Final Fallout: Equestria Story Update: Chapters 25-45

Hi!

Wow. I need to stop giving out time estimates on when things are coming, I totally dropped the ball on this one. But! IT IS DONE! I have, against all odds, finished Fallout Equestria. 

What I Thought

I want to tackle a few of the loose ends of the story here before giving my broad-strokes thoughts. I've basically finished the script so a lot of what I say here may come out as the same as the script so #leaked

Homage

Homage's entire character and relationship with littlepip is, and I cannot stress this enough, painfully bad. Most of this has to do with the sexualization of these characters but it also has wider causes only semi-related to that major point. Homage is poorly developed, poorly characterized, and the relationship she has with littlepip is shallow. The only thing that seems to tie these characters together is a vague sense of doing the right thing and, yes, fucking. By the end of the story, the writing begs the reader to accept that these two are deeply in love, deeply connected on an almost soulmate-like level when they've known each other for like two months. I get that this is pretty standard stuff for lesbians but like, come on. The real pain point is the sex stuff though. First off, these are horses. Obvious fact aside. That's gross, I don't like it. I can't get over that bit. Second, it's just so cringe. It's like Homage can't stop bringing it up even in the most tense or important story sections, there always has to be a reference to off-page horse sex. This is probably the bit that made me want to quit doing this video the most. It's completely awful in every way and I despise it.

The Enclave

This is something I wasn't expecting! The Enclave are unexpected in two senses: first,  I wasn't expecting them to really play a part. They'd been hinted at, but about six chapters before the end they come in and come in strong, and become essentially the story's final antagonist. They're also surprising in that, despite their rushed introduction and removal from the story in the final stretch, I actually really like them. There is a scene where Calamity explains the enclave's system of governance and its society to littlepip which sets up a really interesting and unique faction, especially for this world. I really wish they spent more time on this stuff, it's so promising yet takes up so little runtime.

Final Thoughts

There is an unexpectedly large amount of stuff to talk about when it comes to this story. for the first ten chapters or so i really got worriedf that I would simply just not have the content available to talk about for equestria. Oh yeah, it's horses doing apoicalypse stuff. its surface level and boring, okay bye. Thats my real take on the first quarter of this story. It fails to hook the reader, it has no stakes, no driving plot, and few interesting characters if any. As the story continues and the focus of the plot becomes more dispersed (more away from littlepip and more toweards the ministry mares and the wasteland's factions), things quickly become much more interesting and readable. I love the brotherhood and I love a handful of the minstries, I like xenith and redeye. Fillydelphia and Canterlot are both compelling locations and were really interesting to read about and experience through littlepi's eyes. But it always circles back to the flaw that this is through those littlepip eyes, because no amount of cool lore or factions or locations can change the fact that the character for whom I am being relayed this information by is simply not an enjoyable one for me. I do not like littlepip at all. I have no feelings for this character beyond apathy. The story utterly fails to make me care about this character, and so in the end when she makes her grand sacrifice to rid the wasteland of the enclave and bring sun back to the wasteland, I am left feeling nothing. In the epilogue, as velvet remedy is telling homage all about littlepip and i'm supposed to feel sad or whatever, I feel nothing. The themes are semi-resolved, the plot is concluded in a way that leaves relatively few loose ends compared to most of the fanfiction ive read, but I feel nothing. 

Most of the problems fallout equestria has on a readability level comes from this failure to endear me to its protagonist. There are plenty of other problems, but many of the main ones spawn from this reader-narrator disconnect. This sounds super negative, and it is, but there are definitely still things I liked as I said. This is going to be a pretty long video and a super challenging one for me. I have no idea how i'm going to do this. Wish me luck folks. Will keep you posted.