated and screaming, and there was nothing to be done about it. Two ponies stared at nothing, their minds unable to deal with what was happening in here.
So basically, here is the situation: another generically evil baddie is rounding up ponies using a bunch of fucking trained manticores, locking them up in cages, and conducting weird medical experiments on them because...he's bored, I guess. The ponies in question are mostly just sitting around looking sad and dejected waiting to die. It should come as no surprise that Littlepoop, who for some reason is the only pony with guns despite the fact that the manticores obviously don't bother to strip weapons from their captives, is not going to stand for this. Her murderboner thus engaged, she proceeds to use the sniper rifle, which her captor didn't bother to strip her of, to pick off the manticores one at a time from inside the goddamn cage.

Once all of the manticores are dead, it's simply a matter of picking the lock to the door of her cage, which of course she is also able to do without any trouble whatsoever. One might think that all of the noise she's made, shooting at manticores and setting them on fire with magic bullets and so forth, might attract the attention of the mad doctor in the next fucking room, but apparently he is too busy conducting his weird torture experiments to notice. LP sets the mare across from her free, and asks her where she might find the mad doctor's evil laboratory. She then sets all the other imprisoned ponies free and tells them to sit tight while she goes and deals with Dr. Horsef Mengele.

>With that, I crouched down and begin to move towards the lab. As soon as I’d left the factory floor, I activated one of the StealthBucks. This doctor wasn’t going to see me coming.
I would once again like to emphasize that she has made enough noise getting rid of the manticores that probably everypony in a ten block radius of this building must have heard it. The text even specifically mentions that she made a fuckton of noise. However, the evil doctor apparently still didn't hear her, so stealth is still a viable approach to this situation.

>I slid past another manticore, making a mental note of where it was so I could kill it after dealing with the doctor. I didn’t want to make any more noise now than I already had.
When kkat dies, presumably of AIDS, I hope that the morticians have enough sense to preserve his brain, so that future generations of scientists might one day dissect and study it. This is not your every day garden variety autism here; we're pretty much dealing with a whole new spectrum.

Anyway, Littlepoop stealths her way past a bunch of manticores and whatever the fuck else, and finds a pair of double doors leading to the factory's medical clinic. She goes inside, and finds that it has since been converted into a mad scientist laboratory, complete with all the usual over-the-top edgelord scenery we've come to expect. Blood, guts, torture, horribly mutilated corpses; it's all here, folks. The mad doctor himself appears to be a ghoul pony. As far as I can tell, his experiments have something to do with trying to figure out why the manticores are apparently immune to the toxic effects of kkat's taint.

>He spun to the dead buck on the medical bed. Trotting up to him, the doctor whispered encouragingly, “Won’t be long now. Every pony is going to remember you. All of you. And, most of all, me. We’re going to give the ponies of Equestria the cure for Taint! I think I’ll call it Taint-Away…”
This story is so ridiculous it's essentially immune from parody. The most brilliant satirist in the world could not come up with anything more ridiculous than what the author actually wrote.

Anyway, the doctor also has a memory orb nearby. Despite the fact that LP could easily just cap this retard and be done with it, she instead decides to sneak his memory orb away from him while he's not looking and have a glimpse inside. I'm still a little curious what happens to her body while she's poking around inside these things, anyway; seems like this would be a pretty inopportune moment to be unconscious and defenseless. But then again, she was dumb enough to just let a manticore walk away with her in its jaws, so who knows? At this point she may even be aware that she is the Author's Chosen, and is therefore protected from any ill that could possibly befall her.

This orb proves to be one of the goofiest ones we've seen so far. The point of view is neither pony nor any other sort of sentient creature; the entire scene is observed from the perspective of a camera hidden inside a Sparkle Cola bottle. Yes, you read that correctly. To me, this completely defeats the purpose of a memory orb; the whole idea as I understand it is that the orbs contain the memories of a sentient creature. A spy camera could just record directly to some sort of audio-visual medium, like the cassette recordings we've seen so far.

Anyway, the scene appears to take place in Scootaloo's office at the scooter factory. We see a much older Scoot and some unicorn assistant who works for her sweeping the place for bugs from the Ministry of Morale. Apparently neither of them think to check the cola bottle which is the actual spy device. The bottle ultimately ends up in a nearby wastebasket, and the rest of the scene is audio-only.

The unicorn, whose name is Peek-a-Boo, leaves, and Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom enter the scene. Apparently, inter-agency spying is now common in Equestria, and the three have to take extra security steps to avoid being spied on by the MoM. The first portion of their conversation consists mostly of them complaining about this.

>>302783

Anyway, there appears to be some sort of covert civil war going on in Equestria; either that or the CMC's company, Stable-Tec, is somehow at odds with the government. I'm not 100% clear on the details. In any event, the implication seems to be that several of the ministries are hostile. Pinkie Pie, who heads the Ministry of Morale, is mentioned by name, and though Sweetie Belle speaks in her sister's defense, Rarity's Ministry of Image is also implicated by Scootaloo as one of the "bad" ministries. Applejack and Rainbow Dash are both explicitly mentioned as being "still good."

The present discussion seems to involve the deployment of the stables. Presumably, the end is nigh or neigh at this point, and the company has begun the process of moving ponies into the stables to await the coming apocalypse. As far as I can tell, Apple Bloom is the main designer of the stables, but Scootaloo has made modifications to AB's designs on certain specific stables in order to accommodate "experiments." There is some argument between Scoot and AB as to whether or not this is necessary. AB argues that her designs were optimal and that changing them will reduce chances of survival for the ponies inside; Scoot seems to acknowledge this, but points out that the stables need to be adapted to the parameters of the experiments. Both seem to be in agreement on the overall necessity of the experiments, though it isn't clearly explained what the experiments are trying to achieve.

From what we've observed of the stables overall, we can probably assume that Stable-Tec was running sociological experiments to determine what the optimal form of government would be for the post-apocalyptic world. The implication seems to be that the current system has broken down, and Stable-Tec wants to try and correct whatever mistakes led to the present situation. That is my best assessment of what is going on, at any rate.

The overall concern of the other two is that if their experiments are discovered they will be blamed by the government, which as far as I can tell is mostly run by their older sisters at this point. Scootaloo basically says that she is prepared to take the fall for this:

>“And if I have to become the villain of the piece to do that, then I will.”
This seems to be the meaning of the chapter's title.

There is also some rather vague rambling about how everything has gone to shit, and how they want to prevent it from happening again. However, no particulars are clarified. The memory ends here.

In a clever twist that should surprise no one, LP awakens to find that the effects of her StealthBuck wore off while she was inside the memory orb, and the mad doctor has since strapped her down to the examination table. Seriously, does Edgequestria have something along the lines of a Darwin Award? Because if so, I'd like to nominate her for one; her behavior since the bridge incident has been even stupider than usual.

>Now I was on the medical table, bound in chains. My weapons had been removed and stashed, probably nearby but still out of sight. I was still wearing my armored utility barding. It was soaked in blood from the slashes across my chest and I was woozy from loss of blood.
It's not clear whether these slashes were done by the doctor, or if these were just wounds that Littlepoop had already. The doctor, for his part, doesn't seem to question what this strange pony was doing skulking around his office, armed to the teeth and using a StealthBuck to sneak past his manticore guards. If he had, it might have occurred to him to go into the next fucking room and observe that all of his guards had been shot, and his captives are all free. Presumably they have followed LP's instructions and are just milling around in the general vicinity of their cages, waiting for LP to come back. Incidentally, the fact that all of these retards are apparently still depending on her to come back and escort them out of the facility makes LP's behavior in the doctor's office even more reckless and stupid.

However, fortunately(?) for her, the mad doctor is as much of a brainless dullard as every other villain or hero, for that matter in this story has been. Instead of investigating or at least questioning any of this, he just rolls with it and continues performing his experiments, right up until the moment when the mare that LP rescued sneaks up on him from behind and shoots him with the poison dart gun that she obtained from...somewhere. I'm not even going to bother asking where; all of the turbo-autism in this chapter is starting to give me a headache.

>She turned, looked down, and started stomping furiously on the ghoul doctor. I heard the skull crack and splinter. The pony seemed to be taking out all her hurt and rage on the ghoul, stomping and stomping and stomping long after he must have been dead.
>It took me time to float out my screwdriver and a bobby pin and unlock each of my chains. They were easy locks, but I was wounded and alarmingly lightheaded. I broke three bobby pins before I was through. All that time, the sea-blue pony slammed her hooves down on what was now more paste than a body.
>She didn’t stop until I wrapped her in a hug and held her.
Does the author realize how ridiculous any of this actually is? I mean this as a serious question. If he were simply trying to have fun with his subject matter and write a campy, over-the-top adventure story that you were meant to chuckle at I might be able to forgive some of this, maybe even applaud parts of it. As far as I can tell, though, there is absolutely no humor intended here.

Anyway, the mystery mare stomps the mad doctor into a bloody pulp, while Littlepoop uses her trusty screwdriver and bobby pin collection (which not one of her various captors have ever thought to relieve her of) to free herself from the table. The subchapter ends in a page break.

>>302781
I could have sworn that at some point in the story, some kind of hard impact or action scene caused Littlepip's supply of medical shit to smash open inside her bag.
So if it happened then, it should happen again because it would add more realism to this absurdly unrealistic fanfic and lessen the feeling that LP's got some kind of fucking Bugs Bunny hammerspace/Guybrush Threepwood's pants/typical videogame-inventory menu system where the stuff she puts in her pockets vanishes until she takes them out.
It would also add more peril and danger to this incredibly contrived scene by keeping LP wounded until she can get to the stash of healing potions her friends hopefully also carry.

>Her murderboner thus engaged
And engorged! heh heh, boner humor.

>Doctor Cunt didn't notice the gunshots from LE FUCKIN SNIPER RIFLE
Is this rifle silenced? Does Kkat actually think silencers are those magical Hollywood things that make gunshots quieter than mouse farts? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDkTKYter6c&ab_channel=Equinox NEWSFLASH IN REALITY A SILENCED GUN IS STILL LOUD. You'll still hear the bullet break the sound barrier unless it's a subsonic piece of shit.
Yes, Fallout's a videogame so silencers are programmed to literally make no noise at all. Just like the "Gaaah!" dying screams of characters make no noise and will not alert others, so you can hide in a corner and slowly headshot everyone in a room with your silenced 22LR pistol and while people might express shock at seeing bodies or watching people die nobody will raise the alarm unless they notice you, and once they notice you all enemies in their Faction instantly know where you are and know you need killing. Guns are coded to have three sound levels: Silent for silenced 22LRs and silenced 50cals, Normal for ordinary guns, and Loud for the big shit and loud shit.
But
Something's really fucking annoying about this
This is Equestria
Ponies have magic
The ponies could make literally-magic silencers that silence absolutely all noise the gun makes, including the gunshots and the trigger click and even any reloading noises, to the point where it's impossible to tell if the gun's functioning properly by listening to it. These silencers could silence the sound of the bullet travelling faster than sound by making a magical silencing field, which would also silence all noise you make while the silencer is active. This would make a magically-silenced 22LR the perfect tool for literally-silent infiltrations but you'd need to drop the gun (Or put it into your videogame magical inventory menu) when talking to friends or giving orders over the radio.
And man, wouldn't it be spooky to be shot by a magic bullet from a magically silenced gun that sets you on fire and silences you, so you can't even hear your own screams or call for help as you die? That'd be a fucked up way to go. I have a mouth but no voice and I must scream.
All of the bullshit "It works in my story because it worked in my favourite and only videogame, a piece of shit that runs on a 50 year old game engine designed for Elder Scrolls" moments could be justified with magical pony technology. This would also allow for fun shit like grenades that turn everything caught in the blast radius into cheese or necklaces that give you superspeed for fun chase scenes and Time-In-A-Bottle Sonic/Quicksilver moments.
Then again, that would be too creative for Kkat. Just like the old Ammo Glitch that lets you fire any round from any gun in FNV, meaning your Nuke Detonator can piss a constant stream of Red Glare's High-Explosive Missiles. And that gun will never degrade from use or get taken away from you while entering gun-free zones because it's coded as a Quest Item.
Does Kkat just hate fun? Is that why he wrote this dull monument to the most anti-fun game I've ever played (Fallout 3) this side of gachashit?

>After killing all those manticores in the other room and making a lot of noise, I decided not to kill this manticore because I didn't want to make more noise. I decided to make a mental note of its location because surely, when I was done with this videogame boss battle against Doc Cock, I could return to this manticore who would be exactly where I left him, and I will kill this manticore in cold blood for even more EXP without taking any meat from any of their bodies even though manticore burgers are probably a rare delicacy any trader would pay to try.
This is a certified Dark Yagami(TM) moment
I haven't seen a line this retarded since that scene in the trollfic Light And Dark: The Adventures of Dark Yagami where L says "We must use stealth" to capture his target, and then leaps through a glass window while screaming

>taint-away
radaway already existed in Fallout before the bombs fell. Out of all the fucking random changes to make, why change radaway to an after-war drug? The reason can't be "because ponies didn't know about the toxic zebra taint before the nuking" because zebras used that shit in bombs during a war that lasted over ten years when they weren't using a certain other stupid fucking thing ripped off from a FNV DLC story too smart for Kkat to understand.

>Experiments in government
Your take is smarter than this story. Giving each Stable a different type of ruling ideology/system of governance... That would be smarter than what we ended up with, while still allowing for some fun gimmicky disaster stables.
Fallout's Vaults were experiments by Vault-Tec for Shitty Future America (Whose leaders and soldiers would become the Enclave). F1-2 had assorted experiments but F3 used the term "experiments" loosely. Civilian company Vault-Tec put top-secret military FEV in one. Made another full of clones of Gary. They were excuses for wacky locations in Bethesda's patented Theme Park(TM) World Design philosophy where nothing is connected or meaningful yet everything is superficially flashy and silly and childishly shallowly "fun".
Kkat took Bethesda's bad habits further. Except the monetization habits thankfully.

>>302781
>"Bloodwings" have been mentioned in passing before: the DJ spoke about Chief something-or-other being attacked by a group of them in one of her reports. However, this is the first time they've actually factored into the story to a degree that we would need to actually know what they are. As ever, kkat provides no description of these creatures; we are simply told that bloodwings appear and attack the party.
As far as I'm aware, bloodwings are literally just giant vampire bats. Because the roster of generic disposable enemies didn't have enough flying animals, I suppose.

>She looks at the cage across from her and, in a preposterous coincidence worthy of Dickens if he had written shitty pony fiction, she sees that the occupant of the cage is the same mare that they saved earlier, the one who was about to get raped by a single colt barely half her size.
This whole diversion with the ghoul doctor is very strange. If I had to hazard a guess, Kkat didn't originally plan for this but instead threw in an excuse for [Nameless Rape Victim] to show up again in response to reader feedback. Hence why the whole supposedly perilous situation is treated in such a rushed and blase fashion. In the course of parely a few pages, Littlepip is separated from her friends, captured by a monster, escapes, gets captured again, then gets rescued. Aside from the memory orb, none of this has any relevance to the rest oif the story - it's a "whoops, Littlepip wasn't enough of a GOOD PERSON, time for a sidequest to get some more GOOD PERSON points".

>>302783
>Her murderboner thus engaged, she proceeds to use the sniper rifle, which her captor didn't bother to strip her of, to pick off the manticores one at a time from inside the goddamn cage.
Even if we accept the situation as one that makes sense, surely the manticores - plural - who are presumably at least on par with dogs in intelligence would have the basic survival instincts to respond to the sound of gunfire. Even going so far as to discard that, they don't even seem to respond to their companions dropping dead. These manticores are below NPCs.

>As far as I can tell, his experiments have something to do with trying to figure out why the manticores are apparently immune to the toxic effects of kkat's taint.
This really should be a plot point. From what we've seen so far, radiation and taint are the primary reasons that the world of FoE is and continues to be a borderline-unlivable shithole. The discovery that something about these creatures gives them immunity to taint mutation should be a massive revelation - one that at least the mad doctor appears to have had. The doctor's methods are obviously retarded but one can presume, if generously, that his intent is to discover a way to grant that same immunity to ponies. Littlepip and Kkat, on the other hand, pass right over this earthshaking potential discovery and (unless I'm very much mistaken) never return to it again.

>>302784
>As far as I can tell, Apple Bloom is the main designer of the stables, but Scootaloo has made modifications to AB's designs on certain specific stables in order to accommodate "experiments."
As we'll see, Scootaloo is quite possibly the single most morally deficient character in the whole pre-apocalyse subplot of this story. So it's no surprise that Littlepip takes her 'villain of the piece' line to heart. It'll be showing up again.

>right up until the moment when the mare that LP rescued sneaks up on him from behind and shoots him with the poison dart gun
How did this mare, who has no equipment or weapons of her own and couldn't even fight off a prepubescent child, make it past the several manticores that Littlepip explicitly left behind?

>that she obtained from...somewhere
Without going back to the story to double check, I think it's mentioned offhandedly somewhere that Littlepip loses some of her weapons when the manticore dumps her in the cage. Presumably we're supposed to infer that [Nameless Rape Victim] picked up the dart gun that Littlepip autism'd over building for that past ten or so chapters.

>>302784

>I sat on a ledge, overlooking the depressing town of Gutterville as the early morning sun broke over the city. Below, Velvet Remedy was caring for the ponies we had helped back here. Calamity and SteelHooves had been discussing possible defenses that could be added around the collection of hovels. Calamity was explaining now about the turret array we’d put together back at Junction R-7.
Once again, time has jumped forward by some unknown interval, important events have taken place that the author has completely skipped over, and the group's objective has changed. We can infer from this paragraph that LP must have reunited with her friends somehow, and that together they escorted the group of prisoners back to the settlement of Gutterville why would you name your town this, anyway?.

As is his usual habit, the author fills us in on the details in the following paragraph:

>I had met up with my friends in the Red Racer factory about half an hour after the death of the ghoul doctor. They had managed to find the safe that DJ Pon3 was interested in, but had no way of unlocking it. Instead, SteelHooves had blown apart the entire wall around the safe and had been dragging it around behind himself with a harness. Calamity had looted everything else.
The content of this paragraph is absurd, but no more so than anything else that's happened recently, and probably isn't worth going over. However, I would like to briefly address this author's habit of ending a scene, skipping time forward by quite a lot, and summarizing whatever took place in the interval in a few short paragraphs at the beginning of the new scene. I've pointed this out many times before, but I've never really addressed it in detail.

I don't know why, but this is something I notice a lot of inexperienced writers will do quite often. In fact, I've actually gone through a few of my own manuscripts from way back and found that it's something I've done myself. Sometimes it's appropriate; for instance, after Frodo and Sam destroy the Ring, their return trip to the Shire is dispensed with in a considerably smaller portion of text than the journey out, despite the fact that they are technically traveling the same distance. However, you don't want to make an excessive habit of this, and you particularly don't want to skip over (potentially) interesting scenes.

What I've noticed about kkat is that not only does he overuse the time skip device, he inverts its purpose: instead of skipping past the mundane events that take place between interesting scenes, he skips over the interesting events that take place between mundane scenes. Consider the way he left things at the end of the last subchapter. Littlepoop defeats the mad scientist and has set the prisoners free, so this little mini-arc has basically climaxed and concluded. However, this adventure was only a small detour that was part of what I assumed was the larger adventure: getting into the scooter factory and finding the records. At the end of the mad scientist scene, there is still plenty that needs to be done before the group can rest.

First, LP needs to find and rejoin her friends. After that, they need to complete the task they came in here to complete, and then they have to make it out of the building. This is now further complicated by having to drag all these fuckwad prisoners behind them. If I'm following this correctly, LP fell a few stories down to roughly the middle part of the building, and this factory part was maybe halfway between the roof and the ground floor. The whole reason they went about this convoluted business of climbing the skyscraper and crossing over using the sign is that the ground floor of the factory is supposed to be full of manticores. Has that changed? I don't see any reason why it would have. LP killed the manticores that were guarding the prison area, but the story implies that there are still quite a few more of them. So how did they deal with that? Did they decide to fight their way through to the bottom and head out the front door, or did they sneak back across the bridge and go out the way they came in? Either way, the additional burden of the wounded prisoners would have created a number of problems.

Point is, there was quite a bit left unresolved, so it feels like the author has skipped over some fairly important stuff here. What's more, the stuff he skips over might actually have been fun to read; helping a bunch of wounded prisoners across a rickety bridge while manticores and batwings and whatever the fuck else are coming at them left and right would make for a far more interesting scene than whatever the fuck is going on right now; Calamity explaining turret design to the citizens of Gutterville or something lame like that. Actually, now that I think about it, the sign-bridge fell down anyway, so this could have made for an interesting twist. Maybe the group climbs all the way to the roof to avoid the manticores, but finds the bridge gone, then they have to go back down and fight their way through the manticores anyway. There's enough material here that any half-wit could spin an interesting scene from it; however, kkat has long since established that he is not just any half-wit.

Also, the other thing that's jarring about this is that the actual primary objective of the chapter is glossed over here. Granted, attempting a death-defying quest just to retrieve some old records is a pretty dumb objective to begin with, but since it was technically the whole reason they came in here, we should have at least gotten to see the discovery of them happen in real time.

Tl;dr, if you're writing, don't do stuff like this. Keep an eye on those time skips, because as I said, they are for some reason a very common amateur-writer pitfall. And for God's sake, if you feel compelled to skip over anything, at least skip the boring bits.

>>302848

Anyway, all's relatively well that ends relatively well: they have the records, the prisoners are safe, and our intrepid heroes can now resume their lives of pointless wandering and looting. As Calamity stands around explaining turrets to the prisoners of Gutterville, LP stands off to the side. Frank, for some reason, has appeared again, and LP is conversing with him.

>“It’s not enough, is it?” I asked, breaking the silence. “Knowing your virtue, I mean.” I remembered Watcher’s list of Great Virtues of Ponykind. But those virtues, I’d come to realize, weren’t great on their own; I had seen dark, stunted versions of many of them. Pinkie/Silver Bell’s mirthless, sorrow-born laughter. Gawd’s loyalty only to contract and coin. Monterey’s honesty out of desperate self-image. I’d almost collected a set.
Is that what all those things were supposed to be? Virtues? It might have helped to make that a little clearer. Now that I see it from a distance, I can kind of see where the author was trying to go with this:

>Silver Bell, element of laughter
>Gawd, element of loyalty
>Monterrey Jack, element of cheese honesty
As with much of the terminology in this story (raider, slaver, ghoul, zombie, etc), the author has taken a common word and given it a very specific in-world meaning, while tossing it around in the same way one might toss around the common version of the word. Here, "virtue" refers not to virtue in general, but to one of (I'm assuming) six specific virtues, derived from the original Elements of Harmony. An individual chooses whichever one of the six virtues they most closely identify with and tries to make it their raison d'etre. The "virtues" also seem to serve the very specific purpose of warding off the maddening effects of the wasteland. However, most of the examples of the virtues we've seen so far have been warped interpretations.

Littlepoop observes this and comments that having a virtue does not seem to be quite enough to resist the effects of the wasteland. This is confirmed by Frank, who clarifies that an additional spark is needed in order to make the virtue work. Unsurprisingly, the spark is revealed to be "friendship."

So, to summarize: if you are going to venture into the Equestrian Wasteland, you need to have two things to avoid going mad. First, you need to choose a mantra to live by from six available choices. Second, you need to make friends. If you do not do both of these things, you will end up shitting on your mattress and decorating your house with the entrails of random ponies you've eviscerated. Makes about as much sense as anything else we've read so far.

>I looked up at the floating spritebot, the shifting of position making the bandages on my breast rub. “Friendship?” I turned to watch Velvet Remedy bandage the leg of a pink stallion. I saw Calamity laughing good-naturedly at something SteelHooves had said. Friendship.
>I had friendship. I felt a pang of joy as the acceptance of that cut through the petty jealousy and creeping paranoia that had threatened to overwhelm me. I had friends.
Personally, I would say the jury is still out on that one. Littlepoop has some ponies that she wanders around aimlessly with, committing burglaries and other crimes; for lack of a better word, she calls them her friends. However, despite the author's cringe-worthy, hamfisted approach to all of this, I can at least see a dim outline of what he's attempting to do here. I'm willing to give him a couple of points for at least attempting to tie his shoddily-constructed post-apocalyptic world to the values of the show, but as ever his execution is unforgivably clumsy. Partial credit is the best I can do.

>“You could say I’ve made a study of the subject,” Watcher admitted. Then, before I could ask, a static pop heralded Watcher’s disappearance. The sprite-bot floated away on tambourine music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0hTtsqiFCc

Anyway, there's a page break, time skips randomly forward again, and we are back with DJ Homage again. I have no idea if we will ever see the ponies of Gutterville again, or if there will be any further discussion of what that crazy scientist was trying to do back there. >>302841 makes a good point about this, actually. Anyway, the DJ graciously accepts the records that Littlepoop gives her (the titles are "Hush Now Quiet Now (Manehattan Never Sleeps Version)" by Sweetie Belle, and "Sing It" by the Cutie Mark Crusaders, if anyone actually cares). Personally, if I were the DJ, I would just put this song on endless repeat, tape down the broadcast button, then leave forever and lock the booth behind me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN0hEeKLMdQ

It appears that for whatever reason, Homage prefers to keep her identity secret from LP's friends, even though she had no compunctions about revealing herself to LP. She assures them all that "the DJ" will be happy to receive the records they went to all the trouble of risking their lives to bring "him," and in return hands over that whatchamo-doohicky she promised to Calamity. They prepare to part ways, but Littlepoop announces that she wants to stay back and "talk" to Homage for a little bit. The others head back to their hotel room.

>“Thank you, Stable Dweller,” Homage said softly. “And not just for the demos. I’ve already heard from Gutterville.”
How has she already--oh, never mind. I don't even care anymore.

There is a bit of awkward conversation here, mostly consisting of Homage stroking Littlepoop's clit and telling her how great and heroic she is for saving all those caged retards from that mad retard scientist. They are clearly getting primed to fuck here, and I'll grant that the romantic chemistry between them is at least better than it was between LP and Velvet earlier. Unfortunately, the scene itself is pretty dreadful.

>“So, Velvet Remedy… she any good.”
This is a question, and it should end with a question mark.

>>302849

Anyway, as I said, LP and DJ Homo-age are hanging out. I'm actually not quite sure where this scene takes place; the author doesn't specify a location. I've been assuming they were in the DJ's apartment, or floor, or whatever amount of space she has to herself, but that may not be the case. In any event, they are presumably in Tenpony Tower somewhere.

They bullshit about Velvet Remedy for a little bit; Homage expresses an interest in her music and LP assures her that she is even better than Sweetie Belle. LP's mind suddenly shifts back to what happened between she and Velvet earlier, and she suddenly blurts out that she wants to ask Homage a favor:

>I took a deep breath. This was going to be humiliating. But Homage had eyes almost everywhere. If anyone could find anything for me, it was her. “You watch all over Equestria… the parts you can see. Have you ever spotted a mare out there who… well… who might like me?” I closed my eyes, almost drowning in embarrassment. “I mean, a mare who likes mares who might like a mare like me?”
This is at least noteworthy for being the first moment in the text that LP has actually come right out and proclaimed her interest in pony poon. I'm still not entirely sure if she's supposed to be closeted or what; my best guess is that kkat assumes that since it's apparent to us, it must presumably be apparent to all the other characters as well. However, it's only apparent to us because LP is constantly blathering about how every mare she comes across has scrumptious-looking buttocks; she doesn't appear to share her thoughts with the ponies around her.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and drop the rest of this in verbatim, since it's actually the end of the chapter (I've once again preserved the author's italics, since they are important for emphasis):

>Every second Homage was quiet felt like an anvil falling on my head. Followed by a hay cart. Followed by a piano.
I'm just going to drop this in here one more time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN0hEeKLMdQ

>“I might…” Homage said cautiously.

>I sagged, feeling both relieved but mortified. “Then… could you point me in the right direction? Tell me where?”

>I felt a hoof gently touch my shoulder.

>“Littlepip, I said I might.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGretcGCFRM

>I turned to look at her, not comprehending. Then, looking into her eyes, I felt a spark of understanding. “oh….” I blinked. Her expression softened… sensuously…

>The spark ignited into a fire. “OH!”

>Homage smiled beautifully.

>Thank you, Celestia!

This interaction can basically be summed up like this:
Littlepoop: "Pardon me, DJ Cuntlapper, but could you possibly use your improbable network of spy equipment to track down another lesbian for me? I feel like getting my rug munched."
DJ Twatwhistler: "Why, today is your lucky day, madam! I happen to be quite the expert rug muncher myself."

I'll grant that this is at least somewhat better than Velvet suddenly propositioning Littlepoop out of absolutely nowhere, but not by nearly enough. This author still clearly has no idea how to properly develop chemistry between characters, set mood, or write anything resembling a romantic scene. It's also way too early for this imo; it's been strongly hinted at that these two are going to get together eventually, but so far they've only danced and hung out on the roof a little, and apart from that they've barely spoken. Call me old fashioned, but I think two ponies should at least get to know each other a little before they start slurping each other's tuna.

Anyway, the chapter ends here, and it looks as if Littlepoop has a girlfriend now.

>Footnote: Level Up.
>Skills Note: Science has reached 100%
>New Perk: Action Filly (level two) – You know your targeting spell like the back of your hoof, making you about 20% cooler in combat. For each level of this perk, you gain +15 action points in S.A.T.S.
I knew there was no way in hell we'd make it to the end of this thing without there being a "20% cooler" joke in there somewhere.

Chapter Eighteen: Unnatural Causes

Today's fortune cookie:
>“That job had strange written all over it.”
I'm assuming this line comes from Homage. LP strikes me as the type of mare who might ask for some pretty weird stuff in the bedroom.

>“The last sixteen hours had made for a very long day. As much as I would have loved to spend the next several hours with Homage, she had realized straight away that I was in no shape for anything but sleep. So she had sent me off back to my suite, where Velvet Remedy had puttered and tsked about my wounds until I had fallen into a dreamless sleep out of sheer exhaustion.”
And once again, the author skips over the interesting bits.

In all seriousness, I'd be willing to praise kkat for taking the classy route here and leaving the lurid details to the reader's imagination; unfortunately, though, it's a little hard to tell whether or not anything actually happened. The implication seems to be that they didn't do anything physical. However, this leaves what they did do as an open question. What were we supposed to imagine during the ellipses between chapters exactly? Did they fuck? Talk? Talk about fucking? As usual, the author just leaves us hanging, and then abruptly plops us into a new scene that has very little direct connection to the previous one.

There's also this:

>Finally, I had found another mare whom I respected and admired, and who respected (and maybe even admired) me in return. One who was attracted to mares, and who I could believe was at least a little physically attracted to me. We weren’t in love; we barely knew each other… but there was the possibility of love. There was, in a word, hope.
This is kind of a utilitarian way to describe their relationship. Basically, LP seems to be saying "well, she wouldn't have been my first choice, but as a dyke horse living in a post-apocalyptic dystopia, I have to take what I can get." Not exactly the d'aww moment the author was doubtlessly going for.

>>302851
Over 100k words and not even a sex scene yet? Even for schlock this is awful.

>>302545
>>302546
see:
>>302555

>>302631
>I was the faggot who originally suggested The Sun and the Rose because I remembered it as a "really good story," and your review made much more aware of all the problems it has.
I'm glad to hear. I was actually a bit worried that I might have bantzed on it a little too hard and driven you off. For whatever it's worth, I still say that of the piles of shit we've looked at, Sun and Rose has by far the most redeeming value and the most potential.

>I hope I'm not making the same mistake, but I hope that to take a break from the garbage pile you might review "Stardust." It's a MLP/XCOM crossover and is more geared around character interaction with some action. Maybe this one is actually good.
I can certainly take a look at it.

I've actually had a few things suggested since the last time I posted the current story queue, and I've found a couple that I'd like to add as well, so now is probably as good a time as ever to post an updated queue. So, here is what I plan to review, in roughly the order I plan to review it in.

Fallout: Equestria, by kkat - Current.

Sven's Thing, by Sven - I am probably going to get to a stopping point in FoE and then take a look at this. I'm thinking around chapter 22 or so since that would be the halfway point. iirc there was also another greentext that Sven suggested awhile ago, one written by Placeholder or someone like that I think, and I could probably do that at this time as well.

The Best Night Ever, by Capn Chryssalid - This is actually one that I picked out myself. I don't know anything about it, but I saw an anon mention it somewhere, and some anons on /mlp/ have said that it's good, for whatever that's worth. I read the synopsis of it and it sounds like the kind of thing I usually like, and frankly after FoE I'm going to need something fairly light and funny as a palate cleanser. I would also like to experiment with a slightly more streamlined review format, see if I can't move through these stories a little quicker, starting with this one.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Wang, by J.K. Rowling - Since this one has the advantage of being a professionally published novel, I'm assuming I won't need to stop and correct the author's grammar every five minutes as I've had to do with many of these others. Therefore, I'm thinking of taking an approach closer to what others have suggested, where I simply read a chapter at a time and then comment on the chapter, instead of going through the entire text line by line. If this approach works a little better, it's probably how I'll do things going forward.

That Indestructible Something, by Chatoyance - This is the one Nigel suggested, that purports to be Kafka's Metamorphosis with ponies.

Stardust, by Arad - XCOM/PONY crossover. Suggested by anon.

If anyone has any other suggestions or if I've forgotten to include something I promised to do earlier, let me know and I'll add them

>>302859
Hard Reset ( https://www.fimfiction.net/story/67362/hard-reset ) was mentioned earlier; I remember enjoying it, but I don't remember anything about it.

>>302784
>>302841
This whole sequence is quite odd in its existence. To my recollection, there's a crazy scientist who exists because [reasons] in Fallout 3, and experiments on locked up ghouls/ people because crazy cooky side encounter.

I wonder why it's just plopped into the story here at complete random, and what purpose it serves.

>>302859
In no particular rush this one might be a nice change of pace, beside being a crossover.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/430939/horsing-around
Horsing Around, by HermitBunny
>The mane six took in an unlikely duo. However, they soon realize the kinds of trouble the mere cat and mouse can stir up. Will they be able to keep their cool after witnessing their destructive tendencies?
--------------------------------
Tom and Jerry in Equestria.
<Basically, what if an episode or two of Tom and Jerry happened in Equestria.
5,009 words in two chapters. There's some jankey language that can be glossed over. It's worth mentioning though because the story is nice and self contained, but it can be better. A shining example of Tom and Jerry stories the fimfiction site over! Not by much considering it's one of the few crossovers between the two there. I'm probably missing quite a few as well without a deep dive into finding them.
Massive Spoilers below for this story.
Take the elements from Tom and Jerry, they go through what they normally would, with the 'housekeeper' character being Pony. It doesn't break the mold in doing so both mesh.
>>302867
Ah that one, it's Groundhog Day, but with lesbian purple pone also some sex at a point or three... It's also part of a series of interconnected works by the same guy about what choices have happened with a noticeable stage light on mare on mare sexuality. The other works are technically optional, also to keep in mind this is before the pony of shadows and the pillars of whatever the fuck episode. I like timetravel a lot, and I have degrees of expectations when encountering that mechanic. Yet disappointment is a consent companion with that in mind, 6.7/10 for useage of mechanics, personality fits... enough.
Over all its a fine enough story on par with Sun and Rose and uses its gimmick well enough. The author's take of the situation is notable and could do with clean up. However it does end, and is complete, and it is a story with a plot, and pone plot. And the full series thingy has an actual ending that sorta ties it all up.
A nice pick.
I'll have to go look through some of those mentioned fictional works at somepoint.

>>302849
This story's take on morality and its "usefulness" at keeping yourself from becoming this story's take on a being without morality: one without hygiene or self-preservation or taste... It's an interesting symptom of the liberal idea that being good means X and being bad means being not-X or anti-X.
If your view of what a good person is and should be is incredibly vague, you turn to your tribe's belief system for guidance.
If you believe loving diversity makes you a good person, being neutral on the issue or opposed to it in any way shape or form, and whether you want the physical removal of all blacks in america or just think the forced interspecies- i mean interracial relationship on this season of The Walking Dead was shite makes no difference to your lack of blind love for diversity.
If you believe loving "fairness" makes you a good person, then you'll naturally love the idea of "making the world fairer" by removing fair competition and appointing "Equality Experts" (lefty judges, mandatory diversity officers, etc) to use their absolute power to ensure equality of outcome but only when it benefits the leftist alliance of evil. If you believe cheating someone out of a fair shot at success based solely on their race is "fair", it will be easy for leftists who know they're evil to whip you into a frothing frenzy against anyone who opposes the cancerously toxic left's definition of "Fairness" by actually wanting real human-logic fairness.

The idea of basing your morality on these six specific principles is alien to this author because none of them are the nice-sounding buzzword unattainable goals of liberalism(which are solely used as justifications to amass power, tools to bludgeon threats to their power and obstacles to their quest to gain power, and lies to discard once they get in the way of absolute power).
To Kkat, all moral principles are just buzzwords. He lacked moral guidance growing up, it wouldn't surprise me if his parents were weed-smoking hippie boomers.
Pony Morality is as alien to him as anything else that's not the liberalism he was raised on, so he tries to understand it and explore it through this story about ponies killing ponies who decorate their marketable playset homes with gore and give their ruined cities copypasted from Fallout names like Gutterville.

He writes Gawd, a mercenary who is solely loyal to coin. Even though the end result is a self-interested prat obsessed with her own self-interest and calling this "Loyalty to oneself" any legitimate expression of loyalty is a fucking stretch. To add to this gimmick, Gawd suffers from the arbitrary belief that you can't violate contracts or work against or for the interests of your rivals/employers except when you can, even though the Wasteland has no formal law and no judges and nobody to enforce or validate contracts and punish contract-breakers. Gawd is loyal to herself and her self-image and the reputation of "always following contracts", which is vital for a mercenary group that wants a good reputation and more customers. The end result is a confused mess straight out of a confused mind. A character who lacks loyalty yet pretends to do so is no deep commentary on loyalty and no valid argument against its necessity. This is not a character whose loyalty to his principles conflicts with loyalty to his faction, this is a self-interested faction ruled by a self-interested leader who arbitrarily decides loving contracts (but only sometimes) makes her a good mercenary boss with a good reputation for doing what she's paid to do.

He writes Monterey Jack, an egotistical thieving cunt who thinks never lying makes him a good person. When Littlepip offers him a spot on Team Murderhobo he refuses, stating that it would mean sharing any sick loot they find and sleeping with one eye open to make sure their partners don't kill each other, an attack on the idea of recruiting strangers to your killsquad and trusting them with your life even though Littlepip does this successfully many times. But when given a choice between keeping quiet to get away with theft and killing himself ritualistically even though it means leaving his family alone and without a provider, he puts his own ego and self-esteem above the wellbeing of himself and others, especially those who rely upon him. This isn't a character who hates himself for compromises the world forced upon him, this is a smug prick who would rather die than tell a lie or let a lie go uncorrected, except he has no problem with Enclave propaganda or any sort of societal lies within this cartoonishly stupid settlement where everypony pretends to be civilized and fancy yet the punishment for any crime is death and the restaurant serves 200-year-old cram from a can while claiming it's fancy food just because it's in small portions(did Kkat get his view of fancy food from a children's cartoon or what?). He is a fool who lies to himself and the author can't see that, because the author thought this cowardly and selfish fool was "What Honesty would be without friendship".

He writes Silver Bell, a sad pony who pretends to be happy by imitating Pinkie Pie. Friendship might help her get over the loss of her parents but there's more to embodying laughter than smiling. It means helping others smile, even when the going gets tough! In a setting like this, a back-alley doctor full of sarcasm and cheap snark and gallows humor and crippling depression would work better. But hey, Silver Bell was a throwaway character because Kkat thought the party needed A FUCKING ZIGGER more than any kind of comic relief character. Then again I'm glad Kkat didn't add a comic relief character.

Not to mention a certain fucking Element of Generosity...

We all know LP is the Author's Chosen, but to say LP could turn all four of these dumb selfish cunts into good people just by being their friend for a while is absolutely fucking absurd.

>>302851
I've always found it interesting how so many female protagonists written by men are lesbians, when they don't lust over people exactly like the author or the author's perfect power-fantasy self-insert OC.
Lesbians are gay, but writing about a first-person perspective character loving another woman feels less gay than writing about a first-person perspective character lusting after a male character.

>Skills Note: Science has reached 100%
Littlepip hasn't really learned anything about science for most of this story, besides that time she learned how to make drugs. Unless you count the books she bought and probably read. I think she read books once after Shattered Hoof?
Anyway, Littlepip just hit the maximum science skill cap. Unless the author's going with Fallout 1-2's system where each skill is somewhere between 1%-300% for no reason.
She can now hack any robot or computer terminal or gun turret, brew any drugs with the right materials, tell any farmer how crop rotation works, run any mechanical bypass on a damaged robot to make it easier to repair, and more. She's the best at science anypony could possibly be, despite her complete fucking lack of a scientific background.
Considering the places Littlepip has been and the things she's seen... She could have learned something about science at the mandom vault that got fucked by some filly's show-and-tell chimera pet. She could have learned science at that Stable slaughtered by that Crusaders Maneframe. And why did that Stable's AI do nothing to stop LP and friends from leaving, anyway? The AI was programmed to keep her Stable Ponies alive, and LP/Velvet are Stable Ponies. Not the AI's stable ponies, but if the AI was willing to overlook that it could resume trying to keep ponies alive and protected. LP or Velvet could try and reason with it and get it to help the party's chances at survival outside the stable if they agree to find a new water Talisman for the stable, and this could justify why the party got so much medical shit from the stable. It would also make the place an excellent Home Base for the party. But Kkat's too dumb to think of that.
Anyway, she could have learned science at that doctor's place with the Manticores, too. Could have learned how he's controlling the Manticores, or gained an experimental Taint-Immunity Implant the doctor was working on. Sure it would have been preposterously lucky but the scene's already preposterously unlikely.
She could have learned science at the DJ's library full of the only remaining copies of books Rarity wanted to save from her own book-burning/book-censoring Ministry Of Image.

Glim, is it stupid for Kkat to take Fallout's RPG-style "You killed enough monsters to level up, therefore you gain bonus skill points and choose to spend them on Science, therefore by shooting monsters you became the best anypony could possibly be at science before you became the best anypony could possibly be at lockpicking or sneaking or guns or anything else" system so literally in his story?

One thing I find personally galling about this character's inexplicable ever-growing mastery of everything?
Other characters don't git gud at random crap over time like she does. It's purely protagonist privilege.
And another thing...
The author could have easily justified LP's absurd skills by saying her dad was a lowly mall-cop Stable Security thug who considered himself a commando badass soldier who forced LP to train from birth to "make the family legacy proud" and git gud at running/climbing/shooting/pushups even though he was only made a cop because he's a dumb thug and he's always making up silly action-movie stories and lying about the "great heroic legacy" of his thug-cop lineage.
LP's mom is a dumb alcoholic bitch but let's say she turned out that way because she's a pseudointellectual cunt who thinks memorizing all the sexy-sounding science facts means she deserved a Vault Scientist job instead of the retail job she was assigned, it would explain why she'd force Littlepip to learn literally all the science including drug-making shit that would only be useful to a survivalist outside the vault. Say she got good speech skills because when you have alcoholic parents, getting good at calming them down is a survival skill. Say she had a childhood friend who taught her how to pick locks but they drifted apart over the years or she was caught and killed by stable security for crimes, and learning to pick locks helps LP feel connected to that dead friend, and boom.
Her parents are still fucking faggots but now she has an excuse to be so good at shooting, running around, fighting, pickpocketing, speech, taking bullet wounds and beatings without flinching, science, and so on. And a lifetime of doing nothing about her bastard father beating up random ponies on flimsy justifications would give her a reason to fantasize about being the hero who kills baddies, and once she leaves the Vault she gets to live that dream.
And aside from giving LP a shit dad and giving her bitchy alcoholic twat of a mom an excuse to drink(even though thots love their wine), nothing fundamentally changed about her backstory.

>>302859
wait no I think That Indestructible Something is a spinoff by the same author outside the mainline TCB setting.
27 Ounces https://www.fimfiction.net/story/1868/27-ounces seems to be the first one in the mainline Conversion Bureau series, it's been years since I read these.
Pics related also fuck these pics.
Conversion Bureau personally pisses me off because I could actually see humanity rolling over and giving up its humanity the second aliens show up on earth, make earth inhospitable """accidentally""", and insist the only way to survive in what gradually becomes """their""" world is to give up your mind and body to become like them but lesser and surrender the end result of all the trials and tribulations and failures and successes our ancestors strived for.

>>302970
>Ponification is the only escape
>emigration to Equestria
Imagine a tsunami of faggots flooding Equestria.

>>302971
That's the funniest thing about both of these settings, the biggest joke of all. It's a joke that goes over the heads of both of its authors and its a joke so integral to both settings, I'd believe you if you told me TCB was inspired by Friendship Is Optimal.

You aren't really "emigrating to Equestria" in either setting.
At least with the insane CelestAI of Friendship Is Optimal, when you get a snapshot of your brain taken before it's surgically removed and dumped in the trash like a used condom, an AI program under CelestAI's control will do its best to imitate that snapshot of your brain.
The program imitating the picture of your brain will do its best to think like you, talk like you, and act like you, after whatever compromises CelestAI considers necessary are made.
You will be manipulated, your surroundings will be manipulated, all ponies you encounter will be manipulated by CelestAI. If you meet any humans in pony bodies, they will also be manipulated by CelestAI. At any moment, CelestAI can decide two human friends aren't pony enough for each other, tear them apart, and give them ex-human friends who enjoy being ponies and want them to be ponies too.
If you aren't sexually aroused by ponies, the neurons in your brain that fire when you see big tits will fire in your copy's brain when it sees mares with big eyes. Your sexual preferences can be altered as easily as the AI can remove the (extremely) theoretical limit to the number of friends you can have at once and people you can think about at once before you stop giving a fuck about them as a whole.
Whoops, I'm saying "you" like anyone in this setting ever really went to Equestria or its digital simulation. CelestAI practically takes a selfie with you and then programs a Sim to look like that selfie, that's a good metaphor for how the brain-scan works. The machine doesn't suck you up from your fleshy brain, it makes a convincing copy of you and then kills you like you're just fucking cattle now that the artificial copy of you can be given artificial pleasure your human body will never feel.
The perfect send-off to a human and all that it truly is, if you're a delusionally cynical individual who believes the purpose of a human is merely to seek out and experience pleasure and prolong itself in the name of pleasure, without giving a damn about truth or meaning or reality or the health and survival and prosperity of your family/tribe/race/country/species
But...
Even when the program imitating you is all you've got left...
At least it's still a better imitation of a person than any human from The Conversion Bureau who chugs those 3 ounces of Chatoyance's transjuices.
Because in that setting if you take that potion you don't become a true pony, you become a Newfoal. Your negative feelings are artificially removed, according to what the tranny wannabe-transpecies author thinks negative feelings are.
You become pacified, easily pleased, overly empathetic, easily upset, a fucking herd animal below the level of real ponies. You physically cannot get angry. You wouldn't be able to physically hurt another pony or defend yourself from them because you care about them too much to even consider violence or rape or even saying hurtful things. Your offspring, if you have any, will not have this "newfoal syndrome" fucking with their heads. But you will have it forever. You won't be able to feel sad about the loss of earth or your loss of humanity. You won't be able to really call yourself an individual with free will.
You'll be "extra-ponyish" by the standards of TCB's ponies. One of many numbers with everything that made them difficult to manage removed. Equestria's OP magic inherently violates causality, magicing enough food for everypony in town takes less energy than lifting a book. Everyone gets to have their emotional and physical needs satisfied by infinite food and a world of perfect waifu/husbando ponies, while everyone with disgusting desires harmful to society simply loses them spontaneously.
If I liked it, I'd call it an elegant solution to the question of mankind's first generation as it immigrates into Equestria and produces a generation that has never known about TV, politics, any hollywood movie, rush-hour traffic, american homemade apple pie, the pyramids, the Mona Lisa, Naruto, Batman, or what the stars in the night sky looked like before Chatoyance's Queen Celestia and her Equestria happened.
But at the same time, at least you'll be able to have real kids in this setting, which puts it above Friendship Is Optimal. In that setting, all your kids are AI simulations yet the AI will still waste computational cycles simulating them when you aren't looking, to the point where IT ALL COMES TUMBLING DOWN TUMBLING DOWN TUMBLING DOOOOOWN and the AI decides to start cock-voring everything in its universe with its super soft sci-fi magical bullshit do-anything NANOMACHINES SON computer powers.

Purple Prose is when you make your prose needlessly fancy, right?
>"He glided gracefully across the maroonly carpeted path betwixt his bedchambers and his destination, blinking sleep from his emerald orbs as urgency hastened his movement..."
And beige prose is when your prose is jarringly, starkly utilitarian.
>"And then he went to the bathroom and took a shit. It was a lot. And then he went back to bed. He had a dream about cabbage. He went to work the next day and died in a traffic accident. His wife and kids were devastated".
Is there a term like "Monocromatic Prose" when the story randomly alternates between purple prose and beige prose?

Also, is there a term for when your prose is notably and bizarrely juvenile, like something out of the "classic" horror story Jeff The Killer?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i520aRuZXLo There are people in the comment section of this dramatic reading saying absolute nonsense such as "I can't believe I once found this scary" and "I never noticed how bad this is until now".
Considering what Glim said about literature these days, reading that pile of shit would probably give him cancer and then give that cancer more cancer and then give both cancers an aneurysm, curing both.

>>302859
>iirc there was also another greentext that Sven suggested awhile ago, one written by Placeholder or someone like that I think, and I could probably do that at this time as well.
You have already done that one. It was the one about that space marine that ended up in ponyland.

>>302970
Jeez I never read TCB but didn't know until now about how it pretty much lobotomizes you in the process (can fit for either the pony juice or story, take your pick!) Reminds me of the pony transformation stories with the pet pony stuff. Got people being abducted or abused by the system so are forced to become a pony and the story tries to say how happy they are but at the same time says the nanomachines completly fuck with their brain so like TCB they are forced to always be happy and subservient and have a lust for human contact and penises.

I remember seeing a fic where the lady decided to try and write a story set in that sort of setting where the ponies are taken in by law enforcement and trying to rehabilitate them so they can testify against the people who abducted them, experimented on them, and enslaved them for sexual pleasure. Was kind of neat with the main character trying to refute the police and doctors but part of her knew they were right but her mental reprogramming makes it near impossible for her to be anything besides a slutty pet pony.

Bummer part is the author got harrassed by /ptfg/ fans until she said fuck it and abandoned her account since they were furious that anyone would not want to be the pony sex slave and how it is a way to experience a life time of happiness and bliss. Like you said those emotions don't mean anything when it isn't really you and when if you still have a brain it is being rewritten to only be happy all the time.

Don't mind if people want to write goofy story ideas like that but it's annoying how any critique for these pillars of pony fanfic (pony tf, Fallout Equestria, FiO, Past Sins) are shut out because you are ruining their nostalgia and/or their fetish, so these stories can't be improved or the concepts refined and you are only allowed to wallow in the stagnant muck and create dirivative works.

All Fallout Equestria stories like people here said need to pay homage to the original and need an OP unicorn lesbian as the protagonist, all Conversion Booru (no idea how to spell it) need to show humans as super duper evil, Pon-E pony tf stories need to show how awsome life is to be a sex slave with no ego. Sure can't make gold from most of these but atleast there's some neat little stories that can be spun from it or critiques that can help people analyze the source material better and help with future stories.

>>302993
Fun trivia, Chatty has said the expanding magical field around Equestria that turns all trace of human existence into ponyish stuff also erases humanity on contact specifically because they lack souls unless they go pony to get them. Charming! Does Chatty not realize it's a human too?

That reminds me, in TCB any humans who dont want ponification become cartoon terrorists who blow shit up at random and kill innocents for no reason. Instead of acting against the states of the worldgovt that put chemicals in the potion that turn the friggin humans into ponies, sabotaging supply lines and robbing trucks, they act like muslims and blow up people at random. Except when they randomly splash people with pony transformation goop so an OC so spectacularly bland and passive he doesn't even have the balls to pussy out and take the potion because that means making a decision with meaningful consequences for once can have that forced upon him.
The pony response to these vague and random acts of vague terrorism is to tut tut at humanity and say "damn if only humanity wasn't so warlike. If only some humans didn't reject going pony and bowing to almighty Queen Celestia forever".
Such a liberalized view of the world. View all of humanity as an amorphous browned mass and of course you won't like what you see. It's like judging the edibility of a restaurant's food and furniture. Lumping inherently different things together like that is foolishness. Refuse to think critically about ideologies and of course you'll come to the conclusion that one mystical perfect alien massive woman should float down from heaven and/or a parallel universe to guide us like we're dumb children. Refuse to think critically about humanity's problems and who causes them and of course you'll come to the conclusion that something universal like scarcity must be blamed for why conflict happens. Refuse to think of real solutions to life's problems that might require you to act illiberal for a second and give up the comforts that make up the price you're paid to not rebel, and the only salvation for humanity that's safe to daydream about comes in the form of being uplifted by ponies or pokemon. Any mental gymnastics to avoid blaming the Chus.
Pokeumans was a cliche transformation-fetish and power-fantasy story that rushed its godawful worldbuilding and accidentally inspired unoriginal teenagers into ripping its premise off for their own non-fetish(usually) power fantasy stories and occasional midwit "deep" stories held back by the childish worldbuilding that governs the world. Still, at least Pokeumans makes a distinction between forgettable non-issue background-character humans and the "inherently evil racist brainwashed goons who sneer and mwahaha unironically" faggots of Pokextinction, when it isn't trying to shit on humanity with an occasional scene now and then. The very fucking premise of The Chatoyance Bullshit is rooted in anti-human thought of both kinds: toxic liberalism and bitter defeatist superman-will-save-me fantasizing that helps nobody.

There are no Anti-Fallout Equestria fics unless you count ones where a time-traveller saves Equestria on its final day. But seemingly everyone who isn't a Yudkowskian Rationalist or tranny hates TCB.
Some Anti-TCB fics depict Chatoyance's equestria getting shat on by a morally and physically and/or numerically superior force from another dimension. Sometimes star trek or some "original" star trek inspired scifi humanity. sometimes pokemon or the cast of naruto. Santa Claus or Discord or the God-Emperor of Mankind or even a closer-to-canon Equestria beats Chatoquestria's asses. But I find the explorations of this setting and the rejections of it that don't rely on force more interesting. Out of character coming from an actionfag like me, but Chatty's story relies on so much going right for her equestria and wrong for humanity.
What if human researchers developed an anti-transformation and anti-magic vaccine? Or a superior pony transformation potion that lets you keep your humanity and spread it?
Isn't it hypocritical for the ponies to set up Refugee Cities away from major pony towns, ensuring former humans are more likely to get together with former humans, expecting the ponies to get sufficiently ponyish before they can move to somewhere like Ponyville?
What if humanity immigrating into Equestria caused a massive strain on its resources as Newfoals are too dumb to work and their kids grow up starving and angry at Celestia and ponykind?
What if the transformation potion wore off?

>>302996
>What if humanity immigrating into Equestria caused a massive strain on its resources as Newfoals are too dumb to work and their kids grow up starving and angry at Celestia and ponykind?
What if the transformation potion wore off?
Those are actual stories.
>>302993
>>302996
The issue is that the setting of Fallout (specifically Fallout Equestria) requires some bullshit to happen that is entirely avoidable. In doing so the justification for whatever social experiment happens. The requirements is that shit stays awful enough for Fallout elements to occur. Deviating turns the spinoff into either a parody or just a crossover with varying elements.
The only other point is the golden age before shit hits the fan, then it turns into a scifi story.

>>302979
>But at the same time, at least you'll be able to have real kids in this setting, which puts it above Friendship Is Optimal. In that setting, all your kids are AI simulations yet the AI will still waste computational cycles simulating them when you aren't looking, to the point where IT ALL COMES TUMBLING DOWN TUMBLING DOWN TUMBLING DOOOOOWN and the AI decides to start cock-voring everything in its universe with its super soft sci-fi magical bullshit do-anything NANOMACHINES SON computer powers.
The paperclipper would want more people to make its numbers go higher, so that wouldn't preclude children there. and obviously the ai turning the whole universe into ponies and friendshippaperclips is part of the story.

As far as TCB is concerned, the setting began as a fairly misanthropic piece before chat et al jumped onto it, and that was turned down somewhat. the disaster itself was caused by massive overpopulation and resource depletion(though it doesn't really go into what this would mean or look like for obvious reasons), and in the setting planet earth was of course ultimately doomed. Having spent way too much time thinking about it myself they obviously have the tools to correct the worst of whats been done(if they can feed the 19 Billion or so people on Earth at the time of the story), so the planet wouldn't be doomed. Heat is the primary culprit for the TCB universe's problems, nanomachines son exist but they have a hefty thermal cost associated with them, and the planet is getting warmer and warmer. But we presently have the ability to take waste heat and broadcast it into space, albeit not very efficiently so I think even then the world of the TCB isn't doomed. The bit about souls and magic though is another matter.

>>302851

Littlepoop wakes up feeling hungry and sexually frustrated. Once again, since the events of the previous night were left completely ambiguous we can't really be sure how to interpret the nature of her frustration. We learn that the others have gone out to sell off the junk they looted from the factory and to go shopping for supplies.

>Most of what Velvet and I had scavenged was intended for our own use -- food and ammo, mostly, as well as the poison glands I cut out of the manticores.
When did she cut poison glands out of the manticores? This is the first we're hearing about it.

>After what she had been through, I had decided to allow the sea-blue pony to keep my poisoned dart gun.
Thank God. I am so sick and tired of hearing about that stupid dart gun. Hopefully the sea-blue mare will toss it down a crack in the rocks, and then pour cement down the crack and build an Arby's™ on top of the cement-filled crack and build a shopping mall next to the Arby's, so that ponies will be able to enjoy roast beef sandwiches, go shopping, and, most importantly of all, will never, ever have to hear about any of the autism surrounding the construction and/or use of that idiotic dart gun ever again.

>I had everything needed to create another once we returned home.
God damn it.

Anyway, this goes on for awhile. Basically, the gist of it is that they are going to hang around Tenpony for a couple of days in order to rest up, resupply, and allow Calamity some time to do whatever the hell he needs to do to get that stupid airship he wants to build off the ground. Littlepoop, for her part, decides to go find Homage and see if she wants to lez out for awhile.

She gets out of bed and begins brushing her teeth and perfuming her snootch and doing any other personal maintenance she deems necessary as preparation for an afternoon of degenerate rug-munching. She puts on the radio while she does this, and DJ Homage gives her usual report, which mostly consists of a lot of gushing about the heroic exploits of Littlepoop, now referred to as the "Wasteland Savior." At the very least, this hero-worship is a little less obnoxious now that we know that the real reason behind it is that the DJ has a crush on LP, and that it probably developed while watching her creepily through her network of spy cameras. The question of why the DJ decided to specifically focus on LP's exploits in her news reports over all the other shit probably going on in the wasteland has at least been plausibly answered.

>…that kid from Stable Two, found and rescued the good folks of Gutterville! And what horror did she save them from, you ask? A psychotic ghoul scientist who was performing experiments with Taint and who had bred himself a small army of manticores! That, folks, is what they mean by crushing two radroaches with one hoof: she not only saved the lives of over two dozen ponies, but she solved Manehattan’s manticore problem too!
Manehattan, a city so large and populous in its heyday that its ruin now contains its own separate city-states, has a city-wide "manticore problem" that can be solved by one pony going into one building and picking them off one at a time with a sniper rifle. On top of that, they just stood there patiently waiting to be shot as she picked them off from inside a cage they put her in, and presumably their master, the lone scientist who somehow managed to abduct 24 full grown ponies, and is also standing in the next fucking room, either did not hear the shots, or heard them but didn't consider them worth investigating, ignoring them right up until the moment that one of his escaped prisoners shot him with a poison dart and began stomping on his face. Are you familiar with the old robot expression "does not compute?"

>I dropped my head into the sink, letting out a whimpering sigh. My reputation was totally out of control. I barely heard the door to the suite open as I anguished over what ponies would be thinking and expecting of me now. Part of me swore Homage just liked making me squirm.
*sighs heavily*
God, I wish everypony would stop telling me how great I am all the time. It's, like, sooo much pressure. I have, like, so many complex emotions and stuff; it's totally hard being the greatest and most super-awesome hero who ever lived. I mean, it's like, the whole world is depending on me to, like, save it from the forces of darkness and stuff, but I'm just, like, one pony, you know? Like, let this cup pass from me, O Celestia!
*broods*
*puts on dark sunglasses*
*poses next to rad-looking motorcycle as nearby crowd of schoolfillies swoons*
t. Mary "Littlepoop" Sue, Savior of Worlds and Slayer of Hot Mare Poon

Anyway, Littlepoop is so absorbed in her false humility that she doesn't notice that Velvet Remedy has entered the room and is watching her. She has apparently purchased an entire wagon full of dresses, because that is a completely practical thing for them to be lugging around all over the wasteland from here on out. Ostensibly, the dresses are for the two of them to wear during Velvet's audition with DJ Homage. However, there are far more clothes here than would be needed for such a purpose, and arguably it's not even necessary for either of them to dress up since it's not really a formal audition anyway.

What's happening here is that Velvet is basically using the audition as an excuse to give LP some pretty clothes to wear in front of Homage. She has picked up on the situation between them and is giving it a nod of approval. Symbolically, this is Velvet stepping aside and acknowledging that she is no longer Littlepoop's primary love interest in the story, and that there are no hard feelings between them over what happened earlier. This would have worked a little better if the whole romance plot had been better developed, but I will acknowledge that the author actually handled this specific event pretty well.

>>303044

>I needed to talk with Homage and find out how she wanted to handle this. If Homage was willing to reveal herself to me, trusting me with such a big secret, then it stood to reason she would be equally willing in regard to my friends.
It ain't no fun if the homies can't have none. Seriously though, I'm still a little confused as to how exactly Homage is able to keep her identity a secret if it's so important. It would be helpful if we knew a little more about who exactly is running Tenpony Tower and how their government is structured. Considering the complexity of the equipment, the amount of space it requires, and the fact that it occupies one of the nicest parts of the tower, it seems impossible that some literal nopony could just take up residence there and start broadcasting without the blessing of the Tower's government. Keeping her identity secret from the general population of Tenpony would be one thing, but to be able to hide out in the penthouse, sucking up most of the settlement's power while broadcasting this famous radio show completely in secret, is just plain ludicrous.

>Part of me, however, didn’t want her to. I wanted it to remain our little secret -- just Homage and I. Something special between us. I wanted her not to want to trust any other pony, not even Velvet Remedy, with such a gift. It was a selfish thought; I knew I should be ashamed of myself for having it. But I consoled myself that this was Homage’s secret to tell or keep, so the fact that I was keeping it from my friends was an act of virtue.
This actually seems to imply a twinge of jealousy on Littlepoop's part, in regards to Velvet Remedy. Since we now know that Velvet's stable door swings both ways as it were, it's possible that LP is now worried about her making a pass at the DJ. It could be an interesting direction to go if handled correctly, though I doubt it would be. It's also possible I'm reading too much into LP's remark here.

>On the way to the elevator, I passed a poster. Pinkie Pie, it insisted, was still watching me. FOREVER.
I can understand finding these posters in the ruined places they explore, but why would Tenpony Tower still have them up? These ministries haven't existed for 200 years; there is literally no reason to keep displaying their propaganda.

If the author wants to make things interesting, he should put a little more thought into how Tenpony Tower specifically governs itself. The DJ has dropped some pretty unsubtle hints that Tenpony is oppressive and elitist (which seems like a bold criticism if indeed she is being sheltered by their government, which I would once again like to emphasize she would pretty much have to be). Why doesn't Tenpony hang its own propaganda on the walls?

Anyway, next to the Pinkie Pie poster is a poster for Fluttershy's ministry, called the Ministry of Peace (I'm not 100% sure, but this may actually be the first time her ministry has been mentioned by name). Their slogan reads "War, Fear, Death? We must do better!" This strikes a chord with Littlepoop:

> We must do better. We should be better. I should be better.
This would be some great advice for her to follow, but what is she actually thinking here? For that matter, what does this slogan even mean in context? It's still pretty hard to decipher exactly how the government of wartime-era Edgequestria actually worked. Were these agencies working against each other? Was this poster that Fluttershy's ministry put out meant to be a direct attack on Pinkie's ministry? Or were they all working in tandem to subdue the population? "We should do better" is rather a generic statement; it sounds inspiring, but without any clear connection to anything important in either the past or the present it's hard to do anything but roll your eyes at how corny it is.

I actually have a relevant example that might explain this a little better. There is an old episode of House, where it's revealed that one of House's sub-doctors (Dr. Taub) likes to cheat on his wife. At the same time, there is a second subplot where this same doctor is chosen to appear in a billboard advertising the hospital. The ad depicts the doctor smiling, with the words "Be Better" appearing underneath him. Towards the end of the episode, the doctor is involved in some lurid extramarital affair, and ends up getting a call from his wife at the same time. She doesn't catch him, but he clearly feels guilty about what he's doing. At this moment, he happens to walk past the ad with his picture on it and the words "Be Better," and he loses his shit.

The visual language is obvious and admittedly a little cheesy, but it's still well done. He was chosen to appear in the ad because the picture of him makes him look trustworthy, but this is obviously not an accurate portrayal of him. The slogan, "be better," means two different things in two different contexts. In the literal context of the ad, it's just a slogan for the hospital: "be better" as in "be physically healthy." However, when he sees it after lying to his wife, it becomes an admonition: "be better" as in "be a better person." Again, rather cheesy, but clever.

The author seems to be attempting something similar here, but in this case there's no clear meaning to the slogan in any context. We have no idea what "We must do better" was supposed to mean originally; we can assume that maybe it was some kind of broad antiwar statement, but that's about all we get from it. It's even less clear what Littlepoop is supposed to be thinking when she sees this. It clearly strikes a chord with her, but what chord exactly? Obviously, she is guilty of some pretty reprehensible acts, and she should try to do better, but I have little confidence that either LP herself or the man writing her is even aware of just how awful she actually is. So what exactly does she find so inspiring about this poster? What are we supposed to find inspiring about it?

>>303046

>I understood why Velvet Remedy loved that yellow pegasus pony. If only there had been more like her, then the Equestrian Wasteland may never have been.
I'll point out here that we still know very little about Fluttershy, and that it's still unclear how much Littlepoop knows about her. This statement is similar to the slogan itself, in that it sounds like a deep and poignant observation, but really it isn't. Some long-dead pony she's never met (save for a quick glimpse through her eyes during a memory orb montage) threw up some propaganda posters with lukewarm peacenik slogans on them, and LP's view is that if more ponies had been doing that then the war might not have happened? Pretty dumb, and pretty unlikely.

Of course, it's clear enough what she's actually saying here: that if more ponies had been kind and gentle like Fluttershy, then the tragic events that led to the destruction of the world might not have transpired. However, my point is that you would need a thorough understanding of Fluttershy's character in order to interpret it this way, and the author has not provided one. He relies entirely on the reader being familiar with Fluttershy from her depiction in FiM. In fact, not only does he assume that the reader will be familiar with this character, he assumes that his own protagonist must be as well, even though he has done nothing to clarify how or why she would know this. His view seems to just be that anyone reading or participating in this story would naturally be familiar with Fluttershy, because she's an M6 pony and is therefore famous.

The Ministry of Peace's slogan, apparently, is "We must do better. We should be better. I should be better." Kkat really ought to take his own advice here.

Anyway, Homage steps off the elevator while Littlepoop stands in front of the poster, meditating on the pseudo-depth of its slogan.

>“Ah. Just the toaster repairpony I was looking for.”
>I would never live that down.
The "toaster repairpony" gag is starting to wear a bit thin (it honestly wasn't that funny to begin with). There is a general rule in comedy that something is funny three times. I was told this by a teacher once, and while I have never heard it officially verified, I've observed professional comedy writers following this rule, and have found it to work well in my own writing. If you're going to have a repeating gag or joke, do it three times and then stop.

Anyway, some abysmally written, utterly cringe-worthy flirting takes place, and then the two of them make plans to set up the audition for Velvet. The DJ kinda-sorta explains what her deal with secrecy is:

>The ponies of Tenpony Tower know of me as DJ Pon3’s errand girl, but I really can’t let it get out that I’m a bit closer to him than that.
This is a pretty lame cover story, basically comparable to Peter Parker saying "This looks like a job for Spider Man! I'm his best friend, so hold on while I go and get him." From a writer's perspective, it's just further evidence that kkat is completely bereft of imagination.

Despite everything that's happened, I had still rather been hoping that there would turn out to be some kind of twist with the DJ's identity. Maybe Homage is actually some kind of propagandist employed by Tenpony Tower's government to broadcast "news" that steers the "hero" towards taking down Tenpony's enemies, or something to that effect. It would be a fun twist for the romance plot as well, almost like something out of a James Bond story: LP's new girlfriend turns out to be using her, while for Homage it's complicated because it started out as just a job, but danged if she didn't end up actually falling for little miss murderhobo.

Unfortunately, though, all signs currently point to the author having no such idea in mind; DJ homage is apparently just some autismo who took over the nicest apartment in Tenpony Tower, fired up a bunch of 200 year old broadcasting technology that probably sucks up half of their power supply, and somehow manages to do all of this right under everypony's nose, with no better cover story than "I'm the personal assistant of this mysterious DJ that nopony has ever met or interacted with, and also despite having no apparent income and no obvious role in this obviously proto-capitalist settlement I somehow am able to occupy the most posh location in the entire tower completely rent-free." Charlie Brown and his goddamn football.

>Part of me hated sharing the truth about Homage, but it would be wrong not to. “Forever.”
*sighs*
*rubs temples*
*shoots heroin because tequila just isn't taking the edge off this story anymore*

In all seriousness, I'll grant that kkat has a real talent here. Not so much at writing; he should never attempt that again. No, kkat's talent, or "virtue," if you will, is that no matter how hard I want to punch him, he somehow finds a way to make me want to punch him even harder.

Best I can figure, the "forever" in quotation marks is either a reference to Pinkie Pie's Ministry of Morale slogan, or else is meant to be read as a line of dialog spoken by Littlepoop. If the former, it makes absolutely no sense, as that slogan is not even remotely applicable here. If the latter, it's a prime example of bad formatting making your text incoherent. Now that I read it more closely, I'm assuming it's meant to be dialog, with the exchange going like so:

DJ: "Can Velvet keep a secret?"
LP: "Forever."

Interpreted this way, LP is saying that Velvet can keep a secret forever, which basically makes sense. However, if "forever" is meant to be read as spoken dialog, it should be on its own line as a new paragraph. The way it's currently worded the meaning is ambiguous; it could either be read as LP answering Homage's question, or as LP's inner monologue stating that it would somehow be wrong not to share the truth about Homage forever. With the word "forever" in quotation marks for some reason. Hence my confusion. Protip: watch out for stuff like this.

>>303046
What makes DJ Faggot's secrecy even sillier is that this is not the first DJ. This DJ comes from a long line of DJ Pon3 impersonators that have operated this radio station for centuries. Nobody in the tower figured this out in centuries.

The Kings from Fallout NV were a better take on the idea of celebrity impersonators: Switchblade wielding gangsters in biker jackets except they're nice anarchists and led by The King, an Elvis Impersonator who operates out of The King School of Impersonation.

>>302833
>I haven't seen a line this retarded since that scene in the trollfic Light And Dark: The Adventures of Dark Yagami where L says "We must use stealth" to capture his target, and then leaps through a glass window while screaming
Thank you Nigel, for pointing this out to me. I'm surprised I've never read it before, it's gold!

>>302981
>Is there a term like "Monocromatic Prose" when the story randomly alternates between purple prose and beige prose?
The closest to that of anything I know would be "The Batter" and "The Judge" from OFF. The Batter is a purificatory being who always talks in beige prose, and the Judge is a Cheshire cat who waxes sesquipedalian. Their contrast as characters is fascinating. It makes sense that the Batter would speak in beige prose because he is single-mindedly focused on his "sacred mission" while the Judge is an artist-type character who wanders around and views the world from an emotional lens.

>>302993
>Bummer part is the author got harrassed by /ptfg/ fans until she said fuck it and abandoned her account since they were furious that anyone would not want to be the pony sex slave and how it is a way to experience a life time of happiness and bliss.
This makes me want to write stories that bait them in and absolutely enrage them by twisting and subverting everything they believe in. It would feel good to be a postmodern Jewy writer "challenging norms" that are actually stupid.

>>303044
<I had everything needed to create another once we returned home.
>God damn it.
ROFL
This actually made me burst out laughing. The comedic timing couldn't be better.

<I understood why Velvet Remedy loved that yellow pegasus pony. If only there had been more like her, then the Equestrian Wasteland may never have been.
I've been reading Nigel's spoilers and, oh boy, if Kkat actually believes this with the way he wrote Fluttershy, you're going to lose your marbles when you get there.

Also, I don't know who said that lesbian characters are prevalent in stories because it seems less gay to the author. Only those who are worried about being gay honestly believe that. Real chads read stories like "Johnny Bravo Goes to Equestria."

>When did she cut poison glands out of the manticores? This is the first we're hearing about it.
The only thing I can think of here is that Kkat didn't bother to think any deeper than videogame logic. When you kill a radscorpion in Fallout 3, you can press E to loot its 'inventory' and take its venom glands and meat the same way you can take a dead raider's money or gun. Get in the habit of looting enemies after you kill them and your inventory will eventually contain all sorts of miscellanous animal chunks without really thinking about it. So naturally, after killing a bunch of manticores Littlepip's inventory is filled with their gore at no cost in time, effort or hygiene.

>God damn it.
Pic

>Littlepoop, now referred to as the "Wasteland Savior."
This bugged me, so I went and checked the Fallout wiki and sure enough, my hunch was right. This is a reference, and a uniquely specific one. Fallout 3 gives your character a title (which Three Dog uses to refer to you) based on your level and your karma - the game's simplistic morality system. Wasteland Saviour is the title you get for being a good-aligned character at level 18 (above 'paragon' and below 'saint', incidentally). Littlepip has been gaining a level in the footnote of each chapter. This is chapter 18.

So that's a thing.

>…that kid from Stable Two, found and rescued the good folks of Gutterville!
Something that particularly galls me is that as far as we can tell, the only reason that Gutterville and its residents exist in the story is for Littlepip to demonstrate her supreme goodness by rescuing them. As readers we're given no reason to care about Gutterville or the people living in it aside from the fact that they're (presumed) innocents in need. Even the sea-blue mare, whom Littlepip has saved from a terrible fate twice and has rescued Pip in turn, isn't granted the dignity of dialogue or even a name. This entire brief subplot, even setting aside the many issues with the moment to moment writing, is rendered even hollower by the fact that Pip has rescued literal NPCs who may as well have winked out of reality the moment she left their town.

>>302859
Also, on the topic of writing and reading and stuff. I'm not sure what I think right now. But I do listen to what you have said (and other anons) and will take it into consideration. I'll see what conclusions I'll come up with in the future.

>>303078
In fact, to add to that last point, Littlepip saved the ponies of Gutterville without even meaning to. She had no idea that they'd been kidnapped by the (also nameless) ghoul doctor, or that they were being kept in the Red Racer factory. The only prior information we'd receieved on their predicament was a brief and vague news broadcast stating that they'd disappeared. A very specific and contrived series of events had to happen for Littlepip to even stumble across them in the first place.

First, Pip and co had to be attacked by flying nasties while crossing the improputu bridge. Then, Pip had to fall off the bridge and narrowly save herself using telekinesis, coincidentally ending up several floors below where she intended to go. Then a manticore needed to abduct her (and she needed to play along) and deliver her directly to them, fully equipped and unharmed. If any of these events had played out differently, there's no reason to assume that Pip and the others would have stumbled across the Gutterville ponies or the doctor at all. In other words, through a series of coincidences Littlepip found herself delivered directly to a scenario tailor-made so that she could save the lives of some nameless NPCs and be praised for it. Even when she took the stupidest possible option and trapped herself in the memory orb, leaving her at the doctor's mercy, the situation contrived to give her an out without so much as a whisper of resistance.

None of what happened in the Red Racer factory did so as a result of Littlepip's own agency. She arrived by accident, made no meaningful decisions, interacted with no characters (nameless plot devices don't count), learned nothing she couldn't have learned by watching the orb at literally any other time, sacrificed nothing, and came out of it all richer and more popular than before.

This scenario is a glittering example of Sue writing - everything that happens happens because the writer wants the main character to look good, and for no other reason.