Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[Icy Shake]

But this time it really is!

With apologies to Scott Adams, Somber, and anyone here with good taste (I'm looking at you, Caoimhe):

[O. Hinds]

:D

[WavemasterRyx]

*hugs Somber very gently* Just try to feel better, sir, I'm certain the chapter will be great whenever you're well enough to work on it.

[Retl]

Resumed my re-read at somewhere around chapter 40ish. Fell asleep. Woke up midway into 43 with Happyhorn Gardens. I still enjoy that chapter for how mindscrewy it was. (Forgot who linked to Asylum when I mentioned how much I liked that chapter, but thank you! That's been a fun ride too.)

Anywho, found a few more things I think might be typos, but I'm not sure?

In Chapter 45 - Meatlocker: " He looked at me in worry, but I couldn’t think of what do other than smile in encouragement."
Missing a 'to' between 'what' and 'do'. 

In Chapter 44 -   (Oops nevermind. What I thought was a mistake here was an intentional breakdown of communication between two parties which I had misunderstood when listening to an automated reading.)

[O. Hinds]

Resumed my re-read at somewhere around chapter 40ish. Fell asleep. Woke up midway into 43 with Happyhorn Gardens. I still enjoy that chapter for how mindscrewy it was. (Forgot who linked to Asylum when I mentioned how much I liked that chapter, but thank you! That's been a fun ride too.)

Glad that you're enjoying Asylum!

In Chapter 45 - Meatlocker: " He looked at me in worry, but I couldn’t think of what do other than smile in encouragement."
Missing a 'to' between 'what' and 'do'.

Ah, thank you.

[Derpmind]

Well, this is cool. I was looking at the FoE reddit and found this post, which directed to the non-pony Fallout reddit where someone's discovered the existence of FoE again. What I find interesting is that aside from all the positive comments about the story there are also a bunch of people recommending PH, sometimes right in the same breath. It's always fun to see that our little corner isn't all the fans Somber has.

[Silver136]

Well, this is cool. I was looking at the FoE reddit and found this post, which directed to the non-pony Fallout reddit where someone's discovered the existence of FoE again. What I find interesting is that aside from all the positive comments about the story there are also a bunch of people recommending PH, sometimes right in the same breath. It's always fun to see that our little corner isn't all the fans Somber has.

Well that's because, contrary to Somber's belief that he's a terrible author, he's actually written an extremely good book. I hope he feels better soon!

[Somber]

I'll believe that when I finish it.  And it could always have been better....

[Silver136]

I'll believe that when I finish it.  And it could always have been better....

That's why I said extremely good and not perfect. Things can always be better, but you're human, you're not going to get perfection. Besides PH has been amazing so far, so good that this is literally the only thing I'm ever optimistic about! And isn't it coming to an end soon? You'd have to be trying to mess it up to ruin it by now!

[O. Hinds]

so good that this is literally the only thing I'm ever optimistic about

Oh. Thanks, but I do hope that your life improves.

[FeatherDust]

A couple of questions, apropos of nothing.

First, do you think Project Horizons is comprehensible on its own, without having previously read the original Fallout Equestria?  I would think not; it's too deeply based on the existing setting and the events of the first story.  But I'm curious what others think.

This comes up relevant to the Bronyville Golden Muffin awards, where Project Horizons won the public vote for Best Fanfic of the year, but none of the judges picked it.  That said, all the judges said they didn't really like grimdark, so it's easy to see that they wouldn't vote for anything in the FoE milieu regardless of quality.  One of the judges said he'd started reading the first couple chapters and didn't see it as a very good crossover because it just felt like ponies shoved into the roles of a traditional Fallout story, which is what brought up this question for me -- it seems that lacking the perspective of the first story would make it impossible to make a statement like that with any authority, since you're pretty much jumping into the middle of the setting without the introduction.


On a completely different topic: Raider kids!
So here I'm talking about raiders in the FoE Classic sense, not the PH virused raiders.  How do they... y'know... work?

Raiders almost universally have cutie marks that reflect their lifestyle, which suggests one of these options:
1) Almost all raiders became raiders as children;
2) Non-raider ponies who eventually become raiders tend to have marks that reflect some darkness of spirit even at an early age; or
3) Ponies who become raiders undergo a change to their cutie mark.

The first option seems unlikely; raiders are not nurturing sorts who would easily raise children.  We do see a raider foal in FoE (whom Calamity shoots), which raises questions as to how that works in an environment much more likely to destroy the young (metaphorically or literally) than bring them up.  Raiders are essentially living societal toxic waste, and at least based on what Kkat has said (and what we see of them), they're not a stable population, but continually dying off (through extermination by others, intra-group violence, or idiotically living near deadly conditions) and being replaced by new wastelanders who've lost their virtues.

The second option is possible, and maybe that's the most reasonable explanation; orphans are very common in the wasteland, so we may be seeing a Lord of the Flies style evolution of unguided childishness combined with misery and loss to become mindless half-feral violence.  However, Kkat's blog entry about raiders seemed to suggest that adults, even groups of adults, can become raiders when the wasteland has inflicted enough mental trauma that they throw everything away and become part of it.

The third option is entirely theoretical, since we don't really have evidence of a cutie mark changing based on a serious life-change.  That said, it's not impossible that it does change to a new symbol representative of the pony's spiritual corruption when they lose their virtues entirely.

[Guest]

Nurturing, no. But in Fo:E foals aren't exactly helpless. Silver Bell (Ditzy's adopted daughter, if my memory mixed up names somewhere.) is said to have survived on her own for a good while if my memory is serving me.

There was also the group of foals the group encountered in Fo:E that were being forced to kill eachother. This may play a part in how foals become raiders. Truthfully had the raiders not been killed themselves they could have just as easily killed whoever survived.

[Valikdu]

So here I'm talking about raiders in the FoE Classic sense, how do they... y'know... work?.

I've put my negative pants on today.

...
Feather, I think that you've just put more effort into thinking about the Raiders than Kkat actaully had while writing the original.

I'll just leave these points here:
-The Raiders are an element that was borrowed, wholesale, from Fallout 3.
-Fallout 3 had no explanation for the omnipresent hordes of violently insane people that kill everyone except each other. The only reason for the crazed Raiders' existance there is that, apparently, the designers in Bethesda thought that the Reavers from Firefly were cool.
-Which were not explained, either. At least, until Serenity.
-I've seen explanations on the Raiders that feature the virtue system. I don't really like those, because:
a) That wasn't in the story itself.
b) I don't really like the virtue system, either. It was not among the original's strong points, in my opinion. It's like a game mechanic from Ultima that got forced into the story to connect with the Elements of Harmony, and it makes some characters act in unbelieveable ways.
c) And writing a big pseudo-philosophy essae long after the fact doesn't grant any points! ...I've seen that recent post of Kkat's. I remember that it pissed me off.

[Silver136]

A couple of questions, apropos of nothing.

First, do you think Project Horizons is comprehensible on its own, without having previously read the original Fallout Equestria?  I would think not; it's too deeply based on the existing setting and the events of the first story.  But I'm curious what others think.

This comes up relevant to the Bronyville Golden Muffin awards, where Project Horizons won the public vote for Best Fanfic of the year, but none of the judges picked it.  That said, all the judges said they didn't really like grimdark, so it's easy to see that they wouldn't vote for anything in the FoE milieu regardless of quality.  One of the judges said he'd started reading the first couple chapters and didn't see it as a very good crossover because it just felt like ponies shoved into the roles of a traditional Fallout story, which is what brought up this question for me -- it seems that lacking the perspective of the first story would make it impossible to make a statement like that with any authority, since you're pretty much jumping into the middle of the setting without the introduction.

Well I personally think one could read PH and be perfectly fine. Of course there are some things they wouldn't understand having not read FoE (Namely the Ten pony seen), and a few jokes they wouldn't get, but I feel PH has an independent enough story to be understandable by itself.

[FeatherDust]

Yes, all right...
4) Raiders are procedurally generated when somepony enters an area coded for them.

[O. Hinds]

Regarding raider children:
Possibility 3 is, I think, highly unlikely; I'd say that it's a combination of 1, 2, and raiders with more mundane cutie marks simply not having them mentioned.

I've already given some thought to what it's like to grow up a raider, by the way, when working on Rose Eye. Short version: not pleasant. I imagine that the details might vary from raider group to raider group, with some being more psychotic and less organized than others (relatively, of course, since raiders can't get too sane and organized without ceasing to be raiders) and children simply being impossible in the worst groups, but Rose Eye's (I can never seem to remember the name she was born with, so I'll just keep calling her Rose Eye) was disciplined to the point where "foal" was not necessarily synonymous with "snack and entertainment". A big part of Rose Eye's foalhood, which was pretty standard for her band, consisted of staying out of the way, maneuvering the others to fight each other instead of her, exerting whatever power she had whenever she could, and trying to get as strong as possible. The band's philosophy of life, for those who had something so complex, could basically be summed up as "The world is shit, always has been, and always will be, so do whatever you want; there's no other right but might." The adults casually abused the children and tended to just laugh if the foals killed one of them instead, and the strong children tore the weaker ones apart, often literally. It was unheard of for any foal who survived to adulthood to be something other than a raider, and Rose Eye, if not for Red Eye's intervention, probably would have ended up just a particularly powerful one.

Possibly Razorblade's group of raiders was less harsh, but I still expect that she could likely be a great pony someday; for a pony to grow up in such an environment and be sane and socialized enough to behave the way we saw in Chapel, they must be exceptional.

[Guest]

Don't forget child soldiers, either. It's perfectly possible that raiders just kidnap or take in foals of those they kill, when the fancy takes them (obviously there's also enslavement practiced in other groups, but there doesn't have to be one modus operandi for Wasteland raiders).

[O. Hinds]

Oh, yes, that too.

[Moodyman90]

One could easily read PH without reading the original the same way one can read Lord of the Rings without reading the Hobbit first, and the same way one can play New Vegas without even touching any other games in the series. And also the same way somebody can read Fallout Equestria without having played any Fallout game, especially 3, or have seen any episodes of Friendship is Magic.

Oh yeah, certain scenes, references, meta-jokes, in-jokes, and bits of the setting would be lost on the reader at first, but if they kept reading they'd catch on. Or maybe even go back to check out the original or the Fallout games and get it.

Case in point, there's a scene in the original story where Littlepip gets into a conversation with a cow who keeps calling her second (male) head Bob(or Herbert I get the two mixed up). Since I hadn't played Fallout 3 yet I had no idea that was a joke based off Herbert and Bob, the not quite a super mutant not quite a ghoul character with a plant growing out of his head that grew into a tree. And even when I got around to playing 3, I still had to look up the character to find out he was in Fallout and Fallout 2.

And let's not get into how Fallout New Vegas is swimming in references to almost all the other Fallout games, even paying lip service to the ones that are considered broad strokes canon at best and non-canon at worst. And if you haven't played any of those games before and New Vegas was your first, as it was mine, and stuff like that bothers you to the point of swearing off a whole series because a later addition didn't feel the need to tread old ground, that's a personal issue.

Sorry that got more ranty than I meant it to.

[Scienza]

A couple of questions, apropos of nothing.

First, do you think Project Horizons is comprehensible on its own, without having previously read the original Fallout Equestria?  I would think not; it's too deeply based on the existing setting and the events of the first story.  But I'm curious what others think.

This comes up relevant to the Bronyville Golden Muffin awards, where Project Horizons won the public vote for Best Fanfic of the year, but none of the judges picked it.  That said, all the judges said they didn't really like grimdark, so it's easy to see that they wouldn't vote for anything in the FoE milieu regardless of quality.  One of the judges said he'd started reading the first couple chapters and didn't see it as a very good crossover because it just felt like ponies shoved into the roles of a traditional Fallout story, which is what brought up this question for me -- it seems that lacking the perspective of the first story would make it impossible to make a statement like that with any authority, since you're pretty much jumping into the middle of the setting without the introduction.

The whole "PH (and FO:E in general) is just the plot of Fallout with ponies" argument always bothered me because for a "crossover", there's something of a ridiculous lack of actual crossing over. Fallout Equestria is FiM seen through the lens of Fallout, not ponies shoehorned into Fallout, and while there is a large amount of stuff that the original took from Fallout, the side stories diverge even further than the original. I dare say that other than cursory setting details and some necessary bits from the original, there's practically no Fallout in Project Horizons, and that the original writing that makes up PH is in many respects better than what you see in the Fallout games.

[Vergil]

I wish I had a fallout game that was anywhere near what PH is...and that's coming from a crazy fallout fan.

[Icy Shake]

Agreed on the point that PH and FoE don't require Fallout knowledge to understand, but I did get the impression that much of the Red Eye/Goddess arc from FoE was very strongly based on the Master from Fallout after having played the game long after finishing the story. Again, I think it's true that PH takes much less story-level stuff from Fallout, but there are a fair number of references and jokes within. The thing is, you often don't need to understand the reference for them to work as jokes: case in point, there's the radscorpion poison sac harvesting mission, taken directly from Fallout, but introduced with a separate joke with Glory thinking it's to make antidotes, but the motivation is actually casserole.

The talk on raiders and especially Kkat's post got me thinking a bit about them, and that "pony becomes raider iff they lose all their virtues" just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I can see how FoE raiders are ponies without virtues, being monsters with no characterization whatsoever. But that as the inevitable result of losing all virtue doesn't ring true to me; sure, their psychopathic nihilism with absurd rate of time preference seems like a logical outcome, but the only one? I'd think that you could see completely amoral monsters who still have some sense of self-preservation, or base shrewdness to not exhaust all the sources of sustenance in an area. Likewise, I'm not sure about the degree of sameness within them; why would they all adopt the blood-and-guts decor, leather fetish, and other outward signs of raiderdom—what's the connection between those and the putative (and, by all indications, post-hoc) cause of their status?
I don't know, at this point I almost think that they worked better when they were just there without any explanation; conveniently, as far as the story itself is concerned, that's still the case.

Chapter Five Running Thoughts:

Chapter Five Overall Thoughts:

Chapter Five Editing:

Other Editing:

[O. Hinds]

Agreed on the point that PH and FoE don't require Fallout knowledge to understand, but I did get the impression that much of the Red Eye/Goddess arc from FoE was very strongly based on the Master from Fallout after having played the game long after finishing the story. Again, I think it's true that PH takes much less story-level stuff from Fallout, but there are a fair number of references and jokes within. The thing is, you often don't need to understand the reference for them to work as jokes: case in point, there's the radscorpion poison sac harvesting mission, taken directly from Fallout, but introduced with a separate joke with Glory thinking it's to make antidotes, but the motivation is actually casserole.

The talk on raiders and especially Kkat's post got me thinking a bit about them, and that "pony becomes raider iff they lose all their virtues" just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I can see how FoE raiders are ponies without virtues, being monsters with no characterization whatsoever. But that as the inevitable result of losing all virtue doesn't ring true to me; sure, their psychopathic nihilism with absurd rate of time preference seems like a logical outcome, but the only one? I'd think that you could see completely amoral monsters who still have some sense of self-preservation, or base shrewdness to not exhaust all the sources of sustenance in an area. Likewise, I'm not sure about the degree of sameness within them; why would they all adopt the blood-and-guts decor, leather fetish, and other outward signs of raiderdom—what's the connection between those and the putative (and, by all indications, post-hoc) cause of their status?
I don't know, at this point I almost think that they worked better when they were just there without any explanation; conveniently, as far as the story itself is concerned, that's still the case.

Chapter Five Running Thoughts:

Chapter Five Overall Thoughts:

Chapter Five Editing:

Other Editing:

Ah, thank you very much as always.

Should there be a verb in there?

It's conversational.

Did she know that there was a bullet that poisoned? There were the green goo bullets, but she only used them on robots.

Perhaps she read about them? Firearms are one area where she actually is a reasonably smart pony.

At least a minor overstatement; there was at least the M.A.S. work in Canterlot and maybe Manehattan, but then this may have been published before the Canterlot Ruins run.

Aye, I interpret that as "The greatest concentration, and the second greatest is far behind".

[RoboRed]

More Kkat lore: http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/283655/the-gaia-valley-recordings

[TyrannisUmbra]

Somepony told me I should post here to notify the editing team of a little thing I noticed while reading.

Blackjack's been using an 'Assault Carbine' in the recent chapters (I can't remember when she got it... but it was sometime within the past 10-15 chapters I think?), but the weapon she's /actually/ using is the Marksman (Markspony?) Carbine. Normally I wouldn't even think it's that important, but the distinctions between the two are pretty substantial. The Assault Carbine is an automatic weapon that uses the 5mm (and thus armor piercing) rounds, and multiple times she's fallen back on it and complained about how it's not good at shredding armor (When the Assault Carbine should be amazing at it, probably moreso than any of her other weapons).

So the times it's been called "Assault Carbine" should be changed to "Markspony Carbine".

Also something minor, but I noticed that the word 'me' was doubled in... ch58. Another word was doubled more recently, I think, but I don't remember what it was.

While his armor tried to lift back to the skies, his viscera were pulled into the dirt.  The three banked and dove again, two blasting the green with a focused barrage while the third still aimed for me me.  The green used some kind of spell… a green ray I’d never seen before.

Keep up the good work, and stuff... I'll keep catching up in my reading, just two more to go now.

[Scienza]

Somepony told me I should post here to notify the editing team of a little thing I noticed while reading.

Blackjack's been using an 'Assault Carbine' in the recent chapters (I can't remember when she got it... but it was sometime within the past 10-15 chapters I think?), but the weapon she's /actually/ using is the Marksman (Markspony?) Carbine. Normally I wouldn't even think it's that important, but the distinctions between the two are pretty substantial. The Assault Carbine is an automatic weapon that uses the 5mm (and thus armor piercing) rounds, and multiple times she's fallen back on it and complained about how it's not good at shredding armor (When the Assault Carbine should be amazing at it, probably moreso than any of her other weapons).

So the times it's been called "Assault Carbine" should be changed to "Markspony Carbine".

I'm not sure the in-universe distinction is as significant as it is in New Vegas (where I assume you're getting the details of the weapon from), but I could be wrong. As it stands, its one of the multitude of "unnamed" weapons which Blackjack has accrued.

Also, welcome to the thread! Wear your headcanon proudly on your chest and brace yourself for speculation.

[TyrannisUmbra]

Well, everything in-universe is based heavily on their counterparts from the Fallout universe (Where the two guns are just about as different as a hunting rifle from a minigun), so I figured it was a good idea to post it anyway.

And, thank you! I'm actually a very old reader! I was one of the most avid speculationists back in the day, and pride myself on helping with a lot of important discoveries! I recently had somepony finally spoil one of the most recent chapters for me, which drove me to finally get caught back up with the story after putting off reading it since chapter 40.

I can't wait to get back into making and discussing wild theories.

[O. Hinds]

Somepony told me I should post here to notify the editing team of a little thing I noticed while reading.

Blackjack's been using an 'Assault Carbine' in the recent chapters (I can't remember when she got it... but it was sometime within the past 10-15 chapters I think?), but the weapon she's /actually/ using is the Marksman (Markspony?) Carbine. Normally I wouldn't even think it's that important, but the distinctions between the two are pretty substantial. The Assault Carbine is an automatic weapon that uses the 5mm (and thus armor piercing) rounds, and multiple times she's fallen back on it and complained about how it's not good at shredding armor (When the Assault Carbine should be amazing at it, probably moreso than any of her other weapons).

So the times it's been called "Assault Carbine" should be changed to "Markspony Carbine".

Also something minor, but I noticed that the word 'me' was doubled in... ch58. Another word was doubled more recently, I think, but I don't remember what it was.

While his armor tried to lift back to the skies, his viscera were pulled into the dirt.  The three banked and dove again, two blasting the green with a focused barrage while the third still aimed for me me.  The green used some kind of spell… a green ray I’d never seen before.

Keep up the good work, and stuff... I'll keep catching up in my reading, just two more to go now.

Ah, thank you.

Icy Shake, might I please prevail upon you to add the carbine name issue to your next scan? You are, I think, better-equipped for it than I am.

Well, everything in-universe is based heavily on their counterparts from the Fallout universe (Where the two guns are just about as different as a hunting rifle from a minigun), so I figured it was a good idea to post it anyway.

And, thank you! I'm actually a very old reader! I was one of the most avid speculationists back in the day, and pride myself on helping with a lot of important discoveries! I recently had somepony finally spoil one of the most recent chapters for me, which drove me to finally get caught back up with the story after putting off reading it since chapter 40.

I can't wait to get back into making and discussing wild theories.

I look forward to it. :)

[SilentCarto]

One of the judges said he'd started reading the first couple chapters and didn't see it as a very good crossover because it just felt like ponies shoved into the roles of a traditional Fallout story...

I found that line particularly funny, since one of the things that hooked me was that it wasn't simply ponies plugged into the plot of a Fallout game.

[SilentCarto]

I'd think that you could see completely amoral monsters who still have some sense of self-preservation, or base shrewdness to not exhaust all the sources of sustenance in an area. Likewise, I'm not sure about the degree of sameness within them; why would they all adopt the blood-and-guts decor, leather fetish, and other outward signs of raiderdom—what's the connection between those and the putative (and, by all indications, post-hoc) cause of their status?

Yeah, the whole concept of "raiders" irritates me to begin with. In the earlier games, you had much more realistic groups like the Vipers and Khans that may have behaved badly, but they each had their own culture and quirks, and it was never implied that raiding was their sole source of resources and their raison d'etre.

And hey-howdy-hey, check out PH with the Reapers and Highlanders and all the other little groups who make their living however they can scrape it out.

but the weapon she's /actually/ using is the Marksman (Markspony?) Carbine.

Marksmare? Or maybe fall back to a non-gender-specific term like "Sharpshooter".

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