These melancholy feelings on finishing the book

[loucanscale]

So as the title of this thread suggests i have just finished in it's entirety; fallout equestria. Let me start out by saying, that if anyone feels this thread should not exist for any reason, just let me know nicely and i will take it down. Now to the meat of the matter, while reading the book and upon finishing it, it struck me as how profound and well written the story was not to mention how well constructed it seemed in general. By the time i had reached chapter two i began to stop thinking of it as fanfiction and more as a novel because that's exactly what it is as far as i'm concerned.

This book has splintered from a crowd of small imaginings and fantasy's that dominate the internet to become something more something that by all rights should be classified as it's own entity, the reason why i say this however is to provide context to what i'm about to say.

When i finished the book i was sad; now you may say that this is a common reaction to finishing a story of that length and magnitude and to a degree you would be right. But what truly struck me as i sat in my chair staring at the back cover of that book was how it came into my possession. This book was organised, printed and shipped by what i'm assuming are a culmination of bronys most of whom sound as though they are still finishing school, and i found something incredibly saddening about that. At this point you may be thinking woah is this guy insulting the team who through there own time and effort printed the book and to that i would like to say definitely not i personally think they did an amazing job on the book and would like to thank them on delivering in such a timely manner.

What i am saying is that books are important, they are one of the most important forms of cultural expression even in today's world, as there is so much more personality that goes into books unlike movies or tv shows. Books are a small part of someone else in a way there is no way someone can write a fictional story and not imprint some of form them self onto it books offer insight and perspective from creative minds. And so when i finally finished fallout equestria i was rather upset as i thought at that point how many people are going to miss this book how many people are never going to be able to see this world that this person has created, it almost seemed unfair.

Whenever i finish a good book such as one of Terry Pratchets works or Asimovs or even Jim C Hines i think how great it is that a book like this is out there not only entertaining people but offering a brief glimpse of someone else's mind of there feelings and how they work, in short broadening peoples minds and fueling peoples imagination. But with the case of this book i had to pay over a hundred pounds just to own it not to mention my attempts to find exactly where it was being sold.

You may say well it's on the internet right now for anyone to go read, and to that i say when you narrow down who will actually read the online version you come up rather short as first we have to restrict the reading to the brony community which is quite large then you have to restrict that to the bronys who read fanfiction or who read fiction at all then you deduct those who are willing to read the whole thing all 620,295 words on a glowing screen and then you deduct those who can't even find it as it is still pretty obscure and what your left with is kinda depressing.

I would just like to say to anyone who bothered to read all of this thank you to the author KKAT on creating this story and to the team who printed this book thanks guys and girls and that i wish cultural things such as this were more commonly accepted i certainly enjoyed the book.

[Worldenterer]

I totally agree in that more people should know about this book.
However, I don't see how its producers' ages and education have anything to do with that. Now, I have no idea how old the people who put this together actually are. But still, people who are "just finishing up school" are actually probably some of the best when it comes to using computers, as they grew up and are growing up in the digital age. Are you proposing that it would be better to have some older and more educated, yet computer illiterate person peck away at the keyboard, trying to figure out how to set up a forum and print project of this amazing scale? I might understand your point of how the producers' ages and education made you feel "saddened" if you actually explained your reasoning. I'm trying to put you down at all, I'm just trying to understand.





But yes! Brilliant story, was it not?

[Red]

I don't think he's saddened about the qualifications of the team, but more about how their achievements are acknowledged.
Considering the organizers are still in school, they're in a very busy time in their lives, and organizing an event as large as this on top of that (and as fast as they did) couldn't have been easy. The fact that only a small chunk of the world will be able to read these printed books, the fruits of their labor, is what's saddening; all that effort, and the team isn't earning anywhere near the amount of praise they deserve for doing this.
That's not to say their work isn't appreciated; it's just that it's likely to be only within our little community.

[Worldenterer]

Hmm. That seems right. I never was very good at picking up exactly what people mean when they type. I guess I'm just more of an audio based person!
In my defense though, he wasn't the most coherent when it comes to communicating.
Thanks for the clarification!