Comment on Derpy Deliveries 2 part 9 by MoonlitBrush
For people who haven't tried chocolate and salt together it sounds like a weird combo. Like peanut butter and bananas.
Lets have some context then. The fanfiction was written between season one and season two, when the fandom was getting into the backstories for the characters in the background, Vinyl Scratch and Octavia caught peoples attention, Derpy was seen as the mailmare mother of Dinky, Fluttershy had just finished a short stint as a supermodel, etc. While a lot of the story was based on facts in the show there were more than a few nods to other fan works of the time.
The fanfiction starts off the story very well, taking time to introduce the idea of what a vault is and why they were made, the main character leaves in order to fix a mistake they made, and within a few minutes of entering the wasteland they are captured by slavers, manage to get free with the one other slave with them when the slavers are attacked by another group, and the other slave turns a gun on them to try and take her food. This goes pretty fast, and it shows the first of many ethical problems she'll have to deal with.
Unicorn magic plays an important role throughout, and is one of the things that separates the setting from fallout proper. VATS makes sense now, being a magical device that can see enemies through walls and slow time is more reasonable than fallout's version. In more than one instance magic is used as a weapon, though it's only real use is to move things around rather than the fancy magic Twilight has at her disposal. In a world filled with guns and bullets, levitation isn't usually the better option, so these moments are pretty infrequent.
If you focus on just the combat and the gore then you kinda forget what fallout's about. Fallout is an RPG that happens to have guns and grenades, otherwise it's a lot like the elder scrolls series with some differences. For one, it uses real world music to give a sense of nostalgia that the character in the game likely feels. One song (Anything Goes) talks about events that in real life most people don't know about because it happened so long ago, and is equally meaningless to the people of the wasteland. Fallout 4 uses real life buildings in the city so that if you've been there in reality then you'll recognize many of the older locations, for example.
Fallout:Equestria is perfect for this, since we've seen the show and can recognize many of the landmarks that the main character doesn't see as all that important. The music (which we can't hear but some fans have been creating) is usually made by characters that we do know, and at points in the story their histories are part of current events.
Now, Derpy.
In the story Derpy serves a couple purposes, she represents the good of the world before the end, her sweetness and good nature has shone through for the last two hundred years in spite of her appearance, she brought things ponies needed to survive, opened a shop that has absolutely everything, and even though she's seen the worst parts of the wasteland she never bent and bowed to it. And, spoiler, eventually the wasteland loses and she gets what she deserves. There's a moment where it seems like the dregs of the old war might be enough to kill her, but she comes out on top through sheer force of will. Which might be why she's stayed sane for 200 years, she never gave up.
She's still a background character for most of the story, and her past isn't really given in detail, which is why I started this series of images. From this perspective, every time she sets things right, helps ponies survive, it's another blow against the war that almost killed everyone. Success to her would be to bring back Equestria.
Now, you can focus on the blood and gore, there's a lot of that and it helps show how hard the characters have to fight since much of it is their own, but don't forget that Fallout isn't just a shoot em up, and Fallout: Equestia is even less so.
Lets have some context then. The fanfiction was written between season one and season two, when the fandom was getting into the backstories for the characters in the background, Vinyl Scratch and Octavia caught peoples attention, Derpy was seen as the mailmare mother of Dinky, Fluttershy had just finished a short stint as a supermodel, etc. While a lot of the story was based on facts in the show there were more than a few nods to other fan works of the time.
The fanfiction starts off the story very well, taking time to introduce the idea of what a vault is and why they were made, the main character leaves in order to fix a mistake they made, and within a few minutes of entering the wasteland they are captured by slavers, manage to get free with the one other slave with them when the slavers are attacked by another group, and the other slave turns a gun on them to try and take her food. This goes pretty fast, and it shows the first of many ethical problems she'll have to deal with.
Unicorn magic plays an important role throughout, and is one of the things that separates the setting from fallout proper. VATS makes sense now, being a magical device that can see enemies through walls and slow time is more reasonable than fallout's version. In more than one instance magic is used as a weapon, though it's only real use is to move things around rather than the fancy magic Twilight has at her disposal. In a world filled with guns and bullets, levitation isn't usually the better option, so these moments are pretty infrequent.
If you focus on just the combat and the gore then you kinda forget what fallout's about. Fallout is an RPG that happens to have guns and grenades, otherwise it's a lot like the elder scrolls series with some differences. For one, it uses real world music to give a sense of nostalgia that the character in the game likely feels. One song (Anything Goes) talks about events that in real life most people don't know about because it happened so long ago, and is equally meaningless to the people of the wasteland. Fallout 4 uses real life buildings in the city so that if you've been there in reality then you'll recognize many of the older locations, for example.
Fallout:Equestria is perfect for this, since we've seen the show and can recognize many of the landmarks that the main character doesn't see as all that important. The music (which we can't hear but some fans have been creating) is usually made by characters that we do know, and at points in the story their histories are part of current events.
Now, Derpy.
In the story Derpy serves a couple purposes, she represents the good of the world before the end, her sweetness and good nature has shone through for the last two hundred years in spite of her appearance, she brought things ponies needed to survive, opened a shop that has absolutely everything, and even though she's seen the worst parts of the wasteland she never bent and bowed to it. And, spoiler, eventually the wasteland loses and she gets what she deserves. There's a moment where it seems like the dregs of the old war might be enough to kill her, but she comes out on top through sheer force of will. Which might be why she's stayed sane for 200 years, she never gave up.
She's still a background character for most of the story, and her past isn't really given in detail, which is why I started this series of images. From this perspective, every time she sets things right, helps ponies survive, it's another blow against the war that almost killed everyone. Success to her would be to bring back Equestria.
Now, you can focus on the blood and gore, there's a lot of that and it helps show how hard the characters have to fight since much of it is their own, but don't forget that Fallout isn't just a shoot em up, and Fallout: Equestia is even less so.
See that's why MLP and Fallout don't mix well together, you lost me at slaves and guns, the closest there was to slaves is Sombra enslaving ponies, but they were basically just in chains. As for guns, only weapon I've seen is the party cannon, in the MLP universe, there is no such thing as guns, violence and gore, its suppose to be a peaceful getaway, full of color and happiness, give it a little dark won't hurt it, but pump it with something like Fallout and well, it just falls apart. When you mention death and killed, it just loses it's magic, the only canon death I've seen in MLP was that coffin from that Valentines episode, AJ's parents are sort of still implied, they never mentioned death, although there is a high chance they are, but the show will never mention it, unless it's maybe in a movie, which did happen, only death I've seen were those skulls from the parrots.
Derpy really doesn't fit well with this story either, growing with her, she's not meant to be take as serious as this. Ive recently read a little bit from this comic based on Vinyl being a vampire, comic really doesnt work as well, really messy and very predictable, I facepalmed so hard when I saw Derpy as this basass hero that saved the characters.
I know that these aren't my cup of tea, and that I should just ignore these, and I did so after this picture, where I had to unwatch if this was the route you were going for, your artstyle is great, if it makes you happy, cool, thats for you and your audience, Im more into art that makes me happy and warm inside, seeing Derpy holding the corpse of her daughter, I have no idea how that doesn't make anyone as depressed as I was first time seeing that. In the end, I still don't think that these two series mix well together, but thats just me :/
Derpy really doesn't fit well with this story either, growing with her, she's not meant to be take as serious as this. Ive recently read a little bit from this comic based on Vinyl being a vampire, comic really doesnt work as well, really messy and very predictable, I facepalmed so hard when I saw Derpy as this basass hero that saved the characters.
I know that these aren't my cup of tea, and that I should just ignore these, and I did so after this picture, where I had to unwatch if this was the route you were going for, your artstyle is great, if it makes you happy, cool, thats for you and your audience, Im more into art that makes me happy and warm inside, seeing Derpy holding the corpse of her daughter, I have no idea how that doesn't make anyone as depressed as I was first time seeing that. In the end, I still don't think that these two series mix well together, but thats just me :/
Again, you're kinda using personal opinion without having read the story or played the games they're based on.
Also, there was Arimaspi who stole the griffon treasure and fell to his death. Then there was the time Applebloom would have been eaten by a chimera. Actually, if we're going to include near death scenarios that a kid might believe could happen, there's plenty in season one episode two onward, ranging from physical death to personality death. Going with the logic that "you know they can't really die in this show" isn't a strong argument. Dash trapped on a crumbling ledge on the side of a cliff with the wind whipping away her screams for help... without knowledge of how shows work, a kid might believe she was going to die there.
If we're only using actual death rather than threats of death then you've removed the importance of every villain in the show. Unless you like the show for the happier moments and skip anything else, you have to accept that villains trying to end the world happen a lot, and having a fanfiction all about minor and major villains doing pretty much the same thing fits right in, regardless of the alterations to the setting.
As for Derpy, I happen to favor her a bit, for the most part she's just a background element that ranges from just being an introduction to the idea of ghouls, to not showing up for chapters at a time and only appearing again to do good. Most characters don't stick their neck out for others, she's a bit like an echo of how things are in the show, more helpful and friendly than most.
And that's fair, I like stories that have very strong emotions in them. This one ended bittersweetly, to put it lightly. Every step of the way it got harder for the heroes, only near the end do they realize what can be done to save everyone, forever, but it's in the last few pages where the real cost is made apparent, like in the games. The very ending is as close to a start of a new Equestria as it can get, much of the evil of the wasteland is still being set right.
Most stories like it screw up by having the mane 6 act out of character, ending their friendships because of reasons that don't really work. In this the reasons are forced on them in a way that canon has shown at least once. The alternate timeline where Equestria was fighting Sombra. Their duties kept them apart in various ways especially once the fighting began.
I can't argue that guns don't really appear in the show, and I should point out that the author used that as a sort of symbolism of the difference between the two. In the show the characters would spend more effort trying to fix a problem, and in the story in a flashback they use a gun to solve a cockatrice problem only for Fluttershy to reveal some detail about them, and by using a gun to solve a problem they've instead made things worse than they could have been. I don't know if the characters ever say they wished guns were never invented, but it comes across with that message more than once, that without guns the world wouldn't have ended, diplomacy would have set things right.
Now that I think about it, a gun was what set the war off in the first place, so yeah. Almost forgot that.
But, you prefer more cheerful stuff, and some people prefer their candy without anything special added. Not a whole lot of fanfictions for that, but there's probably a few. A heck of a lot more to avoid though.
Also, there was Arimaspi who stole the griffon treasure and fell to his death. Then there was the time Applebloom would have been eaten by a chimera. Actually, if we're going to include near death scenarios that a kid might believe could happen, there's plenty in season one episode two onward, ranging from physical death to personality death. Going with the logic that "you know they can't really die in this show" isn't a strong argument. Dash trapped on a crumbling ledge on the side of a cliff with the wind whipping away her screams for help... without knowledge of how shows work, a kid might believe she was going to die there.
If we're only using actual death rather than threats of death then you've removed the importance of every villain in the show. Unless you like the show for the happier moments and skip anything else, you have to accept that villains trying to end the world happen a lot, and having a fanfiction all about minor and major villains doing pretty much the same thing fits right in, regardless of the alterations to the setting.
As for Derpy, I happen to favor her a bit, for the most part she's just a background element that ranges from just being an introduction to the idea of ghouls, to not showing up for chapters at a time and only appearing again to do good. Most characters don't stick their neck out for others, she's a bit like an echo of how things are in the show, more helpful and friendly than most.
And that's fair, I like stories that have very strong emotions in them. This one ended bittersweetly, to put it lightly. Every step of the way it got harder for the heroes, only near the end do they realize what can be done to save everyone, forever, but it's in the last few pages where the real cost is made apparent, like in the games. The very ending is as close to a start of a new Equestria as it can get, much of the evil of the wasteland is still being set right.
Most stories like it screw up by having the mane 6 act out of character, ending their friendships because of reasons that don't really work. In this the reasons are forced on them in a way that canon has shown at least once. The alternate timeline where Equestria was fighting Sombra. Their duties kept them apart in various ways especially once the fighting began.
I can't argue that guns don't really appear in the show, and I should point out that the author used that as a sort of symbolism of the difference between the two. In the show the characters would spend more effort trying to fix a problem, and in the story in a flashback they use a gun to solve a cockatrice problem only for Fluttershy to reveal some detail about them, and by using a gun to solve a problem they've instead made things worse than they could have been. I don't know if the characters ever say they wished guns were never invented, but it comes across with that message more than once, that without guns the world wouldn't have ended, diplomacy would have set things right.
Now that I think about it, a gun was what set the war off in the first place, so yeah. Almost forgot that.
But, you prefer more cheerful stuff, and some people prefer their candy without anything special added. Not a whole lot of fanfictions for that, but there's probably a few. A heck of a lot more to avoid though.
On that last part, i dont read fanfics, I only read two in the beginning of the fandom when everyone said that Cupcakes was the greatest thing ever written, even then that fic made no sense. I know there is death in the show, but its rarely shown, and so far haven't seen on screen deaths other than maybe worms and fish, I dont mind a little edge in the show, but it never takes it too far, Tirek looks like someone that could kill, even in some situations looked like he would, but no, he just stole magic and powers. If Chrysalis didn't need Cadance anymore, then she would've killed her there and then, but nope, just lock her in a cave where she can easily escape.
Im taking production class for animation, we're working on one about a dragon in medieval times, during the storyboarding process, someone suggested for him to do the hammer dance, another said to have modern items, all of that wouldn't work because we want the audience to believe we're in that time period, so we replaced a fire extinguisher with a fish full of water, and in a cartoony standpoint, it really worked. Now I don't know too much about FoE, but seeing them go from cheerful and happy ponies to these killers with machine guns on their backs and robotic parts, it just takes you out of the story. In the show, the most bad ponies like those stallions in the daring do episodes do is kidnap them.
Yes, I am saying it as a personal opinion, I'll never understand why people like this fic, if it is based on a video game, I can already predict that its basically the fallout story, but with horses, and some change in the story. This will never be a thing I will get into, not even if someone makes an animation of it.
Im taking production class for animation, we're working on one about a dragon in medieval times, during the storyboarding process, someone suggested for him to do the hammer dance, another said to have modern items, all of that wouldn't work because we want the audience to believe we're in that time period, so we replaced a fire extinguisher with a fish full of water, and in a cartoony standpoint, it really worked. Now I don't know too much about FoE, but seeing them go from cheerful and happy ponies to these killers with machine guns on their backs and robotic parts, it just takes you out of the story. In the show, the most bad ponies like those stallions in the daring do episodes do is kidnap them.
Yes, I am saying it as a personal opinion, I'll never understand why people like this fic, if it is based on a video game, I can already predict that its basically the fallout story, but with horses, and some change in the story. This will never be a thing I will get into, not even if someone makes an animation of it.
I think you assume the story is just Fallout with ponies in it, like a script copy or something. Lets quickly go over a few things first:
Problem 1 - If you take a movie script writer and have them write for a game, it'll usually be terrible because you can't mix media like that, the methods of game design and linear storytelling are very different, books tend to have the largest amount of character dialogue while games typically have fewer words spoken by the characters per minute than tv shows. Then there's pacing differences, themes that work on one but not the other...
Problem 2A - A copied script would just lead to fans of both hating the end product, if you could just copy the dialogue from a particular game session over to a story and change the names a bit, you'd get called out on it immediately.
Problem 2B - Why would the spinoff fanfictions be spinoffs of Fallout:Equestria rather than just from Fallout if it was a copy? Why would there be this much fan content, even.
So, I think that the odds of a carbon copy getting this much attention is very low.
Now, lets assume that the fans of the story not only really enjoy watching the show, but also are fans of the game, which isn't unusual since it was one of the most popular games... ever, I think. We're going to assume this because there's a few barriers to get through:
Barrier 1: Crossover fanworks tend to need the audience to be aware of both settings in order to get much of the humor/setting references, the worst cases fail to describe characters physical features or the features of important landmarks, instead relying on the original works for support. This is not a flaw, reading fanworks that describe Twilight Sparkle in full detail back to back would be a living hell. Due to this requirement, many stories usually drop the ball when describing things and so readers have come to avoid these sorts of stories on sight.
Barrier 2: Some people don't want to expose themselves to certain media for one reason or another. Since watching MLP requires adult males develop a thick skin, the only audience you're going to get are people who are willing to admit they enjoy the show. They might not admit it to friends, but they have to admit it to themselves, which is the first and hardest barrier for many people. Same goes with the Fallout games, though the reasons might be different. In the end, not everything is for everyone, which is why this barrier works both ways.
Barrier 3: Some people only enjoy arguing against doing what other people do. Not unique, I'd like to point out that many ancient mythology stories feature parents casting out their children, the children returning one day and in the end defeating their parents or completing their tasks and gaining the throne or whatever. Cycle of life stuff. Tale as old as time. Still, kinda annoying when someone feels superior for not living life to the fullest. As a kid I used to dread dying too early in life and missing out on all kinds of future inventions and shows and books, and then I realized I was missing out on all those things in the present just by avoiding things that seemed pointlessly popular. This might be true for major industries where popularity is bought, but the internet is powered by word of mouth, and if cat pictures have proven anything it's that word of mouth brings many good things that advertising promises but never delivers on. So, if too many people say something's good, imagine that they might be right?
So, fans of the show and fans of the game somehow get through these three barriers and can now form opinions on it. We're assuming the fans are mostly coming over from watching the show due to the story being on Fimfiction, though the other way around is possible. If the fans are on the MLP side of things, then that means they can hold the story to some of the standards of the show, regarding quality.
Upvotes and likes and view counts are useful tools, they let us know if a story does a good job, but they also let us compare these stories to other stories written at the same time. If the story is higher than average then, odds are, it's also higher than average quality, regardless of the actual numbers involved.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, flies like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.
If a crossover story generates a large audience and massive amounts of fan content with several thousand views, odds are it's good.
If the idea in your head about what the story is doesn't come close to meeting all these requirements then odds are they're opinions formed from nothing, masquerading as something more substantial. Okay, so you don't like a story you've never read based on a game you played for five minutes, that's fair. Opinions are pretty cheap, after all, have as many as you like. As someone who played the game for years, watched the show on weekends on repeat with friends for years, and read the story a few times over, my personal opinion is that it's a good story, I wish there were more professional works like it, I wish the games had as much emotional impact as it, and for a grimdark story this one does a great job of keeping the characters in character, even if Twilight and the others only infrequently appear.
Problem 1 - If you take a movie script writer and have them write for a game, it'll usually be terrible because you can't mix media like that, the methods of game design and linear storytelling are very different, books tend to have the largest amount of character dialogue while games typically have fewer words spoken by the characters per minute than tv shows. Then there's pacing differences, themes that work on one but not the other...
Problem 2A - A copied script would just lead to fans of both hating the end product, if you could just copy the dialogue from a particular game session over to a story and change the names a bit, you'd get called out on it immediately.
Problem 2B - Why would the spinoff fanfictions be spinoffs of Fallout:Equestria rather than just from Fallout if it was a copy? Why would there be this much fan content, even.
So, I think that the odds of a carbon copy getting this much attention is very low.
Now, lets assume that the fans of the story not only really enjoy watching the show, but also are fans of the game, which isn't unusual since it was one of the most popular games... ever, I think. We're going to assume this because there's a few barriers to get through:
Barrier 1: Crossover fanworks tend to need the audience to be aware of both settings in order to get much of the humor/setting references, the worst cases fail to describe characters physical features or the features of important landmarks, instead relying on the original works for support. This is not a flaw, reading fanworks that describe Twilight Sparkle in full detail back to back would be a living hell. Due to this requirement, many stories usually drop the ball when describing things and so readers have come to avoid these sorts of stories on sight.
Barrier 2: Some people don't want to expose themselves to certain media for one reason or another. Since watching MLP requires adult males develop a thick skin, the only audience you're going to get are people who are willing to admit they enjoy the show. They might not admit it to friends, but they have to admit it to themselves, which is the first and hardest barrier for many people. Same goes with the Fallout games, though the reasons might be different. In the end, not everything is for everyone, which is why this barrier works both ways.
Barrier 3: Some people only enjoy arguing against doing what other people do. Not unique, I'd like to point out that many ancient mythology stories feature parents casting out their children, the children returning one day and in the end defeating their parents or completing their tasks and gaining the throne or whatever. Cycle of life stuff. Tale as old as time. Still, kinda annoying when someone feels superior for not living life to the fullest. As a kid I used to dread dying too early in life and missing out on all kinds of future inventions and shows and books, and then I realized I was missing out on all those things in the present just by avoiding things that seemed pointlessly popular. This might be true for major industries where popularity is bought, but the internet is powered by word of mouth, and if cat pictures have proven anything it's that word of mouth brings many good things that advertising promises but never delivers on. So, if too many people say something's good, imagine that they might be right?
So, fans of the show and fans of the game somehow get through these three barriers and can now form opinions on it. We're assuming the fans are mostly coming over from watching the show due to the story being on Fimfiction, though the other way around is possible. If the fans are on the MLP side of things, then that means they can hold the story to some of the standards of the show, regarding quality.
Upvotes and likes and view counts are useful tools, they let us know if a story does a good job, but they also let us compare these stories to other stories written at the same time. If the story is higher than average then, odds are, it's also higher than average quality, regardless of the actual numbers involved.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, flies like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.
If a crossover story generates a large audience and massive amounts of fan content with several thousand views, odds are it's good.
If the idea in your head about what the story is doesn't come close to meeting all these requirements then odds are they're opinions formed from nothing, masquerading as something more substantial. Okay, so you don't like a story you've never read based on a game you played for five minutes, that's fair. Opinions are pretty cheap, after all, have as many as you like. As someone who played the game for years, watched the show on weekends on repeat with friends for years, and read the story a few times over, my personal opinion is that it's a good story, I wish there were more professional works like it, I wish the games had as much emotional impact as it, and for a grimdark story this one does a great job of keeping the characters in character, even if Twilight and the others only infrequently appear.
well im sorry, but it still just looks like it's copying what fallout does, just with a different story, if people like that, cool, if its not my cup of tea, then I just ignore it, I might not ever play the actual game, closest thing I'll play to Bethesda games if Skyrim, if FO4 comes to switch, I'll give it another chance. as with this pony version of it, I'll never get into it other than the adorable pony models.