Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[Somber]

About the plot: it's one of the hardest things I've dealt with.  Does Blackjack exist to further the plot or does the plot exist to further Blackjack?  I've tried as hard as I can to keep it to the former rather than the later.  Ultimately, there is no point to reading a story that is just about a character becoming powerful.  BJ has plot armor.  All her friends do till the time comes for them to die.  If BJ had died in 33, whomever took her place would have the same plot armor.  This last arc has some reverses planned that I hope address the whole notion of 'power'.  BJ has been built up for a reason, but it's been for two specific reasons: to overcome her enemies and a significant plot point.  I can only hope folks stay with me.  Once she faces Cognitum, you can tell me if I pulled it off or not.

I'm sorry Lighthooves was a flop.  I meant for it to be dramatic, but all three of my editors told me I was going WAY over the top, as did a few other folks I consulted so I went with what I did.  You're right.  She could have simply yanked the wires out.  Ugh... Punishment is HARD!  Killing him because he's about to kill folks just doesn't work.  Maybe if I'd made it so BJ mercy killed him rather than let him suffer (after all, as a cyber pony he could stay like that for hours) rather than under the auspice of stopping him it might have been better.

[Somber]

Hey Lucid. 

1. This was a deliberate choice by me.  I didn't want her to be a copy of Deus, so in that respect she's the opposite.  Her pain receptors have all been numbed.  I've read up on people who have this kind of nerve disorder and it was interesting and sad how alienating it is from your surroundings not to feel them.  Normal people feel pain.  Blackjack likes it because she wants to feel ANYTHING.

2. This is a real big thing.  Probably one of the hardest things with writing is character balance.  Monocharacter stories aren't all that engaging.  The problem is that I've made Blackjack special.  She's the one who is resistant to Enervation.  She is the one with all the plot knowledge.  She is the one with the rompus room in her mind.  And so what this leads to is me putting her friends back simply so they don't get killed.  It is, without argument, one of the weakest aspects of Horizons is that she's leaving her friends behind.  But if P-21, Scotch Tape, and Glory had been with blackjack when the megaspell went off, how would they survive.

I will agree this is absolutely my weakest aspect of the story.  Hell, I do it with Boo and even Rainbow Dash.  I'm constantly trying to get them out of the way so all the peril is on BJ.  That makes the story increasingly monocharacter.  Worse, we're missing out on EVERYTHING happening with her friends!  There's so much character development that we just don't see!  Hopefully, with a gimmick I introduced, we might see more.  Unfortunately, at this point, there is very little I can do revision wise.

[InLucidReverie]

This was a deliberate choice by me.  I didn't want her to be a copy of Deus, so in that respect she's the opposite.

I feel like that may have been a bad call. The pain is one of the more redeeming factors of introducing cybernetics to a character. It adds a restrictive pain barrier where otherwise there's simply the power up. The cybernetics don't seem to affect her nearly as much, while the pain is a constant reminder.

In addition being a 'copy of' Deus shouldn't have ever been a worry. She can be as much like Deus in the end as you like as it throws a great deal of character drama into the mix when the comparison is brought up in-story. She could never BE Deus as she's not the same type of pony and that would be the big deal that needs to be proved to keep her sane despite the clear outside similarity.

I genuinely feel like you really missed out on something there.

[Somber]

I'm not a perfect writer.  Sometimes I do well.  Sometimes not.  What's aggrivating to me is the opinion by so many that the story starts great and becomes bad.  That bodes ill for me as a writer.  It means I got lucky to start, then lacked the skills to pull it off.  So I try my best to understand why the second half is seen as so inferior to the first.  The point you make about BJ's friends is DEFINITELY part of it though.

[InLucidReverie]

I do share the opinion that it started out well. I don't agree with you that it was a case of 'I got lucky' though.

The way I see it is that you started solidly with the premise and wrote as you do, very well. I think what's happened is that the weaknesses simply didn't show at the time as we hadn't gotten to them.

[Give_me_muny]

I'd like to chime in here.

Does Blackjack exist to further the plot or does the plot exist to further Blackjack?  I've tried as hard as I can to keep it to the former rather than the later.

I know that this is the philosophy you've been following when writing Project Horizons, and I see how this could help when a story's as monstrous as yours, but it presents problems. The characters have to be themselves lest they become inconsistent, and they can't act as it is convenient to the story, either, unless it makes sense for them to do so.
You can use the environment to guide the main characters, and you can further develop your characters to help the story, but you can't put aside the characters' motivations and personalities to tell a story, especially a story about people, which PH pretty much is, given how little time we spend with the main plot itself.
The biggest issue here is that you seem to think this conundrum has a good solution, that doing it one way or the other will always be successful, but it doesn't and trying to do so will leave you with a parody of a story.
In the best case, the story and the characters grow to be fit for each other as a result of planning with foresight, and a slight push in the beginning.

BJ has plot armor.

If she - or even the reader - has things to lose, it's okay to have plot armor, it still allows plenty of other stakes to exist. (Ideally, this includes the safety and mental well-being of her companions.)

Blackjack has undergone more than a million words of character growth.  Was Harry Potter a bad OC because at the end of the series he was fighting at war against Death Eaters and defeating the most powerful dark wizard of history?

Harry Potter defeated Voldemort because he bonded with Voldemort's wand. He used the basic disarming charm on Voldemort, and was only as powerful as his classmates - except his extraordinary strength of will and devotion.

Blackjack is growing to face threats where, were she flesh and blood, she would liquify before she even reached her enemies, let alone confronted them.

This is true, but she wouldn't have to be a robot if the threats weren't equally powerful. In game design, this is called power creep: the protagonist and the opposition scale against each other into infinity, and this isn't sustainable at all, and you fell to it. Besides that, the protagonist being a being of "magic-like technology" is a major setback in almost every regard for the story.
In a world like Fallout Equestria, there are plenty of ways to up the stakes and the drama without making your hero a robotic death machine, and her enemies magical death machines, and leaving everyone else in the dirt. And if she does become robotic, it should ultimately feel justified and not accidental. This goes for her reproductive bits, too, which were miraculously spared.
(Robotics also have the problem that they aren't "earned" but given, which can be dramatically bumpy.)

I'm glad you are aware of the issues that Blackjack being "overpowered" brought up.

She can be as much like Deus in the end as you like as it throws a great deal of character drama into the mix when the comparison is brought up in-story.

I feel like that would mix the dramatic arcs a tad too much. Besides which, this has been more or less tackled already.

[Evilgidgit]

Blackjack is a Mary Sue!? I don't think so. She goes through a lot more character development than any other character in any Fallout Equestria story, she's carried immense guilt over entire chapters and character arcs, loved and lost multiple times, killed herself trying to do the right thing, lost her way and climbed back up to redeem herself, two-timed Glory in order to prove that it is safe to okay to get physical with stallions after she, oh I don't know, let a bunch of monsters nail her to a table and assault her to protect Scotch Tape and even then let them all go due to her stubborn belief there could be a second chance for them. She carries grief for everyone she has killed or has died because of her, helped her friends with drug addictions, parental issues, identity problems, trauma, etc. Been through hell and back herself to save herself or others, helped the worst badguys in the wasteland get redemption, had a boat dropped on her head, blinded, crippled, turned into a cyborg, contemplated suicide, mourned for ponies who died two centuries ago, had to mercy kill her whole Stable among others, shot a filly and nearly went insane because of it, and overall is a very, very good and decent person.

How in the name of Equestria is she a MARY SUE!?  

[Give_me_muny]

How in the name of Equestria is she a MARY SUE!?  

That's the thing, just look at your list: she never does wrong, she always chooses to suffer when she can if it helps others. She allows herself to be mutilated and utterly destroyed multiple times just to help others. Definitely not Mary Sue, but you can see the similarity in how one dimensional this behaviour is, this unrelenting goodness. Even though it's rooted in her character development and makes sense, she suffers to such a scale that it leaves her hard to accept as a character.

[Evilgidgit]

I suppose it is her headstrong, if not near-deluded sense of good and justice that makes her appealing to me. Apologies for the rant, though.

Anyway, I'm currently reading part two.

Spoiler:

[Icy Shake]

I'm sorry Lighthooves was a flop.  I meant for it to be dramatic, but all three of my editors told me I was going WAY over the top, as did a few other folks I consulted so I went with what I did.  You're right.  She could have simply yanked the wires out.  Ugh... Punishment is HARD!  Killing him because he's about to kill folks just doesn't work.  Maybe if I'd made it so BJ mercy killed him rather than let him suffer (after all, as a cyber pony he could stay like that for hours) rather than under the auspice of stopping him it might have been better.

Well, nothing's perfect, and this is an example of where reading between the lines and personal interpretation can play a constructive role, as long as I don't force it on others.

1. This was a deliberate choice by me.  I didn't want her to be a copy of Deus, so in that respect she's the opposite.  Her pain receptors have all been numbed.  I've read up on people who have this kind of nerve disorder and it was interesting and sad how alienating it is from your surroundings not to feel them.  Normal people feel pain.  Blackjack likes it because she wants to feel ANYTHING.

I think that this was probably the way to go, for a few reasons. First of all, frankly, the pain (and crippling) had been done, while she was dying of everything. So the alienation angle works better as something newer, while still building on the sense of otherness that was gradually building in the last several chapters leading to Black. Mostly, though, I think it just makes more sense from a character perspective, as she's worked through all kinds of physical pain for most of the story, but nearly been brought down by her emotional baggage. Beyond that, at times she's had a certain satisfaction from the pain she's gone through, because she hates herself and thinks she deserves for the universe to punish her; she doesn't get that from existential unease. Likewise, pain is something that (as you said) she shares with her friends, where what she ended up with is something that separates her from them. Moving on, pain wasn't needed as a limiting factor, because she met the limits of what cyberization could provide anyway, and though impressive and far beyond what normal flesh and blood could take, that wasn't exactly unreasonable. But beyond that, the cyborg being in constant pain is a pretty bad design flaw. Sure, it's fine for a prototype tested on someone you think is a piece of trash who deserves what he has coming to him, but it's not something you want for actual combat troops or if you're going to undergo the process yourself. For those situations, you'd probably want to work out the kinks first.

2. This is a real big thing.  Probably one of the hardest things with writing is character balance.  Monocharacter stories aren't all that engaging.  The problem is that I've made Blackjack special.  She's the one who is resistant to Enervation.  She is the one with all the plot knowledge.  She is the one with the rompus room in her mind.  And so what this leads to is me putting her friends back simply so they don't get killed.  It is, without argument, one of the weakest aspects of Horizons is that she's leaving her friends behind.  But if P-21, Scotch Tape, and Glory had been with blackjack when the megaspell went off, how would they survive.

This is certainly true, but to me it may modestly understate the point, since it is her interactions with the core supporting cast that best offer insight into who Blackjack is, how she is changing, and why it matters; reducing their part in the story materially diminishes Blackjack's development, too.

BJ has plot armor.

If she - or even the reader - has things to lose, it's okay to have plot armor, it still allows plenty of other stakes to exist. (Ideally, this includes the safety and mental well-being of her companions.)

Quite true. And a key thing to remember not only for this story, but many, perhaps even most. I think I remember once hearing a suggestion that the difference between a horror story and an adventure is that in the former, you wonder who's going to survive, if anyone, while in the latter, you wonder how they're going to survive/win. And that's not a bug, but a feature.

Blackjack is growing to face threats where, were she flesh and blood, she would liquify before she even reached her enemies, let alone confronted them.

This is true, but she wouldn't have to be a robot if the threats weren't equally powerful. In game design, this is called power creep: the protagonist and the opposition scale against each other into infinity, and this isn't sustainable at all, and you fell to it. Besides that, the protagonist being a being of "magic-like technology" is a major setback in almost every regard for the story.
In a world like Fallout Equestria, there are plenty of ways to up the stakes and the drama without making your hero a robotic death machine, and her enemies magical death machines, and leaving everyone else in the dirt. And if she does become robotic, it should ultimately feel justified and not accidental. This goes for her reproductive bits, too, which were miraculously spared.
(Robotics also have the problem that they aren't "earned" but given, which can be dramatically bumpy.)

I'm glad you are aware of the issues that Blackjack being "overpowered" brought up.

I agree, to an extent, but I'm not sure if I'd really think of it as power creep if it's about building the characters up to the point where they can take on the predefined end game; if you know your story needs to end with characters directly facing down an eldritch horror from beyond space and time, diminished as it may be, then you either need a MacGuffin or you need to get the characters to the point where that can happen. Whether that was an appropriate plot for the setting is a separate issue.

How in the name of Equestria is she a MARY SUE!?  

That's the thing, just look at your list: she never does wrong, she always chooses to suffer when she can if it helps others. She allows herself to be mutilated and utterly destroyed multiple times just to help others. Definitely not Mary Sue, but you can see the similarity in how one dimensional this behaviour is, this unrelenting goodness. Even though it's rooted in her character development and makes sense, she suffers to such a scale that it leaves her hard to accept as a character.

While I can sympathize with that, it's not something that I normally see as too much of a problem, at least where Somber has been concerned. Also, it's just one of those things that will happen when a character is written as a messiah deconstruction, played mostly straight.

[SilentCarto]

However, I'm afraid that I have some bad news for Icy Shake: Somber has decreed that "Raptor", "Thunderhead" (the ship class, not the city), and "Vertibuck" are now to be lowercase.  Very, very sorry.

Um. Thunderhead must be capitalized. Calamity called it a "Thunderhead-class mobile siege platform", which means it's a proper noun, just like "Iowa-class battleship".

Raptor is capitalized in FoE, which suggests it's a proper noun as well -- a Raptor-class destroyer, not a (say) Pyrocumulus-class raptor.

Vertibuck may or may not, depending on whether it's a specific design (M1-A1 Abrams) or a generalized type of vehicle (main battle tank).

I suspect this may be to avoid confusion with the city of Thunderhead, but I wouldn't worry about that too much. If there's a confusing phrase, it might be better to just use its proper name (such as "Target the Radiant Dawn!" instead of "Target that Thunderhead!")

[WavemasterRyx]

I don't know why it still surprises me that so many of you can be such ingrates.


Somber, I think you did a perfectly fine job of balancing the advantages and disadvantages of Blackjack's upgrades. And yes, there are less of Blackjack's friends, but that's going to happen, you can't have every character around all the time...

[Give_me_muny]

I don't know why it still surprises me that so many of you can be such ingrates.


Somber, I think you did a perfectly fine job of balancing the advantages and disadvantages of Blackjack's upgrades.  And yes, there are less of Blackjack's friends, but that's going to happen, you can't have every character around all the time...

Your devotion is nice, but the issues this situation created still exist. It's okay if they don't bother you, of course.

[Guest]

Just got through 61 (I'm the slowest reader ever) damn some of those pegasi are really into Rainbow Dash.

Liked the PP scene. Looks like my prediction was right.

[Derpmind]

I'm not a perfect writer.  Sometimes I do well.  Sometimes not.  What's aggrivating to me is the opinion by so many that the story starts great and becomes bad.  That bodes ill for me as a writer.  It means I got lucky to start, then lacked the skills to pull it off.  So I try my best to understand why the second half is seen as so inferior to the first.  The point you make about BJ's friends is DEFINITELY part of it though.

There's a group of readers who when they started to read PH, somehow got the idea that it was one type of story when it was really another. Chapter 34's over-the-topness, right after Chapter 33 hammered home straight in the face exactly what kind of an unrestrained crazy ride the story had always been. Because this is a super-popular fic, because it's so damn well written, and because I don't really know what, some of the people in this group feel the need to never ever ever give up trying to warp reality with their hate so that PH never did anything they didn't want it to. You didn't get lucky at the start, you got extremely unlucky. I don't know exactly what kind of story the eternal rage crowd think PH used to be, but ideally there should have been something smack damn in the first chapter that would tell them it was going to be a story they wouldn't like at all.

[Guest]

Man, you guys aren't even getting to the good Mary Sue characters in literature, with all your Tolkiens and Jim Butchers and all them. We'll skip Dickens, because I happen to think his characters suck, whether or not they swim in the Mary Suez Canal. Let's talk about Joyce.

Stephen Dedalus is a Mary Sue because he doesn't die despite probably drinking his own weight in alcohol over the course of a day without eating any food, and because everyone hails him as a genius near every time he opens his mouth and he's got a case of authorial insertion AND his name is strange for his country of origin. Leopold Bloom is a Mary Sue because he's too good and matches the author's own views on what makes a good person - why, there's an entire section that hails him as the new Messiah! - and never mind he has serious, deep-seated flaws that guide much of his behavior, because his wife Molly still loves him which means those flaws don't matter. Molly is also a Mary Sue because she breaks one or two gender norms and is sexually honest with herself and her God, and of course is a woman. Let's see, uh, the Citizen is a Mary Sue villain, because even though he's an unlikable twat everyone at the bar reveres him and slaps mythic qualities on him like they're going out of style. Oh, oh, Charles Parnell is a Mary Sue, that's a good one - noble-born, thinks he's going to free an oppressed nation from centuries of control by the powerful Evil Empire, challenges the norms of his society, has a cult-like following and is seen as his people's savior. Yep, I think that we, the internet, have officially solved Ulysses by figuring out that all of its characters are Mary Sues, especially the real ones. Well done, internet. :D

What famous author should I solve next, you guys? Want me to boil all of Hemingway down to being about his own suicide? Or how about how the Fall of the House of Usher is about faulty building codes in New England? Shall I call Nietzsche a Nazi? (I can't wait for the simultaneous cringing of all the lit studies folk =P this is actually fun, great way to let off steam from finals)

[Luminous Lead]

About the plot: it's one of the hardest things I've dealt with.  Does Blackjack exist to further the plot or does the plot exist to further Blackjack?  I've tried as hard as I can to keep it to the former rather than the later.  Ultimately, there is no point to reading a story that is just about a character becoming powerful.

One thing I really liked about Horizons was that the plot happened BECAUSE the characters were who they were, rather than the characters getting dragged around by the plot (main area I felt KKat's original was weak in).

I'm sorry Lighthooves was a flop.  I meant for it to be dramatic, but all three of my editors told me I was going WAY over the top, as did a few other folks I consulted so I went with what I did.  You're right.  She could have simply yanked the wires out.  Ugh... Punishment is HARD!  Killing him because he's about to kill folks just doesn't work.  Maybe if I'd made it so BJ mercy killed him rather than let him suffer (after all, as a cyber pony he could stay like that for hours) rather than under the auspice of stopping him it might have been better.

Well, as far as I see it, both killing Lighthooves to save people and killing him to spare him pain/capture wouldn't be an execution. It wouldn't be punishment (because the focus is on protecting others), and it wouldn't be justice (because he deserves to face trial).  She's not Littlepip, ready to renege on a deal and shoot a downed and helpless Autumn in the head.  Instead, Blackjack wields mercy (the Enclave not reaping the sewn sins of their actions, which they would otherwise deserve) and grace (Lighthooves gets a quick and satisfied sortie, which he doesn't deserve).

Blackjack has often said "I'm not a judge or an executioner", and although she struggled to keep this code, she's definitely dropped the first half.  Despite wanting to reserve judgement, she's had to make tough choices and has grown stronger in her resolve to accept the consequences.  Yet even now she is not the sword of the law, ready to crash down on any miscreants; not anymore, anyway (Prologue Stable 99 Blackjack was pretty hardcore Lawful Stupid like that).

Right from the maintainance underbelly of Stable 99, the point that the story REALLY begins Blackjack defines the future of her existence.  From the moment that she takes in the brutality of her little patch of world, sees some pony who can't fend for himself, she thinks "No. Security saves ponies."  Everything that follows is a result of this moment of self-actualization.  Security is not judgement. Security is not punishment. Security is security. Protection. Grace from those who would harm.

She COULD have yanked the wires out to stop the missiles. She COULD have left Lighthooves to suffer a horrible half-life at the hooves of the enclave, or to be smeared to paste in the culmination of her plan.  But he was there, he was suffering.  Security saves ponies. And Hoofington's new Angel just got her wings...

Or, y'know, Blackjack's not exactly genius grade material.  Having gone through so much trauma (face ripped off, major shut-downs, horrors of war) it's not surprising that she'd fail to use Occam's razor.  Plus, just yanking the wires would be a bit too similar to how Lil'Pip simply caught Red Eye.

So, overall, I think you handed his death very well.

.. for some reason I imagined someone was eating popcorn as they watched things unfold!

So THAT's what the "Kissed by Discord" perk did!  Extra Luck stat, perhaps?

Uh. Just a random thought here, but... what if the kid was Discord's?

Spoiler:

How about Yellow River, where she went full-on-Maiden and nearly killed Glory's sister?

Spoiler:

Bet'cha she finds someone impaled on it.

[Moodyman90]

Could just be me, but let's say Blackjack stopped Lighthooves from launching that missile non-lethally, he most likely would have tried to crawl over to the next one, and the next one, and the next one. All the while slowly dieing after everything that's happened and probably pushed to the point of begging for death by Blackjack.

Like I said, could just be me, but I see what she did less a judgement, less an execution, and more of a mercy killing. Much like those foals all those chapters ago.

[CD]

About Mary Sues: most people no longer know what a Mary Sue is. Being overpowered does not make you a Mary Sue. Goku from Dragonball Z could wipe the floor and outthink his most dangerous enemies, yet strength of character and the risk of failure make this desireable. Gaining new heights of power through the course of the story does not make you a Mary Sue. Luke Skywalker became proficient with his lightsaber and the Force to the point he could match the most powerful Sith in the universe, but his ultimate rejection of the power in favour of trusting in the goodness of his father is what saved the rebellion, not his absurdly swift mastery of the Force. Being a beloved and pure character just brimming with mushy goodness to the admiration of all friends does not make one a Mary Sue. Jesus of Nazareth was allegedly worshipped by his followers and preached such compassion and charity it could make Ayn Rand puke rainbows, but the overarching story is one of tragedy, betrayal and sacrifice from and for the many more who wanted him dead for reasons good or evil. Mary Sue is about how you handle typical traits encountered in most Mary Sue characters, and if you can give a reasonable explaination for these traits, you can get away with having a lot of these.

To sum up my feelings: Ebony Dementia Darkness Ravenway is a Mary Sue. Blackjack isn't.

[Evilgidgit]

I'm definitely sure shooting a child counts as something wrong.

[Scienza]

I just finished 62b.

Damn, I haven't been this amazed by a PH chapter since Lucidity.

Spoiler:

[O. Hinds]

And here's Part Two!
So much awesome.  :D  It’s a long one, too: fifty pages.

However, I'm afraid that I have some bad news for Icy Shake: Somber has decreed that "Raptor", "Thunderhead" (the ship class, not the city), and "Vertibuck" are now to be lowercase.  Very, very sorry.

Well, that took a long time to get through. As for your apology, for what? I have always been at war with Eastasia.

Chapter Sixty Two Part Two Running Thoughts:

Chapter Sixty Two Part Two Editing Matters:

I'll get to other stuff tomorrow, including more comprehensive thoughts on the whole. For now I'll just say this:

Spoiler:

Thanks. :)

Which raises the question: is Boo actually a cat?

:D

I feel like this may have been influenced by Ryx's work.

I have no problem with this. :)

I like to think that the urgency isn't so much to avoid friendly fire harming Blackjack as to preempt a slaughter of her own troops.

:D

Wat. That had to take some serious feats of cognitive dissonance.

I don't think so. Her big public persona was as the do-nothing Ministry Mare, after all. All the black ops and projects were, well, black ops and projects; she had some public military qualifications, but those might, if anything, have lead to people thinking (and being encouraged to think) that she was using her position in government to get a military reputation she didn't deserve.

It's Lonesome Road launching nukes at one or both faction you don't like massive.

Only better, because Somber is writing it and it will actually have an effect on things. :)

I'm sorry Lighthooves was a flop. I meant for it to be dramatic, but all three of my editors told me I was going WAY over the top, as did a few other folks I consulted so I went with what I did. You're right. She could have simply yanked the wires out. Ugh... Punishment is HARD! Killing him because he's about to kill folks just doesn't work. Maybe if I'd made it so BJ mercy killed him rather than let him suffer (after all, as a cyber pony he could stay like that for hours) rather than under the auspice of stopping him it might have been better.

Hm, I think it makes sense, though. Blackjack has a variety of ways to stop him, but she can't wait; if she does, he'll get the missile off. She has to act. We've established that she's not the brightest pony, and, as Icy Shake pointed out, Lighthooves is more or less manipulating her to kill him.

Blackjack is a Mary Sue!? I don't think so. She goes through a lot more character development than any other character in any Fallout Equestria story, she's carried immense guilt over entire chapters and character arcs, loved and lost multiple times, killed herself trying to do the right thing, lost her way and climbed back up to redeem herself, two-timed Glory in order to prove that it is safe to okay to get physical with stallions after she, oh I don't know, let a bunch of monsters nail her to a table and assault her to protect Scotch Tape and even then let them all go due to her stubborn belief there could be a second chance for them. She carries grief for everyone she has killed or has died because of her, helped her friends with drug addictions, parental issues, identity problems, trauma, etc. Been through hell and back herself to save herself or others, helped the worst badguys in the wasteland get redemption, had a boat dropped on her head, blinded, crippled, turned into a cyborg, contemplated suicide, mourned for ponies who died two centuries ago, had to mercy kill her whole Stable among others, shot a filly and nearly went insane because of it, and overall is a very, very good and decent person.

How in the name of Equestria is she a MARY SUE!?  

…That summary sounds like it ought to be on a quotes page somewhere.

However, I'm afraid that I have some bad news for Icy Shake: Somber has decreed that "Raptor", "Thunderhead" (the ship class, not the city), and "Vertibuck" are now to be lowercase.  Very, very sorry.

Um. Thunderhead must be capitalized. Calamity called it a "Thunderhead-class mobile siege platform", which means it's a proper noun, just like "Iowa-class battleship".

Raptor is capitalized in FoE, which suggests it's a proper noun as well -- a Raptor-class destroyer, not a (say) Pyrocumulus-class raptor.

Vertibuck may or may not, depending on whether it's a specific design (M1-A1 Abrams) or a generalized type of vehicle (main battle tank).

I suspect this may be to avoid confusion with the city of Thunderhead, but I wouldn't worry about that too much. If there's a confusing phrase, it might be better to just use its proper name (such as "Target the Radiant Dawn!" instead of "Target that Thunderhead!")

Hm, interesting points… This is above my authority. I'll pass it up to Somber, and hopefully it won't take too long to get a reply. Sorry for the delay, Icy Shake!

Also, much like the uncertain state of that one cyberpony's penis, does Blackjack still have her lady bits? This seems like a weird question, but that's going to be really important when/if she gives birth.

The only parts of me that could feel open air were my mouth and under my tail.

[Evilgidgit]

It's a good name, swicked, though I already have images of Blackjack wielding it Kingdom Hearts style.

I'm not sure if it's a typo or not, but I was just re-reading Chapter 5 to look at Dr. Trottenheimer's diary - what is P.L.? I don't remember any projects beginning with L.
(Steelpony, Chimera, Eternity, Starfall, Redoubt, Partypooper, Horizons).

[O. Hinds]

Okay, Icy Shake, we have always been at war with Eurasia. :)

[Luminous Lead]

Damn, I haven't been this amazed by a PH chapter since Lucidity.

Spoiler:

Post-terror:

So I'm guessing yes.

And man, now Echo's inside her just as strongly as Psalm was. He should've been eventually withering away, like Luna said he would, but since running into Blackjack he's slowly gotten more filled out. Could he be parasitically/symbiotically feeding on BJ's soul?

[Scienza]

It's a good name, swicked, though I already have images of Blackjack wielding it Kingdom Hearts style.

I'm not sure if it's a typo or not, but I was just re-reading Chapter 5 to look at Dr. Trottenheimer's diary - what is P.L.? I don't remember any projects beginning with L.
(Steelpony, Chimera, Eternity, Starfall, Redoubt, Partypooper, Horizons).

Project Liquorgauge attempted to produce shotgun shells that fired whiskey.

Damn, I haven't been this amazed by a PH chapter since Lucidity.

Spoiler:

Post-terror:

So I'm guessing yes.

And man, now Echo's inside her just as strongly as Psalm was.  He should've been eventually withering away, like Luna said he would, but since running into Blackjack he's slowly gotten more filled out.  Could he be parasitically/symbiotically feeding on BJ's soul?

Yeah, I missed that bit. Blackjack's lady bits are safe.

Since Echo's bound to a megaspell, I think he's probably fine, but that would be interesting. My best guess is that Psalm and Echo have created a something resembling Rampage, integrating themselves into her amalgam personality while still maintaining some degree of separation.

[Stringtheory]

It's a good name, swicked, though I already have images of Blackjack wielding it Kingdom Hearts style.

I'm not sure if it's a typo or not, but I was just re-reading Chapter 5 to look at Dr. Trottenheimer's diary - what is P.L.? I don't remember any projects beginning with L.
(Steelpony, Chimera, Eternity, Starfall, Redoubt, Partypooper, Horizons).

Project Liquorgauge attempted to produce shotgun shells that fired whiskey.

It wasn't very effective...

[Scienza]

It's a good name, swicked, though I already have images of Blackjack wielding it Kingdom Hearts style.

I'm not sure if it's a typo or not, but I was just re-reading Chapter 5 to look at Dr. Trottenheimer's diary - what is P.L.? I don't remember any projects beginning with L.
(Steelpony, Chimera, Eternity, Starfall, Redoubt, Partypooper, Horizons).

Project Liquorgauge attempted to produce shotgun shells that fired whiskey.

It wasn't very effective...

It was too effective. Combat efficiency in frontline units decreased by nearly 90%. Urination-related casualties also increased by over 350%.

[Stringtheory]

It's a good name, swicked, though I already have images of Blackjack wielding it Kingdom Hearts style.

I'm not sure if it's a typo or not, but I was just re-reading Chapter 5 to look at Dr. Trottenheimer's diary - what is P.L.? I don't remember any projects beginning with L.
(Steelpony, Chimera, Eternity, Starfall, Redoubt, Partypooper, Horizons).

Project Liquorgauge attempted to produce shotgun shells that fired whiskey.

It wasn't very effective...

It was too effective. Combat efficiency in frontline units decreased by nearly 90%. Urination-related casualties also increased by over 350%.

But the friendly-fire 'casualties' were what really ruined it...

[Give_me_muny]

I don't know exactly what kind of story the eternal rage crowd think PH used to be, but ideally there should have been something smack damn in the first chapter that would tell them it was going to be a story they wouldn't like at all.

You cannot discredit legitimate criticism based off that.

One thing I really liked about Horizons was that the plot happened BECAUSE the characters were who they were, rather than the characters getting dragged around by the plot (main area I felt KKat's original was weak in).

I think Project Horizons has an issue with that. Somber himself said that to him, the characters are just a tool for the plot and it often shows in how they change without proper buildup. It only appeared in the later arcs.

In the Harry Potter universe, the only thing separating a poor wizard and a great one is knowledge and experience.

Right. Neither of those things is power, and they don't lend him power, either.

Harry knows a bunch of magic by the end. Stuff like the polyjuice potion, something he wouldn’t be able to of infiltrated the Ministry of Magic without.

He knows little more than anyone else in his class, like I said. The potions are provided by the merit of the Order of the Phoenix and Hermione's mad potions skills. Besides which, these potions serve as utility, are available to both sides, not failsafe, and well established in the universe.

Do you mean that she always intends to do the right thing? Like, she never gives into impulses to do wrong?
Does Stygius count? I think she should have known it would hurt Glory, even if it was part of her "culture" to sleep around. She'd come to accept P-21 wasn't malfunctioning sex equipment.

Yes, that's what I meant. The beginning doesn't count, because her current character hasn't even developed back then, it was the beginning that set up this behaviour. Stygius was never framed as a serious issue for her, and rightfully so, as it turned out.

I thought a good name for it would be Key since she uses it to open containers or doors about as often as she uses it to open people.Thoughts, anyone?

Key is too sentimental, just call it Crowbar.

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