>>249129Good call. As much as I hate Friendship Is Optimal and the original Fallout Equestria, Nyx's story is more popular than...
No, calling it more popular isn't the right word. Both of those shit stories I mentioned started their own circlejerking mini-fandoms that often put out work better than their inspirations, yet have worship of The Original mandated within said fandoms.
Criticism of this Nyx story isn't as common as it should be. Fallout Equestria fans have memed on the bullshit in the original and Project Horizons, so...
If I was told to make the order in terms of "Deservedness", I'd say Nyx, FIO, then FE.
But in terms of humor, FE is a lot funnier in a "This is what the writer considers good?" sort of way.
It's weird.
I've read Fequestria twice. Once long ago as a young boy with low standards and a desire to be wowed.
And again about a year ago with some friends discovering and laughing at this shitshow for the first time.
It's a completely different experience. Suddenly, it isn't tragic that Rarity almost saved Equestria but failed because of her own foolishness and so she ended up getting raped to death with one hoof fused to a window because body horror poison gas, for example. Suddenly it's comedy gold that this is what the writer goes for when he wants to write heart-molesting tragedy. Friends who do this for fun every week notice shit you never noticed, and you get to say those things you always noticed but never mentioned.
Here's one I always noticed but never mentioned:
The story's sense of morality's a bit fucked.
Singer Belle doesn't act like a human.
Or a pony.
Or a nicey-nice pony forced into sad world and trying to hang onto her nicey-nice virtues.
She acts like the character of a powergaming human trying to do enough Morally Good actions to gain +100 morality points and qualify for some PRC ASAP, logic and roleplaying and the world and the lives of her friends characters be damned.
She acts according to a bizarre form of morality only seen in that kind of scenario. Where certain actions like Sparing Enemies and Charity provide positive karma points, even if they'd logically be terrible ideas that increase the amount of suffering in the world and result in more crimes committed by the people you saved.
Every time she does some dumb shit, like giving away the group's HIGHLY LIMITED HEALING SUPPLIES (Which could save the lives of these life-savers or get used to save the lives of injured innocents later on or get traded for bullets or medicine or anything else) to LITERAL BANDITS - WHICH JUST GOT FINISHED SHOOTING AT THE HEROES AND TRYING TO STEAL SHIT FROM THE HEROES, AND JUST LOST A FIREFIGHT WITH THE HEROES - JUST SO SHE CAN FEEL MORAL, it's treated as something normal and reasonable she just does, and gets away with doing, in passing.
No arguing over whether it's done or not. Singer Belle just does it. And it's mentioned that she does this in fucking passing.
and the story fucking congratulates her for this Stupid Good no-kill-challenge bullshit so fucking much, Littlepip thinks she's so cool and so sexy and so nice for never killing, and she thinks the same thing about Three-Dog-2 for never killing, too.
The story loves Singer Belle, later writing that some Super Mutant Nightkin-Alicorns decided to join her side because she was juuust so merciful and kind uwu, and she ends up making the Super-Followers Of The Apocalypse in the end because fuck depth.
Fuck meaning and fuck depth and fuck the story Fallout tried to tell with these guys, showing them suffer for their goodness and letting you help them help the world and make things better for them, fuck all of that because Cloned Alicorn Supersoldier FOAs is just so much "Kewler".
Original FOAs were weak kind saints hated by those in power, so of course these "Better" FOAs, these "Fallout Equestria'd" FOAs get to be super strong/fast/smart/magic alicorn badasses.
Didn't she also get a Tranq Pistol or something, so she can still sort-of help in firefights? Yeah, she won't kill but she won't bat an eyelid when her friends headshot everyone she tranq'd post-firefight. Good thing she never ran into raiders too doped up on chems to feel tranqs.
Also she did kill raiders anyway at one point, she failed no-kill november. She killed some raiders for forcing some slave colts and fillies to fight to death. Said "I've never killed a pony [blam] and i still haven't" and does this scene end with her coming to terms with the fact that she's just taken a life? Does this scene end with her talking to her friends about this, and trying to figure out what her morality is, what it should be, what morality can be in this wasteland while still being moral, and eventually deciding some people need to die and it's time to kill raiders but leave starving bandits alive, or determinedly re-affirm that she wants to be a hero who never ever kills and swear to try even harder to follow this rule from now on?
Do the little pony children she saved by killing the raiders get to talk, add in their two cents, and help Singer Belle whether she wants to Go Lethal or stick to Nonlethal?
Nope, the scene's just there so the writer can add this scene to his TvTropes "Crowning Moment of Awesome" page. Because nothing says awesome like shooting one raider with a gun while delivering the same cheesy action movie dialogue that infests the whole film.
The protags are told "Pick 1 virtue, hold onto it no matter what" so they do. Littlepip chooses "NEVER GIVE UP" and Singer Belle chooses "Never kill", so she reaches Batman levels of Stupid Good and never gets called out for staying there.
She does get called a cunt once for Tranqing Littlepip and helping her break her mentats addiction, since it resulted in some side-character dying. So there's that.