3/4 c7 Guest
I gotta ask, whatever happened to the first four horsemen story on this site? I've looked for it several times since I first read it years ago and I can't find it for the life of me. Great story, keep up the good work.

7/2/2012 c1 Grits 'n' Gravy
You only get to review each chapter of a story once, and I don’t want to waste any, but I can’t let more time go by without saying something. This is a request/plea/me imploring you for more, but it’s also a review.

I need to know what’s going on with the deathclaws, the something-like-Enclave or Vault-Tec, and their plan/conspiracy, whatever it is exactly; and Dutch, Hatchett, and all that. I HAVE TO know. Sorry about the caps.

I have to know all of that with this peculiar stabbing, gnawing sense of urgency and dread, and I hope you’ll assuage that, but just so you know I’m almost equally as interested to see what Samuel and Alcatraz have to do with it, as well as the perhaps? smaller concern of Samuel vs. Kango—and Hatchett; But it’s the evil government plot stuff that has me jonesing the most.

I’m interested in other things, mainly meta stuff like how you’ll continue to bring gameplay mechanics and stuff into a reality where time, space, physics, laws of thermodynamics and the like exist & apply. It’s weird to read something specifically for that, but I don’t care because it helps me learn about writing, and writing for “Fallout” specifically, and because seeing someone do it so well is really encouraging.

But now that you’ve gone so long without updating (about two months) with something—a new chapter, or just revisions—I’ve cracked.

I’ve been waiting in silence to rigorously compose reviews of this story by the chapter, since April when it all began, but this whole thing is so good even at face value, and so well developed and factually accurate (apropos of what I said above, like translating gameplay to reality, and your excellent depiction of the mundanity of reality), etc., that whatever I review with has to be pretty good too. I’d need to write an actual critique literary review more than an ** of “post more” or “good and here’s something I liked but nothing that says anything.” Need to! I do hope that the previous six reviews encouraged you, though, since I was too intimidated and anxious to unleash one before. I had to wait, and compose a perfect one.

—But it’s been so long since your initial flurry (six eventful chapters in about a month) that I have to implore you to continue, and I have to expend a whole review to do it.

Please keep writing this story. Please keep going. Please finish it, or get close. I beg of you. I’m too socially awkward to expound on how serious and honest I am about that, or to tell you how much I’m loving this story, as well or as clearly as you deserve. What I’m doing is trying—because I have to.

If I’m wrong and you’re just taking a while between postings, I’m sorry, but because it’s been so long I have to implore you to continue.

Please, please keep going forward with this; Keep writing, keep publishing here, keep plotting, keep writing battles, and definitely tell us in the end what happens when your horsemen meet up one more time and face the sinister threat, whatever it really is.

Or if you can’t do that, tell me what it all means, where it goes, what it amounts to. Let me see the rest of what you have, if you won’t finish it. If this story ends as just a nonstarter, incomplete, I’ll be crushed so hopeless that I don’t even know how to express it. “Where it goes” and all that meaning, e.g., the suppression of creative thinking and questioning authority plot & story elements; and deathclaws. And secrets, series of events.

By the way, since I’m going through this, that part about Hatchett and Samuel’s falling out and survival politics, between Hatchett and Dutch, was exceptional, even more so for recap. It probably works even better for someone who hasn’t read “The Four Horsemen of the Post-Apocalypse.” But I have.

I invoke that title, but don’t assume familiarity with you or your process; and I don’t know if what I’m asking of you means “write more,” merely “post more,” or how much of a task it might be to do that. Maybe it’s difficult for you to write; maybe not; or maybe this is just so awesome that Chris Avellone asked you personally to stop, because of the awesome.

—I just don’t know, which might be what makes the remove of the internet and the waiting so excruciating.

Excuse the transgression; What I mean is, I’ll ecstatically proofread what you write or help however else I’m able, if that gets you going, helps this along. I’m volunteering. I’ll proofread, and go through for typos, and whatever weird FFn HTML Unicode format bugs might come up, and check for plot inconsistencies or discontinuities, or whatever else expedites your progress, as long as it’s something I can do; and proofing I definitely can.

Breaking down my grammar for comic effect, I just plain care about gettin’ to read more of this story please, please, please please.

Correspondingly, please feel free to PM or otherwise contact me if you want to talk, or follow up on my volunteering or anything, or if I sound too clandestine (I hope I don’t, though I’m concerned I might. I actually talk like this.). I’m not asking you to get in touch with me; I’m asking you to continue working on this, hopefully to completion. I HAVE TO know what happens, and just what all these things MEAN! And I have to see what happens on Dutch, Hatchett, Samuel and Alcatraz’s second adventure. Sorry for the caps again.

So if I can help you, to help it along, great; Great upon great, I get to be involved.

That’s not a condition, though, merely an offer. This story is so damn good, impressively better than the original to my surprise, even though I maybe wish there were more detail about some things, or might have other trifling concerns which I won’t bother voice—especially because it looks like you’re going to let this story float you by—that I happily volunteer to help, so I’d get to read more, while I’m doing it; or even the rest, I dream. I’d be delighted to read the rest, hopefully all the way to the end, even from my own email inbox, which is HUNKxTofu at Gmail; but I don’t know how you feel about security privacy, so you can ignore that if you want.

Incase you’ve been craving specific or involved feedback—I surely would be—in addition to vague and general, I’ll expand: Some of what I was alluding to was simply gun stuff—I don’t mean or want as much as before (Hatchett’s .44 Magnum & Special handloads; exotics like Alcatraz’s Rockwell M75 Personal Minigun; Dutch’s S&W M39; nuclear weapons . . . ), but I do want more than the sparse nibbles in this now. You’re not doing it wrong, I just want more; and I single out gun stuff because it’s easily accessible. I want, for example, more on Samuel’s Survivalist’s Rifle (Nice pick!) and its 12.7mm/.50-caliber Beowulf-shorty-cartridge (my knowledge is vague; mostly that it fits into a magazine well designed for the 5.56x45/.223 and isn’t a pistol round), or what anti-matérial rifle Dutch has (from what I can tell, it isn’t a Hécate II via “Fallout: New Vegas”), and Dutch’s compact 10mm pistol (“Fallout”-wise I assume it isn’t the “N99” from “-3/NV,” and probably also isn’t something like a Colt Delta Elite, S&W 1076, or a Glock 29; Maybe it’s from an earlier “Fallout.”).

That’s what comes to mind out of hand. I’ve also noticed occasional typos, which slip past everyone, even more so with stories of such volume and content accessible freely; as well as other things like wording issues, clichés or idioms I don’t think fit quite right, or little suggestions of my own.

I hope you enjoyed the “to mind out of hand” part, or at least that it didn’t annoy you. I keep it because it’s so relevant, even if it makes me look like I’m contradicting myself without noticing.

I’ve been bemused and intrigued by the perpetual formatting snafus on this site with this story’s chapters, single chapters chopped into multiple and their mis-numberings, section titles at the tops of some (looks like a glitch); things that might be missing, or have been changed or added to. I don’t know your experience with FFn, but I imagine sometimes confusing or frustrating—You don’t divulge behind-the-scenes info, which is fine but which I hope I’ve made clear I’m interested to learn about; like why you chose to do specific things, and did or didn’t do other things, and how you came up with the whole story, and all its plot elements.

I hope you read this primarily so I can get/read more of “The Four Horsemen Ride Again,” but also to say: Your dialogue is fabulous. It was sometimes good in “T4HotPA,” but sometimes clunky. Here, apart from some of the mystery & intrigue & deathclaws plot stuff I mentioned, it’s my favorite aspect of the whole thing. You’ve gotten much better. I get to enjoy reading your dialogue, which is rare for me; it’s fun, especially between Dutch and Hatchett, because there’s so much of it, and the coloring of their histories, the disparities between them, and their friendship; and a couple of tiny moments, like one between Samuel and Knowles, and when Hatchett comes back to Yewtown/Slickrock with the two raider/cattle-rustlers, and, as chapter-opening major-character-introduction scenes go, the Langy and the other five dirty men going about persecuting/crushing the discord in their ranks, before the man in black appeared. Not the bleeding guts/sausage-jamming stuff, though that was good too; I mean what they said, and how you wrote it.

“T4HotPA” and “T4HRA” are the street name-abbreviations of your two “Fallout” titles. People talk about T4HotPA and JMal a lot on the street.

A note: I didn’t back it up in time, but I read a short story you posted here a few years ago, “Beneath the Sky of Ashes.” I hope you remember it; I do, but all that survives for me are fleeting memories, and the email alert I got for it in November 2010 (different FFn account, different email address—which I checked for the date). It was really good. If you would email that to me, or do something to that effect, I would really appreciate it.

You may not read this. But it’s serious, co

5/9/2012 c6 1Ruven aka Lee
Please tell me this story isnt going to be left unfinished, it damn good and i want to read more

4/27/2012 c1 demonic-dogapillar
this fanfic is awesome please continue writing

4/16/2012 c1 Pale-faced Assassin
First off, I thought it was great. I'm not exactly sure what's going on yet, but that makes me want to read on that much more. I really enjoyed this first chapter, and I hope you'll add more soon.